Between the Roots and Branches [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Don't worry, dreamers of Manhattan. There will be no humiliating episodes of sudden-onset-clumsiness tonight - at least, nothing more severe than what you might experience naturally. Your physical and mental faculties will be left perfectly intact. What a treat! And what luck, because if you do lose your footing, it's a long way down to the forest floor.

But hey, who wants to be on the boring old ground when there are so many wonderful treehouses to explore? There are dozens of them spread throughout the surrounding forest, connected by a series of bridges and catwalks (some, admittedly, a bit more stable than others). It's easy to forget - or fail to notice - that there really is no easy or conventional way down to the ground when you're surrounded by such splendor.

The houses' styles range from charming and rustic to modern and sleek, with many falling somewhere in between. There are viewing platforms for bird-watching or simply taking in the scenery (trees, mostly, though if you venture high enough, you'll be treated the sight of the forest canopy stretched across a valley far below). But the insides of the treehouses are comfortably furnished to varying degrees as well, so there's no need to immerse yourself in nature if you'd really rather not. Some are complete houses in their own right, with all the amenities of a Manhattan apartment and then some.

Go for a climb, or kick back and relax. The only enemies you'll find here are other dreamers... and, potentially, gravity.

Comments

[postictal]

It's like a knife, drilling inexorably to his center, the old stabbing, resonating ache. He's gone to his knees without any tracking of the space between standing and then not, hands still up and gripping the rope railings, his jaw throbbing from the pressure of clenching teeth.

Not real.

not real not real not real

Movement is agony, carving through immeasurably dense fog, a remembered burst of blazing nerves when one hand dips down to hook under Jay's arm and drag him up or away.

Because Tim doesn't leave people, that's not who he is, even when it would serve Jay fucking right if he just -

But that's not who he is.

That's not what he does.

Isn't it?

He wavers. It's pulling at him, skeleton branches crooking a beckoning finger.

No. No. No, he needs - they both need -

He folds like the cut-string puppet he is, slipping and dropping to all fours, halfway on top of the man he, again, couldn't save. His lungs are burning, his throat on fire, tearing out cough after fierce, wracking cough.

[deadeyedchild]

The hand under his arm jerks him awake, though consciousness is a thin, buzzing, muddled event. He doesn't think he can talk, he can barely focus on anything, cognizance trapped under the pressing weight of the invading force between his temples. He grasps weakly for a handhold before another stab of pain hits him, his back arching, letting out a thick-throated groan as Tim collapses down onto him. He's pinned under dead weight and it's coming it's coming closer.

"Tim," he gasps, his fingers finally wrapping around Tim's arm. Tim's curled up and coughing, and Jay can only shake him limply. "Tim, get up." He squirms out from under him and forces himself up, his whole body trembling, too weak to stand. It's down there still, looking at them, pulling at them, but he doesn't look, he squeezes his eyes shut and digs his fingers into Tim's shirt. "Tim, I'm here, get up. Please, Tim, get up."

[postictal]

Jay's voice is dry dead leaves in his ears, fingers too bony and raw - too much like - too much - too much -

He squirms away, rolls over, shoulders quavering under each staggered cough. His eyes crack open a slit to the dizzying drop below - it wouldn't take much to just - he could even - Jay's right there and he weighs practically nothing -

Tim resurfaces for a heartbeat of burning clarity, gasping, lungs heaving like he's just been drowned, and maybe he has. He can never fucking tell. He's on his stomach and, and he's moving, he's getting up, he's on all fours now, he can do this, he can fucking - Jay's just kneeling there and trembling and asking him, begging him to get up and he growls and wraps one hand around the back of his shirt and starts dragging the ungrateful shit even if he can barely stumble along the swaying, suspended wood on his own. He's getting no help here. But he's not -

There are fingers in his head he's always known are there. They're twitching, bony, grasping, unraveling the threads that make him. Maybe they're what stitched those there in the first place. Right now, Tim doesn't fucking care. It can have him, as far as he's concerned. He's never ever really gotten away, has he.

"Move," he grinds between gritted teeth, breathless and pained over the spike blazing between his eyes and slammed through his temples. "Move."

[dendrophobia]

[Run if you like, little ones

It's not on the ground anymore, but peering around the corner of one of the nearby treehouses. Look up and you'll see it.

Do look up]

[deadeyedchild]

Jay stumbles along beside Tim, alternately clinging to him and supporting him as needed, the two of them a goddamn shambles as they struggle their way to the nearest little house, as if that's safe somehow, like little kids trying to get to home base in a deadly fucking game of tag. It's there, he knows it, he can feel it, and he knows Tim can too.

His memory's a mess - all these little cabins in the trees remind him too much of rundown shacks in the woods where it found him, got into him, rewired him. Little bits and pieces coming back to him. Things from before - Tim said run and now Tim just says move, less of an imperative, more of a joint activity - and things from after, Tim telling him how worthless he is, what a useless, uncaring piece of shit.

Not today, fuckers.

"Go," he mutters, the syllable tumbling out of him as if by accident, picking up speed and volume if not sense as he goes. "N-not here. Somewhere else, anywhere else, go."

He shoves Tim away, bodily, almost brutally, it's all he has; the force it almost sends him sprawling but he picks himself up, leans against the wall of the house, where it's staring down at him from somewhere, somewhere, probably just around the corner. He doesn't look for it, not yet, straining against the urge to turn around, instead forcing himself to look at Tim.

"Run," he hisses, and then, then he looks.

What do you want?

Leave us alone.

tw: blood, seizures

[postictal]

The hot prickling has risen behind his eyelids, in his ears, down his throat - bright-burning needles jabbing themselves in knots and tangles, scraping away pieces of him. He can't see it anymore. He can't - oh god.

They're helping each other now, dragging each other forward and it's fucking pathetic, really it is, how they can't even taken two fucking steps before it all keeps going to shit.

Tag, Tim think bitterly, a bizarre, darkly half-amused cough bubbling out between the convulsions and the wheezing and the dark dribbles of blood leaking out his nose, the corner of his mouth. He looks up in a haze, at the pale smear that hovers between the slats in the wood, and the manic sound trickling out of him strangles into silence.

You're it.

Tim hits the floor and can't do anything but lie there, hacking and curled, shoulders shuddering, as Jay does - does something, something stupid and pointless no doubt, and this is really getting to be a habit with him. He's been shot and walked away. Maybe he thinks that makes him invincible. Maybe -

"You run," he snarls. "What're - it wants me. It always -"

His throat closes into coughing, then wet silence.

tw: body horror, slenderman

[dendrophobia]

[It does want, always.

But things are different here in dreamland, or maybe it's just more willing now to toss obstacles aside directly. Having one certainly doesn't mean it can't have the other, and once Jay looks at it he is not going to turn away again. It arrests his gaze, pins him like an insect as it stands near the corner of the house, barely shorter than the edge of the roof.

One long limb or too many long limbs like thin black branches reach out for him, never leaning down to touch but rather beckoning Jay's body to stretch up to meet it, straining until tendons snap and skin shreds like cloth and blood-stained bones rise to its call like the fingers of a newborn tree reaching for the sun. It's slow and deliberate, but Jay will look into its face the whole time, because this is exactly what he wanted, isn't it? To turn around and look. To submit.

Ordinarily it wouldn't tear him apart. It would let him do that to himself, or make them do it to each other.

But then, this is just a dream, isn't it?]

body horror BODY HORROR so much body horror, emetophobia, suicide ideation

[postictal]

"Jay," Tim says hoarsely as the other man plants himself there, staring at it, staring at it, what is he doing he knows that's dangerous, Jay -

Jay, Jay - Jay, no, Jay run just run you dumb fucking shit no Jay no Jay run

Jay, Jay no -

not again

Tim whimpers, unable to bite back the sob, the condensing horror as that thing does what it does with its playthings, stretches them out and discards them, the warped pieces of what used to be Jay, what were - what was -

He retches.

Bodies aren't supposed to change like that.

He can't cough, can't howl, can't run. He can only lie there, useless, watching it do what it's always done, distorting things and sending the tatters of Jay drifting like leaves to the long-drop ground in wet, lazy spirals. Watching flesh peel back, watching him disintegrate into bone. Groaning, creaking, straining like the branches on the trees that have eyes.

"Please," he rasps. "Please."

He can't tell what he's asking for. Please, give Jay back. Please, leave them alone.

Please, take him too.

It's what it's always wanted, isn't it?

tw: gore, much gore, death

[dendrophobia]

[It doesn't move closer. It just is there.

It doesn't react to his words, but presses on his chest with invisible force to keep him down, on his back where it can peer down into his eyes and see him. He isn't exactly what it wants of him yet, but he will be.

Him it does touch, long sharp limbs piercing and pinning him to the ground as it forces itself into the cracks of his mind, heedless of the damage it might cause there. He'll feel an edge softly tracing a line down his abdomen, sharp enough that it takes a second for the pain to hit as it peels him open to see what's inside.

There are things moving beneath his skin, lifting soft wet parts of him out into the sunlight for the first time and placing them on his chest, where he can see the pile grow and feel the heat of his own lifeblood soaking back into him.

If Tim lasts long enough, he may even feel its touch on the inside of his spine.]