The Man Made of Smoke
Alex North
"It was dark, and it was cold."
"[I]nstead of words, I saw a language composed of animal heads which bled and left red trails in their wake. If I looked up at the sky, the sun was always mid-explosion."
"The little fake family were only a couple of hundred yards from the trees now."
"An agent finds reason in every conversation, even if it means not getting the best deal."
"When she came home Friday, she found the house in a grave silence, with no fetching aroma to delight her nose. She found me slumped on the couch, my face in my hands."
"In her yellow handbag was a Saturday night special, a deck of tarot cards, and a cyanide pill for worst-case scenarios. But today, she wouldn’t need any of them."
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