shellyharmon (shellyharmon) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-12-16 18:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | shelly harmon |
Part One
Who: Shelly
What: Discovery
Where: Las Vegas, Shelly's Apartment
When: Present
Ratings/Warnings: Low
Shelly loved her apartment. She loved its unassuming facade. She liked the quiet neighborhood, and climbing up the stairs with the cracked concrete steps when the streetlamps clicked off to welcome the impending morning. The blonde kept her ring of keys in her hand, the one designated for her front door kept extended and ready until she reached the entrance. No matter what she had been doing the evening before, Shelly knew she could leave it outside with the rest of the world.
That’s why people weren’t allowed there, except for the one exception she had made. Shelly was only ever herself within the confines of those walls, and it was too revealing. The people she blackmailed, conned, whatever one wanted to call it, it all worked because in impersonal spaces, the blonde could be anyone she needed to be at any time. Out there, it was easy.
When Shelly first arrived in Las Vegas, she had found a place with some roommates out of financial necessity, even though it drove her crazy to live with other people. It served as motivation to get out into the city and make money, though, so maybe the experience had been worth it. And for this reason, the day she finally got the keys to her own place was still etched into her mind as a happy one.
The first thing she had personalized were the walls. Shelly had never chosen paint before, and it was such a simple, mundane task and it was so ordinary, and yet filled her with a kind of pride and belonging she hadn’t felt since...And the color had turned out really well, a deep, almost studious green. The blonde had kept the sample card in case she ever needed the color again, and that felt responsible. That took forethought, which was very responsible.
Next had come the posters, which were kept rolled up in dusty cardboard tubes. Shelly went to a specialty store to get them framed, tried not to react at the shockingly high cost of custom framing, and brought them home like treasured children. Then there was the mismatched furniture, each piece chosen at random. When shopping, she never sought anything out, never put any expectation in her mind, because the result was so much more special when she stumbled across something absolutely perfect, like her brown leather sofa.
Her home was the one area of her life that was static and reliable and Shelly loved it for that. There was no need for improvement or pretend. No room in the cozy space for doubts. Nothing could touch her there, nothing that she didn’t want or allow. She was sure of very little in life except for that.
That morning, she stepped into her little hallway and kicked off her shoes. There was a small pile of mail on the worn table. It would be mostly bills and impersonal letters addressed to ‘the resident of… and Shelly swished past it, ignoring the task for now. Into the bathroom, to remove her makeup, then the bedroom to change carefully out of an expensive dress. A lot of her money went into her closet.
She woke up later that day, curled up in a comfortable tangle of sheets and her duvet. It wasn’t until her usual waking routine was completed that the blonde finally padded over to the little table and picked up her mail. Wedged between some bills and some local coupons was a vintage-looking postcard.
Shelly smiled when she saw it. It was cool, the front featuring the old Dunes hotel and casino, a candy-pink ‘60s style car parked in front of it, the words ‘Greetings From Las Vegas’ splashed above in a Mid-Century font. She was expecting it to be an advertisement, but looking at and feeling the card in her hands told her it truly was old, the paper buttery-soft from age and wear.
Flipping it over, her smile faded. She read the words scrawled in ink two, three, four times until her throat got tight and it felt like those deep, dark green walls were closing in on her.
‘What would he think if he could see you now?’