NIGHT OWL
I love the idea of rising early. Reading a few peaceful chapters with a mug of coffee, soaking up the quiet, hitting the world with my endless productivity while the rest of life is still sleeping. It’s a fantasy that I return to every now and again – something that I try to make my reality until I comfortably plop myself right back into my night owl form. My true existence.
I love the night. I love reading a few peaceful chapters even more when the house is dark and the neighbors up and down the streets around me are tucked away in their homes. So many evenings I haunt my house with the purpose of making that night the best night – listening to music into the early morning hours with Brandon, playing dozens of games of euchre, curling up with my boys and an endless heap of stuffed animals to watch movies. And the nightlife, too – sitting completely alive at a rooftop bar in Chicago, bouncing between the twinkle lights running up and down the downtown streets. These are my moments.
Naturally, the theme of Midnight really appeals to me. I’m innately drawn to stories of the night. And like most of our themes at Halfway Down the Stairs, I love how the theme of Midnight can mean so many different things. The actual night hours. A dark period. Hidden fears. Celebrations of the shadows.
I want to extend a huge thank you to all of our authors for making the Midnight issue such a beautiful, thoughtful, and dark success. Submissions for our next issue, themed Oil & Water, open on March 1.
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Carrie Bachler is a fiction editor at Halfway Down the Stairs.
© 2025, Carrie Bachler
Halfway Down the Stairs 