pancakevase replied to your post: pancakevase replied to your post: pancakevase...
I might be misremembering, but didn’t you LOL at the people whose ~lives were over~ due to SPN outing fandom, back in the day? I FEEL LIKE THIS IS SOMETHING YOU LOLED AT, BACK IN THE DAY. :P
NO YOU MISUNDERSTAND ME MY LIFE WOULD NOT BE OVER DUE TO HER KNOWING ABOUT FANDOM MY LIFE WOULD BE OVER DUE TO THE POSSIBILITY OF HER THEN JOINING FANDOM
pancakevase replied to your post: pancakevase replied to your post: oh god I just...
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT THAT.
I MEAN IT IS SUPER UNLIKELY BECAUSE THE DVDS ARE PRETTY EXPENSIVE AND IDTHINK THE SHOW IS EVER REALLY REPEATED MUCH ON TELLY AND ALSO THE SHOW PROBABLY JUST ISN'T SCARY ENOUGH FOR HER
BUT WHAT IF SHE GIVES IT A GO
AND GETS INTO THE PLOT DESPITE THE LOW SCARE FACTOR
pancakevase answered your question: Can someone please tell me that I don't need to see a LOTR all-nighter at the Imax?
I’VE BEEN AND IT WAS GREAT
flightinflame answered your question: Can someone please tell me that I don't need to see a LOTR all-nighter at the Imax?
xD when would it be? If its a time you’re available, maybe it’d be good fun
alivocat answered your question: Can someone please tell me that I don't need to see a LOTR all-nighter at the Imax?
YOU HAVE TO GO SEE IT
littlewiggy replied to your post: Can someone please tell me that I don't need to see a LOTR all-nighter at the Imax?
False. You do.
seiya234 answered your question: Can someone please tell me that I don't need to see a LOTR all-nighter at the Imax?
DO IT
...
I don't know what I expected.
(Okay, so it's all the original 32mm cuts, so no extended editions, and it's be 'normal-sized', so about a third of the IMAX screen, which may or may not send me insane, idk.)
pancakevase replied to your post: oh my god, I’ve suddenly remembered I once started...
OH MY GOD. Life on Mars + Sherlock Holmes = I WOULD ACTUALLY DIE???
I fooound it!
Sam wakes up to the sudden roar of silence- the sudden awareness of silence, when seconds ago he was running down a narrow alley, dodging the laundry strung across like banners, footsteps and shouting and the chase pounding in his ears like drums as he ran after- who? A collar, just a lad, peddling drugs and beating up grannies- Brian, or Ben, or something like that. (Sam licks his lips dryly, swallowing back the taste of something sharp and bitter). The kid swerved out onto the road and Sam followed and-
Silence. The rough feeling of the ground between his shoulder blades, one arm jarring at an awkward angle and two hard points of pain pressing in at his temples. He rubs grit between his fingers, and they come away sticky.
It’s quiet, Sam thinks with a wry smile that tugs sorely at the corner of his mouth, too quiet. Something bad has happened, ‘though he doesn’t know what. Instinct. Gene will be so proud.
Where’s Gene?
For all the confusion, the disorientation, the rising tide of dread, that’s the thought that makes him move, and his eyes peel open like they’ve been shut for hours. He stares up into the sky- and somehow the fact that he’s still outside, not looking at some strange ceiling or face or the inside of a coffin fills him with a jolt of relief.
The sky is dark and clear, patterned with stars and the green-edged tinge of a recent sunset. There’s no moon in sight. There’s no sun in sight either, for all Sam knows- he knows- that a couple of seconds ago it was sunny and it was nearly lunchtime and he was running.
“Guv?” he calls out, voice small and quiet and close in the stillness. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, looks around. “Guv? Chris? Annie?”
This is not Manchester.
This is not even nineteen-seventy-three.
It’s dark; the kind of darkness of no electric lights, no orange glow of light pollution, the rapidly fading greenish hues of twilight. Everything glows strangely in gas-lamp-light, shifting and dancing and somehow moist.
No, Sam realises. That’s not the light.
The cobbles are slick with blood. It’s coating his fingers. It’s in his hair. It’s staining his suit (strange and new, it dawns on him, the kind of cut you only see in history books and period films). He can taste it, almost, but he was biting his lip as he ran after Ben, Brian, whoever, wasn’t he?
“Guv?” he shouts, clawing himself onto his feet and spinning on the spot, slip-sliding on dark red stains as he cranes to look into the shadows. Because Gene is in his head and this is in his head and who’s to say his subconscious won’t stick with the same characters twice?
‘Guv?’ his own voice bounces back at him, echoes strangely muffled in the empty street. Nobody’s home; houses deserted, windows gaping black and nothing.
“What,” Sam hisses, “is going on?”
He knows, the way only a copper can, that- for all the sticky-tight feeling of pain somewhere at the back of his skull- the blood isn’t his.
He knows, the way anyone with eyes and half an ounce of common sense can, that someone bleeding that much shouldn’t be able to get up and walk away.
The heavy smell lingering in the air, the strange flat taste in the back of his throat: it’s death. It’s rot. It’s everything going completely fucking wrong.
This is not a good place to be.
Slowly, Sam begins to walk, following the gas-lamps and the scent of slightly cleaner air, and his footsteps sound unnaturally loud in the silence.
He’s alone, he realises. For the first time in these strange months of isolation and confusion and his mother’s distant voice, he’s really, truly alone.
Somewhere not too far behind him, a light flickers and dies.
Sam begins to run.
*
There’s time. There’s time-travel. And then there’s this.
He’s running and he’s getting nowhere, getting nothing except the rhythmic thump-thumping of his feet against the ground and the beginnings of a stitch between his ribs.
The sky has turned fully black somewhere between one street and another, the only indication of any time having passed at all. Everything looks the same, row after row of dark houses and the random pattern of lamps in between. He’s playing ‘spot the difference’ with himself: what shape was that tree he passed ten minutes ago? Did the branches bend like this or like that? Has he seen that splatter of blood before? Is the solitary lamp in the distance a sign of something new or have the others just gone out?
Sometimes he sees movement in windows or alleyways or the corners of the eyes, but when he turns his head, it’s gone. Something tells him not to call out after it (instinct, Sammy-boy, says a voice in his head that sounds a lot like Gene, I told you so.)
He’s been running for ten minutes, an hour, the whole fucking night, when Sam’s breath catches in his throat and he staggers, ankle twisting sideways. The shock of it sends him flying, elbows first, to the ground.
He breathes in, out, in slowly through his nose, and rolls onto his back.
“Alright. Okay. I get it. I’m alone. I’m probably going insane. Running isn’t getting me anywhere.” He spits out dirt, checking for broken teeth with his tongue, and climbs up onto his knees. “What’s going on? Why am I even here? This isn’t fair.”
His voice raises of its own accord, his hands curling into fists as he repeats, “This isn’t fair. Wasn’t nineteen-seventy-three bad enough? What do you want from me? Come on! Talk to me!”
There’s no answer. Of course there’s no bloody answer.
Sam rocks back onto his heels, breathing heavily as the tension drains out of him. He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, pressing in until bright bursts of colour flourish and die behind his eyelids.
Things flicker.
As sudden and as smooth as if it had always been, his breathing fills the world, shifting into the echo and the rattle-click of a hospital ventilator.
Sam laughs shakily. He lets his hands drop down to his sides, eyes closed and head tilted back, and breathes out, “Thank you.” The machine beeps on in the background, in tune with his heartbeat and the most real moment of the whole bloody day.
Tyler, says Gene from somewhere deep inside and all around.
Sam’s eyes snap open.
The plonk insists we all talk to you, in case the car didn’t knock out all of your brains. What there is of ‘em, anyway. The doctors reckon you’ll hear us, if you’re in there.
The disembodied Gene sniffs, clearing his throat, so close Sam can almost feel it. I don’t know quite what you were aiming for, Sam, running out into the road like that. But if you were trying to out-div Skelton, you’ve done us all proud.
“Gene! Guv! I’m here, tell them I’m still here!” He’s on his feet, shouting at the stars like it’ll somehow make a difference, but already nineteen-seventy-three is bleeding away, until only the steady in-and-out of the ventilator remains.
The ventilator-breath rattles, and with the same seamless transition, it’s no longer all around and inside his head at the same time but outside. To the left. Behind him and suddenly, horribly, very, very close.
A hand grabs him before he can move, before he can even react.
“Shit!” Sam exclaims, spinning on his heel and lashing out with a Gene-trained fist to the kidneys. There’s a split-second between the light in his eyes and the electrodes sparking in his brain where it’s a purely automatic reaction. Then the neurons fire up and he sees what’s coming, and even as his fist swings he realises there’s no point in punches because the man lunging forwards can’t be- because nobody can look like that and be alive.
There’s blood. There’s a lot of blood. Blood and gore and bone visible where all the flesh, muscle, skin tissue has been ripped off. Sam can see cartilage where his- its nose has been torn clean away, and a sliver of what might be brain glistening wetly in its hairline.
Great. A zombie, the detached, numb part of his brain is thinking as he staggers back, hands flying out to force its head away. He saw enough horror films in the future to know what that gaping mouth means; those blood-smeared lips and bits of tendon, human hair, caught between its teeth; that hungry, hungry look in its dead, dead eyes. What part of my subconscious do I have to thank for this?
The rest of him is thinking Oh God.
And Help.
And I don’t want to die.
The man- not a zombie, not possible, not happening- isn’t stronger, or bigger, but it doesn’t need to stop, to catch its breath, to feel Sam’s desperate, hopeless, blood-slicked fingers wrapped around its greying neck.
It stinks of rotting flesh.
“Help!” Sam shouts over the buzz of terror in his ears. “Help! Please! Is anybody there? Help me!”
He glances over his shoulder, and- that was his mistake- suddenly he’s falling backwards, smack against the paving stones with the air jolted from his lungs. And he can’t breathe, and he’s staring the- whatever it is- right in its cloudy eyes as it lands on top of him and there’s nothing there, oh God, there’s nothing in them at all and he wonders what happens when you die in the dream of a dream?
“Close your eyes and mouth,” says a voice from above, cutting through Sam’s panic so sharply, so clearly, he can’t help but obey, “and keep your head down.”
He squeezes his eyelids tightly shut, lips pressed together, and then there’s the sharp whistle of something cutting through the air, followed seconds later by a dull, wet thwock. The body sags forwards on top of him, lifeless, dusting his face with a fine rain of gore.
Head wounds, the cold little voice reminds him in the silence, always bleed heavily.
“Keep still,” the same voice says, filled with the authoritative tone of a man who has never even considered he might be disobeyed. It seems like a good idea anyway, so Sam doesn’t move, feeling the weight ease as the corpse is lifted off of him, his fingers uncurling from around its sticky, clammy neck. He breathes in deeply through his nose, relishing the sweeter air.
“Here,” says a second voice, closer than the other, deeper, kinder. He presses something soft and crisp loosely into Sam’s hands. “Wipe the blood from your face, but do be careful not to get it in your eyes.”
“Thanks,” Sam mutters, mouth dry. He clears his throat, licking his lips, and wipes the cloth down his face. It smells so clean that, for a second, he buries his face in it, breathing deep around the beginnings of panic and nausea and what the fuck just happened? Just for a second, then he sits up, crumpling the cloth- the handkerchief, really; even in this light he can see the expensive looking monogram, ‘J.W’- in his hand.
“You’re very clean,” he says, after a pause. “For zombie-hunters.”
He’s trying for a laugh, half-heartedly, but the man crouched down next to him- J.W, he assumes- frowns. The other isn’t even looking at them, standing a couple of feet away and gazing out into the distance. He looks as sharp as he sounded, all long, thin bones and knife-point profile. There’s a poker hanging from his fingers with such ease, such casualness, that Sam feels a little sick. Back home (either home), it would be a murder weapon.
“I have studied their habits closely,” the man remarks distantly, as he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and, with a look of mild irritation, begins to wipe the poker clean. “They cannot communicate, but they are drawn to noise, and they follow,” a flicker of disgust, “like sheep.”
“What my friend means,” J.W explains, laying a hand on Sam’s shoulder, “is that more are coming.”
*
Somehow, the city makes more sense now he isn’t alone. Sam follows his rescuers closely in the darkness, breath catching in his throat at every wet noise in the shadows or whisper from behind him, and they lead him down the alleys and the shortcuts his eyes had slid over as he ran. The streets grow narrow, darker, closer, and the thin man’s pace begins to slow.
“Look,” says Sam, with a jolt of surprise at the loudness of his own voice. J.W shoots him a reproachful look and presses a finger to his lips.
“Sorry,” Sam begins again quickly, quietly, “but look. What is going on here? Okay, you saved my life, but you haven’t told me anything and- I want answers, okay? I don’t know where you’re taking me, but I’m not going any further until you explain.”
“I haven’t saved your life, Inspector Tyler,” says the thin man, drawing to an abrupt halt. “Merely prolonged it.”
“How do you know my-” Sam pauses. A slow smile creeps across his face. “That’s interesting, because we were all so busy being attacked by- by bloody madmen and hitting people with pokers, we never actually got ‘round to formal introductions. I don’t know who you are; you don’t know who I am.” He’s grinning broadly, brightly, like a- well, a madman; but he doesn’t care, because this is it. “You’ve slipped up, see? The beauty of the human brain! It’s good, yeah- oh, it’s good, but it’s not infallible. Tricks of the mind, right?
The figment of my imagination has made a mistake,” he shouts out into the night, “this isn’t real, take me home!”
A hands lands suddenly on his shoulder, jolting him out of his victory and into the real world- whatever sorry excuse for a real world his brain seems to think this is- and when Sam spins around, J.W is staring at him in concern. His gaze is warm. Real.
“You’ve had a shock,” he says, “and taken a nasty bump to the head. Things will make more sense in the morning.”
“No, I want to hear this explanation now.” Sam shrugs J.W’s hand away, turning to glare at the thin man. “I want to go home. Now.”
The thin man had watched Sam silently throughout his outburst, his expression indecipherable with a shade of bored, but he draws himself up at the accusing stare and his eyes flicker with something like amusement.
“If I have made a mistake, Inspector, I am not at liberty to see it. That you can makes you either very intelligent or very foolish, although I’m not yet sure which. As for the matter of your name; why, it was quite obvious once I was in full possession of the facts.”
“What facts?” Sam snaps. He crosses his arms against the rising tide of impatient energy, clenching his jaw tightly.
The thin man merely smiles, his amusement all the more apparent. “Lestrade has made it quite known for some time that an Inspector Tyler was to be transferring from Manchester. You can hardly deny that your accent is from the area. Any fool can see that your suit was recently purchased, and the stitching is quite typical of Northern manufacturers. Finally, I cannot imagine why any man save yourself would come to London, given the current situation. Quite why you chose to ignore the blockades on the roads,” he adds, with a brightness that doesn’t quite fit the situation, “I’m not yet sure, but it is only a matter of time.”
There’s a moment of silence, J.W looking nervously up and down the alleyway, the thin man simply looking pleased with himself. Sam lets his shoulders drop back against the alley wall, and suppresses a shiver as the dampness begins to seep through his strange new jacket on contact.
He’s cold, he’s tired, he wants to go home.
“Right,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose until it hurts. “And I suppose you’re Sherlock Holmes.”
“Ah.” The thin man smiles his situationally inappropriate smile, a look in his eyes that can only be pride. “I see my reputation has preceded me.”
Sam closes his eyes against the world, and lets the laughter pour out.
THE END SRY. I can't remember most of what I had planned (it is from 2007 so yknow) but I believe it was going to end with a swarm overpowering 221B and them all having a heroic last stand and Holmes setting fire to the house to kill as many zombies as possible
