Man am I hungry.... (Journal)

[Mannequin]

Stretching out on the king sized bed Quin reveled in coolness of the silk sheets beneath her.
She'd certainly picked the right person for her temporary 'identity theft', more often than not she ended up picking off someone only to find they lived in a cramped little room in a shared house or a place in the 'bad' end of town....not that there was really a 'good' end if you took into account the crime rate of the city in general (something she was always adding too like it or not). This was a welcome change of luck after the last few days, it had taken several very long showers and a box of baking soda to get the sewer stink out of her skin...thank the lord she didn't have any body hair to contend with!

Judging by the 'items' in the recently deceased owners draws, the wonderful red silk sheets and the fish bowl full of condoms next to the head board it was easy to figure out what the woman had done for a living. For a moment she wished she hadn't killed the woman...but only for a moment.... Quin was a strong supporter of the oldest profession on Earth, heck, her real mother had been a woman of negotiable affections before (and during) her pregnancy with Quin. She'd only found out about that though when she had come home blind drunk one night in her teens and her foster mother had had a total melt down. During said melt down Quin had been told in no uncertain terms that if she carried on in the manner she was she'd end up like her 'good for nothing' mother, whos body had washed up in the docks not long after Quins birth....that night she learnt two things...first was that She was not only the daughter of murdered one eyed hooker that had gone by the name 'Big Sal', but that is was surprisingly easy to break someones nose with a sharp head butt....

Checking her watch she sighed....it would be sun up in a few hours so unless she planned on sleeping in the closet and hoping no one showed up at the apartment door (unlikely if the previous tenant was as popular as the nice furnishing would indicate), or she could get into some fresh clothes and head off to find a good dumpster some place....No choice really was it?

Getting up and heading to the kitchen she, opened the fridge to grab the jar of blood she had been collecting. She was going to see what she could do about making up some sort of blood lozenge when she finally had a place to call her own, but for now she wanted to see if congealed blood might work as an easy to carry snack...like blood jerky.... she took a 'bite' and retched straight away...*nope*... spitting the bloody jelly back into the jar she decided to stuff it into the nice new hold-all she had taken off the beautician that had visited her that night...
....reaching into the fridge she shoved the pulverized head of the beautician out of the way to retrieve the last two jars. She'd need to dispose of them at some point but she was far to sleepy to deal with it tonight... it could wait.

[Mannequin]

*man it's dark in here...wish I'd brought some matches...or a flash light...hell even a jar full of glow worms would do...*
Quin carefully felt her way along the mossy walls on the catacombs hoping she was heading the right way. She'd decided to explore a little more of the area to see what she could rustle up... so far she'd found something squishy that stank when she had stepped on it, something furry that scurried past her ankles and made her yelp with surprise, a few rusty sword blade (?!) and cobwebs...lot and lots of cobwebs.

Off to one side she heard a slight rustling noise and a muffled groan...she stopped dead in her tracks and listened hard...
..having been in the dark for so long she wasn't sure if her mind was playing tricks on her or not...when she'd been in school she'd read somewhere that animals in sensory deprivation experiments routinely started to suffer from auditory hallucinations and as the experiment progressed they would begin to experience full on visual hallucinations too. Though this took days, not hours, so Quin was pretty sure that what she had heard was real...she just wished it wasn't.
She had been hunting in this area on and off for a while now and she knew that generally as long as she didn't walk straight into the creatures that lurked here she wouldn't have to worry about getting mauled...as long as she watched her step she'd be golden...

The shuffling grew a little louder....*probably one of those funky old zombies* she thought, she'd bopped a few of them in the last few days and they were pretty slippery customers, in fact so slippery they were almost liquid in some cases. She'd managed to collect a fine assortment of moldy old bones from them, which for some odd reason were pretty easy to unload at the local shops even if they weren't worth a great deal....but 25 bucks was 25 bucks, and they weren't that hard to come by when you often could find one of those mold covered old bone bags slumped in a corner missing it's lower limbs. And for some reason she couldn't fathom she was always finding weird looking daggers littering the floor....maybe there was a big occult scene in the city she'd not been aware of? It was totally possible with her hermit like lifestyle near the end...

Judging where the noise was coming from Quin quietly unsheathed her sword and slowly turned to face the source of the noise....
....with any luck she'd score enough bones tonight to start working on a down payment for her own place...if she could just curb her 'new shoes' habit....

[Mannequin]

Quin scowled, it had happened again.
Since she had been able to get out and about again thanks to her 'change of lifestyle' she had fallen back into bad old habits. Not that her other 'habit' near then end of her previous life had been something to be proud of, it had certainly lead to A LOT of health problems, not to mention a fair few financial ones, but until the last few months she'd always managed to keep a decent grip on it...or so she liked to think.... but this habit was far worse in a lot of ways as with it being totally legal and it was easy to obtain the desired items in question. This 'habit' didn't mean she had to slink around the slums to 'pick up', nor did she need to spend hours carefully selecting her mark for a night of fun and artistic experimentation, this was a simple case of walking into a normal everyday (or night) store and seeing what caught her eye....and with Quin, may things tended to catch her eye, especially shoes....

Looking down at her latest purchase it was hard to be annoyed for long, for what she had paid for these wearable works for art she could have keep herself in something sensible like plain old sneakers for months even with all the trips she made into the sewers. She'd been warned of course to keep out of them but with one thing or another she ended up wading through those mucky places at least once a week...this would hopefully help to dissuade her from her subterranean escapades a little, the thought of ruining these things of beauty was heart breaking.

Hungry as always but in fine spirits she headed out to hit the bars, she hadn't had much luck the last time but she had a good feeling about tonight. keeping up a swift pace she dodged through the groups of people along the side walk....

*CRACK!*

Staggering for a moment she grabbing a lamp post to right herself...

"$%£$%$%£! SERIOUSLY?!!"

Lifting up her foot she continued to curse under her breath, she was drawing enough attention as it was and didn't want to compound the problem.... the heel of the shoe hung by a few strips of leather, she hadn't even got two blocks before it had given out and she knew for damn sure that she hadn't got it stuck in a grate or crack in the pavement, or at least she thought she hadn't...
....there would be one less shoe salesman by sun up, now that was a certainty....

[Mannequin]

Slowly Quin opened one eye.....then snapped it shut straight away....
*jeeze....what did I drink last night?...wait..no...I don't drink anymore....was it the...*
She sat bolt upright bashing her head against the inside of the dumpsters lid with force, holding her forehead and slumping back down a little she blinked a few times. The least few weeks events came flooding back as she sat puzzled in her pj's, she'd lost her favorite Hello Kitty set a few days back and she now had a reasonably fresh set of Spider Man ones to make up for it. Quite why she still felt the need to where 'night' clothes was a mystery, a throw back to her old life that possibly brought comfort on some level that she would not like to admit.

Looking down at her belly she nearly cried, it wasn't much bigger than before but the whole concept of being knocked up was too much to handle for her right now. She was only just finding her feet in her new existence and she didn't need this headache making things more complicated. A part of her though was excited, she'd never brought a child to term in her life before and in her new state she might be able to have one that didn't die before it was born. She put the fast development down to her new enhanced physiology, although she did note that its movements seems a bit....odd.... at some point she'd have to try and find that nice vampire lady and see what she could tell her to expect, maybe she would be equally excited as Quin about it.....though she hadn't seen any vampire children around which was curious...maybe they ended up like that one from the movies that used the swords and drank garlic juice or something.... or maybe they turned out normal..... she'd hate to have to give a child of hers up for adoption but there was probably some vampire law on the subject that would lead her to being staked out in the sun if she went against it. There did seem to be a lot of funky rules in the vampire world that was for sure, if she'd not been so keen to get out and find someone to nibble on she'd have hung around with the nice vampire lady a bit longer and asked a few questions....

Sitting in the dumpster feeling a bit better about the situation she started to shrug herself out of her PJ's....was it her imagination of was she getting taller?...nah....she must have just pick a smaller than usual dumpster....suddenly she was overwhelmed with nausea, scurrying to her knees she flipped the top of the dumpster open and heaved a long stream of bloody vomit over the edge...
*eeeeew.....*
once she was certain she was finished she ducked back inside her dumpster and carefully resumed dressing for the night, she'd been laying off the winos and addicts since a few days after her 'pregnancy' had started to show so she'd need to put on something of decent quality if she didn't want to look out of place in the more 'upper class' end of town....she had just the thing wrapped in some plastic refuse sacks, for once she'd not simple taken the clothes of one of her victims, this was some elegant s**t!

[Mannequin]

Walking at a relaxed pace Quin took in the sights as she wandered the 'nicer' end of town. Th billowing dress was silky smooth against her cold skin and the loose cut helped to conceal her growing belly. There were plenty of men that wouldn't give two hoots about her condition (some would even actively seek it out from what she remembered of her old life), but it was far easier to lure a man into a dark alley if he thought you were just your average woman.... well....highly 'active' woman that was happy to slink off behind a bar after a few too many alcoholic beverages....

Stopping to look into a shop window she was slightly annoyed by her lack of reflection, she'd gradually got the hang of putting on her make up without one but it was royal pain in the behind...what she wouldn't give for access to a regular make-up artist that didn't need to buried afterwards.....or left with their head caved inside a fridge... or dumped into the sea in trash bags weighed down with rocks.... life could get very complicated when you didn't want to walk around looking like a member of KISS and had no reflection to work with....

Bending a little lower she spotted in the window a tall guy across the street having a good long look at her behind....she of course had 'neglected' to wear an under-ware, it was easier to attract more flies with a visible 'honey pot' than one shrouded in layers of lacy garments as was usually the case in this overt form of signaling..... slowly standing back up she made a show of the contours of her back before slowly heading down the side of the store...looking over as she started to disappear into the murk she looked casually over at the tall man and lower her sun glasses for a second to give him her 'bedroom eyes'....the guy smiled slightly and looking both ways stepped onto the road....

The night had been a true success, as Quin re-emerged from the alley with a nice new watch and fat roll of bills she was in a great mood. She was getting better with the constant hunger that gnawed at her bones every waking moment so she had at least not torn this one to bits...