by crescent + cheep » Tue Nov 13, 2012 10:14 am
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Mercy awoke early that day, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. Last night had been wild, and even though she'd told herself she would only stay until midnight, tops, and drink as little as possible, she'd still only tottered into her apartment at 4 in the morning. Fully clothed, she'd thrown herself into bed, her lipstick smudged from an encounter with another girls lips. Well, this was the consequence; a hangover, wild hair and a pillow full of makeup. Anyone would think a twenty-year-old would be a bit more sensible.
"Damn," she murmured when she saw herself in the mirror - she would need a good shower, and getting the knots out of her red locks would takes ages Well, it would have to be done anyway, so why not start? Mercy took to her closet, rummaging through the mass of clothes inside to find a loose shirt, a pair of short shorts and some odd socks. It would be all she needed on this hot summers day, plus a pair of large sunglasses lying on the sideboard. She could actually feel the sweat running down her body, and with it the motivation to go and have a cold shower.
Twenty minutes later, Mercy stepped out of the shower, wrapped in a large black towel. She only possessed black towels, because of "reasons" as she said. The reasons were simply the preference for non-white things, and the love of black - not, as some teased, because they were so black from drying Mercy, that she was so dirty the dirt hadn't come out in the wash. Nonsense. Mercy could really only laugh about these people - please! Did she look dirty? It was only her mind that did strange things.. sometimes. The red-head slipped into her clothes, feeling better after the cold shower, her best remedy against hangovers, along with a cup of hot tea. She hated coffee with a passion. Tea had been saving her for a year now, for Mercy lived a double life; in the evening, and often all night, she partied and went out with friends - often involving a lot of alcohol. By day, she was a secretary for a large company, handling all the dealings with other companies - often involving a lot of diplomacy no-one who had met her by night would have thought she possessed. Mercy needed little sleep, 4 hours a day were enough for her, provided she had one day she could really sleep for 12 hours or so.
So she was generally well looked-after, and would be for some time, unless she did something really stupid. She'd even secured a space as a secretary in the same company she currently worked at, only in a different City. Brighton. The so-called “City of Dreams” - if you could believe her half-drunk friends. Hell, you could dream anywhere, it was just a habit of one of her friends to call Brighton the "City of Dreams", and so the expression had, sneakily, crept into her vocabulary and thinking. Not that Brighton was so dreamy or anything - the only reason Mercy would be going there instead of trying to get a place in London was the fact that she loved the sea - and there wasn’t much of that in London. Today was her free day, and she would use it for packing her clothes - aka. throwing them all into large boxes and hunting the apartment for anything she could have forgotten. Then she would pack everything into a taxi, and away she would be. Her goodbyes had been said, and there was no reason to stay any longer. The only living thing she would take with her was her cat, Infinity, a beige Asian semi-longhair, so her cat-crazy neighbour had told her, which she had found after work six months ago. An silly name, really, since its origin was by no means Asia, but Great Britain, at least according to Wikipedia.
After a breakfast of tea and toast, Mercy packed her clothes, taking only half an hour to fill the three large boxes she had bought, and another half to finish looking around the house for lost things. She wouldn't be taking her furniture - the apartment she was going to was completely furnished and done up in a nice beige and red design. With Infinity in a carrier, and the remaining boxes at the door, Mercy waited for the Taxi she had called minutes earlier. The streets were empty at this time of the day, especially in the quiet part of Cornwall Mercy lived in, and very quiet. The only things that could be heard were the occasional songs of several birds in one of the trees lining the street, and the waves crashing against the nearby shore.
Her phone rang just as she was putting it back in her pocket after checking the time. After struggling with the touchscreen, she managed to take the call “Hello?”.
“Hiiiiii Murc... waddya doin?” came the voice from the other end, clearly extremely drunk. Mercy sighed, she knew, even through the drunk murmuring, that it was Tathal, a drinking mate, who for some reason had a Welsh name, though he was a Japanese guy.
“Tathal...” she sighed “You know I’m moving today, just calm down and drink some tea.”
“Ohhh yeeaaah, tha ciddy of dreeems...” Tathal answered, and Mercy could hear him coughing for a moment and then break into a laugh.
“Tathal. Go. To. Bed.” Mercy ordered, seeing her Taxi turn into her street.
“Wah? Oh ye, okaaayy...” came the answer, before Mercy hung up.
The Taxi stopped beside Mercy, and the driver, a woman in her late thirties, stepped out. “Morning!” Mercy said to her, smiling her ‘at work’ smile. The driver barely glanced at her as she murmured “Mornin’”, and started putting Mercy’s luggage into the boot. Mercy raised her eyebrows for minute, but then decided it didn’t matter, and handed the last few boxes to the woman.
Mercy stepped into the car and settled on the front seat, finding the belt and strapping herself in, laying her head back onto the headrest and letting out a deep breath. She needed another tea, her head was starting to ache again, and it was quite a drive from Cornwall to Brighton - more than five hours! She'd only get there at about half past seven or so, which wasn't too bad when she thought about it, because she'd have time to put her things away and get used to the new apartment, plus have time to go and see the city at night, find somewhere to eat dinner, and maybe make some friends. Fat chance, Mercy realised - friends weren't made that quickly, unless under the influence of alcohol, which she knew only too well. It took a few seconds for her to realise that the Taxi driver had asked her something, the tone of her voice suggesting it hadn't been the first time.
"To Brighton? Where exactly?" the driver was asking, impatiently tapping her nails against the steering wheel.
Mercy righted herself, reprimanding herself for drifting away. She slipped out the ownership papers she carried in her handbag and handed them to the driver. As the driver tapped the address into the cars navigation system, Mercy slid her sunglasses over her eyes, as the sun had just crept a little to the right, or so it seemed. It made the light shine almost directly into her eyes - and only now did she realise that they were already on their way out of the suburbs, near the motorway.
The drive was long and tedious, and Mercy kept drifting away, eventually falling asleep and only awakening when the driver stopped at a motorway café to drink some coffee. Mercy went to check on Infinity, who was getting a bit ratty cooped up in his carrier. She sat with him in the boot for a few minutes, giving him some fresh water and a treat to keep him happy. Holding her hand in front of her mouth as she yawned and pushed the hair out of her face, Mercy then made her way to the café. Her hair always seemed to be mussed up, it never stayed put except with liberal amounts of gel. However, as Mercy hated gel and usually loved her mass of tousled red hair, it stayed as it was, occasionally giving her a 'just out of bed' look, even though it was brushed. They entered the café, and Mercy felt the unnaturally cold air of the air conditioning machine mounted somewhere above the doorway, making her head hurt for a few seconds from the hot-cold contrast, though the cold was definitely an improvement. Mercy didn't mind hot summers days, in fact, she liked them - however she disliked sitting in a taxi with ancient air-conditioning with the sweat running down her face because the driver wouldn't allow her to open the window while they were on the motorway. Too loud, or too many toxic fumes or something, and what really annoyed Mercy was that the driver herself didn't seem to be sweating very much - a stray drop of sweat may have been on her forehead on occasion, but other than that... Nothing.
Mercy stepped up to the counter and immediately decided she didn't like the man serving, he just looked so strange and somewhat sinister in her eyes, but perhaps it was simply a resemblance to a bad character from a dream Mercy had had the other night - and by coincidence in that dream he had been serving a drink - which had been poisoned. So great was this resemblance that Mercy, when asked what she would like, asked for a packet of menthol chewing gum, the next-best thing to tea against hangover headaches.
After she had paid, Mercy seated herself at a table, across from her driver, and began to chew on her gum, fixing her eyes on the motorway visible through the glass-front of the café. As she looked at nothing in particular, she tried to remember the dream she'd had in the car. It had been something involving elephants... and the white house? The sea had been there as well, if she remembered right. Usually, Mercy could remember her dreams if she really tried, and they were usually a mash-up of everything, be it as insignificant as seeing an old card with elephants on it while she was packing, she had seen and done that day. This probably explained the presence of the white house in her dream - she'd been half-watching the news the other night, before leaving the café she´d been in with her friends to go berserk and drink some shots. The sea probably came from Brighton, and the fact that she was moving there that day. Mercy grinned to herself, feeling stupid analysing her own dreams, but what the hell, there wasn't much to do around there anyway, other than just sit and think.
After a while, Mercy’s dream came back to her, while watching the taxi driver stir her coffee for the umpteenth time and still pronouncing it too hot to drink;
Mercy ran along the pier, towards the end of it, almost reaching it, but then a stampede of elephants came out of nowhere from the end she was running to, trampling her, she only remembered seeing the world turn red and then a falling feeling as she was thrown off the edge of the pier and the impact as she hit the water below, before feeling her wounds burn in the salty sea water.
It wasn't the first time Mercy had dreamed her death, and many would have been worried, but Mercy didn't believe in all that dream interpretation 'shi.t'.
The scene had changed, Mercy now stood in front of the white house and was watching a hoard of dinosaurs rushing through it, glasses breaking and a whole bunch of people going berserk, but strangely, nobody seemed to notice Mercy, standing there alone.
Mercy awoke again from her daydream dream interpretation meditation, or whatever it was she liked to do, and started studying the taxi driver. She was a brunette, and had strange brown grey eyes which gave her a slightly vacant look. Her cheekbones were extremely defined and she had rings under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept for days. Mercy suddenly felt something like pity for the unfriendly driver, but didn’t really know what t say, so she continued as before, and watched a few birds sitting in front of the window.
An instant later, or so it seemed, Mercy was awoken from her daydream - the driver had miraculously downed her coffee in three gulps. They walked back to the car, Mercy feeling the heat even more now that she had been inside the air conditioned café, glad to be in the shade of the car, even though it was swelteringly hot in there. She drifted back off for a bit, the rest of the drive passing without further event, eventually awakening just in time to see the 'Welcome to Brighton & Hove' sign.
"Not long now" the driver told her, seeing her awaken "15 minutes, at most."
Mercy nodded, and smiled slightly, pushing her sunglasses onto her forehead, no longer needing them, enjoying the view of the sea sparkling in the sun that still stood high, shining out from behind a cloud.
Ten minutes later, the taxi stopped in front of a modern apartment house with three storeys. Mercy couldn’t help smiling as she unloaded her luggage, feeling the novelty of a new home under her skin. Having paid the driver and waved a goodbye, Mercy lugged her things up to the house and up the stairs to the second floor and the apartment she’d bought.
Infinity started mewling desperately when she put him down, and the smell coming from his carrier wasn’t exactly pleasant. Mercy quickly opened the door, fumbling with the key for a second, and set up the cat litter tray, before letting infinity out of his carrier prison to explore. Closing the door behind her, Mercy leant against it for a second, letting out a deep breath, before smiling. Deciding that unpacking could wait, she looked around at the flat, eventually finding the bedroom and throwing herself onto the sheets.
Last edited by
crescent + cheep on Tue Apr 30, 2013 11:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
I believe in rights for
EVERYONE
note; crescent is ill & frustrated
