Chapter Thirty: The Grotesque Lottery

Chapter Thirty: The Grotesque Lottery

We waited for the longest time.

I felt like I was 12 years old again and hiding out in the cellar with my grandparents as the storm of the century raged above. I had felt like I was just waiting to find out whether that was how I died.

When I asked my grandpa whether we were going to be okay, he answered, “We will or we won't.”

That was that.

My grandmother was much better in a crisis and comforted me and said that no matter what happened she would be there with me.

It wasn't that my grandfather was cold, no, he just had a different outlook. Even when cancer put him on his deathbed, he still had this slight grin on his face like he was amused that death would finally show its face to him after all these years.

When speaking of his potential demise, he would say again “I will, or I won't.”

Of course, he would have to have a pretty strange outlook on life to get his young grandson hooked on horror movies.

I must have gotten a lot of my personality from him because even as the players around me scrambled, all I could wonder was, is this how I die? I'm not saying that I'm particularly brave or unafraid of death but I am more curious than I am scared.

Anna, on the other hand, was far more interested in being prepared. She immediately started asking around about whether things like this had happened before and what to do about them. Should we run? Can we run?

Grace, under pressure, continued to cook. I could see that she was frazzled, which wasn't normal for her.

“This hasn't happened in years,” she told Anna. She took a cleaver and chopped the heads off of the fish that Lee had caught. “And never like this.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by “like this.”

Her hands were shaking. She really shouldn't have been holding that cleaver, but I wasn't going to say that to her.

“Why is no one leaving?” Anna asked, hoping one of the veteran players would let her in on whatever secret it was that they knew.

Roxie, who had immediately found the front entrance to the lodge, and gone to her room to change into attire more appropriate for a storyline, had mercy on Anna and explained it to us.

“Everyone who has seen that Omen can be chosen. It doesn't matter which team actually picks it up. It doesn't matter if everyone else runs to the other side of Carousel. All we know for sure is that Janette will be on the team. What's going to happen is there's going to be a short debate and then Arthur is going to pick up the Omen. Then the lucky winners will march off to complete the storyline.”

“Can't we just... not touch it?” Anna asked.

Roxie smirked. “This one? Maybe. The next one? Probably not.”

I noticed that she had changed her tropes around. She was no longer a Femme Fatale; she had downgraded back to Eye Candy.

When I asked her why that was, she explained that it was bad practice to have multiple advanced archetypes on a single team. Advanced archetypes tend to take over storylines and much of the plot will become focused on them. If you have more than one it can be pretty convoluted and difficult to discern how to proceed.

“When whatever a ‘grotesque’ is starts killing us, I want it to be Arthur's responsibility, not mine,” she said.

She then started helping Grace shuck corn.

An hour after the package had arrived, Lara, the Psychic archetype, publicly declared that we needed to take it before nightfall.

She had several tropes that could give her information about storylines that she wasn't a part of and omens that had not yet been activated. Tropes with names like Soothsayer and Harbinger. I wasn't sure which one she used to make this prediction.

As if they had been waiting for such a sign, Adeline and Arthur got everyone to arrange themselves by plot armor. They acted as if proximity to the omen might play a role in choosing the team so they wanted the strongest players closest. I couldn't say if that was something they knew to be fact or if it was just a theory.

The air was tense as Arthur, who had packed a large duffel with all of his monster hunting gear, got near the parcel.

There was nothing left but the luck of the draw.

Just looking at the package I could see that the needle on the plot cycle was at omen. For some of us, maybe even all of us, it was about to change.

He reached down and grabbed the package. He took a knife from his belt and opened it up slowly as the surrounding players watched, many with their hands on their holsters.

From within the package, Arthur retrieved a stone statue about the size of a border collie. The statue was hideous. It had the body of a dog, the tail of a lion, the face of a man screaming in agony, and teeth like something out of hell. Two curved horns grew from its head.

I finally figured out what a Grotesque was. It was a gargoyle, and not the Saturday morning cartoon version.

He started looking around at the crowd of players. “Who do we got?”

Three hands raised into the air. There was Reggie, a Bruiser with plot armor 38. Valerie, a Final Girl. Plot Armor 58. And Roxie, the Eye Candy, who smiled like she was expecting it. Plot Armor 40.

Arthur, Monster Hunter, Plot Armor 64 was also part of the party.

Of course, Janette the Hysteric, Plot Armor 9, would be as well.

“Anyone else?” Arthur asked.

There was someone else...

Me.

I raised my hand.

“Oh no,” Anna said. She hugged me.

I was numb. I couldn’t even hug her back.

Arthur cursed.

“Carousel can't resist a Film Buff,” Roxie said with a laugh.

“You’re going to be okay,” Anna said. It was more of a question than a statement.

“I will or I won’t,” I said under my breath.