Book Six, Chapter 86: Don’t drink the Kool-Aid

The most frustrating part of playing the game at Carousel wasn’t the dying. No, dying was easy, physically if not emotionally, and there were plenty of monsters around to help you do it.

The most frustrating part was that even when you knew who the bad guys were and had some idea of how to defeat them, you still had to put on the show. There was a back and forth where the audience might not know who would win, and you were right along with them, not knowing, because if you didn’t perform, it didn’t matter whether you had the answer. You could die holding the monster’s weakness in your hand.

I breathed deeply as I stood over the refreshments table in the common area of the underground hangout. I was On-Screen. I had to look nervous, trying to sneak without raising suspicion. Luckily, I wasn’t the only player there. Dina was nearby, and she came to the refreshments table to stand next to me.

“You said there would be a punch bowl,” I whispered to her.

“There is. It’s right there,” she said, glancing back at the table.

“Dina, that is lemonade,” I said.

“So?” she asked.

“You said punch. Punch is always red.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said. “Why does it matter?”

“The drink mix that I had consecrated is fruit punch flavored. I can’t put it in the lemonade. People will know.”

“Dear gods, Riley, they’ll just think it’s strawberry lemonade.”

I suddenly blew out a breath of frustration. As I casually lifted a small baggie of fruit punch mix and dumped it into the lemonade pitcher, I grabbed the handle and swished it around a few times so that it would mix in.

“It’s a murky grey,” I said. “Barely even pink.”

“Everything in this room is tinged red because of the throne room,” Dina said. “Nobody is going to notice.”

I shook my head. “Who picks lemonade as their last drink before ending the wor—” I stopped what I was saying under my breath as a cultist walked by. I nodded and said, “I can’t believe it’s almost time.”

He smiled at me and nodded. “We’re almost there, brother. The new world awaits us.” He continued on.

“That was close,” I said. “This had better work.”

We both left at different times and circulated through the room. I made my way around, mostly nodding and laughing as people rejoiced about our victory.

I was suddenly very grateful that I had initiated the time skip, because there was no way I was going to be able to infiltrate a cult in person, not for any length of time. These people seemed nice; in fact, they seemed a little too nice for a cult, but it was the small talk and the constant friendliness that would have worn on me.

Would I have had to do that, too?

Luckily, I had a high Moxie, so I could just fake it. I’d probably lose some points in the end, but since my character was undercover too, it was okay if I didn’t act perfectly. He was the bad actor, not me.

As I walked around, I realized that the large wall, which had been covered in pictures and newspaper clippings meant to signify the sickness of this world and the hope for the next, had been disassembled. All of its photographs and various iconography had been moved. We had skipped forward in time. The ritual was coming in fast.

My money said that it was now in the throne room. In all the notes that my character had left during the time skip, they referred to that room as the dark room. But there might have been flexible terminology. After all, none of that got said On-Screen. Now the dark room or throne room, whatever, was emitting a deep red glow.

With my lemonade trap set, I thought I’d mosey on over and see what all the fuss was about. There didn’t appear to be anyone watching me. It was a very high-trust secret society. People were walking back to the red-tinged throne room freely. I grabbed my red plastic cup that I pretended to drink from and made my way down the long hallway.

Like everything else, the hallway had been dug out of the ground, and yet it appeared like something that had been unearthed, a path that had always been there. It had an ancient quality, like exploring a pyramid.

The further I went, the redder things became. I wasn’t sure Carousel thought this through. The entire final fight being drenched in red light might be grating to the audience, not to mention how it would hide the blood, but that was its decision.

While most of the carving of the stone was purely pragmatic, the entryway into the throne room was intricate and beautifully done, as if the associates at Eternal Savers Club had spent hours and hours making it beautiful back when the door was closed, perhaps listening to the voices they heard on the other side.

As I turned into the room, the breath emptied from my lungs against my will. I felt like I was on a roller coaster that had just dropped over a hill.

Before me was paradise, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, the thing my heart ached for without me even knowing it.

To describe it with words, it was a giant red window, maybe some type of ruby or colored glass. I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter, because whatever it was, it was nothing but a barrier. I knew that in my heart, and on the other side of it was happiness.

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Suddenly, I understood why these folks were willing to work retail just to be close to this thing.

Happiness.

That was the thought going through my head. Happiness lies that way. I tried my best to adjust my eyes so I could see what it was that my gut was telling me was so wonderful, so that I could hear it over the ringing in my ears from the pure ecstasy of being so close to the next world.

Because that was what it felt like. It felt like this was a gateway.

I stumbled forward, barely even noticing my surroundings.

“Riley, please help me. Riley, please,” someone yelled to me from off to the side. They were tied by ropes to a large metal plate. It actually did look like a dinner plate. Stacks of groceries surrounded them. Offerings. I doubted the cult paid for those.

It didn’t matter to me.

A voice that I heard in my chest, not in my ears, called out to me.

And what it said, it didn’t say in words, but if it had used words, they would have been, “You are not who you are supposed to be.”

As my eyes finally understood what they were seeing reflected in the red glass, I saw a house in the suburbs. I knew that house because I had grown up in it, or at least tried to.

At the front of that house was a door, and if I could just walk through it, I could be happy. No, better than that, I could be someone who had never known sadness. It was right there, seemingly twenty feet from me. I just had to walk through the red glass and get there. That’s all I had to do. If I could break it with a hammer, I would have done it.

That life, that person, was right there.

“Riley, come on, man. They’re gonna murder me. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand what they’re trying to do here? It’s murder no matter what happens afterward,” the person tied to the large metal dish said.