Motif · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Carl's family

'After a stint in the US Coast Guard, I ended up working as a marine tech.' What Carl says of himself in the first chapter, and what leaks out after: a mother who locked him in the basement with his father's Frogger machine whenever his father's friends came over, and who left; a heavily tattooed father who laughed at him, broke his slingshot and never replaced it, and drove on past a wrecked moving truck saying it was a shame.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 2 — Transfer station 83
• Chapter 4 — Limp Richard's books
• Chapter 15 — The Abyss
• Chapter 25 — Seven hundred hats

Progression

Dog tags were not worn in the Coast Guard (ch. 2); his father's books (ch. 4); the one day his father was physically abusive — a belt, and underwear soaked through (ch. 7); his mother's hand at the edge of the Grand Canyon on the way back from Texas, his father waiting in the car (ch. 15).