Alison Stolpa

The follow-up to "By the Wayside", revisiting its characters ten years after.

A young man named Mike starts receiving messages from a shy, seemingly innocent young woman named Carli. She likes to play dress up, often dressing up as her favorite animal: a cat. She lives with a nice Mormon family, and is well-liked by those who know her. Only Mike knows her true secret, and he is in terrible danger. But who would believe him?

Against the backdrop of an alt-rock music festival, dozens of struggling thirty-somethings deal with a wide variety of social and philosophical issues in their respective lives.

Death by 1000 cuts refers to an ancient method of torture in which numerous small cuts were made on a victim's body. None of the cuts were deadly by themselves, but the combination of them would cause them to die a slow, painful death. In psychology, it refers to small issues that are overlooked until they add up to something too big to ignore. Sometimes I question which version of the phrase is worse.

After starting a job at an eerie hardware store, an anxious young man uncovers a shocking mystery that leads to a fight against terrifying forces that lurk just behind the walls.