Lisa is lost when the Endless Night arrives.
Smoke is thick in the air. Even with the daylight, it's blacker than the souls who left the city.
The power has been out for weeks now. The scent of death and decay is sharp and pungent and all Lisa can remember of light and warmth and hope is gone.
She knows she had a cat, at some point. A father. She can recall broad arms and a thick wiry beard; sharp cheekbones and the sound of her name called as though being reprimanded.
The poison in the air makes you forget.
Lisa can't recall if people knew or not, before the factory blew up and took any hope of the world's survival with it. She has only fragments of life in her head, enough that she keeps staggering on, surviving, though she doesn't know if she can call it that.
Is it really surviving when it has an end, fast approaching? Or is it delaying the inevitable?
Perhaps it's simply being human.
She tries to remember if she knew what it meant, before. What it meant to be human. She can't remember anything. She thinks maybe she didn't know before the End, either. Lisa stumbles into a bar. She thinks. She shakes her head, swaying as she tries to walk across the room, the earth rumbling beneath her feet and the last remnants of life spinning in her mind. Odd visions swim together, an old saloon, a dive bar, an upscale club. She doesn't know if they're the same thing or different, if she dreamt them or lived them.
She doesn't remember if she frequented them, if she even likes the taste of the- she can't remember what it is called, the liquid that burns. She finds one intact bottle out of all the broken shards of- of the sharpness littering the floor.
She forgets how she opened it almost immediately after she does so. Brings the bottle to her lips and coughs and splutters as it splash down her throat. Perhaps she never liked it, Before.
She blindly feels around. Even if it weren't pitch-black from the Endless Night, Lisa wonders if she would be able to see anything, or if the poison in the air had scorched her eyes too badly.
She manages to shuffle her way up the stairs, gingerly running her hand along a weathered banister, careful to afford the shattered chunks full of splintered shards. Feels her way down a hallway, pausing when her fingers trail across a wooden frame and the textured surface of a painting. She traces it softly, wonders what it could be. Her knowledge of art was limited
even before her memories began slipping away like smoke.
She remembers that for a split second, before she forgets about the painting and shuffles on.
She doesn't know where she's going, but a door creaks as she pushes through it. The moment she does, she freezes in place when a voice sounds.
"Who's there?"
Lisa blinks, tilting her head at the voice. She wonders if it was raspy before, back when the air was clean- well. Cleaner.
"My name is Lisa," She says, because it's one of the few things she can remember. "Who are you? Where are we?"
"Oh, you're already far gone, aren't you?" The person laughs.
"Me too. Can't see a fucking thing." Lisa's brow knits as she shuffles forward, arms outstretched, blindly grasping at air.
Her knees hit something- a bed. Then a hand reaches out, grasps her side, then her arm, then her wrist, and yanks her down onto the mattress.
"I'm Jennie," the girl says, voice warm and filled with gratitude. "And I'm really glad you're here, Lisa."
"I might forget your name," Lisa warns her, as she carefully sits on the mattress, leg pressed up against someone else. "It's been getting worse."
