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quietplacememes2018-02-28 08:56 pm
bequiet) wrote in quietplacememes2018-02-28 08:56 pm
Entry tags:
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!
no subject
Both hands curl around the base of her own milkshake.] Eleven.
[Eleven what? In response to the question, she nods once. Only then does she lean in to take a drink of the cold concoction. It's a lot like the ice cream Benny let her have, only chocolate and smoother.
Isabel is right to think that she won't talk about what happened even after it was shown like a show. However, the admittance has her hesitating for only a moment.]
The bad men had your brother?
no subject
[ She nods slowly. The response makes her believe that maybe Eleven was raised in that environment, given a number for a name. It makes Isabel a little angry because every child deserves more than that. Every child, even the special ones with oddities people want to study, deserves a loving home. Isabel smiles, albeit a little sadly. ]
It’s very nice to meet you.
[ Her smile fades when El asks her about her brother. It’s not a pleasant memory. She and the others like her had always had the fear that someone would take them, study them, maybe even kill them in the process, but they lived ordinary lives. Maybe on some level they didn’t really think it would happen. ]
Yes. He has the ability to heal people and a girl was hurt very badly. He saved her life, but the wrong people saw him do it. Eventually they took him.
[ She sighs. There’s a temptation to go into reasonable detail, share her story with the girl, but Isabel holds back a certain measure of the story. ]
They weren’t very nice to him. The rest of us had to find a way to get him out.
no subject
[That is her own way of saying that Isabel could call her that too, if she wants. Growing up she'd only ever been called Eleven by papa and it was tattooed on his skin, hidden beneath the sleeve of her jumpsuit. It was Mike - her first friend - who gave her the nickname.
El returns the smile a little, one corner of her lips turning up slightly.]
Same.
[As quick as it came, the smile disappears. She listens intently to the story Isabel has to share about her brother. There aren't many like her in their world so to hear about others is a new experience, to hear they were treated the same way is horrible though.]
I was always with papa. Listening to people far away and letting papa listen too.
[El was a spy, spying on the Russians even if she couldn't understand what they said.]
I found the monster by listening. They live in the Upside Down. I opened the Gate that let it in and ran away from papa and the bad men.
no subject
I like that. Like Elle Macpherson.
[ Sorry, El. You’re talking to a child of the 90’s. She tilts her head forward slightly. ]
Some of my friends call me Izzy.
[ Her smile dims and fades as she describes her times with the man she calls papa. It’s hard to say from the story what exactly El can do, and Isabel isn’t about to outright ask. It seems almost insensitive to ask such a thing after all she’s just seen. Maybe she’ll find out in time, maybe she won’t.
She frowns a little bit as El describes opening a gate and some kind of Upside Down. It could be another world or dimension. For a moment, Isabel wishes Alex was there to consult on the specifics. He’d be able to translate anything scientific.
The corners of her mouth pull up into the smallest of smiles. ]
I’m very glad that you got away from them, El.
no subject
Who?
[El has watched a lot of 80's television in the last year but even then her knowledge was limited by what existed inside the cabin she called home.
A full smile this time.] Izzy.
[This makes them friends now. She's never had a girl who was a friend. It was just the boys and then Nancy for a very short while - just for a few hours. And friends don't lie so if asked, El would tell her anything.
Like her powers or the Upside Down and what lives there. For the longest time she hasn't had many people to talk to about it. There was Hopper but he was more interested in getting her to learn all of the normal things she missed out on growing up in the lab.
She nods.]
Me too. Mike helped me and I found Will when he was trapped in the Upside Down.
no subject
[ El’s smile causes her own to grow a little brighter. Isabel figures that the sharing of nicknames and personal experiences is a show of trust. Max probably would have been upset that she told anyone his story without his permission, but the way Isabel saw it, she was in a different world. Besides, she had a feeling El knew a little bit about discretion.
Her eyebrows wrinkle when she mentions the Upside Down again. It’s terminology Isabel guesses that you only really understand if you’ve had an experience with it, and that’s where she’s missing out. ]
Is the Upside Down like another world?
[ Isabel thought for a moment about the Granilith and how she and the others like her believed it could take them to another world, the world they were supposed to be from. Maybe El didn’t even need a Granilith. Maybe she could enter this different world without any kind of help at all. ]
no subject
[Still doesn't know who that is but it's fine. Maybe she can find somewhere to look it up later and she can't expand her education. Without Hopper here to help her with the Word of the Day thing they've got going in, El will have do it herself.
Sharing of nicknames is definitely important, it may not build complete trust but Izzy's definitely up there on the top her list. Izzy is like... her friend's older sister, Nancy. Someone El would talk to about things if she ever needed to.
When asked, El glances around before reaching for a napkin. Placing it flat on the counter, then the tabasco bottle Izzy had used and sets it on top.]
Izzy. [Points to the bottle. Then moves it off and flips the napkin over.] Upside Down. Where the monster lives.
[Next comes a butter knife and she holds it up.] Me.
[Finally she proceeds to stab the knife through the napkin, creating a hole in it. Essentially showing that the two places are connected now.]