Book Six, Chapter 54: The Axe

Being Off-Screen should have meant that we had time to talk, but I was still working to create distance between Daphne and Kimberly. Besides that, we would periodically go On-Screen to show how we were dealing with the ever-rising floodwaters.

We would be swimming soon. The dam had to have broken or at least overflowed. That was the only explanation.

“Riley, stop,” Daphne called from behind me. “Riley, wait.”

She said it both On-Screen and Off-Screen, because in a way, there was no difference to her.

After I’d made it out of the labyrinthine back halls of the casino floor, I found myself surrounded by slot machines that were short-circuiting in the floodwaters. There was light that seemed to hang in the air without any particular source.

Carousel must have been done shooting things in the dark. It didn’t want the audience to miss what was next, perhaps.

I dove headfirst into the water and gave up on walking.

I had to hope that Kimberly would find one of the closer stairways. I was taking Daphne on a detour.

“Riley, wait! I can’t swim!” Daphne cried from behind me while we were On-Screen for a moment. She was toying with me for the audience.

I had to turn to look at her to confirm that she was indeed swimming, because I needed to maintain some level of innocence. I couldn’t suddenly turn on my wife, the woman I loved, just because I knew she was a killer. Though the ‘til death do we part’ line might have allowed it. I mean, it was someone’s death. I would have to consult a love lawyer.

While we were Off-Screen a bit later, I could hear her laughing.

“Riley, we still have to play the part, right?” she called ahead.

She paused for a moment as we went On-Screen. Then she continued, “We are still husband and wife, and you can’t just turn that off. I know I can’t.”

“I didn’t turn it off,” I said. “I just want to know what is happening.”

I turned to stop, but she didn’t stop.

She thought she was so clever. It was immediately apparent that we had a tie in Hustle, so she was trying to use the dramatic situation to force me to stop so she could catch up.

I couldn’t afford that.

“You need to give me space,” I said, pushing myself back in the water. By the time we made it across the casino floor, the water was to the top of the slot machines.

In a way, I benefited from the humorous, teasing persona that Daphne put on when she was performing for the audience. I wasn’t just now seeing it, but I was only just now realizing its significance. It allowed me to add a bit of awkwardness that I needed to dodge and look silly, swimming away from her.

I didn’t know the exact nature of this comedy, but it was certainly tongue-in-cheek. The audience, the ones who would watch a film like this, came to see her kill me and look at the camera humorously as she did it.

It was all a big tease, like cutting my hair with those terrifying scissors. Had she done that to tease the audience?

I just had to hope that there were enough people in that same audience who wanted to see me live.

So she was going to play games as she chased me through the water and winked at the audience every time I made a goofy move that she had to copy, or every time she said some corny, lovey-dovey phrase that only Homibride would say.

I would gladly play the counterpart, turning back only to watch her. Enthusiastically and awkwardly lurching away from her as she got closer to me, maintaining as much distance as I could both in character and out.

Finally, I made it across the ground floor and got to the stairways. The door was actually hard to open because of all the water pressing against it, but I didn’t have time to goof around. So I grabbed my meat cleaver and smashed it through the door window, releasing a ton of pressure. So much so that when the water started flowing through the door window, the entire door cracked through the middle and was swept into the stairwell.

I didn’t know if that looked ridiculous or not, but at the moment, it felt very violent and real because I didn’t just swim in gently; the rushing water forced me in. I barely managed to gather my bearings in time to climb up a guardrail and onto the stairs before Daphne made it to the door.

On the first landing, I turned and looked at her.

She wasn’t chasing me anymore, but we were still technically in a Chase Scene. We were On-Screen.

She reverted to emotional, in-love Daphne, and as I looked down at her, I couldn’t deny a physical pang in my heart. I wished beyond anything that she would reveal her heel turn was all for show and that she really was everything I believed her to be hours earlier.

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But that wasn’t going to happen.

We didn’t say anything. We just stared at each other. I held my cleaver, not threateningly, but there really was no way to hold a meat cleaver that didn’t convey some level of threat.

After prolonged eye contact, I turned and continued up the stairs.

“Riley,” she called after me.

I could have left her there, but I knew from her tropes that she had ways to get around impossibly quickly. And we were in the run-and-slash portion of the film. If I didn’t keep her with me, then I knew where she was going to go. She would find Kimberly wherever she was, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

We went Off-Screen.

I turned around, planted my feet, and asked the first thing on my mind. Ramona.

“Why did you kill her?”

She stopped, too, still looking at me, with only the emergency lighting, which turned everything blood red.

“She really did try to stop the wedding. You should have warned her against it,” Daphne answered. This wasn’t the emotional love interest Daphne or the deadly bride from an exploitation flick.