In the movie–book–t-shirt story, we’d all love Miss Sneezy . . . Her deep courage . . . Her sunny humor.

 

 Sigh.

 

 No, unless one of us coughs up a new-fangled Frankenstein or Dracula, our own story will have to get a lot more dramatic before it would be worth selling. We need everything to get much, much worse before it’s all over.

 

 Screw the idea of creating anything original. It’s no use, writing some let’s-pretend piece of fiction. That takes so much effort for what little you get in cash money.

 

 Especially split seventeen ways. Royalty-wise. Sixteen ways, if you subtract the doomed Miss Sneezy.

 

 All of us silent, but commanding her:Cough.

 

 Hurry up and die, already.

 

 No, when everyone else walked out of that coffeehouse meeting, we were the smart ones. Yes, it looked like a crackpot venture that would lead to big trouble, but, hey—it looked like a crackpot adventure that could lead to big money.

 

 All of us sitting here silent, but commanding Miss Sneezy:Cough.

 

 All of us, we’re aching for her to help make us famous.

 

 That’s why the Reverend Godless botched the wiring to all the fire alarms. The very first hour we were inside. At least, that’s what he told the Matchmaker. Godless learned wiring in the military, and the Missing Link helped by holding the flashlight. For good measure, they checked all the phone lines. The one line they found still working, the Missing Link with his hairy muscles yanked it out of the wall.

 

 That’s why Countess Foresight stuck the tines of plastic forks in every door lock and snapped them off. No way could anyone use a key. Just in case her parole officer could track her by that bracelet. No, none of us wanted to be rescued—not just yet.

 

 Just all of us hedging our bets. Scenes that won’t be in the movie. This will all look like Mr. Whittier’s doing. Evil, sadistic old Mr. Whittier.

 

 Already, our team is forming up against the team of Mrs. Clark and Mr. Whittier.

 

 Miss America and Miss Sneezy already just plot points. Our sacrifice. Doomed.

 

 In the red and yellow shapes of electric firelight, in the carved wood paneling of the Gothic smoking room, sunk in the cushion of her leather wing chair, Mrs. Clark’s chin nods lower and lower, almost settling into her cleavage. She asks, did Sister Vigilante find the bowling ball?

 

 And the Sister shakes her head, No. She taps the face of her wristwatch and says, “Civil twilight comes in forty-five . . . forty-four minutes.”

 

 Miss Sneezy coughs—a long, rumbling, wet-gravel cough—and it’s all we can donotto cheer. She digs in her pocket for a pill, a capsule, but her hand comes back empty.

 

 Sister Vigilante excuses herself and starts down the stairs toward the lobby, toward bed, disappearing step by step, growing shorter, until the top of her black-tinted hair is gone.

 

 Our Miss America is somewhere else, kneeling at a doorknob, trying to pick the lock. Or pulling a fire alarm we know won’t work.

 

 Thanks to the Reverend Godless.

 

 The red light glows on the Earl of Slander’s tape recorder. Agent Tattletale shifts his video camera from one eye to the other.

 

 And from down the stairs comes up a scream. A woman’s long wail. The voice of Sister Vigilante, telling us to come quick. She’s stumbled over something.

 

 The Lady Baglady. A new stain. A knife wrapped in the fingers of one hand. All around her, a dark lake of her blood melting into the lobby’s blue carpet.

 

 Long dark hair seems to twine down one side of her face and disappear into the collar of her fur coat. But at the bottom step, when she’s life-sized, the braided dark hair is blood. Under the sculpted hair on that side of her face, her ear is gone. Sprawled there, she holds out one hand filled with red and pink, a shining pearl earring in the center of the oyster-mess, catching the fake firelight. In her palm, cupped next to the pink ear, the diamond of her dead husband.

 

 With all of us looking down the stairs at her, the Lady Baglady smiles. Her head rolls to one side, to look up at us, and she says, “I’m bleeding . . . so heavily . . .” Beyond her pale face and hands, a path of blood seems to trail off forever. Her fingers relax, and the knife slips to the carpet, and she says, “Now, Mr. Whittier, you must let me go home . . .”

 

 Elbowing the Earl of Slander, Comrade Snarky says, “What did I tell you? Look.” She nods toward the top of the bloody braid and says, “Now you can see the facelift scar.”

 

 And Lady Baglady is dead. Sister Vigilante says this, holding a finger to her neck. Blood smeared on the Sister’s finger.

 

 At this point, our future is set. Done. This will be our meal ticket, telling people how we witnessed an innocent human being driven to commit suicide, plus adding the story of Lady Baglady slumming. The tragedy of her husband. The Brazilian oil heiress, kidnapped. Screw the idea of inventing monsters. Here, we just had to look around. Pay attention.