“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” Josh lowered his head. He saw the deep yellow and purple bruises around the edges of Jackie’s cast and along her neck, and cringed in shame.

“Let’s just go home,” Jackie said. “You and Josh can take your car, and I’ll follow in the Mercedes.”

“That is absolutely not possible,” said the mayor in the tan jacket.

“Shut up,” Jackie said again.

She moved toward him, her face set. The flies regrouped into an opaque cloud between her and the man. She stepped forward into them. The flies swarmed onto her skin and into her clothes and onto her face and into her eyes and her nose and her mouth. Their guts oozed onto her tongue as they crunched between her teeth. She batted at them with her uninjured arm, but they wouldn’t release even as she got to his desk and grabbed the pair of scissors leaning against the rim of a coffee mug.

She held up the scissors. The mayor moved back, gawping at her fly-covered body, everyone else in the room forgetting his look of terror the moment they looked away. She brought the scissors down, driving a blade into her cast, and sawing. The cast resisted and the blades were not sharp, but she hacked with a fury. The flies retreated one by one as she worked herself into a sweat fighting against her own cast. Her skin was swollen and red where the flies had been.

Finally, dull blades and all, she ripped off the top of the cast, exposing a hand still clutching a paper that said “KING CITY.” She held it up to the man in the tan jacket.

“Oh yes, of course.” He walked over and plucked the paper from her hand, like a person taking a slip of paper out of another person’s hand, and tossed it into the trash can, where it stayed. He did the same with the paper in Josh’s hand.

Jackie stared at her empty palm, breathing hard from exertion and relief. She clasped and unclasped her sticky, sore fingers, reveling in the emptiness of them.

“Now then,” said the man in the tan jacket, “that’s done. And Josh will be back to you sooner or later, I’m sure.”

“No,” Diane said. Jackie was too struck by the burden that had just been lifted from her, and would not be able to do this confrontation for her. She would have to do it herself.

“You awful, forgettable man,” Diane said. “You will not keep him. You’ve infected my town with your blank face and your false memories. I am sorry no one knows who you are, I really am. I’m sorry that no one remembers you are mayor. I’m sorry for your town.”