Val Mathers (val_in_motion) wrote in zenithrp, @ 2015-11-13 00:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | #day 008, val |
Who: Val
Where: Around town
When: 9:00am - 10:15am-ish
Yesterday had been so eventful socially that even though she'd been drinking, because she'd started so early, she actually passed out relatively early. As such, Val was awake before the 9am announcement. She read through the whole thing, cringing as she went, her heart dropping more and more as each word sank into her brain. So many awful things, some good, genuine requests, some highly disturbing requests, but the requirements for receiving their requests were just... Val could hardly believe what she was reading. Things were going to implode, there was no way the reactions to all of this were going to be mild and peaceful, and Val couldn't decide if she would be better off isolating herself as they were requiring or sticking around and just dealing with whatever punishment they would give.
It felt way too heavy a choice to make for so early in the damn morning.
But Val had to decide fast, and she couldn't look through the network to see if there were any kind of reactions yet. No, if she was going to go, she had to go NOW in order to minimize the chances of her running into anyone. If she encountered anyone, she would fail. And just when had she decided she was going?
Okay, so she was going.
Decision made, she pulled on socks and her trainers and darted out of her room, hoping she wouldn't run into anyone on her way out of the house. She moved quickly down the stairs and didn't look back as she started running down the path. Please don't run into anyone, she thought with a small amount of desperation. Sure, she would like to have her quilt, but she was far more concerned with not getting zapped again.
About halfway to the town, and still with no clue where she was actually going to go for the day, Val heard a noise behind her and glanced back. There was someone - was that Pam?! - on a bike heading her way, and she felt a moment of panic. She ran off the path into the cover of the trees lining it, ducking down and holding her breath as she waited for her new friend to pass. Was Pam actually going to do it? Would the woman who loved animals (almost to a fault!) actually consider killing one animal in order to receive another as a pet? It seemed unfathomable to her, and she was saddened by the thought of it. Sure, it wasn't like any of them really knew anything about each other, but Val would have thought Pam would have been disgusted at the thought of actually killing an animal herself.
She couldn't have done it, certainly, had she been given that task.
Though, perhaps Pam was just as stressed by the thought of being punished as Val was, and so it was making her feel like she had no choice but to do something so awful? Or maybe Pam didn't think it was awful, since a stag was hardly a pet and was often hunted for its meat. And thinking wasn't actually helping anything, with the way her mind was going in circles now.
As she started walking toward town again, staying within the cover of the trees, Val realized that Pam wasn't the only one whose task would lead them into town. Kiley (had she met a Kiley yet? She couldn't remember. The name didn't sound familiar) had been told to get an axe from the hardware store. Where was the hardware store anyway? And now she was feeling a bit idiotic for not having paid attention to the maps people had drawn up or even the map They had provided them, other than getting to the hospital and back? That and City Hall were the only places she knew where they were in the town, and would they even be safe places to hide out? Would they even be accessible?
The City Hall building hadn't been in a very good state of repair, if she remembered correctly. How many days ago was that now? Things were starting to blur a bit already, and that was a scary thought. She couldn't imagine how long they would be here, how long they had already been held captive without even knowing it.
And this was precisely why Val didn't like being alone. If she was alone too long, it gave her time to think, to stress about what the hell was going on, and she didn't want to do that. She just wanted to get through the next twenty-four hours so she could go back to the comfort of her room, hopefully with her quilt from home, and put this whole situation behind her.
Though who knew what she would be going back to? The things they had required some of her housemates to do...
The thoughts just kept circling around as Val continued down and around the outskirts of town. It was probably taking longer than it should have, but she didn't want to chance running into anyone. She didn't want to stay in the trees too long, either; not if Pam was going to be hunting with a freaking crossbow! Only when she spotted a stretch of shoreline did she realize she'd completely bypassed the town, and she started doubling back.
There were houses, and she wondered if hiding in one of them would be better than one of the businesses. On step into one of the houses had her coughing and backing back out. No, that wasn't going to work. The place looked like it was about to collapse, and who the hell knew what that pair of eyes belonged to? No, she wasn't even going to try to figure it out. And so she continued on. The first public building she came across looked to be a restaurant of some kind, a fancy kind of place called Pavo's. Her stomach growled, and she wondered if there might be food in there.
There was.
It didn't seem like a great place to hide, though, so she looked around, finding the wine cellar and thinking that at least if she was going to be alone, at least she could lose herself in a botte, or three, of wine. Though she didn't have a way to carry three bottles of wine. So, perhaps just the one, then. There were, at least, some excellent vintages here. It was surprising and just one more baffling thing about this whole situation. She took the bottle of wine into the restaurant's kitchen and then poked around for something simple she could eat.
She didn't want to risk staying in such a public place, not knowing if anyone was going to be coming around. But that brought her back around to the fact that she didn't know anything about this damn town. The only places she'd been... The hospital. What were the odds of anyone actually going back to that place? Val sure as hell didn't want to, but wouldn't that make it the perfect place to hide out? Of course, she had no clue where it was from here, and she didn't feel quite safe going back to the main road. Creeping along in the shadows didn't seem very appealing, but it seemed to be what she was going to have to do.
As she went outside, a glance down the street showed her the hospital towering just enough above the rest of the buildings on the unmarked street for her to recognize it. Okay, so she just had to make it down... two blocks? without encountering anyone. Easy, right?
It felt like it took an hour, with the way she crept near the buildings, running as quickly as she could when she was out in the open, clutching the bottle of wine in one hand and a fancy take out container in the other. When she finally reached the hospital, she slipped inside and then just stood there frozen for a moment. Where to go now? She wandered down one long hallway and then slipped into a room. It was an ordinary, boring hospital room; a bed, a visitor's chair, and... nothing else of note.
It was going to be a very long day.