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they pull closer even as the equal and opposite force of pain drives their throats to scream. They feel it all . They are in ecstasy as much as anguish.”
    She shook her head, completely disgusted. I saw her eyes light as she took in the room behind me, around us. “Where are we?”
    “The Amphitheater. Love given and broken every hour. When they finish, some of the crowd will dine on their remains until they are born again. Come on, I’ll show you around.”
    She followed me out of the crowd, but when we stepped onto the street, she looked up into my eyes, and no doubt saw the hunger there. The blood may already have been beading on my forehead and face; my body thirsted for the heat of her, the sweat of her, so close, so close.
    She pushed against my chest with her hand and then squealed something, before turning to clatter down the alley in a panicked, staggering dash. I started to follow, but then relaxed. There’d be other food inside tonight, and she was, maybe, too green to choose yet. As the click of her heels faded, I thought that the first thing she needed to do was to get herself some sensible shoes. This place was bad enough without having blisters on your feet.
     
    ««—»»
     
    God knows how she survived her first night without getting flayed. But I saw her again, a day or two later, still unblemished. She was picking through a produce cart in the market square, looking for an apple. I saw her lift one, hold it up to the light and press it to her face to inhale the scent. Her eyes sparkled in the dull, wormy fog of morning for a moment as she breathed in the ripe tang of the fruit, but then her brow wrinkled, and two things happened almost at the same time.
    The first was that the apple collapsed into mush in her hand, its thin exterior giving way to the slight pressure of her clutch. The meal spattered her face, and her hand was suddenly a mess of brownish paste, and squirming, twisting, yellow maggots. They spilled from her hands like confetti.
    The second was that she screamed, a horrible, high-pitched, trapped-in-a-burning-vehicle kind of wail.
    She shook her hand wildly in the air, maggots and apple meat flying in all directions. Her scream turned to a tight hiss, and her breath came in short, fast gasps. I stepped up and wrapped her befouled hand in the fold of my shirt, taking the corruption to myself.
    “You again,” she said finally, when she’d calmed somewhat. “Thank you.”
    I grinned and bowed. “No problem mi’lady. Happy to help a hysterical angel in need.”
    “Angel my ass,” she snapped. Her pale brows creased together and moisture gathered at the corner of her dark-outlined eyes. “Clearly I didn’t make the cut.” She pointed around to the market square, where screams erupted nearly every minute and children and their dogs lay gutted and convulsing on the sides of the road. Patrons walked hunched, in thrall to beastlike men of ebon skin and crimson eyes. Some dragged cages on wheels where other men and women were whipped and kicked and raped in full view, while still more marched locked in harnesses of steel chain and leather spikes. A gang of thrashers walked along the curb, razors moving rhythmically. With each slice, the gang pocketed long slabs of meat peeled from the flanks of the kids and animals and men who lined the gutter, trying to heal from whatever their last abuse had been. Instead they screamed and bled anew.
    As I watched, two men dodged in and out and around the crowds, murder in their eyes and long rusted field scythes in their hands. When at last the man in front turned to confront his tail, the second man took off the first’s head with a clean swipe of the scythe. The spray of blood from the riven soul’s neck spotted the fruit and vegetables all around and the cries of the merchants’ anger rose in a howl that superceded the screams of anguish all around the market.
    “Why am I in hell?” she whispered, and before I could answer, she was gone