THAT'S WHEN WE'LL EXPLODE

"And we become," said the hostess, "silhuettes when our bodies finally go."

Nobody seemed to find this statement strange, everybody being busy as they were milling and talking and admiring the fantastically gross art that adorned her walls.

"I want to walk through the empty streets," she droned, "But all the news reports recommended I stay indoors."

Several people wandered off, moving towards the groaning buffet table where explosions of cheese interpolated with grapes and figs stood in variegated baskets. They began to coo excitedly as they closed in, picking up speed, so that they were virtually sprinting by the time they reached the table's edge. Reaching out with tremulous fingers they hestitated, hands hovering before the succulent food like hummingbirds, moving from side to side as they sought something particularly delightful to eat first, but paralyzed by their indecision so that they ate naught.

"I've got a cupboard with cans of food," said the hostess, reaching up behind her head to begin undoing her magnificent coiffure. It was done with amber and bronze pins, and rose like an ornate beehive towards the vaulted ceilings. Each pin was a foot long, and wickedly curved, seeming to capture the light and mellify it, to absorb and jelly the luminescence that was incandesced out of the lambet light that the candle flames phosphorized with wicked radiance. She held each needle up and then plunged it matador style into passing servants, the length disappearing into buttucks, shoulders, breasts. The servants were quite composed, possessing an almost British mien, and did not complain.

"And it won't be a pretty sight," she admonished the remaining group, who broke out into comradely guffaws, bending over as if suddenly cramped with the worst of Montezuma's curses, faces scrawning up and mouths opening wide to reveal carried teeth and long, lizard tongues that unrolled like Oscar carpets down their jaws and chests and across the floor, interlacing amonst each other and soon the whole group was enmeshed in their own tongue web, a throbbing, pulsing mass of spittle wet red flesh.

"To someone," the hostess said, turning to leave, "Someone I used to know."