(no subject)

[tibetanmethod]

What'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.

Comments

[tibetanmethod]

Without a thought he draws his gun, fast, fast as he can --

"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 --

[middle-name-s.livejournal.com]

"Nnng."




"Coop?"

[tibetanmethod]

"Ben, the way out of here should be on the diagonal, straight across."

"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.

[middle-name-s.livejournal.com]

Harry sits up.

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."

[tibetanmethod]

His eyes are clear, and his speech, it isn't --

Cooper lowers his gun. Doesn't holster it quite yet. "What kind of animal?" He takes one step forward. Another.

[middle-name-s.livejournal.com]

"I didn't get a good look," Harry says, ruefully. "Something small."


"A pine weasel," Ben says.

"Maybe."

"No, look, a pine weasel."

[tibetanmethod]

"Their territory does extend to Ghostwood," Cooper says -- and spies it. "Or so I've heard." He does holster, now, and extends a hand to help Harry up.

[middle-name-s.livejournal.com]

Harry puts up his gun as well, and takes Cooper's hand.

"Yeah, but what's it doing in here?"

"Maybe it's lost, too," Ben says."

[tibetanmethod]

"Fear and love open the doors," Cooper says, shaking his head. "The Black Lodge isn't a place that creatures can just wander into. -- it's moving."

[middle-name-s.livejournal.com]

"Maybe it's a spirit," Harry says. "A spirit shaped like a pine weasel. Or the spirit of a pine weasel. Maybe we should follow it."

"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.

[tibetanmethod]

Cooper blinks.

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.