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Event - Aftermath

Aftermath

➥ Handle With Care

Six photographs arranged in two rows of three photos each depicting tanned hands performing a variety of shadow puppets.
(cw: arachnophobia, entomophobia, chirophobia, elafiphobia)

There is a reason Dogtown has been boarded up. The wicked do not rest and while the majority of ADI's manpower was out of town, those remaining were stretched thin. There simply weren't enough eyes to keep on the park. With too few people, the things that crawl inside crawled out. Most of them have been hunted down and dealt with, but not all. Not nearly all. Though it might not be apparent at first.

The weather is hot and a bit of humidity brings the bugs about. They might all be horrible, but some aren't so bad. Butterflies flit about in the air, their colorful wings offering an aerial show on your walk. Every now and then, however, one or two might catch your eye: there appear to be a few with an odd wing shape that seem to jerk and plunge in their flight. Keep an eye on these odd bugs and you might just finally place the shape: four long, spindly segments. Hands. Interlocked at what would be thumbs, fluttering sets of hands no bigger than the rest of the butterflies flutter about. Some land peacefully, some don't seem to land at all, but just dance about like a perverted wave from no one. Others still, like to land on faces and what a delight it is to be blessed with the gentle legs of a butterfly on your nose as it spreads and stretches its wings! At least until those wings clamp over the eyes under them.

You don't even have to go outside to find things that skitter and hide. Perhaps you've settled down to work on something or read or even check your phone. It'll only take a moment, really, but it has your attention. Enough so that, when you feel a gentle tickle at your neck, you might not even think much of it or reach up to scratch the spot. Except it happens again, slower, more careful; to the point it doesn't tickle, in fact, it feels almost like something is...stroking your neck? Like a tiny hand running along your skin. If you're fast enough, maybe you can brush whatever it is off, or maybe you simply turn your head to look at your shoulder and into the multiple eyes of an eight-legged friend. No, make that six. Six legs and two, long, arms ending in thin-fingered hands.

On the other hand, there are also those things that go bump in the night. Well after sunset, some areas of Gloucester titter with laughter or carry the steady sound of feet hitting the pavement, while some darker corners patter with a rhythmic slapping sound. Following the sound might just lead you through echoing alleyways until you come across the recognizable shape of a deer. A deer whose legs end in hands. Where they start is at the top: curved, gnarled, fingers jut from the top of its head like a perverted crown. Antagonize it or stare too long, and that slapping sound may turn your way, the charging deer aiming for you grasping-fingers-first.

➥ Shipping and Handling

Photo of a the underside of a bridge with a river flowing under it. There is an upside down, discarded bottle in the water and scum-like foam around it.
(cw: underwater threats, drowning, refuse/filth, squirmy things, human-caused environmental damage)

Known locally as the Cut, Blynman Canal in southwest Gloucester connects Gloucester Harbor to the Annisquam River. For over a hundred years the Blynman Bridge has spanned that opening, a busy drawbridge that has nonetheless been left to rust. The Cut is a deceptively treacherous little waterway, and it's not unheard of for locals with too much time on their hands to go down to the canalside and watch the boats in the hope of witnessing an entertaining misadventure or two. There's more than one local legend of boats going down in the canal, though no record of it in recent history, and people claim the water is a lot deeper than anyone might expect. But that's not quite why it's caught ADI's attention recently.

No, it's the wretched sobbing from under the bridge at sunset that's new and concerning…and the reports of boats striking something in the canal where there should have been open water. Several owners have reported thumping on the hull of their boats as though they were struck by some furious creature, but the official story is that they simply struck litter and debris that has recently clogged the canal's entrance. It's not a lot to go off of, but with the recent Dogtown troubles, any sudden change at locations of potential significance is worth an investigation.

In daytime it's difficult to see much of anything in the water, and investigators are discouraged from intruding too obviously on the scene during hours when locals are more likely to be present. As the sun sets, though, the water roils and crashes under the bridge for minutes on end. The motion dies down, the water calms, and the lamenting cries begin. There are no words, only broken sobbing in a human voice. Looking into the water in the dying light, one can see something down there, just below the surface now. Is that a face? Did a hand just breach the surface, reaching pitifully skyward before slipping back under?

Anyone who tries to enter the water will feel detritus brush against them, all manner of sunbleached plastic debris clogging the canal. The walls go straight down under the bridge and the water is deep. It won't be long before one finds oneself not just swimming in trash but entangled in it. It drags even the strongest swimmer down, snaring arms and legs. Fight and cut yourself free, hope for a rescue…or await the end.

➥ Say, Say, O Playmate

Photo of two little girls reflected in a large mirrored door. The younger girl's reflection does not match what she is actually doing.
(cw: hallucination, disorientation, synesthesia, altered mental states, breaking and entering)

There is someone in the mirror. They appear when you're alone. A childish, friendly face, or what you would consider friendly, interesting, someone you would be willing to play a game with… or at least entertain the possibility for. Your new playmate has something to show you. It's something good, and you should follow! Even those who might not usually be inclined, will find themselves drawn in. This playmate seems to be tailor made for you, someone you could get along with. Someone who whispers into your mind and no one but you can see, even if they have their own playmate.

There are too many reflective surfaces in Gloucester, and you'll find your playmate flitting easily between them, like they're stuck in a world beyond the glass. Maybe they are. They might even tell you that's the case. Help them, please! They've been trapped here by some monster for so long.

Those drawn into the chase will find themselves directed to all sorts of places around Gloucester, from publicly open buildings to private residences to other buildings they really shouldn't be going into without a very good reason, like the police station. Maybe try getting in there under the cover of night? Your playmate is insistent that wherever they're leading you, it's important to the trail. And you can feel that they really mean it. This is important, this is vital. It might be harder than usual to say no. Maybe you can make yourself believe this isn't as dangerous as it seems. That's far too easy.

It's a trail that does seem to have an end for those willing to stick it out… and who aren't arrested in the middle of all this for breaking and entering or trespassing. A tiny mirror shard, something no bigger than a fingernail. That's what you've been looking for. Grab it! Grab it! Those unfortunate enough to take their playmate's advice will find themselves experiencing sudden and intense disorientation followed by a 24-hr bout of synesthesia. Ever wondered what gray smells like? What flavor your favorite song is? The color of a burger wafting under your nose? All yours for the price of a mirror shard!

Destroying smashing the shard to even smaller pieces seems to end the disorientation, at least, but synesthesia is something that persists for at least a day after. One thing that becomes immediately apparent, though, as soon as you find the mirror, whatever you do with it, your playmate disappears.

➥ Let's Have a Tea Party

Photo of a smiling caucasian woman holding up a smiling babydoll that is partially destroyed and covered in sand.
(cw: death; drowning; choking; claustrophobia; nausea; emetophobia/vomiting; disorientation/vertigo; body horror)

It begins with a news headline: Lost Baby Dolls Cry Foul On Beach! The article details strange new visitors to Gloucester's beaches, and the residents making efforts to clean up the dolls along with other debris from recent 4th of July fireworks displays. The leader of the local non-profit, I Love a Clean Gloucester, leading the clean-up is quoted as saying some volunteers have been experiencing some unpleasant side-effects from contact with the dolls, clearly indicating there may be something toxic in them. Paul Rudder encourages everyone to be vigilant to pollution and wear thick gloves when assisting.

But ADI digs deeper. It seems those 'toxic' effects aren't what they first appear. There is something supernatural going on. Two dedicated beach clean-up volunteers have been found dead in their homes, drowned on dry land. The police are puzzled. The lungs of both bodies are filled with seawater.

ADI takes over investigating as a stretch of beach is closed to the public. Perhaps you're brave enough to check on these dolls for yourself. Perhaps you're just here to try to bury the things deep where no one can reach them. Those who pick up the dolls, even those wearing gloves, will feel a strange, rocking sensation that grows more intense the longer they hold and manipulate the dolls.

Regardless of actually touching the dolls, those who visit the beach will find themselves dreaming. They are out at sea, exhausted, struggling to keep afloat, their articulated ball joints ache. They can feel the last of their energy reserves bleeding away, their mouth, something they can never close, filling with water as they sink down, deep, deeper, the weight of the water pressing in around them, constricting their body.

Waking up might just be nauseating or a violently unpleasant affair as you'll find the ground still lurching like you're trapped out at sea for minutes or even more than an hour, or hacking up seawater. Repeated visits to the beach worsens the effect, and if the clean-up volunteers are anything to go by, too much dedication might well be deadly.

➥ Mod Notes

GENERAL - Players are welcome to play background NPCs for themselves when they are needed in a thread. If you need more information on general behavior for these types of NPCs, please feel free to ask! In general, the information provided in the prompts should be sufficient and ordinary people will act like… ordinary people! Although, the people of Gloucester seem to be becoming more and more aware of supernatural phenomenon and they are frightened by it. You're welcome to make up any details beyond that for your specific scene. Also, please remember that character deaths are permanent and plan accordingly!
HANDLE WITH CARE (16-20 July) - All creatures can be killed similar to their normal counterparts, but smashing the butterflies or spiders will result in smashed blood, skin, and bone (on whatever instrument you use to smash them with). The deer itself can cause potential harm as it will attempt to gouge, scratch, or even strangle those who threaten it.
SHIPPING AND HANDLING (28-31 July) - From above the water it will not be possible to make out the full shape of whatever is in the canal regardless of the quality of light. Anyone who enters the water and keeps their eyes open will get an impression of a long, eel-like creature with a human-like face; it also has many hands on short, jointless arms all down the sides of its body. It is the garbage, not the creature, that drags characters down–the creature also seems to be entangled.
SAY, SAY, O PLAYMATE (16-25 July) - Your character's playmate can interact only with your character, no others. But two people might see different playmates in the same reflective surface who could be telling them wildly different things. The playmate is someone who will be specifically tailored to appear as non-threatening and friendly as possible to your character. If that means they're a small scared child claiming to be trapped in the mirror, or an older teen or young adult with a rakish air and charming wink. This is about your character's perceptions, not any consistency. Their appeals to 'play' will also be tailored to your character. They might be requesting help, asking for a favor with the promise of a payback, encouraging some silly game, or whatever might motivate your character. The mirror shards will continue to induce synesthesia and disorientation if they are not destroyed. Any shards brought back to ADI will be examined and then ordered destroyed. The playmates will all disappear when all of the shards have been collected, whether your character has successfully collected one they were on the trail of, or not.
LET'S HAVE A TEA PARTY (16-31 July) - Not every doll induces the rocking sensation, but many do. Characters will have a hell of a time trying to pinpoint any source for the dolls. More of them keep washing up, seemingly at random; though, they definitely seem to be coming in batches, and any time a stretch of beach is fully cleaned up, more appear, like something has been watching and waiting to unleash more of the things. Multiple visits to the beach may result in significant lung damage, akin to what you might experience from having partially drowned.

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Caitlyn's been instructed to partner up with someone while hunting the deer. As such, she finds herself padding alongside a man with a metal arm, ADI-supplied hunting rifle held loosly by her side with the ease of someone who's been handling firearms all her life.

"I'm Caitlyn, by the way." She's never been exceptionally good at small talk, but she feels obligated to at least introduce herself. "It's a pleasure to be working with you."

She's used to hunting in a forest, not among buildings. But she's still careful to check every dimly lit side street and alley they pass by, lest the deer sneak up on them.

"Winter," he answers simply. He carries his rifle in the same way, though he also has a mask covering the bottom half of his face, in addition to the metal arm. "You're new," he adds, mostly because he always keeps track of the face of people who work at ADI.

He doesn't look at her as he speaks, eyes roving around over his mask, but some of his attention is clearly on her anyway.

"Yes, I've only just arrived. It's been quite the transition." She offers him a tight smile.

She doesn't have a lot of practice making friends, but it would be nice to make one all the same. Winter seems as comfortable and familiar with his gun as she is with hers - moreso, if anything, since the rifle she's been issued by ADI is rather different from the rifle she grew up using - so perhaps they can talk about guns. "Do you find you prefer the higher fire rate of the lever-action, or the improved range of..."

Did she hear something? She trails off, coming to a halt just outside the entrance to an alley.

He has surprisingly more practice making friends than he'd think, but talking about guns would be pretty awesome-- if it's safe to, anyway. He stops when she does, and levers the rifle against his shoulder, sighting into the alley.

"I don't see anything yet," he says. "Do you?"

Rifle at the ready, Caitlyn peers down the alley. It's hard to see anything, but she squints into the darkness, trying to distinguish anything from the shadows.

Suddenly, there's a yowl and a thunk, and a cat bolts past them out onto the street.

She's about to relax, putting the noise she heard down to the cat, when she hears something else. A sort of odd slapping sound. She glances over at Winter to check that he's hearing it too.

That definitely sounds like hands, to Winter. He doesn't lower the rifle. "Step to one side," he suggest, doing the same himself, giving whatever is coming a clear path between them, so they aren't right in its path.

Caitlyn does as Winter says, taking a step closer to the wall before making sure the rifle is properly set against her shoulder and exhaling softly. She has no idea what's coming, but with the gun in her hand she feels much more self-assured than she ever does without it. Whatever it is, she's sure she can handle it.

The slapping sound is getting louder. She exhales again, finger gently resting against the trigger, waiting to see what comes out of the alley.

It takes a minute, and some pausing here and there while whatever is in there nudges at a garbage can or a puddle on the ground, but if Caitlyn and Winter are quiet enough, the hand-deer comes padding out into the open, fingers on its antlers flexing in the air, nose and ears twitching in their direction.

Caitlyn waits patiently, listening to the creature make its way down the alley, until it comes into view.

It's both horrifying and utterly baffling to look at, borderline obscene in its strangeness. But it's not really doing anything. Not yet. It's not as though she's never killed an animal before, but under the circumstances she's not sure merely being in an alley and having a lot of hands where hands shouldn't be is worth killing the thing over. So she hesitates, steadying her rifle as she waits to see what, if anything, the creature does.

Winter doesn't hesitate-- well, not that long, anyway. He doesn't trust the fear-entity things, and while the spiders had been relatively harmless, the butterflies had not, and something this big will definitely not be. He takes a beat to take the sight in, register the potential threats, try to work out just how the thing works-- and then he fires.

It's at an angle, so he doesn't hit Caitlyn, which means it's not a kill shot, but it is definitely bloody across the thing's shoulder. The deer-thing squeals, and charges him. Revenge, maybe. Dumb deer-headed bravado. Who knows? At least it only has hands, not hooves or horns.

Caitlyn's momentary surprise at the shot ringing out and the deer's subsequent charge barely registers in her posture or how she holds the rifle. She watches the deer charge, tracking it with the barrel of the rifle, leading it just a little as she looks for an angle that will allow to her kill it in one shot without also hitting Winter.

When she's pretty sure she's not going to get a better angle, she fires. It's a clean shot through the head, but who knows whether that will actually kill something like this. Purely on muscle memory, her fingers begin to move a lever that doesn't exist on this rifle before quickly readjusting to pull back the bolt and load another cartridge.

The bullet staggers it. The hand-things aren't really very sturdy to begin with, even at this size, and between that and Winter putting a second bullet into its throat, it goes down.

He holds still for a moment, watching it twitch on the pavement, fingers grasping at the air. "Nice shot," he says, for Caitlyn's benefit.

Caitlyn approaches the deer slowly, rifle still raised, until she's certain it's not getting up again. Her only acknowledgement of Winter's compliment is a short nod.

"Poor thing," she says softly. It really is a nightmare to look at. "Do you think it's always been this way, or was it a normal deer that something happened to?"

She wants to get a closer look, but even if there's no life left in its eyes, the hands are still twitching, and she's not foolish enough to inspect it until that's stopped.

"I don't know," Winter says, dropping slowly to a crouch, though out of hand-grasping range. "Normal deer don't attack when shot, they flee. The hand butterflies and spiders acted mostly like the regular bugs despite being nothing but hand." Except for the butterflies glomping onto people's faces, he supposes. "It probably doesn't matter."

"No. I suppose it doesn't."

She waits another moment before lowering the rifle and crouching down by the corpse, eyeing it carefully.

"We ought to bring it back to ADI for study." Of course, she hasn't thought to bring anything that might transporting the creature easier.

"I can carry it," Winter says with confidence, as if that wasn't even in question. It's not: he's always planned to just haul the whole thing back over his shoulder. It certainly can't be heavier than Steve, and he's carried him before.

But since he has help, he adds, "If you carry my rifle and help me steady it."

Caitlyn is rather surprised by Winter's confidence. Even Jayce, the largest, strongest person she knows, might have difficulty carrying such a big deer single-handedly. But she doesn't question it, assuming that Winter knows his own capabilities.

She holds out her hand to take his rifle.

"Should we cover it with something? It's rather... noticeable." Not that she has anything to cover it with. She's wearing a waistcoat that might, with some careful draping, cover one of the hand-antlers, but nothing else.

It's a combination of metal lacing his bones, intensive training, obsessive exercise, and admittedly some memory of how much he could lift before the serum was nullified. He can do it, but he's going to regret it later. Ice, aspirin, and a long bath will be in order after this.

"People have been calling in reports of this thing for days. And Glouchester is pretty used to weird shit by now. If you want to cover its head, I guess, but. I think we'll be okay."

He gives it a nudge with his rifle butt, and when it doesn't react at all, he offers the rifle to Caitlyn to carry for him.

He makes a good point, but she still feels odd about openly carrying a deer carcass with hands for antlers and feet, so she pulls off her waistcoat - quickly adjusting her shirt to make sure it's still properly tucked in - and arranges the waistcoat over the deer's head, doing her best to cover as much as possible.

It barely covers only one antler, and now that she looks at it, the covering probably just draws more attention to it. But she doesn't exactly want the waistcoat back now, not until it's been washed, so she leaves it.

She nods to Winter and takes the rifle, preparing to help him steady the deer as needed.

He braces himself, crouching beside the deer, and slides the metal arm under it. There's a creak and growl of gears, and he shifts his weight to compensate, letting the machine do the worst of the lifting until the carcass slides down his bicep and onto his shoulder in a fireman's carry.

It pulls like hell at the anchors all along his left side, under the skin, but he's had worse. The burning will die down eventually. It always does.

Then he pushes slowly and carefully to his feet, once he has it balanced. Ow. Yeah, that burns all right. His face doesn't show much of it, though, just the effort. He isn't very expressive at the best of times.

Caitlyn does her best to help, trying to keep the deer balanced as Winter lifts it. She wants badly to ask him about his arm, and all the metallic groaning its making, but this is neither the time nor the place, and he seems to be exerting enough effort that she's certainly not going to make him use any breath answering her questions right now. She simply notes it, and the fact that he can lift that much weight, and stores her questions away for later.

She slings both of their rifles over her shoulder and trots after him, keeping one hand up behind the deer in case it looks like Winter's going to lose his balance.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Event - Aftermath

II. Deer Hunting

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geez I wrote a whole reply days ago and then never posted it

nw!

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