The Foundry | Part Four | Chapter Forty-Five
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Four | Unmasked; Unbound; Unleashed
CONTENT WARNING - Haven’t started writing but this feels like nausea. Not a good sign usually. - Confirmed, pretty shitty.
Chapter Forty-Five
She couldn’t believe that little wench.
Logan just said, “Dude.”
Beatrice Undroth was taking her straight to the operating theater, something had just snapped in the woman. There was no part of her still in her body as she’d carried that young human into the space — someone who still had so much to figure out about themself, and wasn’t but a child of six.
That technician would be getting a swiftest death later, by Beatrice’s thoughtful estimation, while he would no-doubt, mindlessly consume the meal she’d provide from the bounty of her bosom; as how every consummation of sustenance aboard the Auluré was to be understood. It would be for that insolent look of moralistic distain he’d worn in response to the orders.
Nothing was less acceptable to, “Your future empress.” — that title she’d remind the dead man she saw before her — than questioning her right to wield complete and total authority over all life aboard this ship. The ability to allow grace to others who might not fall in-line with her every whim had been burnt away by a lifetime spent beside men like Condor Undroth; and the way they sought to control her.
Credit for every malevolent thing she’d done would be given to Condor. Despite the horrors and power she wielded from her secrecy, she’d never be seen as anything less than what she was beneath it all, in retrospect — a very sad woman.
Alan wouldn’t be thinking of that as he’d taken her by the scalp with his nails digging in until she’d bled. There wasn’t a single thing in this universe which could’ve set him off as much as seeing that notification from his friend in the laboratory come through.
Except what he’d discovered not twenty minutes before receiving the message. He’d been tearing through Father’s office and taking great efforts to keep his presence unapparent to posterity. Yet, when he’d discovered his father’s journal, finding rest in his upholstered, throne-like desk chair — there hadn’t been a page gone by that didn’t reflect the same truth — it was his mother all along who’d been the culprit of his horror.
Condor called him Alan in his journal; his son.
There didn’t seem to be a sentence written that wasn’t centered around his obsession to grasp power from, or within the heart of that woman. She’d been behind everything. His father kept journals all the way back to when Alan had been here before, and there were details made explicit within them which taught of the horrendous things happening in that very quarters he’d been siloed so long.
He’d always felt the energy in that place most wrong, but there was nowhere to put him, and Father would lament that fact in his journal, yet remain spineless to stand against his self-made oppressor.
Alan tore Father’s office to pieces, seeing nothing but red. That man’s cowardice had ruined his life once before, and he’d been letting it happen all over again. To have never once referred to Alan by his name, even in those many private times they’d spend where it seemed his guard came down, felt inexcusable. The thought of having denied something which would’ve been so simple, yet the most healing action someone of his family might ever take — except, perhaps that very same thing from Beatrice — had made Alan quite willing to let his life end on this waking-cycle. If that’s what it took to have them feel it all back.
He’d be bringing that woman with him. Beatrice Undroth; self proposed empress. She hadn’t seemed very mighty to Alan as he’d dragged her towards deck seventeen, on the starboard side. Logan had been hustled away by his friend in the lab, and that would be the single blessing of this entire affair.
Beatrice had been screaming that name. Over and over, before she even saw where he was taking her. Then she’d said it.
“You killed my daughter you bastard!'“
He’d snapped. There were many punches thrown, and she’d been restrained. Alan laid into that woman in ways which were releasing traumas from his body, and implanting new ones all the same. She’d hurt him often, always, and no escape would be had from the means of her control while under her liege. Still, her violence against the boy Alan had been, escalated the moment she’d begun to see who he truly was.
“You’re evil!” She’d screamed through her teeth. Which he’d then proceeded to stomp in with the heel of his boot.
There’d been a time after where she was still. The blood around her had been a shock to see. Alan couldn’t remember this woman — once in her life — being wounded in ways which weren’t immediately transfigured into bold manipulations. Tearing at his heartstrings always, Mother, making him feel ungrateful for what she’d proposed to have done for him, yet denying the truth of who Alan was, and what he needed every step of the way.
It infected Alan, and it was the very infliction which birthed those compartmentalizations Echo had trouble understanding as such. He’d seemed so conscious of it all, how could it also be that he hadn’t known, or been unable to communicate it? That didn’t make sense to the woman who loved him — separated still, on opposite sides of Chiron’s enormous distance.
Beatrice was changing as she’d been dragged onto that causeway which would inform her of their heading, only just as she was regaining consciousness from that freshest brutality he’d laid upon her.
“You’re dead to me,” was what he’d interpreted her to say.
Those had been the last words she’d spoken to her son. Apart from the very few which were shared once the doors to Starboard Airlock 17-C had closed her in. Alan took the opportunity to tell Beatrice Undroth then; his mom, the truth at last.
“I won’t be forced to lie for you any longer. There’s nothing I want more than you to accept me as your son — but you’ve refused to do that, and you won’t be allowed to do this to anyone else, ever again — especially Logan.”
He’d given her time, and Beatrice was felt in Alan as anger and sadness, some rageful denial, then the most usual feeling of all — she hated him.
That woman had always been challenged most deeply by what he truly was, and would come to be one day; a seer, someone who knew more about people and their ways of living than most. Even before he’d told her his name — which she’d denied outright — Beatrice despised the constant reflection he provided through his distain borne from witnessing her ways.
She could feel it too. Everyone could, each human an intuitive in their own unique way. People pretend they don’t understand each other more than they really do — and these two had been doing to each other since Alan stopped being her baby girl. The first moment he’d shown a will of his own, and denied her the last child she’d ever have, in that one place where she could actually love them; her complete control.
Not even the fact he’d been a man. It was that he’d grown up at all, and begun to speak and think. Denying the denier of that baby which she’d gripped so tightly, and had been blessed to have her oversee every detail of their life. No moments of bravery had been allowed for fear of her baby being hurt, into his teenage years, and nothing would stunt the growth of this man more.
A dear friend he’d had in middle school had done it — cracked him open. That was what Alan needed, at that age, to first see what she’d did to him. His name was Chris, and he was the best friend Alan had in early grade school. They’d been inseparable, but got into so much trouble together, always having more fun than would seem to be allowed. After their first two years together, the school system made a point to never put them in a classroom together again, or allow them on the playfield at the same time.
After four grades of not a moment beside his friend, in that place they’d first met, and having fallen out with each other because of it. Chris and Alan finally got a class in middle-school, just one, but it was all he needed.
It was the look in Chris’s eyes as Alan would regurgitate ideas his mother had coded him to believe, which he should have outgrown, but were reflected in the truth he saw by their disapproving laughs, and encouragements to stop being afraid of everything.
It brought Alan back to himself, if quite violently. He’d gotten into a lot of trouble that year with his mom, and at the academy, but it had also been the best year he could remember since they’d been friends before.
The way Chris challenged him was aggressive, but nothing felt more appreciated by Alan, he’d needed it after being so sheltered for that time, underneath the reign of a woman who’d had him acting as she was unconsciously, and wielding his own emotions as weapons, afraid of everything.
Such time went by as Alan stood there before Mother. He’d thought of Echo and Rory, something which was on his mind so often these days.
He’d was seeing that image he’d not be able to get out of his head. It wasn’t the kiss they’d taunted him with — he’d already been numb by that point. It was when he’d looked across the hangar at Echo as he cut free, body full of anxiety and empathetic pain from what he just done to Rory, and the woman he loved had been aiming a rifle at him; appearing as if she’d wished to kill him.
Finally, Mother, inside Starboard Airlock 17-C, seemed ready to speak. In that very place her own cruelest manipulations had a man bring so many to their deaths. Which seemed to Alan like nothing but an equal responsibility they held, for every one of those lost souls
Both his parents were a victim of their own broken system, and each was most lost to the very same tactic — trying to turn the other into what they’d wish them to be. It was the only thing anybody did on the upper decks of Auluré.
Alan had been watching his mother glaring with her near toothless fury, only shards remaining of that whole upper row, and he’d chosen to open the line from his control panel — the one her husband had built just for this. He wouldn’t ever know why he expected something different.
She’d spoken, much clearer, “You’ll always be my daughter.”
Only the moment before he’d chosen to press the release on that outer door, and his last hope for reconciliation with the only one who’d ever held him right before Echo — despite all which came attached — he’d found the will to fight, and a hope to live.
It hadn’t been for his peers at The Foundry. Nor in spite of Mother. It hadn’t even been Logan; who he knew in his heart would find someone special to raise them. Those which had him deciding to fight for his own life, rather than go down in flames with his family, were people he’d never have expected.
Alan thought of all he read, and how personally he’d allowed his hurt to become — those many passages where Father had spoken not only of his wish to treat him with more respect, but the commoners as well — and that’s exactly when he decided what is was he’d been meant to fight for. Everyone his lineage held in the gutters of their hegemony, and those who’d not have a hope to stand the way he’d been so privileged to himself — with space, and time — they’d be his purpose.
He’d make up for never fighting for them before. In whatever way he’d find himself able, hoping that meant returning to his friends at The Foundry, but knowing it would start right here. On Auluré, with those very same he’d stood shoulder to shoulder with for so long, yet never witnessed, too lost in the ways he’d been damaged to see past the tip of his nose.
“Never again,” was the sentiment he’d resolved on.
“Not one second more.”
Ima rank my top ‘tear’ chapters:
————————————-
Yay! Omirion! Fly! Wait…
Lightfoot Hug
Gweverra’s Death
Alan visited by Miriam in forest - after fear dream
Miriam’s walk into the afterlife
Peidirò (First)
Dance Dream
4.2 - Gwevera has good parents
Erick and King Arthur
Illith wants to kill themself - more just, depressing, but I cried a lot
Illith Arthur Vacation
Justiceers - PART ONE- Chapter 10 - Arthur reads old comms panel
Icaro from the Conclave
Artemis Miriam Malta Suicide (that one was really sad to me)
Justiceers Daphne Chapter
The Foundry - Chapter 10 - Bench Dream and Leopold
Medusa: PART 2