[OPEN] I Love The Dead (Forward dated to 10/22)

[pummelgranite]

WHO: Persephone, her entourage, her fans, poor assholes who just wanted to here some music, heroes, etc
WHERE: A music venue on an an ill fated corner of Maurtia Fals
WHEN: Saturday evening 10/22
WHAT: Persephone's Unintended Halloween Horror Show
WARNINGS: at the very least, violent death, aftermath of trauma, mentions of alcohol and drug use. Individual threads may have other content.

[ The venue was as decked out for Halloween as a hall in Maurita Falls gets. Real carved pumpkins on the bars, and a few wraiths hung from the ceiling. All in all it's not intended to be a themed show, any more than all of her concerts are.

And for the first half hour, the show is perfectly normal. But that's when a vision joins her on the stage. At the moment her own memories turn violent, a set of confetti canons that Management will swear up and down did not exist beforehand go off- shooting out a stream of rose petals that look for all the world like blood spray.

That's when all hell breaks loose. ]

((OOC: Persephone's portion of the Memory Lane event! Details here. TL;DR the memory effect will be playing out in at a music joint- meaning in a space of tightly packed, possibly inebriated bodies, VIOLENT AND HORRIBLE memories will be playing out. Chaos ensues! Rescues may be needed! Feel free to put up your own top-levels for violent memories, reacting to the panic, or Being A Hero. All threads pertaining to Persephone will be lumped under the same toplevel for player convenience.))

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PERSEPHONE THREADS GO HERE

[pummelgranite]

PRESHOW

[pummelgranite]

[ There's a sense of calm that's been beginning to come over her, before shows. She's slower to prickly, more likely to string an entire sentence together. ]


Any idea where we should go after the show? Could try one of those American breakfast places.

[heckblazer]

[ Striding into the dressing room, John tries his best to look... not shaken around the impressionable young people. It's mostly his own fault for skulking around the weird cursed memory alley in town, being the prat he was. He'd gained some interesting information on other imPorts, but it meant dirt they had on him, too. Fortunately, the apparition from his embarrassing punk days didn't follow him here.

In a motion he no longer really thinks about, John deposits the box of smokes onto a table within her reach. ]

'know a spot in Heropa. Open all night, proper English breakfast. The eggs are so-so, though.

[pummelgranite]

[ If she notices that he's extra uncool tonight, she doesn't comment. Just goes for the smokes. ]

You wanna bother with the Porters that late?

[heckblazer]

Why not? Yer' a rock star, they'll let ya do anything.

[ He takes a cig himself, patting himself down to search for his lighter. Too many guddamn pockets on his coat. ]

[pummelgranite]

If they're fans? Maybe.


[ She snaps her fingers and lights it for him. Geez. ]

[heckblazer]

[ Maybe a little reluctantly, he takes it. She's not the first magic girl he's encountered to waste her gifts lighting his smokes for him. And the first one, he'd damn near ruined her life more than once. He still gets the odd pang in his chest thinking about it. Maybe that'll be yet another memory that gets dragged from his head and paraded through town. ]

Might be summin' else close by, if ye'd want to be practical.

[ He hates thinking like an adult, but it's almost worth it for her sake. Almost. ]

[abandon_hope]

American breakfast place? Like IHOP or something?

[pummelgranite]

It's the United Nations of Waffles here.

[abandon_hope]

... That's kind of silly.

[pummelgranite]

Uh huh.

[abandon_hope]

Guess it doesn't matter. As long as I can still get pancakes with something ridiculous on it.

THE MEMORY (Spoilers through issue 22, gore in the images)

[pummelgranite]

[ The memory starts downstage from her, appropriately enough.


There's a fight. Persephone wins.


Up from the literal pedestal on which she sings, the live version looks on, rooted in place.


There's plenty of heated discussion, and it looks for a moment like she may show mercy.


But then in tandem, the girl on the stage and the girl in the memory raise their fingers. "Don't" mouths the old woman.


And then comes the spray of rose petals. ]

TRY TO BREAK THE SPELL AND/OR PUNCH HER

[pummelgranite]

[ She keeps singing as panic breaks out in the audience. But there's something wrong. She's only singing one song now, verse after verse of the same thing. Her arms wrap around herself, rather than her normal open swagger.


Her face looks wet- swear or tears?


Another verse. And another. And another. ]

[the_caped_crusader]

[He hears the alert over the intercom of his jet as he passes the city overhead. Traveling at subsonic speeds, it takes him very little time to reach the arena, flying just below cloud cover. Batman ejects from the bottom and takes a nosedive towards the throng of people he can see progressively getting more violent and manic as they come closer into view. His eyes move to the stage, and from a distance he can hear her crying out unintelligibly when he notices her voice crawling up inside the back of his throat and into his head.

He grinds his teeth and opens the wings of his cape late, gliding in towards the stage fast with the reverb of her song shaking his bones, and when he lands hard on his knees, rotten decayed fingers pull at him from through the ground. His body shudders, the sound of broken pearls ring in his ears. To his left, gravity causes the pallid skin of his father's face to lose tautness as his corpse grins at him with empty eyes. Blood surges into his veins and bats swarm around him by the hundreds from the void within his cape.]

[pummelgranite]

[ It's hard to perceive anything beyond the song as it loops over and over through her mind and over her tongue. Hard to feel anything but the sticky warmth of fresh blood that she's sure, absolutely sure is soaking her dress. People are . . . screaming. Screaming in a way that is not the way adoring fans should scream but- but it's hard to hear anything but the snap of bones and pop so sinew in her lyrics.


But a swarm of bats? Well, that gets her attention. The beating of wings- like the Morrigan's flock. Maybe not quite the same tenner, but familiar enough over her own din.


She sets her feet apart. Squares her shoulders. Keeps singing straight into the swarm.


Sings of a wrath that can not be abated. An open wound on the heart. A need for revenge as real and immediate and fatal as the need to breathe. ]

[the_caped_crusader]

[His heart pounds in his ears like the sound of gunfire, but the screech of the creatures swarming around him is comforting. It helps him to balance himself.]

Enough...

[He whispers quietly. But his body is on fire, and unbeknownst to her the music of her song only turns his resolve up to ten. To keep others from being hurt. He mastered his pain more than twenty years ago. His secret is that he always carried it with him. He roars and throws his arms out around him, and the bats scatter back inside him as though to shelter themselves from the fury of his yell.]

ENOUGH!!

[pummelgranite]

[ Well that makes it through. A break in the song long enough to come back into herself- to see the hell breaking out around them.


To perceive the threat right in front of her.


The song dies in an instant, but the chaos in the crowd is self-sustaining by now. It hits all at once, the threat right in her face, the screaming and bloodshed around her. Her heart clenches and her stomach flips. Panic starts to claw it's way up her throat.


No, no here, not now. She just needs space. Just needs to breathe. She springs backwards, putting up a wall of spectral foliage between herself and whoever the fuck this is. ]

[the_caped_crusader]

[No, that was wrong-- not of her, but him. At the time, he didn't have a choice. Had to find a way to get back to himself. But he can't stop this by himself like maybe he might want, there are too many of them. The only way is through her, as she tries desperately to protect herself. He saw no difference between these vines and his bats.

He takes a step forward and places his hand on the writhing plant life, to try to reach her from within.]

Whatever you did, I can't help them! You have to come out! Only you can stop them!

Memory: NEWCASTLE / open / theres too many warnings for the subject line

[heckblazer]

WARNINGS: post-traumatic stress, adult language, demonic summons, blood and gore, child abuse including sexual abuse, violent child death, drugs and alcohol

Everyone makes mistakes and John just made one: oversight.

He knows the effect of Effy's song on her adoring fans. He knows that a few blocks away, the cursed alleyway is still playing out the memories of anyone who happens by, making one big, endless snuff film out of the thoughts of its victims. He doesn't think the two would or could mix together, probably because he's a hopeless, idiotic twat too busy with his own moronic guilt and lame attempts at living vicariously through Persephone. Help her, as if it will absolve him of everyone else he's failed.

Memories are all that's left. The livelihood of Northern folk a memory, the once-vibrant neighborhoods shackled and rotting thanks to Thatcher's rule. With it, the hearts and minds of the misfits that were John's friends.

There's already screams, gunfire, the flutter of batwings echoing through the concert hall. John doesn't pay them mind. He's distracted, namely by the old, rickety brick building that has decided to manifest. It had piss for booze and a leaky roof, but it's where John's band got its start, during his young delusions. Practically blending in with the graffiti and grime there's a badly-lit sign above the door:

CASANOVA CLUB

John could cry out to his former self. He could stop watching. He doesn't. It wouldn't make it go away, now or then. The club doors open. The interior is a macabre mishmash - more vandalism, the designs taking on a visible occult, witchy theme. Lights are smashed, or flickering in their lingering moments of life.

It sets the stage nicely for the heap of bodies on the floor. It's hard to tell how many of them there were - maybe six or seven. Their guts are open like lush, wet blossoms, intestines tangled, obscuring where one corpse ends and another begins. Amongst the flesh, hundreds of pounds of it, there's the evidence of a half-baked ritual. Empty bottles. Candles. Clumsily-drawn insignia on the floorboards, partially washed and obscured by the sticky tide of blood.

The only person still alive is a little girl, one that looks like just about every little girl. John knows her. Daughter of an acquaintance, one of the poor bastards currently eviscerated on the floor. He's got shit for a paternal instinct, but he tries, approaching her like he would a venomous predator.

"Astra. It's okay. It's John, from the band. Do you remember?"

"Don't touch me! Wh- what do you want?"

"What happened, Astra?"

"Heeheeheehee. Didn't you hear it?"

"What happened to your dad?"

"Norfulthing got him. Norfulthing, Norfulthing..."

Her sing-songy reply betrays a mind like a pack of hunting dogs. And the name, clearly not one of any person, or any thing from the mortal world. How did she...? But he can't do anything until he finds out what happened here. Hypotism? Might do the trick.

"Astra, luv, I want you to feel..." he stumbles, can't rightly remember how to talk to children, "...cozy. Like when you're snuggled up in bed, right?"

"I don't like my bed, dad always gets in, he makes me do things."

John can't look away from her, needing to focus, to calm her mind. But he feels, suddenly, the sympathy he had for the bloody pile of men and women dissipating swiftly.

"He makes me, he and his friends, they're all noisy and smelly, and I told him I don't like it."

Then and now, John feels sickness in his throat, but he lets her talk. Demonic rituals aside, she needs to get it out of her system.

"I told him. I told him. I told him. No one will help. So I think of the worst thing, and it gets them, and they don't like it..."

John, young and stupid puts forward a hand, hovering near her forehead, making sure not to close the distance and create unwanted contact.

"Relax, girl. Norfulthing will be gone, I promise."

It comes from the shadows then. Not quite a wolf, or a horse, with teeth and claws like broken glass and veiny, pulsing anatomy an unnatural shade of purple. Norfulthing. Clearly a fear elemental, drawn to the girl, and it has much to feed on.

The young imbecile in the memory, so sure of himself starts at his craft.

"We'll need to summon a more powerful demon to destroy it."

He gathers the supplies, orders his ridiculous friends into their various roles for the ceremony. Just like following a recipe in a cookbook. The John of the present knows the motions, can't bring himself to relive the raw, electric anxiety in his heart on that day, in these moments.

Their circle is sloppy and the incantations are hollow words. The whole ritual is half-arsed, so much so that even a fool with no occult background could see everything going wrong - and he realizes, see they can. This entire incident as it plays out is before anyone, everyone who cares to look. But it's another thing the older, but not wiser John can't move himself to worry about. So, they'll judge him and hate him and think he's scum. They do that already.

The demon appears with flashes of light in every colour visible to the human eye and noises like the crunching of bone and squashing of organs. It looks the way it sounds, a life lesson in what happens you fail to properly name and bind your summons. It speaks, a hungry rumbling and nightmarish tenor mixed with the gravel of hell's own brimstone.

"You̡ ̵a̸re ̵P̀AT̵H҉E̡T͏I͘C͞, Co͠ǹstantine. Wál̸ļowi̢ng ͟in͏ ig̷n͏or̷an̴c̴e͏, ̧you͝ ͘sèék͝ ̕t̡ǫ ͠c̴on͟s҉tr͢a̸in̶ M̶E͡?"

Then Norfulthing is gone, devoured, it's slimy head torn away in a single motion. One demon replaced with another, the beast continues to gloat:

""̵And ͞no̧w͝, I̛ ͠şha͢l͘l͢ c̨l͞aim̕ my ͝fe̶e͏.҉ ̵I'l͠l take҉ t̀h̶is̛ ҉ch͠íld͜ o̶f̕ t̸ortured͢ h͠ear͝t, t̵o e͝a͡s̢e͞ mȩ ͠t̕h̴rou̵g͏h̢ et͘e͡rnìty̨."̶

"NO." John argues helplessly, "I fucked it up. Take me."

"Yo͏u̡ ͢ar̕e min̡e̶ al͜r̷e̕ad͢y͢, ̛aņd̵ ̵y̨our ͝f͘r͜i͜e̶n͞d͘s̡. blo͞óm̴s to ͞b͝e ̛ant̷i̴cipat͏ed̡,҉ ̧p̶luc͝k̶e͘d, ̴a҉t ͜m͞y̧ ̧whi̷m̷."̵

Astra's last words are, "John? No, PLEASE-"

This part is one that the present and corporeal version of John still feels. What's left of his heart is sunk and consumed by the hot maw that is hell's mouth, never sated, followed by his mind. Where the demon appeared with many colours, the girl disappears with just one - red, for the flames enveloping her and the blood flowing from her. Her legs gone, then arms, heart and finally her small, horrified face is gone behind the wall of dark magic and hell's flames. Her screams, those ring on, even while the conflagration subsides and the blood on the floor starts to dry. They warp the walls and that young, stupid, selfish, completely at fault man called John adds his own sobs and cries of damnation, the devastation wordless and guttural. By the time he's dragged out of the club by his weak, useless friends, she's already fallen to silence. The John of the present is too tired to join in, his jaw set harshly, his throat feeling like it's full of ash from a thousand cigarettes.

But the demon had made his own mistakes too. Somewhere between his slaying of the girl and her pet, his name, his true one was projected, and names were powerful, important to casting any spell worth the trouble. It was seared into John's brain, the sting representing the sole, tiny victory within the catastrophe, like the pain of a new tattoo.

His name was Nergal.

[helpline]

[ Well this show got pretty rubbish pretty fast.

He came to the show partly because he's punk rock (or at least as punk rock as a two thousand year old alien can GET) and wants to know the new shows and also because the Doctor honestly doesn't believe anything about gods until he encounters them...and still doesn't really believe anything about gods.

But what he does believe is that the concert's gone wrong, Persephone's gone wrong, everybody's yelling and panicking and well, he's the Doctor, he's got to try something. Shouting's not going to work. Yelling's not going to work, this is all too loud and crazy and oooh, that's a nice bass, who'd leave such a good looking bass just hanging around? He has been using his barely-used telepathic contact more often. Maybe kill two birds with one stone?

So, with the confidence of someone who has NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK THEY'RE DOING but doesn't care, he attempts to initiate telepathic contact hoping that through the chaos and through the panic, Persephone's going to notice.

It is 100% possible the Doctor's underestimating just how fucking weird Persephone's brain might be and he's going to just make things worse by trying. #YOLO ]

[pummelgranite]

[ What he'll find is-

A human mind, albeit one stuck in one motherfuck of an anxiety attack, that's acting as a bridge to something profoundly beyond human. Thousands and thousands of years of grief, and sorrow, and perseverance. It's built of human-like emotions and human-like experiences but enough to be a planet's worth: and it's tuned to be understood and sung out by a single punk with a nose ring. Like plasma pouring into her head, just as sure and bright and dangerous as a star's- an unending chain reaction of the same emotions, splitting and merging and generating tremendous power.


Not really surprising at all that it was fixed to go into nuclear meltdown, with the right push.


But she's canny, even in her panic. When she feels a meddling presence, there's a flare of wordless alarm, and she slams her own will against his inelegantly. She's not sure if she can manage any words beyond her Song, but the message is clear enough: Get the fuck out of here. ]

[helpline]

[ You fucked up a perfectly good human, that's what you did.

The Doctor's got two thousand years of telepathic experience. And, though he's not as good as some others who use their powers regularly, he's good enough at putting up walls. So, when Persephone slams her will against his, the Doctor puts up as many barriers, as many walls as he can, just trying to make her stop.

The message is clear, but the Doctor continues to probe. ]

Persephone, [ he says and thinks as he walks towards the stage more, attempting to push his way through the horde of people. ] Calm down.

[pummelgranite]

[ The verse starts again.

Calm? How could she possibly be calm. The earth will crumble under their feet. Irresistible force will pull them into the darkness. No one will hear them screaming. Every piece of horror around them is a part of that. Every car crash, every mugging, every act of heroism gone wrong. She might be the queen of that pit, but that didn't make the fall hurt any less.

Some small, persistent part of her mind is reaching desperately for the months of therapy and training she'd had- let the thoughts go, put yourself somewhere safe, count your breaths. But it's no good: the song owns her thoughts and her breathing. The only safe places she'd known have been burned to the ground. The feedback from the panic around her is too strong. Inevitably something triggers the disfunction of her human mind, and the plasma starts melting down all over again.

Rebuffed on her first attempt to push him out, she doesn't have the wherewithal to try again. Just to pull back, curl in on herself, to make a pitiful final attempt at containing this to her own head. ]

[helpline]

[ Since she doesn't try to push him out again, the Doctor takes this as invitation to pry again. So, he continues walking towards Persephone as he attempts to talk to her again. ]

Persephone, [ he thinks. ] I want you to concentrate on me and concentrate on my breathing, alright?

[ Hopefully this will work. Maybe? Who knows. He hopes. ]