Tonight, just after midnight, the desk receives seven names — and every one of them arrived because someone had mistaken survival for permission.

Issue No. 4 of This Day in Deaths opens with the series' musical introduction and the universal cold open — tonight's roll-call runs through Texas: Bandera, Port Isabel, San Angelo, Kerrville, Galveston, and a private reservoir where a pale blue Amphicar made theater out of mortal fear one final time.

Rafe Dunlow paints his mouth red and steps between a crowd and a bull one time too many. June Albright knows the spillway pulls and goes after a Panama hat anyway. Teddy Mallow climbs onto a pickup hood because the family has mistaken survival for tradition. Sibley Crane makes anecdotes of other people's fear until his own body enters the room quietly. Clara Vane has learned to fall in ...