EVENT LOG: GRAVES

[inthenightmods]

EVENT LOG:
GRAVES

characters: everyone.
location: Bonfire Square.
date/time: July 12-19.
content: mysterious shrines appear and bring visions of death.
warnings: likely violence and potentially gore.

time to pay your respects.

It happens when no one is looking, when most of the town is asleep and the rest are inside. A makeshift cemetery has come to Beacon, taking up residence in the middle of Bonfire Square. Each monument, shrine, and altar is dedicated to someone who now resides here, a memorial of their previous life.

Some may be drawn by curiosity, others by fear, and some may simply have to pass through this strange graveyard to get to the Bonfire itself. Whenever a person gets near, the altars beckon with a mysterious urge— an urge to approach, and an urge to leave something behind. They will feel compelled to make offerings at the various shrines, but doing so has a curious effect; it causes one to experience the death of the person whose grave they've honored.

Whether you resist the compulsion or give in willingly (or something in between), you'll also have to wrestle with the fact that a grave exists for you. Will you let your death be known, or try your best to keep it secret? Destroying it sure won't work, as it will return— with a duplicate somewhere else in town.

However you choose to deal with this, one thing is hard to ignore— this a tangible reminder of your death, and the fact that it's probably permanent.

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Comments

DEATH

[withsadness]

You look around you, your whole body tense with anxiety. This world is dark, a black void of nothing. The floor you stand on seems to exist only due to the lines of crayon that have given it form. All the walls are sketched in that same waxy pink; it's implausible, but so it stands. There are toys skattered all around you (all hand-drawn and barely recognizable as what they're meant to be), wandering, headless mannequins and scrabbling, strange creatures. They look to you for guidance, but you ignore them and walk on past.

They seem to warn, silently, that perhaps it would be better simply to stay. Stay and play, Mary. Stay and play, please, it's for the best!

But you don't want these mindless games anymore. Ahead of you, up the crayon-stairs of your making, lies the possibility of freedom from this place. Oh, where, where did your friend go? You must find her at once, must tell her how much you love, love, love her! It's all Garry's fault; he frightened her, somehow. But you'll make her understand.

You're such a good girl.

Up the stairs and down the hallway you approach a doorway. You'd hidden it behind a drawing of tangled vines so nobody could ever find it...but is it possible? Voices, inside? Your whole body shakes. No, no, it can't be. They can't be inside! You brush past the vines, throw open the door, and there they are.

The room is just like the others, nothing but sketched crayon, empty of furnishing...except that the scattered books and papers and crayons that are dotted across the floor. Those are yours, your precious belongings! And against the far wall, a life-sized canvas hangs, encased in glass. The glass has been broken open, shards spread across the floor.

The portait is empty, save for a border of yellow roses. But you knew that, of course. You knew what they'd find, and that's why they weren't supposed to find it. You don't know when you pulled the palette knife from your pocket, but you clutch the handle in frightened, angry desperation.

She has a lighter in her hand. Why, why, oh what is she going to do with such a thing? Such a terrible, awful thing? It shouldn't be here! She shouldn't be here!

"Leave."

She isn't moving.

"Leave!"

You shout, scream, and a fissure erupts from your feet, splitting the floor in half. The girl steps backward toward the portrait. No, oh no--you lunge toward her. You'll stop her first. You'll get her before she can get you; you'll split open her neck and paint the walls with her beautiful blood. And it'll be so sad, and freedom will be gone forever, but you'll stay, she'll stay, even if she isn't moving. She won't be able to ever hurt you if she isn't moving. And she won't be able to run away, either.

But your friend, your first friend, your best friend, she's much too fast. The flame touches the canvas, and as it splits and burns and crackles so do you. Your skin bursts, your clothes fizzle, your hair erupts. Sight is flame and wretched, hot, searing pain. You scream, you cry. You reach for anyone and anything.

Where is father? Why isn't he coming? Please, somebody, won't you save me?

The palette knife slips from your hand and then there's nothing left of you to scream. Everything you were is nothing but ash.

[ryanreynoldsvoice]

Falling, fighting, disappearing into nothingness....

Pikachu backs up fast and hard, the action involuntary as if he'd just been repelled by the grave itself. So much so that he bumps up into another grave and proceeds to curl into a small fuzzy ball.

"No! Stop!"

[withsadness]

At the sound of something so close, Mary whips her head around with a glare. But seeing who it is, and how Pikachu looks so frightened and small, smaller than even she is, it tempers her anger and her distrust. How could she ever be suspicious of someone like Pikachu?

So she hurries over to him and falls down beside him, trying to lift him up into her arms. "There, there! There, there!"

That's what people are supposed to say when others are scared.

[ryanreynoldsvoice]

Pikachu, shocked and afraid, is harder to pick up than normal. His nerves flinch at every small movement and touch but in the end he is lifted off the ground.

"I-Is that...uh...was that....is that real?"

[withsadness]

"Not anymore."

But it was real in the past, of course. All real, all horrible. She pets him soothingly, not knowing any better or fully understanding the tension in his body language.

"Everything's okay now, there's nothing to be afraid of."