(no subject)
Characters: Lyle (live_ringer)
Date/Time: From Aug. 18-Sept. 7
Location: 4th Floor--The old Dylandy Home
Rating: PG
Summary: Lyle's never been to the 4th floor before. Fancy it would choose a time like this to set some changes into motion
------
When the door to the elevator began to slide open, Lyle braced himself. Despite being in Edensphere for nearly two years he had never been to the Fourth Floor; he didn't know what to expect.
It was probably best that he hadn't bothered with expecting anything because he most assuredly wouldn't have hit on what he walked into. It was a smallish room boasting bunk beds with blue and green plaid blankets that had been haphazardly tossed across the mattresses in a way that achieved 'making the bed' in the absolute loosest sense of the term. Posters of bands and movies plastered the wall while trophies and little action figures clamored for space on top of twin dressers.
Twin dressers. That one turn of phrase that tumbled idly through his mind brought forth a notion. A wild Hypothesis about why this place looked so achingly familiar that latched on and wouldn't let go. Slowly, Lyle moved forward and paused in front of one of the trophies. It was covered with a patina of dust, just as everything else in the room was. After a moment of hesitation he wiped the dust off and his Hypothesis was promptly promoted to a Confirmed Fact.
Neil Dylandy
1st Place
Marksmanship Junior Competition
February 2, 2292
"Well, I'll be damned."
He looked back at the room he had just crossed. Everything about it, right down to the discarded socks peaking out from underneath the bottom bunk, screamed 'young boys' room' and now it was crystal clear who those young boys had been. His eyes slid to his left where the door that he assumed led to the rest of the house was. Lyle rested his hand on the doorknob with the same dream-like slowness he had been moving with since he had gotten here and moved to step into the next room.
Walking through this door was entirely different than walking through the elevator door since he had expectations of what he would find and those expectations were chillingly, accurately met. The living room was exactly as he remembered in his dream. Well, maybe not exactly. The wood floor was the undoubtedly the one he had shuffled across in bare feet and too long pajamas, but it was covered in the same dull layer of dust that the small bedroom had boasted. The fireplace was in the same location that it had always been, but the gas logs were off and no heat emanated from it. It was as if all the coziness that should have been there was sapped out of the place. Not as surprising as it could be since it held all the abandoned melancholy he remembered from the dining room in the same dream.
For that reason, he was staunchly avoiding the dining room. He knew, just knew what he would see there would be the same as what he saw in the dream and it was depressing. Instead he ambled towards the mantle and began to inspect the pictures there. After glancing at the first few pictures he felt decidedly gipped. Oh, there was a clear cluster of a family unit there--just the right amount of members according to the disembodied voices he had heard before. But only a pair of twin boys of varying ages could be seen in clear focus. The two taller and one shorter member of the family, in every combination he could find, where invariably blurry to the point where not features could be made out.
Lyle snorted cynically. "Figures. I shouldn't have expected anything bet--" He stopped short as he caught sight of an anomaly. Beside the pictures of family was a picture of a couple. A very familiar couple backlit by the ruddy hues of a brilliant sunset. He knew full well that he and Stellaris had come from the same world. They had clearly had something here, too, though there was doubt on whether he had actually experienced any of that yet (the Sphere being a bit wibbly-wobbly on the subject of timelines). But even if he had experienced it, there was something off about the picture being here. For one thing, it didn't hold the layer of dust everything else did. It was a new addition, its glass cover shining and streak free. For another, why add a new little touch like that when the rest of the house was in a state of abject neglect? Something about it just didn't seem to connect.
He was so busy turning over the implications in his mind when he put the picture back that he almost didn't notice the rest. Almost. However, when he caught a glimpse of familiar figures in black, a chill ran up his spine. It might not have been so strange to see the purple-haired man standing in front of the cross-shaped gravestone, in light of the last picture he had just seen. But the petite figure with her hands folded thoughtfully in front of her with her blonde ponytail waving in the breeze? That was off. That was totally wrong. Because Veda was of this world and Lyle's instincts told him that stone, that graveyard, was probably of this world as well. However, one of these things was not like the other and Lyle found himself utterly flummoxed at the idea that Krile had made it into the scene. In light of this, another seemingly innocuous picture of a young calico cat following an older black cat started to raise suspicion.
"Something funny is going on here..." Somehow, stating the obvious to no one in particular did not help the situation to make anymore sense.
--------
The rest of the day and the days after that passed in a similar fashion. Lyle would find something related to a friend or acquaintance from the Sphere that he was sure had absolutely no business being in this house and he would get creeped out. At least some of the items proved to be useful. The kitchen was largely bare, but Lyle would occasionally find prepackaged junk food or wrapped pastries in random drawers that provided enough sustenance to get by. He had found a novel on what he had assumed was his parents' bookshelf penned by none other than Richard Castle. Heat Wave was... cheesy and a little trashy, to be honest, but it kept him sane by staving off boredom and too much contemplation about the state of things here and at home.
The default state of being in a place like this was one of subdued uneasiness, but there were certain places where the feeling was more acute than others. The most logical place to sleep, when the need for sleep came, was in the master bedroom. However, something about that just seemed... presumptuous. Like it was disturbing something that ought not be disturbed. In the end Lyle decided to take to one of the bunks. He felt compelled to take the top bunk and once he got there, a small, nostalgic feeling of triumph washed over him. Until now Lyle had failed to notice that he had instinctively been thinking of this bed as the 'good spot' of the two. A hold over from the life he couldn't remember? Probably.
Just as he had been avoiding what he presumed to be his parents' bed, Lyle had managed to avoid the dining room for the past few days. Chances were it couldn't be any more somber than the rest of the abandoned house but it was the starting point. It was what had kicked off the acknowledgement of a pervasive sense of abandonment and neglect before he had even got here, and so it felt like it would be less comfortable than the rest of the house. However, man cannot live on inappropriate starches alone and it was possible there might have been something of use in the dining room. On the third day he told himself to get over it and stepped through to poke about.
He almost immediately regretted it.
Straight across from the door he was standing there should have been a window. There wasn't anymore. It wasn't that the window had been smashed in. It hadn't been walled over or blocked by a piece of furniture. What stood in place of the window now was... nothing. An anti-something? Lyle wasn't even sure what to call it, except that it looked like a tear right in the fabric of space. Like a black hole without a pull or some sort of strange portal. But that couldn't be, could it? That was the stuff of sci-fi. After a moment, Lyle's brain reluctantly supplied that he was not actually at home, but in the Sphere, and the word 'impossible' was often scoffed at by whatever passed for the laws of physics around here. His hand moved almost independently of his mind and picked up a nearby wooden vase. Lobbing it at the wavering gap in space before him resulted in a predictable outcome: the vase was swallowed whole and the only trace it had even been there was the circular interruption in the dust where it had sat before.
Starting in a slow shuffle that quickly escalated to a scurry, Lyle backpedaled through the door he had just come through. Much to his surprise, he found himself standing in a small, cylindrical room and the door was sliding shut in front of him. He was back in the lift. Rubbing his hands over his face and letting them stay there, Lyle tried to sort out what the hell had just happened.
Date/Time: From Aug. 18-Sept. 7
Location: 4th Floor--The old Dylandy Home
Rating: PG
Summary: Lyle's never been to the 4th floor before. Fancy it would choose a time like this to set some changes into motion
------
When the door to the elevator began to slide open, Lyle braced himself. Despite being in Edensphere for nearly two years he had never been to the Fourth Floor; he didn't know what to expect.
It was probably best that he hadn't bothered with expecting anything because he most assuredly wouldn't have hit on what he walked into. It was a smallish room boasting bunk beds with blue and green plaid blankets that had been haphazardly tossed across the mattresses in a way that achieved 'making the bed' in the absolute loosest sense of the term. Posters of bands and movies plastered the wall while trophies and little action figures clamored for space on top of twin dressers.
Twin dressers. That one turn of phrase that tumbled idly through his mind brought forth a notion. A wild Hypothesis about why this place looked so achingly familiar that latched on and wouldn't let go. Slowly, Lyle moved forward and paused in front of one of the trophies. It was covered with a patina of dust, just as everything else in the room was. After a moment of hesitation he wiped the dust off and his Hypothesis was promptly promoted to a Confirmed Fact.
Neil Dylandy
1st Place
Marksmanship Junior Competition
February 2, 2292
"Well, I'll be damned."
He looked back at the room he had just crossed. Everything about it, right down to the discarded socks peaking out from underneath the bottom bunk, screamed 'young boys' room' and now it was crystal clear who those young boys had been. His eyes slid to his left where the door that he assumed led to the rest of the house was. Lyle rested his hand on the doorknob with the same dream-like slowness he had been moving with since he had gotten here and moved to step into the next room.
Walking through this door was entirely different than walking through the elevator door since he had expectations of what he would find and those expectations were chillingly, accurately met. The living room was exactly as he remembered in his dream. Well, maybe not exactly. The wood floor was the undoubtedly the one he had shuffled across in bare feet and too long pajamas, but it was covered in the same dull layer of dust that the small bedroom had boasted. The fireplace was in the same location that it had always been, but the gas logs were off and no heat emanated from it. It was as if all the coziness that should have been there was sapped out of the place. Not as surprising as it could be since it held all the abandoned melancholy he remembered from the dining room in the same dream.
For that reason, he was staunchly avoiding the dining room. He knew, just knew what he would see there would be the same as what he saw in the dream and it was depressing. Instead he ambled towards the mantle and began to inspect the pictures there. After glancing at the first few pictures he felt decidedly gipped. Oh, there was a clear cluster of a family unit there--just the right amount of members according to the disembodied voices he had heard before. But only a pair of twin boys of varying ages could be seen in clear focus. The two taller and one shorter member of the family, in every combination he could find, where invariably blurry to the point where not features could be made out.
Lyle snorted cynically. "Figures. I shouldn't have expected anything bet--" He stopped short as he caught sight of an anomaly. Beside the pictures of family was a picture of a couple. A very familiar couple backlit by the ruddy hues of a brilliant sunset. He knew full well that he and Stellaris had come from the same world. They had clearly had something here, too, though there was doubt on whether he had actually experienced any of that yet (the Sphere being a bit wibbly-wobbly on the subject of timelines). But even if he had experienced it, there was something off about the picture being here. For one thing, it didn't hold the layer of dust everything else did. It was a new addition, its glass cover shining and streak free. For another, why add a new little touch like that when the rest of the house was in a state of abject neglect? Something about it just didn't seem to connect.
He was so busy turning over the implications in his mind when he put the picture back that he almost didn't notice the rest. Almost. However, when he caught a glimpse of familiar figures in black, a chill ran up his spine. It might not have been so strange to see the purple-haired man standing in front of the cross-shaped gravestone, in light of the last picture he had just seen. But the petite figure with her hands folded thoughtfully in front of her with her blonde ponytail waving in the breeze? That was off. That was totally wrong. Because Veda was of this world and Lyle's instincts told him that stone, that graveyard, was probably of this world as well. However, one of these things was not like the other and Lyle found himself utterly flummoxed at the idea that Krile had made it into the scene. In light of this, another seemingly innocuous picture of a young calico cat following an older black cat started to raise suspicion.
"Something funny is going on here..." Somehow, stating the obvious to no one in particular did not help the situation to make anymore sense.
--------
The rest of the day and the days after that passed in a similar fashion. Lyle would find something related to a friend or acquaintance from the Sphere that he was sure had absolutely no business being in this house and he would get creeped out. At least some of the items proved to be useful. The kitchen was largely bare, but Lyle would occasionally find prepackaged junk food or wrapped pastries in random drawers that provided enough sustenance to get by. He had found a novel on what he had assumed was his parents' bookshelf penned by none other than Richard Castle. Heat Wave was... cheesy and a little trashy, to be honest, but it kept him sane by staving off boredom and too much contemplation about the state of things here and at home.
The default state of being in a place like this was one of subdued uneasiness, but there were certain places where the feeling was more acute than others. The most logical place to sleep, when the need for sleep came, was in the master bedroom. However, something about that just seemed... presumptuous. Like it was disturbing something that ought not be disturbed. In the end Lyle decided to take to one of the bunks. He felt compelled to take the top bunk and once he got there, a small, nostalgic feeling of triumph washed over him. Until now Lyle had failed to notice that he had instinctively been thinking of this bed as the 'good spot' of the two. A hold over from the life he couldn't remember? Probably.
Just as he had been avoiding what he presumed to be his parents' bed, Lyle had managed to avoid the dining room for the past few days. Chances were it couldn't be any more somber than the rest of the abandoned house but it was the starting point. It was what had kicked off the acknowledgement of a pervasive sense of abandonment and neglect before he had even got here, and so it felt like it would be less comfortable than the rest of the house. However, man cannot live on inappropriate starches alone and it was possible there might have been something of use in the dining room. On the third day he told himself to get over it and stepped through to poke about.
He almost immediately regretted it.
Straight across from the door he was standing there should have been a window. There wasn't anymore. It wasn't that the window had been smashed in. It hadn't been walled over or blocked by a piece of furniture. What stood in place of the window now was... nothing. An anti-something? Lyle wasn't even sure what to call it, except that it looked like a tear right in the fabric of space. Like a black hole without a pull or some sort of strange portal. But that couldn't be, could it? That was the stuff of sci-fi. After a moment, Lyle's brain reluctantly supplied that he was not actually at home, but in the Sphere, and the word 'impossible' was often scoffed at by whatever passed for the laws of physics around here. His hand moved almost independently of his mind and picked up a nearby wooden vase. Lobbing it at the wavering gap in space before him resulted in a predictable outcome: the vase was swallowed whole and the only trace it had even been there was the circular interruption in the dust where it had sat before.
Starting in a slow shuffle that quickly escalated to a scurry, Lyle backpedaled through the door he had just come through. Much to his surprise, he found himself standing in a small, cylindrical room and the door was sliding shut in front of him. He was back in the lift. Rubbing his hands over his face and letting them stay there, Lyle tried to sort out what the hell had just happened.