Beautifully written! Excellent juxtapostion of time frames, superb vocabulary (you've really improved!), great descriptions that really manage to capture the darker overtones of this story, and great use of single-line paragraphs. And, as always, a very unique cast of characters.

You're beginning to scare me. In fact, keep this up, and I'm going to start getting pretty demoralized. But keep it up anyway! ^.^