Joanna shoved through the double doors, the very atmosphere steaming around her. She was coated in pink and red goo, though at least the majority of it had dried to crust by that point. Bits crumbled from her clothing and skin as she crossed the linoleum floor toward the reception desk.

The young man sitting there was about to say something perfunctory but stood when he saw someone he recognized. "M-Mrs. Sinclair!" he stuttered. "Uh—Professor Sincl—your husband, he's—"

"I know where his office is," was all Joanna managed to spit out before rounding the desk toward the proper hallway, ignoring the stammering protests of the young man.

What'd happened hours earlier at Danielle's house had snapped something inside of Joanna. She'd been already trembling on the edge of a precipice, as all of them had, for several weeks, and watching that old woman vomit her innards had been too much. Joanna had no memory of leaving the building or where she'd been for the remainder of the afternoon and early evening, but now here she was outside Egon's campus office, and she'd come-to with the sense that there was something intensely important she had to take care of. Her sandals slid once or twice on the floor, but the woman managed to maintain her balance as she blew like a thunderstorm past the multitude of closed doors beyond which lay darkened offices. When she reached her husband's door, Joanna made quick note of the noises coming from the other side before shoving it inward and laying eyes upon the scene she knew she'd find: Egon's bare white ass shocked out of pumping the girl beneath it by Joanna's unexpected and noisy intrusion.

The comical sight of man and woman scrambling to compose themselves, pulling pants up and skirts down, straightening hair and clothing as if a semblance of propriety would somehow erase the event, caused Joanna to begin laughing hysterically. Egon and the grad student he'd been fucking glanced uncertainly at one another and then back at their apprehender.

"Jo—Joanna, this isn't—it's not—" Egon worked to offer some sort of statement, but his wife's mania put him off. His defense quickly turned to offense. "Joanna! What is wrong with you? Why are you even here?"

"Oh my God, Egon. I don't think I ever realized how absolutely unattractive your rear end is from an outside perspective."

The man shook his head in confusion, neither he nor his paramour able to utter more than strange little sounds of indignation.

"Believe me," Joanna went on, calming herself and crossing her arms under her chest, "I couldn't care less how many students you screw."

Egon goggled at her, waved a hand toward the female student. "Y-you mean . . . you aren't upset?"

Joanna's grin rivaled the Cheshire Cat's. "Not at all."

"You're bluffing. You're lying! You're just in shock."

The lamp on Egon's desk flickered erratically for a moment and then stabilized. Joanna's eyes darted toward it and then back to her husband. Her smile flattened; her eyes frosted. "You know, Egon, that's something I never liked about you, that tendency to tell other people what they're thinking. It's so very ugly. And that's exactly what you are: an ugly, ugly man."

Scoffing, her husband lowered his tensed shoulders. "Me? What the hell is all over you, Joanna? Where have you been? And—and where's Benny? Isn't he supposed to be with you?"

"I left him at the park."

"You what? What sort of mother are you? You're not being serious . . . are you?"

Joanna wasn't sure whether she was being serious or not. She didn't know where that comment had come from. Had she left Ben at the park? Why would she have done that? But if she hadn't done it . . . then where was the boy? And why would she have said it if she hadn't actually meant it? Oh well. No matter. There were more important things to deal with at the moment.

The student—a buxom brunette in attire that screamed sexy librarian Halloween costume—suddenly put her hands up as if preparing to be arrested. "You know what, I'm really sorry about everything, so I'm just going to let you two figure this out." She began to inch toward the door, but Joanna stood her ground, lowered her arms.

"I don't think so, sweetheart." Reaching into her purse, she pulled out the small handgun Egon kept locked up in a box, high in their closet. Joanna stared wonderingly at the object clasped in her steady fingers, then snapped it out when she sensed a movement.

"What the hell are you doing?" Egon muttered threateningly, almost amused. "Did you suddenly grow a backbone?"

Ignoring her husband's sarcasm, the woman turned to the student. "What's your name?"

The trembling girl looked about to cry. "K-Katherine," she stammered. "But I—I go by Kitty."

Joanna cocked her head to one side, released a sardonic laugh, and rhetorically questioned, "No shit?" before shooting her in the throat.

Egon made no sound as the girl's body crumpled to the floor and began to pump out blood like a busted spigot, only turned to his wife in utter disbelief.

Somehow, the fish-out-of-water mouth of the girl amused Joanna, that opening and closing as if striving for air. But the noise of it—that was repulsive. "Oh stop your gurgling!" Joanna spat. "You'll turn off my husband, and then how will you raise your grade?" She laughed quietly at her own comment.

Lifting her eyes, Joanna saw her husband had sunk to his knees. His unbuckled pants hung loose at his waist; his untucked shirt was disheveled and improperly buttoned. Egon's face betrayed fear, actual fear now, and Joanna realized that she'd never found him more attractive than she did in that moment.

"Please," he begged quietly, "baby, I'll do anything. I'm sorry—I'm so, so—"

Joanna couldn't let him finish. She unloosed a bullet and waited for him to fall over before walking toward him. As she glanced at his shattered, meaty face, she smirked. "Who's ugly now, hm?"

Egon had collapsed next to the leather couch he'd been enjoying himself on moments earlier. Quite satisfied with herself, Joanna sat down there, scrunching her nose up at the thought of what leftovers might be on it, and pulled her purse onto her lap. She retrieved a lipstick from within and began applying it with her free hand. The sudden quiet was so peaceful, sublime, even. When she was done, the woman pulled a compact from the bag and checked her work in the little mirror hiding within. Then she turned her attention to the very much expected figure standing waveringly still as a mirage in a corner near Egon's vaingloriously stocked bookshelves.

"If you're wondering," Joanna said sharply, "no, I don't regret it. The bastard deserved it. And I don't feel sorry for her, either," she added, waving her gun toward the college student. "Collateral damage."

The pale, naked, eyeless thing said nothing, moved nothing.

Joanna snapped her compact shut. "And you know, I wasn't the one who did that to you. Not really! It was all Danielle's idea, and it was Anjulie's fault the thing even came into the world, glommed into us like some—some nasty tick, bloating itself on our—our terror, our adolescent angst."

The desk lamp flared and popped out, leaving only the light from the hall to illuminate the bodies within the office.

Growing serious, Joanna lowered her voice, finally looked at the broken blonde girl, whose translucent skin practically glowed. "We were thirteen, Emily! Thirteen! Fourteen, some of us. We—I didn't—oh, well, why am I talking to you? This is ridiculous. I have nothing else to say."

Joanna would have risen, would've stepped over the body of her husband and left the room, but the apparition began to move, instead. Slowly, purposefully, it lifted its hands to its widening mouth—a black orifice in the dark shadows—and reached its fingers inside. Joanna watched in disgust as the thing that maybe was Emily, maybe was not, fit all its spindly fingers between its teeth and shoved downward, submerging its arms up to the elbows, before sliding them back out, all in a violent gorging and regurgitating motion. Emily's sullied hands were not empty when they emerged; they clutched glutinous, moist material, and that material the phantasm pulled in ropes and lumps from its own upturned throat—so, so much, enough that Joanna couldn't fathom how it was possible for that slight ghostly form to house so much. When at last the figure lowered its face to meet the woman's gaze with its hollowed sockets, Joanna realized she'd instinctively grabbed her own throat.

With a shudder, the recent widow stood and shook her head. "I-I don't understand what you want from me." She swallowed what felt like a rock that'd formed in her esophagus. The sight of dripping, stringy stuff trailing over the ghost girl's lower lip unsettled Joanna more than anything else that'd just happened, and she was trying to keep calm. "It was never me, I told you. It was the others!"

A book flung itself off the shelf near Emily, shot past Joanna, and smashed into the wall behind her. Another did the same, nearly hitting the woman, and a third would've slammed into her face had she not ducked. One by one, all the books flew from the shelves, and though Joanna crouched down in a fetal position to avoid them, a number of them struck her back and shoulders anyway.

When the painfully long barrage subsided, when the sound of flapping pages and thunks ceased, Joanna cautiously peeked out from between her arms to see that the apparition of Emily was on the move. It had stepped away from the now-empty shelves and into the doorway, where Joanna caught sight of its spine, visible through its watery, diaphanous flesh, before it disappeared into the hall. Quickly, Joanna stumbled to her feet and over piles of books. She followed the ghost into the curving corridor beyond her husband's office. The overhead lights had begun to flicker erratically, but she knew the thing's path by the crimson trail it left behind, its bloody little footprints alongside splotches of darker matter. Skull pounding, heart thumping as if attempting to free itself from her ribs, Joanna staggered along, uncertain what she'd find at the end of that trail, and when after only a moment she reached it, she found that the blood ended at a closed door.

Rapidly taking note of her surroundings, Joanna realized she was in the lobby, past the front desk where the young man had been seated. Behind her was a windowed wall that looked out onto the night, and before her was that closed door beneath which Emily's prints progressed. Joanna peeked through the strip of glass above the door handle, and she saw inside, even in all the vibrating light play, the attendant who'd recognized her, who'd probably wanted to stop her before she'd walked in on her husband's indecency. He stood amidst several stacks of boxes and other unimportant junk, and he was on his cell, speaking low and quickly. When he caught sight of Joanna, he yelped and fell backward, knocking over towers of items.

Joanna knew: he'd called the police. They'd be coming, soon enough. Emily had known it, hadn't she? Had she wanted Joanna to come here? Surely. Of course she'd wanted to help.

The woman tried the door handle, but it was locked. Panic overtaking her, she beat the glass pane in a frenzy. "Knock, knock, knock!" she cried. "Come out and play, you stupid fucking mouse!"

The young man's fear and refusal only incensed her, and Joanna raised her gun and shot out the pane. When she reached her arm through the opening, the boy gained some courage and tried to throw things at her, to hurt her, but a mania had pushed Joanna too far.

"You think it was me, don't you?" she screamed, shoving the door inward and sending the man reeling into the junk. "But it wasn't! I fucking hated her—I hated all of you!—but I didn't—invite—it in—until now!" Her words punctuated with kicks directed at the boy's backside, Joanna at last fired, sending a bullet in a stripe up his back before it entered the base of his skull.

The young man's body fell slack at an angle that brought a flowing red line from his head to his waist; the lights everywhere, in the hall and the lobby and storage room, fizzled to a blinding brightness before simultaneously blowing out; and Joanna was left, abruptly, in a black that would've been pitch had it not been for the uncountable glowing orbs that drifted tremblingly around her, dark stars in a satiated malevolent cosmos.