Her leg trembled. If no one would speak up, she would. She sprang to her feet, throwing the straphanger whose crotch had been hovering two centimeters from her nose off kilter. That inadvertently created a domino effect down the grab rail. The row of near-comatose commuters wiggled, weaved, and shimmied to evade one another.
The guy who’d been hovering in front of Fabulosa pulled some real-time ninjutsu; he squeezed stealthily into the void she’d left between the company spreader and the waif-and-dupe and snatched up her seat right from under her.
The woman standing beside her sniffed the air and scrunched her nose. She had a shrill voice and spoke loud enough to be heard over the deafening croon of the looky-me‘s singing avatar.
“You reek of liquor,” she scolded Fabulosa, as if that were a greater offense to the world than this woman’s scrunched-up, judgy face and harpy’s voice.
Fabulosa half considered giving the woman a psychic push, but figured there was no use pulling out the big guns on minor irritants. It was a long way to Point C and there was no telling what she’d face down the line when the first few minutes proved this taxing.
Fabulosa had a sinking feeling in her gut. She couldn’t help but worry that she had built up escaping Point B a bit much––and that maybe, even if there weren’t worse places, that maybe the entire shebang from one side of the multiverse to the next, had its faults.
She tried to drown such thoughts. It was her fear talking –– her doubts––the smallest parts of her, the most anxious bits, planting little mental landmines to lure her into turning back. Besides, if Point C proved a disappointment, there was always Point A, and beyond that Nanosuelta, and beyond that, points unknown.
She was a tumbleweed of nervous energy with nowhere to put it all, so Fabulosa stormed toward the door where the looky-me bobbed and weaved, singing flatly along to “Old Maid in the Garret.” He and his avatar were butchering a lovely song. What’s worse, is he was looking straight at her, but it was as if he was looking right through her –– as if Fabulosa wasn’t even there at all. She balled up her fists and dug her nails into her palms.