The grassy hills behind him were flooded with illumination. And over Dirk’s shoulder, Janine saw Eula upon her favorite hilltop.

Then, squinting, Janine pulled her face from Dirk’s.

“Is she sick?” she asked.

Dirk turned quickly.

Eula lay on her right side, her left arm dangling across her chest. Her strong black fingers barely touched the grass, and the rain pummeled her without mercy. A pool of deep red swallowed fresh raindrops by her neck.

But it wasn’t just that she wasn’t moving. There was something wrong with her color.

“With everything…” Janine said.

Dirk took off, leaving her behind.

She heard him unlocking a gate.

Then she saw Dirk come into view of the window. She watched him crouch and slowly lift a scythe from the wet, discolored grass.

Next to it was much of Eula’s skin. Dirk lifted it with his forefinger and thumb; a man picking up a fallen costume.

Janine screamed.

“I worked at the House today. Didn’t I?” Dirk looked across the hills to Janine at the window. “Didn’t I quit the House today?”

Janine stepped back.

Dirk heard crunching sounds. Slithering sounds. Metallic echoes. Metal on stone. Metal on bone.

“I did this,” he said. “I did this!”

Janine slipped into the darkness of the path. Dirk didn’t see her go.

He collapsed by Eula’s skinned side.

“This is not freedom,” he said. “This is not escape.”

Slithering sounds. Whispers from a mist. A Mixed-up Man.

Tears fell from Dirk’s face to hers.

“Didn’t I quit the House today? Eula? Didn’t I?”

Soon the timed lights turned themselves off.

Dirk Rogers, the face of the zoo, held Eula and cried.

“What I see is beautiful,” he told her in the darkness of the park.

The shock of what he’d done was bigger than the bloated lumbering body of his nightmares. And somewhere far above him, in a place higher than where the rain fell from, there was a ceiling. There were four walls, too, and a floor. Dirk knew that now.

“I quit the House today,” he told her, laughing now, as the rain became one with his tears. “Isn’t that wonderful? I quit the House. That’s where I was, Eula. I was at the House today. All day. All…day…long…”

The Hedges

1

It was already raining hard outside and had been for an hour, so when Wayne heard a knock at his door he assumed the little girl had used one of the escape paths and wanted her money back. Or maybe she just didn’t want to get wet and sick. Maybe her mother raised her well. But when he opened the front door, she stood in the gravel just beyond the porch with her hands on her hips. And she was smiling. An angry little smile. A knowing little smile. Like she was thinking, I’m onto you.