Gary was sitting on the stairs that led from the street to his mother’s apartment. 

“This does not maketh me happy,” he said, then looked around to make sure no one had overheard. But of course no one had overheard; he was the last human on Earth, having missed the apocalypse by only a few minutes because he’d been busy cleaning coffee from his shirt. He knew his neighbor Charlie would point it out the entire trip if he didn’t. 

“But how did you spill the coffee, that’s what I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know, Charlie. Let it go, will you?”

“Oh Gary, Gary, the smell of it! The sight of it! How embarrassed you must feel.”

“Not at all. No, not at all,” he’d say. 

Charlie would say nothing for a minute, maybe two, but then his gaze would return to the stain and he’d start it all over. “Were you not thinking?”

“I was thinking about the apocalypse, like everyone else!”

“Oh, Gary, the embarrassment.” 

Gary could use words like “maketh” now, now that no one else was around to hear. He could recite Shakespeare, or shout the Pledge of Allegiance backwards, or in Spanish, if the mood was right, which it often was.

His Not-There Wife called to him from the kitchen. “Gary!” she said in Gary’s imagination. She pronounced it “Guh-ree” when she shouted, which was most of the time, or at least it used to be most of the time. 

“I picked you some flowers,” he would tell her.

“Guh-ree!” she’d exclaim.

Or, “I have tickets to the symphony.”

“Guh-ree!”

Or even, “I missed the apocalypse and now I’m alone.”

“Guh-ree!”

Even in Gary’s imagination she pronounced it “Guh-ree.”

Before he could respond, he saw one of his Not-There Neighbors coming out of his front door loaded with several bags of trash.

“Not trash day today, Roop,” said Gary.

Roop looked at Gary, annoyed. He didn’t like it when people called him Roop. His real name was Rupert, but he couldn’t bring himself to make the correction since, he thought, the only thing worse than being a Roop was being a Rupert. He used to dream of being an Enoch, or Malichi, before the world had become unhinged. 

One of the bags split open and its contents spilled onto the sidewalk. Something like blood was dripping from what remained of the bag. “Whatcha got there?” Gary asked. 

Rupert stood there, looking about at the mess he’d made, then looked up at Gary across the street. He said, “None of your business, is what I got here.”

“Looks like blood from where I’m standing. You murder someone?”

“Very funny, Gary, but I don’t got time for you.”

“Oh, yeah? It’s the apocalypse. What else you got time for?”

“So good of you to have missed it,” said Rupert. He had set the undamaged bags of trash on the curb and was now cleaning up his mess. 

“It was an accident. I was - ”

“Tell it to someone who gives a --- ” said Rupert. His hands were covered in red. 

“You sure that’s not blood?”

Rupert was wiping his hands on his shirt now. He turned around and said, “You can help, or you can leave me be.” Suddenly, Rupert’s hair turned blonde, thick, and curled, and his eyes a bright blue. Gary thought that was how Rupert looked as a boy, but he couldn’t quite remember, so Rupert’s hair and eyes turned gray and ashy. 

Giving up on help from his neighbor, Rupert let out a loud, “Humph!” turned, and went back to clearing up the mess. 

Gary took a deep breath, thinking, “There must be something to this,” but couldn’t figure out what it was. So he got up, climbed the steps, went inside, and took an immediate left into his mother’s apartment. Everything was as she’d left it. The loud clock ticking away on the mantle; the once-blue couch that had somehow turned green over the years; the photo of Frank Sinatra shaking Elvis Presley’s hand while someone who looks an awful lot like, but isn’t, Paul McCartney is standing nearby.

“I made dinner,” Gary’s Not-There Wife said in a tone she usually reserved for bad news.

Gary sat down at the kitchen table - the one that was large enough only for two - and looked out the window. Parked cars, trees, leaves being blown along the street and sidewalk by the wind. There were clouds rolling in, but the sun was still bright overhead. “It’s too early for dinner,” he said. 

“Here you go,” she said, setting down what she’d prepared for him. When he looked down there was a napkin and two spoons in an empty bowl. 

“I can’t eat this,” he said.

“Of course you can. It’s your favorite.” 

He looked up at her even though he didn’t want to. Ever since the apocalypse his imagination changed her appearance. Young in the morning, old in the afternoon, middle-aged in the evening. He’d sometimes get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and she’d be a complete stranger. He worried that his memories of her were withering like old paper. Eventually she’d be nothing but shadow and a strange voice. She might not even call him “Guh-ree” anymore; she might call him Bruce, her first husband, or FrankElvisPaul, even though Paul was never there. 

“Charlie came by,” she said, sitting down opposite him. 

He was looking out the window again. “I hate that guy,” he said.

“Oh, Guh-ree, he was here to remind you not to miss the apocalypse.”

“Yeah. Well.”

Charlie liked to flirt with Gary’s wife. His wife said it was a harmless flirtation - “When are you going to leave this beluga and run off with me?” - but Gary didn’t think so. 

“He’s just trying to get your goat,” his wife would say. “If you laughed about it like I do, he’d stop doing it.”

“Hmmph,” he’d say.

“He's just trying to get your goat,” she would say again. 

“Well he's got my goat,” Gary would say.  ”All of them. Not a single one left.”

“Oh, Guh-ree.”

“Is he gonna come get the geese and the chickens too?”

But that was before the apocalypse. Now, Gary’s Not-There-Wife said, “Do you want any more?” She gestured to his empty bowl. He was hungry, but he knew she’d only bring him another empty bowl. He’d been a big man - two-hundred-sixty pounds - before the apocalypse, but had dropped a hundred pounds since. 

“No,” he said. “I’m okay.”

“Are you though? Really?”

“What does that mean?” he asked, looking at her. She was young again. His imagination was losing more of her, he thought, and he could only sigh deeply, an acceptance of an unwelcome fate he’d spent most of his life fighting against, until old age and futility had come knocking. 

“Why don’t you go home? To our home, dear?” she asked. 

He looked out the window again. He told himself not to look at her anymore. It only depressed him. “This is more familiar,” he said. 

“But you only lived here for - what? - seventeen years? And then you went to war and you never lived here again. You came home and we married and you’ve lived with me and the children.”

“Until you went away,” he said. “Until you all went away.” His four Not-There Daughters and two Not-There Sons waved at him from Charlie’s Not-There Car that drove by in slow motion. Then they were gone, but the truck was still there, parked across the street facing the wrong direction.

“Why’d anyone get a car like that living here?”

His Not-There Wife leaned over him and looked through the window. “You mean Charlie’s truck?”

“At his age?”

“He’s only sixty-two, same as you.”

“How many miles a gallon you think that thing gets? Five? Terrible, terrible.”

“Just last April he helped deliver our new water heater. He didn’t even charge us.”

“That the time he grabbed your ass?”

“Well.”

“Well nothing. A man his age living in this neighborhood buys a monstrosity like that is clearly trying to capture a youth he probably never had.”

“Oh, Guh-ree.”

“Oh, nothing,” he snapped. He was looking down at his lap. Then he said, “Barbara.”

Barbara patted her husband’s shoulder.

“And that’s another thing,” Gary said. “Manhandling you like it’s 1945. It’s obscene. Doesn’t he know what year it is?”

“Do you?” asked Barbara. 

Gary remained silent. 

“Another thing: he said you could use it whenever you need to.”

“Like I would need something like that? No. Only if they ask me to move the Chrysler Building. What do you think are the odds of that?”

Barbara was taking clean dishes from the cupboard and placing them in the sink. 

“Why are you doing that? Mom can do that.”

“Oh, Gary. Your mom has been dead for twenty years.”

“Then what am I doing in her apartment?”

“That’s what I keep asking.”

“This whole situation is absurd.” 

“That’s what I keep saying.”

“It’s just that my head is so full of - ”

“Of what, dear?” 

Gary said, “Memory.”

“What’s that, dear?” She was scrubbing a casserole dish that hadn’t been used in two decades. 

“I said, ‘memory.’”

“Oh. I don’t know what that is.”

He got up and took the casserole dish from her hands and put it back in the cupboard. “No. No. You wouldn’t,” he said. 

She gave him a hug, and with her arms wrapped around his neck, said, “Do you want to talk to your mother now? What about your dad?”

“No, no,” he said. “I want - ”

Before he could finish, it was his mother with her arms wrapped around his neck. The feeling of her frail arms, her perfume and the smell of her breath. Her nondescript Eastern European accent when she said, “Alexander.”

“It’s Gary, Mom.”

She released him and stepped back. “It was never Guh-ree! It was always Alexander. What kind of derelict changes from Alexander to Guh-ree?”

He was named Alexander after his father. Gary was the name of a family friend who’d been much kinder to him than had his own father. 

He said, “I don’t like Alexander.”

“But it was your father’s name.”

“That’s why I don’t like it, Mom.” He was staring at her, but her face was blurred, because time was erasing her a bit at a time. 

“Your father was not a kind man,” she said. 

“I am aware of that, Mom.”

“In this life you must learn that everyone has their story, and we must forgive. There are so many things we don’t understand.”

“I know that, Mom. But there’s nothing - ”

“We must forgive.”

He took her arm and put his fingers on the numbers tattooed there.

“That is not mine,” she said. “You put that there.”

“I know, Mom.” He let go of her arm and it dropped to her side like something dead. 

“So take it away,” she said.

“I can’t.”

“Then we’ll both have to live with it.”

The light coming into the kitchen was turning to gold. There were birds outside chirping and getting ready for night. There were automated factories not far away that were shutting down for the day, their low hum and rumble clicking and then going silent. 

“I don’t know how.”

She was putting coffee grounds in a filter. “Decaf,” she said. “I never made decaf when your father was alive.” She pushed a button on the coffee maker but forgot to add water. The button shone bright and bathed her hands in red light. “Do you want some?” she asked.

“No,” he said. 

“To be a good man surrounded by wickedness can be difficult,” she said. She turned her head to look at her son. “Or a woman.”

He nodded as if he understood. Some things are easier to push from your mind than others. “And that’s what makes us human,” the family friend - the real Gary - was telling him now, just as he had all those years ago. 

“What was that?” his mother asked.

“Nothing,” he said. The real Gary had left as quickly as he’d arrived and this Gary - our Gary - didn’t want to explain. 

She walked over to him, blowing gently on her empty cup of coffee. She said, “Do you remember the time the seagulls came dropping coconuts all over? There were thousands of them. They filled the sky! They blocked out the sun so it was like it was almost nighttime.”

“I don’t. That never happened.”

“When the coconuts hit the ground, they split apart and tiny little men came out with swords and started cutting everything up. Pretty soon the whole city was just gone. They used fire on the Japanese, but they used little men in coconuts on us.”

“That never happened, Mother.”

“I think I would have preferred fire.”

Gary said nothing for a moment. He just stared. Then he said, “It's like - ” But he couldn’t quite figure out what it was like. 

“What is it like?”

He was thinking hard. “It's like all my memories have been taken out of their boxes and put in a blender. And words feel like glass.” 

“Oh, honey, when did this start?”

There was a knock in the door and a short, balding man let himself into the apartment. “Mrs. Heimer!” he said, scuttling across the kitchen floor and embracing her.

“Hello, Charlie!” she said. She looked at Gary and said, “Charlie remembers the coconuts, don’t you Charlie?”

“I certainly do!” he said, taking a seat at the table. She brought him a bowl full of honey and grasshoppers. Gary thought he might vomit, but Charlie took a spoon from his pocket and started to eat. “This is very good,” he said. Gary thought he looked and sounded like a TV commercial. 

“Oh, thank you, Charlie. Gary didn’t want his.”

“Preposterous,” said Gary, overemphasizing the “pre.”

“It’s true, dear. You just looked at it like it was full of old mayonnaise. Then your mother came, and she left. Now here came Charlie, and he’s the only one who visits us anymore.”

“Not even the mailman?” asked Charlie, bits of grasshopper in honey sticking to his chin.

“You know the mailman doesn’t come around here anymore,” Gary said. “He left with everyone else.”

“What are we paying him for, then, if he doesn’t come around anymore?”

“It’s the darndest thing.”

“What do you mean, we pay him?” asked Gary.

“I pay my taxes, don’t I?”

“You certainly do!”

Gary said, “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Death and taxes!”

Charlie said, “It’s the moral fiber that’s missing from this country.”

“The moral fiber!”

“Take Roop, for example,” continued Charlie, “who gives his youth to fight a war and comes back with a bad leg, works at the same job for forty years before being laid off, always leaving some part of himself behind like breakcrumbs. And he just keeps getting smaller and smaller, until - whoof! - nothing’s left. Just a bitter old man over there murdering sweet old ladies like your mother.”

“Wait - ” said Gary.

“Murdering them for absolutely no reason, other than to see other people suffer,” said Barbara.

“What?”

“He did like to see people suffer,” said Charlie.

There was a moment of silence as if they were paying respects to Rupert’s victims.

“Are you telling me,” said Gary, “that - ”

“It’s all true,” said Barbara.

“Serial killer living across the street for all those years.”

Gary closed his eyes. He felt like he was dreaming and couldn't wake up. He could feel hands on his arms and people whispering, “Are you okay? What’s wrong with him?” But there was nothing wrong with him, he wanted to say, just that he’d missed the damn apocalypse and now every breadcrumb of his life was packing itself inside his brain. Nothing was linear. No more thens or nows are what’s-to-comes. Just everything shoved into the small space within his skull. 

“Why didn’t anybody tell me there was a serial killer living across the street?”

“You were just a boy, dear.”

“There’s nothing you could have done about it anyway,” said Charlie. “He probably would have killed you too.” 

“I wonder how he’d of done it,” said Barbara, with exaggerated wonder.

“Oh, probably with an ice pick, like the Smith lady over on Toledo. Did you know she was a hundred and seven when he stabbed her to death? She was watching Wheel of Fortune when it happened.”  

“It’s always Wheel of Fortune when those things happen. Or People’s Court.”

“That’s true,” said Barbara. “But they always survive when they’re watching Jeopardy! It’s a fact. I don’t know what it is.”

“You like to watch Wheel of Fortune, don’t you?” Charlie asked Gary.

“I can’t say - ”

“He likes the lady on the show,” said Barbara, “The one who does the letters.”

“Hmm. I wonder where she is now,” asked Charlie.

“It is the apocalypse,” said Barbara, “I’m sure she’s somewhere out there sailing through the cosmos with all those letters in her bag.”

“I hope she doesn’t lose any,” said Charlie.

“Imagine that!” said Barbara.

“If she lost C everyone would call me Harlie.”

“That’s better than if she lost B. Everyone would call me Arbara.”

They all pondered this for a moment.

"Or Ar-uh-ruh," said Gary.

"What was that?"

They both looked at Gary as if he were choking. 

“Well,” said Barbara, “let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Gary wondered what would happen if they lost all the letters. Maybe then he could have some peace. He opened his mouth to say as much, but what came out was, “I don’t watch Wheel of Fortune anymore.” He said it feebly, as if he’d gotten into trouble and was trying to explain himself. 

“All we’re saying, dear, is that you’re the kind of person who would.”

Gary noticed that Charlie’s hand was on Barbara’s knee, and all he could think was, “There’s nothing I can do about that,” because he’d imagined a number on his mother’s arm, and there it was, and he’d imagined a murderer across the street, and there it was, and he’d imagined his beloved Barbara walking hand-in-hand with their neighbor, Charlie, who in his youth was known to walk around the neighborhood in his underwear pretending to smoke cigarettes. 

“What are you thinking about, dear?” asked Barbara. She sounded worried. 

“I was thinking,” said Gary,

“Spit it out, neighbor.”

“I was thinking about the war.”

Don’t think about that,” said Charlie. “That’s all in the past.”

“Is it?” asked Gary. 

“What do you mean, dear?”

“We enlisted together, didn’t we?”

“We sure did.”

“But Roop wouldn’t go to the enlistment office, would he? He was too scared.”

“We were all scared, buddy.”

Charlie said, “Then we went through basic training together.”

“We went through the whole thing together, buddy. They wanted to keep guys who grew up together like us together in the war. They figured it would help morale, give us something a little extra to fight for. When your buddy Gary’s next to ya, the same guy you grew up with playing football and baseball, and dating the same girls, you’re gonna fight harder than if it’s just some skimp you don’t know nothing about. Just some skimp you met on the bus on the way to get your hair trimmed high and tight and your balls chewed off by some other skimp you know nothing about who just happened to join up a few months before you did.”

Then Gary said, “Stop flirting with my wife, Charlie.”

“Sorry. What?”

“Guh-ree!”

“I mean it. Stop putting your hands on her. Stop trying to hold her hand.”

“Gary,” said Charlie, laughing. “Did your balls grow back? What’s gotten into you?”

Gary said, “I’m seventy-two years old! I’m fifty-two. I’m - I’m - I’m sixty-two years old and I’m not going to stand for it any longer.” He was up on his feet now, looking down at Charlie.

“I’ve never seen you like this before,” said Barbara.

Gary pointed a trembling finger at her, and said, “Well you’re going to see a lot more of it from now on.” But then he noticed how old his finger looked. His fingernail was yellow. The joints were swollen and bent awkwardly. He sat back down.

“All right, buddy, all right,” said Charlie, who was heading toward the door. 

Barbara followed him to the door. “It’s all right, Charlie. He’s just having an episode. He doesn’t mean anything.”

“Seems like his episodes are happening a lot these days.”

“He’s just upset because of the apocalypse and how everyone left him behind. You come back tomorrow. He’ll be much better. You’ll see. I’ll have some beans ready for lunch.”

Charlie smiled. “You know I can’t say no to beans.”

“I know.”

“Reminds me of the war,” he said, smiling.

“Gary says the same thing.”

“Those were the days, weren’t they?”

“They sure were,” said Barbara. 

Charlie kissed her on the cheek and walked out.

When Barbara returned to Gary, Gary said, “What did he say?”

“He said ‘those were the days.’”

“What days?”

“The war days.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Gary.

“It means,” she said, “that we were young, and together. We were young and together and nothing in the world could stop us from doing and becoming whatever we wanted.”

“I never wanted much,” said Gary.

“That’s true, dear. You’ve always been so accommodating.” 

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Do I?” she asked. “No. It just is what it is. Neither here nor there.” 

“Well - ”

“I do like it when you stand up for yourself, though,” she said. “A woman likes a man who can take control when necessity calls for it.”

“I take control.”

“You do,” she said.

“There was that time when Walter was letting his dog run unleashed all over the neighborhood crapping on all the sidewalks. Everybody was upset about it. But who was the only one who did anything about it?”

“You, dear.”

“Me. That’s right.”

“You called an anonymous tip line.”

“It was not anonymous!”

“No,” said Barbara. “We found that out when Walter came over and threatened to beat you up. You denied it, and said it must have been Rupert who called in about it.”

Gary remembered now, and felt embarrassed - not for what he’d done, so much as for forgetting the details of a story he’d brought up. “I don’t like confrontation,” he said, looking down at the floor. “The war took all that out of me.”

“I know, dear,” said Barbara. “You don’t have to be confrontational to be a man. I would just like to see you make decisions and stick to them. I’d like to see you do something bold and surprising.”

Gary looked up at his wife. It wasn’t her talking. It was never her talking anymore, because she wasn’t there. It was him talking, but through the one face he loved more than his own. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I missed the apocalypse. I should have been there for you.”

“I should have waited for you.”

“No. Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”

“I know you were late. I just thought you made it on another bus. But I should have waited. I should have made sure.”

Gary was crying now. He looked at his hands, front and back, that were young again. These were the hands that he’d carried to war. These were the hands that had done so much violence. They were young and beautiful, but they were also covered in blood. “I don’t want to remember,” he whispered.

“You don’t have to.”

“I’m so tired all the time,” Gary said. 

“Go on to bed, then. I’ll be in soon.”

“It’s too early for bed.”

“Then take a nap on the couch. I can clean up in here.” 

There was nothing to clean, but Gary didn’t say anything. Instead, he stood, looked out the window, then walked to the living room. 

He had seen the strange girl standing outside the house looking at him. She’d been next to the tree; Rupert was still out there cleaning his mess; several cars passed kicking up dust, but the girl didn’t budge. 

New things didn’t come into Gary’s life often, so one might think he’d take more notice. But Gary was tired. His feet and his heart ached. Besides, he didn’t have much faith that his imagination would understand little girls enough to come up with a satisfying conversation. The little girl would probably talk about the war, or what life was like on the moon, or how to catch an asteroid and ride it all the way to Mars. So he ignored her, and walked to the living room and laid down on the couch. 

“The little girl is out there again,” Barbara said from the kitchen.

“What do you mean ‘again’?”

“This is the third, no, fourth time I’ve seen her out there.”

“Ignore her.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have time for it. There’s no room left in my brain for something like that.”

“Something like what?”

Barbara had stepped into the living room. 

“You know what I mean,” Gary said.

“That’s a little girl out there. Maybe she’s hungry. Maybe she’s lost.”

“She’s not real.”

“What in the world - ”

“And neither are you, so stop bothering me.”

Barbara went back into the kitchen. Gary could see her from the couch looking out the window. She said, “I just can’t leave her out there.” She turned to Gary and held up a dish towel. “Look! I have bread and marmalade. Don’t all girls love marmalade?”

“How should I know?”

“I’m going out there,” she said, not moving.

“Then go. Then maybe I’ll have some quiet.”

“Remember when the girls were that little? Seems like yesterday. Where did the time go? Did it just walk out through the backdoor?”

“No, no,” Gary said. “The future is through the backdoor.” 

“What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. I just made it up.”

Barbara didn’t seem to believe he’d just made it up. She said, “So if the future is through the backdoor, does that mean that the past is through the front?”

“I don’t know, dear. Like I said, I just made it up. I shouldn’t have said it.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Barbara said. She was speaking in her mother’s voice now. “Every word you speak forms itself somewhere in your mind. Every word is like a living thing you give birth to. The things you say carry meaning, even if you don’t intend them to, consciously. They are echoes of what’s going on deep inside you. They are the whisperings of every atom that makes up - ”

“I get it! I get it! Words, words, words.”

Barbara spoke in her own voice again. “I think I’ll go out and invite her in. Are you okay if I go out and invite her in?”

“If it means you’ll stop talking, yes.”

She frowned at him, set the hand towel down, and went outside. He didn’t see her open or close the door, but she was gone, and she could hear her talking to the girl outside. “Hello,” she said. 

“What’s your name?”  

“How old are you?”

“Where’s your family?”

“Would you like to come inside?”

This went on for several minutes. Then other voices joined in.

“Who’s the girl?” asked Charlie.

“She doesn’t look like she’s from around her,” Rupert said.

It was a chorus of familiar voices. Pretty soon Walter could be heard saying, “Just don’t let Gary serve you coffee!”

“Coffee!” Charlie cried out. “She’s a kid!”

“He spills coffee everywhere he goes,” said Walter.

Rupert said, “He likes to judge you on how you handle trash bags.”

“It’s an age thing.”

Barbara said, “You two are the same age!”

“There is a trail of coffee stains from here to Kansas City.”

Curious, Gary got up from the couch and went to the window. He looked out and saw his wife and his neighbors looking back at him. But there was no little girl.

Barbara held up her hands. “We don’t know where she went,” she said. 

“She may have been taken up by the aliens,” said Rupert. 

Walter was looking for her up in the tree.

Gary shook his head, grunted, and went back to the couch, where he fell asleep and began to dream.

The difference for Gary between sleeping and waking life was not that different. The biggest giveaway was that his dreams were never as real as his waking life. This night, for example, he dreamed of the war. He could see the enemy, ten-foot tall alligators wearing the familiar red, yellow, and black uniforms, and speaking in a guttural language that would always sound, to Gary, like choking. 

He looked down at the weapon he was holding and was surprised that instead of his own human arms, he had what looked like the legs of an animal. He held his rifle awkwardly, because instead of hands, he had hoofs. “How’m I supposed to pull the damn trigger?” It was Charlie’s voice, and when he looked over to where the voice was coming, he didn’t see Charlie. Instead, he saw a tall sheep that somehow looked like Charlie - his mannerisms and facial expressions. “Like lambs to the slaughter, ain’t we, buddy?”

Charlie tried to disagree, to argue that as long as they kept fighting and didn’t give up hope, they’d have a chance. But all that came out was a frustrated, “Baaaahh!”

The other sheep looked at Gary and laughed. 

“Don’t let them bother you, Gary,” Charlie said. “They’re just not as far as you in their evolution, and they’re jealous.”

“Baaaahh!”

“I know, I know. But they can’t help it. It’s in their nature.”

Then a shower of red. The alligators were devouring the sheep, tearing them apart with their enormous, gaping mouths. Blood covered the ground and poured into the river. The river turned bright red. Blood sprayed over bushes and trees until everything was covered in it. Gary, knowing he had only seconds to live before he too would be ripped to pieces, cried out for his mother.

Then the fear was gone, because Gary had become - miraculously - one of the alligators in red, yellow, and black. The relief was tremendous. And as he looked down at the sheep he’d caught in his arms - it was Charlie - the thought occurred to him that being the alligator, wearing the red and yellow and black, was worse than being the sheep being so violently done away with. 

This is the end of Part I; stay tuned for more.