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]

( 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. ]