You are listening to our last story for the month of June 2025, issue 225.

My name is Kate Baker. I am your host and narrator. Welcome to the Clarksville magazine podcast.

Our story is titled Outlier, and it's by R.L. Mesa. And this story, like all of our stories for June,

and all those stories in the past,

and those stories that are coming to you in the future, are brought to you by your support.

So thank you so much if you are a subscriber, if you've gone to patreon.com, 4 slash Clark's World.

I cannot thank you enough because you allow us to do this each and every month.

And if you haven't yet, please consider doing so.

We simply cannot do this without you.

Now, our author, R.L. Messa, is the author of Our Love Will Devour Us and writes speculative

fiction from a non-haunted Victorian house on the coast of Northern California.

And if you like what you hear, you can go back to the five remembrances, according to STE-319.

So, my dear listener, I hope that you can sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

Itsy-bitsy, whispers the girl in the glass tank beside mine.

Not a girl anymore, not really, but it's better for my sanity to pretend.

She's still human.

That we both are.

We had names once in skin, soft to the touch. In the sterile, blinding,

white hellscape of the lab, it's easy to forget. We had lives before these, or she did.

The girl pokes the tip of a leg through one of the tank's air holes. Traces of green nail polish linger

on the hooked claws

protruding from her fused toes. The urge to reach out and make contact is more disturbing than the

...