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On August 19th, 2018, a beam of bright green light split the air.
On September 10th, Pure Purple started renting her first apartment.
On November 28th, the virus showed itself to her for the first time.
What the fuck.
Purple stared at the massive red spider thing in her window. Or, well, the gap in her wall where her window pane used to be. It hissed at her, still on-guard from her reasonably startled flailing two seconds ago.
What the actual, legitimate fuck?
Purple took a deep breath. As deep a breath as she could get, anyway, when she could feel her bones creaking and her throat trembling with the tension.
"Okay," she breathed. "I'm not- You can stay right there. I'm not calling pest control for this." Slowly, her hands went to a sort of surrendering pose, both held up with her palms showing. She took a careful step back. "Cursors know I don't have a cup big enough for you, anyway," she mumbled, risking a brief glance away from the... spider? Was it a spider? She thought spiders had more legs. And that spiders weren't bright red and bigger than her torso, but hey, semantics.
When she looked back, the thing seemed to have relaxed out of its hostility. So, like any normal person, Purple backed away as far as she could get from it while keeping it in her sights. If she tried to take a broom to this thing, she was pretty sure it would skewer her. It seemed made for combat.
Still tense, she watched it hop down from her window onto her floor, and scuttle into one of the two other rooms in the apartment— the bathroom, since it was the only door open.
Welp, she wasn't using that for the next forever. Hygiene could go fuck itself. That was something she would not be fighting.
Purple had not forgotten about the huge spider that made itself at home in her apartment. There was a bright red web in one of the corners of her living room now — right next to the bathroom, in fact — where it spent most of its time resting. At least since it seemed to live here, she had a lot less of a bug problem, even if she felt safer out in the halls of the dingy apartment building than inside her actual home.
Every morning was more and more of a struggle to leave her bedroom, much less get out of bed. It was right next to the bathroom, which was right next to the spider, and as far as she was concerned, the simple fact that the two of them existed in the same space gave it enough reason to jump her. She wasn't scared of bugs like Green was, but that didn't mean she felt safe around something that unnaturally big.
So it was that she was toasting bread in her kitchen one sullen, anxious night, and heard tiny tapping steps behind her.
She turned around just before the spider hissed at her. Not violently, just... inquisitively? It was facing her from the entrance to the kitchen.
Purple scoffed. "What do you want?"
She turned back to her toast. One heel bounced off the ground as she waited for the toaster to ding.
Those tiny tapping steps came again, and though she didn't look, she was acutely aware of how close it was to her, where it was in the room just by the vibrations.
It was an important skill. It was one she needed to survive her childhood.
The spider hissed again. She glanced down. "It's just toast. What else am I supposed to make?"
Another hiss. It was almost like a conversation. "Well, the ends of the bread loaves are best like this, so... I dunno." She shrugged.
Maybe it was a little foolish to be talking this way to a bug. But Red did plenty of talking to his animals, and she'd never been able to kick the habit when no other stick was present.
It hissed again.
"What, is it not enough for you?"
Another hiss.
"Fine, if you want to help me so much, go get some jam."
It hissed one last time and tippy-tapped away... to the fridge.
The fridge that just opened next to her.
She looked over and briefly felt alarm so acute it was like a stab wound. The thing had one of its legs raised to keep the door open, and was examining her fridge. Purple winced as she realized just how barren it was.
But that was besides the point, because this thing was smart enough to both understand her and open doors.
Okay. Okay! That was- absolutely terrifying, and now she had to wonder if it could pick locks, and exactly how strong the lock on her bedroom door was, and if she needed to invest in something more manual because there was no way she was letting it in her room ever oh cursors oh great code-
It closed the door and scuttled away.
A shiver ran up Purple's spine all the way through her shoulders and elbows and even skull. What the fuck??? It was leaving through the window. It was that simple?????
"... Okay," she peeped in the suddenly-empty air of her apartment.
The toaster dinged.
Without looking away from the window (which was still empty of any glass, and she really needed to get that replaced soon because it was getting drafty) she reached back and picked up one piece.
When she crawled out of bed the next morning, having not slept and, in fact, abandoning all pretense of trying, there was a jar of strawberry jam on her kitchen counter.
Okay.
Purple opened her door, dripping blood and stumbling into the doorframe. Fffffuuuuck.
Today's fight was a bad one. Because, according to some certain contenders, she should not be allowed to have nice things. So she got stabbed.
Stabbed, and relegated to 8th place out of 16.
Code. Damn it.
With a groan and an lurch to get herself upright, she swung the door shut behind her, pressing one hand to the wounds sliced into her ribs and paying little attention to anything but the red dripping down her arm.
At least, until the other red thing in the house chittered at her.
Finally Purple looked up. She'd gotten halfway through the living room by now, and had to switch hands so she could lean on the table. Up in the corner by the bathroom, the huge red spider thing was staring at her.
She couldn't muster up the energy for a hum, and barely was able to smile. It probably came out more like a grimace. Her head swam too much with the blood loss to care.
Her shoddy patch job had been just that: shoddy. Barely tight enough to slow the flow of blood, or to keep her standing enough to get home. It was sheer grit and the fact that she was used to this type of situation that let her make it in the first place.
Purple finally made it to the bathroom door... and found it already open.
She looked down. The spider thing was there, looking up at her, one foot extended to keep it from closing.
This time, she managed a vague sound that could have, in some world, been thankful. And she toddled onto the porcelain floor, and collapsed to her knees.
The spider hissed, quick and sharp, and her head pounded with the noise. She pulled the cabinet door open and fished out her first-aid kit, because if she passed out without treating the worst of her wounds first, she wouldn't be waking up in the morning.
Her shirt was unbuttoned and pried off — one of the many reasons she wore button-ups in the first place — and she got to work.
The spider fretted over her as she painstakingly disinfected and wrapped up her ribs, which was an insane word to use for a bug that had been haunting her for days now. Nothing was broken— she knew this because she knew what broken ribs felt like. She'd known since she was 8.
When her hands shook too much, though, when she twisted them too tightly around her chest, she dropped the roll of bandages and watched them roll pathetically across the floor.
Shit. Did she have enough on her? Could she cut it now and-?
... Huh?
The spider was holding the roll up to her.
Purple stared at it. Then, sighing instead of gasping, she took it and murmured a "thank you" as she finished the job. Wrap, cut, tighten, tape— a process she was all too familiar with. The blood wasn't seeping through at that point, so she considered it a win.
She reached for a rag to wipe the rest of the blood away with, and found her hand empty.
Right. She'd tossed it in with her laundry since it was so red and hadn't gotten around to replacing it yet. Her head fell back against the cabinet with another sigh.
The spider hissed.
"Just a rag," she mumbled. "I'm missing one."
And just like that, it scuttled away again.
Left in silence, Purple considered how willing she was to go to bed shirtless and with blood drying on her. It wouldn't be the first time...
Except, before she could decide, the spider was back with a rag from her kitchen. It was rougher than she liked for cleaning wounds, but it was so much better than she'd had a moment ago.
"Thank you," she said again as she took it and some alcohol from the kit. It clicked once, and didn't leave her side until she hauled herself back up to her feet and trudged to her room.
It didn't leave until she held her hand up at her doorway, telling it halfheartedly to stay, and closed her door before it followed again.
It was still there, waiting, in the morning.
Purple had not been able to get out of bed in three days.
Logically, she knew she would have to. Rent had to be paid, and she needed to eat. But she'd already gotten enough money to just barely afford another month, and it seemed like that was it. She hated herself for the laziness, but no amount of groaning or berating or attempting would get her off the mattress she'd set up in the corner of the bedroom.
It was warm. She still didn't get up.
Something tapped at the door. She rolled over to look at it. It was closed, as always, and she couldn't think of anyone that would come to visit her. Or knew where she lived.
As the tapping continued, she thought that it was the spider. A bit of an insane thought, but...
tap-tap-tap-tap-taptaptaptaptaptaptap-
"Come in."
The words came barely audible out of her throat. It hurt to talk, even just to whisper, and she would've thought no one could hear it at all — no one could hear her — but the tapping stopped. And the door opened.
The spider dropped its long leg from the doorknob and ticka-tacked over to her. The sight shocked her enough to sit up, because she had been right, it COULD open her door, and she needed to get another lock ASAP, and then for a minute she thought that could be it— that could be all she needed.
'Please. Get up. Get out of bed, do something, get up.'
She slumped back down onto her pillow.
'Ughhhhh, noooooo...'
The spider chittered and hissed at her in a manner that seemed almost concerned. But that was inane. It was a bug. Purple's eyes closed against her will. They were far too heavy to hold up.
"It sucks," she mumbled, far more willing to give an animal the truth instead of a person. "Not being able to get out of bed like this. Can't eat... or drink... or sleep, sometimes..."
She forced her eyes open again. The spider continued to stare at her, almost uncomprehendingly, until it leaned down and bumped the side of its head against her shoulder. It seemed to avoid touching her with its jaws.
Then she remembered the jar of jam, and the roll of bandages, and the way it understood, and she opened her mouth that had never really closed and managed just a few more words.
"Can you get my water bottle...?"
It perked up at that. She watched it turn and scuttle out of the room without further ado, and found she couldn't wait for long without her eyes closing again. She was so exhausted...
More than seeing or hearing, she felt the spider coming back into the room, even if she couldn't manage a look at anything until it bumped her arm again, this time with something big and long.
Her arm moved excruciatingly slowly and her hand even more so, but when she got her fingers around the bottle, she was able to open her eyes again, and even drag herself into sitting up so she could drink. The spider chittered again, waving its little arms in the air.
Already, she felt so much better. Drinking water for the first time in days, even old, stale water that hadn't been replaced since her last poster job, made the sensation of liquid cooling her veins flow through her body— she could practically feel her muscles relaxing. When she looked down at the spider again, it was with the idea that maybe she could actually get out of bed this time.
"Some food, maybe-?" She barely got through the request before yawning and rubbing her eyes, finally feeling for a moment that she'd actually gotten all the sleep she hadn't been able to avoid.
The spider scuttled away again. It came back some long minutes later with an apple and a slice of bread with jam slapped onto it. One of its legs was sticky. She found she couldn't really care. "Thank you."
The food was taken and eaten between swigs of water, and at some point Purple managed the herculean task of swinging her legs over the side of the mattress, onto the floor.
The spider chittered at the motion. She jerked when it touched her, barely keeping from punting the thing back through the door from sheer surprise, but it settled on top of her feet and laid down like a cat.
"... huh." For maybe the first time, Purple smiled at it.