Drawing Blood

A million mirrors, and none of them broken.

Yielding flesh in his hands, hot with fear, sticky with sweat and blood and already smelling of heaven.

You’re not in New Orleans where drinking’s de rigueur, not anymore. Why not just forget about the stuff and make him happy? Because I don’t WANT to!!! his mind raged in the voice of a cranky three-year-old. I LIKE to get drunk sometimes

He felt like a man made of television static, of a million roaring, hissing silver dots.

As the night deepened and the traffic thinned to nothing, it seemed to Zach that the whole country lay over the next rise, around the next bend of the highway all lit up and wide awake, violent and strange and joyous, just waiting for him to come find it

Toward dawn he fell into restless sleep and dreamed of angels telling him to do violence

Afraid they would never make it to adulthood and freedom, or that they would make it only at the price of their fragile souls; afraid that the world would prove too dull, too cold, that they would always be as alone as they felt right now.

When he got like this, Trevor could feel a blind red rage pulsing from him, hotter than the car’s engine, a rage that did not know words like wife and sons.

face was gone to unrecognizable meat, save for one eye glittering mindlessly in all that ruin, like the eye of a bird or a reptile. Both arms and his right leg were gone; the left leg ended just above the