sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #5

Entry tags:

!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

"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.

Erik watches his profile sidelong for a moment.

“Imagined it?”

"I... have a vivid imagination," Steven mumbles as his pupils drift to the liar's corner of his eyes. He's already giving off crazy vibes so he doesn't really care if he just keeps nattering on, but he doesn't want people to think that Marc is certifiably insane.

"I think I'm just lonely, you know. Ha ha."

"A vivid imagination," Erik echoes. "That's not it at all, is it? Are you concerned I'll judge you if you tell me the truth? Because I've seen some things," he assures. "And I'm nothing to you, so why do you even care what I think?"

Steven wrings his hands and shakes his head. Everyone's seen some things. That's kind of part of the problem, isn't it?

"I don't," he tries to lie loftily, clearing his throat. "I'm just blabbering." Why is he still being followed? This is so stressful.

"Where are you staying? I can show you to your cabin..."

"I know how to find my cabin," Erik informs him matter-of-factly. "Are you asking me to leave?"

"No! That's rude. I wouldn't." Even if this bloke does make him anxious. "I just thought you might like to know where you need to go." And obviously Steven wouldn't say no if he decided he wanted to head to his room and rest.

"Or, you know, there are some food places upstairs. If you're hungry..." Steven could be the worst tour guide since, you know. All he does is go to the library and the restaurants. Sometimes loses himself in the Tommy Bahama store.

Erik nods and leans slightly towards Steven.

"You know, if you think whatever you're hiding is beyond belief, that's generally what I look for in people I might want to know."

"I'm-- not--" Steven wrings his hands and stutters, line of sight drifting across the floor.

"I just. I have a twin on board the ship." 'Twin'. That's a hairy topic he doesn't want to get into at all. But at least if he notices that there's two Stevens running around, he won't think that Steven was trying to lie or keep anything from him. "He's lived more of a life and I've just. Thought it'd be nice if I've done some of the things he has. That's all."

"So you talk to yourself in the mirror, pretending you're talking to him?" Erik hazards.

Goodness it's so much more complicated than that. Steven wouldn't even know where to start. He swallows and just nods fervently a few times. More or less, that's how they used to communicate with each other anyway. It was really annoying at the beginning but Steven got used to it very quickly. For a while it was... nice, having someone else in his life to talk to. It's not a huge lie now to say that's how he used to talk to Marc.

"You might meet him at some point." Marc has picked up a bad tendency to want to vet all of Steven's company after the... accident.

"Oh, I'll be looking for him, point of fact," Erik tells him, pretty intrigued by all of this. "Unless you'd care to introduce me."

"Um." Steven's gaze shifts left and right. "Yeah. Alright." Marc would be able to tell straightaway that Steven's not all that comfortable but hopefully he won't stage a full on intervention and just. Be nice and subtle and courteous about it.

"Our cabin's-- just up that way. Although I don't know if he's home right now." That would be awkward, if he was boozing it up at the pub. Steven wouldn't want anyone meeting Marc in that daydrinking, careless, self-destructive state.

Erik is surprised that Steven agrees, but he'll go with it.

"Well, if he's not, I'll just keep an eye out for someone who looks like you but doesn't look like he wants to run away from me."

"I don't-- that's not true," Steven protests quietly, though he doesn't try to substantiate his claim any further than that. Honestly, he's just a constant ball of anxiety rolling around tearing the place up. Not rubbing it in would go a long way to him being able to keep a lid on it.

Ducking back into the corridor, Steven toddles along until they hit room 135. Then he knocks a few times, clearing his throat.

"Marc?" Just in case he's doing 250 pushups and not wearing a shirt... "Are you in? And decent?"

Excuse you, he's got a shirt on. He's even sat on their sofa, flipping idly through a book and still pretending that he doesn't need those reading glasses of Steven when he hears the call.

"What? Of course I am." He tilts his head curiously towards the door. There's really only one reason he'd asked that. Clearly, he's brought some company over.

Steven tries the door and gingerly pushes it open, shuffling in quietly and forcing a smile before holding it open for his... New friend to come in.

"Hey. This is... ... um..." If Erik gave Steven his name, he didn't get it in his spike of anxiety. Steven's leaning away from him a bit, one shoulder raised. Marc could be forgiven for thinking that Steven's just been yelled at or had been held at gunpoint.

"...sorry." He wrings his hands and glances furtively at Marc.

"Erik Lehnsherr," Erik offers, before Steven has a chance to wet his pants over it or something. "New arrival. Steven's suggested we should get together for the high holidays. I don't suppose you know anywhere to get a decent challah around here?" he asks dryly.

Marc can't tell if that's Steven's I'm being threatened face or just his usual anxiety kicking in. He gives a suspicious look between the two and snorts. "You know, haven't seen any. Maybe we should make a complaint to the Captain."

He tilts his head. "Marc Spector. Uh-- where did you two meet?"

And why the hell were they discussing holidays?

"In the bathroom." Because where else do people normally meet? If that sounds horrendously obscene, Steven is completely oblivious. He wordlessly gestures towards the couch for Erik to sit. Even his name is intimidating.

And then Steven busies himself putting the kettle on. The cabin is small but still manageable with just the three of them.

"There's something strange going on with the mirrors. It might be the ghosts again," he casually throws out there while making tea for three because he was a little too flustered to ask if they even wanted any. He does seem to be marginally more at ease standing closer to Marc now than he does when he's just with Erik.

"The bathroom, huh." You sly dog, Steven.

He eyes Erik again briefly before his eyes dart to watch Steven making tea. "What do you mean by strange?"

Because honestly, he hasn't been paying close attention today. He's used to weird shit happening in mirrors anyway. "Did something happen to either of you?"

"There were faces in the mirror. A lot of them. Some of them strange, some of them recognizable, from far in the past," Erik explains. He watches the dynamic between them, the uncanny resemblance. "Apparently, your... friend sees things in mirrors all the time."

"Nothing happened!" Apart from Steven throwing a toilet roll at Erik and him chucking it back angrily. And Steven being too polite to try and shake Erik off, hence the awkward bringing him home and tea-making.

"He didn't have a reflection. And then I didn't have one either." Steven didn't really see the faces, so he can't comment.

"Here. Tea's ready." Maybe they can just drink in extended pregnant silence and not talk until Erik decides to go away and leave Steven alone. Wouldn't that be lovely?!

"What--" Steven, what the actual fuck are you telling people? "So, let me get this straight... This guy over here saw a bunch of different faces, and you didn't see any, and somehow this led to you dragging him back here?"

For some reason. This guy seems kinda... intense, really. Marc isn't sure how to feel about him. "I mean... I'd say most people see things in mirrors all the time. Kinda the point of them, right?"

"Normally one sees oneself in a mirror," Erik points out, in case they don't actually know how they usually work. "And nobody drags me anywhere. He just seems like a baby bird in the wilderness, so I thought maybe you're the one that's got it together," he tells Marc.

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