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

Sans the (former) Skeleton | OTA

[ribticklers]

A; October 1
[Sans is not having the greatest morning.

First of all, his bed is a bed and not a mattress. It's also a lot smaller, so he rolled right off it and onto the floor. Wait, no, first of all falling off the bed meant he's up way earlier than he wants to be. But third of all--or something--he's in a weird room, in a weird house that definitely isn't is. Fourth of all, at some point he realizes he's all weird and squishy and human. A human who needs glasses, apparently, because he can't see a thing unless he's got it held an arm's length away from him.

But he finds some glasses and he puts on the first shirt that he finds in the closet and stumbles outside and--

He sees the sky.

And he just stands there, on the lawn, like a weirdo in bunny slippers, staring up at nothing.]

B; Gelatin Molds
[It's a good thing someone is providing food, maybe. Sans, at least, accepts the gelatin mold with unrestrained glee. You may catch him bringing the thing back in the direction of the house he apparently lives in now, or you may be one of the unlucky people living there too. Either way, Sans is going to shove it in your face.]

Look at this, it's hilarious. [It's like a moldsmal, but made of (maybe) food!]

C; Always Respect the Dead
[It's funny--Sans doesn't realize the problem at first, because while his jack-o-lanterns are terribly made and aggressively lazy (one which is definitely not doing anything to help just has "sans" written on it in marker), he has them lit up for Halloween because that's part of the fun. But there's no way Sans would think to check if they were still lit, especially when he passes out on the couch.

Anyway, that's how Sans wakes up to three very dead-looking kids smashing the front window and trying with more success than he was prepared for to eat his fucking arm, what the hell. At least, for once in his life, he has a size advantage.

He's still trying to process that he's bleeding and what that means as he ducks outside, slamming the door in the faces of the pack of children.]

Do human kids take Halloween this seriously everywhere? [His laugh is half-hysterical. They're going to be climbing out of that broken window again soon, he's sure of it.]

( gelatin molds. )

[sunborne]

Gross.

[ daylight makes a face, scooting back as if afraid the... the... the thing he has to call 'food', for lack of a better word, might attack him.

a silly thought, he knows, but he also thought it would be silly to be fully human and yet-

he crosses his arms, frowning at the still(!) jiggling plate with clear trepidation. ] Do you think they actually expect us to eat it? I think there's, like, this rule to this thing. How we're expected to give back the gifter's plates and dishes after eating the food.

[ribticklers]

[Sans keeps wiggling the plate, so the food just keeps wiggling.] We've gotta try it, just look at it! [This is the second time he has demanded this food mistake be looked at. But it's very important to him.] It's one of those culinary adventure things.

[Is it, though?]

[sunborne]

I can't not look at it. [ its regally wobbly presence all but demands his attention.

... and much as he shouldn't be eating this stuff, it's not like it'll kill him. not anymore. ] I guess it wouldn't hurt? Auntie Chris was over the moon for this stuff when it was released where I'm from; I always wondered what was so great about this. Stuff.

[ribticklers]

I've never seen food like this where I'm from. [Not on purpose, anyway. When food comes out this wiggly it usually means something went wrong.] So, do we just cut it up or what? Think it'll still wiggle like that?

gelatin

[13thcommander]

[Erwin is out wandering the neighborhood when someone shoves a gelatin mold in his face. He flails at it, startled, but quickly realizes it's... food?]

What is it?

[He pokes at it, and the way it wobbles is weirdly engaging.]

We're supposed to eat these, aren't we?

Re: gelatin

[ribticklers]

[This is the best worst food he's ever seen, maybe. He's thrilled.] That's the polite thing, yeah? Gotta be neighborly. Make sure we gel with the community. [Puns always intended.]

[13thcommander]

[Sorry, buddy, Erwin comes from a remarkably humorless world, and that pun is going to go straight over his head. Once you teach him the ways of punning, though... oh god, the dad jokes. The endless, shitty dad jokes...]

How?

[Do you just reach out and stick your hand in it and then eat it? Or is this something that requires a fork and knife?]

[Erwin uses his head to gesture behind them.]

My house is over there, if you want to use the kitchen. You can cut yourself a slice of it.

[ribticklers]

[Sans's note to self: make the next pun even more obvious. BUT FIRST: this gelatin.]

If I'm usin' your kitchen, you should get a piece, too. [Also Sans wants to make other people eat this thing too.]

A (wow, another sans RPer, nice choice friendo)

[zenryokubatankyu]

[When the skeleton-turned-human reaches his front lawn, there's a matching equally baffled looking man staring into the sky aimlessly. Osomatsu, in turn, woke up today on the wrong side of the bed. Kind of literally. Because there was someone else in his bed - not a kotatsu - and he distinctly did not know that person but they were sure there anyway.

So that was a bit of a trip. Moreso when he found out that the house he was in wasn't his own, and his brothers? Missing. All of 'em.

It's worth noting the biggest contrast is that he immediately stumbled to the kitchen, then to the fridge, and took out a beer bottle, and decided to take that with him because he sure needed it. That was a certainty. He ended up outside for about five minutes, wordlessly staring into the sky, getting disparaging looks from random citizens for - gasp - day drinking, and at the sixth minute he was outside his neighbor appeared and now it just seemed like they were vibing together.

As one does in these kinds of situations.

Osomatsu slowly lowered his head from looking at the sky, and his eyes wander over to his neighbor.]

You look confused.

[He states, in a fashion that implies so am I, if his blank expression weren't enough.]

sometimes you have to play a skeleton

[ribticklers]

[Sans only notices someone else is outside partaking in this sky-staring party when they talk to him. And so one blank expression meets another while Sans realizes he can't just say I've never seen the sky before. If you say that to a human, you'd definitely sound crazy. He tries to stuff his hands into his hoodie pockets before realizing he has neither a hoodie nor pockets in this shirt at all. Well, that sucks.]

I'm havin' a kind of rough morning. [Maybe this guy is, too?]

[zenryokubatankyu]

[Osomatsu as well almost instinctively stuffs his own hands into his hoodie pockets...before realizing the same conundrum. Hm.]

You too, huh? [A hint of a smile crosses his face. Rough was an understatement. He really wasn't sure what was going on, but there was a sense that something was off about all of this. But if he said that, he'd sound crazy, right?

But it honestly felt uncanny...] Yeah. There seems to be a lot off this morning - I'm glad it's not just me.

[He takes a swig of his beer.] Maybe it's just this area. I just got here, so I wouldn't know. But I guess y'know that since we haven't met yet.

[ribticklers]

[Man, if Sans weren't in the middle of some weird human town on the surface where he has somehow had his soul transplanted into a human body or something, he wouldn't mind doing some drinking right now.] Actually, I'm new to the area, too. Just got here. [In an extremely literal sense.] Guess that means we get to call it weird and nobody's gonna get mad at us.

C

[koroshite]

[They would be climbing through the broken window, yes, at least if it were left open. It seems Rachel is set on fixing that problem though.

There's blood smeared on her cheek, more splashed on her dress. And tucked into one of the pockets on the front of her skirt is one of the carving knives from the kitchen, it's sturdy handle poking out.

The screech and squeak of the side table garnered from near the door itself is masked by the smashing, the gurgling, the rest of the chaos. And somehow even now the only real emotion in Rachel's tone is her puffed out breaths.]

Usually lights out means no more trick or treating from that house.

[She knows the traditions even if she didn't get to do much trick or treating herself.]

sans isn't a skeleton I just need this emotion

[ribticklers]

[Sans's eyes are wide, his mouth open. As a human, he really has no poker face at all. Everything just moves too much. Humans--when they get hurt, it's really messy, isn't it? And here's this kid with a knife, and Sans can feel his stomach churn and wow, that's terrible, too, but actually, he thinks this kid saved him?

His arm is still bleeding, but he's completely forgotten about that for the moment.]

Uh. I guess they didn't get the memo. [Heh...]

[koroshite]

[She doesn't seem to have a reply for the joke at the moment. The side table is finally heaved into place and while they can't get through the broken window with such ease now it doesn't mean they can't try other spots.

Rachel pauses there to catch her breath, stepping away from the window and any reaching hands as she does so. At least the kids are still somewhat dazed from their abrupt face-meet-door experience.

Her brow has furrowed by now as she looks back to the man himself. It's almost like she's really noticing him for the first time. She swipes at the blood on her cheek with the back of her hand before she abruptly turns even as she speaks.]

I tried to go out the back door. They're there as well. We'll have to go out one of the windows.

[She plucks the knife out of her pocket without hesitation. At least that explains the blood already on her and her clothing.]

A!

[bigheaded]

Someone -- a kid, looks about 12, also bespectacled -- comes up next to him and looks up at the sky, too.

"I know, right? It's actually blue. The air pollution levels must be really low around here."

[ribticklers]

Sans can remember the bits of sky he could see from through the barrier being blue in the daytime, and he remembers learning about a blue sky, but he guesses the last time anyone updated those books was ages ago, so maybe the cities look different now? That's where air pollution is, right? It's not like he ever did any reading about air pollution. He shouldn't be surprised at seeing a human--this has to be a human town, and anyway he's in a human body somehow--but it still feels weird.

"Must be an out of the way town, then."

[bigheaded]

"Seriously," Dib agrees. "Maybe we're out on an island. Or we've time-traveled into the past! Or maybe we're in another dimension where my dad actually gave everyone clean energy instead of getting mad about ice cream. And a robot eye."

Re: Sans the (former) Skeleton | OTA

[lookprofessor]

[So, Luke doesn't mind going to school. He'd rather sleep longer in the morning, and stay up later at night, because he's always been self-directed. But he liked to learn, and school has always been a place to do that--

Except, this isn't London, that was not his mum who woke him up, and his not!father had shoved him out the door after a cheerful greeting that he's sure his actual father had never used before.

Ever.

So he's on his way to school, and finds someone standing outside in slippers and staring at the sky in open confusion, and Luke has to wonder if this guy just as confused as he is. He stops at the far edge of the lawn, and tips his hat.]

Good morning, sir. [The heavy British accent, and maybe the hesitancy of his greeting, hopefully are enough to give him away without being blatantly obvious.] It's...um, nice weather today, isn't it?

[ribticklers]

[Sans has never heard that accent in the Underground--of course, the human world is supposed to be pretty big, so there's probably a bunch of ways humans talk. He also can't help but feel a bit weird at someone calling him "sir"; it's not the first time a kid has done that, but man, it never feels like it fits.]

Yeah. Blue sky and everything. [Grass and trees and no snow to be seen.] You, uh--goin' to school?

[Sans knows that's what human kids are supposed to do during the day; Toriel has talked about it. Still, everything is so weird. Sans definitely still just looks kind of confused about everything happening right now.

(Also, he's still in bunny slippers and pajama pants, and neither of those go with a Hawaiian shirt at all.)]

[lookprofessor]

[Luke blinks, looks over his shoulder at the backpack he's carrying, and then back at Sans.

Right.]

Um...I guess so.

[He had been hoping this would be straightforward, at least enough that he might be able to guess if he's the only one out of sorts or not. That doesn't seem like it's going to be the case.]

...I don't know where school is, though. I, um, [Luke is a very bad liar, including when he's trying to tell the truth, but only sort of.] We...just moved here?

Oct 1st

[purplejaguareye]

[Kipo watches Sans for a moment, before casually approaching him.]

I’m guessing you don’t know what’s going on here either, do you?

[ribticklers]

[It's not like this kid is wrong, but Sans is trying not to let on exactly how much he doesn't know what's going on here. But at least this suggests he's not the only one. He pulls his gaze away from the sky, at least.]

It's, uh, been a pretty weird morning. [He would still rather be asleep. He also hasn't yet entirely ruled out that he's having a particularly vivid lucid dream.] How's yours going?

[purplejaguareye]

Oh not bad for being kidnapped, put in a totally weird house with pictures of me that I don't remember being in, and oh apparently all humans live on the surface now? Where are all the mutes??

[whew that was a mouthful. Kipo rubs her forehead.]

Sorry. It's. You're right, it's been a really weird morning.