About the work

He’d walked out of the blue light just for a moment, to get something from the kitchen, but the chair in the corner caught him. It was a good chair, solid and well-used, but today it felt like a trap, its upright back unforgiving. The fence outside was what he focused on, that single nail head like a tiny, watchful eye. He was remembering a story about a neighbor who spent an entire summer trying to pull that nail out, convinced it was holding up some ancient spirit of the house. No one ever saw what became of that neighbor.