Bryan cannot get comfortable in the hard plastic chair. The overhead light keeps buzzing. And the smell on his jacket, burnt diesel and scorched plastic, cuts right through the interview room's mix of disinfectant and stale coffee, refusing to let him forget whatever he has just come from.
That detail alone, a man sitting in a fluorescent-lit room carrying the scent of something that went wrong, is the kind of opening that pulls you in. Masimba Musodza's short fiction "Perfect Strangers" does not ease you into its world. It drops you straight into the discomfort.
We will be watching this one closely.
Originally published by Brittle Paper.