Men with their tongues burned, knees crushed, eyes gouged out, piled in heaps on the side of the road to Stanley, mothers covering their children’s eyes.

Girls in rooms with blank faces, torn dresses, bloody chunks of hair torn from their scalps, bruised legs slick with men’s fluids.

A door opened, a girl found tied to a desk, almost mute.

A body, sewn in Hessian, arms crossed, tipped into the sea, making barely a splash as it sinks down into the dark.

Ah Lok brushing Trudy’s hair in front of her dressing table. Methodical strokes, the glossy strands, the sound of bombs outside. Trudy applying lipstick. Her jasmine scent.

Dominick’s refined head, in front of Otsubo’s legs. His eyes meeting Will’s, opening wide in panic, then deadening to gray. He didn’t stop, he just closed his eyes. Will, leaping back instinctively, yet knowing not to slam the door, having the presence of mind to conceal his intrusion.

A baby, born in the middle of the night, given away to an indifferent nurse, never seen by its sedated mother.

A young woman, just back from California, still puffy from childbirth, with empty eyes, arms filled with another’s child.