Mrs. Abernathy, who was very evil indeed, sat in a high chamber in her palace, a terrifying constuct of spars and sharp edges carved from a single massive slab of shiny black volcanic rock, and stared intently at the shard of glass before her. She had “borrowed” it a long, long time before from the Great Malevolence, for he had many such shards, and she had convinced herself that one more or less would make no difference to him. They were his windows into the world of men, each revealing to him some facet of the existence that he hated, yet also, in the pit of his being, secretly craved. He would watch the sun set, and lakes turn to gold. He would see children grow up to have children of their own, and become old among those whom they loved, and who loved them in turn. He would gaze upon husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, upon puppies, and frogs, and elephants. He would even gaze upon goldfish in bowls, and hamsters who ran around inside wheels to distract themselves from their tiny cages, and flies struggling in the webs of spiders, and he would envy each and every living thing its freedom, even if it was only the freedom to die.

For so long, Mrs. Abernathy had shared her master’s desire to turn the Earth into a version of Hell, but something had changed. What that something was might be guessed from the fact that the windows of her dreadful lair, which, in its way, had long been nearly as awful as the Great Malevolence’s Mountain of Despair, but considerably smaller, and with better views, had been decorated with net curtains. The curtains were black and, upon closer inspection, seemed to have been used at some point to catch horrible mutated fish, as the remains of a few were still caught in their strands, but at least someone was making an effort. A long table constructed entirely of tombstones now had a yellow vase at its center, a vase, furthermore, that bore a pattern of dozing cats. Admittedly, the vase was filled with ugly bloodred flowers that hid sharp teeth inside their petals, and those teeth would have made short work of any real cats that made the mistake of falling asleep within snapping distance, but it was a start, just like the curtains, and the doormat that read “Please Wipe Your Cloven Hooves!,” and the jar of potpourri made from the husks of poisonous beetles and scented with stagnant water.

What Mrs. Abernathy had discovered, even if she refused to admit it to herself, was that if you go to a place intent upon changing it, then sometimes that place may end up changing you instead. She had returned to Hell, but she had brought back a little of the human world with her, and now she was being altered in ways she did not fully understand.