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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.]
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"Yog-Sothoth? Next you'll be telling me you know Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlehotep, cursed be thy names," he chuckles, tilting his head back down and arching a brow.
"You went through all the years of getting a doctorate just to kill someone? You couldn't have just..." he trails off, gesturing with both hands following someone presumably with a sniper rifle, then firing it off twice.
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"Yeah that's the bitch of it. He was clever enough to use it to kill too, hence getting hired to extinguish him. Took ages to figure out it was his only trick; bought an imprisoned succubus and traded her freedom for his life. He saw it coming the whole time, but..." Erin's smile is malicious. "Not a damn thing he could do about it. Your turn, why magic as a career?"
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"Then when I went to the United States to further my study I found an ancient text with all the evidence I needed and it cracked on from there. That taste of the truth spurred on a ravenous appetite that couldn't be sated for a long time. I'm something of a recovering alcoholic, only with magic."
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"Actually, I'll keep it in mind to try at some point. I'm very against being bound in any manner, but if it becomes a self-control issue, I may look for you to abuse that loophole."
By tradition I declare: damn OCs and their one-liners
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"What sort of fae? You don't look like any I've read about. You're much too social and contemporary for any of the kinds from my world. Too nice, in fact. You're conversational and polite and haven't tried to steal my bones or worse."
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"There's plenty of writing about people young and old being spirited away by the fae for a variety of reasons. Occasionally they leave behind gifts in trade, completely oblivious to the damage their thieving does. Those that are more mean-spirited leave behind changelings. Copies of the people they took that are never quite right. There's a theory in the circles I run in that there's no such thing as fae as written, but they're just more extensions of other greater evil entities. Maybe. If not, though..." he tilts his head back a moment, leaning away to give her a bit more space.
"It was very distantly adjacent to my preferred fields of study. Rarely intersected. If you're ever in the right mood, I'd very much enjoy hearing as much as you can tell me."
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"I'm not going to spend my time here walking on eggshells because I might hurt someone's fragile feelings, miss. If people prefer to attack ignorance rather than educate in an effort to eradicate ignorance, then they are the problem. I'll take the advice under consideration, but here's a bit for you in turn: if I were in the habit of making assumptions, then I would have been obligated to kill you the moment I met you," he muses, turning his head slightly and glancing sidelong at the woman.
"In my line of work, anything not perfectly human in every way is a dire threat with no goal other than the complete enslavement and extinction of humanity."
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"You talk about a war against inhuman evil - and mind you someone already decided to get cross with me for using the word human as in humane because they're so bothered by the unfairness of semantics, evidently - and yet here we are, clearly bound by some inhumane being and people are more content to sit at buffets and plan weddings. It's absolutely ludicrous."
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