snowblindrpg | [network] @featherydouche; postmortem; day 181 [open]

[network] @featherydouche; postmortem; day 181 [open]

so who else died last night
excuse me
"died"
because when i woke up i sure didnt look it
not even a scratch
right back where i started before everything went weird too
same with the people i was with from what i could tell before i left

also you people with the prophet eyes
do you still want to murder us or what

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[Charlie laughs a little.] Yeah, it sucked. My hearing was gone for a long time, too. Like a week, I think. I had to draw and play charades and shit to talk to anybody, which was kinda fun at first, but it got old really quick, y'know? Luckily Charles came and hung out with me, so I wasn't alone for most of it. That helped. [He shrugs. He's not sure what kind of terms Charles and Davesprite on are these days, and he doesn't really care either way, but Charles is a good friend. They like hardly even knew each other back then, too. A lot has happened.]

I hear ya though, man. It sounds like you were basically in the same boat, and like you said, the losing thing sucks. Some people have had some really bad ones, like Quark couldn't walk after he died and Cecil couldn't talk. I guess not talking wouldn'ta been too bad, but it meant a lot to him, so... Uh. Anyway, thanks.

No problem. And yep, same basic problem. Even if I opened my mouth all I got was bird sounds.

[He caws to demonstrate.]

So it was either drawings, or if I felt like showing myself then trying to gesture stuff out. Clint taught me a few things in sign language, and it helped; but it wasn't enough for full sentences, you know?

[It sucked a lot for himself. He likes words, uses them constantly, to the point of monologuing out stream-of-thought style whether people are there to listen or not. The quiet made the lingering static and the chill of the winter air that much more oppressive after his death. Of course, he doesn't say this.]

Whoa. [Charlie forgot about the bird thing. It's easy to forget when they're not talking in person or over video.] Cool, bro. Wait. I mean, not cool, like, that you lost your person voice. Just cool that you can make bird sounds too.

[Don't worry, Davesprite. Charlie is picking up what you're putting down, even if you're not saying it.]

I get it, man. I guess I was lucky because I could still, like, talk and stuff, but I couldn't hear myself so it was weird. And it's not like I was about to record myself like that, but I could use the voice-to-text thing, at least. Not that I knew what I was actually saying, but it was better than nothing, probably. Other people just had to draw pictures and stuff for me.

[He chews on his next thought for a moment. His head goes to a similar place as Davesprite's. It's hard to avoid given the conversation. Dying and coming back isn't really something he can just forget about. That's maybe the worst thing that's happened to him here, and that's saying something. Things have happened in force since then.

But Charlie is pretty open about this stuff, even if it's hard to talk about. He used to not want to talk about it, but that didn't make it go away. Talking about it makes it feel like a real thing that happened, at least. That's better, if it was a real thing and not just something in his head. Plus, Davesprite can clearly relate.]

I think what sucks most about it is, like, it happens after you die, right? So I fucking, I mean I freeze to death, and then I wake up--this was pretty soon after I got here so it's not like I knew how the whole dying thing went until I did it myself--and I can't hear anything, it's after lockdown, I'm stuck in the funeral home all by myself, I can't really use my tablet... Like, that loss shit is bad enough in and of itself, but it's not like the timing helps. It's fucking scary, man.

Trust me, if I had to be part anything, being part bird is probably the best option I could have had.

[He didn't want to show himself back then, sure, but the thing is it was never being part bird that was the problem. Wings are awesome even if he can't fly here, and the feathers are keeping him warmer than he might be. Rather, the problem is and always was what others might think when they see him. Something like him invites questions he doesn't always want to answer, and sometimes rudeness if not outright disbelief. Not the best thing to deal with when he had no words to defend himself with.]

[Charlie moves on, though, and it makes sense the conversation would turn this way.]

Man, I basically had the same thing. It was, what, my third day here? That first day with the static. I got stupid about things, wandered out into the snow...

[He trails off, starts again.]

The revival process got explained to me beforehand, at least, but it still sucks waking up just to crawl off a morgue shelf and get stuck with a bunch of dead people for a night when you can't even talk to pass the time. But then my friend wanted to know where her friend's body was since she'd been here before her, so I did the dumb morbid thing and took a photo catalog of all the people stuck in there with me. You have any idea how many pics I had to try just to fight off all the distortion? But at least I was doing something useful about it. The whole place was way too creepy if I paused long enough to think about it all.

Jesus. [Charlie's not sure what else to say to all that.] That's, uh, nice of you to do that for your buddy. I woke up in the funeral home, so I didn't have to hang out with the bodies, at least. [Not that the lobby of a funeral home isn't also super creepy, but it was still better than the alternative...]

Um. I got locked out, too. Not on purpose, though. Or, I dunno, I guess you didn't say you did it on purpose. Uh, sorry. I mean like, uh... I got really sick not too long after I got here, and I was like, hallucinating and shit, and I ended up outside like right before lockdown and didn't make it back in time. Charles was there. Well, not like, there, but he was inside. He hung out with me. Y'know. During.

[Why is he telling Davesprite about all this? Maybe he shouldn't. But it was scary and they're talking about scary stuff.]

['During.' It explains him and Charles a little better. A moment passes before he says,]

Nah, it wasn't on purpose. Not really. It was this place, you know? You got sick and had hallucinations and everything. Me—I got caught up in that whole thinking nobody else was real thing. I thought...

[There's a breath, and a kind of shuffling sound as he rubs at his hair.]

I'm a sprite, and sprites are game constructs, so even if I was a normal person before this I thought that maybe my brain and data and everything were glitching out on me. That I was dying already and I had just gotten lost somewhere in my world without realizing it, and that everyone I'd talked to was just a hallucination. Didn't help that there was all that static, you know? So I figured if I was going to die, I didn't just want to sit there watching the people I was with blip in and out of existence. I left, and... You know what comes next.

[He never wanted to die, but it felt so certain and inevitable. Why not get it over with the quick way, he figured. He keeps that part in, though, and he wouldn't even be telling Charlie this if not for him sharing his own story first.]

Clint talked to me some during. I fucked up and thought he was fake, too, but it kind of helped. So—I get it.

Fuck this whole place.

Edited 2016-12-18 04:17 (UTC)

I don't think it was this place that made me sick.

[But that's besides the point. Charlie doesn't follow most of Davesprite's explanation, but he understands the sentiment, at least. Wanting to speed things up because you figure it's gonna happen anyway.]

Yeah, it's, um... Well, it sucks. Charles staying on the line with me helped, too. That's the reason I hung out with Cecil and Quark when it happened to them. [Wow, there's a couple of memories he hadn't thought about in a while.] It sucks being on the other end, but uh, dying sucks more and I been there.

[He could leave it at that. He probably should. But he keeps talking, for some reason.] Charles killed me. Like, last night. I think that was better than freezing. So, uh, yeah. Fuck this place.

[He decides not to ask. Why he was sick doesn't really matter for the end result. He was sick, he saw things, and he died in a slow, horrible way. Davesprite winces in sympathy at the second death he lists off.]

How messed up is that? I never wanted to die at all but here we are comparing how bad method a is next to method b. You want to die slow or quick? You want to not trust the snow around you or remember how your friend looked when they murdered you? I got killed by my friend too. Wasn't her fault and I know it, not the real way, but what the hell? How come we have to deal with this?

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[network] @featherydouche; postmortem; day 181 [open]

private

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private

private

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private; cw: technical suicide because of unusual circumstances

private; cw: more suicide talk

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