Stewart Cavanagh

“Snake Street is an area I should avoid. Yet that night I was drawn there as surely as if I had an appointment. 
The Snake House is shabby on the outside to hide the wealth within. Everyone knows of the wealth, but facades, like the park’s wall, must be maintained. A lantern hung from the porch eaves. A sign, written in Utte, read ‘Kinship of the Serpent’. I stared at that sign, at that porch, at the door with its twisted handle, and wondered what the people inside would do if I entered. Would they remember me? Greet me as Kin? Or drive me out and curse me for faking my death?  Worse, would they expect me to redon the life I’ve shed? Staring at that sign, I pissed in the street like the Mearan savage I’ve become.
As I started to leave, I saw a woman sitting in the gutter. Her lamp attracted me. A memsa’s lamp, three tiny flames to signify the Holy Trinity of Faith, Purity, and Knowledge.  The woman wasn’t a memsa. Her young face was bruised and a gash on her throat had bloodied her clothing. Had she not been calmly assessing me, I would have believed the wound to be mortal. I offered her a copper. 
She refused, “I take naught for naught,” and began to remove trinkets from a cloth bag, displaying them for sale.
Her Utte accent had been enough to earn my coin. But to assuage her pride I commented on each of her worthless treasures, fighting the urge to speak Utte. (I spoke Universal with the accent of an upper class Mearan though I wondered if she had seen me wetting the cobblestones like a shameless commoner.) After she had arranged her wares, she looked up at me. “What do you desire, O Noble Born?”
I laughed, certain now that she had seen my act in front of the Snake House and, letting my accent match the coarseness of my dress, I again offered the copper.
 “Nay, Noble One. You must choose.” She lifted a strand of red beads. “These to adorn your lady’s bosom?”
            I shook my head. I wanted her lamp. But to steal the light from this woman ... I couldn’t ask for it. She reached into her bag once more and withdrew a book, leather-bound, the pages gilded on the edges. “Be this worthy of desire, Noble Born?”
 I stood stunned a moment, then touched the crescent stamped into the leather and asked if she’d stolen the book. She denied it. I’ve had the Training; she spoke truth. Yet how could she have come by a book bearing the Royal Seal of the Haesyl Line? I opened it. The pages were blank.
“Take it,” she urged. “Record your deeds for study. Lo, the steps of your life mark the journey of your soul.”
  I told her I couldn’t afford the book, but she smiled as if poverty were a blessing and said, “The price be one copper. Tis a wee price for salvation, Noble One.”
  So I bought this journal. I hide it under my mattress. When I lie awake at night, I feel the journal beneath my back and think of the woman who sold it to me. Damn her. She plagues my soul. I promised to return the next night, but I didn’t. I promised to record my deeds. But I can’t. The price is too high.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“A haunting memory flooded over Ethan when his own little sister had died. He had not thought of her in years! He glanced at the other chairs that sat empty around the table and wondered how different, or better his life would have been if she had lived. He tried to imagine her sitting there, but had trouble conjuring up her face.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing

“Mom, please don't use 'the happy voice.' It reminds me of the day Tinkles died."
"Who was Tinkles?" Sue asked around a mouthful of pancake.
"My cat. When I was five, Tinkles died choking on a mouse that was a bit ambitious for a kitten to eat."
"It was terribly traumatic for Aurelia because it was the first time she'd experienced loss." 
"What did you do to help her get through it?" 
Rosalind smiled at Mother Guardian. "Well, after a good cry, we performed an autopsy."
Aurelia reached for her mother's hand. "I never thanked you for that.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years.

All business and politics is personal in the Philippines.

If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump.

They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on.

I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged.

I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy.

You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn.

Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race.

After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself.

It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up.

He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather.

The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up.

You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points]

Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse.

You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow.

In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil.

There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country.

Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us.

The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys.

The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time.

I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality.
The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent.

Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins.

Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it.

Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds.

Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising.

A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't.

Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill.

It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most.

Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold.

Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink?

She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.”
― John Richard Spencer