A small part of the novel in progress...

(Being a conversation between the MC, Pat, and Old Shuck, a black dog with eyes and no head (via british mythology)).

Fred's Place turned out to be a large warehouse converted into a three-story rooming house. Fred wasn't there, but Officer Davidson, (aka "Call me Chris.") opened the door with a key, got some money from her as a down payment, gave her keys to the building and the room, told here were the laundry room was, took her to her room and gave her a free map of the city. She could tell he'd done this before. Pat just thanked him until he finally got the hint and left close to an hour later. She sighed and plopped down on the bed, feeling drained.
        "That wasn't just a dead body," she said quietly. "There was - something wrong there. Something evil. A bastion of darkness."
        "A bastion of darkness?" a voice said from beside the bed. "Do you even know what that is?"
        "Shut up."
        "I mean, really. You were doing so well until then."
        "I was trying to not go insane."
        "That's what I meant," Old Shuck said. "Sane people do not use the word bastion."
        Pat ignored that. "I saw a dead man who was flayed alive and - and decorating a wall. And it was like I didn't feel anything. I should have. He'd been alive, and he was dead."
        "People die in Africa on TV screens every day," Shuck growled. "I don't see you feeling anything for them."
        "It's not the same thing. It's not right in front of me. And I felt nothing."
        "What do you think you should have felt?"
        "I don't know! Something."
        "Humans. Haven't you heard that everyone is an island?"
        "Actually, it's that no man is an island. Some poet."
        "Everyone is an island. Everyone is apart, alone from all other things. We have to be, to keep ourselves from going mad. There has to be a distance. Always and ever, Patricia Longwell. Insanity is caring too much and feeling too much about things you cannot change."
        Pat blinked. She couldn't recall the last time Shuck had said her whole name. "I don't believe that."
        Shuck wuffed a laugh. "And that is why you are human."
        Pat dug through her bag for a granola bar and ignored him. Sleep came quicker than it should have, and she dreamed.