Lamella

Mel Lane assumed his life was on the track it was supposed to be: a career with upward movement, a home, a long-term relationship. That is, until he comes home one day to a girlfriend he knows and a child he doesn''t. Stranger still, no one else seems disturbed by the child''s presence-or by its bizarre, inhuman features. Mel is a reasonable man, and he knows there is a reasonable explanation-but once the veil of reality begins to ripple, the world around him becomes something he simply doesn''t understand. Worse yet, it''s becoming very clear that he may never have understood it quite as well as he thought he did.

He knows there are answers, written somewhere on the walls or in the airwaves, but finding them will mean confronting truths about himself and the people around him as he spirals down a rabbit hole of identity and place that will threaten to upend the delicate balance of his life.

A darkly surreal and thought-provoking story, ''Lamella'' is the debut novella of American author Max Halper.