And what did you do last night, Dexter? Oh, I played with my dolls while a friend chopped up my sister.

Another dream. Another long-distance call on my phantom party line. No wonder i had steadfastly refused to have dreams for most of my life. So stupid; such pointless, obvious symbols. Totally uncontrollable anxiety soup, hateful, blatant nonsense.

I'm a very neat monster.

Why bother inflicting enormous pain on yourself when sooner or later Life would certainly get around to doing it for you?

…a cheerful black shadow reared up behind him as he spoke, thundering a happy challenge to my Dark Passenger, which slid forward and bellowed back.

For the first time I could remember, I felt weak, woozy and stupid— like a human-being. Like a very small and helpless human-being.

It took me a moment. I blinked, and suddenly it swam into focus and I had to frown very hard to keep myself from giggling out loud like the schoolgirl Deb had accused me of being. Because he had arranged the arms and legs in letters, and the letters spelled out a single small word: BOO. The three torsos were carefully arranged below the BOO in a quarter-circle, making a cute little Halloween smile. What a scamp.