![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieOscar snoozed on the floor and Marya channeled her inner Neil Peart and her inner Keith Moon and even her inner Max Roach, and for a while everything was as it should be.
She played until her arms started to get tired and Oscar got up to wander around the house. She was exhausted and sweaty and felt like she'd done something really productive for herself. She was also hungry.
Oscar had gone into the living room and was sprawled on the couch, which he technically wasn't supposed to do, but Marya didn't usually bother to shove him off and her grandma had conceded a couple of years ago that the couch was no longer really hers and if Oscar wanted to sit on it, he could. Marya figured he was either waiting for her to turn the TV on so he could watch something interesting or he just wanted to snooze somewhere besides the floor. She always wondered if he could feel the vibrations from her kit through the floor, and if it bothered him at all.
It was still raining outside. Marya peeked out the back door in the kitchen, to check and see if the not-cat was still out there, and it had finally gone away. There was a random indentation in the grass, though, a flattened circle where it had been sitting. She wondered what it was and where it had gone and what had it found so interesting about her yard and the back of her house. Thinking about it creeped her out a little - although not as much as finding it in the first place - so she let her stomach command her attention instead.
She made herself a grilled cheese sandwich, poured a glass of milk, and sat at the kitchen table to eat. There was an old issue of Newsweek on the table - her grandma had had a subscription and Marya had just kept renewing it after she moved into the house. It never hurt to know what was going on in other parts of the world.
Although that thought reminded her that she didn't know what was going on in other parts of the world, or even in her own part of it, and that was not something she particularly wanted to think about right now. There was too much she didn't know and too much she'd probably never know, and increasingly fewer ways of finding it out. Instead, she'd read about whatever scientific development Newsweek had thought worthy of reportage a month ago. Maybe she'd read the business articles, although the science stuff was usually more interesting, and there were always reviews of movies she hadn't seen and books she didn't want to read. And anyway, reading Newsweek made her feel smart and informed, and that was never a bad thing.
The smell of people food cooking had brought Oscar into the kitchen, and he put his chin on the table and pleaded silently with Marya to feed him. Couldn't she see he was starving to death, wasting away to nothing, just a mere shell of a dog? Wasn't he cute enough to warrant a grilled cheese sandwich of his very own? Maybe with a bowl of milk to go with it?
Apparently it was not uncommon for dogs to like cheese, but Marya had yet to meet one that liked milk plain, in a bowl by itself. She had clearly inherited the weird dog.
Well, it's not as if I ever claimed normal for myself, she thought.
She gave Oscar the last corner of her sandwich and got up to put her dishes in the sink. She could wash them now, as well as the pans she'd used earlier to cook the chicken and pork chops and sausage. She was still a little tired from her drum practice, but now she was a little wired as well, and a little twitchy. If it wasn't raining so hard she'd take Oscar for a long walk. Maybe there were more people in her neighborhood than she thought, and yesterday when she was out, they were all hiding in the dark in their houses, too afraid to come out. It was possible. When Oscar had to go, she'd put on her raincoat and boots and take him.
In the meantime, she could do the dishes and clean the house. Or she could wash the dishes and check to see if she could get online yet, which is what she actually did. The network was still down and she couldn't connect to the unprotected wireless networks near her house - did people not learn that not only could their neighbors steal internet access from them, but they did? - and when she checked the phone she found that was still down too. She turned on the TV, more for background noise than anything else, and discovered that the local cable access channel was actually broadcasting. She sat on the couch to watch for a little bit, feeling dumb that she hadn't thought of it before.
The station studio was a very basic platform with two chairs and a little side table on it, in front of what looked like a large pale-blue sheet being used as a backdrop. There were two guys sitting in the chairs, one in jeans and a Steelers t-shirt and the other wearing corduroy pants and a green polo shirt. The guy in the t-shirt was in the middle of a sentence when Marya turned the sound up.
"...can just come on down. We're staying on until the power goes out, right, Ken?" Ken was probably the guy working the camera. "Ok, like I was saying, think of us as like the local PSA people. We wanna know who's out there. You wanna know who's out there. You wanna know why all this shit's happening."
"You want to know what's happening," interrupted the guy in the cords and polo shirt.
"That too. Yeah. Ok. this is Thomas, Thomas thinks he knows what's up." The guy in the t-shirt gestured to the guy in the cords - Thomas - and then kind of flapped his hand at the camera. "There's lots of theories, right? He's got another one. Ok, go on."
"Do you know what a ley line is?" Thomas asked.
"I'm not gonna make the joke, but no. What is it?"
"Ley lines are lines of earth energy. The vortexes where they cross can be sites of great magical energy and power. If you map the parts of the world most decimated in the past few days, you'll find where these vortexes lie."
"So people disappeared by magic?"
"Not by magic, by earth."
"What does that mean?" Marya asked Oscar, who had followed her into the living room and was now sitting on the rug watching the two guys on TV. "Disappeared by earth." She snorted. It sounded like hippy bullshit to her.
"What does that mean?" asked the guy in the t-shirt. He sounded as if he was genuinely curious to find out, but also as if he didn't think he'd believe anything Thomas said.
"That means that somehow all this earth energy built up until the earth couldn't contain it, and when it was released, it caused people to disappear. The power is stronger at a vortex, so the damage is more and the losses greater."
"More people kinda vanish, you mean."
"Yes. More people vanish."
"So where'd they go?"
"We can't know. That's a mystery. Think of it as a gate or a door opening up into another plane of existence. Many people got sucked through."
"A rift in the space-time continuum," Marya muttered. "I think someone's been reading too much mystic philosophy."
She'd never been particularly spiritual - and this counted as spiritual to her, this idea that other planes existed and that you could get to them - and people going on about earth energy and lines of power and all this unprovable, unscientific, hippy-dippy handwavey philosophy just made her roll her eyes. She didn't meditate. She thought feng shui was a crock. And so she hadn't heard any theories about all the disappearances that she believed.
She mentally slotted Thomas in with all the internet theorists who believed some variation of "aliens took them," got up, and went to find the vacuum. She'd leave the TV on while she cleaned the house. She didn't have to listen to it, and with the vacuum running she wouldn't be able to hear anyway, but it made her feel better and a little less alone to have it on.
words: 1402
total words: 13,488
She played until her arms started to get tired and Oscar got up to wander around the house. She was exhausted and sweaty and felt like she'd done something really productive for herself. She was also hungry.
Oscar had gone into the living room and was sprawled on the couch, which he technically wasn't supposed to do, but Marya didn't usually bother to shove him off and her grandma had conceded a couple of years ago that the couch was no longer really hers and if Oscar wanted to sit on it, he could. Marya figured he was either waiting for her to turn the TV on so he could watch something interesting or he just wanted to snooze somewhere besides the floor. She always wondered if he could feel the vibrations from her kit through the floor, and if it bothered him at all.
It was still raining outside. Marya peeked out the back door in the kitchen, to check and see if the not-cat was still out there, and it had finally gone away. There was a random indentation in the grass, though, a flattened circle where it had been sitting. She wondered what it was and where it had gone and what had it found so interesting about her yard and the back of her house. Thinking about it creeped her out a little - although not as much as finding it in the first place - so she let her stomach command her attention instead.
She made herself a grilled cheese sandwich, poured a glass of milk, and sat at the kitchen table to eat. There was an old issue of Newsweek on the table - her grandma had had a subscription and Marya had just kept renewing it after she moved into the house. It never hurt to know what was going on in other parts of the world.
Although that thought reminded her that she didn't know what was going on in other parts of the world, or even in her own part of it, and that was not something she particularly wanted to think about right now. There was too much she didn't know and too much she'd probably never know, and increasingly fewer ways of finding it out. Instead, she'd read about whatever scientific development Newsweek had thought worthy of reportage a month ago. Maybe she'd read the business articles, although the science stuff was usually more interesting, and there were always reviews of movies she hadn't seen and books she didn't want to read. And anyway, reading Newsweek made her feel smart and informed, and that was never a bad thing.
The smell of people food cooking had brought Oscar into the kitchen, and he put his chin on the table and pleaded silently with Marya to feed him. Couldn't she see he was starving to death, wasting away to nothing, just a mere shell of a dog? Wasn't he cute enough to warrant a grilled cheese sandwich of his very own? Maybe with a bowl of milk to go with it?
Apparently it was not uncommon for dogs to like cheese, but Marya had yet to meet one that liked milk plain, in a bowl by itself. She had clearly inherited the weird dog.
Well, it's not as if I ever claimed normal for myself, she thought.
She gave Oscar the last corner of her sandwich and got up to put her dishes in the sink. She could wash them now, as well as the pans she'd used earlier to cook the chicken and pork chops and sausage. She was still a little tired from her drum practice, but now she was a little wired as well, and a little twitchy. If it wasn't raining so hard she'd take Oscar for a long walk. Maybe there were more people in her neighborhood than she thought, and yesterday when she was out, they were all hiding in the dark in their houses, too afraid to come out. It was possible. When Oscar had to go, she'd put on her raincoat and boots and take him.
In the meantime, she could do the dishes and clean the house. Or she could wash the dishes and check to see if she could get online yet, which is what she actually did. The network was still down and she couldn't connect to the unprotected wireless networks near her house - did people not learn that not only could their neighbors steal internet access from them, but they did? - and when she checked the phone she found that was still down too. She turned on the TV, more for background noise than anything else, and discovered that the local cable access channel was actually broadcasting. She sat on the couch to watch for a little bit, feeling dumb that she hadn't thought of it before.
The station studio was a very basic platform with two chairs and a little side table on it, in front of what looked like a large pale-blue sheet being used as a backdrop. There were two guys sitting in the chairs, one in jeans and a Steelers t-shirt and the other wearing corduroy pants and a green polo shirt. The guy in the t-shirt was in the middle of a sentence when Marya turned the sound up.
"...can just come on down. We're staying on until the power goes out, right, Ken?" Ken was probably the guy working the camera. "Ok, like I was saying, think of us as like the local PSA people. We wanna know who's out there. You wanna know who's out there. You wanna know why all this shit's happening."
"You want to know what's happening," interrupted the guy in the cords and polo shirt.
"That too. Yeah. Ok. this is Thomas, Thomas thinks he knows what's up." The guy in the t-shirt gestured to the guy in the cords - Thomas - and then kind of flapped his hand at the camera. "There's lots of theories, right? He's got another one. Ok, go on."
"Do you know what a ley line is?" Thomas asked.
"I'm not gonna make the joke, but no. What is it?"
"Ley lines are lines of earth energy. The vortexes where they cross can be sites of great magical energy and power. If you map the parts of the world most decimated in the past few days, you'll find where these vortexes lie."
"So people disappeared by magic?"
"Not by magic, by earth."
"What does that mean?" Marya asked Oscar, who had followed her into the living room and was now sitting on the rug watching the two guys on TV. "Disappeared by earth." She snorted. It sounded like hippy bullshit to her.
"What does that mean?" asked the guy in the t-shirt. He sounded as if he was genuinely curious to find out, but also as if he didn't think he'd believe anything Thomas said.
"That means that somehow all this earth energy built up until the earth couldn't contain it, and when it was released, it caused people to disappear. The power is stronger at a vortex, so the damage is more and the losses greater."
"More people kinda vanish, you mean."
"Yes. More people vanish."
"So where'd they go?"
"We can't know. That's a mystery. Think of it as a gate or a door opening up into another plane of existence. Many people got sucked through."
"A rift in the space-time continuum," Marya muttered. "I think someone's been reading too much mystic philosophy."
She'd never been particularly spiritual - and this counted as spiritual to her, this idea that other planes existed and that you could get to them - and people going on about earth energy and lines of power and all this unprovable, unscientific, hippy-dippy handwavey philosophy just made her roll her eyes. She didn't meditate. She thought feng shui was a crock. And so she hadn't heard any theories about all the disappearances that she believed.
She mentally slotted Thomas in with all the internet theorists who believed some variation of "aliens took them," got up, and went to find the vacuum. She'd leave the TV on while she cleaned the house. She didn't have to listen to it, and with the vacuum running she wouldn't be able to hear anyway, but it made her feel better and a little less alone to have it on.
words: 1402
total words: 13,488
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-10 02:52 am (UTC)Ha!!! That is so true.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-15 04:31 pm (UTC)Which isn't exactly what you were intending, I'm sure. :P