Rogue Evolution

Cat's Shadow 5.3

The hall between the peak of the stairs and Anna's room was dark and nearly silent aside from the ever-present keyboard tapping coming from Jean's room just a couple of doors down. It was dark enough that Anna needed the light of her phone to make sure she didn't slam her face into a wall. She knew perfectly well where the light switch was for the hallway, but turning them on felt a little too much like she was shining a spotlight on herself for the whole house to see.

She fumbled for the doorknob to her room, twisted it, and threw the door open. Her room beyond was nearly as dark as the hallway, aside from the blue light of a laptop sat atop Kitty's bed lowly thumping some bassy jams from its tinny speakers, and a small ember bobbing near the open window. From the dim light, Anna spotted a figure suddenly shift, and ember go dark - "What the hell are you doing here?" Anna heard Kitty's voice ask in the same tone as if Anna were holding a gun to her head.

"I live here, you freak." Anna flipped the light switch next to the door and the room was plunged into high-watt yellow light. She spotted Kitty standing with her back against the wall closest to the open window. Her eyes were wide, her hair frayed and stringy around her temples, and the shirt she wore was dotted with oil stains along the front and sleeves. "What the hell is going on with you? You look like someone drug you behind their truck."

"Why don't you answer my question first! You've been gone all night and you choose now to burst through the door?"

"Why would now be different from any other-" The lingering odor in the room finally Anna's nose. "... are you fucking smoking?"

Kitty's shoulders tensed till they were touching the lobes of her ears. "No! What business of it is yours anyway?"

"It's my business when you make my clothes and room smell like a trailer park!" Anna made to toss her backpack onto her bed when she saw something tiny - the ember from before - fly out the window in the corner of her eye. She straightened up. "What the hell was that?"

"What was what?" Kitty slammed the window shut so hard the glass visibly vibrated. She plopped down on her bed, knocking her laptop to the ground. She mumbled something, and when she bent over to grab it, something else slipped from the sheets and fell to the foot of the bed. Anna walked over and picked it up.

"Fuck - Kitty, Menthols? Really? This shit will tear a hole through your lungs." The white and blue box was ripped out of her hand.

"Mind you're own freaking business, Anna! God!" Kitty shoved the package deep below her sheets, pulled her comforter forcefully over her lower body, and dropped the half-cocked laptop on top. She adjusted the screen so it better faced her and started typing something.

Anna turned to face her own bed and gently rested her backpack atop her unmade twisted mound of blankets. She glanced at her bedside table, at the single unlit lamp, and the abandoned charging cable. Seeing the cable, she remembered the phone she was still holding and checked the charge. Anna sat on her bed in the same spot she rolled out of that morning and jammed the charging cable back into the phone's socket. The screen lit up showing the same stock image she had received it with and she watched till it returned to black. With the generic black phone case facing the ceiling, she rested her phone in the same spot she found it that morning in the pool of ample space that was her nightstand.

There was a time - not so long ago - she couldn't even find a spot big enough to put her phone on her nightstand. Back home, the little table was filled with photos of her and her Moms on vacations, of her and Jess, of the little witchy trinkets and crystals she and Jess bought with their own money at weird a new-age store Jess knew about. Now it was all gone, the photos, the trinkets, all the relics of her life before 'Rogue.' And there was no telling if she would ever see any of it, or the people, ever again. It was almost like... it never happened.