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

Plastic Man | DC Comics | OTA

[plas]

(A) for Arrival
[ He's in hell. A very personal hell, which could almost be made specifically for him if anybody thought he was big-time enough to warrant that. But it's feeling very targeted right about now. The floral prints. The white picket fence and the birds chirping merrily outside the window. The “Our Wedding” photo between the beds. The ugly striped PJs…

Actually, he'd probably wear those without prompting. As a joke, though. Not with the saccharine sincerity that oozes from underneath the bedskirts and lurks under the plastic slip covers on the sofa. No. No way, José. He did not sign up for this.

(Later, when he finds it, when the panic just begins to ebb— the mail on the table that really cranks the uncanny creepy-crawlies up to 11. Addressed to “Mr. Patrick O’Brian”. How did they know?)

Plas appreciates commitment to the bit. He really does. But it stopped being funny after the first five seconds, when on reflex he'd tried to GASP! in horror, really just full-body like a startled cat in the cartoons, and reached for his face…and the skin didn’t stretch off his skull. Literally. Nothing stretched. His spine stubbornly refused to be anything but rigid. It all just stayed…in place. Frozen. Stubbornly stiff. Small.

(There aren't words, and he's not an eloquent man anyway. But at least if his body's a prison, he's still Plastic Man somewhere in it.)

Ma O'Brian always said “you keep making that face and it'll stay that way.” Except he hasn't stayed any way in about thirty years. And folks— it sucks. Holy shit, the list of things Plas forgot is endless. Like: your knees will betray you at the first opportunity; and, backs are God's idea of a big practical joke; and also, gravity is for suckers and squares.

So is balance. So is remembering your leg won't just lengthen to meet the pavement. Observe: an adult man who appears to be in his 30s, in a somewhat disheveled pinstriped suit, stepping off the curb. Please look away, as the fool goes forward, and keeps going forward, and pratfalls onto the pavement. Please. These scraps of dignity are all he has left. ]

Oh, for God's sake—

[ Bleeding! He also forgot about bleeding. And the way pavement will cut up your hands, when you catch yourself on it. And bruises. Forgot about those. And, once again, the white-rimmed shades go skittering away as they fall off his face. That didn't used to happen either. ]

You know— [ To no one. To himself, as he plops himself over to sit on the street, looking miserably at the dirt on his pants and his scratched up hands. To you, maybe? ] You always think karma's gonna come back around on you one day, maybe, but you never think it's gonna be like this.

[ Except this is definitely karmic. Plas (not Patrick, don’t ever call him Patrick sighs heavily. Looks around for his lost shades. At least, at least— he's still got the shades. In some form, anyway. Even if he had to track them down himself. ]

Do you mind grabbing those? [ And that's definitely to you, whoever you are. ] Just gotta…remember how this goes again…

[ Standing up like a normal human being, and not a Gumby-like hell-man. It's so hard. ]


(B) is for “Block Party of My Nightmares”
[ And see, this is karmic, this shit right here. The part where Plas always failed miserably back home: playing at having a day job and a normal life and a family. And now it's like— Pleasantville normal. Too normal. “Leave it to Beaver” normal. Strong evidence for his I'm in hell theory, either way. He'd have put himself in a Chicago overcoat before he’' voluntarily end up in the suburbs.

Okay, but this, though. This is a kick in the teeth. This moment, right here, where they hand him this wobbly mountain of brightly-colored and mismatched ingredients. Plas stares at it, forlorn. Wishing he could be just as gelatinous and jiggly as this strange Meatloaf Souffle Jello Surprise. ]

Oh, you…shouldn't have…now you're just making fun of me…

[ It makes sense in the context of his life, okay? ]


(C) is for Creeping Zombie Children Everywhere
[ Plas is like 99.9% sure: he's seen this movie. Like, definitely. It was an 80s smash hit, or something? (It wasn't.) But in a way— in a way that suggests that maybe there is something so very wrong with him— it's a relief. Kicking it with Lucy and Ricky and Donna Reed? Surreal. Zombie hordes? God, thank you, something finally familiar.

Or not zombies. Plas doesn't need to know exactly what they are. Those are the sort of details you leave to Bats or Mister Terrific or somebody who's not him. What he does know— what still feels distressingly familiar, even decades removed from being Eel O’Brian— is breaking people, with things. With a chair (sorry, honey, whoever you are, they'll get another chair—) when they break in the door and storm the kitchen. Better, with a bat snatched from the kid's room (sorry, son who's not his actual son, but thank God he's not here.) Shattering water-logged femurs to try and make a break out the back door.

It makes him feel like shit. Plas feels keenly that this is not the sort of thing former members of the Justice League should be doing. Even though they're clearly, MANIFESTLY dead. That's some comfort, at least. Not enough to outweigh swinging a bat at dead children's legs, but. Some, you know? And he would like to keep not being dead, until he can figure out why he's flesh-and-blood and then get the hell outta dodge and all that, which means options are limited.

But he forgot how hard it is, beating people down when you're just an ordinary guy. Even when it's people who stay down. Unlike these tykes. Soon he's covered in scratches, clothes ripped beyond repair. Gotta keep swinging. Gotta get out. ]

Sorry, I'm sorry— [ ‘Cause, well. What else is there to say? In those moments where he can catch his breath, before he's got to start swinging again. ] I'm really sorry, I'll— find the cursed amulet and put you back, or the serial killer, or…or whatever! Just— stay down, for five minutes, could ya—!

[ They cannot. Alas. But help would be appreciated! ]


(OOC: I only have hellish shapeshifting icons please just roll with it.)

>:3 guess whomst (also b)

[demonicmiracle]

[At some point during the weirdest party of his existence (and that's saying something, parties in Hell get weird), Crowley has acquired an entire bottle of wine that he's a good two thirds of the way through, because it's making this whole thing slightly more bearable. He's only half paying attention to proceedings, but there's no missing the dude staring at a plate full of some jello monstrosity as if it's just kicked his puppy.]

I'll give you five quid if you eat it.

[Does he just want to see someone suffer more than he feels like he's suffering?

Perhaps.]

howdy stranger :)

[plas]

[ Well, if there's money on the line— the hell with moping about the scandal of his momentarily-missing shapeshifting. Never let it be said that even sans rubber he doesn't bounce back fast. ]

You got yourself a deal. Don't even care about the exchange rate these days.

[ Only, one hustler to an unknown other— ]

But let's see the money first, hoss.

fancy meeting you here

[demonicmiracle]

[He digs a wallet out of his back pocket, checking through the handful of notes there (some may or may not be swiped from one of the locals, don't judge him) to find a five dollar bill. Which is actually dollars, he just hasn't gotten used to adjusting his language yet.]

Don't tell my husband — [A briefly haunted look crosses his face, but like, it's fine. He's fine!] — that I wasted money on a bloody dare. He'll kill me and no one will ever find the body.

it's a small world after all

[plas]

[ As though he hasn't thought about swapping the spare change from neighbors. Or fleecing them in poker. (But that just doesn't seem as funny as it might have, once.) ]

Swear it on my mother's soul— my lips are sealed.

[ Plas makes the gesture— drawing a zipper across his mouth— but of course, the zipper doesn't manifest. The lips only remain the same thin lips they were before. But the frustration and despair at the ruined gag flickers and dies in an instant. There's money to be made. ]

It can't be as bad as it looks. [ Casting about for a fork. For five bucks, he will eat this monstrosity. Proving that no matter how old you are, some part of you will always been an eight-year-old on the playground, sticking weird things in your mouth for the dare. ] You know they're just showing off for the hell of it.

[ All these middle-class people who have the money and time to waste on gelatin madness. ]

[demonicmiracle]

Much appreciated.

[Not that Aziraphale would actually kill him, but he'd make a sort of disappointed face at him and Crowley's too fragile right now to handle that sort of thing.

He puts his wallet away, the five dollar bill held between his fingers while he settles into a lean against one of the folding tables, hoping that this proves to be entertaining enough to be worth the admission fee.]

Oh, it can be exactly that bad. None of 'em are used to having so many options available, haven't learned how to use flavours properly yet.

[plas]

[ Look, nobody should risk the Disappointed Face from The Good Teammate. (Husband. Whichever.) Not that Supes or Metamorpho or anyone would be surprised in the slightest to find Plas gambling within the first five seconds of meeting someone whose sense of sleaze matches his own sensibilities. ]

Nah, no way. They're totally showing off. Got nothing better to do in the suburbs but play World's Worst Betty Crocker and ruin a perfectly good pork chop with a side a green goo.

[ Which would definitely be ruined, by putting them in jello. Poor people do not eat like this. Poor people cannot afford to eat like this, so he's never actually tried one of these confections before. But Plas' stomach keeps reminding him that food is now an obligation, not a fun little indulgence, so. Better take a bite.

Just dive right in, with a big one. The bigger the bite, the faster you get it over with.

He's gotta...chew on it a bit, first, though. And chew. And keep chewing. ]

[demonicmiracle]

Can you blame 'em? Being a housewife isn't the rewarding career it's hyped up to be.

[For all that he's used to expectations being shoved at him from one quarter or another, having to deal with this particularly insidious brand of misogyny is new and frustrating, when he can't just snap his fingers to make someone fuck off. If these women are real, he can't hold it against them for getting creative and possibly passive aggressive with gelatin based food products.

Although he still wouldn't eat them.

The same problem doesn't seem to be plaguing his new friend; Crowley watches him chew with the sort of expression people reserve for driving past car accidents.]

I'm really gonna have to figure out how to cook, huh.

[For his own sake.]

a

[loomingterror]

Remember how what goes?

[The kid who walked up his sidewalk to grab his glasses and hold them out to him looked just about as out of place here as Plas did. His black hair has that bed head tousle, and he's still in his own pj's that look almost identical to Plas' if you ignore the dirt on his knees and around the cuffs of his pants. Like he'd decided to go for the clumsiest, laziest morning jog imaginable.

Or more likely, given the circumstances, like he's woken up in a strange house, in strange clothes and decided to deal with that conundrum but just running out of the house.]

god i'm sorry it was a LONG weekend

[plas]

[ Takes him a minute, here. For one, he has not actually used his eyeballs as God meant them to be used in...in a long time. The sun, it burns. He's gotta scrub at the corner of his eyes with the few clean fingers he's still got left, trying to get them to work again. ]

Oh, you know, just...stuff. Bones, and all that. Nothing big. Thanks for the save.

[ Okay. Vision, in focus. See the glasses, just within reach, squinting against the sunlight (which is not that bright, but it is, okay). Plas hastily grabs them and fumbles them back on his face, all the better to actually see what the fuck is going on—

Thank god his poker face wasn't dependent on shapeshifting. 'Cause if he dropped the beat, right here, and let it show just how hard this gutpunched it'd be...well. Probably not terribly reassuring, for the other person in this conversation!

(But— Oh, god. Kids. They brought kids? Of course there are children involved. Why not go whole-hog on your kidnapping?)

But never let it be said that he doesn't put his game face on and try to deliver on that superhero gig. Even if, literally, his game face is just not...freaking the hell out, at every opportunity, right now. Play it cool, Plas. ]

Hey, ace, somebody steal your sneakers or what?

[ ...maybe not that cool. ]