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Mule
by Simon Maxwell Apter
There are no whole truths; all truths are halftruths, h is irking to treat them as whole truths
that plays the devil.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
1: All Right
Maria had been dead once, by her reckoning for a
good five minutes. She hadn't fallen unconscious
or drifted off to sleep, and she hadn't taken a
break to rest her eyes. As Maria tells the story,
she was coded and coldmotionless, overdosed,
and deceasedon a gurney in the intensive care
unit at an East Lansing hospital. This was back
in the late nineties. Her ex-boyfriend had just
died from a heroin overdose, and after receiving
the news, she'd put the phone down and picked
the bottle up in the same motion, the physics
of simultaneously catching one thing while
dropping another be damned. Sbe remembers
her death that day, the result of a telescopically
To ensure anonymity, all names in this essay have been
changed.
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cities." Homeland Security maintains these additional checkpoints, like the one in Falfurrias,
to direct and funnel potential drug traffic toward
major cities like San Antonio and Houston. She
says, "[I] hit George West, Texas, and I was driving through there and my license plate was just
stuck in the dash. I was in this total redneck
truck and I looked like a total redneck. I get
pulled over by three cops.
SIMON
MAXWELL
AFTER
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"/ should have known better than to go in with this guy because
he's a greedy idiot. He made a deal with somebody who offered
him way too much money for the amount of shit that was coming
in, which should have been the first warning sign."
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SIMON
MAXWELL
APTER
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