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

[handycapable]

[ Mostly, Ray was assuming that a doctor wouldn't be filling out their own forms but rather delegating them to the people spending more time with the patients, but he also hasn't been to a proper doctor in ages, so-- he's basing this perception on media more than his own experiences, not intending to be patronizing, although no, Vasiliy also does not fit his own particular mental image of doctors.

(Not necessarily a bad thing though, depending on your point of view.)

Both his eyebrows raise in interest as he blows smoke out from the corner of his mouth. ]

Wow, an EMT. The real heroes, if you ask me. [ He means it, too. For no particular reasons in specific...... ] As for me, I'm a...

[ A brief pause, but then he shakes his head, taking another slow drag. ]

Well I was a P.I., and before that I was a pilot. Not really sure what I'll be doin' now.

cw allusions to torture

[m1895]

[ Vasiliy knows that he shouldn't enjoy the praise as much as he does—there are countless others like him who do their job much better than him—but it's still nice to be acknowledged after more than a year in his line of work. It's a harder job than people seem to realize, though not necessarily for the reasons that they assume: he gore and the blood and screaming weren't the hurdle to overcome, the technical information was.

At least for him. ]

A pilot. [ Vasiliy repeats it to himself as though committing the fact to memory, pauses to take a drag. For whatever reason, the mention brings to mind Yuri's simultaneous excitement and jealousy over the new Yak-1s, the description of their swift acrobatics he really wasn't in the mood to hear as he scrubbed the underside of his sleeve over and over in a pot of warm water in hopes of lessening the red-brown stain of someone else's blood. He'd probably mopped it up when he sat down and put his arms on the table as usual; the men who came in during the intermission of his act rarely felt the need to clean up after themselves.

Vasiliy's jaw tightens ever-so-slightly. Best not to think about that right now. ]

You could fly still, I think. They have the commercial planes.

[handycapable]

[ Ray tilts his head, appearing to consider the suggestion, although it's hard to explain all the ways that would be complicated-- more so here, probably, lacking the connections and records of experience Ray normally would have back at home. Not to mention the prosthetic hand, but for TDM purposes we'll move on...

He blows out more smoke, flicking his wrist expressively as he taps some ash from his cigarette. ]

Oh, I dunno. What kind of a husband would I be if I abandoned my wife and two bastard children for a rigorous life of airline travel?

[ Smirking wryly, obviously joking, but then he shakes his head, cringing slightly. Why did he remind himself of the whole wife and kids situation? ]

Oof. Too soon.

[m1895]

[ Vasiliy sighs. Yes, that. Hopefully she doesn't expect him to be spending tons of time raising children that aren't even his own. He supposes he should just be thankful that they're on the cusp of adulthood themselves, though, and maybe he can make some meaningful impact where negating some of their indoctrination is concerned... ]

Your new wife, she is good enough? You like her?

[ The question's difficult to articulate - can you bear her presence, he more-or-less means, but that would be wildly too personal a question to ask a total stranger. He's curious as to whether or not she's realized where Ray's inclinations lie yet and exactly how that has or will be playing out, but that, too, is far too personal, and after three years in the "modern" world he's still not too keen on having that conversation or any of the conversations related to it. So he simply asks like they're discussing roommates, which is what it really boils down to at this phase, doesn't it? ]

[handycapable]

Oh, she's fine. [ Another flippant gesture with his wrist. ] Or she will be so long as she doesn't expect me to go puttin' any real babies in her, but it's still a little early for that talk.

[ Ray has Not Discussed It™ with his wife yet, no, because he's still feeling it out-- who knows how she'll take it, for one thing, but maybe (more likely) she doesn't even need to be told.

On that note... he lowers his voice, just a bit: ]

Between you an' me, thank God for those double beds. I'm not really, uh... [ ahem, ] the marryin' type?

[ Smooth. So smooth. Ray doesn't know if or what Vasiliy knows. ]

How's yours?

[m1895]

[ It's a show of trust that he'd be willing to disclose that to a relative stranger here in McCarthyville, and Vasiliy recognizes it as such, carefully controlling his facial expression so that it doesn't shift into anything an American would interpret as disapproval or aggression. He doesn't offer up any similar details on himself in response, however: it's dangerous and sensitive information, this man is still nothing more than a friendly stranger, and this place would rather see him dead than alive. He doesn't need to add another potential demerit to the list of counts these people could raise against him, even if it's only disclosed to a single person.

When Ray asks about his own government-issued wife, Vasiliy only barely manages to stop himself from answering with 'Southern'. Instead: ]

She is okay. Pretty enough. I will probably still sleep on couch in living room. She was not happy to wake up in same room as strange man.

[ Not that he can blame her. ]

[handycapable]

Ugh, right? Yet another reason to be grateful they didn't stick us all with California Queens, I guess-- just imagine waking up next to a strange women in a real bed. Eugh. I would never in a million years take advantage of a woman, but good luck explaining that to one who's hysterical and looking for somethin' to stab you with.

[ He shudders a little, then flicks his cigarette to the ground, stubbing it out under the toe of his shoe. ]

Really, though? The couch? Whose idea was that? [ His back hurts just hearing it. ] Does it at least pull out?

cw vague internalized homophobia

[m1895]

[ Vasiliy shrugs. ] It does not. It is okay though. I chose to. [ He doesn't consider himself to be a part of the false memory of a chivalrous, more respectable 1940s the eightysomethings of this country seem to bemoan every time they see the slightest implication of extramarital sex, but sleeping in separate rooms still feels like the obvious minimum of acceptable behavior in this situation. It's just not appropriate.

He doesn't mention that the couch is probably more comfortable for him than it would be for someone as tall as Ray; he'd rather not draw attention to the fact that he almost looks like a woman standing beside him. And that's saying something. ]

Your wife, she is alright with you staying?

[ If he cares to extrapolate on whether or not she knows, well, that's up to him, though in all likelihood Vasiliy imagines it will. The two questions are intertwined. ]

cw same (+ language)

[handycapable]

I dunno. We haven't really talked about all that yet, though I know that's probably a job for tonight. [ He shakes his head. ] This morning was mostly just spent drinking and introducin' ourselves, but...

[ Trying not to panic and so on, but luckily, being a spy, Ray is pretty good at not losing his head in unfamiliar situations or crises... to a point, anyway, but he's not stressed out and miserable enough to lose that shield of professionalism just yet. ]

It's not like anything marital's ever gonna actually happen in that bedroom, so I'm sure I don't mind. [ Well, he might mind, but he's also willing to allow the potential compromise. ] As soon as I can figure out how to break it to her that she's married to a homo.

[ Which he says with a bit of irony, since it's not a real marriage and no one here is emotionally invested anyway, but it helps to soften the blow of the whole absurd situation if he keeps making bad jokes about it at every turn... or at least that's the idea. ]

likely references to era homophobia etc in tags to follow

[m1895]

[ Do you... really even have to tell her? Vasiliy can't decide if the thought that instantly arises in response would be offensive to someone who is so openly gay, so he keeps it to himself for the time being. Instead, he goes with the next thought that comes to mind, which is: ]

That is sensitive information. Do you trust her?

[ Enough to risk your safety here? Any sane person's answer, in Vasiliy's opinion, should be no— He's known her for less than a full day, and she's a complete and total stranger. He doesn't know her motives, her background, how far she'd have to be pressed by whatever anticommunist committee they have around here to fork over a list of Subversives, one of which would unquestionably be Ray. The less people who have that information, the better, and if she's not trying to solicit sex, there isn't a reason to tell her. He doesn't say that, either.

Ray's undoubtedly encountered enough rabid homophobes to know that there's danger in being "out", that there are people who would rather see him dead than alive, but moreover, outright telling someone to do something rarely has the intended effect, and he seems like a decent enough person as far as Liberals go. Pushing him toward more-or-less signing a confession to whatever fabricated crime the local authorities would use as an excuse to imprison him isn't on his evolving itinerary for the evening. ]