Chapter Text
April Ludgate always assumed that the sensation of dying would be remotely pleasant. With living being a ceaseless laundry-list of increasingly obnoxious chores and the way she was building a tolerance to even the strongest cups of coffee, it seemed like gently passing into the void would be nice. If nothing else, it would usher in the greatest apathy her dark soul had ever known.
Lying on her bed clutching her side, she determined that this was a mistake. Calming down after the most recent bought of coughing, she groaned and rolled up into something resembling a sitting position. Her head throbbed.
Now would be a good time for soup. Or death. Or coffee.
She swung herself into something resembling a standing position and leaned into the door frame of her bedroom.
Of all times for your stupid college-visit road trip, huh, Nat?
It wasn't that April was mad that she had the house to herself. She loved that peace and quiet. It's just that she was sure her mother would throw a fit if she found her daughter dead on the floor when said daughter had promised to get over her flu. Said daughter had even been bribed with a massive bear to discourage her from dying. Said daughter was an ungrateful jerk. Natalie would say so at the funeral.
Dead people don't have to deal with parents, though. Score three for death.
She had had the flu, along with approximately half of the town. Leslie had had it. Andy had the sniffles for a bit, and they weren't sure he had it. Ron had managed not to get it through the magic of a diet composed entirely of strange carbs and steak.
But Leslie got better and Andy stopped sneezing and Ron stopped holding his breath when he was near them.
And April? April was dying.
Should of seen Ann. Could of coughed on her, been all 'why is my flu still the flu'. Ha, what if Ann got the super flu and I had the super flu and then Andy could be SuperNotFlu and I'd be SuperFlu and that would be...
April stumbled into the wall of the kitchen. It hurt a bit to breathe. It hurt more than a bit.
Why had Leslie gotten better and she didn't? This wasn't fair. Granted Leslie didn't sustain herself purely off of cups of coffee and an undying hatred of the universe. Leslie probably ate vegetables. April had been sick and tired and sick of being tired and tired of being sick and had mostly just...not. She holed herself up for the long weekend without her family and was prepared to just not bothering with existing.
She glanced sleepily at the package of unopened fever medication on the table, the groceries that her mom left that still weren't put away, let alone eaten.
Whoops.
April had approximately the same number of braincells online as did the entire Board of Directors running the school district, but luckily those braincells were smart enough to stop her from getting into her car. Instead she found the garage and Nat's bicycle and managed to perch herself on top of said bicycle. Her backpack hung strangely off her shoulders and she noticed that she was wearing it backwards.
Oh well.
It didn't seem to take long to get to work, but honestly she couldn't remember three quarters of the trip. Her legs were shaking by the time she arrived, and she felt incredibly out of breath. It took a couple minutes of wheezing before she could even think to get off the bike.
She had forgotten a lock, but that was alright. No one was going to steal Natalie's weird bicycle. April swung her leg over the bike frame and prepared to climb off. She immediately fell.
"You okay?" asked some random governmental employee who's name April didn't know.
"I don't believe in gravity." She hoped her face was still her normal face. She wasn't sure she had a face. It was highly likely that she was only a skeleton. That would be pretty cool, but her skeleton hurt and she wanted it to stop please.
The employee had left by this point, and April picked herself back up.
I didn't even remember to get coffee. Could've gone through the drive through. Haha bikes.
Her hand felt strangely empty without the normal cup of warm beverage, and she found a random rock and held it in her hand. Locking eyes with another random employee, she pretended to take a sip from it. They raised their eyebrows in response.
Perfect.
They must have redecorated the building, because the floors and the walls were all wavy. Granted, that had happened in April's bathroom last night, after she was done puking. Maybe it was a Pawnee thing. Something in the air.
Her skeleton hurt some more and she slowly trudged to the Parks and Rec office. She didn't even bother going by Andy's shoeshine station. She just really needed to sit down.
"Hey April," Leslie said in her abnormally upbeat tone. "How was your weekend?"
What's a weekend and where also is my face, is my face still a face?
Ignoring the face issue, April did her best to sound bored. "I practiced not existing. I've gotten pretty good at it."
"That's...great! Are you feeling alright? You look a little pale."
"Speaking with the void will do that to you." The room was spinning in an incredibly nauseating fashion. April gave Leslie one of her deadest of stares and went back to focusing blankly on a pad of sticky notes. She still had her coffee-rock clutched in her hand. His name was Rock Stoneson. Any resemblance to any Ron Swanson was purely coincidental.
"Okay then...I'll talk to you later. Glad you're over your flu!"
Ha.