The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG

is Daphne Sinclair AKA Rachel Hutchins
Riley Lawrence is
Kimberly Madison is
Antoine Stone is
.
Logan Maize is
Dr. Andrew Hughes is
Bobby Gill is
.
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We stepped in out of the rain, laughing and holding hands like the wind was trying to blow us away. We were Off-Screen, so we didn't have to put on a show, and we weren’t. That was just us.
Above us was a banner that read:
.
We both read it at once.
"You're cheating on me," Daphne said, slapping me on the chest playfully. "Who is this Hutchins woman?"
I was confused at first, but then I looked at the wedding invitation in my left hand and said, "I think it's you."
The document I had once listed Daphne Sinclair as my bride-to-be, but it had been replaced by Rachel Hutchins.
A look of realization dawned on Daphne’s face.
"Right," she said. "I forgot to tell you that my name was actually Rachel Hutchins. I put it off for so long, it just became awkward."
"I'm just glad that you had the courage to tell the venue, because they seem to have figured it out," I said.
She laughed and dragged me forward, toward where Kimberly and Andrew were standing.
"Did you hear?" Daphne said when we got to them. "We're getting married."
"I heard," Kimberly said with a laugh. "You'll have to tell me how he proposed."
As I attempted to think of something amusing to say, an image suddenly emerged in my mind.
I saw flashes: a long hike up a mountain, a celebration at a hidden retreat. Me getting down on one knee, and there was Daphne.
As quickly as the flash of memory had come, it disappeared.
The others were speaking, and we had gone On-Screen without me noticing.
Antoine walked up to greet us, hugging Kimberly and giving her a kiss.
"How about we make this a double wedding?" he said.
"Don't," Kimberly said. "I told you that is not funny."
"Who says I’m trying to be funny?" he asked, as he knelt down on one knee, looked up at Kimberly seriously, grabbed her hand, and then let go to start tying his shoelaces.
"For every joke you make about proposing, the more spectacular the actual proposal has to be," Kimberly said. "You know that."
"Then I can probably make at least four or five more jokes," he said as he stood up. “Based on what I got planned.”
He turned his attention to me and held out his hand.
I reached out and shook it.
"The day has finally come," he said. He turned his head to Daphne. "Personally, I’m surprised he ever built up the courage to ask you out."
We continued with the basic wedding banter, as if it were some sort of rom-com.
Outside, thunder rolled, and the rain continued to fall harder and harder.
"You may end up having your honeymoon here," Antoine eventually said, as the roar of the rain beating down on the parking lot and the building roof echoed louder.
"I'm sure the casino won't mind," I said. "They’re probably hoping we’ll bankrupt ourselves at the craps table before the ceremony."
"From what I hear, that’ll take a while," Antoine said, glancing over my shoulder.
I followed his gaze and found a picture of me hanging on the wall, with the title 'Carousel World Poker Championship.'
I was a poker player, apparently. And a good one. No wonder we chose to have our wedding at a casino.
I stared at the front doors, which just happened to have the only windows in view.
The rain was like one massive stream.
"The only person gambling here is my fiancée," I said, turning to her with a grin. “Taking a chance on me.”
She gave me a look like I had made a corny joke, and then put her hand to my face.
"I will always take a risk on you," she said.
Off-Screen.
"Why is your name suddenly Rachel Hutchins?" Antoine asked, looking at Daphne.
"I don’t know," she said. “Do you like it? I don’t know if I can pull off a Rachel.”
“You are totally a Rachel,” Kimberly said.
It was strange. Usually, a player’s name stayed the same regardless of what storyline they were in, and any relevant NPCs would just be renamed if they were related or something like that.
"It’s got to be something to do with the plot," I said.
"Yeah, maybe," Daphne said. "So you should all be very careful to call me Rachel Hutchins and nothing else. We wouldn’t want anyone getting confused. Although I already know I will."
"Naturally," Andrew said, but he was mostly talking to himself. His focus was across the room, where they had an entire storefront devoted to selling cigarettes and tobacco products.
"Your hair is wet," Kimberly said, looking at Antoine. "Have you been outside? I didn’t see you come from that direction."
Antoine looked away, almost embarrassed.
"No," he said. "I had some other scenes I had to shoot."
"What were they?" I asked. We were always keeping tabs on each other. Even little pieces of information could be useful.
"I have a feeling you’ll figure that out soon enough," he said. "Don’t make me say it."
I was curious about what would make him clam up like that, but I knew that he wouldn’t hide important information from us.
"So what do you have so far?" I said. "Apparently, I’m the groom. Somehow. Doesn’t seem like a very minor character type of role, but it can be in some movies, especially if the wedding is just a setting and not a key plot event."
"I’m the bride," Daphne said, smiling at me. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
"Thank goodness it was you, or else this would have gotten awkward," I said.
"Maid of honor," Kimberly said, holding up the wedding program. "I haven’t had much time to figure out anything else. Andrew is your best man. I’m assuming Antoine is my date."
"Well, he certainly is after that playful introduction," Daphne said, and she and Kimberly laughed.
"So that leaves Logan," I said.
"You’re going to love this," Kimberly said, and then she held out the program.
"Oh my God," I said when I read the part she was hoping for me to see.
I started to laugh.
"Is he the minister?" Daphne asked, joining me in my giggle session.
"He’s going to have his work cut out for him," Antoine said. "The cynical man of God, whichever god it is that exists in this storyline."
We were still standing in the casino lobby. It was time to move toward the back.
"The sign says that the betting lounge is that way," Antoine said.
The place was built like a maze. Where most casinos had a large, open room filled with roulette and other games, this one was built with intersections and large walls that bounded different areas away from one another. In fact, the front of the casino was the only place that looked open and had a good line of sight.
"We’re going to have fun chasing killers in this," Antoine said.
"Or being chased," Daphne added.
On-Screen
"Should we swing by the chapel first? Maybe it and the dining hall," Kimberly suggested. "Just to get a good look at it, see if the caterers need any answers. I'm halfway certain they didn't understand what I wanted when it came to the floral arrangements."
"Will you calm down?" Daphne said. "It's
wedding, and you're the one acting like a bridezilla."
"Sorry," Kimberly responded. "I just really want everything to be perfect."
They walked ahead of us and continued talking to each other about the wedding.
I held back with Antoine and Andrew.
"I don't think I've seen a casino this empty, even on a Tuesday morning," Antoine said.
"It's the storm," Andrew responded. “No one can get through it.”
"In my experience, degenerate gamblers will make it to the casino even in a hurricane," I said.
As a professional gambler, I should know about that.
"They won't if the road is closed," Andrew said. "They just reported it over the radio. The road to Carousel has been washed away. If the regulars wanted to come out here to burn their money in the slot machines, they'd have to go all the way out east, near the airport."
None of that made sense with Carousel proper’s layout, but Carousel’s geography tended to change by the storyline.
I looked around. Even though there were very few NPCs around, the dings and chimes of the slot machines could still be heard, but the winning player could never be seen. The machine paying off was somewhere in the labyrinth.
This was going to be quite the setting to contend with our slasher.
As soon as we got in sight and laid eyes on our beloved minister, Reverend Logan Maize, Kimberly started to say, "I can already see from here what they've done, "
And then she stopped talking.
She had equipped a trope that she rarely used called
, whose function was to aid in exploration by allowing a player to send themselves and nearby allies Off-Screen simply by starting a conversation in one area and then stopping abruptly, only to continue it in a different area.
Kimberly had just sent us Off-Screen.
If we understood the trope correctly, that meant we would have plenty of time to go to the new betting hall, or whatever it was called, in hopes of finding Lucien Graves and having a nice chat.
We didn’t have to be silent on our way to the betting room. Still, for some reason, we were as if we were afraid that by speaking, we would accidentally continue the conversation that Kimberly had started about the flowers.
It was silly, really. But we needed to be Off-Screen, and we didn’t want to risk anything. So, as Logan joined us, we made our way toward the back.
Bobby was already there, waiting for us. Given the nature of his archetype and aspect, the Recast, as he had chosen, we weren’t sure when he would show up, so waiting around didn’t seem necessary.
He was wearing a uniform, presumably a management position at the casino.
He had not brought his dogs, which was rare, because he had even brought them on a jungle adventure. This storyline, however, centered around a huge storm, and he couldn't imagine wrangling them in those conditions, especially if we couldn’t go outside.
The dogs weren’t there, but his NPC companion, Jules, was. She stood next to him, also wearing a man’s suit. She was taller than Bobby, with spiky blonde hair and pursed lips, as if she were playing her character as the no-nonsense type.
"Finally, you show up," Jules said. "Bobby was starting to worry you got washed away."
"I just thought they got stuck in the storm, that’s all," Bobby said.
"We almost didn’t make it inside," Daphne said with a smile.
"Such a shame," Jules said. "I would truly hate for your day of bliss to be marred by such a terrible event."
She stared down at Daphne, though I couldn’t quite read her face.
"I’m just glad we have each other," Daphne said, holding on to my arm.
Jules smiled. "Isn’t that nice?"
I had never run a storyline with her, and while I knew that she had a very particular sense of humor, her tone was weird, almost aggressive.
"Well, let’s get this show on the road. Can’t wait to finally meet one of these Narrators Riley can’t shut up about," Logan said with a smirk.
Antoine laughed with him.
The joke being that, in their eyes, I was too tight-lipped about my experience on the other side of the mountain, and maybe I was.
We continued down the path that we were heading, past rows and rows of slot machines, until we found the betting room, which was large, and the floor was sunken into the ground so that you had to take several steps down to get into it.
"Holy crap," I said, looking around.
The décor changed, and I recognized it. The casino was stylized as a fancy hotel in the seventies.
This room was art deco.
"What is it?" Daphne asked.
"I don’t think that this room is in the casino," I said.
They all looked at me funny, except for Jules, who seemed to be waiting to hear what I would say, with a smile.
"I think this room is inside the tower on the other side of the mountain. I think they just connected it," I said. "It’s hard to explain."
The way that Carousel and those parasitizing Carousel were able to just sew together different physical locations was mind-boggling. And while you could understand that it was happening, trying to figure out how it worked did nothing but melt your brain.
But this room was very similar to the one where I had met the Proprietor.
Much smaller, but virtually identical in all other respects.
"Are we safe to go in there?" Antoine asked.
"What do I know?" I responded. "But I doubt anything would happen to us during a storyline."
We descended into the room. There were a few people sitting around and a couple of different NPCs on huge ladders in front of a monumental chalkboard.
Because it was the 1970s or so, there was no digital betting board; it was all done with chalk.
It took a while to see the man we were there to meet.
He wasn’t as flashy as I expected.
He was sitting in a spinning chair, hardly more fancy than the average office chair, in front of the chalkboards.
He spun to greet us, and we knew it was him because he was the only person in the room who didn’t show up on the red wallpaper.
He was eating a bag of chips.
Doritos.
Those were Earth chips.
There was something disarming about the way he smiled with his mouth full and looked genuinely excited to see us, as far as I could tell.
He wore a leather coat, almost like a cowboy’s duster, but less flamboyant. Other than that, he just had a button-up shirt and slacks. His hair was long, but not as long as mine had gotten. He had it neatly combed.
He might have been in his early thirties, but I had no idea for how long, with the immortality and all.
He didn’t look like the daredevil I had seen on the poster.
He didn’t stand up to greet us or meet us halfway down the stairs. He just waited with a smile, and when we got there, he stood up, wiped his hands on a handkerchief, and said aloud:
"You brought a Mobile Omen in order to clear out the Omens in the casino instead of picking one of the ones already here. Very good. You just made Mason in logistics a very wealthy man. He got in on the bet before anyone else did."
He snapped his fingers, and one of the NPCs on the ladders moved to one of the items on the chalkboard grid and wrote out the results of a bet.
"You see," Lucien added, "he was the first to realize that was what you were up to. Got in while the odds were still favorable. Of course, once everyone saw his bet, they realized it was the most likely option. But he got in early, and sometimes that makes all the difference."