cursedcontent | TEST DRIVE MEME #1

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

A Blood Offering

You wake up cozy in bed at the Saturn Motel. As you observe the room you may realize that it looks a little dated. Or, perhaps from your point of view the lamp and TV are wildly futuristic. Or, like Goldilocks, it may seem just right: close to the world you just left behind. Either way, you just had a very strange dream (see the arrival scenario) and now you're here. And you're not alone: there's a bed next to yours and someone else is waking up just like you are.

You can chat for a while if you like, but if you try to leave you'll find the door is firmly locked and no amount of kicking, punching, or hitting it with an object will do you any good. Instead, there's a letter on the nightstand which reads:

"Good morning and welcome to your new home!

You may be wondering why you're trapped in this room. Fear not, the door will open easily if you offer a bit of blood. More than a few drops but not enough to be a serious wound. A handprint's worth will do, let's say, and it only needs to come from one of you.

I'll let you sort that out yourselves. See you on the other side.

Sincerely,
The Mayor"

And indeed, a handprint's worth of blood pressed against the door will unlock it and let you out into the world. Do you volunteer your own blood? Do you take it from the other person by force? It's up to you! But there's no food in here, so you better figure it out eventually.

Roller Rink

As a celebration of your new lives here (and an apology for the whole blood offering thing - they were just testing something out, really) the Mayor has invited everyone to the Crazy Eight Roller Rink for a private, after-hours party.

Attendance isn't mandatory, but it is heavily encouraged so that you can meet your fellow Cursed and know who's in on the whole secret. It'll help you down the line at some point if your Curse gets out of control and you need someone to wrangle you.

As a reward, everyone who shows up and completes at least one lap around the roller rink (you must be wearing skates, but you can crawl the lap if you can't get the hang of them) will receive a free walkman with a mystery tape inside. The color, style, and mystery tape your character gets are up to you.

Mallrats

Everyone loves the mall! Right? Right! And this group of newcomers is lucky enough to be here for the White Pines Mall Grand Opening celebration! Feel free to walk around the mall and partake in sales galore, check out the attractions, or just get to know the layout of the place.

The Mayor has given everyone a gift card for $100 that can be used anywhere in the mall as long as they attend the Grand Opening.

They also strongly suggest that you familiarize yourself with the mall and its layout, just in case you ever get stuck there for a while and have to compete with others for food and resources. But that probably won't happen.

Extra Info

The test drive meme and the IC intro log will have the same prompts, and threads between two accepted characters can count as game canon.

The first prompt is flexible: technically you're supposed to be with one other person, but if you want to do larger groups that's fine.

Rooms at the Saturn Motel initially contain two beds for the prompt, but upon leaving and returning characters will find that they all have their own rooms with one bed. If you want a roommate, someone better be ready to sleep on the floor or snuggle up! The room doesn't have to look exactly like the reference image as long as it's not too fancy and suitably dated.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Watch it!"

Too late.

Fukawa had woken first. Naturally, her first instinct on finding herself in a strange room with a strange man and an even stranger message on the door (more on that delightful creepshow later), was to scour the place for a weapon. Yes, she had her scissors, but she was loathe to use them herself and would feel better figuring out the situation safely. So, stripped down bedside lamp it was.

Second, she would wait for him to wake. No use attacking first when she wanted answers, and she couldn't risk tying him without waking him prematurely. Fukawa bided her time, palms sweating around the ceramic and heartbeat thudding on the double.

Yet when he did rise, he didn't react to her at all. Fukawa had stood on the other end of his bed, lamp primed to swing, and he didn't so much as flinch. After a few tense beats she'd realized what was wrong. Just not quickly enough to spare him.

Her lamp is dropped on the mattress as she scurries in to his side, loathe as she is to lose it. He's still bigger than her and much older, but with a fumble like that he can't possibly be behind all this. Besides, if his own lamp was any indicator it would have shattered too quick to do real damage.

"Now y-you're probably gonna have to pay for that. Don't you dare t-try to pin it on me either." She almost reaches for his shoulder. Retracts. She doesn't like to touch people (the feeling was usually mutual) but he can't see and he just knocked his shin really hard. But isn't it rude to assume he needed help? Is she standing too close?

Fukawa grimaces, hands flexing, and ultimately backs away a step. Or two. Better to be unobtrusive than invasive.

"...Th-there's another bed to your left too." In case he's wondering what his options are.

"I wouldn't dream of it." Her voice sounds young. That much Matt knows for certain, even if the rest of his surroundings are a complete mystery. He's so used to his senses firing off a million clues a second that without that constant overwhelm of stimuli, the world that surrounds him feels flat and confusing and more than just a little bit unreal. He can't hear her heartbeat, though the strained tension in her voice is plainly obvious. He can't even get a read on how wide the room is or what might lie beyond the walls.

But hey, there's another bed to his left. Matt turns a small circle to face the young voice and takes a few steps with an outstretched hand to confirm that. The bits of ceramic from the shattered lamp crunch under his shoes, but he ignores that and grips the bedspread under his fingers when he finds it. It feels virtually identical to the bed he just woke up from. "Yours, I presume?" That encourages more questions than it answers, unfortunately.

"Did you just have a really strange dream?"

She tracks his every move, for his sake and for hers. Being stuck in a shitty situation together doesn't mean strangers could be trusted. He finds her bed without further incident, and doesn't make a fuss about anything else. That's one point in his favor. She nods at him before remembering herself.

"Yeah. Or, I j-just woke up in it. It's not mine."

More foreboding is the second question. She flinches. Debates lying, but what would be the point in that? She's had her head messed with before, but it doesn't stop the shiver from running down her spine at the thought. In fact, it makes it worse.

"I...y-yes." She gnaws at her lips. Should she pick the lamp back up? Just in case? "I t-take it you did too? Did it mention anything about some hokey curse?"

Despite the increasing sense of frustration that his current surroundings aren't spilling their secrets to him unprompted, Matt can't find it in himself to be particularly disturbed by what's happening. It's far from the weirdest thing he's experienced before, and if he's honest, prison was getting a little bit dull. At least this new puzzle provides a bit of a break from the monotony. Which is why he manages a chuckle at the girl's pedantic response.

"Okay, that's a fair distinction," he concedes. "That one isn't mine either."

She doesn't sound like she's lying. He can't judge her tone against her heartbeat or rate of perspiration, but the way she hesitates over those syllables seems awfully earnest. So maybe they're both the victims of this strange circumstance. "That's the one," Matt agrees. "What do you think? Do you feel cursed?"

"No more than usual," said dryly, heavy eyeroll implied. Her life's been more a bed of jagged rocks than roses, but to pin it on the supernatural was moronic. Magic wasn't real. Probably.

Right?

"I'm g-guessing you don't feel much different either." He's better settled than she, or at least putting up a strong front for it. She'd chalk it up to age if she hadn't seen too many adults fold under pressure. "Look, it m-may be weird, but I doubt it was a shared dream or any nonsense like that. It could be an implanted memory, or some kind of deep hypnosis. I'm not going to buy into any hocus pocus crap so easily. They're probably trying to spook us."

Edited 2022-08-21 16:54 (UTC)

It's a sort of dark relief that, with all that he's missing, Matt's greatest and most persistent superpower seems intact: underestimation. He's not about to correct her or give her reason to realize that he couldn't feel any more different than he does right now. Like he's been locked into a body that doesn't belong to him -- something heavy and foreign. Matt sinks to the edge of her bed and chuckles. "Good guess."

When the younger girl jumps right into hypothesizing, he bows his head to listen. There are a million explanations for what's happened that seem logical enough, given his own history, but what matters to him much more is how they're going to find their way out of here. How they break the hypnosis or overcome whoever's twisting their minds. "You're probably right," he agrees. "So what do you think? How do we get out?"

Though practically negligible, Fukawa feels a wash of relief come over her. If he'd claimed to feel ill, started showing the slightest sign of abnormality? She wouldn't have anywhere to run.

And that would be because?

"Oh, that p-part's a real laugh. Just a second."

She scuttles in to whisk the note from the nightstand, only to hurry back to the end of the bed. Normally she'd force someone else to read it, lest anyone laugh at her stutter, but there's no one to spare her the indignity now.

"G-good morning and welcome, blah blah blah, th-the door will open easily if you offer a bit of b-b-blood." She pauses to glance up, catch his reaction. "M-More than a few drops but not enough to be a 'serious' wound. Whatever that means. A handprint's w-worth will do, it only needs to c-come from one of you.

"Sincerely," she holds, her sneer begetting a shiver of derision. "The Mayor."

Edited (realizing the note's on the nightstand days later....) 2022-08-23 04:49 (UTC)

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

A Blood Offering

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