What dreams may come [Open, bendytimed to before GTFO plot]

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

In her sealed, silent, sensory-deprived meditation room, Roxie is sleeping. It's a special sleep: for all dreams are connected, she knows, and by spinning her mind out along the web of thought, she might step into others...

[Roxie is dream-hopping, getting a look at the subconsciousnesses of the other people on the ship. So, how it works - if you're interested, go ahead and post with a dream your character is having, and Roxie will slip into it, subtle at first but more obvious as she tries to satisfy her curiosity. Just her being around will make the dreamer more lucid and more likely to remember the whole thing when they wake up.

Also, feel free to ask any OOC questions in a thread here, or poke me on AIM at 'anagramarye'.]

Comments

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Roxie stands a little behind Sherry. She has a t-shirt, and overalls, and her jacket, and little but solid boots—she's never dressed very well.

For a few long moments, she watches Sherry watch the four adults.

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Her heart is pounding, it overtakes the other sounds of the beach. She tries to pull her feet up from the sucking sand but only manages to sink further down. Don't they understand? She has to help them. She has to help all of them. They have to move, because she knows what happens next in this dream. She knows.

Beyond them, becoming even larger, the tidal wave continued to come. But, it was changing, the blue ocean water becoming brown. There's a smell of decay, or wet rot that can only be identified as human. Sherry screams in the dream, as she pulls at at her feet. The sand hurts, it's cutting her skin and dotting her legs. "Stop! Stop this! Please! I... I have to... I have to help my parents!"

But, Sherry doesn't know which set she means.

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Roxie grimaces. The pain isn't really real, but...

She pulls Sherry free of the sand, heedless of the way it abrades at her feet instead. From her neck, her bell hangs free on its chain, and it gives off a soft wite-noise tone.

Roxie moves forward towards the water, Sherry in her arms. With each step she forces through the sand, her legs tinge thicker red, and amidts it a flash or two of white. "You need to stop thinking you're so alone," se mumbles, and tries not to think of how it could apply back to her.

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Sherry's head turns between the wave of undead still coming and her friend, incredibly perplexed. This is new. This is weird. There's never been anyone else but her, and her parents in this dream before. Roxie, however, is not an unwelcome tradition.

"Pot, Kettle. Put me down, Roxie, I need to get to them," Sherry wriggles and grasps at the air.

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"I'm helping you," Roxie says as she shuffles into the water, easily bearing weight on torn ankles that should have already collapsed under her. "But you'll have to trust me. Can you do that?"

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She pauses for only a moment. Better to be positively honest than lie, even in a dream.

"No." Sherry murmurs. The wave of bodies crashes over them with a horrible, ear-splitting moan and the whole world turns black. When light starts filtering through again, it's different.

There's an empty precinct, boarded up to keep out something that clearly made it inside. There are bodies on the floor, some with bullet wounds, others with bite marks.

Sherry stands at the top of the stairs and looks down at Roxie before backing away from the older girl and running. Running fast.



There's a roar from one hall or another, something that sounds like a man, if that man were being half-tortured, and half-enraged.

Sh

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can't I can't Ican'tIcan't!"

1/?

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Roxie facepalms, pushing her glasses up.

2/?

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She glances up, letting out a sigh.

3/3

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And she starts hop-running up the stairs, taking them three or four at a time until she gets to the top, and starts in a soft (for her) jog after Sherry.

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It's weird, but it seems as though this is the only place where Roxie isn't faster than she is, even as she runs at a slow pace through the halls. Again, the overpowering smell of decay is present, but mixed in is a smell of some perfume, and the overpowering taste of bile.

Sherry takes a left turn, a right turn and locks the door behind her. The nameplate on the door reads Chief Irons.

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Roxie slides up to the door, peering at the nameplate. She's alert, but not overly so—it's the kind of zen feeling she slips into in combat, unconsciously paying attention to as much as she can at once.

She tries the handle once, and then raps on the door sharply. "Sherry. Sherry."

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There's no answer, just a muffled whimper from behind the door.

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Roxie pulls a worn skeleton key from her cloak (cloak? didn't she have a jacket?) and a vial of what looks to be liquid, undried blood.

Very, very carefully she uncaps the vial and lets a drop or two flow onto the key, then caps it again. And she presses the key against the keyhole—

Even though it shouldn't really fit, technically, the metal grinds and whirrs, the key slotting into place with a sound of metal flicking against metal. Roxie forces it to turn, wincing, and pulls at the doorknob...

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And is greeted by walls of animal heads. They stare down at Roxie, accusatory. There's blood on the floor of this room, slightly congealed, Some of it on the desk. But Sherry is nowhere to be seen.

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Roxie gestures at the animal heads dismissively, and peers down at the blood.

She forces her key back out of the now-twisted lock and walks a slow circle around the room.

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Sherry's figure backs out of the room, and into the hallway again. She doesn't understand, usually she wakes up out of this nightmare, on the floor or the couch or curled up under a desk somehow. She's never been in it this long before.

There's that roar again, and she's off down the hallway, and gracefully sidesteps the zombies that try to vomit on her, ducking into - what else? - a vent.

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Roxie turns—damn. Tricky. Trickier than she should be, in here, but that only makes sense.

She follows. Zombies? She doesn't sidestep, she simply goes through, trampling them down like some malevolent Mr. Hyde.

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In her vent hiding spot, Sherry listened for her pursuer. There was an all-too familiar moan and shuffling of feet but also the thud-crack-splish sound of a falling body being crushed underfoot.

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Roxie shakes her legs. Ick. And she doesn't want to break the dream to the degree she'd have to to get her legs clean again.

Instead, she pauses and looks about. Into a hallway? No, that doesn't work...

She hasn't noticed the vent yet, though.

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Inside her hiding place, Sherry feels herself rock back and forth. It's hard to be in a place like this for her. In comparison, Stacy is a cakewalk for all the confusion it brings Sherry. But Sherry can forgive her that, since it also brought her two very, very good people again, and a whole host of new ones.

She knows she has to get control of herself, and act like she should. But, despite all of Sherry's protests to the truth, she is a child. The monsters from the memory of that horrible day in Racchoon City will tear her to pieces if she lets them. All she has to do is walk into their arms and be consumed.

But, her streak of self-preservation stops her from doing that, even in a dream. Her voice is thin, frightened and warped from the vent echoing when Sherry finally speaks up. "Roxie, you're not supposed to be here."

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"... I didn't want to see you get hurt," Roxie says, as she crouches to peer into the vent. Oh. Clever. No normal girl would want to stay in the hallways with the shambling... Things.

And she's telling the truth. Out of sight, out of mind, sometimes--but when faced with somebody she considers a friend, almost, maybe, she couldn't just stand out of the way.

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"Sometimes I wake up, you know," Sherry rubs at her eyes. The police station starts melting, changing into a spartanly decorated apartment. It might have once been full of familial love and light, but now it's dim, dark, the shades are drawn. There are plaques on the wall that cannot be read, pictures whose subjects are muted and smudged.

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"But you didn't this time," Roxie observes, glancing around the apartment.

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"No." But her tone suggests she wishes she would. There is dust on the countertops and dining room table, thick and undisturbed. The shaft of yellow-gold light that shines through the shades shows yet more dust fluttering quietly down. The sound of a door opening in the hallway disturbs Sherry, she lifts her head to investigate the noise, but doesn't leave her spot on the couch.

Two adults enter the room, the blond man and woman... or is it Claire and Leon? The figures shift back and forth between faces and bodies. "I'm sorry. You should go now."

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"Why?" Roxie asks softly. Her voice is—wait, is that really?—yes, there's a note of concern in it. Not just the cold dryness she usually bears.