Fifth Ghost Story: Tattoo Addiction
The breakfast table had once been quiet. Then it had been thick with tension. Now it filled with an entirely different kind of sound.
The wet, rhythmic suck of nursing.
"I'm thirsty."
Minjun set down his spoon. Without a word, Suyeon pulled up her T-shirt.
She had already made a habit of taking her bra off before breakfast. As her heavy breasts spilled free over the table, Minjun bent his head as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He took a nipple into his mouth and began to suck. Soft, wet pulls. The sound of milk flowing into his mouth carried across the table.
Seoyeon glanced over while she ate, then stretched a foot under the table. Her toes tapped the inside of Minjun's thigh. He pulled his mouth free.
"Noona."
"Hmm?"
Seoyeon tilted her head with an innocent little smile, still chewing. Under the table, her toes were already tracing the front of his pants.
Jiwoo sat in the corner, spooning soup. She saw everything and said nothing.
Her eyes moved over the rim of her bowl. Her mother's breasts. Her sister's foot working under the table. The way her brother's pants were starting to tent.
Yujin sat at the far end of the table, still wearing her mask.
Minjun lifted his head from Suyeon's breast.
"Auntie, why do you keep wearing that mask? Even when you eat?"
Yujin's shoulders stiffened slightly. Under the mask, her split tongue twitched.
"I think I caught a cold. My throat's a little sore."
"It's been days. Did you take anything?"
"Colds clear up on their own if you give them time. A week or so and I'll be fine."
Minjun looked at her for a moment, then returned his mouth to Suyeon's nipple. He didn't press further.
Yujin adjusted her mask and lifted her spoon.
She pushed rice grains under the mask one by one. She couldn't open her mouth wide. She was afraid food would slip out between the halves of her tongue. One grain. Chewed slowly. Another. She held her tongue still with her teeth so the two sides wouldn't move apart.
A thirty-two-year-old woman was eating like a baby. To the rest of the family, she simply looked like a cold patient struggling through a meal.
Suyeon stroked Minjun's hair and murmured something under her breath. Midway through, she seemed to catch a small orgasm; her toes stretched rigid and her body gave a little jolt.
"Yujin, you still don't look well. Shouldn't you see a doctor?"
The moment the words left her mouth, Suyeon realized how empty they were. Of course there was no hospital here.
Outside this house, nothing existed. Yujin only shook her head.
"A few more days of rest and I'll be fine."
Under the mask, her split tongue moved. She kept her voice deliberately low and rough—sore throat, cold, body aches.
Seoyeon's toes found Minjun's zipper. Even as he nursed at Suyeon's breast, the muscles in his thigh went tight. Suyeon noticed.
"Seoyeon, eat your food when you're at the table."
"I am eating."
Seoyeon did not pull her foot back. Suyeon sighed and, instead, drew Minjun's head deeper against her chest—a mother's attempt to manage daughter and son at the same time.
The table was noisier than it used to be. No one complained. In this house, this was normal.
Yujin set down her spoon, pretending she had finished. She had barely eaten half her soup. She lifted her eyes and swept the table.
Her nephew hanging from her sister's breast. Her niece groping a man's pants under the table with her toes. The youngest in the corner, face buried in her bowl, saying nothing—no. Looking closer, one hand had slipped down and she was touching herself.
They're all insane.
She didn't say it aloud. Only her masked lips moved.
It's the house. The fluorescent lights. The relic I touched. So I have to reverse it.
She set the spoon down. Half the soup remained.
She fixed her mask properly again. The tips of her split tongue brushed the roof of her mouth.
No one had seen this tongue. That was the last proof she was still the sane one.
That night, the breathing in the master bedroom slowly settled. In Jiwoo's room, fingers finally left her folds. The darkness of the fifteenth house settled over them all.
Yujin stood in front of the bathroom mirror and took off her mask.
She opened her mouth. She stuck out her tongue.
The two-pronged mass of flesh writhed in the glass. Slowly, she moved it. The left fork and the right fork twisted independently—one up, one down. The tips coiled around each other. Like a snake.
A snake was living inside her body.
I have to get out of this insane house. Fast.
A sigh slipped past her lips. The breath scattered in two streams between the halves of her tongue.
Yujin looked straight at the woman in the mirror. Thirty-two years old. A virgin. An aunt who hid behind a mask and watched her family. And now even her tongue was no longer human.
I'll reverse it. All of it.
She put the mask back on. The woman in the mirror disappeared.
In the study, Yujin was alone.
A single phone flashlight beam lit the ceiling. She had pulled every fluorescent tube that cast that brothel-like glow long ago.
Books, papers, and old wooden crates hemmed her in on every side—Minjun's father's belongings. The strangest of them she had set apart on the desk.
The Stone Tablet.
Palm-sized. Something was carved into the black stone.
Characters Yujin could not read. But the patterns she understood. Spirals. Circles. Lines branching like limbs. Stare at the whole long enough and it seemed to map some kind of environment.
Knowledge of a place? A building? She could not shake the feeling that it was somehow familiar.
This is it.
Yujin was certain. The tablet Minjun's father had brought back from somewhere in the world. The day the house began to duplicate, she had been touching it. Every time the house changed, the study, the belongings, and this tablet came along the same. She never had to pack it; it was always in the same place.
The hairline crack at the tip of her tongue had appeared right after she touched the tablet. At first it was so fine she needed a mirror to see it—invisible when she spoke, invisible when she ate. In this house it had split open to the root. She had only started wearing the mask recently.
If it's the same principle, maybe I can reverse it.
She set the tablet on her palm. It was cold.
Her other hand slid down between her thighs. Her breath roughened behind the mask.
She pushed a finger into her hole. It hurt at first. A thirty-two-year-old virgin's cunt was tight and dry. But after a few strokes, body heat slowly wet her.
When she pulled her finger free, a clear thread came with it.
Yujin brought the wet finger to her belly. Following the carvings on the tablet—spiral, circle, branching lines—she transferred them onto her skin.
The moment her fluids touched flesh, ink-black lines seeped up. At the same time, the tablet's patterns glowed faintly in response.
A tattoo.
Yujin did not look in the mirror. If she had, things might have been different.
What she believed she was drawing had nothing to do with knowledge of any place. Petals shaped like labia. Buds swollen like a clitoris. Black circles like nipples. Vines ran down the insides of her thighs and coiled around her sex.
But she did not look in the mirror. She was completing an escape ritual.
Three days passed.
More tattoos covered Yujin's body. Every time she squeezed out fluid with her fingers and painted her skin, the patterns spread.
At first they had only been on her belly and thighs. Now they climbed under her breasts. Black vines wrapped her nipples. A flower bloomed wide above her sex. The designs reached under her arms. Her areolas were ringed with marks that looked like sperm surrounding an egg about to be fertilized.
Yujin covered the tattoos with long sleeves and long pants. She still wore the mask. In front of the family she kept her voice low and blamed a cold.
But her own fluids alone were no longer enough. The patterns demanded more and more bodily fluid.
On the third night, Yujin sighed with her fingers still inside herself. No matter how she rubbed, her fingertips only barely got wet.
"It won't come out."
A thirty-two-year-old virgin's body did not wet easily. Tension and fear only dried her further.
To draw a single pattern she had to push her fingers in and out three or four times at minimum. The stimulation built until her cunt grew hot, but she never reached climax.
If she came, everything would only get more complicated.
She glanced at the mirror. Herself in the flashlight beam. Mask off, legs spread, fingers in her cunt—a thirty-two-year-old woman. Black patterns dotted her belly and thighs.
What am I doing at this age, in this freak house.
She stopped. She pulled her fingers free. Self-loathing brought tears to her eyes.
One unfinished pattern sat stalled on her belly. Incomplete. Just like this whole situation.
My company. The project I was running. What about all of that.
She bit her lip. But she already knew the answer.
Outside this house there was nothing. No company, no project, no normal life. All that remained was the tablet, the patterns, and her family.
Yujin put her fingers back inside. The post-shame clarity was short. To survive, she had to finish these patterns.
"Just a little more."
Her fingers moved. Scraping her walls, she managed one more drop. She painted with it like ink on a needle, and a black line reached her navel.
Still not enough. The tablet wanted more fluid.
So every night, Yujin slipped into the master bedroom.
Suyeon and Minjun, and now Seoyeon too. The sheets the three of them used were stained with fluids every morning. Semen. Girl-come. Milk. Yujin took tissues and carefully pressed them to the fabric.
Dried semen transferred to the tissue. She rubbed damp slick marks onto her fingertips.
Then she hurried back to the study and painted her own skin with what she had gathered.
The next morning at the table, Yujin adjusted her mask.
"Auntie, is that cold still not gone?"
Seoyeon asked while ladling soup. Yujin only nodded.
It was not a cold. Under her long sleeves the tattoos had reached her wrists. Now she had to cover everything but the backs of her hands.
"You've been looking a little rough lately. Don't push yourself too hard."
At Suyeon's words, Yujin bowed her head. She was not pushing herself.
The ritual was nearly complete. She needed more fluid.
The fifth night.
She could no longer hide it. The tattoos climbing her neck would not stay under a turtleneck. Black lines had begun to spread across the backs of her hands. Yujin stood in front of the study mirror.
She took off the mask. She took off her clothes.
The woman in the glass.
A split tongue. The forked flesh hung past her lips. Black flowers and vines wound her entire body. Around her nipples, blossoms in full bloom. Her cunt was completely covered in vines. The patterns ran down over her ass.
Even a whore at the end of her rope did not look like this. This was not a human body. It was flesh occupied by something else.
What is this.
Doubt hit her for the first time. Was this really an escape ritual? Were these really tattoos for getting out?
But the tablet demanded more fluid. Her own juices had dried up. What she scraped from the sheets was not enough. She needed living fluid. Something ejaculated right now, in this moment.
Yujin stood. She did not put clothes on. There was nothing left to cover. The door opened.
The hallway. Minjun's room.
Minjun was sleeping alone. Suyeon and Seoyeon had collapsed exhausted in the master bedroom, so tonight he was using his own bed.
Yujin stood beside it. In her hands were strips of cloth torn from a blanket. The only thing in the house that could pass for rope. Holding her breath, she bound Minjun's wrists to the bedposts.
The knots were clumsy—the work of someone who had never done this before. But Minjun was deeply asleep, and the cloth held his wrists still.
Yujin pulled his pants down. Even asleep, his cock was half-swollen. A young man's body drew blood even in sleep.
She wrapped both hands around it. The first time she had ever touched a man's cock. Hot, and softer than she expected. She moved her hands slowly. Up and down. It hardened in her palms.
"If I do it like this—"
She sped up. Her fingers ran the length of the shaft. The head flushed red and he came fully erect. Clear fluid beaded at the slit.
Not semen. Not yet.
"Just a little more."
Yujin worked her hands faster, focused on Minjun's cock. Her wrists ached, but she did not stop. To finish the patterns she needed living semen. Now. This moment.
Then she suddenly realized someone was kneading her breasts like soft rice cakes. Minjun's hands.
When had he gotten free? The knots hung loose on the bedposts.
Minjun was awake. One hand cupped her E-cup breast, rolling the nipple in slow circles.
"Auntie."
Yujin froze. Her hands were still wrapped around his cock.
Even in the dark, the size of the breasts alone told him who it was. In this house, only his aunt had E-cups.
Minjun was neither startled nor angry. He simply kept fondling her tits.
"Don't look. Please."
Yujin tried to pull back. Minjun caught her wrist instead. The one who had meant to bind him was the one held. His other hand found her belly.
Yujin's cunt clenched.
"Don't touch me. Stop."
She tried to shove his arm away, but Minjun did not move. He leaned in and pushed her down onto the bed. One hand pinned both her wrists above her head; the other slid slowly down the inside of her thigh.
"So this is how you were going to take my cum?"
His fingers found the top of her sex. Between the patterns, outer lips no one had ever touched. His finger traced their texture slowly.
"You were going to jerk me off and catch it? With knots that sloppy?"
Yujin's face burned. Shame and humiliation. But when Minjun's finger brushed her folds, her body answered. The skin of her belly and thighs went hot.
"This way gets a lot more out of me."
Minjun spread her legs and settled his hips between them. His hard cock stood at the entrance of his aunt's cunt. The head hovered just short of her outer lips.
"This is incest. You can't."
"I already did it with Mom. And with Noona. You're the only one left."
He brought the head to her hole. The moment it touched the entrance, her body jerked.
But it would not go in. She was astonishingly tight. Not like his mother, not like his sister. Minjun felt around the entrance with his fingers.
He rubbed the sticky, welling insides and pushed his middle finger deep into the narrow cunt. A membrane of flesh caught on his fingertip.
A hymen. Thick, with three or four small openings—the holes that let unfertilized eggs pass. Those holes had never once been broken in thirty-two years. They were the emblem of Aunt Yujin's virginity.
Minjun's hand stopped. Yujin did not answer.
She turned her face away and squeezed her eyes shut. Even in the dark, that silence was an answer.
"You're a virgin. At thirty-two."
Minjun could hardly believe his ears. His mother had borne three children. His sister was twenty-two. And his aunt—thirty-two. A woman whose face was not bad, who had breasts big enough to shame a porn star. And she had never once.
"Auntie, you're beautiful. Your chest is this big. So why—"
Yujin did not answer. She kept her face turned away.
Work. Projects. Reports. Sorting her brother-in-law's belongings. Life had been too busy; there had been no room to think about men. None of that meant anything now.
Minjun gave a short laugh, as if he could not believe it.
"Then you saved this for me. For thirty-two years."
"Don't say things like that."
"Otherwise it doesn't make sense. A body like this, at your age. You were waiting for me, weren't you?"
"Don't be ridiculous! This is rape!"
Yujin's voice cracked—anger and humiliation. But Minjun did not stop smiling.
"Rape? You snuck into my room at night, tied my hands, and tried to jerk me off for semen. If that isn't rape, what is it? I was the one who got jumped first."
He said nothing more. Instead he set the head of his cock precisely at her hole.
Slowly, he applied pressure. The hymen stretched tight inward.
"No...!"
"Say goodbye to your cunt. Bye-bye, my virginity."
Minjun looked straight into her eyes. Even in the dark, their gazes met.
"You're my woman now too."
He drove his hips forward. The hymen tore, and blood ran down the inside of her thigh.
"Ah—!"
Yujin's body arched like a bow. A hole no one had entered in thirty-two years. The walls were narrow and dry. When Minjun's cock went in, the flesh clenched around him as if screaming.
It hurt. But at the same time the skin of her belly and thighs burned hot.
"Auntie—inside, you're so fucking tight."
Minjun's breath roughened. Not his mother's loose cunt, not his sister's firm one—an unused thirty-two-year-old virgin's passage. Dryness made it grip harder; the narrow walls bit down on his cock.
He moved his hips slowly. A little out, then back in.
Tears ran from Yujin's eyes, but her cunt would not let him go. Every thrust, her thick outer lips wrapped the root. When he pulled back they clung and followed. Her inner lips stayed mostly hidden; only a pale flash of them showed between the patterns.
Minjun bent and filled his hands with her breasts. E-cups. Round and heavy. A thirty-two-year-old virgin's tits had less spring, but when he squeezed, flesh overflowed between his fingers in pure luxury.
Her nipples were flat—almost inverted from tension.
"They're tucked in here."
He licked one. The flat nipple slowly began to rise. The skin around the areola flushed. He took it into his mouth and sucked it up.
"Stop it, Minjun!"
Her voice shook. But her body was honest. The moment the nipple fully protruded, fluid seeped inside her for the first time. The dry walls began to wet. Minjun's cock went deeper.
"Ah... ah."
The pain eased, and a strange sensation flooded in. Pleasure. A feeling she had never allowed even herself in thirty-two years. A hole she had never put a finger deep into was now full of her nephew's cock.
Her split tongue slipped past her lips. The forked flesh trembled in the air. When Minjun lowered his head to cover her mouth, she turned away.
"Not that—no kissing—!"
"Doesn't matter. Stick your tongue out."
He caught her jaw and forced her face back. Then he pushed his own tongue over her split one.
Yujin's two forks wrapped his tongue. A sensation she had never felt. In a way no single tongue could manage, her tongue coiled around his as if it had found its match.
Her eyes went wide. She had never kissed anyone. And the first time was with a split tongue, with her nephew.
Minjun did not release her tongue as he sped his hips. As her walls wet, the motion smoothed. When the head reached her cervix, her hips jerked. In the corner of the room, the stone tablet vibrated faintly.
Climax was coming. Yujin could feel it. Her cunt wanted his cock deeper, harder. While her mind refused, her body had already answered.
"I don't want it. I don't—"
Words and body diverged. Her walls wrung his cock; her hole fluttered as if begging for semen. A thirty-two-year-old virgin cunt wanted a man's seed for the first time.
"Auntie, can I cum?"
"Outside... out... don't cum in—"
The refusal died in her throat. Her walls answered first.
Minjun drove deep and pressed the head against her cervix. Hot semen poured into her like lava.
Yujin's back arched like a bow. First climax. First creampie. Everything was a first.
Minjun slowly pulled out. Her hole stayed fully open; virgin blood and semen mixed and ran. Her pale outer lips were swollen red, and the inner lips that had always hidden were pushed outward for the first time.
He traced around her hole with a fingertip. Sticky fluid clung to his finger.
Watching his own semen run out of a woman's cunt had become a hobby in the last few days—from his mother's ripe one, from his sister's firm one. He had to see it from the aunt whose virginity he had just taken.
He got up naturally and turned on the room light. Yujin made no move to stop him; she only gasped, sprawled like a frog, pouring semen and slick from between her spread legs.
The brothel-like light fell across the body covered in her filthy tattoos...
Minjun flinched.
Patterns over her entire body. Black vines and flowers wound her belly, thighs, breasts, and the area around her cunt. Not tattoos. Something alive seemed to breathe on her skin.
Even a whore did not have a body like this. Only some diseased, bottomed-out slut at the end of her life would cover herself in ink like this.
"Fuck, that's hot."
The words slipped out. Yujin could not answer. She turned her face away in shame.
But Minjun's cock rose hard again. He had just cum, and the sight of his aunt's ruined, blood-and-semen-smeared body sent blood surging. E-cup breasts wrapped in black vines. A cunt with petals fully open. A split tongue. Everything was obscene.
"You had a body like this and you hid it."
He spread her legs again. With his fingers he opened the hole that had not yet closed. More semen ran out. Soft pink inner flesh showed.
"Your cunt's still pink."
His voice dropped.
"Mom's dark and red like grilled meat from three kids. I'll make yours the same. I'll fuck you every day until it's a ripe, used-up slut cunt like hers. That's why you put these tattoos on and came to me, isn't it."
Yujin tried to shake her head. No. It was different. But Minjun's cock found her hole again. The head pushed semen aside as it went in.
"Ah—stop."
"Stop what. This is just the start."
He drove deep. Second penetration. Smoother than the first. Semen as lube opened the narrow walls easily. The head struck her cervix. A moan slipped from her mouth. Her split tongue hung past her lips and trembled.
"That tongue too—did you make it on purpose? To seduce me?"
He gripped her breasts and worked his hips. E-cups filling his palms. Patterns squeezed out between his fingers.
"Bigger tits than Mom, tighter cunt too. Looking at these tattoos, your nature's filthier... If I'd known sooner I would've taken your virginity already."
"Don't say that. I don't want—"
"Why. It's true. You're my woman now. I'll take good care of that slutty cunt of yours."
He moved faster. Her hole clenched and rode his cock up and down. Semen and slick mixed and foamed between her thighs.
"Your cunt... it's ripening like Mom's already. If I fuck you every day you'll end up a real grilled-meat slut cunt. Doesn't that sound good?"
Yujin could not answer. But her cunt did. The grip tightened.
Minjun thrust deep a few more times, pressed the head to her cervix, and came. A second load poured into a passage already full. Yujin's body convulsed.
He caught his breath and pulled out. Semen, slick, and the virgin blood still inside ran out together in pink. He looked down at it once, then brought his cock to her face.
Cheek. Forehead. Lips.
The fluid-smeared cock wiped across her face like a tissue. Yujin closed her eyes. Her split tongue slipped out and brushed the base of his shaft as it passed. She tasted the mix of her own semen, slick, and blood.
"Is it over now?"
Instead of answering, Minjun set his cock against her lips. The split tongue wrapped the head on its own.
Yujin lay there catching her breath. The ceiling looked blurred. Her body hurt. Her cunt burned as if torn.
But this was the end. The tablet ritual was complete. The patterns would vanish and the house would return to normal. She believed that.
She forced her upper body up and looked down at her belly.
The black vines were still there. No—they were clearer.
She rubbed her belly with her hand. They would not wipe away. Thighs, breasts, around her cunt. Not a single line of the patterns had disappeared. If anything, fed on fluid, they had spread in a deeper, filthier color.
Yujin dropped the hand that had been rubbing her belly. Her fingertips shook. The black vines looked as if they had drunk the fluids and sunk deeper into her skin. She knew rubbing, scratching, or wiping with spit would not erase them.
"They won't go away..."
Her lips moved. A sound only she should have heard. But Minjun heard it.
"Go away? You covered your whole body in tattoos like that and thought they'd just disappear? That's weird all by itself."
Yujin did not answer. She scraped her belly with her nails. White marks rose over the black vines and faded. The vines did not.
Minjun came closer. Under the light the patterns showed even more clearly. Belly. Thighs. Black circles around her nipples. Vines coiling her cunt. Anyone could see this was not ordinary ink. Tattoos did not sink into skin like this.
He crossed his arms and looked down at her.
"That tongue, these patterns—Auntie, you need to explain. What the hell happened."
Yujin shook her head. She did not want to speak. If she spoke, he would know everything—that she had touched her brother-in-law's relic, that the house had started duplicating from then, that the family had been trapped wandering through fifteen houses.
But her silence was already as good as an answer. Minjun's eyes moved from her face to her belly, from her belly to her tongue.
A split tongue. Black vines spreading over her whole body. This could not be a simple tattoo. In a house with no tattoo parlor, patterns she had covered alone under long sleeves.
Yujin could not bear that gaze. Her nails dug into her belly.
Minjun did not open his mouth. Instead he sat on the edge of the bed and watched her.
The woman who had hidden her tongue behind a mask and pecked at rice grains. The aunt who vanished every night and returned each morning more exhausted. No one in this house had stayed normal.
Father's relics.
Even without saying it aloud, Yujin read it in his eyes. She was caught.
Her breath seemed to stop. Her nails dug deeper into her belly.
Minjun narrowed his eyes. The study was piled with the strange things his father had collected all his life. She had touched one of them. That much was certain.
"Don't... tell my sister."
It was all she could force out. Everything she had hidden until now was melted into that one sentence.
Minjun did not answer. He only blinked slowly—whether that meant he understood or that he needed time to think.
He drew a quiet breath. The bath bomb Seoyeon had touched. The relic his aunt had touched. This house picked people, put objects in their hands, and called it desire.
In the thirteenth house he had said it clearly: do not touch anything that was not originally there. Everyone at the table had heard. His aunt had been there too.
And still she had shut herself in the study and handled his father's relics. Minjun gave a short laugh. Not so much angry as incredulous.
"...So Auntie."
His voice was calm.
"You didn't do it with me. You did it with that relic."
Yujin's eyes widened.
"Coming into my room wasn't for me—the relic made you. Putting your hands on my cock was just because you needed seed."
He reached out and touched her cheek. Tears wet the back of his hand.
"But it's strange. At first you weren't wet at all. The more I moved, the wetter you got. By the end you wouldn't even let go of my cock."
His hand stroked her belly. The black vines were hot under his palm.
"We can't go back anyway. The house, the tattoos, the tongue—all the same. So we live here. With me."
Yujin did not move. His hand rose from her belly to her breasts, from her breasts to her throat. The split tongue slipped between her lips. Minjun pressed it lightly with a finger.
"And Auntie—there's something you still haven't done for me with that tongue."
He sat up on his knees. His half-hard cock faced her. After two loads the head was flushed and the shaft gleamed with pink fluid. Yujin stared at it blankly for a few seconds.
Something she had never put in her mouth in thirty-two years.
Her split tongue slowly extended. The left fork cradled under the head; the right traced the urethra. The two halves moved separately and wrapped his cock. Strength went into Minjun's thighs.
"That's it. That tongue's for this."
Yujin's eyes closed. The forked tongue ran the full length of the shaft. She had never done this, yet the tongue moved on its own. The two halves caressed him in different rhythms.
The taste of the fluids from her own cunt spread through her mouth. Bitter and salty. But she did not stop.
That night Yujin set down the last scrap of her reason. Licking her nephew's cock with a snake's tongue, she accepted that there was nowhere left to return to.
The next morning, in front of the mirror. Black vines over her whole body. A ruined, slutty wreck of a form. But it was different from yesterday.
She was no longer alone.
She took the stone tablet in her hand. Her sister's breasts. Seoyeon's firm cunt. Jiwoo's youthful thighs.
If she was not going to be alone, they all had to fall together.
All of them, obscenely... down to the very bottom...