I clickedYes.
You have left the Royal Court of Princess Donut.
You are no longer in a party.
Your personal space has been segregated.
You have an invitation from Safehome Yolanda. Do you wish to join?
I clickedYes.
Behind us, a second door appeared, indicating the new entrance to my space. After all the moving around and trading of rooms, my space would now be nothing but a single room with a bathroom. And my food boxes.
“I don’t like this, Carl,” Donut said, peering at me. “Your royal bodyguard title went away. Now it doesn’t say anything!”
I grinned. “Yours is gone, too.”
“What! Why! I’m not the one who left the stupid party! Carl, this is so unfair!” A moment later, she let out another outraged gasp. “I can’t even add a new one!”
The door to my new space opened, and Bucket Boy poked his head out. Pink light and music blared from inside. The music was some early 2000s rock, but I didn’t recognize it.
Donut grunted. “What is that?”
“I don’t even know,” Bucket Boy said, stepping out. “She likes it and it’s just playing over and over. She told me I’m not allowed to turn it off.” He looked about the garage. “Wow.”
We’d agreed to let Bucket Boy sit this one out. The poor kid was dealing with some serious shit. A small part of me was annoyed that we weren’t using a hired NPC mercenary, but a bigger part of me, the important part, felt proud that we could protect someone from the chaos, even if it was just for a minute.
“The room is actually bigger now, but it’s just one big room,” he said. “Some of Samantha’s decorations got messed up.” He eyed her across the room. “She’s gonna be mad.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “But don’t stay in my room. Go to the main guild commons. Go fast. It’s about to start.”
Above, the countdown time was down to two minutes. I turned myattention to Penelope the pig, who was eating a flower off a nearby float.
“Penny,” I called, “come here. I got a snack for you.”
All participants in the Parade of Horribles, p-p-p-please proceed to the staging area.
The festivities are about to begin.
[ 91 ]
“What the hell is this?”I muttered as our giant procession moved out into the parade route.
It was in the same location on all the screens. It was just a long yellow-brick road. Before, it had been nothing but wide-open grasslands. But now a low, knee-high fog had rolled in, obscuring the grass. The fog did not come onto the path, instead tapering off in a wispy line.
Lined up on either side of the road, standing in the fog, were now thousands of people. They were just standing there, facing us, unmoving. Thousands and thousands of them, about ten deep on each side.
It was people of all shapes and sizes, but they were all human or humanlike. Some were strangely thin, like Lexis, but others seemed much too wide. They stood, not frozen, but not saying a thing or talking to one another. The line went as far as I could see down the road. Adults, children, babies held in arms.
They all wore a strange but mostly uniform mix of rags and robes, all the same earthy brown color. Most of the rags appeared filthy, like they’d just been pulled from the dirt. The people, too, were a mess, their arms and legs grimy, as if they’d just been dug up.
But the most distinctive features on everyone were the masks. Every person in the crowd, including the babies, wore an oversized, colorful mask. These were complete head coverings, round and bulbous, like bobbleheads obscuring their faces.
The people were pushed tight together, and this caused the masks to press against one another and in some cases turn, which caused them to angle to the side relative to the people wearing them, like multicolor sewing pins all trying to poke into the same hole.
The vibrant masks featured grotesqueries such as goblins, trolls, hobgoblins, demons, and more. These were large caricatures, making the faces more colorful, more comic than they truly were, like from Mardi Gras or Carnival, but much more sinister. There was no music, which added to the ominous mood.
I was reminded of the main dance floor at the Desperado Club. They, too, had just switched to similar monsters. What did it mean?