"The boy sits beside the bed, his face pale in the gloom of a single bedside lamp. His hands rest neatly in his lap as he observes the rapid rise and fall of the woman’s chest. Death rattles her frame with every gasped breath. Tears run steadily down his face, and snot bubbles from his nose, but he makes no attempt to stifle these expulsions. With red rimmed eyes he looks to the clock on the wall. It is three minutes before seven and through drawn back curtains he sees that outside the sun has finally slipped beneath the horizon, its battle lost to a charcoal sky. He leans closer and gently takes hold a skeletal hand. Only ever built of modest proportions, the boy’s mother has dropped almost forty pounds in these last eight weeks. Again he looks to the wall, and now the timepiece is easier for him. It is on the hour: seven o’clock. Another five minutes yet, and then his mother's life-force will be spent, and she will slip from this world again..."
The Damnation Game