OFF THE BUNDLE GOES, spinning like a top. It leaves a trail of string in its wake, tracing a desultory pattern across the floor. When it skitters out to the edges of the ring, Bernadette swoops down and opens her arms, but as soon as she can feel its whir, away it goes in the opposite direction, obeying a gravity of its own. Its progress is dizzying; heaps of string litter the stage. The bulge unravels into a ghost of its former self, until all that is left is a latticework of twine, suspended, still quivering, in midair.
Madeleine has vanished.