(event) WELCOME TO THE MASQUERADE

[vestigemods]

WELCOME TO THE MASQUERADE

OCTOBER 31ST

► THE ARRIVAL

Whether you'd like to admit it or not, some part of you couldn't quite take your mind off of this so-called Masquerade Ball. That part may have been buried deep down under layers of introversion or party-pooping, but it was there. Something about it fascinated you, as if a choice not to attend would be one you couldn't help but feel you'd regret for months to come.

Or perhaps you weren't reluctant at all. Perhaps as soon as the flyers went up, a thrilled gleam flickered across your eyes, and you made tracks for Foodland to scrape together some kind of costume for the occasion. Learned to dance, maybe. Even asked your friend or your sweetheart or that passably-attractive stranger on the street to be your date for the evening. Hey, we're not here to judge.

For some, this is your first time visiting the tent in the brand new clearing. Others may have passed by it sometime since it the night it popped up nearly ten whole days ago, stealing a glance but never quite recognizing that the arrival of such a thing might be odd (or perhaps even ominous). Either way, the lifeless polyester husk has come to life on this night, the formerly drab-looking purple now rich and glowing through from inside. The tent flap sits unzipped, catchy dance-worthy music trickling out from inside. This might just be the best shindig since the @cock.licking.idiot's lake party. (Or it might be an absolute fucking disaster. You know how these things go.)

THE PARTY

The tent flap unzips of its own accord at precisely six in the evening, and already the sounds of a sort of era-neutral dance beat trickle out of the dim. Assuming you have a costume, you'll be able to stroll right inside. If you've tried to cut corners by simply dressing nice, your feet will stick for a moment just before entry, but it seems to merely be a warning. An 'I know what you're trying to pull and I'm letting it slide just this once', but from who? It's impossible to say. If you've not dressed up at all, well, you'll find your feet stick fast just outside the entry flap, unable to move in any direction but backward. That's alright, really - you can run quick to fetch a costume if you'd like, any costume will do.

From the inside, the tent is even larger and more grand than it seemed, and is decorated with subtle but eerie Halloween decor. The lighting is dim but not nearly enough to strain your eyes, coming largely from the scattering of old-fashioned lanterns dangling from the ceiling on near-invisible chains. Touch the walls of the tent, at least in the main ballroom, and you'll feel a nearly unseen layer shift under your fingers, feeling entirely too much like a layer of sturdy cobwebs for many's comfort. The music itself comes from out-of-the-way black speakers in various corners of the ballroom, along both the floor and the ceilings. There's no 'deejay station' or any kind of stage. There is, however, a small tablet halfway up the wall next to the refreshments tables to allow you to queue up a song through a rather simple-to-use interface or even voice command. It even responds to vague requests, like "something less stuffy" or "gimme a slow jam".

Speaking of refreshments, there are plenty. Two tables large enough to seat at least eight are covered in plates and bowls of various snacks and finger-foods, from sweet to savory. The food is absolutely fresh, more so even than what you'd find at foodland - the veggie tray is crisp and well-stocked, and the chunks of various meats and cheeses taste almost artisanal. Next to the food sits a similar table with two large punch-bowl centerpieces - one bowl of 'Blood Punch' (like regular punch, but darker red), and one bowl of 'Kicky Blood Punch' (the same, but with alcohol in it). The punch is almost definitely the best refreshment on offering, the absolute perfect mix of tangy and sweet, complete with floating and submerged chunks of fresh pineapple. The plates and cups both are a sturdy transparent plastic, the one break from the otherwise uniformly festive gathering.

Near the refreshments are the only other furniture in the room (beyond the occasional bench along the wall), a handful of lightweight faux-cast-iron tables, each with a set of matching chairs. It's a place to sit while you catch your breath from all that dancing, or even just to kick back and mingle.

A couple of hallways shoot off from the ballroom, one at each side, and while they each lead to a bathroom, wandering past the bathroom may very well get you lost. The tent wasn't this large from the outside, was it? Unless you're looking for somewhere to be alone, you may want to consider heading back.

THE PANIC

This Masquerade Ball's been quite an occasion... Music, celebration, and plenty of good food and drink. But once the clock strikes nine, it all begins to unravel. Not blatantly, of course. It may even take a few minutes for the partygoers to realize quite what's occurred. One lantern burns out, then two, then three, enough to dim the room even further but not plunge it into darkness altogether. The slow zip of the entry flap is nearly inaudible over the sounds of the music, but once it's zipped, it's stuck hard and fast and not even inhuman strength can budge it - nor can you slice a new exit through the wall of the tent. Even the music itself begins to distort, from clear to scratchy, or from quick to slow as if toggling the fast-forward key. By twenty minutes after nine, whichever half-mutilated tune it's playing degenerates to a single long screech, like feedback almost but much too raw. And then the speakers are silent... But by now, most of you have your own troubles to deal with.

Because fears have begin to manifest - not just any fears, but your deepest and darkest, the ones that terrify you and plague your dreams. Some, you'll recognize right away. Others may be the best available interpretation, foreign to you but for the visceral fear it elicits in your gut. Some go away in a few short minutes. Others will haunt you until the very instant midnight strikes.

It wouldn't be Halloween without a few good scares, now would it?

Once the clock strikes midnight, all remaining fears disappear back into shadows or obscure corners, or even through the newly-unzipped flap of the tent, never to return. Has it really only been three hours since that started? It feels like much longer, enough so that it's jarring to see by the moon that the night has just barely begun. By now, it's painfully obvious that attending the Masquerade was a shady idea at best - why didn't you see it before? You can't imagine how something so obvious slipped past you, but it did.

As soon as the last shaken partygoer steps out from inside, the tent collapses in a formless heap on the grass. There it lingers, a deflated shell of both the vibrant party and the den of terrors it was just minutes or hours ago. In fact, it's still there even as the last person leaves the clearing, but should you return for another glimpse even sixty short seconds later, you'll find that the tent (in all of its immensity) has disappeared altogether.

At this point, weary partygoers are free to drag their tired, potentially traumatized, and generally hungover asses back to wherever they call home. Into bed, most likely - if they can even fall asleep, after a nightmare like that.

► MOD NOTES

• This is a catch-all log for top-levels pertaining to October's Welcome To The Masquerade event. Go ahead and utilize vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make.
  
• All event information can be found in the Event Write-Ups tab of the October Bulletin, as well as the Masquerade FAQ.
  
• Please take care to label your top-levels or prompts with either which segment of the event it pertains to (the party or the nightmares) and/or what time it takes place (before 9 or after 9), so that folks looking for either fun party stuff or horror stuff can see at a glance where they might hop in.
  
• The network does still work during the fear portion of this event, and characters are able to post to it and/or contact others within or outside of the tent.
  
• Reiterating that it is possible for your character to resist the inclination to attend the Masquerade - it's more of a shove in the party-ward direction than any sort of compulsory thing.
  
• Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.

Comments

[seaboard]

It does not land with the satisfying thud of fist against flesh. That sure cracking thump of bones that sit beneath muscles.

No, it is wet, sodden, earth that fractures under her knuckles. A spilled of rancid water that flows out of the gaping hole that Lana makes of his jaw, his throat.

But no - he does not die. It would not be easy to kill him again. Oh, he certainly breaks apart with the blow, and his now disfigured, rotten-mud jaw gapes hanging from the side as he slowly turns his head back around. Maggots and fettered weeds that spill from the inside of his body. Gilia screams in the fear of it, the smell like death had caught up with him, all at once that it's enough to make anyone wretch. So she stumbles, tearing away from him even as it rips her hair. His fingers like weeds that slip and grip.

[bombshelled]

Gross.

That's all that Lana can think when Godfinn breaks apart in a spill of loose dirt and weeds. She never has been the outdoorsy type, and even if she was, there wasn't really anywhere in New York to run into that kind of thing. This is foreign to her, completely and utterly so. She doesn't know what to do with the scene she is presented with.

And so, when in doubt, get the fuck out of Dodge.

Lana backs up, turning to grab a hold of Gilia's shoulders and pry her away from the crumbling grip of Godfinn's fingers. "Come on, let's get out of here!"

[seaboard]

With unsteady feet, Gilia trips to follow her. Shaking, shuddering, surging herself forward, she stumbles. Trying to follow what Lana said.

But her dress is not made for running, and she has only a heart that has never known anything half so dreadful. Behind them her brother screams a horrendous, unnatural noise. A creature of death, a creature dying, refusing to deny. He does not let her go easily.

That as much as she tries to run, grab onto Lana, he drags her back. Snatching her wrist as she's almost, almost free and yanking her back. That stuck between the both of them, she falls, landing heavy in the material of her skirts.

"Lana!"

Because underneath her feet, the ground turns from hard floor to mud to wet earth the same as what seeps from Godfinn himself.

Godfinn sinks into it, made of it, laughing his awful, awful, screaming hysterical laugh. Sinking into the mud to his knees. The right angle to snatch Gilia by her ankles and begin to drag her into the sinking pit of the ground.

[bombshelled]

She's trying to run, trying to pull Gilia along with her, but she feels the moment Gilia's solid form slips out of her grip. She spins, unable to stop the momentum that causes her to skid back a few feet in the wrong direction, dammit! By the time she gets her weight back under her, Godfinn is sinking into the not-solid-enough ground and pulling Gilia down with him.

"Shit. Shit. Fuck! Shit!!"

She lunges forward, not bothering to try grabbing Gilia by something so flimsy as the wrist again, going straight for wrapping her arms around her middle, so she can be sure not to lose her grip again. With her upper body she pulls upward, trying to tug Gilia free of the sinking ground. When that proves to be harder than it looks, she resorts to shoving her high heeled foot right into Godfinn's smug dirt face.

"Let go of her, you monster!"

[seaboard]

Gilia grips back, her fingers latching onto whatever fabric or limb she could get her hands on. Wrapping around even as with sweaty palms made slick from fear and panic and desperation, she feels herself slip. Sliding down even as Lana holds her back.

That she can feel herself slipping, slipping in that horrible creature that wears her brother's face, now distorted beyond all life, a hideous thing that opens its mouth and exposes a rotten core, a maw that grows and grows. Worms and festering flesh, bones protruding from the inside out. It roars, an inhuman sound, that drowns out all else and thunders.

That is abruptly cut off when Lana shoves her foot straight into its face. It doesn't have the relief of hitting something solid. No, never that. A wet, sickening crunch of weak bones, crusting wet skin. Like putting a foot through a rotten floorboard, a long decomposed corpse. Maggots spring around it.

But it is too late, a death blow as it begins to burst apart in more earth-corpse-eating insects. Lana pulls, and from its disintegrating body, it lets Gilia go given it simply no longer has the structure to hold her together.

One last desperate scream is no the mad voice of the condemned or the hideous unearthly sound of nightmares. No, It's pitched shriek is not of a monster, but in its defeat: it is a boy. A young boy with fear in his voice. "Gilly! Gilly please!"

And then it's gone. Sunk back into the earth in desperation as the day he died, the first time.