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An Object In Space
by Nicole Clevenger (c)June 2003Notes and Disclaimers: Yes, it's a Jubal Early ficlet. Written for the ff_friday challenge. All hail Joss Whedon.
Sure ain't the way I planned for this thing to go.
When a man takes on a job, he wants things to go well. When he takes the time to do the homework - learn the names to go with the faces and such - he expects things to go according to his plan. The plan was to get the girl, get the money. It damn sure weren't for me to be floatin' around in the black amongst all these pretty stars.
I ain't worried, though.
The plain facts of the job seemed simple enough, and once I started lookin' it didn't take me too long to catch up with them. Go about a thing systematically - collecting information like little bits of paper on the wind - and you get the results you want. By the time I found that Firefly I knew the Whats, Whos, and Wheres of what I was about to walk into. If you're in control of a situation, you can bend it any which way you please.
'Course - as previously stated - I didn't expect this particular situation to bend quite this far.
That girl twisted me but good...and would someone mind telling me just how she got that captain free to help her out? Can't figure that one at all. You think you got all the possibilities played out in your head, and along comes some crazy girl to mess with your brain and distract you from the plan. That ain't right. Ain't right at all.
Someone should teach that girl a lesson in manners. A nice, slow, sharp lesson she won't forget any time soon after the teaching. With a little extra preparation, these things can be done without any kind of a mess; takin' your time makes it both more satisfying and easier to clean up. Take shooting that brother of hers, for instance: Too wild, too accidental. I meant what I said about surgeons needin' to experience going under the knife - I make it my policy to only say what it is I mean - but don't think I got any kind of satisfaction out of it. I was merely putting an early end to his -
Huh. "Early end." Early end. I do like the sound of that. Sorta flows off the tongue, and I can appreciate that it starts right off with my own name. Sometimes phrases just tumble around in your brain until it's almost like music. Language music.
I do wish I'd had time to go back for that sweet young mechanic. Maybe after I get my way out of this predicament here, I can look in on her again when I come back for the crazy sister. Assuming they're still residing together, that is - people do have a tendency to drift apart. 'Course, a body is a body, and I don't doubt I can find another pretty helpless thing in between here and there. Another someone smelling sticky with that fear sweat just like she did; another someone with that Half Out Their Mind with Scared look just like she had. If I'd had the time to do things properly, I'd've left her there, trussed up on that cold floor until she was walkin' that fine thread of a line between giving up and cycling back 'round towards hopefulness. Wait until she finally started to think that maybe - just maybe - old Early had forgotten her there, and then appear like smoke from the ashes of death itself.
And that there's when the real fun would begin. For me, at any rate...
How could one 'verse be big enough to hold so many stars? Makes a man feel something like insignificant, it surely does. Here I am, just one tiny spec floating through all this space, and it's times like these that make you wonder if it all really means anything. We go through the motions of our everyday lives, imagining we're making some kind of a difference, right? And then one day we find ourselves drifting through the black, seein' just how small our lives truly are.
You know, if I hold my hand up, I can block out a whole section of those bright little lights. Like they no longer exist - not to me, at least. Since we're trapped inside our own heads - our own realities, if you will - don't it stand to reason that I've actually made those stars cease to be with the wave of my gloved fingers?
Getting a bit cold out here. But I ain't worried.
end.
If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Nicole Clevenger
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