Jeremy smiled. It had been many years since they had eaten dinner together like this, just the two of them. It generated a flood of memories.

“The queen bee thinks nothing of sacrificing a hundred soldiers to protect the hive. The queen ant goes even further, commanding thousands of her drones to forfeit their lives, all in the name of the greater good. But what you’ll never see is the Queen putting herself in danger. The Queen knows that without her, there can be no society.”

“We don’t want Charles inheriting one day sooner than necessary, your Majesty.”

The Smith’s attic had been used sparely in recent decades. Occasionally, one family member or the other would allow the ebullience of Spring to convince them to open the trap door, but the thick dust cloud that emerged always changed their mind.

The Smith’s often felt guilty for their neglect. Their cousin Tommy had once visited the attic and his body was probably still rotting up there. His parents always nagged them about it.

For Stephen Samenlego, even the simple act of walking across the street was a chore. He prepared for the ordeal with a regimen of ointments and black market pharmaceuticals that he applied to his most delicate areas. His biggest fear was someone would notice his discomfit and so he plastered over his features to look as resplendent as on celluloid.

His passings always attracted enormous attention. Samenlego often thought the crowds mocked him, that they considered he was somehow undeserving of his unrivaled celebrity. Being the world’s greatest film star has the effect of isolating you from your fellow humanity.

Sully swaggered out of the office on the upper east side. In his pocket, he carried an envelope stuffed with a photograph and a thousand dollars in small bills. This might be the biggest case of his career. That’s when the silver Pontiac swiped into him and broke his leg.

Seventeen drinks later, Sully’s alcoholism finished the job that the mysterious driver had failed to accomplish.

PB came from a peculiar family. His siblings included an elephant, an owl, an orca, a duck, two monkeys, a chicken, a snake, a dinosaur, and a snowman. They sometimes went on strange adventures, though mostly they lazed around telling funny stories to each other. He often suspected they were figments of his imagination, but he heard their voices even as he pretended to ignore them.

He was unsurprised when the detective informed him that he was adopted.

As Gregory Samson awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant chicken. There was no doubt but that he was monstrous.

How Gregory yearned to be a normal-sized chicken again.

Simon went to sleep in his bedroom on 523 Broadripple Avenue. He woke up in a remarkable city in the clouds. He found himself face to face with all manner of fantastic creatures, including flying horses, hippogriffs, storm giants, and singing seraphim.

It took him several days to realize he was actually dead.

Ever since Einstein, scientists have understood the relative nature of time. But Dr. Theodore Herzog was the first one to commoditize time. He realized the principle of the conservation of energy was applicable to time as well. If time is sped up in one place, it must be met with a corresponding slow down of time elsewhere.

Dr. Herzog managed to commercialize his findings so that he could sell people time. Unfortunately, his wind clock never made it to market. A future version of himself came back to the present and murdered him, erasing him from the timeline all together.

Jesper believed in one true love. He fell for his when he was still a boy, while picking mushrooms in the forest behind his home. He met a girl in a white dress and they played for several hours, so that by the time he returned home, Jesper’s father gave him a whipping for being late.

It was as if she were a ghost.