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

[midnightroads]

"I mean, probably. Do you want me to do yours, too?" Bash's smile comes easy (like Klaus's), and he holds up a bottle of a metallic brown a few shades un-red enough not to be a copper.

[takethatnature]

If Bash's paying attention to Wilson's hands, he'll notice that he looks like he's already had a manicure and hasn't taken care of it. The nails are quite long, taper to dull points, and the ends are tinged translucent black.

Wilson is now trying to recall if Klaus has ever mentioned having a brother. "Sure, why not," he says offhandedly.

[midnightroads]

The irony is that Klaus has six brothers, and Bash is none of them.

"Here, sit down. Want me to keep the claw shape for you? You seem like a dude who could rock talons, but it'd be easy to do coffin nails instead."

[takethatnature]

Wilson self-consciously sneaks a look at his fingers. They always seem to grow back faster than he expects them to. He fights the urge to hide his hands behind his back or shove them into his pockets, since he already agreed to the nail-painting, and sits down in the most comfortable-looking chair within a reasonable distance.

"What are coffin nails? In this context." Talons sound self-explanatory. "I'd prefer not to keep the claw shape."

[midnightroads]

"Filing those tips down to a flat edge, like the foot of a coffin. It's practical, and kinda cute, but does take some maintenance to keep up with." Bash takes one of Wilson's hands, thumb running gently over the back of it. His hands are cool, though not ice cold.

[takethatnature]

"I don't want to do maintenance on my fingernails," Wilson gripes. "Can I have a regular nail shape?"

That's a lot of physical contact from a guy he barely knows! Is he being flirted with or is this just part of the nail-painting process? Wilson has no idea, and he's not sure how he feels about the possibilities besides 'awkward'. He's wearing black arm warmers with a thumb hole; a fairly substantial scar pokes out from the fabric covering his left palm, and some smaller ones dot both hands, traces of the nicks and scrapes he got in between the final time he died chasing down Maxwell and the moment he took the Nightmare Throne.

"I don't think I caught your name."

[midnightroads]

"Bash. Erm, Sebastian if I'm in trouble, but folks know me as Bash." The smile doesn't falter, even as he notices the scars. "And what's a 'regular' nail shape? Like...rounded? Square? Oval? Are the pointy things normal for you?"

[takethatnature]

He's a first-namey sort of guy, then. "I'm Wilson."

"I usually cut them around the same shape as the ends of my fingers, so kind of roundy-squarish?" Wilson shrugs, less emphatically than he might if his hands weren't occupied.

"Normal insofar as they do that on their own, yes. Whatever shape you pick is going to turn back into pointy when they grow out." Normal isn't his favourite way to describe the phenomenon - it feels like welcoming in an uninvited, unwanted guest - but if the glimpses he's caught of Maxwell's bare hands are anything to go by, it's likely a side effect of time spent on the Nightmare Throne. As far as he can guess the likelihood of anything with two data points.

[midnightroads]

Bash quietly begins to work on Wilson's hand, careful when he has to handle the area around any of the scars there, clearly trying to be precise and concentrating on his work.

It's several minutes before he speaks.

"You been alright on the ship, then?"

[takethatnature]

"It beats being stranded in the wilderness, but not by much. I wish they'd stop taking all my stuff out of my pockets and throwing me into dark rooms, because that was a quick way to get killed in the world I came in from."

[midnightroads]

“Yeah. Back in Duplicity, being thrown in dark rooms…sure wasn’t a good sign, either.”

There’s a haunted look that crosses Bash’s face.

“I been known to have to fight off panic attacks when shit goes down here ‘cause of all that.”

[takethatnature]

"What's Duplicity?" He doesn't recognise the name, but it does sound like it's in the same category of sinister locations you can't leave as the Constant and the Serena Eterna; it's too inauspiciously named to be somewhere more mundane that throws people into dark rooms and does nasty things to them, like a prison. "Even the name by itself sounds worrying. Mine was called 'the Constant'."

Wilson's eyes dart silently and almost guiltily off to the side, remembering his own freakout in the Labyrinth of Suffering lobby. He's not sure who was present for that and who was a blankly staring head on the wall like the friends he hadn't seen in months, but it sure seemed like the entire ship was there to witness him lose his composure at people turning into barking dogs. When he finally says something, it's an awkward "I can relate."

[midnightroads]

“It’s. Where I was before here. It was a whole city, and it had a lot more laws than the ship does. More…strict roles. Demands on who you had to be, there.” His voice grows quiet, gaze distant, and he stops working on Wilson’s hands for a moment, forgetting himself.

It’s October now. One of his worst experiences there was a late October event, one he never really recovered from fully.

[takethatnature]

Wilson fails to contain the first thought that pops into his head. "Who names a city Duplicity?"

He catches the look on Bash's face after he's got that out. "Sounds like it must have been awful. The Constant didn't really make us act any particular way... well, except for the person on the Nightmare Throne, but everyone else had to deal with monsters trying to kill you every week while you scrambled not to freeze or starve to death."

[midnightroads]

“I think I might rather have had to face that, instead.”

Bash takes a deep breath. Rubs a hand down his face. Gets back to work.

“The last time I was here, I arrived with someone from there, someone who I’d gotten close to, but he’s not here now. Which is fucking me up some.”

[takethatnature]

"Really? I once got struck by lightning eleven times before I finally died. It was kind of my own fault for going sailing in a rainstorm, but I needed supplies, and the rain wasn't letting up... That's the tropical island-y part, which probably has the worst weather of anywhere and the same amount of monsters."

Wilson's puzzled, skeptical expression shifts to concern. "Is he still back there?"

[midnightroads]

"Were you ever controlled? Forced to do things you didn't want to? To hurt other people? Were you punished for failing to conform to the role assigned to you? Were others punished because you failed?"

Bash shakes his head. "Being struck by lightning for something my own fault, I could take. As for Jeff...I don't fucking know where he is, right now. But I'd give my left nut just to see him again."

[takethatnature]

Wilson goes quiet for a long moment.

"You'd have to ask Maxwell about that," he eventually says. Thinking of the darkness of the throne room, the shadowy bonds holding him in place. They had barely made contact with him before Charlie arrived to set him free, and his struggles to escape were almost enough to block Their voices out... for that long. He's not the one who was on the throne for fifteen years.

"It wasn't always my own fault," he adds, sullenly. "Sometimes a giant monster just shows up to destroy everything and all you can do is fight it or get out of the way. I didn't do anything to deserve the Deerclops or the Sealnado."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Hopefully Jeff's not in a worse place than this." He's not quite sure what else to say, when there's nothing helpful he can contribute.

[midnightroads]

"Maxwell. Maxwell, not the metal Max or Max the cutie? I don't think I met a Maxwell yet. Someone I oughta look out for?"

For better or for worse--either way, he's curious about someone who might have been from the same 'verse as Wilson.

[takethatnature]

"Not the Omnic or the one who turns into a dog," Wilson confirms. Maxwell's not bad-looking in his own way, but cutie isn't the description he'd have used. "He's tall, looks older, well-dressed, losing his hair. He used to be the king of the Constant and he takes about thirty seconds on average to bring that up."

[midnightroads]

"Are you and him friends or...?" Because man, there's some sort of a vibe here.

1/2

[takethatnature]

Wilson takes a while to think about that one.

[takethatnature]

"Approximately."

That should clear things right up.

[midnightroads]

"Bro, I flunked out. Use smaller words, please."

[takethatnature]

"Not you too," Wilson grumbles, remembering running into Pratt and immediately getting into an argument about whether science is stupid. "I mean... 'friends' is closer than anything else, except we don't like each other or get along. But we're not the kind of enemies who want each other dead anymore either."