TDM - OCTOBER 2020

[robbies]

TEST DRIVE MEME - OCTOBER 2020

Everyone's entitled to one good scare.
CW: Violence, death, mouth trauma, vomiting, needles, razors

---

“Help me. Please, help me…”

A child’s voice, calling out for aid. There’s no rhyme or reason for when it comes to you. It’s so quiet, a whisper in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind. Were it not for the sharp, stabbing pain it pulls out of you, you could ignore it. You could even pretend it’s just your imagination.

It all happens so quickly and powerfully. Left in the dust, your brain struggles to process it all. Blacking out is the least it can do, but it’s also all it can do, and it does so before you even have a chance to fully register just how young the voice is, and how deeply, heartbreakingly lost it sounds.

When you finally awaken with your bare feet tangled in soft sheets, a layer of fuzzy fleece or slinky silk clinging to your body like another layer of skin, the sunlight pouring in from the window next to your bed momentarily blinding you, and the cries of happy children playing baseball outside of it carrying faintly, it all becomes very clear—

Something is horribly wrong.

---

OCTOBER 1st.

It becomes very clear very quickly that this isn’t a simple kidnapping. If you’re twenty years old or older, the bedroom you wake up in is very clearly a couple’s bedroom — with separate beds like a modest, modern couple of course! A similarly lost and confused stranger is in the other. They are your counterpart, for everything in this room has a matching counterpart — the nightstand and lamp each of you have beside your beds, the framed pictures on the wall, even your pajamas. If you’re under twenty years old, your room is smaller but more personalized, filled with comic books, model kits, stray baseball cards littered around the floor. Dolls, fashion magazines of people dressed from a bygone era, stacks of vinyl records neatly arranged next to a record player. And then there are the pictures. They’re everywhere in the house — in a frame on your nightstand, hung on the walls, stuck in the photo albums and scrapbooks lying on your desk or tucked away in drawers. Here you are on your wedding day, exchanging vows with your partner. Here’s you sitting in a fishing boat with one of the younger members of your house. Here’s a picture of you at ten years old getting ready for the first day of school. All of the photographs are aged, sepia, even yellowed and dusty in frames hung for a long, long time. By the time you make it down to the living room, you’ll notice that the television is on; someone must have forgotten to turn it off before they went to bed. On it, a cartoon pack of cigarettes and accompanying cigarette dancers prance around a black and white pumpkin patch, joined by dancing skeletons, ghosts and witches as a cheerful little earworm blares: ”Thirty days til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, thirty days til Halloween—“

---

GETTING TO KNOW THE NEIGHBORS.

As you get acclimated, you gradually begin to learn more about this strange new world you’ve found yourself in. You’re in a neighborhood on the east side of a town called Santa Rosita located… somewhere in California (wherever or whatever that might be). The year is 1961. If it wasn’t clear enough, your neighbors are more than willing to humor you if you ask. Even if you accost them with questions and demands. Sure, you and your family are a little kooky, and you have a very overactive imagination, but the key to any good joke is playing along! And how could something like “I’m from the future, from another world” be anything but a joke? A. AUNT MYRNA'S PARTY CHEESE SALAD. Over the course of the week, your neighbors will come by unannounced, each with a new homecooked meal to welcome you to their cozy little side of town. Meatloaf, potato salad, lamb chops. Gelatin molds — lots of gelatin molds. Someone even comes by to drop off a gelatinous yellow lump of pineapple, green peppers, celery and yellow cheese swimming in a soupy mixture of sour and whipped cream. “It’s my aunt Myrna’s recipe!” they gush once they drop the casserole tin into your hands, proceeding to rattle off every ingredient. Well, at least you won’t be starving anytime soon. When you bring it back in to your kitchen - and its cheery wallpaper and its floral patterned Pyrex dishware, you and your new...family(?) all stare at the cheese salad, the gelatin, the curiously frosted meatloaf spread. A smorgasbord courtesy of the insistent generosity! Who will take the first bite?

B. DON'T BE A SQUARE!

You can only avoid the cheer and the neighbors for so long, even as you sit inside enjoying all the amenities of your new home. The television can only turn its volume up to five, after all! One bright and sunny Saturday, the weather crisp and clear, news broadcasts and reruns of The Ed Sullivan Show are drowned out by the music in the neighborhood. Eventually it’s too much to bear — you simply must put on your shoes and go discover the source of that infernal racket.

Why, it’s the block party! Haven’t you seen the invitation — with instructions — sitting in your mailbox, silly? Wear a badge so everyone on the block can know you’re new and welcome you to their extended family!

Well! Each neighbor was supposed to set up a table with snacks and drinks and entertainment on their front lawn. Carter Mayhew, one of your Robbie neighbors, has a whole ring toss obstacle course set up for boys to play with, and his wife is cheerfully and blandly instructing a group of girls on jump rope rhymes. Colorful streamers hang from every lamppost and mailbox, balloons and party favors galore. Like you, there are even a few newcomers to Santa Rosita that are caught just as unaware of this event — though others are being welcomed in by husbands and wives and children, caught in conversations about building decks and the upcoming Halloween festivities.

Before you can decide if returning home or joining the party is your choice, a plate with chips and dips and yes, more gelatin is shoved into your hands and a party hat snapped on to your head.

“The guest of honor has arrived! Come and meet your neighbors, neighbor!”

---

THROUGHOUT OCTOBER.

Life falls into a peaceful haze for the next several days. Dull, unassuming, tranquil. As the month drags on, the spirit of Halloween begins to manifest in Santa Rosita, from the pumpkins people start putting out on their doorsteps to the smiling faces of paper skeletons pressed against their windows. And then, towards the end of the month, something terrible happens. You hear it first through word of mouth, rippling through Santa Rosita like a wave, dark murmurs accompanied by sad sighs and downturned eyes. Soon, you start to read about it. Grim business, they say. A tragedy. How could something like this happen. People stop talking about it by the end of the week. Best just to forget about it. Every day, that cigarette commercial comes on. It’s impossible to escape it. And every day, the number of days in the song changes, counting down. ”Thirteen days till Halloween—” “Eight more days til Halloween—” “Three more days til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween…”

---

HALLOWEEN.

CW: Violence, death, mouth trauma, vomiting, needles, razors

October 31st. It sneaks up on you whether you like it or not. When dawn breaks on Halloween day, things are as serene as they’ve ever been as men do yard work, raking leaves as their wives bake fresh pie and cookies in the house, the spicy scent of cinnamon, apple and pumpkin wafting through the neighborhood on chilly October wind. There’s a smile on every child’s face as they skip off the school bus in the afternoon, running into their houses to get their costumes ready. As it begins to get dark, the residents of Santa Rosita start lighting their jack-o-lanterns. One by one, little balls of light flicker to life on every porch and doorstep, jagged smiles grinning in the dark. For the entire night, nobody blows the candle inside their pumpkins out. It’s a tradition, a very old one, and traditions are just another way of saying rules. And Halloween in Santa Rosita, as it turns out, lives and dies by the rules.

A. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR CANDY.

Halloween isn’t just for the kids, although they certainly make up the bulk of who you’ll see out and about on the streets. Walking through Santa Rosita, your neighbors are as generous with handing out treats as they are with handing out gelatin molds and pot roasts, and they don’t discriminate. Adults are received just as warmly as children; the worst one can expect is a quirked eyebrow if they show up to a house without a costume.

Apples, packs of gum, homemade cookies. Chocolate bars, nickels, popcorn balls. Your neighbors hand out all sorts of treats, most of them homemade. The Robbies are no exception, and it’s their treats that seem a bit more high quality than most, some of the candy they hand out being obviously expensive, brand names. The good stuff. They drop each treat into your bag with those same pleasant, mild expressions and too-tight smiles you’ve grown used to in your short time here.

Eventually, as everyone winds up doing at some point in the night, you decide to start digging into your treat bag to sample some of your well-earned goods — maybe in the comfort of your home, maybe outside on the streets. And that’s when the fun begins.

Maybe you bite into metal, the razor sharp end of a blade embedded into the apple or candy bar you’ve picked out burying itself in your gums, or splitting your tongue. Maybe it’s a needle, impaling itself straight through the roof of your mouth or a cheek. Or maybe it’s nothing that obvious. Maybe the realization that something is wrong comes moments after you’ve devoured that chocolate bar or cookie, the bitter aftertaste of rat poison hitting the back of your throat along with bile and the rest of the contents of your stomach as they rise up and out of your mouth.

Or maybe you’ll bite into plain, sweet chocolate or fresh fruit. That’s also part of the surprise. You really don’t know what you’ll get until you start eating.

B. ALWAYS RESPECT THE DEAD.

At ten o’clock, all the television sets in the neighborhood turn on, blaring to life right in the middle of that omnipresent cigarette commercial. The volume begins to rise of its own accord as your television starts to pick up interference, bursts of static squealing amidst the rising, screaming chorus of ”HAPPY HAPPY HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN!”

Breaking through the static, garbled and tinny, a child’s voice cries out.

“Can’t— I can’t hold them— back— Pumpkin— don’t blow the— out—”

And just as quickly as it cut in, the voice cuts back out. Commercial jingle notwithstanding, you’re alone once more. But not for long.

The doorbell rings. You can see them outside from your window: costumed children. Their masks and clothes are grimy and ragged from the muddy, slimy water they’ve been decomposing in for over a week. When they come to your door, squelching wetly as they shamble up the porch steps, they ring the bell or knock, as all polite children do. If you don’t let them in, they’ll find their own way, always by force. And once they find you, all they can gurgle in their reedy, waterlogged voices is, ”Trick or treat.”

From there, they attack.

With superhuman strength and speed, they tear and rip at anything they can get their hands on — clothing, skin, muscle, face, eyes. Being short and small, despite their strength, they're at a distinct disadvantage. They can even be thrown off, with some effort. But they don’t stay down for long, and attempting to hurt or mortally wound them only stalls them for a few moments, if that. How can you kill something that’s already dead?

Some in the neighborhood are willing to try and find out.

The only houses they seem to ignore completely are the ones with lit jack-o-lanterns still outside. They’ll loiter outside these houses, staring straight ahead at your door or window like they can see exactly where you are. But sooner or later, they’ll pass by and move onto the next house.

As long as the candles in carved pumpkins stay lit.

---

OOC INFO

Hello, and welcome to We're Still Here's first TDM! Here's a few things we'd like you to keep in mind:

The TDM is canon. You can treat this as the game's first real event and pick and choose what threads you would like your character to remember when they enter the game. For characters who app into the game, the events of the TDM will be treated like a dream. Upon awakening from it, characters will find that time has jumped ahead to December 1st. You may also feel free to use similar reality and/or time distortions to explain why the family members your characters have in the TDM aren't the same as the ones they may be assigned to in the game proper.

If you would like to have Halloween content in your relaxed housing prompts, please feel free! You are not beholden to follow our prompts exactly so long as the spirit is maintained.

There is no Network prompt listed, but feel free to wildcard one for your characters anyway.

Although the TDM is canon in the sense that characters are free to remember its events when they app into the game, it does not count as an official plot heavy event, meaning that characters will not receive regains from participating in it.

With regards to the dead trick-or-treaters: you may NPC them however you'd like, but keep the details we've listed in their prompt in mind. They are supernaturally fast and strong, will ignore houses as long as they have a lit pumpkin on the porch outside, and will try to enter each house the moment the candle in the pumpkin goes out. Additionally, they can't be killed, but they can be momentarily stalled by injuring them. By November 1st, 6AM, they will disappear the moment the sun comes out.

---

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Comments

[spaghettimonster]

I barely bumped you. [Papyrus latches onto familiar, exaggerated outrage like a lifeline.] Look at you standing there, you're fine.

[He frowns as he finally backs away a step, actually looking Sans over properly for the first time. Based on how tall doorways and various day-to-day objects are, Papyrus has assumed he's about the same height as ever, if a tiny bit extra for the cushion of skin and stuff. But Sans looks... like a shorter, rounder version of how he looks now. Messier too, of course, but if he compensates for that...]

I... I bet they don't look so much like us. [Which will make finding anybody else tricky, but, at least Sans doesn't look wildly different than himself.]

[ribticklers]

[There is definitely something distinctly Papyrus-y to how Papyrus looks, even with all that flesh added on. They better not have literally put flesh on them, that would be super gross.] So we've gotta figure out what everybody'd look like as a human? Ain't that some weird thing they do online? [You know. Humansonas. Sans tries to picture the face he saw in the mirror this morning and compare it to Papyrus's--siblings look alike as humans, right?--but it's hard not to think of his normal face instead. There is one thing, though...] Did you really get up like that and put hair gel in? [That's not actually surprising. Sans, meanwhile, did not do a single thing with his hair.]

come to think of it how far in do you figure this is? I left the prompt very vague on purpose

[spaghettimonster]

[Papyrus nods along at the first couple questions; it is some weird thing people do online. His own design had been slightly more muscular than the body he woke up, and also still had a skull face instead of all this, but he knows exactly what Sans is referring to.]

I, well. It was right there in the bathroom! And I have so much hair...

[You know, Sans, like he always dreamed of having. Or at least occasionally did. It's not long enough to billow in the wind behind him as he drives, and is probably too curly for billowing like that, but then he's not quite skilled enough at driving to go fast enough for a wind - yet.

It's also not as well-coifed as his icons imply, give he mostly scrubbed the gel in, discovered that tugging at it too much hurt, and more gently tried to brush into a style.]

I bet Undyne still has that red hair. And, Toriel... [He's not sure, hasn't seen enough humans to really guess how she might translate. Tall, but if Sans is anything to go by maybe not as tall.]

I was thinking pretty close to the day of arrival

[ribticklers]

White? That's what color her fur is. [Would it work like that? It's not like they have white (or nonexistent) hair because they were skeletons, but fur is pretty close to hair. Talking on the sidewalk about fur and looking like humans, though--Sans's expression flickers before he can stop it, shading into something darker for just a few moments. Sans puts his expression back where it should be--this is already incredibly annoying--and then meanders over to Papyrus's car. With that expression providing context, though, it probably doesn't look as casual as he'd prefer.]

Hey, you were practicing with this thing, yeah? You should give me a lift. We can talk and drive. [Probably a terrible idea! But Papyrus was going slow, and then they can talk without sounding crazy or dangerous or both.]

First couple days sounds good

[spaghettimonster]

[It's not like he's never seen Sans being dramatic with his eyesockets blinking out, but it's rare. Like his brother makes a point of not doing it much around him. Seeing his expression drop so suddenly...]

Uhhhh... Y-yeah! [He turns away to hide his own expression, nodding exaggeratedly to compensate, as he moves back to the driver's seat.]

You can see how far I've progressed... in only my second day driving! [This is a great idea. Papyrus can't accidentally run into his brother if his brother is in the car.] There's three other seats to choose from.

[ribticklers]

[Sans takes shotgun, of course.] Was this just at the house you woke up in? Maybe I should check the garage. [Does he have a car, too? Who would think that was a good idea? Sans's face has settled down for the moment--a distraction works no matter what species he is.] But I guess I can just get a ride from you, anyway.

I feel like I should've given this whole prompt cw: bad driving

[spaghettimonster]

Yeah, in the garage! [Which plenty of people would reasonably consider the place for a car, but what experience does Papyrus have to really build that expectation...? He muses aloud, as he sits down:] Apparently sometimes it's a carhouse, not a doghouse.

[Once they're both seated, Papyrus goes through the steps one of the teenagers helpfully demonstrated, and starts the car. Seat belts are a thing he hasn't entirely learned about either, so it's just a bit of a jolting turn as he returns to the road and starts putputting down it.]

Hey, where do you want a ride to...? [His hands stay on the wheel, but his eyes sure don't.] You didn't say, and, um. I'm fine just driving around for a while!

GREAT (papyrus) driving

[ribticklers]

Let's do some exploring. I haven't been that far yet. [He's been doing a lot of walking, actually, but this place isn't small. Sans stares somewhere midway between the trees and the sky. He still keeps checking to see that there's really a sky right there above them.] Ain't like we've got somewhere to be, right? Unless you've got a job around here already. [The humans who seem to have lived here a while keep talking about things like that. Sans has not given that even a single moment of serious thought.]

[spaghettimonster]

[Good thing the car's so loud, nobody can hear Papyrus's relieved sigh. His knuckles are a little white on the wheel as he looks back to the road, with only occasional glances at the human body that is encasing Sans. Not alone, he's not alone.]

I... I haven't got one, no! They prepared such a nice, furnished house, with all those family photos... [All with the people who were in the house when they woke up, but not of his brother, somehow?] And a mailbox, with a full name... But no job. [Hopefully the rent's not up soon.]

[He turns south, the better to drive to where the town's supposed to be less crowded. Fewer people to definitely not hit.]

[ribticklers]

Yeah, you'd think if they were already gonna be super creepy, they'd go all the way. [Being super creepy isn't the worst of the issues, though, and also why he knows he does have to at least kind of talk about something serious here, at least for a little bit.] But since they went to all the trouble of putting us in these bodies [somehow, after getting them out from under the mountain, somehow], maybe we shouldn't go around tellin' people we're not supposed to be in 'em.

[That's why Sans really wanted to talk in the car. Even if it's a convertible.]

[spaghettimonster]

Ummmmmm.

[Papyrus, by some new and unfamiliar reflex, bites his lip. Some mix of nervousness and not wanting to blurt anything out. Then he winces.] Ow...

[He lets his jaw hang slightly open, and rubs at the imprint of teeth lingering in his lower lip lingers, while guiltily avoiding looking Sans's way.]

That sounds like, a good idea. I haven't gone around telling people anything like that... But, um. I was a little surprised when I woke up.

[ribticklers]

[Sans waves a hand dismissively.] So were a bunch of people. Maybe you were actin' weird, but so was everybody. [And, while he knows Papyrus doesn't really like being seen as so weird people don't like him, if they see Papyrus as a little weird, that would probably be--well, safer, if he says something that doesn't track with being human.] We've just gotta be careful about it now.

[spaghettimonster]

I will be, I can be in disguise and everything. [Opportunities to boast are always nice, but in this instance it's not enough distraction for Papyrus to let his concern be dismissed. Not if this is serious enough that Sans is encouraging them to be all secretive again. His guilty expression gains 1 grimace as he shakes his head.]

But Sans, I mean that I... said some things, to my... roommates. [Everyone else outside that house is calling them his family, and all the photos inside agree with it, but now that he's next to his actual family it's harder to use that word.] Not anybody else, but. They're all just as confused as me. [Mostly. They didn't all admit to being secret skeletons too.]

[ribticklers]

What'd you say? [This may or may not present a problem. Sans knows by now they're not the only ones in at least part of this situation. The kidnapping part should be--uh, not fine, but. It's not like Papyrus would especially stand out there.

Sans has been working on keeping his expression still. Right now he's managing it, but on a human face... Well, a completely still expression doesn't exactly look right, either.]

[spaghettimonster]

Well. A lot of things. My name... [Hardly a worrying detail, even if preceding it with The Great drew extra attention.] The name of the kingdom... Maybe something about skeletons.

[Maybe he outright admitted to a couple of them that he's supposed to be a skeleton, because there was no other good way to explain his confusion about skin, and hair, and stomachaches, and so many things that come with his new body.

He finally glances right to gauge Sans's level of disapproval, and the car swerves for a second before he corrects and looks forward again.]

[ribticklers]

[Sans has gotten that tired look on his face again without realizing. Okay, so that's kind of a lot. Also, the name of the kingdom is The Kingdom of Monsters. But.] You said they were confused about this whole thing, too, yeah? Did they recognize where you're from? [Have humans just forgotten about them entirely? Except someone had to have put them up here, so--well, that one human did go through the whole place. Did they tell someone something? Sans seems deep enough in thought that he hardly notices the swerve.]

[spaghettimonster]

[Papyrus swerving was less about looking away from the road again - though that was part of it - and more a reaction to that expression. It's so strange to hear Sans talking, then look over and see something so... so... so like he tries not to show, huh?]

...No, none of them. I'm not sure if they're all humans... [One or two of them made some other weird comments, and it's challenging to get into specifics when the time distortions are so actively in effect.] But no monsters like us.

[Maybe some completely other kind of monster. Maybe something neither human nor monster, from some other fairy tale world. But there is a very real possibility he's talking about aliens, here.]

[ribticklers]

[Okay, so. Sans's swap to a grin as he deliberately looks at Papyrus is probably way more obvious like this, but that is not stopping him.] Hey, if they're all in a weird situation, it works out for us, right? We aren't gonna stand out for them. Just, uh, don't go around sayin' stuff like that to anyone who wasn't kidnapped.

[It's fine. Okay, none of this is fine, exactly. But if that kid had something to do with it, then that might mean more weird stuff might happen. Or it could all reset. But he wouldn't know if that happened, so it only matters in the sense that this is just something he has to deal with temporarily.]

[spaghettimonster]

[He can almost hear the difference in Sans's voice as he smiles again. Everything is so strange. Thank goodness they're getting toward the southern edge of town, with the opportunity to maybe drive and stop somewhere.]

Oh, yeah. I'll do that. [Imagine telling the friendly, laughing gifters of gelatin that he was actually a skeleton. It seems like they'd switch to laughing at him, at best. But Papyrus blinks and looks at Sans again with some urgency.]

Hey, Sans. You were kidnapped, too! Were... Were other people...? [Did a whole group show up in the same house as Sans? Maybe other houses too?]

[ribticklers]

Seems like it. [But actually Sans got all the way out of his house and to the yard before having to talk to anybody. He probably doesn't have to say he didn't talk about where he was from; it would only be a surprise if he wasn't hiding things.] Unless everyone I talked to was a really good liar.

[Which, Sans can't actually discount that entirely, but probably not.]

Get this--I'm supposed to be like, the head of household where I woke up. Got people callin' me mister and everything. [Sans laughs, because wow, that's a terrible idea! Also, things are too serious right now.]

[spaghettimonster]

Oh my god! [Really, this is too many revelations in too few minutes, and Papyrus starts laughing just from being too worked up by it all.] Mr. Sans. Like you're a teacher or something!

[Imagine Sans assigning homework. Imagine Sans bothering to grade homework. Papyrus cackles again, letting his foot off the gas to lower the chance of running into something while in hysterics.]

[ribticklers]

Mr. Undertale, actually. [Sans puts on his most proper-sounding tone as he says it, but starts laughing again right after.] Where'd they even get that from?

[spaghettimonster]

[That tone invites another round of laughing, but the name itself helps Papyrus wrestle free and wrinkle his face in thought. While he's at it, he veers the car into the edge of a used car lot, where there's at least nobody standing right nearby.]

Yeah, where did they get that from? Why would you be under a tail...? [Sans is taller now, so it makes even less sense.]

[ribticklers]

[Sans probably should be paying at least a little attention to where they're going, but he's not really.] Maybe I was takin' a nap on the floor.

[spaghettimonster]

What a terrible way to get a name. [And yet, he doesn't deny the validity of the theory. Instead his face wrinkles further as he frowns, considering.]

People were calling me 'Mister' too, but mine... It's something completely different. And hard to say. "Kinoh... Kno-hen-moose." [He stumbles over the sounds, despite hearing it a few times so far, because his tongue gets in the way. Talking is fine, when he doesn't think about it all the parts in his face wiggle around to make the right sounds. But the moment he thinks about pronouncing things, he's aware of it all again and has to choose where to move everything. Awful.]