"Next!" said a voice.

She cleared her throat of bile and regurgitation and tried to not slip on gore that slapped at her feet as invisible hands pushed her onto a stage in a small but permanent theatre. A stocky man with a bald head and tribal tattoos near his left ear, shoved a manuscript into the cleft of her exposed breasts and touched the still warm vomit.

"Read!" shouted a voice, light and cheerful, from the front row of the cramped theatre. "Live the experience. Know your character. Be your character."

Trembling with fear and disgust, she stepped over a dismembered arm, complete with hand and a gold wedding band, and looked at the crimson spotted manuscript. Blood slithered between her toes, tickling her feet.

"I said read, dammit," said the audience voice, standing up and waving his arms wildly as if he were being electrocuted. She noticed fifty other men watching her, all dressed in black tuxedos.

She cleared her throat. Her mouth tasted foul and she wanted to retch again. Her voice was thick as she mumbled. A sudden bang on the back of her head made her think she had been shot or battered with a hammer, and she expected to see brain litter the floor.

Louder," the bald man said.

Again, she looked at the audience member. He sat down and crossed his legs. She lowered her eyes to the manuscript. In a loud voice, she read. "Life finite, shan't be judged alone. Man cannot know truth, as truth exists post mortem. What is death but the end of truth, the end of being."

Her eyes flinched away from the words. She expected pain and agony, but saw only dozens of men gazing at her. "More!" shouted the man in the audience.

Tears flooded her eyes and dripped down her cheek. She felt them splat on her chest and arm. Something warm trickled down her leg and she didn't know whether the warmth was urine or her own blood. Adrenalin threatened to blow her chest apart.

She held back the sobs. The audience man shouted, "You're doing well, my dear. Keep going."

Despite her resentment, she nodded and continued. "To escape truth is to not escape death, but be encompassed by it, shadowed and foreshadowed, followed and fated by that which is inevitable. If east meets west, then life meets death and medium components seldom thrive. Seldom shall we live as we meet the truth of death."

The script ended. She dared not look up, dared herself to study the manuscript and wait for instruction.

"Very good, Ms Jacques," said the voice. "Exit right."

She looked up. "Really?" She shivered violently. "I can go?"

"That's the deal."

She looked across at the bald man who nodded at her and pointed across the stage to her right. She passed the script over to him and walked away, her heart furious in her chest, blood rushing in her ears to feel like a fly had nested in there, cleaning itself. Her feet kept slipping on gore and viscera, innards, ears, hands and fingers, loose teeth digging into the soles of her feet and wanting to make her bleed, but she felt nothing but the fear of losing her freedom and her life.

"Next!"

Her foot caught a long, tubular intestine, shiny and warm under the hot theatre lights, coiling around her ankle. She slipped and fell, pushing her arm out to protect her from the floor. Both tibia and fibula snapped, greenstick, under her weight. Her forehead hit the decapitated head of her husband. Her body twisted awkwardly, snapping her neck, and for the last moment of life, seldom as they are, she met the truth of death.