siren_spirit

Name: Lauren Rebecca Swanson

Age: apparent age: 18 actual age: 51

Sex: female

Appearance:

Lauren is a girl who looks around 18 years old. She's short--5'1ish, has medium length brown hair, that generally is seen pulled into a loose ponytail she has draped over one shoulder. Clothing-wise she's seen wearing a floral print sun dress, or a short sleeved button down shirt also with a floral print with a simple shirt beneath it and jeans. She never appears with any make up on, and she had big, warm brown eyes, and a lot of freckles dotting her cheeks. A simple gold cross hangs around her neck.

Most prominently, of course, is she stands out not because of her overall look, which might be considered a little out dated, but not bad--no, it's the fact that she's dead, and her form reflects that. Her right side is damaged. Her arm hangs a little wrong, and her hand is definitely messed up. Three of her fingers, the pinky, ring and middle are squished, and partially missing. Her right leg is clearly broken, her femur jutting from her inner thigh--most likely the wound that killed her. For having obvious, gory wounds, there isn't actually a lot of blood that appears on her clothes or person.

When she's transparent, she appears more dead--paler, her eyes milk of color, her skin isn't normal and tight like it should be. She doesn't have much control of when her form switches. Other spirits seem to master changing their appearance--Lauren has never gotten the hang of it. Most of the time it switches more according to her mood. When she's distressed at all she's in her more corpselike guise, when she's relaxed and happy it's the jeans and shirt, if she's in sort of a normalish mood, she's in the dress.

Special Abilities:

In life she was an accomplished singer, and always had dreams of going to NMU to further hone her voice and abilities. Obviously that didn't happen, but she's kept up with music since her death, and avidly listens whenever she can, and sings along. Which was far easier to do without disturbing anyone when no one knew she was there. She's got a wide knowledge of a variety of music, and has a memory for lyrics.

Supernatural Affinity (Species/Group): spirit

Supernatural Affinity (Powers):

Can drain energy from sources to help her communicate/manifest/etc.

Personality:

Lauren could mostly be described as erratic. She doesn't necessarily try to be, she doesn't want to be one of those people that's difficult to follow sometimes, but with a mixture of not having spoken to people in so long, her enthusiasm for feeling like she can pursue the source of her lingering unfinished business, and the current state of the world going weird...she can be a little much to handle at times. She still retains some of her sweet nature, an echo of who she was in life, but she's been dead a long time, and during that time she's seen a lot of people doing not so good things. Her religion in life totally failed her after she died, so she lost her faith, even if she can't get her personal projection to lose the cross. She's a mixture of a leaning towards cynical old woman, and a bouncy teenager, which is a bit of an odd mix going on.

When she's calmer, and knows people better, she's less difficult to deal with, and can be very supportive and she tries very, very hard with people. Her determination can be leveled on people too, she just hasn't had opportunity to nurture that in so long that she's a little out of practice, and can come off as overbearing when she isn't meaning to. Really, she needs to get used to dealing with society again, and she's already at a disadvantage due to people being largely afraid of her.

One thing that can be said about her is that her heart is in the right place. Often even when she fumbles what she's trying to accomplish, it's often clear that her intentions are golden. She just doesn't always know the correct ways to go about getting things done, or helping people. One thing she's having a lot of trouble dealing with is that she absolutely adored children, she'd wanted tons of them herself--and most of them are terrified of her appearance now. That hurts, and is difficult for her to get over, and sometimes can send her into a depressive state.

History:

Lauren grew up in Marquette, and lived a normal life. She was a good student, wasn't necessarily the most popular girl in school, but she had friends, she was sweet, liked, was told often she had the voice of an angel, and went to church every sunday. She even helped teach sunday school for a while before her death--she really liked children. She studied a lot, loved to read, and practically lived in the public library.

Her highschool career was marked by being a soloist in the choir, and she took part in her church choir as well. What she wanted to do with her life was to be a singer. She'd even gotten all of her paperwork in order for NMU, her grades already good enough to get in, and her grandmother was planning on helping pay tuition. She had a job at the Peter White Library by then, and she was saving up to help pay her part of things. She had a boyfriend, a basketball player for MSHS, Ricky Beauchamp, and it was on the way to a school dance with him, two months before graduation, that tragedy struck. The roads weren't the greatest, and drunk drivers aren't very good drivers. Ricky wasn't drunk, but he'd had a nip or two from his dad's liquor cabinet. The driver of the car that broadsided them on the passenger's side was pretty blitzed, though.

The impact didn't kill her outright, though most people present at the accident site secretly wished that it had. She screamed, and she cried, and she wouldn't pass out from the pain. She bled, and bled, and eventually bled out, but not before she made everyone within a two block radius cover their children's ears, and sob on the street corners. When the pain stopped, she was standing outside the wreck, watching the ambulance finally extracting her corpse from the vehicle. She watched the scene of her demise, until everyone had been taken away, Ricky had been sedated and restrained--though all he sustained was a few cuts to his cheek--watched the wreckers come to haul the vehicles away, watched the police handcuff and arrest the drunk driver, a man she recognized from church, watched as the neighbors all eventually headed inside, lamenting the event.

After that, she didn't know what to do. She tried going home for a while, she tried going to school, she tried going to church. Home didn't work out because her family seemed like they were able to feel her there--or it was their imagination, or hers, but they moved after three months, not able to stay in the area after the loss of their daughter. School was hard because everyone was very broken up after her death, and then things seemed to go on. She didn't deal terribly well with the fate of Ricky, who despite the fact that it probably wasn't his fault, blamed himself, and spiraled into a really bad cycle of drinking, that eventually had him leaving school, becoming a hooligan, and he wound up in prison after setting fire to the drunk driver's house.

Church was just church. God nor angels came down to visit her, she was just a ghost in a church, and while she liked the songs and the candles lit, there was no religious experience. So, eventually she wandered off from there too. She wound up back at the Peter White library, and remained there because it was soothing and familiar, and actually went dormant for a good many years.

That was, until in the late nineties, the city of Marquette decided to remodel the public library. This woke her back up, essentially, the remodeling really disrupting her dormant state. Since then, she's caught back up with music--something much easier to do with it playing all over, and computers being easy to access, with mp3s and music sharing, it was kind of an extravaganza for her, and she loved it. In fact, she spent a couple of years just eating up music in general. After that, she started walking around again, looking at the town, reacquainting herself with the area. There were more spirits than when she'd initially died, that was for sure. And strange places. And then...just recently, the entire world flipped a switch, and she suddenly wasn't invisible anymore. She was confused at first, but has spent the following days trying to learn what the hell was happening. She's starting to figure it out, but still needs some work.

She has decided one thing though--she wants to go finish school, since she can be seen and heard now, if she has a source to tap into. And the school has electricity! The burners in the science labs are fire energy, which is neat to use, even if it kinda creeps people out. But then she creeps people out and she really wishes people would just get over it, she just wants her degree.

Weaknesses:

Lauren creeps people out. She's dead--she's clearly dead, she does that crazy blinky spirit thing like the movies, her appearance changes when she doesn't necessarily want it to, and she can't actually fix that whole looking dead thing. She just doesn't know how to, and even though other spirits have tried to talk her through it--she just can't master it. she has her three looks, and she can't even choose which one she's appearing as at any given time. Hell, most of the time, because she feels no pain and isn't hampered by her apparent injuries, she kind of forgets they're there. It isn't like there's a whole lot of mirrors around that can reflect her. She creates cold spots, she's heralded by the electricity going wonky...all in all, even if she doesn't endeavor to be creepy, people find her as such. Plus, people still aren't used to seeing spirits just hanging about, like normal, so she still hears screams occasionally when she goes somewhere.

She looks young, but she's been around for half a century. And she missed a bunch of years by being dormant. So, she's kind of got this weird mix of maturity beyond what her years look like, older generation mentalities going on...she's just an odd duck by this point. Also, she's not used to interacting with people anymore, so she doesn't always have a good gauge on what is alright to say and what is not. It's not that she's deliberately tactless or clueless, sometimes she just honestly doesn't quite know better. She can also be a little excitable, because she wants to talk to people again now that she can, but...well there's that creepy thing, isn't there.

Lauren doesn't actually know fully why she's still around. So, that makes it hard for her to answer questions from people who want to help her cross over. Many spirits have some driving call, some clear thing that's keeping them here...but with her it's really just an annoyingly vague feeling. All she knows is she wasn't finished yet. She doesn't necessarily have a burning desire to move on, since who knows what that brings, though she doesn't have any incredible tie to being a spirit, either. she just has this nagging, powerful itch in the back of her head that says she hasn't completed things yet, and she needs to do that. She's decided to go back to school, since that's one of the most obvious things she didn't get to finish, so she hopes that does something--but she's got to get people to stop flailing around, running, and shrieking when she comes into the building first before she can concentrate on classes. Blood curdling screams just aren't conducive to learning geometry.

Because she's still learning how to use electricity, or energy, Lauren's control over what she's messing with really isn't anywhere near solid. Some spirits pick it up really fast, and one would think that since she's been around a long time that she would have managed to figure it out well, but she hasn't. Which means she winds up shorting things out, which hampers her because it means she doesn't have a source to draw from to keep herself going, she breaks things by accident and people get upset(if they aren't already upset by her presence alone), and generally speaking, things wonk around her even when she's trying hard not to make that happen. She'll slowly learn, but it's going to take a while.

Lauren's a bit mangled. She's missing three fingers on her right hand, which was her dominant one in life, and it's not like they're coming back. There are kind of mooshed stumps left (though her pinky is entirely missing) they aren't functional, nor whole. her hand on the outside there is a bit on the smushed side as well, small bones visible jutting through the only partially intact skin on the back of her hand. Trying to touch or do anything with her right hand is going to be tricky. When she's manifested, this still doesn't correct itself, and so she's just screwed on that front. She's only got her forefinger and her thumb left, and not everything can be done well with just pinchers. While she can walk without pain even with a femur jutting out of her thigh while in spirit form, if she plans to manifest, she needs to sit down first, or lean against something without relying on her right leg to support her. With a physical form, one really needs that femur to be someplace else, say, intact inside her thigh. Because it isn't, it's a terribly not pretty sight if she tries to walk on it. She'd need crutches to actively get around while manifested, or a wheelchair so her femur doesn't go poking around all willy nilly.

Lauren isn't used to people being able to hear her, and so she will definitely be using the phrase '...I said that out loud, didn't I.' for a while. At the very least until she gets better hold on holding her thoughts to herself. Being dead for so long has kind of destroyed her inner monologue, when you have no one to talk to but yourself, you talk to yourself. (at least Lauren did) So, yeah, she isn't so good at remembering everyone can hear her now, so, she may come out with things that most people would think but never actually say.

Strengths:

She's very determined, and difficult to keep down for long.

PB: Elizabeth Rice

Other Information:

Objects of power for Lauren are buried with her corpse. One is the class ring of Ricky's that he had given her as a promise ring, another is an angel pin her grandmother had given her as a child, the third is the real representation of the cross she wears around her neck. It was a gift from her father when she was confirmed. There's a music box that would give her power as well--but it was sold at a garage sale before her family moved, and she has no idea where it's got to now, or if it's been broken, thrown away, etc.