Amuse-Bouche

Amber Benson and Jeffrey J. Mariotte

The first thing is my head. It’s pounding. I wish briefly that my heart would stop, because with every pulse of blood (I can hear it in my ears, like cars passing on a nearby highway) the pain blooms, then starts to fade, but comes back again before it goes away altogether.

Then I realize that I’m thinking about the pounding, that realization dawning so slowly that at that first moment, when I wanted my heart to simply cease pumping blood, I wasn’t yet awake. Because now I am, and the pain is so much worse that I’m certain, for a few instants, I’m going to puke. I’m lying on my back, and that’s going to be bad, so I roll over onto my side.

Or try to.

That’s when I discover the collar ringing my neck and the straps around my wrists. When I try to turn, the leather of the collar catches my throat. I choke a little, which cranks up the volume on the headache, so I roll back to where I was. Test my hands. A few inches of give, but not much.

Now I’m awake enough to think, What the fuck?

Wherever I am, it’s dark. I’m on a table or a platform of some kind, a theory based mostly on the distance to the ceiling—not as far as if I was on the floor. Plus, when I try to look around, I see things, objects I can’t quite make out, lower than me.

I have awakened in some strange places—usually the wrong guy’s bed—but never in quite this sort of situation.

I am not, I must add, fond of it.

It’s hot in here too. I stink of sweat and maybe pee. So rank, anyway, that I can’t smell anything else around me. Not fond of that, either, but there you go.

“Hello?” Someone had to have put me here. I didn’t do this to myself. If that someone is still around—although I can’t see or hear anyone—then he or she (no, he, without question) can undo it. And right now, that’s the most important thing. “Hey, where are you? What is up with this shit? Hello, whoever you are!”

Nobody answers, and panic bubbles up inside me like coffee in my grandmother’s old percolator. She always made terrible coffee, weak and a little sour. But when I was a kid, I liked to watch it dance into the little clear well in the lid, and I’m trying to think about things I like because it lets me, for almost a second at a time, not think about the reality of what I’m doing here and how I got here and who did this and for fuck’s sake why, why, and what’s next?

And then it doesn’t work anymore.

The panic hits and I’m sobbing and my nose is running, my eyes overflowing with hot tears, and I’m saying something, or trying to, but it’s not coming out right. It’s sort of hey untie me let me out of here what’s the fucking idea if this is supposed to be all fun and games or something you have failed miserably, but it comes out in a blubbering burst of word stew that even I’m a little embarrassed by. Which, given my situation, is, I know. Stupid.

Not my first encounter with stupid, though.

Was it stupid to walk into that bar last night? A place I’ve never been, a block off Sunset. Should have been safe enough, right? It was crowded, and loud, and I’d had this argument with Jen and just needed to be away from everything for a while, have a drink, chill. Was it stupid to drink on an empty stomach?

I can’t remember anything after that. In the bar, I recall a guy hitting on me and me shooting him down, and then that other one, more persistent. Pushy. A little familiar, maybe, like I’d seen him around the neighborhood. He had dark hair, kind of curly but oily, so it clung to his scalp, and a prominent beak of a nose, and this gap between his front teeth big enough that I could sometimes see his tongue through it, like a fat, pink worm trying to escape a cage. He had a sort of spoiled-meat odor about him. I remember telling him, no thanks, and then getting up and going to the bathroom. When I came out, he wasn’t sitting there anymore. And after . . .

After that, nothing. Blank.

Then here. The head, the darkness, the straps holding me in place. The panic.

Which is starting to come back when I hear a voice—his voice, as distinct as that spoiled-meat stink he wore—coming out of the dark. I freeze but miss the words, lost under my own sobbing. A moment later, he speaks again. “I was just wondering, do you know what human myoglobin is?”

I PRESS THE button on the remote control and, through the monitor, the iris of the camera becomes my eye. I can already tell that the actress I chose for the part is working out splendidly. She is a real method actor, her fear palpable even from the control room.

There are seven cameras set up around the studio, the angles chosen to capture every nuance of her performance. As I watch her work, I find I cannot tear my gaze away.

Technologically speaking, I am a fan of the Canon 7D––I find it to be a very filmic digital camera with the right lenses, and a lot more forgiving than the more expensive 5D model. For a long time, I chose to shoot on film, but dealing with Super 16 became so cumbersome (I’ve never been willing to let anyone else process my dailies––I’m a bit of a perfectionist) that I finally gave it up in favor of the more streamlined digital video format. Besides, I am in exalted company. All the modern greats are working in this new medium: Soderbergh, Cameron, Rodriguez. Who am I to be a film snob when the directors I most admire are leading the charge in this bold new world?

I always edit my own material. Always. Over the years, I’ve found I have a real knack for the subtlety of the subject matter. I believe in anyone else’s hands my films would seem exploitative. Tarantino is always being maligned for this, and, thankfully, with my skill and the forgiving nature of my audience, I have so far escaped this negative label.

For me, the pleasure of the filmmaking process is twofold: the actual filming is by far the highlight of the adventure, but the splicing together of raw footage, the crafting of an Oscar-worthy performance, is an almost orgasmic feeling that words cannot express.

I have cast talented actresses––and I enjoy working with them immensely––but, in truth, it’s the hacks who have supplied me with the most joy. My ability to take their subpar work and make something magical from it, well, that, too, is an orgasmic feeling.

I’ve ignored my actress for too long, and now the tears have started. I think unmotivated emotion is déclassé. It must be something they all learn in acting class, because they all do it. I have yet to work with one who does not, at some point, trot out the waterworks, expecting to get my directorial approval but finding themselves the object of my derision instead.

Actors are a funny lot. Always looking for the director’s praise and willing to subjugate themselves to all kinds of humiliation to obtain that approval. I once called the trade my own, but quickly realized how much better suited I was to directing and producing. I am an auteur, not an actor. I crave capturing my singular vision on-screen. I was not born to be a pawn in someone else’s game, to breathe life into another man’s creation.

I press the intercom and speak into the microphone again.

“I’d like to try that once more. But without the tears.”

The actress stiffens, her long-lashed eyes wide as she tries to figure out where my words are coming from.

She was the prettiest girl at the audition. Not the best actress, but from her reading I intuited that she would be easy to mold. That she would take to my directing style without the need to fight me––as some of the more talented ones did in the beginning, before I’d refined my casting criteria. I press the button on the intercom and speak slowly into the microphone, my lips almost, but not quite, touching its thatched head. “Do you know what human myoglobin is?”

She shakes her head, nostrils flaring as she fights the urge to cry. It seems once an actor slips inside the world of a sense memory, it’s hard for them to escape its orbit. But my actress contends admirably with the task.

As I stare into the monitor for camera A, I can see her internal struggle. I call the view from this camera the “money shot” angle because of its proximity to my actress’s face. I am so tight on her eyes that I can see the jagged red capillaries, like molten tributaries feeding the sclera. They remind me of the bright red streaks of blood I found inside one of my eggs this morning.

It was a pleasure to watch the blood absorb into the gelatinous whites as I scrambled them for breakfast, my gourmand’s tongue enjoying the barest hint of blood as I slid the first bite into my mouth.

Delicious.

“NO,” I SAY, shaking my head. “I don’t—what is—?”

I can’t even form the question in my head. There are too many and they all bash against each other and I can’t figure out which one to ask first so I go silent, tugging at my bonds, trying to swallow back terror. For the first time, I realize my nausea is not just from fear, but hunger. I rack my brain, trying to remember what I ate last: a bagel. From the twenty-four-hour coffee place near my house. Maybe an hour before I went to the bar. Before the bagel, I’d only eaten breakfast. Greasy eggs and bacon. The memory only adds to my nausea and I push it away.

“Never mind,” he says, snapping my attention back to the present. His voice has a strange quality to it. I think it’s electronic, like he’s not in the room but somehow broadcasting to me. Which would explain why I didn’t hear anything until he spoke, and still can’t smell him. “Let’s try a little exercise. Show me love. Not lust, not romantic love, but motherly love.”

“What?”

“Look, I understand you’re not a mother. But you’ve been a daughter. You’ve seen mothers. Maybe you had a pet, or a doll, something you cared about. Reach inside and give me motherly love.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I try not to scream, to keep the edge of fear and fury from my voice, because a few things are becoming clear.

I don’t do a very good job of it. “Just let me go!”

“That’s good,” he says. “I love that complex mix of emotions. Confusion, concern, rage, all telegraphed by those remarkable blue eyes, the tension in your muscles, the almost strangled timbre of your voice. It’s nicely played. However”—and here his voice changes, not as calm as it had been, his words becoming clipped, his tone like that of a schoolteacher disciplining a problem student—“it is not what I asked for!”

“I don’t know what you want! I don’t know what I’m doing here!” I wrench at the straps around my wrists but can’t tear free. I fight for some semblance of control. “I’m not trying to, I don’t know, disappoint you. But, you know, you brought me here, abducted me or whatever, and it seems like the least you could do is explain what’s going on.”

A long stretch of silence. Then his voice comes back, still with that disapproving tone. “Just a minute.”

And it’s quiet again. I try to peer through the darkness. Now that my vision has acclimated, I can see things that don’t make any sense. I’m in a big room. No windows are visible from my admittedly limited vantage point. There are floor-to-ceiling posts, random furniture. None of that is especially surprising. But then there are what look like lights on stands, and others on racks suspended from the ceiling. Way off to my right is a clothing rack, on wheels, with what appears to be a variety of women’s clothes, mostly long dresses, hanging on it.

So I’ve been abducted by a women’s clothing salesman? I think about the boutique Jen and I had ventured into, on Beverly, where everything looked like it had been made for size zeros and smaller, and blind at that, with no concept that some people wear clothes for comfort and protection from the elements instead of to make a statement on the red carpet and the gossip pages. We were kind of stunned at first, then amused, and finally we laughed out loud.

The salesgirl was not entertained.

The image of her—blue haired and impossibly skinny, with black plastic cat’s-eye glasses, using some sort of voice-changing device that makes her sound like a man—flashes through my mind, and I can’t help myself. I crack up. Giggling at first, then guffaws, genuinely hysterical laughter. My body tries to fold, my neck scrapes against the leather band, my hands flail to the extent allowed.

Through my laughter I hear the scrape of a door, the scuff of feet approaching. I try to look in that direction, but it’s off my left shoulder and I can’t turn that far. I’m straining, and I know he can see that. He stops, just out of view. I can actually see a little of one of his arms, I think: a black shirt, the arm slightly crooked.

I give up and slump back to my table.

“We have to get some things straight,” he says. Now I can smell him. Definitely the guy from that bar I wish I had never walked into.

“We can start with you letting me go,” I say. “I won’t tell anybody about this, believe me. We’ll just forget it ever happened.”

“You must know that’s not possible,” he says. “Besides, we’re just getting started.”

“Started with what?”

“You have to remember that I’m directing this piece. As an actress it’s important that you be flexible. You have to be able to move from one emotion to another, on cue. I realize we haven’t had a lot of rehearsal time, but I’m counting on you to overcome that tiny obstacle.”

“I’m not an actress!” I cry. “You’ve got the wrong woman! I work in the financial aid office at UCLA. My name is Mad—”

“Aaaap!” he says, cutting me off. “Louise! You’re Louise. And you’re wrong. I recognized you at the audition. I knew right away that you were the one.”

“What audition? I haven’t been to any audition.”

He moves closer, and now I can see him, all greasy hair, nose, and gapped teeth. He puts a hand on my shoulder. I try to shake it off but he holds tighter, his fingers biting into my flesh like he wants to tear off a chunk. “Let’s just try it my way,” he says. “Later on, if you want to try something different, you can. But for now, Louise, do it my way.”

THEY ALWAYS GIVE themselves stage names.

My parents were no different. Once under the influence of the glittering Southern California sun, a nobody Jewess from the Bronx named Esther Smirsky became the much-beloved actress Eleanor Smart. The same went for the orphaned kid from Atlanta they called Henry Cohen. Yet my father loved his given first name––given by whom, he never knew, since he grew up with no knowledge of his true parentage. Not that he ever went looking for his birth parents once he had the money to do it. He chose only to excise the Jewish-sounding “h” from his name and call it a day.

OSCAR-WINNING ACTRESS ELEANOR SMART SECRETLY MARRIES BOX OFFICE SMASH HENRY COEN!

This was an actual headline from a Los Angeles Times article that ran right after they eloped to Maui without having told a single soul of their intention––not even Eleanor’s only living relative, her mother in the Bronx, who, if Eleanor’s nicotine- and alcohol-fueled tales could be trusted, had cried herself to death over the slight.

Speaking of slights . . . I’m not an idiot. Of course, while I was filling out her paperwork last night, I had to look at her Ohio driver’s license. The name on it is not Louise, as I’d been led to believe, but Madeleine Newhall. I don’t care one whit she changed her name for her career or that she still hasn’t gotten around to getting her license in California––even though it’s illegal not to apply for a California license within ten days of becoming a resident. Not that I am going to be the one to turn Madeleine Newhall in to the police for her obvious violation.

An obvious violation, especially if she is, indeed, collecting a paycheck from UCLA for part-time employment.

I know how it goes. Every struggling artist, be they actor, painter, or musician, must have a day job to support themselves in their endeavor. You’d think the privileged son of two famous actors wouldn’t have an inkling what that’s like.

But you would be wrong.

Dead wrong.

Eleanor and Henry had suffered terribly as children. It made them humble, made them work hard for any success they got. They did not believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child. They treated me as they had been treated.

Even when I was a baby none of the creature comforts my parents enjoyed belonged to me. I was relegated to a small back room ostensibly called “the Nursery”––and it is there I still reside. Once they were both dead, I tried to move into the master suite of the old Outpost Estates mansion, but there’s something about the rooms, a moldy-rotten smell, really, that puts me off. Makes it impossible for me to sleep there. So I stay where I feel safest. In the nursery room where I have always lived, alone, like a leper in a paradise I will never be allowed to fully enjoy.

My actress is struggling against her bindings again. I’m afraid she’s going to hurt herself, so I take the already-prepared hypodermic needle from my pocket, uncap it, and slide her underwear down, gently pressing the tip of the needle into the firm, round flesh of her naked left buttock. Having done this several times already, I have the dosage down. Instantly, her eyes begin to flutter, the bright lapis irises rolling back into her head. I begin to release the restraints, finding her arms and legs flaccid in my hands. I unhook the shock collar from its moorings, leaving it in place around her neck.

I’ve found the shock collar, on its highest setting, is a wonderful way to control my actors. It helps them quickly learn that I must be obeyed. I don’t know why more directors don’t use the technique.

With very little exertion, I manage to flip my actress over and worm my hands underneath her limp body, picking her up easily. I wonder if she’s awake, because it feels as though she’s nuzzling my neck, but then I realize it’s just her steady breath wheezing against my skin and the way her head lolls as I carry her across the room. She is heavier than she looks. Though she’s slim, she’s muscular and long-limbed. But I’m up to the task. I lift weights every morning out on the veranda with my trainer, Mike.

I may not be able to fully enjoy the gated compound my parents left to me when they died, but I’ve discovered a consolation prize. It gives me great, almost physical pleasure to know my parents are silent partners in my filmic endeavors. I think if they knew just how much I’ve grown as an artist, they might finally be proud of me.

I keep one hard-backed chair in the center of the second basement room. It is the room’s sole occupant––that is, until I bring one of my actresses inside and seat her on it. I have sat in the chair myself and I can assure you that it’s very uncomfortable: perfect for the work we will be doing.

I step away and immediately, as though she is mocking me, the actress slumps forward in her chair. I sit her back up, draping her arms over the chair back so she won’t slide again, but this position makes her large breasts jut forward under the thin cotton of her chemise. Most men would find the pose erotic. They would spread her legs and touch themselves as they looked at her.

I am not most men.

I am an artist.

I reposition her into a less wanton, more supine, pose and then I inject her with adrenaline.

My actress wakes with a start.

MY HEART HAMMERS so fast in my chest that I wonder if I’m having a heart attack or a stroke or something. A panic attack at the very least. I haven’t had one of those in almost seven years, since I got away from Cuyahoga and my lush of a mother and her useless husband, old Wandering Hands McGee. I can’t say I’ve missed them. The ’rents or the panic attacks.

So it takes me a little while to realize I’ve been moved. I’m sitting in a rigid, straight-backed chair. It’s the only stick of furniture in the room. He, the guy—let’s call it what it is, my abductor, my captor, the man I’m convinced means to be my murderer—stands a few feet away, watching me. He wears a half smile: Mona Lisa in drag. His eyes are wide, expectant. His right hand is buried in his pocket.

“Good,” he says, in reference to I don’t know what. “Let’s get to work, shall we?”

“You know I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

The hand in his pocket moves, and at the same instant I’m jolted by sudden, darting pain. My back arches, my feet come off the floor and slam down again, and I almost fall out of the chair. It’s gone in a moment, just a remnant tingling sensation left behind, and my heart feels like it’s been kick-started again.

“We’re wasting daylight, Louise. A little cooperation would make this all so much easier.”

“Why all the drama?” I ask. I know I’m risking another jolt—my neck is burning and I realize that it’s probably the collar around it, some sort of shock device, and he’s holding the remote in his pocket—but I’m scared and I’m pissed and I’ve really just had it with this guy. “If you’re going to kill me, get to it.”

His hand twitches again and I wince, knowing what’s coming, but it doesn’t. For an instant, I’m grateful. I think about offering him head. That might make him angry, though, and I figure if that’s what he’s after, he’ll tell me. Besides, the idea of him filling up my empty stomach with sperm makes me want to gag.

“Here’s the scene,” he says. “You’ve been hurtfully, unceremoniously dumped by the guy you thought was the One. The wound is still raw. He told you that he only wanted you for your body, for what you could offer him sexually. That stings, because deep down inside, you always suspected that. So you’re going to make sure that never happens again. With me so far?”

Not in the slightest, I think. But I’m not looking for another shock. “Sure. I guess.”

“So how will you accomplish that?”

“I don’t know. Wear baggy clothes. Hide my figure. Maybe gain some weight.”

“Temporary fixes!” he snaps. “Sooner or later you’ll be out there again, with your breasts on display like some common streetwalker. You’ve got to take real action. You’ve got to show your commitment to change. This is the emotional meat of the scene, Louise. He’s coming back to see you, and you’ve got to show him your determination to become someone else, someone who’s not ruled by your sexuality. Someone who can break free from the bonds of the flesh.”

Just when I think I’ve got this guy figured out, I don’t. I’m confused all over again. I thought my flesh was why he snatched me in the first place, and I’ve been waiting for him to make his move. But now it sounds like I repulse him.

Pretty much the same effect he has on me, so I guess we’re even. Except he’s the one with the remote control and I’m the one in the chair.

“You’ve lost me,” I tell him. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to convey that, or even what you mean by it. What do you mean, ‘break free’? How do I transform myself?”

He allows himself a smile, showing me the gap between his teeth. “See? Isn’t this better, Louise? Give and take. We figure out who your character is, what makes her tick, and then you inhabit her. As for your transformation . . .”

His pocket moves, just the slightest bit, and once again I’m spasming, this time lurching from the chair onto the floor. When it passes I climb back up, and I know I’m giving him What the Fuck eyes but I can’t help myself.

He reads me like a newspaper. “A gentle reminder,” he says. He shoves his left hand into his other hip pocket and pulls something out. Holds it up for me to see.

A folded razor.

He bends forward, sets it gently on the floor, then straightens and gives it a kick.

It skids toward me, spinning, hits a leg of the chair and stops.

“I WANT YOU to cut your face,” I say, the words like tiny electrical shocks as they dance across my tongue. I’m so excited about this actress, about all the possibility that lies before us, I can hardly contain myself.

My actress stares at the straight razor, blinking rapidly. I can see the thoughts flickering like ticker tape through her mind. She has such expressive eyes––windows to the soul, they say—that I can almost guess what is going on in her mind.

She takes a ragged breath, trying to decide what might be the best way to approach the situation. I am amused by her. She is trying to figure me out. I want to tell her that after five years even my psychiatrist still hasn’t been able to get a bead on me, so I find it highly doubtful the actress who mans the reception desk at the UCLA financial aid office is going to be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again after five minutes in my company.

She lifts her chin, having decided that a good offense is the best defense.

“No.”

Her voice is low and husky. Reminds me of Sophia Loren, but without the accent.

I lovingly caress the button on the remote control in my pocket, my thumb sliding over its polished plastic surface. My eyes lock on hers as I remove the device from its hiding place, holding it up so she can see how small, slim, and discreet it is. I want her to see it. I want her to watch me press the button. This way she has no doubts about who is in control.

The shock sends her sliding off the chair. I’ve ratcheted it up all the way now––I’d only had it on the medium setting the first time––and her whole body thrums with the electricity I’m shooting through her. I release the button and the pain stops, her body going slack on the floor. She shudders once, a string of drool oozing out of her mouth. A puddle of urine pools around her hips, but it doesn’t bother me. I just go to the supply closet behind me, unlock the door with one of the keys hanging around my neck, and retrieve a roll of paper towels, a brown paper grocery bag, and a bottle of Nature’s Miracle, placing it at her feet.

“Clean yourself up,” I say.

I take care not to let her see the interior of the supply closet: the plastic sheeting, the extra-large roll of garbage bags, the bottles of Clorox, the boxes of disposable cotton gloves, paper jumpsuits, and paper booties. I like to leave things to the imagination, and a look inside my supply closet would give away part of the ending.

Dazed, she collects herself, takes the paper towels and mops up her waste, deposits it in the brown bag––which, unbeknownst to her, I will burn in my fire pit later. She looks up at me through fringed lashes, her long, brown hair falling over her face. There is defiance there. But there is delicious fear, too.

I slide the remote control back into my pocket but do not remove my hand again. Now she will be in the dark, will not know when the next shock is coming.

“Cut yourself,” I whisper, encouraging her with my words.

“Where?” she says.

Where? I wonder for a moment, until inspiration strikes. “Take off the tip of your nose.”

She stares at me, uncomprehending. I distinctly hear her stomach growl. I know she has been on set for twenty-five hours without a meal, but hunger makes the senses sharper, gives a better performance.

“I said, take off the tip of your nose.”

Almost against her will, she reaches out and takes the blade. Her arm rises—my excitement mounts—then she stops, the blade an inch from her nose.

“I don’t want to,” she says, her tone perilously close to whining. “Do I have to?”

I nod.

She swallows, her chapped lips compressing into one thin line. She places the blade against the tip of her nose and closes her eyes. The blade––razor sharp, I’ve made sure––slices through the dermis and then the cartilage. It happens so quickly, the thrust of her hand so decisive, that, at first, it doesn’t bleed. But as her pale flesh falls to the ground, exposing the raw inner parts, the blood begins to flow in earnest. She screams at what she’s just done, the pain registering, finally. She looks down at the floor where the tip of her nose lays, the flat, bloody part pressed onto the concrete. She looks at the blade in her hand, then she lifts her eyes to me. Whatever she sees there, whatever the open window to my soul reveals, makes her scream and scream and scream.

And then the ground begins to shake.

WHATEVER HELL I’VE fallen into must be of my own making. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it—no, that’s a lie, and if I can’t be honest with myself at a time like this, then I’m a hopeless case. I’ve done plenty; I’ve been petty and vindictive, dishonest, I’ve made an art form out of situational ethics, and if I have any personal principles, they’re subject to change without notice. Mom rarely emerged from her alcoholic miasma long enough to teach anything about morality, and her husband was no saint, unless there’s a patron saint of diddling stepdaughters. But I understand that a person has to set her own standards and live up to them, and in that pursuit, I have failed miserably.

But this, now . . . I must have brought it upon myself, because a neutral universe wouldn’t allow it.

Or else the universe isn’t neutral, but insane. Yes, that must be a possibility, too. The universe is insane and the “director” is insane and me—with a razor’s edge held against my nose, the cute, petite button of a nose I’ve been unreasonably prideful of for so long, upturned at the very end—well, I’m either insane or simply a victim, unmoored, haplessly floating in a river of crazy.

He stares at me. That fat pink tongue emerges from his mouth, laps across his lips once. He looks famished.

Hapless. Hopeless.

I make the cut.

Nothing. Did I miss? But then it hits, a shock of pain almost electric in its suddenness. At the same instant, a pale dollop of flesh hits the floor in front of me and I realize what it is and I look up at the man who made me do it and my mouth falls open and the screaming begins. I fall off the chair, certain I’ve pissed myself again, not giving a damn.

But the chair keeps moving behind me, and the floor’s moving too. I think it’s me, but then I see him throw his legs apart for balance, arms outstretched, and he eyes the ceiling. Dust cascades from above. The motion continues, harder, jolt after jolt.

I find myself embracing sanity again. Because this is an earthquake, and I’ve felt a couple of those before. Frightening as they can be—and this feels like a serious one—at least they’re somewhat familiar. The quake tethers me to reality, and I realize I truly have cut off the tip of my nose. Blood spatters the floor and my stomach heaves, and I spew my guts onto the floorboards, noticing as I do that they’re buckling. All around me are the sounds of the structure cracking and snapping and heaving and groaning.

He—the director—tries to run. He bolts for the door, but the ground bucks and hurls him down. At the same time a crashing noise sounds from above. He cranes his neck, looks up, and screams, his hands and feet skittering, unable to find purchase.

And a ceiling beam—in a brief instant of clarity I recognize it as a six-by-six and suspect it’s redwood—snaps and plummets, jagged end first.

It hits him dead on. It spears his lower back, I can actually see an immense shard of bloody wood erupt from his abdomen. As he slumps to the floor, plaster and debris tear loose from overhead and fall across his legs.

More crashing sounds from outside this room, as if the whole—whatever; I think, because of the lack of windows, that we’re in a basement, but that’s only a guess at this point—as if the whole rest of the house is collapsing on us. I brace for more falling beams, ready to die in the crush. Almost eager for the end.

Almost, but not quite.

The shaking ceases and after one more thunderous roar, all is still. Dust has filled the room. It settles slowly, softer than snowfall. I gag on it, spit blood and puke and phlegm.

I force myself to my knees, to my feet.

I’ve lived in L.A. long enough to know that there will likely be aftershocks. For the moment, though, the earth is quiet, its wad shot. Awareness dawns slowly, but dawn it does, and I know these things:

• I have mutilated myself.

• Even so, I’m not as injured as he is. He’s alive, but maybe not for long. He’s moaning and writhing under the weight of the beam that pierced his midsection and maybe broke his legs.

• The house is a wreck, but the power, remarkably, remains on.

• Maybe the universe contains mercy as well as madness, because it has given me a chance.

On unsteady legs, I walk around him, giving him a wide berth. He’s awake, looking at me, his eyes pleading. Blood runs from his mouth in a steady trickle, and although his jaw moves, the only sound he makes is a wordless gurgle.

Beyond him is the door. I’m almost afraid to test it, but the knob turns easily in my hand. Opening it is a challenge, but that’s because of debris behind it. I give a shove and I’m through.

On the other side is the room I was in earlier. I recognize the lights, the rack of clothing, a big slab of butcher block that’s probably where I was lying. As woozy as I am, I know I’ve got to get out of here before I faint. I go to a wall, moving with my fingers always in contact with it for support, and explore the perimeter, beyond what I could see before. Somewhere, there’s a way out.

I almost trip over the staircase before I recognize it. Light barely penetrates this corner of the space, and at first it just looks like a pile of lumber. Then my eye distinguishes the regular perpendiculars of stairs, and I feel a surge of hope. But these steps are lying on their sides, and when I look up, where the staircase should be, there’s a massive clot of wood and plaster and stone. I could dig through it, perhaps.

If I had a month or two. And a shovel. Or maybe a backhoe.

If this is the only exit, then not only is the universe insane, but it’s got one hell of a cruel streak.

As I stand there, looking at it, tears welling in my eyes, I hear his voice call out weakly. “Louise?”

It’s all I can do not to pass out from hunger, exhaustion, and hopelessness.

THE PAIN IS exquisite, deep and heady. Like the smell of gasoline just before you light the match that sends whatever you’ve drenched in it off to hell.

I wonder if this is how my actors felt. Or were they merely shocked . . . reeling, unprepared? Did any of them understand that by making them stars, I was breathing life into them? I like to think they did, that they accepted my gift graciously and were, in the end, pleased with what I had given them.

As I watch Louise scurry through the doorway leading to the next room, yanking at her collar as she goes, I start worrying that I may have let her down. I want Louise to have the gift, to be purified and released from her burden, but fate has intervened and I don’t think it’s going to happen. At least, not by my hands.

I begin to wonder how long it will take to die. I twist my head, looking behind me to the closet where I keep all my materials. If only I could get closer, just a few feet really, I could open the door, knock the gasoline can over, light the flowing liquid with my Zippo. It wouldn’t be a complete success, but I would release us both and that would be something. I find that I do not want to die. Correction: I don’t mind dying, just not this way. Just not if my body is left to rot like a common animal. If there are no flames, then there is no point.

That’s when I notice the forgotten piece of Louise’s nose where it lies on the floor, just beyond my grasp. The savory red-and-peach color catches my eye, enticing me. I reach out my right hand—the left is pinned under me, useless––and stretch my fingers, inching toward it. My index finger grazes the edge of the tip, but no matter how I strain, I cannot reach it, and the pain I engender in my attempts fills my eyes with tears, sends searing fire through my abdomen.

I hear Louise struggling with something in the other room. After a few moments, she returns—she has put on a long brown sweater from the wardrobe rack in the other room, and the sacklike clothing has walled her away from me. There is nothing she can do about the collar, though. It still hangs from her throat like an untried noose—so there is that. Too bad the controller is in my pants pocket on the left side of my body, totally inaccessible.

She walks over and squats down in front of my face. I can see disgust in her eyes, and I realize the damage to my body must be massive. I wish I could stand outside of myself and view it objectively.

“Is there another way out of here?” she asks, her voice controlled, even.

“Why?” I reply, genuinely curious.

She sits back on her haunches, sighs. I can see that she is conflicted—or maybe my severe injury has upset her. Maybe she is just queasy about blood and viscera. Some people are, I’ve found.

Finally, she responds. “Because the earthquake caved in the ceiling above the stairs. We can’t get out that way.”

I nod, pretending to think, but really waiting to see what else she is going to say.

“I can’t get you to a doctor,” she adds. “Unless you tell me how to get out of here.”

She is a sly one. I doubt she will call a doctor if she gets out. She will leave me here to rot. That’s what she’ll do—and it’s the one thing I cannot abide.

“There’s no way out, then,” I say. “That was the only exit. I had it built that way on purpose.”

The calm façade leaves her and she stands up, starts pacing. To my delight, she unwittingly kicks the tip of her nose, scooting it much closer to me than it was. Before she can stop me, I reach out my hand—the pain from my guts sliding up my vertebrae and into my throat—and grab the thing.

“Stop it!” she shrieks, squatting down again, snatching at it.

She’s too late. I slide the delicious piece of skin into my mouth and begin to chew. Her eyes pop almost out of her head, and she grabs me by the jaw and tries to pry my lips apart. Not smart, I think as she forces her fingers into my mouth. I have very sharp teeth and I like to use them. She screams when I chomp down on the index and middle fingers of her right hand. I feel flesh and sinew start to give way, but she manages to extract her fingers before I can sever them.

She falls back on her ass and scuttles away from me, glassy eyed with fear. I settle back and finish eating the tip of her nose, savoring its chewy texture and the saltiness of the coagulating blood. All in all, it’s a rather scrumptious treat.

“You’re insane,” she whispers, more to herself than to me. She shakes her head, as if she can’t believe what she’s seeing, what’s happened to her.

“I have a phone,” I say once I’ve swallowed the last morsel of skin, having had to flick it out from between my teeth where it had gotten wedged.

She sits up, fire burning in her eyes again. Hope. “Give it to me,” she says, starting to crawl back toward me.

I shake my head.

“There’s a condition.”

This stops her cold. She sits down, stares at me.

“You must watch one of my movies first.”

I GIVE HIM time. It seems like hours, but the analog clock in the control room tells me it’s only been forty-five minutes. Waiting is the hardest thing I have ever done, but I have the advantage over him. He’s dying, bleeding out on the floor of that wretched basement room. He knows it. Sooner or later, he’ll break, will give me the phone or tell me where it’s hidden. Or he’ll die and I’ll be able to search his ruined corpse for it. I can outlast him. My nose is hardly bleeding anymore, and I’ve wrapped the fingers he bit in rags torn from his “costume” rack. I could use some first aid, but I’ll live.

While waiting, I’m not idle. I tear the place apart, looking for it. I find his studio or whatever, full of high-tech equipment I don’t know the uses of, monitors and microphones and switches and dials, dozens of soft blue and red lights glowing. I should be able to land a 767 with what’s in here, but I can’t find anything that will allow me to communicate with the world outside.

I do find shelves of DVDs in plain plastic cases. These must be the movies he’s talking about. Has been talking about, since I first woke up here. One of the movies he wants me to star in.

If I watch one, he’ll let me have the phone. That’s the deal, right? I’m not sure how he’ll know if I’ve actually watched it, since there’s no monitor in the room he’s in, and he’s sure as hell not coming in here to watch me watching. But I suppose he could ask questions about it, to verify that I paid attention.

Another idea strikes me, and I go back into the empty room. The stench of his dying is thicker now, flavoring the air. “Where are we?” I ask. “I mean, where’s your house located?”

His face is pale and drawn, his voice weaker than it was before. “I asked you a question before. Human myoglobin. You admitted your ignorance.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s a protein found in muscle tissue. It’s what makes meat red. It’s only found in the bloodstream if there’s severe muscle damage. When anthropologists find it in the fecal matter of ancient peoples, it’s a certain sign of cannibalism.”

I stare at him, knowing the horror must be evident on my face.

“We’re in a side canyon, off Coldwater,” he tells me. “Well off the main roads. If that was a major quake, it’ll be quite a while before anybody gets here to help.”

“If?” I look at the wooden beam piercing his middle. “I’d say it was pretty damn major.”

“Then we’re here for the duration,” he says. “Hungry yet?”

I storm from the room, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of a response. My head aches from the drugs he’s given me and the lack of something to eat in my belly. Ever since I was a little kid, my moods have always been dictated by mealtimes. If I don’t eat, something hormonal or blood sugar related gets set off inside me and I turn into a real bitch. I channel that feeling now, hoping the hungrier I get, the better able I’ll be to do whatever horrible things need doing.

I hate to admit it, even to myself, but in that room with the raw, bloody meat smell of him, my mouth filled with saliva. It’s not to the point yet that I’m bent over, crippled with hunger. But it will reach that point if I’m not rescued. Even if I can call, it could take hours or days to be freed from this basement.

“Okay!” I cry, so furious that I think about going back in there and finishing him off. “Okay, you bastard, I’ll watch one of your motherfucking movies! If that’s what you want, I’ll do it!”

My hands shake so much it takes me a few tries to get the DVD in the player. Once it’s in, I punch Play and sit back in his studio chair to watch.

The screen starts out black, but then a light comes on and shines on a girl in a chair. At first I think it’s me. She’s got my round face, my brown hair, a little shaggy, parted in the middle. My blue eyes. My figure, a little on the thick side, heavy boobs. And she’s got that collar around her neck, as I do. But the white top she wears is different from the one he dressed me in. As the camera moves closer, I see that she’s not me, after all. He’s got a type, like most guys, and we both fit that mold. She might be prettier than I am.

She’s every bit as scared.

The camera pushes in more and I see that she has also been cut, or cut herself. What I first took for a deep dimple on her right cheek is a slash, with blood still dripping from it, down to her jawline and running to her chin. A drop hangs there until she speaks, when it plummets toward her lap.

“M’lord,” she says, her voice quaking. She can barely get the word out. I release a sob along with her, knowing her terror. “I have been awaiting your return with . . . with profound . . . desire.” She’s reciting a script, I can tell. The script is awful, and she’s awful in the role. I could have done better. As if remembering a stage direction—or maybe he reminds her, off camera—she licks her lips. It’s an awkward, artificial moment. Maybe it looked good to him when he was shooting this travesty, but not to me.

“I have been lusting for your touch,” she says. “Longing for it.” She couldn’t be less convincing.

“Show me what you’ve been waiting for,” his voice says from offscreen. The whole scene is ridiculously artificial.

In a move as smooth and sensual as a fourteen-year-old boy at his first makeout party, the woman grabs her own right breast.

I have to look away. It’s so bad it embarrasses me to watch. And I understand, I get it. She’s not an actress, she’s a woman just like me, snatched from someplace and forced to humiliate herself. Like he would have had me do.

I know he’ll ask about what I’ve seen, but I can’t bear to view it. I look around the room, letting the DVD play, hoping he can hear the absurd dialogue he wrote for her. So he thinks I’m still watching.

I don’t look back until I hear her screaming.

I watch the rest through a screen of my own tears, my own horror. She has the razor in her trembling hand, and when she hesitates he activates the collar. She is thrown from the chair, slowly gets up, listens to unheard instructions, and takes the razor to herself. Slices her forehead, her other cheek, her breasts. Blood everywhere. The razor slips from her hand. She refuses to pick it up, so he shocks her again.

This time, she doesn’t get up.

After a few minutes, he moves into the frame. Takes up the dropped razor. Draws it across some part of her I can’t see, his back to the camera blocking my view. Pulls off something that can only be flesh.

When he turns around again, he’s tucking it into his mouth. He chews, swallows, smiles at the camera.

And I am, I realize, so, so hungry that even what the monster just ate looks absolutely delicious.

SHE’S WATCHING ONE of the DVDs. I can hear the screaming from the other room, still as real and frantic as it was on the day I recorded it. I think she might be watching Lisa or Dolores, but I’m too far away to really say for sure—and, frankly, it’s getting hard to focus on the things around me. I have stopped being able to feel my feet and legs; my arms are nearly useless. I can turn my neck, but all that allows me to do is see the closed utility closet door. This just makes me feel terribly sad, so I’ve stopped looking that way.

Louise comes into the room, eyelashes wet from crying. She storms over to where I’m lying and squats down beside me.

“Why do you do this?” she asks, grabbing me by the hair and lifting my chin off the floor. “It’s disgusting. You’re murdering people for what . . . ? So you can eat them?”

She has no idea what she’s talking about. She doesn’t understand that there is a method to what she considers madness. That there always has been. I want to explain to her, but I’m not sure she will get it. Still, I am dying—I know this now, an absolute truth—and I want to tell someone about my work. I turn my head to look at her, to catch her eye, because eye contact is imperative for understanding.

“I am your God,” I say to Louise, holding her gaze with the last of the energy I possess. “Your creator.”

I can see that I am losing her. My words are not penetrating. I try another tack.

“You want to know why I eat them?”

This is what she wants to hear about. I have finally penetrated her, it seems.

“Yes, I want to know why.”

Her stomach growls, aggressive and insistent. Of course she is starving. It’s been more than a day since she last ate. I wonder if she had dinner before going out the night before. These actresses are always so worried about their weight, she’d probably only nibbled at something, a kale salad or a piece of baked fish.

“Why?” she presses, slamming my chin down, hard, on the concrete, recapturing my attention.

I feel the skin tighten, then burst apart like the seams on a child’s stuffed toy. Blood flows from the wound, mixing with the blood that’s already all over the floor. I am losing blood with every breath. Dying one exhalation at a time.

“They are my creations, my actresses,” I say. “Through them I give birth to my films, and my films give life to them. When they have concluded their part, I complete the circle. They belong to me, and no one else.

She stares at me, eyeballs darting back and forth in their sockets as she tries to process what I’ve said.

“You’re sick,” she says finally. “A fucking monster.”

She releases her grip on my hair, and I use the last of my energy to lay my cheek against the concrete floor. The blood that coats the ground—my blood—is wet and sticky, but even through its viscosity I can still feel the coolness of the earth coming up through the concrete, reaching for me, making me shudder.

I am not a monster, I want to say to her, but I have nothing left inside to defend myself with. It would just expend too much energy.

“You’re just hungry,” I whisper. I say it so quietly, she doesn’t hear.

“What?” she says, leaning closer to my face.

“You’re just hungry,” I repeat.

“Yes, I am,” she says. Then: “You promised me that cell phone if I watched your movies.”

I nod as best I can.

“Cut a little of my cheek for yourself,” I say. “Eat a little of me. So you don’t starve.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Not a fucking chance.”

We are at a stalemate. She did as I asked. I owe her the phone, I concede.

“Phone is on my ankle.”

She doesn’t believe me, shakes her head.

“Holster on my ankle,” I say.

She is suspicious. Slowly, she picks her way over the rubble that traps me, lifts my pants leg. I can feel her shaking with relief. She can’t believe I held to my promise. Though I may be many things, a liar I am not—but she doesn’t know this. She knows nothing about me, really.

“Thank you,” she says, crawling back over to me so I can see her face. “Thank you for this.”

She is crying. Tears are leaking from her eyes, falling onto her cheeks and then the floor, melding with my blood. Bringing us even closer together. I think part of her wants to kiss me in gratitude, but she doesn’t. Instead, she powers on the phone, her excitement growing . . . and then it is dashed before my eyes.

“It’s password protected,” she says in shock.

“Eat a little of my cheek and I’ll tell you the password,” I say.

She glares at me. “No.”

I try to shrug, but my body is a lifeless thing.

“Eat a little of me and save yourself,” I say. “It’s the only way.”

She doesn’t want to do it, but I have her in an untenable position. She holds my gaze for too long and I think she is not going to do what I want her to—but then she gets up and walks over to the corner of the room. The blade she used to cut off her nose lays there, still red with her blood. She picks it up and comes back to me, kneels down. She places the blade against my cheek and quickly slices off a piece of flesh, lets it drop into her palm.

The pain makes my blood sing.

Her body thrums with rage as she cradles the piece of me in her hand. With a shudder, she lifts the raw flesh to her mouth. I close my eyes, savoring the knowledge that my body will become one with hers, but when I open my eyes again, I see that she has not done as I asked. My flesh still rests in her hand.

“Do it,” I say, encouraging her. “And the password is yours.”

Her body trembles as she raises the flesh to her lips. She grimaces, then shoves my cheek into her mouth. She can’t even chew, just swallows hard, forcing me down inside of her. She starts to gag, then she vomits, the unchewed skin splatting on the floor in a puddle of bile and stomach acid.

I grin up at her.

“There’s another way out,” I say—and there is. I don’t lie. “I’ll tell you how to get to it, but first you need to promise me one thing. My movies—”

“Fuck you,” she says. “Tell me the password. You promised.”

I sigh. She may have spewed me back up, but technically she did do what I asked. There is also the fact that I am dying, and I need her to live so that she can bring the world my masterpieces, my films.

“The password is 3337,” I concede.

She presses in the code and the phone comes to life.

“Now listen. It’s important that you—”

At first, I don’t realize what she’s doing, but then, as the life ebbs from my body, I understand: she is stabbing me repeatedly with the blade. I try to open my mouth, to tell her the way out before it’s too late . . . but then the moment is gone. I am out of my body, floating away. I look down at my lifeless corpse, devastated that all my glorious work will be forever lost to the ages.

Because unless she gets over her distaste for flesh, she’s doomed. Rescue will come eventually, but no time soon.

And my phone has never had a signal down here in my secret studio.