Their house was

Pressing your nose into the crackling spine of an ancient novel –
Coarse pages and the small warmth of unraveling vanilla.
Nostalgia.

But there was another smell too, around the edges.
One that made it a different story.

A smell like rotten apples  hidden somewhere years before
And forgotten.
A heart-sinking, suspicious nostalgia.

The clock is ticking. You're trying desperately to explain something and you don't have enough time.

End the story wondering...

pulsing, teeming,
breathing meaning

into



me

Warm air from the summer night blasts through the open windows.
I don’t know where we’re going.
I don’t think he knows either.
"Just drive," he says.

So I do.

Del sat on the steps in front of a brick building, smoking a cigarette. She looked more like a thick, young teenage boy that a woman in her mid-twenties. With her track jacket collar pulled up tight around her, she recoiled into herself, slinking back into the steps. She siphoned a long deep inhale of smoke.

Andie blew the cigarette smoke through her tightened lips and whistled the smoke at the mirror in front of her. She reviewed her reflection critically with squinting eyes. It was cold and dark in the room except for the hot glow of cigarette and the glare of a bare light bulb without a lampshade. Her skin stood up with goosebumps and her ******* were small and hard.