A Cruelty's Guide

Chapter 4

There weren't many plays in Phreya, there weren't many forms of thought-provoking entertainment anywhere really. The Opera House held a performance once every week, but even then the tickets were exceptionally expensive and difficult to acquire. The entire idea of entertainment was a classist collision of wealth and time.

Even so, the ones allowed on stage were talented. No. Talented wasn't an encapsulating enough term for the brevity, the reality of their performances. With one show a week, afforded at a hefty price, they needed to make the audience believe their stories, believe they were their characters. When an actor on stage cries, how much of that is fake? How much of it is really acting? Relating to the stories, to the characters, makes their job all the more simple. Crying is easy when you want to cry. In the end, what's the difference between an actor and an empath in tune with their emotions?

Tay wondered if this is how actors felt. On stage, being watched, living their lives, feeling their feelings, based on someone else's story. She cried too. They were Tabitha's tears but it was as if Tay was the one crying them. It felt so real, and perhaps it was, considering they were once felt by Tabitha. If she was the character, and Tay was the actor, how could Mika write such a heartbreaking script?

She wasn't in Tabitha's body now. None of them were. Everyone, except Tabitha, sat on a stadium-esque bench in a stadium-esque area. They watched their fellow player through a glass pane, like an audience to a caged animal.

Hugo hugged his arms to his side, shivering from what he no doubt must have seen and experienced. Desiree wiped away her own tears on her sleeve, discreetly, hoping that no one else noticed. Everyone else simply sat speechless, unsure of what just happened, of what they just experienced, of what to think.

Tabitha was still in her childhood home, from what Tay could see, but it appeared different this time. Darker. Empty. They weren't with her anymore, and whatever Mika had planned, she would experience it alone.

"What was that?" Morgan was the first to speak.

"Her memories, I think." Tay responded, but she couldn't hide her uncertainty. It was so strange, a notion so unbecoming. She was a scholar, and as a scholar she based her entire life, her principles, around academia and rationality. But there was no sense in what she said. How could they all, at once, live out Tabitha's memories through Tabitha?

"Her mother," Rudyard shook his head.

"Her father," Desiree almost shouted.

"Okallah, that poor girl." As stoic and composed as Pembrook wanted to appear, it was obvious that even he was shaken.

"Will we have to endure that as well?" It was the first full sentence Hugo had spoken since they met each other, and the others couldn't help but turn to him. "This is a game, isn't it? When it's our turns, will we all have to relive our pasts just as Ms. Shao had?"

No one responded.

No one wanted to respond.

Because the answer was clear. Yes.

"Somber attitudes aren't fitting for games." Mika was in front of them now, obscuring their view from Tabitha as she continued to assess the room. Are we to just watch as you continue to torture her? Tay wants to ask, but again, the answer was clear.

"Your 'game' is barbaric."

"And yet you have no choice but to play." There's something so empty about his smiles, his laughs. He speaks such twisted words, forces his 'players' to endure such callous forms of torture, but his eyes remain so cold.

Mika finds a place beside Tay, allowing the others to see Tabitha and her nightmare clearly. "Why have us live out her memories?" Tay asks, restraining herself from her violent urges. "Why show us all of that?" It had been a reasonable question, among all of his unreasonable requests. So mundane it seemed unbefitting to ask what could very well be a magicae.