So... y'all remember Dally's death scene? Well...
(If this doesn't make sense CALM DOWN. i just need to wrtie the chapters before this first but its taking me awhile and im really proud of this snippet :D)
The dim street lights illuminate the ground and water floating around me and it flips and flies back into the sky. It's all faintly yellow, I remark, as I fail to properly notice the six ice shards flying for my chest and legs.
I don't feel the need to run, even though I know that the icy bullets will kill me. I feel so calm, it's the calmest I've ever been. I love feeling like this. I feel light, like I could float into the sky along with the rain and drift between fluffy clouds forever. I feel- I don't remember the last time I felt like that.
Like I'm real. Like I matter. Like there's a reason this is all happening. Is this what people feel like when they go to church? I feel very close to God right now.
Because you're going to die.
Well, yeah, but that was gonna happen eventually. We all knew it'd happen to me when I was young and reckless. Just never guessed that it would happen like this.
This isn't reckless. This isn't a freak accident. This is planned. This is a murder assisted by your suicide.
You don't know what you're talking about.
But still I raise my hand and feel like a blasted fool, bluffing bastardly confidence against the incomprehensible force that is nature and God. Does He know I'm bluffing? I close my eyes and inhale and open them as I exhale. The blue mist swirls around my face, clinging to my skin.
My skin burns with the faint, grand feeling of grim triumph. I feel alive. I dig my heels into the ground and square my shoulders. The icicles fall again, shattering as they hit the ground. It sounds like a freight train headed straight for me.
I know what will happen if I don't move, I'll be dead before I hit the ground. But that's what I want, I remind myself as a grin forms on my face.
Is this what it feels like to be pure?
Is this what it feels like to be happy?
This is what I want, I remind myself as the street echoes with the thunderous cracking of the ice. Me and Johnny both. That's only fitting, I decide. I think he's the only thing I love.
I am Dallas Tucker Winston. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Raised by my Momma and then myself.
I am a dirty, lying hypocrite, just like my father, and just like my brother.
I want to be dead, and I will always get what I want.
There's not going to be any editorials about me, even if there were people to write them. I'll always die like this, in every single universe. Change my name, change my height, change my hair color, but that won't change me. That won't change how I'll die. In every universe, I'd die a JD, a violent hood, a hypocrite. Just like my Dad, and Tim Shepard and the Brumly Boys, Cool Hand Luke and Jesse James and all the others like us. I'd die young and desperate.
Maybe what's left of my soul can reach its way home to my Momma, and tell her the news. That'd be good, that's the Dallas that she knew. The truest bits of Dallas Winston were the parts that she raised; the parts that she grew in that small apartment in New York City.
"I'm sorry, Momma," I say silently as the ice bullets jerk my body around. I shudder as the ice pierces my skin, flesh and bones and I crumple slowly to the ground.
