Post by C_Miller on Oct 23, 2011 11:33:40 GMT -5
Ultimate Speed Force: Requiem - Jay Garrick
by Jackalope
Rolling over I see Joan. Her grey hair flows down over her shoulders, her glasses are tilted as she is reading. I look at the lines around her face and for a moment I think I can see all the times she has laughed or cried, every cynical look she ever flashed my way, every frustrated glare, every quick smile, every look of love. She feels my staring and starts to turn towards me, I don't want this moment to end yet. I close my eyes and try to return my breathing to what I guess my usual breathing rate is.
“Too late old man.” I feel her hand on my face, cool to the touch. I find myself smiling as I open my eyes. She lets her hand glide over my stubble and I see that look on her face and in her eyes. Love. She kisses my lips. “You don't need to get up Jay. If you want to stay in bed I'd understand. It's been a trying week.”
All of a sudden I remember all of it and this peaceful morning is gone. Barry's funeral, the death of the Flash, all the pain and sorrow. All of the regret. Joan must realise what I'm thinking because she hugs me, holding me while I think about what must happen next. There needs to be a Flash, the world needs it. The hero who will be there in the nick of time.
With a final squeeze I roll over and get up. Joan watches me as I walk to the closet.
“You don't need to do this Jay. You've given the world a lot over your life, no one expects anything more from you.”
I turn around to see her, lying there with her book on her lap, her eyes twinkling. I feel a smirk on my face. “Since when have you been able to read people's minds?”
She smiles back. “Just yours.”
I turn back around and open the closet door. There in the middle of the small walk-in area it hangs. The yellow bolt on the red. The blue pants and red boots. The helmet. I turn back to Joan.
“I expect more of me.”
She nods, she knows this already.
The air is cool, fresh like a recent rain shower. I see my breath as I blow out then breath in. I look around. The city stands in the morning sun, warming up. I try to picture it how it once was all those years ago. It’s not easy, gradual change is the hardest to notice. It starts off as one thing and inch by inch, year by year it becomes something different. Practically a century, boy time flies when you’re born to run.
I off.
I'm at the bus stop, children wait for their school class. Two kids paused in a game of slaps, the rest texting on cell phones. I'm at the park, a dog leaping in mid air for a yellow disk. A boy looks up at a model plane, stuck up in a tree. I leave it by his feet. I'm at the market. A middle aged woman stands hands outstretched towards a man who is in mid stride, holding a silver handbag. I carefully take it from his hands leaving only minimal friction burns on his hands and place it by her feet. It's a hard time for many people. If someone could just figure out how to fix the economy it would probably help more people than most of the heroes combined. I guess all we can do is try to help where we can.
I'm at Central. It's a different feeling here. A different kind of people. I'm at the University. Six students stand with signs aloft, one of their mouth is open, yelling. The rest look somewhat embarrassed. The sign read 'Stop the Occupation'. 'End the Violence.' Not quite the turnout of the Vietnam years but it's still nice to see that some of the younger generation care. It's them that we are counting on to change things. A surprising number of students are wearing red tops with yellow lightning bolts. I wonder if this is what Barry used to call 'being ironic.' I don't know.
I do the alleyways. The homeless seem undisturbed, none currently hurt or dying. The nights have been warm here, but it won’t always be like that. Every City has them but not every person sees them. Another problem the Flash can't fix. I pass an Asian man, bent down, handing a homeless man a cup of soup. At least some see them.
I slow slightly to hear the beginnings of a siren. Fire. I turn the corner. I'm in front of the burning apartment. The fire truck has yet to pull up. I dodge through the figures running from the doorway, and look around. The fire has spread fast, even at this speed the heat feels like a wall. I start upstairs, moving from door to door. A woman crouched in a corner, holding a small child in her arms. I have to lift them over the flames, flickering like seaweed in slow-motion. Once downstairs I leave them by the fire-truck, only now stopped. I take a lung full of clean air and head back up. An old lady sits, hand outstretched with remote in hand. Smoke half fills the room, yet here she is watching her dailies, squinting through her thick glasses. It's easier to move the couch with her on it. Old bones are brittle. Once she is seated on the footpath outside I head up again. I almost stumble on the wooden stairs, losing their stability in the heat. I make note of it for the way down. An empty room. The next, two kids are huddled in their room, faces frozen in terror. I carry them down.
The firemen's door is open and they are mid jump in hitting the ground. I head back up. An overly obese man is sleeping in a large bed, oxygen mask covering his face. I can feel myself blink in thought. The heat is creeping around me and a thought surfaces. Barry would have already finished here. I lift the man, taking the mask off his face. Pure oxygen, not the safest item here. I leave the man in hovering while I check his window. No one is underneath so a smash it out. I hop back to keep the body in the air and then pull the mattress out from the bed. I push it through the window. I catch the man, trying to position his weight as to not have any section of his body drop too low. His eyes are slowly opening. Now it comes down to timing. I carry him through the window frame, running down the wall, keeping momentum but staying a couple of steps behind the falling mattress. As it hits the ground it bounces up. I rest the man on it and let gravity do the rest.
I feel a shift. I'm at the Keystone border and unfortunately my gut is right, a car is falling off a bridge over the Waid River and another hangs precariously on the side. Behind them a four cars overlap one another in a pile up. I let the speed carry me to the falling car and try to open the passenger door. The faces of the screaming man and small girl only add to my frustration in finding that it is locked. I try his side and it’s the same. I phase my hand through and have to concentrate in order to grasp the lock switch. The whole phasing thing was never my speciality. It was the running, the air, the speed. I slow until I hear it click open and I pull myself back into the speed. I wrench the door open and lean into the car. I undo both seatbelts at once and grab the girl. Only a few feet from the water I drop and run across the water, placing her on the bank. I'm back at the falling car and I pull him out, and deliver him to his daughter. I take a final look at the flying car.
I'm back at the fire and I use the empty window frame to get back to the top floor. Two empty rooms. The firemen are at the base of the stairs. Next room a boy is hugging a large dog in the kitchen. I take them both, leaving them outside the building’s entrance. Back in it I see an African-American couple trying to keep their family safe. The father stands with a fire extinguisher in hand, the mother with her arms around her children. I take them first, the two daughters, then the son and his mother, finally the father. Part of me wants to stand still long enough to see them hug, to rejoice in their survival but there is too much to do. I'm back upstairs to make sure the top floor is clear.
The next floor down seems to be where the fire started. I make my way around the orange flames and can see the approaching Firemen. The first door I enter I can barely see. The thick black smoke feels like fine glass at certain speeds. I try to stay low, and see a woman couching and red faced. I carry her to the footpath near the approaching ambulance.
I'm back at the bridge, the car is tilting past its balancing point and the passengers are trying to scramble into the back seats. I quickly tie its back tow-bar to another car's with a chain from the back of a crashed SUV. A quick surveillance of the crash victims. Most look fine but a dark haired woman at the middle of it looks bad. I don't want to move her but the ambulance is, I check, still at least ten minutes from the crash. It's at times like this I wish I had super strength and could fly. I open the ambulances back door and take the white shirted man with the nearby emergency kit. With him there she can at least get a head start.
Back at the fire, I take another breath in. On the fourth floor again and the Firemen have nearly made it. An old man is crawling on the floor, under the thick dark smoke. I carry him down, placing him on a small patch of grass nearby. I'm back to check three more empty rooms. The forth I can see what I guess is the source of the fire, a huge leaping fire rumbling off an old oven. The fry pan at the centre of it all seems to be melting. The fire trails off the oven through the corridor to a room in which a man stands naked, his arms above him holding a gas can above him, the liquid falling over him. The idiot! The insane ego of it all, not just to consider killing yourself, but to take all these people with you. I want not to have seen him, to have found this room last. I push these thoughts aside. The flames lick at his feet, and I place him on the concrete. Hopefully the police come get him before someone lends him a light.
With the fourth floor cleared, I move onto the third. I catch the stumbling fireman as he almost trips on one of the broken steps. There are a couple of cats I take under one arm. A Latino woman stands at an open window. An old man sits on the toilet. A child hiding under their bed. A man tied to his bed , gagged. A woman, sleeping on her couch, the smell of whiskey strong on her breath. A man in a wheelchair. A poodle whining. A girl crying. Then the third floor is clear.
I'm in Keystone. A crowd is gathered around the base of one of the taller buildings. At the top a man stands, hands flat against the glass behind him. I beside him, the sweat on his forehead makes it seem like it had just been raining. It's hard to tell whether he's a... what do they call them? A Saver. A passenger on the flash-train. There was a story about them on 60 minutes, people who drop from buildings in order that they can be saved. People who get off on the fear and the feeling of being saved by a Superhero. Supposedly people travelled from across America, even the world, to Keystone and Central in order to try it, the newest thing in Adventure Tourism. They never thought about the heroes though. Of course it could be that he was a jumper.
“Don't.” He turns to look at me, panting and sweating. He doesn't look like a Saver; he's middle-aged and balding, in a white shirt partly see-through with perspiration. “Whatever you're thinking, just don't not today. Not in my city.”
The man is almost crying. “You dddon' know... you ddon't know whaat its like, to lo lose everything.” I touch his shoulder. I expect him to flinch but he doesn't.
“Look, I'm sorry for what you're going through. I know loss.” He looks at me with those water-filled eyes. “Just don't do this. I can't know what you are going through but there are people who can help.” There's a shift. I turn to him. “Please just stay here, I'll help you down soon.”
I'm back at the bridge. A fire has started under the cars. I move through the cars checking that people are out. The ambulance is pulling up and I slow enough to tell them to stay back. The injured woman is still in her car, the emergency response man checking her vitals. I grab a stretcher from the ambulance and place it beside the car.
“We need to move her.” The emergency worker nods. We gently lift her onto the orange plastic stretcher. Once there I move her closer to the ambulance. A man is stuck pulling at his seatbelt. I pull open a back door and unclick it, unlock his door and place him on the side of the road.
At the burning apartment I move through the second floor. The firemen are in the midst of escorting the occupants out. I double check the rooms, grabbing a Labrador under one arm. I drop the dog off on the footpath outside.
At the river the fire has spread. Taking a breath I move through the cars, double checking each of the seats. An old man has fallen unconscious on his steering wheel. I open the door and lift him to the ambulances. The air around me shifts. I know the feeling. Running a circle around the cars the explosion is dissipated, the fires licking my skin before fading into nothing.
The first floor of the hotel is almost fully evacuated, the remaining Firemen checking the last of the rooms. A ripple of heat travels across my back. The beginning of an explosion. A gas heater? I pull the nearest Fireman out of the doorway as the flames splash out.
The echo of a shot. I'm in Keystone 17th St. Corner store. The bullet turns slowly as it flies towards the clerk. I wrench its trajectory out of the way of the terrified worker, and pull the gun out of the hand of the young hoodlum.
My eyes close and I see war. The explosions, the bullets, the guns, the death. The faces of the dead and dying, looking at him, the unsaved. The Second World War, Vietnam, Korea. My eyes open.
In the crowd outside the burning apartment a woman cries.
“MY BAABY!”
No, no! Stupid. I'm inside. The smoke filled top floor is enveloped in flames. The ash parts around me. The tiny baby is in a back room, lying helpless. I hand the child gently to the ambulance worker behind the fire truck.
“Please, please...” The words slip out under my breath. My heart is beating hard. I can't believe I almost missed... The infant coughs and starts to cry. I sigh out, realising that I was holding my breath. The red eyed mother runs to the baby, scooping the child into her arms. I wipe my eye.
My mind clicks. Central.
My legs ache with the speed. The crowd stand like statues, eyes fixed on a single point, except for those whose eyes are squeezed shut. Come on! I dodge through the crowd, moving with such speed just in time to see...
The impact.
The crowd gasps, and cries in shock. Someone flips out a cell phone, calling the police. Others just take pictures. I stand, still for once. Frozen to the ground.
Too late old man.
I look at my hand, the smooth skin burn from where I grabbed the bullet. Once I could have snatched the bullet right out of the air. I turn my hand over. I can see the wrinkles and age spots. I try to picture it how it once was all those years ago. It’s not easy, gradual change is the hardest to notice. It starts off as one thing and inch by inch, year by year it becomes something different. Practically a century. Boy time flies...
Time flies.
I start to walk home.
by Jackalope
Rolling over I see Joan. Her grey hair flows down over her shoulders, her glasses are tilted as she is reading. I look at the lines around her face and for a moment I think I can see all the times she has laughed or cried, every cynical look she ever flashed my way, every frustrated glare, every quick smile, every look of love. She feels my staring and starts to turn towards me, I don't want this moment to end yet. I close my eyes and try to return my breathing to what I guess my usual breathing rate is.
“Too late old man.” I feel her hand on my face, cool to the touch. I find myself smiling as I open my eyes. She lets her hand glide over my stubble and I see that look on her face and in her eyes. Love. She kisses my lips. “You don't need to get up Jay. If you want to stay in bed I'd understand. It's been a trying week.”
All of a sudden I remember all of it and this peaceful morning is gone. Barry's funeral, the death of the Flash, all the pain and sorrow. All of the regret. Joan must realise what I'm thinking because she hugs me, holding me while I think about what must happen next. There needs to be a Flash, the world needs it. The hero who will be there in the nick of time.
With a final squeeze I roll over and get up. Joan watches me as I walk to the closet.
“You don't need to do this Jay. You've given the world a lot over your life, no one expects anything more from you.”
I turn around to see her, lying there with her book on her lap, her eyes twinkling. I feel a smirk on my face. “Since when have you been able to read people's minds?”
She smiles back. “Just yours.”
I turn back around and open the closet door. There in the middle of the small walk-in area it hangs. The yellow bolt on the red. The blue pants and red boots. The helmet. I turn back to Joan.
“I expect more of me.”
She nods, she knows this already.
The air is cool, fresh like a recent rain shower. I see my breath as I blow out then breath in. I look around. The city stands in the morning sun, warming up. I try to picture it how it once was all those years ago. It’s not easy, gradual change is the hardest to notice. It starts off as one thing and inch by inch, year by year it becomes something different. Practically a century, boy time flies when you’re born to run.
I off.
I'm at the bus stop, children wait for their school class. Two kids paused in a game of slaps, the rest texting on cell phones. I'm at the park, a dog leaping in mid air for a yellow disk. A boy looks up at a model plane, stuck up in a tree. I leave it by his feet. I'm at the market. A middle aged woman stands hands outstretched towards a man who is in mid stride, holding a silver handbag. I carefully take it from his hands leaving only minimal friction burns on his hands and place it by her feet. It's a hard time for many people. If someone could just figure out how to fix the economy it would probably help more people than most of the heroes combined. I guess all we can do is try to help where we can.
I'm at Central. It's a different feeling here. A different kind of people. I'm at the University. Six students stand with signs aloft, one of their mouth is open, yelling. The rest look somewhat embarrassed. The sign read 'Stop the Occupation'. 'End the Violence.' Not quite the turnout of the Vietnam years but it's still nice to see that some of the younger generation care. It's them that we are counting on to change things. A surprising number of students are wearing red tops with yellow lightning bolts. I wonder if this is what Barry used to call 'being ironic.' I don't know.
I do the alleyways. The homeless seem undisturbed, none currently hurt or dying. The nights have been warm here, but it won’t always be like that. Every City has them but not every person sees them. Another problem the Flash can't fix. I pass an Asian man, bent down, handing a homeless man a cup of soup. At least some see them.
I slow slightly to hear the beginnings of a siren. Fire. I turn the corner. I'm in front of the burning apartment. The fire truck has yet to pull up. I dodge through the figures running from the doorway, and look around. The fire has spread fast, even at this speed the heat feels like a wall. I start upstairs, moving from door to door. A woman crouched in a corner, holding a small child in her arms. I have to lift them over the flames, flickering like seaweed in slow-motion. Once downstairs I leave them by the fire-truck, only now stopped. I take a lung full of clean air and head back up. An old lady sits, hand outstretched with remote in hand. Smoke half fills the room, yet here she is watching her dailies, squinting through her thick glasses. It's easier to move the couch with her on it. Old bones are brittle. Once she is seated on the footpath outside I head up again. I almost stumble on the wooden stairs, losing their stability in the heat. I make note of it for the way down. An empty room. The next, two kids are huddled in their room, faces frozen in terror. I carry them down.
The firemen's door is open and they are mid jump in hitting the ground. I head back up. An overly obese man is sleeping in a large bed, oxygen mask covering his face. I can feel myself blink in thought. The heat is creeping around me and a thought surfaces. Barry would have already finished here. I lift the man, taking the mask off his face. Pure oxygen, not the safest item here. I leave the man in hovering while I check his window. No one is underneath so a smash it out. I hop back to keep the body in the air and then pull the mattress out from the bed. I push it through the window. I catch the man, trying to position his weight as to not have any section of his body drop too low. His eyes are slowly opening. Now it comes down to timing. I carry him through the window frame, running down the wall, keeping momentum but staying a couple of steps behind the falling mattress. As it hits the ground it bounces up. I rest the man on it and let gravity do the rest.
I feel a shift. I'm at the Keystone border and unfortunately my gut is right, a car is falling off a bridge over the Waid River and another hangs precariously on the side. Behind them a four cars overlap one another in a pile up. I let the speed carry me to the falling car and try to open the passenger door. The faces of the screaming man and small girl only add to my frustration in finding that it is locked. I try his side and it’s the same. I phase my hand through and have to concentrate in order to grasp the lock switch. The whole phasing thing was never my speciality. It was the running, the air, the speed. I slow until I hear it click open and I pull myself back into the speed. I wrench the door open and lean into the car. I undo both seatbelts at once and grab the girl. Only a few feet from the water I drop and run across the water, placing her on the bank. I'm back at the falling car and I pull him out, and deliver him to his daughter. I take a final look at the flying car.
I'm back at the fire and I use the empty window frame to get back to the top floor. Two empty rooms. The firemen are at the base of the stairs. Next room a boy is hugging a large dog in the kitchen. I take them both, leaving them outside the building’s entrance. Back in it I see an African-American couple trying to keep their family safe. The father stands with a fire extinguisher in hand, the mother with her arms around her children. I take them first, the two daughters, then the son and his mother, finally the father. Part of me wants to stand still long enough to see them hug, to rejoice in their survival but there is too much to do. I'm back upstairs to make sure the top floor is clear.
The next floor down seems to be where the fire started. I make my way around the orange flames and can see the approaching Firemen. The first door I enter I can barely see. The thick black smoke feels like fine glass at certain speeds. I try to stay low, and see a woman couching and red faced. I carry her to the footpath near the approaching ambulance.
I'm back at the bridge, the car is tilting past its balancing point and the passengers are trying to scramble into the back seats. I quickly tie its back tow-bar to another car's with a chain from the back of a crashed SUV. A quick surveillance of the crash victims. Most look fine but a dark haired woman at the middle of it looks bad. I don't want to move her but the ambulance is, I check, still at least ten minutes from the crash. It's at times like this I wish I had super strength and could fly. I open the ambulances back door and take the white shirted man with the nearby emergency kit. With him there she can at least get a head start.
Back at the fire, I take another breath in. On the fourth floor again and the Firemen have nearly made it. An old man is crawling on the floor, under the thick dark smoke. I carry him down, placing him on a small patch of grass nearby. I'm back to check three more empty rooms. The forth I can see what I guess is the source of the fire, a huge leaping fire rumbling off an old oven. The fry pan at the centre of it all seems to be melting. The fire trails off the oven through the corridor to a room in which a man stands naked, his arms above him holding a gas can above him, the liquid falling over him. The idiot! The insane ego of it all, not just to consider killing yourself, but to take all these people with you. I want not to have seen him, to have found this room last. I push these thoughts aside. The flames lick at his feet, and I place him on the concrete. Hopefully the police come get him before someone lends him a light.
With the fourth floor cleared, I move onto the third. I catch the stumbling fireman as he almost trips on one of the broken steps. There are a couple of cats I take under one arm. A Latino woman stands at an open window. An old man sits on the toilet. A child hiding under their bed. A man tied to his bed , gagged. A woman, sleeping on her couch, the smell of whiskey strong on her breath. A man in a wheelchair. A poodle whining. A girl crying. Then the third floor is clear.
I'm in Keystone. A crowd is gathered around the base of one of the taller buildings. At the top a man stands, hands flat against the glass behind him. I beside him, the sweat on his forehead makes it seem like it had just been raining. It's hard to tell whether he's a... what do they call them? A Saver. A passenger on the flash-train. There was a story about them on 60 minutes, people who drop from buildings in order that they can be saved. People who get off on the fear and the feeling of being saved by a Superhero. Supposedly people travelled from across America, even the world, to Keystone and Central in order to try it, the newest thing in Adventure Tourism. They never thought about the heroes though. Of course it could be that he was a jumper.
“Don't.” He turns to look at me, panting and sweating. He doesn't look like a Saver; he's middle-aged and balding, in a white shirt partly see-through with perspiration. “Whatever you're thinking, just don't not today. Not in my city.”
The man is almost crying. “You dddon' know... you ddon't know whaat its like, to lo lose everything.” I touch his shoulder. I expect him to flinch but he doesn't.
“Look, I'm sorry for what you're going through. I know loss.” He looks at me with those water-filled eyes. “Just don't do this. I can't know what you are going through but there are people who can help.” There's a shift. I turn to him. “Please just stay here, I'll help you down soon.”
I'm back at the bridge. A fire has started under the cars. I move through the cars checking that people are out. The ambulance is pulling up and I slow enough to tell them to stay back. The injured woman is still in her car, the emergency response man checking her vitals. I grab a stretcher from the ambulance and place it beside the car.
“We need to move her.” The emergency worker nods. We gently lift her onto the orange plastic stretcher. Once there I move her closer to the ambulance. A man is stuck pulling at his seatbelt. I pull open a back door and unclick it, unlock his door and place him on the side of the road.
At the burning apartment I move through the second floor. The firemen are in the midst of escorting the occupants out. I double check the rooms, grabbing a Labrador under one arm. I drop the dog off on the footpath outside.
At the river the fire has spread. Taking a breath I move through the cars, double checking each of the seats. An old man has fallen unconscious on his steering wheel. I open the door and lift him to the ambulances. The air around me shifts. I know the feeling. Running a circle around the cars the explosion is dissipated, the fires licking my skin before fading into nothing.
The first floor of the hotel is almost fully evacuated, the remaining Firemen checking the last of the rooms. A ripple of heat travels across my back. The beginning of an explosion. A gas heater? I pull the nearest Fireman out of the doorway as the flames splash out.
The echo of a shot. I'm in Keystone 17th St. Corner store. The bullet turns slowly as it flies towards the clerk. I wrench its trajectory out of the way of the terrified worker, and pull the gun out of the hand of the young hoodlum.
My eyes close and I see war. The explosions, the bullets, the guns, the death. The faces of the dead and dying, looking at him, the unsaved. The Second World War, Vietnam, Korea. My eyes open.
In the crowd outside the burning apartment a woman cries.
“MY BAABY!”
No, no! Stupid. I'm inside. The smoke filled top floor is enveloped in flames. The ash parts around me. The tiny baby is in a back room, lying helpless. I hand the child gently to the ambulance worker behind the fire truck.
“Please, please...” The words slip out under my breath. My heart is beating hard. I can't believe I almost missed... The infant coughs and starts to cry. I sigh out, realising that I was holding my breath. The red eyed mother runs to the baby, scooping the child into her arms. I wipe my eye.
My mind clicks. Central.
My legs ache with the speed. The crowd stand like statues, eyes fixed on a single point, except for those whose eyes are squeezed shut. Come on! I dodge through the crowd, moving with such speed just in time to see...
The impact.
The crowd gasps, and cries in shock. Someone flips out a cell phone, calling the police. Others just take pictures. I stand, still for once. Frozen to the ground.
Too late old man.
I look at my hand, the smooth skin burn from where I grabbed the bullet. Once I could have snatched the bullet right out of the air. I turn my hand over. I can see the wrinkles and age spots. I try to picture it how it once was all those years ago. It’s not easy, gradual change is the hardest to notice. It starts off as one thing and inch by inch, year by year it becomes something different. Practically a century. Boy time flies...
Time flies.
I start to walk home.
