An excerpt

There but unseen therefore immitigable: five demons snug and comfortable in human skin, taut and twitching and tensing for the plan. The street again, the out of doors, night advancing and retreating in entropic shadow-play. Light here, darkness there, reverse. Steps on the concrete, yours, expensive shoes beating the sound of protest ignored. A short-cut, a crossing, saving time to spend space (and face and teeth and ribs and guts), but you do it anyway, make that turn and silence the voice that says go back, run, fly! Clack-click, clack-click, your shoes keep on, faster now and its hard to understand. The demons move in and at first you’re grateful, thinking they’re shadows because there can be no shadow without light, the sweep of headlamps, the trigger of a motion sensor, a garage door spitting yellow into the alley. Hey, hey, hold up there, mall-walker, says one. We’re lost, says another. Turned around, says a third. We need direction, says a fourth. To your funeral, says a fifth. And the first punch isn’t so bad because you think quick violence followed by quick pillage. On your hands and knees, you spit blood, cough and groan, wait for them to slip your full-grain wallet out your back pocket, pull you up and take your TAG-Heuer, maybe even your shoes, leave you penniless and sock-footed, bleeding and sobbing. And that’s a fine dream. The first foot goes in deep, navel meeting spine by way of stomach and pancreas, and between your legs appears something hot and wet, a summer’s cloudburst in the darkest part of the forest. Another foot goes in. And another. Another. Another. Another. Each has its own color, its own riff on hurt. A spidery hand pulls you up by the hair. You are crying now, begging with a blood-flooded mouth, offering everything. Weak. You think we need your money, says one of the demons. He drags you, your knees scraping furrows through the dirt and the muck and the history of that alley. Doesn’t anyone see? But you are too empty to scream, to call attention to yourself. Open him up, says one, and you think this is how I die, imagine knives out, careless incisions, the debouching of viscera like confetti. But a demon pries open your mouth, cold fingers on your teeth, your jaw hinged wide enough to eat yourself, an ourobouros. And now they’re forcing you down, lips agape, and you are tasting concrete, moist and rough, your teeth fitting gritty over a mold, a shape, a curb. Your tongue struggles for a place to go, trapped in a dead-end cave. Night night, says one. Sleep tight, says another. Bed bugs bite, says a third. Especially tonight, says a fourth. Sweet dreams, says fifth. You grunt one last time, then the world explodes in flash of aseptic white—the color of hospitals, bleached cotton, and perfect teeth brushed thrice daily.