Friday, May 11, 2012

Chapter 3 of No Romance

Chapter 3. Jack Learns the Consequences of Refusing Romance.

The thing that moved Jack McDowell was action. The action of movement, to be specific. When he needed to move, he moved, whether that movement be emotional, physical, or mineral. Right now he needed to move away from his annoyance with himself for giving Annie a faint, tiny, flickering matchful of flame of hope.  He understood her from the very beginning, which was, for purposes of our story, when she tried to strike up a conversation with him. This attempt to “strike up” struck indeed---the match, and Jack was afraid that in trying to blow it out, his mouth might serve instead as a bellows.
So Jack needed to move, and he had the perfect motivation for doing so: the arrival of this particular henchfellow, and the AK47 in the cold, dead, slippery hands. This man’s appearance indicated the presence of criminality on the island. Annie’s words on the plane had plainly hinted at this possibility, and now that he had proof, and needed a way to get off the island, Jack decided to investigate. And since it was literally Annie’s supposed job to investigate (she called herself an investigative reporter, remember), he allowed her to come along with him. Maybe she could prove useful.
Maybe.
After sorting through their things, and after Jack had holstered Wrench on his right hip and expropriated the dead man’s assault rifle, and after Annie had equipped herself with a replacement notepad and pen (mightier than the sword, perhaps, but probably not mightier than the AK47) (unless the pen could set off a nuclear device with a single click, or the ballpoint at the end of it could sharpen into a knife or blowing dart of some kind) (and if it could do ALL those things in addition to being able to write, well then, that would be a pretty powerful weapon, far mightier than a sword), they set off through the jungle in the direction the tragically unskilled guard had come from.
A forty-seven minute-and-twenty-three-second’s hike later, they came to a grassy knoll, an inclining crest, and at the crown of that crest they saw what they came to see. Down the curving, nearly vertical slope, and stretching out across a wide expanse of sandy beach from where the jungle in large part ended down to the many docks built on the water’s edge, lay some kind of...compound? Half a dozen large warehouses, smaller buildings in between, a large bay behind it all and bordered everywhere by tall chain link fences topped with barbed wire. And populating it all were two different kinds of people: those with guns, and those without.
“This is obviously a smuggler’s base, but I’m wondering how I know that,” Jack said in a quiet voice.
“It’s the guns,” Annie said in a similar, hushed tone.
”Yeah, so why are there guards with guns?”
“Isn’t that what guards do? Hold guns?”
“But why are they there at all? They’re the only ones on the island!”
“They’re guarding the ones without guns, obviously.”
“But why?” Jack wondered. “Are they slaves or something?”
“Whatever it is, it’s good material,” said Annie, withdrawing her equipment from a raincoat pocket. She started writing, looking up occasionally, but not at the smuggling compound. Rather, her eyes, as they had done on the plane, flickered up at Jack, and every time they did, her mouth suppressed a grin. If Jack had noticed this, he would have probably left her right then and there and gone off alone. Sort of like how he would be doing later that night. But his mind was dreading something else at that moment: the terrible thought that it would be up to him to free these poor defenseless, enslaved workers.
And so he sighed, and frowned.

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They stayed away from the smugglers, and set up a makeshift camp area after another hike, this one slightly shorter at about forty-six minutes, eight seconds. Somehow a fire was made, though neither one of them had ever had to make one without modern technology before. After eating a little bit of food (Jack, kind of always prepared, had packed some trail mix) they complained about not having more food. This turned into a conversation about personal responsibility, choice and accountability, then somehow into a discussion about the overwrought message of Godzilla, then into a question Jack had about aliens (“Why can’t they ever be as complex as human beings, both good and bad?”), then about the United States Congress, then about shoddy journalism (a topic on which Annie curiously had little to say) and finally about unsung heroes that were actually sung heroes, just in a different way. A different key, if you will.
“The adventure movies tell their story to the world. But if any of that kind of thing ever actually happened in the real world, they would be famous, and probably rich, and they’d probably get a book deal, and then a movie about them. And so the cycle would continue. But really, Annie, have you ever heard of me before?”
“No...”
“That proves my point. I don’t think I’m a real person. I don’t live in the real world, where I would get fame and glory for all the stuff I’ve done. I’m in a stupid little adventure story, good for nothing but itself. A damb sequel.”
“And I’m in it too? I’m part of your story?”
“An essential part. But I refuse to acknowledge it. It’s the only thing I can do to rebel.”
“What...what do you mean?”
He almost wanted to say it out loud: I refuse to fall in love with you. But obviously he didn’t, and Annie moved the conversation forward for the sake of convenience.
“So this kind of thing, jumping out of planes and finding smugglers, that’s typical for you?”
“And killing guards. I can’t count how many mindless henchmen I’ve killed.”
“All in order to save the world, right?” Annie said softly but sarcastically.
“Saving the world IS a typical day for me,” Jack said. “So today has been very underwhelming.”
“Oh come on, when have you saved the world?”
“Like I said, you’ll never have heard of them, but I’ll share a few: I saved the world from the Soviets twice. Then I stopped a Japanese nationalistic fanatic who wanted to nuke Pearl Harbor in revenge for his grandfather being shamed. Another time the American government was so self-loathing that they decided to declare war on themselves. I had to punch each politician in the face until they changed their minds. And one time I went back in time and assassinated Hitler in his bunker. Everyone thought he killed himself, but no, he was actually about to set off nukes he had stolen from the future and blow up the entire world, except for his bunker. Afterward he and his actress friend were going to repopulate the world. It was an interesting story, because he used the same channels of time travel that I did, and we pretty much passed each other in the night.” Here Jack paused. “Those may have been just in the movies...but frankly, it’s damb hard for me to tell which is which.”
Annie, he just realized, was writing all this down. Or at least writing something down. He wondered what kind of thoughts were going on that notepad.
“What’s going on that notepad?” he asked with a typical angry frown and a bit of a growl in his voice.
“Um...” said Annie, not looking at him as she continued to write, “Hold on just a sec...um....Okay.” She raised her head to look at Jack. “Now, what was the question?”
Then she smiled. A sparkling smile. All while still retaining some of her shyness.
“Are you really being purposefully coy?” he said. “Because ---”
Her smile evaporated. “No, no, no!” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not---I’m sorry, I’m not doing...I’m not going....” She continued to stammer and mutter strings of words full of all manner of spurts and starts.
Jack couldn’t quite figure out what was going on in that head, and he suspected that she didn’t know fully either. But beneath it all, that crush of hers was surely flourishing. He knew that much.
And so he continued to stare at her as she struggled to speak.
Finally she arrived at, “I’m just rewriting a lot of what I was writing on the plane. My notes sunk with it, you know. You know?”
“I’m not sure I do. Was it really so important?”
Annie blushed at this. Jack sighed at that. Then he frowned at the fact that he sighed, then sighed at the fact that he frowned. Then he let forth a bestial yell, not at Annie, but at himself, and really, at both of them. He was stuck in his role as much as she was. And together...
Annie rose to her feet in fright. At that moment he had no presence of mind to be compassionate or selfless, and so did nothing to assuage her apparent fears. In fact, he turned away from her, and only heard her leaving; he did not see it. When he turned back, however, and found her gone, his eyes fell on the notepad, which she had left on top of her open pack. Curiosity mixed with bitterness at the world compelled him to walk over and pick it up. He read it right there, standing up as straight as that sign on the beach.
A few words and phrases jumped out at him immediately, and were all he needed to see. The first word: dreamy.
He’s a hero, and I get to be his girl! I get to be rescued! Wherever I am, I know I’m safe, because it’s his duty to save me. I don’t need to be afraid of anything anymore.
When he’s thinking he looks like Sherlock Holmes, but with the body and hair of a Greek god. Oh, that hair! The way it bounces just so when he turns his head.
He’s far too handsome to be named Ruggles. I love that his name is Jack! I already know what the name of our first son is going to be.
It went on for far longer. He flipped through the pages, getting angrier with each one. Not a trace of what had been happening with the murder they had witnessed, the plane crash they had managed to survive, the armed guard who had nearly ended their lives, the smuggling operation they had discovered.
Just him.
“Jack?”
He whipped around, and there stood Annie in her raincoat, looking...odd. Her eyes had connected with Jack’s, but had such a vague, unfocused feel to them that she did not see his inflamed temperament, nor what he held in his hand. Her own hands clutched themselves lightly in front of her person, as if offering him something.
“Jack...I want to tell you everything...I want to...give myself to you.”
And those offering fingers reached the edges of her coat, starting to pull it open.
No.”
The word left Jack’s mouth so swiftly and forcefully that she stopped and stepped back. Her eyes and mouth opened wide as if she had just been struck. Then she finally noticed the notepad in his hand and a look of horror came over her, much more horror than she had expressed at any of the other horrifying things that had happened that day. Her face turned white, then red, then white again.
And Jack opened his mouth, delivering a message so fiery it was practically a sermon, and commanding her with all the force and energy of his being.
“No!” he said again. “No romance! I refuse, and I won’t let you tempt me! Do you know how long I’ve dealt with this? This prison I’m in? How many rewards and glories I’m offered for conforming to it, to submitting to the sadistic gods that compose my life? How much I have to deny myself to retain even the slightest hint of identity that wasn’t given to me by someone else? And now you’re going to just take the power that you have and abuse me! Tempt me, try me, destroy everything I’ve built myself into, everything I’ve sought to change! Just so you can have a little dambed emotional fulfillment! I will not be in your presence a minute longer if this is how it’s going to be! Either you leave or I will. Whatever dambed adventure we’re meant to go on, I will not allow romance to be a part of it. So get over me, do whatever you have to do to get away from it, torture yourself for all I care, just don’t torture me longer than I’ve had to bear already.”
He threw the notepad down on the ground and then himself onto his sleeping mat. Annie, tears flinging from her face, darted back into the dark jungle. He gave her no mind, assuming that she’d return eventually, and knowing that either way she’d be kept safe. From there he found solace in sleep.
As you can plainly see, Jack was in a state of rebellion. It’s taken a few tricks to get him here on this island, but now that he’s here, he can’t escape until the work he has been given to do is finished. Undoubtedly he will fight us every step of the way, but in the end, he’ll give you the finest adventure story you’ve ever experienced in your life. So don’t abandon him now: we’ll get him to behave for you. That’s a promise.

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In the morning he woke up alone. A few embers still glowed in the firepit. Hearing the birds with their songs of the dawn gave Jack comfort. Also, knowing he wasn’t dead by the gun of a man or the claws of a beast or the stinger of a scorpion or the venom of a snake or the eye of a tiger or attacked by any of the other sources of violence so prevalent in the midst of so much life---that gave him comfort too. But it also pricked his conscience to be uncertain of Annie’s fate.
According to what he knew of these kinds of stories, she was most likely just fine. But occasionally, very occasionally, deaths of major characters did occur.... And even if she wasn’t dead, she could be captured somewhere, making it his job to save her. This was more likely. And thinking on it, he wondered what would happen if he just left the island, right now, somehow... Although he knew in the back of his mind that such a thing was impossible, and the only way out was to play the little game he had been given.
After waking up fully and taking care of typical morning routines, he began collecting his things and stuffing them back into his pack. When he finished strapping on the sleeping mat (which, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember packing), he slung the pack on his back, kicked some dirt into the glowing embers, and started back into the jungle.
But he only made it one step away from the camp. Literally one step, for all around him men with guns suddenly emerged from the brush. At least a dozen of them, looking mean, tough, stoic.
“Oh, come on, guys, how long were you waiting there for me to get moving?” Jack groaned. “Half an hour? An hour? Two? Good grief almighty.”
Then he caught sight of the woman standing in the midst of them.
Annie?
But it wasn't Annie.

2 comments:

  1. I found the part where the narrator mentioned getting Jack to behave almost creepy. The rest continued the fun yet excitement that the story already had going.

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  2. Ha. Eye of the tiger. Nice touch. Anyway, this chapter does a really good job of explaining both the title and Jack's character. It really is an interesting and understandable method to maintaining any sense of identity. Not too much interrupted the story for me. It flowed very well and kept me wanting to read each line. Though, now that I think of it, maybe there are too many repetitive elements at some points like when Jack thinks about what Annie is writing in her notepad and then immediately asks her that very same thing. It doesn't hurt the story to have such detail, but I'm not sure how much it does for the story either. Something to consider anyway. Other than that, really captivating chapter.

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