[OPEN] Maybe Things I've Misremembered, Maybe Things I Just Forgot

[lasthumanvoice]

Who: Cecil Palmer and YOU
What: Settling in, making friends
When: October, generally
Where: Pumpkin Hollow
Warning(s): Description of panic attack in Prompt 5

1. Birds and heights and movie credits [Downtown Pumpkin Hollow]
Maybe you're shopping, or trying to go to work. Maybe you're heading to get a bite to eat. You're going to be delayed, though. There's a reporter waving you down, running up to you, preparing to ask questions.


2. Crowds and puppets, dying in a fire [Town Hall]
A large sign--no, not a sign, it's not that legible from a distance. A grid? Some sort of grid is posted on the wall of the Town Hall building. It has seven columns, each one of five rows plus a header. Days of the week? Oh! It's a calendar. Cecil has posted a Community Calendar, thoughtfully for anyone to use, to mark off days they'll need extra help at their shop or when they might be having a sale or throwing an event.

He's even taken the time to mark October 8th as the day the next edition of the Gazette comes out, and the evening of October 7th as Simchat Torah (with the preceding week marked out as Sukkot). Alright, he's guessing on those, based on the phase of the moon on his arrival, but look, he'll find time to mark his celebrations as best he can all alone.

Still, if you come to look, you're going to be offered a pen to add something of your own. Birthdays? Holidays from your world? Odes to long-dead gods? Here, have a pen!


3. Ferris-wheels and certain blues [Fall's Promise Cemetery]
"It features a plethora of carved headstones of varying ages and states of care..."

Cecil's first visit out here was to get a scoop, to see if there was information to be gleaned from the headstones. But upon seeing the condition of things, well. He left, and returned the next morning with a scrub brush and a bucket of soapy water borrowed from a local business, taking both to the moss and grime coating each pale stone. It's simply not proper, in his mind, leaving the stones untended and dirty. Even if death isn't working properly, even if new graves aren't regularly being added, it's just the done thing, to ensure the resting places are cared for.

He might be singing to himself as he cleans, so if you're meandering past, you'll hear someone bellowing modern music off-key. Whoops, sorry for that!


4. Oh, but mainly losing you [Wildcard]
Find me at darkersolstice on plurk, discord, tumblr, unsplash or elseweb to plot or request a custom starter.

*****

5. And this growing sense of distance that keeps building in my mind [Commercial District]
Perhaps you're headed for the Shady Merchant's shop. Perhaps you're just doing your shopping. Either way, you might pass a huddled form crouched against the side of a building, having a near-silent panic attack, struggling to breathe. It is Cecil, and he has visited Calloway and now everything is Bad.

Help? Help.

Comments

Fall's Promise

[skeletonkeay]

Like any good goth, Gerry has come to the graveyard to brood. And possibly snoop, interested in the Leeds family mausoleum.

But then, there's Cecil. That odd man he found standing in the street, with as many marks of fear as Gerry himself, and a voice like velvet. (Not to mention the most expressive eyebrows Gerry had ever seen in his life. It's very impressive.)

He softens a bit at the sight of Cecil spending his free time cleaning ancient graves belonging to strangers. Having been dead himself but never with the dignity of a burial... he empathizes with those resting here in a way that not many others can.

Ah, fuck it.

"Want any help?"

[lasthumanvoice]

"If you want! I don't have an extra scrub brush, but you can help with soaking the stones, or running for more water. It's a shame that well over there is sealed. I'm sure it's for good reasons, like some dybbuk or ancient spirit trapped at the bottom, but better access to water would sure be helpful here. Or you can keep me company. That is also a form of help, with this task."

He's currently crouched by the grave of a girl who'd died at the age of thirteen. He does the math at every tombstone, paying attention to families and ages. This isn't for them, not really, this act of care-taking. But he can't help but wonder about every single death.

[skeletonkeay]

"Yeah, lemme go for some more water and another brush," Gerry agrees. "Back in a sec."

He jogs off, heading back into town and going to his shop for another brush and bucket of water, then returns. It takes him a good ten minutes or so, but when he's back he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.

"What made you wanna do this, if you don't mind me asking?"

[lasthumanvoice]

"It just seemed like a shame. People aren't here to maintain these stones among those who remember the deceased, so someone ought to. The city's in trouble, but. Someone should hold onto the heart of the community that it was. I will never have known those buried here, but I can hold some piece of their memory anyway."

He ducks his head. "I hope, back home, there are those who would remember me with kindness. Those who would hold onto my memory. We don't say 'rest in peace', you know? We say 'may their memory be a blessing'."

[skeletonkeay]

"That's a lovely thought." As he washes dirt away from the headstone of a man who apparently had been the town’s original postmaster (wow!), he musters a weary smile. "...Because I technically died twice, I know more than most get to about... how I was remembered. It, ah. It's not what I wanted. But it's about what I expected. "

[lasthumanvoice]

"Twice is a lot of times to die." Cecil is torn between his need to gather interesting stories to report and...y'know, how shitty dying must be like that. "Do you remember them both?"

[skeletonkeay]

"No. Just the first one. Brain tumor. You know how it is." He shrugs, hoping Cecil only knows how it is in theory. Because hint: it sucks. "Then I had my... spirit, I guess, bound inside a book. And that was... well, if someone read a passage from it about my death, I could wake up and talk. But that was painful. And then when I wasn't out and about, I was in a stasis that's kind of like. Hm. Like imagine sleeping but you're fully aware of how much time is passing. But you're still asleep, and you can't wake up till it's time. And also it kind of hurts. It's like that."

[lasthumanvoice]

"I don't know how brain tumors are. Then again, I don't know how my own death was." There's a pause, and a sympathetic frown. "I am glad you're not bound into a book now, though. You make a good person to be around."

[skeletonkeay]

Gerry breathes a laugh at that. "You think so, do you? Don't hear that often. You can thank Jon Sims for that one. He burned the page and released me, and I ended up here."

[lasthumanvoice]

"If I ever meet him, then I will thank him." There's a bright, easy smile. Like, yeah, he knows there's a low chance that two people from one world, let alone one specific guy from Gerry's world, will be brought here. But he does mean it!

[skeletonkeay]

Comically, Jon is here. "I think he's a fisherman now. It doesn't suit him, but he seems to like it. I know he takes statements, too, if you ever want someone to vent to about paranormal junk. Some people think it helps."

[lasthumanvoice]

"I'm not sure I'd even know where to begin." This is, somehow, one of the most subdued sentences Gerry has heard Cecil utter, his gaze a little distant in a way that suggests that he's more aware of the fuckery his life is than he's been letting on.

And then it disappears under a bright, sunny smile, the mask slipping back on as if it's his real face.

"Maybe with the worms. Or the Dog Park. Or Hiram McDaniels, the literal five-headed dragon who ran for mayor!"

[skeletonkeay]

Gerry catches the slip of that mask. How could he not, with as many eyes as he has? With his own mask of snarky indifference close at hand?

But he doesn't comment, out of respect.

"I'd vote for a dragon," he says, chuckling. "Sounds like you had a wild ride. How's it compare with here?"

[lasthumanvoice]

"Here is a lot quieter." There's no hesitation in that answer. Oh, he's heard about Parade Day (not that different from Street Cleaning day back home) and the giant crab, but...nothing has compared to how constant the assault of weirdness activity was in Night Vale.

"Wetter, too. No cacti, no tumbleweeds. No Glow Cloud serving as president of the PTA, no forbidden places which we aren't to even think about too loudly."

[skeletonkeay]

"That sounds exhausting." Even Gerry was never quite that busy. "I imagine a 'Glow Cloud' is exactly what it sounds like."

[lasthumanvoice]

"Occasionally, it drops dead livestock on people. And we're expected to give praise to it. All hail the Glow Cloud and all!" Of course, Jean's response to hearing about that hadn't exactly been positive, but Cecil barrels right on like everything is normal.

Except he pauses in his scrubbing to glance at Gerry, to try and catch his reaction.

[skeletonkeay]

Gerry mostly just pulls a face like he's just eaten something very sour, brows both raised and knit somehow, eyes narrow, mouth pulled into a grimace. "So--- question. Are you praising it because there's, like, positive reinforcement for doing do or just so you don't get meat dropped on you?"

[lasthumanvoice]

"A little of both. And some because we simply can't help it. You know how it is, when gods and godlike beings are around and you don't have any other choice?"

Something in his voice is desperate, pleading Gerry to get it, to understand.

[skeletonkeay]

And he does. Better than anyone.

"Yeah. Pushy bastards. It's even worse when they fight."

[lasthumanvoice]

"It is. Or when they send their followers to fight. Like the Smiling God of Desert Bluffs, or the civilization of tiny people living under the bowling alley who attacked us in the name of Huntokar, their goddess."

Cecil shakes his head. "This place has goddesses, I hear."

[skeletonkeay]

Honestly the bit about the bowling alley gives him a breath of a laugh. Wild.

"So I hear as well. But apparently they're nice. The woman who brought us here was one of 'em. Mortanne." She had been strange. Like if the End was a kindly mother rather than a stoic executioner. Her presence was that of bittersweetness and introspection rather than dread.

"...The gods of my world were just. Fear. Fear and nothing else. They were made of it and always trying to make more of it to feed on. Roughly 14 of them, all representing the deep, primal fears of every living thing. I can still see the marks of those fears on people, even here."

[lasthumanvoice]

“Oh.”

Cecil’s stomach drops, because he knows he’s very deeply touched by primal fears, but he makes a very nice concerted effort to hide that. Hello, Eye-boy, this is a moment of loud Fear of Being Perceived and Known.

“I…uh. Oh.”

[skeletonkeay]

"I don't know any details," Gerry hurriedly assures him, suddenly overcome with his own gut wrenching horror that he's just ruined something precious with his own clumsy words and frightening allegiances. "Just marks. Like scars, I can see it but I don't know how it happened. And I won't pry. ...I can tell you exactly what I see, if it would help you."

[lasthumanvoice]

Does Cecil want to know what the scars on his soul look like? No. No he doesn’t. But at the same time…

“I would like to know how it is that you see me, Gerry.”

Which isn’t the exact same question, but might have the same answer, regardless.

[skeletonkeay]

Gerry softens--- even saddens--- at the question.

"It's not constant. Like it isn't a permanent feature the way scars or tattoos would be. Just glimpses, like tricks of the light or mirages. Echoes of past pain and fear etched onto the space you occupy, and then gone. If that makes... any sense. Like I said, I know what they are. Being watched, being manipulated, uncanny wrongness, things too vast to comprehend. But I don't know how they happened."

He pauses for a long moment, not wanting that to be all that he says but having a hard time reaching for more. He tries, though.

"...I think you're really amazing, though. For how you are. I mean, uh. Most people don't get that many. Most people don't get any, though it's much more common with folks here. But. You've been through a lot. And you're still... kind. Fun. Gentle, thoughtful, good humored. You don't let the fear tell you who you have to be. Me, I got hard. I think most people get hard. But you didn't."