Daphne didn’t suddenly get better when the cameras weren’t watching. My little poisoning trick, combined with all the damage from the explosions, really was getting to her.
I actually did feel terrible. It wasn’t something I could control or even understand, but watching her in pain was difficult, though it did remind me of what she had done to Ramona. I tried to focus on that anger I felt, to wash out all the other emotions, the fake ones.
I glared at her.
She smiled at me.
“Always thinking about the game, aren’t you?” she said, looking over at where the blackmailers had been. “That was made for me, wasn’t it?”
She started coughing.
“No, I thought you were my girlfriend, remember?” I asked. I wanted to be soft and tender with her. I wanted to apologize, but I didn’t know why.
“I could never get you to take your mind off the game. I don’t know why,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “Even from the beginning, it felt like you were just using the emotions I gave you, not feeling them. Why? That’s not how it’s supposed to be, not at first.”
Using emotions, not feeling them. That made me sound like the psycho.
“My walls are higher than your ladders are tall,” I said, feeling pretty proud of that metaphor, trying to be cool and emotionless.
Daphne nodded.
“Did you ever suspect me? I mean, before the finale? Is that why? What did I do?”
Did I suspect that something was going on? Of course. Even if my brain would not settle on the conclusion, I wasn’t an idiot. I wasn’t used to having to chase around my thoughts. I knew something was going on, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing how difficult it was and how blind I had been.
“My parents’ death wasn’t my fault,” I repeated from earlier. “You said something about that, and all I could think was, what the heck does she know about my parents’ death? Did she read about it in the newspaper? But then you started talking about how it was okay that I didn’t go upstairs, and I know you didn’t read that in the news… The thing is… I know that I told you… But I would never have told you about that night. But I did. I even have memories of it. We were on the roof, alone, and I opened up to you because I trusted you.”
Fake memories. Whatever memories I needed to see the truth.
“But that was a different guy. That was a guy who could just be in love. That wasn’t me. Those weren’t my memories.”
Daphne stared at me, and so did Kimberly, and neither said a thing.
“You know, I still remember the flash going off that night. The sound it made, the light being thrown around the corner, and down the stairs. Is that what made you come up with the idea for the camera trap? Did you suddenly remember me telling you about that? Of course, it’s not a real memory, I made it up, I had to have. Because the Lake County Pallbearer didn’t use flash that we know of. He did long exposures. See, he was a real serial killer, not just some greedy black widow.”
Why was I talking about this? Was I angry? I felt like she had robbed me of my secret, and I was taking it back. It was something like that. I realized I was crying, and not just pretending because of my dumb-in-love character.
The words started, and they wouldn’t stop.
“He would pose his victims after he killed them, usually on a bed or in some chairs, maybe on a couch, and take long exposures of them while he walked around in the background. The bodies were perfectly still, so the images of them were pristine. You could see every detail of his victim, but he was moving, so he just appeared like a big black spirit, like the Grim Reaper itself, watching over the dead. That’s why they called him the Pallbearer, because Psycho Nut Job must have been taken.
“But I remember walking by the stairs after my movie was over. I had been watching in the den, sneaking a scary movie on my little television, and when I got to the stairs, it suddenly occurred to me that all the lights in the house were still on, the dishes were still in the sink, and the door wasn’t locked and bolted. All of the things my parents did at night hadn’t been done.
“And suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I knew something was wrong. But I didn’t want to believe it. I thought that if I called the cops or if I ran upstairs, that would make it real, that the thing I was fearing would become true. So I ran back to the den, and I watched another movie, until about halfway through, when I saw someone at the entrance of the den reflected in the glass of the TV. And I pretended like I didn’t notice them. I was wearing headphones, and I was just watching TV. I thought it was my dad, and I was so relieved that I was wrong about something bad happening. I fell asleep down there, and I didn’t find my parents until the next morning.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Why did I tell her that? Emotions were rising up in me, not completely my own. It was her husband, the real one. Some pang in his latent emotions was making me desperate and loose-lipped. He would be about to die just about now in the real story.
He would have been pleading for his life, for love.
Is that what I was doing? Pleading for love. How embarrassing.
“That’s the story I told you, right? Or that’s the story I remember telling you. Do you remember that? How hard it was for me to tell you? Do you remember telling me you loved me after? Or do you just have some factoids listed out on the script, telling you whatever it was that other version of me was willing to say?”
Daphne didn’t answer, but strangely, it did seem like my story was affecting her. I didn’t know if she felt bad for me, or if she felt bad at all, but she breathed slowly. I wanted to think that she felt something like shame for having stolen that secret from me.
“I’ve never told anyone that,” I said. “I never would, normally, especially not someone who I wanted to love me. So there was no way that I could have told you, as much as I wish there was.”
It was everything I could do not to drop to my knees, run away. God, I wanted to run away. But I had to finish a scene.
I looked past Daphne to Kimberly. She was crying.
I felt so embarrassed about everything. There was a timer on the red wallpaper, telling me I had a minute, and I was thankful for that, because I needed to get ready to end this.
I breathed deeply and prepared.
Daphne seemed to have accepted her fate. I didn’t know if she could run or if she would.
On-Screen.
The door to the roof burst open, and Andrew stumbled out, walking all on his own, working as hard as he could to stay upright. He staggered like a zombie, but he was here.
He was holding on to a radio, one of the ones that the blackmailer had. He had sent the message that distracted the blackmailers.
“Where are they?” he yelled out. “The blackmailers, they’re still alive! I don’t know how, but they were coming to the roof!” He looked all around.
“They’re dead,” I said.
He looked at me, and then Kimberly, and then Daphne.
“Do you have the antidote?” Daphne asked, crying. It still actually hurt to see her in such a pitiful condition. She had been so powerful and mystical before… I couldn’t come up with any excuse not to finish the job, but part of me was trying.
“I have the antidote,” Andrew said.
“No!” Kimberly screamed.
“Please,” Daphne said. “I lost mine. They made me throw it off the roof. Please.”
Andrew didn’t take much convincing. He could see she was an enemy, and even though he was in the throes of poisoning when we were in the generator room, he must have picked up what was going on there.
“Daphne. That’s your name, right? That guy called you Daphne,” I said. “So I guess you really aren’t Rachel.”
“I am Rachel,” Daphne said. “I was, at least for a while. Long enough to help her parents. Long enough to help you, almost, Riley. What do you think is out there that’s worth the risk? Please, give me the antidote, and I can make you happy.”
I gave enough time to consider it, but there was no way she thought that was going to work.
I trained the gun on her and started pulling the trigger. After the first time, the trigger just kept going off even without my finger pushing it. The gun had to empty itself; that was part of the trope.
I screamed while I did it.
None of the bullets hit Daphne, of course, but I tried to play it off by throwing the gun down and screaming, “I can’t do it.”
“It’s because you love me,” Daphne said. “And I love you, Riley. I’ll love you till the day—"
She didn’t get to finish her sentence. Kimberly walked up to her and slammed the side of the axe head into her. I wasn’t sure if that was on purpose, avoiding cutting her with the blade, or if Carousel had intervened because Daphne had a sequel to be alive for.
Whatever the case, Daphne fell off the side of the building without a scream. She splashed into the floodwaters below.
“I have no problem doing it,” Kimberly said.
There it was.
We waited for the end, but it didn’t quite come. Kimberly started walking toward me with her arms outstretched, leaving the axe behind.
We had missed something.
“Kimberly!” I screamed.
Just over the edge of the building, I could see a hand reaching up and climbing back over onto the roof.
It wasn't Daphne. It was the cook. Somehow, she had survived being dragged off the edge of the building and had climbed her way back up.
She grabbed the axe and started running toward Kimberly. She must have had good Hustle, too, because she was making time.
I did have a cleaver in my jacket pocket, but I didn’t even have time to reach for it, because a small plastic bag of white powder crashed against the cook’s face, sending white clouds up all around her and covering her in it.
I looked over and saw Andrew, his hands still extended from having thrown the bag.
Did he just throw cocaine at a blackmailer? That was my first thought.
I didn’t even have to ask the question, because soon after, the cook started to scream in agony. She dropped to her knees, desperately trying to wash the white powder off her skin with rain, but being unable to do so.
She got back to her feet and started running, her eyes closed, blinded by the stuff. She ran until she accidentally ran off the side of the building, screaming the whole way down.
“What just happened?” I asked, perhaps a little out of character.
“I found some lye,” Andrew answered. “The maid had it in her pocket. I thought we might need it.”
That was a move straight out of a dark comedy. Perhaps I had killed the final three blackmailers too quickly, and Carousel wanted to punctuate their deaths.
When I rewatched the movie later, I would find out that it was an after-credits scene.
"By the way," Andrew added, "We need to be careful going down. I... might have electrified the stairs. Just in case."
I nodded, laughing to myself.
The rain stopped moments later. The clouds cleared up.
The needle on the plot cycle struck The End as the sun rose in the distance.
I went and picked up the gun because it did have a useful trope on it, though not useful for killing directly.
“See? It all went according to plan,” I said with a laugh, as my brain fog finally lifted and only the scars in my heart remembered the love I had for the Homibride.