A Striking Resemblance

>> Inspired once more by the art of DeTomasso ... This time, bouncing off from the fact he and others have done some many different versions of the character.

1.

It was never established as an official thing, and it hadn't ended on very good terms, but for a few months Margie Bannon had been a sort of apprentice of Lara Croft, assisting her on a couple of expeditions. And during that period she had got very good at mimicking Lara's style. At first it was just a silly joke between them. A couple different people had commented that they looked like sisters, and also Lara remarked on a few occasions that she found it disturbing when other women idolized her too much. That had been intended as a gentle criticism/warning to her overeager student. Margie's playful response was to present herself the very next day as the complete obsessive copycat that Lara feared she'd turn into—emulating not just Lara's clothing and her signature single braid (she had to dye her hair to get it dark enough), but her whole manner, including her accent (though Margie was always rather weak at that part of it). Thankfully, Lara took the entire daft performance in the right spirit. And then later on, they twice put the act to real use, with Margie serving as a decoy. First it was to lead paparazzi astray and allow Lara to take care of a "delicate personal matter elsewhere" (Margie never learned further details) ... The second time was much more dangerous and much more thrilling—she was bait to draw out an enemy, enabling Lara to nail the bastard first.

Currently, though, Margie hadn't seen or spoken Lara in over two years—hell, almost three by now. It was completely her fault things had gone wrong. Margie had developed a thing for a friend of Lara's, an older man she bought rare books from. He looked a lot like Jeremy Irons. When the man turned Margie down, she hadn't handled it well. She threw a bit of tantrum and accused Lara of interfering. Lara simply told her she was being childish, and Margie could recognize now that was true—in fact in her gut she'd known it at the time—but she could never bring herself to admit it out loud and apologize. She just took off on her own and that was the end of their connection. Damn shame. She'd learned a hell of a lot from Lara, but if she hadn't screwed everything up, she knew she would have learned far more.

Three times since then, Margie had done her Lara act. First it was at a little Halloween party with some close friends in grad school. The second time (and on a dare from that group, after she'd impressed them so much) she did it at a very big party, a high society event—passing herself off as the real Lara, just to see if she could get away with it. And she had. Margie still wondered if Lara herself had ever found out about it. She might have, for the thing had got a ton of press, thanks to the embarrassing antics of some other celebrities in attendance. And also the dress she'd chosen to appear in. It had been rather attention-grabbing. So Margie-as-Lara in that flashy number ended up featured on television and in several magazines, and of course on the internet. But Lara hadn't contacted her afterward or made an issue of it. Either she hadn't noticed, hadn't cared, or just possibly she'd been amused by the stunt. Margie hoped the last one was the case.

She told herself she wouldn't press her luck, after that. She'd never try that shit again.

Only then a situation arose that forced her to. Well, pretty much. Kind of.

The impersonation had opened some doors that wouldn't have opened otherwise.

2.

When she started out on this trip, dressing up like Lara wasn't meant to fool anybody again, but as a kind of preparatory spiritual thing—psyching herself up for the adventure, to get in the right mindset. Like war-paint or totemic masks. She felt bolder in that outfit, and tougher, with her hair dyed and braided. Ready for anything. The world's at your feet, when you're wearing asskicker boots. And when you're sneering down your nose through sassy tinted specs. She loved the gloves, too. They were meant to make your hands stronger and they totally worked.

Margie was borrowing her famous mentor's strength and courage—and the sexiness, too, 'cause hey, it felt great. The shirt that said "Yeah fucker, go on and look how great my tits are, and my abs too." The shorts that said the same thing about her legs and her bottom.

But then she couldn't get where she needed to go. She still had some big gaps in her information. There were a few key people she needed to talk to, in order to fill in those blanks, and none of the fuckers would take her calls, let alone meet with her in person. Not until as a last resort she tried using Lara Croft's name instead of her own ... as well as her accent, or at least Margie's weak and wobbly version of it. But bad as it was, all the men bought into the act. Because she looked the part, and because they wanted to. They wanted to believe the real Lara Croft was talking to them, and needed their help. She didn't end up giving any them any of the money she'd brought—they wouldn't take it, trying their damnedest to impress her with their chivalry. Well, if it had made them feel good about themselves, fine and dandy.

Margie never liked her real name anyway. It was an old lady's name, or a fat girl's name. Sounded too much like margarine. Mean kids used to call her that in school. And because of her last name, it got extended to Margarine Yogurt. She could never eat either of those things without getting sick.

She was looking for a secret room, underneath a ruined windmill. She knew which country it was in, although over the last few months they kept changing the name of the rundown rinkydink shithole because of "regime-changes". She also knew the place was between a river which she didn't know the name of, a castle with three different names, God knows why, and a factory that used to make tanks in WWII, and that never had a name at all. The castle and the factory and the windmill itself had all got the shit bombed out of them during that war, but then all of them or some of them may or may not have been rebuilt afterward. Ha fucking ha.

So she'd needed help from local experts. Not to say she couldn't have figured out the right spot by herself, if she put her nose to the proverbial grindstone, but the local guys sure sped up the process. She couldn't afford to sink too much time into this. Margie wasn't wealthy—not yet. Not unless this quest paid off like she hoped it would. Until then, she had all the usual monthly bills looming over her, and she could only take a couple weeks off work—unpaid—without losing her bullshit university job. She needed to get this thing done quick and dirty. In and fucking out, no futzing around.

What had happened was she found an old diary in a library archive nobody had got around to sifting through, until Margie came along. It was in code, but not a tough one to work out. The writer had worked for a crime boss with Nazi connections. He made himself a secret room under a ruined windmill where he stashed a bunch of paintings they'd stolen that he stole off them. Big name stuff. Lost Da Vinci's and Van Gogh's. Then the Nazis found out about this and paid the guy that wrote the diary to kill his boss, which he had, cheerfully. The war ended and the guy went to America for a fresh start. He wrote his diary in the late fifties, confessing with some relish all the dreadful shit he'd done in his life. His only regret was that he'd never made it back to the old country to clean out that secret room. So all those paintings were still stashed there ... waiting for Margie to recover them, in 2013.

But then using Lara Croft's name must have drawn attention from some of her enemies. Shady characters followed Margie to the windmill and she was too dumb to notice until they attacked her, the moment she pried open the trapdoor to the secret room.

Well, considering it was her first experience with that sort of thing, Margie actually hadn't done too bad, once the shooting started. The real Lara wouldn't have handled herself better. Margie always thought she'd just freeze up useless in that sort of situation, like a deer in headlights, but that hadn't happened. She'd got too ticked off to get scared. Pulled her guns out and blown away eight guys, bim-bam-boom. How about that.

Unfortunately one of the eight sons of bitches managed a call on his cell phone before he bled out, summoning reinforcements. And that call had brought twice the original number, if she'd counted them correctly. Pursuing her through the woods ...

3.

She had bought herself a little breathing space by blowing up a bridge—the secret room had contained some crates of dynamite, in addition to the paintings. And she'd put the shit to good use. Fifteen minutes prior to blowing up the bridge across the river, she had blown up the restored windmill (which was, or had been, a real towering monster, mostly stone, like you'd see in an old Frankenstein movie) in order to bury the secret room's trapdoor under all the debris. So the bad guys wouldn't be able to get in there and filch everything before she came back. Which she would make sure she didn't do by herself next time, now that she knew all the priceless art was really and truly still there. Probably coming alone in the first place hadn't been the smartest way to go about things, but she would have been embarrassed as fuck if the secret room turned out empty, or if her local helpers had bungled their part of it and steered her to the wrong windmill.

Except destroying the bridge had cut her off from the closest towns. On this side of the river there was nothing but woods and dinky farms, nine out of ten of which were abandoned, until you hit the mountains along the northern border. At least a two day journey on foot, and she had no food or water on her.

For a while, Margie had just dithered around along the shore, not sure what to do. She had her cell phone but she had turned it off because she was afraid the bad guys were tracking it. Then Fortune seemed to decide she had earned a smile. She went over a hill, and saw a little lake in front of her with a seaplane parked on it. She hadn't known there was a lake anywhere near here—it wasn't included on her map. Or perhaps she was looking at the wrong part. Easy enough to do, since the thing wasn't labeled in English. Was the lake connected to the river? It didn't seem to be but she couldn't tell for sure. Maybe they joined up further ahead, around a bend.

The plane was docked to a lopsided cabin or workshop or some damn thing on the gravelly lakeshore. She saw a man rolling a dolly along the narrow pier connecting them, loading shit into the plane or maybe unloading it. Didn't matter. She hustled down there fast as she could to talk to him. "Hey! Hey! I need help!"

The guy turned out to look a whole lot like Sting, when she got close to him. Young Sting from the eighties, when he was hot. (Well, to be fair he was still pretty hot nowadays, but in an old guy way.)

Margie told him she had bad men chasing her, and she needed him to fly her to safety—preferably over the border. He said she looked like Lara Croft and she told him that was because she was Lara Croft.

And then he told he'd be glad to help her if she had sex with him first.

She took it like a joke and offered him a lot of money—much more than she had on her or could actually afford. Except she would be able to in the near future, once she got hold of those paintings. So she wasn't completely bullshitting the guy. She would have made good with him pretty soon, if he'd agreed.

But he didn't want the money. He wanted sex with Lara Croft. "No money in the world can top that."

"Well, fuck," she said.

"Uh huh," he said.

"We don't really have time for that sort of thing. It isn't safe."

"That makes it more exciting!" Plus he said they had at least two hours—because the next closest bridge over the river was a two hour drive away. "There used to be more, but they got wrecked during the last troubles. This part of the country got the worst of it, you know. That's why there's hardly anybody left around here. I enjoy the solitude, mostly. But I was feeling rather low this morning and I'm glad you've dropped in like this. Lara Croft, of all people! My sister always says I'll go crazy living this way by myself for so long, and maybe she was right. Maybe it's happened, at last. This is too good to be true, isn't it? My uncle lost his mind, you know, at the age of forty three—he used to think the devil visited him, every evening at six o'clock. I'm glad I'm seeing you instead of the devil. Or are you the devil in disguise? Well, even if you are, I'm going to have sex with you anyway, if you'll let me. Perhaps you'll turn back into the devil as soon as things get going, to torment me—but I won't let that stop me. I shall take the risk. I haven't got to have sex with anyone in a long time. My girl was killed, in the troubles. I have never got over it. She was very pretty. You are much prettier, though. She would not mind me saying so. She was always saying people are not honest enough, about such things. I miss her every day more and more. But I know she would be angry for me, for not moving on. She always said that wasn't healthy, when people didn't move on from things after they ended."

He was quite a character, this fucking guy, wasn't he? Jesus. How was she supposed to respond to this shit?

4.

The real Lara Croft wouldn't have put up with this. She would have shot the guy, or knocked him out. And flown off in the asshole's plane by herself without a qualm. Actually, could she do that? Did Lara know how to pilot a plane? Margie didn't know. Well, if she didn't, she just would have made the guy do it. Stuck her gun in his face, or just slapped the shit out of him. Whatever it took to get him in line.

Margie couldn't do any of that stuff, could she? Actually she may as well give it a whirl. So she drew one of her guns and stuck it in his face. She didn't think she could shoot the guy in cold blood but he wouldn't know that.

The guy smiled. "Ah, so it's the devil, after all. Oh well."

"I'm not the devil. Just do what I need like a gentleman and I won't shoot you, because I won't have to."

His response was to grab the gun by the barrel. He didn't try to knock it away or pull it out of her hand, he just gripped it. But he moved so fast she almost pissed herself, and in the same second she squeezed the trigger on reflex. That should have been that. But it wasn't. The damn gun only clicked—it needed reloaded. She thought it still had two shots left in it but she must have miscounted. Shit. She pulled her other gun, but in the second it took her to swing it up, she realized he wanted her to blast him. He hadn't been trying to disarm her, just startle her into blowing him to Hell. And it would have worked if she was less of an idiot.

Well, fuck that. She wasn't gonna help this crazy loser commit suicide and have to carry that around on her conscience for the rest of her life. Plus that would leave her stranded here, since she couldn't fly his damn plane. Unacceptable.

"Let go of my weapon."

He obeyed, looking sheepish now. "Why didn't you do it?"

"You got a death wish?"

He shrugged. "Yes, a little bit. Off and on."

"Jesus. Well, you're no use to me if you're dead."

"You can shoot me after the flight. Right after we land."

"You want me to kill you afterwards instead of having sex with you before."

"No, we will still have sex. But then after the flight, you can kill me if you still want to. I won't mind. Does that make the sex more acceptable for you?"

"You are fucking out of your mind."

"I know it. I know."

She tried to talk him down to a handjob or a blowjob, but he wouldn't go for it. He had to get the real deal. Finally—half out of exasperation, and half in pity for this strange lost soul—she gave in, as long as he agreed to wear a condom. "Of course I will," he said, as if astonished that she thought she had to ask.

So they went into his cabin. There was no proper bed in there, just a couch. It was leather or fake leather, and dark red—almost just like the couch she had in her own apartment, except a little longer. And it had sheets and bed pillows on it.

He shrugged off the greasy mechanic's boiler suit he was wearing and took a quick shower, while she undressed and arranged herself on the couch. How long had it been since she last had sex? Obviously a good while, since she had to think about it. Two months. Three? She remembered it hadn't been much good, whenever it went down, and neither had the time before that. A run of bad luck. Well, story of her life, for the most part.

At least this crazy asshole was decent looking. She had a big crush on Sting for a while, when she was a teenager. That kind of helped, some. Unless she let herself think about it too hard. Because if she did, then it might maybe make this shittier, instead. Like a fantasy figure from her youth had turned evil on her. Climbed out of the poster on her bedroom wall to assault her. God.

Another thing that helped her get ready for this was it was happening to Lara Croft, not to her real self. That made it much less humiliating. Margie Bannon wouldn't do this. The guy wouldn't even want to, probably, if he'd met her in her normal clothes, and talking like she normally did. Of course the real Lara Croft wouldn't submit to it either. But that was okay too because the real Lara wasn't here doing this. She was a playing a different Lara Croft, the chief defining difference being that this version would, because she had to. Because she was younger, less sure of herself. And also maybe dirtier. More perverse than both the real Lara and Margie herself ever were in normal regular circumstances.

She would think of this like a roleplay performance. None of this was real. It was all pretend, like in a movie. Even in porn movies most of it's all staged. They don't really feel it like they pretend to. They just go through the motions and that's the same thing she would do and it wouldn't matter, soon as it was finished.

When he emerged from his bathroom, he had a dinky green towel around his waist. There was no bulge in it—he wasn't hard yet, unless he had a really tiny pecker. His hair was slicked back, but then he messed it up with his fingers. Shook it out so it was back to the same wild goofy spiny mop as before. It looked good that way. Better than when it was flat and neat. That had both diminished him and made him look sinister.

He had scars on his chest and belly that she thought might have been bullet wounds. But she wasn't completely sure. She had a cousin who had some moles removed from his back, and they'd left similar craters on his skin.

She considered asking if she could take a quick shower herself, before they got started. Climbing into secret rooms under windmills gets you grimy, let alone gunfights, demolitions, and running through overgrown woods. But then she figured she would rather not delay things any longer. Sooner they got going, sooner it would be over. Plus what was the point in getting clean when this guy was gonna get her filthy again?

The way he looked at her was weird. It wasn't the look you'd expect from a guy that was about to fuck you. It reminded her of the expression her dad used to get, when he was trying to fix the car or the washing machine or something and he was having some trouble. He wasn't the kind of man that got upset in that situation, like most dads. He didn't cuss and kick things. He would think things over very carefully, but also smiling a little, laughing at himself and the whole mess he'd got into as he puzzled through it.