TEST DRIVE MEME #5

[sailmods]

1. not subtle revealings

[you wake up.

it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.

the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:

Dear Passenger(s),

As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.

At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!

See You Real Soon!

Sincerely,
Gal Friday

you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.

you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]

Welcome! I'm very glad to have you aboard!

[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.

after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]

2. a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling

[the reflections are missing. all of them. in mirrors. in television screens. on the backs of spoons. nothing looks back at you.

then, figures do show up. not your own, like you'd expect. thin, wispy apparitions, people with pleading eyes and hands, reaching out to place their palms against the surface, from their own end. faces familiar and not, beckoning, mouthing words you just can't quite make out. help me, it might be. get me out, perhaps. just until you're close enough, until your skin warms the surface of whatever it is you're peering into. and then, those same hands wrap, all too real, burning-cold against your flesh, and pull, trying to drag you through the surface, making up for their lack of strength with desperation. any flesh unlucky enough to enter the reflection comes back bone-white and cold, all sensation dead, though it will fade within a few hours.

in retrospect, it looks a bit more like they were saying something different. something more like, better you than me. or maybe it's not even words at all. they look a bit more like they're laughing.]

3. complex mementos

[but, hey. sometimes changes are good! like, today, in Playback, there's a brand-new game available for all the children to play! it's an old-fashioned sort of claw machine, the type that's so large, a particularly dedicated kindergartner could wriggle their way inside. the prizes vary, and sit loose: bags of candy, stuffed toys, firearms, painfully early-00s electronics, actually that one just looks like a dead iguana, tiny ship-branded knickknacks... like all the other games in the arcade, the game starts up automatically upon being touched; lack of quarters shouldn't keep you from having fun! pro tip: they are loaded, and they will go off if you suck at claw games and let it fall.]

Comments

[light_mischief]

It's a good question. A great one, really, although Skulduggery is hesitant to get close enough to test any theories he might have. All he knows is that generally speaking, hands reaching out for you through dimly lit surfaces are rarely a good thing.

He's about to say as much when the other turns, and then he's half-prepared to grab him in case he goes stumbling back into the mirror. Thankfully, his reaction is more reasonable than others, and there's no screaming or flailing or anything of the sort.

"Ah, yes. That." As if being a skeleton is something he forgets about all the time. "I am. Although, technically, you are a skeleton, too. Just with more..." You know. "Stuff on it. You can call me Skulduggery."

[munstar]

"Yea... That."

Is this just his life now? Dealing with progressively weirder shit until he finally loses his mind for good? It doesn't sound pleasant, but it's somehow still not as dire as the reality waiting for him back in Hawkins.

Eddie's staring, now, more curious about what this guy has to say than worried about what might happen if he gets too close to the defective mirror. When he does speak up, Eddie actually snorts.

"Shit. I am not high enough for this conversation." Or maybe he's too high? He's still on the fence. That name, though? Really? "I'm Eddie."

[light_mischief]

"Eddie. Good to meet you, and I'm sorry you've been trapped aboard the Eterna with the rest of us."

Skulduggery used to spend more time addressing his skeletal self, but lately he's found it easier to just... throw new people into the conversational deep-end, and see if they can paddle to the surface. That's why he skips the explanation of his magically-based reality in favor of approaching the mirror himself.

"Now, here's a question for you: if you were a shade trapped in the mirror of a haunted cruise ship, what would you be trying to warn the living about?" If they're warning them at all. He can't quite make out what they're saying from here...

[munstar]

"Good to meet you too, man." Eddie nods. "Is being trapped here a bad thing?"

He's certainly making it sound that way. But given the state of things back in Hawkins, Eddie's not sure he can afford to be that picky right now. And to his credit, he does find the notion of a walking, talking skeleton to be incredibly fucking weird- it's just that he's seen so much weird shit in a very short span of time and he can only have kneejerk reactions so many times before they start to get old.

The question is certainly an interesting one, and Eddie has to take a moment to consider it. "I think that would depend on how I became a shade." And how long he'd been a shade in this hypothetical scenario. "Maybe I'd want to warn them about something terrible impending threat. Or maybe I'd want to lead them to some treasure."

[light_mischief]

Alright, he's keeping up. That's good! There's hope yet. Skulduggery gives it no more than five minutes before they circle back around to the but you're a skeleton! problem, but five minutes is all he needs.

"You've become a shade after being trapped aboard this ship, where your soul was slowly siphoned away until you were left as nothing more than a ghost of your former self." He hesitates to even call the shades ghosts at this point, with how little they seem to actually exist. "Which is what will likely happen to us, assuming we don't work out a way to stop it."

Hm. There's always the chance of there being clues on the other side of the looking glass... But also, he absolutely is not going into a mirror on this ship.

"So... it's not a great thing to be stuck here, most of the time."

[munstar]

It's almost a given that Eddie will eventually circle back around to being shocked at this guy's... skeleton-ness. But for now, he seems to be more willing to focus on the conversation. Years of being a DM have prepared him for this moment!

Maybe.

"In that case..." Eddie begins, "I'd be trying to warn them to get out." A fairly straightforward answer.

"How much would I know about what was siphoning the souls?" That's always the million-dollar question, isn't it? And then there's always the matter of finding the right balance of hand-holding and vagueness to allow the party to work things out for themselves. He's generally just there to show them away- whether or not they take it is out of his hands.

"It's not a great thing to be stuck anywhere, in my experience."

[light_mischief]

"Now, that is an excellent question." One Skulduggery hasn't even considered, actually! "We have no idea if the shades know what happened to them. They likely became aware of the situation eventually... but obviously, not soon enough."

Hmmm. Strangely, no matter how hard he tries to make out the faces, they remain just nondescript enough not to be memorable. It's enough to drive him closer to the mirror, although he isn't going to touch it. He's certainly smarter than that. Certainly!

"The actual mechanics are a mystery, but suffice it to say that our souls are in constant, mortal peril as long as the ship continues to operate as it does." Which isn't very helpful without explanation... "You and I and the rest of the passengers were taken at random, in order to serve as fuel for this ship and... guinea pigs for the Captain's magical experimentation. Are you... familiar with magic?"

He's stopped trying to guess who's from what kind of Earth, that's for sure.