So am I dead? How many kinds of living and dead and living dead and dead living had I been in just these few months, these few days, after the stasis of plain old human living and dying? I deserved some kind of existential medal.

Nine years ago I was alive. Nine years ago Jessica Anne Porter was fifteen years old.

No, we wern't telling Teresa. Because she had that same smell on her skin too, that dead hoocow's awful sterile rot, and until I had some answers to throw in her face I was pretending everything was fine.

Be nice to her,” I muttered under my breath. “She’s my sister; she got sick. She lost her kid. For all I know, she may have eaten her.

Isn't it wonderful when people do that, when you put all your faith in their being selfish and self -centered and not giving a damn and it turns out, all that time, you were wrong?