Matthew Legaspi

“Three days ago we not only ruled the earth, we had survivor's guilt about all the other species we'd wiped out on our climb to the nirvana of round-the-clock cable news and microwave popcorn. Now we're the Flashlight People.”
― Stephen King, Cell

“And we were all of us alone, clinging to a rock spinning through the star-strewn darkness and trying desperately to matter. To make some sort of everlasting mark, however true or awful that mark may be. Spinning endlessly alone—until we’re not alone, and we stumble into someone else trying to mark the chaos, and we cling tighter to that person than we ever have to the world itself. That spark in another, that resonation of the soul—a counterpoint in the dark—was more real and more important than the earth beneath our feet.”
― Joe Ducie, Broken Quill

“Annie and I had spun together across worlds and universes and dreams. But the chaos had swallowed her whole, absorbed her warmth, and scattered us apart as easily as we had spun, intoxicated, together.”
― Joe Ducie, Broken Quill

“I could do anything—be anything.
I could be a blackberry farmer.
I could worry about phone bills and nipping out to the corner shop for milk and bread of a morning.
Little Declan Jr. could learn to walk and talk with his real father, alive and well, and I could teach him how to wear a waistcoat with just the right amount of tragic charm, take him to school in a few years, maybe makehim a little sister to look out for, someone to keep him on his toes. He could play a sport—tennis, maybe, or football. I’d attend parent-teacher meetings and have after-work drinks with the neighbors, talking about how well so-and-so is doing, and why yes, Declan Jr. is learning to play the piano. Top of his class, you know—he has his mother’s grace…
I could see all of that, as clear in my mind as sunlight on fresh snow, and so much more.
Just living day to day. One morning we could have picnics, my family and I, next to blue glacial lakes. One afternoon my son would be old enough to meet a girl, get in a fight, need to shave. One evening his sister will need help with her homework, and he’ll complain, but he’ll help.
And then one day the Elder Gods would descend from a blood-red sky in chariots lashed together from bone and flame and take away all my blackberries.”
― Joe Ducie, Knight Fall