“Making love to Shelly. You were her girlfriend, weren't you? You and Nicole both were.” His eyes were unfocused. “She slept with Nicole — I've seen the movies. I could see in her face how much she liked it! Did she like it with you too? Did you enjoy it?” Tommy squinted, then asked calmly, “Will you think about it while you die?”

“I didn't take Shelly away from you. I hardly knew her. I just —”

He opened his bag and took out a long knife. There were dark stains on the wooden handle. Something else was in his hand: a videocassette. He looked at Rune's TV set and VCR, started them both and, after three tries, slipped the tape in. A crackle, then a hum, and the screen became a fuzzy black-and-white.

He watched the set, almost incidentally, as he began mumbling, reciting a mantra. “Way I see it, pornography is art. What is art exactly? It's creation. The making of something where there was nothing before. And what does pornography show? Fucking. The act of creation.” He tried to find the fast forward on her VCR but couldn't.

He turned back to her. “When I figured that out it was like a revelation. A religious experience. You write about fucking and it's not real. But with movies... you can't fake it. You are watching, like, the whole act of creation in front of you. Fucking amazing.”

“Oh, God, no.” Rune, staring at the screen, began to cry. Watching:

Nicole, hanging from the rack.

Nicole, twisting, futilely, away from the swinging whip. “... but with film, it's so different. The artist can't lie. No way. I mean it's all right there. You've got the beginning of life right in front of you...”

Nicole, begging with her eyes, maybe screaming through the gag.

Nicole, crying tears that sloughed off her makeup in brown and black stripes across her face.

Nicole, closing her eyes, as Tommy walked forward with a knife.

“... also religious. In the beginning God created... See, created. That's a fucking wild coincidence, wouldn't you say? God and the artist. And pornography brings it all together...” Nicole, dying.

Rune surrendered to her sobbing. Savorne watched the tape with sad, hungry eyes. “I really loved Shelly,” he said in his slurred voice. "When she left me I died. I couldn't believe that she'd actually gone. I didn't know what to do. I'd wake up and there would be the whole day ahead of me without her, hours and hours without her. I didn't know what to do. I was paralyzed. At first I hated her. Then I knew she was sick. She'd gone crazy. And I knew it wasn't all her fault. No, it was other people too: people like Nicole. People like you. People who wanted to seduce her.

I didn't seduce her!"