Molly blinked, then looked at Thomas and said, "Wait a minute.... We're his flunkies." "You, may be," Thomas said, sneering. "I'm his thug. I'm way higher than a flunky." "You are high if you think I'm taking any orders from you," Molly said tartly.

You need a prostate to understand,” I said.

Sometimes I think that's where most of us are. Fighting off the crazy as best we can. Trying to become something better than we were. It's that second bit that's important.

Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.

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

...as nervous as a bird in a coal mine.

The past was gone. Nothing could change what had already been. Looking back at it, letting its wounds fester, indulging in regret was just a different, slower way to die. The living moved forward.