The clerk at the convenience store on the turnpike had been one of them. A pile of wriggling, glistening worms, stacked in the rough shape of a man and squeezed into a yellow polyester polo shirt with a nametag proclaiming the pile of worms to be named Brian. Edward Donahue could make out the overskin at the same time, like two films projected on top of one another. Brian masqueraded as a friendly-faced man in his mid-twenties, and that was the facade Donahue made sure to react to. His mother had told him it was rude to stare, and Donahue didn't want to find out what happened if the pile of worms that called itself Brian realized it had been made. So he grunted a few banal pleasantries and made sure not to make contact with Brian's slithering and oozing hands while taking back his change for the pint bottle of Absolut vodka. 

Even now, a few hours later, Donahue couldn't shake the image of those countless worms, crawling over one another and leaving trails of slime even as they formed lips and ears and fingers. It was far from the worst thing he had ever seen but it wasn't terribly fun either. He absently cleared his throat, straightened his cheap Van Heusen tie, pulled his shirt cuff over the weird little birthmark on his wrist, checked his whereabouts once again. The diner at the Brier Hill Inn was nothing special, clearly a shadow of what it had once been.. Neither was the coffee he was pounding back. But it seemed like the place to start his surveillance job.

Keeping a watchful but inconspicuous eye from behind the newspaper he was only pretending to read, Donahue mentally reviewed the case notes. Charles Sandrelli, forty-five. Agricultural supplies sales rep. His wife knew he made frequent and seemingly unnecessary stops in Brier Hill during his business trips, she wanted grounds for a divorce and suspected ol' Chuck had a girlfriend tucked away up here. Or maybe a boyfriend, Donahue idly speculated. Not that it mattered, he was a Nineties guy. Just another philandering husband, another paycheck, another podunk little town, another few hours before he clocked off and went back to his room to anesthetize himself with Swedish vodka and basic cable in an effort to forget about Brian back on the turnpike and his throbbing face made of worms.

And so Donahue sat in the diner, drinking coffee, staring at a newspaper, keeping an eye out for Sandrelli so that he might follow him. 

Just a few more hours before his retainer of billable hours ran out for the day and he could feel the sweet blessed relief of the vodka, still in its brown paper bag in his room. Donahue could hardly wait.