Atrophy

| Glimhollow | a Tale of Dust and Dissent

I'm digging this idea.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Bad news: My weekend plans got cancelled and I lost $80.

Worse news: I wrote a post. Garage gang one will becoming later after some hate drinking.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

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_{@Surtr Inc}

The Reid Farmhouse - Outside to Main House

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Penny had been caught off-guard when the abomination had attacked Justin. She had drifted away from the others, largely to keep herself out of earshot of Claire’s grating voice, but when the being that was all tendrils and nightmares had latched itself onto Justin she had broken into a sprint towards the fight. Her body felt like it was on fire as she ran—she was still exhausted from her scrap with Scott earlier that day—and she shouted in distress as she watched the thing throw Claire through the air and into a car windshield like a rag doll. She didn’t like O’Sullivan, but she didn’t want the girl to be killed. Fortunately, Claire was still moving. Unfortunately, the creature had already closed the gap between itself and its target, the girl whose car Claire’s body had ruined, and was entangling her hard. Penny cursed; she couldn’t risk taking a shot without hitting the girl.

Britney, however, had more control over her Abstraction. It vanished as a spear punctured through its chest, but none of them had any chance to breathe a sigh of relief as buzzing filled the air. Penny turned her head to witness insects blotting out the sky like a plague of Egypt. She might’ve been able to swat a few bothersome flies out of the air with her power, but there was no way in hell that she would be able to react fast enough to punch a hole in something that massive. She bolted with the others towards the house, nearly colliding with the mousy girl dressed like an old professor as she crashed through the entrance.

“What’s happening?” asked Rita with a shaking voice. She had caught glimpses of the fight through the blinds of the study, but had not been able to witness the entire thing.

“Giant fucking swarm of pissed off insects hellbent on devouring us like crops,” snapped Penny, punching her fist against the wall. She had witnessed Andrea swallowed up by the swarm, but couldn’t have done anything to help her without being eaten alive herself. Britney had said something about the new girl controlling the swarm. The blonde girl turned on her heels and yelled at her former friend, “Why don’t you wake that bitch up and tell her to stop?”

Meanwhile, Rita followed Britney’s instructions and shut up the window in the living room that she had crawled through. She noted the open fireplace with concern and slid shut the gate, hoping the mesh was too small for any creepy crawlers to squeeze through. She could see the light outside fade away as the swarm descended on the house; they were running out of time. There was no time to panic. Barricades, she had to look for barricades. The coffee table would help board up one of the windows, but it was way too large for her to move it herself. She poked her head into the hall.

“Someone give me a hand! It’s too heavy.”

Penny, despite her protesting, had also gone to work by smashing the entrance mat up against threshold of the door and pinning it into the wall to act like a net to prevent the insects from slithering inside with a handful of pencils and her Abstraction. When Rita shouted she obliged the girl, following her into the living room. The two of them struggled to flip up the table and press it against the wall as they heard the sound of hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny bodies throwing themselves against the glass to get in.

“There’s windows in the study,” said Rita. “We gotta get those next.”

The two hurried over to the room in unison; Penny blasted the computer off of the desk before they stood it upright and pushed it against the window that had been blotted out by bugs. Penny felt her muscles scream with agony, and as Rita darted off to look for any potential breaches in the kitchen Penny caught herself on the door frame of the study before she stumbled and fell. She tried to stand up straight, but all she managed to do was twist her face into a look of agonizing pain and withhold a stream of curses. She buried her face into her elbow and took a deep breath.

“How’s Justin? Breathing?” she said, shouting to Claire over the swarm. She wasn’t just worried about the guy. It would have been nice to have someone who could torch the insects once they slipped through the cracks.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

I'mma be stuck outta town this weekend. Should post Monday night.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

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_{@Surtr Inc@FernStone@Zombiedude101}

The Reid Farmhouse - Garage

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“Right, right, right,” said Billy as Kimberly mentioned Reid’s daughter. He exited the vehicle and poked around in the trunk. Nothing out of the ordinary. “So let’s just make sure that we—” As he spoke, Jordan came out the muscle car with a crowbar and split open the door panel, finding an envelope inside as the panel clattered to the ground. His choked out the remainder of his sentence through chuckles as he rubbed his face. “—don’t break anything.”

While they geeked out about the mysterious envelope, Billy lifted the door panel off of the ground and tried to fit it back into place. Thanks to Jordan’s crowbar skills, the panel slid right back off and almost hit the ground before he caught it. Lifting it back up once more, Billy quickly slammed the door before it had a chance to fall. There. It was as if nobody had been there at all...assuming Reid’s kid never opened the door. He turned in time to catch Kimberly showing off the picture of a graduation ceremony with a group of kids lined up in the photo, their faces crossed off with red marks.

"... What is this?"

“Just some good ol’ fashion nightmare fuel,” said Billy, slipping behind Rien as they took the picture so he could study them as well. Rien was a bit more constructive with their feedback, suggesting that the photo was of the previous generation of Awakened. Nate chimed in, pointing out that if the kids in the photo had been Awakened like them then they being all dead was, to put it mildly, an ominous sign. And he was right. It couldn’t have been Reese. The kid may have always been a creep, but he hadn’t started murdering until their horrible camp out. They could conjecture all day about what had happened, but from the looks of it the pictures were taken before any of them had been alive.

“Anyone know who this chick is? Reid’s wife, maybe? Girlfriend?” he asked, grabbing the “family photo” and pointing to the woman that appeared in a majority of the pictures. “If she’s still alive maybe we could ask her what’s up with the creepy scrapbook project. You know, assuming she wasn’t the one ganking kids in the first place.”

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_{@Surtr Inc@Prosaic@FernStone@Mike73@He Who Walks Behind}

The Reid Farmhouse - Main House

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“I’ll take the study, then,” said Rita, glad to have an opportunity to breakaway from having Britney’s eyes on her. For all she knew, Britney would have the group split up yet again and leave Rita all alone with the woman who, just recently, was beginning to intimidate Rita. She gave Martin a half-hearted wave goodbye before dipping away into the study. The dwindling light from outside barely lit the room, so Rita flicked on the switch. A lamp in the corner of the room next to reading chair buzzed to life; it was better than nothing.

Her attention was immediately drawn to the set of bookcases. The reader in her wanted to do nothing more than thumb through the books on the shelves, and while a number of them looked like stodgy works about academia there were a few titles that hinted at some vaguely occult subjects that mildly piqued her interest. However, she doubted that Reid would leave something so secretive out in the open. Instead, she fired up his computer and waited as the machine clicked, whirled, and then came to life, a login screen for user JReid that prompted her for a password. Frowning, Rita tried “password” and then “admin” before groaning and turning her attention to the desk, which was locked. Screw it. She was never that much into computers anyway; bookcase it was, then.

Rita began at the middle shelf of one of the cases. Slowly she began to pull out books, flip through them, and replace them. She doubted that she’d find anything, really, even if TV had taught her that every creepy house had a rotating bookcase triggered by pulling out a certain book and every secretive guy hollowed out books and concealed confidential information inside of the pages. She figured she’d go through the shelves for the next couple of minutes and then creep upstairs to join Martin.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

@Surtr Inc I'm so sorry this reply is taking forever. This cold has been beating my ass but I think I'm overcoming it. There will be an effort to finish a beautiful comprehensive response today.

@Prosaic

If it makes you feel any better, I'm going to blame you for myself not posting this weekend instead of the real culprit, margaritas.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

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_{@He Who Walks Behind@Ciaran@Surtr Inc}

The Reid Farmhouse - Outside

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Penny felt sick. She wanted to be alone. She had overdone it earlier in her fight with Reese, and instead of sitting on a couch with a bowl of ice cream and watching crummy reality TV until her brain melted she had gone out to the farm. She had to go out to the farm. There was a chance they would discover something important; maybe the next page in Reid’s diary so they could get a grasp on what their “job” actually was. Also, there was a chance that Reese would show up. That was the real reason she wanted to be here. She wanted a chance to take him down again and, as much as it sucked to say, she knew it was next to impossible for her to do it by herself.

She also couldn’t shake the thought that if she had followed through with her more basic instinct to jump into some pjs and veg out by herself that Scott Reese would’ve known, just as he had known that the calvary was arriving, and take that moment to scratch one more camper off of his list. She didn’t like the idea of playing the victim. It was much better to play the opposing role, even if it made you into a bully. Besides, even if she was surrounded by people, she still knew how to not be bothered—cross the arms, lower the shades, freeze a frown on her face, and don’t speak. Easy. Just her, her migraine, and an unending chain of nicotine and carcinogens. What more could a girl ask for, except for a muzzle to be slapped on to the new kid who was too goddamn happy to be here?

“Technically we’re doing crimes by breaking and entering,” said Billy to Isabella. “But yeah, let’s call it ghost hunting so we can take an insanity plea if we get caught.”

Penny muttered a quiet dumbass underneath her breath, and then visibly bristled when one of the girls from Sucre (Paige right? She thought she had heard someone call her Paige) approached her on a crutch. As the silver haired girl spoke, Penny’s features softened and the corners of her lips rose for a brief moment into a mildly embarrassed smile that she quickly masked by shoving a cigarette back into her face. For a second she even forgot that her head felt like a constant blast beat was being played upon it.

“Don’t mention it. It was the right thing to do,” she said. To Penny, it was the only thing she could’ve done. No alternatives had even crossed her mind. She looked past the girl as one of the groups headed into the barn. She cocked her head their way. “They’re leaving you behind.”

Penny didn’t fail to notice the “Claire Bear Stare” being cast her way. At the same time she felt her headache come back. Fitting. Behind her glasses, she stared back. It’d be idiotic to start shit up again, but Penny would push back if forced.

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_{@Surtr Inc@Prosaic@FernStone@Mike73}

The Reid Farmhouse - Main House

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"I was actually hoping that you'd join me. You're too quiet and I get the feeling I need to keep my eye on you."

Rita felt her face scrunch up as Britney tried to play the truth off as a joke. So Britney was going to be scrutinizing her then, huh? It was an alarming thought, even though Rita wasn’t sure why she felt a sense of unease around Britney (aside from how Rita felt a general unease around any person, obviously). After all, the other girl seemed to mainly be interested in helping out the other members of the support group, even if she seemingly knew a suspicious amount of information regarding their bizarre situation. Whatever it was, Rita felt relief when others signed up to be apart of their investigation team—she even mouthed a “thank God” to Martin as he volunteered himself. Otherwise, she was worried that Britney would do more interrogating than Rita would.

With the groups squared away they proceeded up on to the porch of the three-story house. There was something surreal about seeing the house from the old newspaper up close in person, and with the sun beginning to set Rita felt the pressure to burn through the house as quickly as possible before there was no more daylight. The front door was locked, but Britney used her abstraction to unlatch a window.

“I’ll do it,” said Rita when Britney asked for someone to squeeze through the window. For starters, she was now determined to be as helpful as possible to hopefully diminish whatever suspicions it was that Britney had about her. Plus, she was the smallest. It only made sense.

What didn’t make sense, and Rita hadn’t realized this until she set both of her feet on the hardwood floor of the inside of John Reid’s farmhouse, was volunteering to go in alone into a house where a murder had apparently happened according to some mysterious, randomly appearing newspaper article. The newspaper seemed incredibly old, so it was likely that it had been a long time ago and she wouldn’t be wandering blindly into any freshly bloated corpses, but it hadn’t appeared until after the God-Child had shown them the future. Who’s to say that it wasn’t another premonition? Regardless, Rita moved swiftly through what appeared to be a completely normal dining room and into the hall, taking no time to find the front door and open it for the others.

“Um, come on in?” she said, feeling more nervous by the second.

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_{@Surtr Inc@FernStone@Zombiedude101}

The Reid Farmhouse - Garage

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“Hey, you’re welcome to join as long as you keep your drawings to yourself, bro,” said Billy to Rien before clapping them on the shoulder. “Sorry about earlier, by the way. Us lazy people gotta stick together.”

"I mean hey, if you're looking for a ghost..."

Billy looked down as indicated by Nate, his jaw dropping ever so slightly as the man’s shoe momentarily disappeared into the dirt. Even after witnessing Rien’s ability to draw things to life and his sister’s power of somehow becoming even more of a super bitch (which, having not witnessed her abstraction, was what he assumed her power was, all things considered), seeing an abstraction being used was still mind blowing. It also made him a little jealous, since he still had no clue if he had been forgotten or had just drawn some dud abstraction in the power lottery they had seemingly all joined in on.

“I dunno dude, it looks a little fake. We should probably just stick with the sheet,” said Billy, giving Nate a smile that said he was also now accepted into the fellowship of the garage. Not that their group had any real restrictions as to who joined it. Really, he was kind of hoping for four to five other people so he could just dick about while the rest of them searched, but regretfully it seemed like the others had already settled into their other squads. Team Garage moved forward, dipping through one of the doors and stepping into the sunless garage. Billy pulled out his phone and switched on the flashlight, shining it over all of the junk. Apparently, John Reid had been a hoarder. As Jordan poked fun at his comment about it being easy mode, Billy groaned out a soft, “Ah, shit.” But it wasn’t all too bad. After all, there was a sick muscle car that—Sweet Jesus what had Reid done to it?

"How about we go check the cars first?" Kimberly said, "If there's something hidden, maybe it'd be in there."

“I’m on it,” said Billy. He blew past the truck—driving a truck was just asking for someone to beg you to help them move—and began to fidget around with the muscle car. He looked inside the hood, under the frame, and then got into the driver’s seat. He fumbled around inside for a minute, poking at this, pulling at that, before he shouted loud enough to get the attention of the garage gang. “Oh man!” he said, his voice ringing. “This thing is a total piece of shit! It’s completely gutted!”

During his screwing around, the ker-chunk of the trunk unlocking could be heard throughout the garage.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

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_{@Surtr Inc}

The Reid Farmhouse - Mason Square

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Billy had fully intended to chew out his sister when he saw what she had done to his car—his baby—until he had noticed how beat up she looked. He felt a rare anger stir inside of him. He had already dealt with the grief of losing one sibling. He was ready to go through all of that again. Of course, he couldn’t talk to Penny about that; any conversation they had would inevitably turn into an argument, but a talk about their brother Henry would’ve instantly ratchet tensions up to ten. So instead they rode to John Reid’s house in utter silence outside of the hum of the motor and the burning inhale and exhale of Penny’s chain smoking, rows of trees blocking off stretches of farmland passing them by.

He turned down the drive of John Reid’s farm, thankful that his vehicle was not one of the first and that nobody seemed to be getting their brains bashed in by the monster that was, apparently, hunting them all. The sun was low, they had maybe an hour or two of daylight left, and it made the shadow of the mountain stretch over the barren farmland. Billy should’ve figured that their town would be the sight of some insane, doomsday, world-eater type of shit; what other small town has an entire mountain blocked off and forbidden entrance to with decades of myths and mysteries surrounding it? Besides most of Appalachia. Okay, all of Appalachia.

Billy killed his engine upon seeing Britney approach the gate and exited his car. His sister lingered behind for a moment but eventually followed, staying just far enough behind him to show that while she had come there with him, she was not with him. He was used to it by now. He had been surprised that she had even walked with him to the support group earlier that day.

“Man, I’d hate to mow this yard,” said Billy in response to Justin’s quip about Reid’s farming skills as he lazily looked around the area. It all seemed rather standard. Nothing about it screamed “secret sanctuary of the town guardian against unspeakable horrors” but then again it wouldn’t have been such a secret sanctuary if it did scream that. He paced around the grounds, not wandering to far from the group so that he could hear their brave leader come up with a plan to cover the buildings quickly.

“Ah, really dude? You had the perfect opportunity to say ‘Let’s split up, gang’ and you wasted it? Man,” said Billy with a wink. He looked over at his sister. She was already making herself comfortable outside. He knew he shouldn’t let her stay there, between the threat of Reese showing up again and the even more catastrophic scenario of Penny and Claire going at it again, but there was no way he could possibly make her budge. With a sigh of acceptance he shuffled over towards Kimberly and Jordan.

“Wanna hit up the garage, buddy?” he asked, mostly towards Kimberly. “We could find a sheet to make your friend into a ghost for a bit of b-roll. Personally, I’d love to witness the process of live movie magic. Plus it’s the smallest building, so, you know, easy mode.”

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_{@Surtr Inc}

The Reid Farmhouse - Mason Square

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While Billy was joking around with Kimberly, Rita had moved over to Britney. It was clear that she knew more than she was letting on, and if her Abstraction had struck a nerve earlier then certainly she was on the right path. In all fairness, this shouldn’t have been Rita’s fight. It wasn’t even her town. Still, she felt like she couldn’t run from this. Not that she didn’t want to run, oh, she absolutely wanted to run, but she doubted she would be faster than whatever the thing called the Glutton was or what it was capable of doing. And so, she wanted information. To learn what she could to escape it.

And the only one who seemed to have a modicum of knowledge on what the hell was happening was Britney.

“Would you mind if I came along with you?” asked Rita, making sure that her hand was fully obscured by her pocket as the sigil glowed. She was testing the waters, trying to see how uncomfortable the taller girl felt when questioned by her Abstraction. If there was no obvious tell, she would relentless pursue a line of questions once they were alone. If it was clear that Britney rather not have Rita around, she would be more careful in her interrogation.

Assuming, of course, that they got a minute alone.

Let's Go Save the Princess!

I'mma throw in my hat. Currently working on a character who (wrongfully) believes that they are the Chosen One and the main protagonist of everyone's story and the sole fact that they haven't saved the world yet and been revered as a genius is because life is totally completely unfair and their own ineptitude is clearly the work of some grand conspiracy to keep the prophesies from coming to pass.

So pretty much what would've happened if Boromir and Cloud had a crummy love child like the one in my fanfic.

Vivid Recollections: Into the World Unknown (Season 1 COMPLETE)

Also, I've declared that the official name for the group will be... The Support Group.

@Surtr Inc

Screw that. We're calling the support group Camp Console and there's nothing you can do about it.