The air was thick with heat, the kind that made the world feel slow, like a record played at the wrong speed. She sat on the hood of her car, parked just off an empty stretch of highway, an old transistor radio beside her, its silver dial catching the last of the sun. Static whispered […]

The sun hung low, turning the cracked asphalt into a bumpy trail of gold. She stood outside a roadside diner, its neon sign buzzing half-dead in the heat. EATS, it promised, though the “S” flickered as if it had second thoughts. She wasn’t waiting for anyone. That was the thing. People always thought a girl

She pulled off the road when the heat waves started looking like ghosts. The sky stretched wide and empty, except for a hawk riding the currents, waiting for something small to make a mistake. At the edge of the lot sat a diner, its neon sign gasping its last blue breath. Inside, the air was

There was a man who spent his life drawing maps. Not the kind that led to treasure, but the kind that told you where you already were. He sketched cracked sidewalks, old diner booths, backroad motels with flickering neon signs. If you’d been somewhere, he could draw it like he had lived there himself. People