Every inner touch, every one of its fingerprints on my brain, burned like acid. It shredded the walls of my soul like tissue paper, it clawed its way into my very center, I couldn’t tell anymore where it began and I ended. It poured into me like a river into the sea, mixing, melding, until we were one. One. For better or worse. Until death do us part.

What're you still doing up? You know all good little ninjas should be in bed, visions of homicidal sugarplums dancing in their heads.

Pick up your clothes. I am not your maid. How do I know this? A maid cannot kill you with a tube sock. I can.

All I cared was that she had never lied. She was honest in a world just the opposite, and a cool oasis in my life. She was who she said she was, and everything Sophia, my mother, the pathologically manipulative liar, had never been.

Why is it always the world? Why is it never just half a block? Or Jersey? You know, something we could live without?

You're the little spoon, aren't you?

I am your brother. I was supposed to be your brother before either of us was born. Karmic debt. It appears I was Vlad the Impaler or Genghis Khan in a past life.