I'm suddenly finding it hard to know the difference between nightmares and consciousness.

To die trying would be better than to die without purpose.

He sits next to me, careful to avoid my hair that's splayed out around my head like blood. A bullet to the forehead, boom, blond waves everywhere.

It's the silence I imagine in the rest of the world, the silence of an endless ocean and uninhabitable island, a silence that can be seen from space.

Don't you miss it?" I say. "Being free." He laughs.

There is warmth shooting through my broken body where there should be pain, and I put my arms around the back of his neck and I hold on to him. I hold on because you never know in this place when something good will be taken away.

She would do anything, anything to belong to his son after a lifetime of belonging to no one at all.