PSL - On a stormy sea of moving emotion...

[beyondthisillusion]

More often than not, Danielle spent most of her days sitting on a moldering motel bedspread, a rifle across her lap, with one eye on the door to the light-tight bathroom, the other on some crappy soap opera or another. Sometimes she would drift a little. And on very rare occasions, she would dream, seeing watery images of the life she should have known, the shapes running together like water colors.

That morning, her attention wasn't quite so split.

From sunrise until the last lingering rays of sunlight vanished beneath the jagged silhouette of the city, she sat by the motel window and stared up at the sky. Why was it she'd never appreciated how beautiful it was? She could still see a sliver of the moon throughout the day, like a pale, white toenail clipping in the sky. Clouds rolled by, shaped like whipped cream on top of sundaes. And then there was the sun. The big, beautiful, perfect sun.

This...this was what she was being asked to give up. How could she? How could anyone?

But people did. It happened all the time. More often than anyone realized and decidedly more often in her family than was normal.

As the sunlight faded in the west...Danielle wondered if she would ever see it again.

Comments

[soaringeverhigher]

He was moving as soon as the lights started to go. Observation was telling him as much as he needed to know in the moment: the cryptid only moved when no one was looking, and it was fast. Shawn couldn't be much faster, but he could do something.

That something, as it happened, was reaching into a pocket with his free hand for his mini flashlight. Not the most powerful little thing, but reliable, better than these shitty fluorescents.

If it couldn't hide, it couldn't move. Shawn balanced the flashlight on top of the gun's barrel, pointed at the cryptid like a spotlight.

"Wanna see who blinks first, bitch?"

[beyondthisillusion]

Being choked to death by an extra-dimensional angel was decidedly not the way that Danielle wanted to go. She let out a few strangled noises, trying to breathe. But the flashlight helped. She grabbed hold of the statue's wrist and pulled herself up. All those chin-ups Dad made her do paid off. She couldn't escape the statue's grasp, but at least she could breathe again.

You know, for as long as her upper body arm-strength could hold out, anyway.

"It's a Weeping Angel," she gasped. "Bullets aren't going to do anything. Won't even make it mad."

[soaringeverhigher]

Right. So the stony exterior wasn't just a Look. Maybe if he had an AK-47 instead of a handgun, or a few sticks of dynamite...

Couldn't think about that right now. Gotta work with what's around.

"Gotta be something around here that can break it." Industrial appliances and all. Shawn turned his head, but not so far that he couldn't spot the cryptid out of the corner of his eye.

[beyondthisillusion]

For the first time, Danielle thought of a reason why it would be super useful to be a vampire. Then she wouldn't have to blink. As it was,s he came up with some sort of strange system, trying to blink one eye and then the other, so the creature couldn't come back to life and crush her windpipe.

"Extreme cold can crack stone," she wheezed. "If they have a sub-zero walk-in...or something."

Her kingdom for liquid nitrogen.

[soaringeverhigher]

No dice, not in a dive like this. Shit. Cold, cold... Shawn looked in the other direction, and saw a flash of red in the corner of his vision.

Fire extinguisher. Would it be cold enough? Fuck knows. But it was their best shot for now.

"Stay right there!" As if she'd move. "Or — y'know!" Shut up. He was focused on backing away, not taking his eyes off the thing any more than he had to. On the way, he glimpsed a big, cast-iron skillet. Good to know.

Once he had a hand on the extinguisher, things went a lot faster. Shawn raced back as he pulled the pin out, then stuck the end of the nozzle right on the thing's throat — one of its thinnest points — and opened fire.

[beyondthisillusion]

Danielle didn't so much as see herself drop--her eyes were definitely open and she definitely wasn't blinking--so much as feel it. In the thick chemical cloud from the nozzle of the fire extinguisher, her stomach fell out from under her and the next thing she knew, she hit the floor hard.

But, considering the fact her windpipe was intact...she couldn't complain.

She pulled out her revolver and started shooting at the damn thing, hoping it would be cold enough to shatter.

...probably not, but who cared?

What alarmed her was that the cloud was making it hard to see. Not as much of a problem, she realized, if she had super awesome vampire senses.