Wordsearch in Hell

Ellie Carter

Emily finds her way to the warehouse for one reason or the other, where she can find Ellie snooping in the warehouse. They meet each other around the corner of some boxes, which causes Ellie to startle.

She wields her weapon and prize— a wordsearch puzzle book— pointed at Emily. She's sounds American, speaking with a slight southern twang to her voice.

"Ah! Jesus, girl, what the hell? Hey, you're not a guard or somethin', right? You were in those cages too? So, you think this is Hell or what?"

She relaxes a bit, bringing the book down.

Emily Lewenhock

Emily, still a bit dazed herself, startled about as much. No weapons here to cross with the puzzle book, though—ooh, puzzle book? No, focus—so she just took half a step back, her cat slippers thankfully having all the grip they seemed to need.

She finally blinked at the person in front of her, as if the image would make more sense afterward. That did not seem like a straitjacket that was very uhhh effective, but it wasn’t like she’d chosen her own, so…

“Ah—sorry,” she replied in English, her accent a bit more British-flavored but not quite standard.

“But, right—if I’m a guard, they sure didn’t tell me.” Whoever “they” was supposed to be here. “Not sure about Hell, but… I can’t say I have a lot of better ideas at this point."

She nodded at the puzzle book. Convenient visual point of interest that wasn't, uh. Yeah.

"Feels like they wouldn't provide those in Hell… But I guess it depends on how solvable they are, huh?"

Ellie Carter

She doesn't show embarrassment at Emily's gaze and laughs a bit at the idea, "Ah, well, I'll start making up words if I have to. What's your name, girl? Did you come here from a sleepover?"

She gestures to the kitty slippers with the book.

"If you remember. I'm getting the feeling none of us do."

Emily Lewenhock

"I like it. Buck the system, yeah?" As if Emily wasn't the lawful type.

"Emily. You?" A formal handshake didn't seem all that appropriate for this interaction, so she'd just keep an eye out in case the other woman set up for… a fist bump, or something. Eyes on her hands. Yes.

At the other question, Emily ran her fingers through her hair with a sigh. The extra weight on her sleeves was discomfiting.

"Just catching up on some lab notes, as far as I remember… Pretty sure I didn't have any guests over." And that came out a bit dry for some kind of riff on the sleepover thing. Maybe she could tack on another comment to salvage it? Though it'd been so long since she'd had that kind of social thing…

She caught herself zoning out and blinked it off. "Sorry. You've asked some of the others about it, I take it?"

Ellie Carter

"I'm Ellie," she says, no idea about the psychic damage it's about to inflict on Emily. She doesn't offer a fist bump or a handshake, but she reaches out to give Emily a hearty pat on the shoulder and an equally hearty laugh.

"They gave you a lab coat jacket after nabbing you at the lab! Are you flattered or insulted by that? Yeah, I asked some others and so far no luck. Not sure what's going on, honestly. I've been going with the we're all dead theory, but if you've got somethin' else hit me with it."

Emily Lewenhock

As relatively normal as this conversation had been going, Emily’s face went blank for a second at the introduction.

“Oh… no, I haven’t actually—“

Brain seeming to catch up, she cut herself off.

“Uh wait I misheard that sorry. Nice to meet you, ah, Ellie.”

Well, couldn’t get much more awkward than that, so the shoulder pat went unchallenged and nearly unacknowledged.

She snorted at the question. “What else would they choose?” There was pretty much nothing else to her at this point, after all. “Does imply they’ve targeted us long enough to personalize our stuff, but…” She squinted at Ellie’s jacket briefly but couldn’t hazard such an easy guess as her own. And enough of that.

“Well, you’re supposed to gather all your data before making an actual theory.”

“…Not an awful lot of that so far, though.”

Ellie Carter

She laughs as Emily looks at her jacket, putting her hands on her hips.

"Don't worry, girl, I'd say they personalized mine pretty good! I think this is just lending cred to my idea that we're all in the afterlife, no? Who the heck would set up something like this? Divine punishment makes more sense. And it sounds kind of badass."

Emily Lewenhock

Yes, back on topic. The topic being… being dead. Right.

"Yeah, I could see us being brought in to do something, but I haven't exactly seen any facilities I'd be worth taking to make use of. And I'm not sure how much I believe in divine punishment, exactly, but it does make about as much sense as the next thing, you've got me there."

"So what, does that require us all getting… s…mitten? Smote? Smited? You're the expect on wordsmithing here, might have to help me out on that one."

Ellie Carter

"Ooooh, I'm the expert? News to me! It requires us all dying, yeah. Getting squashed. Hey, what do you last remember? Because I think I coulda-woulda-shoulda died, though I don't really remember exactly what happened..."

She puts her hands on her hips and sighs deeply. But it really doesn't seem all that troublesome to her.

Emily Lewenhock

“Well, I’m certainly not a Linguistics major.” Did she even know any of those? Maybe that one transfer student with the nose job? Okay, not relevant.

Emily rubbed her jaw instead. “Last I checked, it’s pretty difficult for paper cuts to have any kind of fast-acting lethality, but I guess never say never. Nothing I could have predictably died from, at least.”

“What were you up to? Some cliffside bungee jumping?” Ellie seemed like she’d enjoy that.

Ellie Carter

Damn, Ellie never even got to go cliffside bungee jumping before she died. She started making a hopeless bucket list before she killed him— shit she wished she shoulda done earlier and certainly wasn't going to be able to do after— but she didn't include that one. She adds it to the mental list.

"Honestly, girl, I just killed someone! I bet I got shot. Maybe you died of lab fumes."

Emily Lewenhock

Dumbfounded, Emily couldn't figure out if that one was a joke or just casually confessing homicide. They honestly seemed equally likely from this source.

"I wasn't even in the lab, I was catching up at home…" More said to herself than anything, but maybe she also wanted to establish she wasn't wearing these shoes to work. That was probably really against safety regulations. Though they were technically closed-toe… Anyway.

"Do you have a potential gunshot wound, then? Or would that vanish in… transit?" She lifted a hand to trace a finger over her palm. "Not sure what to expect if we're just lost souls or what have you, but I sure feel pretty normally physical here."

Ellie Carter

She's a little disappointed by the lack of reaction, but she shouldn't be. She taps her chin.

"Nah. Nothing hurts and I can't find anything that looks like one. Haven't really done a full strip search for it, but I'm not exactly bleedin' through my clothes… buuuuut, I figure if we're dead that doesn't really matter! Probably wouldn't keep the wound, you know."

Emily Lewenhock

Don't take it personally, Ellie, all of Emily's reactions are repressed.

"There are plenty of stories of people not realizing they've been shot—since most nerve endings are at the surface, deeper wounds don't necessarily sound all the alarms…"

"…But yeah, a lethal shot would probably have more bleeding."

"Guess ghost-slash-zombie life is pretty unexplored territory, so that's fair." Not much point theorizing when everyone who could normally supply data, uh, couldn't actually.

"Speaking of which, I haven't hit up all the rooms in this place yet. Might be more info there." She didn't sound especially hopeful. "How's your search going?"

"Probably not bad if you're already looking to search for words instead."

Ellie Carter

"Were you a medical researcher or somethin', girl?"

She throws up her hands and shrugs.

"Nah. Nothin' yet. Just… rooms. More weird rooms and weirder people. Feels like we won't know more until... something kicks off. Unless this is like that show where Hell is just being put with people you find a wee bit annoying."

Emily Lewenhock

Ugh, she didn't like the sound of that in past tense. ~~If she wasn't a researcher anymore, what was she?~~

"Not exactly, but I do rub elbows with a lot." However infrequently that might have been outside of class. "There can be medical implications with some of the bacteria at my lab, but that side's not our primary focus."

She sighed. "Sounds about right…"

"Oh boy. Can't wait to run into all the physics teachers that must be here, if that's the case." Ha Ha Funny. She only vaguely recalled that that other-people thing was a thing, of some kind, so there wasn't much more riffing to be done.

Ellie Carter

She gets a real kick out of that because she always hated school. She throws her hair back with a shake of her head.

"Hah! That's any teacher at all if you ask me! You sound like a smart girl. Why you'd end up in Hell with a troublemaker like me? Developing the plague in there? You're British or somethin', is that it?"

Emily Lewenhock

Emily kept up the casual chat as much as she could stand to with a lady who'd either committed murder or was just Like That. More surface-level stuff, her UK/Netherlands situation, and (jokingly snidely) no, her workplace didn't have any Yersinia studies going.