Every day he ascended the creaking stairs, carefully removed the cloth from the clouded crystal prism, and asked the same question—only to receive the same answer. Until the day came that the stairs stayed silent and the cloth, left undisturbed, was obscured by soft-falling dust, and dustier, and dustier.

Stephanie Lane Gage is an artist and writer in Los Angeles, CA. Her short story “Anomalous Instances of Black Ball Lightning in Daggett, Michigan” was recently published in Interzone (issue #295). You can find more of her visual and written work at @slg.pdf.