It skittered across the floor and stopped at the back of the fridge. Sophia swore. It was watching her. If she took a step, it would just slip behind the fridge and disappear. She glanced down at the broken plates on the linoleum. It wasn’t like her to drop things when startled.

Sophia called to her son. “Samael! You been makin’ universes again?”

Grumpily, he replied from the TV room, “Yes.”

“I’m damn sick of tellin’ you. Cut it out.” She glanced at the storage jars on the window ledge. “Where you been gettin’ the chaos from?”

“Next door.”

“Quit stealin’ from the neighbours, you evil little bastard.”

She looked again at the universe beside the fridge. It wasn’t like the Samael’s early universes which had been small, dark, ragged, and completely feral. This one seemed brighter and better structured, but it also glared and calculated. It was palpably malevolent, as though it might readily kill her if it could figure out how. Sophia was certain, too, that it was expanding.

It slid behind the fridge.