"Content Warning - This Chapter Is Not Funny"

With the agents either goop-ified or stupefied by Ingrid’s demise, I’m able to escape through the backyard, into the cornfields surrounding the house. The gray (shouldn’t they be yellow?) stalks go on and on forever, infinity in the form of corn. They’re taller than me, and they seem to grow even high the deeper I go in, sort of like a dream. Rotting autumn leaves and discarded ears (and ears of corn) crunch underneath my sneakers, already soaked in silver goop.

Keep going, Mary Lou. Ignore the scurrying of rats, the whispers just out of sight. You can’t see any of them, so they must not be real.

Yeah, but I can’t see my nose, so does that mean it ain’t real either?

My head feels woozy. The cornstalks keep multiplying. There are three moons overhead, ghost rockets cutting across the pale light.

What was I doing? I wanted to go trick-or-treating, because I wanna be like any other kid. But I don’t see any houses around. Salem Slot must be decades away now. The only thing here is wild corn and the long whistles of distance trains.

Yes, the train…the train’s important, because…I was gonna take the midnight train out of here and escape. I couldn’t go to the station, since that would surely be crawling with agents, sort of like how something’s crawling ‘neath my skin right now, so I had to find a bend in the tracks where the train slows down just enough to hop aboard. And the bend was somewhere…

You won’t find it, the School sez.

I know it’s still watching me, from its perch atop the hill.

No, not it.

I stop and turn, breeze kicking up my auburn hair and witch’s robes (golly, I’m still dressed as a witch, aren’t I? I forgot).

“It’s not the school talking to me,” I realize. “It’s you, ain’t it?”

Dr. Funny laughs. Who knows? It could be the School. It could be our psychic connection. It could be you hearing voices this whole time.

I don’t hear voices.

You heard me!

Shut up, house.

Aww…

You better come back, Dr. Funny/the School warns me.

I turn away and walk towards the bend that surely must be up ahead. "Yeah right-"

I have your friends.

That stops me.

Bobby and Connie. My men captured them. You either come back, or they’ll be strung up as Red spies.

I frown and dig my fingernails into my palms. “Hah. We’re not friends. Nobody could be friends with me.”

Hmm? I thought you were normal, Marie Louise.

I stop myself. “Y-Yeah, I mean, I’m normal, it’s just that…it’s just that, I don’t gotta tell you nothing. You murdered my mother! A-And you might be my father or something, but you’re one lousy dad!”

Meet me in the Slot graveyard. You have until midnight, Marie Louise.

I storm off in a huff. Bobby and Connie...he’s bluffing. He must be. And even if he wasn’t, you know, I got my own stuff going on. ‘Cuz nobody would be friends with a freak like me.

Corn for eternity. Maybe I’m going ‘round in circles. I’m not alone, at least. All the Halloween friends come in, the Frankensteins and the Grim Reapers and the scarecrows, walking down beaten paths. A kickline of skeletons come out, and there’s a witch doing the Charleston! Oh wait, that’s just me.

I’m looking at myself. A thousand of myselves. Mary Lou in a thousand ways. Walking, talking, following me ‘round and ‘round through the maze of corn.

You’re afraid, Marie Louise. Everyone starts dancing with each other in the gray haze, chanting in unison, voices like songbirds. You’re afraid ‘cuz you wanna be normal, but if you were to remember the past, then surely you wouldn’t be normal. And you can’t use your psychic powers until you remember the past…

There’s another train whistle. I must be getting close.

“Out of my way, out my way!” I bark out, barreling through the cornfields just like...someone. Who was it? My head clangs with the pounding of the pistons at the munitions plant.

Remember, remember!

All the thousand Mary Lou’s and Halloween creatures swirl around me, using the train whistle as a metronome to time their dancing. They form lines and swing outwards until they form an unfolding rose with yours truly in the center.

Remember, Marie Louise!

I trip on something hard.

Remember!

I’m on train tracks now. My own sorry reflection is cracked into a thousand pieces on the rusted rails. Are these tracks real? Cut right through cornfields? I can’t tell. The whistle sounds again. It rushes closer.

I hold my head in my hands, hearing the train rumble towards me.

Pale flesh holds my hands. I lift my head.

A blonde woman stands before me, dressed in a fur coat and pearls. The brown pelt is soaked in red blood, a hole through the heart.

It’s okay, Marie Louise. Accept who you are.

I smile, ‘cuz it’s my mom.

My dream, the one I told to Bobby Wood - the blonde woman and barbed wire…

And my God - I remember!

Mary Lou, you ain’t even American!

Your birth certificate, from all the way back in 1941, sez you weren’t born in Salem Slot, you didn’t live in the house on Maple Street, that wasn’t your mom who got shot that day.

No-sir-ree, you were born in what they now call the Polish People’s Republic, what they once called the Second Polish Republic, and what they called it back then - the GENERAL GOVERNMENT.

Your name isn’t Mary Lou Sunday, it’s Marie Louise Funny!

And the train whistle…good lord, that’s what the train whistle means-

EXT. SONNTAG CONCENTRATION CAMP - MORNING

Camera peers through the window of a three-story house. A train pulling dozens of boxcars chugs along through bucolic meadows. At the end of the meadow, it passes through a checkpoint guarded by soldiers in gray and into a facility where chimneys emit endless smoke.

A family of three watch calmly through the window. DR. FUNNY puts on his jacket, black lightning bolts on the collar.

DR. FUNNY

Well, honey, I’m off to work!

MRS. FUNNY

Love you, dear.

MARIE LOUISE FUNNY

Daddy, waddya do you down there?

DR. FUNNY

My life’s work, pumpkin. You’ll understand one day.

Dr. Funny departs down the stairs. Mother and daughter remain at the window.

MARIE LOUISE FUNNY

I don’t like it here. It smells.

MRS. FUNNY

Smells?

MARIE LOUISE FUNNY

It smells funny.

I vomit into my hands. I wipe them off on the tracks, but the stench remains. I feel like my hair’s falling off. You’re a monster, Mary Lou, your whole family is, and the worst part about it all is that you’re making this whole thing about yerself, when millions upon millions suffered far worse-

Memories shift. Bagration sent Rokossovsky sweeping across the General Government. We fled, first to Peenemunde with von Braun, then to Danzig. My father struggled there, since he said his work involved experimentation, not holding a rifle, which made him unpopular with the rank-and-file, especially when the Red Army kicked off from the Vistula to the Oder, Rokossovsky soon cutting off Danzig from the rest of the Reich. Planes hit the city, the whole thing was up in flames, and my dream - the ferry…

EXT. DANZIG DOCKS - NIGHTFALL

Hundreds of men in gray uniforms struggle aboard the last ferry out of the city. Danzig is being demolished and there’s the constant sound of tanks, artillery, and machine guns. Dr. Funny ushers his wife and child through the madness.

DR. FUNNY

Out of my way, out of my way! Do you know who I am?

The family arrives at the gangplank. There’s barely any room left on the ferry. A group of wounded landsers are being helped up the gangplank, overseen by a Wehrmacht guard. Dr. Funny unveils his Luger.

DR. FUNNY

Stop! Let us through!

GUARD

These men…these kids. They’ve lost limbs-

DR. FUNNY

And I’m losing patience! Let us aboard!

GUARD

We can try to fit your wife and child, but you sir, you must-

Single gunshot.

The train gets closer to me now. The ground vibrates with the strength of an earthquake. Marie Louise, your father is a rotten man, and your mother too, ‘cuz she never treated anyone better, and you know what your father says, that genetics is everything, so you’ve inherited it all. I hope the train speeds up.

One more scene. The Fuhrer has shot himself, and there’s a gray tide escaping toward the west, ‘cuz the Red Army burns crimson with a righteous fury and then some. Spring is in bloom, pink flowers and blue sky, on the west side of the Elbe River. One bridge remains, and the Americans don’t guard it on purpose. Walther Wenck’s men hold the perimeter as the Red Army seeks to crush the final escape route.

EXT. BRIDGE OVER THE ELBE

Thousands of men in gray and ragged civilians surge in one human mass to get over the final bridge to the American zone. Katyushas fire endlessly in the background. Huge spouts of water shoot up from impact, and the ground shakes. Dr. Funny, Marie Louise on his shoulders, arm wrapped around his wife’s, struggles in the tidal wave of Germans.

DR. FUNNY

Move! Move! My family and I need to escape-

Headlights shine bright as a Wehrmacht colonel and his staff drive in an open-top car towards the bridge. The colonel keeps the horn blasting and waves a pistol in the air as emaciated soldiers and civilians stumble out of the way. Dr. Funny refuses to budge.

DR. FUNNY

You can wait in line with the rest of us-

COLONEL

Out of my way, out of my way! Do you know who I am?

DR. FUNNY

My wife is tired, and my daughter is sick-

Single gunshot.

Only my father and I made it over the Elbe. I wipe my forehead. My mother looks down at where the colonel shot her.

I always loved you, Marie Louise. You’re better than us.

I shake my head. “No way, I’m rotten.”

Then die and join me.

The train is getting close, I can feel the heat. I close my eyes and lay back so it can drive right over my head. I deserve it, don’t I?

Connie smiles at me. No, you’re the pretty one.

Susan smiles at me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, Mary Lou.

Bobby smiles at me. I like you, Mary Lou.

And he sez I’m a swell girl…a swell girl…

I open my eyes. There are tears in them.

Woooooah-oh-oh

Woooooah-oh-oh

Man across the aisle, you’re meant for me (Woooooah-oh-oh)

My love calls out to you, why can’t you see (Dooooo-wop)

I grin like a fool, ‘cuz I know your mine (Woooooah-oh-oh)

Kiss me until the end of time (Woooooah-oh-oh)

I sit upright and I wipe the last of the vomit off. My hair’s back where it should be. The Frankensteins and the scarecrows are gone. It’s just me, lying in the middle of the cornfield, no train tracks or nothing, just the raygun pressed against my temple. In fact, I’ve only gone about thirty feet from the house.

The raygun drops to my side as I stand up straight. My mother grows distant.

“Sorry, Mama,” I say, cracking a tired grin. “But the name’s Mary Lou Sunday. I can’t join you ‘cuz I gotta save my friends and stop my father, and yer probably in Hell anyway. Maybe I’ll join you one day, but until then, I’m gonna take this life and use it for good.”

My mother smiles sadly. Goodbye, Marie Louise.

She disappears into dust and nothingness. From above the cornstalks, I see the house on Maple Street.

“You ain’t my mother,” I say to the top floor window. “But when I hear the house, it’s you talking, right?”

Maybe, sez the ghost mother. Maybe you’re hallucinating me, too.

I shrug. “Either way, I’m gonna avenge you and put an end to Dr. Funny’s madness.”

Oh, but Marie Louise, Dr. Funny sez. How can it be madness if I’m perfectly sane?