Speechless: IC

[Govannon]

Speechless: IC

For now, this is blank. I will be editing in any important points as the story progresses.

[Govannon]

Somewhere, in the dark, in a dungeon far removed from the the surface of the Earth, four people lay slumped against walls and in corners, four people that were far more important than they knew. Gerard Robyn, Rina Lovecraft, Kylie Small, and Susan Madison. Four individuals, bound together, must try to escape their bonds. The wheel of fate is turning, and those that determine where it will stop are about to wake.

The first thing that Gerard heard upon waking was a drip. Steady, rhythmic, echoing, annoying. Very, very annoying. Annoying enough for Gerard to flip open an eyelid to glare at whatever it was that was making the sound. God, I'm an idiot. It's just some water dripping from the roof onto the floor. Wait. Since when does my roof have a leak? since when is my floor stone? and with that unpleasant realization, Gerard was jolted abruptly from his slumber. He was not where he had fallen asleep.

The entire room looked like some sort of hellish wine cellar. Old stone bricks made the large arched roof and walls, while uneven cobblestones made the floor. Water pooled in corners and depressions, seemingly at random, around the room and the roof overhead was leaking from at least a half dozen places. There was something, familiar about the room in some way, not in a good way, but something that sent a shiver up Gerards spine. Overall, the entire room seemed, aged, somehow. Like it had been left alone and forgotten for far too long. Cobwebs festooned the walls and the corners, and there was a particularly big one right near that girl's head. Wait.

Gerard opened his mouth and screamed at the girl to wake up, or at least he tried. There wasn't any sound, his mouth opened, but nothing came out. Had he gone deaf? Drip. Perhaps not. He would have to worry about the speech later, for now, he had to wake the girl up, and lacking any other means of communication he had to do it in a slightly less eloquent way than he otherwise would have liked, shaking her by the shoulders.

<OOC> If you're posting first, you can be the one I'm waking up or not. Your choice.

[Lacey]

Kylie awoke, and started to panic. Every night, she triple checked to make sure the alarm on her clock would start a few hours before she usually awoke so she wouldn’t have to suffer through that horrible silence while she scrambled in a terror to get her radio to work. To end the silence. Without paying heed to the hand on her shoulder, she flung her arms, waiting to hit the alarm clock so she could fumble for the releasing sound.

Nothing but the body of whoever had awoken her. Eye wide in horror, Kylie opened her mouth to scream; to cut the quiet. No sound came from her throat. Sitting up, nearly hitting the person and going though a large cobweb as she did so, she curled up into a ball. Already tears were streaming down her face until she found some sound; any sound. There was a steady flow of drips. A small sense of calm returned to her and she listened to the breathing of the person, a man, who’d woken her.

Thank God, she thought with a sigh, pulling the cobwebs from her hair and wiping her tears with her sleeve. Looking at the man, she gave him a broad smile, trying to pretend that she hadn’t had a panic attack and waved at him cheerily.

She stood, nearly jumping up. The sound of her feet slapping again the cold stone just added to the sound and she smiled, jumping again without caring what the man thought, just to make the sound again. Turning to him again, she tried to say hello, but though the words formed on her lips, no sound emerged.

How do you sign my name again? she wondered, trying to work out her fingers. In a few moments, she figured out how to sign K-Y-L-I but forgot how to sign the E.

Lyrics formed in her head, and she again concentrated on the sounds, but letting the song flow through her head as a small comfort.

Now I am mute despite myself
All of them are gone
The silence overtakes me
The idle words forsake me and I am left to face me

She looked around her and saw two other bodies; girls. She motioned for the man, her gesture slightly wild, and walked over to the first she saw.

<ooc> I hope this works

[ｒａｂｂｉｔ]

Susie jerked awake. Unusual. Usually she eased out of sleep, and woke up alert, ready for the day ahead. Now the drowsiness hung around her, weighing down her eyelids and slowing her reflexes; it took her a moment to realize it was dark and how stiff her muscles were – how long had she been sleeping? The air was dank and heavy – stale. Susie’s chocolate brown eyes dilated, adjusting to the light (well, lack-there-of) and she glanced around, gagging slightly as she realized the taste in her mouth was from the air, the damp and muck.

A mild panic weighed down her chest then as she took in her surroundings. She was underground, she had to be; from the smell and how stale the air was, the chamber was pretty deep underground, too, and old. Susie hated it already. Dark and underground?


Be grateful for what you’ve got on your plate, Susie. Look at the bright side.

At least it wasn’t a smaller room.

Other people were here, too. And awake. And moving. Well, two were, the other was still asleep. But neither of them said anything which was, to her, very strange. It’s human nature to speak, to communicate, good etiquette to introduce yourself, yet they weren’t and they didn’t. The brunette got up, cleared her throat as the girl who’d spazzed out only slightly moved towards her and she opened her mouth to ask where they were, why it smelled so horrible, why they were there in the first place, but when she drew in a breath to speak, she only exhaled and it was like she didn’t know how to speak at all, had completely forgotten. It was only in that moment that Susie couldn’t remember what her voice sounded like. What were her first words? How did conversations with her friends go? Jokes? Anything. And nothing.

She looked at the other two who were awake and stared, dumbfounded.

[Govannon]

(A couple of points of description before I begin. I forgot them in my past post, and I couldn't think of any way to fit them in smoothly with this one. The room is lighted, just barely, by candles or flames placed in recesses well above the ground. The recesses don't have any discernible pattern in their height or their spacing. On one side of the room a decrepit archway stands, covered by an old unbarred door.)

The girl Gerard woke was obviously rather distressed, which was understandable given the circumstances, and after a failed attempt at speech and a couple odd little bounces, tried to do something that looked a lot like sign language. It suddenly became clear to Gerard that sign language was the perfect tool for the situation. Something that allowed them to communicate quickly and effectively, without using their voices in any way, using a predefined set of words and phrases. Unfortunately for all concerned, Gerard didn't know it.

Instead, all he could do was simply look at her with a puzzled expression and shrug his shoulders. He just didn't get it. What he did get was the fact that she was looking over his shoulder. Behind them, there were another two girls. One was awake, and seemed to have already discovered her lack of speech, while the other still lay slumped over in her corner of the room.

It was only as he moved over to attempt to wake the sleeping girl that he noticed some writing on the wall just above her head. Spotting it was something of a fluke, it just happened that the candle that cast light upon that portion of the room was lower than the others, making the writing more visible than it otherwise would have been. Seemingly chiseled into the wall by something less than perfect for the task, the writing was messy and appeared to be hurried, but that did nothing to undo it's simple message. Four names, all written slightly differently, but in the same style adorned the corner, and one of them was his.

Tapping the two woken girls, he rushed over to the wall and began gesturing frantically, alternating between pointing at his eyes, then at his name on the wall and finally at himself.

The prisoners had found their names.

<OOC> Yeah, that's great Lacey, although I don't think that anyone else knows sign language... I apologize for not mentioning the lighting and exit in my first post and I know that it's probably not the best way to work it in, but I don't have the time right now to think of any better way of putting it.

Also: I want a vote from you guys in the OOC, I originally said that I didn't want to see any quotation marks, but I realized while writing this post that good grammar would have writing in quotations. So, the question is, do you want good grammar, or the ability to say that you completed a RP without any quotation marks?

[Gsarge]

Rina was awoken by Gerard's shaking of her as she touched his shoulders with her hand a soft groan escaping from her as she opened her eyes looking up to him with a sigh as she noticed that she was very much not in her bedroom and this man that was holding her, while he didn't seem threatening at the moment, was not someone she knew. She tried to tell him to let her go as all realized she seemed unable to making any noise that could be taken as speech as she sighed and gently took hold of his hands to get to him to unhand her before rolling out from under him and standing up, right into a mass of cobwebs.

She shivered lightly with a disgusted look on her face as she brushed them off her and smoothed out her clothing trying to appear proper as her upbringing had pounded into her head.

Once that was all over she began to really take in the surrounding. Water was dripping down from the ceiling, but no apparent sounds of rain. That would mean they were most likely underground and the complex was built under some source of water, giving the style and relative decay of the architecture around them, it was unlikely they would be deep enough underground for the water dripping down to be from an aquifer but more likely a pond, stream, or river. She got up on her tip toes her arms up over her head as she looked to be trying to reach for the ceiling.

She turned back looking to where the man that had shook her and her original location as she noticed that her name was in the wall as she saw a male name on it. "Gerard." It read. She then pointed to her name and pointed to herself with a smile on her face. She then pointed to the only male name on the wall and pointed to Gerard and tilted her head to the side as if trying to give him the best she could of a questioning expression on her face to try to get to understand that she was asking if this was his name.

[Govannon]

Gerard nodded enthusiastically, yes, that was his name. He was glad to see that his message had gotten through to at least one person, Rina, as it turned out. Now he just had to figure out which one of the other two was Kylie and which was Susan.

Unfortunately for Gerard, the amount of time he had to solve that fairly simple problem was about to decrease dramatically. Unbeknown to the four inhabitants of the room below, the roof was about to lose its battle with the water above. The drips became an stream, and the stream became a torrent. It all happened quickly, far more quickly than it seemed should have been possible, the chunks of roof simply fell out only to be replaced by gushing water, and while the room was broad enough to not fill immediately, it became quickly apparent that their room would not remain habitable for much longer.

With a growing sense of urgency Gerard looked at the two unidentified females. They needed to get going soon.

[ｒａｂｂｉｔ]

Susie watched as the male went over to the wall, where her name and several others were, and pointed to the name, “Gerard.”

She blinked. That must be his name, she thought, but the brunette was much more interested in why their names were written on the wall, and why they were there, rather than whom they were. She sighed then and went to go to the wall and point out her own identity, when the ceiling collapsed and a river seemed to fall from overhead.

Surprised, Susie reeled backwards and slipped on the old tiled floor which was rapidly pooling with water. She had opened her mouth to yelp, but no sound escaped and she thudded to the ground with a splash.


Graceful, Susie, fantastically graceful.

Her chest grew tight as she climbed back to her feel, ringing as much water out of her clothes as she could. She closed her eyes and drew in a few deep breathes, releasing them with slow exhales; she felt the water rise, slower than her anxiety – it was only at her ankles, while her anxiety was twisting at her stomach.

They needed to do something. Her brown eyes searched the walls, the water-covered floor, wide and desperate.

[Govannon]

Shit. Forget the names, the situation was getting far worse, far faster than Gerard had though was going to happen. The water was rising, faster then ever now, as the roof continued to wear away above them. To make matters worse, Gerard was beginning to see something in the water. Small white chunks, polished and eroded over innumerable years were beginning to show themselves. Whether they were carried from above, or whether the water dislodged them from the floorboard Gerard didn't know, and at the moment he didn't particularly care. Similarly, he didn't know or care about what exactly the small objects were made of, something that he would later come to regret.

One of the girls yet unnamed had fallen, the water was now at their knees and rising, the other two members of the group didn't seem to be overly inclined to do anything anytime soon, and if this continued they wouldn't last very long. Well, if all else fails, you could always try the door. Well, there was that.

The thing was massive, towering at least two feet over Gerard's head, and probably about four feet across and made of a thick dark wood. The entire left side was dominated by a metal handle, which curved neatly along the edge of the door. This thing looked as though it would pose an issue all on it's own, much less with god knows how many pounds of water pushing on it. Figures that the thing had to be a pull. Grabbing near the middle of the handle, Gerard pulled as hard as he could, and the door didn't even budge. Even as he kept trying he realized the futility of the situation, he tried to call out to his companions to help him, only to remember that he had been silenced. Shit.

[Lacey]

Kylie froze. What was one to do when who-knows-how-much water is convinced that it needs to drown you as quickly as possible? It wasn’t as if she’d ever been in this situation before. Her mind was oddly blank until the most random thought came into her head, I wonder what kind of soundtrack this situation would have.

It was that thought that snapped her out of her stupor and she made her way through the water, reaching down and picking up the girl, Susan. Her pink hair was already wet and it stuck to her cheek. This whole being wet thing is really going to suck. She groaned a little bit, not bothering to wring any of the water out of her hair, knowing it would be futile to do so. Looking around, she tried to figure out what she’d missed.

Gerard was pulling on the door handle. But that answer was obviously too simple because it didn’t work. Nothing ever works the first time. It’s like a rule or something for fate to be against us at every turn. She had to smile at her own thoughts as she waded over to Gerard. That’s optimism for you!

Grabbing a lower part of the handle, she got ready to pull when someone gave her any notice that she was supposed to in the first place. The metal handle was wet and Kylie tightened her grip so she didn’t fall over like Susan had. Not that it mattered because she could hardly get any wetter.

[Gsarge]

Rina looked over the situation seeing the door and the water filling the room as she helped the girl that had fallen over steady herself as she then looked over the door and noticed one of the chunks in the water reaching out and managing to grab one as she put it away some place it wasn’t going to slip out of. Once she had the chunk in a secure place, from what anyone looking could have seen she had just stuffed it into the chest of her dress, she then took hold of the ring pulling with all her might along with Gerard not thinking about she was pressing up against him as it was really more important that they get out of the room rather than worry about being modest or invading someone’s comfort zone.

This was bad, the room was still filling with water and those chucks were still around in the water. She would worry about figuring out what was in water once the fear of drowning was out of the way. Maybe Gerard and she could work out trying to figure out what this chunk she had in her dress was. Even without being able to speak it seemed the two of them seemed to be more grounded in similar skills and learning. Why couldn’t see meet men that seemed as nice as him when her life wasn’t in danger?

The sound of the rushing water was really starting to fill her ears and her thoughts as she worked to move herself being a bit more surefooted than the other girls as being in places like these was something of her specialty not that is mattered since she had no why of letting any of them know what she knew while unable to speak. It just had to be a pull in a room filling with water.

The door opened and water rushed out of the room as the water swept her out of the room as she slammed into the a wall with a sigh as she picked herself off the wall looking around at what was around in hallway she was now inside of.