TDM #003

[bequiet]

TEST DRIVE MEME
You wake, standing. A thick, muddy red dust coats your skin and clothes - it sticks to your tongue and blocks your vision. Inhale and it chokes you, exhale and your breath puffs out in front of your face in a transparent maroon cloud. It tastes of copper, tangy and harsh. Movement is difficult, every limb tingles and aches. Look to your left, your right. Evenly spaced in each direction stands another person indistinguishable in every way from the next. You're disoriented and lethargic, unable to grasp onto a single thought. A pinprick of light blooms ahead and grows steadily larger; a door has opened.

Hands grip your wrists, push at the small of your back and guide you out of the darkness into a room with four walls and a thin, sagging ceiling. The plaster is peeling, the air is musty, and the floor is slick. White plastic piping juts up from the center and curves into multiple spouts, clean water flowing in uneven streams. Those hands pull your clothes off and clear the dust from your body, redress you in handsewn jumpsuits.

A finger is pressed to your lips. Kind eyes meet your own and a single word is whispered - hush.

Led out of the room in a line, you’re taken down a short hallway and into another, much larger room. There’s a woman waiting for you there, a child hugging her leg, and a cloth bag in her hands. She reaches in and pulls out a device, passes one to each of you. Once finished, she begins to move both hands in graceful gestures, a language. One of the people who helped you lifts their device and the screen lights up, tracks the woman’s hands. Letters appear on the screen and you understand the device’s purpose. She tells you what she knows and it’s not much.

This world is haunted. Noise attracts them, so it is not allowed. Communication is through body language, soundless writing, and the device. She tells you that your feet must be light and your mouth never used. There is a community outside these doors, where you can survive together, but only if you agree to one thing: complete and total silence. You'll have time to talk it over. Acceptance allows you to journey outside. The ground is marked in pathways of sand, lining the paths to each building and everywhere in between. You notice that the locals hold their devices always, aloft and glance to it often. It will not vibrate or make a sound to signal a message.

Notices appear. Rules. Guidelines. Feet on the sand and never anywhere else. To open a door you brush your fingers along the hinges - oiled and you may enter. If not, take the brush from the can sitting nearby and coat the metal with the dark liquid. You're to settle into your new home.

Caught me unawares
Content Warnings: Confusion, disorientation
Themes: Survival, horror, it's like groundhog day

The ending of the floor has caught me unawares. This must be the reason why I’m falling down the stairs.

That night, when you fall asleep, you dream of your life before The Quiet Place. At first it's the happiest moments of your life played on repeat, over and over. Everything good and sweet and fun. The second night, it's much the same. You go to bed anticipating another restful and pleasant sleep. But on the third night it changes.

For everyone, it starts the same. There's a long hallway with a door at the end. You walk towards it with nowhere else to go. You twist the knob and when you step forward, the floor ends and you fall. Falling lasts for seconds, minutes, or hours and when you land, it's with a jolt and a cloud of red dust all around you. There's someone else next to you, stumbling, coughing and choking on that familiar dirt that coats your tongue and mouth. When your eyes meet, everything blurs and you're falling again - this time, when you land, it's inside that dream from the first night. Only you're not alone. They're with you. The only way out is to experience the dream together. And when you do wake up, for real, that same red dirt is on your hands.

Falling down the stairs
Content Warnings: Confusion, disorientation
Themes: Survival, horror, it's like groundhog day

The ending of the floor has caught me unawares. This must be the reason why I’m falling down the stairs.

That night, when you fall asleep, you dream of your life before The Quiet Place. At first it's the worst moments of your life played on repeat, over and over. Everything bad and sour and awful. The second night, it's much the same. You go to bed anticipating another restless and dreadful sleep. But on the third night it changes.

For everyone, it starts the same. There's a long hallway with a door at the end. You walk towards it with nowhere else to go. You twist the knob and when you step forward, the floor ends and you fall. Falling lasts for seconds, minutes, or hours and when you land, it's with a jolt and a cloud of red dust all around you. There's someone else next to you, stumbling, coughing and choking on that familiar dirt that coats your tongue and mouth. When your eyes meet, everything blurs and you're falling again - this time, when you land, it's inside that nightmare from the first night. Only you're not alone. They're with you. The only way out is to experience the nightmare together. And when you do wake up, for real, that same red dirt is on your hands.

OOC
From your mods:

Please remember to mark your content in your starters or subject lines as material comes up. The threads on this meme can be used as game canon. Feel free to thread out arrival style meetings as well! If you have questions, pp the mod account, use the faq or comment below. Have fun!

NAVIGATION

---

Comments

[relicta]

[ nat rolls her eyes. bucky could do more with that arm than most people could with both, but he always had to do the self-deprecating thing. like steve. she stashes her device when he switches to sign, happy to oblige even if she likes the funky little gadgets, no surprise there. ]

I thought I put 'no kidnapping' in my contract explicitly. [ she shakes her head gravely, that's about all she's got so she grabs his hand and starts dragging him away from the crowd. she signs back with her free hand. ] Let's go, old man.

[ex_redact551]

[ hand holding - well this is. new. his look of mild alarm is probably hilarious to everyone looking their way right now. knowing he can't sign back - and is thus rendered speechless, in more ways than one - bucky merely makes a face that tries to say, you're not cute.

still, he mouths back at her: where to? ]

[relicta]

[ any point of contact is a lifeline in a place like this, but once they're away from the reset room and she's sure bucky will follow, she lets him have his hand back. she pulls her device back out and pulls up the map feature expertly, like she'd been using it forever. she blows up the map so he can see where it tapers off, then types a quick message, showing him that too so he doesn't have to get his phone back out. ] wanna see where the sidewalk ends

[ex_redact551]

[ bucky's a quick study, and he's already got half the map memorized by the time she's texting him back with 12% of a plan of action. it's a logical next step: figure out where the edges are, so you know how far to go if you want to get out. map out the locale, as it were. it's what he'd do, too.

he reaches over her and taps out in the next line of her text screen: ]

you cover my six, i cover yours?

[relicta]

[ she flashes an ok sign and makes a face like duh, barnes. she will always have your back even when you're being totally weird about it. read: always. she angles herself on the trail so that he can flank the other side of it, moving more like two arms of a tank than two displaced morons in jumpsuits. ]

[ex_redact551]

[ it's the name of their mixtape: two displaced morons in jumpsuits. featuring backing vocals of captain america saying "fight me" on loop.

they walk in utter silence, alert for any sign of stragglers and attackers coming through the dust, and bucky's main thought throughout the whole thing is how he's reminded of those obscure television shows back in bucharest. the ones with fuzzed out edges to the frames, even if the special effects are more current than any of the actors' ages. after a while though, he starts to notice that the dust is just everywhere.

buildings give way to sand dunes, windows half eaten by corrosion. the air is thicker now, too. bucky taps the black widow - romanoff, his files had informed him - on the shoulder. contaminated air, he wants to tell her - and they're both out of face masks. ]