Futuristic gestalt ✦ rp

[AI10100]

ELISE MOORE

INFORMATION

LOCATION

Gas Station, Alabama (?)

INTERACTIONS

Cassidy ( Wyll ) | Cheryl ( Ambiloquous ) | The Universe ( Klown )

MENTIONS

“i think i'm high or dead. probably both.”

Artist

misa

POST

"Guess it could still a good conversation starter if you talk to like a climate change guy. Bet they have a lot to say about it," El said with a nod. The man was a little bit more on the awkward sign but that just meant he wasn't that much of a threat.

She didn't have to follow his gaze to know exactly where he was looking at. Instead, she turned her gaze to the coolers nearby where the drinks were. Maybe after the hot chocolate, she could grab a few drinks there to stock up for the long trip. She blinked a few times and only noticed how there were a couple of lemons scattered across it. "Yeah, you're right. Better to just stay put and watch her food. Might get labeled as a creep if you follow." She tried her best to respond but was a little distracted as the lemons seemed to shift side to side, as if it was moving. God, maybe she was actually losing it from the lack of sleep?

"Well, what you say is-"

Abruptly cut off by the loud scream that rang across the store, El didn't hesitate to search for Cher and dropped her conversation with the man. It didn't take long for her to find her brightly colored friend and quickly looked over her. "Why? What's wrong? Did something..."

The clerk that she hadn't paid much attention to began speaking and El, who normally did ignore announcements, perked up. And well, that was partly because even at her position so far into the convenience store, she could just see his head. She shifted to get a clearer view of him and, yeah, he was towering over the counter. As if that wasn't enough, his arm extended so, so, so far into the convenience store like it was some sort of elastic.

Stepping in between the clerk and Cher was second nature but even she didn't know what she could do in this scenario. Was she high? She couldn't even remember the last time she had touched drugs. Was she drugged? No, no that can't be it. Her gaze followed his extending arms towards the coolers with the wriggling lemons from earlier.

The door opened.

Out came the lemons.

"Lemons" didn't feel like the right word for them anymore as they seemed to form some gelatinous figure. Slimes. Whatever the fuck they are. El instinctively took a step back as the lemon slimes began slipping through the floor, scrambling as if they had anywhere to be. El looked over to the entrance where they seemed to be searching for something and why didn't they just open the damn thing and—

"Am I hallucinating?" El asked, loud enough for Cher to hear. "Or we somehow slipped and had a car accident and we're both dead and we're in purgatory." She tried to say them in jest but, honestly, she couldn't be sure anymore. Not when there was some eight foot clerk with a forty feet wingspan and lemon slimes jumping around.

Speaking of said lemon slime jumping around, El spotted one staring right up at her— it reminded her of orange cats who didn't look like they had a single thought running through their head. Then again, it was a lemon. She doubted the damn thing had a brain to think with. El stared down right back at it with a bit of wonder if it was harmful. The clerk wanted to them to collect these lemon slimes "carefully" and El didn't know if she should trust the monster that wore human skin. Did they have a choice in the matter? What was the patron? What would happen if they couldn't collect them? As if sensing distress and distraction, the slime launched itself right at her and El yelped as both of her hands came up to catch it like she was playing baseball with a child. Her hands clamped around them and it didn't get squashed in between her hands.

"Ew, this is gross," she muttered. The slime kept its shape, somehow, even when she was holding it aloft. "I want to get rid of this. Where do we-" She stopped and looked around to the clerk. "Hey, where do we put this?!"

 

[Gigglecake]

Perhaps it was simply a natural weirdness censor she possessed or maybe it was the power of middle-aged hormones and a guy with a chiseled chest and a tight shirt who was actually interested in her for once, but Joann did not, in fact, notice the strange going-ons around her. Even when her tote purse began to twitch, she automatically assumed it was her phone on vibrate - conveniently forgetting that her phone was plugged in at the charging station and had given her trouble earlier. It wasn't until Jasper loudly announced to everyone in the room that the exit had just become a suggestion. At first, Joann idly wondered if the young fella she had picked up was trying to start trouble or rob the place - in which case, she planned to give him a stern talking to, but when she looked in his direction, she saw that he had meant what he said. There was no handle on the door. No handle on the door.

WHY WAS THERE NO HANDLE ON THE DOOR?

It's also when she noticed that the shelves had somehow turned into cardboard even though she had picked up snacks only a moment ago. Her eyes caught sight of movement by the coolers, and she heard a chirping noise that might have sounded cute if it weren't so out of place in a random gas station. There were yellow vaguely alien... frogs? pushing in great numbers at the coolers and sliding onto the open floor and hopping around - covering more and more square area with each hop and leaving a trail of yellow slime where they went.

"Oh no. No, no, no. NOPE! Ah've done had enough!" She quickly moved away from the frogs.

The twitching in her purse increased. She headed towards the door. "Move!" she said to anyone who might be in her way. "I'm gettin' us outta here!"

She ran at the door a little sideways intending to brute-force it open. Ordinarily, with her weight and the amount of oomph in her run, this would've worked. Unfortunately, it did not this time. All she had to show for her effort was a sore shoulder. She whirled towards the clerk. She side-stepped Elise a little due to her holding one of those slimy yellow creatures. She shuddered, then she gave her full attention to the clerk.

"Now, see here-!! I-I-"

Her mouth fell slack when she noticed that the clerk was suddenly eight feet tall with unnaturally long arms. He definitely was not human. Joann's breath escaped her a moment. Then, she snapped her mouth shut and glared at him. She marched up to the counter. She slammed both of her hands on top of it with a resounding smack sound.

"You listen! Ya can't keep us trapped in here. It's darn right un-American trappin' a bunch of mostly innocent folks against their will-like. Now, you open that door right now, or - or I'll tell your manager about this!" She shook her finger at him in a vaguely threatening manner. Her face had taken on a red hue from anger, and her bosom rose and fell with each powerful angry huff of her breath.

Wyll , Klown , AI10100

 

[Klown]

Interaction: Gigglecake Zedalith Wyll
timesink PawPawkit TheRealAngeloftheStorm
Ambiloquous AI10100 Alien222 Theasuke BriiAngelic
Kameron Esters- efferve

His eyes find Joann. First the right one, then the left, and then his head. Disjointed parts of the same whole. A liberal interpretation of a human. He grew. Swallowing space with a tree root’s greed. His back curved as the nape of his neck touched the ceiling, head bent forward. The walls around him pinched together, sucked in by obscurity.

“You seem to misunderstand.” The curl of his brows read a genuine confusion. “The door left on its own accord. It must have gotten offended by all that unfortunate slamming. Doors are quite sensitive, you know?” He curves down; neck stretched an inch longer, his head tilting as if wobbled on loose hinges. “Perhaps it was given a bad impression.” His smile returned.

The pristine floors are coated in torn lemon skins and viscous yellow membrane, the lemon frogs exploring what the aisles had to offer.

Arms sprouted from the clerk’s unnaturally stretched torso, tree branches to a trunk far too thin. They bend and slither across the gas station, touring snakes that stop in front of each of his customers, where they deposit empty plastic bags for each of them.

“You may place the hatchlings in here for convenience. Please hurry along, my shift will be over soon.” He’s inhumane. A web, a mold, a stain. Something you feel compelled to clean, but don’t know where to begin. There is no malice to his excitement, but an anticipation. A stretch after a busy day, shedding restriction like snakeskin.

​

 

[Wyll]

GESTALT

Cassidy
McNamara

A small prickling of red rose to his cheeks at her smile, giving her a small, slightly-more-confident-than-his-last-attempt smile, bowing his head and tipping an imaginary hat like any good Southerner would. “Not a bother, ma’am. You go take care of business.”

Cassidy had always been one to advocate for putting people in their place and, if they got hurt in the process, then that was just how the cookie crumbled and there was nothing he could do about it. It was definitely encouraging to see that she believed the same.

Cassidy took a quick look around the station, not really looking for anything in particular - something in his gut just told him things were about to start going south. And a man always trusts his gut.

The first sign was the boy who looked dressed for all seasons and yet no season at the same time. Switching his gaze to the door, he noticed - as everyone else did - the door missing the one thing that made any door a door: a way to open it. Un-openable doors. That’s alright. Ain’t nothin’ new there.

The second was the cry from a girl he couldn’t quite see, but he was certain even Ma and Pa had heard her. Screaming girls too? Ain’t nothin’ to worry ‘bout there. We’re good. We’re just dandy. Cassidy slowly nodded his head, accepting everything as it happened, although his face was completely devoid of all emotion - like a computer that was well on its way to crashing; that blue screen of death you receive before everything simply goes black.

One blink later and there was somebody in the door. Cassidy looked away before his eyes were violently yanked back towards the door. There is somebody in the door. The nodding was getting desperate now; his ear twitching; lips pursed and eyes distant. One of them circus acts. That’s all this is. A circus must be passing through. Who’d have thunk it.

And then it happened. The straw that broke the camel's back. The drop that made the cup overflow. The final nail in the coffin.

The lemon frogs.

Cassidy watched as they moved, slithered actually, around the gas station, staring blankly without a single thought behind his eyes. There was only so much tomfoolery he could comprehend and this tom had fooleried a little too hard and a little too long for Cassidy to stay in this station a single moment longer.

He let out a small, terse laugh of disbelief, shaking his head. I had the right idea the first time: nope.

He looked again at the locked door. Or, rather the door-looking wall. Because that's all it was now: a wall. Wall or not, I need to get out of here. Ma and Pa are waiting. Ain't got time to dilly-dally in here like some retired ox.

A train of thought started moving in his head. It may have been one of those old locomotives from the 1800’s that were moving by the power of hopes and dreams, but by both gosh and golly, it was still a train and it was doing its best.

The train arrived at its destination once Cassidy set eyes on the glass that made up the door. Glass was breakable. He'd seen Joann's attempt earlier but he planned to be a lot more…precise.

He walked calmly up to the door, his violent intentions hidden behind a casual stride, lest any clerk stop him. As he strolled towards the door, he began pulling off his light jacket, wrapping it around his hand. Arriving at the door, he simply started at it, like he was looking right through the glass, as he completed the wrap, forming a perfect glove around his hand.

In the same time it took for a bird to flap its wings, Cassidy's entire countenance changed, like a switch had just been flipped.

His nonchalant expression was replaced by one of determination. He threw his right foot back, planting it firmly. A slight squat; a twist that started at the ankle; a clenched fist. The four knuckles of the first were called confusion, frustration, irritation and stress; all compressed into one package for express delivery to the glass that filled the door. A textbook punch, just like Pa had taught him.

However, as fist accelerated toward glass, Cassidy caught the faintest glimpse of a distortion in his reflection. Not a distortion caused by whatever hullabaloo was going on in the store, but the type any contractor had seen: the type you get when you look at tempered glass.

Cassidy had thrown his biggest, strongest, fastest punch at tempered glass; there was only one way this could go.

When his fist connected with the glass, the sound that came from it wasn't…right. Again, not due to anything weird happening with the store. It just sounded painful, hollow…broken.

Yep. That hand is good and broken,, alright. Ain't no two ways about it. If Cassidy was in any sort of pain or shock, he didn't show it. In fact, he acted as if nothing at all had just happened. However, he very deliberately refused to unwrap his hand.

He turned and smiled sheepishly at those around him. “Well darn. The glass ate that punch like a turkey dinner. I coulda bet my car that that would work.” Behind the smile, Cassidy was fighting back a scream of pain as his broken hand throbbed, hidden inside his jacket. After all, Pa would always say that Jack and Jill don't need to know when you fall down the hill. Granted, a broken hand might not be on the same scale as falling on a hill, but the same concept applied. At least, it did to his Pa - a loving man, but a man who adopted Elsa's philosophy of "conceal, don't feel". Cassidy didn't buy into the idea as strongly as his Pa did, but he'd be damned before he had people worrying about his hand when there was a crazy gas station to escape.

“Don't matter though. Glass is glass. And glass breaks. There's gotta be something in here that'll get the job done. Ain't about to sit here and collect lemon frogs for…”

He turned to the weirdest part of all of this, the one thing he had been trying to ignore ever since walking into the station: the clerk. Cassidy looked him over, eyes narrow, features scrunched and gears turning as he wracked his mind, looking for the prefect insult.

“Ain't about to sit here and collect frogs for…for Slenderman over three,” he huffed.

Good one, Cassidy.

Mentions: Joann ( Gigglecake ), Elise ( AI10100 ), Jasper ( Klown ), Vincent ( timesink ), Cosmo ( Alien222 ), Clerk ( Klown )

 

[Ambiloquous]

Cheryl Seki-Feigenbaum

INFORMATION

LOCATION

Gas Station, Probably Not Alabama

INTERACTIONS

El ( AI10100 )

MENTIONS

Gas Station Clerk ( Klown )

“I wonder if the afterlife has social media.”

Artist

𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐊𝐎

POST

Puppeted by an echo of past habits, her shaking right hand reached into her skirt pocket and gripped onto the silicone swirls encasing her phone. Her thumb slid left, right, then tapped, all without ever looking down. She lifted her hand and pointed the camera at the pandemonium in front of her, the seconds framed in red already ticking up.

“El, if you’re hallucinating, then what am I seeing?”

she murmured. Her voice grew louder, with a touch of hysteria.

“We ate weed chips on the way here—or-or our water was spiked, right? That should be it, right…? That should…”

Her smile faltered, and she gave up. Her pitch crept up as she spoke, climbing up the staves until she had reached an octave higher than her starting point.

“We’re dead. We’re definitely dead. Either that or we’re in the process!”

An uncontrollable giggle burst out of her, delirious and breathy. The clerk was Slenderman, lemons had birthed mucilaginous little horrors, and Mr. Autotune said he could phase through solid matter. If there was one good thing to come out of all this madness, it was that the smell had changed from lemon cleaner to summer sorbet—though she knew if she ever got out of this, she wouldn’t ever want to see the citrus fruit again. Just as she finished thinking so, the smell grew fainter. She concentrated; what did that change herald? Her own shaky breaths made itself known in her eardrums, harsh and staccato. It was her: she wasn’t taking in enough air.

She took a frantic gulp of it. Maybe if I just… She closed her eyes; she opened them. Then her eyes widened in horror. One of the awful, goopy creatures had launched itself at El with a vicious bloodthirst in its void-like eyes. Instead of dodging or smacking it away, her fearless, foolish friend had caught it in her hands. She couldn’t scream, her voice choked in her throat, body frozen in abject shock. An image of El falling to the ground, corpse-pale, flashed before her eyes. No, no, no, no!

El’s lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear her.

“Don’t touch it!”

She finally found her voice and grabbed the thing out of her friend’s hands, heart slamming against her ribcage with the cacophony of a million keyboard mashers. The rushing in her ears had turned what El and the flaming-haired woman said into little more than muffled fragments, but it didn’t matter. She just needed to get the blight away from El, get it away, get it away—

She stepped back, stumbling and sliding on her kitten heels in her rush to distance herself. The floor was covered in scraps of yellow rind and a mucous film that was almost easy to ignore in her current state. Too easy, in fact. Forgetting the weight of her backpack, she shifted her weight to the wrong foot, and her heel cap sunk into a cursed embryonic peel. On any other day, this wouldn’t have been an issue. The ex-dancer hadn’t lost her balance yet; she could simply lift her heel and remove it.

Today was not any other day.

When tentacle arms burst forth from the string cheese torso, bending and twisting their way to every unwilling visitor of the gas station, she nearly stopped breathing. Against her will, she squeezed the horrid amphibian-shaped glob of jelly in her hands as if it could act as an amulet against the nightmare creeping towards her. It squeaked, high and sharp. Whether it was because the citrus monstrosities were originally the clerk’s or the might of a single lemon demon was nowhere near enough to contend (or both), the offshoot limbs ignored her desperation and kept moving. A bag stamped with a mocking wink was dropped before her, and she flinched backwards.

She’d forgotten the peel heel.

In true slapstick comedy fashion, her sole skidded on the waxy rind and she flailed to right herself. Arms windmilling with a lightly squashed lemon toad in one hand and a decoden’d phone in the other, she slowly tipped backwards. Cheryl braced for the fall, but instead of hitting tile, she was met with her backpack hitting a flat, insubstantial surface. It toppled behind her. A cascade of clattering sounds, varied and distinct like sundries tumbling off a ledge, spilled around her as she clumsily sat on… an image of a stocked shelf? No, a cardboard cut-out of an aisle in perspective. She stared at it. The toad in her hand chirped. If the products were printed on, where had the racket come from?

She was sure they had all been real, physical shelves not moments ago. A sense of futility washed over her. If she couldn’t even tell when reality had distorted into a surrealist scene in the vein of Dalí, how was she going to stop the clerk if he suddenly decided they’d look good as abstract paintings? The feeling curdled in her gut, churning, compressing, rising again as resentment.

Her fingers twitched. The lemon demon squeaked again, the noise raking razor-edged nails across her mind and scratching the little lockbox she called self-control. She wanted to crush something.

Instead of pulping the toad in her hands and ruining herself, she looked away. She fixed her gaze on El. She took a breath. She smiled.

“Hey, bestie. Wanna do something crazy?”

 

[Alien222]

Mentions: Ambiloquous (Cheryl) AI10100 (Elise)
Interactions: Klown (Clerk) Wyll (Cassidy) Gigglecake (Joann)

Cosmo looked upon the squirming wriggling lemons within the freezers, a silent ‘fuck’ escaping his grinning mouth. For a moment, he considered running out into the snow and leaving the rest behind. They were all lacking in intelligence, decency or both, as he’d concluded for most of the wretched human race years ago. The smell had improved only slightly, now turning to the scent of natural lemons that had just barely reached his holographic nose, a disgusting over-hyped fruit in his honest opinion. A symbol of man’s hubris and the need to breed everything into something else with no reason or rhyme other than the urge to disrupt the natural order; that was what the citron was to him.

On top of that, the scent did nothing to help with the rest of his issues with the cursed store. The continuous drone of the blizzard, the cracks of lightning that lit up the heavens and the lack of a plan were the only factors that kept him within the walls of the convenience store.

Besides, the clerk had mentioned some sort of patron and Cosmo didn't think it was the best idea to go running off if the clerk worked under someone or rather something more powerful than him.

The lemons broke open like egg sacs and out popped…frogs. Out of all the creatures to ever walk, crawl, slither ,or in this case, hop, the earth, frogs were by far one of his least favourite. In fact, it had held the title of ‘worst creature to come out of evolution’ for many years: an award curated and distributed by young Cosmo himself. That was until he turned 12 and discovered the utter useless menace that was mosquitoes.

He backed away from the horde of creatures, hovering near the exit but never going through it, though two redheads that forced him away from it did tempt him into doing so.

‘How do they have less going in their brains than the toads?’ Hatred muttered at the back of Cosmo’s mind as he watched the two try to break down what was most likely an enchanted door of some sort, one of them even going up to the clerk to threaten the creature like it was some McDonald’s employee.

He sighed internally but did not stop them, knowing he wouldn't be able to if he did try. After all, they seemed to be in a panic and retreating to what they were good at, which was strength, not logic.

‘If we’re trapped here for a while, they’ll be useful for something hopefully,’ Rationale mumbled within the pink-haired man’s mind.

He agreed with his own thoughts, however, he was less concerned about the future and more concerned with the present, specifically the frogs presently spreading slime around the store as they bounced further and further from the fridge. So he got to high ground, specifically, the counter. He sat down or rather floated just above it, his smile stretching ever so slightly at the ends at the assurance of the lemon things not being able to reach him.

‘What are you doing? The cashier might-’
Reason began but soon Cosmo remembered how invasive the towering creature behind him could be, so he silenced his 'louder' thoughts, including Reason(able ones). After all, it's not like they were reasoning out something important, just screaming a warning that the clerk might throw him off the counter, something he considered unlikely.

Then came the plastic bags from the twisting amalgamation that was the cashier, pulling out a sigh from him as he realized that indeed everyone would have to participate or was at least expected to. However, he soon noticed something lacking in the clerk’s strategy to allow everyone to collect the frogs: “Excuse me,” He looked up at the cashier, his braids moving up but not fully going down, still hiding his eyes. “What about those of us who are currently…less solid than others? Am I exempt from the task?”

“Also,” he turned to the flame haired duo, not bothering to raise his voice so both could surely hear him as he was quite certain he was about to get ignored again, “I don’t mean this rudely, but not doing what the reality bending, weapon wielding monster in the room says might not be the best idea if you do wish to leave this-"

The sounds of chaos(things toppling over, slipping and sliding) came from the other side of the store, catching his attention for a moment as his mind noted down the two women at the scene, one lying on her back on one of the cardboard shelves. 'Interesting...' He thought as he recognised one as the lady he'd first seen at the counter he now hovered over.

"Store." He finished the sentence, more to fulfil his own strange standards of communication than to actually talk and be understood.

 

[Klown]

J a s p e r A n t o v a
location: gas station
interaction: cassidy Wyll , joann Gigglecake ​

Breaking points—as were typically depicted—were the sharp, jagged edges of something snapped. The unceremonious twang of fibers severed, or the whetted edge of a blade splitting the wind before time thought to blink.

Jasper’s breaking point was none of that. It was syrupy. Meek, and slow, and quiet. His brain souped in the thick molasses of a rationale sloppily melting. He laughed, a soft, breathless sound somewhere between the kiss of horror and fascination. His ringed fingers crawl up the back of his neck for affirmation that his head was screwed straight, that his pulse was still there, that his body still belonged to him. He could only attest to two of the three.

Pulpy lemon offspring speckled the once-pristine tile floors. Joann hollered at the clerk who now crawled up the wall like a tendril of ivy. A guy wearing shoddy reception as skin floated over with the eerie quietude of a phantom and sunk his arm through the floor like it was a puddle. Then, another man approached the expired door and decided to expire his fist with it.

“Turkey dinner? Bro, that sounded like you turned your bones into crumbs just now.” His own knuckles flexed, a sympathetic ghostly ache settling between his joints. He forced himself not to look at the hand, head turning to meet a sun-yellow winky face upon the crinkly folds of a greasy plastic bag. It dangled off the long, branch-like fingers of the clerk’s hand, attached to an arm winding through wide space like a hose.

Jasper accepted it; scooping up the frogs and depositing them into the bag like they were delicate little treasures. Truthfully, he wasn’t thinking. To allow himself the semblance of a thought would crush him under the current surrealism fraying every congruency at the seams. He had to keep moving. If he let his thoughts catch up, he could no longer pretend he was waking up from a dream when all this ended.

He kept picking up frogs, a half made-up song hummed in his throat, spidery and thin with breath. Tremoring with each pulse of his heart and the clumsy juggling of his backpack and guitar case.

“Maybe the faster we get this done, the sooner we can leave?” He spoke aloud to no one in particular. Anyone willing to listen. It’s not like he had anywhere better to be. He sidled beside Joann, smiling warmly. Feeling the distress from her like a heater boiling the air around it. He had no words to offer her, only presence. It felt safe there even with her defiance at whatever the clerk had become—or always had been.​

​

 

[Kameron Esters-]

Darnell had seen a lot in his time on the road: Snowstorms in places that shouldn’t have snow, gas stations too clean to be real, coffee that probably doubled as paint thinner. Kinda like what he's drinking now. But frogs? Lemon-colored frogs hatching from the damn walls?

Yeah. That was new.

He stood frozen near the end of an aisle, halfway through a sip of coffee that suddenly didn’t feel like the worst thing in the room anymore. One of the frogs—a pale, citrus-colored thing with skin like damp wax—plopped onto the floor in front of him. It just... looked up at him. Big, glassy eyes. Its little throat puffed once, like a balloon.

And weirdly?

“…Huh,” Darn muttered. “Kinda cute.”

Reluctantly, and against every logical instinct screaming "Do not touch the weird gas station frog", he crouched and extended a hand. The little thing didn’t move. Didn’t croak. It just let him scoop it up, cold and sticky in his palm like a half-set gummy bear.

He turned it gently, eyes narrowing. “You better not be poisonous, little buddy.”

Another soft pop echoed nearby. Then another. He looked up to see more cracks blooming across the walls, more frogs slipping out like something born from static and citrus and nightmares. A girl shouted near the charging station. Something sparked. A guy cursed behind him.

Darn cradled the frog a little closer, gaze flicking between the chaos and his new, lemon-scented companion.

“Alright. So the gas station's birthing adorable citrus hellspawn now. Cool. Love that.I love that's what's happening right now.”

He looked back down at the frog, who blinked once—slow, unbothered.

“…You’re lucky I'm a sucker for amphibians.”

Darn sighed, but couldn’t help the corner of his mouth twitching.

“You know what? You’re officially Two-Darn. As in, you're 'too darn cute'. And also... me. But smaller and stickier. And who wouldn't want to be named after greatness?” Darn jests.

The frog gave no response, but its throat puffed again, as if in agreement.

Darn cradled it carefully in one hand, raising his coffee with the other. “Alright, Two-Darn. Let's go not die together!"

The frog jumps into Darn's cup without warning, it's big eye peering out of the liquid.

Darn is silent for a moment before shrugging "Well hey, you might enjoy it more than I did."

He spotted Jasper hunched in the chaos, carefully scooping frogs into a greasy yellow plastic bag—like he’d just accepted the new normal and decided to help tidy it up. Kid was balancing a guitar case, a backpack, and what looked like the unraveling of his own grip on reality, all while humming something thin and trembling.

Darn moved without thinking.

He stepped over a trail of sticky lemon residue, dodged a cracked tile that hissed at him (??), and crouched beside Jasper.

“Hey,” he said softly, voice steady in that way people use when they don’t want to spook a spooked animal. “I think you dropped your sanity back there. Mind if I help you pick it up?”

He reached into the bag Jasper held open and gently placed Two-Darn inside with the others. The little frog didn’t protest—just nestled into a crook beside a sibling or cousin or whatever it was. Darn gave it a long look before reaching into his shirt and pulling out a pen. He presses the button and reaches into the bag. He draws "Ⅱ" on Two-Darn's head, then returned his attention to Jasper.

“You’re doin’ good, man,” he said, grabbing another frog that had hopped too close to the coffee station. “Real good. Better than me, if we’re being honest. I was ready to nope out the second the walls started leaking frogs, but…”

He nodded toward Joann. Toward the others.

“Guess we all needed someone to help carry the crazy.”

Darn knelt beside him, shoulder to shoulder now, and started scooping frogs with a weird, methodical calm—like they were picking apples in some twisted orchard.

“Name’s Darn, by the way. Short for Darnell. That little guy I dropped in? That’s Two-Darn. Figured if I was gonna lose my mind, I might as well make a friend on the way.”

He managed a half-smile, crooked and tired. Then, after a beat:

“You think if we fill this bag up, the station grants us a wish or somethin’?”
Klown​

 

[PawPawkit]

The frog blinks slowly, it's watery eyes looking at Newton without fear, just with wonder and curiosity. The frog doesn't seem to scared of Newton's droopy eyes, of his rat's nest of hair, of his much taller and thinner frame. In fact, the frog lets out a little meep before it's small, lemony, bulbous body slowly makes its way towards Newton's open backpack, and eventually scrambles in. Newton then gently turns his backpack towards himself to close up his backpack, the fabric rustling against the tiles. Those large watery eyes peek up at Newton, slowly blinking one eye at a time. Every once in a while, Newton will hear scrabbling and scrambling and the whump, whump, whump of metal cans lightly hitting fabric.

As the scrambling and meeping go on for a few moments, Newton realizes how awkward it must for the frog to find purchase on the cans. Newton talks to the frog as gently as he can, careful not to scare the creature.
"Hey, little man," Newton's voice is in his usual laid back tone. "The bag doesn't seem too comfy right now, so mind if I grab you, dude?" The frog lets out another meep, and it stops scrambling on top of the cans. Newton lowers his hands gently into his bag, careful not to let his dirty, uneven fingernails cut the creature. He lifts the frog just as gently, and places it in his hair. The round, yellow frog settles there comfortably.

"Also, little dude, can I call you Thumbs?" The lemon frog let out a little cheep, and begins to suck on Newton's hair the way a baby sucks its thumb, chew on it. In spite of himself, in spite of the fact that a lemon frog is eating his hair, Newton lets out a happy laugh, a short guh-huhuhuhhuhuh, followed by a full, genuine smile. That smile is unlike the half smiles he'd been giving everyone, and it is a neon sign that there is something that makes him happy.

 

[Klown]

J a s p e r A n t o v a
location: gas station
interaction: darnell Kameron Esters-
mentions: joann Gigglecake newton PawPawkit ​

His song was the battered mechanism of a music box, pitched like the final remnants of brittle glass flaking onto the floor. It was meager comfort. Something sang by his mother once on restless nights—of which there were plenty.

He continued collecting the frogs, not straying far from Joann. Holding one in his palm, he stared into its eyes. Impossibly full of an astounding vacancy, like it knew everything and nothing all at once. When it chirped, he tried matching its rhythm to the song.

Recognition settled on Jasper’s face if only for a second. It was minimal, superficial. The placating voice of the man beside him belonging to the guy who’d pointed out the door was missing. One of his intended partners in touring the gas station before it’d warped itself into a living dream.

“Yeah, me and my butterfingers.” Jasper snorted a soft laugh. His sanity definitely felt lacking. He quietly watched the man pen a roman two on his frog’s head. The ink bled into the thick membrane of its skin, giving it more the appearance of stripes than a number, but the intent was noticeable. With Darnell’s shoulder against his, Jasper felt anchored. Present. A clarity that ought to be harrowing but was instead grounding.

Darnell’s tired smile is met with a bright, rejuvenated one. All ripe, relieved cheeks and an appreciative glint in blue eyes.

“I hope we at least get that,” Jasper shrugged, careful not to cover Two-Darn with the added frogs he slipped into the bag. He leaned in conspiratorially, catching the clerk from the corner of his eye as he giddily whispered, “something tells me a paycheck isn’t even on the table.” Maintaining the scarcity of space between them, like there were still more secrets to share, Jasper held up his fist for a fist bump.

“I’m Jasper, by the way. Not short for anything, so I’ll leave that up to you if you want!” When he does let the space between them breathe, it’s because the sound of laughter drew him away. Pulled into its orbit like a hapless space rock. His initial tour buddy had a frog on his head. The exhausted creases that’d given his features a rugged edge softened into something youthful, almost innocent. Jasper regretted not having asked for his name.

“What would you wish for if this place actually did grant us all a wish or two?” He asked Darnell, returning to the heavy bag in his hands, trying to count the frogs despite their wriggling and indistinguishable likeness to each other—with the exception of Two-Darn. ​

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