The mean streets of Skid Row teem with unhappy characters. Each has his or her own sordid tale to tell about their current condition and the sorry fate that has deposited them there. Meet "Narrator," a documentary film maker who has come to interview these hapless souls. Through the lens of his camera, he hopes to improve his understanding of their plight and the struggles they confront in their daily quest for survival. His story will focus on a minor mystery with major implications. Who killed Cassandra's cat? And why? An insightful short story.

Every ten years, a lottery draws them from all over the country. Every lottery is always the same: four boys and three girls, each with an exceptional mind and each mired in a neglectful or abusive life, which is sure to eventually destroy them. The spooky mansion at 472 Malign Terrace will become their home and their salvation, strange and mysterious though it may seem. Neglected by his addicted mother, a mysterious lottery is the one chance this boy has for a normal life. He reports to 472 Malign Terrace alone and trembling with a strange mixture of terror and excitement.

He is a notorious corporate spy. His last job uncovered a disturbing truth long and deeply buried by unnamed powers-that-be. Though his corporate enemies have kept him imprisoned by flying him endlessly around the world without patriating him into a specific jurisdiction, he is neither forgotten nor alone. When a band of anonymous hackers finally locates him within his prison in the sky, they will stop at nothing to free him and expose his discovery. He crossed the wrong people and learned a difficult rule the hard way. We are all property of the state, subject to the whimsies of fate and the...

To earn extra money, he decides to volunteer for service in Afghanistan as a civilian technologist. During training provided by the government, he vows he will never allow terrorists to easily cut off his head for their propaganda machine. Instead, he is determined to make them chase him through the desert first. After several weeks in-country, all is going well. Then his worst nightmare is realized, yet all is not what it seems. After his capture by bloodthirsty jihadists in Afghanistan, a young American civilian must confront his worst nightmare with eyes wide open. After he manages to...

He returns to keep their lawn year upon year, from his youth to middle-age, and never a charge or missed appointment. Their lawn is immaculate, their hedges invariably neat and trimmed, their fall leaves absent, and their home well-kept. Is it a labor of love... or is it something darker... something terrible and secret? It's a terrible debt to repay. He's choking up every last cent.