Graveyard Shift

by M.L. Rio

Misery loved company and made strange bedfellows.

“Occam’s razor,” Edie repeated. “The simplest explanation is the best explanation.” It was a motto she’d tried to instill in her staff at the Times—along with the official motto, Salva veritate. With truth intact. But the truth was never simple, seldom whole.

“Saint Anthony’s Fire. It was a sort of medieval epidemic. Caused gangrene and hallucinations and made people feel like they were being burned alive.”

“Mycology, really. Saint Anthony’s Fire was just another name for ergot poisoning.”

Friends and lovers came and went, but the Toyota was forever.

The Toyota is forever.

She learned to live in the permanent twilight of sleep-deprivation psychosis. Life, if you could call it that, was a never-ending out-of-body experience.

She’d always been irritable—chronic insomnia did that to a person—but rarely angry. Anger took energy. Anger took effort.