Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

I left the Keene house with no quotes. I was already tired of talking, and I’d said very little.

The local bar, Heelah’s, serves nothing pork related, only chicken tenders, which are, presumably, processed by equally furious factory workers in some other crappy town.

How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky?

“I’m so sorry, my girl,” he said at the end of his visit, and I could tell he meant it because his voice sounded wet.

They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.

I hated to point out to my mother that such was the nature of a bewildered, expiring ten-year-old. Why bother? It’s impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.

Even the idea of this practice I find repulsive. But the sight of it actually does something to you, makes you less human. Like watching a rape and saying nothing.

I always felt like it was the dead deer’s Morse code, a delayed mayday from tomorrow’s venison.

Even her murmur was girlish and clicky. Like a thousand mice nibbling crackers.

Within a few minutes I was asleep, the stink of my breath floating into my dreams like a sour fog.

It occurred to me she never addressed her directly, no Mother or Momma, or even Adora. As if Amma didn’t know her name but was trying not to be obvious about it.

A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.