Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell

by Nathan Ballingrud

It’s time to settle him down. These macho types are such fragile little flowers.

I had never known loneliness. It caused me great pain. And pain, too, was something new. How do your kind live like this? How do you not extinguish yourselves from the cold misery of it? How do you know each other at all?

It’s the brain, which everyone knows is the worst bit. It’s full of all the gummy old sorrows and regrets gathered in life, and the older the brain is, the nastier it tastes.

human beings are geniuses at self-delusion.

All life is a mass of wriggling grubs, awaiting the transformation to the form in which it will greet the long and quiet dark.

Maybe he believes that if he can no longer articulate his grief, he won’t feel it anymore. Maybe he’s right.

fewer and fewer people were paying to be escorted through Hollow City, and those who were tended to be adrenaline junkies, who were likely to get you killed, or—worse—religious nuts and artists, who felt entitled to bear witness to what was happening here due to some perceived calling. It was a species of narcissism that offended her on an obscure, inarticulate level.

He had a theory that people warped as they aged, like old records left out in the sun, and unless you did it together and warped in conformity to each other, you eventually became incapable of aligning with anybody else.

The kid showed him his ID, sighing with the patience of a beleaguered saint. Legal less than a month.

I’m sure he’s fine. People like that always are.” “People like what?” “The ones who start shit. It’s always everyone else who suffers.”