Wait. You don't understand. I just wanted it to stop. Wanted the hurting to stop." I smoothed a bloodied lock of hair from her eyes and felt very tired as I said, "The only people who never hurt are dead." The light died out of her eyes, her breath slowing. She whispered, barely audible, "I don't understand." I answered, "I don't either." A tear slid from her eye and mixed with the blood. Then she died.

I wouldn't burden any decent system of faith by participating in it... I'm not agnostic. Just nonpartisan. Theological Switzerland, that's me.

Alone. It's one of those small words that means entirely too much. Like fear. Or trust.

Yeah, but I forgot to take my George Orwell-shaped multivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of Big Brother Os this morning.

Here had lived someone else who knew that the only thing waiting at home was a sense of loneliness. Sometimes it is comforting. Most often, it isn't.

I'm so pretty, it's hard for me to think of myself as intelligent.

The cold rain came down in buckets. I was shaking, shivering, and naked, and more soap was getting into my eyes. But hey. At least I was clean.