The Game at Carousel: Book Four Stubs July 17th (Arc II Chapters 1- 85)

I couldn't really complain about nightmares, could I? That was the worst I had seen of these demon enemies of ours, at least as far as my suffering went.

But when I woke up covered in sweat, it was difficult not to regret choosing this storyline.

As strange as it might seem, sleep was something that Carousel rarely denied players, Goodnight Neighbor being an exception. Sure, it might wake them from their slumber to chase them around with monsters, but that was for the camera; there was generally time to rest between scenes.

Here, every time I went to sleep, I learned a few new tropes that the Repossessors held. And in order to acquire them, I had to run through some sort of surreal, hellish version of the pizza parlor, chased sometimes by shadows, but this time by possessed animatronics with cracked limbs that allowed them to contort and twist in ways their design was not meant to.

My pursuers never caught me that I remembered.

Worse yet, I had a feeling that the Night Terrors trope the Repossessors had was interacting with my psychic background to give me insight into the hell world that existed beneath it all. But because this was a nightmare, I was having difficulty remembering what happened.

After the first night, I had set out a notebook and a pen, hoping to write down everything. So when I woke and dried my sopping, sweaty skin with a towel, I began writing, trying to record everything I had seen in my nightmare.

Despite the surreal nature, I got the feeling that this endless, exaggerated maze, composed of things found in the pizza parlor, was a physical place, not just a figment of my imagination.

Worst of all, I felt I remembered something only in part. Something I had seen but couldn't recall upon waking, except for the feeling it had given me, a feeling of true dread.

A feeling that, though this was dressed up as a comedy, we were dealing with something that had once been quite terrifying. And I had seen something related to it in the darkness, as I ran through a maze of arcade machines and pizza buffets.

I had seen people who had asked me for help.

My memory couldn't be relied upon to make that conclusion, but my heart remembered.

My heart remembered because a single thought resonated in my mind. That thought was: We didn't come here to save you. And from that, I could piece together what the aching sensation in my chest was.

For us, this was a fake hell, but not for everyone there.