Summer begins for the reader, summer reserved for later nights and just another glass. Morning sun drifts in squares across the floor.
A man rushes into a house and finds a werewolf hunched over a woman. The werewolf eats them both and gathers itself under moonlight and howls about the gratifications of flesh. The remainder tells the story of how the werewolf survives the murder of his parents.
Two spies meet and exchange packages. The spy boards a train and in sudden tunneldark he’s attacked, beaten expertly on the head, and when he wakes up, the package is gone. He suspects double agentry and that the package is in the hands of the Corporation. The Corporation, however, doesn’t know that the stolen package contains codes for a program that will soon eat away at its deepest secrets. A secret society inside the Corporation hires the spy to take back what he’d originally stolen.
“Our lives and the fate of the planet rest on your shoulders,” the secret society tells the spy.
Headstrong, with urges for the wilds, a protagonist concocted from the limbs of bears, moose, and the entrails of pigs leaps through the trees and from there to the deck of a ship and watches the shore diminish into the gray distance, sea storms on the way. A small man creeps up to the monster and asks, “Will you captain this ship?” to which the monster answers, “Aye. We seek the man who made me.”
Two people fall in love. In Paris, the man receives a letter from an old lover who suggests a meeting at a cafe with which they are both familiar. He makes an excuse and leaves his present lover for the cafe. His lover finds the letter, grows angry, and flies home. At the cafe, the man tells his old lover that he’s happy and looking forward to a new life, a future full of gardens and upward mobility.
A monster climbs a ladder in a drain vault and eyes a dog through the vents. He sees the yellow of grease-smeared cabs. A dog trots by. The sun goes down and the monster feels free to roam and murder. The monster quivers from animal hunger. A small boy observes the manhole slowly ease out of its rim and runs toward it.
The protagonist is a writer writing a hypertext about a writer writing a hypertext about a writer writing a hypertext about all the vanishing birds of the world. The birdwriter is an insomniac; the writer writing about the birdwriter is a librarian. The writer writing about the librarian walks all night and sleeps during the day and dreams about the vanishing of the birds.
A family who has wealth and standing in the community goes head to head with another family who has wealth and standing in the community. The parents of both families are executives in the telecommunications industries. The children of both families are jet setters. One of the children, a philanthropist, is lost in a jungle. Her lover, who is the son of the other powerful family, goes in search of her, against the wishes of both families. In a club somewhere in the city, the young man says, “I just find it odd that Sharon’s father is withholding information.”
A superhero refuses to get involved as the maniacal villain rampages through the city. The superhero suffers from guilt because the superhero almost killed a child during an attack by demons. The superhero’s lover is kidnapped by the villain and held for ransom.
“What do you want?” the superhero asks.
“Your head for her life,” the villain says.
The reader pauses. He sees out the window a small snowflake like errant lacework stitch through the branches.
