874. There are all sorts of ways to divert yourself

If' we're very well behaved, we get a pill on Thursdays.
The warden himself walks up and down the cell block doling them out.
He puts one mustard-coloured pill right there in your hand.
Those pills fuzzy your brain up for another week, thank god.

873. His master's voice

Chester and Arthur sat in the living room - it stank like shit.
"We've got to kill them all," said Arthur.
"You know that, don't you Chester?"
Chester nodded absently as he watched Arthur scratch at his collar.

872. Snow drift

Snow drifted across the highway, teased by the wind like a murmuration of starlings.
Bits of it were intercepted by passing cars, ground up in the grooves of a thousand tires.
Relentless, the rest of the snow passed unchecked over a fallow winter field.
Most of it came to rest in a drift, piled up against the old farmhouse with the dead eyes.

871. Walkthrough

Alice drummed a beat against the wooden box.
"The marks," she insisted.
"Everyone must hit their marks."
They had twenty years - thirty, tops - until her funeral and she'd be damned if they weren't going to get it right.

870. Sit-ins and walkouts for the shut-ins and standouts

Professor Shea was a tired old radical - a real Long Hair, my father would have said.
He was always on about this or that or civil rights.
It was surreal, seeing him on tv, bruised and black-eyed from the batons but still defiant as he was dragged away from the protest in handcuffs.
"Fuck it," I thought, flipping around for the end of the game.