I SIT AND WATCH as each of the toe-tapping, sweaty-browed boys take turns disappearing through the door when the woman comes out to call them. They wish each other luck when their names get called and stare at shoes when they come out to leave. They’ve all got stacks of paper and glossy photos. They’ve got messenger bags and stylish haircuts and foam lattes. My lap and hands are empty.

 

When the last of them is sent out and thanked for showing up, I smile and nod my head. He shows no teeth but attempts a smile back. I watch him as he steps through the glass doors and into the street, watch his shoulders separate and rise as he takes a deep breath, watch them ease back to center upon release. And then they call my name.

 

On the other side of the door, the light is low, the air less conditioned. Where there were plastic folding chairs and fake plants back in the waiting area, here there is nothing but a long steel table across the polished wood floor. Three heads appear to float ominously above it. I assume their black clothing is obscured by the lack of decent light, but I am secretly afraid I’m being judged by a band of disembodied pates with dead eyes.

 

“And what have you prepared for us?” the middle head asks.

 

The other two tilt a few degrees and seem to ask the same without words. I do not answer them as the lamps above me shutter to life.

 

I begin by reciting all the Google searches I made this year, starting with the most innocuous and working my way up to the most embarrassing. I attempt a few card tricks but end up playing several rounds of fifty-two pick-up instead. I take off my shoes and kneel, pressing my knees to my Nikes and pretending to be shorter than I am.

 

The heads subtly nod to one another in what I can only hope is approval.

 

“Go on.”

 

I trim my nails for them, starting with my hands and working my way to each toe. I remove my clothes and point to each scar, blemish, and deformity, noting the areas I feel I could really play up for effect. I drink down three liters of water and regurgitate it all into a small plastic pail, like the ones you take to the beach. The performance is hindered by the fact that I forgot to bring along the goldfish.

 

“Fascinating.”

 

“Avant.”

 

“More.”

 

I hold my breath for as long as I can, then wake up on the floor behind sheets of snot and saliva. I shave patches of hair from my scalp and craft dolls from the tufts in various likenesses—giraffe, elephant, aardvark. I place several long-distance calls and tell total strangers my deepest secrets on speakerphone.

 

The heads talk amongst themselves. Their words are sotto, their sound and meaning obscured.

 

I reach inside my throat and feel for the tonsils that aren’t there. I panic and start removing teeth, working my way through embedded molars and incisors. I place them at the altar of the heads, arranging them into a symbol I tell them means camera ready. When I lie on the floor and cover my mouth and nose with a soaked rag, the heads grow vicious smiles that sport too many slick-sharp teeth to believe. They lick at the enamel and lean forward, extending impossibly from the table beyond their branded glasses of Coke and bowls of mixed nuts.

 

“More.”

 

“More.”

 

“More.”

 

I sing out every stanza of the national anthem in broken Sanskrit and krump to the best of my ability. I pull a fake cigar from my pocket and recite lines of Freud in my best Groucho Marx. I perform simple arithmetic. I lecture on the molecular substrates of memory. I do cartwheels until I can pull one off in perfect form, which takes seventeen tries. I scream to the rafters in ghoulish tongues and make like every tree I’ve ever known and just shake. I burn under the hot stage lights aimed at my fleshy form and sweat buckets that pool into bodies of salt and oils and metabolites. I pirouette on tiptoe, finishing with a slide to the knees that removes the outer dermis and leaves the floor streaked in red. Heaving, I bow my head.

 

Clapping sounds emerge from the heads. Whistles flow from their wolf-life mouths. Tears fall from their dead eyes like huge raindrops and mix with the mess on the floor.

 

“Enchanting.”

 

“Resplendent.”

 

“Auteur.”

 

The woman with the clipboard walks me out to the waiting area. She checks a box on her call sheet and thanks me for my time. She wipes her nose several times with her bare hand and puts it on my shoulder, squeezes me in solidarity—or pity—I can’t deduce which.

 

“We’ll call you if we need you.”

 

And I float out the door and into the street, naked and broken, wishing I had spent the thirty-eight dollars on the eight by ten glossy.

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William M. McIntosh is a writer of drivel and collector of rejection letters. He loves literature, film and any other kind of art he can get his grubby little fingers on. His work has been published by Maudlin House, The /tƐmz/ Review, The Yard: Crime Blog, BarBar Magazine, Night Picnic Press, The Lowestoft Chronicle, Roi Fainéant Press, and Your Impossible Voice. He doesn’t tweet, but if he did it would be @moonliteciabata. You can find links to his work here. He is based in Cincinnati.