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 Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2017 7:47 pm
Quote: If you were suspicious about the aurora that started up a few days ago, it seems like you have good reason to be. Ever since they began, no one seems to be able to get a good night’s sleep. Fatigue is setting across the town, making people a little extra cranky. It’s a complete downer to the holiday cheer but no one seems to know what to do. There’s no sign that there’s anything supernatural about the aurora, but there’s certainly something odd about it. People lucky enough to even fall asleep only get to rest for a few moments before they are violently jostled awake by the sensation of falling through a rainbow of colors. Some worse off may suffer from the sensation of drowning beneath strange, rainbow colored water. People are passing out from fatigue and some people are suffering from strange vertigo. There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.
But when she called her mom about it, her mom just said she was exaggerating. But why would she exaggerate about that? It's not like there was any school to get out of anymore; this was her winter break! She needed to be awake and alive and aware so she could get the most out of it! What a dumb time to play sick…
She managed so far as the Hallmark store on her own. It proved the closest to where she was staying, and they were open long hours for the holidays. Plus, they carried her favorite stock of gel pens (since, surprise surprise, the one she was using ran out of ink halfway through her card set). So when she swung open the door that day, the now-familiar bell jingled in much softer tones. That cute cashier from before was behind the counter again, which was a small consolation to an otherwise exhausting day.
"Hi again!" She managed with muted cheer. A loop around an aisle and a half left her in the pens area, and as she hummed dully to herself, she found the set she wanted. It came with five in total: purple, pink, green, blue, and red. She definitely needed the green and red, and she wrote in pink often enough that she could use an upcoming replacement. Again she shuffled to the counter with her burdens.
Her mouth opened into a wide yawn, and she struggled once again to avoid rubbing the makeup out of her eyes. "I think I'm going to like, fall asleep on my way home…" To prove her point, she leaned sleepily on one of the pressboard outcroppings to the counter.
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Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2017 8:45 pm
Derrick was exhausted and he wished that he had sleeping pills that could help him through all of this. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, but he was now definitely, pretty sure that the aurora had something to do with him not being able to sleep. And he usually could sleep pretty well if he wanted to! The fact that he couldn't, and the fact that he hadn't been able to sleep since the aurora started, made him think that there was reason to be suspicious! However, lack of sleep didn't meant that he could just stay home from his job, trying to make up for it, and had gone into work, yawning all the way. At least he didn't open early in the morning, but when he had come in, he was surprised to see how bad the owners had looked. It was an older couple, and the lack of sleep made them look and feel terrible! Derrick had ushered them out, telling them to try to go and get some shut eye, and that he could handle the rest of it, as he was scheduled the closing shift. Sure, he didn't really feel like he could, but he didn't want two old, sleepy people at the registers. That just was asking for something bad to happen. They of course, protested at first, saying they were fine and they just needed some sleep, but when one of the fell into a display slightly, knocking a few things onto the ground, Derrick had insisted they go home and rest, and they finally took his advice. Luckily for him, it seemed that barely anyone was going to the stores today, and he only had a few customers for the day, all of them commiserating with him that they were all tired as heck. Definitely made that aurora more suspicious. When there was finally more of a lull in the customers, and he had gotten everything done that he had needed to, Derrick sat in the chair behind the cashier station, resting his head in his hand and closing his eyes only for a minute... suddenly he was jolted awake when he heard the bell and yelled out the greeting and Derrick realized it was that girl from before. He wished he had that energy that she seemed to have. But soon enough she confessed to him that she was also tired, and yawned, which caused him to yawn too. Those things were freaking contagious! He nodded sleepily. "I think it's happening to everyone. Usually I sleep well, but last night was awful. It would be one thing if I slept and then didn't feel like I had slept at all, but to not be able to go to sleep... that was awful." He really hoped that there weren't any problems with staying up for so long that would cause any long-term harm.
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Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 9:29 am
"Oh my god, I know what you mean! I thought maybe getting some exercise last night would help me go to sleep, so I went for a jog, and I was still just exhausted after. I couldn't sleep at all. Maybe a couple minutes and then bam," she slapped her hand into her palm, "wide awake again. Talk about a nighmare." I almost fell asleep doing my makeup this morning. How awful would that be? Waking up with eyeliner on, like, your forehead.
"So you really think everyone's been like this?" Lovi paused to take a look around the store, but no one else was there. Each of the four aisles looked completely empty, and the front windows were absent the gawkers from the other night. Everyone got their fill of the aurora, and probably just wanted to go home and sleep, like Derrick said.
So that was why it was totally a ghost town out there. Spooky!
"If it's hitting everyone, what do you think's causing it? Is it like, something in the water? Wow, that sounds super Conspiracy Theory. I promise I'm not that weird." She giggled, albeit lacking the same energy and fervor as before.
"Isn't it almost closing time again? I can wait for you like last time. Then if you had any ideas, I'd love to hear them."ssbrosb i was figuring derrick could take the mentor role by either explaining what he thinks is the cause, or someone outside could faint and he'd take charge / tell lovi to call 911, get the person out of the snow?
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Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 11:13 am
Derrick tried not to fall asleep at his station. As, intriguing as her story was, he was just way too tired, to the point where he could barely hear her. He just wanted to sleep so badly! "Yeah, I mean, even if it was just for an hour or something, it would better than being woken up in just a few minutes." He had fallen asleep while writing some calligraphy, but less than a minute later he was jolted awake, spilling ink everywhere. It took all of his self-control not to go into a rage and to clean up the ink before it stained anything. He sighed. "Sorry, not annoyed at you or anything, just... so tired." He looked at her and nodded. "Yeah, so far everyone seems to be complaining about lack of sleep to me. Unless it's effecting only this part of town, I would assume it's causing insomnia to anyone who can see it." Or at least he just thought it was that, of course he coudln't be sure, but he had looked it up a bit last night and people seemed to be complaining about it . "Something in the water? I don't think so." He said, giving her a smile. It was funny to him at least. "I would say it's probably the type of rays that might be coming from the aurora. I mean I'm not sure about the regular one, but since this one is weird, and it is weird for this place, maybe looking at it, it's somehow sending weird signals into our brain, that make it unable for us to sleep. I mean, it would be like artificial screens right? The tv and computer and stuff. When you have trouble going to sleep, people tend to recommend turning those off half-an-hour before going to bed. It could be the same sort of thing, where it's tricking our brains somehow, but because we're unable to sleep, it's even worse than just having trouble going to sleep." He wasn't sure what he was saying at this point. He mostly felt like he was rambling incoherently. He couldn't be sure after all, he was just so out of it. "Yeah... yeah it is. Let me close up the store and then we can go out." What did he just agree to? He wasn't sure. But it seemed like it was time to close at least, and she was the only customer in the store, making sure that everything was where it was supposed to be. Thank goodness they had daily checklists, otherwise he probably would have forgotten half of what he needed to do.
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Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 8:26 am
"You really think it's the aurora? But it's so pretty… Seems odd that something that beautiful could be messing with our brains, don't you think?" The question was honest; she didn't doubt Derrick or his theory, she just wasn't sure how to understand it alongside the docile beauty of the aurora. There had to be something else behind it, right? Some kind of evil force that was manipulating it and using it to make people into insomniac zombies? She hoped so; she didn't want to think the aurora itself was the culprit. Still, she excused herself to the front of the store after her purchase.
Lovi waited with the patience of someone who actually passed out on their feet. She leaned against the corner by the door and nodded off thusly, leaving the store quiet for a few minutes before she startled awake. By then, Derrick already counted the till and locked up all the necessary drawers, leaving Lovi to excuse herself back outside for the main gate.
When Derrick caught up to her, she had another question handy. "So what do you think we should do? If it's the aurora… Uhm. How do we deal with that?" Even though she could power up into Lieutenant Chrysoprase, that didn't really help the fact that the aurora was out in space. Sure, she could jump higher, but not that high. "It would totally suck for this thing to ruin winter break," she sighed as she stepped outside. Lovi held the door long enough for Derrick to come out with her.
Already a gust sailed through town, carrying flurries. Aurora lights danced in the snow.
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Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 5:49 pm
Derrick raised an eyebrow at her. "A lot of pretty things are actually very dangerous. Like..." He was trying to come up with a good example. He didn't want to say serial killers, but it was the first thing that sprang to mind. "Like... a lot of fish. A lot of the pretty ones are pretty poisonous." That was a thing, right? His brain was not being to kind about this lack of sleep, and it was starting to show. He was slightly surprised that he wasn't as cranky as he thought he would be. However eventually he followed her outside and listened to her question. He smiled at her. "Well I'm not sure. There's really no way to get rid of the light. Though maybe sending a rocket to blow up there and try and disperse the light might work." No it wouldn't, but he didn't know how to deal with this aurora either. He rubbed his hand against his face, trying to warm it up and possibly wake himself up a bit more, though the cold helped with that, a little. If he got too cold though he might just nod off. "I hope it doesn't. I don't think I can go more than a few days without sleep." Didn't that kill people? Not being able to get any REM sleep at all? He was sure there was something about that out there. "You want me to... walk you home or something? Or maybe we can try and walk around and see if that makes us feel a bit better?" Maybe they could get some sleeping pills and see if those worked at the local pharmacy? Strickenized We can probably end this in a couple more posts if you want?
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Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2018 9:07 am
"Wow, that's a major bummer." Aquariums were one of her interests as a low maintenance pet (seriously, she didn't have to pet them or take them outside or clean up after them), but she didn't put too much research into it since she couldn't have one at Romano's. Changing the water and accidentally being bitten? Stung? By those fish would suck majorly.
"Hoooooh," Lovi sighed dramatically. zshe wanted to sleep again, and since this aurora thing was causing all the trouble, it made sense that their hands were tied. And rockets were expensive.
"One of my cousins was talking about that earlier. She said we could only go something like a week without sleep? So if this goes on much longer, we should take a bus out of town maybe and stay somewhere else for a while. If you don't have anywhere to stay… Maybe I can talk my cousin into taking you. She's got tons of space. And tons of kids, but that's how the family goes." She knew that was her fate someday — to settle down and have a bunch of kids with a guy she married — but she wanted to push that fate further and further off. Boys were cute, but she hadn't found one that cute yet. And her dad was getting impatient.
Her face lit up at his suggestion. "Actually, yeah. We can make sure the other person doesn't start walking into traffic by mistake, you know?" Though that sounded pretty good… Maybe they could sleep if they got knocked out like that.
Nah. Too morbid. Besides, practically no one was driving anymore.
So she tried to hook her elbow around his and walk the well-memorized distance back to Romano's. "Thanks for doing this, by the way. It's really sweet! And I promise it's not a super long walk, but…" She cut herself off with a yawn. She intended to talk his ear off the entire way home.
Maybe it'd keep them both awake.
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