Work Text:
It is 7:40PM on a cool September Sunday, and you only ever make good decisions. You've just gotten off work, finished an objectively good and productive shift, through and through—you're hoping for a promotion soon, to have a little extra spending money for art supplies, and if this keeps up you're sure to get it—and you're still raring to go. Which is good! Because you didn't drive to work today, you walked, because you figured you could do with the exercise, and also you woke up really early.
You twirl your keyring on your finger as you walk. It's gotten kinda dark out, and you live a ways away and it'll only keep getting darker, and you're a woman walking alone in the city. If you hold it right, a key can do a lot of damage, you learned that from Tiktok. But you have to hold it right, or it'll cut the webbing between your fingers open. You can probably get it in the right position quick enough to act, you think, even if you're twirling it. And if not, the amount of keychains and charms you have on your keyring gives it enough weight to be a weapon on its own, probably. And you've got a knife and a little boxcutter in your bag. The knife is pretty dull—it's why you have the boxcutter in the first place—but a good stab will still do a lot.
So, like, you're totally safe.
The building you're passing right now is really overgrown. You look up at it curiously. It looks... really cool. You bet it looks even cooler inside. And, you've been meaning to practice environmental lighting, and you have a tiny pocket sketchbook in your bag, and you love how the city looks at night—and now you've found a place like this. You could not possibly pass this opportunity by.
You'd slowed your brisk walking pace to a stop as you thought. From where you are now, you spot a rusty side door, one that, if you tried hard enough, you could probably force open. You dart over and give it a shot.
It gives easily, easier than you were expecting—that's good, because you are not very strong! You stumble inside and immediately sneeze at the dust your sudden entrance kicked up. Oh, yeah, this place is abandoned for sure.
The city suddenly feels very silent. Maybe it's the concrete walls muffling the outside ambient noise, or maybe it's how still this place feels. There's hardly even any dust floating by in the light that filters through the broken windows, aside from what you've just disturbed. When you step forward, the sound of your sole hitting the broken tile floor echoes through the large space.
You wonder what this building used to be. There's not much left to build a conclusion from—a front desk, some torn up couches in fun shapes that probably were once brightly colored, the remains of a few computers scattered around. Looks like the lobby of any miscellaneous techy company building, given a few years to rot. Probably offices, then.
You go sit at the front desk and quickly sketch out a POV shot of the locked up front door. While you're drawing, you spot a door to a stairwell not far from the desk, and decide—well, if you're here, you might as well explore, right? And you might happen upon an intact computer, which you could sell and probably make a lot of money. And you need money. So when you finish, you begin your ascent.
You exit the stairwell on the second floor, walk down a hallway, and are met with a sleek modern office space. Would be sleek, at least, if the tiled ceiling wasn't falling apart in some places, caving with water damage in others. It's pretty, and you hope this building is left standing long enough for vines to creep in and make it green. But it's in the city, and evidently, it's already been left a couple years, so it probably won't get much longer.
You wander in and sit at one of the desks. You stare at the black screen in front of you, cracked and dusty. It reflects your face back at you. Your own eyes stare into your soul like they belong to someone else.
You lift your arms and place your hands on the keyboard. You try to imagine yourself in the future, typing away at a spreadsheet or something for 8 hours, 5 days a week. You try to imagine yourself arriving at an office you don't care about in the morning and leaving for a house you hardly live in in the evening. You struggle; you can hardly imagine working your stupid pointless fast food job much more, when you put it in terms like that.
You don't think you're getting that promotion any time soon. You'll be sluggish and task-avoidant within a couple days, regardless of how hard you wish you were working, and your supervisor, understandably, won't be happy. With how you've been lately, you're more likely to get fired. You've only had this job as long as you have because your boss likes flirting with you, and the customers like your pretty smile.
Your parents will be so disappointed. You will be more disappointed in yourself, but their disappointment will hurt more, because you don't know what else you can do. You're trying. You've been trying for years. No matter how hard you try, you've never been able to hold a job longer than a year and 9 months. You flunked out of college, doing something you like.
You could always... You've been told that online sex work is difficult, that it's more stress than it's worth, if you're just looking for a quick buck. It's called selling your body for a reason. You think you'd rather be reduced to a sex object and be good at it than be reduced to a machine and be bad at it.
But as sure as you are that there's a market for your body type, the boxcutter you keep on your person isn't for defense, and you doubt there's much of a market for that that won't land you in a psych ward or worse.
You blink. The closed-lip grin that had been gracing the screen before you five minutes ago is gone. You've replaced it with something hopeless. It strikes you, then—
You are alone.
It is 8-something-PM on a cool September Sunday. You are nearly incapable of making decisions that last. You've just gotten off work, finished the impossible third of your universe-alloted two productive shifts per month. You will crash soon. You're already crashing. It will be bad, and you without a doubt will be fired by the end of next week.
You are alone. You are doomed to not so much burn out as fizzle like a leftover sparkler dropped in a muddy puddle.
You stand. The chair you'd been sitting on doesn't roll back, its wheels all stuck. You return to the stairwell, and ascend.
The building is 6 floors tall, you think. Between the 4th and 5th, you second-guess yourself. When you reach the 5th, you decide to make a detour.
This place really is pretty. You think you might draw something. Maybe write a note, if you can think of anything to say.
You wander down the hall, eyes trailing along the baseboard on your right. You really liked your makeup today, you think absently. It looked like it might rain earlier. You hope it doesn't, because your eyeliner isn't waterproof. You have so much trouble crying that it doesn't matter, usually.
All the doors so far have been closed, so you take notice when your eyes skip over carpet where there shouldn't be. You stop and lift your head.
Past this doorway, there is a desk. On the desk sits an oddly old computer, stained and worn. Beside it lays a VR headset.
You blink. Nothing changes.
There's a faint glow coming from inside the headset.
It's on.
You enter the room and pick it up. When you turn the opening towards yourself, it's disorientingly bright compared to the dark around you. You blink a few times, squinting, in an attempt to adjust. It takes a moment.
You lift it to your face to peek inside, and