We'll eat your steam and lap up your blood. But first, we'll drink your screams

There was a muffled pop, the sound of a small pumpkin exploding in a microwave oven.Morris cut the wheel to the left and there was another bump as the Biscayne went back into the parking area. He looked in the mirror and saw that Curtis's head was gone.Well, no. Not exactly. It was there, but all spread out. Mooshed. No loss of talent in that mess. Morrie thought.

Shirts and jeans litter the asphalt, the empty fabric limbs askew as if they're attempting to escape. Blood smears Sarah's lips as she struggles against the chest of a dirty looking man with a beard. Terror. Terror is the only word my mind can seize on and it forgets what it means. I forget how to think - to move.

What I saw there was my own death.

At three in the morning the gaudy paint is off that old whore, the world, and she has no nose and a glass eye. Gaiety becomes hollow and brittle, as in Poe's castle surrounded by the Red Death. Horror is destroyed by boredom. Love is a dream.

This was like watching murder. Defilement. And it was something worse than either of those things. Even among his family, black trade as they were, books were holy things.