He didn’t want the game to end. Each time he took her to the brink of consciousness, to the point where she hoped that she would slip over into the black and never return, but she survived. Natalie hated games.
Stories and Stills
From essay
Bill’s Funeral (short story)
I tried to remember him younger but I only saw his face in those final weeks, gaunt, shrunken, and a trail of yellow-green mucus streaming from his nostrils
Somewhere, Alaska
The most devastating risk was to believe that I could put to the side what I had been born to give the world, until later.
Quadwallups and Filaments
I glanced at the clock. It was 2:12 a.m., but light flooded through the windows of my house as if it were midday. That wasn’t the strange part.
Incident in Alaska
Within a matter of seconds, a trip, whose base purpose was enjoyment, turned to terror, confusion, and, potentially, my own mortality.
Dirt Road Elegy
I watched, frozen, as he tumbled through the air, whipped his body onto the unforgiving earth, and snapped his skull against the clay. His head bounced.