On the morning of the day when he is killed, Frankie walks with his mom, Delilah, across the only bridge that connects the Southern Quarter of the city, where they live, to Downtown, where they are going to appeal some parking tickets.

He is eight years old, and when he sees a cut-off padlock sitting on the sidewalk, he stoops down to pick it up.

“Sometimes, people who love each other very much lock a padlock onto a bridge as a symbol,” says Delilah.

Frankie turns the broken lock over and over in his hands. “So these people don’t love each other anymore?”

Delilah shakes her head and explains that actually, the city has to come and cut the locks off of bridges, because if there are too many, the bridge will collapse under the weight of it all— “They must have left this one behind by accident,” she says. “See, there’s a sign.”— up on the fence, big letters, “No locks”.

The way it goes is that a police car driving by along the bridge spots Frankie standing below the sign, holding the lock, and the driver decides that he must be about to place the lock onto the fence, so he gets out of his car and shoots Frankie dead. Leaves nothing but an outline in chalk.

Trer watches all of this from high atop the underside of the road.

O Trer, God of Anarchy and Justice, wearing his leather longcoat backwards, buttons down his spine, back of the collar like a mask across his mouth, painted over with tiger’s teeth, and with his tiger-tail swishing behind him.

Eagle-taloned fingers, and eagle-knife eyes to know everything that might concern or amuse him.

He dazzles in caution-tape finery, and his voice is the slippery stones of the creek, where you lose your footing and fall, dashing your head against the rocks.

The choice is not his; it is his nature that forces him to act. He asks Delilah if she would like to destroy this shape of the world, and she tells him that she would give anything. Trer takes nothing but the cut-off lock as his payment.

That night, in her house, Delilah mourns. The skin of her forearms cracks under her fingernails into paint-chips, peeling off her living-room ceiling—face-drip water damage on the carpet, knees folded on the floor into her chest, beating ribs. She makes a sound all through the night, which you can feel in your throat when you hear it.

She is still breathing in the morning, and awake, in her kitchen, but nobody lives here anymore.

In the morning, in the chalk outline, there is Frankie’s body again, right as it had been yesterday, laid out dead.

The people of the Southern Quarter are enraged. They stage a protest on the bridge, just their voices, shouting, and when the police come over from Downtown to keep things quiet, they won’t keep quiet. One thing becomes another, nobody is really sure how, but there are bullets above the shouting, and a dozen people are killed in the chaos— the rest go fleeing into the night, terrified.

The next morning, a dozen new dead bodies have walked out of the morgue and joined Frankie’s, lying right where they fell. The next afternoon, the people of the Southern Quarter are out again, shouting— and again, the police come across that lonely bridge from Downtown.

The next morning after that, there are easily a hundred lifeless bodies walking back onto the bridge and laying themselves down in their outlines. The next morning after that, there are a thousand; the tires of the police cars roll over their heads and spines, and the officers make sure to drink their coffee on the other side of the river before crossing, so that it doesn’t spill from all the bumps. During the day, another thousand bodies join the pile, plus one— one police officer. Statistics. It happens. Or maybe it was on purpose. Who can say? Nothing is clear.

The next morning, dozens of police cars. Vans behind them, loaded with riot officers, armed to the teeth. Armored SWAT trucks. Street-tanks, even, machine-guns mounted on top—line upon line upon line, they come, a proper army.

Trer, God of Anarchy and Justice, stands alone at the other end of the bridge to receive them. The cars at the head of the convoy slow to a stop— the drivers recognize Trer, he is impossible to mistake— and now what is he going to do? With his claws… is he going to tear them apart? There is nothing that their guns or tasers can do against someone like him.

But he doesn’t move to meet and destroy them. He just stays right where he is, blocking the path, watching, waiting for the last of the vehicles from across the river to roll onto the bridge. Tire after tire. Car after car, van after van, truck after truck, tank after tank… over the bodies…

The mouth painted onto the collar across Trer’s face shifts into an eerie smile of welcome. The bridge is starting to creak. None of the officers can hear it— not over the roar of their engines— but he can hear it.

Any moment now.

The last tank rolls onto the bridge. Any moment now. It creaks. It groans. It sags a little bit in the middle.

But nothing happens. Trer frowns. “Hmmm. I really would have thought that would be enough.”

Nevermind. He’ll just have to cheat.

“Symbolism’s there. That’s what counts,” he tells himself, and from the pocket of his coat, he pulls out the cut-off lock. He tosses it down onto the pavement in front of him.

A rumble, a crack, a crash. Bodies and vans are plunging down into the water. This shape of the world cannot survive itself; there’s too much. The bridge collapses under the weight of it all.