A Congregation of Jackals

by S. Craig Zahler

“That’s a thing you prob’y didn’t know—blind people can see in their dreams if they ever had the power of sight in their lives, which I did for fifty-three years. That’s why I sleep a lot more than I used to. Didn’t sleep so much when I had good eyes.

Filled with concerns and unanswered questions, the bride-to-be asked her father if he would read her to sleep as he had up until she was eleven years old, and he gladly indulged her request. His voice carried her from the anxieties of reality into the realm of children’s stories and ultimately into the velvet domain of slumber.