Too Close for Comfort
Newsletter Archive July 29, 2021
Welcome (back) to Unmasked! It’s been a while since we were last in touch, but that’s because our small team is working away on all of the wonderful submissions we have received.
Some big news: Our official deadline for submissions is August 31, 2021. If you or someone you know has a 2020 story to share, don’t wait! The clock is ticking. You can submit your story here.
We hope that this newsletter finds you and your community safer and healthier than our last message. Safety — and its importance — is something that writer Julie Aitcheson knows all about. Her story, “As I Slept,” tells of an unsettling crime that occurred just down the block from her residence during the pandemic.
If Julie’s name sounds familiar to you, it’s because she has been published in the likes of L.A. Weekly, The Baltimore Sun, and The Chicago Tribune, among other venues. She has also written two young adult novels: Being Roy and First Girl.
When she isn’t writing, Julie works as an international educator. Until last year, a better question than “Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?” was probably “Where in the World is Julie Aitcheson?” But at the start of the pandemic, Aitcheson found herself staying at her parents house in West Virginia.
Julie Aitcheson
“My life as an international educator came to an abrupt halt and my plans to pack my life into my backpack for another adventure vanished as though they had never been,” she says. “In its place, I found a committed relationship, a new home, and a sense of groundedness and security that I haven't known since early childhood. When a murder victim was discovered less than half a mile from where I slept, it was a stark reminder that domestication, security, and routine are all just as vulnerable to the unexpected as the nomadic life I loved and lost.”
Aitcheson’s story grapples with the lingering discomfort that accompanies this knowledge:
“At the close of our loop, we approached the road again and followed the fence line back to our starting point. Mid-step, my boyfriend startled, teetering for a moment as if at a cliff’s edge. We’d stumbled right up to the border of a patch of charred ground roughly the size an adult would leave if he’d fallen into a snowdrift and made an angel. My throat convulsed in a hard, hydraulic action. Seeing the burned ground made the body real. Heat flared in my chest and eyes. With the pandemic shrinking my world by the day, the land left for me to walk had become an extension of my body. I did not want my body to feel the way that patch of ground looked, ruined and forgotten.
The next day I returned to the site and sat beside the ashes in hopes that my silent witnessing might fade the dark imprint of what had happened there. I poked a wild turkey feather into the ash along with a stick of lit incense. As I sat, afternoon sunlight crept over the charred ground, turning the smoke from the incense into dancers entwined. When I finally rose and walked away, I felt lighter, like my body had declared a kind of truce with itself.”
Thanks to Julie for sharing her incredible story with us. Want to hear the rest? Look for the full version of “As I Slept” in Hindsight when it is published.