Originally published in The Georgia Review and anthologized in both New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2005 and New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond, Tom Franklin’s “Nap Time” proves that a story doesn’t need a tightly constructed plot to deliver high tension and intense drama. A husband and wife with a colicky baby begin to confess some troubling impulses stemming from the struggles of fresh parenthood; admitting shameful fantasies leads to sharing dark memories; and then….
“Nap Time” is barely over five pages, but boy do those pages pack a wallop, with a closing few lines that are provocative, ambiguous, and ultimately haunting. — Art Taylor