Nilufar liked the lunch monitor job, if you could call it a job at all. Everyday she popped up at the local school, worked for an hour monitoring the kids as they played outdoor while the teachers took a break. Five hours a week. The earnings barely covered the gas price but she, like many other women, mostly new immigrants with little English or foreign degrees who could not find anything appropriate for their education, vied for these sorts of work opportunities.

He felt a tiny snake slithering up his spine, its cold rough skin brushed against his body, creating an uncomfortably chilly feeling that spread throughout his back, his neck turned stiff, for a moment he completely forgot where he was and what was he doing.

This he bought from an antic store. Made of real rope, thick and sturdy, in a neat circle, looked like one of those that he had seen in the western movies where sometimes vigilantes would apprehend a bad guy – maybe a horse thief or a cowardly killer - and hang him from a tree. Simple justice.