Special Contest Feature: Kelsie Hahn

Kelsie Hahn’s story, “Looking,” was named a finalist in the 2014 Psychopomp Magazine Short Fiction Contest. We’re very pleased to be able to feature it now on our website. Below is a little teaser from the opening paragraphs. If you like what you see, just follow the link to load the full version.

 
Bedford had another ten minutes to sleep, but instead he lay on his stomach, staring through the wall at his neighbor, 40-odd years old and asleep in his Star Wars sheets, who would punch the wall when Bedford’s alarm went off until the noise stopped. The neighbor would roll over, fall back asleep in his childhood bedroom set with the dresser drawers half-opened and over-flowing with adult-sized clothes. The neighbor was balding, sleeping on his left side because his right shoulder had broken and healed badly some years before, and mumbling to his stomach, which had the puckered, round beginning of an ulcer. All of this, Bedford knew. Weeks ago, Bedford slipped a junk mail coupon for antacids under the neighbor’s door. He wasn’t even sure that’s what you do for ulcers.
          Bedford had X-ray vision. Of a sort. His sight was in constant flux, his days an unending shift between gears and organs, crawl-spaces and bones. Even face-down in his pillow, his vision fluctuated between the cheap batting fluff, the fitted sheet beneath, the fire-retardant mattress cover, the mattress springs, back to the batting. He reached to the left and slid his hand over the cool sheets, still tucked under the mattress on the other side. Empty. And in another 5 minutes, he would roll out of bed, tip-toe on the hardwood, look out the window, brush his teeth, shrug into a shirt, shuffle into the kitchen, but it would be completely different . . . Continue Reading