Excerpt:

Stanley had jerked the canister away from the maws of the ice machine by now, and was gripping it with both hands. The lid of the canister, which he had been holding under his armpit, pressed against his body, had dropped, and rolled along the floor until it fell over, dead. Stanley’s blue eyes were wide as he stared at the man, who, to him, had been a corpse and now was being animated by some strange power. The man took no notice of Stanley, instead he gazed straight before him at the other side of the hall, his mouth set in bland, self-absorbed determination. After a few times more of opening and closing his accordion, he turned and looked up at Stanley, and said knowingly, “It’s the flies that show you the way to your dreams, boy,” and then he moved his head back so he was staring at the other side of the wall, papered in the same pale beige textured paper as the rest of the hotel.
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Second exerpt:
“Was this your fate, father?” he cried loudly, getting to his feet; he trembled with fear, staring wildly about the echoing kitchen. He could imagine that the spirit of his father was sitting there, this very moment, in the usual chair at the kitchen table; perhaps he was looking straight at him, perhaps he was frozen in time. Dmitri whirled about at a soft noise, expecting to see the ghost of his father directly before him; a flicker of gray about the corner, and he knew it was the cat, playing with some scrap of paper. Or was it? Could it be, possibly, a bit of his father’s grey hair, come from the past, come from the grave? Could the shreds of bone underground have served as sharpened knitting needles, knitting together just a portion of the man who had, just a few days ago, laughed and joked?
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Third exerpt:
Outwardly steel, inwardly eggshells, and soaked in pride that corroded the gears of humility, Jack doggedly put on the cloak of duty all said he should pursue for the good of the people, of the republic, of democracy and peace. He started the path in high school, enamored as many kids are, with flashing red lights, the gleam of a k9 dog’s teeth in a wild flash of a search light, as it barks bravely and intelligently to alert his handlers to a lost child successfully found, the ringing snap of handcuffs being slapped on a perp’s scarred and tattooed wrists, coffee with the guys as they hung around the station on a lazy weekend, the tv playing their favorite show in the background. Simplistic, childish dreams, dramatic and fluffy; nothing wrong with that. Sometimes they harden and become real, sometimes they drift away like forgotten clouds.