No Exit

by Taylor Adams

Like Blue bogging down in this heavy snow, miles from human help—it’ll bury you if you let it. Inhale. Count to five. Exhale.

Am I overreacting? Maybe. Maybe not.

Her thoughts were scattering, her caffeine high deserting her. She needed some damn coffee.

No panic, no fight, no flight, just that shivery little moment when daily life goes rancid.

There’s refuge in normalcy—if you can hold on to it.

Kids were just messy, belligerent little creatures that stressed her out. She’d often wondered how her own mother could’ve handled her, especially since she’d been unplanned.

This was America, where cops and robbers carry guns. Where, as the NRA tells us, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

These two overgrown kids were unprepared for the complexity and scale of what they were attempting.