Shocking Helga silent was one thing, but her appetite was another.

The girl had jested on many an occasion over how a malnourished upbringing had left her with years' worth of room in her stomach for all the school lunches she was denied. Yet as she sat in the booth of a local greasy spoon by the name of the Midtown Grill facing down the hardiest burger platter any human could've ever seen in their lifetime, Helga couldn't find it in her to take a second bite.

Sharing in her friend's state of startled speechlessness was Phoebe who (on top of finding the bravery to pick a french-fry or seven off of Helga's platter) listened intently as Wolfgang guzzled glass after glass of water in the seat across from them. Seated to the lad's left was to a very lean and muscley woman who in some respects could have passed as Leo in drag from afar. Her attire further adding to the coarse swagger with which she carried herself; a black guinea tee with the word "Bouncer" written across the chest in white, a hardy and crisp pair of light blue jeans and a checkered flannel overshirt tied around her waist like a belt. Her only remotely feminine accoutrement was a sterling silver nameplate necklace with 'Marlene' written in a delicate cursive font. Yet despite her appearance, she listened sympathetically to the boy (occasionally patting his shoulder) as he relayed to her the night's events.

"…and then, after seeing Phoebe especially getting revolted by how flippantly he talked about his wartime exploits, I…I just didn't…know where else to turn…" He said.

"That Olchovy teacher of yours…" Marlene begins pinching her nose in frustration.

"Oh, please don't go there; you almost sound like him when talking about Deacon Sawa."

"Mumble, mumble, broken clock…still, in a way all three of you are lucky for getting out as quick as you did before things got worse step-bro."

"WORSE?!" Helga yelped. "Pheebs and I could walk through the carwash across the street ten times and still feel dirty from that last hour we spent with that evolutionary throwback!"

"Multiply that hour by an entire childhood kid." Marlene scoffed dryly. "I'm one of three children he had… legitimately. So between me, Clarise, Tara, there's more than enough traumatic anecdotes coming out of our ears!"

"Can't be as bad as what we-"

Wolfgang vigorously swipes his hand across his throat in a feeble attempt to tell Helga to quit while she was ahead. Yet this gesture and the grimace on his face were for naught as the Toran boy's sinewy sibling all too happily clotheslined what little naivete the girl in pink possessed on the matter.

"That depends on where you want to begin: for example, when I was five, I learned that Memorial Day was dad's personal property. He invented it, it belongs to him, and how much we the family ate correlated with how well we memorized his entire army career; 'Want a burger kid? Tell me how many [goons] I killed on Hamburger Hill.' 'Seconds? Not before you tell me which part of Vietnam I was in when I shoved a live grenade up a VC prisoner's ass!" 'For every baked bean I give you, name a member of my platoon.' Then you had his collection of shoeboxes with photos of Viet Cong women he tied to trees and raped (or worse) and that damned flag festooned with panties from all the women he's cheated on our mother with which he hung with pride in the basement. Oh yeah, on a whim he would just ride off on his motorcycle with the rest of his biker gang and come back holding up another set of undergarments like he had bought home the holy-fucking-grail. And our mom just stood there and took it. Once the three of us hit puberty, he got even more disgusting! After Clarise became a vegetarian at 14 for both health and personal reasons, he made her watch the butchering process after hunts and if she didn't watch, she didn't eat that night. When Tara was caught with her girlfriend in Junior High, he became a one-man repository for every vile lesbian joke on the planet as if such gags would get her to start liking guys…"

Marlene took a long swig of water before continuing.

"It's kinda ironic; Tara and I... she the more femme of us is a lesbian. Whilst I, who took being a tomboy up to eleven turned out straight. It's something we joke about…now…Still, I was the biggest disappointment of all. Until Wolfgang showed up, I was the de-facto son; and dad never let me forget it. The only way I knew he was proud of me is when he'd put his hand on my shoulder and say wistfully 'Mar, why didn't God give ya a pecker?'"

From the corner of her eye, Helga could see Phoebe reaching toward her platter. Sensing she had been caught, the tiny brunette pulls her hand back expecting her friend to be the proverbial bear that would render her appendage into a bloody stump for daring to wave it in her presence. Instead, Helga nudges the plate in her friend's direction.

"All you." She said tonelessly. "I've somehow lost my appetite."

"So, where are your sisters now?" Phoebe asks as she picks at the plate with Helga's blessing. "One would only assume they moved as far away as possible to escape-"

"And you'd assume correct." Marlene replied. "Tara moved to New Jersey and became a Professor of Queer/Feminist Literature at Rutgers. Clarise moved to some no-horse town in Montana where she met and married some vegetarian son of a butcher who started a local produce market. As for yours truly, I stayed to be close to mom until-"

Marlene suddenly felt her phone vibrate.

"Hello…Oh hi Terri…You fired J.D. for WHAT?!…(groan)…Ok, I'll be there but I'm gonna be a bit late though…Yeah, I got a call from Wolfgang… yes, my step brother…his deacon mentor sent him and some friends to meet Leo…yeah…yeah so you understand I…Me? I'm at the Midtown Grill so like I said…(taps on the table and counts under her breath)… like ten or fifteen minutes late…No problem, I mean yeah its sudden but such is being trusted I guess…(laughs)…see you soon Terri."

"What was that about?" Wolfgang asks.

"Sorry to eat and run, but I'm needed at Her Majesty's Pleasure." She replied tossing him her credit card. "Make sure this gets back to me by tomorrow. I trust you."

"Her Majesty's Pleasure huh?" Helga said.

"Tara used to date the owner." Wolfgang replied. "They broke up amicably and Mar got a job as a bouncer. Last year she got promoted to cooler, the bouncer other bouncers call when things get out of hand."

Wolfgang's comment sailed in and out of Helga's ears as she stared out the window and continued to process the night's events. Her thoughts turned to that well-worn maxim in which the human brain gets compared to a computer. Like all computers, the brain is prone to moments of crashing when their operating systems run into an error, and for Helga, the day had been nothing but error from the first instance Olga's cooking compelled her to wake up. After verbally disemboweling her family, the blonde girl and her friend had seen a) Wolfgang not only human out but show no sign of resting on whatever laurels he had achieved in his path to redemption, and b) a skin-crawlingly abhorrent father who prided himself in embodying the word 'unforgivable'. Yet as she tried to rebuild her criteria for what constituted as a dysfunctional family, there still remained one major piece missing in this perverse puzzle.

"What kind of a woman would put up with all that?"

"I'm sorry?" Phoebe replies. "We couldn't make out what-"

"Leo's wife! Your stepmom!" She shoots back turning her head to the other two in the booth. "I mean Criminy, I'm sure Miriam had once or twice put down her smoothie long enough to take a look at Bob and run the idea of filing for divorce up the mental flagpole, but seriously; how could any woman have rosy enough glasses to miss this many red flags and stand side by side in sickness and health with such a…such a…"

"Beast?" Wolfgang finished with a nervous sigh.