Sara Gaines

The Last Winter

My eyes burst open. Hair, sweaty and tangled, sticks to the back of my neck. The small suburban guestroom is dark, but the streetlights lining the cul-de-sac cast a glow on the wall at the foot of my blow-up mattress. Fuzzy, thrift store paintings stare back at me. Squinting, I try to make sense of the lines and shapes, but I don’t have my glasses on. If I wasn’t so numb when I landed, I might have taken a moment to look around and absorb my surroundings. They changed the room around since the last time I was in town.