THINK YOU’VE got a few secrets? What about your neighbors? Behind tailored gardens and neatly painted fences are surprises most of us would never dream about… even in our worst nightmares. Tonight, dear reader, I’d like to share a sweet little nightmare with you. The story that we’ll bring to life is thousands of years old and yet continues to resonate. In Greek mythology, the beauty of Narcissus could have been compared to that of Adonis, another strikingly beautiful young man. When Narcissus discovered his image in a pool, he fell in love, and not being able to find consolation, he stayed watching his reflection and let himself die from starvation.

Our hero this evening is not in danger of starvation, I assure you. Please meet Alex Mandara. He’s fifteen years old, awkward, and he’s spilling over his size thirty-six jeans. In short, he’s grotesque. Right now he’s sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor with stacks of magazines. His chubby teenage hands are meticulously cutting out pictures of the very things that make him feel inadequate. But they’re also pictures of everything he desperately wants his life to be. There are carefully sliced pictures of beautiful and expensive cars, watches, yachts, and houses. There are pictures of people who are not like Alex. Happy men and women smile at him with straight, white teeth, lustrous hair, and perfect tans. Their faces are perfectly proportioned and their bodies are venerable temples. This makes Alex smile as he picks up his little pile of manicured magazine clippings and heaves himself off the floor. It’s hard to watch, I promise you. Little Alex, who is not so very little, walks to his bedroom wall, which is covered with more cut-outs like these. In fact, every square inch is covered, floor to ceiling and four layers thick. He’s applying the fifth layer now, with his piggy-wiggly fingers clutched around a tube of glue stick. Alex is feeding on these images like the hungry little hippo that he is. And as I’m sure you’re well aware, dear reader, we are what we eat. Now that you know Alex, or more specifically who he was, I’d like to introduce you to our hero a few decades later.…

INT. OPERATING THEATER—MORNING

MUSIC UP—Classical music soars.

HOT, WHITE light beams down on an operating table. Several RNs in scrubs monitor the onset of the surgery, handing tools to DR. ALEX MANDARA (29, very handsome, air of perfection).

PUSH IN to Alex’s eyes above the mask, intense upon his task.

LOCK DOWN TIME LAPSE of patient on operating table. The footage is sped up so this process takes roughly 25 seconds of screen time.

Gloved hands move in and out of frame, MAPPING the face with a surgical pencil.

A second set of gloved hands WIPE the face with swabs.

A sheet with barn doors is pulled over, framing the face.