There Is No Escape.

Emma closes a door. Willie flirts with his neighbor. Joany contemplates water shoes. Raquel awaits the death of her

parents. Pip pines for her cousin. Nadine measures proportions. Me, and you, and everyone else chain-smoke cigarettes

while someone searches for an escape.

There Is No Escape. paints a series of intimate portraits, which reflect the age-old saying, "Wherever you go, there you

are." This anthology chronicles the lives of distinct characters as they undergo varying states of desiring escape from

their lives. The stories capitalize on the paralyzing nature of inescapability in love, loss, aging, and the passing of time. By

overlapping in theme, but standing alone in content, these stories showcase the oddly relatable aspects of life despite the

lone quality of experience.

The following is an excerpt from "Me and You (and Everyone Else)"

"...I envy those who obsess over saving time, rather than spending or wasting, but those people are either disgustingly

happy or otherwise raising children.

Saving, spending, not wasting-no matter the route, these are all just subversions from the moments when time starts to

act on us. We are consumed with acting on time the way we so effortlessly did when we were young. Spending time

spending time just to spend time or saving time to save time just to save time. Everything is boiling down to snapshots

between and around each other-one spends time while the other saves, the two of them wanting something from time

but nothing to do with each other.

If everything was everything for forever, time would not carry this much weight. Things would be slightly different for

me. I would be one of those girls who posts dozens of pictures of herself, making the same blasé expression in the same

boring, ugly-ironic outfit. Then, at the end of my life, I'd be content, left with hundreds of pictures of myself making the

same face and wearing the same clothes. More fulfilling ways to spend the time would have never crossed my mind.

Unfortunately, forever is a curious thing and I am not one of those girls. So instead, time eats me alive if I don't find

something to satiate its passing..."