Before you stands the momentous “Villains” special online issue of Barrelhouse. Enter if you dare.

To say the scene: sagebrush

where the deer come to rest

from valley lights, farm trucks.

They step from the corn

Once upon a time a woman who hated birds married a woman

who owned a parrot that would live forever.

Last time we met, I was most

like a bride as I have ever been.

Charles Manson is Dead as the world loses order,

chokes itself in a pell-mell haze.

1. Do you remember how we met?

an understudy is a transgression

it occurs / imitation

There’s always a hook. It’s a staple to this story. A girl, a car, a late boyfriend on a windy night, a hook when she drives away.

Part of my crush was on his name: Kevin Leisure.

They say death does crazy things to the livin’. Those people woulda been put in their place by Mr. Fetters.

I don’t mean to watch you sleep, but sometimes, monsters just get hungry.

I was offered a kingdom and, without thinking about what the future might hold, I took it.

This is the same. It’s all the same. Until it’s not. I’m supposed to know when it’s not the same.

Lenora hates playing hostess now, trying to stretch out the dwindling supply of booze from their liquor cabinet.

Steve’s beard first spoke to him on a spring afternoon, the first warm day of the year.

I have made a career out of dying. I'm a criminal again but maybe I'm smarter than all that, it's just I'm desperate.