She opened a new pair of portals. One up near the warehouse ceiling, just under the struts and beams, the other a mile over Australia’s Gold Coast to capture the rising sun. It was far better than the shitty artificial lights. She widened the portals to let nice natural light flood the warehouse. The interdimensional hole in the ceiling exploded to thirty feet in diameter. Beautiful sky. Mollie did this all while maintaining Joey’s doorway to zombie Talas.

Two pairs of portals, simultaneously. It was incredibly easy. She couldn’t understand for the life of her why she’d struggled so much with something so simple. A baby could do it. From the corner of her eye, she saw more plastic-suited mannequins gamboling about like puppets in the distance. She giggled.

Joey said, “Uh…”

“Eyes in the sky!”

“You sure you want to be doing this?”

Mollie stopped laughing. Fucking ungrateful bitch. “I’m helping you, you stupid cunt!”

“Hey! Looney Tunes!” Joey wheeled on her, jabbing a finger in Mollie’s chest. Mollie traded the sunlight portal for one just before her sternum, just large enough for Joey’s finger.

“I’m just about out of patience with you—” Jab, jab. “—you ugly-ass bi—”

Mollie snapped the portal shut. It blinked closed on Joey’s finger, then blinked open again to catch the precious severed digit before it fell into the sea off the coast of Queensland.

Joey doubled over, screaming, clutching the bloody stump where her finger had been. Red spray misted Mollie’s face and doused her shirt—that wretched little bitch fucking ruined Mollie’s shirt—where she hugged her hand to her stomach. Her finger made a tink-plop sound as it hit the concrete floor, first the fingernail side, and then the raspberry lollipop side. Mollie snatched it from the ground—five-second rule—lest the maggots swarm it and carry it back to their queen before it could be sanctified. Between licks of the stump of Joey’s finger, she said, “Don’t fucking touch me. Don’t you EVER FUCKING SMEAR YOUR FRANKENSTEIN GOD-MACHINE FILTH ON ME AGAIN!”

She kicked Joey in the nose. It knocked the little cunt down, sent her sprawling. Mollie wound back and slapped her across the face for good measure.

Mollie took her shirt off. It had been befouled and couldn’t be cleansed. Balled it up, threw it into the air, caught it with a portal that opened on the garbage incinerator in the basement of her apartment building in North Dakota. The finger went with it.

Joey rolled to her feet. Time passed slowly, smoothly, like a magenta crayon dropped in a meat grinder.

More lights blinked out. The next ring, and then the next. No matter. Mollie re-created the Australian sunlight portal. It was bright and warm in the warehouse. The plastic-suit guys looked really worked up about something.

Two portal pairs at once. God, it was easy. How had it ever been hard? Ffodor, that shitbag Ffodor, he was the problem. He’d clouded her mind, working against her, stifling her abilities, that miserable son of a bitch. She’d show him.