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

[mijo]

[ It is normal to them, Nacho thinks. Maybe. He hasn't had time to form a real solid theory on if they're all plants or this is, for lack of a better term, real. But he can answer the question in a way that doesn't betray his own uncertainty about the place. ]

It isn't normal for me. None of it.

[ Not the time period, not playing house, not being several states away from where he went to bed before waking up here... not normal, no. ]

But I do think we should play along for now.

[minuteofangle]

[ Well. That's a fucking relief. They can commiserate. Gabe snorts, tipping his head back. He holds himself still, but not perfectly so. Any movement he makes is small, controlled. Can't stand stock-still, sniper still, people notice that. Small movements are camouflage just like his anger, his swearing. The angry guy isn't patient, the angry guy's not thinking it through. It's an old game. He's been playing it for a long time. ]

All right, smart guy. Look at us, being neighborly.

[ Isn't this fun. ]

You got a name, or should I make something up?

[mijo]

[ Nacho isn't an expert on human behavior or anything, not enough to see through the camouflage. As far as he knows, the guy is angry, because that's a fairly reasonable thing to be in this situation. But he does know how to deal with angry people. Violent people. Unreasonable people. How to make them think things are their own idea, how to redirect them.

He doesn't need to yet, but it's up his sleeve just in case. ]

Ignacio.

[ He hasn't given his name out as 'Nacho' to anyone yet because that was his name with his friends. Something he doesn't have anymore. He certainly doesn't have friends here. ]

[minuteofangle]

[ Ignacio, all right. They're in business. Not friends, not allies--yet--but they're having a conversation. Gabe can work with that. See what it gets him.

He tips his head back. Bares his teeth at nothing. ]

Rodriguez. Where'd you get dragged in from, Ignacio?

[mijo]

[ It's just a conversation, even if they're clearly both sizing each other up. That's interesting to Nacho -- that they're both that sort of person. You'd think whoever's running this joint would have picked people easier to manipulate, but maybe that's all part of their game. ]

Albuquerque, New Mexico. 2002. You?

[minuteofangle]

Fuck me.

[ Okay. That's a new one. Gabe tips his head back, wondering if he's being had or whether this really is as weird as it seems. It sounds like comic book nonsense, which he'd probably be thrilled about in a different context, but actually living through the shit is not his idea of a good time. What is this, time travel? Alternate dimensions? Wormholes? Maybe his secret nerd credentials are actually going to help him this time.

Then again, probably not. This is the sort of weird that's probably going to turn ugly before too long. ]

Somewhere out in Gamma District. 2755.

[ So. That's a thing now. ]

I'm too fucking sober for this.

[mijo]

[ The Gamma District? Like... space? Nacho's pretty sure that's something out of a sci-fi show, but if it's 2755? Possible. And he can't really call someone out for coming from the future when he is, as well, relative to this place.

He isn't going to drink around these people, but he's okay with playing fetch. It'll give him some opportunity to eavesdrop. ]

I think it's all cocktails, but what's your poison?

[minuteofangle]

[ In truth, Gabe's been avoiding as much of the food and drinks as he can around this place. It's weird, for one thing, and real damn easy to drug for another. But carrying a drink around is good camouflage.

He makes a face. Cocktails. Probably not the good ones, either. ]

There any beer?

[ He doesn't actually like the taste, but it's something to do with his hands. And he can always smash the bottle into someone's face, if it comes to that. Gabe's a practical man. ]

[mijo]

[ Nacho cranes his neck to see over the people in the yard to the table -- yup. ]

Looks like. And sealed.

[ It's cans and bottles, so they'll know if it's been tampered with. In case Gabe was actually going to drink. ]

I'll grab two, you hang out.

[minuteofangle]

[ That's downright considerate. Gabe thins his mouth into a line, but nods. Hang out. Sure. Where else is he going to go? But this is part of the game now. Making friends. Because he knows his odds if he goes about this thing alone and they aren't good.

He'll survive. Whatever it takes.

He tips his head back and he waits for Ignacio to come back, listening carefully to the hum of conversation around him. ]

[mijo]

[ Nacho's back quickly enough, having dodged some of the creepy pleasantville-style conversation by saying he had a friend waiting on a drink. It's not true, they aren't friends, but the Robbie doesn't have to know that.

He leans back against the fence so the blind man can feel that he's there, and holds the bottle out in easy reach should Gabe raise his hand. The cap is still sealed, should he want to open it himself. ]

Dead ahead.

[minuteofangle]

[ The only good thing about this is Ignacio makes enough noise that Gabe can hear him coming. And he telegraphs, too. That's downright considerate.

He quips a smile, sardonic, then reaches out. Beer in hand. ]

Thanks. Least there's alcohol.

[mijo]

Here. Bottle opener.

[ He pops open his own, slips the cap into his pocket and passes the opener, pressing it lightly against the back of the other man's hand so he knows where it is. ]

[minuteofangle]

[ Considerate again. Gabe grunts, taking it, and pops the cap. ]

What kind is it?

[ He tucks the cap away, holding the bottle opener out. Probably won't drink it, but holding a beer makes him look a little more like he belongs. Camouflage. ]

[mijo]

Uh... German-style lager. You picky?

[minuteofangle]

No.

[ He runs his fingers along the rim for a moment, then tips his head back and drinks. Beer is beer. It goes down just fine. Probably wasn't drugged, despite whatever his paranoid brain is saying, but Gabe doubts he's going to be drinking much more. But it's something to hold in his hand, something to do, and that's probably better than lurking like an asshole.

Play the part. Look like you belong. ]

Just like knowing what's in front of me.

[ Information is power and all that shit. No telling when the small details are going to start mattering. ]

So. Apparently we belong here, according to the locals.

[mijo]

[ Nacho speaks low so no one else can hear, but keeps his body language easy. Like he's just having a private chat with his buddy. ]

According to the locals, yes. But they act like it's normal. You have to wonder if they're part of it, or were like us once and brainwashed... I've been thinking of trying to leave. Say I'm going on vacation or something and just drive.

[minuteofangle]

[ That's a whole lot of people to corral and condition, if that's the case. And it doesn't bode well for them, either, since it seems to have worked.

Fun times all around.

He taps his fingers against his beer, thinking. ]

Doubt it'll be that easy. Should probably fortify the car.

[ Worth a shot, though, even just to see what happens. ]

[mijo]

[ Nacho has some idea of how to do that, but it takes connections and supplies he doesn't know how to get here. It'll send up red flags, at the least. ]

Fortify? You think that's realistic?

[minuteofangle]

It's not hard to do.

[ Get a welding torch and some scrap metal, go to town. Gabe doesn't all that much about cars but he's hung around Eli enough to pick up a couple tricks. Add reinforcements, be careful about the weight distribution. He wonders if GPS trackers are a thing in these parts. The tech seems weirdly sparse.

He lifts his beer but doesn't drink. ]

Not hard to get guns around here, either.

[ Funny, that. He and his wife noticed that. ]