Peacocks Like Children Screaming by Verless Doran The preacher was a real Holy Ghoster. He was one of them old-timey preachers that always wears black and walks around with sour looks on their faces and has stony, fierce eyes that feel like they are looking right into your soul. Them kind of preachers that when they talk to you on the street, they sound just like they do in the pulpit, with hard, set words that come out like a song without music. Like they was all carefully picked out and put...

Land Be cool. Gotta be cool. He'll pass. He don't want you. Slow down just a little. Not too much. Don't draw attention to yourself. Just ease up on the accelerator enough to make him just a little bit faster than you are. Just enough to make him see that he needs to go around you. Okay then, slow down a little more if he don't want to pass you. Why ain't he passing? He must just not be in a hurry. But cops are always in a hurry. They always pass you unless they want you. Why would he want yo...

What miserable thing my eyes hath pricked? What cruel treachery hath God performed On the thing named John Merrick? To what immortal plan hath he conformed? He hath been played a cruel trick of nature; The slave to divine whim Every perversion and contortion of stature Is manifested in him. Another trick, crueler still: The hand the God perfected, But not enough to cure or heal The body that beauty neglected. It hung like a whispery, wanton phantom, A ghost of ill-conceived fate, Amidst the h...