Book Six, Chapter 36: A Close Shave with a Haircut

“I don’t remember what happened exactly,” Ramona said. “I hit my head, and when I woke up, my car was caught in the floodwater. I thought I was going to die.”

We were On-Screen, back inside the entryway. We had her sit down in a leather chair. The last remaining maid had gone to fetch her some towels.

“That’s awful,” Daphne said. “Don’t you worry, we’re going to take care of you.”

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Ramona said.

Andrew was shining a penlight into her pupils.

He examined her head. She had a swollen lump right on her hairline.

“I’m afraid you may have a concussion,” he said. “Can you tell me your name?”

Ramona paused for a moment.

She began to cry. She’d always been a tougher figure; I hadn’t seen her cry since she had found out the truth about her sister being an NPC. But she was crying for real now.

“My name is Ramona Mercer,” she said. “I was trying to get to Carousel. I think I messed up.”

Whatever had happened in the floodwaters had actually scared her.

“Well, don’t you worry, sweetheart. You’re safe now,” Daphne said as the maid arrived with towels.

Andrew continued his examination, but there wasn’t much more for him to deduce. She had a head injury, not the worst.

“An ice pack and some observation are all you need. I might be able to find you something for the pain. A shower and change of clothes might be useful if you were in floodwaters.”

Ramona nodded.

“Come with me,” Andrew said. “I’ll take care of you.”

He took her hand, helped wrap her in towels, and led her away. As they wandered off, Ramona stared back at me and Daphne with a strange look on her face. That hit to the head must have been pretty terrible.

Off-Screen.

Kimberly, Antoine, Daphne, and I just looked at each other.

“How did she end up inside this storyline?” Antoine asked. “We must have done something wrong.”

“It was our fault,” I said. “Ida Rae features a huge storm; it probably had a large radius of influence or something. We should have waited longer to trigger it.”

“We waited until they were hundreds of yards away,” Antoine said. “That should have worked. What we did was overkill.”

“Apparently not,” I said.

“If she was drawn in,” Kimberly said, “how many of the others were? And if they’re out there like she was…”

We looked out the glass doors. We could hardly see anything. The rain pounded them, even with the carport sticking out the front of the building. We had hardly been able to make out Ramona through the rain.

“If someone’s out there, they probably won’t make it in here,” Daphne said.

“Well, this run just became that much more important,” Antoine said. “If we have dead players out in that storm…”

Lightning flashed.

“Whatever’s happening,” I said, “that doesn’t change anything for us. If they’re out there, we can’t save them.”

It was cold, but true, and everyone there knew it. It was a miracle that Ramona managed to swim her way to the building. The hotel was in a recession in the ground, but the building itself was above the parking lot. It was a last sanctuary for miles.

But if the water grew too much… even we wouldn’t be safe.

After Ramona left, Bobby and Jules came and led me to the hotel/casino safe. We were On-Screen, and the entire scene was devoted to them showing me that they had put a large amount of my cash into the safe for safekeeping.

I had to sign a piece of paper saying that I witnessed them putting it in the safe.

For a while, I wasn’t exactly sure why the scene existed at all. It could easily be replaced with a line of dialogue.

“I’ll try to lose some of that to you,” I said, “though it might be hard without any card dealers on staff.”

“Oh, don’t you worry one bit, Mr. Lawrence,” Jules said with a laugh. “If you’re hankering for a round of cards, be it blackjack, poker, or any other game you fancy, I’ll deal them for you.”

I laughed.

“That’s why you’re the boss,” I said.

“Well, actually, he’s the boss,” Jules said, pointing at Bobby.

“Yeah,” Bobby said, “but I don’t know how to deal cards, so I have to keep her around.”

They started bickering with each other, with Jules bringing up how she was due for a promotion or, at the very least, a raise.

“I’m doing the job of three people,” she said, “and one of those people is you.”

“I’m training you,” Bobby replied. “How else am I supposed to do it? I believe in hands-on learning.”

As they continued their back-and-forth, I looked down at the pad of paperwork I was filling out.

It was a clipboard with lots of copies of the page I was signing attached. Apparently, this was something they did regularly with guests who brought lots of cash.

The author’s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I noticed that there was another clipboard there too, but this one was the opposite; it was for withdrawing cash from the safe, cashing out, as it were.

Perhaps it was the angle of the light, or perhaps I was just looking for a reason for this scene to exist, but I noticed that there was an impression on the page for the other clipboard.

Someone had filled out a withdrawal form and pressed down so hard their writing had been etched into the page below.

I angled my head, and while I couldn’t make out most of the information that was written, I could make out a name.

It said: Antoine Stone.

I couldn’t see the amount, but apparently Antoine had already cashed out.

I figured he would tell us something like that.

Bobby and Jules were still bickering, so I grabbed a pencil off the desk, and I gently turned it on its edge and rubbed it over the name section of that page, which revealed Antoine’s name in a way that the camera could pick up. This method also allowed me to see how much money he had withdrawn.

Twenty thousand dollars.

I wondered if Antoine knew he had done that.

I quickly ripped off the page, finished up my paperwork, and left, looking for Daphne.

I didn’t find her, but I did find Kimberly. I gave her the copy of Antoine’s withdrawal slip and explained what I had learned.

We still had some time to go before First Blood, so we were more or less safe. We decided to go up to the roof to look around. Any useful thing we didn’t find during exploration would not be there in the Finale, after all.

Carousel had decided to send us On-Screen when this happened.

The funny thing was, we couldn’t go out onto the roof; that would be ridiculous. The rain and the wind, and the lightning were terrifying.

Instead, we were at the top of the stairs with the roof access door cracked open, watching.

“It’s like we’re in the middle of the storm,” Kimberly said, “like nothing else exists.”

“If we’re not lucky, we might not exist here in a minute,” I said.

The wind fought with us, trying to open the door further.

“Don’t be like that,” Kimberly said. “It’s your wedding day. Can’t you be optimistic on your wedding day?”

I stared out into the storm.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I never expected to have one. I guess I almost feel like it still won’t happen, even though it’s only hours away.”

Kimberly looked at me with pity.

“The wedding is definitely going to happen,” Kimberly said. “The honeymoon…”