The rules of Panic are simple. Anyone can enter. But only one person will win.

Do the other kids make fun of you? For how you talk?' 'Sometimes.' 'So why don't you do something about it? You could learn to talk differently, you know.' But this is my voice. How would you be able to tell when I was talking?

A string of bright white buildinh, glistening like teeth over the slurping mouth of the ocean.

Are you ever afraid to go to sleep? Afraid of what comes next?” He smiles a sad little smile and I swear it’s like he knows. “Sometimes I’m afraid of what I’m leaving behind,” he says.

It was as though the darkness was a sheet of raw cookie dough and someone had just taken a cookie cutter and made a child-sized shape out of it.

In a world without love, this is what people are to each other: values, benefits, and liabilities, numbers and data. We weigh, we quantify, we measure, and the soul is ground to dust.

The priests and the scientists are right about one thing: At our heart, at our base, we are no better than animals.