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goneawayworld2021-04-02 06:31 pm
goneawaymod) wrote in goneawayworld2021-04-02 06:31 pm
Entry tags:
DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL - FINALE
DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call...The Twilight Zone.
LINKS
OOC FAMILY INFO/WORKSHIPPING
PLOT PART 1
NIGHT EVENT
NETWORK POST
MAP
Click for larger map
Darlington High School: The town's high school, home to various cliques of teenagers, and containing secrets that can only be discovered after dark.
Sheriff's Station: The sheriff seems like a typical sitcom sheriff, neighborly and helpful, but the sheriff's station has carefully guarded files that might be of interest to the New Hires.
Abandoned Factory: In such a sunshiney town, why is there an abandoned building?
Library: Information about the town can be found here, including a section with town records.
TV Studio: The possible source of strange broadcasts that can be found on TVs in Darlington.
???: A completely unassuming house.
Abandoned Mall: Another abandoned building, and one that's outside of time. This shopping mall is a decade or two early for the time period in the sitcom. Perhaps something useful can be found inside.
Murnjgod Appliances: The TV's in the window of Murnjgod Appliances sometimes display cryptic messages that might offer clues or puzzles to be deciphered.
DETAILS
Day has broken and the town is still acting...strangely. The townspeople are milling around like normal, living their lives, but some of the monsters are still roaming around, too. People can avoid their attention by playing their parts whenever they're around, and they don't automatically attack everyone just for being outside.
Something is also wrong with whatever's controlling this place, like their searching and prodding around has somehow unhinged something. The mechanism that was shoving them around different places has stopped. The laugh track sometimes goes out of control, laughing at random moments.
The different groups are free to move around and prepare, with one pair going to fix the machine, and the other pair heading towards Joshua Nichols' house and then the TV station. Once the machine is fixed, others can start herding the townspeople out of town and the area's effect.
no subject
At the suggestion that they knock, he thinks it over for a second and shrugs.
"Suppose it is his house, so, couldn't hurt." In a rare moment of taking the initiative, he steps up next to Toothless and gives the door a knock before quickly backing up to stand just behind Hiccup again.
no subject
The inside is a mess. It's half living room, half lobby of a TV station. And it also gets mixed up the farther they get in, the rooms of a house merged with recording rooms and offices and studios.
It's like something tried to convert the station into a home by force.
Various places have small screens, near areas where they clearly had people monitoring things as they filmed live. The screens blip on and start to show things.
A boy that must be Joshua sitting in a shabby home, alone. He's young, watching black and white television, occasionally smiling at the jokes.
no subject
What the screens showed made sense to Hiccup. The kid's childhood had been rough, and he'd turned to sitcoms as a source of comfort. Which just about explains this entire situation, really.
"We're here to talk. I'm Hiccup, my buddy here who you kind of turned into a dog is Toothless, and this is," Hiccup pauses, "...actually I don't think I got your name."
no subject
“Martin.” He doesn’t turn from the screen when he answers, and the name slipped out without a thought before he could catch himself, wincing in mild irritation when it hits him.“That’s not my name. I can’t say my name.”
“Not that I’m complaining.” He finally turns from the screen to say that bit, addressing the room at large, as if Josh might as well be the house itself. Maybe he was in a way. “Funny gag. Mildly inconvenient, but...Martin will just do for now.”
Turning back to the screen, he chewed on the edge of his lip, arms loosely folding over his chest as he watched the kid, thinking over what he wanted to say.
“Couldn’t help noticing you put me in a house without any parents. Was that just a coincidence? Symbolism? Projection? Or…”
no subject
They start flashing in ways that aren't entirely coherent. Like the action is reflexive.
It's definitely all Josh. Josh, making a home movie at a friend's house. Josh at some kind of awards ceremony.
Josh standing with some other staff at the station, watching a news broadcast being filmed in the studio, one occasionally flipping to footage captured online in a stream.
The reporter says, "These impacts are reportedly taking place across the world." Her face goes pale white as she listens to her earpiece. "I'm sorry, I've just gotten word that the Capitol building is now gone. And so is the White House. It's unknown if the president was in residence."
The people standing around the screens with Josh all look horrified and the 18-year-old holds a hand over his mouth, shaking. Then he pulls out his cell phone and start dialing frantically. It rings and goes to voicemail.
"Mom, where are you? Please pick up. I don't know what to do. I'm going to go home." Another call comes in and he picks up.
A woman's voice can be heard.
"Ma, are you okay?"
"I'm okay! Where are you?"
"I'm at the TV station. Mom isn't picking up!"
"She just might not have her phone with her. Don't worry about that right now. Josh, honey, I want you to run. Just run to the edge of town and into the woods. Go up to the fence near the Motts' farm. They're not going to bomb a random forest or random fields. Once I get out of the city, I'll come find you there."
"Okay. Okay."
"Go!"
"Okay. I love you."
"I love you too, baby, Don't be scared. It's going to be okay."
He hangs up his phone and wipes at his eyes.
"There has been no presidential response yet, and - and I...I need to call my husband." The reporter gets up from her desk and runs off set. The screens in the studio in the memory all flip to a "technical difficulties" screen.
And then the world suddenly shreds apart, straining like reality itself is screaming. One of the other staff members shoves past Josh. His phone is knocked out of his hand. Silvery stuff starts to surge through the hall towards the teenager in a wave.
The screens that were showing the memory blip to the same "technical difficulties" screen.
There's a door at the end of the hallway with a red light above it warning that whoever's inside is recording.
no subject
That said? He empathized with the kid, he really did, but this needed to stop. No matter how terrible the world outside was this one wasn't really any better.
"I think we found 'em," he says, gesturing over at the door before going to it himself.
"We're coming in now, alright?" Hiccup takes and releases a breath, mentally preparing himself, before pushing open the door.
no subject
Following the path as it led them through Josh's past, and shifted to images of the news talking about the bombings, and Josh scrambling to get a hold of his adoptive parents, he watched with a mix of horror and grim fascination. Cringing and looking away when that wave of silver came rushing at the kid.
Finding themselves at a door at the end of the line, he looked over to Hiccup, nodding mutely at his assessment and moving to stand behind him again as he opened the door.
no subject
They can tell because it's lined wall to wall with screens, all displaying different things. Some display strange patterns or static. Some show emergency broadcast screens. Others display old black and white TV shows. Other screens show scenes of Darlington's residents acting out their tv show existence, nearly indistinguishable from other tv shows.
There is abandoned scientific equipment here.
And flood lights, both suspended above, and on the ground, that look like they were smashed in with giant fists.
And then there is the figure. Lit by a backdrop of televisions. The room is more than fifty feet tall because the being is at least 35 or 40 feet, judging from how tall it looks just sitting down. It sits with its back to them.
It looks far more like an it than a him, skin a strange lifeless grey, its head and body hairless. There is a sense that its not a human body, more like something strange and wizened like that of a troll. Despite not wearing clothes it doesn't look anatomically correct.
There is the vaguest sense of something cordlike in front of it, dangling, but its hard to tell with its back turned. It doesn't look at them as they walk in, simply sitting in place, almost in a pose of meditation, its body swaying slightly, like a child listening to music or daydreaming.
Or trying to comfort themselves. It doesn't turn to face them when they walk in. The TVs on the screen silhouetting it flicker and shows radiating lines of black and white, like the screens in front of it are possibly broken.
no subject
If Toothless hadn't been a dog right now he'd be more willing to risk it, but there were no quick escapes here.
"Josh? Joshua Okafor? We need to talk."
no subject
"We-Well...He did survive the probable death of his parents and his world by getting swept into the new one on a flood of what could symbolically be called the blood of the universe. Kinda makes a twisted sort of sense...or just an eerie coincidence." The more he spoke the more he calmed himself, eventually letting go of Hiccup and stepping out from behind him again to cautiously move closer to Josh. It went against every instinct, but if the guy wanted them dead he would have just killed them or sent monsters after them, wouldn't he? But he let them in, even led them right to him. This wasn't a supervillain or a monster, it was a lonely kid who'd lost everyone he cared about, been mutilated by a bomb, and used as a lab rat.
So he tries, tries very hard, to not look terrified and keep his voice steady as he speaks up.
"We wanted to ask what happened here with Jorgmund, if you would help us, and try to help you." As he moves to step past Toothless he can't help lightly putting a hand on his fluffy head, either to help calm himself or reassure himself that he was there as he kept his eyes on Josh and the screens. "I know you're probably sick to death of people just using you. But you've been watching us, right? Probably even heard some of what we said over the comms? You know I'm not lying about wanting to help you, don't you? Guessing that's why you let us in here, isn't it?"
cw: face body horror
It lets them both finish talking and then finally reacts, like there's finally enough stimuli to make it move from a more passive state to an active state, like it's not about words but about stimuli and agitation.
He turns suddenly and they see that if this being was Joshua Okafor, he is nothing like what he once was.
He has no face.
Only wires and cables that are embedded where a face should be, like something forced so many of them in that any face was destroyed. There are no eyes peering out through the cables, there is no mouth, it's just all cables and wires and cords and the tape of tape decks. The other ends are threaded into the different broken screens in front of him.
He abruptly turns towards them and then comes after them in a terrifyingly fast crawl. From the front they can see he looks as sexless as he initially appeared, like some kind of troll-like doll. He scurries towards them at a speed that is far too quick for his size, the ground shaking as he his hands slam against it. Right when he's nearly upon them, close enough to start swinging his hands and crushing them, he gets yanked back by reaching the end of the length of the cords, like a dog being choked back with a leash.
He flails, reaches for them, swatting at them, straining to try to get close, but they're just out of arms reach.
The shrieking can be hear over the TVs again, like a voice overlaid with the sound of sheering reality from the earlier memory. The screens all flash to the moment of trauma again, to the grey wave in Josh's memory sweeping him down a hall into a control room with a console, now vacated. It slams him into it so hard his face breaks into a monitor. He withdraws and at least nothing major is damaged - his eyes are okay! But his nose is broken and bleeding and his face is covered in cuts. He tries to get up as the silver flows away into surrounding rooms, finally free from the pressure, and it seems like he should be able to leave...
But wires start to shoot out of the console, plugging into the cuts of his face.
He screams as they keep plugging in, trying to rip the cords out, trying to get free. But they move like living things, like snakes striking, hiding more and more of his face with cords, muffling his mouth and choking him as they go down his throat. They don't see the worst of the damage because his face is turned away but he starts to grow in size, as the studio warps and changes around him. He cries, struggles, screams, fails to get the striking cords to stop.
Eventually he holds massive hands to his head and shrieks in an inhuman cry, as his consciousness spreads - unable to stay in one brain anymore, one place, and disperses, stretching out until it's not really what could be considered a mind anymore. A collection of distant memories. Desires. Impressions. But not a mind.
The Stuff can do terrible things. Make unliving things alive, make living things unalive. Merge the two. Turn a tv station, and an 18-year-old with his whole life ahead of him, into an organism. One single organism, trying to comfort itself, that absorbs a whole town into a nightmare it's not even awake enough to realize it's creating.
He's not awake, not really. Because eventually, when the perceived negative stimuli is gone due to nothing directly attacking, Josh stops fighting against his leash and goes passive again.
He crouches low, his head near the ground - and near them - and looks down with them at a face that has no eyes, tilting his head sharply, like a bird, like he's forgotten he was upset, and is confused by human beings that aren't 2-dimensional and made of light and electrical impulses.
Re: cw: face body horror
Thankfully it turns out to be unnecessary. Josh can't reach them. Hiccup breathes a sigh of relief.
"Josh, please. Do you remember anything, besides this? Your mothers. They adopted you."
Hiccup pulls out the photo he'd retrieved, showing to him. Eyes or no eyes Josh can still somehow perceive things.
"See?" He hopes they can somehow bring Josh even a little bit back to himself. If they can't, Hiccup knows deep in his heart what he might have to do and absolutely under no circumstances is it a thing he wants to happen.
cw: face body horror
And as Josh is yanked back before he can reach them, the screens around them breaking into a scream as they show exactly what happened to the kid with a kind of visceral violence no horror movie could ever really capture, he loses it, squeezing his eyes shut and clapping his hands over his ears as his own screaming devolves into crying.
Even as the screaming from the screens stop, and Josh calms again, crouching with his head close to them, as Hiccup begins trying to reason with him again, Merton continues to cower.
He has no helpful words to add to this. Probably couldn't have spoken up even if his brain wasn't blanked out from hysteria. His carefully built Jenga tower of courage had come crashing down around his ears, and now he finally was hyperventilating, every tight breath coming out as a sharp forcefully quiet noise that was caught somewhere between a broken laugh and a sob.
Re: cw: face body horror
He holds the picture up close and two camera lenses telescope out from between some of the cables and zoom in so that he can fully take in the picture.
There is a sensation like some kind of force that was spread out all over starts collapsing inward. The screens around him focus again on all the captured people still in the scenario. Color starts to seep in and they're seen waking up, clothes transforming back to their original clothes. All of them look alarmed at their sudden change.
The camera head monsters and paper dolls start transforming back to people.
And the being - no longer just a creature - starts to cry. The tears sweep out between the cables on his face, looking like the liquid static that had seeped out of everyone's TVs the night before. Giant fingers delicately brush against the framed picture.
Joshua Okafor slowly reaches for his face and then jolts up in a panic, suddenly aware of what's wrong with it. His body language is less monstrous and suddenly horrified. He puts the framed papers and pictures down, off to the side so they don't get damaged, and starts frantically pulling the cables off his face.
They spring out again like striking snakes, trying to reconnect, and he struggles to hold them back. The more of them he pulls off, the more staticy goo starts seeping out of his face - and then pouring. And the more goo that pours out, the more he starts to shrink, as if the goo is what contributed to his massive size.
As he pulls off cables, the monitors around them start to blip off, as if he's disconnecting whatever's going on in this place.
He gestures at the cords and cables plaintively, as if begging for help getting them off.
Re: cw: face body horror
Thanks the gods, it had worked. Better than Hiccup had dared to hope. Josh was shrinking down. Color was returning to the world and Toothless was returning to his natural form. As were everyone's clothes, unfortunately.
Most importantly, so had a sixth sense Hiccup had only just barely been aware was gone.
He reaches out with his mind and grasps at the copper and aluminum threaded through each cable and wire. Then he pulls. No matter how hard the cords fight him he doesn't stop until Josh is freed from every last one.
Re: cw: face body horror
Scrambling over to Josh, he's no less panicked but at least determined to try and help Hiccup tear as many of those wires out as he can. Occasionally tying together the ones he physically can, to try and stop them from surging forward to imbed themselves back in his face.
Re: cw: face body horror
Trying to make himself human.
He mostly succeeds. He's oversized and slightly deformed, legs and arms too long. And he also stays monochrome like he's a character on a classic TV show. But he ends up human enough to worry about decency and pulls one of the leftover tarps from the Jorgmund equipment to cover himself.
"Holy shit holy shit holy shit."
He's crying and hyperventilating, his tears still crackling static. But he's human. Aware. Alive.
The cords from the monitors wither and die like damaged vines and the console they were sticking out of starts to rot and fall apart like it's something organic.
"Who are you? Where am I? I don't - I don't understand what happened. I was so out of it. I need to find my moms."
Re: cw: face body horror
The dragon in question is flexing his wings and finds. It's nice to be back in his own body. Being trapped as a dog had not been fun.
"You're in what's left of the the TV station. As for the what? Thaat's kind of a long story."
no subject
"And I'm Merton." And man, he never thought he'd be so happy to just be able to say his own name. "We came here to try and help you. When the bombs hit...you..." He paused, trying to figure out just how he was going to describe everything that happened.
"Wow, this is going to be hard to explain...Um...When the bombs hit, you were hit with their detritus. A substance called Stuff that, to give the simplified version of it, changes everything and everyone it touches, usually based on the thoughts and imagination of the people around it. When it hit you, it used you and this station to spread its influence, and yours, over the whole town. It...and trust me, I know how crazy this is going to sound...it used you to trap the people in this town in a black and white sitcom. And it's been a few years since you were last...you. Everything is different. The whole world. It's..." He looked pleadingly up to Hiccup for help with the rest. How do you tell someone the whole world they knew and everyone in it are basically just, gone?
no subject
"You were the cause of the sitcom, but I don't think you had any control there. You were definitely out of it," he tries to reassure. Finding out you'd been basically mind-controlling everyone wasn't exactly fun news to hear.
"Unfortunately, we don't know where your moms are. We've only been here a few days, and most of that was just us trying to figure out what had even happened. But," he says, recalling what he'd seen when they'd gone to his house, "when we picked up that photo from your house, there were other ones missing. I thought it might've been you, but obviously it wasn't. Which means your moms might still be out there."
Or at least one of them at any rate. Not that Hiccup was going to bring that up.