S. A. Cosby

A Novel

All the Sinners Bleed

Lindsay

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. 

“The South doesn’t change. You can try to hide the past, but it comes back in ways worse than the way it was before. Terrible ways.”

“The South doesn’t change … just the names and the dates and the faces. And sometimes even those don’t change, not really. Sometimes it’s the same day and the same faces waiting for you when you close your eyes.

Waiting for the world to shed tears for your pain was like waiting for a statue to speak.

Sometimes grief is love unexpressed. Other times it’s regret made flesh.

“You can’t fix everything, no matter what tools you use, Ty. Shit, you can barely fix anything. Most days you gotta just hold on and keep your head down,”

“My brother Luis used to say, ‘Ain’t nothing to do in small towns except fighting, fucking, and drinking.’

“We’re all alone, Pop. We’ve just trained ourselves not to believe it,”

Small towns are like the people who populate them. They are both full of secrets. Secrets of the flesh, secrets of blood. Hidden oaths and whispered promises that turn to lies just as quick as milk spoils under a hot summer sun.

His instructors at the Academy had their own version of string theory. The way they explained it, there were invisible strings that vibrated unseen in the liminal spaces between sunrise and secrets, between rumor, shadows, and lies. Strings that pulled all this together. All you had to do was find the seam and unravel it. Or rip it apart.

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