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WARNING: The following is an interactive horror fic. There will be no blood or gore, but the content is designed to disturb. Please read and participate at your own risk.
Author’s Note: For those wondering, no, neither of my chaptered fics are dead. This is just a little something that wormed its way into my brain while I was working on other projects, and it just sort of stayed there. Think of this fic like A Leash of Foxes meets Unedited Footage of a Bear. If you’ve played/read Cutlerine’s fic, you know basically how this works: it’s partly your story as well. Comments and commands are therefore 100% welcome!
Without further ado, welcome to Bad Decision Town.
MISSION BRIEF
On ██ July ████, [REDACTED], henceforth known as Patient A, vanished from [REDACTED]. He remained missing for a period of ██ days before being found, apparently comatose, within a confirmed Rocket laboratory. Thirty-six hours after retrieval, it had been determined by ████’s emergency services that psychic tampering may have occurred, due to the medical team’s failure to rouse Patient A using non-psychic means. Given this information and the circumstances of his capture, we are now operating under the assumption that A has been trapped within his own dreamscape as part of an effort to retrieve valuable information from his mind.
Prior to that point, the retrieval team had discovered you in the company of Patient A. While we have yet to determine whether or not you had been the cause of Patient A’s condition, the medical and research teams have deemed you to be our greatest hope in retrieving A’s psyche from his dreamscape. Be warned: this will not be an easy mission. Patient A possesses a powerful imagination and a strong will, and with those in combination with his subconscious, it is very likely that highly volatile cognitohazards stand between you and A’s waking self.
We will do our best to guide you from the outside. All of your observations will be relayed to a text-based prompter, which our agents will read and base their advice on. Follow their words, and perhaps minimal damage will occur to both you and Patient A’s psyche.
Good luck. The world is counting on you.
---------------------
You are at an intersection.
It is quiet and night, and these are the two things you know for certain. The city around you is dark, far darker than you ever recall it being. Skyscrapers, some of which are vaguely familiar to you, box you in, and even though it’s night in the city, they stand as silent pillars of black glass and black steel.
No lights. That’s what’s wrong, you realize. It’s not pitch dark necessarily; there is a hazy glow emanating around the city. But all of the buildings, all of the street lamps, all of the traffic lights, everything that could possibly be a source of illumination to you is completely, utterly dark.
This is the first thing you notice. The second thing is that it’s quiet. You know this place, now that you look at it. You’ve been here before. It is where your friend is from, and every now and then, he brought you here to celebrate his holidays with his family—and, perhaps, yours, now that you think about it. Every time you’ve been here, you remember it being bright and colorful and loud, with thousands of voices and booming music all around you. But now, it’s quiet. Not even a hum of electricity or a soft whistle of wind breaks the silence.
Perhaps, you think, this is why you couldn’t recognize this place at first. Looking at it now, it reminds you of a mange-infested rattata: once vibrant and full of life, now sickly and barren.
There are four roads here: one for each of the cardinal directions.
Can I reserve this post and edit it later with my response and review? I really don't want another person to beat me to it, but unfortunately I have some things to do right now that will prevent me from responding immediately.
EDIT: My response. The review will come later.
You run your hands up and down your body, trying to get your bearings and assess your situation. You are wearing a warm coat with a delicate texture. You cannot make out the color, but just from touch it seems to be a very luxurious item of clothing, with lush fur lining the cuffs and the hem. A slight breeze ruffles your long hair and blows it into your face. You feel a rather large tote bag, also made of a high-quality material, hanging from your shoulder. As you feel around the inside of your bag, your bare hands brush against various items: a fancy PokeGear, a pouch full of lush berries, and several Poke Balls.
You frown. So far you still don't know who exactly you are. All you know so far is that you know this empty city, and are on the extremely important mission of looking for your friend. Only when your fingers rub against a smooth ring do you remember.
Your name is SILPH, GLIMMER SILPH. You are the daughter of two of the most powerful individuals in the Pokemon World: the President of the Silph Corporation, a woman by the name of Sparkle Silph, and the President of the Devon Corporation, a man named Diamond Devon. You are one of the wealthiest people in Alola. You are also a loyal and skilled employee of AA1, one of the most advanced secret agencies to ever exist in the Pokemon World. With its expansive network of spies and technologies, AA1 is solely responsible for maintaining the overall peace of the Pokemon World - a task that the official police forces are sorely incompetent at.
Can I reserve this post and edit it later with my response and review? I really don't want another person to beat me to it, but unfortunately I have some things to do right now that will prevent me from responding immediately.
EDIT: My response. The review will come later.
You run your hands up and down your body, trying to get your bearings and assess your situation. You are wearing a warm coat with a delicate texture. You cannot make out the color, but just from touch it seems to be a very luxurious item of clothing, with lush fur lining the cuffs and the hem. A slight breeze ruffles your long hair and blows it into your face. You feel a rather large tote bag, also made of a high-quality material, hanging from your shoulder. As you feel around the inside of your bag, your bare hands brush against various items: a fancy PokeGear, a pouch full of lush berries, and several Poke Balls.
You frown. So far you still don't know who exactly you are. All you know so far is that you know this empty city, and are on the extremely important mission of looking for your friend. Only when your fingers rub against a smooth ring do you remember.
Your name is SILPH, GLIMMER SILPH. You are the daughter of two of the most powerful individuals in the Pokemon World: the President of the Silph Corporation, a woman by the name of Sparkle Silph, and the President of the Devon Corporation, a man named Diamond Devon. You are one of the wealthiest people in Alola. You are also a loyal and skilled employee of AA1, one of the most advanced secret agencies to ever exist in the Pokemon World. With its expansive network of spies and technologies, AA1 is solely responsible for maintaining the overall peace of the Pokemon World - a task that the official police forces are sorely incompetent at.
[Haha, it occurs to me that this is probably my fault. I'd meant to link to A Leash of Foxes to give people an idea of what to expect and how to play—or, you know to explain it better in the first place, but think of it like Zork. There is definitely a set main character who is a "you," to coincide with the set secondary character who is "your friend," which is why this story is here and not the RP forum and why there's no real call for specifying who the character is. (You can, of course, ask at any time for the character and the friend's identities. The main character is not an amnesiac, after all. Then again, whether or not you'd get a straight answer all depends on when you ask.) However! You are absolutely free to have fun with the thread anyway. Readers are explicitly set by the prologue (the italicized part) as being agents of the mysterious ████, who are guiding the main character through the eponymous city. On the other hand, I might also expand this into a full-fledged RP if people like the concept enough. The core idea has potential, as what the main character is doing and what happened to your friend are both precedents. Highly unethical and extremely dodgy on both counts, but they're precedents. Meaning there is definitely room for experimenting. Also, your character sounds pretty awesome, and I kinda want to do something with her but haven't really mapped out the fic in a way that would leave room for multiple somnonauts.
So! Tl;dr, totally sorry about the confusion. orz But basically, yes, the way this works is actually in which readers, assuming the role of an outsider watching the main character in the fic, give commands to the main character themselves. The main character then acts out whatever you tell them to do, and the end result hopefully moves forward the plot. Should you wish to write stories about characters from that perspective to go with commands to the main character, I ... would honestly be endlessly fascinated by that, ngl. And technically, as the main function of this thread would still be to tell a singular story (in that the main character is unable to interact with you beyond receiving advice and information), it still counts as a fic in my book, meaning I can't necessarily stop you.]
>If you have one, check your Pokégear. If it has a GPS function, use it to check where you are and where the paths lead. If not, at least check to see if you have any messages.
PLEASE DO. 8) You probably know already that I flippin' loved A Leash of Foxes, even though I was more of an observer than anything else. It would be awesome to have another one on the forums. Heck, it's been awhile since we've had a real trend going on around here anyway~!
>Recall what you know about this city and your friend -- names, locations, shortcuts; anything that might be useful to navigate this place.
First, the city.
On the surface, you know it as the place your friend is from—and, indeed, it is still the place he calls his second home. It is a place by the sea, as many cities in his home country are, and underneath its modern veneer, at its very heart, it is an old city. The myths of your friend’s people are still alive and well here, in the absent music and in the missing lights and festivities. This place, the real version of this place, is just as beautiful and colorful as its rainbow-winged god.
This is Goldenrod City.
Or it is not Goldenrod City but rather a memory of Goldenrod City—and possibly not even that. It is colorless and silent, devoid of people and sound, and this worries you. Normally, your friend’s mind is warm and vibrant, but to see it so cold and lifeless…
They hurt him. You know they did, and even though you couldn’t see what they did, you can tell. It is clear to you, looking up at the black buildings and the soft edges of the city’s colorless aura, that your friend had been in pain—enough pain to chase off all the warmth of this place. Clearly, you need to act quickly. The sooner you can draw your friend out of these dreams, the sooner you can begin to help him heal.
Second, though, you consider your friend. You know why they hurt him, of course. To the human world, your friend is important, valued for what he can do. The other people were right in saying he has a powerful imagination. He considers it his best trait, the one thing he can use to “make a difference in the world,” as he puts it. Unfortunately, it is also the trait that had attracted them to him. He was right there. He needed you, and you—
You close your eyes and focus. His imagination was important to people, and that was important in itself. But to you, however, he is your friend. He is your friend, and you were one of his first, besides the bulbasaur. He has always been kind to you. He has always fed you and given you shelter, cared for you when you were sick and helped you develop your powers, made you feel safe and loved and whole. Without him, you know you would not be the creature you are now. Perhaps you would have gained the mastery over your abilities that you currently possess, but it would have been far more painful without him.
Not that this is the only thing he means to you, of course. Your friend is warm. Colorful. Different somehow from all the other people in the real version of this city. There was something different about him. There is something different about him. You would do anything for him, even this, even if the other people hadn’t forced you to do this.
So you know you must find him. You reach out to him now, but you still cannot sense him.
Yet … you know enough about this city to know where he might be.
You open your eyes now and look.
Directly to the east, there is the Department Store. Your friend never thought much about the Department Store, but it is the most popular area of the real Goldenrod. Perhaps there may be someone there you can ask for help.
To the northeast, there are the gym and the flower shop. Fond memories exist in the latter and only the latter.
To the west is your friend’s home. This place feels the warmest out of all the places in the city, but between your friend’s home and you, there is something that feels far colder than anything else here. The direct route may be ill advised.
To the northwest, there is one entrance to the Underground. The other entrance, you know, is located beyond the cold something, very close to your friend’s home. However, the route to the Underground is longer, and you also know that this path isn’t necessarily safe or free of its own shadows. Never mind the fact that you don’t know what may be in the Underground, either.
Nothing exists due north or south, nor to the southeast or southwest. The city stretches infinitely in all four of these directions.
Where would you like to go?
>If you have one, check your Pokégear. If it has a GPS function, use it to check where you are and where the paths lead. If not, at least check to see if you have any messages.
Unfortunately, your friend was always the one to carry the pokégear. In your hands, it would always malfunction. Your friend knew why; it had something to do with your abilities. “Alpha waves,” he called it. “You emit them subconsciously. It’s not your fault.”
He said this after you’d picked up his pokégear once, just to see what it was. Its screen had flickered in your hand, and sparks had jumped from the sides until the whole device had popped and died. You’ve decided since then that you would rather not deal with human technology at all. It is a wonder to you that the device monitoring your progress through these dreams works, but you admit this is the least strange thing the other people have in their possession.
>Check your pockets and clothing to see if you have anything of use.
You do not have pockets, as you do not wear anything that would have them. You could if you wanted, but you never did, and your friend always felt uncomfortable seeing other people force their companions to do it.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have nothing. There is the psychic tracking device that the other people gave to you, not to mention the psychic amplifier all of your kind carry. In addition to these items, your friend gave you a bell, which you wear on a red cord around your neck. You don’t need it, but you like the way it jingles when you walk.
This is a fascinating idea, but I think I might hold off on giving an in-depth review until the story has had more time to form. There's great potential here (and obviously I have every confidence that you will realize that potential in time) but I'd like to let this find its own way before commenting too much on it. Now...
Because doing things the easy way is never fun
>Go northwest
Under your feet, the pavement is solid and smooth, and these signs are reassurance to you. Your friend had been hurt but not broken; there is still hope for recovery. But the rest of the city still unsettles you: the way the buildings loom dark and silent, the way each structure looks generic and nondescript, the way they lose detail as you press on.
You don’t stop to look, but your eyes fall on the facades of storefronts. Letters in mismatched alphabets stretch across signs—some in Russian, in English, in Chinese, in your friend’s native Common, and a few in squiggles you are almost certain aren’t languages at all. Without your friend’s help, you can’t read any of them, but even if you could, you have a feeling none of them would make complete sense because the stores don’t make complete sense. Bakeries with blackened cakes covered with plastic flies, dress shops with fish for mannequins, an electronics shop with a wall of TVs facing the street … these, you know, are merely your friend’s hazy recollections, mixed with his dream state. He never spent much time in this part of the city to create solid memories, so his mind is compensating because you are traveling through this place.
Or, at least, that is your theory. You don’t want to think about any other alternative.
One of the TV screens catches your eye. You know you shouldn’t look, but you do. You turn your head and stare, and you find yourself face-to-face with a black-and-white test pattern on a large screen occupying the center of the window. The screen flickers, and the same test pattern blossoms across all the other screens in the display. They remain for a second, then blink—actually blink, with darkness folding down like eyelids over twelve different eyes—before appearing once more. When they return, they’re starker somehow—crisper, with harsher blacks and whites.
And it’s then that you realize the city isn’t silent anymore. There’s a hum now—low and buzzing, like an old TV being turned on or like electricity running through high-tension wires. Behind you, the cold air suddenly becomes warm, like a hot breath burning the back of your neck. Yet you don’t take your eyes off the screens … because right then, the center monitor changes. In the center of the test card, text blinks into existence in bold, stark-white letters.
PLEASE STAND BY
You continue to watch. The test card and text disappear, replaced by a pitch-black screen. Then, a few seconds later, new words appear. Centered. White. Mechanical.
EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM
hello world
In the reflection in the window, something catches your eye: a line of figures, standing perfectly still across the street. You can’t make out exactly what they are, but they look tall and clothed—humans, perhaps? Except … completely unmoving. Just standing there, arms at their sides, faces too fuzzy to make out.
You feel your breath hitch at the sight of them, and you grit your teeth. This is a dream, you remind yourself. This is your friend’s mental defense mechanisms. They can’t hurt you. You repeat this thought a few times before you finally turn around to face them.
...
You find yourself standing in front of a dark skyscraper with a steel tower thrusting up towards the sky. You know this place: Goldenrod Radio Tower, the source of Goldenrod’s main form of media. Behind it, squatting in its shadow, is the glass-and-steel archway covering the entrance to the Underground.
There are no people behind you.
You sense a dark presence inside the Radio Tower.
You cannot sense anything at all from the Underground.
Hm. Best to figure out what the rules of this universe are before we do anything rash, I think. Or, well. Before we do anything else rash.
>Determine how far you can use your powers in here without harming your friend, and, since you clearly have a good understanding of how mental constructs work, assess the threat posed to you by your friend's mental defence system.
After mulling over it for a few days, I'm interested to know if it's possible to broadcast anything from the radio tower, and if so what that would do to our friend/the world. You did say this was Bad Decision Town, so yeah, time to boldly go (completely unprepared, natch).
> Close your eyes for a while because you're morbidly curious as to what would happen if you lost your awareness just for a little while.
Ha. Haha. HAHAHAHA-
Ahem. I apologize, but now that I've read this whole story that was my first reaction. Man, I was SO off in my interpretation. When I read the first post I was sure that the main character was a James Bond-type secret agent who was, through Matrix-like technology, inside her important friend's dreamscape in an attempt to wake said friend up. Who knew that the main character was a Pokemon? XD
Another reason for the HAHAHAs is the horror. Even though I don't fully understand what's going on, this fic is still chilling me to the bone. Its horror is really well executed, and is definitely something that I can't cook up (I s2g the last time I tried writing horror it ended up seeming like crack, so I just rolled with it and re-classified the fic as "crack taken seriously". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). I'm not quite sure how to define the horror, but man, this place is SO messed up, and I feel like the poor main character won't be sane for much longer. Great job with the execution, really.
Currently, my only criticism is that I'm not entirely sure what's going on. Who exactly is the main character? Who is the friend? What's the background context behind this story? What's with the psychic tampering and other psychic stuff? Why is this city so weird? Of course, since this is only the beginning of the story, and confusion is a huge part of horror, I'm kind of sort of fine with it. XP
I do have an interpretation of the events in this story, though, and this interpretation will NOT go away. Chances are I'll be 120% wrong as usual, but:
The "you" main character in this fic is Bill's Espeon, which would explain the psychic powers. The friend is Bill. The "you" main character from "This Is..." is Bill, and since I've read that fic (and am quite aware that your favorite character is Bill) I'm pretty convinced that the main character in this fic is indeed Bill's Espeon.
Can I also say that I love the whole Goldenrod Gym reference? XD
As a side note, this post's kind of review - shorter, less formal, and more manageable - is probably the kind of review I'll be writing more in the future. It's definitely less stressful than my previous format of strictly formula Weekly Reviews. Now that I've put less pressure on myself, I'll definitely try my best to be along for the ride.
>Determine how far you can use your powers in here without harming your friend, and, since you clearly have a good understanding of how mental constructs work, assess the threat posed to you by your friend's mental defence system.
At first, one would think that the first question would be the simplest, but it gets a little more complicated the longer you dwell on it. Dreamwalking, or the act of projecting oneself psychically into another’s dream, is basically advanced telepathy. Anything you do within another’s dream state is less telekinetically manipulating your environment and more telepathically influencing your host to manipulate it for you, whether they know it or not. As such, on paper, it’s safe in the sense that nothing that happens to you here will harm you physically. You could, for example, be run in with the blade of an adult scyther, and you’ll wake up completely unharmed. Likewise, as long as you’re careful and not actively trying to destroy your environment, you could very well do whatever you pleased in that world, and to your host, your actions would be just another component in one long, very strange dream.
Or, well, “whatever you pleased” is a bit strong of a term. Obviously, you’re limited by your own imagination and your knowledge of your friend’s dream topography. Teleporting from one point to another, for example, would require you to actually see the places you want to teleport to, as attempting to do it the way you can in reality will very likely not get you particularly far. Places, after all, may not be exactly where they should be in a host’s dreams. On the other hand, using some kind of variation of telekinesis—or, rather, manipulating the environment through extremely strong mental suggestions to the subconscious—should probably work better than it would in reality, as if you tell a sleeping human that you can lift a beached wailord, they are less likely to argue with you.
Yet that’s not quite true either. Yes, all of these rules work for willing subjects, but someone who is invaded and therefore unwilling to become a host is an entirely different matter. And there is where it gets complicated … and where the second question comes in.
To put it simply, there are two types of mental defense systems. The first is more of a barrier—mental walls, mental buffers, and the like—designed to repel an invader out of the mind. It’s also the easier type to erect and the more humane to execute, as it operates using only one action: push. At most, the invading psychic will be rendered momentarily stunned if the host pushes hard enough, but because an invader’s natural mental state is obviously not within the host’s mind, then that’s the worst possible outcome to the barrier type of defense.
However, the second type is a bit more ruthless, and it takes a lot more effort for the host to execute, especially if they aren’t psychic in the first place. In simple terms, imagine the human immune system. Imagine that an invading psychic mind is a bacterium that has somehow bypassed the barrier that is the host’s skin. Imagine millions of white blood cells descending upon that bacterium, consuming it whole, and breaking it down until there is nothing left. Now realize that because it’s just your mind within that dream scape, to be broken down means nothing will go back to your body. Which is to say this type of defense mechanism will consume your mind, your soul, everything you are—and leave your body as an empty husk. That is the second defense system.
You taught your friend the first type of defense system a long time ago, back when the headaches your kind induce on his got to be too much and back when he realized having just any psychic enter his brain would be a risk to his work. And that is the type you were expecting to face. But the funny thing about trauma is that it can do all kinds of things to the human brain, including force it to learn a completely different defense mechanism to preserve its sanity. The shadows you saw in the window? Those were the leucocytes, hunting down the vague notion that there is an invader in that dreamscape.
So, as of right now, you know the risk. Spend too long in your friend’s mind, and his defense system will find you and eliminate you. Make the wrong move in your friend’s mind, and his defense system will find you and eliminate you.
But … perhaps there’s still hope. The closer you get to your friend, the more you can assert your presence on him, and the more you do that, the more likely he will recognize you and call off his defenses. Thus, your objective is made all the more clear, thanks to your thoughts on all of this: you must find your friend, and find him quickly.
>Enter the radio tower
Against your better judgment, you enter the radio tower.
Here is where someone writing horror fiction would say that the air felt cold or off or something along those lines, but to you, there is nothing immediately wrong about the air of the lobby. Structurally speaking, it even looks like a lobby, with its pristine counter, its marble floors, its posters for various radio shows, right down to its potted plants.
But it’s the details of that place that throw you off. For one, the reception desk is not manned by any sort of human being, as it is in reality. Instead, there are chairs behind the desk, and on those chairs are pikachu plushes, dressed in little suits and dresses. You approach the desk and gaze into their button eyes, but you can sense no life from them. These, you decide, are not leukocytes. Not yet, anyway, and you choose not to stick around long enough to see if your friend’s dreamscape will turn them.
So instead, you wander away from the reception desk, to the posters on the wall. Like the signs outside, these are in languages you either cannot understand or doubt are languages at all, but more than that, there is something wrong with these. At first, they start off normal enough: just posters with images of pokémon performing. Jigglypuff singing into microphones and meowth dancing in rains of coins and clefairy in space helmets … in Johto, pokémon have been the cornerstones of entertainment since the ancient Noh theaters, so it doesn’t surprise you to see them here. But as you continue along the wall, the posters get stranger. The pokémon become replaced with people in pokémon masks—lanky figures with rubbery jigglypuff and meowth faces grinning unnaturally wide. And at first, they did the same things their pokémon counterparts did—sing into microphones and dance and so forth—but with each new poster you see, their movements get less and less … energetic, somehow. Like they’re slowly tiring out until, at last, they stand with their arms hanging limply at their sides.
And then, you come to the last poster, but it isn’t of the people at all. It’s of your friend. Or, a younger version of your friend—the person he was before he had met you. He sits in black and white on a chair facing someone unseen. A microphone hangs down from above him, but he stares straight ahead, not at it. His mouth is closed, and there’s something odd about the eye you can see. Something glassy. Tired.
You step forward to examine the poster carefully. Your friend’s hands are folded over something on the table in front of him, but you can’t tell what it is. As you step closer, you start to make out something between his fingers: a soft-edged object, poking up between his knuckles. A feather, perhaps?
Something out of the corner of your eye catches your attention, and you glance at the side of the poster. There’s something there: a fuzzy darkness that takes up one edge of the poster. You squint and reach out of yourself, grasping at the edges of this thing. You know it’s a memory, and you can tell by your friend’s expression that it’s not a good one. But what is this? What happened here?
> Close your eyes for a while because you're morbidly curious as to what would happen if you lost your awareness just for a little while.
You close your eyes.
For a long while, nothing happens. When you feel it’s safe enough to assume that nothing will, you open them again.
The pikachu dolls seem to be looking at you now.
All of them.
Author’s Note: For the Hearing Impaired
For those of you who are unable to hear the sound file included in this batch of updates, here is a graphic representation. Yes, the fact that some parts of the story will link to media like this will become important later in the story. You may still enjoy The Empty City without clicking on any of the links, but some clues may not be as apparent through text alone.
Ahem. I apologize, but now that I've read this whole story that was my first reaction. Man, I was SO off in my interpretation. When I read the first post I was sure that the main character was a James Bond-type secret agent who was, through Matrix-like technology, inside her important friend's dreamscape in an attempt to wake said friend up. Who knew that the main character was a Pokemon? XD
Totally A-OK. XD I have to say that messing with sci-fi tech would be more my style, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to write a fic from the perspective of a character who’s been a part of my headcanon since forever.
Another reason for the HAHAHAs is the horror. Even though I don't fully understand what's going on, this fic is still chilling me to the bone. Its horror is really well executed, and is definitely something that I can't cook up (I s2g the last time I tried writing horror it ended up seeming like crack, so I just rolled with it and re-classified the fic as "crack taken seriously". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). I'm not quite sure how to define the horror, but man, this place is SO messed up, and I feel like the poor main character won't be sane for much longer. Great job with the execution, really.
Aaaas for horror, I have to say a lot of it comes from exposure and practice. ;D While I kinda hesitate to say I’m a fan of creepypasta (because people automatically assume I mean fanpastas or things like Slenderman and the like, which are all right but, y’know, not what I mean), I read a lot of those as well as more traditional urban legends, and I’m an avid listener of the NoSleep podcast. On top of that, I’m endlessly fascinated with things like Unedited Footage of a Bear and This House Has People In It or generally weird and creepy media of an indie variety. And, of course, then there’s just watching YouTube videos of people delving into the deep web, which has some preeeetty fun stuff too.
Long story short, ngl, ages ago, I couldn’t write horror with ****, in part because I couldn’t read it. Squeamish and all. But after I just sort of dove right in (with the milder stuff—namely fanpastas), I started picking up tips here and there and basically everywhere. And the biggest tip that I’ve figured out from all of this is that blood and guts isn’t scary; fear is scary. Like, you could have a creepypasta wherein not even a single drop of blood pops up, and it can be scary as **** because it’s dialing into something else—the atmosphere or images that are very specifically threats towards the characters therein or something else.
In other words, like I say now and then to other folks, good horror involves a bit of self-reflection in that in order to pull it off, you have to be willing to scare the bejezus out of yourself. If you understand what makes you scared and what being scared actually feels like, it’s easier to write that scary atmosphere because you’ll know when you’ve hit the right notes, so to speak. Like, if you write and you don’t feel creeped out by what you’re thinking about—even slightly—then chances are good your readers won’t feel creeped out.
So for me, I know I’m at my jumpiest at the earliest parts of the night, when I’m sleep deprived and all. That’s when you start to see stuff out of the corner of your eye, or you swear something in the mirror moved, or things like static become infinitely creepier because you can just barely get a good handle on them. Even test cards get a little creepy at that time of the night because I’m anticipating that something wrong’s going down. And that’s really just it: the constant feeling that something wrong is going down, but it hasn’t yet, so you’re constantly on edge, waiting for whatever it is to happen. And because I’m aware that that is what creeps me out, I know when I sit down, “Okay, the most ****ed up thing I could do here is make them wait for it too.” And here we are~!
Tl;dr, thank you! I’m glad it creeps you out. ;D And I hope some of the above will help you on any future attempts you have~!
Currently, my only criticism is that I'm not entirely sure what's going on. Who exactly is the main character? Who is the friend? What's the background context behind this story? What's with the psychic tampering and other psychic stuff? Why is this city so weird? Of course, since this is only the beginning of the story, and confusion is a huge part of horror, I'm kind of sort of fine with it. XP
Hilariously enough, you could totally ask about all of this in-game. 8D Some of these questions actually do have answers that the main character is deeefinitely willing to dole out. (For example, the city is so weird because it’s an unstable dreamscape corrupted by your friend’s psychologically hurt mind. The main character would go into more detail about it if anyone’s interested, but that’s the gist of it.)
I do have an interpretation of the events in this story, though, and this interpretation will NOT go away. Chances are I'll be 120% wrong as usual, but:
The "you" main character in this fic is Bill's Espeon, which would explain the psychic powers. The friend is Bill. The "you" main character from "This Is..." is Bill, and since I've read that fic (and am quite aware that your favorite character is Bill) I'm pretty convinced that the main character in this fic is indeed Bill's Espeon.
[spoil]You’re right about one thing, but close on the other. ;D
Your friend is Bill, and if you asked the main character for his name, they will probably tell you. Eventually, anyway. I’d like to keep his name out as much as possible, partly because I’m admittedly feeling a little guilty that this is yet another Bill fic and mostly because this is a weird situation in which who he is specifically matters less than who he is generally. It’s not that you could replace him with any character and still get the same results, of course; the story’s set up in a way that if you tried to replace him with an OC, it wouldn’t make sense. But! At the same time, naming him would draw attention away from who he is as a person, which in this case is really the entire point of the fic.
And I realize that likely made no sense, but it’ll hopefully get clearer later.
As for the main character, I’d hate to say it, but they’re not actually Espeon. Espeon pretty much only exists in that one universe, but this character exists pretty much in every fic universe on a technical level, even if I don’t actually mention them. They’re technically the evolved form of a character mentioned in canon, but because canon has never specified whether or not: A) the character has evolved or B) the character is still with Bill, they’re more headcanon than anything else. Which is to say, they’re in every fanfic universe I’ve created because it’s my headcanon that they’ve been with Bill this whole time. Liiiike I said, this is just a convenient excuse to finally explore them. ;D
Funnily enough, this is also something the main character would readily answer and explain if asked. I just wanted to see how long it would take before someone sent in a command to have them examine themselves. XD[/spoil]
Can I also say that I love the whole Goldenrod Gym reference? XD
And in the meantime, can I just say that if anyone actually tries to go to Goldenrod Gym, they’ll find delightful surprises therein? (And by “delightful surprises,” I mean “horrifying things; do not go there.”)
As a side note, this post's kind of review - shorter, less formal, and more manageable - is probably the kind of review I'll be writing more in the future. It's definitely less stressful than my previous format of strictly formula Weekly Reviews. Now that I've put less pressure on myself, I'll definitely try my best to be along for the ride.
On a general level? Haha, yeah, for the best. It sounded like you’ve got a lot on your plate right now, so it’s definitely a good idea to not commit yourself to something hardcore and stressful for you. *nods*
If you meant specifically for this, that’s cool too! XD
> RUN. Run away from the Radio Tower to the Underground. You don't want to risk your attacks not working in this wonky dreamscape.
I really liked how much explanation was in this "chapter". Now I'm a lot more sure of how things are going to work here. In addition, YIKES. The horror is really kicking up a notch, especially with the Pikachu dolls looking at you. I love fashion dolls and collecting them, but why the heck do certain dolls look so creepy?
Gotta say I disagree with you, Pi. Things are just getting good. So I'm gonna go ahead and put the Bad Decision back into Bad Decision Town and say...
Despite not being able to sense our friend, we definitely sensed something, and it would be a crime against the Scientific Method not to see this through. (I think. I'm pretty sure my definition of the scientific method is a bit skewed) Also I kind of want to know if it's possible to broadcast anything in the dreamscape. So anyway...
So, if I'm reading this right, and I may well not be, our Morse message is something like KNOCK KNOCK WHO'S THERE AAA AAA AAA NO ONE ANSWERED, which is possibly actually more reassuring than if someone had answered, to be honest, because if someone answered, then someone is listening, and the goal of Almost Bad But Determinedly Good (Despite Firebrand's Best Efforts) Decision Town seems to not be noticed while we go about our psionic business.
Also, I'm amazed it took us that long to realise that we might not be wanted here. Kind of feels like that was made clear a while back.
Anyway, pikachu dolls seem way less creepy than dolls of humans, since they by definition can't enter the uncanny valley, so for the sake of our sanity we shall categorise their stares as merely 'rude' rather than 'horrifying', and ...
>Leave. Quietly. Shut the door on your way out.
Hopefully two voices in favour of the preferably-not-dying route is enough to sway our hero's mind.
>Head further up the radio tower. Think over the sounds you heard.
[spoil]
Due to my knowledge of Morse Code (and definitely not some translator I found) I learned what that code was: KNOCK KNOCK WHO'S THERE? ...NO ONE ANSWERED
I'm really enjoying this so far! I'm really intrigued by the universe you've set up and its delightful set of rules. I am 100% behind anything psychic, but I love the horror setting you're creating, here. I'm super curious about how much you plan in advance and how much is on the fly, especially as we inevitably turn into a terrible Twitch chat equivalent and proceed to screw everything up.
My guess as to the main character's identity, since now seems like a bad time in the story to make them do any self-reflection:
The fact that I'm not all that familiar with your headcanon does put me at a disadvantage here, but still worth a shot! My first guess was that our main character was a Gardevoir, since you seem rather fond of them, but your comment about headaches got me to do some Googling, and the only psychics I can find who induce them are Elgyem and Kadabra. According to Bulbapedia, Bill did catch an Abra (though I never recall ever learning that in-game), so Kadabra or Alakazam seems like a good guess!
Gotta say I disagree with you, Pi. Things are just getting good. So I'm gonna go ahead and put the Bad Decision back into Bad Decision Town and say...
Despite not being able to sense our friend, we definitely sensed something, and it would be a crime against the Scientific Method not to see this through. (I think. I'm pretty sure my definition of the scientific method is a bit skewed) Also I kind of want to know if it's possible to broadcast anything in the dreamscape. So anyway...
Keep in mind that we now know the longer we spend putzing around, the higher our chance of being found and literally having our mind destroyed. While I like the idea of trying to send some kind of broadcast, I'm not quite sure what sort of message a Pokemon would send, and under these circumstances.
I'm intrigued to see whether or not our commands will be taken democratically or anarchically, so I'll just add the following:
>You return to examining the poster to see if there is anything else you can gleam from it, and see if you can take the a fuzzy darkness from the poster edge. You try to sense if there is anything else of use in the tower.
> RUN. Run away from the Radio Tower to the Underground. You don't want to risk your attacks not working in this wonky dreamscape.
>Proceed up the radio tower.
>Leave. Quietly. Shut the door on your way out.
You feel conflicted at first. Stay or go? On the one hand, you were raised by a scientist, and as such, you can’t help but feel your friend’s overwhelming sense of curiosity. Had he been there and in his right mind, this wouldn’t be a decision. He would lead you up the stairs, and you would be with him. On the other, you were always the voice of reason between the two of you, and you know damn well that running off into dangerous places is exactly what got you and your friend in this mess in the first place.
Ultimately, though, you decide against leaving. It’s not because your handlers—the collection of voices pushing into your mind from the tracking device—have urged you to stay. It’s because you know that something in here could be a hint: a clue, a shade, something that could tell you what is locking your friend in his dreamscape.
>You return to examining the poster to see if there is anything else you can gleam from it, and see if you can take the a fuzzy darkness from the poster edge. You try to sense if there is anything else of use in the tower.
So you do. Ignoring the pikachu dolls, you turn your attention back to the poster in front of you, the one of your friend. You push your consciousness outward again, mentally feeling the poster and searching for some kind of sign. It rustles under your unseen hands, and the shadow at the edge ripples. You watch it intently for some time, your mind pushing at the edges of the poster to urge it to react.
And then, finally, it does. Like a flip book animation, the shadow flickers and shifts in jerking waves. Slowly but surely, hands emerge from the right edge of the poster, stretching across with five shadow-drenched fingers splayed. No body follows; the arms simply stretch like taffy strings from the edge of the poster, across your friend’s face, and to the other side, where one hand wraps around his head to cover his eyes. The other hand twists, and the long fingers reach into his mouth and, slowly but surely, begin to pull out his tongue.
It’s here when you tear your eyes away from the poster. You want to look at something else—anything else—but your gaze settles instead on the other posters on the wall. All of them have changed in the time it took you to study the first poster. The pokémon and the people in the masks are gone now. In fact, everything is gone now. All that’s left on each of the posters are patterns of dots and dashes and slashes in glistening, black letters, splattered onto bold, red pages.
As you study these posters, you steady yourself. You don’t know what these messages mean, but it’s the feeling from them. You feel as if you’re being watched, not by the pikachu dolls but by something else. You feel that cold, heavy presence of something else in that dreamscape besides you and your friend. And you feel something moving all around you.
But more than that, you feel something upstairs. Something shifting and congealing. It feels … warm, like your friend, but it’s not the whole of your friend. Not really. And it feels cold, like the hands and the dolls and a lot of other things, but you know it’s not any of these entities. Not really.
And from this, you draw one conclusion: whatever it is, it is important.
The hands from the first poster enter the next and then the next and then the next. There is still no body, no end to their arms, and something about their open palms exacerbate the feeling of having all eyes on you.
It is then that you realize the tone you’ve been hearing has changed.
>Head further up the radio tower. Think over the sounds you heard.
You tear your eyes away from the posters, grateful for another distraction. Instead, you look at the open door, at the staircase behind it. You know that you’ve put off going upstairs long enough, and now, knowing that you would rather not find out what else these hands will do, you finally set out for the upper floor. The pikachu doll beside the door doesn’t stop you. In fact, none of them do, but you know that if you turn around now, you will most likely find all of them staring at your back.
You try not to think about this.
It doesn’t take you long at all to climb the stairs, and when you do, you find yourself in a single room. Perhaps it’s because your friend doesn’t remember all of the details, but there is only one floor here, despite how tall the building seems to be, judging by the skyline out the windows. All of them, that is—each wall isn’t so much a wall as it is a window, looking out onto the sprawling Goldenrod landscape. You’re almost certain this is not the actual view from the real radio tower, but it’s not important.
What is important is the main feature of this floor: a broadcasting booth. The controls seem to take up half the room. You glance at them to see lights on and screens flickering. In front of them, sitting in a chair, is a plush meowth wearing a headset. Like the pikachu downstairs, it, too, is staring at you as soon as you emerge into the room. You ignore it and the controls. They’re not important right now.
That leaves the other half of the room. This space is divided neatly in half by a wall, which isn’t really a wall so much as another window with a door in it. Beyond the door are two dolls. One of them is of a woman. Red-headed. Glasses. Leaning over a microphone on the table in front of her. You recognize her from the advertisements you would see when you accompanied your friend on holidays back to his home. This is DJ Mary, although she is too young to have ever met your friend as a child. You suppose that the memory has gotten corrupted somewhere, muddled by the dreamstate.
She is also not important.
The reason why is because across from her, sitting in a chair beneath another microphone, is your friend. Or, rather, not your friend but a rag doll of him too, rocking back and forth in his chair. As you approach the door, you realize that this rocking has a source: fine, glistening threads stitched into his stubby arms and the back of his neck. Your eyes trail down one of the strings to his hands, and there, you see something odd. Fuzzy. Gray. Feathery. The object that was between your friend’s fingers in the poster and half of the sensation you were feeling downstairs. This, you realize, is something that may be important.
As you continue to watch, you realize something else. The tones are not coming from the speakers or a radio or anything mechanical. They’re coming from these dolls. Every so often, a pull string from the back of one would draw itself out, sliding to its full length before slowly winding back up. And as the string withdrew, the doll that housed it would beep and hum until falling silent, just long enough for the same thing to happen to the other doll. At first, the message is simply the same as the last one you heard, repeated over and over again, first by one doll, then the other. But then, as soon as you come to a stop right at the door, DJ Mary’s string extends, draws back, and allows her to emit an entirely different message.
Author’s Note: Responses
Lmao, juuuust in case anyone’s wondering, I do, in fact, have a plan for resolving ties, should we ever have one again. It’s called “rolling a d20.” 8D No, but seriously, thanks so much for making this round preeetty interesting.
Also, to Cutlerine, those AAA bits were meant to be periods, but I like your translation better because it sounds like someone was randomly screaming while feeding lines to the telegraph operator.
I really liked how much explanation was in this "chapter". Now I'm a lot more sure of how things are going to work here. In addition, YIKES. The horror is really kicking up a notch, especially with the Pikachu dolls looking at you. I love fashion dolls and collecting them, but why the heck do certain dolls look so creepy?
Well, I’d say Uncanny Valley, but it’s more than likely that they just are. XD Idk, it’s like the more innocent an object is, the more horrifying it is out of context.
In the meantime, fun fact, but did you know that in the Victorian era, people used to make dolls based on their owners, using said owner’s real, human hair?
I'm really enjoying this so far! I'm really intrigued by the universe you've set up and its delightful set of rules. I am 100% behind anything psychic, but I love the horror setting you're creating, here. I'm super curious about how much you plan in advance and how much is on the fly, especially as we inevitably turn into a terrible Twitch chat equivalent and proceed to screw everything up.
To answer the all-important question of “how much am I making up on the fly lmao,” the answer is quiiiiite a bit. Granted, I started off with a vague idea of what to find in each area and developed stuff as y’all made it clearer and clearer that, yep, we were going in that tower and we were going to to the top, but a lot of the details are more or less improvised. Likewise for the overall plot. I know, in general, what needs to be done, but the path from Point A to Point B to Point C and so forth isn’t a solid thing (so I can change it when actions happen).
In the meantime, as for whether this is full-on anarchy/democracy, it’s totes democracy unless someone says something hilarious interesting enough to pursue. As I’ve explained outside of this spoiler so that everyone can see it, in the event of a tie, there will be lots o’ d20 rollin’.
My guess as to the main character's identity, since now seems like a bad time in the story to make them do any self-reflection:
The fact that I'm not all that familiar with your headcanon does put me at a disadvantage here, but still worth a shot! My first guess was that our main character was a Gardevoir, since you seem rather fond of them, but your comment about headaches got me to do some Googling, and the only psychics I can find who induce them are Elgyem and Kadabra. According to Bulbapedia, Bill did catch an Abra (though I never recall ever learning that in-game), so Kadabra or Alakazam seems like a good guess!
Yep, the main character is a kadabra. A kadabra named Kadabra, for those interested, not because I’m uncreative with names but instead because Bill lives in a cottage by the sea called a Sea Cottage. How creative do y’all think he is when it comes to names?
Also for those interested, Kadabra has a gender and a nature, but I’m hesitating about specifying either of those due to the risk of breaking the whole “this character is a placeholder for the player” illusion going on. I will say that their special ability is Inner Focus, however.[/spoil][/spoil]
Alright, I guess I am a glorified translator now, because I got the first Morse Message (or MM) done in a minute.
[spoil] SO TELL US, HAVE YOU MADE A DECISION? ALL THE TOP SCHOOLS WANT YOU. YOU MUST BE SO PROUD.I WANT TO GO HOME.SOURCES SAY YOU WERE SEEN WITH A GIRL RECENTLY. ARE YOU DATING? TELL US ALL THE DETAILS.I FEEL SICK.ARE YOU AFRAID OF DISAPPOINTING YOUR MOTHER, OR JUST YOUR FATHER? [/spoil]
The tone is very simple: [spoil] STAY TUNED [/spoil]
I will not translate the last message, just because I am tired of transcribing dots and dashes.
>Continue up the tower. Try to avoid or ignore the posters.
Anyway, let's kick things off with some exposition.