Lance Altes

“What’s that?” Zack fretted.
“One’s dead—janitor at the church where Gerry did his dirty work before Michigan. Died yesterday. We think he was killed, but autopsy results are inconclusive. They’ve ruled out homicide, and the official cause of death is ‘cardiac arrest.’”
“The church strikes again? People are being murdered?” Zack seethed.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith

“All distances in time and space are shrinking. […] Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its picture on film or its sound on radio, can remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. […] Everything gets lumped together into uniform distanceless. […] What is it that unsettles and thus terrifies? It shows itself and hides itself in the way in which everything presences, namely, in the fact that despite all conquest of distances the nearness of things remains absent.”
― Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought

“Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.AMD”
― Founding Fathers, The United States Constitution

“When I moved my hands down away from the window I caught sight of my reflection in the glass, bright against the black morning beyond. I couldn’t contain the audible gasp that sounded in my throat. I had expected to see the slightly translucent representation of my face mirrored on the pane, but instead I saw an ivory haze where my features should have been.”
― Misty Mount, The Shadow Girl