Popcorn 9: Page 9 person," saw the reflection of his face. He could see the damage Michael's short-yet-sharp nails had caused: a circus-red scratch running in a straight line from his left ear to more than halfway across his face. Damage that a heavy, neurotic man in a self-absorbed, ever-dieting world could ill afford.     George saw warm, red blood, and he imagined the scar likely to remain in its wake. Grasping blindly for support, he clutched the broken, white plastic Teensy Weensy Book Lite that lay on the nightstand next to his bed. The portable reading lamp had come into his possession at a white elephant Christmas gift exchange held at the bank where he worked. At first, he had cursed his luck at picking that gift from the pile, almost tossing it into a trashcan while waiting for a bus home. Later, though, he found the lamp particularly useful for browsing pornogra-phic magazines while in bed. Its small light fell only on the pages and not on his body, which he preferred not to see while masturbating. The very morning of the day he would kill Michael, he had stepped on the lamp while scrambling from bed an hour late, breaking a piece off the lamp's plas-tic shade. What remained came to a sharp, dan-gerous point.     George held the shard of plastic as if it were Michael's neck, so tight that his fingers stopped aching.    "I FUCKED UP," he screamed, turning back to the dead man. Not dead enough for George, who proceeded to assault the remains with the make-shift weapon. Lamp shade and fist rose and fell and rose and fell, the force breaking Michael's skin and cracking some of his ribs, allowing his blood to surface.