Book Five, Chapter 52: Twisted Threads

There was a sporting goods store around the last turn of the U-shaped building.

It had an appropriately punny name: Dead Sprints.

Unfortunately, it was closed down because it contained so many cool objects, and it would be overpowered for us to shop there. After all, sporting implements often made great incognito weapons—even if you weren’t an athlete.

The Atlas didn’t say anything about it because trope objects (of which there were tons in there) were new, but the conveniently placed attendant filled us in. They said that the shop’s owner had been murdered the night before so the shop was closed. She gave us details, including a newspaper article. It seemed pretty clear to me that to shop there, you had to run a storyline and save the shop owner the day before you went.

So, as we passed by, we could only window shop, staring past the locked doors and shutters at the hockey sticks, golf clubs, mountain climbing axes, and other interesting items, many of which had tropes attached.

Oh well.

I carried my TV as best I could. We had brought the wheelbarrow in case we found something worth purchasing, but we didn’t bring it inside the outlet mall because of the crowd. Luckily, the TV only had a 13-inch screen, and it really wasn’t that heavy.

Isaac was psyched when I actually bought a TV, and I don’t think he even realized it had a trope attached.

There was a Halloween-esque shop called The Hem and Haunt, and the strange thing about it was that it didn’t appear to have a single omen inside. It had no trope objects, no items of interest at all because it was not a shop in and of itself but rather the setting for an omen that showed up at 3:00 a.m.

I supposed the idea was that people would be disarmed by the lack of danger and then be thrust into a terrible storyline. Who could say?

It would have made more sense back in the days when players were struggling to find a place to survive between Writs of Habitation.

Either way, no one would ever want to walk inside, especially because one of the mannequins in the window was wearing what I could only assume was human skin as a costume.

However, an employee was standing out front, inviting us in. Her name was Jezebel, and I only remembered her because, like several of the other shopkeepers, she kept telling us one thing:

“If we don’t have what you like, our sister store at the Carousel Mall is sure to have what you need. I can give you directions,” she said, holding out a little pamphlet with a map on it.

The actual Carousel Mall was too dangerous to enter, but all of these little shops around town seemed to want to funnel people toward it.

One day, we would surely go—but not that day.

For most people, the real goal for that trip was just clothes. If those clothes happened to have magic powers inside storylines, that would be cool, but for the most part, that wasn’t it.

My friends and I lost our clothes whenever Camp Dyer was prematurely shut down, so we mainly wore what we had on us—with the exception of Kimberly, who put in more effort to procure clothes.

Still, buying clothes and having a choice in what you wear every day was an important part of staying sane.

Personally, I didn’t think that my clothes were too bad, considering I’d been wearing them for the better part of a year, according to the calendar that was. In reality, they weren’t close to being that old; much of the damage my clothes ever had was done in storylines and was instantly reversed after the storyline ended.

More than that, even though we had apparently spent many months inside The Die Cast storyline, my hoodie had disappeared when I entered it, so it would still be in pretty good condition even if it weren’t for the magical resetting ability that Carousel had.

Still, I wanted a new undershirt, and maybe a few backup pairs of socks and other garments would make me feel more at home. I was currently rotating through clothes I had borrowed from various storylines, but none of them were ideal—and none of them were brand new.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

You do what you have to to survive, even if it means stealing undergarments from the characters you play.

So shopping was easy for me. I just needed the basics.

It was equally easy for Dina, who claimed she had purchased an entirely new outfit. However, to my eyes, she looked like she was still wearing her brown leather jacket and ripped-up jeans—perhaps a newer version I didn’t know.

“What?” she asked. “This is what you wear when you don’t want people messing with you.”

She did look tough, but…

“You’ve been murdered in that outfit,” I said.

She shrugged, still admiring her new jacket, which I still swore was her old jacket.