Thirteen stories. No safe distance.
Holding Pattern is a collection of short fiction spanning medical horror, domestic dread, technological unease, social ritual, linguistic collapse, and cosmic indifference-each story distinct, self-contained, and quietly irreversible.
A patient consents to something they cannot later refuse.
A house learns how to make room.
A system hesitates-not because it's uncertain, but because it isn't.
A town preserves itself by ensuring someone always stays behind.
As the collection progresses, the stories begin to echo one another. Assumptions shift. Endings stop behaving like endings. What initially feels like genre experimentation reveals itself as something more cohesive-and more personal.
This is not a puzzle to be solved.
It is a structure to be inhabited.
Readers who enjoy subtle horror, philosophical unease, and narratives that reward attention over explanation will find Holding Pattern difficult to forget-and harder to place back on the shelf.