A lost carnival mechanic meets up with a couple guys working on a housing development in the New Mexico desert.

(from One Story)

With a beautiful setting and semi-strange characters, this story had the potential for all kinds of plot directions and surprise endings, in the story and in the story within the story. Instead it was merely weird. It set up a sense of dread and the potential for something drastic, but nothing happened. But, you know, to hell with judging a story on what it wasn’t. I think I was craving a twist is all.
The story, as it was, was neat, indiosyncratic in an uncasual way that led me to believe every little moment had a purpose, even when it clearly didn’t. The deliberately molassesian unraveling (and one glaring typo) did put a damper on things, but hey.

Here‘s a Q&A with Peter Rock about this “Lights,” because it’s a One Story story.

Tullycraft, “Secretly Minnesotan”