03.2023 | WELCOME BACK! Hello friends old and new! I'm so excited to welcome you all back to SITW! I've made some changes to the plot and added the ability to play supernatural charcaters! So come and check it out! I can't wait to jump back into this little town with all of you!
A strange history surrounds the town, it is a place where mysterious and supernatural things have been known to happen. The reputation of the town reguarly draws in visitors and newcomers alike. While some residents avidly believe in the supernatural, others are far more skeptical. What do you believe?
The last ringing laugh bounced off the tiled walls and floor of the girls locker room and she heard the door bounce close. Gym class would start in a few minutes and Margret was frozen. She was staring at her hands resting on two bare thighs that converged with loose fitted running shorts, seemingly immobile. Margret didn’t remember the last gym class she actually participated in as it was usually a class she would have strategically skipped.
So far this week she had been... good. Attended every class, checked all the boxes, gulped down her meds and did her homework. Now she was sitting alone in a locker room bench practically chewing a hole in her lip.
Really she was just focused on trying to feel the air on her face, the odd sensation that her body and skin’s borders didn’t exist. For most of the week she had walked the schools halls in an indistinct fog on auto pilot. Then, it would lift for a moment, and Margret would wonder where the hell she was or what she was doing. Sometimes it was paralyzing but more often than not she just wanted to sit there and indulge in the feeling of detachment because it felt good.
She folded her arms over one another and rubbed the goose pimple covered skin. Gym class was not the teens strongest suit. This body was fine but spindly, built for books and not dodge ball. A droplet of blood dripped from her lip and onto her pale thigh. It shook her from her comforting haze.
“Shit,” her hand cupped her chin in an effort to catch anymore droplets. She licked her lip and the metallic taste blotted her tongue. Hurriedly she stood and made her way to the Locker room bathroom to clean herself up.
Ida always made a habit of being late getting into the gym. She found that if she was predictably five minutes late, Coach would let it slide. People liked patterns, liked knowing what to expect. So, if she always showed up at 9:35 instead of 9:30, there was no reason for him to get his feathers ruffled because - however late - he always knew when to expect her. Ida was more trouble than she was worth most of the time which, on rare occasions, worked to her advantage.
When the first bell rang, every day Ida would grab her clothes and make a beeline for the stall in the far corner before anyone could know she was there. This was for two reasons: one, the thought of getting changed in front of her more-often-than-not tormenting peers made her physically sick. Two, above this particular stall was a vent meant to suck up foul smelling locker room air for recirculation. On days where Ida was feeling particularly agitated, once the locker room cleared she could sneak a cig by standing on the toilet and blowing smoke up into the vent. She’d flush the butt down the toilet and go into gym feeling much less hostile than before.
Today was one of those days. Ida had the bright idea to take French her senior year, thinking that - as a native Spanish speaker - she’d have an easier time of it. Boy was she wrong. Today they’d been made to read aloud to the rest of the class, and her tongue - fine tuned to the Spanish language - couldn’t quite muddle through the words on the page. Her French teacher assumed that she’d skipped out on the homework and admonished her for her lack of preparation.
Ida had attempted to defend herself, but by that point French and Spanish had become so tied up in her head that all she could do was stammer angrily, prompting gleeful, malevolent laughter from many of her classmates. Hearing what she very much recognized to be a racial slur whispered from the back of her room, she threw down her book and stormed out of class. Ida was sure she’d be hearing about that later today. But, the good news is that it got her to gym early. Plenty of time for a cig.
Hearing the locker room door swing closed, Ida stood up on the toilet, lifting the cigarette to her lips. She took a long drag and blew the smoke up into the vent, the nicotine immediately working its magic. As she lifted the cigarette to her lips again, she heard a noise from inside the locker room. She looked frantically around for somewhere to put out the cigarette, however when she saw who it was, she froze.
She’d heard Margret Sung was back in Sweetwater, but hadn’t really given it much thought. In Ida’s opinion, Margret had gotten plenty of attention over the years - no way she herself was going to continue to be part of the audience. When people like Margret Sung go off the deep end, Ida didn’t consider it a tragedy. She considered it karma. Now, face-to-face with the girl who had temporarily made her life a living hell, the familiar anger and dread battled it out in her mind with a sense of disbelief and maybe even a twinge of pity. Margret was bleeding from her lip. Her face was hollow looking and her shoulders slumped - not like the girl Ida remembered. Before she could process what had happened, words jumped flatly from Ida’s mouth: “What the fuck are you doing here?”