Jerry Johnston sat in the Delta Airlines boarding area. The time was 2:34 in the morning. He stood. He lifted his shoulder bag. He took a few steps. He put the bag down. He patted jacket pockets. He felt papers. He lifted the shoulder bag once again and returned to his chair, actually the next one over. He sat in that chair. It felt cold.

Rita sighed, already tired of the neighborhood grocery store. The products on offer were gray and rancid, and she turned away in disgust from a woman intently inspecting a package of ground beef with yesterday’s sell-by date.

Today was special, and Rita would not settle for anything less than a perfect treat.

The moon hung in the dark night like a single, severed buttcheek, pale as—

No, that was terrible.

The moon was a Swiss cheese hole, but inversed, because it was cheese-colored and the sky around it was—

No. That was even worse somehow.

The early morning commuter train from Boston screeches into the station at historic Concordia, the affluent community where a sports jacket is required at the town dump and where geese are prohibited from flying in over the town line.

There was nothing more dangerous than rounding a corner. As an older stickbug, Anise could feel her exoskeleton creak as she bent by even the slightest degree, she wouldn’t dare push too hard for fear of forming a crack along her delicate body.