Arc II, Chapter 23: The Off-Screen Death

Strander Blake, as the script apparently called him, stood directly behind the spirit of a drowned woman. I couldn’t see him, but I could almost feel the rage coming off of him.

It wasn’t just rage though. There was fear there too.

Dozens of ghostly arms appeared from behind the drowned woman. They belonged to different spirits that Strander had collected. They were all sewn to him. My brain could barely comprehend what I was seeing. It was almost an optical illusion as if the owners of those arms must have been somewhere, but they weren’t

We knew what came next. He would go after Isaac, the character with the lowest plot armor in the scene. That was how the game worked.

But Strander Blake didn’t seem to care at all.

The dripping woman walked forward quickly and one of his arms reached out and struck at Dina, who was closest to him. Dina tried to dodge, but it was pointless. The owner of that arm leaped out and struck her. She flew across the room.

I still couldn’t properly see him, couldn’t read his tropes. Perhaps he had a trope that allowed him to attack whoever he wanted. That certainly threw a hitch in my plans, but even as that thought went through my head, I realized I was wrong.

Strander Blake was reeling in pain. It was as if attacking Dina had physically hurt him if such a thing were possible.

He screamed in pain.

He was fighting for control.

I could see the dripping woman eyeing Isaac as Strander’s next target, but he screamed again and forced her to look at me. I could see the strands of black thread pulling against her. He was trying to resist the rules.

“I pick him,” he screamed. “You were mine. Your little tricks. I could watch but not touch. You were marked for death and now I’ll finish it!”

Was he mad about Oblivious Bystander? I let the steam out of his little trap and he hadn’t gotten over it.

I jumped back, but it was a pathetic attempt. He was so fast.

He screamed as he launched himself across the room at me. I backed up toward the first room I had played the Ten Second Game in and Strander tackled me into the darkness. He slammed the door behind us.

Off-Screen. We were Off-Screen just me and him.

He threw me against a wall hard.

He wanted to kill me, but he couldn’t. His threads tightened, threatening to rip from the ghastly flesh of his host, but she wouldn’t budge, couldn’t budge.

“This wasn’t what I was promised,” he said. “I was tricked.”

I was terrified and my brain was in fight or flight mode, but I was all out of fight. Just being thrown against the wall had Incapacitated me and Hobbled me. I couldn’t even tell what my injuries were. I hurt all over.

But curiosity was strong enough to fight through the pain.

“Who tricked you?” I asked.

He hesitated from answering, he must not have been sure.

“Silas Dyrkon,” he eventually answered. He was enraged and frustrated. “Said he had a player problem and I was just the one to fix it. He described his world as one of death and horror. How could I resist? I didn’t know he would do this to me. He lied. He said nothing of these…. Chains. How could he humiliate me like this? The Strand o’ Blac? Living Hell itself.”

He was new. Carousel had brought him here under false pretenses too.

“This is a circus. Everyone wears chains here,” I said. My heart was beating so fast I couldn’t even hear what I was saying.

“Not the guests,” Strander said. “Not yet.”

I could hear the others pounding on the door. Strander Blake still pulled against whatever “chains” he said were binding him, but he couldn’t kill me. I wasn’t next. We were Off-Screen. It might have been possible under some circumstances. If I were less prominent in this storyline, if he had the right tropes if he hadn’t disobeyed, but Carousel seemed to be making a point.

Eventually, he relented.

“I’ll finish the other,” he said. “Then I’ll come back for you.”

He stood and walked back toward the door. As he did, my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room finally and I saw the vanity in the corner.

It was the same one that Sidney had broken to obtain the mirror she wielded on the outside. Sidney knew the ghosts avoided mirrors. On a hunch, I did the only thing I could.

The Insert Shot ability allowed me to draw my allies’ attention to an important object from those objects discovered in the Party Phase. I had found one: the mirror in the bathroom where Kimberly had taken a shower earlier.

The mirror was poorly covered. Whatever reason it had been there originally (an unused subplot), it was still a mirror.

I activated my ability and sent out the information to my teammates.

Suddenly, right before Strander got to the door, they stopped banging on it. I heard them talking.

Before he opened the door, he tried in vain to do something I couldn’t quite perceive. At first, it was like he was trying to twist the drowned woman’s body and change the ghost he was presenting, but he didn’t seem able to.

It dawned on me what he was trying to do.

“You can’t use a spirit that isn’t a part of this storyline,” I said.

I could tell he was annoyed still.

He turned to look at me. As he did, the drowned woman disappeared and Kimberly emerged. “The script tells me to use this one,” he said. “Friend of yours?”

I nodded.

“Riley,” Kimberly cried. Her throat was crushed, but she didn’t seem aware. “What’s going on? I was lost in the dark for so long. I don’t know how I got back here. What do we do? How do we win?”

It was actually Kimberly. She didn’t know she was bound to Strander Blake. She was afraid.

“Antoine needs you,” I said. “He’s hiding in the bathroom across the building. You know the one. Go to him.”

She nodded.

She reached down and grabbed the door with her ghostly arm and walked out of the room. One of Strander’s many hands waved at me as she went.

On the red wallpaper, my Written-Off status was lit. I couldn’t help my friends this way. I had to trust that they could figure it out themselves.

The strangest thing happened as I stood there. I realized that the screen I usually use to rewatch old storylines was on the red wallpaper.

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It was my Director’s Monitor trope. My Deathwatch ability had activated. At first, I feared I had been killed and just didn’t realize it, but as I checked and rechecked my trope, I noticed that Deathwatch didn’t activate when my Dead status lit up. It activated at my “demise”. That meant it still worked if I was “dead” because I was Written Off, not just when I was physically killed.

That was interesting.

I kept one eye on the screen, watching as Strander crept across the living room. Sometimes the footage was polished and perfect, other times it was rough, as if it had been cut from the final film. I was watching the movie in real-time.

That wasn’t how it normally worked. I usually only saw the finished product.

I worked my hardest to stand. I found out why my Hobbled status had lit up. My hip had been broken. Still, I crawled to the door and looked down the hallway.

I could see Kimberly/Strander Blake cautiously moving across the floor both in my head and with my eyes. I got the sense that Strander didn’t exactly get much say in the matter.

“Freaky,” I said under my breath.

I couldn’t bear to go any further with my hip’s condition. The movie continued to play on the red wallpaper.

“Antoine,” Kimberly said softly. She started to cry. “Antoine, where are you?”

She kept walking toward the bathroom until she got to the door.

She walked through and I lost sight of her, but I could still see the footage in my mind.

Antoine was in the bathroom with Isaac and Sidney. Bobby and Dina were in the wind, likely Off-Screen as backup.

“Kimberly?” Antoine asked. He was crying.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said softly.

Antoine walked close to her and looked down into her eyes. “We’re going to be okay,” he said, fighting through the tears.

“We need to leave,” she said. “We need to… go somewhere safe.”

“You’re always safe with me,” Antoine said. “We’re going to be a family.”

Kimberly pulled against the threads in her arms and embraced Antoine. Antoine hugged her back, though he eyed the covered mirror.

Dina’s slender arm reached through the doorway and grabbed the towel off of the mirror.