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    The Strangest Creatures
    The Strangest Creatures
    The Strangest Creatures
    Ebook47 pages38 minutes

    The Strangest Creatures

    By Nathan L. Henry

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    About this ebook

    By the author of Good Behavior, Bloomsbury, 2010, a highly recognized childhood crime memoir, comes this disturbing story of pointless self-annihilation.

    "The strangest creatures roam this land..."

    Aaron Cornell, FUCK YOUR WORLD tattooed on his right hand, went from being a fine student in middle school to something between a good-time party-boy and an out-and-out murderous thug between now and the time Nick saw him last. New in town and with nothing but time on his hands, Nick allows Aaron into his life, and gets a front row seat to a meaningless, violent self-destruction. At times fearing for his life, at times confused by the absurdity of Aaron's behavior, he can only marvel at the ways individuals lock themselves into their own fates. A meditation on delusion and grandeur and the futility of cheap violence.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNathan L. Henry
    Release dateJan 18, 2012
    ISBN9781466124332
    The Strangest Creatures
    Author

    Nathan L. Henry

    Nate Henry is now 32 and lives in Columbus, Ohio. This is his first book.

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      Book preview

      The Strangest Creatures - Nathan L. Henry

      The Strangest Creatures

      By

      Nathan L. Henry

      © Copyright Nathan L. Henry 2012

      Smashwords Edition

      Cover by Nathan L. Henry

      Other works by Nathan L. Henry:

      Good Behavior, A Memoir, Bloomsbury USA, 2010

      Argentine, A Novel, Smashwords Edition, 2012

      Olympia, A Novel Smashwords Edition, 2012

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      This is a work of fiction. All characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons is entirely coincidental.

      Prologue

      When we were kids, Aaron showed me a gun his father gave him before he left the family for good—a little twenty-two revolver that had eight or twelve chambers. It was a small gun with a huge cylinder—pointed it right at my face and I took it from him, said, Don’t you ever fucking point a gun at me.

      It’s not loaded, man.

      I don’t give a shit.

      That’s the crappy little revolver he carries around with him now.

      The restless crazy…

      Maybe—

      Maybe he escapes and becomes a colonel Kurtz of the Aztecs and sways the limbic systems of whole populations with his bare fists, lunar charts and coca leaves and intestines boiling in copper pots over flame…

      He pops twelve twenty-two caliber slugs into the back of some poor girl’s head and scratches his balls. Fuck ‘em, he says, and spits between his teeth. He rapes ghosts and eats the hearts of children.

      He has become a vampire of the mountains, a vampire whose fangs are as long as samurai swords…

      He is the Vampire of the Universe, has bandoliers of ammo across his ash-smeared chest and machine guns in each hand and shrunken skulls around his neck.

      He sinks like radioactive herpes into a dead civilization and gives it a reason to hate itself.

      Or maybe he did not escape.

      The strangest creatures roam this land…

      Chapter 1

      I’m walking through the parking lot of the Hideaway bar when somebody yells, Nick!

      I stop dead still and listen for footfalls and when I’m relatively certain that I’m not in imminent danger of being jumped, I slowly take out my pack of cigarettes and light one, something to get me balanced before I turn around to face my attacker.

      I thought you were in prison! The voice comes from across the parking lot. People turn and look.

      There’s a group of young guys gathered around a beat-up, rusted out gray Chevy Nova, over at the other end of the parking lot in the shade of a massive tree. I start toward the group, still no idea who they are, still pretty certain that I’m about to get into a fight.

      One guy

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