+ Let's go for a dreamwalk! + [OPEN PLOT CATCH-ALL]

[mviw]

Who: Everyone who wants to participate!
Where: The Mindscape (and elsewhere in reality, if specified)
When: September 6th through September 8th
Rating: PG-13 to R for potentially disturbing, violent, or dark subjects.
Summary: Thanks to an explosion on the third floor, every time a person falls asleep, they enter the Mindscape...

The Story:
Plot information is here!

Comments

tim wright; ota; every inch of me is charred

[postictal]

[ooc: please note that the starters below have the capacity to contain potentially triggering content; please refer to the content warnings listed in my permissions post for specifics. scenario-specific starters are in the comments!]

[The mind you step into is dark, at first. As the shadows resolve into edges and the contours of a building, you'll find that the interior isn't much better. The central courtyard is overgrown with kudzu, the floor matted with leaf litter. The breezeways enclose it in a square of brick and cement floor; aside from the decrepit, obviously disused appearance, it is a generally inoffensive setting.]

[Until you venture in the building proper.]

[You might be able to recognize the halls as belonging to a hospital, stretching on and on without apparent end. But some great fire damaged these halls a long time ago. The walls are caked with a patina of dust and soot, the paint flaking and cracking, and every so often the air with reverberate with the distant crash of falling debris. Every footstep crackles with twigs and the accumulated detritus of some twenty years or so of utter disrepair.]

[The ash-blackened, soot-streaked hallways do not go on without change; they are lined with doors. Most of them are shut tight as though welded. But with a bit of prying or forcing, you might be able to claw one open.]

[Or you might find one that's been left ajar.]

childhood; every day is a fight for my life to get some self-control

[postictal]

The room you enter is small and cramped and bereft. The walls, so unlike the charcoal-burnt husk of peeling paint outside, are a pristine white, with only the presence of a small cot bolted to the ground to break the uniform monotony. There is no window.

There's only a small boy huddled on top of the cot in question. He can't be older than eight or nine; his knees are drawn up beneath his chin, and his eyes are shadowed and haunted, flitting across the corners of the room, as though tracking the presence of something that is not there. Sometimes he lifts his chin in a nod, or shakes his head, but he winces every time afterward - as though the very motion causes him incredible pain.

Inevitably, there will come a rap of knuckles on the door, and it will swing open to herald the arrival of someone clad in a white coat and bearing a clipboard.

And then the nightmares will begin.

(posting on every tim prompt) (👀 me) (self control)

[burntvideocassette]

The moment Jay steps into the hallway, he knows where he is. Just another nightmare, clearly.

(It could pass for a school.)

He's been there in person a few times, but more often through the lens of someone else's camera. The hooded man left a tape for them here. Alex brought Brian out here for a shoot. (Very funny.) Tim was a patient here.

A branch snaps underfoot, and Jay's head jerks back, expecting to see Alex or the hooded man or worse. Nothing. Just an empty hallway.

He doesn't think he's been to this part of the hospital. The doors here are still intact, but the first one Jay tries is shut so tightly Jay wonders if it warped in the fire. The next few are the same.

Jay unfolds the flip-knife (back in his pocket somehow) and runs it along the edge of the next door. He's not sure if it accomplished anything, but he can see the paint flaking along the crack. He braces his shoulder against the door and shoves against it with his full strength. One, two, and--

Jay stumbles inside, catching himself against the inside wall, which is...actually pretty pristine. There's a startling lack of bare concrete and peeling paint. No asbestos in sight.

There's a quiet sniffling in the corner.

Jay's head snaps around to look, pressing himself against the far wall, but the threat is...they're small. Just a kid. What's a kid doing here?

And then the tiny head looks up, eyes wide and frightened and horribly familiar.

:)

[postictal]

The door opens. Jay himself is almost like a shadow, flitting mothlike behind the doctor who enters. She's smiling, but it's a tad strained, and the child's focus is wholly devoted to her. He doesn't want to. He doesn't care what she wants, or how short it will take, or how it's just a routine check-up, or any of it.

He doesn't want to anymore.

"How are you doing today, Timothy?"

He doesn't answer. He drives the heel of his palm into an eyesocket, scraping away the wet film of moisture that refuses to stop leaking out. He doesn't have an answer.

"We just need to do some checking up on you today." Her voice is gentle, that soft, too-pleasant lift that he hates, trying to smooth away the anxiety that's already spiking up down his spine, prickling at his skin. "Okay?"

He tries to shake his head, but he already knows it's not really a question, and he's not really allowed to answer.

"Can you sit up on the edge of the bed for me, please?"

There's the brief tensing of tiny muscles, just for a moment. His eyes dart frantically about the contours of the room - settling on the shadow of a man who isn't tall enough to be an imaginary friend. Can he see him? Can he see something so impermanent, that doesn't really matter?

His gaze slides away again. Back to the doctor.

Slowly, he nods, and starts to comply.

[burntvideocassette]

Jay just stares at first, back pressed against the far wall.

'This was my room,' Tim had said, and now Jay's faced with what exactly what that means. No window. A doctor who is clearly trying her best to be nonthreatening, but Jay remembers that tone of voice from teachers and nurses and pediatricians of his own. She's asking nicely, but there's no room to say no. That's just how things work. Those are the rules.

He hangs back, knowing for sure that this is one of those dreams where he can't do anything but watch.

Until Tim looks straight at him.

"Hey." Jay's walking toward him now, coming up to the edge of the cot. "Hey, can you...see me?"

[ngah]

The burnt out husk of this building reminds her too much of her own home. She'd gone back, once, to see if anything could be salvaged, only to see the whole building had completely collapsed, a burnt out husk with nothing left to be saved.

Almost like this place. It's not a building that's familiar to her, but close enough that she figures she's dreaming of something related.

Until she enters a room and it's completely untouched by fire in a way no room in her small house in Waterfall was. It's small, too small to be a proper bedroom, and Undyne has no knowledge of human hospitals to draw upon and guess what this place might be.

It seems mostly like a prison cell.

There's a human inside, a human child, a haunted look in his eyes as he remains curled in on himself. Undyne tries to remember, but... no, she's never seen this child before. He's not one of the six. There's something about the appearance of a human... Though they're far less varied than monsters, Undyne will never forget the faces of the ones that gave up their SOULs for Asgore's plan.

So who is this kid, then, if not one of them?

"Who the hell are you?" she asks, forgetting to censor herself in her confusion.

Someone is at the door. Undyne whirls to see who it is, and in enters some kind of prison guard, presumably. Though they wear a doctor's coat, which throws a bit of a wrench into Undyne's concept of this place as a prison. Well, maybe prisons need doctors, too. Even prisoners get sick.

[postictal]

Tim's eyes settle upon the fish lady that enters, though he's quick to avert his gaze and hastily press the heel of one hand to his temple, trying to ward away the headache that's probably going to follow. She doesn't...look like anything he's seen before. The doctor that enters doesn't acknowledge her in the slightest, and his heart sinks. Just...Tim going crazy again. He was supposed to be doing better. He wasn't supposed to be seeing things like this not anymore.

The doctor bears a cup of water and a small plastic container, the clipboard currently pinioned between elbow and hip. The memory has scratched out their face until it's nothing more than a vaguely twitching mass of black scribbles. Everyone with a face, reduced to facelessness. Like the tall man.

"Make sure to drink all the water this time," the doctor says, holding out both cups. "You tried swallowing them dry last time, remember?"

Tim nods. He peers into the plastic cup before grimacing at the trio of white tablets and gulping them all down, chasing them with the water provided. They settle in his stomach with a taut clenching in his chest, and he has to settle down onto the cot again with his hands wrapped around his abdomen.

"How are you feeling, Timothy?"

He shakes his head, grimacing.

"I know it doesn't feel very good, but eventually we'll...we'll get it right."

[ngah]

This is... definitely weird. The kid seems to see her, but the doctor is acting like she's not there at all. What did this kid do to get locked in prison, anyway?

She isn't able to identify the pills he takes, doesn't know the first thing about medicine. He must be sick, though, and his gripping his head and, after, his stomach, causes her to assume he's in some sort of pain.

But he saw her. He saw her even though the doctor couldn't. And she can't even see the doctor, their face completely scribbled out. Undyne waves a hand in front of the doctor's faceless head, but there's no reaction.

She turns back to the kid. Timothy, they said his name was.

"So, Timothy," she tries. "What'd you do to get locked up?"

rosswood; i lost myself hitting the ground

[postictal]

[This door opens to a dense, impenetrable woodland. The shrilling of crickets punctuates the ragged breath that drags at the young boy's lungs as he runs. Every few steps he starts to splutter and cough, his tiny lungs seizing up in convulsive fits he can only ever delay, never prevent.]

[He stumbles and one hand grasps out at the trunk of the nearest tree. His fingertips scrape against the bark as he works himself upright with a quiet, panicked wheeze.]

[Behind him, a crescendo of voices and approaching footsteps draw rapidly near. The occasional bright beam of a flashlight sluices through the dark, and the child ducks behind the trunk of the tree, hands snapping over his mouth to muffle, in vain, the hoarse huff of the coughing fit struggling to burst free.]

fire; 'caure i am on fire, a crying, burning liar

[postictal]

There is, once again, a small boy sequestered in the corner of a windowless room. This time he sits on his cot cross-legged, eyes occasionally darting upward to glance at the door. It never opens.

He reaches tremblingly into the pocket of his sweatpants, drawing out from within something small and silvery. It glints in the harsh brightness of the reflective white walls. He turns it over and over in his hands - a small rectangular prism of scratched and worn metal.

It's a lighter.

The boy's eyes screw shut.

"I don't want to." The words are whispered, barely audible. He flinches as though struck before he says, louder, "I don't want to."

His voice cracks, trembling, and he buries his head in his hands as he begins to cry.

[choosetruth]

Georgia doesn't know precisely what's going on. The burnt, ruined, wreck of a former hospital had made her uncomfortable, but it's different enough from her usual nightmares that confusion had won out over fear and she hasn't screamed herself awake. Yet anyway.

She doesn't scream when she opens the door, though it's a close call. Here it is. The nightmare may have started differently but it was always going to end here, in a hospital room that's all white with no windows, where they can bleach away all evidence you even existed in seconds if they have to. Where the doctors will come and tell her that Wonderland was just a dream, something as fake as the memories they planted in her head, to give her hope and then snatch it away. It's a trick and she's still there and she'll always be there until they run out of use for her or she becomes too much trouble to keep alive and then they'll--

There's a small boy in the room.

It's enough to jar her back to the present, and that's enough for her to start noticing differences in the room. It's white like hers is, and there's a cot like she had, but it's still different. She should know. She memorized every damn inch of that holding cell. It's a different room and there's a different boy and this is.....

She doesn't like looking at the too white walls any better than she did before, but this isn't her nightmare. This is something else.

[postictal]

He's seen better days. He's gaunt, paler than usual, shoulders shuddering as they sag in utter defeat. There's something he keeps looking at, but whatever it is, it doesn't reveal itself. He trembles on the spot. He doesn't want to. He doesn't want to.

But he slides off the bed regardless, and begins to unwind the sheets from the frame of the cot, arranging them at the join between the floor and the wall farthest from the door.

His gaze skirts across the room one last time. His eyes settle on Georgia, only for a moment.

Then he blinks, and shakes himself. It isn't real. Can't look at things that aren't real.

He breathes in. His thumb presses against the lighter until the bright tongue of flame clicks to life with the soft spit of sparks.

The weight of the action holds him still for several long moments as he considers the stilling fire. His breath lurches in and out in uneven, panicked bursts until finally his eyes squeeze shut, his free hand pressing at his temple as if to ward off an incipient headache.

Does he have to?


He presses the flame to the sheets.

It doesn't take long for them to catch alight.

[choosetruth]

Shit. She takes an almost involuntary step forward, trying to--she doesn't know what, except she doesn't actually want to go into that white room even if the fire, so bright and out of place and not white, makes it more appealing.

The fact that a room that's on fire is more appealing than a white room is probably something she should worry about, but that's a problem to deal with later.

At least she can think more clearly now. She recognizes the boy now, who looks vaguely familiar but doesn't click into place until she remembers that event where they were children. This is Tim. Just as a child.

A child setting a hospital on fire. That... probably isn't good. The trouble is, judging by the fact that Tim is generally a whole lot older than this, this is a memory. Which means he'll probably survive the experience, judging from his existence as an adult, which means she doesn't have to worry about the fact she's not sure she should stop it even if she can and the fact that there's a certain part of her, an increasingly angry part, that is more than happy to see a hospital room go up in flames.

But she isn't sure enough to move away. She'll see this through. She has to.

college; i don't blame you for not wanting to stay

[postictal]

"So, whaddaya say?" There's a young man sitting across from Tim, sprawled on the carpet of what Tim modestly calls his "music room" - an otherwise quite bare room in his apartment, with only the black squares of instrument cases and the upright stand of a keyboard to deviate from the nondescript blankness of the walls.

"I can't believe you talked me into this," says Tim. He's plucking disconsolately at the stringed instrument in his hands - a banjo, for anyone who can recognize it - without much enthusiasm. "I said I'd try it. I didn't think I'd actually get the part."

"Yeah, well." Brian glances from side to side before lowering his voice as though in confidence - despite the fact that they're very obviously the only two people here. "I don't think anyone else actually tried out."

Tim snorts. "Can you blame them? With that script..."

"Hey," says Brian, leaning back again, "you don't have to. Just figured it might be a nice way to branch out, y'know? I know Alex. We hang."

"God knows why."

Brian slings an empty beer can at Tim's head. It bounces off his skull with an appropriately hollow thunk. Tim's lips twitch in something that almost approximates a smile, and Brian grins.

"There's worse ways to make your acting debut," he says, teasing. Tim shakes his head.

But his mind's already made up.

[burntvideocassette]

Jay knows something's off the second he steps through the door. He feels numb, not emotionally but physically, even less "real" than he was in the last room.

When he takes in his surroundings, he realizes why.

He wouldn't be just another hallucination here; there's a nonzero chance he'd be recognized. And whatever this place is, dream or memory or time travel or whatever, seems like it doesn't want that to happen.

Physical form or no physical form, the sight of Tim's music room (which he's only ever seen on tapes) and Brian, whole and alive and as much of a well-meaning goofball as Jay remembers from the few times they talked, is enough to constrict Jay's throat with an unexpected wave of nostalgia.

Maybe Jay could've hung out with them for real, if things hadn't gone to hell.

[postictal]

He doesn't show up at all, really - no more or less a voyeur than he was in a past fraught with tapes, with snippets of memory caught on film and preserved for scrutiny from someone who couldn't remember the cheerful camaraderie of a far, far easier time.

"You know," says Brian, slowly, his eyes lighting up with the kind of spark that would indicate he's getting a hell of an idea. "I bet Alex hasn't got any clue what to do with the soundtrack."

"What d'you - "

"I mean that he's gonna need a composer." He forms one hand into a fingergun, smirking. "Right up your fuckin' alley, dude."

"I can't even read music."

"Listen to this guy." Brian jerks his chin to indicate the black squares of instrument cases liberally festooning every corner of the room. "What d'you call this, then? Hoarding?"

Tim shrugs helplessly. "'S a hobby."

"Says the guy studying music theory."

hallucinations; i tried to scream and made no sound

[postictal]

Run!

[The word echoes off the confines of the tunnel, the word rebounding with the cacophony of retching coughs. There's something drawing...near. Its face is white and blank, and It looks as though It might be clad in a crisp black suit. But the way It stands, the way Its limbs stretch on and on, like It distends the space around It - there's no way it can be human.]

[Tim lies, gasping, on the floor of the tunnel, his shirt caked with dust. He can't breathe, he can barely see, and the closer It gets the more his head begins to throb with a concentrated agony.]

[Closer - ]

[Closer - ]

[It reaches for him - ]

hallucinations

[mypartnerintime]

Max knows by now how much curiosity kills in Wonderland- but she's nothing if not nosy. Soon enough the charred hallways of the ruined hospital start to seem too quiet, too confusing. She wanders in what feels like circles, seeing the same burned walls and doors over and over again.

The doors start to look inviting.

If only because there doesn't seem to be any other way out. And that one, there, slightly ajar, with fresher air on the other side...

She nudges it open and steps through, fist clenched around the handle-

and is greeted by something terrible.

Her mouth drops, and she'd scream if not for the fact that all breath seems to have left her lungs. It's black- and huge, limbs stretching, disfigured, like a person stretched into an alien form- And Max freezes in disgust, horror-

Until she finally notices Tim lying beneath the thing. She gulps down the tightness of he throat and gasps, "Tim!", caught somewhere between rushing forward to help and being unable to move. A wave of something like nausea floods through her and she staggers.

[postictal]

It doesn't move - not in any easily recognizable fashion. It doesn't advance step for step. It does not glide forward like some half-formed wraith. It draws closer, inexplicably, between blinks, between coughing fits, in the minuscule degrees of time when your eyes flicker or when your attention coasts to the man convulsing on the dust-soaked floor.

Until It's leering mere feet away, and the sheer, overwhelming malice of Its power radiates like the most powerful heat wave. Your lungs will bubble and your head will buzz. Your limbs will tingle with static, your brain a screaming haze of agony as the electrical currents begin to swim beneath the bright burn of Something Else.

That's when the world tilts.

The image of the tunnel dissipates.

Water abruptly closes over Tim's head - and the head of his uninvited guest. His arms scythe blindly through the water, trying to buoy himself up, but to no avail. He can't scream. He can't think. A burst of silvery bubbles erupt from between parted lips, fading into the murky brown.

feed me the hell

[normandysbest]

[Her steps through the hospital have been practiced, careful. She knows this is an intrusion, and despite not understanding what's happening- there was no event announcement, no Wonderland trick- she knows this isn't real, not technically. But still, the instinct is there; someone's in trouble, somewhere. There are people she wants to protect. Moreso, as terrible as it sounds, she knows there's plenty of reasons to be suspicious of people here, ever since Alex figured out about the mole for the Queen of Hearts, and... there's always a chance to do some reconnaissance. Figure out what may or may not be lurking somewhere.

Perhaps, she shouldn't have asked for that.

She's caught immediately, when she opens the door, in a whirlwind of panic between the sight she's seeing, but it's overwhelmed quickly by Tim on the ground, and she moves, instinctively, reaching for a gun that isn't there and coming up empty, caught between her desire to help him and an absolute panic of something locking herself in place.]

Tim!

:)

[postictal]

[Either he doesn't hear her, or he's too far gone to react. He's on his back, his lungs working double time to keep him breathing through all the dust and the hot sweep of static jittering in his lungs, in his limbs, locking his muscles into place.]

[There's something watching.]

[It turns Its gaze upon her, or something close enough to it - because upon closer inspection, it will become clear that It doesn't have a gaze. It doesn't have a face at all. It does not need to possess a pair of eyes to look upon Shepard with a profound and eternal and unyielding malice infused in every atom of the air in this dusty, cloudy, arid tunnel.]

[The feed on the camera strapped to Tim's chest screams with static. The flayed barbed wire of his nerves have been stoked in gasoline; every movement sends another throbbing current of absolute agony torquing down each neuron in a synaptic, convulsive blaze.]

[Soon, Shepard will start to feel it too.]

[She'll feel it in her brain. In her skull. She'll feel it in her nerves.]

[She'll feel it in every piece of hardware in her body.]

[ complete ]
[ unending ]

[ anguish ]

[It is the very worst migraine multiplied a thousandfold. It is the sensation of something sinking invisible fingers into your molecules and carding through each one. It is something pulling you apart, piece by piece, and inspecting each fragment in turn - ]

[Before It sets them all on fire.]

failure; i never should've let myself get attached

[postictal]

A man steps forward with a tremor in his voice, the camera wobbling in his grip. You can't see his face; the memory looks as though it's being viewed through a camcorder, and it trembles unsteadily.

Alex?

The bang that echoes off the walls of the abandoned school is like a punch to the gut, and there's a muffled, staggered cry, and the camera swings away. There's the patter of footsteps, the frantic tattoo of shoes against cement, and the slam of a door. The memory splinters into a stream of scarlet.

A man lies half-propped against a kitchen island. The domesticity of the setting is almost absurd, when contrasted with the carpeting of crackling paper laid out beneath him. Black scribbles lash across the pages as though written in charcoal, snarling, silent indictments of YOUR FAULT.

The man's hand is clasped over his abdomen, where the wet red still runs out from his fingertips and down the black of his windbreaker. His complexion is silent, and he sits deathly still.

In the corner of the room, Tim trembles.

[uncaging]

Anyone with any sense would run away as far as they could when they heard the bang. Something was wrong here - something was dangerous. Elizabeth, however, runs straight toward the noise, scared that someone could be hurt. And someone was, not just hurt but beyond saving. She bends down, places her fingers on Alex's pulse point and knows it's hopeless to try to revive him.

She's about to turn and leave when she catches Tim in the corner of her eye, and she gasps as she realises it's him. Running over to him, she crouches in front of him, bringing a hand up to place gently on his shoulder.

"It's all right. You're going to be okay."

[postictal]

The shape of the body flickers, as though the frames are caught in reverse. A man in a brown cap, his shut eyes slightly wide-set - a man with a ragged patch of stubble, face darkened with bruises, a sliver of a knife jammed into his throat - a man clad in a beige hoodie, slumped against the wall with his head dropped down over his chest.

The three unfurl in a bright triptych, interchangeable, and beneath every one of them, the pages declare the truth of the reason they're any of them there. Any of them, dead.

YOUR FAULT.

A hand settles on his shoulder, but Tim doesn't seem to notice. His expression is contorted, his hands compressing into fists as they drive down over the crackle of paper.

"Jay...?"

The word breaks, the world interlaced with static as the three of them flicker in and out, and in and out. Jay - Alex - Brian.

Jay. Alex. Brian.

lies; and when you've forgotten who i am it just feels i'm nobody at all

[postictal]

[In the far back of the hospital of Tim's mind, there's a battered filing cabinet. Its label is little more than an all-caps warning scrawled in black, written down the middle of each drawer:]
LIES
[The drawers are jammed, but with enough brute force, they'll open sure enough.]

[Some folders are labeled. The bottommost drawer in particular is rife with these. BRIAN, reads one. TOTHEARK, reads another. JESSICA, reads a third. JAY, a fourth.]

[Some stretch even further. The middle and top drawers have other labels, other secrets, beneath the overarching category of Wonderland. GEORGE. MAX. ZACHARIE. SANS. To name but a few.]

[...there are many more.]

[There are so, so many more.]

[You really could take your pick.]