A deranged man who likes to call himself the Director kidnaps a teenage boy and girl to be his actors. He expects them to perform the six acts of his play without messing up once, or else harrowing pain awaits them.
🥇1st place / The Cosmic Awards
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NATHAN'S EYESIGHT WAS already shitty. Combine that with waking up after a blackout, with extra blurriness and disorientation, and he was pretty much blind. It took him a few minutes (plus endless blinking) to make out that the two pale things propped up on the wall opposite him were actually his feet.
Someone was murmuring incomprehensibly in the background. Nathan suddenly realized his hand was warm. Or actually, something warm settled on top of it.
When Nathan finally found it in him to crane his neck to the side, Adelaide came into focus. Curly red hair cleared. She was kneeling beside him, holding his hand, praying in a different language—French, logically—with her eyes closed.
"Adelaide?" Nathan tried pulling his feet off the wall but the movement caught Adelaide's attention. Her hand shot out, gripping his knee and forcing his legs to stay propped against the wall.
"Oh my gosh, you woke up." Adelaide sounded pleasantly breathless, as if Max (Nathan's dog. Friendly fella unless you so much as tried hurting Nathan) had been chasing her. "Keep your legs up, yeah? For your blood pressure."
"I wanna sit." Nathan curved his torso forward, off the floor, using Adelaide's hand as support until he sat upright. For a second, he couldn't remember except tattered fragments of what'd happened before he'd fainted. Then it clicked in place, when the cuts and wounds on his arms and legs blazed with pain.
"You worried me sick." Adelaide's voice was almost accusatory. "I- I thought you weren't gonna wake up. I felt like I lost you. It's so awful, not having you around talking and just . . . being you."
Nathan appreciated that she gave a shit about him but didn't appreciate her just about yelling it. "Sorry for making you worry, really," he mumbled. "But it's not like I fainted on purpose."
Suddenly, Nathan coughed, and all his ribs ached with the effort. He wished the memory of the Director sitting on his chest could disintegrate.
Adelaide's expression softened. "I didn't mean to shout it at you. I'm just so happy you're awake."
"It's okay. Thanks for helping me." What Nathan really wanted to do right now was sit in the corner and sleep until the pain'd melt, but the questions nipped at his insides like woodpeckers. So he asked, "What happened when I fainted?" with his voice low and ashamed.
Adelaide made a weird face. She twisted her torso, fetched the glass of water—except the glass wasn't exactly glass anymore; it was a plastic cup. Nathan frowned. Had Adelaide tried to—?
