I believe that I am in Hell,

[Justin doesn't bother making a post. Neil has already articulated his thoughts on the door, and anyone who wants to find him will know that he's either at the Police Station or in Xanadu. (He would spend more time in the apartment, but the thought that Neil and Todd might end up separated if the door works is more distressing when he's around them.)

He has a bouquet of pink orchids with him. Homegrown, of course, and intended for one very specific visitor, if she comes. She has to come. If the door works, this might be his last chance to see her.

It might be his last chance to see anyone. Justin is, as usual, not optimistic about the outcome of the experiment with the door. At best, everyone with somewhere to be will leave. At worst--well, he's torn between worst-cast scenarios. Either the City could be destroyed and take everyone with it or the Anonymous Movement could force everyone out. (Okay, the first is worst, but the outcomes are equally distasteful. He would lose the only people he cares about either way.) Such lines of thought make Justin even broodier than usual, which is a significant achievement.

Maybe, for once, the worst won't happen.]


[COMMENTS]

[A very wet hand grabs the recording device. After a moment of darkness, the device is set down (with absolutely no gentleness whatsoever) on the edge of the fountain. From off screen:]

I'm not surprised you're here.

[After a few moments full of drippy noises--the sounds of someone wringing his shirt and hair out, maybe--the device is retrieved and turned to show a wet and unamused Justin.]

It hasn't been a year, has it?


[COMMENTS]

[action]

[Justin, looking older and more worn than usual, is in the garden. If his rumpled appearance or the cigarettes don't indicate a cursed state, his complete inaction should. He's seldom idle, usually, and the police force has been keeping him occupied lately.

But right now, he's sitting under a tree. Smoking. Looking either bored or blank--it's difficult to tell. He's not going anywhere soon.]


[text]

This again. And again, and again, and again. The details change but the plot repeats itself. Not just one weekend a month or even here alone. Listen to the clock. Each tick is just like the one preceding it, like the one following it. Tedious second after tedious second. Identical seconds, adding up to minutes and hours and days and years that blur together into a single unremarkable life until, finally, we have the privilege of dying.

I wonder why we bother living through the tedium.

Why do we consider life so valuable when it ultimately comes to nothing?


[ooc: Cursed with The Years That Never Were. This is a Justin I've been working on for a while, so there's an explanation for the curious. Responses will come from the curse journal, mostly.]

[COMMENTS]

I don’t remember the curses on a weekend like this being so uniform. It’s a comfort, almost, knowing that so many others are afflicted with the same thing.

It’s also startling to wake up and find that, not only is your body not your own, but someone you know is living a radically different life than they were yesterday. Startling, not surprising. Living in the City makes surprises few and far between (and those few surprises are almost inevitably unpleasant)—or so I think.

If you’re unhappy about your situation this weekend, remember that it won’t last. Nothing, good or bad, ever does.


[Justin is—like much of the City, it seems—not the same gender as usual. Also like many others in the City, he has decided to distract himself by drinking. After stopping by the police station to grab some work to do, he heads to one of the smaller bars in town. It’s not quite a dive, but only just. On a normal day, he would hide in the corner. Cursed, however, he feels confident enough that no one will recognize him and instigate a conversation.

Should anyone meander into this bar, they may see a young, willowy woman sitting alone, staring morosely at a stack of papers and drinking almost absently.]


[COMMENTS]

[All Justin had wanted was lunch. Unfortunately, the café seems to have embraced a clothing-optional philosophy... along with the rest of the City. So much for lunch or, for that matter, ever leaving the apartment again once he gets there.]

There's a... a curse today, I assume. If you're not affected and you haven't been out today--if you haven't seen anything yet--just stay at home.

Don't check the network, either.


[ooc: Decidedly not cursed. Mortify at will, action as you like if your character is in the vicinity of Café Juliet or just running around outside.]

[COMMENTS]

[Justin, unaffected by the cold induced by sitting near the fountain that the City had seen fit to drop him into during winter, finally tires of waiting for what he’s convinced what must be a trick of the mind to dissipate and resolve itself into the nothingness of death. For a lack of any other distractions, he fumbles with the device he had found in his pocket earlier.

He doesn’t fully understand why he would bother hallucinating what resembles a camcorder. The brain is truly a strange and unfathomable thing.]

Am I dead yet?

[It’s a ridiculous question. He still exists enough to imagine things; the answer is clearly no.]

If not--if not, I hope this doesn't last long.