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[oom] 1x01a Deja Vue
I'm happy, hope you're happy too*.
I can see the bullet travelling towards me, swimming through smoke and air thick as water. So slowly I imagine I can see it spiralling as it comes. I can see the gutted hull of the barge reflected in its surface.
Time simply stops.
The VHS tape rewinds, the audio squealing not unlike the needle of a turn table skipping across the grooves. I am twelve years old again, and the sky is blue. There's not a cloud in sight. My dad is putting a suitcase in the car. My mum is smiling down at me. The film jumps again.
My heart pounds in my ears. A red ribbon slips through my fingers as a man's hand closes around mine. Again, the images on the film blur as it spools passed.
A voice speaks my name. "Alex." I see the man who shot me standing on the sidewalk. Yes, Arthur Layton. I remember his name. He's pointed a gun at my head and pulled the trigger. In the reflection of his sunglasses, I see a man in white. A clown, shouting my name.
"Alex!"
This means nothing to me.**
~~~
Molly! We'll blow the candles out together.
She was safe, that much Alex knew. After Layton had briefly taken her hostage, and then escaped, Alex had seen her daughter delivered to Evan's side, blown her a kiss, made her that promise she intended to keep.
Meanwhile, Arthur Layton, that scar faced little weasel, had slipped into the back seat of her car while she was saying goodbye. He pointed the revolver at her head and he'd made her drive, down to the river again. He tells someone on his mobile that he's going to tell her the truth about why her parents died.
Later, she might think it was her own curiosity about that fateful day that makes her leave the safety of the shore, and walk down that rusting steel gangway and into the belly of the barge. He's been living here. There's a mass of blankets and discarded bottles of booze and take away containers. A fetid pile in the corner says he's been here awhile. He makes her sit while he paces, ranting about his glory days as a drug dealer. She tries to reason with him, uses her skills as a hostage negotiator and a psychological profiler, to no avail.
It means nothing to him.
He doesn't even hear her voice as he slips his shades on. She watches as he raises the gun, thinking frantically, he's brought me this far. He must have demands. This can still all work out.
And then he pulls the trigger.
* Ashes To Ashes by David Bowie
** Vienna by Ultravox
I can see the bullet travelling towards me, swimming through smoke and air thick as water. So slowly I imagine I can see it spiralling as it comes. I can see the gutted hull of the barge reflected in its surface.
Time simply stops.
The VHS tape rewinds, the audio squealing not unlike the needle of a turn table skipping across the grooves. I am twelve years old again, and the sky is blue. There's not a cloud in sight. My dad is putting a suitcase in the car. My mum is smiling down at me. The film jumps again.
My heart pounds in my ears. A red ribbon slips through my fingers as a man's hand closes around mine. Again, the images on the film blur as it spools passed.
A voice speaks my name. "Alex." I see the man who shot me standing on the sidewalk. Yes, Arthur Layton. I remember his name. He's pointed a gun at my head and pulled the trigger. In the reflection of his sunglasses, I see a man in white. A clown, shouting my name.
"Alex!"
This means nothing to me.**
~~~
Molly! We'll blow the candles out together.
She was safe, that much Alex knew. After Layton had briefly taken her hostage, and then escaped, Alex had seen her daughter delivered to Evan's side, blown her a kiss, made her that promise she intended to keep.
Meanwhile, Arthur Layton, that scar faced little weasel, had slipped into the back seat of her car while she was saying goodbye. He pointed the revolver at her head and he'd made her drive, down to the river again. He tells someone on his mobile that he's going to tell her the truth about why her parents died.
Later, she might think it was her own curiosity about that fateful day that makes her leave the safety of the shore, and walk down that rusting steel gangway and into the belly of the barge. He's been living here. There's a mass of blankets and discarded bottles of booze and take away containers. A fetid pile in the corner says he's been here awhile. He makes her sit while he paces, ranting about his glory days as a drug dealer. She tries to reason with him, uses her skills as a hostage negotiator and a psychological profiler, to no avail.
It means nothing to him.
He doesn't even hear her voice as he slips his shades on. She watches as he raises the gun, thinking frantically, he's brought me this far. He must have demands. This can still all work out.
And then he pulls the trigger.
* Ashes To Ashes by David Bowie
** Vienna by Ultravox