The phone is lost. My mother is finally dead.

A man thrust his way past Clarissa onto the escalator in Grand Central, she rifled frantically through her bag for her phone. Shaking her head, she went to a booth where a police officer was sitting and emptied the bag’s contents onto the counter: hand cream, lipstick, a coin purse, a MetroCard holder, a dozen pennies, chewing gum, a Virgin Mary scapular, and a brush. My phone—I lost my phone.

DANUVIUS APPLICATION BY JHON SÁNCHEZ 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 44

As soon as she got the notification, Clarissa wondered why she hadn’t simply said no.

MEMORIAL SERVICE @ 7 PM

She laid the iPhone against the mirror and drew a black line under her eye. An image of her mother with her cat appeared along with a message bubble that blinked with the same intensity of an ambulance light.

You cannot do anything right.

Because of the Danuvius Application, she had to press the accept button, but before the phone could repeat in her mother’s voice the text she had just read, she rejected it. Her finger shoo…