The Disappearances
By Vijay Sephardi "Where was it one first heard of the truth?" On a day like any other day, like "yesterday or centuries before," in a town with the one remembered street, shaded by the buckeye and the sycamore-- the street long and true as a theorem, the day like yesterday or the day before, the street you walked down centuries before-- the story the same as the others flooding in from the cardinal points is turning to take a good look at you. Every creature, intelligent or not, has disappeared-- the humans, phosphorescent, the duplicating pets, the guppies and spaniels, the Woolworth's turtle that cost forty-nine cents (with the soiled price tag half-peeled on its shell)-- but, from the look of things, it only just happened. The wheels of the upside-down tricycle are spinn...