Otherworld : Edition #1408

[stayscared]

Who: Mike Enslin, his family, some hotel people, an evil fucking room & anyone!
What: Encountering various and sundry fucked up parts of Mike's entry to Lunare's Otherworld Event.
Mike's specific Otherworld Player Plot Comment is HERE, if you're wondering what might show up here.
When: All of February.
Where: Anywhere you want!

Content Warnings: Pretty much every warning, this is a lot of horror. If there's something you DNW to have in any thread, ping me on plurk eisdamme or discord @ eisdamme#7495, pm me, put it in your subject line or tag and I'll avoid that thing.

Let someone else deal with this fucking room, for shit's sake! Let Mike save you from it! He can be useful! Feel free to breeze through it just meeting Katie. I am down for all the CR honestly. Handwaved or non handwaved. Short threads that eventually handwave are great! I am a fan of handwaving via discord/plurk for time reasons. Want to break all my rules and just do some random shit? HMU let's do it.



THE WORLD

The fog that rolls in is slow, and with it the sound of crashing waves. You may not see them yet - it's very possible that you don't find yourself on the beach at first, or ever. Many things are possible in Trench, and in this version of Trench, they're a little bit (more) off. Ain't that some shit?

There's less distortion here ...at first. The buildings don't seem as rusted, and though everything does indeed fall apart, this center seems to hold for a little while.

As you wander through this Trench but not Trench, trying to get your bearings - be it alone or as part of a group (hello friend hello stranger) you might begin to notice some common themes.

If it's not the waves it's the music. Even when it's silent it's not silent.

(All your friends are dead)

What?

Some buildings aren't buildings at all - they're made of paper, and they might just pop up at random, as if someone turned a page and poof. Ah, good, it's only a bookstore. Or a post office. Maybe a place you recognize from Trench. Maybe it's your place.

As long as it's not a hotel.

The streets are lined with bottles, broken and whole, and papers blow by on a wind that doesn't seem to exist in form, only in sound. Stray pages of books floating by, familiar or foreign, and some might be a little burned around the edges. What's a flaming page or two, eh? For every one that's burned another's wet, and the signage? Oh, there's something to see. It just keeps changing every time you look. At first glance it's fine, and then it gets personal. It gets horrifying. Vulgar. Or maybe that's reversed.

Oh, the odd doorknob will roll by. That's fine. Keys are interspersed with the bottles and papers, with strange and beautiful collages here and there (some of them recognizable from any Nick Bantock books he might have shown them. Others look a bit Escher-y). When they're not being monstrous. Every sign is off kilter just a hair - the shoreline looks crooked. The buildings, even familiar ones, look crooked (and then they don't) and can cause nausea. The closer you get to The Dolphin Hotel the worse that gets. But maybe you're curious.



Sometimes the waves really rumble. Mind the random floods, please and thank you.


PLACES AND PEOPLE (?) OF NOTE(S)


The discordant notes of a harp that just doesn't quite land - the notes are almost melting as they ring through bloodied strings, but as creepy as they might sound (that song playing? come on, you know it. it could be anything.) they'll lead you to safety, too. It's a harder road than following the little girl, but it's reliable if you listen closely.

Did it just change to a violin? Might've. Can you trust your ears? The faint sounds of recorders might also be there, in the undercurrent.

(If this song starts to play, though? Time to rock, time to roll, time to get the fuck out.)


If you are lucky, you might see a little girl - her age is almost always static - ten - but those who have seen her photograph before might catch a glimpse of her as she might have grown to be. Either way, one can be sure she'll lead to a safe room, of which there are a few.

She might play a game of hide and seek, or catch me if you can - destination safe room every time. To those that are stubborn, misdirected, adventurous or self destructive, she might offer a slap bracelet. They slap loudly when they're clapped onto the wrist, but they might just conceal your steps from the things that walk these roads and rooms. They might put a little 'fuck it, fuck this' in your step, too.


Perhaps you don't see her at all, but find her trail of drawings (cray pas, wax crayon) - on paper or etched into walls both inside and out - arrows and flowers and little mice (rats?) running toward a way, this way, come on, please follow, her maps are clear and plentiful, and she can't be caught by whatever stalks this place, though it will certainly try.

Phone booths litter the areas, as do phones on desks. Upon closer inspection, they will melt. Some might be able to transmit voices. You might even be able to make a call. Make it count if you can.

Would you like to phone a friend? (five this is five) Yes, bring your friends!


There is a bookstore. Sometimes it's brick and mortar, sometimes it's a paper copy of that, and popped up like a cheap jumpscare, but...

...it's mostly safe, as long as you can stand being uncomfortable. Monsters won't attack here, but panic attacks are on the menu. Or maybe on the spine of every book in the place. Most times it's nearly empty and you are, well, kind of unwelcome. But sometimes everyone in it is so happy to see you and it's very full! Either way, you are watched.

Outside, and even on the beach (even in buildings) packs of wolves roam here and there, sometimes accompanied (sometimes chasing) a tall, thin hollow of a man in a Knicks cap, cigarette tucked behind one ear (or not), or in his hand (or not) as he asks you for a light. Or a smoke. Well, what he says is not quite that, but it's what he meant to ask when he isn't growling instead. He won't attack, but the wolves may. Or they may eat him in front of you.

There's a sense of being followed, and you never get a full glimpse of the woman, but you know it's a woman. The closer she draws to you, the more your fear ebbs, the more your heartbeat returns to its resting state, the more you feel alive. And the moment that happens, the moment you feel even-keeled, about to let her catch up, to reveal herself, there's the compulsion to run.


A man patrols the borders of this strange new landscape, and travels the places in between (But never the safehouses and never the bookstore and never near the woman that follows, or the little girl. Those latter two? He'll cower in their presence and become even smaller, wheeling himself away into the shadows.) and the slow creak of his wheelchair can be heard under his mumbled cursing - just a harmless old man who's gotten himself stuck on a curb, or is turned around and confused in a dead end alley - maybe even on the sandy beach. None of that matters. He's skin and bones, and wears a frightened word as if he means to use it but cannot find his voice. Should you offer to help, you might find out what a ruse that is. His clawed hands are weapons. But the worst ones are his words. And the chair is part of him, he'll mow you down if he can - he's fast. Anything he utters will be tailored toward any inner failings a character has. He can be outrun, and he's not any stronger than a strong human without supernatural stats.

Should he meet the man in the cap with His Wolves? Well, that might just do the trick. They don't get on very well, you see.


The usual Otherworld denizens might be familiar if one has been to previous versions - or consumed any medical horror media - or memories. Plague Doctors and twisted nurses are definitely a thing, be they more old-school Hammer Horror, or carried straight over from a more Silent Hill-y place. They drag IV drips, whispering nonsense Bible verses. Ultimately, they will try to put you back into a bed. Where is the bed? That depends on you, it's a 50/50 chance it'll be terrible. It may just be a fakeout. Your mind? Not that reliable.

But reliable or no, it tells you that some places, be they shops or homes - once inside, are all darkness and heavy air, the only light the spatters of glowing fluid on the floors, the walls, on everything.

Those places? They're rife with spectres.

THE SAFE ROOMS

The saferoom is either a hospital room, where Katie climbs into a bed or it's a beach house, where she does the same.



THE BEACH


There's a beach that looks like any California beach. Maybe any New York beach, too. You might find seashells on the shore if you look, or you may find too many glass eyes, more washing up with the soft whoosh of each wave, to lie on the sand and fix upon you.

If the wolves come, if the ocean suddenly turns to chicken soup (it does that at least half the time) everyone on it acts like nothing is happening, nothing is weird, and sometimes as if you don't even exist. If something is trying to eat your face, they will just go about their business, perhaps with unrelated, benign commentary.

Sometimes there is a Lighthouse. It might remind you of one you have seen in Trench (and then unseen) and you can never reach it. That's a mercy, perhaps.

Other times, there is a woman staring out at the water. She may attempt to walk into it.



THE DOLPHIN HOTEL & ROOM 1408


If you've been blessed with a slap bracelet, then at some point on your way toward or into the room, you might run into this fellow, carrying his toolbox. He'll have some words for you. They're mostly don't go in there, but he'll accompany you to the safe room. Come on, it's just another elevator ride and straight into Olin's office. Have a drink, read a book, enjoy the view, just don't go back up there. He might have a couple slap bracelets in his toolbox.

The same woman on the beach may also attempt to walk into the Hotel. Maybe even into the Room. You know that's a bad idea. (Why is it okay for you, then? Because it is. You're special. You're unflappable. You're also full of shit.)

Would you like a boss battle? It can be Room 1408! What a fucking mess that can be!

Should you go in, it's all just fine until you're at the door. It's crooked. No it isn't. (Yes it is. But you're also crooked now, and there's nothing for that, sorry.) The room is harmless looking enough - and it can play out in any number of ways. It's a vicious, horrible room, and it's the most bland looking thing on first pass, too.

The room service menu might offer up some of the following (and more!):

💀Would you like televisions to just rudely start playing heartbreaking moments for your life? They can do that! They can be anywhere!

💀The air vents seem sus "safe". There are zombies in them! Maybe even zombie wolves.

💀Mundane paintings turn monstrous and then they're attacking!

💀You too can have an unhelpful narrator by the hotel's "room service". Would you like to check out?

💀Do you suffer from claustrophobia? WOULD YOU LIKE TO?

💀There are all kinds of ghosts! Murder and suicide victims abound. If it's an urban legend it might be here. Step right up and GET YOUR GHOSTS.

💀Would you like to see a doppelganger of yourself? It can happen. It can also talk to you through your Omni. Spoiler: it's a jerk.

💀General Manager Gerald Olin will judge your choices if you want, but politely. You're the dumbass that insisted on coming here, after all. (He can be a last resort saferoom guide (Olin's office) ...or an Evil Fucking Room(tm!) fakeout that tries to shove you into a mini fridge and re-live your worst memories.)

💀Nothing is off the table. Except escape, if this room has its way. Like the other other worlds, death is a possibilty here. It may not be the worst one.

ENJOY THE COMPLIMENTARY TURNDOWN SERVICE

"Kill it with fire."

Comments

[fugu]

[ It starts with static, and a sign. It had caught Xuan's attention with a graphic invection; he could have sworn it told him to go fuck his sister. But it takes a moment for whatever translation software Trench runs on to translate this epithet, just a few nanoseconds for Xuan's eyes to glide past, register, glance back — and now it's a simple no turning sign. A mistake anyone could make, surely.

The noise isn't so jarring. It feels like he must have been hearing it for long before he actually came into the town, when he was safe with his lamp in his cave. It's just that only now he's properly registered it, the way on a summer's night one might suddenly notice there have been cicadas chirping since sunset. That's all. It certainly didn't spring up when he looked at a rude sign.

The water is about the same. When that comes rolling up around his ankles in the first soft wash, all he thinks is how pleasant, quietly pleased that his friend the ocean has come so far into town. The large fish skeleton that follows him everywhere splashes into it, silent but just as happy.

So all in all, it takes Xuan a little while to notice. That he's somewhere new. (Hello, stranger). That he's somewhere dangerous. (All your friends are dead.)

He's dead, too. Perhaps that's why he's so drawn through the strangely empty streets, ignoring doorknobs and drawings, bedknobs and broomsticks, towards the Dolphin Hotel.

Xuan needs a Room. ]

[stayscared]

[sometimes a little static is what's needed. a bit of a nudge when words aren't words so much as they are weapons, a little twist here, a little twinge there, a trick of the eye or an eye for an eye? well, that's anyone's guess and maybe (defininitely) both options are on the table. the table isn't even a table, but let's not reveal that just yet.

hello, hello the doors seem to say. or ...they do say for a flicker of a moment. it's echoed in a repairman's muttering of oh, hell no when xuan approaches the doorstep, though there's no man to be seen muttering just yet.

the thing that is the dolphin hotel narrows its gaze (the windows are sharp, the windows are narrow, the windows make widows and dine on the marrow) unsure of what to make of a dead thing it doesn't own.

still, he is not without other watchers - a little girl frantically shaking her head at him from a half a block away, trying to whisper don't go in there! hey, mister!, but she cannot come closer and her doppelganger waves from an upper window, a little beckon as the dolphin hotel throws open its doors with a smile.]

[fugu]

[ Xuan knows something is Wrong, a little left of centre, but Trench culture shock is still drowning him in the way that water never does — he's seen a lot of sights in his years (nine hundred, who's counting) but all specific to his lands. Even the horror; tell him a ghost should be wan and translucent peering white-faced from
the attic and he might laugh at the translation error. Everything here is strange, like he's living in metaphor, and that was before the static hum that is still flickering persistently, itching his ear canal faintly.

Is his concept of a hotel even the same as the Dolphin's? God knows he'd have no idea what to do with the bell at the front desk. But he'll still come in, interested and drawn by more than just the strangeness, a deep-gut pull like the one the crucible exerted. (He spent years in that hollow mountain range, eating all the other ghosts it drew.) (The powers he gained are gone now, washed away on the shores of Trench and replaced with something in the blood.)

He pauses just inside the doorway, before heading to where he saw the girl (the other girl, the inside girl.) He had a little sister, once, a long time ago. ]

[stayscared]

[the center moves in this place, curling like an ouroboros and waiting (it's patient. it's hungry, but it's patient. the longer it draws this out the better the meal, though that's bit it in the ass before, but it hisses in reminder of that (and the lobby will shimmer just a bit. do its walls brighten? is that hiss the background hum of regular hotel traffic?), determined not to make the same mistakes. there will be no going too far this time, only just far enough.

there are people there, of all different styles and types - a mixed bag of hotel regulars straight out of its own memories, trenchies, and people that might look more ...produced from xuan's own recollections, good or bad. they take little notice of him other than to offer tepid, pleasant acknowledgement, though he may be approached by hotel staff either in curious helpfulness (do you need a room?, right this way, you're already pre-booked!) or a watchful side eye from the general manager (in his sharpest suit) and a cut across that lobby towards any "help" xuan's being offered.]

Sir, If you're going to go up there, make your exit before the fourteenth floor. Or the thirteenth, if the numbers aren't playing nice today. That elevator can be full of ...tricks.

[he doesn't look at xuan when he says elevator, he looks directly at the person offering the help, and it's a warning for everyone involved. but fuck off olin, or shade of olin, it can solve that by naming every floor fourteen.]

[fugu]

[ Between Ghost City and Heaven there's plenty of NPCs in Xuan He's life, so there are a lot more Chinese people than usual in the Dolphin today.

That asshole Qi Rong is there in a chef's uniform with some little kid clinging to his leg, grinning and playing with his meat cleaver. Xuan's usual appetite sours immediately upon seeing that. He'll eat nearly anything but he's no cannibal like that Green Ghost bastard. There's also a couple of people he recognizes from Trench, but when he asks if they know how they got here, if they know the way back, there's just polite-nothing responses (try the pamphlets at the front desk, one girl says, maybe they'll have a map.)

The manager intercepts him right as he's headed for the elevator, and Xuan is so surprised to have someone say something beyond a scripted platitude, something against the general vibe of this hotel, that he snaps out of his own following of the room's siren song and pays attention. ]

I'm meant to be staying on floor fourteen.

[ A little confused, perhaps even hesitant now. ]

Ah, are you the owner of this place?

[stayscared]

[three out of four npcs here are the worst, xuan. the odds are terrible: they favor no one, really.

the presence that is the hotel will take note of his ...distaste for cannibalism. it's smug at its own word choice even if it's a bit on the nose, even if xuan can't hear it. but it growls at olin, and the general manager finds himself blinking back tears, fingers pressed to his eyes (a sudden parched-throat rasp of terror, a long moment as he wonders if he's been blinded like rommie van gelder) when he hadn't meant to press his fingers to anything. hadn't moved his hands if his mind's to be trusted. obviously it isn't.]

No. [as fearful as he is, there's relief in his tone, contempt too, as if he's pleased to disassociate himself from the building (room) in question. he regains some composure, after all : he's hard to rattle, too. he knows what's up there. what waits.] I'm just the manager. But I am responsible for whatever happens in any other room besides 1408.

You're not meant to be staying in that room. Nobody's meant to---

[the helper has far too many teeth, and olin can see all of them for just a moment.]

---step away from the elevator. Please.

tell me if i should change any of this :| also cw for multiple unpleasant deaths

[tagartist]

[ Strange girls, panic attacks, and monsters, oh my. It's like being back in the Dream practically and Chloe was pretty satisfied by the idea of never seeing anything like that fucking town ever again. But here she is, here it is, and she wants to get in and out and back to Shiro's house as fast as she can. She'll treat it like a stealth mission because fuck if she's ever been good in a fight.

It's too bad she's always been really shitty at stealth games.

She hates beaches. She hates lighthouses. She hates hospitals and hotels and she doesn't even know how she got to this stupid fucking room, but she tried to turn around and nope on out of the Dolphin Hotel a few times now. The old man with the slap bracelets who just wants her to not go in the Room is probably someone she should listen to and she knows it, it would absolutely be a (mildly) better time if she did.

But she's played too many horror games to feel like that's actually an option. Or lived through too many at this point, maybe. Deerington always made you enter the room, why would some Otherfuckery Trench be any different?

It still took a solid minute or five of staring at the door (is it hanging right? It doesn't look like it's hanging right. Whatever.) before she finally forces herself to open it, preparing for the worst, barging in like maybe she's about to enter a battle. But it's...

It's just a room. Of course it's just a room. She glares at the neat hotel setting, the stupid generic curtains, the characterless bed spread. Ugh. ]

Well that's lame and anti-climatic.

[ She's about to see whether or not the door actually reopens, if maybe she entered into the wrong Creepy Vibe room, but that's when she hears the TV turn on by itself and she closes her eyes, muttering to herself, hoping it's not gonna be another fucking Ring reference, because she's had enough of those.

The sound of her own shouting, of telling someone to put the gun away, to calm the fuck down, it's all too fresh for her own liking and the gun shot makes her nails dig into her skin in a way she doesn't like. She turns around finally, going to try and see if pounding on any of the buttons of the TV will make it switch to something different, knowing it's stupid as she does it. Worst idea, even, maybe. as it goes on to give her the world's shittiest montage. It's gun shot after gun shot (why did she have to get shot so many times??? Couldn't her murderers be more creative??) and being hit by a train or crushed by debris in a hurricane.

And then it's the Dream and she's falling from a cliff that her best friend just threw her off, hitting the ground with a sound that should have killed her, but just left her broken and hurting. She's screaming at a monster form of one of her dearest loved ones, begging them to come back to themselves, helpless when he swipes a claw at her and she sees her torso go one way and her legs another. She backs away from the TV at that point, feeling a wave of nausea, the memory of being not quite dead after somehow still so fresh in her mind. Her hand goes to rest on the scar on her belly that she can still feel through her shirt, and she's just... going to sit down in the tacky looking chair.

Alright. So maybe some things from the past can still get to her. ]

Cool. Room can't take a little roasting. I get the message.

change nothing! (except your decision to enter this shithole it has bad reviews!!)

[stayscared]

[a voice - carried on the static of the now pictureless television set - no, it's not hanging right, everything in this goddamned room is a nope out, what are you doing in here? it's the old man she didn't listen to - and it's a little bit fifty shades of poltergeist the way it sounds.

that lame and anticlimactic is how it hooks you, and oh it gets those hooks in quick. did you like the video, chloe? it has more selections it could show, but why show when it can tell, and imply (and lie and possibly make you die) - it loves a good rhyme and it doesn't know why.

reason is a thing this room doesn't have a lot of, and it likes to bleed its guests of it, that's for sure. because it does have hunger. and it's got a sense of humor. although, it resents that roasting line because it doesn't like to remember, and that's not going to happen here. not now, not this time, and maybe it hadn't happened at all. its memory is long and wide and full of teeth and that's not the only outcome it holds.

(it did win at least once. it did.)

but the temperature creeps up at that, just a bit. chloe can take a little bit of a roast, right?

the phone? it doesn't look like it did a moment ago, it's no longer a rotary dial, but something a little newer (not much, still old by chloe's standards) and the red light blinks as it announces you have a new message, one new message, one. the blinking is haphazard and flickering, and the voice might be recognizable to her.]

bad choices are her theme tho

[tagartist]

[ Where's the Magic Midget when you need her? That's the first thought that runs through her head as she tries to block out the weird as shit voices that she shouldn't be hearing in the first place. It's hard for her to tell if it's because of her own fucked up head that is prone to hallucinations already or if it's because the TV is actually talking and she's not sure she wants to really take the time to figure out which. The last thing she wants is confirmation she's losing her own mind. Again.

She still feels nauseous. Was she getting a fever or was it just hot in here? She doesn't think to look at the thermostat, especially not when she gets distracted by the sound of the messaging machine. The unexpected noise made her flinch harshly, but it's better than the TV (even if it's creepy in its familiarity, makes her think she should just leave it alone, really...)

The message. Hah. ]

You're hilarious.

[ She goes to poke at the machine, not having actually used anything like this since she was what? In kindergarten? Her dad had something like it, she thinks, and the idea of that makes her stomach flip again, the way it always does when she thinks of her father. She can almost hear the sound of the Mack truck horn, the one that used to haunt her nightmares, but she goes to try and push that particular hallucination out of her mind. If it's actually her mind making it, anyway. ]

lets be real they are mike's too (he might have to crash this party)

[stayscared]

[it could be a fever. could the room do that much? well, if it can manage a drowning in a bowl of chicken soup, if it can manufacture memories and tilt the stage, if it can freeze or heat itself to a dante-esque circle of a temperature dance, then why stop there?

(burn me alive)

it might be able to jigger the thermostat of a human body. it might. it could. probably.

but it's not that, not yet anyway. it'll file this thought away for the "future" - even if time is a flat, cyclical bitch of a thing - it'll chew on that idea as it chews on the tape (there is tape where there wasn't before) inside the machine as soon as her finger touches the button.

it's a garbled spill of rot, little inky lines down and out and spreading into a bloom of voices, not a beep but a horn, that's a horn, that's the message. do you get the message, chloe?

was there a message? there's no machine at all now. it's dead quiet. the room stills and pulls back and dials itself back into silence, but it's still oppressively hot. a room service menu slides under the door.

pigeons roasted in shit is the nicest thing on the list. it's a wordsalad of horrors, really, should she care to read it.

bit by bit, there's a rattling, a scraping in the walls. it's coming from above.]

please crash it

[tagartist]

[ Chloe's a little too young to remember what tapes were like, how easily they were destroyed by machines on a regular basis. She's seen them get chewed up in movies that take place in times before she was even a glimmer in her parents eye, but she's pretty sure it didn't act like that, that it wasn't so... Freaky. That it didn't make her head ache the way this does, and as the horn blasts, she clamps her hands down over her ears to try and block it out.

Fuck you, Room.

She keeps her hands over her ears even once the place is silent again, feeling sweat on the back of her neck that could be from the instinctual panic that always comes with her dad's death, or from the fact that the room is getting too fucking hot. Her hands drop as she finally goes over to smack the thermostat, knowing adjusting it is probably pointless.

The menu gets a glance, a nose wrinkle, and she decides maybe that's better not to pick up. She wouldn't have been hungry even if the list held something more appetizing and she doesn't want to puke thinking about what pigeons taste like in general. Besides, the noises are a little more distracting, and she glances up. Great.

She'll just... grab the nearest heavy looking object, because she's seen the bullshit that comes out of the vents in Deerington. She's set a xenomorph on fire with hairspray, she can totally handle this. Maybe. ]

Re: please crash it

[stayscared]

[the smack at the thermostat is met with a sharp edge - though it might be avoided easily enough - the room has other ways to draw blood. it can draw this out forever if it likes, on slow loop or fast loop, that's a matter of taste, and who says things can't be switched up for fun?

the machine is a timer and that timer reads out something that isn't numbers at all. it's symbols of pure dread, the kind of things that make a person want to dig at the soft eyemeats or to retch uncontrollably.

(the menu sits untouched. ignored. affronted. this is some of its best work! how dare.)

and here she is hefting that object (it's a lamp no it's a vase no it's a fire extinguisher) and it's so easy to swing, too. it's light and it could mold itself just a little in her hands to be more grippable and if she thinks about it, if she stops and really thinks about it (don't do that don't think there's no need to think) it might feel a bit too moldable. a bit too much like skin.

the room is egging her on now, imploring her to swing it - to just hit into the air (batter up batter up three up three down this is five five three and STRIKE) as the ceiling above her begins to shift and shimmer just a bit before it gives out - gives birth to a rain of dust and brick and smoke and screaming.

mike's hit the ground as the surface reforms with a belching squelch - a screech of distaste as if it is glad to have spat him from its insides. right back at ya, fucking air vents. third time's a charm? (three up three down batter up chloe just swing and kill your friend because all every friend is dead. every father is dead. everything you touch turns to shit and rot and everyone deserves to feel just like you do.]

[tagartist]

Mother fucker!

[ The swear comes out in a sharp hiss when her hand gets cut by the thermostat, though she tells herself she's had worse. It's not a bullet to the head or as bad as having your body torn apart, right? She glances at her fingers, figuring it wouldn't even need stitches, and goes to clench her fist around her shirt to try and stop the bleeding for a second.

She was holding the lamp-extinguisher with one hand at first, holding it firmly, feeling like she should squeeze it a little harder for comfort but there's also something about it that makes her stomach flip. She should drop it, really, she's sure that's the right thing to do, except that noise above her is getting closer and the way it changes in visuals makes her feel like she can't let go of the only thing she has to protect her.

The make-shift weapon is pulled above her head, the words echoing in her mind ignore and encourages the scream-ish shout that escapes her when she sees something actually fall out in front of her. She doesn't register it at first, both hands going to grip the bulk of the... What the fuck was she holding again?

It's that thought that makes her pause, that gives her just enough time to register that she was actually about to try and hurt someone who hasn't done anything to her yet, and it makes her freeze. Her eyes widen for a second before the flesh-like feeling in her hands finally hitting her and it makes her gag, makes her toss it across the room instead of at Mike's head.

The ceiling just gave birth to Mike. ]

What the fuck? What the fuck! [ This is the only reasonable thing to say here. ]

[stayscared]

[is it a moment of levity or does this somehow make the horror worse that he's screaming at the same time she is - and almost the exact same litany.]

Fuck!!

[hands up to shield himself from a blow that never comes - shaking the dust and plaster from his hair with the briefest thought of thanks for the asbestos that causes an animated irritation in his gesture - until he realizes that not only was he right that this bitch of a room snared someone (again) - this time it's someone he knows. someone he likes. it's all bad, any day of the week, any way you slice it (and she'd looked like she was considering slicing him, that's 1408 for you) but a familiar face adds insult to injury.

he could try and knock her out, carry her out of this thing on his own terms, but he's not a hundred percent sure he could succeed - and he's not risking her neck on the odds - even if they're ninety nines. if she were someone else he might try.]

Welcome to the fucking Dolphin.

[he's looking her over, for scratches, burns, anything - and wincing at the sound of whatever she threw thunking onto the carpet. it's far too reminiscent of the torso that had been shackled to him in the tower's ten (?) floor zealot extravaganza. ten this is te--

he is just going to yell at the ceiling for a moment. it's ...fine.]

Fuck you, too! It's ten! It's five! It's three! Make up your fucking mind, you bag of rotten pigshit! I know, I know they're all dead and so am I, so who's got anything to lose? Not me, motherfucker.

[sorry, chloe. please forgive him if he puts out an arm to shield you from ...everything.]