sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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!tdm

TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Steven backpedals until he collides into a wall between toilet stalls. He covers his mouth with one hand and points at the mirror with the other. And then he points at the other man. And then he points at the mirror again. And then he's covering his mouth with both hands. After a few seconds of hyperventilating, he calms down enough to wring his hands in front of his chest.

"You don't have a reflection!" Isn't that obvious?

"Are you a ghost?!" Grabbing a roll of toilet paper that's conveniently just behind him, he hurls it at the other man as though he expects it to just pass through his ghostly form and hit the mirror.

Erik catches it and whips it back at him.

"It's not me, idiot, it's the mirrors. Does your reflection look normal to you?"

The toilet paper roll clocks him in the forehead and Steven ducks his head belatedly, whimpering as he shuts one eye and rubs the spot he got hit on the side of his forehead with the heel of his palm. He didn't even hurl it with that much force and there's no need for the other bloke to throw it back that hard.

"I don't know! He's not talking to me that way anymore!" So, obviously, Steven's reflection can't be normal.

Erik watches him like a person watches a traffic accident, except it's not cars in the intersection, it's two bicycles ridden by clowns.

"You normally talk to people in mirrors and this is making you gibber like a frightened child?"

He's only one half of a clown, thank you very much! A fully grown man clown, not a child either!

"No!" He normally talks to Marc in the mirror, but Marc's here now, so he doesn't really look at the mirror much anymore.

"What's wrong with the mirror then?" Steven tries to redirect. Still not entirely convinced that the other lad is human but, you know, spending some time on a cruiseship with ghosts will do that to you. In a very unsubtle way, Steven tries to lean over to one side again to see if their reflections have reappeared.

Only instead of seeing their reflections, there seems to be someone else in the mirror now. A lithe, willowy lady with long hair that has Steven tilting his head.

"...do you see tha'?" There's a lady, in the mirror, but not physically standing there in between the two of them. What's a woman doing in the men's loo? What a pervert...

"I saw something I didn't care for. A brazen attempt to manipulate. Do you know the person you're seeing?"

Telepathic manipulation, maybe, and Charles nowhere in sight.

"No." He squints. "I don't think so. I mean she sort of looks like Sadako but I don't know Sadako personally. That would be weird because she's not real and if she was, I would be like, stupidly answering the phone and going ''allo luv, 'ho's this? もしもし？' and properly, finally dead dead by now."

She puts her hand on the mirror and Steven jolts backwards, kind of wanting to help her but also scared shitless and trying to ramble at the other man. His freaking out face and uncoordinated spaz face seems to look the same.

"Oh my days I think it's Sadako we need to go. I can't afford to pay for another broken toilet. We need to go we need to go we need to go--"

Erik grabs the front of his shirt and pushes him against the stall.

"Pull yourself together," he tells him. "They're not getting out of there. What's causing them, is the question. What's their purpose?"

Steven yelps and squeaks as, not for the first time, he's being accosted in the gents. This must be like the basic premise of half of the gay porn industry but the only thing Steven can think of right now is getting murdered by an angry woman again.

"Right! Well! Um!! Can we speculate on the nature and origin and raison d'être of the murder mirror woman outside of the loo?!" Steven exclaims, unable to stop himself from constantly looking over the other man's shoulder.

"Did you-- even wash your hands after touching your willy?!" Because Steven has priorities, apparently.

"I came in here to check the bruises on my face," he says evenly. "People have remarked on them. I haven't touched a 'willy' since I walked in here."

He turns and looks at the mirror.

"Why do you think she wants to hurt you?" Erik asks. He's not discounting it; he's just curious. "Because the people I've seen in there aren't... killers."

A killer is what he usually sees in a mirror.

"Okay. Good." No willy touching is a good ground rule to have. Steven doesn't get a chance to study the bruising too closely before the other man is going towards the mirror again, causing Steven's anxiety to spike a bit.

"Um..." Steven averts his gaze and straightens out his shirt before wringing his hands.

"...I was attacked. By. Another woman. A few weeks ago. It was-- my fault. I think. I-- don't remember, exactly." Dropping his gaze, he swallows and touches his elbows, a self-comforting gesture that's not very effective right now.

"Th-they say the captain likes hurting people, for fun. And watching them react. And suffer." It just seems more likely than not that the lady in the mirror doesn't have good intentions. Especially with Steven being such a shit magnet.

"Can we leave? Please? I'll look at your face. Any other injury you have. I've got-- tea and biscuits and supplies and books and Marc." Marc would protect them, or at least figure out what to do. Steven doesn't like it here. But he doesn't want to leave someone here either.

"I don't need medical attention," Erik says stonily. "Or biscuits."

He takes Stephen's shoulder and steers him out of the room into the hall.

"What do you know about the Captain?"

"Are you sure?" Steven gestures at his own face as they leave the bathroom. "You do look a wee bit banged up..." He swallows sympathetically. Now that he's out of the bathroom, he seems a little more relaxed.

"I met the captain once. On the bus, during camp. He seemed like a rather chipper fellow, but. You know there's good-mannered chipper and there's psychotic-mental-breakdown-haha-you-wanna-know-how-I-got-these-scars?-megalomaniac-anime-caricature-supervillain chipper and I'm not sure how he was feeling. I'm not sure anyone knows how he's feeling. Most people seem intent on piracy or-- or mutiny, you know. Killing him and trying to take over the boat. I don't know that that's going to work out..."

"Has anyone ever considered an alliance with him?" Erik asks, leaning back against the wall next to the bathroom door.

"I thought we should at least try to reason with him, but." Steven lowers his head and shrugs. He's become so accustomed to the fact that nobody listens to him or cares what he has to say that he doesn't fight it.

"You should find the magical Irish skeleton. Mr. Skulduggery Pleasant. He knows the captain well."

“Does he benefit from that acquaintance?” Erik asks, studying the man’s body language. He’s used to making people uncomfortable, but he’s not sure the continued discomfort is his doing here.

"I... guess? What kind of benefit?" Steven's never thought of Skulduggery as the kind of man who would cozy up to the captain just for some special perks. But maybe there's something going on there. Steven didn't think to pry.

"He's a skeleton. I think he's been dead a while. I don't-- think there's a lot you could give him?"

“What sort of work do you do?” Erik asks him. “Nothing that requires taxing your mind, I assume,” he adds, crossing his arms.

"I'm a. Gift. Shoppist. Or, I was. At the National Art Gallery in London." He'd like to protest against the insult, but he just kind of takes it. The only way to make the world less of a cruel place is to not be cruel to other people.

Wringing his hands, Steven swallows and gestures towards the hallway with several identical cabin doors with a tilt of his head.

"You'll find Mr. Pleasant down that corridor, on the right. He can-- tell you everything." Steven twists his hands in the hem of his shirt, twisting and creasing the fabric. "I'll be going now." Steven sulks and tries to slink away quietly.

Erik draws alongside him as he walks, like he invited him instead of excusing himself.

“How long have you been here?”

"Um... not long," Steven muses, pursing his lips as his line of sight drifts across the floor. "I was... a little over a week out from Shavuot." Marc doesn't keep track of these things, but Steven was raised to be a good Jewish boy. "I guess it's been a couple of months...? I haven't been keeping track." Maybe he should have been counting the days.

"Time doesn't-- really make sense here. You'll meet people from all over."

Erik blinks at him.

"...Shavuot?"

"Yeah! You know, the p-- um. It's a. Jewish holiday," Steven cuts himself off before he goes on a huge spiel that absolutely no one is interested in.

"It happens in May or June. The date changes a bit every year..." Is that itself too much information? It's so hard to gauge when the person you're talking to wouldn't typically give you the time of day.

“I know what it is,” Erik says almost sharply, though his voice is softer a moment later when he adds “though it’s been some time since I practiced.”

"We don't really, either," Steven replies equally quietly. "I thought we did, but. I guess I imagined it." He takes a deep breath in through his nose and huffs out a sigh.

"Well it won't be that long now before Rosh Hashanah. We're in room 135. You're welcome to come by and. We can do a little something?" Steven offers with a tight-lipped smile and a glint of light in his hopeful eyes. He thinks Marc could have used the community. Maybe he can encourage them both to. Just sit around and eat lots of sweets and drink things. It doesn't have to have all those complicated emotions tangled up into it.

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