Chapter 72 of 99 · Book 8, A Parade of Horribles
Chapter 72 — Have You Ever Seen the Rain; Minus unmasked
Book: A Parade of Horribles · Part: Horrible One · Previous: Chapter 71 — Hungry Eyes: the goodbye; Bautista's tea · Next: Chapter 73 — The Garden of Deliverance; the ducts · Floor: Floor 10 — Don't Come in Last · Series: the series
Opening
Carl: Are we doing this now?
Summary
'You’re the one that’s going to be leading all of us to our deaths. You’ve been the face of all this.' Carl addresses the crowd, tea in hand: a salute to the escapers, the deal-takers and those hoping for the parade; the floor keeps 'trying to make us turn on one another', and heat seven will force it, 'But everyone here […] I consider you my brothers and sisters. My family.' One last piece of business, 'a message to the universe.' Elle: Bartholomew Eli McGibbons, forty-three years her husband, dead thirty-five — his ring on a chain at her neck — and his favourite song, Creedence's 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain?' on the boom box. She has a family again, and a fan club, and she turns on Linus: the Snow Cones 'knew an impostor the moment he stepped into the dungeon.' The real Linus's private essay, posted to the Posse server: 'I don’t think I ever really thought of them as real people until I understood how much they loved each other […] Especially my big brother. I miss him so much.' 'Fuck […] He never wrote me.' 'So you are the brother!' 'They just brought me in after he was already dead.' Donut's review: too much sex talk out loud, the tattoo wrong. Elle: the pretend-accident poison would have failed — everyone who drank has an immunity; 'Goddamned amateur.' Carl: that is how they know he has no outside contact; they waited days for the move. 'Who was your target?' Not Carl — 'He’s the best chance we got to survive this because he’s the one most likely to get everyone killed' — nor Donut, whose loss would make him too volatile too fast: 'the target was you,' Imani, and secondary 'pork chop over there.' 'I was just following orders.' Carl, hand through the illusion of his neck: 'We have been tempered in the fires of hell, and we are now past the point of being broken […] You and everyone who put us here has already lost. All that’s left is for the wreckage to settle in place.' Minus will wake in his small ship in orbit over Earth, where friends of theirs will be waiting. 'My Barry really did love that song.'
Characters
- Carl — 'We have been tempered in the fires of hell […] All that’s left is for the wreckage to settle in place.'
- Princess Donut — 'IT WAS THE PRINCESS POSSE MESSAGE BOARD'; the fan-fiction paragraph; 'You’re worse than Prepotente.'
- Elle McGibbons — Barry, forty-three years, dead thirty-five; 'This is our house now'; 'Goddamned amateur.'
- Linus and Minus — Unmasked: the real Linus's essay; 'He never wrote me'; targets Imani and Louis; back to his ship in orbit.
- Imani — 'Who was your target?' — her.
- Louis and Firas — Minus names him his secondary target: 'Pork chop over there.'
- Prepotente — 'My acting is top-notch!'
- Daniel Bautista — Pours Donut a bowl.
Locations
- Hungry Eyes Village — The salute; 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain?' on the boom box.
Motifs
- The tourists — The impostor the fan club caught in five minutes.
- The Syndicate — 'You keep trying to divide us.'
- Carl's family — 'I consider you my brothers and sisters.'
- 'You're not going to break me' — 'Past the point of being broken.'
- The Princess Posse — The Snow Cones and the Posse together.