A Ten-Year Dream, All in Vain

A mortuary reconstruction specialist has spent ten years beside Mike, from his days as a down-and-out boxer to his rise in business, and their wedding is one day away. On its eve, she restores the remains of an unidentified woman and discovers the body is Mike's long-missing mother. Before she can tell him, she is kidnapped and dragged into an underground fighting arena, where her face is disfigured, her voice poisoned into silence, and she is drugged and tied onstage to be auctioned as a human stress toy.

With her eyes swollen nearly shut, she watches Mike kiss his lover Jane in the crowd, then bid thirty thousand dollars to slap her a hundred times. Jane, a psychologist, urges him on, and he chooses ever more brutal programs, shattering her wrist and fingers. Only the red mole on her hand and her voice make his friends wonder if she is his fiancée, but he dismisses the thought. Bleeding and pregnant, she claws the first stroke of her own name into the blood on the floor, and when Mike sees it, his pupils contract.