It is four-thirty in the morning, not yet day but warming, the sky still mostly opaque, a phthalo green, now, as opposed to the onyx of true night. The boy is being led on a length of chain, handcuffed. He does not struggle. He does not speak. He is naked, shoeless; shards of glass cut into his feet as he walks, but he doesn’t seem to notice, only continues walking, bleeding. It is hard to guess his age; his testicles have descended and he has a thatch of pubic hair, but there’s no flesh beneath his epidermis, only bone reaching out through his skin, the ribs and sternum nearly free, the clavicle, skull, and vertebrae not far behind. The street is mostly deserted. The camera remains with the boy as he walks, so there is no way to tell where he is or who is on the other end of the chain. Two, three times, people appear behind him, their mouths open, frozen around words that won’t come, their eyes gaping, suspicious. All are wearing thick jackets, winter hats, and gloves.

The structure appears like a leviathan, a hellfire-red, rolling steel scaffold eight feet high and six feet wide. The back of the man on the other end of the chain appears, followed by another man; both wear vestments: an alb, girdle, stole, and chasuble. One has braids that fall to his shoulders, the other’s hair is cropped to his scalp. They undo the boy’s chain and handcuff his wrists to horizontal slats on opposite ends of the scaffolding, then his ankles, and move off-camera.

The boy is shivering. His skin has taken on a purplish cast.

The man with short hair reappears and places a small table to one side of the structure, and the man with braids places something on it too dark to see, and this is when even those who chose to watch the uncut version of the video reach for their trackpad, because the action dies for over an hour. The priests take up positions on either side of the boy, standing motionless, silent, and the camera doesn’t pan or track, only stares into the darkness encompassing the two men and the boy between them. Light emerges from the womb of night slowly, releasing gradient and line, detail, breath by skein, the advent of color.

One of the priests is Caucasian and one is African American, and both wear masks that cover their eyes and the upper slope of their cheekbones. The Black man’s mask is ivory, the white man’s onyx; both are hand-carved and polished to a sheen. The men’s vestments are identical.

Light flashes off a small puddle between them—the boy’s urine, passed under cover of night.

People come. At first, there are very few, and they are very cautious; we don’t see them, but the camera seizes upon their footsteps and voices, their breathing. We see a hand take the object from the table, hear a click and a loud electric whine. The noise stops, but the object isn’t returned, and we wait for the priests to object, but they don’t, only reach for a replacement.

The camera stares.

There are new voices, loud voices, and fresh footfall.

“Yo, man, what the hell you doing? What is this?”

“An offering,” says one priest.

“Foolishness,” says the other.

“What?”

“This man wishes to atone for his sins and those of his forefathers.”

“This man is merely compounding them.”

“Four fathers? What the hell you talking about?”

“He offers you his body and voice.”

“His body?”

“He offers nothing.”

“Da fuck do I want with his body?”

“It is what he takes from you, what his forefathers took from your forefathers.”

“Took from me?”

“I warn you, Friend, he only seeks to relieve himself of the guilt he feels.”

“I ain’t never seen this cracker before in my life.”

***

Time.

The white priest scratches his nose, checks his watch. The boy’s eyes are glassy, unfocused; his head lolls left, right, falls, jerks upright.

The day swells, the light growing increasingly intense, blinding the camera.

Time.

An hour more; people move around the periphery, but no one touches the object on the table, no one steps into the frame. The boy is awake if not alert, staring at the broken asphalt in front of him. The priests step off-camera, resume their places immediately, different, somehow—one shorter, the other taller, maybe.

The boy collapses, his knees corkscrewing out from under him. He falls forward, jerked backward at the limit of the handcuffs, dangles.

“Shit!” The Black priest rushes to the boy, tries to hold him up. “Help me get him down,” he says. “We need to get him to a hospital!”

“No,” the white priest says. His voice is different than before, higher.

“What do you mean, no? He’s going to die!”

“He isn’t.”

“So now you’re a doctor?”

“No, I’m seven hundred bucks short of making rent.”

“I’m calling!”

“The fuck you are!”

The Black priest reaches into his pocket for his phone, but the white priest grabs his wrist and twists it up behind his back. “Six hours,” he says.

“Let go!” the man flails, trying to jerk himself free.

“Take it easy, bro. Okay? Take a deep breath.”

“Fuck you! Let me go!”

“All we have to do is stand here for six hours, then we get paid.”

“He’s going to die!”

“He’s not going to die.”

“Look at him!”

The boy is in a fugue state, half-hanging and half-standing, caught in a torsion of spasms that send him twisting one way, then the other, like a marionette hanging from its strings.

“He wanted this, remember? He hired us to do this. He’s a sick fucking bastard, but that’s not our problem. Our problem is rent. Rent and food. Now, I’m going to let you go, and I need you to be cool. Can you do that?”

The Black priest nods.

“Good.”

***

A detente.

Time.

Light and wind; trash blowing through the camera frame periodically: a wrapper from McDonald’s, an advertisement from The Post, ticket stubs, and a plastic bottle rolling the length of the alley until it hits the Black priest’s foot and he kicks it away.

We don’t know this, but it’s Saturday morning, and even if much of the city didn’t make it home from their post-after-party breakfasts until seven or eight, it’s still New York; the ambient noise, constant, a susurrus of conversation, traffic, footfall, and wind.

It is just shy of eleven when the next person comes on camera, virility emanating from his pores, rising with his breath. He is twenty- five or twenty-six, walking with two women, his chest and jaw thrust at the world like a blade as his muscles threaten to burst from his tank top, which is visible because he’s unzipped his jacket to his navel despite the cold. His hair is done in tight rows.

“Fuck is this?” he asks, separating from the women, directly in front of the camera.

The priests tell him, one then the other, following the script.

“Whatever you say, man.” He gestures at the object on the table. “That an iron, for, like, tattoos and shit?”

“It is,” the Black priest answers.

The man takes the iron from the table, handles it, grins. “Don’t see many marshmallows around here.”

The priests are silent.

“You lost, Marshmallow?” the man asks the white priest, sunlight dancing off the diamonds in his ears. “And you.” He turns to the Black priest. “How stupid is you, nigger? How stupid you have to be to be hanging out with Marshmallow and his butt-ass-naked honky friend in Mott Haven?”

“Come on, D,” one of the women calls, “let’s get out of here.”

D ignores her.

The white priest says his line and the Black priest follows with his.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

D moves closer to the priests, muscles taut, teeth bared. A shard of light leaps from the tattoo gun. D clicks it on, unleashing a pulsating electric shriek.

“What I do know is your friend’s about to get a tattoo.”

The white priest nods.

“What?”

“It is foolishness.” The Black priest’s voice is barely audible as he speaks.

“Fuck did Uncle Tom just say to me?”

“He is here to atone for his sins” —the white priest’s voice cracks beneath his mask— “and those of his forefathers.”

“Fuck his forefathers.”

The man takes the gun from the table, grabs a fistful of the boy’s hair, and yanks backward, exposing his forehead and throat.

“You pussies ain’t even gonna try to stop me, is you?”

“Why would we?” asks the white priest. “This is why we’re here.”

Metal; motor; time.

The man finishes, drops the gun on the table without turning it off, squints at the priests, spits, and turns to go without a word.

“Shit,” says the white priest.

The Black priest doesn’t respond, reaches for the tattoo gun, and turns it off.

“What’s it say?”

The boy is semi-conscious, barely able to stand. He’s not supposed to talk, but we don’t know that, nor are we aware that he hasn’t eaten in twenty-two days, or slept for three. All we know is that he’s naked, emaciated, and cold.

And that this is the first tattoo.

The white priest tries to read it, fails. “I can’t make it out,” he says. “There’s too much blood.”

“It says, ‘This what happens to cracker-ass, honky, marsh-mallow motherfuckers who come to the Mott with their bitch-ass, bonky, oreo friends.’”

The white priest squinted. “You can get all that?”

“I watched him write it.”