4
" Oliver Marley supposed there were more dignified ways to end his life. A lifelong victim to the twin sins of an infertile imagination and pragmatism, the thought of travel simply never crossed his mind. Had it occurred to him, Oliver could have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, into the abyss of the Grand Canyon or said au revoir off the Eiffel Tower. But truth be told, Oliver never was much of a traveler. Even locally there were certainly higher quality casinos to choose from, taller parking garages from which to leap. Instead he found himself perched atop the nearest appropriately-sized structure to his home, that being the parking garage of the Circus Time Hotel & Casino. His view not of Alcatraz Island and the rough waters of the San Francisco Bay, nor the breathtaking vistas of the Arizona desert, or the romanticism of the Paris skyline for that matter. Rather he found himself bathed in a noxious blend of pink and green neon, staring into a pair of giant blinking pastel eyes belonging to the eighty-foot clown staring down at him like a frilly guardian angel. Then again, when your primary objective is to pancake yourself on a public sidewalk, perhaps you’re not in the best position to nitpick over the intricacies of what does and does not constitute bad taste. Oliver would just have to live with the clown, at least for another minute or two. "
― , Marley
5
" Oliver Marley understood what it was like to be a specter, a spook or phantom. To his colleagues Oliver had brown eyes, matching hair, a hint of forehead and little else. While logic dictates that eyes, foreheads and hair must in fact belong to some kind of face, and that face be attached by the neck to a body of some fashion, there was precious little evidence to support this. Always peeking out from a computer terminal, behind paperwork or over a cubicle wall, should Oliver have a duck in place of a nose, or a pair of green beans rather than lips, no one would be the wiser. "
― , Marley