With a black beret pulled down tight on her head, she could be anyone. When the bus pulls to the corner where Comrade Snarky had agreed to wait, she stands there in an army-surplus flak jacket-dark olive-green-and baggy camouflage pants, the cuffs rolled up to show infantry boots. No, this was only a writers' retreat until it was too late for us to be anything, It doesn't matter who we were as people, not to old Mr. Spring, summer, winter, autumn-one whole season of that year. Too many of us, locked away from the world for one whole A lot of hot, sticky blood.ДЄnd we were supposed to write short stories. Real intestines, real lungs, a beating heart, blood. As if you cut open a rag doll and found inside: Names based on our sins instead of our jobs:Д«ased on our faults and crimes. The names we earned, based on our stories. You called peonies-sticky with nectar and crawling withДЄnts-the вЂњant flower.вЂќ You called collies: Lassie Dogs.Д«ut even now, the same way you still call someone вЂњthat man with one leg.вЂќ The same way-when you were little-you invented names for the plants andДЄnimals in your world.

Locked away from the ordinary world for three months.ДЄnd we called each other the вЂњMatchmaker.вЂќ And the вЂњMissing Link.вЂќ

Run by an old, old, dying man named Whittier,ДЄnd we were supposed to write poetry. It was supposed to be safe.ДЄn isolated writers' colony, where we could work, This was supposed to be a writers' retreat.

Haunted chuck palahniuk german