speculative fiction Missy Matchstick speculative fiction Missy Matchstick

The In-N-Out Between Worlds

A woman drifting through the California desert follows a mysterious receipt into a world where In-N-Out counters, drive-in screens, and motel ghosts begin replaying the love she never knew how to stay inside. As memory gives way to possibility, she is offered one last order: keep running, or take what was waiting for her all along.

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speculative fiction Missy Matchstick speculative fiction Missy Matchstick

Waffling in the House of Her

In a stilted chapel at the edge of the desert, a woman finds twenty-nine versions of the same lost love waiting in the pews for her. What unfolds is a surreal reckoning with memory, repetition, and the stories we keep revising when we cannot bear to let them die.

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speculative fiction Missy Matchstick speculative fiction Missy Matchstick

White Sands, I’m Not Lost Anymore

A woman wakes after death in a white desert where sorrow blooms into flowers, old letters can be buried into beauty, and the people she left behind come to meet her one by one. What unfolds is a surreal reckoning with love, regret, and the possibility of peace after a life that hurt too much to stay inside.

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magical realism Missy Matchstick magical realism Missy Matchstick

Where The Desert Keeps Her

Somewhere off an unnamed road in the Mojave, a motel appears for those who have lost something they can’t return to. Inside, the rooms shift with your memory, and a girl who may not be entirely human offers you exactly what you didn’t know you needed to let go.

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Writing The California Fever Dream

 

“Outside, the sky began changing colors like it was unsure which version of the sunset to run. A Joshua Tree caught fire, silently. Beautifully. And then reassembled itself in reverse.”

Static at the edge of 29 Palms

“She could taste the day. Hot pennies. Sunscreen. The faint chemical sweetness of melted plastic… She told herself this was normal. California normal. A climate that didn’t ask permission.”

What California Makes

“The heat was biblical and immediate. By the time she had crossed the wash and climbed the low rise beyond it, her shirt was sticking to her back and her thoughts had gone strangely bright around the edges.”

Roofline Blonde