Oh wow I forgot writing was fun.
Hello all! So basically, I’m writing the prequel to the story I wrote last #WIM. I think it was called [basis] or something. No idea what this one is gonna be called, but I do love a good double/triple meaning title, even if one or more of the meanings is convoluted and only makes sense in my head. Shrug.
But yes! My shack dweller and visitor are back. I love these idiots a normal amount. I wasn’t able to get through much, but I was able to churn out like 600 words, and that’s far more than I’ve been writing over the course of several months, so… Progress!
Here goes somethin’.
{title TBD}
There’s days when memories form like mist, even as you’re presently living them. You know this is a time that will stay with you, whether you would have it or not.
Sometimes it’s a forgotten tattoo that peeks out of your sleeve and makes you jump.
Sometimes its presence lingers, cloying, weighted–a thick salve along your skin you can’t ignore.
Altogether, regardless, it’s there.
In whatever form it chooses, outside of your control.
—
She thought nothing of it when fog rolled in on the first day of her new job. (Front desk receptionist work meant to pay the bills that never seemed to stay paid for long.) Her car crawled through the buzzing gate of the research center, headlights switched off in the dim midmorning haze.
She’d found the listing online, a shining ad of white marble and chrome and walking lab coats with chicklet teeth midway between the forager haul clips and indie band posts that frequented her timeline. Needless to say, it wasn’t her schtick, but it paid well. Plus it was a botanical research center, and she liked plants well enough.
“You seem to have the desired level of knowledge for this position,” the head researcher tasked with hiring her–Kent, she recalled was his name–had said over the phone. Odd phrasing, but alright, she recalled thinking. “Report on the fifth at ten o’clock for training.”
And she did. It wasn’t much change from past reception positions she’d had–less books on the wall, no wafted scent of brewing artisanal coffees, an unfortunate lack of tattoo flash sheets littering the desk. Overall, the expanse of her work area–a carbon copy of the ad she’d seen–was remarkably unstimulating.
She let out a long sigh.
“Something on your mind?”
She turned, eying the intern also stationed at the desk with her. Shaggy dark hair, lab coat, tap tap tapping away at an email, it seemed.
“Truthfully, nothing at all,” she supplied. “It’s like my brain was wiped clean with the rest of this place.”
The intern huffed a laugh, short through the nose with a twitch in the shoulders. “Ain’t that how it is…”
“Thought this was a botany place. Where are the plants?”
The intern turned and made eye contact with her, and smiled. “Well, they’re all inside being peeled apart and put back together again.”
The tap tap tapping resumed, and she sat back in her office chair that was a few shades less than comfortable.
—
There was a mug in front of her face, steaming into the air where it sat on the partition sill between the desk and the spotless lobby. She blinked, focusing on the chipped toadstool pattern along the bottom, the handle resembling a gnarled branch, then to its owner.
The intern, who she learned had leveled up to full time lab assistant the previous week, beamed bright. “Let’s not lose you now.”
She hangs her head for a moment. “That obvious, lab rat?”
The click of a tongue and a pinched brow. “Easy now, you look about half dead behind that desk. Don’t let Kent catch you sleeping.”
She straightened up in her chair, peeking around for the doctor dramatically. It draws out a chuckle. She’s satisfied with that.
Taking the mug in hand–it was actually decent, and actually hot–she smirked. “Y’know, I like to think I’m actually on Dr. Kent’s good side.”
Lab Rat snorts, waving a hand and walking off. “If you say so!”
She shook her head and took a sip, wincing at the lack of sugar.
It was as she was driving home that she realized the mug was exactly her favorite aesthetic–something she’d see in her own home.
Yeah so uhhhh that’s all I got this week. Nothing has happened, but don’t worry!! I have things lined up in my brain and on the notes app on my phone. It’ll come together… at some point…
I’m not a fan of the opening bit and might cut it for a more cold opening, but who knows! Maybe it’ll grow on me.
See you next week!
CM
