There were, of course, things I wanted to say, words I wanted to share before the event- before I squeezed the life from him as if he were nothing more than a child's red balloon [...]. Something that might float up and away on an invisible string pulled by an ancient deity until I'm left standing alone on the chessboard of the mess we've made together- the illusion we had shared, the magic we had wrongfully invented.

[...]

"What's the word of the day, Pres?"

"Verisimilitude," the boy says, as they filter inside the house. "The appearance of being true or real."

[...]

MARTYR: I take from things around me all the time. I take and I take and I take. I never seem to give. I'm just not that way.

—Eric LaRocca, You've Lost A Lot Of Blood