A Study in Luce

Luce lives in a decent sized one-bedroom apartment. The bedroom is smallish, the walls are painted marine blue, the floor covered in a dingy, once-white carpet. There’s a rug on the floor patterned like the Fourth Doctor’s scarf, hand made for her 18th birthday. The walls are covered in posters and pictures that she’s collected over the years, and a small marker board calendar. There’s a crack in the wall left by the previous tenant. Luce’s full sized bed is pushed up in the corner under the rooms’ only window. Across from the bed is a large walk-in closet that houses the washer and the dryer; the door to said closet leans against the wall over the doorway, the hinges gone. A large trunk sits on the floor at the end of the bed; a 1920’s era Louis Vuitton trunk that belonged to her great-grandmother. The quilt on the bed was a graduation present from Luce’s grandmother, an old quilt her grandmother made for Luce’s mother as a wedding present. Below that are old dark purple sheets that have a few small burn holes in them from the times that Luce has fallen asleep with a cigarette. The whole apartment smells of Marlboro’s, her perfume, and whatever candle she has decided to light for the day- usually a vanilla sugar cookie scent. There is no door on the hinges of her bedroom’s doorway, so she has hung a dark red curtain with a gold rope attached to tie it back and hand on a small hook she placed on the wall for it. The overhead light in the room doesn’t work, so Luce uses strings of small fairy lights hung all along the walls, and a floor lamp with four positionable heads. Pushed up against the wall opposite the bed is a desk she bought at a garage sale. It’s littered with crumpled papers and candy wrappers, all hiding a desk calendar that’s still dated back about four months. There are two wire-mesh organizers, one for folders, another for small office supplies. They are both completely empty, and nearly hidden by knick-knacks and papers, but Luce insists on keeping them. The rest of the apartment is only ever in two states of cleanliness- totally spotless or absolutely wrecked. There is no in-between. Luce is a very scatter-brained woman and only ever ‘half tidies’ things, until the mess becomes completely unlivable. When she does focus on things, she gets a kind of tunnel-vision focus, and neglects just about everything; the need to et, personal hygiene, her ever-ringing cellphone, everything. Though quite strange, Luce is a nice enough person. She starts up conversations with anyone who will listen to her rambling. But at the same time, she’s the sort of girl you didn’t bring home, because you knew she would be there when you opened the door, petting your cat and talking to your parents, leaving you wondering how the hell she got in.