Dr. Pamela Isley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
joan_of_bark) wrote2024-09-22 04:11 pm
joan_of_bark) wrote2024-09-22 04:11 pm
Entry tags:
The Apartment Above Pick Your Poison, Sunday Evening
Sometimes life stretches across years, decades, centuries; a seed grows into a sapling, cells dividing in the cambium as it builds rings and rings and rings, until there stands a giant that towers over a city square. An apartment goes abandoned, a careless human knocks over some trays and lets the moisture seep in, and makes a home for millions of microscopic organisms who settle in the walls. Connected to each other by delicate threads that stretch for miles and miles and miles...
Sometimes life happens in an instant. A pair of feet beat a hasty retreat, a mad beast of flesh and fungus snaps its jaws, and instinct kicks in: you grab it, and you pull, and you fall.
And there they are, those delicate little threads. Reaching for you. And suddenly--
She burst from the wall like an absurdist's rendition of childbirth, the mold giving way to human tissue and chlorophyll blood. Like called to like; acremonium and cordyceps intertwined, then let go, allowing her to pass. She hit cold floor, barely bruising her palms, not noticing. Her lungs burned too fiercely for it. An ugly cough forced fungal mass to the back of her throat-- it abated a moment later.
She laid there, for a moment. Just breathing. Had Janet escaped? ...
She turned over, and stared at the black haze on the wall. A pile of fungal-flesh remains lay scattered before it. The last of the monster. Of. Whatever. That had been.
She's safe.
With effort, Pam clambered to her feet, her hand gripping hold of what looked like an industrial-grade planter as she hoisted herself up. "Okay," she wheezed. "Okay. That worked." After another moment to catch her breath, she staggered to the window, and peered out at the townscape outside. "Definitely not in Seattle anymore..."
[[ expecting one, but open after if anyone's going to stumble past the storefront in the evening ]]
Sometimes life happens in an instant. A pair of feet beat a hasty retreat, a mad beast of flesh and fungus snaps its jaws, and instinct kicks in: you grab it, and you pull, and you fall.
And there they are, those delicate little threads. Reaching for you. And suddenly--
She burst from the wall like an absurdist's rendition of childbirth, the mold giving way to human tissue and chlorophyll blood. Like called to like; acremonium and cordyceps intertwined, then let go, allowing her to pass. She hit cold floor, barely bruising her palms, not noticing. Her lungs burned too fiercely for it. An ugly cough forced fungal mass to the back of her throat-- it abated a moment later.
She laid there, for a moment. Just breathing. Had Janet escaped? ...
She turned over, and stared at the black haze on the wall. A pile of fungal-flesh remains lay scattered before it. The last of the monster. Of. Whatever. That had been.
She's safe.
With effort, Pam clambered to her feet, her hand gripping hold of what looked like an industrial-grade planter as she hoisted herself up. "Okay," she wheezed. "Okay. That worked." After another moment to catch her breath, she staggered to the window, and peered out at the townscape outside. "Definitely not in Seattle anymore..."
[[ expecting one, but open after if anyone's going to stumble past the storefront in the evening ]]
Immediately After
Re: Immediately After
These tiny places had incredibly thin walls. It sucked a lot of the time. When the whatever hit the floor, the resulting crash resounded through the whole building and nearly sent her jumping out of her own skin. "What the--"
"--fuck," she finished a minute later, flinging open the door with no small amount of drama. "Are you?"
Re: Immediately After
Shit. She groped around for a good alibi, an excuse, but whoever this lady was had her at a disadvantage. "I guess it wouldn't help if I say that I'm in landscaping...?"
The look on the woman's face said that it wouldn't.
And then it said something else, as bright light tore the air in the shop in two.
Re: Immediately After
But it didn't feel like a standard-order portal.
It felt like magic.
"Margo?"
"Shit," Margo hissed. "Q?!"
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. They'd figured something out.
Her gaze whipped back to the woman. "I guess you're my replacement, thank fuck," she said, grabbing her skirts with both hands and hiking them up as she rushed out of the door. "Deed's in the back room, old-ass chest, key's hanging right above it. The one employee we got comes in on Thursdays. Fuck this place, have fun!"
And into the portal.
Re: Immediately After
The words were barely out of Pam's mouth. When they hit the floor, it was empty: the portal had already evaporated, and taken the woman with her.
Taken off guard, for the second time in such a short period of time. I'm losing my edge. Still, this could have ended worse. Probably. (Where am I?)
She sucked in a deep breath, and reached up to redo her ponytail, alleviating that frustrating feeling of being askew. There was no point in lingering in that; she needed to settle her nerves and figure out her next steps.
Downstairs, An Hour Later
Across miles? States? Oceans?
She staggered down the stairs first. That strange woman had seemed confident the building was safe, but she wasn't going to assume blindly that she was telling the truth. She turned on the lights, and stared into the shop.
"... Please tell me this isn't Sephora."
OOC