Shut-eye

Posted on Thu 2nd Jul, 2020 @ 7:32am by Yuliette Marayan Dr.

1,216 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Brown Sector: The Zodiac

Yuliette wanted to use the shower very badly, but the showerhead was well out of her arm’s length. She had nothing to stand on. Well, the toilet. She set one foot on one edge of the bowl, another foot on the other edge. It rocked a little. She could just barely reach the showerhead, but apart from her questionable grasp and shaky footing, it was too rusty to take apart for the filter installation. The toilet rocked again and, seeing as it looked like the bowl hadn’t been cleaned since installed and there was no seat…. she feared this could only get worse and hopped down. She’d have to settle for installation over the sink faucet.

The filter came with directions. In Bajoran. She checked both sides, but Bolian was equally unhelpful. There were, however, diagrams, so that wasn’t nothing. She was a surgeon, for goodness sake. How hard could it be? She poured the pieces out of the box and contemplated the puzzle.

It wasn’t so awful. A washer and gaskets, the multi-fit options, some of which she could just return to the box. She interlocked and connected all the needed parts in all the right order and encased it around her faucet… and then found that the final step involved something she didn’t appear to have.

“Number four gorch,” she read from the imprint on the casing. It had a little arrow pointing to the fancy cut head of the fastener. “What the frip is a gorch? Blasted Bolian manufacturers!”

Yuliette tried to hold together all of her work with one hand while kneeling and looking at the instructions. The ‘parts included’ drawings did not include anything she would assume to be a wrench or screw driver. Which meant it expected the purchaser to have had a number four gorch of their own on hand!

Frustrated, but still clamping all of her hard work together by hand, she kicked the box and all of the extra fittings when skittering around the little room. One of the little screws plinked into the drain hole in the floor. Well, she bought it at least. She didn’t have to worry about returning the thing with missing parts and having it charged to her.

Who was she kidding! She was out 75 units worth of seed money and couldn’t turn the spout on even! Yuliette sighed and looked down at the mess she’d made. Something caught her eye. There was something stuck in the crease of the lid flap. Using one hand to hold the spout and her foot to reach out and hook the box back towards her, Yuliette caught the box with her finger tips of her free hand and examined it. There was a piece of paper taped there. She used her one free hand to hold the box and her teeth to peel back the paper. In her reflection in the mirror she saw what she held in her teeth was a note to which a small tool was taped. She dropped the box and then turned the paper around so as not to go through the mental trouble of trying to read in mirror reverse.

“You’ll need this, too, Miss. -Ian” She read aloud. Examining the tool she smiled. “So you're a number four gorch.”

With the proper gorch, it was easy enough to tighten the fasteners. She worked the faucet handle and was pleased at the clear water running out. She had some soap and a rag in her overnight bag, and looked at the completely open wall leading to the balcony. What did she need more? The air to relieve the stench, or the privacy of cover? For a moment, privacy won out. She went to untie the scrap ropes holding back the crude curtain that was all that separated Yuliette from outside view, if anyone cared to look in on her. It unfurled and she felt closed into the tiny place once more.

She stripped and carefully refolded her clothes. Pissed off, she looked at the impossible kanar stains. She’d washed mud, blood, sweat, spit and food stains out of that outfit. But Kanar looked like it totaled it. That was an expensive, durable, and frankly fashionable outfit she’d gone to great lengths to source for her work in the desert. It wasn’t just some once and done party dress. Now it had ichor green streaks on both articles, top and bottom. Was it best to keep them anyway, or to throw them away and be done with them? She decided not to decide for now. Returning to the chipped skink, she set to sponge bathing herself using the running water while trying not to touch the unclean sink basin itself. She was as always thankful she’d opted for a short haircut, and gotten good at trimming it for herself. At times like these when she had to wash her own hair in a minuscule amount of water, she couldn’t imagine the trouble of rinsing out anything more.

Before she’d managed to clean half of her, the smell of rot was growing overwhelming once again. Yuliette dried off herself entirely with a small hand towel and hurried to her satchel for more menthol balm under her nose. She pulled on a different outfit from her bag. She couldn’t call it clean exactly, since it had been so long since she had washed any of her few outfits. But she’d remedy that tomorrow. Along with a through top to bottom scrubbing of the apartment. She rerolled the curtain to get the open air back into the room now that she was proper once more. Being as short as she was, she was only able to secure it towards the middle, where the sagging cross bar bowed downward.

She dragged the nasty old mattress closer to the balcony so she could breathe fresher air and then produced the plastic sheet from Findley’s, shaking it open over the mattress. Sleeping on plastic would be nothing but sweaty and gross, but it couldn’t be worse than being in contact with that thing. She lay down on her back and stretched out the aches. Tension subluxated everything and she went through a process in her head of naming all her muscle groups and stretching and relaxing each one. Finally she opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling. In spite of being the only surface in the place with a clean coat of paint, it was noticeably bowed and cracked along a seam. She hadn’t remembered noticing that in the morning when she’d first gotten the keys. But she hadn’t been on her back, looking up, either.

Yuliette didn’t want to stare at the sagging ceiling so, as if looking away in denial would make it better, she turned to her side and curled up with her hands forming a pillow under her own neck. She was far too tired to continue to be disgusted or offended or afraid. Sleep relieved her of it all.

((ooc: end of Yuliette's first day.... thanks for reading and allowing me freedom for the introduction! Let me know if you have any ideas for JPs! ~nikki<3 ))

 

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