The Last House on Needless Street

by Catriona Ward

I judge people two ways—on how they treat animals, and on what they like to eat. If their favorite food is some kind of salad, they are definitely a bad person. Anything with cheese, they are probably OK.

Killing things is hard, sure, but keeping them safe and alive is much more difficult. Oh boy, do I know about that.

Cats’ souls live in their tails and teds keep their selves behind their big wet eyes. But brouhahas keep their deepest feelings in their butts.

I like this kind of place, where you’re in between one thing and another. Hallways, waiting rooms, lobbies and so on; rooms where nothing is actually supposed to happen. It relieves a lot of pressure and lets me think.

Everyone feels like that sometimes. Sometimes things get bad, and you can’t see a future ahead. It’s all cloudy, like the sky on a rainy day. But life moves very fast. Things never stay the same forever, even the bad things. The clouds will blow away.

The young feel pain intensely, I think, because they don’t know yet how deep it can go.

When she finishes, she opens the book at random in the middle and continues reading. Dee only ever reads this one book. She likes to read, but you never know what books are going to do to you and she can’t afford to be taken off guard.

The house feels wrong today, as if in the night someone moved everything an inch to the left for a prank.

There’s something horrible about the thought of an empty room, in the dark.