Haunted Roads

((OOC: for Dimitri, will post this evening... same story.))

Who: Chris and Hesper
When: the wee hours, just before dawn
Where: the enclosed gardens, 13th floor

After getting in from work, Chris had found that he was unable to even consider going to bed yet. It had been a particularly tough night for him, involving a lot of necessary conversations with co-workers, questions to be asked and answers received. Most of the time he could hide out in the file room or lurk behind his supply cart (or even in one of the supply closets) and not have to talk with too many people. At least Vernon Johnson, his nemesis, was on vacation this week, but everything else had gone wrong for him tonight.

He was a nervous wreck and still cold from being outside, where the temperature was close to freezing currently. After changing into a thick grey sweatsuit and grabbing his sketchbook and a charcoal pencil, Chris left his apartment on the seventh floor and took the elevator upstairs to thirteen. He'd had an unpleasant experience in the pool area, but thus far the gardens had been a good place for him. Lush and earthy-smelling and, to him, reminiscent of his growing-up years in Cypremort. Being outside in nature had been a constant in his life, and he missed that. It had felt safe somehow.

Chris settled down in his favorite spot in a back corner, out of the line of sight of the entrance and beneath one of the windows that didn't open. He thought that maybe they were treated with something, because when he was here in the daytime, he'd noticed that they didn't seem to let in as much light as they should. He didn't know that for sure, though. He pulled the hood of the sweatshirt up over his head so that nothing showed but his pale face and dark-blue eyes, taking a deep breath and gazing into the nearest mini-forest of greenery until it all blurred together.

He needed to relax. The last time he'd visited his aunt, she'd asked him if he was sick, telling him he looked as if he'd lost weight. He probably had, though he wasn't the sort who weighed himself. He gauged things like that by the way his pants fit, and actually he had needed to tighten his belt a notch to keep his work pants from falling down in recent days. Chris wasn't sleeping well, and he found himself constantly looking over his shoulder. He was typically nervous as a rule, but he seemed to be more so lately.

Finally he turned his attention to the sketchpad, flipping it open and hastily skipping over the pages that were filled with lavish drawings of creatures with membranous wings, of fire and smoke spiraling toward a cavelike rock ceiling, of desolate leafless trees stretching anguished limbs toward a black sky. Tormented flashes of the pictures that had been invading his brain since he'd been forced to touch the blonde woman he'd run into on the street that night several weeks ago. He was determined to draw something pleasant, something that would soothe him and lull him toward sleep.

Chris was warming up now in the thick sweatsuit he wore, and he bent his head over the sketchbook that he'd propped up on his knees, one corner of his lip held gently in his teeth as he began an elaborately detailed sketch of the dimly-lit vines that clung fiercely to a wooden trellis. The contrasts made it look like a secret garden all its own, sheltered and shadowed and safe.