2019-06-21 - Burn It All

Penelope was a mess. She knew that. Her dog knew that. Everyone that was in on this disastrous knew that. She had crawled out of the sewer and headed towards home. She wasn't going into her house any further than the entry way. Once the door is closed and locked the redhead is stripping out of her ruined clothes and piling them near the door. Brutus comes trotting over and sniffs them, giving a snort of disgust and then he waddles after her. "Leave those alone." she mutters to the dog.

Then she's heading upstairs, the door to the bathroom is toed open with her foot and she heads for the shower, because she was going to have to sit in there for a few days to get this god awful stench from her form. The hot water is turned all the way up, no cold to speak of. She wanted to melt the skin off of her bones from the way the steam was starting to rise. Penny plants herself on her bottom and lets the water rush over her, scalding pale skin as it hits her.

She was in one of those moods and she was still bleeding everywhere, but she wanted to be clean. Clean would make everything better, right? Blood, dirt and God only knows what else circles the drain as it's washed off the skin in a goodly amount. The wound in her chest was going to be something weird to explain to her fellow co-workers, but she's think of something. Mauled by a mountain lion maybe?

Maybe.

45 minutes later is when the hot water ran out and given the weather outside, there's no need to sit under a cold spray of water and die of natural causes like Pneumonia. Penny drags herself from the shower and wraps her form in one of those fluffy towels she'd bought for when life was sucking. This was the pinnacle of sucktatude. Yes, that was a word in the vocabulary of the woman. A lot of things sucked these days. It made her yearn for having someone she could just break down in front of.

But that was a long time ago.

Two hours later found her dressed in fresh clothes, things that were warm and comforting. Lucian's old ARMY sweat shirt that he probably hadn't noticed was missing until she'd left to go back to school that one time and jeans. The pile of ruined clothes had been moved to the grill and were now covered in lighter fluid. A match is struck and then boom...no more stupid ruined clothing. Penny gives a frown as they burn. She'd liked that blouse, but after the sewers...there was no way to save it.

And she had other things to deal with.