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

[spookyaction]

"I don't quite know," he murmurs in return, calmed now that he's with her; she is so very calming. He closes his eyes and leans into her touch. "But I think the hallway was trying to kill me."

He takes off his sunglasses as an afterthought and pockets them, gazing into her sharp eyes. "Not usual behavior," he adds, rather unnecessarily.

[thatwasvisual]

She hums approvingly as he leans into her hand, and for a moment, she longs to take off her gloves… but no, not here. They are only visiting, after all.

"The hallway?" she repeats, raising her eyebrows. A quick glance over his shoulder is as good as an added, 'that hallway?' It doesn't look particularly threatening. More to the point, it doesn't feel threatening. Quite the opposite. But there was that strange sound, and the perplexing fact that she didn't sense Adam's approach until he was already stumbling (stumbling!) through the doorway. How very intriguing. And worrisome.

[spookyaction]

"Well it's calmed down now," he says, only a little petulantly. "Before it didn't look anything like that. I had to knock down a door to get in here. There were skylights opening up on their own, trying to burn me. Very postmodern stuff."

He frowns. He doesn't want to go investigate - he'd rather look at those mandolins he's just noticed. But he'll defer to Eve's curiosity. He always does.

[thatwasvisual]

Can you blame her, really? When you've been around as long as they have, mysteries are all the more valuable. Eve lets her hand drop from Adam's cheek, and a moment later, she's standing before the threshold and peering curiously out into the hall. She remains within the room, though - the usual superstition about crossing a threshold uninvited seems particularly apt at the moment.

She has a hand raised, intending to extend it experimentally into the hallway, when there's a faint creak from the door. Eve steps back, a faint, perplexed smile on her face, as the heavy wooden door that had been propped back against the wall slowly swings shut. She fancies that there's something a little sheepish about the motion, as if the door might say, don't mind me. Still, it's with a gentle firmness that it finally clicks shut.

She looks to Adam, smile widening. "I believe we're meant to stay in here."

[spookyaction]

Adam watches her closely, curious without being concerned (she is a survivor after all), and lifts his head in mild interest when the door seems to make its own decision, waiting for her to step aside before it closes on them.

"The right choice, I think," says Adam gently, and turns to observe the wall of mandolins. "And a good room for it, after all."

[thatwasvisual]

Eve returns to Adam's side and gazes up at the instruments. "I thought you'd like it here," she agrees, leaning against his shoulder. He could stand to cultivate a few more passions, in Eve's opinion, but at least he reliably has this one. Music, and her, and… well, blood might be more accurately categorized as a need.

[spookyaction]

Adam hums thoughtfully to himself and finally selects a particularly beautiful antique from the wall, Italian rosewood. He sniffs it gently, then strums it. Perfectly in tune - improbably so. He gives the slightest of smiles and starts working out the beginnings of something.

[thatwasvisual]

Even steps back to give him room to play, then turns to resume her examination of the music room. Half of her focus is on his music, though, and she steps in time to the beat as she explores. She notes with approval that it is not funereal - a positive sign. Perhaps he's on an upswing. He's certainly due for one.

She's drifting over for a closer look at a harp when she spies another door in the wall perpendicular to the hallway. There is nothing notable about it, aside from the fact that she's certain it wasn't there a minute ago. It seems this place has a bit of a door-based theme to it.

She doesn't like to interrupt his music, but this demands some attention, she thinks. "Adam." She glances back at him to be sure he's listening, then turns to the new door. "I don't think this belongs here."

[spookyaction]

Adam glances up from his tinkering and immediately spots the new door. Strange enough to draw him up. He sets the mandolin delicately down on an armchair and moves toward her, studying the sudden exit.

"I don't think so," he concedes. "Should we...?"

Without waiting for an answer - he can almost taste her curiosity - he reaches out and opens the door. It gives without resistance; heavy and slow, creaking only a little.

The room beyond seems too perfect to believe: windowless and almost empty apart from the table in its center, upon which rests a crystal decanter of unmistakable sustenance.

Adam doesn't make a move forward. "We seem to be staring down a gift horse right between the teeth," he says finally.

[thatwasvisual]

"It does look lovely," Eve says. It smells lovely, too - clean and fresh. But Adam isn't moving, and she hasn't forgotten the state he was in when he first entered the room. There's no sense in rushing into things.

She steps forward, close enough to the threshold that she can extend an arm through the doorway and beyond. Nothing catastrophic happens, and she turns her hand palm-up, as if checking for rain. There is something off, a sense of something like pressure, or humidity, though it's neither of those things. She withdraws her arm, considering.

"Curiouser and curiouser," she murmurs. The table is close enough to the door that she could just about reach it from the threshold if she crossed it. So there's really no need for both of them to risk crossing the room. One could stay here. A lifeline.

Eve dons her sunglasses and smiles like a scythe. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. "Take my hand, baby. I'm going in."

[spookyaction]

Adam clasps her hand tight and returns the smile with slightly less conviction. "Watch out for monsters," he says quietly.

He watches her as she steps through, right up until she vanishes. He jerks forward in surprise, not actually crossing the threshold, and tightens his grip on impulse. There - he can still feel her hand in his, maybe a little less closely, like she's not completely solid, but it's there. He can't smell her, can't hear her. The rest of the room and the decanter remains undisturbed, but hell, he's not taking chances, not after what he went through. He clasps her tightly and yanks back, pulling as hard as he can against some mild resistance - a thickness in the air, or something. He hisses with the effort.

[thatwasvisual]

Monsters, Eve thinks as she crosses the threshold, had better watch out for her.

There are no monsters, as it turns out, and there is no gorgeous decanter, either. The room changes in a blink from what she'd expected to something altogether different - still small, and still featuring a little table, now distinctly worse for wear and devoid of any offering.

There are also many windows, and not one courteous curtain to be seen. Sunlight fills the entire space, and Eve hisses as her skin begins to smoke, then blister.

Adam's hand feels wrong in hers, less substantial than it ought to be, but not so much that she can't feel his grip tighten and give a slight tug. She whirls back toward the doorway, finds it incongruously, impossibly blocked - how can it still be shut despite their joined hands? - and claws at the doorknob with her free hand. The entire mechanism breaks free of the rotted wood; she hurls it aside and wrenches open the door. She can't see Adam, but at this point she can't see anything. Without further delay, she throws herself back over the threshold.

The subsequent collision with Adam's chest is painful, and her sunglasses are knocked askew, but now that she's back in the cool, curtained darkness, she can already feel her body repairing itself.

"That," she says when she's once again capable of speech, "was unpleasant."

[spookyaction]

"It was," agrees Adam, referring mostly to the sensation of nearly losing her, though he has a pretty good idea what else she may have gone through. "It was like my hallway, wasn't it? The house isn't constant." He frowns suspiciously at the walls, wrapping his arms around her, stroking her hair absently. "Is it just this room that's safe?"

[thatwasvisual]

She removes the sunglasses - they did their job admirably, but they're no longer necessary - and nuzzles into the cool curve of Adam's neck with a hum of agreement. There might be other sanctuaries out there, but reaching them - if they even exist - would prove a challenge, and she finds herself far less inclined toward experimentation. There's still a faint prickling under her skin; without refreshment, she'd start to have some difficulty repeating this trick a third or fourth time.

"It seems we're stuck here," she says, not terribly upset by the prospect. There are worse rooms in which to be stuck, and far worse company. Her lips quirk into a smile. "Until nightfall, anyway. Then we could leave by the windows." Probably. She hasn't been able to take in the scenery for obvious reasons, so they could be on the tenth floor, but she's not averse to a little climbing.

[spookyaction]

Adam returns the smile, a bit more faintly, as is his wont. He disentangles himself from her and drifts back over to the armchair, angling for the mandolin. Cumbersome to play with his gloves on, but it can't be helped just now.

"Any requests?" he asks, only half-joking.

[thatwasvisual]

Her smile widens as she settles herself in another conveniently placed armchair, drawing her feet up onto the cushion and looping her arms around her knees. "Freebird," she replies, unable to resist the obvious joke.

[spookyaction]

Adam gives her a look of palpable oh please, ugh, that's not funny. "Smartarse," he mumbles under his breath, and then, just to be petulant, he strums out the first few bars of Stairway To Heaven.

[thatwasvisual]

Oh, but his reaction is at least half the fun. Eve laughs aloud at his little sulk - this one, at least, is laughable and not slightly worrisome - and cants her head to one side. "Oh, come on. An original, then."

[spookyaction]

Adam smiles to himself and effortlessly turns the Stairway riff into something new, melodic and strange, as it comes to him. It is a little lighter than his usual fare, he notices it too. Perhaps he is feeling better? Perhaps it's the novelty of being somewhere new, even if it is a bit dangerous. A little danger does them good, now and again. He supposes.