Terminal Girls by John Pistelli
The first section of which is titled
The Lightning Is Its Striking

ON a storm-forecasted day in late April, Professor Lazarino—thirty-seven years old, recently tenured, and a decade married—had just concluded one of the final lectures of his early American literature course with an explication of Emily Dickinson’s poem 465, in which the speaker lies dying in a room full of loved ones.
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My six-and-a-half-year-old son wanted to be a policeman for Halloween. But the monster-sized Halloween costume outlet store that I took him to was out of policeman costumes except for one that was missing the hat yet still cost twenty-five bucks. His second choice was the U.S. Army soldier fatigues. I thought back to the 5:30 p.m. newscasts about Iraq in which he said his favorite part was the fallen heroes. Young faces and life stories in thirty-seconds. The face of death this fall as we notice how so many old movie stars are dying this time of year, how much faster the yellow and red falling leaves are raining down upon us and the cooling earth as we pick out masks to laugh at death and gut the pumpkin into our own disguise. The fruits of summer off the withering vine to ease the tension of the decline, of our own death.

This story, of Bosley Clonninger, will contain no dialogue. Bosley's social ineptitude was such that to transcribe conversations involving him, if done with any degree of accuracy, is simply too painful. My apologies for the inconvenience. Also, little will be noted concerning his character since it was largely undeveloped at the time of the events in question. Speaking of events, the incidents in which Bosley was involved were such that they are of little interest to anyone in search of thrilling plot lines interspersed with exciting digressions and sprinkled liberally with complex and entertaining sub-plots. In fact, it must be admitted in advance of any attempt at narrative, that the life and times of Bosley Clonninger are, put simply, not particularly interesting.