2020-08-12 - Rise from Your Grave

It's later on in the evening. The sun having gone down doesn't do much for the oppressive heat of the sun, though, at least not for a few hours. It's still in the 80s. As a result, Alison has her windows down as she drives home from work. Her pace slows to a crawl as she gets into the trailer park itself, which, well, is pretty much mandatory given the kids running this way and that, drunks wandering around, shit like that.

Deep in the woods surrounding the trailer park, Giada Blackthrone snaps awake.. laying in the disturbed grass covering her like a grave, she sits bolt upright and stares around at her surroundings with widened, red rimmed eyes, and a gaunt demeanor. She's wearing her jacket, gloves, beanie, and jeans with leggings beneath.. winter clothes.. and burning up because of the heat.

Stumbling out of the woods, dirty and looking dreary, the woman probably looks a fright as she stumbles out of the woods into the path of Alison's car... not so close that she is splattered across the windshield, but close enough that slamming on the breaks is absolutely necessary to keep that from happening... And even still her gloved hands slap down on the hood... staring through the glass at her redheaded friend.

Gigi has been gone for... months. Since just after Valentines day..

Now she looks like she just crawled out of a shallow grave.

Alison does, in fact, jam her foot on the brake pedal when the figure wanders into the path of her car. "Jesus, what the fuck. Get out of the--" It's an automatic reaction to some probably drunk asshole not watching where the hell he's going, but then she blinks a few times and realizes just who the hell it is.

Someone going missing all of a sudden in Gray Harbor isn't all that unusual. Sometimes people just get sick of the place, find a better opportunity somewhere else, that kinda thing. Sometimes it's something a lot worse, what with the general weird stuff that happens, or the organized crime that operates in town. People coming back does tend to be pretty unusual, though. Coming back all of a sudden looking the way that Gigi does? That's definitely in the realm of the more unusual.

"Gigi? What the fuck?" Alison puts the car into park, turns the engine off, and scrambles out of her door, making her way over to Giada to embrace her in a hug.

Gigi stares at Alison as the car goes into park, but continues leaning forward upon the hood of said car even once it's stopped inches from pasting her across the glass... Following her friend, they were friends right?, with a narrow eyed stare through blood shot, black rimmed eyes. She looks like she's been awake for days... and hasn't eaten in three or four times that long. Gaunt, sickly looking, and pale.

"Ali.." The sound of her voice actually startles her, it sounds like a croak. Breaking twigs and twisting branches.. her eyes, green as the summer leaves, turn to the forest with a deep frown.. Then traverse back to the waitress.

Tugging at her jacket, trying to get it off. So hot... sweltering.. her shirt is torn, or just thread bare, like someone left something out in the elements. "Why is it so damn hot in February?"

The redhead lets Gigi go, helping her out of her jacket as she struggles with it. "It's not damn well February, and you know it. Ugh, and you smell like hot garbage. What happened to you? Where have you been?" Alison's face contorts like she's just smelled something that's been left to rot out in the hot sun for weeks on end. Which probably isn't too far from the truth.

Gigi takes a deep breath and blows it out and even her breath smells like earth.. not an awful scent, just a natural one.. naturally unnatural.. or unnaturally natural, depending on ones point of view. She practically collapses against Alison, "I don't know." She confides in a voice that sounds more human. Dropping her jacket and her beanie, now pawing at the oversized, thread bare, sweater.. "I... I went into the woods trying to find Ember.. and then I woke up just now.." Ember disappeared around the same time.

"I think the woods..." Staring at them, terror in the usually overly confident womans eyes. "I ..." tears running down her cheeks, cutting clear lines through the dirt on her face. "I need a bath.. and a phone." Kai. "What do you mean it's not February?" More horror. Genuine horror.

Alison looks a bit confused, kind of like, what sort of game are you playing at? Obviously Giada knows damn well that it's not February. "It's, like, the middle of August.. the 12th or something?" Ah, yes, Alison, the exact date is the important bit here.

She reaches into her bag slung over her shoulder and pulls out her phone, unlocking it before handing it over to the grubbier than usual woman. "Are you okay? Do you want to clean yourself up at my place?" Alison's kind of having a hard time parsing the exact situation here.

"It was February sixteenth..." Gigi complains, snatching at Alison's phone and holding it in both hands as she tries to remember Kai's number... baring that, tries to find it in Ali's contacts... baring that. Starts crying and sinking down against the front of the car. "I have no idea what the fuck is going on.." Topless, except her bra, and just as dirty beneath that sweater... She looks a fright.. a genuine horror story at worst. "I think I died."

Kai's number probably isn't going to be in Alison's contacts. Hell, she hasn't seen Kai in months either, though that doesn't necessarily mean anything so drastic as what seems to have happened with Giada. "You seem.." Alison pauses. "Mostly alive? I'm glad to see you again, I thought you left like everyone else fucking does." The redhead hugs Gigi again as she sinks down against the front grille of her car. "C'mon, let's get you inside."

Gigi clutches Alison's phone to her chest, right between her breasts, and stares up at the redhead, "Do I?" It's a genuine question. Confirmation. She is afraid she might be dead and this might be the afterlife somehow. With the hug, she tries to stand, but her strength is supremely sapped and she's more or less just hanging on Ali now, moving under direction towards the trailor rather than under her own cognition. "Kai probably thinks I left her." Matter of factly, sunken eyes downcast, "I guess I kind of did.. we had a fight.. and.. fuck, Ali.. what the fuck is going on."

"I'm pretty sure that I'm not dead. And you're here with me, which makes you not dead. Could use a shower, though. And probably a pizza, I think." Alison helps Giada along into Alison's trailer, holding the door open for her and guiding her towards the bathroom. Some dickhead's started honking his horn behind her car parked in the middle of the road, but the redhead's far more worried about Gigi than that right now.

"I haven't talked with her in a while, not sure what's up with her.. we'll get it figured out, though. I promise."

Immediatley upon entering the Trailer, Gigi collapses on the couch. She's not doing it to spread dirt everywhere, but she's just got not strength... she definitely wants a shower.. but she'll probably have to settle for a bath. Which, she remembers, and rolls off the cushions to crawl in the general direction of the back of the trailer. Peeling off more of her clothes in the process.

She's usually a thicker girl. Thin, sure, but on the bigger side of thin. Now she just looks sick. Ribs showing, bony ass... no muscle to be seen anywhere as she disappears into the bathroom and drops over on her side upon the floor. She's not yet come to thinking about Bug or how her trailer had been dark at this hour, when there should definitely be lights on. Or how there was no cars out front... or curtains on the window.

What she doesn't know is they'd moved a month and a half ago when she disappeared. Not out of Grey Harbor, but away from the trailer park. A lot has changed.