Dean thought about the way this sort of thing usually went in the movies. Your typical cinema hero, facing yet another round of torture, would spit in his tormentor’s face and say, “Fuck you.” Or some witty alternative.

What Dean said was, “Please don’t do it. I’ll do anything. I swear.”

A brief pause.

“Thank you, Dean.”

She snapped his thumb.

Dean’s next scream mingled with the laughter of Ms.

Wickman’s apprentices. Some of the laughter died off as their Mistress gathered his broken fingers in her hand and…squeezed.

Then squeezed harder. And harder still.

Tidal waves of pain slammed through Dean. His body bucked. The long, continuous scream that ripped out of him felt as though it might tear his body apart. Dean blacked out for a moment, only to be reawakened almost instantly by the agony blazing in every nerve ending in his body. At some point, Ms. Wickman relinquished her grip on his broken fingers, stood up, and moved away from him.

He heard her talking to her followers. There were four of them, ranging in age from mid-teens to early twenties. The oldest, a thin but tall boy of about twenty or twenty-one, hauled Dean off the floor and deposited him on the old sofa. The sofa reeked of mildew and rot, and it creaked beneath his weight.

Then Ms. Wickman loomed over him again. A long, thin cigarette was pinched between two fingers of her right hand. She took a draw on the cigarette, then blew a thin stream of smoke at the sagging ceiling.

She met Dean’s gaze and smiled. “Do you smoke, Dean?”

Dean coughed. “No.”

That strange, wicked smile again. Insinuating. Malicious to the core. “Well, you’re about to start.”

Dean felt terror again, sure, but now another feeling rose to the surface, a weariness he felt from the depths of his soul. “I don’t care anymore. Please kill me now. Get it over with.”

The woman’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Oh, Dean, honey, I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding between you and me.”

Dean drew in another sharp breath as she sat next to him on the sofa and draped an arm around his shoulders. He trembled beneath her touch, tried to cringe away from her, but of course was unable to move.

She leaned into him, her breath hot on his ear as she spoke. “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here, Dean. You see, we’re not going to kill you.”

Dean’s gaze swept over the mad woman’s followers, cataloguing a variety of minor injuries and mutilations. A missing finger here, a livid scar there…and the tall, thin boy was missing an ear.

Dean shook his head as more tears filled his eyes. “No. No, no, no. You can’t make me. I won’t…won’t be like… them.”

A dark-haired girl in a raggedy black dress and black Doc Martens laughed. “Where have I heard that before?”

More deranged laughter.

Ms. Wickman leaned closer still, her lips moving softly against his ear as she said, “You’ll be whatever I want you to be. You belong to me now.”

Then she put out her cigarette on the back of his mangled hand.

Dean screamed yet again.

And watched aghast as smoke rose from the seared pucker of flesh.

Two years later

Dream Weaver was a drink or two shy of being truly drunk. She had every intention of addressing that deficiency within the next few minutes. But first things first. She needed to get her game face on before wading back into the action. So she extracted a tube of lipstick from her Prada knockoff purse, uncapped it, and leaned over the sink as she applied a fresh coat to her full lips. She capped the tube and dropped it in her purse, dabbed away the excess with a square of toilet paper, then teased out her hair a bit with her fingers.

The image looking back at her from the bar bathroom’s tiny, cracked mirror looked less and less like a stranger with each passing day. This was a good thing. She wanted to obliterate every trace of the woman she’d been. Erase her. Replace her with something completely different. Whether or not that “something different” was something others would consider admirable was of no consequence.

Her flowing blonde tresses were gone, replaced by a choppy, dyed-black cut that made her look like a punk Bettie Page. Her formerly perpetual tan was also a thing of the past. The extremely tight and skimpy black top she wore accentuated her womanly assets and displayed a lot of very pale flesh. It looked as though the sun’s rays hadn’t touched her in years, which wasn’t too far from the truth. Ultrashort denim cutoffs hugged her still shapely ass. She turned to admire herself from a side angle, peering over her shoulder to get a glimpse of the new black rose tattoo on her lower back.

She looked good. Hot. She was a beautiful woman. None of the potential cosmetic changes available to her-short of a splash of boiling acid to the face-could change that essential aspect of her existence. But she was cool with that. It was the one thing about herself she had no desire to change. She was a much shallower human being these days, a thing she had no problem admitting to herself. Gone was the ditzy girl who fretted so about the feelings of others and worked to avoid using her looks to unfair advantage. In her place was a cool, cold-hearted bitch who knew damn well she was prettier than just about everyone else-and didn’t hesitate to make full use of the fact.

Someone pounded on the bathroom door, rattling the cheap hook-and-eye lock. “You about done in there? Other people have to piss too, you know.”

“Wait your fucking turn, cunt!” Dream snarled, her face twisting in a sneer.

Dream slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder and stared at her reflection some more. The only flaw in the otherwise perfect reflected visage was the tell-tale hint of red in her eyes. She dug a Visine bottle out of her purse, squeezed a few drops into each eye, and blinked away excess moisture until she could see clearly again.

The bathroom door rattled in its frame again.

Dream smiled. And waited. The redness was already fading from her eyes.

She waited another beat longer, until the door rattled yet again. Then she went to the door, popped the lock out of the hook, and opened the door. The girl waiting to use the bathroom was a scrawny thing, almost waifish. Flat-chested and curveless. She wore thick glasses and her short hair was dark with streaks of blonde.

Dream smirked. “There she is…Miss America.”

The girl rolled her eyes and tried to push past her into the bathroom. Dream stepped aside, allowing her entry. Then she shut the door and locked it again.

The girl’s face twisted in a scowl. “What are you doing? Are you a dyke or something? I don’t swing that way.”

Dream adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder and stepped forward. “I don’t care.”

She slammed the girl against the wall and punched her hard in the stomach. The girl’s eyes went wide with shock and pain. Her legs gave out, but Dream held her up and punched her again. Then one more time.

She stepped away and the girl dropped to her knees. A sheen of sweat broke out over her face and she lunged toward the toilet, flipping the lid open an instant before her stomach voided its contents. When she was done heaving, she looked at Dream, her lower lip trembling as she said, “Why…why…”

She lifted her glasses and swiped at a sudden flood of tears, unable to comprehend the outburst of violence.

“Because I’m a bad person.” Dream knelt next to the trembling girl, lifted her chin with a finger. “And you don’t fuck with bad people.”

The girl twisted away from Dream and cried some more.

Dream stood up. “Get yourself together. When you’re done here, pay your bill and leave. Don’t say a word about this to anyone, ever.”

Dream watched her a moment longer, then turned and left the bathroom.