“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 that could be seen 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 nodded, but not at what she had said.

He stopped in the middle of the living room and looked around at the rest of us.

The gang was all there: me, Ramona, Camden, Anna, even our NPC friends were hanging out. But I wouldn’t call it a party. We were all basically just passing through.

Camden and I were going to the movies later; Ramona and Anna were allegedly going on a drive with their NPC dates to Hanging Tree Lookout, which was like a make-out point type of place.

I didn’t know if that was really where they were going, but Evan, who had been pursuing Anna for the entire storyline, had declared that’s where they were headed, and Nathan, who was officially dating Ramona, had agreed.

That didn’t matter. That was just our loose justification for having all gathered together.

What mattered was the conversation between Isaac and Cassie.

I wasn’t used to saying that in storylines, but they were coming into their own.

“I think something happened to Avery,” Isaac said.

“This again?” Evan asked. “Didn’t she put in her two weeks’ notice or something?”

Evan had not taken a job, and neither had Nathan, despite filling out an application. I wasn’t even sure if they were named characters.

“She left a note on Gus’s desk,” Isaac said. “But how would she leave a note? The door should have been locked. How did she get in?”

“She could have left it before she left for the night,” Evan said. “Did you think of that?”

Evan didn’t normally play his character as a bully or anything like that, but someone had to be a counterpoint to Isaac, and I didn’t want it to be any of the players. Isaac was going to end up being pretty sympathetic, so arguing with him or teasing him too much might turn the audience against us.

Evan, being somewhat meta-aware, understood that, and he was playing the role well.

“Speaking of people missing in action,” I said, “where did Ruck go? He crash his car again?”

“Who knows,” Nathan said. “Probably went to his dad’s place. He can do whatever he wants there. He’ll be back when he wants a home-cooked meal, I’m sure.”

Nathan was sitting next to Ramona and practicing his public displays of affection.

“So he just up and left?” Isaac asked.

“You know, I bet that’s why he bought the car,” Evan said, “so he could drive places.”

“You know, I think you’re right,” Nathan responded.

Isaac started pacing again.

“Take out the trash,” Cassie said again, as she, Anna, and Ramona left to go to her room.

“You know what is interesting,” Camden said, speaking up for the first time, “I looked through a lot of the calendars going back years, and at some of the employee schedules, a few people did quit just by leaving a note on the boss’s desk.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, “that’s the type of job we have, right? Plus, I don’t think I could look Gus in the face and tell him I wasn’t coming in. He’s too nice. It’d break my heart.”

“Hey, I’m not arguing,” he said, “but it is kind of weird, since Gus is almost always the last person to leave and the first to arrive.”

We needed some way to get this mystery rolling, and that was our best approach at the moment.

“Sometimes delivery drivers are out working past closing time,” I responded quietly.

I was trying to play my character as someone who suspected something was going on, but was in extreme denial about it.

I stared into the distance.

“What do I know,” I continued. “Isaac is right, I was with Gus when he locked up. I don’t know how Avery would have gotten in to put that note on his desk in the morning.”

“Must have used the back door,” Evan said.

“Must have,” Camden agreed, though he didn’t seem comfortable with the explanation.

I decided to get quiet. I didn’t want to drive the narrative or be too much of a talking head. I had already been given enough meat for a side character and maybe more.

Instead, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a little plastic baggie. Inside that baggie was a brightly colored pink piece of material that very well might have been a paint chip. I furrowed my brow; I tried my best to convey worry or uncertainty.

“What color were Avery’s nails ag—” I started to ask before a crashing sound interrupted me.

For all I knew, the camera wasn’t even focusing on me, and I was only On-Screen because I was in the room, but still, I tried my best.

Isaac, who had still been pacing, clumsily collided with an end table next to the couch. That end table happened to be home to a family portrait of Isaac, Cassie, and two random people who never showed up in the film but were clearly their parents.

Cassie stormed out of her bedroom.

“Can you not be careful?” she asked. “Why are you constantly breaking things?” She went to the end table and set the picture back up properly.

Isaac looked like he had seen a ghost. His eyes were darting around the room, into the corners.

Of course, he hadn’t actually seen a ghost. And he wasn’t the only one to see it, but he was the only one to acknowledge it. It had been a shadow, just a blip, nothing prolonged, nothing humanoid, but a shadow flashed across the wall.

He had seen it and bumped into the corner table.

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He had reported seeing them all day, ever since the incident with the pizza in the break room.

We had been preparing for this moment ever since.

“Okay, okay, I’ll take out the trash,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard anything Cassie had just yelled.

And so he walked out of the room, eyes darting left and right, on the lookout for more shadows.

“He has been so weird today,” Cassie said, trying to sound like an angry older sister but also sounding concerned. “Did something weird happen at work?”

I shrugged.

“The new boss lady forced him to eat a piece of pizza,” Camden said, with a shrug to match mine. “Something about food waste.”

“Is he being bullied?” she asked, as if she didn’t constantly bully him.

“We don’t know yet,” I said. “So far, she’s been doing the same thing to pretty much everybody.”

Cassie didn’t respond but looked in the direction Isaac had left, with concern.

Off-Screen

I immediately put my headphones on and leaned back in the rocking chair that I had posted up in. Funny enough, all of the other characters in the room, players and NPCs alike, just watched me at first.

It was lonely in the director’s chair.

Isaac was humming a tune that I almost recognized. I had asked him to, so that I could hear what was happening, and of course, I’d asked him to mumble to himself.

He happily obliged.

“So you’re going crazy,” he said to himself. “Most mental illnesses start showing up after puberty. Why couldn’t I have just gotten chest hair instead?”

I could hear him moving bags and trying to lift one of those round metal trash cans and carry it along.

From then on, I didn’t really have to just listen in because he passed by the house and started moving toward the front yard, where he was going to leave the cans to get picked up by the garbage truck.

We could see him through the living room windows.

We all mimed talking and laughing and whatever we needed to appear normal through the windows of any exterior shots, but in reality, our eyes moved toward Isaac at every opportunity.

We were being vigilant.

“Why does the boy always have to take out the trash?” Isaac whispered to himself. “Cassie needs to learn how to take out the trash. She’s going to be single her whole life.”

He stopped and went silent.

“It’s just a tree,” he said. “It’s just a tree.”

He continued to repeat that to himself.

He was seeing shadows again.

But of course, in this storyline, shadows had a way of growing faces.

“Hello?” Isaac said, concerned.

I moved to scratch my right temple and glanced out the front window.

Those same pale-faced men in suits were walking by on the sidewalk. There were three of them, and I wasn’t sure if they were the same ones I had seen before, but I knew what they were.

Their skin suits would pass even close inspection. They weren’t rubbery or anything.

It was the way they walked and moved that revealed them.

Once you had seen them shed those skins, you could never see them as anything but a costume afterward.

They wore their human disguises with such disdain.

Oddly, Miss Pryce didn’t have such a problem, but I was no less confident that she was a demon.

The men did not respond to Isaac, but they did stop on the sidewalk.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I wondered the very same thing. What kind of scheme were these demons up to?

Finally, one of them answered.

He sounded very normal—no high-pitched voice, just like an ordinary person—except what he said was not ordinary at all.

“The promotion has been redeemed. The trespasser has been advised. The consumer has indulged freely. Satisfaction must be guaranteed.”

Isaac dropped the trash can.

“My dad is gonna be really mad if you don’t just keep going,” he said. “Dad!” he called out, bluffing.

The men seemed to stare at Isaac.

And then they just walked off down the sidewalk.

I was ready to jump out of my chair.

“Weirdos,” Isaac said, once they were a good distance away.

Those of us inside had basically been holding our breath.

We finally breathed when we could no longer see the strange men; they faded into the darkness of the night.

Isaac picked up the trash can and moved further with it, all the way to the curb, with no incident.

But the thing was, there were two trash cans.

So he had to go back to get the second.

I could see a little screen on the red wallpaper counting down. Isaac was about to go Off-Screen, and we were about to go On-Screen.

I held up five fingers and counted down silently: 4, 3, 2.

I then took off my headphones.

On-Screen

“So, when you say you’re going to Hanging Tree Lookout, like, the four of you,” Camden started to say, “what exactly does that entail?”

Anna, Ramona, and Cassie were back in the living room.

Anna was the first to be able to get back into character. She sort of blushed and said, “We’re just going to look at the vista.”

Then she looked at Evan and repeated seriously, “We are only going to look at the vista.”

Evan put up his hands. “We’re just going to look at the vista,” he said with a smile, maintaining prolonged eye contact with Anna.

“We aren’t,” Ramona said, putting her hand on Nathan’s shoulder.

Nathan turned and looked at her with a big, goofy grin, unable to look cool for just a few moments.

Anna and Cassie gasped and chased after Ramona into the kitchen, but before they could get there, a loud crash came from the far end of the living room.

No one was over there.

The picture frame containing the portrait of Cassie, Isaac, and their family had crashed back down. But this time, it didn’t just fall over; it fell onto the floor.

Cassie, suddenly awash with concern, walked quickly back over to look at the portrait.

She picked it up and stared at it.

I couldn’t get a good look at it, but later, I was able to.

It had a singular crack in the glass.

A crack that went right across Isaac’s chest and stopped where his heart would be with a big sunburst pattern.

Cassie held tightly to the picture and said, “Where’s Isaac?”

She turned around and looked at the rest of us.

“Where is Isaac?” she repeated.

“Still outside, taking out the trash,” Camden said.

Cassie went and looked up at the front yard, where only one trash can had been brought to the road.

She put down the picture frame onto the couch, tossing it like a frisbee, and started to run out through the kitchen and out the back door, to where the second trash can waited.

The room was silent. I stood up and followed, as did Camden and Ramona.

The others kind of crowded in that direction, but didn’t go outside.

Unfortunately, we needed to divide up who saw definitive proof of the supernatural and who didn’t, so that we could maintain conflict and tension later on. It was an unfortunate reality because I would have preferred everyone to storm out with us, knowing what we were walking into.

As soon as we were outside, back toward the second trash can, which had been knocked over onto its side, the three demons again.

They still looked like men.

One of them was grabbing onto Isaac, holding his neck like he was picking a giant flower.

Isaac, not one to go down easily, had grabbed a trash can lid, one of the nice metal ones, and as we walked outside and got closer, I saw him absolutely hammer one of the men in the face with the trash can lid.

He hit the guy so hard that the demon lost possession of the head of his skin suit, and it just sort of deflated for a moment.

That was probably Isaac’s Weapons of Mass Absurdity trope at play.

Cassie stormed those men with a rage that was more than just an act.

“Put him down!” she screamed. “What are you doing?”

“The promotion has been redeemed. The trespasser has been advised. The consumer has indulged freely. Satisfaction must be guaranteed,” the man holding onto Isaac’s neck said as if he wasn’t in a fight, and as if he wasn’t constantly getting banged with a trash can lid by a struggling Isaac.

Camden, Ramona, and I ran to help, tugging on Isaac’s legs to prevent him from being kidnapped.

Cassie raged.

She didn’t have any good offensive tropes against demons (or anything else, for that matter), but her high Moxie was still a valuable asset.

Supernatural entities like ghosts and demons could be affected by Moxie, though it wasn’t exactly clear if she had a way to use it.

I had told her to pretend she was some sort of fiery preacher, condemning the demons to hell.

I couldn’t help but feel it worked, as she screamed at them, allowing us to pull Isaac away from the three attackers.

“This is my brother!” she screamed. “Let go of him!”

The demons were clearly frustrated.

Their skin suits were not fake enough to hide their expressions.

“He has made an act manifesting assent to a contract,” one of them said. None of their mouths moved, so I didn’t know which one.

I didn’t know where we were supposed to go from there.

We didn’t have a good way of attacking demons or anything else.

Was it really just going to be a tug of war?

Luckily, it didn’t come down to that.

“He can’t enter a contract with you,” Cassie screamed with venom. “He’s a minor!”

I didn’t know if she was making a joke, or if that was just the first thing that came to her mind, or if perhaps her Soul Read trope had led her to that line.

But the men in their skin suits stopped pulling and let go.

They looked at each other, unsure of what to do next.

And then they just left. They walked away slowly. For some reason, they just gave up.

Cassie might have yelled after them, but then all of us got quiet.

We just stared at each other.

Finally, Ramona said, “Did you see that guy’s face?”

No one answered.

“His face was crooked,” she said as if she couldn’t believe it.

She was right about that.

The bash from Isaac’s trash can lid had totally ruined the fit of the skin suit.

We stared after the three men, and the one with the crooked face comedically pulled the material that made up his head, rearranging it so that he looked like a normal human again.

And again, we all just stared at each other.

Off-Screen

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep