"This isn't happening.."
Peridot whispered this in disbelief. She stood from her chair, now on eye level with the floating girl. The blonde is staring at her uninvited guest in confusion and denial.
"I'm asleep." Peridot said. "I'm asleep and I'll wake up in a few minutes." Then she smacked herself in the forehead, her chuckle forced. "No, that never works.. This isn't a cartoon, or, or some sitcom.." She backed up against the kitchen wall, next to the fridge, and sank down to sit on the floor, face in her hands.
Peridot's stutter was not missed by Lapis. The floating girl smiled and came to float down next to her target, arms crossed under her chin.
"Yeah, I'm as real as can be." Lapis said this gayly, as if she had come across a new toy as a child.
"So you're really a ghost." Peridot stated, confirming the situation to herself. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, looking up to see the girl floating in front of her.
"Demon, actually." Lapis corrected, flipping herself upside down to get a look at Peridot from a different perspective. "Name's Lapis. Lapis Lazuli."
"Like the thing from Minecraft?" The blonde couldn't help but chuckle at the irony of the situation.
"Yep." Lapis confirmed with a grin, flipping herself upright and crossing her legs as if she were sitting on an invisible floor. "No one's ever used that game as an example, though."
"Yeah, well I'm not like everybody else." Peridot retorted, starting to feel a bit more.. she wouldn't call it comfortable. But she did feel more at ease with the floating girl in her house. Perhaps it was because she knew the circumstances now, at least most of the circumstances.
"That's why I'm here, Peridot." Lapis spoke her target's name for the first time, and the name rolled off of her tongue as if she knew the girl her whole life. "Because the boss down under considers you one of the most likely people to kill themselves."
"Well that's not dark at all." Peridot said, not batting an eye as she took in this information. She stood from the floor, dusting off her pajamas. "Figured you'd be here for something along those lines though, if you are a demon."
"You don't seem too surprised." Lapis commented, cocking her head to the side.
"I get over surprises pretty quickly."
"Pfft, tell that to your broken window." Lapis scoffed, brushing her target's words off like a speck of dust.
"That was different, I didn't get any sleep last night!" Peridot argued, her fists down at her sides, her face flush with anger and embarrassment. "That stupid clock wouldn't have gotten me otherwise."
"Uh-huh, sure, whatever you say." Lapis giggled and began to spin herself upside down and right side up over and over again, still in the cross legged position. Floating was fun.. she should have killed herself sooner. "How'd your friend not notice the glass?"
"I cleaned it up before she got here." Peridot pinched the bridge of her nose and turned away from the kitchen, making her way to her room. Lapis followed closely behind, now upright and laying down in the air. The demon found that she couldn't help but stare at her target's butt..
"So how does this work?" Peridot asked when she got into her room, taking a seat in her computer chair, turning to face her uninvited guest. Her arm rested on her desk after she shrugged her button down shirt off to hang over her chair, now just in a sports bra and pajamas. "Do you like, haunt my dreams or something? Probably would work better if you didn't introduce yourself to me, you know."
"Nah, it's a lot less complicated." Lapis took a second to compose herself before answering, having stared at Peridot as she spoke. Why did this blonde have to be so hot? "You'll see how things go."
"Right.. Well whatever. At least you don't eat much, since you're apparently my new roommate." Peridot said this as she turned to her desktop computer, which was already turned on from before she found her houseguest.
"Yeah, kinda hard to digest food when you're dead." Lapis floated beside Peridot, fingers locked to rest under her chin as she watched her target surf the web.
One might think that Peridot would be the one to consider this situation odd, but really, she just didn't care. If all her new "friend" said was true, then all there would be to this visit is a few minor annoyances. So she would just go about her daily life, attempting to entertain herself with her computer, and completely ignore that Lapis Lazuli even exists.
The demoness, on the other hand, was rather perplexed. If Lapis suddenly encountered a demon, and she were alive, she probably would have freaked out. She would have reasoned that she was crazy, that she needed help from a therapist to get over her problem, and live her life happily talking to her demon in an asylum. But seeing Peridot's less than stellar reaction confused her.
Why would Peridot not care that a demon was haunting her in an attempt to force her into suicide? Why wouldn't she be scared, terrified, of a specter that can invade her personal space and mess with whatever it wished?
Lapis idly floated by and watched in wonder as this girl in front of her typed away at her keyboard, searching through YouTube for entertainment.
"Didn't you not get any sleep last night?" Lapis asked, recounting when Peridot mentioned that she was sleep deprived.
"Nope. Didn't sleep at all." And it was obvious now that Peridot was tired. It was easy for her to keep up her energy when she studied with Pearl, because that was after she had taken a shower. But now, as she began to relax in her computer chair and watch some of her favorite YouTubers play video games, it was easy to become exhausted after everything she's been through.
"But I don't want you staring at me while I sleep.. It's creepy, and I'm pretty sure that you, as a demon, would just love to creep me out." The blonde said this without looking back at Lapis, her eyes glued to her screen, eyelids heavy.
"I'm a demon, not a stalker." Lapis countered, floating around Peridot's room in a circle as she spoke, gently kicking her legs. She'd grown bored of the computer screen quickly. "I'm supposed to make you kill yourself. Two of the requirements for that are that you need to be awake, and you need to be so incredibly depressed that it would drive you to that point. Just being creepy isn't gonna cut it."
"You don't sugar coat things, do you?" Peridot asked, finally stealing a glance back at the floating girl to see that she had a smirk on her face.
"If it gets you to Hell faster, it works."
"Right.." Peridot sighed and turned back to her computer, shutting the system down. She was too tired to enjoy the crazy shenanigans the Grumps were up to anyway. The blonde stood from her chair, stretching her arms above her head. "Alright.. Hope you can find some way to have fun while I'm asleep."
"Never thought about that.." Lapis stopped her circling in midair, slowly coming to touch her feet to the ground. Well, to give off the impersonation that she was standing. She is intangible, after all.
"I'm sure you'll figure something out." Peridot began to remove her pajamas, sliding them just far enough down her legs so that they would fall on their own so she could kick them off of her feet. Now just dressed in a black sports bra and neon green panties, she climbed into her bed. "Maybe you can go visit Hell and talk to some people." The blonde said this after she had gotten herself comfortable, removing her glasses and placing them on her night stand, where her alarm clock used to be. That now resided in the trash.
"Maybe.." Lapis pondered this after watching her target strip and get ready for bed. The words Peridot said only actually registered in her head when Peridot had covered herself with her blanket. She's lucky she's already dead, or else her face might be a deep shade of red in a blush. She was actually wondering why Peridot was so okay with being dressed in such away in front of a stranger, let alone a demon.
"Well whatever you do.." Peridot interrupted Lapis' thoughts, turning in her bed to face her wall, and her now broken window with her curtains closed. She would have to get that fixed in case it rains. "..just be sure not to bug me."
Lapis didn't answer. Instead, she floated away from Peridot's room, deciding to take a little tour of her new home, for the time being.
As she floated around the house, phasing through walls, Lapis thought. She thought about how odd it was to be a demon, unable to kill anything, unable to even touch anything. If she wanted, she could feel something. The texture of the carpeted floor, or the softness of a certain fabric, but she couldn't actually move anything or pick something up. It was odd, really, being able to feel without actually feeling anything.
Lapis thought about how quickly the recent events occurred. In just a single night, she killed herself, met the ruler of Hell, became a demon, introduced herself to her target, and was accepted as who and what she was without a second thought.
She closed her eyes and sighed as she unconsciously drifted through the house, killing time. What an odd human Peridot was..
Meanwhile, as the blonde lay in her bed, arms hugging at her sides from under her blanket, shivering in fear, she struggled to keep her breakfast in her stomach.
Author's Note: It's always weird with me. I write 300 or so words in the first day of writing this chapter, I can't think of crap for a week, then I have sudden inspiration and finish the chapter with just under two thousand words. I need to fix that.
