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

dean winchester ※ supernatural

[cained]

I. STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET

( walking up in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar woman beside him isn't exactly new — what is new is the respectable distance between their separate beds and the fact that he's fully clothed, in perhaps the most hideous pajamas he's ever seen. he's on edge before he even makes it to the edge of the bed, glancing around the room with a keenly suspicious eye — from the photos on the nightstand, the colors of the walls, the fucking carpet, he feels like he's woken up on the set of fucking leave it to beaver. either this is a dream (of the celestial or djinn variety he can't be sure of yet) or he was drugged or — hell, maybe it's another great american values psychic on the loose.

he's careful not to disturb the woman in the bed next to him as he rifles through the drawers in their shared room, looking for anything useful, anything that might give him a clue as to where the fuck he is. he doesn't find much aside from clothes he would never wear, cigarettes he's never smoked in his life, a box of medals from a war he never fought in. for a fake vet, there sure aren't any fucking guns to be found, which is frustrating but probably in the best interest of whoever stuck him here. if they know his reputation, they'll know what he can do with a weapon in his hands.

eventually, he creeps out of their room, passing a mirror on the wall and doing double take at the thick rimmed glasses on his face. under his breath, he mutters oh, come on but makes his way down the stairs after tucking the glasses into the collar of his pajamas.

it's the photos on the walls that unnerve him the most: photos of him, and from the brief glance he'd given the woman upstairs her, too. like they're married, like this house, this family is theirs. he stops dead when he spots a photo of him as a kid, one he recognizes despite the sepia — he tears it off the wall, digging the photo out of its frame to turn it over: dean's first fishing trip, '31 written in his father's unmistakable handwriting. he drops the frame on the stairs, rushing to find the phone book he's sure this house must have.

which is, naturally, when the doorbell rings. he grabs the fireiron from the living room as he heads toward the door, only opening it a fraction of an inch to see who's outside. a friendly neighbor, of course! with meatloaf! and then every time he almost has a second to get back to what he was doing (checking the kitchen for the basics: salt, check, but not much; silver, check; knives to use in a pinch, check — even trying to call the operator in an attempt to contact any of his family members, to no avail), another neighbor comes by — and by the time the sixth friendly neighbor comes by, dean fully swings the door open, waving the poker uncomfortably close to the perky woman's face. )

No. No offense to dear Aunt Myrna, but you need to get the hell off my property cuz I'm about five seconds away from going postal on this entire neighborhood. And take that with you, for fuck's sake.

( whatever it is, it looks disgusting, and he's had just about enough of the hospitality around here. the door slams shut right in the poor woman's dejected, slightly scandalized face. he doesn't particularly care what his fake family thinks about that little outburst; all he does is lift his shoulders in an indignant what? kind of way, dropping the poker by the front door. he heads into the kitchen, eyeing the sink for something important, absently making conversation with any of his fake family members: )

This thing have a disposal? I ain't normally one to discriminate, but I know where those damn Jell-O molds are going.

II. BABY DRIVER

( he shouldn't be surprised that the car in the garage of his fake house is not his baby, but there's still a lump of anguish that settles in his chest when he sees the blue '61 impala instead of his '67. still, it'll have to do. he's got work to do. until he knows what he's dealing with here, he needs to restock his arsenal with as much monster-killing paraphernalia as he can, make nice with the local law enforcement just on the off chance anything weird happens. he gets a job as a mechanic at the only garage in town, keeps his eyes and ears open for the latest gossip, plays house as much as he can stand it, asks around about any strange occurrences, checks the library and town hall for records of any violent deaths or anything else suspicious. a town like this has to have secrets, and he's dead set on finding them. (a job that'd be easier with his brother here, but sam still hasn't shown his sorry ass yet.)

one afternoon he heads to honeybees' sporting goods section, pulling out a wad of cash and walking out with a pistol and hunting rifle and enough ammo to concern a normal person. the clerk simply asked if he was going hunting. (technically, not wrong.) on his way out, he also picks up a can of paint, dropping all of this into the trunk of the fauxpala, shooting an innocent and charming smile over his shoulder at anyone who might be passing by as he locks the trunk. )

Nice day, huh?

( don't mind the guy casually dumping guns into his trunk. he's at least smart enough not to paint a devil's trap on the inside of the trunk in broad daylight, but the amount of salt he packs into the trunk after coming out of the grocer's later might look a little strange to anyone onlooking. )

III. CANDYMAN

( it's a fine evening for eating as much candy as possible, because what else is halloween about if not for eating all the candy? sam would disagree with him, but sam can shove it. (he'll eat sam's candy, too.) which is precisely what he's doing while sitting in his car with the top down outside the doc holliday bar, enjoying the cool and crisp october wind, listening to the greatest rockabilly hits on the radio, candy wrappers already littering the passenger seat of the fauxpala. he's just finishing his last piece of candy, about to head into the bar, when an unpleasant aftertaste rises up in the back of his throat. he barely makes it out of his car before he's hurling on the pavement. eventually, when he thinks he can breathe again without puking his guts out, he wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve and says to no one in particular in the wake of a self-deprecating laugh: )

Well, that's embarrassing. Ain't even had a drink yet.

( never mind the fact that he's pretty sure someone in his happy little neighborhood tried to poison him. he'll deal with that later. now he needs to ingest different type of poison. voluntarily. whiskey, after all, is the best medicine. )

IV. ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER

( after the report of missing kids and a bus crash, dean had gotten that familiar prickle of a case, but without being able to waltz in like the fbi, he hadn't been able to suss out much on his own. frustrating, but that hasn't stopped him from doing as much digging about this place as he can in his free time. the attic has quickly become his base of operations, one wall already sporting newspaper clippings, profiles on locals of importance, copies of town records — then pictures of the missing kids, the dead principal.

the town seems to forget a week later, but dean doesn't. even if no one wants to answer his questions quite so readily anymore, he keeps asking.

and then at ten o'clock on halloween, the sound of the television drags him down from the attic, racing down the stairs with his pistol at the ready, that damn commercial blaring through the house and then — static cutting through the jingle. )

Finally. ( to any of his family still in the house, he starts shouting orders: ) Salt! Now. Make a line at every window and door, you hear me? Don't look at me like that, just do it.

( pumpkin — don't blow the — out.

the doorbell rings. dean can barely make out the children on the porch in the dark (fuck, when did the jack-o-lantern light go out?), but he recognizes one or two of them — shit. the missing kids. part of him feels guilty he couldn't help them before this happened to them. but he's not about to let them hurt anyone; that he can help.

slowly, he opens the door to the feral and decaying children outside with his hands up in a placating gesture. he's had some pretty dumb ideas, but this might be one of his dumbest. )

Heya, kiddos. Fresh out of Atomic Fireballs. But I gotta say, I'm digging the costumes. Is that you under there, Little Debbie?

( trick or treat, they gurgle, and dean gets the feeling they didn't come here for candy or compliments. then little debbie is jumping at him, knocking him backwards, his gun flying out of his hand. the other kids follow her, advancing on him, clawing at him, and as much as he hates to, he punches and kicks and bashes his way out of a dogpile of kids, throwing them off him, sending them careening into furniture he's glad he didn't pay for. they're fast, but he manages to dive for his gun, shooting rounds into their wet and decaying heads. )

Didn't your parents teach you any manners? This ain't any way to treat your elders! ( still, they keep coming, and coming, and coming. he runs for the poker by the fireplace. ) That's it, we're going on a field trip! ( he swings through the gurgling kids on his way back out the door, drawing them away from the house and out into the street, where hopefully he can enlist some backup. )

V. WILDCARD

( feel free to encounter dean in the inbetween of any of these prompts or hit me with something totally different! i'm definitely down for family shenanigans. as always, you can pm me here or dm me on discord (miyou#1092) if you'd like to discuss other ideas. )

i + v, i do what i want

[retraverse]

[ Beverly Marsh wakes up slowly and gently, which is her first clue that something is deeply amiss. She doesn’t know what roused her but it certainly wasn’t a nightmare; and given that she hasn’t had a pleasant night’s sleep in years — 27 to be exact — it’s a foreign sensation, feeling as well rested as she does. Still, the echoes of her last lucid memory (a child’s anguished voice) hovers like a bad dream; and as grim as it is, it’s also the only shred of familiarity in this unfamiliar space. She sits up in a bed that isn’t her own, wearing a delicate nightgown in powder blue nylon straight off the set of Mad Men, and rubs the sleep from her eyes as she takes stock of her surroundings. The bed next to hers is empty which is a fucking blessing given the unease buzzing under her skin — it’s been slept in, that much is obvious. Wherever she is, she isn’t alone. Somehow that’s far from comforting.

Assuming this is even real. Which is a theory that is somehow, bizarrely, more comforting because the clown is the only thing that makes sense.

It wouldn’t be the first time Pennywise had crafted some elaborate, vivid hallucination to ensnare his favourite prey, although this one is almost too pleasant and mundane to fit into his usual nightmare fare. Or he could be toying with her, lulling her into a false sense of security just like with Mrs Kersh. Something could come jumping out of those closets or grab her ankles from under the bed. Refusing to let the fear take hold of her for too long, Beverly takes a steady breath and gets up, shrugging on the sheer matching peignoir draped over a nearby chair, and investigates: A glance outside the window tells her this is a modest suburb not unlike Derry (so she hasn’t been kidnapped by Tom and dragged back to New York, great) and the copy of Ladies’ Home Journal on her nightstand tells her it’s October 1961 (... okay, not great). ]

What the fuck, [ she whispers at the stately family portrait of Princess Grace fucking Kelly staring up at her from the cover. The date. Beverly looks around the room with sharper awareness, more alarm, zeroing in on the framed wedding photo of herself and a man decidedly not her ex-husband on the vanity, the black and white snapshots of children she’s never had, the yellowed and well-worn love letters tucked with care into a jewellery box. My dear Bev… They span years, the topmost one dated 1944 and signed, Your loving husband. ] What, [ again, ] the fuck.

[ The panic rises like bile in her throat now and she has to brace herself on the dresser, squeezing her eyes shut and taking several deep breaths to calm her rattling nerves. It doesn’t help. Where’s the trick? What’s the joke? When does the picture-perfect facade crumble into decay and ruin, when do the photographs warp and burn in their frames, when does the goddamn clown walk into the room and say —

Morning, Mrs Winchester.

Beverly whirls around to face the door, a heavy glass bottle of perfume clutched in her fist like a grenade, heart hammering so loudly in her ears she almost can’t hear herself think, let alone speak. ]

Don’t. [ Her voice is shakier than she’d like, but there’s steel shot through it, too. She doesn’t know this guy but she knows he’s wearing the same face as the one in the photos. But Pennywise can wear all kind of faces. ] What the hell is this? What did you do, you bastard?

i

[deadringing]

[ elena's been going through the house since she's woken up, trying to figure out who the people in these portraits are supposed to be to her and, more importantly, how she's wound up here. she's no stranger to the supernatural, she is something supernatural now (or at least she's supposed to be), but so far she's pretty sure she's never come across anything that can transport her to a totally different decade.

she's in the dining room when she hears someone come downstairs, and then the doorbell rings. elena's hands instinctively clench into fists, and she looks around for something to use as a weapon, settling on a decorative fork that she snatches off the wall.

the person she'd heard come downstairs answers the door, holding something that looks way more useful as a weapon than what she's got. he talks to them for a minute before shutting the door, and she realizes to her frustration that she can't hear what the other person is saying, can barely hear him. that shouldn't be happening, she should be able to hear everything, but this feels...this feels like she's human again.

the man slams the door and stalks back into the living room, and elena comes into view, holding out the fork, eyes narrowed. she probably doesn't strike a very intimidating figure in her nightgown, but she's not about to show that she's afraid. ]

Who are you?

iii

[redrighthanded]

[ As strange as the town is, at least it has a few familiar features. Hellboy's used to tooling through the suburbs, though usually it's at the behest of the B.P.R.D. and on the trail of something big and stinky (or small and bloody). Now it seems like all he's got is time to waste, so of course he finds himself heading out away from the pleasant streets and sidewalks. A little asking around gets him directions to the motel and its attached bar, where he feels at home for the first time since waking up in a weird house that's not his.

As it turns out, his new body isn't as used to processing alcohol as his other one was. Maybe something to do with muscle mass and relative density, either way after knocking back a few beers he finds he needs to step outside and clear his head a little. Another point in the town's favor: a plentiful supply of smokes, and they're not bad, either.

He's standing outside, a cigar lodged between his teeth and his eyes on the sky, arms loosely folded across his broad chest, when a car nearby opens up and disgorges -- literally -- its occupant onto the sidewalk. Eyebrows raised, he carefully pulls his gaze away until the guy's collected himself a little, at which point he tilts his head and studies him with a decent amount of pity etched on his craggy features. ]

You okay, buddy? Kinda made a mess of yourself there.

ii

[choosetruth]

[Georgia ignores the niceties. She's not one of the locals. She'll save being polite for... well, probably not any times soon.]

Where'd you get the guns?

baby driver

[the_caped_crusader]

[ bruce stops on his way back to the car, suspiciously eyeing dean and the guns, a far cry from the empty-eyed stares and smiles of the clerks and bag boys within the store. ]

Not really, no.