Season Finale - Part IV
After the incident between Morgan and Chloe, Zach’s on thin ice. He’s left out of a secret writers’ room during which they discuss how The Culling Man will board The Scallion, Morgan will die, and Chloe and Christian will defeat The Culling Man in one big blood vortex.
Angela and I decided it would be best if Chloe and Morgan met on neutral ground. We picked a deli just outside the baby housing units. I felt a bit like I was escorting my child to a date. I picked up Morgan from his place and met Angela and Chloe at the restaurant. Morgan dressed nicer than usual. I noticed his fingernails were clean. We sat the two of them down across from each other and found seats for ourselves a table away.
“I like your tie,” Chloe said. She looked at the table. She ordered a veggie melt.
“It’s my only one,” Morgan said. He didn’t order any food. “I’m really sorry I hit you.”
“They had to give me a new tongue. I thought we were friends,” Chloe said.
“We are friends,” Morgan said.
“Friends don’t hit friends.”
“I know.”
I worried for a second that this was a bad idea. I looked at Angela because I couldn’t really stand to look at either of the babies, but she was busy staring at the menu tablet.
“I’m going to die,” Morgan said.
“Oh,” Chloe said.
“That doesn’t make it okay that I hit you. I just wanted you to know. I’m sorry. They’re going to kill me. You are my friend,” Morgan said.
Chloe reached out and touched Morgan’s hand. I looked at Angela. Babies aren’t supposed to touch each other off-set. She shrugged.
“Can we talk alone for a little bit?” Morgan asked.
I looked at Angela and she looked at Chloe. Chloe nodded. Angela and I got up and moved to another table. I ordered Angela and me beers and told her that Morgan gave me a seltzer the other day. She didn’t believe me.
Angela and I spent the next two hours working and glancing up to make sure Chloe and Morgan were okay and not violating baby policies. I emailed seven old colleagues during that hour looking for open writing slots. After the Morgan debacle, I suspected that I was going to be replaced next season. If Drew didn’t tank my reputation across town, I had a good chance of landing another position. Not many other writers had as much hands-on baby managing experience as me.
Chloe came over to tell us she was ready to go home. Angela walked her out and let her say goodbye to Morgan with an affectionate wave.
I asked Morgan how it went. He said well, that he felt better about the whole thing. I slapped him on the back and smiled. I offered him a beer and he said that he just wanted to go home.
“I’m proud of you,” I said as I walked him to the front door of his room.
“Thank you,” Morgan said. He didn’t look at me.
*****
Drew called me into his office a week later. He walked over the ending with me and it was pretty much beat for beat what Angela said it would be. Even the blood vortex. He also told me that I was a real disappointment to him and that my talent had gone real downhill in the last few years. I nodded along like I agreed and didn’t stop when he said that I didn’t have a spine. He wanted me on board for appearance purposes until the finale and then I was “donezo.” That’s how he put it. He shook my hand afterwards and said he looked forward to reading my work when I was good again.
I sat in on the readthrough of the script. This one guy in the makeup department cried when he heard The Culling Man was going to get thrown into a vortex. Morgan had maybe three lines in the episode and they all sounded wrong. Drew kept my name on the writing credits all the same. This drone programmer afterwards came up to me and congratulated me on the finale. He really liked the scene where Christian and Clyde finally got together. I lied and said I really liked that part too. It was all shit to me.
I showed up on the shoot of the big Scallion fight scene because I felt like I owed it to Angela given how much she had helped me. I gave her a hug beforehand and told her I was proud of her and that was the truth.
It was set up on the usual Scallion soundstage and was more crowded than usual. Big fight scene. Two baby deaths. Only one take to get it right. I saw Morgan enter dressed in a ragged and dirty costume. Nails dirty again and beard even longer. I called out to him, but he didn’t notice.
Angela and I headed up to the rafters to watch like we always would on inessential shooting days. I liked getting to view it like I was at one of those old Broadway plays. When Cynthia had been killed, it was the best place to see it all without being in the splashzone.
Drew called everyone to their places and the room fell silent and into motion. The drones launched and hovered and swirled. It started. Morgan snorted another round of scarab dust and swayed on the railing of the Scallion. He looked tired and bony and serene. I wished I could be up there, up close to see him off. I, more than anyone, deserved to see what happened next.
The Culling Man entered from a plank in the floorboards. He managed to sneak in through the dimensional door in the barracks that Christian had been hiding for visits with his sick mother. This was Brian’s idea. The Culling Man bit. Not the stuff with Christian and his mom. Christian was Drew’s baby. Bland pretty boy cardboard protagonist. He sucked.
The Culling Man crept along the floor like some kind of demonic sloth. Brian probably coached him on that. Brian hated sloths. Morgan swayed and The Culling Man crept. Then it just happened. The claws went through Morgan, in and out twice. Through the back and out the front, tearing through his shirt. Morgan gasped and coughed like he was supposed to. The Culling Man stepped away and Morgan was on the floor.
There were two shots and The Culling Man was on the floor too. Angela grabbed my leg and Drew cursed in what he probably thought was a quiet voice. Chloe emerged from behind the masthead holding a thundergun. I turned to ask Angela if there was a change in script, but she shushed me. Chloe walked forward and pumped another thundershot into The Culling Man. She tossed the gun away and helped Morgan prop himself up against a crate. She sat crosslegged next to him.
“I’m going to die,” Morgan said.
“Oh,” Chloe said.
“That doesn’t make it okay that I hit you. I just wanted you to know. I’m sorry. They killed me. You are my friend,” Morgan said.
Chloe reached out and held his hand. “You’re my friend too. I’m sorry you had to die.”
Morgan died.
Drew called cut. Angela muttered an, “I’m so fucked,” and disappeared down the rafters.
I watched from the rafters as the cleanup crew stepped onto set. They cut the rope rig for the useless blood vortex. They pulled out two bags to put the pieces of The Culling Man into, but Brian asked them to wait a minute. Props and effects grabbed the thundergun before it could go off again and kill another baby. Angela made a run for Chloe, but Drew intercepted her to ask what the hell just happened. Chloe sat with Morgan until the mops and bags showed up. The two men loaded his body into the packaging and slapped a “disposal” sticker on it. Chloe looked up. She saw me. I waved. She closed her eyes and lay on her back, arms spread wide like she might melt into the wooden starboat.
Morgan’s body wheeled past me. His eyes stared upwards. Nobody had bothered to close them. I climbed down from the rafters and avoided the general chaos unfolding from the screaming match between Angela and Drew. I asked one of the mortuary guys to let me have a minute to say goodbye. One of them rolled their eyes and muttered something about writers but stepped off to grab a soda.
His claw wounds had already dried. Baby blood was thinner than ours. I noticed that The Culling Man hadn’t been moved. He sat in a blob of synthflesh just under the masthead. Brian knelt over it and looked up to the light fixtures on the ceiling. While The Culling Man’s baby blood stained his jeans. Brian closed his eyes and muttered something to himself that I didn’t hear. He looked like a soccer kid after missing a goal
Morgan’s eyes were brown. I realized that I had always thought they were blue. I was wrong I guess. They looked like they did that day in the marsh. Open and wide and gasping. I looked away. A blood crusted hand lay loose to his side. I slipped my nail under his and scraped away what dirt was there.
Nic Anstett, a writer from Baltimore, MD, loves the bizarre, spectacular, and queer. She is a graduate from the University of Oregon’s MFA program and has attended workshops through the Clarion Foundation, Lambda Literary, and Tin House, where she was a 2021 scholar. Her published and forthcoming fiction can be found in publications such as One Story, Witness Magazine, Passages North, Lightspeed Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories and a novel.
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