The Purdzilla Show

Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash Old Laurent Moutier* was gone, at the age of ninety, taking with him like everyone does a lifetime of unknown private hopes and dreams and fears and experiences, and leaving behind him like most people do a thin trace of himself in his living descendants. * Jack Reacher's maternal grandfather Lee Child (in the story Second Son )

The guy on the floor was still breathing. But in a shallow, desperate kind of way, with a reedy plastic wheeze, in and out, in and out, as fast as he could. Like panting. But without getting anywhere. Probably the fault of the strap button on the bottom of the guitar, punching a half-inch ahead of the mass of the body itself. Probably clipped a vital component. Larynx, or pharynx, or some other kind of essential structure, made of cartilage and spelled with letters from late in the alphabet. Lee Child (in Blue Moon: Jack Reacher has just used a bass guitar like a axe on a baddie's throat)