witheredblum | sinking down, down

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?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[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.]

[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?

[ Lottie really should just walk away. Instead she replies, drily: ]

If you want to think you're seeing the wilderness, just let me know. I'll tell you what it's like.

[ Is that...a joke?? Hard to tell. ]

Oh, the wilderness would eat me alive.

[The literal wilderness or the metaphorical spirit of nature? Yes.]

Probably literally. My heart's black with coffee and city asphalt.

[ If Vanity was stranded with the Yellowjackets, they'd totally roast her on an open flame. ]

Mm, I don't know. Might spit you out. I bet you taste terrible.

Finally, a use for all the tannins in my blood.

[Let's be real, she'd be tough and stringy and serve better as some kind of animal bait.]

[She lets out a short breath, looking away.]

So, uh. No secret, I don't particularly like you. But you were really important to her.

[No need to say who.]

And since there's a non-zero chance we're all going to get incinerated soon- sorry.

[ An apology?? Lottie raises an eyebrow.

Then again, Vanity is really doing this for Hawke. Lottie gets that. There's a lot she would do for Hawke, too. ]

For what? The chlorine bomb, the reality check, or just not being very nice?

I'll admit it's mostly the first thing.

[No comment on the other two, that's probably safest all around.]

I'm absolutely not qualified to comment on the second and fuck if I really know where to begin on the third.

[ 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?

I'd love to dance.

[she'll smile, offering her hand in return.]

[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?

[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?!

Would you be any happier if we let them go to waste? Be honest.

Pretty sure it doesn't count as theft once you're dead.

[They can't exactly get ghost high on them, probably.]

Given that you committed murder it might actually count as legal seizure of goods.

[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.]

sinking down, down

Ghostcoming

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw cannibalism joke

cw further cannibalism joke

no subject

no subject

ota

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject