Carousel Book Six, Chapter 41

The stairwell down from the penthouse technically did have emergency lighting, but for some reason, it was an obnoxious dark red color, and it blinked very slowly, so there were entire seconds of darkness between momentary reprieves of light.

Luckily, I had pretty good Hustle, so I wasn’t worried about tripping, even though any person in real life would likely take a tumble under these conditions.

Daphne kept pace with me easily enough, though she did slow down after a few levels.

“Do you ever think about our wedding?” she asked in a soft voice.

“I haven’t really had time, I mean, it just happened,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment. Almost an entire three blinks of the red light.

“No, I mean for real,” she said. “Do you think we’ll get married?”

We were Off-Screen, so we technically could talk about this, but it felt like a terrible time.

“I don’t know,” I said. “First, we’ve got to rescue all the Vets, figure out this Throughline nonsense, and see if there really is a way out of Carousel. But yeah, I mean, that’s what people in love do, they get married. It’s not like I’m going to find anyone I love more than you.”

I stopped my descent. I got the sense that she was feeling some really big emotions, and I didn’t want to run off and leave her as she slowed down.

“Why do we have to leave Carousel first?” she asked. “Why can’t we just get married here? I mean, we could die any minute. Don’t you want that perfect moment of happiness?”

Oh no.

“What is with you talking about a wedding like it’s a perfect moment of happiness? Honestly, our fake wedding was mostly just super stressful, trying to play the part for the audience, you know what I mean? And I imagine a real wedding would be pretty similar, minus the serial killer.”

She laughed gently, but briefly.

“You’ll never be happier than right after you get married,” she said. “Everything goes downhill from there. It’s when you really get to know a person. You know, when they have no reason left to hide anything.”

She was a few steps above me, but she closed the gap slowly, holding onto the handrail.

“Do you think you know me?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, think of all the things we’ve been through together. I know you better than anyone back home ever did, right?”

I waited for the red light to blink and searched her face as well as I could to understand what had brought this conversation on.

“I think the only way to know a person is to give them everything they say they want, and then see what they do once they have it,” she said.

I saw a tear rolling down her face.

“I thought I was the cynical one,” I said. “What’s going on? I know that trying to think about romance when people are dying around us is difficult, and that’s all Carousel is.”

I could see her holding her handbag in one hand. She was opening the clasp and closing it over and over again.

“Look,” I said, “love isn’t the hopeless thing I thought it was. I never thought I’d get to love anybody, but here I am, with you. I was so afraid that love would lead to pain, and that I would never let myself do it. But then I met you, and somehow, I got there.”

“You love me?” she said.

“Of course I do.”

“I don’t think you can really love a person until you know what’s wrong with them,” she said. “Until then, it’s all in your head. You don’t know them completely.”

I stepped up toward her and grabbed her hands.

“If anyone’s love has been tested, it’s ours, right? I mean, Carousel is not the place for the faint-hearted.”

She wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“Do you still feel your character’s love?” she asked.

Whoever the groom was, back when this storyline was real, he was truly in love. I wondered what his life was like. I wondered what his bride was like. I also wanted to know how it had all gone wrong. I was pretty sure I would find out soon.

“I do,” I answered. “It’s like a physical jolt running through my body. He loved his fiancée very much. And I think she loved him too.”

Daphne embraced me and said, “She did. With all her heart. I think they were happy together all the way to the end. Don’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Maybe we should run this storyline again sometime, just to feel it again. Happy. Peaceful. Optimistic.”

“A perfect moment,” she said.

I kissed her because I could tell she wanted me to. And because I wanted to, too.

“But I don’t make you feel like that,” she said.

It was a trap the whole time.

“I never said that,” I said. “It’s just, I’m cautious. I don’t want to count on a happy ending until we’re crossing the finish line. You can’t ask more than that.”

“I can’t make you happy,” she said, “because of all your baggage.”

“Wow,” I said, letting go of her and backing down a few steps. “Isn’t ‘happy’ a little bit of a high bar in a place like this?”

She didn’t answer me. But when the red light came on, I could tell that she was distant, as if she were reading the red wallpaper.

“You can’t be happy because you blame yourself for your parents’ death. But that’s not fair to you.”

“I blame myself…” I repeated. “Where is this coming from?” I asked.

“If you had gone up the stairs when you suspected something was wrong, you would be dead too,” she said. “It isn’t your fault.”

“I know that,” I said. “I know that. But… where is this coming from? When did I tell you…”

“You can’t love a person until you know what’s wrong with them, and I know everything about you, Riley. That’s why I can love you completely. But I still can’t make you happy. And if I can’t do that, what is the point of any of this?”

“Daphne,” I said, “this is not the time. When we get back, maybe you can have a talk with Andrew or—"

“What kind of wife would I be? What kind of bride? If even on your wedding day, all you can think about is escape.”

“All I think about is escape,” I said. “Always, in a storyline, outside of a storyline, it’s all that’s on my mind. And I still have to avoid doing anything about it, or else we might get put on Carousel’s Throughline by accident. I think we need to end this conversation. We need to go downstairs and help the others.”

She stared at me blankly for a moment and then said, “I need to go check on my parents, see if they’re all right with the power outage.”

“Okay. We can stop by there,” I said.

“No,” she said. “You’re best on your own because of Oblivious Bystander, which now makes a whole lot more sense. I’m better on my own, too. I’m safer. Remember? Because of my tropes.”

“Right,” I said, though I didn’t specifically remember which tropes she was talking about.

“I’ll go downstairs and check on everyone,” I said. “It should be pretty easy to be oblivious in all this.”

“Clearly,” she said.

“And we need to talk about whatever that was, because my head is spinning,” I added.

We continued down the stairs until we reached the floor where her parents were. She walked through the door, and I considered following her, but I didn’t.

She was right. We were better off alone if we were going to be attacked. Of course, I might have been biased by how much I wanted that conversation to end.

I did hope she would be all right.

How strange, even as I continued down to the first floor, I kept cursing myself for how stupid it was to let her go off alone. Why did I do that?

~ ~ ~

The first floor was worse off than I expected.

Not only was it dark because the lights were out, but it would seem that the slot machines had some sort of emergency backup that allowed them to continue chiming and dinging constantly in the distance. I couldn’t see the machines that were paying off. I could never see the machines that were paying off. Yet I heard them echoing through the labyrinth that was the casino floor.

As I walked, my shoes squeaked against the damp floor.

Water was coming into the building. Things were going to get ugly.

On-Screen

Carousel filmed me as I discovered the new world that the power outage and the flooding had created. I would go Off-Screen for a few minutes at a time, but then be right back on.

I picked up the pace and started running back toward the banquet hall.

You never realize how slippery wet carpet can be until you’re running on it.

Still, I had to act appropriately for the situation, and “appropriately” meant full speed.

But then I ran into Bobby, and I only knew that because of the red wallpaper.

As soon as I caught sight of his physical body, I stopped.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

“Bobby Gill. The manager,” he said, clearly frightened.

“Is there an emergency generator or anything like that?” I asked. “We need to get power back on.”

“I switched to the emergency backup as soon as the lights went off. A few minutes later, somebody broke in and sabotaged it,” he said. “Why would anyone do that?”

“They don’t want us seeing them come and go,” I said.

“Have you seen my assistant?” Bobby asked. “I sent her to the emergency generator first, but she never came back.”

“No,” I said. “I’ll keep a lookout. Is everyone else still in the banquet hall?”

“I have no idea,” Bobby answered. “People started panicking.”

“I need to go find Kimberly,” I said.

“The blonde one?” he asked. “She was there last I saw, but she might have gone to the kitchen, to be with… well, you know. She’d been talking about it. And I think your friend, the doctor, might be there too.”

“Then that’s where I’m going,” I said.

Bobby paused for a moment. “I’ll go with you,” he added. “Maybe Jules is there.”

“Well, let’s get a move on,” I said.

We started running together, and we didn’t go Off-Screen, which would have been very useful.

“This is a terrible time,” Bobby said. “A terrible time for this. We’re training mostly new staff. I can’t seem to find any of them.”

New staff?

“This would be one terrible first week at work,” I said.

“Well, it will be their last,” he said. “They haven’t been listening to me at all. It’s like they don’t even know I’m in charge.”

He was trying to tell me something.

We continued running in the direction of the kitchens, and we made it there in record time.

As soon as I pushed through the door, I could see Kimberly’s poster flash on the red wallpaper, which made me hyper-aware. Just aware enough to reach up and grab the frying pan that she was about to smack me with.

“Oh, thank God, it’s you, Riley. Something strange is going on here.”

“You’re just figuring that out?” I said.

There was about an inch of water on the floor. The stoves were powered on. Their flames lit up the kitchens, bouncing light off every surface.

I saw that Andrew was in the kitchen, examining a body atop a prep station.

It was the receptionist.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Poor girl.”

“Is she?” Kimberly asked, nearly in tears. “Look what we found in her pockets.”

She pointed to a large metal bowl that would normally be used for mixing, but in this case, was used for evidence that they had taken off the NPC.

I went over there and looked. Andrew had a flashlight on him and was kind enough to illuminate the contents of the bowl for me.

There was a box cutter. I reached in, grabbed it, and opened it up. “Is that…” I started to say.

“Blood,” Andrew responded. “Looks like she cut somebody open with that thing.”

I looked back into the bowl to see what else might have been there. There was a TV Guide, and on the cover was Antoine. The article was titled "The Fitness King: How Antoine Stone Plans to Build His Empire."

At first, I didn’t understand the significance. But then I opened it up.

The article on Antoine appeared to be a typical promotional piece, designed to advertise his show and enhance his persona.

But there was a section of it underlined.

A section where he talked about how he was filming episodes back-to-back because he had to go to a friend’s wedding in a few weeks at Carousel Casino and Resort, as the interviewer specified. Apparently, it just happened to be one of his show’s sponsors, so he gave it a shout-out.

“You don’t think…” I said.

Was she stalking Antoine? Why pretend not to recognize him?

“I do,” Andrew said. “She’s got bruising on her arms, looks like someone snapped her wrist. I noticed she was acting strange when we all gathered in the banquet hall. Holding her arm to her body. Hiding her injury.”

“You think this 90-pound woman killed Antoine?”

“I follow the evidence,” Andrew said.

“Then who killed her?” I asked.

As I looked back at her body, something changed on the red wallpaper.

She wasn’t an NPC anymore.

She was an enemy with a Plot Armor of 30. Her name was now, simply, Blackmailer—Codename: Honey Pot.

“We are so getting sued,” Bobby said.

And then we finally went Off-Screen.