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

[originalshen]

He sent a blood letter with your legs. The words are almost foreign to Shen Qingqiu's ears - not because he can't believe them, but simply because...well. His legs are still perfectly intact, is the main thing here.

So he stares, speechless, confused, moved in a way he can't properly describe (positive? Negative? He genuinely cannot say, his ex-brother's tears genuinely seeming to inhibit his ability to think.

"......It was a dream. He caught you in a dream, and you've convinced yourself it was real. I still have my legs, Yue Qingyuan--and you never should have tried to reach me! I told you! Why couldn't you ever overcome that impulsiveness of yours!?" Despite everything, he's working himself up with greater nervous energy the more he speaks, even if he isn't sure what it is exactly that he's truly angry about, or if he's angry at all.

[qige]

He smiles, shaking his head. The tears are what they are, and he wipes at them once more, his tattered sleeve smearing then into coolness against his cheek. Soon they'll begin drying, leaving the film of itching salt behind.

"If you say so, Xiao Jiu." It's not the case, and he knows his own truth. The nightmare his friend believes was authored hadn't been for Yue Qingyuan. He wasn't ignorant of what the provocation meant, what his own death was intended to buy.

Let Shen Jiu not realise the truth either. His self now is better, easier, not as hurt in visible ways as he will be, he would be.

Or perhaps this is a different sort of meeting by the river in death, without the chance yet to drink to forget, to become part of the pattern again all over, whatever it would bring.

"I was never very good at remembering not to rush when it came to you."

Honest, for what the costs were. The sanctity of himself never mattered much at all to him.

[originalshen]

Despite not knowing what's going on - despite thinking Yue Qingyuan is overreacting over something that never happened - he lacks experience with emotional scenes like this, and unwittingly finds tears gathering at the corners of his own eyes as well.

But scrubbing them away would be acknowledging their existence, so he simply chooses to shove the man instead as he turns his back to him. "What kind of example are you supposed to set, if in twenty years the head of the sect still can't show even a modicum of restraint! Get your head out of the clouds, we have more important things to be focusing on right now!" They're lost! In a weird place! In stupid clothes! And he can't let this idiot see his tears either, so he's just going to start marching off in some random direction in this extremely ugly clothing store.