TEST DRIVE MEME #7

[sailmods]

1. before she hung up, she said she was a skeleton

[there is no note in your cabin. no forces stall your legs if you decide to walk anywhere but the atrium. in fact, for the first time in hundreds of years, newly arrived passengers on the Serena Eterna are waking up with absolutely no guidance. nothing but your fellow passengers in the halls - or maybe in your bed.

perhaps you end up in the atrium eventually anyway. it is where guest services is, and where Gal Friday… actually hasn’t been in a few days. until today. and she is visibly frazzled, her hair uncoiffed, her suit rumpled, something a bit like a bruise blossoming down from her hairline and over her smooth features. more papers than ever cover her desk, and when she turns to face you, her voice is as cheerful as ever, but audibly strained.]

Welcome aboard the Serene Eterna! [a pause] You know how to work a life vest, right? Everyone knows that! You don’t need me to teach you that!

[a light bulb burns out behind her head.]

… I’ll get right on that!

[freedom includes the freedom to not know what the fuck is happening. maybe you should reflect on that.]

2. grandma went and can't stop screaming

[it’s something about the lighting fixtures, this month. has the Bellona always had a massive chandelier? maybe. who knows. don’t ask questions. either way, in the stillness of the night, or day, or late afternoon, there is a noise like a cord being cut, and the chandelier plunges into the audience below.

it hits nothing, of course. no one is ever in the theater. and that, perhaps, is what the trouble is.

so, the chandelier starts to… travel, one could say. it starts to hang in various rooms: the dining halls, the bars, the clubs… sometimes, if you’re out on the pool deck and suddenly realized you’re under a shadow, you can glance up and see it suspended 20 feet above your head, securely fastened to nothing in particular and yet remaining perfectly in place.

until it isn’t. until it falls, crystal shattering on whatever surface it lands on: floor, table, person… and, wherever the chandelier goes, a lilting childish voice follows it, singing without any obvious source.]

Ring-a-ring of roses, a pocket full of posies… ashes, ashes, we all…

3. jeff bezos murdered the infinite tommy bahama

[the lights of the Infinite Tommy Bahama go out three days into October.

barely an hour after its closure, the lights go on again, and a new banner is unfurled.



physically, it is the same store. you can even see the old signs hidden behind the new ones. however, long gone are the tropical prints and khaki dress shorts. now, one can purchase any number of officially licensed or legally distinct Halloween costumes, decorations, and various other haunted accoutrements, leading back as far as the eye can see, and then farther still. is that a Gal Friday mask? spooky! well, at least you’ll be good and ready for the Halloween party at the end of the month, which is absolutely just a normal party and in no way whatsoever anything even remotely resembling a trick. there are only treats at The Infinite Spirit Halloween!

note: bahamanuel is still here! somewhere! it kinda looks like dan bongino.]

Comments

Chrissy Cunningham | Stranger Things

[bubblegumheart]

Before She Hung Up

It's unnerving, waking up in such a small bedroom. The last thing she remembers is Eddie leaving the room, and then her nightmare house. The monster. Running, running, running until she couldn't run anymore. Gentle words from a monstrous figure, promising to make her suffering stop. It was desperation that had driven her to Eddie in the clearing that day, and something else entirely that froze her in her tracks. And then there was nothing.

Until she woke up here.

Chrissy's never been on a cruise ship before, as far as she can remember.

Eventually, she makes her way to the atrium, and finds herself staring a little at Friday. She's not even the worst thing Chrissy has witnessed recently, and yet, she's having a little trouble wrapping her head around what she's seeing.

"I'm sorry, but... I think I do need you to show me how to work a life vest."

Can't Stop Screaming

The theater is kind of disappointing, if only because it seems like nobody ever hangs out there. It doesn't stop Chrissy from checking periodically, but she's apparently just fortunate enough to check at times when it's deserted. It occurs to her to ask someone, but she's easily distracted- easily overwhelmed by everything else that's going on.

The first time she spots the chandelier, she's across the room. She doesn't even realize it's there until after it's started to fall. After that, she's careful to keep an eye out even if there's no rhyme or reason for where and when it shows up. The most unnerving part, though, is the sing-songy voice that always accompanies the crash. It takes her a couple of times witnessing it happen before she realizes she recognizes the rhyme.

The next time, she's prepared with a quiet "... we all fall down."

Infinite Spirit Halloween

Halloween used to be one of Chrissy's favorite holidays, back before she discovered that monsters were real and could very much come after her. Now, though, she's not entirely sure how she wants to feel about it. Generally speaking, she knows that her experience isn't universal. She knows that not everyone was seeing and hearing things that shouldn't be there, that not everyone is an easy target.

Currently, she's browsing the store. Chrissy's pretty sure it used to be something else, or maybe it was a different type of store altogether. Maybe she wishes it hadn't changed, so that she could see what was in stock before. It bugs her, too, that it's apparently October here when it had been March back home. How much time has passed since then? She has no idea. Maybe this place just works differently.

Choose Your Own

[Wildcard it up if none of the above are doing it for you. Feel free to hit me with brackets if that's your preferred format. You can also catch me at cornyflake or CornyFlake#7375 to plot some nonsense- or just to chat!]

Spirit Halloween

[serialskiller]

On the one hand, Murderbot remembers the other Chrissy who was here. On the other, it's actually aware this might be a divergent one from another timeline. Still, still, it approaches with a certain caution, a figure built like it belongs in a military propaganda poster, but dressed in a yellow dinosaur hoodie that manages to be big on it, paired with cargo pants and stompy work boots.

"Careful going too far into the store. It's easy to get lost."

That's safe enough, right? She'll let it know if she remembers it.

[bubblegumheart]

"Is it really that big?"

It hadn't seemed that expansive when she'd come in, but Chrissy knows better than most that appearances can be deceiving. She's still in the process of turning to address the helpful voice when she notices the hoodie first. Chrissy giggles, feels a little bad about it, and brings a hand up to cover her mouth.

"I like your hoodie! Did you find it here?"

She's only just come in, so it's possible that she hasn't found the hoodies yet. Maybe she'll keep an eye out for one.

[serialskiller]

"It's...bigger internally than it ought to be. Some say it's even infinite. As for the hoodie, ah. No, not here. I have a few nice hoodies, a gift from the sundries shop."

Read, a regain. But not the traumatizing type of 'my mun wants to torment me' regain, the kind that's actually a kindness to the character.

It almost looks a little bashful when she giggles, but not in a hurt or upset way. Just...shy. It's weird for something nearly six and a half feet tall, clearly combat-ready, to be shy. Right?

[bubblegumheart]

"That doesn't make any sense." She's not exactly an A student, and she's hardly a physics expert, but it seems impossible for one section of a place to be infinite. Unless... maybe the whole place is infinite? "Maybe I should go find the sundries shop at some point." It might be nice to have something that isn't a reminder of home.

"Do you know what this place was before it was a Halloween store?" Maybe it's a long shot, but Chrissy is brand new, so she figures that most people she runs into will have a better idea of how things work around here. "Do they have other kinds of hoodies too?"

[serialskiller]

"Things making sense here is hardly guaranteed." Yes, by itself, that warning is meaningless. That makes it no less important to offer. "Before this was...whatever this is...it was a Tommy Bahama, which apparently meant upscale tropical vacation apparel. Most of it was sort of gaudy for my taste."

Ignore how bright yellow its sweatshirt is.

before she hung up

[pinballer]

"Don't bother. I think she's broken or something."

Vance was just kind of wandering around, having forgotten all about these stupid demonstrations, until he ran into a new arrival. So, the captain can't be bothered to clean up their messes anymore but he can keep dragging people here? Figures.

"...But I, uh, kind of didn't pay attention when she showed me how to work it, so I can't help you there."

[bubblegumheart]

"Oh. Can she be fixed?"

It's not the first question that occurs to her, but it makes sense that someone might be able to fix her if she's broken. Unless things just don't work that way at all here and she's asking dumb questions.

"Is that why her face is... you know, not there?" She's staring a little, because she can't seem to drag her eyes away. It feels kind of like it did when the monster cornered her, only she's not being chased and she's not filled with terror. Eventually, she does manage to quit staring long enough to turn away in favor of facing her would-be rescuer.

"That's okay! Maybe we can find someone to show us both."

[pinballer]

"I don't know if we can fix the old bat," he says, "The no face thing is probably to creep us the fuck out, but she doesn't seem to hurt us."

It does, in fact, creep him the fuck out because it reminds him a bit of one of the masks his captor wore, but he's too cool to admit that to anyone.

"And we can find someone to show you, but I don't really need one, anyway," he says, "I'm dead."

And he's pretty casual about it.

[bubblegumheart]

"Maybe she's under the weather." Again, she has no idea, but trying to rationalize this place is a suitable distraction for now. "She just wants to scare us?"

Chrissy's seen and heard worse, but it's still pretty disconcerting to see someone without a face. The monster in her head had been worse, at any rate, but it had managed to do for her what Eddie couldn't, so she supposes there are shades of gray here.

She's quiet for a long moment, worrying her lower lip with her teeth as she considers the admission. "Maybe I don't need one, either."

[pinballer]

"I guess she might not want that, but the captain does," he says, shaking his head, "It's complicated."

Vance isn't the most emotionally sensitive person out there, but he recognizes that change in expression. Death sucks. Coming to terms with it sucks. He's been at it for almost a year now and it's still awful.

"You too, huh? That fucking blows," he says, hesitating a little before he decides to just ask, "What happened?"

infinite spirit halloween

[inhairently]

Steve's been here juuuust long enough to stop questioning it when this place decides to do something fucking weird like decide it's Halloween for seemingly no reason. The restaurants don't serve food anymore, the unseen forces that used to keep this place clean don't do that anymore, but hey! At least they can find some really cool Halloween decorations.

He is not, actually, very much in the Halloween spirit at all. He's not much in the spirit of anything these past few weeks, but he's wandering the aisles anyway, picking over the shelves again and again as if he might suddenly realize he really does need a shitty Freddy Krueger mask, actually.

It's only once he's wandered a bit too far into the infinite aisles that he encounters something that stops him in his tracks. It's not a hokey Halloween display or anything like that, no. It's a glimpse of home, familiarity. A person who definitely shouldn't be here.

"Chrissy Cunningham?"

[bubblegumheart]

It's the sound of her full name in that surprised tone that drags her attention away from the hoodies she's considering, and has her turning a little quicker than she'd meant to. Chrissy blinks, unable to move for a moment, when she spots a familiar face. It hadn't really occurred to her that she might run into anyone she knows here, so it's a little surprising to see Steve now.

They weren't ever friends, exactly, but everyone knows who Steve Harrington is- the same way everyone knows who she is. A lot of that is probably a similar situation, she supposes, though she's never asked because she's been too busy trying to keep her head down and make it to graduation.

"Steve Harrington?"

It's not the most intelligible reply, but it's all she can come up with at the moment. Of everyone she could have run into, Steve is probably the last person she would have expected. Though, there are certainly worse alternatives.

"Did you just get here too?"

[inhairently]

"No, I've been here for about a month, I guess?" Time isn't so much strange here as it is hard to keep track of, what with doing the same thing day in and day out with the occasional bouts of fucking awful sprinkled in. "This place is kinda weird."

Yeah, no shit.

Steve's met dead people here. Hell, he died and woke up the next day like he'd had nothing more than a night of heavy partying. It shouldn't be so unsettling to see Chrissy standing here looking at Halloween clothes like he'd just run into her at Melvald's on a Saturday. But when he looks at her, Eddie's words echo in his mind.

Her bones started to snap.

Her eyes, man, it was like there was something, like, inside her head, pulling.

Chrissy was a sweet girl, cursed by a monster, murdered horrifically. Her death had sent shockwaves through Hawkins that she probably couldn't even begin to imagine.

...And he realizes he's staring at her exactly like she's the sweet, cursed, murdered girl who decided to show up like a ghost, so he shapes his expression into something more neutral and sidles up next to her to check out the hoodies she'd been looking at. The heavy shit can wait, at least for a little bit.

"Hm." He hums a note as he squints at the display, then thumbs through the rack. After a couple of seconds he pulls out a shirt they definitely sell at Spirit Halloween and not just on Etsy, shut up, and says, "I mean, you gotta go with this one, right?"

hey wtf I want this shirt lmao

[bubblegumheart]

"That's a long time." Of course, now she's trying to think back to a month ago to figure out if she'd seen him at all. It's probably pointless, now. "I can't even remember what I was doing a month ago. Studying, probably!" Seeing spiders and broken clocks is more likely.

"I've never been on a ship before. Maybe this is normal." There are a lot of things she's never done, and trying to list them all now would be impossible.

Chrissy is used to having people's eyes on her, to being in the spotlight. For years, people have looked at her like they're expecting her to act or speak or be a certain way, or like they're waiting for her to mess up. It's irritating, but it's a fact of life. Something she's long since gotten used to.

Steve's not looking at her like that now. Or at least, it's not exactly like that. Sure, he's probably surprised to see her here, but that's not something she can help. Maybe he's disappointed because he was hoping for someone else to show up. She couldn't help that, either.

So it's a little surprising when he sidles up next to her. Chrissy blinks and turns to watch what he's doing with a curious tilt of her head. She's about to ask what he's looking for when he seems to beat her to the punch, pulling out what might possibly be the cutest shirt she's ever seen. "Steve! Oh my god! There's no way I could ever top that!"

you're in luck! it can be yours for the low low price of 16.99ish

[inhairently]

( right here )

"The best part is you don't even have to pay for anything," Steve says. "You can just take what you want." He pulls the sweatshirt off the rack and offers it to her. "See? No price tag."

Outwardly, he probably seems like the same Steve Harrington she used to see in the halls at school. Calm, cool, totally collected.

Inwardly, he's a total wreck as he wonders how he's possibly going to break it to her that this place is probably actually Hell and they're trapped here forever and there's nothing they can do and oh god there are GHOSTS and ALIENS here Chrissy and sometimes people DIE and they come back like NOTHING HAPPENED. And so on and so forth. He's also sort of dancing around the idea of asking her what the last thing she remembers is. Could it be, perchance, snapping into a pretzel in Eddie Munson's living room? He hopes not, for her sake.

He makes the executive decision to continue acting as if they've just run into each other at a totally normal Halloween store on a totally normal day, for his own sanity as much as hers. There's no need to rush into things yet. He'd had a tough time with it all at first (and... still is, if he's honest) and he'd already seen a lot of creepy, impossible shit in Hawkins. He doubts Chrissy has much experience with anything like that beyond her brief tangle with Vecna.

"Find anything else cool?" he asks, casual as can be. "I haven't really had a chance to check this place out."

Screaming

[shaun_the_sheep]

[That sure is a startled claymation sheep that just sproinked sideways at the chandelier crashing down again. What is up with this place! Shaun isn't keep on all the chandeliers falling. He looks up at the girl sidelong, exasperated: can you believe this place?]

Baaaa. Maah.

[And who is going to clean it up, anyway? That's dangerous to leave lying around.]

words cannot express how blessed I feel by this tag lmao

[bubblegumheart]

[Of all the things Chrissy might have been expecting to see after waking up on a cruise ship, a wayward sheep is probably pretty near the bottom of the list. And yet, there it is.]

Hey wait!

[Yelling after it and trying to carefully close the distance so she can figure out if it belongs to anyone probably isn't going to be very effective, but she can't just leave the thing to its own devices. It might get hurt or worse.]

happy to provide

[shaun_the_sheep]

[Shaun startles again, hooves scrabbling on the wooden deck, before giving the girl a wide-eyed look, very clearly of the I didn't so it this time variety. But he's a farm sheep, not a wild one, so he lets her get close, flicking his ears a bit uncertainly.]

Maah?

[bubblegumheart]

[Unfortunately, the extent of Chrissy's knowledge about animals comes from books or nature documentaries. As it is, she's not even sure what kind of sheep she's dealing with- just that there's a sheep on board and that it doesn't appear to be with anyone.]

It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you.

[She's making an attempt at keeping her voice soft enough to be soothing as she inches closer. Chrissy can't see a rope or a lead or anything, so her current plan is to get close enough to pat its head.]

Where did you come from?

[shaun_the_sheep]

[Shaun eyes her a bit, and recognizes the extended hand as an effort for petting. So he takes a sideways step so her hand lands right on his fluffy head. He likes pets and scratches, especially where his horns used to be.]

Baa.

[He came from a farm, of course. Where else?]

infinite spirit halloween

[thefreak]

Time has felt really weird since the day he arrived. At first, he thought about trying to keep track of the days, because that seems like the kind of thing you do when you're stranded in a place. A place that kind of feels like a prison, because they're trapped here with no way to leave, as far as he can tell. Isn't that what you do at a prison to keep your sanity?

So for all he knows, it could be October. Maybe time moves faster here for all he knows. What he does know is that if he is going to be forced to dress up, he is not wearing one of these costumes as is. Fuck The Man, capitalism be damned, he's gonna make his own.

Apparently he's not the only one who has decided today happened to be a good day to browse the wares here. He spots a familiar scrunchie, which causes his throat to feel tight, just for a second.

"No..." he whispers, taking a step back and nearly colliding with a rather gawdy skeleton display just behind him.

And then a little louder, but with a waver that clearly announces how nervous he is to see what she's going to look like when she turns around. "Chrissy?"

Because he can't get that out of his head, the way she looked last to him. The horrific mangled body that he abandoned in his trailer. She is standing, though, so there's a chance that she's in better shape than the Chrissy that torments his nightmares.

[bubblegumheart]

It feels a little stupid to be upset at the prospect of losing time. It was March before and now it's apparently October. Chrissy can't decide if time just works differently here or if she was gone that long- or even which alternative she'd prefer.

The last time she'd dressed up for Halloween, it was because she'd let Gina talk her into matching in that they'd both gone as Disney princesses. That's probably not going to be an option here, for a couple of reasons. Chrissy isn't sure exactly how much time has passed since she'd first woken up here, but she has yet to run into her friend. She can't even feel too badly about it- she'd never wish this place on the other girl. It's not necessarily a place she'd choose for herself either, but that doesn't matter as much when she thinks about the alternative.

She's in the process of looking over what she's reasonably sure is some kind of maid outfit when she hears shuffling, and then her name, behind her. Chrissy blinks and straightens up to turn, abandoning the costume for the time being. Her eyes go a little wide when she spots him, though, because it hadn't really occurred to her that she might run into him here. "Eddie?"

If it's any consolation, she looks as good as she ever did before things went completely sideways.

[thefreak]

Eddie lets out an obvious breath of relief when Chrissy turns around and reveals herself to not be the visage that haunts his nightmares. Instead, she looks just the same as she had when she visited his trailer all those however many days it's been.

"Holy shit." He'd run into Steve before, but he had never really considered that Chrissy could end up here. And he still isn't quite sure what here is, only that it really doesn't surprise him that he couldn't just be allowed to rest for a fucking change.

"It's...good to see you." What he doesn't say is, it's good to see you like this, although he doesn't quite sure if this is alive or what state they're really in. "Wish it were under better circumstances, though."

[bubblegumheart]

It's kind of an odd response, but Chrissy has no idea how long it's been since she'd seen Eddie last. The fact that he seems surprised to see her kind of makes sense, she supposes. Steve had been surprised, too. She can't blame him for that, all things considered.

"Holy shit is right." This place is weird in a way that she can't quite place. There's just something off about it. But she feels lighter here, in a way, so maybe she shouldn't complain too much.

"It's nice to see you too, Eddie." It's on the tip of her tongue to ask how long it's been. He looks the same as he had before, only he's not smiling this time. He's not joking around or trying to make her laugh, either. He's just... looking at her like he can't believe she's here.