One

Fire and Despair

of the moon wilting over the flaking paint of the old wooden

shutters were gone. Now in sympathy, only the darkest shadows

would witness what was about to happen.

    A few minutes before dawn, the air had become dank. Propped

up by pillows against the mahogany headboard, Kory lay naked

on his bed. He had just vomited on his withered legs, after he tasted

the toxic gun cleaning oil on the barrel of his nine-millimeter

semiautomatic Glock. This was not the first time he had sat alone

with his pistol in one hand and the picture of his only child in the

other. Up until now, he had ejected the breached hollow point

bullet from the chamber and replaced his gun under his pillow,

where it had been kept since the shooting thirty years ago. But this

morning, the agony in his body seemed to ignore the handfuls of

variegated pills he had taken to numb the nerve pain from his

multiple sclerosis . . .