Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.

This world is full of broken things: broken hearts, broken promises, broken people.

I'd been hurt, and in response I had acted violently, destroying a little of myself each time I did so.

For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.

She was plump, with dyed red hair and a face so caked with cosmetics that the floor of the Amazon jungle probably saw more natural light.

He had never really speculated about this before, since demons came in all shapes and sizes. Indeed, some of them came in more than one shape or size all by themselves, such as O'Dear, the Demon of People Who Look in Mirrors and Think They're Overweight, and his twin, O'Really, the Demon of People Who Look in Mirrors and Think They're Slim When They're Not.

It was an overcast late November morning, the grass splintered by hoarfrost, and winter grinning through the gaps in the clouds like a bad clown peering through the curtains before the show begins.