You are listening to a Clarks World magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Greetings Clarksville citizens and welcome to the third story for the month of September,

issue 216.

Do hope that these stories are finding you well. And as always, thank you for your ongoing support.

Whether it's telling a friend, buying a subscription, or going to Patreon.com, forward slash Clark's World, you are the ones who let us continue to bring you

these fabulous short fiction pieces we can't do this without you and if you

haven't yet supported the magazine, please consider doing so.

It's titled Broken and is by Laura Williams McCaffrey.

Laura Williams McCaffrey's short stories have appeared in Cakeda,

Solis Literary magazine and YA Review Network,

earning such honors as the SCBWI magazine Merit Award.

She's also published three YA fantasy novels with Clarion books, Marked, Water Shaper, and Aalia Waking.

She teaches at Solstice, the low-res MFA program at Lassal University, and at Cabot School, a small K-12 school.

She lives in a little house in the Vermont woods with her musician husband.

So my dear listener, I hope that you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

7. to the hum and wine of the air filtration system crank to its highest setting. She has become

accustomed to her cell four paces long, four paces wide. Its lack of view. She has become accustomed to

peering through green goggles to seeing the walls and most

everything as yellow-green. Yellow-green walls, pantry door, front door, bathroom door, sink, water heater, reclining chair with its feeding IVs and

other tubes and wires that she's usually hooked into through her suit. She's about to make all of this disappear.

She stands on her suit in front of her reclining chair and she cradles her helmet,

which she can't stop petting.

...