A feeling settles over me—a one-beer-deep feeling, a no-more-skittering-feet-after-the-trap-snaps feeling.

I once heard a story about a girl who requested something so vile from her paramour that he told her family and they had her hauled her off to a sanatorium. I don’t know what deviant pleasure she asked for, though I desperately wish I did. What magical thing could you want so badly they take you away from the known world for wanting it?

She’s like dough, how the give of it beneath kneading hands disguises its sturdiness, its potential.

I was a creature so small, trapped in some crevice of an indifferent universe.

Stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle.

Many people live and die without ever confronting themselves in the darkness.