'I only fuck the meat!'

Thomas glanced at Neil's face, saw the brain behind it reaching for him through the pose of facial musculature, clutching with primeval visual cues. He could see it looking, peering through keyhole eyes, buzzing with anguish and information, trapped by the severing of a single cord.

It pulled Neil's lips into a rueful smile, pinned his face into a pathetic grimace.

Goodbook, it mouthed.

Please…

'What I do,' Gyges gasped with coital intensity. 'They know… but they do not feel.'

Untouched, Thomas turned to free his ex-wife. In his periphery, he could see Gyges hunched over Neil's broad back. But he dared not look. The billionaire had become a thing of blood and sawing shadows. A monstrous tabloid horror, murmuring as he worked…

'Look at you.

'Boned like a fish…

'Like a prom queen with low self-esteem.

'I will fill you like a cup…

'Like something holy.'

The false premise in Neil's argument.

After freeing her, Thomas held Nora's face to his chest so that she too would not see. 'Look at you…' The Chiropractor brooked no witnesses.

They held hands as they climbed the basement stairs. A series of colorless images assailed Thomas with each and every blink. He saw Cynthia Powski, her skullcap drawn back like the curtains of a theater stage. He saw the Museum of Natural History diorama that had so impressed him as a kid: male and female australopithe-cines walking side by side across a vast plain of volcanic ash. He remembered asking his father what had happened to them, whether they had gone to heaven. 'Do you see wings?' his father had snapped.

My son… Thomas thought as they crested the final steps.

My son and daughter are dead.

All was dark upstairs. Nora's face, bruised and bloodied by Mary's screws, seemed to float in the gloom. Neither of them spoke. When they turned on the lights, it seemed they could see too much. Cobwebs in the corners. Hardwood floors that seemed to creak beneath the weight of their gaze. No furniture. No pictures. No obligatory antiques. Thomas knelt and picked a small white card from the floor, studied the painted real estate agent smiling from the corner photo.

WELCOME HOME!

the gold-embossed letters shouted.

He let the card flutter from his fingers. Then he wondered where Neil had hidden the bodies.

Nora began testing doors, gingerly, as though feeling for fire beyond the blank wood panels. Thomas followed her lead, more out of some instinct to mimic than out of agreement.