Iris's present turned out to be a TV, which had fallen on Misery first. The TV was cracked, but it blinked to life for a moment.

"In recent news, the Gloomsville Hospital was destroyed in a fire," it said. Then the already fuzzy picture turned to static and the TV died.

"This is not good, not good at all," Scaredy Bat whimpered. "We must be most careful!"

"It's fine," Misery said. "Well, I mean, no less fine than before. I still have enough first-aid kits to last us all through the day. I can go get a few so we'll have them here…" She stood up, but didn't walk three steps before tripping over her bandages. (She now strongly resembled a mummy.)

"On second thought… maybe someone else should do it," she said.

"I'll get them," Ruby volunteered.

Ruby went down the rickety stairs to Misery's room. She'd never understood why Misery chose to sleep on a bed of nails, but now was not the time to ponder this. She walked straight to the closet, which Misery kept stocked full of first-aid kits, and opened the door.

Ruby stared in disbelief. There was nothing but a gaping hole where the floor of the closet had been. Of course, this meant all six hundred of Misery's first-aid kits were gone. Ruby ran upstairs to tell the others.

"I have some bad news," she said.

They all looked alarmed, but none more than Misery and Scaredy Bat.

"In all the time I've known Ruby," Misery said to no one in particular, "I have never, not once, heard her say that. If Ruby says it's bad news… It must be really, really, really, extremely, very terrible!"

Scaredy Bat said nothing. He just clung to Doom Kitty, shaking so hard Doom would have thought there was an earthquake if she didn't know better.

"Misery, your closet is…" Ruby began. "Oh, I may as well get to the point. All your first-aid kits are gone."

Misery gasped. "No- that's not possible. I- That closet is supposed to be indestructible! You- must have seen it wrong. It's not possible. Let me look." She sounded more panicked than any of them had ever heard her before.

So she went downstairs to her room. Fell downstairs to her room, really. The others followed. When she opened her closet door, she found that Ruby was right. Her closet was just a doorway to a bottomless abyss, and the first-aid kits were all gone. She could do nothing but stare at the emptiness.

"Misery! It's been ten minutes!" Ruby's voice finally snapped Misery out of her trance. She closed the door and slumped down on the floor.

"They're… gone…" she said in a voice that scared everyone a little. It was quiet, distant, and a bit more high-pitched than usual, as if she were about to cry. Most of all, it sounded empty.

"It's okay, Misery," Ruby said, though she wasn't sure she meant it.

"There's…. nothing we can do," Misery said. "Nothing…. It's all over."

"Over? Over?" Scaredy Bat repeated, terrified.

"There's nothing left to do… There's just… nothing left…"

"Misery, it'll be okay. We just have to be careful, is all," Ruby said, as cheerily as she could manage.

"It doesn't matter… how careful we are. Things are going to happen… and now there's nothing we can do."

"Misery-"

"Don't."

"Misery, it's not over," Iris tried. "Life is an adventure! This kind of thing happens in movies all the time, and the heroes always make it through!"

"But I'm not a hero, Iris. I'm just me. Sure, the main characters always get a happy ending… But even though we're the main characters of our own story, most of the time, you get stuck with the story that no one tells. And the story no one tells doesn't need a happy ending." A tear ran down her cheek.

No one, not even Ruby, knew what to say to that.

Misery shakily stood up. "I am leaving," she said in the same tearful, empty voice. "Thank you for being such good friends." She started upstairs, but Ruby stopped her.

"Let's not go back to this again. We're still sticking by you no matter what."

"But Ruby…" Misery said. "If I stay here, well, you're going to die. If not, it'll hopefully just be me."

"Misery, we're not going to die. No one is. And we're not leaving you, either. Or letting you leave us."

"You don't understand, Ruby. Even if I were to stay here, it's not like you'd be saving me. It's still going to happen. Only it'll be to you, too. It would make me happiest just to know you're safe."

"Misery-"

"The world's probably better off without me anyway," she said to herself.