Chapter 40 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 40 — The Book of Voodoo

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: The Father · Previous: Chapter 39 — Lazarus-A-Bang-Bang · Next: Chapter 41 — Jola the Yule Cat · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

We had to hike a good ways to the saferoom, which was within a small, side-of-the-road shr

Summary

A shrimp-shack saferoom. The chat's cheating attempts against frozen deckmasters: traps and structures teleport away when combat starts, crawlers inside the ring are knocked cold; Tserendolgor's sling sniper lost his targeting and his target stepped a metre left, then he killed him anyway — 'desperately trying to fix how unbalanced the card game was'. The guild: strippers and changeling children asleep in a heap around a silent Encino Man, water-balloon latex everywhere, the cleaner bot whining in its corner, Mongo curling gore-covered into the pile. In Donut's room, energy gone: the diving-suit fight would have smooshed Carl — 'There's so many cards […] It's not fair'; 'What happens if you die? What would I do? And if something happened to me, what would Mongo do?'; 'I don't like being in charge of the deck'; 'We're already losing Katia no matter what happens, and nobody is talking about it […] Sometimes when I think things like that, I can't breathe.' A comment scrolls past — 'I'm going to drop this stupid feed if she keeps being so whiny' — and Carl switches the board off, pushes aside the photo of Bea and Brad, lights the candle: an old-fashioned nap in a chair. He cannot sleep: the river, always; Mordecai's baggage; Odette's guilt; Frank Q and the ring and being crushed; 'the man I knew I’d find up there'; 'You will not break me. Fuck you all.' Forty minutes; Samantha threatening the social board ('Let me read it'); 'You talk in your sleep.' Achievements: Smush 12 (+3 that will not show past 14); 'Cascadia's Turquoise Taco!' — the floor's design took millions of hours, and Cascadia, 'the recently divorced lead engineer and the current executive producer', is 'right there, man', so most of you monkeys ending card fights before a draw is a Gold Prepotente Box; 'Smeat!' for minion bodyguards — 'Spreadable Meat. The raw materials used to lubricate the forward momentum of the galaxy's inevitable downfall' — a Silver Spam Box of five Scrolls of Build Trench (WWI depth, combinable into sleeping quarters). Carl on the card game: 'a half-assed YuGiOh! ripoff duct-taped together by someone on an Adderall bender'; his old argument with Sam about Magic. The Prepotente box, a gold goat head that screams open at the brain: The Filthy Little Crawler's Book of Voodoo — untradeable, indestructible, returns if dropped; a convention voodoo board in book form, names added only when near another owner, messages under their name private, under your own broadcast; 'Not because it can secretly be used for any sort of nefarious purpose which will become clear later, so just get that out of your head this instant, mister.' Nearly everyone got one. 'You have bedhead, Donut.' 'THIS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF CHATTING BY LEAVING POST-ITS ON ONE'S LOCKER IN HIGH SCHOOL […] I ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT USE THIS.' 'Interesting.' Daylight: the mountain is mud, sea below and snowmelt above; the patch's Climb benefit against Donut's tips. Imani's seventh fled and the eighth stays frozen — fights are in order; Katia swapped for a kting voar; Li Jun's team still testing; Chris found the boss area locked behind a vending machine that eats nine tokens. Louis wants Christmas presents — Carl: 'It’s like early March or something'; Carl's foot-tall grocery tree, gnawed bare. 'Let's make sure we all get our keys first.'

Characters

• Princess Donut — 'I can't breathe'; refuses the book; gasps at presents.
• Carl — Turns the board off; lights the candle; cannot sleep for the river.
• Samantha — Threatening a screen's mother.
• Mordecai — In the crafting room, as always now.
• Cascadia — Divorced, executive producer and, in the AI's achievement text, 'right there'
• Louis and Firas — Wants a Christmas.
• Imani — Chasing a fled deckmaster through Detroit.
• Chris — Finds the token vending machine.
• Frank Q and Maggie My — Remembered: crushed by it all.

Locations

• The Royal Palace of Princess Donut — A shrimp shack; a guild floor of sleeping strippers and children.
• The Florida Keys — The mud mountain in daylight.

Motifs

• The Filthy Little Crawler's Book of Voodoo — Given to nearly everyone; 'nefarious purpose […] clear later.'
• The show — A comment on Donut's fear; feeds dropped for whining.
• The river in Carl's head — Awake with it, always.
• Crawler on crawler — 'The man I knew I'd find up there.'
• T'Ghee totems — The game's balance mocked; Cascadia's millions of hours.
• Loneliness — Losing Katia and nobody saying so.
• The ghosts of Earth — Christmas that is March; a gnawed tree.
• The three phases — Fights in order; a fled seventh; the vending machine.