RESIDENT EVIL
A N A M N E S I S
Written by Nick Blackford
Based upon Capcom's Resident Evil created by Shinji Mikami
Chapter One: Celeste, Nathan and Lisa
Celeste would be twenty-five in a week, and even on the night of her birthday she was scheduled to be working at Carnegie Love, the small delicatessens that she'd worked at since she was eighteen.
Tonight she was exhausted, work had made the day even longer than they usually felt. She flung her small handbag onto the floor and collapsed onto her sofa chair, an unconscious routine she seemed to follow every weeknight.
Celeste caught a glimpse of her reflection in the television opposite her, she didn't have the energy to look for the remote control. She looked tired; the concave, thick glass of the television screen unflatteringly distorted her slim figure.
The phone suddenly rang, it would have made her jump if she had the energy, and instead, she simply slumped sideways and answered.
"Celeste?" Shrieked the caller, Celeste squinted. "It's Leila. I can't talk for long, I'm in the phone box on the corner."
It was her boss, Leila Donahue. The only voice she didn't want to hear on the other end of the phone at that particular moment. Leila was a cold woman who despite knowing Celeste for almost seven years, had never once smiled at her. Celeste knew a lot of people like that, it was hard not to, living in the busy, bustling Raccoon City.
"What's wrong?" Celeste asked, she knew what was coming.
"Celeste honey, Sheryl's not come in, she's got a fever, can you believe it? Listen, could you come in and cover for her, I have to be somewhere tonight, it's very important; I wouldn't be ringing you if it wasn't." Leila whined.
Celeste was still looking at her reflection in the television; she could see her face begin to sink, and almost drooping and falling from her skull, onto the floor like half-set jelly.
"Leila, I've just gotten home -" Celeste wasn't able to finish.
"Look, I realize the timing is just horrible, but with the way business has been going recently, I can't afford to close up. You know?" Celeste paused for a moment, she wasn't strong enough to let Leila down, and she never had before. Leila carried on spitting familiar pleads down the phone before the phone box ran out of change.
Celeste put the phone down, lifted herself from her sofa chair, picked up her bag again and left her flat, slamming the door behind her.
It wasn't really that far to Carnegie Love, but tonight, when she just wanted to sit down at home, the prospect of making that journey again seemed to pull out her insides. A short bus ride down through central Raccoon City and she'd be there. Celeste stood at the bus stop for the second time that day and lit a cigarette, she pictured Leila standing impatiently inside Carnegie's, serving another miserable customer at the till.
Images of familiar cheeses, breads and meats rushed through her mind, Celeste realized she hadn't eaten since the morning. Her stomach growled as if to remind her.
A police car screamed passed her at high speed, it broke her daydream. She looked for the bus but the street seemed unusually empty. Without warning, a truck rushed passed, following the police car and running down a large road sign on the other side of the road. It startled Celeste and she dropped her cigarette into a puddle.
She watched as the truck roared down the road at a tremendous speed. The ground shook slightly as the vehicles tore into the distant darkness. She stared at the road sign across the road in disbelief, contemplating that if the truck had simply swerved the other way, it could have easily been her lying there, twisted and broken.
Celeste raised her eyebrows and looked down at her last cigarette, bobbing in the puddle next to her. "Fuck's sake." She muttered to herself. She then let out a long sigh and looked up, noticing that the bus was approaching. Grateful for having noticed the bus at all, she prepared herself for her journey back to work.
The thirty-three through midtown was usually packed full of people trying to get home but on this evening, the bus had only half a dozen passengers. She'd noticed that recently she'd been able to get a seat almost every time she got onto one too. She pondered; wondering how this could be considering the buses had been less frequent if anything recently.
A businessman with a briefcase gave her an unjustified, particularly nasty look as she paid the driver for her ticket. There were several people on the bus, all of them staring at her as she made her way to her usual seat. It was as grubby as any other bus in town, colourless and dimly lit with graffiti either scratched or scribbled onto almost every surface.
As she sat down, Celeste looked at the other passengers wondering who they were and where they were going.
"They're probably all going home." she thought. Celeste turned to look out of the window as the bus began carrying her reluctantly to work.
"You promised we'd spend some time together tonight." Amanda remained defiant; it had been weeks since Nathan had spent an evening in, weeks since he had spent any real time with her.
The young, newly wedded couple had exchanged vows and since then seemingly less words each evening thereafter.
"You know Amanda, it costs money to keep this flat looking like something out of a catalogue. I don't enjoy going to work every night." Nathan yelled. He only yelled like this when he was lying but Amanda was oblivious to Nathan's lies, he was a convincing liar when he had to be.
Nathan wasn't going to work every night. Sure, some nights he was but the majority of them were spent going to Annalisa's flat. Annalisa; confident, happy and an escape from the pressures of work and married life.
Amanda had looked slightly upset by Nathan's outburst and for this he felt slightly guilty, but he didn't let on.
"Look, I just miss you. You're always there." Amanda said softly, she was looking at Nathan, but he wasn't looking at her, he was facing the front door with his back to her and his hand already on the handle.
"The club can't run itself." Nathan said softly, a sense of regret about his voice. For a second he considered turning around and forgetting Annalisa's offer. He'd regret for the rest of his life that he didn't.
Without exchanging another word Nathan left the flat. After coldly leaving the building he reached into his denim jacket pocket and pulled out a cell phone and dialed a number quickly.
"Hey," Nathan smirked "yeah I'm on my way, give me half an hour alright? Yeah. Ok I'll see you soon." Hanging up Nathan made his way half way around the block to a bus stop where he waited.
It was a convenient coincidence that the thirty-three through midtown went to Annalisa's house as well as the club where he worked, it had made things that little bit easier with Amanda. She had once waved to him from the window of their apartment while he waited for a bus. He had remembered how little things such as waiting at the wrong bus stop could get a cheating husband caught. Nathan glanced up at the window but Amanda wasn't there this time.
He loved Amanda, she was warm, funny and loving, she appreciated him fully. But Nathan also loved Annalisa, not because she provided anything special that Amanda couldn't, simply because she wasn't Amanda.
Nathan was thirty years old and was already feeling as if he could predict the rest of his life in the same way you could predict the ending of a badly made movie. The excitement and unpredictable nature of his relationship with Annalisa quenched a thirst in Nathan that was ironically saving his naively conceived marriage to Amanda.
Nathan turned his cell phone off realizing that his bus was arriving.
As a doctor, it wasn't unusual for Lisa to be paged by the hospital when she was urgently needed and not working. Today she had been paged while eating at a local diner with a friend.
During her journey to the bus-stop a further eight alerts had beckoned her to the hospital; with each one her journey was given further urgency. It frustrated her to have to wait for a bus; she would rush, taking as little time as possible to get to the bus stop.
When she finally got there completely out of breath she simply had to wait. Getting a cab in Raccoon City nearly always took longer somehow; the hospital wouldn't pay her fares either.
She had often contemplated that the speed of the bus driver could determine a life or death situation at the hospital but she tried not to think of things in such a way.
Being a nurse Lisa had one major flaw; she was terribly over-weight. This made rushing to the hospital a huge ordeal. Time after time she had arrived at the bus stop, her face pressed red by her blood pressure as she gasped for breath. Strangers at the bus stop would look at her, as if they expected her to faint or even explode.
Once a child had laughed at her attempting to get her breath back, unfazed by the fact she was looking straight at him he had laughed none-the-less for what felt like an hour before his mother had told him to stop.
She was meant to be on a diet but while eating in the diner with her friend she had consumed two large Danish pastries. She felt hypocritical working as a nurse while parading around the hospital displaying her obvious condition. It felt like a condition to her.
She'd seen big women on television shows crying out that they're 'big and proud'. Lisa wasn't proud at all, she was suffocated and restricted by her weight and it depressed her more than anything in the world. Perhaps if she were fitter she wouldn't need to take the bus at all, how guilty that had made her feel. The thought lingered for a while but was then abruptly forgotten as the bus appeared in the distance. Relief replaced guilt as Lisa waited to board the bus.
