Steven Millhauser

It’s difficult to know exactly what we feel about our phantoms, but I think it is fair to say that in the moment we see them, before we’re seized by a familiar emotion like fear, or anger, or curiosity, we are struck by a sense of strangeness, as if we’ve suddenly entered a room we have never seen before, a room that nevertheless feels familiar. Then the world shifts back into place and we continue on our way.

Five past twelve. Do you know where your children are? The room is so hot that the heat is a hand gripping her throat. Got to move, got to do something. Moonlight is streaming in past the edges of the closed and slightly raised venetian blinds. She can’t breathe in this room, in this house. Oh man, do something. Do it. The crickets are growing louder.

but the thought disturbs her— she feels exposed, a girl in moonlight, out in the open, spied on. She doesn’t want anyone to look at her. No one is allowed to think about her body.

The inside of her skin itches. Her bones itch. So how do you scratch your bones?

has the sudden sense that the whole project is astray, his whole life astray, but the thought is so terrifying that he quickly suppresses it.

He ought to clear out all this junk, but it would be like throwing away his childhood.

He never throws anything out

His heart lifts. The night will forgive him.

she dreams of release

Sometimes it seems to her that she is simply waiting—waiting for the moment when she will be able to relax her will a little.