For the rest of my life, I’ll never be anything but The One Who Left Mom Alone in the Car That Night. It’s like landing on the “bankrupt” wedge on Wheel of Fortune—no matter how well you’ve played the game, one bad spin undoes it all. I’ll never be Selfless Angie Who Took Mom in […]
I watch the man I’m going to kill as he finishes his coffee and orders another. He doesn’t notice me—he’s too busy cataloging the younger women scattered around the diner to take interest in an aging housewife, and for a fleeting moment, I’m not sure how I feel about this. He would have noticed me […]
The man on the floor looks to be around 150 pounds, which means his body contained about five liters of blood. It seems like most of it has already leaked out onto the rotting linoleum of the old Half Time Deli on Route 431. The floor is slick with the stuff, and since I’m not nine feet tall, I can’t avoid stepping in it. I’m glad I traded my skirt and heels for jeans and boots before I headed out here.
The place was a shithole even before the health department shut it down years ago, but I always found it charming in the same way that I see a weird, busted-neon romance in boarded-up motor courts and abandoned drive-ins. I never really like a place until people decide it’s all used up. My therapist would probably dampen his boxers over that, if he could stop staring at my boobs long enough to hear a word I say. Did you know a judge can order you to see a shrink when you shoot somebody, even if said somebody deserved to be shot? Blood and red tape: the only constants in my life.
