Rusty Nail Quotes

He smiled. "we go inside." "I'm going to get tetanus in there." I grumbled. "Don't go rolling in piles of dirt and rusty nails and you'll be fine." "You're an ass.

It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to push to write it down, just to keep the pen moving on the paper. It used to be a perfectly ordinary day, but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail.

Fucking gorgeous man. And the best part? The way he looked at me. Like I was the prettiest girl in the room. “Hey, baby.” The man was a poet. “Hey.” I was too.

Dirty talk is an art. Do it too often, it becomes routine. Never do it, and you’re missing something. Simon did it just right. He was like a perfect bowl of smutty porridge: just right.

...sometimes you have to pretend to be feeling better to actually feel better. It's why new workout clothes make you feel like you want to work out.

His gaze grew wistful, and he looked so young. 'I don't want to put things off, even though we haven't been together a really long time. I don't want to wait--you never know what can...Look. I adore you, and I want a home. Again. With you.

My boyfriend likes to fuck my brains out on our kitchen island. Which tile would you recommend for that?

But when you go weeks without that same 190 pounds in your bed, the truth is, it felt kind of nice to sleep underneath that. Or at least, off to the side just a little bit. I loved him, but I loved my kidneys too.

I love the shit out of you. So calm down and just tell me what you need. -Simon

I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label. But is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find this idea somehow demeaning to human dignity. For myself, I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we. But the essence of life is not so much the atoms and simple molecules that make us up as the way in which they are put together. Every now and then we read that the chemicals which constitute the human body cost ninety-seven cents or ten dollars or some such figure; it is a little depressing to find our bodies valued so little. However, these estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made mostly of water, which costs almost nothing; the carbon is costed in the form of coal; the calcium in our bones as chalk; the nitrogen in our proteins as air (cheap also); the iron in our blood as rusty nails. If we did not know better, we might be tempted to take all the atoms that make us up, mix them together in a big container and stir. We can do this as much as we want. But in the end all we have is a tedious mixture of atoms. How could we have expected anything else?

He lifted his head and opened his eyes. Singularly focused, dark, and of one mind-set. Simon was about to fuck.

He bent over the back of sofa inside my apartment and removed my panties. With his Teeth. With his mother-loving teeth! I can't even! Romance novels, schmomance novels, here's how Wallbanger does it

So what do we do next? Y’know, as people in a relationship after they’ve solved a conflict.” “Pretty sure a blow job should follow this,” he said seriously.

She was always calm under pressure, always the cucumber when everything else was jalapenos.

I’m very cute when I’m vulnerable.

dicks didn’t need to be inserted for it to be cheating.

Because no one can hurt you quite like someone who says he loves you.

From: fmarino@thewillingschool.org To: abainbr@thewillingschool.org Date: December 19, 6:54 p.m. Subject: Three Things 1. Truth: I'm terrified of an embarrassing number of things, including Ferris wheels, rusty nails, being alone, and being with someone. 2. Truth: I'm working on that. 3. Dare: Take a chance on me, Alex Bainbridge. Qu'ieu sui precieuse, leu lo sai."

When you were in a long-distance relationship, of course you made the most of the time you were together. But sometimes, it was the unexpected that really made the difference. The unexpected emotions you were hit with when you saw that face, looked into those eyes, felt those lips. The unexpected reminder of why you fell in love with this person could hit you so powerfully. And this was that time.

While I'm quietly ignoring your "Smile, miss's," "Dammmn, girls's," and "Hey, sugar tits, you wanna suck on something sweet's?" I'm also fantasizing about peeling back the skin of your penis with a rusty nail.

Hey, Babe." The man was a poet. "Hey." I was too.

Think I even noticed that I had a forehead full of sofa? Hell no, I had a Wallbanger kneeling between my legs.

With one lick, I was close. With a second lick, I was close to stupid.

Caroline, I love the shit out of you. So calm down and just tell me what you need. No more holding back. And then I’ll tell you what I need, and we’ll figure out how to work it out.

A bus. A cough. A rusty nail: Death sits near each one of us at every turn. Sometimes we are too aware, but mostly we push it away. Sometimes it looks exactly like life. Orange: The colors of the sky are the same when the sun rises as when it disappears.

Hell, yes. I love you; that’s not going to change. I want this, I want you, and I think . . . Oh hell, here comes the Dawson’s Creek.” He grimaced and I chuckled in spite of the moment. His gaze grew wistful, and he looked so young. “I don’t want to put things off, even though we haven’t been together a really long time. I don’t want to wait—you never know what can . . . Look. I adore you, and I want a home. Again. With you.

Don't look so forlorn. You're making the right decision. Cole once ate a pound of rusty nails and claimed it tasted like unicorn tears mixed with fairy dust. True story. I was there." Reeve nodded encouragingly. "I wasn't there, but I can believe it. I once saw him body slam a teacher for daring to ask him the meaning of X minus Y." "He put the guy in the hospital for three months," Poppy said, tapping a fingernail against her chin. "Or was that a student he body slammed for daring to give an answer different than his?" "Probably both. He's body slammed enough people to start a new country. And there could be a neighboring city for the people he's punched in the throat.

Some people read palms to tell your future, I read hands to tell your past. Each scar marks a story worth telling. Each callused palm, each cracked knuckle, is a broken bottle, a missed punch, a rusty nail, years in a factory.

I’m hardly just someone. I think I rate a little higher than that,

I try not to watch the news. Too depressing.

Welcome to the shit club where life is always hard, and you never know what to expect before life knocks you down again,” I responded to her outburst. Raven’s

Bring a grown-up sucked sometimes.

Clive remained behind Simon’s knees. Simon’s Knees . . . What a great name for a band.

Wait a minute, hold up. Stop everything. His name is Barry -" i started. "-Derry?" Mimi finished. We collapsed on the floor howling amid chopsticks and soy packets. "Silence, whores, silence. Besides, Reynolds, you dated a guy named James motherfucking Brown," Sophia snapped back.

Dressed in black pants, a white button-down, and a leather jacket, he was sophisticated but cool. A man about town, a globetrotter, a secret cat whisperer who would sell his soul for an apple pie. And he was mine.

and yes, baby-puke-green appliances. To be fair, when they were initially manufactured, they were called avocado. Which was just insulting to avocados.

I had the life I wanted. And I wasn't afraid to say no to somthing more.

It was like pulling one loose thread on a sweater, and suddenly, poof, no sweater! And you’re standing naked in a new hotel with terrible lighting.

If it has tires or testicles, it's going to give you problems.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. I knew it was him. My skin told me.

You’re fucking hot, and you’re fucking great, you’re a fucking catch. And if fucking Neil doesn’t get to have you anymore, who cares, because you’re fucking awesome,” I finished.

It used to be a perfectly ordinary day but now it sticks up on the calendar like a rusty nail.)

She voices the flames of hunger and moves his hand. in a field of wildflowers, her words lead to a bloody cross of rusty nails and dreams. And longing.

But my insides are made of seawater, warped wood, and rusty nails.

Big, burly Harley with the heart of an angel, soul of a teddy bear, and Sue with her backbone of titanium, spiked with rusty nails, ready to take on any threat to those close to her.

The famous atheist Christopher Hitchens once declared that ‘You’re expelled from your mother’s uterus as if shot from a cannon, towards a barn door studded with old nail files and rusty hooks.’ Presumably that was what he had in mind when conceiving his three children.

The sad thing is that sentimentality is constantly getting the better of my pure reason. Antediluvian memories tie me to you like a pair of handcuffs. You are stuck in my soul like a rusty nail without a head. And apparently I am stuck in you too, somewhere among the cogwheels you are equipped with instead of a soul.

I got into Jillian's Mercedes and drove back across the bridge to wait for my art installation. Which never showed up. Hey, art installation? Suck my dick.

I’ll feel guilty Monday, but today I can’t think about anything work related. My head will literally burst.

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me. But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall In company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small, things priceless and worthless. A first water diamond, an empty spool bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. in your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held so much like the jumble in the bags could they be emptied that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place, who knows?

Hypocrisy is what being a parent is all about,” Jon said. “Well done for cracking the books, Jared and Holly. You see how it pays off.” Holly smiled and the light of her smile seemed to spill all over the room, reflections of light refracted all over everywhere. “It’s true reading is a wonderful thing,” Rusty observed. “I read a Cosmo a year ago, and I still remember how to keep my nails in perfect condition and also ten top tips on how to dress to accentuate my ass.” Now everybody was staring at Rusty. Unlike Jared, he did not blush. “Those tips are working,” he said. “Don’t pretend you haven’t all noticed. I know the truth.

but sometimes you have to pretend to be feeling better to actually feel better. It’s why new workout clothes make you feel like you want to work out. I was still waiting for that one to turn out to be true . . .

Who" The month of flowering’s finished. The fruit’s in, Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth. October’s the month for storage. The shed’s fusty as a mummy’s stomach: Old tools, handles and rusty tusks. I am at home here among the dead heads. Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won’t notice. My heart is a stopped geranium. If only the wind would leave my lungs alone. Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down. They rattle like hydrangea bushes. Mouldering heads console me, Nailed to the rafters yesterday: Inmates who don’t hibernate. Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze, A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted, Their veins white as porkfat. O the beauty of usage! The orange pumpkins have no eyes. These halls are full of women who think they are birds. This is a dull school. I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet, Without dreams of any sort. Mother, you are the one mouth I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways. I said: I must remember this, being small. There were such enormous flowers, Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely. The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry. Now they light me up like an electric bulb. For weeks I can remember nothing at all.

What?” she said. “I like you, you know,” he said. “I know.” “No, I mean I like you the way you are, I don’t need you to change.” He smiled. “I’ve never thought of you as a monster or a weapon or--what did you call yourself? A rusty--” She caught the word nail in her mouth.

Though I’ve not taken anyone’s drink order in a quarter of a century, in my stress dreams I’m always sweating through my oxford shirt and poorly tied tie, deep in the weeds, having been triple seated with eight tops, thanks to a clueless seventeen-year-old hostess. The bartender’s taking forever to mix a single Rusty Nail because Sergey Brin hasn’t yet invented Google. Empty plates are stacked tall as skyscrapers on the tables, which is confusing. Why would a party of four dirty up twenty-three plates apiece, even if I were serving tapas? There’s no busboy in sight.

Akos touched her face. When he first met her, he thought she was this fearsome thing, this monster he needed to escape. But she had unfurled bit by bit, showing him her wicked humor by waking him with a knife to his throat, talking about herself with unflinching honesty, for better or for worse, and loving--so deeply--every little bit of this galaxy, even the parts she was supposed to hate. She was not a rusty nail, as she had once told him, or a hot poker, or a blade in Ryzek’s hand. She was a hushflower, all power and possibility. Capable of doing good and harm in equal measure.

I wanted to write an adventure story, not, it's true, I really did. I shall have failed, that's all. Adventures bore me. I have no idea how to talk about countries, how to make people wish they had been there. I am not a good travelling salesman. Countries? Where are they , whatever became of them. When I was twelve I dreamed of Hongkong. That tedious, commonplace little provincial town! Shops sprouting from every nook and cranny! The Chinese junks pictured on the lids of chocolate boxes used to fascinate me. Junks: sort of chopped-off barges, where the housewives do all their cooking and washing on deck. They even have television. As for the Niagara Falls: water, nothing but water! A dam is more interesting; at least one can occasionally see a big crack at its base, and hope for some excitement. When one travels, one sees nothing but hotels. Squalid rooms, with iron bedsteads, and a picture of some kind hanging on the wall from a rusty nail, a coloured print of London Bridge or the Eiffel Tower. One also sees trains, lots of trains, and airports that look like restaurants, and restaurants that look like morgues. All the ports in the world are hemmed in by oil slicks and shabby customs buildings. In the streets of the towns, people keep to the sidewalks, cars stop at red lights. If only one occasionally arrived in a country where women are the colour of steel and men wear owls on their heads. But no, they are sensible, they all have black ties, partings to one side, brassières and stiletto heels. In all the restaurants, when one has finished eating one calls over the individual who has been prowling among the tables, and pays him with a promissory note. There are cigarettes everywhere! There are airplanes and automobiles everywhere.

I don’t get it.” He sighed, standing up and throwing his dinner into the trash can. As he turned back to me, I saw total confusion in his eyes. “When I was thirteen, my dad bought my mom a new car. She came home from the grocery store one day, and bam—there it was. Red bow and everything. And she said all the same things you’re saying. It’s too much, you shouldn’t have done this—everything. And my dad kissed her, handed her the keys, and said, ‘Let’s go for a drive.’ And that was it. She gave in.” He leaned against a sawhorse, dragging his hands through his hair. “You know why? Because she knew how much it meant to him. Everything he did was to make her happy.” His voice deepened toward the end, sounding rough and a little choppy. His blue eyes were huge, and I could see his jaw clenching. He cleared his throat. Twice. Then he swallowed hard. Shit. “So keep the car, don’t keep the car, whatever. I just wanted to do something nice for you, because I could.” His voice wobbled a bit, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I was in front of him, pulling him close and wrapping his strong arms around me. I held him tight. A minute later, I felt him hang on. Sweet boy.

I hate to say it, but sometimes I slept better when he was on the road. But you’re not supposed to say that, right? You’re supposed to curl up each and every night for eight solid hours of spooning and cuddling . . . But the truth? I needed my own bed occasionally. I liked some alone time. Is that bad?

Like I could stop? Don’t you know I dream about this when I’m away?” he asked, nudging me with his nose, exactly where I needed his mouth to be. “You . . . dream about . . . this?” I asked, arching my back. I was so close, so very close. “Fuck, yes, are you kidding?” He flattened his tongue and dragged it across my entire sex, dipping inside and continuing up, closing his mouth now and encircling me with his lips. Releasing me with a groan of his own, he brought one hand down, using his fingers to press into me. “I think about this, and the sounds you make when you come, the way you taste. Mmm . . . sweet Caroline, you drive me crazy.

It’s true reading is a wonderful thing,” Rusty observed. “I read a Cosmo a year ago, and I still remember how to keep my nails in perfect condition and also ten top tips on how to dress to accentuate my ass.” Now everybody was staring at Rusty. Unlike Jared, he did not blush. “Those tips are working,” he said. “Don’t pretend you haven’t all noticed. I know the truth.

I know what’s coming you see. I know no one beats these odds and I know it’s a matter of getting used to that and realizing that you are expelled from your mother’s uterus as if shot from a cannon towards a barn door studded with old nail files and rusty hooks. It’s a matter of how you use up the intervening time in an intelligent and ironic way; and try not to do anything ghastly to your fellow creatures.

I am, reluctantly, a self-confessed carbon chauvinist. Carbon is abundant in the Cosmos. It makes marvelously complex molecules, good for life. I am also a water chauvinist. Water makes an ideal solvent system for organic chemistry to work in and stays liquid over a wide range of temperatures. But sometimes I wonder. Could my fondness for materials have something to do with the fact that I am made chiefly of them? Are we carbon- and water-based because those materials were abundant on the Earth at the time of the origin of life? Could life elsewhere—on Mars, say—be built of different stuff? I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label. But is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find this idea somehow demeaning to human dignity. For myself, I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we. But the essence of life is not so much the atoms and simple molecules that make us up as the way in which they are put together. Every now and then we read that the chemicals which constitute the human body cost ninety-seven cents or ten dollars or some such figure; it is a little depressing to find our bodies valued so little. However, these estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made mostly of water, which costs almost nothing; the carbon is costed in the form of coal; the calcium in our bones as chalk; the nitrogen in our proteins as air (cheap also); the iron in our blood as rusty nails. If we did not know better, we might be tempted to take all the atoms that make us up, mix them together in a big container and stir. We can do this as much as we want. But in the end all we have is a tedious mixture of atoms. How could we have expected anything else? Harold Morowitz has calculated what it would cost to put together the correct molecular constituents that make up a human being by buying the molecules from chemical supply houses. The answer turns out to be about ten million dollars, which should make us all feel a little better. But even then we could not mix those chemicals together and have a human being emerge from the jar. That is far beyond our capability and will probably be so for a very long period of time. Fortunately, there are other less expensive but still highly reliable methods of making human beings. I think the lifeforms on many worlds will consist, by and large, of the same atoms we have here, perhaps even many of the same basic molecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids—but put together in unfamiliar ways. Perhaps organisms that float in dense planetary atmospheres will be very much like us in their atomic composition, except they might not have bones and therefore not need much calcium. Perhaps elsewhere some solvent other than water is used. Hydrofluoric acid might serve rather well, although there is not a great deal of fluorine in the Cosmos; hydrofluoric acid would do a great deal of damage to the kind of molecules that make us up, but other organic molecules, paraffin waxes, for example, are perfectly stable in its presence. Liquid ammonia would make an even better solvent system, because ammonia is very abundant in the Cosmos. But it is liquid only on worlds much colder than the Earth or Mars. Ammonia is ordinarily a gas on Earth, as water is on Venus. Or perhaps there are living things that do not have a solvent system at all—solid-state life, where there are electrical signals propagating rather than molecules floating about. But these ideas do not

So, I’m curious,” Akos said. “How many languages do you actually speak?” “Really, it’s just Shotet, Thuvhesit, Othyrian, and Trellan,” I said. “But I know a little Zoldan, some Pithar, and I was working on Ogran before you arrived and distracted me.” His eyebrows lifted. “What?” I said. “I don’t have any friends. It gives me a lot of free time.” “You think you’re so difficult to like.” “I know what I am.” “Oh? And what’s that?” “A knife,” I said. “A hot poker. A rusty nail.” “You are more than any of those things.” He touched my elbow to turn me toward him. I knew I was giving him a strange look, but I couldn’t seem to stop. It was just the way my face wanted to be. “I mean,” he said, removing his hand, “it’s not like you’re going around…boiling the flesh of your enemies.” “Don’t be stupid,” I said. “If I was going to eat the flesh of my enemies, I would roast it, not boil it. Who wants to eat boiled flesh? Disgusting.” He laughed, and everything felt a little better. “Silly me. I clearly wasn’t thinking,” he said.

Miserable beings, who, during their ragged infancy, ran barefoot in the mud of the crossings; shivering in winter near the quays, or seeking to warm themselves from the kitchens of M. Véfour, where you happen to be dining; scratching out, here and there, a crust of bread from the heaps of filth, and wiping it before eating; scraping in the gutter all day, with a rusty nail, in the hopes of finding a farthing; having no other amusement than the gratuitous sight of the king’s fête, and the executions — that other gratuitous sight: poor devils! whom hunger forces to theft, and theft to all the rest; children disinherited by their step-mother, the world; who are adopted by the house of correction, in their twelfth year, by the galleys at eighteen, and by the guillotine at forty! Unfortunate beings, whom, by means of a school and a workshop, you might have rendered good, moral, useful; and with whom you now know not what to do; flinging them away like a useless burthen, sometimes into the red antheaps of Toulon, sometimes into the silent cemetery of Clamart; cutting off life after taking away liberty.

But now you know what I’ve done,” she said, staring at her hand, at his chest, anywhere but his face. “Before, you had only seen me do it to other people, but now you know the kind of pain I have caused people, so many people, just because I was too much of a coward to stand up to him.” She scowled, and lifted her hand. “Getting you out was the one good thing I’ve ever done, and now it’s not even worth anything, because here you are again, you…you idiot!” She clutched at her side, wincing. She was crying again. Akos touched her face. When he first met her, he thought she was this fearsome thing, this monster he needed to escape. But she had unfurled bit by bit, showing him her wicked humor by waking him with a knife to his throat, talking about herself with unflinching honesty, for better or for worse, and loving--so deeply--every little bit of this galaxy, even the parts she was supposed to hate. She was not a rusty nail, as she had once told him, or a hot poker, or a blade in Ryzek’s hand. She was a hushflower, all power and possibility. Capable of doing good and harm in equal measure. “It is not the only good thing you’ve ever done,” Akos said, in plain Thuvhesit. It felt like the right language for this moment, the language of his home, which Cyra understood but didn’t really speak when he was around, like she was afraid it would hurt his feelings. “It’s worth everything to me, what you did,” he said, still in Thuvhesit. “It changes everything.

Whether the human mind can advance or not, is a question too little discussed, for nothing can be more dangerous than to found our social philosophy on any theory which is debatable but has not been debated. But if we assume, for the sake of argument, that there has been in the past, or will be in the future, such a thing as a growth or improvement of the human mind itself, there still remains a very sharp objection to be raised against the modern version of that improvement. The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded. If then, I repeat, there is to be mental advance, it must be mental advance in the construction of a definite philosophy of life.

Kestrel came often. One day, when she knew from Sarsine that Arin had returned home but she had not yet seen him, she went to the suite. She touched one of his violins, reaching furtively to pluck the highest string of the largest instrument. The sound was sour. The violin was ruined--no doubt all of them were. That is what happens when an instrument is left strung and uncased for ten years. A floorboard creaked somewhere in one of the outer chambers. Arin. He entered the room, and she realized that she had expected him. Why else had she come here so frequently, almost every day, if she hadn’t hoped that someone would notice and tell him to find her there? But even though she admitted to wanting to be here with him in his old rooms, she hadn’t imagined it would be like this. With her caught touching his things. Her gaze dropped. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind.” He lifted the violin off its nails and set it in her hands. It was light, but Kestrel’s arms lowered as if the violin’s hollowness were terribly heavy. She cleared her throat. “Do you still play?” He shook his head. “I’ve mostly forgotten how. I wasn’t good at it anyway. I loved to sing. Before the war, I worried that gift would leave me, the way it often does with boys. We grow, we change, our voices break. It doesn’t matter how well you sing when you’re nine years old, you know. Not when you’re a boy. When the change comes you just have to hope for the best…that your voice settles into something you can love again. My voice broke two years after the invasion. Gods, how I squeaked. And when my voice finally settled, it seemed like a cruel joke. It was too good. I hardly knew what to do with it. I felt so grateful to have this gift…and so angry, for it to mean so little. And now…” He shrugged, a self-deprecating gesture. “Well, I know I’m rusty.” “No,” Kestrel said. “You’re not. Your voice is beautiful.” The silence after that was soft.

I select the right practice gun, the one about the size of a pistol, but bulkier, and offer it to Caleb. Tris’s fingers slide between mine. Everything comes easily this morning, every smile and every laugh, every word and every motion. If we succeed in what we attempt tonight, tomorrow Chicago will be safe, the Bureau will be forever changed, and Tris and I will be able to build a new life for ourselves somewhere. Maybe it will even be a place where I trade my guns and knives for more productive tools, screwdrivers and nails and shovels. This morning I feel like I could be so fortunate. I could. “It doesn’t shoot real bullets,” I say, “but it seems like they designed it so it would be as close as possible to one of the guns you’ll be using. It feels real, anyway.” Caleb holds the gun with just his fingertips, like he’s afraid it will shatter in his hands. I laugh. “First lesson: Don’t be afraid of it. Grab it. You’ve held one before, remember? You got us out of the Amity compound with that shot.” “That was just lucky,” Caleb says, turning the gun over and over to see it from every angle. His tongue pushes into his cheek like he’s solving a problem. “Not the result of skill.” “Lucky is better than unlucky,” I say. “We can work on skill now.” I glance at Tris. She grins at me, then leans in to whisper something to Christina. “Are you here to help or what, Stiff?” I say. I hear myself speaking in the voice I cultivated as an initiation instructor, but this time I use it in jest. “You could use some practice with that right arm, if I recall correctly. You too, Christina.” Tris makes a face at me, then she and Christina cross the room to get their own weapons. “Okay, now face the target and turn the safety off,” I say. There is a target across the room, more sophisticated, than the wooden-board target in the Dauntless training rooms. It has three rings in three different colors, green, yellow, and red, so it’s easier to tell where the bullets it. “Let me see how you would naturally shoot.” He lifts up the gun with one hand, squares off his feet and shoulders to the target like he’s about to lift something heavy, and fires. The gun jerks back and up, firing the bullet near the ceiling. I cover my mouth with my hand to disguise my smile. “There’s no need to giggle,” Caleb says irritably. “Book learning doesn’t teach you everything, does it?” Christina says. “You have to hold it with both hands. It doesn’t look as cool, but neither does attacking the ceiling.” “I wasn’t trying to look cool!” Christina stands, her legs slightly uneven, and lifts both arms. She stares the target for a moment, then fires. The training bullet hits the outer circle of the target and bounces off, rolling on the floor. It leaves a circle of light on the target, marking the impact site. I wish I’d had this technology during initiation training. “Oh, good,” I say. “You hit the air around your target’s body. How useful.” “I’m a little rusty,” Christina admits, grinning.

No one knew how to bear other people’s hate like Cyra Noavek. Sometimes she even encouraged it, but that didn’t bother him so much. He understood it. She really just thought people were better off staying away from her. “What?” she said. “I like you, you know,” he said. “I know.” “No, I mean I like you the way you are, I don’t need you to change.” He smiled. “I’ve never thought of you as a monster or a weapon or--what did you call yourself? A rusty--” She caught the word nail in her mouth. Her fingertips were cool, careful as they ran over the scars and bruises he wore, like she was taking them back. She tasted like sendes leaf and hushflower, like saltfruit and like home. He put his hands on her, sighing into her skin. They got bolder, fingers laced with fingers, knotted in hair, taking in fistfuls of shirt. Finding soft places nobody else had ever touched, like the bend in her waist, like the underside of his jaw. Their bodies pressed together, hip bone against stomach, knee against thigh… “Hey!” Teka yelled from across the ship. “Not a private place, you two!” Cyra rocked back on her heels, and glared at Teka. He knew how she felt. He wanted more. He wanted everything.

Kristen- So you know I ran… and he got me. He had his belt in hand ready to whip me, and he did repeatedly until I fell to the ground, with him straddling me, his hand touching me, he started pinching me, and that is when he pierced my nipple with an old rusty nail. ‘Honey hush,’ he said as I screamed, even more, the second time; because I knew the pain was picking and nearing. He laughed- ‘Saying now everything matches!’ I recall him saying this- as he pulled me up dragging me by the hair. ‘Good now your bare ass can rub up on the bark of the tree, and then I can smack it later on tonight. You would like that? Wouldn’t you? My little bitch!’ Kristen- I had to say- ‘Yes, Yes- I would!’ I screamed louder than I have ever had in my entire life! For the reason that I knew what was coming! I could see him coming with the cruel tools in hand! I was thinking to myself. ‘Please God don’t let him have a screwdriver.’’ Because knew what he would do with it, and where it would be shoved in! Just for the hell of it, he drew a target on my tummy with my lipstick and started throwing tools like wrenches, trying to hit the same spot. I thought for sure something of his was going to go deep inside me. He looked at me, flashing scissors, and said in a sick way. ‘Look, baby, these are the same scissors your momma used to slit her wrist. He slapped them in my hand, and said it is your choice; you can do the same thing she had the choice of... What do you say? You know these are the very same scissors, that gave your mother the episiotomy that brought you into this world. Now they can be the same scissors to take you out.’ Gasping for breath in being so appalled, I remember saying- ‘What did I do to you?’ He said- ‘It is not what you did to me, it is what they want, and what I was asked to do, and what they will do to me if I don’t!’ I said- ‘Who are they?’ He whispered in my ear, as well as he bit it- my earlobe with his teeth afterward saying. - ‘You are that stupid? I knew it! Will If I tell you, I will have to kill you.’ He said- (In a very paranoid, yet almost cocky tone of voice.) So, I yelled back- ‘Just do it- you- vain shit-face!’ That is when he did it, one by one. Yes, one toe by toe, all the nails went in and through my fingernails and flesh. This happened to my hand, palm, and wrists one nail at a time. (Bang! Bang! Bang!) Until the point that I was able to suspend from them alone on the tree. The same tree that he carved our names into, saying forever and ever. I have to say at that point I did not want to live, saying get me down! Then he yelled- ‘Not yet- my baby!

I jumped then. It seemed I heard a child laugh. My imagination, of course. And then, when I should have known better, I headed for the closet and the high and narrow door at the very back end and the steep and narrow dark stairs. A million times I’d ascended these stairs. A million times in the dark, without a candle, or a flashlight. Up into the dark, eerie, gigantic attic, and only when I was there did I feel around for the place where Chris and I had hidden our candles and matches. Still there. Time did stand still in this place. We’d had several candle holders, all of pewter with small handles to grasp. Holders we’d found in an old trunk along with boxes and boxes of short, stubby, clumsily made candles. We’d always presumed them to be homemade candles, for they had smelled so rank and old when they burned. My breath caught! Oh! It was the same! The paper flowers still dangled down, mobiles to sway in the drafts, and the giant flowers were still on the walls. Only all the colors had faded to indistinct gray—ghost flowers. The sparkling gem centers we’d glued on had loosened, and now only a few daisies had sequins, or gleaming stones, for centers. Carrie’s purple worm was there only now he too was a nothing color. Cory’s epileptic snail didn’t appear a bright, lopsided beach ball now, it was more a tepid, half-rotten squashy orange. The BEWARE signs Chris and I had painted in red were still on the walls, and the swings still dangled down from the attic rafters. Over near the record player was the barre Chris had fashioned, then nailed to the wall so I could practice my ballet positions. Even my outgrown costumes hung limply from nails, dozens of them with matching leotards and worn out pointe shoes, all faded and dusty, rotten smelling. As in an unhappy dream I was committed to, I drifted aimlessly toward the distant schoolroom, with the candelight flickering. Ghosts were unsettled, memories and specters followed me as things began to wake up, yawn and whisper. No, I told myself, it was only the floating panels of my long chiffon wings . . . that was all. The spotted rocking-horse loomed up, scary and threatening, and my hand rose to my throat as I held back a scream. The rusty red wagon seemed to move by unseen hands pushing it, so my eyes took flight to the blackboard where I’d printed my enigmatic farewell message to those who came in the future. How was I to know it would be me? We lived in the attic, Christopher, Cory, Carrie and me— Now there are only three. Behind the small desk that had been Cory’s I scrunched down, and tried to fit my legs under. I wanted to put myself into a deep reverie that would call up Cory’s spirit that would tell me where he lay.

Wait a second,” said Ash. “How is there a ‘moon in springtime before the start of the new year’? I think it’s a riddle. It makes no sense.” “Yes, it does,” said Jared. “The new year was in March in England until the 1700s, when the pope introduced a new calendar.” Everyone stared at him. Jared flushed slightly, scar thrown into relief, and muttered, “I read a lot of old books.” “Well done,” said Jon. “See where learning gets you, lads? So much better than messing around with girls or playing those video games which one hears are full of violence.” Kami, as a witness to many of her father’s video game marathons, gave him a long judgmental stare. “You total hypocrite.” “Hypocrisy is what being a parent is all about,” Jon said. “Well done for cracking the books, Jared and Holly. You see how it pays off.” Holly smiled and the light of her smile seemed to spill all over the room, reflections of light refracted all over everywhere. “It’s true reading is a wonderful thing,” Rusty observed. “I read a Cosmo a year ago, and I still remember how to keep my nails in perfect condition and also ten top tips on how to dress to accentuate my ass.” Now everybody was staring at Rusty. Unlike Jared, he did not blush. “Those tips are working,” he said. “Don’t pretend you haven’t all noticed. I know the truth.” Kami rolled up a magazine on the table—sadly, for the sake of dramatic irony, not a Cosmo—and hit Rusty over the head with it. “Does anybody have anything else to say—I can’t stress this enough—specifically about Elinor Lynburn and medieval New Year?” “Want to know what it was called? You’ll like this,” Jared added, and he looked at Kami. It was a simple glance from his gray eyes, but it felt like being put in a room that was just the two of them. “Lady Day.” Kami beamed at him. “You know what I like, sugarprune

Kestrel came often. One day, when she knew from Sarsine that Arin had returned home but she had not yet seen him, she went to the suite. She touched one of his violins, reaching furtively to pluck the highest string of the largest instrument. The sound was sour. The violin was ruined--no doubt all of them were. That is what happens when an instrument is left strung and uncased for ten years. A floorboard creaked somewhere in one of the outer chambers. Arin. He entered the room, and she realized that she had expected him. Why else had she come here so frequently, almost every day, if she hadn’t hoped that someone would notice and tell him to find her there? But even though she admitted to wanting to be here with him in his old rooms, she hadn’t imagined it would be like this. With her caught touching his things. Her gaze dropped. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind.” He lifted the violin off its nails and set it in her hands. It was light, but Kestrel’s arms lowered as if the violin’s hollowness were terribly heavy. She cleared her throat. “Do you still play?” He shook his head. “I’ve mostly forgotten how. I wasn’t good at it anyway. I loved to sing. Before the war, I worried that gift would leave me, the way it often does with boys. We grow, we change, our voices break. It doesn’t matter how well you sing when you’re nine years old, you know. Not when you’re a boy. When the change comes you just have to hope for the best…that your voice settles into something you can love again. My voice broke two years after the invasion. Gods, how I squeaked. And when my voice finally settled, it seemed like a cruel joke. It was too good. I hardly knew what to do with it. I felt so grateful to have this gift…and so angry, for it to mean so little. And now…” He shrugged, a self-deprecating gesture. “Well, I know I’m rusty.” “No,” Kestrel said. “You’re not. Your voice is beautiful.” The silence after that was soft. Her fingers curled around the violin. She wanted to ask Arin a question yet couldn’t bear to do it, couldn’t say that she didn’t understand what had happened to him the night of the invasion. It didn’t make sense. The death of his family was what her father would call a “waste of resources.” The Valorian force had had no pity for the Herrani military, but it had tried to minimize civilian casualties. You can’t make a dead body work. “What is it, Kestrel?” She shook her head. She set the violin back on the wall. “Ask me.” She remembered standing outside the governor’s palace and refusing to hear his story, and was ashamed once more. “You can ask me anything,” he said. Each question seemed the wrong one. Finally, she said, “How did you survive the invasion?” He didn’t speak at first. Then he said, “My parents and sister fought. I didn’t.” Words were useless, pitifully useless--criminal, even, in how they could not account for Arin’s grief, and could not excuse how her people had lived on the ruin of his. Yet again Kestrel said, “I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault.” It felt as if it was. Arin led the way out of his old suite. When they came to the last room, the greeting room, he paused before the outermost door. It was the slightest of hesitations, no longer than if the second hand of a clock stayed a beat longer on its mark than it should. But in that fraction of time, Kestrel understood that the last door was not paler than the others because it had been made from a different wood. It was newer. Kestrel took Arin’s battered hand in hers, the rough heat of it, the fingernails still ringed with carbon from the smith’s coal fire. His skin was raw-looking: scrubbed clean and scrubbed often. But the black grime was too ingrained. She twined her fingers with his. Kestrel and Arin walked together through the passageway and the ghost of its old door, which her people had smashed through ten years before.

Funny thing about regrets. I don’t lament what I’ve done, but rather, what I didn’t do.

soaking them in buckets of seawater, to which she’d add a handful of cornmeal and a rusty nail. She’d agitate the water several times a day, and change the water after twelve hours.

There should be a language called Nail, so I could more naturally say, “My nail is a bit rusty.

another Diet Dr Pepper? Wait, what? I was torn from my pirate fantasy by the nasal, weenie voice of Richard Harrison, CPA. “Can I get another Diet Dr Pepper, please? And for the lady, another—what was it you’re having, Viv?” “Scotch. Water. Neat.” I answered, looking across the table at the latest in a long line of blind dates. Set up by my mother, which should have been my first clue to say no and run screaming into that good night. Not that she didn’t have good taste; she’d picked a looker with Richard. Strike that—he was a looker if that’s what you were in to. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Brown chinos, perfectly creased. White button-down. White teeth. Blindingly white, actually; I was pretty sure when he smiled chimes went off. Every time a CPA smiled, a fairy got its wings? Jesus, Viv, get a grip. I sipped my Scotch, wincing not only at the good burn, but at the bad turn this conversation was taking. Tax laws over appetizers. Nothing like a little burrata caprese with a side of capital gains. I’d gotten through the first twenty minutes of Current Bad Date by letting my mind

managed to snag the last available table and all three ordered the special with sweet tea to drink. “It’s like Thanksgiving,” Shiloh said. “Not for me. Thanksgiving was working an extra shift so the folks with kids could be home for the day. Christmas was the same,” Bonnie said. Abby shrugged. “The army served turkey and dressing on the holidays. It wasn’t what Mama made, but it tasted pretty damn good.” Since it was a special and only had to be dipped up and served, they weren’t long getting their meal. Abby shut her eyes on the first bite and made appreciative noises. “This is so good. I may eat here every Sunday.” “And break Cooper’s heart?” Bonnie asked. “Hey, now! One night of drinking together does not make us all bosom buddies or BFFs or whatever the hell it’s called these days.” Abby waved at the waitress, who came right over. “I want this plate all over again,” she said. “Did you remember that we do have pie for dessert?” the waitress asked. “Yes, I’ll have two pieces, whipped cream on both. What about you, Shiloh?” She blushed. “I shouldn’t, but . . . yes, and go away before I change my mind.” “Bonnie?” Abby asked. Bonnie shook her head. “Just an extra piece of pie will do me.” “So that’s two more specials and five pieces of pie, right?” the waitress asked. “You got it,” Abby said. “I’m having ice cream when we finish with hair and nails. You two are going to be moaning and groaning about still being too full,” Bonnie said. “Not me. By the middle of the afternoon I’ll be ready for ice cream,” Abby said. “My God, how do you stay so small?” Shiloh asked. “Damn fine genes. Mama wasn’t a big person.” “Well, my granny was as wide as she was tall and every bite of food I eat goes straight to my thighs and butt,” Shiloh said. “But after that wicked, evil stuff last night, I’m starving.” “It burned all the calories right out of your body,” Abby said. “Anything you eat today doesn’t even count.” “You are full of crap,” Shiloh leaned forward and whispered. The waitress returned with more plates of food and slices of pumpkin pie with whipped cream, taking the dirty dishes back away with her. Bonnie picked up the clean fork on the pie plate and cut a bite-size piece off. “Oh. My. God! This is delicious. Y’all can eat Cooper’s cookin’. I’m not the one kissin’ on him, so I don’t give a shit if I hurt his little feelin’s or not. I’m comin’ here for pumpkin pie next Sunday if I have to walk.” “If Cooper doesn’t want to cook, maybe we can all come back here with him and Rusty next Sunday,” Abby said. “And if he does?” Shiloh asked. “Then I’m eating a steak and you can borrow my truck, Bonnie. I’d hate to see you walk that far. You’d be too tired to take care of the milkin’ the next day,” Abby said. “And you don’t know how to milk a cow, do you?” Bonnie’s blue eyes danced when she joked. Abby took a deep breath and told the truth. “No, I don’t, and I don’t like chickens.” “Well, I hate hogs,” Shiloh admitted. “And I can’t milk a cow, either.” “Looks like it might take all three of us to run that ranch after all.” Bonnie grinned. The waitress refilled their tea glasses. “Y’all must be the Malloy sisters. I heard you’d come to the canyon. Ezra used to come in here pretty often for our Sunday special and he always took an extra order home with him. Y’all sound like him when you talk. You all from Texas?” “Galveston,” Abby said. “Arkansas, but I lived in Texas until I graduated high school,” Shiloh said. The waitress looked at Bonnie. “Kentucky after leavin’ Texas.” “I knew I heard the good old Texas drawl in your voices,” the waitress said as she walked away. “Wonder how much she won on that pot?” Abby whispered. Shiloh had been studying her ragged nails but she looked up.

Your eyes having a nervous breakdown? Do you not know what to do? Well-guess what!” He stomps to the left of the recruit, pushing the recruit’s head into his until their cheeks meld together. He points out in front of them both. “I don’t care if some monkey is rippin’ your eyeballs out with rusty nails! YOU STARE UP FRONT AT ATTENTION! RIGHT THERE! IS THAT CLEAR!

I took a moment before saying, “You think the murderer is a Brazilian samba trio.” Dailey held up his right hand and ticked off fingers. “They’re organized. Focused. Motivated. And are in excellent physical condition, by the looks of the pictures on their CD.

Actually,” Coursey lowered his voice an octave, “we’ve been informed by Homeland Security that three members of a subversive Brazilian band went through Customs at O’Hare Airport eleven days ago.

Text from Mimi to Caroline: So I’m thinking we should have a game night—you know, play Pictionary and stuff like that? I’d love to, but I’m slammed. When were you thinking? Maybe the Saturday night before Thanksgiving? Can you spare a few hours over the weekend? I can spare a few hours, yes, that’s about it. You guys wanna come out to Sausalito? Be nice not to have to go back into the city. We can do that. I was thinking we should invite Sophia. Of course we should. And Neil. Oh boy. Trust me. There’s an entire wall of windows in Jillian’s house, Mimi. The last thing I need is someone throwing things. Trust me. Think Barry Derry sells party insurance?

I’m often asked which of the Jack Daniels books is my personal favorite. It

He had to be putting me on. No one was this slow outside of HEE HAW.

Sir!" he called out. "The Great Chaffalo! My name's Touch, and I brought a bundle of straw. I'd be much obliged if you'd turn it into a horse." Nearby, the tall weeds rasped a little in the breeze. But that was all. He picked up the straw and hurried past broken windows to the rear of the house. "You there, Mr. Chaffalo? It's me, Touch, and I'm in a dreadful hurry. My great-uncle aims to cart me off to the orphan house, but that don't take my fancy. I ain't asking for a fine, high-stepping horse, sir. Just any four legs'll do, as long as one ain't lame. I'd be proper grateful, Mr. Great Chaffalo." Undiscouraged, Touch moved his bundle of straw back to the front of the house to try again. And he noticed the rocking chair was pitching as if someone had just got up. Touch's hair went stiff as needles. But he was determined not to be scared off. He caught his breath. "If you were dozing, I don't mean to rile you up, sir. Maybe you heard of my great-uncle. Judge Wigglesforth? Crosscut saws don't come any meaner. I know I don't amount to much, for a boy, but I'm not shifty-eyed, the way he says. I hope you can see that, Great Chaffalo." Suddenly, Touch thought he could feel a pair of eyes watching him. The eyes in the poster! he thought. His hopes took a leap. "I aim to ride through the woods until I'm long out of reach, sir. He won't know where to look. I'll thank you everlastingly if you'll oblige me with a horse." A snarl burst out of the tall weeds. It wasn't a horse. It was a scruffy wild dog, its teeth looking like rusty nails. And it was coming straight for Touch. Touch began to shinny up a porch column, but he knew that hound was going to get its rusty teeth into his leg. Then he heard a snap of fingers and a voice in the air. "Hey! Hey!" The bundle of straw changed into a horse.

Fucking gorgeous man. And the best part? The way he looked at me. Like I was the prettiest girl in the room. “Hey, babe.” The man was a poet. “Hey.” I was too.

Help, help, help, I am lost in the very deeps of the earth. Not eight feet underground but two hundred; blind already but not deaf, shuddering in the warm water, fingers burning last grip loosening; one nail, one rusty nail.

He went down and found the body floating. Francis had been dead about an hour. In one of his hands, clutched so that they could barely unfasten it, was a rusty nail.

The order, for completists, is WHISKEY SOUR, BLOODY MARY, RUSTY NAIL, DIRTY MARTINI, FUZZY NAVEL, CHERRY BOMB, SHAKEN, and STIRRED. She’s been the subject of many shorts (JACK DANIELS STORIES, BURNERS, FLOATERS) and has appeared as a supporting character in many of my other novels (SHOT OF TEQUILLA, THE LIST, SERIAL KILLERS UNCUT, BANANA HAMMOCK, FLEE, SPREE, THREE, TIMECASTER SUPERSYMMETRY). Due to popular demand, she’ll be back again in another novel, LAST CALL, being co-written with Blake Crouch.

When he first met her, he thought she was this fearsome thing, this monster he needed to escape. But she had unfurled bit by bit, showing him her wicked humor by waking him with a knife to his throat, talking about herself with unflinching honesty, for better or for worse, and loving—so deeply—every little bit of this galaxy, even the parts she was supposed to hate. She was not a rusty nail, as she had once told him, or a hot poker, or a blade in Ryzek’s hand. She was a hushflower, all power and possibility. Capable of doing good and harm in equal measure.

No charges pressed yet. They took my gun, though. Any chance I’ll get it back? That’s a pricey piece of hardware.” “If you fill out all the release papers correctly, you should get it back a little after Y3K.” “Shit. If I’d known that, I would have beat him to death with my bra.

Holly hit her head against the shelving unit, and I grabbed her hair and helped her hit her head two more times. There was no tae kwon do name for that maneuver, but it felt great.

I’m guessing GoLYTELY isn’t a taste sensation.” “They claim it’s chocolate-flavored. More like chalk-flavored. I’d rather drink a gallon of paint.

No one else needs to feel bad about what happened. Only one person. I wish there were a way to assuage him, a way to tell him, "It's all right. You don't have to step around the rusty nails and broken glass of my past. Don't beat yourself up." But the only way to do that would be to acknowledge it in the first place, to say it happened, and I can't do that. When I try to talk about it, everything goes haywire.

Nails, society, and sentiments can all get rusty without care.

All our financial situations had changed over the years. Mark’s bar, The Rusty Nail, was thriving. Aaron was computer engineering at a large company downtown, and as of recently, I had earned my brokerage license and opened my own real estate company. We could all afford our own places now, and each one would have been bigger than the eighteen-hundred-square-foot rental we shared. But there was something unbelievably comfortable about our arrangement that made us all stay.

Eddie Grace's buick Got four bullet holes in the side Charley Delisle is sittin' at the top Of an avocado tree Mrs Storm will stab you with a steak knife If you step on her lawn I got a half a pack of lucky strikes man So come along with me Let's fill our pockets With macadamia nuts And go over to Bobby Goodmanson's And jump off the roof Hilda plays strip poker When her mama's across the street Joey Navinsky says she put Her tongue in his mouth Dicky Faulkner's got a switchblade And some gooseneck risers That eucalyptus is a hunchback There's a wind down from the south So let me tie you up with kite string I'll show you the scabs on my knee Watch out for the broken glass Put your shoes and socks on And come along with me Let's follow that fire truck I think your house is burning down Then go down to the hobo jungle And kill some rattlesnakes with a trowel And we'll break all the windows In the old Anderson place We'll steal a bunch of boysenberrys And smear 'em on your face I'll get a dollar from my mama's purse Buy that skull and crossbones ring And you can wear it round your neck On an old piece of string Then we'll spit on Ronnie Arnold And flip him the bird Slash the tires on the school bus Now don't say a word I'll take a rusty nail Scratch your initials in my arm I'll show you how to sneak up on the roof Of the drugstore I'll take the spokes from your wheelchair And a magpie's wings And I'll tie 'em to your shoulders And your feet I'll steal a hacksaw from my dad Cut the braces off your legs And we'll bury them tonight Out in the cornfield Just put a church key in your pocket We'll hop that freight train in the hall We'll slide all the way down the drain To New Orleans in the fall

Rose was sixteen, and the only light in her dark world had been extinguished. She’d tried to kill herself with a rusty nail that night. Sylous had come to her for the first time then. Whispered to her about how he could protect her, save her, and set her on a different path. A chosen path on which she would be safe from all the cruel people who lived in sin. All she had to do was agree. Would she? She had. And as his first show of power, Sylous had killed her father in his home office as Rose looked on. He showed Pastor monsters terrifying enough to send him into cardiac arrest. It was the first time Rose had seen a Fury—the true wrath of God, not the manipulated version Pastor used to justify his violence.

I can't do it, if I finish that, I'll have to attach a seat belt to the toilet. Maybe an airbag too.