I needed a new avatar for that Saturday's Masquerade, even though I was planning on sitting back and spectating from afar while Aunt Betsy continued her adventure. I opted for a nondescript costume of plain trousers and sweater with a tie around eye mask, then chose George as the name for my new beige persona. George would get no backstory, no personality, no nothin'. His only role was as a placeholder, a sacrificial victim in waiting.

By happenstance Aunt Betsy put her name down for the boiling oil game against two opponents, both of whom got dunked as she chalked up yet another victory. Both victims made a great show of overacting as they went in, then were pulled out as tar covered lumps curled up at the bottom of the cages. Aunt Betsy looked on with cold, smug satisfaction, two more victims added to her tally.

But the most notable event of the evening came at midnight, as Maise joined Lexie for her initiation deathplay, under a matching pair of Venetian avatars in beautiful ballgowns and sequinned masks.

Lexie was a tomboy with short blond hair and an intense expression. The two of them entered to a dramatic song with the refrain "Love me to the end", repeated over and over. The song built in volume while the pair made their way to the stage with considerable presence and dignity. Waiting for them was an imposing cabinet filled with spikes at the back and on the door, which was rigged to slam shut on the occupant. Maise (or Anna, as her avatar was named) went first - when the door was opened again she fell forward into the arms of the stagehands, who dragged her off to Limbo, her dress pocked with bloodmarks from the spikes. Then Lexie (aka Sofia) entered the cabinet herself, accepting her fate with courageous, passionate intensity. It was a remarkable performance on both of their parts.

The following week, Debs asked me for a favour.

"Maise is debuting a new avatar this week, so she wants some volunteers to get the character rolling. We have some ideas to build her up to challenge Aunt Betsy and maybe defeat her, but first she needs establishing with some early kills. Are you interested in helping?"

"Sure, what do I do?"

"She's going to make a show out of picking out her opponents, so be on the dancefloor ready. So you know, the convention when asking someone to volunteer for you is to go up and ask 'will you die for me?'. I told her to look for the vanilla guy in the boring sweater, so she'll probably come right to you."

"What about Lexie?" I asked. "What's she doing?"

"Uncle Morbid gave her a job, they've already put her to work at Morior Studios and she'll be starting as an angel this week. We have plans for her, don't worry about that... I planted the first seeds on Saturday when I spoke to her."

"Oh?"

"When she asked about the numbers on the name badges, I told her I was banking kills so I could get a particular swansong where I'd be sawn into quarters, crossways then lengthways."

"Are you?"

"I made it up on the spot. I knew Lexie had a thing for sawings from talking to Maise, I thought if I fed her a story like that it'd get her imagination running. I mean, yeah it'd be fun and they could probably set it up, but mostly I was messing with her head. I think it worked, time will tell."

Sure enough, come Saturday George waited in the crowd on the dancefloor to be approached by a dark haired vixen in a slinky purple dress and black glittery mask like the one worn by Julie Newmar as Catwoman. She looked me up and down, touched my neck with the point of her fingernail and purred a greeting.

"I'm Axiala," said Maise, in character. "Will you die for me?"

"Yeah, OK," said George.

----

Axiala's game of choice turned out to be Shredder, a card game played around a funnel sliding down to a set of spinning blades. Clearly this fed down through the trap to the basement and there had to some trickery afoot to make the blades safe, but you wouldn't know by looking down at it. The machine looked sharp, vicious and terrifying - George was seriously questioning his choices.

Two more volunteers joined us around the funnel. The first was Dolph, a soldier avatar who looked like an Action Man doll in a black balaclava mask. Dolph had exactly the same size and build of - who else? - Limbo Len, so no big shock that he'd be doing this. But in the other seat was someone more surprising, someone I would never have expected to willingly sacrifice themselves.
Magistralle gave me a little wave. Her wrestling gear and mask were pink this time.

We were each given an oversized playing card. On every round of play we chose to either switch the card for another from the deck, trade with another player or stick with the card we had. You couldn't repeat the move made by the previous player, the object was to avoid being left with the lowest card after two times round, whoever had that got dropped. At the moment of truth at the end of round two I found myself with the eight of clubs with the choice to either trade or stick, Magistralle having just switched from the deck. I looked across to Axiala, who nodded. I took this as a call to trade and did so.

The card she gave me was the two of hearts. Even if there were more twos in play, George was getting dropped. There weren't anyway - Dolph and Magistralle had a five and a jack, respectively.

I set aside the card and smiled at Axiala, who looked back with an impatient pout and a slightly raised eyebrow. Beneath my feet I could hear the foreboding rhythm of the spinning blades... wub... wub... wub. The shiny metal slide down there looked awfully steep, the wait for the inevitable interminable... and then the seat was released and I was falling, sliding on my backside towards the centre of the shredder. As I dropped through I felt the blades whipping against my body... of course they were soft rubber, so merely stung... as I landed on a pile of mattresses in the basement I heard a whooshing noise and looked up to see a torrent of stage blood being squirted upwards in a fountain from hoses hidden in the mechanism. Some of it rained down on my head as I watched, leaving me soaked in red goop as I tried to clamber up from the mattresses. Two angels were there to help me to my feet and take me off through the corridors to the same shower area and stairs I went to following Hyacinth's dip in the acid pool. I cleaned up, got changed and made my way up to Limbo.

The first to meet me there was Gillian, so apparently Magistralle had been Axiala's next victim after George.

"Hello, Gillian," I said. "I must say, I didn't expect you to be sacrificing Magistralle like that."

"I did it for two reasons," she said. "One, Magistralle had amassed enough kills, it was time to tag her out and try something new. But also, I did it for Maise. I don't think she remembers yet, but we were at school together."

"How does it feel seeing someone here that you knew in life?"

"A little sad, obviously it means they died. But it's also interesting that we both ended up here, doing this. It just goes to show, you never know what you have in common with the people you grow up with."

"What do you think of her as Axiala?"

"It's a good avatar, she makes a good villainess. I appreciate what she's doing building to a match-up with Betsy. Who is also a great heel, by the way, I genuinely had no idea she was going to turn on Hyacinth like that. Of course, Magistralle would have pulled you in anyway. She wasn't doing the job for anyone that night."

"Would you have been Magistralle in the actual wrestling ring, given the chance?"

"Probably not," admitted Gillian. "Lucha Libre is all about gymnastics and high flying out of the ring, whereas I was more of a submission wrestler, throwing people about and stretching them on the mat. But I do like the aesthetic, it's a lot of fun to put together."

"You carry it well, you have the body for it."

Gillian smiled. "That's very nice, thank-you."

"Do you miss wrestling?"

"Yes, a little. But definitely not working for a certain promoter."

"Why, what did he do?"

Gillian took a deep breath, as if thinking carefully about something serious. Before she could answer, the door opened and Len came in to join us.

"Hi, fellow luncheon meat," he said cheerily.

Nice timing, Len. Real nice timing.

---

We watched the rest of the Masquerade unfold on the TV monitors, including Betsy picking out Angel Lexie to oppose her in a game where both players sat in perspex boxes filling with fine sand. This was already bending the rules - angels could fill spaces in games, that's part of their job, but you're not supposed to single out particular angels and force them to compete. I suspected Uncle Morbid's complicity in this.

The game was the same word association game Maise had played against Didi beneath the cement mixer, only this time the sand was flowing constantly, so any time a player had the chute above their box they were getting buried. The game was very close - I remembered Debs telling me angels could play to win if you asked them to and she was doing all she could to maximise the drama throughout, allowing herself to get buried all the way up to the neck before making her final play for victory. As Lexie grabbed the air pipe between her teeth and the sand built up around her face, I saw Betsy make a last, mocking comment to her, just before she was buried completely. The game completed, the door on Betsy's side was opened, allowing the sand to flow out and the

stagehands to dig her free, while Lexie remained stuck inside her sand filled tomb.

I looked round to see what Len and Gillian thought of it all, but they weren't giving the screen any attention at all. They had moved closer together on the sofa and were in the middle of a prolonged kiss.

Good for them, I thought. I wasn't exactly shocked.