New Story: An Alternate Romance by Robert E. Kearns In the heart of rural Ireland, where winter’s chill seeps into both the home and the soul, Patrick Purcell lives a solitary life in his antiquated nineteenth-century farmhouse. A man of routine, tethered to a meat processing plant and haunted by the specter of a lonely retirement, Purcell finds solace in the flicker of his television screen. But then a mysterious encounter shatters his isolated existence. One stormy night, a
