[Your head is foggy. Your body is numb. Prone on a flat, tepid surface. No seams, cracks, or earth. As if you'd laid down on the glassy surface of a mirror, and slept there for a hundred years. No light pricks at your eyes to wake you.]
Hey!
[The sound flits through one ear and out the other. It's distant, and it barely matters.
But you become aware of your breath. You are breathing, and it feels an odd thing to do in this place. Thicker than it should be, as if you have to work for it. Sensation tickles at the ends of your fingers and toes, and you have a sense that you are not alone here.]
Hey! Get up, won't you?
[Small hands prod at your arm. Your side. Somebody grumbles and darts around you — small feet, too, rubber soled — and sets to the same routine on someone else nearby.
Slowly you open your eyes, and are met with utter darkness. Shapeless, edndless, oppressive and complete. But you can see two figures lying down next to you. Say, don't you know them?]
[this is not the best situation to wake up in, no. her head feels clouded, there's no sensation of exactly how she got here, and breathing is harder than it ought to be. she tries to sit up, let her eyes adjust to the darkness to the extent they can.
she runs her fingers through her hair to push it off her face, and turns her attention to the two figures near her.]
Hello?
[while she's still adjusting to the darkness, she's hoping she knows these people.]
[ waking up in a strange place with disturbing sensations is unfortunately nothing new for someone who usually spends so much time walking something like the Fade, but it's never a pleasant surprise. jerking his arm in close as he feels something touch it, curling his fingers in and struggling to sit up. it's dark and he's human, he doesn't have good night vision - squinting to try and figure out who's talking.
but not responding yet. you just never know in a place like this.
concentrating very hard on believing there is a floor, because if he stops, there might not be one. ]
[ yeah, he doesn't love waking up like this either. though what seems to be a kid prodding him awake — that gets his attention enough to pull him out of whatever initial worries he's having. ]
What...?
[ just muttered to himself as he tries to sit up and look around and get kind of feel for where the fuck he is... but after he hears shadowheart's voice he will at least be polite enough to answer as he squints in her direction (he usually does have good night vision, but who knows how much that will help right now). ]
You're enjoying your freedom from the long dragging days of school. You pitched your schoolbooks and bopped on out into the sunshine and the tall grass, scampered across paved roads and haunted the Aladdin Movie Theater (now showing a creature double feature! I was a Teenage Frankenstein and I was a Teenage Werewolf, because if it ain't broke why fix it?), paid pennies for candies and turned up the dial on the radio whenever the teen programming came on. One of you brought your transistor radio today, even, just so Chuck Berry and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers can join the fun.
It's the first time you've played out in the Barrens. It is, ironically, absolutely thick with tall grass, swampy sponge, and if you wandered in a ways, dotted with wide, heavy-topped pipes that pushed out of the ground like mushrooms and lead straight down into Derry's labyrinthine sewers. You'd been warned once or twice not to heave the lids off and hide in there, even the grown men of Derry Public Works can get lost. But why the hell would you want to hide out in miles of shit and piss anyhow?
No no, here in the grasses it's fine. The rough and tumble bruisers from school haven't rubbed all three of their brain cells together to figure out that's where the bullied kids go. Which, you may as well be. You don't have it as bad as say, Eddie Kaspbrak, who was famously frail and had to honk on his aspirator if he took up so much as a light sprint. Or Richie "Trashmouth" Tozier, whose perilously running mouth was fronted by two buck teeth and earned him the nickname Bucky Beaver, though with how often the Bowers gang caught him you might as well call him Roadkill Rich. Or stuttering Bill Denbrough, who was a solid kid that in any other world might have done all right for himself, if he could only spit out one sentence in a straight shot. Most people laid off him a while though, after his brother Georgie was murdered last October.
That's the other thing. Curfew's at 7pm, sharp, and that goes for every kid in town. You don't want to end up dead or missing.
But here, it's safe, right? You're a bit hidden away, and the three of you are together, along with two other kids from the Bill-Richie-Eddie crowd of big old Losers. Shy and sweet Ben Hanscom, who wore sweatshirts even in the hot stink of July so that no one would call him "Tits" or remark upon his gut, and Beverly Marsh, who was pretty but poor, and usually had a bruise splotching over some stretch of her lean limbs or across the flat of her cheek. It's they who led you down here, come hang out a while and bring your tunes, Ben's got his comics and Beverly's got her cigarettes, but hey, it's your guys' first time here!]
What would you like to play? [Ben asks, inquisitive.] We don't have firecrackers or anything crazy like that.
Save it for a big celebration. [Beverly says and winks to Ben, who turns both rose-red and utterly mute in the blink of an eye. She turns to the three of you as he attempts to regain his composure.] I'm game for anything. As long as it's not Cowboys and Indians, but war or safari or stuff like that is cool. Or games like tag. Did you bring any cards?
[The world's your oyster. Do you like to play pretend, or do something a little more organized?]
[will i use baby icons this whole time probably now, but for now.
this girl is jen hallow. you would assume jen or jenny was short for jennifer, but it's actually short for something long and dated sounding and probably biblical. she's moved to town some [redacted] time ago to live with her aunt, an unpleasant woman most of the town children probably avoid, a mean church lady. she wears her hair in cute buns and braids and dresses in decent clothes, though not cool ones by any means.
the impression of her family situation is weird and religious and somewhat mysterious, but the impression of jen as a person is that she's moody and reserved and kind of unpleasant. would probably be a bully more often than she'd be spending time around these kids, except that she's equally rude and unfriendly with the popular kids as she is with everyone.
it is a mystery why she bothered showing up to this, but she seems more willing to be included today than she usually would be. maybe the way bev asked was nice.]
I still haven't agreed to play anything.
[but she will probably ultimately go along with whatever anyone else proposes, while acting disdainful about it.]
[ i probably won't stick to baby because i only have A FEW. but its fine. you get the picture.
this boy is ❚❚❚❚❚❚ ❚❚❚❚❚❚❚ but refuses to go by anything but andy. new school, new name. he spends most of his days doing his absolute best to beg out of class and then escape out of a bathroom window or sidle out the door of the nurses office when no one is looking, a skinny blonde headache through and through. just an absolutely incredible escape artist. he has a certain charm though, even if his moods tend to cycle somewhat unpredictably from energetic to ... a bit dark. maybe he'll grow out of it.
he looks incredibly disappointed there aren't firecrackers, by the way. sticking his tongue out. ]
I hate cards. I always lose. [ he does seem to have extraordinarily bad luck with cards. ] Safari doesn't sound so bad ... Oh, have you guys heard of Lord of the Rings?
[ already kicking around and looking for a Good Stick. You know. One that looks like a Gun?]
[ mine aren't accurate no matter what because he's not a mauve-haired catboy now
the last boy is del mcgarry, a small and pale auburn-haired kid who looks at least one grade younger than he actually is. he and his brother bax — who's younger than him but already bigger, and pretty much his opposite in terms of appearance with a darker complexion and longer, wavier hair — have been getting kicked around in the foster care system for most of their lives. they get a lot of shit for it, for being these scraggly kids nobody wants enough to keep, but the one thing that really pushes del's buttons is any insinuation that his brother isn't his real brother. he's generally a fairly well-behaved (if sharp-tongued) kid who likes to read and does well in his classes, but he's ended up in detention a few times for socking kids in the jaw when they said the wrong thing.
especially lately. he's been even more protective of bax ever since georgie died.
today though, bax is off at baseball practice, and it's just del and his backpack full of ratty old books hanging with the other outcasts. ]
Yeah, 'cause you stink at playin'.
[ annoyed because he wanted to play cards... short legs are too much of a disadvantage in too many physical games!! ]
Of course, Yves is missed. The news is devastating. For a boy that was bullied so badly he had to switch to the pitiful shelter of the conglomerate-grades Christian school, he had bounced back in many a heart and mind.
Otherwise, life is quiet. Suspiciously so. Your caretaker's eyes glide over your injuries as if they were never there, and you are left to bandage and nurse whatever you have on your own. Kids, though. They do double takes, ask where you took a fall. Del has it the worst off the bat, but luckily the sucker marks dissipate after two days. Do you tell anyone about what happened to you? Do you tell each other?
You decline the invite to play in the Barrens again with Beverly and Ben and the others. They understand, the news is the pits and they aren't in a playful mood either, but they insist that you're welcome again later. You hang up the phone with a squirmy, guilty feeling in your gut. It just doesn't feel right.
How is life going for you? Are you meeting up again? Where are you spending your summer days, if not together?]
[jen does tell the others what happened. it's frightening, to risk talking about it, when no one else has believed her.
but they were there when yves was found. they saw what happened to him. they helped move his body, something so awful that she hardly even wants to admit to herself happened. and it felt, when that was happening, that del was brave and forceful and knew what to do and andy was kind and hugged her.
so she tries to trust them, and tells them. how she went home and couldn't get back inside, and this probably makes her sound insane, but a car with no driver was chasing her, it was trying to run her over, and she has the bruises to show for it but no one seems to believe her.]
And no one would let me back inside. The people in this town... they only want us in by curfew so they don't have to think about us.
[ yeah, he'll tell the others, but no one else. if only because the claw marks leave him limping for a few days and he nearly gets caught shoplifting bandages from the store, and needs help covering.
he'll spend the summer being as far out of the house as possible - which maybe is an insane choice considering the rampant child deaths, but at least it's not stuck in that basement, stuck underground in a place with no light and no way to tell if that box is still there. still waiting to be opened again. he hasn't been sleeping well. if he's getting any rest at all, it's during the day, catnapping. it's making his moods worse. ]
[ del has been paranoid about water ever since. he doesn't wash his hands before meals anymore; his showers last exactly as long as it takes to get clean and not a second longer, and he keeps the drain plugged with a rubber stopper until he gets out. he waits outside the bathroom whenever bax showers too, just in case anything sounds off. they keep the baseball bat within their reach whenever they go to sleep now. bax mostly sleeps okay, trusting that his big brother will protect him. del barely sleeps at all because he knows he probably can't.
he tells jen and andy, but no one else, and he makes bax swear he won't say a word to anyone else either. he explains how he heard yves's voice from down the pipes, and waner's, and others, and how he would have just thought he was off his fucking rocker if he didn't have the injuries and bax's account of what he saw so clearly telling him otherwise. ]
Rather be in a real prison than this shithole town.
[ at least then they'd only have to worry about being attacked by other inmates and guards. he could handle that. ]
[Gone, and somewhat forgotten. Your names are remembered and you are grieved, maybe more than you expected. Kids and teachers remember you. The children who tried to help that last day certainly remember you. Your guardians are stricken with a knowledge of their own failure, too late to take it back and too late to change their own ways.
Because It doesn't just enjoy the misery of little children in their final moments. It loves the grief and the regret too, the self-loathing, the actual loathing. Fear is best, but the rest balance the palate, and so it moves and obscures and manipulates in ways to best prepare a feast.
No matter. That was a long time ago.
When you wake this time, you remember your life and death in Derry. But you remember more as well. Lives in worlds far away from the hum of Chevy motors and Jerry Lee Lewis on the radio, from The Wizard of Oz and decoder rings in cracker boxes and yo-yos that just wouldn't sleep for you, no matter how hard you flicked them down. That stuff was real, but so were dragons. Spellcraft, awakenings, spirits and corrupted forms, companions and quests. So was the afterlife — irrationally, a place of regular murder, but also of free-wheeling prank curses and whimsical locales, philosophical debates on phones that spiralled into so much gossip and bullshit.
And yet, none of it seems to matter very much. You are yourselves and in your own bodies, as you were before Derry, but you feel very dimly about it. Disconnected. Can someone put the plug back in the wall socket? Maybe you only just woke up. Maybe that's why you feel free floating, mentally more of a mist than a person.
As you cast your disaffected gaze around, you see something.]
[Anders, you died in a snarl of fury. Too much injustice, too little boons to go around, too many bad decisions and too little fire to burn it all away. That rage still simmers in you but far away. As if it were a pot on a stove on the other end of a broad and placid inn. Out of sight, out of mind.
For now you stand at the side of a paved road. The trees rustle in a light breeze and paint dappled splotches of moonlight over your feathered cape. It's pitch dark, but you can just make out the sign stating the nearest gas station (2 miles ahead) and the nearest bed to rest (Derry Town House, 8 miles ahead). There is cricket song and a distant motor.
A slowly approaching motor. Headlights on the road.
Hey Anders. I sent you a ride. Can you dig it?
It's a voice in your head. But not a bad one, you don't think. A guiding whisper.
When the lights draw even and slow to a stop, the red and white ‘58 Plymouth idles next to you. You see your reflection in the passenger side window, and you look like an ordinary, middle class American man. Something Andy might have grown up to be if he got his act together. The you in reality is clad in clothes from your real home, your real calling, but maybe nobody else will see you that way.
The door pops open of its own accord, and the shadowed figure at the wheel beckons you in.]
[ well. he's used to listening to voices in his head. has he ever felt connected to his own body? it has never belonged fully to him anyway. it has been the chantry's by law, it has been the circle's by force, it has been the pearl's for coin, it has been justice's and kirkwall's and hawke's - but his?
he'll stand by the roadside, feathers shifting in the breeze, as the car pulls up. putting a hand on top of the car and leaning down to look in the open door - not getting in quite yet. his fingers drum against the metal. ]
... You look old, Karl.
[ but he knows he does too.
sliding into the front seat, pulling the door closed. ]
[He does look old. The dark of the interior doesn't help.
It's not until Anders takes his seat and pulls the door closed that he senses how old. The smell of putrefaction is soft in his nostrils — still seared from the sewer, after all these years — and Karl's neck makes a squishy, muffled noise as he looks back to the road. Pulls the car back between the white lines and follows the signs. Only 8 miles more.]
It's been some time. [He intones, and the voice rasps.] We need your help with something.
[Shadowheart, you were thankful to fade away for a friend. Embrace the emptiness and cherish your distance, accept the futility of hope. Love. You confront the wolf of your dreams and find it’s not the same kind at all. Terrible in a different fashion. Hungrier. You feel even the shock of that drift to the back of your mind. As it should be. There’s no need to dwell on such things.
You’re alone on a city street. Stood in front of a department store window. The woman in the reflection is pretty, if unremarkable. Jen if she had another twenty-seven years on this Earth. But when you reach up to tuck away a stray lock of hair, you find your ears are pointed.
It’s quiet out. Closing time is over, and the only souls still up on their feet are either doing shift work or committing sin. You’re neither. You don’t know what you plan to do, in fact, only that there is a purpose to your being here.
I’ve sent someone along to help with that.
Shar? No. Not quite. A new voice in your head.
A large shadow casts from the light of the streetlamp, drawing your eye.]
Hey. Come with me, yeah? I’ve got something to give to you.
she's quiet, tired, but this person appears and she feels relief. maybe the perfect person to see at a moment like this, more for any person on the planet than her specifically. strong enough to fight for her and warm enough that she always would. it feels easy to let go of some of that fear and trauma and to just want to trust.]
Yeah. But I've got to run a few things by you first.
[Karlach smiles, and commences a walk. Her tail swishes and flicks behind the pair as they go, and she glances around at the store fronts, the empty streets and topped up waste bins.]
Kind of a shite place, isn't it? This town. How did you find it?
[Fidelio, you went numb. Nothing mattered after losing Bax.
But you remember now. Your brother is dead. Your brother is alive. You are alive and you are dead. All of it is true, all at once. These truths lock together and push. Fight in your head to stake a claim in reality, until a cold splash of static pushes them out of the forefront. The paradox can persist, and you will carry on.
You’re sitting down in the hallway of a hospital, some uncomfortable chair with metal piping for arms. In your lap is a stack of papers in a round binder clip. Handwritten, page after page of intensive notes. It takes a moment, but you do recognize it. You only found one page back then, but this must be two or three hundred pages altogether. There’s no time to read it all, but you get the sense you don’t need to.
(The Fire at the Black Spot, a bar burning under the hands of hateful white men.
The Revenge of Claude Heroux, a lumberjack turning his axe on the union busters who slew his friends.
The Execution of the Bradley Gang, where the citizens of Derry banded together and tore five bank-robbers on the run into bloody, bullet-addled pieces.)
These stories join the war at the back of your mind. Not yet. It’s not important yet.
None of the passing staff or patients seem all that bothered by your ears. One flicks, catching a sound to the left. You see someone walking into the room just down the hall. She turns to look at you before she enters.]
[ everything feels a little fuzzy and distant, disconnected; he's been paying little attention to anything that's been going on in this hospital as he's been idly flipping through the stack of pages in his lap.
but junah... she always gets his attention. and she's always had him wrapped around her finger, so as soon as she gives him an instruction, he nods, picks up his papers and follows. ]
[The Derry Town House has had a lively one tonight.
There are five bodies cooling on its floors. Three occupants checked out early the regular way: Bill, Beverly, and Eddie reconvene, realizing it's too late for two of their childhood friends, and slip out back before anyone can catch them. They pile into Eddie's rented car and drive to the Barrens to finish the job. They're not just two short now, they're four short of seven. Three is a lucky number but it's bad odds for where they're going, and their spirits are low as they've ever been.
Anders comes down on the left staircase. Methodical, uncaring about the wounds sustained, which are many. He stays upright and resolute marching down into the lobby.
Fidelio, Euphasia, and Taair could almost skip steps, they race to the bottom so fast. They're on the right staircase, avoiding the bloody mess of the left like the plague. Taair has a car parked out front, he agrees to take them out that way and find help. They arrive in the lobby just before Anders strolls in, looking like fresh hell.
Last to arrive are Shadowheart and her Father. They take the right staircase as well, but at a gentler tilt. She'd arrived first at the Town House in order of operations, while Fidelio came last, so she had extra time to cry it out and clean up a bit. As much as one can, with the amount of blood on her. They walk in on the awkward stare down that started only seconds before.
And something about hitting that ground level floor shakes you all. Any fog lingering in your heads lift. The spiral mark on Anders's forehead wipes clear, and so do all the wretched effects that came with it.
You remember each other. You remember the people with you, the ones you left upstairs, the ones you warned away. You remember yourselves, senses returning the moment all three of you are reunited on one floor, locking eyes and feeling a steep pitch of dread.
Why were you here? What have you done?
There's barely a moment to consider it. There's a flash of lights in the windows. The whole front wall of the town house is broad panes of glass, all the better to see the police cars switching on their headlights, their flashing red and blues. Officers are perched in their cars and crouched around propped open doors for cover. There must be at least thirty pigs squared up around the joint, maybe thirty-five, armed and aiming every gun at you. All of them with a glassy look in their eyes.
The boys at the precinct just had a funny feeling, you know? Strange that so many suspicious characters booked into the Town House this weekend. And the ones that wandered in on foot? Gosh, even stranger. So strange, after a year full of dead and missing kids. After the the town Librarian got cut up like a Christmas ham while working late. First some broad had called from this number — Beverly had called. Hung up before they got her name, but the officer had been suspicious. Who calls a library after midnight, just as they were wiping up the blood from the place? — then they got a hot tip, anonymous collect. Couldn't place the caller if they tried, but he's been around town for sure. He's been around a long, long while.
He's cartwheeling in right now as a matter of fact, though none of the officers react to him. They don't see the clown roll straight up beside the chief, pop to his feet and honk his bulbous red nose, screaming with laughter.]
BOOK 'EM, DANNO! SICK 'EM BOYS! YOU BETTER LIGHT 'EM UP! THERE'S YOUR KILLERS RIGHT THERE, YOU BET YOUR ASS THAT'S THEM! GREASE 'EM! GAS 'EM! BLOW THEM AWAY!
[And the chief, who doesn't so much as turn to look the howling clown in the eye, gets a funny feeling that hey, maybe they should just fucking shoot the sons of bitches.
So they do.
The glass crashes out in one calamitous shatter, and the bullets spray every which way. Fidelio takes three to the chest and one to the stomach, another improbably skates through the top of his right foot. Not enough to lame him, but there's a chunk of bone flying. One clean through the head. A damn lucky shot, no telling who pulled that trigger but congrats on your marksmanship, sir.
Anders catches two in his left arm and three more in his leg. He'd been turned to the side a bit, and the blows spin him around to take another in the collar bone. He falls flat after that, and most others miss him.
Shadowheart threw her arm up, as if that might save anything. She gets two in it for the effort, another through her neck and two more in her middle. One in the hip.
After that, it's anyone's guess who is hit where and which blow finally did them in. The whole crew, adventurers and guest stars alike, are lit up like fireworks at New Year's Eve. One big old blowout to close another year of feeding on children. Just like the Fire at the Black Spot, the Execution of the Bradley Gang, or the Revenge of Claude Heroux.
Maybe you might make it into Mike's history book after all.]
[she descends the stairs in something like a fugue state. all fight has gone out of her. she didn't clean up, she's still covered head to toe in blood, that's important. she still doesn't feel like she has any sense of where she is, who she is, but she's also reached a state where she's just given up on fighting back. maybe something like that helpless terror she felt before, the one that froze her in place, is a better protection right now than any proactive impulse.
she sees the others, anders no doubt also bloodsoaked and del with a gaggle of people he managed to evacuate, and...]
Andy? Del?
[some memory blooms, like seeing long lost friends, but along with that sense of reunion, the horror, the recollection of what happened to them.
and then the fog lifts. and she realizes that she's here with a man who she doesn't know at all, who may be nothing more than a character in this story, the story of a girl named jen hallow who never existed. maybe this man is someone she created, an amalgam of her own secret hopes and wishes. she had always dreamed of that night, of being abandoned in the forest, pursued by wolves, waiting for help to come. and she had always joked, either she was an orphan or she'd simply been abandoned, there's no good explanation for why she was there, no loving explanation for leaving a little girl alone in the woods with no one to protect her.
but there was still that secret hope, that secret wish, that once back before the time she can remember, maybe somebody had loved her. maybe that someone had looked for her, had missed her when she was gone. maybe the whole time she was the subject of some cruel experiment, a project to take a little girl and twist her into another shape for shar's hideous amusement, there was someone somewhere else who still wanted her.
he isn't real, but part of her accepts finally how much she wanted it to be.
anders and fidelio, andy and del, though, they're... they're both real. so is eupha, so is taair. so probably are all of these strangers. oh god - what's happened to them?]
Anders, you're -
[he looks so fucking bad. the horror of everything she went through hits her like a ton of bricks, and she imagines the same for him.
but there's very little time to process it before this story ends.]
[ yeah in an absolute fucking foogoo state man. the grink is HERE.
it takes a moment for him to realize that he's back from the desert. that color (red, blue lights) and music (sirens) are returning, like blood rushing into your ears at incredible volumes. the only cure for Tranquility is death. Or a Spirit reaches out to touch your mind, to return you full force into yourself. it's enough to break a person. but he's already broken, already something no longer human, but human enough to not be a monster.
he drops the bloody knife - maybe just because his hand can no longer hold it, now that he can feel pain and fear and relief again. Enough twists and turns though the sewer to end up here of all places. Funny how that works out. ]
Hi, Jen. Hi Del.
[ no where to run this time. but maybe that's for the best. he'd accepted judgment once before, and this feels like another opportune time.
he's just going to start hysterically crying in the moments before the curtain drops, but maybe that's not a bad thing. at least he can. at least it's something. ]
CONGRATULATIONS!! YOU WON! Sort of. Stan understands, Derry is just fucked like that.
Thank you all for playing and thank you for being great sports, collaborators, and inventive participants! I couldn't have asked for a better crew.
Here are your takeaways:
RETURN EFFECTS
- You can be children again for a few tags on the return post but please go back to your adult selves soon - You will have intense paranoia esp around plumbing or other reminders of your monsters/experiences for 24-48 hours - you may hallucinate Pennywise or any of your monsters as a visual jumpscare or an auditory hallucination for 24-48 hrs - you retain any injuries you choose and may dial back the severity to make them playable/treatable to your own discretion. Remember we have a hospital but no guaranteed healing items on board - you may retain your childhood knowledge of the 1950s so long as it doesn't grant you an unfair advantage in trials or game mechanics somehow. I just think it's funny - Lifelong hatred of clowns optional - Lifelong love of Chuck Berry MANDATORY
REWARDS
A Really Good Stick - what it says on the tin. Fit for a capable damsel. Curse one person into an enchanted sleep for 12 hours or until someone gives them a kiss to wake up
"I Am No Rock" Rock - a rock that may have been prophesied to slay a great evil and shatter glass ceilings. Curse someone to be made of rocks for 4-6 hours. See: anna garcia's season two appearance on very important people as Zeke
The Reed of Gondor - a reed that could have been a horn to call for aid. Curse one person with theme music of your choosing for 4 -6 hours.
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holyspirits) wrote2025-03-09 04:46 pm
Egads!! Where am I uwu???
Hey!
[The sound flits through one ear and out the other. It's distant, and it barely matters.
But you become aware of your breath. You are breathing, and it feels an odd thing to do in this place. Thicker than it should be, as if you have to work for it. Sensation tickles at the ends of your fingers and toes, and you have a sense that you are not alone here.]
Hey! Get up, won't you?
[Small hands prod at your arm. Your side. Somebody grumbles and darts around you — small feet, too, rubber soled — and sets to the same routine on someone else nearby.
Slowly you open your eyes, and are met with utter darkness. Shapeless, edndless, oppressive and complete. But you can see two figures lying down next to you. Say, don't you know them?]
no subject
she runs her fingers through her hair to push it off her face, and turns her attention to the two figures near her.]
Hello?
[while she's still adjusting to the darkness, she's hoping she knows these people.]
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but not responding yet. you just never know in a place like this.
concentrating very hard on believing there is a floor, because if he stops, there might not be one. ]
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What...?
[ just muttered to himself as he tries to sit up and look around and get kind of feel for where the fuck he is... but after he hears shadowheart's voice he will at least be polite enough to answer as he squints in her direction (he usually does have good night vision, but who knows how much that will help right now). ]
Yeah?
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CW: suicide, wrist trauma
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1958 (CW: mentions of bullying, fatphobia, implied child abuse)
You're enjoying your freedom from the long dragging days of school. You pitched your schoolbooks and bopped on out into the sunshine and the tall grass, scampered across paved roads and haunted the Aladdin Movie Theater (now showing a creature double feature! I was a Teenage Frankenstein and I was a Teenage Werewolf, because if it ain't broke why fix it?), paid pennies for candies and turned up the dial on the radio whenever the teen programming came on. One of you brought your transistor radio today, even, just so Chuck Berry and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers can join the fun.
It's the first time you've played out in the Barrens. It is, ironically, absolutely thick with tall grass, swampy sponge, and if you wandered in a ways, dotted with wide, heavy-topped pipes that pushed out of the ground like mushrooms and lead straight down into Derry's labyrinthine sewers. You'd been warned once or twice not to heave the lids off and hide in there, even the grown men of Derry Public Works can get lost. But why the hell would you want to hide out in miles of shit and piss anyhow?
No no, here in the grasses it's fine. The rough and tumble bruisers from school haven't rubbed all three of their brain cells together to figure out that's where the bullied kids go. Which, you may as well be. You don't have it as bad as say, Eddie Kaspbrak, who was famously frail and had to honk on his aspirator if he took up so much as a light sprint. Or Richie "Trashmouth" Tozier, whose perilously running mouth was fronted by two buck teeth and earned him the nickname Bucky Beaver, though with how often the Bowers gang caught him you might as well call him Roadkill Rich. Or stuttering Bill Denbrough, who was a solid kid that in any other world might have done all right for himself, if he could only spit out one sentence in a straight shot. Most people laid off him a while though, after his brother Georgie was murdered last October.
That's the other thing. Curfew's at 7pm, sharp, and that goes for every kid in town. You don't want to end up dead or missing.
But here, it's safe, right? You're a bit hidden away, and the three of you are together, along with two other kids from the Bill-Richie-Eddie crowd of big old Losers. Shy and sweet Ben Hanscom, who wore sweatshirts even in the hot stink of July so that no one would call him "Tits" or remark upon his gut, and Beverly Marsh, who was pretty but poor, and usually had a bruise splotching over some stretch of her lean limbs or across the flat of her cheek. It's they who led you down here, come hang out a while and bring your tunes, Ben's got his comics and Beverly's got her cigarettes, but hey, it's your guys' first time here!]
What would you like to play? [Ben asks, inquisitive.] We don't have firecrackers or anything crazy like that.
Save it for a big celebration. [Beverly says and winks to Ben, who turns both rose-red and utterly mute in the blink of an eye. She turns to the three of you as he attempts to regain his composure.] I'm game for anything. As long as it's not Cowboys and Indians, but war or safari or stuff like that is cool. Or games like tag. Did you bring any cards?
[The world's your oyster. Do you like to play pretend, or do something a little more organized?]
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this girl is jen hallow. you would assume jen or jenny was short for jennifer, but it's actually short for something long and dated sounding and probably biblical. she's moved to town some [redacted] time ago to live with her aunt, an unpleasant woman most of the town children probably avoid, a mean church lady. she wears her hair in cute buns and braids and dresses in decent clothes, though not cool ones by any means.
the impression of her family situation is weird and religious and somewhat mysterious, but the impression of jen as a person is that she's moody and reserved and kind of unpleasant. would probably be a bully more often than she'd be spending time around these kids, except that she's equally rude and unfriendly with the popular kids as she is with everyone.
it is a mystery why she bothered showing up to this, but she seems more willing to be included today than she usually would be. maybe the way bev asked was nice.]
I still haven't agreed to play anything.
[but she will probably ultimately go along with whatever anyone else proposes, while acting disdainful about it.]
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this boy is ❚❚❚❚❚❚ ❚❚❚❚❚❚❚ but refuses to go by anything but andy. new school, new name. he spends most of his days doing his absolute best to beg out of class and then escape out of a bathroom window or sidle out the door of the nurses office when no one is looking, a skinny blonde headache through and through. just an absolutely incredible escape artist. he has a certain charm though, even if his moods tend to cycle somewhat unpredictably from energetic to ... a bit dark. maybe he'll grow out of it.
he looks incredibly disappointed there aren't firecrackers, by the way. sticking his tongue out. ]
I hate cards. I always lose. [ he does seem to have extraordinarily bad luck with cards. ] Safari doesn't sound so bad ... Oh, have you guys heard of Lord of the Rings?
[ already kicking around and looking for a Good Stick. You know. One that looks like a Gun?]
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the last boy is del mcgarry, a small and pale auburn-haired kid who looks at least one grade younger than he actually is. he and his brother bax — who's younger than him but already bigger, and pretty much his opposite in terms of appearance with a darker complexion and longer, wavier hair — have been getting kicked around in the foster care system for most of their lives. they get a lot of shit for it, for being these scraggly kids nobody wants enough to keep, but the one thing that really pushes del's buttons is any insinuation that his brother isn't his real brother. he's generally a fairly well-behaved (if sharp-tongued) kid who likes to read and does well in his classes, but he's ended up in detention a few times for socking kids in the jaw when they said the wrong thing.
especially lately. he's been even more protective of bax ever since georgie died.
today though, bax is off at baseball practice, and it's just del and his backpack full of ratty old books hanging with the other outcasts. ]
Yeah, 'cause you stink at playin'.
[ annoyed because he wanted to play cards... short legs are too much of a disadvantage in too many physical games!! ]
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CW: eye/face gore
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Del
cw: emeto
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Andy
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Jen
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1958, PT II
Of course, Yves is missed. The news is devastating. For a boy that was bullied so badly he had to switch to the pitiful shelter of the conglomerate-grades Christian school, he had bounced back in many a heart and mind.
Otherwise, life is quiet. Suspiciously so. Your caretaker's eyes glide over your injuries as if they were never there, and you are left to bandage and nurse whatever you have on your own. Kids, though. They do double takes, ask where you took a fall. Del has it the worst off the bat, but luckily the sucker marks dissipate after two days. Do you tell anyone about what happened to you? Do you tell each other?
You decline the invite to play in the Barrens again with Beverly and Ben and the others. They understand, the news is the pits and they aren't in a playful mood either, but they insist that you're welcome again later. You hang up the phone with a squirmy, guilty feeling in your gut. It just doesn't feel right.
How is life going for you? Are you meeting up again? Where are you spending your summer days, if not together?]
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but they were there when yves was found. they saw what happened to him. they helped move his body, something so awful that she hardly even wants to admit to herself happened. and it felt, when that was happening, that del was brave and forceful and knew what to do and andy was kind and hugged her.
so she tries to trust them, and tells them. how she went home and couldn't get back inside, and this probably makes her sound insane, but a car with no driver was chasing her, it was trying to run her over, and she has the bruises to show for it but no one seems to believe her.]
And no one would let me back inside. The people in this town... they only want us in by curfew so they don't have to think about us.
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he'll spend the summer being as far out of the house as possible - which maybe is an insane choice considering the rampant child deaths, but at least it's not stuck in that basement, stuck underground in a place with no light and no way to tell if that box is still there. still waiting to be opened again. he hasn't been sleeping well. if he's getting any rest at all, it's during the day, catnapping. it's making his moods worse. ]
The whole place is a prison.
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he tells jen and andy, but no one else, and he makes bax swear he won't say a word to anyone else either. he explains how he heard yves's voice from down the pipes, and waner's, and others, and how he would have just thought he was off his fucking rocker if he didn't have the injuries and bax's account of what he saw so clearly telling him otherwise. ]
Rather be in a real prison than this shithole town.
[ at least then they'd only have to worry about being attacked by other inmates and guards. he could handle that. ]
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CW: mentions of racism, hate crimes
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CW: Child murder, cannibalism
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CW: Child murder, cannibalism, gore, animal attack
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1985
Because It doesn't just enjoy the misery of little children in their final moments. It loves the grief and the regret too, the self-loathing, the actual loathing. Fear is best, but the rest balance the palate, and so it moves and obscures and manipulates in ways to best prepare a feast.
No matter. That was a long time ago.
When you wake this time, you remember your life and death in Derry. But you remember more as well. Lives in worlds far away from the hum of Chevy motors and Jerry Lee Lewis on the radio, from The Wizard of Oz and decoder rings in cracker boxes and yo-yos that just wouldn't sleep for you, no matter how hard you flicked them down. That stuff was real, but so were dragons. Spellcraft, awakenings, spirits and corrupted forms, companions and quests. So was the afterlife — irrationally, a place of regular murder, but also of free-wheeling prank curses and whimsical locales, philosophical debates on phones that spiralled into so much gossip and bullshit.
And yet, none of it seems to matter very much. You are yourselves and in your own bodies, as you were before Derry, but you feel very dimly about it. Disconnected. Can someone put the plug back in the wall socket? Maybe you only just woke up. Maybe that's why you feel free floating, mentally more of a mist than a person.
As you cast your disaffected gaze around, you see something.]
ANDERS
For now you stand at the side of a paved road. The trees rustle in a light breeze and paint dappled splotches of moonlight over your feathered cape. It's pitch dark, but you can just make out the sign stating the nearest gas station (2 miles ahead) and the nearest bed to rest (Derry Town House, 8 miles ahead). There is cricket song and a distant motor.
A slowly approaching motor. Headlights on the road.
Hey Anders. I sent you a ride. Can you dig it?
It's a voice in your head. But not a bad one, you don't think. A guiding whisper.
When the lights draw even and slow to a stop, the red and white ‘58 Plymouth idles next to you. You see your reflection in the passenger side window, and you look like an ordinary, middle class American man. Something Andy might have grown up to be if he got his act together. The you in reality is clad in clothes from your real home, your real calling, but maybe nobody else will see you that way.
The door pops open of its own accord, and the shadowed figure at the wheel beckons you in.]
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he'll stand by the roadside, feathers shifting in the breeze, as the car pulls up. putting a hand on top of the car and leaning down to look in the open door - not getting in quite yet. his fingers drum against the metal. ]
... You look old, Karl.
[ but he knows he does too.
sliding into the front seat, pulling the door closed. ]
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It's not until Anders takes his seat and pulls the door closed that he senses how old. The smell of putrefaction is soft in his nostrils — still seared from the sewer, after all these years — and Karl's neck makes a squishy, muffled noise as he looks back to the road. Pulls the car back between the white lines and follows the signs. Only 8 miles more.]
It's been some time. [He intones, and the voice rasps.] We need your help with something.
This town is tainted. You have seen it yourself.
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cw: reference to SA
CW: Mentions of bullying, mutilation, attempted child murder, patricide
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SHADOWHEART
You’re alone on a city street. Stood in front of a department store window. The woman in the reflection is pretty, if unremarkable. Jen if she had another twenty-seven years on this Earth. But when you reach up to tuck away a stray lock of hair, you find your ears are pointed.
It’s quiet out. Closing time is over, and the only souls still up on their feet are either doing shift work or committing sin. You’re neither. You don’t know what you plan to do, in fact, only that there is a purpose to your being here.
I’ve sent someone along to help with that.
Shar? No. Not quite. A new voice in your head.
A large shadow casts from the light of the streetlamp, drawing your eye.]
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she's quiet, tired, but this person appears and she feels relief. maybe the perfect person to see at a moment like this, more for any person on the planet than her specifically. strong enough to fight for her and warm enough that she always would. it feels easy to let go of some of that fear and trauma and to just want to trust.]
Something for me?
[yeah, she'll go with her.]
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[Karlach smiles, and commences a walk. Her tail swishes and flicks behind the pair as they go, and she glances around at the store fronts, the empty streets and topped up waste bins.]
Kind of a shite place, isn't it? This town. How did you find it?
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FIDELIO
But you remember now. Your brother is dead. Your brother is alive. You are alive and you are dead. All of it is true, all at once. These truths lock together and push. Fight in your head to stake a claim in reality, until a cold splash of static pushes them out of the forefront. The paradox can persist, and you will carry on.
You’re sitting down in the hallway of a hospital, some uncomfortable chair with metal piping for arms. In your lap is a stack of papers in a round binder clip. Handwritten, page after page of intensive notes. It takes a moment, but you do recognize it. You only found one page back then, but this must be two or three hundred pages altogether. There’s no time to read it all, but you get the sense you don’t need to.
(The Fire at the Black Spot, a bar burning under the hands of hateful white men.
The Revenge of Claude Heroux, a lumberjack turning his axe on the union busters who slew his friends.
The Execution of the Bradley Gang, where the citizens of Derry banded together and tore five bank-robbers on the run into bloody, bullet-addled pieces.)
These stories join the war at the back of your mind. Not yet. It’s not important yet.
None of the passing staff or patients seem all that bothered by your ears. One flicks, catching a sound to the left. You see someone walking into the room just down the hall. She turns to look at you before she enters.]
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but junah... she always gets his attention. and she's always had him wrapped around her finger, so as soon as she gives him an instruction, he nods, picks up his papers and follows. ]
Right. Comin'.
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1985 - Close
There are five bodies cooling on its floors. Three occupants checked out early the regular way: Bill, Beverly, and Eddie reconvene, realizing it's too late for two of their childhood friends, and slip out back before anyone can catch them. They pile into Eddie's rented car and drive to the Barrens to finish the job. They're not just two short now, they're four short of seven. Three is a lucky number but it's bad odds for where they're going, and their spirits are low as they've ever been.
Anders comes down on the left staircase. Methodical, uncaring about the wounds sustained, which are many. He stays upright and resolute marching down into the lobby.
Fidelio, Euphasia, and Taair could almost skip steps, they race to the bottom so fast. They're on the right staircase, avoiding the bloody mess of the left like the plague. Taair has a car parked out front, he agrees to take them out that way and find help. They arrive in the lobby just before Anders strolls in, looking like fresh hell.
Last to arrive are Shadowheart and her Father. They take the right staircase as well, but at a gentler tilt. She'd arrived first at the Town House in order of operations, while Fidelio came last, so she had extra time to cry it out and clean up a bit. As much as one can, with the amount of blood on her. They walk in on the awkward stare down that started only seconds before.
And something about hitting that ground level floor shakes you all. Any fog lingering in your heads lift. The spiral mark on Anders's forehead wipes clear, and so do all the wretched effects that came with it.
You remember each other. You remember the people with you, the ones you left upstairs, the ones you warned away. You remember yourselves, senses returning the moment all three of you are reunited on one floor, locking eyes and feeling a steep pitch of dread.
Why were you here? What have you done?
There's barely a moment to consider it. There's a flash of lights in the windows. The whole front wall of the town house is broad panes of glass, all the better to see the police cars switching on their headlights, their flashing red and blues. Officers are perched in their cars and crouched around propped open doors for cover. There must be at least thirty pigs squared up around the joint, maybe thirty-five, armed and aiming every gun at you. All of them with a glassy look in their eyes.
The boys at the precinct just had a funny feeling, you know? Strange that so many suspicious characters booked into the Town House this weekend. And the ones that wandered in on foot? Gosh, even stranger. So strange, after a year full of dead and missing kids. After the the town Librarian got cut up like a Christmas ham while working late. First some broad had called from this number — Beverly had called. Hung up before they got her name, but the officer had been suspicious. Who calls a library after midnight, just as they were wiping up the blood from the place? — then they got a hot tip, anonymous collect. Couldn't place the caller if they tried, but he's been around town for sure. He's been around a long, long while.
He's cartwheeling in right now as a matter of fact, though none of the officers react to him. They don't see the clown roll straight up beside the chief, pop to his feet and honk his bulbous red nose, screaming with laughter.]
BOOK 'EM, DANNO! SICK 'EM BOYS! YOU BETTER LIGHT 'EM UP! THERE'S YOUR KILLERS RIGHT THERE, YOU BET YOUR ASS THAT'S THEM! GREASE 'EM! GAS 'EM! BLOW THEM AWAY!
[And the chief, who doesn't so much as turn to look the howling clown in the eye, gets a funny feeling that hey, maybe they should just fucking shoot the sons of bitches.
So they do.
The glass crashes out in one calamitous shatter, and the bullets spray every which way. Fidelio takes three to the chest and one to the stomach, another improbably skates through the top of his right foot. Not enough to lame him, but there's a chunk of bone flying. One clean through the head. A damn lucky shot, no telling who pulled that trigger but congrats on your marksmanship, sir.
Anders catches two in his left arm and three more in his leg. He'd been turned to the side a bit, and the blows spin him around to take another in the collar bone. He falls flat after that, and most others miss him.
Shadowheart threw her arm up, as if that might save anything. She gets two in it for the effort, another through her neck and two more in her middle. One in the hip.
After that, it's anyone's guess who is hit where and which blow finally did them in. The whole crew, adventurers and guest stars alike, are lit up like fireworks at New Year's Eve. One big old blowout to close another year of feeding on children. Just like the Fire at the Black Spot, the Execution of the Bradley Gang, or the Revenge of Claude Heroux.
Maybe you might make it into Mike's history book after all.]
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she sees the others, anders no doubt also bloodsoaked and del with a gaggle of people he managed to evacuate, and...]
Andy? Del?
[some memory blooms, like seeing long lost friends, but along with that sense of reunion, the horror, the recollection of what happened to them.
and then the fog lifts. and she realizes that she's here with a man who she doesn't know at all, who may be nothing more than a character in this story, the story of a girl named jen hallow who never existed. maybe this man is someone she created, an amalgam of her own secret hopes and wishes. she had always dreamed of that night, of being abandoned in the forest, pursued by wolves, waiting for help to come. and she had always joked, either she was an orphan or she'd simply been abandoned, there's no good explanation for why she was there, no loving explanation for leaving a little girl alone in the woods with no one to protect her.
but there was still that secret hope, that secret wish, that once back before the time she can remember, maybe somebody had loved her. maybe that someone had looked for her, had missed her when she was gone. maybe the whole time she was the subject of some cruel experiment, a project to take a little girl and twist her into another shape for shar's hideous amusement, there was someone somewhere else who still wanted her.
he isn't real, but part of her accepts finally how much she wanted it to be.
anders and fidelio, andy and del, though, they're... they're both real. so is eupha, so is taair. so probably are all of these strangers. oh god - what's happened to them?]
Anders, you're -
[he looks so fucking bad. the horror of everything she went through hits her like a ton of bricks, and she imagines the same for him.
but there's very little time to process it before this story ends.]
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it takes a moment for him to realize that he's back from the desert. that color (red, blue lights) and music (sirens) are returning, like blood rushing into your ears at incredible volumes. the only cure for Tranquility is death. Or a Spirit reaches out to touch your mind, to return you full force into yourself. it's enough to break a person. but he's already broken, already something no longer human, but human enough to not be a monster.
he drops the bloody knife - maybe just because his hand can no longer hold it, now that he can feel pain and fear and relief again. Enough twists and turns though the sewer to end up here of all places. Funny how that works out. ]
Hi, Jen. Hi Del.
[ no where to run this time. but maybe that's for the best. he'd accepted judgment once before, and this feels like another opportune time.
he's just going to start hysterically crying in the moments before the curtain drops, but maybe that's not a bad thing. at least he can. at least it's something. ]
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WRAP UP EFFECTS AND REWARDS
Thank you all for playing and thank you for being great sports, collaborators, and inventive participants! I couldn't have asked for a better crew.
Here are your takeaways:
RETURN EFFECTS
- You can be children again for a few tags on the return post but please go back to your adult selves soon
- You will have intense paranoia esp around plumbing or other reminders of your monsters/experiences for 24-48 hours
- you may hallucinate Pennywise or any of your monsters as a visual jumpscare or an auditory hallucination for 24-48 hrs
- you retain any injuries you choose and may dial back the severity to make them playable/treatable to your own discretion. Remember we have a hospital but no guaranteed healing items on board
- you may retain your childhood knowledge of the 1950s so long as it doesn't grant you an unfair advantage in trials or game mechanics somehow. I just think it's funny
- Lifelong hatred of clowns optional
- Lifelong love of Chuck Berry MANDATORY
REWARDS
A Really Good Stick - what it says on the tin. Fit for a capable damsel. Curse one person into an enchanted sleep for 12 hours or until someone gives them a kiss to wake up
"I Am No Rock" Rock - a rock that may have been prophesied to slay a great evil and shatter glass ceilings. Curse someone to be made of rocks for 4-6 hours. See: anna garcia's season two appearance on very important people as Zeke
The Reed of Gondor - a reed that could have been a horn to call for aid. Curse one person with theme music of your choosing for 4 -6 hours.