LoveSettlement

and dips a finger in, holding it there until she feels the tickle of an ant climbing aboard. “I did wonder if you guys survived all that fri...

She pushes one of the tables to the center of the room and climbs atop it. A stretched arm still doesn’t quite reach. So she unfolds one of ...

low. This does seem peculiar. A large room with a low ceiling? Was this not something she noticed before? The girl has the distinct feeling ...

of the table and eats tortilla chips. They are a little stale. Two more of the same brand in the grocery bags. Then we have packages of napk...

conference center. “What life needs is better narration.” She sighs and rubs her forehead. “And a toilet.” She raps one of the tables with a...

at the table to check her progress. She’s already past it? Didn’t she? Wasn’t there? She marches over, grabs a chair, takes it back to where...

blundered past in the dark. Then back to the dorms. Then shed this uniform and get the civvies out of the box. Then call a cab. And shake th...

tell, but she tests every hint of bump or suggestion of depression. A sliding door, a door that swivels on an axis, a door that rises. A doo...

opens a bottle of generic cola. “Now is the time for all good women to let caffeine and high fructose corn syrup come to their aid.” This cu...

just the sort of thing that could save a girl from dying of fucking dehydration.” With the light pouring into it, the hundreds of bubbles sp...

fingers. “Great,” she says pleasantly, pretending not to be about to fling the bottle across the room. The light from the keybox suffuses th...

room is smaller than she expected. Still big. But more like a barn than a cathedral. “I wouldn’t have minded stained glass,” she says, stepp...

and bears down on it, really driving it back and forth and forth and back and back and forth and forth, really going at it, her arms burning...

keybox against the floor, sliding it back and forth between her hands. At first it’s just something to do, something to do unmindfully, the ...

the atmosphere felt closer, warmer. A big hall doesn’t feel like that. At the very least sound carries farther so doesn’t seem all pressed t...

more squares of the institutional umber wink up from the dark. Wandering out there wouldn’t be much different from plunging into a fogged-in...

meeting notes. Maybe there was something at the meeting about an impending change in the nature of reality? Might all the answers be in her ...

and sees her fingers silhouetted. Not imagining that, the girl says to herself. If only the darn thing were emitting enough light to be usef...

judging the vibrations of the folded paper. If a wall popped up directly before her, her nose would not be the first to know. She only now w...

been walking in the dark. Not yet an hour. More than fifteen minutes, easily. Long past time she should have come upon a door. Something cle...