“Your hands are screaming,” Moira explains, watching my compulsively wringing hands. “You’ve seen things, maybe even done things, that you can’t afford to remember.”

In the story that lent its title to this volume, the unnamed narrator struggles to remember his past. But what is the past? In some of these stories, a sense of the past creates the backdrop for almost prosaic characters in unexpected, or unimaginable, situations. In others, the time and place may feel familiar, even nostalgic, but the events often exist outside the realm of normality. Teleportation in the office lunch room? A very real descendant of a fictional character? An alternate way famous artworks might have been created? An apparently ordinary old woman who may be an angel, or perhaps a being our collective unconscious hasn’t dreamed of yet?

In this collection, Harry Neil’s characters interact with his created realities of time and place in ways that make you laugh, cry, cringe, sigh, or groan. But the one thing you won’t do is guess what will happen next.