The novel’s famous opening line—“Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time”—has become practically synonymous with post-traumatic stress disorder. Slaughterhouse-Five can be a profound source of comfort and healing for trauma survivors, particularly war veterans. During the Vietnam War, The New York Times described the novel as a kind of self-help manual for psychic pain. A Vietnam veteran once praised the book, describing himself as “unstuck” at times. Vonnegut’s daughter later revealed that her father experienced PTSD himself and that he wrote the novel in an effort to save his own life. In doing so, he may have saved many others. Veterans from later conflicts, including Iraq, have also spoken of turning to Vonnegut’s novel for solace, finding that it helped lessen feelings of guilt, grief, and emotional pain associated with combat trauma.

Billy’s PTSD manifests through his nonlinear experience of time. He moves unpredictably through different moments of his life—one moment a young soldier in the war, the next an older man approaching death, or even his own birth. This fragmented structure mirrors the way trauma affects memory, pulling sufferers out of the present moment through trauma triggers. In the novel, Billy is triggered by a barbershop quartet singing at his wedding anniversary in 1967; their harmony reminds him of the guards who stood outside the slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners of war were held. Other recurring PTSD triggers include specific color combinations—ivory-white and orange-black—and evocative smells such as mustard gas and roses. On many levels, Billy appears to be reliving his trauma through nightmares or subconscious flashbacks. When a siren goes off, he expects “World War Three.” His constant movement through time places him in a “constant state of fright,” a condition familiar to many people living with complex trauma.

Billy’s travels to the planet Tralfamadore reveal an intense need for escapism, a common coping mechanism among those with PTSD. Like many trauma survivors, he creates a fantasy world where painful memories of war cannot reach him. His frequent dissociation, a hallmark symptom of severe trauma, further illustrates his psychological fragility. He fears he might “shatter like glass.” Unlike the hypervigilance often associated with PTSD, Billy appears dazed and emotionally numb. When he arrives at a POW camp, and his coat catches fire, he barely reacts, prompting a British soldier to remark, “This isn’t a man. It’s a broken kite.” The first time Billy becomes unstuck in time is in 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, when he becomes a “dazed wanderer.” Even when shot at, he simply stands still.

Billy also exhibits suicidal ideation, another tragic reality for many people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Rather than fearing death, he often welcomes it, resenting those who rescue him from it. Hints of this appear even in his childhood, such as when he fears he might jump into the Grand Canyon. This suggests either early childhood trauma or, given the novel’s nonlinear view of time, trauma that reverberates across his entire life.

Vonnegut describes soldiers as “living moment to moment in a constant state of terror, thinking brainlessly with their spinal cords.” Modern trauma psychology supports this depiction. Trauma over-activates the amygdala, the brain’s fear center, while impairing the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, which govern memory, emotional regulation, and logical thinking. Billy’s symptoms reflect this neurological damage. He cannot remember basic facts, such as his age, and he frequently cries for no apparent reason. Depression, nightmares, and sleep disturbances—all common in PTSD—are prominent in his life. Other POWs refuse to sleep near him because he harms them during his sleep. After the war, Billy commits himself to a mental hospital, highlighting the difficulty many veterans face when reintegrating into civilian life after combat trauma.

While hospitalized, Billy meets Eliot Rosewater, who introduces him to the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. Billy becomes obsessed with Trout’s work, once again revealing the role of fantasy and science fiction as trauma coping tools. One of Trout’s novels, Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, describes people whose mental illnesses cannot be treated because doctors can perceive only three dimensions. At the time Slaughterhouse-Five was published, PTSD was not yet a formal diagnosis. Vonnegut may have been commenting on how trauma survivors were misunderstood and left untreated.

The novel also explores free will and trauma. A Tralfamadorian compares human existence to a bug trapped in amber and notes that only on Earth do people believe in free will. Trauma survivors often feel similarly trapped, resigned to a life shaped by suffering and stripped of agency.

Readers may find healing through this novel by gaining insight into their own experiences of trauma and recognizing themselves in Billy’s suffering. From a bibliotherapy perspective, Slaughterhouse-Five demonstrates how literature can help heal trauma by offering language, metaphor, and validation. The idea of being “unstuck in time”—unable to remain fully present—resonates deeply with many trauma survivors. More than fifty years after its publication, Slaughterhouse-Five remains a profoundly relevant novel about PTSD, memory, and the human cost of war.

Grace Mattioli is the author of  three novels: “Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees,” “Discovery of an Eagle,” and “The Bird that Sang in Color, ”  and several short stories. She is currently working on a memoir. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and her cats. Her books are available from all major online book sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

“The book isn’t just about Cosmo’s journey. It takes a hard look at the lives we live, the monotony we assume is part of adulthood, and the mediocrity we’re content to settle for. Through Cosmo’s shoes, the reader’s perspective is quietly opened to new possibilities.”
— The Lit Room Reviews

The quote above comes from my favorite review of my second novel, Discovery of an Eagle. While there are certainly worse problems than living a monotonous life, sleepwalking through existence often leads to a quiet unhappiness—a feeling of being dead inside. Over time, this disconnect pulls us away from the vital part of ourselves that gives life meaning and depth.

Like Siddhartha, Cosmo comes into contact with this lost part of himself while on a journey. Unlike Siddhartha’s awakening, however, Cosmo’s discovery is unintentional. After he and his sister, Silvia, survive a near-fatal accident, Cosmo is forced to confront the fragility of life. The encounters and experiences that follow reinforce this realization, and his healing begins.

He comes to understand that he has been living without passion, moving through life without truly inhabiting each day. Most of us live as though tomorrow is guaranteed rather than recognizing that each day is a gift. It is only when Cosmo embraces this truth that he begins to see the world’s beauty more clearly.

I first read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha many years ago, but during a recent rereading, I was struck by an unexpected connection. Hesse had used a line remarkably similar to one in my novel: “As Cosmo looked out the car window, he felt as if he was seeing the world for the first time in his life, and in some ways, he was.” Forgive me for drawing a comparison between my work and a literary classic, but the parallels were impossible to ignore.

I believe Discovery of an Eagle can be deeply healing for many readers. It invites them to reconnect with the wise, “seeing” part of themselves—what Carlos Castaneda describes as true awareness. By doing so, it can help free them from monotony, awaken their senses, and encourage them to live life more fully.

Enjoy the following excerpt from this book:

They drove right to the South Rim as the park ranger who greeted them had instructed. The magnificent Canyon opened itself up to the sky, which was half deep blue, and half filled with clouds. The clouds hung around the mountains as if they were formed to each other. Light came through the cloudless spaces in thick, bright strips and turned the Canyon iridescent shades of pink, red, brown, and orange. Each time the light shifted the picture changed dramatically. Cosmo thought it wouldn’t amaze him, but he was wrong.

As he stood and stared out at the wonder, a bald eagle flew by him, only a few feet in front of where he stood. He couldn’t believe that the creature had flown so close to him. It landed on a ledge for a few seconds and then took off again, its wingspan reaching across nearly the whole of Cosmo’s field of vision. Silvia stood right beside him, watching the eagle as it flew over their heads. Neither spoke a word until it flew away and disappeared behind a cloud.

“Wow!” Silvia said. “An eagle. I love eagles!” She looked like she wanted to start jumping up and down.

“Yeah,” Cosmo said, still staring at the final trace of the majestic bird. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so close.”

“Don’t you want to know why I love them so much?” she said, disregarding her brother’s comment.

“Why?” Cosmo asked as if humoring his sister. “Because you’re such a patriot?” He laughed, knowing well that it wasn’t the correct answer.

She looked back at him snidely and said, “Because of what they mean.”

He didn’t say anything. He knew he didn’t have to. He knew his sister would tell him the answer without being prompted to do so.

“Strength, courage, immortality, spirit, divinity,” she said, gazing into the spectacular gorge below.

He knew about eagles symbolizing courage and strength, but not about immortality, spirit and divinity. The picture of the eagle was still fresh in his mind, gracefully sweeping over the earth, its wings spread like an angel. Divinity seemed to fit just right as something that this phantom bird should symbolize. It glides along with unearthly grace to remind everyone that our own journey can be as smooth or as rocky as we chose to make it. It appears, and then it disappears as if by some divine magician, and in its brief revelation, reminds us that we all have the potential to rise above.

The Self is the wise, all-knowing part of me—the part I turn toward in moments of crisis, the voice that reminds me I’m human and doing the best I can when I make mistakes. As Siddhartha discovers, the Self is the primary source of all joy. It is infinite and enduring, unlike the external world. As he tells his friend Govinda, “Remember, the world of shapes is transitory.” Siddhartha himself was a “golden child” who rejected the path laid out for him by his father and chose, instead, the road less traveled. This spirit of individualism—a theme I’ll explore more deeply in upcoming bibliotherapy posts—runs throughout Hesse’s novel.

Although Siddhartha encountered many teachers who could impart knowledge, he ultimately learned that wisdom cannot be taught; it must arise from within. This realization comes to him as he sits by the river, where his Self finally emerges. The river—his greatest teacher—shows him how “to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.” Siddhartha at the river reminds me of a scene in Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees, when the protagonist, Silvia, watches the sun set in Cape May. In that moment of stillness and attention, she discovers the wisdom she has been seeking on her own peace-making journey—a wisdom that comes not from outside sources, but from her own Self. Nature, too, is my temple: the place where I hear the voice of my Self most clearly.

Siddhartha also learns that suffering is an inescapable part of life, and that peace comes from “stop[ping] resisting, to love the world and stop comparing it to some world he only wished for and imagined, some sort of perfection he himself had dreamed up.” He comes to see “how beautiful the world was when one just looked at it without searching—just looked, simply and innocently.” Whenever he searched outside himself for fulfillment, he felt despair, even longing “to be rid of himself.” As he tells Govinda, “I was afraid of myself, running away from myself.” He realizes that nothing external—not even the love of his parents—can truly complete him. I have run from myself, from the pain inside that was too big to be with, even for a second. I’ve gone through a great deal of trauma in my life and have been diagnosed with complex PTSD. I discovered that people with this issue, having such profound pain, is common.

Like Siddhartha, I spent years searching for happiness outside myself rather than within. I often escaped into fantasy to avoid the pain I felt, looking to the world to rescue me, to give me more than it was capable of giving. This longing left me ungrateful for my own life and blind to the beauty of the world as it was. Eventually, I came to understand the limits of the external world and how easily it can pull me away from my Self. Like Siddhartha, I was running from myself—specifically from the part of me that held pain. Over time, I learned how to stop resisting, as Siddhartha did, and to love not only the world as it is, but all of myself as well. In my forthcoming memoir, I chronicle my experiences in healing CPTSD.

Just as many newer schools of psychology espouse the theory of the Self, they also emphasize turning toward pain rather than resisting it, since resistance is what creates suffering. While these ideas appear in books published in the twenty-first century, Siddhartha was first published in 1922. It’s striking that modern psychology took more than a hundred years to arrive at insights Hesse already understood when he wrote this novel—one that, in my not-so-humble opinion, remains the greatest spiritual novel ever written.

Grace Mattioli is the author of  three novels: “Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees,” “Discovery of an Eagle,” and “The Bird that Sang in Color, ”  and several short stories. She is currently working on a memoir. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and her cats. Her books are available from all major online book sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

When a reviewer described my debut novel, Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees, as “healing,” I was deeply moved. In that moment, I felt I had accomplished one of the most important goals of any writer: to touch readers’ hearts and inspire reflection.

Much of the stress, pain, and suffering in our lives stems from human conflict. If we could learn to live in harmony and truly get along, both individuals and society would benefit. But peace is rarely easy. As Silvia learns in Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees, it is not something that simply exists—it is something that must be intentionally cultivated.

Learning the Art of Peace

Throughout the novel, Silvia Greco practices the challenging art of negotiation as she attempts to reunite her fractured family. She learns to communicate with empathy, addressing each family member’s unique perspective. These skills—listening, compromise, and understanding—feel increasingly rare in today’s divided world.

A lesson Silvia learned from her grandmother underscores the power of forgiveness:

“A good way to stop being angry at someone was to remember something kind that person had done for her. The first thing that came to Silvia was the bonsai tree her mom had bought for her… From that point on, whenever Silvia got mad at Donna, she would simply remember the bonsai tree. Even more than the tree itself, she remembered the kindness and thoughtfulness that had prompted her mom to buy it.”

This simple technique—focusing on acts of kindness rather than dwelling on anger—resonates throughout Silvia’s journey. In my own life, I’ve used the same approach. Holding onto resentment only harms the person who carries it, while remembering the good fosters freedom, compassion, and peace.

Inner Peace Begins with Outer Peace

As Silvia works to restore harmony within her family, she also heals herself. She discovers that inner peace cannot exist without outer peace. During a reflective sunset in Cape May, New Jersey, she experiences a moment of clarity:

“As the sun touched the ocean, it would sink fast into the horizon. The ramble in her brain quieted down… She knew that if all of her family members could be in the same room and see into each other’s eyes, they would remember that they loved each other.”

Through this moment, Silvia understands that reconciliation is not only for others—it is for herself as well.

Practicing Peace in Our Own Lives

My hope is that one day, the world might experience this same kind of peace: where we recognize our shared humanity, dissolve artificial divides, and prioritize connection over conflict. By practicing communication, empathy, and forgiveness, we can take steps toward harmony—one relationship at a time.

Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees is more than a story about family. It’s a novel about healing, forgiveness, and finding peace—both within ourselves and in the lives of those we love.

Grace Mattioli is the author of  three novels: “Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees,” “Discovery of an Eagle,” and “The Bird that Sang in Color, ”  and several short stories. She is currently working on a memoir. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and her cats. Her books are available from all major online book sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

The narrative unfolds through multiple perspectives: the father (Dad), his two sons (the Boys), and Crow, whom I interpreted as grief itself, given form. In the book’s description, Crow is called an “antagonist, trickster, goad, protector, therapist, and babysitter,” a fitting array of roles for something as complex and contradictory as grief. Crow arrives to comfort a family shattered by the sudden death of its matriarch, and interwoven with Crow’s presence are fragmented reflections from each family member as they try to comprehend what has happened.

One passage resonated deeply with me, having lost loved ones suddenly myself:

“Four or five days after she died, I sat alone in the living room, wondering what to do. Shuffling around, waiting for shock to give way, waiting for any kind of structured feeling to emerge from the organizational bakery of my days… Grief felt fourth dimensional, abstract, faintly familiar. I was cold.”

Another passage that struck me comes from the Boys:

“Where are the strangers going out of their way to help, screening, plain bits of emergency glow-in-the-dark equipment at us to try and settle us and save us?”

My own mother died when I was fifteen. In the days immediately following her death, our house was filled with people bringing food, flowers, and tears of their own grief for the woman I called Mom. This line transported me back to the first time the house became empty again—and how that physical emptiness mirrored the hollowness I felt inside myself.

Toward the end of the story, Crow leaves once the family is ready to move forward. Before departing, Crow reminds Dad that his wife died from hitting her head. I interpreted this as Crow’s final act of mercy: absolving Dad of any lingering guilt and freeing him from the burden of imagined responsibility.

In the novel’s final scene, the point of view shifts from third person to first person as Dad and the Boys travel to a place Mum loved to scatter her ashes. Dad proclaims, “I love you! I love you! I love you!” into the wind. A few years ago, I, too, went to sea to scatter the ashes of a friend who had been part of my life for decades. While the experience was profoundly healing, it was also devastating—it marked the finality of my friend’s life on earth. Reading this scene and recognizing my own experience within it was, in itself, deeply therapeutic.

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is a powerful example of bibliotherapy in action. It meets readers in the rawest stages of grief and offers solace through recognition and connection. Grief is also a central theme in my third novel, The Bird That Sang in Color. In the following passage, the protagonist reflects on her mental state after losing a loved one:

“When I was raw and broken, I’d lose time staring at whatever was in front of me while nothingness filled my mind—not the kind of nothingness that Buddhist monks aspire to; more like an off-pitch humming sound, colorless and without any texture. I felt like I was stuck between two worlds—that of the living and another one between here and the afterlife.”

Grief also runs through my upcoming memoir which centers on the death of my mother and other profound losses—all of them sudden and premature, the oldest occurring at age sixty. With each loss, I’ve learned more about the grieving process, from the physical consequences of endless tears—dehydration, muscle soreness—to the emotional necessity of letting grief move freely through the body.

I feel fortunate to be someone who has always known how to grieve, perhaps influenced by my Italian heritage. I do not hold back. I wail. I collapse. I pound the floor with my fists. In many cultures, this kind of grief is expected and honored. In others—like the United States, where I live—it is often suppressed. At my brother’s funeral, when I became hysterical, two people offered me a tranquilizer. I declined. I wanted to feel my pain—not only because I believe it is healthy, but because I believe grief is an expression of love.

Grief is love’s continuation. It is the visible thread that binds my soul to those who have crossed into the spirit world. It is comfort and consolation—and, paradoxically, the greatest beauty I have ever known.

Grace Mattioli is the author of  three novels: “Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees,” “Discovery of an Eagle,” and “The Bird that Sang in Color, ”  and several short stories. She is currently working on a memoir. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and her cats. Her books are available from all major online book sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

Resources for bibliotherapy are widely available. Curated lists of recommended books—covering topics such as grief, addiction, identity, and life transitions—can be found online. Public libraries are invaluable gateways to literature, often offering tools like Novelist to help readers locate titles relevant to their personal experiences. Bibliotherapy is not a new concept: it dates back to World War I, when books were used to help soldiers cope with trauma and emotional distress. Many bibliotherapy texts are uplifting, featuring characters who confront real-life crises with honesty, courage, and resilience.

Reader-response theory helps explain why bibliotherapy is so effective. This literary framework emphasizes the active role of the reader in creating meaning. Each reader brings their own experiences, beliefs, and emotional history to a text, making reading a dynamic, interactive process rather than a passive activity. In upcoming posts, I’ll explore how my personal experiences shape my interpretations of the books I discuss—and why this subjective engagement is central to the healing power of literature.

While nonfiction books on self-help and spirituality are often the first resources people turn to during difficult times, fiction is frequently overlooked. This is surprising, given how deeply storytelling is woven into our lives. We tell stories to ourselves and others daily. Our subconscious minds create stories in dreams. Stories resonate long after we finish reading, shaping thoughts and emotions in subtle but lasting ways—and in doing so, they offer comfort, insight, and healing.

In this new series, I’ll introduce a selection of fiction and nonfiction books well-suited for bibliotherapy, including my own novels: Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees, Discovery of an Eagle, and The Bird That Sang in Color. I invite you to join me on this journey of reading, reflection, and emotional healing.

Grace Mattioli is the author of  three novels: “Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees,” “Discovery of an Eagle,” and “The Bird that Sang in Color, ”  and several short stories. She is currently working on a memoir. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and her cats. Her books are available from all major online book sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

In one scene, Silvia, the novel’s protagonist, draws a parallel between the war in Afghanistan—unfolding during the time frame of the book—and the ongoing conflict within her own family. For Silvia, these wars are not separate. Both are fueled by fear, power, and the inability to listen, and both leave lasting emotional casualties in their wake.

The parallels between personal and global conflict continue to feel painfully relevant today. Inspired by current and devastating wars around the world, I was moved to write a poem about war—its costs, its cycles, and the longing for peace that persists even in the darkest moments.

I’d like to share that poem with you below.

The story of war

I dreamt I was a soldier

Death came every second

Bullets soared

like angry falcons

into skin, already broken

Screams of deep pain

fell on the crumbled ground

Lost limbs flew through a firelit sky

Bombs shook the earth

Investors cheered 

Journalists told the same old story

with no beginning and no end

I woke and prayed hard

for a new story

called Peace

Scene from Chapter Seven of “Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees”

In effort to block the noise in her head, Silvia grabbed the TV remote that was on a small, dented end table next to her chair, and turned on the television. She was hoping for something comedic, like a Seinfeld or Simpson’s episode, but, instead, she got an update on the latest casualties in Afghanistan. This was even worse than the noise in her head. The war reminded her of her family, and her family reminded her of the war. Fucking war! Never ending fucking war! The thing that has always been and will always be. Arrows morphed into missiles. Sticks and stones turned into atomic bombs. No end and no beginning, just like the fighting that existed and would probably always exist within her family. 

She looked over at Vince, who looked like he wanted to jump into the television set and make everything right. She looked at Cosmo, who looked jaded, expressionless, and complacent as a turtle. He was the person who knew how it all really was and knew that their family was just like the rest of the world. Too late for saving. A family of divisions and alliances. A family with so many lines that had grown thicker with time and would just continue to thicken as time went on. Lines that could never be erased.

“When will this war ever end?” Vince said, his arms flying through the air.

“Whenever it does, you can rest assured that another one is right around the corner,” Cosmo said. 

“Yeah,” Silvia said, her eyes transfixed on the television set.

“But why?” Vince cried. “Why does it have to be that way?”

“Because it is,” Silvia said, who was suddenly talking like a realist.

“As long as people have been around, they’ve been fighting with each other,” Cosmo said, getting up from his chair. “I mean, think of the cavemen. They fought with each other over buffalo and women.” 

“As long as I can remember, our family’s been fighting too,” Silvia said.

“Well, that doesn’t mean we all have to go on fighting for the rest of our lives,” Vince said, surprising Silvia with his sudden concern for the well-being of their family.

“I tried, Vince,” Silvia said. “I tried to fix things in our family. Look where it got me.”

“Where?” Vince said.

 “Nowhere,” Silvia said. “No. I’m worse than nowhere. I’m defeated.”

“Trying to make peace in our family?” Cosmo said. “You’d have better luck in the Middle East.”

Grace Mattioli is the author of the Greco Family Trilogy books, including Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees, Discovery of an Eagle, and The Bird that Sang in Color. These books are available from all major online book sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

A fluorescent light in the hallway flickered frantically before burning out. In the sudden darkness, I could still see the paint peeling off the walls. The worn wooden floors creaked with every step.

“The corner unit just opened up,” Dan, the building manager said. He had a devious twinkle in his eyes and wore all black, despite the Tucson summer heat.

Rory and I stood behind him as he unlocked the door to the apartment. As soon as it opened, we were blasted with sunlight. We put our hands over our eyes. Dan walked right into the blaze like he was impervious to it. The whole place was one room with a bathroom off to the side. The high ceilings gave it a feeling of spaciousness, but I felt trapped in there. I could almost see the walls closing in on me. As soon as we walked in, I wanted to run out. There was something there besides the three of us.

“It looks great,” Rory said. He would have said that of anything.

“Do you have anything else?” I asked Dan.

“This is the only one we got open now,” he said with calm indifference.

“Hey Crystal.” Rory turned to me. “It’s not like we have a ton of options and classes start tomorrow.”

“You’ll be a stone’s throw from the university,” Dan said.

“Can we have a minute,” Rory said to Dan.

“Sure thing, I’ll just be back in my office.” He left and closed the door behind him.

“Look, we can sign the lease and then break it if something better comes along.” Dan looked at me pleadingly, head tilted, his red, long hair hanging messily in his eyes. “We can always get out of the lease. Leases are meant to be broken. That’s what my dad says.”

“So, we can keep looking for something else then?”

“Sure.”

With that, I agreed. We left the apartment and headed down to the management office to sign the papers.

***

Despite a temperature of 116 degrees, moving day was easy, almost like we were being helped along with the process. We finished unloading the rest of our boxes when Rory said he wanted to go to the convenience store around the corner.

“I want to come with you,” I said.

“I think it’s better if you stay here, maybe start unpacking the kitchen stuff,” he said. “I’ll get you anything you want from the store.”

“I don’t want anything. I just don’t want to be here alone.” I made my big eyes bigger.

“C’mon. I’ll be like two minutes.”

I reluctantly agreed and told him to leave the door ajar. I opened the box full of kitchen stuff and pulled out the nonstick frying pan we used for almost everything. Just then, I heard what sounded like someone humming behind me. I became still as a statue so I could listen more closely. Troubled and dissonant, it got louder. I turned around swiftly, raising the frying pan up in the air, ready to strike what could only be an intruder. The humming ceased.

I had no time to process what had happened because as soon as the humming stopped, rain started coming into the apartment, almost horizontally. I ran to close the window and outside I saw lightning and a large black funnel cloud swirling angrily. All I could think of was Rory dying out there in the storm. Hollow with fear, I stood by the window watching for him outside.

“Holy shit!” Rory was suddenly standing in the doorway. “I didn’t know tornados could happen in the desert.”

I loosened with relief. He told me he came right back when the storm started so he never made it to the store. He said a massive tree fell outside in the parking lot. I imagined it falling on top of our car. We went outside when the rain let up to see that my fantasy was reality. Rory ran over to the car and started moving branches off the beaten old thing. It was on its last legs, and I was afraid this was going to be the thing that killed it.

I turned around to see Dan standing like a scarecrow with his arms outstretched, staring at the whole scene, expressionless. It was like he expected this to happen.

“I know just where you can go and get that repaired.” He grinned big and wide and told us about some place up the street that gave all their customers a card for ten free meals at Sizzler. He said this as though it would fix everything.

I went in the car with Rory who told me that even though it was running, we couldn’t drive it.

“Something’s dragging on the ground. The force of the tree must have knocked out the muffler or something.”

We got out of the car and went upstairs to our apartment. Rory lit up his bong and I went into the bathroom to cry. Having our car out of commission with no means to repair it broke me. That car was my only freedom. I sat on the toilet and went to grab the roll of toilet paper on the floor when it suddenly rolled away from me as if pushed by some invisible force. I ran to tell Rory, but he only looked at me with glazed eyes and a stupid, stoned smile. He took a long hit and choked some words out, “You need to get some rest.”

I went outside to get some fresh air, and in the entranceway, I ran into a pizza delivery guy dressed in bell-bottom jeans. He asked me where apartment number twenty-three was. I pointed him in the right direction and then, he introduced himself to me.

“My name’s Keith. Like Keith Richards.”

“That miracle of science?” I said.

He didn’t laugh. He just stared back at me curiously and said, “How long you been here?”

“This apartment? Today’s my first day here but it feels like longer.”

“This place is like that.”

“Like what?”

“Time moves different here. It’s like it stopped.” He looked up at the white stone building. If I hadn’t been so creeped out by the place, I’d call it beautiful. It had a turret in the center front of it that reminded me of a castle.

“What do you know about this place?”

“Well, rumor has it, it was built over an Indian burial ground” He leaned in towards me as if he were telling a great secret.

“Oh, like Poltergeist?” I said, jokingly.

But like with my other joke, he only stared confusion at me, and continued, “This building was used as a hospital in the 1800’s. I heard that Doc Halliday died here. And then, it was used as an insane asylum.” He smiled mysteriously.

“Isn’t that pizza getting cold?” I asked him.

“Yeah, I better go drop it off. Bye for now.” He went down the hallway, knocked on a door, and stood there for about a minute waiting. He then turned to me and said, “Guess nobody’s home. I’ll leave it and get the money next time.”

We said goodbye. He walked away and left the building, vanishing in the dark of nighttime.

Back in the apartment, Rory was playing a video game.

“Shouldn’t you be studying your books?” I asked him.

“Oh. c’mon, it’s the first week of classes,” he said.

I sat on the floor and began reading my organic chemistry book, all the while trying hard not to think about Keith’s narrative of the history of this place. I fell asleep, my face resting on the pages of my book.

Then I saw them. They were only a few feet away from where I lay. Blurry, amorphous shapes that moved in and out like an accordion being played by a crazy-eyed clown. They didn’t say or do anything. They didn’t need to. They were frightening just by being. I felt their pain, their anger, their entrapment. I felt them trying to bring me down with them, trying to pull me in like toxic quicksand. Finally, I screamed myself awake and with that scream, Rory woke up and told me to go back to sleep.

“But I just had the worst nightmare in the world!” I said. “Nothing was happening, but I felt their energy. They were right here with me. I’ll never be able to sleep in this place again.”

“Just close your eyes and lie still. You’ll get back to sleep.” He stroked the top of my head.

I got up from the bed and sat in the only chair in the place, studying until morning, when Rory awakened and said he had to rush to class.

“Wait for me,” I said.

“One of us has to stay here,” he said. “Dan’s coming by to fix the leak in the kitchen sink.”

“I didn’t notice a leak.”

“Well, there is one and we got to get it fixed. He’ll be here any minute I bet.”

I got completely ready for class so that I could leave as soon as Dan was finished. I only had a few minutes to wait for him, which I did in the hallway, sitting on the floor. He came over wearing the same black clothes and carrying a small blue toolbox that looked like the one that belonged to my grandpa.

“Hey there,” he said. “Why you out here in the hallway?”

“Oh, I needed a change of atmosphere,” I said, looking up at him.

We went inside to the kitchen sink. He opened his toolbox and the cabinet under the sink. He crouched down to look at the pipes. Just then, I got the sudden urge to grab something. I saw a screwdriver in the toolbox and thought, that’ll do. But I wanted to do more than hold the tool. I wanted to jam it into Dan’s neck. A part of me kept fighting the urge while another part of me coaxed me to do it. When he turned to look at me, my face was stiff with fear.

“I see the problem,” he said.

He explained the problem, but I didn’t comprehend a word of what he said, too lost in my head. I asked him if I could leave and let him lock up. He was more than fine with that. I hurried outside, where it was back to blue cloudless skies and an unrelenting sun. In the aftermath of the storm, limbs of trees were scattered on the ground like dead bodies. I let the sun wash over me, hoping it could burn the contamination I felt from those things that haunted my sleep.

I tried to imagine the life of one of those desert ghosts from my nightmare. A cowboy who’d been wounded in a shootout in some old west barroom. He was brought to our apartment building that was then used as a hospital. Maybe he stayed in the same room where Rory and I lived. He healed and was on his rotten way. Years later he murdered some poor Cherokee man in his sleep. The wife and small daughter of the Cherokee man woke screaming, wailing. The cowboy saw the look of unending pain in the eyes of the man’s bereaved family. He’d never stop seeing the pain in their eyes or hearing their screams.

Years later, he returned to the same place where he was once hospitalized, but the place was no longer for physically sick people. It was for those who’d lost their minds. He’d finish out his days here, tortured by what he’d done, waiting patiently for death, only to die and find himself even more trapped than he was in life. A desert ghost being kept alive by the dry, dead air that passed through him. Alongside all the other desert ghosts, always together but always alone.

Off in my own world, I lost track of time and now, I feared I’d be late to biology class. When I arrived, there was only one seat available, right in the front of the room. Normally, I wouldn’t care but after not sleeping all night, I feared dozing off in class and having the teacher see me. I managed to stay awake through the ninety-minute lecture by continually resituating myself in my hard, plastic chair. My eyelids, all the while, sliding down over my eyes as if pushed against their own will.

After the long and painful class, I walked to the library through the buildings to avoid the afternoon heat. As I passed a classroom with its door open, I heard a lecture being given.

“We’re going to be examining the ways the religious traditions of South Asia understand supernatural forces and beings,” the deep-voiced professor said to the class.

I stopped and stood by the door so she could hear more.

“Take the Indian sect of Jainism. These people believe in demons and even possession. They believe that these evil spirits walk among us, that they have power, and they’re here to antagonize the human race.”

The professor saw me standing by the door and invited me into the classroom. He told me it wasn’t too late to sign up, and that the name of the class was “Gods, Goddesses, and Demons: Divinity in South Asia.”

“Thank you,” I said, walking away. The thought of taking such a bullshit course made me want to laugh. I studied the hard sciences after all.

***

I got home around seven that night. I could have come back a lot earlier, but I wanted to stay away as long as possible. I decided to stop by the apartment where Keith delivered the pizza to find out if whoever lived there ever got it. I knocked on the door and in seconds, some girl with long black hair and about a pound of makeup appeared. I couldn’t see her eating a pizza under any circumstances. An adorable tabby kitten stood behind her, hissing at me like I was the devil.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “She never hissed at anybody before.”

“And I’ve never been hissed at before,” I said.

“Bad girl, Flower,” she said to the kitten.

“No worries. I live down the hall. I was wondering if you got your pizza last night.”

She furrowed her brows and said, “You sure you have the right place? I never ordered a pizza.”

Despite the temperature being somewhere in the high nineties, all the hairs on my arms were standing straight up. No wonder Keith wore bellbottom jeans, and he didn’t understand my references to Keith Richards and Poltergeist. 

“I’m sorry to have bothered you.” I slipped away and went off to my apartment.

There, Rory was playing a video game, his loyal bong on the floor beside him. I went over to my clothing boxes to get a t-shirt out and saw that they’d all been opened.

“Hey, Rory,” I said, turning towards him. “I appreciate your encouragement, but you don’t need to open my clothing boxes. I’ll unpack my clothes when I’m good and ready.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t open any boxes.”

He stared at me like everyone else had been staring at me tonight—in utter confusion. I thought he must have opened them and then forgotten in his stoned stupor, so I asked him if he was sure.

“Of course, I’m sure. I didn’t even unpack all my stuff yet. Why would I care about yours?”

I’d been reluctant up until then to say anything to Rory about my encounters, not just because he’d tell me I was insane, but because I didn’t want to say any of this stuff out loud. I didn’t want to make everything more real than it already was, but I couldn’t hold my tongue.

“Have you had any weird encounters since we’ve been here?”

“Like what?”

“Like I never opened these boxes, and you never did, so how did they get opened?”

“You probably opened them and forgot about it.”

“Have you heard the sound of someone humming?”

He just looked at me like I was crazy, so I stopped. I opened the fridge and was delighted to see there was a six-pack in there. I drank one after the other until I passed out, thinking that the alcohol might somehow protect me from the hauntings. But I was wrong. They’d returned with a vengeance, suffocating me with their endless pain. It lived mostly in the minds of their rotted-out skulls. Their cries of anguish were silent, but I could hear them loud and clear. They were imprisoned in their pain, and they wanted to escape this place even more than I did, but they had surrendered a long time ago. If they couldn’t leave, they’d see to it that I couldn’t either.

Again, I screamed myself out of the nightmare and looked up to see the greatest horror of my life! A gargoyle sat in the chair where Rory was once sitting, its eerie wings draped over its hunched back. Its thickly, wrinkled face, strangely composed. That was the last thing I remembered. Weak with fright, I passed out. When I came to, Rory was sitting in the chair. The gargoyle was gone but I knew I’d never stop seeing it.

***

During the fall semester, weird stuff kept happening. I’d come home to find all the kitchen cabinets opened. Those bored desert ghosts would hide my stuff all the time. They loved to hide my keys most of all. I supposed it was a way of trapping me in with them. I kept having those terror visits in my sleep. For a while, I stopped sleeping at home all together. I drank coffee and stayed up studying all night and slept on a couch at the library in between classes. Then one day, a library worker told me I couldn’t sleep there anymore. I went back to sleeping at home and just dealt with the nightmares.

At some point, I stopped screaming myself out of sleep. I stopped being so afraid of the visits. I just went with them. I figured they were all in my mind so they couldn’t do anything to me. That was about the same time that weird stuff stopped happening in the apartment during my waking hours.

And that was about the same time Rory left me. He said I wasn’t the same person he met years ago. He said I had changed. He told me he’d help with the last few months’ rent because that’s what good people did, but I told him to keep his money. I’d make it somehow. When I told Dan, he told me that if I could help him out with maintenance of the building—vacuuming the hallways, cleaning apartments after tenants vacate—he’d ask the landlord to reduce my rent by half.

So, I help Dan out and I get the whole apartment to myself, mostly that is. The spirits remain. It’s surprising the stuff you can get used to if you want to. Only a few months ago, I wanted nothing more than to get out of this place. Now I never want to leave. Something tells me I never will.

Grace Mattioli is the author of  three novels: “Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees,” “Discovery of an Eagle,” and “The Bird that Sang in Color, ”  and several short stories. She is currently working on a memoir. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and her cats. Her books are available from all major online book sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

When Eloise was five years old, she took a trip to Arizona with her parents. Her mum’s dream had always been to see the Grand Canyon and when she got sick, Dad insisted they go there for a family vacation. Eloise could still remember when she first laid eyes on the giant hole, how small it made her feel, how she felt scared and curious and amazed all at the same time. She remembered lots of other things about their trip, like the food that made her mouth burn, the funny accents all the people had, and the way the world looked so different from London in this faraway place. But most of all, she remembered the magical color in the sky that she called “plue.” It was mostly pale pink with a tint of light-blue and it appeared right after the sun had set.

“Plue is my favorite color in the whole world,” Eloise told Mum as the three of them stared into the sky, the color plue fading fast into a brilliant pinkish orange.

“As soon as we get back home,” Mum said, “I’m going to make you a dress in that color.”

The day after they got back to London, Mum looked and looked and looked in all the fabric stores in the East End but couldn’t find any plue-colored material. So, she decided to make her daughter a pale pink dress with light, blue trim. Sewing it seemed to tire her, and this made Ellie cry. Despite her fatigue, she made a beautiful dress. Although it wasn’t plue, Eloise thanked Mum a million times for making her it. She wore it proudly. Dad even let her wear it to Mum’s funeral, which was only a few months after their trip to Arizona.

Eloise heard Dad say to her uncle, “There’s no point putting a little girl in black.” He cried before and after everything he said. Eloise felt as if her tears would never stop. For weeks after the funeral, she sat by the kitchen door where Mum used to walk through every day after work, hoping that she’d walk in and tell her it was all just a bad dream.

One day, she decided to stop waiting, and she traded her waiting for remembering. Eventually, she forgot what Mum’s voice sounded like and had nearly forgotten what she looked like. But she remembered how it felt to be held in her arms; how she’d kiss her on the top of her head every morning; how she’d sing her a bedtime song each night. She remembered their time together in Arizona, and when she pictured the color plue in her mind, she could almost feel Mum standing right next to her, the two of them gazing at the sunset sky.

***

Eloise grew up and grew old, but she never stopped longing to go back to Arizona to see the color that she couldn’t see anywhere else. When her husband, Harry, retired from his job, she told him they should move there.

“The dry heat will do wonders for your arthritis, Harry,” she told him.

“We’ll be so far from our friends, all the way out there,” he said.

“We’ll make new friends.”

They didn’t have any children and their parents were long gone. Harry’s brother was close to him, but Eloise said that he could come and stay with them in the winter. “He’ll love getting out of this cold, damp place and into the sunshine.” Still, Harry wasn’t convinced until one day when he was so stiff that he couldn’t get out of bed. A few months later, they were on their way west.

***

After five months of living in Tucson, Eloise had seen many, many sunsets, but each time she saw one, it was as if she was seeing the color plue for the first time. She could hear music in the sunsets, a melodious rhythm that sounded through the sky. Even though the color plue was so fleeting, it also seemed to stop time, and in that space that was both brief and endless, she felt like she was a little girl again with Mum standing next to her.

The fabric store where she got a job was right off Speedway Boulevard, the road that was once called the ugliest street in the United States with its endless sea of strip malls and billboards. Harry told her she didn’t need to work and that they had enough money to live comfortably with their modest needs. But she liked to keep busy, and just like Mum, she loved to sew, and the store offered employees a generous discount on fabric. She worked until 4 p.m., so she was out with plenty of time to enjoy the sunset with Harry.

She liked the store and the other employees, but she knew she’d never be friends with them. She didn’t care about making friends here. Harry was more than enough for her. Besides, she hadn’t come here for the people or even the place. She came so that she could see the color plue.

Although she didn’t care about making friends, she cared about fitting in, or at least not feeling like a misfit. Every time she opened her mouth, people stared at her like she was odd. She tried to make her voice less cockney. She tried using American expressions, but sometimes she got them wrong.

“Your house will be a million dollars with curtains made of this fabric,” she once said to a customer.

One day, she was sitting in the breakroom with a couple of her colleagues Stephanie and Cindy, who were talking about the weather.

“It’s supposed to go up to 120 tomorrow,” Stephanie said.

“I heard the brightness index is going up to ten,” Eloise said.

“Brightness index?!” Cindy said. “I think you mean the UV index, Eloise. There’s no such thing as a brightness index.”

The two ladies started laughing deep and loud and mighty as if it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard in their lives. Eloise didn’t know what to do, so she started laughing with them. She hoped they didn’t notice that her laughter was fake and forced. She got through the rest of the day by focusing on all the beautiful fabric in the store and thinking of how she’d see the color plue that night. She thought of telling Harry and what he’d say to comfort her. He did his best, but it wasn’t quite what she wanted to hear.

“So, they were having a laugh, Ellie,” he said.

“Yes, they sure were, at my expense,” she said.

“Where’d you get the ‘brightness index’ from anyway?”

“I could have sworn I heard the weatherman say it on the news last night.”

“Sometimes you’re too sensitive, Sweetie.”

“It’s not that, Harry.”

“Well then, what is it?”

“I’m sick and tired of feeling different here, like I don’t fit in.”

“You’re not saying you want to go back home, are you?”

“No, not that. It’s just—”

“Well, that’s good,” he interrupted. “Because I don’t ever want to go back there. I felt stiff as a board back there.”

“And I don’t want you to. I just don’t want people to look at me funny every time I open my mouth.”

“I know what’ll make you feel better.” He got up from his chair and held his hand out for her, and together, they walked out to their backyard to see the sunset. They had two plastic lawn chairs that were placed right in front of an ocotillo tree. The color plue came through its long, skinny branches, and Eloise looked out and remembered why she had come to live in this place and why she never wanted to leave.

***

The next day, she was quieter than ever at work and her boss, Maggie, even asked her if everything was alright.

“Oh yes, I’m fine. Just got a little headache is all.” But it seemed that Maggie didn’t believe her and that she knew that Eloise was sad. Maybe one of the ladies had told her about the brightness index incident. She seemed to take pity on Eloise.

“Why don’t you go outside for a break?” Maggie said.

Eloise thanked her and went out to sit on the dry ground under a cottonwood tree. Outside, it was a typical cloudless, blue-skied day. A mild desert wind soothed her, and as she leaned back against the tree, a white sedan pulled into the parking lot. A tall woman dressed in yellow got out of the car, followed by a little girl with red hair. The child, who looked to be no older than six or seven, stood tall and walked proudly beside her mother.

Eloise had red hair before it turned gray. When she was about the same age as the little girl in the parking lot, she couldn’t stand being a redhead. The boys and girls at school called her Lobster. She always wore a hat outside but inside there was no getting away with it. The teachers made her take her hat off and she’d sink down in her seat like she was ashamed.

One day, after school, she cried to Mum.

“I wish I was born with brown hair or blond hair,” she said through her sniffles. “I don’t like being different.”

“So, you want to be like everybody else then?” Mum said, smirking.

Eloise usually came right back with an answer to any question, but not for this one. She didn’t want to be laughed at, but even more than that, she didn’t want to be like everybody else.

“Well, no…”

“Being unique is better than being like everybody else. Don’t ever forget that.”

After that day, Eloise was never sorry for having red hair. In fact, she grew to love it and never wore a hat to hide it. Now, she heard Mum’s wise words again, so loud and clear that Mum could have been right there saying them. She stood up and marched back in the store, holding her head high.

“Did you have enough time to rest?” Maggie asked as soon as she came back into the store.

“Yes, love. Thank you.” With these words, she went out to the floor to help a young lady who’d come looking for material for curtains.

“My place is kind of drab. I’m looking for something–”

“Something that’ll brighten you up?” No hiding her cockney accent.

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

“I know just the color for you.” She led the customer to a bolt of fabric that was the closest thing in the store to the color plue, and she held it up and said, “You can’t go wrong with this color. It’ll brighten up the drabbest of places.”

Grace Mattioli is the author of  three novels: “Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees,” “Discovery of an Eagle,” and “The Bird that Sang in Color, ”  and several short stories. She is currently working on a memoir. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and her cats. Her books are available from all major online book sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.