Disappearances (14) : People are missing. Maybe they’re people you know, maybe you’ve just heard about it on the news. They’re just disappearing. In front of you one second, gone the next, sucked into some between-space. Into some hole that flickers out of sight once it’s swallowed them up. Maybe you got sucked in–right into a strange strange black expanse, with no access to anyone else or any exits. The pull would have been magnetic, almost unavoidable. Some might escape, but maybe you didn’t. Electronics don't work and characters cannot power down. There’s no way to reach the outside world. You might feel the sensation of creatures following you, you might run into obstacles or strange environments in the darkness. While you are in this strange location you may feel hungry but will not starve to death; you may feel tired but you will not need to sleep. Maybe you were lucky and got sucked in with someone. Maybe you’re trapped there and run into someone and team up. One thing is for sure, though–once you’re here, you can’t get out on your own. Characters who get sucked into the strange between-space will not be able to participate in the ORP immediately but will have an opportunity to join partway through so if this is something you’re interested in, please keep your eye on that! If you have questions on if something is permissible, you can PM The Space Cauldron to ask!)
His best plan since noticing those strange rifts popping up had been to ignore them entirely, and Adrian did so with gusto. Crazy rift swallowed up his cleaning chemicals? That's fine, he could requisition more from the company. Rift opened up on his bathroom door and rendered the thing inaccessible? Alright, he could take a bath in the kitchen sink. Won't be a great experience, but he'd done worse before. Rift ate the front door? Well, good thing he had a fire escape down the side of the building. What's so many flights to a Negaverse Super, anyway?
For a few days, it worked. Adrian continued going to work, going to other work, buying groceries, sleeping, going out drinking with a few guys, winning impromptu little poker tournaments with a polished smile and a few too many card tricks. He started settling into it — not a comfortable life, but it proved benign enough if all the rifts disappeared were a few belongings he could easily replace.
But then they started taking people, and Adrian noticed them again, and was challenged to readjust to a new normal. People were now disposable things — there and then gone, like cobwebs, or a morning dew. Like a winning streak. He wasn't sure what to make of it, or how he could reconcile it. Nor had he put much thought to what a person affected when they disappeared, up until he saw it personally.
That began with Simon — the whiny, seldom-liked individual who lost a jackhammer to the rifts. In the beginning, no one noticed he was gone. No one wanted to ask about it, really; most of the workers had a middling relationship with him, found him to be more a liability in their work than an asset. Their foreman got excited at the prospect of firing him for a no-call, no-show going on the third day, but for that, he knew he had to get in contact with the man. That was, to Adrian's knowledge, the first time they realized he was gone. Not simply failing to attend work, but gone.
Simon never picked up the calls, even after multiple days of multiple attempts. He didn't have a wife, or kids, or roommates — Simon lived alone. He lacked close friends. His existence was a solitary one.
By the fourth day, the foreman wanted some of the crew to check out Simon's house. If the man died, there'd be no one around to notice, not until the body started to rot. And if he was still alive and in trouble, the foreman wanted his mediocre worker rescued and returned to work as soon as possible. To accommodate his wants, the crew drew lots (for they knew better than to rely on something like poker). Adrian was one of three to draw the short straw, and was relegated to the task. He supposed that, out of all his coworkers, he was the one best suited to investigate any sort of out-of-the-blue disappearance. After all, he had a habit of making those disappearances himself, but he was reasonably certain that Simon did not number among his victims.
Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2022 2:20 pm
It was the following day that the crew of three — Adrian Frost, Germaine Wilson, and Oisin McArdle — showed up to Simon's flat. A shoddy place, it boasted no-nonsense architecture between its builder grade front door, builder grade molding, and builder-grade paint. Of course, the place had at least a dozen bachelor's hallmarks, between the cluster of beer bottles left on the coffee table, a mess of dried food left to congeal on the kitchen floor, and clothing strewn about wherever Simon felt like taking it off. All the pretenses of behavior were suspended when one lived alone, and Adrian understood this, but he hadn't seen the bachelor life in quite this much glory in a few years.
They'd agreed to split up, but Adrian already knew they weren't looking for a body. He knew the smell, knew the signs — none of them were present. No flies, no stench, no disgruntled neighbors complaining about ceiling drips or an indescribable smell that came from nowhere in particular. No, the place was a hot mess, and there were bugs, but they wouldn't be finding a corpse here.
And the flat wasn't much to search, either; like Adrian's place, Simon was afforded very little room in the place. Probably worked out to his advantage, too, since the man had maybe five pieces of furniture in his possession, if Adrian counted the TV. If Simon was there, they'd find him in under five minutes.
Adrian moved about the space, not particularly motivated or interested in the furnishings therein. It was all trash, to him — between the indications of lifestyle, the magazines, the stacks of unopened bills and advertisements, he didn't care to know that much about his coworker. Adrian had decidedly checked out of searching for Simon once he noticed the cell phone wedged between the couch cushions, and the keys that still hung on a nail that was driven next to the front door. The fact that they had gotten in via the unlocked door should've been indication enough that they needn't trouble themselves.
But there they were, and the other two decided, by majority, that Adrian should be the one to check the bedroom. He was, after all, the one most suited to tolerating bad smells.
When he entered, he was surely greeted by a terrible, unique smell, but it still wasn't that of a body. Adrian still didn't see much purpose in breaking in there, and had mentioned it a handful of times by now, but the pair wanted their details. All this invasion of privacy, for a dude that none of them particularly liked or hated. Resigned to it, Adrian picked around. Maybe they'd find a receipt for a plane ticket to Michigan, or some nonsense like that. Maybe they'd find a note that he decided to walk himself into the river, or moved in with his new girlfriend, or skipped town to join some up-and-coming gang out in his home state. People walked out of their lives all the time.
As Adrian threw open the closet doors, he found exactly the kind of evidence he was looking for. And it wouldn't accept Adrian walking away, this time.
Strickenized
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Strickenized
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Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2022 2:20 pm
When the other two reluctantly paced into Simon's bedroom, they found nothing but a pair of open closet doors. The windows were shut and locked, there was no ventilation system, and Adrian had not walked back out the way he came, yet there was no Adrian in sight.
Adrian was long gone. Adrian knew he was long gone, and that familiar, sour, dreadful lump in his stomach informed him of how gone he truly was. He was the same type of gone that Simon was, which was to say, gone without hope of return, for even as he turned back, he only saw more endless, winding dark. His eyes strained to see anything, and his imagination ran with the absence of sensory input.
He reached for his cell phone, somewhat relieved that he finished charging it an hour before they were sent on this fool's mission. But as he retrieved it, he found it wouldn't respond. Feeling around for the button to turn it back on, it didn't prompt anything — not even a dead battery symbol. Adrian kept his commentary to himself.
With no light, he had little choice but to find a wall by touch. He paced a couple steps to his right, and with hands extended, found cold and unyielding… Rock, he supposed. The surface felt uneven, jutting out and dipping in at parts, and had a rough texture that he usually associated with stone or concrete. Then he meandered in the opposite direction, and about five steps in, found another wall. He reached upward, stretched his arms as far as they could reach, but found no discernible ceiling.
That was as far as he had gotten in identifying his boundaries when he heard an echoing skitter. It was then that he caught his breath and held it; he waited, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He wanted it to be a trick of his mind, some dumb attempt to play himself. Then he heard it again, and it sounded much closer than the last. With it came a ticking noise.
Closing his eyes, Adrian pilfered his pockets. In an absence of results, he felt another pit of dread forming atop the first — he didn't have his pen. Even if whatever skittered in the dark was something he could fight, he lacked the magic for it. Lacked the strength for it. He couldn't teleport out of wherever he was, he couldn't call for help on the Negaverse tablets, he couldn't even drain whatever was coming for him. If it was coming for him.
At this juncture, he had only one recourse, for running blindly into the depths was a fool's move, as was fighting the thing. Instead, he felt only so far along the wall that he found a small alcove that cut below the rock. Then he knelt down on shaky legs, folded up on himself, and tucked his way inward, as he hoped with every shallow breath that the skittering thing was as blind and lost as him.
