It is, unfortunately, laundry day again; tomorrow Riley will be improvising socks out of newsprint. He sighs, fills the mesh bag to bursting, and girds himself for battle.

Except he doesn’t literally gird himself because he’s been commando for a week.

“Hi, Ceely,” he says as he backs through the door.

“Oh my God!” says Ceely, delighted. “We’re always here at the same time!”

“Weird,” says Rilo, who’s seen her staking the place out for weeks.

“You are so stalking me.”

“Everybody does laundry,” mutters Rilo, jamming whites into reds with one foot.

“Hey,” says Ceely, “seen your cat this week?”

“I think this blood is mine,” says Escrow.

Vairocana silently tosses the bent lead pipe. Escrow catches it and follows the smeared trail back into the bathroom stall where Escrow is hiding.

“You’re not what you think you are,” gasps Escrow.

Escrow smirks. “On the contrary,” he says.

“I’ve been thinking about… mortality, in here,” whispers Escrow, hands pressed to his bleeding belly. “And I do believe in reincarnation, right? I mean, we do, you know that–so why the braintaps, the cloning? Why not leave it to the metaphysical?”

“Because sometimes reincarnation needs help,” says Escrow, and raises the pipe.

On Thursday, unbidden, shadows start spreading: pooling in shallow depressions, dragging along reluctantly, getting fat and lazy in the light of noon. In rural areas, some get pulled into streams and simply disappear.

It’s Kori and her thinspiration community who first notice that they’re losing weight, and their shadows are gaining. The news spreads quickly. The smarter people hide in their basements and put blackout curtains on the windows. They can hear their shadows growling, but it’s soon drowned out by the poor people outside: they’re the ones on the ground now, shrieking, helpless, stretched like taffy by the setting sun.

Seriously! This shouldn’t be that shocking! The Cabinet is composed entirely of lycotroids swathed in human flesh. So what? It’s 2012! Lycotroids have been public knowledge for years, at least on the right messageboards. They’re already among us, like Farmont there, from the Post. Isn’t that right, Farmont! Farmont’s a plant, everybody.

See that? Transparency.

Lycotroids are citizens–working, buying groceries, paying taxes–okay, not the taxes, haha. They’re fellow countrybeings, and they have the best interests of our species at heart! Or technically at liver.

That the President was born a woman, okay, there it makes sense to be startled.

These pages contain no flames whatsoever. The words herein will not evoke from thin air any of the nine elements, nor will their use in conjunction with telluric resonant circuits produce bends in the matter of time. The names within are fictional, and any resemblance to gods living or dead is entirely coincidental. This book provides no guarantee of internal Euclidian geometry. The hagiographic index may not be used to tempt saints.

This comprises the entire and binding agreement between READER and EDITOR. In no event will the EDITOR be liable for consequences of misuse.

<H’rnhoth> I agree <Iighilló> I decline