“I’m tired of digging,” Swamper whined.

“If we don’t hide this thing, somebody’s going to eat it before we do,” Hillbuck said.

Swamper’s ears drooped.  “Can’t we just eat it now?”

“I think we need to boil it first.  Now hurry before somebody sees us with these shovels.”

Close by, the owner of Hank’s Produce peered out at the empty street corner where there was supposed to be a kid handing out samples.  Had the kid chased after those damned rabbits again?  Well, he’d better not ruin that promotional carrot costume he was wearing.  It had cost Hank a fortune.

On stage he possessed an uncanny quality of truth that massaged people’s ability to suspend disbelief.  He faded masterfully into the fabric of a play, his refined banality upstaged easily by more ambitious thespians.  But one skill made him famous: he could cry on cue.  How his tears touched those faces in the darkness!  He cried, too, in life to get his way and almost always succeeded.  Almost.  Tonight he shouldn’t have checked his text messages backstage.  She had seen through his act, shrewd girl, and now more than anything he wished he knew how to stop crying on cue.

“Go outside!”  Zachary’s mother pulled aside purple curtains and gestured theatrically at the window.  From where he sat on the floor, Zachary could see blue sky.

“But Lost is on,” he protested.

“Television will rot your brain.  You need fresh air,” she said.

Years later, Zachary’s television lay in a heap next to the ceiling fan, on what used to be the ceiling but was now the floor.  Zachary gazed down at blue emptiness through the skylight at his feet.  A good thing he’d been inside when the Inversion happened.  In the end, rotting his brain had saved his life.