Seth (
powerdealer) wrote in
applesaucedream2014-05-19 03:47 pm
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[open] Locked within a room of memory, locked up away with no light of day
Seth sits in his bed, back against the wall, facing the door.
This is not his current room. No trace of the sleek, clean style he favours. No decorations, no furniture at all except for the bed. The walls are brick and stone, the floor dirty cement, the air musty and heavy, with just a hint of smell from the sewers coming from the toilet in the corner. There's a constricting feeling of anxiety and dread, his attentions focused on the heavy, bolted door.
There used to be books and writing equipment at least, but they took that away before they returned him here. They even took away his nice blanket. It's funny the simple things you get attached to when there's nothing else.
Any moment now, he knows, one of the rebels will come through that door and discipline him. Tell him he'll do as they say, or else. He wonders what it is he did this time. There's been quite a few times over the more than three months they kept him here that he didn't want to do what they told him to.
He's had this dream before. He doesn't quite know it's a dream yet, but it'll soon come to him. And while it's not a nightmare that makes him wake with a start and a strangled scream, it's the sort that weighs heavily on him the entire following day, like a weight on his chest, making it hard to breathe, making any small room feel like a trap.
The door opens, and someone steps in, the door closing heavily behind them.
[This is a recurring dream for Seth, so he can have a different visitor on different nights. If you tag in, merely pick a date.]
This is not his current room. No trace of the sleek, clean style he favours. No decorations, no furniture at all except for the bed. The walls are brick and stone, the floor dirty cement, the air musty and heavy, with just a hint of smell from the sewers coming from the toilet in the corner. There's a constricting feeling of anxiety and dread, his attentions focused on the heavy, bolted door.
There used to be books and writing equipment at least, but they took that away before they returned him here. They even took away his nice blanket. It's funny the simple things you get attached to when there's nothing else.
Any moment now, he knows, one of the rebels will come through that door and discipline him. Tell him he'll do as they say, or else. He wonders what it is he did this time. There's been quite a few times over the more than three months they kept him here that he didn't want to do what they told him to.
He's had this dream before. He doesn't quite know it's a dream yet, but it'll soon come to him. And while it's not a nightmare that makes him wake with a start and a strangled scream, it's the sort that weighs heavily on him the entire following day, like a weight on his chest, making it hard to breathe, making any small room feel like a trap.
The door opens, and someone steps in, the door closing heavily behind them.
[This is a recurring dream for Seth, so he can have a different visitor on different nights. If you tag in, merely pick a date.]
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The door, the door he just came through, is gone.
"No!" He lunges forward, instantly panicked, pressing his palm flat against the wall. He tears it apart in his head, carving out the gap, fitting the door back into the space, but it won't come. The wall is solid beneath his fingers. He drops his hand and staggers back, shaking. Oh god, not again. Not now.
"Fuck!" He swivels sharply toward the adjacent wall, slamming his palm against it, hard enough to hurt, trying to make an exit, to collapse it, something. He doesn't want to be enclosed here. Nothing's working. He knew this was a trap.
He can't do it. He backs away, breathing heavily. Ostensibly they're in no danger here, but he knows that won't last. The dread, creeping up inside him, that iron taste in his mouth. Any minute now something's going to come out of the dark and devour them both. And it'll be his fault.
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He has the opposite reaction of Johnny, just standing there, watching him rage and panic. Perhaps because he's always been trapped. Nothing's changed for him.
But what about Johnny? He feels a sudden protectiveness of him, now he's so helpless while Seth is calm. Well, not calm, exactly. Not focused, either. But perhaps more numb. Or perhaps he simply doesn't fear circumstances all that much. Not for himself, anyway. But he needs to help Johnny, he can't let him be trapped here as well. What if they do the same thing to him?
"Come on," he echoes Johnny's words, reaching to take his hand and tug him along. He does hold onto it though, knowing that this won't work if he doesn't. He doesn't stop to consider how he knows that. And then he simply walks through the wall where the door was, helping Johnny do the same. Though whether what they find will be anything better than what they left, he can't tell.
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Moving through a wall is a pretty bizarre experience, unsurprisingly, but it's painless and it's over quick enough. He staggers through and is about to offer thanks, but he's cut short by the discovery that the setting has changed. They're not at all where they were.
Everything is dark, almost completely lightless, low ceilinged and untextured. Not wood, or earth, or stone, or metal beneath their feet - soft but solid, almost like ash. The space is broad and expansive, from what he can make out, a network of walls and no doors, just vast, labyrinthine space.
It's the house.
"Oh no," he says quietly, wanting to sink into the earth. "No, no, no."
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"What's wrong? Where are we?" he asks, since Johnny seems to recognise it. He can only sort of make out his shape in the darkness. Perhaps it wouldn't be a terrible idea to keep holding onto one another, but he doesn't intend to leave Johnny's side anyway.
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"It's-" He shakes his head. How can he explain this? "We have to get out of here." He grabs Seth's hand again, automatically this time, and starts moving. "Stairs. We have to find the stairs."
It all makes sense now, doesn't it? Why he couldn't use his power. He can't use it here. This is where it comes from. The house has reclaimed it. Reclaimed him.
They haven't made it far at all before the noise starts, inevitable and blood-chilling, a loud, sharp BANG in the distance, of a door being slammed, or pounded on. Johnny starts and jerks around, still clutching at Seth, staring terrified into the dark. It's coming closer. Coming for them.
"Shit," he whispers. He's made this so much worse. He always makes it worse.
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His head whips around at the noise. Since there's nothing to see, he looks at Johnny again. "What's that? What's making that noise?" It would be extremely helpful if Johnny actually seemed to know the answers to these questions.
Not waiting for a proper answer, figuring Johnny can give it on the go, he decides he doesn't want to stick around, so he hurries forward now, pulling Johnny along. At least he knows what they need, stairs, stairs, where are the stairs...
cw: brief but graphic violence
If he'd had a moment to understand where they are, what's happening, he might have been able to keep it from finding them. He could have grounded himself, knowing it wasn't real, and given them the stairs to climb, back up out of the earth. But as it is, mere horror at the idea of it catching up to them is enough to manifest it at his back, unseen in the void but heard and felt well enough, carrying the smell of smoke and blood, enough that he can taste it on the air. Too late to turn or try to lose it. He leans heavily into Seth, shoving him aside, and feels it rush at him, all claws and teeth, slicing into his back, dragging four long gashes from hip to opposite shoulder. He screams and collapses forward onto the ground, and it's gone for now, swallowed back into the dark, but he knows it's still there, waiting.
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He feels sick from smell and the sound and terror, and the fact that when he looks back, all he can see is Johnny on the ground, something dark at his back. Seth hurries to his side, falling to his knees, looking around himself, then at Johnny.
"Shit," he whispers, looking at the gashes, hovering above them, afraid to touch. "Fuck, okay, Johnny? It's gonna be okay, I'm gonna give you a power to heal yourself. You'll be fine," he reassures, taking Johnny's hand again.
And then there's a blinding white light from where their hands connect, Seth closing his eyes against it as he feels the power surge out of him and into Johnny. It's over in a few seconds, and Seth instinctively reaches out to stroke Johnny's hair in a comforting way. It won't immediately heal his wounds, nor would it regrow limbs or anything, but it'll work quickly enough that he won't bleed to death, and hopefully that the pain is dulled somewhat.
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"Th-thank you," he murmurs shakily. He pulls himself up partway, still huddled on the floor next to Seth. "I'm sorry I brought you here. I didn't mean to."
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They probably shouldn't stay here, but he doesn't want to drag Johnny around too much when he's hurt, and he doesn't want to leave him either.
"We'll get out. We just need to find some stairs, that's what you said, right? There's got to be some around here somewhere," he says, trying to sound more confident than he feels. Even just sitting here, he feels like something is about to sneak up behind, something breathing down his neck. He's not sure if that's the place or if he's just imagining it.
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He stands a little unsteadily, offering his hand to Seth. "If it wants to keep us, it will."
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"Maybe it doesn't want to," he says, taking his hand, and the lead. Somehow he doesn't think continuing down this road will help, but when he's gone through the wall, things had changed drastically, so maybe they will again.
And they do, but they don't really improve, as they step through the wall once again. They're out in the open air now, having apparently stepped out of a crypt and into a vast, dark graveyard. "Well, that's promising," he comments sarcastically.
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"How - how did you do that?" He steps forward, relieved beyond caution. "I don't understand."
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"This is Thamesmead. London," he adds, looking back at Johnny. "Where I used to live."
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He wanders further out, amidst the tombstones, looking around at the expansive distance. "Which way should we go?" he asks, turning back.
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"Shannon." His voice breaks as he says it. And then she sits up, violently sudden, and Seth jerks back, and her mouth is covered in blood, and she's looking at them with hungry eyes. Just staring.
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He stops dead when the girl sits up. He can hear the emotion in Seth's voice, and he remembers hearing this story - dead girlfriend, undead girlfriend. She doesn't look happy to see him, though. She doesn't look anything. Except maybe hungry. Shit. Shit.
"Seth, we have to go." He grabs Seth's shoulder, trying to pull him back. "Seth, come on."
cw: gross blood and zombies
He steps over to the casket, and Shannon still isn't moving, just watching him approach. Seth has more or less forgotten Johnny's even there now. He's uniquely focused on the woman in front of him, as he holds out a hand to help her up. She takes it calmly (her hands bloody as well), and gets to her feet.
Seth has lost any sense of self-preservation, any real rational thought. He leans down and kisses her cheek. She reciprocates by reaching up to wrap her hands gently around his throat, and they kiss. He doesn't even notice the blood.
And while this has been going on, other people have been appearing in the distance, all around them. Several of them are covered in blood, or with deep gashes across their face and bodies. They're not shambling or moaning, just walking. Getting closer and closer, from every direction.
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"Oh, god," says Johnny, now thoroughly disgusted. "Holy shit, dude. No. Stop that."
It's right around then that he notices they have company. A lot of company. Closing in around them on all sides. Johnny spins around, looking for an way out, which they don't have, of fucking course.
"Oh, fuck, oh fuck," he snaps, feeling desperate. He storms back over to Seth and Shannon and forces them apart. "Seth, wake the fuck up. We have to-"
He's cut off when Zombie Shannon, with a sudden aggressive snarl, wraps her arm around his throat and jerks him back, immediately trying to bite him. Johnny makes a desperate grab for her hair, holding her back as hard as he can, struggling awkwardly. "Fuck off!" he says shrilly, entirely terrified.
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Seth tries to catch his breath as he looks down at her body, no longer bloody, apart from the gash in her skull. He clothes have changed too, the jeans and jacket he buried her in (the second time).
"Are you alright?" he asks, looking up at Johnny. His own face still has blood on it. Where did he get the shovel? It must've been lying there from when they dug her up, but he can't remember picking it up. He doesn't think too much of it.
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"I'm okay," he says, though he's not, really. "But there's like, a fuckload more of them." He makes a sweeping gesture to encompass the approaching hoard.
Where did the shovel come from? Johnny casts a look around and notices, even more confusingly, a baseball bat. Well okay. Whatever goddamn works. He picks it up and hefts it. "Please tell me you have a better idea."
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"Aim for the head," he adds, walking towards the line of zombies. Better than to wait for them all to center on them so they'll get attacked from all sides.
cw: more grossness/blood/graphic violence with sound effects
"I can't believe this is fucking happening," mutters Johnny as he follows Seth, keeping relatively close. He draws a breath and exhales slowly, leveling the bat at the nearest zombie. Freaking zombies.
He pulls back like he's about to hit a pitch, then swings and smacks it neatly across the skull of his would-be attacker. Actually, not that neatly. Quite messily, in fact. It makes a sickening crunch, and the zombie person staggers to the side, looking dizzy and dazed, before crumpling to the ground.
"Oh fuck," he says, breathless, but he can't stop there; they're off and running now, and he's swinging left and right, keeping Seth close but always outside his bat radius. Blood is fucking everywhere. All over him. Goddammit.
cw: just assume most of this thread is horrible
Seth's face isn't the only thing covered in blood now. All he can taste is blood, all he can smell is blood and moist dirt, all he can see is blood and darkness and Johnny - who is also covered in blood.
He brutally slices someone's head open with the sharp edge of the shovel, but it gets caught in the skull and unbalances him for a moment, and a moment is all that's needed. Someone jumps him from behind as he's trying to get a proper grip on the shovel again, and he cries out in pain as teeth close on the side of his neck.
cw: yeah that
He wakes up screaming. Not unusual.
He sits up hard and fast, making himself a little dizzy. Scout's agitated, whining from the little bed Johnny made for him. Johnny swings over the side of the bed, breathing heavily, bringing himself back down. "Come here, Scout," he murmurs, holding his hands out, and the dog hurries over for some whispered comfort and scratches behind his ears.
"I'll be right back," he mumbles, getting to his feet and staggering to the door. He fumbles it open and steps into the hallway, angling toward Seth's apartment.
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