By Daniel R. Mangru

She’s twelve, almost thirteen, and keeps things to herself. 

I interrupt her video game. “Let’s go for a drive,” I say. 

We pass shopping complexes, parks, houses—a blur of normalcy. 

The warehouse parking lot is empty. 

I park the car. 

“Come around,” I tell her, opening my door. 

“Gas, brake, mirrors.” A quick lesson. 

She steers, accelerates, slows, and stops; reacting to phantom obstacles that I call out. 

I teach what I can. The doctor says I don’t have long. 

She glances at me, a question in her eyes. I just smile, soaking it all in. 

She’ll be fine.

*   *   *

Daniel R. Mangru is currently an MFA Creative Writing student at Dominican University of California, with a passion for exploring the unsettling beauty of everyday people. Influenced by the minimalist prose of Raymond Carver and the imaginative twists and social consciousness of Rod Serling, he writes literary, speculative, and gothic fiction.