Nebraska. Interstate diner. Feels like a bad song. Kid behind the counter has glasses even thicker than mine. Greasy little prick's probably the one who called the cop. I paid for my coffee. I paid. Man like me gets the dick in public no matter where I go. The beard and the age, the backpack. I get it. No point in dancing around the obvious.

The little shit pile glances at the cop then talks at me while he wipes down the counter, "Cold as a fuck out there, mister. You got a place to stay?"

"I'll be alright."

"Close in 15," the cop says. Fat piece of fuck, this one, "And we can't have you lurking around here, buddy. Jail's closed for the night, too, just so you know."

He nods at the human shit behind the counter, smiles at him, walks out. Car door closes. He sits there. He'll be sitting out there in 15, too. The kid walks in back. Out the window there's a full, crisp moon, but it ain't no moon, it's a fuckin' burden. Time blurs. I'm sick. All my people are dead. The kid flips the sign in the window around and opens the door, stares at the fuckin' floor and waits for me to go.

(excerpt from "Gravy on My Mashed Potatoes", KAYFABLES)

All Stories are true as Stories. For instance, the first Horror Story I read was not Salem's Lot by Stephen King, but 'The Story Of Abraham and Isaac' in my little 'Bible Story Book'. It had no serial killers, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, or zombies. Just a Father with a knife, who was going to cut his Son's throat and burn him because a Voice in his head told him to, and the Voice was, as we know, God. So that was all right, we GUESS...

But what if Abraham was just some dude suffering from mental illness? Then it becomes a Horror Story--one which terrified me as a child, even more so as a parent. I am still somewhat sickened when I think of that story, which disturbs me far more than anything I've ever read by H.P. Lovecraft, Dean Koontz, or even "splatter-kings" Clive Barker and Edward Lee. That is, it horrifies me that someone might base their real-life conduct on it. But it's part of a whole Series of Stories in a Book that many people believe to be literally true, and the perfect, ONLY guide to human conduct...

She's waiting under the apple tree that drops its blossoms in September. Every year, same story; I show up, she's got her back pressed into the trunk. I wonder how a tree can wait so long to bloom and usually she's silent. This year she opens her hand and offers me a tiny apple, cut in half, pink flesh pulsing like a traffic light. "You thought about not coming." she says, no judgement, just fact. I say nothing, but my hands are slick in my pockets.

"You might have missed this." she proclaims and drops it into my mouth which hangs open, forgotten, like every reason I dream up to cease my yearly pilgrimage.