We'd found the temple after three days of hiking through rainforest, jungle, and other groupings of mercilessly green vegetation. It looked like it had been expecting us. The doors had been rent apart, and vines like guiding arrows led the way for us inside.

"Whenever someone starts talking to you about purity, the old 'Oh you mustn't', they're just trying to scare you," the oarsman told the lad sitting next to him. "All those fucks have done bad and thought worse, trust me."
The kid was barely tall enough to see over the...

There was no requirement to march, they reminded us.
Who can bend the will of the heavens, after all, to demand the fate of a man fall this way or that?
I hated that heady talk that those talking heads got up to on the TV. In lieu...

"Now, Tony, I know you don't give a fuck." The Manager's head rested there, just above my cubicle. His hands looked like they'd wrung out a bundle of invisible snakes, being crushed evermore under his grip. "The client thinks he has sway with you, said you'd take care of it....

There’s something relieving in having cast the dice, watching them tumble over the great green felt. A lovely human on your arm, if you were running well, something sweeter to think about. Otherwise, the cigar smoke and cheap colognes swept over your nostrils and you kept watching those cubes toy...

It came as a child. Not that we knew that at the time. The size it already was would have convinced anyone otherwise.
It set itself up on the side of town closest to the school and the old carpet store. Every night it went back to that pit...

The Almighty Dollar! The Church of the Coin!
Down with the Scholar, Join the Unjoined!
In Banks as in Heaven, Thy Balance Fulfilled
Lest fate turn ye beggar & find empty your Tills!

 "How the hell'd you do it?" a plainclothes asked me.
"Intuition", I heard myself say, coupled with a smile and the ignition of a cigarette.
What I didn't say is that to recognize something means to have seen it before. 
The scene now having been fully cased,...

Do lifelines fray? Must we change them out every now and then?
He looked down at his journal. It sounded like an emo album lyric.

Comedy was always his lifeline. It was still his go-to entertainment, but it didn't tickle the way it used to. Nothing shone as brightly as...

"Part of being a grown man is building dependencies on stuff."

"I like that. That's a chronic aberration."

"You know, I think babies would be happier if they took caffeine pills."

"The only person being ruined is my doctor."

- The same person.