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

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

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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.]

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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.

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."

The voice on the phone, the silence of his father, the pounding of his own heart - these echo in Edgar's ears so loudly that he doesn't hear someone enter the room. He sees movement out of the corner of his eye, some part of his brain registering the motion even as the rest of it is too numb to respond.

A voice cuts through the din in his mind even as his brain catches up to what's going on, fast forwarding to the present. As soon as it hits him that someone else is in the room and talking to him, his head snaps around, eyes locking with hers.

His eyes want to flicker back to his father's body, but he won't let himself. Instead, he focuses on the young woman's face. It's a pleasant face, with a worried, searching gaze that it takes Edgar a few seconds to realize is at his expense.

Aiden darts restlessly around the room, the tether humming with his anxiety. He doesn't like this place, and Jodie's inclined to agree with him. Even without the corpse, she gets the impression that this room would feel oppressive. Better to get the kid out of here as soon as possible.

Now that Jodie has the boy's attention, she keeps her eyes focused on him, not wanting to draw his attention back to the body by glancing at it, herself. She holds out a hand, close enough that he can reach it if he wants to, but not so close as to invade his personal space. "Why don't we get out of here?" she suggests. "I'll help you."

Helping kids with dead fathers (or uncles, or whatever - dead family members, at any rate): what a fucking habit to cultivate. What else can she do, though? She sure as hell isn't going to leave him here.

Part of Edgar doesn't understand - doesn't she see his father? Why isn't she trying to help him? Why would they leave? Where would they go? Another, smaller part, growing louder with every passing second, understands that it's too late, that they should leave, that this is a bad place. That part manages to gain control, and he reaches out to take Jodie's offered hand.

"There we go," Jodie says in quiet approval, slowly getting to her feet, drawing the boy up after her. Under different circumstances, she might wonder at his silence, but not now. She backs toward the door one little step at a time, keeping her eyes on the boy's face, keeping his back to the body. If she can just get him into the hallway, everything will be… better. Not okay, but better than this.

Aiden's thrum of alarm is her first indication that things are about to get worse. Her second is when the body in the corner moves, rising into the air as if drawn by strings, feet hovering a good five inches off the ground. Oh, god. Oh, shit. She keeps her gaze resolutely fixed on the boy as she continues backing toward the door, a little faster now. "It's okay," she lies, trying to smile as the body's head lolls to one side, its eyes milky white but still somehow seeing, the face contorting into a snarl. "We're almost there."

Aiden, she thinks, do something!

He doesn't need to be told twice. Aiden lashes out at the entity inside the corpse, forcing it out, and the man's body collapses back to the floor as if the strings have been cut, landing with an audible thud. Jodie stiffens - there's no way the kid missed the noise - and darts a quick glance at the crumpled form before she resumes gently tugging the boy toward the door, hoping he won't turn around.

Even through the haze of shock and horror, Edgar doesn't miss the loud thud behind him. He turns to look over his shoulder before he can stop himself. At first, he is surprised by the lack of change - something happened, but nothing looks different. But maybe he wasn't entirely letting himself really look, because as soon as his eyes drift down to the body (the body, not his dad) he can tell that it has moved. Somehow.

He stumbles slightly, confused and suddenly deeply afraid, but can't stop to think as Jodie continues to pull him toward the door he couldn't find before.

"It's okay," she repeats: a stupid, factually incorrect mantra. But then she's stepping back through the doorway, and it's as if a weight has been lifted off of her shoulders. Once the boy clears the threshold, Aiden darts out after them, pulling the door shut behind him.

Jodie takes a breath, still holding the boy's hand. This is better. The shift in the atmosphere is palpable. "What's your name?" She's hoping he might find his voice now that they're someplace safe.

It isn't okay, and Edgar is pretty sure it will never be okay again. But then he steps through the doorway and into a bright, clean, normal hallway and the door shuts behind him. The effect is immediate - his levels of tension and horror drop significantly as soon as he clears the doorway and continue to recede, like a tide within him retreating.

He takes a few deep, shuddering breaths of air, adjusting to the sudden shift in mood.

He blinks at Jodie for a moment, her routine question somehow strange given the past few minutes. Then, seeing their hands are still clasped, he responds.

I'm Edgar, he thinks at her. His mouth twists in a small, wry smile. And I probably sound like someone you know.

Holy shit. Nathan. Nathan's voice is in her head, and despite what his voice is saying, it takes her a few moments to realize the kid is the source. He's the one talking in her head. In Nathan's voice. What the fuck.

Aiden feels her surprise, but doesn't understand its cause. The boy did something, he must have done something, but what? He hovers above the two, uncertain and suspicious, but not to the point of lashing out.

"How are you doing that?" Jodie asks. It should probably occur to her to drop the kid's hand, but she continues to hold on despite the fact that he's looking a lot better and doesn't seem likely to either bolt or collapse.

Edgar has gotten used to the many types of responses he can receive when he first "speaks" to someone. That doesn't mean going through the initial discovery phase has gotten any easier. He braces himself, and beings the explanation he had gone through many times before.

I'm mute, but I can talk to you using my mind so long as we are touching, he patiently explains, lifting their joined hands to illustrate. I'll sound like people you know at first, but eventually my voice will settle into something that isn't anyone in particular.

Cole. Then - she stiffens - her mother. She wasn't even sure she remembered her mother's voice anymore, but there it is, warm and reassuring and terribly out of place.

"… Uh-huh," she says, a bit unsteadily. There's a ripple of frustration from the tether, and Jodie belatedly realizes how out of the loop Aiden is right now. It's okay, she thinks, he's just… talking in my head. It's okay. Aiden doesn't feel particularly mollified, and she adds, He's named Edgar, he's mute, and he's some kind of telepath.

Unsettled as she is, she can't help feeling a bit curious about his ability. It seems like the sort of thing the DPA would eat right up, and she finds herself wondering if he can make himself understood regardless of language barriers, or if he just thinks in English. "Have you always been like this?" she asks instead.

Mute, yes. Telepathic, no. He studies her face for a heartbeat before adding, Do you know about the rift?

Whoa, shit, can he hear her? Fuck. Translating for Aiden is just going to have to wait - or have to be done carefully, aloud, in such a way that Edgar doesn't pick up on it.

"Yeah, I know about the rift." She rubs the back of her neck with her free hand. "I take it you got one of those rift powers or whatever people are calling them."

He nods. The rift took the way I usually speak and made it more literal, he explains. He lifts his free hand, making a few one-handed signs with it. I speak with my hands. First with sign language and now, thanks to the rift, with touch telepathy.

He stares at his free hand for a moment, eyes distant, then smiles crookedly. It is a lot easier being able to talk to someone this way, instead of writing everything down or teaching them how to read signs. It isn't always easy for the person I talk to, though, as you know, he adds, smile turning slightly sad and rueful.

Christ, this is weird. It's like… like rummaging through someone else's closets and trying on their clothes, mixing and matching until they come up with an outfit that actually fits. His voice continues to shift as he speaks, weird combinations of Cole and Nathan, her mother, assorted DPA scientists, kids from her old neighborhood, Ryan, Vince, Nick, and then Johnny, Andrew and James, until the sharp pangs of recognition fade and Edgar's voice slowly settles into something she can no longer place, a sort of standard teenage boyish blend.

"It is getting better," she reassures him. God, he must have to go through this whole spiel with everyone he talks to; at least she's only going through it once. Then, because she hasn't forgotten what happened in that room even if it does feel better out here, she adds, "Are you okay?"

Edgar's face falls, going blank even as pain flares in his eyes. The hand holding Jodie's twitches, but somehow what happened in the other room doesn't seem as painful out here. The memory of it seems far away, difficult to grasp, and Edgar is able to think about it, acknowledge it, and then step back from it.

Yeah, I'm okay, he replies, giving her a nod and the faintest hint of a smile.

He shifts his attention to where they are now. It's a wide hallway with plush carpeting and the kind of wall hangings that remind Edgar of the illustrations in his books of fairy tales. Do you know where we are?

Maybe she shouldn't have asked - she regrets it, a little, when his face falls - but hell, what was she supposed to do? Pretend it didn't happen? Fuck that. She's not pretending godawful shit is no big deal, something you can just sweep under the rug and leave behind you.

But that doesn't mean she's going to pry, either. "Okay," she agrees, giving his hand a little squeeze before turning to examine the hallway. "And no, this is all new to me. I came from down that way," she adds, gesturing back down the hall, "but I haven't been in any of the rooms besides… that last one."

Edgar appreciates the squeeze, and gives her a small smile. That smile fades to a frown, though, when she answers his question.

This looks completely different from the other room, he says, confused. He supposes it's possible to have such a run-down room in a place that seems as large as this one, but it still seems unusual. Maybe the other rooms are more like this? he asked hopefully.

"Maybe," she says dubiously, frowning at the door of the room they just left. From out here, there's nothing to suggest that its interior is awful, no warning signs or construction material. If she opened the door again, she'd expect to see something as nice as this hallway.

She's not opening the door again.

"Let's head this way," she says, nodding in the direction she and Aiden had been going before. Maybe Edgar's right, and things will remain pleasant. They can put a little distance between themselves and this particular room, if nothing else.

Okay. Edgar starts off in the direction Jodie indicated. He has no desire to stay where they are and shares her sentiment about getting away from the room she found him in.

As they walk, Edgar idly wonders what time it is. The hallway is an interior one, flanked by doors but not a window in sight. There had been light in - in there - but the windows it filtered through had been so dirty, it wasn't possible to tell if it was sunlight or moonlight. Or even artificial light.

He also wonders about where they are. It seems to be a very large place, and while it doesn't seem abandoned (he refuses to think about the room they've left behind), it doesn't appear to be bustling with the number of people who might require so much space.

Do you think anyone lives here? he finally asks. It seems so quiet.

"I haven't seen anyone but you," Jodie says, deliberately not counting the body in the room they left. "But it's too well-kept to be abandoned." Well, the hallway is too well-kept. "Maybe it's being renovated or something. But it's kind of quiet for that, too." No sign of any construction, no equipment or tools, no sound of hammers or drills.

She tilts her head toward the doors they're passing and asks, "Wanna try one?"

Edgar nods. Jodie's explanation makes sense, but it doesn't feel right. Nothing about this place does. So when she suggests trying one of the doors that line the hall, he doesn't argue. Maybe there's something right behind one of them.

Okay, he says, giving her hand a faint squeeze. You pick.

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

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