Slashtag, p.16
Slashtag, page 16
“You’re not listening, bro,” D says, getting defensive.
As much as I hate to admit it, Landon has a point. This is twice now that D has abandoned me after promising to have my back, and it’s the second time D-wreck has conveniently appeared to my rescue, right when something weird is happening. At this point, I have no idea if Landon was in control when he put me in that dumbwaiter. Britt’s already admitted almost everything she says on camera is a lie.
I think back to the secret message on my phone—good dogs keep their mouths shut—about Britt explaining she’s not here of her own free will, about the red ball that seemed to terrify D down in the basement. Whatever’s in this house has a way of getting into our heads. Why wouldn’t it know that a shoulder squeeze is just what I would need to trust him?
“What were you really doing down there when you found me?” I ask D-wreck.
“You too? Come on, I told you I woke up down there.”
“You woke up exactly outside of where I was trapped at the exact moment I was there?”
D looks at me pleadingly and then to the rest of the room. “Hey, I’m not the one who sent you down there. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be stuck in a tiny box in the basement. Why are you all looking at me all of a sudden?”
“Because I know you deflect when you’re lying. What aren’t you telling us?”
D huffs like a fourteen-year-old who’s just been caught with a backpack full of cherry bombs. “I stole your clothes, all right?”
“You what?” A familiar flash of anger whips over me. He’s not evil, he’s just an asshole.
“I really did wake up outside of the room, but when I did, I was back in the lobby. I don’t know. I was embarrassed and a little freaked out, so I decided to make it look like I was just pulling a prank. I took your clothes, hid them down in the basement, and that’s when I heard you banging against the door of that mini-elevator.”
“Dumbwaiter,” Shawn clarifies.
“What did you just call me?” D says, stepping up to Shawn with a sudden outburst of masculine energy that reignites the room.
“It’s what the tiny elevators are called, dumbass,” Shawn retorts.
“Well I thought it was an insult!” D shouts. “It’s a stupid name for a little elevator!”
“No more stupid than a grown-ass man calling himself D-wreck.”
“Hey!” Britt claps her hands together until everyone goes quiet and gives her their undivided attention. To illustrate her point, she continues to clap to the rhythm of her words. “We. Are. Supposed. To. Be. A. Team. Look, I can see everyone is tired and hungry. Why don’t we all take a minute to move this conversation to the dining room and discuss this like adults over some breakfast?”
I look around the room. The mere mention of food immediately softens everyone. It’s the one thing in this moment we can all unanimously agree on.
I’m the first to enter the dining room, so I grab a bottle of wine from the bar and a fresh glass.
“Do you think maybe drinking isn’t the best idea right now?” Shawn asks.
“After the night I just had, I think I’ve earned it. Anyone else want some?”
Britt steps forward. “I wish we had champagne for mimosas, but I bet I could make some sangrias work.” She looks at the bottle and frowns. “I’d rather have a bold Spanish Tempranillo, but this’ll do. Hey Shawn, do you know if there’s any fruit in that kitchen?”
“I’m sure there is. This place is fully stocked.”
Britt grabs the bottle and my wine glass, then leads Shawn toward the kitchen. “Since we’re on the buddy system, how about I play sous chef while you whip us up some breakfast.”
The two push their way through a pair of swinging doors heading into the kitchen. Shawn quickly returns, propping both doors open with a couple of bags of flour.
“Even though I’m cooking, I still want to hear what’s going on.”
The rest of us gather around the table closest to the kitchen. D-wreck, Landon, and I pull up seats, while Kiki stays standing, taking on the role of meeting director.
“Okay, so how about we each take a turn telling our version of what happened to us last night, and maybe we can learn something or find some sort of a connection.”
Landon swears he doesn’t remember leaving the room. Instead, he recounts a dream in which he was in a casting room as a child. His father told him he either needed to win the role or else he would be walking six miles home by himself. As he drones on, trying to garner pity, I take a minute to think about some of the grander implications of what’s happening here.
At this point, there’s no question in my mind that Krentler Media has put the seven of us in an extremely haunted house with the intention of killing us all. If that’s true, there’s no way they could actually televise this. It doesn’t matter how rich or famous the board of directors are, no one could actively commit such a heinous crime in plain sight of the whole country and expect to just get away with it. That means there’s likely no prizes either, which means the whole story of promising April new kidneys was a lie.
“We have to get out of here.” I accidentally cut Landon off mid-story, not even realizing I’m vocalizing the thoughts growing too urgent to keep to myself.
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” Kiki says, like she’s talking to a child. “The whole point of this is to escape.”
“You’re not listening. It’s not a game. Arthur Wilson is an actual ghost, and he’s coming for us all. We have to find a way out of here right now.”
Kiki and Landon stare at me as if I’ve gone insane.
“It’s true,” D-wreck backs me up. He shares our story, focusing on the death of Chef Costanza and our encounter with Wilson, leaving out the personal details about Clarence the dog and the red ball.
Shawn pokes his head through the door and calls out, “So who was he under the mask?”
“He said his name was Miguel,” D-wreck replies. “I didn’t recognize him.”
“Hang on,” Kiki says. “You’re saying neither of you knew who he was? I thought he was supposed to be, like, some celebrity chef in disguise.”
“So did we,” D says.
“And that doesn’t strike you as odd?” She bites at the cuticle next to one of her fingernails.
“Like, is it weird he could get so popular without being famous first? I don’t really see how that’s relevant.”
“No,” Kiki says, in an unmistakable tone of condescension. “What if he isn’t the real Chef Costanza? You’re saying that you saw him in basically the same situation that you found Lucy, right? I mean, I know I’m not supposed to be saying this, but we all know that whole thing with her was fake, right? Nobody actually thinks Lucy is dead IRL.”
Britt appears from around the kitchen corner with a large pitcher full of red liquid and tons of cut up slices of oranges, strawberries, and ice, then places it on the table. “All right everyone, who wants a nice, refreshing sangria?”
Everyone grabs a glass and pours themselves some except for Landon and Kiki. She’s too focused on making a point.
“You guys didn’t say you actually saw Costanza, or Miguel, die, right?”
“I watched him choke to death right in front of me,” I say, baffled at how Kiki could still be arguing this.
“But you didn’t check his pulse or anything, did you? All you saw was some foam coming out of a guy’s mouth. Who’s to say that guy was even the same person that was with us earlier? Because of the mask, there's no way to know anything for sure.”
“I know what I saw!” Tears well behind my eyes. I fight them back, afraid it will come across as a sign of weakness or hysteria to only further hurt my credibility.
“You’ve watched a lot of people choke to death then, yeah?” She says it as a question, but the accusation is clear. “So in that case, he could have been an actor, just like Lucy. Someone planted here to make it seem like any of us could actually die, when in reality, it’s all just part of the experience.”
D-wreck points to his bandaged face . “Did this not look real to you when you were cleaning it?”
“You’ve gone to further lengths,” Kiki says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve seen your channel, guy. It’s not like you haven’t filmed yourself jumping into a kiddy pool full of Legos before, or detonated a car’s airbag under your ass. I saw your cut. It wasn’t very deep.”
“Are you fucking serious right now? It’s on my face! I was attacked by a friggin’ ghost!” D shoots to his feet and knocks his chair to the ground. “The guy wasn’t just pretending to be incorporeal when I tried to chop him in half.”
“And after he killed Costanza, did he come after you? Did he chase you through the basement with a knife?”
“He disappeared,” I admit. “We had a chance to escape, and we took it.”
Kiki shakes her head. “So this ghost attacks you, makes you watch him kill someone, then just lets you go? To what end?”
“Pacing, probably,” Landon chimes in. “The show’s not much fun if everyone just dies at once. You have to space them out, or else you don’t have a compelling narrative.”
“Hey guys, are you sure we should all be talking about this kind of stuff?” Britt says, trying to lead the discussion in another direction. “Remember in the rules it says we’re not really supposed to question the realness of stuff?”
Kiki peels off another cuticle with her teeth. “I don’t know. Not being able to metagame kind of feels like playing with one hand tied behind our backs, you know? Especially if they’re going to pull these kinds of tricks on us.”
Britt stares blankly at Kiki for a second, clearly upset at being undermined. “Well, if that’s how you’re going to act, I don’t want to have any part in it. I’m going back to help with breakfast.” She takes a large sip of her sangria, tops it off with the pitcher, then hurries back into the kitchen with her drink in hand.
Kiki continues with her theory. “So first off, I think we can all agree Lucy was an actor. For the sake of my argument, Costanza is an actor too. Look around. Aren’t we all actors here, in one sense or another? Sure, it’s easy to put any random guy in a mask, but how hard would it really be to hire any of you to pretend to be scared like the rest of us, while secretly having your own side agendas? Britt stirs up insane drama for a living. D-wreck has literally been fucking with people’s perceptions of reality for over a decade. Landon is a professional actor. Hell, he’s even played this guy before. What’s to say he’s not just doing a role to make us all believe he’s this creepy in real life?”
“Fine, what about me then?” I say. “What’s my line?”
Kiki studies me for a second before her face turns to something resembling pity. “You’re either an accomplice to some plan D-wreck has to scare us, or you’re too dumb to know the difference between fiction and reality.”
My fists clench. I’ve never been in a fight before, but this bitch is getting on my last nerve. Before I say, or do, something I’ll regret, Shawn starts shouting for all of us to get into the kitchen ASAP. I’m grateful for the distraction, even though I dread whatever’s coming next.
The first thing I notice upon crossing the threshold is just how large the kitchen is. There are prep stations and ovens placed in seemingly random areas in a room that twists and turns beyond where I can see.
A few feet down the line, Shawn is holding Britt by the shoulders and shaking her, shouting her name. Britt either doesn’t hear him or doesn’t care. She’s got a tub of butter clutched tightly to her chest with one hand, while her other is busy taking savage scoops of the stuff and shoving it in her mouth. Her face is gleaming with fat smeared around her cheeks. It’s run down her chin and neck. Yellowy streaks shine across her forehead, punctuated by little lumpy chunks of butter rubbed off from her hand while presumably pushing her greasy dark hair out of her face.
“What are you doing?” D-wreck shouts, sprinting toward Shawn and Britt. “Get it away from her!”
Shawn’s eyes are wide with fear. He reaches a hand down from Britt’s shoulder, toward the tub. She buckles down on it, hovering her face only inches away as she quickens the pace of stuffing her mouth.
D comes at her from underneath, trying to pry her arm away from the metal tub she’s got tucked so tightly into her. She’s too slippery to grab by the wrist. Britt wriggles away and tucks herself down until she’s in a defensive ball on the ground.
“I need your help, man!” D shouts to Shawn, who has been all but useless at separating Britt from the butter.
“I don’t want to hurt her,” he says, while half-heartedly trying to pry his fingers between her elbows and her hips.
“Just pick her up already!”
Shawn grabs Britt by the elbows and starts to pry her apart. Even though he’s finally putting in real effort, she’s still maintaining her grip on the metal tub. After some struggle, he manages to pull her scooping arm out, at which point she buries her face into the bucket itself, slathering her tongue around the sides for any lingering globs and moaning in a sick ecstasy. With only one hand left to secure the tub, D is finally able to grab hold of it and rip it away with a firm yank. He tosses it toward me. It bounces and clatters across the floor, slinging large pats of butter across the cupboards and tile.
Britt twitches in Shawn’s arms, and D-wreck helps hold her down. After several futile struggles to escape, her head lulls forward, and her body goes limp. Shawn slowly lays her on the ground and then lets go.
“What the fuck just happened?” D asks.
“I don’t know. I asked her to get me some butter, and the next thing I saw, she was eating it by the handful.”
Once both of the boys’ backs are turned, Britt springs upon all fours and scrambles in my direction. Shawn notices her just in time, barely managing to grab her by the ankle. She comes to a sudden stop, her hand outreached in desperation, groping for a mound of butter on the floor. Britt’s trying to pull herself forward, closer to the tub, but she’s so greasy she might as well be on ice. Shawn keeps her held steady as she tirelessly reaches for the tub. Unable to make any forward progress, she scoops what little is sitting on the tile in front of her into her mouth.
I can’t stand watching any more. Kneeling, I grab the bucket, hoping to remove the temptation, but notice something poking out from the butter. My fingers slip against it when I try to excavate the thing from inside. I finally get a grip on whatever it is and pull it out.
It’s a figurine of a pig made out of pink glass. I try to hold it up to the light to get a better look, but it slips from my butyraceous fingers and shatters on the floor.
“Oh God,” Britt moans by our feet. Her face is full of horror and confusion. She tries to push herself up, but her hands slip out from under her, and she falls back forward onto her face. “I’m going to be sick.”
Shawn lets go of her leg. Britt manages to grab hold of a cupboard handle and pull herself up. She just barely makes it to her feet before vomiting several times into a nearby sink.
I turn to Kiki. “You think that was acting?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
From: Lucy.K@Krentler.media
To: Board@Krentler.media
CC: Operations@Krentler.media
Subject: Night 1 Summary
Hello Members of the Board and Operations Team,
The subjects ended their Night 1 of Slashtag at 7:26 a.m., which gives the day crew two and a half hours to prep for the events of Day 2. Overall, things were much smoother than Day 1.
I believe this is thanks, in large part, to Dr. Pollard, whose psych evaluations so far have been accurate down to a 3% margin of error. Without his insight on our subjects’ psyches, traumas, and reaction to fight or flight stimulus, we would be flying blind.
Our night crew was successfully able to facilitate the evenings events without major incident, and Renshaw’s work with Arthur Wilson has indeed been exemplary. We are particularly pleased with how easily our cast members fall into a suggestive state when sleeping or separated from the rest of the group.
Of course, nothing is perfect, and there are a few notes for us to either improve our performance or keep of note of moving forward:
Tawny and D-wreck have already taken advantage of Wilson’s inability to interact directly with biological material. While this doesn’t change any of our scheduled events, we may need our day crew to put in a little extra effort into separating our subjects, in order to ensure Arthur Wilson can perform his tasks properly.
Considering the discovery made re: Wilson, we may want to hasten how quickly the subjects collect the remaining keys. We suggest unlocking the History Museum in order to allow for the subjects to move to the mind phase more quickly.
Distrust between cast members is high. While dividing them was one of the goals for Night 1, we need to make sure that their paranoia doesn’t reach a point where anyone veers too far from their planned arcs.
While it’s our hope that the subjects will continue along the key assembly storyline, we’ve gone ahead and activated the first wave of possession statues, in case any subjects go astray. This will also ensure the Pain Volume Index increases at a steady rate.
As a reminder to props, be sure to remove clues leading to specific statues if the subjects find them organically
I know the directive was to eliminate Tawny next; however, given her unexpected leap in viewership, we feel it’s best to push her down the list a point or two. Fans love a comeback story, and public opinion is quickly shifting back in her favor.
Now for some analytics from Night 1:
While there was an initial dip in viewership past 11 p.m. PST, things picked up again at 3 a.m. when east coast viewers began to tune in. At present, our viewership is even higher than yesterday’s peak daytime hours, thanks to an aggressive sharing campaign on Social. We are currently reaching 50 million households, 8 million more than during the peak of Day 1. Of course, we also have to consider that today is Saturday, which should allow for a much higher number of binge watchers.
