“Blaze” (post 4) by Richard Bachman (Stephen King) (post 19): Police coming; George says kill baby; George suddenly gone; Blaze and baby flee

As quoted in post 3, Blaze had begun to realize that George was an alternate personality. However, “he certainly didn’t realize that…George was…the creation of a mind working at a feverish, half-crazed pitch below the burnt-out surface stupidity. For years he had identified himself as a dummy, coming to accept it as just one more part of his life, like the dent in his forehead [from physical abuse in childhood]. Yet something continued to work away beneath the burnt-out surface…This was the part that remembered everything. Every hurt, every cruelty, every bad turn the world had done him” (1, p. 173).

Meanwhile, newspapers indicated that the police were coming, and he had to flee. George pressed him to kill the baby, which Blaze almost does. So it was the baby or George. One of them had to disappear. And “Suddenly George was gone” from Blaze’s awareness (1, p. 197).

So Blaze packs the car, and he and the baby flee.

1. Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman). Blaze [1973/2007]. New York, Gallery Books, 2018.