I can no longer believe in any voodoo spell or laboratory virus. This is something deeper, darker. This comes from the cosmos, from the stars, or the unknown blackness behind them. The shadows in God's boarded-up basement.

It's rare that I read more than two or three books by any one author, usually only one.

I can’t seem to make myself care about anything to the right or left of the present.

But I'm not afraid of the skeletons in Julie's closet. I look forward to meeting the rest of them, looking them hard in the eye, giving them firm, bone-crunching handshakes.

I sigh inside, so exhausted by these ugly questions, but when did a monster ever deserve its privacy?

Of course, if I eat all of him, if I spare his brain, he'll rise up and follow me back to the airport, and that might make feel better. I'll introduce him to everyone, and maybe we'll stand around and groan for a while. It's hard to say what 'friends' are any more, but that might be close.

One mistake, one brief lapse of my new found judgement-that's all it took to unravel everything. What a massive responsibility, being a moral creature.