“T.J. Kipler and Diplodocus”: Flash Fiction: Story about Losing the Self in Others...

(I used this picture of myself while locked up in the hospital for Anxiety attacks and eletric storms in my brain. It fits with the story though!)

“T.J. Kipler and Diplodocus”

When the fluorescent bulbs go out, I don’t think twice. Staying late again at the DA’s office, by the green light of my table lamp, I continue to read through the casefile on the crime boss known as “Diplodocus”.

A rustle down the hall disturbs my focus. With a bang, I jerk my head as my office door shoots open. I rise in alarm, hands still on the file, as a woman with fox-red hair marches in. My heart pounds in my eardrums as she launches herself at me; I leap sideways from my desk, trying to head her off to the door. My name plate reading T.J. Kipler falls to the floor.

She rounds the desk, mirroring my movements. Two women playing cat and mouse: yet my pantsuit grants little flexibility, constraining me. She had come prepared, dressed in black and all stretch. She holds up a syringe as her green eyes fix on me with a confident, determined gaze.

I fling my lamp, the green dim light snuffing out.

A dodge- I pause. She's just a silhouette in the faded moonlight.

A jar of pens releases into a volley. As I cringe, she springs.

I bite the carpet, hard. A syringe flashes as she holds me down. My body goes tense as the needle pierces my neck.

Losing consciousness, the room fades in a haze.

Time warps and stretches.

Has it been minutes, hours?

I open my eyes. I sit by a windowsill, in some kind of office. There are so many people here…

They're having some kind of party. Coworkers I don’t recognize are chatting and laughing. Though I have no idea who they are, I sense a closeness between us. As if we’ve been through something big together.

But how did I get here?

Looking down, I am dressed in something stretchy, comfortable, all in black. My head fog lifts in splinters, shards, like a mirror unbreaking to show me myself.

With a swish of fox-red hair; The woman approaches.

Champagne glasses clink.

A calendar with city names written into the days flashes across my mind's eye.

Madrid, Paris, Milan, Barcelona, Berlin… I’ve been to them all, somehow, in the past few weeks. What have I done for them? With them. My team now.

Their attention shifts to a mounted flat-screen. Someone turns up the volume as a newscaster announces, “The police still have not discovered the whereabouts of the missing DA agent working on the Diplodocus case.”

The red-haired woman comes over and leans in close to my ear, as if to whisper a secret. Pressure at my neck, another syringe injection. My neck slumps, I'm out again.

...

I blink through the darkness.

A thick head-fog lifts and I stretch the heaviness from my limbs. I am vaguely aware that it’s been several months since my last clear memory. I am seated, my body poised on a bench in a mahogany trimmed office…

There he is. Broad-shouldered, he is shuffling a stack of paperwork at his vast desk.

He flings a folder at me. “Presumed dead,” he snorts. “So, is she?”

"What?" I ask.

"Dead." He replies.

I nod, a smirk blooming on my face. I open it and turn the pages of the file on T.J. Kipler. It's laughable. So much information on this woman, this DA agent, her life, the silly work she put in for no reason.

“She is,” I laugh in reply.

But she is me. No. Was?

I feel a magnetic pull to this man. I approach him, electrified with affection. He is power turned to desire, embodied. I shove aside the nameplate reading: Diplodocus, and I take him into my arms.

And thus.

T.J. Kipler is dead.