Schrödinger's Kat in; The Prisonya's Dilemma

[Pippi]

((Kat Locke-Baldwin continued from When A Curious Hate Oozes Calamity))

Well. This place was better, she guessed. Slightly less full of rubbish, slightly less rancid. But not by much.

Kat rummaged through what must have been the kitchen area, opening cupboard doors as quietly as she could, shining her torch inside for something more useful than her current cache of weapons. She’d never liked her home back in Bellington, and not just because of the people living in it. Calling her parents’ skillset ‘limited’ would have been generous, and both of them barely earned a living wage. Most of their money went on their personal little ‘den’, filled with video games and anime paraphernalia. The rest of the house was small and poorly insulated. You could hear the neighbours through the walls. Their ‘garden’ was more a tiny brick terrace next to a patch of grass and weeds.

But compared to this place, it was the lap of luxury. There was rubbish and dust littering the ground, forcing Kat to watch where she put her hands, lest she cut herself on broken, dirty glass. There was an oven with a hob, and a tiny, beaten up fridge in the kitchen, and those two things took up almost the entire space. She barely had enough room to turn around in it, thanks to her bags.

This was the first room she’d visited in this house, and she could only imagine every other room would be exactly the same; tiny and smelling of mildew and damp.

And completely fucking empty of anything worthwhile.

It took a hefty amount of restraint for Kat to not slam the cupboard door shut, as she was greeted once more by rusting, greasy old pots and frying pans. Useless. Anything this shit could do, the bottles in her bag could do better. She needed a kitchen knife, or a cleaver, something like that, but she guessed all the soldiers had cleared any additional weapons out of the town before she and her classmates had been dropped here.

It had been a longshot rummaging around in the kitchen, and she knew it. What she really needed was one of the weapons they’d all been given. She needed a pack, abandoned or left behind or lost. She needed a pacifist to have thrown away their rifle in disgust. She needed a body.

24 hours had gone by, and the sole body she’d seen had been Rue’s freshly looted one. That still made her stomach churn to think about, and didn’t help her worth a damn, so she moved on to the next cupboard.

As soon as she pulled the door open, a mountain of plates spilled out, and Kat just about covered her mouth and leapt backwards in time before they toppled on top of her. There was a deafening crashing sound, half the plates shattering into tiny shards, porcelain flung to each corner of the tiny kitchen.

She stood up straight, holding her breath, one hand in her pocket, wrapped around the handle of her gun, the other slowly unzipping her bag to give her access to the bottle. She stood there in silence for a minute. Two minutes. Five minutes.

Ten minutes of deafening quiet passed, before Kat could breathe normally again and relax. Either this house was totally empty, or, if there was somebody here, then they were totally petrified. Both options worked just fine for her.

She started to move, feet crunching the plate shards into powder with each step. She had every intention to just get out of this hovel and search elsewhere. There was another doorframe to her immediate right, missing its door, and she could smell decay from within, but that didn’t mean anything. This whole neighbourhood stank of rot and decay. She’d been in two shitholes in a row, now. Surely she could afford to search somewhere a little nicer.

She could smell blood from the room, too. Again. Didn’t mean anything. She strongly doubted blood hadn’t been spilled here before they’d come.

She realised she hadn’t moved an inch, and she closed her eyes before raising them skywards, taking a deep sigh.

“Fucking…”

Alright. One more try in this building. If she came up empty-handed, she was heading elsewhere. Maybe a trip to the beach would give her better results.

She hit the jackpot as soon as she stepped inside.

The smell of blood got stronger and stronger the further into the room she moved, but she forced herself to ignore it as she moved towards the bulking bag leaning against a moth eaten sofa. Soon, she was standing over it, and soon, she could see the reason behind the smell of death.

There was the body she’d been looking for. She couldn’t help but turn her nose up at the blazer thrown haphazardly over its face. Was that supposed to be somebody’s attempt at respect for the dead guy? It was a pretty pisspoor attempt, if it was.

It helped, though. She kept on seeing Rue’s face attached to her lifeless body, whenever she closed her eyes and tried to rest. This was… this was just meat. Anonymous meat, without a face, without a name, without an identity to tie itself to Kat. It just existed.

She scanned the rest of the meat quickly. There was a knife, jutting out of its stomach. Despite the fact her own was tangling itself into knots, her heart leapt. She moved around to look down at the meat, kneeling next to it, face closer to the knife. There was blood surrounding it. An awful lot of blood, some of it on the handle itself.

Kat closed her eyes. She briefly considered taking her own blazer off and ripping it to shreds, preventing any of the blood getting on her. That would have taken too long though, and increased the likelihood of her getting pysched out.

She took a deep breath. Just meat. That was all it was.

She shot her hand out and grabbed the handle, feeling patches of blood stick to her palm and fingertips, and she pulled, unable to block sight and sound and scent all at once as the knife gave way with a soft, damp noise. She stood up again, turned around immediately, back facing the meat, as she admired the knife. The whole experience had taken less than a second.

The blade looked nasty. One serrated edge and one hell of a sharp point. There was a weird button on one side of the handle. The entire blade was steeped in blood.

Kat looked at the knife for a moment longer, before she doubled over, throwing up for the second time in two days, vomit thin and watery, barely avoiding her shoes. She stood back up after a few seconds, wiping her mouth, and when her hand moved away, she had a grin on her face.

The content’s of the meat’s bags were transferred quickly into her own. She gave it a quick test run on her back around the room. A little heavier, but not by an uncomfortable amount. Especially not now that the two bottles, worthless now, were lying in shards in the corner. The fake gun went to her left pocket. The knife was fixed to her belt loop on the right hand side. She patted it, grinning again at the weight and how it felt on her. Then she left.

Finally, she was starting to get somewhere.

((Kat Locke-Baldwin, continued in What if You... Wanted to go to Heaven... But god said, "ᴜɴᴇxᴘᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ ɪᴛᴇᴍ ɪɴ ʙᴀɢɢɪɴɢ ᴀʀᴇᴀ"))