Lock Every Door

What he doesn’t say is that letting so-called important people move to the front of the line requires an equal number of unimportant people.

Like Dylan.

Like Erica and Megan.

Like me.

All it takes to get us here is one small ad. Apartment sitter needed. Pays well. Call Leslie Evelyn.

After that, we simply disappear.

Creation from our destruction.

Life from our deaths.

That’s the meaning behind the ouroboros.

Not immortality, but a desperate attempt to spend a few more years eluding the Grim Reaper’s inevitable grasp.

Shouldn’t the wealthy, by virtue of their superior breeding, be less susceptible than people who have nothing, come from nothing, are nothing?

The unwilling participants in a mad doctor’s experiment. Infect the poor to heal the rich.

Because it reminds you of what you’ve lost and what you’re trying to get back.

“They’re rich,” Dylan says. “All of them. And rich people don’t give a damn about the hired help. They’re vultures.”

One time is an anomaly. Two times is a coincidence. Three times is proof.

“Every day, before I leave for work, I sit and stare at this poster, hoping that Eleanor is right,” the woman says. “But so far, each new day only brings the same old shit.”

The same can be said of certain places. The closer you get to them, the uglier they become.

But some people mistake privacy for secrecy and fill in the blanks with all kinds of nonsense.

I’ve never thought of myself as gentle. Fragile is more like it. Prone to bruising.