A Winter Vacation From Life

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

The Christmas tree glows and shimmers in all its lights and tinsel, illuminated against the dark of the night sky coming through the window, by its own light and that of the fireplace, with a fire roaring behind a grating. and there's plenty of blankets, pillows, even extra sweaters (in all their scratchy, tackily-designed glory) to be found on the couches and armchairs around this room, too. You'll probably need the warmth after the trip.

So please, stomp the snow off your boots on the welcome mat, and hang up your coat on the hanger. Actually the hanger's kinda full of coats, so maybe put it on the bench by the door? On second thought, that's kinda piled with coats too. Come to think of it, there's coats and boots and hats and scarves strewn all around the entryway. Oh well.

There's a mug of hot chocolate and marshmallows waiting for you in the kitchen, if you want it. You'll know you're getting close by the smells of gingerbread baking. The heartiness of a full holiday dinner isn't something this place can provide you, but the dining table holds trays of sugar cookies, gingerbread men, candy canes, and other festive treats. You can take as many as you want. You can get as many seconds and thirds and more of hot chocolate as you can drink. There's always enough to go around, somehow.

The halls are decked with boughs of holly and twinkling Christmas lights, though those luckily aren't the only source of light - there's also those plastic or metal lanterns that have old, warm lightbulbs in them instead of fire, or an LED in the shape of a tea candle, one on every shelf and table. The kitchen and the living room are the important places, but you could walk for a long time in these halls if you wanted. You could find just about anything you'd find in a nice vacation home by a ski hill easily, decorated for the season, like a bedroom adorned with fairy lights or a bath with candy- or ginger-scented soaps. Navigating the house feels so natural, you might not even notice some small violation of geometry or common sense, like taking a left three times and ending up somewhere new, unless you're looking out for it.

It's dark out, and gently snowing, but if you stick by the house's light you can go outside and make a snowman or some snow angels on the slope. From the outside, the house is a classic chalet-style home, and wreathed with lights and glowing figurines of reindeer, snowmen, and other symbols of the season. There's a path leading from the front door down the slope, and... well, you can breathe fine up here, but the lower part of the mountain is out of sight, the mountain path vanishing into the clouds below. One gets the feeling that if you travel down that road, you'll vanish into the clouds too, to who knows where?

There's no hurry to leave. You can find board games in nooks and crannies, books on the shelves and under covers, or maybe catch a show or some Christmas music on one of the old-timey radios in the living room or kitchen. Maybe use the actual ingredients in the pantry to cook up a proper dinner, or colour on the walls with the crayons rolling under the couches. I heard there's a karaoke machine alongside the TV in in the basement — oh yeah, there's a basement. But even it is warm and decorated, like the rest of the house.

You even have your phones back, with wi-fi and everything! So browse to your heart's content, but you can't post anything, and do be warned, there's an odd glitch or... something, going on with the devices here, that causes grisly pop-ups of footage of Survival Of The Fittest, Version 8. The one you just left. Even the TV and the radios sometimes cut to audio or video from there — if you fiddle with the channels you can get a live feed of any of your living classmates, but why would you want to? Even without the pop-ups, you sometimes get pings from news websites, but they're not really the news websites you know, just more updates about the tragedy you left behind, and- maybe it's best to unplug, for now. Haven't you been through enough?

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

"All I want for Christmas.."

"iiIIIiiiIIiiis..."

"yooooooooouuuuuu~"

Mariah Carey eat your heart out - Tenshi Marie Anastasie Fukushima-Yves was coming for your throne! Sure, she was never the biggest fan of Christmas music, but she had a begrudging respect for this one song, except now that begrudging-ness had fallen away to complete adoration, a chill in her bones that jingled with the festive chimes, to the point where she outright jumped with joy like she was weightless on a stage when the first verse kicked in. She truly did not care about the presents under the tree.

She waved her hand, danced, and sang her heart into the microphone, as the lyrics scrolled behind her on the TV screen, but she kept her back to them, keeping her smile to the audience instead. There were karaoke machines back home that graded your performance - this wasn't one of them, but if it was, Tenshi surely would be getting perfect on every note. After all, she'd only rehearsed this song 12 times since she got here! It was either that or hang up more mistletoe around this basement, which was surprisingly easy, because the ceilings were very low. If she knew more about stage craft she could like... make a little contraption that had a string she could tug on to release a bunch of mistletoe at a dramatic moment.

(This was important because it's not gay if it's under the mistletoe, it's just the law, and Cedar died before her but might not have gone to the basement yet and Tenshi figured she'd arrive soon but she didn't but karaoke made the time fly by and crawl so slowly without her playing harmony.)

"Make my wish come trueeeee, all I want for Christmaaaaaaaaaaaas!"

Tenshi reached her hand out to the audience.

The pillows on the couch in front of her seemed as appreciative as ever.

"Is YOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!"

[KamiKaze]

Ashlee, meanwhile, was outside the lodge, well within the light. If you peered outside through the window, you could see her making a snowman, all on her lonesome.

But, she didn’t look like she was enjoying it. Her face was contorted, as if trying not to remember something painful.

And she was.

Ashlee frowned as she put the head of the snowman on. She put pinecones and pebbles on him to make a smiling face. Once she was finished, she took a step back.

And remembered.

Karin had lied to her. She remember how… violated she felt when she got the news about Victor. But it didn’t happen. Never happened. And for what? She got shot, that’s what. And sure, Victor hadn’t done anything so… disgusting, but he lobbed people around anyways, not helping his case. But then… she was still lied to.

Ashlee clenched her hands. She felt herself shaking. Before she knew it, her fist went straight through the snowman’s midsection. Everything above collapsed and fell to the ground in a heap around it.

She breathed heavily, still feeling the pounding in her ears. She could hear someone singing ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ inside, but it was deafened by her own emotions.

After she calmed down a bit, she looked around herself. Did anyone see that? She wasn’t known for such outbursts back home, back when she… was alive. She tried to stay calm and collected, and yeah, sometimes she got angry. But nothing like that. What if anyone saw her like that?

Ashlee felt… her stomach lurch for a moment. But she wordlessly began rolling up another ball.

Might as well start over.

[Yonagoda]

Slightly bitchily but mostly just frustrated, Millie tossed her phone to the side. "No cell reception," she announced.

She's been trying to call people for the last to hours. Texting didnt work. Gmail didnt work. Not even discord. Video feeds of the dead keep on running. Meena, that absolute bitch, bleeding herself hollow in front of an audience. She'd caught herself almost smiling, and then stopped, horrified.

Her head was no longer split open, but it might as well, given the headache.

"PLAY SOMETHING NICER!" Her voice struggled to reach beyond that of a practiced, enthusiastic musician. She was aiming for annoyed, but it came out as the equivalent of an encore, encore! The hot chocolate was cooling, and the lights were too bright. For a while, before she calmed down, Millie thought that this was hell. But also, like, christmas girl's sleepover party!!!!! Cute throw pillows! Warm coats! Gingerbread! The unending horrors!

The last one ruined things for a bit. But to be honest, this made her a little glad that she wasn' trying to hunt people down to survive or anything. She thinks about Kitty, and the horror in her face when she realizes that she disemboweled people to escape a perfectly cozy afterlife where things are Actually Kinda Good, loneliness notwithstanding. Or the Horrors. The labyranthine twists and turns. The inevitable awkwardness when it piles up.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

Tenshi bowed, and looked over at the audience. Now it consisted of pillows and one girl, who said something. Play something... nicer...? What was nicer than this?

She didn't know this other girl. Something about her face seemed vaguely familiar, so she'd buy that they were in the same class, even if being here wasn't proof enough. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe some kids came here, and others went to some other afterlife party. Maybe Cedar was never here, and never would be. And maybe, some unrelated dead kids ended up here. But no, Tenshi was pretty sure she'd seen this girl's face at JEM before, so.

One thing new-old girl wasn't though, was someone Tenshi had to listen to. Literally. She pulled her hearing aids out of her ears (as nice as it was to have them again), grabbed her coat off the couch, and shoved the aids into one of the pockets. With a few buttons flicked on the karaoke machine, she started the song again. From the top, from memory.

"I don't want a lot for Christmas..."

[CardboardAirplane]

Jack was mostly just annoyed now that he was here. It was like, "Great, what do we do now?" because oh you know, it wasn't like being here all of a sudden wasn't one of the most fucking jarring things to ever happen.

Or maybe it's not really happening. Maybe this is still a dying hallucination. I mean, if that was even possible if he was shot in the fucking head. As far as he knew though he was still experiencing things so at that point he might as well not question it.

He could check his phone, and he was surprised to actually have it which was cool. What was not cool was that it didn't work as intended. What kind of sick-ass joke was that? Beggars can't be choosers and he should be happy that he wasn't just floating in a void of nothingness in the first place but come on.

Ah whatever, he's never exactly crashed a girl's night out before but now felt like the most appropriate time to do so. Hell was nice and all except it wasn't if this was all he was going to be hearing the entire time.

He didn't know why this was happening—hey, these looked like some familiar people. Whatever, his first instinct was to turn off the karaoke machine.

[Dr Adjective]

Something was different.

To an extent, Bethany was still cold. But less so. More of a brisk chill, much like her customary family walk to church on Christmas morning, not so much the frozen hellscape she last recalled being stuck in. Her hand felt warm too. Hadn't she been reaching for something before?

Memory. Clear and sharp. Why did that seem off?

Oh. Yeah. Her brain was actually working. Before this, she recalled - with bizarre clarity, in fact - being rather in a rather hazy state. Based on popular media, she assumed it was like being drunk. Fuzzy, not quite sure what she was doing or where she was going, acting quite irrationally. So why was she suddenly enjoying such clarity of mind?

Bethany opened her eyes.

She had never in her life intentionally cursed aloud, and yet.

"What the fuck?"

The moment rather demanded it. Because with memory coming back rather rapidly, Beth was pretty sure she'd been bleeding on the floor moments ago. She'd just put a spear into the flank of Rebekah Hayes, thinking she'd been hostile for some reason. That she'd been protecting a monster. Aracelis, specifically. Bethany remembered. After that, Rebekah had fought back, and Bethany had... well, she'd died, if the cold blackness that all those memories ended with was what she thought it was.

So the moment of opening her eyes to see a picturesque ski chalet right out of a seasonal postcard did indeed rather demand just a little bit of light cursing. Just a tad. About a week ago she hadn't even been looking forward to the *intended* school trip, she had some baggage associated with mountain vacations, though it certainly would've been preferable to where she actually ended up visiting, in fairness. Either way, it was pretty baffling. So what was this, Purgatory or something? She'd ascended from the Hell of the island, but not quite to Heaven. Just a less violent version of ironic punishment, where she could reflect on her sins and feel guilty forever, instead of being punished with fear and pain.

Anyway, what was that warmth about just *one* of her hands?

Beth turned her head to the side. Immediately, without so much as a pause for thought, she jerked her hand out of Rebekah's grip. Shifted a few feet away, because they were two girls who were Not Gay.

But then she did have a second to think. There was really only one thing to say.

"God, I'm so sorry."

She couldn't look the other girl in the eye. Her instinctual brain insisted on generating all sorts of excuses for how their last meeting had gone, everything from before the abduction, through the fate of Przemyslaw, to their last living moments together, but Bethany's conscious mind wilfully pushed them all aside. There was no excuse. Besides, if this was really Purgatory? She'd surely better start repenting, hadn't she?

"I am so, so sorry."

[Gundham]

Rebekah blinked.

She’d been drifting off to sleep just a moment ago, but now she was vertical and wide awake. She was warm again, too. This was probably courtesy of the Snuggie, which she was still wearing. She remembered, quite recently, being cold. Cold and sleepy. She’d fallen asleep somewhere cold. Her fingers and toes had been ice cold, her body, too. Her tongue. Yes, very cold, but she’d been too sleepy to get up and go somewhere warmer. Ah, you know what? The hot springs. The hot springs would have been very warm indeed. They had “hot” right in the name. You couldn’t call them that if they were only lukewarm springs. So, yeah, she should really have gone to the hot springs to warm up.

She brought her free hand up, and felt the lingering presence of some tears. The feeling of an imprint on her shoulder, where someone’s hand had been gripping her tightly. And then she remembered. She remembered being there with Jess and Beatrice. Were they here, wherever this was? She remembered darkness, too, and sadness. She remembered blood. Lots of blood. And she understood, now, that she wasn’t asleep.

Her other hand felt warm. She looked down at it and found the reason why. It was being held by another person’s hand. It looked sort of familiar. Brought the word “stick” to mind, for reasons that seemed quite important, but which she was still struggling to piece together.

She was dead. And this, apparently, was her soulmate. Well, that was pretty cool. It really was a thing!

Then her soulmate shouted “What the fuck?,” into Rebekah’s ear and it startled her quite badly. But then she saw the chalet lodge and blurted out a sort of “Whuh buh?” noise, mostly out of confusion, but also for solidarity. If she was going to be stuck with this person for their entire afterlife, it was probably best to find common ground.

Then her soulmate tore their hand away and staggered back, and Rebekah recognized them. Bethany Lyon. Bethany Lyon, who had a cool name that sounded like she was part lion. Bethany Lyon, whom she’d killed. Bethany Lyon, who’d killed her.

“God, I’m so sorry,” said Bethany Lyon, and, mindful of their circumstances, Rebekah chanced a quick glance behind her just in case Bethany Lyon was talking to God.

“I am so, so sorry,” Bethany Lyon continued.

Rebekah fidgeted with her Snuggie. If anybody should be apologizing here, it was her. Bethany had arguably been a bit feral at the time, but Rebekah had swung the rifle with absolute intention. “No, no… I should be apologizing to you. I… I shouldn’t have hit you. I was scared, and I thought you were going to attack my friends, and I… I hit you with the gun and I’m so sorry…”

[Dr Adjective]

"It's not your fault. Don't apologise."

Even now, here, Beth couldn't help herself. She had to be more in control, more correct, more in charge of everyone, and in this particular case, more penitent. But at least she was starting to become aware of it. Just a shame she had to die to start recognising flaws in herself.

"Or, rather," she continued, trying to salvage the statement.
"I forgive you. For what it's worth, I doubt a gentler approach would have saved me."

Thinking back, that seemed right. She'd been alone, grievously wounded, and completely without supplies. Even if she'd survived the encounter, she'd merely have been a burden on Rebekah's group and their limited resources. Bethany had no desire to be a burden on anyone. She took pride in being self-made and self-supporting wherever she could be.

And more than that, she had the clarity of mind to wonder why she had been that way. The second point was clear: she'd gotten cocky and allowed Aracelis an opening to damn near smash her head in. But the former and latter? Where had Shawn gone? Where had her supplies gone? What answered both of those questions neatly and without any strange hoops of circumstance to jump through? Simple. He'd taken her things and run. For all the guilt she felt over leaving Przemyslaw, at least they'd left him with some means of survival. Coward saw his one true friend and ally take a bad hit, and immediately left her to die without even having the guts to finish her off himself. He'd left her to suffer.

But the scowl that crossed Bethany's face soon softened. She was still angry, undoubtedly, but more than that she was simply... sad.

She finally understood all of those downer Christmas songs. She'd never had to face the holidays alone, and now, well, she understood herself to be completely alone. Except for Rebekah, at least.

Bethany exhaled a deep sigh. Something about the way her breath fogged the air in front of her was comforting. A reminder of happier holiday seasons.

"I... I don't want to be alone, Rebekah."

[Gundham]

Rebekah stepped forward, and surrounded Bethany Lyon in a big bear hug.

"You're not alone, Bethany," she said, quietly. "You've got me. I forgive you for everything. And, like... we came here together, you know? So whatever happens now, whatever happens next... we're gonna face that together, too. As a team."

[Dr Adjective]

Instinct told Bethany to resist.

Partly because she'd just come from a place where letting someone get so close to her literally came with a risk of death. Partly because this sort of affection between two girls was the kind of thing she'd been told all her life God wouldn't approve of. But no. Bethany was investing effort into being better than her instincts, examining when they might actually be wrong for once. And upon examination, there was nothing dangerous nor romantic about Rebekah's advance, just comforting. Just showing another lonesome ghost that she didn't have to be alone in this uncanny little Christmas getaway. Neither of them did.

"Thank you, Rebekah."

She wasn't crying. It was just snowflakes melting around her eyes. Honest.

"Let's get inside. How bad can it be, now that it's... over?"

Bethany didn't have it in her to actually say aloud that they were dead. But calling their time on the island over? That was actually halfway pleasant if left unexamined.

As for how bad it could be, it could be someone singing Mariah Carey karaoke. Mercifully, someone else turned off the machine shortly after Beth's entrance, in time for her to have started downstairs in search of the source. The culprit: Jack Kilgore, she knew him in passing, but he'd gone quite rapidly up in her estimations now.

"Thank you."

She opened with her gratitude, tuned just loud enough to get across to anyone else around that she, for one, was on his side with regard to rejecting the music.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

"ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAAAAAAAaaaaaaas... is... you?" Tenshi made a valiant effort of singing for a little while, until she realized something.

The remnants of her hearing could be unreliable, but she was pretty sure the music had been turned down. She turned around - no lyrics to greet her vision, just some guy named Jack who showed up.

Her lip and eye twitched a bit, and she glared off to the side as she reached into her pockets. She half-heartedly tossed him the mic (because he wanted control over the music so badly) and spun around, falling back onto the couch. It drew her in, hugging her with the squishy old faded fabric and cushions, as she fished her hand mirror and one of her hearing aids out of her pocket.

Her brows furrowed, focused and just a tad bitter, as she put her hearing aids back in.

[CardboardAirplane]

What was this, an open mic night? Jack didn't sign up for this. Don't give him no mic, he just didn't want Hell to upgrade to Hell 2.

Jack tapped the microphone a couple of times even though he just turned off the karaoke machine. After the mic test, he held it in front of him.

"Sooooooooo." His finger started twirling the cord as he thought of what to say. "Tough crowd, huh?"

"Oh! You know, I heard this reeeeaaaaaally funny joke once, and it-"

His voice stopped abruptly as he stared blankly into the crowd (a sad excuse for one at that).

"Eh, fuck it." The mic dropped down onto the floor with a thud and Jack started to walk upstairs as he realized he didn't actually care enough to tell it. He's gonna look for some fucking chips.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

By a window somewhere on the ground floor, there were two armchairs, both occupied, and a coffee table.

Daniel reached his mug over, humming before he said, "Not gonna lie dude, you were the villain in that one."

Liya sighed, picking up the whiskey bottle and pouring a shot into the boy's eggnog. "Yeah... yeah. I figured."

She watched him raise it to his lips and sip. His face still scrunched up a bit as he did so. In fairness, neither of them ever had whiskey before now, Liya just randomly found a bottle in the back of one of the cupboards and thought, spiked eggnog is a thing right? A little odd that an afterlife? Limbo? full of dead teenagers, all of whom were under drinking age, contained any alcohol at all, but hey. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. The flask clinked on the coffee table as Liya set it back down.

"I mean, you had a better excuse than me, but shit," Daniel continued, pausing to take another ill-advised sip of spiked eggnog. "I don't mean to blame you but-"

"I can handle it," Liya rebuffed, swishing the remnants of eggnog in her own glass.

"-but yeah, one wonders how Kitty would have fared if you, you know, didn't do that."

She could only tiredly laugh, and reach for the whiskey. After she popped the flask open, she took a sip straight from it instead. As if punished for her hubris yet again, she sputtered, and doubled over.

Daniel leaned over, his hand trying to swipe the flask away. "You okay?" he asked, nonchalantly, as he continued to grasp.

Liya straightened up, wheezing, and stretched her hand out, keeping the whiskey out of Daniel's prying hands. "Alright, alright. I'm alright," she lied. "She uh... probably..."

Her excuses died out before they formed. She'd kill again anyway, so why not try to end the murder spree before it started? Funny how prophecies worked sometimes.

"Nevermind," she muttered, pouring more whiskey into her mug. It trickled, dropped, and came to a stop. "...aw man."

"Great," Daniel groaned, rubbing his temples. "And you took way more than me."

Liya scoffed. "Did not."

"Did too. You should go find more." With that, Daniel slammed back the rest of his eggnog-whiskey abomination, and was reduced to the same sputtering mess Liya just was.

Mustering her most unsympathetic tone, she said, "Easy buddy."

Daniel sat up, and flopped back against the armchair with a heavy sigh. "Or we could ask somebody else if they found anything...?"

"That's a good idea." Liya nodded, and took another long sip of what remained of her drink. It wasn't as warm as before, but it filled her chest with a fire, that she roared out, making Daniel flinch- "HEY! ANYONE FIND ANOTHER FLASK OF WHISKEY?"

"On second thought, some food would be nice," Daniel murmured, as he got out of his armchair and distanced himself from Liya.

[Dr Adjective]

Except, now Tenshi looked absolutely, pathetically sad. An earlier incarnation of Bethany probably - no, certainly - wouldn’t have cared. She might even have enjoyed it a little, thinking it a just punishment for inflicting that karaoke on everyone else. She still did, to some extent, but…

Anyway, Jack dropped the mic after an even less enjoyable abortive attempt at comedy. Bethany crossed to where it had fallen, picked it up, and turned the machine back on.

“I do have to insist you sing something else,” she said, biting back the powerful urge to be more harsh.

As she held the mic out to the dejected Tenshi, a thousand tiny transgressions crossed her mind to apologise for. Her appearance, her hearing problems, her nerdy interests, her annoyingly dramatic manner, just about anything Beth could’ve been known about to be cruel about. But they dried in her throat, still too proud to properly admit to wrongdoing.

Instead she left it open to interpretation, maybe she just meant the karaoke thing when she just added: “Sorry.”