She keeps pulling the trigger and recocking it phudd clickclack phudd clickclack phudd and I really should stop her because if it’s misfiring, sooner or later it’ll go off but I already know that isn’t going to happen and so does she. When I turn around there’s nothing in the barrel except a grief that will never go away.

Flavia throws the Donnerbüchse on the ground and jumps on my back and starts to claw at me but honestly her heart isn’t in it. She hates me about as much as she hates everyone else in the world but what she really wants right now is to book a flight yesterday to far away from here and to wake up and find this was a nightmare and she’s in Hawaii in a stinking capitalist resort with waterslides and all her friends and she knows with a stark misery that that did not happen and here we are this is the world. The best she can hope for is just a hug and I so I hug her and she screams and screams and water stuff comes out of her face that is not tears and not snot and not vomit it’s just horror.

This is the shape of the world and how it is and you believe it is not and that is nice for you.

I know better and now so does Flavia.

She gets in a few good ones and my ribs will feel those later but who the fuck cares about my ribs when Bruno’s ribs are over there on that table about two meters from his head and yeah Flavia you beat the shit out of me you are totally right that this is my fault.

But honestly it’s not me you want to kill and we’ll come to that sweetheart I swear we will.

She pukes on my shoes and then she apologizes and I just hug her some more. I am a monster and I live in a world of bad things but that does not make me a monster and if you find that confusing, then I don’t know what to tell you to make it make sense, but I wouldn’t leave you to look after my kids. No obviously I do not have kids.

Flavia pukes some more and this time she gets the back of my legs:

“Sorry sorry I’m sorry—”

“There there honey. Jack’s here now. There there.”

“Did Charlie send you Jack?”

“Naw Flavia she doesn’t know it’s gonna wreck her. Like it’ll break her apart I don’t know what she’ll do. I just came to give Bruno back his coat.”

She looks. “I gave him that coat.”