Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“And we’re back! ” a voice dripping with theatrics crackled enthusiastically over the speakers. 

The sound of the voice, coupled with the sudden sting of a jolt of electricity coursing through his body, roused Ranboo from a state of complete mental oblivion. The senseless, atemporal void that was the blackened and empty canvas of his mind was now being painted over by a sudden array of gaudy lights, colors, sounds, thoughts, and feelings. The overstimulation dazzled Ranboo’s senses for a few seconds before the lens of his amygdala began to sharpen, and reality spread itself bare before him. 

The first sensation that revealed itself in all of its terrible clarity was pain. It was an indescribable agony, a sting that penetrated through every atom of his being, although it seemed to be emanating primarily from his extremities. Too overwhelmed to process anything else, Ranboo instinctively tried to move away from the source of the pain, and attempted to draw his limbs closer to himself, following the natural impulse to adopt the fetal position. It was at this point that a second horrific facet of reality was revealed to him: his entire body was almost completely incapacitated, hanging above the ground and displayed flat against the wall like some sick, mantled hunting trophy. 

His heart, already thumping with the tempo of a frightened bird’s flapping wings, began to beat even faster. The space in front of him was almost impossible to see directly due to a spotlight which shone directly onto his body, illuminating the garish set in his peripheral vision: a tangled mess of neon lights that stabbed at the eyes, interspersed by a writhing mass of cords and cables that connected a host of pitch-black screens like a web of veins and neurons. The one thing he could make out in front of him amidst the glare of the blinding spotlight was a single black camera lens – it seemed to stare at him, hungrily, like the pupil of a cyclops. 

He tried to scream for help, but all that came out of Ranboo’s mouth was a choked, animalistic noise as his vocal chords failed to open and close properly due to the interference of something sharp sticking down into his throat. The inhuman vocalization was immediately followed by a wet cough, as Ranboo forced the blood from his lacerated larynx out of his lungs. Most of the blood sprayed back onto him, deflected by the metal-plated mask that, despite being slightly damaged, was still tightly fastened to the lower half of his face. He instinctively tried to recoil away, but he hit his head against something cold and hard.

Ranboo mustered the strength to move his head in an attempt to get a better look at his immediate surroundings, but what he saw turned his blood to ice. Two square iron panels were situated either side of his head, adorned with a set of wickedly sharp spikes stained with something dark, accentuating the smell of rust that was already emanating from the horrific contraption. Ranboo’s panicked breathing became even more erratic as his mind began to process what the contraption was – an iron maiden, with his skull positioned precisely in the center.

“Congratulations, Ranboo: you’ve made it to the end!” the voice from the speaker lauded him. “You completed your Experiment!”

A spark of recognition flared in Ranboo’s mind. Now that some of the blood had been cleared from his throat, Ranboo feebly managed to garble out a question: 

“Wh… wh-where… wait, Hetch ? … You’re alive ?”

Ranboo was incapable of recalling much that was substantive, as his mind was clouded by pain and fear, but he was able to recognize that voice – the voice that had guided him through this insensible nightmare, the voice that had helped him to escape this insanity and gain sight once more of reality, the voice that belonged to his Savior. 

Why is this happening to me? How did I get here? Why isn’t he helping me?

“Wh… what’s going on?” Ranboo asked in confusion. He drew in a shaky breath, trying to feed his lungs with something other than blood, which was still trickling slowly yet continuously down into his throat. “What…wh-what’s happening?” 

“Of course I’m alive, Ranboo. You see, I still have a role to play here.” 

“...What?” Ranboo croaked, although the response was near inaudible. 

 “The Founder gave me a purpose, many, many years ago,” Hetch’s voice drawled over the speakers, “to repurpose this company, and to create these ‘Experiments’.”

Ranboo swallowed. “... ’Experiments’ ?”

“These… ‘shows’.” Hetch continued, relishing every unnecessarily drawn-out word that bled from the mouthpiece. “So as to find out who in your world is worthy of joining the cast, to live on in the future shows, forever!”

‘Joining the cast’...? What cast? What is this place? 

“No… I don’t want to join-” he pleaded, sucking in another breath, tainted by the smell of iron. “I don’t want to be on the future shows. Please!” Ranboo looked about frantically, trying once more to catch a glimpse of anyone or anything that might help him, but the glare from the spotlight was still too blinding. With no one else to turn to, he focused his gaze on the camera lens. 

“I-I don’t want to do any of this! Please…” he begged the camera, “just let me go! You can just let me go, right?” 

The camera was silent.

Hetch’s voice crackled over the speaker again. “I’m afraid that’s not an option.”

At that moment, the inlaid lights on Ranboo’s mask began to flash red, intermittently drenching his face in scarlet. Faint wisps of memory passed through his mind, flashing and fleeting like the scales of a fish darting through a stream. 

How could you have been so blind? 

Hetch was just as much of a cast member for Showfall as Ranboo himself had been. Both were actors in some kind of sick production, created for the entertainment of a nameless, numberless audience. Hetch, the “Savior”, and Ranboo… he had been called the “Hero”, had he not?

…He didn’t feel very heroic. 

His Savior had now also revealed his true colors, and the picture they painted was sickening. Before, Hetch’s words had seemed to Ranboo a beacon of light, illuminating the path to freedom and the end of his torment, when in actuality they were nothing more than the lure of a nefarious angler fish, tempting him away from the path of liberation and leading him instead towards a set of jaws that promised only delusion and death.

Ranboo was certain that he had seen Hetch die, or, at the very least, lay mortally wounded upon the floor, never to recover. But now, strung up with his head resting in a literal death trap while staring at that void-like, ravenous camera lens, Ranboo realized that even Hetch’s death, too, had been nothing but a farce. Hetch had deceived him, always has been deceiving him, obscuring the dark and dreadful truth with mirages of color and gaiety. Ranboo had been naive and far too trusting, but could anyone really blame him, considering that the threads of his entire conception of reality had been unraveled right in front of him, and continued to disintegrate before his eyes whenever he tried to weave together an understanding of a single consistent, coherent thing?

“Wait…So you’ve just been behind all of this? Wh-what do you mean?” He rasped, raising his head up towards the camera again, and a thin trickle of blood began to drip down his chin. 

The mask continued to blink – the wisps of memory that his tormented brain had previously failed to properly grasp ahold of now revealed themselves to him in greater clarity. Flashes appeared before him of a cabin, an old bedroom, a greasy hospital bed, a room with gaudy wallpaper, and an odd collection of board games and other paraphernalia. The locations felt… off , somehow, like something had messed with Ranboo’s depth perception, or the perspective of one of the boxes of board games was slightly unaligned with what it should have been.

“Oh, yes!” Hetch replied, sadistic glee seeping through his words. “Every decision you’ve made, every death you’ve caused… Don’t you see that these are consequences of your own actions?”

Almost as if Hetch’s biting words were a cue, the scarlet lights on Ranboo’s mask flashed even brighter. He held on tightly to those wisps of memory, and they seemed to grow, somehow, before his mind’s eye. He not only saw locations, but… faces. People. Not drawings, nor paintings, but real people. 

He saw the face of a man wearing a large sweatshirt, brown hair peeking out from underneath a blue-brimmed and oddly stained baseball hat, sitting on a rusted playground carousel that seemed out of place. The man was frozen, and his eyes were fixed on something in horror – something that Ranboo could not see. What is it you see?

He saw a woman in a bright red suit with a scarlet bucket hat to match, and di-colored brown and blonde hair that fell down loosely to frame her amicable face. She wore a cordial smile, but her eyes were bloodshot, and her cheeks were streaked with tears that had not yet dried. She disappeared from Ranboo’s view. He heard her scream, followed by a BANG as loud as a thunderclap. And then he heard her no more. “It’s so dark… it’s so cold…” 

He saw a man dressed in a stark black and red suit, with an almost comically cartoonish cane in his hand. Too much… He is too much… The curves and creases of his face were too expressive, like those belonging to a caricature. His voice was too thespian, too dramatic. He was… wrong, somehow. But then he wasn’t there any more. Why did you leave? Was it too much for you, too?

Finally, Ranboo saw a man with glasses, dressed in green. He was covered in it, from head to toe, like an ancient log overgrown by moss. His smile flashed, bright and cheerful. And then the smile melted; the face was unbothered by consciousness, resting. The light was too bright. Ranboo’s hands were warm. Then suddenly the man was screaming. Why is he screaming? Why won’t he stop? He was screaming – he was covered in blood and he was screaming. Why am I screaming with him? …But then his bright and cheerful smile returned, and Ranboo’s hands were cold. Cold… so cold . Shaking and cold. The man in green was different this time. The smile was gone, but the face was real. He took Ranboo’s hand. Run. Run away. Run! RUN! They ran. They saw. They saw . He fell. Help him. I have to help him! HELP HIM! The scream returned. But I – LEAVE HIM. I can’t – LEAVE. HIM. The scream fell silent once more.

… I left him . He was my friend, and I left him behind . 

Tears began to form at the corners of Ranboo’s eyes for the first time since he had awoken. He grimaced as they fell, salt mixing with the blood already present on his cheeks. 

I left them all behind. This is all my fault… I did this. I DID THIS. And now they’re gone, they’re dead and gone and it’s all my fault –

The lights on Ranboo’s mask shone, brighter than ever before.

And a tsunami of memory washed over him. 

“...How is this…?” Charlie’s voice wavered. 

He panned his eyes over the set of five small, obscurely furnished rooms, each appearing as though it had been lifted directly from a giant’s dollhouse. His attention was drawn immediately to the fourth on the left, which was evidently made to imitate an eccentric child’s bedroom. 

Standing stock-still to his right, Ranboo gave no answer. His expression was impossible to read, as it was shrouded in shadow by the hazy room and the lack of scarlet light that usually emanated from that bizarre mask that covered the lower half of his face. 

Charlie took a few tentative steps forward towards the dimly lit room (... set piece ?) that had initially grabbed his attention. His mind felt like it was being pricked by tiny fish hooks that wanted to drag it in two opposing directions; he was simultaneously overwhelmed by both a feeling of intense nostalgia and an uncanny anxiety. As Charlie approached the child’s bedroom, that anxious feeling amplified, filling him with a sense of dread, and he tightened his grip on the handle of the cast-iron pan he held in his hand.

I know this place.

He knew he had seen it recently. Ranboo had been there, too – Charlie felt it deep in his bones. He looked back at his friend, who had also moved closer to examine one of the other rooms, which was furnished with an old television. The dim light from the set pieces in front of them reflected in Ranboo’s eyes, and Charlie watched them widen in the dark. Ranboo remained silent, but his brows began to crease with worry. After a few moments, he slowly took a few steps away from the peculiar room. 

Charlie, however, turned back to the set, and stepped even closer. 

I KNOW this place.

He had been here before, long before his friend had ever set foot in these walls. How long ago exactly, though, he wasn’t sure. He tried to wrack his mind for an answer, but as soon as he tried to alight on something definite, it fell from his grasp like fine sand. 

There was a painting hanging on the wall that unnerved him. It was of someone who shared his exact likeness from his younger years; they had the same light mousy-brown hair, the same pair of glasses, even bearing the same mischievous glint in their eyes. But Charlie had certainly never commissioned anyone to create a portrait of him, and neither did he know anyone who would have done so for him, or would have known him well enough at that age to have created something like this from memory.

But who did he know? He frowned. This odd bedroom: that was familiar to him. Ranboo was familiar to him. The comfortable and cozy space, innocently decorated with plush toys and his streaming setup, that room he had thought was his own, which Ranboo had wrenched him away from, away from delusion – that was familiar to him.  Everything else seemed to melt and distort in his mind like some twisted funhouse mirror. Faces flashed in his mind’s eye and disappeared almost as soon as they appeared. One lingered a moment longer than the others – it belonged to a dark-haired man in a blue-rimmed baseball cap, whose expression changed rapidly from one of horror to one of complete apathy. And then that face, too, was gone. 

Charlie swallowed, averted his gaze from the portrait, and took a few steps towards the final room on the left. It had the appearance of an attic, with stairs in the back corner that led down to nowhere, and a tiny window that looked as though it offered anyone who looked through it a glimpse of a lush, verdant world outside. But that, too, was false. A well-worn, dust-covered desk, atop which sat a rather out-of-place black and gold lamp, stood nestled between a faux brick chimney and the slanted attic wall fashioned out of cheap, engineered wood. Slowly, his gaze drifted across to a tiny tricycle at the back of the attic room set, also gathering dust. Something about that tricycle struck him. Without knowing the reason why, tears started to well up in his eyes. Charlie subconsciously brought a hand to his mouth, muffling his breath as it shook with an emotion he couldn’t quite place, an uncanny feeling that was equally split between nostalgia and dread. 

Suddenly, a nightmarish sound that turned Charlie’s blood to ice flared up from directly behind the flimsy piece of wood that masqueraded as an attic roof – a paralyzing noise that could only be described as a growl formed by some horrific amalgamation of distorted TV static and the guttural, inhuman vocalizations of some mechanical beast. Charlie gasped and instinctively jumped backwards from surprise and fright, but sheer, animalistic terror gripped his soul like a vice. He was incapable of moving further or uttering a sound, and he could only watch in horror as a set of fingers that were far too long to be human curled over the edge of the set piece. Whatever dim light there was glinted off of the inorganic surface of those sharp, mechanical digits. 

Charlie’s eyes widened as he noticed the wires that sprung from those ghastly hands, wires that looked almost as though some sadistic surgeon had removed a creature’s veins and arteries from their proper places and set them on display for the world to see. His eyes traced the wires up a pair of gangly arms with too many joints to a tangled mess of cables and cords that seemed to pulsate, as if alive. The cables wreathed together to form a base for what appeared to be a retro television, sitting atop the writing mass of living electronics, and the bone-chilling noise was emanating directly from behind its darkened screen. The distorted, mechanical growl suddenly crescendoed into an ear-splitting roar, like every variation of an air raid siren was picked up on a glitched microphone and simultaneously forced to play through a mangled speaker. 

Despite every nerve of his body feeling like it had been set on fire, and his mind screaming at him to run, to flee, to MOVE , Charlie’s feet stayed bolted to the floor, like a fawn paralyzed with fear stays motionless as a jaguar with outstretched claws flies towards its tender throat. It was only when the entity began to charge towards him that his amygdala processed the situation, and Charlie flung himself backwards. 

“No no no no NO NO NO NO-” he yelled, trying desperately to put any kind of distance between himself and that… THING . 

Out of sheer panic, he had failed to notice another set of cables on the floor immediately behind him. Charlie’s foot caught on one of the loose wires, and he fell flat onto his back, dropping the pan which clattered noisily to the ground, him along with it. 

Shit shit shit SHIT SHIT – 

The entity easily closed the gap between itself and its prey, and Charlie cried out as he felt those monstrous hands tear through his tactical vest as effortlessly as whetted knives through a sheet of flimsy paper. 

Charlie shrieked as the entity grasped him, pinned his torso to the floor, and bent its head over him to the point where the screen almost touched his face. A sharp pain suddenly shot through him, and Charlie watched in agonized disbelief as a writhing mass of wires wriggled its way from the entity’s forearm into the exposed flesh at his side. 

Screaming hysterically, he looked wildly about for any sign of something, anything , that might help him, and his eyes locked onto Ranboo. His friend had retreated back several steps after the entity had begun to charge, and despite half of his face being hidden behind the mask, his eyes were all one needed to recognize the sheer horror and panic that had taken root within him.

Despite the indescribable pain at his side, seeing Ranboo standing there caused something to resurface in Charlie’s memory. 

…

A few minutes prior to entering this darkened staging area with its obscure and uncanny set pieces, he had an encounter with the mysterious figure who had been guiding his friend (and therefore Charlie himself by extension) to freedom, an exit from Showfall’s premises. “Hetch”, he had called himself. They had found him lying in a pool of his own blood, hand pressed weakly against a massive gash in his abdomen, just barely clinging to life. Neither Charlie nor Ranboo had known how to react. Hell, Charlie still hadn’t processed that they had just survived being chased halfway around an entire mall by a horde of mindless, masked Showfall drones. 

It was Ranboo who was the first to put his thoughts into words. 

“I… I don’t know how to feel,” he said as he knelt beside the figure on the floor.

The statement was more than one of confusion and indecision, and Charlie knew that. He had felt it too, this lack of being able to process anything naturally or fully, ever since being reintroduced to the ‘real’ world. It wasn’t just that they didn’t know which emotion to feel, or how to react, but that both were struck with the terrible notion that they might have lost the ability to feel anything real at all. How is one supposed to react, when one doesn’t even know if what one is reacting to is real or false?

“That’s because you … aren’t you, anymore,” Hetch had responded. “Think: Where were you before this – before this all happened?”

Ranboo stuttered, wracking his brain for anything substantial. 

“I-I was … in a warehouse? Uh, th-this, here! I was here!”

“No, before that,” Hetch cut in. “Your life!”

Ranboo responded with greater confidence. “The c-cabin! I was in the cabin!”

“Who are you ?” Hetch persisted. Ranboo faltered, unable to answer.

“You.” Hetch pointed a finger directly at Charlie. “Where were you before this?”

Charlie squatted down next to his friend, who was still searching for his own answer. 

“Um…”

“What’s your life? Where are you from?”

It should have been a simple question to answer. Everyone knows where they grew up, where their home is. This should be easy. Shouldn’t it? 

“Yeah! I, um…,” Charlie frowned, knocking his hands together as if that would help to jumpstart his memory. Nothing came to him, except for flashes of the tiny bedroom with its obscure furnishings and stairs which led to nowhere. “I … grew up in a, uh, a cabin-”

“A cabin, huh?” Hetch repeated, unimpressed. “Don’t you see?”

Charlie did see. And what he saw scared him. He didn’t want to face the truth. He wanted certainty, stability, a home. But the truth offered him none of those things. He covered his face with his hands.

“They put memories in your head. They programmed you,” Hetch continued, while Charlie stood up and began to pace the room. “You are their playthings, their puppets .” He looked at Ranboo. “And if I can’t make it, then you have to finish my job, ok? And tell them … that Hetch did this.”

Charlie wasn’t looking at them anymore, he was too caught up in his own growing sense of fear and grief over having lost a life he couldn’t recall, but he heard Ranboo respond that he would do what Hetch asked of them. 

Hetch reached a bloodied hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, and handed it to Ranboo. “Take it. It’s a map to a kill button. You hit that, and the whole show comes down. The curtain falls. You will all have your lives back, and you can find the real exit.”

Charlie turned to see Ranboo take the scrap of paper, now stained in Hetch’s blood. Hetch grunted, and gave them a dismissive wave. “Just go. Go and tell the world.”

“...I’m sorry,” Ranboo had said as he stood to leave. Charlie had said nothing – he was still trying desperately to recall something.

Anything. 

…

But now, he remembered. He remembered it all. It came back to him in a flood of memories, washing over him as wave after wave of agony emanated from the living wires lodged in his abdomen. While his mind felt like it was a previously emptied vessel that was now finally being refilled, Charlie felt his physical strength drain away from him, almost as though the entity above him was tapping the very life from his veins. 

As he screamed, the entity screamed, too. It was an almost perfect copy of Charlie’s vocalized anguish that was then distorted almost beyond recognition: a harmony most discordant. 

From where he was lying, however, Charlie was able to catch a glimpse of something in one of the rooms on the opposite side of the outside hallway through the door they had entered. A faint red light shone in the far darkness – Hetch’s button. He struggled under the monster’s grip, and through the sheer power vested in him by the primal desire to survive, he managed to free one of his arms, and pointed towards the light.

“Ranboo, the button!” he cried. The entity cried in unison, causing the words to sound garbled and warped. Ranboo didn’t move.

Charlie persisted, and shouted again, as loud as he possibly could. “THE BUTTON, RANBOO! ”

This time, the message was heard.

Ranboo still didn’t reply, too terrified to speak. But he inclined his head just slightly enough that Charlie knew he had understood. 

Out of nowhere, an alarm suddenly started to sound, and all of the lights in the room snapped on like stage lights. The incessant blaring over the speakers mingled with Charlie’s panicked screams, and the floor began to thunder and shake in the wake of a stampeding horde of Showfall drones that had just burst into the room.

Charlie continued to struggle against the entity’s grasp, clawing at loose wires and trying in vain to wriggle free from those terrible, inhuman hands. Through his peripheral vision he caught one last glimpse of Ranboo, who he assumed was frantically calculating whether he should make a run for the button, or turn back and attempt to aid his friend. 

He evidently had made his decision. Casting one final look back at Charlie, characterized by an amalgamation of guilt, pity, and fear, Ranboo bolted away as fast as his long legs could carry him. 

Despite the pain, despite the terror, Charlie felt a sense of relief. If he didn’t survive this encounter, at least his friend, the only thing that had felt real in this world of lies and deceit, would have a chance to live. To be free. 

…

But Charlie wouldn’t give up on this world just yet. 

The mob of Showfall drones had long since passed him, all presumably in pursuit of Ranboo. While grappling with the entity, Charlie had managed to squirm his way along the bloodied floor just far enough that the small cast-iron pan he had dropped earlier was now within reach. 

Mustering one final burst of energy, he kicked the monster where its stomach would have been. He flipped onto his side, wrenching himself free from the writhing wires that had been lodged there, and grasped the handle of the pan as tightly as he could. Quickly recovering from the blow, the monster lurched forward, trying to grab ahold of its prey once more. 

With a passionate yell that was filled with rage, a desire for vengeance, and pure defiance in the face of oblivion, Charlie swung with all of his might. 

The sheer weight of the iron pan, coupled with the force of Charlie’s enraged swing, crashed into the screen of the entity’s television-like head, causing the CRT glass to shatter into a million pieces. Charlie didn’t seem to care that some of the razor-sharp shards ricocheted back into him. 

The entity reeled, screeching as it clutched its hands to its face. As it staggered backwards, Charlie shakily got to his feet, and scanned the room for any sign of escape now that he had been given this one and only chance. He knew he couldn’t outrun the monster, so the only option left was to outsmart it, and hide. 

To the wall on his left was a fire extinguisher. In the corner of the room, which had begun to dim as soon as Ranboo had left the room, lay a half-covered vent on the floor. 

Charlie turned back to the set piece, all that he had ever known to call “home”, and wrenched the heavy portrait off of the wall. He threw it with all of his remaining strength at the fire extinguisher, which fell to the ground and immediately started obscuring the space between him and the entity with a cloud of white smoke. Charlie whirled around, and sprinted towards the vent. Over the monster’s screeching and a crescendo of something resembling TV static, Charlie was able to break open the vent with the handle of his pan. As one last distraction, he threw the pan in the opposite direction towards one of the exits, and crawled inside the vent.

His entire body felt like it was on fire. The wound in his abdomen, although now free from the entity’s wires, was still seeping with blood. The sound of the alarm, the smell of smoke and blood, the utter horror of what he had just been through; all of it was almost too much for him to bear. But that primal urge to live kept Charlie’s wits about him long enough to endure this multifaceted nightmare a little longer. After rounding a corner in the vent, he applied pressure to the wound with one hand and covered his mouth with the other. Gritting his teeth through the pain and making every effort to stifle his breathing, Charlie waited.

The entity made a guttural noise as it realized its prey had slipped free of its clutches. Charlie squeezed his eyes shut as he heard it slowly shamble towards the place he had thrown the frying pan, which had clattered noisily as it hit the ground. The entity was silent for a second, and then unleashed an ear-splitting shriek before barreling out of the room and down the hallway. Gradually, the cacophony of its distorted caterwauling faded, replaced by the sound of the alarm which seemed to grow louder and more frantic with each passing note.

Suddenly, the wailing of the alarm was cut short, sounding almost akin to a wounded animal being put out of its misery. As the world became blanketed in silence, darkness fell upon the media tower.

…

For some time, Charlie refused to open his eyes or even to withdraw his hand from his mouth. He remained motionless, enveloped by the complete darkness. Gradually, however, he became more aware of the stabbing pain in his abdomen, and of the gravity of his present situation. 

Choking back a sob, Charlie wondered if the void that surrounded him was a sign that the entity had caught up to Ranboo, tearing him apart and stuffing him with wires in Charlie’s stead. Then again, perhaps Charlie had managed to distract it for long enough, perhaps Ranboo really did manage to outrun the drones and find the button in time, thereby finally acquiring his freedom from this hellish nightmare. 

Either way, the show was now over, just as Hetch had said. 

Charlie drew in a long, shuddering breath. He was utterly exhausted; the adrenaline from his fight with the entity was rapidly ebbing. No matter; he would find out what happened to his friend, regardless of the cost. This final shred of hope – that Ranboo was still alive – was the last frail defense preventing Charlie’s tortured mind from otherwise succumbing to oblivion.

...

He had done it.

Ranboo’s face stood mere inches away from the mask of one of the Showfall drones that had been mere seconds away from grasping onto the provisional bag he had slung over his shoulder. The smooth, white surface of the mask seemed to glow due to the scarlet light that reflected off of it from the button. Tentatively, with his heart beating wildly from the chase, Ranboo lifted his shaking hand from the surface of the button, revealing the obscure logo that was etched into the center. The light, pulsating faintly, was the only source of illumination in the entire hallway. It cast a soft but eerie glow onto the covered faces of the sea of Showfall drones that stood before him, each of them standing rigidly with their heads lowered, like deactivated automatons. 

Drawing in a shaky breath, Ranboo cautiously took a tiny step towards the horde of drones. They remained motionless and unresponsive. His heartbeat slowed a little in relief.

Taking every care to avoid touching them, Ranboo slowly inched his way through the mass of stock-still bodies. After maneuvering like this for some time, he finally reached the end of the hallway, and a window of light on the other side of the media tower caught his eye. His heartbeat quickened once more at the thought of finally exiting this goddamned building.

In spite of his guilt, in spite of his grief, the hope in Ranboo’s heart grew brighter. His pace quickened and his determination strengthened as he approached that window. After having spent so much time in the dark, the light spilling onto the floor was almost blinding. Sunlight. 

Ranboo paused for a second to stare into that blindingly beautiful beam, allowing warmth and comfort to pour over him for a change. This was it: a taste of freedom. He could even hear a songbird chirping from the glow beyond. 

After a second or two longer, Ranboo turned to the room to his left. It had no door, only a pitch black entrance framed by dimly lit white paneling, which gave it the illusory appearance of a hole that had been cut out of the fabric of space. Above it hung a large EXIT sign, pulsating with the same eerie, scarlet glow of Hetch’s button. 

In the wake of all that had happened, all of the pain, the death, and the torment, Salvation had, at last, shown its face to him.

Ranboo stepped up to the doorway and paused, resting his hand on the frame.

Showfall’s production was over. The starring actor had reached his curtain call. What else was there to do now but present himself to the audience one last time before the lights went out and the curtain fell? 

Fine; you’ll get your Hero’s bow.

He turned, raised his arms triumphantly above his head, and bowed before the dark and empty expanse before him. 

But before he could rise and finish the theatrical gesture, the lights on Ranboo’s mask suddenly flared up, brighter than ever before. A sea of red light bled onto the floor in front of him, and needles of pain wrapped around his skull. They pierced his mind and quickly weaved fine threads of agony down through his neck and his spine, lacing his nervous system with pure anguish. He remained paralyzed mid-bow, unable to move anything of his own accord, even his face. His heart and mind, however, were still his. The former was beating erratically like that of a quarry cornered by a carnivore; the latter was racing through every possible scenario, overwhelmed by anxiety as to what would happen next. 

All of a sudden, the metaphysical strings interlacing his whole being snapped taught, and he could only watch as his own hands executed the bow with a histrionic flourish. 

Before he could comprehend what was happening to him, Ranboo was pulled backwards right off of his feet into the void-like room behind him, like a puppet handled with too much violence and far too little care. He fought against the pull of those formless strings, and managed to grab ahold of the door frame in a manic attempt to claw himself back towards that faint shaft of sunlight, that miniscule glimpse of freedom. 

But it was not meant to be his. It never was. And it never would be. He realized that now.

Hands, real hands, threw themselves around his torso and wrenched him away into the shadows. Ranboo’s head collided with the floor, and the precious vein of sunlight, like liquid gold splashed onto obsidian, faded until it, too, was swathed in darkness.

...

...

...

Ranboo awoke in a daze. He was lying on the floor, crumpled like a discarded marionette with its strings cut. He no longer felt the pervasive sting of those needles, those horrible threads that had been weaved through him; at least, not presently. Ranboo assumed that they could be back at any moment; he had learned not to expect anything anymore, and that the only thing he could be certain of was that nothing was certain. 

He rubbed the fog from his eyes and blinked, trying to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness that surrounded him. His bag was gone. The room was pitch black; the lights in his mask were no longer glowing, so he was deprived even of that source of illumination. He hesitantly got to his feet. 

“You know, I’m not supposed to have favorites,” a voice from the dark stated matter-of-factly, and Ranboo nearly jumped out of his skin. “But your performance has just been exceptional!” 

An old redhead studio lamp snapped on, casting a soft, warm glow about the room. Ranboo looked about, and recognized it as the control room; the ‘heart’ of the facility. On the wall in front of him was a host of differently sized TV monitors, each situated in front of paneled lights. None of them were powered. Ranboo turned around. Next to the stem of the studio lamp stood a black, well-worn folding chair. Lounging upon it, like some sort of monarch, was-

“Hetch ?!” Ranboo said in disbelief.

“The one and only!”

Confusion and doubt crept into Ranboo’s voice. “You were … we saw you die!”

“Nope,” Hetch said with a hint of smugness. “You thought you saw me die. It’s called acting, sweetheart. Well… acting and practical effects.” 

“B-but,” Ranboo stuttered, “What about the drones? Your wound?” 

“Acting,” Hetch waved his hand. 

Ranboo began to pace the room. “What about what you told Ch- … my friend and I? About the button? And th-the map to the exit?” his voice caught, unable to say Charlie’s name. The grief was still too fresh, not yet ready to process. 

“Acting,” Hetch said again, irritated. “A script, Ranboo. That was a script. Can a director not have a little fun and play a little role in his own production every once in a while?”

Ranboo stopped pacing, halted in his tracks by the shock and realization.

“...This was all you?” he said, staring at Hetch in disbelief. 

“Of course it was! Why, I even told you to give me a shout-out!”

Ranboo scoured his memory. … ‘Tell them that Hetch did this’. 

…Shit.

“How? Why? Why would you do something like this? To me? To all of us?” 

Hetch smiled. “Entertainment, my dear boy! You’re a smart lad, you should know your history: this is nothing but bread and circuses to keep the masses appeased! And my, what a hungry bunch they are,” he said with a theatrical wave. 

Hetch rose from the director’s chair and began to slowly circle Ranboo, gesticulating for emphasis. “We’re all animals in the end, are we not? We crave the satisfaction of blood and violence. But we’re not just animals, not at all; we’re social animals. We seek camaraderie, the sight and touch of another. The only thing more enticing than a bloody victory is connection . And we here at Showfall give thousands, no, millions of people within our devoted audience a chance to feel that connection.” 

Hetch paused, now directly facing Ranboo. “A connection, more specifically, to you, my boy. You’re the Hero, after all.” He slapped a hand on Ranboo’s shoulder in the same manner a brother or teammate would. 

Ranboo shook his head slowly. “I… I don’t want to be a Hero,” he said, his shoulder starting to shake at Hetch’s touch. “I just want to go home.”

“Oh, but Ranboo…,” Hetch tutted. “This is your home.”

Hetch patted Ranboo on the back before sauntering back to his chair. 

“As I said, I’m not supposed to have favorites. But you, my dear boy, are clearly cut from the same cloth as I am! You share in my vision, and that is what makes you great.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am a writer and a director, Ranboo. I compose the scripts, set up the scenes, give you some prompting here and there … but it is you who are the artist! It is your choices that determine the quality of the production! And my, has the audience loved you,” Hetch said with pride. 

“But those weren’t my choices!” Ranboo cried, desperation seeping through his words. “You used me! I was nothing but a mouthpiece for you!”

“Come now, I can’t take all the credit!”

“You killed my friends! Sneeg, Niki, Charlie - you tortured them! Killed them!” Ranboo shouted at him, clenching his fists until his knuckles were white. 

“...But that’s not quite true, is it?” 

Ranboo, seething with rage, launched himself at Hetch. Completely unphased, Hetch raised a hand and lazily snapped his fingers. From behind the lamp, previously obscured by the glow, two masked Showfall drones bodied Ranboo to the floor. To his credit, Ranboo did struggle, but in his already weakened state he succumbed easily. The drones hoisted him rudely onto his feet, tied his arms behind his back, and turned him to face Hetch once more. 

After Ranboo was incapacitated, Hetch tutted again. “Now now, Ranboo. That’s no way to treat your director. But as you’re my favorite, I’ll let it slide.” He snapped his fingers once more, and the drones planted themselves either side of the director’s chair. 

“Let’s return to the subject at hand, shall we? Just think about it, Ranboo. Take dear, sweet Niki for an example. Sure, the audience voted for her, but you could have intervened and picked anyone else from that carousel at any time.” 

Ranboo was silent. 

“That new cast member, too. What was his name? Ethan? What a tragedy. You’re a smart guy, Ranboo; you figured out that blacklight puzzle long before he did. Yet you didn’t warn him, did you? You didn’t stop him from walking through that door.” 

Hetch leaned forward. “And Sneeg, too! You did him dirty, don’t you think? I was impressed by his resolve, although he didn’t share my creative vision like you clearly do. Thrice he tried to leave the Showfall grounds. Thrice! You’d think he would have learned after we put him in solitary confinement for a while with only the remains of the last guy who tried to pull that stunt to keep him company, but no!” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “And even after all of that effort, he then chose to sacrifice his place in the spotlight to let it pass to you, instead.” He pointed a hand directly at Ranboo’s face. 

After a pause, Hetch retracted his hand and rested his face on it instead. “You could have stopped him, you know. Yet you chose to go on with the show, to see it through to the finale.”

By then Ranboo was shaking all over, nails digging deep into his palms almost to the point of drawing blood, staring at the floor. You did this. You did this. It’s your fault that they didn’t make it. You could have helped them.

“But what you did to Charlie …” Hetch sneered, “Now that is how I knew you would be my star, Ranboo!” he said with glee. 

Ranboo’s blood drained from his face. “I came back for him… we were going to get out of here. Together,” he said, almost in a whisper. 

Hetch scoffed. “You think yourself a Savior? That’s my role, Ranboo. There can only be one! And besides, you did him far more harm than good.” 

“...What?” he looked up.

“Take the beginning of the second act. All you had to do to advance to the third room was to persuade him to give you the location of the key, and yet you went straight for the scalpel, no questions asked!” Hetch clapped his hands together like a child. “You vivisected him, Ranboo. You rummaged around in there for quite some time. Over five whole minutes, in fact!” He sounded impressed.

Ranboo nearly vomited in his mask. “B-but… that was just slime? Toys! A game!” he tried futilely to reason with himself. 

Hetch tapped his temple. “To the audience, maybe. Can’t have pesky demonetization affecting our ad revenue, can we! Ah, the wonders of Showfall’s Phantoptics.”

“I-I didn’t know!” he choked back a sob.

“Oh, but you did. You saw. Just like Sneeg saw. But while he tried to hightail it out of there, you chose to stick around. To see it through. That’s why I like you, Ranboo.” 

Was that really all this was? A rose-tinted mirage to mask unspeakable acts for the sake of nothing but entertainment and money? It didn’t matter. Whether he had knowingly done all that Hetch had said or not, the consequences remained unchanged. Ranboo fell to his knees, shaking violently and managing to dig his nails into his arms in spite of them being tied behind his back. Their blood is on your hands. YOU did this.

“But that’s not all. You even went so far as to go off script!”

Ranboo looked up again in confusion, eyes red with emotion.

“Just now, in the penultimate act. You chose to take Charlie with you! He was happy, living in a dream. But you woke him from it. You dragged him into the nightmare, Ranboo. You could have left him there, in peace. He was merely scripted as a set piece, you know. But no, you had a vision . An eye for the dramatic! You roused him from his slumber, dragged him through hell, and left him in the hound’s maw. Just like that! You didn’t even offer a single word of pity to the one whom you call ‘friend’.” Hetch kissed the tips of his fingers, like he had just sampled some gourmet food. “Art is what that was, my boy. Art. And the audience reveled in it.” 

No… no, that can’t be right. It just can’t. You tried to save him. But he didn’t make it.

“I tried to save him… but that - that THING . It got to him first.” 

Hetch’s smile melted instantly into a frown. “That ‘thing’ has a name, you know.” 

He’s completely insane, Ranboo thought to himself.

Hetch waggled a finger at him. “While I do like you, Ranboo, I won’t tolerate you disrespecting Adam like that again. Anger towards a director is expected, but you will not speak like that about a fellow cast member, and a veteran, nonetheless!” 

“...Adam? The creature’s name is Adam?” 

A low rumbling suddenly started from the far corner of the room, followed by a series of slow, heavy footfalls. It grew louder as it approached, glitching and distorting all the while. Ranboo fell backwards and tried frantically to crawl away, until his back met with the wall of TV monitors. 

The entity loomed into view behind Hetch’s chair. The director raised a hand up and cupped the edge of the creature’s television head, almost like he was petting a massive dog. It was only then that Ranboo realized the guttural noise might not be a growl, but a purr. 

After taking a second to process this, Ranboo tentatively posed another question. “You… said before that he was security? N-not an actor?” … Or was that just part of the act, too?

Hetch nodded. “Retired actor, I should have said. Adam was our very first, weren’t you, lad?” he said to the entity as he scratched its ‘chin’. “He was a true star. Reveled in the limelight, a true artist. His shows were before my time, though.” 

That monstrosity used to be human? … Like me? What happened to him?

Ranboo swallowed nervously, and opted to keep Hetch talking. Maybe if he could get Hetch to drone on about sentimental topics for long enough, he’d be more likely to let him go. “Your time?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. Long before. I was just a scrap back then. No, Adam is who inspired me to want to be a part of Showfall’s productions in the first place! I dreamed of being an actor, like him, for many years. But it wasn’t until I met the Founder that I realized I was destined to be a director instead.” Hetch stared into the distance, reminiscing.

Why would anyone dream of being in this position? Who in the world could possibly want this? 

“I didn’t need the limelight to realize my full potential,” Hetch rambled on. “No, my purpose was to help others to realize theirs. To weed out the undesirables, and raise up the stars who could truly shine. The Founder saw my vision, and gave me the power to run my own show – under his jurisdiction, of course.” 

“...What happened to… uh – Adam?” Ranboo asked cautiously. 

Hetch was irritated by the redirection away from himself, but answered anyway. “By that time, Adam had been cast and repurposed in hundreds of Showfall’s productions. A dedicated man he was, and the audience loved him. But, alas, there’s only so many rewirings and repairs that one can go through before one loses one’s appeal…” He looked sadly towards the entity. “We loved Adam so much, though, and we couldn’t simply let him go! He was retired from acting, yes, but we allowed him to remain a part of Showfall’s productions in a behind-the-scenes role. Security seemed to fit his talents best.” 

Ranboo knitted his brows together in thought. “If he’s not an actor, then why did he appear on… on ‘set’? Why attack me? Why … why kill Charlie?” 

“Silly boy, haven’t you been listening? You’re the Hero of this production. Adam wasn’t attacking you; you were no threat! It was Charlie who was going dangerously off-script. It was he who was a threat to you, to Showfall. He was vicious! Look at what that ruffian did to Adam!” 

The entity lumbered out from behind the chair towards Ranboo. Now illuminated by the studio light, Ranboo saw the abomination clearly for the first time. It was massive, standing easily at seven feet even while hunched over. It was vaguely humanoid in form, but its arms and fingers were too long, too sharp. A mass of multicolored cables and wires of various thicknesses and lengths covered it from head to foot, weaving in and out of its skin which was taut, leathery, and blackened with age and dried blood. 

But what Ranboo saw behind the shattered CRT glass of the television caused his blood to run with ice. Two massive rows of teeth, human teeth, complete with far too many incisors, canines, and molars, glistened inside of that black box. Pink, fleshy gums, coated in a mix of blood and saliva, sparkled in the dim light. 

Ranboo flattened his back against the wall, staring in horror at Adam’s maw, hyperventilating with panic. The entity slowly approached him, not once stifling the awful, distorted rumbling which emanated from its throat. As slowly and gently as a monstrosity of its nature was capable, it reached out a clawed hand, nearly touching Ranboo’s face. Ranboo sat as far back as he could, utterly paralyzed with fear. 

The ‘purring’ suddenly stopped. Adam gradually opened its mouth, revealing several more rows of humanoid teeth. At the back of its throat was a tiny red light. It blinked. Ranboo squeezed his eyes shut, expecting the abomination to bellow at him, or eat him. 

What came out was far, far worse. 

“Help me … please,” it pleaded, softly. But the voice was not that of a monster, or even a stranger. 

It was Charlie’s voice. An almost perfect mimicry passed through several layers of distortion.

Ranboo screamed. And Adam, in Charlie’s voice, screamed in unison. 

In the room beneath him, Charlie heard an ear-splitting cacophony. Two people were shrieking; one voice he recognized as belonging to Ranboo, and instantly his chest swelled with relief. 

He’s alive! 

The warm feeling was immediately replaced by dread, however, as he remembered that while the scream did come from Ranboo, showing that he was indeed not dead, it was still a scream, and a primal, horrified one at that. What the fuck is happening down there?

Charlie listened closer. The second voice sounded eerily familiar, yet wrong, somehow. Then it hit him: it was his voice, distorted almost beyond recognition. 

It must be that god-damned TV thing. Oh fuck - it’s down there with him! 

He pressed his hand harder against the wound on his side, blood still seeping slowly through his fingers. It copied my voice before, after it stabbed me with those fucking wires … it must have retained the ability, even after I smashed its screen to pieces.

Charlie inched forward through the vent. He had been crawling around in the dark for some time now, searching for a safe exit. He saw a faint reflection of light from the corner ahead of him; perhaps there was a vent in the ceiling in the room below where he could see, and maybe even help. 

The screaming was suddenly cut short. Through the vent, he could hear Ranboo gag, and what, to his confusion, sounded like a horse champing its teeth together; but he still hadn’t reached the opening in time to see what was happening. He strained his ears, and picked up the sound of another voice, also strangely familiar.

“Hush now, both of you. That reaction was unnecessary, don’t you think? And besides: we can’t have our rogue cast member finding out where you are, now can we?” 

Charlie crawled forward as quietly as he could, and finally reached the opening in the vent, which was actually quite large. He looked down into the room, which was illuminated by a soft, warm light. The back wall was covered in what looked like powered-off television screens, and snaking all over the floor was a tangled mess of hundreds if not thousands of wires. The owner of the voice that had just spoken was out of his field of vision, but Charlie didn’t care – his attention was trained solely on Ranboo, who was lying curled up against the wall of monitors with his hands tied behind his back, his entire body convulsing with panicked but stifled hyperventilation. Above him loomed the abomination that had stolen Charlie’s voice, making a low, glitched trilling noise. 

The third unseen person snapped their fingers. “I do apologize about the gag, but it’s a necessary precaution that I had installed in your mask for situations like these. We just cannot have an unaccounted-for cast member compromise the production! This is the finale, after all, and the audience is expecting nothing less than perfection.” 

As he spoke, the entity turned around, leaving Ranboo quivering on the ground. Charlie put his hand over his mouth to stifle a gasp. That thing has TEETH? Since when did it have fucking TEETH?

He turned his attention back to Ranboo, who, despite his obvious fear, had a determined look in his eyes. He grunted, evidently trying to say something.

“Oh, don’t give me that look. Yes, your ‘friend’ is still alive somewhere, but soon he will be found, and then he will be repurposed, just like you will be too, after the curtain closes!”

Charlie watched as Ranboo’s expression paled, and he started shaking his head frantically.

“You didn’t think we would just let you leave? No, Ranboo. The audience loves you, and you do share in my vision, whether you believe so or not. There is no place for you out there, but here … there is everything. You’ll be a star, do you hear me? A star!”

Charlie watched as Ranboo struggled to rise from the ground, only to be tackled by two strongly built Showfall drones wearing the same masks as the horde from earlier. They dragged him to his feet and pulled him to the side. The owner of the third voice suddenly came into view, and walked up to the wall of TV monitors. Charlie squinted at the figure through his cracked glasses, and suddenly widened his eyes in surprise. 

Is that HETCH? How in the Kentucky-fried FUCK did that bitch survive?!

“I admit, I do have a flair for the dramatic,” Hetch said as he fiddled with some switch on the central monitor, one that was square in shape and protruded slightly in comparison to the others. With a mechanical snap, it broke in half, revealing two slabs of savage-looking rusted iron spikes set either side of a smooth yet equally stained iron plate. “But can you really blame me when the audience goes rabid for these silly contraptions?” 

‘Silly’?! That looks like a fucking SAW trap! Oh Jesus fuck, it IS a Saw trap!

Hetch snapped again, and the two Showfall drones dragged Ranboo towards the horrific device. His attempts at both kicking and screaming were futile. 

“I had the honor of joining this wonderful team at around the same time as your ‘Puzzler’, don’t you know,” Hetch monologued while the drones shoved Ranboo against the wall of monitors, freed his hands from the knot behind his back, and subsequently restrained them again so that his arms splayed out far to either side. “I suppose my affinity for puzzles and machines stems from working with him as my colleague for so long. It really is a shame that Jeremy is beyond repurposing again; I would have so enjoyed seeing you two perform together once more.” 

Ranboo was frantically shaking his head, trying to stop the drones from touching him, but one of them just grabbed his throat to keep him still while the other closed a section of the contraption around his neck, like an iron collar. His head was positioned squarely in the center of the middle slab. He stopped moving now, fearful of piercing himself on one of the spikes should he turn his head too far. 

“Not to toot my own horn, but if I must say,” continued Hetch absent-mindedly while pacing slowly in front of Ranboo, “while I do love puzzles and silly machines, my pride lies in my use of symbolism. I do so love a good figure, an evocative leitmotif, lightwork that really tells a story.” He stopped pacing and met his eyes. 

“I know I said before that it is you who are the artist, my dear Ranboo … but tonight, just this once, you will be my canvas.” 

After the drones had finished securing Ranboo’s legs together, rendering him completely immobile, Hetch snapped his fingers one final time. The drones exited from Charlie’s view. 

Hetch took a step closer. Charlie could see the urge to recoil reflected in Ranboo’s eyes, even from this distance. 

“Do you want to know what I will call my masterpiece…?” Hetch said, revealing a small but wickedly sharp drop-point knife in his hand.

Fuck it. I’m not going to let this ass-hat finish his villain monologue.  

Charlie smashed through the vent in the ceiling. 

…And fell directly on top of the entity.

“SHIT!” he yelled as he tumbled to the ground. While the creature did indeed soften his fall, the impact still aggravated the wound in his side. Whatever, I’ll worry about that later. If there even is a ‘later’. 

Hetch turned around, his face painted from ear to ear with a manic grin. “Charlie! I was beginning to worry that you would miss your entrance. We have a finale to get to, after all, and I can only stall for so long!”

Charlie rolled out of the way of the entity as it swung a hand out to grab him. “I don’t know what the fuck that even means!” 

He didn’t give Hetch time to continue talking. Disregarding the pain in his side, Charlie launched himself at him, flailing about erratically enough to knock the knife from his hand. Hetch tried to snap his fingers with his other, but Charlie put a stop to that by kicking him right in the groin.

While Hetch doubled over, Charlie swept the knife off of the floor, and ran towards Ranboo. His friend’s eyes were wide, staring at him with an imploring look. Despite it all, his eyes crinkled upwards at the edges; he was happy to see that Charlie had actually survived. 

“I’m gonna get you out of that trap, Ranboo,” Charlie spoke quickly, “and then we’re both getting the fuck out of this hellhole. We’ll burn it to the ground, d’you hear? You just gotta trust me.” He held up Hetch’s knife. 

Ranboo looked from the blade to Charlie’s candid face. He nodded as best he could within his restraints. 

“Alright, then.” Ranboo squeezed his eyes shut as Charlie raised his hand, and he brought it down onto the mask with as much force as he could muster. One of the panels on the left side of Ranboo’s face cracked slightly, loosening a little. But the mask remained intact. 

“No, no, no, don’t do that!” Hetch said through gritted teeth. “You’ll damage–”

“That’s the whole idea, you sick fuck!” Charlie retorted as he struck again at the mask. This time, a jagged piece of one of the panels broke off, revealing a little of Ranboo’s bloodied mouth. Charlie could just make out the shape of something forcibly holding it shut. Multiple somethings.

Holy shit… those are fucking wires. T-they’re threading right through his goddamn face! There’s no way I can take this fucking thing off without making him bleed to death … or choke first on his own blood. This is so fucked.

“Change of plans, Ranboo - I’m cutting you down first.” 

But before Charlie had even made a motion to cut the binds on one of Ranboo’s wrists, he saw his friend’s eyes widen as they locked onto something directly behind him. Realization dawned.

Oh god, oh fuck, I’m so sorry, I’m so s-

Ranboo could only watch as the entity rose up behind Charlie and slowly unhinged its jaw. A long and thin cable, white in color but stained with blood and saliva, snaked its way out from the depths of the creature’s throat. It was tipped with a razor-thin needle point. Ranboo locked eyes with Charlie, trying to plead at him with his eyes to RUN! GET OUT OF HERE! IT’S A TRAP! LEAVE ME!

But it was too late. 

The white cable plunged into the nape of Charlie’s neck. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, and he slumped to the floor. 

Hetch grunted, straightened his jacket, and walked over to Charlie’s body.

“Glad that excitement’s over; I was getting bored waiting for him to show up. It’s almost showtime! It’s rather handy that we outfitted Adam with some of our latest probes. If you noticed, thanks to Adam’s precision, the probe was angled upwards, and should have made direct contact with the rogue’s cerebellum, allowing us to take control of his motor functions.” 

While Hetch admired Showfall’s handiwork, Ranboo wasn’t listening. He stared at Charlie, who was crumpled on the ground like an abandoned doll. 

Hetch used me as bait … and I allowed him to go through with it. I failed Charlie AGAIN. 

At first, Ranboo couldn’t see Charlie’s chest move, and feared that he had been outright killed. But then he noticed Charlie’s finger twitch ever so slightly, and, ever so slowly, his chest began to rise and fall. He’s still alive… he’s still in there, somewhere. Maybe I can still fix this. 

“Finer probes will now be making their way to the lad’s parietal and frontal lobes, as well as his hippocampus. That’s all that will really be needed for phase one of standard cast member reprogramming,” Hetch rambled, scratching his chin. “Although, after all that this one has seen, we’ll likely have to do a full rewiring of his limbic system in order to keep him in line. Maybe even a factory reset after another memory backup.” 

Ranboo made a noise, trying to spit out the blood that was trickling back into his windpipe without further cutting himself on the wires that still nicked the back of his throat. The noise distracted Hetch from his musings, and he turned back to face his starring actor.

“Now that our rogue cast member problem has at last been dealt with, you may have your voice back. You’ll need it to sing for the audience, after all.” Hetch took a small white remote bearing the Showfall logo out of his pocket (one that was noticeably different from that which he had drawn the treacherous map from earlier) and entered what was probably some sort of code. 

Ranboo cried out as some of the wires that had stabbed through his cheeks to sew his mouth shut suddenly retracted back into the sides of the mask. But because Charlie had damaged one of the sections, some of them didn’t retract all the way, and remained poking down into his throat. He immediately fell into a fit of coughing as he tried to expunge the excess blood from his lungs. 

Hetch made a noise of disapproval. “I was trying to tell that rascal that he was going to damage you, before I was so rudely interrupted,” he said, giving an irritated kick to Charlie’s leg. 

After giving himself a second to catch his breath and cope with the searing pain in his mouth, Ranboo swallowed. He looked down once more at Charlie, and then back at Hetch. “What will happen to us?” he asked, tentatively.

“To him?” Hetch pointed towards Charlie’s body on the floor. “Didn’t you just listen to a word of what I was saying? He’s being rewired. Reset, so that he can be repaired and recast in a new production. You, however, still have a role to play in this one, my boy. We have our grand finale to get to! I need to prepare the stage for your apotheosis. Symbolism, Ranboo – symbolism is key! It is my trademark, after all. My art! ” He said, smiling maniacally. 

Ranboo turned his face just enough to angle the hole in his mask directly at Hetch’s face, and spat blood at him. “I will never,” he hissed, “be a part of your fucking art piece. This is sick. You’re not an artist with a vision; you’re a lying sadist who has succumbed to his own delusion!” 

The smile fell instantly from Hetch’s face. The blank stare that he turned towards Ranboo sent a shiver down his spine. 

Hetch wiped the blood from his cheek. “You know, Ranboo…,” he said, in a much lower, more sinister tone, “...you just gave me a truly wonderful idea.” 

He bent down and, careful not to disturb the wires, hoisted up Charlie onto his feet. One of Adam’s massive hands held him steady. 

“‘A sadist who has succumbed to his own delusion’, you say?” Hetch chuckled to himself. “You see, Ranboo, neither of you will remember this encounter. Not for a while, at least. No, your initial reactions before the camera need to be fresh to appease the audience. But,” he paused, “that does not mean that I can’t revel in a bit of private artistic symbolism, myself.” 

He picked up his knife, which had clattered to the floor after Charlie started the ‘rewiring’ process. 

“My masterpiece was going to be called ‘Savior’s Stigmata ’...” Hetch said, dreamily. 

Ranboo reeled in horror and disgust. “You were going to crucify me?! In a goddamn Saw trap?!”

“I was, yes.” Hetch drawled. “But now … I realize that it would be far more poetic, far richer in sweet, sweet symbolism… if he did it in my stead.” 

As if on cue, Charlie began to twitch. His whole body shuddered for a second, and then he suddenly went still, his head lolling to the side. Slowly, he began to readjust himself, his spine straightening one vertebra at a time. His eyes snapped open, staring blankly ahead. No acknowledgement was given to the wound in his abdomen, still seeping with blood. 

“Where are they…” Hetch said, rummaging around in his many pockets. “I know I had another pair on me… ah! Here they are.” He took out a pair of rectangular-framed spectacles, identical to the ones Charlie had broken earlier in the fall, only these were in pristine condition. “The finishing touch!”

As soon as the glasses were put into place, Charlie blinked, and the wire disconnected itself from the nape of his neck. The entity drew it back into its mouth, bloody tip and all, like some monstrously thin tongue, and removed its hand. 

Charlie stood silently on his own, completely motionless. His eyes were trained directly on Ranboo, but Ranboo could tell that they were merely facing in his direction. He wasn’t looking. He wasn’t seeing. 

No… not like this… anything but this. He deserved so much better. So much better. I was the cause of this. He sacrificed himself twice for me. And for what? What was it all for? It wasn’t even for Hetch’s goddamned audience. His consciousness died for nothing. 

Hetch placed his knife firmly in one of Charlie’s hands, and a bundle of tattered television wires in the other. 

“Now, then. Shall we begin?” Hetch said in an excited tone as he headed back to his director’s chair. Adam followed closely behind, and then shrank into the shadows beyond the stage light. 

Hetch snapped his fingers, and Charlie’s eyes focused. He was really looking at Ranboo now, but every ounce of candid, amicable warmth that once emanated from his gaze was now gone, replaced by something cold and mechanical.

“You did this to me, Ranboo,” Charlie said with a merry tone which was incredibly discordant with his expressionless face and the knife in his hand. “You left me. Yet I came back for you. And you failed me.”

Ranboo’s eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t leave you! I thought you were dead! I would have come back!”

“Would you? What would you have done? Watched, as that creature ripped me limb from limb? Or would you have stepped in and started cutting me open, yourself? Again?” As he spoke in that eerily cheerful voice, Charlie pried open one of Ranboo’s hands, and drove the knife straight through the palm. Ranboo screamed as the blade passed through flesh, tendon, and bone, but the pain from Charlie’s words hurt more than the wound ever would. 

“You vivisected me, Ranboo. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.” Charlie separated some of the wires from the bundle in his other hand. “But instead of desecrating a work of art, like you chose to do, I will create one instead.” He twisted the knife, allowing the blood to flow freely down the wall onto a monitor screen below. Ranboo shrieked, but the sound was cut short as the wires dug further into throat.

Once he could breathe again amidst the fog of agony, Ranboo pleaded with the empty vessel in front of him. “Please, Charlie…,” he said, tears streaming down his face, “you’re my friend. I would never intentionally hurt you. You can still s-stop this!” 

Charlie paused, and glared directly at him. “Stop this?” he said, wrenching the knife back out from Ranboo’s palm.  “And stop the show? Preposterous.” With that, Charlie took ahold of the bloody palm and began to weave a host of wires throughout it, fastening Ranboo’s hand securely to the wall behind him. 

Ranboo saw that there was no hope of reasoning with Charlie. He turned his frantic gaze back to Hetch, who was silently watching the whole scenario with his hands clasped together in glee. 

“Hetch,” he pleaded through pained sobs, “stop this! Just let me go!”

Hetch waved his hand and sighed. “We’ve been over this, Ranboo! You’re not going anywhere. Not before the audience has their fill of you.”

Ranboo screamed as Charlie drove the knife through his other hand. He heard the tendons in his palm snap under the blade. Dimly, he wondered if he would have had the relief of falling unconscious if it weren’t for the goddamned mask on his face, plugged directly into his brain. Charlie once again twisted the knife, yanked it out of Ranboo’s palm, and laced the bloody appendage full of wires. 

“Please…” Ranboo sobbed, utterly defeated. “Just let me go...”

“Will you please stop repeating yourself!” Hetch exclaimed as Charlie removed himself from the scene, backing into the darkness. “No, no, no! For the last time: that decision is not up to you. Or to me, for that matter.” 

Ranboo could barely muster the emotional or physical strength to lift his head. 

“Who, then?” he asked, weakly. 

“Why, them, of course!” Hetch gestured to an old-fashioned film camera that had lowered itself from the ceiling, like some kind of mechanical tree python. The lens trained itself on Ranboo, and he stared back into it, expressionless. 

“And this is just the beginning! My creative vision doesn’t just end here. But let’s cut this intermission short - the audience awaits!” 

Hetch entered another code on his remote, and the light on Ranboo’s mask began to flash. Hetch gave a thumbs up and a grin that could rival that of the Cheshire cat.

“Knock ‘em dead, superstar.” 

And Ranboo’s mind fell at last into blissful nothingness.

…

He blinked. The tsunami of memories had passed, leaving a wake of tragedy and pain open and raw in his mind. 

Ranboo remembered the cabin. The warehouse. The media tower. The control room. He remembered Hetch, with his child-like smile and horrific mirages. He remembered Adam, that tragic actor whose reward for working an indeterminate number of years for Showfall had been to be twisted into an inhuman abomination, forever to continue serving the company. He remembered the other cast members and the bloody, agonizing fates they suffered. Sneeg. Niki. Vinny. Austin. Ethan. Even Frank.

And he remembered Charlie. 

Ranboo looked around again, scanning the space about him for any sign of his friend. Or… the empty vessel that had once been his friend, at least. But he still could not make out anything in the face of that searing, blinding spotlight. 

“Do you remember, Ranboo, all the decisions that got you here?” Hetch’s voice crackled again through the speaker, and sadistic excitement seeped through his every word. 

“No… no! Th-they weren’t my decisions! You controlled me!” Ranboo cried. “Y-you controlled me!” he spat, a shred of anger showing at last. 

His mask was flashing with a rhythmic blood-red glow, almost like it was trying to respire along with him, although it seemed to have an easier time of it than its frail wearer. Ranboo sucked in whatever oxygen he could while avoiding letting the blood trickle too far down into his lungs again, although it was about as effective as trying to breathe through a reed while at the bottom of a lake. 

Amidst his sputtering and hyperventilating, Hetch continued to prattle on. “I didn’t control anything, Ranboo. I just wrote a script! The real, human emotions that come from breaking a reality … don’t you see that’s where the real fun is in all this? We only pushed you in the right direction. Every time the show ‘broke’, and you saw what was really happening behind the scenes … that was the real you , Ranboo!” Hetch twisted his verbal knife. “Your decisions, your choices – they led other people to die for you ! … That’s the Hero in you, Ranboo.”

What little resolve that brief burst of anger had given Ranboo quickly began to fade. He was beaten, broken, and could barely listen to what Hetch was telling him anymore. He looked again at the camera, and weakly tried to bargain with it. “I… I won’t say anything. I’ll leave… and – and it’ll be ok!” He paused for a breath. “I’ll just – I’ll just leave, and… let’s just–”

“Ranboo, Ranboo, Ranboo,” Hetch interrupted. “Look – in the past, I would just make my own decision on whether or not a character was worthy of joining the cast.”

An image of Jeremy, or the ‘Puzzler’, as he had known him, flashed through Ranboo’s mind. He had been another of Hetch’s ‘favorites’, had he not? …And look what happened to him.

“I don’t want to join the cast! Please,” he sobbed, “I don’t want to keep doing this!”

Hetch ignored him. “Since this is the first time we actually have a live audience…” As he spoke, the camera hanging in front of Ranboo drew in closer, looking for all the world like the head of a massive snake, closing in for the kill. “...We might as well let them pick!”

Ranboo stared into the lens. There are hundreds, no… thousands of people who can see me. Hear me. Why won’t they help me? Why do they choose to do nothing?

“Please,” he implored the nameless horde. “Let me go!”

Hetch addressed the masses like a true entertainer and master of ceremonies. “What do you think, audience? Should we let him live in these shows for an eternity? ”

The thought of spending an eternity trapped in this hell ignited something primal within him. The raw power of the will to survive made Ranboo put aside the thoughts of the wires in his throat, his former life, his history, and his friends, and allowed him to summon enough energy to cry out at the top of his lungs: “LET ME GO! PLEASE, JUST LET ME GO!!”

“...Or should we end this one with a bang ?” Hetch concluded, malice oozing from the speaker.

Ranboo’s resolve was truly crumbling now, as his pleas appeared to be falling on deaf ears. He sobbed continuously, and the tears which now streamed freely down his cheeks caused the blood that was already oozing from his lacerated face to run in rivulets down his neck. He was delirious now from the pain and fear; his amygdala could process no more. 

“I don’t want – I don’t want to continue! ” he slammed his head back into the iron panel, gasping for air. Looking at it with bloodshot eyes, Ranboo entreated the camera. “So what happens to me? What happens?”  

“Well,” Hetch replied in a sing-song voice, “if they decide to let you live, you’ll be rescripted! Repurposed! Recast in my Experiments, forever!”

The camera began to recede from his face, almost as if it was trying to retreat in disgust from the bloodied spittle that was flying towards it from the mouth of its wailing subject. 

“As for the latter… well. We get an entertaining ending. Both to the show and… to you!”

Realization dawned. Hetch’s masterpiece was not just imprinting his psyche with irreparable trauma. Not just the bloody, mechanical stigmata that he had been branded with at the hands of his best friend. ‘Apotheosis ’, was the word Hetch had used. Religion was truly the furthest thing from Ranboo’s mind at the moment – for what merciful god would enable this degree of undue suffering? – but he knew one thing: for the soul to ascend, if it existed at all, the body had to expire first. 

“So… I die?”

So, this is it then. The audience’s grand decision. Initially, the thought of death didn’t seem too bad. Anything to escape this fucking nightmare.

But then, he remembered precisely what his head was resting against. He turned to one side, bringing the sharpened iron spikes once more into view. Blood. They’re already covered in blood. Oh god… that’s how I’ll die. I really am going to die here! I can’t do this – I can’t DO this–

He turned back to the camera in a panic. “Y-you can change this, right?” he begged. “You don’t have to do this, I mean, someone will find you! S-Someone will get you for this!”

“Look, Ranboo. You can die now, or you can die when you’ve outlived your usefulness. Which could be tomorrow, or a thousand years from now! It all depends on how long you can fulfill your role.”

Ranboo remembered the frightful TV entity. Adam. Would I ever fulfill my role? He thought. Adam had done the same for years. And even after his ‘role’ as a cast member was taken from him, these sadists still forced him to continue working for Showfall’s security. How long? For how many years has he needlessly suffered?

He was exhausted. Every bit of strength that Ranboo once possessed, physical or mental, had been utterly drained as his hope dissipated. “I don’t want to keep doing this…” he sobbed, weakly. “I don’t want to be in this anymore… please .” It didn’t matter anymore to him how he would be released from this prison… he just wanted silence. Anything would be better than this. 

“You’ll play as long as they wish you to play, Ranboo. They can’t get enough of you! And, looking at the poll… it seems that they want to play with you forever!”

I can’t keep doing this… If I went back, I would only hurt more people. More people would suffer and die because of me. His hope for his own salvation may have been extinguished, but guilt is a truly powerful motivator. 

“No, please ! I don’t want to keep being responsible for this!” Ranboo begged through pained gasps.

“Time’s almost up… Any last words you might want to say to the audience to swing them one direction or another?” 

“LET ME DIE!” Ranboo howled without hesitation, his voice raw and ragged from sheer exertion, exacerbated a hundred fold by the internal damage to his throat. “PLEASE! ” Just let me DIE! I don’t want to keep doing this! ” 

“...Strong words from our ‘Hero’.” Hetch almost sounded disappointed in him, like Ranboo had failed him in some way. “He’d rather quit than keep going… to continue entertaining you, the masses!” He evidently was trying to get the audience to swing the vote back the other way. “What do we think about that, audience? … Has he earned his rest, or do we want to see him play again?” 

“I want to die…” Ranboo dissolved into a fit of pained, defeated sobbing. “I can’t live like this…”

As he wept, visions of his friends' faces flashed through his head, almost as though his mind were trying to soothe him. “I saw… everything ,” he said, almost inaudibly.

Hetch took this as an opportunity. “And you’ll see so much more !”

“No, no, no, no … please …,” Ranboo sniveled, lifting his head for one final time to look the anonymous audience directly in the lens. “Please…just let me die.”

The voice over the speaker paused.

“Ah… well, it seems that the audience has made their decision, Ranboo. Are you ready to hear it?”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t care anymore. “...I don’t want to know…” he wept softly to himself. He had given up. 

I’m so tired.

As the countdown was reaching its end, the spotlight dimmed, and all of the lights from the wall behind him blazed red, silhouetting him against the mass of wires and monitors. Now that the blinding light in front of him had lessened, Ranboo was finally able to catch a glimpse of the rest of the room in front of him. 

To the center, bathed in red light, Hetch sat in his director’s chair, partially obscured by the camera. A mask covered his face, and he held the white remote loosely in his hand. 

To the left crouched Adam. Its mouth was open, and the tiny red light from within its throat blinked rapidly. Ranboo could have almost sworn it was Morse code, but could not see it clearly enough to even attempt a translation.

To the right stood Charlie, flanked by the two Showfall drones. He looked just as rigid and lifeless as they were, and his eyes weren’t even facing in Ranboo’s direction, but straight ahead. Soulless. Empty. 

“The audience has voted…” Hetch lengthened every word, no doubt relishing in the dramatic effect it produced. 

At that moment, Ranboo saw something flit across Charlie’s face. He flinched, stumbled a little, and looked around, bewildered.

 “...for you …”

A second later, he locked eyes with Ranboo.

“...to die. ”

Charlie made as if to run towards him, holding out his hand, but the drones to his sides immediately grappled him and muffled his mouth. 

Charlie…you’re still here? Ranboo thought, too exhausted to speak. 

I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for all of this. 

He didn’t react, even when the curtain, reeking of blood and iron, fell at last.

Forgive m–

…

Charlie awoke from a dreamless state of unconsciousness, and stumbled a little, surprised to find himself already standing. After catching himself, he glanced around his immediate surroundings, and found himself in a darkened corner with two Showfall drones flanking him on either side. They stood bolt upright, shoulder to shoulder, motionless, and devoid of expression.

Casting his eyes around the room illuminated in blood-red light, Charlie caught sight once more of Ranboo, and their eyes met. He was in a terrible state; even from this distance, Charlie could tell that his friend was utterly drained. He could see blood leaking from the hole he had made in Ranboo’s mask, and he was immediately filled with a sense of inexplicable guilt.

He averted his eyes, and they were immediately drawn to the gory spectacle of Ranboo’s hands. Holy fuck… what the fuck did they do to him?!

They were completely mangled, covered with blood and entwined with wires of varying colors and sizes. They weaved in and out of the skin of Ranboo’s hands and forearms, through tendon, bone, and flesh, and fastened him securely to the wall behind him. Charlie wondered how Ranboo wasn’t unconscious from the pain he must have been feeling, or, for that matter, dead. 

His ears attuned to the theatrical tone of Hetch’s voice, which sounded like it was coming from every direction simultaneously. He became dimly aware that the director had just announced Ranboo’s death sentence.

After processing what that actually meant, Charlie didn’t give a second thought to the drones at his side. He reacted instantly, and tried to hurl himself forward into a run, but the drones easily caught ahold of his arms. With vice-like hands they gripped his shoulders, pulled him back into place, and covered his mouth. Charlie struggled, and, clawing at the drones with one hand, stretched the other out towards Ranboo, as if the simple action of reaching for him would do either of them any good. 

Charlie flinched. His hand was covered in blood, some old and dried, some still fresh and warm. Some that wasn’t his.

He began to shake, and looked helplessly back at his friend, whose eyes hadn’t left him.

And then the box closed upon Ranboo’s head.

…

…

…

Charlie had never seen a person die before. He had seen bodies, yes, but he had never watched as someone’s life was extinguished right before his eyes. 

But it was the sound … that awful, bone-chilling crunch that would forever scar Charlie’s mind. It wasn’t instantaneous. God, he wished it was. The sound of splintering bone reverberated through the room, and the ghastly, wet squelching that followed seemed like it would go on for an eternity. 

Charlie stood completely paralyzed, eyes wide with shock, as he watched the blood begin to ooze from the cracks in the box. It snaked its way in streams down Ranboo’s neck and soaked into his shirt, already saturated with sweat and tears. It dripped down his extremities, still quivering with phantom animation, and began to pool at his feet. A scarlet mirror, reflecting a form devoid of life. The static world, enveloped in what was otherwise complete silence, caused the slow drip … drip … drip… to echo ominously. 

Charlie remained motionless for some time. 

It wasn’t until Hetch loudly clapped his hands together, breaking the silence, that Charlie even blinked. 

“Welp! That’s a wrap! The feed has been cut, folks. Our finale was a smashing success, wouldn’t you say?” Hetch said with barbaric satisfaction as he jumped from his director’s chair. He snapped his fingers, and the drones at Charlie’s sides dropped their hands from his mouth and shoulders.

“Get this mess cleaned up, will you? And take our newest cast member to repairs. If his temporal lobe is intact, I want a full backup copy ASAP. You have your orders on mandible, larynx, and phalanx reconstruction and modulation. Chop chop!”

Charlie remained rooted to the floor as the drones marched in unison up to the mangled body mounted on the wall. Hetch pressed a button on his remote, and the iron maiden slowly wrenched itself open, accompanied by a chorus of mechanical creaks and the blood-curdling rending of flesh. 

Upon seeing the sheer scale of mutilation, Charlie immediately vomited up whatever was left in his stomach and collapsed on the floor. As his consciousness ebbed, he heard the drones pry his friend’s disfigured body from the wall and drag it away down the hallway. He lay unmoving as he heard Hetch’s footsteps approach him. 

“A smashing success indeed! And just you wait, my boy – if the audience found that entertaining – and they most certainly did, if our average engagement numbers are anything to go by –” he said ostentatiously, “then they will absolutely devour what we have in store for them just around the corner.” 

He squatted down so he could look Charlie in the face.

“And they sure do love you, Charlie. Oh, how they love you.” He smiled without a hint of kindness. “I know you’ve been relegated to supporting character roles for quite some time now, but with these ratings … I think it’s time for you to finally get your chance to shine in the limelight!” He patted his head, like the proud owner of a prize-winning pig.

“Congratulations, Charlie! It’s high time you start preparing for your heroic debut!”

As Hetch stood up again, he punched in one last code into his remote. 

The world began to spin as Charlie’s mind tore itself apart. He could feel it as his memories, his emotions, and his entire self were pulled from him, unwinding like loose thread, and drawn downwards, spiraling faster and faster into a maelstrom of nothingness. Oblivion lay in the eye of the storm, and once he arrived in its depths, he welcomed the darkness that devoured him whole.