The little girl bolted through the alleyway, the glow of the Quik-Liq lighting the crumbled city street like a rotten Christmas tree in the black-blue nighttime. The sharp wind funneled between the buildings, blowing her tattered hoodie up above her elbows and revealing the ripped Flash-Bang Live In Termino t-shirt underneath. The graffiti on the peeling concrete walls around her, which looked like cave paintings earlier, now looked like warnings, dark omens about some ancient threat in some long-forgotten tongue. The bug brothers had found her.

They flew down like vultures as she rounded a corner a few yards ahead, wearing meaty smiles and white undershirts and five-o-clock shadows. One was fat, the other deathly thin. Both had wiry haircuts and wielded black box cutters as they flew over the city on the smoke-colored bee wings coming out of their back.

The little girl went around a second corner, leading to the playground. The paper mill where the city's little money came from was across the stream from the playground, and across the withered wooden train tracks behind the factory lay Jury Park, a run of old houses not hit by the urban renewal that wound down the city's golden years. The brothers knew better than to hit Jury Park. The abandoned homes children loved to tell ghost stories about, were haunted not by vengeful spirits or escaped lunatics but by junkies and pushers and even the occasional so-and-so north of the border. Every house in Jury Park was a drug bust waiting to happen. Best not to operate there. The brothers knew to stick to the alleys and rooftops of the town, places where Your Eyes Play Tricks On You and they wouldn't have to deal with a squad of cops adding twenty synonyms for “giant-ass wings” to their report.

The brothers landed, panting as they watched the little girl's silhouette evaporate. They didn't speak, but thought the same thing. They both saw their latest tribute waving seventy green around by the school like she just blew her nose on it. She probably had enough to get the brothers through the next two months. And she looked barely twelve. It was too good to pass up. But they both knew where she was going. And something wasn't right about her clothes. None of the yuppies would let their little millionaire run around like a baby hobo. Was the money hot? That made it even more tempting. It meant she wouldn't get cops involved, and she'd get a lesson about her place on the food chain.

“It's tasty,” the skinny one said, “almost TOO tasty. Her money will keep us eating for weeks.” The fat one said nothing. Unless she had taken the time they gave her to pitch a tent, she would be over the stream already. They couldn't risk going by the factory. There was only one place for her to run. And there was only one place for them to catch her.

The brothers took flight, staying just below the icy clouds as they watched the familiar landscape disappear. They landed in the heart of Jury Park, sniffing the air around them. The girl would be there soon. They looked at the ruins. Here a house about to cave in, there a gas station that hasn't pumped for years. A billboard sat at the end of the road, broadcasting the message “Yucky's is coming.” Yucky's had come and gone and been replaced by a Troopers, and when Troopers went bankrupt the manager torched it and killed three women. The little girl charged past, not even seeing the brothers. They took off after her as she vanished over the end of the street.

The thing you once could have called a mansion sat at the tip of Beadle Walk. Most in Jury Park looked old, but even the ones that had long ago collapsed seemed to owe their demise to outside forces, shoddy construction or wind or flood. Had it spent its years in a bubble, the oldest house on the street wouldn't look much different than in its prime. The houses seemed to have lived only a hundred years. The mansion seemed to have lived all of them.

The brothers abandoned their flight as they reached the end of the walk. Of course she went to the mansion. Of course she did.

“Old as s***,” the skinny one said. The fat one, as usual, was silent.

They circled the mansion first, not wanting to acknowledge the possibility of her going inside the mansion. Behind it, in the vast field of graying wheat, was a small playground constructed long before the invention of fun. The little girl was sitting on a swing, hanging limply from the rusty frame. She had the same wide-eyed look of terror, but aside from her shaking hands, she was motionless. The fat one extended his box cutter, his brother doing the same while preparing to speak. Before he finished drawing in a breath, the girl was enveloped in a flash of yellow light. Thread by thread, the yellow burnt up her clothing and replaced it with a school uniform a hundred years old easy. Her unwashed brown hair turned to bright red pigtails. Her face, the only constant, drained of its color as her eyes turned to two ovals of yellow light. “Flash-Bang never played in Termino,” the thin one whispered to his brother.

The two things had appeared at some point during the light show. It was impossible to say exactly where they came from. Their eyes glowed the same bladder-disease piss color as the girl's, and their sausage-colored skin was stuck to their bodies in wet lumps. On paper, it seemed obvious to call them “dog-like.” But they weren't. A dog can be scary, or even cruel. But you can take a dog to the ends of the earth and look it over from any angle and it'd still be a dog. There are rules to a dog. A dog made sense. The things in the playground made none.

The little girl spoke with the voice of a man. “I am Took,” she said, “ the Viceroy of Consequence.”

“Of course you are,” said the skinny brother.
The beasts snarled at him. They slowly paced the playground, keeping the brothers within ten feet of the swing where the little girl still sat. “I have sniffed your souls like you sniff the garbage-tainted air,” she growled. “And your souls smell rotten to the core. So my prisoner-” here the little girl extended her thumb, stiffly jabbing it at the air in front of her“-brought you home.”

“Your prisoner?” the skinny brother said, his throat dried up as the monsters eyed him. “What law did she break?”

Took's prisoner was silent. One of the beasts opened and closed its mouth.

“I see no lawmen,” the skinny one continued, bolder now even in the presence of the monstrosities, “I see no judge or jailor. I've heard of you, Grand Lord Took. Why should my brother and I listen to the judgment of a self-righteous clown who struts around like his c***'s too big for his trousers?”

Took said nothing and let out a gentle laugh. The creatures closed in on the brothers, but turned towards the little girl. In unison, the beasts spoke one gravelly word, like cinder blocks dragging together. The beasts weren't staying close to the bug brothers out of hollow intimidation. They were sucking in the air around the brothers. Tasting it.

“Guilty,” said the creature.

“Your fates have been chosen,” said Took.

“S*** down a chimney,” said the thin brother.

Took's eyes slowly turned orange, then bright red. “When they've finished with you,” said Took, “I'll make you my prisoners. I'll keep you awake, just like the girl. Perhaps I'll have you take turns eating crushed diamonds. Or make you ear-to-ear slit your own-”

A light. Sirens. Cops. Three cops came from behind the house next door, dragging a man with a bottle of Electra-Lite in each hand. The brothers took flight over the commotion. Took was transfixed by the light. One of the monsters jumped but couldn't reach the two. The cops and the pusher gawked at first Took and then the brothers as they disappeared. “Too tasty,” the skinny one said, blinking his eyes against the cold wet wind and seeing the glowing eyes of Took imprinted on his lids, “too damn tasty.” The fat one was silent. The bug brothers flew high above the city as the glow of the all-night gas stations lighting the crumbled city blinked out, overtaken by the pink-blue light of morning.