Lost Rambler

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 27

“It’s too early to worry like this,” I said. “They’re still within the time frame allotted for the story. Just have faith.”

I didn’t know what I was saying, but it was my attempt to comfort a worried friend.

Anna paced back and forth across the living room floor. “I’m telling you something is wrong. It says Lila is doomed. It says Michael is doomed. Kimberly is panicked. And Antoine, why did we send him back into the forest? Why did we allow that?”

He had...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 26

If I never went to hell again, it would be too soon.

I managed to make it to bed by noon the day we got back, and I didn't wake up again until noon the next day. Even then, I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t have to. No one was going to make me.

But as I lay awake in my empty room, I got a sudden burst of loneliness and wanted to go see people.

I knew they would be around there somewhere. It wasn’t like they could easily leave the Loft without me.

Ruck had...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 25

As the storyline ended, Silas, the Mechanical Showman, appeared amongst the rubble of the burnt restaurant.

"Congratulations, you've won a ticket," he said in his cheerful yet worn-out tone.

We knew the drill. I walked over and slapped the red button before he could even finish his little greeting.

I got no stat tickets. I was over ten levels above this storyline by my estimate. I couldn't really complain. My only concern was whether or not my teammates got rewarded well, wh...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 24

Oh gosh, Jerrica, one of the only named characters, had some role to play. Who could have guessed? She's the daughter of the guy who famously had no kids? No way!

It wasn’t exactly a mic drop moment, but Camden and Anna were just beginning.

The family started whispering, but they were so loud I could hear what they were saying. They were a mix of emotions. Disbelief, anger, and concern were all present.

“What does this have to do with the deal?” Gus asked, hop...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 23

Hiding while the action was happening elsewhere was starting to get old.

Isaac had taken charge upstairs and was ushering people into this other version of Hot Head.

I stared from a distance, trying to understand what I was looking at. It looked like they would step up on the platform of his lower mouth and climb into some invisible space above, which must have been the oven up on the surface.

They were climbing one at a time, and in a hurry.

All I could do was listen ...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 22

I knew that Carousel rewarded exceptional feats, but I was expecting a reward in the form of something that fell out of Silas the Mechanical Showman’s ticket slot.

There were dozens of coins in varying denominations in the safe, about a hundred dollars worth, but that was not what interested us the most.

It was an envelope containing one handwritten letter that we wanted to see first.

It only took me a glance to know what it was. I passed it around so that the others could...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 21

The rest of the scene was a non-stop onslaught.

Isaac, teaming with Ruck and Ramona, managed to move through the rest of the demons and cut through them with ease.

To Isaac’s credit, he was really good at maintaining a level of fear that made him look more like a scared teenager fighting for his life than a badass, which was good for his character.

Demons in skin suits, demons made of props, all lay shattered, their dark shadows emitting whisper-screams.

Eventually, ...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 20

Ramona and I stood over the broken remains of the Madame Macabre fortune teller. Like so many of the other things we had seen, this was a pale imitation of the actual animatronic, a mockery when you looked inside.

"Do you hear that?" she asked. "The whispering?"

I nodded. "The demon that was possessing it still seems to be in there. Freaky. I think these things get injured when you destroy their host."

You think you know demons, but the demons from this storyline seemed so p...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 19

I was there, in the pit.

I had thought about it since the beginning of the storyline, since before I knew that Hell was a literal, physical place. Somehow, I had known I would have to go there. Maybe I had seen it in a dream.

Maybe I had known what was going to happen.

Because, as I came to my senses at the bottom of a very long slide, I started to realize that I remembered far more of my nightmares from the previous nights than I could have recalled intentionally.

Eve...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 18

I always liked to think that I was calm and collected. It was likely that all my teammates thought that, too, although they might have called me cold.

The truth was, I have always locked my emotions in a box. Ever since I was a little kid, my face could stay still even if I was in agony, or happy, or surprised, or sad.

All of those emotions were locked in a little box at the back of my neck. It felt like that, at least, crammed in a box along with every part of me that fe...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 17

I was glad to finally have some momentum in this storyline. Finding out that many Insight tropes were completely corrupted was a terrible surprise.

Trope Master took forever to use because I had to wait for a new nightmare each night to get a little more information about our enemies. But it was the loss of the Dailies that was most upsetting. At the end of the day, I didn't get any information in the normal way the trope presented.

I got no raw f...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 16

I had to drag Isaac along as soon as we went Off-Screen so that we could make an actual plan.

We had talked about the inevitability of going into hell for a rescue. After all, if we didn’t rescue anyone, we wouldn’t get rescue tropes even if we won.

I had put it off because we didn’t actually know what we were dealing with in terms of risks.

What was the fate worse than death? Was it simply entering hell? If that was the case, then Isaac might have been safe, relativel...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 15

I walked through the back halls of the pizza parlor like I was walking through a haunted house.

We had put off the realization that something supernatural was going on for as long as we could, but now all of the principal characters should know that something was amiss.

My character had been there to witness Isaac's near-kidnapping. I had constant nightmares about some subterranean hell based entirely on the aesthetic of this pizza parlor. I had seen pizzas appear from nowhere, an...

Update

Still working on the next chapters. I want to finish a whole batch at once to get this next sequence right, so please bear with me. It shouldn't be that much longer than planned, but I thought I would warn you.

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 14

I couldn't really complain about nightmares, could I? That was the worst I had seen of these demon enemies of ours—at least as far as my suffering went.

But when I woke up covered in sweat, it was difficult not to regret choosing this storyline.

As strange as it might seem, sleep was something that Carousel rarely denied players. Sure, it might wake them from their slumber to chase them around with monsters, but that was for the camera—there was generally time to rest between ...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 13

On-Screen

We were back inside in the kitchen.

“Lock the doors!” Ramona called out. Nathan quickly ran to the front door and locked it.

“Are you okay?” Cassie asked Isaac, cradling him despite his desire to pull away from her.

“I’m fine,” he said. “They didn’t hurt me—they just got my neck, that’s all.”

Thank goodness it was only his neck.

Cassie took a moment to look closely and examine him. Then she slapped him hard on the shoulder....

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 12

“Stop pacing,” Cassie said for the tenth time, “and take out the trash. How many times do I have to say it?”

Isaac ignored her. He walked from one end of his family's living room to the other. He was jumping at every sound. His eyes darted out the windows every time the wind blew.

It was dark outside. All he could see was darkness and streetlights.

“Mom and Dad will be home in a couple of hours. You better have that trash to the road,” Cassie said.

Isaac no...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 11

I barely made it back into the kitchen in time for my next scene. Luckily, that scene didn't involve much from me—it involved listening. Of course, it also involved whipping up some pizzas. Five of them, to be exact.

Isaac was in the front kitchen. He ducked down, looked through the open mouth of Hot Head, and called out to me:

“That last order got cancelled.”

“That order of five?” I responded, looking at the last ticket.

“They just called in,” he said. �...

Update

The chapter will be here in a matter of hours. Sorry for the wait. I will get the advanced chapters caught up over the next couple of weeks. It is my top priority. You should start pulling ahead over the next few days. This next chapter will still leave you tied, but that will be fixed soon. I appreciate your patience.

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 10

I had been through a lot since coming to Carousel.

I had been a puppet on the strings of many a puppet master. I had run through mazes like a rat, but perhaps the most annoying enemy trope I had ever come across was Night Terrors.

The ability that the Repossessors had made it so that my insight tropes came in the form of nightmares. Not such a big deal—it didn't actually block my ability to gain insight; it just punished me for wanting to use it.

My charac...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 9

I told the others to go home and lock their doors.

I couldn't kick the feeling that anyone who got caught trying to watch what happened to Avery that night might share her fate.

Of course, that didn't apply to me.

My build was designed for reconnaissance.

First, my Call Sheet trope would tell me the next time I was to appear On-Screen, and as long as that timer was hours or even days in the future, I knew I was safe from being drawn into the scene.

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 8

I was struck by how normal working at Pecatto's was. It was too normal.

It felt like Carousel was rubbing it in our faces.

That wasn't to say there weren't odd things.

Camden had looked through all of the timesheets and schedules and found that there were three no-call, no-shows. We followed up with Jerrica and found that those were just former employees who had dropped off the face of the earth.

"We should follow up," Camden said. "Track down these people. Talk to the...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 7

I was in the back kitchen—the proper kitchen—where prep cooks were chopping vegetables and cooking off sausage so that it could get to the level of doneness they wanted when it got on the actual pizza.

It was my first day, and I was the only player there.

The schedule was designed that way—to force us to actually get used to the place. To be fair, it was quite a big place. This was no mom-and-pop shop. This was something only an entire family could have put together. And the...

Health Update

I’m out of the hospital now—thank you all so much for your patience and support. My appendix burst, which required immediate surgery and some recovery time.

I’ll be easing back into posting as my health allows, and I’m looking forward to getting back on schedule soon.

Update

Unfortunately, I am stuck in the hospital for the next four days. I am sorry that I will not be able to get any writing done while I am here.

I will try to get you all caught up next week. I'm sorry for the delay.

Update

Feeling under the weather. Next post tomorrow.

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 6

"This one is fine," Cassie said as she cut off a piece of her pepperoni pizza with a fork.

"I'm having trouble understanding what you meant when you said the pizza was wrong last night," Anna said. "Can you go into more detail?"

Cassie had a trope for detecting magical objects called It’s Speaking to Me. She did not, however, have much skill in describing what magic felt like. Maybe it was like describing color to a blind person....

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 5: By the Slice

On-Screen.

“Get away from the door,” Isaac said as two upperclassmen stood too close to the entrance. “The pizza will be here soon, and I have to answer it because this is my house.”

The guys gave him a strange look.

“Cassie, your little brother is being weird again,” Ramona said from the couch nearby.

The house party was in full bloom: “high school” students, red plastic cups, a keg in the laundry room. Everything Hollywood had taught us ...

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 4

Since we had all agreed that we would never run Post-Traumatic again—or at least not run it to gain experience points or rewards—we decided to watch the storyline.

It was developing into a sort of tradition. Run a storyline, watch the storyline. That way, we weren’t playing to entertain cosmic voyeurs or immortal sorcerers. We were playing to entertain each other.

At the very least, it had been a lot of fun when we did it with Stray Dawn.

2025-04-07 03:14:33 +0000 UTC View Post

Carousel Book Six, Chapter 3

Alright, just like we practiced.

We all stood around the dining room table, fanned.
I handed a rolled-up newspaper to Camden—I had just purchased it from a stand down the street.

“Any luck?” I asked.

By the time Camden unfolded the newspaper and had it set out in front of him, he already knew the answer.

“Looks like we got it,” he said, flipping through the pages.

Oh, how I had missed his Eureka trope.

Within a fe...