Jaime Balboa

Jaime Balboa's fiction has appeared in The Timberline Review, Lunch Ticket, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, Hobart, Fictive Dream and elsewhere. An editor for Flash Fiction Magazine, he and his partner live in Los Angeles where they are raising a son. Follow him on twitter @jaimerb.

The Leather Satchel

Muriel decided to catalog the desiccated remains herself. Her heart raced. Her fingers tingled. Electric lanterns placed every few feet illuminated the cave. Layers of dust and the neglect of time conspired to make it all but unrecognizable. Was it female or male? From when? She studied it, looking for signs. So much anticipation. So much hanging in the balance. Her doctoral students and undergraduates gathered, hushed and eager. The small team of researchers, on the twenty-ninth day of a thirty-five-day dig, had made little progress until Guillermo, a first-timer, found what looked to be a canvas jacket from the First Common Era baked into the wall of the dry Nevada desert cave.