The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
strangerpeople) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
15strangers2020-02-09 12:08 pm
strangerpeople) wrote in 15strangers2020-02-09 12:08 pm
W̧E̷E̡̕K ͡3̴
She offered you something you hadn't ever expected: hope.
"I think I've pinpointed where this blight has come from, and how it became so virulent. You were among the first whose crop was infected-I wish to speak to you personally about it."
You meet in a car, and drive to an isolated road. She will not take any chance to speak publicly about it-not yet. She doesn't want to release the information until she is certain. But she felt honor-bound to explain to you, given your own importance in her research. You hadn't known she had sampled your dead and dying grapes, but she did.
"This blight..." She opens a folder, showing you the photos. "Started with a gopher, several years ago. I know, it sounds insane. This disease should only affect certain animal species. But one day, it jumped into vines...the original gopher died a long time ago. But not before it had eaten an entire cluster of grapes in one swallow. It ended up scratching itself on the trellis of the grapevine as it choked to death. Its blood, its body decayed, and helped to water and fertilize that strain of grapes the next year or so, and...well, the seeds from those buds that resulted were sent out to every farm in the area. Then, to every farm in the country, different regions..."
That sounded insane. This woman's theory sounded utterly bonkers. But you can't dismiss it out of hand-you have no better answer.
Before you can say anything more, the woman's phone rings. She answers, and you see her face turn white. You don't have to guess why.
Before, the theoretical gopher had infected the grapes with the blight.
Now, the blight had claimed its first human victim.
-
[The morning hurts. It hurts to know that, even dead, there was that final, terrible moment for the Embarrassing and the Nagging. It must hurt more to know that this will continue, and that there is something out there that is invested in ensuring each and every last one of the Strangers are, if not dead, than broken.
And then, there is IT. IT is the enemy, it seems. But...what is IT? Is IT the one truly responsible? How?
As you try to think on it, you remember your truths, and suddenly, you realize, another has changed:
[That you would. Can you? You know that, whatever your answer, you must find a way to the truth. The alternative is too horrible to even contemplate-if it is even possible to be comprehended. After all-if what you saw is what happens to the dead and condemned, what will become of the living at the hands of the terrible, unknown IT who is your jailer?
Hope that you do not have to find out. Hope there is an answer in the new floor that has opened up in the Building. Otherwise...otherwise you really are doomed.
There are 13 strangers in this place.]
cw: brief existential pain
An icy cold like he's never felt tears through him, and just before he finds himself being ripped apart by the blackness and static...he's stumbling through his front door and into the outside.
Damnit.]
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1. Holy mother of fuck, that's a new kind of cold.
2. Whatever the hell it was that... carried out the "execution", there's more of it/those out there in the cold, isn't there?
3. It really did drop him at the assigned house, not number twelve.
Did that little trip do anything to his pyrex dish of pills, by the way?]
no subject
did...did they get eaten!?]no subject
Almost all of the remaining pills get poured into a bowl in House Seven's kitchen, leaving just ten in the lidded dish. This is really, really going to suck - and suck any warmth out of him, he's pretty sure, so it's best to be ready. He drags a couple of blankets out of the bedroom and sets them just inside the front door. If there's a percentage being taken, he'll be able to tell. He isn't sure if there'll be any way to tell if it's significant or not, but...
Once more unto the breach, and all that. This time he just walks into the wall-that-isn't-a-wall, both arms holding the container against his chest. There's no way the lid can slip open, this way.]
no subject
The blackness is terrible, and seems alive. More than alive. Jonathan might think of Dracula as the darkness threatens to tear him apart, to render him colder and less then nothing. This power is like Dracula, but deeper, darker. Stronger and primal. It's not exact, but if there was such a thing as a power of evil incarnate,like Dracula claims to be?
Well. Congrats, Jonathan. You found it.
Seconds later Jonathan is back on his porch, stumbling out with the feeling of frost in his hair. The lid of the container is not open, and no pills are missing.
However, the lid is scratched up with deeply-embedded gouges, as if a feral animal tried to rend it asunder.]
no subject
[He falls into the house, when he tries to walk through the door. It puts him closer to the blankets, at least, so he can wrap up and curl into a ball on the floor, staring at the lid where it landed. What the hell can gouge tempered glass without shattering it!?
He isn't letting himself think about Dracula. He isn't thinking about hands with claws, isn't thinking about his father's scars, isn't thinking about that oppressive presence. If he tells himself not to think about that, it doesn't count as thinking about it.
He isn't going to try again - not right now. As he's pulling himself back together - was the dish the only thing damaged, or are there marks on his arms the feeling of cold kept him from noticing?]
no subject