“An independent port city and (according to some) home of pirates, New Orleans was home to strange-looking creatures. A place where sea serpents pulled ships past fields where zombies worked, to docks where cargo was transferred to wooden wagons pulled by dwarf mastodons the size of Percheron horses and driven along streets paved with broken oyster shells. So no one would have thought it particularly remarkable when, for three days, an endless queue of young women stood outside the door of a luxurious room at the Masonic Fema simply for the opportunity to lift up their skirts or open their blouses to show off a tattooed thigh, breast or buttock to two judges who sat on a double armchair, restrainedly looking at the visitors, asking them a couple of questions, and then sending them out…”