The Ever-Running Bath

 

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Thrilled to announce that my story “The Ever-Running Bath” has been accepted into Issue 2 of Xanax Hamster by From Beyond Press, a magazine of trunk horror fics! A woman injured on a desert hike struggles with her surroundings and her past. Publication December 2024.

The cold wetness of the sweatshirt was so familiar that in Susan’s half-waking state, it seemed she’d reached into her washing machine, not her backpack. This one goes in the dryer, she thought, drawing it out. The sweatshirt smacked against her bare leg, leaving a wet spot that the light breeze immediately cooled.

It was the only coolness to be found. Susan woke fully to find herself sprawled in the dust of some nameless canyon. Or maybe it had a name, she had no way of knowing. The sun was directly overhead, a hard, bright stone in the sky, seeming so heavy it could fall and crush her. There was no refuge from its heat in the narrow space between rocky walls.

Yesterday was fragments: the jangling of her keys as she locked the front door, then breakfast on the trail, good old raisins and peanuts. That strange sense of height that came from standing on well-padded shoes in the absence of buildings. And then a sudden something awful, the world shifting faster than her mind could track.

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