quietplacememes | TDM #003

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test drive meme!

TDM #003

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

arrival
[If you've been in the community long enough you might be approached the night of the new arrivals. There's a problem with one of the arrivals. A female child is being uncooperative. Maybe there's something that could be said or done to calm her.

Ellie is terrified and feels like she's being held against her will. She refuses to stop shouting insults or lashing out, and won't let her clothes be taken off her body. She's bitten at least half a dozen natives and even a couple of the other new arrivals that tried to help. She's pressed herself into a corner of the room, and is trying hard to glare through the tears that are in her eyes.

Someone new walks through the door and Ellie shoves herself back in the corner even more. If she makes herself look small enough she'll really be able to surprise them when she attacks.]

I'll tell you what I told everybody else. Stay. Away.

falling down : cw assault of a child
Tell them that Ellie is the little girl that broke your fucking finger!

Her own voice echoes in her head every night. She used to dream of Riley, of finding a curse. She used to dream of the infected taking everything from her. More often she had started to dream of Joel, how he was changing her life for the better. Now all she could dream about was that fucker who had tried laying his hands on her. Her nightmares spin in circles, always ending with her killing him and escaping out into the snow. The scuffle wasn't that long in actuality. In a nightmare it can feel like it lasts for days. Ellie's first new nights of sleep are restless.

This night is different than the other nights. She's grateful for the hallway and the door, and welcomes the feeling of falling into nothingness. The dirt filling her lungs and clinging to her makes her heart race. It feels so real as she lands, that she wonders if this is even a dream at all. But she hears her own words echoing in a shout, and can hear herself fighting David. It's a struggle for life or death, for keeping his filthy hands off of her.

She wants to throw up. Reliving this is painful enough, but there shouldn't be an audience. Someone else is here with her, covered in the same red dirt. They're both contaminated, a captive audience in one of the worst moments in her life.

"Stop watching, or I'll stab you in the eye."

network
un: punosaur
I'm not saying beach puns will make anyone feel better, but I'm pretty sure they'll keep us from going cray-sea. I know, I know. I'll need to be more pacific, right? I just fish I could actually say any of this shit out loud.

Newt's eyes drop to the floor almost immediately at the threat, and he makes a noise in his throat that sounds like annoyance. His fingers clench at his side, itching to help her somehow, offer comfort. Newt's never been in such a situation and he feels awkwardly placed.

"I can't really do much about seein' it," he mutters, attention forcibly on his hands as he tries to wipe the dirt off on his trousers. Everything in him is itching to fight, to help, to do something for her even if he doesn't know her. Even if she seems as friendly as one of the Cranks that tried to bite his face off.

He doesn't have a weapon on him, and it makes him uneasy, more than her threat.

She knows she could stab him if she needed or wanted to. But Ellie really doesn't want to. All of her anger is a defense meant to keep her pride and dignity intact. They can't help her in this nightmare. All they can do is let it unfold. The fact remains that she doesn't need his help. She doesn't need anyone's.

"Sick freaks like that deserve what they get."

Her jaw sets and she stonily looks on ahead. She doesn't flinch as she watches herself be thrown hard enough to black out. Any moment now, and David dies. Her eyes look from her nightmare to the intruder. She watches his face for signs of pity. When the sound of her coming to and killing David with as many stabs as possible echoes in the dimly lit room she looks for signs of disgust.

The sounds of her struggle draw his eyes back up, and he watches hesitantly, looking to her and then the scene in front of him.

"Yeah." He agrees with her, people like that don't deserve to live. He thinks of the Cranks and how they're monsters. This man, assaulting her is no better than them. What's the point of existence if it's without humanity?

Newt's aware he was told to look away, but it's sort of impossible when there's such a ruckus drawing all his senses towards the scene. Lips curl into a frown and his dark eyebrows tug together, there isn't pity, there's anger on his face. He can feel her stare on him, and finally his warm brown eyes find her, resting on her instead of the scene.

"He buggin' deserved more than that, if ya ask me." Newt's not really sure what he deserved but a large part of him was angry, in a way he's never been before. Sure, he's been angry at WCKD for trying to turn him and his friends into iv bags of a cure for a virus they were fighting. But this, it's a different anger, one of disappointment and disgust, but at the other man. Newt's normally rather forgiving, but this is something he can't forgive in someone.

His eyes find hers and she wants to crawl out of her skin. He doesn't know her. Why does any of this bother him? She needs to deflect and act like her bad dream isn't a big deal. Maybe if she pretends enough he'll just think it's a fear and not a memory replaying itself.

"Dead's enough."

This is part memory and part pure nightmare though. There was always more to the dream every other night. She knows what's coming now. Joel's not here so it's up to her to keep this guy safe. Can he even be hurt in a dream?

"Just forget about it, all right? We need to get weapons and out of here. Come on."

She isn't sure if the clickers can even touch them. Maybe they'll just move right past. But she isn't about to take a risk heading outside into the snow unarmed. The knife she used to kill David lays there near his body and the shotgun he had tried using on her is discarded across the room. She runs over to pick up both and hands over the shotgun to him.

He lets out a hum of acknowledgement to her comment. There are certain people that Newt is convinced deserve more than death, but he'd be content with them dying so he can understand the sentiment. He can't possibly begin to know what she's thinking, having known her less than ten minutes.

"Where are we goin'?"

He begins to follow her, only to come to a stop when the shotgun is pressed into his hands. He looks at it and offers a small, "thanks," to her before muscle memory takes over and he pulls the pump back looking for a shell in the barrel. He can't recall shooting a gun before the Maze, not that he can recall anything before the Maze, but when he'd been given a rifle back when he was defending the Right Arm, it had all come naturally, like he'd done it before. Part of him hopes it had been his parents that had shown him how to protect himself from Cranks, and part of him fears it was WCKD.

Newt wets his lips, before looking at her and her knife. Now her threat of stabbing him in the eye is a lot more doable, and he's thankful it doesn't seem to be what's on her mind. The fact that she's given him a gun, has him feeling a bit less uneasy with her, even if he's fairly certain by the looks of things she could stab him to death before he could even think of shooting her.

"Name's Newt by the way," he offers, because if they're going to be running out into danger, they might as well know each other's names, he figures.

"Ellie."

She smiles but it doens't meet her eyes. She can't trust him because she doesn't know him but she's more willing to give him a chance because he looks close to her age. Older but close enough that he's a novelty. She won't hurt him and she'll help him make it out of this dream sequence without too much trauma.

"You handle that thing like you were born doing it. That's...that's good. Those things you'll see out there? They're called clickers. Kill as many as you can and don't let yourself get bit."

Yeah, that sounds like good enough instructions. He's got the long range weapon and she'll be the one having to be in close. She leads the way out of the warehouse and into the snow. They're not out there ten seconds before zombies start rushing at them.

[ frank pauses in his approach, hands going up in a clear sign of surrender. he doesn't blame this girl for being wary. hell, she's probably one of the smart ones for doubting this whole bullshit place. ]

No one's gonna hurt you. [ not on his watch. ]

[Who does this guy think he is? Like his hands up make any difference here? It doesn't prove he's unarmed. Just that he isn't actively trying to kill her.]

I bet you say that to all your kidnapping victims.

[ probably for the best since frank is literally always armed, even if it's only with these claw hammers he calls fists (there's also a knife strapped to his ankle.) slowly, his arms lower, but he stays where he is. ]

No, that's definitely not what I say to them. [ more like, this is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. cool stuff like thAT. ]

[What the hell dude? So he does kidnap people and say things to them? This guy's a real piece of work.]

Yeah, I could tell you looked like a sick fuck the second you stepped through the door. What kind of shit do you say to them?

[If he knows how kids that lash out due to fear can talk big he can likely see that she doesn't actually mean any of that. She runs her mouth to make him stay right where he is.]

[ he laughs, a brief snort of bemusement. he's going to like this kid, he can tell. ]

Ever heard of a joke, sweetheart? [ though this place... isn't much for laughter. the silent or the aloud kind. ] No one kidnapped you, alright? At least, not that we know of. There's somethin' about this room, it pulls people in from everywhere.

Bullshit.

[She pushes herself out of the corner and advances toward him. So maybe he has her curious.]

If we're all victims here, why did they try making me take off my clothes? That's really messed up!

[ frank remains stock still as she comes closer, tilting his head in a commiserating manner. he gestures to his jumpsuit vaguely. ] They're worried about your clothes making noise, that's all.

[Her arms wrap around herself like a rope keeping her clothes tied down to her. No one is taking them off of her.]

With the clickers that are out there everyone has to be quiet when they're out of quarantine zones. Is that what this is?

[ he understands her hesitation, and if it were up to him no one would be taking her clothes from her. maybe he can talk to the natives -- he does have something of a rapport with them. what the girl says next interrupts his thoughts, and he's not really sure what it means fully. his confusion shows plainly on his face. ]

Clickers? If you mean the monsters, then yeah. Any noise you make will attract them.

[Wait, what? His confusion makes her confused in return. She's been thinking that she's still in the US but maybe not. Now that she thinks about it she remembers some old lady mentioning France.]

Yeah, and then I kill them. Do you not know how or something?

[ he narrows his eyes. not because he doubts she kills monsters on her world. he doesn't. but the sound eaters are... something else. ]

No one knows how.

[What kind of ass backward safe zone is this? She doesn't know what to say to that. So she doesn't say anything and rubs at the back of her head.]

We're in France, right? So things must be different here. But I can teach you how to kill them. Maybe...maybe that's why I was brought here.

Ellie | The Last of Us

zombie apoc babies???? | falling down

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arrival (i'm tweaking this slightly bc i desperately want this cr hhh)

Thomas!

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falling down

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