The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

by Laird Barron

  The blonde laughed at me as her eyes slid around most frightfully and my wife's head superimposed and shimmered there, rippling with static, frozen in time.

  I picked up the gun and I thought about my dogs that she kept in the divorce, and I thought of her as she was when we met, when she told me that it was over, and that disembodied voice replayed in my ear, promising that it would never be over, and I wished I'd run after John, wished that I'd rescued Poe from the trashcan grave and maybe I should put the gun down and get into the car and go do just that, but in this universe I'd already squeezed the trigger.

  ***

  GVG and Michael were right. L and his demon spokes-puppet were right-nothing's different, nothing changes. Lasts longer, though.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to the gang at Night Shade Books and especially Ross Lockhart; my agents Janet Reid, Heather Evans, and Pouya Shahbazian at Fineprint Literary Management; the editors who originally published many of these tales: Nick Gevers, Jack Dann, Nick Mamatas, Darrell Schweitzer, Matt Cheney, and Eric Schaller.

  Special Thanks to Jason, Harmony and the kids; Gordon Van Gelder; Ellen Datlow; Paul Tremblay; Jody Rose; Timbi Porter; Norm Partridge; Athena, my loyal companion; and to John, Fiona, and David Langan for being my family.

  Finally, thank you to my readers for your support over the years.