[MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

[lifeaftr_mods]

Something is wrong.

This may not very well be obvious, at first. The Storyteller is not present to put forth yet another diatribe, informative or apologetic, and the backdrop of guttering flame and sandy campfire is as present as ever...albeit briefly.



Those who tell their stories will start to notice something...odd taking place. Indeed, no matter how they intend to begin their tale, the land of Mu will immediately start to warp to accommodate it, or something utterly unlike it, until storytellers and listeners alike may find themselves in an exact recreation of a seemingly random memory, in the most stark and painstaking of detail. There is no altering the memory, nor is there any preventing it once it's begun to play - you will simply have to witness memories that are not your own this go around.

Furthermore, stories that take place in worlds other than LifeAftr will be, frankly, inevitable. Those memories, too, will be recreated, to be relived by the teller and lived by the listener.

---

It is time, once more, for you to tell a story...with a slight twist! This is, in fact, our first player plot, as provided by Dragon! The initial setting will be familiar for oldcomers, and newcomers will recognize it from the introduction they received in their dreams.

Yet for this Storytelling only, people can imagine whatever stories they wish, from both their homes and their time on LifeAftr, as long as they don't mind the fact that others will be reliving those stories in the form of an impromptu memory share.

Even those who prefer not to voice their stories aloud are not safe this time around. If the memory is recalled in essence, Mu will shift to accommodate it in full.

There is, however, a benefit to this: those who venture memories to be relived will receive both a befuddled apology from the Storyteller, who will assert that this was most definitely not meant to happen (they're the Storyteller, not the Rememberer!), as well as a tired promise that the relived memories will be worth two offerings each, as if in compensation.

Not that it counts for much, probably.

Comments

The Villain (cw: violence, death)

[ishotyouuu]

It’s just after Boxing Day. The air is crisp and biting, the kind of cold that painfully steals the breath from your lungs and makes your body burn from it. You’re a few months away from your nineteenth birthday, and you’ve been kicked out of yet another bar-- your fifth one this week. Someone should fill out a bingo card based on the mishaps you get into these days. You could raise a stink about it; could traipse back in and start some shit with the bartender who clearly has something against guys like you, but fuck it. You’re just too tired, it’s too cold, and all you want to do is head back to home and forget this entire year ever happened. Forget Julia ever happened, fuck her lying black-hearted soul. You don’t mean that, of course. Late at night when you’re lying in bed with no one to hold, you still cry sometimes, heart filled to bursting over what could have been if only you’d been more careful. If you hadn’t lied to her so much. If she hadn’t found out how young you were when you started seeing her. It’s just that sometimes anger is a good anaesthesia. Helps to burn away all the hurt feelings and loneliness that have become your silent partner ever since she packed up and left. You don’t understand why you’re not used to this. People always leave you, in the end. Why are you even dwelling on this now? It’s not like anything’s going to be any different from yesterday. You’re just going to take a shortcut through the same goddamn alley you’ve always gone, back to your same shitty basement apartment with its cracks in the wall and the Hispanic lady next door who has night terrors and screams about “el diablo” nearly every night--

There’s something sticking into your back. You feel it plainly, and a rush of something-- not quite fear, not quite disbelief-- runs up your spine at the sensation of it. A gruff voice-- or rather, a voice making a failed attempted to be gruff-- rasps in your ear, and you immediately understand what kind of situation you’re in right now even before the man behind you has a chance to say anything.

“All right, pretty boy. Clean out those pockets.”

Amazingly, you fight the urge to laugh. You’ve never been mugged before, and this whole situation seems too absurd to be real. You half expect yourself to wake up in a cold sweat, heart still hammering in your chest before the relief sets in that is was all just a bad dream. But it’s also funny for a different reason-- this is just the rotten cherry of the shit sundae that has become your life, isn’t it? You’re almost amazed it hadn’t happened sooner. In what is most certainly a leave of your senses, you risk a glance backward at the man holding you up. Green eyes in a youthful face stare back at you-- the guy barely looks any older than you are. And behind that hardened exterior lies a certain desperation… and inexperience. It might not be his first rodeo, but it’s definitely his second or third. The guy apparently doesn’t like the look you’re giving him, because he presses the gun-- if it even is a gun; odds are it’s merely his fingers positioned to feel like a gun-- more firmly into your back.

“No funny business. Pockets. Empty. Now.”

You vaguely wonder if he got acting lessons from Clint Eastwood movies. Your hand reaches into your pocket. The situation has suddenly become less funny. Why does this shit always seem to happen to you? Did you kick too many puppies in a past life or something? Was the world just content to shit all over guys like him who were already at their lowest? Within your pocket, your hand closes around something oblong and hard, and a sudden thought emerges within the doom and gloom that has become your thought process: Maybe I don’t have to take it. The man can obviously hear the telltale click, but he barely has enough time to even speak before you’ve whirled around and given him what’s in your pocket-- namely, your pocketknife. The knife punches through the fleshy part of his neck with only a small amount of resistance, and you have a chance to see his eyes widen in surprised agony before he’s stumbling backward, a throaty gagging noise issuing forth from his gaping mouth. He claws at his neck, his fingers touching the knife still embedded in his throat and then sliding off again. As you watch, he falls to his knees, then sinks down onto his side, his body writhing as he struggles to suck air into his lungs.

He doesn’t die for five minutes, and you stay there and watch every excruciating moment of his passing. You wait for the mounting horror, for nausea; for the malady known as killer’s guilt syndrome that you’ve heard some soldiers succumb to. But all you feel in this moment, watching a man’s life ebb away in a dingy alleyway in the cold, is a all-encompassing feeling of boredom. You’re bored and you’re tired, and you wish the son of a bitch would just die already. Eventually the horrible sucking noises fade. The stricken man gives one last rattling cough and then lies still. Only now do you reach down and take the knife from his neck-- carefully, so as not to get any of his blood on you. You close the pocketknife with a deciding click, stuff it back into your pocket, and resume making your way back home, as if the whole ordeal-- the mugging, the assault, the cold-blooded murder-- hadn’t happened.

The instinct of a killer was inside you, even then.

[ohshitsweetflips]

Cha boy doesn't know about 'the instinct of a killer' but from his stranger's vantage point it's kind of a big shrug of a situation, honestly. Don't know this dude, and sure maybe that was a little, no pun intended, overkill, but. Some things are just like this, right? Slow deaths are an awkward and sometimes boring mess from the outside, he hasn't forgotten that. And getting busted up about it wasn't gonna bring anyone back from the dead. The world is frequently a real turd of a place, and sure, Taako knows that trying to make it better like, lump-sum is technically right, over making it better for just yourself. But really, deep down, the most important part is making a difference at all, not having to just shut up and take it. It's not what he'd have done in Wade's place, but it's not some kind of unfathomable alienating logic train either. Just a thing that happened, the way things unfortunately do.

"I mean, obviously this one stuck with you." Is that...is that a consolation or just some kind of testing the waters. Whatever it is, it's not particularly judgmental. "So that's something, at least?"

[ishotyouuu]

Of all the memories someone could have chosen to walk in on, it's probably telling that this one is probably the least shameful to Wade, and it shows. Impassively, as if he were watching a scene from a movie, Wade watches his younger self depart the alleyway and make his way back home. It's only after he loses sight of the man he once was that he turns to face the one who had spoken, and it's only to give him the most imperceptible of shrugs.

"Didn't really stick with me that much, honestly. I mean-- this was more or less the deciding factor of my future career, or whatever euphemism you wanna use, but you'd be surprised how little I think about it."

He'd come to terms with what he is a long time ago. Or at least, that's what he managed to convince himself, for the most part.

[ohshitsweetflips]

Taako, who is very good at not thinking about all kinds of things, would not be that surprised, actually. But he nods anyway, still just the non-judgmental side of impassive. Fair enough, dude can make his own call on that or whatever. It does kinda sound like bullshit, but we all deal in bullshit here, he's got no reason to argue.

"What's the non-euphemistic version, exactly? I mean, I'm guessing you're not about to say 'sandwich artist, here.'" He grins, disarming and lazy, like he didn't just watch a memory of a murder.

[ishotyouuu]

This guy... is taking this surprisingly well. Wade regards him with mild surprise-- not many people would be able to watch a guy give someone an impromptu tracheotomy with this much aplomb, which either means that this dude is chill to the point of being semi-catatonic or he's seen this sort of shit before. Wade's hedging toward the latter interpretation. He shrugs, plastering an equally disarming smile on his face.

"What, you don't think I can make the cut? Pretty sure Subway's hurtin' for a new spokesperson. Y'know, after what happened to their last one."

A pause.

"Mercenary work just seemed like a no-brainer, after that day. I mean, I enlisted not long afterwards, but I wasn't too good with takin' orders from someone, y'know? This way I can be my own boss. Hours are good an' the work's satisfyin', for the most part."