Rem: I've just recently fallen into the AVP fandom. And besides having a desire to improve my writing, I had some ideas boiling in my head for some time. Please enjoy! And your reviews are greatly appreciated!
Disclaimer: I do not own the AVP universe, nor do I profit from any of these chapters/writings.
Story image: credit goes to K Putt (link in profile) image titled 'Space Engine'
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Desiree woke up to the bright heat of the sun.
Feeling drained and light headed, a single thought crossed her mind.
Shit!
She startled up, expecting to be in her bed in her one bedroom apartment. Late for work, the thought terrified her. After completing her nursing degree, fresh out of university, sleeping in had been a constant worry for the new grad. The occasional nightmare, out of several, that included accidentally killing her patients for all various kinds of reasons. The kind of stuff she thought far too often on.
Before she could discern the sound of waves, the sight of the white beach– her head swirled and forced her back down. Her hands clenched into the sand as her breathing hitched, and her heart throbbed in her ears.
The world almost went black, almost.
She forced herself to breathe; in through the nose, out through the mouth.
At least the waves sounded calming enough. And as time passed the darkness receded, the sounds of the new world surrounding her quietly flooded in. Trees swaying and rubbing against each other, the sound of their leaves scraping, shuffling, and animals – perhaps insects too – that she couldn't recognize made noises.
She wanted to believe she was in a dream. And as that thought crept further into her mind; she decided she might as well take hold of it. There had been no other explanation to tell her otherwise. Desiree carefully lifted herself up onto her elbows, and then up into a sitting position. She decided to sit for a while, and take a moment to really observe where she had been placed in said dream.
The beach was long with few rocks. The edges of vegetation included yellow, tall and sparse grasses. The lush green of a jungle stark, and bright loomed over the edges of the sand and grass.
With all things considered, a tropical beach wasn't so bad. She thought it was beautiful as her eyes drifted to the ocean. Clear blue; with all sorts of exotic fish inhabiting the shallow waters not too far.
It must have been a part of the dream. Whatever was acting up in her head – the dizziness, dreams made things too real. She had experienced pain before in dreams. And yes, she had lost family members in dreams, and screamed herself awake when in reality nothing had actually happened. Not once in her life had she ever realized her dreams had been dreams while being in them.
The grogginess, the light-headed symptoms of her arrival meant nothing to her.
Happily she considered herself lucky, again. This would be the first dream she'd been able to discern. Ever. And on a tropical beach nonetheless.
Perfect.
Desiree finally looked at herself. She wore little, and recognized none of it. A one-fit t-shirt poorly scrapped together hung just below her knees. No bra, no underwear. That made her uncomfortable. That, and her bare feet. It would make going into the unknown jungle a very uncomfortable experience.
It was starting to make her uncomfortable as she sat, thinking about the sand and all the places she'd find it in. She squirmed at the thought, and moved to stand. Thankfully the world didn't spin.
Desiree walked up to the water's edge, right at the point where its waves reached before receding back into the ocean. Scanning out, there was nothing beyond the ocean's horizon. It met directly with the sky, and it was incredibly endless from her view. Taking a deep breath in, she started to walk the length of the beach ahead of her. She considered how dreams normally went. And the only survivalist dreams she'd encountered, and remembered, had been the zombie dreams.
Those dreams were hardly pleasant. Sometimes she would die, or those she had cared most ended up dying.
Either way, despite the charm her surroundings offered, she understood the smart idea of planning for the inevitable.
She only hoped it wasn't an island full of zombies.
With that thought in mind, she clenched her jaw and started planning.
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Desiree enjoyed watching survivalist movies. The occasional reality TV show featuring a guy in the middle of nowhere had been amusing, but she hardly ever took note of their tips and tricks. She wasn't a camper – her family had hardly been able to afford it. She enjoyed day hiking, but her dreams and aspirations of taking a seven-day hike on the tip of Vancouver Island had not come into fruition. Those plans had had a date and time in the future. And those classes on survival in the forests never booked; the job was going to cover that soon. The loans looming over her head had been the biggest threat to her financial security in the meantime.
Perhaps this dream would prove something.
As the first hour seemed to roll away, she managed to rip the sleeves off her shirt, and had gathered palm leaves to make some sort of shoe for her feet. It worked, in an odd, messed up way. Somehow she'd managed to use the strips of clothing as strings to hold the leaves together and around her foot. Whether they'd prove effective, and durable remained highly questionable.
The woman considered the position of the sun then, and didn't like the idea of sleeping without shelter. Among the plethora of things and items she required, for a second she felt overwhelmed and lost. If this were a dream, when would she wake? How long would this dream actually take? The rare dream spanned over months in dreamtime. What would that be like knowing she'd have to experience every second of it?
Shaking her head with a huff, she went back to work.
Desiree settled with an area just up above the beach. A sparse area of jungle that didn't appear thick and overcrowded, something she could work with. Gathering driftwood, and sticks along the border of the jungle she worked on a palm tree structure. Using one of the oddly grown trees, one that seemed to curve sideways a little before squiggling its trunk upwards, she leaned the longer sticks against it at an angle. She stuck other pieces of wood vertical on the other side so as to make a wall to her back.
As the light began to dim, she started placing the palm leaves down 'inside', and layering them on top of the sticks at an angle. It was weak, not very warm, but with limited time ahead of her she scrambled to make a pit of some sort to start a fire. Despite her best efforts, Desiree could not spark the wood. Preferring to keep her hands, and not wanting them to go raw from the efforts of rubbing wood, she crawled into the structure.
Desiree's thoughts immediately went to her stomach. The need for food made her mouth water, a good sign, considering she hadn't found any. The feeling of hunger brought her back to her memories in university, competing in the women's varsity wrestling team. At any given time she had two kilos to cut, sometimes three despite the two-kilo grace they allowed for regular weigh ins.
Growing up she'd promised herself she wouldn't do that. It must have been the mentality, no – the reality of it all. Everyone 'did it'. And some weigh ins had been easy, others, not so much. She envied the men because they could loose the water weight fast, and quite a lot. It made five kilos – eleven pounds - look easy, but it had been the worst two days of her small, varsity-wrestling career.
Not the kind of wrestling where you'd expect a woman to have double D's, a sexy outfit, and a cheesy name to scream into the crowd. Unless you managed to cut weight without your tits shriveling from the water loss; scratch that, the dieting, and the weight cut.
She giggled at the thought.
Pretending that she was in fact fasting for something spiritual, seemed to get her through the constant pangs of hunger on a weigh in.
But the worst feeling of it all had been the water loss. And if she couldn't find water in three days, in this heat, she'd die. And dying from thirst was a very, very uncomfortable way to die in a dream.
Drawing up several dried out palm leaves on, and about her, she closed her eyes. Curled up as much as she could in her pathetic little structure, she hoped she could dive right back into sleep. And perhaps she might even wake up when she did. In reality land.
Surprisingly, even as the temperature cooled at night, and past her fears of insects crawling into her hair, she fell asleep.
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Something had grabbed her in the night. Light was flickering from somewhere. But she had been too slow. Quickly, suddenly, her structure tumbled and a hand shoved her shoulder down. Something straddled her, something else pressed against her neck. It felt cool to her skin as she felt herself perspire more. Eyes cracked open, trying to adjust to the night and make sense of the looming figure.
"Don't move!" The harsh voice, female, warned her.
"You do anything stupid, and I'll cut your throat. Alright?"
Desiree did not have the words, and mumbled something incoherent.
"What?" The stranger snapped and slapped the side of her head. It stung, but other than that it was harmless.
The knife was starting to dig into her skin.
"Y-Yeah! Okay, I get it!" This wasn't a position she often found herself in. It had been too easy.
"Who are you? What do you do? What year is it?"
Desiree blinked, and fumbled.
"Ah… ah- it's, it's the year twenty seventeen, August third." She took a breath. "My name… it's ah, Desiree. And I'm a nurse, a ah, yeah I'm registered and all that."
The hazel eyes gleamed in the low light of the fire. The strange woman had been carrying a hand made torch and stuck it into the ground nearby. She looked ragged from what she could tell by the light. It was hard for Desiree to read her expression then; features tight, stressed, but otherwise blank.
"A nurse?" The stranger seemed to contemplate this. Desiree watched, as the woman's eyes seemed to withdraw in a headspace far, far away from her.
"You're coming with me."
"Wait, what's your name?"
"No time, get up, now." These commands seemed to seethe in the air. This woman would have no patience for her. Lifting the jagged edges of the knife from her neck, she stepped away and grabbed the torch from the ground.
"Where are we going?" Desiree prodded the woman as she got up. Briefly happy that she had constructed her weak pair of tree shoes ahead of time.
"Somewhere… safe, for now."
Desiree was still waking up. But the answer made her pale. The woman ahead of her was gaunt, muscled nonetheless, but obviously not well fed, and worn.
"It's not zombies, is it?"
Desiree would have preferred a snort, or a grin of amusement that would have told her otherwise. But the woman continued to stare at her with numbness in her expression, hardly an expression to begin with. She must have ignored Desiree's question, because something intense burned in her eyes as she clenched her hand around the torch.
"Follow me."
Her heart was pounding again. Desiree nodded in compliance. There must have been a good reason for a woman with a knife to reconsider killing her. Despite the doubts that trickled with her appearance, Desiree had no choice.
There was something out there.
With the desire to know more from this woman, Desiree followed closely behind her as she skirted them along the beach. The stranger stopped, glanced back, and then moved them into the jungle.
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To be continued…
Rem: not too much action yet. But things will heat up in the next two chapters. Tell me what you think! Feedback and reviews are much appreciated, thanks!
