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Chapter 8 is the eighth chapter of The Lonely Ones novel.
Description[]
Ruse struggles to jump into the Ball Pit to rescue Feast as the memory of jumping into her Nanny's pool returns, paralyzing her. Knowing every second counts, Ruse takes the leap into the Pit, but as she struggles to figure out where Feast could be, something humongous lurks in the wooden balls.
Plot[]
Ruse stands at the edge of the Ball Pit, the Puppets closing in on her. She wants to leap after Feast but can feel her own dread holding her back, keeping her body from moving. Ruse feels paralyzed from her fear, unable to breathe, her heart pounding, but she’s not afraid of what might happen, it's more so that her body knows what comes next even if her brain doesn’t remember what. Ruse thinks of Feast and the precious time she is wasting standing at the edge when every second counts to rescue Feast. Ruse is suddenly able to move, she coughs and gasps, her hand clenching her pocket watch, reminding her of where everything began. Ruse puts away her watch, takes a deep breath and jumps into the Ball Pit, slipping between the balls that are much lighter than expected, nothing compared to hitting the surface of a pool. With the momentum of her dive quickly moving her down into the Pit, she learns she can move around with wide arm movements and cupped hands, but sweeping the balls behind her and propelling herself is slow and takes a lot of effort, becoming exhausting both physically and mentally as she feels another familiar feeling creep into her mind: despair.
She pushes harder but the lack of air is suffocating her, making her think she is drowning again. Ruse stops moving as her mind goes back to a returning memory of her sinking in her Nanny’s pool where she jumped into, but despite knowing how to swim, she doesn’t. She’s there in the pool but soon she will be nowhere. After reaching the bottom of the pool, she waits. After a moment in the water, she kicks herself off from the bottom to swim back to the surface, but she never reaches the top, or rather she can't. She kicks and moves her arms as much as she can but something is holding her back, pushing her down. There’s something dark in the pool with her that won't let her go, will never let her go. In the Ball Pit, Ruse is sinking more and more, she tries to stop her descent with the motion of her arms and legs but all the while she does, she finds it difficult to think with the clattering of the balls. Having jumped into the Pit without a plan to help Feast, she doesn't know what to do to even find him in it. With minimal light entering the Pit, she can't even see him. With no other choice, Ruse stops moving to try and hear something.
As she slowly descends again, she can hear the sound of a louder rattle in the Pit, something is moving slightly below her right, she calls out Feast’s name but gets no response. Suddenly, she hears another sound, the sound of rain, but it's not, it's the balls moving, too many moving at once for it to be Feast, she can hear it moving below her and it's humongous. The shifting spheres push Ruse up and to the side, confusing and disorienting her. She doesn’t know what the creature is but she stays still until it passes. As paranoid as she is about moving, she can't stay where she is, she just has to be faster to move her way around. She heads in the direction she thinks she heard Feast. As it gets darker in the Pit, she thinks about how she should have reached the bottom of the ship by now, but feels the impression that the Pit is endless. At the moment she considers returning to the surface in defeat, she spots Feast in front of her, but he’s unconscious. She makes her way towards him and wraps her arms around his chest. Ruse begins towing Feast alongside her towards the side of the Pit. To swim back up would be a losing battle, and with no bottom to the Pit, the best chance for them to escape is by reaching the wall.
Ruse eventually reaches the wall and touches what she believes is the climbing net that stretches up past the surface of the Ball Pit. After finding a foothold, she begins climbing up the net, one laborious rung at a time. She can feel her arms go numb and heavy, her lungs burning as she pulls herself and Feast up. Ruse expects a strong cold hand to hold her down, shove her back into the depths, but she keeps moving. After finally reaching the surface, Ruse pulls Feast up and rests him on the top layer of the Ball Pit so she can catch her breath and regain her strength, but quickly panics the moment she notices Feast slide back down into the Pit and out of her grasp. Unable to reach Feast while clinging to the net, Ruse lets go of the net and lunges for him in the Ball Pit as he disappears, managing to grab hold of his arm. Ruse holds Feast up and drags him back to the wall so she can grab hold of the net with her free hand. With Feast still unconscious, she tries to gently shake him awake but he doesn't open his eyes. Just as she considers removing Feast's mask to check on him, Feast awakens with a rasping breath.
Feast weakly speaks, questioning if it's really Ruse and she replies to tell him she is there with him. Suddenly, Ruse hears the sound of something big moving in the Ball Pit, she follows the sound with her eyes and can see the balls rippling. But soon the balls stop moving. She looks around for other movement and while there is no activity, she quickly hooks her foot into the net to keep herself stable and begins attempting to free Feast from his binds, but the rope is too tightly knotted so she instead starts tearing the rope apart with her teeth. Soon, the movement within the Pit returns and starts making its way towards them. Ruse bites through the net, freeing Feast and she quickly guides him onto the net next to her. Ruse is startled when something brushes against her leg, she twists away from it but despite her attempts to climb up the net, the creature grabs hold of her leg. She can't break free from its grasp no matter how much she kicks. Ruse holds onto the net with one hand while Feast holds onto her other hand, all the while grabbing onto the net with his other hand.
Ruse tells Feast to go on without her and save Mim, but he shakes his head in refusal, eventually letting go of her hand. Ruse tries to hold onto the rung of the net as the creature continues to pull her down, her fingers ache and her joints pop from the stress of being pulled like taffy, unable to hold on for much longer. Ruse watches Feast sneak along the wall towards the arcades exit. The Puppets are focused on Ruse, ignoring Feast. Ruse is relieved to feel the creature in the Ball Pit suddenly let go of her, only for it to instead shift its focus on pulling the net away from the wall. Ruse dangles from the net as the creature stretches it far out over the Pit. The net is eventually torn from the wall and settles across the surface of the balls, giving Ruse a chance at running along the ropes towards the edge of the Pit. Before she can reach the edge, she trips, her ankle tangled in rope. The creature begins pulling the net down at the center of the Pit, with her along with it. Her fingers are numb, but she believes she must be holding onto the net. Her attempts to pull herself free from her tangle fail, her arms are too heavy to pull her.
Unable to free herself or go on, she thinks about her situation and how she knew such an outcome would happen if she tried to save another like Feast, but she feels no regret, admitting to herself that she would do it all again despite knowing there would be such an outcome in the end for her. In an unexpected turn, Ruse can feel small hands around her ankle, she twists herself around to look and is shocked to see Feast having come back for her, trying to free her from her tangle. As anxious as Ruse is to see the net draw closer to being pulled down under the wooden balls, Feast stays calm and quickly untangles her. With Ruse now free, Feast gestures that they move and the two of them jump into the Pit to swim away from the creature that's below them. With the net now gone, pulled under the balls, Ruse and Feast can only continue to frantically swim towards the edge of the Pit as the creature begins to pursue them. As soon as Ruse and Feast reach the edge of the Pit and climb back out onto the deck, the balls subside, indicating the creature has stopped its pursuit. Ruse thanks Feast for coming back to save her, but Feast reminds her she saved him first. Ruse decides to not tell Feast that she nearly decided to not save him, but knowing Feast, he would have saved her anyway without ever thinking about himself. Ruse wonders if Feast’s selflessness to save another was what led him to end up in such a place now.
Ruse notices Feast looking behind her with an alarmed face, she turns to see the puppets advancing towards them. Feast reaches down into the Ball Pit and grabs a handful of balls to chuck at the Puppets moving around the Pit, his good aim even hitting a Puppet directly in the face with enough force to make it lose its balance and fall into the Pit. The Puppet stands unsteadily above the balls as the creature in the Pit moves towards him from below, then pulls the Puppet down under the surface. The Puppet's head, torso and limbs are shot back out of the Pit in a geyser of balls. Ruse thinks about how she too could have suffered the same fate and how she only managed to escape because Feast helped her, feeling a twinge of sympathy for the puppet. Even though she was the one who put herself in danger to help save him first, she finds her decision to do so even more remarkable as she thinks back to when she fearlessly jumped into her Nanny’s pool because she had nothing left to lose. Jumping in the Ball Pit was harder for her.
The Puppets are on the move, Ruse and Feast are not out of danger yet, they need to leave the arcade. Feast taps Ruse to ask about Mim’s whereabouts. Before remembering to answer Feast, Ruse thinks about how when the time is right, she wants to tell Feast about the pool and what she can remember about her life. Ruse also wonders about how he arrived at the Carnevale and if he would be willing to share his own past. Ruse points to the exit the Performer and Mim left through and Feast nods with determination to proceed. Feast and Ruse hold hands and run away from the puppets, towards the exit to save Mim.
Characters[]
- Ruse
- Feast
- Mim
- The Puppets
- The Ball Pit Monster
- The Performer
- Ruse's Nanny (mentioned)