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

WEEK SEVEN

[facultwist]

[ Welcome, Hatsune!

The shadowy figures behind each survivor are more defined now. They're...

well, they're copies of them. ]

[goldendoll]

... Oh. So that's what it meant. [ cool great first thought to have.

wait.

she kind of looks down at herself, turning her hands over. where the fuck is she. ]

[ergine]

[ Well. Maybe a helpful hint is Kohaku standing over the edge of the pool. ]

Hatsune...?

1/2

[goldendoll]

Kohaku...? [ there's a disoriented blink, and then yeah, she starts to rush to close the gap— ]

2/2

[goldendoll]

[ and then anthy just fucking tackles her. girl help ]

[sweetsynergy]

Nice trick. Dunno if it worked exactly how you wanted, but. Impressive. Ow.

[Hey Hatsune, here's Vanity sitting in the bottom of the pool, slumped against the side.]

Definitely shook things up, at least.

[rosewitch]

[guess what hatsune. you're getting a hug. from the person WORST AT HUGGING IN THE WORLD PROBABLY. GET TACKLED IDIOT]

[bellpepperexercise]

...hi.

[Kana doesn't crowd Hatsune the same way that other people probably want to with all the teary romantic reunions she's got lined up.]

You, uh...you guys were pretty cool. Still gave me a heart attack, though, dummy.

[Her voice is soft despite that insult.]

[trustheart]

…You were pretty cool up there.

[ Cue a nervous-looking Chris standing a few feet away. ]

Better than some dumb girl who threw her life away.

[banishedfromparadise]

[Dorothy lets others be the first to greet Doloris - Hatsune - while she sorts through her feelings on this whole thing.

Finally, when there's a moment, she steps in closer to the other girl. And slaps her hard across the face. She hasn't tried that as a ghost yet, but it seems to work well enough with other ghosts.

And while Hatsune is still reeling from that, Dorothy confusingly pulls her close into a tight, almost protective embrace, clinging to her as if she's something precious Dorothy had lost.

She doesn't have words yet, this'll have to do to sum up her feelings for the moment.]

cw: dissociation, ableism, institutionalization, unreality

[protomartyr]

[ Dorothy and I don’t take any prescription medications.

There’s something wrong with Lottie. She doesn’t eat, sleeps at odd hours, doesn’t speak, paces the house at night. She needs to be fixed. You need to fix her.

Can you hear me?

Lottie has not been here since partway through the trial. The person who has stopped speaking, who has taken to staring at nothing in the bottom of the pool, isn’t Lottie. She’s a ghost, and ghosts aren’t real.

At one point, the ghost’s empty gaze looks at the newcomer. The ghost doesn’t say anything, though. Why should she? The fact of the matter is, she has no idea if the newcomer is real, either. So the ghost looks away, resuming her watch of nothing. ]

investigation. again.

[rosewitch]

[Heyyyyy. So. Anthy's gonna try and get close to the horrible doubles. What's the haps? What's the vibe? Are they saying anything?]

[trustheart]

[ Chris is watching you be the canary in the coal mine, Anthy, but only because you tried before she could. ]

[facultwist]

[ They're murmuring. It's soft, quiet, but... it's like they're repeating only their halves of conversations. Sometimes they'll mention things like "this week's motive" or "Isabella" or... well, one of your names. ]

[sweetsynergy]

[By the time Sunday rolls around, Vanity is fully back to moving without hurting all over and is checking up on the living. Hearing they all made it out isn't quite the same as actually seeing them still alive and well, especially after getting slammed into the bottom of the pool with her own disembodied ass held desperately in her hands.]

[So of course she eventually ends up in the library, warily eying Shadow Hawke and glancing down at the yearbooks Shadow-Was-My-Furry-Awakening Hawke is glancing through.]

Oh come on, at least go through the newer ones so we can maybe find the head bitch-

[And then Hawke pauses over one photo in particular.]

...oh shit, is that-

[Later on she can be found in the lounge, trying and failing to haunt the TV.]

Oh COME ON-

[She just kind of. Smacks at the box in futility.]

YOU ARE ELECTRONS, THIS SHOULD BE EASY-

[trustheart]

[ Chris is watching Vanity watch Hawke, having nothing better to do and wishing she were hanging out with Rinne instead, when suddenly she sees who Hawke and Vanity are both pointing out. ]

…Mom?!

[eternalfuture]

Vanity? When you're done smacking at the television, can we talk?

rinne

[rosewitch]

[There are a few moments, just a few, between the conversation with Isabella and their trip to the administrative building. Anthy takes them, and she finds Rinne, somewhere quiet and out-of-the-way, where they can be mostly invisible.]

. . . hi.

[She was there for the locker room kerfuffle, even if she didn't participate. Rinne will have seen her, lurking, being inscrutable.]

Are you . . . how are you?

[Nailed it.]

[lifegoalsorwifegoals]

[ Rinne is off to the side. That's pretty normal. She likes to stay out of the way. To observe.

But right now it's also something different. Something inside her that's...

She doesn't know. She's not used to there being something inside her, besides distant longing. Envy, jealousy, crushing acceptance. ]

—Aah-?! [ Rinne is also a little lost in her own head. She turns to Anthy in surprise. ] I'm- I'm fine, Anthy-san.

[ The polite smile wobbles. It's harder to keep up. It's been harder. ]

I...

I don't...know how I am.

Ghostcoming

[sweetsynergy]

[It's been a hell of a week. Polters heisted, kids rescued, storms briefly tamed, Boo Buddies immolated in the second worst roasting the ghosts have inflicted in recent memory.]

[But even in the face of danger and uncertainty, where there's hope there are always parties.]

[Time to mingle unseen.]

[Well, unseen by the living, probably. The ghosts can mingle normally amongst themselves. Though a lot of you probably wish Vanity could be unseen.]

[sweetsynergy]

[Vanity is- wallflowering. She has no illusions about how actually welcome she is here, so she's mostly hanging back, watching the living with an air of melancholy.]

[Though if anyone actually does approach her-]

The acid shroom tea seems like tempting fate, is that just me?

ota

[protomartyr]

[ Being dead, Lottie doesn't have another set of clothes to change into. She can do something about her hair though, so while the living sets up for doomcoming, Lottie retreats back into the locker room and braids her hair.

Early at the party, Lottie trails behind the living like she's one of their shadows. Occasionally, she'll indulge herself, and hover her hand just above one of the living's shoulder's. If anyone dead sees her, she'll murmur: ]

I know they can't feel me. Just trying to conserve energy.

[ Later, even though Lottie hasn't taken any shrooms, she has been to a Doomcoming. She knows the tradition. So she smiles at you, wry and a little bittersweet, and offers a ghostly hand. ]

Want to dance?

[bellpepperexercise]

[Kana lingers around the party, despite not being able to be seen by any of the living.]

Jeez, you try to warn people that the shrooms are bad and then they brew them into tea?! Come on!

[Kana huffs, slightly paranoid now that a ghost is gonna come bursting through the wall.

She has a bit of bluster in the beginning, but later on in the evening, Kana is far more pensive, staring thoughtfully at alive people and occasionally humming along to songs she knows.]

...what happens when it ends?

[thatsplato]

[Misty’s always wanted to go to parties. To smile, and laugh with friends. To be the kind of girl that people wanted to see at a party. Instead, this is her third party. The first was after the bus crash. The second, the sleepover. And for the third? She’s dead. It doesn’t stop her from lingering in the doorway, staring at both the living and the more brave of the deceased. There’s a longing in the way she looks on at things.

She stays there for a long time. Watching from the sidelines, like always. Invisible to those she wants desperately to notice her, to smile at her.

But, eventually, she might also be caught inside. She stares at the shroom tea.]

Why does everyone keep stealing my drugs?!

[banishedfromparadise]

[Dorothy's here, wandering around and gazing wistfully at the living. She can't say she'd ordinarily be particularly thrilled about the mushroom tea, or haphazard snacks, or the eclectic selection of music playing from Hawke's speaker, but for what their lives (and afterlives) have been these past several weeks, it's something. Something she wishes she could really be a part of.

Please, someone distract her from how many of the people she wishes she could speak with right now are out of her reach. Nothing against (most of) the ghosts, but now that they're just waiting for this all to end... she's feeling a little lonely.

As it grows late, between observing and mingling, she notices a certain redhead she'd been watching wander off to the conservatory, and follows. They share something of a private moment, across the boundaries of the dead and the living - but anyone who might have gotten curious what Dorothy's up to can catch her after she's expended as much energy as she can spare for the haunting.]