TDM - JANUARY 2021

[robbies]

TEST DRIVE MEME - JANUARY 2021

Good to the last gasp.
CW: gaslighting, potential mentions and depictions of trauma and other problematic material, body horror, dolls, violence

---

“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 outside of it carrying faintly, it all becomes very clear—

Something is horribly wrong.

---

JANUARY 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, the morning news is playing. The newscaster, a man in a gray suit and horn-rimmed glasses, keeps shuffling his paperwork on his desk as black and white footage of people in the midst of celebration — throwing streamers, wearing paper hats, toasting flutes of bubbly liquid — is interspersed between his droning report: ”New Year's Eve was in full swing last night as citizens from all over Santa Rosita came together to ring in 1961. A surge in ginger ale and sparkling cider beverage sales was reported by Honeybees as early as eight o'clock in the evening, a boon for the store…“

---

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. CLOWN AROUND. If December was a time for sweet treats and good food, January is the month where everyone is trying to unload their leftovers. Who better to enjoy them than you, the newest family on the block? Your neighbors have quite a bit of food to share: Throughout the month, they'll stop by to say hello, bringing a new sugary dish with them each time. As always, jello molds are a staple. One plate turns into three turns into five, and by the end of the first week of January, you're likely to end up with a collection of jiggling pink, green, and orange lumps taking up space in your fridge. From mountains of Whip 'n Chill to Broken Window Glass cake, you'd be forgiven in thinking that there's no end to it. And yet, there's the occasional exception. Someone comes by with a Bundt cake lathered in vanilla icing and topped with rainbow sprinkles. Were it not for the giant candy clown head topping it, it would almost look good enough to eat. "There's a rumor going around that you've been a bit under the weather, so I thought this would cheer you up!" they say, right before thrusting the technicolor nightmare into your hands, the clown's dead pink frosted eyes staring up at you. Your neighbor is quick to tell you to eat it while the icing is still fresh (you never know who might lick it off when you're not looking, eh kids?), but not that the clown itself is made out of styrofoam. That's something you'll just have to find out for yourself when you take it back inside and start chowing down!

B. SNOW DAY

What awakens you one cold Friday morning isn't the blare of your alarm clock or your family getting ready to start their day or even the chilly air that tickles your toes as they poke out from the bottom of your covers, but the sound of hooting and hollering outside your window. The sight that awaits you when you go to investigate is something out of a Norman Rockwell painting: The entire neighborhood is outside, playing and carrying on in the snow. While everyone was sleeping, Santa Rosita got four inches of snow, more than enough for the schools to close but not enough to stop everyone from enjoying it.

And enjoy it they are! Children build snowmen in their front yards while their fathers work on shoveling their driveways. Most, however, are busy erecting snow forts in their yards and the middle of the street, running back and forth as they collect ammunition for an ongoing snowball fight that takes up half of the neighborhood. Nobody is spared from their assault, not even the adults, and especially not the newly arrived ones who leave the house. Good luck getting the mail, mom and dad!

"Come on! There's plenty of snow!" one young boy yells at you over a snowdrift. "You can join my team!"

"Nuh-uh!" another boy shoots back. "You can join my team!"

And on and on it goes. Well, for the pacifists among you, making snow angels is always an option!

---

THROUGHOUT JANUARY.

CW: gaslighting, potential mentions and depictions of trauma, and other problematic material

There’s no business like show business! And business is hopping at the Starlight Drive-In, which has been boasting about its all-new film premiering on January 2nd and playing all month long. The critics are raving, the townspeople are flocking, and plans to go to the drive-in seems to be all anyone can talk about. “Make sure you get there early to see the serials,” many of them suggest, eyes wide with excitement. “I couldn’t look away!” Whether you come with your family, your friends, or simply come on your own, the lot is packed, Robbies and normal townsfolk alike beaming as they hook the individual speakers onto their cars. Apropos of the cold weather, the concession stand has added seasonal items to their menu, serving up hot chocolate and kettle corn in addition to its usual soda and popcorn. Watching a movie against a backdrop of gently falling snow while you're sipping on steaming chocolate and melted marshmallows has a certain je nais se quoi to it that even you have to admit is appealing. At last, when it's finally dark enough to start, the projector clicks on from the booth in the back of the lot and the movie begins. A. COMING ATTRACTIONS. The movie, Curse of the Doll People, is a horror flick. A real chill-o-rama, starring actors you've never heard of playing a group of archeologists who unknowingly trigger a deadly curse that sets a group of murderous living dolls upon them. The poster pasted on the ticket booth promises it'll be the most fun you'll have screaming. Unfortunately, you have to sit through several minutes of previews first. The coming attractions aren't anything special — a bunch of westerns, a romance, even a beach musical. Far from being bored to tears like you might be, the people in the cars around you are glued to the screen, popping snacks into their mouths and whispering their commentary among themselves. The movie is the reason why everyone's here, sure, but you don't just get one flick out of going to the pictures! There's also the serials, little 5—10 minute long chapter plays that tell a story in pieces. Nothing can beat those, and when the first one starts, everyone sits in rapt attention as if it were the feature presentation itself. But as the scene opens up on a sight that is instantly familiar to you, and your own face stares back at you from the projection screen, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary film. You watch your memories play out in grainy black and white footage, aired for all the world to see. Or perhaps not — though you may not realize it, the movie playing out on the screen differs from person to person. No one sees the same thing. The person next to you might see one of their worst fears come to life, whether imagined or real, practical or fantastic. You might see one of the worst moments of your life — the death of a friend, your hated enemy bringing you to the brink of death, your absolute lowest point — exactly the way you remember it... save for the way your double on the screen occasionally turns to face the audience, staring directly at you with a knowing smirk and a wink. Or the way your loved ones will sometimes go off-script, gazing at you with pleading eyes as they beg you to help them. The people of Santa Rosita will see an exciting battle between two pirate ships, swashbuckling and cannon fire in place of the traumas you're witnessing. When the serial ends on a cliffhanger, much to the disappointment of everyone around you, it's almost a mercy. "Tune in next week for the thrilling second part!" Well, you will, won't you?

---

END OF THE MONTH.

CW: body horror, dolls, violence

Aside from the horror of the drive-in, January might seem to be passing calmly... until one night, something changes. In the middle of the night, once you fall asleep in your comfortable bed (or on your couch, or with your head lolling against the kitchen table), a nightmare comes to you. The shift from whatever dreams you were having to the cold, dark void you find yourself standing in happens gradually and quietly. So too does the image that plays out in your mind's eye: From out of the darkness, a featureless mannequin stands ramrod straight, facing you with its arms pressed rigidly to its sides. It has no face, no identifying marks, no features at all. It's a blank slate in every sense of the word... until it isn't. Slowly, the material of the lower half of its face begins to split as a searing pain tears through your own, as if invisible fingers are ripping your lips off inch by inch. The slit on the doll's face widens and deepens until, finally, mercifully, its new mouth opens as yours disappears, replaced by a flat, smooth barrier of skin. Like it was never there to begin with. The pain returns, this time in your arms and neck — right as the doll's own begin to jerk. Your joints are hardening, seizing up as the doll's arms go from minutely twitching to slowly flexing. While every nerve and bone from your fingertips all the way up to your shoulders grows heavy, the doll tilts its head and looks down at its hands, as if seeing them for the first time. By the time it takes its first step, you've taken your last: the pain has spread to your feet, ankles and toes hardening and locking into place. Every part of you is claimed this way; what isn't taken by force simply fades from your body and shifts into being onto the doll's, your skin replacing its cloth body, your clothing dressing it, your hair filling out its head. Your tongue goes numb as the licks its newfound lips, coarse cloth and batting surging up from your lungs and all the way to the back of your throat. By the time it's over, you can't move. You can no longer breathe. All you can do is stare at the perfect, eyeless double of yourself standing before you. As your eyes begin to burn, the last thing you see before everything goes black is the sly curve of a smile — your smile — before the face wearing it turns away and walks back into the darkness. Luckily, you wake up to a room full of sunshine and the distant sound of traffic as the neighborhood gets ready for another beautiful day. The morning air feels cold and dry on your skin. You're you. As much as you've always been. Right?

A. DOPPELGANGER.

It's the kind of morning that makes you want to sing. Where the sky was once dull and grey, it's now a deep blue. Barring the usual hustle and bustle on the streets of Shadyside, the first sound that greets you when you wake up is the steady beat of water trickling outside your window as the snow begins to gently melt under the rays of the sun. You may even hear the chirp of a bird! January, in all its dreariness, is nearly at an end.

When you leave the room to go downstairs — or upstairs, if you slept in the living room — the house is quiet and flooded with sunlight. With how perfectly silent everything is, it's easy to mistake the calm for solitude and think you're alone.

This is not the case.

Waiting to greet you is a familiar figure. If you go downstairs, you'll see it sitting in your kitchen with its head bowed and its arms hanging limply at its sides; if upstairs, lying in your bed on its back. There's no mistaking who it is. Even at a distance, their hair, face, clothes and features all instantly recognizable, and you know who it is before you even fully register their presence:

You.

Motionless, your doppelganger looks more puppet than person. Its chest is still, not a single breath leaving its mouth. Its eyes are closed. They snap open when you get closer to it, wide enough to see the whites, as its head jerks up to look straight at you. In a staccato imitation of your voice, it chirps at you:

"Hi!"

"Good morning!"

"Hello!"

"Rise and shine!"

Your clone is a good imitation, but not a perfect one. Its movements are stiff and uncoordinated, like a marionette being commanded by unseen strings. Though its cheeks are rosy, its skin is pale and almost glossy with the texture of newly polished porcelain. None of these setbacks bother it in the very least. If left alone, it goes about the house mimicking your morning routine, though given how awkward just walking is for it, it's almost certain to do a very bad job. Still, it tries its hardest, following you all day around the neighborhood, trying to imitate your movements — all with a smile!

That is, until you become aggressive with it.

It doesn't take much to set your doppelganger off — a simple shove will do it. When that happens, its eyes will do the impossible and open even wider, its mouth yawning into a wail that pitches louder and louder. That's the point when it will lunge at you. Its hands will try to go for your throat, but not always. It's resourceful enough to improvise with whatever it has around it, whether that be a kitchen knife, a paperweight, or even a letter opener. Luckily for you, they're fragile. Just hitting them is enough to crack and chip away at their skin. With enough strength, their limbs can even come off. Unluckily, they don't stay down for long; even a severed appendage can be popped back into its proper ball-jointed place.

All the while, they never stop childishly whining and shrieking at you.

"Not nice!"

"Why are you so mean?!"

"Not nice, not nice, NOT NICE!"

The only way to shut them up for good is to keep pummeling them until they're nothing but a pile of doll parts. But be thorough — even a mouth that's nothing but a shard of porcelain can still talk.

---

OOC INFO

Hello, and welcome to We're Still Here's second 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 February 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. Additionally, starting today comments made to the TDM will now count towards Activity Check. Current players are permitted to use up to five comments from it for this month's Activity Check — half of the required amount to pass. The other five must be made within the game's communities.

If you would like to have January or other winter-themed 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.

A note about the drive-in theater: Players are in full control over what memories, phobias, or fears the serials before the movie will depict. You can also specify whether or not other characters will be able to see your character's serial. Be sure to label your threads with relevant content warnings if needed!

---

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Comments

natasha romanov / marvel comics

[latrodectus]

I. January 1st

[ Natasha's first impulse is to try to make it work.

Her training prepared her for this— specifically for this, deep cover domestic work. She remembers the façades of the false streets she had to walk down, practicing her accent. It was an assignment many of the other women wanted, the glamour of America, the chance to die for one's country. Natasha hadn't known what she wanted, back then.

Now she knows she wants out. But she has to figure out where she is, first. Why she's here. She studies the photos, sweeps the room for cameras, careful not to disturb the figure in the other bed. It isn't long before one of her housemates find her, though, staring into the mirror, eyes empty as glass.

But then she turns to face a stranger, and smiles, showing teeth. ]

Hi, honey.

[ Try to make it work. ]

II. Coming Attractions

[ The light of the falling sun turned all that it touched to gold, gilding the lily of everything. In the grainy archive footage, you can't tell.

The footage is of two young women, driving along the road.

"I cant say that I understand why the KGB is rescuing people from Castro. But we must serve, even when we do not understand," says the dark haired one, the passenger.

The other woman replies. "No, Marina. We are agents and we have made a choice. We serve. But we are not puppets." Her eyes leave the road for a moment, to watch the other take a quick drink from a flask.

"For the nerves," she says, offering it to her companion. Natasha— because it's Natasha who is driving— shakes her head.

"Ah yes," says Marina. "Brave Nat doesn't get nervous."

But then Natasha looks directly at the road, at the audience, at herself. "I do, Marina. I certainly do."

Outside the picture, at the drive in, the color drains from her face. She doesn't leave her seat, but glances around, to see how the other patrons are reacting.

And she begins to plot her sabotage of the projector. ]

III. Coppélia

[ It doesn't take long for Natasha to shove her doppleganger, setting off the shrieking doll-bomb. She's in her yard when it happens; certainly the neighbors can hear.

It isn't long before the thing grabs a nearby garden hose and tries to use it as a makeshift garrote, grabbing Natasha with a surprising strength. ]

Hnnn.

[ She elbows the thing in what might be its chest, eyes searching the surroundings for an ally, a weapon, a witness. ]


IV. Wildcard

[ Feel free to throw a snowball at her, or text her, or whatever, really. Anyone is free to see her little movie, or not! I am elsinore for plotting. ]

III

[sonicsiren]

[Beyond Dinah's own doppelganger, Natasha's isn't the first one she's come across. On one level, it's nice to know that she wasn't the only one who had found an unpleasant surprise in her, er, home that morning. She's stops on the sidewalk, watching intently, a bag from the local hardware store in her hand. Dinah's already reaching into it, pulling out a hammer from the bag.]

Good morning, neighbor. Need a little help?

[latrodectus]

[ Natasha has two options, here: continue playing helpless, and hope the new neighbor can cover it, or she can take the thing down herself, and hope no one else needs to get involved.

Or, she would have two choices. Instinct takes over, and she flips the doll-thing over her own shoulders, onto the ground, using the hose as a leverage point. There's a crashing noise— it's arm is broken.

But it still gets up. ]

Not nice, not nice, NOT NICE!

[ That's true, at least.

After one ragged breath, hands still twisted around the garden hose, she looks at the stranger with the hammer and nods. ]

Yeah. That would be nice.

[sonicsiren]

[If there's one thing Dinah's always appreciated, it's another woman who can handle herself in a heated, troublesome situation. The redhead clearly knows how to fight, and though Dinah can hold her own in a combat situation, she finds herself glad that she's not the one facing off against the other woman.]

Nice for you, not so nice for your new not-friend. Here!

[She gently tosses the hammer at Natasha and then leans against the side of the house, casually watching the fight.]

Taking out the mouth first helped me a lot. Didn't have to hear it whine or scream or complain. I know, on a living creature, that'd be cruel and inhumane, but whatever this thing is - it's not human. Just wildly creepy.

[latrodectus]

Thanks.

[ Good thing the doll creature is missing an arm, now. Natasha drops the garden hose and catches the hammer. She takes Dinah's advice and smashes it in the jaw, first. It's ugly, but a little bit satisfying, too.

After the screaming dies down, with a few more determined hammer blows, she looks back up at her neighbor. ]

It is wildly creepy. [ Not that far out of the ordinary, though. She's dealt with robot doubles before, at least. ] You had one too?

[sonicsiren]

In my kitchen. It hadn't mimicked me for more than a minute before I was going at it with a rolling pin - and then a frying pan. And then one of the chairs from my kitchen table. And then with its own arm. Soon we were flying out the kitchen window, going at it.

[Dinah smiles a twisted little smile at the memory. God, it had felt so good to hit something and work her frustrations out.]

I'm still not sure why it was there, but it's clearly sent to mock some of us who aren't as, ah, native to Santa Rosita as some of our neighbors are. The implications of that, while fuzzy, are also more than a little unsettling.

I'm Dinah, by the way. Hi.

[latrodectus]

Natasha.

[ And though she's smashed the thing's mouth, other parts of the body are still— alive is probably not the word, but moving. So she starts taking the hammer to other body parts.

She can do this while keeping a conversational tone, evidently. ]

Well, I suppose it's nice to have confirmation we're being watched.

[sonicsiren]

It's nice to meet you. Wish it was under less crazy circumstances.

[Granted, Dinah couldn't remember the last time she'd ever been in a circumstance that wasn't crazy.]

Watched. Toyed with. Have you been to the drive-in lately? Apparently they've been playing some real thrillers specifically made to unsettle some of us.

i.

[trifold]

No.

[ --Comes the hissed, sharp reply, from someone who's handling this all a lot less stoically than she is, and was thusly just startled badly by the sudden appearance of another person in the house.

None of this is right, and his bright blue-brown eyes reflect that wildly, darting from all corners of the room, to her, everything, restless and disturbed. In one of Naberius's hands he's wielding a broom, the only sword-like object he was able to find in the hastily checked closets upstairs. He points the broom at her accusingly like a fencer challenging his opponent, but it takes him a good thirty or so more seconds to work out what to say. Or, no, ask.

This isn't what he imagined-- this isn't at all how he expected this to be. He glares at her, eyes wide and furious and frantic, then demands in a loud sputtering whisper the only words he can manage so far: ]

That's-- presumptuous.

[latrodectus]

Is it?

[ Well, good. He's not in on it either. That's good to know— and a relief, honestly. But it's also a complication. Especially if he can't hide the fact that he's not supposed to be here.

She looks him up and down, clearly assessing, eyes sharp as razors. Natasha doesn't seem offended by his casual rejection. And then she walks out of the bathroom, ignoring the broom— whatever that's supposed to be— clearly expecting him to follow. ]

Explain this, then.

[ The pictures of them, on the wall. Chaste, presentable. But obviously coupled. ]

[trifold]

[ He keeps standing there in position, frowning after Natasha even once she's walking away, but then -- warily -- he lowers his broom/sword and follows her, stubbornly refusing to look at or explain she's indicating. At first. A few moments pass before he gets curious and does look, but because he wants to, not because she told him to (Naberius shoots her a brief sidelong glare to somehow communicate that fact). ]

It's... [ He takes one of the pictures down and stares at it. ] These things can be doctored, can't they? What are those called... "deepfakes."

[ Which makes no sense, but nothing right now makes sense, so he's confident about bitchily claiming the honor of "first, and by default most correct, theory so far." (Other than the theory that everything he's experiencing right now is a figment of whatever mental prison cell Ianthe's keeping him in, which to be fair, would be so completely just like her.) ]

I don't remember any wedding, do you?

[latrodectus]

[ He's young, isn't he? The way he carries himself is so sure of himself. And the broom. Compensating for something. ]

No. I don't believe it happened. At least, not the way these pictures show it. But how long do you think it would take, to make forgeries like these?

[ The other question that lies beneath that is: how long have they been here, really? She wonders if his experience was the same as hers, waking up here after an ordinary night. She doesn't consider the possibility that his soul has been stuffed into someone else's body in order to gain stick-handling skills. That's very weird. ]

[trifold]

[ He scoffs dismissively on reflex, but the question isn't a bad one, so he elects to not actually dismiss it, growing silent and troubled-looking as thinking tends to make him do.

The forgeries are good. He's definitely never seen fakes like these before, even the expressions are... well, he would never look at someone the way he's looking at his "wife" in these photos, with a fond sort of devotion that differs from, yet also somehow rivals, the way he dutifully looks at Coronabeth, but maybe if he had a real wife he would look at her like this.

But we'll never know now, will we, therefore: fake as shit, they clearly must be getting fucked with somehow, because he refuses to believe what happens after cavaliers get absorbed is that they end up in the middle ages with a crummy house and a family they don't even know-- though he didn't have much time to actually think about what happens before it happened, to be fair. And Ianthe would 100% fuck with him if she could, he has no doubt.

His eyes narrow, mouth curved indecisively, before he tosses the photo aside and looks back at Natasha. ]

I don't know how long it takes to Phoboshop a few pictures, but our personal information alone-- more than only one night, that's for sure. Who are you anyway?

[latrodectus]

[ "Phoboshop"? ]

Natasha. [ It's a risk, in a situation like this, to use her real name, or part of it. It is a very Russian name, even though she her accent General American. ]

Even if we've only just gotten here, something like this took a while to build.

[trifold]

[ Maybe the one (and definitely only) good thing about Natasha waking up with Naberius is that he has not a clue the significance of her name, nor Russia, nor even what Russia is. All of this is beyond ancient history to him, and certainly not any history he'd care about. ]

Naberius the Third.

[ He opts to keep it simple for now, though it's difficult to leave off "Prince," but he's politically savvy enough to understand that would only make him a more valuable prisoner (hostage?) if this isn't all just some mental mind game.

(Which it probably still is, but.) ]

If it's all even real. [ He wraps on the dresser lightly with his knuckles. ] Which I doubt.

i.

[the_caped_crusader]

You must be new here.

[ bruce's response is dry in return, concentrating more on the retro coffee maker than the uncanny doll-like smile from his 'wife.' ]

For someone who just arrived, you picked up pretty fast on the uptake. Not your first time, I take it?

[latrodectus]

[ Well, shit. There are a few things to do when you get made: lie, play dumb, run. Natasha thinks she could probably make it out the window before he could catch her, but even when it was the tactically sound option, she always hated running. ]

My first time what?

[ This is a real question. She still doesn't know what she's dealing with here, and he, implicitly, does. ]

I can improvise.

[the_caped_crusader]

Yeah, I'll bet.

[ his smirk is visible only from the corner of his lips as they turn up, face still down towards the coffee maker. in a moment, he removes the pot and pours two cups, setting one across the other side of the table before he takes a seat. ]

I'm in the same boat. Most of us are. You'll be able to recognize the ones who aren't pretty quickly. It might not be great, but the coffee's not drugged.

[latrodectus]

Thanks.

[ She takes the coffee, and doesn't smile. Too many possibilities running through her head— and her demeanor's obviously shifted from before. ]

You know, that's a line that most girls find suspicious. [ But she does take a slow sip of the coffee. She'll have to eat something here eventually. ] How long?

[the_caped_crusader]

Mm. A little over a month now. It seems like longer...

[ he takes a sip from his cup, brow knitted. ]

You know how to carry yourself; I don't really care how or why, but my recommendation would be to keep it up. Whoever or whatever brought us here wants us to play along, but I think you'll find out quickly this is anything but normal.

[latrodectus]

[ She doesn't taste anything but coffee in the coffee, so, point for you, mysterious stranger. ]

Feels like longer, because things keep happening? Or because they're screwing with time?

[ But of course, she has no proof or even evidence that there's a "they" involved, yet. She's just a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

Natasha hates that she can't rule out time travel. ]

II ; tw execution depiction, guns, allusion to freedom summer murders

[m1895]

The scene that presents itself to Vasiliy's eyes alone begins with the echo and scuff of jackboots on a cement floor. Pan left, slowly—a second set of feet in a pair of dirty tapochki take unsteady steps forward, as though leading the way. They aren't; the establishing shot makes that much clear: the man in the nightclothes and house slippers is being led with a revolver pointed at the small of his back as his shuddering gasps and half-sobs echo down the corridor.

The man in the uniform wrenches open the heavy metal door to an empty room with a drain at its center and shoves him through the threshold. Tears gather under the point of his chin and drip onto the cement. Muted, as though heard from the other side of the door, his executioner reads what Vasiliy already knows is a list of charges, then his sentence.

The man on the screen looks over his shoulder and smiles at himself through the tears.

A bang, harsh and loud, rings through the confined space, followed by a muted thump. The camera follows a rivulet of blood as it snakes its way toward the drain. In the audience, Vasiliy swallows back vomit.

[ His heart races; when he looks down at his hands, they're damp and shaking. All of these people know. All of these people are watching the most intimate, visceral moment of his life, or the end of it, at least, opening his mind like a corpse at the center of an anatomical theater. This revelation is a horror movie for them. The Other, living among them, occupying a normal human body like someone they would grant personhood—Invasion of the Body Snatchers realized.

He needs to leave this room, and this town, and go somewhere safe before the FBI's dredging his Communist body up from the bottom of a muddy lake. Vasiliy swallows hard, willing the fear out of his mind as much as he's able—now isn't the time to slip up. He gets up too dramatically, draws too much attention to himself, someone will take a good look at him and realize that he's the man on that screen. And come hell or high water, he's not going to die a second time. Not today, not at the hands of McCarthyists.

Winterwear has made it easier to conceal his sidearm, which works to his advantage, as does the darkness of the theatre. Very casually, as though scratching an itch, Vasiliy unholsters it and keeps it against the side of his thigh, steeling himself for... whatever is to follow, wherever he'll be in ten minutes. There's no telling how this is going to go, but what's going to happen if he doesn't do anything is a certainty, so he waits for another crescendo in the audio of the film, which has since returned to a mundane suburban storyline, before he cocks the hammer of his weapon with a distinct click, louder than he'd like but still only audible to the select few in his immediate periphery, most of whom will probably just assume it was the cup holder or chair or something. Probably. ]

sorry, gmail ate this notif

[latrodectus]

[ Natasha knows that sound, grew up with it, like she knows death, and hunger, and the angry twist in her ankle, an old injury that she feels first thing in the morning, before the blood rushes down to her feat.

Still, she wonders if she is imagining things. The projection on the has her shaken. If she knows the sound of a cocked weapon like she knows her own mind, well— she hasn't always known her own mind, has she? Caution, she tells herself. But steel climbs up her spine all the same.

Natasha's eyes search through the crowd for the source of the noise, the moving light of the screen projection turning every face changeable. There, in the big coat, she decides. She approaches him with a shy smile, though it might be obscured by the dark.

Sorry. I got lost. [ Her accent is General American. She practiced it for months. ] Do you think you could walk me to the concession stand?

coppélia

[chromiums]

[ after a few (official) weeks of this place under her belt, lorna's learned to take anything outside of the status quo very seriously, especially since the townspeople will inevitably forget about whatever horrors took place once the sun comes back up. so when the shrieking starts, she only pauses to shove her feet into a pair of shoes before running outside to find its source. she finds a woman fighting with a double of herself - or is the double fighting her?

her abilities are back, albeit in a limited capacity - she can sense that there's metal around, but can't bring it to her. she takes a second to dig it out of the snow on the lawn before running towards the pair, observing them for a moment more before determining which one to attack. she goes for the one that's strangling the other, striking her in the back.

hopefully she's right about which one is the evil twin. ]

[latrodectus]

[ It doesn't take long for the terrible automaton to reveal itself, shrieking in dissonant static, like a television with bad reception. ]

Why are you so mean?!

[ But it doesn't take much for the doll to loosen its grip, allowing Natasha to wrest herself free. She stands there, panting, rubbing her neck, as though she's too shaken to do anything else.

But then the doll attacks again, ignoring the woman who just chipped off part of its shoulder. At least now it's easy to tell them apart. ]