Draft Zero:
Welcome To The Breakdown

The worst thing about killing people is, in fact, the people. I get asked this a lot in my workshops and, for the sake of the cliché, have to answer blood. Or the screaming. Or—if I'm in Nevada, where vegans are fucking everywhere—the dull pain of a part of my soul untethered. The tears feel very real as I recount the mauve tints of my soul turn black—as black as coal, or eyeliner, or the night sky, or the straps of the Prada bag I stole from my ninety-eight-year-old victim.

It was a regular Tuesday in school when Soul realized she wasn't human. The class was physics, but she had forgotten her notebook at home, and was scribbling away at the back of her math one. The symbols looked like hieroglyphs and magic and a bit close to the doodles her little sister had made of milk and fruit loops that morning. She had transcended the mortal plane, something that occurred often when it was maths and physics and logic. She was floating through a cloud that

We are pigeons. Grey birds with the dumb gaze of an American trying to think in miles, and an ugly coat the color of concrete at dusk....