No, he definitely couldn't say that. What? Tell a boy that his dog lacked the neural integration required to possess experience? That he was unconscious through-and-through, dead all along? Most adults couldn't wrap their heads around that one.

Couldn't save him, son. Just like I couldn't save you. The old man was too busy getting laid.

Shame, like a hammer to the chest. Cold and hard.

Too busy being dead weight…

He sobbed into Sam's hair. 'No,' he muttered.

Need to take control…

Sam moaned and arched against him. 'Time for bed,' she murmured.

Need to think… to take control.

She sat up and stared with eyes that refused to focus. She rubbed a palm against her cheek. 'You coming?'

Control! Control!

'Yes,' he gasped.

He turned off the screen and helped steady her up the stairs. But when she turned toward the bedroom, he continued straight into the bathroom. The light pricked his eyes. He tugged open the medicine cabinet and fished with clumsy fingers through old prescriptions and over-the-counter remedies, remembering how Nora had fairly cleaned the cabinet out when she moved, and wondering how the hell he'd managed to fill the damn thing up again.

Then at last he found it. Control.

The label read:

BIBLE, THOMAS

Lorazepram 1mg

90 TAB APX Dr Bruno, Gene

TAKE HALF TABLET WHEN NEEDED UP TO THREE TIMES DAILY

Once, when things with Nora were real bad, Ripley had caught him taking one. 'Papa's little helpers,' Nora had explained to their daughter, shooting him a scathing glance. Everything had become a pretext by that point. If they weren't sniping, they were scrounging for ammunition.

Thomas cracked the lid and tapped a pill onto his sweaty palm. A jewel of condensed powder against whorls of skin. He popped it and washed it down with water from the tap. He stuffed the bottle behind some Deep Ice, then slapped the mirror shut.

'Nerves of fucking steel,' he promised his haggard reflection.

How Neil would laugh.

There is so much scripture written into little things.

You hear your dog die first, stamped like a can beneath my hard, hard heel. It twitches like a Chinese toy. You come running. Oh-my-God, what's happened? You stop, dumbstruck, when you see me in the living room, unable to make sense of this, me, the stranger in your home. Your mouth opens, moist and hollow, and I decide to fill it when you're dead. Who? you want to cry, but you already know. You were born with knowledge of me, just like everyone else. No! you want to scream, but truth brooks no contradiction.

Truth brooks no contradiction.

I say the words, knowing their meaning will elude you until your final post-coital twitch. Only as your pupils slacken will you see their bulldozer finality, their crowbar penetration…

I have broken into you. There is no refuge remaining.

There never was.

I say the words. 'Just the meat… I promise.'