"Five ...four ...three ...two ...one..."

"On Tuesday, May twenty-fifth, the world was shocked when a horrible discovery was made on Wallabout Street in Brooklyn," Jane Whitney said on a very rare live televised show, standing before the backdrop of a roomful of seated people. "As many of you recall, early in the morning of that strange day, a man was found imprisoned in the most bizarre fashion imaginable, with his arms wrapped around a lamppost. His hands had been brutally amputated, and then his arms had been connected together in a crazy surgical procedure that can only be likened to a modernistic version of a medieval torture. For almost nine grueling hours, that man was a public spectacle, until he was removed from the lamppost by police and workmen. In addition to the amputation and connection of his arms, his mouth had been sewn shut, and a feeding and breathing hole had been placed in his cheek." A close-up photograph of the sewn-up mouth and blowhole filled the screen momentarily, then the picture switched back to Jane. "We have with us today the victim of that insane torture and mutilation. I would like to introduce you to Mr. Jerome Lewis...."

The applause was deafening as Jerome Lewis pathetically sat there in a chair, by himself, drooling, before the audience of the Jane Whitney Show. His loop was in his lap, a position he'd grown accustomed to while sitting. And right there, in the front row of the audience, sat Marshall Stanley, Jerome's agent and promoter, with the biggest smile he'd worn in years, because he felt as if he'd discovered the very next Beatles, at least for as long as he could ride the wave of gruesome public curiosity at Jerome's expense, all the way to the bank.

Jerome seemed a bit nervous as he looked to Marshall for a cue of some kind. And Marshall gave him one. He flapped his hands, indicating that he wanted his client to raise the loop, but Jerome just stared, paralyzed with stage fright. The audience was out of control, and the applause sounded like a hailstorm on an aluminum toolshed. Marshall overlapped his arms, with his hands on his elbows, to mimic Jerome's loop. He raised his simulated appendage while whispering with exaggerated lip motion to Jerome, "Flash the cheesecake! Flash the cheesecake!" They'd rehearsed what Jerome would do in the greenroom, and a hundred times before. But under the heat of the blinding stage lights, and staring at all those pairs of ghoulish eyeballs, and the cameras, and the woman with the microphone, Jerome's tongue was frozen to the roof of his mouth, and his mind turned into a wet sponge. But Jerome finally did get the hint.

Following Marshall's cue, he raised his loop, and the clapping, hooting, and whistling instantly subsided, replaced with gasping open mouths. Jerome wore a custom-made white T-shirt, with a slit from one sleeve to the other. This slit was buttoned horizontally across his chest.

"...Camera two, stay with those arms. Come in closer. Closer. Closer..."

The connection zone of Jerome's arms filled the TV screens in millions of homes across America. This had been the most publicized Jane Whitney Show ever. The bidding war for first public display had driven today's take well into six figures, with the promise of much more to come. Jane had even outbid Geraldo, Oprah, and Donahue, and the producers felt they were really out on a limb with this one -- no pun intended.

The room was dead silent. For a moment, even Jane was at a loss for words. With all her professional experience, she'd never seen an audience respond like this one. Her grip tightened around the shaft of the microphone. "I almost don't know where to begin," she softly said as Jerome lowered the loop back to his lap. "Jerome, what was the first thing that went through your mind when you found yourself out there on the street, attached to the lamppost that awful morning?"

With all the rehearsing Jerome and Marshall had done for the live debut, this question had never been considered. Jerome said nothing. His mind was blank. Marshall tried to communicate an answer telepathically to his young prodigy in the chair up there under the lights, but telepathy never works on TV, even for the pros.

"Jerome, I know you must be a little nervous," she said, then walked out from the audience and sat down next to her guest in another chair that had been placed onstage during the full-face camera shot of Jane during her last statement, followed by a series of horrified expressions of disbelief from a random sampling of the audience. She put her hand on Jerome's shoulder and soothingly said, "I know this must be very difficult for you." Jerome snapped out of his debilitating fright and looked into Jane Whitney's understanding eyes. "What was the first thing that went through your mind that day, on the lamppost, Jerome?"

"I...I don' know," Jerome said in a barely audible voice. Jane's face was less than a foot from her guest's, and she looked directly into his eyes. "First of all, everything I seen was like... upside down. So I think I was goin' out a ma mind."

"And that was the result of being blindfolded for six weeks?"

"Yeah. Dat's what dem experts tell me. I ain' seen nothin' for six whole weeks, and yo' brain suppose to make da image you see go upside down or somethin'."

"How sensitive were your eyes after not being able to see all that time?"

"I could barely keep 'em open. Dey was tearin' 'n'" --beeeeeeeep. "Dis clamp was on ma head all da time. I thought dey did somethin' ta ma brain 'n'" --beeeeeeeep. The people in the control room kept a tight rein on Jerome Lewis's language on the video digital delay, and while the surgery was not considered too obscene for national television, the word shit definitely was.

"Jerome, do you have any idea who would want to do this to you? Someone in your past? An old enemy? Someone who wanted to get even with you for something?"

"I don' got no idea. One minute, I'm on da street; da next minute, I'm on dat lamppost wit all dem people laughin' at me, 'n yellin' at me, 'n tryin' ta hurt me 'n'" --beeeeeeeep.

"We have some videotaped footage of you that we're going to play from that morning...."