peckenpaugh | HE IS HERE

the vines have run wild

it's over Everything is in shambles. Walls and floors torn and broken from roots and branches sprouting through. They block doors and crowd passages and pulse with sick life. The Thing sits in the center of it all, angry and starving, its trunk both still and moving in ways you catch only when it is in the corner of your vision. Branches that look less like bark and more like skin stretch in every direction, lush with shadowy leaves and dotted with bits of glowing blue. The ruined floor is littered with those little twinkling dots. Seeds. Everywhere, seeds. They hang on boughs, and rest on banisters in the upper levels. The one thing in this nightmare that doesn't radiate that awful, pervasive hunger.

The roof is gone, replaced with a writhing canopy of shadow and muck. Some parts of it are complex spiderwebs of tendrilly shapes, others solid formless movement. The only consistent thing about it is that it is terrible to behold, faintly nauseating to look at for too long. Ash rains down between gaps in its branches, and what glimpses of sky are visible are nothing but swirling gray clouds. What stars still shine are magic, man-made, floated between balconies by prom committee before the dance.

Those remaining begin to stir. Each one of you has heard Pocket's words, "Find the roots." And if you want to save your friends, your family, the holler — hell, maybe even the world — that's exactly what you're going to do.

You climb from protective cocoons of dying moss, push your way past walls of solid ice, emerging into utter destruction. Things move and make noise at the edge of your vision, but for now, at least, all is calm. What to do? Where to start?

it's ruined Among the twinkling maple seeds are the dropped possessions of students and staff, lost when they were pulled away. A compact mirror, a cell phone, a pair of glasses, cups of punch spilling across the floor. A single red heel sits at the edge of the jagged pit that peers down into the Sorting Path. The air here is hot. Too hot. If you jump, you'll surely be boiled alive.

Though locked when everyone tried to flee, vines and roots have torn the doors to the auditorium off their hinges. The splintered remains of heavy oak doors litter the entrance halls and stairwell alcoves, leaving an open path outside. Not that you'd want to flee, by the looks of it.

A cool night breeze is the only relief from the growing heat of the auditorium, yes, but even that is tainted by the heavy scent of flowers. Outside, vines and purple flowers have exploded over every surface. They climb up lamp posts, engulf buildings whole, hang from trees. It would be beautiful if it weren't horrifying. Campus is unrecognizable.

there is no hope Roots and vines clog the way to the Sorting Path, and most stairwells are completely obstructed by the growths of that horrible tree. Up above, something buzzes and wails, a mockery of a cicada's cry, and beyond that the twittering of birds nesting in the tree's highest branches.

Pouch coalesces in the middle of it all, a one-winged magimagicicada, weak and weary but undaunted. Resolute, if not reinvigorated. He bends down to touch a seed, and the moment his obsidian fingers light on it, a blue-white portal to somewhere else rips right through reality. A memory begins to play. Somehow, the bug seems to know what he's seeing.

She gave us what we need, the one who ran says to the gathered students, his voice in their heads as much as the air. Let's all not let her down, huh?

Find your friends. Find my siblings. It's time to fight.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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[CRITERIA: minimum replies 8, reach the potato chip bag]

For a few seconds, there's nothing but darkness.

If it's true that lack of sight causes other senses to be enhanced, then that's kinda unfortunate, because the smell of old sweat hangs heavy in the air here. It's comforting. Somehow.

Light creeps in soon enough, ushered along by the sound of a zipper being pulled. Loudly. Finally an object comes into focus and it's a face. A giant face. Like, movie screen sized. Eddy Waxweiler could probably do a better job cleaning his pores and, oh– the ground is suddenly moving, up, up, fast, like an elevator, and then abruptly stopping again.

"You again," Eddy's normally soft voice booms, and large raccoon ringed eyes look directly down at the assembled.

From this vantage point, it becomes clear that this memory takes place in the dormitories. The sophomore ones, specifically, based on the arrangement of the room. School issued desks and bunks line the walls and some are kept far more fastidiously tidy than others. The nearest - presumably Eddy's - falls within the general cleaniness level of 'lived in'. A framed photo, a model of the Apollo Lunar Module, and a Fergus O'Malley poster are all intentionally placed around the desk, while school papers, a half-empty bottle of black nail polish, an unopened bag of potato chips, and a cheap ballpoint pen are scattered across the surface. Every so often one of the mothers in the photo takes a moment away from her young scuffed-up sons to shake her head in disapproval at the mess.

Far below, a now-opened mahogany and slate equipment bag full of Keeper gear sits near Eddy's feet. A small hole has been chewed through a side seam.

It's all pretty standard. Except the part where everything seems at least fifty feet tall.

Oh.

This memory belongs to a mouse. Probably the five foot tall one that just got frozen gnawing on the giant hand that everyone's perched on.

A surprised hiss of pain escapes from Eddy as the mouse sinks her teeth into his palm. "Not food," he scolds gently, carefully carrying the small fuzzy trespasser over to his desk. She leaps from his hand before he has a chance to set her down and immediately beelines for the potato chip bag.

"Not good for you," he chides when she starts to chew on the plastic, but he opens it up all the same and offers her one of the chips inside. The mouse greedily grabs the chip between her teeth and then launches herself into the safety of the potato chip cave to devour her prize. Eddy sets the bag down and then crouches beside his desk, so the mouse is at his eye level as he watches her feast. She shows no signs of slowing down.

"Guess you can stay," he admits defeat with a sigh. A few more seconds pass and he reaches a finger into the bag to stroke the mouse's fur. "So what do I call you?"

Nearby Eddy's feet, the floor vent slides open with a loud metallic clank.

Edited (a VERY important memory lmao) 2020-06-17 15:06 (UTC)

HE IS HERE

MEMORY: Honey I Shrunk The Kids

MEMORY: Honey I Shrunk The Kids