LC 2 Hall of Laughter

                Red Laughter danced along the dark corridor towards her secret retreat. The sound was hollow and metallic. She laughed at the sound. It reminded her of the day she woke up on the alien ship. The day that those little mechanical bugs remade her body into the cybernetic being she now is. The day she was reborn as Red Laughter. She laughed that day because crying seemed so pointless then. And now she can’t cry at all.

                At the end of the corridor is an unassuming door. The grey steel door opens into a large chamber. As she enters the chamber, lights start to glow at various intervals around the room. They light up an oval room that contains a bed, a refrigerator, and a lot of monitors hooked to several news feeds and internet websites. With a flick of her fingers the channels change and websites flicker.  There was one area in the room, an area of many tables, bookcases and displays. All of them containing some sort of mementos of past capers and operations.

                Red laughter skipped about her room. She loved being here in the low light. Since her transformation, she has not felt comfortable in the bright light of the sun where everyone can see her. See what she has become. She would rather stay to the shadows, in place out of people sight. Here in the dark she doesn’t have to face the fear and disgust that showed in faces of the normal that saw her.  She can be comfortable in her own skin. Or at least what was left of it. She can relax and be herself. She didn’t have to hold back and hide her new self. She was free here in the dark. Free to be herself.

                Those damned aliens took so much from her that she couldn’t be who she once was. She had to be someone new. She even had to change her name because it didn’t fit her anymore. She took the name Red Laughter because Lex kept telling her to stop laughing. It annoyed him. But he wanted aliens, all aliens, gone. Aliens did this to her, so she was inclined to agree with him. But the aliens leaving will not change who she has become, who she is now, and who she will have to be for the rest of her life. And here in the dark she can be herself with fear and loathing. She can laugh and relax without recrimination.

                Red Laughter calls her new home The Hall of Laughter. But she is the only one laughing in it. Alone.