Calamity- A Bad Night Part II (Night of Jai's disappearance)
"Wake up, Melissa."
"Huh? Wha?" Mitzi Storm says, wiping the drool from her mouth and feeling uncomfortably warm besides. She doesn't bother opening her eyes, figuring that her mother just wants to yell at her again. Annie Storm likes yelling at her at 2:00 when everyone with a brain is asleep. She yells just to hear the sound, though the stupid British accent is new. So is calling her by her full name. Annie hasn't called her by her real name in years, which is about the same amount of time since Mitzi has called her "Mom".
Mitzi's head hits the pillow and she tries to go back to sleep.
"Melissa, wake up! You don't have much time and you need to get out of the house now!"
"Chris'sakes, Annie...leave me alone. Had a good night...let me sleep." she mumbles, putting the pillow over her head, though that just makes the room /hotter/.
"Melissa, if you do not get out of the house right now, you will die."
Seriously?
"Look, Annie, I am so /sick/ of your crap..." Mitzi begins, sitting up in bed and looking at where her mother usually is, only to find that Annie Storm is not there. Or, at least Mitzi can't tell if the older woman is there, because of all the smoke.
There's only this much smoke in the house when Annie tries to cook.
"Damnit, Annie." Mitzi groans, getting out of bed and getting her slippers on. She stumbles toward the bedroom door and reaches for the handle, only to yank it away as she learns that the knob is scalding.
/That/ was a bad sign.
She tore the sheets under her bed and stuffed them under the door to keep the smoke from coming in, then grabbed her purse and cellphone. Then she ran to the window, thanking whatever deity was listening at the time that she and Annie had moved from the third floor of their building to the first floor at the start of the school year. She tried to open the window, but found it stuck. She turned and grabbed the small nightstand by bedside and prayed that this worked like in the movies.
She tossed the little dresser through her bedroom window, greeted by cool, crisp air as the glass shattered. Mitzi climbed through the window, catching her hand on a jagged piece of glass as she did so. This caused her to lose her balance and fall awkwardly to the ground outside in back of the building, landing hard on her back.
"Ouch." she groaned, then slowly rolled to her stomach. Mitzti got to her feet and headed around the front of the building to find a crowd of on-lookers watching the building blaze. Looking among the gawkers, the first thing she noticed was that Annie wasn't there.
"Annie! Annie!" she calls out, then has to stop as a coughing fit overtakes her. Still, she's looking around for her mother as an EMT brings her a blanket and a bottle of water.
"Miss, we need you to calm down--"
"I THINK MY MOM IS INSIDE!" she yells, pointing at the building and coughing again.
"Miss, we need you to calm down. The firemen are working to help everyone they can right now, but you're the first person to come out of the building." the EMT says, pressing the bottle of water into her hands.
Mitzi drinks the water and waits to hear word on her mother.
-Two Hours Later-
Mitzi Storm stares at the husk of her former home, standing alongside one of her neighbors, Mrs. Rodriguez, who has a comforting arm wrapped around her.
Thirty-nine of the forty residents of the Clarkdale Arms apartments in Keystone City escaped the burning building before the roof collapsed through the three floors. The police and Fire Inspector say it's too soon to tell the cause, but there will a "full investigation", which means that no one is ever going to know what really happened.
Mitzi was the first person to emerge and Mrs. Rodriguez was the last. The only person that didn't come out was Annette Storm, her mother. Mitzi remembered hating her mom for a lot of things over the years, especially for being so mean to her all the time, but she always figured that Annie would be there until they were both old spinsters like that movie that she couldn't think of the title of right now.
Now, she's alone. Oh, she had people she could have called, did call. Jai, her brother, any of the Raiderettes, even Cait.
No one picked up.
Her only possessions are her purse, her cell phone, and the winning powerball ticket she found earlier tonight, just lying on the ground. She'd though kissing Jai was the best thing that happened to her all day, but the ticket beat even that. With her luck, she'd win $500 bucks, which would get her a new outfit that she could wear to school for the rest of the year, since she'd just lost all over other clothing.
But Annie, and all her yelling, cruel and heartless ways, was still gone.
What the hell am I going to do now?
