This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Triesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear David Means read his story The Depletion

prompts from the November 1st, 2021 issue of the magazine.

Means is the author of the novel Histopia and five story collections, including The Spot,

and instructions for a funeral which was published in 2019.

Now here's David Means.

The Depletion prompts.

Right about that night, long ago, when you lay in bed listening to the sound of wind buzzing

through the old television aerial mounted on the porch outside your bedroom, remember

the door out to the tin roof, the buckle and ting against your toes, a deeply disturbing

sound like a stuck harmonica read, one that combined with the sound of crying drifting

up from downstairs through the heater duct, seemed indicative of more troubling harmonics.

Right about the way that one summer afternoon, your older sister Meg disappeared, heading

out into the beyond as you saw it, until finally she called one night in September to explain

that she was fine, safe in California, not far from a redwood forest, staying with a

guy named Billy, which caused your father who was cradling the heavy black foam, the receiver

against his lips to grimace tightly, his face bewiskered, thick with stubble before he began

weeping softly, as he turned and suddenly with a grand sweep of his arms, held the phone

up and away from him so that the curls of the spiral cord spread out in the mute intonation

of the dial tone was audible, remembered years later.

Right about the summer, the dead heart of it up in northern Michigan, when you wandered

...