Excerpt of Friends of the Deceased by Dale J. Moore

Katrina stood in her salon, cutting the hair of one of her
regular customers, Duncan. His twitching and restlessness
was far worse than normal. She looked up from the nape of
his neck and caught an image in the mirror in front of
her.
It was the reflection of a man outside the salon. The man
held some bright orange papers in one hand, a stark
contrast to the grey weather outside. One of the bright
pages was held up with one hand by the man, before
becoming
firmly taped onto the window behind and to the right of
Katrina. He continued to tape signs on each of the large
windows of the store front, hesitating only slightly as he
pinned up the one directly behind her. The writing on the
pages faced outside.

Katrina kept trimming Duncan's hair as she fixated on the
man outside. She looked back to her customer and let out a
short shrill at the blood on the back of his neck. Her
loss
of focus and Duncan's severe shaking had caused her to
nick
his skin. She applied pressure to the small cut, but it
gushed around her finger.