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TEST DRIVE MEME #10
a. that's where we both belong
[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 aboard! I'm so happy you could join us!
[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.]
b. and there's plenty of that down by the sea
[it’s strange to think about, isn’t it? how all those new passengers, the ones grumbling or shouting their way through the forced muster drill, have absolutely no idea what happened just last month. no idea about the labyrinth. no concept of why anyone around them would be a bit more hesitant around shadows.
they’ll learn.
sometimes a shadow is darker than it’s supposed to be. very rarely does anything come of that; just a vague sense that someone is watching you, and little more. sometimes, though, the shadows move. sometimes they grab at your ankles as you walk. sometimes they give you a shove as you go down the stairs. sometimes they pull your hair, or pinch your arm.
sometimes you feel something sharp cut into your lower leg.
that’s not a shadow, though. that’s a fiddler crab. you see the crab, sometimes. the cut isn’t from its claws, which don’t look very intimating; it’s not a very large crab. the cut is from the large kitchen knife crudely taped onto its back. it’s probably fine. it's not chasing you. there isn't evil in its heart. probably.]
c. think I'll go back to the Keys
[one day, in the atrium, two pedestals suddenly appear. on each is a large button: one green, and one blue. pressing the blue button gives you a little treat, popping out of thin air next to you. pressing the green button sends a small electric shock through your body. weird, but, hey, pretty avoidable, right?
except, it seems to be spreading. to every other button on board.
in the elevator. on the soda machine. the arcade. your phone. the bell on Friday’s desk.]
and she asked me—
"Give him to me," she snaps, and reaches to snatch the crab out of Brutus' hands.
But it's a sloppy grab. Miscalculated, and in the end she's catching more knife than shell. The edge of the blade is pristine and sharp, and cuts lines along her fingers that just look like paper cuts until they begin to bubble and bleed black. Clarke hisses, but undeterred by a bit of pain, reaches out again.
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"Ah, first mistake, now I know you want it."
A low chuckle like metal creaking, "you go around stickin' knives on all your pets, ya fuckin' muppet?"
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And when the newcomer hoists the knife-burdened crab into the air, she's absolutely reaching out for the barstool to her right. Dragging it forward. And — it's all in the eyes — threatening to climb onto the seat in order to reach her prize.
"But he doesn't belong to you, either. I'm not asking again, hand. him. over."
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"Alright, alright, cool your jets," still half-chuckling he reaches up to carefully peel the tape from Ody's shell with a delicacy that betrays his thick fingers, catching the knife in his free fingers.
"Here we are. Watch the passion fingers this time, mate," he suggests as he hands off the crustacean, keeping the knife for himself.
"He a mascot or something?"
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That ended up being a remarkably easier fight than Clarke had been preparing for. She absolutely despises the easy, low laughter thrown her way, but so long as the man is un-taping Ody, it stays any drive to climb the barstool and just absolutely launch at him. She watches the descent of the kitchen knife, then immediately jackrabbits her eyes back to the crab in question as he's slowly lowered down — into waiting palms she readily extends.
Ody frets for a moment in the cup of her fingers, then skitters through blood to viciously pince at her thumb. Fucking — ow??
And thus Clarke's trying to wrestle the crab off her, into a safe hold as she answers — "He's been around longer than you have, and merits that much more respect."
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The smile that splits his face reveals a couple of missing teeth, and he heaves himself glacially to sit back upright, his joints clicking as he does.
"He pinch off your sense of humour, too?"
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All legs accounted for, nothing but the slightly tacky residue of the duct tape, and a few vicious snaps in the direction of her nose and... at least everything is physically fine.
"Did you happen to see who put that on him?"
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Brutus is rough around the edges, doesn't have much experience dealing with civvies or anyone who couldn't laugh off the idea of their own death, and in particular hasn't dealt with teenagers since he himself was arguably one. It'd be pretty easy to shrug her lack of reaction off as her problem, he's used to flying solo- DONNER pilots tend to self-select for being alright on their own anyway. But if he's here, and wants to break out of here, he's gonna need comrades, and that means probably sanding down his edges just a touch. Obviously this whatever-the-fuck is important to her.
"I was just fucking with yus, yeah? Wasn't gonna hurt the little guy. I like... animals?" he thinks that's what this is? "and all. Sorry. Haven't gotten used to dealing with civvies."
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And a stranger he really is, from the way he talks, to the way she had no metric to know he was joking — and still no baseline to know if that apology is honest. Jinx never made it a secret she'd wanted to eat Ody, Palamedes could protect him from any other likeminded individuals — and Valdis probably would too, if the goddamn crab would just stay in his goddamn enclosure. An appraising silence reigns for a few moments, as Clarke picks over what portion of his statement she'll respond to, ultimately landing on:
"He's the closest thing we have to a real animal on board. If you see anything else, know it's probably a shapeshifter, and can do more harm than just a little stabbing."
There. It feels as if she's done her part, warning the man of at least one of the wilder parts of ship life. She could just turn around and stomp off, Ody-prize in hand, but...
"And I wouldn't consider anyone here a civilian. Even the ones who don't do anything proactive, they're still a part of this place and doomed to suffer with the rest."
It sure is a lengthy way to encapsulate you don't know what we've been through, but hey, it works.
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"It's not what you've been through, it's the culture that makes someone a civvie or not," because he's had this fight with other lancers at MO&S before and it never gets less exhausting how self-righteous people get about their particular type of suffering.
"Is anyone going to tell me what kind of suffering or is everyone under some fuckin' agreement that you're all gonna be vague and poetic about it. 'm not a sphinx, I don't fuckin' do riddles, mate."
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Ody is safely held in just one hand now, as Clarke holds up the other to tick suffrages off on her fingers like re-viewing a grocery list.
"Dying. Dying painfully. Dying and waking up to find out part of you went missing in the reanimation process. Almost dying and suffering a gut wound or dismemberment until the next time you actually die. Watching your friends die. Watching your friends be possessed. Killing your friends because they're possessed. Killing your friends because you were possessed. Being separated from your friends in a room full of hundreds of mounted heads and made to go through a door to your own worst nightmare one by one. Being forced to vote on who to murder. Knowing you could always disappear into a void of nothingness, knowing you'd be conscious and stuck the whole time. External torture. Internal torture. The special kind of torture that is watching Skulduggery Pleasant make eyes at the Captain. Food shortages. Some weird supernatural plagues. Zombies. Clowns. And the worst thing of all —"
Yeah, she absolutely ran out of fingers to count on, but can at least now point down at the floor for dramatic effect.
"Is the futility of knowing we're stuck, and there's probably no way out of this alive."
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"You're a hard cunt. There you go. I don't have any of my medals on me, so I can't give you one. Okay? Hard cunt in chief. Hard cuntasaurus. So now you know that I know you're a hard cunt, I'm gonna ask you nicely for some actually helpful information. Dying from what. Injured from what. Why, who, what are we working with, what resources do we have, and who the fuck is 'we' here."
It sure is a cultural difference that this kid's first concern is posturing. None of the ground crew back home would handle anything like this.
"You're not the only cunt on the ship, mate, if you aren't going to help me I'll ask someone who's not looking to dick-measure."
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Or at least thinks she is. Heavily debates options like walking right the hell away in this moment, but doesn't. Considers just setting Ody and all his vehement pinches on the man in front of her. It'd be easy, just drop him on the bartop Brutus is so idly leaning on now. But, he's got a knife, and a love for animals probably only stretches so far. Hmm, choices, choices. And ultimately, hard as it always is to walk away from a spat —
"Dying from being murdered by people. Injured because a person tried to murder you. Usually. Because that has been the design of this place for hundreds of years before us, and you shouldn't let anyone's bright ideas about peace fool you into complacency. Everything else you want to know? Go ahead, ask someone else. I don't want to do this right now."
— that's exactly what she does.
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Fucking inner-ring assholes with no sense of humour. Always so fucking touchy. And the audacity of that set-up for a murder threat- come on. He pats his thigh holster for his gun and goes back to his drink.
[ i'm just shitposting ignore me ]
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