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.