londoncallingrpg | Haunted House GP

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Haunted House GP

The house doesn't exist, that's the first thing anyone who might find themselves inside it would want to know. Now, you might ask how one could find themselves inside something that doesn't exist, but you'd honestly be better off asking yourself how you could leave something that doesn't exist. After all, ideas and concepts can't be burnt or broken, and you can't breakdown a door that's not there- Or was there and then decided to be somewhere else for a while...

You wake in a house though, a house that doesn't exist. A house that defies the laws of reality. There are corridors that go on for days, rooms full of nightmares, and millions of doors that lead you anywhere but out. Trapped inside with you are dozens of other people, all searching for an exit, or an explanation.

Behind every door you'll find your darkest fears, maybe even memories you've tried to forget, or secrets you never wanted to share...

(OTA! Here is your first of two Halloween gps! This one is, of course, set in the haunted house where your pup can run into anything you can dream up! Deadly traps! Spooky monsters! An existential crises! Top level your pups waking up or running into danger, and then go ahead and tag other players! Since this is all magic-y and spooky don't worry too much about time lines and who bumped into who first. Only rule is that your pup can't escape until November 1st! Have fun! Also, because there are two GPs going up this week, both are open to new top levels for two whole weeks! And, of course, you can keep tagging long after that if you want. :D I'll post reminders daily on slack.)

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"One that doesn't have teeth," Jag stated, since with this place, who knew what was possible. He wished he was wearing more than an old t-shirt and a pair of jeans, so he could've lent something to Val. Seeing him naked (he quieted that bitter little voice before it said anything, this time) wasn't exactly an eyesore, and that was what made it sit uncomfortable in Jag's lungs.

"Unpleasant thought," Val agreed, glancing down at his most vulnerable parts and wincing a bit.

"Risk worth taking though, I'd rather not be nude in the face of danger," he added, starting to open doors as he spoke. Most of the rooms were empty, but one stood out. A grubby looking room that Val recognized from the brief time he'd spent in Mexico, not long before he'd finally gotten his life back on track.

Uncomfortable, he slipped inside- Hoping that Jag wouldn't notice the empty bottles and the rather impressive amount of drug paraphernalia that littered the room as he made his way over to the suitcase on the bed.

Jag followed behind him, unwilling to stay alone in the corridor. What if the door slammed shut and he found himself on his own? No, he'd much rather stick with Val.

And he was immediately distracted by some of the drug paraphernalia on the table by the window. He picked up a bag of what appeared to be weed, opened it and smelled it; it smelled like the real deal, and some good shit, at that.

Hey, once a scavenger, always a scavenger. He zipped up the small bag and shoved it into his back pocket, then grabbed some skins and a pack of cigarettes to put in another pocket. The harder drugs he didn't touch; they weren't his style. Instead, he turned back to Val, not having realised that he used to live here.

"Found something you can wear?"

"Yes, this will do," Val said quietly.

The jeans and t-shirt were nothing noteworthy, but the heavy boots and familiar leather coat were staples of Val's wardrobe. Distinctive items that he wore often, items that were unique to him.

Jag frowned as he noticed the coat. "That looks a lot like yours." It still hadn't connected that Val hadn't just been lucky to find clothes that fit him, and a jacket that looked so much like his, but that they were actually his clothes and his coat.

"It is mine," Val said quietly. "Everything in this rubbish heap of a room was mine at some point."

"Oh." That's a brilliant comeback, isn't it. Jagiro.

He would have protested that the room really wasn't that bad, but the hard drugs stopped him. Emotionally speaking, this was probably a rubbish heap of something.

But what did you say to something like that? 'I'm sorry' would just make him sound like a wanker, and he didn't want Val to feel forced to tell him anything he didn't want to. Moving right past the subject it was, then.

"So how are we here? Where are we?" The shutters were closed, and he turned to the window and tried to open them, but he gave up after a short while. They were stuck, as stuck as Val and Jag themselves.

"Mexico, four years ago- Maybe five. I don't really remember," Val admitted, nodding at the needle on the table. "It's a bit of a blur."

Jag followed Val's line of sight, and that, for some reason, finally had it sink in, how hard it must be for Val to be here. "Right," he muttered, and stepped closer, reached out to lay a hand on Val's forearm, just the way he used to. "Let's get out of here, alright?"

Val tensed, but only for a moment- And not because Jag was touching him. The truth was, he wasn't proud of what he'd done here. He couldn't help but hate the man who'd lived so dangerously and recklessly back then.

"Yes, alright," he nodded, heading for the door, then pausing.

"Please- Don't... Don't tell anyone about this," he said softly, his gaze uncharacteristic vulnerable. "I'm not this person any more, and it- It would break my mother's heart if it got back to her, and lord only knows what my father would do."

"Shit, Val, I'm not going to tell anyone," Jag replied instinctively, frowning at the thought. Not even his bloody awful father. Not as if he could, anyway, but even if he was going to meet the bloke for some reason.

He'd rather just punch him and get kicked out of wherever he might have run into him. Much more his style.

"Thank you," Val said softly. "Really, Jag- It means a lot to me that you'd keep this between us."

Jag felt distinctly uneasy about being thanked for something that ought to come naturally to any semi-decent human being, but the way Val spoke to him just then, it tugged at him in that way he'd tried to wall himself off against. "'course," he mumbled, glancing down before looking up at Val again. It was his turn to look vulnerable as he added, "Look, about what I said last time - I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

Because apparently, this was the perfect time to have that conversation. While stuck in this bloody place, with impossible rooms from the past and foreign countries, fire he couldn't control, and random shifts back and forth.

Val's brows went up slightly at that, and he nodded slightly as he pushed his hair back.

"I wasn't exactly on my best behaviour either," he admitted. "I'm sorry that things got so terribly heated between us. For whatever it's worth- I've felt your absence from my life since we last spoke, and it's been much harder than I realized it would be. ...If we ever get out of this living hell, I do hope we can- Well, try again, perhaps?"

Try again. Much as Jag couldn't have been happier at the thought, he also felt uneasy about how real it felt, how real it might be. The sort of real he always destroyed, in the end. "You should know, I always fuck this kind of thing up," he warned Val, which was, in itself, an agreement. "But... I mean. Yeah. I'd like that." They were hard words to get out, but they'd agreed, with Emma. The less heartache the better, and he wasn't going to give up his chance for less heartache, not without trying.

"Yeah?" Val replied, smiling softly and resting his hand on Jag's arm. "All the more reason to get out of here then."

"Don't take this the wrong way," Jag told him with a half smile, "but I don't think I needed extra motivation." He pulled his arm away from Val's hand to be able to take it in his and squeeze, then let go and resumed heading for the door. "Come on, then."

Of course, he couldn't stop smiling now. He wasn't sure how long that would last, in this place.

Val followed along, glancing back into the room one last time, and swallowing down the feeling of dread that settled in his gut.

"Perhaps you should lead the way a while. I've had dreadful luck so far," he said.

That certainly wiped the smile off his face, as he thought back to the fire, and the screams. "I haven't exactly been lucky either," Jag pointed out, clenching and unclenching his fists mechanically. "What about those people you could smell?"

"I can't smell them any more- And it's not that my nose is any less sharp, but rather- the scents have changed," Val frowned. "I can smell sage now, can you? As if someone's been burning it."

"Sage is good," Jag said immediately. He was sure he didn't have to tell Val it was used to ward off evil spirits; Val probably knew a lot more about it than Jag did. "Which way?"

Val nodded to the left and began walking that way.

"Do you want to talk about the flames?" he asked after a moment, glancing over at Jag. "The ones in the room where I found you."

"Not much to say," Jag answered, only glancing at Val before looking ahead again. "It was just - it was like a nightmare." Everything about his body language screamed that he didn't want to talk about it, but he forced himself to go on anyway. "People were burning, and I couldn't do shit." He sounded angry as he finished speaking, but that was just his default tone when talking about anything that made him feel this bad.

Reaching over, Val gave Jag's shoulder a firm squeeze.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, I'm sorry," he said, letting his hand linger, then turning his attention to a door up ahead that was slightly ajar.

"Should we risk it?" he asked.

Jag's shoulders hunched under the contact; he was prickly about everything, when talking about something like this, and that included touch. He wanted to answer something to Val's first words, but then he followed his gaze towards the open door, and nodded before creeping forward silently.

He risked a glance through the door, and froze. This was the squat he'd lived in with Victor, and before he'd made any conscious decision to, he'd walked inside, looking around the abandoned room they had claimed as their. Their stuff was still all over it, as if they'd never left. As if he'd never left. Victor's guitar, their respective heaps of clothes, sleeping bags and a camping stove.

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