Blackwater Val
Aaban walked down the center aisle between the giant silver cross and the Jesus statue and exited the chapel quietly, heading for his locker.
He clicked the butane lighter on and off as he moved, thinking about fire and about retribution, and eternity, too, and about young supple virgins waiting somewhere in the hereafter for him.
3
The bees were in the trees . . .
Cassie could see them from her house, in the bushes and locust trees where they had swarmed, down the slope which led to the small pond at the bottom of her backyard. They conspired there, the low buzzing sound of their carryings-on lifting on the breeze and rising up to where she stood. Cassie humphed.
Sikat na Kabanata