Summary

"Control Knobs" follows the narrator's fears and frustrations with her rental home's cheap oven and its broken control knobs. There are supposed to be three knobs total, but two of the knobs have now cracked and are unusable. The narrator uses one knob interchangeably to work her cooker, but she fears this final knob will crack soon, leaving her without a way to make hot meals. She begins to panic and feels helpless. She recalls a book she recently finished. It is classified as a post-apocalyptic tale about a woman who is a lone survivor from a mysterious curse placed on everything around her except herself and a small area of land she is in. The woman learns how to survive with the means she has in this survival bubble. However, she relies on matches to make her fires. In the novel, the...