Juniper, an empath, fights to save two strangers after reality gives way to a hellscape on Earth. When chaos tears apart the city, she settles in with the darkness. Her job as a sex worker makes for easy living, as she can anticipate client emotion...
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There was a knock at the door. Who knew Juniper was at the hotel? No one.
Has to be the maid.
No one announced themselves as "housekeeper" or "room service". Just silence while Juniper decided whether or not to open her door. Then it occurred to her the boy from the street could have followed her the few blocks down to the hotel. She didn't feel the perverse excitement that belonged to the boy. What she was sensing was sadness and ...regret. Couldn't have been the molester from before.
Juniper guessed who it was before he spoke through the door.
"It's Christopher."
Christopher. Her estranged husband.
The man she had given up her life for to start a new one. Not that Juniper's old life had been overly fabulous, but it had been hers. Because of his inability to cope with their dying world, she'd had to start over a third time. Good thing prostitutes were in high demand no matter the social condition of things.
Condition of things.
The condition of things had been Juniper's most motivating factor when leaving Christopher.
You're too drunk right now, so maybe I'll give this note to you later.
When you drink like this, it worries me. In truth, it breaks my heart.
If this goes on, I don't know how much longer I can be on this road with you.
This is part of the reason I tried to let you go before.
I knew in my gut that you would do this. I knew you would hurt me. I just didn't know how...This must be it.
And still I love you. It makes me weak and a coward to withhold confronting you. I wonder if I'll even give you this note. Most likely, I will just repress my unhappy state, hoping that you'll change. But this is you, isn't it?
Juniper hadn't given Christopher the note the first time he had come home drunk, or even the second time. In all other areas of her life, she wasn't one to let things continue to happen. With Christopher, she didn't know what she was doing. She let him keep on drinking because she was afraid to be without him. And she was also stupid because she believed he would change.
Oh, he changed. He changed right into an asshole. His normally blue aura became a dingy yellow. All his feelings of love, kindness, and humor corrupted into grating waves of emotions Juniper hardly recognized as human.
She had tried reading animal emotions before. The experiment had failed every time. Every so often though, she would get a flash of happiness or anger from a cat or a dog. As a child, Juniper had felt something coming from the gorilla habitat at the zoo. A large gorilla once stared straight at her, and she stared right back. Its feelings were so clear that she could practically hear its thoughts: the gorilla was bored. Below the mellow feelings, there was anger. At the core of many of its strange emotions, Juniper knew there would be anger.
On one end, she was fascinated with the encounter. On the other, she was frightened of the implications. While apes and humans were different, they weren't too far apart genetically. Obviously, the difference wasn't huge if Juniper could sense their emotions so clearly. What separated humans from apes (in her estimation) was the anger. Humans had plenty of their own anger, but it wasn't an underlying emotion in all of their actions. Being inside of the feelings of the creature made her see there was a veil, a very thin veil. Lately, Juniper sensed the veil was disappearing, for everyone. If she really thought about it, Christopher's anger (and even the boy's anger) closely resembled what she had felt that day in the gorilla habitat.
"Can I come in?"
He didn't sound (or feel) drunk. It was probably safe to let him inside. Juniper opened the door.
For a drunkard, Christopher looked remarkably sober. His hair was combed, his buttoned down shirt was clean, and his khaki pants were unsoiled by beer or piss. It was like looking at the man she had married, instead of the monster he had become.
"How did you know I was staying here?"
Juniper didn't step aside to let him in, nor did Christopher try joining her.
"I saw you in the lobby when you checked in downstairs."
It didn't make sense. Christopher had already been in the hotel, but it didn't explain how he knew which door to knock on.
"Yes, but how did you find my room?"
Christopher found his shoes interesting. "I followed you.'
"And how long have you been doing that?"
He looked up. "Sorry?"
"You heard me. No one knew I was here. Except for you. How long have you been following me?"
Christopher appeared confused. Juniper delved deeper into his emotions; his appearance wasn't deceiving. A perk of her power was that it made her a human lie detector. Through and through, he was confused, not conflicted like when he was lying. Christopher hadn't been stalking her as she had feared.
"June, I've been living here for a couple of weeks now. It's not safe at our house anymore."
Our house. He was still thinking of it as "their" house, even though she had lived in it for a mere three months.
"It's not safe for you here either. Fuck off."
She slammed the door in his face.
It was necessary to cut the conversation short, because Juniper could feel herself relenting, even as she told herself to hold back, to not care. Not caring about a man she had loved for almost a decade was hard. She wanted to ask what had happened to make their (his) house unsafe, but the question would have opened her up to asking more of him than she needed.
Juniper grabbed her bag and was ready to leave the hotel when she remembered, there was no where else in the city for her to go. Leemo's place wasn't an option. He hadn't let her crash since Nieto's death. Everyone else she knew was either gone, or dead.
There was one place she could go to. Christopher's mansion. He was here, that meant it was empty. He had told her it wasn't safe, but it only wasn't safe to him. Juniper knew how to handle herself. She could make it safe.
She stood by the door, one hand ready to turn the knob. After a moment, her hand fell away and she collapsed on the bed. The thought of another trek on foot wasn't appealing. In fact, it was exhausting. Juniper wanted, no needed, to sleep.
Tomorrowshe would force herself to move on. Tomorrow she would walk the ten miles southto get to Christopher's house, and she would make the house her home. Hers.
****
A/N: Going through the city Juniper? Not a smart move at this point, but we'll see how it goes!
Dedicated to a new follower, Ninja_Socks, a fantasy writer with titles such as The Faerie Ring, The Troll, and The Forest Complex:
