Steven Ramirez

Sal turned, an eye stalk hanging from his teeth.

I like to think she hates my guts a little less every hour.

You shouldn__ have done that, Dave.

I turned to her, my whole body hard with tiredness and regret.

Did you ever think it won__ be the undead who kill us, but ordinary people?

We are born. We die. Somewhere in between we live. And how we live is up to us. That__ it.

There__ no better way for a woman to punish a man than to make him sleep away from her.

She smiled at him like a freshman invited to the senior prom. It made my blood boil.

But I was still determined to protect her. It might be the one good thing I would ever do in my life. I wondered if God would even notice.

There__ nothing worse than delivering bad news to women. I hoped I wouldn__ get good at it.

I heard them tearing at it. It was the sound of mortality.

I don__ know how these things died without benefit of a bullet to the brain pan. They seemed to exist in an eternal twilight of longing.