(open) like a bee inside a jar

[flensing]

When; Throughout the first week of May
Rating; T for tentative?
Characters; Anna and You
Summary; An open log
Log;

[ The car is just the way she remembered it, the way it was when she had hidden it in the woods outside that house: dust-streaked and dinged, the seats stained with blood and tears and coffee. Her mother had intended to give it to her, that car, but Anna had needed it before her twenty-fifth birthday had come along. Before she had gotten a job or finished school or fallen into a relationship that her mother could approve of. Maman had always known what Lucie would lead her Anna into: heartbreak and trouble. Anna had known it too, and she had taken the car anyways. She had driven it to the hospital and taken Lucie and they had never looked back. In many ways, the vehicle is a comfort. It had been their home for two years and stored inside of it are all the things that Anna thinks she truly needs to survive: a blue tent, a few pots and pans, a shotgun and its shells, and her little leather bag of stolen medical supplies. She had wished for it, knowing how it would comfort. The vehicle is also a heavy weight in her thoughts. An anchor into the past. She can smell Lucie on the interior, and on her clothes still packed neatly into a satchel. Lucie was not so very neat, Anna had packed it for her after washing the contents inside. There is no one to look after here, and Anna cannot even bring herself to be so selfish as to wish Lucie was beside her. She just takes her car beyond the city and sets up camp. ] OPTION A: Anna's campsite! She may point her shotgun at you! OPTION B: Anywhere else around town in her snazzy little car.

Comments

[flensing]

[She glances over her shoulder at her tent and her car. There was nowhere that was safe, really. In or out of the City, it was all the same. The dangers came from within, from within herself and others. God, if there was one lesson she should have learned from Lucie, it was that the most terrible horrors came from within.]

I lived this way... for quite some time.

[nohometown]

[He doesn't understand, yet, how the greatest danger is already within him. Everything he's had to contend with has always come from without. He still sees the city as safer than the wilderness, but perhaps the isolated areas are more dangerous where he comes from.]

I see. Before I came here, I was used to living closely with others.

[SOLDIER quarters had been his home for years. He had his own rooms, but others were always close at hand. He doesn't care for the isolation, but so far, there's no one he wishes to reside with here.]

Don't you hear it? The ticking.

[flensing]

[Anna nods, considering a moment longer before she sets her gun aside, her hand troubles to do it, but it's what she wants and she pushes herself. She crouches down to gather her firewood back up.]

...please, come sit.

[She motions at the fallen log that lays before her currently empty firepit.]

I hear the clock ticking, yes.

[But perhaps she has already been close enough to insanity that it is almost comforting.]

[nohometown]

[He continues to show no reaction to the gun, politely not mentioning it. When she asks him to sit, he moves forward, as suggested.]

Thank you. [It may only be a log in the forest, but he has the air of someone taking a seat in someone's home, on a fine piece of furniture. He sinks smoothly into a seated position.]

It doesn't trouble you then, I take it? You intend to stay out here?

[flensing]

[It is her home, her little campsite, and she intends to play the hostess. She has her firewood, and while the spring has made things a bit damp, she can set the fire burning. She has a little teapot and a there are a few bags of tea in the rations. She and Lucie hoard them on the rare occasion they stop into a diner, usually to wash their faces in their bathrooms and ditch out on the check, but a treat was a treat.]

It tells me time is moving, and the city is not so far, by car.