God has to remind us this isn't heaven by a long shot, so he increases the radios and lethal flies.

The silence between us was so profound I thought part of it must be my fault.

I tried to speak in a cool, calm way, but the zombie rose up in my throat and choked me off.

I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor or pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.

we walk the plank with strangers.

It won't happen yet, Ellen mused, mashing cooked carrots for Jill's lunch. Breakups seldom do. It will unfold slowly, one little tell-tale symptom after another like some awful, hellish flower.

Sometimes I feel so stupid and dull and uncreative that I am amazed when people tell me differently.