InsaneJournal

Day One - Night
Who: Laura Moon and OTA
What: Laura finally finds herself a home!
When: Day one, nighttime, probably around 8:00 p.m. by a watch
Where: Bob McGillicuddy's Drug / Liquor Store
Rating: TBD, but at least PG-13 for language
Status: Dropped


For someone to whom time didn't matter to consider a day to be incredibly long meant that it had, in fact, been a very, very long day. In fact, Laura was not certain that she'd ever experience so long a day in her entire life and death. She had been restored to a state of being freshly dead, she had been knocked unconscious, she had been dropped in some random forest outside of some random town in some random place that was not West Virginia, she had met a random person on a random journal that worked through mysterious means, and she had randomly searched the entire town for a suitable place to call her lodgings. Even with superhuman speed and the fact that she didn't need to sleep, this was not the shortest and most pleasant day ever.

She probably could have stayed at the carnival which she had found upon entering the town limits and where she had departed from her 'companions,' also known as the two random people with whom she'd found herself in the woods upon waking. Still, a certain sixth sense of hers, still active beyond death, told her to rethink that. She wasn't like people; she could not live in an uncontrolled environment like people. Laura had walked from Eagle Point, Indiana to Florida hoping to get warm. Her rate of decomposition had increased by the time that she'd reached the Kentucky border, and that wasn't much of a temperature change. Cold was cold to most people, but when the rate at which your organs began to liquefy increased with even the slightest change, she preferred to keep herself on ice. It wasn't as if she could really feel it anyway; she could more feel the effects of it. As she had walked south it had only gotten worse. After a few weeks in Florida that subtle wriggling in the pit of her lung had become a full blown case of maggots; that was a hard condition to hide when you worked the midnight shift at a gas station where everyone who entered fancied him or herself a detective.

As a result of the warm-ish temperatures and the rain, Laura knew that it would be a very good idea to find someplace dark and as cool as possible to keep herself. Being in a strange place meant that she would have to evaluate every possible option. She'd set off as soon as she'd finished scouring the carnival grounds. What kind of carnival did not have any concession stands? As she'd traveled the town she'd made a mental map of this and that. She did not yet have a good idea of where anything was, and it only occurred to her that she should have been drawing a map once she'd sat down to talk to that Shannon girl on the journal. Maybe, if they were linked, everyone could see them. Then there was the issue that she was traveling at superhuman speed. What seemed like a five minute jog to her probably took normal people a half hour at least. Thus, she resolved to explore more tomorrow if she could not first find a way to get back to West Virginia. Night patrol was a worthy job, and if she was forced to stay here, she'd probably pick it up.

Laura had found her home in the form of the Drug / Liquor store. She'd gone in on a whim when she'd noticed how few windows the building had, hoping to find some random corner that she could curl into in a closet or a root cellar (since this seemed to be the kind of old town that still had root cellars). Fortunately, she'd found the place mostly dark by eight when she'd gone in. Little light was helpful, especially since she could see as if it was broad daylight. She'd see someone long before they'd see her, hopefully.

That was when divine providence had struck, or some god had seen fit to bless her with a moment of irony. A liquor store. That meant beer coolers, and they were actually fairly cool. She had measured herself against the glass fronted case that stood against the back wall of the store, and it was the perfect height and width; it would even be a little bit roomy. Feeling ridiculous and muttering 'fuck my life' the whole time, she had unpacked the cooler, neatly piling the beer beside it and in front of the next cooler over, she had removed her survival kit and placed it on the ground in front of her case. She stepped inside, facing the glass door, and closed it on top of her. That was beneficially better.

While she did not sleep, she thought, perhaps, it would be a good time to pretend, because staring at the inside of an empty drug store from the inside of a beer cooler seemed awfully boring. As she did not notice the passage of time, Laura would remain inside for what felt suitably long, or until she got so bored she could no longer stand it, and would emerge fairly well preserved (far better than if she had stayed out and about in that moist, warm-ish atmosphere). Her eyes slid shut, and she leaned back into the case. She did not mind standing, for her muscles would never give out and her bones would never get tired, but she slouched a little bit, wedging herself into the case to approximate comfort. Slowly, she crossed her arms over her chest, fingertips on each shoulder, just as they had laid her in her casket. When she pretended to sleep, she always laid herself out as she had been for that last great repose that had been far shorter than most people intended. For all intents and purposes, Laura Moon looked like a dead body that had been shoved into a beer cooler.

It had not occurred to her, in all of this preparation, that someone might fancy a cold one after the stress of being dropped into a strange new world.