Post by dwindsweptwayne on Dec 29, 2013 8:18:59 GMT -5
OOC Name: Firestorm
OOC Gender: Female
IC Name: Katherine James
Character Model: Nina Dobrev
Ghost Codes: Whats your price for flight?
Age: 25
Gender Identity: Female
Sexual Preference Kinsey 1 (optional -Kinsey Scale* may be used):
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5’ 6”
Weight: 122 lbs
Weapons: Kitchen knives, tire irons, 2x4s, kitchen grill igniters
Supplies: Three backpacks half-full of Ramen noodles and Capri Sun drink pouches, matches, two three-person tents, three double-sized sleeping bags, two sets of kitchen knives from the kitchen at Michaels, two changes of clothing each for us and the kids (a huge torture for poor Tristan!), a dozen long-end end kitchen grill/fireplace igniters, and a kitchen torch with two canisters of propane (out of the 12-canister box we left South Carolina with). One of those two-child strollers with the tent-like top that the rich ladies used for running, with the big bike-type tires and the luggage rack things under the bed and on the back.
Special Survival Skills: Organizational skills, I guess, and hope, and a desperate hunger to find a safe place for my kids.
Quirks: No tolerance for drinkers -- mother was killed by a drunk driver. She has two children (boy 6 and girl 4, NPC), whom she loves dearly, and is traveling with an older widow-woman who helps take care of the kids (Mrs Keasley, NPC) , as well as her best friend from work (who will be an active character as well).
Short Biography:
I was raised in New Jersey, the younger of two children. We had a wonderful childhood. My brother, Dominic, was five years older than I was, and a great older brother. Life was like one of those old Better Homes and Gardens magazines, with the pictures of the happy family in the nice little house, with the clean kitchen and the pretty supper on the table.
Tragedy struck when I was 12, though. My mother was killed by a drunk driver, and our lives went into the toilet. Papa didn’t handle momma’s death well, and started drinking heavily, until Dominic and I were finally able to pull him back around. He was never the same, though, after momma’s death, and went through the motions of life, without really living. Since he didn’t live much, neither did we.
Dominic, as he got older and into high school, handled our barren home life by going out with his friends to party. I handled it by dating a Linebacker on the football team, and letting him convince me that if I -really- loved him, I'd have sex.
I planned on going to college, but the summer after high-school, I suddenly found myself pregnant, and marrying my high-school sweetheart. Dad didn’t say boo about it -- just walked me down the aisle and hid in a corner of the reception hall till it was all over.
I thought I was lucky -- cheerleader marries football star is right out of Cinderella, and I really thought I loved the guy.
Dominic had beat me to getting married by 4 years, so he considered himself an authority on all things marriage. They'd started a family, too. They had one child, and were working on a 2nd by the time I got married. Life just seemed to kick him in the teeth. His wife had a miscarriage, late in the pregnancy, and neither of them coped with it well. He started drinking, and after a while, he just couldn’t stop. I told him he couldn’t see his niece and nephew. I thought that would stop the drinking, but when he didn’t, or couldn’t, stop, well… I had to cut him off.
Dominic never liked my ex, and when he was drinking, he was VERY vocal about it. I wasn’t going to listen to a drunk. I should have listened. At first, it wasn’t so very bad — the occasional slap, screaming at me for something completely out of my control that he didn’t like — He always apologized profusely, and promised it would never happen again. I always believed him. Makeup Sex got us two little children, Matthew and Kristen. After the kids were born, though, it went from the occasional outburst to undeniable abuse. When he burned my fingers by holding them to the stove for fixing him Hamburger Helper instead of a steak at the end of the month when he’d gambled away all the money — well, I imagined Mattie and Kris — what about when the little things THEY did wrong got on his nerves.
The next day, his bags were on the street, and I had the locks changed. A month later, I got a restraining order. Three months later, he tried to burn down the house —with us in it, and I knew I had to leave. I scraped together enough money to move — but not to anywhere fancy. We left in the middle of the night, and headed for a small town called Pickins in South Carolina, where a friend of mine from high-school, now married to a high-school football coach, lived on a little country farm. We stayed with her till I could get a job waiting tables at a local Breakfast/Lunch restaurant named Michaels, and I started moving up in the business. My boss was fair, promoted from within, and within two years, I was the Hostess and Front End Manager.
I was home with the kids and the widow lady from next door who got the kids off to school so that I could make my 4:30AM report time at the restaurant, and my best friend from work, on the day the dead rose. We’d had some sickness in town, and they’d closed all the schools a month before, to help handle the pandemic. A bunch of businesses closed down, and I’m pretty sure a lot of the people whose businesses closed did so because they got sick and died, but nobody ever really talked about it. Fortunately, it was off-season, so we weren’t inundated with tourists.
We stayed on, for a long time, really. I mean, I didn’t really have anyplace else to go, especially with the kids. Mrs. Keasley, the widow next door, moved in with us, and so did my bestie from work, Tristan — don’t get all up in a dander… it wasn’t romance. He’s as gay as a three dollar bill. It just didn’t make sense to waste resources on separate households, and I think we felt safer with all of us in one place. But then, this summer, the place was completely overRUN with zombies. We hid in the basement for weeks, waiting for them to pass, and wondering if they’d find us. The kids were terrified. When they were gone, there was nothing really left of the town, and with nothing left in terms of people, food, or supplies, well, what choice did we have. We told the kids it would be a BIG adventure, and we started walking. It wasn’t an adventure. It was horrible. We never slept on the first floor of ANYPLACE. We went hungry a lot, and thirsty, too. The kids were miserable, and they’re too young to tell them that they can’t cry when they’re miserable.
I was just about ready to give up when Mrs. Keasley’s short wave radio picked up a signal from a place not far from where we were holed up — out in Delaware somewhere… and we figured what the heck. It couldn’t possibly be any worse than this!
OOC Gender: Female
IC Name: Katherine James
Character Model: Nina Dobrev
Ghost Codes: Whats your price for flight?
Age: 25
Gender Identity: Female
Sexual Preference Kinsey 1 (optional -Kinsey Scale* may be used):
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5’ 6”
Weight: 122 lbs
Weapons: Kitchen knives, tire irons, 2x4s, kitchen grill igniters
Supplies: Three backpacks half-full of Ramen noodles and Capri Sun drink pouches, matches, two three-person tents, three double-sized sleeping bags, two sets of kitchen knives from the kitchen at Michaels, two changes of clothing each for us and the kids (a huge torture for poor Tristan!), a dozen long-end end kitchen grill/fireplace igniters, and a kitchen torch with two canisters of propane (out of the 12-canister box we left South Carolina with). One of those two-child strollers with the tent-like top that the rich ladies used for running, with the big bike-type tires and the luggage rack things under the bed and on the back.
Special Survival Skills: Organizational skills, I guess, and hope, and a desperate hunger to find a safe place for my kids.
Quirks: No tolerance for drinkers -- mother was killed by a drunk driver. She has two children (boy 6 and girl 4, NPC), whom she loves dearly, and is traveling with an older widow-woman who helps take care of the kids (Mrs Keasley, NPC) , as well as her best friend from work (who will be an active character as well).
Short Biography:
I was raised in New Jersey, the younger of two children. We had a wonderful childhood. My brother, Dominic, was five years older than I was, and a great older brother. Life was like one of those old Better Homes and Gardens magazines, with the pictures of the happy family in the nice little house, with the clean kitchen and the pretty supper on the table.
Tragedy struck when I was 12, though. My mother was killed by a drunk driver, and our lives went into the toilet. Papa didn’t handle momma’s death well, and started drinking heavily, until Dominic and I were finally able to pull him back around. He was never the same, though, after momma’s death, and went through the motions of life, without really living. Since he didn’t live much, neither did we.
Dominic, as he got older and into high school, handled our barren home life by going out with his friends to party. I handled it by dating a Linebacker on the football team, and letting him convince me that if I -really- loved him, I'd have sex.
I planned on going to college, but the summer after high-school, I suddenly found myself pregnant, and marrying my high-school sweetheart. Dad didn’t say boo about it -- just walked me down the aisle and hid in a corner of the reception hall till it was all over.
I thought I was lucky -- cheerleader marries football star is right out of Cinderella, and I really thought I loved the guy.
Dominic had beat me to getting married by 4 years, so he considered himself an authority on all things marriage. They'd started a family, too. They had one child, and were working on a 2nd by the time I got married. Life just seemed to kick him in the teeth. His wife had a miscarriage, late in the pregnancy, and neither of them coped with it well. He started drinking, and after a while, he just couldn’t stop. I told him he couldn’t see his niece and nephew. I thought that would stop the drinking, but when he didn’t, or couldn’t, stop, well… I had to cut him off.
Dominic never liked my ex, and when he was drinking, he was VERY vocal about it. I wasn’t going to listen to a drunk. I should have listened. At first, it wasn’t so very bad — the occasional slap, screaming at me for something completely out of my control that he didn’t like — He always apologized profusely, and promised it would never happen again. I always believed him. Makeup Sex got us two little children, Matthew and Kristen. After the kids were born, though, it went from the occasional outburst to undeniable abuse. When he burned my fingers by holding them to the stove for fixing him Hamburger Helper instead of a steak at the end of the month when he’d gambled away all the money — well, I imagined Mattie and Kris — what about when the little things THEY did wrong got on his nerves.
The next day, his bags were on the street, and I had the locks changed. A month later, I got a restraining order. Three months later, he tried to burn down the house —with us in it, and I knew I had to leave. I scraped together enough money to move — but not to anywhere fancy. We left in the middle of the night, and headed for a small town called Pickins in South Carolina, where a friend of mine from high-school, now married to a high-school football coach, lived on a little country farm. We stayed with her till I could get a job waiting tables at a local Breakfast/Lunch restaurant named Michaels, and I started moving up in the business. My boss was fair, promoted from within, and within two years, I was the Hostess and Front End Manager.
I was home with the kids and the widow lady from next door who got the kids off to school so that I could make my 4:30AM report time at the restaurant, and my best friend from work, on the day the dead rose. We’d had some sickness in town, and they’d closed all the schools a month before, to help handle the pandemic. A bunch of businesses closed down, and I’m pretty sure a lot of the people whose businesses closed did so because they got sick and died, but nobody ever really talked about it. Fortunately, it was off-season, so we weren’t inundated with tourists.
We stayed on, for a long time, really. I mean, I didn’t really have anyplace else to go, especially with the kids. Mrs. Keasley, the widow next door, moved in with us, and so did my bestie from work, Tristan — don’t get all up in a dander… it wasn’t romance. He’s as gay as a three dollar bill. It just didn’t make sense to waste resources on separate households, and I think we felt safer with all of us in one place. But then, this summer, the place was completely overRUN with zombies. We hid in the basement for weeks, waiting for them to pass, and wondering if they’d find us. The kids were terrified. When they were gone, there was nothing really left of the town, and with nothing left in terms of people, food, or supplies, well, what choice did we have. We told the kids it would be a BIG adventure, and we started walking. It wasn’t an adventure. It was horrible. We never slept on the first floor of ANYPLACE. We went hungry a lot, and thirsty, too. The kids were miserable, and they’re too young to tell them that they can’t cry when they’re miserable.
I was just about ready to give up when Mrs. Keasley’s short wave radio picked up a signal from a place not far from where we were holed up — out in Delaware somewhere… and we figured what the heck. It couldn’t possibly be any worse than this!
