The Staircase in the Woods

by Chuck Wendig

(“I’m a youse guy in yins territory,” he was wont to say.)

“You’re bleeding,” his seatmate said. Lumpy guy, smelled like hoagie oil.

I can taste this

People are allowed to change, he thought, less like a belief he agreed with and more like an argument he was desperately trying to make to the jury of himself.

You’re in your diet soda era, a fading photograph of who you once were. I can’t even see you in there.

ate

In it were a dozen fish of several varieties, all dead, so dead they were nearly disintegrating, wisps of fish fiber floating off of them.