Nightlife

Snap judgments? I'd gotten over those about the time I was toilet trained. Swore off diapers and faith in the human experience all in one week.

When life gives you lemons. . . You might as well shove 'em where the sun don't shine, because you sure as hell aren't ever going to see any lemonade.

There are monsters among us. There always have been and there always will be. I’ve known that ever since I can remember, just like i’ve always known I was one.

To survive in the world, you have to give up the fantasies, the make‐believe. The only trouble is that it's not all make‐believe. Some parts of the fairy tales are all too real, all too true. There might not be a Red Riding Hood, but there is a Big Bad Wolf. No Snow White, but definitely an Evil Queen. No obnoxiously cute blond tots, but a child‐eating witch… yeah. Oh yeah.

He might not be a human, but neither was he a monster. The lack of one didn`t necessarily equal the other. There was something so simple about that, yet it had taken me until now to figure it out. Catcher was no monster.
And neither was I.

The things you think in certain situations... the thoughts that run through your mind, they`re never what you think they would be. Maybe never even what they should be. My thoughts should have been solely on what was before me, but instead they twisted into one barely coherent whole that was practically screaming into my brain, "Run!" Survival instinct is, after all, an ultimately selfish mechanism.

A flashing charismatic smile, a price suit, sunglasses that cost more than Nik and I had to spend on a car -- it all was aimed in our direction like a heat-seeking missile.
"Oh, damn," I groaned wholeheartedly.
"It`s an unfortunate fact of life," Niko said with grimly amused resignation. "Where there are graveyards, there are flesh-eating revenants. where there are cars, there are car salesmen."

I didn`t tell him that by Friday Niko and I would be long gone. We`d be a soon forgotten memory, the same as we were to so many people already. Just ghosts. Because in a world of monsters, you had to be a ghost to survive.

Mom had looked at me once when I was younger, about eight. It was a strange look, one of repugnance mixed with a reluctant pride. "You`re a monster, but you`re a beautiful one," she had said. Great, I was an evil, squatting thing wrapped in shiny silver Christmas paper. Even at eight I hadn`t thought that was much of a compliment.

That's the definition of a teenager, isn't it? A coma with two legs and an endless appetite. Certainly being deprived of my God‐given right to ten hours a night made me cranky.