Lily (ex_dismantle458) wrote in the_colony, @ 2009-12-06 21:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 01 |
Week One, Monday
Characters: Lily Olander
Location: Abandoned grocery store/Street
Summary: Lily goes grocery shopping.
Rating: PG-13 for briefly disturbing images
Lily’s hair was a rat’s nest. She giggled softly to herself as she ran her fingers through the red clumps, nails tangled in knots and dirt. Her mother had always threatened to chop it off when Lily was little. If you’re not going to take care of that hair, I’ll take care of it. Except her mother was gone now and Lily was sad to think about it, to think about her face as pale as her hair, to think of how the hospital staff hadn’t even let Lily say goodbye –
“Shut up.” Lily said to herself. She hit her head, her face, her shoulders. She dug her nails in the sides of her arms until she felt crescents of blood well up. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Don’t think. Don’t think.” And so, she didn’t. Instead, Lily focused on her task of sorting through the abandoned food of the empty grocery store. The things like fruit, meat, vegetables, those were bad. Lily could smell it the minute she pushed the no longer sliding glass doors open and crept in. She held the sleeve of her dirty yellow sweatshirt over her nose, her other hand pressed against the screwdriver tucked in the side of her jeans. She was shopping for food, but someone could be shopping for a fight, for blood, and Lily didn’t want that. She removed her sleeve from her nose to inspect a can of beans, eyes narrowed. Her stomach growled in anticipation and for a moment, she was sitting in her kitchen, back home in LA, and her mom was making pancakes and Dad was telling a joke to Annie and oh god
Lily dropped the can of beans on the floor and scooted away from it, as if it were a snake. She moved toward the back of the store, her soles of her shoes squeaking against the tiled floor. Lily passed by the dairy products section, wrinkled her nose delicately at the smell, and moved into the canned fruits section. She hoped there were apricots. Lily liked apricots.
A car alarm went off in the distance and Lily jumped. Someone was going to die. Car alarms were bad news. It was better to be quiet and be unknown. Like a mouse. Or a corpse. Lily pulled five cans off the shelf, collecting them in the front pocket of her sweatshirt. Satisfied with her stash, she slouched toward the door at the back of the star marked “employees only.” She jiggled the doorknob, only to find it locked. It didn’t take more than a few minutes to pick it and the door slid open with a soft whoof of air. Lily instantly caught the scent of death and the bloated corpse or what she assumed was the store owner lay on the ground before her. His head was at an odd angle, Lily noted, and the gun he had probably shot himself was still in his hand. Lily pressed her sweatshirt sleeve to her nose again.
“Sorry,” She whispered. “Go back to sleep.” She shut the door.
She left the grocery store, her hands wrapped around the precious cargo in her sweatshirt. She was tempted to take one of the carts at the front of the store, but she could practically hear the sound of the wheels rolling against the pavement and she knew that too much noise was bad news. She tilted her head back, glancing up at the sky. The sun was down, but Lily didn't care. The night used to scare her, the dark and all its monsters, but had been a little girl then. Now, she knew that there were things scarier and real monsters could get her in the dark or the light. She breathed upward, toward the clouds in the sky and pretended that she could see her soul leave her body, float up into space or somewhere above all this. She thought of the tree house that her father had built for her when she was little. From up high, everything looked safe and that was where Lily wanted to be. Somewhere up high, somewhere safe.
Her stomach protested again, insisting that Lily eat something so she sat down on the sidewalk and removed one of the cans of apricots from her sweatshirt. The can didn't have one of those pulls at the top of it, so she removed her screwdriver from her jeans and dug at the top of the can until it opened. Putting the screwdriver away, she tilted the can back and poured the first of the contents into her mouth, practically swallowing the canned fruit whole. With a jolt, she yanked the can away from her mouth with a small cry. She had cut her lip on the can's jagged edge. Pressing her finger to her bloody lip, she pouted, thinking that she should have been more careful. Setting the can down on the sidewalk beside her, she leaned over to glance into a puddle at her feet, to determine the seriousness of the wound. It wasn't too bad, nothing Lily hadn't dealt with before. In fact, it was kind of intriguing. She dabbed her fingers in her blood and smeared them over her lips, like lipstick. Grinning at her murky reflection, she pouted her lips and blew it a kiss before picking up her can and continuing on her way.
Today was a good day.