Det. Snark stood over the man he had just put five bullets in, thinking that now it would just be a matter of waiting to see if he was in fact the serial killer they assumed he was, but if they were wrong he knew there would be hell to pay.

On his 100th birthday he looked back on his life with neither nostalgia nor regret, but still cursed his enemies and remembered his friends and their drunken days fondly.

When Theo woke up the next morning it wasn't the mind-numbing hangover that had his hands shaking, it was the enlistment papers with his signature on them.

Dave, who really, really, really wanted a b b gun, was cursed by his friendship with Pete, an eye-patch wearing boy whose brother had shot his right eye out with the same type of weapon Dave was desperate to get his hands on.

The boys flipped through the dog-eared magazine and tittered at the images of the women with hairdos of another generation, but whose bodies were the same in every other respect.

The red tinted moon, like a bloodshot eye, hung over the field in which the men quietly dug the shallow hole that was the width and length of a man.

The smell of anise filled the air in the tiny candy shop that the boys were allowed to visit once a week, while the kindly old man behind the counter smelled of sweat and alcohol.