Running Wild [Muse Thread]

[STAFF]

(This will be the only OOC post in this thread.)

Need some muse?

What would happen if your characters ended up in the middle of one of your (or their) favorite movies? How would they react, and what part would they play, if any at all? What would happen to them in the end?

If you have multiple characters, you could put them all in separate movies, or all in one movie, or some in one movie and so on. You wouldn't have to use all your characters, either. Just enough to get those creative juices flowing.

You can also work together, if you want.

So go for it! I'd love to see more posting happening on the site so we can get to the exciting climax of Volume IX. Show us what you got!

[Fallon Daugherty]

Movie: Exam

Two rows of tables had been set in a large room. The only exit was guarded by a man in a security uniform and a gun. At the other tables sat a variety of other candidates. They were present for a most unconventional job interview, in which the first person to come up with the right answer would win the job. The problem was, they had not been told what the question was.

Fallon chewed on her pencil. The Invigilator had warned them against spoiling their paper, but who knew what that meant…? One man was getting up and trying some things, such as moving around and talking, and that seemed to be fine. But then he started giving people nicknames, and that was kind of annoying.

He was Caucasian, so he called himself “White.” There were also “Dark,” “Brown,” “Brunette,” “Blonde,” and “Deaf.” The last got his name because whenever White talked to him, he hunkered down and avoided eye contact, saying nothing. As for Fallon, she got “Asian,” although she was not. There was enough Asian on her mother’s side to confuse things, though.

Fallon rolled her eyes. When they realized the lights might be ultraviolet or infrared, everyone started knocking out the lights. With a sigh, Fallon joined in, using the heel of her right shoe to punch out the lights. Nothing really happened. “There. Now are you happy? Now you’ve knocked the lights out.”

The room went totally black.

“Wait a minute,” Brown said. “Lights on.”

The lights turned back on.

“The room. It’s interacting with us.”

“Cool,” Fallon said. “What does that have to do with the question?”

“Maybe the question has to do with the room,” Dark suggested.

“Right.” Fallon rolled her eyes again.

“The Invigilator said something about the room,” White pointed out.

“No, he didn’t,” Fallon said, glancing toward the black window where the Invigilator and whoever else was probably watching. “Right?”

“But she had forgotten that one of the rules was not to address the Invigilator directly, and so the guard came for her. “You tricked me!” she spat at White, who had a smug smile on his face. “I’ll find a way to get back at you for this, you jerkass bastard!”

And that was it for Fallon - in the painfully white hallway, she looked once more at the door leading to the room - sealed to her now - and sighed, then made her way down the hallway.

[Jordan Mercer]

Movie - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Objects passed by in a blur. Gabriel Constant ran in circles, searching for a name. They swam around him, going on and on and on - until he stopped. There was the name he was looking for. Arch Stanton’s.

He stopped to breathe for a moment. Then he grabbed a piece of wood and began to sift the dirt from the ground beneath the stakes. He was making progress, and could feel the thud of a wooden beam beneath the thinning layer of sand, when a shovel landed at his knees.

Jordan Mercer was standing over him. The expression on the man’s face might have been described as “smug” had it not been obscured by a cigar in the left corner of his mouth. “It’s much easier with that.”

Gabe picked up the shovel and weighted it, unsure. Jordan shifted his poncho to reveal a gun. Gabe proceeded to dig with the shovel.

But it was not long before another shovel was thrown onto the scene. “Two can dig a whole lot faster than one.”

Both men looked up, surprised. None other than Christian “Angel Eyes” Moynahan had joined them. The unruly-haired gentleman tossed his gun from one hand to the other. “Dig.”

Gabe did so. Jordan merely took his time lighting his cigar.

“You aren't digging.” Christian aimed his gun at Jordan.

Jordan hardly seemed to notice. “If you shoot me, you won’t see a cent of that money.”

The other men frowned. “Why not?”

Jordan slid his foot forward. The coffin lid flipped open, revealing nothing but a skeleton. Gabe hissed through his teeth, then crossed himself quickly. Then, in a sudden outburst, he picked up the shovel to hurl it at Jordan, but thought better of it. “You fuc-“

“You thought I’d trust you?” Jordan asked coldly; yet there was a smile on his lips. “Two hundred thousand dollars is a good bit of money. You’re gonna have to earn it.”

“How?” Christian asked.

Jordan thought about that - or seemed to; it could have crossed his mind long before - and picked up a nearby rock. “I’ll write the name on the bottom of this rock.” He glanced at Christian. “Your gun?”

After pausing for a moment, Christian spun the gun around his finger and flipped it back into its holster. The three men got up and moved toward the center of the cemetery.

They stood looking at each other, spread apart, equidistant from each other in a triangle. Gabriel removed his gun from his pocket and let it fall to his hip, resting from a loop around his neck. Christian, dressed in all black down to the hat, ran his fingers along his belt, lined fully with ammunition; the other hand he rested on his gun in its holster. Jordan adjusted his brown hat and shrugged his poncho over his shoulder.

The circle of ground on which they stood was the center of Silent Hill Cemetery, a large graveyard with its tombstones and crosses arranged in a similarly circular pattern. In one of its graves was a cache of gold. Jordan, being the only one who knew the name on the grave, placed the rock face-up in the middle of the cracked ground. Now, it seemed, they would try one another for the prize.

They studied each other carefully. Christian glanced from Jordan to Gabe and back through his angel eyes. Gabe watched his two opponents with widening eyes, sweating profusely. Jordan’s eyes were narrowed, but his lips, wrapped around a cigar, seemed to be ticked upward in a perpetual smile. Each man waited for the other to make a move first.

Minutes passed. Each man had to have the gold - and for himself only. Their hands moved closer to their guns, inching over ever so slightly. There was no room for error here. Someone would walk away from this with Jordan’s rock and an untold fortune in gold, and the others would be left to rot in this barren desert graveyard. It would not be him, resolved each man. He must outshoot his competition.

Suddenly, Christian whipped out his gun and spun toward Jordan, but Jordan was faster, and his shot nearly knocked Christian into the open grave not far from him. Gabe tried to shoot Jordan - multiple times, but found that his gun had been relieved of its bullets. Meanwhile, Christian got up on his elbows and readied his gun, but Jordan shot him again, and this time Christian did fall into the grave. Jordan shot Christian’s hat into the grave with him, and then issued one more shot to send Christian’s gun down there too.

Jordan trod casually toward Gabe, who tried his gun again and again as his foe reclaimed the rock. “Fucking hell,” Gabe spat at Jordan. “You could have gotten me killed! When did you unload it?”

“Last night,” Jordan said carelessly, sidling up to Gabe to take his useless gun from him. Gabe watched him with a mix of wonder, annoyance, and fear.

“You see, Gabriel,” Jordan said, snapping the gun’s barrel back into place, “there are two kinds of people in this world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.”

Gabe narrowed his eyes. “Where?”

Jordan held up the rock, exposing the bottom. Nothing was written there. “It’s the unknown grave next to Arch Stanton’s.”

Indeed, there was a grave just next to Stanton’s marked only “unknown.” Here Gabe began to dig, and it was not long before he uncovered another coffin - this one filled with bags of canvas. A giddiness took over Gabriel; he hefted two of the bags out, and split one open with the shovel; gold coins spilled out. Gabe ran his hands through the gold, nearly giggling at the sight of it - until he caught sight of the noose Jordan had hung for him from a tree overhead.

“That’s-“ Gabe glanced from the noose to Jordan. “That’s a joke, right?”

“It’s no joke, it’s a rope, Gabriel.” Jordan nodded toward the tree. “Go stand up there and put your head in that noose.”

Gabe frowned. Jordan waved his gun, and Gabe complied, climbing up on the wooden cross over the grave of gold. The cross swung and groaned under his weight. He put his head through the noose.

Jordan tied Gabriel’s hands together, then pulled the noose taut. “Well, then,” he murmured, walking around Gabe’s scaffold to the bags of gold, of which, counting the open one, were eight. “Four for you, and-“ Jordan hefted four unopened bags of gold onto Christian’s horse. “-and four for me.”

Gabriel watched, barely able to stay upright, as Jordan mounted the horse and went on his way. “Sorry, Gabe.”

“Jordan!” Gabe yelled, still wobbling on his cross, until the distance was so great that there was no use yelling, and then some. “Jordan!”

And indeed, Jordan stopped and turned the horse around, to level a rifle at long distance toward Gabe’s rope. After peering through the sight for a moment, he squeezed the trigger - and made a clean shot through the rope. Gabe fell forward, face first on his gold.

Jordan turned away and spurred the horse on. Meanwhile, Gabe forced himself up and ran to the center of the rocky field, his hands still tied, winded, sweat dripping down his face. “Jordan! Jordan! You know what you are?”

The figure in the distance did not stop.

“Just a dirty son-of-a-b—!”

[cue theme music]