The smoke filtered upward, creeping toward the ceiling, and Beverly squelched the dying embers of their recreational pot into an ashtray. Or, well, it was really an empty coffee mug but it would do. She was hungry yes, the desire to stuff her face overwhelming - but she just needed a minute to rest here. Figure out what to do about Richie's little primordial evil problem.
"It feels real," she said. "It feels like it happened already, that we can't - escape it." She'd felt that way, when she saw them all die the same way Stan did - it just kept burrowing, like a tick, until they had no choice and that fate seemed inescapable.
They'd changed it, of course, because sometimes that's what happened - you couldn't hold the future. But even so, it felt plenty real at the time, set in stone.
"If I find someone, will you - let them see if they can remove it?" she asked; Mike told them all the Deadlights was like a virus. Maybe it had to run its course, but maybe there was a way to push it along faster. She didn't know. She just wanted it gone from Richie.