The four nearest girls looked up in panic. Alarm bells rang shrilly, rockets popped out of the centers of the feather dusters, fire sprinklers showered down rainbowed sparks. The pretzels unwound limply. The slices of Swiss cheese curled into rolls out of which confetti blew in continuous blasts.
A girl pulled her phone out of the ice bucket and choked herself by winding the cord around and around her throat. The next one reached in her desk for a pair of waterwings, inflated them and began practicing the breast stroke. Others mutely handed him sheaf after sheaf of statements, loading them on his reflexively outstretched arms until the top ones slid off onto the floor. He could see they were made out to him but he had no chance to read the items or prices.
They piled the bills faster and faster; girls came from the farthest desks, staggered under armfuls. He dumped what he was holding and tried to struggle free from the mounting heap but it was already above his waist; he could not get his legs loose. He dug with his hands; the papers slipped down to cram the holes as fast as he dug. They imprisoned him with their weight; first the left, then the right arm was pinned to his side.
Buried to the chin, he filled his lungs with air, foreseeing the covering of his mouth and nose. The pressure was painful now; he felt his ribs slowly caving in. The deluge ceased; the girl who had choked herself wormed her way to him on her belly, creeping up the paper mound, dragging the telephone behind her. She pressed her swollen, twisted, blackened tongue against his lips, looked into his eyes with her protruding glazed ones.
He wrenched his face away. Girls approached with rubber stamps so large they could barely lift the bulbous handles. As they were raised he read DIAP on their dark purple surfaces. The girls hurled and slashed them downward, biting into the bills. With each thump masses of paper vanished. His arms were disengaged, then his legs. He breathed deeply, took a step, leaving only scattered invoices on the floor.
The girls threw themselves at his feet. "Take us," they moaned, "use us, violate us, degrade us. We love you."
The Governor shuddered as he perceived they were all sisters, product of a multiple birth; in each face he saw the features of the strangled girl. The one with the waterwings, using a crawl, swam rapidly between the others and raised her clasped hands imploringly. She was drowning. He rolled her over and began clumsily giving her artificial respiration. Her hair gradually turned white, the blue dye floating in a powdery cloud above her head. He put the valve of the waterwings to her mouth and expressed the air. She opened her eyes.
"Let us go," she said.
The others protested, weeping, clasping and unclasping their hands, tearing at their bathing suits in anguish, clutching their throats in grief, but they did not try to hold him. He helped the white-haired girl to her feet. She drew a key from between her breasts and handed it to him. He put it in his pocket and they left the office. As soon as they were outside her hair changed to brown, the pink bathing suit became white, her nail polish, lipstick and eye-shadow faded. She shivered.