He wept tears for them. Sparkling crystalworms that wiggled down his immaculate cheeks like so much venom. How thelight caught them, falling and squirming as if in anguish, splatteringwet and cheap on the warped wooden stage. The dolls reached up and brushedhis face with their stiff little fingers. Froze him like fire, burned himlike ice. He whispered their secret names and made them swoon with plasticpleasures. No Ubrue. No Eon. No Penette. Nihil. Null. Nothing. No...

When the lights became dimmed by the crackof dawn he made his way through the stink of cloves and their jealous eyes.The ones who he brushed as he passed with a corner of his coat hissed inchildish desperation, snatched at him with slippery fingers. He shruggedthem off as easily as raindrops. The thought was still glutted with Ubrue.So filled with Ubrue, knowing Ubrue. Ubrue and his sharp little fangs -he kept them for a souvenir. But that was silly, how could he ever forgetUbrue; Ubrue who knew, melancholy Ubrue, willing Ubrue...

Sector in the morning was slick with nightterrors. He skirted the sidewalks full of pain. He walked the junkyardswhere the damned sometimes liked to hoard their ruined treasures in tatteredsuitcases, in dented trunks, in sheets of plastic damp with dew. In someparts mutilated remains of automobiles lain, silent hulking shapes tamedby black flies.  They smelled like old worlds.

There was a little pool of viscous fluidby the deflated rubber of a moving mechanical. It was thicker than oil,so much thicker and still dripping from the crease of the half-opened door.A dozen of flies had already lathered themselves in it, beating their fatwings furiously to keep their swollen bodies suspended in flight.

Chrome grasped the cool handle and letthe hinges shriek cruel words at him through rusty teeth. The flies scatteredand then returned just as quickly. The smell was so strong, so sensuous,so cloying. It wrapped around him like an anaconda. The red had soakedinto the carpeting and into the seat covers. So red it was black. So blackit was fetid. So fetid it bloomed large poppy blossoms.

The boy in the car had slashed his wristswith a dull razor that rested now on the dashboard. A boy like cherry coveredin milk chocolate crushed by rough fingers. Chrome picked him up gingerly.His skin was fine, sweet caramel. The delicate skull with its mop of blackcurls nestled gently in the crook of his elbow. He put his ear close tothe bony ribs and heard a heart precariously beating. So soft a thing thepulse was, gentle and throbbing with the violence of staccato machine guns.

He brought the wrists to his lips and lickedthe wounds. They gus