Fictional account

"My name is Yuiko Stigsdotir. Don't ask why. I have spent some time with various people from various countries. A day in my life starts of slow, gets faster towards the middle and on a good day ends with company. I don't think myself a slut mind you, it's the company more than anything else.

"My mornings involve preparing and eating breakfast, changing, showering and whatnot. Not normally in that order, or at the same time, or alone. Instead of braving the morning rush hour, I walk to work - it takes 10 minutes or so. I am clerk - that means I push paper for a living. My work life is therefore, obviously, incredibly dull. My colleagues are boring and my boss is a jerk. I get my kicks by going out every night or so.

"I go out alone, but like I said, on a good night I have company; not always a guy, not always singular, depends. Mostly I cook dinner using whatever's cheapest. You'd be surprised at how well you can dine on a budget, provided you know where to look." I paused, that's me introduced. I waited for his next question.

"Do you still go out?" He was making notes in little black notebook, despite having a dictaphone recording every word we said. He wore fairly plain-looking suit. Gray, with a blue shirt. Gray tie. And a hospital ID card, with his name. Prof Yogi Surendran. Hell of a name.

"Yes. More often now than before."

"If you get company, as you call it, in your home, then what?"

"We'll be talking, obviously, and then..."

"Say no more. If you go home alone?"

"Callgirls. There's always someone available"

"Uh-huh."

"I sleep better afterwards, and for a more reasonable time. I get nightmares otherwise."

"Right. Ms. Yuiko, I have here a file from the previous psychologist. In it is a short passage."

"Yes, I know, I wrote it."

"I'd like you to read it out to me."

I hesistated. "Um... what?" I gulped.

"I'd like you to read it. Don't worry about it. It's only paper"

It's only paper he says. Only bleeding paper. The idiot. It's not the paper. It's what I wrote on it. But what could I do? I took a deep breath, and started reading.

"I forget the day, it was a while back, long after dusk and a few hours until dawn, after a complete failure of a night out. The man I'd left behind was all hands, and not a good kisser. Getting plastered so soon wasn't exactly impressive either, so I left in the arms of the next - drunken - pretty face that showed up.

"I turned into a back-street in a huff, on my way home to lots of chocolate ice-cream. I found myself staring at her, among the dismembered, disembowelled and violently violated remains of vagrants, stone cold faces carved into sheer terror as if chiselled, their bodies decorating the walls by some macabre designer, organ pinups, flesh carpet. I retched and retched and retched and wiped my mouth clean, then I was running down the pavement into the steely arms of a lovely boy who took some convincing that I hadn't just escaped from the nearest asylum, and that following me back to the alley wouldn't end with something bad happening to him.

"When we got there he fainted. I glared in disbelief then I turned back to the victim, her eyes were turquoise stars in her alabaster face ,staring up into the star-less, midwinter night sky. I fancy, still, that they once glittered with innocence.

"In her button nose and cherry lips, she expressed a haunting mix of agony, resignation and betrayal but - tellingly - not fear. Her head, as much of her body, was a portrait of weeping scars and blood and some small scabs. Her neck was a porcelain pedestal adorned with a delicate white-gold necklace with a ruby pendant and a thick, purple welt around the nape. She was framed by blood-matted cornflower hair that lay about her as haphazardly as her limbs, that were dressed in black silk - opera gloves and stockings.

"An - ironically - crimson brocade evening dress lay in shreds about her and instead of small-clothes, she is clothed in bites and tears, from her heavily bruised loins to her shattered ribs fluttering beneath her wonderfully full bosom - wait, fluttering?

"Hastily, I threw my arms around her in an attempt to warm her up, yet as my hands moved up to her head... where all they felt was mush. I looked up for my companion, but he had left. Wincing and alone, I turned the barely living body over, and stared and convulsed pathetically at what I saw. I might have vomited, but I'd nothing throw up.

"The Brain was half-stewed, the gaping orifice in her skull walled with blood and pulver. My eyes traced down her back, following deep gashes that ran alongside and parallel to her spine until her lumbar, accompanied by claw-marks across her back and sides. At the base, her torn rectum leaked blood and shit.

"When her back, inflating and deflating with her breath, slowed its motions to a stop, I dropped the body and broke down. It was too much, and as our bodies lay limp and dejected in the trash, my voice sang alone and filled the dark with my mourning wail until... he returned with the authorities...

"...They asked me questions... I answered them... eventually... with an automatic kind of... robotism... but only after spending the best part of an hour weeping into his shoulders, while he crooned and comforted softly.

"For the record, I never saw him again after we left that night. By the time I got home I was filled with a curious numbness, and my dreams were raging nightmares of screams that froze my blood, and the base theft of innocence and life. I woke in tears, and a cold sweat.

"I got dressed and returned to the place at dawn. Most of it had been cleared away, covered up so as not to cause alarm, but hidden in the refuse, lying forgotten and bereft of their owner, I saw something we'd all missed. Almost as large as their owner, and utterly beautiful, I imagined them with their owner at the peak of her beauty, turquoise stars shining with hope and dreams of love only to be torn apart in the most repugnant way and have her dove-like wings taken from her, along with her life.'

"There now, not too hard, was it?"

Seriously, I could've punched him. But I was too busy crying.

> Pretty face