Congratulations! You’ve successfully completed a FIRST DRAFT. You should feel PROUD, GLEEFUL, and CREATIVE. But now what? 

Well, I hate to break it to you, but a first draft of any piece of writing (or art) is just half the battle. In fact, it may only be about one-quarter of it. The rest of that battle lies in the editing process.

Editing is a battle all on its own. It takes time, usually more time than the actual writing does, and it requires more than just one person. It’s more of a mountain than a molehill, so to speak. But no matter what kind of story you’re telling, whether it’s through a poem, podcast, film, TV show, novel, or short story, it is going to need editing. Nothing is born perfect, after all. 

Don’t let that scare you. Just because the journey isn’t over yet doesn’t mean you haven’t gotten somewhere. In fact, your final destination should be clearer than ever. Before your first draft, you may have had only a vague idea of where you were going. Now, you have a story. And you can do anything with that. 

This blog exists to get you from first draft to second draft and beyond with as few tears and headaches as possible. And although everyone approaches it differently, editing is a process and there are steps you can follow to make it easier on yourself. Here’s our guide to help storytellers improve the clarity, coherence, and impact of their stories in seven steps. 

1) Shift your mindset from creator to editor.

First of all, take a step back and take a deep breath. You’ve just created something! You should be proud. And like a good oven-roasted beef tenderloin, it needs some time to rest. Set your finished first draft aside for a couple days, or even a couple weeks—be careful of letting it rest for TOO long, though, lest you overcook the meat!—and take your mind off it so that when you do return, it’s with well-rested, fresh eyes, ready to chop it up.

Putting it away for a period of time will also help you shift your mindset from creator to editor. Creators are not concerned with perfection. In order to get words on the page, writers need to cast aside the idea that initial drafts can be perfect. Strive for greatness, not perfection—only then can innovation flourish. Then, once you have completed a draft, you can refocus your energy on editing. 

Editing brings you a step closer to “perfection”—whatever that may look like. But don’t see it as a chore. Editing your own work can be just as fulfilling and inventive as drafting it was. It is where you can play with the small details and take your time with each scene, character, narrative arc, line, and word. Editing is where you ask yourself questions like, “Do I need that semicolon or should it be a period?” and, “What exactly am I trying to say by using the word expeditious twice in the same paragraph?” 

More than that, editing is a time for you to fully appreciate the scope of your work. Enjoy it—and be prepared to brutalize it. In a fun way, of course. 

You also have to be prepared for others to critique your work. No piece is complete without input from other creatives or editors you trust. Depending on who you share it with and how you choose to share it, you may have a lot of feedback to get through. Don’t let this bog you down. You don’t have to take every piece of advice (and you shouldn’t, as some will be contradictory), but you should consider all feedback with an open mind. And whatever you end up using or not using, have a good reason for doing so. 

2) Read your work aloud.

It cannot be overstated: Nothing will help you edit more than reading your work aloud. It sounds simple. It even sounds obvious. And if you hated reading aloud in school, perhaps it sounds dreadful. But this isn’t that. This isn’t stuttering words in front of a classroom of bored, judgmental middle schoolers. This is your own work, in the privacy of your own space. You don’t have to read this aloud to anyone (though you can if you want; my cat, Cleo, for example, has provided a beautiful set of ears for many a story). 

Reading aloud will help you catch moments of awkward phrasing, repetitive language, and pacing issues that reading silently won’t even catch. As you read aloud, you will naturally stumble over areas that don’t make sense or have grown uncomfortably slow. Rhythm and cadence are a big part of what makes a piece flow well. If the words sound good when spoken aloud, then you know you have a good cadence going, resulting in an easier and more pleasant reading experience. This is true for all types of work, not just poems—though it tends to be especially important with those. 

One way to make the most of a read-aloud session is by recording yourself. Even if you hate the sound of your recorded voice, being able to replay a recording of your work can help identify potential improvements. Plus, you get to imagine it as an audiobook!

3) Tackle the big picture first.

The first step of editing any first draft is to look at the big picture. It’s not worth editing at a line level until you can see how the story comes together as a whole. This will help ensure you don’t waste time editing details of paragraphs or scenes that will ultimately be cut. So, while it can seem overwhelming at first, here are three steps to help you get started with making big picture edits: 

1. Read through the entire work without editing. Don’t leap into making changes right away. Instead, take your work as it is and, as you read, note down anything that stands out to you as an overarching issue or problem area. It’s tough to do this, especially when you find a spot you feel you can fix right away. Resist—in the long run, it will be worth it.
2. Identify the core themes and messages. Reading through your work should reveal what it’s really about, which you may have known before starting or may have formed during creation. A big picture edit looks at how your themes, overall plot, and internal message work throughout your story. Are they consistent? Anywhere they’re not, make note of it. What is the message of your story and is it getting through? If not, why and where can you improve it? Be ready to think through these questions as you read—without immediately fixing anything you discover to be not working.
3. Check pacing and tension. If you find your story difficult to get through at any point, it will be even worse for new readers. Note areas where it feels slow, as they often benefit from tighter writing or added tension. This also goes for anything that feels too fast—there may be places that require more building out. 

At this point in your writing/editing journey, the big picture is the most important part. If there are issues with your story at a base level, they’ll be much easier to fix at this stage in the process than, say, ten more rounds of edits down the line. We also call this developmental editing, because it looks at what needs to change with the story’s basic elements. So take your time and don’t be afraid to read through more than once. Of course, reading it on your own is only going to get you part of the way there. But once you have an idea of the areas that need fixing most, you have a better chance at getting closer to a final draft with the next steps. 

4) Engage with other readers for feedback. 

The best way to get good, objective feedback is to share your story with others. This may feel scary at first, especially if you’re not totally satisfied with it yet. But, really, this is the best time to bring in other readers who can tell you what they’re seeing in the story. Sometimes, our love of our own work—the characters we’ve created, the scenes we’ve written, the lines of beauty we’ve formulated on the page—makes us too close to it. Other times, we’re too critical of ourselves and everything seems wrong—even the things that are very right. Asking other readers to provide feedback will help you sort through it all.

To find other readers, you can: 

• Ask friends to lend an eye. 
• Join a writing group with the goal of sharing work.
• Search for beta readers online. 
• Sign up for a course dedicated to first draft editing. 
• Engage with an editor you’ve worked with before. 

All of these options have pros and cons. Friends may be the easiest to ask, but they may not provide the clearest feedback because they’re not totally objective towards you. Joining a writing group is definitely the best option, and it means you’ll be able to lend your own editing skills to others. Trading work so that you’re both invested in the other is a great way to make this productive for everyone. 

Beta readers can also be helpful, though this route will likely require you to pay for services. In this case, we recommend taking the next steps first and then paying for beta reading. GoodReads has a group that provides access to beta readers offering free services. There are also some Discord communities dedicated to such services. 

Signing up for a course, such as the ones offered through Writers.com, Novelry, Gotham Writers, or any other program, can connect you with writers who are also working on a novel (or other kind of story). The downside is that these courses can be expensive. But because everyone is paying for them, there is an added pressure to get work done and provide good editing to all. 

Another option is to work with an editor you have before. Editors who are familiar with your work know your writing style already and can speak to it specifically. 

How to Request Feedback 

It will be helpful to know what kind of feedback to ask for and how to request it. After your own read through of your work, determine what will be most helpful to you. Consider these elements: 

• Structure: Is there anything about the structure that bothers you? Remember, structure is how your story is organized. If there are issues with the story’s structure, it may be confusing or even boring for readers. 
• Plot: A question you should always be asking is: Does the plot of my story make sense? Does it follow the rules of the world you’ve built? Do the characters’ actions make sense in (and out of) context? Is it interesting enough to carry throughout the entire piece? Is the major conflict well laid out? 
• Theme: Are the themes obvious? Do they align with the content of the story? Can an invested reader see and understand their meaning in the text? 
• Voice: Does the voice that you’ve used for this work, as an author, tell the story best? Are the characters’ voices distinct and interesting? 
• Exposition: Is the background information built into your story working on the page? Is it difficult to get through? Do readers need to know more, or perhaps less? 
• Dialogue: How is the dialogue working in your story? Do the way the characters communicate make sense? Are the conversations they have necessary to the plot?
• Suspense and Tension: Is there a feeling of suspense as you read? Does the anticipation to get to the next scene build throughout? 
• Pacing: Were there any parts you struggled to get through? Anything that happened too quickly?
• Grammar: Are there any major grammatical errors, especially ones that consistently appear, throughout the text? 
• Emotional Impact: Did you feel something while reading this? 

The more specific you can be in your request to editors, the more helpful they will be. Don’t ask for all of this at once, but rather highlight what you think is needed most in their read through. 

5) Prepare to do line edits. 

Another important step of the editing process, and one which usually comes closer to the end, is line editing. This looks at the line-by-line of the text to make specific edits, fine-tuning language to adjust for pacing, grammar, and more. During line editing, you are looking at sentence structure and wording. You are asking questions about everything that appears on the page. It’s a long, drawn-out process, but one well-worth doing as it will heavily improve the quality of the work. 

Here are a few general rules to follow of line editing: 

1. Kill your darlings. All writers struggle with this essential aspect of editing because it means, as the phrase implies, getting rid of your favorite phrases, scenes, moments, or even characters. It means removing anything that isn’t strictly necessary to the story. It’s about making it leaner, clearer, and better paced. You don’t always know what these darlings are, either, until someone else points them out for you. But generally speaking, “darlings” refers to anything that you love, but doesn’t move the story in the direction it needs to go.
2. Show, don’t tell. We’ve talked about this at length in our Show, Don’t Tell blog, but showing the reader what characters do in the story rather than telling them about it will always be more engaging. To find places where you’re unintentionally telling, look for filter words and anywhere the narrative slows down. 
3. Strengthen dialogue and description. Look at each line of dialogue and read it aloud to yourself. Does it make sense, spoken aloud? Are the conversations your characters have moving the story forward somehow? Refer to our blog all about dialogue for tips on ensuring the way your characters speak to each other is natural, necessary, and interesting. Along with this, make sure that your descriptions make sense, feel natural to the story, and don’t fall into the pitfalls of poor exposition. 

These tips should help bring your story to the next level: one more step closer to “perfection,” whatever that is! 

6) Smooth transitions and structure for clarity and flow.

How words, phrases, lines, scenes, and chapters transition into each other is an important part of how easy it is to read a piece. Although we’ve discussed how important overall structure is in a story, it’s also part of what happens at a micro-level. Here’s how to tackle structural issues and check flow in your own work: 

1. Check paragraph and scene transitions. The way a line, phrase, or scene flows should feel natural and make sense to the reader. Places with abrupt transitions will likely give you pause or cause a stumble during a read through. Ask yourself, “Why isn’t this working?” and “How did this character go from here to here?” 
2. Eliminate redundancies. First drafts often suffer from repeated information or added filler because the author was still working out the story while writing it. Look for these areas and eliminate anything that isn’t extremely necessary to the story. The shorter the piece, the less redundancies it can tolerate. In a very long novel, for example, it may be worthwhile to remind the reader at the end of something that happened at the very beginning. But generally speaking, repeated information is wasted space and slows the story down. 
3. Refine sentence structure. The first take on anything will result in long, overly complex sentences that need clarification. You may accidentally slip into passive voice where it’s not needed. Or else, you simply take longer to say something that you later realize is very simple to get across. Everyone does this, and other readers will help you catch these overly long sentences. Remember: unless there’s a good reason not to, try to convey everything you have to say as simply as possible on the page.

This kind of editing takes a lot of time because it’s so in-depth. But the end results will be worth it, and lead to a much more engaging and polished piece of art.

7) Proofread and polish. 

The final step of any draft is to proof and polish. Proofreading amounts to doing a spelling and close grammar check. It is essential to ensuring a piece is truly ready for submission somewhere, or for publication. Polishing your work in this manner will make you feel more professional and ensure that readers don’t write you off because of a silly grammatical or spelling error. 

Proofing your own work can be difficult, so if you have someone to do it for you, use them. But if you don’t, follow this checklist: 

☐Read the work aloud to check for sentence flow and clarity. 
☐Run spell check or sit with a dictionary and go over any words you’re not 100% sure about.
☐Check for any grammatical errors by following this list:

• Dialogue is formatted correctly. Check out our blog about dialogue for an overview of proper dialogue formatting in the United States. 
• All sentences end with the proper punctuation. 
• Proper nouns and first words of sentences have an up-capped first letter, unless you’ve made the stylistic choice not to do this. 
• Any stylistic choices you’ve made are done consistently. For example if you’ve chosen to use the Oxford comma, you use it every time. 
• Your use of em-dashes, en-dashes, and hyphens is correct—look this up if you’re not sure. 
• Your sentences don’t slip into passive voice where not necessary. 
• Your use of figurative language makes sense. 
• You don’t have any dangling modifiers. 

☐The work is formatted properly and according to guidelines, if available.
☐Check the vibes: How do you feel about your piece?

• Are you confident about sending it on? Would you be proud if it got published? If the answer to these questions is no, is it just nerves or is there something specific that’s worrying you? If the specific thing is something you can fix, easily, do so. If it’s not, perhaps it’s okay to let it go—for now.

Most importantly, recognize and celebrate the fact that you have created something. Completing a draft of a story, no matter what that story looks like in its first form, is epic and worth feeling good about. You did that!

Exercise

Take a (short) piece of writing you’ve worked on over the course of this series and read it once to yourself without doing anything else. Then, read it through again, this time aloud, and mark every place where you stumble over words or notice awkwardness. Go back and edit those sections to make them sound better according to the guidelines above. After doing so, read it again. Still notice places to make changes? Feel good about what you’ve written? It may be time to share it with others to get their thoughts and feedback. After all, the writing and editing process works best when multiple people weigh in!

Your Story, Your Voice

No one can write a story the way you would, not even ChatGPT. Or a ghostwriter. Nothing will feel like having created your own work from start to finish, so no matter where it goes next, even if that’s nowhere, you can still feel proud. 

Remember: read your work through, read it aloud, send it to other people, and work on refining every part of it. The editing process is as rewarding as the creation process is, and it’s all part of the same incredible journey. 

If you complete the editing process and feel really good about your piece, consider submitting your work to F(r)iction! Check out our submission guidelines here to see if your work falls under our purview. 

Andrea gets out of bed without waking Scott.The kitchen is dark and quiet.She puts on an apron as though it were the nineteen-fifties and she is a homemaker.She starts to make him breakfast.She will let the sounds and smells of her cooking wake him.These things are all part of it.What she makes is not, though;…

LETHE

here—                                          all along the path 
                                                     lead me
as if each step could do more than amplify 

                          the silence you left for me

look—               how the grass bows a slow
           gravity                              —dislocated
                        footfall after 
footfall after

                                          how the river runs 
                 to your body   runs

headwaters welling from every fracture

                                                     already
                                        i am forgetting
               how to pronounce your name

my good-for-nothing tongue                plumbs 
your good-for-nothing mouth

                                                      —mud-choked 
estuary split                   open with seed

those gardens that will never be

                             birds come with their hunger 
and i let them—

because the berries are too red
because secrets are graves         and i’m tired
                                                         of digging

there are other ways to make a body sacred

hoofprints measure
                           the width
                                       of every field
                                                               and i follow
simple as that—

what does it matter if the dreams are wordless?
if i am visited by ghosts or if
                                                   i have become one?

SELF PORTRAIT AS CIRCUMFERENCE & CROWS

for months after i dream 
             of sawing circles
                          out of ice      allow myself 
                                                fall through

                          since i outgrew my last body 
             winter arrives             one black bird
at a time & the snow
             ghosting into my memories
                          no matter how
                                                    i hold them

                          don’t tell me it’s only october 
                          that i have no sense of direction

             each day           i gather in the rafters
of every conversation 
             strange-voiced            as a god
                                                    distrusting 
             the construct of god
the idea that healing is possible

             if i am                to make you believe in 
             me        i must retrieve my body

                          walk across     the water
                                                    of a crow’s eye 
                          to find
             the blackhole               at its center 
to learn the art of undrowning

IN WHICH I BECOME THE WANING CRESCENT MOON

                              all night entranced              i watch my back
                                                 undress             mirror into
                      mirror   my scarlet mole             a tiny hole through
 my heart   there   breaths fatten like             wax   bead onto
                       sheets   room soft with             the opposite of
                                   candlelit   where             nothing
                                           touches me

                                                                             i crumble
                       where nothing touches              me   my magnetic field
                                   erratic and weak             admits all 
                                     manner of dark             matter    i draw back
                             along an involuntary            muscle   immune to
                                          stillness and             gravity   one ear
                             brimming with silver             one eye a field
                                          of milkweed

                                                                             i do not mean to 
                                         haunt myself             but i do   linger
                            in this disintegration              loop   with minutes
                                 gathering   ponds             in my palms
                                          with my face             eclipsed   in a shard
                                       of dinner plate             which i rise to find
                                  moon after moon             which i run from
                                                   circling             wolfish
                                  for the bitterness             of my own fingers
                                          in my mouth

By the time John Surly Whittaker lumbered onto the stage, he was already missing his fingers and toes. The audience didn’t realize he had been vanishing since 1885. Nor did they realize that parts of him were missing under his gloves, shoes, and custom-made suit. Still, they all turned wide-eyed when they saw him, for…

A Community Feature with Lamp Lifeboat LadderLamp Lifeboat Ladder is a global refugee resettlement program that supports survivors of torture, sexual violence, and trauma who have been forced to flee their homeland. They provide protection and holistic accompaniment to survivors, and work with them to identify and address their needs—this may be medical care, safe housing, access to education, or therapeutic support. Lamp Lifeboat…

“You’re going to love it here, Dad,” the stranger says. She has blond hair, thick eyebrows, and a sharp chin. My chin. My daughter? My sweet little . . . Abigail? Rachel?

“I’m sure I will, sweetie.”

Her eyes green like my wife’s. Always wet, like drowned emeralds. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but the doctors here seem really nice. They’re going to take good care of you until you feel better.”

“Better?” I say, dumbly.

She laughs though the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Better,” she says, as if the word were a talisman. “Then we can bring you home.”

“Home,” I mouth the word, loving the way its roundness fills my mouth. “That sounds really nice, Abby.”

Her eyes well up and she squeezes my hand. “It’s Victoria, Dad.”

I smile through the heartache. “Right.”

I blink and I am sitting alone, the light through the window now the soft gold of evening.

“Vic?” I cry for my daughter, eyes darting to the corners of the empty room.

My new home is a ten-foot by ten-foot box with a window overlooking the yard. My bed is a twin, topped with a king-sized comforter. There is one photo on the wall. In it, an unfamiliar man in a tuxedo has his arms wrapped around a woman in a white gown, his hands resting on the luminous curve of her pregnant belly. They both smile at me.

“That’s me?” I say aloud, standing and hobbling closer, my knees aching. Why do they ache? That’s right, I’m old! The man in the picture is handsome and young though, his eyes full of life.

Excited, I take the picture from the wall and move to the bathroom mirror.

I am fatter than the man in the photo, a rounded gut hanging over my waist. Gray hairs poke out from my ears, and my face looks like a melted wax caricature of the man in the photo. I touch the stubble on my chin and the loose gizzard flesh that hangs beneath.

“I’m old,” I say aloud, though the delight is gone.

I put the picture back on the wall.

I begin to weep.

“Think of it like getting lost in a fog,” a woman tells me. She is middle aged, with a thick jaw and a snake’s nest of curls atop her head. She is sitting in a chair in front of me, jotting notes on a clipboard.

I am sitting on the edge of my bed, and I am wearing a different robe than I was a moment before. My face is dry.

“How long have I been here?” I ask.

“You were checked in four days ago,” the woman responds. “Henry, are you here with me?”

Four days? My God, I lost four days?

“Yeah,” I croak, throat dry. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

The woman studies me over the edge of her cat-eye glasses. “The fog metaphor. We’ve found it eases the transition into and out of the fugue state. The jumps, the missing time, those will only get worse. But with the right attitude, we can make the process as comfortable as possible.”

“Fugue state?”

She nods tiredly. “Imagine an entire world covered in a deep, impenetrable mist—you’re lost in it, but you can see a mountain. We’ll call it Mount Clarity. Every day, your brain tries to climb that mountain. Some days, you won’t succeed. And some days you will climb all the way to the top and be your old self again. The important thing to remember is that it won’t happen every day—it’s okay when you don’t make it to that peak. We’ll be here to take care of you until you’re back with us.”

I open my mouth to thank her; only a groan comes out.

When I dream, I am in that fog. It is colder than I imagined, a thousand icy fingers worming their way into my skin.

I see Mount Clarity in the distance, and I run towards it, eyes fixed on that sharp spire rising above the white blanket. There are others here too—shadows racing, scrambling up the slick sides of the mountain.

There is something in their faces that I don’t like, a mindless terror in the way they look over their shoulders. They screech like animals, growling and crying. Their fingernails scrape against stone until they crack off in bloody splinters.

“The fog isn’t empty,” a voice whispers in my ear. “You need to run, Henry.”

I try to catalog what I know. I have the vague memory of writing in a leather journal. A woman with green eyes always insisted on it, even on the bad days, pushing it towards me along with a glass of orange juice. In the absence of it, I catalog aloud.

“My name is Henry,” I say. “I am old.” I reach for more and am delighted when I find it. “I was a soldier, like my father. After that, I built roads and married a beautiful woman.” At the mention of her, my eyes are drawn to the photo on the wall. “She took care of me, until she went away.”

I reach for more; there is only fog.

My stomach rumbles. The world beyond my door is a mystery, but my nose still works, and I smell bacon.

I stand on creaky legs, thankfully remembering to put my pants on before exiting into the hallway. The walls beyond, painted a chipped yellow the same shade as piss, are lined with old pine doors.

I step over a muddy bootprint outside my door and follow the scent down the hall, stopping only when I notice two men in scrubs working in a nearby room. They are collecting bedding and shoving it into a laundry cart. A trash can sits in the hall just outside the door, a receptacle for the prior occupant’s worldly possessions. On top, there is a photo—a white-haired woman with her arms wrapped tight around the chest of a little girl. The glass is cracked, a dark line splitting the woman’s face in two.

“Who was she?” I ask. The men pretend they don’t hear me. A shred of a memory rises from the fog. Victoria’s gap-toothed smile radiating up at me, her blue eyes bright.

No, I think, that can’t be right. My Victoria’s eyes are green, not blue. Yet, I cannot abandon this girl to the garbage. Someone should remember that she existed, that she loved the old woman in the photo, and that for at least one moment, she had the same smile as my Victoria.

I slide the photo from its frame, fold it, and place it in my pocket.

The rec room is large, six battered hardwood tables positioned across its width, centered on a pair of well-worn couches. On the TV, John Wayne is pointing his trusty Mare’s Leg at a couple of scoundrels, and I think I know the movie, the thrill of memory drawing me close. But, before John can waste the bad guys, someone calls my name.

“Henry! Earth to Henry!”

I turn, dumbfounded. It’s a woman, her black hair standing out amid a sea of blue and gray heads. She is wearing a bathrobe, has a narrow face, dusky eyes, and a wry smile. I suck in my gut.

A man sits next to her, hunched over a crossword puzzle, a pair of round-framed glasses

perched on the tip of his withered nose, bald head covered in dark liver spots. He holds a shaky pen above the paper but doesn’t write.

“How do you know my—” Then the revelation hits. “Berta!”

“That’s me! George, he knew me today!” she slaps the man beside her. “Come Henry, sit with us.” I join them, my memory chugging to life like an old diesel engine. She is Berta, a widow from the war. She is the youngest person here, only sixty-one, but insane.

“I got a head full of ghosts,” she told me once. The other is George, a lifelong bachelor, an

accountant, and an expert on WWII. One day, fairly recently, George and I sat in the garden while he explained to me how Joseph Goebbels had turned a nation of normal, loving people into Nazis.

I settle into the chair opposite them. “How are you today?”

Berta’s smile, all white teeth and crow’s feet, is infectious. “Still crazy. And you? Are the boots still keeping you awake?”

“Boots?” I ask, brow furrowed. “I don’t remember, what do you—”

George grumbles something, cutting me off. Berta shoots him a worried glance. “He isn’t doing too well today. Hasn’t said much.”

George is like me, I recall. Just further along into the brain rot. I crane my neck to see his puzzle. He has only written one word, four letters in a row made for eight.

HELP.

“You hungry?” Berta asks conspiratorially, grabbing my forgotten stomach’s attention. “Breakfast is already over, but I saved a couple slices of toast.”

She produces a paper plate from under the table. The toast is cold, covered with a red jelly that tastes like summer. I wolf it down, eyes watching George, ears listening to Berta as she regales us with stories about her summer spent in Venice, and the lovers whose hearts she broke there.

George continues to work on his puzzle. By the time he’s done, the light outside has turned red, and he has written the same answer for every question.

I am lying awake in bed; the clock on my nightstand reads 3:00 a.m. I draw the comforter up to my face and breathe in the scent of home, warmth, and a woman’s lingering perfume.

There is a sound out in the hallway. That’s right, I remember, that’s what woke me, those heavy boots invading my foggy dreams. I listen to them move down the hallway, passing right outside my door. Then, a moment later, they return, going the other way.

A chill sweeps over me; I can smell blood. Unconsciously my hand drifts to the edge of the mattress and reaches underneath, running my fingers along the crinkled edge of the photo I stole from the trash bin.

As a short scream echoes down the hall outside, I bury my face in the comforter and let memories of better days drown it out.

The next morning, another room is being emptied by men in scrubs. I am intent on passing right by them. I woke with a clear memory of Berta and George, and I cannot wait to tell them.

Yet, when I near the room, something stops me. I stare, watching the two men empty the former resident’s trashcan into the larger bin in the hall. Receipts, an empty pack of cigarettes, a couple of empty whiskey shooters.

“What happened to him?” I ask the young orderly as he steps outside to toss a pile of birthday cards into the bin.

The boy shrugs. “He died.”

I stare down at the cigarette pack. Marlboro, like my father used to smoke.

“How?” I ask.

The boy glances back at me, clear annoyance on his face. “Got old, I guess.”

I don’t bother to tell the boy that I, too, am old. Something in the way he looks at me tells me that he already knows.

Once his back is turned, I pick up the Marlboro pack. The lingering smell of tobacco inside tickles a memory, silver smoke curling around a dark mustache.

“What was his name?” I ask.

The kid sighs. “Beats me. Look, man, I got a lot of work to do. Head on down to the rec room. I hear they got musicals on the TV today.”

That night, I am a child, sitting atop my father’s workbench, watching him rub varnish into the side of the oak canoe we have spent all summer building. The muscles in his arms ripple as he spreads sealant on the hull, his rugged afternoon shadow making him look every bit the war hero I believe him to be. This is years before I learn that

he spent the war getting shit-faced on a patrol boat off the coast of Brazil. He impregnated a woman there. She sent him letters, dozens, first swearing her love, then begging for money, then cursing his name, and finally pleading for him to come back. I will find these letters on the day of his wake, and I will weep while others toast his name.

But at this moment, it is summer, I am a child, and my father is perfect.

“How fast will it go? Can we take it down the Mississippi?” We had just read Huck Finn in school. “Maybe not the whole Mississippi,” my father says, puffing his cigarette, silver smoke curling over his mustache. “She’ll take on the pond out back just fine.”

“Can I name her?”

He arches an eyebrow. “Naming a boat is a serious business. Give a boat a bad luck name, bad luck is all she’s going to give you. You sure you’re up for it?”

I nod, gravely.

He looks at the canoe again, then at me. “Well, then she’s all yours. What’s her name, cadet?”

I deliberate silently, head bowed until the perfect name comes to me. I open my mouth and the word breaks apart on my tongue. I try once more to say it, but only a dry hiss leaves my throat.

It’s hard to think. Someone is walking behind me now, heavy boot falls scattering my thoughts like clouds of gnats. I look to my father and his face is gone. In its place, a circular window has been cut into his head, through which white fog falls in billowing sheets.

“What’s your name, cadet?” he asks. “Gotta hold onto that.”

I wake, covered in cold sweat. The boots are in the hall again.

I go over what I know. It isn’t much.

Except for the dream. It’s my only clear memory, a lighthouse in the fog.

“Do you believe in the afterlife, Henry?” George asks me. It has been a time since the dream, days, maybe weeks. Long enough for the flowers in the yard to bloom.

We are sitting in a pair of battered chairs on the back lawn, watching Berta as she sketches the butterflies on the begonias. She works in crayon, all they’ll let her have.

I consider the question, searching my brain for anything that might tell me how I feel. “Maybe,” I say with a shrug. “I hope my wife is there.” Loreen, her name swims to mind. The name tastes like tears, and my heart twists.

“Me too,” George says. “Except the wife. Between you and me, I never saw the appeal.” He runs a leathery tongue over his thin lips. “What do you think it looks like for people like us?”

“People like us?”

George rolls his eyes and taps a finger to his wrinkled temple. “Ya know, people with the Mad Cow, the brain rot, the Forget-Me-Nows.”

“Same as everyone, I guess? Maybe we get it all back.” I try to think about what that might feel like. The few memories I have are so precious to me now, each a beacon of light radiating in the lonely dark.

“Maybe. But… what if we don’t?” His eyes are distant, his hands clasped in a white knuckled grip.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what is a memory if not a piece of us? And when it’s all gone, what happens? Our souls won’t know where to go? Or worse, what if we can’t go anywhere. Like, without the things we did, neither side knows where we belong. No heaven, no hell, just…”

“The fog,” I finish, thinking of the hole where my father’s face had been. We both fall silent for a moment, staring at Berta, at the butterflies, at nothing at all.

“Way I figure it,” George says glumly, “we are going to find out one way or another. And chances are we’ll both be drooling idiots by the time that happens.” He falls silent for a moment, his eyes set and hard, lips drawn back in a skeletal grimace.

Then, he slaps me on the shoulder and stands, knees cracking in protest. “Suppose all we have are the good days, and Lord knows neither of us got a lot of those on the horizon. Come on old man, I’ll whoop your ass at some checkers.”

We play most of the afternoon. Neither of us remember the rules, so we make them up as we go, working around our Swiss cheese brains. By the time Berta joins us, the board is cluttered with checkers, markers, a black pawn from a chess set, and forty-seven dollars in Monopoly money. We are both red-faced and sick with laughter.

That night, feeling more myself than I have in a long time, I pray to God that my Loreen is at peace. I pray that she is watching me as I inhale her scent from the comforter.

The boots are in the hall again.

It is close to 3:00 a.m., the only sounds are the constant hum of the air conditioner and the soft squelches of the boots’ wet rubber soles against the linoleum.

I look around the room. The same nightstand, the same clock, the same photo on the wall. Only, the couple in it is no longer smiling. Her eyes are filled with pity, his with horror.

The boots draw closer, the smell of blood announcing their arrival, a choking coppery scent that seems to fill my throat. I gag, pressing myself down into the bedding as if the ghost of Loreen’s perfume could kill the slaughterhouse stench and drive the thing away. It doesn’t. The boots come to a stop outside my door.

“What do you remember?” a voice asks and for a moment I think I recognize it. It’s a man’s voice, deep and sure. But wrong too, as if a dozen other voices whisper softly just beneath it.

I look at the door. Surely I didn’t hear that? I have a bad brain, the Mad Cow, the Forget-Me-Nows. It was some fragment of a dream, dragged into the waking world. Yet, I find my hand snaking under the lip of my mattress, touching the photo, then the cigarette pack.

It speaks again, this time louder, as if smelling my doubt. “Do you remember me?

I do not dare to respond. I lie there, frozen, eyes on the door until I hear the sound of the bootsteps retreating down the hall.

When I next emerge, a woman is at my door, a plastic gold tiara set into her wild tangle of black hair and a tray of blue frosted cupcakes in her hands.

“Good morning, Henry! And before you ask, no, we are not lovers. Good thing, too. Lovers get the door; friends get to share my birthday cupcakes.”

I smile. “I’m sorry, darling, have we met?”

“We most certainly have. And now, you’re going to spend the day worshipping me.”

Sitting at our table in the rec room, three of us eat until the frosting has dyed our lips and tongues blue, prompting the Queen’s bald friend to remark, “It looks like we just blew half of Smurf Village.”

Her laugh is like a cannon, blowing through the room, leveling all in its path. We laugh with her. She manages to convince an orderly to put on her favorite movie, an old black and white film where people dance their problems away. Halfway through, watching Fred Astaire foxtrot with a red-headed beauty under a crystal chandelier, the Queen gets swept away by the music and begins to dance herself.

She pulls the bald man to his feet despite his protests. “No! No! I couldn’t, my knees! Berta! Berta!”

“Up!” she commands. “Respect the crown and rise, serf!”

He rises, to my surprise, and seizes her around the waist. He leads her in a fast waltz around the room to the delight of other patients, creaky knees be damned. By the end, he is smiling and red-faced. He gives a flourished flip of his wrists as he bows to the crowd.

“Thank you,” he says, “thank you. Please stick around for the after-show and enjoy the buffet. I’ll be here ‘til I die.”

The Queen comes for me next, and I don’t fight her. I try to lead her, as the bald man did, but succeed only in smashing her toes with the first step.

“No worries, my dear,” she whispers, “I know the way.”

She leads me into the dance and before long the music takes us. The bald man claps his hands in rhythm with our steps, the entire room spinning around us. Then, she deposits me in a chair and takes to the tabletop.

Her skirts billow about her as she kicks and spins, the orderlies rushing to pull her down, only for her to dance away, leaping to the next table. She blows a kiss to one of the orderlies.

Each time they get near she jumps again, her eyes wild with delight.

“Do you think she is going to be lonely, when we’re gone?” The bald man asks, voice hushed.

I blink at him, placid as a cow. “I think she’ll be fine. She’s a charmer. Besides, I’m not planning to go anywhere. Are you?”

He looks at me a moment, then sighs. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

“No,” I admit, “but I think we’re friends.”

“That we are,” he says, looking back to where the Queen is balancing atop the couch, teal-scrubbed men closing in on all sides. Just before they pull her to the ground and jab a long needle into her neck, she takes a bow to raucous applause.

They drag her back to her room. Just as she leaves our sight, the bald man stands, and I smile up at him, unburdened with even the simplest of thoughts.

He stares at the hallway to the residential rooms, where the Queen has just vanished. “Do you ever hear the boots outside your door?”

“No,” I tell him, “I don’t think so.” Yet, for some reason, my stomach churns and my breath catches in my throat. I feel cold. I smell blood.

He nods, bright eyes set knowingly on me. “That’s good. Take care of her.”

George is gone. I know it before I open my eyes, the thought repeating like a pounding drum, summoning me back from the emptiness. I sit up in bed and stare at my closed door. Outside, other residents shuffle by on their way to the rec room, their slippered feet whispering on the tile.

George is gone.

How long ago was Berta’s birthday? I can’t be sure, but I think no more than a week, maybe two. George was bright that day, brighter than me. He couldn’t be gone. Most of the people who died of the Forget-Me-Nows were broken things by the end, barely able to move, let alone dance. George, by contrast, was alert, strong. Some days, it’s almost like he isn’t sick at all.

I’m just being paranoid, I reason. I stand, shave, and brush my teeth, the familiar routine easing the dread in my stomach. Then, I step out into the hall and turn, intending to walk down to the rec room like any other day.

George’s door is open, a trash bin in the hall outside.

A sharp, cold blade slides into my heart. Inside, two orderlies are stripping the room of everything that made it his.

“Where is George?” I ask.

“He died,” says one of the orderlies.

I don’t ask how. I already know the answer.

I grab one of George’s half-filled-out crossword puzzles from the trash can in the hall. Every question has the same answer.

HELP.

That night, I slide the crossword beneath my mattress to join my other meager treasures in the dark.

I spend a day with Berta in the yard, sitting on a bench near the small flower garden. It has been a time since George died, though to me, it feels like earlier that afternoon.

Berta tells me that she once seduced a prince who gave up his crown to be with her. She spent a long summer with him, hunting tigers in India before running off with the captain of a whaling ship and breaking the prince’s heart. I sit on her words with rapt attention, believing every one of them.

“Do you think George knew he was going to die?” I ask when she is done, the question loosed before I know I want to ask it.

Berta watches a butterfly, a Painted Lady, crawl over the top of a lily. She sucks in a breath, puffs out her cheeks, and lets it out slow. “He did. He said the boots were going to get him.”

“The boots?” I ask, unable to hide the quiver in my voice. I expect Berta to say George was delusional at the end of his life. I expect comfort.

Instead, her face goes pale, voice a haunted whisper. “You must have heard them. Everyone does around here, eventually.”

“Who is it?” I ask.

“More like what.”

“What is it then?”

The butterfly takes flight, rising slowly into the air above us. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “Maybe it’s death. Maybe we can hear it coming, when we’re close. Or maybe it’s a ghost; people die here all the time.” She leans back, eyes unfocused and set on the chipped wooden fencing where a horizon ought to be. “I think it’s a hungry thing, though. I can hear it salivating.”

“Hungry for what?”

“Who knows? Does it matter how it gets you? Result is the same.”

The finality in her voice twists the dagger that has been in my heart since George died, and I choke, fighting back tears. It’s real, God help me, it’s real. “It spoke to me.”

I don’t notice my hands are shaking until she takes one in hers, folding her fingers over my hand and pulling it to her chest. “What did it say?”

“It asked if I remembered it.” The memory is clear in my mind, without the faintest shred of fog. “I don’t. Or I don’t think I do. But its voice—I think I know it, but I don’t remember where from. It’s driving me crazy.”

She doesn’t reply for a long time. We sit, watching the sky turn gold then the purplish-green of a bruise. Finally, she lifts my hand to her lips and kisses me on the knuckle.

“You can stay in my bed tonight. I’ll sneak you in,” she says. “No funny business, mister. You shouldn’t be alone right now. Not with the boots after you.”

“Do you really think it’s after me?”

“Yes. But not tonight. Tonight, you’re mine.” Despite what she says, there is funny business that night. It is sweet, and gentle, and kind. I call her Loreen. She doesn’t correct me.

“I miss you,” the woman with drowned emerald eyes tells me. She is sitting beside my bed, one hand extended and folded over mine. We are alone, but we are not in the hospital. My bed sits in the middle of a clearing in the fog, its billowing walls stretching up out of sight on all sides.

“Do I know you?” I ask.

She laughs, then chokes. “Yeah, I should think you do.”

I study her for a moment. Her face is familiar but her hair is short, and unnaturally dark, dyed.

“I— I’m sorry—I don’t—”

She squeezes my hand tighter, “It’s ok, Dad. You don’t have to stress yourself, I’m right here.”

“Victoria?” I blink. “You changed your hair.”

The smile she gives me is a summer sun, its warmth penetrating every part of me. “Dad! I’m sorry, that must have confused you,” she runs a hand through her dyed locks. “I didn’t think, I—”

I give her hand a return squeeze, “No, it looks good.”

She laughs again, and then, inexplicably, begins to sob. Operating on some ancient instinct I cannot name, I pull her towards me and she curls against my side. In a flash, she is a child again, her arms stretched wide over my belly, her face pressed against my chest. In one moment, a thousand forgotten nights drift through my mind, nights spent holding my little girl as she quaked in fear of thunder or the terrors that lived in her closet.

“I wanted to see you again,” she says into my chest. “The doctors called. Said it wouldn’t be long now.”

“Long till what?”

She doesn’t respond for a long time and when she does it is in a small whisper, the kind reserved for words too painful for daylight. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. When Mom died, I knew you needed help. I should have brought you home, I should have cared for you. This place, it is all I can afford but you shouldn’t have to die here.”

“Hush,” I whisper, running a hand through her hair. “There, here, all about the same to me now. It will have me soon.”

“I could take you home?” she says.

I shake my head, “Not enough left of me to take.”

“I don’t want my daddy to die.”

I point to the wedding photo that floats over the end of my bed. The man and the woman are smiling, their hands pressed flush against the woman’s belly.

She lifts her head and sniffles. “That was our beginning. All three of us.”

“Then remember them,” I say. “Remember us.”

We lie like that for an eternity, just me and my little girl in the fog. I know what is coming next, can hear it echoing across the emptiness, the sound reverberating in the icy air until it seems to surround us, enclose us.

It’s coming.

Berta is gone. Her room is bare and empty. I ask an orderly if she was moved. He tells me he doesn’t know. I have to find out from one of the nurses that she suffered an aneurism in her sleep a month ago. I sit on the bench in the garden, where she and I had once shared a long afternoon, and touch the sun-warmed stone where she sat.

I try to remember the way she smelled, but the only scent that comes to mind is blood. I weep. I am still weeping when I see the butterfly, the Painted Lady. It is dead, lying on its side in front of the bench, and I lift it as if cradling a child.

“I miss you,” I whisper.

A passing wind flutters the Lady’s dead wings.

“I’ll remember you, as long as I can.”

The boots are coming, the soft squelch of rubber on linoleum dragging me inch by inch back into myself. I make myself small, comforter drawn up over my head, eyes peeking out of a thin slit to stare at the door.

The smell is worse this time, rotten, like offal left under a summer sun. Then, to my horror, they stop at my door.

“Do you remember me?” it asks from the other side.

“No,” I blurt out, heart slamming in my chest. “No, go away!”

The thing in the boots doesn’t reply, but already I can hear something else, the soft click of metal sliding against metal. The brass handle begins to turn. I bolt to my feet and press my back to the wall. My mind races, thoughts melting together into a panicked, animal scream.

I need a weapon and, as if drawn by some strange gravity, I find myself reaching for my mattress. I grab the edge of it and flip it up. The photo of the little girl is there and the empty pack of Marlboros, but that isn’t all. An empty tube of lipstick, a crusted band aid, a peach pit, and more. Where had it all come from? And more importantly, how the hell can it help me? I push the trash aside, hoping for a knife, or a rock, but there is nothing. My hand falls to the photo of the little girl, my little girl. I grab the photo and remember the way Victoria pressed against me, and the atom bomb radiance of her smile.

Maybe we can feed it?

Berta’s words flash across my mind. Feed it? Feed it what? I have nothing but these trinkets, these—

“Memories,” I whisper, my voice cracking, eyes wide on the photo in my hand. I think to grab a different one, anything other than my Victoria, but the brass handle has almost turned enough to open. I hurl myself against the door in panic, and the thing on the other side pushes back with a terrible, inexorable, strength.

“Give it,” the thing on the other side of the door moans.

My legs are already burning, my neck painfully taut. I’m not strong enough, I realize with a growing dread. The rest of the treasures are safely tucked across the room from me, though they might as well have been on the moon, for all the good they could do me now. I stare at the photo crumbled in my hand and begin to sob.

“I’m sorry,” I choke. “Please, forgive me.” Then, shoulder still braced against it, I slide the photo under the door, my fingers tracing the little girl’s face right up until it vanishes from sight.

The shaking stops and I hold my breath.

I hear the crinkle as the photo is lifted off the ground. All falls quiet—too quiet. I strain to hear.

“Good enough,” the voice eventually says. A memory comes to me, so clear and sharp it seems to be happening right now.

“To the moon!” Victoria demands. It is a sunlit day, and I am young and whole. I take her in my arms and thrust her toward the sky, making rocket ship noises with my lips.

“Mission control, this is Houston. We have a problem!” I dive her headfirst toward the ground, stopping her fall at the last second and carrying her at a jog, her face hovering inches above the grass, her arms spread wide.

“Faster!” she screams. “We gotta reach the moon!”

I release her and she glides forward on the wind, before breaking apart into fog, one bit at a time.

It is almost dawn before I manage to remember how to stand and open the door.

The photo is gone.

“Who are you?” I ask the stranger.

She squeezes my hand and says a name, but the sound comes out like a dry wind.

“Do I know you?”

Her tears are hot when they drop from her face onto my palm. “I wanted to stay in town, till it was over.”

“Till what was over?” I ask. “Am I going home?”

I give it the lipstick tube the next night, the memory of a girl I loved and lost in college. Then the night after that, the peach pit goes and along with it a soldier I fought beside in another life.

As my last thought of him fades, I can almost see him standing in the room with me, dressed in combat fatigues, a foggy hole where his face should be.

“What’s the exit plan here, Hoss? You don’t got a lot of ammo to spare.”

I give it the crusted band aid, a pink sock, a shiny pebble, one step at a time, marching dutifully towards perdition. As I give it the pebble it speaks again, voice so familiar but so wrong, alien.

“These memories are weak,” it says. “I know you got something better. Feed me, Henry.”

I feel thinned out, my thoughts growing wispy and ephemeral. My body aches down to the bones, and my eyes feel like lead balls sinking into my skull. It isn’t leaving. Must still be hungry. So, I go back to my hoard, snatch up the empty Marlboro pack and begin to shove it under the door.

Then, with a violent tug, the pack is pulled the rest of the way through to the other side. There is a dismissive snort, and a chuckle that sounds as alien as it is hauntingly familiar, distorted and wet. I imagine a throat filled with blood, spilling endlessly out of a twisted mouth.

“Do you think this will satisfy me forever?” it asks.

“Will it satisfy you tonight?”

“You know what I want.”

“Just go away, please. Don’t take them too.”

It does not respond. As its heavy footsteps fade, I remember my father, sitting tall in a canoe as he glides silently down the river into a bank of icy fog.

I stare down at the space beneath my mattress, crippled with an impossible decision. Only the crossword puzzle and the dead butterfly remain.

The boots come slow tonight, one methodical step after another.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, hands hovering over the two objects before finally lifting George’s crossword. I read his final words one last time, trying to hold his reddened, laughing face in my mind.

Then, with a stone in my stomach, I slide it under the door. Yet I can’t let go of it, my fingers pinched on the corner. The boots come to a stop and yank at the puzzle.

“No,” I plead, tears in my eyes. If it takes the paper, George will be gone; nobody else is left here to remember him. I try to pull the puzzle back, but it’s too strong, ripping it from my hands.

It laughs, not with one voice but hundreds, thousands, so loud it hurts. I scream and weep, begging it to go away or to just kill me.

It leaves, eventually, but not before speaking in George’s voice.

“Help me, Henry,” it says. “For the love of God, help me.”

George dances in my head. He takes a bow and becomes fog.

In the morning, I ask for a sheet of paper and a pen from one of the staff. Sitting alone in my room, using the nightstand as a table, I write a letter to Loreen.

I tell her I miss her, and that I can’t wait to see her when I get back from the war. I tell her that I think we should finally have children, and that a couple as good looking as us have a civic responsibility to procreate. I tell her that I think I could be a good father, if given the chance.

Then I remember that she is dead, and my tears make a black smudge of my signature.

I blink and I am sitting in front of my door, cradling the dried-out corpse of a butterfly. I hold its gossamer wings apart, pinched delicately in calloused fingertips.

I almost drop it in surprise, looking around my darkened room, eyes wide. How did I get here? I was just thinking of—of who?

“Do you remember me?” the thing asks from beyond the door, and my heart freezes in my chest. That’s right, that’s why I’m sitting here, holding my only friend.

“Please,” I whisper, “not her. Please.”

“You have to remember me,” it says.

“I don’t!”

The door shakes in its frame. “You have to!” it shouts, its shout twisting into an inhuman metallic whine. “You have to remember me, Henry!”

I scream and shove the butterfly’s corpse beneath the door.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry Berta!”

The door shakes, the thing echoing back my scream in my own voice. I scramble under the bed, dragging the comforter with me and screeching like an animal, my entire body rigid, my muscles cramped in terror. I scream and scream, until two orderlies burst in and drag me into the light.

They press something sharp into my arm. A warm darkness envelops me.

Berta walks into a foggy jungle and vanishes.

When I wake, I know I have always been alone here.

“How are you feeling today?” The doctor in the cat-eye glasses asks me.

I moan in terror.

“Non-verbal,” she says, scratching on her notepad. “Are you in any pain?”

My words are but a groan.

“Just try to relax,” she says, already standing to move along to the next room. “It won’t be long now.”

I take the photo off the wall and hold it up to the thin light from the yard.

I wonder if this is how those faceless others felt, before the end. I wonder if they found peace in the afterlife, or if they became hungry things.

The boots are in the hall, walking at a leisurely pace, a victor’s march.

The man in the photo is a stranger to me. I trace his narrow jaw and bushy eyebrows with my fingers. Distantly, I think I remember the feeling of holding my wife close as we danced at our wedding. Did we make love that night? Was I a good man? Does it even matter anymore?

The boots come to a stop outside my door and I brace myself.

“Do you remember me?” it asks.

I look at the photo, then at the door, and for the first time I realize I do know that voice, have heard it before, but never like this, never outside my own head.

The door swings open.

A figure stands in the shadows, with a clean jawline and dark, piercing eyes. It is dressed in a tuxedo, standing tall and strong. Where its face should be there is a hole, from which fog falls in freezing sheets. I look to the photo, the man is smiling wickedly up at me, the woman dead in his arms.

“You know who I am?” And I do. I see it all, reflected in this thing with my voice. I see myself holding my wife’s hand as cancer devours her, I see the love in my daughter’s eyes, I hear guns firing, a jackhammer screaming, the sound of George’s knees creaking as he and Berta dance, all the moments that make a life. Every bit of me, stolen and glued back together until this thing is more me than I am. All but one piece, all I have left. I feel something tug inside my head, a thread pulled taut.

“Henry,” I whisper.

I press my face into the comforter and breathe deep Loreen’s perfume, basking in my last mote of light. The thing steps forward. George’s face appears in the window in its head, leering maliciously down at me. Then Berta’s, and Loreen’s, and a dozen more, a slideshow of familiar strangers that ends exactly where I know it will. With a man’s face, my face.

“I’m so hungry.”

The thread snaps.

My name is Henry. I am old. I was a soldier. After that I built roads and married a beautiful woman.

My name is Henry. I am old. I was a soldier. I was a road. I married a beautiful woman.

My name is Henry. I am. I was.

My name is Henry.

My name is—

I am twelve years old, and I am standing in the master bedroom. The bedroom my grandfather shares with his wife, the woman who is not my grandmother. The room with the bed they sleep in.It’s a very tasteful room. My grandfather’s wife has exquisite taste. No bright colors. Not even any deep, rich colors….

It took them several years to realize they were all dreaming the same dream. Why does one really report a dream, after all? Over the breakfast table, pulling on non-slip shoes for work, sitting in the passenger seat of a tired minivan on the way to school—only unusual dreams are the topic of conversation. If it’s…

Waking, I stir beneath the soft warning of another aubade slipping deep into the moist soil of my corporeal shape. Beneath the glimmer of my bedsheets, I am a dreaming animal dissatisfied with breath alone. And I still want to ride the silhouette of earnest sleep until the world returns to green. I wink and…

A crowd gathered the day before Sushi Maekawa closed.

So Ayami wanted to say. In reality, only four people lingered outside the glass storefront. If Sushi Maekawa still drew crowds, they would have soldiered on instead of closing.

She glanced at the tank on the counter and met the gaze of one of the fugu. Its round dark eyes seemed accusatory, though whether it wished to say Why would you eat me? or Why won’t you eat me? Ayami couldn’t tell. Considering the number of fugu they still had in the back, this one was unlikely to be consumed today.

She rubbed her right hand—beginning to show wrinkles—against her forehead. Had she become as sentimental as her mother? Twenty-six years a fugu chef, and never before had she assigned thoughts to her fish.

Toshi, his uniform starched and spotless, flipped the sign from Closed to Open. He unlocked the front door, but not one among the four-member crowd entered.

Ayami glanced at the clock. Were they opening already? 10:00 a.m. So, it was opening time. More and more, time had become the domain of digital clocks and flashing numbers rather than the world outside, where nights were starless and days endlessly smoggy. During Sushi Maekawa’s last major renovation, they had changed the dark cherry wood tables for a lighter finish to give some illusion of light.

All three fugu turned away from Ayami. They were torafugu, with black blotches on their sandy yellow backs and some of the deadliest poison to go with their exquisite taste. One of them nuzzled the glass, round eyes directed at somewhere beyond Ayami.

Ayami followed its gaze to the man seated behind the counter. Maekawa Gen, proprietor of Sushi Maekawa. Arms crossed, eyes hidden behind ever-present sunglasses, bald patch gleaming beneath the LED lights—another concession from their last renovation and one Ayami had suggested. Most would mistake the sunglasses for some outdated fashion statement, but Gen had confessed to her that even indoor lights hurt his eyes these days.

Ayami reached out and tapped Gen on the shoulder. “Sit there brooding for too long and you’ll scare off all our customers.”

Gen turned. Ayami knew him well enough to read his expression behind the sunglasses: annoyance, mild. “Look at them,” he said, gesturing at the gawkers outside.

“I know. Milling around the door, not coming in when it’s their last chance.” She forced a smile. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

“No. Look at him.”

It took Ayami a moment to figure out who Gen was talking about. A young man in an oversized t-shirt leaned against the storefront glass, unzipped backpack at his feet, Quickscape helmet in his hands. The helmets didn’t offer the full Dreamscape experience—their nodes weren’t that powerful—but they were immersive enough if you wanted a quick break from reality.

The man slipped the helmet over his head and sat down on the sidewalk. He fell still, reacting no more to the people around him than the glass did.

“Can’t he read?” Gen growled. “‘No Dreamscaping.’ Says right there on the window.”

“He’s not inside the restaurant yet,” Ayami pointed out. Nor will he ever be, like the millions of others lost to the Dreamscape.

Gen snorted and turned away. No matter how Ayami felt today, he must’ve felt worse. Sushi Maekawa—once Fugu Maekawa, before changing its name in a futile attempt to attract tourists—had been in Gen’s family for generations.

The bell—an old-fashioned one, for this Gen had refused to give up—rang. Two people Ayami recognized pushed past the three gawkers and one Dreamscaper to enter. Uehara Reiko was around Ayami’s age, her grey-streaked hair knotted in a bun. Her son Minoru was in his twenties and updated his hair like other people updated their multi-tabs. Today it was cerulean blue and spikey. Over forty years ago, when Ayami was in second grade, her older brother had returned home sporting a similar hairstyle. Their mother had chased him around the house with a razor. Nowadays, Minoru’s peers would consider him a dinosaur; who bothered with flesh-world styling when it was easier to make a cool avatar in the Dreamscape?

Reiko’s eyes fell on the fugu tank as Toshi led them to their usual seats by the window. Ayami couldn’t remember them sitting anywhere else recently since their table was hardly ever taken. Gen had offered them private rooms at no extra charge, but Reiko had turned down the offer, saying she preferred the window even if the sun rarely broke through.

“What are you going to do with those guys?” Reiko asked, gesturing at the fugu. Toshi shrugged and muttered something noncommittal. Ayami could’ve answered. The fugu would be sealed in locked containers and disposed, like their poisonous parts were. A waste, but at this point shrinkage was the last thing Sushi Maekawa cared about.

Reiko waved away Toshi’s attempts at handing her the menu. “We’ll get the torafugu five-course meal. I’d get the eight-course one, but all my invitees refused to come.”

Toshi nodded and made his way to the curtain. Ayami had heard the order, but she listened as he repeated it. After, as she turned to walk deeper into the kitchen, she heard Reiko say, “I admit, I expected more of a fight to get in. That’s why I said to come early. Not that I have much else to do with my mornings now.”

Ayami’s hands curled into fists. Reiko had worked at a local onsen for nearly three decades, only to be dismissed at age fifty, as the resort ran out of reasons to exist. Reiko had accepted an early retirement. She was one of the lucky ones, with savings and a son who supported her.

Ayami forced her fists to unclench as she turned to the tank. Nine torafugu swam within. It had been ten yesterday. More shrinkage. Despite their best efforts, fish sometimes died before they could be served.

Ayami washed her hands and laid out her equipment: the cutting board, the knives reserved for cleaning fugu, the tray marked with “Dispose” for the parts she would cut away. She scooped the largest torafugu from the tank. It wiggled as she lifted it from the net, but before it could even attempt to inflate, Ayami inserted her knife into the top of its head.

The fugu stilled. Decades ago, when Ayami first started her training, many had questioned why. She should’ve felt as out of place as this fugu did, lying lifeless on a wooden cutting board. She hadn’t been born in a family of chefs, had never even eaten fugu in her childhood. She’d been an excellent student, had gone to university at age sixteen. Only to wind up in one of those glass-and-concrete offices: answering calls, filing documents, bringing tea to company execs.

She’d watched her fellow women shatter themselves on the shores of ambition. Passed up for promotion or settling for singledom. Bombarded with Japan’s declining birth rate and how it was their fault. Get married, have a child, find yourself bound by the shackles of motherhood. Unable to return to work, or returning to slashed pay, confused peers, and the label of an inadequate mother.

Ayami had said, No more. Not me.

She raised her knife. Now came the part she’d trained three years for. The part that required an examination where two-thirds of examinees failed, the part for which she was the last practicing chef in Shimonoseki—and indeed, the world.

Chop off the fins. Split the skin, peel it away. Remove the insides—liver, intestines, all filled with tetrodotoxin. She placed them on the “Dispose” tray. She worked quickly, with practiced ease. No part of fugu preparation surprised her now, not even those pollution-mutated fugu with their organs in the wrong places.

Perhaps it was good she had been born then, and not now. In that world of restriction, she had rejected corporate life and found the fugu.

She’d remade herself into something no one expected from her; in all her years growing up, she’d never heard of a female fugu chef—though now she knew they’d been there all along, and she wouldn’t label herself any sort of innovator, no matter what the magazines said. She’d drawn more than a few odd looks during her apprenticeship, sometimes studying alongside youths who’d worked in their parents’ kitchens their whole lives. But in the end: a license, a test. Standards that didn’t depend on drinking or socializing or singledom.

She’d passed the exam. She’d been that one third.

Ayami glanced down at the pale fugu flesh. Removing poison was just the first step. She had fugu-chiri to stew. Milt to grill and season. Sashimi to cut and arrange in the shape of a chrysanthemum. During Fugu Maekawa’s height, Ayami had three, four assistant chefs, though none of them were allowed to touch the fugu. Now she had just Keisuke, and he wouldn’t be in until noon.

Ayami smiled as she parted the torafugu flesh into thin, translucent sashimi slices. There had been golden years. Every table in Fugu Maekawa filled come dinner time. No one could get through the door except by reserving days in advance. Interviews with Ayami received full-page spreads in Shimonoseki Life, the city’s leading magazine at the time (now folded, not even digital). Gen, not so grumpy then, gave Japan Profile writers access to Fugu Maekawa’s kitchens and bragged about Ayami and the restaurant.

Eventually, the golden years ended. First came the non-toxic fugu, made by isolating the fish from tetrodotoxin-laden bacteria. Ayami closed the lid over the simmering stew and sighed. And we thought that would be the worst we’d face. Lobbyists asked the government to relax the ban on fugu liver, to relax the fugu preparation test itself. Shimonoseki sniffed in disdain, then raged, then panicked.

Ayami sprinkled seasoning over the milt. No, the problem had come with Synthfood, then Dreamscape. The former gave you the day’s nutrients in an easy-to-swallow packet, and the latter lets you enjoy the world’s delights in a virtual space. No calories, no accidents, no expensive plane tickets. The real world became obsolete. Virtual treks up Mount Fuji outnumbered real climbs many times over. Osaka Castle, built and rebuilt over centuries, stood empty in the height of summer, its continued maintenance a subject of budgetary debates. Shimonoseki’s aquarium closed last year, shipping as many fish as possible off to Okinawa.

Restaurants shut their doors. Some chefs jumped ship, worked with Dreamscape developers, opened virtual restaurants. Ayami, too, had offers, but she had no wish to leave Sushi Maekawa, and Gen had refused to even contemplate a virtual branch. “It’s not the same,” he’d said. “The Dreamscape, no matter how much it improves, can’t rival real life.”

But for most people, it seemed, the Dreamscape was better. And who could blame them, with the real world polluted and stifling and sunless? The falling demand made fugu—both traditional and non-poisonous— unprofitable to farm. The pollution in the seas made them difficult to catch. Ayami felt a prickle of pride knowing she’d outlasted them all, those safe-farmed fugu and their under- trained chefs.

There would always be people like Reiko and Minoru. The question was, would there be enough of them to support chefs like Ayami? The answer, ultimately, was no.

The first reporter—the first flesh-and-blood reporter, as drones had been buzzing around the building since morning—showed up at 1:30 p.m. Ayami allowed Keisuke to grill the shrimp while she sat down for her final interview.

He was a foreigner. Ayami wasn’t surprised. Since the restaurant’s golden years, western reporters had loved her, the office worker who became a fugu chef—a female fugu chef. She’d felt a vague unease when reading through machine translations of those articles; some of them seemed to treat her as a symbol more than a person. But today Ayami reserved her annoyance for those Japanese reporters who hadn’t come, who’d sent drones for the closing of the last fugu house.

“Do you mind if I turn on full Dreamscape recording?” the reporter asked. His Japanese was excellent, with only a hint of an accent.

“No,” Ayami said. She had little love for Dreamscape formats and interactive news, where viewers would be able to poke her virtually rendered skin, smell traces of cooking oil on her uniform. But if she refused, he’d create his report solely through memory reconstruction and that would be even more inaccurate.

He picked up a piece of fugu sashi with chopsticks, dipped it into the sauce, plopped it into his mouth, and chewed. A line of English text crawled across his multi-tab’s holographic screen. Notes to enhance his interactive video, probably. Maybe some stupid comment saying “tastes like chicken” or “doesn’t taste like anything at all, just the sauce” on the little opinion sidebar. How could a thirty-something foreigner understand things like texture and subtlety? At least he handled chopsticks well and didn’t drop the sashimi in the stew like one reporter had long ago.

Moments after the thoughts surfaced, Ayami pushed them down. She was not being fair to him. She didn’t know what he’d written, and he hadn’t done anything to earn her disdain— except to show up on this day when she was losing everything.

He ate more sashimi and drank a gulp of fugu-chiri. Then he said, “There is no tingling.”

Ayami raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

He leaned closer as if to share a secret. “I’ve eaten fugu in the Dreamscape. It causes a tingling sensation to the lips. The virtual server said it’s to imitate the remaining traces of poison, and the tingling is part of fugu’s charm.” He frowned at his sashimi chrysanthemum and the petals he’d plucked away. “There’s no tingling in this one.”

Ayami chuckled. “No, no. Fugu—properly prepared fugu—isn’t supposed to cause obvious tingling. Some chefs add spice to the sauce which can create that effect, but as my old teacher used to say, too much tingle and you better run to the hospital.”

The reporter didn’t seem perturbed by this. Just drank more stew, moved on to the next question. “It must’ve hurt Maekawa Gen greatly,” he said, “to sell the building to a DreamHub developer.”

Ayami frowned, then tried her best approximation of a nonchalant shrug. “You’ll have to ask him about that.”

“He refused to speak to me and said I should direct all questions to you.”

In truth, Gen had wavered for weeks about the DreamHub developer’s offer. It felt like selling to the enemy. But Gen needed the money to care for his ailing father, and the restaurant had spent its last years losing money rather than making it.

Ayami said, “Gen accepted the best offer. That is all.”

The reporter tapped something on his screen. “There were many reports of your restaurant receiving offers to collaborate on a virtual branch. But Maekawa Gen turned them down. Is this something you wish had gone differently?”

Ayami mulled over what to share, then decided the truth would be fine. This was her final interview, the final record of her as Sushi Maekawa’s fugu chef. “It was Gen’s decision. But I… do agree with him.”

The reporter raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Are you distrustful of technology as well?”

“No. Not technology. It’s just… with Dreamscape…” She waved a hand, trying to explain, hoping she did not come across as outlandish to him as Gen sometimes seemed to the rest of them. “It’s not real. I’m not sure how I feel about it replacing the real world—and leaving people who haven’t given up on the real world with nowhere to go.” She thought of Reiko and Minoru, and of herself.

The reporter made another note. She expected him to probe further, but he moved on to a different topic, and for that she was grateful.

The interview continued until the reporter was about halfway through the carefully prepared meal. Then he told her he wouldn’t keep her any longer, and surely she had other customers to cook for.

“Thank you,” he said, rising to his feet and bowing, “for agreeing to this interview. I know this must be a hard day for you.”

Ayami returned his bow. “Thank you for coming. For… for being the only reporter who came.”

She’d turned away, about to walk back to the kitchen, when he said, “Please, don’t think too badly of my fellow reporters. The JAXA conference is running through the week. That’s probably why they couldn’t show up in person today.”

Ayami paused in her steps, contemplated what to say, managed to find nothing suitable. She resumed walking. She had to get back to the kitchen. She trusted Keisuke, but she didn’t want to spend another minute out in the dining area.

Toshi was gone when Ayami returned to the kitchen. Left at 2:00 p.m. sharp after Sumire arrived for her shift. “He said it looked like we didn’t need him,” Gen explained. “Of course, I offered to pay him for the whole day, but he would have none of it.”

Ayami didn’t reply, just continued turning over the grilled eel. Gen lingered for a moment, then stepped through the partition back into the dining area.

“He didn’t even say goodbye to you,” Keisuke said as he stretched a shrimp for tempura, voicing Ayami’s thoughts.

“It’s alright,” Ayami said. “It’s… characteristic of Toshi. Professional until the end.”

“More like ice-cold and heartless.”

Ayami’s mouth quirked into a smile. “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about Toshi surviving this cold and heartless world. The rest of us will have only Dreamscape to fall back on.”

“Dreamscape? Ha. If any of us gets lost in there, Gen will hunt us down and give us a good beating.”

He glanced at the partition as if wondering whether Gen would return to do just that, then said more softly, “That’s for the rest of us, of course. You’ve earned a break, and even Gen can’t dispute that.”

The partition flapped open, but it was Sumire who stepped through, not Gen. Ayami passed the completed eel dish to her, then said to Keisuke, “I’m not sure I’m ready to… to retire. To live only in Dreamscape.” She didn’t want her last memory of her working life to be failure, to be her restaurant shutting down.

As Sumire left, Keisuke said, “Gen has a point, and I completely understand why he feels that way. But sometimes… I wonder if they might have a point too.”

“They?”

He glanced at her. “I was reading some articles this morning. About this place, and how we’re about to close. Most of them were the usual—lamenting the loss, rehashing your story, talking about the sale to a DreamHub developer. But there was one that said… it said we were part of the problem.”

Ayami had an inkling about what he was talking about, but still she said, “Please explain.”

“Part of what caused that.” He waved a hand at the window behind him. “The poison in the air, the poison in the seas. The fishing industry was at least partially responsible.” He sighed and dipped the shrimp into batter. “It got me thinking, maybe Dreamscape is the way out. If we did all that to the real world, then we should get out of it.”

He’d forgotten to pre-heat the oil. Ayami had half a mind to point that out but stopped herself. “But will hiding in Dreamscape really help? If we want to fix this, don’t we need to be, well, here?”

Keisuke shook his head. “Probably. I don’t know. My point is, it might be worth looking at from another angle. The Dreamscape isn’t your enemy. You’ve been working hard all your life. Sometimes it’s okay to just stop.”

Just stop. Step into an early retirement, like the one forced upon Reiko. Except unlike Reiko, Ayami had no one. No family to rely on, no close friends unless she counted Gen. She had poured her life into her work, only to find herself standing at the pinnacle of a dying profession.

During the three o’clock lull, Sumire walked over to Ayami as she was inspecting the knives. “I sent something to you,” Sumire said. “Check your multi-tab.”

Ayami tapped the mailbox on the hologram and found a pamphlet from JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It listed training programs for mechanics, navigators, onboard nutritionists . . .

“And?” Ayami said. Then regretted it, when Sumire’s face fell.

“I thought . . . I thought you’d be interested.” Ayami frowned. “Interested? As in . . . ?”

“To apply. You understand cooking and nutrition, and you’re good with your hands. I figured, even JAXA could use someone like you.”

Ayami wanted to laugh—but at the same time, felt something close to tears pricking the back of her eyes. She didn’t know whether to read this as a joke or to be touched Sumire genuinely thought so highly of her. “I’m old. Even if JAXA needed someone, they’d want someone young. Someone like you.”

Sumire bit her lip. “I heard you earlier, when you said you weren’t ready to retire. I heard your interview with the reporter too. You said you wished there was still room for people who haven’t given up on the real world. Isn’t that what JAXA is trying to do? To carve new roads for us, not in Dreamscape but in space? I’m probably not smart enough to help, but you—”

“Don’t say that,” Ayami cut in. “You’re plenty smart. If you think whatever JAXA is doing could work, then you should apply.”

Sumire’s smile was brighter than the overhead lights, brighter than the sun in Ayami’s memory. “Thank you. Maybe I should be more confident. But in turn, I think you should also be more positive. It’s never too late. Please think about it.”

They’d meant to shut down at 10:00 p.m., but the last customer lingered, drinking sake and eating his fifth tuna temaki. Ayami, Gen, Sumire, and Keisuke let him be. Ayami scooped out the last torafugu in the back and started preparing it. The three in the front swam on, uneaten.

“Making this one for you,” Ayami said to the three remaining employees. “At this rate, we’ll be done before the customer out front is. You want me to grab the fugu from the front tank too?”

A chorus of no’s echoed around the kitchen. “Just one piece is enough for me,” Sumire said.

“I’ve had enough fugu to last a lifetime,” Gen said. “And you still don’t make it good as Father did.” Ayami rolled her eyes, and he chuckled.

“Not sure if I should trust you, Ayami,” Keisuke said. “Maybe you’re going to poison me for the time I burned the calamari.”

They all laughed, and chatted, and promised to keep in touch, though Ayami had no idea how many of those promises would be kept. She liked them all, even Toshi, but memories of Sushi Maekawa would become a wound now, and keeping in touch with her co-workers would feel like scraping at the scabs. However, for tonight they were a family, complimenting her on the fugu meal with vocabulary the reporter would never have, cleaning up together on their last night, Gen himself sweeping and taking out garbage.

Gen would return. There were still inspectors to meet, deals to sign, further clean- up to oversee. But for the rest of them, this was the last time.

The last customer left with a ring of the old metal bell. Ayami leaned against one of the wood tables and stared at the tank on the counter.

Gen walked up to her and slowly removed his sunglasses. He blinked as if trying to clear away dust or tears.

“Maybe . . .” Ayami began.

“Hmm?”

Ayami bit her tongue. Maybe you should see someone about your eyes, she wanted to say. But she’d already voiced those concerns a dozen times, and Gen always brushed her off.

Instead, she gestured at the three remaining torafugu. “Such a shame to throw them out.”

“What do you propose?”

She couldn’t keep them. She still lived in the single-room flat she’d had since her office worker days; she didn’t need anything bigger since she spent most of her life in Sushi Maekawa. She wouldn’t be able to keep torafugu alive for long. And she didn’t want to stare at them all day, didn’t want to be reminded of the life she’d lost.

“I’ll need a container,” she said. “And rope.”

They found a clear plastic container with a lid and a length of yellow rope. Ayami scooped water and fugu from the tank to the container, and Gen poked holes in the lid to allow air to pass through. Ayami bound the rope around the container and tied a handle at the top.

At the door, Ayami bowed to Gen. “Thank you for everything.”

He shook his head. “No, I should thank you. I have barely a quarter of my father’s culinary talent. It’s thanks to you that Fugu Maekawa survived so long.”

Ayami didn’t miss how he’d used the restaurant’s former name. “It’s thanks to you, too. A restaurant is more than its chef.”

The corners of Gen’s mouth curled upward. “We outlasted all of them, didn’t we? Take care, Ayami. You were the best there was.”

She hefted her backpack and the container of fugu. “Take care, Gen.”

The walk to the bus stop seemed to take twice as long as usual. Her multi-tab said the next bus would arrive in twenty minutes— decent, considering how late it was and how much public transport had downsized. The bus arrived, carrying only two other passengers: a woman and a man sitting side by side. They gawked at Ayami and the fugu visible through the container. The woman whispered a string of words to her companion and gesticulated so fervently that Ayami wondered if she recognized her. The woman looked old enough to have read Shimonoseki Life back in the day.

Ayami got off at the Kanmon Wharf. It was a short walk to the harbor, the container in her right hand, the fugu staring out into the night, as uncertain as Ayami herself. Even if the city lights blinked out, the skies were no longer clear enough for anyone to see stars. Her steps tapped a steady rhythm on the wooden walkway. She could see the abandoned aquarium building. Once she could’ve asked them to take the torafugu, but now that wasn’t possible.

Ayami knelt on the empty pier, placed the container beside her, and after a moment’s hesitation, released the fugu into the Kanmon Straits.

They would probably die out there. Most things did these days, out on the tainted waters. But maybe they’d survive. They’d survived this long, from their trip to the restaurant and now back to the sea.

Ayami returned to the bus stop and flicked on her multi-tab. She tapped the mailbox icon and opened the JAXA pamphlet.

The land and sea these days were not made for her any more than they were made for the fugu. But maybe she too could find livable waters. She read and reread the registration dates, locking them away in her mind. She’d made change work before, when her life and career had been tumbling toward dead ends. Sumire was right. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

in a crowded room: dress to blend in. No sudden movements, no bright lipstick, bright hair. No loud laughter. You can move among others without attracting attention. Just nod and smileon a city street. Don’t make eye contact. Wear sunglasses. Never smile, or frown. Walk on the shadowed side. Learn to blend into your environment;…

The line is long for a medicine show. It is headlined by a switch of a man who, according to his placard, is called Hanrahan and whose chief ware is a milky green solution by the name of “Doctor Hanrahan’s Clairvoyance Balsam and Vermifuge.”“Can we go? Can we go?” cry Conrad and Lizzie from the end…