Random Story Idea

Hi Internet People,

I know there wasn’t any Witch House writing this week, but I’ve been mulling around an idea. You can totally blame Penny Dreadful’s introduction of Dr. Jekyll for this one. I sort of have a mild obsession with the idea of duality, I mean my favorite movie is Fight Club after all. I’ve just always been interested in the idea of someone being two people or having two diverse sides to their personality. This might be because I have a tendency to act in two very different ways when I’m in social situations. At work and at some social events, I’m closed off and very direct. I don’t express emotion very much, but when I do I’m very reserved. Online and when I’m with close friends or in situations where I feel comfortable I am bubbly, expressive, loud, basically I act like my actual self. In Fight Club the narrator is more reserved, while Tyler is crass and does whatever he pleases without worrying about the consequences. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are a bit like that, though depending on the version Mr. Hyde can be truly evil and murderous.

I have always wished that there was a female equivalent to Fight Club, yes Black Swan has elements, but it doesn’t exactly fit, and this week after seeing Dr. Jekyll in Penny Dreadful I had a thought. I kept kicking around the idea of one woman secretly being two women. Alright so hear me out, the focus of the story would be someone who is kind of a wallflower, she doesn’t really put herself out there, but her work does a big mixer event and she gets convinced to go. She doesn’t mind her job and would like a raise so she thinks fine, I’ll be socially active and look involved and maybe I’ll get a promotion. She goes to this bar, it’s pretty nice, very laid back urban professional feel, and while she’s there she meets a woman. This other woman doesn’t seem to fit at all. She’s in like leather pants or something much more suited to a standard dive bar. Our main character is surprised to see someone like that at this place where everyone is sort of business casual and most of them have just come from the nearby office buildings. She can’t help, but sneak glances at this woman and eventually the leather clad woman calls her out for staring, it’d be a sly pickup line sort of thing, like hey buy a girl a drink first or something. The two strike up a conversation, but before things go very far, the woman in leather pants says she has to go. Before she does she asks for our main character’s phone. She puts her number in and says to shoot her a text some time.

Now our nervous main character winds up texting within a few hours, something sets it in motion, and the two meet again. They go out to a different bar, much more leather pants woman’s speed and spend the night chatting. Eventually they wind up going back to her place and much like in Fight Club they’ll move in together, though I’m thinking they move into the plush young business professional place. They only ever spend time together at night, though that isn’t odd they both work during the day and on the weekends the main character sleeps pretty late in the day while the other woman is at work. I’m not thinking giant underground guerilla organization style Fight Club, but I keep thinking it would be interesting if our main character was secretly ruining the company she works for, like leaking their secrets to the press or syphoning money into random accounts, something very corporate espionage. It turns out the other woman, who is also her, is somehow trying to make her life better. She’s there to make her happier and to help her achieve all she ever wanted, but in order to do that she needs to get her away from her corporate job. It’s not fully planned out, but the idea kept popping into my head and needed to put it down somewhere.

Find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, on my kleffnotes YouTube channel, I write for The Nerdy Girl Express and run their Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp.

Talk to ya later,

Katherine

Snapped Traps and The Mouse Hunt in the Witch House

Hi Internet People,

I promised we’d get to the traps this week and we did! Though this might not be what you were expecting, but it’s going to lead to something very soon.

Ellery was startled awake by a yelp of pain and a stream of colorful curse words. Rubbing her eyes she muttered “Wassa matter?” as she tried to remember why she was in a pile of blankets on the floor. Still dealing with a foggy early morning mind, she looked up and noticed Anna clutching her toe and glaring at her phone.

“I overslept and then totally forgot you spent the night and tripped over that stupid book. I think I’m bleeding, but I have to run to campus. My advisor needs some clearance form for the project and I have to be there in like ten minutes. You can stay here, but I have to go.”

“I’m so sorry, I had no idea this thing was so close to your bed. Do you need a bandaid?”

“No time, it’s just really swollen. Don’t worry about it, I’m sure it’ll go down. Definitely not going to wear any open toed shoes today.”

While Anna got ready, Ellery scooped up her stuff, including the toe attacking book, and made her way back to her room. Before she opened the door she silently muttered, “no mice, no mice, no mice” and then with a quick breath in pushed the door open. From the doorway she quickly scanned the traps and noticed one of them looked tripped. Slightly on edge, she laid her things on the bed and tentatively inched toward the far left corner of the room. The trap was most definitely tripped, but whatever had tripped it had caused it to flip over. Ellery could just call her landlord’s number and then she wouldn’t have to touch the trap at all, but she didn’t want to waste anyone’s time if there wasn’t actually anything in it. Her parents had dealt with a small family of mice in their garage a couple of years ago. She remembered that some days the traps would be tripped, but the mice would have scampered away before they got snapped.

There wasn’t a broom nearby, but there was a piece of leftover paneling from her Ikea bookshelf.

“I guess that’s one use for those random leftover bits.”

Summoning her courage Ellery shoved the wood piece at the trap and squeezed her eyes shut as it landed upright. Breathing in, she gave herself to the count of three and forced herself to look at the trap. Thankfully there wasn’t a dead mouse inside, but there was something. Sticking out of the peanut butter coated teeth was a tuft of brown fur. Unless the mouse was running around half skinned, there looked like there was just way too much of it.

“Please don’t tell me I’m sharing this room with a rat, especially a half-naked trap snapping rat.”

Popping the trap open, Ellery pulled out the tuft of hair and quickly threw it in the bathroom trashcan. After washing her hands multiple times, she decided that maybe just taking a shower would make her feel a little less grossed out by her possible new four legged roommate.

Find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, on my kleffnotes YouTube channel, I write for The Nerdy Girl Express and run their Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp, and I post recipes on the iZombie Support Group site.

Talk to ya tomorrow,

Katherine

The Witch House is Back!

Hi Internet People,

The Witch House is back! We haven’t gotten to the mousetraps yet, but next week Ellery is headed back to her room to check the traps. For today I have some important set up and blending between this and the original story.

Ellery and Anna had spent much of the night working on their respective research while Carmilla streamed in the background. They’d each seen it enough times that the story didn’t distract them too much, though Ellery did have to admit that she’d put down her book during the puppet show and the waltz. She couldn’t miss out on those chemistry filled moments, but by the final moments of season one she had become completely immersed in the dusty tome she had grabbed from her room at the last minute. Ellery hadn’t anticipated this particular book to be as engaging as it turned out to be. Over the course of her initial materials collection she had done some quick skimming of so many texts that many of them had begun to blur together in a series of familiar quotes and events. This book though was very curious, particularly in the third section, which was set in the slightly more recent years of Arkham history. Ellery had initially intended to focus her thesis on the witch hysteria that emerged in the late 1600s, but there was something here that she couldn’t ignore.

The third section of the book had surprised her because it was full of scribblings crammed inside the margins. Even though the writing was condensed and involved a great deal of squinting to even begin to understand there was something hauntingly urgent about the presence of these words. Ellery managed to see the word Keziah, which seemed out of place within a section devoted to architectural restoration within Arkham in the early 1900s. Keziah was a name that she had read hundreds, if not thousands of times when she began her research. She was a well-known and feared witch who had been arrested in 1692 and madness and hysteria had surrounded her time in Arkham. What was strange was that not only was her name not typed anywhere within this section of the book, but it kept appearing within the cramped handwriting as though she was somehow vital to what they were trying to share.

Even though her eyes had become remarkably tired, Ellery had been able to piece together something about a house and strange night visits. The sentences though seemed to move from focused to entirely nonsensical as she made her way closer and closer to the end of the book. It didn’t help that even though Ellery loved old books and wanted to learn just what the mysterious note writer was saying her head was beginning to throb. The perils of mold allergies in the historical field were something she’d always have to deal with. After popping some Benadryl Ellery drifted off to sleep, but her dreams were tinged with cookie stealing vampires and long dead witches.

Find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, on my kleffnotes YouTube channel, I write for The Nerdy Girl Express and run their Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp, and I post recipes on the iZombie Support Group site.

Talk to ya tomorrow,

Katherine

Did You Notice Something Different?

Hi Internet People,

Did you happen to notice that I haven’t been posting as regularly this month? I know that I warned you all that I would be out at ClexaCon for a few days and not posting regularly, but I also haven’t been as actively writing posts for this blog. I skipped Sunday of this week, or last week, depending on how you view your week. I have been actively writing up articles and filming and editing videos for The Nerdy Girl Express really frequently and I realized that maybe updating this blog every day wasn’t the best use of my time. I’m not saying I don’t like my blog, I really like writing things up on here, but I think it would be better for me to focus on writing more focused and less filler posts here.

With more focused posts I think this blog will be more productive and I’ll be able to share more important things. Now that isn’t to say that I won’t be writing up some random things when I feel like it, but I want to give myself the freedom to work on other things.I am going to still try and post a Witch House post at least every week, though it may not always be on a Friday. I will also be linking to some of my videos, I still want to have my Fangirl Freakouts and My Kinda Recaps available on here when they go up, and I might link some other ones. I really just think it will be better for me creatively to use this as a resource for more focused things. Now I will definitely still have at least one article a day up on The Nerdy Girl Express, because that is what a lot of my writing focus is.

Now you can still keep up with me every day on Twitter, NGE, and on video upload days on YouTube. The links are all below!

Find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, on my kleffnotes YouTube channel, I write for The Nerdy Girl Express and run their Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp, and I post recipes on the iZombie Support Group site.

Talk to ya tomorrow,

Katherine

Mouse Traps and Witch House

Hi Internet People,

I didn’t write exactly the scene that I was planning, but I finally am on track to introduce some more Lovecraftian stuff very soon.

“Please be the landlord, Please be the landlord.” Ellery kept murmuring under her breath and she jumped off her bed and ran to the door. Anna chuckled, “I think that’s the fastest I’ve ever seen you move without food, drink, or YouTube being involved.” As she pulled open the door Ellery quickly turned her head and stuck her tongue out at her friend. The person at the door was not their grandmotherly landlady, but instead a rather hulking figure of a man.

“Gran said you called about a mouse.”

“Oh hi Doug, yeah I kept hearing something scurrying around last night. I didn’t see anything, but Anna and I set some traps up around the room.”

“Alright, well I’ll do some checking, just ignore me. Unless something jumps out I should be out in a few minutes.”

“Cool, thanks! Let me know if you need me to move anything. I sort of haven’t really unpacked much so the boxes might not be super easy to get around.”

Ellery and Anna attempted to pretend Doug wasn’t there, but the room was just too small and no matter how hard they tried it was really just awkward. They both just wound up messing around with their phones until he finally announced that he didn’t see any signs of mice, but that he’d check back in after a couple of days. As he was leaving Ellery remembered a vitally important question and blurted out,

“If something dies in those traps, you’ll take care of it right? Sorry, I just really don’t want to touch a dead mouse.”

“No worries, it’s not my favorite thing in the world, but I’ll take care of them.”

“Thank goodness, I’ll let you know if anything gets trapped before you come back. Thanks again Doug!”

Once he left the two women looked around the room with a mild amount of mouse related paranoia, they were hoping that none of the traps would suddenly spring now that he had left.

“You know what if you have like a Mouse Trap mouse and you never catch it?”

“Okay that mouse was adorable and helped create string cheese so I wouldn’t care if I had that kind of mouse. I’m worried I’ve got some sort of Rattigan style situation happening and this super creepy thing will just go crazy and leap on my face in the middle of the night.”

Both of them shivered at the thought of some huge rodent surprising them in the dark.

“Maybe tonight you should stay in my room, whatever is in here might be bolder without you here.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I’ll grab some stuff and we can head down. Oh crap, book! I said I’d bring research stuff with me to my meeting at the end of the week and I still haven’t looked over that one book.”

“We can do a research night, the psych folks want me to send over my edited proposal in a couple days so you read and I’ll edit.”

“Sounds like a plan!”

Find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, on my kleffnotes YouTube channel, I write for The Nerdy Girl Express and run their Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp, and I post recipes on the iZombie Support Group site.

Talk to ya tomorrow,

Katherine

Witch House Infestation

Hi Internet People,

I really got caught up on the rats this week and I decided to focus on what Ellery think is in her room this week.

Even with the blankets thrown over her head for protection, Ellery had slept fitfully through the night. Her dreams, though they were few and far between, had been filled with little clawed feet and rabid eyes. She couldn’t stop thinking that some sort of rodent was going to wind up on her face. Why her face was the focal point of these fears she wasn’t sure, but she’d been in such a panicked state that even though it was nearing noon she was still lying in bed and feeling exhausted. Once sunlight had started coming through the small window Ellery had jumped up and turned on the few lights that she had. She’d tried to get more sleep, but she kept jerking awake at the thought of rats.

Eventually she gave up on sleeping and quickly got out of bed, looking everywhere for signs of anything out of the ordinary. Mostly she was just looking for a tail or possible signs of gnawing. Ellery sprinted to the bathroom and grabbed the nearest pair of pants she could find. In her mad dash she managed to close the door and try and get dressed. The entire time she just kept muttering, “Don’t come out, I’m naked, don’t come out I’m naked.” Somehow that seemed like a way to keep whatever was in her room from attacking her. She ran in and out of the bathroom in search of the rest of her clothes and finally she managed to get an entirely new outfit on. Then she leapt back on her bed as though she was in some sort of wake up triathlon. Once she’d checked to make sure she was safe she checked her phone and noticed five missed texts from Anna. None of them were urgent, but the last one did suggest grabbing lunch. They really could have used the kitchen downstairs, but neither of them were very good at cooking. Ellery had actually made it through most of college by eating instant mac and cheese and canned fruit. Not together, but they definitely had constituted a number of her meals over the past four years. She sent a quick, “Coming!” text to Anna and shoved her shoes on.

Over lunch Ellery had tried to put as much caffeine in her body as possible. It hadn’t really woken her up, but she was at least functional as a human being now. Over fries and milkshakes she’d explained why she was so tired to Anna. They’d decided to pick up some mousetraps, just to play it safe, and Ellery called their landlord. She hadn’t been able to get a hold of her, but she left a message about the scratching sounds and asked if someone could come by and check her room. After picking up all of the rodent deterring supplies, the women got to work spreading super cheap peanut butter on the little plastic traps. Neither of them really wanted anything to get caught in the traps, but they weren’t sure how else to handle a rodent infestation. With the traps in every corner and crevice they could think of, Ellery and Anna climbed up on her bed to relax. While they were geeking out over some photo edits on Anna’s tumblr there was a knock on the door.

Find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, on my kleffnotes YouTube channel, I write for The Nerdy Girl Express and run their Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp, and I post recipes on the iZombie Support Group site.

Talk to ya tomorrow,

Katherine

First Night In the Witch House

Hi Internet People,

For this week’s addition I wrote Ellery’s first night alone in her new place. It’s just a little scene, but I wanted to get a feel for reactions and how to set up the nights in her apartment.

Ellery flopped onto her bed in exhaustion. She and Anna had been on campus way longer than either of them had anticipated after being given the runaround by the registrar. It turned out that all of their paperwork needed to be signed by department heads and they’d had to scramble to track them down in between all the semester prep meetings underway. Anna had been sucked into an impromptu advising meeting and Ellery had only managed to escape the history secretary after promising to come by later the next day with her research packet. Once they’d gotten away from the clutches of academia they’d been so tired and hungry, the coffee and bagels hadn’t kept them fueled for long, they’d snagged burgers at a little place on the edge of campus. With a full stomach and heavy eyes Ellery had gone back to her apartment, while Anna headed back to the psych building to check in with some of her research friends. She had no idea how long Anna would be gone and with the sky getting dark all Ellery wanted to do was go to bed. Groaning, she got up and with a sidelong glance at the still unpacked boxes in the corner, she threw on her sleep clothes from the night before. “It’s not like I’m trying to impress anyone,” she muttered as she climbed into bed. Her laptop was still on the small table by her bed and she decided to throw on something for background noise as she dozed off.

She woke with a start and abruptly sat up. Her laptop had turned itself off and the only light in the room was from the dull red numbers on her alarm clock. As her eyes attempted to adjust she couldn’t make out just what time it was, but she could tell it was late. Normally Ellery slept like a rock, Anna even made jokes about it. Once they’d been staying at Ellery’s parents’ house and Anna had woken up, made breakfast, and finished an entire paper before she even got out of bed. Now in the red tinted darkness Ellery felt confused. As she sat staring around the room she suddenly heard a faint sound. It was a sort of scratching, though the noise was dull as though it were coming from far away. She tried to listen harder to try and make out just what the noise was, but she couldn’t focus on it. Each time she thought she had figured out where it was coming from it seemed to move farther away. Ellery waited listening for a few more minutes, but the noise was gone. Laying back down she threw the blanket over her head, just in case whatever it was decided to come back.

Find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, on my kleffnotes YouTube channel, I write for The Nerdy Girl Express and run their Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp, and I post recipes on the iZombie Support Group site.

Talk to ya tomorrow,

Katherine

A New Witch House Scene

Hi Internet People,

I didn’t want to copy paste the whole story so far, but click here to read the first portion of the Witch House story. This scene starts on the next day so you could read it by itself if you wanted to.

At some point late that night Anna had gone back to her room, but Ellery had been so asleep she hadn’t noticed her friend leave. She’d tossed and turned a few times, but the stress of moving and unpacking had worn her out to the point where even though this was a new environment, she was just too tired to care. The loud blare of her alarm clock startled her awake, she didn’t remember setting it, but it wouldn’t surprise her if Anna had taken it upon herself to do it on her way out. Ellery hated having to get up early. She would have much preferred to go in to campus for lunch, but she knew that they both needed to get their paperwork squared away with their departments. Pushing herself out of bed, Ellery realized she actually wasn’t sure which tub contained her clothes. The plan had been to unpack everything last night, but after the wine, Ikea furniture, and the webseries binge, she’d sort of forgotten about everything else. She looked down at the Batman boxers and the oversized Doctor Who t-shirt she’d fallen asleep in

“Yeah, I definitely have to find clothes.”

Beginning with the closest tub, she popped off the lid, which revealed a coffeemaker, some mugs, and an assortment of small kitchen appliances.

“Nope, not clothes.”

Ellery opened tub after tub finding books, towels, sheets, school supplies, until finally she found pants. About ten minutes later she’d managed to find a random shirt, a grey hoody with the college’s logo on it, plus clean underwear and socks. She’d just made her way to the bathroom when there was a loud knock on the door.

“Ellery are you up? Come on we have to get going in like five minutes or I’m going to be late!”

She could just picture Anna scowling at the door and checking her watch.

“Okay, give me a sec!”

Rushing through her morning routine, Ellery was pretty proud of herself for managing to look like a mostly put together human being in what felt like two minutes. She shoved her feet into her beat up high tops, while throwing her hair up into a messy bun to hide the fact that she definitely had bed head. Anna was yelling for her to hurry up as she threw her paperwork and phone into her bag and grabbed her keys. With a slightly dramatic flick of her wrist, Ellery popped open the door and declared that she was ready to greet the day. Anna’s response was less excited and more exasperated.

“I knew I should have set your clock ahead by 10 minutes. You’re totally buying me two bagels.”

Find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, on my kleffnotes YouTube channel, I write for The Nerdy Girl Express and run their Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp, and I post recipes on the iZombie Support Group site.

Talk to ya tomorrow,

Katherine

Witch House Repost with New Dialogue

Hi Internet People,

Last week I posted some Witchhouse Writing and this week I wrote up some dialogue. Since it doesn’t really make sense without the scene I wrote last week I’m posting that with the new stuff underneath it. You can skip ahead if you’ve already read the setup part. The new stuff starts with the dialogue. I also totally wound up adding in a webseries reference, I just thought it fit with what I plan to do later on.

The room was nice enough, a bit smaller than she had anticipated, but Ellery supposed she shouldn’t really complain. Campus housing had been exceptionally limited for graduate students and LC House had been more than willing to rent her a room far below the standard rate. Her decision to attend Arkham University had been motivated by her desire to study the rich history of the area and she had been hoping the house would be a bit, well, older. It actually resembled the sort of place she’d expect to see in an Ikea catalogue. The room was a sort of an off white shade, not exactly eggshell, but the sort of color you’d expect in a model home. Her room was one of 6. Three on the first floor, two on the second, and the sixth alone on the top floor, which is the room she had been placed in. The landlady had apologized a number of times for isolating her up on the third floor, but she’d been overwhelmed with renters and had only decided to rent out the top room as a last resort.

Ellery didn’t see anything wrong with the room; it even had its own private bathroom. Nothing fancy, but she’d be the only one who wouldn’t have to share. It had a small desk with a battered chair that looked as though it had been the companion of many a student over the years, a bed on a slim metal frame, and a night table, which sported a fresh coat of varnish. She’d been told the upper room had only one small window in the bedroom, which meant that natural light was limited. With all the texts she’d be bringing in for her research Ellery had actually appreciated the minor inconvenience of limited sunlight. She’d brought enough lamps to keep the room well lit and they’d do far less damage to the books than sunlight would. After carting all of her boxes up the two flights of stairs, with a bit of help from the son of the landlady, Ellery was laying on her freshly made bed taking in her new surroundings. She was startled by the sound of a knock at the door, but she was happily surprised to find her friend Anna standing in the doorframe holding an allen wrench and a bottle of wine.

“Oh god I love you.”

“You’re totally talking to the wine aren’t you El?”

“I mean I love you too, but right now I definitely love that bottle more.”

“If I didn’t know you so well I’d totally think you were an alcoholic.”

“Same goes to you woman with the wine. Do you have a corkscrew for that or are we going to try and use the power of Ikea to get it open?”

“Screw top my friend, screw top”

With that Anna swiftly twisted the cap off of the bottle and thrust it dramatically into Ellery’s open hand.

“Should I give a speech? Formally claim this place as mine or something?”

“Maybe just a nice cheers and we get to putting that bookcase together?”

“Cheers!”

After an hour and a half of drinking and cursing, the two women stood up and positioned the newly built piece of furniture against the wall.

“Is that middle shelf even?” Anna asked as she titled her head slightly to the left.

Ellery looked at it and closed one eye, in a halfhearted attempt to see if the shelf was level.

“Honestly as long as it holds books I don’t care. If I have to look at those directions one more time I’m going to turn that thing into a nice bonfire and call it a night.”

“Maybe don’t put that ‘History of Arkham’ book on it, I’m not sure it’s sturdy enough for that much bulk.”

“I’m not even sure that bookcase is sturdy enough for that book. The guy who wrote it seriously must have been paid by the word. I mean I love history, but do I need to know the number of clouds floating above the church on the day the bishop came to christen the new alter, nope not really.”

“This is why I couldn’t do what you do. I’d much rather examine how people behave instead of what they write about. Oh speaking of behavior, did you sign the form that says I can record you?”

“I mean the camera is already on, I set it up when I set up my laptop.”

“Wait you were recording this? This totally doesn’t count for the study, we haven’t even started classes yet.”

“I wanted to make sure it worked. Think of this as a test run and hey, you’re the only one who’s going to watch this thing, you can just make a note that my subject video starts at hour two or whatever. And I have the form, it’s with my stuff for the department. Just remind me to give it to you before you leave.”

“I’ll remember, my advisor has been asking about them all week. Seriously the semester hasn’t even started and he’s freaking out that I won’t get the releases in. It’s not like he didn’t already approve the project.”

“I’m sure he just wants his ducks in a row. We can grab coffee and swing by campus tomorrow to drop everything off. I’ll even pay since you brought the wine.”

“I knew that bottle would come in handy. Hey, since your laptop’s up why don’t we check out that series with the psychiatrist and the supernatural people?”

“Yes! I’ll turn off the camera and we can totally binge watch. You’re going to love it!”

Let me know what you think, I’m really trying to build the story and I’ll go back and do more editing later.

Find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, on my kleffnotes YouTube channel, I write for The Nerdy Girl Express and run their Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp, and I post recipes on the iZombie Support Group site.

Talk to ya tomorrow,

Katherine

Some Witch House

Hi Internet People,

I wrote a little bit of Witch House stuff. It doesn’t go into a ton of detail, but I was just doing some stream of consciousness writing to see what came to mind.

The room was nice enough, a bit smaller than she had anticipated, but Ellery supposed she shouldn’t really complain. Campus housing had been exceptionally limited for graduate students and LC House had been more than willing to rent her a room far below the standard rate. Her decision to attend Arkham University had been motivated by her desire to study the rich history of the area and she had been hoping the house would be a bit, well, older. It actually resembled the sort of place she’d expect to see in an Ikea catalogue. The room was a sort of an off white shade, not exactly eggshell, but the sort of color you’d expect in a model home. Her room was one of 6. Three on the first floor, two on the second, and the sixth alone on the top floor, which is the room she had been placed in. The landlady had apologized a number of times for isolating her up on the third floor, but she’d been overwhelmed with renters and had only decided to rent out the top room as a last resort.

Ellery didn’t see anything wrong with the room; it even had its own private bathroom. Nothing fancy, but she’d be the only one who wouldn’t have to share. It had a small desk with a battered chair that looked as though it had been the companion of many a student over the years, a bed on a slim metal frame, and a night table, which sported a fresh coat of varnish. She’d been told the upper room had only one small window in the bedroom, which meant that natural light was limited. With all the texts she’d be bringing in for her research Ellery had actually appreciated the minor inconvenience of limited sunlight. She’d brought enough lamps to keep the room well lit and they’d do far less damage to the books than sunlight would. After carting all of her boxes up the two flights of stairs, with a bit of help from the son of the landlady, Ellery was laying on her freshly made bed taking in her new surroundings. She was startled by the sound of a knock at the door, but she was happily surprised to find her friend Anna standing in the doorframe holding an allen wrench and a bottle of wine.

Find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, on my kleffnotes YouTube channel, I write for The Nerdy Girl Express and run their Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp, and I post recipes on the iZombie Support Group site.

Talk to ya tomorrow,

Katherine