Title: Afterlife
Author: ianthe_waiting
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Carnivale and its characters are the property of HBO and the show's producers; no copyright infringement is intended.
Genre: Drabble
Warnings: S.2 Spoilers
Summary: #23 – Afterlife. Iris knew she was going to hell.
Word Count: 580 words.
Author's Notes: Drabble: a slice of fic in less than 1500 words.





Prompt 23 – Afterlife








Iris Crowe truly did not believe in heaven, but she did believe in hell. She lived in hell everyday, and in the afterlife, she would reign there as well.

She had told Norman this, once as a child, and just that moment, standing over the man she had known as “father” most of her life. Norman could only weep silent tears, as Iris cleared away his meal, moving into the kitchen to place dishes into the deep bowl of the sink.

Iris rested her palms on the edge of the sink for a long while, staring out the kitchen window toward the valley of New Canaan below. Yes, Iris would be in hell for all eternity, and the only solace was that Justin would be with her. In hell, Justin would hold her without a conscience to divert his mind. In hell, Iris could love him as she wished, and hate him just the same.

Justin’s time was nearly over, and Iris could feel some great crescendo approaching. She did not have her brother’s powers, she never wanted them, but Iris Crowe could feel a storm break from a hundred miles away, and she could feel that a storm was about to break over New Canaan.

Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, she turned and went to Norman again, smiling wanly as she maneuvered his wheelchair to the door to let her old mentor get some fresh air. Norman made no sound as the wheels squeaked and rattled over the wood floor. Iris winced once as her knuckles scraped between the doorjamb and the back of the wheelchair before stepping into the cooler breeze of the porch.

Together, she and Norman sat, looking across the valley, at the tiny specks of people moving, migrants setting up camp, men working on the foundations of Justin’s church. The movement and the people scared Iris. As she glanced to Norman’s bright blue eyes, she knew it scared him as well.

Iris wondered if hell would be the same, people coming in all the time, taking up space, taking up air. Would hell smell as bad as the migrants? Would hell sound as terrible as hundreds of ragged migrant voices singing ‘Bless Be the Ties that Bind?’ Iris shivered in the heat, and she knew Norman had noticed.

Iris tried to smile again, but found her lips trembling.

She was not scared of the afterlife, her sweet Alexei would be with her, always. In hell, Alexei would be a prince, and she would never know fear in his embrace.

Iris knew fear as she watched the valley, because she knew that something was coming, something that would be the end of her brother, and possibly herself.

It was death she feared, the transition from living to dead, from this world and the next. She feared it because Justin feared it.

There would be no afterlife for either of them, not really. Just a continuation of the hell that had begun the day their mother took them away from their father, the day that the train had wrecked and their mother had died.

The only consolation Iris Crowe had was that she would once again be Irina Belyakov, free of the mantle she had assumed as a pious Christian woman. And Justin would be Alexei again, and forever—the ‘usher’ of an end of a dynasty of madness.

Together, in hell, forever and a day, and Iris closed her eyes in anticipation.