“This looks like a quiet little place for a set of sheets to slip into for an ice-cold beer,” thought the folded sheets, who’d slipped from Henry’s linen closet several months earlier without Henry’s knowledge, and had hidden away in the coat closet, nearest the back door of the house, lying quietly behind a pair of bowling ball carrying cases (hadn’t Susan taken her bowling ball when she moved out? thought the sheets, but not for long, since it only brought up the whole painful business of being left behind, which wasn’t something that the folded sheets was anxious to explore, lying there in the dark, at least not something it’d want to think about while hidden behind a couple of bowling balls, which smelled of cigarette smoke (no doubt second-hand smoke from the bowling alley (the folded sheets tried to breathe shallowly, which was hard to do, considering the excitement of having escaped the linen closet and the very idea that they were on their way somewhere - who knew where! - and hoped that when they got there - wherever that might be! - that the smoky smell wouldn’t have soaked in too deeply, certainly not more than a decent washing and refolding wouldn’t take care of)), while it’d waited for both the courage and the right moment to slip out of the house unnoticed, which had been only this afternoon, and which two bus rides and a short walk later, had brought them to the front door of the quiet-looking little tavern which the sheets now passed through, just in time to catch a glimpse of the surprise on Henry’s face (which the folded sheets mistook as surprise at seeing his own missing sheets show up at the very bar he happened to be at during working hours, but was, in fact, the lingering surprise of having watched a woman pull an AK47 from somewhere out of her bra), the final flash of the cocktail waitress’ bra before her shirt snapped back into place (which was rather nicely crisp and freshly pressed, thought the folded sheets), and finally the site of the assault rifle being fired (an AK47, the folded sheets observed, having seen one in action on more than one occasion while watching movies on the bedroom television), but not the sound of it being fired (since folded sheets, as everyone knows, have no ears), which might have forewarned the sheets (might, I say here, because as everyone also knows, sheets, in spite of what they might bear witness to in the bedroom, still remain rather unworldly and naive) of the inherent danger, nay, the foolishness, of walking into a small bar in the middle of the afternoon while an assault rifle is being fired, but which of course, being earless, the folded sheets didn’t hear, causing them to walk straight into the path of a single stray bullet, which ripped through several layers of crisp folds, dropping the sheets to the floor in an undignified heap.