After my submarine research for this piece, I’d love to write something longer. What a crazy, crazy thing. I can’t imagine anyone would approve of such shenanigans as balloon popping or antler jousting on a sub, but people (esp. in extreme situations) are capable of anything.

You’re right, looking back through these stories and other writing I’ve done, madness is a driving force. I feel like it’s the immeasurable variable, the dark matter of our inner universe(s). It means a lot to know that you and others are enjoying this weird stuff.

There is madness here, as in so much of your writing (all of your writing??!), but the kind of madness shared and brought about by unnatural circumstance. We get only the briefest of peeks into the characters here, in a steel tube, deep underwater, forced to create their own world with its own rules and not even a torpedo tube is escape.