"Okay, okay, I think this one's on me," Colin Mochrie apologized as he burst through the wall of football players. "Maybe genre wasn't the problem. Maybe it was setting!"
Jon let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. A second later and there would have been a lot of blood spilling onto the grass.
"I know," everyone turned to look at Colin in rapt attention. "Do it again, but this time you're on a cruise ship! Yeah, that's the ticket!"
The world blinked around Jon once again, and suddenly he could feel a cool wind on his face. He was sitting on a lounger, on the deck of a cruise ship, and the box with his stone was once again on his lap. Karyn was laying in the lounger just beside him. And she was wearing a cheerleader's uniform.
Jon took a breath. Now that he wasn't blinded by fear, he could think a little bit about what had been happening.
Each iteration of the scene had been wildly different, but each one hit the same three beats: Jon shows Karyn the stone, they see Sarah, and Karyn makes a wish. Maybe those were three things that he couldn't change. Maybe he had to find a way to navigate out of this loop while working within those constraints.
That would certainly be easier to do on a cruise ship than it was in a horror film. But Karyn's previous wish had obviously carried over, like all the others. Who would Jon find sitting next to him when she finally said--
"Hey, Jon-boy! How's it going? Glad we're still on break?"
