[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

gabe goodman | ota

[ungrieved]

[Please be advised that the following contains references to child death.]

i. we were still living downtown

[ungrieved]

The first scene is simple, and small, and normal.

A healthy baby boy gurgles in his crib, not even a year old. A mother beams, and hums along to the chime of a music box on the dresser. She reaches down to tickle at him, and his tiny hand grasps at her finger without strength, without coordination, but with an earnest needing that only a baby can possess.

"Gabe," says his mother, fondly. "Gabriel."

The baby utters a feeble little burp of sound, as if in reply, and she laughs. Her name flares in the head of the witness like a wave of warm scarlet, lit in neon and gold:

Diana.

...Mom.

[souris_keteer]

... So that's what a mother is like.

Mickey watches the scene quietly, and he has to admit... he's a little envious. Being an orphan, he has no idea about his parents. Did he ever have a mother who played with him and sang to him and loved him like this?

But the feeling doesn't last too long - negativity rarely does with Mickey. A warm smile grows on his face. He's happy they're happy.

"Hmmm."

[ungrieved]

Gabe, on the other hand, is envious for other reasons. Talking mouse or not, he didn’t consent to let anyone spy on the only good memories he had. The boy who abruptly placed himself between Mickey and the crib is older, but he’s the subject of the story nonetheless.

For however long that lasts.

“What are you doing here?” he snaps.

[souris_keteer]

Mickey is so startled he lets out a big "WHOA!" and stumbles backward, landing on his behind. He flails and fumbles, trying to get back up and properly apologize.

"I-I'm sorry!" He stammers. "I didn't mean... I was just tryin' to find out what was goin' on..."

[ungrieved]

“Has anyone ever told you that it’s rude to eavesdrop?”

He should be smiling. In control. He should be fending this attack off with ease. But with everything he is having gone unacknowledged until now, what does he do when someone finally does mention him, recognize him, address him - and do so in a moment of the utmost privacy?

[souris_keteer]

Mickey is about to protest that, again, he didn't mean to - but ultimately he realizes that the second he saw anything, he did have the choice to turn away, close his eyes, not listen... He sighs a little.

"I'm sorry." He repeats, head lowered shamefully. "I guess... I was just curious what a mother is like. But you're right, I shouldn't have looked."

[ungrieved]

"You didn't have a mother."

He advances, abruptly far less threatened, far less reactionary, and far more predatory. The mouse has just exposed a weakness, and Gabe intends to take full advantage of it. Think of it as compensation. Emotional compensation for unjust crimes.

"Was it everything you hoped it would be?" His mouth twists upward into something of a sneer. "Is it picture-perfect in your mind now?"

[souris_keteer]

Mickey needs another pause to think. He's an adult now, at least by his world's standards, so the pining for parents isn't as strong as it once was. He has to cross his arms, tilt his head, and mull the question over.

"... No." He finally admits. "I mean, it's nice... I wish I had somethin' like it... but it's not perfect because it's not mine. It's yours. We've got different lives, and at least for me, I'm happy with the way things are. I shouldn't go wishin' for stuff that belongs to someone else."

[ungrieved]

Gabe laughs. It’s a decidedly brittle, unpleasant sound, wrenching at his vocal cords. He’s never had to be aware of those sorts of bodily limitations before. Unfortunately, the newness of the sensation isn’t enough to deter him.

“Maybe you should. Maybe everyone else is wishing for your life.”

[souris_keteer]

"Aw, I don't think..." But he trails off, considering. Before he wound up here on the islands, he achieved his childhood dream, he and his friends were heroes, and he was about to ask the princess out on a date. Compared to most people, that's a pretty darn good life!

"Gosh, you might be right." He finally says, a little worried. "Gee, I hope I haven't been bragging about it and making people feel bad... from now on, I'll be much more careful when I talk about home. Thanks for the tip!"

... Yeah, Mickey is still blindly oblivious that Gabe is trying to manipulate the mouse and make him feel bad. Nooo, surely this is just a normal conversation!

[ungrieved]

This is embarrassing. It’s embarrassing because it’s obvious that not a single word he’s saying is landing a hit. Clearly he’ll have to try harder.

“Just think of how many people whose lives you’ve mocked, pretending that you’ve had it rough.” Pretending. That’s right.

[souris_keteer]

Mickey counts on his fingers, trying to remember who and how many people he's talked to abut his home life. "Let's see... There's Newt, and Roy, and Ren... Hmmm... I think I told a bunch of people at this point. Maybe I ought to play it safe and apologize to all my friends, just in case." Nope, still not hurt.

ii. someone simply said: "your child is..." ; cw for child death

[ungrieved]

The streetlights blur into linear streaks, smeared against the dark glass of the car as it drives too fast. The man's face is strained, taut, worried. The woman - her black coat thrown over her blue nightgown - clutches an infant. He'd cried. He'd cried for hours, thrashing, squalling, and no amount of murmuring or soothing or stroking or holding would quiet him. She slept in his room, but still, he cried.

Until one morning he stopped.

He's so still, when they hurry him inside. The hospital doors whisk open to accommodate them, and the doctors are there in an instant. The last thing he hears from his mother is a desperate, wordless cry, too distraught to even form his name with her lips. The man beckons her close. He keeps her up when she looks so fragile, so lost, like he's the only thing in the world that grounds her here. She clings to him without knowing what she does, her gaze roving, restless. The tear tracks glint beneath the harsh glare of the hospital lights, stark and bleak. The halls smell of antiseptic. The tiles glow underfoot.

The time that passes is, in essence, hours. Streamlined by the grooves of memory, compressed down into a selection of moments: the pain that defined the life of Gabriel Goodman, depthless and agonizing and displayed in a context he could never understand. A pain that flared in his middle with a vengeance and set him screaming, screaming, screaming, but would soon leave him quiet, so very, very quiet.

The doctors missed it. The clinic, the specialist, the ER. They said, "he has food allergies." They said, "babies cry."

He doesn't toss fitfully. He doesn't worry the blankets. He lies there, eighteen months old, ice-cold, and is still. The resuscitation is too late.

The medicine failed.

The doctors lied.

There's quiet in the hospital room. Disappointment, weariness, and silent resignation, until one of them speaks with solemn professionalism.

"Someone's going to have to tell the family."

[souris_keteer]

Is this horrifying? Is this upsetting? Is this sad beyond belief? Yes.

... But it's also really, really confusing. Because if that baby was indeed the guy he was talking to - how can he be a guy now? If he is a ghost - because at this point Mickey's willing to believe anything can exist here - then why is it an adult ghost? Why did he want Mickey to see this?

So Mickey says nothing, does nothing, save for staring in silence.

[ungrieved]

"Cute, huh?"

There he is, waiting just behind the mouse like the phantom he is. Half-sunk in shadow, the firelight licking him into harsh relief. His expression is veiled, unreadable. But the words hum with an undeniable electric charge.

"The perfect, loving family. So adoring." His mouth twists into a sneer, ugly and pained. "So adoring, they wanted to forget me as soon as I was gone."

But they failed to account for one thing.

They failed to account for just how badly he would refuse to be forgotten; just how fiercely he would cling to the world, and refuse to fade from memory. He will never be an abandoned memory. Not now. Not ever.

[souris_keteer]

Mickey looks back at him, still silent. He's not sure what to think. What to say. He's still deeply confused and troubled on a great number of things.

... But even though he hasn't said a thing, his face is giving away at least one thing he is certain about. Little tears have begun strolling down his cheeks, rolling down and dripping off. What Mickey can understand at the very least was there was a death, an unfair and unjust death of the highest order.

[ungrieved]

“Are you content with that?” His teeth glint in a terrible, cold smile. “Have all your questions been answered? Are you happy with the life you got to have?”

Is he happy that he got to have one at all?

[souris_keteer]

By now Mickey has realized he's begun crying, and he certainly knows he won't be able to make it stop anytime soon. He tries to clean his face as best he can, sniffling here and there.

"I'm sorry." Is all he says. And he is, he genuinely is. It's very unfair what's happened, even if Mickey doesn't wholly understand it.

[ungrieved]

“Do you think sorry fixes If? Do you think it makes any of it better? Do you feel any better for having said it?”

Does this ease anyone’s pain, the passive claim of an apology too late to mean anything? Does he feel better, now that he’s ventured the bare minimum?

[souris_keteer]

Mickey is about to say no, it doesn't fix anything, of course not. But that won't help. Gabe needs to let this all out, and if Mickey is the verbal punching bag to do so, then that's what'll happen. Shoot, he'd offer a hug if he thought Gabe would accept it. (He's assuming that would be a no.)

So Mickey decides to just keep quiet and allow Gabe to say all he needs to say, shaking his head to let the boy know he's still listening.

[ungrieved]

Oh, does he think that makes it better, too? He's stricken into silence. He can't even wrap his stupid little head around it, can he?

"My mom loved me," says Gabe. He folds his arms over his chest before realizing the motion feels insincere, incomplete, and he lets them drop to his sides again. "She loved me so much she never wanted to let me go. Everyone else, they wanted to forget that I was ever there. They didn't even say goodbye. They didn't even say goodbye!"



His hands are around his chest again.

Hugging himself. Holding tight.

[souris_keteer]

Mickey's urge to hug the guy increases, but again, he's not 100% sure that's the route to go.

However, Mickey now has words.

"We might not get the chance to say goodbye here, too." It's a sad little warning. "The friends we make here... sometimes they vanish and we don't realize it right away. We're pretty sure they went home." Not entirely, but it's better than believing the alternative. "But even if we can't say what we want to say, before the right time... we will remember. I promise I will always remember you. You don't have to believe me... you don't have to believe anythin' I've said. But I will remember."

[ungrieved]

He could just disappear. Again. He could disappear and never come back, doomed to be left in some perpetual halfway state, the same as ever. Even this could be snatched away - this second chance he wanted more than anything.

He thinks that’s good enough? The promise that he’ll be remembered?

He’s heard that one before.

“That’s what they all say.”

iii. so my son's a little shit

[ungrieved]

The door shuts.

In a tidy little house with a dark room, Mom sits in a chair by the lamp that's still on. Her face looks pale and drawn. She's been awake for hours.

From the dark, a creeping silhouette slows, and stops. A boy, no older than seventeen, drags the hood of his jacket off his head, eyeing her skeptically.

"What are you doing up? It's 3:30."

"It's the 7th night this week I've sat 'till morning," says Diana, who sounds as though her heart might be breaking, "imagining the ways you might have died."

"Yes," says the boy, with a world-weary amusement that implies this is a conversation they've had many times before. And they have. Many times. "And tonight's winner is?"

"In a freak September ice storm with no warning."

Gabe scoffs. "Because that happens."

"There's a gang war. There's a bird flu. Trains collide."

"Now, what did we say about watching the news?" says Gabe, with fond exasperation.

"Now you act all sweet and surly..." Lined as her face is with concern, his mother is plainly happy to see him. "But you swore you'd come home early. And you lied."

Gabe laughs as he lets his schoolbag slide down from his shoulder and shucks off his hoodie. It's not clear where he's been, exactly - only that he's been. "You gotta let go, Mom. I'm almost eighteen."

"Are you snorting coke?" demands Diana, belligerent.

Gabe shrugs fluidly.

"Not at the moment."

"Who's up at this hour?" The voice that floats from upstairs is still slurred and disoriented from sleep, but there's the unmistakable noise of someone getting out of bed, preparing to stumble downstairs.

Diana immediately shakes away the pall of whatever seeing her son has cast over her like a shawl, beckoning anxiously for Gabe to come away.

"Your father." She jerks her head to the darkened space just behind her. "Go. Up the back way."

Gabe glances over his shoulder, pausing. There's a glimmer of something like remorse when he speaks again.

"Why does he hate me?"

"Because you're a little twat," says Diana, so promptly that it has never been more evident that they are mother and son.

"You can't call me a twat," Gabe grumbles. But he obligingly melts away into the dark. In a matter of seconds, it's as though he was never there.