Mell was not particularly forthcoming about herself, or anything else. I managed to establish almost by accident that ‘Mell’ was short for something but she refused to say what, and that Perky Weather was an asylum, or possibly a prison, as I’d suspected.

Also as I’d suspected, she had escaped – but then everything had gone dark and her immediate assumption had been that someone had hit her with a tranquilliser dart, which was why she’d been suspicious of us.

The very fact that she referred to crushing Creepy’s testicles in one hand, and eviscerating Mister C of 9 with the other, as ‘being suspicious’ convinced me that we were looking at a female Creepy from some alternate universe. But she refused to provide any more information.

Creepy had managed to pull himself to his feet and hobble away to find a stapler, and for a short time we busied ourselves turning Mister C of 9’s outsides back into insides and sealing him up. He didn’t seem unduly concerned about the massive abdominal wound, as I supposed he needn’t – given what he was.

Winona produced some needle and thread that he claimed was for repairing book bindings, and replaced the button on Mister C of 9’s shirt. Then he asked if maybe stitches would be better than staples, but by then it was too late and Mister C of 9 declared primly that we’d all been ‘ogling’ his supple naked torso for long enough.

“Alright,” I said, and brought glasses and another bottle of coke to the table while Winona fastidiously wiped away the thick black slime Mister C of 9 seemed to have instead of blood. Mell, Creepy, Mister C of 9 and Winona then sat down, and since there were only four chairs and one of them was a lawn chair and another was a bar stool, I served up the drinks and then went out the back to pick up a couple of milk crates to stack up and sit on. “Alright, so. Now there’s four of you, from different-”

I stopped, because Mell’s head had snapped around and she’d lurched to her feet. I turned to look, and found myself staring at … well, maybe I should just say ‘the fifth Creepy’ and leave it at that for the moment.