Browse the archive
Topic: memory
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Show and Tell
Approx. 19 min read
In a school built among the remains of civilization, a teacher's weekly salvage lesson uncovers an object that knows more about her past than she does.
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The Apologies
Approx. 16 min read
Strangers approach Peter Haines to confess injuries he cannot remember suffering, while records begin supporting lives he never lived. One apology finally leads him to an offense whose true direction he knows.
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The Only Stranger
Approx. 16 min read
Ruthann Prosser weighs gravel trucks at a quarry outside Mitchell, Indiana, and six days ago something came back that everybody else gets to lose. The trouble isn't what she finds in there. It's what she can't find.
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The Last Call
Approx. 26 min read
A county records worker follows ringing landlines through abandoned buildings and learns that answering for a place can become a kind of custody.
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The Obscura Spore
Approx. 28 min read
A woman comes north to empty her dead mother's hoarder house, expecting a month of sacks and a skip. On the fourth day she reaches for the wall of newspapers that has stood in the front room since 1991 and her arm goes into it up to the wrist. What's underneath is cold, translucent, and sweating a fluid that smells of her mother's perfume and the back of a hot television. It doesn't fight when she cuts it. It takes something else instead, and she only notices what's missing when her sister mentions a summer she can no longer find.