TEST DRIVE MEME #10

[sailmods]

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.]

Comments

[maximumcake]

"I will do the same for you here. Absolutely." That's not even a question. But the trust he sees in this mans eyes... it fills him with such a strange agony. How weird to feel proud of a past he can't remember. He seems to have become a really good person in whatever life they shared. Now, he's afraid he won't be able to measure up to it twice.

"Um. I guess we could start with me showing you around? There are a lot of nice features to this ship. Like, there's a pool, and an all you can eat buffet. Ooh, we have a sushi restaurant too, and a bunch of bars. You don't... smoke, do you?"

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar smiles, fond and warm. "We actually met in a pool, if you believe it? Tell you about it sometime. You introduced me to sushi, too. Nah, don't smoke, never had anything you could fuckin smoke growing up, don't really see the point."

[maximumcake]

"No kidding? That makes sense. I've always loved swimming." Eventually, this is going to stop feeling so weird, right? Like he's giving himself deja vu.

"That's good. I don't wanna throw shade at the people who do smoke, but I've never really liked the habit. It can damage your taste buds so things don't taste right anymore and that would suck so much. You probably already know how much I love to cook."

[hate_gettin_older]

He laughs at the last words. "Like it's breathing, man. They got a kitchen here? Or anything like it?"

[maximumcake]

"Yep. That sounds like me." That's one thing he will never change about himself.

"We do! It's brand new. There weren't any kitchens when I first got here and it was killing me but now that we're back on the regular ship again, we got one and I've spent almost every day in there."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Excellent," Edgar says. "So there's this thing I gotta go see before they'll let me go anywhere else -- want to come with? Or I can find you after? Doesn't look so easy to get lost here, it's a lot smaller than the last place."

He says that with an odd blend of approval and resignation; he'd just been starting to really enjoy the wide open spaces.

[maximumcake]

"Oh, you mean the muster drill? Yeah, I'll go up with you. Meeting Friday for the first time can be kind of jarring. You'll see what I mean when we get there."

He does detect a bit of that resignation. Max can't relate so much given where he came from, but he can still be sympathetic.

"We do sometimes get to leave the ship to go on excursions. This isn't all you'll ever see."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Excursions?" He starts walking again, half-jogging down the hallway in anticipation of Max's longer stride. "Like, to visit different places and that?"

[maximumcake]

And here Max was preparing to slow his pace down for the shorter man, but it turns out he doesn't need to.

"Yeah, exactly. In December we went to a fancy hotel up in the mountains and I got to play outside in the snow all day. And then I cooked a bunch in the kitchen later to warm up." He'll conveniently leave out the murder and trial part.

[hate_gettin_older]

"Huh. No thanks very much on the snow, but -- mountains? Only ever seen mountains once, sort of."

He's cheerful about it, though. After a lifetime of seeing nothing outside of the train's Tail section, anything new is still fascinating to him.

[maximumcake]

"You like the tropical weather here better? Honestly, me too." Even if it does make wearing a suit a little warm sometimes.

"Only once? That's a shame, they are really beautiful. I've driven through them a few times on a long road trip. It's funny, actually. My master's clan is called the Ozark Moutain Clan but the Ozarks don't actually even have real mountains. Technically, they're hills."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Love warm weather, man, fuckin love it. 'S like heaven."

Out onto the deck now, and Edgar stretches his arms out and turns his face up to the blue sky, and gives a sigh of unalloyed enjoyment.

"Dunno if I'd say beautiful, exactly, about the mountains I saw? Might've liked em better if I wasn't busy trying not to fall off the edge."

Which way from here? He makes a move in one direction, or tries to and finds himself frozen to the spot again. Rolling his eyes, he turns the other way and starts walking again.

[maximumcake]

"Have I got great news for you? It's always sunny here. The weather is the same every day." Max kinda misses thunderstorms if he's being honest. Not tornadoes, but a hard rain and the roll of thunder can be soothing.

"Oh. Shit. Yeah, that might make a different kind of impression. I've never been in danger of falling off a mountain before." Unless you count those perilous parts of the drive where there's nothing but a flimsy guardrail between you and a plummet to certain death.

"The forced thing sucks, I know," Max says when Edgar rolls his eyes. "It will stop once you do the drill."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Tell you about the mountain thing sometime, yeah? 'S a good story." Once you get past any difficulty believing the part about it taking place on Mars, at least.

"How long's the drill take?" he asks, half-jogging along again. "And what's it for? Note said something about safety?"

[maximumcake]

"Yes, absolutely. I want to hear all of your stories." A pause. "You've probably heard so many of mine. So, like, if I start to repeat myself you can just tell me you already heard it." He wouldn't want to bore Edgar by telling the same stories over and over.

"It's supposed to teach you how to operate the lifeboats if the ship starts to sink. It's not that long, really, but it's not all that helpful, either. Oh, one thing though, you should definitely keep the necklace Friday gives you. It's weird, but it also might have magic protective properties."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Right then," Edgar says, "learn about lifeboats, keep the necklace, got it." He gives Max a cheeky grin, and turns toward the cluster of people where the drill is about to start.

As promised, it doesn't take long. He makes his way back to Max afterwards, shaking his head in bemusement and fingering the central pendant on the lei.

"Look for the gal with the winning smile, they said. That's cute, that is."

[maximumcake]

Max waits patiently by the rail, taking the time to scan the rest of the crowd of attendees too. No one he knows, still. He's very pointedly avoiding looking at Friday directly.

"I know, right? Isn't it creepy? The only thing that smile is winning is a disappearing contest." Seriously, why no face? It gives him the willies.

"So. Now that you're free to roam, where do you want me to show you first?"

[hate_gettin_older]

"Well ..." He glances around, then back up at Max. "Can't decide between 'show me anything dangerous I should know about' and 'show me your favorites,' so how about you pick?"

[maximumcake]

"The kitchen is my favorite, but we're saving that for last or you won't get to see the rest of the ship." He laughs at his own joke. But, seriously, they should both know it's true.

"Ooh, I know. I can show you the Infinite Tommy Bahama. It's a clothing store that goes on forever. Like, seriously, I'm not sure if anyone's found the back. Maybe not even Siffleur and he lives in there. Oh, right, I should warn you about that. Siffleur is a werecougar. Sometimes he likes to hunt people in the store but only if they actually sign up for it. So, you don't have to worry too much. There is the Bahamanal, though. That's kind of dangerous. It's, like, basically a monster made out of clothes? I don't know. It's really weird."

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar absolutely knows that's true, and wouldn't have it any other way. He nods along with the explanation -- honestly, a clothing store is exactly what he should have guessed for Max's second choice.

"A monster made out of clothes?" That's disbelieving, but with laughter under it. "What's it do if it catches you then, how's it supposed to eat anything?"

[maximumcake]

"I don't know how it got there, but I do know it has teeth. Maybe they are made of, like, buttons or zippers or something. It can definitely bite. Oh, and it has babies too. Just... some of this stuff you have to kind of go with and not ask too many questions about." Usually, the answer is something vague like "magic" or "vibes." It is what it is.

"It doesn't like fire, though."

[hate_gettin_older]

"... Doesn't like meaning it'll run away from, or doesn't like meaning it'll attack if you have any?"

That's an awfully specific question, Edgar.

[maximumcake]

That is an awfully specific question... Max is looking at Edgar a little harder now.

"Uh... scared? I think."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Right," airily, "good to know, might help sometime."

A beat.

"... So you know how I said we met in fairyland?"

[maximumcake]

Okay. He's eyeing Edgar very suspiciously now.

"Yeah...?"