The Fascinating Stranger, and Other Stories

In a vast, silent wasteland of abandoned factories, one man has claimed a half‑finished limousine body as his shelter. He drifts between sleep and waking, surrounded by the skeletal frames of countless unfinished cars, while a lone night‑watchman stalks the dim aisles, unaware of the hidden tenant. The setting feels both monumental and claustrophobic, a derelict cathedral of industry where the ordinary rules of ownership have dissolved.

Mr. Tuttle’s days are a fragile balance of coping with a lingering illness and the guilty comfort of cheap, illicit liquor. He moves through the empty shops early on weekdays, evading the occasional clerk with a notebook, while on Sundays he lingers in his makeshift bed of shavings, listening to the strange, rattling sounds his own body makes. The story unfolds as he wrestles with the moral weight of his choices amid a hauntingly empty world.