“Ramon nudged the body with his foot. “I’ve gotta apologize, Nash. You were right. This vehicle was a great idea.”

“Thanks!” Nash beamed as he pulled off his plastic clown mask. “It was more than that, it was brilliant.”

Ramon set his clown mask on the narrow counter inside the ice cream wagon, inspecting the body on the floor. “Easiest kill in a long time. The vehicle is perfect camouflage.  No one’s frightened of us when we’re wearing the clown masks. We can cut him up at our leisure and haul the entire carcass back to camp.” (more…)

Out here, he thought, a man can be himself. To the west the sun was beginning to fold in on itself, an origami illusion whereby its roundness divided into thirds, refracted light from the cold earth compressing it as it fell, flattening, deforming. Still, there was an hour of daylight, and no one to see his hands shake or ask why it was he kept looking nervously down the hill toward the house and beyond to the town  whose roofs were burnished copper in the late of the evening. He thought of gold and precious things and his thumb subconsciously curled under the two tall fingers of his left hand and pressured downward on the warm band that had ringed this finger for so long it had worried an indentation below the first knuckle. (more…)