Nine Swords

The filth was strangely beautiful, as long as she kept her distance. Waiting for ArcyCiern to arrive to document the scene, she allowed herself to be mesmerised by the play of reflections and shadows as it slowly mutated on the surface of the dimly lit swimming pool. It felt like being in a warm womb. She saw vine tendrils, rope coils, umbilical cords, the face of a porcupine, shirts blowing on a washing line, the hairstyle of Elvis Presley. She shook her head and roused herself. With a wry grin she wondered what Rorschach would have made of her imaginings.

With a mouthful of fried egg from her full English vegetarian breakfast, she ponders her next move. As she’d walked to the café she’d spotted the boarded up shop next to a “designer” piercing and tattoo emporium: pay eye-watering prices to have your body mutilated by self-aggrandising sadists. She got that for free most missions.

The shop was called ‘Magic Carpets’, it’s name painted in faded mock-egyptian letters across the frontage. Superficially it seemed to have been closed for years, but there was a new padlock and maybe a curtain swayed from a dirty upstairs window as she went past.

Physiotherapy, counselling, positive mental outlook training, rest, Prozac, a Beatles cover band - none of it had worked for Floryn. In the end, all that was needed was time, and the love of a good dog. A really, really smelly dog.

In the depths of Floryn’s depression Oswald had stunk like a physical manifestation of Floryn’s mind state. She had taken to wearing her CDC gas-mask when she visited, but he didn’t seem to get the hint. It just meant that he couldn’t hear a word that she was saying, even when the words were “Give that stinky dog a bath”.

And again, I shouldn't read these at the office!

Here are some new words for you:
penthouse
metal detector
diaphragm

Katelin took herself off to the restroom get the taste of the atrocious coffee out of her mouth. Squally gusting wind was blowing bits of garbage around Hawkins airport and Mellified tried to picture her missing years, her mind whirling like the Burger King wrappers. She resolved to speak to Richard Sonnac as soon as they got back. Katelin returned smelling fresh as a daisy and with a conscious effort to lighten the mood, Mellified turned to her “So Katelin, it seems you and I have a similar problem with the airport metal detector and our same brand under-garments”

haha thank you :p

Coughing and spluttering and choking. Eyes streaming. Nasal passages inflamed. A miasma so thick you could almost cut it with knife. Was this a new security feature that had been recently installed? She prayed for the lift to the Penthouse to speed up and lifted her watery eyes to the floor display - only a few to go. She noticed that her group mates were suffering as badly as her, with one noticeable exception.

Mercifully, the doors opened with a hiss and with a gasp they staggered out of confinement. She raised her eyebrows and mouthed to Antanahe:

“Floryn’s new aftershave?”

Double length drabble using up all my words. Would anybody else like to play? (Instructions linked in the first post of this thread.) I could do with some more words please.

It was the military cap that did it. A wave of melancholy swept over her and she experienced a choking sensation in her diaphragm. Covered in dust, cobwebs and dead spiders, the cap had been lost behind the changing room lockers. It was Floryn’s.

She remembered her succession of teammates and wondered where they were now - missing in action or wandering the streets shouting incoherently at security cameras or perhaps even laying low in Belgium if she had correctly deciphered that cryptic postcard. She missed them.

Gradually she took in her surroundings and felt better - the smells of Katelin’s muscle pain cream, Durendal’s mints and ShockG’s discarded socks - these had been constants since she had joined. There were new constants now like Helixia’s chewing gum, the glasses case that Ishco was always forgetting. Small changes made by the new members constantly altered the atmosphere of the changing room and these might become the new normal, or might gradually fade away leaving a thin patina of memories.

Sighing, she dusted off the cap - it wasn’t one of Floryn’s favourites. She hung it back up on a peg next to all the new hats. Perhaps it would be worn again one day.

Shelter
Device
Fertilizer

The promotion with awesome new powers brings awesome responsibility - and awesome headaches. Especially at 2:19am.

“So - if I wait 7 minutes for Lydia Darling (Darling? - pain in the spooky arse more like) to finish her mission, then I can give this sack of fertilizer to Liam Callahan to make explosives and hopefully not upset The Nameless One (still haven’t had time to find out what she’s called), and after I’ve got another 13 minutes to wait for luckless Martin Espina (numerology? - pah!)”

Her brain was overloaded, so, quietly, she set everybody to ‘Incapacitated’ and dragged herself off to bed.


* ABOUT DRABBLES *

Drabbles are 100 word long pieces which give some background to your character in SW:L. For added fun they must contain a word (fertilizer was the word in the Drabble above) which another cabal member has supplied to you. Anyone can play - sign up in the Coffee Bar forum and request a starter pack of words! Put [DRABBLES] and your character name in the title.