We didn't have that long Off-Screen, but it still felt like an eternity. I would have loved to take the opportunity to ask the Stranger questions but surviving the story was more pressing.

I saw Cassie and Isaac sitting deathly still on the couch. I needed to say something to help them. I wished that Anna was there. She might not know the perfect thing to say, but she would at least get in the ballpark. I would do my best.

"You ready?" I asked. I tried to mask my own fear.

“Am I going to die?” Cassie asked.

She got straight to it.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

“I don’t think I can do the Ten Second Game,” she said. "I'll look away the moment I see something scary. I know it."

“You don’t have to,” I said. "I don't blame you for wanting to opt out."

“You did it,” she replied. “You acted like you wanted to.”

I nodded. “I get the feeling nobody would put up with me if I didn’t do stuff like that.”

She paused. She seemed to think over the situation again.

“But how do you just get over it? The fear?” Cassie asked. “Were you afraid on your first storyline?”

“Of course I was afraid. It’s just not a useful thing to think about,” I said.

In The Final Straw II, it didn’t matter how afraid I was. All I could do was run through the maze either way. In The Astralist, I knew I was going to get got and did my best to delay it. Didn’t do much good there.

“You just don’t think about it?” she asked.

“I do but anytime I start to see it affecting me, I just lock it down. It helps that I can’t stand the idea of people seeing me get emotional,” I said. I briefly thought back to when I was a kid and my Grandparents wouldn’t let me leave my parents’ funeral early. I was forced to lose control in front of everyone. I still got itchy thinking about it.

“That’s not a good thing,” she said.

“It is here,” I said. Then, back to the task at hand, I added, “You’re a Psychic, anyway. Just act like you’re afraid because you’re sensing something dark or something. Psychics and stuff are Moxie-based. So it’s all in the performance. You want your tropes to be strong and useful, play into them.”

I hoped that if I could give her something to focus on other than her fate, it might be enough to calm her. Focus on the task at hand.

“Just keep making remarks,” I said to Isaac, who was never far from Cassie. “And look around for a weapon you might use that’s funny. Always be looking for ways to trigger your tropes.”

I thought that was good advice even if I didn’t always follow it as well as I would like.

Isaac nodded. “You said it’s the Tutorial. Doesn’t that mean no one has to die? I mean Tutorials are supposed to be easy.”

Truthfully, I didn’t know. I wasn’t even confident that Carousel even called it a Tutorial. The players definitely did, but that didn’t mean Carousel was bound by that logic. Besides, death wasn’t a failure in the Game at Carousel, it was a strategic decision.

The Stranger caught wind of our conversation and added in his own line while eating my chicken tenders. “Nothing is supposed to be easy here, kids. In Carousel, your limits are just the starting point. This story is not the one I’ve run before. Carousel has been busy. Don’t slack, my friends, don’t slack.”

“Where is the camera?” Dina asked. “We aren’t between scenes. What is the audience seeing?”

Dina was right. Being between scenes wasn’t indicated on the red wallpaper, but it felt different than simply being Off-Screen. I couldn’t describe it.

“Camera’s showing the audience the threat, in some fashion, I imagine,” The Stranger said. “First Blood is on its way. The audience might already know what’s out there.”

“Could be on Constance,” Kimberly suggested.

Constance was safely away at home, waiting for us to wake her up with a phone call.

“Might be, sure,” he said, but I didn’t think he bought it.

I didn’t either. Carousel didn’t even know if we would call Constance. I had watched the storylines we had been through a dozen times each using my Director's Monitor trope. I had developed some sense of how the final movie would play out. Carousel didn’t make up for our mistakes. I figured that if we didn’t tell the audience something, it wouldn’t remind them. Part of making a perfect performance was remembering to give Carousel lines it could use in its final edit. That didn’t exactly seem like a priority right then though.

----------------------------------------

While Off-Screen, I decided to make my way around the suite to familiarize myself with the set. I had done this already, but I had to channel my nervous energy into something. I was trying to find an object to use my The Insert Shot ability on. Being able to buff a weapon or otherwise useful object gave me a sense of purpose, but so far I had no idea what would come in handy.

I circled around, sticking my head in every door. I grew increasingly conscious of how close we were to First Blood.

That’s when I saw the mirror in the bathroom Kimberly had showered in. Like all of the other mirrors in the place, it had a cover over it, but unlike all of those, which had been covered with a thick white sheet, this one was only covered with a towel. Not one of those oversized hotel towels either. This one was barely covered with one of the towels meant to twist up in long hair. It was barely covering the mirror.

And it was moving.

Nothing was visibly coming out from behind it, but it was clearly being jostled by the air. The wind was blowing it. There were no open windows so that didn’t seem possible.

I needed to take the opportunity of our minutes Off-Screen to ask The Stranger about it. I walked quickly back to the living room where everyone else waited.

“Is there something special about the mirrors?” I asked. “I know you said the ghosts could cross through them, but why is the one in the bathroom back there blowing in the wind?”

The Stranger went to check what I was talking about.

He had a theory.

“It’s a trap in a manner of speaking,” he said. “It’s billowing Off-Screen in there. That can only mean that Carousel would go On-Screen the moment one of us tried to fix it. That was a nice catch. Didn’t the blonde one say that she saw something flip the light switch in there earlier?”

“Yes,” Kimberly answered. “While I was showering.”

The Stranger nodded. “Carousel has that thing prepped and ready to go. The audience is aware, and the characters—that’s us—were made aware. It might do something with it later.”

I thought back to the Subject of Inquiry storyline where Carousel had appeared to be planning to set the poltergeist on Antoine for First Blood, but I prevented it. That part had barely made it into the final movie. Instead, First Blood had been the massacre of most of the NPCs in the building. I wasn’t sure if that was an easier or harder version.

“So should we trigger it?” Antoine asked.

“Normally,” The Stranger said, “I’d say yes. Carousel would be pleased. This storyline used to be mostly jump scares, some minor fate-worse-than-death if you really messed up. This time, I don’t know.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I thought for a moment. I tried to put myself in the shoes of a new player. What would someone new to Carousel do right now?

“We’re new players, just now starting to see the red wallpaper but we think we’re going crazy. We’re super creeped out by this strange man, no offense. Do we investigate the moving towel over the mirror?” I asked.

“Definitely not,” Antoine answered.

I agreed. It probably didn’t matter.

“Classic Carousel choice. Both choices are the wrong decision,” I said.

No one argued. Either we triggered the billowing towel right then or Carousel would do something else. Best not to do it so near First Blood if we could avoid it.

So we waited until eventually…

On-Screen.

“We can’t wait any longer,” The Stranger said impatiently. “We need someone to go speak to the spirits that have gathered. Everyone has to do it. Everyone.” He looked to Cassie.

Cassie looked horrified, but, to her credit, she did say, “Something is happening. I can feel it. There is something wrong. We shouldn’t be playing this game.”

“Whatever,” The Stranger said. “I’ll go. Can someone please join me?”

He looked over at me, but I didn’t budge.

“I’ll go,” Bobby volunteered.

The Stranger nodded and the two of them went off to yet another of the rooms with the bell.

When they left, we stayed On-Screen. Did Carousel know that I had something to say?

“He’s still hiding something,” I said. “I don’t know what, but he knows more than he is saying.”

The others looked back in the direction that the two of them had run off to.

After a few excruciating sessions of twenty questions with a ghost, The Stranger and Bobby returned. The Stranger didn’t look happy. Bobby looked confused. They had nothing to report.

“You said your daughter left you a voicemail,” I said. “Mind if we listen to it?”

The Stranger froze. “I don’t have it with me. It was on my home machine. Don't have a cell.”

I gave him a distrustful look. He had asked us to bring up the voicemail. If he wasn’t talking about it, that meant there was something incriminating about it that he couldn’t reveal yet. The Stranger as a player would have just found that out most likely.

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“Next,” The Stranger said.

We needed another group to play The Ten Second Game.

“Fine,” Kimberly said. “I used to play Bloody Mary at sleepovers when I was a kid. I was the only one who actually did it. This can’t be that different.”

Her Grit jumped a point. I suppose she was trying to trigger her Convenient Backstory ability to boost a stat. This had not been her most successful attempt. If I had been thinking about it, we might have come up with a better use, but a point of Grit for bravery (I suppose) was better than nothing.

Antoine gave her a look that I recognized as “Are you crazy?”

Nonetheless, he went with her. His baseball bat was at the ready. It wasn’t a great weapon against ghosts, but it activated his Like a Security Blanket and Swing Away tropes.

With the Plot Cycle moving toward First Blood, we all knew what was to come. If Kimberly had stayed in the living room with the rest of us, it might have brought trouble to us.

With any luck, First Blood wouldn’t even be lethal. It could be an injury or even just a huge scare if it fit the story. I wasn’t sure though.

Within moments, the twisting of the bell and ticking of the mechanism had started.

In the living room, we were Off-Screen. All eyes were on Kimberly and Antoine.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Nothing.

The belle was rewound. Kimberly asked another question. We hadn’t agreed on what to ask. We didn’t even really know what the spirits could tell us. That was another thing I had forgotten to plan around. I made a mental note for all of us to get on the same page about that as soon as possible.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Briinggg!

That was a yes to whatever they asked. They rewound the bell.

Tick.

Tick.

Kimberly screamed. There was a crashing sound like glass breaking and then something hit the wall.

On-Screen.

Everyone in the living room jumped to life. We raced to the room with Kimberly and Antoine, but as we got there, the door slammed.

I got there first and pulled against it with all my might. Bobby and The Stranger helped. As hard as we pulled, nothing budged.

“Antoine! Kimberly!” I screamed.

No answer. In fact, though I could hear movement in the distance when I first arrived. I couldn’t hear anything in the room.

“… got her!” I heard Antoine scream eventually, but the sound wasn’t coming from in the room. It was coming from outside. “It has her!”

And then nothing.

“She’s hurt!” Cassie screamed. Her The Anguish ability came with a useful perk of being able to see the health stats of her teammates. “She’s getting worse! We need to do something!”

She must have seen the stats on Kimberly’s status bar move as, first, Unscathed dimmed with the first injury. Then some combination of Incapacitated, Mutilated, Hobbled, Unconscious, or even Dead would start to light up. They would blink at first, but then stay lit when things were finished.

“She’s going unconscious,” Cassie screamed, staring into the red wallpaper, “I think it’s choking h—"

The words caught in her throat.

Cassie couldn’t speak anymore.

She started to gag. Then, a force threw her hard against the wall behind her. She started getting dragged across the wall by her throat.

We ran to her.

She was terrified, unable to speak, barely able to breathe.

“Fight it!” I screamed.

This was The Anguish ability. She could “empathetically” share the damage of allies to lighten their injuries. I had not anticipated it being this effective while she was so low-leveled, but then I realized, as a Psychic, her Moxie was high for her level and her Grit was zero. That stat configuration would maximize this trope's capabilities.

That wasn’t to mention that this storyline was the exact type that trope was designed for. Psychics, ghosts, the confirmed paranormal. It was a perfect storm.

“You have to fight it!” I screamed. I had done little to reinforce my own inherited Psychic abilities that my “Grandmother” was implied to have passed on to me because of my background trope. I would be almost useless here but I had to try.

“Isaac!” I screamed. “Encourage her! She needs you now!”

Isaac obeyed and promptly knelt down beside his sister and started encouraging her to fight. Tears filled his eyes. He was helpless.

I didn’t know if bringing in the power of family would work here. It was too early. The theme hadn’t been established. But I was throwing everything at the wall.

We were firmly in First Blood now

Cassie started to lift up by her throat, up, up. She was floating.

Whatever it was that was attacking Kimberly was powerful, but she was surviving. They both were.

I grabbed the couch and pulled it under where Cassie was floating.

“What do we do?” Bobby screamed to The Stranger.

The Stranger looked as confused and afraid as we did. “This has never happened before. I know some people are more sensitive to spirits… How was I supposed to know?”

I jumped up on the couch and reached up toward Cassie. She was turning blue, but I could see on the red wallpaper she was still alive.

The fact that Rebirth hadn’t come yet meant that Kimberly was too.

I tried to lift her up, to secure her so that she wasn’t hanging from her neck. Miraculously, It was working.

She and Kimberly were connected.

Cassie was extending Kimberly’s survival. Every minute Kimberly lived, the weaker the big bad got. We needed to do whatever it took to help her survive longer.

Eventually, she lowered to the ground quickly as if slammed, but the couch took much of the blow. I could see deep purple bruises forming around Cassie’s neck. They were in the shape of a hand.

We continued on for what seemed like an eternity that way.

Eventually, whatever force was dragging Cassie around by her throat relented. The needle on the Plot Cycle jumped to Rebirth. Kimberly was dead.

Cassie was barely alive, just hanging on.

“She’s trying to say something,” Dina said.

Cassie was moving her lips. She couldn’t talk. Her throat was crushed. Her Dead status was blinking and staying on longer and longer each time it blinked.

Isaac held Cassie in his arms and cried.

No matter how much we warned them, he was never going to be prepared for this.

Cassie died on the couch. She had held on for nearly ten minutes of choking torture, barely able to breathe. In the end, she lost the fight. But she had helped Kimberly and the team. I hoped that would be enough.

Isaac tried to wake her.

“Can’t we do something?” he asked. Then he repeated himself in a scream.

After Cassie was gone and a beat had passed, my attention returned to the room Kimberly and Antoine had been in. I tried the doorknob and it opened easily.

There was glass on the floor. I could see that. There was also a dent in the drywall opposite the window. Beneath it, a broken metal flashlight had landed.

Bobby, Dina, and The Stranger were there with me.

“Someone threw the flashlight through the window,” I said.

“With a broken window,” The Stranger added, “It could have just walked right in. We need to get this covered up.”

He moved to flip the mattress up against the broken window.

“Damn,” he said as he realized that wouldn’t work. It was too short to cover the whole thing. “There’s cardboard in the storage room,” he said to Bobby.

Bobby ran to fetch it.

“I’m guessing that we can’t just close the door,” I said.

“You guess right.”

I stared out into the darkness through the window. No spirits arrived in the distance.

It just looked like I was staring out the window. Nothing special. I knew that wasn’t true. Even though it looked like a forested hillside, the land outside that window belonged to the dead.

“She was saying ‘Antoine alive’,” Dina said. “When she was dying. I think that’s what she was trying to say.”

Antoine alive.

Out there lost in the woods, the ghosts his only company. That wasn’t good.

Just as Bobby arrived back with the cardboard, I heard the tinkle of glass and a young man stepped through the window. I hadn't seen him in the distance.

He held his hands up in front of him as if to surrender.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said. “I barely got away alive. My friends. They’re still back there. I left them. I was afraid.”

He said this mournfully, unprompted. He worked himself nearly into tears, but the tears never came.

I was distracted by the way his head tilted unnaturally to the left. By the bony protrusion pressing out against his skin from below his ear from where his neck had snapped.

J.T. Guzman (Wandering Spirit)

Plot Armor: 3

__________

Tropes

Death Delusion

This entity is not aware it is dead.

Don’t Wake the Beast

This entity is asleep or in a similar condition. They will not stir without outside intervention. Waking them will transform them into a more dangerous form that plays by different tropes.

Walking Crime Scene

This entity’s ghostly form reveals clues as to the nature of its demise.