The Stranger sighted down the barrel of his gun. He hesitated, his finger on the trigger. Caught in his crosshairs was a human figure rising into the air towards him at some speed. It was the man he had last seen playing “March of the Gladiators” on a piano. The man rose into the air, his mouth open impossibly wide, and his shadow fell down below him like massive entrails spilling from an animated corpse. The shadow congealed and shuddered as it held up the man like a hand puppet, pushing him higher and higher into the sky.

The Stranger took the shot.

The bullet caught the man clear between the eyes and went clean through the back of the skull. The corpse shuddered, hanging in the air like the condemned at the end of a rope. But it didn’t stop, and the shadow below opened the corpse’s mouth and a scream of rage, or perhaps it was triumph, burst forth as the shadow operated the dead man’s lungs to produce it. The Stranger took out a stick of dynamite, bit the fuse to shorten it, lit the fuse, and dropped the stick of dynamite without even looking. He ran for the gondola.

There was a small explosion. Hands reached out for him as he stumbled. The gondola hovered overhead, but the Kid and the Conjurer, working in tandem, got hold of the Stranger and lifted him up. He flopped down to the floor as the Fat Lady rose, higher and higher into the air.

When he rose to his feet again and looked down, all he could see was a fine red mist falling down. It fell on the mimes and painted their faces crimson. A pool of shadow lay far down below, and as he watched it flowed, like water, down the street. The mimes looked up, wordlessly.

The hot air balloon rose up into the sky, far above the city.

They felt rather than heard the second explosion. Somewhere to the east of them, in what had until very recently been the back room of Jefferson & Norvell, Medici, of Asclepius Gardens, the fish had finally detonated.

It manifested first as the taste of purple. They felt it on their tongues, against their inner cheeks. It set their teeth on edge. The rooftops wobbled like cloth. In the avenues down below, the revellers stopped and stared. A man pushing a food cart looked briefly puzzled and then turned into a pink flamingo. He spread his wings experimentally and took to the air.

The towers of the city began to melt. A horse-drawn cart swerved sharply to avoid a swirl of tomatoes which had drawn together into a humanoid shape and ran down the street, leaving juicy footprints in its wake. The horse reared back and its legs turned to glass in the air and it remained there, suspended, only the eyes still alive and blinking.