Killoffer has decided that it’s time for something different. In the vaguely autobiographical Six Hundred and Seventy-Six Apparitions, the author becomes a character in his own story, abandoning his prior life as a Parisian cartoonist and incidental epicurean, shuffling off to Montreal, desperately seeking something. Struck pensive by a sink-and-a-half full of long-ignored dirty dishes, he wonders what could’ve and might’ve and should’ve been, whether ’twas nobler to suffer outrageous fungus, or to take arms with a squad of scrubbing bubbles. Each of the author’s roads not taken finds another, a hydra of intention, eventually assuming physical manifestation. Perhaps there was some unfinished dessert in that mélange of china and stainless steel, a piece of uninspiring madeleine.

Knocked down by revelation, Killoffer gets up again, oblivious to what’s happening as he goes about his business, leaving behind these golems of squandered possibility. Sitting at the end of a bar, with a drink and a smoke and a book, Killoffer settles in for an inconspicuous evening. But at the same time, he’s gearing up to paint the town blood-red, tossing punches at the bouncer, or dragging a woman he just met off to the toilets for a quick one. We’ve all wondered “what if…?” but Killoffer knows—instinctively, at least. In a series of infinite options, he never chooses.

—Chris Tamarri