“I’m Will Landon and you’re listening to Night Train on KHJZ, Radio R&R. Here’s a little lullaby…”
Your chocolate-fondue voice yields to silken jazz, a mastery of sound so artful it hushes my debilitating phobia.
Maybe one day I’ll venture outside, into a world equally endowed with such gentle manners.
Râna is currently trapped in her home by snowbanks as tall as herself.
Day after day, Niles sits at the kitchen table contemplating the same glass of water. Is it half empty or half full? Niles realizes that once he’s peeled back all the perceptual layers, there is no glass. He just wishes his dad had finished the damn thing before he died.
Râna Campbell wrote this story.
“Come here, little sugar pillow,” my husband used to say, enfolding me in his arms on our sleep-in Saturday mornings. He died before I mastered his native Icelandic and learned he’d been using the literal translation of “marshmallow.” I still glance at my love handles, wondering just what he’d meant.
Râna had a beautiful decade of living in the northwest of Iceland interrupted by the pandemic, and she’s now preparing for the zombie apocalypse in her hometown of Montreal.
April’s showers were nothing compared to its deluge of awkward compliments on the wig. Fatima washed up on her doorstep, drained from the month’s third chemical assault, and adjusted the monstrosity. The tulips budding in the garden caught her eye, and a smile like the sun broke across her face.
Râna hates writing about herself but loves referring to herself in the third person.
November brings darkness. The sheep are enclosed. Fishing will be good provided forgiving seas.
Women bide time knitting. The hardy jog in blizzards. The lonely drink.
Northern lights extend the horizon until the sun again conquers the mountaintops.
That day, we host neighbours for coffee and pancakes, savouring our endurance.
Râna is an editor from Montreal who lived in a small town in Iceland for nearly ten years. Her work has been longlisted for the Australian Writers’ Center’s Furious Fiction showcase and shortlisted for the New Writers Flash Fiction Competition. Her first publication credit is forthcoming with the 42 Stories Anthology.