In the future, in a rented room over a bar in northern California, George Hill is sleeping badly; so too the woman beside him. She wakes up first. She has a caramel complexion and a spray of freckles over the bridge of her nose, her hair straightened and bleached to a coppery shade only a degree darker than her skin. She's young; scarcely out of ( Read more... )

Goooood morning, Cy-boys and cybergirls!

I'm happy to announce we have a star-crossed winner in today's heartbreak sweepstakes...
--Janelle 'Ruth' Monae, "March of the Wolfmasters"

Time's a crooked bow.
--Andrew 'Idgie' Bird, "Armchairs"
Come with me ( Read more... )

The truck finally dies south of Pueblo. He'd come to Colorado looking for a friend in Denver, but Josie had moved on a long time ago, and he'd fled south knowing they were on his tail. Now George makes his way down the highway between Colorado City and Walsenburg on foot, his thumb out and his water jug depleted. He wants to believe there will be ( Read more... )

It's an old trick; he got it from his mother, who got it out of a novel. It's a good one, though. It works. It kept them alive, running from the man in the yellow coat, and it kept him alive, getting out of Austin. It'll work with any deck of playing cards, but Tarot cards are better. George used a deck of loteria cards, bought at the HEB the ( Read more... )

( Cut for racially-charged language )

( Read more... )

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO It's August of 2008, South Bend, Indiana, a club called the Happy Jack Saloon. He's Harry Kowalski, and for five years he bounced here. Watched the owner run it into the ground, with a golden arm and a blind eye to what the girls put into their bodies; got a mob loan ( Read more... )