Claudia. (veterinary) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2012-11-11 13:46:00 |
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Had she been more lucid Claudia would have been absolutely terrified right now. Though she'd never even considered it as a fear, losing her mind was possibly the thing she would be most afraid of if she really thought about it. Intelligence meant a lot to Claudia, both in her self and in other people. Intellectual conversation, research and the ability to use logic and reason were all things she loved, all things she admired in herself and in other people. It wasn't even that she considered herself to be that smart; she thought she knew a lot and liked to make sure other people knew that she knew a lot too, but she also knew that she only had all this knowledge because of the hard work she put into studying. She wasn't a natural genius but she enjoyed caring for her mind, feeding it with new information, challenging it with problems, increasing its capabilities any way possible. But here she was, trapped in a nightmare, losing the thing that was most important to her. Claudia didn’t get sick that often, she generally ate healthily, exercised regularly, wore the supplied rubber gloves when she did dissections and always scrubbed her hands even once she’d taken the gloves off. Right now, however, she was feeling more poorly than she could remember feeling in a long time. She had already thrown up and been taken to the hotel room with Jonas by the others. Lying in bed she felt exhausted, her limbs feeling like led, every movement seeming to take all the effort and energy she had. All she wanted was her mum or her dog or Allegra, someone to bring her tea, tell her that she would be alright and put one of her favourite movies on for her. She always rotated through her favourite movies when she was feeling sick, knowing them well enough to not have to concentrate on them, the familiarity comforting but the story still able to take her mind off feeling ill for the duration of the film. She stared at the wall in front of her, almost willing it to start playing a movie. This was a dream, right? There was no reason why the wall couldn’t also function as a tv screen. Claudia hadn’t believed in ghosts before coming to IVI and discovering that seeing and communicating with ghosts was actually a possible Vol power. To her ghosts didn’t make sense, they were hard to explain using science and Claudia really liked trying to justify things with science. It made things neater, allowing her to understand and explain them. There were scientific explanations for ghosts, hypersensitivity to infrasound for example, but that didn’t hold if ghosts actually existed. She couldn’t deny that ghosts existed now she knew Kristijan and his ability but that didn’t mean she wanted to be able to see ghosts herself. Yet there they had been, sitting at tables during breakfast, looking just as much at home as the other hotel guests that had arrived. There were none in the hotel room she’d been brought to, as far as she could see, but she was still having a hard time accepting that she’d seen them at all. Seeing ghosts wasn’t her Vol power, why were they suddenly visible to her? Was she gaining a second power? Was it replacing her first power? Was the same thing happening to Jonas? She felt suddenly panicked, sitting upright in her bed, planning to inform Jonas that their powers were being replaced with the ability to see ghosts and there was nothing they could do about it, when she was hit with a wave of dizziness from the quick movement. She lay back down slowly, all memories of what she had been planning to do forgotten. There was something on the walls. Many somethings. Small, black, scurrying across the walls, seemingly multiplying as they moved across the room. They weren’t something she recognised, mostly featureless aside from being black with legs, but she was sure they were coming for her. Why didn’t anyone else in the room seem concerned? She backed up, sitting as close to the head of the bed as possible, knees drawn to her body and blankets wrapped around her tightly as if they would protect her. They were on the floor now, it wouldn’t be long before they crawled into her bed. She squeezed her eyes closed as tightly as she could, waiting to feel the creatures surrounding her in bed, wriggling all over her, crawling into her mouth and nose and ears. But nothing came. Hesitantly she opened her eyes. There was nothing there. Her dog had always been there for her when she was sick, jumping up onto her bed or the couch or wherever she was laying and snuggling in close, keeping her company. It was no different this time, one of the spare pillows on her bed suddenly appearing as her dog to her. Not her current puppy though, but Truffle, the dog she’d had for most of her life but who’d died last year. “Truffle!” she called out, suddenly feeling more energetic and happy. As usual when she was sick the dog curled snuggled into her body and curled into a ball, lifting her head to look at Claudia before resting it on her body, eyes closed. Claudia wrapped her arm around the pillow, patting it softly. She felt better now her dog was here. Not physically, physically she still felt horrible but mentally it was a boost. With an animal here she was no longer useless, she could at least help something if it got hurt. Maybe it wouldn’t be helpful in making sure the survived in the long run but for Claudia it was still a comforting thought. “I’ll keep you safe,” she said softly to the pillow, placing a light kiss on the top of her dogs head. She didn’t know where she was. This room was unfamiliar. Had she ever been here before? How had she gotten there? Who were these people? She looked around the room slowly, trying to take in every feature to see if it jogged a memory while also trying to not draw attention to herself in case these people couldn’t be trusted. Eventually she pieced it together, the beds, the neatly furnished room, the fact she was still wearing her swimmers underneath her clothes, it was beach weekend! But that still didn’t explain who these people were and why they were in her room. Her dog still hadn’t left her side, Claudia was grateful for that. Truffle was snoring lightly as she slept next to Claudia. She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed that sound, in Truffle’s last few years it had been a sound she’d relied on to make sure her dog hadn’t died in its sleep, panic surging through her every time her dog had breathed quietly, the need to prod her and check she was still breathing multiple times through the night had become habit for Claudia up until the time Truffle had died. The snoring now was the most reassuring thing Claudia had heard since entering this nightmare, even if it was all in her mind. She closed her eyes, content for a minute. It was the smell that alerted her that something was wrong first, her eyes fluttering open. There was Truffle, still sleeping peacefully but not at all okay. All of the diseases Claudia had ever healed her from seemed to have come back, along with new diseases Claudia had never treated her for, symptoms popping up everywhere. Her stomach coated in bruises, bloody vomit next to her head (how had she missed that happening?), nose and eyes running and hair falling out, among other things. She’d never seen a more sickly looking dog in her life. She focused on healing her but as soon as she fixed one thing another seemed to pop up, it was an endless cycle, and in the end she gave up, burying her head in her dog’s fur, whispering that it would be okay. When she eventually lifted her head there was no longer any sign of injury or sickness on her dog, she instead looked like a puppy again, exactly how she’d been when Claudia had first got her. Why had she been so worried? She couldn’t remember anymore, this was obviously a perfectly healthy dog. "Caleb," she greeted, happy to see the familiar face, "Did you arrive with the other hotel guests?" Had she been more with it she would have thought to ask about Allegra, was she in a nightmare too? Was she alright? But as it was Claudia wasn't entirely convinced that Allegra wasn't in the hotel too, either having arrived with the others that had come on this beach trip with them but just not having been found by Claudia yet (she'd temporarily regressed back to thinking this was a holiday not a nightmare) or a new arrival, like Caleb, along with all the other hotel guests she and Jonas had seen at breakfast. Though if Allegra was here Claudia wasn’t sure why she wasn’t visiting her, sending Caleb instead. Was she having too much fun at the not-beach mountains to check on her sick friend? Or had she been here earlier and she just couldn’t remember properly? Now she thought about it maybe Allegra had visited her. Hadn’t they watched a movie together? Or was that just what Claudia had wanted to do? Struggling with her confused memories, Claudia barely registered that Caleb was talking, filling in the others about how he and Marine hadn’t managed to locate one of the groups. It was good she wasn’t listening though, she was not in the right state of mind to hear that one of her closest friends and her roommate were both missing. "They," she told Caleb, lifting an arm to gesture at the other people in the room before letting it fall back to the bed with a thud, "found scalpels" she finished, paying attention to him once again and answering his question of how she was doing. "Scalpels" she repeated, partly to emphasise the importance of this discovery and partly because she found the word comforting. She squirmed around in her bed a little, snuggling into her pillow that she was still convinced was her dog and yawning, feeling a complete lack of energy. "Something about this being a lab too," she added. She couldn't recall exactly what the others had said and she’d completely forgotten the part about the scary doctor, instead focusing on the positives of this discovery. "This means we’re safe." From what she knew of Caleb he hadn't spent much time in labs so she felt the need to elaborate. "There's dangerous stuff in labs," she explained slowly, having to use all her concentration to maintain focus in this conversation, each word hard for her to get out. "Just like there's dangerous stuff in here but labs have safety precau-" she trailed off finding the word too difficult to say. "As long as you follow them you'll be safe and this is a lab and I know lab rules so we'll be safe." she finished with a smile, pleased with herself for managing to explain that so well (in her opinion). She yawned again and pulled her pillow even closer, before apologising to it. She hadn’t meant to wake her dog from her sleep. “Shh, it’s okay,” she told her pillow, patting it lightly, Caleb completely forgotten. “Go back to sleep.” |