#ashmoremuses

Why was this so hard? Compared to things she’d done on a nightly basis just to survive, this should be a walk in the park, but for the first time in who knows how long, very real fear restricting her lungs far more than the cigarette smoke that she inhaled. Hands shaking, she stared across the parking lot at the congregation of people standing outside the door, taking a small solace in the fact that she was hidden in the shadows next to tree planted in a small space between parking lanes and looking as pathetically choked as she felt. 

Somehow both hot and cold, she’d paired an oversized black hoodie with a pair of tiny denim shorts, her feet for once lodged into the comfort of a pair of flip flops rather than the biting heels that had long ago worn deep callouses into them. Even her face with it’s smattering of light freckles was free of make up, masses of dusty blond tresses piled on top of her head in a messy bun that added several inches to her pixie-ish five foot stature. 

Dropping her cigarette onto the pavement next to the tree, she used her toe to stamp it out as the first of the crowd started to head into the establishment, but even then she hesitated. Being last would be worse than being first, but it seemed this would be just another failed attempt to step through those doors, because already she could tell, there was no way she was going to be able to make herself go. 

“Well, yeah,” Annie said after a moment’s thought, “that’s why your super identity is Lamplighter, right? Not a great deal of mystery to that one.”

@ashmoremuses

Help him set the thing on fire? Wasn’t that his whole gimmick? Lamplighter. It was almost in the fucking name. Yet here he was asking him if he could help him set something on fire? Was he whatever it was he used for just not working for him today? John of course knew who he was, how could  he not be? All he had to do was turn on the damn news around here. John just didn’t get it. Still somehow he was blinking at the man who was asking him to set something on fire. “Isn’t tha’ your whole thin’? Settin’ shite on fire?” John asked after another pause. “Wha’s wrong? Performance issues?” Might not be his smartest idea but it just seemed a little funny.