[ Shit all over modern, you try and get your waterlogged brain to come up with anything that isn't amphibious in this weather. ]
[ But likewise, there's a moment where Beverly falls so totally still, even her muscles forget to shiver. A moment where her blood turns to ice and freezes her the rest of the way to solid in an instant of gut-dropping, head-reeling terror. It hadn't been what she'd thought it'd been, she'd made (double—triple—quadruple) sure of that, but alien nature had one hell of a cosmic sense of humor, didn't it? Or perhaps alien nature was what they'd all had dropped on them in the first place, a hundred million years ago. Who the hell even knows what those two had seen down in the smoke-choked clubhouse. Who the hell could even say it was real (besides, well... all of them). A creature that burrowed down inside your thoughts and used them all against you—fitting, isn't it, that it would take the shape of a spider (big fat black spider, drains the size of freeways) getting all eight of its legs so into your grey matter you don't even notice the mandibles. It felt just shy of familiar, but far past ugly. Creeping in the drains just out of sight. ]
[ There's no spider, down in the bushes. No place big enough for one to hide between the scattering of trees, playing Pied Piper with an old Irish cop. Nary a mention of shapeshifting to be found, back up in the old space library. But quite possibly, were it not for one well-armed gentleman leaving her with the odd seed of hope that some old loon should be down planetside, she might have turn tail and ran right there. ]
[ There's still a moment that runs cold, palpable as a split second of dead silence at Houston, when the instant after zero runs a second too long, the moment a cockpit, a control room, and a nation simultaneously accept that it could all explode right there on the launch pad. Richie Tozier would have Boxer to thank for liftoff, in the bitter end. That fright doesn't quite go nuclear, and when she tries to run after all, it's not away down the road, but chancing straight down off the path, sloshing and skidding down into the real thick of the muck and lunging into the man with all the momentum she can't quite halt. He deserves the smack just as much as he deserves the hug. ]
Oh— Why can't you say hello like a normal goddamn human being?! Everything's looneytunes here and you know it!
[ It meets the crook of his shoulder halfway between blazing frustration and fluttering laughter, as if she knows the answer full well and loves to hate it. It'd been only a handful of days since she'd seen him last, and only a handful of hours she'd seen him before that in nearly thirty-odd years, but if she needed something familiar to cling to then... Now, well... Perhaps if she felt a little ten again, like she had (like they all had) sat around Arthur's Round Table in that darkened library—even just for a moment—all this fantasy nonsense could finally go down smooth. Spoonful of sugar and all that. ]
I've been looking all over for you, [ she can't help but huff, softer now. The beeping in too many words came nostalgic, but the rest of it, she lets it melt her fragile nerves in spite of the chilling rain. Finally found the other little lab rat that got away, the other one too dumb and antsy to keep sleeping through the post-apocalypse. ]
hey either close the tab or square up ho.
[ But likewise, there's a moment where Beverly falls so totally still, even her muscles forget to shiver. A moment where her blood turns to ice and freezes her the rest of the way to solid in an instant of gut-dropping, head-reeling terror. It hadn't been what she'd thought it'd been, she'd made (double—triple—quadruple) sure of that, but alien nature had one hell of a cosmic sense of humor, didn't it? Or perhaps alien nature was what they'd all had dropped on them in the first place, a hundred million years ago. Who the hell even knows what those two had seen down in the smoke-choked clubhouse. Who the hell could even say it was real (besides, well... all of them). A creature that burrowed down inside your thoughts and used them all against you—fitting, isn't it, that it would take the shape of a spider (big fat black spider, drains the size of freeways) getting all eight of its legs so into your grey matter you don't even notice the mandibles. It felt just shy of familiar, but far past ugly. Creeping in the drains just out of sight. ]
[ There's no spider, down in the bushes. No place big enough for one to hide between the scattering of trees, playing Pied Piper with an old Irish cop. Nary a mention of shapeshifting to be found, back up in the old space library. But quite possibly, were it not for one well-armed gentleman leaving her with the odd seed of hope that some old loon should be down planetside, she might have turn tail and ran right there. ]
[ There's still a moment that runs cold, palpable as a split second of dead silence at Houston, when the instant after zero runs a second too long, the moment a cockpit, a control room, and a nation simultaneously accept that it could all explode right there on the launch pad. Richie Tozier would have Boxer to thank for liftoff, in the bitter end. That fright doesn't quite go nuclear, and when she tries to run after all, it's not away down the road, but chancing straight down off the path, sloshing and skidding down into the real thick of the muck and lunging into the man with all the momentum she can't quite halt. He deserves the smack just as much as he deserves the hug. ]
Oh— Why can't you say hello like a normal goddamn human being?! Everything's looneytunes here and you know it!
[ It meets the crook of his shoulder halfway between blazing frustration and fluttering laughter, as if she knows the answer full well and loves to hate it. It'd been only a handful of days since she'd seen him last, and only a handful of hours she'd seen him before that in nearly thirty-odd years, but if she needed something familiar to cling to then... Now, well... Perhaps if she felt a little ten again, like she had (like they all had) sat around Arthur's Round Table in that darkened library—even just for a moment—all this fantasy nonsense could finally go down smooth. Spoonful of sugar and all that. ]
I've been looking all over for you, [ she can't help but huff, softer now. The beeping in too many words came nostalgic, but the rest of it, she lets it melt her fragile nerves in spite of the chilling rain. Finally found the other little lab rat that got away, the other one too dumb and antsy to keep sleeping through the post-apocalypse. ]