Jane banned me from fixing car engines after costly re-repairs undercut my budget-sparing effort. Fine. It surprised me when Jane asked me to take apart the furnace, find the problem, put it together. I’m finished. It’s in one piece, except a nut, two wires, and this metal...thing. The pilot light lights, but no ignition. We’re almost young, there aren’t extra funds to tap. Long before How-to videos. Prehistoric. We freeze three days before trial and error smiles on us with heat. Jane under heaps of blankets wonders aloud if she could have loved a mechanic as easily. My brutal humorist.

—From the author’s in-progress manuscript, In the Location Business, a collection primarily of microfictions.

Todd Mercer’s

short collection Ingenue was a winner of the Celery City contest. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, is available free at Right Hand Pointing. Recent work appears in Beatnick Cowboy, Flash Frontier, and Literary Yard.