The woman’s name was lost in The Fall, as was so much else we once thought vital—seasons, rivers, uncharred air—but her image persists, has become indelible. The giant wall of white upon which her travesties are projected once yearly has become a mecca for all in this, our new world. The desert for miles around is littered with the bleached bones of those who would gaze upon her bare body, to confirm for themselves and their outposts that one such as her ever actually existed.

“Attention, please,” the Manager says over the office intercom. “The Auditor’s shuttle is scheduled to dock in one hour. I repeat, one hour. Warehouse staff, please ensure that all inventory is in place.”

The thaw comes early. Though I’ve been held here for dreams upon dreams, I am not ready. Shoals of us overwinter in the ice. As our bodies slow to quiescence, the ice resonates between us: signals that would be battered unintelligible by moving water.

My ghost bled through the shadows, an icy wind stirring the leaves. Eyes like candle flames shuddering and crescent moon mouth, it had found me as a girl and never let go—the only thing that was really mine. It led me to an overgrown graveyard, pelts of moss eating like acid through fallen tombstones. In the haze of tree-shadowed dark, huge stone towers loomed in the distance, wrapped by vine and tree limb.

Mark was aware that he looked more dead than alive, so he did not have high expectations for his first, and last, night on the town. He had fled the hospital’s cancer ward fuelled by stolen methamphetamines, wearing stolen clothes, and armed with just his credit card.

The men knew before she did. Before this boy, before sophomore year, before even her twelfth birthday, they had jostled her on the sidewalk and hooted from cars, searching for something just past her skin. But now, with her panties stripped off and the boy’s eyes on her, Jackie felt a strange prickling. A warning pacing behind her ribs. A mouth about to drip.