I had no way of understanding them. I had no stories to explain what had happened.

Dead. He was dead.

I gasped, but Marta covered my mouth before I could scream. I recognized the dead man as one of the men who worked with my father in the forests.

But I was not prepared for the face of his attacker, as it settled outside the window it’d just thrown the body through.

I recognized the face of the creature. I knew it all too well, but it didn’t match the harsh look of the body of the thing the face belonged to. A winged creature, a hard shell of skin the color of a cloudy sky. Its eyes were completely dark so that no whites would show. Slim and sharp teeth protruded from its mouth, as it hissed and revealed a long tongue that just barely dipped past its jaw. Long talons on its hands and feet, hard palms set against what was otherwise sagging and wrinkled skin.

So how was it that I recognized this creature when I'd never set eyes on anything like it before?

Because it had the face of my mother.

Shayna insisted on singing to the baby, and Yael seemed soothed by her songs, but the rest of us! Such a caterwauling would scare off my customers, I was sure. Still, it’s not good to argue with a new mother—it might sour her milk—so I held my peace and tried to get used to the horrible sentimental songs.

'The only thing that gives life any meaning is the hope that when you die you'll go to a better place, and when they close that door to you and the only one that's left open is the door to Hell, then it's better not to have been born. For me, Juan Preciado, Heaven is right here where I am.'

'And your soul? Where do you think it's gone?'

'It must be wandering around up there on earth, like all those others, looking for people to pray for it. I think it hates me for the bad things I did, but that doesn't worry me any more. I'm rid of all the pain it used to give me. It made me feel bitter about everything, even about not getting enough to eat, and it made the nights unbearable, full of terrifying thoughts. Visions of the damned and things like that. When I sat down to die, it told me to get up again and keep on living, as if it still hoped for some miracle that would clean away my sins. But I wouldn't. "This is the end," I told it. "I can't go any farther.' I opened my mouth so it could leave, and it left. I felt something fall into my hands. It was the little thread of blood that tied to my heart.'

"You wouldn't believe the scope for mischief that the Beast of Redmond unintentionally built into its Office software by letting it execute macros that have unlimited access to the hardware ... However, this is the first time I've seen a Word document eat a man's soul."

- Charles Stross,
Equoid