Lost Episode: Harper Everette, The Event

--- Harper Everette, Monsters Arising ---

Her eyes drifted to the sky glowing as if it were the middle of the day rather than sunset, massive golden cracks in reality leaking light into the air.

“Frankie… you seeing this?” She asked, wondering if her overactive imagination was getting to her once more. The fact that other people were getting out of their cars to stare at it told her it probably wasn’t.

“Yeah…” The redhead confirmed with a frown. “I’m also not liking it.”

She swallowed, remembering something she’d seen once when she was little. Something she’d tried very hard not to remember. “What… what do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, but… we should get home as soon as we can.” Frankie told her, pulling out the keys their manager had foisted on the other woman before burning off.

“Y-yeah.” She agreed as her friend turned back to the cafe door to finish locking up, Harper’s eyes never leaving the cracks so high up in the sky.

At least not until a black one opened up much much closer.

“Uh, Frankie you might want to hurry…” She warned the other woman.

A set of claws began to reach through the crack.

“Or better yet, unlock the door!” She suggested with no small amount of panic as she realized whatever the claws belonged to was slowly opening the crack.

“Why?” Frankie frowned, glancing over before following her gaze to see the many teeth inside of the growing crack. “Shit!”

The redhead threw the doors open. “Inside now!”

Not one to argue when her life was clearly in danger she did as the larger woman suggested and ran inside before turning around as Frankie began to lock the door behind them.

“Is that really going to do anything?” She found herself asking.

“No idea, but it’s better than nothing.” Frankie pointed out, just as a massive thud shook the ground, drawing their attention to a massive mass of gray flesh and teeth sprawled out in the middle of the street as people finally began to run and scream from it.

The monster picked itself up and shook itself off before turning to one such person and lunging at them, bringing them to the ground in a display she was glad she couldn’t see from the other side of the monster.

Not that it kept her from knowing what it looked like when (claws tore through flesh, spattering blood on the wall as screams died down.)

“W-wait, we need to open the doors!” She whispered breathlessly.

Frankie looked at her like she was crazy. “Why the hell would we do that?”

“People need some place to hide!” She tried to explain as the monster outside began to pick itself up and anot. “We, we can’t just leave them out there or else that thing will get them!”

“Then they should run while they can, there’s only o-” Another thud cut Frankie off, her eyes going wide.

A third thud had them slowly turning as a pack of the monsters began to flood the streets.

“Fuck…” Frankie cursed.

Seeing a mother and daughter both with familiar blonde hair, she lunged for the door quickly opening it before calling out, “In here quick!”

“Thank you!” The mother told her, rushing in with her child in hand.

“Over here!” She yelled at the nearby people, one or two of them hearing her and rushing over. “Over he-agh!”

She yelped, as Frankie pulled her away from the door before slamming it shut and bracing it just in time for one of the monsters to slam into the door, causing it to buckle but not give under her weight. “Quick lock the door and then through the second!”

Moving quick, she did as the other woman told her and locked the cafe’s main doors before rushing through the second set that she’d always found an annoyance until right this moment when it would provide another barrier between her and the monster.

Just as quickly if not more so Frankie followed after her before bracing the inner doors. “Find something to barricade the door!”

“R-r-right!” She nodded, quickly looking for anything the cafe would have to brace the door before grabbing a couple of chairs and dragging them over to the other woman. Something that a couple of the people she’d managed to bring inside began to help her with.

“I-I think this is the best we can do.” She told Frankie once every chair in the building was in front of the doors. An amount that looked distinctly short in the face of a monster the size of a small car.

--- Harper Everette, City on Fire ---

While the people she’d pulled off the streets had all gone to hide in the back kitchen, neither she nor Frankie were willing to leave the monster unsupervised. Which unfortunately left them with little to do but watch as the monster paced back and forth on the other side of the glass, having eventually given up on the front doors.

An eventuality that gave her an unpleasantly clear view of the gray beast, the way its veiny muscles rippled as it moved, the fact that its gums and fangs were visible from a lipless maw, or the fact that it had no eyes despite there being two clear indents for them in the sides of its head.

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“What do we do?” She whispered to Frankie, fully convinced that the monster knew they were still inside the building despite being blind. “We can’t just sit here.”

“Can we do much else?” The redhead asked her seriously.

She bit her lip. “What about the back? I know it’s locked but you think we can sneak through the alley out back?”

Frankie considered it for a moment before shaking her head. “No, that thing is blind but it can tell we’re here. If we go out back there’s no telling if it’ll be able to tell or not. As much as it sucks it might be best to wait until it wanders off, or someone comes to help.”

“Is anyone coming to help?” She wondered quietly, she’d heard of there being some group to prevent a second set of Riots but she also knew their predecessors hadn’t done much to help anyone either.

“Yeah…” Frankie pulled out her phone and frowned at it. “I… know someone but I need a cell signal to get a hold of them.”

“What about the landline? Isn’t there one in the manager’s office?” She suggested, figuring it didn’t matter who this ‘someone’ was just so long as they could help. “Do you think you could reach them through that?”

“Maybe…” Frankie sighed, running a hand through her hair. “Though that depends on if they’re at the Den or in the middle of all of this shit.”

“Can’t hurt to try.” She shrugged. “I mean, it’s just a phone call. Not like we lose anything by trying.”

“True.” The other woman admitted before nodding. “Alright, I’ll try the land line. You just… keep an eye on things here.”

“Aye-aye, captain.” She saluted, earning a wry grin from her friend.

“Don’t change Harps.”

“Don’t plan to.” She nodded, as Frankie made her way into the back.

She glanced at the monster and grimaced as it continued to pace, waiting for she wasn’t sure what, before deciding it might be better to focus on the people she’d pulled in off of the streets rather than the monster on it.

Stepping back into the kitchen, her eyes drifted over the four people half huddled and half spread across the kitsch, before falling on the mother comforting her crying daughter. Something that had her remembering what little she could about her own mother. (A kind voice… Warm hugs… A feeling of safety… Blood on a wall and a corpse on the ground.)

She shook her head before looking at some of the treats that hadn’t been grabbed through the day.

“Here, I know it’s not much but…” She shrugged a little helplessly as she offered the people the cookies and snack cakes. Though she was more specifically offering it to the crying child.

“Th-thank you.” The mother told her, offering a weak smile as her daughter accepted the cookie. “For, for everything.”

“You mean for getting us trapped in here?” One of the others scoffed.

“Better than being dead on the streets like everyone else.” Another argued.

The child began to sniffle again, and she glared at both of the men. “Zip-”

A thudding sound made her freeze, the faint cracking afterwards made her heart stop.

Terrified but needing to know, she slowly opened the door separating the kitchen from the main area and peeked through the crack to watch as the eyeless mass of flesh and teeth bashed its head against the glass window, the impact causing a web of cracks to form. A web that grew even larger as the monster slammed its head against the glass again and again.

“Fuuuck…” She whimpered, before turning back to everyone else. “Okay, everyone I need you to stay quiet and stay down. I… I need to go get Frankie.” (Otherwise she might wander out of the office when that thing gets in here.)

“What’s wrong?” The mother asked, holding her child close.

She chuckled nervously. “N-nothing, just… just stay back here, and, uh, lock the door.”

“Not like there’s anywhere else to go.” One of the men told her.

(Right, don’t have the time for this…) She told herself before stepping into the main area and quickly moving for the manager’s office, her eyes never leaving the monster as it continued to slam its head against the deteriorating glass.

Which is the only reason she wasn’t caught off guard when the glass finally gave in under the monster’s weight, leaving it free to climb inside the cafe in pursuit of its hiding prey. An event made all the worse by how it drew the attention of some of the other monsters that had come through the black tear in the sky.

Knowing that she didn’t have time to get to the kitchen or the office, she instead rushed for the nearest door and ducked inside of a supply closet before slamming it shut behind her.

Not even two seconds later a weight crashed into the door causing it to fracture and splinter, even if it didn’t quite give yet.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…” She steadily cursed as she quickly fumbled for her phone before using it as a light to look around the closet in the hopes of finding anything that could help her out of this.

--- Madeline Mertens, Parents’ Perspective ---

She clung to her daughter Fionna as they all heard the glass outside the cafe give, the monster breaking through whatever fragile defense they had only a few moments after the kind girl trying to help them had stepped out.

“Fuck!” One of the men -the one wearing button up- cursed, something she couldn’t really complain about given their situation. “We need to get out of here!”

“But where do we go?” She asked as her baby girl started crying.

“There’s, there’s got to be like a back entrance or something. For loading supplies and taking out the trash.” The other man -the one wearing a business suit- pointed out. “All we’ve got to do is find it and we can get out of here.”

“But what about those girls?” She frowned. “The ones who were out there?”

“If they’re out there odds are they’re already dead.” The suited man told her, forcing a grimace out of her because (he’s probably right…) before looking at the first man. “I saw a door over that way, didn’t try opening it but that’s got to be what you were talking about right?”

“Yeah, it’s got to-” The man was cut off as something slammed against the kitchen entrance, the door only holding because of the lock. Not that that stopped one of the hinges from giving. “Shit we need to move now.”

Fionna’s crying grew worse as the monster slammed into the door once more, knocking it down enough for the beast to reach through with one of its scrabbling claws.

Knowing she didn’t have time to calm her daughter down, she picked Fionna up and started towards the door that the two men had already run out. The two apparently having no problem leaving her and her daughter behind. (Bastards…)

She made it to the door just in time to watch a gray mass sprint past the open doorway, just moments before a scream tore through the air. (Oh, no!)

Cornered between beasts, she had just enough time to turn around and watch as the door behind her was torn to the ground, allowing the other beast to slowly force its too large body through the door frame as it clawed and scraped at the ground desperate to get at her and her daughter.

Her eyes darted around the kitchen, hoping to find someplace she could hide Fionna until it was safe, even if it meant using her own body to keep the monster from her daughter.

“Hey asshole!” A voice shouted. “Leave them alone!”

From behind the monster the kind blonde girl jumped onto its back before jamming what looked like a broken mop handle into one of the beast’s empty eye sockets and digging it in deep, even as the beast bucked and thrashed to throw her off.

The girl ripped the mop handle out before stabbing it back in over and over again. “Why. Don’t. You. Just. Die. Like. Your. Boyfriend. You. Bitch!”

At some point during the girl’s screaming the beast’s body spasmed before going limp, leaving it to slowly slump to the ground as the girl tore into it, making absolutely sure the monster was dead.

Once she was sure the thing was dead, the girl panted from the exertion before slowly beginning to laugh. The sound mildly unhinged as the girl laughed ever louder, before looking at her and Fionna with a large smile. “Would you believe that was one of my top three fantasies?”