There are still moments when he feels like a child. He is in the passenger seat of a car. The driver isn’t speaking. It’s late evening, early summer. The radio plays some nebulous punk-rap-ska track from the late 90s. He doesn’t quite remember it. He looks out the window without seeing and remembers trips as a child spent reading speculative fiction in the back seat. He remembers the sensation of journeys overlapping, of The Fellowship of the Ring juxtaposed with a cross-section of amputated mountainside along I-87 South. He had fallen asleep once in  rest stop parking lot and dreamed that his parents had returned from the bathrooms with a bag of live eels for him to eat. He rolls the window down. He wants to write today.

It’s dark when he gets back to his apartment. He has trouble fitting the key in the lock. He’s afraid to force it. He imagines the body of the key lodged in the lock, its head snapped off in his hand. He closes his eyes and sees a gently condescending look on his landlord’s middle-aged face. He makes it inside, finally.  He flips the light switch. The incandescent bulb flashes and then burns out.