The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG

I wondered why I hadn't been pulled apart in the way that Lorne had been.
He had far more Grit, and even though he was the Second Blood sacrifice, I didn't see any good reason for Tom to take his time with me, any good reason, of course, except for Carousel wanting to get the footage it needed.
I was done for. Alive was a bit of an exaggeration.
In an attempt to keep the shadowy rope around my neck from strangling me, I had jammed my fingers in between the shadow and my neck, and all that had done was get them caught. Maybe if I could have reached down and grabbed the remaining protein bar in my pocket and used it to invoke the name of the Heaven King, maybe then my strangulation would end.
It seemed weird to me that I had just done an exorcism to rid myself of the imprisoned god’s influence. Did that not carry over? It had only been minutes. Shouldn't that protection still be going? Apparently not. Blessings didn’t transfer.
It was no use. My hands were trapped, and the air was getting harder and harder to find as blood was barely getting to my brain. Kimberly and Kelsey were preoccupied. Antoine was tied down to the offering dish, and Bobby, it seemed, had actually betrayed us.
Even though it felt like my eyes were about to pop out of my head from the pressure, I stared down at him as he tossed more offerings through the reality veil. How many times in Carousel was I going to think we were all on the same page about something, only to find out that wasn't the case? We had been over this. Heck, even the Vets had lectured him about trying to find his wife.
Was Bobby really going to seal our fate to get his wife back? How long could it possibly last? How could it be worth it to him?
If we lost the storyline, he wouldn't get to stay with her anyway for more than a scene, even if this god had the ability to resurrect her, which I had my reservations about.
Why would Bobby… what was he looking at?
He kept glancing over toward the wall where all of the newspapers and pictures had been posted, all of the demands the cult had made in exchange for their devotion. I followed his gaze. He was clearly looking at the poster of his wife, Janet. Maybe her image was inspiring him.
It didn't make sense. On the red wallpaper, he was Infected, but not fully. Whatever this god did, it never fully brainwashed a person. Sure, it let them think they were talking to their loved one, and it was very convincing and soothing, but it wasn't mind control.
Bobby's Infection indicator was flickering like a heartbeat. He had enough control. That was no excuse.
A red bolt of lightning hit the wall near Janet's poster, and an obituary for someone's best friend just disappeared like it was never there. I couldn't remember who had put that obit there, someone in the cult. I wasn't good enough with names to be in an organization like this.
The red lightning was changing reality. I had already figured that out. It was slowly merging the new world and the old, and Bobby was watching, waiting, hoping to see the part he cared about merged. Was he only doing this enough to try to see Janet resurrected? If he were successful in that, would he decide to betray the cult and help us? Surely.
But what if she never came? What if she stayed dead? How far was he willing to go? Would he sacrifice Antoine?
I didn't want to think about it, and I could tell I didn't have much thinking left to do. My Dead indicator was almost fully lit, and my thoughts were getting fuzzy.
But if Bobby was doing what I thought he was doing, if he had not fully lost himself in the fantasy of being with his wife again, maybe there was something I could do to help. However much I might regret it later, if we lost, there would be no later.
I stared at Janet's poster, and I used the
on it. It was a weak and feeble version of the
, sure. The trope was most potent when used during the Party Phase, and it was already so late into the finale that the poster wouldn't really be buffed or anything like that. But the
did have one further effect that could still be useful.
It put the object in view of the audience. That was it.
That was all I could use it for at that point. If I could just force the cameras to look at that poster, hopefully that would get the ball rolling for what Bobby was trying to do.
But I wouldn't be around to see it.
Because everything faded to black as the shadow gripped down even tighter, and my fears of suffocation were proven to be unsubstantiated as the shadowy tether tightened a lot faster than I anticipated.
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“Please tell me you’re not really doing this,” Antoine pleaded with Bobby Gill as another watermelon passed through the reality veil.
“It’s nothing personal,” Bobby said. “I have to do this.”
“You don’t have to,” Antoine said. “This is murder. Is this how you want your wife to come back into the world? To know that you were willing to do this?”
Bobby looked up at Antoine and stopped throwing offerings for a moment. “She’s never going to know anything,” he said. “And even if she does, at least she’ll be alive. At least I’ll have been able to save her.”
Antoine thrashed at his restraints with no success.
Bobby continued to throw oblations to the dark god until he uncovered something underneath the various offerings: a long, thin knife. He couldn’t look at it. There was no way he could ever use it, no matter what.
Suddenly, an image surged into his mind, an image of his wife’s missing poster placed onto the red wallpaper. He knew what that meant. He turned to see Riley dangling in the air, staring down at him in his last moments as the shadowy sinews of Tom’s spell ripped his head from his body.
What have I done, he thought. Could he have saved Riley? Was that the right play?
Bobby looked over at Janet’s missing poster. He had to make this work or else it would have all been for nothing. He continued launching oblations into the reality veil, one after another, desperately hoping that after each throw, Janet would be revived.
Nothing was working. He needed a boost. He needed help. But what options did he have?
On the red wallpaper, there were options. The tropes of all of his fallen comrades had been listed out. By stepping into one of his fallen allies’ narrative roles in some loose way, he could use one of their tropes.
His aspect capstone trope allowed that. He was a Recast. He could be anything he wanted.
Luckily for him, he actually shared a role with one of his fallen allies, Riley. In fact, they had the same subplot, or at least a substantially similar one. Riley was more of an infiltrator, but they had a similar relationship with grief, similar enough at least for this trope to activate. And he knew which of Riley’s tropes he wanted. All he had to do was use it.
Antoine was still pleading with him, but Bobby had tuned that out as best he could for a while.
“You can’t do this,” Antoine said. “You’re not a bad person.”
Bobby almost wept at the thought, but there was anger there, too.
“How would you know?” he asked. “You don’t know anything about me, and you don’t care. No one cares. You know what’s funny? In the movies, the handsome guy does anything for love, even things that are destructive, that cause huge problems for other people, and he’s a hero. But doing things for love isn’t something only heroes do, is it? Everyone is willing to risk it all for love—even the bad guys. So I don’t know which I am. But I do know what I’m willing to do.”
Would something like that work? A vague speech about movies and motivations and then…
His Moxie and Hustle jumped up four points apiece.
Bobby had chosen Riley’s
trope, which buffed a cinematic act as long as it was linked to a cinematic inspiration. That brought him to 14 Moxie—almost as much as Kimberly. Was that enough for his improvisation to work? That, plus all of the work he had done pulling the thread?
He continued to throw offerings across the reality veil.
“Janet,” he called out. “Can you hear me? Please! Hurry!”
He looked up at the red barrier, and there she was, where she had always been, watching him with a smile. And as they had one last look at each other, a red light flashed and Bobby felt his entire body vibrate. He was blown back two feet onto his backside.
Suddenly, he heard something beeping. He had no idea what it was, but he soon realized it was in his pocket. He reached in and withdrew an old fashioned pager, bringing it up to his eyes. There was a small message on it:
“She woke up,” Bobby said out loud, confused at first.
He stood up and looked back to where Janet had been on the giant red wall, only to see that she was no longer there. All he could see now was a red-tinted prison with a gigantic god-like being lying in it, trapped in place, fresh from an attack.
“Janet!” he screamed out. “Where are you?”
And as he turned to look at her missing poster, he saw that it wasn’t there. Something had replaced it.
“Hurry, finish the ritual!” Tom screamed to him. “We don’t have much time!”
Bobby ignored him and painstakingly walked over to the wall where Janet’s missing poster had been. In its place was a news article:
But of course, in the new world, Bobby saved Janet. He got her to the hospital in time, and now she was waking up.
“Go finish the offering!” Tom screamed, and at first Bobby did as he was told, walking back over to the table. He looked down and saw the knife. He grabbed it.
He acted like he was really considering it.
And then he looked up at Antoine, then down at the pager again.
“She woke up,” he said.
Quickly, he handed the knife to Antoine, who immediately turned it around and started trying to saw his way out of his restraints.
Bobby, meanwhile, used his buff in Hustle to start to run out of the room.
“Where are you going?” Tom screamed after, blasting Kimberly back in a wave of darkness. His shadowy threads didn’t seem to work on her.
“My wife,” Bobby said. “My wife is alive.”
“We have to finish the ritual,” Tom said. “You’ll meet her again in the new world.”
Bobby looked at the pager one more time and then up at Tom.
“I don’t care about a new world,” he said. “I just want
.”
He then turned and ran out of the room as fast as he could, faster than Tom could react. He ran until he was out of the underground hideout and all the way up to the store. He must have bounded across the entire floor in ten steps.
The police cars were out there, some of them still with the engines running, and he grabbed one.
“She woke up,” he said to himself, and then he started driving toward the hospital, driving as fast as he could, because he had to get there before the movie ended.
Whatever it took, whatever he had to do, whatever risks to himself or others, he would follow the thread that led to her. Just like he promised.