trans_9 | What dreams may come [Open, bendytimed to before GTFO plot]

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

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'.]

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It was hard to tell whose dream it was, since there was nobody in sight-- just endless dark halls, lined in stone and steel bars. The air stank of wet rot and decaying flesh, mixed with the unmistakable smell of blood. Decomposing human bodies lay strewn about like rag dolls that somebody had tossed around, a trail leading deeper into the darkness, where the sound of heavy, raspy breathing was audible.

Roxie slips down the halls, soft on the soles of old, cheap, worn sneakers. The tang of decomposition and blood in the air don't discomfort her; in fact, they're almost comfortable.

There. She starts down the trail leading further in, careful not to step on anything loudly enough to give sharp warning of her presence.

The bodies are mostly anonymous-- faceless former-people laying twisted and broken in pools of rancid water and blood. Under the stains and between the tatters, they all wear the same clothing-- black collars around their necks, blue shirts over yellow tanks and pants. There are numbers printed on the shirt backs along with ROCKFORT PRISON in faded white letters.

Further down the hall, the bodies grow less and less anonymous. A fair-haired, athletic man is crumpled against the wall, a massive axe blade nearly severing him at the torso with blood splattered all over his handsome face. A blonde child, a girl with a red ribbon in her hair, lies face down with a gaping hole punched in her back.

The breathing is punctuated by the sound of a gasping human voice, like someone trying desperately to stay calm or to keep from screaming, or to keep breathing at all. The dark hallway, and the carnage, stretches on.

Roxie hunches over the girl. Oh. Hnn. She murmurs a feather-light apology and reaches into the hole in the girl's back, stretching, twisting...

The girl twists into a sitting position, and then a standing one. Roxie is gone. The blonde girl twists, spitting up blood. She shudders, moving stiffly and then more smoothly. She twists to look down at herself. Matted blood, but none of her own. There is no wound. That was a mistake of perception.

The girl pads down the hallway, keeping close to the edges, staying out of straightforward view.

The hallway seemed to be drawing to an end, and the features on the bodies continued to get more detailed. These people were clearly the important ones.

An older man with a kind face and gentle eyes had been torn open like tissue paper. Blood spattered the wall in a violent pattern behind him, as though he had been struck down while standing.

A short distance down the hall lay the body of a middle-aged woman in blue jeans and what used to be a pink blouse. Three bulletholes punctured her forehead and blood saturated her hair, face and clothes. Her blue eyes were still open, a cloudy film softening their color-- though they still seemed able to follow whoever was looking at them.

Nearby her lay a heavyset redheaded man, Prisoner 0266 according to the numbers on the back of his jacket. His body was more heavily decomposed than any other, his skin gray-green and stretched and falling off his bones. He lay on his back, the front of his body mutilated by gunfire and speckled with still-fresh blood.

And with the end of the hall finally in sight, a young woman's body lay front and center in the middle of the floor. Her neck hung at an unnatural angle and her pretty face stared straight up at the ceiling.

A sob echoed from the corner up ahead, where a pale figure was huddled in terror. Steve was shaking, face buried in his knees and his fingers clutching to cover his ears. His hands and the prisoner fatigues he wore were soaking with fresh blood.

The blonde girl pauses at each body. She's turning over the pieces in her head, but she doesn't want to come to a conclusion yet—

The corner. She nearly walks right around it, but a half-glimpse at Steve is enough to make her pull back. There's the dreamer. She edges back. What to— She decides on a tactic.

The blonde girl thumps to the floor, just around the corner from Steve, and starts letting out a shuddering, unpleasant half-wail—the barest precursor to full-on crying.

Steve looked up abruptly, his face stained with tears and blood and dark circles under his eyes. It looked like he hadn't slept in months. His expression was startled-- hadn't expected to hear any voices in a prison full of death.

"Who is that?" he muttered quickly, almost frantically. He shifted, stumbling slowly to his feet, but only to back further into the corner. "Get away!"

"B-but..." the girl protests, whimpering, and breaks into soft, vulnerable crying.

Crocodile tears, but they're very good ones.

His voice got louder and angrier, laced with a hint of desperation. He'd made whoever it was cry-- the vaguely familiar voice of a child, but Steve knew better than to go towards her. He had to stay here. And she had to go.

"You don't fucking get it! You have to go! Get out of here, right now!" he yelled. "Just get the hell away from me!"

"W-what's going on?" the girl whines, confused and scared. And the yelling—that just makes her cry more intensely.

Steve's voice cracked with emotion. It was hard to tell if he was angry, frustrated, or scared. "You have to get out of here!" he screamed. "Or you're gonna end up like the rest of them! Just go, run the other..."

He paused and lurched like a shock passed through him. His hand clutched at his chest and he stumbled to his knees, his breaths turning into short, shallow gasps.

"Get away from me... no!" he managed to choke out. "Not again... God, please, n-not again...!"

The blonde girl crawls around the corner, still sniffling. "What's happening?" she demands, looking over at up at Steve. "What a-ah-are you d-doing?"

He looked up in horror at the girl who stood before him.

"Sherry?!" he gasped. "But you... You were- aah!" Steve's head lowered suddenly and moaned in pain, crumpling closer toward the ground. He couldn't breathe, and his heart was racing so fast it felt like it was going to explode. His arm twitched and he fell forward, catching himself on his hands and knees. Something seemed to be rippling under his skin, starting to grow paler and discolor a sick shade of green.

"Go...! God, no, please... I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die...!"

Blood splashed from his throat. Then he screamed in agony, and his voice mutated into an inhuman roar that echoed all the way down the hall.

The blonde girl scrambles back, letting out a yelp of surprise and panic as she sees what's happening. "St-stop it!" she shouts, trying to get to her feet but stumbling back onto her behind again, letting out a squeak of pain as she lands.

He wishes he could stop it, but he can't. No amount of begging or pleading will stop the virus from taking over his body once it starts, and no matter how he tries to control it, in this dream he's helpless as he was the first time. His hands twist into claws, and his body grows rapidly, his spine ripping out of his shirt and his clothes falling to the floor in tatters.

The hallway grows even darker and it's impossible to see just what he's turning into. Whatever it is, it has teeth. Long, sharp teeth dripping saliva and blood. Its eyes glow red and every breath it takes comes out in a vicious snarl. It grows bigger until it nearly fills the hall and it stalks forward on quick legs, as though it's hunting and just spotted something that might be prey.

The creature roars again, but imagination turns the growl into words. "HELP."

It lunges violently towards the helpless girl, claws lashing out like whips.

"PLEASE HELP."

And the girl—

—moves, in a way and with a speed that Sherry would never be capable of, throwing herself back out of the way of the claws before they can get to her.

"S-stop it!" she protests, still bawling.

I don't know about that, Roxie. Have you ever seen Sherry really haul it?

"HELP"

The creature is incessant, deaf to her pleading. It stalks the girl down the hall relentlessly, slashing and snapping at her in an attempt to add her to the pile of bodies.

"DON'T WANT TO DIE"

The prisonscape begins to change, the hall growing wider and the ceiling higher. Suits of armor holding axes like the one embedded in Leon's body line both sides of the now cavernous room. At the far end of the hall, underneath a barred threshold where the gate is lifted open, the walls grow narrow. There are no doors or windows. There's a dead end, and it's there the dream ends. As the girl passes under the threshold, Steve's voice echoes from the shadows.

I'm glad I met you. I love you...

And instantly, one more human body hits the ground and lies motionless. The creature is gone. All that's left is the body of a teenage boy, pale, bloody and broken.

Everything goes black.

Roxie is left...

...

...

Confused. What the hell.

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

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