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

[undiagnosed]

[they're both kind of a mess, huh? and-- there it is again, that suggestion that's enough to make archer sick to his stomach again, the state of the kids that are obviously just high on meth coming after them and that the solution here is to shoot them. one of his major lines! just the one! and everyone wants him to cross it!]

I'm not shooting the fucking kids! [he yells back, tone switching from its general monotone to more genuine anger.] And-- they're not dead! They can't be moving if they're goddamn dead! If you keep this up then I'll shoot you!

[demonicmiracle]

You're gonna have to get used to the fact occult shit exists real soon.

[Considering he's chatting to a literal demon, albeit one that can't prove he's a demon right now, since he's been made human.

But if Archer isn't willing to shoot them, they need another solution; casting a glance around doesn't reveal too much, there's broken windows and doors on some places, but others are left curiously untouched. With a sigh, Crowley jogs back closer to Archer, even if it puts him closer to the still approaching kids.]

Oi, look, what do you reckon is so special about those houses?

[undiagnosed]

No, thanks. I'm not particularly interested in the furry community. [not even close to what crowley meant, but archer is, as usual, That Way. nothing that's happened so far has been, to him, evidence of a supernatural happening.

he slows down to follow crowley's look, brows drawing together in a frown.] Don't know, don't care. Cover is cover!

[demonicmiracle]

That's not — [Crowley just makes a wordless sound of frustration, both annoyed and slightly insulted by the implication, but not wanting to get into a tiff about it right now.

He'd rather focus on potential safety, picking the closest house to run over to, rapping his knuckles on the door to no avail.]

Now we can do your window thing.

[By which he means: break in through one.]

[undiagnosed]

[he gets to the house a few moments after crowley, out of breath for the effort of running more than the actual distance.]

You're seriously knocking? [archer takes his gun out and with almost no warning shoots out the glass panels in the door. BB gun it may be, but it still cracks the glass and makes it easier for him to smash it in with his cane. he reaches in, opening the door from the outside.] You should've answered the door faster!

[archer then turns and levels the gun at crowley.]

So, remember when you told me not to tell anyone about the blood thing? If you tell anyone about us running from a bunch of kids, everyone will know.

[a beat. he looks to his own gun, then back at crowley.]

Also, I'll shoot you.

[demonicmiracle]

M'not an animal.

[Demon, yes, but that's no reason not to have manners; there's something a bit spiteful in his insistence in not being like other demons, but it is what it is.

He's more than willing to let Archer handle the door situation, rather than cut himself further, since he's realising that wounds bleed way longer than he remembers. His thoughts are on that, and on the fact that this is more than a localized issue with him, the zombie kids, which means he's not really paying attention to Archer until the gun is leveled at him.

He's aware now, that it's a BB gun, so he mostly looks annoyed.]

Fuck's sake, I'm not going to tell anyone. [There's a mutter under his breath that might be something disparaging about the general concept of men, but who knows.] Will you let me in, now? I need to call my — husband.

[Still not used to that.]

[undiagnosed]

You are, however, obnoxiously British.

[though not enough to remind him of woodhouse, god help archer's fragile psyche if he ever meets aziraphale and his received pronunciation.

archer lowers the gun and moves aside so crowley can get past.] Go ahead. I just needed to get that straight.

[...]

Or, well, you know. Gay. Am I right? [he snorts at his own stupid joke, then closes the door. when he speaks again, it's more muttering to himself:] These people better have tequila...

[demonicmiracle]

[He's not even British, not really, he's just lived there for several hundred years and it's sort of rubbed off on him. That's not really the point, though, so he just gives Archer a flat look as he slinks past him.

He startles at the comment, going a bit pale as he tries not to choke on his own damn tongue.]

It isn't like that, s'just — this place, we woke up in the same house. Married, apparently. [Like they haven't known each other since the beginning.] Just want to make sure he's not been eaten by zombie kids, would hate to start my life here as a widow.

[undiagnosed]

Uh huh. Sure. [archer waves a hand as he pats around the kitchen wall for the light switch.] I don't actually care.

[he looks back around the doorframe after a moment, eyebrow cocked.]

Though... I guess if he's in trouble you might as well, y'know, tell him to come here. 'Cause the idiot kids are ignoring it for some idiot reason.

[demonicmiracle]

Right. Yup.

[Eloquent as always when he's feeling flustered and uncertain, but he shoves it aside in favor of busying himself with the phone, dialing 'his' number.

(After this, he might start finally wearing that stupid watch they gave him, just to be more easily contactable.)

It takes several rings to get through, and Aziraphale sounds equally flustered, but he manages a short conversation with reassurances that he's perfectly fine, not a scratch on him, and some theories on what the Hell/Heaven is going on, before Aziraphale insists he has to go, and hangs up. Crowley sighs, and goes to see if Archer has found alcohol yet, because he very much wants some.]

It's the jack o'lanterns, apparently.

[Who'd have thunk.]

[undiagnosed]

[predictably, by the time crowley has finished his phone call, archer has found what looks like just about all the booze the kitchen could possibly have to offer - including some that was hidden if one of the broken open cabinets is any indication. he has some great intuition for this stuff.

archer looks over when crowley enters, eyebrow raised.] Really? That sounds fake.

[demonicmiracle]

[Crowley, equally predictably, goes straight for the bourbon. It's not the whiskey he'd prefer, but needs must.]

People've said the kids were kept out until the candle was extinguished.

[He shrugs as he takes a drink directly from the bottle, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand when he's done, because his manners only extend so far.]

Believe me or don't, it's no skin off my nose, but I'm gonna make sure the candle out front stays lit.

[undiagnosed]

That's... okay. [he pushes a bottle of gin towards crowley -- open, archer had evidently tasted it and found it wanting.] Whatever. As long as it doesn't mean they try to skin us again. Goddamn little meth heads.

[demonicmiracle]

[What is this? Prohibition America? He doesn't want your shitty gin, Archer.]

They're not — [He groans, frustrated, and starts rifling through cabinets for a glass, because drinking bourbon from a bottle sucks, actually.] This would be easier if I could still perform a bloody miracle.

[Both dealing with the ghoulish children and convincing Archer that it's something supernatural.]

[undiagnosed]

[well, too bad, he's saving the good shit for himself! archer snorts.]

Okay, Harry Potter. Slow down. Is your husband in a place with a candle?

[demonicmiracle]

[Rude.]

Crowley, actually.

[Did they do introductions? He doesn't think they did, so he might as well give his name now.]

And yup, he put one up earlier, reckons they're cute. [His opinions about this are evident.] He's set himself up helping out anyone who got hurt, has some medic experience from the war. [World War One, most specifically, but old habits die hard.] That's how he heard about the houses where the candles went out.

[undiagnosed]

[archer is... very bad at social cues, sometimes, but he gets this one.]

Sterling Archer. World's best secret agent. I beat the previous one in a duel, so it's legit.

[poor, poor cyril.]

Huh. That's... actually so nice of him I don't have a joke about it.

[demonicmiracle]

Not very good at the secret part, though.

[He was only with the SOE for a little while, but 'don't tell anyone you work for them' was like, the first rule.

Dryly:] Yeah, he's a proper angel. [Crowley, however, does have a joke about it, even if it's one only he gets.] I'd have left them to bleed out, so they're lucky he was the one at home.

[That's... maybe true? Depends on the people, really.]

[undiagnosed]

Right? It's like... why even bother?

[archer is, of course, referring to the fact-- why keep themselves secret? it's a cool job! people think he's cool for being one! he doesn't see the problem with putting it on the table when he wants to pull a card that bumps him up in the social ladder.

...you know, at least in his eyes.] Sounds like you got a real Odd Couple thing going on. You're the Felix, right?

[demonicmiracle]

[Dryly:] Oh, I dunno, I always figured Nazis not shooting you on sight was a good reason.

[Not speaking from experience or anything!! Haha.

Less haha is Archer's question. He will take that gin, now that he thinks about it, even if it tastes terrible.]

Do I look like the sort of person who washes playing cards?

[Is he being insulted? He genuinely doesn't know.]

[undiagnosed]

Last ones I saw didn't even get their guns out before I killed them. So, you know.

[archer falls silent for a long few moments, squinting at crowley a little uncertainly.]

I want to say... yes?

[demonicmiracle]

Can't get much useful information out of a dead man.

[Well.

He could! But he has the bonus advantage of being able to pop down to Hell to ask questions.]

What about me says that, cause I need to change it immediately?

[He forgets he's not presently dressed like an aging rockstar, because he hasn't been able to find a good pair of skinny jeans.]

[undiagnosed]

Yeah, I think when it comes to Nazis and KGB and whatever then it doesn't really matter as long as they're dead.

[okay, it does matter, but he's not about to get into the intricacies of his job. also, there are barely any nazis left? where the hell is crowley from? he doesn't sound german...]

Uh... do you have all night? [asshole.]