Tick Tock

Tommy told Sal about the strange white-cloth figure with black stitches that he had found on the front porch. "Sounds like Pillsbury Doughboy gone punk," Sal said.

The chill, like scurrying spiders, worked deeper into him, weaving webs of ice in the hollows of his bones.

Tommy and Scootie locked eyes. Only minutes ago, he wouldn't have believed that he could ever have felt such a kinship with the Labrador as he felt now.

Don't be negative. Negative thinking disturbs the fabric of the cosmos.

Everything is more than it seems, but nothing is as mysterious as it appears to be.

Whatever you expect is what will be, so simply change your expectations.

The doll twitched. Its head turned slightly toward Tommy. Its green eye fixed on him.

Everyone thinks his family is strange," Del said, scratching Scootie behind the ears, "but it's just that... because we're closer to the people we love, we tend to see them through a magnifying glass, through a thicker lens of emotion, and we exaggerate their eccentricities.