it can creep up inside you and consume you.
Who: Bethany and Leah.
When: Early this morning—about 5:30 or 6:00.
Where: The park.
The night before, Bethany had been awake for many hours—something simply would not let her sleep. But she had passed out a few hours before the sun was near the horizon, as was inevitable, and had woken up about an hour or two before dawn to see boarded-up houses and no power. Irritated, the young woman had opened her back door, beholding a cardboard box on her back step—she almost tripped over it, and was glad no one else was awake to hear her curse. Lugging the package inside, she almost froze when she saw the note. Disconcerted, she fished around in the mostly-empty drawers in the kitchen, an endeavor that had only produced one candle and a few matches, half of which were damp. But it was better than nothing—even though she had never been much of a superstitious person, she didn't feel like sitting around in the pre-dawn gloom while there were people leaving art supplies and cryptic letters on her back porch.
So she dressed in whatever she happened to touch first, and then sat watching her single candle slowly melt until it was nothing more than a puddle of warm wax. After the tiny flame had snuffed out of existence, the blonde carefully tugged on her warm, white gloves and had slipped out the door before anyone else in the city was likely to stir. She felt a bit guilty, leaving her house like that, but she was sure that staying wouldn't help rid her of this minor case of insomnia. The sun was just peeking over the buildings then, giving the part of the city she could see a dusky look.
Leather jacket warming her shoulders and a pair of jeans protecting her legs from the chill, she shoved her hands in her pockets and meandered down the street towards the park. Without electricity, she couldn't very well stay in her house and do nothing—she also couldn't go to the bar as she had wanted. Then again, it might be best to check on the place and make sure nobody had broken in. But the gates of the park were already in view by the time she thought of that, and so she continued on her path, dodging around the lake and instead choosing a smaller walkway that hugged the western fence, away from the road.
A briar of wild red roses caught her eye, and, smiling to herself, she adjusted her course towards them, sneakers crunching quietly on the gravel with every step. There was only one that was in full bloom, the others having died already from the cold. The petals would make sweet rosewater, when crushed with mortar and pestle, which was said to aid sleep. A few other random thoughts crossed her mind as she reached out, pulling off a glove before gently fingering one frost-covered petal. Bethany pulled off her other glove and, after tossing the pair on to the frostbitten grass, pulled a small pad of paper from her back pocket along with a sharpened pencil from the bun in her hair. What sort of artist would she be if she left the house unprepared?
Crouching down so she could get a better look at what was undoubtedly the last blossom of the season, she began to sketch it, an almost exact copy of the flower beginning to take shape upon the previously empty page.
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Today wasn't a good day. Leah woke up, and could have sworn that Remy was shaking her away. Neither of them usually touched her, so she already had a feeling that something was wrong. Reaching over to turn on the lamp beside her bed fulfilled her fears, as it didn't come on. A quick check of all the other lights proved that the electricity had gone out, since all the bulbs in her brand new home wouldn't go out at once, would they? Leah was now very concerned. She also realized that it was early, very early. Still, with a fear coursing through her, she was now wide awake. It didn't really matter how early it was anymore, she had to get out of here. It wasn't like staying indoors was going to keep her any warmer than going outside. Maybe someone outside would know what was going on.
She got dressed as warmly as possible, and headed out the door. She had been wandering around for a while when she stumbled into the park. By this point, she had actually forgotten why she had set out in the first place. It was actually Remy who reminded her, pointing out the girl drawing a rose, telling her to ask if she had electricity.
"Good idea, Remy," she muttered, heading over that way. Once close enough, she made a proper amount of noise to let the girl know that someone was coming up being her. "Excuse me," she said when she was about two feet away. "I was wondering, did the electricity go out in your home as well? Mine's not working anymore."
Each contour of the rose, every individual curve of the many petals was a miniature work of art in itself. Recreating flowers had been one of her first endeavors as a child, and they were still one of her favorite subjects to draw. The lines were so smooth, almost perfect. The layers of petals intertwined just perfectly, creating a natural sculpture. It was a shame that this was the last wild one she would see for months, and she briefly considered plucking it from the bush in order to perhaps extend its lifespan by a few days.
And it was during that minute lapse in concentration that she heard someone approaching, felt her muscles tense and her mind clear of the artistically-induced fog.
Hearing a female voice, her position relaxed a little. It wasn't likely that this woman meant her harm, and there was no need to worry. Out of pure curiosity, the blonde turned to face the voice, her eyes falling upon another flaxen-haired woman who looked sort of on-edge. But in this place, that shouldn't have surprised her.
At the question, Bethany grabbed her gloves as she nodded and stood, flexing her fingers to keep them from cramping up. She glanced at the drawing in her hand and gave a mental nod—not too bad. "Yes, it did. Terribly early this morning, I'd guess, since I was awake around five." She cocked her head to the side inspecting the other woman as innocently as she could. "Where do you live? Maybe the entire city is out." If that was the case, then they had something planned, she had no doubt of that.
She didn't notice the woman tense up and then relax at Leah's approach. That would require Leah to have slightly better concentration after being woken up so early in the morning than she was capable of right now. Still, hearing that her electricity was out as well was not comforting at all. "That's very worrisome, actually. I woke up around the same time...I think." She actually wasn't sure, due to lack of electricity.
"I live on Main Street, back that way," Leah said, pointing toward where she lived. "Where do you live?" Of course, a little deeper, Leah was starting to go into panic mode. She *hated* being in the dark. It may not quite go up to a true fear, but that didn't mean that she liked it one single bit.
Bethany nodded as she listened, idly flipping her gloves back and forth in her hands. The movement was more thoughtful than nervous, and she forced herself to stop before she frightened the other woman by seeming overly concerned. Something was going to happen soon, she could just feel it. A loss of any kind in this city wasn't a good omen for the inhabitants, herself included.
"Main Street... That's all the way on the other side of town from me. I'm on Cherry," she mused aloud, a worry-line forming between her pale eyebrows. So both halves of the city were out of power. Most definitely not a fair sign. Things were moving along—she just didn't know in which direction. She didn't doubt that some of the houses and businesses were in the same condition, but she decided to ask anyway. "Were some places around you boarded-up?"
Leah tried to listen while the woman talked about where she was from. Leah herself just couldn't help but worry about what was going on. She nodded along when she talked until her last question. "Boarded up?" She thought for a second. "I think so...I wasn't paying much attention to other places. We could walk back up that way a little and look."
That seemed reasonable enough to her, so Bethany slid the drawing-pad back into her pocket, stuck the pencil in her bun, and tugged on her gloves. "Let's, then. Standing still is just making it colder." In her opinion anyway. The blonde woman shoved her hands in her pockets before looking back to her impromptu companion. She realized that she hadn't even asked the other woman's name. Her mother would have been cringing in horror at her daughter's rudeness if she'd been present. "My name is Bethany. Bethany Elliot."
Leah watched her stand up and put her pencil away. "My name is Leah James," she said with a slight smile. She did find it quite cold out here, but she was used to the more sunny southern weather or her own home. She started to walk in the direction that she had come from. "I didn't think to look around for boarded up places. Is that what you saw on your way here?" If so, that wasn't really good at all, now, was it?
"Nice to meet you, Leah." The artist trailed after her, breath making little puffs of white fog in the morning air. Montana had suffered through a few hard winters, but Bethany couldn't remember the last time she had been this cold. Maybe she was spoiled from moving around so much, always landing in a different country during the chilly season, but still. It almost made her miss home. "Yes. Most of them were empty before, but now it looks as if they've all been condemned."
She gave a mental chuckle, a slight, cynical smile quirking her lips—how ironic. The people were damned, and so were the buildings.
Although Leah had dressed warmly, she was still shivering underneath her thick coat. She just wasn't used to this kind of weather. She rarely even saw snow growing up, and then she spent most of a year underground. Not exactly great ways to build up your cold tolerance. And now, without electricity, the inside of her house was probably every bit as cold as it is out here. Luckily, it at least lacked the wind and snow.
Leah looked around as she walked at the now boarded up buildings. "I can't believe I didn't notice this before," she said. "What's going on here?"
There weren't many things in the world that made Bethany want to go home, crawl under her covers and hide. But seeing the city look the way it did now, well. She could already feel the urge to get as far away from this place and as warm as humanly possible. A split second later she was mentally kicking herself—there was no need to worry. Her superiors were probably just trying to scare them all to see what would happen. Not that that was a good thing, but still. She could handle it. She hoped.
"I have no idea," she replied breathlessly, looking around as incredulously as Leah. There was no reason for this that she could discern except for perhaps the scientists' amusement. It was wrong, either way. She didn't like it.
This was incredibly creepy. Leah wasn't sure how she should react to all of this. Why were all of these houses suddenly boarded up like old abandoned shacks? Half of the houses in the neighborhood looked like something out of the start of a bad horror movie. Then again, parts of her life kind of showed like one as well. She *had* lived underground for almost a year, and spent a lot of that time in a place where strange noises occurred and the house changed shape at will. Hopefully, it wouldn't get any worse than that.
"This...is wrong. This isn't what is going to help reintegrate us into society at all."
Bethany bit the inside of her cheek. Reintegrate them into society? Was that what they'd all been told? It made sense, though. People who had been through experiments like that couldn't just be thrown back into their lives as if nothing had happened. They needed time to adjust, to get a feel for what it would be like. But putting all of them in the same place—it was convenient, wasn't it? Maybe too convenient.
Suddenly, the blonde didn't feel like being in the streets anymore.
She stopped dead in her tracks, arms crossed over her chest to try and suppress her shivers. "It is wrong—very wrong. I don't like this at all. We should probably go inside until the power comes back on—or at least until later in the day."
Leah was chilled to the bone. This place didn't look right to her at all. Many of the houses, if she didn't know any better, looked like they hadn't been inhabited in years, and yet she knew that a few people had lived in a few of these houses the day before. Something desperately wasn't right here.
"Yes, getting inside sounds like a good idea," Leah said, only half listening at the moment. "Should we go back to our homes, or somewhere like City Hall?" Maybe the heads of this little town knew what was going on.
The one time Bethany had been to City Hall, she hadn't received much in the way of help. She had taken one look at the people there and decided that perhaps it wasn't the best idea to ask about her superiors—the majority of the employees appeared as if they had been part of experiments as well. They all had the little flicker of insanity in their eyes that she had learned to recognize, had sometimes imagined she had seen in herself. But maybe she was just being paranoid—it wasn't unheard of.
"City Hall, I'd say." There was certainly nothing they could do in their houses, so long as the power was out. Although part of her was worried that maybe she would go back and her doors and windows would be covered with plywood, the fear wasn't as pressing as the one of being outside.
Leah herself had never been to City Hall, so she just figured that there would be the normal heads of town there or whatever. She hadn't really had the chance to meet too many people at all, actually. Sure, she met a few at the forced interaction thing, and now she met Bethany, but the others probably had days ahead of her on meeting new people. She wasn't even sure if all of her still living Experiment compatriots were here or not.
"City Hall it is, then." She paused for a moment. "Do you know where it is? I'm afraid that I've only been here for two whole days." She turned around in a circle, as if trying to figure out which direction she was supposed to go in.
That caught her off guard for a moment. Just two days? She had assumed that most residents had arrived only a day or two after herself. But it must have been a few more for Leah. That was interesting. Apparently, they were still rounding up some of the participants. Mentally, she scolded herself; they weren't cattle. They were human beings, albeit ones with certain... problems. That didn't make then much different from her, though.
"North," she said, looking around for some sort of marker. The sun was just beginning to rise, so she turned left. "This way," she said, pointing down the street. She squinted at the sign for a moment before adding, "It's on Park Road."
She could tell that Bethany was surprised that she had arrived here so recently. "How long have you been in this place?" Leah asked her. "I think there were still other people there with the doctors when I left." Leah wasn't sure that the doctors wanted to release her when they did, since she still talked to Remy and Baboto whenever she saw them. Oddly, she hadn't seen much of them since coming here. Other than a few random occasions, she only saw them when she was alone. How odd.
Leah nodded and followed Bethany when she made the turn toward City Hall. "Hmm...I suppose I should memorize this. I hope that someone at City Hall knows a little more about what is going on.
Bethany thought back to her first day in that too-big house, and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. Sometimes, the place still made her want to just crawl into bed and never get up. She didn't belong there—she belonged in her little cottage in Latvia, with the villagers who minded their own business because she minded hers. "A week, week and a half," she finally answered." Not long time, but long enough.
A small smile tugged at her lips. "I wonder if they'll have a map at City Hall," she mused. "If there is, you might want to grab one."
"A week can feel like forever." Back in the experiment, hours occasionally felt like years, but sometimes, days and weeks passed by without her really noticing at all. That may have been the intent of the scientists who experimented on them, though. "Time is relative that way."
Leah couldn't help but smile back. "A map would be helpful." She would have to grab one if one was actually there. Hopefully, it would continue to be useful after today.
Bethany knew exactly what Leah meant; sometimes she would set to work on a report and it would only feel like minutes before she was finished, though hours had passed. Other times, the only expression broad enough to measure the time she spent in front of the monitors was eons. There was no sense of time when she was involved in a painting, either. "I know the feeling all too well."
It wasn't long before the larger building appeared in the dusky light, rising above its fellow structures by a decent amount. "City Hall," the blonde woman said, gesturing towards it.
Leah smiled. She could get wrapped up in staring at a wall, personally, but it was nice knowing that it happened to other people as well. She shifted her medical bag from one hand to the other, flexing her fingers in order to get a little more warmth back into them. For having gloves on, her hands were near numb at this point. Of course, she had probably been sleeping in the cold for hours when Remy woke her up.
She looked up at the building, which was backed by the lightening sky. "There doesn't look to be anyone there yet," Leah said. Of course, it was still early at the moment, but that still left a nasty feeling in the pit of her stomach. If the electricity was out all over the town, shouldn't *somebody* be here?
Once her eyes adjusted to focus on the building, a small worry-line formed between her eyebrows. Leah was right; the place appeared to be deserted. Goosebumps rose on Bethany's flesh, and it wasn't just because of the cold. Still, she trotted up the steps, cupping her hands around her face as she leaned close to the window on the double-doors, a small part of her hoping that the two of them were simply imagining things.
Empty. Totally and completely empty.
Stepping back from the door, the blonde woman swiveled to face her companion, shaking her head almost frantically. "None of this makes any sense," she groaned. Not that her superiors were good at that sort of thing, but at least everything they had done in the experiment had had a purpose. This couldn't be different, could it? There must have been an ulterior motive.
Leah crossed her arms around her chest, practically hugging herself while Bethany looked through the windows of the building. Leah hated this with a passion. This was just another game, wasn't it? They hadn't been taken out of the experiment at all? For all Leah truly knew, the world still didn't know about them. It wasn't like she really knew any different. All she wanted to do was go home and scream and cry at this point.
"Maybe...maybe we just should go home at this point." Of course, her house could start screaming at her again, just like the other house did underground. "What else can we do?"
Already, Bethany could feel her patience waning. It wasn't Leah's fault, she knew that much. But if she didn't find a way to calm herself soon, she would likely end up taking it out on the other woman. And releasing her anger on another person was never a good thing. The last time it had happened, that poor man had been in the hospital with an unhinged jaw.
Keeping her face devoid of any emotion but slight worry, the artist nodded in agreement. "Good idea," she murmured, glancing at the ground uneasily. It wasn't an act; she truly was disconcerted. "I suppose waiting it out is the best choice." She gave a smile, but it was a fake one; all those years of practice were being put to work. She had nothing to smile about, except making the acquaintance of another seemingly normal person. That in itself should have been a blessing, but she couldn't fully appreciate it. "Maybe we could meet up another day, huh? Coffee or something." If they lasted that long, of course.