Sunder: demo July 2019

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<script>Sound.play('Search_the_Shadows.mp3');</script> These are the things that only happen in the dark Memories that fear the light: The taste of metal on skin. A bloody flower that blooms and explodes into a narcotic thrust. Long ago, you lived in these places. Half-shattered, half-shadowed towers Where annihilation's music thrums and dances, A beat that passes through the wet and dripping walls. A memory guides you: the smell of forgotten lust. As you stumble past, at so very long last, half-familiar faces on a damp-stained concrete stairwell, a name is plucked from the tip of your tongue and the strange dreams that consume your endless hours. [[FOLLOW THE MEMORY HOME]] / [[TURN AWAY]]

<script>Sound.play('Follow_the_Memory_Home.mp3');</script> She softly took your hand and she led you away With a whispered word that barely recalled a kiss long years ago. And nothing happened at all - only: You spent the long night drinking tea on her frayed and ragged (link-reveal: "sofa")[ worrying chapped fingers between worn threads as you spoke, hands almost touching] You talked about abandoned dreams and friends long dead now. And a time when you still had (link-reveal: "hope")[ of a sort] A long time ago. "I won't go with you," she said, "But I can show you a door "Where the light still (link-reveal: "shines")[ in a blaze of terrifying eternity]" You don't know if she's afraid or simply waiting for (link-reveal: "someone else")[ (a better friend than you)]. In the morning she leads you to (link-reveal: "a hallway")[ where the doors stretch into forever. Endless. Identical.] With a furtive glance over one shoulder she takes you to one door among many and asks: "Is this what you really want? Is this what you really need?" [[YES->GO INTO THE LIGHT]] / [[NO->RETURN TO THE DARK]]

<script>Sound.play('Turn_Away.mp3');</script> Desire burns white-hot in your veins for an instant. The urge to call her back by name and once again return to the place that forged you. But you are sure this is not something you can survive to re-live: the taste of steel poison at the back of your throat, thunder in the blood at the tourniquet's release. There's nowhere safe in this world but there are places less dangerous than this. You'll find another way. [[SEARCH THE SHADOWS]]

<script>Sound.play('Go_Into_The_Light.mp3');</script> The key slides into the lock with a steel-clean thrust Like metal(link-replace: ", in vain")[ in vein]. It turns, oil-smooth, with a click and a blaze of fire at the edges of the world By the time you step forward she's already gone, disappeared from sight. In a few moments more, she Has receded from memory, and you cannot even picture her face or remember her name. [[AS YOU BURNED]]

<script>Sound.play('Return_to_the_Dark.mp3');</script> You ran from her. Like you always do, always will and always did. Down all six hundred flights of stairs Down into the bowels of love, where brick becomes concrete, cracked and (link-reveal: "bleeding red")[ as deep set iron leeches out, decaying under the weight of years and infinite storeys of most bitter regret.] Beneath the sky-towers lies the undercity, A world of echoes and polychromatic sparks in the warming dark, where you stand stock still and stare. [[AMAZED]]/ [[MAZED]]

<script>Sound.play('As_You_Burned.mp3');</script> If you have never seen the sun, it is a holy terror: A blazing orb that blinds and petrifies Your pupils shrink to pinpricks and it's not enough You screw your eyes shut but the light pulses through them Red and terrible. You (link-reveal:"feel")[ (but can never see)] your skin begin to burn. Your nostrils fill with the stench of burning hair and dirt, As your (link-reveal:"clothes")[, ragged and stiff with sweat,] begin to smoulder and you must [[FORCE YOURSELF TO LOOK]] / [[RUN SIGHTLESS, IN SEARCH OF SHADOW'S COMFORT]]

<script>Sound.play('Force_Yourself_to_Look.mp3');</script> The door opens on a cold, crisp winter morning. It's a little after dawn - almost nine o'clock and the sun illuminates the eastern sky like a bolt of blazing gold. Shiny-topped milk bottles clink and clatter in their cage as you pick it up and stoop again to collect the Sunday paper. -[[this is an ending]]-

<script>Sound.play('Run_Sightless.mp3');</script> You screw your eyes shut and run as far and as fast as you can. Arms outstretched and wheeling you somehow fail to fall. Your hair catches light but still you run, trailing a plume of fire behind you. By the time you reach the dark, your hair and your clothes are long gone, as is much of your skin. You saved your eyes, at least. The shadows are salve to you as you fall, breathless and sobbing, to your knees. But you must crawl further, into a dark, wet place where you can smell water. Your skin has begun trying to reknit itself. [[OPEN YOUR EYES]] / [[CRAWL TOWARDS THE WATER]] (set: $skinless to true)

<script>Sound.play('Mazed.mp3');</script> It seems magical at first. A great, sacred hall to all the better daemons of humanity, cast in the scintillating colours of heaven, and yet dancing to the pulse of a deeper god. But as your eyes adjust to the ghost-light, you see that it's still just concrete and rust all the way down. Knots of people gather and break apart like motes of shining dust that float on sound and a shared taste for poison. Nothing more. Unspoken words echo in your head, (link:"doggrel")[doggrel(show:?doggrel)] that breaks the rhythm of dream. |doggrel)[There is no deeper meaning There is no higher power There is no hidden being There is no secret flower] And you, child of bleak fortune, have been carried here by the strong back of the woman you never were and the gentle arms of the man you will never be. The city is your existence, halted here; indefinitely interrupted. The crossing of all dead roads. And, knowing this, here in this sub- basement you kneel, rapt, with your thrilled and rictus smile and fresh blood on your arms. Another debasement. This is not your [[ESCAPE->SEARCH THE SHADOWS]] But you could [[STAY HERE]] if you wanted

<script>Sound.play('Amazed.mp3');</script> Beneath the city, a luminous garden shines. The Hesperides' orchard, where light glows briefly golden before being dragged out to be slaughtered by eternal night. Satyrs and bacchai bask here, where the old gods never died, where a piper's dance heralds madness and a garden of poppies blooms white beneath an underground sun. But still, you turn away from the golden garden, knowing it is not for you. That this is not your home and never can be the half-remembered Ithaca that lives on in the aching void in your chest and, perhaps, at the end to this weary road that you so crave. [[WAKE UP]] / [[SEARCH THE SHADOWS]]

{  (set: $child to false)  (set: $homunculus to false)  (set: $servant to false)   (set: $ichor to 0)  (set: $blood to 0)  (set: $heart to 0)  (set: $ticket to 0)  (set: $metromap to 0)   (set: $rottingman to false)  (set: $skinless to false)  (set: $thegarden to false)  }

<audio autoplay><source src=\"Open_Your_Eyes.mp3\" type=\"audio/mp3\"></audio> You never went anywhere. Suffered through all that and you never went anywhere. It hurts to stand but you painfully rise from the sofa, your skin raw and liquid. Flecks of dirt cling to the blisters, and you have stained the grubby fabric with clear pus Reality shifts from time to time. And sometimes it leaves mementoes behind: This time, you have lost your skin. Could be worse. You quietly leave the flat, stepping around still-sleeping figures on the floor and out into the grey neverdawn of concrete and dirty rain, to walk forgotten streets looking for somewhere better to find or forget yourself. [[SEARCH THE SHADOWS]]

<script>Sound.play('Crawl_Towards_the_Water.mp3');</script> Eyes closed, you crawl, called by the moist darkness, away from the burning sun. Back to your beloved secret. Back to what you've always been. The tracks on your skin open like gills as you slip into the poison lake, drawing it into you as you become one with water and take your place at the stranding shore. Here, Melpomene birthed the sirens, her daughters, and in this drowning sea, lewd Salmakis was born. The sea and sand are made to sing sweet temptation in the name of that forbidden thing that lies close to life and closer still to death. You bear poison in your thick blood and that poison carries you far along the shoreline of resignation. Carefree and untouched by the curse of hope, you near Lethe and blissful respite. When next you return to the city You know that you will never leave its arms again. It is a virus of the mind and a fever of the body. A god that replicates itself. Forges you, forgets you, anew in its image And sends you to bring back others just like you were. -[[this is an ending]]-

<script>Sound.play('Stay_Here.mp3');</script> A crimson flower blossoms in murky water There are worse things than this: A moment of release Where flesh and blood meld, ecstatic, with glass and steel Not exactly the power to forget and not exactly permission to forgive yourself but something to feel. A brief absence of fear and the companionship of shadows very much like you -[[this is an ending]]-

<script>Sound.play('Wake_Up.mp3');</script> The golden children of twilight have departed by the time you awake. The god of the outside has returned to the void. And this is nothing more than a concrete basement, scattered with detritus, the used sharps and memories of oblivion, and a scrawled promise that YOU WILL BE FORGOTTEN [[SEARCH THE SHADOWS]]

This is the first demo of ''Sunder'', a fully voiced interactive narrative poem by <a href="https://mightyowlbear.itch.io/">Mighty Owlbear</a>. It carries content warnings for violence, drug use, suicidal ideation, suicide, childbirth and drowning. [[BEGIN->SEARCH THE SHADOWS]]

Thank you for playing the demo of ''Sunder''. If you'd like to catch anything you missed, here's a full passage list: [[SEARCH THE SHADOWS]] [[TURN AWAY]] [[FOLLOW THE MEMORY HOME]] [[GO INTO THE LIGHT]] [[AS YOU BURNED]] [[FORCE YOURSELF TO LOOK]] [[RUN SIGHTLESS, IN SEARCH OF SHADOW'S COMFORT]] [[OPEN YOUR EYES]] [[CRAWL TOWARDS THE WATER]] [[RETURN TO THE DARK]] [[MAZED]] [[AMAZED]] [[STAY HERE]] [[WAKE UP]]