[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

[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."

[lasthumanvoice]

Cecil is about to say something, perhaps. And then Gerry says he 'got hard', and there's just this wicked smile that grows on Cecil's face. Because yes, he's still fun, and perhaps a tiny bit still juvenile.

[skeletonkeay]

"What? What's with the face?" And then the realization. "Oh, come on, you know that's not what I meant!"

He nudges Cecil, trying to play it off, but he's beet red in the face and kicking himself for spilling his guts and then immediately saying something dumb and ruining it.

[lasthumanvoice]

"I know it's not, but it's easier to tease than to acknowledge my own vulnerability. Because you're very right about everything you said. Even the kind bits. But those might be the hardest to accept."

He nudges Gerry back gently.

"Hard often comes with brittleness."

[skeletonkeay]

Gerry breathes a laugh. "You're telling me." He's felt on the verge of crumbling for a while now.

Cecil is...

Precious. Important and priceless. Fragile and indestructible. And honestly? He's cute.

Gerry hasn't had many opportunities to feel this way about another person. None of them ever came of anything. It's hard for him to think of himself as capable or worthy of such things, so utterly spent from a life steeped in terror that all he had left in him was bitterness and dry jokes. And even if he had a chance to explain how he feels... his words fail him, even in his head.

Ah well.

With a cleared throat, he gets back to cleaning. "Anyway, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable with the whole... Seeing thing. The fear god my family was involved with, that I was involved with, we called it the Eye, or the Ceaseless Watcher, or the Beholding. Fear of being watched and known and judged, of obsession, of terrible secrets. It gives its people some extra insight. Tends to freak people out. Shocker."

[lasthumanvoice]

"It wouldn't be a fear god if it didn't freak people out." But the look that Cecil gives Gerry is a kind one. Yes, it's a lot, but it's not enough to chase him away from this moment of connection. He moves to a grave nearer to the one Gerry's working at.

"You mentioned seeing the fear of being manipulated on me. Being used? That's...that's what killed me. Or at least, the closest to it. Or, perhaps, the closest to it I'm aware of."

[skeletonkeay]

"...You were being controlled," Gerry surmises, "and it got you killed. That one--- that's called the Web, or Mother of Puppets. It deals in psychological manipulation, brainwashing, addiction, general existential fear of the lack of free will, supernatural things like possession and mind control, annnnnd spiders. Just spiders. Seems odd to lump them together but that's how it is."

A beat.

"I'm sorry, though. That's a nasty situation. Especially to die without even feeling like it was your choice to be there. But... you're here. So there's a chance it can be resolved."

[lasthumanvoice]

"It's worse than it not being my choice. I don't remember how it happened. I don't remember what killed me. Just. The feeling of being invoked again. Being used again. Called up to act without being there."

He shudders visibly. "It has happened a lot, lately."

[skeletonkeay]

"Eugh," Gerry groans in agreement, a sympathetic shudder coming over him as well. "Sounds creepy. And not much sounds creepy to me anymore. Do you know why it happened?"

[lasthumanvoice]

"No. I mean, yes. I mean...ugh." He drops his scrub brush into the bucket, turning to face Gerry as he sits against a tombstone. "So, you know how every once in a while, the Sheriff's Secret Police has an auction of things they've confiscated, found, recovered and stolen?"

[skeletonkeay]

"...You know, we didn't have anything like that back home. The Section 31 officers tended to prefer to destroy or hide the things they got. But I get the idea." He waves for Cecil to carry on.

[lasthumanvoice]

“Last year, between the first edition comics and cursed artifacts and the actual human disguise came…Lot 37. Me. For sale. I don’t know for sure who bought it, but in the months since, I’ve been activated, used, to protect Night Vale’s mayor several times. Apparently. I don’t remember those events. How they resolved.”

He scrapes a hand up his face, rubbing at his eyes. He’s not going to cry. He isn’t, that’s against the rules here. He can’t, not in front of Gerry.

[skeletonkeay]

"...Well, fuck."

That's all the words Gerry can find, but his tone speaks volumes. He's heard many similar tales from those who encountered the Web's workings and avatars, most of all from Hilltop Road. All the same, what a terrible fate.

After a moment, Gerry puts a hand on Cecil's shoulder. "I won't let it happen again. If I see your strings being pulled, I'll cut them. You have my word."