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

[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.

[johnny_truant]

Johnny no longer has the strength or wherewithal to protest; he's gotten lost, drifting in his mind (which is the house), just like Will, just darkness and pages to burn and Karen - no, not Karen, hah, not even Charley or Eliot or the TARDIS or Gabe, but Seth, god, well in some ways that's better, isn't it? he lets Seth pick him up and pull him through the wall, just as Karen did for Will, and not even for something so melodramatic as love and marital loyalty, but just because Seth likes him all right.

It would be enough to make him burst, embarrassingly, into tears, if they didn't immediately drop into turquoise, chlorinated, perfectly temperatured water.

Johnny snaps back to life, floundering out of Seth's arms and breaking the surface, paddling awkwardly, his jeans soaked and weighing him down. "What the," he gasps, swiveling around. "What the fuck?!"

He grabs out for Seth's arm, swimming his way toward the edge to pull himself out. Well, that's one way to wake up.

[powerdealer]

Well, this was a terrible idea. For half a moment he clings tighter to Johnny, as if afraid to lose him, but when they hit the water he's more concerned with dealing with that. He's not a great swimmer by any accounts, and clothing makes you surprisingly heavy, so for a moment he struggles to keep his head above water and he momentarily panics.

But then his flail-paddling does what it's supposed to, and he gasps in air and struggles towards the edge. For the moment he's too occupied to even be relieved Johnny seems to have come to himself again.

[johnny_truant]

Johnny's splashing and paddling is every bit as awkward - he's a decent swimmer but jeans and shoes add what feels like fifty pounds. He's hoisted himself out halfway when he notices Seth is having a bit of trouble, and drops back down, grabbing one hand clinging awkwardly to the platform while the other reaches out for Seth. He can't talk for chemical-tasting water getting in his mouth, but he manages to get a hold of Seth's hand and hauls him in, slipping back into the water with the sudden momentum. He keeps his hand on Seth's back, pushing them both back up, and heaves himself out of the water, flopping onto tile and cement like a tiny, lanky beached whale.

"Here, I gotcha," he mutters, leaning down to help Seth out. As soon as Seth has enough leverage to help himself, Johnny lets go and drops back down onto the floor, staring up at the brightly lit ceiling. This room feels like a different fucking universe, but somehow that doesn't surprise him.

"You okay?" he says, looking over at his friend. He feels strange, exposed, but also muted, like he's recovering from an anesthetic. "Um. Thanks."

[powerdealer]

The real fear subsides when Johnny gets hold of him, though the adrenaline takes a while longer to disappear. By the time he's pulled himself out with the help of Johnny - it's remarkable just how much weight drenched clothing adds - and flopped onto his back on the stone floor, he's no longer frightened, just breathing heavily from the exertion. He closes his eyes and gives a nod in reply to the question.

After a few moments of just lying there, catching his breath, he opens his eyes and pushes himself up onto his elbows. It's quite a pleasant room, actually, and his eyes wander briefly over the well-lit and well-kept surroundings - quite a change from the other room - before they settle on Johnny.

It's Seth who should be asking if he's okay, given Johnny had what a temporary mental breakdown. Even if Seth was quite literally thrown into the deep end, he just had a bit of a fright. "Don't mention it," he answers finally, examining Johnny, making sure he's alright.

[johnny_truant]

Johnny stays on the floor, staring at the ceiling for an extended moment. "I'm sorry about all... that," he says eventually. "I kind of got lost in there."

He presses a hand to his face as though staving off a headache, wiping excess water from his skin. "I wish you hadn't seen," he mumbles.

[powerdealer]

Seth nods sympathetically, looking away when he feels sure Johnny's fine - or an approximation thereof, at least. "You don't have to talk about it," he reassures. If he wants to, that's fine, but it seems like Johnny wants Seth to know as little as possible about that stuff, and if it's something he's trying to put behind him, who's Seth to pry?

He looks down at his shirt and tries to wring some water from it. He wishes he could pull off proper dream manipulation, just will himself dry. But the sensory experiences in these dreams are so much more real and visceral than in regular dreams, so it's hard to convince your mind that it can be easily changed and manipulated, even if you have regular lucid dreaming. Seth is still just sitting here dripping.

[johnny_truant]

"I know," says Johnny quietly. It's not so much that he wants privacy as it is his conviction that the information in that room - in the book - is dangerous. But he doesn't know how to explain that.

He pulls himself up afer a moment, sitting and dripping and staring at the still-rippling pool.

"So what now?" he says. He feels inert, like he could stay here staring at the fake water forever.

[powerdealer]

Probably a good thing he didn't read more, then. Johnny's already mentioned it's dangerous, and that it drove him crazy, so even if it didn't also feel pretty personal, Seth's not inclined to dig, even if he doesn't really get how it can be dangerous. For all he knows there can be some supernatural shit mixed in there, and his self-preservation instinct is far too strong to get involved.

"Dunno," he answers. Then he thinks fuck it and pulls off his shirt (not quite as easy when it's wet) just to wring the water out of it. "Wouldn't mind just taking a breather." He's sure there must be much more to this place, but his urge to explore is pretty weak at the moment.