Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains · Book II · 2025
Cul-de-sac Carnage
Dan has a store, a rubber dog for a best friend and a price on his head. Now he needs allies, a magic laundromat and a way down.
Cul-de-sac Carnage (2025) is the second book of James Hunter’s Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains, a horror-comedy LitRPG set in the Backrooms, the endless liminal maze of the internet legend. Fifty-five chapters long, narrated as before by Dan Woodridge, a Cincinnati contractor and ex-Marine who runs a shop in a dead mall on the third floor and is now the most wanted man in the place.
It is a book in two halves. The first is base-building and politics on floors we half know: a trade alliance with a settlement of furries, a pilgrimage through a haunted hotel to a laundromat run by a cult, a security chief made of camping gear. The second is one long siege of a single floor, the 24th, a flat Midwestern subdivision called Sunnyside, where the dads mow in unison, the children ride in silent packs, and the Homeowners Association is a literal monster. The blurb promised lawnmower men, feral Karens, Kannibal Kids and a tyrannical HOA. It delivers all four.
Croc, Jakob and Temperance return; new regulars arrive in Ed Myrl, a paranoid Vietnam veteran who turns out to be right about the signal, and his fire-breathing parrot. Goodreads readers rate it higher than Book 1 (4.42 from about 3,000 ratings, October 2026).
The Kiosk and the Furries
Some time after Book 1, Dan’s store sits safe behind its glass door on the third-floor mall, so the Flayed Monarch’s Aspirants besiege its doorways and pick off his customers instead. Dan’s reward for killing Funtime Frank, a plaque called the Kiosk Franchise Opportunity, offers a way to hit back: slay a mall kiosk’s franchisee and own a terminal in the Franchisor’s network.
The kiosk is Keke the Kiosk Crab, a giant hermit crab wearing the booth as its shell, and it takes Dan’s water jets, two new Taxidermied Horrors made from Funtime Frank’s band (Synthia 2.0 and Drumbo Rebooted) and a cannonballing Croc to crack it. Steamboat Studios on the 99th floor approves Dan as franchisee, for an 85 per cent fee.
At home Wraith is waiting: Tribune of Howlers Hold, whose fursuit is an Artifact too powerful to give up and whose head under the bull mask is a real bull’s. He brings Dan’s wanted poster and an alliance, if Dan can carry the Hold’s three-person Tribunal. Wraith’s brother Jackson, a Roomkeeper prophet whose hands Temperance once cut off, wants Dan handed to the highest bidder; Ajax, the quartermaster, can be bought, but only in person.
The Hold, founded by 317 people who Noclipped together from a 1998 convention party, lives in shipping-container flats under a sports dome. Wraith walks Dan to a patch of fake turf where children born down here are playing.
“Make sure you’re worth it.”
For the first time Dan thinks about killing the Monarch rather than outlasting him. In the Muzzle and Mast, a pirate ship beached in a high-school gym, Ajax lifts off his fox head and names his price: protection from Jackson’s men, a discount, and laundry.
II · 1 Keke the Kiosk Crab The third-floor mall, chapter 1. Dan claps two Taxidermied Horrors into being, Synthia 2.0, once the Jamboree’s cat keytarist and now wearing a chainsaw for a hand, and Drumbo Rebooted, an animatronic bear under an elephant’s head, and the health-gadget kiosk he has come for rises twenty feet on spider legs. It is Keke the Kiosk Crab, a hermit crab wearing the booth as its shell. Killing her makes Dan a franchisee of the kiosk network.
II · 2 A Bull in the Lounge In the store’s Employee’s Lounge, Wraith of Howlers Hold sets his cartoon bull mask on the table, and the head underneath is a real bull’s: his fursuit is an Artifact too powerful to give up, just as Dan is stuck with the bathrobe. He slaps down Dan’s wanted poster and offers the Hold’s alliance, and Temperance names the obstacle: the Hold is ruled by three Tribunes, and one of them is Wraith’s own brother, Jackson.
II · 3 Make Sure You’re Worth It Howlers Hold, founded by 317 people who Noclipped together from one convention party in 1998, fills a domed sports complex on the 7th floor with shipping containers stacked into canyons and strung with patio lights. Wraith saves the point of the tour for last, a patch of fake turf where children born in the Backrooms are playing. It is the moment Dan’s war stops being only about his own skin.
II · 4 The Muzzle and Mast The Hold’s only tavern is a pirate ship beached in a high-school gym, with a snarling wolf for a figurehead and its bare masts brushing the ceiling. Once the bar is cleared, Ajax the Fabulous lifts off his crimson fox head: human, sweaty, freckled and shrewd. His vote has a price, and the last item on his list is the strangest. He wants laundry services.
Hotel Hell and the Sacred Laundromat
Fursuits are nearly impossible to get clean. Somewhere on the fifth floor is a sacred laundromat whose washers clean anything, and Ajax wants it annexed to the store. Dan, Jakob and Croc go, armed with Dan’s new trick: Relics are runes shaping Mana, and runes written on tennis balls make grenades.
The fifth floor is Hotel Hell, endless gilded corridors with velvet drapes over windows onto nothing. Worst are the Lodgers, drowned-looking guests who never checked out; one hides in a harbour painting, drains Dan’s will through his weak Grit, lunges from a mirror to bind him, and is unhinging its jaw over his head when Croc bites its head off. Dan annexes the suite and takes his first shower in two months. Between rooms Jakob tells his story: a Berlin cancer researcher, once in love with Temperance (Croc diagnoses a Twilight love triangle), who left the Hold because the Howlers had given up, and means to reach the bottom and learn what the “God Box” is.
A laundry chute drops them into a dark warehouse of derelict washers laid out like a maze. At its heart glows the Spin Cycle, a tidy laundromat under pink neon, where Laundry Brownies, bearded little men no taller than a detergent bottle, finish a summoning and hail Dan as their Deliverer. The Brownies are the magic, and their Profane Corrupter is the area boss: a fifteen-foot golem of soiled underwear that hurls washing machines, backed by an assassin of green gas whose dagger leaves Dan’s legs dead. Jakob fires sofas from a bazooka and Croc carries Dan into range until Sterilization Field unravels the thing into a rain of briefs.
Behind the laundromat, in a utility closet, lives a whole Brownie city. Dan plays prophet with a gashapon medallion, a pizza and a shaken can of beer, the high priest Bertrim swears a covenant in purple blood, and the laundromat joins the store.
II · 5 The Lodger Hotel Hell, the fifth floor: gilded corridors, frescoed ceilings, velvet drapes over windows onto nothing, and Lodgers, guests who checked in and never checked out. Hunting for a suite with a real shower, Dan finds a corporate harbour painting with one figure too many on the dock. Its attack goes straight for his weak Grit; he drops his hammer and can’t lift a hand. Croc arrives just in time.
II · 6 Red Yarn and Berlin Through Hotel Hell Dan nails up survival tips hung with rings of red yarn that will lead lost Delvers to his store. Jakob, pressed at last, tells his story: a junior cancer researcher from Berlin, once in love with Temperance, who left the Howlers because they had given up. He means to reach the bottom of the Backrooms and learn what this ship, the Backrooms itself, really is. “My purpose is to understand its purpose.”
II · 7 The Spin Cycle A laundry chute drops Dan, Jakob and Croc into a dark warehouse of derelict washers and dryers laid out like a maze. From the machine-tops Dan spots a blaze of pink neon: the Spin Cycle, a tidy neighbourhood laundromat of white brick and pastel paint standing alone in the gloom. Inside, the Laundry Brownies are finishing the summoning they have performed every day for more than four years, and their Deliverer has just walked in.
II · 8 The Profane Corrupter The Brownies’ Profane Corrupter is the area boss, the Shart Stain Golem, fifteen feet of soiled underwear held together by a hive mind, and it throws washing machines. Jakob answers with a graffiti-covered bazooka that fires sofas. A gas assassin’s dagger leaves Dan’s legs dead, and Croc carries him into range in a sling of tentacles until Sterilization Field unravels the golem into a rain of briefs.
II · 9 The Brownie City Behind the laundromat, a utility closet holds the Brownies’ whole city: three hundred of them in houses of detergent bottles and clothespins, with rope bridges, Christmas lights and a cathedral built from a washing machine’s innards on the top shelf. Dan plays the prophet with a gashapon medallion, a pepperoni pizza and a shaken can of beer. Bertrim, the high priest, swears a covenant in purple blood, and the laundromat becomes part of the store.
Building the Store
Past 15,000 square feet Dan may build a third golem, and from survival-aisle gear, a riot helmet and shadow he makes Camo Joe, Security Chief. In the freezer he turns hotel doors, crab legs, bellhop arms and mimic eyes into Undead Doorway Sentinels that fold into ordinary doors and guard his anchors. At level 23 he drops a title, Cold-Blooded Murderer, earned for killing Natasha Anno in Book 1: it is powerful, and he doesn’t want to become what it rewards.
The Tribunal’s vote is never shown, but the alliance works. Anchors in the Muzzle and Mast and outside Funtime Frank’s bring 123 Howlers to the Grand Reopening: a laundry queue two dozen long, Hold children riding Croc like a pony. Folding a traded Relic into his Pressure Washer, Dan forges Hydro Fracking Blast, a burning water jet so cruel it sickens him. He keeps it.
Then Jackson, tall and blond in silver plate and wolf hides, corners Dan in the breakroom with five Knights and demands a discount. Dan raises his prices ten per cent. When Jackson grabs his wrist, the store’s Stasis Halo freezes him, and Dan slaps him with the Ban Hammer, which teleports him to a random anchored floor. It takes him three days to walk home.
II · 10 Camo Joe With the store past 15,000 square feet, Dan may build a third golem, and he wants one he can trust with the place while he’s away. Into the pile go a camo poncho, a tactical jacket, a pack of survival gear, a riot helmet and shield, a Taser and one security camera. What stands up and salutes is Camo Joe, Security Chief, named for a hard-charging convoy sergeant from Dan’s first tour in Iraq.
II · 11 Doctor Frankenstein In the walk-in freezer, in a rain poncho, Dan plays Doctor Frankenstein with a glowing blue overlay that lets him graft parts onto his Horrors. From a spare hotel door, a frame of two-by-fours, crab legs, bellhop arms and a bellhop’s head with a security camera for a face, then mimic eyes for a mimic’s knack of hiding, he builds an Undead Doorway Sentinel. It looks, he decides, like a biblically accurate angel. Five of them go out to guard his doors.
II · 12 Grand Reopening Doorway anchors in the Muzzle and Mast and outside Funtime Frank’s bring 123 Howlers into the store at once, more than a third of the Hold: masks on the concession tables, a laundry queue two dozen long, years of hoarded Relics traded for coffee pots and cereal. The Hold’s children ride Croc like a pony, and Princess Ponypuff, who never haggles and never gives anything away, hands out lollipops for free.
II · 13 The Ban Hammer Jackson at last: Wraith’s brother, a Roomkeeper prophet in silver plate and real wolf hides, the hero of every fantasy novel except for the cruelty in his eyes. He demands a discount and gets a ten per cent surcharge. When he snaps his fingers, Camo Joe drops the two Knights who charge; when he grabs Dan’s wrist, the Stasis Halo locks him in white light, and Dan’s slap carries the Ban Hammer, which flings him to a random floor.
The Director and the Vote
On the security cameras, six Red Hands corner a young woman in a Shakespearean dress by the kiosk. Dan, Croc and Temperance go down. The fight is quick and ugly; then the surviving Aspirants, and Croc, hang in violet light while the Aspirants are taken apart. Croc and Temperance plant themselves between the “victim” and Dan anyway. She curtseys and calls herself the Director, emissary of a power she won’t name (one of the eight Sovereigns, Dan reckons).
She knows his secret: his Compass cut the Monarch’s web of doors, so the Skinless Court now moves its armies through the kiosk network of the Franchisor on the 99th floor, the Monarch’s ally. Kill the Franchisor, she says, and leaves gifts: a paper fast-food crown that guards the mind, tattoos that make kiosk Dwellers let you pass, and an iron ball that projects the whole network, some 3,000 kiosks down to the 355th floor, like a glowing termite colony. The route runs from floor 3 to 24, 49, 75 and 99.
Croc, who has never been below the 17th floor, admits he is afraid of losing Dan and of being useless deeper down, and weeps from a button eye in chair form.
“Friendship isn’t transactional,”
Dan calls a vote, and all four vote to go. Jakob names the first stop, the 24th floor: lawnmower men, Kannibal Kids and the Sunnyside Homeowners Association. Dan puts on the crown, forges Psychic Sovereignty and floats off the floor, and writes runes on playing cards, decks of healing, balloon animals and exploding wax clones of himself: Discount Gambit.
II · 14 The Director The Red Hands’ “victim” is the most dangerous thing on the floor. She hangs the last Aspirants, and Croc, in violet light and takes the Aspirants apart without lifting a finger. Croc and five-foot Temperance step between her and Dan anyway. She curtseys and calls herself the Director, emissary of a power she won’t name. She knows about his cameras and his compass, and she has a job for him: kill the Franchisor of the 99th floor.
II · 15 The Vote The Director’s gifts lie on the table in Dan’s suite: a paper fast-food crown, a stack of tattoos, and an iron ball that projects the kiosk network like a termite colony of light, some 3,000 kiosks down to the 355th floor. Croc, in chair form, confesses he is scared of being useless where he has never been, and a tear leaks from one button eye. Then Dan puts it to a vote, and nobody votes no.
II · 16 Discount Gambit Ready for the 24th floor. Dan puts on the Crown of the Burger Baron, a cheap cardboard fast-food crown that shields his mind, stamps a Kiosk Club Card tattoo on his hand and forges Psychic Sovereignty, which lets him float. Then he writes runes onto playing cards: red decks for healing, blue for Mana, a black box of exploding wax clones of himself, green for balloon animals that blow up. Discount Gambit, he calls himself. In the microwave door he sees an insane hobo contractor.
Down the Kiosk to Eternal Suburbia
The way down runs through a lotion kiosk’s cabinet, a cavern of corpses and a corkscrew catacomb of skulls lit by green witchlight, to a freestanding freezer door that opens inside an ice cream truck. Outside, the sky is the red of a nosebleed and the houses blur between fleshy growths and tidy homes. A gang of children on bikes, every boy a Timmy and every girl a Tammy, rings its bells up to the window and asks for ice cream; the four serve a silent, orderly line, and the children ride away. The truck radio reads the HOA Board’s notices: ignore laughter in the cornfields, keep away from the quarantined fireworks tent. Jakob guesses that tent is their gateway.
Outside, the illusion takes them too: Croc a golden retriever, Jakob a man in a cardigan, Temperance in a yellow sundress (her first dress, she fumes, in two hundred years), Dan in khaki shorts and a tucked-in golf shirt. At dusk the Kevins mow in unison while the Kathys garden and walk tiny dogs. The four borrow a golf cart and blend in, until a Kevin reads one of Dan’s survival tips, painted in red.
“Red is an unauthorized color.”
The illusion drops: a lawn of human hair, a house like a tumour, and Kevin a boil-covered thing with a lawnmower for a torso, while a Kathy comes off the roof on tentacles of hair. Dan earns his first HOA Citation. Jakob’s memories come back: he crossed this floor once, and the bike-gang children ate his friend. The residents don’t mind you staying; they mind you leaving. Their loot explains the floor: each carried a phone with one app that boosts a floor-wide illusion like a wifi router.
In a cul-de-sac on the edge of the corn stands the Pyro Emporium, a striped fireworks tent ringed four deep by a hundred silent Alpha Kyles and Feral Karens. A Kevin greets Dan by name, and his tag now reads Tyler Edenson, Dan’s boyhood best friend: the floor is reading his mind. At the bun station a voice from the edge of the corn warns him off the food. It is Ed Myrl, the missing maintenance man from the radio.
“question the signal. Question everything.”
Myrl blows smoke in Dan’s face and he sees the meal for what it is, human meat on the grill. Then Myrl hits a button on a ham radio strapped to lawnmower batteries and “Footloose” blasts at a hundred decibels. The cookout shatters into horrors, but cut off from the signal they only fight each other. Myrl gives Dan nine minutes of battery; Dan spends them turning the lawn into a killing field, until hundreds more Thralls come over the horizon.
II · 17 Way Down We Go The road to the 24th floor starts in a lotion kiosk’s cabinet, past two Sales Sirens who bow to the tattoo on Dan’s hand, through a cavern of corpses and a pitch-dark fissure. Then comes a corkscrew catacomb like the one under Paris, walled with skulls with green witchlight in their sockets and colder at every turn, until it opens on a landfill of suburban junk and a freestanding freezer door.
II · 18 Ice Cream for the Timmys The freezer door opens inside a filthy ice cream truck on the 24th floor, under a sky the red of a nosebleed. Bicycle bells come up the street, and a pack of children asks politely for ice cream. Their tags say Normal Human Boy and Girl; for a blink Dan sees spider eyes and round, toothed mouths. The freezer turns spotless, the children wait in total silence for their cones, and the Timmys and Tammys ride away.
II · 19 Blending In Outside the truck the floor’s illusion takes them too. Croc is a golden retriever at last, Jakob a man in a cardigan and boat shoes, Temperance a fuming housewife in her first dress, she says, in two hundred years, her cleaver passing for a skillet, and Dan a dad in khaki shorts and a tucked-in golf shirt. At dusk the Kevins mow in unison. A borrowed golf cart makes perfect camouflage.
II · 20 Lawnmower Man Lulled by Sunnyside, Dan keeps leaving survival tips, until a Kevin reads one painted in red and the illusion drops. The lawn is human hair, the house a tumour, and Kevin a boil-covered thing with too many eyes and a lawnmower for a torso, swinging a seven-foot belt of nails. Dan floats up out of reach, straight toward a Kathy crouched on the roof. Killing them earns his first HOA Citation.
II · 21 The Pyro Emporium At nightfall the Kevins grill in their driveways, and at the edge of the development, in a cul-de-sac against miles of corn, the four find the quarantined fireworks tent from the radio notices. The Pyro Emporium is the kiosk gateway down to the 49th floor, and it is guarded four deep by a hundred Alpha Kyles and Feral Karens, level 35, standing as still as mannequins. Nobody gets in tonight.
II · 22 Mr. Myrl At a block party thrown by a Kevin who now wears the name of Dan’s boyhood best friend, a voice from the edge of the corn warns Dan off the food. Edward Myrl is the missing maintenance man the radio warned about: Vietnam veteran, conspiracy theorist, level 34, tagged an Outcast by the HOA. His rules: question the signal, skip community events, never eat their food. A puff of his smoke shows Dan what is really on the grill.
II · 23 Footloose Myrl hits a big green button on a ham radio wired to lawnmower batteries, and “Footloose” blasts across the cul-de-sac at a hundred decibels. With the signal jammed, the block party comes apart into what it always was: a grill-master with a smokestack for an arm and a fork the size of a spear, a Kevin fused to a golf cart, a centipede of Kathys. With nothing telling them what to do, the Thralls fall on each other. Myrl gives Dan nine minutes.
The Cornfields, the Bunker and the Tiny Tots
The radio orders them murdered, and they flee into the corn, where the Thralls won’t follow. At a ruined barn under a full moon a Kannibal Kid crawls out, eight feet of antlered wolf skull: by night the Timmys and Tammys gain ten levels and hunt the adults, and once they have eaten enough they grow up into the HOA. Myrl buys five minutes with a pint of rotten ice cream.
His bunker under the barn is a 1950s fallout shelter, home to Woodstock, a house-cat-sized African gray parrot who is herself a Delver and promises to kill everyone with fire. Myrl, a Vietnam veteran, has lived here about forty years, since this was floor 19, a black-and-white 1950s town. His theory is a government outfit, BEACON, and a mind-bending transmitter that twisted the place into the HOA. Behind a blast door waits Big Bertha, a bomb that can kill the signal from within fifty feet of the radio station. The way in runs under the Sunnyside Tiny Tots Preschool, and it has to be now: tomorrow the Bleeding Moon rises for a month or more. Dan keeps quiet that an anchor could free Myrl tonight.
The preschool is tidy brick with an empty playground, its swings still swaying; Croc recognises a mimic hatchery. Through Myrl’s bong smoke Dan sees the truth, Myrl’s included: half-turned, six-eyed and lamprey-mouthed after thirty years fighting the change, he must eat memories to stay himself. Inside, thousands of Itsy-Bitsy Swarmlings pour from classrooms and ceilings, and one gavel blow chains Killing Blow through the packed brood: seven levels in minutes, and a title, Toddler Terminator, that Dan isn’t proud of. Then an alarm brings Mr. Wiggles, a sixty-foot worm with a dimpled baby face that shrugs off every attack. Dan springs a locked stairwell door with a Quantum Skeleton Key, Drumbo is sacrificed to stall the worm, and as the door bows Dan slaps a doorway anchor on it. On Wiggles’ side the door stops existing. Myrl touches the anchor and reads the store’s rules, and the secret is out.
II · 24 Kannibal Kid Myrl leads them by dowsing rods through the corn, where the Thralls won’t follow, to a collapsed barn. What crawls out under the full moon is a Kannibal Kid, eight feet of skeleton under an antlered wolf skull. By night the Timmys and Tammys gain ten levels and hunt the adults; fed enough, they grow up into the HOA. Myrl sets down a pint of rotten ice cream like an offering, and it buys them five minutes.
II · 25 Woodstock Myrl’s bunker is a 1950s fallout shelter: cinder block, a cot, a record player, a scrap-wood bookcase holding 1984 and Helter Skelter. In a cage hangs Woodstock, an African gray parrot the size of a house cat and a Delver in her own right, who greets strangers with a promise to kill them with fire. Croc turns into a blue rubber parrot and talks her round. Myrl, it turns out, has lived on this floor for about forty years.
II · 26 Tiny Tots By daylight the Kevins and Kathys stay indoors, and Myrl walks the four across Sunnyside to the Tiny Tots Preschool: tidy brick, trimmed bushes, a spotless playground whose swings are still moving with nobody on them. Croc, near panic, knows it for what it is, a mimic hatchery. Myrl hands round his bong and some old Vietnam-era gas masks, and through the smoke the building is a sore of meat, and Myrl a half-turned Delver who eats memories.
II · 27 Mr. Wiggles A locked stairwell door sets off an alarm, and the Preschool Administrator comes: Mr. Wiggles, a sixty-foot worm with a dimpled baby face, shark’s eyes and thousands of spider legs, filling the hall wall to wall. A jet of water only makes it bawl, and it shrugs off every hold. Dan has already sprung the lock with a Quantum Skeleton Key; Drumbo goes in to buy seconds while the others pile through, and Dan slaps a doorway anchor on the door. On Wiggles’ side, the door stops existing.
Regrouping at the Store
Through the door: bright aisles, pizza, a queue of Howlers at the laundry. Myrl, who hasn’t seen another human in nine years, weeps, then decides Dan is a BEACON spook and draws his Colt. Dan admits he hid the store just as Myrl hid what he is; Jakob bares the arm the Aspirants flayed so it never heals. Dan offers Myrl a way out now. Myrl refuses: fifteen years’ work, and he’ll finish it.
At the Monolith Dan reaches level 35, twelve levels gained on floor 24, and rebuilds Drumbo and Synthia with Sunnyside parts. Ajax, out of his fursuit, reports Jackson perma-banned and losing followers, dangerous because he’s scared. Then Croc bursts in at level 25, evolved into a folding chair Dan can’t pick out, a nearly real golden retriever and a steel-clawed grizzly, with a new attack that spits out a red slug he names Remy. In the preschool’s sub-basement Dan finds a derelict Loot Arcade whose prizes include a one-shot parachute man and a Potion of ‘YOLO’.
II · 28 Through the Door Through the anchored door: bright aisles, greasy pizza, Ponypuff browbeating a haggler, a line of Howlers waiting on their laundry. Myrl hasn’t seen another human being in nine years, and his shoulders shake. Then he finds he can’t get past the store’s level cap, decides Dan is a BEACON spook, and draws his Colt. Dan owns up: he hid the store just as Myrl hid what he is. Myrl stays to finish his fifteen-year job.
II · 29 Croc Evolves At level 25 Croc evolves, and has to show everyone at once: a folding chair Dan can’t pick out of the breakroom set, a nearly real golden retriever with a hyena’s legs, a grizzly with steel teeth and claws, a spiked mace for an arm. His new ranged attack vomits a forearm-long red slug that eats, grows and explodes; he names it Remy, his own Renesmee from Twilight. Ajax, out of his fursuit, is delighted.
The HOA
Down a fallout tunnel lies the station’s red-lit basement. Myrl throws Big Bertha’s lever, the station’s old equipment blares Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”, and the building rears up. The radio station is the HOA itself, the Home Overlord Association, a kaiju three or four storeys tall patched from the neighbourhood’s houses, with a single great eye and the radio tower for a crown. Croc, Dan and Myrl tumble out of its door under a bleeding moon; Jakob and Temperance are still inside with the bomb.
Dan throws Myrl the parachute man, reaches Croc (both hind legs broken), and improvises. Myrl talks Jakob through Big Bertha by walkie-talkie; Croc grows long legs and rubber hands and drives the limb-festooned ice cream truck; Dan rides the roof. The freezer’s bottomless rotten ice cream becomes ammunition: every pint he flings at a Thrall turns the Moon Cursed Kannibal Kids on it. The HOA heals by eating its own residents and roars its creed at Dan,
“your petty individuality is the disease and that I am the cure”
then charges. Dan leads it toward the corn, feeding it some twenty exploding clones of himself, until the truck dies.
He sends Myrl, Woodstock and Croc into hiding with a doorway anchor and triggers Form FleshTron, Go!, Funtime Frank’s old Relic: Synthia, Drumbo, five Sentinels and the truck wrap round him into a twenty-foot mech with a spiked gauntlet on one fist and a buzz saw on the other. He drinks the YOLO potion. Mech meets kaiju in the moonlit corn, and the HOA has him half-swallowed when Jakob’s voice crackles over the radio: the sequence is done. Big Bertha detonates inside it, the music stops across the whole floor, and Dan drives the saw down through the great eye before he collapses.
He wakes on the sofa of his suite. Myrl used the anchor, Croc found him, and Jakob and Temperance cut their way out of the corpse. Dan is level 42. Among the loot is the HOA’s illusion engine; no one should have that power over other minds, Dan decides, not even him, and the Director was wrong about him. The Franchisor can wait. Tonight, with Twilight on the DVD player and Croc’s head on his thigh, he is
“just a guy, drinking a beer, watching a terrible movie with his best friend”
The gateway to floor 49 is still unused. The story goes on in Kiosk Kingdom.
II · 30 The HOA Myrl throws Big Bertha’s lever, Pink Floyd blares from the station’s walls, and the radio station stands up. It was never a building. It is the HOA itself, the Home Overlord Association, level 55: three or four storeys patched together from the neighbourhood’s houses, with shingles of cartilage, window frames of bone, one enormous eye and the radio tower rising from its skull like a crown. Croc, Dan and Myrl tumble from its door under the Bleeding Moon.
II · 31 Ice Cream Man Dan Croc grows long legs and rubber hands and takes the wheel; Dan rides the roof, boots glued to the metal, the jingle blaring over Pink Floyd. The freezer’s bottomless rotten ice cream is his ammunition: every pint he flings at a Thrall turns the Moon Cursed Kannibal Kids on it. Woodstock flies resupply in a harness of rope and carabiners, and Myrl hands up an apple cannon for the long shots.
II · 32 Form FleshTron, Go! With the truck dead in the corn, Dan sends Myrl, Woodstock and Croc into hiding and triggers Form FleshTron, Go!, the Relic Funtime Frank used to merge his band. Synthia, Drumbo, five Sentinels and the ice cream truck wrap round him into a twenty-foot mech, with a windshield for a visor, a tyre-sized spiked gauntlet on one fist and a buzz saw big enough to fell a redwood on the other. He drinks the YOLO potion. Kaiju, meet mech.
II · 33 The Real Prize Dan wakes on his sofa, level 42 and a Kaiju Slayer: Myrl used the anchor, Croc found him, and Jakob and Temperance cut their way out of the corpse. Sorting the loot, he decides the HOA’s mind-control filter is power nobody should have, himself included. The Franchisor can wait until tomorrow. Tonight there is a Twilight DVD a Howler traded in, a beer, and Croc, who thinks it might be the best gift Dan has ever given him.
Borrowed from the Backrooms legend
- No screen adaptation of the books exists (October 2026). What Cul-de-sac Carnage borrows is the internet legend of the Backrooms and a stack of pop culture it parodies; no statement by Hunter about his sources has been found, so the links below are this companion’s reading.
- Noclipping, and the people who vanish. The legend began in May 2019 with an anonymous 4chan reply warning that if you “noclip out of reality” you end up in the Backrooms (Wikipedia); noclip is a game cheat for passing through walls (Wikipedia). Book 2 makes it a mass event: Wraith’s Howlers were founded by 317 people who Noclipped together from one convention, and he says legend files the lost colonists of Roanoke and Rome’s Ninth Legion under the same heading (ch.5).
- Numbered floors with warning labels. The fan wikis grade each level by a survival difficulty class (Backrooms Wiki, Level 0); Book 2 gives floors hazard classes (Spatial, Biohazard, Temporal, Cryo) and makes the 24th a Cognition Hazard, a floor that lies to your mind (ch.26).
- Space that shifts, and dead interiors. The Wikidot wiki’s Level 0 rearranges itself when no one is looking (Level 0); the Fandom wiki’s is “Devoid of Entities” (Fandom, Level 0). Dan learns the Backrooms is mostly empty and boring, finds Hotel Hell reminds him most of the Lobby, steps into an ice cream truck whose inside is Lobby yellow, and hears from Myrl that floors grow, merge and update: the 24th was the 19th forty years ago (ch.9, 12, 29, 38).
- Things that pass for people. The wikis catalogue entities such as the grinning Smiler, the Partygoers and the Facelings, humanoids that copy human roles and routines (entity list, Facelings); Sunnyside’s Kevins and Kathys, mimics wearing a suburb, play in the same key.
- An institution studying the place. Kane Parsons’ web series adds Async, an outfit that opened a portal into the Backrooms in the 1980s (Wikipedia), and his 2026 film for A24 keeps its scientists (Wikipedia)). Book 2 gives Myrl his own: BEACON, a covert government bureau whose “Project Black Mirage” he blames for the HOA (ch.38). No borrowing is claimed either way.
- Nostalgia as a rule. Parsons has described the Backrooms as a poorly remembered late 1990s and early 2000s (Wikipedia); Wraith says the Backrooms runs decades behind the real world (ch.5), and the 24th floor pulls Dan’s own Ohio childhood out of his head, bike bells and bottle rockets and a best friend’s name (ch.29, 34). Almond water, the legend’s drink, is absent; here it’s Zima and Jolt Cola.
- The pop culture it parodies. The HOA and its radio are suburban-conformity horror: Dan names The Stepford Wives and Children of the Corn (ch.30), Myrl’s shelf holds 1984 and he calls the signal Big Brother (ch.38). “Footloose”, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” and Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” are the weapons against it. Hotel Hell feels to Dan like a Stephen King novel (ch.9), and “Hotel California” plays in the tavern (ch.6). FleshTron is Voltron made far worse, with a Sailor Moon transformation sequence (ch.52); the Sentinels are the “biblically accurate angel” meme (ch.20); and a Relic looted from the Kannibal Kids turns its user “wendigo-like” by moonlight (ch.55). Croc’s Twilight obsession runs to the last page.
Continuity notes
- Dan: level 22 → 23 (ch.20) → 24 (ch.32) → 35 (ch.45) → 42 (ch.54). Wears the paper Crown of the Burger Baron and a Kiosk Club Card tattoo from ch.26 and floats with Psychic Sovereignty. Drops the Cold-Blooded Murderer title (ch.20); gains Toddler Terminator, Domino Rally and Kaiju Slayer. Keeps the HOA’s illusion engine only to study it.
- Croc: evolves at level 25 into an Adolescent True-Transmorphic Mimic (ch.46): steel claws, a nearly real retriever, and Remy, a red slug spawn. Both hind legs broken and healed in the HOA fight (ch.49).
- Jakob: his Berlin past and his love for Temperance told (ch.11); shows Myrl the flayed left arm he once showed Dan in Book 1 (ch.43). Ends soaked in the HOA’s blood.
- Temperance: stays a Howler in good standing as Ajax’s bodyguard; ends at level 30, out-levelling Jackson and promising him a rude awakening.
- Howlers Hold: allied with the store through anchors in the Muzzle and Mast and outside Funtime Frank’s (ch.21); the Tribunal’s vote itself is never shown. Jackson is Ban Hammered, perma-banned from the store and losing followers (ch.22, 46).
- New at the store: Camo Joe, the Laundry Brownies and the Spin Cycle, room 5519, a freezer, a security office, the Loot Arcade; Ed Myrl and Woodstock, Myrl strangely at peace (ch.54).
- Out of action: Synthia 2.0, Drumbo Rebooted, the five Doorway Sentinels and the ice cream truck, their power Relics burnt out by FleshTron; none can be summoned until Dan rebuilds them (ch.52).
- Open threads: the Director’s employer; the Franchisor on 99 and the Lord of Coin; BEACON and a way out; the Pyro Emporium gateway to floor 49, still unused; Mr. Wiggles, presumably still behind his vanished door; the Monarch, still coming.
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The whole walk: The Series · I · Discount Dan · II · Cul-de-sac Carnage · III · Kiosk Kingdom · The Backrooms