She rips her fingernail off and hands it to the nail technicians. The edge of the nail throbs. A bit of slime or blood? She is not sure anymore, but the contorting pain climbs up each joint, snapping past her shoulder to her neck and up to her face, making tears flow out., and she She squeezes her eyes shut. But this feeling of pain makes the body soften, to continue being torn apart. They finish painting and return the fingernail for her to snap back on like an assembly kit. The pain again squirms heavily, circling all over her body, bursting into tiny yellow particles.

Her husband finishes cooking dinner, then calls her at the nail salon to ask her to come home. She gets home, eats, then nurses the baby. The pain from the child sucking greedily as if on a rubber nipple runs through her heart, up her neck again, and spreads across her face. She aches and lets out a breath. Her husband immediately comes over to thump her back and squeeze her legs. His hands work the muscles, pinch the skin, twist and knead with professional skill—deeply relaxing, but it doesn’t hurt, so she tells him to stop. Then she goes up to the room, locks the door, takes off her wedding ring, turns on the machine, and starts talking. Her husband down in the kitchen checks the session and soothes the baby to prevent even the smallest sound from slipping through the crack of the door into the room.

She says hello. A viewer swears in the chat, so her husband blocks him. She holds up ten glaring red nails still seeping blood before the black lens and speaks into the white fur-covered microphone. The audience floods in clapping emojis. Some have already donated without her needing to ask. But she knows people will ask, so she twists off a fingertip herself: it spins, gradually separating from the remaining joint, revealing tendon and white bone. Blood and fluid ooze out thick, slick on the skin. Waves of reactions rush up, making her husband down in the kitchen switch to slow mode so she can call out names and interact. She smiles. Right at that moment, the child suddenly shrieks. The sound feels like it wants to puncture her eardrums., so sShe laughs loudly then pulls out three teeth at the same time. White microphone turns red. She wipes the camera lens, says that there’s a little technical difficulty to reassure the viewers, then runs downstairs. The child cries louder and louder. Not only are her eardrums punctured, but all the fluid in her cochleas has started spilling out. She loves it, but gets no pleasure from it:

“Damn you, what are you crying for, do you want this house to starve?”

Her husband is covering the child’s mouth. The child glares at him, its nailless hands scratching up the hairy back of his hand. She sighs. He sighs and hands her the child, then ends the session. She nurses the child on one breast while he helps pump milk from the other into a bottle and mixes in a little white powder. Then she gives the little one the rubber nipple, and it falls asleep instantly. Her husband puts it in the crib, hands his wife a fresh thermos of ice water, checks her makeup again before kissing her forehead.

She returns to the room, snapping the teeth scattered across the faux-leather chair back into place. The feeling of the roots piercing through the gums, her jaw throbbing, costs her five minutes sitting blankly in the chair, bouncing her leg, before regaining the strength to continue. Suddenly, her husband knocks on the door and calls in:

“A famous female person already has a family and children! Confirmed because this stupid female person talked too loudly and forgot to turn off her mic!”

She springs up, goes to her page, and sees hardly any fans left. The next session has started, but there is no one left in the waiting room. The ones who stay spit insults. She reads them, feels hurt, so she gets no pleasure from it. She knows her mistake already, so she finds her wedding ring to put back on, fixes her hair, looks closely at her makeup, checks that she is still in the frame, then begins gouging out her eyes.

Everything goes pitch-black, then turns yellow very quickly—Eyes against the skull. She strikes her lower belly hard. Blood leaks from her vagina, but she is sure it can’t get into the frame, so she pulls her teeth out again. Sticky drool almost makes her swallow the ring. The pain from the uterus running up to the jaw, cramming together, makes her unable to hold back a laugh. The throbbing pain makes everything completely yellow. Just a solid color. She scratches her neck, peeling skin, peeling flesh, and when the fingertips feel the blood pulsing in the artery and vein, she stops and smiles softly, believing the two skull sockets are still facing the camera’s magic eye.

Her husband speaks loudly, trying to make his voice carry through the doorway:

“A female person who stopped being famous because she had a family and children has become famous again!”

And she hears the sound of the door opening, footsteps, and the rustling as he comes in to find her eyes for her.