“Howdy from Upstairs”—2008 SC Fiction Project winner
Captain Mandrake, as he calls himself, strides into the room—a living space, warm, cluttered, three generations’ worth of portraiture and bric-a-brac, the only sound the crackling of a dying fire—and proceeds, as he is wont to do, to cause me no shortage of distress: And it is late, and the chill of January has settled over the world. I am reading; I am at a good part. It is my one escape, this.
But by now, I am used to the routine. I’m just especially tired tonight.
