Life was short and brutal; so were the neighbors.

Here, rancid air hangs heavily in a void, its texture thick, liquid, clinging, in a night full of the hot smells of decay.

She twisted her body to the curtained windows, listening to the night. “Where are you, poor dead thing? Are you right outside?” The voice of the sea drifted on a low wind, like the noise a wolf might make in its sleep.

It’s not about slaying monsters,” he told her. “Not these days. I think it’s about learning to live with them. Anyway who says we’re the good guys?” “I.

Take a deep breath and read. It’ll calm you.

Something new prowled, something voracious and well-adapted to this environment. Something bad. Even the wood seemed to shiver with fear. And, no, trees do not make a sound when they fall in the forest with no one around to hear. But just before they fall, they scream.

They were all so young and so aware of it. Youth comprised their sole asset, which each understood, and such knowledge excited them as much as it haunted them.

Maybe a person had to lose everything to find purpose.

Even the spate of clearly well-intentioned films about AIDS only added to the certainty that gay characters wind up dead by the final reel. After all, in the movies, no one lives with HIV... perhaps the ultimate stigmatization.

Hope can be the cruelest thing. But it was all she had.