TDM - OCTOBER 2020

[robbies]

TEST DRIVE MEME - OCTOBER 2020

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

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“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—“

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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

[preaker]

[ Camille stares back at the man, the assumed source of her assumed kidnapping (because what else could it be?), but he's either playing dumb or he's —

— well, telling the truth. Those are the only two options, aren't they? She hesitates, unsure how to handle him. Handle any of this. Is part of his game making her answer his questions? Getting some delight out of her confusion? She doesn't know where they fucking are. She has no idea. ]

I—I don't know. [ She can feel her resolve faltering. This is really, really, scaring her. Whatever Phase 2 of this is going to be, she's not at all prepared for it. Is he gonna pull a knife out on her? A gun? ] I just woke up in that bed, ten, maybe fifteen minutes before you. I don't know what street we're on or.. or whatever.

[ A beat, as something he said sticks out like a splinter in her mind, and she can't help asking, because it's... such a strange thing to say that it frightens her. She has to voice it. ]

...What do you mean, when we are?

[m1895]

[ So she's in her own time period. Great. Vasiliy scrambles for an answer, some reasonable way to ask what he desperately needs to know without raising even more suspicion. ]

The date. What is today?

[ Normal. He just has to act very, very normal, long enough for whoever's on the other end of that wire to recognize that he's not a threat, provided there really is a wire and her situation isn't identical to his own. And if he gets arrested—he doesn't have his passport and visa to show to the police, nor does he have any form of identification. There's no telling if his social security number is even the same.

In short, police may be coming, and he has no way to prove he's in the country legally.

Vasiliy does his best to shelve his panic, to shapeshift into something less threatening like he has a thousand times before. She's more afraid of him than he is of her, judging by her body language and the tenor to her voice, and she herself doesn't seem to be much of an immediate threat. He consciously relaxes his jaw, breathes more slowly, briefly breaks eye contact—a well-worn path by now, the beginning steps in a convoluted routine. He rubs a hand over his face, then tries again: ]

Look—I woke up here too. I just want to know where I am and what day it is.

[preaker]

[ Camille hesitates, not answering at first. Her own fears and paranoias lend her to be a very suspicious person of other people in general, much less when she wakes up in some unknown room of some unknown house with one of them. This raises all the red flags she can think of — except the pieces just don't make sense. Those photos don't make sense. The time period in the photos don't make sense.

But she sees those subtle shifts in the man, the way his jaw loosens, how he looks away from her; small things, but telling. After that long pause, she finally responds, slowly, eyeing him with just a bit more confusion than outright fear now. Because his persistent question is making her realise the weather outside that window behind her doesn't match the weather she was just experiencing back home. ]

It was July 17th last I checked. But it doesn't look like July anymore, out there. [ Camille's eyes sweep towards the window, where autumn is clearly kicking in — leaves of various colours collected in neat little piles out on the front lawn. ]

....And judging by these photos, it's not even 2018.

[ Which is, in fact, when she actually comes from. With that, she hesitates again before she gestures to the pictures hanging on the wall. They span several years, but the most recent ones, the ones of her and the man looking the ages they are now— ]

—Looks like the fucking 60's in those. And we're both in them, somehow.

tw brief lynching/kkk mention

[m1895]

[ Fuck. He can't decide whether it's better or worse that he's been reborn closer to his own time period (as opposed to even further in the future than 2020) in a general sense, but of all the times to exist as a Russian communist in the South, this is probably the worst. How long until they lynch me? Vasiliy wants to demand, but he holds his tongue. He managed to keep his mouth shut through the entirety of the Purge; he can sure as hell shut up and keep his political leanings to himself long enough to stay alive here, where there isn't even a secret police organization to speak of.

Well, the CIA. And the sheriff's office. And the KKK.

Christ, what a nightmare. With his luck, they're probably in Selma or something, and given that she's Southern, she's probably not even a liberal, not even a centrist—a liability, more likely to report him to McCarthy and his little friends now that she's in an era that gives her that option. At least last time everyone else was Communist, too. At least last time he was the secret police. ]

We need to go downstairs. See what we can find. Maybe there is television set, magazine, something. And we need identity documents. Social security card, passport, birth certificate, anything.

[ Or a box of cigarettes. Fuck, he needs a smoke. ]

[preaker]

[ Camille keeps staring at him, trying to seek out any other subtle little signs of.... what's going on under the surface of him. Okay, he's definitely not filling the typical role of 'kidnapper' here. Maybe there's something wrong with him, she doesn't know. She doesn't know a damn thing. But he seems... functional, at least — his suggestion to head downstairs and start searching for official documents takes her aback, but at least it's a plan. ]

Okay. Okay, yeah. [ The woman's still eyeing him carefully, but she nods, slowly folding her arms across her chest as she takes a very careful step forwards, meaning to follow him down. She's... well-aware that her claim about the police being on their way is going to crumble as time ticks by; he'll soon enough realise she was lying. But maybe she can locate a phone before then, call the actual cops, get some help going. ]

....I wanta check the other rooms on the way. If that's okay. [ She offers, hopefully less abrasively than she might have come across to begin with. She's still wary about setting him off somehow. ] .....Because there's kids in these photos, and.... I don't know. What if they're here, too? In this house?