Silent Hill

[alkali]

Maybe you've come here by accident. Maybe on purpose, or together, or alone. Either way, the fog is settling down thick, and all roads leading out have crumbled away, leading only to deep cliffs and chasms. You're stuck.

Welcome to Silent Hill.


Instructions
1. Post your character with their name/canon in the subject line.
2. Tag around!
3. You can each choose or roll for a reason you're here.
4. You can even roll for a situation.
5. No powers! Sorry--enjoy that.
6. Oh, and try not to die.

NOTE: This meme can potentially contain triggers, for violence and psychological torture in particular. Please take heed!

why have you come?
1. You're searching for someone. A relative, a friend, a dead lover. Someone has led you to this quiet little town.
2. An accident. You got lost in the fog, the roads fell off into chasms, you thought you saw someone in the road and crashed. Time to venture farther in for help.
3. Returning visitor. You've come here before, to the lovely little resort town, and had a beautiful time. But this second trip will be different.
4. An escape. You're running from something ... or someone. A crime you committed? Grief? Too bad you ran to the wrong place...
5. Wildcard, or make up your own!

what horrors do you encounter?
1. You just met. You've only been able to find each other, no one else in town. Stores are deserted, doors are locked, silence is everywhere. What happened here? What's going on?
2. A shuffling in the night, the fog, or in a tight dark hallway of an abandoned building. A strange creature is moving toward you. Maybe humanoid, maybe not. They can be powerful. They can be slow. They can vomit acid. Time to pick up whatever plank, knife, or gun available to you ... if you both want to live.
3. A dark secret from your past is returning to haunt you. It manifests in hallucinations, the town reaching deep inside your mind to paint the surroundings in grotesque symbolism. Yet, the other person can't seem to see what you see.
4. The walls are peeling away. Or maybe you got knocked out and just woke up to an entirely different kind of town. There are chains, rust, fans, orange light, splatters of blood. A horrific version of what used to be around you. Welcome to the Otherworld.
5. That other person with you--you see them as someone they're not. Someone from your past that you loved or feel bone-wracking guilt over. And no matter what they say, that they're not, they're someone else, you just can't help but see...
6. The town has driven you insane. The monsters, the guilt you may carry. It's all coming back to you. You need to lash out. At anything. At anyone.
7. Wildcard, or make up your own!

Originally posted by myheartglows

Comments

[empty_vessel]

Ooooookay. That was a little quick on the response, but having someone else here beats the hell out of being by himself. Besides, there's enough weird here to stress anyone out.

But he hurries after, and the cafe door is soon in sight. The lights are off, though, and there's no one inside.

[welcomequeenalice]

Oh dear. Gen checks behind the counter, poking her head through the swinging doors that lead to the kitchen.

There's puddles on the floor, filthy water dripping from a broken pipe next to the large dishwashing sink. Unsettling dark smears are on the tables and floors. She can hear buzzing flies and smell something rotting, maybe old lettuce or lunch meat. (She hopes.)

There's also a doll. A cute little doll, the plastic kind with the large eyes and hair you can brush or braid. It's sitting next to a large butcher's knife and a chopping board. Whoever was last in the kitchen had ignored the rotten food in favor of hacking the doll into pieces and leaving its dress in shreds across the counter. Gen swallows hard. By now she almost wishes it was an episode. At least then she'd be sure to have it pass.

[empty_vessel]

The dripping water doesn't sit well with Jimmy, nor do the black smears. It's not a good sign when blood is the lesser of two evils. Combined with the smell of rot, Jimmy has to stop in the doorway for a moment before he heads inside. But he's okay. He's in a diner in... wherever this is, and not back at the reservoir.

While Gen's checking the kitchen, Jimmy moves around to the counter and picks up the phone. There's the dial tone, then it cuts out with a crackle of static, fading into the sound of water, lapping against the shore.

The phone falls from numb fingers to clatter on the floor with the cut cord railing after and a thin trickle of water spilling out of the earpiece onto the floor.

[welcomequeenalice]

The tiny clatter sounds like a crash against the backdrop of the quiet drips, and it sends Genevieve dashing for the door. Her feet skid against the hopefully-water and she falls through the swing doors to smack against the counter.

"What is it?" she gasps, trying to get her breath back. Her heart flutters like a scared bird.

[empty_vessel]

"The... The phone." Jimmy takes a step back and looks at the phone in the puddle of water, cord lying beside it.

"It..." He can't just lie and say that it just startled him. "There was a dial tone for a second, then... this." There's a step away from the phone receiver and the spreading pool of water. "Did... Did you find anything?"

[welcomequeenalice]

"I don't think anyone's been here for a long time. There's a doll in the kitchen, but..." She gives him a moment of nervous staring, and then reluctantly her eyes go back down to the phone.

"You...cut the wire? Why?" Dial tone what.

[empty_vessel]

A vigorous headshake. "I didn't. I picked up the receiver to see if there was a signal, and there was for a second, but the sound changed and I dropped it... And then the w-water started spilling out." And it's a faint stutter over the word, but it's noticeable. "I didn't know the cord was cut until I dropped it."

[welcomequeenalice]

Like hearing the ocean in a seashell.

"We should move on," says Genevieve, barely managing to avoid tripping over words herself. "Find a working phone, or--oh!"

Over by the door is a rack of pamphlets, likely for passing tourists. Gen sidesteps the puddles to pull down a handful. Phone number, maybe? Map? Anything that can put them at a fixed point.

[empty_vessel]

Jimmy moves over too, giving the puddles a wide berth and continuing to glance back at them. "That..... that could probably work." This little bit of water isn't what you have to worry about, Jimmy. Remember?

The maps are in english, but he doesn't recognize the companies. No AAA, no Rand McNally, nothing familiar. There's a map stuffed in behind the others, though, labeled 'Scenic Silent Hill - A place for lovers.' Jimmy pries it out of the rack, half crumpled and wedged in there and offers it to Genevieve.

[welcomequeenalice]

Genieve turns it over and unfolds it. "Silent Hill...I've never heard of that place." The map seems fairly standard for a city. Town hall, church amusement park, small enough to only have two police stations but possessing a surprisingly large hospital complex.

"Is this where we are?" she asks, shaking the map at him in confusion. "I don't even know what state we're in." State of confusion, perhaps.

(Totally stealing from the movie for the state, if I need to change, lemme know.)

[empty_vessel]

"This was the only map that didn't have a state on it. The rest are all.... Maine or New England?" A glance back at the rack to see maps of the New England area, highways, and out of state tourist traps.

"Only one way to find out if we're there. See if Bachman Road is on the map. The cafe might not be, but the street will."

Re: (Totally stealing from the movie for the state, if I need to change, lemme know.)

[welcomequeenalice]

[OOC: Feel free to transition when you like, or I can start throwing in a few low-level monsters for them to run from.]

"I was in Gotham when I fell asleep, how could we make it all the way to Maine?" Her finger traces the route of the roads on the faded map. There's spots on it which might be mold, and hopefully were mold rather than anything else. "To a town with no train tracks, no people. This doesn't make sense--ah, found it!"

She holds the map up, indicating a road that runs down the center of town. "We're not far from the police station. Even if no one's there we can use the phone, or the radio."

Above them one lightbulb starts to flicker.

[empty_vessel]

[OOC: Sorry this took so long. I couldn't get the visuals right for it, and it drove me crazy trying to figure it out.]

The flickering bulb gets a glance upwards, but with as abandoned as this place looks, the power being iffy isn't a surprise.

What gets his attention, is the siren. His head whips towards the front window and he starts checking the weather and moving a little to check the color of the sky. Jimmy knows what tornado sirens mean, knows that they mean to get away from windows and get under sturdy cover. He's about to start doing just that for Genevieve and himself when he turns around and sees that the water has gotten a lot closer.

The puddle spreads into a trickle, moving towards the door and seeping under. Jimmy and Genevieve hurry out of the way of the water as it moves from a trickle to a stream, pooling around the door before flowing under as mildew and rot creep up the walls and bloom in unpleasant patterns. Outside, huge waves of brown-green water crash down the street, leaving it wrecked and ruined in their wake, as if the town had been underwater for decades and the tide is just beginning to move again.

[welcomequeenalice]

The siren makes her flinch, but she lacks the instinctive fear of tornados that lets one know. It's just a loud, confusing, terrifying noise, which in Gotham could mean a wide number of horrible things. She dodges the flow of water, concerned for her shoes, only to keep staring as it seems to climb up the walls to inflect it with black stains.

Then she hears the crash of the water. It pummels the houses, overturning the faint edges of the train that she can see through the distant fog before it's forced away down the street. "There's a flood! Th-there must be a flood!" Out of nowhere, close to no rivers or oceans, no warning and no wind. Not right, not sensible, not realistic. Her voice is nearly a shriek.

I wish I hadn’t cried so much! I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That WILL be a queer thing, to be sure!

[empty_vessel]

The waves pass, and the water drains away to puddles and algae, both slowly drying out on the street. The mildew and encrusted building fronts remain, though, looking (and smelling) like an excavated lake bed.

Jimmy doesn't like this either, he remembers the water. He remembers it very well. "It's not! It's not... Look. There's no... the water's gone!" He's edging towards hysterics too, and if Genevieve loses it, he won't be far behind.

[welcomequeenalice]

"But--but--" But that isn't how a flood works! It's not reality and she's trained herself so hard to understand reality so she can notice when her vision deviates from it.

There's a noise in the fog. It would be a growl if the growler was held underwater, trailing from low and harsh to a high whine that sounds like a crowbar being scraped against concrete. Genevieve sees what looks like a walking figure striding through the puzzles and mud, and she almost calls it to it until the light from the diner illuminates its silhoutette.

The creature is grey and wiggling as it steps forward, as if writhing in agony. It has no face, and yet she can see the hint of bone structure twisting beneath the gnarled flesh on its head. Genevieve goes rigid.

"Do you see that?" she whispers.

[empty_vessel]

Jimmy nods. "Yeah... I... I see it too." Under other circumstances, he'd be a little more suspicious about so many questions confirming what's going on around them, but this is so bizarre that he can understand completely the need to double check what in the hell is going on.

He'd thought the same thing, at first. That the figure was a person, walking towards them. Until it starts walking into the light and it is very, very wrong.

".... I think we should leave. Now." He takes a step back and carefully nudges Genevieve to start doing the same.

[welcomequeenalice]

"Mhm." It's the smallest noise a small person can make. She starts backing away, barely breathing.

Then she hears a crash from the kitchen.

[empty_vessel]

Another Figure, stumbling blindly into the kitchen door, slamming into a hanging set of aluminum pans on the way, powdery with smears of green patina.

And a closer look is not helping anything. More reminiscent of body parts stuffed into a trash bag than anything else, it shuffles towards them awkwardly once it clears the doorframe. Jimmy starts moving faster at that, hurrying Genevieve towards the door and out into the street.

The street still looks like the bottom of a lake, but there's more room to run out here.

[welcomequeenalice]

No no no no. No. Genevieve's legs work almost independent of her flailing, helpless brain.

"We need--we need to--how doth the little crocodile--" she pants, stumbling over pieces of concrete left by the water. Curse her small legs.

She stumbles again, this time over a length of rebar rusted at both ends and sharp where it's broken off. Her hands grasp it as she picks herself up, little thought behind it. Not a scepter but it'll do. Improvised weaponry was a heavy aspect of Rogue combat training.

[empty_vessel]

Keeping moving is probably the best idea for now, with Genevieve being the only one armed and trained in combat.

Looking around to see if there's any more potential weaponry gets him only corroded metal and crumbling, rotten wood. "... Genevieve? Unless you feel like fighting two, I think we need to go. Probably very fast."

[welcomequeenalice]

"I'd prefer not to fight one!"

She can see the sign for the police station, still dripping with water, and speeds up.

[empty_vessel]

Jimmy has to agree, following behind Genevieve at a run. Splashing through puddles and glancing around for more of those.. things.

The run is mercifully clear, though. Just puddles and the constant stink of lake water, and Jimmy comes to a panting halt outside.

[welcomequeenalice]

Her hand lands on the station door, and there's almost hope--but it doesn't open.

"Hey! Hey, unlock the door!" Genevieve pounds desperately on the muck-smeared glass.

[empty_vessel]

The doors don't budge, and in the little window provided by the smearing of muck, the police station looks abandoned. Papers scattered on the floor and dust covering everything.

Jimmy glances back to see how close the Figures are, before suggesting that the police station is a wash and the Figures are.... gone. The street is still shrouded in fog, but the figures aren't there.

"Genevieve?" Things don't just vanish into thin air. Not usually, anyway. And he doubted those figures were anything he'd run into before.