What if your life depended on the astute observations of a kindly stranger? If someone walked in your house right now, what would they see?

Tumbled stacks of books and a blinking computer monitor along with coffee mugs ringed with lipstick and headless chew toys might be a normal state of affairs. Business as usual. It might also indicate that a terrible struggle occurred between a writer and a small-but-ruthless dog bent on distracting her from anything productive. The logical conclusion might be that they went for a walk.

Or not.

What if a terrible possibility lurks behind ordinary observations?

That might have been one of the questions in author Dean Wesley Smith’s mind as he wrote our story for this week’s podcast, “The Road Back.” He takes the stuff of the everyday and twists it into an intriguing story set in the same universe as his poker thriller, Dead Money.

In print and electronic editions, you can also find this story in the first issue of Smith’s Monthly, which features new and original short stories like this one, plus full novels and great non-fiction.

This podcast is no longer available. To listen to the current podcast, please click here.

You can read “The Road Back” in Smith’s Monthly #1, available in ebook and trade paperback, and can also be found as a stand alone story in ebooks format at your favorite retailer.