Effy Stonem (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
itsconceptual) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
undergrounds2016-03-16 12:20 pm
itsconceptual) wrote in undergrounds2016-03-16 12:20 pm
Entry tags:
[open] march prompts - will match prose OR brackets
i. a nightclub
Nights with live music are better for dancing. People come up with any number of reasons why -- the feel of the bass beating in your heart, the energy from the band mixing with the energy of the crowd. It's all bullshit, really. Esoteric crap that people come up with when the night's mostly over and they're too high to think they sound pretentious. It's all because of the noise. Because when the amps are pumped up to max, when the singers are screaming into their mics, it's too loud to worry about thinking. The couple in the corner making out, two friends having a row...it doesn't matter. You mute it and just fucking dance.
Which she does, as much as possible. Moving. Aggressively ignoring all of the other shit. Beat after beat, partner after partner, staying only long enough to make them want her and then vanishing into the crowd again. Later, you'll find her at the bar, ordering a round of shots --vodka, from the look of it-- and then immediately downing one of them.
ii. outside a tube station
"Listen, Ms. Stonem," Effy, she silently corrects, watching them. "You're a lovely young lady, but I'm just not sure you...mesh...with our vision." She wasn't really listening for the rest. There were some half-hearted platitudes --"we really do wish you all the best," "we're really very sorry," "you've been so valuable," things like that-- and she probably muttered a quick "thanks" before going to pack her things, but it didn't matter. Not really. Temping in a finance office was never really her dream job, of course, but it just sort of...seemed like something you were meant to do. "Get out into the real world" and everything. Well, so much for that. She doesn't realize until she's off the train that one of the briefs she'd been putting together is still in her bag.
As soon as she's off the train, she pulls out a cigarette, flicks open her lighter -- it doesn't work. Nice.
She can be found outside of the station, unlit cigarette still in her mouth, tearing pages out of the brief, folding them into abstract shapes and then tossing them into a pile on the ground.
iii. late night wandering
It's always the same dream that wakes her, so late into the night that it borders on early. A door, appearing in an empty wall of her flat, opening into blackness, calling her forward. Beckoning. Sometimes, she thinks she can see herself, staring back at her from the other side of it, a faint silhouette in the darkness.
"You don't know me," she hears, her own voice coming from that other self's mouth, "and you never will."
She takes a step toward it, and then another, and then--
Awake, gasping, she shoots up and stares at the wall. No door. She reaches for a lighter, remembers the stern words of the landlady --no smoking at all times, god, why had she picked this place, again?-- and slips outside. It's raining -- something she doesn't seem to notice until she realizes she's forgot her keys. In her flat. With a door that automatically locks behind her.
"...Fuck."
And that's the story of how Effy is now wandering around alone, soaked and smoking, aimlessly waiting until someone happens to open the door -- or the management office opens. One or the other.
iv. wildcard
(any time during the month. choose your own starter, or talk to me on plurk [![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
posolutely] and i'll set up another prompt!)
Nights with live music are better for dancing. People come up with any number of reasons why -- the feel of the bass beating in your heart, the energy from the band mixing with the energy of the crowd. It's all bullshit, really. Esoteric crap that people come up with when the night's mostly over and they're too high to think they sound pretentious. It's all because of the noise. Because when the amps are pumped up to max, when the singers are screaming into their mics, it's too loud to worry about thinking. The couple in the corner making out, two friends having a row...it doesn't matter. You mute it and just fucking dance.
Which she does, as much as possible. Moving. Aggressively ignoring all of the other shit. Beat after beat, partner after partner, staying only long enough to make them want her and then vanishing into the crowd again. Later, you'll find her at the bar, ordering a round of shots --vodka, from the look of it-- and then immediately downing one of them.
ii. outside a tube station
"Listen, Ms. Stonem," Effy, she silently corrects, watching them. "You're a lovely young lady, but I'm just not sure you...mesh...with our vision." She wasn't really listening for the rest. There were some half-hearted platitudes --"we really do wish you all the best," "we're really very sorry," "you've been so valuable," things like that-- and she probably muttered a quick "thanks" before going to pack her things, but it didn't matter. Not really. Temping in a finance office was never really her dream job, of course, but it just sort of...seemed like something you were meant to do. "Get out into the real world" and everything. Well, so much for that. She doesn't realize until she's off the train that one of the briefs she'd been putting together is still in her bag.
As soon as she's off the train, she pulls out a cigarette, flicks open her lighter -- it doesn't work. Nice.
She can be found outside of the station, unlit cigarette still in her mouth, tearing pages out of the brief, folding them into abstract shapes and then tossing them into a pile on the ground.
iii. late night wandering
It's always the same dream that wakes her, so late into the night that it borders on early. A door, appearing in an empty wall of her flat, opening into blackness, calling her forward. Beckoning. Sometimes, she thinks she can see herself, staring back at her from the other side of it, a faint silhouette in the darkness.
"You don't know me," she hears, her own voice coming from that other self's mouth, "and you never will."
She takes a step toward it, and then another, and then--
Awake, gasping, she shoots up and stares at the wall. No door. She reaches for a lighter, remembers the stern words of the landlady --no smoking at all times, god, why had she picked this place, again?-- and slips outside. It's raining -- something she doesn't seem to notice until she realizes she's forgot her keys. In her flat. With a door that automatically locks behind her.
"...Fuck."
And that's the story of how Effy is now wandering around alone, soaked and smoking, aimlessly waiting until someone happens to open the door -- or the management office opens. One or the other.
iv. wildcard
(any time during the month. choose your own starter, or talk to me on plurk [
no subject
He takes out his lighter again and examines it. It's metal and rather embarrassingly emblazoned with a Union Jack, very much the kind of thing you buy that one uncle you forgot to get a souvenir for at the airport duty free. "I think this one might actually belong to my flatmate, but I'm keeping it unless he asks for it back. Found it in the kitchen a couple weeks back." It seems like something Matt would like. Matt's still in the Anglophile phase of his life as an expat--a few more weeks in London and Simon figures that'll be beaten out of him.
After a beat, he adds, awkwardly, "I'm Simon, by the way."
no subject
Her eyes are on the lighter as he flips it between his fingers. It's fairly nice, imagery aside, but a faintly amused smile flicks across her face at his idle explanation. "Finders keepers, yeah?" she suggests, tone a little dry, smoke in her words. It doesn't really matter whose it is, in the end, but the fact that it looks so...souvenir-esque is a little funny. Either he or his flatmate -- one of them must be either a tourist, or maybe a bit of a punk.
"Effy." She's quiet for a moment, breathing another lungful of smoke into the sky, and then nods at him. "You coming or going?"
no subject
Adulting is hard on no sleep.
"Going. First night off in over a week. You?"
Something about Effy makes Simon deeply uncomfortable; he doesn't quite know what. She's stunningly pretty, which doesn't help his self-consciousness any, but it isn't that. There's something about her that feels simultaneously extremely familiar and intensely foreign. Something about the way she smells.
...Oh.
Fuck.
Here he is trying to chat up a pretty girl, and she's fae. Because of course she is.
no subject
"A week?" She looks a little surprised, eyebrows lifting. "Very industrious of you."
Between drags on cigarettes and probably predictably awkward first interaction moments, something Simon might notice is that despite the airy, aloof demeanor, and despite the fact that she is indeed fae, she's also making an aggressive attempt to act normal. Or rather, to act human. Jobs, coffees, taking the train -- normal things that normal people do. She knows what she is, and she knows that there's something strange about him, too. But that doesn't mean she has to give a fuck about it.
"Also going," she adds, shrugging a bit. "Taking a permanent vacation from work."
In other words, sacked. Another very normal thing.
no subject
Oh, he knows all about trying to be normal. Even when he's up to his eyeballs in supernatural shit--his previous career at Starbucks is now a long-distant memory, leaving him fully reliant on Sylvia Redbright and her Night Council for income--he still desperately clings to the illusion that he's just a normal student who has to work nights to afford a flat near UCL.
He whistles faintly when she admits she's either just been fired from her job or left it willingly. The way she looks when she talks about it, he's willing to bet the former.
"I'm a bit jealous."