Selina yawned and stretched, belly down. Like a cat. She can't help it, it's just something she does when she wakes up.
In her stretch, she pawed at the soft linens beneath her, using the fine, spacious bedding to its fullest with every wind of her arms and every pedaling turn of her legs.
Finally, after almost a full minute, she was up.
She looked at the clock by the side of the bed. 3:30 AM, it read. Her mouth sleepily curled into a Cheshire smile. "Purrrrr-fect," she cooed.
While she'd already slept in her casual clothes, she looked through the nightstand's drawers for something nicer to add on. Diamond cuffs? Subtle. Gold watch? Definitely. The pearls were a bit much, but she decided to go with them anyway – she liked a little flare in her cattitude, and she wouldn't have it on for too long anyway.
She got up to check herself out in the dressing mirror across the room. Her hair was a bit messy, but nothing a sweep from a licked palm couldn't fix.
A five-minute walk brought her down a hallway dim with twilight to an open kitchen area. She turned on the light, revealing a wall of shelves lined with various bottles of alcohol, opposite to a counter with a motion-sensor sink, and adjacent to a chrome steel fridge.
Ignoring the bottles of spirit, Selina opened the fridge door and got right to work making herself breakfast. 'Eggs sound nice,' she thought, 'and an omelet sounds even better.'
Around this time, most people would be going through what the rest of their day was going to be like; Selina, on the other hand, was not most people. She was going through what the next half-hour would be like.
'Let's see: omelet should take maybe ten minutes, coffee another five, maid gets here at about four... that should leave me, what, ten minutes? Once out, maybe I can stay at Pam's again while I wait for school to start. After that...'
She shrugged to no one in particular.
'...who knows? Maybe the owners really don't mind having a weekend's worth of food go missing. They can invite me over, forget about the security system, I bring some friends – we'll have a blast!'
Thirteen minutes later (the omelet took less than she thought), the corners of Selina's mouth curled upwards as she took a sip of thirty-dollar coffee. She put the cup down, licked away her latte-foam whiskers, and purred.
Oh, yes.
Everything was going according to plan.
The last substitute for an alarm clock Harleen had expected to use was hyena slobber; and yet, that's exactly how she woke up.
A few seconds of flailing and laughing at how it tickled and spitting out drool that wasn't hers, and it was over. Her eyes greeted her with the sight of her eager spotted pet hyenas, mange and all.
"Babieeees!" she cried out, wrapping an arm around each of their hairy brown necks in an exuberant embrace. They squirmed, not so much in retaliation as in enthusiasm if their manic howls were anything to go by.
"How my babies doin' this mawnin'? Hungry?"
They jumped up and down, howling laughter growing even more manic as the amount of drool increased.
"Ahright, ahright..."
She leaned down next to the couch she slept on where she kept a cooler, reach in and taking out half an entire ham, still on the bone. Before the dogs could even snap at the juicy piece of meat, she threw it.
"Go fetch!"
Sure as sugar, they went running after it on top of several yards of solid grey concrete and metal beams raising all the way up to the ceiling of the warehouse. At its center was a lonely little couch, a duffel bag, a rug Harleen pinched from a dumpster, and the cooler.
The sound of her babies echoed through Harleen's palace of nothing, and she smiled.
It was enough. She was happy.
Her phone rang in her pocket. When she picked it out, the time read 6:03 AM. Only one of three people could be calling her this early, and with a quick peak at the caller ID, the worst was confirmed.
Suddenly, she wasn't so happy.
Harleen pressed the answer button and tried to put on the best vocal smile she could muster as she held her phone up to her ear.
"Mistah B! Ha's it goin', big guy? Early ta bed, early ta rise, somethin'-somethin'-bugs-in-yer-eyes, am I right?"
"Quinnzel, I swear to God, this is your last warning!"
Oy vey.
He continued, "you put off your lease for the last time! I get that you got caught in the flood from last month with your wallet in your pocket, the week after that you were in the same spot as some ugly people, and then there was that... what was it again? Some 'brat-related incident'?"
Harleen gritted her teeth and tried her best not to sound like it. "Bat-related," she corrected, though he wasn't all that far off.
"Right. And I know we got a special deal so I could forgive you all those times with all the money you already gave me. Lord knows I'm more than happy to take it."
"No questions asked! Right, Mistah B?"
"Yeah, yeah, but this time's different! Either do whatever it is you usually do and pay me cash up front by eight on Thursday, or you and those rabid dogs of yours can kiss your whole setup goodbye! Goodbye!"
The line disconnected and Harleen was left standing there, holding her phone, wondering how she was going to get twenty-thousand dollars in the next three days.
One thing came to mind.
She picked up her phone again and started texting.
BA-THUMP.
"GAH!"
Doris jolted upwards in her bed. Her breathing was quick and her blood was coursing through her body at a breakneck pace. She could feel it slowing down little by little, but only just.
Doris held her hand to her chest and felt her heart almost jumping out of her rib cage, bouncing like a drumstick off a snare drum with every beat.
'Geez,' she thought, 'this is the worst one yet...'
While her hand was there, it felt something else on her chest: sweat. Lots of it. When she went to bed, Doris wore a sports bra and gym shorts, all much damper now than they were last night. She'd been sweatier in general recently, but this was new, having only occurred the past few nights.
She couldn't worry about that right now, though; the clock on her wall said it was a few past six already, leaving only so much time to fit breakfast and reps in before school.
She changed out of her clothes and rolled on some deodorant – heavily – before changing into her regular getup. Ignoring the many effigies of the people she loved to hate using dartboards and sports equipment scattered around her bedroom, Doris opened the door adjacent to the main hall and a phone conversation her dad was having reached her ears as she made her way to the kitchen.
Words like "cortisol" and "extradite" were thrown around. Something she didn't understand. Something they wouldn't explain to her. Something they'd pretend wasn't there, even though they only talked about it all the freaking time.
She could make out "steroid," though, and the words "nerve damage" seemed familiar. Probably about the stuff she was sneaking out of their lab. If it was, then...
She pushed it to the back of her mind for now.
Dad must have heard Doris step into the room because as soon as she did, he stopped and turned his head to face her with an almost bewildered expression. He said goodbye to the person on the other line and put the phone back on the hook. His smile was painfully forced.
"H-hey there! Good morning, sweet pea!"
"Mmrph," Doris grunted, walking right past him.
He fumbled with his eyes and his hands, occupying himself while he searched for possible conversation topics.
"So, uh, what are you having for breakfast?"
"Toast," she said dryly.
"Oh, that sounds wonderful! Do you want me to get that for—?"
By then, she'd already picked out two slices of wheat bread and pushed them down into the toaster. At the moment, she was just sitting at the dinner table, back facing her dad, waiting for them to pop up.
"O-oh," Dad said, more to himself than her.
Sounding defeated, he took out a plate from the above cabinet and placed it in front of the toaster, moving the butter plate so that it was closer and putting a knife on the far side of the plate. It was all he could think to do before heading off to his lab again.
When it popped up, she put it on a different plate and took it to her room without any butter.
She huffed through a mouthful of dry crumbs.
"Nerd."
When she woke up, Carol didn't get out of bed. Not at first. She didn't even want to open her eyes. She could still feel the dried streams of mascara that ran down her cheeks.
Carol hated this feeling. It was so much easier to be hurt and angry than hurt and sad; she just couldn't find it in her to be that way, though. Even though she did have someone to blame, this was just too much...
There was nothing for her to get up for anyways. The world was ending. The sky was falling. Her life was over. Everything had come grinding to a halt, crashing down and utterly decimating everything she had worked so hard towards all these years.
Because, as of yesterday, she'd been blocked – BLOCKED – by Hal Jordan. Love-her-of-her-life Hal Jordan. Romeo-to-her-Juliet Hal Jordan. Looks-so-cute-when-he-runs-away-in-absolute-terror-screaming-bloody-murder Hal Jordan.
The signs were there, she supposed. She texted him every day, adding "hi," to a sea of other messages saying "hi." He would occasionally tease her with a "who is this" or a "please stop," or even an "i am literally going to block you." She just couldn't understand why he was doing it now.
She rolled over in her bed so she could at least be facing her phone. Her eyelids cracked open, letting in a sliver of light...
...and her phone was on.
She had a notification.
Could it be from Hal?
She lunged out from between the sheets to snatch the phone from off her nightstand.
Her heart, she was sure, made a 'plunk' sound from dropping in her own chest when she saw it wasn't from Hal, but instead from one of her female friends.
'Blonde + red/blue dye started a group text.'
Carol sighed. 'Well,' she shrugged, 'might as well open it...'
It was interesting, to say the least – interesting enough to get her out of bed, brushing her teeth, doing make-up in her vanity mirror peppered with photos of Hal (some of which not entirely taken with his knowledge), wolfing down Mommy's famous scrambled eggs and marmalade with fresh-squeezed orange juice, and walking out the door.
She stopped and turned around halfway to her daddy's car.
"Whoops!" She rushed back into her room and slammed the door. This time, she locked it. "Almost forgot one thing..."
It took a second to reach around under her bed, but in less than a minute, she was able to find just the right corner of empty space she was looking for.
"Ah, here it is!"
A flash of pink light flooded the underside of the bed, temporarily blinding Carol. She bumped her head on the way back up because of it, but on the bright side (pun not intended), she did so holding just what she was looking for: a round, spherical lantern, made of unearthly pink metal and glowing an even brighter pink from within.
With one hand, she held it by its circular handle, thin and wiry – perfect for her dainty, girlish fingers; the other hand, she held up balled into a fist so that her ring was facing the glowing window, and its brightness intensified.
She spoke the oath:
"For hearts long lost and full of fright,
For those alone in Blackest Night:
Accept our power and join our fight
Love conquers all with violet light!"
The glowing subsided, leaving Carol with her newly charged ring. She shuffled a bit in putting the lantern back – it was tough every time, finding the right pocket dimension to put it in, but it sure beat Mommy or Daddy finding it with just a quick sweep of her room.
She held up her power ring to examine it one last time before heading out.
"Gonna need this for later..."
Pam usually heard voices when she woke up. She kept plants everywhere, all of whom shared their secrets – secrets of the Earth, of soil, of water and the air, of people and insects and how, deep down, they were all just the same. Those secrets were hers and hers alone to hear, and so she relished them.
This particular morning, however, Pam was surprised to hear a different kind of voice coming from the living room. It was distinctly in English, but the voice itself didn't sound familiar, and there was something about the tone that was just off to Pam. Whatever the reason, she had to investigate.
Pam crept slowly to the other end of the room, making sure not to alert her would-be intruder. Intruders? She thought she heard a second voice. And then, as she turned the knob of her door without a noise, yet another. 'How many are there?' she wondered.
Pam opened the door just a crack, giving her an eyeful of the short hallway to her living room. On the left, a small closet, and on the right, her bathroom, both seemingly undisturbed.
The voices were louder now, but she still couldn't see anybody from around the opposite corner. Louder and louder they got as Pam shuffled down the hallway, hoping to find whatever disgusting, deceitful human beings were being this invasion of privacy, before finally she stepped into the living room to find...
...the TV was on.
Three men were sitting around a table on-screen, talking.
And how did it get turned on? Hanging over the edge of the couch was the leg of a dark-skinned girl who answered her question.
"Good morning, darling," Selina said, not even bothering to turn and face her. It was as if she could just sense her there. "Sleep well?"
Pam shrugged, not really thinking of a viable reply after having just woken up.
"Good enough an answer as any!" There she went again. By now, Pam was used to it.
Even if she wasn't – and there was definitely a time when she wasn't – she liked Selina. Selina never told to eat her greens, or to get out more often, or to talk to more people; she just supported Pam where she could, watching out for her safety and clawing off anyone's face if they dared look at her funny. She was like a second, better mom to her.
It took Pam's stomach gurgling audibly for her to realize she was needed breakfast. There used to be a kitchen area near the entrance, you could still see the outlines of a counter on the wall, but she tore it out to make room for her plants – no, literally, 'tore it out'; with the strength of a circus strongman, vines had reached out on her command, ripped it from the wall and crumpled it to dust. No more kitchen area.
Instead, there was a cooler she kept in the bathroom where she got all her tap water from. She had bacon but had no way of heating it up (god knows why she got it in the first place), so she settled for a slice of ham.
Ham and tap water for breakfast. Part of the reason Pam liked to be left alone was that this was a normal thing for her. No plants harmed, none screaming in horror or shedding tears of sap from witnessing their fallen brethren be consumed so greedily... and nobody likes her. Story of her life.
She stepped back out into the living room to see Selina watching some cop show and bit into her meager slice of ham.
Selina held up her phone over the coach's back. "Check your phone, by the way."
Pam swallowed her bite almost as if she'd inhaled it. "Why?"
"Just do it."
Pam rolled her eyes and took her phone out from her pocket to see one notification: "The Weird One started a group text".
'Ugh. What does she want now?'
She checked.
'...oh. So that's what she wants.'
Leslie ran a groggy hand over her face and groaned. Like most days, she felt like crap, but today she felt even more like crap since she had been up til three in the morning just browsing her laptop' in fact, she only reason she went to sleep at all was because she blacked out. The last thing she could remember doing...
She looked at her nightstand. Her laptop was still plugged in, with the same website still up: "sapph-fire-dot-com."
She slammed it shut without thinking. 'Shit,' she thought. 'Hope nobody came in here and saw that.'
One change of clothes later, she was sitting in her head again, grabbing her phone out from the jungle of wires that made her put a fire hazard sticker on the outside of her bedroom door (not because she needed to, of course; she just thought it looked cool). The phone's clock told her it was a few past seven – school was about to start soon. Not that she cared all that much. Still, her parents would bitch to her about it regardless, so she pulled up her pants and slid herself out of bed with a grunt. She eyed the corner of her room where laid a bright green sheet about the size of a barn door hanging from her wall behind a desk, two lamps, and a tripod stand for her phone, all of it for her LexTube "influencer" channel. She looked at the time, then back at the setup. It killed her to admit it, but the morning report was going to have to wait.
Upon closer inspection of her phone, Leslie was surprised to see 'Spazoid started a group text' in her notifications.
"Oh shit, it's Harley!" Leslie opened it up, sitting on pins and needles for whatever batshit insanity that girl had come up with this time.
'WHOSE REDDY 2 ROB A BANK?' it read.
Leslie needed a pick-me-up this morning, and by god, she got one.
Her fingers danced furiously across her virtual keyboard until not one second later, her response popped up:
'FUCK YEAH LETS STEAL SOM SHIT!'
