On Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, Emi­ly (Em) and her hus­band Rod­ney (Rod­dy) are in their home, dis­turbed by the sight of a mob storm­ing the Capi­tol on TV. Em, while out­ward­ly appalled, finds the event fas­ci­nat­ing in her deep­er, unspo­ken opin­ions. She mus­es on the trans­for­ma­tion of America’s mid­dle class and the thrill of polit­i­cal upheaval, though she would nev­er open­ly admit her dark­er wish­es for the sit­u­a­tion.

Bon­nie Rae, a younger woman work­ing for Em, is also watch­ing the events unfold. When Em insists on turn­ing off the TV, the scene shifts to a more per­son­al set­ting. Em directs Bon­nie to work on a dig­i­tal task involv­ing Christ­mas and New Year’s greet­ings, pre­tend­ing to be less tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy than she is. This act main­tains her appear­ance as a harm­less, intel­lec­tu­al elder, mask­ing her judg­men­tal and rad­i­cal thoughts.

The nar­ra­tive then reveals a sin­is­ter side to Em and Rod­dy’s life. They dis­cuss their next poten­tial vic­tim for what is implied to be a dark rit­u­al involv­ing human fat, hint­ed at when Em applies a mys­te­ri­ous lotion made from a man named Peter Stein­man to Roddy’s arthrit­ic hands. The cou­ple has been tar­get­ing indi­vid­u­als for their body fat, which they use for pain relief and poten­tial­ly oth­er, undis­closed pur­pos­es.

Em and Rod­dy delib­er­ate over choos­ing Bon­nie as their next sub­ject, weigh­ing the risks and ben­e­fits. They ratio­nal­ize their choice with Bonnie’s cur­rent life situations—her breakup, the strained rela­tion­ship with her moth­er, and her expe­ri­ence of work­place harass­ment. Their con­ver­sa­tion reveals a chill­ing detach­ment from moral­i­ty, view­ing Bonnie’s per­son­al strug­gles and rou­tines as fac­tors that make her an ide­al tar­get. This plan­ning indi­cates their method­i­cal approach to select­ing vic­tims, high­light­ing their hid­den malev­o­lence beneath a facade of nor­mal­cy and kind­ness.

As the chap­ter clos­es, the con­ver­sa­tion between Em and Rod­dy, cou­pled with the appli­ca­tion of the mys­te­ri­ous lotion, casts a dark shad­ow over their seem­ing­ly benign exis­tence. Their casu­al dis­cus­sion of tar­get­ing Bon­nie and the use of har­vest­ed human fat for relief reveals a deep-seat­ed mal­ice and manip­u­la­tion, set­ting the stage for a sto­ry inter­twin­ing the ordi­nary with the grotesque.