Cheeksapart: We Have Seen Better And We Will Tell You So

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Take everything off and come here. We have already started. There are two of us and one of you, and there is a form on the table with your name going at the top of it -- because tonight is not a video, it is an appointment. One word inside this opens your sheet, and only the ones who paid ever get that word. It stays open in front of you the whole time, and what goes into it goes in your handwriting, not ours. We start at the front. You will hold it out for us and we will not be kind about the numbers. Then you turn round, bend, and spread yourself open with both hands -- and you hold it, on a clock we control, while we talk about what we can see and do not lower our voices, because we are not talking to you. We are talking about you. After that it gets worse, and I am not going to tell you how. There is a smell test. There is a taste test, and you do it to yourself, twice. There is a box where you type the honest number and then a second box underneath where you type the real one. There is a section about the last woman who saw this, and whether she finished, and one sentence we make you write out word for word that you will hear in your own voice for years. And at the very bottom there is a verdict. It is greyed out. You do not touch that one -- we fill it in, both of us, while you are still bent over, and then you read it out loud to yourself, slowly, every word. You already know what it says. You have known since you were nineteen and nobody has ever been cruel enough to put it in writing. We will be.