Chapter 43 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 43 — The motorcycle

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: The Father · Previous: Chapter 42 — Sharp-Elbows · Next: Chapter 44 — A different time instance · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

“Carl, I feel you’ve been asleep quite long enough,” Donut said as I groggily sat up.

Summary

Forty minutes out, dreaming of the river and the ogre's dying eyes. Donut, half-cleaned and talking too fast: sieve debuffs, the ring that is not his strength ring, Woozy, the corpses she thinks went over the edge — 'Oh' when he says the bodies and tokens are in his inventory. 'You punched a hole in the entire mountain!' The zombies did not vanish: turkeys, then pigs ('Have you ever heard a pig moan?'), Mongo put away. She looted every card: the Worm Fulcrum is a non-consumable special that takes a card slot, imbued with one of her spells before a fight and cast once — Clockwork Triplicate on Geraldo made three seals who fought each other until yelled at (three Shi Marias, three Jolas); and Golden Combo, a unique, reusable Combo. Then: 'I was thinking maybe I can do this last fight by myself […] I'm pretty much indestructible […] Or, you know, we can just skip the last fight and go see someplace new.' 'Donut, you'd rather us fight other crawlers than get the key?' Carl remembers Ferdinand and wanting to skip the Masquerade; 'if we had, even more people would've died.' How she knows: the motorcycle outside the trailer, the one with the dent from the fourth-floor prize carousel, the one that changed his face. 'You're always saying not to let them have the satisfaction, Carl. I'm trying to be more like you.' 'Don't try to be like me, Donut. You need to be like you.' 'Let's go say hi to dad.'

Characters

• Carl — Wakes with the ogre's eyes; names the man in the trailer.
• Princess Donut — Offers to fight alone, or not at all, to spare him.
• Mongo — Put away from the zombie pigs.

Locations

• Dallas County, Iowa — The cracked edge of the farm; girders like a skeletal hand.

Motifs

• Carl's family — The 1965 Panhead with the dent; 'dad.'
• T'Ghee totems — The Worm Fulcrum as a spell-holder; Golden Combo.
• Found family — 'Be like you.'
• The river in Carl's head — Swept away in a dream.
• The three phases — The key boss behind a vending machine.