004-006 » it was the possibility of darkness...

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern Mathias.
WHEN: Days 004-006
WHAT: Where has the day gone?
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Graham Plowman "The King in Yellow"

DAY 004
THE DAY OF DARKNESS

For those who ventured out on the third night, the day will look eerily familiar, for this is no day. The sun does not rise in the morning as it should, and the black sky still stretches ominously above them with no stars or moon to light their way. It is impossible to tell either the hour or the passage of time, a truly disorienting experience for those used to the normal cycle of day and night.

Beyond the safety of that initial cluster of houses are three blocks more of residential spaces, along with streets branching off on either side into neighborhoods. There are no lights on in any of these homes, though there are occasional streetlights illuminating the way. The unwilling residents of Mathias are welcome to explore these home, though it is wise to take care of being out in the cold for too long. The temperature hovers near the freezing point, dipping lower the further one ventures down those side streets. At a certain point, the temperature drops sharply and those comforting streetlights blink into darkness. These same conditions befall those who try to walk beyond the Mathias Public Library.

The silence from the start of the unearthly night also continues into what should be day. No sounds travel through that bitterly cold air and while there is no physical impact on any who wander outside, the silence feels oppressive and like the rest of the world has disappeared beyond their small circle of sound and whatever light they carry with them.


A NEW ARRIVAL

A terrible time to arrive in Mathias, surrounded by darkness and freezing cold. The newest resident will find herself shivering awake beneath a streetlight outside the Public Library, with no sign of how or why she has ended up in this unfamiliar place.

Best get inside, dear. It isn't safe in the cold.

DAY 005
NIGHT CONTINUES

There is still no sign of the sun. No moon. No stars. Nothing but darkness and painful cold greets our weary fellows on the fifth day.

Indeed, it seems almost monotonous, like this stretch of hours will be exactly as the last... until it isn't. At unpredictable intervals, the power begins to fluctuate within buildings where it had previously held steady. Lights flicker, central heating stutters, and as the hours wear on, there is the notion at the back of the mind that the electricity may go out entirely. Many houses and buildings in Mathias have fireplaces — it might be a good time to start using them.

DAY 006
SILENCE BROKEN

Across Mathias, the power fails completely. Now our ill-fated friends understand why emergency kits are so easily found in residences and businesses in town. Candles, matches, crank flashlights — these are the only means to light your way if you're foolish enough to move beyond the safety and warmth of a fireplace.

The silence is no longer relegated to the outdoors now, but has seeped inside. Sounds almost seem to be absorbed by the impenetrable blackness, disappearing into its depth so completely that one might begin to believe they never existed. The feeling of utter isolation becomes almost maddening, relief only provided slightly by the company of others. And then, suddenly, within that dark nothingness—

Voices. Indiscernible whispers from within the black, one voice or a dozen, with no source to be found. Lasting a mere second or for minutes or hours on end, coming from any direction or from nowhere at all, heard by only one person or by everyone, there is no shutting them out. Following the whispers is ill-advised, as they may lead away from the safety of a group, or out into the cold and beyond the point of no return.

---

LOCATIONS

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY A large brick building with a string of round lightbulbs draped across the double door entry way, the library resides at the intersection of Phillips Drive and Jackson Boulevard. The building is older than most in this area and coated in more dust than an ill-used library might usually see. There are a number of tall windows throughout the main room that are either broken with glass and debris scattered across a wide stretch of floor or coated in grime so thick that light couldn't penetrate even if there was any. There are lanterns with candles set around the room on lower shelves or the tops of pedestals, and low lamps with green glass are perched on reading tables at one end.

The books are what one might typically find in a small town library - classics, history, dry biographies, but nothing too controversial and nothing published after 1990. But these books are all collected at the front half of the library — toward the back is a different story. Almost as if walking into a different era, the shelves suddenly filled with old leather-bound tomes that smell add a musty smell to the air. Those shelves rise up toward the high ceiling, the tops barely able to be seen with one of the lanterns should it be lit, and as one reaches the very back of the library—

Streaks of soot cover the shelves, or what remain of them, and those along the wall are a blackened mess of what is left behind when books burn. From floor to ceiling, these shelves are a mangled ruin, and there is no way to tell what these books might have contained, or why the fire did not spread further into the room.

THE RESIDENTIAL HOUSES The stretch of new houses mentioned on Night 3 may still be explored as the night continues. Phillips Drive continues on for three blocks past where Mathias's newest residents took shelter, and the cross-streets of King Lane, Stoker Park, and Jackson Boulevard are also open for one block in either direction. Venturing beyond this area is met with painful cold and debilitating exhaustion.

The houses in this section of town are both locked and unlocked, ranging from pristine (if dusty) condition to rundown and falling apart, as if some houses have aged where others have not. The "oldest" houses have been overtaken by rot, interior walls missing whole sections, holes in the floors between levels. There is running water in all the houses in this area of time, but only the best condition houses have working electricity, though the electricity will begin to fail as the night stretches on. The corded landline telephones found within the homes are still working, thankfully, and new sets of numbers (this time without names) are easily found for each block.

As utterly empty as the "newest" houses seem to be, the oldest are... less so. There's a feeling that someone could walk around the corner at any moment. It is almost the sensation of being watched, or of there being thing else there that cannot be seen. Nothing in the houses is disturbed and there are no shadows springing out, so perhaps there's really nothing there at all...

THE BOARDING HOUSE Another large brick building at the intersection of Phillips Drive and Jackson Boulevard, the boarding house occupies the opposite corner from the library and seems to be almost as old as the larger building across from it. There are three stories to the building: the first floor contains the kitchen (fully stocked), dining room, shared living room space, and a half bath; the second floor has four single bedrooms and one full bath; the third floor also has four single bedrooms and one full bath. There is a locked door on the third floor that leads to an attic. Each room is furnished with a double bed, desk, and small table and chairs, and in each room there can be found the clothing and personal effects of the former boarders. The electricity and other utilities in the boarding house function just fine until the power fluctuations begin as in the rest of town.

Room 1 — unclaimed
Room 2 — unclaimed
Room 3 — Daisy Johnson
Room 4 — Max Guevara
Room 5 — Number Five
Room 6 — Phil Coulson
Room 7 — Claire Novak
Room 8 — unclaimed

To claim a house for layout designing/exploration or a room in the boarding house, comment here. House numbers will be generated in response to comments.

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Comments

[enduresurvive]

She struggles with that reference for a minute. Romero. Wait, that's the zombie guy, right? Ugh. Zombie shit. She's never been much for horror films, but especially not zombie ones. It's too close to home, though she doesn't consider Infected to be like the frankly silly looking animated corpses in old movies. Real life is just so much worse.

"No. Not zombies," she says. She doesn't roll her eyes, but that tone is there in her voice, as if to say zombies aren't real. "It's a fungus. It's called cordyceps. It's a mutation of cordyceps that can infect people. It...gets into your brain and controls you so you lose your mind and you aren't you anymore. Infected go after regular people to spread the infection. That's all they really do."

Her voice sounds hollow, like always, when she explains it. There's always that part of her that wonders why she's different. She's one of them. But she isn't one of them. Fuck, it would have been easier to be one of them.

"What's it like?" she asks, abruptly. "2015. Where you're from. What's it like?"

[tinstar]

Raylan only thinks about it while Ellie is struggling to focus in on his reference. Why would a girl from 2039 of all places know George Romero? The verbal roll of her eyes that followed was even more of a rebuke on the 80's and the Zombie Horror Genre.

What she described sounded more like a Stephen King Novel. Dreamcatcher, specifically.

"For someone like you? Trust me, lookin' into the wayback machine might not be the best idea." Someone her age might be going into collage, getting their third shit teenage job and getting a boyfriend. Raylan had a feeling that wasn't what Ellie was going to get to experience.

He thought it a kindness to gloss over what 2015 had that 2039 didn't and reached in to open the door to the house, stepping in ahead of Ellie as he swept his flashlight across the foyer. "Another two level. Not many single levels around. Either older homes or higher rate of livin'."

[enduresurvive]

"Why, because I'm gonna be pissed that the world didn't end where you're from? Maybe. But I bet people are still pieces of shit without all that going on." She's half-joking, but her cynicism is pretty strong. She's an optimist somewhere on the inside, or was once, but it's so hard to find that now. It's so hard to trust anything these days.

So she follows him inside.

"Looks kind of like houses in movies, right? Nothing super notable, nice looking neighbourhood if you ignore that somehow not even one car exists here." It was almost disappointing that they were so...the same. But it was still weird how much stuff was left. Nothing was rotting, just dusty. How long had these people been gone, anyway?

[tinstar]

"Maybe," he answered half truthfully with an innocent roll of one shoulder as he stepped into one of the side rooms to have a look around. People tended to resent what they couldn't have and he didn't want her to feel like he was rubbing it in or anything. "But people have always been pieces of shit - part of the human condition."

He ambled around a table, dishes left on from the breakfast whatever family had just finished. "Kinda does. Movie set. They used to build full towns to drop nukes on in the 30's and 40's - that's what this reminds me of. We should probably stick together, just in case the floor ain't as sound as it looks. No use riskin' getting trapped somewhere."

It was always 50/50 if someone was offended by the company or not, but she wasn't a cop or an agent and while he was sure she could take care of herself, it would really be less work for him, in case something did go wrong.

[enduresurvive]

If Ellie was offended by Raylan's company, she'd just leave. She doesn't have any concrete reason to stay, but...she's never done as well all alone as she does with others. Though she seriously regrets Dina coming with her to Seattle, that's because Dina is pregnant and sick, not because she doesn't want the company. What they're doing in Seattle is dangerous (and fucked up, Ellie can admit that sometimes even if it won't stop her plans), and she doesn't want Dina or anyone else hurt. But it was also nice to not be along on the long ride up there.

It's nice not to be alone here, to have Raylan there. He seems like he knows what he's doing, more or less, and that gives her confidence. Sure, he could still turn out to be shitty. She's aware of that and is still on guard, but for now she's trusting him.

"They built towns to nuke them?" she asks. "What the fuck, why?" She takes a cursory glance around, but it really does seem pretty much like all the other houses, so she lets herself get distracted enough to focus on his question.

Wanna handwave the rest of this answer her answer? Maybe start something new?

[tinstar]

"Nuclear Testing. They wanted to see the effects of it on a town," hre replied matter of fact. "The Nevada desert is covered in craters from it." He ducked his head into another room and rolled himself around the door frame to enter into what he assumed was a TV/Living room. Nothing terribly impressive or anything important, though he imagined that if he took the time to look at the pictures, he'd see similar ones that he saw to the other houses.

"They stopped in the 40's I think, though the lands still actively used for military tests. Messed up the locals too, radiation poisoning, illnesses.." He looked back at her. "What effected your people, this.. fungus. Was it always there?" Or did someone put it there?

He didn't think they were going to find much in the house, and it let him question her a more casually.