+ 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

[mypartnerintime]

Max struggles to her feet, adrenaline pouring through her, just about the only thing keeping her standing. For a moment she thinks she has blacked out, and she vaguely hopes it's true; then things would be over. And as scared as she is of dying, at least she'll wake up in a day, lungs clear, back in Wonderland.

But no. It's... nighttime? And there's Tim, convulsing, shaking. She struggles toward him, staggering forward more than walking. "T-Tim..." Her breath shakes as she moves, and her head still throbs from when she tried to rewind.

Now they're in a different place, Tim coughing out blood, and she tries again. "Tim-..." But it's a distracted, pitiful attempt to call out, in a voice drowned in fear. Too much of her attention is taken up by the lingering image of that thing burned into her mind's eye.

And then water, again- she wants to panic, she desperately wants to flail and scream, but here body's too tired, too worn and damaged. And that helps somehow. She twists and struggles, but more calmly. She only swallows water instead of breathing it in. Darkness edges into her vision insistently, as though waiting for her to give in, but she fights back.

[postictal]

The world swims too swiftly for anyone to find a purchase. The memory had screamed down the contours of Tim's spine the first time, and it blazes just as impossibly now - the oil slick of gasoline running down his nervous system, set alight by a thing without a face, that thing that Alex so feared and couldn't escape, no matter how desperately he tried.

Max once said there was nothing here.

Was she wrong?

The world blinks once more. It's woodland again, trees soot-black and standing up straight like the bars of a jail cell. Tim claws at the leaf mulch desperately for purchase as something starts to drag him away. For a hair of a second, his terrified gaze lights on Max -

(Can he see?)

And then he screams.

The sound carries as he's dragged, torn through the forest clipped with static, into something dark and bristling.

Hope this is okay!

[mypartnerintime]

Standing on solid ground again- Max's knees buckle once more with the sudden shift, and she stumbles forward, arms outstretched to catch herself. Tim's so close, he's right there, she only has to keep to her feet a few moments longer, fight back the creeping dark of unconsciousness...

But as she gets closer she feels it, in the dark behind Tim- feels a presence there, a Thing, somehow behind Tim and yet looming over Max, too. As though It's not in some physical location now, but It's wherever she is... following her in her mind...

Part of her wants to run. Part of her wants to make sure Tim's okay. But she knows it's all irrelevant at this point. Without her rewind, what can she do? She can't talk her way out of this, probably couldn't even get away if she tried...

The dark closes in. She slips and falls, into silence and painless black, as she finally stops fighting, exhausted. The last thing she sees is Tim reaching forward, panicked eyes gazing in her direction as though he can see her... trying to find something to grab, to fight It's pull...

The last thing she feels is that suffocating presence closing in around her. Something unknowable and forever strange.

And then, nothing.

it's absolutely okay beCAUSE I THINK THAT WRAPS IT

[postictal]

ITS OK SHE WASNT PLANNING ON BEING HAPPY EVER ANYWAY

[mypartnerintime]