blurring the lines (between fiction and reality)
Agatha was pacing the apartment floor being lectured by Wanda when the lights flickered out and the phone call disconnected abruptly, turning to crackling static, which she quickly turned off. She didn’t really think much of it, figuring the electricity and phone lines were just down. A brilliant excuse not to talk to Wanda: better than she could fabricate herself. Why question it? It would be back shortly, and by that time Wanda would probably have come up with something better to pass her time. Where most people would check the news on their phones or turn on the television (and in doing so would discover a much wider problem), Agatha didn’t, resigning to change into her silk robe and settle to read her book by candlelight, as per her original plan for the evening. Whatever happened with the phones and lights would resolve itself by the morning.
She did wonder briefly about the shouts from the streets below, but her balcony was too high up to see what was happening since all electricity, and now phone lines were out, plunging Paris into pitch black and leaving the open space of the penthouse lit by nothing but a few candles. It was central Paris: it’s not like drunk people screaming on friday night was uncommon. Maybe they were just annoyed by the sudden power cut. There was a time when she would have been among them but now she was somewhat more reclusive. That was the whole reason that Wanda kept bothering her to go out more. It's not like she was anti-social, she just had better ways to spend her time than partying in the streets.
Noting the other abnormal events of the evening, she should have questioned why someone was knocking loudly on her door at 11pm, but she just figured it was Wanda, or maybe Billy coming to bother her in person so she ignored it for a minute: because she had to seem appropriately reluctant to let them in. It was unusual for them to come by without warning, but not unheard of if Wanda got really bored. When the knocking persisted and got louder- unusual for either Billy or Wanda, she found herself answering the door, then immediately letting out a piercing scream and jumping back as it revealed a man covered in bruises and blood, causing her to jump back.
“Hello?” she said cautiously, wondering how a man in such a state had made it up however many floors her apartment was. She was met with an almost zombie-like groan, causing her to back away quickly. She spent far too much time in her manuscripts, she sighed, her heart rate spiking as she shut herself in the kitchen and rummaged around in one of her draws, pulling out a very illegal firearm with pearl and amethyst inlaid in the handle. A rite of passage for any writer, however hers also happened to be very functional. Loading several bullets into the gun, she allowed herself a brief minute to wonder how she got into this situation, before opening the door and pointing the gun at the man, who was starting to look very dead, and was groaning alarmingly. She did feel a little bad, but she felt more scared. Not that she would ever admit that.
“Who are you?” she began. Simple question. No response. Her hands shook more than she would’ve liked.
“What are you doing in my apartment?” she asked him, more slowly now. Still no response, only he began moving closer towards her, causing her to back away.
“If you come any closer I will shoot,” she warned, feeling nervous now. The man continued to approach and she was now backed against a wall. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath, squeezing the trigger twice, and watching the blood splatter all over her wooden flooring.
Most people would probably be more concerned about the fact that they had just killed someone, than the flooring, but Agatha wasn’t most people. Agatha was a writer and this was the kind of environment she spent her life in, albeit it was normally on a page. ‘Agatha Harkness’ and ‘apocalyptic event’ belonged in the same sentence: it was her life’s work. Still, after she’d run through the steps she’d have to go through to clean the blood off the floors, and considered the invaluable information this incident provided for her writing, she started to panic about the dead man in her living room.
Slowly, she approached the body to take a closer look and her original concerns resurfaced. This man looked long dead: not someone you find in a penthouse apartment in central Paris. His limbs had the stiffness of someone long dead, his flesh radiated cold and his blood was long dried, spilling from fatal wounds that didn’t match her gun, apart from the clotted mess that now coated her flooring. Despite the overwhelming evidence, a part of her still figured it was her overactive imagination, and that this was either some hallucination, or he was just an ordinary person with some pretty serious injuries. She wasn’t exactly familiar with what a fatal injury looked like, she tried to convince herself, conveniently forgetting about the in-depth research she had done for her novels, and experts she had consulted for her screenplays.
Nonetheless, she carefully locked her front door, and the one to her balcony, barricading them with chairs. She looked and felt paranoid. After a moment of consideration, she walked into her room and grabbed one of her more practical bags- a vintage leather rucksack which still had a price tag that would make any normal person flinch, and began filling it with anything she would need in an emergency. She had written this scene more times than she could count so she followed the script. Change of clothes, flashlight, first-aid kit, food, cash. Check. gun, bullets, pocket knife, rope, water. Packed. She briefly questioned why she even had all this stuff, but. She was a writer, there were stranger ones out there. Then, because she definitely wasn’t as hardcore as her characters, and also did not have a behind the scenes make-up team, she added her makeup bag, most valuable jewellery, and a mostly-empty notebook and pens, as well as an old mp3 player, before looking at the bag in front of her. If anyone found her they would probably admit her for psychiatric help, but it made her feel a tiny bit safer as she waited around in the apartment for daylight to arrive. If it really was just paranoia and an overactive imagination then she could throw the bag in the bottom of her walk-in wardrobe and laugh about it with Wanda over a glass of wine tomorrow. If it wasn’t: she wouldn’t last a day without the supplies and nobody around would be judging her for it.
As she waited, she sat at the kitchen island because her living room smelled of decaying flesh and blood, and picked up her book again to try and pass time. At that moment, her affinity for disaster novels was less than helpful, with every page bringing up a new concern that she hadn’t previously thought of. Definitely paranoid, she muttered, placing the book face down on the table in frustration. Every shadow in the dark apartment made her jump, and every look out the window reminded her of how long she had to wait until morning. She hadn’t even considered that that might not help: she had no reason to believe that these ‘zombies’ held any of the traditional characteristics, but it was her best shot. Worst case scenario, at least she would be able to see. Next, she pulled out her laptop and began writing but the script in front of her felt like the most standard opening scene to a zombie movie ever: and worse, felt like her life. Her life was becoming stereotypical, albeit for a zombie apocalypse movie, and that did not make Agatha feel good. If there was anything she hated, it was being stereotypical and predictable, so she closed the laptop (and stuffed it in the top of her bag along with its charger), and walked over to her wardrobe and got changed to focus on something else.
She couldn’t leave in an emergency in her dressing gown after all, so she pulled on purple trousers, heeled boots, a white blouse and her favourite coat, which made her feel substantially better. She then walked over to the vanity and applied light makeup, pinning her hair out of her face. If she was facing an apocalypse, she was going to do it stylishly, she figured, before looking at her reflection in the mirror and sighing. It was a great outfit for a day on set, or an interview or even a trip to one of the little cafes down the street for coffee and writing, but she wasn’t doing anything practical with heels on. She decided at that moment that she definitely preferred movies. In fiction, a character could survive a zombie apocalypse in heels because Agatha said she could. In reality, she controlled the narrative less effectively. Taking one last look in the mirror, she swapped her outfit for jeans, a black tank top, and practical boots (or at least as practical as she owned) and returned to her seat at the kitchen island. Apocalypses, it seemed, if that was even what was going on, were much less cool in real life.
The dark was suffocating, and as much as she squinted out the window to the streets below, she could barely make out a flashlight or two on the streets below. She normally enjoyed alone time, but now, though she would never admit it, she wished she had some company. Hopefully Wanda and Billy were together, she thought. The two didn’t always have a perfect relationship, but when the boy wasn’t with his mother he was usually with Agatha, so it was reasonable to hope they were safe somewhere, together. Still restless, she headed back into the bedroom where she grabbed the rucksack and brought it through to the kitchen island, anxiously undoing and redoing the buckle on one of the pockets. Nervous habit. She checked the contents of the backpack again, checking each item of her mental list for the second time. Change of clothes, though unfortunately practical-still there; flashlight- there though she added some extra batteries as well; first-aid kit- hopefully suitable because she didn’t have the equipment to improve it; food, which was mainly granola bars since she rarely ate in; cash, though she would try and pick up more at an ATM in the morning. Did ATMs work without power? Her bullets, pocket knife, rope, and water then went back in her bag, and she slid the gun into the waistband of her jeans: there was no point in having it if she couldn’t access it, though she shuddered at the thought of having to shoot anyone else. It would be very inconvenient if the apocalypse was just a figment of her imagination and she’d gone around shooting people. Her reputation would be ruined. Then again maybe it would just give her authenticity? People working in her industry got away with a surprising amount. Probably not worth the risk though.
She closed the backpack and pushed it back into the middle of the table before returning to the walk-in wardrobe and picking up her favourite coat again, which she had discarded in her final outfit change. Practical? Absolutely not, but life without dramatic accessories was not a life worth living, she decided, putting the coat back on and examining her reflection in the mirror. She was not cut out for this. For a lack of anything better to do, she then began changing her earrings to a row of gold hoops, which at least made the outfit a little less miserably dull, and grabbed her favourite rings and watch which also helped accessorize (and would be useful if her phone died), 4am, it read. She had about an hour left before she could figure out what to do, so after grabbing a few of her other sets of keys (though she thought it was unlikely that she’d end up in London or Los Angeles), she returned to restlessly sitting at the kitchen island waiting for sunrise.