Emergency Contact

by Mary H.K. Choi

Penny swallowed the rest of her questions: whether he felt like a ghost trolling the living, mining their existence for ideas; whether or not he got lonely watching other people the way Penny did.

This is what she did. It was as if she

knew the moment he was able to wake up without wanting to die and couldn’t abide by it.

It felt crazy to him that she was even another person. Her arm may as well have been his arm. That his arm had the power to turn against the rest of his body and walk away made no sense.

All the whirring that’s usually going on in my brain shuts the hell up.” “But the whirring’s good,” he said. “Your whirring’s good.”