Mockingbird, Mockingbird, Mockingbird

[blindwatchersees]

Who: Sheogorath, SQQ, Tarantulas, Jeff, Shouji, and you!
What: Assorted 'meetings of madness' across the island
When: Over the course of August
Where: Various
Warnings: Heavy discussions of identity, possibly discussion of fugue states, possible mentions of violence, unreality




Is that a sound you've heard? [Closed w/ SQQ]

It's as Shen Qingqiu is seeking solitude in the temple that he's visited by a strange sensation. It starts as a physical one, the faintest breeze dancing around the tip of one ear, but then it becomes a song- the erhu part of the Butterfly Lovers begins to play. The sound seems to tug at the end of his sleeve, the way that a narrative piece often seems to pull the listener along with it. Gently, gently, it implores him towards the door, and out into the daylight.


Is that a song you know? [Closed w/ Jeff]

At this point, Jeff's been given a good idea of what to look for when trying to identify Sheogorath. Of course, no one's account of the man is exactly the same, but there seem to be some common elements. He has a beard, and a walking stick, and his eyes are all sort of colors but always strange and piercing.

In the late afternoon, Jeff spots a man who is almost certainly Sheogorath, heading into the woods alone.

Perhaps he ought to follow, and try to catch up to the fellow?


One that was layered with the crackle of a radio? [Closed w/ Shouji]

It's getting late, about the time that businesses are starting to shutter for the evening, when that strange old man who fought off the Tristitia with Shouji a little while ago wanders into the Burger King, his cane making a soft tap tap tapping sound on the floor. He walks up to the counter, and stands there, not making a sound, as he looks around the place, a placid smile plastered across his face. He clearly wants something, but what?


What makes him call in the pouring rain? [w/ Tarantulas]

It's raining.

The drops are big and heavy, and they make a noticeable tapping sound against the window panes. Every so often, a gust of wind will rattle the glass. In the distance, there's a long, low rumble of thunder.

As Tarantulas works on whatever it is he's working on, his auditory sensors suddenly pick up on the sound of purring. Should he take a look around, he's likely to notice a large, gray cat in a little vest, perched atop a nearby shelf. It's staring at him with a familiar pair of eyes, their pupils fractal and ever transforming at their edges.


Is it a song of pride or an alarm of pain? [wildcard]

Anything you've been itching to say, or do, or think with the Madgod? Go crazy!

Comments

is that a song you know?

[cacophonish]

Jeff follows after the man, this seemingly frail and human manifestation of that elusive something always teasing at his perception. He moves softly, as if he's wearing something far more delicate than his boots. Or maybe it's more like his steps keep landing in a dream.

He doesn't rush. Even if he's a total city boy, the woods don't unnerve him; if anything, they're an odd source of comfort. A land soaked in blood and fear, where monsters and other impossible things roam. It's a lot like Dogtown, in that way. He often used to lose himself there.

With languid, dreamy steps, he follows Sheogorath, a soft hum dancing through his throat. He's not bothering to hide, but he isn't calling the man over, either. He'll just keep following, until there's a stopping point.

[blindwatchersees]

He continues to wander, always just ahead enough of Jeff that he has to hurry to keep up, but always close enough that Jeff never feels completely at risk of losing him. With practiced footing, he slides down the slope of a collapsed bit of ground, into Paradesium. And he just keeps going, moving on and on. The flora and fauna described in the papers slowly give way to alien life, and the side of the caverns seem to be covered in bark and fungal strands. All of it belongs here and doesn't belong here, an intrusion of something not even remotely out of place.

There are frogs singing somewhere, unseen, and bright little jewels- chrysalises- hang from the low branches.

He keeps going.

[cacophonish]

He slips out of time. Not just time, but this whole... plane of existence. Of being. That's how it feels, burrowing further into this primordial essence. He's disconnected from here and now, and following the old man all the way into someplace Other.

A part of him wants to stop and try and take it all in, but he doesn't have time for that, not right now. Curiosity's burning too hot, and he's compelled to see it through. And so, harmonizing with the frogs in a wordless melody, he continues to follow to the old man further and further away from anything grounded and known.

cw: psychoactive substances, transformation

[blindwatchersees]

The air is sweet on his tongue, a greenish haze growing more dense in the air. It's coming from the mushrooms, from the strange growing pods, from hollow, broken-off boughs that seem to exhale. The caverns are breathing, and now suddenly they're twisting, too. The spores worm their way into Jeff's being and show him a network of being spiraling down, down, down, down..

The old man stops. He turns to face Jeff, and he smiles, showing teeth. Those teeth start growing long and needlelike, the man's whole smile too large, too wide, as his whole being starts to stretch and contort and expand. His fingers twist out into branches of branches of branches, fractals ever-growing, while his eyes multiply as fungal stalks, each of them still somehow capable of blinking in an asynchronous shudder of movement. His flesh rises like a tidal swell, splitting to reveal a tangle of roots and moss and mycelium, a magnificent beard of hyphae cascading from an etched-bark approximation of a face. And all the while, that mouth is opening wider, wider, wider...

Re: cw: psychoactive substances, transformation

[cacophonish]

How glorious this is. Glorious? That's a word he's never really conceived of before. It doesn't fit in his vocabulary. It feels alien, rolling through his head. But he can't think of anything else that could encompass all that he's taking in.

Terrible grotesque divine inspirational. Is there any word that captures every word?

He breathes in time with the world, in dreadful harmony. He's a part of this, isn't he? Jeff looks down, as if expecting to see roots where his feet were, but no. He's still one thing and not many. Not yet. His gaze shifts to his fingers, and he flexes them. Straightens. Curls. Stretches. It almost looks like they're twisting, when he moves them. They're still flesh, but the edges seem less defined, like maybe... maybe they can reach through the barrier of senses and definitions and stroke a sound, or grasp a song...

Jeff looks at Sheogorath, beholds him with blown out pupils like he would something divine. There's fear and dread, of course, wiggling in his guts. But that, too, is in harmony with his awe and ecstasy.

He exhales. He's grinning like a hungry, feral thing.

"You're amazing..."

[blindwatchersees]

It leans forward, dreadful teeth and twitching fibers close enough for Jeff to feel its warmth and its coolness and its intoxicating presence.

As it speaks, it speaks with a voice cobbled together from millions of distinct sounds, parroted back to create a semblance of a voice through the squeak of fruiting fungal bodies rubbing past each other.

"Wiggly thing... made of lines... ^covered in bugs... do you like the tailed ones? The hollow ones? Do you wear ^hats, rightside ^up, ndsᴉpǝ _poʍu? You could be made of skins, and bones, and sinews, gifted to so many, many, many, and the bugs _cr^aw_l inside their ears."

[cacophonish]

This thing is vast and incomprehensible, and so much more than him. Even in his euphoric delirium, Jeff can imagine those teeth tearing through him. Slashing, gnashing, crushing, breaking him down to... to whatever lives inside his skin these days.

He wonders, sometimes, what his insides might look like. If his scars like to move, then what about the rest of him? Is his heart still where he last left it? Have his kidneys moved? If somebody were to cut him open, would they find his guts? If he gets too close to those teeth, will he find out?

And still, he's drawn to it. He's like a fucked up guppy, swimming up to an anglerfish-- swimming past the pretty little lure and right up to its jagged mouth.

When it speaks, it reminds him of Ziggy. Ziggy had no voice of its own, and so it borrowed words once spoken, clipped them together in countless familiar voices.

"I..."

Is he speechless? Now, of all times?

"I'm already skin and bones and sinews." Right? Even as he says that, there's a lilt at the end, bordering on a question. And then he laughs, struck by a sudden feeling of absurdity, and admits, "But I don't... I don't wear any hats." He pats his own head, as if to check. How could he know which way he wears a hat that doesn't even exist?

[blindwatchersees]

"^Hat, ^hat. A ^hat after I. Do you not <see>? They will breathe you through hollow bones. Should I tear them ^out?"

The being lets out a series of odd chirrups and clicks, reminiscent of those made by more vocal insects.

"Too soon? Too soon. _Feet ^unbound by a dot of silk. You need a branch. Then you will s_piⁿ and s^pi_n and one by one rip the stitches that keep your skin attached. Then melting! Melting, melting, melting... _sink into the earth, become a tree, cut yourself _down, ^build a frame, ^build a door. Too tough, right now. Too sticky, sticking to itself. It cannot pass through the soil to the roots."

[cacophonish]

If anyone asked him to interpret the creature's divine words, Jeff wouldn't really know what to say. But he understands-- or, he feels like he understands, in that way that all things are suddenly understood on a cosmic level, when psychedelics are coursing through the system.

He Understands, even as he's lost in riddles. He thinks about the story it told when it was a butterfly. The caterpillar-- the worm-- spinning until it became something new. And a door. It's always doors. Everyone expects him to have a door now, but he doesn't know where it could be.

(If he opened himself up, would he become a door?)

Jeff's heart is racing. Strange, because he doesn't feel afraid. His head's full of clouds and dreams and bliss, but his heart's racing like a rabbit and his breaths come in short bursts.

There's some disconnect between the human animal that Jeff was and the idea he is becoming.

"That's okay," he whispers, though whether it's to himself or to the great worm, he can't say. "I can change." He looks down at his too-human, too solid feet. "I can..." He lifts one, as if to test it. It comes away from the ground easily, and he immediately begins to wobble. Ah, fuck. Gravity.

cw: blood, flaying, eaten alive, images assd with drug/alc abuse, claustro, unreality, infestation

[blindwatchersees]

As he begins to wobble, the soft, organic earth beneath him gives way, and he pitches forward, right into the Worm’s open maw. For a brief moment, there’s a flash of pain as needle-like teeth plunge into him, but before the sensation can even begin to register, he’s wholly enveloped, and everything is gone.

Then he’s back, falling through an endless canopy of colorful silks, as he rolls from sheet to sheet, a rainbow whirl consuming his senses. Then, the endlessness draws closer around him, infinity becoming smaller and smaller, until it wraps snugly against his skin.

There’s something crawling inside of him, just beneath the skin. It plucks at the threads that hold his skin in place, not breaking them, but making them sing like the strings of a guitar. It plucks, and it plucks, and it plucks, sending vibrations spiraling into Jeff’s core.

He’s lying on a bare mattress in a smoky room. There’s the muffled sound of a live band playing downstairs. He can smell cheap booze and cigarette smoke. Unfinished lyrics lie strewn on the bed around him. They’re stained with bloody fingerprints. When he looks closer, he can see that the music isn’t written on paper, but rather, skin. Something is dripping down from the ceiling. Was there always that human-shaped spot on the ceiling? Wait, no, it’s not a spot… it’s a body, his body, skinned and wide-eyed, suspended by a net.

It’s just a dream, the other Jeff mouths, over and over again, lipless mouth stretched into a grotesque grin.

The dripping blood is hardening on Jeff’s lying form, which he finds is too exhausted to move. The blood drip and drips and drips, flooding the room with an impossible deluge, until it drowns him in a shell of amber. Again, the world goes dark as he’s buried.

There are muffled voices. Suddenly, streams of light reach him through a hazy golden filter. Through an amber lens, he can see a giant, holding him up in the air, examining him.

It’s like a dream, says the giant, voice far away and distorted. Jeff is placed in a velvet-lined box, and the lid is closed.

He’s walking in the woods, an axe in his hands. Instinctively, he stops at a tree, and begins to chop. He chops and he chops, with more endurance than he’s ever had, until the tree falls with a crack and a thud. As he strips away the bark and starts preparing it for processing, he finds his own face already carved into the wood.

You’re a dream, the tree-Jeff sighs, humming to himself, seemingly not bothered by the axe still lodged in his tree abdomen. Treedomen?


He can’t remember forming the boards, can’t remember where he got the nails, can’t remember where he found the hammer, but he’s got everything he needs to make a door. He just hasn’t, Getz There’s a threshold in the void, in a place he can’t see, can’t smell, can’t taste, but he knows that wherever this is, he’s been here before. And before that threshold, written on a doormat made of butterflies, are the words:

“Is a song you hear in a dream no less real?”

…

He wakes up, whole and unharmed, on the soft, fibrous ground.