Chapter 75 of 99 · Book 8, A Parade of Horribles

Chapter 75 — Archie's boy; Imani's family; the Feast Hive

Book: A Parade of Horribles · Part: Horrible One · Previous: Chapter 74 — Human shells; Ad Infinitum · Next: Chapter 76 — Apartment 231; the peach beer · Floor: Floor 10 — Don't Come in Last · Series: the series

Opening

The fifth and fourth floors of the apartment were much the same.

Summary

The fifth: Annabeth on the toilet with her phone screams and stays; the gate is the kitchen-sink drain; Find Traps marks a freeze-trap gate in the hall. The fourth is Archie Mu's — the ladybug man, now in the Cabaret — with Mackenzie, Scottish, screaming on a kitchen chair, a wedding photo with her eyes X'd and Archie's not, and a boy, Ollie, in every photo un-X'd; the gate under the boy's bed; a lost action figure the size of a wall. She phones: 'Archie, please pick up […] There was an animal in here […] Ollie. Where’s Ollie?' 'Mommy. What’s […] what’s wrong with your eyes?' Gate Four. Donut: Archie is divorced and his wife hates him; he went in with his son, Oliver, who disappeared — this is the un-divorced version, and the simulations are being broken by the racers. Carl: X'd eyes mean dead; the boy's photos are clean, so his child lives. Mackenzie tears at her stitches, gagging, blood down her face as the boy huddles. Louis: Britney blew a man's head off on the sixth and a thousand beetles poured out; a hole in the stairwell door has a queue; he follows Chris and the Erins' big rig. Apartment 310: eight people shouting round a heavyset man in a Detroit Lions shirt convulsing with foam at his mouth, two men with PlayStation controllers watching, an older woman pacing and crying, children whimpering, Gucci the Maltese barking, marijuana thick — all X'd. 'Girl. Where are you? Imani!' Imani enters, thinner, haggard, ringed eyes, barely reacting: 'Did anyone call 911?' Carl warns Elle. The gate is on a barred window over snow and a driveway; a burned house across the street. 'You said you were done with this bullshit!' Deontay hurls the controller. This Imani picks up Gucci — un-X'd — and sees the eyes for the first time; 'Mom, your eyes.' 'Not Imani. She’s not going to like it, but she’ll be okay.' Behind them everyone rips at their faces; the mother's body freezes and her designator changes: Ruptured Feast Hive — beetles half the truck's size pour from the peeled hole, then from eyes and mouth, 'just coming and coming and coming'; Imani slams a bedroom door with the dog. Gate Five. A beetle the size of a bear, purple-black with a familiar yellow glow: Sacred Feaster Scarab Beetle, Level 50, invulnerable. The AI: 'sometimes people make mistakes. Sue me.' These are bugs plucked from Khepri's feast table in Club Vanquisher; the shells were to break like piñatas as the racers broke their loops, the beetles were to flow to the roof and form the Sacred Guardian of the Immortal Tem, a hundred-foot gate boss — but the gods are 'doing shit I can’t control'; the boob-armour woman has killed or subjugated everything on the twelfth except 'the weird-ass, bug-headed Khepri dude', who did something the AI will not explain; 'this death-cult bullshit literally broke the game'. The floor boss is cancelled; the bugs will now try to kill them, still invulnerable. They swarm the window; Nester drops them off the wall — and half take wing. '… fly?'

Characters

• Carl — 'You said you were done with this bullshit!'; reads X'd eyes as the dead.
• Princess Donut — 'Do you think she’s going to freak out? I mean, the real one?'
• Pontiff — Spider legs past the seizing man.
• Nester — Calls the utility room below.
• Imani — Apartment 310: her family, a man seizing whom Donut takes for her father, a haggard her; 'Not Imani. She’s not going to like it, but she’ll be okay.'
• Elle McGibbons — Warned ahead.
• Louis and Firas — Beetles from a head Britney blew off.
• Britney Proskurina — A head off on the sixth.
• Chris — His big rig followed.
• The Erins — In the rig.
• Archie Mu — The un-divorced what-if: Mackenzie and Ollie.
• The System AI — 'Sometimes people make mistakes. Sue me.'
• Khepri — Did something the AI will not explain; the death cult broke the game.

Locations

• The L'Engle Building — Annabeth on the toilet; Archie's boy's room; a Ruptured Feast Hive.

Motifs

• Human Shells — Shells break into Feast Hives of invulnerable scarabs.
• The AI's confessions — The Sacred Guardian of the Immortal Tem cancelled.
• The gods — 'These fucking gods are doing shit I don’t like.'