Worse than their everyday ugliness was the proof they were getting old. Their lips suction-cupped each other, and their loose skin looked baggy and wadded around every orifice. Their bodies rocked together as if they were some terrible old machine forced to work at top speed until it would break apart.

Nelson's erection looked twisted and dirt-dark, something from a bin in the back of a Chinese grocery. Tess's lips and her chest looked sideshow-too-big, the scars still burning-red.

So what.

Tess Clark cried as they watched themselves from every angle, in every position. Every part of them, from the soles of their feet to their scalps, the secrets they kept between their legs, the hair they hid under their arms, they watched it all, until the tape ran out and left them sitting in the dark.

That was all they were.

After that, even crying seemed like another doomed way to get through the moment. Any emotion seemed a silly and useless way to deny what they'd both seen. Any action meant starting over with another doomed, stupid dream.

They could make another movie. Start their production company. Only now, whatever they did, they would know it wasn't real. They'd never be the way they imagined they were.

And no matter how hard they tried, no matter how much money they made, they were both going to die.

In two days with a rented camera, they'd used up their lifetime allowance of interest in each other. Neither of them held any mystery.

The lights and camera, ABC Rentals kept calling to get them back. The rental company kept charging their credit card until the Clarks owed more money than they'd ever put in savings.

The day Nelson Clark rolled out of bed, to pack the camera and lights, to take them back, that day he didn't come home.

That next week, Mrs. Clark's period didn't come, either.

“These two huge breasts,” Mrs. Clark says, “they were supposed to be a tax deduction.” Just the appearance of something big and mothery. And now a baby was on the way.

Nelson Clark never did come home. In a city this size, every year, hundreds of husbands walk away. Kids leave home. Wives escape. People disappear.

So what.

Tess Clark burned the videotape, but it plays every time her eyes close. Even now, almost sixteen years later. Even now that her child is born and grown and dead.

That baby, she named: Cassandra.

9

It's in the Italian Renaissance lounge that Mrs. Clark finds Director Denial slumped over a heavy, dark wood table. The table dripping with blood from every edge. The sticky blood already flocked with a layer of cat hair. Director Denial with a rope of twisted nylon stocking tied around her wrist. A meat cleaver is sunk in the table. Above the nylon stocking, the Director's hand lies pale in a puddle of dark red.

On the floor under the table, Cora Reynolds chews on a severed index finger.

“My dear,” Mrs. Clark says, looking at the crusted, bloody stump as the Director wraps a scrap of yellow silk around and around to cover it. The blood soaking through the yellow. Mrs. Clark steps forward to help, to wrap the silk tighter, and she says, “Who did this to you?”

Director Denial twists her nylon tourniquet tighter, saying, “You did.”

At this point, everyone is looking for an edge.

We all want some way to pad our role. To put our character into the spotlight after we're rescued.

Plus, it's a way to feed the cat.

Whoever can show the worst suffering, the most scars, they'll play the lead in the public mind. If the outside world broke in to rescue us right now, Director Denial would be our biggest victim—flashing the stubs of her severed toes and fingers, flaunting them for sympathy. Making herself the lead character. The A Block on any television talk show.

Making us her supporting cast.

Not to be outdone, skinny Saint Gut-Free borrowed a cleaver from Chef Assassin and lopped the thumb off his right hand. A radical thumb-ectomy.

Not to be upstaged, Reverend Godless asked to borrow the cleaver and hacked the smallest toe off each his feet. “To be famous,” he said, “and after that, wear really narrow high heels.”

The green wallpaper and silk drapes of the Italian Renaissance lounge, the green is spattered and sprayed with blood that looks black under electric light. The floor feels so sticky, the carpet, that every step tries to pull off your shoes.

The Missing Link says losing a finger does take your mind off being hungry. The Missing Link, he's wearing a bishop's vestments, sprouting black chest hair at the collar, all white brocade embroidered with gold thread along the edges. He's wearing a powdered wig that makes his square head and shaggy beard look twice as big.

With his ponytail, the Duke of Vandals wears a buckskin shirt and pants with long fringe flapping from every seam. Chewing his nicotine gum. Mother Nature limps around, hobbling in high-heeled sandals that show off her own severed toes, her choker of brass bells jingling with every limp. Nibbling a clove-nutmeg aromatherapy candle.

We're all keeping warm in frilly Lord Byron poet blouses. Or Mary Shelley long skirts filled with petticoats. Dracula capes lined with red satin. Heavy Frankenstein boots.

About this time, Saint Gut-Free asks if he can be the one to fall in love.

Every epic needs a romantic subplot, he says, holding his pants up with one hand. To cover all the marketing bases, we need two young people deep and desperately in love—but kept apart by a cruel villain.

Saint Gut-Free and Miss Sneezy, talking in the Italian Renaissance lounge with its embroidered chairs and banners of green silk between tall windows of mirror, here was the place to hatch a romance.

“I was thinking I'd be in love with Comrade Snarky,” Saint Gut-Free says.

Next to them, the meat cleaver's stuck in the long wood table: Mr. Whittier's ghost waiting for its next victim.

Wiping her nose sideways, Miss Sneezy asks, has the Saint talked to Comrade Snarky about her being in love, too? After we're rescued, during the marketing-and-media-promotion part, any two people who fought to be together, they'll have to at least fake being in love. How they act inside here, it won't matter, but once those doors come open they'll need to be kissing and hugging every time a camera turns their way. People will expect a wedding. Maybe even children.

Batting her bloodshot eyes, Miss Sneezy says, “Pick a girl you can fake loving for the rest of your life . . .”

Saint Gut-Free says, “How about me and the Countess Foresight?”

The way Saint Gut-Free sees it, being fake married to him has got to beat hacking off fingers. Any woman here should jump at the chance.

And, smiling, her face close-up into his, Miss Sneezy says, “How about you and me?”

And Saint Gut-Free says, “How about Baroness Frostbite?”

“She has no lips,” Miss Sneezy says. “I mean, she really has no lips.”

How about Miss America?

“She'll already get famous for being pregnant,” Miss Sneezy says. She says, “I'm not pregnant, and I have lips . . .”

Director Denial has already hacked off fingers. So has Sister Vigilante—plus some toes, using the same paring knife that Lady Baglady borrowed from Chef Assassin to slice off her ear. Their plan, after we're rescued, is to tell the world how Mr. Whittier tortured them by hacking off a little bit for every day they didn't produce a great work of art. Or—Mrs. Clark did the cutting while Mr. Whittier held the victim down, screaming, on the long, dark wood table in the Italian Renaissance lounge.

The table is already scarred from practice chops and nervous chops and successful chops with Chef Assassin's meat cleaver.

“Okay,” Saint Gut-Free says. “How about Mother Nature?”

It's clear, he just wants his feet rubbed, some new way to get his rocks off. A foot job. Another hands-free method beyond the invisible carrot, the candle wax, and the swimming pool. Not so much a romantic subplot as sexual need.