story Part One - The existential dread of the White Box Building

[jabberwock]

Telly sat quietly in his chair, waiting for the billboard to ping his number.  As he waited, his mind played out scenarios where Ms. Singer might find a chair nearby, and he could strike up a conversation.  Or perhaps she would trip and he'd somehow step up and catch her.  Or the DMV was suddenly held up by bank robbers (but why?) and some bizarre unlikely scenario would make him seem more heroic than the firm grip of reality dictated.  As a dozen unlikely scenarios unfolded, he imagined some woman crossing the floor, looking wildly like a horned demoness about to wreak havoc on unsuspecting bystanders.

 

Or was he imagining that?  With a start, life jolted him awake and he stared.  Was this a movie?  Did some cosplayer have to run a quick DMV errand before heading back out to some event?  He wasn't exactly sure.  All he knew was that the scene played out in front of him like one of his mental fantasies gone wrong.  One of the security guards, much more alert than Telly, was already on his way to confront the woman, but she treated him like nothing more than a distraction.

 

Telly realized he hadn't moved during the entire exchange.  He had sat motionless and dumbfounded as the creature continued to stalk deeper into the mundane space, and her path of carnage was moving ever closer to his vulnerable areas.  Suddenly cognizant of the danger, Telly jumped to his feet and sprinted towards... well away, actually.  He found himself closer to the windows, as a woman suddenly focused her gaze in his direction.  Her words were a blur to him, but her intentions were clear.  A door marked Staff Only lay past her pointing finger, and the service technician made his way directly towards it.  He glanced backwards to see that some had opted to help.

 

His mind considered it.  Turn around.  Get people to safety.  But his body kept moving.  Telly was no hero.  In seconds, he was through the door.

[matt_s]

Tim absentmindedly stood at the back of the queue, turning his card over and over in his hand while constantly comparing his number to the number on the televisions above. Unsurprisingly, his number was far higher than the number being served and continued to remain so as his watch inched steadily onwards. He pulled out his phone, flipped through a few websites (weather, news, email, the usual nothingness), and put it away. The routine of checking his number and then his phone repeated several times. All remained the same. The HVAC droned on, the crowd shuffled forwards, and Tim overheard snippets of conversations -

 

What do you mean I have the wrong form? I have 1032B right here?

Well, you have 1032B, but you also need proof of insurance 1044C-12 that is current of today. I'm sorry, I can't help you.

OH HAMBURGERS!

 

and on and on. Tim mused on the duality of institutions as giant entities but also as assemblies of individuals - ignore personal connections, and receive no help, but neglect the power of the faceless bureaucracy, and flounder....

 

But then he felt something. Something that was not right, a primal shuddering that ran along his spine and forced him to cautiously turn around. Growing in his peripheral vision was horror. A woman slowly morphed into a THING that began to brutalize the screaming people around it. Tim could barely stand blood at the best of times, and he emptied his stomach in a putrid stream at his feet. He staggered backward awkwardly and was struck dumbfounded as people ran, died, or hid in the formerly bland atrium. A woman shouted something about a door and pointed, and Tim followed, staggering through the frame into the beyond.

[Whisper]

Mr. Wiry's nod - and even more the subsequent obedience - sparked a touch of relief; he wouldn't have to pull the guard alone or, even worse, both guard and Mr.Wiry clinging to it in some well-intended but misplaced attempt of first aid.

Two versus one and a reasonably slick floor meant quick progress. Though Martin tried not to drag the downed guard into obstacles or over pieces of broken glass, those were secondary considerations; 'remove from immediate danger' was the first objective. Well, second, actually, after 'self- and patient-preservation', but still - and cosmetic or minor injuries sustained while being rescued was preferable to serious injury from not being rescued. It wasn't as if someone would rather loose a limb for being left in danger than get a bruise from being dragged to safety, right ? After all, all attempts from victims to sue their rescuer for damage sustained while being rescued had been put down quite decisively. Both in Switzerland and all of Europe. And even if this wasn't either place, any such lawsuit would surely be rejected, right ?

Realising that his thoughts had scattered into various directions, dragging out memories and experiences, recollections of rescue and first aid drills - from the point of view from both the intstructee and the instructor - and lots of other, tangentially related stuff, Martin made a mental effort to push all of that aside and refocus on the now and here.

 

"Good." he complemented Mr. Wiry with a nod before turning his head to look over his shoulder towards their goal.

"MAKE WAY !" he barked at some young woman blocking their path before, when she failed to move, simply continuing to pull and shuffle-walk backwards and croaking "SHOO !" which, possibly because of the pure absurdity, did get her moving.

[TiffanyKorta]

Those heroically trying to save the guard were having some success, struggling with those fleeing the chaos. Any progress was loss with the clopping like sounds of the demon-like Lynda. With those legs she moved much quicker than you’d expect and was upon you grinning down with sharpened teeth.

 

“Well aren’t you just adorable being all brave like!” apparently she retained her Midwestern accent “Afraid it’s a little to this one though…”

 

She reached out and touched the guard who seemed to begin to melt into a mud like substance, whilst still somehow retaining a humanoid shape. After admiring her work she looked up and smiled at the little group.

 

“No what shall I do with you?”

 

Meanwhile

Those that choose to follow the instructions found themselves in a rather large storage closet full of all the various forms that the DMV needed to function. The only thing that seemed out of place was a full size mirror, plain and unadorned but not generally the kind of thing you’d find in a room for storing forms.

 

Still at least you had time to ponder such things, along with just who you’ve ended up in this space with.

 

Back in the DMV

Lynda began to reach out, possibly to exposure on of you to the same fate as the poor guard, when her face went blank arm falling back to her side. She then just turned and walked away as if she’d completely forgotten about you.

 

“Hurry and join the others, before she realizes that someone was influencing heerrr...” The guard suddenly spoke with the woman’s voice you heard before, the final words more a gargle as they turned completely into the muddy form.

 

It then stood up somewhat unsteadily and lumbered off to catch up with there apparent mistress, of the few remaining humanoid in this place several of them were of similar forms.

Edited July 9, 2022 by TiffanyKorta (see edit history)

[Whisper]

The she-demon moved with surprising - and alarming ! - speed and was suddenly not only within arms' reach of him but also smiling maliciously at them, exposing her sharp teeth that seemed designed specifically to rip and tear into flesh. Too many... adults have around 30 teeth... The tangential thought was as intrusive as it was useless - but at least, it was more sensible than the fleeting, half-formed, preconscious idea of jumping up and trying to grapple the she-demon.

The demoness extended an arm and Martin instinctively released the guard's belt and half-jumped, half-scooted backwards, eyes widening in growing horror as the effect of the incarnate nightmare's touch become obvious.

Slack-jawed, he watched the guard dissolve or... transform into... a mass of roughly guard-shaped... mud ?

With the she-demon looking down at him and posing her - rhetoric - question even as her arm began to extend again, Martin realized that he might die. Not at some point 50 years in the future, not one day when crossing a street and - unluckily - chancing upon a phone-distracted driver, not anytime but... now.

Martin closed his eyes.

 

<<“Hurry and join the others, before she realizes that someone was influencing heerrr...”>>

 

Opening his eyes with an emotion too complex and multilayered to understand, Martin saw the she-demon walking away without sparring him or the guard-shaped mud - which seemed not only to be the source of that comment but also use the lady-clerk's voice - any attention. When the mud-shape pushed itself to its... feet and began to lumber after the demoness like a clumsy puppy, a small, strangled sound escaped from his throat. He didn't know what that sound aspired to be - a groan? a whimper? a stifled laugh? - nor did he pause and try to find out. Instead, he pushed with hands and feet, sliding on his backside over the DMVs floor in direction of the 'Employees Only'. 

 

A sound at his side made him turn his head in alarm but instead of some new horror, it was only Mr. Wiry. Martin sought the other's gaze, desperate for the normality of another human in all this nightmarish chaos. Eyes meeting eyes, Martin nodded vaguely in direction of the door they'd been told to go through.

He made another push-and-skid before some part of his brain still (or again) capable of rational thought told him that it would be faster to stand and walk. And stand and run would be even faster.

After a split-second deliberation, Martin pushed himself to his feet and tried to turn towards the door and do exactly that only to find himself unwilling - unable - to turn his back on the retreating demoness and the guard-shaped mud lumbering after her. He compromised and walked - fast - backwards towards the door while keeping the two nightmare-spawned things in his sight.

 

<<...>>

 

Once through the doorway, Martin immediately takes a step to the side before slowly turning and half-falling, half-leaning against the wall.

He wanted to scream - but instead, he closed his eyes and slowly and very, very deliberately exhaled. Then inhaled. Held the breath. And exhaled.

Eyes still closed, Martin reached into a pocket and pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Those familiar with tobaccos may recognize it as brand not being sold in the US. He fumbled out one of the few remaining cigarettes - four left - and put it between his lips before opening his eyes and trying to light it.

With his hands shaking, it takes five attempts before the lighter sparks into a flame and a several long seconds before Martin managed to light his smoke. Not caring one whit that he was a) in a federal building and b) in a room full of paper, Martin took a long if somewhat shaky pull on the cigarette before slowly releasing the smoke from mouth and nostrils.

He didn't smoke much - a single packet can easily last him a week or more - so the effect was immediate; Martin's perception wobbled and he felt a momentary light-headedness.

Familiar feeling, that.

Welcome - and grounding. 

After a second long pull-and-release, he looked at the others that fled into this... form-storage... room. "Was, verflucht nonemou, isch DAS gsü ?" That he posed the question in his native tongue escaped him.

[Sir Lazeabout]

Jane knows one thing for sure - she's not going to face her end cowering in a closet. Fleeing from danger is one thing, that can be exciting in its own right, but Jane Singer don't do cowering.

 

"Right!" she say. "I have a plan - we'll all charge out of here at once and get ripped to shreds by the demon!"

 

She pauses.

 

"Okay, when I put it like that it sounds less like a 'plan' than like 'suicide,'" she admits. "Gah, I suck at plans. Does anyone else have a better one? We can't just sit here and wait for it to get to us!"

[wtaylorjr2001]

On death's ground ... FIGHT! Michael knew he was going to die as the demon walked closer and closer. She stopped us and mutilated the body we were trying to save. Michael's breath caught in his chest. He didn't want to die. He wanted to build computer programs, to work on AI, to find the love of his life and have many computer loving kids with her. But there was no way he could stand against those claws, and what she did to the guard. Tears filled his eyes as he raised his fists for one last battle. Tears filled his eyes as he prepared for death. He drew back for a swing when she turned around and walked away.

 

Michael, the dark skinned negro, looked at her as she walked away, bewildered until the corpse spoke. By all rights it should have been a corpse but it told them to head towards the staff room. This was a lost cause. Those who didn't run were dead ... or worse. Michael looked at his helper. He then ran towards the staff room. He ran into the room and closed the door behind his chubby helper. 

 

He began to shake. It began with a faint tremor, then he shook. He ran to the farthest corner from the door and crouched, trembling, shaking violently. A lady suggested going outside to face that thing, he was just about to say no when she changed her mind. His partner in rescue spoke in a language he didn't understand.

 

In a shaky voice, "She turned those people to mud. Those claws. It was horrible," He stopped, and thought for a moment and continued with, "that thing is magic. Something sent it away when we were fighting it. It cast a magic spell on it. Just like in the fantasy books I read. There is a wizard on our side, helping us. The wizard could only help some of us."

 

Michael then stared at the door and trembled.

[jabberwock]

The young man stumbled through the doorway, one of the first ones in.  Others followed, colliding into his back and sending him further into the depths of a... closet.  A goddamn closet.  Not a hallway, not an exit, but a staging room for whatever horror was out there.  Telly could see the horror slowly dawning on his face through his reflection in an oddly placed mirror.

 

Others clambered in, and the inflow of bodies made it near impossible to push his way back out.  This wasn't where he wanted to be, waiting to die.  His mind swept the room, looking for some egress that he had missed.  A vent large enough to crawl through, or a small window hidden behind the shelves.  Nothing.

 

He turned back to face the others in the room, idly noting one familiar face, before stating the obvious.  "It's a dead end."

 

Others spoke as well, proffering plans of escape (all suicidal) or pure gibberish.  Mud?  Magic?  He had no clue what the dark skinned man was saying.  Was it part of the terrorist's fantasy act, a show she put on to live out her twisted homicidal dreams?  Giving up his life seemed too high a price for those answers, the technician would have happily lived out the rest of his life in ignorance, if only he could escape.  "We can't stay here.  Back out and scatter.  There's only one of her, right?  Better than waiting here for her to get us all."

[Whisper]

Marting wasn't in the habit of letting his jaw drop or look utterly flabbergasted but the athletic woman managed to provoke both wit the suggestion of her 'plan'. Too disbelieving - and still rattled from what he'd just witnessed outside - he only managed a small but vigorous shake of his head in response.

Mr. Wiry's shaky-voiced portrayal washed over Martin but he focused his attention on his cigarette, taking another deep pull and then watching the thin line of smoke from the glowing tip curl up to avoid reimagining the horrible scene outside. Except, the way his hand was shaking, there was no lazily upwards-curling trail but a smudgy little cloud. Then, something Mr. Wiry said penetrate Martin's mental avoidance and his head jerk to look at the speaker. 

 

<<There is a wizard on our side, helping us. The wizard could only help some of us.>> 

 

The Swiss' eyed widened and his face was suddenly home to way more expressions and emotion than a single face should ever trying to express at any point in time, chiefly among them surprise, disbelief, hope and... wishfulness  ? He kept looking at Mr. Wiry as one of the first to have fled into this staff storeroom - Mr. Tousled, Martin labelled on him on account of his hairdo - first stated the obvious then picked up on Miss Sport's 'plan' and expanded it into an only slightly misconceived one. 

 

Were they trying to get killed... turned into mud-effigies or... whatever ?

 

Training and drill exercises stirred in the depth of Martin's memory, dislodged metaphorical layers of dust and rust and vied for attention.

"She - it - is fast." Martin interposed. "Fast enough to catch most if not all of us." Now that he was speaking more than single word utterances, Martin's accent made it obvious that he wasn't a native speaker. He had the diction and pronunciation of someone who'd learned English as a foreign language and spoke it with the cadence and accentuation of his native tongue. If not for the clear British English tone, one might mistake it as some kind of Southern US dialect due to the slow and drawling rhythm and the over-emphasized vowels. "Besides, it was leaving, almost as if it'd forgotten about us." At this point, Martin paused, looked around, then shrugged and lowered his hand to tap the ash from his cigarette on the ground before looking at Mr. Wiry. "Didn't it ?" 

Even if the notion that there was some kind of wizard helping them was alluring, Martin wasn't going down that road. "And with other people fleeing, someone's bound to call the police. Staying right here and keeping this door firmly shut until help arrives is what we will be doing."

Martin didn't realize that somewhere between his brain and his tongue, 'should' had not only morphed into 'will' but also been infused with the tone of command, making it no longer a suggestion but not quite yet an order. 

 

[Thot]

Having taken the couple of pictures he needed to display the chaos of the situation, Akhtar had carefully joined the ragtag band assembled in the closet. A couple of those people were clearly in shock, spouting nonsense as if it were the most normal of things. He was as clueless as anyone else, but that... creature made him wonder how much of his country's old mythology might actually be true... Chery-benut ?

 

Those were useless thoughts though, and the ambitious diplomat chased them away and looked around. A composed woman, plenty of not-composed people, papers, and... a mirror... It didn't exactly sound like a safe hiding place, and Akhtar's mind drifted again. Through the Looking-Glass...

 

Finally, he decided to take action, and spoke up, but tried to still muffle it. "Please everyone let's keep quiet and not draw attention to us."

 

He would have liked to walk further from the door, but it would have probably triggered some negative response, so instead he tried to squeeze himself as close to the walls as he could, wondering how best to hide himself, or play dead if needed.

[matt_s]

Tim was not particularly impressed at the suggestion to flee.

If we try to make a break for it, well, there are plenty of corpses out there that show how likely that is to succeed. We were ushered in here for a reason, let us pause and think what that might be beyond our immediate survival. Although that aim is one I personally hold as a high priority.

 

Tim stares into the mirror, wondering what he expects to see. There is something odd about the mundane being where it should not, and he would even have been less perturbed if it was some obscure supernatural construct rather than a simple mirror where it ought not to be.

His breathing steadied, and he suggests that

Let us listen at the door, to see if anything is on the move out there. If someone comes seeking refuge, we must give it naturally. And the rest of us can - QUIETLY - look about this room for anything out of the ordinary beyond the obvious.

Tim punctuates his reference to "the obvious" by generally gesturing around the room - the known weird was one thing, but the unknown weird terrified him.

[Anthr4xus]

Rachel has fled into the closet in a blind panic, but as soon as she realized that it was a dead-end she swore again.  Moving through the crowd of other bystanders that had also rushed into the room, Rachel found herself standing near the mirror at the back of the room.  It was weird that a mirror at all, much less a free standing, full frame mirror, in this small space, but at the suggestion of someone else in the small crowd she looked around at the nearby shelves to see if there was anything of note there.

[Sir Lazeabout]

Jane starts rummaging through the shelves, though she's failing rather badly at the "quietly" part in her haste.

[Whisper]

Martin watched with a touch of bewilderment how the somewhat stiffly-dressed gentleman put away his phone, remembering him standing just outside the door and taking pictures with it. Actions might speak louder than words - but that didn't mean Mr. Stiffly's were bad. Quite the contrary, in fact; Martin found himself nodding softly in reply to them.

As another man spoke - bland and... average in just about every aspect, easy to miss and dismiss - Martin finished his smoke and bent down to place the stub on the floor and carefully ground it under his shoe to extinguish every last shred of glowing tobacco. He looked around for some place to dispose of the flattened stub but not finding anything suitable, shrugged, picked it up and deposited it back into the mostly empty packet.

Though he didn't think it likely that there was anyone - anyone human that was - still outside (and it was likely too soon to be expecting help to be arriving), he nevertheless stepped back next to the door. 

Taking care to position himself handle-side but not actually in front of the door but in the reassuring firm cover of the wall. Focusing his attention on whatever sound might be on the door's other side, his eyes swept through the storeroom in search of anything that might make a suitable weapon. A SIG P220 would just about be perfect; he might not be a noteworthy marksman but he did have the training to use a semi-automatic 9mm gun - and given the short distances, accuracy wasn't too important. Given their location, though, he'd settle for a long-handled broom....

[jabberwock]

The fact that the terrorist was leaving was news to Telly.  It must have happened after he had slipped into the closet.  He nodded at the foreign man's words, digesting this new tidbit.  Another fairly plain man refuted Telly's idea of fleeing the closet, citing the clerk's words of safety.  Telly wanted to speak up, saying that there was no guarantee that the clerk wasn't working with the terrorist, and wanted them to lock themselves away for later.  The words burbled up in his throat, but died unspoken.  That was not his way, getting into someone's face while cramped together in a closet.  The path of least resistance, of least discomfort, that was how Telly interacted with the world.

 

Instead, he turned away, searching the shelves again and knowing what he'd find.  Reams of paper, ball point pens, paper clips, white out, etc.  All the minutiae needed to keep a relic of the past trudging along.  The mirror itself was bulky and in the way.  Likely one of the employees had sold it to a coworker, and they had whisked it into the back until the end of the work day.  The technician wondered if perhaps the new owner might be one of those on the floor outside, but... he quickly wiped those thoughts from his mind.  Too much.  Too much for today.

 

If he were MacGyver, he could bend these paperclips and use some random chemical from the white out to make some sort of weapon.  If he were Jane Singer (oh that's right, she was in here too) he'd find some daredevil escape route that likely included parkour across the desks and a second story window jump to a moving vehicle.  Sadly, he was none of these people, and to him, paper was just paper and pens were just pens.