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"...Pain is an unavoidable side-effect..."
Directed by: Scott Winant
Written by: Daniel Knauf
Summary
Shells are flying and weary medics attempt to help an array of maimed and screaming
soldiers, one of whom has lost his legs and an arm...until Ben finally wakes up from this terrible dream. Pulling the sheets off his body,
he sees that his arm and legs, too, have become bloody stumps...until, he finally wakes
from his dream of waking.
"They're getting worse, aren't they? The dreams." says Lod, who is squatting nearby.
But Ben stomps away from his offer of breakfast. Rita Sue finds Stumpy sitting alone in
the car, drinking a morning beer and listening to the radio. She tries to entice Stumpy into
a little "picnic" but the still grieving father says he can't. Rita Sue is hurt. "Don't you
miss me?" she asks.
Sophie delights Jonesy by bringing over a couple of baseball gloves, and the two enjoy a
catch and conversation, as in happier days. But when the conversation turns to Sophie's
mother, Jonesy fails to defend Sophie's new friend Libby, and the pleasant afternoon
turns ugly.
Samson collars Ben and sends him on a mission: he's to recruit a freak with claws for
hands, known in the area as "Scorpion Boy." Samson gives Ben directions and fifteen
dollars to bribe the boy's parents if necessary.
Brother Justin, meanwhile, is in a mental institution, receiving round after round of
radical-and painful-therapies, involving icy submersions, insulin injections and rubber tubes.
Interviewed by a doctor in a padded cell, Justin answers his questions. "I've always been
what I am," he says. "The left hand of God." Asked what that means, Justin says, "It
means I am no longer his servant." As the doctor takes notes about Justin's various
psychoses, Justin, who is several feet away tells him he misspelled "excitation."
"I broke a man's neck. I willed it and it was so," Justin says. "Why don't you try that
with me?" the doctor asks. "Perhaps I already have," is Justin's reply. Later, as the
psychiatrist walks away, he distractedly corrects a misspelling of "excitation" in his
notes.
Bouncing along country roads in the truck, Ben asks a sharp-dressed man the way to the
town he's looking for. Glancing at the Carny logo on Ben's truck, the man offers a set of complex
directions, and Ben sets off.
At the carnival, Stumpy listens to Jonesy's complaints about women. "What you need is
to get your candle waxed," Stumpy says, and tries to talk him into paying a visit to Rita
Sue. Jonesy is surprised and refuses, but Stumpy pushes. "You could help me out." he
says. "I need a relief pitcher here."
Nearby, Rita Sue notices Libby and Sophie dancing and laughing as Libby practices her
routine, and hatches a idea of her own-to get Sophie to join the cootch tent. "Why don't
you work the bally?" she asks, after sending Libby for a Nehi. " I'm not asking you to
strip, just get em worked up while Felix turns the tip."
Sophie refuses. "I got a job," she says. Anyway "Momma'd blow a gasket." When Libby
returns, she knows immediately what her mother has been up to and is furious.
Ben has tracked down the freak -not a Scorpion Boy, it turns out, but a Lobster Gal. But
as he enters the foul-smelling shack where she lives, the girl is already signing a contract
with the sharp-dressed man who sent Ben on the goose chase. The man, Phineas Boffo, is
an old colleague of Samson's and offers his hand. "We freak finders gotta stick together,"
he says. Angry at being outsmarted, Ben takes his hand, and terrible visions of Crusaders
and torture appear. When Ben looks down, he has Boffo's lodge ring in his hand, and he
drives off, with the man yelling after him to give the ring back.
Rita Sue rejects Stumpy's suggestion about Jonesy. "I don't roll with trade," she says.
But Stumpy persists. "Why would you want to do something like that to us?" But Stumpy persists. "It's just another trick, he says."
Sophie argues with Appollonia over Rita Sue's offer and her association with Libby. "At
least she knows who her father is," Sophie says. Her mother slaps her, without moving,
and Sophie slaps her back. Before long she is back at Rita Sue's tent.
At the mental institution, Justin seems have a strange effect on the other inmates and on
the staff. With a glance, he causes a nurse to change the radio station, and the sound of
Tommy Dolan fills the room. "Where are you, Brother Justin," he calls out to his
audience. "Where are you?"
Ben is filling the truck's tank when he is approached by a man offering to sell a chair.
The man is stranded with his dispossessed family, and they don't have money for a new
tire. The gas station proprietor yells at the man, but Ben offers some of Samson's money
to pay for the repair. As Ben pulls off, a piece of paper on a weathered bulletin board
catches the Okie's eye. Ben's face is on the poster, along with the words: Wanted for
Murder. The man quickly tears the sheet down.
Sophie's bally debut is a disaster, as a shocked Jonesy ends up beating an over-
affectionate audience member. Ben returns to the carnival and informs Samson that
"some weasel beat me to the punch." Samson laughs: "Sounds like the kid's got your
number, Phin," he calls to his old friend. Phineas Boffo emerges from the cook's tent and
angrily demands his ring back. Ben hands the ring over to Samson, who returns it, but not before clocking its insignia.
Outside the Dreifuss's tent, Jonesy is torn over keeping the appointment Stumpy set up for him with Rita Sue. Eventually she comes out to get him. He's nervous and tries to back out, but Rita
Sue is all business. Gently removing his clothes, she's startled by the look of Jonesy's
scarred knee. He is shaking as she touches it, then kisses it, and soon he is crying.
Touched, Rita Sue kisses his lips and they embrace with increasing passion.
Samson walks up to Management's trailer, and, thinking her hears voices, steps inside.
Lodz is inside talking and laughing, and mentions Scudder. Stunned, Samson looks over to the
curtain separating Management, and a growling voice rasps, "Samson, leave us."
Standing alone outside, Samson looks at the trailer, and then at object he has been
nervously rolling in his hand, an old watch fob. a medal of some sort. On its front is, the same
emblem that was emblazoned on Boffo's lodge ring. On the back, the initials: H.S.
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FATE Game UPDATED!
New upgrades make the game faster and your character even more powerful. Download now.
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Carnival Fact
Nicknamed "The Green Fairy" or "The Green Muse", absinthe was said to both heighten creativity and cause madness and epileptic fits to those who drank this mysterious green liqueur.
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