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Last Night (76 hits)

Category: UberMadness! Entry

Rating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)

Submitted by Magicaddict (View user info) at 2006-10-24 07:05:00 EDT

This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.

"Jack!"
"Amy".
"Five minutes, Mr Knight".

Five minutes. To relive a lifetime. It wasn't nearly enough. Facing each other through the bulletproof glass, Jack and Amy Knight had that same thought at the same time. They didn't know where to start. For ten seconds they just stared at each other.

"I'm so sorry, Jack", Amy finally said.

So sorry, Jack thought. So sorry for what? Ever since this had begun, he couldn't bring himself to hold her responsible for anything. This had been his fault - his from the start. There was no one else to blame for anything.

"Let's not talk about it now," he said, wary of the amount of time they had left. "Let's talk about something else".

Amy looked down, smiling weakly. They had to spend this time remembering, finishing, bringing things to a definite conclusion. They had talked about what happened so many times, from every angle. Surely there was nothing left to discuss.

"Yes, let's". She looked back up at him. "Do you remember the time we first met?"

"Of course," he replied, happy to play along. "That Saturday in the park..."

"...jogging in different directions," she completed, giggling - all of a sudden the cute, innocent girl he had fallen for again. "I remember thinking you were the best looking thing I'd ever seen coming the other way".

He remembered. A wonderful sunny afternoon some fifteen years ago in Geluvelt Park. He'd seen her as he walked to work one morning, beautiful and athletic as she ran. He'd taken up jogging in the park before work just on the off chance that he'd see her, and it had thankfully paid off a couple of weeks later. He'd been so happy to finally get her to see him that he'd tripped over, she'd stopped to check he was alright, they'd started chatting and the rest was history. Neither of them thought that it would end up with their getting married, but they'd got off to a perfect start and everything went from there. He'd just started a fantastic job, she was...

His job. He shouldn't have followed the train of thought so far. It reminded him of what had happened. How it all went wrong.

The branch of Isbet Insurance that Jack worked for was exceptionally hard to get into. It, along with similar departments throughout the country, dealt with insuring the military, and given the current situation, was a growing industry. He'd been one of the intake of university graduates, following a rigorous selection process he was extremely proud to have passed with obviously enough flying colours to have been accepted. His superior was Sarah - known as being a bit of hard case, difficult to work for, but Jack had been told she was an excellent boss and he "shouldn't worry about it".
____________

"I couldn't believe how...gorgeous...you looked every time I saw you".

Amy blushed, remembering. She knew how Jack had fallen for her figure first, followed by the rest of her, but it had never bothered her - she may have been shy, but had always been proud of the way she looked. She never thought that she'd meet her dream man huffing and puffing her way through the park, but over the course of time he'd shown himself to be more than the pretty yet goofy guy who'd flashed her a smile then gone base over apex because he hadn't been looking where he was going.

"I still say you looked better than me".
"That wasn't what people thought on our first date".
____________

Shouldn't worry about it his fat ass.

He'd been happily married to Amy for about eighteen months when Sarah made her first move on him. Not a physical one, but something entirely more insidious.

He'd been working late on Friday evening, trying to avoid having to come in early on Monday to finish something he had been taught not to remember by Tuesday. The office had been silent, save for his typing. Sarah had been in her office, on the phone with the door shut, for several hours. At first completely inaudible over the sound of the rest of the office, now her voice was a muffled buzz with only the sound of his hands on the keyboard to compete with. Reaching over to pick up some files from the other side of his desk had coincided with her raising her voice slightly to whomever she was talking to, and he'd heard "and I'm fucked!" It had sounded pretty agitated.

Yes, that was the exact point that everything had pointed straight downhill and hit the gas.

His interest piqued, he had put down the file and started towards her office, not entirely certain what he was doing. Maybe he was going to knock, check everything was alright. Maybe he was heading to coffee machine near her office door, hoping to get hold of some gossip. He hadn't made it either way, the course of the now quite clear side of her conversation causing him to stop and listen, unable to do anything else.

"If you don't find me a buyer, where does it leave me? You know I can't afford to be found with it!"

Pause.

"That's not my fault. You promised to have a buyer by today".

Pause. Then, angry.

"I don't CARE that it isn't anything to do with you! If our mutual friend doesn't have their money by Monday, they're pulling the plug, and if I'm finished you're sure as fuck going down with me!"

Pause. Very calm now.

"Maybe you should have thought about that before you got into this. I never made any bones about what we were doing".

Pause. Getting more agitated.

"I don't give a shit if it's too pure. The little shits were hardly adding to the gene pool anyway".

Pause.

"Enough. Get me a buyer within twenty-four hours, and no one need know. Don't, and we're all dead in the water".

It was so easy. Everyone in the business thought about playing the system, Jack included - but never to this extent.

"Get it done, or I swear you'll wish you'd never been born".

The phone had slammed down and the door had opened. Jack had suddenly become acutely aware of where he was standing.

Sarah had stormed out, looking extremely angry, and froze in shock at the sight of someone else in the office. At the realisation that he'd heard, the shock turned to a cold, calculating stare.

"You've got a decision to make, Jack. Make sure it's the right one".

She had left without another word. It was only after she had done so that Jack realised what he was being told to decide.
____________

"Going to a nightclub with friends hardly counts as a first date," she pointed out. "I didn't know what I was doing".

"You had three guys following you around like the Pied Piper".

Jack remembered what she had turned up in. The brief gypsy-style frilly top and short skirt had been sexy enough without the boots accentuating her legs as well, but her curly brown hair hanging loose, rather than tied back in a pony tail like he knew her from the park, had pushed her from sassy to cutesy and made her the hottest thing in the club by far, especially as she knew how to dance.

Curly brown hair. He wanted to cry.

Her friends from university who had come along looked cheap, like they were trying too hard, but Amy was just naturally beautiful. They'd gone out to dinner, just the two of them, the following week, where he'd realised that her looks were only a tiny part of what drove him wild about her. She was intelligent but modest, shy, but stood up for what she believed in, and listened as well as she talked. They had closed the restaurant down - the chef had gone home long before they did.

"I preferred the meal".

She was right. He'd had even more fun staring at her soul that night than he'd had staring at her body the week before.

"So did I".
____________

He hadn't been given the chance to make a decision. Sarah made it for him.

It wasn't long after that evening that he'd started to be pulled up for mistakes that he knew weren't his. Clerical errors, the kind that were small and insignificant when isolated incidents, but when mounted up started to make someone look very bad indeed. He was brought to Sarah's office on more than one occasion, with superiors looking on and extracting promises from him that he would do better. He looked at Sarah, she looked at him, and they both knew.

She was discrediting him in case he went over her head.

He shouldn't have hesitated when he first found out. He should have got on the phone that night, but something - the shock, the force with which Sarah spoke to him, general crass indecision, who the fuck knew - stopped him, and now it was too late. It wouldn't be believed that he didn't have ulterior motives. He couldn't report her and not get dragged into it himself.

Then, they might have found out what he'd managed to slip through the net.
____________

"I remember the wedding".
"You looked beautiful".
"So did you".

This was no place to be having this conversation. Not here, being watched by a prison guard and monitored by all and sundry to make sure what was said wasn't going to cause a breach of national security.

Still, it wasn't going to happen anywhere else.

The wedding had been every bit as beautiful as they had dreamed. The sun had been shining, the families friendly, the dress white as driven snow. Jack had never known such a beautiful concept - Amy in layer upon layer of satin and lace, every single one making her more perfect, and surpassable only by their sequential removal later that evening.

They had kissed as man and wife, God had been in his heaven, and all had been right with the world.
____________

Two months after that night in the office, his already shaky world had been forcibly dismantled.

Sarah had never told him how she found out. The first he had known about it was when he was summoned into her office, to find not the panel of superiors he was expecting, but her. Alone.

And smiling.

"How did you think you were going to keep it a secret forever, Jack?"

She had produced a photocopy of a document. It was written in French.

Jack didn't need to see any more. It was a copy of the criminal conviction he had received for being drunk in charge of a car in the south of France when he was eighteen. It hadn't been his car, his keys, his alcohol, or even his hat that he had been fetching from his friend's car, but he was the one who had been found half cut with the driver's door open and the keys in his hand. He had paid an on the spot fine and been done with the whole affair.

He'd thought.

How Sarah had found it, he didn't even want to know. She must have had fingers everywhere - Interpol, DCPJ, consulates, local police the world over, who the fuck knew once again. All he knew was that he not only held a criminal conviction (albeit in a foreign country), but that he had expressly lied when he said he hadn't. He couldn't afford a good lawyer to play the system and tie her up. He couldn't go to her superiors, or this would be sent round them faster than soft fruit through a short grandma. He couldn't even confess - it would only lead to what Sarah wanted. He would lose his job on security grounds. They weren't particularly caring about where it happened or what was done. If you had a record, you weren't eligible.

Sarah saw his expression and the smile turned nasty.

"Checkmate, Jack. You won't say a word".

He had seen everything falling down. His job, his security, his employability, the safety and future of Amy - perfect, innocent Amy - was now the personal property of someone guilty of God only knew what, and free to continue as she wished. Without another word being uttered, Jack had left the office, white as a sheet, feeling like he'd just been gutted from the inside out. He hadn't stopped trembling until he got home and confessed everything to his wife.

It is true that there are things in the shadow of which no one deserved to have to live. Both of them had agreed that. After looking at it in desperation from all possible sides, however, neither of them could see a single way out of the situation Jack had gotten into.

This was in no way an excuse for what happened next. They had also agreed on that, after it had happened.
____________

"Do you remember our honeymoon?"
"Of course. The jellyfish".

He chuckled. The jellyfish. He'd dived into the sea from a boat they'd hired for the day, and caught a sting in the chest for his trouble. Thankfully, it was only a young one and he'd been able to get out in relatively little danger. Plenty of swearing, but relatively little danger. Once she'd got him safely back on board, Amy couldn't stop laughing. He remembered how superb she had looked in her black and white bikini as she piloted him home, after making sure he was comfortable and had access to remedial beer. He remembered that he would never see her again in anything but what she wore now. It was true she could make anything look good, but some things were almost beyond even her natural ability. Tears welled in his eyes.

"Amy, I'm so sorry".

She put her hand up to the glass.

"Don't. It wasn't your fault. It was hers".
____________

Sarah had been found dead in her apartment the following weekend. She had been stabbed twenty-three times with a carving knife. A relatively new one, said forensics. Had she been killed a few days later, the police may have had a harder time tracing the killer.

A crime of passion, they said. Her husband had immediately fallen under suspicion, but he had a watertight alibi, and there was a trail of relatively simple clues that marked the murderer out as being quite an amateur.

There hadn't really been much to say as they came to Jack and Amy's house. Nor had there been much to say at the trial, or the sentence. Guilty as hell - no real point in disputing it. The only bone of contention was whether or not the pleading of insanity would help the claim of mitigating circumstances.

It hadn't.
____________

"Time's up, Mr. Knight".

No, it wasn't. He cast a desperate glance at the guard, advancing even as he spoke. There was so much more to say. Tears openly fell down Jack's face as he looked at the woman he loved. She had tears in her eyes as well, but she wore a smile that said she was proud. Or perhaps not afraid.

"I love you, Amy. I love you, and I'm so sorry".

She smiled angelically, and a single tear fell from her right eye.

"I forgive you. Do you forgive me?"

What else could he say?

"Of course".

The guard placed his arm on Jack's shoulder. It really was time.

He headed for the door, stopping once to turn and look at Amy. Shaven headed, shackled hand and foot and wearing orange prison overalls, she was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She turned and shuffled out, joined by the priest.

He hoped he had made her last night on earth something at least partially worth remembering. Memories were all he would have of her for the rest of his life.

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