Drilling into the floor of the abyss, I find a rickety trap door with an old wood stairwell into the basement of iniquity. On the wall, lit by one sanctimonious candle, a cubist portrait of my once soft face. Years of hardened mistakes bake in the heat, unleavened by learning. Rote memorization is necessary before Mariana’s Trench-level analysis. Coldly, the cameras cut away to a scene of my birth on the craggy coast of a shore that will claim me.