Chapters 241, 242, and 243 (Patreon)

Apologies in advance. This whole scene is really four chapters, which means this ends with a fucked up cliffhanger. I'm not quite finished with 244, and I wanted to make certain you got something before the end of the month. I have an additional note about these chapters at the end.

~

Chapter 241

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

I groaned. I’d been dreaming. Dreaming of the river, of me being swept away. Of those eyes. The eyes of the ogre as she died.

“How long was I out?”

Donut sat next to me, and she was completely covered in gore, but I could see she’d successfully cleaned off half her head which meant I’d been out a while. She continued to furiously clean herself.

“Forty minutes! Really, Carl. You’re always getting knocked out. You’re really good at killing things, but you’re only barely competent at not getting yourself killed. Who would’ve thought getting turned into a sieve comes with such a nasty set of debuffs? You let that porcupine lady stick her points in your eyeballs! And where did you get that ring? It’s keeping most of the debuffs at bay, but I didn’t realize it wasn’t your strength ring until I saw it glowing. No, no, don’t stand up yet. My goodness. You still have Woozy. I don’t have the tokens, and the bodies tumbled off the edge, which means you need to go diving into the ocean to find the corpses. They’re probably buried, too. So you need to get moving, but first we have to make sure that Woozy debuff goes away first. I can’t have you passing out while you’re submerged. Honestly, though. I’m afraid the bodies might be hopelessly buried. If so, that means we’ll fail the quest to get the key.”

I could still taste the ogre on my lips. Those eyes. Holy shit. Where had I seen her before?

I coughed. “I have the bodies of both of them in my inventory. They have the tokens on them, but not their cards. Holy crap, that escalated quickly. I’m going to need a minute.”

“You have the tokens already? Oh.” She sounded almost disappointed.

We sat at the edge of the farm, along the cracked asphalt. The majority of the commercial barn had tumbled off the edge, but some of the supports of the structure remained, metal girders hanging off the edge of the ever-crumbling cliff like a clawed, skeletal hand. I blinked as I stared off at the sight.

“Anyway, Carl. It escalated because you did that superhero jump with your backpatch skill. You punched a hole in the entire mountain! Really, Carl. It was a little over the top. We’re lucky Mongo didn’t get bitten by a zombie turkey. They, by the way, didn’t go away, so we have to be careful. They’ve gotten into the pigs, and now there’s a bunch of zombie farm animals roaming everywhere. Have you ever heard a pig moan? It’s quite distressing. I had to put Mongo away. Now, wipe yourself off. You look like you were dragged face-first through a pile of wet, disgusting corpses.”

“I was.”

“Maybe so, but there’s no reason to look like it. I suppose you should give me the tokens.” I blinked over at Donut, who was still furiously cleaning herself. “Oh, and don’t worry about the cards. Not only did I get them, but I made some changes to our deck. They were just floating there at the edge, and I grabbed them all. Miss Sharp Elbows had a lot of cards, including some of our old favorites. No time to get into the details, but we have a new totem in the deck.”

Donut was acting odd. She was being strangely... stiff, matter-of-fact, talking faster than usual. It wasn’t so much what she was saying as how she was saying it. Something was wrong.

“Wait, what? A new totem? Who’d you get rid of?”

“Nobody! Remember that magical staff card? The one that ogre lady used to turn the dead turkeys all into zombies? That was in her deck. It’s not consumable even though it’s a special card, but either way it doesn’t take up a totem slot, though it does take up a card slot while it’s active. I have to imbue it with one of my spells before we start the fight, and if I do, I can cast that spell, but I can only do it once. The staff itself works like a totem, and it looks different depending on what spell it’s holding.”

“That’s good,” I said. “If you use Clockwork Triplicate, you can make three Shi Marias or three Jolas.”

“That’s what I was thinking. I’ve already set it up, and it works. I had to have a quick fight with a group of zombie turkeys while you were out, and I summoned my deck and tried it out. I used it on Geraldo, and they all started fighting each other until I yelled at them. But it worked!”

“Good, good.” My head was starting to clear. “What else did you get?”

“We got another combo card, but it’s a unique! Isn’t that great? It works the same way as last time, but it’s not consumable, so we can do it over and over! Imagine the possibilities!”

“Donut,” I said, finally sitting up. “Why are you talking like...”

“Anyway,” she said, cutting me off. “I was thinking maybe I can do this last fight by myself. With those new cards, I’m pretty much indestructible.”

I blinked. “Is that a joke?”

“Not even a little bit. Look, Carl. The fight is right over there. There’s a vending machine, and I pop the tokens in, the trailer opens up, and I go inside. I have a short, quick, easy fight, and I’ll be right back out with the key. It’ll be nothing. You just sit here are rest.”

I just looked at her, not saying anything.

“Or, you know,” she continued, “we can just skip the last fight and go see someplace new for the last part of the...” She trailed off.

“Donut, you’d rather us fight other crawlers than get the key?”

“I...” She paused, and she deflated. “No, I suppose not.”

I took a breath. I was finally starting to realize what was going on. I held out my arm, and she jumped into my lap.

“Donut, do you remember on the last floor when you first saw it was Ferdinand, and I freaked out? I wanted nothing more than to skip the Butcher’s Masquerade and just go down the stairs.”

“I do remember, Carl. I also remember you later saying you wished you had gone down the stairs.”

I nodded. “I do wish we’d figured out a way to avoid that last fight. But if we had, even more people would’ve died.” I paused as she leaned into my chest. She looked up at me, and her face took up all of my vision. “How do you know who it is, anyway?”

She blinked a few times. “Uh, well, it’s two things, really. The first you’ll have to see for yourself. But the second is the motorcycle. It’s the same one you were offered in the prize carousel on the fourth floor. It has that big dent in it. I remember how it affected you when you saw it. You didn’t say anything at the time, but I knew you recognized it. And now that same motorcycle is sitting outside of that trailer over there, and I just know he’s going to be in there. You’re always saying not to let them have the satisfaction, Carl. I’m trying to be more like you.”

I pulled Donut into a tight hug. “Thank you,” I said.

I mentally prepared myself, and I stood all the way up as Donut transferred to my shoulder. “You know what? It’s okay. They’re doing this to everybody. We have to get it over with. And don’t try to be like me, Donut. You need to be like you.”

Donut sighed as she settled onto my shoulder. “I suppose you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Good girl. Now come on. Let’s go say hi to dad.”

Chapter 242

Sometimes, things are exactly what they seem to be.

Sometimes, there are no surprises, and despite that, despite your intention to gird yourself against what’s about to come, it still hits you with the force of a kick to the stomach.

I had to take out a zombie turkey, multiple zombie chickens, and an undead pig as we walked up the street. The entire north side of the floating chunk of Iowa was covered with the monsters. Donut said they were sliding off the edge and falling to the ocean far below. I knew some were probably landing on the thin strip of Florida also, meaning we’d likely be dealing with more zombies later, no matter what happened today. Donut wouldn’t stop bitching about them.

“They really need to stop recycling plot lines,” Donut was saying as we walked up to the trailer. “What is with the undead hordes? We had the ghouls during the Iron Tangle, those undead body part monsters at the end of the last floor, not to mention all the vampire forest creatures, oh, oh, and the ghommid village. That was just a few days ago! And now we have zombie farm animals? I mean, really. Whomever is coming up with this crap needs a new trick. It’s like a guy at a bar using the same annoying pickup line over and over. It didn’t work the first time, so why keep trying it? It’s pitiful, really.”

“You shouldn’t complain about things we can easily beat, Donut. Especially not out loud.”

“I know, I know, Carl, but it’s not like they don’t know this already. The posse loves speculating on cool monsters we should fight, and they’re starting to get tired of the undead things. I want to kill more dogs. Do you know how long it’s been since I killed a dog? It’s been ages. My numbers are always great after I kill a dog.”

She was trying to distract me. I was formulating a response when I saw it, and the reality of what was about to happen finally hit me.

“Fuck me,” I said, seeing the motorcycle.

It was sitting right there in the yard of the dilapidated, single-wide trailer. It wasn’t the only thing out here. The whole place was a junkyard. There was a broken-down Ford truck with only three tires, a rotted couch, an old dishwasher, plus what looked like a regular, old-school soda vending machine. The soda machine was covered with weeds and dirt like everything else in the yard. Instead of a logo for Coke or Pepsi, the machine featured the profile silhouette of a man I immediately recognized. Under the image were the words One Fight for Nine Tokens.

Under it was an asterisks mark with tiny letters that read: Warning. Once activated, you may leave the zone, but if you do, you will need to deposit nine more tokens to reactivate. And under that, in even smaller letters was: By the way, there are only nine tokens available in this whole area. So if you leave, you’re pretty much fucked.

“I thought it was a fatter version of you with a mustache until I saw the motorcycle,” Donut said. “It’s only a shadow, but he looks just like you, Carl. The nose is quite identical. It’s eerie, really.”

I felt as if I couldn’t breathe, and I was doing my best to hide it. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“Does he really have a mustache? Did he work in porn? It’s no wonder you didn’t have any pictures of him.”

“Sometimes,” I said. “To the mustache part, not the porn. Whenever he was getting ready to go out on one of his motorcycle weekend trips, he’d grow it out.” I instinctively reached up and grabbed my own face, which I still shaved every day. “He could grow one out really fast.”

“Well, it doesn’t appear he’s ridden that thing in a long time,” Donut said, looking over the dirty motorcycle.

“You know what,” I said, looking over the yard. My eyes focused on the green weeds growing up around the tires of the motorcycle. At the flowers. “You’re right. This is wrong. All of this is wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

I gestured behind me. “Everything here was covered in snow just a few hours ago. It melted because it was transferred here to Florida. This trailer and the entire yard is different. Look at the grass. Look at all the dust on the truck and motorcycle.”

“Hey,” Donut said. “You’re right! They’re cheating! And this is different than the zombie turkey barn. That had snow on it! And look over there, where the yard ends!”

I looked at where she was pointing, and there was a pile of kids’ bicycles in the overgrown yard adjoining the neighboring trailer. One of the bikes was cut in half. The half that had been in the neighbor’s yard was gone, and the front half remained in the yard here, sliced off like it had been cut with a precision laser. I looked over the bikes, remembering. When I was a kid, everyone would roam the neighborhood in packs, but I never had a bike, and I’d chase after them on foot, always getting left behind. I never had friends, not lasting ones. I always blamed not having a bike.

I looked over at the neighboring trailer, and one of the same bikes from the pile was leaned up against the side of the wall. It was literally the exact same bike, complete with the same pink and white Spider Gwen stickers.

“This yard and trailer is not from Christmas. They are cheating. This little spot is from a different time. Earlier, but not by much. Maybe sometime in the summer. It’s spliced in.”

An ominous feeling washed over me. Why would they do that?

It’s because they want you to see something. Something specific they caught on their magic cameras.

I walked over and rubbed my hand across the dirty and cracked leather seat of the motorcycle. The bike had Georgia plates that’d expired years before. I knew nothing about these things, but I did know there was something special about this one. It was a collector’s item and if it had been in good condition, it’d be worth a lot of money. It was a Harley-Davidson 1965 FLH Electra Glide Panhead. I didn’t know what any of that meant, but I knew this was the last year of some type of configuration and the first year of something else. He’d never shut up about it. This damn thing was his prized possession.

I reached down and picked up the motorcycle. I lifted it easily. I remembered that day I’d accidentally knocked it over. How heavy it had been. I pulled it into my inventory.

To my surprise, it didn’t stick itself in the temporary category like everything else from this floor. It went into the same spot as the two pieces of the royal chariot, the bicycles, the kayak, and a few others odds and ends. Shitty Transportation Items.

“If we loot stuff from here, I think we get to keep it,” I said.

I looked around the yard again, this time more carefully. There was a clear line where the ground changed, where this little section had been added in. It was a rectangle about twenty feet all around the trailer, stopping a few feet into the yard of each of the neighbors. There were other things cut in half. A rake. What looked like a part of a fallen-over fence, though both halves remained. The winter half had shifted an inch over to the side.

My eyes caught a line of flower pots dotting one clean side of the yard, up against the south, flat end of the trailer. The first, biggest pot contained purple, round clusters of flowers, and they were carefully potted and taken care of. There were little signs in each pot, but I couldn’t read them from here. My dad would never have done that. I swallowed at the implication. I took a step forward to exam them further, but I hit an invisible wall, smushing my face against nothing. Behind me, the vending machine made a chime.

“Put the tokens in, Donut. And let Mongo out.”

~

Warning: The fight will not commence for forty-two minutes and thirty seconds.

A countdown timer appeared in my interface.

Warning: This area exists in a different time instance than the remainder of this floor.

Warning: Physical interactions in this area act differently than other locations on this floor.

What the hell does that mean?

The warnings came the moment I touched the flimsy door on the side of the trailer. I’d cleaned out the yard, taking everything I could pick up, including the old washing machine, several kids’ bikes of various sizes, and all the pieces of rusty crap. I couldn’t quite lift the Ford truck all the way, though I felt as if I should be able to. I wished we had more time. I did manage to lift one end, and I thought if I could possibly jack it up, I might be able to get under it and lift it long enough to take it. This one had Iowa plates, and the registration was surprisingly up-to-date, despite the missing tire. If we had more time, I would’ve stripped the whole vehicle clean, including the engine to give to Katia.

The flower pots were all labeled with the type of flowers they were. The handwriting was elegant and feminine. The purple flowers in the big pot that’d caught my eye were called alliums. There were daffodils, asters, hyacinths, and several others. Next to it was a well-organized shed filled with gardening supplies and bags of soil. I took them all.

Also on the back side of the trailer was another surprise. Half of an old minivan sitting in a parking spot. It was cut down the middle, front to back, and it was leaned over, fluid spilled all around it. The winter half wasn’t there at all. The engine was cut right in half. I tried picking the whole thing up, and crap started falling off of it. I took it all, but it was mostly junk.

Donut remained silent on my shoulder while I did all this, though she did jump down and land upon Mongo as I took all the minivan pieces. The dinosaur had eyes on what looked like a zombie cow wandering down the street. The zombie was leaving us alone, and we warned Mongo against chasing after it. If he left the yard, he wouldn’t be allowed back in.

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.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I reached up and touched the door sitting there next to the carport, and that was when I received the warnings.

“What?” Donut asked. “Why is there a timer? Carl, what does that mean?”

A strange numbness had fallen over me. It was like I was watching this all play out on a screen, and it wasn’t really happening. “There’s a reason they made it from a different time, Donut. They want us to watch something. We can’t leave, so we might as well get it over with.”

“But what does that last warning mean?”

“Let’s find out. You stay back until I call you in.”

“Carl?”

“Yeah.”

“You can just wait out here with me. You don’t have to go in there.”

“I know. Thank you. But I need to do this. You wait, okay?”

Donut hesitated. “Okay, Carl.”

The ground rumbled as a distant cliff crumbled into the ocean far below.

I entered the house, and I closed the door behind me.

Chapter 243

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

“Holy shit,” I muttered.

It was him. My father. I hadn’t seen him in over twelve years, not since that day, and there he was.

There’s this scent one associates with their parents. You don’t even think about it until you’ve been away for so long, and it returns, dragging unwelcome memories with it, shoving them at you all at once. That scent was here, burned into the thin walls. I don’t even know what that smell was. It was a strange, but subtle musk that only clung to him. It was here, in this trailer, but it wasn’t alone. It was faint, mixed with the antiseptic scent of a dying man.

He was in a hospital bed, which was parked right there in the middle of the room. There was nobody in here except him. There weren’t any monitors or diodes or anything I’d normally associate with someone in such a state, with the exception of a single IV bag that dangled off a pole attached to the bed. The saline bag was almost done, and the clear tube snaked into his arm. The man was swallowed by that large bed. He was awake, back elevated, slitted eyes fixed on the television screen, which was showing a baseball game.

The room had obviously been recently rearranged for this setup. The couch was pushed all the way to the side up against an old, cheap entertainment console with the television facing the bed. A small dinette table was on its sides, legs folded in with four chairs stacked up against it near the refrigerator, to make room.

All the windows had purple curtains featuring that same flower upon them. Alliums.

My dad had always been a big guy, though I’d eventually grow to be much bigger than him. Still, when I remembered him, he was always huge, larger than life. The silhouette outside on that stupid vending machine. Not this. Not this shell.

This is it? This is what I’ve been afraid of?

He was sick. He was dying. The man weighed maybe 140 pounds, easily 80 pounds lighter than he’d been at his prime. His hair, which he’d always dyed brown, was mostly gone, now just gray, sickly wisps upon his head. His skin had taken on a deep, yellow tone and was mottled with spots.

Twelve years. It looked as if it had been forty.

Still, the man was awake. Lucid, watching the television. It was a Seattle Mariners game, and they were playing Baltimore. It was the sixth inning, and Seattle was getting stomped. My father’s eyes darted back and forth as he watched. I’d seen that look so many times before. His hand clutched onto the remote, curled in the same way he used to hold a bottle of beer as he watched. There were a row of bandaids on the back of his yellow hand. His skin looked almost translucent, somehow plastic, like it would crinkle if I touched it.

He hadn’t shaven in some time, and a patchy, bone-white beard had formed over his gaunt face.

“You pussy,” he said to the television screen. “You goddamn, worthless pussies. Pathetic.” He lifted the remote up and attempted to shut off the screen, but the remote slipped from his grip. He tried again, and this time he managed to shut it off. His hands shook.

He just sat there for a moment in the silence, breathing heavily.

Donut: CARL ARE YOU OKAY.

Carl. Yes. Give me a few minutes.

I couldn’t look away. What had happened? How’d he get here to Iowa? I had so many questions.

“Are you just gonna sit there and stare at me, or are you gonna ask what you wanna ask?”

I almost jumped from my skin.

But then, I saw who he was really talking to.

The small boy appeared, head emerging from around the hallway that led to the back bedrooms. Maybe six years old.

Goddamnit, I thought. God fucking damnit. I’d been holding out hope until that moment. But the instant I saw him, I knew. There were toys out there, in the yard. I was hoping maybe my father had met a woman who already had children.

But no. That nose. Those eyes. That hair. My mom always complained my dad’s genes were so dominant, anyone remotely related to him was doomed to look just like him. The boy took one hesitant step into the room, but he remained behind the hospital bed, hidden so my father couldn’t turn and look directly upon him. I couldn’t take my eyes off the boy. The poor kid looked as if we was going to bolt at any moment.

“You turned off the TV,” the boy said. “Can I watch now?”

“No. I need to rest. But go get me my cigarettes.”

The boy stood there, frozen.

Move, or I’ll make you move, boy.

“Move, or I’ll make you move, boy.”

“I... I don’t know where they are. Mommy took them. You’re not allowed.”

“Tell your mother I want to talk to her.”

“She went next door.”

“Go into my room. Open the bottom dresser drawer on the left. There’s a pack there. Bring it.”

The boy didn’t answer. He turned and ran away into the dark hallway.

“Asher! Get back here you little shit!”

Asher, I thought. His name is Asher.

Donut: CARL, CARL A LADY JUST APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE. SHE’S IN THE YARD. SHE WALKED THROUGH ME, AND HER CLOTHES DIDN’T GO AWAY. DO YOU THINK THAT’S WHAT THE WARNING MEANT? I THINK SHE’S WORKING ON THE FLOWER POTS, BUT I CAN’T TELL BECAUSE YOU TOOK THEM. OTHER THAN THE CLOTHES THING IT’S JUST LIKE WITH THE REGULAR MEMORY GHOSTS. SHE WENT TO THE SHED AND GRABBED SOMETHING, AND NOW IT LOOKS LIKE SHE’S SCOOPING SOMETHING UP THAT ISN’T THERE.

Carl: Okay. Warn me when she moves toward the door.

Donut: SHE HAS A TATTOO OF A DOG ON HER NECK. A DOG TATTOO. ON HER NECK. I THINK IT’S A PITBULL. IT’S ABSOLUTELY SICKENING.

Carl: Be nice. I think that’s my stepmom.

Donut: SHE CAN’T BE YOUR STEPMOM, CARL. SHE’S LIKE KATIA’S AGE.

My hands shook as I took another step into the room. There was a curio here, covered with Precious Moments figurines and a few framed photographs. I slowly started to gather everything except the photographs, which seemed wrong to take. There was also an urn, which I realized contained the remains of a dog named “Chance.” Likely the same dog who was tattooed on the woman’s neck. I took it.

Only two photos featured my father. One was a wedding. I stared at it. Sure enough, the woman was younger, much younger, barely older than me, and she held hands with my father as they both laughed. My dad was in his full biker gear, complete with a bandana on his head and his leather vest. It appeared they were in some dive bar, surrounded by other biker guys.

I could see the neck tattoo in the photo. The woman was about-to-pop pregnant. She wore a crown of purple flowers in her hair. Alliums.

The second photo was of my dad, staring forward with a one-year-old Asher on his lap. This was more like the man I remembered. Humorless, eyes a million miles away. Cold, uncaring.

There were multiple photos featuring just the boy. I picked one up, the most recent. Behind me, my father coughed, reminding me he was there, right there. I ignored him for the moment as I stared at the photograph. Brown hair that looked like it was enough for two people. Thick and haphazard and untamable. Blue eyes. That nose.

Asher.

Asher.

My brother.

I had a brother.

Goddamn you, I thought.

Was that why they brought me here? To show me that they’d taken something I didn’t even know I had? To show me what I’d truly lost?

Donut: THE LADY IS ACTING WEIRD. SHE PULLED SOMETHING OUT OF ONE OF THE FLOWER POTS, BUT I CAN’T SEE IT BECAUSE YOU TOOK IT ALREADY. SHE’S HOLDING IT AGAINST HER CHEST AND CRYING.

I took the photo and placed it into my inventory. I turned and faced the man, who remained in the bed, sitting up, staring off into space.

Kids aren’t always a product of their parents. But sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes parents can cast a shadow so thick, you can drown in it.

Frank had said that to me, right before he handed me the Ring of Divine Suffering. He’d died soon thereafter.

“You know,” I said to the man who couldn’t hear me. “I used to be so scared of disappointing you, and I don’t even know why.”

Donut: SHE’S SMOKING A CIGARETTE NOW, PACING BACK AND FORTH. WAIT, SHE THREW IT AWAY AND IS NOW HEADED TOWARD THE DOOR!

Behind me, the door opened, and the woman walked in.

I blinked, staring at her. She was tall, thin. Hollow eyes. Uncombed, black hair dangled off her head. Nails that had once been painted red, but they were chipped and faded. She was wearing nurse scrubs. Nothing like the laughing, smiling woman in the wedding photograph.

She looked nothing like my mother, either. Yet... yet she was her twin all at the same time.

“Where have you been? I need my boost.”

“I was next door helping Mrs. Tomlinson. I’ll get your medicine.”

The woman didn’t even look at him as she pushed past and went to the back, exuding the stench of cigarettes. She was holding something behind her back so he wouldn’t see. I couldn’t see it, either, as it was invisible to me, meaning whatever this was, I’d already taken it. The woman’s hands were shaking. She had tears rolling down her face.

“I’m your husband,” he tried to call, though he couldn’t truly shout, revealing how weak he really was. “I’m the one you’re supposed to be taking care of.” He coughed a few times and started muttering. From the hallway, I could hear the woman talking softly to Asher, telling him to stay in his room.

I moved into my inventory, and I started examining the flower pots I’d taken from the yard.

I understood, then, why they’d really brought me here, what they wanted me to witness.

Carl: Zev, is this even real? How long did it take you assholes to find this? How do you even have it? Did you just record everything?

Zev: I’m sorry, Carl. You know I can’t give you details. But I assure you everything you’ve seen so far is indeed a recording of what really happened that day. Everything until the timer reaches zero. I can’t tell you more than that.

I glanced at the timer. I stepped forward, and I leaned in, super close to the man’s face.

This close, the scent was amplified. A part of me registered I’d never been this close to him, this close to his eyes, his mouth. How was that possible? He was my father. Shouldn’t my memory be filled with his face?

But no. This was it. The closest I’d ever been. It seemed important.

I moved to whisper into his ear.

“You’re a bully. Nobody likes you. Mom tried to kill you, and in about 20 minutes, I’m pretty sure your new wife, my stepmother, is going to finish the job. You’re so goddamn insufferable, she can’t even wait for whatever this is to kill you off. Two different women, and they both try to kill you? What does that say?”

He sat there, staring off into space. His death was so close, and he had no idea.

“And you know what? Your passing is so unimportant, so insignificant that nobody will care. The only reason I’m here now to watch this is because the idiots running this shitshow think I’m going to buckle under the pressure of seeing you, of finally confronting this big, bad monster from my childhood. But here’s the thing, old man. I’ve grown up. I’m not scared of shadows anymore. Not when I’ve seen what’s really out there. And seeing you here today, seeing you like this, it’s actually a good thing. You’re about to die. You’re broken, you’re alone, and you’re a nobody. My only regret is that you lived long enough to inflict yourself onto my poor brother. If I’m lucky, the assholes will resurrect your corpse and turn you into a boss so I can kill you again.”

I straightened my back, and I turned away, facing the back hallway.

“I’m not even going to stay for this last part. Not your real death. You don’t deserve for anybody to watch you die.”

The woman reappeared, holding a syringe and a new IV bag. “I have your medicine right here.”

“It’s about time.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.”

~

I moved to Ash’s room while my stepmother injected my father with a lethal dose of morphine.

I wasn’t sure exactly what the plan was, or why she’d been hiding the little glass bottles of morphine in the big flowerpot outside. That didn’t really matter.

I moved into the small room of the boy. He was curled up on his bed. He had a matchbox car, and he idly ran it up and down the wall.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t know about you,” I said. “If I had, I would’ve been here. I would’ve made sure you were okay. In a few months, something is going to happen, something really terrible. Hopefully you’ll be asleep in your bed when it happens. It’s too late for me to do anything about that, but I want you to know something. You won’t be forgotten. Not ever.”

I reached forward, and I put my hand on his head, but my hand went all the way through.

I wiped my eyes, and I proceeded to loot the room. He didn’t have much, just a few toys, a few pairs of pants and shirts. I found an old, heart-shaped candy box, and it had a shiny rock in it, two dollars, and a little plastic cowboy. Part of me was hoping there was a picture of me somewhere here, some sign that he knew he had a brother somewhere. There was nothing. I left the box with his prized possessions. I took the rest, including some crayon drawings, mostly of airplanes. As I finished, the woman came into the room.

“Come here, Ash,” she said to the boy, and she took him into a hug as she sat on the bed.

“He wouldn’t let me watch TV,” my brother said.

“It’s okay. He’s resting now. You just stay with me for a few minutes, and then you’re going to go over to Mrs. Tomlinson’s house. You can go play with Elizabeth, and tomorrow we’re having your birthday party.”

“Am I going to get a bike? And cake?”

She smiled big, tears rolling down her face. “We’ll see, honey.”

~

With five minutes left, I moved to the master bedroom, not wanting to eavesdrop anymore. While I was in there, I proceeded to take everything I could. From the living room, I could hear my father say something, desperation in his raspy, slurred voice. Nobody was there to answer him, nobody there to hear his final words.

The first thing I did was move to the bottom left drawer of the old dresser. Not only was there three packs of Marlboro Reds, which I immediately took, but there was more. I picked up a folder filled with court documents. I took it without looking at it. He also had a 9mm Glock, which I took along with two boxes of ammo. After that, I just picked up the whole dresser with mirror, and I took it all into my inventory. I took the queen bed, the cheap bedside tables, all the clothes. There were more photos on the walls, mostly of Asher, and I left those, but I took everything else. He’d only had the single gun.

There was also an arcade cabinet, sitting right there in the too-small room, taking up too much space. It was unplugged and had clothes draped over it. It wasn’t Frogger, but Centipede. I took it into my inventory.

That was it. I had his gun, his motorcycle, and his goddamned arcade cabinet. The only other thing he had left was his life, and that, too, would soon be gone.

With just a minute left, I took out a cigarette and lit it. I returned to the living room, moving past my motionless father. I paused, not looking at him. I took my lighter, and I lit the drapes with the purple flowers on fire.

I paused, and I looked up at the ceiling.

“If your intention was to hurt me, you fucked it all up. This was pretty much exactly what I needed to see.”

I returned outside to find Donut sitting upon Mongo, waiting patiently.

“Are you okay?” Donut asked.

The timer has concluded. You may now proceed inside to face the keyholder.

I cracked my neck. “I’m okay.”

“You’re sure?”

“I said yes, Donut.”

“Good. That means I can tell you to get that disgusting cigarette out your mouth.”

I laughed as Mongo screeched.

“Just give me a second, okay?”

She looked suspiciously at the door. “Do you know what we’re going to face in there?”

“No,” I said. “But I do know what we’re not going to face.”

I sighed, and I tossed the cigarette away. It tasted old, and it tasted wrong.

The window cracked, and flames burst out, reaching out into the sky, black smoke billowing upward and away into heavens that weren’t really there.

“And we’re not going to do it in there. It’s way too cramped for our totems, so first we’re going to watch this goddamned trailer burn to the ground.”

~~~~
@@@@@@@@

So… my dad died while I was writing this chapter. My real dad, and he was nothing like the man portrayed in this book. As you can imagine, the timing on all this is pretty fucked up. There’s a weird catharsis there, writing about someone so terrible and knowing it’s true fiction. Sometimes, though, there's this weird intersection of truth, even when you're saying the opposite of how it really was. I will miss him, and I'm sad he won't hear what I still have to say.

Also, fuck cancer.

Link to my dad’s obituary: https://tucson.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/james-dinniman/article_b7aff4fe-b5af-11ed-aac2-f70425487061.html

This upcoming weekend, I will be at the Tucson Festival of Books. I will be at the Indie author’s booth on Saturday only, for three hours only from 11-2. Hopefully I see some of you there.

This next chapter is going to be one of the most batshit things I’ve ever written. I’m pretty excited about it.