I don't move. I wait behind my log, terrified. Over the past ten minutes, it's become such a dear friend, I consider naming it: Howard, my pet log.

Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another.

Climb onto my shoulders. I will not let you fall.

Adolphus is not at his desk. That means he is somewhere in the Monstrumarium, has gone home for the day, or is dead.

Some things you can never leave behind. They don't belong to the past. They belong to you.

Memories can bring comfort to the old and infirm, but memories can also be implacable foes, a malicious army of temporal ghosts forever pillaging the long-sought-after peace of our twilight years.

Self-pity is egotism undiluted, after all—self-centeredness in its purest form.