Reading Time: 6 minutesHe has found a gift. The kitchen, which at home smelled of disappointment and lost hope, is now a place of amelioration. But when the full moon rises, he hears the night call his name. It sounds like fear. It smells like nightmare. It tastes like death. He departs with the sun.

Reading Time: 8 minutesChip, Tom, and Brian are never found, or at least not most of them. There are only remnants: a stray finger, a discarded shoe with a foot still inside… Only one entire body is discovered amidst the carnage. It is that of an unknown man, naked and unmarked, save for a hole through his heart.

Reading Time: 7 minutesRiver is strong, nimble and has the element of surprise. Brian and Tom lie back on damp earth, as if sleeping. River kicks Chip’s face. All of his rage and disappointment, all his sorrow and fear explode in righteous anger.

Reading Time: 6 minutesA week after Gabriel moves in, Kristjan leaps from the window. He hangs in the air, twisting for a moment like an autumn leaf, before falling thirteen floors to the hard, hard pavement.

Reading Time: 5 minutesGabriel arrives in San Francisco at dusk. He’s dropped off in the Tenderloin by a man desperate to be rid of him. Gabriel’s presence in his car is like the scent of mortality.

Reading Time: 7 minutesAt eighteen, when Gabriel leaves the orphanage, the sisters breathe a sigh of relief.  He has never been any trouble. Never talked back; indeed, rarely talked at all. He is obedient, clean, and scentless. The nuns can find no fault in him, but neither can they feel affection. He makes them forget Christ and contemplate Gabriel. He induces guilt. His very silence screams for attention. He is a shadow in the soul.

Reading Time: 8 minutesGabriel is much more unusual than a virgin birth. Granted, human virgin birth is miraculous, but in many species of fish, lizards, insects, and sharks, virgin birth is the norm. It is helpful to remember that a miracle is not necessarily good, it is simply unnatural.