Patio

In the short story "A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound," the second person narrator's patio is the primary narrative setting. At the start of the short story, the narrator is "hanging clothes barefoot in a nightgown" on her patio when her upstairs neighbor Menéndez's dentures suddenly drop down from above (3). When she realizes the false teeth have cracked in half, the narrator bends down to collect the broken pieces. Moments afterwards, her neighbor Menéndez's body comes "plummeting, breaking, dying on the blue tiles of [her] patio" after his teeth (1). Because the narrator has been calmly going about her New Year's Day, this event shocks and unnerves her. She is not only disturbed by the presence of her neighbor's dead body and the slow trickle of his blood towards her bare feet, but by Menéndez's sheer nerve at having chosen her patio as the place to...