DiLaurentis House of Imaginary Friends and Factual Horrors
Jason: Can you imagine thinking one thing is true about your brother and then finding out a whole other horrible thing that changes your understanding of the entire world?
Ali: Like finding out he’s got a stash of videos of you and your naked 12-year-old friends?
Jason: You have no idea what it’s like to think you can trust and parent and then be betrayed by them.
Ali: True, I’ve never watched my mother shovel dirt on top of me from the bottom of a grave she dug with her own hands.
Jason: I have suffered so much. I fell down an elevator shaft one — WAIT A SECOND.
Ali: What is it?!
Jason: One time I jumped out of a fifth story hospital room window after falling down an elevator shaft, so I went to Aunt Carole’s because I wanted some of her meatloaf and also all of my bones were broken and I needed a place to rest, and Mom was there! But she wouldn’t let me inside! I’ll bet you it was because Charles was in that house, and he was alive!
Spencer: Spencer has certainly executed a man with less evidence; let’s go to Aunt Carole’s and see if we find any Cheetos bags under the porch!
Ali and Jason invite the Liars to come to Aunt Carole’s house. They all agree to go, except for Aria, because she took some horrifying photos of ghoulish baby dolls with real human skin for faces and she wants to develop them alone in the dark at a school building that eats small children for dinner sometimes. The doll photos cause her some PTSD.
There’s a cute boy in the dark room and his name is Clark and he tells Aria she’s got a good eye for photography and there’s a guy outside named Ezra who wants Clark to ask Aria if she wants to journal about her time being kidnaped.
What Aria remembers in the dark room is that Charles cut off her hair and made her dye it pink like from endless Labor Day.
Is Charles obsessed with recreating Ali’s death day because he wants to bond with his sister over how Jessica killed him too? Or is he obsessed with recreating Ali’s death day because he wants to reenact it and make sure he kills her for good this time?
Oh, also Emily doesn’t go to Aunt Carole’s because she’s gotta make sure Sara stays off the roof, or else Pam’s calling Sarah McLachlan to come get her and take her to the pound first thing in the morning. Over coffee, Sara tells Emily she went to go see her mom, but her mom tried to burn her alive in the yard like a witch, the way she burned all her clothes and books and shit when Sara got kidnapped and/or checked into Radley under the name of Bethany Young.
Emily: You remind me of someone I know. Want to go swimming?
Sara: I remind you of your love Paige McCullers and you want me to defile the memory of her?
Emily: No, you remind me of the fake cousin who kidnaped Paige McCullers and forced my hand in committing my first homicide, but it’s hot as balls and I want to go swimming.
They do. I don’t want to talk about it.
At Aunt Carole’s the Liars and Jason sneak around and don’t find any red coats or anything. No parrots. No maniacal wall scribblings. Spencer has another one of her bloody flashbacks, taking it far enough to remember screaming at the Eye of Sauron up in the ceiling about, “WHO DID I KILL? WHO DID YOU MAKE ME KILL?” Hanna comes to her and soothes her and pets her face and tells her she didn’t kill anyone. It was just the five of them down there, plus feral Sara, and they all made it out alive.
In the yard, the Liars find Charles’ grave, and of course Hanna grabs a shovel and starts digging. Ali is like, “STOP! There is a dead DiLaurentis down there!” And Hanna is like, “Half of all DiLaurntis graves are empty. That’s science. Now get out of my way!” There’s a large scuffle between the DiLaurentises and the non-DiLaurentises and ultimately they stupidly decide not to dig up Charles’ imaginary body.
Hanna goes home and Caleb yells at her some more about how she can’t just keep disappearing. She goes, “You mean to like a whole other show? Yeah, that’d be really inconsiderate of me, wouldn’t it?” And she storms out, leaving him to stare broodily out the window at the fireflies.
Aria goes home and tells Byron about the dollhouse and he’s like, “Wow, that sounds like a harder core version of what my deranged mistress did to you and your friends. Remember that? In the basement in that storm? LOL, life is so weird.”
Spencer goes to the Brew and Ezra won’t let her have the pot brownies Dede Drake made for her because he is the worst.Â
And finally, Vernon comes clean to Ali about why Charles had to go to Radley in the first place. When she was a baby, Charles set in motion an elaborate plan to murder Ali. First he rigged up some speakers out in the yard of Alison yelling for help, which sent Vernon and Jessica running outside. Once they were out there, a net fall down from the swing set and trapped them. And then an army of remote controlled bees began attacking their faces! And while they were trying to get free from the bees and the net, three-year-old Charles boiled pot after pot of scalding water, carrying each one carefully to the bathtub, where Alison was hanging from the shower rod, sitting inside a cauldron. He intended to boil her to death!
And that’s how come he landed at Radley.
The Risen Mitten tracks the Liars because Spencer installed GPS pellets in their heads, I bet, and eats some taffy because The Risen Mitten has a soul and gets hungry like you and like me.
Nicole (@PLLBigA), thank you for the wonderful screencaps and for talking me off the ledge of Emily’s house the other night after that pool scene. XOXO.Â
