“What is this place?” I ask. “What do you do here?” Instead of answering, Sullivan turns away from me, there on the other side of the glass counter, and reaches for an item on the shelf behind him. He sets it down between us and folds his arms, not speaking. It’s an old wooden fishing lure, an eyelet at the top where the line would be tied, and a barbed hook at the bottom. “Is that for me?” I don’t pick it up. I’m afraid to touch it. “No,” he says. “It’s not yours.” “Whose it it?” “A madwoman,” he… …
“I’m setting fire to my Twitter,” Viola says. “It’s too much of a fucking mess. That whole place is imploding so hard that it’s going to suck into itself and black hole the entire thing into another dimension.” We are sitting on the roof of her house, just outside her attic window, in a place most people would consider dangerous. We are not most people. It’s cold out, and gray, and an icy wind is blowing, but there is still a plague going on, even if most of the world is pretending that there isn’t. Up here, we can take… …
The taste is like cobwebs on my tongue, and it starts the moment I cross the threshold and enter the shed. The light is dim, the window small and coated in a layer of dust and grime, and it becomes more dark when I let go of the door and it closes gently shut behind me. A quiet but insistent sound hovers at the edge of my hearing, like the hum of a distant waterfall. The key in my hand is no longer hot to the touch. I put it in my pocket and turn in a slow circle, looking… …