“I have been waiting. Waiting for so so long now. I can barely make out the wood underneath me. I went to the burnt down farmhouse. I had to go somewhere. My flesh is so red and inflamed. My toes are blackened. I can't remember the last time I ate, not that I have much of an appetite.”

“Help me...Please help me...I have this sick feeling, sitting in my stomach. I have tried to keep an eye on u. It. My body feels like it is...I don't know what I would really call it. I think that maybe I touched something I wasn't supposed to. It was those things. Once the sun went out, things started coming out of the sewers. I don't know. I DON'T KNOW!”

“In the paradise of the morning, I have found refuge from my grief. The sun rising up, though bathed in scarlet, still brings with it a sense of calm that I cannot deny. As the blood red sky lightens, the shadows are rendered as viewable spaces, the distinction between light and dark fading in the red light.”

“I went to a museum, tucked away along a stretch of road you and I both know by heat...heart. I went there knowing that I was looking for someone, but I couldn't remember who. I found the door unlocked, the stains of blood on the floor and the desks unattended. And as I lingered upon the space, I noted the sound of electric light.”

“My head aches, and my skin is screaming. I am shaking with pain, and it was only going to get worse. I have been having nightmares, ones where I am lost within the dark, unable to find any light at all. I know I am outside, but I cannot see a thing. Because there are no stars.”

“The only thing that gave the room any color, save the color coming form the light outside, was a painting on the wall, one of a beach at sunset. It was an abstraction, but it was impossible to fail to understand to whom the house belonged. It was only another minute before someone out of sight answered the door.”

“I suppose at some point you showed him a picture of me, because when he opened the door he recognized me instantly. He looked tired, wrapped in blankets and layers, like he hadn't been sleeping. The lights were off, and I couldn't tell if it was on purpose. It was in the dark that I noticed another shape, but I could not make it out.”

“I had hoped that finding you would have been easy, that you would have remained at that old apartment building, even if it was going to hurt. I think that was an unfair presumption. That place smells of sea water still, and there is a film on the tub that won't go away.”

“I remember the first day my mom had me stay home from school. I wasn't sick much when I was little, and things just seemed to fall into place when it came to friends and family. Everyone just seemed very lucky, and I didn't go to my first funeral until I was sixteen. But that wasn't why my mom had me stay home from school that day…”

“Blood breaks upon the rocks, as the water cascades and shifts around me. The foam is a rich pink, while the green lake water looks like oxidized plasma. It is sunset, but the only difference that makes is the deepening of the reds that have dominated the sky, along with the enlarging of the sun, if only through distortion.”