There. Over her shoulder again – Candlefly. Closer this time. Near the red barn with the peeling paint. He starts to push past Jess, but she catches his hand.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Candlefly’s gone. Mookie growls. “There’s… something. I gotta go do something.” I gotta go kill someone. He feels for his cleaver but it’s gone. Right. Damn. Stuck in the floor. But wait – is this a dream? Maybe it’s not. Shit. Shit.

“You leaving us again.”

“Jess, I gotta–”

“Doesn’t matter. She’s dead. Look.”

Mookie follows Jess’s stare.

There’s Nora. Face up in the mud. Blood pumping from her gut, pooling in divots of greasy mud. The pigs start sniffing at her. Mookie turns, sees Candlefly smoking a cigar in the distance, smiling. The pigs start to bite at Nora’s feet. One pulls her boot off. Starts eating it. Another starts in on her heel.

Candlefly is laughing now. He’s far away, but that deep laugh carries.

Mookie launches himself over the fence. Into the mud. Boots stuck. He can’t pull them out. The mud is sucking at his feet, drawing him down, down to his knees as the pigs move in and begin to eat Nora, chewing off her fingers, moving to the face and eating her nose and ears and working on her chin. One stoops and laps at the blood like a dog–

A whisper in his ear. Candlefly. “How did it feel to watch your daughter die?”

“How did it feel to watch your daughter die?”

Candlefly slaps the canned ham that is Mookie Pearl’s head. Pat, pat, pat. Harder: whack. The man’s eyelids flutter. His face, shot through with dark striations. Bruise-colored arterial fractals. A side effect of the Snakeface’s poison. Sorago’s in particular.

Three doses. Enough to drop an elephant.

And still Mookie Pearl almost cleaved his skull like a cantaloupe.

Impressive. And a shame. If there was a chance to still bring Pearl into the fold, to make him part of the plan…

An option, no longer. This road only ends at one place. Alas.