A tragic flaw is a crack in an otherwise invulnerable shield. In Thompson's case, the wood in his solid Anglo-Saxon self, if a shield, a large perfectly symmetric circle, thick oak bound around with a steel ring, the wood had cracked because he had soaked it with a cleansing agent, til it was dried out and brittle.


The screaming of pigs. The peptobismo light of the sun coming across the sky at dawn. The pens and then the ride through the tunnels.


One bright spot, a connection, in an otherwise dim day. To open the box, to find it not empty, but to find the long-awaited e-mail, a letter, a token, a sign, a branch broken off the tree and carved into something personal. This is to live for. Live wires amidst the tangled vines of dead ones. The reverse of the mesh of Christmas Lights, snarled up in the box, with the one bulb out somewhere.

Let virtual dogs lie.