The Stand Private Messages

Tor had some brilliant ones for his SKIDS that he might or might not like to share . These are the ones we sent out for roles - I had thought it would be cool to do more of this kind of thing with SKIDS (particularly in response to the sheriff) but once the game got started we were busy enough just writing deaths.

Some of these are kind of repetitive but here they are in all their glory:

Townie
One by one they drifted off to sleep…

…perchance to dream.

Suddenly your dreams come into an unusually sharp focus, and you wonder, as you look around the cornfield, if this is really a dream at all. But of course it is; after all, what on earth would you be doing in a cornfield in your waking hours?

You hear a sound in the distance and find you are quite able to move in the direction of the…music. Guitar music. You look around in wonderment as you walk, amazed at the lucid detail of this dream. You can feel the plowed earth sink slightly under your footfalls, can smell the corn and fresh, slightly damp air, and the music holds an uncanny clarity. While the voice singing in time with the strumming of the guitar is clearly old, the words are not garbled with age and the sound is stunning and beautiful and full of light. You know without realizing it that you are moving toward a force of benevolent goodness.

You might have heard the song in your childhood; the music carries a wave of pleasant nostalgia, though you cannot place the hymn. The corn parts easily in front of you and you find you are quite suddenly standing in a clearing in which rests a modest farmhouse. An inviting porch wraps around the back of the home, and on the porch is the oldest woman you have ever seen.

She smiles and stops her strumming and singing when she sees you approach, and you can see her overly bright false teeth in that smile.

“Welcome, welcome to Hemmingford Home!”

You frown, wondering where you have heard that name before, and why you would be dreaming of such a place.

“My name is Abigale Freemantle. I am 106 years old, and I still bake my own bread!”

You open your mouth, ready to introduce yourself in return or ask the questions piling up in your mind, you aren’t certain which, but Abigail continues.

“You come see me now! You and all your friends.”

Before you can speak, before the shock that this woman knows your name has worn off, you feel the strange pull of wakefulness wash over you, irresistible as the tide. You open your eyes, trying to determine the hour in the darkness and to shake off the mixed feelings of loss and hope this strange dream has left behind.

You know now what you must do. This group of strangers, bound together by a simple immunity or fate or some other force, needs your help, your wisdom, your better judgment, to get to Nebraska.

Doctor
Your dreams feel sharp and clear, lucid even, and you take in your surroundings in surprised interest. You are standing by a tire swing in a clearing surrounded by corn. A house rests in the clearing, and on this house there is an impressive wrap around porch. On this porch is an old woman, and she is calling to you, beckoning.

“Somethin’ special about you, Hank. Come closer, child, let Mother Abigale get a good look at you.”

You approach slowly, your curiosity piqued by this old woman’s words, and find yourself sitting on the steps of Hemmingford Home, looking up at this old woman in her rocking chair with a guitar in her lap. She smiles down on you and rests one wrinkled hand on your shoulder. You are amazed to find that suddenly all the tension and aches leave your body at that simple touch. The pain in your head goes away as though it was never there at all. You look to Mother Abigale with something like awe.

“What did you do?”

Mother Abigale gives a hearty laugh at that, shaking her head in denial. “Wasn’t nothing I did, child; that was the Lord, working through you and me. Working through us all, to do His will.” Her voice began cheerfully enough, but turned serious, almost stern, as she went on. “It is by His will that you have been given this gift. The Lord will work through you, child, but the choice he gives to you.”

You frown, confused. “What gift? What choice?”

Ignoring your questions, Mother Abigale continues. “Once a day, child. Pray for wisdom.”

More bewildered than ever, you shout against a sudden pulling feeling, a dragging into another time and place. “Wisdom for what?!”

Your shout goes unheard, and suddenly you are far from corn and farms and kind but strange old women. You are instead standing on a great mountain top, and when you look down you believe you can see all the world spread out below you. Although the sight is stunningly beautiful, you feel a strong sense of anxiety and foreboding as you turn to look over your shoulder.

Behind you stands a robed figure, his hand outstretched in offering, and the sight of him might be the most terrible thing you have ever seen. You cannot see his face, and some part of you thinks he doesn’t have one, but before you wake up gasping you realize you can make out glowing red eyes.

When your eyes fly open, the word no on your lips, you sit up, fully awake now and more confused than ever. Who was that man? –Was- he a man?

And what choice?

Sheriff
Somehow your dreams seem clearer now than they were before, than they have ever been; you are more aware, your senses are alive with understanding. It is almost hard to believe this is a dream, but what else could it be?

It is the middle of the night, and you are standing in a clearing in a cornfield. In front of you is a house, and you know instantly that this is a good place, a safe place, a place of peace and rest. You close your eyes and breath in the farm air, smelling the corn and the earth underneath that pure, clean scent. You open them again when you hear music, and for the first time you notice an impossibly old woman on the porch of the house. You don’t know how long you stand there, silently, listening to her sing, but when she stops and looks at you, looks right through you, you suddenly believe you have been standing there for hours.

“Temperance, Rejoice! God has come to me with a special purpose for you.”

Rather than rejoice, though, a shiver goes through you. Suddenly the darkness seems oppressive and frightening; you want to move but you can’t, even though you are alarmingly aware of something behind you.

You try to scream, but nothing comes out, when a long, brown weasel runs over your foot and scurries through the corn.

“Weasels in the corn! Get! Get!”

Gasping in panic, you look to the old woman again, hoping for some explanation, but she only picks up her guitar again. After a pause, she speaks, her voice trailing off as you slowly come awake.

“The Lord is all knowing, but tells his humble servants what they need to know in His time. You come see me again, Temperance, and he will tell you more, through me. For I am not the potter, but the clay…”

You open your eyes and the last traces of the dream fade away. It is a long time before you can go back to sleep, with all the questions on your mind. How did she know your name? Who was she?

And what about the weasels? The weasels in the corn? You shiver again, just thinking of them, even though the night holds all the warmth of early summer.

Who are the weasels in the corn?
Serial Killer
You are dreaming, a random firing of synapses that means nothing to you and never has, when suddenly everything comes into sharp focus. You wonder, for a moment, if you are still dreaming at all, but conclude that you must be – why else would you be in the middle of a cornfield, with soft music playing in the distance and the inky night sky looming over to swallow everything around you?

You walk toward the sound of the guitar, mostly because there is no where else to go, and soon you arrive at a clearing in which sits an old woman, playing guitar on a wrap around porch. She stops her playing and singing eventually and looks up to you, smiling.

“Welcome, Kassidy, welcome to Hemmingford Home!”

You take a couple of steps back, unnerved that this old woman knows your name, but she calls after you as you step away.

“Come back here, now! We have work to do – you come see me, Kassidy, you and all your friends!”

Deciding this is just a little too creepy, you turn and bolt, running between the rows and feeling the leaves slap against your arms and face. You look over your shoulder to see how far away from that weird old lady (witch?) you’ve managed to get, and when you turn back to look where you’re going you very nearly run headlong into a man all in black, with no face but red, red eyes.

You wake up choking, sputtering, completely freaked out by your all too real and disturbing nightmares, and it is a long moment before you calm down. Then you run your hand over your face, shake your head, and close your eyes again.

It was just a dream.

Even as you think this, though, you know it is a lie – a lie you tell yourself to keep from conjuring up those horrible apparitions. Before you fall asleep again, you conclude one thing, at the very least – you want nothing to do with the old woman, or the man with no face.

Godfather
You are dreaming, though more clearly than you ever thought possible, and in your dream you are standing on the top of the space needle, looking down over the city. It is very cold, and you suspect that no cup of coffee is going to warm this sort of cold up. Someone is speaking to you, but you don’t want to see his face.

“I will place you high in my artillery.”

You don’t realize, at first, where the voice is coming from – it is as though he is speaking directly into your mind. And you don’t dare ask who he is. You think perhaps you already know.

You turn around, slowly – you cannot help yourself, because this is a dream or because this man (thing?) has some power over you, you cannot say which. You do not see what you were expecting; it is only a man after all, in faded denim. There is a happy face button on his jacket, and he is wearing cowboy boots. He appears entirely ordinary.

Except his smile makes you want to scream, and you still cannot quite meet his eyes. You know you will go mad if you do. He reaches out, possibly to tear your throat out, but before you can move you feel a cold hand clap down on your shoulder.

“Anthony, old buddy, old pal! We’ve got work to do!” He flashes his hideous smile. “You’re gonna be my right hand man out here, that alright with you?”

You blink, heavily, but follow willingly enough as the man leads you inside, where the others are sleeping. He shakes his head in mock sadness as he regards the resting forms.

“A lot of these folks are going to have to go, my good man. Take what you can to Vegas.” He pauses with his head tilted to one side, pretending to think carefully. “Better kill one tonight. Let them know we’re serious.” He points to one, the fat man named Vern, then jerks his thumb back over his shoulder in a ‘he’s outta here’ gesture.

You take a step back, repelled by this idea of killing more people after so many have died. The man seems to read your thoughts and shakes his head, smiling as though he has just caught a child at some sort of mischief and wants to make them squirm before hanging them up by their entrails.

“Anthony, Anthony, Anthony! Who’s side are you on? He’d kill you. He’d kill you without a second thought, my good friend. And, hell, if he doesn’t, you’ve got me to worry about!”

This idea seems quite amusing to the horrible man, and he throws back his head in a parody of laughter. You try to step back again, frightened beyond imagining, but you stumble and fall to your knees. The man looks down at you, and you look up, into his eyes.

He smiles.

“That’s better.”

Mafia
For a moment you believe you have woken up in a strange place, and it takes you a few seconds to realize you are walking in a dream. Walking through a cornfield, as a matter of fact, for reasons beyond your comprehension.

You hear music in the distance, and turn to find it. Soon you can see a clearing through the corn, and in that clearing is the oldest woman you have ever seen, strumming a guitar and singing. You stop just out of sight, uncertain if you should go on in spite of your certainty that this woman would do you no harm. One moment of hesitation turns to two, and soon you find yourself turning away, with the strong feeling that you do not belong in that clearing at all.

As you make your way deeper into the field, you notice the sky going dark all around you, as though a sudden storm as swept over the farm in an attempt to swallow it whole. You shiver, surprised to find yourself cold, but you continue on. You push stalks of corn aside to make a walkway, and it is while you are doing this that you see the eyes.

At first that is all you see – a pair of red eyes like burning coals in the blackness – but after staring for some indeterminate amount of time you realize that you can make out the outline of a dark cloak, and indeed a figure. A hand reaches out toward you and you cringe, but the figure (man?) is only beckoning on before turning and heading into the corn.

You follow.

Abruptly, the cornfield ends and you find yourself standing on the edge of a cliff. The robed figure gestures out onto the city below in silent offering of all those dead empty lands. You look down, curious if slightly skeptical of this somewhat dubious offer – after all, isn’t this all yours for the taking anyway? As you stare out into the distance, though, you begin to understand, in the immediate way of dreams, that this stranger, this Man with No Face, is offering you much more than just the dried husk of a world that has moved on. Power. Wealth. Fame. That and so much more could be yours. Oddly, you do not doubt that this man, whoever he is, can deliver on his promises.

And yet, you hesitate, remembering the old woman in her rocking chair, wondering what might have been had you chosen to step into the clearing rather than following this man into the corn. The cloaked man, as though sensing your indecision, turns to you, and you see his red eyes glowing in the blackness within his cloak. He reaches up, as though to pull back his hood and reveal his face, and you try to scream, try to stop him, but no sound can escape your closed-off throat.

Instead, you drop down as your legs give out – you can feel the sharp sting as your knees hit the rock below you, seconds before you wake up gasping. You know, in that brief moment between waking and sleeping, that you will serve him, you will serve this man, or beast, that brought you to your knees at the threat of showing his face.