Event № 1 : January 2024

[silentspringmods]

Event № 1 : January 2024
Part I; Chapter 2. Silence tells me secretly everything

universe/setting information, role assignment, and FAQs

I. A Thought Is Haunting Me

January 1st.

CWs: nonconsensual memshare/receiving of memories, flashbacks to combat zone and injury, blood, hearing loss/burst eardrum, panic attacks.

Just in time for New Year's Eve, the town square that held a magnificently decorated 15-foot Christmas tree last week now has a glittering silver ball to rival New York's own waiting atop a flagpole rooted in the same spot. Strings of lanterns illuminate the snowy brick courtyard, lined with stands offering hot cocoa, ciders, and various warm snacks, or perhaps characters are more interested in obtaining a pair or two of silly New Year's glasses that allow them to look through the numerals 1961. Eventually, though, all goes quiet for the exciting countdown.

'Five... four... three... two... one!

The ball drops, and confetti streams down onto the square (and the people standing in it!) as the Sweetwater High School Marching Band picks up a jaunty rendition of the New Year's classic Auld Lang Syne—but characters will likely find themselves distracted by the dark spots that appear in their fields of vision, gradually expanding until everything is eclipsed entirely by soft blackness. They feel less and less of the world around their bodies, numbness starting at their fingertips and toes and creeping up their extremities until they feel touchless, floating, completely absent of sensation. Then something replaces it: fragments, or perhaps all of what follows.

The world flashes black, then returns, hazy and doubled, half obscured by smoke as you lie face down on the hard, rocky earth. One ear shrieks, a whine that grows higher and higher. Hot blood streams down the other earlobe and drips onto your neck, washing off sweat and grime as it trickles toward your collar. Pain slices through what you think must be your eardrum like a jackknife shoved into your skull. You cough, throat burning, ribs protesting the movement. A coppery taste, a warmth, fills your mouth. You check with your tongue and all of your teeth are there; the blood is coming from your broken lip. The hair on top of your head feels hot and wet. You know your cheek is scraped open from the gritty sting taking up most of your face.

The doubled image of a medic gets into your face, his lips silently moving. You try to shake your head, to communicate that you can’t hear him over the shriek of your own tinnitus, but your neck is too stiff. Your brain slams against your skull and your head feels like it’s been hit with a brick. Blood drips off of your brow and into your eye.

The medic squeezes your shoulder and pushes off, scrambling across the debris until he disappears in the gray-brown smoke. There’s a moment of irrational fear: he’s leaving you here to die. You’re hit somewhere and you’re last in triage. You’ve heard about soldiers not feeling the gunshot until much later. When he and his buddy come back with a stretcher, surprise mingles with the dread of being lifted.

You shut your eyes tightly, trying to recalibrate your vision, but it still swims with the pitch and yaw of the rocky earth beneath you. When you open it, he’s trying to look into your eyes, hand on your shoulders, his lips finally moving in a pattern you recognize: Going home. Going home.

Going home.

You close your eyes.

*

You stare at a long tawny finger as you wind it into the red plasticized cord of the phone set, doing nothing when it begins to throb against its tethers, the single physical sensation anchoring you in reality.

“Listen to me. I need you to be calm and handle this. Someone will be there in thirty minutes, Ron. You need to keep it under control until then or we’re going to be in a world of shit you can’t even imagine—Put up roadblocks. Say a convict got loose. I don’t care. Do what you have to. Don’t call me unless it’s resolved or someone’s fucking dying, Ron, do you understand me?”

*

The door opens as the emergency light comes on, flickering. The room fills with the suffocating stench of diesel. A candystriper’s golden-brown hands wrap around your thin wrists, pulling you as she rocks back on the heels of her wet tennis shoes with all of her might. Tears stream down her cheeks, strands of relaxed hair hanging in her eyes. She chokes her words out around sobs of her own, eyes wild with terror, screaming: Miss Ruby, you have to get up! You have to get up, Miss Ruby! But your legs won't move. Your breaths shudder ragged in the air just like the volunteer's.

At 12:01, characters return to consciousness: but there are little changes, twinges that make this a bit realer than a dream. Perhaps their index finger twinges as blood returns to it and the impressions a tight phone cord left on their skin fade, or maybe they find themselves wiping a few droplets of blood from the corner of their jaw. Perhaps their ears ring, gradually giving way to clearer sound—or maybe they awake sitting on the ground with their arms around their bent knees, face wet with tears, overcome with a raw panic unlike anything they’ve ever felt. How very odd.

Notes:
—Characters can experience all of the memories, or players can pick and choose.
—Characters do not have to be in the square to receive the memories.

II. In the Valley of the Dolls We Sleep

January 13-15th.

CWs: violence, entrapment, hypnosis, living mannequins, dismemberment.


'New year, new you!' the cheery saleswoman on the radio and television ads for the local two-story department store proclaims ad-nauseam, becoming more and more of a regular guest in characters' homes as time marches on toward the 15th of the New Year. There are great sales to be had, and would you look at that, characters have a few gift cards to this very store in their respective purses and wallets! Over time, the voice of the young woman in the advertisement almost seems to grow more insistent, even though the same ad plays every time: surely it's just familiarity altering one's perception of her voice, right?

On the morning of the 13th, characters wake up to the sound of every radio and television set in the house turned on and blaring the ad. The saleswoman reminds them that time's running out, and that the sales will only last for another 48 hours before they're gone. If characters can't hear, they only make it as far as the living room before the television screen comes into view, the same message scrolling across the bottom of the screen in large close-captioning... even if they haven't turned it on. This time, something feels different, and characters find themselves compelled as though by a supernatural force to go check out the sales being advertised.

Characters may notice once they're inside of the building that it's only new arrivals here: the townspeople of Sweetwater seem to have already done their shopping! Fortunately, there are still some great items left. It may be when looking at that cashmere sweater or a nice pair of snowshoes that characters catch a tiny flicker of movement out of the corner of their eye: but when they turn in that direction, there's nothing except a faint, nagging sense that something's not right. It happens again as they pass through the store—and then, with no warning, the faceless, eyeless mannequins throughout the store burst into motion at the same time as the sales associates collapse to the floor unconscious, attacking characters with inhuman strength and whatever items they have at their disposal with the intent of bludgeoning them to death.

If characters try to escape from the way they came, they will find that the automatic doors and fire doors are all locked as though from the outside. The windows cannot be opened or broken, nor can the glass of the doors—they're trapped here. Really, truly trapped.

To make matters worse, the mannequins, unlike the salesman, seem truly impervious to... everything. Guns can pierce them, but they have no blood to lose or brain to damage. They can be dismembered, but they're strong, and hard to pull apart; even if a mannequin's head is removed, the body will still function. Characters have one advantage, however: the mannequins are not as intelligent as human beings, and seem to mostly lack object permanence. If characters can stay silent and out of sight after finding somewhere to hide, the mannequins will drop their pursuit after about fifteen minutes of trying to get to them.

The mannequins stay alive for 48 hours, and the doors stay locked for the same amount of time. Characters who do not find a way to sleep risk sleep deprivation symptoms similar to the ones detailed in the explanation of modes of torture in Sweetwater, and will be slower, weaker, and less able to fight off or escape from the mannequins. 48 hours is also a very long time to go without water, which can only be obtained from the sinks in the bathrooms... both of which feature nicely dressed mannequins in one corner.

Notes:
— The departments of the store are as follows:

- Women's Clothing
- Men's Clothing
- Children's Clothing
- Furs
- Baby/young child supplies
- Home appliances
- Kitchen
- Decor
- Furniture
- Toys
- Hunting, Fishing, and Outdoors (hunting-style guns, ammunition, snowshoes, fishing rods, flies/fly-tying equipment, dog beds, hunting blinds)
- Tools ( Limited. There aren't any electric saws or more specialized tools like bolt cutters to be found, but simpler "Little Joey picked this out for you, Dad!" wrench/screwdriver sets, branch loppers, lawnmowers, snowblowers, etc. - in general assume that there aren't any power tools player characters can use to bulldoze the mannequins with, but there might be some tools that could help with other things... )
- Fine Jewelry/Watches
- Ladies' Gloves

— Deaf characters and characters who wear earplugs to bed will be awoken by their spouse moving, or will randomly wake up even though they can't hear the ad.
— Players who wish to opt out can say that their character simply slept through it and woke up after the doors to the department store had already locked.
— The mannequin limbs are inert after they've been removed, but the mannequins can still operate without a head.
— Characters may try to investigate at the risk of leaving cover. If a character is able to get close enough to the service desk on the second floor, they may also notice that one of the customer service associates, a teenage girl, lies slumped over the counter as opposed to on the floor with her coworkers, an unlabeled, recently installed button depressed beneath her shoulder—she was leaning forward before she lost consciousness. If her body is moved, the button stays anchored in place. If characters check it again, hours later, they'll notice that it can't be depressed or lifted, but seems a little higher—almost as if it takes a set amount of time to return to resting.

III. Drill it in like J. Paul Getty

Throughout January.

CWs: torture, non-fatal electrical shock, restraints, medical/psychiatric abuse, nonconsensual drug administration, altered states of consciousness, needles/injections, gaslighting, brainwashing, sleep deprivation torture, antipsychotics overdose, smoking.

Should characters discuss the horrors of the month on the network, over the telephone, or in places where townspeople can hear, they’ll face the consequences. They go to bed the night of the offense as usual—and come into consciousness in a dark room, a basement of some sort, bound to a chair with leather restraints buckled onto their wrists, their ankles. A leather strap runs across their chest, holding it to the back of the hard wooden chair they’re bound to. A few feet away, the static electricity of a television box provides some measure of light as noisy waves ripple across the screen.

Upon further examination, there’s one more thing on characters’ left wrists, directly north of the leather straps holding it to the armrest: a set of electrodes and thin wires that run down and across the room.

“You’re awake. Good morning.” None other than the town’s private practice doctor, Norman Pollock, greets them, with the same matter of fact tone he’d use during a standard physical exam. “You seem to have lost sight of what makes Sweetwater so special, so we’re going to watch some videos, get your head on straight. We can’t have this kind of subversive behavior when the country’s already under attack, Sweetheart.”

He presses a button on the television remote—which characters might notice has a second, less refined one taped to its side—and a program comes on: What Communism Will Take From Us.

For the next 36 hours, the hour-long video plays on repeat, showing idyllic scenes right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, detailing the joys of the American way of life, emphasizing all of the ways subversive thoughts and actions undermine it, and how they hold the door open for the Red Menace. This is what’s at stake, what little towns like Sweetwater, Maryland have to use. Norman sits in a chair nearby, smoking cigarettes, reading issues of the New England Journal of Medicine, the remote never leaving his hand. The moment characters’ eyes close for longer than a single blink, the electrodes on their wrist deliver a nasty shock to help them wake up, growing in intensity with every additional offense. His never do for longer than a regular old blink.

By the end of the 36 hours, characters can expect reality to begin to blur at the edges, and may be experiencing auditory hallucinations, paranoia, and their minds wandering in ways they haven’t before. At 36 hours of sleep deprivation, the body cries out for it, desperate to rest. Maybe they erupt into hysterical laughter, or weep uncontrollably, or panic. Norman is unphased by all of it.

If characters try to fight back, or prove too argumentative and unwilling to learn, Norman will produce a glass syringe and draw up a thick fluid from a dark glass bottle, which, if characters have the necessary visual acuity to see, reads haloperidol. He jams the needle into their gluteus and injects; within 10 minutes, characters will feel very, very sedate, almost catatonic in their stupor. Effects vary from person to person, but it is not a pleasant experience: in addition to the deadness it brings on, hearts race and mouths go dry. It gets harder to swallow, or maybe a character’s vision begins to blur. The limbs contract in fits and jerks in the immediate and for the week the drug lasts. The face twitches uncontrollably, muscles ache in their rigid stiffness, and it becomes hard to stay upright throughout the week as the drug interferes with the character’s balance, making them dizzy and confused.

THE TOE TAG
If characters fight Norman, however, they may find that he backs against the nearby metal filing cabinet–knocking loose a piece of paper hanging from a half-open drawer when he does. It’s recognizable as a photocopy of a toe tag, the kind affixed to corpses in a morgue, but characters have seconds before their vision doubles and blurs too much for it to remain readable. Characters who are injected with haloperidol for subversion, either for talking about the murder or a different offense, may comment to the event post under the designated mod comment to take a shot at reading the tag. Remember, though, it’s probably best not to advertise that they saw anything out of the ordinary, or to even mention what happened to them, on a publicly visible communications channel…

They wake up in their own bed shortly after losing consciousness, and spend the next week corpselike.

IV. It's Freezing and I Am Watching You Shovel Snow

January 7th onwards.

It's a cold winter for Maryland, characters will hear their neighbors complain, and within a few days of the New Year they have reason enough to complain too: the snowstorm everyone's been talking about in the neighborhood clubs comes on the 7th of January, dumping a foot and a half of snow. Better grab that snow shovel, or find someone to help you if you can't! A snowstorm like this takes multiple visits outdoors to keep up with, so maybe now would be a good time to practice divvying up responsibilities with characters' new spouses or children—or for bachelors to seek out the help of a neighbor. Characters may also have to deal with a power outage lasting up to 14 hours—better visit a house that has power if they need anything, but at least this is the kind of experience that brings a parent and child or a new couple or even two members of the same community closer. At least in theory.

It’s not all near-death experiences, psychological torture, and power outages, though! Characters who find themselves in need of some R&R will be pleased to know that the local fire department has tested the municipal park’s pond and found the ice is now suitably thick for ice skating. Characters will find lace-up leather ice skates in their size hanging from their tied-together laces in the garage, though this probably isn’t the best way to learn to skate if they haven’t before, given the lack of rail to hold on to–unless they have a friend to help them balance?

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Comments

Re: drill it in... (*borat voice* my wiiiiife)

[tedandroses]

Teddy is frowning at the neck of the guitar. Something about the placement of her pinky finger and her third finger makes their hand want to spasm, the way they are right now, every time they try. They blink, setting one finger down at a time as though spelling a word out. It's hard to concentrate actively, much less stay aware of other things the way they normally would; Teddy doesn't even notice when Wrench leans on the archway between the living room and the hall for a moment, watching: despite him taking up a good most of the height, a solid diagonal.

And then he stamps, loud, and they jump, their whole body going tense and jerky. Their arms want to snap up in front of themself, hands trying to clench in some half-protective, half-fight instinct, and they half-fumble the guitar before they're able to clench their hands around it. "Jesus fuck," they say, setting it down on top of its case, and try to slow their heart down. It doesn't really care what they think.

They look back up, a little sullenly. It is good that it's Wrench: for half a second they thought someone had come back for them. It's also shitty that Wrench made them think someone had come back for them, and is this a thing he does, and also, does he have any idea how fucking big he is? Teddy's not with it enough to even do anything with the thoughts but let them happen.

They furrow their brow at his hands, the confused, upset draw together of his expression, trying to understand, blinking. It's not even a hard sentence, it's like -- it's like after some unaware seizures, when they know they know a word but they can't get it from their brain to their mouth.

Teddy shakes her head, wearily, and signs repeat with a face and a sigh. Her hands are shaking, a constant, Parkinsonian tremor that goes away occasionally if she focuses hard and tenses, or if she relaxes enough to sleep; but in those states, the jerks sometimes just become larger: more space between them but more aggressive. -- slow? .

It strikes them abruptly that it feels a little weird. They haven't signed much in almost a week, between the mall, and being at city hall, and then that...place. They haven't seen each other much at all; they've talked a little crossing paths, but just small talk. They wince and, hoping he'll get it, put a flat palm to their chest, please -- creating a smooth circle might be easy, who knows, but it feels overwhelming, exhausting, most things do but especially movement -- and then they fold it into a fist, repeating the word over top. I'm sorry.

When he asks again, slower and clearer, if maybe a little emphatic, she takes a breath. That was sort of what she assumed the gist was, but it's so hard for her to think.

...Does she know any signs that apply here?

There's a real part of Teddy that just wants to sign drugs and leave it, the way Wrench alludes to working but won't say what he did (which leaves like, four possibilities, maybe ten or twelve if they get inventive). There are a couple of reasons that's not happening; primary among them that they don't know the sign for drugs (except by fingerspelling which sounds very hard right now and also somewhat less funny, if it was a good joke to start with, which it isn't actually).

Teddy chews on their lip for a second and then jerks their head toward the couch, shifting their eyes away from his without quite meaning to, anxious. Come here. Their notebook is on the coffee table, and writing's going to suck but it might be better anyway.

They reach forward for it and the pen, to steady themselves and to try and clear their head: then they open to the next blank page, ahead of him getting closer. They write, slowly, in the middle of the page, like a title. It feels like they're watching a movie, peering over their own shoulder, breath held for the big reveal: as though writing it out makes it real.

Teddy goes over the first word a few times, making it blocky and bold.

THEY
took me.

[wwrench]

Wrench is used to inspiring a reflexive sort of startle in people. So used to it, in fact, that it's hard to take offense. Something passes through the edges of his expression — a quirk of his lips, like he wonders what Teddy thinks he's going to do to them — and then it's gone. It's funny; he's never exactly taken pleasure in intimidation the way he sometimes thinks Numbers does, even though of the two of them Wrench feels far more able to unconsciously wield that power. He wonders if his partner thinks the same. What would Numbers be like if he were the mountain of a man instead?

He's almost equally as used to being asked to repeat himself, and that he does without so much as a blink of annoyance. Wrench wants to be understood, of course. He's frustrated at a situation that he can't comprehend and the feeling that the person he's living with is more a stranger to him now than when they woke up next to each other some weeks back. But he doesn't fault Teddy for her lack of fluency, so he does slow down and really try to ensure that every word lands. Usually, he'd judge by the light of recognition in someone's eyes, but looking at theirs now it's hard to tell what's actually getting through.

When they do finally usher him to the couch Wrench perches on the end, considerate of the instrument that's captivated the near-entirety of Teddy's attention since he first walked into their home and found her sitting here like a specter. He leans forward, watching her write and re-write the one word that needs the most clarification, that tells him nothing except to be wary. Wary of who, though?

Wrench grabs the pen and circles the first word three times in a quick, looping circle. Who? he signs, almost whistling with the intensity of his exhale between pursed lips. Who took you?

cw for mild paranoia(is it?) and post-kidnapping trauma; selfblame; electric burn description

[tedandroses]

Teddy can tell he’s giving both them and -- their guitar, actually! -- a little room. With how they’re feeling between the startle and just — everything that happened - it’s unexpectedly good to be granted it.
It reminds Teddy, though, cutting solid through the fog, that at no point have they actually felt unsafe around Wrench -- barring just now, and that was as much the noise, and the spectres of the days before. More often the opposite, and it could easily not be that way.

Also: it’s not convenient, as much as it's careful. Now that their guitar is laid flat, Teddy carefully nudges the whole thing, case-and-instrument-tiered-cake, to the right: so Wrench can move over, so they can shift in to let him see and annotate. When he circles the word, Teddy tries to think of how to explain, pursing their lips, and gestures widely at the house or maybe the whole surrounding neighborhood in a sort of demonstration.

There's an us here and a them, in Teddy's mind. Everyone new to the town, and then the townies -- the neighbors, the residents. People who think -- or are willing to pretend -- that the two of them have always lived here, or at least, for some time. The ones who want houses like this with lawns neatly trimmed to the centimeter of HOA rules; no real, non-decorative trees or wild animals to speak of; cocktail parties and new appliances.

Who believe in the pictures on the wall, like the one her gesture sort of ends at.
She likes it probably the most of the fake pictures, because there's a story there -- she's laughing, her actual open-grin laugh that takes up half her face, not pretty-for-the-camera; there's motion blur at Wrench's edges, like he's ducked too slow into a timed photo, and he hasn't quite reached where she's sitting on the hood of the car, so instead he's just posing, arms crossed, like he meant to do that.
It's cute: it looks almost like it could be real.
She hates it, even more than she likes it, because it looks like it could be real. This place didn't just stick them in frames: it somehow made them into puppets in this weird play.

That's why it's everyone. That's why it's They. Whatever the hell this is, even if it is the 60s, people here still have to know this is all wrong. That something's going on. But they like their nice houses and they're afraid of -- something. Communism. The doctor. Whatever bigger thing this is. So they shut up.

That and the fact that Teddy went to bed and woke up in a basement, which is more important to tell Wrench.

The thoughts are all a mess, prexistent, in their head -- it might be half a moment or it could be minutes of thinking -- except for that last. Right. Focus. There was a someone more than anyone else.

doctor, Teddy writes, taking the time to make their print as neat as possible, despite their shaky hands. Then, with a sudden thought, they turn to the back of the couch, where there's a console table on which they've set their evening medication: it's easier to take it down here. That way, they'll remember no matter when they want to go to bed.

There it is. On the upper right of the label stuck onto the amber bottle. Next to a little not-quite-cursive blue pre-printed Dr, the name Pollock typed out incongruously above her proper prescription for zonisamide. She turns the bottle toward Wrench, and taps next to his name.

It reminds Teddy that in -- Jesus. A handful of days -- they're going to have to refill this medication. Prescribed to them by the person who strapped them to a chair and drugged them. If they ever have to go to a doctor...

They shiver, almost convulsively, their teeth chattering a little, and it's not, they're pretty sure, the drugs. I looked up information. Just records they scribble, this time just trying to get it out. I was here
They sign "here" as well, insistent, turning to look up at Wrench, guilty and fearful of everything that implies. Someone had to get in without anyone -- without Scout -- noticing, or at least ...without anyone remembering they noticed.
Had they done something to Scout and Wrench? Could they come back at any time?
If Teddy hadn't dug around, would they not be able to get in?

They turn back, writing, I woke up -- ??? Basement. Strapped down.

Suddenly remembering -- they've been having trouble identifying sources of pain all day, and it might've done some nerve damage, that or the muscles just hurt worse -- they lift and turn their left arm over to show Wrench, the dark, black-singed centerpoint of a blistered pink squarish ring of burn on their forearm, right above where their wrist had been secured.

No sleeping, they sign flatly, one handed. They probably should have cleaned and covered it but it had been hard to even get up.

The idea still sounds like a ...lot.