[color=ffb7c5][h3][center] Jay [/center][/h3][/color]


Jay stared at the red number on her phone notifications bar go up. 27 unread emails from last week. 51 now. All from the same person. She hovered a finger over the reply button. [color=ffb7c5]"Auntie, please stop sending me... |"[/color]. No, no. Not like that. The finger instead pressed firmly on the delete button. She grimaced and then elected to take another big swig from the jug of coffee. 

The taxi driver gave a nervous flicker through his rear view mirror. [color=ffb7c5]"Haven't spilt any."[/color] She said, with a reassuring wave, cradling the jug tightly in her arms. Look, see. Secure. Totally in control. 

The taxi driver was entirely unconvinced. Still, he had the courtesy enough to pretend to be convinced, proffering the non-sequitur, "You must be a big coffee drinker." 

[color=ffb7c5]"Uh, yeah. I guess so."[/color] That was a lie. She didn't normally drink coffee. She didn't even like the stuff. Yet she had already went through several litres of the stuff ever since she picked up her first batch at the beginning of the trip, fingers drumming on the plastic lid incessantly as she felt it replace her blood stream twice over. It was probably better that way, since pounding headaches meant less time to think about - she reached for the word - disclosures. Disclosures that despite the world insisting on placing in her way, Jay would much rather ignore. 

She opened her emails. 52. No, stop. She turned off her phone. Don't even go there.

Instead, Jay picked up the closest other thing by her side. The sleekly written letter that was written by the self-proclaimed "master of the mystic arts". All her basic intuition told her it was probably a cult - no, definitely a cult. Even with so many strange phenomena being rattled off on the media, even with her so called 'dreams' being unpleasantly...well, not dreams, her gut reaction slammed the verdict down. Magic, sure. Mystic arts? Delusional.
[color=ffb7c5]
[i]Whatever. I've already gone off the deep end.[/i][/color] Jay thought drily, eyeing the creepiest looking driveway to have ever been conceived. [color=ffb7c5][i]Hope at least the cult robes are cool. [/i][/color]

The gravel growled beneath her shoes as Jay slid out of the cab. Gnarled tangles of roots and dead branches clutched at the driveway up to the mansion, which itself was comprised of broken planks and moss-eaten stone. A sighing old thing, crumbling under the weight of its own history...and something else, half-ineffable. The cab driver threw another quick glance at down the overgrown mansion in the distance, at the weird white-haired lady with a suspected coffee addiction, and made a wise decision to simply continue on his way. And Jay made a questionable decision to simply watch the cab scarper its way back past the greying foliage.

[color=ffb7c5][i]I'm definitely fine.[/i][/color] Jay thought, then threw back her head and downed the rest of the bitter caffeine.