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 Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2016 8:00 pm
Quote: a DM'd thread in which thorne must escape an unnerving place
He does not hesitate in following the trail to the doors.
A house of mirrors, Noeh had told him, and there was a soft terror inside of him sleeping, but he would do this for her.
His hands press on the door and he steps inside.
A house full of mirrors.
Well, how terrifying could a reflection be?shibrogane hope this is an alright start for mirror house rp! q q
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Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 3:34 am
The doors click shut behind him and disappear seamlessly. Noeh wasn't kidding when she called the place a house of mirrors. Every surface is mirrors: ceiling, walls, floor. And in every surface there is a different Thorne. One of them seems to smirk Corr's cruel smirk. Another's skin has begun to go slack from decay. Still more depict other ways Thorne's life could have gone differently, and as the mirrors all reflect each other there are hundreds of reflections to sort through. Thorne stands at a fork in the labyrinth: He can go right or left.
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Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 1:00 pm
Thorne has a bad history with mirrors.
It's not even that though. For a long time, Thorne simply avoided them all together, ignoring his reflection or draping blazers over bathroom ones to keep from seeing his own face. It had been after his fathers funeral, a forgotten thing by now, nothing but habit.
There's no way to avoid them here though.
Thorne tries not to feel the grating fear as he sees Corr smile back at him from one reflection, another rotting from a chest cracked open, ribs bent outwards, bright red. His breath sharpens and he shudders, steps through the labyrinth.
Left or right looms before him.
Left to the corpse smile, right to Corr.
Thorne walks left.
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2016 7:33 pm
To the left Thorne finds more reflections: his own face, over and over and over, minimal differences, but clearly not him. But now there are others, too. Chris in some. Algernon. Mare, even, whole and beautiful in the mirror. He finds a door. It's locked. The Thorne corpse collapses nearby, an awful retching noise coming from its glasgow mouth.
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Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2016 7:54 pm
Thorne tries to block them out, these reflections, shells and ugly monsters inverted, all of them wearing his face. His breath comes out ragged for the span of a second, but then he tames it. It is a nightmare, waking. Noeh waits for him on the other sides. The retching behind him turns his stomach, but Thorne has an awful chanting in his head. Do not look. Do not look. The door is locked so Thorne maps and catalogues it in his mind, presses his hand to the door. For one silly moment he thinks, why won't you open for me? And then he turns and starts back down the hall to the right. To Corr.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2016 3:23 am
"Princeling," murmurs Melany. Nearby, maybe. Her voice comes from every angle. Her voice comes from the place where Thorne's skull meets his spine, the unprotected little hollow. "Princeling, did you really think you'd ever escape me?" Her hands, cold, vice-like. Her thumbs against the bumps of his cervical spine, her fingers--such boring, normal hands, not particularly long or spindly, just hands--around his throat like a torque. "Do you think you could be my equal?" Behind him, corpse-thorne continues to try to vomit something up. There is a metallic clatter. From behind. From where Melany's hands seem to lead. "Do you think you could," she asks.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2016 10:38 am
Thorne wants to snarl, wants to snap and bite and beg for her to leave him alone. It's too real, he thinks. It's too real, she's here - the panic swells: she's hereshe'shereshe'shere -
Snap. The corpse of him tries to vomit something up. Snap. Melany asks if he ever thought he could be her equal. Snap.
Do you think you could?
"You're not real," he says, forces himself to say, because if he allows himself to think she is, he might fail then and there. "And even if you were, your questions don't matter."
He turns, forces himself through every single screaming vein and muscle and memory in his body, and moves for the metallic clatter in line with Melany's voice, wherever it leads him, only pausing to stare at his corpse, at what he is trying to get out of him, his heart jamming an uneven staccato in his chest.
"I'm not trying to escape you anymore," he snarls, "You're inside of me, now. Part of who I am. I'll be your equal because you made me to be."
He keeps going.
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Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2016 2:50 am
Melany's hands are so ******** cold. Her breath smells like burnt offerings, charcoal and crackling sage. But he turns, and there's no one there, no one except the retching corpse, and between the corpse's hands where it tries to hold itself up is a key. The ball-bearing chain leads back into the corpse's mouth. It tries to vomit again, the sound gut-tearing. The key clatters against the ground.
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Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2016 11:44 am
Thorne blanches, horrified, wants to apologize or cry out or run. But he stays rooted in place, unable to move, watching like a deer in headlights. He didn't know what he was seeing - past, present, future? Nothing at all? Nothing, just a nightmare?
He doesn't know.
"I'm sorry," he says, he doesn't know why he says it, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry - "
He takes the key and goes to unlock the door. And he tries not to look back.
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 3:10 am
The bloody key--Thorne had to rip it out of his corpse-self's throat--drip drip drips onto the floor. It's easily ignored, however, in the cacophony of whispers, in the touch of cool hands on his shoulders. Passing silence, the smell of burnt meat, something crackling and conversations too low to hear, and images of those Thorne loves most. There is another corpse, but this one is not a reflection.
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 9:11 am
Thorne hisses, the key ugly and wet in his hands, as something cool slides over his shoulder, whispers crowding against his spin. Hands. He tries to look behind him, but fear only makes him turn part way. He hates the images around him more than he knows how to bear - don't look at me don'tlookatme -
"Stop," he's sure he says. "Don't."
Help me, a desperate part of him wants to scream, but Thorne isn't weak. He is only this - alone. There is no one to help him.
His entire body shakes as he moves for the next corpse. He doesn't know anymore what to do, so he puts his hand on the corpse and turns it over.
Don't be, don't be, a part of him thinks, but he's not sure who he's asking not to see here on the ground anymore. It's certainly not himself.
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 10:10 pm
The body is months old and mummified in the dry air, the dark red hair stiff--maybe blood, maybe its natural color. There's clothes, a sweater that reads BRUNCH SQUAD. But the dead giveaway is Finn's ring around the corpse's thumb, the sling supporting one immobile arm, and the tattoo: geometric lines and circles. "He died and you did nothing," someone says in Thorne's voice. "They'll die, too. And you'll do nothing." In the mirrors, serial Chrises fall to their knees. Blood oozes from their eyes. Jeremiah freezes over, skin paling to blue, ice spiking out of him and holding him up as he falls. Jeremiah burns to death, and for a horrifying moment his silhouette within the flames looks like Melany. Algernon does nothing. He stands, he stares, he does nothing at all. "Princeling," says Melany now. "You should turn back, Alexander. It will only get worse from here."
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 10:20 pm
Thorne does not have to look at the ring to know who it is. He's spent months in memorization, painting Aleksy's hands from memory, his fingers trailing the depth of those geometric lines. For what it's worth, if it's worth anything at all, Thorne does not vomit. His stomach wrenches and a terrible noise spreads from his mouth, but he does not vomit.
His vision slides, blurs. The voice talks, and all around him, people die. Chris dies, over and over again. Jeremiah burns, freezes, falls. He thinks he might be speaking, but if he is, the roaring in his ears drowns it out.
Don't - crackles through him like a gunshot, but don't what? Die? The voice tells him he did nothing, is doing nothing.
"Aleksy," Thorne says, sobs, and the name is a bullet. But the body in his arm is mummified, months old. They were right. He'd done nothing.
The moment of violence in him crushes inwards, cruel. He thinks he sees Melany and his vision whites out before a staggering amount of pain slams through him - he'd thrown his fist into the mirror, wanting to shatter that silhouette that had looked like her. He uncurls his fist, splays it against the mirrors edge.
Failure thrums through him like a lifeline. Failure, shame, the terror of being alone because he had done nothing - done nothing -
"No," Thorne says, forces himself to say, realizes he's sliced clean through the supple soft inner ledge of his lip, the ferrous taste burning its way down his throat. "I won't."
This isn't real, he tries to tell himself, but maybe it is.
Inaction is still an action, someone had once told him, grief is useless. Be angry. Burn it down if you cannot build it. Raze it when you cannot win.
It was a cruel set of words that had never bent him before, but was crushing him now.
"Show me the way forward," he says, to them all, to Melany - real or not.
Show me what it means to be king.
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 10:40 pm
They are reflections. The corpse is real. It doesn't move. (What is in Aleksy's place, then?) For a long, horrible moment, everything is frozen. But it is the last long, horrible moment, and like all moments, it ends. The reflections blink out one by one. Bloodied Chris, Jeremiah's smouldering corpse, Algernon's blank stare. Shiloh with his face half beaten in: gone now. Noeh is easing the body from Thorne's arms--but it's not Noeh at all, or at least not Noeh as Thorne knows her--it's Noeh, human, blue-grey flesh gone to a pinkish brown. Her hair falls in brunette curls and her voice, when she speaks, has a taste rather than a sound. A honeyed flavor, soft as air. "Who are you?" A younger Noeh. Barely out of her teens. Around her neck is a chain with two rings, and Thorne knows--like a slap from a cherished friend--he knows that he needs one of them. "I'm Mina." Mina? That can't be right. Her face is Noeh's. Her hands are Noeh's. Even her corkscrew curls are Noeh's. "Are you okay, dude?"
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2016 10:49 pm
Thorne isn't really aware of anything, anything until someone tries easing the body from Thorne's arms, and he realizes he is tightening his grip - he doesn't want to let go. But what good is holding on? What good is -
"Don't take him," he rasps, his voice harsh and broken, but he's already gone. "I can't - Not yet - "
He shakes all over, and looks up. Straight into Noeh's face. But she's speaking, she's younger, she's not -
She says dude.
Thorne snaps a little. He feels himself go stiller, and then, piece by piece, draws himself into a working body, a working tool.
He loosens his grip and lets Noeh ease him closer to the ground, even though his hands are still wound against one of Aleksy's.
"Mina?" He asks. "But you're - "
He struggles. "My name is Thorne." A pause, a breath. Stutter. Restart. He has so many questions. But all he can get out is, "Why are you here? What about Melany?"
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