Only Bernard, in the front row, had the nerve to laugh at Death.

While his parents beamed, little Tommy Lundquist, future developer, surveyed the view from his newly constructed treehouse.

“Okay, before you go, let me read this one more time: ‘Burn the houses, eliminate the townsfolk, destroy the crops, plunder their gold!’… You knuckleheads think you can handle all that?”

“Again? Oh, all right. … One warm, summer evening many years ago, I was basking on a stretch of Interstate 95 not far from here …”

Protozoan gossip