In Bloom

by Paul Tremblay

She eyes a cellophane-wrapped pack of pandemic-holdover N95 masks on the passenger seat, but she doubts their efficacy against toxic gas.

he joked that she was always in a rush to drive away. She said, “The opposite. I’m always driving toward something,”

residents had been mandated to update or replace their septic systems by the year 2030 in a Cape-wide attempt to curtail the high levels of algae-feeding nitrogen and phosphorus within the untreated human waste that enters the waterways.

the effects of the cyanobacteria’s toxins had contributed to a drowning, a possible disappearance, and scores of illnesses among players and fans who had attended the Orleans Cardinals Cape League baseball game.

There are always truths submerged within stories, and her job is, if not to dredge them up, then to invite readers onto her own chartered boat, guiding them so that they may uncover those truths from the murky waters for themselves.

Perhaps like most stubborn men, he didn’t know how to admit to being wrong without foolishly feeling like he was negating himself and everything in which he believed.

There was an overpowering, tangy smell, a room full of lilacs with none of the sweetness, though the smell was swampy too, the moldering of vegetation and sediment brined in vinegar.

traveling within the coded memory of my DNA, back to when our ancestors lived in the primordial oceans and were nothing but nerves and electrical impulses dedicated to environmental observation and reaction, with little bandwidth to spare for a singular, primitive sentience.

I want to be made into an antenna again. I want to be connected, or reconnected, to that evolutionary wavelength that’s millions of years old. Somewhere in that signal, in that near-infinite chain, I’ll find my father.

Heidi has learned never to underestimate the mysteries of the whys, truths, and lies we tell each other.