That stung. "I wasn't asking you to," I mumbled.

"So you're still there! Take my hand and lead us out."

I pulled myself together. "You'll have to follow my voice, babe. Your memoriesare too intense for me."

We resumed our slow progress. I was sick of crawling, sick of the dark, sick ofthis lightless horrid existence, disgusted to the pit of my soul with who andwhat I was. Was there no end to this labyrinth of pipes?

"Wait." I'd brushed by something.

Something metal buried in the earth.

"What is it?"

"I think it's--" I groped about, trying to get a sense of the thing's shape. "Ithink it's a cast-iron gatepost. Here. Wait. Let me climb up and take a look."

Relinquishing my grip on the pipe, I seized hold of the object and stuck my headout of the ground. I emerged at the gate of an iron fence framing the minusculefront yard of a house on Ripka Street. I could see again! It felt so good tofeel the clear breath of the world once more that I closed my eyes briefly tosavor the sensation.

"How ironic," Euphrosyne said.

"After being so heroic," Thalia said.

"Overcoming his fears," Aglaia said.

"Rescuing the fair maid from terror and durance vile," Cleta said.

"Realizing at last who he is," Phaenna said.

"Beginning that long and difficult road to recovery by finally getting in touchwith his innermost feelings," Auxo said. Hegemone giggled. "What?" I opened myeyes.

That was when the Corpsegrinder struck. It leaped upon me with stunning force,driving spear-long talons through my head and body. The talons were barbed sothat they couldn't be pulled free and they burned like molten metal. "Ahhhh,Cobb," the Corpsegrinder crooned. "Now this is sweet."

I screamed and it drank in those screams so that only silence escaped into theoutside world. I struggled and it made those struggles its own, leaving me tokick myself deeper and deeper into the drowning pools of its identity. With allmy wilt l resisted. It was not enough. I experienced the languorous pleasure ofsurrender as that very will and resistance were sucked down into my attacker'ssubstance. The distinction between me and it weakened, strained, dissolved. Iwas transformed.

I was the Corpsegrinder now. Manhattan is a virtual school for the dead. Enoughpeople die there every day to keep any number of monsters fed. From the store ofmemories the Corpsegrinder had stolen from me, I recalled a quiet moment sittingcrosslegged on the tin ceiling of a sleaze joint while table dancers entertainedJapanese tourists on the floor above and a kobold instructed me on the finerpoints of survival. "The worst thing you can be hunted by," he said, "isyourself."

"Very aphoristic."

"Fuck you. I used to be human, too."

"Sorry."

"Apology accepted. Look, I told you about Salamanders. That's a shitty way togo, but at least it's final. When they're done with you, nothing remains. But aCorpsegrinder is a parasite. It has no true identity of its own, so itconstructs one from bits and pieces of everything that's unpleasant within you.Your basic greeds and lusts. It gives you a particularly nasty sort ofimmortality. Remember that old cartoon? This hideous toad saying, 'Kiss me andlive forever--you'll be a toad, but you'll live forever.'" He grimaced. "If youget the choice, go with the Salamander."

"So what's this business about hunting myself?"

"Sometimes a Corpsegrinder will rip you in two and let half escape. For awhile."

"Why?"

"I dunno. Maybe it likes to play with its food. Ever watch a cat torture amouse? Maybe it thinks it's fun."

From a million miles away, I thought: So now I know what's happened to me. I'dmade quite a run of it, but now it was over. It didn't matter. All that matteredwas the hoard of memories, glorious memories, into which I'd been dumped. Iwallowed in them, picking out here a winter sunset and there the pain of ajellyfish sting when I was nine. So what if I was already beginning to dissolve?I was intoxicated, drunk, stoned with the raw stuff of experience. I was high onlife.

Then the Widow climbed up the gatepost looking for me. "Cobb?"

The Corpsegrinder had moved up the fence to a more comfortable spot in which todigest me. When it saw the Widow, it reflexively parked me in a memory of a graydrizzly day in a FordFiesta outside of 30th Street Station. The engine was goingand the heater and the windshield wiper, too, so I snapped on the radio to masktheir noise. Beethoven filled the car, the Moonlight Sonata.

"That's bullshit, babe," I said. "You know how much I have invested in you? Icould buy two good whores for what that dress cost." She refused to meet myeyes. In a whine that set my teeth on edge, she said, "Danny, can't you see thatit's over between us?"

"Look babe, let's not argue in the parking lot, okay?" I was trying hard to bereasonable. "Not with people walking by and listening. We'll go someplaceprivate where we can talk this over calmly, like two civilized human beings."She shifted slightly in the seat and adjusted her skirt with a little tug.Drawing attention to her long legs and fine ass. Making it hard for me to thinkstraight. The bitch really knew how to twist the knife. Even now, crying andbegging, she was aware of how it turned me on. And even though I hated beingaroused by her little act, I was. The sex was always best after an argument; itmade her sluttish.

I clenched my anger in one hand and fisted my pocket with it. Thinking how muchI'd like to up and give her a shot. She was begging for it. Secretly, maybe, itwas what she wanted; I'd often suspected she'd enjoy being hit. It was too lateto act on the impulse, though. The memory was playing out like a tape,immutable, unstoppable.

All the while, like a hallucination or the screen of a television set receivingconflicting signals, I could see the Widow, frozen with fear half in and halfout of the ground. She quivered like an acetylene flame. In the memory she wassaying something, but with the shift in my emotions came a correspondingwarping-away of perception. The train station, car, the windshield wipers andmusic, all faded to a murmur in my consciousness.

Tentacles whipped around the Widow. She was caught. She struggled helplessly,deliciously. The Corpseg-rinder's emotions pulsed through me and to my remotehorror I found that they were identical with my own. I wanted the Widow, wantedher so bad there were no words for it. I wanted to clutch her to me so tightlyher ribs would splinter and for just this once she'd know it was real. I wantedto own her. To possess her. To put an end to all her little games. To know herevery thought and secret, down to the very bottom of her being.

No more lies, babe, I thought, no more evasions. You're mine now.

So perfectly in sync was I with the Corpsegrinder's desires that it shifted itsprimary consciousness back into the liquid sphere of memory, where it hung smugand lazy, watching, a voyeur with a willing agent. I was in control of theautonomous functions now. I reshaped the tentacles, merging and recombining theminto two strong arms. The claws and talons that clutched the fence I made legsagain. The exterior of the Corpsegrinder I morphed into human semblance, savefor that great mass of memories sprouting from our back like a bloatedspidersack. Last of all I made the head.

I gave it my own face.

"Surprised to see me again, babe?" I leered. Her expression was not so muchfearful as disappointed. "No," she said wearily. "Deep down, I guess I alwaysknew you'd be back."

As I drew the Widow closer, I distantly knew that all that held me to theCorpse-grinder in that instant was our common store of memories and mydetermination not to lose them again. That was enough, though. I pushed my faceinto hers, forcing open her mouth. Energies flowed between us like a feast oftongues.