The exterminators wove their bags from the vodka strength of the noonday sun, killing the shadows straight off when they stuffed them in the bags. But Culver wove his bags from the strands of dawn, from when the first few beams trailed across the fields, not too bright, but just bright enough that they couldn’t slip through the stitches.

Hailey, startled, fell backwards on her rear. She was ten, and mushrooms had never deigned to talk to her before.

She wondered if she could transform into a bear, or an ant underground, something that could burrow into the depths of the soil or rock and stay there for months in the winter, unconcerned with the cold or with cages.

Victim One: 56-year-old male Gary Beary. Balding, supervisor. Assaulted with a desk on the fourth floor of the insurance building on 10th street.