Just One Thing with Vanessa Blakeslee

Vanessa Blakeslee’s story “Patient X” opens questions about death, care, and our sense of reality. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“It's always difficult to pick just one thing to discuss about how a certain fiction came to be, but without hesitation, the most mysterious aspect of this tale--the orbs--are rooted in true accounts. When I was about 12, I awoke in the middle of the night in my grandparents' farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania to find a sparkling orb, about the size of a tennis ball, hovering above the corner of my bed. I sat up and stared at it, petrified, for a while, but nothing happened, and I finally decided to ignore it and went back to sleep. Years later, when I met my spouse, he turned out to have an orbs-visiting-in-the-middle-of-the-night story of his own, only the twin orbs, in his case, spoke telepathically. For a long time, I wondered how I might explore this paranormal phenomena in a story, and a couple of years ago, when I found myself bothered by the "assisted dying" bills being passed across the Western world, enough to write about it, I felt like the premise needed an element of strangeness--so I brought in the orbs. I believe the story is well-served by them--and as for the real-life orbs, who can say?”

Photo Credit: Ashley Inguanta