The Lesser Dead

by Christopher Buehlman

So there I was on her third-floor iron balcony, the smell of the iron making me horny for blood,

The girl didn’t deserve to wake up to a sore crotch, a hangover, and a dead cat.

Twenty years go by fast when you’re dead.

I guess God was giving me a hint. He does that. God or whatever’s sitting where God ought to be.

He woke up from dreams about burning hootches and covering himself in mud to wait in ambush and then he’d wake up and get sad when he realized he was just in his shitty apartment and he had to go out and talk to people he wasn’t allowed to punch.