It wasn’t the sound of loud calliope music that finally woke Jeanne up, but the violent shaking and shuddering of the phone on her bed once the alarm finished its first cycle. The sudden, but continuous stream of movement beside her head that seemed to not let up no matter how long she tried to wait it out convincing her to finally open her eyes with a groan, and paw fruitlessly at the general direction of the snooze button before finally rolling over to try and shut it off properly.
The first thing she noticed is that she was up at an ungodly time, 6:13 AM to be exact, far earlier than she usually does, which seemed a little weird, especially since the alarm was simply marked as ‘I guess’ in her clock app.
The second thing she noticed was that she was still wearing the same black jeans and grey shirt she wore to the party last night, or well, at least she thinks she actually went to the party. She had sent an (unread) message to Widya saying that she did, and she can definitely remember going, but she could also remember a few other things that made her question whether any of it ever happened.
Namely, the fact that she can definitely remember going to their host’s home, and feeling her heart pounding in her chest, and her own jaw slackening in awe as she sloughed off her own skin and grew into a giant monstrosity of a woman before pushing her into a corner and threatening her with extreme violence if she didn’t… start exercising? It all felt like a metaphor or a misremembered dream, or well, it had to be right?
Before Jeanne could really dwell on it much further though, she realized that she had more pressing issues to deal with, namely that her throat was dry, her stomach was growling, and her skin had that uncomfortable dry sweat stickiness to it. She needed a shower, a drink, and a warm meal in no particular order, and with nothing but empty bottles in her apartment, and distinctly remembering the indecision that drove her to heading downstairs in the first place, Jeanne figured that she could at least think it over in the shower.
With a sigh, Jeanne rolled ungracefully out of her bed, kicking away the loose pile of discarded instant noodle packets and cans that had accumulated on the floor as she shuffled towards the shower, briefly taking a moment to dig out a new black shirt and vaguely grey pants out from her closet along the way before she tossed everything she was wearing to a pile that was probably too close to the squishy trash bag from before, and simply tried to enjoy letting the cool water wash over every part of her.
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Instead, as soon as the momentary bliss of feeling last night’s dust and grime start to wash away down the drain passed, Jeanne’s mind immediately started thinking, and not about her breakfast either.
‘What if’ her mind thought without prompting as she scrubbed herself down with a loofah, ‘What if this was the dream, and our memories of meeting that monster was our waking life?’ It seemed like a strange thought, at least until her brain reasoned with, ‘Think about it, since when do we set alarms? How did we get here even after talking to her? Do you remember the motions of actually walking home and turning into bed in the exact same outfit as last night, or did we simply wake up in bed because that’s what we’d find the most comfort in after passing out or something against her fridge?’
She blinked a little as she let the water wash over the soap that clung to her body, trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy as her mind continued to wander ‘And what day is this even? Since when did we set alarms? And what for? This all seemed almost too normal.’
Jeanne ground her nails a little out of anxiety, before she remembered what she was here for and started to work some shampoo into her straight black hair, while cursing herself for forgetting to buy more conditioner again. ‘Of course,’ her mind reasoned, as it shifted tracks back to the dream idea, ‘she could just be overthinking things again, quite frankly there’s no reason to believe that anything really happened the way she remembered it last night.’
The thought perked Jeanne back up again, as she put her head under the shower’s stream once more, ‘She’s had this conversation before right? But she must have gotten it wrong before, it must have all been a dream, a nightmare borne from frying her own mind through her monomaniacal focus on continuing her work, and the mild trauma of exposing herself to the direct charms of a slightly attractive woman who just happened to look like her best friend and presumably wallowing in her own sadness before sleeping after completely failing to leave an impression on her (which also conveniently explains why she doesn’t remember much before the presumed dream.)’
And yet, despite it all Jeanne still couldn’t help but wonder, ‘If this was all just a dream, why would my neck feel a little swollen where she picked me up and squeezed me?’ she pressed her hand along her neck, wincing a little at the slight puffiness.
As she moved on to brush her teeth, Jeanne realised that her thoughts were going nowhere fast, was this a dream? Was all of it just a stress induced hallucination or a nightmare? Her mind kept going round in circles, and all she was sure of was that she had at no point put any real thought into what she should get for breakfast.
Blinking a little in the slightly grimey bathroom, Jeanne wondered if there was some way to prove that any of it really happened without bluntly knocking on Helena’s door for answers, only for her to realize something, Vera was right there, at least for the early bits, and well, she did say that she could come to her for help with just about anything right?
Figuring that she could kill two birds with one stone, and at the very least being able to prove the reality of her waking self by forcing herself to endure something as normal as asking her neighbour about last night’s party while probing for interesting breakfast options. Jeanne toweled herself mostly dry, got dressed, and took a mild detour to snatch her phone before she shuffled out of the front door, wincing slightly at the morning light as she stepped into the hall.