...something Francine knew all too well as she read his lips while racing past the classroom window; a cryptic revelation that not even she had the courage to face; a dreadful harbinger of what would soon come to pass.  The frigid Winter air nipped at her ears and lips.  One foot in front of the other, over and over as the snow crunched beneath her feet.  She looked to the sky as the snowflakes fell, the Winter sun blinding her eyes as she mechanically ran forward.

At once, the white of the snow-caked sky seemed to zoom over her head once, twice, three times...her line of sight was suddenly spinning rapidly out of control.  Wet snow rolled over the back of her head, past her signature barrettes, and then back over her head again.  Then, she felt a forceful thud atop her head, right where her hair parted.  Again, again, and again.  She could smell her lucky gym socks as her body crouched ever inwards and her feet reached but a few inches away from her face, catapulting forward and downward, her world spinning vertically like a pinwheel gone haywire...

Francine Alice Frensky was falling down stairs.

In the distance, old John Morris a'raised his salty, whiskey-soaked nose.  The faint tumbling and cries from the schoolyard were desperate and torn, as was the cry of the fishmongers.  Rising clumsily to his aching feet, he opened his world-weary eyes to see, as he picked up his hammer and saw...