Copyright © 2023 by Ralph Robert Moore.

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These Were the Angels is my 13th book.

18 stories and novelettes.

Only 2 of them previously published.

150,000 words. 525 pages.

If your pizza delivery guy has eaten one of the slices of your pizza, and brags about it to you in front of your girlfriend, before you get into an argument with him, should you make sure he doesn't know Papa Pajama? Why are your neighbors being so helpful? What happens when you find out what's been clogging your vacuum cleaner? Can old men be trusted? What's the punchline to 'A nun and a priest walk into a bar'? If strange creatures with both their eyes on one side of their head start invading the city, what's the best way to cover that story as a TV reporter?

You wake up in bed beside a woman who has to constantly rush to the bathroom. You have to do a wellness check to see if a homeowner is still alive. You meet a great guy, but he says he's been abducted several times by aliens. Your partner worries the kittens you've taken into your home may be part of a sinister plot. You and your girlfriend climb up staircase after staircase curving up around a massive tree trunk. You and your OCD boyfriend share an imaginary panda who's a podiatrist.

What happens when you see an unusual spider on a tree trunk? When a girlfriend you haven't heard from in years tries to get back in touch with you, is it wise to contact her? If you earn your living pretending to break into homes to terrorize the families inside, does it get harder and harder to tell what's real and what isn't? What are the consequences when you decide to no longer lock your front door? How does a body builder cope with the fact his beloved dog has died? Why has something gray and massive fallen out of the sky on top of your car parked in a supermarket lot?

The Dirty Part of My Body
Little Lies Don't Count
Invisible Insects
The Blue Bugs Are Crawling on Us
Five Months Before She Committed Suicide
Talking to Toilet Paper
She Had Terrible Diarrhea
Little Girls Eat Baby Dinosaurs
Every Day Is Like the Bible
Don't Be Afraid of Orange Juice
Her Hand's Wet Success
Pudge in the Mirror
No Beer Until Sunday
Dark-Haired Girls Know How to Punch
What You Don't Know
When There Are So Many Boys Around You
What I Do for You When It Rains
After a While the Dead Stop Singing

The city goes out for drinks. Arrives for a first date. Stands in line for a movie, irritated by someone who cut ahead of them. Shops in a supermarket on the way home, buying a frozen dinner for one. Finds out by phone they're being let go. Decides to get an early start on a weekend project, but can't find their protective goggles. Gets in a fistfight with a stranger in a laundromat. Starts an argument with their lover. Decides to score some drugs. Stops off at a gym to outdo their personal best. Watches TV at home minding their own business and the cable goes out.

Blood, snot, vomit, piss, shit, pus, semen.

And here's Claire, blonde, beautiful, blue-eyed, white slacks, white blouse, moving through this misery, reaching down here, reaching down there, way over there, holding their hands, patting their shoulders, ruffling their hair, telling each of them they're not alone. But each of them is alone, like she is. Like you are, reading this sentence, all of us living our lives alone in the emergency room of a hospital.