You are listening to yet another Clarkshould podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker,

greetings Clarkshould citizens. I hope this podcast finds you very well. This is our fourth story

for the month of January 2025, issue 220. Thank you for supporting us in 2025. Thank you for

supporting us in all the years prior. Without you, we can't bring you

these wonderful stories, arts, podcasts, nonfiction, and pay the people behind putting this

all together each and every month. So thank you if you have gone to patreon.com forward slash Clarksworld

or Clarksvillecitizens.com or have bought a subscription.

You help me do something I absolutely love doing, so thank you.

Our story is titled The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe and is by Tia Tisharo.

Now Tia is a multiracial science fiction fantasy writer hailing from the Pacific Northwest. By day,

she works in a neurobiology lab. By night, she writes, and in between, she dabbles in stained

glass and juggling, though never at the same time. Her short fiction is published in Clark's World,

uncanny, and apex. And if you like what you hear, you can go back to every hopeless thing,

an intergalactic smugglers guide to homecoming and to carry you inside you. So my dear listener,

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

Jay scrubs at the blood spot on her tennis shoe with her thumb and a gob of spit,

hurried by the knowledge that Hardy will be there any moment.

It's swelter hot on the gravel backroad, and she's doused in the sound of cicadas from the forest behind her, and the quiet knowledge of

what she's left in that forest to rot. An engine growls through the human air, and Jay straightens up

like a kid caught sneaking treats from the pantry. Ivy gnarls up through the rusted mailbox by

the side of the road. She sets her elbow atop it, trying for casual, but flinches

back when the mailbox creaks ominously. By the time Hardy arrives, Jay's standing contraposto,

...