A New Week

I've been looking forward to Monday, as I often do, because this is easier work than I have at home. *g* Sure, I'm fantastically busy here, but it's physically easy. All I have to do is six things at once, including standing in the hall directing people to their class - this is a very confusing building, so we do that the first few days of each semester.

Saturday I had some deep thought about outhouses, but now I can't remember what it was. Whatever, it stopped me in my tracks. I think it was something about how I use to use an outhouse all the time when I was a kid, because a significant number of people in my family still used them exclusively, even up to my high school years. When we moved to the big city (New Albany) when I was six and my dad bought his very first house (so I would have a permanent address in a good school district), there was still an outhouse in the back yard. I don't think we ever used it, because he installed a TINY one seater without room for a sink inside the house, but it was there till he knocked down the stall, covered it and put a basketball goal up in its place.

I think it occured to me how many people in this country will never even experience one, much less be familiar with them. Weird, the shit I think about. ;-)

Friday was TOO exciting. I did indeed get some writing done up in 296, before people found out where I was at and started pestering me. I woke Kelsey up in the car she had passed out in from shock. Parker is inside, trying to make himself not panic, looking for medical supplies (which WOULD be difficult to find in a hospital if you didn't know where to look) and she wakes up. Of course, that FUCKING computer died on me and I lost network AGAIN. No e-mail, which I needed when one of my faculty called to have a file sent somewhere, and I couldn't access my flash drive suddenly. I was SO PISSED until I figured out to drag the file to the desktop, and I saved this much:

A shadow fell over Kelsey’s eyes and woke her from her light slumber. She was happy about waking, because her mind absolutely refused to leave the slow motion, endless loop of her grandmother being chewed to death by her long-time neighbor. Much as she tried, though, she couldn’t bring back the scene of herself beating the damned thing to death. That’s what she wanted to see, because she thought it might be a lot more fun to watch than Grandma Opal.
It took a few moments to wonder why a shadow had appeared suddenly, and she almost opened her eyes before realizing she should be real damned careful if she didn’t want to end up like Grandma Opal. Because it was pretty easy to see how strong these things were if a slob like Miriam could throw a person five feet.

So Kelsey did open her eyes, but only by the narrowest slit. It was a trick she had learned as a young girl, when her mom used to send her to her room to nap. Like she needed a nap. When her mom would come in to check, Kelsey would totally relax every muscle in her body and let her eyes go slack, except for opening them the barest amount. Sometimes her mom, ironically afraid of being conned, would kneel down next to the bed, put her face really close to Kelsey’s and try to see if her eyes were open, but she never once noticed that her innocent daughter was watching, putting one over on her. As soon as she left, Kelsey would get out of bed and do whatever she wanted, quietly.

Now she used this skill on whatever was looking in the window. The first thing she noticed was that her face was only a couple of inches from the glass. It was grimy, and made her want more than anything to get out of this filthy car. On the other side a dead thing had its forehead pressed against the glass, looking closely at Kelsey.

Only a few inches away were two dead eyes. It was hard to tell where they were looking exactly because the parts that should be white were now a glassy black, so there was no discernable iris. The black made its eyes look a little bulgy, and its mouth was a bluish gray color slightly darker than the surrounding dead skin. Of course the mouth was hanging open and drool had collected in the dark mouth and was flowing out the corners and down the sides of its chin to the neck, where it mixed with the clotting blood it the ripped out neck. It had been a man in need of a shave, and the short dark bristles stood out sharply against the pale skin.