Amy listened, trying to figure out what was happening, but the raspy sound of her own breathing was too loud. She forced herself to slow her panting until she heard the rustle of her clothes, the high-pitched ringing in her ears. And then, beneath it all, the quiet, steady, implacable sound of water flooding the Showroom and flowing around the Liripip.

Amy rubbed the fingers of her right hand against the back of the wardrobe. They came away wet. Now she could feel the water soaking through her upper sleeve. She rubbed her fingers against the bottom again, and this time she felt standing water; she could actually splash it.

The freezing water continued streaming in, lowering Amy’s body temperature, making her teeth chatter. The wardrobe was a stone in the middle of a stream with water rushing past on either side. It suddenly slid to the left. At first Amy thought she was being lifted by the penitents, but as the wardrobe swayed and bobbed she realized she was floating. The flood was lifting her up and carrying her away.

Soon the fingers of her right hand were completely submerged. She realized that in order to breathe she’d have to press her nose against the top of the wardrobe. She screamed and thrashed as the water rose higher and higher, over her arms and knees, filling the Liripip’s lower half. In spite of everything that had happened—escaping her chair and escaping the store and rescuing Basil and nearly escaping again—Amy realized she was going to die after all. She was going to drown while trapped inside a Liripip.

And that’s when she realized: you are trapped inside a Liripip.

The one thing every store partner knew about Liripips was that customers hated them. They were bargain priced so the store sold them in droves, but everyone who purchased one lived to regret it, and irate customers were always carting them back to Returns. Assembling the wardrobe was an exercise in frustration. Four hex screws connected the top to the sides, and fully securing them was almost impossible; even when you did, they fell out at the slightest movement. Liripips on the Showroom floor required constant tightening, which could be done only with Orsk’s proprietary Magic Tool. And like all good Orsk employees, Amy carried her Magic Tool at all times.

All she had to do was get it out, reach up inside her coffin, loosen two of the hex bolts at the top, and then pop the lid. With luck the whole frame would come apart, like a badly constructed piece of flat-pack furniture. Under normal circumstances, it would be easy … but with an increasingly numbed arm? Submerged in frigid water, trapped in the dark? Water lapped at Amy’s ribs and she realized it was her only option.