ArchivedLogs:Vignette - Forgetful

Vignette - Forgetful
Dramatis Personae Melinda, Kate, Nzinga, Tove
In Absentia	2013-11-11 Updates on Mel's place. (Part of Infected TP.)
Location <NYC> Melinda's Apartment - Lower East Side
The apartment is composed of four bedrooms, two baths, a living room and an entry space attached to the kitchen, near the door. That kitchen is covered in tile, from floor to countertop to back splash on the wall, all white, with light, thin blue stems and flowers. The cabinets are newish, with blond wood kept meticulously clean of fingerprints. It is also outfitted with an excellent coffee maker, or two, with all the accoutrement to go with it. The living room is mainly furnished by found pieces, two chairs and a couch. None of it was constructed at the same time, but it all has been reupholstered with the same cloth, the surfaces colored similarly and with a regular weave. The wood has all been refinished as well, dark and able to hide stains well. The walls are sage green. A cursory inspection shows that four people live in this four bedroom apartment, so it's difficult to pick out what belongs to any one person. Melinda is forgetting something.  She knows it, but she can’t put her finger on it.  Times being what they, it aren’t helping much. She tried keeping the café open for a while, brewing coffee for stragglers who just needed to get out of their apartments, using a locked door and a door bell she purchased from a local hardware store to screen the groggy, coffee-withdrawal victims from those ravaged by all three stages of this new illness.  Things were cozy and perhaps a little homey, but their numbers dwindled.  Then, making coffee and snacks for the CDC, Red Cross, and National Guard became the next priority.  Then their stocks ran out and it wasn’t worth it to reorder, not with things being what they are.  Bridges closed, food being looted – it was nothing compared to the idea that one could die just trying to take a walk.  Mel brought home a box of the remaining perishables and pretty much all of the nonperishable stock that other brave employees didn’t want and refrained from leaving the apartment after that. Things were going downhill rapidly.  The apartment feels smaller and smaller by the day and there’s still something nagging Mel in the back of her mind.  She fired off a number of texts to check in with people, let them know she was okay and Kate, Nzinga, and Tove, too, so it couldn’t be that.  Even if she forgot to tell Shane specifically that the café was closed, she is fairly sure that the large sign on the back door telling anyone coming by to contact her or wait for her to call them would suffice.  Jim answered his text, so she doesn't need to worry about him - and while she is worrying about Hive's current state, she knows he is in good hands. She sits with her cellphone in her hand, staring off into space as her roommates play yet another game.  Candyland.  The darker more involved games seem to lose their appeal when everything outside their door is horrible and terrible.  And that isn't quite an exaggeration.  They can hear people, from time to time, out in the halls, going from door to door, asking their neighbors if they had food they could share, bartering with batteries and candles, reading material swaps at first, but as the days march by, they started hearing people pleading for food, and when no one answered the doors, those doors sounded like they were broken into. Mel and her roommates reinforced the door and put  up barricades on the window leading to the fire escape.  It strikes her as counter intuitive to block up the exits, but there were other things to be worried about here.  It's easily enough opened from this side, she tells herself every time she thinks about it, but it is harder from the outside. Her eyes shift, moving from the lack of recent message to the faces of those around her.  Nzinga is intent upon the game, quite intent count the number of spaces between her and her current goal.  She... is also a lifesaver.  When Mel finds herself up and awake into the wee hours of the morning, worrying and trying to remember what she forgot, blessed Nzinga comes by and sends her off to sleep.  Granted, her dreams are less than pleasant too, the feeling of forgetfulness merging into the idea of what it must be like to be one of the walking dead outside, her lost thoughts turning into people she must consume to understand -- but when she wakes, she is at least rested. To be honest, the mood around the apartment is much less tense because of Nzinga's gift. Tove is amazing as well. He keeps moving between his turns at the game board to wandering to the kitchen to check on what he's fixing. They are still doing well with rice and beans, the more perishable meat and soft cheeses having been consumed quickly to keep them from spoiling. He managed to get a fair bit of supplies, having made friends with the small Chinese grocery owners months ago, and helped them clean the place out to make it less attractive to looters. He promised to help them clean and stock when everything was over, providing things ended, to pay for what their apartment claimed, but the owners were just glad to see some of it go to people they knew and liked, rather than it being taken forcefully by those they didn't. And Kate. The ever adaptable Kate. She still went out. She goes out and looked for supplies and finds them, whenever they run low. She has a knack for it. Probably something to do with her mutation, she teases. Kate just says she's just an innate shopper that can only show her worth when money is no longer an object. Pain relievers, delicious tea, deodorant. You name it, Kate finds it. And then, she finds Mel, lost as she is in thought. "Mel!" "What?" Mel looks up, surprised to be staring right at her when she speaks. "Mel. It's your turn. Did you forget?" Yes, she forgot.