nowin3d

[nowin3d]

✨ enjoying food and drinks in the waking world 🍹✨ 

[nowin3d]

wanted to write. anxiety hit due to some bureaucracy bullshit irl. disco drop instead ✨️

[nowin3d]

so we know bill has Creature Instinct and will drag dead animals to you like a cat to show appreciation. just letting you know he also naps on your stuff, knocks over your things if you ignore him, bites.. etc.

[nowin3d]

the door chime of the antique store rings with his entrance, as surely as her mind does when he crawls into it. an odd setting for the brain to conjure, and rather detailed with all the little knick-knacks, but as he leans on his cane and bemusedly watches her jotting down notes, he assumes it's her subconscious working through the latest episode of her occult jig. he's pretty sure that seventeenth-century vase is haunted! the mind is tricky like that, solving its own problems through unconscious efforts. one as sleep-deprived as hers is even trickier. the little room seems to tremble, blurring at the edges and spiralling into nothingness. this is only a dream, and the store is bereft of presence — except for its owner and her unwelcome guest. they're in her mindscape, after all! her physical body is probably passed out somewhere after several sleepless nights. one more evening spent with caffeine and other bill-repellent beverages and he'd have started taking it as a personal insult. 〈 i was starting to think you were ignoring me, bells. i'll chalk it down to you being busy, but i'm a little hurt. 〉 he's toying with a random figurine of some goddess as he speaks, which breaks when he drops it in favour of standing beside isabella, leaning against the counter, gloved hand poking at her notes, 〈 whoops. ANYWAY, I CAN HELP WITH THAT! you know what they say, three eyes are better than two! 〉

ONE ORDER OF SWEET DREAMS COMING UP, FT. @riviyerah

[nowin3d]

who's doing this for bill? him and WHO?

[nowin3d]

would you like to experience nightmares and hallucinations of varying degrees ? it's on the house. aka starter call!

[nowin3d]

okay here's a little plotting guide / interest tracker <3

[nowin3d]

the air turns liminal at the cusp of the witching hour. a little pocket of the uncanny, allowing one to slip between the cracks of reality and dreams, when the world sleeps. and sleep it does, just ask the corpse behind the welcome desk! there is a decrepit, empty motel off the side of the road, and the shadow of a man in a coat stands at the door. the man is whistling an old tune, cane looped around his arm as he watches the girl dragging the remnants of a living thing across the flooring.

there's nothing wrong with a midnight snack, bill can't fault @ftzie for being hungry. it's only natural! 〈 i take it the place's closed? 〉 his chuckle is made louder with the taps of his cane against wood as he stalks closer. gloved hand rings the service bell once, twice. she asks him if he saw everything, and he grins, and tilts his head, 〈 i see LOTS OF THINGS, red! 〉 he says this, and she must pick up on the fact that he's a tourist among humans, something just off beneath the flesh — talk about wolfy senses, wow! — because her next question is right up his alley! or maybe she was being snappy, but it does not bother bill one bit. it's funny all the same.

GINGER FITZGERALD PONDERS, CAN YOU SEE THROUGH A WALL? CAN YOU SEE THROUGH HUMAN SKIN?

he can see enough to know the missing arm off the man is in the other room, but that's besides the point. nudging the carcass with his cane, bill makes a show of looking it over, though evidently not bothered at all with the mess. he pokes it again, and something spills out. 〈 WELL, YIKES! that's not a very difficult one to see through, girly. and that... must be the guts! is it just me or are sfx getting BETTER? 〉 it is not an answer to her question, not really, but answer enough.

[nowin3d]

there's actually another part to this so wip but....!!!

[nowin3d]

i think bill should be allowed to make jokes he picked up from long-lost civilizations .. but no one would get them :(

[nowin3d]

I’m gunna eat a whole bottle of flinstones vitamins and astral project to mcdonalds to order a fourth dimensional mcflurry and cry in the mcbathroom

[nowin3d]

the dissection of the mind can be physical and metaphysical, and to anatomize one's dreams is an ordeal far bloodier than running a knife through muscle. the heart of the subconscious, what a neat little place. bill lounges in @mvltiversed's dreams like he owns them — and if you ask him, he does! — a parasite made god here, a false idol, and he's thoroughly enjoying the shrine ford has made of his own mind. an altar, all for him! today, in the dream, there is a hazy blackboard the man is using to note down equations, with bill's help, and they've got a good work-flow going! bill almost doesn't expect the shift in conversation promoted by the musing, but hey, it's his speciality, so he indulges.

STANFORD PINES MUSES, IN A DREAM, ARE ALL THE CHARACTERS REALLY YOU - DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF YOU?

muse nudges its artist, poking his head with one finger, 〈 WELL, HEY, I'M HERE, TOO! maybe you're not as alone in this big, scary, genius mind of yours as you think! a little company goes a long way, doesn't it? 〉 with a flick of his cane, the dream shifts, the calculations all whooshed away... the dream-world waits, like limbo, for them to continue. what was that about dante and virgil? well, this is certainly better than that old tome! 〈 let's put that thesis to the test, sixer! just you, me, and whatever dark corners of your brain we can dig up. what'ya wanna dream about? 〉

[nowin3d]

—         ask meme      :      THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR,   MAX GLADSTONE & AMAL EL-MOHTAR.pronouns / tenses changed in some places.

twice is coincidence. three times is enemy action.

killing gets easier with practice, in mechanics and technique. having killed never does.

you know — just as i’ve known, since our eyes met — that we have unfinished business.

it’s been so long since i last started a new conversation.

we knew one another as one knows a childhood dream.

our glorious crystal future shines so bright i gotta wear shades, as the prophets say.

i’d walk a swath of rot through your verdancy, no matter how light i tried to step.

it grieves me to think you’d make a boring poker player. but then i imagine you’d cheat, and that’s a comfort.

let me tell you what you have told me, speaking plain: you could have killed me, but didn’t.

tell me something true, or tell me nothing at all.

there’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there?

do i have you still? do i address empty air and the flies that will eat this carcass?

if we’re to be at war, we might as well entertain each other.

that’s what we treasure. that’s us, always: the volcano and the wave.

hunger, ___ — to sate a hunger or to stoke it, to feel hunger as a furnace, to trace its edges like teeth — is this a thing you, singly, know?

have you ever had a hunger that whetted itself on what you fed it, sharpened so keen and bright that it might split you open, break a new thing out? sometimes i think that’s what i have instead of friends.

this is a place i love, and hate myself for loving.

i was the only person on that tiny rock, and i made the world go dark.

i wanted to be seen. that need dug into the heart of me.

i was light, hollowed, hungry.

have you been lonely?

you place each stone expecting it may do many things. a confession is also a dare is also a compulsion.

i have observed friendship as one observes high holy days.

harvest is not a word for swiftness; the future harvests us, stomps us into wine, and we grow stronger and more potent together.

what i return to, the me-ness that i know as pure, inescapable self… is hunger.

i love cities. to be alone in a crowd, apart and belonging, to have distance between what i see and what i am.

shit. i’m sorry. i can’t keep up the joke. and it’s wrong to call you enemy.

i am more sensitive to your footsteps, i think, than anyone alive.

this letter is a knife at my neck, if cutting’s what you want.

i see you as a wave, as a bird, as a wolf. i try not to think of you the same way twice.

i have built a you within me, or you have. i wonder what of me there is in you.

you’ve whetted me like a stone.

i remember bright light, and then — hunger. hunger that was turning me inside out, hunger in the most primal way imaginable, hunger that obliterated every other thing.

i was only my own body, only my own senses, only a girl whose parents were running to her because she had a bad dream.

this feels like teetering on the brink of something that will unmake me. but i trust you.

there was, i am sure, a time i did not know you. or did i dream that me, as i’ve so often dreamed of you?

i want to be a body for you.

i sought loneliness when i was young. but when i think of you, i want to be alone together.

i want to be a context for you, and you for me.

i love you, and i love you, and i want to find out what that means together.

this is me, the truth of me: broken open, in the palm of your hand, dying.

you must feel it — the difference? we’re on the brink of something.

i would rather break the world than lose you.

i’ll be all the poets. i’ll kill them all and take each one’s place in turn, and every time love’s written it will be to you.

how could you die like this? how could you die at all?

sometimes you have to hold a person, though they’ll mistake embrace for strangulation.

[nowin3d]

something about cosmic horrors and space and loneliness. imagine being such a powerful, intelligent creature ... and being all alone in infinite space. the last of your kind, some forgotten civilization that no one has heard of. it's an isolating thing, to know that there will never be anyone who can really, truly understand you ... :')

[nowin3d]

* unleashes the horrors upon you * consider this a cute lil plotting call.

[nowin3d]

the mutilated parts of a story are hidden in the dreams, in the margins of the mind. the brain has corridors surpassing horror, locking nightmares away in a deep subconscious, never to see the light of day. all that comes with the flesh package! the reality of existence is a gnarled thing, which begins and ends in rot. hiding those ugly parts, there is routine, the commonplace chapters, the distractions, the veil between man and the unknown. poking around in the dreams of one @demidritch makes him wonder what it is they find so interesting about playing this human simulator. ( this is the boring sitcom bit of the human psyche, if you ask bill! )

what's funny are nightmares! sometimes, nightmares are locked behind doors, which bill so likes knocking on — but even he knows to steer clear of whatever ancient thing occupies the mind of joanne. there is something old which walks here, in the demesnes of their dreams. he does not need to see it to feel its presence, a cosmic stamp declaring its existence. yeesh, scary stuff! that doesn't mean he can't have a little fun, and when he goes opening doors to their terrors and their fears and lets them have at it for the duration of a rem cycle, he does, indeed, find it very humorous!

another door opens, then closes. took them long enough to find him! they're not looking too good. it's probably the anger. a grin is thrown their way, entity's arms crossed neatly behind his back, head tilting, 〈 OOOH! what's that perfume you're wearing? channel N°cosmic dread? 〉 his laugh rings and rings, echoing — their remark interrupts him, and he huffs in annoyance,

JOANNE HOSHINO SAYS, IS IT FUNNY TO YOU? IT'S NOT TO ME.

the room contorts into a sanitized, simple living room, with no monsters beneath its creaking floorboards. very sitcom-y, very mundane. 〈 it's funny because it's sad! 〉 taking an empty seat on the couch, he ropes them along with his cane. as soon as they're seated, prim and proper, a bucket of popcorn manifests into their hands. the television flips to some old film, probably the day the earth stood still, judging by the alien man, but it's never easy to describe what you're seeing in a dream! 〈 is this reeeeeally what you wanna be doing with your existence? forever? UGH! mope all you want, it's not gonna change what you are. 〉

[nowin3d]

bill and his complicated history with every lovecraftian horror is smth that can be so funny ... ten novels worth of information. ask him about it, he'll tell you about his glory days.