Strawberry House//Grape House

[Pippi]

((Gabby McLeod continued from Refreshing as Lemon Squash!))

Her goal, upon fleeing from the labs, had been like, totally simple; to pretty much just wander around with no destination in mind, until her little legs gave out from underneath her. She knew it was, like, kinda totally oxymoronic behaviour - she was aiming to be aimless, y’know? Didn’t really track from a, like, literary perspective - but it was the best, and only, plan that had come to her frantic mind at the time. Running wherever her feet took her would take her, like, someplace else, and that was really all she needed right now.

‘Sides. It wasn’t like she’d even know where to go, even if she was of totally sound mind. How did you even begin plotting out an escape from somewhere that didn’t actually, like, exist in the real world?

So she’d scampered along, meandering across the school, letting, like, fate or gut instinct or, like, some internal compass she totally couldn’t read guide her to who-the-heck-knows-where. It wasn’t exactly, like, a particular long journey or anything; the ‘little legs’ part didn’t have even, like, an ounce of hyperbole in it after all. But it sure as heck was winding as all get out. She was totally pooped after what must’ve been, like, less than half an hour. Surely she had to have wound up, like, as far away as possible from the group over at the lab by now, right?

So she had thought. So she had totally been mistaken.

Because, like, the moment she had finished gasping desperately for air with her hands on her knees (stupid freakin’ stamina system, did anyone anywhere actually enjoy having to deal with that sorta baloney? It was bad enough having a practically-nonexistent stamina meter in real life) and looked up at her surroundings, she noticed just how similar the sterile, clinical white walls of this corridor were to the ones she’d just escaped from. And how the floor was eggshell-blue linoleum once again, rather than, like, the dark navy carpet covering the rest of the school’s floors. And how the arrangement of doors to her right pretty much, like, mirrored the ones…

“Oh, c’mon…”

The penny dropped at pretty much the exact same time Gabby’s head and shoulders did the same.

“Are you, like, freaking kidding me right now? Are you actually SERIOUS? Come ON, that’s not FAIR!”

Honestly, like, the fact that she had only made it one floor up from her original starting point was kinda totally worse than if she’d wound up right next to the labs once again. At least that would’ve been kinda sorta funny. This, though, this was just, like, a good half-hour of her life wasted for a teeny tiny half-step forwards. And, jeez, loathe as she was to remind herself of the fact, she didn’t super have the time to spare on meaningless acts.

If she hadn’t totally worn herself out with her pointless little excursion, she might’ve gone straight back to raging at, like, all and sundry, throwing a total fit, contemplating once more the merits of throwing herself out the window she was now, like, standing next to, the whole shebang. As it was, she had just about enough energy to, like, kick up some nonexistent dust with the toe of her high-tops, before putting her hands on her knees again and letting out a combination sigh and groan of despair.

“Shoulda pulled a sickie today…”

Should played hooky, shoulda spent even more time hanging out with Izzy instead of focusing on stupid schoolwork, shoulda made a big bid for that super rare Optimus Prime stamp on Ebay. So many things she shoulda done if she’d only known this, like, gonna happen to her. How could she have done, though? How could, like, any of them have predicted this bullcrap was gonna happen to them? ‘Cept Zeph, obviously. That stupid, slimy, double-crossing, rat fink, two-faced total loser.

At least she had enough, like, clarity of mind again to realise that - the fact there was no point in beating herself up over, like, something she couldn’t control, she meant, not the fact that Zeph sucked total buttholes. And also enough to know that, like, maybe cutting loose from the previous group on such poor terms might not’ve been the total best idea when it came to the long game. It wasn’t the fact that she left the thing that she, like, regretted, nah, not at all. If she’d stayed in that room any longer, she felt that she was gonna, like… okay, so, like, one time at school back in Aberdeen, they’d been making jams and preserves and other stuff in class for, like, some reason, she couldn’t remember what. And Gabby had helped to make this neat little jar of apricot jam, with a handprinted label and a small square of gingham cloth tied nicely around the lid. And then she’d put it in her bag and she had totally forgotten to take it out when she’d gotten home, and then it had languished there for months and month, until one day when she had been trying to find her homework, which she had, like, actually totally done this time, but it was steadfastly refusing to crawl its way out of her bag, right up until she turned the whole thing upside down and it tumbled out, along with the longlost jamjar. And out of, like, morbid curiosity or somesuch, she had gone to open the poor thing, except it had totally fermented over the course of that whole time, and the second the lid became loose it had blasted directly upwards, straight into one of the ceiling lights, shattering it totally into, like, a bazillion pieces, all the while gross and mouldy jam poured over her entire hand and homework.

So, like, yeah. Gabby woulda totally been an apricot jam explosion if she’d stayed in that room any longer.

But if they were legitimately, like, planning on splatterhousing the folks who had killed other folks, then they had totally decided that they wouldn’t have any issues with taking lives, and that was not a group of people that Gabby felt like being around… but also not a group that, like, she wanted to get on the wrong side of, y’know? Succumbing so easily to the mob mentality felt like a real slippery slope, and she was real scared that she might, like, find herself right at the bottom of it.

“Euuuurghh…”

Gabby stood up mostly-straight, and as she did, she caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection in the window. Jeez. Oh, wow, gosh, super jeez. This was the first time she’d taken a good look at herself since she’d been totally trapped in here, and she did not like what she saw. She looked, like, totally haggard. Her eyes were puffy and red, and there was a, like, gross cocktail of dried tears and makeup smeared all over her cheeks. She looked like she’d seen a ghost, and then, like, fifteen other ghosts in short succession afterwards. She sniffed, and sighed. The best she could say about her appearance was that she wasn’t all, like, gross and snotty. At least, like, not any longer.

And this wasn’t even, like, how she actually looked right now, either, was it? She wasn’t looking at a reflection of her, of Gabby McLeod herself. Not even if she had designed her avatar to resemble her in every single possible tiny way, right down to, like, the placement of each and every freckle. It felt like she had taken crazy pills, the way she couldn’t, like, stop herself from thinking about this, but how could she not? How could she ever let this thought escape from her mind? She hadn’t even been allowed, like, the grace of getting to die as herself. It was a summary execution with a burlap sack over her head, a crude face drawn in Sharpie on the front?

What did she look like right now? Did anyone know? Would anyone know? Did anyone, even the ones she loved the very most in the whole world, remember the last expression on her face before she had put on this stupid headset? Or would her memento to them all be a look of utter dread, before the bodybag be zipped up around her?

Gabby sniffed again, shoulders sagging. It was, like, so hard to keep the faith that she could do something to prevent that outcome when it all felt so freaking hopeless, when she was having to engineer a breakout attempt via a puppet with, like, half its strings missing. She didn’t think she could be the last one standing, after all. The idea was, like, totally abhorrent to her. Which only left trying to find another way out, and jeez. Where did she even begin with that?

She looked down a little, at the print of Keke Fortuna on the front of her shirt, sword three times as big as she was clutched in her tiny paws. She wished that she could be a little bit more like her. She had always wanted to be more like that little chinchilla girl that she had assisted in piloting; brave enough to stand up to any odds, ready and raring to go even when they stomped her into the dirt and, like, kicked her when she was down, so totally happy and free to be just herself. How did she do it? It felt so, like, easy to be fearless in the Twitter posts and Reddit AMAs. But she guessed when you hadn’t actually lived that things - hadn’t even been the one holding the controller at all - it was, like, a simple matter, pretending to be bold.

Maybe that was what she had to start doing again. Wasn’t that what she had, like, thought, back in the labs? Fake it til you make it? Start off by acting courageous and like she had a plan, and the real thing would, like, surely follow after?

She didn’t even think she could, like, muster up that much right now. But the alternative was just, like, standing here, a total mess, until the clock ticked down to her oblivion. She would have to find a way, somehow, because she didn’t have any other choice.

She sure as heck wasn’t gonna find it here, though. Specially not when she thought as though she could, like, totally hear the voices of her erstwhile allies from close by, as if they were totally mocking her for her failure at making her escape. Somewhere else, then, some other place to put a mask on top of her existing mask. Maybe somewhere with, like, someone else, who actually had a plan to logout of this heckhole.

At walking pace this time.

((Gabby McLeod continued in Uncharitable Circumstances))