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

[powerdealer]

"I have absolutely no idea," he admits, plucking away the page from his hair and giving barely a glance at it before throwing it back into the pile.

"Where exactly is here?" he asks, looking around. Doesn't look like somewhere he'd be willingly. "And what's all of this?" he adds, reaching back down his neck and pulling out the page from there too.

[johnny_truant]

Fuck, they're in his clothes. What, did he roll around in it all before conking out? Johnny doesn't bother answering, crossing quickly to him and kneeling down, pulling pages away from him without any regard for Seth's personal space, tearing and crumpling them as he goes, tossing them aside.

"You need to go," he says tersely. "You need to get out of here right now."

[powerdealer]

What the hell? Are the pages like.. dangerous or something? Cause that's how Johnny's acting. He gets to his feet, and hello yes, he himself can get the one that's trying to crawl down into his underwear, thank you, Johnny doesn't need to help.

"Seriously, man, what's going on?" he asks, frowning with concern.

[johnny_truant]

Johnny gets up with him and grabs his arm, maneuvering him awkwardly toward the locked door.

"It's nothing," he says, not even listening to himself, what a stupid and obvious deflection that is. He's just desperate to get Seth out of the room. He presses his hand against the papered wood (oh god, those are the letters from his mother, oh god) and tries to force the door open.

He can't.

"Fuck," he says with increasing panic. He tries to force the handle again with no luck. "My power's not working. Can you get through here?"

[powerdealer]

Though it's definitely something, Seth decides to just go with it for his friend's sake. He nods and takes Johnny's hand, ready to pull him through alongside him, and is confused when Johnny doesn't seem to want that.

"What, you're not coming with?" he asks, now even more worried.

[johnny_truant]

Johnny shakes his head distractedly. "I have to stay here," he says. "You go, get out. Get somewhere safe. You'll be fine." He ives Seth a little nudge toward the door and turns back, surveying the sprawl of his life. He crouches down and starts pulling up pages like weeds. Some of them are nailed to the floor. He picks one up that just says "screen" in the middle, and nothing more, and crumples it up angrily. His hands are bleeding a little, he realizes. Too many paper cuts. He didn't even notice.

Seth's still behind him. He turns his head to the side without looking. "Go," he snaps.

[powerdealer]

Seth wavers for several moments, unsure what to do. He's still not sure what the actual threat is. What there is to be safe from. And if he feels like Johnny needs his help. He looks as if he's having a mental breakdown. But the second time Johnny tells him to go, and decides to trust that he knows best for now.

He steps through the door, into a surprisingly pleasant hallway. What now? He realises suddenly that there's still a page inside his shoe, so he bends down and pulls it out, looking at it before he can think to do otherwise.


-ps^...
________________________

^...Time has accelerated and I've done nothing to mark its passage. Yesterday seemed like the beginning of July but somehow today finds me mid-way through August. When I went to work everyone got incredibly uncomfortable and drifted away. My boss looked stunned. He finally asked me what I was doing and I just shrugged and told him I was about to start building needles.

“Johnny, are you alright?” he said in a very sincere and concerned tone, without even a note of sarcasm, which was probably the weirdest part.

“Sort of, I guess,” I replied.

“I had to hire someone else, Johnny,” he said very quietly, pointing over to a young blonde woman already in the process of cleaning out the back storeroom. “You've been gone for three weeks.”

I heard myself mutter “I have?” even though I knew I'd been away, just hadn't seemed that long, but of course it had been that long, I just hadn't been able to make it in or even call. I hadn't been able to make it anywhere for that matter and I pretty much kept my phone unplugged.

“I'm so sorry,” I blurted, suddenly feeling very bad


Seth stares at the page in his hand. This seems like too much of a coincidence. A book about Johnny? By Johnny? It seems unlikely that Johnny would care so much if it was unrelated to him, after all.

He bites his lip and looks at the door, stuffing the page in his back pocket. He's regretting leaving Johnny in there, he probably shouldn't be alone in the state he's in. He draws a breath and steps through the door again.

[johnny_truant]

Johnny doesn't notice Seth coming back in, too fixated on the destruction of his evidence. It's not until he gets up and turns around that he sees his friend there again, like a goddamn apparition from out of the dark. Fraught, tense, and caught off guard one time too many, Johnny suffers an internal burst of wild irrationality like a bomb going off. Seth might not be real. A hallucination or a disguised enemy, or worse, he might not be the friend Johnny has thought him to be. Without giving himself time to really think, he lunges forward and seizes Seth's collar in both hands, backing him sharply into the wall.

"I told you to go!" he all but snarls, strung between terror and rage. "Why are you still here? What do you want?"

[powerdealer]

Seth only watches him for a moment before Johnny notices him, but perhaps he should've announced his presence immediately, given his sudden reaction.

It's only barely that his instincts don't kick in to let Johnny fly right through him. Somehow he thinks it's best if he has something solid to grab onto right now, and Seth doesn't think he would really try to hurt him. And if he does try, well, surely his instincts will kick in then, and the twinge of hitting the wall is painful but not quite enough.

"I want to make sure you're alright. I don't think you should be alone right now," he answers, as calmly as he can. It's hard for him not to notice something is pretty wrong with him.

[johnny_truant]

Seth's continued calm gives Johnny pause, and for a moment he hesitates, hovering in the massive gulf between fury and gratitude.

"I - I'm not all right," he says, desperate and miserable. "But I need to be alone here, I don't want you to see, I-"

Suddenly ashamed at his assault, he lets Seth go and backs away, staring dully at the pages. "I'm sorry," he murmurs. "I have to stay here. I have to get rid of it. All of it. You don't want to be here, it could - it could hurt you."

He suspects he's not making sense, but he is in no position to worry about that right now. He sinks back down to the floor, kneeling and wrapping his arms tight around himself, pulling at his clothes and his skin. "Please go," he whispers.

[powerdealer]

Seth watches him with concern, feeling lost as to how to help. The struggle between respecting someone's wishes or doing what you think is best for them. A lot of the time, people know best themselves, but what if something happens? And leaving a friend who looks this desperate and helpless doesn't seem like the best choice.

He doesn't follow, doesn't want to infringe on Johnny's space just now, but neither does he leave. "What if I help you? I won't look, I promise," he says.

[johnny_truant]

Johnny says nothing for a moment, staring at the floor, overwhelmed with shame and bitter resentment at himself for putting Seth in this position, however much he didn't mean to - it still feels like his fault.

"No," he says after a long pause. "It's - it's my burden. If you really want to, just... sit there, maybe. And don't look at anything."

Grimly, he reaches out and picks up another wad of papers - a little window of text standing out in the midst of absolute gibberish and story, and the neighboring page, its mirror image. Another pair, the window blacked-out, and then missing altogether.

What a clusterfuck. How did he ever get through this? It seems so distant now. So distant, and still so present and unavoidable.

"I'm sorry," he says again, even quieter.

[powerdealer]

Seth nods slowly, looks around, and then simply sits down on the spot, brushing aside pieces of paper. At least this way he can keep an eye on Johnny, and maybe his presence will... whatever, have a reassuring effect or something.

"Not sure exactly what you need to apologise to me for," he answers calmly. "And you're clearly going through some shit, so yanno... Don't worry about it. Just lemme know if ya need anything."

[johnny_truant]

Johnny doesn't respond just yet, barely glancing at Seth before he returns his focus to tearing up the pages. He's distantly aware that this is a lost cause. The torn pieces only make for more clutter, disguising the whole pages from view more effectively. And he's not even sure the task will ever be finished. What if the pages are in infinite supply. What if the house just keeps making more of them, or reproduces the ones he's already destroyed?

"Aren't you going to ask?" he mumbles.

[powerdealer]

"I... think I already have some idea," he answers awkwardly. "Before you said you didn't want me to see, I..."

He shifts a bit, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out the page, then holds it out to Johnny. "I read this." He pauses, then adds, "It was stuffed into my sock for some reason."

He's a bit nervous about upsetting Johnny again, now he seems to have calmed down. But it's probably better to tell him sooner rather than later, in case Johnny thinks he may have intentionally led him on.

[johnny_truant]

Oh.

Johnny's heart sinks like a stone, into the deep pit of his stomach. With trembling fingers he accepts the page, terrified - what will it be? The story of his mother? The... whatever it was... encounter in the tattoo parlor storeroom? Something awful about Raymond, something that will make Seth look at him with disgusting pity for the rest of their friendship?

A story about a woman who fucked him? His descent into madness, hallucinated murder, dreams about his own gruesome death?

Something so much worse - something about the house, something that might get into Seth's head and wreck him like it did Johnny?

No. It's just a fucking piece of when he realized he'd lost his job. Missing for weeks and not knowing. Pathetic, yes. Worrying, yes. Not a real secret. Not something bad.

Still. "I wish you hadn't," he murmurs. He crumples the paper in his hand and stares at it numbly for a moment. He shouldn't be angry. Not fair to Seth. Not his fault.

"It's the book," he says, the book even though he's never mentioned it to Seth. "The book I finished. The book that almost killed me."

That ought to give him a little more of "some" idea.

[powerdealer]

"Sorry," he answers. He probably should've figured, the way Johnny was tearing the pages off him. But at least it doesn't seem like the end of the world. That's something.

"A book you wrote?" he asks, trying to prompt a bit more information. If Johnny is being literal (and based on his behavior, he probably is) about it nearly killing him, then Seth can certainly understand why Johnny feels so strongly about it. It still doesn't give much info on how or why it was so bad, but... it might simply be none of Seth's business, so he's not sure he wants to ask outright. He just wants to know enough to help.

[johnny_truant]

Johnny can't really blame him being curious. Curiosity here is dangerous, though, Seth can't understand how dangerous. Johnny has to give him just enough to never want to look again, and nothing more.

"I didn't write it," he says. "I added to it." He gestures to the page Seth had given him. "But mostly it was someone else's. He died, I found it, I finished it. It got into my head and it drove me crazy, and that's all." He's still pawing through more pages but he doesn't quite have the initiative to destroy them anymore. He's getting tired. Feeling weak and helpless.

"It's dangerous," he murmurs. "I don't want anyone else to get hurt by it."

[powerdealer]

"Alright," he answers, watching Johnny with worry. He's not sure whether the book is actually dangerous or if it's just Johnny's imagination coupled with some sort of mental health problems, but either way, he doesn't see the point in digging further into it. Johnny had seemed pretty well-adjusted the other times Seth has met him, so perhaps it's just a thing that becomes a problem when the book in question is brought up or present or whatever. For right now it seems more relevant to solve the problem at hand.

"Don't suppose you've got a shredder somewhere? Or a fireplace?" he suggests. There's so much paper around, one might even be hiding around somewhere. If destroying this book will help Johnny somehow, he doesn't see why they shouldn't.

[johnny_truant]

"That would defeat the purpose," says Johnny, almost laughing, entirely humorless. "This has to hurt. It has to make me bleed. That's always been the point." He gets up abruptly and angles back toward the opposite wall, tearing the pages down with renewed, vicious energy. He hates this fucking thing. He hates it so much. He wishes he'd never seen it, except who would he be without it? He'd be nothing. Some fuckup having a lot of sex and never getting anywhere. That's all.

[powerdealer]

"Why?" Seth asks. He assumes Johnny has some sort of reasoning for it, but probably not a particularly good one. And while a bunch of papercuts in a dream isn't the worst thing Johnny could do to himself, Seth doesn't much like seeing him this way. He wants to help somehow, but it's very difficult to know how. He could give him the healing power again - not like he really loses it if it's in a dream. But the major problems Johnny's currently dealing with aren't really physical.

[johnny_truant]

"Because that's how it fucking is," answers Johnny automatically, almost machinelike, and he stands there a moment before he suddenly folds, sagging against the wall, trembling violently. His hand grips a wad of pages, not quite tearing them down, but instead grasping at them for purchase.

"I'm never gonna get out," he whispers, wholly terrified. "I'm never gonna get out of here."

[powerdealer]

"Hey, hey," Seth answers, jumping to his and going to Johnny's side. "That's bullshit, you're gonna be fine," he answers gently, taking him by the shoulders to try and give him some support. His sympathy for Johnny is reaching the point where he'd make him tea or wrap him in blankets or something if he thought it would help (and that it wouldn't be super awkward). "We can leave right away, if you want."

[johnny_truant]

"Doesn't matter." Johnny shakes his head, not entirely listening, not entirely present. "Doesn't matter, it'll still be here. I'll still be here." He sinks down to the floor, curling inward, gripping his head, still mumbling, the words no longer distinguishable from themselves, not to his ears and certainly not to Seth's.

[powerdealer]

"Johnny..." Seth kneels alongside him, stroking his back a bit, trying to get him to look up or acknowledge him again. "C'mon, Johnny..."

It doesn't really seem to reach him though, and his muttering is very worrying. Being here is definitely not doing him any good, with the cause of his distress littered everywhere around them, so.

"Right, we're getting you out of here." He shifts to get a better foothold, then reaches around Johnny's chest from behind and stands, lifting him along and through the wall. Good thing he's not a very hefty guy. Nothing short of Johnny kicking and screaming is going to stop Seth getting him out of this room.

Unfortunately, since this isn't the same wall he went through earlier, what Seth doesn't know is that this one leads directly into an indoor pool, and once through the wall there is nothing to stop them from toppling into the water.