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memesville2020-10-25 11:03 pm
robbies) wrote in memesville2020-10-25 11:03 pm
Entry tags:
TDM - OCTOBER 2020
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.
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.
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? |
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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.
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.
Thomasin | The VVitch | OTA (major movie spoilers and i haven't reviewed yet...)
She was lifting from the ground. She was laughing. All her grief coalescing into a strange sense of relief.
Then a child's voice, pain, and she was waking in a bed unlike she had ever known. There are things she doesn't recognize. There are images on the wall like paintings but impossibly real, so much so she expects her fingers to slip through when she touches them. There's noise down the hall and a frightening image (which also can't be slipped through) dances and chants. The witches in the moving picture look nothing like what she knows.
She runs, but then stops at the door, stunned by the sight of stained glass in geometric patterns, sunlight casting its colors on her and the floor. There's a painful moment of nostalgia and then she pushes past that door too.
The alienness of the street bears down worse than that first night by the woods or on the New England shores.
Who to call? Who to ask for help? Her family? God? No.
"Black Phillip. I bade thee show thyself. I... I know not where I am."
GTKTN A - Bread With Butter
The neighbours bring food. She is no longer the daughter in a banished family, but the daughter in a welcomed one. They don't know her father as too pious to stay amongst the people. They don't know her for her place in a coven. They smile unnervingly wide, welcome her, and bring food.
The gelatin molds sit upon the table. Her new "family" looks on them with disgust. She scans each and every face to be sure.
Then, she grabs the dish and hauls it close cuts off pieces almost frantically to devour, as though this is decadence.
GTKTN B - A Pretty Dress
It is a curious thing, to know one is damned already. To know this and find a closet full of colorful clothing and shoes, to hear music and see celebration. To be invited to it. She half expects the chanting of the coven, women rising up into the air.
She does not expect a pointed paper hat to be plunked down upon her head. She blinks and searches for an explanation.
"What say you? Guest of honor?"
Respect The Dead
"Back! Back! Get thee back!" She screams but the rotted children do not heed.
She swings the knife she grabbed from the kitchen, sticking in the children who slow but do not stop, tears spilling as she thinks again and again of her mother with a sickly twisting in her gut to go with the fear. She has no power here as should have been granted to her. She has nothing.
There's no choice. She has to run.
Around the table, scrambling past and out the door, the wretched creatures race behind her. She runs across the street to the first house with a still-lit candle in a carved grinning pumpkin. She beats her bloodied fists on the door, still holding the knife.
"Let me in! Let me in! I beg of thee grant me entry!"
bread with butter (hellooo thomasin this is so cool)
"Just wait. I'm going to cook you a really, really good shepherd's pie."
(hello hello : > )
She looks up to her with some surprise.
"You would do that? Truly?"
She doesn't know what a shepherd's pie is, but it's an offer of food and one just for her. She pauses in her eating, trying to remember the way a daughter was to behave like some words from a forgotten book. Her words are careful, testing.
"Need I fetch for thee from the garden?"
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She wears such a proud smile. "No. We'll get someone else to do that."
"What's your name?" A beat as she hesitates, before letting her grin return twofold. "Should I give you one?"
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She's so lost in that thought, she nearly misses the question she's asked. Even still, there's a moment in which she hesitates. She doesn't have to give her name. She could become anyone, be anything. But, ultimately, her name was what she put in the book.
"Thomasin. If it should please you," She says. "Shall I call thee mother?" Is that a part of this whole thing? It's what the neighbours suggest.
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"Villanelle. Don't call me mother." What a hideous word that is.
A grimace passes her face for but a moment before being replaced with a smile too sweet. She reaches across the table toward the girl's face, ready to stop should she retreat. It's true, they can be anyone here, anything, but one can just as well claim and morph one's own name.
"Thomasin. Thomasin." The s nearly resembling a z. "Which one sounds more powerful to you?"
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"Yes, Ma'am."
She doesn't flinch or back up when the woman reaches for her, but she does go very still. She braces for the moment she might need to run or fight back. There's the knife on the table. She could just as well use that. But, once again, the woman surprises her.
"Thomasin is a good Christian name," She says. And then with barely a pause, "The latter has more power." And now, faintly, she does smile.
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Respect the Dead
Watching from the window, Huaisang's heart pounds with terror. Will his 'husband' make it home safely? And their 'child' as well. Huaisang has very few parental urges, but now he feels the start of one, worrying over the youth he's assigned to protect.
The child who pounds on the door isn't his own assigned child, but at least she isn't one of the undead creatures, who stay back away from the porch with his lit lantern. He's a coward but not a selfish one--though there's risk to himself, he swiftly opens the door to let in the bloodied girl.
Dressed in dark gray capris and a white blouse, he quickly shuts and locks the door again, pressing against it with a terrified wince. There are no poundings upon the outer door. The children will not step upon the porch, it seems, as long as the candle stays lit.
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"I... I am in your debt," She says between gasps. She straightens up but she doesn't let go of the knife.
She hears no banging at the door. She hears nothing.
"Have- have they gone? Those beasts..."
Those children. But they couldn't be. And surely they were not Lucifer's doing. There would be no more sense in harming her.
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Her savior is an unlikely one. He's shorter than Thomasin by the breadth of two fingers, and everything about him is soft. Soft hair intricately braided, soft cheeks full and well-fed, soft hands that have never known a callus.
"Come on." Retreating quickly from the locked door, Huaisang leads the way to the back of the house. He has a back-up lantern burning in the kitchen. The face on this one is much more cursory, hastily carved with only two square holes for eyes and an upturned line for the mouth, but the candle inside of it is burning brightly, and there's an array of unlit candles beside that, gathered from around the house. "Do you want to wash up?"
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Indeed, he's an unlikely sort but it seemed any saviour of hers was of that kind one way or another. He bades her to follow and so she does. By now she's worked out the kitchen and its magic waters but she hasn't lost her wonder over it, even as she goes to rinse blood from her hands. The site makes her slow a moment then hurriedly carry on.
"Have you a thought to what they are? They seem witched corpses, but I know not for certain..." If they were witched, why go after her? Again she comes to that thought and it bothers her.
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He chews on his lip, wary and frightened. Even in such a dangerous situation, he's picked up no knife of his own, nor any other form of defense. "Do you want a change of clothes? I can probably find something that will fit you, if you'll watch the candles while I look."
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"Nay. I've seen no youth that would protect a spirit from wrath or evil. But perchance they possessed, I know not what would hold such power." She turns back to the man and smiles faintly, thinly. "You would have my debt grow in your favor. But I shall. I'll see to the candles."
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respect the dead / very cool character choice if i do say so myself
He unthinkingly reaches for the empty space on his hip where his revolver should be and swears when he grasps nothing but helpless emptiness on his dash toward the front door. The legs of the dinner table groan and scrape against the wooden floor as he pushes it to the side; the double mattress that was held upright between the table's edge and the door falls flat with a muted thump shortly before he shoves it to the side with his foot and starts on the deadbolt and lock.
Vasiliy only opens the door enough for the girl's waifish body to slide through, then slams it shut with one hand and audibly turns the deadbolt with the other as soon as both of her feet are on the welcome mat.
"Are you okay?"
Why thank you!
"Hurry!" She screams. "You must hurry!"
Her panic grows and, stupidly, her anger too. She should not be helpless here. She signed the book. This should not be happening! But she knows no magic and she feels none of the power she briefly felt. She is going to be torn apart by beasts and that will be that and--
The door opens a crack. She forces her way into it, slipping inside. She as the monsters slam into the door after her.
"I- I'm--" What does she say to that? "I know not."
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But none of that will matter if those things get into the house. Vasiliy immediately leans the mattress against the door again and circles the edge of the dining table to push it back into place from behind, looking over his shoulder as he does so. "Go sit on stairs. I will examine you in short time."
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"If it please you," She says, and to the stairs she goes. Covered in blood, settling down to wait for the worst. This, too, feels familiar. She wants to throw the knife away but can't bear to at the same time, holding it fast.
respect the dead
He doesn't actually know, yet, about anything that's happening outside right now. He just hops up at the summons and darts over to open the door. "Yeah! Come in, come in! You want - candy?" He's not sure this is how trick-or-treating typically goes, but he's down!
Michael!! yes!!
And then she blinks and looks up in utter confusion.
"I- I beg thy pardon?"
8D !
Turning, he retrieves the bowl of candy he'd prepared earlier. If there's any possibility of continuing the Halloween traditions, he's gonna aim for it! "Gonna be honest, I don't really know what most of the stuff in this decade is," he says, filling the silence automatically. He peers into it, shuffling the contents a little, before holding it out to her. "Not really my area of expertise. But there's, you know, caramels and stuff."
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"Decade?" She repeats. "You are from elsewhere too?
The bowl is offered and, knowing no other thing to do, she takes a piece out. But she looks at him, rather than try and open the thing up.
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Michael takes the bowl back and sets it down on a side table, all without taking his eyes from the girl. This seems...he probably can't just ignore this and try to focus on the fun human holiday, can he? She seems pretty freaked out. "Someone giving you trouble out there?" he asks, casting a glance back at the door. There's thin windows on either side, but they're too small and the night too dark to give him any clear view of much beyond the porch - where, of course, his jack-o-lantern is. He wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the locals were hassling her, though. They're creepy and weird, and he figures it's really only a matter of time until they start doing something evil.
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As he goes to look outside, she can't help trying to look out too. Beyond the porch is a black curtain of night.
"Have you not seen them? They are wretched things. Corpses. They were dripping. They attacked me."
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Respect the Dead
"Enter, child. Be safe."
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When the door opens, Thomasin swears she could weep with relief. She scrambles inside. She's quick to plead that the woman should hurry to shut it behind her, but once it is, she allows herself a breath, all but falling back against the wall.
"Thou art most gracious."