Who: Coraline Jones & OPEN TO ANYBODY!
Where: The Grounds, Your Bedroom Door, The Halls, The Dining Room
When: Early November
Rating: PG
Summary: Being a mansion busybody, and sampling sounds for spooktunes
The Story: (But first, mood music...)

Out and About

The grounds feel extra chilly these days, air crisp with all the pleasantries of autumn, and the forest edges along with some of the garden is shedding crunchy leaves this way and that. There's a distantly smokey smell too, that's impossible to pinpoint the exact source of, but it pleases Miss Jones immensely.

She wanders the grounds with a sense of open-minded purpose, wearing a slouchy wool cap and a cozy sweater underneath her bright yellow coat. It's not quite cold enough for snazzy gloves, which is just as well- easier to carry a handheld tape recorder, pointing it at scattered leaf piles just before giving them a hearty kick with her wellington boots. Coraline walks hard along the cobblestone pathways too, trying to put a little more deliberate weight in her footsteps, occasionally bouncing from foot to foot rhythmically as if playing on invisible hopscotch boards.

She bothers the vendors for a bit, knocking on empty turtleshells and strings of pretty glass beads, bowls of jangly trickets, poking about at their wares with absolutely no real intentions of buying or bartering. Once the faceless merchants have realized this, and she's had quite enough of their cold shouldering, Coraline moves on quickly, finding a branch with some leaves still attached (not poison oak!) to run along the fences, making a glorious racket. On the review playback, it's not quite as satisfying as she'd hoped. Maybe she should have thought to arm herself with fancier microphones.

Soon she spots someone else out here, probably minding their own business, or lost in their own thoughts, and hurries over wth the branch dragging behind her on the grass.

" 'Scuse me?" The girl pipes, waving mid-approach. "Hi there, uh... Are you busy, right now? Would you mind, um... holding this up for me, for just a second?" Turning the branch around so the leafy ends are facing her sound recorder, she smiles hopefully and makes a flimsy, demonstrating gesture. "Yeah. Give it a good rustle?"


Door to Door

There's an eerie sounding disturbance in the hall, off and on during the day. Maybe you've just been too tired or preoccupied to investigate it's source. But that's okay. The sound machine's about to come to you!

(Knock-Knock-Knock.)

Yep, that's the sound of smallish knuckles on your bedroom door. Did you perhaps forget to put the No Solicitations or Please Do No Disturb sign on the door handle today? Or is a mild distraction a most welcome visitor, right now?

This one might be a little impatient, piping up before you can quite make your way to the door, or yell at the drop-in to go away

"Hello?" Sounds precociously girlish, and not with any particular panic. Like there might be a wagon of Girl Scout Cookies involved? And there's the knock again, repeating. "Is anyone home?"

No cookies in the wagon, alas, though it's rigged with some kind of dated recording equiptment, wedged in alongside a tangle of wires hauled out of her closet, along with one too many odds-and-ends noisemakers. In front of it stands Coraline Jones, a blue-haired girl in a silvery soft sweater that's a couple of sizes too big and stripey neon leggings.


Hallway Sound Effects

Sounds like someone with far too much free time on their hands has raided the music room's percussion and hand-instrument cabinets.

And it sounds like that someone has assigned you a few of them, and has been innocuously tailing you for as long as you can bear to dismiss your shuffling footsteps accompanied by the rattle of maracas, or every turn of your head punctuated by slide whistle. She follows at just enough of a distance to duck into an open doorway or lean up against the wall beside a mirror, examining a chip in her clipped painted nails.

But Coraline's harmless mischief can probably only continue on for so long, before she's called out for being a general nuisance. Or until she can get one of her victims to crack a smile.


Wish to Table

It's on the later side of suppertime, and Coraline has just managed to snag herself a seat in the dining room, staring down at her plate with the usual sigh of indecision. Pepperoni Pizza sounds like a great idea, but she's already had that three times this week, and that annoying naggy voice in her conscience that sounds like her well-meaning father is reminding her of food groups and variety.

She heaves a sigh, and quietly grumbles 'Okay, Dad' under her breath.

"Hmmm..." She strums her fingers on the fancy tablecloth and peeks up and down the long table for some inspiration. "What do I want, what do I- Oh! A...Chicken Pot Pie?" Coraline requests, remembering a microwaved one that she used to help herself to on nights when her father made stuff like Creamed Kale with Goat Cheese, or Seafood Paella. "With no mushy peas, please." She adds, before the magic can complete it's thing. "Ooh, and extra crusty crust!"

Yum. That's perfect, and perfectly sized for her appetite with room for dessert, too.

But after a second marveling sniff of the air, her face pulls a grimace of disgust. Gross. Where is that coming from?

Her attention goes scurrying a few places down in curious horror as she stabs a fork into her pot pie, steam rising from the pierced crust.

"What are you eating?!" Coraline exclaims, eyes wide with revulsion.

"That looks, um..." (Gosh, don't be completely rude, Coraline. Even if that smell is turning your stomach) "...Different?"