Who: Geek Subculture, 4chan and Conspiracy Theories What: Silent Hill flashbacks. When: During the blackout and just after. Where: Leia's apartment. Warning: If you've played Silent Hill, watched Saw or Nightmare on Elm Street or read House of Leaves... That's your warning.
The lights flickered just before they went out and Leia, in the middle of explaining some new X-Men story arc to Chris, stopped mid-sentence and glanced towards the window in her living room. This wasn't right. It felt inherently familiar and not in a good way, she decided. Her first instinct was to reach for his hand, gripping it tightly as she pulled her knees up to her chest and her feet up off the floor. "What's going on?" she managed to murmur before the first sound of a crash startled her and caused her to jump.
When the lights went off in things - video games, movies, comic books - that was the creepy, evil, bad things took their turn to crawl out of the shadows and do their worst. For a moment her vision crackled into greyscale static and she gasped. Swore. Clung tighter to Chris' hand.
The sound of the door opening a moment later actually caused her to scream, cowering before the outline of a figure in her doorway. "It's me," John muttered, closing the door and sliding every lock into place before feeling for some corner inside and away from the door. "It's finally happened," he said, panic clear in his voice. "This is it. This is it."
Leia whimpered, and pressed her eyes closed, shoving the heels of her palms against them, already shaking. Trying to remain calm wasn't even an option when she could feel the paranoia and terror radiating off of her brother and the only thing she could see was like a television trying to catch a signal - flickering in and out, images and sounds crackling through - overlapped with a familiar fog, decay and the overwhelming feeling that there was something slowly stalking up the hallway towards that apartment.