The Shards

by Bret Easton Ellis

I had no stakes in the real world—why would I? It wasn’t built for me or my needs or desires.

Our odds looked good: we were young and alive and strong and nothing could hurt us, and there wasn’t anything clouding this perception, a fable about our place in the world, and we ignored the intrusive notions of fate and horror and hideous death that might kidnap us from the golden dome of adolescence we resided under.