"Rubber, glue," Joy says, in exultation too unkind to be called gleeful, dripping toxicity in her tone as much as her sheen of virulent Vileblood. She stands over her and sets her fists on her hips, still unconcerned with her nakedness.

She used to be so precious about that. She had insisted on decorum, on propriety, and it is still a manner she affects when it pleases her to do so, but this is a lesson Joy has learned: in the end, it's all so much meat.

The rather irritating meat at her feet quivers. It squirts hot jets of saliva as gastric dysrhythmias set in, vagus nerve twitching with sympathy for its cranial cousins. She bends over with keen interest in the continued unpleasantness she's inflicted upon him, mouth a sharp little underline of minor triumph.

"Creche insults from a creche mind," she says, just to rub it in, and at least this is familiar.