rebirthorder: (Maria ; nagia)
Rebirth Mods ([personal profile] rebirthorder) wrote in [community profile] fuckthistown2019-02-23 10:36 pm
Entry tags:

Test Drive Meme #2


TEST DRIVE MEME

Well, I'm alone there now...
In our 'special place'...
Waiting for you...

Waiting for you to
come to see me.

I. Blue Catfish Diner - Daytime

Supplies in the Inn and Hotel have run low, so what is there to do but search the town? And restaurants and diners seem a good place to find something to eat.

It may take some doing to force open the diner's door, and the inside of it smells of dust and rotted food. There are dishes still on tables, and a horrible smell floats in from the kitchen. The roof must have developed a leak in its years of abandonment, and the black-and-white tile floor has cracked and mildewed without care. What were once shiny golden ceiling tiles are now black and grimy with tarnish -- and quite possibly mold -- and even the jukebox that looms over one corner has seen better days.

In the kitchen, a few cabinets hang open with huge cans visible. A closer inspection reveals things like Spam, canned chicken, cream of mushroom soup, and creamed corn. Not appetizing, maybe, but edible. Maybe even plentiful.

Just as you finish your inventory, something in the main room blares out static, and then the jukebox snarls a gamut of sounds from the beginnings of songs. It eventually settles on Folsom Prison Blues, but every so often, the playback intercuts with something else entirely --

The music cuts out, interrupted by a woman screaming something incoherent and agonized, or a man begs some merciless other for his life, or somebody else wails for everyone in earshot to run, run, don't look back.

Just as suddenly as the screaming started, it stops, and Johnny Cash returns to singing about the train he watches going by. Considering the things that happen in this town, the real question here isn't what happened, or how, but whether the jukebox is worth investigating, and what it will do if you try to change the song.


II. Lumber Yard - Daytime

There's only so much furniture you can break down for fires, not to mention only so many broken stairs anybody can skip and stay sane. Assuming anybody is still sane and you're not all having the same hallucinations.

For example: somebody closed the lumber yard's fence and chained it shut, and left a crucified man to watch over the entrance like some demented scarecrow. They left a mask and goggles on him -- or forced him to wear it, just to make his crucifixion more painful -- but if it was ever air-tight, something shattered the lenses in its eyepieces, and rather than eyes, dark, jagged holes stare sightlessly from where the lenses used to be. The person or persons who crucified him wrapped his wrists in barbed wire, and one clenched fist has fallen loose from its moorings. In his other hand, he clutches a knife, and somehow didn't let go, even in death.

What are the odds they promised they'd let him live, if he could cut himself free? Knowing this town, you probably shouldn't bet against it. Especially since it would take some serious strength to cut barbed wire with a single serrated blade.

Beneath the body, somebody painted the word O U R S in jagged white letters.

If you choose to enter the lumber yard despite this warning, you'll need to climb the fence. There is lumber here for the taking, though none of it looks high quality. But you're trying to stay warm and repair some stairs -- you're not exactly building your dream house.

Getting it out might prove to be a problem. You'll either need bolt cutters for that chain, or a key for the lock.

The corpse might not be a bad place to start, but neither would the dilapidated building.


III. Playing Field - Nightmare

The Playing Field overlooks the river, sloping gently down toward the water, but there are glints in the grass that hint at the presence of broken glass or maybe needles, and the river itself looks like a roiling mass of black sludge. Even under ordinary circumstances, the place might make you shiver. After all, is there anything worse than an abandoned playground?

Turns out yes: a not abandoned playground in Silent Hill's nightmares.

The worst part is the way they shake their heads: too quickly, so swiftly it's a surprise they don't snap their own necks. Back and forth, back and forth, like some sort of twisted bobbleheads, and the patches of hair still left to them bounce as they move.

No, the worst part is that as they move toward you, they scream with a noise that sounds like a baby's cry. It's a long, endless, almost gurgling wail, the kind of sound that would cut to the center of any parent's brain, right through the eardrums. The sound that means they need something. They need to eat. They need to be changed. They're scared and lonely and need to be held, to be reassured.

No, the worst part is their little shriveled gray fingers and how they end in what look almost like fishhooks. The better to catch you with and never let you go. At least not until they rip you to shreds.

No, the worst part is they know you're here, and they're toddling toward you, ungainly step after ungainly step. Slow, for now, but there's no guarantee they'll stay that way.

In the corner of the play yard, one of the swings is still moving sluggishly, back and forth, back and forth, creaking as it goes. It's the only swing left; the others all have rusted chains and have fallen to the ground.

Not a bad weapon. Just one problem: the children are between you and the chains.


freezeyourbrain: (observing)

Lumber Yard

[personal profile] freezeyourbrain 2019-02-25 03:35 am (UTC)(link)
JD hears a woman apologize, first, and then the chime of someone climbing on chain link. He's prepared for the thud as she lands, but his eyes narrow. He can't say he likes suddenly not being alone.

He drops the wood he'd been inspecting and steps out of the stack, moving himself partly -- though not all the way -- into view. She's got the knife the crucified scarecrow had been holding.

Damn it. He should have taken that as soon as he saw it, rather than wait to see if he could find something better.

"Did you just apologize to a scarecrow? You know that's as useless as idle oars on foam, right?"
eyefortrouble: (really)

[personal profile] eyefortrouble 2019-02-27 01:08 am (UTC)(link)
Aya brandishes the knife at JD as he steps into view, gasping slightly. She hadn't been expecting to run into someone so quickly. But is this kid just some looter, or is he affiliated with the group that strung that man up? Idle oars on foam? He has a way with words, it seems, though Aya isn't immediately sure what it means in the bigger picture, if anything.

"Yeah, I did," she answers stoically, shaking her head. She doesn't want to get into accusing anyone. Not right off the bat, anyway. "That was a person. No one deserves to be tortured like that." Her grip on the knife tightens momentarily before she continues. "Agent Brea, FBI. Identify yourself."
freezeyourbrain: (for actual fuck's actual sake)

[personal profile] freezeyourbrain 2019-02-27 02:31 am (UTC)(link)
Honestly, it had just been a re-purposed Baudelaire quote. He all but ignores the knife -- at least, he doesn't react visibly, although he's not going to forget she did that.

"No, that wasn't," JD says, like she just declared the sky was green. "It's a scarecrow. Who would be crazy enough to -- what's even the point"

But he can easily guess the point of stringing up a guy, crucifying him and leaving him as a warning. Ours, they said. They weren't kidding, and they're not fucking around. He's really not used to not being the most dangerous guy in town, and the fact that here, he probably isn't... Well, it's a little unsettling.

At word 'FBI,' he stiffens a little, expression turning deliberately blank.

"Jason Dean," he says. "High school student. Stuck here, just like you and everybody else alive in this town."
eyefortrouble: (look)

[personal profile] eyefortrouble 2019-02-27 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
Aya squeezes the handle of the knife once more before lowering the weapon. A high school kid who couldn't even fathom the possibility of the 'scarecrow' being a human victim of torture? She feels guilty for revealing it to him. "I, ah, I'm sorry, Jason." That may explain why he's in here, though. It'd take a specific kind of person to climb that fence despite the brutal warning the 'scarecrow' represented.

"Stuck here?" Aya crosses her arms after the sheathes the knife in the empty gun holster underneath her waist-length black leather jacket. "What do you mean by that? There are others?" She clearly just got into town.
freezeyourbrain: (yes you are sensing hostility)

[personal profile] freezeyourbrain 2019-02-27 04:05 am (UTC)(link)
Huh. Sorry. That's not a word he hears out of grown-ups very often, but she does call him Jason. Just like every other useless adult who doesn't understand.

That he never told her to call him JD doesn't occur to him. He offers a distant nod in reply to his apology, and then shrugs. He doesn't want to volunteer too much information to an FBI agent. Odds are good she's not here for him -- it's not like he survived his murder spree -- but she'd probably arrest him if she knew about any of it.

But he probably can't get away with not answering. "I've met a few around." JD laughs, humorlessly. "Have you tried to get out yet? Now, like a wolf caught in a trap, I remain fastened, perhaps for ever, to the grave of the ideal." He'd never much liked 'Which is True?' and he likes it even less now, since he's lost Veronica. In case Agent Brea doesn't recognize the Baudelaire quote for what it is, JD adds, "We can't leave. Go ahead and try -- you'll just end up by the damn Welcome to Silent Hill sign."
eyefortrouble: (wat)

[personal profile] eyefortrouble 2019-02-27 04:48 am (UTC)(link)
Tried to get out? What a strange way to phrase it.

"No, I'm here on business. I'm not leaving until I complete my mission." It's a bald faced lie, but she says it with such conviction, it might as well not be. She raises an eyebrow at JD's laugh-quote combo. "What do you mean, you'll end up by the sign?" Aya is no stranger to the supernatural, but the kind she's dealt with so far is pretty far removed from Silent Hill's brand of fucked up.
freezeyourbrain: (i'm a creep i'm a weirdo)

[personal profile] freezeyourbrain 2019-02-27 05:40 am (UTC)(link)
"You're not leaving at all," is JD's response. "If you try to leave -- and it doesn't matter which way you try -- you'll just end up at the sign. I don't know if you get turned around in the fog or if something weirder is happening, but that's what happens."

He shrugs. Whether she believes him or not is irrelevant to him. Honestly, all he wants is that knife -- and the gun holster she stored it in -- and to figure out how to get lumber out of here.
eyefortrouble: (comms)

[personal profile] eyefortrouble 2019-02-28 12:57 am (UTC)(link)
Aya blinks a couple times, trying to wrap her mind around what JD is implying. She's no stranger to suspending her disbelief, though, and considering the reason she's in town in the first place...

She rubs the back of her neck. Calm down. You've been in tight scrapes before.

"All right. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is. There's some things I have to do before leaving, anyway." First things first. "What are you doing here? Come to gather some firewood?"
freezeyourbrain: (are you in there)

[personal profile] freezeyourbrain 2019-02-28 02:22 am (UTC)(link)
"Nah, I just collect lumber for fun." He rolls his eyes. "Yes, I'm here for firewood. In case you haven't noticed, it's cold out." Curiosity rears -- the morbid kind. He finds himself asking, "What is it you have to do here?"

The sooner the FBI agent goes, or tries to go, the better, as far as he's concerned. Especially if she'll leave the lumber yard. He's pretty sure FBI agents and murderers are natural enemies.
eyefortrouble: (cell)

[personal profile] eyefortrouble 2019-02-28 04:28 am (UTC)(link)
"All right all right, calm down." Despite said tight scrape, her tone is light and teasing. "I tend to run hot, okay?" That's an understatement.

It takes a good moment or two for Aya to decide whether to tell this kid what she's here for or not. Trust doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it - Aya only has a vague idea herself. The more she thinks about it, the more cloudy it gets.

"I'm looking for someone. It's a cold case, but I got a tip that she's here in town. She might be in trouble." Good enough, for her purposes. "You mentioned there were others here?"