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

[skaikru]

( gentlemen, the only thing suspicious here is the façade y'all are adopting. it's also super unimportant, because: blood. open wounds. the pretext of being summoned to the infirmary, and the reality that walking through those doors dictates. in the future, no one cares if boys make longing doe eyes at each other, and in the present it's still as easy as slipping on a pair of gloves to dip into dissociative bedside manner and caretake.

steve's liminal gratitude gets an offhand wave; no problem and anytime and you're not my concern right now wrapped into one.

and eddie gets a tight smile along with a nod. ) Sure. Sit down — ( they're short an operating bed (and any surgery tools that date after the 1800's but hopefully won't need that) but there's a perfectly good gurney-style assessment table not too far off. clarke points to that as a guide. ) — and take off your shirt for me?

[thefreak]

[ There is, unfortunately, no delaying this part anymore. It has been easy up until now to pretend that he isn't as bad off as he is. By some miracle his wounds, as terrible as they are, stopped bleeding, but that doesn't mean he's out of the woods by any means.

There's something about actually seeing the damage that has his chest grow just a little tighter as he sits down and starts to carefully peel the shirt that had slightly congealed to his skin from the dried blood. He can mourn the loss of a perfectly good Hellfire Club shirt later, but right now his greatest concern is just how grisly the bite wounds look. ]

I would make a quip about something, something, not even gonna buy me dinner first? But I'd really rather not add a black eye on top of all the rest of the injuries.

[ They're not nearly as deep as he thought they would be, but there are so many of them across his chest and sides, and he tries to tear his eyes away because the more he looks, the more he's reminded of the bats tearing at his skin, chewing him to shreds. The world looks blurry now, but not because of disorientation, no, his eyes are stinging with tears as he finds himself overwhelmed, flashes of being held down as one of the demonic bat's tails wrapped around his throat, choking the air out of him. He had been so sure that he wouldn't make it in time for Henderson to send him off.

And now he's here. Wherever here is, and he's not really sure he wants to know. What he does know, though, is that if this really is another chance he's being given, he doesn't want to waste it. ]

So, um. How bad does it look?

[skaikru]

( a lot of emotions follow all at once. clarke looks at him in a manner simultaneously flat and aghast, preturbed and insulted with the insinuation she'd ever deck a patient. (it's not the worlds worst assumption, but eddie at least has done nothing so egregious to warrant that; he's safe.) then a touch of pinched confusion in the way her eyes narrow — did steve get to the point where she was from something like 170 years past their existence in the timeline? though it's mostly the whole apocalypse bit that really destroyed cultural understandings about dating, re: take me to dinner first as a joke. )

All the food here's free.

( but lastly and more pressingly, when she turns her attention to freshly bared wounds, it's just a thick blanket of concern. not disgust, though the deep claw marks are gross but (unfortunately, hi steve) familiar. clarke swallows thickly, watching the largest laceration in order to get an idea for how quickly it's oozing blood. )

Not great. ( honesty first. ) But given you were just standing upright and holding a conversation, they're probably not bad bad. ( unless he's in shock. so first thing first in assessing that is actually going to be reaching for his wrist and feeling for a pulse, or for just how clammy and cold the skin's gone, or any dark tints to the ends of his fingers. while doing so, she'll ask: ) How's your pain?

[thefreak]

[ There's a feeling of relief that washes over him, that his brand of ridiculousness (because humor is a coping mechanism, a way of distracting from pain, but he doesn't want to offend anyone in the process) isn't going to sour whatever budding friendship this could end up being. Not that there's even a guarantee, but based on what Steve has told him so far, he has a feeling friends are going to be necessary if he has any hope of surviving here.

Especially friends who know how to stitch him back together. ]

It's, uh, not great, but I also don't feel like I'm on the verge of dying, so, uh. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. [ Shock has a tendency to do that, right? But shouldn't the shock have worn off by now? Or maybe because he already kind of died in one world, he's incapable of dying from these wounds again?

He's not exactly looking to find out, though. ]

I'm guessing I'm gonna need stitches? You need to clean them out first? [ That, he surmises, is going to hurt like a bitch. But he'd much rather pass out from the pain from that than have to deal with gangrene, so. He'll bite down on a wooden spoon if he has to. ]