Chapter 44 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 44 — A different time instance

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: The Father · Previous: Chapter 43 — The motorcycle · Next: Chapter 45 — Asher · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

Sometimes, things are exactly what they seem to be.

Summary

'Sometimes, things are exactly what they seem to be.' Zombie chickens and an undead pig on the road; Donut on recycled undead plots ('It's like a guy at a bar using the same annoying pickup line'), wanting to kill more dogs for her numbers — trying to distract him. A single-wide trailer in a junkyard: a three-tyred Ford, a rotted couch, a dishwasher, and a soda machine bearing a silhouette Carl knows — One Fight for Nine Tokens; leave and you need nine more; there are only nine. 'I thought it was a fatter version of you with a mustache […] The nose is quite identical.' 'Don't ever say that again.' The moustache grown for motorcycle weekends; Carl still shaves daily. Then he sees it is wrong: no snow ever melted here — weeds and flowers, dust on the truck, a bicycle sliced in half at the property line and its twin, same Spider Gwen stickers, against the neighbour's trailer; a rectangle about twenty feet round the trailer 'spliced in' from another season — 'Maybe sometime in the summer', Carl guesses. 'They want you to see something. Something specific they caught on their magic cameras.' Carl never had a bike; he chased the packs on foot and blamed the friendlessness on that. The Harley-Davidson 1965 FLH Electra Glide Panhead, Georgia plates expired years ago, the prized possession he once knocked over — lifted easily now, and it files under Shitty Transportation Items, not temporary: loot from here is kept. Along the trailer's flat end a row of tended flower pots with elegant, feminine handwriting: alliums, daffodils, asters, hyacinths — 'My dad would never have done that.' An invisible wall; the machine chimes. 'Put the tokens in, Donut.' The fight will not commence for forty-two minutes and thirty seconds; 'This area exists in a different time instance'; 'Physical interactions in this area act differently.' Carl strips the yard — washing machine, kids' bikes, the shed of soil and tools, half a minivan cut engine and all (the winter half absent), the Ford with current Iowa plates he cannot quite lift. 'There was other stuff here, in the far side of the yard. Stuff I didn't want to think about. Donut saw it, too, and said nothing.' 'You can just wait out here with me. You don't have to go in there.' 'I need to do this.' A cliff falls into the sea. He goes in and closes the door.

Characters

• Carl — Recognises the silhouette; loots his father's yard; goes in alone.
• Princess Donut — Sees the other stuff and says nothing.
• Mongo — Eyes on a zombie cow.

Locations

• The trailer — A single-wide in a junkyard, spliced in from summer, Georgia plates and a woman's flower pots.

Motifs

• Carl's family — The father, the Panhead, the bike he never had, the moustache.
• The ghosts of Earth — A different time instance; loot you keep; something the cameras caught.
• This is what we lost — Alliums, daffodils, asters, hyacinths in a woman's hand.
• The three phases — Nine tokens in a soda machine; forty-two minutes.