George Kelly’s 72-year-old mother was in bad shape. Just a few days before, she took a nasty fall down the stairs from the second floor to the ground floor of her apartment. She was already quite brittle, so one particularly hard knock on her upper right arm fractured it on the corner where the tread and riser of a stair meet.

Fortunately, George–who still lived with her–was there when the accident happened, having heard her scream from her apartment, which was right by the stairs. She’d meant to go to the grocery store just down the street to buy something, and she’d assured him that he didn’t need to accompany her; he could just relax in the living room and watch TV, for she’d be right back.

If only he’d accompanied her.

Instead of going to the grocery store, she of course went in his car to the hospital where he worked. He was a nurse, and he insisted on taking care of her personally.

She lay in her recovery room on a bed the upper half of which was raised up at about a forty-five degree angle. Her right arm was in a cast, going straight out from the side of the bed to the elbow, then going straight up from there.

George virtually never left the room. The rest of the staff liked and respected him enough to let him focus all of his care on her during his nursing shifts, and when his shifts were finished, he was allowed to stay with her even when she was sleeping and therefore not to be disturbed, which he of course would never do. He slept in a bed on the other side of the room, had a change of clothes handy, and food was sent to him as well as to her.

Why did he insist on being with her as much as possible? His love for her went far beyond the usual love of the most dutiful of sons. George, in his late thirties, never married. He was straight, but no woman could ever replace his sweet mother.

Though as a high school student, he’d bullied Tiffany along with Faye and all the others, George was far more of a ‘weakling’ (in the form of a ‘mama’s boy’) than Tiffany could ever have been. By calling her a “wimp,” he was really just engaging in projection.

His father died when he was six, so his mother’s burden of raising their one child was enormous. She’d been a timid, reclusive sort, with virtually no friends in the neighbourhood, so he became her best friend…in the Norman Bates sense, though without the psychopathy.

She was his entire world, and vice versa. Terrified of abandonment, she couldn’t bear the idea of him meeting a girl and marrying her, then moving away to some far-off city, his mother never seeing him again except for the ever-so-occasional visit.

So, in anticipation of such a scary prospect, his mother subtly manipulated her boy into such a state of emotional dependency on her that the idea of marrying and moving away would have been unthinkable to him. She even influenced his decision to become a nurse, so she’d have someone to take care of her in her old age…and now he would do just that for her.

On the third night of her hospitalization, he sat by her bed, his eyes tearing up. He knew in his intellect that with proper care, which she of course was getting, she would be fine and well again; but her fear of abandonment was something she’d managed to project onto him, so his emotions overruled his intellect, and any significant injury she’d sustain would put him in terror of her approach to death being at all pushed forward.

She lay there asleep. The medical equipment indicated, at a glance, that her heart rate and other vital signs were fine. He could see the rising and falling of her chest to indicate breathing; but the fear remained in his heart that that rising and falling would stop, even though he knew, in his medical expertise, that there was no reason for such a stopping to occur all of a sudden.

“Wake up,” he whispered in a barely audible voice. “Mom, please wake up.” He wanted her to wake up, but he didn’t want to be the cause of her waking up.

Her eyes opened. She looked at him and smiled.

“George,” she said in the frailest of voices.

“Oh, Mom,” he said, with a smile and a tear running down his right cheek. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, dear,” she said. “I just had a really good, long nap. I actually feel quite good, especially with you here. It’s comforting knowing my son, the best nurse in the world, is so dedicated to my recovery.”

“I am, Mom,” he sobbed. “Yet I’m so mad at myself for not insisting on going with you to the grocery store. When you slipped, I could have grabbed your arm and stopped you from falling.”

“We didn’t know this would happen. Don’t blame yourself.”

“You’ll be OK, Mom. Don’t worry. I’ll be sure of that.”

“I’m sure you will, son. But if you’re so sure, why are you crying?”

“I just hate to see you get hurt, Mom. There’s always that fear, in the back of my mind, of something…anything…going wrong.”

“What could possibly go wrong, honey?”

“Well, we assumed you’d be OK going to the store by yourself, and look what happened.”

“Oh, just because one thing went wrong doesn’t mean all manner of other things will go wrong, too. George, tell me: what’s worrying you so much? You always seem so afraid for me, and that’s sweet and all, but you’re making yourself needlessly unhappy, and that will affect your own health. What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing, I guess,” he said, looking down at his hands, which drooped between his knees. “I guess I’m just thinking silly thoughts.”

“Well, stop thinking silly thoughts,” she said, giving him a firm look. “Oh, I’ve gotten sleepy again. Back to sleep for me.” She closed her eyes.

“Good, Mom. Get some more rest.”

Actually, his thoughts weren’t all that silly. He just couldn’t tell her about the voice he’d hear, from time to time, a voice that he’d been hearing over the past year.

A voice that said, You’re going to murder her one day.

…and the speaker of that voice, invisible, was at that very moment hovering right beside him.

Faye Oliphant and Brad Rolie, her husband of nine years, had been trying for the whole length of their marriage to have a baby.

It wasn’t an infertility or sterility problem. Actually, Brad had difficulty getting it up for her.

There were two main reasons for this problem. One was Brad’s secret addiction to internet porn, and its bevy of flawless, photoshopped beauties causing him to be used to that lofty standard of physical perfection in women, which the vast majority of women outside the fantasy world, of course, haven’t a hope of even approaching.

The second reason was Faye’s size, as of her thirties.

She was rather chubby in high school, recall; hence Tiffany’s changing of Faye’s surname to “Elephant,” and earning Faye’s hatred, as well as giving her a motive to bully Tiffany. By the time Faye had reached her thirties, though, her size had ballooned to that of a woman weighing almost five hundred pounds.

When Brad was dating her, in her late twenties and weighing around three hundred pounds at the time, he was deeply conflicted between his sincere love for her as a person and his distaste for her looks. He imagined that, over time, he’d outgrow his shallow preference for women with the bodies of models, and would be able to have a normal sexual relationship with her, getting aroused in bed with her based on his love for her.

No such luck.

She was so deeply hurt, on their wedding night, by his lack of enthusiasm for her in the bedroom that she found herself eating the pain away.

Hence, three hundred pounds became five hundred.

…and he’d sneak off to his computer for a good wank every night after she’d gone to sleep.

Still, she wanted to have a baby, her own baby, not an adoption. And so did he.

So they attempted lovemaking in the missionary position, at least once or twice a week, every year from their wedding night until now, with Faye at the age of 38. It had been so frustrating for them.

Faye’s self-esteem was so low that she didn’t even consider exercising or dieting. Brad was so ashamed of himself for not being “man enough” to get the job done that porn was his only escape from his depressing reality.

But one night, after seeing his dear wife in tears after having caught him masturbating to a PornHub video, Brad was determined not to fail in bed with her this time. He had to make it up to her, after having disappointed her for so long; after all, in spite of his porn problem, he did sincerely love her.

So, as absurd and pathetic as this must sound, he got on top of her that night, closed his eyes, and imagined as vividly as he could that he was about to screw the porn star he’d been watching on that video.

…and a miracle happened.

He actually got enough of a boner to stick it in her and pump away until he came inside her.

But would she get pregnant?

Actually, she did!

Both husband and wife were so thrilled to find out that they were dancing together in the doctor’s office.

When she had an ultrasound, it indicated she’d have a girl. Both parents were perfectly happy about this: a daughter was exactly what they’d been hoping for.

Family and friends congratulated her, celebrating with a huge party. These were the happiest moments of their whole marriage.

As the months went by, full of delightful anticipation for both of them, she was for the first time in her life happy to see herself getting bigger in the middle, and her weight going up. She crossed off the days on the calendar, impatient for the time when she was expected to go into labour.

And finally, the big day came. It would have been difficult getting her huge body into a car and over to the local hospital, so they managed to deliver the baby with a midwife right in their home.

As she was struggling, groaning, and screaming to get their daughter through the birth canal, she had her eyes squeezed shut almost the whole time.

…and with her eyes closed like that, neither she nor Brad or the midwife, so focused on the birth, noticed the malevolently grinning apparition of Tiffany’s ghost looking down on the mother-to-be.

Furioso looked first at the ghosts of Alexa and Megan, then at that of Tiffany.

The first two of the three female spectres were in a kind of agony that made Tiffany’s pain seem almost like relief.

You shouldn’t be too surprised at the heightened pain you are feeling, Furioso said to Alexa and Megan. The vengeance you wreaked on your victims far outweighs their past cruelties to you when you were in physical form.

I wanted them…to know…what real pain is, Alexa said.

Her apparition was melting into a lava-like blob, as was Megan’s. The skin of theirs that wasn’t melting was flaking off into thousands of tiny pieces of ash that were blown all about in the steaming hot air of Hell.

They already knew what real pain is, he said. Everyone on Earth knows what real pain is.

I wanted them…to know…what my pain felt like, Megan’s ghost said. To be raped…by the one…you love…while another watches…and laughs at you. She and Alexa were groaning in pain, twice as loud as Tiffany’s groans.

They didn’t kill you, he said. Nor did they kill the ones you cared about.

Since when are you,…a demon,…lecturing us…about right and wrong? Alexa growled at him. It was your idea…to have us…get our revenge…on them…in the first place!

They made us want to kill ourselves, Tiffany said. Our own parents didn’t care about us. They all taught us that the whole world is uncaring; with no one to care about us, we found ourselves with no one to care about.

You killed innocent children, he said. People who had done you no harm. I never recommended that you do that.

We were innocent, too, Alexa said. We’d never done…any of them…any harm…before they hurt us, including our parents.

Still, he said, you are now so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin. When I offered you a chance for revenge, I’d never imagined you would go to such extreme lengths of cruelty. Instead of you enduring the suffering of Hell while gaining satisfaction from contemplating your tormentors’ own suffering, your new sins have added to your own suffering in a way that makes your revenge seem to have not been worth it.

As awful as I feel, Alexa snarled, it was worth it.

I agree, Megan said.

That is because your hate has grown to such a size that you imagine it will shield you from your pain, Furioso said. That shield will be only temporary; you will feel much worse later, for it will be your hate that makes you hurt.

I feel nothing but hate, Tiffany hissed. Hate for a world that hated me so unjustly.

I feel…the same hate, Megan said.

As do I, Alexa said. There is…no other feeling.

The world gave us nothing other than pain and hate, Tiffany said. It will make no difference to me to feel Alexa’s and Megan’s greater suffering; but vengeance will give me the satisfaction that at least Faye Oliphant and George Kelly will suffer, too.

Are you sure you want to do this? Furioso asked Tiffany. I advise you not to carry your revenge too far.

I’ll do what I have to to get my satisfaction, Tiffany grunted. Take me to where Faye and George are! I want them!

Very well, Furioso said.

The demon disappeared with Tiffany’s ghost, while those of Alexa and Megan continued their grotesque degeneration into disfigured, molten piles of unimaginable pain.

Lynne Hendricks and Herman Schubert got married almost immediately after graduation from high school. It seemed to most that this marriage was way too hasty, yet his and her parents saw, demonstrated every day in the couple’s sincere, enthusiastic love for each other, a true, bedrock commitment.

Besides, Lynne and Herman had no desire to have kids, so if it ever came to a divorce, there was no fear of custody battles complicating things.

They went to the same university, renting an apartment just a few blocks from the campus, and their commitment to each other extended to a commitment to focus on their studies; because without a wish to chase after sexual encounters with any other members of the opposite sex, neither of them had the temptation to party in bars.

This monogamous commitment of theirs, so unusual in kids in their late teens, was nonetheless explicable: the apparent suicide of Megan Fourier drove the two into such sexual guilt that their monogamy was meant as a kind of atonement.

Herman had been getting nightmares starting just a week after Megan’s disappearance. He dreamt of himself raping her, a vivid reliving of the actual event, of him raping Lynne, or of Megan with a strap-on raping him. He’d dream one of these variations at least once a week, if not almost every night.

As a Catholic, he went to confession and told the priest everything with his face soaked in tears. The priest advised him to turn himself in to the authorities, but Herman of course didn’t want to face that; so he decided never to have sexual relations with anyone other than Lynne, for the rest of his life. To him, such a sacrifice of so many potential partners, with his good looks making temptation easy, seemed an acceptable form of atonement.

Lynne had nightmares, too. She’d witness either the rape as it had happened to Megan, or she’d see Megan watching Herman rape her, or she’d see Megan with the strap-on raping her, with Herman watching and laughing. Her nightmares were less frequent than his, around once a month, but they were no less intense. When he proposed to her, she agreed that their giving up of sex with anyone else would be a sufficient punishment.

Of course, neither of them could have even imagined that it was Megan’s ghost that was visually narrating their every nightmare.

Lynne’s guilt increased upon taking a Women’s Studies course during her first year in university. Hearing the shocking rape statistics her professor quoted invariably triggered her memory of what she’d had Herman do to poor Megan. At the same time, though, the guilt motivated her to commit to her marriage all the more, resisting every pass handsome guys gave her on and off campus. Given her beauty, she got lots of those passes, almost every day, often several on any one day.

Lynne and Herman never changed their minds about not wanting to have kids, and their hard work studying paid off, with Herman getting into Law School, and Lynne getting a degree in psychology. Eventually, after their post-graduate work, he joined a successful law firm, and she became a psychotherapist, often listening with tears of compassion to her patients’ retelling of such traumas as child sexual abuse. His proudest court case, him as prosecutor, resulted in the conviction of a rapist.

Over the years, Herman and Lynne found that their nightmares about Megan were becoming fewer in frequency, until by the time they’d reached thirty years of age, they were no longer having them at all. During their thirties, therefore, their married life had become nothing less than a blissful one.

Indeed, they remained no less in love than they’d been as teens. With their successful work, they used their plentiful money to buy a beautiful house in a quiet neighbourhood in North York. Every year, they’d have vacations in such places as Florida or Europe. Life was good.

Megan the ghost had been monitoring their marital bliss the whole time.

She grew conflicted over whether or not to get revenge on them. First, she noticed how the simmering hate in herself and in Alexa and Tiffany was eating them up, hence Megan’s easing up on Herman’s and Lynne’s nightmares. Also, she sensed how her tormentors had grown repentant of what they’d done to her, making her less eager for revenge.

Still, seeing the boundless happiness of that couple irked her, for she remembered how she’d originally wanted Herman for herself.

She was especially irked to see their passion and joy when making love, which was every time they did it.

So one night, twenty years after her rape and her disappearance with Alexa and Tiffany, Megan decided to make her presence known to Lynne and Herman…in their bedroom.

It was just past ten PM. Lynne, still quite beautiful at 38, had just showered, perfumed herself, and prettied her face with makeup while Herman lay in bed waiting for her. It made no difference to him if she were eighteen or thirty-eight years old: she was still the sexiest, loveliest woman in the whole world.

She came out of the bathroom with only her bathrobe on. She went into the bedroom with a grin for Herman, who grinned back at her.

“Take the bathrobe off, honey,” he said. “Let me see you.”

“No,” she said bashfully.

“Oh, come on. I know how you look under it, and that’s why I wanna see. You have a beautiful body.”

“But, honey,…”

“Don’t be shy. Give us a look.”

“Oh,…”

“C’mon, don’t be such a tease.”

“Oh, OK.” She undid and dropped the bathrobe at her feet. One hand covered her breasts, the other, her pubes.

“Lynne, what’s with the covering up?”

“Well, I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“What’s that got to do with anything? You’re still the hottest, sexiest woman in the world. Let’s see it all.”

“Oh, alright.” She moved her hands away in all timidity.

He grinned as his eyes feasted on her lovely flesh.

“What are you so shy about?” he asked. “Your body is as perfect as it’s always been. Now, get in bed with me. I’m as hard as a rock, and I’m gonna show you how much I like that body.”

Giggling, she got under the covers with him. He took off his underwear. They held each other and began kissing.

Megan scowled, burning with envy, as she watched them together, so happy.

So undeservedly happy.

It’s time I took away your happiness, she thought. Her spirit descended on Herman as he entered Lynne.

Some time after the achievement of her revenge, Alexa’s ghost reappeared before those of Megan and Tiffany. They looked at her apparition with mixed feelings.

Do you feel satisfied, now that you’ve destroyed Boyd and Denise? Tiffany asked.

Yes, Alexa said. Completely. She grinned gloatingly.

Are you sure about that? Megan asked.

Why would you doubt me? Alexa said. Of course I’m sure.

It’s just that…here in Hell, we burn, melt, and suffer, Megan said. Satisfaction seems so far away, so unattainable, even after receiving revenge, as I got on my father.

Achieving revenge is a satisfaction all in itself, Alexa assured Megan. Even in this hopeless place.

I suppose so, Megan said, looking away from Alexa.

Why do you have doubts? Tiffany asked. Don’t you want to get revenge on Lynne and Herman for raping you?

Oh, yes, of course I do, Megan said. Every second that those two are still alive, I burn in a rage. Their every heartbeat is an insult to me.

So, go after them while you still have the opportunity, Tiffany said. Make them suffer, as we suffer.

They have no right not to suffer, Megan acknowledged with a scowl and a snarl. I hate that they’re happy.

Then get them, Alexa said. Ruin them. Why do you hesitate about your revenge? What’s stopping you, Hamlet?

Oh, I don’t know, Megan said, still not wanting to look at Alexa. How much of our burning and melting is just our sentence here in Hell for suicide, though; and how much of it do you think could be because of how much we’ve let our hate and anger turn us into murderous monsters? Aren’t we turning into the very bullies that we despise?

I don’t care if I’ve become a monster, or a demon deserving to be in Hell, Alexa said with a frown of hate. We’re in Hell and suffering anyway; it makes no difference if we get revenge or not as far as our fate’s concerned. But it makes a lot of difference if we suffer here and let our bullies get away with what they did to us, or if we make them pay.

I agree, Tiffany said. I groan in agony as each day passes and I don’t get revenge on Fay and George for what they did to me. We’ve followed Furioso’s advice about waiting to get revenge later, after cooling off after killing our parents. I’ve waited long enough: I will definitely get Fay and George.

We’ll suffer either way, Megan, Alexa said. But we can make them suffer, too, and we’ll show our strength, our power. Aren’t you tired of being weak? Make Lynne and Herman weak instead. Enjoy it. I enjoyed making Boyd and Denise weak.

But you killed their children and spouses, too, Megan said. You killed innocent children, and really violently. They never did you any harm.

Oh, who cares about them? Alexa said with so cold a face, it was as if her burning and melting had stopped and reversed, making her almost into an ice sculpture instead.

You don’t have to harm anyone other than Lynne and Herman, Megan, Tiffany said. Just hurt those two alone, if the idea of hurting innocent people bothers you. It makes no difference to me. We’re in Hell: having a moral conscience here is rather pointless, don’t you think?

I guess you’re right, Megan said. But I’m getting only Lynne and Herman. No one else.

Do what you like, Tiffany said.

Furioso appeared before the three spirits.

Are you ready to face Lynne and Herman, Megan? he asked her.

Megan looked over at Alexa again and winced.

Yes, I guess so, she said with a sigh.

Megan and Furioso disappeared, off to find the two targets of her revenge.

Tiffany now looked at Alexa’s apparition and winced.

You have no regrets over how you got even with Boyd and Denise, do you? she asked Alexa.

None at all, Alexa said with a rigid tone in her voice, though her face and body were anything but rigid.

In fact, her apparition showed her skin melting and dripping down to her feet, like the wax of an almost used-up candle.

Denise Charlton, 38, had gone through quite a transformation over the years. Had she, at the age of eighteen, seen what kind of person she’d become twenty years later, she’d have never believed her eyes.

Still, the transformation did occur. It occurred out of sheer necessity. There was simply no way she could have sustained herself by continuing with her juvenile delinquency. Her violent ways had to stop.

It had all started with her abusive drunk of a father, an ongoing problem she’d known as far back as she could remember. As a little girl, she’d had to endure seeing that piece of shit get pissed and beat her mom; little Denise would get plenty of hits from him herself.

Now, when he attacked her, her trauma response wasn’t freeze, as was the case with her timid mother. She hated the way her mom was too afraid to fight back, so Denise was resolved never to deal with her dad in that way. Though the beatings she’d get were far worse than those her mother got, and though Denise always lost her fights with her old man, at least she made sure that bastard got a few dents on his own body, too.

Her fight response became her way of dealing with everybody. She was determined to let the whole world know she wasn’t going to take shit from anybody, and if anybody was stupid enough to give her shit about anything, she’d fuck him up good and proper.

Because of her attitude, she got into a lot of fights in the schoolyard…and no, she wasn’t afraid to fight boys, either. She’d fight with people at school, on the streets, and at any part-time job she ever-so-briefly had. She was a potential menace–Denise the Menace, everyone called her–to anyone who had the bad luck of crossing her path, and she was damned proud of that.

She started getting in trouble with the law, typically charged with assault and battery, at around the age of fifteen. Sometimes she’d get caught vandalizing–throwing rocks in windows, spray-painting rude words on buildings–or there was the occasional petty theft. But usually it was her and her gang of bad girls beating people up, out of sheer boredom.

Well, one night, months after the disappearance of Alexa, Megan, and Tiffany, Denise took her violent ways too far. That night, she and her gang assaulted a middle-aged woman and put her in the hospital. Denise was the ringleader, and the one who gave the woman the worst of the beatings, so she got the harshest punishment: five years imprisonment.

During her first year in prison, she stewed in a rage, angry at how unfair the world had always been to her. She got into plenty of fights with the other female convicts. But early into her second year, after a nasty fight that got her face bloodied and her ass in solitary confinement for a week, she found herself forced to rethink her life.

Though the preaching of the prison priest only made her roll her eyes, he did say one thing that made her reflect: “Anger is the enemy. Anger is a poison. If you don’t cure it, your hate will kill you one day.”

Indeed, she thought as she sat all alone in that room and sulked. Look at where my hatred and anger have led me. I have to stop fighting all the time. Maybe Mom was right to have been such a wimp.

She resolved, once she got out of solitary confinement, to make efforts to control her hostility to the world. Naturally, it was hard at first: she got into a few fights after getting out, but they were fewer, and she was pulling her punches for the first time.

After a few months, she was surprised with herself how rarely she was being even verbally abusive. The others in the prison were even more surprised, and after another year and a half of good behaviour on her part, she was considered for early release.

She had a parole hearing, and after making it clear how sincerely remorseful she was for not only having beaten up that woman, but also for all the hurt she’d needlessly caused others, she was released halfway through the fourth year of her sentence.

She found work–menial labour, but it was enough to get by. Her parole officer never had any complaints about her. She continued to be amazed at her transformation.

A few years later, she met a man, Jack Drew, a nice man, totally the opposite of her father. Jack was gentle, he never drank, and he managed to revive a belief in her mind that there actually are good people in the world. After two years of dating, they got married.

She was thirty when she gave birth to their son, Jameson. She lay in bed at the hospital, and when the nurse put the newborn baby in her arms, and her husband was standing by her, tears ran down her cheeks. She’d not only escaped the hell of hate and anger; she’d entered the world of love.

Notions of wanting to hurt people had become alien to her on this first gazing into her baby’s eyes. Now she felt only nurturing instincts, the drive to help, to give comfort, to remove hurt.

Again, she was amazed at how much she’d changed.

Years went by, and she was a dedicated mother. Taking care of little Jameson was a joy. Even when he was difficult, and outright annoying–which was not infrequent–her first instinct was almost always patience and kindness, rarely anger. He’d have to have been an extraordinary brat to make her as much as raise her voice.

So one morning, 38-year-old Denise was with her eight-year-old boy in the living room while Jack was at work. He was playing with his Star Wars action figures while she was watching TV.

He was imitating light sabre noises as he had Rey and Kylo Ren fighting. Really getting into it, he was also getting really loud.

“Keep it down, honey,” she said. “I can’t hear the TV over you.”

He kept at it at the same volume.

She sighed and said, “Fine.” She picked up the remote and turned up the volume. He made louder light sabre noises.

She sighed again, but before she could open her mouth to tell him to play quieter, a commercial came on. She decided to get a drink from the kitchen.

Before she got up, though, she looked over at Jameson. The sight of her cute little boy, so happy playing with his toys, disarmed her annoyance at his loudness. She got up and walked over to him.

“Look out!” she said playfully, her tickling fingers poised for attack. “The Emperor is going to zap you, Rey!”

She got her fingers on Jameson’s little belly and began tickling. He screamed and giggled, dropping his action figures.

“Stop!” he yelped. “Mom, stop!” He giggled and screamed some more.

She stopped, then gave him a big hug and a kiss on his chubby left cheek. “Want a Pepsi from the fridge?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, nodding with enthusiasm.

“What’s the magic word?”

“Please.”

“OK, one Pepsi, coming right up.” She got up and went over to the kitchen. He returned to his loud light sabre noises.

She stood by the fridge, and as she opened the door, she looked back, with a smile, into the living room at her boy.

“I love you,” she whispered, then reached into the fridge for a Pepsi, and she got an orange Fanta for herself.

Someone else was gazing at her boy, and at her, but this person was frowning, not smiling. This person was invisible to Denise and Jameson, but were they to have seen this person, they’d have seen disheveled hair, pale skin, red eyes, and a tattered black dress.