open — an inspector calls.

[perceptual]

Who: Helly and YOU!
When: Last week of Christmas
Where: Your very home...
Open/Closed: Open
Applicable Warnings: n/a, will update as necessary!



You open your door to find a cheery redhead standing on your doorstep with a plate of cookies resting in the palm of her hand. If you look closely at the cookies, it's pretty obvious that they're shortbread from the store and definitely not homemade – but it's rude to stare, so don't scrutinise too closely.

"Hi!" Helly says brightly. "I'm Helly. I live on this street. I just moved here." A meaningful pause, with some deliberate emphasis on that phrase that hopefully makes sense, before she adds, "I was wondering if you wanted a cookie."

Maybe this is a little too close to the memory of the salesman for anyone's comfort, but Helly's thought about this. The only way to go door to door asking questions of people without rousing too much suspicion is to lace it thickly in the false pearly-white cheer of Sweetwater, until she can get some privacy. She rustles the cookies on the plate a little insistently, and lifts her eyebrows in what she hopes is an understandably meaningful way.

OOC — as I said in the CR meme, Helly is going door-to-door to introduce herself and try to suss out who here is in a similar boat to her. You can tag in if you'd like to meet her and thread out a conversation, OR we can just handwave that our characters have met in advance of the event!

Comments

[perceptual]

"Whoa." That's Helly just now noticing the knife, which freezes her in place for a moment. But she figures if she was gonna get stabbed, it would've happened already – unless Miss Atlanta is waiting to be provoked.

Helly swallows a little, and draws herself up straighter, figuring that she's just going to have to be extra careful about what she does and says going forward. She heads further inside, casting enough of a look around the place to determine that this house is pretty similar to her own – to the one she woke up in. It doesn't entirely feel like her house.

"I'm not one of them. And I think if I was, I would've dismissed you by now, right? You know how they do that? Whenever you say something weird or talk about how this place is fucked up, they ignore you, and then they talk to you like you've lost your mind?"

[littlemissfutility]

"Yeah." She's been cautious, talking to them, but she'd had to ask the inevitable question, where are we? to someone. Beth jerks her head toward the kitchen, waiting for the woman - not old, but solidly an adult in a way even Maggie wasn't - to go first. There's no reason to stand out here in the front hallway, if she's normal. "It's like they're looking right through you."

To what, she's not sure, but that vacuum cleaner salesman who wouldn't take no for an answer had done the same thing. "What's your name?"

[perceptual]

"Helly." It's not the first time she's said it since she got here, but something about this situation makes her feel a little irritated by the sound of it, almost childish in its inflection. But she's not a Helena, couldn't possibly be, doesn't want to be. So Helly it is.

She heads into the kitchen, peering around again, but the layout is just as similar to the one she's used to that she figures there's nothing much worth looking at, and she doesn't actually want to snoop.

"You?"

[littlemissfutility]

"Beth." That "Helly" doesn't really sound like a name is something she knows better than to say, but it is weird. Maybe it's short for something embarrassing. "Are the cookies okay to eat?"

They might as well get comfortable, right?