The ninth angel opened her eyelids and a sun shone in each eye and a golden hall ran inward in each one. Like telepathy, she silently communicated to Gracie, outside Plato’s cave, past the sapphire skies and amber reign, past the dark matter and the dark energy and the dark chaos and the dark corner...

Excerpt from The Bottom of the Universe Then she thought evolution and atheism and the law of entropy, if things don’t break down to their smallest points and dissipate, well? It would be impossible to break down indivisibility? It would be impossible to evolve or exist, or not exist, separate from ...

A barren, twisted tree decayed in the back of the dark, snow-covered cemetery away from all the other trees, and a black snake coiled around one of its dying, callous boughs. The old, drunken cemetery-keeper fought his way through the cold wind and approached it. “My ancestor spoke to Eve and tempte...