Tension mounted as the three judges, who wore 1920s style film director’s jodhpurs and berets, took their places on the set. Chef Gordon R. Crank stood in the center flanked by Gram and Joe Slick. The cameras rolled. Slick, with arms crossed, had his back to Crank. American viewers would be reminded that four of us remained as finalists in the most intense cooking contest on the face of the planet, on the back of the planet, on the sides of the planet and future planets yet to come...
She read her reviews and her recipes out from under her wig of childlike hair, red and terribly cut. All of her, bony elbows and satin skin, beneath those thin red wisps that framed not her face, but the teenage figure of a boy. Somehow, she almost made skin that looked to bruise easy seem sexual. Almost. She was terrible. She was what is left after and changed. Rotting.