The lights flicker, stretching their fingers across the room, prying into the dark corners, twisting shadows and strangling what is with light angled all the wrong ways.

His smile groans, twisting and crawling across his face.

“And that’s when I swore… next time I told this story, it’d be the truest, most bona fide version ever told. I gave sermons. Made promises. Swore if I was lying, my toes would fall off, and so would my kids!” he says. He stops, takes a few quiet moments, then wraps his fingers around the mug and sighs as the warmth runs up his arm. He smiles, lifts the cup to his lips, and takes a sip. His smile widens as he puts the mug back on the table, then runs his tongue along the brim of his raggedy moustache.

“That’s better than you promised,” he says, winking playfully. “You’ll have to give me the recipe before I go. I’d love to introduce my friends back home to the flavours you’ve cultivated.”

“Enough!” Helga roars, slapping the table with an open hand. “Say why you come, then go. I am old. I have no time for children and their little worries. Your father, he knew this. Da!”

“My worries are greater than a child’s,” Ivan gloats, leaning back in his chair as he stuffs a wad of wet, sticky tobacco into his mouth.

His eyes devour Helga’s ample bosom, a smile slithering across his lips as sweat trails down his clammy brow.

“And I am not my father. Where he failed, I will not!” he hisses through clenched teeth before he leaps to his feet. The old rusted wheels of his chair scrape across the floor with a volatile scream, carving long ribbons from the floorboards.

He clumsily pulls a large meat cleaver from beneath his coat, the thick metal glistening in the dull light as it arcs through the air, then lands with a wet, heavy thunk. Silence chokes the room until crimson spreads beneath the blade.

Helga’s eyes widen, then she screams, the cleaver buried deep in the wood, her hand tumbling to the floor with a grotesque slap. She holds her arm up as an eruption of red sprays from the stump.

Boris and Sven charge from the shadows. “You fucking swine!” Boris bellows as he tosses chairs from his path, Sven quickly following behind.

Ivan yanks on the cleaver, but the table won’t let go. He grits his teeth as they drag him down. Fists and elbows strike clumsily against his flesh, wet, sickly squelches erupting as bloated, liquid-filled bags burst. His nose is smeared across his face. Teeth tear into his cheeks, snapping at the roots.

Sven grabs Ivan’s nut sack and squeezes, tearing at him like a wild animal, then drives his knee into Ivan’s groin, once, twice, three times, each hit heavier, crueller, until something inside bursts.

Helga, for the most part, doesn’t move. She sits, cradling her severed hand as the river that flowed moments ago from her stump now runs silent. Boris and Sven pull the broken and bloody Ivan to his knees, his nose spread across his face, eyes swollen and pressed shut, one ear torn off, the other a red, swollen mess.

“Your father, he was no coward. He was man, da? Man who demand respect. When he speak, we listen. Always,” she spits, lifting her severed hand to her mouth and tearing at the flesh, chewing on her own meat.

“I eat what is mine,” Helga says as a trail of red runs down her chin. “That, your father knew, da. He understood. Much like you. Much like this, da. He learn who to trust, and who to fear.”

Ivan’s broken body stiffens and his eyes widen as he watches, frozen in abject fear, while Helga’s severed arm begins to pulsate, hissing as an eruption of sinew, flesh, and bone bubbles from the stump. Vein-like worms slither across it, twisting, shaping, knitting, sewing, as a new hand grows from the wound, bone by bone, inch by inch, birthing itself in pain.

Ivan tries to cower, but Boris and Sven force him to watch as Helga eats her own flesh while her new hand grows. She smiles, then frowns, the shift sharp as glass, eyes fixed on the broken, bloody Ivan.

“Now, da. Now we talk. You agree to my terms, not yours. You go back. Do what must be done. Da?”

Ivan swallows, his broken face scrunching as his pride fights with his common sense. Helga’s smile returns as she rises to her feet.

“I understand. You think you need more time. So… I give you time,” she scoffs. “But I take what you try steal from me, piece by piece. Maybe I start with fingers. Maybe tongue. Maybe something else. Something make you less man, da… maybe I take your past. Your memories. Make you stranger to yourself. You look in the mirror, don’t know who looks back.”

Ivan starts to thrash as she steps closer, but his broken body doesn’t respond the way he wishes, and the strength of Boris and Sven is vice-like.

“P-Please,” Ivan stammers as she stands above him, her eyes gleaming in the light.

“Hush now, child. Pleading time is over. Be man, like your papa was. Let me show you,” she hisses, pressing her newly grown hand to his cheek, its fingers ending in sharp talons. Rows of gleaming teeth flash like knives inside her widening mouth. “How you too… can be,” she growls before biting deep into his throat, tearing away a fist-sized chunk of flesh as a thick stream of lifeblood pours from the gaping wound and drenches her. He gasps, gurgles, then falls limp as the world washes away while she feeds on him.

As his heart takes its final beats, she pauses and presses her cold lips to his swollen ear. She purrs, “Now, child, we do things my way, da?”