Motif · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

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 7 — Duendes
• Chapter 13 — Milk and potatoes
• Chapter 26 — MaeMae
• Chapter 30 — Four drugs
• Chapter 34 — Family business
• Chapter 44 — A different time instance
• Chapter 45 — Asher
• Chapter 46 — The Reminiscence Hydra
• Chapter 47 — Operation Slut Stomp
• Chapter 53 — Flee rules
• Chapter 63 — The doggie door

Progression

The floor's memory is built to be personal. Carl thinks of his mother at the Grand Canyon when a spider's closed eye looks at him (ch. 26), of his father when Katia detoxes (ch. 30), of the motorcycle he once knocked over when he sees it in a yard (ch. 44). The trailer gives him the father small, a brother, and a stepmother who kills for the boy's sake (ch. 45); the hydra gives him everyone he knew as heads (ch. 46); Donut gives him Bea reading his messages and hiding Asher (ch. 47). He rides the Panhead, tapes a crayon airplane to his wall, plugs in the Centipede cabinet (ch. 49), and swears at the sky's opening to a brother he never met (ch. 72). 'I'm not scared of shadows anymore.'