Beached in the middle of the desert, like a tremendous pink whale, was a convertible 1955 Cadillac. Steam billowed from under the hood. The thick white vapour was fading when Eddie pulled the stolen F250 to a stop on the roadside.

Eddie slapped a beat up Stetson on his head and jumped out of the truck, the desert heat like a blast furnace. George squeezed his bulk out the passenger door. His shirt was clinging to his back and ample stomach. Joining Eddie at the back of the Cadillac, he asked, “What do you think?”

I’m opening the cabinet now…The solitary tin can contains beets, what else? Only I can access the cabinet; the little ones are shrunk oh so small; they circle my legs, scratching at my heels. Wait, I tell them, mustering up bravado against welling tears. Dinner will be ready soon...I’ve believed each dinner would be the last, but I keep waking up to another last meal, and always a can of beets.

All night she dreamt of blood. The crackle and crunch of bones made her uneasy.

Morgan gasped and kicked until she was awake. Her head throbbed. She smelled like sweat and fear and there was something stuck between her teeth. She pried at it unsuccessfully with her fingernails. Frustrated, she threw the sheets aside and ran into the bathroom. She grabbed a bit of dental floss. The thin piece of white string slid back and forth. Morgan let out a sigh of relief when she felt whatever it was come loose.

She felt large piece of skin between her thumb and index finger. Only it had…ridges. She frowned.

That’s strange.

March 8, 2005

I killed my wife yesterday. Emptied a full load of 22's point blank into her chest. The drinking glass she was holding looked like it was suspended in air before it fell to the ground shattering into pieces.

This morning, my wife and I went to the mall to window shop.

I haven't been seeing patients lately. I'm not a hypocrite. It's unethical to promote mental health if one is unsure of one's own state of mind.

Miriam Webster knew something was wrong. All of the dogs in the neighborhood were barking their heads off, including her little Bull Terrier, Mason. She closed the book she had been reading and placed it on the night stand. She checked the digital readout on the clock-radio: 9:43. She had been reading for nearly two hours, totally lost in the magical world of that wonderful wizard boy and his amazing adventures.

Let's go.

Words mouthed not spoken, seen not heard. You come to yourself in the midst of a party in an unfamiliar room, a florid face leaning into yours--a graying beard like mangy squirrel curled around the mouth, tobacco-stained teeth flashing yellowed squirrel bone. Flat pale eyes crackling enthusiasm.

Something inside you squirms, but you yield. A meaty hand on your arm draws you from your seat. Reluctant traces of your high drop to your feet. Cold breakers of flesh crash against you as you sway through a sea of bodies, dozens of bodies, people talking eating laughing dancing: a throng pulsing to the rhythm of music unheard, cased in silence as thick as January ice.

It was over lunch at the old Warburton Hotel that Scott told me his story. The Warburton is an antiquated jumble of brown stone and striped canvas on New York's upper west side, a particularly suitable setting for that sort of tale. It is steeped in its own peculiar amalgam of gloomy history and faded nostalgia, so the cosmopolite who finds himself on the premises had better be a resident, a chance traveller with a penchant for the bizarre, or simply (like myself) a fellow with a taste for Claude Benoit's odd blend of French and American cooking.

"Attention, SaveMart shoppers! A group of bloodthirsty zombies has invaded the store. Do not be alarmed, but please proceed to the nearest exit in a calm, orderly fashion. Leave all unpurchased merchandise within the store. Regardless of the circumstances, we will continue to prosecute all shoplifters to the fullest extent of the law."

This announcement met with several moments of shocked inaction, then an anthill of activity erupted in the shopping center, as if the pronouncement’s full meaning had hit everyone at once.

Enoch slammed the hood of his stubborn Cutlass. Great. He'd been ignoring an ominous grinding noise for weeks, and now he'd have to walk home.

Within fifteen minutes he was in town, but it was a bright day, and the sweat was pouring off him. Judging by the number of kids on bikes and playing on the sidewalks, Enoch guessed it was about 3:30. He heaved a sigh of relief in spite of himself; though he was years out of high school, 3:30 still felt like freedom.

It was a drunken lark. A gag. Eric and Tony got hammered out of their skulls on a box of cheap wine and then went tearing through the Red Mantis Buddhist Prayer Gardens at two in the morning.

They giggled like schoolboys when Tony filled his pockets with bars of soap from a steam room and exchanged his running shoes for a pair of wooden sandals placed neatly beside the doorway. They laughed heartily as Eric rampaged through carefully tended rock and cacti gardens, flipping stones and gravel through the air, cleaving cactus in two with an iron bar he'd found near the fence right before they'd hopped over it.