introductions

[cancrymods]

It comes to you suddenly, at the end of an unravelling thread of thought. A sudden, piercing sense of wrongness stops you in your tracks and sends you tumbling through rapidfire questions that you realize you have no answer for. How long have you been here? How long have you been doing the same things, over and over, blindly going through the motions of a routine? Just who are you, anyway?

Questions beget more questions and answers prove illusive until you arrive at the only things you know for certain: the first is that this place is Purgatory.

The second is that you're here because you're dead.

Oddly, this doesn't feel like a surprise of any sort. You don't remember how or why it happened, but it did and that's that. It feels rather as though you've been slapped awake and everything around you has come into sharp focus. You're in Limbo, where you've been wandering since you arrived here in Purgatory alongside all the other mindless souls who are acting out what little they remember of their original lives.

Still lingering is that horrible sense of something being terribly wrong. It hasn't dissipated with your realization of the truth – if anything, it's intensified. There's no way to tell what it is, but there's something going on here.

Maybe you should investigate – or at least see if there's anyone else here who's had the same realization as you...

[ OOC: Welcome to the very first log of Can Cry! For the first few hours, Executors will be free to explore and mingle among themselves. Mod replies will come in a few hours. If you're planning to investigate, please indicate that you're doing so in the subject line as your comment. ]

Comments

magnum opus | ota, investigation

[alcahest]

[ the moment of realisation disrupts her mind like a stone dropped into a still, placid lake — it breaks the calm, but then it sinks without resistance into the depths, and the surface settles once more, as smooth as glass. her newfound awareness brings with it no feeling at all. even the sense of disquiet is dim and distant, as if it belongs to someone else. she doesn't know who she is, and that's fine. it doesn't feel as though she needs to. her death, too, means nothing other than a general sense of peace. it doesn't seem very different to how she was earlier.

what carries her feet through the town is a sort of blank, mechanical curiosity. there's little else to do. the routine that was disturbed no longer makes sense to her, so she can't return to it; she could simply sit still and wait, but for what? if she explores, at least maybe she'll find something to do with herself. a purpose for being awake.

the girl doesn't look particularly aware of herself, compared to the others who have been startled by a similar realisation. her face is doll-like, her movements reserved. occasionally, she seems as though she wants to approach another person, looking at them with her glassy, melancholy gaze. but she always turns away. there is something in her that warns her not to get close.

what eventually gets her attention is the train station, perhaps the only thing that strikes her as somewhat familiar. she peers in the direction of the tracks while she waits for a train. ]

[cancrymods]

[ She doesn't have to wait long – only a few minutes after she arrives, so does a rickety old steam train, coming from around a sharp turn and rattling into the station before coming to a slow stop. It lets off a huge sigh of steam before all the doors open. No passengers step off, but the train idles patiently for her to climb on. ]

[alcahest]

[ nothing else she's seen has seemed as right as this — the sound of it clattering along the tracks, the way all of its parts move in conjunction like a great living beast, the hiss of steam billowing into the sky. although the specifics of the machine are lost to her, she's certain that this is something she knows. and, well. she lacks the self-preservation to be cautious about strange ghost trains. the thought doesn't even occur to her. she boards.

she checks each carriage for both people and objects as she goes, but she's moving towards the front of the train in search of a driver, more curious than intent. ]

[cancrymods]

[ There's nothing of note to be found on the train; for all intents and purposes it just looks like... well, a regular train. There's a Specter up front driving the whole thing but they're the only other person on the train. ]

[alcahest]

[ to the driver's cabin, then! ]

Excuse me... [ she's not actually sure what to do here. she just wanted to look. ] Um... There's no one else on this train. Is that normal?

[cancrymods]

[ They don't respond. They're busily going through the motions of checking over the controls and it almost seems like they've barely even noticed she's here. ]

[alcahest]

[ okay, yeah. that's probably what she should have expected.

she'll go back to the previous passenger carriage and take a seat politely to see where the train goes. ]

[cancrymods]

[ As if on cue, once she takes her seat, the train shudders back to life and trundles off along the track. The scenery in the window is a sort of vague, generic blur of passing houses made surreal by Limbo's bizarre architecture (bizzarchitecture?).

Only a few minutes after setting off, though, the train pulls into... the exact same platform that she left. ]

[alcahest]

[ she gets off when the train stops and looks around for a moment at the familiar scenery, puzzled. ]

...?

[ she's going to look at the tracks and see if there would be enough room to walk beside them without being in danger of getting hit by the train. ]

[cancrymods]

[ It's possible! It'd be a bit dicey but it's not like you can die twice.

... Probably? Probably. ]

[alcahest]

[ good enough! let's take a walk. she's looking at the scenery as she goes, watching for where it somehow looped back around without her noticing. ]

[cancrymods]

[ She doesn't have to look long – as soon as she turns the corner away from the station, she'll find she's.... turned the corner back to the station.

And if she turns and looks behind her, she'll see the station again.

It's pretty disorienting. ]

[alcahest]

[ well, nothing new here then. she's just going to keep doing this for a while and get on the train a few more times until she's satisfied. don't worry about her, mods. ]

[schardynfreude]

[He, too, seems wary to get too close to anyone, but goodness, no one else has paid him much mind in the first place. The fact that she looks at him at all is enough to get him interested. All these people, or beings that were once people, just going about their days unaware...]

Ah--young miss? [Is she really even all present? Perhaps he's mistaken and she's just another of the masses.]

[alcahest]

[ although her expression doesn't change much, she seems to startle slightly at being addressed. she looks to her left and her right, to check that he's not talking to someone else, and then nods slowly. even if her stare is blank and she moves as if she's half-asleep, she does seem to have more awareness than the robotic inhabitants of Limbo. ]

Yes... [ she approaches him with a few cautious steps like a curious deer, and leaves some distance between them. ] Um. I felt like I shouldn't get too close to anyone, for some reason.

[schardynfreude]

[social distancing is healthy!!!]

That's fine. Perhaps we ought keep our distane. [After all, he hasn't been getting up in anyone's grill either. But he can't think of any good reason for it.] Surely we can at least talk. I take it...you seem not to know what's happening all of a sudden yourself?

[alcahest]

[ she thinks about it for a while, as if there's a possibility she does know and just hadn't realised. eventually, she shakes her head. ]

No... I remembered that I had died, but I don't know anything else. [ it's strange. there was no problem earlier, when she was the same as the other inhabitants of Purgatory. now she's not sure what to do with herself, and she hasn't seen anything important even though she's "awake." ] It seems like... maybe it was better not to remember.

[schardynfreude]

[He's had the thought himself--that maybe it'd be better to go back to being a mindless sheep. But every time he goes there, he fights back against it.]

It's strange, certainly, and confusing. But surely knowing is better than not.

[alcahest]

Is it...?

[ that unsettles her. she has such a clear certainty that that isn't true, but she doesn't know where the thought comes from. wasn't she fine before she remembered? even if she's changed, this is still the same place it was a moment ago, a town that goes nowhere, meant for these people who go nowhere. what if there's no place for someone like her or this man? ]

They look happy. [ her expression is faintly sad, watching Spectres pass by. ] Maybe we're being punished...?

[schardynfreude]

They look empty. [It's a more vehement reply, sharp and biting, than he expects out of himself. He's quiet for a moment while he sorts through his thoughts, watching these...empty vessels toddle by.]

I would find it quite vexing indeed if a few single solitary souls were singled out for some kind of...divine punishment. [It makes him angry, the idea of it, for some reason. Perhaps just because of how unfair it seems.] And what could you or I have possibly done in our lives to be punished so, hm? That these others did not?

[alcahest]

[ she finds she can't particularly argue on the matter of whether it's emptiness or happiness. she feels empty now. although even to say she "feels" empty might be too much. it all seems very... distant to her, and until now she hadn't noticed it, or considered that this may not be the case for everyone else. she keeps watching people walk past with her sad, empty gaze.

punishment, though. that thought is actually a little less lonely. this one doesn't bother her at all. ]

I don't know. I can't... remember. [ she pauses, considers it, and then adds haltingly: ] But if I can't remember... then it could have been anything.

[schardynfreude]

And yet, I could think of nothing to warrant such a lonely and dull afterlife. We should consider, instead, other reasons. Perhaps it's a gift instead.

[alcahest]

A... gift?

[ the blank look she gives him seems puzzled, now. as if that possibility is one she can't even wrap her head around. ]

But we're still stuck here, the same as the others...

[schardynfreude]

A gift! [He seems pleased with this notion.] The gift of awareness is not one to be squandered. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that we have woken up in this world, apart from these other sorry souls, for good reason. To do something.

As to what that might be, I cannot say. But better to look at this as something less bleak, hm?

[alcahest]

I see... [ she's not sure she understands, exactly. it certainly doesn't feel like a gift, and she doesn't feel like someone would give her one. but those feelings also aren't particularly strong, and it makes more sense to defer to someone else's judgement. ] If there's something we're supposed to do, then... we should find out what it is.

[ doing what someone else intends for you. that one, she understands. that's much, much easier. ]