Al and Lil Binewski deliberately breed their children into carnival freaks using drugs, poison, and radiation.

Baby Chick pulls Lil to him telekinetically to nurse, revealing his extraordinary powers to the family.

Vern Bogner shoots several Binewski children at a shopping mall parking lot, believing he is doing a decent thing.

Arty transforms his carnival act from oracle to full-blown preacher, drawing enormous and devoted crowds.

Alma Witherspoon shouts at Arty's show that she wants to be like him, directly inspiring the birth of Arturism.

Arturism grows into a massive cult with thousands of followers having limbs amputated to physically resemble Arty.

Arty punishes the twins for prostituting themselves by giving them over to the Bag Man.

Lil shoots and kills the Bag Man after finally recognizing him as the man who shot her children years before.

Arty orders Dr. Phyllis to lobotomize Elly, permanently destroying her will and mental faculties.

Oly secretly asks Chick to transfer Arty's sperm into her own body so she can bear his child.

Arty forces Oly to send her newborn daughter Miranda away to be raised in a convent.

Chick, shattered by the family's suffering and Arty's cruelty, triggers a massive firestorm that destroys the carnival.

Oly lives in Portland under a false name, secretly watching over both Lil and Miranda from a nearby apartment.

Miranda tells Oly about a wealthy woman named Miss Lick who is offering ten thousand dollars to have her tail removed.

Oly shoots Miss Lick inside an athletic club footbath, killing her to protect Miranda from surgical disfigurement.

Al and Lil Binewski deliberately breed their children into carnival freaks, creating a family whose extraordinary nature drives the entire story. The youngest child, Chick, reveals telekinetic powers, and eldest son Arty leverages his siblings' abilities and the family's carnival to build an ever-growing cult called Arturism. Arty's hunger for dominance leads him to make increasingly destructive decisions — lobotomizing his own sister and forcing Oly to give up her infant daughter Miranda. When Chick finally breaks under the weight of the family's suffering, he destroys the carnival in a firestorm that kills Arty and most of the family. Decades later, Oly lives in Portland secretly watching over her daughter Miranda, and when a wealthy woman named Miss Lick threatens to surgically alter Miranda, Oly kills her to protect what little family legacy remains.

The rise and fall of the Binewski family carnival.

Lil runs away from her wealthy Boston family to become a carnival geek, biting the heads off live chickens.

Arty tries to smother baby Chick with a pillow, but Chick's powers hurl Arty unconscious against the ceiling.

Oly drags unconscious Arty away from the scene to conceal his attack on Chick from their parents.

Arty secretly tips off a hotel manager to sabotage Al's casino gambling scheme that uses Chick's telekinesis.

Elly pushes Arty's wheelchair to the top of the carnival rollercoaster and threatens to send him over the edge.

Dr. Phyllis arrives unexpectedly at the Fabulon and attaches herself to the carnival crew as its doctor.

Zephir McGurk wires the audience benches in Arty's performance tent so crowds physically feel his words as vibrations.

Norval Sanderson, a national magazine reporter, arrives at the carnival to cover the Arturans and write a cynical exposé.

Sanderson returns to the carnival after a leave of absence and presents himself as a devoted Arturan follower.

Elly sells the twins' virginity to a carnival pageant judge for money, against a horrified Iphy's wishes.

The twins flee the carnival and reach a clinic for an abortion, but guards drag them back before the procedure completes.

Arty purges dissenting Arturans overnight and has Dr. Phyllis herself lobotomized and stripped of all her limbs.

The twins give birth to an enormous and insatiably hungry baby that Iphy names Mumpo.

Oly joins Miss Lick's athletic club and engineers their first meeting, strategically putting Miss Lick at ease.

Miranda shows Oly her finished nude drawings, calls her unique and wonderful, and reveals she has scheduled her tail surgery.

The secondary events of Geek Love reveal how the Binewski family dynamics were shaped by acts of jealousy, ambition, and willful blindness. Arty's early cruelty — attacking baby Chick and sabotaging Al's schemes — establishes his need to dominate, while the arrival of Dr. Phyllis and Zephir McGurk quietly equips him with the tools to build his cult. Outside figures like reporter Norval Sanderson show how even worldly, cynical people can fall completely under Arty's spell. The twins' sexual rebellion and failed escape for an abortion mark the point at which the family begins its irreversible collapse. In the present-day strand, Oly engineers a friendship with Miss Lick at an athletic club, only for Miranda to reveal the urgency of the situation by showing Oly her finished drawings and announcing her surgery date.

The characters and incidents that shaped the Binewski world.

The Binewski family prepares to abandon newborn Chick at a gas station, believing he is too normal to keep.

Arty privately confesses to Oly that he was the one who hired the thugs to attack Al and Chick at the casino.

Chick begins private lessons with Dr. Phyllis, learning how to locate and block pain in others using his powers.

Chick heals the amputated stumps of an old horse named Frosty, astonishing everyone in the carnival troupe.

Iphy announces she intends to marry Arty one day, and Elly furiously punches her in the mouth.

The veiled Bag Man arrives at the carnival seeking to serve Arty, and Oly privately learns he is Vern Bogner.

The Bag Man exposes piano teacher Tomaini as the twins' pimp, and Arty expels Tomaini from the camp.

Oly retrieves Al's gun and leaves it with the twins after Arty coldly refuses to call the Bag Man off.

Arty asks Chick to restore Elly's mental faculties out of guilt, unknowingly setting the final catastrophe in motion.

The restored Elly immediately kills baby Mumpo to stop him from consuming the lives of herself and Iphy.

Iphy kills Elly with a pair of scissors after discovering Elly has murdered Mumpo, and then dies herself.

Oly follows Miranda to the Glass House Club and is pressed into performing in a humiliating strip act herself.

Miss Lick shows Oly her locked room of secret recordings and casually mentions being inspired by the Arturans.

Oly concludes that the only way to permanently protect Miranda from Miss Lick is to kill her.

A newspaper reports both Oly and Miss Lick were found dead; a letter Oly mailed to Miranda reveals her true heritage.

Geek Love is driven by a chain of pivotal revelations and irreversible choices that slowly dismantle the Binewski family. From Chick's near-abandonment at birth to Arty's confession about hiring thugs, each turning point exposes the hidden currents of jealousy and manipulation running beneath the family's surface. The arrival of the Bag Man — secretly Vern Bogner — and Arty's fateful decision to restore Elly's mind set the final catastrophe in motion, leading to a cascade of deaths inside the twins' trailer. In the present-day strand, Oly's chance encounter with Miranda at the Glass House Club pulls her out of her watching distance and into her daughter's life, while Miss Lick's mention of the Arturans forces Oly to confront her family's long reach and make the choice to kill.