FIFTH TRIAL

[rech]

[Today marked yet another death, and your good friend Randall is here to hype all of you guys up for this! As the room stretches, he speaks.]

You all know the spiel here, don’t you? Stretching room, I’m the Phantom, always my way, blah blah blah. We should get on with this. I want to see how it ends.

[A candle is lit and a voodoo doll placed out for Prince Kit. Your shitty ghost pirate friend is prepared.]

Trial start.

[TRIAL START!]

Comments

[hasit]

[Leia's here and she brought her fucking coffee and she's just sort of staring into space from her podium because at a certain point the grief becomes white noise in her head and it's easier to just power down that part of her brain than to give in to sadness and upset.]

Evidence. We all...we all know the drill.

[not_over_yet]

There was a bookcase atop the body--oddly, the books from it appear to have been removed first. The bookcase caused him no visible injury, and the absent books were carefully placed around the rest of the room. There was also a chair knocked over.

In the casino, there was a table apparently knocked over, with some playing cards scattered nearby. The table wasn't damaged at all though, and combined with the oddness of the bookcase, I'm wondering if the scenes were staged to some degree.

There was one book missing entirely--The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. Did anyone happen to have taken it back to their rooms at some point?

[stanbyme]

I didn’t know we had a library til today, so it wasn’t me.

[bayoublues]

Kit was tryin' to make his way through the books in the library...I think when I last saw him, he was readin' somethin' called On The Road? Maybe Kit took it.

[downtonabbeast]

[Beast is here and he didn't bring coffee but he brought the porg. If anyone needs therapy (and he wouldn't blame them), Monsieur is available to hug.

Beast of course looks as morose as usual. He pauses by Kit's spot for just a second before he finds his own. Every week this song and dance gets more difficult. There's so many empty spots.]

[not_over_yet]

Bit odd, taking a book back to one's rooms, and then going back for another without returning the first one. Possible though.

[doopdoll]

What? Were they not strong enough to just shove the whole shelve over? [WHO TAKES ALL THE BOOKS OFF FIRST?]

[bayoublues]

...Isn't that what libraries are for, though? Takin' out books?

[not_over_yet]

Usually one returns the book once finished with it.

[hasit]

[Ackbar is at Leia's heels, and after only a moment's hesitation he goes over and curls up atop one of Beast's feet. Therapy pig is here I guess!!]

[hasit]

No, they certainly were. Whoever it was...they were strong enough to knock over that wax statue of Boogie Man, or whatever he's called, in the Wax Museum. It's solid, and very heavy—I couldn't get it to budge easily.

[bayoublues]

[......]

Ohhhhhhhhh. I was wonderin' how libraries manage to stay in business.

[stanbyme]

Probably one of several reasons I’m not welcome in some libraries.

Or bookstores.

[not_over_yet]

Then why...? [ WTF BOOKCASE-PERSON, WERE YOU WORRIED ABOUT UNTIDINESS ]

[hasit]

[nice babe]

[hasit]

I don't know. But the other thing that worries me is...whoever it was also decapitated the statue of.

[Looks at Freddie. Looks away.]

Dr. Facilier.

[stanbyme]

Decapitated? Ain’t that a little...

[hasit]

A little much, yes.

[stanbyme]

Did it look purposeful? Like they were trying to make a callback?

[hasit]

No, it seemed more as if it was broken off. Whether on purpose or not, I couldn't say.

[nachosquire]

I mean, he could have finished the first one and then grabbed the other one?

[No one said anything about On The Road being missing, after all.]

[angelgoatdemon]

[The goat opens his mouth a little, then clears his throat. People may or may not notice there's now a dog collar on him!]

There were bruises on Kit's neck, caused by strangulation. Beside his body was a broken wand, snapped clean in two .

[The goat, he speaks like a man! He's clearly not used to this.]

[not_over_yet]

Also possible, though it does raise the question of how he removed said book from the library postmortem.

[not_over_yet]

[ ! ]

You can talk?

[ CLEARLY THE IMPORTANT QUESTION TO ASK ]

[hasit]

[Oh. Wow, who's going to talk next week, Monsieur les Gros Yeux?]

It's good to hear from you, Lekmet. The bruises...were they hand-shaped?