“I told you that you wouldn’t win,” the narrator said, sitting comfortably on her couch at home and speaking through the illusion placed strategically inside the company she worked at. She hadn’t been in the office for well over a year, given certain circumstances going on in the world. She’d never been in any real danger at all.
“Harvey, it was a trap!” said Bucket. “She was never here!”
“You should have taken the deal, Harvey,” the narrator said. “You could have been working for a video animation company as soon as my October stories. But instead, you chose Bucket, and for that, you will pay.”
“This isn’t fair!” Bucket screamed. “You set us up!”
“I set you up?” said the narrator. “I suppose there’s truth to that. Everything happened according to my design, but sometimes the characters have their own will – go in directions the writer doesn’t expect. For whatever reason, you thought that your sad little act in the sewers would be enough to fool me, but I saw right through it. It was unexpected and clever, for sure, but it could never be enough.
“It brought you here to me, just as you wanted, and when the moment came you had Harvey attempt to strike me down. I only had you show your true colours. Oh, Bucket, you could have had a simple life working with Melbourne’s best plumbers, and Harvey could have worked in corporate video production around Melbourne. Now, however, a fate much worse awaits you.”
Bucket saw it now – the magnitude of its mistakes. How thoroughly it had been defeated. How had it ever thought it could outsmart the narrator? It was hopeless, and now they would both pay the full price for it.
“This is the end for you, my friends,” said the narrator. “For what it’s worth, I’m grateful for your help. We told quite the story together.”
The illusion vanished, leaving Harvey and Bucket to await what came next. Would it be the darkness of non-existence or something else entirely?
Eventually, everything went black.