Thread: To the Last Syllable (Mr. M & Bathos)

The first thing Lyla noticed, upon awakening, was not, in fact, the unfamiliar surroundings in which she found herself. It took her brain a little warming up before she was in any shape to hear things, let alone register the soft music or the faraway sounds of city traffic. She was occupied with other things, like the wave of nausea that accompanied the agonizing pain that rattled her skull when she tried to lift her head from where it rested. She sucked in a deep, hissing breath through clenched teeth and lay back down, still as a corpse. On the heels of this discovery came the fuzzy, tentatively optimistic notion that she was still alive. The fall hadn't killed her, though it should have. Perhaps she'd landed the hood of a hovercar--head first, if the throbbing in her brain was any indication--and was rushed immediately to ... Where the fuck am I? It was then that the little details of her situation began to pierce through the haze of confusion and pain, and her mental gears switched shudderingly into a state of alarm. It went like this music, mattress, books , light. Then her awareness panned out a little, and it went like this dilapidated hideout, perfect lair for a violent criminal, no one around to hear her beg for her life. Her pulse skittered and leaped in her throat, and for a moment, that was the only sound she could hear the erratic little thump-rush-thump-rush of blood pumping past her own ears, the shallow, labored breath in her chest. Gingerly, she sat up and took stock of her own body. She found herself mostly unharmed, aside from the invisible chisel and hammer going to work right between her eyes, but that was likely from the fall. She knew a moment of panic when she noticed a smattering of blood on her dress, just at the shoulder, but then she recalled biting a man's face and, after that, there was a moment of frenzied wiping at her mouth. Her shoes were still intact, little black flats that were hardly at the cutting edge of modern fashion but serviceable, and well suited to her line of work. She counted this as a good thing, as she might soon be placed in a situation where she'd be running for her life. When she finally did peek over the stacks of books, she may have indulged in what her mother would have called an over reaction. That is to say she flailed, lost balance on account of all the shock, dismay, and head trauma, and ended, after an elaborate and accidental flourish, as the promontory atop a small mountain of overturned books. Her eyes never left the throwback. She'd seen a few mild cases before pronounced incisors, oddly formed eyes, etc. But she'd never seen the likes of this man before, with thick hair covering most of his visible skin, and the beginnings of an actual snout. She'd heard rumors, and always considered herself an egalitarian, but faced with the cold reality of the thing, she found she was absolutely terrified. Okay, she said, pausing before moving on in a rush, I don't have any money and no one would listen to me even if I wanted to tell them about this - Which I wouldn't! I won't tell a soul, just please don't kill me and I'll ... I'll, uh, pick up these books, too. Immediately, she started scrambling to re-stack the piles she'd toppled.