July 16, 2025 Introduction

Doris stops. She doesn’t remember this door, or this sign.  She reads it again, out loud.

Early Landfill 
Room 428
NE Memory Lane

 What?

Something flickers in the back corner of her mind.  She shrugs it off and yanks back too hard on the knob, expecting resistance. The door swings open easily as she stumbles forward into a puff of dust and catches herself just inside. She sneezes. The smell of old papers, abandoned books, the sharp hush of memory and breath that had been held all too long.

Books, boxes, torn-out pages are scattered like the aftermath of a storm. Stacks and piles of loose sheets flutter like wind-blown leaves. Dust motes swirl in the narrow shaft of light slicing through the dimness.

 “Finally.”

Grace sits at a desk in the far corner, pen lifted off the page.

“What she said,” adds a younger voice.

The girl sits cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by scribbled notes, sketches, old typewritten pages bundled together with elastics and paper clips. She stands, brushes her dusty palms on her jeans.

“Might as well come all the way in,” she says. “Just be careful not to let the door hit you on the ass.”

Doris hesitates.

“You found this place when you let that last story crack you wide open.” Grace whispers.

A heavy sigh bubbles up and escapes her lips, loosening something tightly held within her chest as she steps inside.     

Behind her, the door swings shut.  Misses her ass by a mile.

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