On Certain Days, the Hurt Feels Brand New

Most people love the music computer in Sara's brain. Earworm lyrics. Trivia and connections. Obscure cover versions. She knows it all. Only one person knows the obsession behind Sara's knowledge. And the heartache she hides.

Can a break with the past show Sarah a new future?

Originally appeared in Obsessions: An Anthology of Original Fiction, Stark Publishing, 2020

An excerpt from At the Heart of It All: The Day All Her Best Defenses Fail

Sarah may have been born with the computer, but her father had at least installed the software and optimized it for music. The massive database she'd been filling as long as she could remember.

Anything that changed after that hadn't been his fault.

"Not now. Not while you're in this traffic."

She took advantage of a dead stop on the highway and called up Jimi Hendrix and Crosstown Traffic to distract herself.

Keeping the calendars out of her office helped some with this dreadful, painful month. Same with turning off the displays on her phone and her computers at work. Even if she'd followed her occasional impulse and spent all of October in some sort of technology and communication void, she'd know.

Some part of Sara knew exactly what day it was.

Every single year.

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