Like a predator who had no further use for its prey, Karol tossed the limp body of Clive aside.

“I wouldn’t use your Remark. Not yet.”

Devon had never listened to the people trying to kill her, and she wasn’t going to start now. With a smirk she slid into a stance for killing tyrants, then ran at him at speeds inadvisable.

Karol blocked the attack with a fleshy elbow and coughed out a laugh.

“Don’t tire yourself.”

Another attack, reckless and improvised, this one all Devon. It was aimed at his pupiless eyes. Without dignity Karol covered his head, hands taking superficial cuts.

“Oh, you really are a bother aren’t you.” With head still covered he charged.

Adam flew off in the opposite direction and Devon kept her grip. Her dangling feet burned across astroturf as she held on for dear life.

”Sorry, should have warned you, there was just no time.”

“Yeah, no time.” Devon said, struggling to speak. Far below them Karol was on his feet. It had taken him five backyards to realize this was pointless, and from a mad dash he had slowed into a mad saunter.

The path he took was scorched earth, revealing a gooey pink substance underneath the fake grass. Devon didn’t know much about dirt, but from her limited experience, it usually wasn’t pink.

”Some distance will do us some good.” Karol’s voice occupied her mind. The imprint of Adam shivered within it, not used to a new voice appearing so soon after the welcome eviction of Clive.

The man, bestial and slovenly, snorted and turned away, retracing his steps.

”You’re running?” Devon said, trying to provoke even as she dangled from Adam. “Aw come on, did those scratches wound your ego? Is one little boo boo all it takes to bring down the Gutter of Gutworth?” She took a clump of green grass in her hand and tore it skyward. Beneath it was that pink substance. Reminded her of fish paste left in daylight. Slightly springy and very greasy.

“No. I’m gathering ingredients.” Around him the remains of placebos rose again. Bodiless heads rolled after him, legless corpses dutifully crawled. Bodies bisected hopped arm and arm, separate beings now, but with a remembered kinship.

Wasting no time, Devon flew down and was running as soon as she hit the ground. She cut down the trailing placebos when she could, and then threw herself at Karol with the help of her fast twitch fibers.

He turned, caught her in his claws, and threw her right into the closest house. Flying through the window the glass shards hurt like hell but it was the impact with the far wall that knocked her out.

.

.

Karol had a mother who looked exactly like him.

Karol had a father who looked exactly like him.

Karol looked nothing like either of them. They reminded him of this constantly.

He came from a long line of Meagers who knew what shape to twist into, the thought that he would be the one to break it was far more than he was capable of. They used a special meat to get the form all Meagers had.

With it came beautiful greasy skin, robust cheeks, hands fit for a massacre and a stomach that showed its mouth’s work. But he was not allowed to eat the food that made them so, so beautiful.

He tasted every morsel he could, but they all made him ill. He was gaunt and unseemly, the job he had was forgotten and became a dream. His past had been eaten, and he couldn’t even stomach the scraps.

He would look up at his parents with their beautiful hair and perfectly coiffed mustaches and ask, no, demand them to tell him how, how were they able to get such a perfect, corpulent, cromulent form.

”That's easy” they both said in unison, “We eat something delicious! But we can’t tell you.”

”That hurts me, beloved ma and papa. For what could possibly be so delicious yet so taboo that it justifies obscuring it?”

”Because we are eating people like you and me Karol! We are saving them a century of rotting and a clear easy final bow with Death with nothing left behind. But society frowns upon this because there’s something in us that gives us the ick. But that’s a false response, one everyone who matters survives, the fact that it’s delicious should tell you we were always meant for consumption.”

And Karol understood the glorious secret his parents had learned, and he thanked his dearest papa and mama, but they had never existed. He was simply a man in an alley eating corpses, developing a private justification that got more convincing with every bite.

And after that, he became a very successful restaurateur.

…

She was out for only a moment. That was her assumption.

The floor beneath her was cold and metallic, and the air here smelled of oil and sour milk. This wasn’t the large bedroom she had fallen into. Someone had moved her here.

“Adam, what-“

”I don’t know.” Even for him it was a serious tone. Alarmingly urgent. “Look. Up.”

Above them stood a heavyset placebo lit by a violet spotlight.

While half of his face was sloughed off, what could be seen reminded her of Karol. Albeit a more handsome, younger version. The type of actor who would have portrayed him in a play, Devon thought. (She had never seen a play but her dad had told her about them. The only ones that still ran were propaganda meant to incite.)

“Consider, if you will, a chef. What is his worth?” Karol said from some unknowable place above them. “Is he not entitled to the freedom of his craft? The chance to experiment to his heart's content, tradition and procedure be damned?”

With no sign of the black strings that had controlled them before, the Karol placebo moved with Karols words, making wide dramatic movements that matched the impassioned way Karol was speaking. Devon gripped Adam tightly and sliced off the placebos head. Her arm outstretched, her whole body pointed like an arrow, she kept that pose long after the head had hit the ground. Nothing happened.

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But then it continued miming, sticking to the script like this was all planned.

”The benefit of living is that you can reinvent yourself an infinite amount of times. I have lost count and it’s not necessary to inform you of the specifics. It’s safe to say I was not always like this, but I had picked myself up from my bootstraps, shuffled into Gutworth with no credit to my name, and I -”

Groaning, Devon scanned the blackness, trying to find where Karol was pontificating from.

”He’s here, he’s definitely here. Wait for your eyes to adjust he’ll reveal himself.”

Another spotlight flashed on and Devon jumped, almost throwing Adam as a reflex. There was a table here. The now headless Karol placebo and another placebo walked into the spotlight, bowed, and stood on opposite sides of the table. There was a plastic fish bolted to a board that Devon assumed was meant to be read as real.

The placebo Karol mimed scooping out imaginary guts before putting them on an equally imaginary plate.

“I quickly became a successful and productive member of society, as far as Lumpen would define it. An entrepreneur in the culinary arts. I had a few cravings one would call unusual, but it did not interfere with my work. As base and pedestrian as it was, I treated it with respect. I scooped the guts out of fish and fed them to the masses. Soon the business and accolades I was entitled to followed. And yet I went to bed every night-“

The spotlight winked out, ushering in darkness as the Karol placebo seemed to turn itself off.

”…Empty.”

“Everyone in this town sure loves to explain themselves.”

“This isn’t explaining crawl shit.” Devon said derisively. She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted, “Cut to the ending!”

The Spotlight came back on. The two placebos from the last scene were now staring at a bloodied kitchen block with plenty of different tools. Unlike the fish, the blood seemed to be real. While one was pretending to cut into the fish, the Karol placebo hovered behind them, his expression nervous.

”The people I worked with meant less than nothing. I was a fool wasting my skill on mere animals. The Art, the true Art, was a phantom flavor at the tip of my tongue. I knew how to make it real.”

Without warning the Karol placebo suddenly gripped his hands around the other’s neck.

“I knew how to gut a fish.”

Over and over again he slammed the placebo on the kitchen block, his blood mixing with what was already there. Light on dark, two toned.

Then, suddenly at ease, the placebo Karol hoisted the corpse onto the block and began preparing him. Scooping out his organs and placing them on the nearby oven top, getting a boiling pot ready. This was all done, none of it was mimed.

The spotlight cut off again, though the squelching sounds of meal prep remained.

“Did you know that my Art was an instant success? The news didn’t report this but every customer I had going forward never complained about the food, or ever accused me of using subpar ingredients.”

Once that sound had finally stopped, an assortment of different colored spotlights flashed on, displaying for the first time how vast the room they were in was. The spotlights covered a good 100 feet but still no walls could be seen. Beneath the spotlights there was a large group of placebos, most of whom Devon recognized, sitting at tables and pantomiming eating food. Placebo Karol’s back was towards them, and he had his hands clasped, surveying the people eating his work. His hands were still bloody from before.

“I had my fair share of complaints, valid and not so, but they all dried up when I began my Art in earnest. Their minds would lie to them, call it wrong and vile, but their mouths couldn’t lie. We taste great, and for that I was arrested!”

Two placebos wearing authoritative uniforms appeared and pointed at placebo Karol. All the lights disappeared except for the ones above the two cops and him.

She wondered who was working the lighting. It was quite an impressive production. The green spotlight followed the two as they walked over to Karol, overtaking his violet one once they overlapped. He hung his head sadly as the other two mimed cuffing him.

“And so they arrested me, claiming I was a menace. Compared to the town guards I was anything but. Life was already cheap, I was simply honest about it. I found a use for the ones that I killed. Should I have left the bodies to rot? Would everyone have loved me then? Why was it my fault I learned we tasted delicious?”

Devon could see his point, the city guard before Lemure took over wasn't perfect. They were thugs and brutes under the command of a Mayor who killed with impunity. But that didn’t make the fucking cannibal superior!

“Patience, Devon. Let him tell his story.” Adam had sensed her heart rate increasing and her blood pressure spiking. Any longer without him simulating her serotonin and calming her down and she would have done something foolish. She knew this as well as he.

The remaining light went out. There was a faint mechanical whirring. She sliced an arm off instinctively when it brushed against her. It was the placebo who had tried to beat them to death with a watering can. Devon could faintly make out the dull uncomprehending eyes and tight guillotine mouth. The placebo picked up the arm slowly and ran to her place. As she did the lights came back on.

A massive crowd of placebos was now gathered, watering can squeezed into the back of it. A massive crowd in this parlance being around 20-25 (Devon assumed those were all the able bodied ones that could be spared for this scene) but it was no less impressive. They mouthed expletives and curses as the small looking Karol placebo was ushered forward by the two guardsmen from the last scene. When Karol finally spoke, his words were shaky and a bit strained, like he had just been crying.

”I was treated like an animal. Never had I felt lower. People who days ago were begging for a seat at my table were screaming for my death. I did not blame them, the voice of authority is a powerful one. Even I felt myself being soothed by its sway. I started to view myself as a passerby would, a common criminal deserving of scorn.”

There was something (beside the undertones of crying of course) that piqued Devon's interest. It took her only a moment to realize what it was. His voice wasn’t coming from within her head anymore, it was coming from above.

”And that's when he appeared. A patron of the arts.”

An old placebo who Devon took to be a proxy for Lemure pushed through the crowd.

“He understood when something didn’t taste right. ‘This man isn’t a criminal, he’s a hero. You should all strive to be like him.’ Truer words have never been spoken. I remember his voice… straight from the chest he talked. Straight from it.”

There was intense choreography going on in front of Devon. Placebos in masks swarming the guards, those same placebos freeing the placebo Karol, yelling in triumph, but it was secondary, and it wasn’t a play Devon would’ve watched anyway.

Her gaze was fixed above, at a patch of darkness that resembled a human the more she looked at it.

It was a giant commanding oval standing at the crossroads of a large x above the spotlights, some sort of railing. The huge figure shifted, pushing at levels and wires. When Karol spoke again there was no question where the voice was coming from.

“He was already a man of some renown. The war and all, though I wasn’t one for politics.”

She found one of the pillars, riddled ritualistically with holes, and began scurrying up it.

”He had people who believed in him. They explained the misunderstanding, got the guards under control.”

Adam remained silent, and Devon made sure to think of nothing but the play. Couldn’t have Karol know they had located him. It seemed to be working.

“He gave me and the guards a proposition.”

Above him now, nearly there.

“To have a three way duel.”

She jumped down on the catwalk. A bit of a wobble, almost fell, but minimal noises. His speech was far louder than the sound of footprints.

“We have Remarks for a reason.”

She had Adam in her hand. Steady now, don’t fuck this up.

“So I did what was natural.”

With an unplanned grunt she pounced at his neck.

”I drew my Remark.”

Karol turned to Devon, and drew his Remark.