The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

by Mariana Enriquez

“Go home. Leave us here. And don’t worry. We’ll get out someday. Someday soon.”

These "endings" are so lazy it's astonishing.

She still felt the same fear that had paralyzed her in the hotel’s circular hallways when she was little; it was the same fear that kept her away from the practically monastic dining room on the first floor, or from the big mirror awaiting restoration in the guest room used for storage, where she was afraid of seeing something unknown reflected.

These stories are heavily repetitive. Ghost kids, public diarrhea, absurd and unaccountable fear. Yet none of them have actual plots.

She was beautiful, but she didn’t know it.

Eye roll