Along the River of Flesh (Gone to See the River Man, #2)

by Kristopher Triana

Sinners need somebody to blame for the wicked things they done, so they create a devil. Our devil be The River Man.”

he’d experienced intimidation and a lack of cooperation from the law, so his distrust was not political but forged from personal experience.

One didn’t have to believe in ghosts to be uneasy in a place with such a history of violence and grief.

Reality didn’t bend to the expectations of one’s fantasies. That’s why people always said to be careful what you wished for.

“Who are you?” Keith asked. “What’s your name?” “My name? Fuck You, that’s my name.”

“He’s not an officer of the law,” Keith told June. “That’s one of the reasons I like him more than you, though that’s a pretty low bar.”

To drag anyone else into his vortex of constant suffering would be a crime he could never forgive himself for.

There were limits to Gary’s poor mental health. It wasn’t homicide that beckoned him, but suicide. It ran circles around his other thoughts, hiding in the cobwebs of his mind only to reappear in random games of peekaboo. Even when the urge was subdued, it was still there, its lulling call reminding him there was always a way out of this. It danced around each effort to up his serotonin, overpowering every brand of anti-depressants and mood stabilizers medical science could offer. Suicide was his one true relief, the last-ditch hope for stillness.

June didn’t believe in any of that. If God’s love had given her a disturbed mother and absent father, it was He who had to ask June for forgiveness, not the other way around.

There are some nightmares so hard-wired into our souls they become a part of us forever,

“If ya gonna shoot me, shoot me. But spare me the big hero horseshit. I’ve heard it all before, and it ain’t impressing me or nobody.”

“The cobra looks down upon the rattlesnake, yet both are filled with venom.”