The light is so far away. You would think, if my creations were really trying to keep me awake, it wouldn’t be so dark down here. Maybe, because they’re afraid of the dark, they think I am too. As though I’d make them in my image. That’s so old school. It’s the sound that stops my dreams anyway—the singing that echoes across these four stone walls…

I really hate when I have to kill my clients. It happens to everyone who signs a Harvester contract eventually, but that hasn’t made it any easier over the years. Guzzling down other people’s emotions and attributes, no matter how cleanly I filter out the bad stuff, leaves traces behind that fester over long periods. The woman across the street has all the typical signs…

You step through another thicket of dying something that crumbles away beneath your boots. For a brief moment the leaves perk up when you pass, the light from what you hold in your arms giving them a last sip of life before darkness. But that moment has been getting briefer the longer you travel, and it hardly matters any more…