Alistair Explains Why Theresa Is Not Dead; The Explanation Does Not Help

The switched injection. The wax body. The burning coffin. The Gazette attempts to reconstruct the logistics and partially succeeds.

0602Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald is alive. The Gazette is obliged to report this without editorializing and finds that obligation structurally impossible given the circumstances. The sequence of events, as disclosed by Alistair Crane, is as follows.

Alistair substituted the lethal injection with a non-lethal one before the execution. He then swapped Theresa's body with a wax replica. He then set the coffin on fire. He then told people what he had done, in the manner of a man who considers narrative disclosure one of the rewards of planning ahead. The Gazette notes that this required him to have prepared, at minimum: a non-lethal injection substitute, a wax body of Theresa of sufficient verisimilitude to survive a viewing, a method for switching the bodies without detection, and a burning coffin. The question of why Alistair Crane does any of this is, as always, technically answerable but spiritually unanswerable. He is like this. He has always been like this. Why is he like this? The Gazette has made its peace with it and recommends readers do the same.

Theresa is currently haunting the Crane mansion. Pilar has confronted Ivy and Rebecca over the fake tape, and has vowed to cause them precisely as much suffering as they caused her family. Theresa has also confronted Ivy and Rebecca directly, emerging from her coffin to do so, which the Gazette considers an extremely effective opening position for a negotiation. Theresa has additionally confronted Ethan about the tape depicting him killing Julian, a tape which depicted a murder that did not happen of a man who may not have been killed by whoever appeared to kill him. The question of who shot Julian Crane remains.

Editorial Board · On Alistair's Motives He has them. They are ulterior. Further details pending.

Supernatural Staffing Desk

Timmy Returns as an Angel; Visits Tabitha

The light. The angel. The power outage that was actually revenge. The Gazette files this with as much composure as it can locate.

Timmy's light went out. The Gazette has nothing to add to that sentence that would improve it and will not try.

0602Tabitha, seeking revenge for Timmy's death, used her powers to cut the hospital's electricity. This is the kind of grief that takes a specific form depending on who you are, and for a centuries-old witch whose only genuine companion in several hundred years of existence has just died, this is apparently the form it takes. The hospital lost power. Good Charity's life support affected. The Gazette does not condone the method but understands the impulse. 0602

Tabitha has fled Harmony. The Gazette does not know where she has gone. The Gazette suspects she does not know either.

Julian Crane Desk

Julian Returns Home and Takes a Bath; Also Confesses Knowledge of Sheridan's Death

Julian Crane has returned to the mansion and taken a bath. The Gazette notes this as the most structurally normal thing Julian has done since the tuna vat. He has also, in a separate development, confessed to knowing that he was responsible for Sheridan's supposed death, and has implied that he may have been the one who killed her — or at minimum that he knows who did and considers himself implicated. The Gazette is filing this under Ongoing Crane Crimes, a section of the archive that now requires its own index.

Pharmaceutical Operations Desk

Rebecca Deploys Five Baggies From Her Bust; Maid Executes the Reversal; Gwen Extensively Messed Up

The drugs. The bust. The tea. The friend. The alley cats. The Gazette covers a pharma operation that went wrong in every possible direction.

Gwen and Rebecca, pursuing their longstanding policy of chemically assisted interference in Theresa's life, attempted to drug her tea. Rebecca, in a logistical flourish that the Gazette is compelled to document precisely, produced five individual baggies from her bust and added portions of each to the tea. The Gazette notes five. Not two. Not a single prepared compound. Five separate baggies, individually sourced, extracted from the bust of a woman who was apparently prepared for multiple distinct pharmaceutical eventualities at a formal social occasion.

WrecksLLC · On the Extraction "drugs just hit different when a busty redhead pulls em from betwixt her bosom"

The maid, Phillis, who is a friend of Theresa's, observed the operation and executed a reversal: she swapped the cups. Gwen received the five-baggie tea. Gwen is now extensively messed up, riding Ivy & her scooter, Dear reader you read that right. Ivy and Rebecca are attempting to help her. The Gazette finds this outcome structurally satisfying and proportionate, and will note that the maid has demonstrated more tactical intelligence than anyone who has attempted to help Theresa in the preceding issues.

Romantic Entanglements Desk

Sheridan Engaged to Two Men Simultaneously; Luis Not Handling It; Brian Medically Fragile; Beth's Mother Praying for Structural Intervention

The reverse amnesia. The reunion. The second engagement. The doctor's phone call. The Gazette covers what is technically a love triangle but is more accurately a love isosceles trapezoid.

Sheridan has arrived back in Harmony experiencing what the Gazette's medical correspondent terms reverse amnesia: she remembers everything, she remembers it all at once, and she is extremely excited about it. She and Luis reunited and made love. She then remembered her relationship with Brian. She is now engaged to both of them, a situation that has not been formally announced but is operationally accurate.

Luis is not handling this well. The Gazette notes that Luis's threshold for not handling things well is calibrated to a relatively normal human standard, which in Harmony means he is essentially always not handling things well, because the things are not normal. This is not a character flaw so much as an environmental inevitability.

Brian, meanwhile, survived the car crash 0602 from Issue 20 and was subsequently found passed out in a park. Eve, following up after he was seen at the hospital, called the Bermuda doctor who treated him post-crash. The Bermuda doctor confirmed that if Brian becomes emotionally upset, he could die. The Gazette files this information and notes that Brian is currently engaged to a woman who has just reunited with her previous partner and remembered their entire relationship while in his arms. The Gazette does not predict smooth sailing for Brian's cardiovascular situation.

Beth and Luis are also engaged. This means the following people are currently engaged: Luis to Beth, Luis to Sheridan (operationally), Brian to Sheridan, and presumably several other people the Gazette has not yet been informed about. The Gazette recalls the double wedding architecture of previous issues and notes that Harmony appears to be once again building toward it like a river toward a waterfall, with similar inevitability and similar consequences for anyone standing downstream.

Maternal Intervention Desk

Beth's Mother Prays to Prevent Luis and Sheridan's Reunion; Prays to the Wrong Party, Results!

Beth's mother, alarmed by the development of Sheridan's return and reverse amnesia, has taken the matter to prayer. She is praying for Sheridan to be brought into the situation so that the Luis-Beth engagement can not proceed and she can have Beth all to her bedpan. The Gazette notes that this represents a formal escalation from passive obstruction to divine petition, and observes that given the established metaphysical infrastructure of Harmony, which includes functional witchcraft, angel visitations, shadow demons, and at least one earthquake caused by a zombie succubus, it is not entirely clear that prayer to a benevolent force is the correct tactical channel for this particular request. However, directly before press, we were informed that Louis has since broken things off with Beth for Sheridan. Great Job Mom!

Point · Counterpoint  ·  The Question of Beth vs. Beth's Mother: Who Is Worse?
The Case for Beth Being Worse Beth is an active agent. She was/is? engaged to a man who is in love with another woman, a fact she is aware of, has always been aware of, and has structured her entire romantic strategy around. She does not labour under any illusions. She is not confused. She is not acting out of grief or fear or some misguided maternal instinct. She is simply doing it, with full information, in the direction of her own interests, on purpose. There is a clarity to Beth's villainy that is, in its own way, more troubling than the alternative, because it requires no external explanation and admits no obvious cure. You cannot solve Beth with therapy. She is fine. She knows exactly what she is doing. That is the problem.
The Case for Beth's Mother Being Worse Beth's mother is praying. Not scheming, not acting, not deploying pharmaceutical assets from her bust, praying. She is asking a higher power to intervene in her daughter's love life. This is, on its face, a more passive approach, but the Gazette would ask the reader to consider the particular quality of audacity required to bring God into a situation that began with a fake pregnancy, proceeded through multiple attempted murders, and has arrived at a point where the primary obstacle to your daughter's happiness is that the man she loves is in love with someone else and everyone knows it. To take that situation to prayer requires a complete absence of self-awareness so total that it loops back around into a kind of grandeur. Beth is doing dumb things. Beth's mother is asking the universe to do bad and dumb things on her behalf and expects results. The Gazette scores this marginally worse.