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 Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 9:05 am
Prompt #2 In a time of darkness, sometimes it's the little things that make a difference. Destiny City has its fair share of tragedies, not the least of which was the Carnival Fire of 1942. The story of a distant memory that claimed the lives of over a hundred people and injured many more recently resurfaced after an estate sale revealed the only surviving relics of the massive fire: a set of old carousel horses. A local philanthropist and historian acquired the set, some of which were badly burned, and set about restoring them. It took several months, but the project was completed and the Carousel was resurrected in memory of those who lost their life on the very grounds they lost. It stands now, open to the public, a tribute of Destiny's City past and its perseverance. The Carousel operates as to be expected, with antique horses that are perhaps a bit more frightening than need be and a tune that is almost as eerie as it is cheery. Some even say they hear distant voices, and screams, mixed into the music; others have said that as the Carousel moves the shadows of people fleeing distracts them. It's probably just a ghost story, though. Are you brave enough to find out?
Yet when she had first approached it, eerie music seeping into her head, she couldn't help but be distracted by well, shadows. It seemed to be a running theme for her at the moment, at some point in the last couple of days she had developed a paranoia regarding them and now she was beginning to see things in them almost everywhere. Suffice it to say she wasn't a fan and even as she begrudgingly stared towards the carousel with a mild frown on her features, she knew that she'd have to find a way to shake whatever this was.
Still, something was messing with her.
She slid her hands further into her pockets and slouched further down on to the bench, chin partially hidden by the collar of her coat. Even know she could see them, the semblance of a shadowed entity running passed the rapidly spinning horses. Her eyes were definitely playing tricks on her but at least for now her ears weren't screwing with her; she'd heard someone else mentioning that they'd heard screams.
Maybe it was just the season; she was an adult now and really should have known better! Trickery might very well have been afoot but that didn't mean it was real right?
For now, the red head wasn't risking it as she admired the carousel from a distance but even that had a bit of a macabre look to it as well!
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Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 2:16 pm
As far as Michelle was concerned, she was avoiding any and everything that was remotely spooky, scary, or skeletal. She didn't want to go to any haunted houses (even those some of the high school kids tried to invite her to - those kids were precious when they wanted to be), she wasn't going to watch any ghost adventure shows on TV (not that she normally did anyway, she just made extra sure to avoid them), the only thing she had planned for the season was getting candy from the store and handing it out to trick or treaters while saving one bag of chocolate for herself. But then rumors had started -- as far as she was concerned, at least, they were rumors -- talking about how creepy the carousel was and at first, there was no way a carousel could be spooky. They were sweet and innocent and brought much joy, so just to prove that her coworkers were being dumb, she'd gone to check it out. Almost immediately, she'd heard screams -- they sounded far off, but also like they were in time with the music playing from the carousel, and she did not like that. Looking at the horses, some looked perfectly fine, but others...they looked like they'd come to life and try to eat her. So, she decided it was time to stop staring at it and get away from it. Being how she was, though, she found herself a seat on a nearby bench, sitting beside another redhead, giving an uneasy smile. "...really not as innocent as a carousel ought to be, is it?"
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Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 3:01 pm
"I'm assuming they call it art?" Liliane didn't immediately look at Michelle as she took a seat, but she did at least respond to her. She'd been paying attention but as she'd always been comfortable with other people approaching her she hadn't been disconcerted. A few seconds later she did look at the other woman though, offering a wry smile in greeting.
"I'm not a huge art buff but I'm pretty sure it's not really my thing," she added and gave a nod towards one of the more gnarly horses as it passed by their immediate line of sight. "I'm not sure if they did this on purpose or something legitimately made that thing with the aim to scare kids and give them nightmares later on."
She paused briefly.
"If it was the latter than someone must have had it out for those parents," she mused; another pause and she pursed her lips thoughtfully.
"Doesn't help they brought it out during this season either and it's already got rumours around it," she shook her head. "I must have selective hearing because I can't hear some of the parts of the song they keep saying is there," she confessed. Yep, she was going to assume that the screams were a hidden part of the song that she hadn't picked up on...as for the shadows she'd been seeing, well, she wasn't about to admit she could see those.
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Posted: Wed Oct 09, 2019 5:44 am
"Art is supposed to mimic life to an extent, so either the people who designed this were terrified of horses, or just hated them to the point of making them look so...well." Michelle cleared her throat. "Either way, it had to have been intentional. Everything in art is done intentionally, or so my understanding is. They meant for those horses to look that way, whatever the reason behind it was, but the question is why?" Licking her lips, she gave a small shrug, looking over to Liliane for a moment before back at the creepy horses on the carousel. "Used to, things weren't quite the same as they are now. I mean, humanity has progressed in so many ways that it's both easier and harder to scare us. It might not have been considered scary back then, but now it definitely is. Especially with what sounds like screams in the midst of it all." Michelle shuddered. "Carousels are popular whatever time of year but I agree, they picked a really weird time to bring it out," she sniffed, reaching up to rub at her nose absently. "Hearing all of the song isn't all that great. Maybe it's a frequency thing. Be glad you're not hearing it, it's really...really bad. It could be just it screeching and not actual screams, but...I don't know, it just feels weird to me. In a not fun way."
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Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2019 3:31 pm
"Wait, you can hear that stuff too?" she asked and furrowed a brow as she turned to look towards the carousel again. She'd have preferred if she could hear that rather than what she could see. Whatever was happening lately definitely seemed to be messing with her sense. She wasn't normally easily spooked, in fact she quite liked Urban Exploration and other adventures that could lead into dishevelled or completely dilapidated places...but there was something about this week that just wasn't sitting right.
"I'd sooner hear it," she admitted and pursed her lips as she regarded the carousel horses once more. Mich had a point, art was supposed to mimic life to a certain point but this seemed quite macabre. Half of them seemed fine while the other half looked twisted, almost as if they had been crafted by someone entirely different.
"I'm just plain seeing things," she admitted at last and pursed her lips. "Never had a halloween season like this, don't remember having a week where everything just ended up so creepy in general," she added. She paused again to watch the carousel spin and with it, the flickers of retreating, shadowy figures.
"I didn't really get a chance to look in to where it had come from, I know it was a restoration project but were we really that weird back then?" she didn't know if Michi would know, but there was probably a historian somewhere that could shed some light on it...as it stood, Liliane didn't really want to get near it to read any plaques. "Maybe I should have paid more attention in history lessons..."
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Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2019 8:45 am
"I can. I wish I couldn't. I promised some friends I'd come and stay for a bit so I'm...here and staying for a bit, but I'm not getting any closer than I am now. The horses look weird, there's screaming sounds that can't be explained by wind or faulty equipment, but hey, I'm not running from this. It's spooky as can be, but it hasn't hurt anyone." Yet, she added in her mind. She wasn't seeing things quite to the extent that Liliane was, but what she saw was more than enough, causing her to chew on her lip absently. "You and me both. This is my first Halloween season here, I arrived towards the end of summer, and I've been told things just get creepy here but...this is one of the first things that's made me really think 'okay, yeah, creepy'." Michelle's head tilted to the side, listening to Liliane before giving a small shrug. "I have to admit, I'm not recalling where it came from off the top of my head, but there are a lot of things in the past that were normal for the time that we would consider creepy or just plain horrible now. This just seems to be one of them, though you'd think there would be more than whispers about how this is creepy if it was really that bad. Wouldn't have so many families here, definitely...."
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Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:27 am
"They do get weird," she conceded after several moments of thought.
Oddly enough Liliane had lived here for the vast majority of her life, however, her parents seemed to have a knack for picking times of year to go on vacation that had allowed her to skirt around the worst of the paranormal and unexplained activities that seemed to happen. Up until she had been found and handed her wand she had been completely unaware of the real scale of what happened in the city.
...Hell if it hadn't been for the fact she was concentrating on her studies it was highly likely she'd have been on vacation again this year, thus avoiding all of this chaos in the process. Suffice it to say that Liliane wasn't necessarily a fan of the weirdness, but she was beginning to regard her good fortune with a new found respect.
A holiday would not have gone amiss lately.
"Really weird actually," she added, squinting briefly as she recalled the Star Festival. Between strange little star people, angry plants and electrified fireflies, there had been a lot to unpack that time. Now she was staring at not just a spooky as heck carousel, but also unexplained ghost-like activity that seemed more malevolent than mischievous.
"You're from out of town?" she asked curiously.
"You've got spectacular timing," she mused and offered a wry smile.
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Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2019 9:11 am
"I feel like 'really weird' is an understatement," Michelle said with a soft laugh. "I've seen plenty of things since coming here, but they haven't been so...spooky until lately. Know what I mean?" There was a soft hum before Michelle was nodding at Liliane. "Mmhm, out of town, from down south actually. Needed a change of pace so...here I came, once I got accepted for a job. Only been here since...late July, early August, somewhere in there -- and it's been a ride ever since. I could do with less of the spooky, though. A lot less of that. Weird, I can handle. Spooky..." She shuddered, hearing screaming once again. "I love the costumes and candy of Halloween, but the rest of it is...not so great for me."
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Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 9:12 am
"We normally visit family each year around these times when my parents can get off work," Liliane smiled warmly. She'd only been able to dodge the peculiar due to a very predictable routine that had existed for almost the entirety of her life; had anything weird happened while she was a child then she certainly didn't remember it...but up until recently she had been oblivious to the machinations of her home city.
"Seems like things changed up for them lately though so rescheduling is now a thing," she chuckled and turned her head away from the carousel, choosing instead to give herself a little breathing space. If she kept staring at it then she might find herself lost in it and given her already semi paranoid state that wasn't going to do anything for her.
"I used to think my friends were screwing with me; I'd come home and they'd have all these crazy stories but now it looks like they were telling the truth," she admitted.
"I'm cool with the fun and games but things that look like they'r'e hurting people..." she shook her head. "Not my thing."
She was the first one to love a very good and detailed halloween prank, but if this was a prank and it was on such a large scale then she had to question the motive. Some of the things she had heard in recent days had implied people were being left in places that probably should have been avoided.
"Bit like that carousel really, I'm starting to think it should have been left burned," she murmured.
A pause, and then she was struck with the realisation that manners were a thing.
"I'm Liliane by the way, not that I might talking to strangers and all that but...always nice to have a name for a face!"
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Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 9:35 am
"Aaah. That would explain why it's new to you despite having lived here for a while," Michelle nodded, looking thoughtful. "I wonder if your parents were aware and were trying to protect you as long as possible, in that case?" Parents did take caring for their children seriously, after all. At least from her experience. "I tend to take things with a grain of salt, but the more people say the same or similar things, the more inclined I am to believe them -- or at least believe they think they saw or did the thing. Know what I mean?" She nodded softly, listening to Liliane speaking, leaning to the side as Liliane muttered to hear what was said only to suddenly have introductions happening. Right. That was a thing. She spoke to so many people daily without getting a name, she hadn't thought anything about it now. "Ah, I'm Michelle, it's nice to meet you, Liliane," she smiled, giving a slight bow of her body in response before, "And maybe you're right. Some things are better left in the past...and this certainly seems like something falling into that category." She shuddered, moving to sit back up.
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Posted: Tue Nov 05, 2019 2:21 am
Did her parents know?
Michelle raised a very good point with that one, had there been a reason that her parents had deliberately scheduled their vacations around particularly 'festive' periods? It might have been entirely coincidental of course, driven by the convenience of getting time off in these weeks, but at the same time she couldn't help but wonder if perhaps there was more too it?
The season was as good as time as any for conspiracy theories, when combined with the paranormal activity and all around weird events, it seemed quite apt.
"You know that might be worth asking about," she mused and cast a half glance towards the older woman. "Once I figure out how to approach it without sounding completely mad," she admitted. Her parents were certainly used to her eccentricities, but the paranoia she'd been experiencing lately had been unusual. It was best to approach these things with a more level head than anything else.
"But you're right on the whole believing something when everyone is talking about it, I know some moods are infectious but this somehow seems a little different," she pursed her lips. "Maybe there's something in the water," she hazarded.
She was loathe to use the 'terrorists' as a reason for it given that she was one, but if the Negaverse were at fault it would be easy to blame the senshi for it... The media seemed to use the White Moon as its favourite punching bag.
"Wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened," she pointed out. She might be on vacation at lot of the time but she did keep up with her current affairs and there was always something being covered up.
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