The Third Parent

When Tommy² loads more bullets and aims at Penny⁶ — who knew about the hidden revolver — Jack¹ screams the memorized code: six-six-three-five-eight-Rez. The effect is volcanic. Tommy's² composure cracks for the first time; shock twists his plastic features before rage swallows it.

He grabs Jack¹ by the throat, lifting him off the ground, demanding to know who told him that. The phone rings and Tommy² drops the boy, storms inside, and smashes the receiver off the wall. While he rages, Penny⁶ retrieves the discarded gun.

Later, through his headphones, Jack¹ hears the voice again — it claims to be on his side and says it will need him someday. Jack¹ tells his sister³ about the voice. Katie³ believes him. The code clearly terrifies Tommy,² but Jack¹ has no idea why.

Two years in, Mike⁵ wakes Jack¹ after midnight. The family van idles in the driveway, Penny⁶ and Katie³ already inside. They speed into the countryside, cornfields streaming past under a full moon. Through his headphones, the voice warns Jack¹ in two devastating words: he's coming.

A tire blows on a lonely road. Mike⁵ changes it while Jack¹ watches the corn for blue eyes. They reach a desolate motel and collapse into uneasy sleep — all except Jack,¹ who cannot stop scanning the curtains.

When he peeks through, Tommy² stands at the cornfield's edge, glowing eyes fixed on their room. He boots the door in. He beats Mike⁵ with a dresser, wraps Penny's⁶ head in a shower curtain and smashes it into the mirror. The family is loaded back into the van and returned to their prison.

By 1998, the entire street has suffered under Tommy² — one version of him inhabiting every home simultaneously. At a forced cookout, the neighborhood fathers band together. They tie Tommy² to a chair, beat him, drench him in lighter fluid, and set him ablaze. He burns to nothing without screaming, his last words directed at Jack:¹ see you soon. Two glorious days of freedom follow.

The families search every house — Tommy² is gone. The Williams family sleeps in one bed, goes to church, watches a movie together. Jack¹ rediscovers happiness. Then, at dinner two evenings later, a knock comes at the front door. Tommy² pushes in, unchanged, smiling. He wanted them to taste hope, he explains, so that losing it again would break them more completely.

Tommy's² vengeance for the burning is surgical and deliberate. He snaps Mike's⁵ knee with one twist, inverting it in its socket. Then he grabs twelve-year-old Katie³ by the throat, slams her onto the kitchen table, and saws off both her legs at the thigh with a kitchen knife while the family watches, paralyzed.

To keep her alive, he presses her screaming stumps against the red-hot stove burners until the flesh cauterizes and she loses consciousness. He carries her upstairs, humming a lullaby. Katie³ dies the following morning.

Mike⁵ stages a car accident — drives the van into a telephone pole and sets it on fire — to explain her death. At the funeral, Jack¹ watches the mourners weep and feels nothing but fury at every person who never noticed his family was drowning.

The following year, Tommy's² attention narrows to Jack¹ with unsettling tenderness — stroking his face, whispering that Jack¹ is ready for his final lesson. He marches the ten-year-old across the street to the Murphy house, where Jason's mother¹⁰ lies bound to a bed.

Tommy² forces Jack¹ through an act the boy barely comprehends while she weeps and tells him to think of happy things. On the walk over, a passing driver ignores Jack's¹ screaming pleas for help, seeing only a disobedient boy and his frustrated father.

Four months later, Tommy² vanishes without explanation. The family spends a year bracing for a return that doesn't come. Jack¹ will not fully understand what was done to him until years later. What he knows immediately is that something essential has been amputated from his soul.

Eighteen years later, Jack¹ is twenty-eight, living alone in the city — chain-smoking, drinking heavily, cycling through one-night stands he terminates with cruelty. His only enduring friendship, with Jason Murphy⁷ from the house next door, survives because Jason⁷ shares the same scars.

On his birthday, Jack¹ has a tearful breakfast with his father,⁵ who walks with a cane from his shattered knee and weeps openly about Katie.³ That evening, his ex-girlfriend Liz⁸ calls after three years of silence.

At her country house, she introduces Mason⁹ — a brown-eyed toddler unmistakably Jack's¹ son, conceived weeks before their breakup. Jack¹ reacts with fury, storms out, then sits in her driveway until shame overtakes him. He returns to apologize. They agree to talk tomorrow. He drives home carrying a revelation he never wanted.

At 3 AM, Liz's⁸ number lights Jack's¹ phone. Muffled sounds, then texts: someone is in her house, and he claims to know Jack.¹ Tommy's² voice pours through the receiver — the same impossible laugh from twenty years ago.

The mysterious headphone voice⁴ calls from a blocked number, warning Jack¹ not to go, but Jack¹ drives through the night anyway. Tommy² opens Liz's⁸ front door, smile unchanged by two decades. Inside, Liz⁸ is bloodied and trembling, a gore-smeared trowel beside her. Tommy² demands Jack¹ stay and help raise Mason,⁹ threatening Liz⁸ with worse if he refuses.

When Jack¹ defiantly repeats the old code, Tommy² slams him face-first across the table. Cornered, Jack¹ agrees. He carries Liz⁸ to bed and whispers the only survival advice he knows: do exactly what Tommy² says, never call the police, never try to escape.

Through his headphones, the voice finally identifies itself as Rez⁴ — a solitary, ancient being born from The Barrier, a ring of dark machinery encircling the edge of the universe. After eons of loneliness, Rez⁴ discovered Earth and became obsessed with the concept of family.

He tried to dream himself a vessel to walk among humans, but after sixty-six thousand three hundred and fifty-seven failed attempts, each layered atop the last, the final dream emerged sentient — carrying every previous iteration's violence beneath its compulsion to parent.

The code is Tommy's² true designation: dream number 66,358 of Rez.⁴ Tommy's² cruelty stems from early versions modeled on humanity's worst impulses; his nurturing instinct from later, gentler ones. To kill Tommy² permanently, Rez⁴ must die before him, severing the dreamer from the dream.

Jason⁷ — Jack's¹ childhood neighbor and sole surviving friend — doesn't wait for the plan. He arrives at Liz's⁸ house with a gun while Jack¹ is out gathering supplies. Tommy² stuffs him up the chimney with enough force to shatter bones, then lights the fireplace below.

Jack¹ returns to hear his friend⁷ screaming, unreachable, burning alive. Tommy² drags Liz⁸ down the hall into the bedroom. While her cries echo through the house, Jack's¹ phone rings — his mother,⁶ voice flat, informing him that Mike⁵ killed himself an hour ago.

Jack¹ sits on the couch cradling Mason⁹ while the walls contract around what remains of his world. When Tommy² finishes with Liz,⁸ she limps to the kitchen, picks up the abandoned pistol, and puts a bullet through her own head. Mason⁹ runs to his mother's body, patting her face, asking her to wake up.

During a violent storm, Jack¹ steps into the field with a knife and hammer. Rez⁴ descends from the sky in a streak of blue fire — a nine-foot titan of wire, gears, and glowing fluid, his eyes twin spotlights behind a cage of grated metal. He confronts Tommy² by his number-name.

Jack¹ drives his knife down Rez's⁴ spine, splitting the translucent casing of blue liquid. Rez⁴ collapses, whispering that Jack¹ was his only friend in the entire cosmos. A pulse of energy erupts — Tommy² shimmers into thousands of copies, then collapses back into one.

That one is still ferocious. Tommy² hurls Jack¹ through the front window, rips three fingers from his hand, and gouges out his left eye. Half-blind and shattered, Jack¹ hides a glass shard in his mouth and bites it into Tommy's² remaining eye, blinding him completely.

Blind and screaming, Tommy² gropes through the dark. Jack¹ finds the fire poker by the hearth and drives it through Tommy's² chest, hammering it into the floor. He douses the pinned body in liquor and turns on the gas stove.

Then he staggers down the hall, lifts Mason⁹ from the bed, and carries him to the front door. He places a cigarette between his lips — the one constant habit of his broken life — lights it, and flicks it onto Tommy's² body. Flames engulf the impaled figure as Jack¹ crosses the rain-soaked field with his son.⁹

His legs give out in the grass. He pulls out his phone and dials 911. As the operator answers, the house detonates. Five days later, Jack¹ wakes in a hospital — one-eyed, three-fingered — his mother⁶ at his bedside and Mason⁹ safe. Tommy's² body is never found.