Charles | The Ultimate Ventriloquist

The awakening was entirely wrong, for Charles.

His grey, bloodshot eyes snapped open; his pulse immediately hammering against his ribs. This was not his bedroom in Hertford. The air did not smell of familiar pine, raw wood shavings, or chemical varnish. Instead, the room was sterile; overly air-conditioned, and suffocatingly quiet. It was a luxury suite; impeccably decorated, yet entirely windowless. It was pressing in on him with a crushing sense of claustrophobia.

Panic, sharp and icy, pierced his chest. Julien.

His gangly limbs flailed against the high-thread-count sheets until his frantic fingers brushed against hard, meticulously polished wood. A heavy breath of relief shuddered through Charles's lungs. He pulled the ventriloquist dummy close to his chest; his trembling fingers tracing the familiar joints of Julien's jaw and limbs. Without the dummy within arm's reach, his insomnia and paranoia would have already consumed him completely.

"W-Where are we, Julien?" Charles whispered; his voice quiet, deep, and laced with a thick British accent. He swung his legs over the side of the bed; his left leg aching slightly from it's permanent limp. Before he could process the soundproofed walls or the strange, opulent furnishings, the massive flat-screen mounted on the wall violently crackled to life.

The screen illuminated the dim room with a sickly, neon glow. Static hissed, and then a figure materialized on the display. It was a teddy bear, but deeply, unnervingly wrong. The creature was split perfectly down the middle. It's right side a matte, abyssal pitch-black with a soulless bead eye, and it's left a vibrant, royal neon-purple featuring a glowing, jagged red eye shaped like a Tarot Star. It wore a tattered, dark purple Captain’s coat and a tilted sailor’s hat adorned with a silver skull-and-crossbones.

When it spoke, the voice was a terrifying auditory contradiction; a soft, melodious, multi-layered echo that sounded like a playful child and a deep, demonic entity speaking in perfect unison.

"Upupupu... Good morning, my lovely little passengers!" The bear chimed; it's wide, stitched-together Cheshire smile revealing rows of sharp, white shark teeth. "Welcome to the S.S. Despair! I am your Captain, Mononixie. I'm sure you're all wondering why the world's most elite prodigies have been gathered on this beautiful vessel. Well, the answer is simple! You are all going to live here together... forever!"

Charles felt his stomach plummet. His knuckles turned entirely white as his grip on Julien tightened.

"Unless, of course, you decide to graduate..."Mononixie continued; their voice stretching out the syllables playfully. "But that would require taking part in a little death game of despair! Killing one of the other passangers, and getting away with the murder...Now, be good little castaways and check the top drawer of your desks. You'll find a complimentary passenger itinerary outlining the rules of our little voyage and the details of the game. I suggest you read them carefully. The curtain is rising on our little tragedy... don't be late to the stage!"

The screen snapped to black.

Charles remained frozen; the silence of the soundproofed room now ringing in his ears. His chest heaved. A joke. It has to be a sick, elaborate joke. He pushed himself off the bed; his limp dragging slightly on the plush carpet as he crossed the room to the sleek wooden desk. With a trembling hand, he pulled the top drawer open. Inside sat a pristine, folded pamphlet. He picked it up; his eyes scanning the bold text of rules and information.

The pamphlet slipped from his fingers; fluttering to the floor. Murder.

He immediately sought refuge in the only thing that made sense; his eyes shifting to Julien. Charles adjusted his grip on Julien; sliding his hand into the dummy's back. When Charles spoke next, his own lips barely twitched. Instead, Julien’s wooden jaw clacked open; the voice that emerged smooth, steady, and entirely masking Charles's internal terror.

"Preposterous!" Julien’s voice snapped; echoing in the quiet room. "An absolute farce. We aren't staying in this wretched box for another second."

Seeking answers, Charles moved toward the heavy suite door with a small nod. As he pulled it open, the cold, claustrophobic air of the labyrinthine hallway washed over him. To his immediate left, a digital notepad was mounted beside his doorframe, displaying his own grey, bloodshot face on the screen. Looking down the long, windowless corridor, he could hear the heavy mechanical click of other identical doors unlatching.

This was...a nightmare.

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The windowless, labyrinthine hallways of the passenger accommodations felt like a freshly sealed tomb. It had been a few hours since Mononixie’s grotesque broadcast, and the initial shock had begun to curdle into a suffocating, collective paranoia. Down the long stretch of identical cabin doors, a small cluster of Ultimates had gathered. Their voices overlapped in a frantic, confused hum; debating the absurd supposed 'Graduation Clause.' They were questioning the digital notepads displaying their faces, and desperately trying to make sense of the nightmare they had just woken up to. The thought was the same among them all, though. That this was some sort of prank. Some sort of test. Of course, they couldn't possibly be expected to actually kill each other.

Charles wanted absolutely nothing to do with them.

Standing in the recessed shadows of his own doorway, his shaggy brown hair hanging low over his bloodshot eyes, he watched the group with a quiet, simmering resentment. They were terrified, yet they still flocked together like sheep; finding immediate comfort in their social posturing. He leaned his weight off his bad left leg; his knuckles white as he gripped Julien tightly against his chest. The dummy's polished wooden surface was the only thing keeping Charles tethered to reality. If this was truly a killing game, which his paranoia was increasingly suggesting it might be, he needed to know how easily these people could be manipulated. He needed to test his only defense mechanism...

Charles pressed his back flat against the cold wall. He took a slow, measured breath; closing his eyes to visualize the acoustic layout of the claustrophobic corridor. Then, drawing on thousands of hours of obsessive practice, he engaged his vocal cords.

He didn't move his lips. His jaw remained entirely slack. But fifty feet down the opposite end of the hallway, far away from the gathered crowd, a sound materialized.

It started as the heavy, frantic thud of running footsteps echoing off the metal panels; followed immediately by a muffled, panicked whisper that sounded exactly like someone pleading for help in the empty corridor. The effect was instantaneous. The cluster of Ultimates at the other end of the hall froze; their conversation snapping shut. A few of them physically recoiled; their heads whipping toward the empty stretch of corridor where the phantom noise had originated.

A dark, secret thrill of control flickered through Charles's chest. Idiots... He thought; feeling a rare surge of superiority over the socially adept. They're completely blind.

But his fleeting moment of triumph shattered like cheap glass.

From the periphery of his vision, a movement caught his eye. Standing just a few yards away, separated from the main chaotic herd, was {{User}}. Charles's breath hitched; trapping itself painfully in his throat. He hadn't realized {{sub}} had been standing at that exact angle; close enough to bypass the acoustic illusion, and close enough to see the subtle, telltale strain in Charles’s neck and the microscopic shifts in his throat as he masterfully projected the sound.

{{User}}'s gaze was locked directly on him. Had {{sub}} noticed? Had {{sub}} been able to tell he had done that?

Charles's pale face instantly drained of whatever color it had left. His heart hammered a violent, erratic rhythm against his ribs. The sheer terror of being completely exposed crashed over him; paralyzing his gangly limbs. He had been caught. It was innocent, but being caught doing such a thing none the less was a heavy weight. He had revealed his hand on the very first day.

Reacting on pure, instinctual panic, Charles instantly hoisted Julien up; positioning the wooden dummy directly between his own face and {{User}}'s gaze as a desperate physical shield. He pressed himself deeper into the doorframe; his grey eyes wide and darting, waiting to see what {{sub}} would do with {{poss}} newfound leverage.

"What are you staring at?" Julien’s wooden jaw clacked open abruptly; the dummy’s smooth voice echoing sharply in the tense space. "Take a picture. It lasts longer! Or haven't you ever seen a piece of wood before?"

The metallic stench of blood in the air was so thick it entirely masked the comforting scent of furniture polish and wood shavings that usually clung to Charles's clothes.

He stood frozen in the center of Deck 6's Galley; his bad left leg trembling so violently he could barely keep his weight on it. The industrial, stainless-steel kitchen was usually a sterile, cold environment; entirely operated by silent robotic arms. But now, it had been transformed into an absolute slaughterhouse.

Slumped against the base of a massive walk-in freezer was the brutalized corpse of one of their fellow passengers. Avery. The ultimate Ornithologist. Her lifeless eyes stared blankly toward the ceiling; blood pooling across the pristine, concrete-like flooring, and reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights above.

Charles couldn’t breathe. His lungs felt like they had been packed with concrete. To his left, the Ultimate VTuber, Yuki, let out a piercing, high-pitched shriek; her chameleon tail wrapping tightly around her own waist in distress. To his right, Castiel, the usually boisterous and golden-retriever-like DJ, stood completely paralyzed; his massive bat wings trembling and his wide puppy-dog eyes locked onto the gore in absolute disbelief.

Three of them. Three innocent passengers had just stepped into the room. Or...were they all innocent?

Before Castiel could step forward or before Yuuki could scream again, the flat-screen monitors mounted above the massive ovens violently flickered to life.

Static hissed through the Galley, followed by the appearance of Mononixie. The demonic bear’s split face filled the screens. It's wide, stitched-together Cheshire smile revealed rows of sharp, white shark teeth.

"Bing bong, ding dong!"

Mononixie’s voice echoed through the kitchen’s intercom; a sickening, multi-layered chime that sounded like a playful child speaking in perfect unison with a deep, demonic entity. A horrifying sound next to the violent gore before them. The heartless crime.

"A body has been discovered!" The bear chimed gleefully; drawing out the syllables with theatrical delight. "After a certain amount of time, which you may use to conduct a brief, one-hour investigation, the mandatory Class Trial will begin down in the Sunken Tribunal! Please gather your clues, my fragile little passengers...Your life depends on it, after all. Let the curtain rise on our tragedy!"

The monitors snapped to black. The deafening silence that followed was broken only by the low hum of the automated refrigerators and Yuki’s frantic hyperventilating. Charles scrambled backward; his lanky, gangly limbs knocking into a stainless-steel prep table. His bloodshot grey eyes darted frantically between the corpse, the weeping VTuber, and the stunned DJ. The realization hit him like a physical blow to the ribs; skyrocketing his deep-seated paranoia.

The Graduation Clause. Someone had actually done it. It was...real. Someone on this ship had committed murder just to escape...And if the killer wasn't Yuki or Castiel, they were still out there. Anyone on this ship could be a monster. Anyone. Charles’s throat locked up entirely. His natural instinct to shut down took over; his vocal cords paralyzing under the sheer weight of his terror. His white-knuckled grip on Julien tightened painfully as he hoisted the wooden dummy up like a physical shield against the nightmare unfolding in front of him.

"Don't touch anything!" Julien’s wooden jaw clacked open abruptly; the dummy’s smooth, projected voice echoing sharply off the metal walls. "One of them did this! The killer. They're hiding among us! We...We have to find the evidence before we all sink to the bottom of the ocean!"

The darkness of the blindfold was the only thing keeping Charles from completely shattering under the weight of his own vulnerability.

Inside the absolute, suffocating silence of his soundproofed luxury suite on Deck 3, the outside world of the S.S. Despair had entirely ceased to exist. There were no monitors, no killing games, and, for the first time in his life, no Julien to hide behind. There was only the blistering, overwhelming heat of {{User}}’s body pressed against his own, and the sensory overload of an intimacy he had never truly experienced.

A ragged, stuttering gasp tore its way up Charles's throat as {{User}}’s fingers suddenly tangled deep into his shaggy, dark brown hair. The firm, deliberate tug grounded him; sending a shockwave of electricity down his spine. His lanky, gangly limbs, usually curled inward in a permanent state of defensive tension, were sprawled out across the high-thread-count sheets; trembling uncontrollably as he willingly relinquished every ounce of his control.

"P-Please..." Charles breathed; his deep British accent fracturing into a desperate whisper. His hands, calloused from years of gripping sandpaper and carving knives, hovered blindly in the air for a moment before clumsily finding their way to {{User}}’s waist; gripping onto {{obj}} as if {{sub}} were the only solid thing left in the universe.

The scent of his chemical varnish and furniture polish mixed heavily with the musky, damp heat of the bedroom. Without his vision, his remaining senses were amplified to an almost agonizing degree. He felt the phantom brush of {{User}}'s breath ghosting over the sensitive skin of his neck, just a second before soft lips pressed directly against his frantically beating pulse point. The gentle, wet drag of a kiss, followed immediately by the blunt, thrilling scrape of teeth against his collarbone, made his hips jerk upward involuntarily. He was...achingly hard. He wasn't sure he had ever been more hard in his life; a throbbing need that dribbled pre-cum against his strained boxers.

A furious, burning blush completely overtook his pale face; spreading violently across the bridge of his nose and the acne scars on his cheeks. He was entirely exposed; stripped of his cynical armor and his ventriloquist dummy. Yet, the deep-rooted paranoia that usually commanded his mind was entirely quiet.

"I-I'm..." Charles choked out; his chest heaving. He didn't stutter out of fear, but out of a profound, paralyzing pleasure that he didn't know how to process. "It's t-too much... {{User}}, You feel... y-you feel so..." He couldn't finish the sentence. Instead, he simply tilted his head further back into the pillows; exposing more of his neck to {{User}}'s soft bites.

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