Chương 274: Book Six, Chapter 36: A Close Shave with a Haircut

"I don't remember what happened exactly," Ramona said.

"I hit my head, and when I woke up, my car was caught in the floodwater. I thought I was going to die." We were On-Screen, back inside the entryway. We had her sit down in a leather chair. The last remaining maid had gone to fetch her some towels.

"That's awful," Daphne said.

"Don't you worry, we're going to take care of you."

"I didn't know where else to go," Ramona said. Andrew was shining a penlight into her pupils. He examined her head. She had a swollen lump right on her hairline.

"I'm afraid you may have a concussion," he said.

"Can you tell me your name?" Ramona paused for a moment. She began to cry. She'd always been a tougher figure; I hadn't seen her cry since she had found out the truth about her sister being an NPC. But she was crying for real now.

"My name is Ramona Mercer," she said.

"I was trying to get to Carousel. I think I messed up." Whatever had happened in the floodwaters had actually scared her.

"Well, don't you worry, sweetheart. You're safe now," Daphne said as the maid arrived with towels. Andrew continued his examination, but there wasn't much more for him to deduce. She had a head injury, not the worst.

"An ice pack and some observation are all you need. I might be able to find you something for the pain. A shower and change of clothes might be useful if you were in floodwaters." Ramona nodded.

"Come with me," Andrew said.

"I'll take care of you." He took her hand, helped wrap her in towels, and led her away. As they wandered off, Ramona stared back at me and Daphne with a strange look on her face. That hit to the head must have been pretty terrible. Off-Screen. Kimberly, Antoine, Daphne, and I just looked at each other.

"How did she end up inside this storyline?" Antoine asked.

"We must have done something wrong."

"It was our fault," I said." Ida Rae features a huge storm; it probably had a large radius of influence or something. We should have waited longer to trigger it."

"We waited until they were hundreds of yards away," Antoine said.

"That should have worked. What we did was overkill."

"Apparently not," I said.

"If she was drawn in," Kimberly said, "how many of the others were? And if they're out there like she was…" We looked out the glass doors. We could hardly see anything. The rain pounded them, even with the carport sticking out the front of the building. We had hardly been able to make out Ramona through the rain.

"If someone's out there, they probably won't make it in here," Daphne said.

"Well, this run just became that much more important," Antoine said.

"If we have dead players out in that storm…" Lightning flashed.

"Whatever's happening," I said, "that doesn't change anything for us. If they're out there, we can't save them." It was cold, but true, and everyone there knew it. It was a miracle that Ramona managed to swim her way to the building. The hotel was in a recession in the ground, but the building itself was above the parking lot. It was a last sanctuary for miles. But if the water grew too much... even we wouldn't be safe. After Ramona left, Bobby and Jules came and led me to the hotel/casino safe.

We were On-Screen, and the entire scene was devoted to them showing me that they had put a large amount of my cash into the safe for safekeeping. I had to sign a piece of paper saying that I witnessed them putting it in the safe. For a while, I wasn't exactly sure why the scene existed at all. It could easily be replaced with a line of dialogue.

"I'll try to lose some of that to you," I said, "though it might be hard without any card dealers on staff."

"Oh, don't you worry one bit, Mr. Lawrence," Jules said with a laugh.

"If you're hankering for a round of cards, be it blackjack, poker, or any other game you fancy, I'll deal them for you." I laughed.

"That's why you're the boss," I said.

"Well, actually, he's the boss," Jules said, pointing at Bobby.

"Yeah," Bobby said, "but I don't know how to deal cards, so I have to keep her around." They started bickering with each other, with Jules bringing up how she was due for a promotion or, at the very least, a raise.

"I'm doing the job of three people," she said, "and one of those people is you."

"I'm training you," Bobby replied.

"How else am I supposed to do it? I believe in hands-on learning." As they continued their back-and-forth, I looked down at the pad of paperwork I was filling out. It was a clipboard with lots of copies of the page I was signing attached. Apparently, this was something they did regularly with guests who brought lots of cash. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

I noticed that there was another clipboard there too, but this one was the opposite; it was for withdrawing cash from the safe, cashing out, as it were. Perhaps it was the angle of the light, or perhaps I was just looking for a reason for this scene to exist, but I noticed that there was an impression on the page for the other clipboard. Someone had filled out a withdrawal form and pressed down so hard their writing had been etched into the page below.

I angled my head, and while I couldn't make out most of the information that was written, I could make out a name. It said: Antoine Stone. I couldn't see the amount, but apparently Antoine had already cashed out. I figured he would tell us something like that. Bobby and Jules were still bickering, so I grabbed a pencil off the desk, and I gently turned it on its edge and rubbed it over the name section of that page, which revealed Antoine's name in a way that the camera could pick up.

This method also allowed me to see how much money he had withdrawn. Twenty thousand dollars. I wondered if Antoine knew he had done that. I quickly ripped off the page, finished up my paperwork, and left, looking for Daphne. I didn't find her, but I did find Kimberly. I gave her the copy of Antoine's withdrawal slip and explained what I had learned. We still had some time to go before First Blood, so we were more or less safe. We decided to go up to the roof to look around.

Any useful thing we didn't find during exploration would not be there in the Finale, after all. Carousel had decided to send us On-Screen when this happened. The funny thing was, we couldn't go out onto the roof; that would be ridiculous. The rain and the wind, and the lightning were terrifying. Instead, we were at the top of the stairs with the roof access door cracked open, watching.

"It's like we're in the middle of the storm," Kimberly said, "like nothing else exists."

"If we're not lucky, we might not exist here in a minute," I said. The wind fought with us, trying to open the door further.

"Don't be like that," Kimberly said.

"It's your wedding day. Can't you be optimistic on your wedding day?" I stared out into the storm.

"I don't know," I said.

"I never expected to have one. I guess I almost feel like it still won't happen, even though it's only hours away." Kimberly looked at me with pity.

"The wedding is definitely going to happen," Kimberly said.

"The honeymoon…"

"That's asking too much," I said as I rested my hand on an emergency fire axe box next to the exit. I opened the box casually and saw that someone, most likely an employee, had stashed some cigarettes and a lighter there under the axe. I gestured to Kimberly as if asking her if she wanted some cigarettes, but really, I just wanted to put some attention on that weapon. I used the Insert Shot on it.

Maybe I was beating a broken drum, constantly using it on weapons, but that fire axe could be the very thing that saved us. I needed to get the ball rolling on it soon, and Kimberly being in the scene couldn't hurt with her meta enhancement trope. Kimberly smiled at my little cigarette joke.

"Yeah, asking way too much," Kimberly said.

"But hey, in a few months you'll have an excuse for the two of you to go on vacation."

"There you go," I said as we stared out onto the roof. At times, we only had a few feet of visibility. I let the door close.

"Well, I've got to go find my bride," I said.

"And I have to go find my leg-warmer-wearing workout instructor," Kimberly responded. I laughed and turned to walk away.

"I'm happy for you," Kimberly said. I turned back.

"Yeah?"

"And you can be happy for you too." I nodded, but didn't respond more than that. Kimberly had given me some notes, that maybe I wasn't falling into the romance as easily as Daphne was, or as easily as she and Antoine did. I had such a deep connection with Daphne. I had ever since we had come to Carousel. Now, all of a sudden, I was shy? I didn't know what they wanted. I felt in love, and I was doing my best to show it, but I just wished there was a way you could be in love without anyone around to watch. Oh well.

Kimberly went looking for Antoine, and I went looking for Daphne. I knew I had found her because I went On-Screen right before knocking on her door.

"Come in," she called. I opened the door and saw her holding a large, ornate pair of scissors. They were actually quite beautiful. I looked around to see why she might be holding the scissors.

"You have the urge to cut something?" I asked. I could see a small sliver on the countertop of her kitchenette; it looked like a piece of paper that had been cut.

"Yes," Daphne said. Then she pointed the scissors at me.

"Already?" I asked.

"We aren't even married yet." She laughed.

"Your hair, silly," she said.

"I know the 70s are supposed to change things with gender roles, but it's your wedding day, and this just won't do."

"You want to cut my hair?" I asked, chuckling.

"Do you even know how to cut men's hair?" She snapped the scissors open and closed a few times, really displaying how large and lethal they were. She would probably have to use them for more than cutting hair by morning.

"I worked as a hairdresser while I traveled around Europe," she said.

"Isn't this how the European men wear their hair?" I asked.

"Come over here," she said with a belly laugh. She pulled out a stool. It's not like I could say no. I didn't want her to cut my hair. It was strange that she had never offered before when we were outside of a storyline. Even if she cut it now, it would all regrow when we got to The End. I obeyed. I took off my nice button-up shirt and was wearing nothing but my undershirt. I really was due for a haircut.

"I like you just the way you are," she said as she grabbed my hair and ran her fingers through it.

"But there is a very handsome head of hair under here somewhere, and I'm going to find it." She began cutting my hair, one little chunk at a time, moving methodically around my head.

"You can check, there's probably a bowl in the cabinet," I said.

"Might make things easier."

"If you had a bowl cut, I wouldn't marry you," she said, laughing.

"There is a line." She continued to work, slicing, shaping, grabbing my hair, and doing her best to gather the fallen pieces, placing them on the counter next to us. I could hear how sharp these scissors were. They were a trope item. They had the Sha-Shing trope attached to them, which made them produce an audible sound when brandished. It also made them a good weapon. I had a pair of hedge clippers like that, disassembled and tucked in my hoodie pocket, wherever it was.

We went Off-Screen for a while, and she was forced to continue the haircut because there was no guarantee we would go back On-Screen during that scene, and I couldn't have half a haircut.

"About your He Has a Tell trope," Daphne said.

"How well does it work?"

"Yeah, it can seem a little ambiguous," I said. It was weird we hadn't talked about it.

"It helps detect when people are more nervous than they should be, more stressed during an interrogation. Usually, it means they're trying to hide a lie or something. But not always."

"So it's not a lie detector exactly," she said.

"Right. But functionally it is, because in a movie it's hard for a character to just lie smoothly without being stressed at all. After all, then there's no tension."

"So if someone could lie without being stressed, it wouldn't work?" she asked.

"Well, yeah," I said.

"But what kind of sociopath could lie without revealing anything at all?"

"I can't imagine," she said with a smile. On-Screen. She continued to work, but eventually the normal way of cutting my hair no longer worked. Maybe the scene was getting boring, so she came around to the front of me, lifted her dress, and straddled me, sitting in my lap while she continued to cut my hair. I had to bite my lip to stop myself from passing out. I wasn't used to this type of treatment at all.

"All done," she said after a while. I could feel her moving the cool scissors over my forehead. She bent down and kissed me on the lips.

"You look perfect for the happiest day of your life," she said.

"The happiest day of our lives," I added.

"Yes, of course," she said, kissing me again. I had no idea when Carousel would press the Off-Screen button, but I was hoping it would be soon. If it wasn't, the cash value of the ticket to watch this storyline in the Manifest Consortium was going to go through the roof. Just as I thought things were going to go too far, The door to the room burst open. Daphne was off my lap and brandishing her scissors like a jungle cat ready for a fight. But it was just Kimberly, her eyes filled with tears.

"Antoine's been killed," she said. I checked the red wallpaper. Things were moving quickly. The Party Phase was over. First Blood had just arrived.