And Then I Woke Up

by Malcolm Devlin

Isn’t it beautiful how stories can work like that? The subtle way they help the teller, the subversive way they reach the listener, how they creep inside you like waking dreams.

I read voraciously, because words on a page felt committed in a way words said out loud were not.

Quite simply, a piece of her arm was missing, as though it had been carefully filleted, served rare in its own sauce.

The world has always been bigger than us as a species, and it’s only our own limited viewpoint that makes us think we’ll ever be in a position to destroy it so decisively.

His theory is that our dreams serve a facility to work through our perception of different realities and the narrative shuts them down as though they represent a form of competition.

The shots sang as the monsters fell and then you were alone and it felt like a promise.