He lifted the small keepsake from the drafting table and let it swing from his fingertips, smiling at the whimsy of it. It was a silly thing, hardly appropriate for a grown woman with a serious profession, and yet it suited her. She was still a girl in many respects-fresh, unspoiled, fun, uncertain. He recalled in perfect detail the uncertainty on her face as she turned and saw him tonight in the library. It made him want to hold her. Instead, he held the comical little plastic alligator with the sunglasses and red beret that he had taken down from the rearview mirror in Annie's Jeep.

She wouldn't mind that he had taken it, he reasoned. It was just another small secret between them. He pressed a phantom kiss to the alligator's snout and smiled. The Percodan felt like warm wine flowing through his veins. He closed his eyes for a moment and felt as if his body were going to drift up out of the chair.

He had brought out several of his treasures. Setting the alligator down on the ledge of the drawing table, he picked up the small, ornate photo frame and ran a fingertip along the filigreed edge, smiling sadly at the woman in the picture. Pam. Pam and her darling daughter. The things that might have been if Stokes and Donnie Bichon hadn't poisoned her against him…

Regretfully, he set the photograph aside and picked up the locket. There would be a certain symbolism in passing it to Annie. A thread of continuity.

Holding the locket in one hand, he took up his pencil in the other and touched it to the paper.

"I knew it."

Three words could not have held more accusation. Despite the melting effect of the drug, Marcus straightened his spine at the sound of the voice. His mother stood directly behind him. He hadn't heard her come in through the bedroom, he'd been so engrossed in his fantasies.

"Mother-"

"I knew it," Doll said again. She stared past him at the drawing on the tilt-top table. Tears rose in her eyes and she began to tremble. "Oh, Marcus, not again."

"You don't understand, Mother," he said, sliding from his chair, the locket still dangling from his fist.

"I understand that you're pathetic," she spat. "You think that woman wants you? She wants you in jail! Do you belong there, Marcus?"

"No! Mama!"

Lunging past him, she grabbed the framed photograph from his table and held it so tightly in her hand that the metal cut into her fingers. She stared hard at the picture of Pam, her whole body trembling, then, sobbing, she threw the frame across the room.

"Why?" she cried. "How could you do this?"

"I'm not a killer!" Marcus cried, his own tears burning his eyes. "How can you think that, Mama?"

"Liar!" She slapped him hard on his chest with her open palm, staining his shirt with her blood. "You're killing me now!"

Screaming, she turned and swept everything off the drawing table with a wild gesture.

"Mama, no!" Marcus cried, grabbing her arm as she reached for the portrait.

"Oh, Marcus!" Doll dragged her hand down her cheek, smearing her face with blood. "I don't understand you."

"No, you don't!" he shouted, pain tearing through his face as he strained against the wires in his jaw. "I love Annie. You couldn't understand love. You don't know what love is. You know possession. You know manipulation. You don't know love. Get out. Get out of my room. I never asked you here. It's the one place I can be free of you. Get out! Get out!"

He screamed the words over and over while he staggered around the room, hitting things, smashing things blindly, knocking a dollhouse to the floor, where it splintered into kindling. Every blow he imagined landing on his mother's face, shattering the sour mask; striking her body and snapping bones.

Finally, he fell across his worktable, sobbing, pounding his fists, the fury running out of him. He lay there for a long time, his gaze blurry and unfocused, staring at nothing. After a while he realized his mother had gone. He straightened slowly and looked around the room. The destruction stunned him. His special things, his secrets, lay broken all around him. This was his sanctuary, and now it had been violated and ruined.

Without so much as righting the fallen chair, Marcus picked up his keys and walked out.

Victor sat among ruins and rocked himself, mewing. The house was dark and silent, which meant everyone else was asleep, which meant they had ceased to exist. Marcus forbade him to come into his Own Space, but Marcus was asleep and therefore his wishes were Off like television. Victor usually liked to come in here and sit among the small houses. Also, he knew where Marcus kept his Secret Things, and sometimes Victor would open the Secret Door and take them out just to touch them. It made him feel strong to know about the Secret Door and to touch the Secret Things without anyone else knowing. It gave him a feeling of red and white intensity, and that was very exciting.

Tonight all Victor felt was very red. He hadn't been able to shut down his own mind at all-not even during his regular time. The red colors swirled around and around, cutting and poking at his brain. And his Controllers-the little faces he pictured inside his mind, the arbiters of emotion and etiquette-only watched, their expressions disapproving. The Controllers were always angry when he couldn't stop the red colors. Red, red, red. Dark and light. Around and around. Cutting and cutting.

He had tried to soothe himself with the Audubon book, but the birds had looked at him angrily, as if they knew what was in his mind. As if they had heard the voices. Emotion filled him up like water, drowning him in intensity. He felt he couldn't breathe.

He had heard the voices earlier. They had come up through the floor into his room. Very red. Victor didn't like voices with no faces, especially red voices. He heard them from time to time, and what they said was never white, always red. He'd sat on his bed, keeping his feet off the floor, because he was afraid the voices might go up his pajama legs and get into his body through his rectum.

Victor waited for the voices to go away. Then he waited some more. He counted to the Magic Number three times by sixteenths before he left his room. He had come down to Marcus's Own Space, drawn by the need to see the face, even though it upset him. Sometimes he was like that.

Sometimes he couldn't stop from hitting his fist against the wall, even though he knew it hurt him.

The disorder of the room upset him. He couldn't abide broken things. It hurt him in his brain to see broken glass or splintered wood. He felt he could see every torn molecule, and feel the pain of them. And yet he stayed in the room because of the face.

He closed his eyes and saw the face, opened them and saw the face again-the same, the same, the same, but different. Mask, no mask. The feeling it gave him was very red. He closed his eyes again and counted by fractions to the Magic Number.

Annie. She was The Other but not The Other. Pam, but not Pam. Elaine, but not Elaine. Mask, no mask. It was like before, and that was very red.

Victor rocked himself and whimpered inside his being, not outside. The intensity was building. His senses were too acute. Every part of him was hard with tension, even his penis. He worried that panic would strike and freeze him, trapping the red intensity inside where it would go on and on, and no one would be able to make it stop.

He lifted his hands and touched his favorite mask and rocked himself, tears running down his cheeks as he stared at his brother's pencil drawing of Annie Broussard, and the jagged, bloody tear that ran down the center of it.