Meet Sunday, a woman who seems to have her life in order. Or perhaps there’s too much order. “To outsiders, her life seemed golden. On the inside, though, she was feeling more and more like one of those insects preserved in warm yellow amber and hung on museum walls…” and so Sunday embarks on a search for meaning, for contact, for something—anything.
However, she doesn’t go about this journey by running a marathon, backpacking across Europe, or attempting to climb Mount Everest. She doesn’t take up knitting, or a book club, or begin volunteering in a soup kitchen. No. In “Exit,” Allison Kelly has our protagonist begin her quest by “taking deep dives into dark corners of the Internet.”
The narrator uses swimming in uncharted waters as a metaphor for Sunday’s journey. “She was reaching for the ocean floor, for something new – and then her fingertips brushed sand.” In what form will the answers arrive? As a series of signs, of course. Signs that would stand out amidst the daily grind, hiding in plain sight. The first of which appears as, “four green letters perfectly reflected in the corner of her glasses, like a secret message just for her: E X I T.”
What will Sunday discover? Or, more importantly, what discovery will the reader make by following Sunday’s quest? Read the story and find out for yourself! There is indeed a twist that you won’t want to miss.
Source: Kelly, Allison. “Exit.” Maudlin House, 19 December 2023, https://maudlinhouse.net/exit/.
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