notes - In a weird way this is for my Mom, who bought Sephy and I the Lost DVD set and forced us to finally watch it. I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'm not sure staring at it any longer is going to do much more than drive me insane. Ave Maria by Amet A Lost Fanfiction "I never drink water. I'm afraid it will become habit-forming." - W.C. Fields It's a game, Charlie thinks. A test, and he is Job in the belly of the whale. Or maybe Pinocchio in the Disney cartoon, because Job is brave and he's always been a bit more of a coward over little things like being swallowed whole. Except that isn't right either -- the little puppet boy was braver, and his story ended well. Besides, the self-sacrificing ponce chose his fate. Charlie doesn't even have that little self-flagellation anymore. Not with the plane crashing. No sorry -- planes. Plural now, they know. For all anyone can figure there are maybe hundreds scattered across their little deathtrap island, now with two boats and two planes confirmed. Some carried supplies, other passengers, and one... well that just carried Death. Death in a sad little powder crammed into the small cargo hold that saw the last of Boone. Death locked in benevolent icons fashioned by false priests, a dozen Madonna who in their great wisdom chose just the right moment to shift and roll, ending any sense of security their merry band of buggered had left. Death that promises to return that certainty, for just a little while. For a small price, and is that really too much to ask? He fingers the weathered Madonna in his hands, its peaceful features, its robe that same cartoonish blue they always used on the cheap icons, that bespoke the hurry in which the statue had been fashioned. No care, no details to distinguish the holy sculpture from the horde of others scattered across the world and that is demeaning to the Virgin, Charlie thinks. He thinks of his childhood, when they'd lead his class out of academics for morning mass on the Feast of the Assumption, when the priests took their little statue of the Madonna and put it on a flower laden pedestal at the front of the church, gazing down on his little Catholic schoolboy self in benediction. It's hard to believe he was ever that innocent, but he'd been moved. Maybe it was the change, the way the mass reordered itself to accommodate their feminine icon, so much smaller than the larger reliefs of Christ. Maybe it was just the momentary stay of math test, but something in him had been touched by that munificent expression, the careful sweep of outstretched hands, and for a week after he'd tried to recapture that feeling at daily mass. It was gone then, and he knows with a hollow certainty that it's sure as hell gone now, tracing the lines of the Virgin's heart of fire. He was taught the fire is meant to represent service and caring for others. As a child he imagined a sort of ceaseless passion, devotion, but all he can think now is that it should shrivel up, all Raisin in the Sun, distilled like the wood in high school science experiments to something cold and unfeeling, ash. There is no grace lurking behind that benevolent expression, just that same siren call of ashen powder and the Death it brings. This is a test, Charlie thinks, and he will fail. return to splash page