The Long Walk - Priscilla, Peter - "Lucky Her"

[driftinginnines]

Title: Lucky Her
Fandom: Richard Bachman's The Long Walk (technically Stephen King ;D)
Characters: Priscilla, mentions of Peter McVries
Word Count: 1446
Date Finished: August 14, 2008
Author's Notes: THIS IS MY FAVORITE BOOK IN THE UNIVERSE sorry I had to put my love for it out there. Peter is my favorite character and I love exploring him and the relationships he's had/he makes in the book. So here's a Pris exploration.

Lucky Her

There were times in bed, when she was pressed between the wall and his body, that she could hear him snoring quietly and she would curl up against his back and run her fingers up and down his spine, thinking about the name "Priscilla McVries" -- it had a nice ring to it. The air had been cold -- it was always cold in that place -- but when he was sleeping beside her in her small bed, his feet hanging off the side and his hands tucked under his face, she could get away with a thin sheet as her cover. He was always so warm to the touch and she wasn't surprised that his body could basically heat her whole shoebox of a room.

They were poor as a couple, financially and mentally. Physically, they were fine, healthy even. And emotionally they worked wonders together. But they fought over their jobs and their mindsets. Goddammit, they fought.

She will always remember slicing his cheek open with that silly souvenir letter opener. Paddington Bear never looked so lethal before, in his over sized coat and his floppy hat. She will always remember the way it felt when she pulled the blade across his skin. It felt slick and disgusting but at that moment it felt so right.

Priscilla remembers it now as she's sitting in front of the television watching him walk and walk and walk and slowly commit suicide. She can see the scar on his cheek, standing out as a bright white line against his already pale skin. The cameras bobs along with the Walkers, the views switching between groups. She feels herself jump slightly as it cuts back to Peter who is currently walking with another boy, his eyes boring straight into the camera lens momentarily before he goes back into his discussion with the other Walker.

She isn't able to hear what he's saying over the chatter and din of the crowd around them, but he looks quite subdued, which is unnatural for him.

She leans forward in her lumpy recliner with her elbows planted on her knees and laces her fingers together, resting her chin on them. She remembers yelling at him to leave her alone and to get out after she cut his cheek. She didn't want to see him, she didn't even want to offer him another glance. But now she isn't able to take her eyes off of him.

Priscilla stays up all night and watches the live coverage of the Long Walk. Every fifteen minutes she tells herself she's going to get out of the chair soon and stumble to her bed and pass out. But every fifteen minutes she doesn't. She continues to sit in the recliner, rocking back and forth slowly and gnawing at her already stubby nails.

One by one, the Walkers are shot. One, then another five minutes later, then the next after an hour. For a few fleeting moments, Priscilla thinks -- and doesn't admit to herself that she also hopes -- Peter might take this whole thing. He might survive. She also can faintly picture herself seeking him out afterwards and seeing if they could work things out. Not even for whatever he takes as a prize, but for the mere fact that she still feels her heartbeat quicken when she sees him.

And if her heart wasn't going faster than normal at this exact moment because the cameras are showing him again. He's goofing off. She still can't hear him over the crowd but she's definitely watching him and he's making some obscene gesture with his hand and pasting a stupid and familiar expression on his face. She can see all the other boys around him laughing and she can feel herself smiling, something she quickly catches herself doing and stops. There was no smiling now, not with him out there marching to his own death.

They continue to drop at different intervals. Some by sunstroke then gunshot, some by fatigue and gunshot, some by just plain old gunshot. She's watching it all with glazed eyes, still leaning forward in her chair, her legs and arms falling asleep and tingling slightly. Minutes pass, hours pass. Her stomach rumbles. She's not moving from that position and the only thing changing is the steady beat of her heart, depending on what is flashing by on the television.

There he is again. This time he's dozing off as he's walking, his head bouncing up and down comically with each step. The next time they show him, he's absently rubbing his scar and listening to one of the other boys talk. The next time he's pulling one of the other Walkers away from the crowd. He's yelling. There's twenty left, there's sixteen left, there's nine left.

There's three left.

Finally he stops.

She watches him as he sits down. She stares, wide-eyed, as he gets shot and killed. While it's all happening, out of the last two boys, one is watching absently and still walking while the other is screaming and yelling and trying to get Peter back up. Priscilla knows how the first feels, just wanting to walk away from him -- the problem. But she also knows how the latter feels. That one had talked to the real Peter, the one that Priscilla still harbored feelings for. The one who was jovial and quick-witted -- a gentleman in a perverted sort of fashion.

The sight of him in his last moments and taking his last breath sucks the feeling out of her and physically she doesn't move an inch. She doesn't want to believe what she had just witnessed, even though she knows she has to. The cameras were showing a high-shot of the street. She could see the last two boys still walking and she could see the pool of blood where Peter McVries had sat himself down and had been shot and killed. Nothing is tearing her gaze away from that pool of blood on her small television set.

The high-shot gets higher and higher and more of the crowd is coming into view, as is more of the road. The image changes to something else, but Priscilla's eyes are still locked on the spot on the screen where that crimson bath had been smeared all over the road. Her thoughts were going to worse places as the time passed. She knows, just like the time she slipped that blade into his skin, she will always remember this moment. She will never forget the moment Peter McVries died. She always thought she would see him again one day, that maybe they could work something out. Now that day was never going to come.

Another gunshot or two sounds a good time later and her tired eyes still aren't leaving the spot on the left side of the television.

But that blonde pushing her way to the front of the crowd suddenly catches Priscilla's attention. The way she screams at the final walker and pleads with the guards to let her through. Must be his girlfriend.

Lucky her, Pris sneers.

But as she finally moves, letting herself fall back into the old recliner and pulling her legs up to her chest, she takes back what she said about that girl being lucky. Yeah, lucky her for getting her boyfriend back. Her shell-shocked, gaunt and now mentally absent boyfriend who will never, ever, ever be the same.

Suddenly she wants Peter back so bad that a few tears manage to spill from her eyes and her breath hitches in her throat. She moves again though, pressing herself against the back of the recliner and burying her face in her hands. She wants him now more than ever. She wants his dirty sense of humor and his horribly endearing tactic of saying the right thing at the wrong time. She wants to apologize for introducing the Paddington Bear blade to his cheek. Priscilla wants to feel him in bed beside her, warming up her room and trapping her between him and the thin wall of the shitty apartment. She wants their arguments and their fights and their problems --

She just wants him. She'll always remember that moment and she will always blame herself for his death. If she hadn't driven him away, he just might be in the other room right now, snoring quietly, shirtless and half of his body hanging off the tiny bed.

And then she finally drifts off into a light sleep, a haunting and familiar feeling settling across her skin as she dozes, something she is so used to feeling as she falls asleep. She swears she can feel Peter's calloused fingertips along her spine.