Tally turned away. Five minutes was suddenly too long to stand here, eyes burning, unable to cry.

Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch.

And the worst thing was, there were no mirrors out there in the wild, so the princess was left wondering whether she in fact was still beautiful... or if the fall had changed the story completely.

To everyone who loves a long-secret romance, revealed at last.

But you weren't born expecting that kind of beauty in everyone, all the time. You just got programmed into thinking anything else is ugly.

God, you mean I lost my virginity to the apocalypse?" Morgan sighed again. "The whole thing was really embarrassing; my parents sent me to Brooklyn when they found out." She shrugged. "I thought I’d be safe in a gay bar, okay? What were you doing in there anyway?" Lace looked at me sidelong. "You were where?" I took a sip of beer, swallowed it. "I, uh, hadn’t been in the city...very long. I didn’t know.

A rat called Possible New Strain was sitting under a spaghetti strainer held down with a pile of journalism textbooks, saying rude things in rat-speak.