"'So, last night at practice Heather had this pad of paper and a pen and some tape, and she starts writing things like 'I eat kittens Mr. Donaldson' and 'there is a large slimy thing right over your head' and all this stuff. I swear she's mental."

"Yeah. You want some gum?"

The tour bus, well-uphostered in rich maroon velour and, to the delight and amusement of its passengers, posessed of a small bathroom with blue water in the tiny metal toilet, growled its way ponderously through the tangle of streets surrounding the hub of the United States capital and the ambient Grecian metropolis that accompanied it. Air, thick with the effluent of twenty-nine young men and women and warm as an outfielder's armpit at a winter baseball game, passed in and out of the whole set of lungs again, and went around for another go. Even the air was getting bored of this bus.

"Well, you know, we were having casserole and my brother's friends all come down for that for some reason, after all it's only tomato sauce and hamburger and everything."

Cases of bulky metal instruments thudded under the floor on corners, trumpets and French horns and clarinets. The whole set, actually, with the exception of the drums which had their own van. Drummers always got the good shit.

This bus, navigating through the traffic, held the members of the T. Edison High School band, late of Cincinnati, safe and annoyed in its shell. The Smithsonian museum had duly impressed them, especially the jewel parts with its extensive and fatal security measures explained in meticulous detail, and likewise the architecture of several buildings and/or monuments, with their correspondingly now-extinct varieties of marble. Regardless of the history and grandeur involved, a few hours after lunch the lot of it obviously began to blur together and the atmosphere gradually degenerated from the lofty ideals of democracy to idle speculation as to which senators might have used the same bathrooms the band had. It was decided that Day Markham, a second-chair tenor saxophone, had Orrin Hatch cells on her butt. She'd used the men's bathroom, aiming for maybe Tom Foley, she said, but Orrin it was. Oh well.

The day outside dropped reluctantly into dusk, lingering hopefully around in the early stages of twilight hoping to get that silhouetted-building thing just right. The effect was botched a bit by the low clouds, unless one happened to like the look of Gothic, Grecian, and federal-style buildings all mashed together, drifting into one another like crenellated ships. A surprising number of people did seem to go for that sort of thing. Dark was beginning in earnest when the bus pulled up, stately and utterly at home, in front of the hotel. The bus exhaled the band in one great, rank stream of breath. They filed raggedly through the front doors, gabbling about dinner and how the Protestants screwed everything up.

*** *** *** *** ***

Lewis was not having a good day. Good evening. Whatever. It didn't matter to him particularly, and having to deal with this pompous nonsense of greeting people first thing with "good evening" and getting up "dark and early" and the whole ridiculous mess depressed him. Having to drink blood, and quit his job, and refrain from calling his wife and reassuring her that he was all right, he really was, and if she could learn to live with this new version of all right he'd be happier than anything if they could stay together, now THAT depressed him. He felt horrible, physicaly and mentally, as though this new state of his had more finely-tuned the connection between his moods and his body. His head and stomach hurt constantly. He had no energy.

He was three weeks old, plus thirty-one years and four days. He hated it. He'd been a reasonably happy junior manager of a mid-range hotel, and now he was a pale, fanged, horror of the night. He figured that everyone this happened to had felt this exact shock and dismay, and his disappointment at his own unoriginaity depressed him further.

He was here to sign some papers, make his resignation official. Otherwise they'd harass his wife, trying to find out whether he'd embezzled something, or at least where he'd gone. Two, maybe three signatures, and he'd be done, and Jillie wouldn't have to worry about anything.

*** *** *** *** ***

The rooms didn't have anything to eat in them except the mint under the pillow, and Day's roommates had fought over that immediately upon arrival. Anna had won, apparently. She'd ALSO won the right to take a shower first, somehow, and Carrie was stretched out on the double bed flipping through a travel brochure. Day was still hungry. She was a growing girl, after all, and dinner had been sadly limited by the size of the party.

"'M gonna go see if there's a vending machine somewhere."

The carpet was interestingly patterned, pillar upon pillar receding on a field of ivy-strewn green into the distance, right into the elevator. The first and second-chair trumpets were already in it, and Diana, who played flute and was well known to be sleeping with Quinn, the first trumpet. They rode the elevator all the way down, in silence, to the third floor.

*** *** *** *** ***

Lewis couldn't help doing a final round. He hadn't been devoted to his company on a familial level, the way some of the senior managers were, but he felt a good-bye was in order anyway. The sight of healthy teenagers traipsing down the hall toward him did not improve his mood.

*** *** *** *** ***

Day was nudging past Diana. Diana had her mouth open to explain something. Troy and Jason were trying to trip each other. Day was rather surprised, upon later reflection, how there literally seemed to be no space of time between the moment when she saw the red glow of the soda machine and the moment she was on her back with her eyes closed. The moment when she realized what she was feeling seemed to happen several minutes later, and she died with the vague ideas that it should be going on between her legs instead of her armpit, and that she should be wishing she'd done more with her life.

*** *** *** *** ***

Lewis, to put it bluntly, just couldn't take it anymore. He knew what the rules were.

*** *** *** *** ***

Diana stood up first, then Troy, then Day, then Jason. There was no-one else in the hall. They looked at each other, and saw the shit on themselves, and as one they ran for the elevator.

Day broke the door. It just didn't seem worth it to dig for her key and she was panicking like she'd never panicked before. Carrie was just out of the shower and Anna was on the bed, flipping.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"What the FUCK happened to the DOOR?"

Day's suitcase wasn't where she'd left it.

"Where'd you put my clothes?"

Blank stares answered her.

"Where the fuck did you put my clothes, both of you!" was followed by a quiet, unvoiced realization. Oh shit. They see the teeth. A vague terror filled her, and every spy movie she'd ever seen spoke into the void loud and clear: kill the witnesses, or they'll get you later.

Not long afterwards, Day fled down the hall, clutching a pair of pristine blue jeans to a bloody wreck of a shirt. It was a truly choice moment.

Diana, Troy, and Jason stayed under their beds for the rest of the night, or in closets. In the morning they were dragged out by well-meaning bandmates and met their ends in soot. Day, however, was found by pale, fanged horrors of the night when the sun went down that day, digging herself out of the rhododendron garden to the side of the hotel, wearing new blue jeans and a cook's high-collared shirt.

And that, young lady, is how Day broke. Now go to BED."

Anomalis Pluralia

(--* MERCARI, day, Anna, & Heron C. Heretford *--)