The Shavings Off Your Mind are the Only Rent [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Picture a house. Actually, picture two houses. They're (almost) identical structures that share an uneasy coexistence, tangled together on a quantum level. One of the houses is Good: bright, cheerful, full of comfortable furniture and a pervasive feeling of safety. The other house is Evil: dingy, dilapidated, and haunted by the dreamers' greatest fears.

The good news - and bad news - is that travel from one house to the other is as simple as passing through a door. All a dreamer has to do is walk through a doorway, any doorway, and they'll find themselves in whichever house they weren't in before they crossed the threshold. Perhaps they'll step out of a beautiful library and find themselves in a threatening hallway - or perhaps they'll flee a menacing kitchen and find themselves in a perfectly safe dining room. That is the nature of the houses' entanglement: every door is a portal between the two.

There are, of course, complications. Dreamers in one house can't perceive the other; if you're in the Good house and looking through a doorway, the space beyond will look as nice and inviting as the space you're in now (until you step through that doorway, of course). Dreamers also can't really perceive one another if they're in the same room, but in different houses, though they might see a flash of movement out of the corner of their eye, or think they heard something.

Perhaps the greatest complications are the houses themselves. They have rather strong personalities, and they aren't very fond of one another. Each house will want to keep you if it can (keep you safe, in the case of the Good house, or keep you for itself, in the case of the Evil one). Dreamers may attempt to cross a hall and find the door that looked open and inviting a moment ago is now barred shut, leaving them trapped in the hall - or have doors suddenly close in their faces before they can end up anywhere unpleasant. Still, there's only so much either house can do, and even a locked door can be jimmied open or busted down.

Escape from the houses is possible, but the formal gardens beyond are similarly entangled, with neatly trimmed lawns and expertly plotted flower beds becoming overgrown tangles of nettles and algae-choked reflecting pools. An archway is as good as a door, as far as the gardens are concerned, and there are plenty of arbors and arches over the paths. Of course, dreamers may find that a sound arbor in the Good garden has collapsed in the Evil one… and heaven help anyone who dares to explore the hedge maze.





[ooc: y'all know the drill. ALL characters are welcome, regardless of whether they're in the game. Characters can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion.

Also, this dream party marks the aforementioned calendar freeze. For the next three weeks, the IG date will sit on July 3rd. Posts dated July 3rd or earlier are allowed and encouraged. The calendar will resume forward motion at a 4:1 ratio on Saturday, July 26th.]

Comments

[watchesthebeans]

This seems a nice place. Not only is the room in which Aglet finds himself clean and homey, but it seems purpose-made for a Borrower. Low chairs and couches sport fringes that reach the floor, short carpet deadens the sound of his footsteps without snagging his feet, and there no signs of other vermin whatsoever. When he comes to a grate with openings wide enough to admit his body he pauses and peers inside, curious about the ducts and other spaces inside the walls. In such a lovely house, perhaps other borrowers have set up home -- or at least he can get into the sort of enclosed spaces where he feels most comfortable and scout out routes to other rooms. Adjusting the strap of his shoulder bag, he clambers between the bars and into the dim space behind. He'll get out his candle stub once he's inside and has his hands free, of course, and then he'll explore.

Only when he gets inside it's suddenly a lot darker than it looked from the room. Aglet balks, glancing at the grate to see why the light isn't coming through -- only it's changed since he climbed through. Now there's a filthy air filter covering the inside of the grate, held firmly in place by a metal mesh. "Huh?" he asks, reaching out to touch it. "But --"

But what he never says, because it's then that Aglet hears motion behind him. Whirling to face it and then standing stock still, he strains to hear. A skittering sound sends chills up his back, and he fumbles for his candle stub, hurriedly getting it out and setting it on the floor so he can light it with his flint and steel. The sparks reveal shapes moving in the darkness, and it takes Aglet several desperate tries before the wick lights, revealing that the space he so blithely climbed into is crawling with insects. He lets out a cry and steps quickly away from one right beside him on the wall, the circle of firelight making the others shy away...though nowhere near as far away as he wishes they would. Bugs he's seen before and bugs he can kill, but there are so many, and not all of them are the kinds that only eat plants or wood chips. Some he recognizes as the kind that eat other bugs...or meat.

How long Aglet is inside the wall he wouldn't be able to say, but by the time he emerges from a crack in the wall elsewhere he's lost both his candle stub and one of his shoes. "Get off! Get off!" he howls as he finds himself stuck partway through, legs kicking at awful crawling things while his upper half sticks out into another room as lovely as the first.

[apidae]

Bee's staring out the windows, admiring the gardens, wondering if she can find a way out to them, when the slightest little sound catches her attention. She straightens up, holding very still and listening carefully. She can still hear it - there is definitely some small creature in distress. Maybe a mouse? She creeps around the room, peering at the perimeter's wainscoting, when she sees it: a flash of movement from the grate! Oh - it's a person!

She wants to be delighted by the smallness of him, but now is not the moment. He's in trouble! She crouches down quickly, cupping her hands beneath him.

"I'm here, little one!" she says softly. "It's all right. Grab onto me."

[fucking_ebay]

Peter has found the liquor cabinet. It didn't take a lot of doing, seeing as he hasn't even left the room in which he arrived, but it's certainly given him incentive to stay put. He rifles through the shelves in search of something blindingly sweet, setting aside various bottles of bourbon and so forth as he tries to find something more palatable. To another side he sets a bottle of mead as backup in case he can't find a nice liqueur.

[essentiallyharmless]

Lucy's running down a long hallway. She could swear something's following her, but she's yet to see what.

There was blood, so much of it, and it's covering her shoes. They used to be light blue, matching her summer dress, but now they're stained deep red. And screams, and the sounds of something pursuing, and every open door slams shut before she gets to it.

She tries door after door, willing one to be open, but nothing seems to give.

Until suddenly something does, and she rushes in the room, slamming the door shut behind and standing her hands pressed against it, breathing hard. When she realises the noises have stopped, she leans her forehead against the wood with a sigh.

[thatwasvisual]

What a charming music room. Eve runs a white-gloved hand over the scalloped edge of a grand piano (late nineteenth century would be her guess; a more accurate assessment would require the removal of her gloves) and takes in the rest of the room from behind her sunglasses. Heavy curtains are drawn over the windows to keep out the daylight, and she smiles faintly, appreciating the… consideration? It does feel like consideration. How odd.

The lamplight is courteously low, and finding herself alone, Eve removes her sunglasses and tucks them away in her pocket. Then she drifts over to examine a collection of mandolins hanging along the wall. What a pity Adam isn't here. He would adore these.

[spookyaction]

Adam is, by contrast, in a hall that much befits his mood, dank and crumbling and brutally unwelcoming. He stands there a moment - a hall isn't much of a place to be, but which direction to explore? - but it's a moment too much as a sudden shrill creak rings out from above, of rusted metal against rotting wood.

He looks up sharply, and if he weren't wearing his sunglasses that'd be it for him - as it is, the little flare of light sets him forward in a panicked motion, staggering with drunken panache into the shadow surrounding the sudden square of hostile fucking sunlight. A skylight, just opening of its own accord, trying to kill him, apparently. Not very welcoming.

The noise repeats itself - oh shit. Another. He sidesteps this one with in a panic and presses against the wall, hissing. He glances down the hall and oh, fuck they're everywhere, skylights all the way down. Opening in a nice line, as if forcing him toward the door on the other side.

He bolts.

Even at his vampiric speeds, the skylights are intent upon keeping up with him, each one opening impossibly, a loud clunk just behind him, the light burning at the heels of his feet like an angry dog. He reaches the door with a little time to spare and finds it locked and boarded up. Of all the - he struggles angrily with the handle for a moment, but the light is spilling closer and closer behind him, and with an impatient snarl he punches his hand right through the door, shoving the rest of his body along with it and forcing the door open.

And just like that, the door is gone. No weight pushing against him now, he stumbles and almost falls onto his face in surprise. This room is much nicer, the curtains drawn, everything dim and cozy. He turns back in angry confusion, and sees a similarly dark, richly decorated corridor, not at all like the one he just emerged from. He's considering stepping back into it to satisfy a scientific impulse, but his attention is quickly drawn to the other side of the room.

"Eve," he breathes, melting into a relieved stance and moving quickly toward her.

[antitimelord]

Zagreus doesn't care about any houses' personalities or motivations or favourite colours. He's just sick of being involved with them, eternally sick of the entire notion. For instance, it doesn't make a bit of difference that he's currently in a grandly appointed music room, radiating high culture and well-being. It shouldn't be radiating anything. In a fit of pique, he sweeps an innocent clock off its mantel with a satisfying crash. 1/1000 clocks broken.

[bibliophale]

Well, Aziraphale is rather enjoying it here, thank you very much, though the sudden crash and clatter of a beautiful antique being destroyed is certainly enough to rouse him from the sofa in a fit of dismay.

"What did that clock ever do to you?" he demands, not yet getting up, just peering over the back of the sofa at the pouty-faced destructor.

[rae_of_sun]

Sunshine is running from vampires.

And it's absurd. On some distant level, she's aware that running from vampires is just… inherently ridiculous. You can't run from them, because by the time you've gone two steps, they've caught you eight times over. Hell, you don't even make it two steps. You just wake up by a carthaginian campfire surrounded by them, because one of them put the Breath on you before you even knew they were there. That's how vampires catch you.

And yet here she is, bolting down a hallway, knowing it's futile and ten different kinds of stupid and unable to stop herself, because even if her fight is more effective, flight is far, far more appealing.

"Shit!" she hisses when the hallway abruptly ends in a door. She jiggles the handle - it's locked - then growls a word under her breath. There's a begrudging click from the lock, and Sunshine wrenches the door open and stumbles through, slamming it shut behind her.

[watcher_giles]

"Well, this is different."

Giles turns on the spot, taking in every nook and cranny of the room he is in, trying to recall where he is and how he got there. He's found himself in a small, cozy sitting room of a sort, furnished with squashy armchairs just begging to be used as reading spots for any one of the books filling the cases that line one wall. The rugs are cushy, the pillows plump, the fireplace glowing and - unless the glorious smell and the steam rising from it deceive him - the pot on one of the spindly tables is full of tea.

There's a whisper of unease under the pervading sense of contentment he feels, and Giles listens to that whisper as if it were a shout. Giving the tea a look full of longing and distrust, he strides toward the nearest door, determined to figure out what is going on and why it is going on around him.

Before he can reach the door, however, it flies open and is just as quickly slammed shut, having disgorged a dark-haired woman into the room. She turns from the closed door, about to break into full sprint, and plows right into Giles, who stumbles, but manages to keep them both upright.

"Whoa, easy," he says, taking her gently by the shoulders in a steadying gesture. "What is it?"

[bluesuit_handy]

Andrew is quickly discovering that it's hard to run with two growing babies inside of him. He's been sticking to the apartment more than ever lately; while overall the pregnancy symptoms haven't made him feel as awful lately, his growing belly has become impossible to hide. On a woman the shape of it would be familiar enough to likely be recognized for what it is, but on Andrew...well, it's possible for a man to carry excess fat almost entirely on his belly, right?

Right now, though, he's not so concerned about how he looks as about how slowly he moves. Panting, he looks behind him at the spreading darkness, knowing what lurks inside. There had been another person when he first found himself in this dilapidated library...or at least, there'd been part of another person before the vashta nerada had finished picking the bones clean in front of his eyes.

He reaches the heavy double doors, knees feeling weak...and finds the doors locked. In a flash he's got his screwdriver out and buzzing against the lock, which thankfully gives a click just in time for him to shove the doors open and fling himself through before the shadows catch up with him.

[bagropa]

Croach has, sensibly, remained where he arrived in the good house - in a hallway, decorated in a Earthen style with which he is unfamiliar, which contains many doors. He has inspected several of the rooms from their doorways, and while all appear to be empty and of average interior design, he senses something dangerous about them, and so remains on guard in the hallway. He walks up and down it and occasionally sits in one of the chairs up against the wall, making note of the strange floor coverings and the patterned walls. It is not clear to him why so many of the human dreams occur within human houses. Frankly, he does not understand the appeal.

His watch is interrupted by the clatter of a set of doors opening from what Croach had observed to be the library. A humanoid emerges, and Croach is immediately on alert - he had noticed no immediate dangers within the room, and senses none still, apart from the general... unease he is experiencing.

"Do you require assistance, humanoid?" Croach asks, reaching for his quantum bow. He can tell that the humanoid is in distress, and also... "You are fertilized!" Croach exclaims, and were he to identify this emotion, he might designate it excitement.

[omnomnom_feels]

Rashad stands in a spider-infested basement and watches the human corpse currently tearing itself from the naked earth that makes up the floor. Strange, he thinks. Zombies do not usually act independently and -- he checks again, casting about him for the low levels of background emotion that would indicate the presence of another sapient -- he can sense no necromancer commanding it. How did it even know he had stepped into the room while it was still buried?

Stepping forward, he crouches just out of its reach as it struggles to extricate its legs from the soil. "Explain yourself," he commands it. In this aspect, alas, the zombie turns out to be quite ordinary, as its reply takes the form of a low moan and a clumsy swipe in his direction. Well, no sense leaving it where a mortal might stumble across it, Rashad decides. Zombies are such unclean things. No blade on his person, so he'll have to do it the old fashioned way. Like as not it would resist an attempt to send the remains of its soul away, but destroying the body should have the same result. With a little frown of concentration, Rashad summons blue aetheric fire to flicker over his body, then calmly steps around the zombie and takes it firmly by the back of its neck, holding onto it while its clothes catch fire and the writhing creature groans and burns.

Anger. The feeling in the air makes Rashad look up, wondering if he's found the necromancer. No...no, that's not a mortal's anger. It seems to come from all around him, faint but malevolent and permeating, and he gives the ceiling a curious look as he stands and brushes ash off his hands, the flames that danced across his skin dying out. "I've upset you," he observes. "But what are you?"

[johnny_truant]

One of the first things Johnny has learned about this place is that his stupid power doesn't work here. He can't get out, can't move himself somewhere better, can only move through the house by the conventional method, in accordance with what seems to be its will. It's easy enough to pick up on this dream's "gimmick" - every other room is awful. Awful, nice, awful, nice. Real funny. Johnny would stay in one of the nice rooms, but the niceness is almost just as bad, to him. He doesn't feel comfortable anywhere. He wants to get outside. So he keeps moving, passing easily from the pleasant rooms into the terrible ones, and repeatedly having to force doors open to get back into the pleasant ones. The more he explores, the more he expects to find Zagreus, or the horrible red-haired woman, or someone waiting for him around every corner - but he remains alone.

He stands now in a luxurious kitchen, frustrated by relentless movement, seeming to take him nowhere. Straight through, on and on. Such bullshit. He casts a look around and spots a door not like the others - closed, for one, most of the pleasant-room doors aren't closed - and tucked off to the side. He wanders over and pushes it open.

Stairs, carpeted and clearly lit (though he knows they won't be anymore as soon as he passes through the threshold) downward. A basement.

Well, this is CLEARLY a place he should not be headed.

Yet, for some fucking reason, probably because he's an IDIOT, he passes through and goes down.

Immediately and predictably, the lights go out, the stairs creak and give beneath his feet, and he instantly recognizes that this was a stupid, stupid idea.

He's about to turn right the heck around when he realizes there's actually someone here. Noises, a flash of strange light - a smell. Putrid, deathlike. And a low voice murmuring in the dark.

Terrified and yet unable to pull himself away, he steps down a little further, far enough to see into the basement, where one man stands over another - something horrible, writhing in the dirt. He doesn't know what's happening here but he's pretty sure he doesn't want to find out. Yet he's almost too scared to move.

"Fuck," he hisses, can't contain it, and immediately shrinks back, causing the stairs to creak more, too loudly to be ignored. Fuck.

[ceciiil]

Oh God, so much blood. Blood and incredibly tacky window treatments. What kind of monster's kitchen IS this? They don't do anything to block out the sun, the wallpaper's already all faded. Cecil slogs through the mess and opens the fridge, closes it hurriedly enough to dislodge a cheerful magnet, which falls into a bloodpuddle with an unpleasantly thick sound. "I don't know what I was expecting."

[interndana]

Everything is a little too cheery here, from the sunlight and the gentle breeze coming through the curtains, to the perfectly white lace runner going down the length of this dining table. Dana has a long-honed instinct that makes her wary when she's around people or places that are this cheerful, with this intensity. That's like kindergarten stuff, mistrust of extreme happiness right up there with macaroni portraits.

She paces around the dining room, all the pleasant and tasteful decor doing nothing to make her feel less restless. And more than that, she feels hungry. What's a dining room without food? She should find a kitchen, perhaps. Dana spies a little door, half hidden behind a large potted fern. Aha! Before she leaves, Dana takes a sturdy-looking fork and steak knife from the sideboard, in case the kitchen is stocked with wheat or wheat byproducts.

It takes a little shove to get the door open, but it soon gives way. Dana steps through with purpose and conviction and slips, skidding on wet tile with enough momentum that she falls on her ass and slides into something someone.

"I'm so s-" she looks up. "Oh! Hello Cecil."

[johnny_truant]

By this point Johnny's so used to dreaming about horrible, fucked up houses that he can almost do nothing but stare blankly around himself. Right, so the windows are all barred, the doors are locked, there's bloodstains and claw marks on the floor... whatever, right? He exhales slow and heavy and wanders to one of the windows, looking out at a choked, overgrown garden. He pulls away from that, and-

-something crunches under foot, like dry leaves. He looks down. It's paper. He bends down to pick it up, and peers at it.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He drops it, lets it flutter down from his hand, his heart in his throat. He lets his gaze move around the room. Pages are everywhere now, covering every inch of the floor, taped up and down the walls, papering the ceiling. He can't move without shuffling through them. And they're all his. His pages.

Here's one that says:

Ken Burns has used this particular moment to illustrate why The Navidson Record is so beyond Hollywood: "Not only is it gritty and dirty and raw, but look how the zoom claws after the fleeting fact. Watch how the frame does not, cannot anticipate the action. Jed's in the lower left hand corner of the frame! Nothing's predetermined of foreseen. It's all painfully present which is why it's so painfully real."<sup>216







216</sup>As you probably guessed, not only has Ken Burns never made any such comment, he's also never heard of The Navidson Record let alone Zampanò.


And another:

After my father died I was shipped around to a number of foster homes. I was trouble wherever I went. No one knew what to do with me. Eventually—though it did take awhile—I ended up with Raymond and his family. He was a former marine with, as I've already described, a beard rougher than horse hide and hands harder than horn. He was also a total control freak. No matter the means, no matter the cost, he was going to be in control. And everyone knew if push came to shove he was as likely to die for it as he was to kill for it.

I was twelve years old.

What did I know?

I pushed.

I pushed all the time.


Now, he pushes this away, tearing it up with an angry, desperate yell, turning his aggression on the walls and ripping down page after page. No, no, no, no. He left this all far behind. He doesn't want it anymore. No one can see it. No one.

[i_jones]

One roughly door-sized section of one of the walls gives in a little, then recedes, the mass of papers breathing slowly. After a moment, they ebb and flow again, and then they strain against their adhesives. One page yields, ripping in half, and the rest quickly follow, making a jagged border for the door that Ianto barrels through, having clearly just shouldered it open.

He pulls up short, skidding a little on the loose paper. This looks... a bit odd and private. "Er, sorry," he starts, hands held up half defensively. "This... isn't the loo."

[edgar_sawtelle]

Edgar finds himself in a dark, dirty space of indeterminate size and purpose. What light makes it through the dingy windowpanes only serves to highlight the gloom, casting a silvery pall over his surroundings. Even as his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, he sticks out his hand, palm flattened, expecting Almondine to nudge her head under it. When she doesn't, he pats the hand against his leg to call for her, squinting around for a door. When she still doesn't appear, Edgar, concern growing, looks around the room for her.

At first, he doesn't notice the body. It's lying not far from the wall opposite him, in a patch of shadow, but even as his eyes pass over its dark shape, the light shifts so that it is fully illuminated. His body recognizes the person a second before he does, going completely tense in the heartbeat it takes for his brain to catch up.

Edgar stares into the open, unseeing eyes of his father and collapses to the floor, his knees giving out beneath him. Mind and body fight against one another for a minute as he struggles to both crawl to his father and run away. Then he gets his feet under him again and stumbles to the body. He hesitates for the space of a breath before placing a hand on his father's still chest, the other in front of his mouth. There is no sign of breathing, and his pulls his hands away as if stung, glancing around frantically for help.

He spots a telephone on a nearby table and fumbles his way to it. He doesn't even check for a dial tone before jamming a finger at the '0' button and pressing the receiver to his ear. After two rings, a tinny voice comes on the line, asking how to direct the call. Edgar, in a panic, takes a deep breath. As he releases it, he slams a fist against his chest, trying to drive sound out of his body. All that he manages is a soft grunt, and hearing it makes his stomach drop.

He knows this. This is all so familiar, so horribly familiar and yet not right, not exactly the same. He drops the receiver, the voice still sounding from the earpiece, and backs away until his back hits a wall. Sliding down to sit on the floor, he draws his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them, eyes glued to the body of his father, staring at him from across the room.

[heysoulsister]

Jodie's wandering down a pretty opulent hallway, all thick carpeting and nice wallpaper and framed paintings of pastoral scenes. She doesn't examine any of it too closely - doesn't even know what she's doing here, really - but that doesn't seem to matter. She feels completely at ease, which is such a rare treat that she's not inclined to question it too closely.

Aiden's feeling a bit more restless, and he roves into one of the rooms off the hallway. He wasn't expecting to find it occupied, and the tether thrums with surprise and alarm as he notices the boy and the body. A minute later, Jodie steps into the room. She frowns at the disparity between this godawful place and the beautiful hallway she came from, but only for a second - then, her attention is drawn to the boy curled up along one of the walls. His eyes are fixed on a man's body. She's not even sure if he knows she's there.

"Hey," she says gently, taking a few cautious steps toward the kid. Christ, he looks awful. She glances between him and the body, noting the resemblance between the two, and winces. There's no point in trying to heal the man; they're too late for that. Jodie drops into a crouch a few feet away from the kid and tries again. "I'm Jodie."

[wildmage_daine]

Daine's never seen a garden such as this one. It's all so… neat. Gravel crunches beneath her feet as she walks along a broad path bordered by perfectly manicured lawns and tidy flower beds. Pleasant as it seems, she's not entirely sure she likes it; it's all a little too organized, with none of the rambling enthusiasm she associates with healthy plants.

As if in response to her inner thoughts, she spies another garden a little ways off, charmingly framed by an ivy-covered brick archway. This one hasn't been pruned so severely, and she steps through the arch with a grin…

… Only to find herself in a vastly different garden. It's as if the one she'd expected had been allowed to grow wild for years, a threatening tangle of thorns spilling over and obstructing the pathways. "What?" she whispers to herself before turning back the way she came. But the wall has crumbled; the archway she passed through no longer exists.

What is this? Time travel? Some sort of illusion? She tries to reach through a spray of thorns, but they're solid enough that she only gets pricked fingers for her trouble. Drawing her hand back, she presses her lips together and swiftly sets an arrow to her bow. Whatever's going on here, she has a feeling she'll need her weapon.

With this garden so overgrown, there's only one path she can take. She edges along it, listening carefully, ready to fire in an instant.

[slumberingwood]

Hopefully Daine isn't too trigger happy, because she won't get too far before something with fur the color of coal comes rushing over her head to crash against the crumbling walls behind her. Ballyhoo has grown since the rift last dragged her into a shared human dream, but the nine-foot-long dragon is very badly spooked. She cringes and drops low to the ground as the guttural roar of something very large sounds from elsewhere in the garden, eyes on the sky. She hasn't even noticed the human she nearly bowled over.


[OOC: I was thinking of throwing an emperor dragon at them, though it may be too big to really fit in the garden. They're basically undead giants; there's some info about them if you scroll down here.]

[mr_fring]

This is not the first time he's found himself in a richly kept home, with no memory of his arrival. This is better than the last, though; quiet, comforting, still and empty. It's some sort of foyer, letting out into the expansive gardens beyond. He peers out the windows at greenery, wondering if he is truly alone here, or if there are people to be found - perhaps people he's met in Manhattan? That seems to be the pattern he's experienced so far.

Just near him is an open door, looking out on a decadent sight indeed - a clear blue pool, broad and sparkling in the sun.

This certainly isn't the time for a swim. It's pleasant enough right where he is anyway, he doesn't feel particularly inclined to leave. But at the same time, something draws him out. The pool so reminds him of Max. Or rather the last time he saw Max.

He steps closer, passing through the open doorway.

Instantly everything changes. He stops short, feeling a sickening lurch in his stomach. The water is gone now, drained dry, the pool nothing but a gaping cement hole sent into a crumbling brick patio. Ivy creeping and dying over everything. Gus inches forward, hesitant and nervous, for a closer look. Everything's as it was, but... ruined. He turns back to see if the house's interior has changed as well, and sees instead a bolted, barred door. Gus approaches it quickly, giving the handle a firm shake, but it's locked and perhaps rusted shut.

He drops his hand, wipes it on his trousers. Stay calm. There has to be an explanation.

He turns back to the pool, still finding himself compelled to go near it, even with it in this state. He crouches down at its rim, studying the intricate latticework of cracks and weeds in its floor. After a moment he lowers himself into it, standing at its deepest point, gazing up at the walls, trying to imagine himself in the water, lingering far beneath the surface.

[ceciiil]

Unbeknownst to Gus, Cecil has been watching his strange empty-pool meditation (?) for a little while. He doesn't want to interrupt what certainly looks important and tranquil, but he has a feeling Gus might need know the full scoop about his surroundings. Cecil, in his slightly bloodied pantslegs and general knowledgeability, is bound to be helpful, here. Object (in this case, location) duality. Worst case of it he's seen, actually; gotta be murder on the local property values, that sort of thing can spread like termites. "Gus?" Polite, unintrusive, attempting not to startle.

[i_jones]

The sitting room was tastefully appointed, once. Now the wallpaper is dirty, peeling, and what isn't covered in a fine layer of dust is coated in grainy dirt as nature reclaims the rotting wood floor and wall paneling. The window is too cloudy to see out of, but a woman in a rocking chair sits next to it all the same, wrinkled, pale hands curved around the ends of the armrests like claws. Moths and rot have claimed the best of the spiderwebbed shawl across her shoulders.

Ianto approaches cautiously, the wood giving softly and damply under his shoes, but no matter how close he gets (not so close), no matter the angle, he cannot seem to see her face. With the cold crawling across his skin and into his cheeks, he's not sure he wants to. There's a high-backed chair in the corner against the far wall, next to a crumbling fireplace filled with piles of ash, and Ianto gamely brushes away the grime and brittle shells of long-dead insects before he sits, to wait. He's not sure what scares him more - that she will turn around, or that she won't.

[jennifer_strange]

Okay. She's not sure how, but Jennifer has just taken a catastrophically wrong turn. Her first guess is that there's some sort of unpleasant magic going on - a bit ostentatious, even, with the whole overwhelming sense of doom and aggressively spooky aesthetic - and her gaze is drawn to the incongruously polite-looking man sitting in the corner. Is this his work?

Down by her feet, the Quarkbeast sneezes.

"Erm." Jennifer shivers in spite of herself. "Sorry. Wrong… room." She isn't sure what she's interrupting, here, but she's reasonably certain she doesn't want to be interrupting it anymore. She turns to leave, then lets out a little 'tsk' when she realizes the door has transformed into a boarded-over ruin. God, she's probably getting tetanus just by looking at the nails holding it all together. She throws a sheepish, uneasy look over her shoulder at the man in the chair. "D'you mind?" she asks, gesturing to the door.

[apidae]

She'd been asleep, but now she's here - an unfamiliar room, and not a very nice one. A cellar, in fact - barrels of wine and jars of strange, unlabeled liquids filling up dusty old shelves. The only light is a harsh worklamp positioned over a table against the far wall. She wanders over - carefully now, this is not a good place for bare feet - to take a closer look, and-

Oh! She shuffles back in quick horror, her hands clasped over her mouth. Someone has been working on a mask. In another circumstance she might think it beautiful craftsmanship - the painting so lifelike, such a good approximation of skin tone and texture. But it makes her almost sick to see it. The mask is a too-perfect likeness of her own face.

The brown tones of her skin, every shape and curve of her features perfectly rendered - no slits to see through, only closed eyes, even lashes, rendered perhaps with horsehair. She doesn't want to get close enough to see or touch.

Her back finds a wood pillar, a weakening support - it shifts slightly when she runs into it, and she can feel the head of an old nail jabbing at the small of her back. She steps forward quickly. Got to be more careful. Better yet, got to find a way out.

She skirts around the table, its singular light so like a grotesque invitation, seeking out an exit. Even a small window will do. As she gropes through the lengthening dark, she can't seem to take her eyes off the mask, terrified by its deathly stillness, the accuracy of it.

Finally, her hand finds the half-rotting bannister of a staircase leading up, oh thank goodness - she's about to turn away, casting one last fearful glance at the mask-

Its eyes are open.

This time she can't help letting out a scream. The mask's eyes - her own eyes - are staring coldly at her from the table, like at any moment it could get up on an invisble body and start toward her, or like its mouth could open and speak.

She turns away in terrified anguish, hurrying up the stairs so fast she almost trips several times, finding the door at the top, stuck fast with swelled wood. She throws her little body against it harder and harder until, finally, it bursts open and she stumbles out, free, heart still pounding, breath still coming hard and fast.

[eighth]

The Doctor jumps a little when a young lady suddenly bursts into the room. He'd just been pottering about, exploring. Well, beginning to explore. He hadn't actually made it out of the room yet. It's a cozy little kitchen, and he'd been looking through the cupboards to try and figure out the year.

This is immediately abandoned the moment the girl joins him, of course. "It's alright, I'm here," he reassures after barely a moment of looking at her fright, and he runs over to the door to see what's chasing her.

...There's nothing, actually. Just a regular, well-lit staircase, no sign of disturbance, no sound of footsteps or growls or yells or anything. He closes the door anyway, before turning back to the girl to make sure she's alright.

"Okay, I've got you, you're safe now," he says calmly, reaching gently out for her shoulders to steady her.

[heysoulsister]

The relative peace of a roomy, well-stocked library is interrupted by a strange non-commotion in the doorway. There is a crunch of wood that must have been imaginary, a brief flash of explosive motion that can't have possibly happened because there is nothing there to explode, and then a young woman stumbles into the room, her clothing smudged with dust and telltale scrape along one cheek.

"Shit," she says between gasps, turning to look back at the doorway. But the hallway beyond isn't what it was, and this room holds no sense of pervasive horror. They're safe. For now.

Jodie sits down hard on the thick rug and flaps a hand once, as if to ward off bugs. "It's fine," she says, "it's barely even bleeding." Only then does she turn to take in her surroundings.

[apidae]

Bee peeks out from behind her book and a plush armchair, which she's ignored in favor of sitting on the floor. All that commotion! Someone must have had a difficult time coming in, just as she did. She feels a little more shy than usual, not wanting to startle someone who's already on edge - and it sounds like she didn't come alone? But no, Bee can't see anyone else, just her.

She clears her throat softly, still just peeking out. "Hello," she says. For good measure she adds, "You're all right now."

[bibliophale]

Strange place, this. Two places, more like. One quite a bit nicer than the other. Yet Aziraphale finds it almost impossible to keep to one or the other. Impossible if there is any exploring to be done. They switch back and forth continually. Always contesting one another, establishing kind of warped balance. A little too familiar.

Exploring isn't really his taste, but there's just nothing else to do. Maybe if he finds a library? Or something.

He passes through one lovely empty room, sighs heavily as he goes to open the next door. Another horrible one ahead. Hopefully not too taxing to escape.

He pushes the door open and steps over the threshold.

[rae_of_sun]

It might have started out as a ballroom, but it has since become… infected. Along the left side of the room, beneath the tightly shuttered windows, it could almost pass for normal. The right side of the room, however, is an oily tangle of glistening black pipes and crusted-over levers and dials, a senseless conglomeration designed for aesthetic intimidation and not any kind of actual, industrial purpose. On the floor, gangrenous threads of black and green are creeping out of the mess, encroaching on the young woman shackled to the left-side wall.

The sickly, poisonous threads have already claimed her hands.

Don't look at him, Sunshine thinks desperately. Don't look into his eyes. But it doesn't matter, it's all useless. Bo is in the center of the tangle of pipes, they emanate from his throne like malevolent roots, and he doesn't need to meet her eyes to kill her. All he has to do is say her name, and his voice will prise her apart.

He shouldn't be able to say her name - either of her names. But he's trying. Oh, he's trying, and it won't be long before he gets there.

You must be so tired, he says, and it feels like being flayed alive. She wants to cover her ears, but that wouldn't do any good, and she doesn't want to touch herself with her… with those corrupted hands. They do not belong to her anymore.

Do something! part of her screams, but she is chained to the wall. She cannot… face him. All she can do is wait for it to end. Gods and angels, why can't it just be over.

Such an enterprising little human, Bo muses, as if to himself. And then he tries again: Sssssssssssssssssss… Still only achieving the first letter, but that unholy hiss is still enough to make her throw herself back against the wall in a futile attempt at escape.

[theoldgirl]

Well, this isn't at all where she meant to go, the TARDIS observes critically. The idea was to meet up with Gabriel in the telepathic current for some private telepathic fun and so she could provide him with a respite from his troubles. But almost immediately she got dragged into an eddy and deposited in a dream construct not of her choosing at all. And... she's not alone.

There's two of them, kindred minds, sisters perhaps. She tries to reach out for the more welcoming one, its presence seeming stronger, but besides a friendly greeting she doesn't get much of a response. A fairly simple mind, then, or a very young one, or too alien for her to connect with properly? That doesn't make sense, since it's taken the shape of a human mansion. This incongruity sets her just a little on edge, and when she tries to convey her desire to see the rest of the structure, she is met with good-natured but firm denial. Which is not reassuring either. Entities in the form of human houses have a tendency to be shockingly unpleasant, even to her.

Still, she's not in a mood to start any strife, so for now she decides not to resist her 'host' and manifests in the room she was put in. The first thing she notices is the overwhelmingly sweet smell of flowers and fruits. Large potted plants with just as large blooms line the glass walls of an expansive conservatory, spacious enough to house fully grown lemon and orange trees. In the center of it is an ornately sculpted fountain splashing pleasantly. The TARDIS does take a moment to smell a lemon, touch a few unusual plants and run her fingers through the water, but she's also looking around for an exit. If the housing entity doesn't let her reach beyond the radiant walls of this room, she'll just have to look for Gabriel the inconvenient way.

[bibliophale]

Dreaming again? He must be. He doesn't recall gong to sleep, and yet here he is. At first he thinks it's the Garden - but he realizes it's indoors, a lovely room full of life, imagined though it may be. Well, at least it's a pleasant dream. He moves through it quietly, drawn toward the fountain, soothed by the sound of running water. If he must dream, he hopes they're always so peaceful.

He realizes he's not alone. There's a small woman in the room as well, drifting around just like him. She seems to be looking for something. Maybe she doesn't know she's dreaming. And he is certain he didn't dream her up. Her presence is quite strong, her identity very marked and separate from his own. She doesn't feel human, either - he's not sure what she feels like. Quite curious. He catches her eye and makes a little wave.

"Hello," he says pleasantly. "You look a little lost."

[has_a_horn]

The whole room smells musty and feels oppressive, and he's definitely sure this isn't where the TARDIS had meant for them to appear. They'd agreed to some time away from the reality of his injuries, but this isn't really his idea of private telepathic fun. Another group dream, then.

"TARDIS?" He turns, and a large shard of glass cracks under his boot. He's not even sure which way he should go to get out of here. It seems like this used to be a conservatory, but it's long since been neglected into disuse. One of the fruit trees has broken through the glass ceiling in one spot, and it seems to have come apart or rusted in other areas enough for the glass to drop.

He steps gently over the mildew and vine covered floor towards an old broken fountain. He can feel the TARDIS in the dreaming, but so far the only life he's seen here is rats nesting in the ivy. Actually...quite a lot of rats. A distressing amount of rats. That seem to be getting very interested in him.

[wildmage_daine]

This looked like such a nice conservatory until Daine actually stepped inside. Now, it's a ruin, and full of rats, besides. Their unfriendliness is a sharp, persistent itch in the back of her mind, and she scowls in annoyance and turns to leave… but the door she came through is rusted shut, the once-fancy iron scrollwork fused into an immovable cage. Her frown deepens, and she considers just taking a bulkier shape and smashing her way back through before tucking the option away as a plan B. Plan A can be finding another door. Perhaps there's an exit down at the other end.

The rats aren't overeager to let her pass, but they are only rats, numbers notwithstanding. She forces them aside with her magic as she walks, gritting her teeth at their resentful squeals and ignoring their insults. More of the creatures swarm toward her, but she resolutely holds them at bay; the result is something like a furry brown tide breaking around a rock.

Her focus is evenly divided between the rats and the walls, so the sight of another person surprises her a little. She can't say she's thrilled when she recognizes him (though at least her annoyance with Gabriel provides more ammunition to use against the rats). She huffs, then says, "Fancy seeing you here." Fancy seeing him anywhere, in fact.