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:

“DADDY?! DADDY, WHERE ARE YOU?!”

Nothing.

CHAPTER XVI

Her jaws click shut. A drop of black water slips from her chin and splatters against the concrete, a helpless victim dragged down by gravity. Her jaws click again. Beads of sludge melt down her body, beneath her dress, between her legs.

She looks about the empty room. Adrenaline drains from her system. A sense of security nestles in around her now that she’s back in her own space. But even then, a wisp of anxiety stitches through her tendons with a thin needle, disrupting her peace.

Because her daddy is not here.

Her jaws click, trying to mitigate the bruised sensation behind her molars. The pain isn’t real, but the phantom memory of it is. The disturbed irrationality of the act perplexes her.

“They’ll bash against the walls with their giant fists and sticks. But don’t worry, my sweet. They won’t be able to get in. Not in here.”

Not in here. But out there? Out there, they’ll do so much worse.

She bends over her mattress to pluck a lollipop from the pile, opting for the one that sticks out from the peak of the sweet mountain like a flag of victory. She unwraps it and lets her jaw hang loose after one final click, placing and replacing the lollipop on her tongue at awkward angles as though someone else were doing it for her.

It’s not the same. The loving wrap of his arms around her doesn’t come next like it should, but the sweet bite makes her feel a little more settled.

The sludge hardens. Her skin tightens, crackling when she moves to stand. There is a bath down the hall, just a few paces away.