Michelle got the idea to go to DC about three days after the plague hit.  Bobby would hear none of it.  About a week later the power went out and he agreed.  They had nothing to lose, after all.  Things went much better than expected.  As soon as they got to DC, her movie career took a skyrocket.  She got the role of Crysta in a live action remake of Fern Gully, she’s playing Thumbelina on a children’s show, and is going to be in a remake of The Incredible Shrinking Woman.  For the first time in a long while, her talent was allowed to shine.

Right now she was in the studio, working with various costumes.

“Ok, and we were thinking something like this for your costume during the banquet in the hall of the faeries,” said the overly flaming costume designer.  “I’m telling you, sparkles, sparkles, sparkles everywhere!”

“Sparkles… on a dress supposedly made of flowers?”

“It’ll look like dew once it’s on screen--trust me babe, I know what I’m doing.”

“… Well, ok.”

“Alright, fabulous dear.  Let’s see… ok, that seems to be it… are you ok?”

“Yeah, fine… just tired I guess.”

“Oh, god, you’d be insane if you weren’t.  You’ve been working for the past three days.  Go home, doll.  Get some sleep.”

“I’ll try, Ted.”

“By, love.”  And with that, Ted left to start working on costumes.

Michelle had become a workaholic.  She spent as little time at home as was humanly possible--Bobby was still just as abusive as ever.  Not so much physically, but psychologically.  And he had begun to find it amusing to bring her to orgasm against her will.  Every time he did something like that, it chipped the delicate fine china of her mind.  The long hours and constant work weren’t helping either… she was beginning to los it.  Not to mention that she was feeling… a tad under the weather.  If she came down with the Flu… who knows.

(Catching the Flu is scary in this new world, not just because of the memories of the Super-Flu, but let us remember that for plague victims it can be lethal.  Plague victims who came down with a case of the flu had a much higher mortality rate than those immune to the super flu--nobody knows why, but I think it has something to do with the size of the white blood cells in comparison to the non-shrunk Flu Virus.--FB)