Chapter summaries Death in the Mouth: Original Horror by People of Color Sloane Leong and Cassie Hart

Chapter 13: Alice or Rose or Aurora or Allerleuirah or on the Occasion of the Burial of the Beast

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter follows an unnamed woman (given the fairy‑tale names Alice, Rose, Aurora, Allerleuirah, or Belle) as she travels through four different cities—South, West, East, and North—in the aftermath of her father’s death. Each city corresponds to a stage in her grieving process. She arrives late at the hospice where her father, referred to as “the beast,” dies. In the West city she attends the funeral and meets a grief counselor, but her fiancé expresses doubt about her mourning. In the East city the ground feels hollow, and her fiancé refuses to plant roses for her father, stating she owes him nothing. In the North city winter freezes her journal (a tool for processing grief) and she contemplates suicide by hiding pills under her tongue. She wakes at midnight, realizing she has not reached the city of her happy girlhood. She decides to leave the fiancé and packs three dresses, ashes, a ring, and a comb. Ignoring his accusation that she is “sick,” she heads to the station. The chapter ends with her hope that she can still find the lost city of her youth—a place where her father made breakfast in a kitchen untouched by broken trust or spilled blood.

Key Events

  • The protagonist arrives late to the hospice where her father (the beast) is dying.
  • She travels through four unnamed cities (South, West, East, North), each representing a different phase of grief.
  • At the West city funeral home, a counselor gives her a journal and mentions the seven stages of grief; the protagonist quips about seven sins.
  • Her fiancé grows uneasy with her grieving process and eventually refuses to plant roses for her father, saying she owes him nothing.
  • In the North city, winter locks the journal’s pages, and the protagonist hides pills under her tongue, indicating suicidal thoughts.
  • She awakens at midnight, concluding that the present city is not the one she dreamed of as a child.
  • She packs a few belongings and leaves the fiancé, who calls her “sick” and threatens to end their relationship.
  • At a train station, she resolves to find the door in the grass and the words that can “return beast to human form”—a metaphor for forgiveness and reconciliation with her past.

Character Development

  • The Protagonist (Alice / Rose / Aurora / Allerleuirah / Belle): The chapter traces her movement from passive grief to active decision. She begins by following her fiancé’s lead through various cities but ends by choosing to leave him and pursue a mythical, pre‑trauma childhood. The fairy‑tale names suggest that she is re‑enacting archetypal stories in an attempt to transform her own narrative.
  • The Beast (Father): Though dead before the chapter begins, the father looms large as a figure of both harm and lost love. The protagonist’s ambiguous wish or curse on his deathbed (“wish or curse, how can you know”) underscores her conflicted feelings.
  • The Fiancé: He represents a worldly, pragmatic perspective that cannot accommodate the protagonist’s need for symbolic closure. His refusal to plant roses and his ultimatum “If you can’t let him go, I’m done” highlight his emotional distance from her grief.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • The Search for an Ideal City: The repeated phrase “This is not the city” functions as a refrain, grounding each scene in the protagonist’s feeling of displacement. The city she seeks is not geographic but a metaphor for the safety and joy of her childhood before her father’s betrayal (or death).
  • Fairy‑Tale Deconstruction: The chapter borrows names from Sleeping Beauty (Aurora, Rose), Little Red Riding Hood (Alice, Allerleuirah), and Beauty and the Beast (Belle). By layering these identities onto a contemporary experience of grief and abuse, the story critiques the promise that a kiss or a prince will restore innocence.
  • Roses as Memory and Grief: Roses appear as the flowers the protagonist once stole from her father’s bush, as symbols of his life (she asks to plant roses at his grave), and as a motif in her final determination (“rosethorn”). The fiancé’s refusal to plant roses signifies a rejection of her need to honor the past.
  • The Frozen Journal: The journal, a tool for the prescribed “stages of grief,” becomes immobile in winter. The freezing of its pages parallels the protagonist’s emotional paralysis and near‑suicidal despair.
  • Doors in the Grass and the Mouth of Winter: These images evoke portals and transformations. The protagonist believes that if she finds the right door and speaks the right words (“Open Sesame, Drink Me, I forgive”), she can return to the pre‑lapsarian moment of her girlhood.

Why This Chapter Matters

Chapter 13 is a turning point in which the protagonist refuses the linear, clinical model of grief offered by the counselor and instead embraces a magical, mythic quest. Her decision to abandon her fiancé and her known life signals a rejection of the “real world” that cannot hold her pain. By weaving together multiple fairy‑tale heroines, the chapter suggests that female trauma is often narrated through borrowed stories—and that true healing may require rewriting those stories from within. The ending, with its hopeful vision of a city where “not a drop of blood was spilled,” leaves the reader uncertain whether this is genuine redemption or a dangerous delusion.

Study Questions and Answers

1. What does the recurring sentence “This is not the city” mean in the context of the chapter?
Answer: The phrase indicates that the protagonist’s physical location never matches her internal, idealized city—the place of her innocent childhood before her father’s actions broke trust. The sentence emphasizes her dislocation and the failure of her current life (symbolized by each city she passes through) to heal her grief.

2. How does the fiancé’s refusal to plant roses reflect a broader conflict in the story?
Answer: Roses symbolize the protagonist’s desire to lovingly remember her father despite any harm he caused. The fiancé’s refusal (“You owe nothing after what he did”) represents a utilitarian, rule‑based morality that conflicts with her need for ambiguous, ritualistic mourning. This clash leads to their separation.

3. Why does the chapter end with the image of a girl “waking in April sunlight to the sound of her father making breakfast”?
Answer: This image represents the impossible desire to return to a moment before trauma—a “golden childhood” without fear, sexuality, or broken trust. It echoes the Sleeping Beauty myth while subverting it: the girl wants to wake not to a prince but to a restored father. The ending is both hopeful and tragic, as the reader understands that such a city may be unreachable.

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