Cheryl Williams

Within the Woods

Cheryl Williams has lived her whole life behind a book, whether it's a novel, her diary, or her sketchbook. She may be Ash's younger sister, but she's the mature and responsible one, and she's usually charged by her parents with keeping her goofball brother out of trouble. That isn't an easy task at the best of times, and it's all but impossible when Ashley teams up with Scotty for some wild scheme or another. This weekend it's a trip to some old cabin in the woods that nobody's even seen. She'd rather stay home, but her parents insisted he bring her along. Nobody's particularly happy about it.

At least she can keep him from doing anything too stupid, like drinking that jug of moonshine Scotty bought on their way through town.

She doesn't like the trees. It's a strange fear, and Scotty's made fun of her for it enough to know his taunts by heart, but it's been a part of her for as long as she can remember. Perhaps that's because one of her first memories is watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with her family, and seeing those grinning faces in the trees, their branches clawing at the heroine's skirt, trying to drag her off or rip away her dress. Those two prospects became tangled up in her mind: either one led inevitably to the other in a way that gave her a secret, shivering thrill. She realized later that the monster trees were only meant to be a figment of Snow White's imagination, but by then it hardly mattered. Besides, who's to say their daylight normalcy isn't the real illusion? She stubbornly avoided the shortcut home from school that would have meant walking through a quarter mile of shaded forest, and she concocted a litany of excuses to skip her dad's camping trips.

But the woods still grew close to the back of the house, and her fearful imagination conjured crinkled faces out of the tree trunks, all of them watching her undress, and she stared as the moonlit shadows of their branches stretched like bony fingers across the windowsill. She shivered, pretended to ignore the feeling even as it consumed her, and closed the blinds the moment she was done.

Cheryl isn't actually a virgin. Most of the guys she knew in high school were too crude, too brash, too overbearing for her tastes. But when the senior quarterback turned his wandering eye her way, she submitted easily enough - mostly out of a sense of duty to her jealous friends, but maybe a little out of curiosity. It lasted just long enough for him to deflower her in a quick, fumbling backseat affair that only left her feeling smothered and sore, then he broke up with her. Within a week or so, the rest of the boys at school had started calling her a cold fish. None of them ever asked her out, so at least one good thing came of it. After that, the first year of college left her precious little time for dating, and besides, everyone she knew just thought of her as "Ash's sister."

And so here she is tonight at a ramshackle old cabin - did Ashley really pay money for this place? - in the middle of nowhere, haunted by ghostly whispers and dark shadows moving in the woods. When she senses those lurid stares outside her bedroom window once more, lingering over the sight of her naked body as she emerges from the shower and changes into her nightie, Cheryl finds herself playing the rebellious sibling for a change. She sneaks down the hall and out the back door without telling any of the others and wanders into the night, venturing alone into the waiting forest...

Player's Notes

Quote

A lot of people have replied saying "it sounds like she's in pain to me." Were they watching the same movie? She struggles at first, but there's definitely a moment where it suddenly becomes erotic for her...

The above quote's from an online movie forum, and it was the first hint I had that I wasn't the only one who had some strange thoughts about Cheryl's experience in the woods. It all started with a middle-school church sleepover showing of The Evil Dead, and seeing this scene when I was at just the right age to be more fascinated than horrified by the prospect of lust-crazed vines and a horny demon tree. It helped that I grew up in a house surrounded by the forest, and sneaking off to be alone in the woods is a favorite childhood memory. Even the prospect of all those scrapes and scuffs wasn't much of a deterrence - I'd grown up taking them for granted anyhow, and the raw, dull sting against my skin just felt bracing. I'm certainly no masochist, pain isn't a turn-on or anything like that, but as one fleeting aspect of a struggle? It has its place.

My erotic fascination with Evil Dead begins and ends with that one scene, though. None of the other tree monsters made that sort of impression, and the deadites aren't sexy: they're just vicious, scary, and revolting. Maybe the skeleton soldiers in Army of Darkness - they do have less rotting meat on their bones - but there isn't a lot skeletons can do. I suppose you could say the same about demon trees, though, and they turned out to be full of surprises. But certainly not Ash (he'd be my brother, and besides, Ash vs Evil Dead sort of ruined me on him by making him such a creep), and, really, not anyone in the Evil Dead universe. All those leafy cords knotting my legs like some bodice-ripper nightmare, though, and the squeeze of my breast and that solitary twig slipping between my thighs, delving where no prim churchgoing girl's fingers would dare (I don't know that Cheryl's churchgoing, but she's fussy and proper, and that's close enough for me), then slowly spreading my legs while the oldest tree's sinking its biggest branch down between them...

Where was I again? Ahem, anyhow, this character's all about exploring that sort of situation. And since playing the character of Cheryl is so deeply personal, and the potential for misunderstandings so ripe (no maiming, no bad endings, no mind control - and the list goes on), that's really the only premise I'm looking for at the moment. If I do find the right RP connection, though, maybe the story can grow from there.

Other Odds and Ends

I play Cheryl as a shy, repressed, and bookish college freshman, someone whose sexual experience isn't zero but also isn't very positive or memorable, and certainly did nothing to satisfy her curiosity. As the designated "responsible" sibling (not actually older, but same dynamic), she's always been the one burdened with setting an example for her brother, and has a somewhat-deserved reputation as a wet blanket. Beneath all that, however, there's a sexual undercurrent stoked by the vintage smut she's discovered in old gothic novels, a guilty fascination with the intensity of those stories about wicked noblemen and bound servant girls - not just the bondage itself, but the underlying idea of being overwhelmed and driven beyond her normally chaste limits, with no choice but to give in to pleasure. Thanks to a formative viewing of Disney's Snow White, she's wrapped all those guilty thoughts up with the idea of the midnight forest itself as a symbol of lurking, masculine lust. And now, thanks to the Book of the Dead, her darkest fantasies might very well come true... 

One idea I like is that what happened to Cheryl is fairly unique, a devilish magnetism between her sexual repression and the hedonistic demons. The trees tore poor Scotty to shreds when he tried to escape, and they simply killed Bobbi Jo, but they left Cheryl unharmed. They wanted something very different with her, and I prefer the idea of the forest singling her out (even if it's just to cruelly exploit her sexual inhibition) rather than the trees being perverted as a rule. In that sense, I imagine Cheryl being a bit psychic and sensitive to spiritual forces, someone who might have been an oracle or priestess in another age.

(Last year's Nosferatu remake really captured that sort of theme with Ellen, along with the supernatural fusion of sexual abuse and mutual sexual addiction.)

The RP I'm looking for doesn't always have to be that one dramatized movie scene, although I'd like to hew very close to it - there are so, so many ways that fantasies involving force and pain can go wrong, and it walks a very thin tightrope between what enthralls me and what horrifies me. The story does branch off, however, in ways that might let it follow different directions afterwards. Does Cheryl turn left instead of right when she panics and flees the broken bridge a little while later, only to find herself back in that familiar hollow? Does she sneak out of the cabin again later that night, resigned to her fate and now offering herself as a willing sacrifice to sexual abandon? Does that first experience continue all night long, perhaps even saving her friends by keeping the evil distracted until sunrise? (Oh look, there's Nosferatu again.)

Could Cheryl even conceive a daughter from the experience, a teenage heroine with supernatural powers? That could make for a fun spinoff character...

Anyhow, if you're up for exploring this sort of premise further, let me know! I'm always happy to talk and try to figure out a roleplay with anyone who's interested.