Chapter Forty-One: The Grotesque Angel

Chapter Forty-One: The Grotesque Angel

“Barely missed an artery,” Valerie said. She was trying her best to pretend that the injury I had just sustained wasn't going to kill me. “You'll need to take it easy. Looks like you're not going to be a part of this fight. I can patch you up, but you're going to need stitches after this. A whole lot of stitches.”

Her voice shook a couple of times during that speech. Her trope required her to pretend that my prognosis was good. That, combined with covering up the injuries, allowed me to continue. It’s the same thing that happened with my leg outside.

She used up the rest of the bandage material just trying to hide my enormous gashes from view.

Arthur watched on with a gun raised ready to fight anything that broke through the door and followed us, but the door held. Eventually, we stopped hearing bangs against it. The Grotesques on the other side must have found something else to distract themselves with.

Maybe it was Donald.

“You should be able to stand but don't run. Don't want to get your blood pressure up. I really don't want to do this because you just had one but what the hell,” Valerie said handing me another one of her pretend pain relievers.

I swallowed it whole.

As before, it worked. It took the edge of my pain away.

Off-Screen.

“You don't have long,” Valerie said. “Even at my best, I can't hold off a fatal wound for more than a scene or two.”

Arthur sprang into action. He reached down and grabbed me by the arm and pulled me up onto my feet.

“We need you to identify this creature On-Screen and then you can die,” he said.

The way he said it was like he thought I actually wanted to die, but he wasn't going to let me until my shift was over.

Standing there, broken leg, broken collarbone. I think I was even disemboweled and bleeding out. And yet none of that was true because the audience was told it hadn't happened. I felt like I needed to throw up. This was unnatural.

“Let’s go,” I said.

The catacombs were massive. The chamber that we walked into when we went down the stairs was at least the same size as the church above. Tunnels branched off in multiple directions. It wasn't clear which way we needed to go.

The place was dark and damp.

Arthur had brought a flashlight in his duffel. He aimed it around the room.

The place was littered with molds for casting statues. Donald had used them to build new Grotesques. He must have been at this for weeks. Hundreds of bags of concrete lay empty and strewn about.

Around them, hundreds upon hundreds of shattered Grotesques were stacked up in the corners of the room. Donald must have just smashed them with a hammer any time they came out stupid and violent instead of smart and cunning.

On-Screen.

“So, this is where he made them?” I asked. My character was the only one that hadn't been down here.

“Ground Zero of the apocalypse,” Arthur responded.

We walked around the room getting a sense of things, allowing the camera to get shots of us taking everything in.

With every step I took, I knew I was on borrowed time. We needed to get to the final battle soon. Luckily the needle on the plot cycle seemed to be on our side. It was coming fast.

“Stay here, be careful, wait for us to come back,” Arthur said. He pulled another flashlight from his duffel and held it out toward me.

I shook my head. “Give it to Valerie. She needs it more.”

We made eye contact and I think he understood.

I was safer in the dark. I was safer when I couldn't see what was trying to get me.

Valerie and Arthur went off to separate tunnels stating that they would go for 5 minutes and then turn around. That way they could systematically check every tunnel. If one of them didn't come back, the other would go searching.

I would just kind of stand there and try not to die until I had told one of them which Grotesque was the Leader.

Fortunately, whenever we got attacked in the church, I had been able to buff both Valerie and Arthur because of my prediction that the creatures underneath the white sheets would come to life. It wasn't much but a little Grit and Savvy could go a long way in their hands.

When they left, I stayed On-Screen. That had to be the most ominous thing possible. I kept expecting to go Off-Screen as the camera watched them explore.

It didn’t happen.

I had leaned myself against the wall. Given what I thought was about to happen I started to walk around and examine the room more in the dim lighting that seeped in under the door upstairs.

As my eyes adjusted, I saw them. They came creeping out of one of the tunnels one at a time. I hadn't used Oblivious Bystander in near darkness like this.

As I walked around, six or seven Grotesques of various sizes and shapes started to disperse around the room. I needed to stay oblivious to all of them. I spread out my hands to help me guide myself. I blinked my eyes in an exaggerated way to show exactly how blind I was. I even tried to incorporate a little of the “I'm in so much pain I can't tell what's going on” thing that I did with Ranger Danger.

The Grotesques moved around, crossing my path, following me. They were silent for the most part, only making the faintest trace of noise.

I started to breathe loudly, I gave myself a cough, anything to explain why I couldn't hear the scratches on the ground around me. Coughing felt excruciating even with Valerie’s magic pain pill.

Still, I powered through.

I only had to wait five minutes. If I knew movies, and I did know movies, the tunnel that these creatures had just come out of would be the one we needed to go down. I needed to relay that information to Arthur.

As I walked along, I was heading straight for a table that Donald had been working at. There was a row of busted Grotesques on that table. At the far end of that row, one of the small live Grotesques had crawled into place next to the broken ones.

Dammit. Carousel wanted that scene.

Everything was lined up. Part of the price of using Oblivious Bystander was that I had to make it entertaining. It was strange using a mostly comedic trope so near the climax of an action movie like this, but here we were. I had almost thought that Carousel wouldn’t give me a chance to use it at all.

I walked along the desk, my hand feeling among the broken Grotesques. I made my way slowly. As I went along, I could almost feel the camera following me, the tension rising in the audience as they think I’m about to touch one of the living Grotesques.

There were seven broken Grotesques ending in an eighth that was alive. I made my way past the first, the second, all the way on to the fifth, and sixth.

The voice of the Leader echoed in my head. He might be right. The gargoyles up at the top we're carving their way through to the outside world. Once they escaped, that was it. We lost.

Arthur took another shot with the flare. This time he missed, only turning one of the gargoyle's arms to stone. Not enough.

Just under a dozen creatures remained unless one of them wanted to go down and start waking up the statues beneath.

Those that weren't clawing their way through the opening were swarming around like wasps in a huge circle. It wasn't that there were a ton of them, but they were moving so quickly that it was hard to tell which one was the Leader even though he looked different.

You cannot resist me. I can see your heart's desire. You do not want to be here.

No shit.

Arthur fired off one more round from the flare gun. This one hit one of the Grotesques near the Leader. It went down.

“One flare left,” Arthur said. He handed the flare gun to Valerie. “Better make it count.”

Then, after having attempted to evade for so long, the circling Grotesque changed tactics. They started to attack.

One after another, they divebombed Arthur and Valerie, preventing Valerie from getting a critical hit against the Leader because of her Better Make It Count trope.

Arthur did his best to hit them with a Molotov and break them when they got close. It was made difficult because after burning one, he had to get ready for the next before he could take the first one out.

All the while, the Leader hid behind his brethren.

The Leader of the Grotesques was a terrifying creature. I didn't know if there normally was a Leader for this storyline or if this creature had been crafted specifically because Arthur had brought his Cut the Head off the Snake trope.

What I could say was that this creature did have one defining weakness, even at night when it was living flesh and virtually unstoppable.

It hated being ignored. It had been speaking to me off and on all fight. I had mostly not been paying attention. Part of that was because I was dying. The other part was because enemy monologues do start to all sound alike.

Ever since it began whispering to me, I could feel an urgency pick up in its voice. The longer I went without responding the more frustrated the voice became. At first, it was like he was trying to be friends with me but now I could feel his rage.

Humans believe that they are superior. They build altars for gods. But whose image do they adorn them with? Mine. Could there be any greater evidence of what you truly fear?

Come now, join me, serve me and I will spare you.

A monster with a God complex. I thought only humans could have one of those.

I will not be ignored. Pledge your service to me or face my wrath.

Riley, take your weapon and kill your comrades and you will live. You were always better off alone. Would you even be in this hellish place if you hadn't been dragged here by those who claimed to care for you?

The joke was on him. I wasn't even sure that I could kill Arthur and Valerie with my gun. I didn't know how the stat matchup worked with friendly fire.

I assumed that the audience could hear him tempting me so I had to play it up as if it might be working.

I kept a hand on my gun and held it out, not all the way toward Arthur but I needed to show that I was struggling with the decision. In a way I was. I could feel the temptation to succumb, to betray those around me. It was just so distant behind the pain.

I dropped the gun and let it rest on the ground.

Even as Arthur and Valerie were shooting them in the sky, I could see the Leader continuously trying to look at me. I was the target, after all.

I think I had a way to end this. I was at my end. I had to act.

“I will not help you!” I screamed defiantly. Blood choked me as I spoke but I screamed through it.

That did it.

The Grotesque Leader stopped flitting around in the air with his brethren and made a beeline for me. He pounced on me, landing on my leg and crushing my knee. He drove one claw into my stomach, undoing whatever positive effect Valerie’s healing had done, releasing my wounds from their bandages and putting me further on my path toward death.

If I was going to die, I would die executing one last plan. Roxie had died to buff my Savvy, after all. Seemed a shame to waste it.

I reached out toward the Molotov cocktails that had fallen out of the duffle and grabbed one of the bottles. I grabbed onto one of the creature’s horns and then drove the bottle over his head, smashing the glass and pouring flammable liquor over his torso and flooding down onto me.

After that, I was done. I had nothing left in my body to fight with.

Pop!

I heard a noise to my right, like a firework.

In the corner of my eye, I saw a bright orange fireball.

My entire body erupted in pain. I hadn't thought that I could be any more injured but this agony was something new. I wasn't numb to it.

I was on fire.

But so was the Grotesque.

Bang! Bang!

Gunfire continued to ring out, this time much closer to me. I couldn't tell if they managed to kill the Grotesque. I was too preoccupied with my own hellish existence.

You fool! You worthless--!

The Grotesque was speaking to me but I couldn't hear most of what it was saying. It sounded like it was in pain too.

All I could think about was hoping that my pain would end.

After what felt like an eternity, it finally did.

Bang.

The pain stopped. All went dark.