The first time I saw an exorcism, I knew there was no God.

There it it again, that noise. That low hum that I know so well now, spinning, gaining momentum in my head, like a cyclist in a velodrome, until its steadiness and roundness becomes sharp, painful, cutting like glass.

People of Earth, a better tomorrow has come. I’m near bursting with pleasure to report that the global community needn’t worry any longer about food shortages and famine and the like. Why? My patented insect-enlargement gun!

Rose lifted her 55-year-old legs until they were perpendicular to the bed and admired how girlish they looked. It gave her the sexy legs of a 20-year old, if the morning light was right and she squinted a bit.

She told me one way to deal with it would be to put everything in a box and burn it.

By February, I had decided, That you'd tear out my throat every morning if it meant your favorite song would play from my neck.

Yet it was another thing to grow to become indispensable to someone without whose infirmities the helper could not exist. People in general had started to call that helpless requiring “codependency,” but to Althea that word did no good,

I may as well have been sleepwalking. Either way, I had no opportunity to admire the moonlight flooding into the long corridors, illuminating the stag heads and painted cheeks of long-dead ancestors.