The church pews were all rotten and sagging, moss had spread, adding green and yellow stubble to everything, and there was swamp water down the aisle reflecting the broken stained glass windows. The altar had been knocked down and a white tree grew out of the floor there, branches reaching insolently upward and sticking out through holes in the ceiling. There was a constant rushing sound of insects and large black birds screamed at each other, a few of them flapping around close to the ceiling. A large, overfed man in a stained suit sat at a wooden desk where some broken pews had been pushed to the side. His face was oily and sweaty and he would scratch the top of his head with the soft end of the quill he was writing with. He sniffed and snorted and scratched at the paper, filling several pages with illegible scribbles. He looked up and stared at Matt, whose body was lying face-down in the water like a fallen groom on his way to a wedding ceremony. Then the fat man hunched over the paper and continued writing. A girl, maybe 20, entered through the broken church doors, an old rifle resting on her arm. “You still here, Maggot? I thought they got you with the helicopter.”

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A bunch of people had been strangled and left in this stinky alleyway down by Martha’s. Marty told me about it- I first saw it from the second floor window of the abandoned building. They were all twisted around, four men wearing suits stained with blood, one woman in a grey suit as well, one little boy with a slingshot sticking out of his back pocket. Face down in the disgusting water down there. There were always piles of garbage bags on that alley, a broken baby carriage, dead pigeons. It always smelled bad. Now it smelled much worse, even from the second story window. Marty threw a piece of broken plaster down at the pile and hit one of the dirty, white faces, bruising it. He didn’t laugh, just stared. “You coming down with me?” I turned at his question, snapping out of it. “Where?”

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Four black specks looked like they were hovering in one place but as Ted watched they gradually they got bigger and the whining sound got louder. He stumbled and almost fell backwards, his city boots slipping on the dry leaves, trying to keep his eye on the specks. Then he ran through the trees, whining getting louder, brittle fallen branches snapping underfoot. He had made it as far as the lake when they came crashing down from above. He dove for the water but they scooped him up in their net before he hit the surface, struggling now and twisting in the rope web as they flew him up above the trees, his bare arms getting all cut up. He couldn’t really see them from down there, just black silhouettes against the sun. They looked almost human, flying like airborne superheroes.

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