A "sin eater" practices their trade in a fenced-in motel off a country highway. A man wrestles with a sudden, otherworldly infatuation he develops with an infection in his hand. An orphaned teen seeks refuge in the woods from the monstrous presence she's unleashed from a garbage bag. Neither wholly rural nor urban, the exurbs of North Texas represent both an outer limit and a dead end. But "The Occultation" is more than an exploration of this shadowy terrain. It's also an inquiry into the metaphysics of class. Via stories that alternately hover and prowl at the edge of genre, author Chris George tests verisimilitude's capacity to represent the peculiar nightmares that are all too familiar to those living on the margins of the American Dream. In the process, he also challenges readers to locate the poignant in the grotesque, the mystery in the mundane, and the transcendent in the derelict.