A night of faces to be seen once, and never again. A single-use configuration of bodies and costumes. A masquerade, one could call it.

He sailed through the night to the first appointment spot. Pickup. That was the easy part. He didn’t even have to meet the person who’d left the package in the locker. As a teenager he had been scrawny (more than he was now) so it was fortunate for him the jars packed into the bag were featherweight plastic and not glass. Maybe the delivery had been prepared by someone who knew him, and had pity. He inspected the contents. They were held upright by foam, and behind the glass, this night…

They were asleep.

The second appointment had him pass through to the bustling part of town, just past the  busy hours. He was still a kid, that’s what the handlers called him, but old enough now that nobody asked questions. The night had a cutting clarity; it had just rained and the sky was bright with stars and string lights and glowing windows, with neon and streetlamps. When he looked behind him, down the cramped, sloping street that led back to the shopping zones for the less adventurous, he could see all the way down while hardly straining his eyes at all.

The elevator was out of order. He took the stairs, holding the large padded bag steady.

He came to the room for his meeting. It was wall-to-wall white, a hard screaming white; later it would be painted light blue. It was also unfurnished. There would also be stools and a bar and a number of fanciful machines in there, in the pale blue future. But right now, it was just bodies.

There were six people waiting. Breathing heavily. All men, strong ones, not what he’d expected. But only one was standing to greet him. The rest weren’t allowed on their feet. They weren’t even supposed to sit up. There was twine around their ankles, and their mouths, and arms. Blood, too.

One of them was loose. The loops around his hands weren’t secure, but he lay prone, as if knocked out. Glancing over; his build was athletic, arms in particular. Perhaps that had been what let him snap his bonds. But he was a lousy actor.

The assistant, as he’d come to think of himself, pretended he hadn’t seen anything.

“Finally here, pretty boy.” His guide was a shaggy post of a man, with the coloration of oatmeal. Lean, smaller than the others, but it was clear this was his domain. “How was the walk? Anybody bother you?”

“No.” It seemed like a safe thing to say. He carefully set down the bag, unzipped.

“Too bad.” A ringing noise went off behind him, but he didn’t look just yet. “You know how this works?”

“Of course.” It was true enough. “I was expecting younger bodies...”

A derisive clicking of the tongue. “You’re from one of those traditional families, then.” The voice suddenly drew very close, and he smelled iron and tobacco. “The boss says no more kids. Fine by me. Kids don’t put up a good fight. How well did yours put up, when you did the deed?”

The assistant held his breath. Metal and soot sat trapped in his lungs.

The shadow of the guide swept back. The room was filled with rancid breaths, then a cry. The loosened prisoner had made his attempt at escape. The guide had caught him, pinned him, and was now sitting on his chest, a boot on his throat.

The remaining figures on the floor had gone completely still.

“He’s got energy,” said the guide. “Good.”

He withdrew a knife from the flattened man’s arm, the blade seemingly materialized from nowhere. Bringing his other hand forward, the guide now had two hook-ended knives, each as long as his assistant’s forearm, and both already stained.

The assistant averted his eyes, occupied himself with twisting the first jar open. A terrible smell, old rancid blood and sugar and afterbirth, began to fill the room.

Over the sound of whimpers and heaving, the guide purred, “Come stand a little closer, kid. You won’t be able to do anything all the way over there.” To the mangled creature under him, in the same honeyed tone: “you’ll feel better when you’re all filled up.”

The assistant brought the jar closer as requested. He felt lightheaded and confused even though he really had only one simple task. He tried to convince himself that the bile in his throat meant he was still sane. Simplicity was no guarantee of sanity.

The lanky guide smiled, inspected his knives, and made a quick attempt to scrape off the lingering dirt before getting started. It was so quick that nobody had time to prepare. Metal against metal, the blistering shriek wrung every nerve, every muscle in the assistant’s body.

He clung to the jar for dear life and squeezed his eyes shut. This is how it starts, he thought. You and me and him and you again.

“You’d better be watching,” the guide crooned, slicing open the body beneath him, an indescribably neat slit of red blooming top-down the sternum.

The assistant stumbled, and steadied the jar as if it were a life more important than his own. He hated it; the stink, the look, the meaning of it, but it was all the companionship he had. The jar was the closest thing to an innocent presence in the room.

It will be over soon. You endure. Tomorrow, you’ll see things differently.

He could barely hear himself think, but he was apologizing. To the jar, to the man on the ground, to the jar, and then—

The ringing in his ears morphed, split and rounded out, grew feelers that stretched and thickened into writhing twin adders, one red, one black. Their tails were conjoined, the end buried in a black hole of severed windpipe belonging to a withering, bruised human head half-submerged in a hospital pillow. He heard Orchid’s voice droning, “It can always get worse. It will always get worse.”