Quote:
Who knew fruit cake could be so good? A local bakery claims to have perfected their recipe and is giving away free samples. The good news? It’s delicious. The bad news? A few hours after ingestion, something strange kicks in. Suddenly, everything seems so colorful and bright. The music sounds so much better, everything tastes so much better—and then, it stops, and everything is an awful blend of everything. Lights are too bright, smells and tastes are overwhelming, music sounds like noise. You’re sick enough to throw up everything in your stomach—which is good, because within a few hours of that you finally start to feel normal again.
Hayley wasn't usually one for fruitcake. It was the sort of stodgy, old-person dessert that you suffered through because Your Auntie Homemade It and You Wouldn't Want To Hurt Her Feelings Would You. That said, though, when she heard that some bakery was giving away free samples, and further that it was actually good and didn't taste like a horrible nightmare brick of suffering, she figured that it couldn't hurt to try a little.
So she swung by in the midst of getting her holiday stuff together, takingt he time as she nibbled on the sample to scope out the bakwery's other wares. Maybe when she went to get corrupted, she'd bring some cookies, or cupcakes. Celebrate her new life with Wavellite and Bellite, welcome in the new her with some sweet treats and the people who were going to help her out afterwards.
She was feeling pretty good when she left the bakery to continue windowshopping on the streets around it, wandering among people doing after-Christmas sale buying or just enjoying the snowfall that dusted the streets. It was a nice day, as winter days went, and slightly less bitterly cold than it had been, and that was enough to make Hayley pretty happy with everything.
Right up until things started going...weird.
It was good, at first. She was willing to attribute it to a good mood, because the initial experience was everything seeming just a little brighter, a little happier, a little more magical. She hummed and skipped a little down the street, enjoying how...colorful and bright and exciting everything was. She wanted to hold onto that feeling forever, to the joy and excitement of whatever this was that she was feeling.
It couldn't last.
She'd heard Cait talk about "sensory overload" before, but she'd never really gotten what that meant until the moment everything came crashing down. All of a sudden those extra bright colors and extra cheery sounds weren't pleasant anymore -- they were too much and too loud and too grating, and Hayley felt a little bit dizzy just from the sheer amount of....of everything happening aorund her.
She started running, jogging down the street to find somewhere quieter, and finally she ducked into a back alley, but even that wasn't great because she could smell the dumpster a little farther down and she could still hear all the people on the street and even when she squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears it was too much, too much, too much--
She staggered to the dumpster and doubled over next to it, vomiting up everything in her stomach, and she felt tears pricking at her cheeks. This was....this was miserable. She wasn't sure if it all went back to the fruitcake, or what, but whatever it was, she hated it.
Slowly, she made her way out of the alley and started looking for a taxi. Honestly, all she wanted was to go home, as fast as possible, and curl up for a nice nap until all of this went away.
[506 words]
