Chapter One- After the ashes cool

Marion carefully peeked around the corner into the elegant living room. Watching her partner deteriorate over the last few weeks had been anything but easy. She watched as Lana, a cigarette in her mouth, and a drink in her shaky hand, tended to the remains of the fire in hearth. She hadn't been entirely sure of what had been going on an hour earlier when Lana had lit a roaring fire. Marion wasn't much for fires, she always feared they'd find their way out of the hearth and onto the carpet, but Lana understood them. She knew exactly how to fuel them, to control them, to squelch them.

An hour earlier, Lana had had her own book burning, having tossed her first copy of Maniac into the deep orange flames. Lana stood there as long as it took, and watched the flames overtake her life's work. She relished watching the binding melt, and the pages crinkle up turn into ash. Now she fished the remains out of the fire, carefully studying the ash, what was left of her best-selling story, the one that made her world famous

"It wasn't the only story I had you know." Lana gasped, acknowledging Marion's presence. She'd known she was there for a time but had wanted to pretend she was alone.

"I know." Marion said.

Lana had been having horrible flashbacks since Johnny's murder…to everything from the rape, to Briarcliff, to the failed abortion, to thinking that Marion was Wendy…her Wendy…and even to things that had not happened. Lana had reconciled herself to the fact that maybe she was just going crazy and that the Thredson family curse had finally claimed her too, just as it had claimed her son, deteriorated his mind and made him a murderer.

"You didn't need to burn your book Lana." Marion offered.

"Sure I did. It was the perversion." Lana had not taken her eyes of the words burning in the fireplace this entire time. "As soon as it became the preeminent thing in my sights it wrecked my life. It, you see…is what screwed up my perception of things. What caused me to betray Jude…how many people do you think I've killed because of that thing, Marion?"

"Lana I know your upset, but he was trying to kill you too." Marion offered, she did consider that Lana had been almost inconsolable since she'd pulled the trigger on her own son.

What she didn't know was that Lana was driving herself crazy with guilt and was deeply searching for a way out. She couldn't sleep and at night she sat up in the living room, mumbling:

'There's been enough blood, there's been enough blood.'

In fact, she couldn't look around this living room, or at her face, or down at her hands without seeing them covered in her baby's blood: blood that was half hers, half that monsters…Johnny was only part monster…he'd succumbed to it and it was all her fault….and here she'd thought she'd done something to save him.

"If I'd kept my promise on Briarcliff…how many people would've lived?" She continued. Marion found this an interesting point but she didn't believe it.

"I threw the damn book in because it was a sham and it needed to go up in flames. Because of it, I killed my son twice…he was never supposed to know who he was Marion." Lana was crying now. "That was the point…to try and save him from his destiny."

"You couldn't control fate Lana."

"But it's my fault! I never wanted life to end that way for him…why do you think I had him? I didn't want life to end that way for him…" She sobbed, her thoughts turning back to Wendy now, the woman who haunted her in her dreams, in many of the things she'd done.

She often wondered if her relationship with Wendy was as broken for all of time as it now was with her son…if she'd ever forgive her, if he'd forgive her.

"My only son…he died in childbirth…yeah. Uh-huh." Lana took another drink.

"Well, then maybe it's time you to right your wrong. Write something else. Something more truthful." Marion offered.

"Come here. I have to tell you something. " Lana warmly extended her hand to Marion without looking up. Marion came and sat by the fire next to Lana, totally unaware that a confession was about to be made. Lana took a deep breath. "Marion." She said, placing her hand warmly on her partner's knee. Marion placed her hand comfortingly over Lana's and squeezed it. "You have no idea what a monster I am. It wasn't just Johnny." She shook her head. "On that hot August day, up in Boston…I gave three babies away to the world…to their fate, whatever that would be…I've never mentioned them to anyone even you because…I wanted to keep them safe." She sniffled. "A mother's love must reside somewhere in my heart…because I wanted more than anything to protect them from their fate. And I thought that met letting them go, but I'm not sure now. Maybe they'd have been better off with me…knowing who they were."

"Oh Lana…I understand, its alright…its alright. You've been through so much…it's not all on you. You can't blame yourself."

"But I do…about everything. About the lie I've lived…about glorifying myself instead of shutting that place down as soon as I could. What am I to do now to find closure?" She asked. "I feel like I single-handedly created the second Bloodyface."

"Lana that's ridiculous."

"Oh no it isn't…I've been so conflicted for years I don't know which way is up and which way is down anymore…I haven't for a long time. That's what the drink is for…" She admitted, finally setting her glass down on the mantle. "You see, it didn't just start with the rape and the asylum…I think the start of my decline was really having all that evil live inside me. Like I said…Johnny was never a saint. Even when he was an unborn baby.

That's really how I came to create the second Bloodyface…you see. Maybe I could've changed that in him…I had no clue I was expecting triplets, but I knew it was twins, at least for the last five months. It's just something about being pregnant I can't describe to you if you haven't done it…for me, I knew intimate things about the unborn people I carried…my womb overpowered me, putting me in a deep quandary. It was like a carrying a horrific combination of precious baby and pure evil. Like something not even real."

Marion listened attentively, wondering if this had more to do with her conflict over loving her child but hating its father and the way it was conceived. She pulled Lana into a hug, sometimes she had to remember that Lana was very deep, but not a true open book. She was the one in the relationship who most often had to forgive and to guide.

"I think it's time." Marion smiled.

"For what?" Lana had no idea what she was talking about.

"To find them." She said reassuringly.

"Who?" Lana narrowed her eyes, Marion couldn't believe she wasn't following her and laughed.

"Darling. You said you wanted to make things right…to tell the truth…its time you did that with who matters most. Johnny was evil, bad to the core from his beginning in your womb, to his end, right behind me on the floor…you said so yourself…but the other two need to know who they are. Are you ready?"

Lana bit her lip. For the better part, she wanted to leave them alone. It was what had been important to her. She didn't want to answer the questions they had. At the same time, a part of Lana longed to find them, to know they weren't murderers and criminals. She'd wondered if they would've turned out as well as Julia and Thomas if she'd raised them…at the same time, she longed to see a piece of herself untouched by all of this, as she hoped her son and daughter were. Johnny had been anything but that.

The other boy, had become a psychiatrist like his father, and she had wondered if that was something she should be proud of…or if it is should chill her to the bone. She'd become friends with his adoptive mother, in a kind of secretive way. The woman had no idea Lana was her son's natural mother and she'd lost all connection with the boy, named Ben, after she had died some twenty years before. And as for the girl, the one who she'd had the hardest time giving up, she'd discovered she was adopted by a couple in California when she was less than a week old and had never been able to track her after that.

"That's what you need to do Lana." Marion smiled, brushing the hair out of Lana's face. "And I'm here with you every step of the way. She reassured. Lana was silent, and in that instant she saw Wendy smiling back at her rather than Marion.

"I'm ready." Lana said. "To meet my son and find my daughter. To make things right between us."