The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG-Chapter 35Book Six, : The Extra Player

“I am so sorry, sir, but I have to say, you look so familiar. Is there somewhere I might have seen you?” The receptionist at the front of the casino was gushing to Antoine.

"I don't come around here a lot," Antoine said. "I just have one of those faces."

"Maybe," the receptionist said, but she stared at his face, intent on figuring out where she had seen him. She was a young woman, bright-eyed and freckle-faced, possibly in love with Antoine.

"Miss Tanner," a voice sounded from behind us. "Help get these people's room keys figured out, and then leave them be." I turned to see that it was Jules talking. Bobby walked behind her meekly.

"Yes, Miss Romanski."

The receptionist continued digging through a drawer, trying to find all the necessary paperwork, but at the same time, she kept glancing up at Antoine.

I was there with Daphne, Kimberly, and Andrew. We had been exploring the casino, learning its layout, trying to find any NPCs that might be important. There couldn't have been more than twelve in the entire building.

Management had sent most of the employees home, and it seemed like all of the guests were from the wedding.

We were seated in the large leather chairs at the entrance to the hotel area. There was a fountain and some statues.

We had been taking pictures nearly all day.

They were going to be some gloomy pictures, taken in an empty casino on the cloudiest day possible, but Daphne didn't let that get her down. She really played into it, and when she was into it, it was hard for me not to be.

We were holding hands on the loveseat.

In the distance, I heard something rolling across the floor, and I turned to look and saw that an old-fashioned 1970s television was being rolled into the reception area. The NPC rolling the TV was a great big guy named Ed, on the red wallpaper.

It had great big bunny-ear style antenna sticking out of the top, and as soon as it got plugged in, the receptionist yelled out, "That's it! I knew I recognized you from somewhere!"

We all stood to look because she made a big deal out of it.

The television had come to life, and a show was playing on it, although there was a fair amount of static. Apparently, with this storm, they needed to bring it near the doors to get a signal, or at least that was their logic.

It took me a moment to figure out what it was she was talking about, but then I was able to see through the static and the dancing images to an exercise show, one of those workout-style things with fast-paced music, an energetic host, and a bunch of women in tights in the background doing exercise moves to the instruction of the host.

I couldn’t believe it when I realized who the host was.

It was Antoine.

"This is Carving Stone with Antoine Stone," he called out in his most energetic voice, wearing a red hoodie that looked like mine, but the sleeves were torn off at the shoulder, as well as some yellow athletic shorts that came up above the mid-thigh, that was more popular in that era.

Antoine was dancing around, exercising to the music.

"Remember, if you're sweating," he said, and then he and everyone else in the studio audience called out, "You're sparkling!"

"That's right," Antoine said. "Now we're gonna move into the lunges. You never know when you're gonna need to lunge, so follow along!"

It was an absolute out-of-body experience. If the killer was in that room, they could have killed us all in that moment, and I wouldn’t have noticed.

"Turn this off! I told you to get the TV so we could watch the weather station," Jules said. She turned to Bobby and said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Gill. I'm training them as best I can, but with this storm, they're a bit distracted."

"That's okay," Bobby said. "It's hard to blame them. Just don't let it happen again."

Jules returned to look at the receptionist and gave her a frosty look.

We were On-Screen, so we couldn't exactly play our surprise and shock as anything else.

Kimberly looked at Antoine with a smile and then said to the group, "We didn't want you to find out this way. We were going to delay the news until after the wedding, so we didn't steal your thunder. But, Antoine got his own show."

"They picked up the show?" I said. "I thought that was a pipe dream."

We all walked over to Antoine and congratulated him. It was hard for me to suppress a smile. He looked embarrassed. We had wondered what he had gone off to do when the storyline started, but filming a workout video wasn't even in my top hundred guesses.

"It was a pipe dream," Antoine said. "But sometimes they come true."

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He had brought his Everyone Loves a Winner trope that endeared him to NPCs because of a recent victory. The workout show was his victory.

"Don't I know it?" I said, putting my arm around Daphne.

Kimberly cooed at the adorableness.

"I'm just glad that I get to help people," Antoine said, "even if I have to dance like a clown to make it happen."

I glanced up at the television, which was now on a weather station, and I saw, in the old-fashioned graphics, an impossibly large storm covering all of Carousel. Things were going to get bad in the coming hours.

Off-Screen

As soon as we weren't On-Screen anymore, we all broke down in laughter.

"Joke all you want," Antoine said. "Apparently, I'm making a bunch of money from this, so my character doesn't care."

"It's not your character we're laughing at," I said.

Moments later, Logan appeared, dressed like a pastor, and saw us laughing.

"Did you find out the workout thing?" he asked.

We nodded our heads.

He had a good laugh himself. "I was in my room watching my television when that came on," he said. "I nearly had a heart attack."

"Well, maybe if you followed the workout, you wouldn’t have to worry about those," Antoine said.

After a while, the laughter faded, and the jokes halted, as a clap of thunder so loud it shook the doors sounded outside.

That sobered us up real quick.

"So, have we learned anything?" I asked.

We had, but nothing too strange. We had just gotten to know some of the NPCs that were staying. There weren't that many wedding guests, just a few family members.

There was a photographer, a couple of cooks working overtime, the receptionist, a bellboy, and possibly one or two other odd figures.

"As long as we know a baseline for how they're dressed and what items they carry with them, my Dead Giveaway trope should help us figure out which one is the killer, assuming the killer is one of these NPCs and isn't just hiding out unseen," Logan said.

"I sent most of the employees home," Bobby said, "while the storm was still distant enough. I figured fewer suspects was a good thing."

This was one of those decisions that was going to be wrong no matter what he had decided. Fewer employees helped eliminate random background characters from the equation when we were trying to find the killer, but it also meant there would be more opportunities to be left alone.

“No matter how we slice it, this is going to be difficult,” I said. “There's just so much square footage to cover here, and so few of us. We have to assume the killer has a trope to help with getting around the set.”

Experience taught me that.

“I’ve been thinking about your trope,” Daphne said, looking at Logan, “and I grabbed this.” She opened up her jeweled handbag, reached in, and pulled out a small bouquet of white roses. She had used a luggage tag on the handbag so that it could contain whatever she might need, much like I had done with my hoodie pocket.

“Flowers?” Logan asked.

“The way I figure it,” she said, “we can have Riley use his Insert Shot ability on the bouquet, and then we could each take a flower and wear it on our person. That way, whenever the killer gets one of us, they’ll most likely have to take the flower, and if someone has a flower that isn’t supposed to, we’ll know it was them.”

Logan seemed impressed. “The Insert Shot adds narrative weight to whatever item he uses it on, which increases the chance that that’s the object that gets taken. That’s pretty smart. I’ve never used Dead Giveaway before, so I don’t know how bad the variability is.”

I wasn’t sure it was a great idea. It would probably work, but I wasn’t certain that was a good use for the Insert Shot, which had a limited number of uses. If you used it more than once, it stopped being as powerful. Usually, you would want to use it on a weapon or an important object.

Daphne could read my doubt on my face.

“You don’t like it?” she asked. “I thought you’d be proud of my idea.”

“No, it’s a good idea,” I said. “I think it would work.”

Then I explained my hesitation.

“That is a good point,” Kimberly said. “Most of the time, he uses that, it’s on an object that we use to defeat a killer, like the mirror in The Ten-Second Game or Isaac’s pizza paddle, from what I hear.”

He had brought the pizza paddle from By the Slice home with him and had drunkenly demonstrated his martial prowess.

“He doesn’t like it because it wasn’t his idea,” Antoine said jokingly.

“No, it’s not that,” I said.

“Well, if you don’t want to do it, just say so and we won’t do it,” Daphne said sweetly.

I thought about trying to trigger a vote.

“I think we should go with your idea, but not use the Insert Shot,” I said. “I like to have that in my back pocket, that’s all.”

I could tell Daphne wasn’t happy, but she was a reasonable person.

“Okay,” she said. “Then we’ll just try to set it up On-Screen as well as we can so that those flowers will be important, a good motif.”

“They probably already will be, seeing as this is a wedding. Plus, they’re white roses, which will look pretty striking with blood drops on them,” I said.

“Exactly,” Daphne said. “We’ll be just fine.”

“Now explain to me why I’m going to wear a flower from some wedding that’s happening at my place of employment?” Jules said.

Bobby had literally just said that to her quietly while the rest of us were talking, and she decided to bring it up with the group.

It was an oddly sweet dynamic.

“Well, maybe you just won’t get one,” Daphne said.

“And it was such a good plan,” Jules responded. “Come on, Gilligan,” she said to Bobby. “We have to go make sure the banquet room is ready for this shindig.”

Soon after they left, we went On-Screen.

“To Riley and Rachel,” Andrew said, holding up a glass of champagne that we had just poured. It was going to get confusing having to call Daphne Rachel. I’d have to be very intentional about it.

We all lifted our glasses and drank.

“I have an idea,” Kimberly said. She had taken the white roses from Daphne. Her Hall of Fame trope strongly connected her to the meta of the story, so if she were the one to present the flowers, they would be more likely to become a motif.

“We should each wear one of these flowers,” she said, “to mark the occasion. Aren’t they beautiful?” She held them up for us to look at.

She passed them out one at a time, and we each helped each other pin them to our clothing. Kimberly put hers in her hair, as did Daphne.

“Pastor Maize,” Kimberly said, “could we get you to wear one too?”

“I would be delighted,” he said, clearly not meaning it. “Anything for the lovely couple.”

He gave us a curt smile, held the flower up, and then walked away as he pinned it to his own lapel.

I adjusted my flower, and then Daphne adjusted it, as I touched the flower in her hair and then traced my hand down her shoulder, pulling her in for a kiss.

Thunder sounded.

And it was all the more shocking because, as it did, a banging could be heard on the front doors, which had been locked to prevent the wind from pushing them open.

“Someone’s outside,” Andrew said.

The rain and condensation were so thick on the doors that we couldn’t see through the glass.

We rushed to go help the person as the storm raged.

We unlocked the door and pulled it open.

Standing there, holding a large bag over her head, was Ramona.

We looked at her, and she looked at us.

All of us were confused.

How did she get into the story?

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