Arc II, Chapter 36: Cecilia

For a while, it was just me and Cecilia On-Screen. She talked in circles. At first, I thought she was just redoing lines to get a better take for Carousel, but then I started to suspect that she was lacking some of her higher faculties.

“When Howard fixes me, I think I will run for Miss Carousel. I’ll have to make a new name, obviously, but that is hardly a problem. If you can change your name, you can change who you are,” she said. After a few moments, she added, “Oh, you really don’t have any idea how beautiful that girl is. I watched her at the party. She was the center of attention.”

That wasn’t strictly true. Dr. Halle was the person everyone else was looking at, but Kimberly was the center of Cecilia’s attention.

“Howard says he cannot guarantee that I’ll look the same as I did, but I’m fine with that. My old life isn’t something I would want to go back to anyway. A pretty daughter is a feather in her father’s cap. Isn’t that the saying? It certainly felt that way.”

“Did you ever run for Miss Carousel back before…” I started to say, but I realized last second that asking her what happened to her might have been the very thing that triggered her Don’t Wake The Beast trope.

I didn’t want to wake the beast. Not even a little.

“Back when I was beautiful?” she asked.

The air was drawn out of the room. I thought I heard a frenzy hiding in her voice.

I shrugged.

She stared at me for dramatic effect. Not being able to see her face or eyes made it impossible to know what was going on in her head. I tested the straps that held me to my hospital bed. They held tight like a treacherous seatbelt.

She gingerly grabbed my injured hand.

She admired the craftsmanship of the long thin fingers. They were like a pianist’s fingers, perhaps. Gray as death, but long and nimble.

What kind of creature could they have come off of? I thought they might be a monkey’s fingers, given the animal parts schtick, but that wasn’t right either. They had an artificiality to them.

She clasped my hand, squeezing it tightly.

Then she answered my question.

“I did run for Miss Carousel. It wasn’t my idea. I was told to. So I did. That’s not what the gossips thought, but they always were so mean. It was just me, the girl who worked reception at my dad’s business, and Julie Havers. The others dropped out. She had a leg cast, Julie did. She had to get it removed prematurely for the competition. Her brother did it with a hack saw. I watched. I don’t know how he didn’t draw blood. It smelled so bad under her cast. Like she was rotting.”

Her gloved fingers moved over my new ones, squeezing them, testing them.

“She was in tremendous pain, you know. The whole time. Everyone watched her wondering when her leg might just… snap. I don’t know how she hid the pain on her face for the judges. I always admired her for that. You don’t deserve the beauty if you can’t deal with the pain…”

Cecilia drifted off into a memory.

I swallowed hard.

Across the room, Isaac let out a moan. He was waking up. I dreaded what might happen when he sobered up enough to understand his situation.

“It looks like he almost has the process figured out,” I said, trying to be positive.

Cecilia looked back to Isaac.

“No. Not quite. He still can’t figure out the molding process. I’ve heard nothing but promises for over a decade. I haven’t given up. You can never give up,” she said. “The pain doesn’t matter. Only the possibilities matter.”

I started to realize that Cecelia might have been drugged. The lulls in her voice. The determination to just float into the future without a future. It was all so familiar.

I suspected something else. Cecilia might not be her name. I had my suspicions.

“Dr. Halle was Jed Geist’s personal doctor.,” I said. “Did you know him?”

Cecilia didn’t answer for a moment.

“He was a nice man,” she said with a sniffle. “They never did figure out who killed him, did they? I hear he was the last living Geist, but I don’t think he counts. He never cared about his family. He just let them burn up and threw them away… Some say the Geists deserved what happened to them. Do you think so?”

I couldn’t say. We hadn’t been told what they even did yet.

“Most people don’t deserve what happens to them,” I said.

She paused again. I could feel her eyes on me even though I could not see them.

“Some do,” she said coldly. It was the last thing she said in the scene.

How did Cecilia fit into all of this? There was one person at the center of everything. One person connected Halle’s experiments to Jed Geist’s death.

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That was the point, after all. Figuring out who killed Jed Geist and why. But then Bobby did say there were multiple directions the script could go.

I had ideas, but how did I test them without triggering her trope? I would have to wait until I wasn’t tied down. I would need a weapon and an escape route before I poked that bear.

Isaac started moaning louder, crying.

Cecilia bolted the moment he started as if his anguish was torture for her.

He continued crying, then screaming in horror.

He was pushing against his restraints, desperate to get out.

“Isaac,” I yelled. “Isaac. Listen to me!”

He looked at me with his new eye. The uninjured half of his face was still covered.

His pupil was wide and with points on either end. The green tint around it was too large.

It was clear he had only just noticed me when I spoke to him.

“Isaac,” I said. “You’re going to be okay. Just tell a joke. It’ll make you feel better,” I said, referencing his mental health trope, Gallows Humor, that soothed him when he made a morbid joke.

He was panicking. The drugs were clearing up. The sedative was a made-up movie drug that didn’t play by logical rules. He shouldn’t have been coming out of it that fast.

“Wait,” I said, “I got one.”

If my plan didn’t work, I was going to feel like a real jerk.

“Look at this,” I said, wiggling my new elongated digits, “I can count to twelve and a half on my fingers now.”

I hoped he would catch on to what I was telling him. Carousel would probably cut that joke.

It looked like he was about to say something.

“I can take a group photo all by myself now,” he mumbled.

That was a joke. I couldn’t tell if it was working.

“That’s good,” I said. “You got another?”

He was staring across the room at the window, which was so clean and polished he could see his reflection in it. I had wondered why the windows of this old decrepit building had been the only thing clean. This was part of the plan.

“Don’t look at yourself,” I said. “Just close your eyes. Tell me another joke.”

He did as I said.

“I wonder if I can get mirrors for half price now,” he said. He continued mumbling on, trying to keep his mind off his condition. “No, the half-off joke should be about Halloween costumes. Now I know which side is my good side.”