odinochkaMargarita SonDate: 2024-11-28 01:54 am (UTC)
Maggie has come to expect and look forward to these magazine missives passed through their modesty screen. She doesn’t even have to look up from her work darning one of her woolen socks in order to reach over and pluck the tear out from John’s hand.
She lays it on the ground next to her and reads it over while she continues to weave columns of yarn across a hole in the heel.
It’s silent for a full two minutes, which John should know by now means that Maggie is giving this serious thought. Then, finally:
linemanJohn "Quirkless" HwangDate: 2024-11-28 02:09 am (UTC)
He flicks the screen. Like a pendulum it swings into her space, his, hers again, before finally settling back into the no man's land between them. Emoting by proxy, touching by proxy—so Maggie knows he's smiling and thinks her terse, blunt answer is funny, because he won't transgress the physical barrier between them to otherwise let her know. The divider is a kind of rule.
"That's not very 'phat' of you," John replies with mock solemnity. "I thought it was interesting that 'believing in God' is presented as the opposite of 'owning a gun.' But I guess having a gun makes a person a kind of god."
He flicks the screen again, trying to goad her into a bigger response. Maggie laughs like a wild animal. Absently he thinks how he'd like to that laugh again before she moves out.
Maggie pauses in her work and leans back to peer at John through the small gap between the dividers. Only one of her eyes is visible to him, squinting suspiciously.
"I thought you were Catholic?"
Her own religious beliefs are vague and without doctrine. She believes in spirits, energies, and other worlds. She is superstitious and certain that ill-will can translate to physical or mental illness. When she was sick with Black Fever the first time, she felt that she went somewhere else and came back. Since then, she has become more sensitive to messages and omens. She believes dreams are a window into another plane of understanding or existence. But she doesn't pretend to know what any of that really means and she is not a witch.
"Isn't that blasphemous thing to say? If you wanted, you could kill me with your bare hands. Does that make you god?"
Her tone is light and conversational, despite the heavy topic. She isn't accusing John of anything. But it feels important to her that he knows she is aware of the inherent power imbalance between them and comfortable enough with it that she can mention it offhand while alone with him behind closed doors.
Feeling her staring at him, John turns onto his stomach to stare back at her through the gap. What he sees of Maggie's iris between the dividers is black. John's eyes are black, too, but when he assesses himself in the mirror his eyes are black like water, or tea in an old, squashed mug. Maggie's eyes are black like atmosphere, like a job he once worked during his apprenticeship pulling cable underground. The darkness outside the glow of his task lighting seemed impenetrable, alive on its own.
He considers her response. After living with her, even for a brief amount of time, he thinks this is so like Maggie: to take something he said that he believed to be innocuous, stick her hands in it, and show him something he hadn't considered. Tonight it is something grotesque. He thinks about what she's said and tries to answer.
"We are all made in His image."
But he's not satisfied with his answer and he doubts Maggie will be, either. She is making a point about them, he thinks, mostly him—he, a big man, with an insular, self-protective attitude that could be considered hostile at times, and a tremendous capacity for violence. A capacity for violence is practically required to survive these days, but what works to keep you alive in a zombie outbreak hardly seems suitable for quiet moments between people. And John is aware of the differences between them. When he fired his gun at the horde in the storage facility so they would attack him instead of her, he was very aware of those differences.
"And we all have obligations to one another, not to harm. And we are commanded to love. That's what I believe."
He flips onto his back again, thinking suddenly that he doesn't want her to look at him anymore. Or at least he no longer wants to be aware of whether she looks at him or not. I wish you thought better of me, he thinks, but does not say it. Why would it matter and what good would it do.
"Anyway, I stay on my side of the divider. And tomorrow you move out. So."
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11/27
She lays it on the ground next to her and reads it over while she continues to weave columns of yarn across a hole in the heel.
It’s silent for a full two minutes, which John should know by now means that Maggie is giving this serious thought. Then, finally:
“These lists were designed to annoy people.”
11/27
"That's not very 'phat' of you," John replies with mock solemnity. "I thought it was interesting that 'believing in God' is presented as the opposite of 'owning a gun.' But I guess having a gun makes a person a kind of god."
He flicks the screen again, trying to goad her into a bigger response. Maggie laughs like a wild animal. Absently he thinks how he'd like to that laugh again before she moves out.
11/27
"I thought you were Catholic?"
Her own religious beliefs are vague and without doctrine. She believes in spirits, energies, and other worlds. She is superstitious and certain that ill-will can translate to physical or mental illness. When she was sick with Black Fever the first time, she felt that she went somewhere else and came back. Since then, she has become more sensitive to messages and omens. She believes dreams are a window into another plane of understanding or existence. But she doesn't pretend to know what any of that really means and she is not a witch.
"Isn't that blasphemous thing to say? If you wanted, you could kill me with your bare hands. Does that make you god?"
Her tone is light and conversational, despite the heavy topic. She isn't accusing John of anything. But it feels important to her that he knows she is aware of the inherent power imbalance between them and comfortable enough with it that she can mention it offhand while alone with him behind closed doors.
11/27
He considers her response. After living with her, even for a brief amount of time, he thinks this is so like Maggie: to take something he said that he believed to be innocuous, stick her hands in it, and show him something he hadn't considered. Tonight it is something grotesque. He thinks about what she's said and tries to answer.
"We are all made in His image."
But he's not satisfied with his answer and he doubts Maggie will be, either. She is making a point about them, he thinks, mostly him—he, a big man, with an insular, self-protective attitude that could be considered hostile at times, and a tremendous capacity for violence. A capacity for violence is practically required to survive these days, but what works to keep you alive in a zombie outbreak hardly seems suitable for quiet moments between people. And John is aware of the differences between them. When he fired his gun at the horde in the storage facility so they would attack him instead of her, he was very aware of those differences.
"And we all have obligations to one another, not to harm. And we are commanded to love. That's what I believe."
He flips onto his back again, thinking suddenly that he doesn't want her to look at him anymore. Or at least he no longer wants to be aware of whether she looks at him or not. I wish you thought better of me, he thinks, but does not say it. Why would it matter and what good would it do.
"Anyway, I stay on my side of the divider. And tomorrow you move out. So."