Public Purchase - Part Eight

Groaning I pull the sweaty boots off with a huff, wriggling my delicate toes as I grumble under my breath at Aurelia's distaste for socks and underwear. Clambering over to the computer I heave my lithe frame up onto the seat, slumping over slightly as I feel my heavy chest hang forward with me.

My eyes shift to the papers, my gaze locking to homework that seemed to be weeks and weeks old at this point.

"Has she not done anything since we..." I grumble, my eyes narrowing as I wonder whether she even looked at this homework since we agreed to the swap. reaching over I snatch the top item from the pile, a series of questions relating to Romeo and Juliet as my eyes begin to dart between my questions.

Despite my poor vision I slowly begin to read the work I would be expected to complete. As I sit down to try and tackle the overdue homework I quickly find myself making short work of it the questions largely just requiring a surface level reading in various texts of English Literature and basic knowledge of historical events. I worry for a moment that the wine slowly seeping into my system would ruin my handwriting, my already terrible scrawling likely to decay to an illegible mess. However, as I lose myself to answering the mind numbing questions I soon find my handwriting shifting to a neat and cursive script with cute loops and flourishes that leave me a giggling mess.

"Did Meredith make her learn..." I chortle, watching in amazement as I draft the fancy yet barely legible text.

Before long I soon exhaust all the humanities subjects in the pile, my delicate hand cramping after writing more about Macbeth and Hamlet in the past hour or two than I had done in the past decade in academia.

Public Purchase - Part Seven

My gaze slowly drifts as well, slowly falling to a small wine rack resting atop the counter at the far edge. With a giddy grin I point at that, a knowing smirk soon forming on my lips.

"Can we start with that?" I ask, Meredith whipping around to look at what I'm pointing at. Her hands quickly fly to her hips before she twists back around, her gaze narrowing behind her glasses to a glare.

"Aurelia Marigold-Prim..." she begins to snap, her shouting of my extended name coming to a stop as she bites her lip and her eyes drift up in thought. "I suppose... You do have a fully formed... well at least the part that counts for present purposes..." she mutters, walking over and pulling a bottle of red from the top of the rack.

"Okay, we can share" she states, pulling two glasses from one of the open cabinets. "But one, I need to hear more about my new daughter, and two..." she states, placing the glasses down before uncapping the wine and pouring the glasses. "We still need to go over the ground rules, before Sammie gets home at least."

Public Purchase - Part Six

A small stone wall wraps around the entrance to the clearing, the older woman bringing the pickup truck to a stop close to a cute little wooden gate. Flower beds and trees dot the landscape beyond the fence, creating an extensive garden in front of a rustic stone cottage sitting beyond.

With a click of her seat belt the older woman turns to climb out of the driver's seat, pausing for a moment to look back at me with a more serious expression.

"Come on, we have to get this thing planted before Sammy gets home" she states, hoping down to the path below before stretching a little. "Besides, you and I need to have a talk. Don't think you can just take over for Aurelia without any ground rules."

I sit in the large and heavily worn seat for a moment, my hands fidgeting with the hem of my lime green polka dot sundress as I try to wrap my head around what the dark haired woman had said. I blow some of the red hair from my face, the gears inside my skull whirring as I find the sudden thrusting of myself back into living under a parent's thumb difficult to parse.

Suddenly, a loud thumping rings through the cabin of the pickup, the loud drumming causing me to jump with a loud squeal.

"Come on!" barks the dark haired woman, opening my door as she continues to hammer the roof of the vehicle. "I carted this thing into the truck without Aurelia's help, you can at least help me get it to the house."

Public Purchase - Part Five

Taking a deep breath I watch as the bus pulls out, the warm sun above me feeling almost heavenly and deeply distracting as I feel it on my arms. I hold them out a little past the brim of my hat, taking in the warmth and taking a deep breath of fresh mountain air as a warm smile creeps across my lips.

"Okay... I'm home... I guess..." I giggle, shimmying my hips from side to side with glee as I look over the quiet early afternoon streets. While likely bustling and full on the weekend and holidays, the town seemed largely dead without tourists and visitors to fill the cafes and stores lining the shopping district.

Swallowing hard, running my tongue along my slightly crooked teeth, I try to remember what Aurelia had told me about getting home.

"Up the street?" I mutter, looking around at the intersection I had found myself in. "She said something about a dirt road right? Yeah... I mean..." I huff, struggling to remember everything that happened in the rush to make the bus after our surgery.

As I wander down to the corner, glancing up and down the streets in the hopes of getting some sort of insight into where to go, I spy sight of a tall and lanky young woman waving at me excitedly from down the street.

Public Purchase - Part Four

As I go to say something more, holding up the bus pass, the driver just nods at me before tapping on a small device by the hand railing and then to a sign requesting that passengers don't speak to the driver while the bus is in motion.

Nodding to him, and more than a little desperate to sit down as I feel my shrunken frame jostle and shake thanks to the rough ride of the bus, I quickly scan my pass as I turn my attention to the bus at large.


As I reach the seats I find the bus a completely empty bus, taking a seat up the back for privacy.

Public Purchase - Part Three

Sighing a little as I swing my legs over the bed I stare at the floor beneath me. It seems so much further away, the dangling slender yet athletic legs reaching far less further down than I was used to.

"We should probably..." I begin to mutter, only to be cut off by Aurelia.

"Get dressed?..." Aurelia muses, thinking for a moment even after talking over me. "Yeah, I mean sure. You do have to get the bus home, and that thing takes forever" she groans, throwing her head back and flinching slightly as the expected sensation of hair against her back simply doesn't come.

Public Purchase - Part Two

 "We're on the clock now" he chuckles, leaning into my room through the doorway. "You just sit tight, I'll be back soon enough once I've checked on... Ms. Aurelia Marigold-Primrose Augusta Alice-Elizabeth Daniels" Doctor Jones muses, cocking an eyebrow as he reads out the long winding name.

"That's going to be fun to write out... You sure know how to pick 'em" the doctor laughed, muttering under his breath as he leaves the room to check on the other half of the procedure.

Public Purchase - Part One

 Sitting up in the hospital bed I can't help but forget and shift in place. The sound of my paper gown fills me ear, the subtle beeps from nearby rooms grounding me in the clinical clean environment.

The coarse and crisp sheet shift against my exposed behind, the hairs catching on the material and acting as a constant reminder of just how little the tiny garment I wore really covered.

"Mr. Hughes?" Calls a firm yet warm voice from the doorway into the shared room, the other beds thankfully being empty for the time being.

My gaze snaps to the dark-skinned man standing by the doorway, his hand knocking at the frame in lieu of any real door to tap at. The man, in his late thirties, stands dressed in a pair of green scrubs beneath a practically glowing white lab coat that catches almost too much light from the fluorescent sitting the ceiling.