Some stories close cleanly. Mine don't. This one began in a room I no longer live in, at a desk I no longer own, during a year I'd rather not date too precisely.

What I remember is the door. Not a real one — the room only had the one, and it was always shut the way doors are shut in houses where nobody's angry, just tired. The door I mean was the one I kept writing toward without meaning to, page after page, until I noticed it was the only thing in the manuscript I hadn't explained.

Some stories close cleanly. Mine don't. They leave a door open somewhere in the back of your mind, and something keeps walking through it.

I left it unexplained. That was the whole decision, and it took longer to trust than anything else in the book. Explaining it would have made the room safer. Leaving it did the opposite, which is the only reason Purgatory reads the way it does now.

I'll come back to this room again. There's more in it I haven't used yet.

— M.S.