Winner of the 2017 In Places Between short story contest. Excerpt: The window’s teeth were jagged and dirty, and she had no desire to feel their bite. Yet she leaned out, rested her head between their fangs and stared up into the night sky. Smoke filled her lungs, stretching and burning, but she held it in while she gazed at the stars. As she exhaled, the smoke circled around her like a black hole with her at the very center, then it drifted away taking all her pain, sorrow, and anger with it and leaving a mellow warmth that filled her every cell. There. There it was. The feeling she spent all day, every day, seeking. She sat up long enough to take another pull from her pipe, and when she exhaled once more it slipped from her slack fingers to rest on the dirty floor at her side. The stars above her shone brighter, and one plummeted to earth while she tracked its blaze of brilliance across the sky. The apocalypse had done one thing for her—it had put out most of the lights, and brightened the stars. It had taken a lot of things from her, but not this. Not them.