The first chapter of an in-progress novel.

“The voice began on a Tuesday morning while Monte Walsh was standing in his kitchen, holding an unopened package of bacon over the garbage can.”

Walter Briggs was arrested on a Tuesday morning for telling a joke.

The concept, as described in the thirty-eight-page proposal Randy submitted to the city’s Planning Department, was “a disruptive digital entertainment property combining creator culture, competitive reality programming, food-based aspirational branding, and the democratization of female entrepreneurship.”

By morning, he had decided he needed somewhere nobody cared about theater, someplace where the name Chekhov was more likely to be mistaken for a rifle than a playwright.

There was no thunder, no glowing doorway, no mysterious wind blowing through the apartment, and no choir of angels politely alerting me that physics had submitted its resignation.

The deck simply felt heavier.

“We do not sell products. We sell relief from the injuries created by the culture selling the products. The customer arrives bleeding. We sell him a more attractive knife.”

He sat across from Director Wallace at a white table. Between them was a bowl of individually wrapped mints. This offended him more than the hood. Torture should not involve mints. It suggested customer service.

People came.

At first they came to be angry.
Then they came to be seen being angry.
Then they came because tickets became difficult to obtain.

Its cover was plain linen, the color of fossilized limestone. There was no author. No publication date. The first page contained only a sentence.

I have been waiting for you.

Pan's eyes lit up. "I have met God."

Hume paused in the dealing. Roberts's mouth turned into a grim smile. "You've met God, have you, you heathen prick?"

Pan nodded. "I have. God is a white man."

“They waited for the next frightened person to confuse survival with surrender.”

“Chuck had spent half his life mistaking another person’s pain for his assignment.”

Jack took a deep breath. "Why is it so easy for you to dismiss the truth for your convenience? You have to understand that the personal is political, right?

He lied there, the beast breathing slowly, and wondered what happened? Where was his wife? Did she do this to him? Why?