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

[bibliophilicbells]

And it gets stranger the more time I spend here. I'm not from a world where things like... [He gestures vaguely, trying to indicate the whole of this place.] ...happen. Or are possible. But I'm apparently from a world that's strange to others here, so...

[He sniffs, nose feeling a little cold, and takes another sip.]

Makes for interesting conversation, at least.

[oldmanfive]

Is there anyone from a world where stuff like this happens? Because I'd be interested to talk to someone who has experienced similar situations before coming here.

[ Yeah, he's true age might be showing as he thinks things over. ]

It could offer some insight into our situation at least.

[bibliophilicbells]

[Consider his interest piqued.]

Well... yes, to a degree. Plenty of people to speak with about the supernatural, me being one of them.

[He's just gonna dangle that right there.]

[oldmanfive]

[ And that glare finds his face again as he scrutinizes the other man. ]

But didn't you just say you come from a strange world but not like this one? [ It's not that he doesn't believe in supernatural things, his brother can talk to ghosts for crying out loud. But he definitely feel like he is being baited. ]

[bibliophilicbells]

I did. There are... creatures in this world not found in mine, but I’ve yet to meet another angel native to this place. I think I’m something of a novelty.

[And he’ll wiggle proudly about it, too.]

[oldmanfive]

[ He feels like he should be more surprised, but this place might have desensitized him even further than he already was, because he's just going to take the guy at face value on this. ]

Heh. I can't say I've ever met an angel back home, but I wasn't the member of my family that could talk to dead. That was my brother. He might have rambled on about god being a girl on a bike once, but I don't always pay attention to everything he says.

[bibliophilicbells]

Oh, I'm not dead. I've been around since the Beginning. And God — er, you know what, I'm not sure. She might enjoy a bike ride every now and again...

[Wait hang on he needs a moment to sit with that mental image.]

[oldmanfive]

Uh didn't actually mean to imply you're dead. I just meant that my brother who communes with the dead is more likely to interact with supernatural beings like angels and demons and what not.

[ He slightly grimaces because he didn't mean to create a rabbithole there. Oops. ]

[bibliophilicbells]

Ah. Well! It's your lucky day, isn't it?

[Aziraphale flashes a smile. It quickly fades, as he adds:] Although I'm afraid this place has turned me rather human.

[oldmanfive]

I don't know that I can say this is a lucky day because I met an angel. They did just put my memories up on a movie screen and that kind of defines the majority of this day.

[ He's not trying to be an asshole, but he hasn't forgotten what just happened. ]

That seems to be going around. I know a few people with special abilities that can't use them anymore. Though I guess it is more disturbing that they were able to capture a celestial being.

[bibliophilicbells]

...right.

[Right, yeah. That whole thing with the memories.

Aziraphale's shoulders take on a bit of a slouch as he considers Five's words, feeling... strangely at ease, all of a sudden, and sure that this isn't actually Heaven's doing. He'd mostly banished the thought, but part of him couldn't help wondering...

Anyway.]

I did get one of my abilities back, but that's it so far.

[oldmanfive]

[ Oh that makes him perk up. Some actual hope that he can get his powers back would be nice. ]

Now that's interesting, you're the first I've come across to get a special ability back. Do you have any idea how that happened?

[bibliophilicbells]

Not a clue. It was just... there, again, one morning. And I only realized it on accident. Some others were given items from home, or had... um, missing parts returned, so to speak.

[He tries to sound grateful, because he is, but he’s also deeply suspicious.]

[oldmanfive]

[ It does sound suspect that they would just be given an ability or item from home back out of the blue. There has to be some sort of pattern, that they aren't seeing yet. But without more information it is hard for Five to theorize.]

Interesting. So did this happen all around same time for those of you who got something back? Or was it spread out?

[bibliophilicbells]

Around the same time, I think, for the ones that I know of.

[A pause.]

Sorry, I should – [He offers a hand for the shaking.] My name’s Aziraphale. Some people here call me Avery.

[oldmanfive]

[ That just makes him hum as he frowned while thinking things over. Definitely he needs more information, he might have to brave the network thing and see if he can't get some more answers that one.

Instinctively he moves to take a sip of his chocolate but stops short once he realizes how cold it has gotten. He lets out a sigh as he tosses the cup into the nearest trash can.]

I'm Five...[ He introduces himself, but momentarily hesitates to shake Aziraphale's hand. Though reluctantly he does, sooner or later he is going to have to work on that touch thing. ] Why Avery? It doesn't exactly flow with Aziraphale.

[bibliophilicbells]

I’ve cycled through a lot of ‘A’ names in my time – Avery was what I went by back home before I wound up here. I switched to it, oh, a few decades ago.

[He laughs, a quick and quiet sound.]

My human alias, if you’d like to call it that, is A.Z. Fell. A customer asked me what the initials stood for, and it had been so long since the last time I gave my full name that I panicked and chose the first thing I saw... off a box of labels. Avery, as I learned, is an office supply chain.

[Can’t win ‘em all.]

And ‘Five’?

[oldmanfive]

[ That story actually gets an amused scoff out of Five. He's never really thought of Angels living among humans, but it would make sense that if they did, they would be under assumed identities.

Thus he shrugs in that 'okay makes sense' type of way. ]

My adoptive father wasn't keen on coming up with names for me or my siblings. So he just numbered us. According to him, our numbers reflected our usefulness to him. Personally I never cared where I fell in the placement. So when the others took names, I just stayed Five. It's my name but it doesn't define my worth.

[bibliophilicbells]

[Cool, that’s the worst explanation Aziraphale could have thought of.

No wonder Five’s memory was... that way. No wonder his father didn’t make time for magic. No wonder this kid strikes him as such an old soul.]

...it’s certainly unique.

[Yeah he’s not touching the rest of that. Not right now.]

[oldmanfive]

[ Five knows his father was an asshole and he'll be the first to admit it. So he isn't exactly surprised that he might have thrown the angel off a bit. ]

Yeah, I suppose it is, even if I have to field the "like the number" question quite a bit.

[ One of the rare times, where he'll actually make a joke. The story of his name is a much tamer story especially when compared to the memory that got broadcasted. ]

[bibliophilicbells]

[That draws a smirk from Aziraphale, and a little relief — great, so this conversation isn't a total bust. Small victories!]

— well, erm, I'm... around, I suppose, if you need anything.

[oldmanfive]

[ There's a moment of actual amusement that reaches Five's eyes. It's another rarity given how stripped bare that serial of his memory made him feel. ]

Thanks. [ His tone actually sincere as he does appreciate the offer, even if he's not sure he would ever bother the guy. But who knew what else could happen in this strange ass town. ] I'll keep that in mind.

[bibliophilicbells]

Of course.

[With that, Aziraphale thinks he might as well take his leave — it's chilly, and he'd rather not be privy to anyone else's bloody memories tonight.

And anyway, the film's started.

So he offers Five another small smile, and mutters a "take care," and steps away.]