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memesville2020-10-25 11:03 pm
robbies) wrote in memesville2020-10-25 11:03 pm
Entry tags:
TDM - OCTOBER 2020
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.
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.
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? |
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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.
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.
Desmond Miles | Assassin's Creed | OTA
Desmond remembers pain like nothing else he'd experienced. No injury, no stabbing, no gun wound, nothing could compare to what felt like electricity burning every part of his body from the inside out. His world didn't black out soon enough but it did mercifully soon. And then he wakes up, blurrily, no longer feeling like he was made of fire but nothing is familiar.
"Dad?," he murmurs first. Did he come back and get him? What about the others? This room looks like nothing familiar and he's not wearing his clothes. The sun is so bright and he rolls out of bed way from it, still feeling faint, and then struggles to get to his feet and figure out where he's at. If there was someone else in the bedroom, Desmond doesn't notice, instead he stumbles down the stairs, squinting at this odd place. The photos make no sense. The old television makes no sense. Where did they bring him now?
He moves out of the door to look around and the light is blinding yet again, causing him to just sit on the doorstop, his head pounding, so very confused. "What the fuck," is all he manages to mumble.
Don't be a square!
Things don't make more sense and Desmond's fairly certain he's stuck in some kind of in-between consciousness world again. Sometimes when looking at the pictures he starts to think maybe this is real, but it's complicated, and his head feels like it's always swimming these days. He confusedly takes all the food that is delivered by eerily smiling people. He never grew up in a neighborhood, let alone one straight out of an old TV sitcom.
He figures maybe he could get some answers or a bead on what the hell his mind or outside forces are doing to him now if he goes out. Desmond isn't shy by nature so he is only cautious when he approaches the unexpected block party because this place has been slowly creeping him out since he arrived. He's used to tending a bar and making small talk with everyone who comes in, but it's been awhile, he's rusty.
Someone hands him food (or did he unknowingly get it himself?) but when the person moves to put the hat on his head, he reaches out and snatches the wrist sharply. His instincts are still fast and defensive, and he's not holding it all that nicely. He pushes them aware quickly and then realizes he's not exactly acting in the spirit, is he?
"Sorry. Um. New?" If anything the lack of real reactions to his behavior deepens the weirdness. Desmond moves back over to the food table.
"Where's the booze. I need a vat of it," he asks the nearest person, whether or not they're part of this group.
Always Respect the Dead
Desmond has never had a Halloween before. That's not a thing where he's from. They used to do something fun at the bar for it, decorations and specialized drinks, but no trick-or-treating. He wanders the neighborhood curiously, having found the outskirts of the town but not gone anywhere, and he tries to resist being given any candy.
"No, it's cool, I'm not." A kid. Trick-or-treating. No one ever takes no apparently. "Fucking hell." He mutters under his breath and takes as few things back. He doesn't look at them when he gets back to the house, or the television that might've been a warning. He's not at his best currently.
When the doorbell rings he winces because he for sure doesn't think he has any candy for them. He does have what he was given so he figures he'll do his best, opening the door to find what has to be the start of a legitimate horror movie standing in front of him. "Those are some ... real good costumes ...." They seem like they plan on coming in and Desmond's concern starts to rise. "Uh, no, here, wait."
They push their way in and since they're kids (creepy as fuck kids) he just steps back. Then they pounce. Luckily his instincts and skills are still intact, even if it took him a bit to realize the situation. If his Eagle Sight was working he would've already known, but nothing's working quite right. Desmond dodges and moves smoothly, the attacks being avoided rather than hit back. But he can't do it forever. After they manage to land a blow and pain snaps through him, so does his control snap.
Desmond fights back, breaking limbs, still trying not to kill, but they don't seem to even care when he twists arms and slams down knees. "Night of the Living Dead, goddamnit." He snags two by the back of the neck and flings them right out the door, following behind to try and get them out of the house and after him. He notices there are houses with flames lit and people inside doing just fine, so zigs and zags and pounds on one of them. Will they let him in?
Wildcard
[Message me on plurk if you have questions/ideas.]
always respect the dead.
no subject
His shirt is ripped but it doesn't look like they broke skin, just tried to claw at him. ]
Desmond.
[ He replies and moves to look out the window to the side. The little creeps did follow him there, but they seem to be stopped, watching. Waiting. ]
Don't be square!
She's amused though. It's certainly the type of gathering that she thinks would drive someone to seek something like that out.
"If you asked our hosts, I'd imagine they'd be quite confused. Oh, but I think I may have seen some bottles over at one of the tables."
She'll try and be a little helpful even if she isn't planning on indulging in something like that.
"Certainly not a vat's worth, but we all have to make do with our current situation, don't we?"
no subject
Desmond really and truly hates this. Arguably, getting drunk in this situation is a terrible idea. Who knows when these weirdos won't start something bad up, but on the other hand. He's not particularly interested in being sober for all of this. If he can just take a bottle and go back to his fake house, that's not a terrible idea.
He looks very out of place at this gathering from his appearance to his posture to his lack of pleasant expression or smiles.
"Give me one second." She helped! He does move away only to return with one of said bottles. Apparently they also don't notice shit like this, so he may be alright. "If I get offered any more gelatin I'm going to lose it."
no subject
She frowns, after taking a moment to find the right word. Something that isn't too harsh towards their neighbors' culinary misadventures. She's not quite sure unappetizing is right, but it's what she's settled on.
"I recently received a rather questionable dish created by someone's aunt. Truth be told, I haven't found myself brave enough to try it yet."
arrival
Desmond's next-door neighbor had also come out to examine the day. He's standing on his own stoop, still in his bathrobe and apparently not the least bit self-conscious about it, arms folded over his chest as he squints in confusion at the picture-perfect street. He glances back behind him at the house, as if to confirm that it's still actually there, and not something he'd imagined.
"I really can't complain about the accommodations, mind, but comfortable as they may be, that really doesn't go far in explaining -" he gestures with one hand to the street, the houses, the environment in general "- all of this."
no subject
"This is a weird ass hallucination." And he really does think it's one. He can't actually see this as real yet. It could be a hallucination, he's had plenty of those, or his mind going crazy before he dies, or this is a version of hell he didn't expect. It's not as if he has all the answers, but dying does put a pin on the possibilities here.
"Do you have the pictures in your house too?" Desmond isn't to a point yet where he even knows there are creepy neighbors, assuming they're both in this situation. There were pictures of him, he saw them, with someone else and kids, as if from a wedding book or whatever.
no subject
"Yes, several." He shakes his head, mystified. "Incredibly detailed, and so small - whoever painted them must have been working on them for years." He pauses. "An alarming prospect, considering the subject matter."