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You are dead.

Of course, it takes a long time to believe that. You've died so many times by now.

You say, “I am dead.” But how can you say “I am dead” unless you’re still alive?

That conundrum stumps you for a time.

Eventually it dawns on you that it can also work in reverse. Only if you're dead can you be murdered as many times as you have. Perhaps the dead, too, can fool themselves. Perhaps they, too, can say, “I am alive” and mean it only as a figure of speech.

Going round and round like this…after a while you just stop thinking about it at all. Alive or dead, it stops making any difference.

Neena is sitting in her room as the first stars begin to appear on the monitor behind her. The monitor displays a purple sky of impossible depth and unspeakable beauty. She's already dressed for the occasion: the white fishnet stockings and the white micro miniskirt, the five-inch silver platform sandals, and the elegant gloves, white, satin, elbow-length, with the forty-nine tiny pearl buttons running up to each alabaster elbow.

She's wearing a corset comprised of the ribcage of a murdered teenager, which has been laced tightly enough to reduce her breaths to tiny sips, like a deep-sea diver out of her depth, hopelessly conserving a limited supply of oxygen. Her breasts, enhanced by surgery and indelible inks, are cupped inside this cruel corset. The bra cups are formed from the skeletal hands of the two children she shall never bear.

Her left nipple has been pierced. That is the custom here. But the charm which dangles there is unidentifiable--a Martian hieroglyphic?

Earlier, her geisha-corpse makeup was applied by her Japanese transsexual maid. Oh yes, they have those here, too.

Her hands are lying uselessly in her lap as she faces the upcoming endless night with no personal expression whatsoever.  

"Are you ready?"

"No," she whispers.

"Then come."

Someone, unseen, in the darkest corner of the room, has been masturbating. Finally, after much effort, he or she reaches a shuddering climax that makes the very atmosphere twitch.

Neena takes the proffered hand of the undertaker, who is dressed, predictably, in formal black. On his face, he wears a mask of black silk, as if he were afraid  to breathe the molecules of death floating in the air of this place. His eyes are entirely abstract. He will never fuck Neena, never, not even after the passage of another thousand years.

Neena rises from her chair, unsteadily, as if from past

abuses such as those not even fantasy can quickly and completely heal. She moves, still dreaming, towards a door that seems always to be opening into some new nightmare.

She tells herself that she will remember this time, just this once, but she knows that she has already completely forgotten everything that is about to happen.