carsgovroom

Partners (Cars & Blue)

The sound of something falling to the carpeted floor made Elise's eyes open and she saw Delia standing there with a horrified expression on her face, purse in hand. She stared at the woman for a moment in confusion as she started to muttering to herself in a panic, and her eyes trailed down to where Delia's iPhone had been apparently dropped.

Wariness crept through her, and Elise reached into her bag and found her own iPhone. She pressed the center button, and nothing happened. Elise's brows furrowed. This wasn't normal for her, her phone was usually on unless she was restarting it so it wouldn't overheat, or it had run out of battery. But Elise was organized and she rarely let that happen. She pressed the power button until it blinked to life, and she exhaled with relief. She could call a cab, a friend, her roommate, anyone to come find her and take her home. They would tease her about her seemingly crazy night and chastise her for sleeping in a motel room, but then everything would go back to normal.

Then she saw the date and Elise almost dropped her phone, as well. She was now extremely positive that the last thing she remembered before waking up was that it had been Tuesday evening and she had left the office after work. She had been walking towards the bus stop, like she always did and then...blackness. Followed by opening her eyes to a headache and an orange motel room. On Saturday morning. Almost four days later.

Elise desperately tried to think, to remember her past Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday...but her memories remained blank. Three full days of her life were just gone. Elise tried to remain natural, tried to assure herself that there was a logical explanation for everything. That everything was normal. But what kind of normal person forgets three entire days?

She rubbed her forehead with her right hand as she tried not to panic like Delia had. It was only then that she finally noticed that there was something on her wrist. Elise pulled her hand away from her head, her eyes focusing on whatever was on her wrist. It was a tattoo, in black ink, snaking around her right wrist like some kind of bracelet. The tattoo was a vine of ivy that curled and twisted in intricate detail, and the black ink ivy leaves stood out against her fair skin. Elise turned her wrist, studying the tattoo in horrified fascination, and saw that both ends of the ivy were attached to a strange symbol that was tattooed on the pale flesh under her palm. It was if the symbol, which she had never seen before, was the pendant of the bracelet and the ivy was the band securing it, holding it in place.

Elise did not have a tattoo, had never planned on getting a tattoo. The commitment was too intimidating. The tattoo had definitely not been on her wrist when she had left work on Tuesday night. What had happened to her during those three blank days?

She needed to get out of here.

Her hands fumbled with the phone, and she glanced around her until she saw the small table beside the sofa. Finally she found the pad of paper that was in every hotel room that had the name of the place emblazoned onto it. The Sunset Motel...thank god she was still in the city. "I'm calling someone to come get me," she announced to Delia, turning her head to look at the woman. There was a forced calm in her voice, but it still trembled slightly. "I need to get out of here and go home. Do you need a ride?"

Partners (Cars & Blue)

Ha, that's good to know. I'm working on a response, but my WiFi's acting glitchy. Should be alright soon, hopefully?

Fade into the Moment (Jiskastya x carsgovroom)

Tomorrow is my day off so I hope to have something for you. However my internet problems may get in the way of that... I am working on the post though~

Partners (Cars & Blue)

Sounds good. Tomorrow's the first day of the school quarter so I have to mentally prepare myself for that. :/

And ha, it's just a spooky coincidence. ;)

Partners (Cars & Blue)

A few days probably works better anyway, so that sounds good to me~

Partners (Cars & Blue)

What do you think of them having been missing for about a week? Maybe a couple of days more or less?

Partners (Cars & Blue)

Elise just nodded her head slightly when the other woman said her name. What was she supposed to say? It's nice to meet you? Not under these circumstances, it wasn't. Elise turned her head, slowly since stabs of pain still shot through her forehead, and her eyes took in the rest of the room. Aside from the nasty shade of orange everywhere it looked like a standard motel room.

Maybe there were some matchbooks in the drawer, or pens and pads of paper that had the place's name on them. She had to figure out where she was.

She edged slowly towards the bedside table and finally put an end to the wailing alarm. It was a huge relief when the beeping stopped, and Elise closed her eyes briefly and exhaled slowly. According to the clock it was pretty late in the morning, almost ten, but there wasn't a date. She wrenched open the top drawer and found a Bible, but nothing else with the motel name on it.

Closing the drawer, Elise let out a small groan as she rubbed her head gently, massaging her temple. She needed an aspirin. And a huge glace of ice water. And a shower.

She heard the other woman, Delia, speak again, and Elise's eyes opened to see her against the wall, head bowed. Maybe to relieve her own splitting head ache. She wanted her purse... Her purse...where was Elise's purse? Was she even carrying a purse or a bag before she got here? She tried not to think about what might have happened to it if it wasn't here. If she was lucky she had forgotten it at home, but if she wasn't... What if it had been stolen? Her wallet, her keys, her phone...how would she track it down?"

Her head turned again as she scanned the room once more, and her eyes settled on a slightly darker but still hideous sofa across from the bed, near the window. Two items had been seemingly tossed onto it. One was a black and pink purse, the other a familiar brown leather messenger bag.

For the first time since waking up in that room, Elise felt relief. "It's over there, on the sofa," she told Delia.

Standing proved to be one heck of a challenge. Her head protested, her arms and legs felt wobbly, and she almost lost her balance. But Elise managed to brace herself against the wall and slowly edged around the room until she reached the sofa. She lowered herself onto it, and took Delia's purse and set it on the floor in front of her so she could crawl over to it. "Here," she said to alert the other woman. Then she took the messenger bag in her hands and pulled it open, fearing the worst.

Everything was still in there, her keys, her wallet with her ID and money and credit cards, her phone, her laptop computer (which looked undamaged). Nothing was missing. She let out an exhalation of relief and hugged the leather bag to her chest, leaning back against the sofa and closing her eyes briefly. This bag...this was the bag she took to work, and the dress and jacket she was wearing were typically items she'd wear on an average day of work. So...she could assume that the last thing she remembered doing was leaving work for the day. Unless she had gone out with coworkers after? It was still difficult to remember.

Partners (Cars & Blue)

Did we sleep together?

Elise had been watching the woman as she all but scurried across the floor, away from the bed. The girl's wide eyes and panicked expression must have mirrored her own, and it took a few moments for her words to process. Sleep together...Elise's eyes widened, if it was possible. She didn't know...she had no memory of it, or anything that had happened to her in...she didn't even know how long. Elise's eyes flickered down and she saw, with relief that she was still fully clothed, and her hand clutched the soft material of the sundress she was wearing. What kind of people spent the night together and woke up still in their clothes? Sure that meant that they...that they hadn't...

"I, uh, I don't think we did," Elise started to say, but the other woman had already speaking again. Some of what she said made little sense to Elise, but she did understand when the woman asked if she had drugged her. "What? No...no, I would never." She knew she couldn't remember, but Else also knew herself, and she knew that she would never do that sort of thing, not even if she had gotten drunk.

She wasn't entirely sure if the other woman had heard her though. She was still speaking, and by the time she was finished she seemed almost in danger of crying. Elise looked at her, her lips parted slightly as she tried to think of what to say. What could she say in a situation like this? Two people, strangers, waking up in the same bed with no memory of how they met or how they had got there or of anything that had happened to them in... How long had it been? One night? One week? Elise had no idea.

"I can't remember anything, either," Elise confessed to the woman. She was still on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest and trying to make herself small as possible. "I don't know who you are, or how we met, or where we are, or how we got here. I don't know how long we've been here, or what day it is, or if I still even have a job. I can't even really remember the last thing I was doing before waking up here. So...if you were drugged...I must have been drugged, too." That was a terrifying thought. If someone had drugged the two of them...what had they done to them? And were they coming back?"

"My name's Elise." Perhaps knowing each other's names might jog some memories. "What's yours?"

Partners (Cars & Blue)

The first thing Elise was aware of when she started to rouse was how much her head was throbbing. It reminded her of the first and only time she'd agreed to doing some tequila shots with some of her coworkers one night after work and the hangover she'd experienced the next morning.

But that almost paled in comparison to this pain. It was like someone had driven an ice pick through her temple.

Then Elise became aware of the loud and shrill beeps that were sounding less foggy by the moment as she woke. They did nothing to help her aching head. What time is it? she wondered, God, what DAY is it? I feed so...what did I do last night? She tried to think about the previous night, tried to think about the last thing she remembered doing, but she couldn't. Her mind was swimming, her thoughts and memories were cloudy, and her head continued to pound painfully.

She wanted to throw up.

But first she needed to turn off that freaking alarm.

Eyes still closed, Elise reached her left arm out to hit the button on her alarm clock. But where her alarm clock should have been there was only open air. Her hand didn't even touch her bedside table. Something was wrong...something other than this hangover. A hangover she shouldn't have because she hardly ever drank that much. Elise became aware that she was lying on a lumpy mattress, a mattress she didn't recognize.

Then she heard a thump and a noise of surprise that she had not made. Oh God, I'm not alone...

Almost instinctively at the realization of another presence Elise tried opening her eyes and sitting u[p. Both proved to be mistakes. Light hit her eyes, almost blinding her and sending another stab of pain through her temple, and sitting up just made her head spin. After several moments of nursing her head, Elise finally managed to push herself slowly into a sitting position and eased her eyelids open.

She was greeted with a jarring color of orange. It was so bright it made her eyes hurt, but she hardly thought about that. What she thought about was how she recognized nothing surrounding her, not the walls, or the bed, or the rest of the furniture. She wasn't in her room. Her heart thumped and she felt panic creeping through her.

Then her brown eyes fell on the opposite side of the bed she was sitting on and the girl on the floor. The girl who had obviously fallen to the floor from the bed where she had been lying next to Elise. A girl that was as much a stranger to Elise as this room was.

Elise could only stare at her for a moment, her eyes wide as she tried to process what was happening. It made her head hurt again. "Who...who are you?" she asked, her voice sounding strangely slurred to her ears.

Partners (Cars & Blue)

Got my sheet up, working on my response right now~