Sunrise on the Farm by Holly Day

She walks down the road, numb, oblivious to the rasp of burnt grass against her skin. Who knows what happened at the old farmhouse far behind her, its windows like black eyes, watching her walk away? It could be a home she is walking away from, full of loving parents, family members who meant well but just didn’t understand her dreams, could be something worse, a childhood home, but full of dark memories that were all too easy to leave behind, could be a stranger’s house, some place she woke up in, abandoned in a basement or tied to a radiator, her captor off on errands for just long enough to craft an escape, it could be even worse: her own home, her husband, dead on the floor, either because she did something or something happened to him, a heart attack, a hammer to the back of his skull, an accidental fall down the stairs, a push. Is that blood on the hem of her calico knee-length dress, the thin cotton fabric catching and trapping the dried burrheads as she walks? Is that a knife in her hand, used to cut herself free from ropes with agonizingly slow and careful determination, used to strike out at her captor, her husband, her lover, with unexpected fury and force? Or is that just her purse, clenched tightly against her side, containing a single bus ticket with an unreadable destination, a handful of bills, a phone number and address scribbled on a wrinkled scrap of paper?

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Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, The Hong Kong Review, and Appalachian Journal. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle.