whitechapelmod | TEST DRIVE

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test drive

TEST DRIVE

TEST DRIVE MEME

OPTION A

With the cooling weather came the changing of the leaves, the lighting of candles and the advertisements in all the shops and bulletin boards for the Annual Whitechapel Road Fall Festival. Overnight your quaint little neighborhood has been transformed from a typical Victorian-esque scene to well, a typical fall festival scene. Strings of lights have been wound between the lamps, scarecrows have been put up in shop windows that hold signs with arrows on them, directing you down the main street toward the park.

In the park, you'll find a small carnival. No big gaudy rides, of course, but booths set up by local businesses where they sell items from their shops. Games like bobbing for apples and pin the nose on the scarecrow have been scattered in the places between the face painting booths and cotton candy vendors. There's also booth offering food and drink-- and doesn't that cider just smell wonderful? Of course, they have hot chocolate too, if cider's not your thing.

Mingle and enjoy your night! But be careful-- you might just end up in the dunking tank..

OPTION B

You wake late in the morning to a strange chill in the air. The weather, sure, but also something else, something wrong in the energy. Maybe you've never been much of a person who believes in that sort of stuff-- energy, vibes, whatever-- so you brush it off and go about your day. It's not until you're out and about that you really start to notice something. The streets are mostly empty, the shops closed down. A cold wind blows through and makes you shiver as you turn down the street toward the Town Board. The papers flutter in the wind, but it doesn't matter, you're not reading them, you're reading the message written in red over all of them.

YOU WILL ALL BE PUNISHED.

Is that blood it's written in, or paint? It's hard to tell, but the color seeps into the fliers and advertisements-- "puppies, free to a good home" or "half off on all clothing TODAY ONLY"-- staining them, ruining them. You know without even turning and walking the extra block that something very bad has happened. Yellow tape surrounds the board, you just notice, and blocks the entrance to a nearby alleyway. An officer stands guard, but he looks pale and shaken. This isn't the first. Just last week, someone was killed too. The boy who delivered the milk. Eddie. Throat slashed and a message written in blood on the wall above him, similar to this one.

An ambulance arrives but you stay where you are, watching as more officers emerge from the alley, carrying something on a stretcher. Someone, you realize, because what else do they carry on stretchers? A shock of red, curly hair pokes out from the top and you think of the girl who runs the register in the bakery, a waitress from the cafe you tried last week, your sister back home who will (hopefully) never end up here. Could this really happen here? Some maniac killing people because they think you need to be punished? It's wrong, it's confusing, and it's terrifying, isn't it?

Make a top-level comment below, with whichever option you'd like in the subject, and maybe a little starter. Please also feel free to disregard the options and choose your own adventure! Below are links to the setting and premise, so feel free to use those as reference in guiding your post. Tag around and have fun!

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Hey. [Her voice is soft when she speaks, because she's not blind, she can see that he's pretty freaked out, and she can see and feel his arms shaking. She wraps her arms around him, firmer and more stable than he has. He seems like he needs it right about now.

She leans her forehead against his, smiling again.]

I didn't think I'd find you here.

I didn't-- I didn't, uh- [Didn't think he'd find her here, again, ever. Didn't think he'd feel this again: her arms, her breath on his face, her hair brushing against his cheek as she leans her forehead against his, any of it. Didn't think places like this existed and if they did, he sure as hell didn't think he'd be going there. Not after what he's done...

Even if he can't even bring himself to feel guilty right now.

He clears his throat again.] Oh, god-- um. [His voice wavers no matter now hard he tries to keep it steady. The king of smooth, right here, but he just can't. The brain capacity for whatever kind of front he may want to put up just isn't there; it only occurs to him now, belatedly, that somewhere between there where Jane wasn't and here where Jane is, he's dropped his cigarette. Which is probably for the best, considering the way both of his hands are sliding into her hair, settling over her ears without any conscious thought of dropping the flaming thing before doing it. She'll never know how close she came to needing matching haircuts today.

Before, he might have hesitated, made some kind of wisecrack complete with shit-eating grin before tipping his head and leaning in for a kiss. He'd probably have even waited, just a half-second, to give her a shot at some token resistance since he knows she's into that (and so is he).

That isn't what happens now, though; the way he presses his lips against hers now isn't like that at all, nor is it the kind of confidence or boldness it might appear to be. It's all desperation, this time around, quicker than blinking because even though he can feel her body, warm through however many layers, a part of him is still terrified that if he doesn't move quickly enough she'll be gone.]

[Whoa. There is something seriously wrong. Not-- not with him-- well, okay, maybe a little with him-- but with-- just-- everything. This is supposed to be happy, right? The last time she saw him he'd seemed pretty stressed, pretty fucked up, but nothing compared to this. This is really freaking her out, and Jane's not easily shaken. Not by a long shot.]

Hey, hey, you're okay. [Her hands slide up and through his short hair. She meets his kiss, trying to match the feeling, but probably failing. A hand rests on his cheek, thumb swiping over the bone as she pulls away-- but not too far.]

I'm here, you know that? I'm right here.

[He's happy. He's ridiculously, unbelievably happy... And therein lies the problem. That doesn't go well for him, it doesn't last, not the way he needs it to. Not lately, anyway. Not for a long time.

And so it's dangerous, letting himself feel it again when he knows in his gut that it's not gonna end well. It can't, not with him. A bit of the guilt creeps back in- why should he have this?- but horribly (wonderfully), her fingers sliding through his hair (or relative lack thereof, how the hell's he gonna explain that?) chase it away almost as quickly as it'd sprung up, pushing all thoughts of his many failings from his mind. In their place, a tingling warmth settles deep in his chest at the brush of her thumb against his cheek, and it stays there even after she pulls away, enough to give him that extra push to finally form coherent syllables, words, an actual sentence:]

Yeah. Yeah, you're here. [...Not much of a sentence, and certainly lacking in originality, but he repeats it after her like a mantra, like saying it out loud will make it permanent.] How long?

[Hours, days, months? Has she been here since--

Don't think about that.]

Almost a week, I think. [Since the first one, she wants to say, but she doesn't need to. He'll know. He was always good at that reading her mind thing. She appreciated it a lot. Appreciates. They haven't been apart that long, right? Right. Why does it feel so long? Why is he acting like it's been years or something? Why is his hair super short?

She has a lot of questions, but in her mind, they've got all the time in the world. They can't leave this place, they're stuck here. Together. It sounds perfect to her.]

You?

Four days, five, maybe... I kinda lost track. [He lets his eyes slip closed with a sigh, finally recovering his ability to breathe and think semi-normally.] It, uh-- It feels like a lot longer.

[She can probably tell that, though- he's being weird and he knows it... Though whether he has control over it or not is a different story.

Eventually he lets one hand drop to her shoulder, squeezing it lightly as it finally starts to really sink in that she's not going anywhere. The other slides forward, curving over her jaw as he brushes a stray eyelash from her cheekbone.]

You look... [Beautiful, warm, happy, alive. Not like-- Not like the last time he saw her.] You look great.

[He smiles, then, but as small subdued as it is, it's completely genuine-- the first in a long while.]

...Digging the jacket.

[How is it that they got here at the same time but hadn't found each other until today? This place is tiny, but Jane guesses she didn't really go looking for him or anything. And he's acting like she's the last person he expected to find here, so maybe it's not that weird. Maybe she's making something out of nothing.]

Yeah, time really drags in this place, huh?

[It's so quiet and like, chill. Nice, but off-putting sometimes. Way less off-putting with him here, definitely. She laughs softly and kisses him, brief.]

Thanks. I got it from some store on the main street. The woman practically gave it to me for free.

[For one of her weird coin things. She's not really sure what they're worth, but whatever, it's an awesome jacket.]

[Now that she's right here in front of him, it strikes him how stupid it was not to look for her... Hindsight being what it is, he'll be kicking himself for a long time over that week he could have spent here, with her instead of by himself watching the last of his crystal peter away for lack of anything else to do with himself.

He'll just have to make up for it, he supposes. Not all of the lost time... But some.]

That's that "small town charm", I guess.

[He's not charmed. Or wasn't. He is now.

And brief though it is, that kiss drains some of the lingering tension from his shoulders; when she pulls away that tiny smile of his will have grown a bit.]

Yeah, for like a coin thing, right? They look like Chuck E Cheese tokens but everybody here's pretty stoked about them. [He pats his pocket.] I got like a carton of cigarettes for one, the guy looked like he was about to have an aneurism when I tried to give him more than that...

[He was also a bit less than thrilled when Jesse tried to pay with, like, actual money... Weirdo.]

So where've you been staying? Place ain't that big, I don't know how I-- [Missed you? Yeah, no, he knows exactly how he missed her...] --you know. "It's a small world," et cetera...

[She hadn't wanted to think about it, but the look on his face was definitely a little bit more than 'haunted'. It'd been haunted and strung out, and she knows he smokes, but he'd been doing better, recently, right?]

Yeah, a coin thing. Think I'll start a tattoo parlor to earn more of them. What do you think?

[There's an easy grin for you, Jesse, and don't mind that it's trying to compensate for the cold, empty feeling this place gives off.]

Uh, that place...Ms. White's. It's free, just have to do chores.

[He is trying (desperately and unsuccessfully) to forget that yeah, he's a little strung out. It's not like she hadn't seen him that way before- he'd been so fucking stupid about it at the condo- but knowing what he does now, how easy it was for everything to go wrong... He wishes he could take back all those times he'd let her in after smoking up.

But he can't. All he can do now is try to keep his shit together and be as subtle about it as possible until he's all amped out.]

Yeah-- Yeah, that's awesome. [He returns that grin. God he's missed seeing that...] Totally liven the place up a little, loosen the town's collective tie or whatever. I like it. [And to her response, he nods.] Right, right. I checked that one out too, but I ended up going over to the apartments. They wanted two of those coins and that was it. More space, you know...?

[He's gonna go with that as the reason he hadn't spotted her, instead of the daze he'd been existing in since being dropped off here.] ...You painted up the walls of your place yet? Back home you had that mural...

[The unfinished one.]

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