The first thing which pierces the darkness is a shrill screeching noise. Incessant and grating its sheer persistence is what brings you round to wakefulness. Sore eyes open to what initially appears to be pitch darkness punctuated by one shaft of bright light pointing away from you and cutting through the gloom.

As the fog begins to clear you realize you are lying sideways, raised in the air and suspended from falling in some kind of a harness. It then dawns on you that it's a seatbelt and as your eyes become accustomed to the dark you can see that you are in a vehicle which appears to be lying on it's side. Pieces of glass in your clothes and a cool breeze against your skin suggest the windows are broken. The one shaft of light in front of you is coming from a lonely headlight, the other must be either broken or buried in something.

Casting a look around you the vehicle appears to be a van of some kind with three seats in the front and several more in the back with what look like several boxes or crates of some kind which have now been thrown around the inside of the rear compartment. In addition to you there are four other occupants, all of whom seem to be coming to at the same time. The endless screeching is coming from the horn which the driver was slumped over but it cuts out as the driver stirs into wakefulness.

As you start to work out your situation a horrible truth starts to settle in. You don't know where you are. In fact, you don't know why you're there and then you realize you don't know who you are. The others in the van are also strangers though you do feel an odd sense of familiarity about something in this situation.

There isn't a huge amount you can do from your current suspended position but you are able to make a quick survey of your own injuries.






OOC: It doesn't really matter who is where in the vehicle so feel free to assign seating as you post. Someone has to be the driver but other than that it's just flavour.

Also while you wake up not knowing who you are you all have wallets, purses etc. on you which appear untouched and so have drivers licenses, credit cards etc. to at least give you a name and some basic details if nothing else whether you look straight away or in a bit.

"What the hell!" Mike exclaims from his position suspended above one of the rear passenger seats.  "I think my nose is broken!"

Mike pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and tries to staunch the flow of blood.  "Where's the damn seatbelt?"  He fumbles with his other hand to release the belt.

"Is everyone else okay?"
This message was last edited by the player at 01:35, Fri 05 Mar 2021.

Location: Unknown, Status:Unknown
"People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening.” - Laurell K. Hamilton, The Laughing Corpse

Jason 'comes around' and tries to move, he screams in pain,  "Ahhhhhhh!!!" He stops moving quickly and tries to figure out where he is at.
He hears a voice and responds, "Whose there? Where are you?"

Thomas wakes up and looks around to take in his surroundings, feeling the pain in his head, Thomas attempts to stop the flow of blood.  Reaching into his suit pocket, Thomas takes out his handkerchief.  Noticing that he is sitting in the drivers seat, Thomas attempts to figure out what happened.  "Hello back there, is anyone else in this vehicle?  I'm not sure who I am nor how I got here, but if there is anyone else here speak up."  Waiting for a reply Thomas attempts to remove himself from the vehicle.

The dark haired woman blinked.

Once.

Twice.

And immediately regretted it as she felt a wave of pain erupt in her skull, almost as though someone was pounding on it with some sort of hammer. She closed her eyes, tried to give it a moment to subside. Around her she could hear voices. Different voices. Men’s voices.

What the Hell was going on?

Where was she? She was suddenly aware of something digging into her. And a throbbing pain in one finger.

She risked blinking again. This time her head didn’t scream out in protest. Or at least not so much protest.

That was the point where she realised that not only did she not know where she was but she couldn’t remember anything else. Like anything at all. Not where she was. Not how she got here. Not who else was here. Wherever here was. But she felt like maybe she should know them. She wasn’t sure.

Because right now she couldn’t even remember her own name.

A wave of panic suddenly washed over her. She could feel a knot of tension in her stomach as she started to process where she was, realized that she didn’t appear to be too badly hurt. Apart from the headache and the pain in her finger. And she was in a van of some sort. On her side. She could feel a seatbelt cutting into her, began to fumble around for the release button, trying to find it in the dark. She can hear someone screaming, someone else saying that his nose is broken. Another voice coming from the driver’s seat. ”Where are we?” She said. ”What just happened?”

A thought then flashed through her mind. What if it catches fire? ”We need to get out of here! NOW!” Her voice was becoming more anxious as she redoubled her efforts to find the seatbelt release.

The seatbelts prove difficult to undo, straining as they are against weight bearing down on them and most having locked into place presumably as a result of whatever happened to land you in this situation.

Once released from the belts the easiest route of egress from the van proves to be through the  left hand doors, now pointing roughly upwards. The front door is jammed shut but the broken window can be easily enough squeezed through. The panel door at the back is more operational and slides roughly backwards allowing those using that method to then slide ungainly on to the ground outside.

Outside the vehicle you find yourselves in a ditch on the side of a long, straight road running as far as you can see in either direction. The van lies on it's side in the ditch, scrapped and battered like it's been in an accident. It is an otherwise unremarkable white van with no particular markings.

Now you are in the cool evening air you see it isn't as dark as you thought. The sun has set but there's still enough light to see by though that light is fading fast. On either side of the road are cornfields, with the occasional patch of woodland, as far as you can see though in the direction the van is facing you can see the lights of a building perhaps a mile down the road.

Mike clambers awkwardly out of the van, turning back to help anyone still in it.  Once everyone is out he looks at everyone, hoping for some hint of recognition.  He stuffs his bloody handkerchief back into his pocket and feels a wallet.  Pulling it out he peers at the driver's license in the light of the headlights.

"Either I'm Mike," he says, "or I stole his wallet."  He puts the license back into the wallet and the wallet back into his pocket.

"Please tell me one of you remembers who I am!"

”I can’t remember anything!” The woman said to the guy who had called himself ‘Mike.’ after she’d extracted herself from the crashed van. There was an edge to her tone. Not remembering anything - including her own name - was freaking her out. She didn’t know Mike, didn’t know how she’d ended up travelling with him. Didn’t know how they’d crashed.

Maybe he had the right idea though. Using her uninjured hand, she reached into her pockets of the pant suit that she was wearing, fished around to see what they contained, her fingers clutching a driver’s license when they emerged from her jacket pocket. Mimicking Mike, she walked around the van, idly noticing that she was wearing high heeled shoes as she held the license under the light.

”I’m Alison. Alison Voss.” She announced, reading the name on the license before returning it to her pocket before looking over at her unfamiliar companions. ”So, Alison and Mike. What about everyone else? And does anyone remember what just happened here?”

Location: Unknown, Status:In severe pain, left side ribs
"Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated." - Jean Baudrillard

Jason fumbles with, then 'attacks' the lapbelt. It gives way and Jason hits bottom, then with the searing pain in his side, he really hits bottom and fades out.  He hears someone saying get out and he contorts to get out of whatever he is in.

He staggers to his feet and holds his side.  Jason sees several people milling around,  " What the hell is going on?  Don't you know who you are?""  He then tries to remember how he got here and then, who the hell is HE?

He checks for his wallet, it's there and he looks at his drivers license," I'm Jason Henry, anyone know me?""

Upon exiting the vehicle you assess each other. None of you are immediately familiar to each other but you do immediately notice something else - all of you are filthy. To varying degrees you are caked in dirt with mud and grime on your clothes, in your hair and on your faces. It doesn't look like the filth came from inside the van so, presumably, happened before the crash.




OOC: Anyone checking their pockets has everything they would expect to find in their characters pockets (even if your character wouldn't expect to find it, if that makes sense). So phones, keys etc. are all present. Any phone checked is out of reception - not surprising as you appear to be in the middle of nowhere - but working albeit with some minor damage.

"What the hell have we been doing?" Mike wonders aloud, not expecting an answer.  "Treasure hunting?"

He finishes going through his pockets, and holds up a key dangling from a blue plastic diamond.  "Looks like I was staying at a motel in Michigan."

Mike looks around, finally settling on the building up the road.

"Maybe there?"

Alison was too preoccupied with looking at her cellphone to hear Mike’s question, far less offer any sort of answer, even if he wasn’t looking at one. Not that the phone was doing her much good, given that it was asking her for a passcode and she had no idea what to put in. ”I’m calling nine one one.” She announced, pressing the button for emergency calls that would bypass the passcode, only to hear the sound indicating she had no network.

”No signal.” The dark haired woman muttered, stuffing the phone back into the pocket of her pant suit, where she felt it bump against something else.  ”A Motel?” She asked, as she drew out a similarly sized diamond to the one that Mike was holding, saw that hers also had a key attached to it, with the number six on it. She looked over at Mike again, wondered, briefly. Were they? ”What room?” she said, not waiting for an answer as her eyes turned towards the building that he had indicated as she answered his question. ”I don’t see anywhere else nearby. And we can’t stay here all night.”

"Room 4," Mike replies.  He nods at her last statement.

"It's only going to get later," he says, "and I'd rather spend the night indoors."

Mike starts walking up the road toward the building.

"Be nice if one of us had a vacation itinerary," he says.  "I'd hate to miss our reservations for the biggest ball of twine, or whatever other attraction might be out in the middle of nowhere."

Location: Unknown, Status: In severe pain, left side ribs
"Be Brave and Take Risks: You need to have faith in yourself. Be brave and take risks. You don't have to have it all figured out to move forward.”
- Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

Jason checks his pockets and finds something in one of them, takes it out and reads it. "Hummm... The Coach & Lantern Motel, 12705 W. Vienna St, Clio, MI on one side and #3 on the other!" He slowly follows Mike towards the building.

Thomas drags himself out of the van and joins the others standing just outside of it.  Reaching into his pocket like the other in his group Thomas pulls out a cell phone, wallet and a set of keys.  Thomas opens the wallet and piers inside, "Well according to this my name is Thomas Daniels.  Nice to meet the rest of you.  Also my key is for room 13, what a lucky number."

Following the others toward the building

Any mobile phones may be useless due to a lack of service but they do tell you something; it's coming up to 9.00pm and it's September 17th. Not that either of those facts is hugely useful for you right now.

With little else to do you start the walk towards the lights in the distance. In the half hour it takes your battered bodies to walk the mile and a half down the road not a single vehicle passes you. What you do get, as the light fades, is the start of a cold September drizzle - not quite raindrops but still enough to soak you to your skin.

The building, when you arrive, is an old farmhouse which looks like it has been in this spot for decades. One lonely exterior light shows peeling paintwork on the front of the building and a battered mailbox reading 'Baker' at the bottom of the drive. The area around the house is littered with a variety of farm machinery in varying states of disrepair. Two lights are on inside; one downstairs and one up.

Just as you start to head down the drive to the building the night air is cut through by a shocked scream from within!

Mike starts running for the front door of the farmhouse before he's even clearly thought things through, surprising himself.  He keeps going, though, worried about who might be in trouble.

Location: Baker Farmhouse, Status: In severe pain, left side ribs
"A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming." - Jane Fonda

Jason holds his left side as he does his best to keep up with Mike.

Hearing the scream Thomas follows Mike and Jason toward the front door.

It was probably the drizzling rain that made the walk feel longer than it actually was. Or maybe it was the pain in her injured finger, which had morphed into a constant throb. Or the fact that she was wearing heels. Probably a combination of all of the above, exacerbated by the fact that they’d just been in an auto crash. Which seemed like particularly bad luck given that there didn’t appear to be another car on the entire damn road. It made Alison wonder just how the hell they had managed to end up in a ditch.

Maybe the farmhouse will toss up some answers. Maybe. Although a look at the machinery on the lawn isn’t exactly reassuring. The place was kind of creeping Alison out a bit. And that was before the scream comes from inside.

The dark haired young woman watches as he male companions all go rushing towards the sound at various levels of speed. Very noble. But it kind of leaves her feeling a bit nervous when she’s suddenly standing outside by herself. Deciding that she’d rather not wait around outside on her own, she follows the three of them in, though more slowly.

You all reach the front door without incident, Alison following behind the three men who take a more gung-ho approach.

The front door itself appears to be in slightly better repair than most of the exterior of the house, a solid wood affair with a small window set in it at head height though blocked with a curtain on the inside. The two windows to either side of the front are dark and curtained (the downstairs lit window being around the side of the building). One simple electric push doorbell sits to the side of the door.

Listening closely you can hear, over the patter of rain on the various detritus in the front yard, low sounds from within. Low voices and possibly some quiet music...

Getting to the door, Mike stops himself from just rushing into a stranger's house.  Who knows what that scream meant?  Instead he pounds on the door.

"Hey in there," he yells, "open up, quick!"

Then he shakes his head, clearly rethinking the whole approach, but too late to take it back.

He came round probably later than the others, so the young man dropped into the conversation. He crawled on four limbs, like an animal, then painfully raised himself to a kneeling position. After doubling down suddenly a few times and retching noises, he managed to speak a few words.

"I'm coming, too." It sounded more like rusted metal grating on rusted metal, though.

Catching up with the others, he stayed back and studied them a little. "Who the hell these people are? Think, moron!" - then, realizing he didn't even know his own name, he checked his pockets and found the ID. "Kyle. Meh. Sounds familiar, but how could I be sure?"

"Khrrrr. Oh, that hurts." he exclaimed, touching his throat.

Mike's hammering on the door elicits a response pretty quickly. Within a few moments a light flares to life on the inside of the door and mere seconds after that the curtain is pulled back slightly to reveal the heavily bearded face of a man who looks slightly surprised to find several dirt strewn people standing on his doorstep.

Without opening the door he glances down and to his right for a second before looking back up at you again and gruffly saying,
"What's with all this noise? And who on earth are you?"

Mike backs up slightly, surprised to have the door actually answered.  He stammers a bit, then blurts out.  "Car crash," he gestures down the road.  "We're injured."