The Eye of the Bedlam Bride — Chapter no 13

[ 13 ]

th <Note added by Crawler Milk. 6Edition> I used to make a stew for my whole family. The recipe in itself wasn’t anything special. Rance meat, bone broth, a wild grass that would grow on the leeward side of our island. We’d pray over the cauldron while it simmered. The stew, when prepared properly, would not only be delicious. It would awaken the old knowledge within the minds of the young. We’re all imprinted with the route of the yearly migration, but something in the traditional meal quickens that knowledge. In sharing this meal with our young, we’re not only bonding with one another. We’re ensuring their survival should we fall.

I can’t stop thinking about it. These aliens took us before I could make this year’s stew. The youngest amongst us are not here. How are they faring out there, all alone? How can they possibly survive without our guidance? Who will show them the way?

“TAKE US BACK TO THAT DAY,” ROSETTA SAID. “YOUR FIFTEENTH birthday. Your mother poisoned your father and left him for dead, and then she went into the basement of your home and hanged herself from the pipes.

According to the incident report from the police, you were the one to discover her. Your father had only ingested a portion of the poison and was barely injured. Your mother had left a note, but the contents of which are a

mystery. Apparently, it was a letter to you.”

I felt as if I’d been slapped. It was like she’d stood up, walked across the space between us, and backhanded me as hard as she could. I reeled.

“We’re not talking about this,” I said as I recovered, my surprise getting replaced by anger. “That’s not what we agreed to. We’re supposed to be talking about the Anacortes Boys’ Ranch.”

“We are,” Rosetta said. “But we gotta get there first. Your history is well known, but we need to establish the timeline. I’m sorry if it’s uncomfortable.”

“Your mother killed herself?” Donut asked. “Your own mother? I didn’t know that. You always said she left you. I assumed she ran off with her personal trainer or something.” She paused. “You know what, I don’t remember you ever talking about her other than that. Saying she left you. Or your father for that matter. Miss Beatrice would never shut up about her mother and father.”

Every instinct told me to stand up, turn around, and walk out. That was precisely what I would’ve done if it’d been anyone else asking this of me. I took a breath, gritted my teeth, and I said, “Yes, my mother hanged herself. A few months later, my father disappeared and left me all alone. A few months after that, I was taken into custody by the state of Washington. I was placed in a home where I broke the nose of some other kid. Then I was shipped off thto a place called the Anacortes Boys’ Ranch, where I lived until my 18 birthday. I was handed a high school equivalency certificate even though I hadn’t been in a real school for two years. I moved back down to Seattle, and I crashed on a couch for about a month while I looked for a job. I couldn’t find one, so I went to a recruitment center. I got there during lunch, and the only one at his desk was the Coast Guard guy. So, now you know the history.

Let’s move on.”

Donut sat there, her eyes shining up at me.

“Let’s back up a bit,” Rosetta said. “You said your father left you.” I tensed. “But the state didn’t take you into custody for a few months after that.

How did that come to be?”

You’re a bully. You’re a bully, and nobody likes you. It’s why mom left.

I don’t need you to like me. But you will respect me.

The fishtank that he’d shattered with his motorcycle helmet remained there on its pedestal, still broken a month later. A monument to the last living thing in my life that I cared about. The photo on the wall above it remained.

My mom and dad, smiling at the camera. A lie. A goddamned lie.

Never, I’d said. She’d almost gotten you. Just wait until I’m big enough to finish what she started.

He’d turned around and walked out the door. He walked out the door, and I never saw him again.

The studio had gone silent. The only sound was Zev’s rebreather.

“Carl?” Rosetta finally prodded.

“My dad couldn’t handle being a single dad, and he disappeared. My sophomore year of high school started a week later, and I went to school as if nothing had happened. I ate the rest of the food we had in the house, and when that ran out, my friend Sam would bring me food. It wasn’t until the power went out did someone finally notice I was living by myself.”

Rosetta nodded. “In fact, didn’t they suspect you of actually killing your father?”

I grunted with amusement, remembering. “Yeah.”

The images on the roundabout changed.

It was a grainy video of a police interrogation room. Me and that asshole detective guy. What was his name? I couldn’t remember.

I sat there, my arms crossed, wearing a hoodie. Fifteen years old. I looked so small, so defiant. I could still smell that room. Like Lysol and coffee and smoke. I was there all night, I remembered. He’d offered me a cigarette, trying to be my friend, to gain my trust. I’d taken it. My first. He brought me an entire pack. Cigarettes. I was fifteen years old.

“When was the last time you saw your father?” the detective asked.

On the screen, I shrugged.

“Carl, did you do something to him?”

“What if I did?” I asked.

“Did you?”

I shrugged again. I took a drag of cigarette, trying to look cool. I coughed.

I remembered that moment like it’d just happened. I could still taste it.

About an hour after this, they’d discovered my father was alive and well somewhere in Wisconsin where he’d gotten himself arrested a few times for public drunkenness. The detective’s attitude toward me completely changed once they learned my dad was alive. They were being kind and respectful to me because they wanted me to admit to a crime. It was a false respect, a false kindness, but it was the first I’d gotten from an adult in such a long time, and despite my outward hostility, I’d been just drinking it up.

I had wanted them to think I’d done something to my father. It was stupid, I knew now. But I’d desperately wanted them to see me, to understand me, to know me. I was here, goddamnit. I was real.

But once they realized there was nothing of interest to them, everything changed. I was just another sad, abandoned kid. A victim. I was not their problem. I was nothing. They left me alone in that cold room with the smell of cigarettes and Lysol and coffee, waiting for the social worker. They’d taken the pack away, admonishing me about smoking. I was left there for hours, forgotten, in that tiny room.

I’d never felt so helpless, so impotent in my life than when that social worker came and told me it was time to go. In so many ways, it was worse than the moment of my mother’s death. Her departure had been like a slow- motion car crash that had taken years to get to the violent, abrupt impact. My father’s disappearance after that was nothing but an aftershock. And everything up until that moment was me just spinning, rolling away, injured and in shock from the trauma with the broken glass of my life raining all around me.

But that moment. The moment the woman came and opened the door to the interrogation room and said, “Come on now.” That was the moment I’d finally stopped reeling and could see exactly where I was.

“The police claimed they were going to arrest your father for child abandonment,” Rosetta said when the video stopped playing. “An arrest warrant was issued, but it appears he was never taken into custody. He was stopped in a traffic incident seven years later in Georgia, which is another state of the country, but they let him go. It’s not clear if the officers were aware of the warrant or if it was still active. That was the last time he was in the system.”

That last part was news to me. I did my best not to show a reaction.

Donut, I realized, was on my lap. I couldn’t remember when she’d jumped there.

“This is ancient history,” I finally said. “Nobody cares about any of this stuff.”

“That’s not even a little bit true, Carl,” Rosetta said. “But you’re correct on one point. None of this is new. Odette’s special on your life, which recently tunneled, touched on all of these points.”

“Her what?” I asked.

“What I’m really interested in is how your society dealt with children

who are all alone. We have seen the specials about what happened to children left in India for obvious reasons, but your country, the United States of America, was on the other side of the planet.”

I had no idea what was obvious about India. I only knew of a few crawlers from India. But the last thing I wanted was to get her to talk more about this.

She continued. “You ended up at a home for teenaged boys. We have photos of your sleeping quarters, but only a precious few records about you during that time. All we have is a three-page report. And the record from your graduation. All good marks.”

That photo of me holding the young goat reappeared. Another photo of the dorm, probably taken from the ranch’s website, popped up on the screen.

The photo was wrong. Too clean. There was light shining into the room. I remembered how dark it had been all the time. That place, too, had smelled like Lysol.

Most of my time there was a blur. I was there for two years. It seemed like it was just for a week. Yet… yet, it also felt like it was a decade, all blurred together.

“It was called a ranch, but there were no animals there. I worked nearby at a real ranch during the summer, shoveling goat crap. But most of my time there was spent at the home cleaning or rewiring the lights or replacing all the power outlets. That’s what they did. They gave you something to do. They kept you busy doing something inconsequential, something you could use once you aged out.” I paused, remembering.

“Did you feel as if you were abandoned by society?” Rosetta asked.

That’s exactly how I felt at the time, but I wasn’t going to contribute to any anti-Earth bullshit.

“I was an angry and scared kid, but here’s the thing. On the surface, everything about my life sucked. My mother was dead. My dad was gone. I was shoved in the corner until I wasn’t anyone’s problem anymore. My situation seemed bleak. But I was healthy, I had medical care, food, and a place to stay until I was considered an adult. Compared to some other kids, I had it great.” I paused, wondering why I was saying this. Wondering if it was true. “It wasn’t ideal, but looking at where I landed, I think sometimes my mother was right. That it was the best possible outcome.”

Rosetta appeared surprised. “Wait, right in what? Right in killing herself?”

I didn’t answer directly.

“I joined the Coast Guard right after I turned 18, and everything worked out okay until aliens decided to come along and destroy…”

I paused, my eyes catching a photo on the roundabout. It was me in the kitchen at the boy’s home, and it appeared I was making dinner. There were a bunch of ingredients lined up on the counter, and I had a big knife in my hand while I chopped up a potato. Sitting next to me was a big jug with the word “Milk” on it.

The photo was wrong. It was fake. They’d never let me anywhere near the kitchen except to clean it, and the milk jug was strange. It was shaped like a two-liter bottle of soda. Not correct. Plus the angle of the photo was wrong.

It was impossible. If I was chopping potatoes at the counter, then the person holding the camera was standing where there was a wall. I was about to say something, but I thought better of it. Was it a message? Were they trying to tell me something? If so, what the hell was it?

“We know you oftentimes worked in the kitchen, preparing a stew for your fellow students. That single report from the Ranch stated you didn’t talk much to anyone, but with your cooking skills, along with some help from the home’s manager, you could really make a statement. Everyone would gather together at the end of the week for stew night. The report said your special ingredients were simple. Milk and potatoes and whatever else you could find.

That was it.”

“Cooking?” Donut asked, incredulous. “Carl could cook? Carl once almost burned the apartment down making a breakfast sandwich. And don’t get me started on the pancake incident. He covered me with batter and then tried to give me a bath! In the bathtub!”

“That was your fault,” I said, my mind working as quickly as I could.

“You knocked the bowl off the counter.”

“If I knocked something off the counter, then it was placed too close to the edge. All the best cooks know not to place things next to the edge when there are cats in the home. That’s cooking 101, Carl.”

I turned back to Rosetta, who was looking directly at me.

“Apparently Carl needs a proper recipe to do his best work,” Rosetta said.

I looked up at the screen. “The stew was easy. Milk and potatoes. I remember that. Sometimes they didn’t give us much else to work with, and I had to improvise.”

“That sounds like mashed potatoes, not stew,” Donut said.

“Potatoes are very versatile,” I said.

“Very,” Rosetta agreed. “Most…”

The whole world blinked. Rosetta disappeared. The other three in the

room remained. The lights snapped on.

“Hey,” Donut said. “What happened!”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Zev shouted at the same time. She was shouting at the massive goat.

“I have ended the interview,” Harbinger said. “I am also recalling your attorney.”

“Wait just one second, you hairy glob of what-the-fuck,” Quasar began before he also disappeared.

“Liaison, you do not have the authority to do that,” Zev said, sounding pissed. It was the angriest I’d ever heard her. “We’re going to have to refund them! And you can’t just dismiss an attorney like that!”

“She and Carl were obviously talking in code,” Harbinger said. “I have full authority to intervene when I believe cheating is involved. My job is to protect the integrity of the crawl. That’s why I am here. I have banned Rosetta from participating in any future crawler interviews.”

“They’re going to sue, and they’re going to win,” Zev said.

“No such lawsuits are proceeding at this time,” Harbinger said. “This interview is over. Carl and Donut, you may return to the dungeon now.” He paused. “You should know, Carl, that I strongly believe you need to be removed from the crawl. I am actively working to have both you and the caprid disposed, and I will eventually succeed.”

With that, he blinked and disappeared.

“That’s nice,” I said.

“Damn him,” Zev said. “Those idiots are always messing everything up.

Always overreacting. Sorry guys. I doubt she got enough for Carl’s portion of the interview.”

“I liked her,” Donut said. “Rosetta. I didn’t at first because she’s one of those Crest people. But she genuinely seemed interested in the subject, even if her producers get all of their television shows mixed up. I didn’t even know what that last show was, though it had the Evil Dead guy in it. And now she’s not going to be able to do her show any more because she was talking about mashed potatoes!”

“That’s okay,” I said after a moment, my mind racing. She’d risked everything to get that message to me.

I’d read through Milk’s notes in the cookbook twice now. I needed to go back over it. She’d mostly been about portals and mapmaking, I remembered.

And special types of ink. She had a few recipes for the stuff. I needed to take another look.

I remembered one of Milk’s passages in particular. It wasn’t a recipe or important information. Just a rant, like we all did in the cookbook from time to time. Someone had responded, agreeing. I was pretty sure the responder

was Rosetta.

Potatoes are very versatile, I’d said.

Very, she’d replied. Just like…

…Just like all root vegetables.

Potatoes and milk.

I still wasn’t certain, exactly, what they wanted me to do with the yam thing. The toraline root vegetable. But now I had an important clue. And now that I had definitive proof that my sponsors, the Open Intellect Pacifist Network, employed at least one, likely two, possibly three former cookbook owners, then whatever it was they were attempting to get me to do was of crucial importance.

“Carl, are you okay?” Donut asked as we returned to the green room. She jumped to the room’s counter and sat, facing me. “That wasn’t very nice of her to bring all that up about your mother. And your father sounds like a huge jerk. I’m surprised you turned out so well adjusted, though it does explain a few things. Why didn’t you ever tell Miss Beatrice any of this stuff?”

I gave a non-committal grunt. I wasn’t okay. I was pretty damn far from okay. But what could I do? It was done, and it had been done for a very long time. Every time I started to feel sorry for myself, I would think about everyone else in the world. So many people had it so much worse. Especially now. I almost felt like I didn’t have the right to feel upset about something that had happened so long ago.

Only Zev remained with us, and she was furiously typing onto her tablet and grumbling. She was pissed about the liaison. I’d never seen her so irritated.

“It’s in the past,” I finally said. “I don’t want to be defined by things I have no control over.”

Donut just looked at me for a long moment, a concerned look to her face, like she was debating whether or not to pursue it.

I felt it, then. The river. It bubbled up a little here and then. It was growing. I could hear it now. Loud, screaming. I’m still here. I’ve been here the whole time.

Patches, when applied improperly, never hold for long.

I gave Donut a small, uncertain smile, and I shook my head.

No. Don’t. Please.

Donut blinked slowly, and then she jumped to my shoulder and leaned against the side of my head, allowing me to give her a pat. I thought she was going to continue the line of questioning, but then she seemed to change her mind. She straightened. “Well, it’s quite tragic. But did you hear what she said? Odette had a special about you! Isn’t that great? I wonder what sort of audience share you pulled. Do you think there was one about me?”

“There is one,” Zev said, not looking up from her tablet. “It’s airing tonight, actually. There was one about Li Na last night. Tomorrow is Katia.

After that, I can’t remember. Maybe Florin. Odette had them made to air while she travels to Earth orbit.”

“Really?” Donut asked, suddenly bouncing up and down on my shoulder.

“My own special. A special, about me!” She gasped. “Do you think they have the video of the judging from Cleveland? If you watch the video, there’s a close-up of Spice Mountain of Cinnamon’s owner right when she realized she lost, and it’s just… chef’s kiss.” She made a smacking noise. “Miss Beatrice had the screen cap as the wallpaper on her phone for like a month.”

“Zev,” I asked. “Did you deliberately not tell my attorney that Harbinger guy would be here?”

“No, Carl,” Zev said. She sounded harried. “I’m sorry. I am so busy. I have so much going on right now that I shouldn’t even be here. We lost dozens of staff during the Valtay changeover, plus we weren’t prepared for this eighth floor, plus the Valtay don’t allow certain types of micro AI systems to assist, and now I’m doing the work of five. It didn’t even occur to me he should be informed. I’ll make a note of it for the future. I didn’t know it would be that guy, either.”

“So, he’s the one who got bribed by the Skull Empire?” I asked. “How does he still have a job?”

“We’re not having that conversation,” Zev said. “You’re transferring back in ten seconds. You’ll be back here in two days for the preproduction

meeting.”

Donut stretched and sharpened her claws on the edge of my cloak. “If Rosetta really is banned, I do hope she gets to show her last episode, even if their producers have a weird obsession with shows that…” She trailed off and made a little gasp. “Shows that aren’t as good as Gossip Girl.”

th <Note added by Crawler Milk. 6Edition> I am writing the sixth edition of this book. I am putting as much information as I can in here. One day you will find these words, and I pray that they feed you, like the stew I used to serve to our little ones.

But is it enough to give this information to just one person? There’s honor in giving someone a meal. But I wish to cook a feast for the whole galaxy. I wish for them all to choke on our pain.

th <Note added by Crawler Rosetta. 9Edition> Comrade, I agree. One day, we will make certain they all know.

Our words will not be lost. I swear it.