After several minutes of the most painful of efforts, Al was just beginning to feel a regaining of control over his body. Just a bit, at first: he could stir slightly, he could fidget and budge, all while suffering a terrible headache to deter him.

Freddie looked over at him and saw his face wincing in pain, the slight movements that suggested someone other than Mei was trying to control Al’s body. Freddie smirked at the amusing sight.

“What’s the matter, loser?” he asked Al. “You trying to hold in a fart? That was directed at Al, not at you, Mei. It looks like he’s trying to regain control.”

“He’s trying to,” Mei’s feminine voice said through Al’s mouth. “He won’t succeed…not for the moment, anyway.”

“Not ever, I’d say,” Emily said. “He’s never succeeded at anything in his life, except annoying people. I’m surprised he can make his body move at all, with you there, Mei.”

“I must say, Mei, that we were wrong to have stopped praying to you,” Freddie said.

“We’re both very sorry about that,” Emily said.

“Just aid us in what we wish to accomplish here, and all will be forgiven,” Mei said.

“He obviously sucked at praying to you all,” Freddie said, “since even his prayers weren’t enough to placate you. As Emily said, Al can’t do anything right.”

“That he actually killed our father, as Meng has told me in my thoughts…”

“And Po told me in mine,” Freddie added.

“…and he didn’t stop his bitch girlfriend sitting over there from killing our mother–that’s all the more reason for Freddie and me to hate Al. Feel free to kill him, too, Mei–we won’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Freddie said. “Kill that loser.”

“Oh, we’ll have him killed,” Mei said. “And we won’t stop with him.”

All three of them looked over at Hannah, bound and gagged in her chair at the other side of the table in the dining room. She was still unconscious.

They stared at her and grinned.

“She’ll make such a tasty dinner,” Freddie said, looking over at possessed Al, and knowing that he could see and hear everything said and done at their dining table…but he could do nothing about it. “Mmm!”

All three of them repeated “Mmm!” even louder while looking at Hannah. She stirred a bit.

Al gained a bit more control of his body, and he made it shake so the legs of his chair rattled against the tiles of the dining room floor.

This was enough to wake Hannah up.

Finding herself bound and gagged, with all three remaining Dan family members staring maliciously at her, she whined through her gag as loudly as she could to produce a scream, while shaking her chair and rattling its legs on the floor as much as Al was.

Assuming her crazy ex-boyfriend wanted her dead as much as his crazy brother and sister did, Hannah couldn’t understand why he was fidgeting in his chair as she was. Was this some pathetic, fake attempt to convince her he still loved her, to make her believe he was indeed possessed by the spirit of one of his ancestors? Did he really think she was stupid enough to believe that?

“You’re gonna taste so good when we’ve cooked your flesh, like a giant turkey,” Freddie said with a laugh, his taunting eyes going back and forth to look into Hannah’s and Al’s. “Yes, Hannah. We’re gonna make Al kill you, cut your body up into pieces, cook them, then eat them…that is, our ancestors will, and Al will. He’ll do it, ’cause he’s so weak! Isn’t that right, loser?”

Al was shaking the chair even more.

“What are you so upset about, loser? You’ve eaten her before, haven’t you?” Freddie laughed.

“Don’t be crude, Freddie,” Emily said.

Al’s shaking and rattling of the chair was getting more and more violent. He almost fell off of it, but he clasped his hand on the table, his fingers inches away from a large, Japanese deba bocho meat cleaver.

“Mei, you aren’t losing control of him, are you?” Meng’s deep, masculine voice said through Emily’s mouth.

“He’s…getting stronger, but I’m…managing,” Mei’s feminine voice said through Al’s mouth.

“If we beat him into submission, will you feel the hurt, or can you leave his body temporarily?” Po asked in that distinctly gravelly, grandmother’s voice, through Freddie’s mouth.

What? Hannah thought with eyes agape. How is Al’s sister talking with a man’s voice, and he and his brother are talking with women’s voices? Can crazy people really imitate voices so precisely, as unnatural as it would be for their biological voices to do? Or am I going crazy?

“Is that you speaking, Po, or is it Freddie?” Meng asked, as if she were as surprised as Hannah. “It sounds like something he’d like to do to Al.”

“It’s most likely a combination of Freddie and me,” Po said, putting a smirk on Freddie’s mouth. “You should be aware that, as we spirits continue possessing these bodies, our wills become more and more merged with those of the bodies.”

“Isn’t that true, Al?” Meng asked him, putting a smirk on Emily’s mouth now, to taunt Al as he continued to shake his body and take it back from Mei.

Meng and Po turned Emily’s and Freddie’s heads back to looking at Hannah as she continued to struggle, in as much futility as Al, to free herself. The two possessed bodies were licking their lips.

“She’s gonna taste so good, isn’t she, Al?” Freddie said in his own voice. “The ancestors are opening my mind to cannibalism; I never imagined I’d develop a taste for it.”

“Same here,” Emily said in her own voice. “Funny what a little demonic possession can do to your head.”

The two noticed that Al’s struggling was abating. He was sitting much more still now.

“Mei, if you have regained control over his body, why don’t you pick up that knife and start cutting her up?” Freddie said.

Al had completely stopped shaking now. Mei looked at Freddie calmly.

“Yes,” Mei said with a smile. “I have fully regained control of the body.”

“Good,” Freddie said in Po’s voice, then got up. “Let’s do this.”

Mei and Meng brought Al and Emily to their feet, Mei gripping that Japanese knife in Al’s hand.

The three of them walked toward Hannah.

She was whining in a shrill, raspy voice behind that gag, fidgeting frantically in her chair. Her tearful eyes looked up into Al’s, desperately looking for his expression rather than Mei’s. All she could see was the cold expression of a killer.

That’s not Al that I see, she thought as the three had almost reached her. It’s not Al at all. Not even a crazy version of him. Could it be a demon inside him?

They were at her chair now. Her ankles were tied to the front legs of her chair, so she couldn’t even kick at her tormentors. She could only squeal and shake.

Emily and Freddie held the chair still from the back, while Al stood before Hannah, Mei having him raise the knife high over his head, ready to come down on her with a stab in the chest.

Mei and Hannah looked in each other’s eyes, the latter’s full of pleading, and the former’s utterly empty of pity. Hannah kept looking for Al, somewhere deep inside those eyes. He had to be there. She searched and searched back there, but she still couldn’t find him.

Now, instead of squeals and whining from her gagged mouth, sobs of despair were coming from it.

I shouldn’t have told him I wanted to dump him, she thought. I want my Al back, crazy or not.

And then, she could finally see Al in those eyes.

And no, it wasn’t hallucinatory wish-fulfillment.

The knife came down in a slashing arc…

…and it dug deep in the middle of Emily’s chest.

“Emily!” Freddie screamed. “Al, you piece of shit!”

Her body fell to the floor, soaking it with blood.

“Mei, I thought you had him under your control!”

“She stepped aside for the moment, it seems,” Al said in his own voice with a grin, then he pointed the knife at Freddie. “And you’re next…loser!”

“Oh!” Freddie said with a chuckle. “You think you’re gonna take me on? C’mon, loser, try it!”

They stepped away from Hannah. They faced each other behind her. She kept whining and struggling.

“C’mon, loser, cut me! Let’s see what you got.”

Al slashed from right to left, aiming for Freddie’s chest; but Freddie grabbed Al’s arm by the wrist, squeezed it hard, and made him drop the knife. Then Freddie punched him hard in the gut.

“Ooh!” he grunted, then fell to the floor.

Freddie picked up the knife and smiled.

“I’ve always hated you, Al. You know that. But your killing Dad, letting your big-nosed, white whore kill our Mom, and killing Emily here give me all the justification I need to dice your guts into a million bloody pieces!”

As Al was getting back up, Freddie ran at him with the knife and threw him hard on the floor. Al banged his right shoulder on it; it hurt like hell.

Freddie started by slashing Al’s face several times.

“There,” he panted. “Now you’re even uglier. Think your bitch girlfriend’s gonna like that? If you do, you’re even stupider than I thought, loser.”

He slashed Al’s face again.

“It won’t matter if she doesn’t like it, though, ’cause I’m gonna kill you now.”

He sat up and raised the knife high over his head, ready to come stabbing down.

Hannah was going crazy not being able to see or help Al. Her only comfort was not watching him die.

Freddie brought the knife down, but Al’s left hand caught him by the wrist just in time. The tip of the blade was a few millimetres away from Al’s chest. Both arms shook as they debated over where the knife would go.

Freddie looked in Al’s eyes with much more than his usual non-fraternal malice. Al was at first looking back into his brother’s eyes with the same hate; then he turned his eyes away to look at Freddie’s hand.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Freddie panted, spit dripping from his mouth onto Al’s bloody face. “You’re weak. You always were weak.”

Hannah could only whine and shake in her chair in blind helplessness.

Al brought his mouth over to Freddie’s hand. He bit two of the fingers holding the knife. He sank his teeth in deep, bloodying Freddie’s hand and his own chest.

“Aaah, you fucker!” Freddie screamed, then he dropped the knife to suck on the cut.

Al pushed him off with a strength he never knew he had, then kicked him hard in the balls. As Freddie buckled, Al grabbed the knife and ran at him, knocking him to the floor.

Al held the knife with the handle down. He wanted to bash Freddie’s face in before stabbing him. The wooden handle smashed down on Freddie’s forehead once, on his nose twice, breaking it, on his left cheek three times, his right cheek once, his chin twice, and his mouth four times, knocking out two upper and two lower teeth and soaking his face in blood. His bruises would look like a black-and-blue mask.

“You’re still…a loser, Al,” Freddie gasped in toothless lisps.

Al flipped the knife around to point the blade down. “Yeah, Freddie,” he said. “You’re about to be stabbed to death…by a loser. Be proud of that.”

He plunged the blade deep into Freddie’s throat, shutting him up once and for all.

Al let out a big sigh, then got off of Freddie’s body. He went over to Hannah and cut her feet and hands loose.

She got up from the chair and got the gag off in an impatient hurry.

“Oh, thank God,” she sighed. “And thank you, Al, for stopping them.”

He just stood there–silent, unmoving, frowning, and looking down at the floor, his face dripping blood all over it and his shirt.

“Look, I realize now that…your family…had some serious…well, mental health issues,” she said, searching for the kindest way she could put it. “And it’s…obviously harmed you…emotionally, too. I think we can work this out. We’ll find…a professional…to help you through this.”

Still gripping the knife, he started shaking and twitching.

“Oh, no, NO!!! Hannah, get away…from me!”