Chapter 45 of 74 · Book 6, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Chapter 45 — Asher

Book: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride · Part: The Father · Previous: Chapter 44 — A different time instance · Next: Chapter 46 — The Reminiscence Hydra · Floor: Floor 8 — The Ghosts of Earth · Series: the series

Opening

And then, there he was. Right there in the living room.

Summary

Carl's father lies in a hospital bed in the middle of a trailer's living room, twelve years on: 140 pounds, yellow-skinned, a shaking hand round the remote, cursing the Mariners. 'This is it? This is what I've been afraid of?' Behind the bed stands a boy of six with Carl's nose, eyes and hair, whom his father threatens to make move. Asher. A brother. Carl wonders whether he was brought here to be shown that they had taken something he did not know he had.

A woman walks through Donut with her clothes intact — this is a different time instance — crying and smoking. The curio holds a wedding photo from a dive bar, the bride heavily pregnant in a crown of alliums, and a recent photo of Asher, which Carl takes. He remembers Frank's words: 'Sometimes parents can cast a shadow so thick, you can drown in it.' The stepmother comes in, in scrubs, hollow-eyed, nothing like the laughing bride and yet a twin to Carl's mother, and his father demands his boost; the flower pots hide little glass bottles of morphine. Zev confirms that everything until the timer is a recording of what really happened that day.

Carl leans closer to his father's face than he has ever been and whispers: that he was a bully; that Carl's mother tried to kill him and in twenty minutes his wife will finish it; that Carl is not scared of shadows any more, having seen what is really out there; that his only regret is his father living long enough to inflict himself on Asher; that he does not deserve to have anybody watch him die. The stepmother arrives with his medicine, and as Carl goes to Asher's room she injects his father with a lethal dose of morphine.

In Asher's room Carl apologises to his brother for not knowing about him, hopes he will be asleep when it happens, and promises he will not be forgotten. He leaves a heart-shaped candy box of small treasures and takes the crayon drawings of storms destroying cities. There is no picture of Carl anywhere. The stepmother sends Asher to a neighbour's to play, with a birthday party promised for tomorrow.

Carl empties the master bedroom — cigarettes, unread court documents, a 9mm Glock and ammunition, the keys, a Centipede arcade cabinet — while his father's raspy last word sounds from the living room with no one there to hear it. He lights a cigarette and sets the allium drapes alight. 'If your intention was to hurt me, you fucked it all up. This was pretty much exactly what I needed to see.' Donut tells him to get the cigarette out of his mouth; it tastes old and wrong. First they are going to watch the trailer burn.

Characters

• Carl — Closer to his father's face than ever; whispers the truth; burns the trailer.
• Carl's father — Dying in a hospital bed in the living room, bullying a six-year-old, murdered by morphine.
• Asher — Carl's brother, six, afraid of storms, hoping for a bike.
• Tami-Lynn — A nurse with a pitbull tattoo and morphine in the alliums.
• Princess Donut — Narrates the yard; 'SHE'S LIKE KATIA'S AGE'
• Zev — 'A recording of what really happened that day.'
• Frank Q and Maggie My — The shadow you can drown in.

Locations

• The trailer — A hospital bed in a living room; a boy's room; a master bedroom stripped bare.

Motifs

• Carl's family — The father seen at last, small; a brother never known; a mother who tried too.
• This is what we lost — 'You won't be forgotten. Not ever.'
• The ghosts of Earth — A recording, cameras that saw everything, a murder spliced in for one viewer.
• The show — 'The idiots running this shitshow think I'm going to buckle.'