Blurt slowly shuffled to his feet.

Never mind that the smell of iron stung Petre's nostrils. Never mind that he had slipped on something wet, red, and human. Never mind that his son's naked skin was smeared in equal parts red and grey.

"He's standing!" Petre exclaimed, and he lifted Blurt into the air. He spun around in the cramped stairwell, but the landing was wet with his children's eating, so he soon slipped and fell.

His fall was cushioned by what remained of the gunmen, and a flicker of revulsion made his skin crawl. Then he looked into his son's newly formed eyes and delighted.

"Blurt so fuuull!" Blurt said, though his human lips still floated beside the black of his goo. The human face he had molded was without mouth, and its eyes did not blink.

"Blurm... Blurm waNt sleEp..."

Petre swerved towards the sound, so wonderfully familiar, not because he had ever heard Blurm speak, but because he had imagined how his daughter would sound one day.

Blurm emerged from the mangled and melted bodies of the gunmen. She was heftier than last he had seen her, and pouty human lips floated amidst her bulbous black globs.

"Her first words!" Petre said, and he hefted both of his children back up into the air.

He felt like he was in a dream. Such warmth gushed throughout his veins, and the smile that sat on his face ached with its width. To watch his children grow!

"N-none of that makes sense."

And Petre was pulled out of his dream. The words were like a bucket of cold water, and he looked up the stairwell with a snarl to find the RxTV reporter looking down at them, her body hunched over as if sick.

"Y-You're treating those things like... c-children?" Sarku Dno asked, a hand over her pale face. "Like... like h-human children? But that doesn't make any sense."

Blurm and Blurt bristled from within Petre's embrace, and he cooed for them. He would not let some strange woman (You had to be well and truly mad to approach someone surrounded by dead bodies) ruin this special moment.

"They're monsters!" Sarku shouted from higher up the stairwell, her voice shrill. "W-why would they grow into s-small children?!"

"Noisy," Manya said from within his right eye, and he watched her emerge in a slow reveal of coiled red veins and massive teeth.

"They're not monsters," Petre said, full of frustration, and Manya lunged for Sarku.

Her white teeth slathered with a pinkish drool. Petre cried out.

"R-rude, cuz!" Manya said. His hands had flown instinctively towards the explosion of Manya's flesh. He could feel how powerful she was, and yet he still tried to pull her back.

"She's just some... some crazy woman," Petre said, surprised by the desperation in his voice. Because the gunmen and soldiers were one thing. They had wanted to hurt his treasure. But this woman... Petre did not know what she wanted.

"Oy!" he exclaimed as Sarku's eyes fluttered, and she started to fall face-first down the stairwell.

Petre reached her as her body began to roll down the steps. Her nose and lip were bloody from where she had hit the ground. A small smear of blood trickled down her face where her glasses had shattered.

"Lot happens when you take a little nap," Manya said as she retreated back into his right eye. Petre could feel quite uncomfortably how much she had grown as she squeezed back into her hole.

"Pa... pa?"

Blurm and Blurt rolled towards him, and only then did he notice the strangeness of Blurt's transformation.

His son had molded small human legs and a diminutive human head, but he did not use either. They merely hung off his black goo like some enormous human-shaped tumor.

"But I'll teach him," Petre said to himself. He had only just grown them. Odd that Blurb had developed her mature body all at once while his children-

"Blurb!" Petre exclaimed, and he stomped over to Blurt. His son recoiled, his black goo rippling like a violent tide.

"Blurt! Where is your mother?"

His son did not answer at first, his black continuing to ripple and shake as if in unease.

"Blurt!" Petre said, and he lifted his son into the air. "Where is she? You were supposed to watch over her! Both of you!"

"We... we felt yoOur hurt," Blurm said with her new lips. "We... we came..."

"So you l̸̤̪̎ẹ̴̐f̴̨̑͜ť̸͓̃ her all alone?!" Petre shouted, and he wanted to squeeze the little black wretches into juice. "Let's go!"

He could scarcely feel his hands with the white fury that pulsed through him. Blurb, his treasure, was all alone somewhere. The mother of his children, confused and weak.

Petre wanted to scream as he hurried through the building, his mind confused. He should have gone down, but instead he stormed through the first open door.

And there, in the hallway, he saw a snarling beast, its face a black taste of monstrous hate. He stiffened with fright, and the beast stilled, as well.

Petre brought a hand to his face, and looked at his reflection, his features marked with an inhuman wroth. He had not washed his hair in the last couple of days, and it flew around him in an unkempt lion's mane. An explosive length of beard obscured his mouth, but not the shape of his snarl.

He wore rags that not even the lowest of beggars would wear. They were covered in rips and tears and various bullet holes, all painted red with blood. His grey bloodless hands were clenched and swollen with thick veins. They looked like the ends of two maces, his white knuckles their lethal spikes.

And despite how his arms and hands swelled, his stomach seemed deflated and empty. It was as though all of his nutrients had been usurped by the violent hate that filled his clutches.

"I look like a freak," Petre said to himself, and he unclenched his fists and soften the howl that filled his face. "I acted like a monster..."

He turned to find Blurm and Blurt at the entrance to the hallway. They disappeared at the sight of him, and Petre was filled with a horrible regret.

"I-I'm sorry," Petre said, and the great gush of strength left him at the words. It was as though he could feel the hate that swelled in his fists disperse throughout the rest of his body. "Papa's sorry. Blurm. Blurt."

His children crawled out from their hiding and rolled towards him. How could he have screamed at them like that? How could he have been so foul?

"Finished with your tantrum, cuz?" Manya asked. Her words did not share in her earlier mischief.

"We need to get back to your mother," Petre said, ignoring her. "Lets go back to her right now."

"E-excuse me!"

He looked up to see Sarku Dno had roused from her unconscious. Blood dribbled down her face, and she had tried to readjust her broken glasses to ill-effect.

"I-I want that interview," she said, her legs trembling as she looked at the gaggle of monsters in the hallway. "Might I... c-come with you?"