You know how this game works: take out the master, and the puppets go ragdoll. So you charge straight for the jock, pushing aside one alumni to do so. As you advance, the jock takes a few steps backward, yet plants their feet, getting ready.

‘Vivikesh Ne’gulafal,’ the jock hisses, and for a second you expect your legs to go limp or pain to shoot through your nerves, but nothing happens. The jock seemed to expect something to happen, as well, which is why he’s shocked when you successfully deliver your foot to the bottom of his jaw in a powerful kick (yes, you still work legs once a week), knocking him out.

Once the jock falls to the floor, so do the puppets, just as you’d expected. Cautious, yet feeling unmistakably heroic, you rush over to one – a man in his 40s, you’d wager – and tear the tape off his mouth.

‘Damn it!’ he cries, wincing as he struggles with the ropes.

As you begin to undo the ropes, you adopt an apologetic tone. ‘I’m sorry, I’d heard the cry from outside and –’

‘And you figure’d you’d save the day, huh? I get it,’ he sighs, as you free him from the ropes, ‘but you’re a fool to come here. You don’t know the black magic they have at play here.’

‘He’s right,’ the older gent you just freed (?) adds, as he helps a woman of a certain age from her ropes. ‘We’re all hostages of history now, moving towards its one end – the manifestation of God.’

Rest assured, you’re thoroughly weirded out. ‘Hold on, what? I thought this was a – umm – a theatre reunion?’ You laugh, all too hollowly. ‘Is this, like, some sort of theatre trick?’

‘Unfortunately, no,’ the older woman sneers, ‘this isn’t a trick – this is real. Really real. Like, as real as real gets.’

You’re alarmed. ‘Really? What do you mean?’

Twin #1 turns to you. ‘The Board of Trustees dug up an Indian burial mound on school grounds to start fracking underneath it, they weren’t opposed when a group of alumni calling themselves The Nine promised funding if they could set up a so-called participatory theatre experience at the next reunion, and now the alumni are secretly enacting a blood ritual to resurrect the corpse of Erich von Straussheim himself.’

‘The school founder?’ you gasp. ‘They want to resurrect him? And, wait, he wasn’t Native American, was he?’

‘No, but he was buried with the local tribesmen,’ the woman of a certain age nods, ‘after a lifetime of religious proselytizing. But he wasn’t preaching some Judeo-Christian religion, as our school’s brochures attest…’

‘But what does this have to do with fracking, and blood magic?’ you ask, academically.

‘It’s a long story. Do you wanna hear it?’

A) Yes.

B) No.

You take out one puppet with a judo chop to the spleen, but when you try a roundhouse kick – your favorite move – on the next, she grabs your leg mid-air. Hopping around on one foot, you struggle to stay standing, but now both remaining puppets are forcing you back towards the window. Yes, you are going to get thrown out that window. Yes, you will hear the cackling of the jock as you fall towards the ground. And yes, when you fall on your back from the 2nd story window, you would have survived, were it not for the bolt of lightning which just so happened to strike you at the exact same moment you hit the ground.

Try again?
Credits

Let’s silence this mime, once and for all. Whipping the ninja star out of your pocket, you flick it through the air and into his eye. The mime stumbles backward and falls, dead on impact. Looking over his shoulder, the jock then returns your gaze, and laughs.

‘Idiot! Can’t you see that I’m the bad guy, here?’

You scoff at his self-appraisal. ‘I don’t know, I thought the mime might have been, like, controlling you, somehow – as if the mime were using you as a puppet…’

‘If anyone’s the puppet, it’s the mime – for the self is merely a pantomime, after all,’ the jock replies, ‘and I can do with my puppets whatever I like.’

With a snap of his fingers, the three bound and gagged alumni raise themselves up, shrug off their bindings, and advance towards you.

‘So be it,’ you say. Yes, it seems those Tae Kwon Do sessions will come in handy, after all. The only question is, how exactly to navigate this fight? Do you try to take out the puppets first, or go straight for the master?

A) The puppets.

B) The master.

Maybe these re-animated bodies are friendly, you tell yourself. And anyway, that mime seemed like a jerk, right?

Cautious, yet feeling unmistakably heroic, you rush over to a body – a man in his 50s, you’d wager – and tear the tape off his mouth.

‘Damn it!’ he cries, wincing as he struggles with the ropes.

As you begin to undo the ropes, you adopt an apologetic tone. ‘I’m sorry, I’d heard the cry from outside and –’

‘And you figure’d you’d save the day, huh? I get it,’ he sighs, as you free him from the ropes, ‘but you’re a fool to come here. You don’t know the black magic they’re conjuring.’

‘I got a glimpse of it just now, whatever the hell that puppet-show was,’ you snap back, helping another middle-aged gentleman from his bindings, ‘and shouldn’t you be a little more grateful, being freed from that… trance you were in?’

The man scoffs as he helps a woman of a certain age from her ropes. ‘Freed? You call this freedom?’ He laughs again. ‘I’ve never been free. And neither have you. And we’ve all come here to accept that fact.’

‘He’s right,’ the older gent you just freed (?) adds, picking up his bowler hat, ‘we’re all hostages of history now, moving towards its one end – the manifestation of God.’

Rest assured, you’re thoroughly weirded out. ‘Hold on, what? I thought this was a – umm – a theatre reunion?’ You laugh, all too hollowly. ‘Is this, like, some sort of theatre trick?’

‘Unfortunately, no,’ the older woman sneers, ‘this isn’t a trick – this is real. Really real. Like, as real as real gets.’

You’re alarmed. ‘Really? What do you mean?’

Twin #1 turns to you. ‘The Board of Trustees dug up an Indian burial mound on school grounds to start fracking underneath, they weren’t opposed when a group of alumni calling themselves The Nine promised funding if they could set up a so-called participatory theatre experience at the next reunion, and now the alumni are secretly enacting a blood ritual to resurrect the corpse of Erich von Straussheim himself.’

‘The school founder?’ you gasp. ‘They want to resurrect him? And, wait, he wasn’t Native American, was he?’

Before anyone can answer, a crowd of alumni wearing head-to-toe body suits that make them appear faceless bursts through the door, accompanied by the atonal thundering of timpani drums.

‘What the fuck is this!?’ you cry, as they fill the room and start dancing in a whirling, wordless maelstrom.

‘It’s the Edema Uru’nai!’ the Woman of a Certain Age screams, ‘Flee for your lives!’

And you watch in apoplectic horror as she flings herself out the window, with a bolt of lightning following closely thereafter which hits her at the same moment that she crashes on the ground, very thoroughly dead. Looking back, you see four of the faceless alumni tearing open the stomach of Twin #2 and throwing his entrails into the middle of the room, while Twin #1 – restrained by three other faceless alumni – struggles and watches helplessly.

‘Please! Eustace! No!’ he sobs, before getting knocked out by other alumni and dismembered, in turn.

Well, this went south pretty quickly. But you may be able to survive, yet. You could, after all, attempt to join the faceless alumni by eating the entrails of Twin #2, or you could jump out the window, and hope you survive the fall (and possible lightning strike). What do you do?

A) Eat the entrails of Twin #2.

B) Jump out the window.

Deciding a mime is better company than re-animated corpses, you run after him, down a flight of stairs, through the wings and on-stage. The mime darts to center-stage and collapses dramatically, in the middle of an array of alumni wearing full-body suits that leave their faces featureless.

Offstage, you recognize two old college friends whom you’ve fallen out of touch with since graduation, Ajax and Achitophel. Ajax sports a wild mane of red hair and looks like he just left a Korn concert (your older cousin listened to them, not you, you assure yourself – your inner monologue making that reference doesn’t make you old. Though they did appear in that one South Park episode). Achitophel, on the other hand, is wearing the same clothes you saw her in last – seemingly the entire Vineyard Vines Summer 2014 catalog – though she’s also holding a massive two-handed Infinity Bludgeon. It is an elegant weapon, from a more civilized age: the adamantium handle is sixteen hands long, and laced with a criss-crossing inlay of silver which blossoms out like a mandala over the bludgeon itself, a heavy boulder famously dug up by the school’s founder, Erich von Straussheim, in The Year of Our Lord 1744.

Before you can say anything, the mime is gesturing frantically to Achitophel, communicating something. Eventually, she nods her head and says, ‘I see.’

‘Achitophel! Long time no see,’ you say, cautiously, ‘this looks like a fun… theatre performance, just like old times.’

‘Berna’vida-mal, entath!’ she cries with a flourish, and all the sudden the faceless alumni are grabbing you and dragging you to center-stage.

‘No! Wait! Don’t!’ you cry helplessly, but it’s too late: you’re being torn limb from limb, who the hell can guess why, you’ll never know, cause…

Give it another go?
Credits

You can’t quite figure out what the hell is going on, but this jock seems to be a maniacal lunatic, whereas the mime – so far as you can tell – is in some sort of trance that the jock put him in. Well, one way to find out. Whipping the ninja star out of your pocket, you flick it through the air and into the jock’s eye. The jock falls forward out of the mime’s hands and hits the floor hard, dead on impact. The mime stands still, stunned, looking at you wide-eyed.

You stare back. ‘Hey. Can you talk?’

The mime shakes their head back and forth in a long, steady motion, then – with both hands – points to the huddled forms on the floor around you.

You look. The bound and gagged alumni are no longer struggling in their ropes. Going over to one – a middle-aged man – you tear the bandage off his mouth and check for a pulse.

‘He’s dead,’ you say, looking over at the mime.

The mime pretends to cry and pull out their hair, and you are stunned by his callousness.

‘Hey, this isn’t an act,’ you say, looking at the other two bodies, ‘these people are dead. How…’

Your mind races through the possibilities: perhaps the jock had built up a neural bond with the people he’d brainwashed, and by killing the jock and severing that bond, you’d killed them? It didn’t make sense.

Just in case, you shake the body of the dead man. Yep, he’s dead.

‘What the fuck,’ you protest, exasperated. ‘Did I do this?’

The mime points to you, drags a finger along his throat, then starts to silently guffaw, throwing his whole body into it. Disgusted, you grab him and shake him, too.

‘Are you dead, as well?’ you demand hysterically, ‘what the hell is wrong with you?’

The mime makes a fist with their left hand, places it against their skull, and then with their other hand pretends to crank their fist as if it is some sort of engine. As they do so, you hear rustling, and look back: the seemingly dead bodies are rousing themselves again. Letting go of the mime, who darts out of the room, you watch as the struggling bodies free themselves from their bindings. What do you do – follow the mime, or stick around with the seemingly-once-dead-people?

A) Follow the mime.

B) Stay with the re-animated bodies.

Feeling quite cavalier, you scramble up the side of the building and into the open window. Inside, you discover three alumni bound in ropes with scotch tape over their mouths. Yet there is a third alumnus, a guy you recognize from some intro class whom you believe was in a frat, but now is in a choke hold, compliments of a man dressed as a mime: he’s got the white face paint, Parisian attire, and Cirque du Soleil build, yet somehow is about to strangle this ex-linebacker with ease.

Seeing you, the mime lets up his grip, just enough for the captive jock to smile and say, ‘Aha! You’ve arrived just in time for the coup de grace – could be fantastic, no?’

Hold on, isn’t he the captive in need of saving? Why is he seemingly taking delight in his imminent death? No time to think about it – he’s gonna die soon, regardless. Maybe he’s somehow brainwashed the mime into becoming a weapon for his own self-destruction?

You reach into your pocket and feel your ninja star, kept for just this sort of occasion. You’re an excellent shot, everyone knows that. So the question is, whom do you take down: the jock, or the mime?

A) The jock.

B) The mime.