Chapter 5 #2
“What you’ve just described is a prototypical romance with a layer of science-fiction and fantasy on top of it.
Not new in the slightest.” Vile rolled his eyes.
“Your collection of adjectives and descriptors is simply newly selected at random. A lottery machine picker can do that. That isn’t storytelling. ”
“He means a new twist in a story. Something unforeseen. Something really unexpected.” Virtue smiled lopsidedly. “Maybe you can use the stories we go into, and find a new twist to something that’ll surprise us. Then you both get to go home.”
“How many people have ever managed to do that? Tell you something new?” Sasha was pretty sure she didn’t really want to know the answer, but like looking down after being told not to, there she was asking it anyway.
The look on Vile’s face was punchably smug as he clasped his hands behind his back. “Precisely?” He paused as if to count in his head. “No one.”
“What about the two guys who dropped the books off to us earlier today?” Sidney furrowed her brow. “They lived.”
“One of them. Two books. We can provide rapid transport, if you will. I wonder what’ll become of James. His brother didn’t go down easy, that’s for certain.” Vile shrugged.
“Jordan. Jordan was the one who lived. James died.” Virtue shut his eyes and looked for all the world like he wanted to scream.
“Whatever.”
Sasha turned to look at Sidney. Best of three. It wasn’t just a competition, it— “Fuck.” The black book and the white one. Wendy and Mr. Smee. She slapped a hand over her face. “Fuck!”
“Later, absolutely. Though the erotica is kept in the basement.” Vile sniffed dismissively. “It tends to get feisty with the other genres if we let it roam around.”
“That’s not—” She groaned. “Never mind!” Taking off her glasses, she cleaned them on the edge of her black turtleneck sweater before putting them back on. “This isn’t a survival game. It’s a death match, isn’t it? You’re playing us against each other! I’m on your side, and she’s on his!”
“No! I’m not doing it—” Sidney threw up her hands and stormed away from the scene a dozen feet. “I’m not going to try to kill my own sister!”
That had Vile bursting out in hysterical laughter. He slung an arm over Sasha’s shoulder, pulling her into his side.
Sasha froze, not knowing what to do. He was so damn strong. The smell of old books and a hint of roses washed over her.
“Well! Then, I expect you’ll have plenty of stories to try to twist into something ‘new,’ won’t you?
You aren’t the first pair who began by swearing never to work against the other, only to slowly devolve into madness or hatred as the novellas turned into novels turned into epics.
Before long, you’ll be at each other’s throats, mark my words. ”
Pushing away from Vile, it was her turn to storm away from them all. “And we don’t get a say in any of this.”
“Do the fish get a say in the fisherman’s decision to throw a lure?
I’m afraid not.” Vile clicked his tongue as if remembering something.
“Ah, and don’t think we’ll be spending days going through children’s literature or cozy romance.
If I wanted to watch paint dry, I’d go meander through William Wordsworth. ”
Sasha knew they were doomed to fail at coming up with something “new.”
And the smile on Vile’s face said he knew it, too.
The idea of coming up with a truly unique story seemed goddamn impossible. Humanity had been reusing the same tropes and ideas for centuries, how could she and her sister possibly pull off coming up with something new? Something they wouldn’t see coming? Especially when they could read their minds?
And, meanwhile this best of three bullshit?
No, there had to be another way out. A third way. There had to be.
Sasha turned to Virtue. He was a hero. That was the whole point of him. He had to stop it—right? “Take us home. You have the power to do that, right?”
“I—I can’t—” He stammered, rubbing the back of his head like he was suddenly caught on stage in the limelight and didn’t know his lines. “It’s not how it works—I have to play my part.”
“What do you mean that’s not how this works?” Sasha stormed up to him and poked him in the chest. “Take us home before this serial-killing psychopath murders us!”
“Only Sidney, not you—” Vile corrected her, but she didn’t care. “Very different.”
It wasn’t. She kept her glare fixed on Virtue. “Take us home. Please.”
His shoulders drooped. “I have to follow the rules. I’m the hero. And he sets the rules. The villain always does.”
She longed with every ounce of her being to grab Virtue, shake him like a Polaroid, and scream in his face that either she, her sister, or both of them were going to die horrible deaths if he didn’t take them home immediately.
But it wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t. They were just doing their thing. What they were designed to do. It was like being sucked into Alice in Wonderland—she had to play along, or else.
“We’ll get there later.” Vile chuckled. “We haven’t finished Pan. And I love playing Hook.”
Threading her hands into her hair, she gripped the strands and tugged, using the sting in her scalp to try to calm herself down. “Tell a unique story, using existing stories and tropes. While you both try to kill us.”
“I won’t be trying to kill you,” Virtue assured her.
“I give you my word. And if you try to stop him from killing Sidney, we can work together to try to find a way out of this. Maybe there’s a loophole.
” He smiled in that piteous kind of way you smile at someone at a family member’s funeral.
“There’s always a loophole in stories like this, right? ”
Yeah. Yeah.
Now that was a plan she could get behind. And he was right—there was always some kind of backdoor in stories like this. Some sort of trick way out of a contract or a seemingly hopeless situation. Right?
There had to be.
Otherwise, there’d be no happy ending in any book, ever.
And the villain always lost. Even in stories where the endings were tragic, downers, or bittersweet, the villain never really won. Which meant that there was a way to beat Vile. There was a way around the game.
They just had to find it.
“We’ll see about that, dear.” He held out his hand to her again. “Who knows. Maybe this is the start of a new kind of story. Now, come along, Mr. Smee. We have an island of teenagers to brutally murder.”
“How come she gets to be Wendy and I have to be Mr. Smee?” Sasha grimaced. She didn’t want to go along with this. But she didn’t really know as she had much of a choice. She glanced over at Sidney, who looked like she was on the verge of tears.
Virtue was consoling her, holding her close. The two of them looked…really cute together. A fairytale prince and his princess. A pang of something hit her like a proverbial brick. Jealousy was the wrong word. Sadness, maybe.
Loneliness.
A hand settled on her shoulder. “Because we villains are relegated to the world of insipid sidekicks* for our companions, my dear. We never deserve love.”
“If you were capable of love, I guess that means you’d be redeemable.”
“Hardly. It would mean we were capable of emotions like anyone else, and therefore we wouldn’t be worthy of vilification.
” He hummed. “Indeed, I would argue it is perhaps an abundance of ill-spent love that can lead one to villainy in the first place. But I digress. Perhaps a conversation for another time, should you so decide to humor me.” Vile grinned down at her. “To Neverland?”
“I guess.” She winced. “Can you not drop me again?”
“Pah. You’re no fun at all. As you wish.” He gestured down an aisle. “After you.”
Sasha walked in the direction he gestured, and she made it about five paces.
“Watch out for the—” Virtue tried to warn her.
It turned out that her instinct not to trust Vile was a good one.
The floor opened up beneath her. And once more, she fell into the darkness, screaming, to the tune of his laughter.
* Do you think I choose to be accompanied by greasy little old men everywhere I go? -V