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careful about how I approached people, so I watched and
waited. I soon discovered they were building a rollercoaster
inside a skyscraper. It wound down from the top of the
inside of the building, twisting into hallways, offices, up and
down elevator shafts and stairwells, and presumably into the
basement and maybe even the sewers. I could see the cars
zoom past some of the windows, and I could faintly hear
the joyful cries of the passengers. Soon, a ridiculous little
absurdity began to wiggle around inside me—I desperately
wanted to take a turn on the ride. But a derailed car filled
with screaming riders came crashing out of a thirty-story
window, so I decided to move along. At least, until the roller
coaster was repaired.
“It didn’t take me much longer to figure out that the whole
world had pretty much gone off the deep end, so I decided to
find a quiet place to relax. I was about to sit down behind a
dumpster and read from a damp fashion magazine I’d fished
out of it when I heard something behind me. It was sneaker-
woman, smiling so hard she made my face hurt. She just
stood there like some kind of demented doll. After I don’t
know how long, she put her hand out like she was checking
to see if it was raining. Suddenly, across the entire city, it
started raining bloody body parts.
“Twitching arms, blinking eyes, quivering livers—you
name the body part, it fell all around me as I ran. The sharp
slapping sounds of flesh meeting concrete punctuated the
dull wet thump of bodiless heads hitting the ground. Blood
splashed everywhere from the constant rain of limbs, and
I was soon covered from head to toe in gore. I would have
loved to ditch those damn slippers if I hadn’t needed them
to run across the bloody pavement. Squish-squash, squish-
squash, squish-squash!
“I looked back over my shoulder. She was still there,
smiling, not so much as a drop of blood on her. I had no
idea what she would do if she caught me. She was all of
my height, which wasn’t saying much, and about the same
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