“One hand planted on the top rail, slick from a recent rain, I swung my legs sideways, up and over. Home free. Until my bottom foot clipped the post, and I spun as if caught in a crocodile’s death roll.Good news? The spongy forest floor cushioned my fall.Bad news? Momentum slammed my torso into a tree trunk. Couldn’t breathe.But good news again. I’d rolled under a fat, bushy pine, which, along with the fading twilight, concealed my position. I heard the beast fly overhead in pursuit, taking out a few treetops on its way by. Yeah, that was my plan all along. Man, I’m good. Except my body. It hurt.”

“I have good news and bad news The good news is that the jeep is still where we left it, and I got the damned thing working again.""What's the bad news?""Something took my fuzzy dice.”

“The pain over my heart returns, and from it I imagine tiny fissures spreading out into my body. Through my torso, down my arms and legs, over my face, leaving it crisscrossed with cracks. One good jolt...and I could shatter into strange razor-sharp shards.”

“For a moment I feel as though I exist outside of my body, as if I'm looking at myself from his perspective. I see my face, my injured arm, these legs that suddenly seem unable to carry my weight. Cracks begin to form along my face, all the way down my arms, my torso, my legs.I imagine this is what it's like to fall apart.”

“The good news is that you may have created my past and screwed up my present, but you have no control over my future. You don't know me at all.”

“I planned my death carefully, unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it.”