5Title: The 10 Tastes of Sour
Cannon: The Darkest Hour (2011)
Disclaimer: The Darkest Hour was directed by Chris Gorak, produced by Timur Bekmambetov and Tom Jacobson; there are more people involved with the production of the movie and none of them was me. I make no money with this fan fiction (heavy assistance on 'fan') though I would like to borrow Max Minghella (playing Ben) for a moment.
Timeline: Pre-movie, with spoilers, and further on.
Rated: Not K. Maybe M. There is mention of violence and death. Maybe a little cussing. Might as well.
Pairings: Sean/Natalie, Sean-Ben
Characters: Sean, Natalie, Ben, Anne, Sergei, Vika, others…
Summary: Every time somebody dies, Sean tastes sour milk at the back of his mouth. (This is proof that this drabble bit fic was supposed to be completely different.)
Synopsis: 10 moments that are meaningful to Sean, and they all taste like milk. (I don't know where all the milk came from. I think I was looking for a random title to come up with and 'sour milk' just happened to be spit out. I had this whole idea to Sean predicting the future [in the way that someone important to him is going to die] by the taste of spoiled milk in his throat, but that didn't happen, did it.)
Author's Note: I just saw the movie at 12/31/2011, 9:30 pm in 3D. I thought it was pretty good despite that the reviews were not all that good and it was considered a box office bomb. I mean, it was still no.9. Sheesh. I take plenty of artistic license in this and I expect you to understand that.
HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE! *blows a paper whistle* [In the background, there are fireworks.]
t_h_e (1) f_i_r_s_t (1) c_o_f_f_i_n
Gavin Crane dies of a drug overdoes at the age of 31. The dead man's son is only five years old at the time. Mother Crane tells everybody that it was Tylenol in the bottle the man swallowed but the little boy, Sean, knows differently. He'd seen the different pills scattered in the pill box like skittles.
Sitting at the table across from light features with eyes dug into sleepless pits, the little boy had a glass of milk. Every time Gavin drank from the amber bottle, with a swish, Sean would copy him. The next morning, Dad is not moving, Mom is a bitch, and Sean wants to die.
So he takes a sip of the cup.
He spits up the sour milk all over the sink in nasty globules.
t_h_e (2) s_e_c_o_n_d (2) s_i_g_n
The new elementary school to a first grader is the same as all the others. Annoying people. Overly helpful people. And the failures. The teachers are too sugary. The principal is a douche and probably couldn't find his way out of a maze garden the size of an average sized swimming pool.
The lunch lady who swipes his card is different. She is glassy eyes in boredom but her hair (under the required hair net) is a series of bold colors ranging from blue to pink. In the cafeteria line there is a poster at the end that is meant to direct all bored children in the line. It is a poster of a popular country musician with a white mustache of milk. The every current "Got Milk?" sign is underneath in bold and a cartoon cow is dancing in the background.
Sean decides that he likes the lady. "I don't like milk" he says when its his turn to pay. She looks at him and even if her mouth is stuck in a frown her eyes seem to smile. She takes it and slips two juice boxes to him underneath the metal counter.
t_h_e (3) t_h_i_r_d (3) o_f_f_e_n_s_e
Officer Perry Clare is a nice and polite woman with a blue suit of one of the City's Finest. She has a golden smile and a silver badge in a fold-up case.
Sean just wants to see the gun. (He'll learn how to later.)
He doesn't mean to ask her aloud the color of her panties. Any other Mother, he is sure, would have made their child go to bed without their sip of calcium-heavy juice.
t_h_e (4) f_o_u_r_t_h (4) k_i_n_d
Mother has become a sort of Stepford Wife when her marriage to a fireman is still in its stage of new. She makes friends with some other lady in the PTA while he is still cutting class and just waiting to get away. When he gets home he is practically ordered to make friends with some other kid.
He does so out of necessity and also because the other guy looks as annoyed as he is. But Ben is not overly helpful, though he can cheat of the nerd occasionally. He is also not overly nice-Ben can keep a grudge and use blackmail when the situation calls for it. Ben Anderson can chug a beer, steal a wine cooler, and hock the cheerleader's panties to the jocks with the best of him. Mom tells Sean not to ruin the other boy, but Ben and Sean are too alike to ignore the other.
Unfortunately, Ben is also in love with milkshakes of any kind.
t_h_e (5) f_i_f_t_h (5) p_l_e_a_d
"You can do it man!" Sean tells Ben. "You're a genius. Just think of what we could do. Just two guys out in the world, meeting hot chicks, and living life up!" Sean paces the basement of his friend's house which has basically become a gaming heaven. He repeats a pep talk to get his friend to continue with his project.
"And how did you get this information on the world-wide bars again?"
"I'll never tell." Shark Week and cattle mutilations are not the only interesting things on TV of course.
t_h_e (6) s_i_x_t_h (6) p_a_u_s_e
The plane ride over is bumpy. Turbulence is an often occurrence and Ben is so afraid that he is going to hurl that they leave an open seat between them.
Twice the oxygen masks fall from the sealing randomly and cause a panic.
An hour from the airport in Moscow and they have found they've been turned around.
A baby spits up on Ben from across the aisle and before he can even laugh, Ben throws up on Sean.
Not thirty minutes from landing, when everything has calmed down, the lights go out, the plane rocks, and there is a moment went not even the bile can wash away the taste of old milk in the back of Sean's mouth.
They cannot have alcohol on the plane.
t_h_e (7) s_e_v_e_n_t_h (7) t_a_l_e
In the basement of the once-bright night club, the five survivors have their own tasks. Natalie and Anne sit together. "Stick together," they say. "We just have to stick together." Ben and Sean have their own male bonding and problems to work out. Ben orders everything around them and moves like a squirrel on crack to see what they have for their horde. Skyler usually sits on his lonesome, watching everybody with scared eyes and a skittish twitch.
To pass the time, they tell stories. It goes unsaid that they cannot tell anything scary. It has to be happy or bright or true. But it doesn't.
Sean's story of how this one guy in a cage watched shark for six hours leads to discussion of Natalie's ex-boyfriends stalking her.
Ben's idea is talked about the program he came to Moscow for but is debated by Skyler which gets the two in a fight that the girls stay out of and Sean gets in the middle to break up.
Anne has a head full of in-the-car trivia. She waxes tales of Larry, Curly, and Moe until someone-they're never quite sure who it is-brings up that they'll likely never be able to watch another one.
Nat messes with her phone. "Why won't it work?" She just wants to take a picture. But then she thinks about the last picture she took and the way everything went to hell after that.
Ben sets up waxing lyrical about food-mostly about what they have and don't have. There is some fruit, and some vegetables, but no meat. And Nat hates olives. That leads to what they will do when they run out of food.
Skyler wants to talk about other animals, and Sean could have gotten into that if it hadn't brought up Ben's dumb old hound dog stuck back in Seattle, and that they were likely never going to see him again.
On day three, they hear a noise outside once and wonder what it could be. At first, they think it could be anther human but a –spurt- noise tells them differently. Anne has zombie dreams that night so they duct tape up the dead bartender before he can decompose anymore. (The stench is fowl and Sean can't help but him old country music because of it). Just in case.
t_h_e (8) e_i_g_h_t_h (8) s_c_r_a_t_c_h
Ben's ever-present sharpie marker comes in handy. They all feel like they're not gonna make it out of there alive, so they take different corners of the basement and write whatever they can. Some of it is a eulogy. They write an explanation in the white space across from the door. On one wall they play tic-tac-toe, MASH and a bunch of other things just to keep themselves busy.
In Sharpie, Ben makes a big black X on the wall where the old woman is bricking up her house. He doesn't think she will live but maybe someone will see it and know there were survivors once.
They leave the bridge and Ben writes on the wall that the particular walkway is unapproachable due to massive damage.
The embassy gains another big X an a quick sentence about how the dog barked at it and then just burned up by the thing right there in front of them like a cat running into a chicken coop before the fox can get out on its own.
After Natalie and Sean discover the way the glass hid them from the 'ghost,' Ben writes out a quick explanation about sharks and cages, of ghosts and glass where anyone can just walk by. If they don't make it, maybe someone will see it.
The tall building that once held a spy scope now holds an arrow towards a lit up house and a eulogy to Skyler who was a major ass hole but also saved them (even if his own death was inevitable).
The postal office has a hundred sharpies and markers so Ben can finally replace his warn down stick. The soldiers take to the idea and white washed walls get a new paint job of a hundred different stories in sharpie.
Vika gets their little group to write out their own stories in part of a wall together, and makes sure to give a nice eulogy to her own parents, Anne, Sergei, and Sergei's cat.
The cement ground where Sean almost dies again before they kill the first one, Vika throws fire bombs, they kill a trio of aliens, and stop a bus by killing another of them earns a large X on the ground, a few quick sentences and a eulogy to Ben.
When they are safe on the submarine, heading to America or wherever there are more survivors, and freedom fighters, They sit down and on a big notepad, they begin to write a story.
Sean wouldn't mind the down time as much if he hadn't had to drink so much milk. They have enough water to last for a while but the milk would go bad.
t_h_e (9) n_i_n_t_h (9) r_i_d_e
It takes almost three years to get back to Seattle. Light-bulb jewelry is heavily 'in' and Natalie is heavily pregnant with their first child (Anne or John they haven't decided yet. Or maybe Ivan). Vika helps her 'big sister' waddle out of the latest sub (It would be the ninth and hopefully the last) they have taken a ride in to get here.
Each holds a gun like they were born to it and atop the 'boat' are dozens of powered microwave guns and a few more they will take with them.
Sean does his best not to be grossed out at his wife's craving for milk and anything else.
t_h_e (10) t_e_n_t_h (10) c_o_u_n_t
As of January 1, 2012, the human population of the USA was 312,781,705. The world count was closer to 6,984,963,472. After the alien invasion that wrecked most of the world and took away much of the metal within the Earth, the numbers were much lower. In the USA, there was a recording of around 11,462 including the two natives, the Russian girl, and the newborn. Communications eventually brought the world number of living humans to 643,505. Within city limits was the only safe place to be. African and 'third world' areas were pretty much wiped out totally. There were no 'higher grounds' to get to except for the cities which had the only ways to detect the invaders and the know-how to fight them.
Natalie Crane nee Corbin looked up from the job of warming a bottle of milk towards a closable glass cradle with a connected oxygen tank where her youngest child was raising amuck until she was interrupted by her oldest child. 16-year-old Anne had held a gun for the last ten years of her life.
"We've found a way to mass produce the microwave bombs. We just need a way now to set them off with doing it manually."
t_h_e (Really It Is) e_n_d
Reviews welcomed.
So how did you like it? Yes it was another 'ten pieces' fic but it was also to a totally new fanon. How did you like it?
This has not been edited professionally or at least from someone with know-how. If you would like to, please send me a PM and I will gladly let you.