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The Floor Show

The lights went out, and Owen’s heart leapt in fear. The darkness felt palpable. Like it covered him— smothered him. Like suddenly he was alone with himself and in that moment all the bad thoughts came roaring up and roaring back, how weak he was, how he should’ve never been born, how Lore rejected him, how Matty was always so much better than him, and in that sensation his arms started to itch, and so did his fingertips, and he felt the greatest urge to dig into himself with tooth and claw, tearing himself down to the struts, ripping skin from meat and meat from bone, rendering himself raw and skeletal—

Then the lights came back on, and he felt blinded by them.

Nick remained in the center.

But Alfie and his automaton family were gone.

Now, three other automatons appeared.

Automatons that were them .

Lore, Hamish, and Owen.

The room had changed at the corners of the Dreamboat house, too. In the far left corner, the Hamish automaton—gray cinder block cheeks and carpet tufts of hair—stared at himself in a broken mirror. Vomit slicked his chin as his arm shot up suddenly in a robotic slot machine motion, dumping pills into his open mouth.

In the far right corner, Owen saw himself. A sad coatrack of a boy, skin painted with bone-white primer, eyes just dark holes in the cold ceramic face. All the while taking that Old Timer penknife and pulling the blade in short, sharp tugs across his upper arms, then his upper thighs. The sound of it was nearly deafening, the little thkkk, thkkk, thkkk of the cuts being made. The blood that spilled was not plastic beads, nor was it red curtain, but rather blood, fresh blood, real blood pooling around his feet and seeping into the carpet.

And then Lore. Lore off to the side. No. Not Lore. Lauren. Little Lauren. Young—here, maybe what, thirteen, fourteen? Porcelain doll skin. Hair of some old stuffy. Teeth of an old gray computer keyboard, and her eyes the spinning disks of a disk drive, whirring, whirring. She was the only one who spoke: “Hello?” she asked, her voice garbled, computerized, like something recorded on MIDI and played back through a Casio. “Is anybody home?”

Lore, the real Lore, not the Lauren Thing, stifled a sob as she shrank.

It bled through Owen’s heart. Somehow, hers seemed the saddest to him, suddenly. Her pain was so simple, so clear, and they’d missed it this whole time: Lore was alone. Always alone. They barely ever saw her mother because she barely ever saw her mother. Owen felt crushed by that revelation. He’d always joked it was cool she didn’t really have parents because his sucked so bad and none would be better than what he had, but was it? Lore went to bed every night wondering when her mother would come home. And sometimes she didn’t, he guessed. He understood Lore there better than he had in a long time.

Maybe ever.

Defiant now, Owen said, “You can’t shock us with this…shallow, derivative theater. We know who we are. Give us our friend back. Now.”

Lore nodded. “Fuck off, house.”

“Yeah,” Hamish said. “Nick, if you’re in there? Fight back, buddy. We know you can do it. We’re here, man. We’re here.”

Not-Nick chuckled again, and shrugged halfheartedly. “I didn’t think that would work. But that’s okay. I have one more thing to show you—and this, this, will be the thing that breaks your pretty minds like a baseball through a window.”