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

[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."

[ceciiil]

The extreme foreboding Cecil feels, ramping up into fright when something skids into him, is shortlived. "Dana!" He beams, taking in her knife and fork, then hurries to help her up. Interns, so prepared. Isn't that always the way. "Sorry about the mess," though it's not even his kitchen. "And the window treatments." He gestures wildly yet aimlessly, at her sadly bloody clothes, the ramshackle cabinetry. "I am so glad to see you."

[interndana]

Dana's happy to see him too; she would go in for a hug but they're both messy enough as it is. She takes in the kitchen, standing with her hands on her hips and smiling a little in disbelief.

"Well I was hungry," she says, looking at the floor and the counters and the sink, and the window treatments. "You know it's so odd, I was just in the dining room and everything was so tastefully decorated, too! Whoever's house this is supposed to be, I don't think they have a good relationship with their cook."

A thought occurs to her, and it distracts her from the unfortunate wallpaper. Dana almost claps a hand to her mouth but that would only exacerbate the blood problem. "Oh Cecil," she says, eyes going wide and serious, like a realtor deer. "You don't suppose this is the cook, do you?" The mess seems quite extensive, but there's quite a lot of blood in a human body after all.

[omnomnom_feels]

Rashad notes as he re-enters the kitchen that its appearance has changed since last he saw it. Of course, last time he was in this kitchen he was in the 'good' version; it is interesting to see how the same room works now that he's exploring the house a second time with the opposite perspective from before.

Then he also notes that there's a mortal in the room and immediately turns on his horrified bystander act. He lets out a little cry and covers his mouth like he's trying not to be sick, staring with wide eyes at the man by the icebox. "What happened in here?" he asks, though he expects it was probably already like this.