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Jan. 23rd, 2007 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tibetanmethodWhat's black and white and red all over?
The answer of answers:
Not the newspaper or the Communist panda. Not the FBI agent in a blender.
The Black Lodge.
***
The vertiginous pattern on the floor never stops -- the black and white stripes, with each stripe coming to a point and receding until it makes a point in the other direction, like so many tessellated and spooning lovers. The red curtains aren't heavy at all. They just hang.
The corridor is so long, and the statue at the end -- the one with the Greek lady, or maybe she's Roman, the one with the missing arms -- it's like the mountains on the horizon: she's not getting any closer.
They walk, Leland Palmer and Josie Packard and Harry S. Truman. They walk, and they walk, and then
His eyes are wrong. Cooper's eyes are wrong. He's stepped out of nowhere, somewhere out of the curtains, and he's got a rictus grin that says he knows everything about you and everything you don't know, and his eyes are wrong -- milky and murky and utterly without sanity.
He points a finger. "mOneY cAn'T bUy yOU LoVE."
Leland is the first one to turn away to where Cooper -- if it is Cooper -- points, and to part the curtains. What's beyond them is a room: black leather chairs, a black leather chaise longue, a floor lamp, another statue --
And the midget in red, and Laura Palmer.
Their eyes aren't wrong.
The answer of answers:
Not the newspaper or the Communist panda. Not the FBI agent in a blender.
The Black Lodge.
The vertiginous pattern on the floor never stops -- the black and white stripes, with each stripe coming to a point and receding until it makes a point in the other direction, like so many tessellated and spooning lovers. The red curtains aren't heavy at all. They just hang.
The corridor is so long, and the statue at the end -- the one with the Greek lady, or maybe she's Roman, the one with the missing arms -- it's like the mountains on the horizon: she's not getting any closer.
They walk, Leland Palmer and Josie Packard and Harry S. Truman. They walk, and they walk, and then
His eyes are wrong. Cooper's eyes are wrong. He's stepped out of nowhere, somewhere out of the curtains, and he's got a rictus grin that says he knows everything about you and everything you don't know, and his eyes are wrong -- milky and murky and utterly without sanity.
He points a finger. "mOneY cAn'T bUy yOU LoVE."
Leland is the first one to turn away to where Cooper -- if it is Cooper -- points, and to part the curtains. What's beyond them is a room: black leather chairs, a black leather chaise longue, a floor lamp, another statue --
And the midget in red, and Laura Palmer.
Their eyes aren't wrong.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2007-02-02 02:58 am (UTC)Laura Palmer. Josie's hand tightens on his, and Leland staggers forward.
"Laura!"
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Date: 2007-02-02 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 03:19 am (UTC)He raises both hands beside his head, palms facing outward. "dO yOu kNoW whAt wE arE, sHerIfF tRumaN?"
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Date: 2007-02-02 03:21 am (UTC)And Josie'sgrip begins to hurt.
Harry can't stand to watch this; it's too personal, too painful, what he can see in Leland's face. And for this reunion--there's going to be a counterweight. He turns to the tiny man with what isn't really relief.
"You're spirits, aren't you? The spirits of the woods."
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Date: 2007-02-02 03:30 am (UTC)He brings his hands together in a sharp clap. Laura looks away from her father, looks at the man in red -- who says, "fOr tO fIlL uP yoUr sOuL." He looks sharply at Josie, and then back at Harry --
And smiles.
He knows something.
"mOneY cAn'T bUy yoU lOvE."
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Date: 2007-02-02 03:36 am (UTC)He wishes Cooper was here. "We re-opened the door," he says. "Things can go back to-to normal." His voice wants to break on it.
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Date: 2007-02-02 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 03:41 am (UTC)She doesn't turn back.
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Date: 2007-02-02 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 03:43 am (UTC)He wasn't there until the little man looked for him.
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Date: 2007-02-02 03:52 am (UTC)And Josie's lips twitch.
"Josie," Harry says.
"It doesn't make sense out there, Harry," she says. Tears are in her eyes, and it's really starting to hit him now. How many more times will she say his name, exotic and mysterious-sounding in her accent?
(And not, some dark shadow in his heart whispers, the hiccupping shadow of these... things?)
"Josie." He can't ask her to say. He can't--what can he say.
"It's so hard to understand that place," she whispers. "I'm so tired."
That's what he can say. "So go." It's tender, and it's mournful, and it's...
perfect courage. He has to let her go.
He loves her, after all. What else does he need to know?
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Date: 2007-02-02 04:07 am (UTC)And there's always pretty music in the air.
He dances, and Josie Packard moves slowly, sinuously, one foot in front of the other, and lowers herself delicately to sit in the little man's place. Josie blinks once, twice.
"tHroUgH caVeRnS mEaSurElesS tO maN."
And as though on cue, all three -- Josie, Laura, Leland -- turn their heads just a degree too far to watch him dance.
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Date: 2007-02-02 04:09 am (UTC)He takes a step backwards, towards the way he came in, still choking back tears.
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Date: 2007-02-02 04:31 am (UTC)If Harry Truman looks back around, he'll see something interesting:
The red curtain wall on the other side is moving, closing.
Soon it will sweep over Josie, over Laura, over Leland.
The man in red vanishes -- chameleons his way right through the curtains without a trace.
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Date: 2007-02-02 04:33 am (UTC)There's no way out.
And Harry doesn't have any back up.
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Date: 2007-02-02 04:44 am (UTC)No Harry Truman.
Just Josie Packard, in her chair; just the floor lamp, and the marble statue; just Leland holding his daughter's hand; just the three of them looking transfixed at the little man's dance, as though they're statues themselves.
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Date: 2007-02-02 04:52 am (UTC)A one-armed man.
Philip (Michael) Gerrard, shoe salesman to the stars, takes a few faltering steps into the room. "There are--people," he says, unsure.
Sarah Palmer enters, backwards, carrying Dale Cooper's feet. "People?" She turns... and drops the FBI agent's legs. "LELAND!" she screams. "LAURA!"
"Laura?!" Ben Horne's voice comes from beyond the curtains--which slip closed before he does more than glimpse what lies beyond, as he staggers back, suddenly carrying to totality of Dale Cooper's dead weight.
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Date: 2007-02-02 04:58 am (UTC)Laura's smile is hesitant, radiant.
"cOmE hOMe, sAraH." He holds out a hand.
Josie Packard's eyes are closed, as though she's listening to something.
The music continues; the tiny man is no longer dancing. Instead, he and Gerrard look at each other, heads tilted, and slowly they reach out to touch each other: Gerrard with his palm on the tiny man's head, and the man on Gerrard's shoulder. The one with no arm.
"oNe aND thE sAmE," they say, simultaneously.
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:04 am (UTC)(In Twin Peaks, Dr. Jacobi knocking on the door of the Palmer house. No one is answering. Eventually, he breaks down the door. The power's out--so why's that fan going?
He moves through the house, expecting--almost anything. A corpse, more than likely, with a knife or a gun or a bottle of pills. Not a white horse, though.
There's a shower of sparks, and the ceiling fan snaps loose from the ceiling and crashes down the stairwell; he leaps to one side just in time.
When he gets back up, there's no horse, and he never, ever speaks of it.)
It's not really a choice.
**************
"Sarah?" Ben calls. "Ungh." He shifts Cooper's bulk. "Sarah!"
He knows what he saw, in that brief moment. And somehow--he thinks he won't be seeing Sarah Palmer again.
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:16 am (UTC)Red curtains.
Black and white floor.
...Benjamin Horne. And nobody else.
"All roads lead to Rome," he murmurs. "And all doors -- "
"Hello, Mr. Horne."
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 05:31 am (UTC)He feels...empty. Cleansed. Serene.
Unafraid.
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:34 am (UTC)"Then the sheriff kidnapped us, and took us... somewhere."
"This is all crazy."
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:38 am (UTC)"Or Leland."
He's taking steps, trying to part the curtains; they won't move.
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:39 am (UTC)"Laura." He sounds like he can't believe what he's saying.
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:46 am (UTC)"It worked," he says to the curtains, softly. "How about that."
(A memory, half-felt, half-sensed: do unto others as you would have done unto you.
Laura Palmer is dead, and his hand on her shoulder, and no words spoken; just kindness.)
He turns away from the curtains. They ripple. "And Sarah -- she's...gone?"
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:49 am (UTC)And--for all he says, that proves he believes it. He knows it's true. There's no denying the beauty of that jungle, or the horror of this place.
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:55 am (UTC)He says it to the curtains again, pacing along them, looking for the way out. Over his shoulder, apologetically, "I've been reading Thomas Wolfe. It's difficult to forget." Beat. "I'm assuming you'd like to leave."
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 06:17 am (UTC)There's a corridor. "Once we get out of here -- those will be the leaves. It exits into Glastonberry Grove, and I'm assuming you've been -- "
"Harry?"
They're in the next room; Cooper has just gone through the curtains, and he's staring at a body in the middle of the room.
The body of Harry S. Truman.
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:21 am (UTC)(Flicker)
"Oh, God," Ben whispers.
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:36 am (UTC)Harry may have brought his gun.
Cooper knows he didn't bring the whiskey.
"Ben, listen to me. We're going to cross the room on a diagonal, quickly, giving him a wide berth."
"I don't think that's Harry."
And even if it is --
-- Cooper doesn't want to think about that --
-- they can't do anything for him. Not like this.
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:39 am (UTC)(flicker)
move. They move through the curtains and find
(flicker)
The same room, with the same sprawling sheriff, and the same smoking gun.
Now he moves, reaching for the pistol.
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:42 am (UTC)"Hands off the weapon." Sharp, implacable, and he doesn't have time to consider the very real possibility that this isn't going to work --
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:43 am (UTC)"Coop?"
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:48 am (UTC)"Harry, sit up so we can see your eyes."
It's the best way, the only way, he knows to make sure --
His gun hasn't moved.
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:50 am (UTC)He's not shot. There's no bottle in here.
"I tripped over something. An animal," Harry mutters. His eyes are clear. "Gun fired when it hit the ground."
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:52 am (UTC)Cooper lowers his gun. Doesn't holster it quite yet. "What kind of animal?" He takes one step forward. Another.
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:54 am (UTC)"A pine weasel," Ben says.
"Maybe."
"No, look, a pine weasel."
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 07:01 am (UTC)"Yeah, but what's it doing in here?"
"Maybe it's lost, too," Ben says."
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Date: 2007-02-02 07:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 07:06 am (UTC)"Yes!" Ben says, beginning to do just that. "Either it'll lead us out, or further in, and after everything I did for these little bastards it better not be further in." He wags a finger after the tail of the pine weasel, which is snaking away between two curtains.
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Date: 2007-02-02 07:10 am (UTC)And a little pine weasel shall lead them isn't how it goes, but it's certainly worth a try.
Corridors, and rooms, and rippling curtains and every so often the sound of one string plucked on a bass.
The sunlight, when they finally emerge, is blinding. Cooper can hear the birds, and the footsteps -- Hawk's voice, that of Major Briggs, a sudden flurry of noise and sensation. "We're okay," he says, slightly dazed. "It's done. We're done."
The pine weasel is nowhere to be seen.