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

[eighth]

"Hmmm," he answers, looking between them. Then, pointing back and forth to each of them, he recites a verse that sounds a lot like eeney-meeney-miney-mo, only the words are about the Time Lord founders.

He ends up on the door to the left, and grins at Bee before heading through it. The room they enter is extremely cluttered, large and filled with furniture covered with sheets, almost a maze of white cloth. "Huh. Seems like this part isn't in use."

[apidae]

"Oh dear," comments Bee, looking through the mess. "I can't even see the other side." She raises herself up on her toes, but she's still too short to see over a few of the taller shrouded items. She lowers herself back down and automatically reaches out to take the Doctor's hand. "It's a bit creepy," she says, only a little nervous.

[eighth]

Ooh, a natural hand-holder, excellent. He squeezes her hand encouragingly at her comment about creepiness. "Got any good ghost stories?" he asks with a grin, before starting to weave carefully through the tightly-packed furniture, stepping over stools and clutter, dodging chair legs sticking out at shoulder height from stacks of furniture... It's a bit ridiculous, just how much they've piled in here.

[apidae]

"Not sure it's the right time for those," she says as they grope their way through. "Have you ever met a ghost? I never have. I'm not sure I want to."

Which is when, right on cue, the surrounding silence is broken by a spectacularly alarming disembodied moan - a low feminine voice, loud and continuous, enough to startle her right out of her skin. She jumps closer to the Doctor with a soft cry, gripping his hand harder.

"What was that??" she hisses, staring around, eyes wide.