Juniper Thompson, a 5'8" denim wearing, tank top sporting, bespectacled grad student was headed to her afternoon classes at the research center. Being an environmentalist, Juniper insisted on taking the bus to work despite owning both a car and license. Unfortunately she, like all who take public transit, came face to face with one of humanity's oldest threats, bad weather. It was raining something awful that day, even worse, it had started after Juniper had begun her not overly long but still pretty long commute, so she was left without any protection from the elements save for the metal beast she was seated in.
Like all good things, the bus ride had to come to an end. The 10-minute walk from the last bus stop to the research center was usually quite enjoyable as it gave Juniper time to move her legs a bit before having to sit down or stand in one spot for hours on end. Now it felt like a test of fortitude as the rain came down hard on her, completely soaking her clothes. The thin sweater that she wore over her tank top clung to her skin like glue to paper and the pools over water forming in her shoes gave every step she took an annoying squelching sound. Her patience with the rain was wavering as she let out a string of expletives and curses to every god she could name.
Exactly 10 minutes later Juniper Thompson arrives at the building they officially called Lab 1. She is walking up the steps to the front entrance when her foot meets a slippery substance of the seventh step and she is sent barreling down the stairs, landing in a puddle back first. She lies in the puddle for a minute or so to reflect on what just happened all while her face is pelted with wet drops of rain to the point where her glasses become more of a suggestion of vision than anything. She exhales until all of the air is out of her lungs and breathes in again until they are full, then releases the world's longest sigh.
She plants her hands on the ground beside her to push herself up off of the ground but instead of the grip to the ground that water on asphalt would provide, her hands slip backwards as if she has stumbled into a puddle of some sort of lubricant. Exasperated, Juniper swears loudly and then rolls out of the substance onto normal ground where she is able to finally stand up. She looks down at her hands and finds them coated in a greyish slime, she presumes that the back of her pants and sweater look the same. She stares at the puddle that she had landed in, a small puddle of the same grey ooze about two feet wide and only about a foot longer sat there in a shape that resembled Australia. She looked around to find the origin of the ooze and spotted an open window on the second floor where there was a line of the stuff leaking down the side of the building.
Wiping off the ooze on her pants to the best of her ability, Juniper walked up the steps with less vigor and stuck to the railing like it was her mother and she was a toddler at a carnival. She opened the door to absolute silence except for the light pitter-patter of the water that fell off of her and onto the tile floor of the lab. She figured that everyone else must have already got to work, it made sense, she was notoriously late for insisting on taking the bus and the rain and puddle did her punctuality no favours. While she could go and join her fellow researchers in the room at the end of this hall, she was curious about what that stuff was on the second floor, and that was partially because she needed to know if what she touched was dangerous.
She made her way upstairs, her squelching shoes replacing the silence with the sound of a sick duck. There were only two rooms on the second floor. The first one, was Dr. Gladstone's office, the woman who ran the whole operation, and the second was a chemistry lab. Juniper assumed that the ooze came from the chemistry lab, after all, who knows what those crazy folks in chem are doing, she thought. After going in to find it empty, and with all windows shut and no ooze in sight she gulped and knocked on Dr. Gladstone's door. After a moment she heard nothing and assumed that she either wasn't there or was preoccupied. So she knocked again just to be certain.
Juniper jiggled the door handle and when she found it to be unlocked she welcomed herself inside and immediately saw the open window and the metal contraption resembling a thermos knocked over and leaking over the side. She ran over and stood it back up and read its label "the G.R.O. formula?" she said aloud to no one in particular. She looked all over the container for warning signs of toxicity or anything of the sort, no such thing existed. Silently cheering about being in the clear, Juniper went downstairs and instead of meeting with her peers she walked right out the door and using what little money she had, called a cab. She was wet, sticky, and the whole ordeal had left her tired, she wanted to go home to shower and rest.
When it got there she ran as quickly as she could towards it, she opened the door and as she stepped in she hit her head off of the roof. She didn't make a noise but she cringed and rubbed the spot she had hit, that was just the kind of day she was having, she thought to herself and chuckled a bit. When buckling her seatbelt she found that her head was brushing lightly against the soft ceiling, just a small car she guessed...  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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