Halloween 2022: Choose Your Spooky Outcome: Chapter 11
“Me,” you say, the word falling heavily from your lips. “Victoria has her ability to pull magic from Halloween, Thad inherited some sort of enchanted gene, Pumpkin has a mix of the two, and apparently you’re a chaos god. All night long, I’ve been watching you four do incredible, impossible things. While I’ve barely been able to help out, even getting literally dragged along at times.”
The army is drawing closer, pushing at your focus, but you manage to force the final words out. “I’m the one who doesn’t belong. The only thing special about me is the death-reset-thing; without this prison, I’m totally normal.”
A thunderous crack splits the air as a long split mars the perfect exteriors of the cube. While not blown apart, the opening is large enough to slip through. With the sounds of pursuit filling your ears, you waste no time leaping inside, Jim coming in a few steps behind. Entering doesn’t merely drop you in a cramped room, however. Instead, you find yourself in an entirely new, and familiar, locale.
You’re back at college, in a way. The landscape is deserted, the sky tainted a red hue like weathered rust, even the buildings seem slightly sinister. Then again, that could just come from knowing the amount you spent here weighed against how much help that degree actually contributes.
“I know a lot about stories,” Jim says, still casually sipping from his Infinite Beer Cup. “When you start so many by your nature, it’s hard not to get involved, see how they go. Stories love circles, you see. Beginnings and endings, their details mirroring one another. That’s why it has to happen here. This is the way out.”
“Alright then.” Puffing out your chest, you take the best fighting stance you can manage, fists raised under the rust-red sky as you wait for the final challenge to appear.
After a few seconds, you nearly leap from your skin when Jim pats you on the back. “Guess I should have been more clear. I meant ‘here’ in a general sense. We’re not actually there there yet.”
“Oh,” you reply, a good amount of the gusto in your sails petering out. Reaching out, you snap the Infinite Beer Cup and take a deep swig. Cold, delicious, and endless. “Where to then?”
“The place where it actually all started. Our dorm room.”
With a nod, you turn to start walking… only to find your feet with no sense of direction. The dorm room where you and Jim met, it should be a simple matter to recall which building it was in, or the number, but instead there’s nothing. Just an empty blank.
“Use the key,” Jim butts in, his input entirely uninvited.
“Oh, you’ve got narrative juice to burn on snark? Here I thought that stunt with the army would have you tapped. Guess this might still be fun yet.”
Your hand closes around the top of the EverKey while Jim appears to talk to no one, lifting it out like a dowsing rod. You feel a slight tug from a cluster of buildings on your right and start plodding forward, readjusting every few moments to chase that pulling sensation, which grows stronger with each passing step.
“Believe it or not, you’ve gotten this far before,” Jim says. “Not easily or often, but with the right friends and lucky breaks, life can take some interesting turns. This is the first time you’ve ever made the choice to come here, though. Usually it happens when the time for a real restart has arrived.”
“How far were we from one of those?” With the key’s weight in your hand, you imagine coming to this place unprepared, without a tool that could perhaps set you free from it.
Jim pauses to knock a small potted plant off an outdoor display before answering. “Can’t say for sure as it’s not my call, but based on history I’d guess pretty close. The further we get from the start, the less interested our watcher grows, unless it’s a truly unique set of circumstances.”
Your mind flickers back to the moon base and skyscrapers, compared to the nigh-endless rows of apartments and houses. “I’m not one of the unique ones, am I?”
“You weren’t at first. Chasing after Victoria is almost always your first move, and it sets a few things in motion. Then there was the wish-world, which seemed like a blip, until Pumpkin and the EverKey came along.”
The pair of you arrive at the front of a building, the key’s tug shifting upward. Together, you head through the front door as Jim continues. “People love that quote about ‘doing the same thing over and over is the definition of insanity’ but then forget about the law of averages. Do anything an infinite number of times, and you’re going to eventually get some severe deviations. Pumpkin is one of those deviations.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Partly to let you understand what I was hoping for, partly to keep you distracted and help the key work, but mostly so I could fill up as much space as possible with dialogue. Less narration is less chance to fuck with us at the finish line.”
Now who’s being snarky?
“You set the tone, I just play my role.” Jim grins at the ceiling like a madman, which he probably is, right? Doesn’t that make more sense than a secret god?
“Lil heavy-handed there, huh? Come on, you can do better than that,” Jim, perhaps correctly, points out.
At last, the two of you reach the fourth floor and halt outside an unremarkable room. Simple door, regular knob, yet the idea of walking through it fills you with unmitigated disgust. The urge to flee fills you, rushing to your legs… only to be stopped by the pull from that damned key.
“This is where you use the key,” Jim announces. However, rather than point to the keyhole, one which looks far too small for the EverKey, he instead opens his hand.
“Walking through is easy, but once inside there’s no way for you to win. Not usually, at least. With that key, I can go take over… let’s call it the control room to keep things easy. The catch is, you have to be willing to trust me. Trust me even after finding out I’ve known more than I was letting on. Trust me with the best chance at escape you’ve ever had.”
Jim sure appears to be owning his secret-keeping head-on. Probably no point in drawing attention to the possibility that it’s just more manipulation from somehow who knows you better than you ever realized. A trick to get his hands on an artifact with incredible power, which could be wielded in who knows what manner by an admitted force of chaos.
Seems a little odd, if not suspicious, but whatever. No need to drag this out. The question is clear.