"Where is the bear when the bear is not where the bear should be?" asked Frankie Jelinek's husband with sweet reasonableness. "Ever think about that?" "No," said Frankie, "I don't. Wherever teddy bears go. Maybe a picnic." Steve gave his wife a sleepy kiss and rolled over. Supernatural phenomena were not in the baby care books. Yet...

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Magnetic Betty explained the problem. ?And so you see, things fly through the air and stick to me when I walk by. None of my friends? mothers will let them play with me.? ?A tricky business,? replied Dolby Jenks, World's Champion Detective. ?Not my field, I'm afraid, Betty. I would suggest that you find different friends with different mothers.?

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An odor of mint attracted the francher to an unpromising patch of brown scrub. It spread its fetlocks, a legacy of embedded Przewalski horse genes, and arched its neck down to feed. It munched contentedly for some minutes then collapsed. The francher's nostrils flared as it gulped at the thin unsatisfying air. Wide speckled eyes bulged; oval pupils stared. Under the brilliant glare of the high, dry sun its knee joints cracked, emitting soft popping sounds. An Andean vulture circled closer.

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In fairness to the former owner of Claude's prize scalp, a wayward Detroiter lost in the woods, he had never heard of Claude Ellis; he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and had been dead anyway, along with a whole lot of others. The Over-Homers most likely caught them sniffing around and shot first. The Canadians were OK, not like the government men: rendezvous, free food, free whores and no trouble.

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"Sweet Jesus!" Elizabeth Profitt Pease has?for just a moment, a split second?the queer idea that there is an eyeball in her teacup. "Uh... hello, eye." The eye does not speak. She takes a swallow of Dr. Pomeroy's straight from the bottle and shakes her head to clear it. She squints; the eye in her teacup squints back?the eye is hazel and clear. It is her mother's eye.

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"My sister, is she dead? Go and give her a poke, would you?" The great white presence that was the Lady Mother of the Long Walkers indicated the row of captive queens on their dais beneath her, deferentially lower.

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On the countertop the lone ant groomed its antennae. "You are going to kill your husband. He is wearing out, then?" The ant was dusted white from its struggle through the arsenic buffet Ginny had just laid out.

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"See that, Franklin?" said Eleanor Roosevelt. "That's O'Brien." Franklin observed a line of stars on the eastern horizon. There were four. "Oops, sorry." Eleanor nodded at her new constellation, O'Brien, and the fourth star blinked out.

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"I am midtown. Manhattan?" Linda Winkelman speaks her question out loud in the middle of the rush hour push; no one notices. She can not recall who she is or why she is here. "I remember lemonade," says Linda. Buildings disappeared, people disappeared. Now it is her turn. Linda Winkelman was born the year they invented frozen lemonade.

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Linda's mother is secretly tickled at the patronymic of Linda's intended. "Winkelman? His name is Winkelman? That's the same name as ours. It sounds like incest. The neighbors will think your father was screwing some babe in Yonkers."

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The woman at the far end of the kaleidoscope had not been there last week, of this Simon was sure. She was naked or near enough, thinly dressed in a diaphanous veil. "Holy shit!" Simon Alexander breathed on the lens and gave it a wipe with his sleeve. "I see that I have your attention..." said the woman, "...finally."

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The ineffable, unnamable God of Hosts stood with a burly, bearded personage who held a bar towel draped over one arm, a symbol of his trade. The golem toyed nervously with an ear. "My people should quake at My unutterable Name, not fall on their tukhes," God sighed. The ear came off. "Bim... this is not about you. Try to stay on topic."

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The penis with the butterfly tattoo arrived in the mail that afternoon. A plain cardboard box, book rate. Inside a bubble-wrap cocoon was the plastic bottle, Sue Bee Honey. The norteamericano supermarkets displayed these in tidy rows near the peanut butter. The butterfly's wings hung limp in a golden haze of honey as though it had only just left its chrysalis and paused in the sun to dry.

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San Expedito was fussing with his military kilt. "This better not be birdlime, Barney. Or so help me..." Oswaldo pretended to read, pointedly ignoring his patron saint.

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"This is plastique," Patricio explained, as though lecturing a museum tour. "In it is a radio detonator controlled by my associate in our airplane. If your associates inside..." he tapped the Mercedes, "...have any transmitting equipment with them, I should caution them against using it. This is a finicky device."

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Oswaldo O'Rourke y Nuñez prowled the night by the light of a moon three quarters full. He dressed in black. Many wore black?priests, hippies, country and western singers, but the blackening of the face was surely a mark of perpetration. Ozzie crouched to pray behind the big green dumpster in back of the Pick 'N' Pay?a futile prayer to a bogus saint, San Expedito.

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It was a real nice laying-out, tasteful. Well, maybe not so much tasteful particularly, but neat. They'd got Ed's left arm attached to his head and not his shoulder. And they had the remaining right arm attached on the left side. To look like them, I supposed.

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"YO, BABE!" a man's voice blared at Grenadine McKenzie, "SURPRISE, YOU'RE PREGNANT." The face digitized, fell apart, then reassembled itself. A line of empty pixels ran across a tanned chin. One eye twitched. "Gotta go. Kissy-kissy."

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There was a dead man in the yard this morning. I checked in my wallet for my latest picture of the front yard. I have a collection of yard pictures that goes back for years but I usually carry only one photo at a time. No, he was a new arrival. I called Sheila. Sheila is my ex-wife.

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Lord Zorgon of Alymeade sighed, a great exhalation redolent of smoldering carpets. "Where was I? Facelifts, yes. Women, whatever their ages, never wish for sensible things like orthotics or a tonsillectomy."

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"I thought there was a special providence that looked out after these things," said Gerry. A ten-dollar jackpot dropped into the takeout drawer. "There is," said a voice. "And don't whack the machine, the lottery corporation doesn't favor muscleheads abusing church property."

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Libby Pease remembers her girlhood as a litany of lost callers. Now a visitor: William Powell has misplaced Myrna Loy.

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Libby Pease accepts having her own personal shaman as an article of faith, which faith she could not tell. The dead Indian smells rank, but not unpleasantly so: fresh earth clinging to over-wintering vegetables, plug-cut tobacco and molasses. He wears a loincloth and is well muscled, albeit stringy.

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Prosper Epilegomenes is a mouse demon in service to Sminthian Apollo. He blows up a car dealership and kills a troublesome neighbor.

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Duckpin bowling in Taunton, Massachusetts. A duel over a magic hat sacred to Artemis, sister of Apollo.

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It was always Thursday in the Ferguson and McLaughlin Family Bar, Tables for Ladies, all Thursday, all the time. But this Thursday a different barmaid. "Hi, I'm Bambi. The Divine Artemis couldn't make it. The demiurges are chucking quoits today."

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Errol Flynn, aged 120, has been kept alive with hormones and organ transplants until 2025 for the last, final, remake of Kipling's Kim. It will be a musical.

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Twins play which kid's got the papers. Originally published as The Flags of All Nations Hors D'eouvre Toothpick Caper.

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His great green eyes invited her to share a secret knowledge, intimating she was trusted, but not yet ready for a full revelation. Her species would have to mature.

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Jim bit the dog's ear off. He spat. Dog blood was different, somehow forbidden.

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