Fantastic Metropolis

And then they came for him, the thin man with his predatory grace, Blake like an apparition from the darkened hallway, the manuscript folded carefully against his breast. Gentle hands, but resolute, closed about his arms.

“No, please,” he said as they led him across the lawn.

But they turned upon him their flat, affectless eyes, saying nothing, and for the second time that night, Hollis caught the scents of oil and polished steel. Summer wind tore at the pages of his manuscript as the translucent carapace of the beetle slid into place above him. And then they were speeding silently away. Hollis glanced back, but all the houses looked the same. The fireflies were gone and nothing moved but a single scrap of paper, rising and twisting in the moonlit dark before the wind harried it away.