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…)

When it all started Vincent was hunched over a keyboard writing a report on his first true clinical psychopath. There seemed to be double the clamour one could expect during an early afternoon in the psychiatric wing of the Ted Fisher Correctional Facility. His mind screened out this background noise–although at one point he glanced out the window and saw a woman in a tight skirt and high heels running across the hospital wing’s manicured lawn. His subconscious mind noted the oddity, but up top he was still evaluating when, if ever, his ‘client’ ought to be released back into the regular prison system. When the woman disappeared behind a hedge, he turned back to his computer screen and resumed typing. (more…)