Bell was smitten.

“You have piercing eyes,” Bell said, measuring her level eyes like a statistician.

“Fuck you,” retorted The Dog.

Marilyn brushed it off.

“What about that cabin? That's where you live, isn't it? It has a chimney.”

Bell jolted.

“We can't go back to the cabin.”

“Why?”

He looked back. There it stood: his decrepit shack.

“We're not going back to the cabin.”

But Bell found himself speaking only half-heartedly, loitering on the words. A faint wisp of an idea had tickled the back of his mind, and slowly he allowed it to grow.

“I'm going,” Marilyn said.

That was that. Marilyn began the short trek to the cabin, and Bell stood slowly to follow. He knew the eyes of the Baal awaited his return—a Komodo dragon, stalking, hungry for his reanimated feelings, ready to bite and leave festering bacteria in the wound. Had it been weeks or months since Bell had arrived? He wasn't sure. Until today he hadn't remembered ever being anywhere else. He felt like an escaped convict marching himself back to the chair. But even still there was this new, bubbly hope—this sly intuition that things were changing—that the noose no longer fit his neck. It was written in the slow churn of the new sky.

Marilyn entered the dark cabin before him, and he heard no squeak, no scream. Not a whisper. There was no moon here, no stars nor sun, but the ever-revolving cycle of night and day remained, and twilight had finally settled. Bell entered the cabin, his heart no longer beating.

The room was silver. The fire had died.

The Baal was gone.