That motherfucker. First he booby-trapped the refrigerator with a mousetrap, then he fucking tried to strangle her while she was in the middle of trying to make them all rich. She’d slash him open, and strangle him with his own intestines, she had no choice he was infected with a madness that only she could see a festering boil filled with pus that could only be cleansed tying it off with his own entrails and pulling tightly to rupture the cyst and then she would consume the madness before it reinfected the others consume it transform it spit it out reborn reformed repurposed they didn’t understand she had to show them but Jim and Troy were too busy smashing at each other with crowbars to hear the truth of her revelation and she couldn’t find a blade for opening Brent’s stomach but there were knives in the kitchen blades for cleansing toward the house she went but Dad was in her way Dad looming over her with a pitchfork and he had the infection too and she had to cleanse him but he lunged at her she leapt aside and then the screaming started again as the tines went through Brent’s stomach because Dad knew the only cure was to be found in her brother’s innards so he twisted the fork and Brent screamed again but Dad was doing it wrong and he’d never cure his own sickness this way so she folded space and then the pitchfork tines went through a hole in Brent into Dad’s own gut and he screamed and dropped the pitchfork as the red sickness seeped out of him but the thing wearing Troy’s skin planted another crowbar blow to Jim’s face and she had to cure him too but now Dad held the pitchfork handle like a staff and he swung it at her head cracking against her temple swinging bashing kicking at her smashing at Mollie breaking her concentration—

The portal to Talas blinked shut. And just like that, the rage and madness left her. She could see and think clearly again. Apparently so could her family, because now the barn echoed with the horrified screaming of the confused, horrified, viciously wounded Steunenberg clan.

What the …

How did …

Jesus fucking Christ …

They’d turned into a lunatic psycho-cannibal flashmob just like the one she witnessed on the streets outside the casino. In fact she’d tried to—

Oh, holy fuck. She had actually intended to pull out Brent’s intestines and use them to “cure” him of his evil. She’d actually believed that made sense, understood it would work, knew it was the right thing to do.

It hurt, the dry heaving. Her stomach gave up nothing but a few drops of bile. Her throat stung, burned raw by acid and shame and fuckfuckfuckingshitwhatthehellwasthat. The others were emptying their stomachs, too.