Death And Artaxes

[Emprexx Plush]

((Nikki Nelson-Kelly Continued From Cabin Fever))

Alright, let's address the elephant in the paddy. This place sucked with a capital S U C K, and we're talking literally now. Her boots were laced up nice and tight, 'cuz if they weren't she would have lost one trudging through all this muck already. After all the rain it was basically a massive gloopy sinkhole and if nobody had gone down in it yet that was all luck. Once in awhile her foot would nudge something that she really really really hoped was a fallen branch or like, a forgotten hoe? Yeah, a big, stiff, knobby hoe. That worked as long as you assumed whoever made them didn't understand how to make a hoe. They could have done anything before they wound up here. A hairdresser maybe, not a great one but they were doing their best! Sure their co-workers gossiped behind their back constantly and their customers were getting colder by the day but they had their dedication to the craft. It was all gonna turn around someday, you can bet on that. Except it never did. Tips dwindled. Appointments cancelled. Walk-ins walked out when they saw they were thee only one free. What were they supposed to do? Their friends and family were thousands of miles away thinking that they'd made it big, they couldn't go home like this, how could they disappoint Mother like that? The other hair dressers are getting cattier though, isolating them, openly mocking them, they want them to fail.

They've never felt so alone in their entire life when WHAP! A flyer blows in their face advertising a meeting in the community center basement. One of those new age spiritual scenes. What have they got to lose? They'd do anything for a friend, and they find so many! For the first time since college they feel like they belong somewhere. Weeks go on and their co-workers can't get under their skin anymore. Customers are drawn to their sunny, unshakable demeanor. Everything is looking up until they get some devastating news: the group is moving. There'll be some stragglers, but they're leaving behind this city for somewhere better. A place all their own where they can be free to express themselves however they choose. Of course the hair dresser hesitates, but at the end of the day the group is their home now. They belong with them. Work barely gets notice before they're out of the city, ready to embrace this new phase of their life. Of course in the new world everyone has to pitch in, and leadership knows how good they are with their hands. It's time for them to take up a new trade in service.

It's time for them to make hoes. Not perfect ones, because the group doesn't expect perfection, only sincerity. Brother, the hair dresser has sincerity in spades. Which they will also make, but like, later.

Now it could be argued she was wildly off track right now, but it was all serving a point! You could look at the flooded swamp around her with all its mysteries lurking below the surface, and you could assume the worst. From the buildings there were all sorts of horror stories you could pull together with ritual sacrifice or suicide, government officials storming armed, barricaded doors in a bloodbath that wouldn't spare any, least of all women in children. Oooooor you could imagine how beautiful it used to be when people were hard at work here. You could look at the evidence and decide that everyone just left after this community satisfied their needs. They were happy here, and when they weren't anymore they went their separate ways peacefully, proud of what they'd done.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was thinking positive. It was gonna keep Nikki gassed up for days. You could let the bad thoughts drag you down and get swallowed up in the Swamp of Sadness, or you could keep on trucking with it all washing of your back like rain. She wasn't like, naive; you see somebody with a gun and some unexplained blood stains, you know they're bad news. You didn't have to torture yourself with worst case scenarios though. Be practical, don't delude yourself, but don't jump to that negativity. People could have been happy here, and so could she. Even if she'd realized a ways down that she was totally lost and headed the wrong way because her map had been upside down and she hadn't noticed. Because you know what? It's the journey, not the destination. Oprah said that, and Nikki wasn't her number one fan or anything but she seemed to have things pretty figured out!

Both Nikki's musings and backtracking were interrupted by her foot snagging on something. Not a new sensation by itself, but this Something wrapped around her foot and dragged with a weight behind it. Like, uh, some grass stuck on a rock? No, no way, it was thick and when it rubbed against skin under rolled up jeans it felt kinda like some kind of cloth? Really caked with goop by now, as that rubbed off it felt crazily close to the strap around her shoulder.

...oh no way.

Nikki dragged the bag to the surface. It was black in patches where mud sloughed off. Her hands brushed away at the key spot to compare it to her own.

B-038

Nikki hadn't seen anyone else trudging around in here with her, and it looked like it'd been here a long time. It was heavy too, probably still full of stuff if the water hadn't soaked it through. Nobody would just, uh, give something like this up right? She hadn't seen any other bags laying around for the taking, and since it had literally everything she needed to survive in it she couldn't imagine ditching hers without it being taken from her cold, dead, uh, okay, yeah. That was. That was an option.

But it didn't have to be the one she settled on.

She could tell herself someone dropped it. Hid it, then forgot about it. Hey, maybe even decided they didn't trust what they'd been given and would fend for themself! That was all possible. It wasn't like she'd tugged it out of a pile of bones or something crazy like that, she'd just, it'd sunk in the flood and she'd found it. Nothing wrong with that. Little bit of urban discovery, and nobody else was using it, soooooooo...

Nikki picked up her pace, looking for somewhere stable enough to stop and take inventory.

((Nikki Nelson-Kelly Continued I'm Here))