Clowns to the left of him, jokers to the right, and here Tim is (is he Tim? he thinks he used to be Tim), stuck in the middle with an... with probably an axe, so there's nothing left to do but swing.

Plastic warps into Sasha's face -- except it's not Sasha's face, because he can't remember Sasha's face, because something stole her even more thoroughly than Grimaldi stole Danny -- and Sasha's voice says, soft and high and desperate, "Please, Tim, it's me, Sasha; you're hurting me!" until his sharp weight on a stick (a hammer? a macuahuitl? why does he know that word? is it a word?) splinters her to shards of silence amidst the calliope's song.

This is the fifth time he's killed his best friend since the world went mad; he doesn't think he can take much more.