She was dressed in her sister’s clothes, and that was why the chill found her so quickly. Ebba’s boots were much too big for her; Brim could feel frigid water between her toes as she clung to the seawall. A sealskin mask shielded her face from the worst of the wind, but this was High Tide, when gales bowled entire huts over and all but froze trees solid. This was High Tide, when the dead returned to the island. […]
“They call her what?”
Diana Lattimer hadn’t paid much attention to the old woman living further up Canyon Creek Road. Since she and her daughter Katie had moved in, they’d seen occasional cars rattling down the road, stirring red dust that hung like the ghost of travel in the hot air, until it sank, slowly as a long breath, back to the ruts and round white quartz pebbles like discarded molars lying beside the road. […]
His shame was exposed, the scar where a shell splinter had torn through his groin and ripped away his manhood. Albert no longer cared. He was counting the moments until he died.
A deep sucking followed the crack of bone. The slurping of marrow, the fluid dripping from her jaws, the varied noise of her digestion. […]
Gerald Michael Leary flat out fainted when Cecilia Murphy lifted up her skirt and showed him her naked flesh. As usual, she hadn’t worn any knickers, and the curls of her brown pubic hair writhed like tiny little snakes. It happened during a pub brawl, when he was about to lay one on Sam, Cecilia's brother, who'd been egging him on about his eejit hurling team. […]
We meet in a tumbledown tavern because Cutter doesn’t like the cold. He lost two fingers and countless friends nine years ago at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir where sub-zero temperatures proved more deadly than any Chinese rifle. […]
She squeezes your arm flirtatiously; her fingertips are made of rubber. Thick industrial rubber, with embedded heating coils to bring them up to body temperature.
Then she laughs, a warm and human sound, and you almost forget you are sitting inside of her. […]
