“Persephone! Persephone Lynn! Get down here already!”<br/>Persephone, or Perri, as she preferred to be called, groaned and let her head drop onto the worn second hand desk she was sitting at.<br/><br/>Gran. What on earth could that belligerent old woman want now?<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">“Persephone!”</span>The shrieking became louder and more shrill as the old woman became more and more impatient.<br/><br/>“What?!” Perri snapped, rubbing her temples. At nineteen years of age, Perri was a gangly young woman who hadn’t quite grown into her long limbs. Bony and flat as a board, the only truly memorable features she had were her striking aquamarine eyes and messy array of blue, pink, and purple tendrils mixing with her natural blond. It was cropped short and gelled into a distinctly punk look; Perri had chosen it simply because her Gran would not only hate it, but had specifically forbade Perri from dying her hair at all. She’d had similar reasons when she’d had her ears tripple pierced, then again with her eyebrow and nose cartilage, and yet another time for the snakebite piercing on her lower lip. Gran had been furious each time, and had implemented more rules to clip Perri’s wings... Which the ever-rebellious teen wasted no time breaking.<br/><br/>“You’re not to go out past sunset!”<br/>“What?! I already have a curfew of like eleven, what the bloody hell is this sunset business?”<br/><br/>“It’s for your own good! People went missing on the train today... Just<span style="font-style: italic">vanished</span>,” The elderly woman had finally made it up the stairs, and now fixed her granddaughter with an equally aquamarine stare, though a little less bright and lined with wrinkles. Perri simply raised an eyebrow at her Gran, clearly believing that this was no more than a ploy to keep her cooped up in the absurdly tiny Londonderry home.<br/><br/>“There’s evil afoot in this city, Persephone Lynn. There always has been, just waiting to surface. Back when I was about your age, in fact--”<br/><br/>“Oh, for shit’s sake, Gran,” Perri groaned, “There’s nothing evil about an empty train car... If there was, in fact, an empty train car.”<br/><br/>“You think I’m lying?”<br/>“I think you’ve said equally crazy things to try to get me to do what you want... Though we both know how well those worked out,” she added, sticking out her tongue to reveal her latest acquisition; a tongue piercing.<br/>Gran shuddered visibly, but there was evident anger in her eyes, “<span style="font-style: italic">Persephone Lynn!</span>I told you, not another piercing! You’ve got so many darned holes in you it’s no small miracle you can even hold water!”<br/><br/>Perri rolled her eyes and prepared a retort, but the old woman’s tongue was faster than her pace up the stairs, “Give me your house key.”<br/>“What?”<br/>“You're sixty years younger than I am; if I’m not hard of hearing, neither are you. Hand it over.”<br/>“Why?”<br/><br/>Gran narrowed her eyes further, “You think I don’t notice you sneaking off to God knows where in the middle of the night? I’ve put up with your blatant disregard for house rules up until now, but no longer. The city is dangerous, Persephone, especially at night.” With surprising speed, the old woman scooped up the messenger bag that currently held Perri’s keys and began rifling through it to find what she was looking for. The younger woman’s indignant “Hey!” was cut short as Gran found the keys and tossed the bag back. With dignity that only Gran seemed to possess, she ambled back down the stairs, ignoring her granddaughter’s snarls of outrage.<br/><br/>Perri sat, frowning, at her desk. You could say she was moping, but in her head she was already planning her escape. Sure, the doors were locked, but there were other ways to enter and exit a home. For the first time in the sixteen years that she’d been living with her grandmother, Persephone Lynn was glad that she lived in the room nearest the sloping roof. Purposefully, she swung her bag over her shoulder and strode over to the window. She lifted it and hauled her skinny frame out and onto the roof. She pulled the window back down, leaving just enough room to slip her bony fingers in once she came back. From there, she crossed easily to the branch of an old oak tree growing close, probably a little too close, to the house, and clambered down to the ground. She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, which she wore everywhere, and walked to the bike rack. A tight-fitting black graphic tee that didn’t quite reach low enough to cover all of her midsection rested above a pair of faded, ripped up jeans, secured low on her hips with an oversized canvas belt. Dirty, ancient red sneakers didn’t quite keep the cold and the damp away from her feet. Perri, who disregarded fashion almost as well as she did house rules, dialed in the combination on her bike lock and pedaled off into the night.<br/><br/>Monsters and ghosts... What utter nonsense. Although, an entire train car devoid of passengers at any time, much less the morning rush, was certainly strange. Then again, the whole thing was probably a concoction of her overly-hovery grandmother’s surely senile mind. If something had happened at the rails, there would be an investigation. Perri smirked, and headed in the direction of the underground.