There it stood, five feet of mongrel, each section clashing with the other, blood coating all of its mass. Even though it looked as if it set itself to burst by its threads at any second, it pressed Janardan down, his neck right on the door step.

Taking the place of the silence in the room, Hasso gasped. Velma's head snapped to follow it.

"That's..." Whatever Hasso had left to say, it backed up in his sarcophagus. 

Velma pored over Hasso's face. All throughout the near decade he'd lived under their roof, he'd never seen Velma's face like that. His eyelids barely ever peeled back, barely ever covered an open mouth. Then his vision panned on the dress, and then to the mongrel.

Something climbed up his abdomen. It's as if his airways closed in like a straw. His entire body threw itself into tremor. Looking at both Hasso and his father, he tries to look for something—pity, help, anything—but they're just as weaken as he was.

"Mama...!" He implored the mongrel between fits of wheezing. "Please...say something, say something, Mama. Say something to Dad and him!"

Under his palms, Hasso's lips curl into a grin full of teeth. It stayed even when Velma's hands toiled at taking the dress off of him. Hasso minded Velma as he stumbled in front of the mongrel, presenting the dress as it slipped in between his knuckles and dressed the mongrel in it. "There you go...there you go. You're all dressed up, you're all dressed up, Mama. Say something...!"

It didn't say anything. It stood still. 

It allowed Hasso to turn to Velma's father and quip, "You have a very beautiful looking wife."

Father's awe sat in for a few seconds before snapping his neck towards him and grabbing him by his neck. "Why the fuck...is he callin' that thing his mother?! You better start spitting...spitting out something—or it's gonna be your...fuckin' teeth!"

"I thought she was beautiful," Hasso crooned in between the pressure. "But she'll be even prettier later, so don't be that upset."

"Did you...fuckin' hear me? I said, 'What...Why is he calling that thing his mother?!'"

"...Isn't it?"

Velma left the mongrel to tend to its own and turned to Hasso and his father. "Mama's broken, Hassie, she's broken."

The way Velma carried his words grabbed at something at the pit of both the father and Hasso.

Hasso cooed. "I promise you, she's not, we just need to take her to the—"

"Get a fuckin' hold of yourself, will you? That's not your fuckin' mother and you know it!"

"Mama's not moving..."

"I know... your mother was a fucking cunt, but I know she wouldn't, she wouldn't... kill anybody! She wouldn't!"

"Good job, Velma, good job. Don't worry. She's working, she is."

The words tighten the father's grasp on Hasso's neck. "I just know your...fuckin' ass had something to do with this! My son would never fucking do this!"

"...You're hurting Hassie! You're hurting him!"

"You never liked your wife, sir?"

"That's not Suzanne! That's not fucking Suzanne!"

In the wake of his sniveling, on all fours, Velma crawled back to the mongrel, which still had its foot's weight on Janardan's skull. The bickering went on.

"Mama...mama, please. You've got to say something...Daddy's hurting...he's hurting him real, real bad. You've got to say something. Please. I'll be so happy if you and, and, Dad—"

A noise engulfed all of Velma, sending himself lumbering towards the source, yelling, "Hassie—!"

In between Hasso's fingers were the hairs of his father, and down below hung a face adorned in patches of violet, red running from his nose as he"slept." "He'll be fine. He'll be coming with us, too. Go get packed up, alright? I'm gonna get dressed."

Velma's father's head cast off to the side, Hasso made his way up the staircase.

"Is Mama coming too? Is she coming?"

Hasso chuckled. "Of course. She's the main star of the show. They're going to be happy to see her when she comes. And after, you'll be, too."