(Immediately following the Bottled event)

Being dead was a**. Being stretched out into an elephant in the middle of a thousand shattering bottles was maybe worse. For Ella, the jury was still out. She landed back in the park like she’d never been kidnapped, staring blankly at the rest of the superpowered gangsters as they chatted about and dispersed. Ella had never seen so many--she thought she might have seen Nembus in the crowd, but there was no way to make contact without looking maximum suspicioso, and besides, Ella had already done her duty by rooting around in a couple of graves and then taking a nap. She wasn’t on the clock--why did she need to worry about being professional, networking with work friends? Nembus was Nembus, she was the only one out of them that had actual magical powers, she would be just fine.

Yawning, she dusted herself off and stood eventually, trying to gauge the time of early morning by the hint of impending sunrise peeking through the trees. 5:30? Maybe 6? It was hard to tell--the sunrises and sunsets were timed a little differently in Rochester, and Ella had never been the sort of girl to pay them much mind. She almost thought to fidget with her phone but remembered she only had about ten percent battery left--given that she had her phone on silent (she always did, she wasn’t some savage), she had no way of knowing that in her pocket the little device refreshed, noticed unsent messages, and fired them all off at once:

To: Mr. Fantastic
hey
so uhh
I died again
RIP
You can have my mouse and keyboard if you want


When she started to feel a little less numb, Ella shuffled over to her originally intended destination at the bus-stop, adjusting her headphones to account for the cold. In silence, she waited for the next bus going anywhere but the park, pulling her hands into the sleeves of her hoodie. Feeling left her fingers in the chill, which matched the rest of her by the time the bus arrived, and her expression was blank as she boarded, unsure of where exactly she planned to head except that she was done with where she’d been.

Which was how she’d gotten to Destiny City in the first place, if she took the time to put thought to it--she’d been done with Rochester, and she’d seen a scholarship that lined up with her resume and took it, along with the first flight out of town. Her parents had cooed and congratulated their little Ella Fran, finally having some incentive to step out into the world and make something of herself, but the truth was that Ella didn’t have anything planned after the leaving part. All the rest was up in the air, and that was how she’d ended up being dual enrolled at a college and some kind of internship with a shadowy-spy organization powered by Soylent Green.

(Soylent Green was people. It was an older reference, but it checked out. Ella knew her memes.)

It wasn’t that she particularly minded being in a shadowy-spy organization, except that all she’d really wanted to do was go out, drink energy drinks and play MOBAs until she hit Diamond or her fingers fell off. Doing the rest of the responsible adult thing was hard.

So she decided not to adult for the night...morning...whatever liminal hour she’d found herself. Instead, she hopped off the bus line near a twenty-four hour convenience store she knew by her apartment, paid for two cans of locally sourced jet-fuel energy drinks, and then shuffled her way down the block to her apartment, abandoned by all but her for break. Ella had roommates, in theory--they stayed out of her way, and she stayed out of theirs. She’d soundproofed enough of her room to not bother them with her music and not get bothered by them having friends, and all in all it was a peaceful relationship as long as the dishes were done. With nobody else home, though, Ella was greeted to the sound of nothing and the sight of a long line of cups she’d previously left by the sink, the only evidence of her eating in the last couple of days. She yawned, continued to ignore them, and nudged the door behind her closed with a searching foot. In a sitcom, this was where the quirky roommate would come barging out and say something about the cute neighbor next door, but nobody came. She was at peace with that, she supposed.

Ella wasn’t bothered that she’d died. Was she bothered? She picked at the emptiness in her chest like it was a scab, like if it bled she would have a reason to cry and then at least she could acknowledge that it had happened and been real and that she wasn’t just crafting up delusions of impending mortality again. But nothing bled. She bit her lip. Ella wasn’t bothered.

She shuffled her way to her bedroom and slumped onto her bed, determined to do nothing but curl up into an empty burrito and hope that the blanket cocoon would warm her up enough to process what she’d just witnessed. In the process of wiggling, her phone tumbled out of her pocket--she’d been so numb she’d forgotten to check, and it looked like she had some new messag--

Oh. Oh no. She’d texted Reid at four in the morning about being dead and getting her keyboard. It was as heartfelt as Ella could be when facing her own death, and it was embarrassing and there was no undoing it, it was just there for him to see when he woke up and there was nothing she could do about it. At least, nothing she could do about the messages that were already there:

To: Mr. Fantastic

false alarm haha
I got better
don’t touch my mouse/keyboard
nerd


There. Just a touch of name-calling, and there was no way Reid would ever suspect that her first round of texts had anything to do with a fluttery feeling in her ribcage that either made her want to sing or vomit. The jury was still out on that one, too.

Ella popped open the first fizzy can of jet fuel and laid down on her side, feeling like a chrysalis made out of sherpa and cotton. Maybe when she emerged as a beautiful butterfly she would stop doing stupid s**t like texting her hot coworker about the existential crisis she was having.

One could only hope.

(WC: 1116)

Ghouliboo