Openings

I knew I was going to kill him the moment he walked into my kitchen.

 ***

"Is it weird for you?"

"Is what weird?"

"That your abductor loves you more than anyone else in your life?"

"It isn't so strong. She has Gothenburg Syndrome."

"Ha."

The echo: I stand and face the waterfront and behold the absence of gulls and ponder the silent lapping of tethered boats, until a siren blares like the sudden shout of Satan, and not a single one of us has any inkling what comes next, as we dim with a fallen...