Lily's walking carefully, so she doesn't trip when - some kind of fabric? Meets her foot. Might be a towel, was there some kind of spill?

(The television is off, she notices suddenly. She's not sure when that happened, and she hasn't heard anything.)

Whatever. 

She finds the light switch and flips it. 

There's a guy a bit older than her, maybe, but not by much, lurking over near the door to the office.

He pulls the door shut, sharply; the sound it makes is a little loud.

She does not jump. Really. Anyone who saw her startle was imagining things. 

She does, however, turn and say after only a moment's pause, "Oh, hey, do you work here? I wanted to do laundry."

"We're closed."

"Well, your sign says you're open, your electricity works, and I need to do laundry."

"We don't have enough staff."

Eye roll. "I never see more than one employee here, so."

"But - look, dude, I get you don't want to be here. I don't want to be here either. I'll do my laundry, I won't break anything, and I'll be out of your hair."

"...Fine. Don't go into the office or out the back."

"I won't."

"Do you have a door stop?" She gestures at the open front door. "Or working air?"

He turns and fiddles with a thermostat by the office door; there's a thump and rattle as the air conditioning kicks in. He then heads back towards and past her, shouldering her out of his way, and picks up a jacket on the floor - the thing she'd bumped into. 

He doesn't say anything else to her as he stalks towards the front, kicking her laundry basket inside so he can close the door -

But then he turns to her, says, "That machine's my clothing. Don't touch it," with a gesture at the machine nearest him (which is currently off) - 

And then heads out the front door, slamming it behind him.

Okay. Fine. 

...Lily was an asshole, and she'll probably regret that when she's less exhausted and overheated and stressed, at least in terms of 'that was a totally unnecessary bridge to burn.'

But something in the air here - and by 'something' she means the heat - has her temper on edge, so she doesn't regret it yet. 

She doesn't touch anything she was told not to touch. She just takes her clothes to the washer furthest from the dude's, counts how much change she has - makes a face, and triages so she's just washing what she needs most, and what'll fit okay in one of those tiny dryers, especially since she just knows these are going to need two dry cycles...

Sorting is a bit soothing, actually, and she finds change in one of her pants pockets - not enough for more laundry, but maybe she can get a cold drink from the vending machine...

She goes to find it - it's pretty near the back -

The TV's back on. It's just showing static, but - it'd been off earlier. Not even on static when she was shuffling around in the dark, and the dude hadn't messed with it she's pretty sure - but she hadn't exactly been paying much attention to it.

It's distracting. She doesn't really like static, and she's started getting little black flecks in the corner of her eyes the last few minutes, and - yeah, they don't combine well. She turns the TV back off. Hopefully it'll stay that way.

And - onward to shitty vending machine coffee.

It's when she's walking back to the benches at the front, iced coffee in hand, that she sees the tooth.

It's a front tooth. It's got a bit of blood on the end, and it's an adult-sized tooth. Something about it sends hairs rising on her neck - which is silly, probably two dumbasses got into a fight -

She gives the tooth a very wide berth while walking around it. At least there's no one here to see her. And then - well, the laundry machine's kicking up a racket, and she's briefly worried it's hers -

But, no. It's the dude's machine. It's kicked back on or something, and it's rattling around violently. Water's running down the front in a thin little rivulet, tarry and black. It smells - sharp, strange, and - familiar -

She's going to have to walk past it to get out, is her first thought, and then her second is to wonder why she's suddenly terrified - her third that she's leaving - her fourth to worry about abandoning her clothes -

Her feet are smarter than the scared animal part of her brain. She heads for the front door at a fast walk, but she's not going to be able to avoid going by the machine -

The rattling gets worse as she approaches, black fluid sloshing out - not rattling, thuds, something slamming into the inside of the machine, something large - and then it rocks and tilts -

She starts to run. The door opens in - it'll slow her down, and there's no good cover - she can yank it though, move fast -

Not fast enough.

The machine begins to fall, and the lid opens, and a skeletal thing surges out. It's human, or was, or should've been - It moves strangely, the entire left half of its body crushed, its spine curved in, sinews of black dirt and water the only thing holding the shattered bones together. They make it look melted, fuzzy, and it's a jittering static in her perception, like it's not all the way in reality -

It surges for her before she can get the door open even a little. It's going to beat her to it.

She falls back, tries to get the row of washers between her and it - she needs a weapon -

It's uncoordinated, at least, and not very clever - it tries to go over the washers and fails.

Well. At that. It's strong, and fast, and determined, and it's not able to knock washers over with one move, but - it's going to get through.

Lily sprints for the back door, grabs a mop she passes on the way just in case - back door pushes to open, she should've gone for that first, she's an idiot - not the time.

It gets loose.

Lily gets maybe within three feet from the door before it's on her, shattered arms reaching to grab her, the skull's mouth chattering open.

She swings the mop around. Tries to get the end in the thing's mouth - tries to hold it off, to make sure it at least pushes her toward the door.

She trips. Her back hits the door.

The mop shatters in its jaws.

It looms over her, mouth open, for a single long moment.

Lily bares her teeth, fear turning rapidly to rage.

It twitches, a little, black static dripping into reality -