Brian Freeman - Immoral

It took them nearly two hours to work their way down one row of carnival rides, then back up the next. They wandered by the baseball game, run by a seedy barker in a devil's costume, with a button pinned on his red suit that said WELCOME TO HELL. He smiled, revealing two chocolate brown front teeth, and invited Tommy to try his hand.

"Break three plates, win the grand prize," he said.

"What's the grand prize?" Rachel asked.

The devil pointed at a giant stuffed bear, fat and soft and nearly as tall as Rachel. The girl's eyes widened, and she looked longingly at Tommy, hanging on his arm. "Can you win it for me, Daddy?"

"You bet I can."

The devil handed Tommy three baseballs. Tommy juggled two in his right hand and wound up with his left.

"You're drunk, Tommy," Emily warned him. "And you don't look good."

Tommy fired the first ball into the dead center of one of the ceramic plates. The plate smashed into shards, falling amid the litter of the booth, and the ball slammed into the aluminum wall with a bang.

"You did it, Daddy! You did it!"

Tommy grinned. He let the second ball fly, and crash, bang, another plate shattered.

"One more, Daddy, and you win!" Rachel cried.

"Make a place for that bear on your bed, honey," Tommy told her.

He readied himself for the next pitch, cocking his meaty arm. The crowd gathering behind them tensed, expecting another bang, waiting for the plate to explode.

Instead, the ball dribbled off Tommy's hand, bounced on the counter, and landed on the ground with a thud. The devil laughed. The people around the booth groaned with disappointment. Tommy's knees buckled, and he grabbed his arm, screaming. His face was contorted and red.

Emily said the first thing that popped into her head and instantly regretted it. "Damn it, Tommy, you haven't thrown a baseball in years. What the hell were you trying to prove?"

Rachel shot her mother an angry stare. Tommy bit his lip so hard that a pearl of blood formed and slipped onto his chin. Rachel rubbed it away with her hand.

"I'm sorry, honey," Tommy said to Rachel.

The old man at the counter, still chuckling, waved at Tommy. "Don't forget your prize." He held up a small stuffed pink pig, with black sunglasses, and tossed it to Tommy.

Tommy looked embarrassed as he handed it to Rachel, but Rachel held the pig as if it were even better than the grand prize. "I love it, Daddy," she said, and as he leaned down, she kissed him lightly on the lips.

It was as if Emily had been stabbed in the heart. She was jealous, and she hated herself for it. "I guess it's time to go home," she said.

Rachel had other ideas. As they wandered away from the booth, the ride known as the Ejection Seat suddenly sprang to life in front of them, a circular chair of steel tossed like a rock from a slingshot, carrying two screaming passengers. A microphone embedded in the chair carried their hysterical cries out over the fair.

"Wow," Rachel said in a hushed voice. "Do you think I could do that?"

Emily interrupted. "I don't think that's a good idea, Rachel. Your father's not feeling well, and you're too young for a ride like that."

"You don't look too young to me," Tommy said. "And I feel great."

"Come on, Tommy, don't be foolish," Emily said.

Tommy winked at his daughter. "What do we say, Rachel?"

Rachel looked at her mother and sang out in her most girlish voice, "Bitch, bitch, bitch!"

Emily was stunned. She tugged on Tommy's arm and whispered in his ear. "You taught her to say that to me? Are you crazy?"

"Shit, Emily, it's only a joke."

"Fine, take the fucking ride," she hissed, hating herself for letting Tommy get a rise out of her.

He pretended to be shocked. "Mommy used a bad word."

Rachel held Tommy's hand triumphantly. They headed together toward the ride, and then Rachel looked back. She called out, as if it were a wonderful joke, "Fuck you, Mommy."

Emily took two steps closer, swinging her hand back, ready to strike her. She wanted so badly to slap her daughter's face. But she froze, holding back. She began sobbing. She watched them wander away, paying no attention to her as she cried, drawing stares from the people passing by. She wiped her cheeks, then pushed through the crowd toward the spectator area near the Ejection Seat. She would do what she had done all along. Cheer for them. For the husband who made her feel like an insect, and for the daughter he had taught to hate her.

As they strapped Tommy and Rachel into the Ejection Seat, a spotlight hit them, and Emily could see their faces clearly.

Rachel was beaming, fearless as ever.

But Tommy was pale, his face bone white, sweat pouring down his forehead.

A horrifying awareness began to dawn on Emily, as she realized that Tommy's condition had nothing to do with the fair and nothing to do with a pulled muscle. Instead, it had everything to do with his father, who had dropped dead at thirty-seven, and his grandfather, who had only made it to age thirty before ending up in the ground.

"Don't ask me to grow up, Emily," he had said to her once in a sober moment.

"Wait!" Emily shouted, but no one heard her.

The sensations of the night became a blur. The din of music and voices thumped in her head. Lights blinked and whirled around her. She smelled burnt grease, powerful enough to suffocate her.

"He's having a heart attack!" she screamed, as loudly as she could.

The people around her laughed. It was a joke. It was funny.

Ping. The cable released. The Ejection Seat shot upward like an arrow. The towers rattled and swayed. The microphone in the chair caught Rachel's squeals of delight. Her excitement at being shot weightless into the air was almost sexual. The giggling laughter poured out of her and washed over the crowd.

Tommy never said a word.

Up and down the chair went, bouncing and wobbling like a jack-in-the-box for thirty seconds that lasted a lifetime. Then Emily heard murmurs among the people around her. She saw people start to point. Rachel's squeals subsided.

"Daddy?"

Emily could see her husband clearly now, his head lolling to one side, his eyes rolled up into his skull like two hard-boiled eggs, his tongue hanging limply out of his mouth. Rachel saw it, too, and screamed.

"Daddy. Wake up, Daddy."

Emily clambered over the fence that kept the spectators back. The ride workers managed to snag the chair and pull it back to the ground. As Emily ran toward them, they undid the straps from Rachel, who clung to her father and cried hysterically. They undid the straps from Tommy, too, but he simply slid from the chair and crumpled in a pile on the ground, with Rachel still hanging on him and calling his name.

Emily knew at that moment she had passed a crossroads in her life. Part of her secret soul believed it would be a road to something better. In many ways, living with Tommy dead was easier than living with Tommy alive. She had always been the one holding a steady job and paying the bills. During the next few years, she began to pull them slowly out of debt.

But in the most important way, in her daughter's mind, Tommy never died. He became frozen in Rachel's memory.

It began the day after the fair, as they drove in cold silence back to Duluth. The tears on Rachel's face had dried, and her grief had turned with amazing swiftness to malevolence. At one point on the highway, the little girl turned to Emily, her eyes on fire, and said with a terrifying passion, "You did this."

Emily tried to explain. She tried to tell Rachel about Tommy's weak heart, but Rachel didn't want to hear anything.

"Daddy always said that if he died, it was you who killed him," she said.

So began the war.

Emily, lying in Rachel's bed, picked up the silly stuffed pig.