applesaucedream | Universal Remote [Open to All]

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Here's an interesting scene: the dreamers of Manhattan are on a pirate ship. Or perhaps they're standing in a busy ER, wearing scrubs and holding a scalpel they may or may not know how to use. Or perhaps they've found themselves in the middle of a world cup championship game, or an old-fashioned highway robbery, or an interstellar dogfight, or a dramatic, 'unscripted' showdown between arguably attractive people they've never seen before in their lives.

Whatever the situation, rest assured: it probably won't last long.

Maybe the Rift is bored. That might explain why the dream keeps changing, as if someone were idly flicking through the channels and switching up the genre. The poor dreamers are just along for the ride, the only constant amidst a shifting array of scenery, clothing, and overall mood. Perhaps, if things are sufficiently interesting, the dream might settle a little to see how things play out. But given the Rift's definition of 'interesting,' that might not be a good thing for whoever is providing the entertainment.

[OOC: the usual dream party rules apply. All are welcome, regardless of whether they're in the game or not. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. Dreamers' clothes may change to reflect whatever scene they're in, but their memories and personalities will remain intact... though the overall mood of the setting might influence their mood, as well. Feel free to throw NPCs into whatever scene you find yourself in, with bonus points added if said characters treat the dreamers as if they're established parts of the 'canon.']

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The storm of high-pitched bleeping starts to fade the further away they get, much to the relief of both Daniel's eardrums and his patience. He blows out a long breath and braces a hand on one of the spindly tree trunks as he doubles over, panting.

It's only after he's caught his breath that he comes to realization that the almost comical alarm of the camera crew has all but dissolved, and the surrounding woodland has settled into an uncomfortable, eerie silence. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

The bark under his hand is oddly smooth and pale.

Then it twitches.

Daniel's hand jumps away as he startles back, shaking his head.

"Oh god," he says, babbling, "oh god, oh god oh god - "

The tree unravels, a grotesque parody of a flower in bloom, and casts its gaze to the both of them with a bulbous pair of horrible milky eyes. A glistening strand of spittle slides down its mottled chin.

That is not a tree.

For a time there's nothing but the thudding of his own heart and the rasping of his own breath in his ears. If the camera crew can track them they're at least not chasing him and Daniel, because the sounds of chaos they leave behind never resolve themselves into the sounds of pursuit. Peter follows the shape of Daniel, afraid the other man is going to disappear into the trees and leave him alone.

He stops in a little clearing short of where Daniel does, panting himself and looking back. They left the crew behind a while ago and as far as he can tell they're proverbially out of the woods, if not literally out of the woods. Maybe now they can catch their breath and figure out what the fuck is happening to them, before they get plunged into some other version of television hell.

There's a little rustle from Daniel's direction, and Peter freezes, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end at the litany that comes spilling out from the man behind him. He doesn't want to turn around. He really, really does not want to turn around and know what's scared Daniel.

He turns around, and lets out a blood-curdling scream.

The thing utters a high-pitched shriek to rival Peter's, jaws gaping wide, and Daniel can only stumble back and stare in abject horror. He bumps into Peter, gropes for the other man's shoulder, and abandons the the action as he watches the thing's eyes fix greedily onto the movement.

"Run, run run run run run," are about the only words he can successfully form but his muscles have locked and gone rigid. He's gone deer-in-headlights frozen in the face of whatever the hell this thing is, paralyzed but for the chattering of his teeth and the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

The thing creeps nearer on spidery limbs.

The thing is all the more terrifying for the fact that Peter doesn't know what the hell it is. His mind whirls frantically, absurdly, through the list of possibilities as though being up against something big and wrong unarmed in the woods would be made better by matching it up to its proper name.

He grabs at Daniel, not so frozen as the other man, and yanks him along as Peter breaks into a stumbling sprint back the other way. "Fuck!" he squawks. "Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck --"

Maybe they can sic it on the camera crew. The thought would be funny if only he wasn't sure that he'll be feeling its hands on his back at any second.

Peter has to practically haul him into the first few steps, but the rough action is enough to jar his legs into remembering how to stagger into a run. The trees have gone darker, black-barked and spindly, their immediate surroundings dense with mist. He can only hope Peter has some idea of where they might be going, because he has no idea where they are or where the cameramen might be in relation to here.

The thing screams again. Daniel glances over his shoulder, but the patch of forest is horribly empty, devoid of any bony, clawed shape.

"Where did it - "

Then he glimpses the pale streak in the trees, leaping from branch to branch with evident ease.

"Up!" Daniel yelps, but without any means of verbalizing the context he has no idea if the pronouncement is remotely helpful. It snaps from one trunk to the next, little more than a blur, keeping in perfect line with the two panicked men charging through the woods.

For a second Peter has the ludicrous thought that Daniel is telling him up, as in climb up that tree, but as he looks up the twisted shape of a likely candidate he sees --

"Fuck!" he exclaims, and veers away, though the forest is thick enough that it has no trouble adjusting its own course to follow. They're going to die. They're going to die in these horrible fucking woods and he doesn't even know what the hell it is that's going to kill them.

If he'd had the presence of mind to demand what the hell the thing is between panicked gasps, he would have - but the only instruction locked in his brain is the single-minded fixation in getting as far as humanly possible from that thing.

Unfortunately, the thing in question has other plans. Skeletal fingers lock tight around his ankle and unbalance him with a fierce jerk. Daniel skids into the leaf mulch with a muffled grunt that quickly turns into a horrified yelp as the sharp tugging movement to his legs just keeps going, dragging him back and away and into the pitch-dark woods with an inhuman speed. He grapples uselessly at the ground, fingers shredding through leaves and twigs and catching on roots, but there's no purchase, nothing for him to latch onto. The trees blur into brown-gray linear streaks. His glasses are gone. The last thing of which he's fully cognizant is the sickening crack of his head smashing into one of the passing trunks, and then silence.

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