The next morning, I woke up only to find that the thick fog that had settled over the city as I slept had wriggled its way through my ears and nose and seeped into my brain, smothering my thoughts with cotton fluff and dampening the sound of the alarm that'd been blaring for no less than two hours now. I forced myself to sit up in bed and even though I had slept for no less than 10 hours, I felt like every ounce of energy I should've had upon waking up had been sucked out of me, as expected on mornings where the curse of forgetting to shut the windows overnight unexpectedly sneak up on you. I pick up my phone and turn off the alarm, noticing that it hadn't charged at all overnight and the battery had just 11 percent, and that it was now almost 12 pm.

Thank goodness it's Saturday.

My feet swing over the edge of my bed and they hastily meet with the pink sherpa slippers I'd finally gotten around to purchasing. How I tolerated the oftentimes frigid tile on my bare feet remains a mystery to me to this day. My hands swipe over my nightstand hoping to find at least one allergy pill, even if it's a weak Children's pill, and of course, my searching is fruitless and I have to get up. I cross my fingers and silently pray to whichever god is listening, hoping that I bought allergy medication last week and there wasn't the empty bottle in the medicine cabinet that I half remember being in there last time I checked. I open the cabinet, and the bottle is there staring right at me, which was only half of the good news I needed. My hand reaches out for it - the moment of truth that'd determine the events for the rest of the day - and it's light and empty when I pick it up. Damn it.

Now I really have to get up.

I shuffle over to my dresser and abandon my slippers (read: kicked them back so they're in the general vicinity of my bed) and get dressed in a matching grey sweatshirt and sweatpants set that was criminally comfortable and vaguely stylish. 10 minutes is all I should need to get in and out of the drugstore and back to the rest of my day. I closed my window just a little too hard and opened the blinds and the paltry amount of sunlight coming through the window did little to improve my mood.

The banner I kept over my bed, which competed with all the other brightly colored post-its and papers for real estate, read 'Find Beauty in Everything', which was a reminder I try earnestly to keep in the back of my mind. There is beauty in all things, but definitely not weather induced allergies, that's for sure. I close my window just a little too hard and open the blinds, and sometimes I almost forget how much more tolerable living on the upper floor of one of the only VOCALOID repair shops in town is when you're able to get this much sun in your room.

I made sure that the small bantu knots I'd managed to put in my hair last night were still knotted, and downstairs I go, keys and lanyard in one hand and a white-knuckled grip on the railing in the other.

The shop door was locked, and I double- and triple checked. Theft wasn't much of an issue in this part of town but I don't want to take my chances because even beyond the boundary between Earth and Hell, Dad would never let me hear the end of it. My car was the old, slowly dying Acura sedan that was parked on the street outside almost all hours of the day, and what I lacked in patience for driving around in this densely populated town of shit drivers, I more than made up for in parallel parking prowess. The nearest drugstore was 8 minutes away.

Actually, it's 2 minutes of driving, and 6 minutes of traffic and road rage related fuckery, give or take. I was graciously given an extra helping of traffic related waiting and I'm in the store in 12 minutes instead.

There's all sorts of tabloids lining the walls, the usual mindless drivel about which celebrities are dating who, the latest trends in VOCALOID models (which seems to be a resurgence in the chibi models, which were a nightmare to work on), and an upcoming challenge among VOCALOID enthusiasts, which drew me closer.

Maybe not all of the tabloids were drivel.

I took that magazine and the bottle of anti allergy pills I had originally come in for and also a pack of gummy bears for the ride home. It was a rough week, I deserve them.

In seconds, the bottle was open and I had already downed two pills with one of the many water bottles I had started and forgotten to finish. There was no work to do today, so I enjoyed a little bit of free time just driving around the city while I waited for my symptoms to leave me alone.

I found myself watching the oak's branches reach over the street to hold hands with the birch on the other side, as though they were huddling together in this cold in a futile attempt to keep their leaves from dropping every time the wind rustled them.

The shouts of the children playing four square and tag and tetherball at the public park easily made its way through my windows as I passed by them and so did the blaring of trumpets and pianos inside of the jazz clubs I'd told myself I'd go to someday when I gained the ability to pry myself out of my bouts of isolation and introversion. There were so many things to do in this city - it's densely populated for a reason - but yet I found myself driving towards the one place I usually went when I had free time to be spent outside of the shop but no desire to be around anyone else, the creek.

The creek was nothing special. A little trickle of water that probably came from the big river that intersected the city, that probably contained more rejectamenta and crap you don't want in your body than a gas station restroom. There weren't ever any fish in the creek, nor was there ever any (living) wildlife there, but yet there was just something so calming about watching the water run over the little pebbles and smooth stones that made up the bottom, and just being so far detached from everything else that was happening, even if it's just for an hour or so. I missed it the same way someone misses their weird (yet harmless) cousin, I hadn't visited in months.

I park on the street, about as close as I can get to the creek. I don't know if anyone else knows about this little secret spot of mine, and I'm not sure if I wish anyone did know, but what I'm certain of is that I wish there was a parking lot so I wouldn't have to walk so far. The air smells of petrichor and wet moss and warm nickels and it only gets stronger as I venture through the pines and brambles that secluded the area from the rest of the city. I get past the second pine tree, the one I'd carved my first initial, R, into when I was in 2nd grade, when I see it.

A foot, belonging to a body thrown in the creek. Shit.

I immediately turn back to return to my car and blame the sudden chill and the sweat on the back of my neck on my diminishing allergies and the cold.

I came out here to buy the medicine I needed and have some alone time - I should've known better than to go to the damn creek. I always knew that they'd find a body out here, it's so secluded and quiet here, it's the perfect place to dump a body… if I don't say anything will I get questioned by the police? Ugh, I think I need to go and check.

I pace around and hyperventilate for a few moments as I try to psych myself up and put on my Big Person Pants to go see the creek's body. I hope it's not too gory or too decayed and that I don't accidentally do something to incriminate myself…

The felled branches of the maple trees and the random pinecones and the wet leaves make the ground slippery and crunchy and I almost fall into the creek and contract 30 different diseases, but thankfully the only brambly bush that was ballsy enough to grow this close to the flowing petri dish provided me with purchase and what felt like 700 cuts all over my hands.

From this close, I could see that it wasn't a human body in the creek, it was a VOCALOID - some kind of BIG AL, to be exact, and not the cute redesigned one. It's not the really old one, the one that heavily treaded the line between zombie Elvis and nightmare fuel, but it falls somewhere between those two points. He's ugly cute, from what I can see.

Letting go of the bush I try to get back up, cursing under my breath and internally laughing in relief - at least I didn't have to go to the police or deal with the nightmares from finding a corpse in the creek. It takes a moment, but I get back up to the trees and start heading back to the Acura again, and something stops me in my tracks.

What if this was a test?

A chance to redeem myself?

There's no way.

Who knows how long that android's been sitting in the creek, waterlogged? I haven't been here in a while.

My hand is on the handle of the door and I feel a wave of guilt wash over me. There was an entire VOCALOID in the creek, filled with water and just left there for nature to overtake it, with no care to any of the batteries or delicate components inside, and here I was, a mechanic, just getting ready to leave it there.

Maybe it is a chance to redeem myself.

I sigh and roll my shoulders and stretch out my arms and legs. The VOCALOID was 6'5" and a whopping 183 lbs (plus however much water got into him), and I had no one around to help me. No one around that really understood, at least. The ground isn't as slippery and unmanageable as it was before, since I'd scouted a way to get down to the water that had way less wet leaves and mud and more grass and rocks, which would let me get down without falling in this time. I hook my arms under the android's shoulders and put my entire weight into pulling him out of the creek and of course, his weight and the slippery ground work against me. I tried pushing, too, maybe if I pushed him out, it'd make things easier, but it only undid all the progress I'd made in pulling him, so I just continued to pull, until my legs, back, and arms all started to ache and I had water all over my sweatsuit with no progress made.

I continue on, though, since I had already been here for so long trying to get him out. It didn't matter to me if he was to broken to turn on once I get him out, I at least want to minimize any further water damage at least. Every time I pulled on him, some of the water inside him poured out, which only made things marginally easier.

One last big pull about 30 minutes later and he finally comes out of the creek, leaving me on my back in the damp grass and an old VOCALOID at my side, full of water and covered in algae. Now, the second part of this struggle comes, which I'm hoping is easier - getting him into my car.

I drag him through the muddy grass and it's so much easier to do once you've got a good bit of momentum going and you ignore the fact that you're going to have to figure out how to get all the mud and algae and creek muck off of him later, and the fact that said mud, algae, and creek muck was going to be hanging out in your back seat because there's no way a VOCALOID this big would fit in the trunk.

The doors to my car were already unlocked, so I open one up, tip him as much as I can to minimize how much water soaks into the seats (I never knew a VOCALOID could hold this much), and I do a weird push and shove that I'm sure will have me sore tomorrow just to get his joints to bend enough to get into the less-than-stellar amount of space in the back. If I ever had to dispose of a body, this car would be a horrible asset, I swear.

I get in the driver's seat, turn my key the obligatory 3 times, and my engine finally comes to Iife and I'm on my way back to the shop. There's no way I'm going to carry him all the way upstairs - all the repair rooms were downstairs anyways - but I'm not sure how many customers I'll have on monday and I'm not psyched to have any potential creek bugs crawl out of him and make a home in one of the repair rooms, but I can't find any other alternatives.

I think that my car is a little slower than usual because of the android in my backseat, and it makes my drive torturous. Hopefully, the subtle tinting that Dad had done on the windows was enough to keep any passers by from looking into the back seat and seeing what looks like a human at first glance - I really don't want the police to get involved with this. There were only a few close calls, a few assholes on the way back, and this one woman with her overly curious child. I saw someone with a MEIKO pass by as well (whose outfit was very cute), and the VOCALOID looked in, but didn't do anything, so the drive back went much smoother than expected.

I park behind the shop and get the hand truck that was just inside the back, thankful that I'd finally remembered to put it somewhere where I'd remember it, open my back door, and wrestle the android out of my damn car and onto the truck, praying that he stays balanced while even more water pours out. If he somehow managed to drag himself on this rough, poorly taken care of asphalt in the parking lot, it'd sand down his flesh in an instant.

The hand truck slams against the wall in the back room with a solid thunk, and I roll the VOCALOID off of the little metal platform and onto the pile of towels and rags I'd set up on the floor. I take off his clothes, an extremely hideous patterned collared shirt and a pair of slacks that seemed to have torn and ripped either before or after I got him out the creek, and I start removing all the rusted screws holding him together.

I slowly open his chest panel with a rag covering my fingers, wincing and bracing myself, but it does little to keep me from jumping back and screaming when no less than 100 mutant creek earwigs crawl out of him, scatter around the room, and hide in all the cracks and crevices in the room.

I shake off my heebie jeebies, roll him over and shake him a little more and more bugs and water come from him and soak the towels.

He was gutted of all of the components except a basic personality and his voicebank, which makes one wonder what the point is in taking out all these old components and leaving the android, the components that came out of him wouldn't work with any of the new models we have anyways.

I'll check on him later, and hopefully he'll be a little bit drier so I can work on his insides - I've been meaning to start a new project anyways.

Spraying a cloth with some disinfectant, I start to wipe off the germs and algae that had started growing on his skin, and make a mental note to take my car in for a deep clean.