Book Six, Chapter 22: The Frat Guy

I knew that Carousel rewarded exceptional feats, but I was expecting a reward in the form of something that fell out of Silas the Mechanical Showman’s ticket slot.

There were dozens of coins in varying denominations in the safe, about a hundred dollars worth, but that was not what interested us the most.

It was an envelope containing one handwritten letter that we wanted to see first.

It only took me a glance to know what it was. I passed it around so that the others could read.

“But I thought you couldn’t learn new information in the finale,” Isaac said. “Are we not in the finale?”

“You can’t discover new information in the finale unless it’s scripted,” I said. “But you can find a piece of paper containing information that you already figured out.”

I didn’t expect the Hell plotline and the devil’s deal plotline to dovetail Off-Screen like this, but you live and you learn.

“Camden and Anna?” Ramona asked after she had read the letter.

“They did their job,” I said. “Now we have to go back up there and help them finish.”

The truth was, there was only one real theory that could get us across the finish line. After all, this storyline had nothing to do with going down into hell. Rescuing these poor souls from their all-you-can-eat-and-more pizza buffet was a subplot.

The main plot was a different kind of rescue altogether.

What we had just received was not just a reward to us, I suspected. It was a reward to Anna and Camden for having solved the principal mystery of the story: how had the demons cheated Gus Senior into selling his soul? What was the trick? And how might we undo it? The letter told all. We just needed to get it to them.

First, we needed to escape Hell.

After we defeated the demon amalgamation, I could suddenly see the red wallpaper.

According to my Call Sheet trope, I didn’t go On-Screen for another three hours.

I was trying to think about the logistics of that, because as far as I could tell, all we had to do to escape was climb up out of the pit and use Hell’s version of Hot Head to ascend to a higher plane, aka the pizza parlor.

Was it still late at night up there?

I wasn’t going to complain. I was tired.

The NPCs weren’t acting scripted, which made me very concerned. In between scenes like this, they should be out of character, doing what they had to do to get to the next scene.

But they were acting like real people. It made me nervous.

Avery and Ruck had clearly formed some kind of bond with all the other captives, and all of them were hugging and rejoicing as they slowly made their way toward the stairs.

I caught up with them, and Isaac and Ramona followed. Isaac was moving a little slower; his healing trope could only do so much. He had taken quite the tumble.

Once we were all gathered together, I said, “I’m guessing that we have a scene at the top of those stairs, so I’ll have to fall behind in a bit.”

Isaac had come down here to rescue Avery, and that subplot needed some footage to show them leaving. The confrontation with the Off-Screen amalgamation would be like it never existed. It was only there as part of the hidden mechanics of the story.

As we waved the NPCs forward, I caught Ruck talking to Ramona.

“So there I was, laying out in my lawn chair. I’ve done this hundreds of times, thousands, I don’t even remember, and all I can think is, here we go again, wonder who the killer is. And I look over at the house, and I see Riley sitting inside the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal in front of the big window, acting like he can’t see me,” Ruck said.

Ramona shot me a curious smile.

“Now he’s playing the outcast even though he doesn’t know it, and we have my death scene coming up. It’s First Blood, it’s pretty standard. And all I can think is, what is this guy doing? So my friend Nathan, you know Nathan, you met him earlier, was the killer. And he comes up ready to stab me, acting all menacing while I’m basically just sleeping there in the lawn chair. And he shoots me this look like, what is this guy over here doing? So he stabs me to death. Nothing to worry about, I’ve secretly got like 100 Grit when it comes to pain in that storyline, so getting stabbed in the gut feels like a shirt button popping off to me.”

“Was he using Oblivious Bystander?” Ramona asked.

“He was using, yeah, that trope. I don’t know the name of it. Then Nathan has to go chase him, because that’s what he was supposed to do if there was a player around during the murder. And he goes to do it, but suddenly he can’t. He can’t do anything aggressive. He just looks menacing at him and poses up in front of the window. All the while, Riley’s just sitting there eating cereal while I’m getting murdered, bleeding out by the pool, dreaming about those little sandwiches that craft services gives us.”

“He doesn’t really use that very often anymore for some reason,” Ramona said, “but he always takes it with him.”

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“Well, I can’t blame him,” Ruck said, laughing. “I bet it drives all the killers wild.”

I felt like I was getting called out.

“I like having it with me,” I said, “as a backup even if I can’t use it all the time. It’s harder to be oblivious when you also have to be on top of things. I’ll use it more later, once people get leveled up.”

Maybe I was being defensive, as if this were a criticism of my loadout.

“It’s alright. We know you have everything thought through,” Ramona said.

Not by a long shot.

I shrugged my shoulders. The truth was, I would like to go back to just being some hapless Film Buff in storylines. But then, I had chosen Filmmaker as my aspect, which was a leadership role, even if it was a meta one.

“So who solved the murder?” Ramona asked. I felt like she knew the answer to this, but she was being friendly with Ruck.