A high school dropout working at an arcade faces death with a samurai's calm. A kidnapper takes her tiny victim to the mall. A boy with a lisp transforms himself into a hero - by endangering himself and everyone around him. An old woman commits a dreadful crime to protect the simple, ordered world she loves. A successful young woman's life is forever changed by a brush with death in human form. A stranded highway patrolman finds himself defending a woman against a killer, with only his own hatred and ghosts to help him . . . Sometimes a subtle re-take on genre classics, sometimes uncanny and surreal, the stories in this collection are connected to one another by the dread and darkness in every line. Set in motels, parking lots, video game arcades, malls, roller-rinks and trailer parks, along lonely wooded highways and in lonelier subdivisions, these tales catalogue the lives of the discarded. In the best noir tradition, the heroes and anti-heroes here are trapped by circumstance, willing to commit desperate acts to get the things they want.