Interview by Gary Fincke

Because I haven’t been working, my wife has taken a stupid job. Because she needs our car in order to sell door-to-door, I am boarding a bus for the city. “Everything,” I tell her, “goes faster when you’re unemployed.”

“You’ve said that before,” Lorrie says. “It makes no sense.”

“This time I mean it.”

“You’re thirty-four years old, Stephen.”

“It’s like I’m living in chipmunk time,” I say. “It’s like hunting for acorns before winter.”

“Get on the bus,” she says.  “Get the job.”

It’s seven miles to the city. But after a few miles, the bus slows to a pace that makes me imagine I can outrun it. During high school, I tried that when I was late to a scholarship exam. I had an opportunity to win four years of free tuition, and my father had the station wagon stuck in traffic. As I watched the clock on the billboard at the end of the bridge, I decided to run. My father yelled when I opened the door, but I took off along the sidewalk, figuring I could make the last half mile in about three minutes, which would leave me a minute or so to register.

It was a stupid thing to do.  Even pumped up like I was by panic, I couldn’t do a half mile in three minutes wearing street shoes and a coat.  My father pulled up beside me after six blocks and four minutes. All he said was, “Nice try.”  I was sweating and breathless, and it turned out the test had a fifteen-minute grace period for late registration.

Right now, I don’t feel at all like running. I feel like I’ve already outpaced the bus and reached the city. That I’ve already spoken to strangers who will send me a rejection email later in the week.

Last night, in bed, as I tried to explain how I have spent most of my life thinking ahead of myself, Lorrie fell asleep and left me lying wide awake. For more than a few minutes. For more than ten. Until I heard ticking that sounded so much like a pulse that I shook her awake. “Do you hear that?” I asked.

She rolled over and faced away from me as if she needed privacy to listen. It was past eleven o’clock, and I was thinking of how early I had to be at the bus station. “Don’t you hear that?”

“No.”

“You’re not even trying.  It’s coming from over there.”

“Where?”

She wasn’t whispering the way someone who believed me would, but I stayed still and softly said, “By the window.”

“Which one?” she practically shouted.

“By your dresser.”

She propped herself up while I held my breath. “Maybe you’ve been dreaming,” she said, but I didn’t answer. She turned away from me, moving slightly closer to whatever she heard.

She sat up then, and I was surprised at her courage. Usually, I have to inspect the house for her, checking locks and the children. “It’s my quartz watch,” she said, anger in her tone.

“You woke me up for a sound you’ve heard every night for more than a year?”

I buried my ears in my folded pillow. There was nothing I could say to her about how being useless improves your senses. How light and sound and smell can be terrifying, that danger is amplified by speed and time. I waited for her to go back to sleep before I let my pillow fall open, but now that she’d told me, the sound had shifted to something like rustling leaves, something you don’t wake up for, not unless there’s a constant wind. Or, more likely, not unless someone is parting them, carefully pushing through as he approaches your darkened house.

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GARY FINCKE — Gary’s latest flash collection is The History of the Baker’s Dozen (Pelekinesis 2024). His latest book is After Arson: New and Selected Essays (Madville 2025). He is co-editor of the annual anthology Best Microfiction.

Art by CLARISSA KURTALIAJ — Clarissa lives between a bakery and the woods with her husband, Ted and their pup, Grub. She graduated in studio art and english from St. Lawrence University and now continues to weave her wonders of the world by crafting hanging mobiles, taking care of family, watching the seasons, and learning the art of pastry chef. She loves reading and writing and now, is loving illustration.