Slowest Hunter

I.

In May, Talia stops our long-awaited national tour like an icicle to the heart. “My family wants me to focus on the Match-Hunt,” she says before she quits. I quit too, by default.

The cancellation is swift and buzzy. Reporters hound us for “a statement” and paparazzi terrorize us, hoping to catch us in the middle of a catfight. We pull our merch from the website and ask our warehouses to incinerate all of the Toxic/Tonic stock, but the zeitgeist thinks this is just a genius publicity stunt to manufacture demand. We fire the choreographers, the backup dancers, and the pyrotechnicians. The fans are credited their tickets back, but three stadiums full of fraudulent tickets are sold before they start to get with the program. We’re really done. The fans think they’ll miss us, but really they need something to talk about. There haven’t been messy celebrity divorces or pedophile producers in the news cycle recently. The tour cancellation has given them something to speculate over and sensationalize:

TOXIC/TONIC SPLITS ON EVE OF MULTI-MILLION $ TOUR

ALL TOXIC: FAKE FRIENDSHIP OR PARADISE BOTCHED?

FANS’ BROKEN DREAMS, MANAGER’S NIGHTMARE,
AND NOT A CARE FOR TOXIC/TONIC

What follows is an outcry of frenetic phone calls, angry emails, and envelopes bursting with desperation. So we change our numbers and post that we’re doing a “social media detox” before our accounts go black. Yet we have our burner accounts and are obsessed with the comment sections, which are red-hot with ire, calling us “ungrateful” and “not even that good.” They want to know how we could do this to them? Okay, but how could Talia do this to me? Conspiracists focus on me betraying Talia, and by extension, the nation. Somehow, she’s the winner here. As our fans go for our jugulars, she gets the good angles. She’s pulling my life apart, yet I am the side character of her plot. Then I remember, I’m the girl from the trailer town who she brought to the city, while Talia was always bred for fame. I should be grateful she chose me. Right when I start to feel weird about my jealousy, Talia receives a package with something electronic and explosive. Game over. Our security team moves us both to a hotel two hours outside of Los Angeles to lay low for a couple weeks. It turns out a passion denied always comes out the same: all at once and dangerous.

In the dark of the hotel room, Talia asks if I will join the Match-Hunt too. Of course, I had always known there would be a day when Talia was summoned to it, but I never thought about the possibility she might ask me to go with her. I am surprised she considers me as more than just a step stool for her career.

“I want to do this with you, Reva,” she says, her voice small and far away.

The fact that she always had another life, a shadow life, waiting for her was ignorable until the day arrived, like a baby on a doorstep. Funny she could be so cut out for the pop star life, and for the same reason have to leave it. Talia is a generational Hunter. The Match-Hunt is for the genetically elite, a way to sieve out The Stars amongst the stars. The actual mechanisms of the game are opaque to us, but we know the affair is violent. The prize for winners is that they get to live in the aesthetically superior Harmony Village, away from the troubles and demands of the Real World. Talia’s mother is among the starlets who chose to eventually return to the Real World, in order to raise another star, but even she won’t indulge us with the actual mechanisms of The Hunt. There’s an oath of silence, she tells us, to guarantee the playing ground is fair for all. What’s clear is that those who don’t match, don’t survive. Yet people still apply to join. What matters is that it is exclusive, therefore enviable.

Talia reminds me the Match-Hunt is a chance to start a more authentic life, one far away from the fake glitz of rehearsals, wardrobe fittings, meet-and-greets, and shows.

“No one thinks about how being famous means you get treated like a circus monkey,” she says. “You can live by your own rules if you survive The Hunt.”

The Match-Hunt guarantees not just the continuation of bloodline, but a chance to subvert the age-old trope: a young star seen as a vestal virgin, beloved until she begins to step into her sexual power. Then she is demonized if she owns her sexuality. Eaten up if she doesn’t. Aging is so nasty for us pretty ones.

Talia asks me again in the dark. “Will you go with me?”

I am not like her. No shadow life commands me. I tell her I can’t join.

Talia does not insist on anything against my wishes. She is too clever for that. Instead she lashes out with the sudden violence of antipathy. Talia leaves our hotel for another in the dead of the night and shuts off her phone line. I haven’t gone a day without Talia since we met twelve years ago. Her abstinence from communication is stifling. My body first internalizes the pain of her absence, then erupts. A trail of minor infections trickles up my central chord: a UTI, then paronychia, then a stye. Her tyranny has metabolized into physical evidence, yet the pain embodied is so severe my own anger slips away. I see how little of my life is my own.

On the fifth day of her silence, my mouth ruptures spontaneously with canker sores. I channel my breathing through my nose to avoid the pain. I tell myself I am glad we don’t have our endless phone calls anymore. I keep my mouth shut to avoid the stabbing of air. Despite this, I quiver from a fever onset from the pain. My sweat comes out hot, dries cold. As I lie in bed, close to shitting myself, I almost surrender to Talia’s request. But the Match-Hunt is too dangerous for me. This is like choosing between two deaths.

Yet death has never been the worst outcome when it comes to Talia. She knows how to make life hell when things don’t go her way. She is vain about her reputation. She is ruthless about her desires. She doesn’t care who is collateral. Even on her way out, she can’t stand to be cucked.

From her hotel room, Talia launches an online blitz. She starts a smear campaign against the production company, and then the talent management. She turns them against each other, timing out strategic anonymous tips to tabloids, sharing graphic details about lascivious behavior, and inventing the most depraved motivations for each one. Then she emerges with her unvarnished version of the story. Everyone is hungry for it. She talks about how raw she was when she had her first boyfriend, an older boy who left her when our producers forced her to wear a promise ring, to sell her image as a virgin.

“It was like a sexual prison,” she says, crying for the camera.

Our entertainment lawyer, a shrewd and pugnacious hustler-type, catches wind and becomes litigious. As fans tear down our managers, the managers blame our producers, and the producers come after our mothers. Talia’s mother is pegged as a narcissist for selling her to the industry, and it comes out that mine has been institutionalized since I was five. I forgot that the armchair sleuths of the internet are magnets to dirty laundry. What surprises me is the outcry of sympathy. While everyone is suing each other, one thing is clear: we are the victims here. As the tabloids post wide-eyed photos of us with captions like “SEXUALIZED BEFORE THEY EVER GOT TO BE SEXUAL,” think-pieces are written about the ethos of the music industry. How could they turn the STAGE of these nubile talents into a PLATTER for this salacious nation to gorge? No one cares about the cancelled tour anymore.

Talia is proud of her work, but needs my help to deliver the final blow.

“We need to show them we’re relatable as hell. They need to see that life on stage is insufferable, and we deserve understanding, sympathy, and privacy just like them.”

She’s right. We have power here. It’s not just that we are multiplatinum, or that every venue had been sold out for months. It’s that we could wear bedazzled potato sacks and you’d find bedazzled potato sacks in every department store the next day. Our absence can’t create a gap in culture, because the idea of us is the culture.

Hearing from her immediately eases my physical symptoms. The sores clear up, and we book TMZ for an exclusive at-home interview. Talia leads the conversation, speaking in a squeaky voice, making herself sound younger and dumber. She stares into the camera, her wide, down-turned eyes deferent.

“As long as we threw our hair back and shook our hips, we got paid. But it wasn’t really about the money. We just wanted to be good. So our costumes got smaller and smaller, which made our managers happy. We loved when everyone was happy. When they were, we got soda pop after the show and a whole day off from rehearsal. We always wanted a good show.”

In our TV appearances, we wear candy-pink suits, like little girls trying to go to court. Our look is meant to depict searing innocence that borders on intellectual incapacitation. The goal is to wring us of all culpability. We can’t help it that we are an uncanny mixture of supernaturally talented and naturally beautiful. All we ever wanted was to make good music, kiss boys, and be teenagers, but instead we are forced into the role of professional child. It is implied that we were groomed. This is our final performance, and it needs to land.

I close the interview out:

“We left the stage because we were victims of the American industrial exploitation complex. Please respect our privacy during this very difficult time.”

Only a psycho pervert would want to threaten our lives now.

When the interview airs, we put on oversize sunglasses and run to the newsstands to grab copies of People, Us Weekly, OK!, and Star:

BABIES ON BLOW: T&T SLUR THEIR WAY THROUGH INTERVIEW

INCEST IS BEST?! TONIC IS LIKE A SISTER, SWEARS TOXIC

TOUR CANCELLATION COVERING UP A BABY BUMP?

On top of the headline crusade, someone has tipped the paparazzi off about our hotel situation. Now neither of us can get a coffee without a firing squad of cameras.

Talia locks herself into her hotel room and texts me.

It’s not too late to join The Hunt. Get yourself out of this mess.

I can’t think, seeing all the cars lined up down the block. My hands shake. I shut my curtains and order room-service wine. The doorbell rings, and I jump up. When I open the door, the delivery boy points his phone in my face, blinding me with a flash as he hands me the bottle.

The next day—washed-out face, eyes dilated by the flash, holding a bottle of booze—I'm front-page news:

STARLET BLAZED OUT AND ALONE

LIKE MOTHER LIKE DAUGHTER: TONIC’S MENTAL BREAKDOWN

WHO KNEW?? TOXIC IS THE GOOD ONE???

I’ve seen this story play out before over and over. Lohan. Spears. Hilton. Olsons. I am despondent. This is the end of my career. It’s rehab and wellness checks from here on out. If Talia disappears without me, I’ll be accused of her murder.

I want to join the Match-Hunt, I text her.

The screen shows three typing dots. Her phone line is active again.

Amazing, she texts. I’ll take care of everything.

▴ ▴ ▴

In August, Talia and I receive envelopes of the same size and thickness. She gathers me, the envelopes, and our anticipation all into a room together. We open the letters. They are brief, and the messages inside are identical:

you have been selected into the cohort.

“I knew you’d make it,” Talia whispers, her eyes bright and oscillating in their intensity, as if daring me to challenge that.

“Thank you,” I say.

“These are from the Mother Hens,” she says. “They chose us!”

I imagine the Hens as elder beauties, there to guide us to victory. They will make it worth this ordeal. They have to. The fan forums have already speculated on the timing of this year’s Hunt coinciding with the cancellation. Everyone knows this: very few can enter The Hunt. Alongside my relief, there is my fear. What are the actual mechanics of the Match-Hunt? In the forums, they discuss whether it is a brawl, a melee, or a fistfight.

It’s like entry to heaven on earth, user clarevoigant7112 says.

Only if you live to see it, user matchunteressss_888 responds.

I try to imagine who else will join our Cohort, but can only conjure them with the haziness I had once seen when nude women gathered in the steam room of a music video we shot—intense, obscene and indistinguishable from one another. Why do we need distinction, when everybody has an expiration date in this industry?

It’s easy to feel I made the right choice when Talia’s lips press into my hair.

“We’re going to find Ideal Mates,” Talia sighs, her eyes seaming into mine.

I want an Ideal Mate, sure, but all I can think is how this means more time with Talia. Precious, precious. If we survive, we can live in Harmony Village together, where all the winning couples are invited to stay. We can stay there forever if we want. The protocols to leave are intense. I’ll never have to know life without her.

Talia’s scent is so close, it becomes my breath.

“I’ll teach you The Hunt, make sure you live,” Talia says, as if she can actually make a few calls and arrange it. Maybe she can. Because she is a generational Hunter, there is a wealth of knowledge stored in her blood lineage. This is why she invited me to prepare with her all summer. I am the more likely of us to die.

II.

That was a different life.

A new one begins in September, when we are shuttled up to the BorderHouse. On the bus, I float through the warm springs of our competition’s beauty. I recognize some faces from various industry awards shows. They are models, singers, and even the occasional groupie. No one is as famous as us though. The girl at the far end of the bus keeps looking at us. She looks familiar. Maybe she was an extra in one of our shoots. She wears a wool sweater, despite the heat, and there is redness around her nose and eyes. Her skin glistens porelessly, like everyone’s on this bus. We look effortless and expensive, the way we are expected to arrive on set before hair and makeup.

“It’s flattering that this is the competition,” I whisper to Talia, and she nods.

It’s hard to believe we will have to hurt each other soon. The concept of violence has been annihilated by this pummel of exquisite faces. Something about Talia has changed in the months since we quit the stage. I can see her more clearly now, like I am looking up at her on stage from a first-row seat. There is softness to Talia’s beauty, which keeps drawing me back into it. Her features combine into a swirl of blur and precision—the bulb of a nose, the filter of freckles, the bowls of cheeks. Each feature alone is vague, but her hair pulls it together. No one could dream up such a hair color. It is what made her a star, not her singing. Her hair is a toasted brick, slightly deeper than the coat of a red panda. So many of our fans tried to dye theirs to her color, but it was inimitable. The girl in the sweater glances at us again.

“You are so lucky you came in with me,” Talia whispers. “I’ll keep you safe from them.”

I agree, I am happy to be with her. Talia is a true star, even amongst stars. I am safe around her, held up by everyone’s adoration of her. She is a special beauty, which is important because generic beauty was always overflowing in our lives. Anyone can pay to look good at the industry standard, so there is an uncanniness to it. Yet on the bus, the girls look stripped down. We are no longer the dream weaver, how-did-she-get-that-perfect beauty. On this bus, each girl’s aesthetic is unique again. There is a small woman with a big nose, whose collarbones look like sensuous daggers. Another woman with long hair, her split ends catching in the sunlight like silken spiderwebs. There is one whose top lip is pulled so tight, it looks sewn on, which accentuates the contour of her immaculate jawline. Other than editorial modeling, no one wants to deal with this type of beauty. Too much effort must go into marketing, otherwise the looks are too exotic to draw in the big crowds. It makes me wonder how these girls were chosen for the cohort. A talent scout once said, “Just because you put up a lightning rod, doesn’t guarantee lightning is gonna strike.” To become a star, you need beauty, talent, timing, but also some subterranean luck.

The girl in the wool sweater looks at me again, but she feels far away. All the girls do. Maybe this way is better. I don’t form preferences for who will live or die at the end. Our bus is herding us to the conceit of the Match-Hunt. Some of us will succumb. Some of us will succeed. That’s just the way it is. Like auditions, but higher stakes. Those who lose cannot return to Real Life knowing the secrets of The Hunt. Generations down the line should all have a fair shot without intel and lowdowns to help them. If those who lose must die, I wonder, does the Match-Hunt proliferate beauty or prune it? Can there ever be too much beauty?

I try not to worry for us. If Talia is the most beautiful to me, it must be that I am the most beautiful to someone else. This is why we will each find an Ideal Mate, and survive the Hunt together. I nuzzle into Talia’s shoulder, and feel her warm hand shelved on top of mine. My brain feels smooth and slow in the heat of the bus. She is the only one who feels like a real human to me.

▴ ▴ ▴

We meet the Hens upon arrival, which is an acid shock. They are so ugly, they seem to exist in opposition to life itself. They have downturned faces that peer out through flaccid flesh, as if their bodies are trying to absorb their features. Their heads melt into their necks, which ooze into their bodies, forming a mound. I imagine termites crawling out of their giant pores, then shudder remembering how I handled their letters so tenderly all summer. The handwriting in the letters had been severe and sterile, as perfect as if it had been inscribed by a lathe. I had imagined the Hens would be as pencil-wisp as their correspondence, but now I can hardly bear to think of them as human. The dissonance between the beauty of the bus ride and the grotesqueness of the Hens makes it seem as if some law of nature has been irreversibly damaged.

The other girls do not seem so bothered. The Hens cluck and coo in excitement as we walk in, but are prone to spontaneous breaks of composure. All around I hear, “How did the bus treat you?” and “How do you fare?” They spit in their hands and smooth down our hairs. They swallow us up with intrepid admiration. Inside the cocoon of their bodies, it smells of lotion smeared into old bedsheets. They pull at us, peering inside our ears and nostrils. I’ve been taught to check every hole of mine twice before heading out the door, I am used to this level of scrutiny. It’s the attitude that’s unnerving. The hens are murderous with approval, inciting waves of jealousy amongst the girls. We mirror their violent delight, and plumes of hostility ripple through our midst, as we fight for attention from the Hens. It’s natural in us, this desire to be loved best. I get an elbow in my rib, as I send a foot out to block one of the girls. Talia and I stay close to each other, like a wall. The Match-Hunt is already a brutal competition.

A stomping noise breaks the skirmish. We scatter apart as a procession of bodies comes into the room.

“Those are the husband Henches!” Talia whispers to me.

The husband Henches hold long sticks, which drag on the ground and make an awful scraping noise as they saunter in. They are more brusk than the Hens, the hairs on their hands wiry and pubescent, their bellies’ shapes nameable. Each Hench pairs up with a Hen, standing slightly to her side and behind her, like some sort of accessory. Though the Henches wear heavy leather masks, they are deliriously repulsive. The Hens can suddenly be considered appealing in comparison, through some acrobatics of the erotic.

“We don’t have to match with them, do we?” I ask in horror, which makes Talia laugh.

“They’re taken, sweetcheeks,” Talia giggles. “The masks are to keep Passive Incidents of Sexual Tension at bay.”

I nod, though I do not feel at risk of any Passive Incidents.

▴ ▴ ▴

Night slips over the BorderHouse like a sheath. Windows darken and candles go on. The Henches collect our phones, headphones, and iPads before we can attend the inaugural communal dinner. A tall Hen with seven warts down her neck like the Little Dipper beckons to me. Her mouth is a perfect upside-down “U” as she reads my form, and she sucks on a pen.

“I’m Flaustine,” she says, her mouth splitting her face open to reveal hidden lips smeared in lipstick. “You’re Reva.”

If this was a script, it could read like caveman dialogue, but the way she says it is regal, as if anointing me.

“I am delighted by this arrangement,” she says. Her glassy eyes sparkle.

We sit down in a room that looks as if a run-down nightclub was converted into a banquet hall. The girls are seated on the left side benches of three long wooden tables, and the Hens sit on the right. The walls are black velvet, and I can tell the Henches are standing strategically to hide the stains on them. They line the wall like decorative objects. There are fragrant platters of covered food on the table, lit by candelabras and sconces along the walls. In this light, everyone looks like they have been summoned from death. Our beauty is sanded down. We chatter as if we are not covered in bruises we just gave each other, taking care to introduce ourselves, though I have seen some of them on TV before. Layli and Tessa sandwich me, and Leonie, Masha, and Vamika sit down the lane. Talia is sitting one table away, but she keeps turning around to wink at me and mouth comments at me. I am relieved I can still lip-read what she says. A Hen appears at a podium in front of the dining tables and Talia mouths, “Head Hen” to me.

Head Hen taps on the microphone, then begins to speak.

“Welcome, women of the forty-seventh annual Match-Hunt Cohort. You are the most aesthetically gifted group the BorderHouse has seen in years. You should be so proud.”

The girls around us begin to pitter, but Talia and I roll our eyes at each other. We are used to remarks on our beauty, but even more so, streams of criticism. Scrutiny. We are calloused enough by flattery to ignore it.

Head Hen begins the history of The Hunt:

“The Hunt is hundreds of years old,” she tells us. “It started with an offshoot of a pilgrim colony in geographic Canada, but The Hunt is agnostic to nation-borders. Its founding mission is to serve as a ballast against the quicksand suction of the moral degeneration of the modernizing world.”

As she speaks, there is a rhythmic pounding noise. It is the Henches, beating their staffs onto the stone floors. The echo creates a low droning din. I stick my fingers in my ears, but the other girls seem impervious. Even Talia is so drawn into Head Hen’s speech that her mouth is hanging open. Is that drool? Her eyes go glassy. The other girls make similar faces. No one blinks, though some of their eyes water. The Hens are unaffected.

When the speech ends, the Henches stop the pounding. Talia’s eyes seem to return to her sockets, and she smiles drowsily at me. There is no time for chatter. The Hens uncover the platters, to reveal entire roasted chickens, soups with balls of floating meat, three varieties of mashed potatoes, and plates of charred broccoli. The smell is overpowering, but the Hens stick their forks directly into the food and begin to eat. Some of the girls look like they are still waking up. I place a single meatball from the soup onto my plate, watching the others before I chew. Food had been a major point when Talia taught me Match-Hunt strategy.

“The food will be liberally available. Overeating is the easiest way to self-select out. You have to eat enough to keep strong, but never indulge.”

It’s not hard for me to abstain. Hunger was part of the growing pains of teenage stardom. You had to keep looking like a teenager, even as your body began to bank calories for a never-arriving womanhood. Our look was “teenage flecks,” even after Talia and I hit our twenties. Lack of calories left us underdeveloped. Concave. As the other girls begin to politely fill their plates and eat, I see Talia has only taken a few broccoli stalks. The Hens rip chicken wings off the body and chew so voraciously they spray spit onto the table. I feel sick watching them, and my few bites leave me feeling dumb and full. At the end of the meal, I fight to keep my eyes open as the girls line up with their Hens and are escorted out the door.

Flaustine pulls me aside.

“You will be staying in my special quarters with me,” she says.

My drowsiness kills my motivation to ask her any more questions. I simply follow her as she takes me away from the other girls, away from the Henches, and away from Talia. We go down several hallways until we reach a single room, lit by a candle. The walls are stone, and two tiny beds press against the wall on opposite sides of the room. My bags are already there, laid out and unpacked. I wonder if her warty hands have been in my stuff.

“You can go to bed,” Flaustine says, and I am relieved of further curiosity. I crash onto the mattress, ready to drown myself in sleep. As my consciousness unlatches from me, Flaustine’s voice cuts in.

“Remember this: sometimes the rules and regulations are aesthetics, and the game has already been played out.”

It sounds like a song, the way she says it. A warm pleasant feeling washes over me, and I spread my limbs around in bed, imagining them loosening off of me. Nothing feels real at that moment. Images bubble up in my mind of me meeting my Ideal Mate, of us falling in love, and starting a family. He looks like Talia, I think. I feel something warm and wet on my forehead. I open my eyes and Flaustine is hovering over me, giving me a bedtime kiss. Then, like a gate slamming shut, I fall asleep.

▴ ▴ ▴

The next morning, I spot Talia next to two other girls, giggling with them. I feel jealousy twist inside me.

“Welcome to First Assembly,” says Head Hen. “I hope you slept well at the BorderHouse. Your rest is important because the time to prepare for The Hunt begins now. I imagine you wish to extend the cheer. It feels wonderful to be among this chosen elite, but too much merriment will cost you your life.”

There are loud theatrical gasps, as if this is first-time news.

Head Hen continues, “The BorderHouse is so named because of our emphasis on borders, parameters, and regulation. Our job is to train you to your Match potential, and your job is not to embarrass us. It is now the time to learn the Borders, and prepare to Match. Here’s the first rule: you Match-Hunt alone. You have no friends nor allegiances in the House. Your only ally is your Hen, and her Hench by extension.”

I remember my dream from the night before. After the idyllic images of falling in love faded away, The Match-Hunt turned into a bloody game of hide-and-go-seek. Everyone was a Seeker, and I was the only Hider. I lasted till the end by stabbing my fingers into anyone’s eyeballs whenever they found me, stuffed inside a BorderHouse closet. In the end, Talia had not found me, and I did not have to kill her. I had crawled out of the closet, toward Harmony Village, alone.

Head Hen continues her speech: “Our job is to prepare you diligently to Match. Why do we care so much? Because if you fail, we are Castigated alongside you.”

Whispers erupt amongst us, but I remember Talia told me about this. Castigation means corporal punishment. An important training method.

“Honestly, I’d rather be Castigated than cancelled,” Talia had said.

I suppose we can take comfort in the fact that the punishments here are physical. Bodily pain fades away. And on top of that, since the Hens are Castigated alongside us, we can trust that their instruction and their strictness is for our own benefit. This removes the weight of suspicion off our backs.

“Even when a Hen gives you advice that is difficult to believe, or frightening to follow, you must trust them. You have no reason to doubt your Hen,” says Head Hen. “You must never disobey your Hen. Every action should advance your Hunting while also protecting your Hen. In turn, they will protect you. We are all on the same team here.”

Then we are introduced to how we will spend our days at the BorderHouse.

“Every year the BorderHouse must be swept of its old energy, and infused with your Fresh Spirits,” says Head Hen, holding up a toothbrush. “This is your responsibility as you prepare your mind, body, and space for The Match.”

She snaps her fingers and a Hench walks up to the stage, taking the toothbrush from her grip. His staff drags alongside him as he bends onto his hands and knees and begins to scrub each tile of the floor beneath her painstakingly, inch by inch.

“The point is not punishment, but preparation,” continues Head Hen. “You must develop physical stamina and mental grit in order to be worthy of a blissful life. Hench Henrik here will demonstrate what it takes.”

Hench Henrik crawls to the next tile and begins to scrub. Head Hen stands directly behind him, so close she looks as if she might mount him. She trails him, inspecting the floor beneath him as he crawls under her like a dog. Head Hen runs her fingers along the ground and licks it. She frowns. Fast as a whip, she slams his head down onto the tile. There is a loud crack. A girl screams.

“Let this be a reminder of what happens when you are not thorough,” Head Hen says as blood begins to pool around his head. “The Match-Hunt demands your full attention. Every waking moment is dedicated to The Hunt if you wish to advance to the final match, with your Ideal Mate.”

The Hench lifts his head slowly, and stumbles to get up. His movements are dizzy and uncoordinated.

“Thank you, Hench Henrik, for your offering to these girls,” Head Hen says. “Assembly dismissed.”

▴ ▴ ▴

We girls scrub all day in silence. Like me, they are scared we will miss spots if we distract ourselves with banter. After dinner, we retreat to our quarters. Flaustine takes me back to our special quarters, and asks me to shower. When I come back to the room, she closes the door. Her Hench is outside, and I measure his distance from us by the volume of his staff scraping along the floor. Flaustine sits me in bed and brushes my wet hair with her long, sharp finger nails.

“Relax your shoulders,” she says, and I do. The image of Hench Henrik’s head bleeding on the tile is still on my mind.

“You truly are so beautiful,” she says in a singing voice, still brushing my hair. “What was it like to be a pop star?”

I am too exhausted to speak with her, but I am even more scared to disobey.

“I don’t know. It was fun, sometimes. Hard most of the time.”

She pauses her brushing and her eyes are glassy and glinting in the candlelight. Her warts seem even bigger than they did when I met her, and they cast long shadows down her chest and throat. She looks like she is being sliced.

“Come on. You were part of the biggest pop duo of your generation.”

I wince at the reminder.

“Talia was everyone’s favorite. The fans, the managers, the backup dancers. It felt like what I did didn’t matter.”

“Could she do the show without you?”

“Of course not. They said she wasn’t a strong-enough voice.”

“Poor thing,” she murmurs, scraping through my hair again. “Did you ever think you could make it on your own?”

Talia doesn’t know this, but there had been a time when I tried out for a straight-to-streaming film. I wanted a solo career because our profit split was 75-25 in her favor, but she had founded the band. The audition had been a flop. I hadn’t made it past the second round, which they had advanced me to on name alone. I can’t bear to admit my disloyalty to Flaustine.

“Never,” I say. “They said that together we had a special kind of magic.”

“You know, that’s what having an Ideal Mate is like.”

“Like what?”

“A special kind of magic.”

She means this to be enticing, but I don’t feel anything. I knew of very few types of magic that were truly worth the pain that came with them. Celebrity least of all. Right before Talia quit, there had been an odd dissonance. The sales for Toxic/Tonic were at an all-time high, but the shows themselves had begun to go stale. The fans were riding off pure nostalgia. On our last show before the tour, Talia had no emotions. She was eerily quiet. Was it because she knew she was leaving for The Hunt, or was it grief for that rare magic, now gone?

“Do you think the point is for magic to last forever, or to have experienced it at all?” Flaustine asks, as if reading my mind.

“That makes it sound like we get to opt into magic. Being a star means you are used to everyone opting in and out of things on your behalf. Everything we did was to finesse our public image, no matter what it did to us.”

I had seen starlets only a few years older than me fade away, or worse, spiral into drug addictions, lose all their money after a shotgun wedding, and kill their creativity to become cooking show TV hosts. The meteor tail of stardom had an expiration date.

“Maybe I should admire what Talia did. Taking a stand. Opting out,” I say, but my eyes and mouth begin to feel heavy. The sleepiness of The BorderHouse is descending onto me.

“Maybe if you had left too late, you would not be selected into the Match-Hunt,” says Flaustine. “The standards are higher here than in the Real World.”

“Do you want to know something weird?” I ask, though my brain feels dense. “Sometimes on stage, when we had a bad show, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to rip Talia to shreds or kiss it better.”

Flaustine stops playing with my hair. A Hench scrapes right outside our door.

“Is that normal?”

“Of course not,” Flaustine says and blows out the candle. “Matters of Ideal Mates tend to be very black and white.”

Before I can think about what she could mean, she kisses my forehead like she is stamping it, and I snap into sleep.

▴ ▴ ▴

The next morning, my brain feels clean as if my dreams have been drained away. When I get to Second Assembly, the room is just as quiet as I wish to be, like everyone is experiencing the same hangover. The girls seem zoned out, barely lifting their heads as Head Hen tells us today is the day we learn how Match-Hunt works. My ears perk like flowers to sunlight, but no one else moves. Henches line up in the hallways as the Hens hand us each a sheet of paper.

“The Match-Hunt involves a questionnaire. You List into these papers. You’ll store them at night with us, in locked drawers. Your answers are the primary determinant of whether you will find an Ideal Mate. Do not lose them. They are due before The Match.”

There is a rumble of whispers. I look down at the sheet. There are only two questions:

This is an exercise of objectification: List your Requirements for your Ideal Mate. Please be concise yet thorough.

This is an exercise of objectification: List your Unrequirements for your Ideal Mate. Please be concise yet thorough.

My eyes blur. On stage, if I ever forgot a move, I could count on Talia to know it. But the Talia I see now looks vacant. Her head slumps, her eyes barely open.

“Questionnaires can be thought of as verbal portraits,” Head Hen continues over our din. “In your answers, paint an effigy with words. Go deep into your imagination to conjure an Ideal Mate, and then splay it to the page. It’s the only way to be certain of what you see in front of you during the Match.”

I try to think about my Ideal Mate. I want to know how to describe him. What would he look like? But all I want is someone who will keep me tethered to Talia in yet another new life. It could be anyone. Some of the girls have already begun writing on their sheets, words pour from them like barrels down a waterfall. I crane my neck to see what they could be writing, and a couple of other girls do the same.

“A NOTE ON SCOOPING,” Head Hen’s voice screeches. “Scooping means stealing answers. It is the most cardinal of sins. Never share the results of your Listing, never hint at what you desire out loud, or you may become an inadvertent victim of a Scoop.”

Pencils stop moving. The girls who were writing fold up their papers and place them out of sight. The room goes silent.

“When Scooping occurs, it is devastating, but only for one party involved. You. If you share your Requirements and Unrequirements, anyone can Copy-Cat. If the Scooper is more beautiful than you, more measured than you, more diligent...they will Scoop your Match away from you. Always keep in mind that your cohort is your competition,” says Head Hen.

The Henches begin to pound their staffs, and again the other girls’ faces loosen, then glaze over. Head Hen continues over the din.

“However, Scooping is absolutely preventable if we work together. So as a community, let us never share our Heart’s Wishes, spare a Deep Thought, or provide a Competitive Edge to another. If the itch to divulge becomes severe, consider telling someone much less pretty than you...Your Hen. Let’s protect each other, so those of us who survive can Match Chop-Chop.”

The Henches stop pounding, and the girls start to come back. I wonder where they go when the Henches pound, but as the girls return, a palpable tension moves through the Cohort. Paranoia and tension can be felt as papers are folded up and pencils put away. Suspicious eyes dart around the room. Now every Cohort-mate has become a possible enemy. I try to make eye contact with Talia, but she looks in every direction but mine. Fuck her. I am going to have the most perfect answers, articulated most perfectly on the page, guaranteeing the most enviable Ideal Mate. I will be so obviously competent, so destined to Match, the mere thought of me handing in my paper will have the Cohort ready to rip off my scalp. Talia can’t always be the winner in life. I have a shot here too and there has to be a way to do it without being as cold as she is. I am going to imagine a more perfect future than she can. I will write something so precise and descriptive that every Mate can be my Ideal Mate.

I will be guaranteed to live, just like Talia promised.

▴ ▴ ▴

I see Talia the next day at lunchtime, sitting with another girl. As I get closer, I recognize the girl who kept looking at us on the bus.

“Reva, do you know my roommate Monica?” Talia asks. “Monica went to middle school with us. She says our careers inspired her to become a songwriter.”

Monica waves at me, and I try not to scowl. It makes me sick that she gets to spend her nights with Talia. She is probably one of those people who thinks she is entitled to our friendship because she knew us before we were famous. I want her to get away, so I can talk to Talia privately. Something looks wrong with her. She has lavender and green circles under her eyes, the veins showing on her eyelids. Her skin is pallid, and her hair doesn’t shine. Her lips are bright cherry pink and puffy, like she has been chewing on them.

“Hey Monica, do you mind grabbing me a fork?” I say, and she eagerly scurries off.

“Talia, are you okay?” I ask.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she says, smiling faintly without looking at me.

▴ ▴ ▴

There is a yawn of three days before the Third Assembly. This is our time to draft our Lists. I am mostly siloed into my room with Flaustine, where I worry my pencil, tap it on the sheet, and never fill it in. Every time I imagine my Ideal Mate my mind goes blank. I just need someone who will love me back, but to win, I must be willing to bury the other girls under the Earth. It kills me to imagine the Other Side without Talia. And it kills me to imagine her Listing without qualm. I was never anyone’s favorite, all my life. Even my own mother left me. I don’t know how to work against Talia. I hate her for her lack of softness with me. For treating the competition like it’s real, with no moral quandary. Why am I always the one hurt by her wake? I grow depressed and find it difficult to leave my room, even for cleaning and meal times. Flaustine leaves me be. When I see the other girls, I see sadness etched into some of their faces too. It’s hard to face failure when you’ve already been a star.

▴ ▴ ▴

Another night of no dreams. At Third Assembly, my Cohort looks unhealthy and anemic. Their eyes are yellow, their lips are cracking. Talia sits next to Monica again. She looks the worst of all, so pale she is almost translucent.

Head Hen appears at the podium.

“Today we will give you our best advice on Listing.”

The Henches tap their staffs on the perimeter of the room as the Hens sit us in a huge circle. Then they form a concentric, smaller circle inside ours.

“Write your heart’s gaudiest wish,” Masha’s Hen says.

“Be shameless,” Raya’s Hen adds.

“Intoxicate yourself with your desires,” says Vamika’s Hen.

Once they have finished going around, they turn full-body toward Head Hen. She gives one curt nod, which looks more like her chin indenting the slab of her neck, and the Henches stop tapping.

The assembly moves forward on to its next topic: Matching Chop-Chop.

“It is prudent to List in such a way that no obstacle is created that could impede your success or expediency,” Head Hen explains. “So, how can we ensure you Match Chop-Chop?”

The girls around me look as if calculations are floating in the air around them, invisible but necessary to solve.

“For one, good penmanship is key to Matching Chop-Chop.”

“You must control the degree of indentation your pencil marks into the paper. Dark enough to read, light enough it does not shred the page.”

“Shredding is a common disqualifier,” Head Hen clucks in pity and disapproval. “Impassioned Listing is killer. Patient, prepared Listing wins.”

“You want to Match Chop-Chop because finding an Ideal Mate gives you Identity and Purpose and Someone To Go Home To,” Head Hen continues, taking great pause between the words so we can write it down perfectly. “You must Self-Know effectively to earn these things.”

▴ ▴ ▴

That night I ask Flaustine how to Self-Know more effectively.

“At its root, Listing is an exercise of hearing the heart, and obeying it,” she says.

“Every time I look at the questionnaire, my pencil gets stuck. My mind won’t flow. How come everyone else has an endless well of the future mapped out?”

“Sometimes the rules and regulations are aesthetics, and the game has already been played out,” she says again, and trails off into a hum.

Her favorite way to end a conversation.

I shut my eyes and try to drift off faster than her soggy lips can send me to sleep. In the half-land between waking and slumber, I see Flaustine’s face flickering. When I still my mind’s eye, it is Talia’s face I see in the gaps. Talia’s eyes are hard, but Flaustine’s are soft and caring. They flit back and forth until they begin to blur together, and I can no longer differentiate them. They both want to help me crack open The Hunt: make the fattest, beefiest, most perfect List. I relax further into sleep, and before I drift off, I have a nearly violent urge to kiss them both.

▴ ▴ ▴

When I wake up the next morning, my mind feels clean. My List remains empty, and I wonder if I should panic. I want to know how Talia’s Listing is going, but she is nowhere to be seen. Fourth Assembly opens with the introduction of a new cleaning task.

“Steaming,” says Head Hen, “is crucial to your enterprises as a future Mate.”

She holds up a plastic device that looks like a miniature metal detector, and calls over a Hench again to help demonstrate.

“Hench Mordwell will show us the tenets of patience and delicacy today.” She shuffles down to him, moving slowly and laboriously. She plugs the long cord of the device into the wall, and we watch the device turn on and sputter until it begins to emit steam. She hands the device to him, and he begins to move it up and down the heavy velvet curtain.

“One day soon,” Head Hen shouts over the sputtering of the steamer, “you will be steaming your wedding dresses. You will want to ensure they are flawless.”

She walks around the Hench, inspecting the curtain as he goes. The device is so small, it is completely ineffective against the curtain.

“You will need precision of technique to ensure your dresses are worthy of your beauty, and in turn, to ensure you are worthy of your Mate.”

She beckons the device from him, and begins to run her hands down the curtain.

“It would be so unfortunate if you exhibited poor taste or judgement, which trickles from your choices of Lifestyle to your selection of a Mate. Minutiae of detail matter, so please take this to heart as you List. Hench Mordwell, please come here.”

She opens the gurgling water pit of the steamer and pours it onto his face. He groans before falling over, clutching at himself as if trying to tug free of his own burning skin. His mask hides what must be a grotesque view. Boils form on his neck as water trickles out from under his mask. No one at the assembly makes a sound.

“The punishment must always match the crime,” Head Hen says, before dismissing us.

▴ ▴ ▴

That night we eat wearily. All of the girls look disoriented, their hair in frizzy disarray from the steam that filled the room, dehydrating us into nausea as we steamed cloth after cloth, handed to us relentlessly by the Henches. The clothing we steamed was too large for any of us, and made of various fabrics. Most of us had never steamed clothing in our lives, since that was the job of our costume designers and wardrobe managers, and it surprises us how brutal the activity is. Our arms ache and our backs are sore from holding up the machines all day. Talia is still nowhere to be seen. I look for her as my arms shakily bring food to my plate. I pick at it, working up the energy to eat between bites, until I spot Monica at the far end of another table. She is hunched over, her hair crimped from the steam. It looks particularly awful because her bangs are standing straight up, like she has been anxiously fussing with them. We will be taken away to our dormitories soon, so I put my plate down unfinished and walk over to her with urgency.

“Have you seen Talia?”

“She’s just a little tired. She was excused from cleaning today and she’s taking her meals in bed.”

This worries me. Talia is pop-star tough. We weren’t allowed to cancel a show or rehearsal for anything short of a life-threatening emergency. When our car got stuck in traffic while dropping us off to a live New Year’s Eve show, we both got kidney infections holding our pee so we could sing during the ball drop. We’d inhale painkillers to stave off hangovers if we partied too hard before a morning studio session. We don’t break when we’re a little under the weather.

“Listen closely, Reva. I want to tell you something important,” Monica says, her eyes darting around nervously. I lean in close. She begins to speak strangely, almost rhythmically, in a way that reminds me of the Henches’ staffs pounding. “Dig deep into the dusty reaches of your imagination, and use the new questions like a funnel.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“Rustle the edges of your fears to understand the boundaries of your understanding,” she says, gripping my arm. I pull it out of her grip, and she leaves a claw mark on me.

III.

“Gossip is not permitted at the BorderHouse.”

Something about this Assembly feels different, as if it demarcates a new season at the BorderHouse. It’s hard to say how long we have been at the BorderHouse now. Days have melded into nights, forming weeks I no longer can keep track of. They stopped announcing the Assembly number after the first week. The Match itself seems interminably far. How much more can they wear us down, make us prove ourselves? Girls who found the cleaning too hard have disappeared. Talia remains, though she has become skeletal and no longer speaks. Our Before in the Real World has faded so severely, it feels like a fantastical invention. The constant roulette of chores, work, and meal avoidance keeps us dull and obedient.

“The rules are for your own safety,” Head Hen clucks, and we all nod together.

There is no clarification of what constitutes gossip. In the Real World, gossip could annihilate your career or protect you from a predator. We all knew who was grooming who, and who slipped substances into drinks if he got you alone. But they don’t want us to help each other here. The wider the gulf between us, the more vicious we will be to each other. The more elite the outcome of the competition.

Head Hen beckons a Hench to the stage, and an especially burly one with blond hairs poking out of his protruding belly walks up. I don’t even wonder what his name is. I know she is going to hurt him gratuitously.

“Speak hearsay,” commands Head Hen.

She doesn’t even wait for him to say words. When he opens his mouth, she grabs his tongue and drives a nail into it as easily as if she had run a hot knife in butter. The nail is so large that it forces his tongue to stay outside of his mouth, and blood begins to gush down his chin. A couple of girls begin to sob.

“Never speak ill of the Match-Hunt. Never speak of it with anything but reverence. Our traditions are correct, and all else is slander.”

No time is wasted getting the pamphlets posted. They go up that evening all along the halls while we are cleaning. When we walk to dinner, there are enough pamphlets to fill an entire gallery. One catches my eye. I stop to read it. It is intricately illustrated with graphic panels depicting the punishment we witnessed in the morning. A title in bold serif font reads, why open your mouth when you have no taste?

The photo intrigues me as much as it repulses me. I want to look at all of them. The next pamphlet tells the story of a woman caught bedding with a Hen.

“A nose job,” the pamphlet says, “to prevent the sniffles of misguided lust.”

Both the Hen and woman’s faces are severed where their noses used to be.

“Most importantly,” the pamphlet reads, “they deeply regretted their action.”

The contrast of the beauty and the grotesque makes me feel my heart in my throat, reminding me of all the places my blood can travel. Another shows the Castigation of women who spoke a little too sweetly to each other. Their lips have been stapled together, and they are locked into a permanent kiss. I am not intrigued anymore, but petrified. I recognize one of the girls on the poster. Harlowe. First-name-only famous. She was huge five years before Talia and I blew up. A melodramatic queen of ballads who had the vocal range of Christina Aguilera and the larger-than-reality status of Mariah Carey. Even with her accolades, her fame was dying down when she chose to enter The Hunt. She refused to get plastic surgery, and no one wanted to see her shows anymore. She was a cheap booking for the national anthem at sports games, when she abruptly left a game one day. She dropped the microphone on the pitcher’s mound and walked away. She was never seen again, but we had all assumed she had made it to Harmony Village. How could she not? She was a generational talent. I look at her contorted face, her lips pulled so far forward I can see skin ripping, and understand that talent cannot protect you from exploitation. It doesn’t grant you humanity. In a place like this, only obedience will protect you. I feel sick. I pull the pamphlet off the wall and stuff it into my shirt. At dinner, I eat alone. There are not many girls left. Miraculously, Talia is still around, even in her spectral quality.

▴ ▴ ▴

“Do the Castigations scare you?” I ask Flaustine that night.

“Sometimes the rules and regulations are aesthetics, and the game has already been played out,” she sings over the scraping of her Hench outside. The noise is grating on the last of my nerves. The pamphlet is rippling inside my shirt.

“What if you are Castigated alongside me?”

She repeats herself, and the pamphlet scratching along my ribs makes me lose control of myself.

“Why do you always say that?” I huff at her. “Say a real answer!”

“That is a real answer!” she says, laughing so hard that spit dribbles down her chin, getting caught in her warts.

I try to gain control of my breath again.

“Just tell me what’s happening to Talia?”

“You were brought into The Hunt with a purpose. You will know what you are to do to find your place,” she says calmly, her voice trailing off into a whistle. “You must focus on your Listing if you wish to live.”

A desperation bursts out of me that I didn’t know was there. The last time I saw Talia, she was hollow. A rind without fruit. She has always been the tough one. Toxic to my Tonic. Not until The Hunt have I worried about her. Seen her as fallible. Seen her as capable of being hurt.

“I don’t know what to List. I can’t do it.”

Flaustine looks at me with disdain for the first time since we met.

“Do you want to know why you are here? You got very lucky. Yet, it could all change at a second’s notice with one wrong step.”

My heart is sieving in my chest, making the pamphlet cut into my skin. Tears leak out.

“Why can’t you help me?”

“You think the worst thing that can happen to you is death, but this place isn’t satisfied with such an easy escape.”

“What do they want from us?”

Flaustine is quiet for a moment.

“I used to be beautiful, you know. Just like you.”

She points at her warted, melting face, whose features get lost in folds of skin, and trails her hand down her body. I inhale the musty scent of cloth that wafts from her and I try to imagine her as beautiful. It’s impossible. She smiles wide at me, her yellowed teeth jaggedly misaligned. The pounding of the Henches’ staff fills our room and the heaviness of sleep pours over me.

“Was losing your beauty the worst thing that has ever happened to you?” I murmur as my eyes slip shut.

“Maybe. But at least I didn’t lose my mind.”

Flaustine kisses my forehead like she is branding it, and I snap into sleep.

▴ ▴ ▴

That night, I have my first dream since my arrival night. I dream my mind is being drained, my thoughts and preferences gone like in a bloodletting ceremony. After this, the Listing flows out of me like a gushing hydrant. I write a List that is robust and precise and garnished with intricate details of my Ideal Mate. I pray they find someone for me, and the Hens cluck quietly as they review my List. Bloodlust in their eyes as they tell me I have an Ideal Mate. “He will love you!” they caw. “You will love him!” They give me a flouncy white dress, a heart-shaped locket, and a veil that goes from my head down to my knees. The Hens nod and cluck at me, their approval so intense it feels lethal. Their beaks are cold on my neck as they coo into my ears, “Time to meet your love! Now put on your beautiful outfit!” I put the items on, and look in the mirror. I look so bright, as if I have been bleached. The Hens pat my hair and pull my dress, fussing over me as they walk me to our wedding altar. In front of the altar are rows of white chairs filled with women whose backs are turned to me. They all have red panda hair, and for the first time, I relax. Talia is with me. She would not attend something she did not want for me. I tell the Hens I am ready, and two of them walk me down the aisle, toward a man. I reach the end of the aisle, and my heart jolts when I see him. The man is handsome, like someone straight out of an underwear catalog. He is cut and trim, his hair blond and his eyebrows dark. My vows begin to spill out of me as I walk up to him. “I am your wife, always. I will please you forever. I am happiest when you are happiest,” I say in horror. I don’t know where these words are coming from. They erupt out of me, like small bombs. “Thank you,” he says, and walks to me, helps me up towards him. As he leans in, I catch something I forgot to List: his ears. His lobes are two orbs of flesh covered in peach fuzz, dangling on each side of his face like ballsacks. They throb as if they held their own heartbeat. I want to vomit. The officiant asks my Ideal Mate for his vows. He begins. “Hello my doll... I love you my good girl... I can't wait for you... I am so happy...this is your life...you wanted this...it was your idea...good girl...star of your life now... good girl...you’ll die if you leave me... you wanted this...” His voice sounds computer generated. “Kiss your bride,” the officiant commands, and I look away from my Ideal Mate into the crowd of Talias. What I see sends me into shock. Every seat is filled with a Hen, each with Talia’s red hair, round features, and bowls of cheeks. I want to scream, but my Ideal Mate’s lips land on mine, locking the sound in my chest as I go from bride to wife forever.

▴ ▴ ▴

When I wake up, I think I am still inside my dream. But it’s dark out, and I am in bed. There’s a heart-thump coming from my chest. A certain type of knowing, like my brain has puzzled out something it has been too tired to understand until now. I’ve lived the meteoric type of fame that destroys people’s ability to see you as human, and I had accepted this until now. But with the pamphlets going up and girls disappearing, they’ve elevated their charge against us. They're turning violence against us into a public spectacle, loosening our morals for us. Everyone loves to see famous women fall. Spiral. Crash out. Succumb to their own success. Even us. Competition is crazy-making. Every woman in the BorderHouse holds a dagger in her heart, and she would take it to your skull without hesitation if it meant she would live to Match.

That’s why I am going to leave The Hunt tonight. I can't force anyone to join me in some surreptitious revolution, but I can show them the way out. If Listing is an exercise in obeying, then I will shred every instruction. We all came from a Before, which means we each have the privilege of our own history. Its dissolution is the violence of The Hunt.

Sometimes the rules and regulations are aesthetics, and the game has already been played out.

The words ring in my head, and I would have believed them, if not for the circus of my life with Talia. She attracts me as much as she repulses me. So beautiful on the outside. So empty otherwise. In the morning, the BorderHouse will wake up and think I have vanished. But they’ll see the Lists are gone, and maybe the girls will have enough air away from their exhaustion to find a way out too. I want Talia to come with me. I am as obsessed with her as everyone else, but seeing the husk of her body has shown me her fallibility.

Teach me how to find you, I implore Talia in my mind.

As if summoned, there is a light in my room, flickering feverishly for my attention as it hovers. There she is, I think, and I begin to follow her. I creep out of my corridors, and she takes me in the same direction I have seen the other girls go every night, down the corridors. The hour is so late, even the Henches are asleep. My only company is the pamphlets, outlining the crimes of Cohorts before me. In the dim light, the pictures appear to move and dance, Castigations of the past reanimating. I see one woman who stole another’s List fingers shut into a panini press. Another’s eyes are being stuck with toothpicks, one by one. I wonder what she was not meant to see.

The hallway is longer than I imagined, but I am serene as I follow Talia’s light. She dances up and down at times, and I recognize some of the choreography from our most beloved song. I hardly remember that life anymore, but I know it was real. Eventually, she takes me toward a doorway, from which light seeps out. I know I have reached them. The other women. Talia hovers near the keyhole of the door, and beckons me closer. As I walk toward it, the air shifts. It becomes pulsating and moist, and I can hear a low sound throbbing in the undercurrent. A temperature more than a sensation. I peep into the keyhole. Inside the beds are lined up along the wall. Though the women are asleep, they are slightly propped up with their arms dangling loosely by their sides. Their legs are long in their beds, and they look pliable, like they would bend backwards if pushed even lightly.

At the base of each bed is a Hen. They lean over the beds, like a succubus, and chant toward the sleeping girls. I tune in my ears, as best I can, but the words are dull and guttural. I can only catch certain ones:

“Obey... Bliss... Mindless…good girl… you deserve…to be mindless…never been so relaxed…you want this…relax…accept… Obey…good girl… We all want the same… This was your idea…good girl…you deserve this… Mindless… You want this… Bliss…never been so happy…never been…so mindless…good girl…”

I can see the women more clearly now. They are glowing and fragile; pure potential, slumped in obedience. As their desires are erased from them, they become the ideal performers of a new life. I hate it. I stumble away from the door, but trip over something. I land with a thud. The chanting inside stops.

Talia’s light is gone, and I wonder if I should go inside for her. At the same time, I understand I am in the most danger. I am a Throwaway. Brought to appease Talia into The Hunt. Maybe they would have let me live at the end if I walked around with my mouth open, air yellowing my teeth, drool dribbling down my chin, decorating it with their definition of vanity. How can I fill out this questionnaire when every standard of beauty, desire, recognition is Talia. Every beat of my heart is supposed to pump blood to my brain, make it work, but instead it fires off neurons to the maligned beat: Talia Talia Talia. Requirements: Talia. Unrequirements: Not Talia. The way I want to rip her to shreds is the same way I want to love her.

A hand falls over my mouth, stops air from entering my lungs. The hand is large, with hairs on it, thick and wiry. Another hand latches itself over my body, and I hear a staff scraping as I am dragged away. Flaustine’s words ring in my mind:

You think the worst thing that can happen to you is death, but this place isn’t satisfied with such an easy escape.

As the Hench carries me in a direction of the BorderHouse I’ve never seen before, I understand where Flaustine’s beauty went. Once they are done with me, maybe I will agree that losing my beauty isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Maybe it was ever having it.