+ It's good that we can't see what isn't there +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: EVERYONE
Where: Wonderland and adjacent dimensions!
When: Friday, April 21st to Monday, April 24th
Rating: PG-13, warn if higher!
Summary: A place to list your tears throughout the event, and describe the worlds that can be seen or accessed through them. Event Post.
The Story:

While invisible zombies ravage Wonderland, tears are popping up everywhere! Through them characters can see versions of themselves from alternate universes. Some of them show a different version of Wonderland, some a different version of their home. Some are as benign as a character drinking coffee instead of tea, others are as drastic as somebody's entire personality changed completely.

On day one tears are so small as to barely even be recognisable. Faint voices and melodies can be heard through the tiny cracks if you step really close, but these brief and indistinct glimpses are barely even worth describing.

On day two tears have opened up wide enough to recognise them for what they really are. Yesterday's melodies will sound clearer, and the voices will become decidedly familiar, belonging to people characters know, sounding perhaps even like the characters themselves. Look through the tears and they may catch sight of home, or something that merely looks like another part of Wonderland. The tears are yet narrow and instable though, and the field of vision is correspondingly poor.

On day three the tears have grown a great deal. The worlds beyond them can be seen and heard, though most cannot be interacted with at all. Only the biggest ones are already stable enough for characters to stick their hand inside, and pulls through any objects within reach.

On the fourth and last day some tears have finally become large and stable enough for characters to pass through whole. Not all tears will reach this stage, but those who have can be visited, and the world beyond them explored... at each character's own peril.

Comments

tim wright | ota, will match any format

[postictal]

day one | beach

[postictal]

[The first sign that the little event warning's begun to take place happens in the morning, as he drops the butt of a cigarette into the sand and stamps it out with one heel. Something hisses in his periphery - a shimmer, like part of reality has grown distended, swelling like a soap bubble.

Tentatively advancing yields nothing of consequence. He's not stupid enough to reach out and try touching the aberration, but something begins to hum out from the wisping crack in existence, something that sounds bizarrely like - like music, maybe?

No.

Not music.

Something much, much worse.]

day two | hallway

[postictal]

Over time, the will-o-the-wisp flutters of static-laced unreality gets to be...maybe not normal, but he's learned how and when to recognize it and how to steer himself around the anomalies appropriately. No guarantee they're bad, but it's probably for the best if he doesn't get too close.

That lasts right up until the moment that he does get too close, turning a corner in one of the mansion halls and coming right smack up against a window into a familiar scene. Discolored silhouettes shift across the slice of world within, all but indecipherable.

Their voices, however, ring entirely too loud and clear.

"I'm sorry. We just don't think he's ready for that."

An unfamiliar voice; low, calm, masculine.

"What do you mean, he's 'not ready'?" A woman's voice now, verging on vaguely hysterical. "You said he was getting better!"

His hands ball into fists, an unconscious reflex that has him backing against the nearest wall, breath tight in his throat. That one, that voice, the pitch to those words - those are more than a little familiar.

"You know how it is. It comes and goes. We told you when you admitted him that there was no guarantee that he'd ever - "

"You're supposed to make him better!" Her last word cracks. Tim flinches, eyes flicking shut. "That's the point of you doctors, isn't it? He's meant to be attending school and, and - not doing this, running tests and doing whatever the hell it is you think is helping him in here!"

His shoulders hitch, climbing to his ears as he presses himself against the wall, all but frozen into stillness. She never...he never heard that before, not from her. Since when did she care? Since when did she fight like this, for this, for him? What is this? What the hell, exactly, is this?

"Apologies, Mrs. Wright, but what is it you're asking of us, exactly?"

The woman's voice is cold.

"I want you to help my son. Help him."

Tim buries his face in his hands.

[arks]

Weird things have been happening.

Then again, that's practically Wonderland in a nutshell. And every time since he's been here, Jay thinks of Tim first - how he's handling it, if he knows anything, if It has decided to make an appearance (because he's expecting it. That's easier than being surprised by far, even if it's an uncomfortable reality), and usually Tim is the first person that he goes to try and find if he's not decided to hide himself away in order to avoid whatever craziness this place has dumped on them.

And he does what he intends to, finds Tim turning around a corner and follows him, but one of those things is there. It's making sounds, like the one Jay had heard - Alex, Brian, Tim and Jay, and everything seemed too normal and Jay had no idea what it was - but he doesn't recognise the voices this time. He's going to get Tim's attention, before he sees his reaction to them, and he falters.

Obviously his friend recognises the voices. And Jay, the curious and nosy thing that he is, decides to listen. (And if he's reminded uncomfortably of the medical files that he had released online for the world to see, despite them being none of his business? He tries not to think about it. )

"Tim?" He says, once it's finished and the voices have faded. "Hey... Are you okay?"

Definitely not, but he approaches and goes to put a hand on Tim's shoulder, but thinks better of it. After everything, who knows how he would react to sudden contact? Instead his arm drops to his side, and he shuffles on the spot uncomfortably.

[postictal]

He's already decided he's pretty goddamn well sick of this. Sick of this event, sick of these windows and glimpses into other worlds. A world, apparently, where his mom gave a damn about him, where she actually bothered to stay and help. It's -

Sick.

It's a sick, twisted, fucking joke, and he wants out. As far away from all of it as possible.

The last thing he needs is Jay seeing this - whatever it is. He twists, raking a hand through his hair, the butt of one palm digging ruthlessly at one eyesocket to smear away the heat gathering at the corner of one eye.

"Fine," he mutters, the furthest thing from it. "You been seeing these? These things?"

[arks]

"I saw one earlier," Jay replies, feeling sort of useless in the face of Tim's obvious distress. As much as they sort of knew each other before everything with It happened, and were sort of friends during it, Jay realises that he doesn't really know much about the other. Oh, he had the files, and knew of Tim's personality and history of being in the hospital, but other than that? Basically nothing.

As much as he can guess who the woman was - it's obvious from her words - he doesn't know how this is affecting Tim, how he's supposed to help, what he's supposed to say. Maybe if he knew him better even slightly, he wouldn't feel so helpless.

"It was us. Except everything was normal. It... it was weird," he carries on, leaning towards Tim as if he wants to step forward and help, but can't quite make himself take the step. "It wasn't anything I remember either, so it didn't happen - unless it's another one of those things I've forgotten. I don't know."

[choosetruth]

George shouldn't be here.

Well, that's ridiculous. This is the hallway. She has as much right to be here as anyone. But she probably should have moved on quickly and not seen this, rather than pausing and watching until it was too late to pretend she hadn't seen it. At least, to late to pretend to herself. Tim probably wouldn't stop her from leaving, if he's even seen her. But well, that would be a lie, wouldn't it? Of omission, anyway, and if she's going to view something private, the least she can do is acknowledge it and give Tim a chance to either give the image some context or tell her to fuck off.

She clears her throat. At least she has sunglasses again, and real clothes. Even a coke, clenched hard enough in her hand her fingers are denting the sides, but that's the only real indication of her emotions.

"Sorry, I... didn't mean to overhear." Or see his reactions.

[postictal]

What a fucking surprise. Right? Picking into his life again, picking into memories, into answers. Into the memory of something that never happened, a version of his mother that wasn't there, because she was never there. The accusatory crack of roiling frustration in her tone, directed at fucking doctors who told him they were just hallucinations. Only ever just hallucinations, because something like that couldn't possibly be real, right?

Only fair. Isn't it? He's glimpsed a bared vulnerability, all her protective walls and layers stripped away, and now it's her turn. The heel of his palm smears across the corner of one eye, wiping something aside.

"Sure," he says, heavily. He can't look at her. He stares dully ahead. "But you're not complaining. Right?"

[choosetruth]

She frowns at him. "Seriously? You've known me how long now, and you still think that of me?" There is a part of her that can't truly regret seeing this, since she's a sponge for knowledge and can't truly regret seeing anything. It's filed away, impossible for her to forget, along with everything else. But that doesn't mean it was fair or good for her to witness this. That doesn't mean she's okay with it being on display like this.

"It's a huge violation of privacy. Not unusual for Wonderland, maybe, but that doesn't make it right."

day two | grounds

[postictal]

[The sights and sounds humming out of the various tears or windows or whatever people feel like calling them - most of them are completely irrelevant, or carry a weight and context beyond the scope of his insight. More than a few, however, have left him trembling, his head light, his lungs feeling too small and too shallow.

One part of the mansion grounds seems mercifully bereft of the things and any of their disembodied voices, and he staggers to a grateful halt, hands raking through his hair. Just for a moment, he can breathe again.

Just for a moment.

Something rumbles to his left, a low growl that sounds almost canid in nature. He glances up, wildly, but nothing reveals itself. There's nothing but the faint crackle of something underfoot - leaves or grass or twigs - and then the invisible attacker bursts into a flurry of barking. It surges forward with a muffled hiss of paws over leaves.]

Shit -

[It's only thanks to the blurred imprint of its paws against the ground that Tim's able to throw himself out of the way in time, kicking out blindly with one leg. He catches it, whatever it is, squarely in the ribs, thrusting it back and away.

Scrambling to his feet and falling into a hard sprint, Tim can't help but think ruefully that this is probably why he should think of compromising his rule and start carrying a weapon.]

[justmakeroom]

[ Zombies are, unfortunately, a familiar threat to Andrea. She knows how to handle them, how to fight back. But these are invisible, and it's terrifying in a way she hadn't anticipated. Killing zombies - or walkers, as they called them - had become second nature, but she had a decided advantage when she could see them coming.

Leave it to Wonderland to up the ante.

Both Andrea and Michonne have been stockpiling weapons in case of emergency, though neither one of them could have predicted this. They split up to patrol, to help, and Andrea's walking the grounds when she sees someone attacked by...a dog? Running to the side, she follows after him, wanting to make sure he's okay and that whatever he kicked doesn't catch up to him. She has a gun drawn, and a sword similar to Michonne's katana slung across her shoulders, behind her back. ]

[postictal]

[Tim would be grateful, actually, really fucking grateful, if his world had something as comparatively mundane as zombies, or invisible zombies, or invisible zombie animals. It'd mean fewer missing memories torn free from his head and fewer blackouts and fewer headaches, and even if there was the perpetual risk of death it'd be a damn sight better than the personal risk of mental excoriation.

The thing is still barking at his heels and rapidly catching up when he catches sight of someone who is carrying a gun and wearing a - a sword on her back, apparently, because that's normal, and his smoker's cough is doing him no favors now but he manages to throw himself flat onto the ground just before the thing leaps. It arcs over his head, presumably, if the patterns of pawprints in the dust just ahead of him are any indication.]

See - d'you see it?

[Obviously not "see" it, but - hopefully it's moving enough for her to get an actual bead on it.]

[justmakeroom]

[ Just dealing with Wonderland and the way it screws with memories during events is enough for Andrea. She'd really hoped she'd seen the last of walkers for a lifetime. They should have earned a reprieve from these things by now, but she also knows better than to assume Wonderland really cares about showing any mercy.

Nodding with a focused look in her eyes, Andrea unsheathes the sword, holding it steady and waiting for the right moment. ]

I see it. It's right... [ Her eyes narrow and she takes two steps forward, suddenly swinging out and hitting. It's not enough to kill it yet, but it looks to be wounded from the blood trailing in droplets on the ground, the creature making a strange guttural sound. ]

day three | gardens

[postictal]

[There's something in the garden, hiding out between the trees. The long, ragged tear of the edges of its world trail, the seams split wide open. It might be hard to see, at first; it is, to start with, little more than a slip of something stained dark, clad in what appears to be a business suit of some sort.

Atop its thin shoulders sits a face, bleached skull-white and utterly featureless.

It watches.

If you're unlucky enough to stumble across It, It will start to watch you, too. Seeing It hurts, like It simply isn't meant to exist at all, like staring into the sun for far too long. The pain will build in your temples, then in your throat. You will start to cough. You will start to look behind you. You will start to feel cold, even if the sun is out and the trees are green and the flowers are in perfect bloom.

A chill will chase down your spine and still, It will watch.

Run, if you like.

Its effects on your mind are not so easily escaped.]

[uncaging]

[Elizabeth had been on her afternoon walk through the garden, contemplating the tears and what she can do about them, when she's sure she sees someone out of the corner of her eye. As she looks more closely, a complete and utter dread comes over her - whatever it is that she's seen through this tear, she knows it's not natural. It continues to watch her as she tries to run, stumbling through the forest and trying her best to ignore the stabbing pain between her eyes. She leans on the trunk of a tree as she coughs and sputters, not daring to glance back but somehow knowing that the thing is still there.]

[postictal]

[Getting away from it all seems, at this point in time, all but impossible. He's already seen It ghosting in the corners of his eyes, in the back of his mind, an irrepressible pressure squeezing at his temples and ears. Glimpsed through cracks in the world. Through thin, sticklike limbs stretching for the sky.

He shouldn't find the stuttering sound of a coughing fit to be so innately terrifying, but terrifying they are. It only gets worse when he realizes he recognizes the source of it.]

Shit - Elizabeth?

[God. No. God, no.

Not her.]

[uncaging]

[She continues to cough, making a barking sound that comes from deep within her chest. As she realises Tim is nearby she reaches for him, her fingers trembling.]

You've got to run. Get out of here.

[She doesn't know why, doesn't understand, but she knows deep down that whatever it was she saw, it's dangerous.]

day three | gardens

[screwedontight]

The day before Seth had encountered one of the tears. A glimpse of a vision of Kate's life, happy and fulfilling, perhaps. Already because of that he is wary of the off shimmer of their world and these other worlds they show.

More so when he catches a glimpse of whatever the fuck that is.

"And suddenly I get why people have problems with the suit," Seth mutters, wearing a definite version of the same suit with black and white, and damn that sent a cold chill down his spine. Even as he slides his gun out from under the jacket, muzzle point at the ground. For now.

Turning his head as he coughs, reflex, but hating it takes his gaze off whatever that is. Blinking, ignoring the pain in his head as he just stares, considering what the fuck he should do, and hating that tiny voice in the back of his head telling him to run.

"I sure as fuck don't remember that thing in Alice in Wonderland," he says, soughing as he says Wonderland and kind of ruining the quip.

[postictal]

This is bad. It's bad because it's not even a visual snapshot of the thing, it's not some shared hallucination, it's not Wonderland aping the thing's shape and movement. It's everything going, inexplicably, to shit, because It is leering through the gaps in space and peeling Its way through into his head again, and no matter what he does he'll never escape it. It'll burn Its way in, in the back of his head, into the pieces of his skull that may as well have been scattered like ashes.

It sets his teeth on edge, burning into the back of his eyes when he sees It, when he sees someone else seeing it.

"What - " Shit. Shit, shit, shit, goddamn. "Get away!"

[screwedontight]

Seth shakes his head, blinking, knowing he needs a clear view to get a shot. Not certain he can get one though. Jumping when he hears a voice, one familiar to him. Shifting, putting himself in a way to position himself between Tim and ... whatever the fuck that is.

Glancing towards Tim, bringing the gun up slowly, barely glancing back to make sure he was in the general range of that monstrosity.

"What the ever loving fuck is that?" He demands to know, though he kind of listens, taking a step back, moving closer to Tim.

day three | fourth floor | cw blood and gun violence

[postictal]

Room forty-four has been empty for some time now. Months, in fact. A handful of people, maybe, have thought to miss its former occupant. Perhaps it's no coincidence, then, that the scene unspooling in the tear just outside it is relevant to said occupant.

A man wearing glasses, the lines beneath his eyes dark and crisply defined, the worn cuffs of his sleeve stained with dots of scarlet, is trying to run. He may look gaunt, malnourished, atypically haggard, but those who know him will find his visage unmistakable.

Alex Kralie is bleeding out, one hand clasped over the dark patch that's come crimsoning across the front of his shirt.

"You don't have to do this," the words rasp from his throat, a desperate litany to some menacing shape beyond the tear's boundaries. "We can stop this. I know we can stop It. Please - please."

The silhouette of a gun is raised, and it fires.

The bullet strikes Alex squarely in the temples, giving way to a burst of fragmenting bone, a smear of gore across the surrounding floor and wall of whatever abandoned building he was frequenting.

Someone steps forward, surveying the body with a stony dispassion, the window to the world throwing his features into sharp relief.

"No," says Tim. "We can't."

/o/

[normandysbest]

Shepard hasn't been out and about actively looking for the tears; mostly, she's been trying to figure out a solution to the 'getting attacked by invisible shit' phenomena that Wonderland has decided to group with all of reality splitting apart. She's moving as light as she can, armored up but not yet with her full loadout of weapons, when she hears it.

A voice she hasn't heard in a long damn time.

She finds herself in front of the tear, watching the scene, flexing her hands. She recognizes both of them, now. They were from the same world.

(And still, he dies, out of her reach.)

She's standing, arms crossed, in front of the tear, even as the scene progresses forward, for no apparent reason. More than anything else, she just seems reluctant to leave.

[postictal]

The subtle warping of the world feels utterly inescapable, opening windows into places he's never seen before, and no matter where he ends up, he ends up seeing something he knows he shouldn't. Mounting the stairs and taking off on a floor at random brings him straight into yet another, and this one already has a speculator.

He stops dead, drawing short. Shepard stands, watching, with her arms folded, her expression -

Unreadable.

His eyes fall to the body lying on the alternate floor of an alternate world. A blue-stripped jacket. Glasses lying askew on the concrete, spattered with red, a thin crack spiderwebbing down one lens.

His throat convulses in a swallow.

"What the hell."

[normandysbest]

Immediately, when he speaks, her eyes slice over to him, but she stands unmoving for a few seconds more before dropping her arms, turning towards him just enough to gesture at the tear.

"Gonna guess this isn't what really happened. None of these seem to be showing the truth." It's a small comment, something to start this. She's not asking him to repent, or grovel. But now she has to know, eyes drifting back to the gruesome scene.

"He was here, for a while. Kralie."

day four | sixth floor

[postictal]

[Not very far from room nineteen, another scene has been set.

A tall, thin shadow of something stands like some specter of a horrible omen. The walls and ceiling are bare, a clinical white. The only deviation from the uniform blankness if the square of a window through which the sun shines, and the dark, atypically tall thing that stands just to the right of it.

And in the corner, the shape of a small, huddled boy.]

I don't want to. [The words are quiet, pleading.] I don't want to, please.

[The thing tilts Its featureless head, as though vaguely curious by the little boy's protests. As though It, perhaps, finds them to be amusing in some fashion.

It's not clear what It does, but it soon has the boy doubled over, hands clutching at his head, screaming. He screams until tears spring into his eyes, shaking his head, devolving into a staggered, choked-back sob.]

Okay! [he finally manages, a strangled shout.] Okay! Okay! Just - just let me...

[The boy fumbles for a moment about in his pockets before he extracts something small and silvered; a lighter. It takes several more minutes before he can master the particular flex of his thumbs that depresses the switch and coaxes the stilling flame into existence.

He glances up at the thin, unnaturally tall shape without a face in the corner of his hospital room, faltering.]

Do I...do I really have to?

[The thing makes no sound, but the boy cringes as though struck.]

Okay! Okay. I'm - 'm sorry.

[With a shaky, tearful nod, he lowers his stare back to the bright flame clasped between his hands. And slowly, carefully, fingers trembling, he puts fire to the bedsheets on his cot, and sets the whole thing alight.

It isn't long before the entire hospital corresponding to the tear is merrily ablaze.]