Flalalady

Author: 2014 Ang (The Padled)

Inspired by the Character Bracket

Flalalady blows the steam from her gun after having taken out her second to last opponent. Amid the dust, there sat a very still woman. An old woman. So old and so still that it seemed like she didn’t even remember what year it was.

Flalalady looked at her, sized her up and down; the way the old woman slouched and looked back at her through nonchalant, hooded eyes. There’s no WAY this woman had just survived the absolute fray that had broken out among the AOA Lengendaries. And yet… here she is, untouched; having been perfectly danced around by every single enemy, as if they’d believed that SHE certainly wasn’t a threat; or at most, as much of a threat as a plant. Sure, she shouted profanities and sometimes told weird stories (usually about sex with a president) to anyone who had so much as three breaths of time to hear a word. But still, she just sat there, like a little houseplant.

Flalalady held her gun at her hip. The threat, though overlooked by all the others, was seen by this mastermind singer (quite honestly, a prodigy of her time). She knew that Barbara Ann Delight had known what she was doing. She played it up – the memory loss gimmick; for several years, she had. But there was a spark behind those nonchalant eyes – a tiny one, a little bright speck that told Flalalady all she needed to know.

This woman had avoided the blows of everyone, not by fighting, but by appearing harmless.

But Flalalady was no fool. She didn’t fall for it. And THIS was her final opponent. An opponent of wits.

She took a confident step forward. Barb didn’t move, but she did follow her with her empty blue eyes.

“I know who you are, woman.” Flalalady begins. “You act forgetful; that’s all a play. It’s bullshit. You were underestimated. But not by me.”

The woman just stares at her, a silly dementia-coded smile still plastered on her face.

Flalalady continues, “I know that you remember everything. You tell your stupid little stories because nobody has the energy to argue with a stupid story. So they just believe you. They just wave you off and say, ‘oh, that’s just barbara ann!!’ and they laugh and go on their way. Not me.” She points to herself. “Not me. And if you think I underestimated you…. well, then you underestimated me.”

For once, the odd woman opens her mouth (without intending to tell a sex story), “I counted your bullets.” She says simply. “You’ve fired them all. That gun you’re holding only carries a mag with 7 bullets. They’re gone. So it looks like it’s just you and me.”

Flalalady grips her revolver tighter, her fist turning white around it. “There’s no way you know that.”

“You were the only one here who brought a gun, were you not? And I heard 7 shots fired. I don’t see any other guns. I didn’t hear any other bullets. That gun,” the woman lifts a slow finger, “is the only gun on this battlefield. And that gun has no more bullets, Flalalady.”

Flalalady shakes the hair out of her face and tilts her chin upward, defiantly and pridefully. “I don’t have to fight with only a gun. I know how to fight otherwise. Perhaps I spared the best of my talents for my final opponent. I planned to beat out the easy ones this way, Barbara. You think you’re the only one left standing who hadn’t thought through her every move? Do you think I’m STUPID enough to have gone into a fight without a plan of what to do when my bullets ran out?”

“I didn’t question you at all, Flalalady.” Her gaze is steady as she points a little higher. “You have sweat on your forehead, though.” Then she slowly retracts her finger, her arm disappearing into the swath of blanket that surrounds her.

Flalalady wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, quickly, “Because it’s HOT, you idiot! I’ve been up, STANDING; you’ve been SITTING. It must be nice to look so harmless, you little old woman! But a woman like me doesn’t look harmless. I don’t HAVE that benefit.”

Barbara sat silent for a moment, never taking her tired yet sharp eyes from the young singer before replying steadily, almost weakly, “You’re 30. You haven’t yet learned the power of restraining your anger. You’re wearing yourself out just yelling at me. Your pride is strong. Your character is weak. You’re a talented singer. … an awful fighter.”

“Oh, you have no place to say that! I took down-“

“Yes, I watched you shoot seven from right here. The gun did that, my daughter. But what did you do? You hid behind that gun. You trembled behind it. You looked prideful, but your heart,” Barbara Ann lifted her other hand and curled it toward her own chest, “your will, your own sense of self… is weak.”

Flalalady paused, indignant. She flexes and unflexes her fingers around the handle of her gun. She hated that this woman had calculated her so keenly. She hated that she’d paid attention to the bullets. She hated that she saw right through to her core mother wound of insecurity. She hated being read like that.

“And what about it?” Flalalady tries to calm herself. “What about that has to do with the way I could rid of you right now?”

“Because why would you hurt an old woman?”

Flalalady perhaps should have known that Barbara Ann had enticingly said this to reverse-psychologically incite her, but she charged at the woman and, with an uppercut to the jaw, Barbara Ann fell lifeless to the floor.

Barbara Ann was calculated. She was old. …She didn’t want to be old anymore. Now, she could be a young ghost and tell all the other ghosts all her old lady sex stories.

Flalalady won the battle, but Barbara Ann got what she wanted.

Yes, she had faked dementia for years, because she was done dealing with the bullshit. She didn’t want to have to have a say in it anymore; she had spent all her young years doing that. All the whipersnappers would have to continue on in that role. But she was an old woman. She deserved peace.

And if she went swiftly with a punch from a powerful and gorgeous woman, then sure, that was the way she chose to go. In the end, they both won. But Flalalady did feel bad, she felt loss in the form of regret late on lonely nights, because the old woman had been right; she had poor self image. An enemy is an enemy, but Barbara had been right about that one thing.

Yet, Flalalady was too prideful and too afraid and felt too ashamed to talk to a therapist about it, so she got on stage and she sang; and she sang well. And she won a thousand Grammys and was hired by every Broadway musical to ever exist in her lifetime. And the world was blessed by her voice.

Things have a funny way of working out, and sometimes, it doesn’t LOOK like it did, but it kind of really did, anyways. :)

Fin.