sinking down, down

[facultwist]

Death is a drop into a blackness that swallows you. You feel the movement of not air but shadow across your face as you plummet, and there is no bottom. No crash.

If there is another side, you do not reach it.

It is neither the light of heaven or the fires of hell that greets you when you wake. And wake you do, to the buzz and flicker of old fluorescent lights.

You are laid out beside a full-size competitive swimming pool, half-filled with stagnant water. The doors out are blocked off by locked doors covered in caution tape. The locker rooms are long since emptied, paint peeling from the humidity. The only signs of habitation are a few pieces of scattered graffiti.

Welcome to your new home. There's no sunlight, no indication of time passing. Just you and each other and your thoughts. the stagnant water bubbles a little occasionally, but there's nothing in it.

Before long you'll realize that you no longer need to eat or drink. You might notice your hand go through something if you don't focus. You're a ghost now. What's that they say about unfinished business?

Comments

[sweetsynergy]

Oh "if," sure.

[banishedfromparadise]

I was speaking to Anthy. You're still on thin ice after the stunt you pulled~.

[sweetsynergy]

You hated me for SO LONG before the murder thing, but go off.

[thatsplato]

She is a hater.

[sweetsynergy]

[Oh god is she actually agreeing with Misty on something]

From day one, even.

[banishedfromparadise]

A girl's not allowed to change her mind?

If you hadn't tried killing everyone to save yourself, break the game, whatever it was... I might have changed it differently. Guess we'll never know.

[sweetsynergy]

Sure, Jan.

[banishedfromparadise]

[A scoff.]

You wish you were the Marcia.

[Look at these kids making dated references thanks to long-running memes!]

[sweetsynergy]

...I don't actually know the Brady Bunch beyond the meme, you do?

[This feels possibly worse than anything Vanity herself might accuse Dorothy of.]

[Unless maybe you actually like the Brady Bunch, but this is Vanity.]

amusingly I did kind of plan this

[banishedfromparadise]

Well. Marcia's the popular one, right?

[That's... literally all she knew.]

[sweetsynergy]

I don't know, you're apparently the Brady uber-fan.

[banishedfromparadise]

Everybody knows Marcia's the popular sister. That's why she has that line.

[sweetsynergy]

Fascinating. Got any more deep Brady Bunch lore to share from your many hours of watching?

[they may all be about to die, for the second time]