"Wanted, wanted, Dolores Haze. Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet."

He sat on the swingset alongside Charys Murphy with a book in his hands, reading aloud. Cherry was only fourteen, so her legs were like straws under her Meadowview skirt and she put multicolored clips in her mouse-brown hair. They were both swinging back and forth, back and forth; Ray's shoes were loafers and they scuffed the rubber on the ground under the swingset when he let them dangle, and kicked the brown autumn leaves all around them.

She tilted her head at him. "Is Lolita really about *****, Mr. G?"

"No," he said aloud, "it's about doing so much harm to another person that by the time you realize it, really realize it, it's too late."

Ray was hungry. He had the Devil in him and the Devil needed to eat, and what the Devil ate was flesh and blood and bone; he was famished, and, looking at Cherry Murphy, he knew that if he took her hand and bit through the muscle and tendon at the place where the thumb joined the heel of the hand, he'd be satisfied. He was a dragon on a hoard of gold and he'd devoured any number of knights who came to vanquish him in battle. He knew if he scooped her eye out of her socket and crushed it between his teeth he wouldn't be so hungry any more.

He thought of real food, human food, to try and stave off the hunger -- but French toast and shepherd's pie and deep-dish pizza just made him feel sick.

"You're a wolf in sheep's clothing, Mr. G," said Charys. "You look like us, you act like us, you walk around like us, but you grind our bones to make your bread."

"What?"

"Is there really a difference?" Charys was eighteen; she scuffed her sneakers against one another and pulled the chains of her swing so she rocked back and forth, back and forth, the blood in her veins just under her skin smelling like frying bacon or cooking caramel corn.

****

"Is there really a difference?"

Ray was hungry. He was sitting on the swing with his arms folded over his chest like it might contain the hunger, and Gene had his hands on each of the chains, holding the swing still. The hunger was worse this close; he could lay his hand flat on Gene's chest and feel his heart beat. He did. The book had fallen open on the rubber under their feet and landed to stretch its spine.

"They say," said Gene, smiling at him, "that the human heart is the best meal in the world. That once you eat one, you never have to eat another one again."

Ray shook his head; didn't say anything about that, just shook his head. His stomach was starting to wrench with hunger.

"Do you want mine?"

He opened his mouth to say no, but instead what came out was him digging his fingernails into Gene's chest hard enough to draw blood -- and his fingernails were sharp enough to do it, this time, and blood stained his rose-pink shirt in rivulets. He cried out, because he always cried out in pain, didn't he, but he closed his hand around Ray's wrist and said, "You always did. Take it. Eat it. Spit out the aortal tissue, I hear that's tough -- just --"

"Stop it. Shut up," said Ray, and he got up to walk away, but instead what he did was reach into the pocket of his khaki trousers and pull out his Swiss Army knife. "Get away from me," he said, and flicked out the longest blade.

"You don't mean that," said Gene, pleading, his grip tightening.

Ray removed his hand from Gene's bleeding chest, and he let it drop to his side -- except it didn't drop to his side, it lifted up and struck him across the face. His other hand stuck him with the knife and he fell; but when he hit the ground he hit the book and blood started to stain the pages. The knife clattered to the ground as Ray stared at him. He wasn't horrified yet. He was too hungry to be horrified.

"I don't think there's a difference," said Gene, his voice normal, then Lolita turned red with his blood.

****

Blanche was covered in blood. Her blood or someone else's, he couldn't tell, but as Gene bled to death under his feet and Cherry seesawed back and forth on the swing next to him, Blanche was staining her swing bloody as she swung back and forth, crying. She cried loudly. She cried really goddamn loudly, he thought, and he couldn't block it out of his head and all it did was stir his hunger. On the next swing over from her Steph was staring out into space, whitefaced, a chunk of flesh bitten out from her shoulder.

There was blood running from his mouth, he realized. He reached up to wipe it off. But he was thirsty like he was in a desert surrounded by sand. So he wiped it onto his hand and then smeared it on his lips instead.

"Why did you do it?" sobbed Blanche.

I don't understand, thought Ray. His mouth said, "I was hungry."

"I'm fourteen," said Blanche. "I'm only fourteen. Fifteen," she corrected, "in June."

"I was a daisy-fresh girl," said Steph, staring ahead of her, "and look what you've done to me."

"I don't understand," said Ray out loud this time and was surprised his mouth obeyed him. Blood ran out of his hands from where they touched the metal chains of the swing. A few swings over, Steph passed out and slumped out of her swing; he tried to get up and go to her but he was too hungry. Blanche kept crying, her head in her hands, blood all over her dress. Next to him, unattended, Charys was starting to swing -- back and forth, back and forth, higher and higher.

****

He was sitting on the ground: on the rubber, in the leaves, with Gene's head in his lap. Gene was bleeding to death and three words were carved into his chest, a knife lying nearby; Ray had one of his hands in his hand and the other hand on his forehead. He didn't feel hungry any more; it had been replaced by some kind of dull, cramping ache in his breathing that was worse anytime he brushed Gene's hair with his fingertips. He closed his eyes.

"I don't think there is a difference, Mr. G," said Charys, swinging higher and higher.

Ray said nothing. Gene's face was very white.

"I don't think there is a difference," continued Charys, swinging her legs to propel her, "between screwing someone and screwing them up in some other way. Or at least not for you, Mr. Freeman, is there?"

Absurdly, Ray immediately wondered what Steph would think of such an inappropriate comment; but when he looked over she'd vanished, maybe died. The ache intensified, but when he looked back at Gene he realized looking away had made it abate in general, because it was back in full force. It was like a vise was crushing his chest.

Blood coated his hands from the chains of the swing. He smeared it on his shirt, which was white, but that just turned it red.

"Your car is limping, Dolores Haze," sang Charys, "and the last long lap is the hardest."

Gene's blood was starting to puddle on the rubber around them and Ray shut his eyes and bowed his head and fumbled for the knife.

"And you shall be dumped where the weed decays --"

He plunged it into his own skin, but that didn't actually happen, and suddenly everyone was gone and he was falling --

"-- and the rest is rust and stardust."

He hit the ground by the Municipal Bank Building from thirty stories up, and his bones shattered and his organs caved in in a pool of blood; and his dun-colored tie was stained bright red as he stared, unable to blink, at the Destiny City skyline.