All my life, up until that moment, I'd had a warm, protective blanket wrapped around me, knitted of aunts and uncles, purled of first and second and third cousins, knot-tied with grandmas and grandpas and greats. That blanket had just dropped from my shoulders. I felt cold, lost and alone.

Life's not linear at all. It happens in lighting flashes. So fast you don't see those lay-you-out cold moments coming at you until you're Wile E. Coyote, steamrolled flat as a pancake by the Road Runner, victim of your own elaborate schemes.

For what other reason would you have me save you? Because I like you? Better to be useful than liked.

Valhalla on the right. Paradise regained on the left. Stuck between a Godiva truffle and a chocolate eclair. Between a rock and a very hard place. Two very hard places from the looks of it.

Keeping vigil over her are two monsters of very different breeds but monster just the same. Death on her left. Devil on her right.

He was on me before my brain processed the fact that he was coming for me.

I love music because it's so fecking brilliant. Music is math, and math is the structure of everything and pretty much perfect.