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tendrils rushed across his arms and legs, pinioning him. Ropes? Sand? No, too light.
    Then something bit him. His lungs filled with air just in time to scream. He thrashed his arms and legs, pushed against the sand, whipped his head in fury and terror, to no avail. Unbreakable bonds held him to the ground. Small creatures bounced over him and sank long spindly teeth into his belly, his arm, his head. He felt them sucking, and now those bonds entered the bites, coursing into him, pushing muscles, tendons, and ligaments aside to crawl up inside his arms, his legs, his abdomen. It wrapped around his ribs and exerted pressure, oh so gentle pressure, until his scream tapered off into a wheezing hiss.
    He was a big man. Eating him took time. His brain, encased in thick bone and otherwise impervious to the probing tendrils, recorded it all.
    The mountain of fat on his belly offered little resistance to the biters. They burrowed in like ants in whipped cream. Wherever they entered, the tentacles followed, seeking, exploring, pushing. Those tentacles kept him from bleeding out, blocking his wounds so that he would live that much longer. He could feel them fighting in his chest cavity, twisting like boa constrictors in heat, churning up his internal organs in a froth. They missed his heart, sparing him a heart attack. Without his lungs, though, he had only seconds left until he lost consciousness.
    He lay on the beach being consumed, watching the clouds drift through a serene blue sky only to disappear over that strange red wall. The sun glinted off something near his eye. A slender tentacle slid into view, silhouetted against an azure haze. It dove in figure eights through his eye sockets. Darkness overcame him. His brain, the sole survivor, registered the enemies beating at the gates of his cranium, tightening, trying the doors and windows of this fortress. Impenetrable cochlea sent frantic messages notifying the brain that what was left was sinking, slowly being pulled down into the sand. The brain ignored this information as the invaders discovered the cavity at the back of the neck and pushed their way in. Surrounded, airless, bloodless, the grey matter at last succumbed, and Howie ceased to be.
     
     
     

CHAPTER TH REE
     
    Lauren chose against college. Her high school sweetheart, Nick, convinced her to stay in town. Smart enough to matriculate anywhere, she made the dumb choice to stay for love. College is expensive; love is cheap. They moved in together, against her parent’s wishes. She broke contact altogether in retribution.
    The little apartment wasn’t much, but Lauren and her boyfriend enjoyed a solidarity in poverty – love against the world. He took a job at a garage, came home every night smelling of grease. He could never quite wash it off before dinner. She got used to the feel of those petroleum chapped hands scratching her body in the night. She pretended it didn’t hurt when his calluses caught her hair. He was kind, but she soon realized they were mismatched.
    Lauren found herself working a dead-end job in a grocery store. She endured a half-wit manager and a staff of imbeciles. She suffered the abuse of customers. She listened patiently to the inane conversations of her colleagues. At night, she brought home free suppers desiccated by hours under a deli heat lamp.
    She used to fantasize about arriving at work one morning to find the whole shopping center burnt down, the roof gaping aslant across a smoking ruin. She saw that on the news once. Somewhere in America, an overnight gas leak detonated a department store. Television news stations teased her with that disaster for days while helicopters offered tantalizing aerial views of the carnage.
    She used to fantasize that someone came to work with a shotgun and shot her boss. The police would take the smiling perpetrator away amidst cheers and applause. The store owner would say, “Lauren, the store is yours now. Make the changes you always