One of Us: A Novel

He had lost his mind with grief when Jasper died and he’d gone on a murder spree that to this day continued from time to time. She was at the stove, making taters and bacon in a skillet when she decided that they’d have to murder him. He falls to his knees next to her body, squirming against the scarven binds that fasten his wrists behind his back. “El-eleanor!” he garbles through his gag. “Oh, now, now,” Uncle Charlie growls when Bolt starts snuffling. “She ain’t hurt that much. Her Self—her thoughts, her feelings, her Eleanor-ness—would fade and fade, decline into a random disorder of glints and glimpses of consciousness, and then, finally, would be dissolved into the pulse of rot and rebirth that was the universe.