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Please welcome our new serialized flash fiction by Rodger Jacobs... updated every Monday

Like every other wandering and shapeless fool in this wind-blasted, fire-ravaged town I used to believe in the myth of the future, and I shaped my life by this belief. I turned my back on the past and eagerly awaited the dawn of tomorrow.

The land is restless in L.A., restless and sliding like the high lurching cliffs that confront the ocean in Pacific Palisades; that should have been enough to clue me in to the impermanence here, the impermanence of life and of the city itself.

I knew that Evelyn LaScalles would murder me. I knew it the moment I laid eyes on her in that dive bar near Seward and Willoughby, a particularly nasty stretch of Old Hollywood. She smiled and asked if she could buy me a drink. I lowered myself onto the high-backed stool next to her and tried to ignore the obvious outline of a gun in her handbag. It was none of my business. A lot of people have good reason to carry a gun in L.A.

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