Arc II, Chapter 16: Connection Terminated

We didn’t have that long Off-Screen, but it still felt like an eternity. I would have loved to take the opportunity to ask the Stranger questions but surviving the story was more pressing.

I saw Cassie and Isaac sitting deathly still on the couch. I needed to say something to help them. I wished that Anna was there. She might not know the perfect thing to say, but she would at least get in the ballpark. I would do my best.

“You ready?” I asked. I tried to mask my own fear.

“Am I going to die?” Cassie asked.

She got straight to it.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

“I don’t think I can do the Ten Second Game,” she said. “I’ll look away the moment I see something scary. I know it.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “I don’t blame you for wanting to opt out.”

“You did it,” she replied. “You acted like you wanted to.”

I nodded. “I get the feeling nobody would put up with me if I didn’t do stuff like that.”

She paused. She seemed to think over the situation again.

“But how do you just get over it? The fear?” Cassie asked. “Were you afraid on your first storyline?”

“Of course I was afraid. It’s just not a useful thing to think about,” I said.

In The Final Straw II, it didn’t matter how afraid I was. All I could do was run through the maze either way. In The Astralist, I knew I was going to get got and did my best to delay it. Didn’t do much good there.

“You just don’t think about it?” she asked.

“I do but anytime I start to see it affecting me, I just lock it down. It helps that I can’t stand the idea of people seeing me get emotional,” I said. I briefly thought back to when I was a kid and my Grandparents wouldn’t let me leave my parents’ funeral early. I was forced to lose control in front of everyone. I still got itchy thinking about it.

“That’s not a good thing,” she said.

“It is here,” I said. Then, back to the task at hand, I added, “You’re a Psychic, anyway. Just act like you’re afraid because you’re sensing something dark or something. Psychics and stuff are Moxie-based. So it’s all in the performance. You want your tropes to be strong and useful, play into them.”

I hoped that if I could give her something to focus on other than her fate, it might be enough to calm her. Focus on the task at hand.

“Just keep making remarks,” I said to Isaac, who was never far from Cassie. “And look around for a weapon you might use that’s funny. Always be looking for ways to trigger your tropes.”

I thought that was good advice even if I didn’t always follow it as well as I would like.

Isaac nodded. “You said it’s the Tutorial. Doesn’t that mean no one has to die? I mean Tutorials are supposed to be easy.”

Truthfully, I didn’t know. I wasn’t even confident that Carousel even called it a Tutorial. The players definitely did, but that didn’t mean Carousel was bound by that logic. Besides, death wasn’t a failure in the Game at Carousel, it was a strategic decision.

The Stranger caught wind of our conversation and added in his own line while eating my chicken tenders. “Nothing is supposed to be easy here, kids. In Carousel, your limits are just the starting point. This story is not the one I’ve run before. Carousel has been busy. Don’t slack, my friends, don’t slack.”

“Where is the camera?” Dina asked. “We aren’t between scenes. What is the audience seeing?”

Dina was right. Being between scenes wasn’t indicated on the red wallpaper, but it felt different than simply being Off-Screen. I couldn’t describe it.

“Camera’s showing the audience the threat, in some fashion, I imagine,” The Stranger said. “First Blood is on its way. The audience might already know what’s out there.”

“Could be on Constance,” Kimberly suggested.

Constance was safely away at home, waiting for us to wake her up with a phone call.

“Might be, sure,” he said, but I didn’t think he bought it.

I didn’t either. Carousel didn’t even know if we would call Constance. I had watched the storylines we had been through a dozen times each using my Director’s Monitor trope. I had developed some sense of how the final movie would play out. Carousel didn’t make up for our mistakes. I figured that if we didn’t tell the audience something, it wouldn’t remind them. Part of making a perfect performance was remembering to give Carousel lines it could use in its final edit. That didn’t exactly seem like a priority right then though.

While Off-Screen, I decided to make my way around the suite to familiarize myself with the set. I had done this already, but I had to channel my nervous energy into something. I was trying to find an object to use my The Insert Shot ability on. Being able to buff a weapon or otherwise useful object gave me a sense of purpose, but so far I had no idea what would come in handy.

I circled around, sticking my head in every door. I grew increasingly conscious of how close we were to First Blood.

That’s when I saw the mirror in the bathroom Kimberly had showered in. Like all of the other mirrors in the place, it had a cover over it, but unlike all of those, which had been covered with a thick white sheet, this one was only covered with a towel. Not one of those oversized hotel towels either. This one was barely covered with one of the towels meant to twist up in long hair. It was barely covering the mirror.

And it was moving.

Nothing was visibly coming out from behind it, but it was clearly being jostled by the air. The wind was blowing it. There were no open windows so that didn’t seem possible.

I needed to take the opportunity of our minutes Off-Screen to ask The Stranger about it. I walked quickly back to the living room where everyone else waited.

“Is there something special about the mirrors?” I asked. “I know you said the ghosts could cross through them, but why is the one in the bathroom back there blowing in the wind?”

The Stranger went to check what I was talking about.

He had a theory.

“It’s a trap in a manner of speaking,” he said. “It’s billowing Off-Screen in there. That can only mean that Carousel would go On-Screen the moment one of us tried to fix it. That was a nice catch. Didn’t the blonde one say that she saw something flip the light switch in there earlier?”

“Yes,” Kimberly answered. “While I was showering.”

The Stranger nodded. “Carousel has that thing prepped and ready to go. The audience is aware, and the characters—that’s us—were made aware. It might do something with it later.”

I thought back to the Subject of Inquiry storyline where Carousel had appeared to be planning to set the poltergeist on Antoine for First Blood, but I prevented it. That part had barely made it into the final movie. Instead, First Blood had been the massacre of most of the NPCs in the building. I wasn’t sure if that was an easier or harder version.

“So should we trigger it?” Antoine asked.

“Normally,” The Stranger said, “I’d say yes. Carousel would be pleased. This storyline used to be mostly jump scares, some minor fate-worse-than-death if you really messed up. This time, I don’t know.”

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I thought for a moment. I tried to put myself in the shoes of a new player. What would someone new to Carousel do right now?

“We’re new players, just now starting to see the red wallpaper but we think we’re going crazy. We’re super creeped out by this strange man, no offense. Do we investigate the moving towel over the mirror?” I asked.

“Definitely not,” Antoine answered.

I agreed. It probably didn’t matter.

“Classic Carousel choice. Both choices are the wrong decision,” I said.

No one argued. Either we triggered the billowing towel right then or Carousel would do something else. Best not to do it so near First Blood if we could avoid it.

So we waited until eventually…

On-Screen.

“We can’t wait any longer,” The Stranger said impatiently. “We need someone to go speak to the spirits that have gathered. Everyone has to do it. Everyone.” He looked to Cassie.

Cassie looked horrified, but, to her credit, she did say, “Something is happening. I can feel it. There is something wrong. We shouldn’t be playing this game.”

“Whatever,” The Stranger said. “I’ll go. Can someone please join me?”

He looked over at me, but I didn’t budge.

“I’ll go,” Bobby volunteered.

The Stranger nodded and the two of them went off to yet another of the rooms with the bell.

When they left, we stayed On-Screen. Did Carousel know that I had something to say?

“He’s still hiding something,” I said. “I don’t know what, but he knows more than he is saying.”

The others looked back in the direction that the two of them had run off to.

After a few excruciating sessions of twenty questions with a ghost, The Stranger and Bobby returned. The Stranger didn’t look happy. Bobby looked confused. They had nothing to report.

“You said your daughter left you a voicemail,” I said. “Mind if we listen to it?”

The Stranger froze. “I don’t have it with me. It was on my home machine. Don’t have a cell.”

I gave him a distrustful look. He had asked us to bring up the voicemail. If he wasn’t talking about it, that meant there was something incriminating about it that he couldn’t reveal yet. The Stranger as a player would have just found that out most likely.

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“Next,” The Stranger said.

We needed another group to play The Ten Second Game.

“Fine,” Kimberly said. “I used to play Bloody Mary at sleepovers when I was a kid. I was the only one who actually did it. This can’t be that different.”

Her Grit jumped a point. I suppose she was trying to trigger her Convenient Backstory ability to boost a stat. This had not been her most successful attempt. If I had been thinking about it, we might have come up with a better use, but a point of Grit for bravery (I suppose) was better than nothing.

Antoine gave her a look that I recognized as “Are you crazy?”

Nonetheless, he went with her. His baseball bat was at the ready. It wasn’t a great weapon against ghosts, but it activated his Like a Security Blanket and Swing Away tropes.

With the Plot Cycle moving toward First Blood, we all knew what was to come. If Kimberly had stayed in the living room with the rest of us, it might have brought trouble to us.

With any luck, First Blood wouldn’t even be lethal. It could be an injury or even just a huge scare if it fit the story. I wasn’t sure though.

Within moments, the twisting of the bell and ticking of the mechanism had started.

In the living room, we were Off-Screen. All eyes were on Kimberly and Antoine.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Nothing.