fuckthistown | Test Drive Meme #1

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Test Drive Meme #1

TEST DRIVE MEME

In my restless dreams,
I see that town.

Silent Hill.

You promised me you'd take me
there again someday.

I. Public Records - Daytime

If you want to find out more about the strange town you’re in, why not check the Public Records building?

There’s no one at the guard post, and there’s no one at the desks, so you’re free to look through all the filing cabinets you can find. Some are full of petty complaints sent in about this person not cutting their grass short enough or that person letting their dog out without a leash, and there are meticulous records of replies. Others are full of blueprints of different buildings, buildings that exist and buildings that don’t. Others still have police reports, and there seems to be a suspicious number of reports about abused and disappeared children, and dealers selling hallucinogens to tourists. All those complaints are found unsubstantiated or tragic accidents. Nothing to be done about it.

Deeper in the filing rooms, so far deep that you can’t see the sun from the windows anymore, there’s one filing cabinet that smells like charred flesh and smoke with a tiny, childlike black handprint pressed to its surface. The filing cabinets around it are full of messages to you, messages from loved ones that may or may not be alive anymore. There’s no way to open the cabinet with a handprint on it. No way to look through it. If you fiddle with it too long, you’ll start getting a dreadful feeling of being watched by someone very, very unhappy.

II. Midwich Elementary School - Nightmare

Sirens cut through the night, and the fog lifts, only to be replaced by darkness. The floor glows like embers, linoleum peeling back to reveal rusted wires, like the floor is a catwalk instead of the bottom of a school. The walls are too hot to touch, and they glow with words scratched on their surface as if with a burning hot knife.

Witch

Go home

Drop dead

Terrible things spill from the classrooms. Tiny, childlike creatures, blackened entirely save for veins of red heat breaking the surface of their skin like lava. They turn their faceless heads towards the nearest living creature and shriek, sprinting towards them with arms outstretched, intending to tackle them in a blistering, suffocating bear hug.

III. Toluca Lake - Daytime

Starvation is looming. Anything perishable has rotted, and non-perishables have been devoured. What is there to do?

Well, there’s always the lake.

It stands to reason that there are fish in the lake. The tourist pamphlets in the hotels advertise fishing trips, after all. But on the docks, someone has drawn in chalk a terrible picture. It’s a childlike drawing of the bottom of the lake with hundreds of hands reaching up to the surface, hundreds of hands of the dead reaching to take the living down with them.

Maybe it’s a warning. Maybe it’s just a taunt to get people keyed up. Either way, there’s a fishing boat docked with a fishing pole ready to go. Good luck.

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The words on the wall are disconcerting, but more disconcerting is the size. First Aid is used to being too large for human environments, but this one.... and his scanners aren't working.

There's smoke in the air and it catches in his intakes weirdly. This has got to be some sort of weird processor loop or something. He tries comms, but they're down too.

"Spot?" His voice sounds weird, kind of quiet. First Aid is a quiet mech by nature but he knows how to make himself heard on a battlefield or a disaster site when it's important- all of them do. Even without being commander of their gestalt, Hot Spot is in charge of fire scenes by pure virtue of his function and First Aid defers to him; First Aid's primary job when it comes to those is emergency evacuations. But normal structure fires are usually just pleasantly warm against his armor, unless there's hazardous materials or certain types of chemical fires, the heat isn't enough to damage him, and now, the heat from the walls feels almost blistering.

There's no answer from Spot, no signal from his comms, and all he can do is try to clear the building himself, heading down the red-lit hallway. There's the sound of strange movement from within. "Please, if anyone is there- shout so I can find you! We can help you get out!"

The sound of someone calling is what convinces Elena to emerge from the small closet she's been hiding in. It's from down the hall, the voice distant but seeming to move closer. Which means those things will...

He might not know about them.

Practically flinging herself out into the hall, she looks one way and then the other, holding out her hands and waving in what she hopes is a universal gesture of Stop doing what you're doing!! But already she can hear the shuffling within the classrooms increasing, her heart sinking into her stomach.

"Hi there! Are you okay? This building isn't safe, you need to get out!" First Aid is relieved to see that the woman is ambulatory. "Is there anyone else still in here?" First Aid stops in front of her.

There are doors on either side of the hallway, still closed unlike the one that the woman had emerged from, and now that he's standing still, First Aid can hear noises behind them. He turns, clearly intending to open the door that he's standing next to.

So not a universal gesture then. Great. Really, this is exactly what she needs.

He's lucky she isn't Katherine, who would have left him to his fate and run as fast as vampirely possible in the opposite direction. Katherine values self-preservation above all else, while Elena's sense of compassion demands she stay and try to get them both out of this mess alive.

"Don't open the door!" She moves toward him, fast but not as fast as she should, a hand outstretched to stop him before he can reach the door. Hopefully.

"What?" First Aid freezes in place. "Is there anyone else with you? I'm trying to see if there are more people who need to get out." He reaches out and carefully puts the palm of his hand to the door. Normally, his sensors would pick up temperature readings right through the flimsy wooden door, but whatever is going on that's landed him in this shape is more than a little weird. "The door isn't hot."

Would it be bad if she reached out and shook a complete stranger? Or would the circumstances excuse such an act with all things considered?

"The things on the other side of that door don't need help," she tries to explain, wondering at the back of her mind if there's anything she can even say to dissuade him from this course. "They'll try to kill us if they get out." If he doesn't move, she'll grab his arm and try to tug him away from the door.

First Aid is an agreeable mech in general and someone who seems to know what is going on (and isn't running into a burning room herself) is worth listening to. "Who will? Are you sure?" He doesn't open the door though. "Are you alright?"

The way he keeps asking that is strange, a repetitive inquiry that tells her just how focused he is on helping someone. It's... a bit unsettling, to be honest, but the sounds on the other side of that door are even more so.

"I won't be if we don't get out of here now," she tries, taking his hand in her own. "Please."

"No, of course." First Aid is a little confused about why she is holding onto his hand, but evacuating the building is the first priority of any fire. "The exit is back this way." He indicates the direction he came from.

The sounds from behind the door are increasing- scrabbling sounds, but no one answered him, and combined with the warning, he's not entirely sure what the right thing to do is. "Are you sure no one is in there?" He glances back.

Yelling and shouting seem like terrible ideas to Arkin, but he appreciates the speaker's intent. There's a click of a door lock and he emerges from one of the thankfully empty classrooms. His left arm has been hastily bandaged with an old t-shirt.

"Hey. You gotta be quiet. There are things in here that'll come after you." His speech is hushed but firm.

"Things? What kind of things?" First Aid says. "Are you alright? You need to get out, this building is on fire." He glances at the man's arm. "Do you need medical attention?"

"I don't fucking know! Monsters. We can try to get out of here but we gotta do it quietly. My arm's fine. Got a burn off one of those things."

There's some sounds of movement further down the hall. It could be another person but Arkin will lay money on it not being anything human. He gestures to the room behind him. "You gotta get in here."

Monsters? First Aid is dubious, but not that dubious, and it's not as if he hasn't seen weirder. "In there? The door's not that far, if you think you can make it, and there's a lot of smoke in here." He moves towards the door anyway, though.

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