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

[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. ]

[schardynfreude]

[Better to see it as a gift than a curse until suggested otherwise, even if things look bleak.] And if we can't find it, then we'll simply have to find something to do ourselves.

[alcahest]

[ even though her expressions don't change much, she seems to be giving him a look of alarm. ]

... I don't think I can do that.

[schardynfreude]

Oh no? Whyever not?

[alcahest]

[ good question. why is she so sure of that...? doing what she's told is comforting. doing something that she decided on her own is— ]

I don't... know how. The thought of doing something like that is...

[ she shakes her head. ]

It... doesn't feel right.

[schardynfreude]

Oh...hm... [He seems vexed by this.] Far be it for anyone to suggest you to do something that doesn't feel right. Instinct is all we have to go on at the moment, unfortunately.