Gloom (complete)

Snow, Falling

His arm was achy and stiff when he woke up. It had been his idea to stay at the bakery for another day. Plus, both pairs of clothing were wet from running and falling in snow, so they needed a little time to dry. He was also exhausted, dragging Jacey had, without a doubt, taken a lot out of him, although he would never admit it a loud.

Jacey, as soon as she had woken up, snatched her lighter back, propped open the bakery's backdoor and started a fire in a trashcan and set it in the bakery's doorway. She had also hung their pants and shirts next to it on a cake cooling rack.

She had vanished for a few minutes, wrapped in thin sheet, maneuvering over fallen pots, pans, and other fallen items in the bakery's kitchen and into a back office mumbling something about her foster-grandfather being a flashlight fanatic, coming back a few minutes later with three black flashlights.

"I have to change your bandages and see if you hurt your arm, " she told him. She curled her legs underneath her, sitting beside him, and pulled one of their bags against her side before looking through it.

Blain tugged his blanket tighter around him as he watched her look in the bag. She blew a couple black ringlets of hair out of her face which did nothing but cause more to fall in her face. With a frustrated sigh she blew at the hair again. He felt a smile tug at his lips, but quickly bit it away, quietly sneering.

She took a break from searching to blow breath into her red hands and onto numb fingers. She curled her digits and stared at her shaking hands before once again beginning her search for bandages in the bag. Guilt crawled up his spine and he was unable to squash like he usually did, ignore it the way he had been doing for years. He felt bad about taking the blanket while only leaving her in a thin sheet.

He hated it. He hated feeling any emotion but extreme contempt for Jacey, she had made his life more unpleasant then it had already been. Yes, indirectly and obliviously so, but he needed someone to hate. He couldn't have cared less if that was unfair and stupid. A lot of people admired Jacey, some would say it was impossible to hate her, she was honestly nice. It made him sick. It was only when he was insulting her and picking on her relentlessly, did he catch glimpses of frustration and sometimes hatred on her face, when he was sure that the girl wasn't as kind and understanding as she claimed. Although she had never once actually claimed she was nice, he hated her for it. He honestly believed she was only kind because it was much easier.

He owed her. He understood full-well, him dragging her inside after she had fainted wasn't enough to equal all of the crap she had done for him since the earthquake; that was why when she had stated she would be going to his house with him he hadn't opened his mouth and rejected her idea. He could see his fellow teen didn't want to be alone. He couldn't blame her.

He had seen what that... 'thing' had done to that man and he couldn't help but think it could happen to him. He hadn't went to touch the creature's victim like the girl had, but he could plainly see the 'thing' had purloined something from its victim. The man's body had been chalk white and stiff, his hair brown had wisps of white which didn't occur because of age, eyes dull. Husk, his body had reminded Blain of an empty husk. He wondered if he could have helped. His stomach churned.

"Ah, I found it finally," Jacey exclaimed. She held up a role of bandages and a bottle of peroxide and shook her shoulders in a tiny dance. "The bandages aren't wet too." The girl smiled a huge grin, almost as if she had forgotten all about being trapped in snowy hell, starving, mystery creatures; and how the only other person they had seen in awhile had been attacked by said mystery creatures.

Instead of being as annoyed he usually would be, he was only mildly irritated by her goofy grin. He was getting use to her, he ascertained, his mental musing accompanied by a level of unease.