The stimulation fills her with rage.

“She’ll tire out! Keep beating!” a different voice shouts.

“Yeah, yeah! Does she got a wallet? Purse?!”

“Ain’t seen nothin’ on her!”

“’Er body’ll ’ave to do!”

A hand grabs onto the skirt of her dress and tugs. She hears a slight rip that instantly absorbs her attention.

A moment later, her mouth is filled with sweet iron.

“AH! FUCKING BITCH! SHE BIT ME!”

Hands pull away, leaving a trail of thick drops she can feel in a line down her center. The weight of four bodies lifts from her chest. The ceiling is still nothing but empty tears. She doesn’t understand what she has done until she looks up at the group of creatures backing away from her.

One of them displays his bloody hand, three fingers missing.

She feels hard slime and knitted fabric swish in her mouth. She spits. A succession of fingers and a clump of dark fabric shoots out from her lips. A mouthful of blood and flesh pours down her chin.

They all pause. Then one creature shrieks, setting off a domino effect as they scatter away, stumbling and tripping over themselves to escape.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here!”

“Bitch ain’t worth it!”

“Freak!”

They run out of the alleyway and disappear around the corner.

One final screech—

“My fuckin’ fingers!”

—the sound of distant wet footsteps, and then silence.

She licks her lips, feeling the tacky substance cling to her skin, and whimpers. She looks down at the limp, crimson-colored foreign bits before her and gargles on the blood in her mouth. Or at least she thinks it’s blood. Do creatures bleed? It has to be blood.

But it tastes so sweet. Like candy.

Like her lollipops.

Repulsed, she spits up as much as she can, hacking up red phlegm and wheezing until the taste of sweet iron is barely detectable. Until the taste of creatures is out of her.

She wails, covered in dirt and red stickiness, wet and disgusting, flesh stuck between her teeth. Daddydaddydaddydaddydaddy! She runs out of the alleyway with barely a scratch on her—but the blood smeared across her skin, drenched in her hair, and the red tears staining her face make her the poster-child for Hell.

She traces her steps, uninterrupted, until she is back home, stepping up to the tall door and swinging it open.

“Daddy?!” she shouts into the building.

Nothing.

She steps inside and runs back up the stairs. The door to her room is still open. She bolts down the hallway and bursts across the threshold.

“Daddy?”

But the room is empty. Her toys are back where they have always been, waiting with immortal patience in the center of her room. On her mattress is a pile of lollipops. Hundreds of them! Enough to last her a long while. A very long while, filled with sugar . . . but maybe not her daddy.

She turns around and screams back down the hallway, back down that dark throat anchored to the stomach of the Outside: