allegrita wrote:Wow. This is a perfect companion piece, standing across from Beth's story just as Mick stood across from Beth at the funeral. Such different days, such different thoughts, leading Mick to the same place as Beth.
I love your Mick voice here. The rhythm of your prose, the sentence structure, the word choices - all completely different from "The Sun and the Moon." Mick just pours out of the setory. His wry, self-deferential humor is perfect, as is his focus on the physical hurts he's dealing with... because he can't quite face the emotional ones. But he skates around 'em a lot... and, like Beth, he makes a decision on this day. To grab this time he's been given and to make the very most of it. Every day he wakes up, he's gonna go to that mirror and whisper, "Still human." And he's going to work hard at overcoming his natural reticence and his fear of being hurt... and eventually, he'll end up at the beach picnic with Beth.
You have so many wonderful touches here: Mick dreading the painful trip up the stairs; looking at his bruises; going over his conversation with Beth the day before (loved his amused annoyance at Coraline's perfect timing); his acknowledgment that, although Beth hurt him deeply right after Josh's death, she was hurt in turn when Coraline interrupted their conversation; his understanding that two people had been sacrificed in order that he and Beth could have a chance to be together.
I absolutely love Mick's acknowledgment of what he did to Tejada, too--that creepy-wonderful scene where he showed his bloody face to Tejada before killing him. Your take on it is brilliant, and I can see Mick offering it up, in a way, to Josh's spirit. Not just vengeance, but also a reassurance to Josh that Mick had rid the world of the evil that Josh had died trying to stop.
As a final note, this story creeped me out just a little, because Mick's musings on Josh's death sound a lot like part of a story of mine (Drifting), which I wrote a lot later. So... I just want you to know that I've never read this before today, and my imagining of Mick's thoughts was not based on yours.
alle, thanks so much for giving this a read....and not to worry, with the limited material we have to work with, there's bound to be overlap
P'Gal and I trip over each other regularly
I love writing from Mick's POV - with all the voice overs in the series, it was if you were hearing his thoughts....I find it easier to write from his POV than I do dialogue for Mick. Because he's plain spoken, it's easy to fall into the trap of making him sound less intelligent than he is. To compensate, it's also easy to have him use phrases and words that aren't in keeping with his character as subtly pointed out by Josef when Mick pokes at him in Sonata
'How very egalitarian of you.'
'That's a big word.'
Yes, Mick focuses on the physical pain, because he's a guy and that's something he can understand and wrap his brain around. Aches, pains, cuts, bruises, they give him something to think about until he's ready to face what he has to - dealing with the aftermath of Josh's death. He's avoiding the emotional pain initially, but eventually, he gets around to it - Beth's, his own, even acknowledging the pain he caused Josh.
I loved the scene near the end of LLF where Mick dispatches Tejada and enjoys every minute of it....for once the vamp is turned loose to rid the world of the real monster. I love how you see that as his way of not only offering amends to Josh, but trying to finish the work Josh started.
I love this piece, because it's almost all Mick's thoughts. One long voice over, if you will. Here, we see him work through his inner conflicts and troubles; everything from the physical pain (recovering from a beating) to the emotional pain (he doesn't want to intrude on Beth's grieving, feeling some guilt for coming between them). One of Mick's last lines is: