There was a searing pain coursing through Lura's head, and it hurt to open her eyes. But once she did she immediately felt like closing them again. The harsh fluorescent lights in the hospital forced her to squint at first; once her pupils adjusted she realized where she was. Athena was sitting in a chair on the left side of the bed, and Victor was standing against the wall just a few feet away. Athena noticed that she was awake and motioned for Victor to pay attention. They both calmly gathered around her.
"What's going on? Why are we in a hospital? Why am I in a hospital?"
"You had a nasty fall," said Athena. "Hit your head right on the lip of the tub." That explains the head pain, Lura thought to herself. Even thinking to herself made her brain throb violently against the confines of her skull. "Do you know who we are?"
"Yes, of course I do. Athena and Victor Carson."
"Yes! Very good! At least you've retained your memory."
"Yeah, well, maybe that isn't such a good thing."
Seconds later a woman walked into the room carrying a clipboard. "I see someone finally woke up," she stated with a luminous smile on her face. Damn, Lura thought. How does someone get perfect white teeth like that? "You probably don't remember me, do you?"
"You're… my doctor?" Lura took an educated guess based on her attire and demeanor.
"That's right. I have all of your test results back, and you both seem to be perfectly fine. Lura, I advise you to stay here for the night. You can leave tomorrow morning."
Lura nodded her head to show that she understood, but quickly stopped and uttered, "Hang on, who did you mean by you both?"
The doctor swung back around and gave Lura a perplexed look. She then looked at Athena and Victor, and Athena and Victor shared a glance of confusion between the two of them. "Lura, you're pregnant. We conducted an ultrasound and everything seemed to be in order. You're both fine."
Lura simply couldn't respond. She just stared at the woman blankly with her jaw open wide. "Uh, thank you, doctor, for all your help," replied Victor, shaking her hand and getting her to leave the room. He turned back to look at Athena, and the woman nudged her head to tell him to leave as well. He grasped the signal and stood out in the hallway.
"Lura, honey… talk to me. What's wrong?"
"I… I don't know. It's too early to take a paternity test, right?"
"What? You mean it isn't Charles' baby?"
Lura's memory certainly wasn't gone, as she quickly brought back the memory of that night she tried to make Barnaby jealous by sleeping with Parker. "It… it might be my baby's baby…"
Athena decided to stay with Lura that night in the hospital and told Victor to go home to be with Ellen. He arrived home at ten to midnight, and ashen Ellen was still up, sitting by the fireplace reading a book.
"You're smudging the pages," Victor whined as he walked in and noticed the pages she had read were stained black from her fingers.
"Sorry," Ellen cautiously put the book down on the side table. "How is she?"
"Not great," Victor admitted, taking a seat opposite her in the other chair. "She's fine. But apparently she's pregnant, and the father can be one of two people: Barnaby or her own son."
"Holy shit, that's fucked up," Ellen said. "That's really fucked up."
"That coming from a woman who's literally made of ashes," Victor retorted. He got up and headed over to the bar in the dining room. "I'm gonna fix myself a martini, you want one?"
"I don't think I can. I'd probably soak away."
"Oh, right." Victor made his drink and returned back to his seat.
Ellen waited for him to finish his first sip before speaking up. "I can't even begin to tell you how horrible I feel, Victor."
The fact that she said something remotely kind to him made Victor nearly spit out his drink. "Excuse me? Feel bad about what, Ellen?"
"It's taken Jacob's death and my own to realize how good of a guy you really are."
He chuckled and glugged down half of the contents of the martini glass. "Nice, Ellen. I almost thought you were being genuinely generous for a goddamn second." He raised his glass up in the air. "Cheers to you and your lame attempt at that. You never did have a good poker face."
"I am being genuinely generous, Victor. Look at everything you did to get to the bottom of Jacob's disappearance. Look at how sweet you're being to this Lura girl. You know she's just as much a victim of Barnaby's torment as you are. And you're caring for her: letting her stay here, taking her to the hospital. You are a good guy, Victor Carson. I, on the other hand, am an evil, manipulative bitch." Victor meanwhile gulped down the remainder of his martini. He desperately wanted to get up to make himself another one, but he figured Ellen was in the middle of a moment and he didn't want to disturb her. After all, he was such a good guy. "I nearly destroyed your life, and then I nearly destroyed it again."
"Ah, we're back on the whole plane thing, aren't we?"
"Listen, Victor. You and I both know that wasn't my idea. It was my father's. There was no way you were going to win that re-election. Everyone in this goddamn city hates you. We were losing our sponsors and political action committees by the day, and that all meant daddy was losing money." Victor suddenly felt the martini come back up in a sickened reaction to hearing her say the word daddy. He absolutely hated his father-in-law, Francis Huckabee (the second). No, he didn't just hate him. Hate, believe it or not, wasn't a strong enough word. He loathed him. He practically counted down the days to his death. As a matter of fact, he did for a brief time. Francis had a heart attack a few years ago, and all during his recovery Victor kept a tally in his ledger for each day that passed with him still alive. Who is she kidding? Victor thought to himself. I'm not a good guy.
Ellen continued. "He was the mastermind behind all of it, Victor. You and I both know it. But I'm not trying to absolve myself of the guilt. I listened to him, and I made you do it."
Victor rubbed the bridge of his nose as he flashed back to the moment in time when he arranged for his campaign opponent, Marcus Buchanan, to die in a horrific plane accident. He hired a colleague of the Huckabee family, Duncan Manchester, to fly the private plane and risk his own life should it come to that. A sudden engine failure over the Atlantic while Buchanan and his mistress were on their way back from a secret Caribbean vacation and just like that, the mayor's seat was destined to be his.
"I thought I was better than you because of my privileged background, because my daddy had money, because I spent my summers riding horses across our estate and playing croquet with his clients' daughters, because he told me that success isn't something a Huckabee strives for, it's something that a Huckabee is simply given." Victor actually smiled at that last part, knowing that Francis made sure to say that at least once at every Huckabee family gala. "I do love you, Victor. You do know that, right?"
"Of course I know that. I loved you, too. But our love was… clouded by other things." Barnaby was a light wispy cloud compared to the thunderhead that was Francis.
Ellen frowned upon hearing him say that. There was one part of that sentence that she didn't approve of. "You loved me? As in, past tense?"
"Ell, come on. You just admitted that you're a manipulative bitch. You know I wholeheartedly agree with that. I was madly in love with you, so much that I would do absolutely anything for you. And I did. And I still do. Except now I do things out of fear instead of love. I fear that you'll pack up and take Jacob from me. I fear that you'll expose all our dirty little secrets and frame me for everything. Oh, wait," he said with a sarcastic shift in tone. "You already tried to do that. How could I possibly still love someone who would do that? You were willing to put me behind bars so you could raise Jacob on your own. You don't need to pay for a divorce if you simply incarcerate me."
"Stop it, Victor. I never would have divorced you."
"Oh cut the bullshit, Ellen. Stop pretending like you're still in love with me. Stop making me look like the bad guy!"
"Victor, you're not listening to me!" she screamed. Victor wasn't prepared for that and gave her the opportunity to finish. "I realize my mistakes now. I treated you like garbage, but my eyes have been opened ever since I came back. Seeing you being the caring, protective, loving man you are is making me fall in love with you all over again."
"So what are you saying here, Ell? You want to see if we can get this marriage working again?" Victor swore he started off that question rhetorically, but by the end he was almost certain he wanted an actual answer. Deep down this was what he always wanted: a chance for Ellen to turn things around and fall back in love with him, and for them to love each other like they used to, before the in-law drama and the political hassles and the murder conspiracies.
"I don't know," she admitted, sounding teary-eyed, although no physical tears were forming. "I mean, are you just supposed to walk me around town like this? Does my father even know I died? Did you even tell my family?" Victor remained silent. A full martini glass would have allowed him to sip instead of answering the question. Instead of being outraged, she just laughed.
"Can we put this on the back burner for just a minute, Ellen? There's something more pressing at hand that we have yet to discuss."
"What's that?"
"We have two bodies on our hands: our son's and that psycho clown's. We need to figure out what we're going to do with them. The garage is starting to smell horrible."
"I could kill you right now, Julius," grunted an angry Barnaby as he stared at the beast from outside of the cage.
"How was I supposed to know it was gonna be your father's life force?" Julius readily defended himself, but then quickly realized how childish he sounded. "I mean, I'm sorry, Barnaby. I was just trying to help."
And not a split second later, Barnaby perked his head up with an idea. "We simply have to kill it!" Julius wasn't exactly following at first, and it showed in his facial expressions. The ringmaster rolled his eyes and prepared an explanation. "When you killed Cassandra, the life force inside her jumped back into Ellen Carson's body. The exchange is reversed when the new being dies." Barnaby excitedly grabbed onto the bars of the cage and stuck his nose inside of it, not even remotely concerned that the three-headed monster could easily tear his face skin off. "All we have to do is put a bullet through this monster's heart, and my father will be brought back to life."
"But what about the show? We created this thing to gain our audience back. Without it, we're fucked."
"We'll figure something else out, Julius! But for right now, all I care about is getting Marty back here. We'll lose the hybrid animal, but at least we'll get a clown out of it. Go into my office and get my gun. You remember where it is, right?" Julius nodded and left, while Barnaby stood there leaning against the cage, staring at the three-beasts-in-one and trying to envision his father's face in any one of theirs.
A few minutes later, Julius came back empty handed. Barnaby raised his hands to ask where his gun was, but the lion tamer just shook his head. "Did you move it?" Barnaby instantly got worried and pushed the man out of his way as he sprinted towards his office. He retrieved his safe in his closet, punched in nine two one six, and opened it up. It was empty. Not a single thing was in there. Ruuxa was the last person to be in that safe, when she paid herself before untying him on Halloween night. She must have not only taken every penny he had, but also his gun.
"Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME!" Barnaby was so outraged that he lifted the safe and chucked it at the window, sending shards of glass in every direction. Julius, meanwhile, stood a considerable distance outside of the room in the hallway and watched the man wreak havoc.
Ellen stood out on the porch and felt the harsh breeze push into her. The wind managed to get through the tiny cracks of the congealed ashes that made up her composition, and she could actually feel it going through her. She looked up at the sky and noticed a very bleak sky overhead. That's odd, I don't remember hearing it was going to rain this evening. She continued to gaze up at the sky until she heard someone cough to her right. She looked over and saw Ruuxa walking up the steps to her house, joining her on the porch. She had a bandage over her nose, showing that her appointment with the nasal surgeon was a success.
"Something tells me that I already know why you summoned me."
"You do?"
Ruuxa nodded and took the woman's ashen hands. "It's very rare to find a case of self-sacrifice." Ellen gulped as she realized what she was about to do.
"Will you pass on a message to Victor for me?"
"Absolutely, dear."
"Tell him that I really do love him. Tell him that he's made me a better person more in the past few days than in our entire time together. Tell him that I know this marriage can no longer work out, which is why I'm choosing this as the best option. Tell him that he deserves happiness and deserves to be with someone who puts him first just like he does with everyone else. And tell Jacob that I love him and that I wish I could be there to see him."
Ruuxa was nearly brought to tears. "I'll pass it along. Come here." Ruuxa brought the woman in for a hug. "Any last words?"
"Thank you, for doing this for my family." And with that, Ellen lost her life force once again, this time for good. Ruuxa put her arms to her sides, and the pile of ashes that once made up the figure of Ellen Carson started to slowly scatter away in the wind. Once all of Ellen was gone, Ruuxa rang the doorbell to be greeted by Victor a few moments later.
"Oh, hi. What are you doing here?"
She still had tears in her eyes. "You are a very lucky man, Victor Carson. Are you aware of that?" He gave her a perplexed look and she couldn't help but smile. "I have a message to pass on from Ellen."
"What do you mean? Where is she? She just came outside here a few minutes ago."
"Ellen's gone, Victor. I need you to tell me where Jacob's body is."
They had just buried the boy in the backyard just a few hours ago. It was the act of burying him for good that made Ellen realize that her son was truly gone. She had to do something, and what better way to do something than to give her son life again, her own life, to be specific.
Victor didn't even bother to ask any questions. He grabbed his shovel and dug up the same hole that he just put his son in earlier that day. A few minutes later he got most of the dirt out of the way and he pulled his son's decaying body out from under it. Ruuxa then knelt down on the grass next to him, held his hands, and within a matter of seconds, she managed to successfully put Ellen's life inside his.
Lura was in the upstairs guest room, lying in bed and crying, realizing her life was turning to shambles. But she heard commotion coming from outside and it forced her to get up and look out the window. There she saw Victor shouting in joy as he held Jacob—an alive Jacob—in his arms. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Lura smiled. The scene in front of her was so moving that she almost forgot about her own life drama for a moment and just cared about how happy Victor and Jacob must be now. There was absolutely nothing stopping her from killing some random person on the street and having Ruuxa put that life force into Parker so that she could have her son back. But deep down she really didn't want to do that. Especially not now that there was at least a fifty percent chance that she was carrying his child.
Still in his bout of anger, Barnaby decided once and for all to end the beast. "Barnaby, don't you think you should maybe find another gun and do it that way?" suggested Julius, still standing far away.
"Shut the fuck up, Julius. Don't you dare get in my way now." He grabbed his walled and left the train, walking in any general direction. Julius was worried that he had become fully unhinged. He spent the next few minutes sitting by the beast's cage and trying to comfort the animal. That, however, proved to be a horrible idea. The minute he stuck his hand inside, the lion immediately snapped at him.
Some time later, Barnaby returned with a tank of gasoline and a book of matches. "Jesus Christ, man!" exclaimed Julius. "You're gonna burn the animal to death?"
"It's the only way I see fit, Julius. A bit of poetic inspiration struck me while I was defenestrating my safe. Think of the phoenix. From this tri-headed animal's ashes, a new life will emerge: my father's. Now… get the fuck out of my way."
Julius didn't even bother arguing; he could tell there was some severe craziness in Barnaby's eyes. He got up and walked back onto the train, and watched Barnaby from there. His boss started dumping the fluid all around the border of the cage. The animal snarled and followed him around the perimeter. Barnaby then walked over to the meat crate and rubbed the gasoline tank with a slab of raw chicken. Once it was all lathered up in the scent and taste of delicious lion/wolf/leopard dinner, he tossed the tank into the cage. The lion caught it first, puncturing the plastic lining with its teeth. The other two heads started to snap at it as well, and as they fought for dominance over it, the fluid continued to splash all over the cage and their body.
Barnaby stood back, lit a match, recited a quick prayer, and tossed it into the cage. That was, however, before Julius came sprinting back outside at the last second to stop him. Julius intended on knocking the match out of his hand, but he was too late. As Barnaby tossed the match, Julius bumped into him, sending the ringmaster forward and into the wall of the cage.
What happened next seemed like a blur to Julius. He remembered scurrying away from the blast of fire that erupted and just running to the safe haven that was the circus train. He looked back and heard both the monster and Barnaby scream for help as the flames engulfed them. After contemplating for a few seconds, Julius ran back outside and carefully stepped into the blaze to grab his boss out from the wreck. Once he was sure Barnaby was out, he ran back inside to grab a fire extinguisher. It didn't do much at first, but after a few minutes, the fire finally subsided.
The smell was unbearable. Nothing worse than the combined smell of burning flesh from a human, lion, leopard, and wolf, Julius thought to himself.