The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All: Stories

by Laird Barron

You think you know what evil is until you look it in the eye. That’s when you really cotton to the consequences.

1

My viciousness and cruelty are without peer. There are bad men in this business, and worse men, and then there’s me.

3

Mine was a talent for reading and leading people. I didn’t mind manipulating them, I didn’t mind destroying them if it came to that. It’s not as if we dealt with real folks, anyway. In our world, everybody was part of the machine.

6

I’d likely be dead by then so no time like the present.

7

He did not add, he was a good man. I appreciated a little honesty, so far as it went.

7

knew slippery devils like him always came in first and they survived by stepping on the heads of drowning men.

8