I couldn't resist...

Picture 4: Everything is laid out in the next room. After all, every funeral deserves a feast. As we waited for sunset, Alex insisted that he needed a picture of the whole family. Most of us are a little uneasy with photographs, but we hadn't taken a family picture since the little ones came over. I had the girls cleaned up for the picture, but they couldn't resist the spread in the next room. They've always been messy eaters.

The girl chained to the table has cried herself out now, and only whimpers and moans occasionally. Thomas will be with us soon.

Aww, man, Ginger. That is teh creepy.

My take on #10. The momma's getting stomped on with combat boots today, isn't she?

I wish Mama would stop dragging me to these things: Junior League, the Rotary Wives Club Ball. She knows how I hate them. Other girls make me feel so ill-at-ease. Mama says she’s invested too much in me to stop now. First, it was dance and deportment lessons; then, elocution and French. Now, it’s all these damn balls and club meetings. I spend hours getting ready. There’s so many extra things to do: pad my girdle, pad my bra, shave twice so the make-up hides the shadow. Mama, I don’t want to be a girl, I want to date girls.

HA! Ailleann, I was about to do one called "The Unbearable Lightness of Ferlinghetti and you just saved me the trouble. Woot!

Look At Me Drabble for Picture #8

In Re A Sudden Suspicious Death

I don't know anything about it. I wish you'd stop asking all these questions.

So you have the photo - what does that prove? Of course I know who they are, they're my cousin Janice and her friend Rosie. Don't talk to me as if I was stupid.

What? No, I wasn't mad at Rosie. Just because Janice died doesn't mean I'd do anything to Rosie. What? Do I think it was Rosie's fault Janice killed herself, Rosie stealing her boyfriend? That isn't my business.

They're both dead now anyway. You can't prove I did anything.

I want to go home.

Ha. Girlfriend wants the Out. But of course, it doesn't exist.

I was actually mentally linking to my second favourite Shirley Jackson novel, "We Have Always Lived in the Castle."

Scary as shit, funny as hell, deeply twisted, and with the best "the townspeople hate us and we've had a mass murder in the family, so they sing this about us" ditty ever:

Merricat, said Constance, would you like a cup of tea?
No no no, said Merricat, you'll poison me.
Merricat, said Constance, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard, ten feet deep?

I love Shirley Jackson.

I think I'm going to have to pick up some Shirley Jackson one of these days. Where would you recommend starting with her, Deb?

Photo #7.

Look at his face! Jaime was so proud of that car. He wanted nothing more than to own it. He said with that car, he could start his own taxicab company. What if it was only one car to start with? He worked four different jobs for two years so he could buy that car. He and his friend, Manolo, drove it 24 hours a day the first year. They bought a second car and hired two more drivers. When we got married, we drove it to Cancun for the honeymoon.

Someday, I wish he’d look at me that way.

Nice, Deb! I absolutely love We Have Always Lived in the Castle -- it might even be my favorite Jackson.

I can't decide which photo to do next.

Sail, that drabble is insanely haunting for me. My friend Dierdre and her ex-husband Hugh had a car that stole all his affection. He was bulding it from scratch; she named it Morag the Hag.

I'd recommend starting with the gold standard: Start with "The Haunting of Hill House", give yourself a week to digest just how tightly packed and terrifying it is, and then move on to "We Have Always Lived in the Castle". Her two non-fiction memoirs about her family, "Life Among the Savages" and "Raising Demons" are howlingly funny, as well as dark and amazing; her short stories are world-famous (two words: The Lottery), and her lesser-known novels, such as "Through the Wall" or "Come Along With Me", are corkers, one and all.

But start with the class of the act. Just because it has the most purely Jacksonian language and terseness.

I've read some of her short pieces but no long ones. But of course, I was speaking of the Simonverse, and the Out being the one magic thing a suspect can say that will make a detective forget the whole thing and let you go home. But by the time you need it, there isn't one.