A veteran returns to his Massachusetts hometown after fighting overseas, only to find his parents have locked him out and left him money to disappear—they've learned he's gay. Reeling from PTSD, he sees violent, hallucinatory death everywhere: in strangers, neighbors, even himself. He waits for word from August, his childhood love, now hospitalized and badly burned. Their letters trace war's atrocities against queer soldiers alongside America's own culture-war hypocrisy. Jonathan Lees's novella is a powerful tale of queer weird fiction.