“We need to get out of here,” Valorie said, grabbing Arthur's duffel and handing it to him.

Arthur didn't put up a fight.

The four of us ran as fast as we could out of the church. We left Donald tied up. His Grotesque friends would need to rescue him. When we got to the door Arthur had a shotgun up in case anything tried to stop us, but nothing did.

As we ran out into the courtyard of the church, we saw what had made the noise. The large, winged creature that had killed Roxie was up on the roof. It didn't attack us as we left. It probably didn't want to bring down a fight at that moment. It had to go in and spread its curse to all of the statues that Donald had been manufacturing in the basement.

Off-Screen.

“The fairgrounds,” I said. “Roxie said that the arming sequence should happen at the fairgrounds.”

“Roxie would know,” Arthur said.

The trip back to the fairgrounds took far longer without Roxie there with her mystifying geography. When we eventually started to get close I noticed that something was wrong. Something was different. It was too quiet.

The Ferris wheel was still running but I couldn't tell if anyone was inside its seats.

The Grotesques had been here.

As we arrived, we were back On-Screen.

“Oh my God,” Valorie said. She raised her hands over her mouth and nose, evidence of the horror that she saw before her.

It had been a massacre.

Many of the festival goers had been able to escape but plenty hadn't. What remained of them was strewn about the fairgrounds.

“Just focus on the mission,” Arthur said. “The entire town is going to be like this if we don't stop them.”

“Arthur,” I said. “I don't think we have to kill all of them. I think we only have to kill the leader.”

Arthur turned to me, “You think, or you know?”

I nodded my head slightly as if reassuring myself. “I know. When he killed…. When we first saw him, I made a connection. I can't really explain it, but I saw his weakness. We kill him, they all die.”

I had just made Arthur’s Cut the Head off the Snake trope canon. The audience needed to know.

Off-Screen.

“We'll set up over here by the spotlight,” Arthur said. “Reggie, drag a table over here.”

The spotlights were attached to their own unique trailer so that they could be hauled to different locations. They had a logo for a rental company, the same one that the moving truck Travis had stolen had. They were powered by portable generators that stood next to them on the ground and ran on gasoline. A little boxy pickup truck was hooked up to one of the spotlights.

“Found the keys,” Valorie said after having fished them out of the pocket of one of the poor NPCs lying around us.

The entire fairground smelled of blood.

“How long do we have till they're back?” Reggie asked.

Arthur shook his head. “Not long. It's too early for us to do the arming sequence but we can still prep for it. We're probably going to have a wave of them here soon. I see you've got a weapon.”

He was referring to the sledgehammer that Reggie had found.

“I also found these,” he said, tossing three smaller hammers onto the table that he had just hauled over near the spotlight.

“During the arming sequence, we have to go see if we can find some supplies. Riley, grab that hammer and help me with this real quick,” Arthur said.

On-Screen.

“When I lift this up, I need you to break that bracket there,” Arthur said. He hoisted the spotlight up. I took the hammer and to the best of my ability smashed a small metal bracket that was designed to keep the spotlight from swiveling independently of its motor.

“These things are weak to sunlight. I bet they're probably even weakened by the lights at the fairgrounds but this thing has got to do some damage; we're about to bet our lives on it. When they come you have to aim for the stone portions of their skin. If you hit living flesh you aren’t going to do much but the stone parts will crack.”

He reached into his duffel and pulled out a handgun. He spun it around and then handed it to me, handle first.

I grabbed it.

“You think this is going to do anything against those big statues underneath the sheets at the church? You know those things are going to be alive the next time we see them?” I asked.

I had been waiting for some moment On-Screen to make that prediction. I couldn't have done it whenever I told him that Roxie was dead; that wouldn't have made sense for my character to do at that moment.

“Try hitting that sign over there,” he said, “Right in the letter ‘O’. Let us worry about the big ones.”

I looked at where he was pointing. The sign read “staff only.”

I took the gun.

Arthur started to instruct me with things like:

Don’t hold the gun so tight but still hold it firm.

Breathe out before you pull the trigger.

Keep track of how it shoots so that you can adjust for the next shot.

Always count how many shots you've taken so you know when you have to reload.

This was intercut with me taking shots at the sign and missing most of them, but in the end, I actually managed to hit right in the middle of the letter ‘O.”

“You'll do fine,” Arthur said.

Off-Screen.

Before I knew it, I noticed that something new had appeared under my poster on the red wallpaper. I had a trope called Mind Over Monster. Arthur had just taught it to me temporarily. That must have been how the Master and Apprentice trope worked.

“We're coming up on an attack,” Valorie said. “I can feel it.”

Arthur nodded. “Okay none of us have to die here. We're still in the rebirth phase we just play this thing right and we’ll be fine.”

He talked like he was talking to everyone but really, I think he was just talking to me.

I didn't know if they were going to try to sneak up on us all at once. They certainly had the tropes they needed to get that done and so far, they hadn't used it very often. Maybe just knowing that they can sneak up on you is more unnerving than them actually doing it.

We had liberated another of the spotlights so that it could be aimed independently of its motor. Arthur was going to aim one. I would aim another. Valorie would have our backs with a shotgun.

And then there was Reggie. Reggie stood out in the middle of a clearing holding a sledgehammer in one hand and his flask in another.

On-Screen.

It was time.

At first, all I heard were scratches. Then I heard thumps; they were knocking into things as they came from deeper in the fairgrounds where they had run chasing their victims.

And then they emerged.

“On the left,” Valorie cried out.

With all my might I pivoted the spotlight over so that it shined to Reggie’s left. The spotlight was so bright that it created a visible beam, a shaft of light that stood between him and anything that approached from the left. On his far side, he was protected by a brick building that might have been used for storage. On his right, he was protected by Arthur’s spotlight.

The first gargoyle emerged. It was a small one that ran right through my beam of light, turned to stone, and bounced off of Reggie's chest where it landed on the ground with a crack. Reggie was quick to bring down his sledgehammer and shatter it to pieces.

“Right!” Valorie said.

Another one, bigger this time approached on the right. It was jumping and nearly cleared the beam but luckily Arthur raised his light just in time to turn the gargoyle to stone.

Smash.

“Wooo!” Reggie screamed.

Again on the left, then on the right.

By the time the creatures could get to him either all or most of their body had been turned to stone and all Reggie had to do was shatter them.

This was our plan to conserve ammunition, the one finite resource we had.

Even when one slipped through hiding in the shadows of their stony brethren, Reggie's hammer was powerful enough to smack them back into a beam and then shatter them to dust.

Technically the Grotesques were after me. I had the lowest plot armor. But they would have to get through Reggie in order to get to me the way we had set up our defense. Arthur made it clear that I had to survive to the finale, so they had planned everything in order to make that possible.

“Up top!” Valorie screamed.

It was the terracotta soldier that Roxie and I had seen when we were here earlier.

The statue had originally had swords but now those swords had fused into its arms. What's worse, this one was high-level; it was one of the smart ones.

It jumped down from the roof right on top of Reggie.

I tried to move the spotlight fast enough to hit it before it got to him, but I just couldn't get the large light to budge in time.

Arthur was quicker. He got his light to move but the damn thing was so smart it stayed on the other side of Reggie, using him as a shield.

Luckily Reggie had designed his build around buffing his mettle. Even with this thing's high level, Reggie was able to send it flying backward into the brick building with one swing of his sledgehammer. It was quick to return back to him running at full speed its blade arms ready for a strike and its sharp teeth ready to tear into him.

And then Reggie did something that was far cleverer than his archetype would have you believe he was capable of.

He turned sideways.

He was a big guy, big enough to block out the light and keep the terracotta Grotesque from turning to stone. But once he turned sideways, both of the monster's arms got caught in the light and were unable to deliver the killing blow once it got to him.

As it neared, he grabbed onto it and snapped its arms off.

He then swung his hammer and knocked it out into my beam of light. One more swing and it broke to pieces.

After that, the waves of Grotesques slowed down.

Eventually, the arming sequence started.

“We need some of that homemade liquor that you were telling us about,” Valorie said.

I didn't exactly see where it was, but I was familiar enough with the area to be able to find it.

We got to work.

The extended arming sequence trope that Arthur brought with him was a game-changer. An arming sequence can't get interrupted typically so we spent the next 40 minutes or so assembling Molotov cocktails and preparing for our assault on the church.

As the needle on the plot cycle tipped closer and closer toward second blood, Arthur and Reggie would make regular eye contact. Reggie seemed to be asking him a question nonverbally. Arthur would signal him, “Not yet.”

I knew what they were talking about.

It was time for another sacrifice play.

When my friends and I had played through our storylines we always just accepted whatever first or second blood came to us. The veterans went out of their way to choose when, where, and how first and second blood would occur.

One last time, Reggie looked at Arthur asking his silent question. This time, Arthur nodded.

Reggie took out his flask and swallowed a drink.

On-Screen.

“I'm going to go see if there's a concession stand,” he said. “My blood sugar’s getting low.”

“Stay close,” Arthur said.

Reggie took a drink out of his flask and raised his other hand into a thumbs-up.

He started walking away from the rest of us, drinking excessively as he went. He started to stumble as he walked, to lean on things.

As he got further away, I could see his plot armor had started to drop.

We worked in silence finishing up our preparations and loading them into the back of the truck. Then it was time.

On-Screen.

“Where's Reggie?” Valorie asked. “Have you guys seen him?”

As if right on cue, a scream echoed through the fairgrounds.

We all grabbed our guns and ran toward the sound. When we got there, I was horrified by what I saw.

The figurines from the shop where Roxie had bought me the frog had all been transformed.

They, plus a few regular-sized Grotesques, had managed to take down Reggie. However, they hadn't killed him. They just continued to bite and claw at him without any clear strategy on ending his suffering.

I didn't have to fake the horrified look on my face.

When Reggie saw us, he yelled, “Help me!”

But it was too late to help.

Arthur removed his gun from his belt. Reggie saw.

“Just do it,” he struggled to say.

Arthur aimed the gun at his head and shot him. Valorie threw a Molotov at the creatures. They were all doused. We spent a few minutes destroying them with hammers Off-Screen.

In the story, Reggie's character had gotten so drunk that the creatures had been able to get the drop on him.

In real life, Reggie had pretended to be so drunk that his Totally Wasted trope activated and his plot armor dropped down below mine. He pretended to be so wasted he couldn't help himself when attacked. What kind of self-control must it have taken to do that?

It really did take a special kind of person to survive in Carousel.

With that second blood had been spilled.

Reggie’s flask lay next to his body. It had been shredded open and its remaining contents leaked out onto the concrete next to him.

As I stared at it, I noticed something strange. I could see little ripples being created in the peach tea that had puddled up. Little concentric circles appeared rhythmically in the liquid.

Pound. Ripple. Pound. Ripple.