ONE
Juno
Juno wraps the gauze once, twice, then three times around the wound.
God, I hate basements
, she thinks to herself, tearing the bandage with her teeth and pressing it in place. She thinks she might actually see
better
if she closes her eyes, here.
Of course, most places are this dark at night, ever since the Collapse. At 19, Juno is just barely old enough to remember when she could flick a switch and this entire hallway would be flooded with fluorescents light. Every nook and cranny suddenly, immediately visible, the long bare bulbs reflecting off the tile. It was a creepy school basement then, too, but now...
Now there's a different type of dark. A dark that lasts.
I fucking hate basements,
she thinks again before slamming shut the locker door she just accidentally shouldered into. The metal clang is the only sound she's heard aside from her breathing since she came down here, and now the silence is weightier than before. Her breathing seems louder, more insistant. She's sucking hot air into her lungs in gulps, and the sweat pours off of her face and arms so much that her dirty-blonde side-bangs are plastered to her damp forehead, and she can feel rivulets of sweat running down her back and tricking into her ass crack. There's no ventilation to speak of, and a concrete basement like this one keeps all of the heat from every long summer day.
But not of the light, though. Not even the summer starlight makes its way down here, where the windows are two caked with dust to see through and every doorway leads to another staircase.
So Juno sighs, and the air is muggy in her lungs. She straightens her back and reaches out her fingers again, this time trailing them gently and far out in front of her, so she doesn't run into a locker door again.
That was really stupid. This is all really stupid
. Not the first time she's had that thought, and it won't be the last. As far as Juno is concerned, that's basically a mantra these days. Later on, back at the camp, Froggy will confirm it for her. She might even get spanked for wandering off again -- God knows it wouldn't be the first time she'd been spanked for "being a dumb-ass." Juno doesn't care, though. If Homer can learn how to sleep with one eye open, she can learn how to sleep on her stomach.
At last, her fingertips trace to the end of the lockers, and she gasps softly as, for a split second, they graze nothing but air, and Juno is lost, suspended, in the perfect darkness, before her fingers make contact again with the wall. End of the lockers means that she must be close. When she closes her eyes, she can still picture the doorway, the fogged glass with the room number embossed. She closes them now, trying to let the memory guide her, all of her senses straining now to gauge the space.
Just then, her fingers touch a door frame.
Aha!
she thinks, smirking triumphantly.
Guess I actually CAN see better down here when I've got my eyes closed!
She fumbles for the door knob, her hand hitting it with a loud
clack
, and when she grabs it she can feel it shake, loosened by the years. Instinctively, she feels her back pocket for bobby pins, but there's no need: the door swings open at a light touch, and she's greeted with an acrid smell that makes her wrinkle her nose.
Last time she and the rest of the Doomsbury Squad were down here, they'd been attacked and almost overtaken by Hoppers, an entire family (or maybe faculty) of them. It had been all that Bobbi-Ross could do to fire rounds blindly, hoping to care them. Luckily, she'd hit some kind of chemistry set in one of the cabinets, and it started hissing and sparking and stinking like hell. Bad smells never bother hoppers, but the sounds did, and the series of resounding
pops
was enough to discombobulate the lot of them so that Juno and the others could get out in time and slam the door behind them. Seems that was the last time the door was opened, because the smell has stayed.
Juno coughs into her bare arm and pulls her shirt over her nose. There's a haze stinging her eyes, even squinting, and she's sure it's something she shouldn't be breathing.
Just another reason this is stupid,
she thinks. She coughs again. She's beginning to think she might actually
deserve
that spanking back at camp, as much as she hates to admit it -- and won't.
Her midriff knocks up against something, and there's a scraping sound that almost causes her to cry out, before she realizes it's only a desk. She closes her eyes again, trying to recreate the layout of the room in her mind. When there was light down here, it was sunlight through opens windows at the back. The desks were arranged in rows of four -- no, five. Four rows deep. There's a stone counter at the front of the room in front of the black board -- she can feel the edge of it now, it just brushed against her fingers -- and the sheet-metal cabinet Bobbi-Ross sprayed with bullets is further back.
Juno remembers exactly where she was when those firecrackers-or-whatever started going of: she was hunkered down beneath one of the desks in the front row, nose to the floor, butt in the air. She can even remember the way her undies were riding up that day, and the sudden lightness she felt when the flashlight clattered to the ground behind her.
Which is why Juno is here, in an abandoned basement even though she hates basements, risking a spanking even though she hates spankings. In the heat of the moment, Juno didn't have time to pick up her flashlight -- it rolled across the linoleum and wound up in the second row. Taking the time to grab it might have been the difference between their narrow escape and something far, far worse.
But damned if that flashlight wouldn't have been worth it.Fully aluminum, friction-grip handle, and heavy enough to turn a Hopper's head around with a good enough
whack
, that flashlight has been sorely, sorely missed. Ever since she lost it here she's been looking for a replacement, and she's come up empty.
They just don't make them like they used to
. How many times had her dad told her that when she was growing up, camping out with him and her siblings in the RV, roasting weenies on a campstove from the 1980s? She'd always thought he was full of it.
That flashlight, though. That flashlight is one of a --
clink
Juno freezes in her tracks, her foot still raised. She can hear a low metallic sound: the flashlight rolling across the floor. "Fuck yes!" she shouts, unable to contain her excitement. She reaches forward, grunting and panting with the effort of slapping her hand against the bare floor --
C'mon, c'mon, it was just here --
an finally her hand touches something cold and smooth. "Fuck
yes
!" she repeats. She lifts the item carefully, as though she were the claw in an arcade machine, then claps it solidly into her open hand. It's her flashlight, no mistake! She feels the familiar grip, and it calms her. She presses the cold metal to her head and actually moans aloud, the cold touch is such a relief that it makes her shiver with delight. Then, still keeping her eyes closed (since it makes no difference either way), she fondles the flashlight until she feels a curved switch, and she slowly depresses her thumb.
"Moment of truth..." she says to herself.
She opens her eyes and the switch clicks. A rush of white light springs forth, as though it were there all along, and the world is illuminated! Tables and chairs and patterned linoleum rush into view, and the world suddenly has walls and a ceiling again. The light is so powerful that Juno has to squint, and still the rays glint at the corner of her eyes.
"Oh, fuck
yes
!" she repeats for a third time. She swings the flashlight to her right --
And sees the Hopper standing in the doorway, looking at her with that same, befuddled look they always have, its eyes reflecting purple in the flashlight's beam.
"Oh,
fuck no,"
