Lila regretted that she could not drink alcohol. The numbing sensation of it would have been useful in the walk home, the hot summer breeze nice on the back of her neck, but far too sharp for her in that moment.
She wished for the pastel life where nothing was wrong, and everything was soft, fuzzy, and warm, like her blanket.
She unlocked the backyard gate, and
Lila closed the door behind her, and did all she needed to do, and then, when satisfied, made her way back to the office.She prefaced her return with," You don't have to get lost when you need me. The bathroom's upstairs and at the end of the hall. The kitchen is immediately to your left when you go up. The staircase is right in front of you, when you leave the room, just past the cafe. I'm going to sleep now."
The cafe was a far different place than Emmet was used to: an ugly tile floor sticking out like a sore thumb, and an extreme lack of the embellishments that Emmet had once derided.It looked wrong, plain, and just... off.There were no green plants lighting up the room, breathing life into the place, and the white, circular lights above Emmet's head, turned on b
Quickly moving, he twisted open the handle to get into Lila's room, finding it in a dismal state.There was no bed, and also little furniture.In one corner, there was an iron and a large, flat board with multiple bedsheets laid upon it, looking as if Lila had been using the surface as a makeshift ironing board, rather than going out to buy a proper one. Underne
Emmet had no idea about how long he had been loitering about Lila's kitchen, but he knew that by the time that she had arrived upstairs, ready to presumably cook the meal for the evening, he knew that he was hungry.She was rubbing at her eyes, an arm thrown out against whatever wall or surface was nearby, as she stumbled up the stairs and into the kitchen, tripping over the last stair and almost face planting the floor as seemed to be wandering around in a tired daze.
"Speaking of forgetting things. I needed to tell you that you have your doctor's appointment tomorrow. I know that I said that I'd bring him back to see you about... I don't know how long ago, but he's arranged to come about half six - ish in the evening.I do need to tell you first though that the doctor isn't a regular NHS doctor though.There's an organisatio
Lila knew that the locks on her bedroom door had been undone.Emmet had probably entered the room too, but she wouldn't quite know until she checked, but it was already obvious enough that the lock had been touched, with smudged finger prints all over the duller metal surface.Lila couldn't find it within herself to care.
As soon as the light hit her cupboard, the only furniture in the room and the only furniture that she really needed so far, it was obvious that Emmet had entered her room and had approached it, white fibres that matched his bandages and his cast clinging onto the mirror, near to the handles to open the cupboard.It was obvious.It was easy.
When Jasper first opened his eyes, he had been alone, cold, and still starving. Having no idea how long he had been laying there on the floor of his prison cell, waiting to die of starvation to produce less paperwork, he closed his eyes once more and sunk into the abyss.The second time that the world had returned to him, he found himself far too weak to open his eyes, lead lining his eyelids and his muscles straining far too much in his attempts to see the light. There were people there, voices surrounding him and transferring some warmth to his broken and shattered and shrivelled body.He had been cradled as if he were a baby, his head supported on someone else's shoulders, his limbs and held and moved with infinitely soft care, and he found himself encompassed by warmth. Blurred and unclear voices conversed above his head quietly, gently flowing into his ears, and soon, he was being fed water.Sustenance, for the first time after entering this hell, passed th
“Why’re you sleeping on the floor like that? Come on, get up. You’ll hurt your back doing that,” Doctor Marigold chided, dragging all her bits of heavy machinery around the office space to prepare for her demonstration.Behind her, Lila remained still.“I know that you’re not dead. Come, get up already,” she called out, stepping over a few sheets of paper that she had laid out to grab Lila by the shoulder and heave her up into sitting.The stubborn girl just flopped down again, not opening her eyes.“If you get the fuck up, we can move the flight a week forward so you can stop worrying about it,” Lucy Marigold shouted across the room.Like a rubber band, Lila snapped back up and finally opened her eyes.It had been harder to see the bags below them when they had been closed and Doctor Marigold wondered if she should buy the girl some sleep tablets.“I’m awake,” Li
Yolanda seemed to understand that she needed to back off and stop teasing Gretel, when the other woman's eyes suddenly misted over, and it was if she was no longer a part of this world.She kept the bubbling annoyance within her away from her face, putting on instead a mask of concern as she reached out and poked Gretel's arms, trying to maybe prod her out of her stupor and bring her back from the recesses of her mind.Yolanda had never actually seen somebody collapse inwards to a catatonic state over her own actions.It was interesting to see it all happen and fold out in front of her.She poked Gretel again, touching her in the face lightly to see if that would possibly work to pull the other woman out of her mind and back into the world where she was needed proper.It wouldn't reflect well on her if Gretel didn't wake up within the hour.It didn't feel as
When she awoke, she was sat ready to eat and was dressed just like her mother, in a pastel blouse and a lungi down to the floor.Lila looked down at herself and jumped when she heard rattling, noticing the ten, or so, bangles on each arm and the lines of mehndi that ran down all the way to the hems of her sleeves, resting halfway between her shoulders and elbows. A pin held her blouse shut at the top and a quick once over of her hair, with one of her hands, revealed that it had been styled in a simple bun and adorned with flowers.“This is weirdly romantic,” Lila commented, staring at the lit candles nestled in the variously sized candelabrums set around the circular room.There was no door, but a giant window which led to a balcony outside. There was no ceiling but the walls reaching upwards, all the way up, until they formed a dome in the same shade of dull brown that coated the floor and the giant, round table in the centre.The only dishes
“So, is she finally asleep?” Emmet asked the boy stood behind the counter. He was exceedingly slim for someone surrounded by sugar all day and Emmet could make out the outlines of his spindly elbows through his shirt. His face held a no nonsense, blunt, and almost bored expression. “Yeah, she is. She’s been knocked out on the sofa since I sent her back there,” Kai answered the long haired man in front of him, his hair pulled back by a ribbon matching his eyes before being pulled over his shoulder once more. He looked vain. “Oh good. Don’t tell her that I was involved,” the man asked, putting both his palms up to face Kai. “I’m telling her that you’re a fucking weirdo for that,” was the scowled answer. “No. Seriously, don’t tell her. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her. She’s known my partner for longer that I’ve known him. She doesn’t trust me with him. Why’re you making that face?” Emmet tried to justify himself before giving up
“Are you sure that you’re getting enough sleep?” Kai asked Lila, watching her sway on her feet and clutching the front counter.“Yes,” she gasped, dropping her head into her hands, elbows on the table.“Go and lie down on the sofa. Go to sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you up when I have to leave for college,” Kai instructed her, tapping her on the shoulders and shepherding her towards the office.“… fine,” she conceded, letting Kai move her along towards the back.“You know that this just proves my point,” Kai pointed out, pushing her through the boundary of the door and closing it behind her.“Fine,” she whispered back to him, talking into the silence of the office.She let herself fall over the sofa, draping her upper body over the arm rest and letting her head be cushioned by the pillows. Shuffling a bit over to put her body entirely on the sofa, Lila f
“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now again!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now keep on going!”Lila landed each punch, timing her breaths to the count as she moved her fists, dodging underneath the swing that came towards her head, before blocking the second hit that came to her and moving along with the force of the fist that hit her arm.The swinging punching bag forced distance between Lila and Tweedle Dum, and she stepped back to where she was stood before, within the path of the moving bad, to put more distance between him and her.“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!”Lila punched the bag once more, landing all of her hits.“Okay, time for a break,” Tweedle Dum announced, grabbing the punching bag and pulling it back to him as Lila moved away from the centre of the room, sitting down on one of the rickety plastic chairs at the side of the room.She took of
“Bitch! Why’d you run off and abandon me like that!?” Lila shouted from behind the counter when Kai finally walked back into the store.She was waving her hands about and wore an apron covered in flour as the single customer in the store, an old man precariously balancing on his cane, slept whilst leaning on the radiator.“I thought that you wanted some bonding time with your family so I left you to do that it private!” Kai answered her, tiptoeing past their unconscious patron, in a combination of whispering and shouting.“They’re hardly my family and you left us in the middle of a public café!” Lila cried, not modulating her voice at all.In the background, the old man began to snore.“But you still talk to them a lot like you do to me, so I let you, and besides, I got about fifty more pages of Good Omens done in Waterstones,” Kai appealed, finally at the counter and opening up the
Gretel and Silver had their fun as he continued to teach her how the interface worked and how he had managed to figure out that the system was an older model from the lack of integration between the screen and the touch pad, and explaining how easily it would potentially be to do so once the technology, as displayed in this device, had been demonstrated and established to work in a functional product."We were working on something like this as well, back in the workshops back home for the company that I was in the research and development department for. We were trying to get our motion sensors to be as small as possible for more commercial and personal use of technology that we could sell to the public and those who couldn't afford the contact computers.We had no idea on how their tech worked, because of trade and company secrets and all, but we managed to piece together a few things by looking at the patents and when we bought a few and m
“Alright, the shop’s free. Why are you actually here?” Lila questioned, crossing her arms and staring down at the tablecloth of Jasper and Emmet’s table.“I’ve got lesson now. I’ll be back in a few hours,” the teenage boy behind Lila announced, picking up a bag that had been hidden behind the counter the entire time and rushing outside.Lila continued to stand there, waiting for a reply.Jasper couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t meeting either his or Emmet’s eyes.“Are you planning to leave us?” he asked her back.Lila’s fingers dug into the creases of her shirt,” I’m going to be leaving for a trip soon, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. Kai’ll be running the shop and will be looking after things, broadly. He lives here now and I scheduled my leave for when his school term ends so he can take care of things.”“On thi