I rush out of my room, ready to fight off an attacker or call for help or something. Before I’ve thought about it, I’ve shoved through the open door of Room 402 and am seeing a woman in a red dress sitting on the couch, mascara or bruise-smeared eyes, blood trickling from a cut in her lip. Harry Warren is sprawled across the floor at the foot of the bed between us, taking up a lot of space for such a short man. His hair is mussed and there’s a purple gash over his left eye.

‘I hit him,’ she says, pointing at the marble-based lamp flung in the middle of the white bedspread. ‘I think he’s dead. Will you help me?’ The scene is elegant, meticulously staged; so artful and hyperreal, it’s clear that this is a private scene.

‘Sure,’ I say, flattered to have been called into an intimate one-on-one.

She wipes the lamp down with the corner of the cover and places it back on the nightstand, then rips the sheet off the bed and lays it on the floor next to the body.

Which is when he lurches up and grabs at me, trying to pull his mass up against my legs. As he grabs and pulls, he pinches at the flesh on my inner thigh, his long fingernails scraping the thin skin. It’s fucking sore, and just instinctively really I raise my knee into his face. The timing is perfect. There’s a sickly shattering crunch as the rest of his nose crumbles back into his skull and something else pops, and he crashes back to the floor.

‘That’s fucking disgusting,’ I say with a giggle, also secretly pleased that I’ve been graced with this key scene and these visceral horror effects – they’re gross and they’re great. Metamuse have really upped their game, even after Elemental, which, as we know, really had me going.

I squat down and help her roll Harry onto the sheet. He’s fucking heavy and he’s not cooperating, and it takes some time to shimmy him properly into the middle of the material. When we’re done, the woman goes into the bathroom and washes her face and hands, and when she comes out she’s crying and shaking, and it’s hard not to get caught up. It’s easier and more entertaining to park your cynical doubts and just go with it, as I’ve discovered. I tell her not to worry, that it’ll be over soon.

‘We can take him down to the pool,’ she says. ‘Pretend he tripped and fell.’

‘There’s a pool?’ I say.

She nods, chewing her lip like a starlet. ‘In the basement.’