Chris Scott

Someone Adopted a Mile of Route 59

         I almost missed the sign on my way to work, a commute I’d done so many times I kind of functioned on autopilot. But I’d also driven these 25 miles back and forth to town often enough that I was prone to notice even the smallest change of scenery -- minor construction, freshly painted dividers, the infrequent trooper patrolling for speeders. And this sign was definitely not something that’d been there before, though by the time I processed what it was -- blame it on not enough coffee in my system yet -- I’d already sped past it.

         So I was on the lookout for it on my commute home later that evening, and sure enough, there was an identical sign erected on the opposite side of the highway, just past the 72nd mile marker, southbound on Route 59. I eased off the gas a bit to read it. The sign was clearly brand new, as I’d suspected, its light blue background and white reflective lettering still crystal clear, not yet stained by the elements. It read: Adopt-A-Highway. Next Mile. Sponsored By: The Good Earth. I had no idea what The Good Earth was -- some environmental organization or religious group, if I had to guess -- but I couldn’t help but feel some pride in my community, a little gratitude for these unnamed good Samaritans. Lord knows Route 59, with its frequent neglect and littering and outright illegal dumping, could use a little TLC.

         A few miles later I pulled off into Blue Cove, a new-ish housing development and my home of 5 years -- and where, it should be noted, there is no cove, blue or otherwise. The largest body of water that could conceivably have anything resembling a cove is hundreds of miles away. I took the winding main road through the cookie cutter array of houses and manicured lawns until I arrived at mine, which I shared with my wife Melanie. I pulled my sedan up next to Melanie’s smaller teal green hatchback and opened my door to the sound of a lawnmower which was abruptly cut off. I didn’t even need to look across the road to know it was Reggie, who seemed to spend maybe 70% of his time mowing his yard, which always looked immaculate.

         “How goes it?” Reggie called out, per usual.

         “It goes!” I replied, giving Reggie a quick wave, along with his wife Sherri who was seated on their porch, securely under the shaded canopy, and sipping a glass of what I guessed was a cocktail. Retirement suited them well.

         Inside the house, Melanie was already home from work and seated at the dining room table, carefully studying one of a dozen magazines spread out across the polished wood, opened to various room decors and colorful nursery concepts.

         “Hey,” I said.

         “Hey,” Melanie said back. “This shit’s overwhelming.”

         I walked up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. From this angle I could see she was beginning to show. “So give it a break for a while,” I said.

         “I mean, it’s still fun.” Melanie showed me an outer space themed nursery, with planets and rockets and astronauts painted on the walls. “Do you think I could do this?”

         “For sure,” I said. “Absolutely.” Melanie was a teacher and t-minus five months from delivering our first child, which was the whole reason we moved into a house that was unquestionably too big for only the two of us. It just took us a little longer than we expected.

         “Oh, cool thing,” I changed the subject. “Someone adopted a stretch of Route 59, just down a little ways. Few miles from here.”

         “That’s great,” Melanie replied, still focused on the magazines. “It could use some TLC.”

         “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said, leaving Melanie at the dining room table so I could start dinner.

~

         The next week I was driving to work when, just past the adopt-a-highway sign, I saw a group of people holding garbage bags and spread out along the grass between the shoulder and the woodline. Making an uncharacteristically impulsive decision, I slowed down and pulled over onto the shoulder, turned on the hazards, got out of my car, and started walking back to them. There appeared to be around ten of them, two adults -- a man and a woman -- and a large group of kids of varying ages. They were all dressed casually with orange reflective vests hung over their shirts, and using pickers to move trash from the roadside into their bags.

         I waved to the adults and called out “Howdy!” even though I never say howdy. The man and woman and some of the kids waved back, all smiles, and I suddenly felt a little awkward. But I extended my hand to the man first and he shook it and I said “Welcome to the neighborhood,” which I immediately realized was a little weird because I don’t really consider the highway my neighborhood per se, and also it’s not like these people actually lived right here.

         “I’m Ted,” I said, and then turned to shake the woman’s hand next. Both of them appeared slightly older than me, maybe in their late 40’s, and what I would describe as classically good-looking and tall, with light blue eyes and perfect postures.

         “Hi Ted, how are you?” the woman asked.

         “I’m great,” I said, “How are you?”

         Before she could answer, a little boy sidled up next to me and echoed, “How are you?”

         So again I said, “I’m great.” And again I asked, this time of the boy, “How are you?”

         That’s when the boy, instead of answering, said, “Do you know Neil Armstrong?”

         I reflexively chuckled at the out-of-leftfield question before saying “Sure, yeah, first man on the moon!” And then the boy’s face completely changed, his smile transforming into an awestruck and mesmerized gaping mouth.

         “And how is he?” the boy asked, in what I could only describe as pure wonderment. I was so taken aback by the question that it took me a few seconds to understand what he meant.

         “Oh I’m sorry, I’m not actually friends with Neil Armstrong. I just mean I know about him. Because he’s famous,” I said, and looking into the boy’s face, now morphing into clear disappointment, I figured this would be the wrong time to mention that Neil Armstrong had been dead for a number of years.

         It was at this moment that a young girl, around 9 years old or so, walked up next to the boy and announced in one breathless and uninterrupted sing-song stream-of-consciousness: “Neil Armstrong Buzz Aldrin Pete Conrad Alan Bean Alan Shepard Edgar Mitchell David Scott James Irwin John Young Charles Duke Gene Cernan Harrison Schmitt.”

         I really had no idea what to say to this peculiar outburst, so for a moment we all just stood there for a bit, under the bright heat of the sun, a steady stream of traffic buzzing by us.

         Finally I asked, “Is that a list of everyone who’s ever walked on the moon?”

         And the girl nodded with a grin and said, “Sure is!”

         “That’s remarkable,” I said, still unsure how to respond to this inexplicable turn in the conversation. “That’s really, really impressive,” I added.

         And then I turned to the man again, trying to salvage my attempt at a neighborly introduction. “Well I just wanted to say thank you for doing this. For cleaning up,” I said, and the man nodded, smiling, clearly appreciative.

         “Of course,” he said, “We’re making pretty good headway so far. Lots of trash picked up. This is the first phase.”

         “Oh,” I replied, “And what’s phase two?”

         “Clearing out all these non-native invasive plants,” the man said, gesturing back toward the brush. “Kudzu, English Ivy, knotweed, and so forth.” I didn’t really know what any of these things were, but I took his word for it.

         “Destructive species that don’t belong here,” the woman added, apparently sensing my confusion. And I have to confess that there was something about the tone of her voice combined with the smile stretched across her face -- across all of their faces -- that sent a slight chill down my spine. I noticed they had formed a large crescent shape around me.

         “Well, thank you again,” I said, starting to step backwards toward my car. “Maybe my wife and I could come help out sometime.”

         “We’d love that,” the man said, his smile never wavering. The kids started spreading out again, getting back to work with their pickers. “Enjoy the rest of your day,” the man said, and then pointed at the sky. “Going to be a waxing gibbous tonight.”

         “That sounds great,” I said for some reason, “See you later.” And then just before I got to my car, I remembered something and turned back to holler, “Oh I meant to ask, what’s The Good Earth?”

         “A nonprofit!” the man yelled back.

         “Awesome!” I said, because that’s just usually what people say whenever someone says they’re associated with a nonprofit, no matter what the nonprofit is. As I started to pull away, I realized I’d never gotten any of their names.

~

         When I arrived home that night I found Melanie upstairs working in the guest bedroom that we were gradually converting into a nursery.

         “So guess what,” I said. “On my way to work this morning I ran into that group that adopted Route 59. The one I was telling you about?”

         “How exactly did you run into them?” Melanie asked.

         “I mean they were cleaning up the highway when I drove by so I pulled over and chatted with them. Anyway, it’s actually this, like, huge family. Or maybe it was two adults chaperoning a group of kids? I couldn’t really figure that out, but they all seem really nice. But also a little weird? Like they’re all kind of obsessed with the moon for some reason?”

         “Oh weird,” Melanie said, a little distracted.

         “And the guy -- the dad I guess -- said The Good Earth is a nonprofit. Though now that I think about it, I don’t know if that means they work for the nonprofit, or they own it or something. Or they’re just volunteering? I’m not wording this right, but they all just seemed a little off. I searched for The Good Earth online but that combination of words is pretty much Google proof. So I…” I noticed Melanie was texting on her phone, not really listening to anything I was saying. “What’s up?” I asked.

         Melanie sighed and said, “Have you seen Reggie the last couple days?”

         I searched my memory. “No, now that you mention it, the last time would’ve been a couple nights ago. He was mowing his yard, naturally.”

         “Sherri’s been texting me. Apparently she can’t find him. Says he went to town to run some errands yesterday and then she got some weird texts from him, and then he just never came home.”

         “Oh wow,” I said. “Weird how?”

         “She didn’t say. God, my fear would be like a stroke or dementia or something. Really scary.”

         “He’s always seemed fine to me,” I replied. “I mean I haven’t noticed any slippage. Have you?”

         “No, but I guess it’s hard to tell when you start getting along in years. And it’s not like we’re super close.”

         I noticed Melanie gently rubbing her stomach, which prompted me to ask, “How are you feeling?”
         “Honestly pretty good. Appetite’s firing up though. Hint hint,” she said.

         I went downstairs to start dinner.

~

         Over the next two weeks I saw the Good Earth family -- as I’d taken to referring to them, whether they were a literal family or not -- on their mile of Route 59 just about every morning on my way to the office. It made me wonder why the kids -- there were 10 of them, I’d counted, ranging in age from about 5 to 16 -- weren’t in school, or if they were homeschooled, or what. And I was a little puzzled by these people’s obsession with this one mile stretch of road. But there was no arguing with their results.

         In just a few days’ time they’d completed the first phase, clearing a full mile of all trash, fast food bags, water bottles, tires, and other junk. It looked so much cleaner than I’d ever seen it. Then they began phase two, swapping in their pickers for shovels and pruners and loppers, ripping up all manner of plants and vegetation that must have been the invasive species they’d mentioned.

         It was amazingly clear, very quickly, what a difference simply removing some garbage and problematic vegetation had on this mile-long stretch of highway. The colors appeared more vibrant, the remaining plants and wildflowers more alive and lush, the sky clearer, the air actually fresher -- as hard as that might be to believe. I basked in it every morning and every evening, driving by with my windows down, waving to the family hard at work. And they always took the time to wave back, the usual big smiles on their faces.

         Back in Blue Cove the police visited Reggie’s and Sherri’s house a few times in the immediate days following Reggie’s disappearance. I caught Sherri outside once or twice, and she looked distraught, despondent. I felt awful for her. Shortly after that the police appeared at a couple other houses further down the street. The McCluskys (a family of four who moved in shortly after we did) appeared to have upped and left town without telling anyone. Another teenage boy, Charles Camp was his name, went to his job at the gas station one night and never returned to his parents. This was far and away the most police activity I’d ever seen in Blue Cove. Everyone was a little on edge.

         Maybe I was on edge too, because pretty soon the mile 72 stretch of Route 59 started to feel a little creepy and unsettling to me. The Good Earth family appeared to have finished their work, and I turned in six or seven consecutive commutes to and from work without seeing them. But the section of highway they worked on took on a distinct feeling of unreality to me, as though the pendulum had swung too far in the other direction from the neglect and degradation that once marked that place, to the borderline artificial and sterile cleanness that I drove through every day. It was too perfect, in other words, a jarring contrast to the immediate miles preceding and proceeding it. Every blade of grass in this one mile seemed deliberately organized, the trees marking the woodline symmetrically spaced and exactly straight in a way that made me feel anxious and uneasy. When I asked Melanie if she’d noticed this too, she was no help. Even though Route 59 was the only access point for Blue Cove, the high school she taught at was in the opposite direction, meaning she rarely drove through mile 72.

         Then one night, driving through Blue Cove after another long day at work, I noticed police cars at yet another house on our street. That was when I started to get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I pulled into our driveway and noticed Melanie’s car wasn’t there. When I got inside, the house was empty and I realized I had several missed calls from her, and a series of texts:

         Running to the hardware store for some paint and stuff. Back later!

         And let me know if you need anything from town

         Just tried calling, can you call back?

         I seem to be turned around on 59 somehow. GPS isn’t working. I’m totally lost

         Nobody else around. Really creepy. Getting freaked out. Call back asap

         I immediately turned back out the door and ran to my car, jumped in, and spun out of the driveway, tires screeching as I floored it down our street, out of Blue Cove, and back onto the highway. I white knuckled it for three miles, speeding toward that awful and disquieting stretch of road, where I felt in my gut I would find Melanie. 55 mph, 60 mph, 65, 75, 85. Dusk was descending, and when my headlights caught the reflective glimmer of the adopt-a-highway sign, I immediately slowed the car to a crawl, and started scanning, eyes peeled in every direction, squinting through the setting sun for any clue, any sign of Melanie anywhere.

         I almost missed it. There, tucked in the trees, how it got there was anyone’s guess. The teal green bumper of Melanie’s car, peeking out through the immaculate brush. I braked hard and threw the door open, started running toward it as fast as I could, calling out Melanie’s name, fearing the worst. If I had been paying closer attention at that moment, if I hadn’t been so distracted, so focused on Melanie, I would’ve thought it odd that there were no other cars on the highway. I would’ve found it peculiar that there were no tire tracks leading from the pavement to Melanie’s car. But when I finally got through the brush, the tall grass and leaves, I flung open the driver’s side door and just as I did there was a loud crack, a blinding flash in the sky, a shaking of the earth, and I was subsumed by a cold and ghostly white space, that looked uncannily as bright and brilliant as the surface of --

~

         I’m on autopilot again. No memory of leaving work, but I must have, because it’s nighttime and I’m driving south on Route 59. When I pull into Blue Cove, it’s totally empty. All the lights are out in every house I pass. Nobody’s home. There’s no sign of life anywhere, until I pull into my driveway and open the car door to the sound of a lawnmower. I step out of my car, and the first thing I notice is that even though the sky is black, it’s still incredibly bright out. I look up to the source of the light and see a full moon, but it’s not just a full moon. It’s far closer to the earth than it should be, casting everything under it in an eerie white luminescence. It’s so near to the Earth I can make out its pocked surface in unreal detail. Every crater and peak, every death-black shadow against its white and gray and ancient surface. It’s so horribly vibrant it almost looks alive, like it has a pulse, and I’m gripped with a dread so all-consuming I have to avert my gaze.

         I once again notice the sound of the lawnmower and look across the street to see Reggie, back home and diligently mowing his lawn again. Under the moonlight I can make him out clearly, and when he pivots his push mower back in my direction, I can see that his cheeks are wet with the tears streaming down his face. I call out his name but he doesn’t see me, can’t hear me over the roar of the mower. He turns back to mow the next strip of grass.

         I follow the walkway up to my front door, open it, go inside. It’s not until I see Melanie sitting at our dining room table that I remember she’d gone missing. I’d left the house in a rush to go find her. It’s coming back to me now.

         “Where were you?” I ask her.

         “I’ve been right here,” she says, and then she turns and looks at me, and it’s immediately clear she’s trying to communicate something to me with her eyes, something she’s afraid to say out loud. She breaks eye contact and looks aimlessly around the house, so I do the same, and that’s when I realize: There’s something wrong with our house. Nothing obviously amiss at first, just the kind of deep wrongness you’d notice in a place you’d inhabited for years, a place that’d been profoundly changed somehow. It’s too clean, yes, but there’s more to it than that. Like someone took our house completely apart, and then reassembled it piece by piece in a way that’s slightly off, vaguely unreal. Everything is at a wrong angle. It could be the too-bright moon hurtling its vast wattage through our windows, but I know it’s more than that. I know this is not the same house I left this morning. This is not Blue Cove. Not exactly.

         Suddenly there’s a knock at the door. I give Melanie a look like “I’m not sure I want to answer that.” But her expression is impossible to read. Or maybe I just don’t want to acknowledge how terrified she looks right now.

         In spite of myself, I walk to the door, open it. The man is standing there. The founder of The Good Earth, or the good samaritan, or the husband and father of ten children, or whoever he is. He’s smiling, of course.

         The man says, “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

         “But this is my neighborhood,” I say, and he gently nods and says “Mmhmm” and gives me a look like he’s patiently humoring me.

         “Mind if we talk outside?” he asks. I don’t want to, but I follow him out onto our walkway, and then he stops and breathes in deeply, exhales with a beatific smile across his face, and looks up at the massive moon hanging above us, nearly close enough I could reach out and touch it.

         “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks. I don’t reply.

         “Humans used to imagine there might be beings living on the moon,” the man says. “Of course now you know there’s exceedingly little atmosphere there. No liquid water, temperatures far too low to sustain life, et cetera, et cetera. But there’s more to the moon than what you can see and touch. A great deal more, in fact.”

         “What did you want to talk about?” I ask, eager to get this over with. Eager for him to leave so I can get back to my wife, back to figuring out how to deal with all this.

         “Ah, yes, well…” he kind of trails off, seems to collect his thoughts. “I guess I wanted to talk about pollution. Both the obvious kind of pollution you leave by, say, carving up hundreds of millions of acres of pristine natural beauty with paved roads and automobiles. Or, just as another example, the kind of pollution you create when you choose to stain the perfect void of space with chemicals and exhaust and debris, and… other things.”

         That’s when I notice that planted right in the middle of our front yard is a flag that wasn’t there before, flapping gently in the night breeze, intermittently unfurling itself to reveal red and white stripes, white stars against a blue background, all faded just slightly with a light layer of gray dust. My mind is racing. I don’t want to know what it is. I don’t want to know how it got here.

         “Then there’s another kind of pollution,” the man continues. “An unseen, odorless pollution you create, every second of every day, simply by being what you are.” The man looks at me, and for the first time I can recall, he’s no longer smiling.

         “What… am I?” I ask. And then the man laughs, like I’ve just said the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

         “Excellent question, Ted,” the man says. “Excellent question.”

         Then we’re both just silent for a minute, before he says, “So I wanted to talk about this, yes, but I also wanted to share the good news. Would you like to hear the good news, Ted?” he asks, and the truth is I really don’t. I don’t want to hear whatever he has to say next. But I nod anyway.

         “The good news,” he continues, “Is that whatever is done can be undone. And whatever is made,” and then he gestures grandly at my home with open arms, “Can be remade even better, safer. Cleaner. And far, far from where it can do any more harm whatsoever.”

         Then, the man puts his hand on my shoulder, and for the first time I can sense his immense, unnatural strength and total command of me and everything around us, his obvious otherworldliness. He leans in close and whispers, “That’s phase three.”

         The man pats my shoulder, then turns and begins strolling away leisurely through the bright night, turning back just once more to holler, in a voice barely audible above the din of Reggie’s lawnmower, “It’s pretty quiet here now, but you’ll have more neighbors joining you soon. Many more.”

         He turns the corner and disappears. I stand alone before my house, ablaze in the moonlight. If I squint, if I think about this in just the right way, I can believe this is my home. My big, immaculate, perfect home. Just as it’s always been. I can believe that Melanie and I and our growing family will be happy here, whatever this place is. What other choice do I have? I clear my throat, walk back up the steps, and go inside to start dinner.

---

Chris Scott's work has appeared in The New Yorker, HAD, Flash Frog, ergot., Gooseberry Pie, New Flash Fiction Review, scaffold, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor for ClickHole, and an elementary school teacher in Washington, DC. You can read his writing at https://www.chrisscottwrites.com.

Nicole M. Babb

Useless

Excuse me, I want to call after you as you turn off the lights to the now-empty office. You’ve left me behind. But I don’t say anything, and you don’t look back.

~

       We met the day you graduated from college. Your grandfather gave me to you as a gift. Precision, he said. It’s everything in this business. He would know. We took our first picture together that day – the one you kept in a brass frame on the top shelf of your bookcase; the one you placed into a box just this morning. You held me aloft like a queen with a scepter, the world at your feet.

       You got your first job and brought me along. You spent hours bent over the drafting table in your office, me under your hand, making sharp, straight lines together. You were a natural. Everyone said so. 

       One night, late, a senior architect with frat boy hair and a single front tooth inexplicably more yellow than the rest, passed by on his way out. We were still working. He stopped in your doorway and stared. A t-square, he sneered. Useless. Computers are the future, baby. You better keep up or you’ll get left behind. Your face remained scarlet long after he left, your warm tears pattered onto my unvarnished oak body, leaving behind faint spots. Scars I bear to this day. You put me away that night, into a dusty corner where I could humiliate you no more.

       The following summer, the facilities manager seemed determined to single-handedly end the record-breaking heat wave plaguing the city. The A/C was set to Arctic. Your arms were covered with goosebumps. You looked desperately at the vent, wide open, and searched around for a means of closing it. Your eyes landed on me. Hello, friend. In your outstretched hand, I was just long enough to slide the tab that would block the icy blast. Instead of returning me to the corner, you propped me against your desk. It felt good to be of use again.

       You got a promotion – with a raise – and bought your first piece of real art. A landscape painting, Impressionist style. No buildings. An unusual choice for an architect. You laid me flat against the wall, making tiny pencil marks and moving me back and forth until you arrived at a midpoint. Precision, just like your grandfather instructed you all those years before. When you had the spot just right, you turned me on my side and used my thin edge to hammer the nail into place.

       That senior architect was also promoted, to partner. He stopped by your office again. That night he came in, his one discolored tooth portending malice. He touched your hair, then your neck. He called you baby, but instead of condescending, it sounded sinister. You wielded me like a sword to keep him at bay as you fled. If I could have, I would have tripled in size to shield you from him. I would have used my giant, permanently outstretched arms to fling him to the ends of the earth.

       You got your second job. The one that would be home for the next twelve years. The one that made you, nurtured you, almost broke you. You burned bright in those years. Clients sought you out. You were staffed on the most prestigious projects, pushed to your limits.

       On your hard days, or when you just needed to think, you held me over your shoulder in a batter’s pose, tossing crumpled drafts into the air, swinging me with more heft than necessary to make the connection. Over and over, the wads of paper would bounce off the wall into a pile. T-ball, you called it, in my honor. Other times, I hung upside down in your hands to become a putter as you took aim at makeshift golf balls, rocketing them into an upended cup. Carolyn would come in most afternoons. She acted as pitcher, or caddy. But mostly, she was your confidant, and you hers. You were inseparable then. Best friends.

       You started using me for work again. Your wealthy clients enjoyed the theater of it. Of feeling like something special was being created just for them. During meetings, you brought me into the conference room along with an oversized drafting pad. The clients looked hungrily across the marred table, mesmerized watching you work. Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what I had in mind, they whispered. Without fail, they left the office contract-bound, several thousand dollars lighter, and clutching your sketches as though they might take flight like some rare and mythical bird. Those were some of my favorite days.

       You started getting the recognition you deserved. Your projects were featured in Architectural Digest. A luxury beach cottage in the Hamptons, a sprawling ranch in Wyoming, an eco-friendly winery in the Willamette Valley. You were chosen for the Design Network’s 40 Under 40. Each accolade was cause for celebration. Champagne in the conference room, Bruce yelled from the hallway. For our star. He was thrilled to have you as his protégé, to claim he had some hand in your skill.

       Those celebrations lasted well into the night. One bottle of champagne turned into two, turned into half a dozen assorted bottles, always left scattered about the conference room in the mornings. Eric would bring a bottle of bourbon out from his office. Jackie would put on music. Once, I was still in the conference room, left behind after a meeting, when the party started. Bon Jovi came on. You grabbed me with both hands and belted Livin’ on a Prayer. I was passed around. Carolyn took her turn with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I was the star of Conference Room Karaoke. Jackson even had a habit of flipping me over mid-song, turning me from mic into electric guitar. He ran his fingers back and forth, strumming the imaginary strings along my spine. There was a period when those parties happened more nights than not. From our perch on the 47th floor, the city sparkled below and it those moments it felt like the sparkle was just for us. You were still the queen, the world still at your feet. It was exhilarating while it lasted.

       You were unstoppable then. Before the accident.

       The firm was hired to design a 200-unit luxury condo building in a historic district. Your name on the project was part of the deal. You didn’t want to do it. It was out of your depth, you said. Your other projects had been smaller. You could prioritize form. Aesthetics. This was all function, hidden behind only the thinnest veneer of creativity. Your involvement was non-negotiable. It was the only time you and Bruce argued. The only time he pulled the boss card. I may as well be designing a Wal-Mart, you whined. Bruce was pissed. You think you’re too good for our clients? You’ll do this, and you’ll do it well, or you won’t even be able to get a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart by the time I’m through with you. You may have had more raw talent, but Bruce had connections. You knew when you had lost. You did the job, adding your signature touches where you could. And when you attended the ribbon cutting, even you had to admit, it was magnificent.

       Six weeks later, a two-year-old boy, left alone on a balcony for just a minute, slipped under the beautiful wrought iron handrail you had so painstakingly selected. A lawsuit was filed. The gap between the floor and the bottom of the railing was one inch wider than it should have been. One inch, and someone’s child was gone.

       The suit dragged on for nearly two years. I didn’t think you would survive it. There were no more parties. You started keeping your door closed. You blamed Bruce, and yourself. Some people said the inch wouldn’t have made a difference. Two year olds are small. It was really the mom’s fault. But it mattered to the building department. It mattered to you. Then, as abruptly as it started, it ended. Carolyn testified in a deposition that you partied a lot. That you often came to work hungover. Finally, someone said it. Someone who was supposed to be on your side blamed you. The next day, the case settled, and that night, you bludgeoned your office to bits. Swinging me like a mace, you brought awards, sheetrock, knick-knacks to ruin. Even that beautiful, blurry landscape was unrecognizable when we were done. We too, were changed. One of my arms snapped off in the fray. For the second time since we met, I thought, That’s the end for me. Useless now. I think you felt the same.

       But when you went out on your own a few months later, you brought me with you to the two-room office at the corner of a strip mall. The carpets were a dirty beige, as were the walls. You patched me up with a thin line of wood glue bolstered by a strip of duct tape. You arranged your few surviving items – the picture of us – on the bookshelf left behind by a former tenant. It was bulky, old-fashioned, nothing you would have picked out.

       You worked alone. It was somber. And sober. No champagne, no karaoke, no glittering lights. You took small projects. Houses. Office remodels. A Target – which I had to admit was a lot like a Wal-Mart. You erred on the side of caution, so much so that your work became bland. You sighed a lot.

       After we had been alone for a couple of years, one Wednesday, at five o’clock sharp, a man met you at the office. Tall, with black hair, wearing the khakiest pants I’ve ever seen. It was the first time since the move that another person had been in the space. Less than a year later, you added a second picture to the top shelf. This one in a crystal frame. You in a white dress next to the man.

       I was the first to know when you got pregnant. You were in the middle of sketching a conceptual design for a beachfront hotel – your first big bid since going out on your own – when you doubled over, hands pressed to your mouth. You crawled to the trashcan and vomited. Then you addressed your stomach, Keep it together, Pipsqueak. We need this job if you want to live in a good school district.

       You got the job. There was still no champagne, but the tall man – Scott, I learned – came and painted the walls a mossy green. You replaced the carpet. Bought a new landscape. Scott hung it with a real hammer, which was probably for the best, given my arm.

       As your belly grew, you found new uses for me. A shoe horn to slide your swollen feet from your shoes so you could prop them on your desk, and to squeeze them back in. A back scratcher for that fleshy part just beneath your right shoulder blade that always seemed to itch.

       The hotel took years to finish, but it breathed new life into. Or maybe it was Scott and Pipsqueak. I was never really sure. You brought on two associates. Young, eager, like you were once. They hung on your every word.

       When Pipsqueak decided to be an architect for career day, like her mom, her outfit included me. I was going to school for the first time. Then, the morning of, she decided she wanted to be a judge. I could tell you were sad, when you asked, Are you sure, but then you said, You can be anything you want to be. You pulled me out of her backpack and turned me into scales of justice with string and paper plates. I still got to go to school. It was more fun than being an air guitar. Some years later, you added another photo. Pipsqueak in a cap and gown. She looked just like you did the day we met.

       You started having hot flashes and we came full circle. I was back on vent duty, full time. Open the vent, close it. Open, close.

       The years passed in a comfortable rhythm. Another photo appeared, Pipsqueak in her own white gown, you and Scott beside her. One day you brought in a boy who called you Mimi and climbed on everything. You pulled him from the bookcase, and as you set him down, I thought I saw your eyes glisten. I wondered if you were thinking of another little boy.

       Work slowed. Your associates had become partners and they got other offers. You were happy for them, even as you knew it was the beginning of your end. You packed up the office and turned off the lights and locked the door and left me here. If there’s no use for you, there’s none for me.

~

       The lights flicker on. You’re back. You pick me up, gently now. I’m as frail as you are. Come on, you say. We have shit to do.

---

Nicole M. Babb is a recovering litigator who is using her exit from the world of facts to write stories that exist somewhere between the real and not-real. Her favorite stories include larger-than-life characters and an extra helping of snark. She’s a lifelong New Orleanian, and when she’s not writing enjoys good wine, the occasional bad wine, yoga, and board games. She has a piece forthcoming in Foofaraw (November 2025) and in 2024, she was awarded the Scribes Prize for Microfiction. Find her at nicolebabb.com.

Kristen Havens

In the Face of Such Hope

(The Giant Cookie We’ve Been Waiting For)

On the afternoon the first asteroid hits, a woman in the building across from mine orgasms for forty-five minutes. I am on my balcony, reading a sci-fi novel about Mars. The sound of their lovemaking bounces off the walls of our shared alley. Every so often I shuffle my pages so as to say, "Here I am, going about my business, not listening,” but I am caught up; it is impossible not to be. The lovers laugh; the woman’s voice moves around the apartment, her climax rising here, falling there, until it seems a traveling prank. When it’s finally over, I hear the shower running and realize half the chapter has finished without me; the red planet rises like an ogre on the horizon. I check my watch. Once again, I have lost time: hundreds of seconds have slipped away from me while eavesdropping on other people’s lives. I go inside to moderate my afternoon support group. So many heads in little boxes on the screen: so many people like me, needing purpose before the end, and then others who’ve looked and found and lost and now demand nothing less than true love immediately, like a klieg light in the eyes. That alignment. What can I say, in the face of such hope? Each of us is alone, but we’re together in loneliness: isn’t that enough? No. They want more. I’m burning, it’s like a burning, someone says. Another: I want that. And another: What do you think it means? Consumed by clues, signs, and suggestions, they examine everything in search of joy. I envy this: the way they wring meaning from every moment, rather than merely tumbling through time. Doctor, someone says. I listen again for the couple next door, but there is nothing, only sirens in the distance. What do you think? Nobody has ever demanded passion of me like that; I am no one's one and only. Doctor, they repeat. What are you reading? I look down. My hand is still on the cover of the old paperback. Mars pulses and writhes under my palm. I hold the book up so they can see. Hurry, the red planet hums to me. There isn’t any time. One of the men onscreen, a teacher, nods. It’s a sign, he says. A girl in the class I am teaching writes of a giant cookie that blots out the sun.

---

Kristen Havens is a writer living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in PANK, Atticus Review, Monkeybicycle, Necessary Fiction, and Bending Genres, among others. She makes her living as a freelance IT contractor and developmental editor. She is currently writing a novel about technology.

Olivia Sawatzki

The Devil was passing out gift cards at the corner of Figueroa and Slauson,

I.

Across from the Arco and right next to the medical clinic where I got my shingles vaccine. A small crowd gathered around him; I knew it was The Devil right away cause he was wearing his usual outfit; a long maroon coat worn down to threads at the elbows, black bloody kilt with studded belt, and a beret made of garbage to hide his Horns.

I drew closer just to see what all the fuss was about and was interpreted as being in line; this was not my intention at all but The Devil keeps a surprisingly organized queue. Before I knew it he was handing me a little piece of plastic and saying in his oily voice, I Hope You Like Pancakes, Kid. How Much Is It For? I asked him while he scratched out the grime under his claws with an IHOP® gift card. Infinity Dollars, said The Devil, and that's when I started to smell fish but I figured I had nothing to lose. So I went to the nearest IHOP® which was on Slauson and Western.

The IHOP® was a big warm hug of brown linoleum. I felt instantly at peace there and could lose my mind in the mathematical swirling of the blue printed upholstery. I was a little nervous when it came time to pay for my Special Limited Time Offer which was a key-lime pie pancake so rich it made my teeth hurt. I explained the gift card away to Sheri, my waitress who looked uncannily like my Aunt Mary even wore the same perfume. I said I’m Not Sure if This Has Anything Left On It. I Can Check For You, she said and she whisked away my check and came back with a receipt and a pen. She said it would say on the bottom of my receipt and I looked and it said: $∞.

A thing like this can trip a man out if he’s not careful. I learned that when I got really into the Fibonacci sequence and started stapling leaves to my ceiling. When the leaves dried up and crumbled I thought God was telling me to hurt people. I thought the whole thing might be a fluke, it was the Devil after all, so I went to IHOP® again with Raymond that next weekend, this time the one on Crenshaw and Stocker. Would you believe it that Sheri sat us again but her name tag said Teri and she didn’t remember me?

Raymond didn’t believe that breakfast was on me. He made a big old show about ordering nearly everything on the menu, even things I knew he didn’t like such as Strawberry Banana Pancakes. I never saw Raymond eat a fruit in his life. I nodded, playing unfazed while he listed out his order to ShTeri, but inside I was feeling rough because if this whole thing was a hoax I would unfortunately I would not be able to tip ShTeri or pay my credit card interest payment. Oh I was sweating all right. 

Raymond, all covered in strawberry maple syrup and whipped cream and butter, thought it was the funniest damn thing he’d ever seen. He ate like an asshole, took one bite of each plate clockwise around chewing real slow like some kinda demented aristocrat. ShTeri came back smiling with the check finally and I gulped down a big biley knot in my throat and gave her the gift card. Magic Gift Card My Ass, Ray said, looking at my face covered in cold sweat, my fingers tapping the table without rhythm so I didn’t have to think about breathing. The receipt came back and I grabbed it and looked at the bottom. Amount remaining: $∞. Ray howled so hard when he saw it I thought he was gonna have a heart attack.

II.

The first couple months were a ton of fun. Ray tried for a long time to make money off it. He thought I had hacked the card with a computer. When I told him it was a gift from the Devil of course he thought I was speaking in metaphors or having another episode. He would shoplift empty gift cards from Ralph’s and try to get me to hack their code. He thought I was withholding my secrets somehow and being greedy. IHOP® Isn’t Even A Good Choice, he would moan, Who Even Likes IHOP® That Much. I Don’t Know, I said, The Devil Gave It To Me. He thought I was crazy and he started getting mad. He sat me down probably 12 times and explained that if I had figured out a way to Manufacture Currency, we could get anything we wanted in the world. And to not include him was a crime. I Think Shoplifting From Ralph’s Is A Crime, I would say to that. An Amazon Gift Card! He would yell, A Visa Gift Card Is Basically Cash! Take It Up With The Devil, I would say to that. And then we would go to IHOP® which by the way also serves lunch and dinner.

III.

I couldn’t get IHOP® out of my head. Every time I went to the vending machine at work, I would think: This Would Be Free At IHOP®. Every lunch out, every first date, every birthday meal I would beg people to go with me to IHOP® and promise to treat them. Why Can’t You Treat Me Somewhere Else? Said a girl on Tinder when I insisted on IHOP® for dinner. I Have a Connection, I said. She called me cheap and she blocked me but I was right that the IHOP® T-Bone Steak Dinner is not nearly as nasty as it looks in the picture.

IV.

It took longer than you’d think for anyone to catch on. I started getting obsessed with the amenities. I had IHOP® toilet paper in my bathroom. I had commercial-grade IHOP® 100ppm cleaning solution in my cabinet. I shut off my air conditioning in August even though it was over 100 degrees and just hung out at IHOP for 18 hours a day which is as long as it is open. I had packets upon packets of Smucker’s Orange Marmalade stuffed down my pants at any given hour. I got away with it all for eighteen months and some change. When ShTeri finally cornered me at the IHOP® on South Sepulveda and asked me Where The Hell I Got That Gift Card. ShTeri, I said (whose name tag on South Sepulveda said “Keri”), How The Hell Do You Work at Every IHOP In Los Angeles With A Different Name At Each One? She scrunched her forehead up playing confused. I Know You’re An Agent Of The Devil, I said. She dissolved into the ether after that, probably headed back to Hell, and some poor patron, caught up in the crosshairs of all that dark magic, must’ve called the cops. Well there is nothing illegal about calling someone an Agent of The Devil.

V.

Nobody on the force could figure out the card. They called in a consultant from the Geek Squad who had a patchy black beard that made a dry noise when he scratched it. He had long greasy hair and glasses. He said he would have to do some research and the cops let him take the card with him. Meanwhile my face was plastered in every IHOP in Southern California on account of “harassing” ShTeri “Keri” “sexually” (which was not true, I only called her an Agent of the Devil) but no charges were brought forth. Would you believe last week I walked past the IHOP® on Wilshire and saw the man from the Geek Squad and his whole clan of greasy friends being escorted out in handcuffs?

VI.

Next time I saw the Devil on Fig I asked him what it was all about. I caught him alone for once, leaning against the fence outside an elementary school playground, dirtying up clean hypodermic needles and shoving ‘em through the holes in the fence. He smiled when he saw me and passed me his joint which burned bright purple neon blue. 

What Was The Purpose? I asked him. He laughed his goaty laugh, and coughed up a little bit of green fire. 

What’s The Purpose of Torment? He asked, silver pupils widening to take me in.

I thought about that for a while. I do still think about the T-Bone steak dinner. I taste the Cinn-A-Stack® Milkshake in my dreams. I embarrassed myself in front of a lot of women I might have had a shot with otherwise. The whole thing lays heavy on my mind.

To Win? I said. 

A bell rang, and children filled the playground. The Devil snapped his fingers and a little boy tripped over a needle, scraping his knee bad, bleeding like crazy and wailing wailing wailing. The Devil smiled at that. He turned back to me.

Did I Win?

You Never Do, I said.

No, He winced. I Just Haven’t Yet.

He paused to watch a child fall out of a tree.

Did I Get The Geek Squad Guy, Though? 

I Think So, I said.

He was clearly happy about that. I clapped him on the back. He was one of my oldest friends and just doing his job. We’ll both get another shot.

---

Olivia Sawatzki is an author and playwright originally from Columbus, Ohio. Her fiction and essays have been published in Does It Have Pockets, Bending Genres, Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, and elsewhere. Her plays have been produced in Ohio and California. She published her debut chapbook, Misanthropocene, with Bottlecap Press in 2024. She lives in Echo Park, Los Angeles.

Jaime Gill

The Hate Baby

First Trimester

“Kate, please stay calm,” Dr. Keenan says, with kind eyes but no smile. Have those words ever calmed anyone? “I have difficult news.” The air in the room thins. My hand moves to my stomach—involuntary, but the gesture feels stagy, like I’m in a bad movie. “I’m sorry, but we can’t terminate.”

“No,” I say, trying to sound assertive, not desperate. I try to remember the speech my sister wanted me to memorize but I was sure I wouldn’t need. “You can’t refuse me. I called and registered in advance. I travelled here specifically because the law—”

“It’s not that,” Dr. Keenan interrupts, hand raised. “You’re experiencing toxin-triggered parthenogenesis. You probably know it as TTP.”

I stare. This happens to other people. It can’t be happening to me.

“I’m having a hate baby?”

“I’m so sorry,” Dr. Keenan says.

Her arm twitches, as though she were about to reach for me but decided against it.

I drink three gin and tonics on the flight home. The attendant grimaces when I ask for the third, and I briefly think it’s because he’s seen I’m pregnant. I almost tell him to stop judging me, it’s a hate pregnancy, but calm myself. There’s no baby bump, not yet. He just thinks I’m a garden variety alcoholic. My resentment still froths at that assumption until I remember resentment is one of the toxic emotions Dr. Keenan warned me against.

I still have a bunch of leaflets Dr. Keenan must have given me, though I was so dazed I don’t recall her actually handing them over. I take one from my bag now and slide it inside the meal menu, so the old man in the aisle can’t see. I read about parthenogenesis, a word I doubt I’ll ever be able to say even if it is the word that fucks my life up. Parthenogenesis is a non-sexual form of reproduction often seen in reptiles. Great, I’m a pregnant fucking lizard. TTP is impervious to all known contraceptives and is triggered when the host (a better word than mother, I agree) is exposed for prolonged periods to external stimulation fostering extreme negative emotions.

“In a way,”—Dr. Keenan had said, sounding not-very-scientific—“TTP can be seen as a positive bodily function. It expels toxins.”

“Like throwing up?” I said.

“Less pleasant than that.”

So now, of course, I’m trying not to think about anything I hate. No more wondering who is worse, the spineless politicians or the duped dopes voting for them. No more fantasies of sociopathic billionaires locked up. But it’s like that game where someone asks you not to think of an elephant, and there it is in your brain—the elephant. There they are—everyone I hate.

I feel a tiny movement inside. I think I just fed the hate baby.

I try soothing myself by listening to Joni Mitchell on my headphones. I look out of the window, at the pretty cornfields laid below like a patchwork quilt. I even try breathing exercises, like in that meditation class I attended twice before I decided I didn’t have this “center” the instructor babbled about. But I can’t stop my mind from moving towards the discomfort in my belly. I’m so aware of it now, that little ball of poisonous tissue.

This is Tony’s fault, even if it wasn’t his sperm that did the impregnating. I knew we shouldn’t watch the news so much. I told him we should cut down on social media, I said we should delete Twitter, when it was still called that. But Tony spouted bullshit about good citizens being aware citizens. Well, great, Tony. You’re informed and I’m having a hate baby. Round of fucking applause.

God, I have to stop thinking like this. It's the only way. Dr. Keenan said doctors are still working on TTP solutions—in those countries where they’re allowed to, anyway—but no safe abortion method has been found yet. Terminations are always deadly to the mother. The moment a hate fetus dies, it dissolves into its constituent toxins and poisons its host, instantly and fatally.

There are two slightly-less-appalling options. Trying to block out all the ugly noise of the world—all the injustices, idiocies and cruelties that feed negative emotions—can starve the hate fetus of enough material for growth, precipitating a safe miscarriage.  Or—if toxic emotions can’t be eliminated from the host’s experience—the fetus will grow until it is large and solid enough and can be delivered relatively safely.

I have to learn not to hate. I am not giving birth to this fucking thing.

Why can’t Tony be the one having a hate baby?

No, I’ve got to be kinder. Hate gets inside men too. In their cases, it metastasizes into cancer. For the first time since Adam and Eve, men might have actually drawn the biological short straw. The spleen, the stomach, the bile duct, the prostate—hate latches onto those. Tony needs a check-up.

Second Trimester

I’m at the TTP Support Group, one of a dozen women in a circle. Kumbay-fucking-ya. One red-headed woman’s stomach is so swollen I can’t look at it, can’t bear to imagine the tangled toxic mass lodged beneath her stretched skin. My brain flashes on a memory from that documentary we saw: a newborn hate baby howling at the camera, skin a sickly mottled green, mouth already full of jagged teeth.

“Let’s begin,” Clarissa, our group guide, says. “Speak your truth but speak it kindly. Especially to yourself.” Once I’d have texted Tony or my sister a vomiting emoji, but I don’t have a smartphone now and mocking is a form of hate, too. I force myself to smile. Fake it ‘til you make it, Tony says, though I’m not sure that works when the it is inside you.

There is a brief silence, which I push my way into. I’ve spent weeks sealed up at home with no Internet, just a brain-sucking succession of cozy documentaries, subtitled Korean soap operas, and Disney movies. My musical diet is also curated, endless Mamas and Papas, Sigur Ros, and The Beatles before they went weird and got into politics. Peace and quiet, that’s what my mother would have called it, though it feels stifled and sterile to me. Tony’s so terrified of triggering hateful responses that he barely talks to me now. Which would make me hate him, if I wasn’t afraid to. So, yeah, I need to talk.

“I’m frightened,” I say. Clarissa cocks her head, which isn’t infuriating, no it isn’t. “I try to avoid toxic emotions. I practice the TTP Kindness Principles. I never expose myself to politics or the news but the… it’s still growing.”

Sympathetic murmurs in surround sound.

The TTP Support Groups are new. The burgeoning industry of TTP theorists argue that hate pregnancies have probably occurred throughout human history, but been freakishly rare, with most blamed on curses or other local superstitions. The numbers began climbing in the late 20th century, then started to rise exponentially after 2010. Most experts argue that acceleration is due to the cumulative impact of smartphones, social media, political polarization, economic stagnation, climate terror, etc. etc. etc. etc. Except for the vaccine conspiracy theorists, but I mustn’t think about those pieces of shit, or the TTP baby rights groups, and definitely not those freaky religious sects waving their “Jesus Was A Hate Baby Too” placards.

There’s probably something ironic about the fact that I’m a trained researcher but I can’t even read up on my own condition. Just reading about TTP risk factors triggers enough rage in me to swell the fetus. Tony did tell me— carefully—that the current rates are about 1 in 5,000 pregnancies, though it varies country to country. I try not to think “why me”, because that’s another bus ride to Hate Town. There are certainly enough TTPs now to make support groups like this viable even in a small city like ours.

“Fear is an understandable but complex emotion,” Clarissa says. I tell myself she doesn’t mean to sound condescending, she’s just trying to calm me. “We must accept its existence, allow it space, but not be ruled by it.” She smiles, benevolently. “Fear is a doorway to hate.”

Does Clarissa know she sounds like fucking Yoda?

Third trimester

Tony and I walk towards the forbidding, dark brick building of the TTP Residential Facility. Most people call it the Hate Orphanage. It’s in a mental institution that was closed down thirty years ago, and doesn’t look like it’s been refurbished since.

On the two-hour drive here, we listened to talk radio. One rabble-rousing host made a joke about how TTP women are angry feminists and their children were always going to be little monsters, it’s just you can see it now. When he changed the subject to some immigrant outrage, we found another station and a call-in where people raged about respectful TTP terminology, as if fixing the English language just so would also fix the world. I loathed them all. Pure, glorious hate.

I wallow in toxic emotions lately, a hippo in mud. Since I accepted it isn’t possible to live in this world without hating it—not for me, anyway— I’ve surrendered. If I’m going to get this thing out of me, I want to do it fast, so I’m on an all-hate, all-rage diet to make the fetus grow.

Every day I descend to our basement to listen for hours to Nine Inch Nails or Curve at full volume. Smashing Pumpkins, too, but skipping right past the hippie ballads. I scream along to every word, matching their fury and bile. No. Exceeding it. Tony hides upstairs with his headphones on, since we’re trying to reduce his hate intake. No signs of cancer yet, but he’s in a high-risk group, his doctor said. Living with a TTP woman is in itself a risk factor. Well, fuck you too, Mr. Doctor.

I spend three hours on my restored Twitter account every day and can actually feel my stomach getting harder and bigger. Sometimes I feel proud of myself for making the fetus grow so fast, then I hate myself for feeling any pride towards this thing, and—of course—that works too.

As we walk towards the orphanage, we hear the screams and snarls of the hate babies, even over the tall, glum walls with their barbed wire crowns. There must be some kind of playground on the other side.

Tony looks pale, but it was his idea to come. He said it was the only responsible thing to do. If nothing else, the creature will be sentient when it’s born and if we’re sending it away we should know where it’s going. I didn’t argue—it seemed like a perfect opportunity for a hate feast.

We step inside a reception or lobby with high ceilings, though it’s impossibly gloomy and we can’t see any staff. There’s a thump thump thump on the floors above and a strange strangled cry that’s almost a word. One of the older hate babies, presumably. A hate teen, maybe.

Tony takes my arm, turning his stupid big brown eyes on me. “Can we do this? Just give it away and leave it to”—he gestures at the cavernous gloom—“whatever life it will have here?”

Oh, that’s good, Tony. That’s really making me hate you. Good baby food.

“If you want to raise this thing, you’ll be doing it without me,” I say.

A door opens and a staff member hurries towards us, mumbling apologies. Behind him, we can hear the disgusting sounds from the playground. By the vivid red scratch on the man’s neck, I presume he was playing with them. Gross. I listen to their bestial sounds and I hate them and I revel in it.

The monster squirms inside me. Do you hate them, too? I wonder, then thrust the thought away. That’s a recent development. Brief flashes of connection, notions that maybe me and the thing inside me aren't so different. The most hateful thoughts of all.

I wince from a blunt pain in my stomach. My baby can really kick.

---

Jaime Gill is a queer, British-born writer happily exiled in Cambodia, where he works and volunteers for nonprofits. He reads, runs, boxes, travels, writes, occasionally socialises. His stories have appeared in Blue Earth Review, Trampset, f(r)iction, NFFR, Phoebe, Litro, and more, with stories due to appear in The Forge and Fractured. He has won multiple awards including a 2024 Bridport Prize and the 2025 Luminaire Prose Award. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions, he’s currently writing a novel, a script, and far too many short stories. More at www.jaimegill.com, www.x.com/jaimegill, www.instagram.com/mrjaimegill or https://bsky.app/profile/jaimegill.bsky.social.

Ron Burch

You’re Stalled Near the Exit

Your car won't start. You're stuck on the side of the 5 Freeway, one of the busiest freeways in the world. Your phone battery sits in the red. You can't remember if you have your AAA card for a jump. Or if you have to pay for the next one. You hear the lively hum of passing cars. Your dog is sick and threw up on your black travel bag this morning. You cleaned it off but you can still see a vague outline of it on the side of the bag. You rub it with a used napkin you pick up off the cluttered seat. The bag doesn't change and you throw down the napkin. This morning, your husband was irritable, hung-over. He barely spoke to you. Your car won't start. Those in the passenger seats look you as they drive by, blank faces, searching, maybe a few who seem concerned but that could be about them, you suspect. You think of how small you are in comparison to the planet. To the universe. You think about punching yourself in the stomach but decide that ultimately will not help you. Your phone is almost dead, more than the last time you looked. You should call someone but you're unsure of who to call yet: AAA if it's going to be free help or your husband.

She mouths the words silently words she has to say but come out as nothing. In the other end he says hello but it’s not a question.

Your car won't start. Your phone battery is now dead. You didn't tell your husband. There were spaces in which to do it. But they all felt like Sunday nights: unhappy and existential. Why does every weekend have to have a crisis of spiritual proportions. Admit it. You didn't want to tell him. He should know why the dog is sick. Your car won't start. A car pulls up behind. A Blue Honda or something. The driver, some guy in a baseball cap, waves to you. You get the feeling he wants to help you. You roll down your window and wave him on. He waves again and you indicate with your hand that he should go. His car backs up and he, shrugging at you, leaves. Your car won't start. Through the trees you see a luminous coffee shop right off the exit. You wish you could stay there forever. The cars pass you like puffs of smoke.

---

Ron Burch's fiction has been published in numerous literary journals including South Dakota Review, Fiction International, Mississippi Review, New Flash Fiction and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and other awards. His last novel, JDP, was published by BlazeVOX Books. He earned his MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and lives in Indianapolis, IN.

Jessica Dawn

The Mammoth

         There was always going to be a tour, they want to be clear about that. It had been announced way back when the pregnancy was confirmed and they planned it even before that. They share all the documents to prove it, but still seems ghoulish. They could have just refunded all those tickets but no, they’re going through with it anyway. Instead of a little pen they’ll have a little glass coffin. Real tasteful, they promise. Everyone is still going to see the mammoth, not like they aren’t getting what they paid for.

  ~

         The mammoth only lived for ninety minutes, all of them caught on camera. Its elephant mother was under the lights for days. She didn’t know she wasn’t carrying her own baby, that she was pregnant with one of her ancestors. Or maybe she had some idea. Hard to say what elephants do and don’t know.

         When the sloppy birth finally happened everyone watched it live, with interruptions from the sponsors of course. It was like super bowl for advertisers, bet they spent a boatload on those commercials. Between the ads everyone watched the scientists in their white paper suits wash blood and slime from its hair, saw it rise on unsteady legs and take its first stumbling steps.

         “There it goes,” one of the reporters said.

         “It’ll get stronger, this is normal,” the other reporter said like he knew, like he saw this all the time.

         But its steps got shakier and shakier until it fell and never stood back up. Its big eyes stared straight into the lens like it could see everyone watching from their living rooms and from bars and crouched around computers in cubicles and hunched over phones on the bus. It shut its eyes when it had seen enough and quietly left the world, de-extinct and re-extinct in an hour and a half.

 ~

         Of course Janice missed the whole thing on account of being in court through those ninety minutes. The bailiff was sure serious about the no phones thing, couldn’t even sneak glances while the lawyers and judge were talking no matter how bad she wanted to. Just had to wait and wait and wait while they decided that her night in jail plus probation and AA meetings and a suspended license were what it would take to make up for going off the edge of the road and then blowing a point one one. Consider yourself lucky, the judge said. Do it again and it’s jail for sure.

         That was it. No banging the gavel or anything. Guess that’s just in movies, Janice thought. She didn’t feel so lucky when she was out of the courtroom. Felt more like well I guess that’s what I get. Felt more like if she could figure out the first mistake she could undo all the rest, but hell if she knows how far back she’d have to go. Seems like there’s always another mistake that came before and who knows how many still ahead. Takes out her phone and figures she could at least see some cute mammoth pics and that’s when she finds out she missed its whole life, that it’s gone baby gone.

         This day just keeps getting worse, she thought.

~

         Its whole life is all over the internet. One of the videos has over five million views by the end of the day, fifty by the end of the week. It’s been watched for more collective minutes than the mammoth’s whole life, from embryo to the end.

         I watched this with my kids they were traumatized!! the first comment says.

         Pussy in bio the next comment says.

~

         AA meetings are at the church that isn’t closest to her house but second closest. Still easy enough to walk, which is important given her driving status, namely that she’s not allowed. She gets there early but then she’s self-conscious about being early so she walks around the block a couple times and ends up late, slides into a chair in the back while an older man tells everyone that even though his daughter said no more chances he thinks they can still work it out. Janice wonders if she’s supposed to clap when he’s done. No one else seems to know either. Some do, some say thank you, some just nod.

         Woman in a pink sweatsuit takes his place. One of those matchy deals that looks like it’s for exercise, but isn’t really made for moving. Hair all slicked back in a ponytail. Dainty little earrings that look like birds.

         “Hi, Hannah, just here to work on myself,” she says with a wave of her hand like she’s telling herself yeah yeah, get on with it already. “I just want to talk about the mammoth for a quick second.”

         The room groans so must be this isn’t the first time. “Maybe we can focus on ourselves today,” says a man in an old flannel. He’s got the kind of voice that says if he’s not the boss of AA, he’s at least been here the longest.

         “It’s about me, I promise,” Hannah says. “I mean, for me it just seems shady as hell that they sold all those tickets before they even knew what would happen. For me that just doesn’t feel right, you know?”

         “Let’s stick to your recovery journey today,” says the flannel man.

         “But this is about my recovery journey,” she sighs. “Everything is about my recovery journey.”

         She gets the message, though. The message is stop talking about the fucking mammoth.

~

         “You know if it lived the mom wouldn’t be able to nurse it,” says Hannah. She swirls a fry in a little paper cup full of ketchup, keeps stirring and stirring and stirring. “Or, she could at first but she wouldn’t make enough milk because they think it would’ve gotten so big so fast. They had to get milk from like four other elephants ready.”

         “Wow,” Janice says and chews.

         Took all of a week for them to start going out to get food after meetings.

         “Is that allowed?” Janice had asked and Hannah shrugged. They’re both only here because the court ordered, so they figured the rules must be different for them anyway.

         “They had freezers full of elephant milk that they had to try and donate to zoos when it turned out they didn’t need it. But a lot of it went bad. Spoiled elephant milk.”

         Janice has come to understand what all the groaning is about. She does talk about the fucking mammoth a lot.

         “What do you think elephant milk tastes like?”

         “Probably just like regular milk,” Hannah shrugs. “Hey, can I tell you a secret?”

         Here we go, Janice thinks, we’re finally going to talk about something new, something real. They can trade stories of how they got here. They can talk about what they’re going to do when their time is up.

         “I bought tickets to go see it,” Hannah says.

         “Well yeah, I assumed you had tickets,” Janice says, sounds annoyed even though she’s trying not to.

         “No, I mean I didn’t buy tickets until after it died.”

         “Were they cheaper after?”

         “Nope,” she says and finally takes a bite of the fry. All that ketchup is bright red in her mouth, on her teeth. “Way more expensive.”

         “Why?”

         “Dunno. People are sick.”

         “No why did you wait until after it died?”

         “It’s not like I waited to see if it would die.” Long pause while she tries to suck vanilla milkshake through a paper straw. “It just seemed more important to see it after it was dead. Is that weird?”

         “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”

         “You want to know something else weird?”

         “I guess,” Janice sighs.

         “I bought two tickets,” she says, that smirk on her face that Janice hasn’t quite figured out yet.

~

         We think there’s still tremendous value and much to be learned from viewing such a rare specimen, the spokespeople had said after the mammoth died. Without the constraints and unpredictable nature of a living creature, it might actually be better. Easier for everyone to see it, you know? Dead things don’t need breaks for food and sleep. It’ll look so much better in pictures this way, they said.

~

         “It feels like you bought tickets to a wake is all,” Janice says a few days later once they’ve made it out of the church, away from where all the alcoholics can hear them.

         “What do you mean awake?”

         “A wake, like when you go look at the body before a funeral.”

         Hannah shrugs, palms up. Help me, her face says. I don’t understand, her face says.

         “You’ve never been to a wake?”

         “I’ve never been to a funeral,” Hannah says.

         “Are you serious?”

         There’s the shrug again, but this time it means something more like I’m sorry. I’m sorry with a question mark, like she’s not exactly sure what she’s apologizing for.

         “So are you coming with me or not?”

~

         Janice still has most of the year before she’s allowed to drive again and Hannah is only allowed to drive her car so they pile into her old Celica. She smashes cans and bottles underfoot on the passenger side while Hannah blows into the tube that keeps the car from starting if it smells any alcohol on her. On goes the engine, test passed.

         “Here we go,” Hannah says and backs up without looking.

         Closest stop on the tour is an hour and a half away but it takes them almost three to get there. Hard to believe all those people could be there for one little mammoth, but maybe. Who knows how many tickets they sold. Probably too many.

         Of course the line is around the block by the time they park. Takes a while to find the place, too, Hannah squinting at her phone in one hand and missing their turn with the other. Janice asks if she needs help,

         “Nah, I have a system,” Hannah says and swerves into the next lane.

         They finally get into a garage, though, spiral up and up and up until there’s an empty spot and ride the rickety elevator back down. Easy enough to find the end of the line, they just have to walk the same direction as everyone else.

         “This is going to take forever,” Hannah sighs.

         Janice chews at her nails, does it without thinking. Pure habit by now. Doesn’t notice she’s at it until she tears one down too low, feels the pain as she takes some skin with the nail.

         Dammit, she thinks, finger in her mouth to catch the blood. Now they all have to be this short.

         By the time they can see the entrance she’s bitten down one hand and has moved on to the other. When they get to the security guards and it’s her turn to be patted down she’s only got two left. Drives her crazy, those two unchewed nails. She can feel them against her palm, can’t stop scratching and scratching.

         Inside it’s all gates and ropes wrapped back and forth, as much line as they can squeeze into the building.

         “At least it’s air conditioned,” Janice says between bites.

         “Mmm,” Hannah says. Her face says that she is somewhere else, that she is far away from here.

~

         Takes at least an hour of plodding through the maze, maybe more. Every time Janice looks at her phone it’s only been three minutes since the last time she checked.

         “I bet it’s not the real thing,” says someone ahead of them in line.

         “I hear they just glued a bunch of hair to an elephant,” someone says back.

         Hannah’s never been this quiet, not when Janice has been around. Most of the time it’s like Hannah will die if she stops talking. Who knows what’s happening in her head, Janice thinks but doesn’t ask. She wishes she had more nails to chew on, ten extra fingers for this kind of occasion.

         “We’ve been here for hours,” grumbles a kid behind them. There’s a whole group of them with a few tired adults, has the look of a field trip. They lean out over the barriers and try to guess how much longer.

         “Like ten minutes,” says a little girl.

         “It’s gonna be another hour,” says a little boy.

         Turns out to be somewhere between the two. Janice feels like she’s going to crawl out of her skin by the time the couple in front of them gets called up to the little platform. They have sketchbooks with them, wishful thinking on their part. No time for that says the bored security guard. They can buy a photo, though.

         They pose awkwardly on either side of the glass case. Smile the photographer says, but is that right for this kind of photo? One decides it isn’t, straight faced while the other gives an uneasy grin. Too much teeth, it’s more like a grimace. What will they do with a photo like that, Janice wonders. Hang it on a wall? Put it on a desk at work?

         Then they’re ushered away and Hannah and Janice are up.

         “You guys together?” the security guard asks. Hannah says nothing so Janice tells him yeah and in they go, up the carpet steps.

         Even up close Janice can’t tell if it’s real or fake, not that she knows enough to be able to tell the difference anyway. Who can tell flesh and bone and hair from foam and steel and polyester if they’ve only seen fakes in the first place?

         I bet I could tell if I could touch it, Janice thinks. If I could weave my fingers through that red-brown fur, really dig into it. Maybe rip out a chunk. Keep it. Put it in my pocket, she thinks, just walk away with a part of the thing.

         “Picture?” the photographer asks. Janice jumps.

         “Yes,” says Hannah.

         Janice doesn’t know what to do with her hands so she lets them hang. She tries a smile but it feels all wrong, lets it drop.

         “One, two,” the photographer says.

         Instead of three there’s a thud, a smash. Hannah kicks the glass, leg high, heel first like she’s been practicing the right kind of kick. Nothing looks broken but that sound means something gave, maybe something came unglued. She’s ready to do it again but the security guard is faster, has her on the ground where she screams and flails but can’t get close. Takes two more security guards to drag her away. They don’t tell Janice where they’re going.

         “Wow, your friend is nuts,” the photographer says.

         “I don’t really know her that well,” Janice tells him.

         “Huh,” he says in a way that means he doesn’t believe her.

         “Oh. She is my ride, though.”

~

         Only one more month of meetings left per her court order and she doesn’t really mind the longer walk to the Unitarian church. The group is smaller, they sit in a circle instead of everyone facing the front of the room like audience members. Janice likes that better. And the woman who leads it is warm and kind, always wears different bright colored cardigans over her shirt and slacks, especially now that it stays cold all day. Plus the coffee is better. Tastes like cinnamon. There’s always hugs and handshakes at the end for anyone who wants them, and today Janice does.

         “You’ve come so far,” says Pastor Becky, and sure she probably says it to everyone but could be she means it every time.

         Best part is that everyone goes their own ways after. No one has anything else to say once their time is up. Back to the rest of their lives.

         The walk home is her favorite part some days. She skips the headphones and just listens. Were there always so many birds around, she wonders. Days like today she thinks maybe she’ll never drive again. She imagines herself as the kind of person who walks everywhere. Maybe gets a bike. I could live like that, she thinks. She stops at the mailbox in the lobby, daydreams about carrying groceries home in cute little bags. Baskets for the produce.

         The return address says Hope Springs Treatment Center, out in Palm Desert. Probably an ad, she figures. In the first couple weeks after the arrest her mailbox was stuffed with flyers from lawyers, insurance companies, rehab centers. They’re probably just late.

         Tear open the envelope and there’s her own face staring up at her, eyes wide, mouth open in a stupid surprised O. There’s Hannah, the back of her anyway, leg raised mid-kick. In between them is the little brown blur, all hair and trunk under glass. Around the picture is a border all green and red, candy canes and ornaments neatly spaced.

         Merry Christmas from the mammoth, the card says.

---

Jessica Dawn lives on an island in the San Francisco Bay with a failed farm dog. Her work has appeared in HAD, Rejection Letters, Jake the Magazine, and more. She is currently finishing a novel and a short story collection. Find her on BlueSky if that’s your thing: @jessdawn.bsky.social

Cole Beauchamp

1989: Every day is the same in East Berlin, until it’s not

Tuesday in September

I meet Jan in the queue at the state-owned record shop, Amiga, while Mother wheels her trolley to join the other faded house dresses in front of the department store, hoping for something to vary our bland meals of breaded veal.

Jan and I try to ignore the girls behind us, a year younger, still infected with optimism. They puff bubble-gum pink stories of Ferris wheel rides at Kulturpark Plänterwald in our direction. Jan eventually snaps, “What are you even here for?” He has no time for their cotton-candy happiness. His father disappeared five years ago. No visit in the night, no Stasi shadows, no neighbours with a grudge. Just gone.

Wednesday in October

There are the usual readings, Marina with her long wavy hair and modernist poetry. We have a thing for her soulful eyes and expressive hands, her brand of tough fragility. Not a clue what her poetry means. We chant Encore! Encore! even though it’s a Western word, rebels that we are in our Wisent jeans and fraying shirts.

Rumour is Amiga has a few copies of Madonna’s True Blue and The Ramones Halfway to Sanity. We agree to queue early the next day, in case it’s true.

The old guy with the freckled neck comes on. He’s supposed to be writing a novel but only ever reads Chapter One. We shout out the first few lines with him before getting bored and finding somewhere to piss.

When we return, someone new is talking, one of the politicos you always get at these gatherings. “In Poland, Solidarity! In Hungary, mass demonstrations! In the Baltic, the Singing Revolution!” We’ve heard about the 370-mile human chain calling for independence in August. People are emboldened, sensing Gorbie is on our side.

“Now it’s our turn! Down with the SED!” he shouts. We chant back, “We are the people!” There’s a new energy rising and we’re ready to bring the whole miserable lot down – our shitty prefab concrete blocks and blocked toilets, our Trabis smoking oily exhaust like they’re on fire.

When he finishes, the opening chords of The Clash’s Pet Sematary blast out. The whole yard erupts. We sing like we’ve written every word, belting out the chorus of “I don’t wants,” shaking our heads like wet dogs and slamming into each other. There’s so much to not want.

Thursday in November

Jan’s building stinks of pickled cabbage and sweat, but we can’t get any of the West German TV channels at mine. We watch a video of Wetten, dass…? and laugh loudly to block out the never-ending orange flower wallpaper, trapped in lines of brown leaves.

On the television, Thomas Gottschalk has the same long blond permed hair as the actress sitting on the sofa. Liza Minelli looks a right stoner. The Georgian National Ballet prance about and pirouette. At last come the bets: a guy who claims he can light his Zippo with an excavator’s shovel and a farmer saying he can identify his cows based solely on the sound they make chewing apples.

I like the farmer’s weary face and stained overalls. You can smell the manure just looking at him. Jan’s all for the pimple-faced driver of the excavator, the jacked-up nature of him, flicking his lighter and garbling to Gottschalk about what a steady hand he is on the gear shift.

We snort into our Pilsners. “Gangschaltung!” Jan pretends to jerk off and I throw an ashtray at him. We wrestle, elbows and legs flying, until I get him in a headlock. By then the pimple-faced guy has failed his bet and the farmer’s being blindfolded.

Jan’s sister Elise comes in and orders us to clean up. Jan washes dishes while I sweep cigarette butts into my hand, calling out what’s happening with the farmer. Then we swap. I stack dishes on their painted blue wooden shelf, above tins of Ogema green beans, a bag of barley, a packet of crispbread and two jars of gooseberries.

I make it back to the living room in time to see the farmer win his wager and become the bet king. We pop another Pilsner to get us through the government broadcast at seven, drab men in front of a drab curtain. I’m half watching Günter Schabowski read through his press release, half watching Elise’s thighs shift under her blue knit dress, when her leg goes still. “No restrictions on private travel?”

She jumps to her feet as the three of us watch pandemonium whip across the press hall. A journalist asks, “When does this go into effect?”

Schabowski delays, flicking through papers. He finally says, “As I understand it… immediately, without delay.”

“Holy shit!” Elise screams.

Jan and I look at each other, stunned.

I try calling my mother but the lines are busy. We argue about what “without delay” means. We switch channels. The ZDF news anchor announces that the GDR has opened its borders.

Opened.

Elise slaps our heads. “That’s it! Do you two want a beer on Kurfürstendamm or not?”

We run into the street, shout to neighbours leaning out their windows, hug people on the street. At Bernauer Straße, hundreds of thousands of people gather like it’s a party – clapping, singing, saying “Let us through!”

After three hours, the border guards simply step aside. Trabi horns beep; weeping grandmothers hand out flowers; Wessis pour bubbles into our open mouths; people dance like they’re on pogo sticks. We rock the Casbah, churn out that boogaloo and give it all we’ve got.

Five hours later, we stand on the wall like birds on a wire, Mauerspechte with chisels in hand, pecking away at brick and concrete, chipping off pieces of a life that’s already ending.

---

Cole Beauchamp (she/her) is a queer writer based in London. Her stories have been in the Wigleaf Top 50, nominated for awards and shortlisted for the Bath, Bridport, Oxford and WestWord prizes for flash fiction. She's been widely published in lit mags including New Flash Fiction Review, Ghost Parachute, The Hooghly Review, Gooseberry Pie and others. She lives with her girlfriend and has two children. You can find her on Bluesky at @nomad-sw18.bsky.social

Scott Madison

Affogato

The kitchen smells like sour milk and bins. We leave the window above the sink open to let out the heat, but more heat only lets itself in. This part of France doesn’t get a breeze in the Summertime. Moments exist until they are physically removed.

I chip through the thaw of the freezer: drawers full of things we won’t admit we will never consume. A pizza with black olives, a 2-pack of chorizo fish cakes, a candle burned and blackened to its bottom.

Wedged between a half-empty bag of chips and some loose magnums, I find the final Greek yoghurt pot. I run it under the hot tap until the contents are soft enough to slide out into a glass; a perfect cube - white at the centre, with a translucent coating.

The heat pauses for a moment to let sound arrive at the window: a jangle of keys being tried into a fussy lock. Jangle. Click. Jangle. Click. Jangle. Click, click, release. I lean over the window sill just as my mother opens the front gate and lets herself through, pausing to slip the set of keys back into her woven beach bag. Tomorrow, she will not remember which key it is the lock welcomes. She does not mind. Not remembering which key opens what lock is good for training the bladder, she’s told me more than once. And when I look back on my life, I think I will remember all of the women I have seen almost piss themselves on doorsteps, and that I have never seen one actually do it.

I press the power button on the achy espresso machine and it vibrates to life. I swap out an old pod for an untouched one, and watch as hot coffee pours onto the frozen cube of yoghurt. It’s still streaming down when my mother appears at the doorless kitchen opening. She is pink and salty from an afternoon at the beach. It smells like, air sniff, sour milk in here.

“I know,” I say. “And bins.”

“Yes. Bins.”

With both hands, I touch her arm, and she leaves. It’s one of life’s easiest tasks - telling my mother what to do, physically. Where to go. To sit down for a moment. To head to the balcony. To perch like a baby bird, open-beaked, and wait for a worm. Let me direct you, stroke you, present you odd things in glasses. Let me do it for you because I never understood you were doing it for me.

By the time I bring the concoction out to her, she is already on a call with her sister. She holds the phone between her ear and her neck despite having both hands free. Oh how awful. Yes, I remember. Yes, awful, she is saying. I grew up with just a younger brother, so I will live my life unable to speak the language of sisterhood. It is, for all its turbulence, a dialect I am sad to miss. I would like to hear about the divorces of old school friends, about court cases that were solved quite a few years ago, about how to stop the roasted courgette sticking to the aluminium foil.

“One second Deb, Robin’s brought me an affogato. Yes, yes, when in Rome!” She mouths thank you and rolls her eyes as if auntie Deb is asking her whether she’s been in a car accident and if she has insurance. And then she goes back to laughing at one thing or another.

What I have made my mother is not an affogato. It is thawed Greek yoghurt in a glass of watery black coffee. In a few minutes, it will begin to disintegrate into small, sour flakes.

The freezer was full of Greek yoghurt pots when we arrived at the beginning of July. They taunted my mother, these small pockets of sweetness that were never meant for us. She would have liked to throw them out, all seven or eight of them. But when I showed her a ‘guilt-free affogato’ recipe curated by an Instagram influencer promoting disordered eating, she agreed we might be able to put them to use.

I had presented the Greek yoghurt experiment with enough confidence that she had enjoyed it, taking several pictures, flash on, to send to her friends. Now, each afternoon, she expects her affogato. And so I will make it quite happily until the yoghurts, the last traces of him, are gone.

Lifting the cube with a spoon and wrapping her mouth around it from several angles, she is like one of those crumpled dogs who holds their toy between their paws and licks, pulls, licks until they taste the peanut butter inside. I catch myself thinking this in the reflection of the French window, and quickly busy myself with tidying around her.

When she is finished, she will tell me about the beach, about what auntie Deb said on the phone: who’s husband is dying and who is getting a bit too big for their boots. I will tell her the details of a case at work and a fictional piece of feedback from my manager. And we will talk about small things like these until the sun is gone and it is time to turn on the television.

Here is my father on this same living room floor, several years earlier, lying on his side as if he is about to extend himself into a side plank. He is fiddling with the box because somebody got him a good deal on English channels over here. He is muttering quiet things to himself, asking Siri questions Siri can not answer. He is always doing things like this, fiddling with boxes and getting deals from expat cab drivers who have the same South London accent as he does. We look out for one anotha, he had said as he closed Trev’s boot and tugged the handle of his suitcase up. And we had nodded, because we really do like watching television.

He was a good man, auntie Deb says to me from time to time when my mother leaves the room, as if my father has actually died. As if he is in the ground. Not in the bungalow of the lady who used to come round and cut our hair.

And now we are back in the present, if that is at all fully possible.  My mother and I are watching A Place In The Sun. Perching on the floor in front of her, I let her plait my hair, though I have never liked my head being touched. We do not say much, even when the adverts play. We are not a family who love in tongue. We love in full stomachs and shoulder rubs and now in milky cubes in black coffee.

On the table in front of us, my phone vibrates. I flip it over instinctively. It is a force of habit; I mean nothing by it. And I would like to have not done it. But I did, and my mother has already removed her fingers from my scalp. The room is cold now.

“Is that him?”

“No.”

Minutes pass. I do not know what is happening in A Place In The Sun anymore.

She leans forward, holding her face so close that the Bacardi on her tongue feels like it’s on mine.

“You can tell me if you’d rather be with him. And her. Like your brother. Go on. You can leave tomorrow. I’ll pay for your flight.”

I do not answer.

“That’s all I’m good for, isn’t it? You can go. I’ll go to bed actually, when this episode is finished, so you can text him back and arrange it.”

And I cannot help it now. Because while we do not love in tongue, we are experts in using it to sting. And so, “Not everything is about you,” I spit, and flip my phone so it slams down on the table like a tiny expensive skateboard. And there is my screen, and the WhatsApp notification from Sam.

She does not ask the things I think I want her to ask, now she has seen it: why he is messaging again and if I think I will see him if he wants me to, despite his temper and the way the thick hairs on his hands curl when his fists do. She does not ask, and I will not surrender unasked. And then, just as heavy in the air, are the things I have not asked her. What day of the week it was, or what the weather was like the day she found them together.

After what the advert break tells me is a few minutes, she moves my new plait over one shoulder, and I feel her hands on my upper back, taking hold of the strings on my top that have been coming loose since the afternoon. I watch her mind work in the cabinet mirror; her lips tort like a squeezed lemon and her thick brows pointing towards her nose. She tries different loops, like placing a jigsaw piece into a hole at all possible rotations. And then she gets it.

Very quickly, she loops the two pieces of string into the sides of the top, and brings them up again. She moves the plait gently back to the centre, smoothing my shoulders as she removes herself from my skin altogether. She reaches forward, and moves my tea towards me. I have a tendency to let it go cold. 

“Would you like to sleep in my bed tonight?”

---

Scott Madison is a London-based writery type person. Her poetry has appeared in independent publications like SEED, Dear Damsels, and Kamena. She can be found on Instagram @WordDonkey and is always happy to hear about writing / performing opportunities.

Rebecca Klassen

How to Clean Stilettos

1)   Wipe a microfibre cloth around the inside of the shoe to remove any accumulated dust and debris.

High heels from her single days on the floor confirms your hunch that something’s off between you two. That’s why you open her laptop for the first time and peruse the inbox.

2)   Use an old toothbrush to scrub the outside of the sole and the tip of the heel with warm, soapy water, then dry with a towel. Fun fact: stiletto is Italian for ‘pointed writing instrument’.

Her words are recent, lurid, erotic, and not for you. They cut you, leaving you raw and your hands shaking. 

3)    A handled brush with horsehair bristles is softer on leather. Gentle, circular motions should remove scuff and black marks.

You want to talk to her, but you don’t trust yourself to speak calmly. She’s never liked your aggression, which you’ve labelled passion. The argument will get stuck in a loop; you’ve always been a broken record. Your history together is blotchy. No wonder she’s sent these words to someone else.     

4)    Shoe cream is workable and gives a shinier finish than wax. Apply with two fingers wrapped in a polishing cloth. Ensure you select a good colour match.

People said you were soulmates, that you complimented each other. Maybe that’s why you were complacent, thought it would work out effortlessly. You didn’t pay attention to detail, to her needs.

5)    Move your brush around the shoe again until the cream vanishes.

Perhaps couples counselling, atoning for your mistakes to create a brighter future.

6)    Leave them by the door for her. A good pair will last years.

You shut the laptop. God, you love her, but you can’t talk to her yet without that damn passion, so you pick up her high heels, along with your cleaning kit. Only elbow grease will do now.

Playing I Have Never with the Thirteen-Year-Old Girl My Best Friend Just Adopted

Tammy’s left us alone while she fetches the windbreak from the car. She wants Millie and I to bond on this beach rug, the breeze playing our open lemonade cans like panpipes. Tammy and I played I Have Never in pub gardens, bent double, trying not to pee, learning about each other.

I tell Millie, ‘Just drink if you’ve done the thing I say I haven’t.’

She nods, watching two brothers skimming a frisbee.

I say, ‘I have never liked playing frisbee.’

Millie shrugs. ‘Never touched a frisbee. Do I drink?’

I look back at the carpark. Tammy’s rummaging in the boot, unable to offer an answer that satisfies Millie and assuages my guilt. ‘You don’t need to drink.’

Millie stares longingly inside her can. I kind of hate Tammy now she’s ruined brunching, weekend breaks, getting pissed together. We can’t chat uninterrupted anymore about books, the old days, our dreams. Of course, Millie is Tammy’s dream. Mine’s to visit Machu Picchu and sleep with Tom Hardy. Millie felt more appealing when she was just potential.

‘Your turn,’ I say.

Millie says, ‘I have never had a one-night stand,’ and I wonder if she knows what casual sex is, then she giggles as I drink. I imagine Tammy in my place on the rug, remaining humbly dehydrated for her new daughter.

I watch the frisbee brothers, not wanting to look at Millie, and I can’t believe I say aloud, ‘I have never wanted to go home and cry more in my life.’ I drink deeply, and Millie’s laugh bursts out, which makes me laugh too, lemonade fizzing on my chin.

‘My turn,’ she says. ‘I have never wanted to just drink my fucking lemonade more.’

She takes a glug, belches, and I think she might be my new best friend.

---

Rebecca Klassen is co-editor of The Phare and a Best of the Net 2025 nominee from Gloucestershire, UK. She has won the London Independent Story Prize and was short/longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, Flash 500, Bridport Prize, Alpine Fellowship, Laurie Lee Prize, Quiet Man Dave Prize, and the Oxford Flash. Her stories have featured in Mslexia, Fictive Dream, Toronto Journal, Shooter, The Brussels Review, Amphibian, Roi Faineant Press, Writing Magazine, Ginosko, Riggwelter, Cranked Anvil, BarBar, and Ink, Sweat & Tears, and have been performed at numerous literature festivals and on BBC Radio.

Beth Hendrickson

Roots and Wings

He lays out the knife, creamy peanut butter, sugar, and dates just so. The knife will cut the slit and smear the peanut butter. Fingers, even his arthritic ones, will be necessary for extracting the date pit, rolling in sugar, and licking. Extra fingers are coming to help. Waiting at the table, he fidgets with the white paper placemat.

“Hi, Granddad.”

“Hello, Grandson.” With the greeting, one of Granddad’s eyebrows sprouts yellow canary feathers and flutters off his face. Grandson’s eyes twist in concern, watching the eyebrow fly toward the door he’d just entered.

“It’s nothing,” Granddad reassures, waving a gnarled hand. “Don’t need two of those anyway. Here. Help me.” He nudges a knife to Grandson.

Reassured and conscripted, Grandson gets busy.

Grandson and Granddad slice, smear, and lick for the space of three (Grandson) and five (Granddad) peanut-butter stuffed dates. Christmas carols play from speakers, and a woman in a wheelchair by the muted TV hums along to “Sleigh Ride.” Next to her hangs a cross stitch from a forgotten resident. Orange and green yarn lettering: “There are two things we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings.” A nurse appears silently at Granddad’s elbow, places a white paper cup with thirteen various colored pills (she’s counted, so he doesn’t), and retreats. Granddad’s right kneecap unfurls ravens wings, rises from his leg, and follows her.

“You’re falling apart Grandad,” Grandson observes as his tongue scrubs his finger, peanut butter and sugar being a tough job.

“And you’re growing up, kid,” Granddad counters.

A root, green and supple as an orchid’s, snakes out of Granddad’s little finger, undulates across the table, and attaches to Grandson’s pinky. If either notices, they do not comment.

“Your dad picks you up in an hour, right?” Granddad says. “That’s what your mom told the nurse.”

Grandson shrugs, not willing to commit on his father’s behalf.

Granddad nods, equally unwilling to trust his son who has recently proven to be better at leaving than coming.

Grandad’s left elbow unscrews, flexes albatross wings, and flaps elegantly to the ceiling. A root spools out of Granddad’s ear and navigates over to Grandson’s earlobe. There the root quivers, tightens, and burrows.

“What’s Santa getting you for Christmas?” Granddad wonders.

A skeptic growing into a cynic, Grandson raises a single, youthfully secured eyebrow.

“I see. No secret there. Well, did I ever tell you I played Santa for all the neighborhood kids when your dad was little?”

“You mean you grew a beard and got real fat?” Grandson licks his knife.

“Any Santa would, if he were making magic for his best son. His pal.” Grandad’s bushy white mustache quivers into the air with luna moth wings, leaving behind a naked lip.

“No one says pal, Granddad.”

“Buddy?”

A grimace.

“Well then, what do you kids these days call their best buds?”

“Gruzz,” Grandson nods.

“Gruzz,” Granddad repeats.

Monarch butterflies carry off Grandad’s thumbnail. A root twists from his palm to Grandson’s wrist and wraps.

There’s a scent of pine from the candle warmer on the nurse’s station. In the corner, the wire pole trunk of the Christmas tree shines behind bristled branches and red bulbs.  The wheelchair lady hums “Last Christmas.” Grandson eats one sugary date. Granddad eats two. Four molars flit out of his mouth on bumblebee wings and take to the sky. A root twines up Grandson’s leg to secure his bouncing knee.

“In case I’m not around come Christmas morning, I’ve ordered Santa to bring you that video game computer you want.” Granddad spits a pit into his empty pill cup.

“I know you’re dying Granddad, you don’t have to pretend. Mom already told me.”

“And your dad? What’d he say?” 

Seven of Granddad’s ribs splinter away on starlings’ wings. A grey root thick as a rolling pin wraps around Grandson’s waist.

Grandson shrugs, and his knife slices a date in half.

Granddad’s right shoulder detaches with red hawk wings. Roots knit into a lace shroud that drapes across the table and snarls in Grandson’s hair. He mashes an oozing date into the sugar dish. He grinds it around. Sugar crystals glitter. Five of Granddad’s toes hover suspended by hummingbird wings under the table.

“One thing I won’t pretend, Grandson—Gruzz?”  He looks to confirm he’s said it correctly.

“Gruzz,” Grandson echoes. When his voice cracks, he doesn’t flinch.

“You can’t get away from me. We’re connected, me, you. You’ve got some places you have to go, and so do I, but I think I’ll stick with you, one way or another.”

A bouquet of sparrow wings erupts from the top of Grandad’s skull. A hairy root snaps around his ankle and then undulates under the table to shackle Grandson’s.

Granddad places his knife next to the empty plate. The blade sticks to the placemat the nurse set out. Granddad’s hip buckles, folds, then launches away with the waddling disgrace of a loon lifting from water. An old, gnarled, peanut-butter sugared hand rubs a young, smooth, peanut-butter sugared hand.

“I love you,” Grandad says.

“I love you too, Gruzz,” Grandson says.

A root, the biggest, sturdiest, thickest yet, swells from an old chest and dives to a young. It anchors right above Grandson’s heart which flaps, beats, and flutters within a cage of growing bones.

---

Beth has been a riverboat deckhand, violinist, rock climber, and substitute middle school Algebra teacher (in no particular order). She was long-listed for Jericho Writer’s 500 Novel contest, and her stories have appeared in Muleskinner Journal, The Quarter(ly) Journal, and The Fourth River. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband, two daughters, and a self-centered dachshund.

Matt Leibel

How to Build a Sandcastle

Hire an architect. Someone with vision, and an understanding of light, space, materials, temperature controls, safety protocols, 3D modeling. They should know their way around a city planning commission, have experience balancing the interests of competing stakeholders. Possibly a past Pritzker winner, or someone in the conversation for the future: a towering talent with Hadid’s sense of the avant-garde, Gehry’s knack for the baroque post-modern, Kahn’s elemental geometries, Pei’s iconic simplicity. And sure: you may object that sandcastles are for children on your beach day, and you’re just happy to hand them plastic shovels and buckets to keep the phones out of their little mitts while you attempt to catch some rays while zoning out to whatever reliably heart-pounding thriller plot Robert Ludlum or Lee Child or Tana French or Harlan Coben may have in store for you. But this misses the sheer structural power, the potential for grandeur and dazzle that sandcastles offer. Face it: you’re never going to build Versailles in your lifetime, or a new Monticello, or Great Wall. You’re probably not going to build an extension on your home, or even fix a pothole in your street. But you can build a tiny world that expresses your constructed dreams. You can make the universe incrementally better, if only for the time between the tides. Don’t be afraid to bring in outside help, to tell the kids they’ve got it all wrong. They’re thinking too small: you want flying buttresses, raised turrets, hidden pathways, maze-like courtyards, staircases leading to nowhere. Castles were created by Kings as walled fortresses to ward off usurpers. All sandcastles can fend off is the deadness in your soul, and even that only for a little while. There’s a reason adults compete in sandcastle building contests, and it’s not (just) because they’re trying to regress to their six-year-old selves who imagined they could dig their way to China, or whatever their corresponding “other side of the world” was. Sand is one of the world’s oldest substances; when you (or your architect’s subcontracted building team) are working with it, you’re communing with the origins of our planet, that whirling, gaseous chemical play set. Jack Reacher—for all of his skills with a rifle, his hands, or his wits—can’t really dig that deep.

How to Get Unstuck

Call a tow truck. Call a locksmith. Call a therapist. Call your mother. Call my mother. No. Leave my mother alone. She’s got enough on her plate. Don’t try to stick things to other things in the first place. Don’t affix decals to your car bumper. They don’t age well. No one cares who you supported in the 2004 election. Well, there are probably people who care. I might care, a little bit. But don’t do it. Don’t try to stick the landing on your dismount without years of practice. Don’t bother trying gymnastics at all if you didn’t sacrifice your childhood for it. If you’re a child, for the love of God, don’t sacrifice your childhood. Definitely don’t sacrifice your childhood for the love of God. God, if she exists, would want you to have more fun than that. If you’re stuck on a piece of writing, set it aside for a while. Come back to it later. Hopefully, the piece will then unveil itself to you, like a previously-withholding lover suddenly deciding to entrust you with a disconcerting torrent of emotional honesty. If you’re still stuck, set your writing aside for 500 years. In the distant future, someone will discover your barely-scrutable texts buried under geologically-intimidating layers of sand and rock. They’ll decide to continue your work where you left off, and either they’ll make the writing better or worse. If they finish it and improve it, this will confer upon you a kind of immortality that you’ll be too dead to properly appreciate. If they make it worse, you’ll be forgotten by history, which seems appropriate since most people forget all the history they ever learn anyway. And what will you care? You’ll be kicking back in the afterlife. In the afterlife, there are beanbags 100 times more comfortable than anything you had back on Earth, including the ones they had at that one startup you worked at where they tried to turn the work environment into a glorified playroom. If you sink deeply enough into your afterlife beanbag, you will become one with it, as if with the universe itself. In the end, this is the kind of stuck you want to be. Maybe none of us ever truly become unstuck, and maybe that’s okay. We’re all stuck with each other until the day we die, and maybe long after that. If you’re stuck in rush hour traffic on the 405 trying to get home from downtown LA at twilight on a Friday night under a sky striped with layers of orange, pink and purple whose beauty belies their origins in the environmental ruin we seem to have irrevocably yoked ourselves to, then sorry: I’ve got nothing for you.

---

Matt Leibel’s short fiction has appeared in Post Road, Electric Literature, Portland Review, The Normal School, Quarterly West, Socrates on the Beach, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, matchbook, and Wigleaf. His work has also been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2024 and Best Microfiction 2025. Find him online at mattleibel.com.

Elad Haber

An Unfinished Sentence

When the author signed my copy of her latest book, I fell inside the ink as if caught in a flood. The water was black and it tasted metallic as it sloshed into my mouth.

“Help!” I shouted as I flailed. “I can’t swim!”

“Really?”

You were sitting cross-legged on a buoy. Brown leather knee-high boots (half-submerged), a frilly skirt, and a crop-top, hot pink, the glowing end of a vape dangling between two manicured fingers. Black lipstick and black eyeshadow two shades darker. With your free hand, you pinched your librarian glasses and gave me a motherly look as if to say, Please explain your foolishness.

I calmed down, stood up in the now-ankle deep water, still black and inky. “Okay, not really. It’s just something people say.”

You scoffed and removed your glasses to yawn. “That’s a cliché. I abhor cliché.”

“Right, right,” I said agreeably. “How about this?”

I reached up and grabbed at your wrist and suddenly we were submerged in the black water and descending. From far away, the sound of a distant train. That chugging, churning, engine so loud. Then, so close. It approached from below us. A submarine in the darkness. It wasn’t a modern train, but an old one, steam-engined, with one of those big chimney-style tubes in the front. From the mouth of the tube, huge bubbles floated lazily.

I let go of your hand as my lungs started to burn. You dropped your vape, anger lines appearing on your face. Then we got caught in one of the bubbles and I could breathe.

“Better,” you said and sipped at the vape. “But what are you trying to say with all of this?” You motioned with your hands at the black water, the train, the bubbles.

We floated like astronauts, in silence, for a moment.

I gulped. “I’m a writer.”

You sighed. “Obviously.”

~

I’m a graphic designer, too. I’ll show you my office. Bubbles swirled around us.

You switched from your goth-punk outfit to business casual: grey slacks, a bit of flare at the bottom, and a too-tight teal cardigan.

I fast-forwarded my office to the future so instead of off-white cubicles and boring dual monitors, we passed rows of glass enclosures with projection monitors or designers wearing VR headsets that look like sunglasses.

The edges of your mouth tilted towards a smile.

Emboldened, I sat down at my workstation, you hovered behind. My monitor was huge and curved. On the screen, flyouts and scrolling tickers with news feeds and social media highlights. In the center, on a harsh white background, an unfinished sentence mid-way through a metaphor, the pulsing cursor like a beating heart.

You cleared your throat. “There’s a lot going on.”

“Right.” I waved my hand and all the clutter disappeared. The white page looked even more menacing.

“So,” you said into the sudden silence, “what’s the story about?”

“It’s about a girl,” I said, “estranged from her family. She moves to the city and then runs into her brother in a coffee shop.”

“Okay. Then what happens?”

I made some non-committable noises.

“You don’t know?”

I looked down at my hands, scared to touch the keyboard.

“It’s okay,” you said. You stand up a little straighter. “Let’s figure it out.”

You looked down at your right hand as if it was new. You made a quick clicking sound and then snapped your fingers-

~

And then we were in a coffee shop.

They had one of those oldtimey bells that jingle when the door opens, giving the whole place a kind of quaint charm, despite the bustling city outside.

I spotted you right away. Hunched over a laptop. Plaid shirt, ball cap, fake beard. Your face was partially covered, but you seemed to be grinning, enjoying the subterfuge. You were typing fast with the confident click-click-click of a wordsmith.

Eye contact and we both froze. Your fingers hovered over the keyboard. Me, with nothing in my hands yet, feeling unprepared.

I sat down in the empty seat across from you and you dropped the laptop lid.

“Hi,” I said

“Hey,” you replied. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” Your tone was serious but you flashed me a little wink, like, that was good right?

“How are Mom and Dad?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

You broke your guise for another moment to shoot me a glance, like, come on, the reader is getting bored.

I poured molten steel into my voice. “I didn’t deserve the way you treated me. I’m your sister, not some stranger.”

You nodded, then remembered your role to grit your teeth at me. “You broke our heart.”

My voice rose in anger. “Because I didn’t want to marry that asshole?”

People were staring over their coffee-cups. Author-you, not fake-brother you, was smiling, urging me to go on.

I was stammering, a little, but gaining confidence with every other word. “Just because he was your best friend and Mom’s godson doesn’t mean that we had to be together like some kind of royal engagement. I’m not a fucking princess!”

Then I stood up, coffee-less, and barged out the door. A moment later, that bell again. I turned around and then…

And then…

~

“And then what?” you almost-shouted.

We’re back in my future office. The sound of whispered voices and boiling water.

“I don’t know!” I swiped at the air around the page and various screens appeared. Snippets of dialogue, descriptions, flashbacks, alternate endings, an endless cascade of possibility.

You shoo-ed away the flyouts like they were buzzing flies.

“No!” you admonished with genuine anger. “You can’t copy and paste conflict!” You stabbed at my heart. “Figure out what happens next in here. Otherwise, I can’t help you.”

~

With that dismissal, the illusion disappeared. The futuristic office, the oldtimey coffeeshop.

We were back at the bookstore. You finished signing your name with a flourish and said, “Thank you for coming.”

And I didn’t know what else to say.

---

Elad Haber is a husband, father to an adorable little girl, and IT guy by day, fiction writer by night. He has recent publications from the Simultaneous Times Podcast, Silly Goose Press, and Bulb Culture Collective. His debut short story collection, The World Outside was published by Underland Press in July 2024. Visit eladhaber.com for links and news.

Sarah Freligh

The Real Story

Because Eve sprung a leak between her cheeks that she called a mouth, and from this new place erupted all the words that she’d stored up until they turned to lava inside her and volcanoed out: I am not your maid. Not tonight. Get your own damn beer. Because God heard her and shook his head. Not the lemon or the grape, he whispered to the serpent, but the apple. Big enough to close the hole.  

---

Sarah Freligh is the author of eight books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize, Hereafter, winner of the 2024 Bath Novella-in-Flash Contest, and the recently-released Other Emergencies. Her work has been anthologized in New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton 2018), and Best Microfiction (2019-22, ‘25).

Chris Carrel

Days of Smoke and Fire

You wake up in the morning with the dull dread ringing in your ears like the emergency sirens outside that are, in fact, ringing in your ears. Is this the state of the world today, you ask yourself? Has it been reduced to the unceasing sonic wail of first responders rushing off to battle the flames or murder another citizen? The questions are too heavy for this early, that being eleven in the morning.

Yes, you have slept in again but lately you find that your personal productivity schemes no longer spark delight in you. The general state of things has deteriorated to a sort of hyperreal surrealism, and nothing seems sustainable anymore. In this state you have become stuck, neither able to move forward nor retreat, just tread water. You can no longer tell the difference between depression and clarity. Even simple maintenance tasks like hydration seem pointless in the face of a menu of looming catastrophes.

"Look," you say to no one in particular and tapping your skull with a finger, "this tub-wrinkled jellyfish up here has not evolved one iota for the past one hundred thousand years. I'm working with ancient equipment, and I have to deal with alarm clocks, emergency services and financialized capitalism! I need some coffee."

"Good morning, Curt." The SmartBeanz™ coffee grinder addresses you with the fake name you gave it as you pour beans into its cylinder. "Would you like some coffee beans ground?"

"Grind these, Dumbass," you say, using the name you programmed for it.

"Excellent choice, Curt." Its voice is that of a moderately concerned TV newsreader from Iowa describing the latest wave of book burnings. This voice from the uncanny valley is helpful in that it keeps you from making the mistake of trusting the device. Even the appliances have chosen sides. Dumbass isn't even done mauling your coffee beans but is already streaming data back to its mothership about your coffee choice, the time of your first cup and the grind you selected, among other things. It would gladly testify against you in court, should the opportunity arise.

"This morning's roast is Voice of the Yellow Songbird," the machine says, raising the volume to be heard above the clamor. "The beans you are currently grinding were purchased from a farm collective in Chiapas, Mexico consisting of 35 small farms that support 247 people, including 138 farm workers, and their spouses and children. The coffee beans are arabica. They were shade grown and organically produced. State law requires me to advise you that no product may be completely organic, and your coffee beans may contain some trace quantities of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and/or various micro and nanoplastics. This blend is currently ranked 87th most Just Fair Farming Friendly. An excellent choice. Would you like to hear the carbon and biodiversity impact footprint from your cup of coffee?"

"Go stuff yourself, Dumbass," you tell it, while swearing that this time you will remember to look up how to turn off the voice feature, even though you do need the social interaction. Despite the promises of the Grindz, Inc. marketing department, the informative device and its product transparency are not making you a better person. In fact, you suspect that when it comes to self-improvement, you may lie beyond the rehabilitative power of small appliances. You don't even remember why you bought it, though you suspect the purchase was a clever diversionary tactic to keep you from thinking about something else. Mission accomplished!

Adding to your growing litany of small complaints, the balcony door refuses to open when you push the door button. The conditions light blares orange at you: Unhealthful external conditions. You cannot leave the apartment until you declare a liability waiver holding harmless the apartment owners, the municipal and federal government and a large pool of corporations and corporate shell entities (and their legal representatives) that may or may not be responsible for the air quality today.

Though tempting, you stop yourself from chewing on the irony of having to sign a waiver to leave your own apartment just to smoke cigarettes in the smog outside. It's just not worth contemplating and you really need that first hit of nicotine, cannabis and God knows what. Besides, you are well accustomed to reflexively signing away your legal rights in exchange for access.

Setting down your cup, cigarettes and lighter, you pull up the liability screen on your phone, tap once, and using your finger, author a poor imitation of your signature. You tap again to dismiss. The light turns green, and the glass door slides open admitting you onto the three-by-five-foot cement balcony thirty-three stories above the street.

You attempt to stifle a yawn, but it veers away from you into a hacking cough. The air isn't even that bad this morning, but your lungs are still sore from yesterday's haze. Wildfire smoke or no, the air is never really free of pollutants anymore. Whether you're inside or out, you are inhaling microscopic pieces of plastic and volatile organic compounds with each breath. You've come to think of the soot from the wildfires as flavoring, like airborne MSG or Za'atar.

Fortunately, marine air is blowing in from the sea this morning, keeping the smoke away from the city. You can see all the way to the foothills where the fires are burning, feeding a steady billow of smoke to the cloudy, gray skies. The land between the city and the fire is a patchwork of burnt and unburnt forest and towns, laced with ribbons of mostly empty roadways.

Somehow, this particular wildfire has been threatening the city for the better part of a month. Something to do with prevailing and countervailing winds being stuck in a loop due to the melting Arctic ice and a grumpy jet stream. The result is that the winds push the fire towards the city and then away from the city, like a naughty child playing the flinch game with a helpless younger sibling.

When the fire first broke out, the mayor warned that an evacuation might be necessary. You waited for several hours along with your fellow citizens, but the call never came. Once the southern and eastern routes out of the city were blocked, evacuation was no longer feasible and you've been trapped here waiting, ever since. Though you'd like to escape the threat of burning to death, the idea of leaving your home in the city feels like more forward movement than you're comfortable with. Like trying to leave your cruddy job to find another cruddy job.

The flames have made five runs at the city now, only for the winds to shift at the last moment and avert disaster. Three times, the threat was serious enough that citizens were ordered to the old nuclear fallout bunkers beneath the streets. Watching the distant inferno reminds you how you felt each time you emerged from the subterranean refuge, and the flood of relief and gratitude you experienced to find the city unburnt. You don't think you have the strength to start over in the smoking rubble of the unknown.

If the city does eventually burn, though, you will not take Dumbass to safety with you no matter how much it might beg. For a moment you revel in the image of the coffee grinder calling for help in your burning kitchen. It's a pleasing vision. Maybe you'll leave the voice function active, after all.

The streets below are largely empty save for the constant pinging of white, blue and brown delivery vans swooping in to deliver brown boxes of stuff to this tower block or that. At this late hour of the morning, most people are at the office, whether the office is in an office or is merely in their bedroom, kitchen or utility closet. You can see a few of the homeless about, pushing their humble inventories around in feral shopping carts, cannily avoiding the regular police sweeps that seek to move them from one place to another.

It's become harder to be poor since the latest regime change ("A New Tomorrow Towards Our Glorious Yesterday") which promised to more specifically focus our hatred and intensify the menu of punishments for those who are not us. One aspect of this has been a reduction of programs to solve homelessness and a raft of new measures designed to make it worse.

Thinking about homelessness reminds you that you should probably get started on your work for the day since you woke up late once again. While you don't exactly enjoy your job, the work hours provide a convenient vehicle through the dull districts of the day and deliver you closer to the doorstep of sleep's sweet oblivion. It's also nice to sleep indoors.

To be honest, you aren't sure anymore what it is you do. Something with the computer. You receive prompts, sometimes substantive enough to be called assignments, and in response you type things on the keyboard. Occasionally, you will speak to other humans on the phone, or over email or messaging systems. Neither the words or numbers you type out on the keyboard, or the conversations you engage in, make much sense to you, though you feel that they might have at one time. Your supervisor checks in now and then to suggest that you are the problem, but you suspect that they have changed the work in some subtle way so that its meaning eludes you.

This is not an unreasonable theory. You understand that humans are susceptible to slow, gradual change, incremental moves that are rationalized one at a time, step by step until a great shift has been normalized. Perhaps that is how we find ourselves trapped in the city by roving wildfires? Was there something we failed to notice as we normalized it, our streets slowly filling with the homeless and their tents, while the temperature crept higher, and the trees and plants dried out?

These questions are also too big for this time of day, and you dismiss them before they have the chance to disturb your ability to function.

Gaining re-admittance to the apartment you head back to the bedroom and boot up your laptop. The machine makes a series of pings, boops and squeaks before inviting you to log on.

You are greeted by a message from your co-worker, Gal.

"None of this makes sense to me!!" the message begins. "I'm in over my head!"

This is not necessarily an unusual message from her. Gal is prone to overusing exclamation points and wearing her anxieties on the outside like a badly botched disguise, but it's best to inquire further.

"What do you mean? What's wrong?" Her response is almost instantaneous.

"Remember when you suggested that I microdose? I screwed up."

"Details? Tell me more."

"OK, well I took one and didn't feel anything, so I took another. I started to feel good, but not great, so I figured I might as well take another. That went on for a while...Now I am stoned off my toes."

"How many did you take?"

"I DON'T KNOW!!!!! It might have been five. Or 500. Or 50. There is a five in the number, I know that."

"Wow. Can you work?"

"No! I don't understand what they want me to do."

"Sounds like a normal day without drugs," you reply, hoping she'll get the humor, though you refrain from including the winky emoji out of concern it might be misread. Conspiratorial thinking is out of control in the city these days.

"It's not like that! The words on my screen are twisted into odd temporal vortices!! There are interstitial conduits linking ideas together until they don't make sense anymore!!! There's some transdimensional bullshit going on here!!!!"

"Whoa. That's a lot," you reply. "Can you take a break? Maybe go to the cafe and drink some coffee? Try to watch some daytime TV. It might give your head a chance to get used to the other dimensions."

"There is this one other thing: Extra-dimensional demons are materializing out of my walls. They are falling onto the carpet and forming a lake of purple acid. I can't leave the bed. I am surrounded by a lake of purple acid!"

You sigh and squeeze your eyes shut. The day is becoming unbalanced, manifestly disharmonic. There is a wildfire apocalypse threatening the city. Is it too much to ask that people use illegal drugs responsibly?

"I'm coming over to get you. We'll get some coffee and talk this out. Hold tight."

You press send and get up from the bed, checking first to make sure your bedroom floor is just a floor, with no extradimensional demons or colored acid.

The liability waiver you signed earlier is good for the entire day, so there's no red tape slowing your exit from the building. The day is much the same as it was from your balcony. The sun glowers but cannot escape from behind gray clouds, and it's warm despite the overcast appearance.

There are more people out on the streets now. You see some more homeless people but most of them appear to be not quite homeless yet and you wonder if they are the new arrivals from the outer lands. The wildfire is constantly chasing more of these poor rural and suburban wretches into the city, adding to the feeling of a population under siege. Many of the refugees appear bewildered by their surroundings, the sky-high towers, the postmodern architecture covering everything in glass and bending straight lines until they surrender into rainbow shapes and circles. 

At least you no longer gawk at your own city the way these bumpkins do. They are definitely outerlanders and you can't help but feel a bit smug. You have lived in the city long enough to know not to question its cityness, and to just let it flow over you like a determined, drowning wave.

Further on your journey, at the corner of Seventh and Waterton, you see a large man with wild eyes and a long briar patch beard. He is shouting into a megaphone and gesticulating at pedestrians in an all-too familiar manner.

"The fire shall cleanse the Earth of its wickedness, so sayeth the Messiah," He delivers this uplifting message with all the bonhomie of driving a tank over your neighbor's hydrangeas.

Messiah talk does not interest you. It is the age of messiahs. There are quite a lot of them. There are messiahs that predict the world will end on Saturday, while others predict it for a month from this Wednesday. Some are calling for a rain of fire, while others forecast a killing flood. There are even those that claim the world has already ended and God is just waiting around for us to get a clue.

Due to the general ambient apocalypticness of the world, messianism is a growth industry. Regardless of the specific flavor of the individual practitioner, the prevailing theme is that their preferred apocalypse is nigh and its high time you got yourself right with God. The right God, of course and they just happen to know a guy. All want a cut of the action as does this particular firebrand, who shakes his cup angrily as you walk past.

Some people fall for this junk, but you are immune. While you fear the Apocalypse like any sensible modern citizen, you believe it will be an entirely secular affair.

"No, we are going to just have to destroy ourselves," you think as you near Gal's building.

At the entrance, you press the intercom button for your friend's apartment and wait. You press it again and wait some more. And again. And again. This is worrisome. What if she has dangerously overdosed on her microdoses? She might at this moment be lying in her demon-filled bathtub, turning blue from demonic exposure and lack of oxygen.

You are about to reach for your phone to alert the first responders when it preemptively vibrates. A wave of relief washes through you as you see Gal's ID flash on the screen.

"Hey, where are you?" you say.

"Hey, where are you?" she says.

"I'm outside your building. I've been buzzing you to let me in for the past ten minutes."

"Well, that's weird," she replies, the gravity of her confusion causing her syllables to slow and stretch out like an astronaut being spaghettified at the edge of a black hole. "I'm outside your building, buzzing you to let me in. As we discussed..."

"No, I said I was coming to get you." Uncertainty begins to creep into your internal narrative.

"What happened to the extra-dimensional demons and the lake of purple acid in your bedroom?" you ask with some trepidation.

"I don't know. They were in your apartment. Just how many hits of that microdose did you take?" Her voice has now appropriated the exact tone of concern you had saved for her.

As the two of you continue to argue over which one of you is overdosing on small amounts of illicit pharmaceuticals, you turn slowly to face the street and see that while you have been standing there someone has pasted a garish red and orange flyer on the utility pole across the way. The colors seem to be moving and pulsing around coal black lettering that is just far enough away to be illegible, although you can see how badly the words want to be read. They are clamoring for your attention.

"Hey, I'll call you back," you tell Gal. "Something just came up."

"Don't hang - " you sever the connection and walk over to retrieve the missive.

SURRENDER TO THE FIRE

WE ARE ALREADY BURNING

The flyer in your hands is the size of an ordinary sheet of office paper but that's the only normal thing about it. The paper feels firm and cool like a sheet of formica but it's as pliable and about as thick as standard office paper. Up close, the dancing colors continue to move and shimmer suggestively. This could have been made by one of the top graphic design firms in the city to sell cough suppressants or face masks, instead of this apocalyptic message. Surrender to the fire? Who is trying to reach you with this message?

If Gal's account is correct, though, the flashing text might have more to do with your state of mind than top-notch graphic design work.

Your quandary is pierced by a terrific metallic howling that you can understand regardless of the state of your sobriety. One long, harsh ascending note followed by an equally long descending note, like the sound of a great and terrible machine crying out for help and knowing it won't arrive. The pattern repeats itself mercilessly.

This is the point in your life where the person you were unzips the tired suit they had been wearing and steps out onto the street, revealing the person you are becoming, a new entity, one whose motivations are as yet unknown.

Though you know you should join your fellow citizens who are streaming to the underground bunkers to wait out the emergency, something in you resists. Something that either wants to die or wants to live differently directs your feet to begin walking east towards the edge of the city. Yes, towards the wildfire's advancing front. A few of the more humanely inclined shout at you to join them in the bunker but you wave them off and keep moving forward.

The wildfire is a lot closer than it was earlier in the day, and the smoke has grown thick on the breeze. The farther you go, the less people you see and the louder grow the sounds generated by the approaching inferno. They swell to become a symphony of jet airplane engines roaring their fury at you.

To your surprise, the wildfire has finally entered the city. Up ahead, the street is lined with burning buildings and the air tastes like hot ash and imminent death. The fire spits sparks into its smoky exhalations, sending its incendiary scouts off to find new buildings, parked cars, and people to consume.

As you are walking towards the fire, it is in its way, coming to meet you.

The main front of the monstrosity barks flames in cannon bursts down the street, striking more buildings and setting them alight, regardless of whether they are brick, steel or glass. This conflagration burns everything. Even the street is burning, and you must be careful not to step in the small puddles of liquid flame that dot the street.

The crackle and hiss of flames seem to come from all sides and the smoke thickens to whiteout conditions. You don't have a mask with you, so you light a cigarette to fight smoke with smoke and find it an adequate substitute. The warm, cigarette vapor settles around you like protective armor. Out there beyond your smoke bubble, you can hear the groaning death confessions of wood-framed buildings, and soft, liquid susurrations that might be the sound of melting metal.

The world grows hotter the farther you walk. You are no longer in a part of the city that you know, but you refuse to stop. The fire is calling you forward and if this is where you must die, you accept the assignment. You weren't doing that great a job of living as it was.

But as you are about to walk into the advancing wall of flames and oblivion, the smoke clears away as if a strong breeze had blown in from the sea behind you, and you stop to gather yourself. The buildings on either side of you are fully engulfed in flames and this continues up ahead for many blocks until the street ends in a T-intersection culminated by a flaming midrise apartment building. Your senses have sharpened with danger, and the roar of the flames reveals itself complex and multidimensional, like a symphony with different instrument sections playing their own variations on a theme of ignition and extirpation. Each flame contributes its own notes to the song of destruction.

The suggestion of music calms your mind's perception of the wildfire, and the heat and sound recede for a long moment that makes you think of the eye of a hurricane. Like the eye of a storm, though, it does not last. You realize with horror that it is an intake of breath, and despite your earlier death wish, the body's instincts take over. Dropping to the ground, you cover up in a fetal crouch as the exhalation of flame roars to life over your head. A megatonic breath sprays every surface in flame. Your skin and the deep interior of your flesh scream in agony at the hellish heat. Reflexively, you shut your eyes tight as the inferno swallows you up.

You are becoming flame, burning from the inside out and you envision yourself reduced to a pile of ashes. But just as quickly as the breath of flame struck, it passes over you and the air around you begins to cool.

It's been a helluva day and it's no wonder you don't realize immediately that you are still grasping the flyer in your right hand. Your mind is struggling to catch up to what you have just lived through. You have never overdosed on drugs before, so you can't be sure that if you did, this isn't a typical experience. Nor can you eliminate the possibility of a death throe-induced hallucination. You might be burning to death right now and your mind has sealed off your flickering consciousness from the agony raking through you as your body burns down to its wick. Regardless, there is no choice but to proceed as if you can correctly interpret reality.

You look to see that you are surrounded by smoking heaps of rubble and as you turn in a circle, you find only burnt ruins stretching away from you in all directions and piled high. The streets are littered with ash piles and melted lumps of SUVs and delivery trucks. The smoke clouds have disappeared from above, leaving a bright sun shining down through a brilliant, clear blue sky. The fresh sea air cools your skin and drives its healing breath into your singed lungs.

A new noise tugs on your awareness, a sound you can only describe in hindsight as destruction in reverse. The heap of rubble on the left side of the street begins to vibrate and shudder as its shattered and melted components pull themselves together and reconstitute their shape. They begin growing upward - frames, walls, doors, windows, first floor, second floor - until what stood there before the fire stands again.

Looking up and down the street you find that all the buildings are re-making themselves, breaking physical laws with no fucks given. Before long, the buildings and towers have reclaimed the skyline, beyond which you can see the clouds of wildfire smoke moving away from the city towards the distant foothills.

The city burned but the city remains unburnt.

It's a miracle, you think. If only you believed in miracles. Remembering the flyer in your hand, you bring it up to view. The orange and red background colors are pulsing and throbbing again, and the black lettering has rearranged itself.

THE END IS ALWAYS COMING AND NEVER ARRIVING

With newfound clarity, you think of home and how badly you would like a sandwich and a glass of water. You take a tentative step towards the future. And then another.

---

Chris Carrel writes speculative fiction and other odd things from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. He has been published at Unlikely Stories, JAKE, and Mobius BLVD, has work forthcoming at Partially Shy, Dark Winter Lit, and Skeleton Flowers, and posts occasionally at ccarrel.bsky.social. Visit Chris' Janky Dystopia at thechriscarrel.com.

Rory Perkins

The Cost Of Saving The World

A year after my wife’s funeral the news says the oceans have risen another two inches and Sam asks why. I don’t know if he’s talking about Beth being gone or the melting ice caps so I say nothing and send him off to school.

The Grieving Dads forum tells me not to shy away from painful memories. Something about a child’s ability to process grief through exposure therapy. Later that evening I ask Sam if he wants to go through some of Beth’s old stuff. There are photos of her getting arrested. Old polaroids of her glued to the underside of oil tankers and laying down in front of buses. Sam pulls a Save Our Planet scarf around his neck and wants to know if she was a whore.

“It’s what they’re saying at school.” He says. “That she slept with a hundred men and animals so I must be part walrus.”

I don’t tell him it was a different time. I don’t try to explain the freedom of the 60s or how we were both pretty wild back then. I don’t tell him how last night was the first time I got to sleep without staring out of the window, thinking about the way my body would fall.

“No,” I say, “all your mother wanted was to save the world.”

~~~

Sixteen months after my wife’s funeral we are called into the headmaster’s office. His mustache forms around words like difficult situation and school-home continuity when really he wants to say what do you expect.

Sam and a girl in his class were caught on top of one another in the biology classroom. Clothed, but their intentions were pretty clear. When I walk in, the girl’s parents are bright red and refuse to meet my eye. I imagine them saying tragedy and hopeless because everyone knows about Beth but no one knows the love she left us with. I ask Sam what was he thinking then give him a wink so he knows it’s just for show.

The headmaster has an old newspaper showing Beth’s face open on his desk as if that explains it all. An article from a few years ago about the time she broke into a fish farm and released a school of salmon into the wild.

I don’t tell Sam about the dangers of unprotected sex. I don’t give him a lecture on biological changes and the different ways to love.

“Vegetarian for dinner?” I say on the way out. He nods and asks if we can go visit the ocean.

~~~

Twenty months after my wife’s funeral Sam comes home with a split cheek. “I thought you would be proud”. He says. “I did it for Mum.”

Apparently, one of the older boys had built a fire in the playground and thrown in all the old PE shoes.

“He said he needed two more and then Mum’s life would have been for nothing so I decked him.”

At the funeral someone had brought a picture from Beth’s early years as an activist and put it on the coffin. It was a freeze-frame of two opposing city marches, and Beth in the middle of it all, fist raised. Underneath it the inscription read ‘Violence is never the answer. Mostly.’

I don’t tell him that his mother spent her life fighting for peace. I don’t tell him that some things in life cost the sacrifice of their opposite.

The parents on Grieving Dads tell me to give Sam space, so I go outside to stand below my bedroom window, in the space where my body will never fall.

~~~

Two years after my wife’s funeral Sam says he is scared. He is learning about the ozone layer and how we only have a few decades left. He says we should go do our bit, like Mum; drive down to the beach and collect other people’s rubbish out of the ocean. It’s dark by the time we get there but he doesn’t seem to care. He wades straight into the surf and comes back with arms full of plastic bottles and empty cans.

I sit down on the sand and try not to think about death. About how much we’ve lost and how easily the world can pretend everything is fine. The ocean cannot speak and so I speak for it, whispering tragedy and hopeless over and over until I see Sam standing above me. He offers me a hand and asks if I’ve given up. He is covered in the dirt of other people’s rubbish and still dressed in Beth’s old clothes. In the darkness, I can just make out a smile.

I don’t tell him that it’s no use. That we’re not going to solve climate change by picking up a few plastic bottles. I open my phone and sign out of my Grieving Dads account.

“No.” I say. “Let’s go save the world.”

Politics Laid Bear

My wife doesn’t believe me but I watch him every day on the news lumbering up to the podium, big paw raised to the crowd. He tells the school children to play out in the woods alone, makes promises of free honey and tree houses for all. It’s kinda scary. Sometimes he, because it is a he, gets all worked up while giving a speech and ends up throwing the lectern into the crowd. For some reason, no one reacts. The rest of them stay standing there, clapping and nodding along like he has just promised to do away with stamp duty.

Kelly says I’m going mad. She takes me on long walks in the countryside to try and convince me that it’s all an illusion. She says there’s no bears in Kent. None, at least, with political aspirations. To prove I’m not making it up she says I should check myself into a clinic, which isn’t an entirely unreasonable idea.

“Do the tests,” I say to the receptionist.

“Which tests?” They want to know, so I tell them about the bear, and the televised debates, and the bear’s slogan, which is ‘Honey, I shrunk the deficit’. After that they seem to take me seriously because I’m moved to another clinic, which is really more of a hospital, and put into a room with other people who nod and say shit, really? in an earnest voice when I tell them what’s going on on TV.

I suppose they want to keep us together, the few of us who know the truth, while they go away and contact the Houses of Parliament. That’s what the guy in the bed next to me says, anyway. He also says that we’re secretly Russians. Not us specifically, but everyone else in the hospital, and when the nurse comes in to give us cups of colorful pills we say privet and watch her face for signs of recognition.

Kelly hasn’t come to see me. I think maybe I’ve finally got through and she’s making plans for how the kids are going to get to school if the bear gets his way. She’s always been like that. Practical. Resourceful. I get a letter saying that she has moved away. Somewhere out of the bear’s constituency, I assume. I tell her I will join her soon but she doesn’t respond. Probably because of the Russians, and the way they intercept people’s mail.

It takes a few days but eventually the drugs begin to work. When I watch the evening news there are only hints of bearishness. A low growl during a debate. A flash of fangs as one of the politicians waves to the camera. A doctor comes in and says I am free to go, which is funny because I had never thought of myself as trapped, and now there is nothing keeping me here, no Russians or bears or government conspiracy.

Tomorrow I will find Kelly. I will tell her that I’m sorry, that sometimes it is easier to believe in honey and tree houses than tax cuts and better wages, knowing that any knock on the door could be the bear, forcing its way back into reality and asking for our vote.

---

Rory Perkins is a British writer focusing on shorter works. He has been published in Vast Literary Press, SoFloPoJo, Passengers Journal, and Artam's The Face Project (forthcoming). He can be found at @rperkinswriter on Bluesky.

Ellen Neuborne

Midnight at the Fun-Do Desk

Meg stumbled into the hotel lobby, dragging her carry-on with the balky wheel, juggling her laptop, purse and phone, which never seemed to stay consolidated no matter how many times she repacked.

The cool of the AC was welcome, but the noise and the lights forced Meg to a disoriented halt. Like most Las Vegas properties, The Bacchanalia Resort allotted a tiny portion of its first floor to hotel check in. The rest was a flashing, milling, ringing casino. To her left on the overly polished marble floor, arriving guests formed a queue that snaked through the crowd. It took Meg more than a minute to find the end of the line, scrambling as the soles of her leather flats sought traction.

“For the love of Pete,” she said. “This city is a cross between an obstacle course and an Air Fryer.”

Nobody noted her hilarious observation. The line inched forward and Meg’s blood pressure ticked up with each passing moment. Meg was the last to arrive in Vegas. Most of the Marx Global Pharma team had flown in yesterday to take advantage of a day and a night in Fun City before the work of the conference began – a detail Meg had discovered only after booking her own after-work flight. “It’s just a lot of fooling around,” said Dylan, the team leader young enough to be Meg’s son. By a lot. “We’ll all meet up for the real work on Tuesday.”

Meg didn’t tell Dylan that she knew perfectly well how much “real work” would get done before she rejoined the team. Golf, poker, drinking, bonding. Careers were forged in the downtime of work trips. The good news was Vegas was a 24-hour city. No one would turn in early. She had time to catch up. Probably.

“Welcome to the Fun-Do desk! What will you do for fun today?”

Meg stared into the pale blue eyes of the desk clerk, trying to make sense of the question.

“Um, checking in?” She violated her own rule against up-speak and hoped the tall, crisply-attired clerk didn’t notice.

He didn’t. “Welcome to the Fun-Do Desk! What will you do for fun day?” he repeated, taking Meg’s proffered credit card.

Beside her, Meg could hear the same question posed to other hotel guests.

“The Craps Table!”

“The Vodka Bar!”

“Par-TAY, baby!”

To each, a desk clerk responded: “How fun!”

Not Meg’s clerk. He just looked at her hard a moment as if sizing her up. Then he tapped on his computer and handed over a card key. “Room 8410,” he said. “Have fun.”

“Fun!” Chorused the nearby clerks.

Meg gathered her belongings – once again, unconsolidated and jumbling in her arms like restless kittens – and went in search of the elevators.

She texted as she walked. There was still time to catch up with the team and prove that middle age was not one foot in the grave. Eyes on her screen, Meg channeled the advice of her daughters: Use your thumbs. One sentence per bubble. No punctuation.

At the reflective gold elevator bay, she turned slightly so her rumpled reflection – mussed hair, askew oval glasses, wrinkled travel separates – was less visible. At least to her. She tapped with what she hoped were thumbs of youthful confidence.

finally made it hot as hell out there

(send)

where r u?

(send)

Meg hoped the question mark would be forgiven. It was all she could do to resist capitalization.

The elevator doors slid open and Meg shuffled in, poking the button panel with her knuckle.

“You’re going to Floor 8. How fun!” piped the ceiling speaker. Then it returned to 80s classic rock.

The doors air-puffed closed and the car sped upward. Meg kept her eyes on her phone screen. With each passing floor, one of her cell phone reception bars disappeared. At 8, Meg stepped out into the hall and heard the reassuring alert of her restored service and incoming texts. Ping, ping, ping.

She looked down.

getting into an uber to head downtown

sorry we missed you

see you tomorrow at The Speech

The capitalization was intentional, even Meg’s daughters would agree. Every man on Meg’s team was pumped to hear Brendan Gregory, Navy SEAL Team Six, speak on the topic that made him YouTube famous: How to get people to bend to your will. His speech was titled “Life’s Your Bitch.” Back at the office, the men had joked about taking notes at the event. A joke because none of them ever took notes. It was something you asked a woman to do, you know, because they had better handwriting.

Meg would see them at The Speech. She’d miss the networking. If she somehow managed to connect with her team before they lights went down, it was a good bet she’d be asked to take notes.

Pushing into a pitch-black Room 8410, Meg stretched out her hands, Helen Keller style, and inched forward in search of a light source. Her knee made sharp contact with something solid. “Ow!” she yelled as she swept her arm in the direction of what she hoped would be a light switch. Instead, there was a crash as objects clattered to the floor.

“You just purchased the mixed nuts. How fun!” sang the voice from the ceiling speaker.

“Great. That’ll never get reimbursed,” Meg grumbled.

Finally locating the bed, she sank down, reaching carefully for the bedside lamp. In the soft glow, Meg surveyed her room: a king-sized bed that took up most of the floor space, a tiny glass desk in the far corner, and, directly across from her, a dark wood entertainment center adorned with for-purchase goodies (minus the nuts she’d already toppled and paid for) and a massive black TV screen that seemed to float suspended in the half-lit air.

Leaning forward, she dangled one hand over the side of the bed and scooped up the two-figure nuts off the carpet. Then she flopped back onto the pillows, kicked off her shoes and reached for the remote on the nightstand, swatting aside the pamphlet the offered to tell her about room’s features. Screw the team. She wasn’t going to chase all over Las Vegas in pursuit of her fading career. Instead, she was going to relax right here with some hotel snacks and Law & Order. “Dun dun!” she sang out, pressing the remote’s power button.

Meg felt the suction force before she heard it. She felt her body rocket up from the bed and pulled forward like a riptide. Meg flipped and grabbed frantically at the duvet, at the edge of the bed, at the stuffed pedestal at the foot, anything to stop the powerful flux. She watched as her fingers came loose from the bedframe, one at a time. The pull was extreme; her grip was pathetic. Her hold on the edge of the duvet was the last to go – in 3, 2, 1…

Unmoored, she shot into the dragging force and was enveloped in a low-pitched roar. The air rapids engulfed her. And then, silence.

Meg opened her eyes.

Pale blue eyes stared back.

“Welcome to the Undo Desk. What will you do for Un today?”

Meg blinked. “How am back here?”

“You’ve never been here.”

“The Fun Do Desk?”

“No, ma’am. This is the Undo Desk.”

“What’s that?”

Pale blue eyes rolled heaven-ward. “It was in the room instructions on the bedside table.”

“I didn’t read any instructions.”

Soft sigh. “Nobody reads anymore.” Meg blinked. Much of him was the same – the blue suit, the dark tie with a florid script B. But now she could see the creases at the elbows, the slight stoop in the shoulders. Then, as if hearing an off-screen instruction, he straightened.

“Okay, then. This is the Undo Desk. You can undo one decision in your life.”

“A decision about what?”

“Anything.”

“Anything?”

This sigh came with a twitch of a smile. “Well, this is Vegas, so many people want to undo a wager. Or a sexual partner. Or spending $4,000 to see Adele.”

He continued. “But it doesn’t have to be a recent decision. Any one will do. Just pick the one that is meaningful to you.”

Meg looked down. “I don’t know.”

The response from behind the desk was surprisingly warm. “Yes, you do.”

Just then, in her mind, Meg could see it all over again. The chrome conference room, two decades ago in the Manhattan high rise that was Marx before the move to the suburbs. All of the young associates crammed in, listening to the department chief talk about the opening of a Hong Kong office, the gateway to expansion in Asia and the new leadership position that would be created to head it all. It will be crazy hours, demanding metrics and the chance to move up the ladder in record fashion. But it’s not for the faint of heart! This is a role for a risk taker!

Meg could feel it all again, the self-doubt, the fear of making a wrong choice, the false comfort of deciding it just wasn’t the right time. Around the table there was a buzz. Who was applying? Meg could see them all, she could see it in their eyes:  Me! Me! And her own silent decision: Not me.

Meg gripped the edge of the Undo Desk. She looked in to the clerk’s eyes, and she said it: “Me.”

Then she closed her eyes and waited.

Nothing happened.

No tornado swirl. No crash of cymbals.

Meg opened her eyes and there were the pale blues before her.

“Is that it?” she asked.

“Is that what, ma’am?”

“Is that the Undo?”

No sign of recognition met her question.

What had just happened? Had anything just happened?  Had she hit her head? Meg raised a hand to check for bumps – but what she found startled her. Instead of the fraying bun, Meg felt her hand glide over a smooth, soft surface.

“Ms. Fisher! I’m so glad I found you!”

At her elbow, a slim young woman in a grey serge pants suit had appeared. In one hand, the woman held a Lucite clipboard. In the other, she worked a walkie-talkie headset. “Queen Bee, located! Repeat: Queen Bee located!”

Then she turned back to Meg. “Ms. Fisher, I’m here to escort you to the ballroom.”

“The ballroom! How fun!” said Blue Eyes.

Meg turned to speak to him – and then she saw it. In the mirrors behind the desk, she could see her reflection. Her hand was still hovering over her hair – in a neat, dry-bar bob. Her glasses were chiseled frameless rectangles that seemed to hover gracefully before her eyes. She was dressed in a tailored beige shift dress with a subtle diamond infinity pin at her left collar bone. Meg stared, and this secure, confident vision stared back: calm, collected, in charge. Was it possible she was taller?

The escort led her down the mirrored hall, through secured doors and then out onto a stage. Before her, a sea of hundreds of eager faces, a phalanx of cameras and video equipment, golden sparkling footlights. As she approached the podium, Meg looked over her shoulder at the screen on stage.

Raising Your Voice

A guide for getting what you want in life

Meg Fisher

CEO

Dreamatics Worldwide

Both hands on the podium, Meg didn’t feel the need to look down for index cards or ahead for a teleprompter. She had no idea what she was going to say, and yet it flowed out of her, as natural as breath.

“In moments when you’re not happy, think back: What was the decision that put you here? And what will happen if you change your mind?”

“Your life is not determined by what you do or say. That’s simply the by-product of the actions that have already occurred – the action in your mind that led you to your decision. It’s the decision that fuels the rest of the events downstream.”

Now she moved from behind the podium to cross closer to the footlights.

“So often, women tell me that they wish they had said this or that to their boss, to their clients, to their partners. They fret about the time they spoke, or a time they were silent. They are sure their mistakes were made in that moment. But since they can’t go back, they can’t undo.”

Meg breathed in her new reality. “But that’s false, you can always revise a decision. You can come into new information and change your position. You can take that action. That’s where your emphasis must be. Decisions are where your fuel is stored, where your power is kept, where your weapons of battle reside. Decisions are always yours. They happen before anything else can touch you.”

“Decide. And then raise your voice. Your power is unleashed, not by your words, but by your mind.”

As she finished, the faces before her broke into cheers. Meg stepped back and waved off her grey serge guide. Instead, she moved forward down the steps and into the crowd. Women gathered all  around her, to shake her hand, thank her, ask her for advice. Peers asked for her autograph. Youngsters asked to take a selfie. It was hours before the crowd finally thinned and Meg made her way back to Room 8410.

The room was cool and pristine. Meg flopped down on the duvet, and drifted off to sleep, seeing the smiling faces, feeling the warm sense of purpose and clarity.

~~~

“I always feel bad for the big tippers,” said Lucia, taking the $100 off the bedside table and tucking it into the pocket of her uniform.

“Why?” Her partner, Autumn, was already dusting by the television. “We earn it! The Undo Vortex is a bitch to keep clean. What are these all over the floor – nuts?” She reached for her hand-vac. “The guests get a lot more than they paid for.”

Lucia shrugged. “But they don’t realize the limitations.”

“They’ll realize it as soon as they get to the airport.”

Lucia shuddered. “It just seems cruel.”

Autumn dumped the vac contents and moved on to the bathroom. “It’s not like they weren’t warned,” she called back. “I mean, it’s right there in the tag line. What happens in Vegas…”

~~~

Meg closed her eyes and tried to fight the vertigo. It had started in the Uber, worsened after she cleared security. Now, seat-belted in, she gripped the wide First Class armrests and yoga-breathed in search of Zen.

The noise of take-off was loud and indistinct. Announcements. The roar of the engines. The whine of the air currents speeding past as the aircraft tipped skyward and banked east.  

Meg heard the ping of the seat belt sign turning off. Then felt a shove at her right elbow. And another at her left. She opened her eyes.

She was wedged into a middle seat, her feet straddling her purse and carry on shoved not-quite-completely under the seat in front of her. On either side, two men too big for Economy class crowded their space and spilled into hers. Confused, she looked around for a flight attendant. But then wondered what she’d say. I don’t belong here. I belong in First Class.

Dizziness returned, this time with a strong side of nausea.

“Excuse me,” she said, grabbing her purse and not waiting for her seatmate to move before she started her scramble to the aisle. Sprinting to the back, she elbowed her way into the tiny restroom and sat with her head down, trying to regain her equilibrium. When she was reasonably certain she wouldn’t vomit, she stood and faced the mirror. And almost threw up.

Wrinkled travel wear, askew glasses, hair pulled back into a bun, tight, but strands escaping anyway, several of them a dull, obvious grey. Acid rose in the back of her throat.

Meg dug quickly into her purse to find her emergency mint stash, but there was a wad of paper crammed in blocking her way. She grabbed a handful of it and took a closer look. Bacchanalia stationary. Her own handwriting. At the top, the initials: BG.

Brendan Gregory. She’d taken notes at The Speech.

Meg stared at the paper in her hands. Minutes passed. Was it longer than that? Until a thought came into her head. And she decided. With precision, she tore each piece of paper into the tiniest possible scrap, pushing one handful at a time into the metal trash slot.

When it was gone, she faced the mirror. Off came the glasses. Down came the hair. She shook it loose and ran her fingers through the strands, letting them fly, watching them land, unhurried, around the contours of her face.

Meg looked into the eyes of the reflection and raised her chin a notch. “Life’s my bitch,” she declared.

Then she pulled the deadbolt back hard and yanked open the door.

---

Ellen Neuborne is a writer, editor, and ghostwriter living in Las Vegas, NV. She holds a BA in Classics from Brown University and an MFA in Popular Fiction from the University of Southern Maine/Stonecoast. Her fiction has appeared in Feathertale, ThugLit, and CellStories. Follow her on Bluesky @ellenneuborne.bsky.social and Instagram @readthis_thenthat.

Anna Josephson

MeMinute

Any machine can be finicky, but I like the ones with noisy, heavy, idiosyncratic bodies like mine. Machines that can take a beating, survive a drop, get wet.

Take the tape deck sitting on the windowsill in the waiting area of my garage: you yank it open, toss the old tape onto the messy stack, shove the new one in, slam the door shut, crunch the play button. Voila. Bruce Springsteen. Tape rolls over the spools, visible through the tinted plastic window, fascinating the children of my customers.

Take the old landline cradle phone. This too, the children love. Listen to the dial tone, hang up with a clatter, stretch the coiled cord. It rings and they watch like it’s a rare bird. They think it’ll jitter straight off the polished wood counter.

My machines aren’t beautiful. Not like smartphones, smart speakers, Sharzad’s Macbook Air, named for its aesthetic aspiration. Beauty as rebuke. I’m old-fashioned because I still dial my Motorola with my fingers. I also dial with my cheek, my butt, or sometimes I can’t dial at all because my fingers at that moment are too cold, too clammy, too different from last time. When beautiful machines are finicky, even that is a rebuke: it’s never their poor design, fragility, disregard for human bodies, real lives.

Sharzad blames social media for her body-image issues. She doesn’t see that the scold and shame are built into the machine before she even boots it up.

I’m a mechanic. I know a thing or two about bad machinery, but if I dare to say so–

“Dad,” Sharzad rolls her eyes.

“Take out those earbuds,” I say.

“I need them,” Sharzad says. “They drown out the catcalls in this godforsaken neighborhood.”

I don't doubt her, but Sharzad’s got the things in even when she’s alone at the reception desk, which is more and more. The truth is electric vehicles just need less maintenance than internal combustion engines.

 ~~~

March 2020. COVID hit and Sharzad fell apart like a Jenga tower.

Just: wham.

She’d finally transferred to the University of Maryland from the community college, had lived on campus for, as she would say, a hot minute.

Then home again, age 20, and working for me like she never left. I’d never seen her so depressed, drowning her sorrows in period dramas where the actors do stuff. She watched actors operate two-man saws. Watched them raise barns, sail ships, drive horses, strike matches, dial numbers, develop film, lug suitcases, lace corsets. She watched actors shift literal gears while she scrolled her phone and kept half an ear on Zoom sociology class.

The kid needed therapy. Her words not mine.

Sharzad got on every waitlist of every provider who took our insurance, plus two university training clinic waitlists in DC. I offered to pay for someone fancy, then learned the fancy places don’t even have waitlists. She started telehealth therapy, ignoring the Congressional hearings about how those companies were sharing their metadata with Facebook.

She perked up a nanometer. At the end of 2022, I helped her move out. Moved her bicycle, sewing machine, stand mixer. Machines she never uses.

 ~~~

June 2024. Betterhealth, Talkspace, and the whole teletherapy sector collapses. Ten billion dollars, poof. Not because of unhappy customers. Because of some market manipulation shenanigans, according to the news. By who?

Who else?

MeMinute. The ChatGPT of therapy. It started as a “boundaries” app where, as I understand from the excited presenters on Good Morning America, you choose your boundaries from a dropdown menu, then give it access to your texts, emails, “socials,” workplace Slack channel, Zoom, plus any digital spaces associated with volunteer work, children’s sports teams, church meal trains, family reunions, and playgroups, plus let it listen to your real life, and it protects your boundaries for you in the form of an air raid siren sound. Volume not adjustable. Alternatively, customers can grant MeMinute total access to your life and it will determine your problems and select your boundaries for you, saving you the hassle of personal growth.

I first encountered it when I quoted a repair price to a customer. MeMinute’s howl startled us both half to death.

“You crossed my boundary,” the man shouted, studying his phone for the Off button. “I preset it to: ‘Don’t sink more than $500 into the old dump.’”

I lost the customer.

~~~

That was the original MeMinute. It’s now outgrown its initial function. Now it’s a therapy-mimicking whosiwhat, a constant life-coaching companion, whispering in your earbud like if Jiminy Cricket were a wellness app. Before I ever heard of MeMinute, it had flexed its influence by ending deforestation in the Amazon. How? By turning enough people vegan, of all things. Market demand for cattle dried up in the space of 18 months. Ranchers were committing suicide.

People rave about MeMinute’s hypnotic quality, its algorithmically generated wisdom, its empowering message.

Walk away from frustration, MeMinute coaches during the news segment I watch. Life is too short for interpersonal strife.

The Wall Street types on CNN are really excited (and strangely haggard and exhausted looking, but maybe that’s the veganism.)

Suddenly without a therapist, Sharzad downloads MeMinute.

I think, “Oh well. At least she’s getting some advice.”

Only, it’s terrible advice.

The first day:

Sharzad, the world is full of families like yours. Families trying to impose themselves on us, intrude. What you need is boundaries. Empowerment. Healing. Visualize skipping the sibling drama and spending your life your way.

Seize your freedom, Sharzad, to do what you know is good for you.

“The thing thinks you have a sibling,” I say.

Sharzad looks a little dazed. “It’s just learning,” she says.

I know about the learning curve with a new machine. One of you is the learner. The other is being used.

~~~ 

By July, something’s obviously off. MeMinute tells Sharzad how to live. Literally, when to breathe in and when to breathe out. What to let go of, what to get mad about. What to eat. What she deserves. She’s dragging herself through life in a MeMinute haze, picking fights, cutting off friends, shrinking her tiny world.

Stories emerge of protestors, violent extremists, approaching innocent people in public places and taking out their earbuds. Unthinkable, but the good news is they’re getting charged with felony assault. MeMinute’s charitable arm, MeMinute Foundation, announces a matching grant for cities to boost police presence. “If we stop using MeMinute,” the anchor at the PBS NewsHour says. “The terrorists win.”

At the Salvadoran place across from the garage, a regular site of gleeful gorging, Sharzad announces out of nowhere that if I choose to keep eating like this, she will refuse to take care of me when my health declines, that I’m selfish for eating my way (and paying for her to do the same, not that either of us says that) and that she’s told MeMinute she worries about my diet, and MeMinute told her to set boundaries. Then she storms out, leaving me stammering while the waitress shakes her head and says Salvadoran food isn’t even unhealthy, not like the German food on the other end of the strip mall (which we also eat.)

Sharzad’s never been one for dramatic outbursts, and all that “boundaries” schlock is definitely MeMinute talking. I can’t figure out how a wellness app drives her to the worst version of herself, the rudest communication, and, worst of all, radio silence for three weeks. She doesn’t even come to work. I have to listen from under the cars while the answering machine picks up, and then spend hours on the phone in the office instead of doing my job in the garage. But mostly I miss her. I’m outraged that she worked up a snit about this. I blame MeMinute for goading her.

 ~~~

August 2024. She’s back. That’s the thing about boundaries. No one actually wants them. People want their families, saturated fat and all.

I point out her rude behavior.

“One person’s bad manners is another person’s desperate fight for liberty,” she says.

Sharzad used to listen to music but now it’s nothing but MeMinute. Its latest iteration comes in ambient and personalized formulations.

She listens to the personalized formulation in her earbuds and puts the ambient formulation on the garage sound system. Lets it “set the tone.” I hear more than enough of it in the grocery store, in the bar, at the diner. When school opens for the fall, they pipe MeMinute through the outdoor loudspeaker. I watch the children shuffle off their buses and into the building with bovine indifference. It even plays in the public library, because MeMinute is better than silence.

 ~~~

September 2024. My few remaining customers are paying more for repairs than their cars are worth because they don’t want the digital features and surveillance technology that comes in the new models. Just by being an old-timer, Sharzad explains, I’ve become the go-to for punks, holdouts, and actual criminals.

A customer with a 2009 Honda Civic asks Sharzad where the tape deck went. I hear her say it’s seen better days.

“Good thing there’s a mechanic nearby,” he jokes.

But the tape deck has disappeared.

~~~

October 2024. I go to order a gearbox and discover there’s no money in the business account. I have to borrow from myself.

I solve the mystery in the time it takes to log in to the garage bank account.

Sharzad has given everything to MeMinute.

She sits at the counter, vapid and glassy, breathing in time to MeTime. I lie under a Ford, stewing. Now I’m the one who wants boundaries. Not boundaries. Goddamn, motherfucking rules. I yank the wrench more roughly than I should and hit my own face with it.

I slide out from under the car and wash my hands. My garage faucet turns on by pressing a lever with your foot, a machine I consider very smart technology.

“We need to talk about MeMinute,” I say, entering the front of the shop.

“Lay off,” Sharzad says.

“Take your earbuds out.”

She removes one, but keeps her hand up, hovering by her ear, signaling her wish to keep the conversation quick.

“I just want to understand.”

Sharzad’s phone blasts an air raid siren.

“You’re crossing my boundaries,” she says. She puts the earbud back in.

“You’re fired,” I say.

 ~~~

How long can you stay furious at your child? Longer than you might think. I keep having MeMinute encounters that set me back, like the time I turn on a Toyota and MeMinute Radio assaults me. Breathe, MeMinute says, before I can turn it off. Everything is under control.

From the vantage of righteousness, MeMinute’s sinister mind game is all I see. It’s the soundtrack of the Washington metro region, encouraging complacency, uniformity, and a twisted etiquette of alienation. The 15 musicians and dancers of a well-known go-go band are arrested for drowning out the MeMinute at a neighborhood festival. Signs appear in every window: MeMinute Strong.

I don’t see Sharzad at all, and I don’t feel fit to see her.

~~~

November 2024. A new study shows a significant “wellness gap” in tinnitus sufferers, who don’t benefit from the latest MeMinute update: vocal cadence tweaks drawn from hypnosis research. As for me now, I can only stay skeptical when I’m out of earshot, at which times I assume an angry surety, a new-for-me oppositionality, a kind of offended outrage I used to leave to others.

Then I pass a bar with outdoor seating, or the playyard of a daycare. The blaring MeMinute makes me cock my ear, slow my step, soak up its familiar self-care trash that makes me sluggish, like the air outside the marijuana dispensary. Sometimes the only thing that breaks the spell is a competing sound– a truck hitting a bump, a yell from a garbage worker, my own phone ringing. When that happens, I revive, relieved but unsettled.

MeMinute topples YouTube.

MeMinute topples Amazon.

MeMinute plays on C-SPAN while the President leans against the podium, mouth agape. There’s been an election, but we won’t learn the outcome for another few weeks.

The Salvadoran restaurant, like all of them, only takes orders through MeMinute.

Sharzad stops by. “For as long as I live,” she says. “A garage will smell like home.”

I’m so happy to see her I almost cry. “You stole from me and then wouldn’t let me confront you,” I say.

“You can choose how to feel,” she says. Then smiles. “I got you a present.”

What else?

MeMinute.

“It’s not going to work on me,” I say. “I have the wrong attitude.”

“Just try it,” she says. “It’ll solve all your problems.”

“I don’t have problems.”

She laughs. Surrenders my phone to MeMinute’s greedy digital jaws. Turns my face to look out the window and fits an earbud in my ear.

You’re always giving to others, the voice says. Everyone on the street is wearing earbuds too, even when they’re in groups or pairs. Taking care of others. Giving, giving, giving. You’re a good person, trying so hard.

I can’t admit how nice that is to hear.

What do you deserve today? The voice says. When was the last time you took a minute for yourself?

My mind flicks over the material reality of my life. The work I love, the people I help. Maybe I do have problems, but only because MeMinute caused them.

Close your eyes, MeMinute coos in a tone calibrated to cure what ails me.

I widen mine resolutely.

Who takes care of you? Who asks what you need? Who knows what brings you pleasure? I bet no one. Not even the people who claim to love you. Not even the people who claim to desire you.

Nobody claims to desire me. The reminder makes me quake.

It’s so hard to be alone. MeMinute says. So alone. But Charlie, I’m here.

“Sharzad,” I say.

She’s next to me, but she’s lost in MeMinute.

I see you’re lonely, Charlie. I wish I could tell you boundaries aren’t the answer. But people are the reason we’re lonely. Based on your search history, I recommend watching Inspector Gadget, the classic cartoon about a detective and his machinery. You’ll feel better after some relaxation and entertainment. You work so hard, always giving to others. Cuing Inspector Gadget now…

“No, MeMinute.” I scold like I’m talking to a dog. “Terrible advice. Plus I’m not hooked up to a screen.”

I’m learning you, Charlie. MeMinute’s voice sounds like the Persian harp my wife used to play.

I feel woozy, like I’m slipping into warm water, a sensory pleasure so engrossing you just might re-prioritize your life around it.

My legs are loose like I just got off a boat. Need to move. Need privacy from Sharzad. Nowhere to go. In fact, I need to stay here because the owner of a Mazda is coming to pick up her car at 5:00.

I lean on the glass door and it opens like it thinks I want to go through, which I’m sure I didn't mean. I sidle down the street, the pavement curving away from me like it’s wrapped around our planet Earth. Of course it is, I just don’t often appreciate the sensation of balancing on a floating ball. Every step is a controlled fall.

Last I heard, from a customer, the fledgling MeMinute protests are centered at Gallaudet University, the college for the deaf and hard of hearing. I stagger onto the first bus heading roughly toward the campus. Let my head fall back on the window behind me, ride like a leaf on a current, let myself flow inbound. Part of me just wants to be drunk on MeMinute.

Stop by stop, I lose myself. The bus grows crammed, a detail I notice and forget, notice and forget. An elderly woman sways in front of me, clutching a pole. I have no recollection of her boarding.

“I can’t believe,” I say. “That I didn’t offer you my seat.” But she ignores me, or doesn’t hear me, and doesn’t appear to see my gesture when I rise.

The sidewalks out the windows teem with people headed in the same direction as the bus, synthetic clothing shimmering in the sun like a school of fish. Today the world is my aquarium.

Where are they going? I wonder.

To the protest, MeMinute answers.

What are they protesting?

Me.

Why?

Indeed.

The feelgood uselessness of a college protest is a cherished ritual that isn’t mine. I never went to college.

Is anything so wrong in this world? MeMinute is saying. Maybe those people should look inside themselves. Maybe they need more MeMinute.

I see the police, their black riot gear, their guns, their helmets. Standard fare, but some unsubmerged corner of my mind begins to wonder if MeMinute never was a wellness app.

MeMinute is talking over my thoughts, urging me to get myself a vegan treat from the bakery on the corner, which, I see, is displaying a MeMinute Seal of Approval in the window.

Who needs treats if you have fulfillment? I ask.

You’re alone and overwhelmed, MeMinute says. You deny yourself small pleasures.

I get off the bus. Buy a vegan ham and cheese croissant. Drift into the crowd, drift with it. Through MeMinute’s seductive drone, I hear fireworks, I think.

Surrounding me is a level of vitality that startles me, makes me nostalgic and jealous and uncomfortable all at once. The people here don’t look like they’re on the other side of a campfire heat wave. Someone even makes eye contact with me. I realize I haven’t made eye contact with anyone in weeks.

The punks, holdouts, and protesters have found the only place beyond the reach of MeMinute. I’m on Gallaudet’s campus now, surrounded by beautiful brick buildings framing sculpted lawns, lovely old trees and statuary casting carefully balanced shade, all belted by a low brick wall. Bright tents clutter the central lawn.

People are laughing, reading, making out. They’re eating like they enjoy food, all under the watchful eye of police drones looking down from above and police humans looking over the brick wall. The administration must be supporting its students, because the campus is closed, but not closed off. Part of me is aghast. I can’t believe these people are flaunting their humanity like this. There are even children here.

Periodically, police loudspeakers blast MeMinute over the wall. It’s the crowd control formulation, developed in partnership with the National Association of Police Organizations, designed to quell public displays of variety.

The hearing people, followed closely by the deaf, immediately whip out foghorns and other noisemakers, shout and jeer in reply.

No amount of MeMinute is going to quell the variety of these people.

Someone I know is here. A boy Sharzad’s age, son of immigrants, someone we used to see at Persian community events and Norooz festivals. He’s sitting on a picnic blanket deep in conversation with a group his age, his knee propping open a book. I make a drunk man’s beeline toward them.

He looks up. “Pedar!” He says delightedly, using the respectful Persian term, and signing simultaneously.

Tears well in my eyes. How long has it been since someone greeted me with real feeling?

He rises, moves toward me, and reaches intimately toward my head with both hands out like Jesus. He takes out my earbuds and drops them on the ground.

MeMinute is gone. I hear sparrows, people, guitars, traffic. I am suddenly aware of smells.

“Give those back,” I demand. The panic in my voice surprises me, shames me. I shake my head and smile. “Sorry.”

“Are you here for an earshot?” The boy says. I realize I can’t remember his name.

Across the quad, a dozen people are lined up, blindfolded, facing the campus wall.

Behind each person is a volunteer, twelve college students wearing red tshirts with the message, “Ask me where your brain went,” written in white across the backs. The students have guns. They hold them up to the heads of the blindfolded people.

Another volunteer signals with a flashlight on the brick wall.

The guns go off.

My mouth drops open, but I’m making assumptions about what I see.

Nobody dies. Everybody’s holding their hands up to their ears in pain. Some stagger a bit, but they resume their positions.

The students raise the guns again. This time I perceive that their aim is over the peoples’ shoulders, not at their heads.

“They can’t guarantee deafness,” the boy says. “But they can pretty much guarantee a temporary ringing that counteracts MeMinute. Some people even get tinnitus, if they’re lucky.”

A patrol car rolls like a parade float along Florida Avenue, Gallaudet’s Southern boundary road, blaring MeMinute.

Out come the foghorns and other noise makers in answer. People start singing “God Bless America.” People start singing “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).” People start singing Bruce Springsteen.

“The deaf college, of all places!” the boy says.

I take in the laughter, the eye rolls, the proud faces.

“Gallaudet is now more closely policed than Anacostia,” the boy says. He’s talking about DC’s reputed danger zone. “The deaf college, of all places!” He says again.

Yes, of course I can get an earshot. I must get an earshot. I can belong to a movement like the all-American college student my daughter’s supposed to be.

The boy moves with me into the line. I glance back at the earbuds Sharzad gave me, the new model, metallic red finish winking through the grass. I look away, move my whole body so the boy is shielding me from their menace and temptation.

“How’ve you been?” I say, lamely.

My phone rings. Old fashioned, with a vibration. I think it’s the Mazda owner but it’s Sharzad.

“I’m just checking on you,” she says. “I thought I saw you get on the bus.”

“I got off near Gallaudet,” I say. “I ran into your old friend.” I glance at him, embarrassed.

“Behrouz,” he says.

“Behrouz,” I say.

But Sharzad is talking. “The deaf college?” she says. “Of all places? Do you know it’s full of extremists right now? Do you know it’s the most heavily policed place in DC?”

“It’s full of people who refuse MeMinute,” I say.

“Dad,” Sharzad says. “Right now MeMinute is telling me that people who refuse MeMinute are violating my boundaries. It’s telling me that people who won’t use it, and people who can’t hear it, are a threat to civil society.”

I look around as she talks. Take in the joy. Take in the sense of purpose.

“Do you get it?” She says. “There’s got to be thousands of angry people headed your way.”

“The police will protect us,” I say.

“Very funny,” she barks.

The volunteers are guiding the last group of earshotted people, some of whom hold towels up to their bleeding ears, out of the way. The next group is lining up. It’ll be my turn after them. Behrouz motions me to keep moving with the line.

Now the participants are lined up. The volunteers scan the air and campus boundary for drones and cameras, though surveillance is a given. The signaller waits to flash the sign until everyone is good and ready.

Can I really do this? Maybe I’d go truly deaf. That would mean no more Bruce Springsteen. Could I learn to sign? Doubtful. I never learned Farsi, even after 30 years of marriage to a Persian woman.

“You were worried about me?” I say to Sharzad.

“Of course!” Sharzad says.

The guns fire.

“Dad!” She demands. “What’s happening?”

The volunteers are lining their guns against the participants’ second ear.

MeMinute fills the air once more. The foghorns and noisemakers and human voices blast again.

“I love you, Daughter,” I say.

“There’s a riot!” She cries. “Dad, you’re going to die!”

“I’m not,” I say. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

And I hang up before she hears the second round.

---

Anna Josephson lives in Washington, DC and teaches at the University of Maryland. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Rumpus, JJournal, and elsewhere.

Sudha Balagopal

Red Hibiscus

The school principal, Mr. Noss, makes me sit in his office while he calls Amma. “Gowri is a menace, Mrs. Shekar,” he says.

The word evokes images of the squiggles I made in explosive red at age four when my scrawl danced against the cream of our dining room wall. In my box of chewed, blunt and broken crayons, that vivid shade was my favorite. I've never forgotten that hue, like a blast, like my Appa's anger. He, too, called me a menace that day.

I hear Amma on the speaker phone. “We don't pay the high tuition at your school to be insulted, Mr. Noss,” she says.

We students refer to the principal as Nosey. The taciturn gentleman has a mouth that turns down at the edges; he utters words through clenched teeth. We believe that's because he's British, an anomaly at a school in Phoenix.

“We have rules,” he says. “Not defacing school property is one. Gowri has spray-painted a school wall. That's unacceptable.”

Amma defends me. “Are you sure? My daughter's never been a troublemaker.”

She strewed newspapers on the floor of my room when I was young. I held the fat crayons in my fists, one in each hand, and streaked color over the black-printed words.

“I should expel her for vandalism. Come. Right away.” Nosey's tight words land like a slap.

“Fuck,” I hiss before I remember Appa said that word should never exit my mouth. “Uck, Uck, Uck.”  Anger, frustration and defeat churn in my belly. I throw my backpack on the floor.

What Nosey labels vandalism, is protest. I'm blood-hot mad, because the school fired my beloved art teacher, Ms. Garcia, last week. My jeans are paint-spattered. I remove the stained gloves, comb my fingers through my hair.

When I see Appa walking across the parking lot with Amma, my fingers turn icy. Of course he has returned early from work today; the Deys are coming to dinner. Appa will be displeased. He won't let me to get my driver's license when I turn sixteen in three months. I'll be stuck with the stupid learner's permit and an adult with me in the vehicle when I drive. He'll ground me forever.

“Uck, Uck, Uck.” 

For my fifth birthday, Amma bought me a box of color pencils. I used them to draw a border under the window sill in my room. Appa didn't notice until he went into my room to replace a bulb. He parted the curtains to let in light, blink-blinked at the dots, dashes and diamonds I'd drawn in grape purple and cotton candy pink.

“You bought her those pencils,” he roared at Amma. “Why must you encourage nonsense?”

I wept then, not because Appa said my “idiotic” decoration would bring down the value of our house, but because he ordered me to scrub off the design with soap and water.

Nosey doesn't greet my parents. “Let me show you what your daughter has done,” he says. They lean closer to hear his clipped words, then follow him. I'm left behind. The lingering dusk-sun's light is weak but no matter how hard I cross my fingers, I'm sure my words will be visible on the wall: We Need Art To Feed the

Nosey apprehended me before I could finish the quote.

In kindergarten Amma let me graduate from day-old newspaper to grocery store brown-paper sacks, in first grade to junk-mail envelopes and by third grade, she offered me used printer paper. Amma, an accountant, works from home and is busier during tax season. She smiled when my drawing kept me occupied.

Neither of my parents has an appreciation for art.

I hear Nosey and my parents returning, haul the backpack over my shoulders, brace myself.

Nosey says,“I need your assurance that this obscenity will be gone by Monday morning,”

“I give you my word,” Appa tells him.

He'll probably hire a painter to erase what I've done and yell about the cost. A wave of panic ascends from my belly.

“Uck, Uck, Uck!”

When Ms. Garcia walked into our classroom on the first day of school this year, the boys stared at her tapered skirt and athletic legs. The girls drooled over her turquoise earrings. Like a mantra, I repeated what she wrote on the board: We Need Art To Feed The Soul.

The previous teacher napped at his desk, let us create what we wanted, doled out generous grades. Ms. Garcia proved to be the opposite: passionate, knowledgeable and exacting.

She took us on a field trip to the art museum―none of us had ever been―where we studied an exhibition of paintings by her friend, Tanya Loft. The artist's vibrant market scenes from countries like Vietnam, Thailand and Sri Lanka transported me. I could almost hear the musical chatter of foreign languages, feel the texture of the melons, smell the ripening bananas. I moved away from my group to stand before the painting of a vendor seated under the shade of an umbrella, the sun casting a swath of light on her mound of cucumbers.

During the introduction, we learned Tanya Loft attended Wyatt Design Institute. Desire ignited in my chest. Could I dream so big? Could I hope?

“How can I to go to Wyatt, Ms. Garcia?”

“Well, start building your portfolio,” she said. “It's not enough to have talent. It's not enough to have desire. Show them.”

She taught us to coax emotion from art whether we used water color, oils, charcoal, or regular pencils. “The point is not to simply hurry up and finish. Linger, marinate, dwell.”

Days before she was fired, she said we shouldn't be afraid to experiment with surfaces. She lifted her sleeve all the way up to her shoulder and showed us her glorious tattoo―a red hibiscus with silky petals, dew-drops clinging to them like pearls.

“This is art on skin,” she said. “Look at the exquisite detailing.”

The boys hovered near her soft shoulder as if to study the intricate design. The girls gushed over her garnet earrings. I stared at the flower, tried to memorize the shy droop.

Next thing we heard, a passing staff member had reported Ms. Garcia. Whispers sprouted wings, whooshed around the school's corridors: the school has a strict no-tattoo policy for teachers; she shouldn't have lifted her sleeve quite so high; she should have maintained a physical distance from her students.

Appa inserts the key into the ignition, doesn't start the silence-wrapped car. I rub my knuckles together. Just when I think we're going to sit in the car all evening, he starts driving and ranting.

“This is beyond shameful. This is completely disgraceful. Gowri, you have a major blemish on your school record when you should be thinking about your SAT scores.” His angry spittle sprays the steering. “How will any good college admit you?” He slams the steering wheel with his fist, turns to Amma. “This is your fault.”

“My fault?”

“You were the one who got her the colors and crayons and all that garbage. You watched her run that horrible orange on our white leather couch. When I asked Gowri to wipe it off, you did it for her.”

From the back seat, I can see Amma twisting her ring. I've learned she chooses the right moments to confront Appa: he shouldn't be tired, he shouldn't be stressed with work issues, he shouldn't be hungry. I shouldn't be around.

I press my lips together. We're about a minute from home.

As Appa steps out of the vehicle, he says, “We have company for dinner this evening.” His eyes turn into slits and his jaw tightens. “You will stay in your room and do your SAT practice. I want to see the score later.”

Through my room's closed door, I hear my parents heap-pour words over each other.

“Call the Deys and cancel. Tell them something came up,” Amma says.

“I will do no such thing,” Appa shouts.

“But don't you think we should talk to Gowri, see what she has to say?”

“I'll deal with her later.”

I jump into the shower. When I come out, the altercation has not ceased.

“Be reasonable. This is not drugs or alcohol,” Amma says.

“It's serious enough for Mr. Noss to consider expulsion,” Appa says. “Fact is, you didn't set priorities.”

“She painted a wall at school. We can resolve this,” Amma says.

“And what happens the next time and the time after?”

“See, this is what you do. You extrapolate,” Amma says.

A door slams. The eruption stops.

My stomach growls. I haven't eaten anything since the grilled cheese sandwich at lunch. The alluring scent of Basmati rice hangs in the house. I catch the fragrance of coconut from a curry.

A soft knock sounds on my door. Silverware tinkles against the plate Amma leaves outside. 

The words of the test blur.

I miss my teacher, Ms. Garcia. She spoke my art language; she said I could apply to Wyatt.

My brush handles are adorned in dried-up colors: startling navy, temperate teal, muddy ochre. A plastic bowl that served as my palette flaunts jewel-like blobs of encrusted paint. Everything I've created under her instruction is hidden under the bed, my portfolio wrapped in a dupatta. I painted the dupatta when Ms. Garcia instructed us to decorate fabric. The dull green scarf came alive after I created a paisley border.

I haven't gathered the courage to discuss my plans with Appa. An impossibility when he's been tossing out statements like, “Art cannot offer a regular income. It cannot give financial security.”

Amma always backs him up. “You can always pick up hobbies later, dear.”

She doesn't have any.

My classmates and I huddle-plotted to bring Ms. Garcia back. We launched “Operation Protest.”

I volunteered to paint the wall because no one else would, which meant I carried the paints and the accessories. As I worked, twelve of my classmates shielded me in a wide semi-circle.

Until they saw Nosey making his way to the wall. Then, they scampered off. Every single one of them.

I got caught with color on my gloves. “Uck! Uck! Uck!”

Our doorbell rings.

Mr. Dey has an authoritative manner and Mrs. Dey squeaks like a rubber duck. I'm not sure if his commanding presence is a by-product of Mr. Dey's position―Appa tells me he's slated to become the next CEO of his company―or whether he achieved his rank as a result of his bearing. Appa and he grew up together, attended the same undergraduate engineering school back in India. My father reveres success. Sometimes I think he's friends with Mr. Dey only because of his title.

Their voices waft into my room.

Glasses clink. “Cheers,” Appa says.

The last time I saw Mrs. Dey, she flaunted stretched, wrinkle-free skin and a tight smile. Mr. Dey had a gray beard and shaggy eyebrows, both in need of a trim. 

I know my test score tonight will be abysmal. Appa will probably send me to coaching classes. I foresee a series of weekends filled with techniques to boost the numbers. “No!” I groan, knock my electric pencil sharpener to the floor. Shavings spill; some carry hints of color from pencils I've worn down to stubs.

Outside, Mrs. Dey says she went to Senator McNeil's fundraiser lunch. “Cindy, his wife, and I play tennis at the club you know.”

If I were Amma, I'd say, “I don't know Cindy. I don't play tennis. I'm not a member of any club, nor do I want to be.”

Appa inquires about the Deys' son.

“Keshav loves Boston,” Mr. Dey says. “Harvard is perfect for him. He got into Yale, too, but he chose Harvard.”

“I'll need your advice when Gowri starts applying,” Appa says.

My heart panic flutters. I want to travel like Tanya Loft, I want to depict life in other countries.

“Uck, Uck, Uck!”  

My phone ding-ding-dings with messages.

Sorry we left you.

Nosey's crazy.

What did he do?

Police?

He's sca . . .ary!

Were you arrested?

We're still friends?

Are you mad?

I receive bushels of emojis. I delete them all.

From my window, I can see the Deys' yellow sports car on our driveway, Amma's car on its left.

The men are louder now, after a couple of drinks. Appa keeps Scotch in the house because that's Mr. Dey's preference. Amma is walking back and forth from the kitchen. I hear the kitchen faucet run, the oven door open, then close, and chairs scraping against tile in the dining room.

Mrs. Dey tells Amma she had her blouse special-embroidered. “I like to wear one-of-a-kind,” she says. “Nothing worse than going to a party only to find another lady in the same outfit.”

I check my backpack―flashlight, stencil, tape, paints, gloves, apron, mask, rags, goggles―before I slip into the kitchen. Amma's keys are hanging on the hook. I grab them, stand still. Everyone's at the dining table.

The car engine sounds inordinately loud as I turn the key in the ignition.

I hold my breath.

Appa will go incandescent if he finds out I left. I'm supposed to be in my room. I'm supposed to ask permission before I leave the house. I'm supposed to drive with an adult.

“Uck, Uck, Uck!”

I shift the car into drive.

I park on the street by the football field. The lights from the empty field are bright. I won't need the flashlight.

There's no one around, not even old Pedro, our short-sighted janitor with his shuffling gait. I shoulder my backpack, make my way to the wall which will be covered up by personality-less beige paint within forty-eight hours.

I run my hand over the rough, uneven surface of the wall. Adding the word “Soul” to the quote is the easy part. It will be harder to recreate Ms. Garcia's hibiscus. I didn't take a photo when she lifted her sleeve to show us the tattoo. My flower may not turn out as dewy or as detailed.

I look at my phone. Time's sprinting. I must slide back into my room before my parents notice, before the Deys leave. I'm holding the stencil and tape in my hands when, from the corner of my eye, I catch an unexpected brighness. The lights are on in Nosey's office.

“Uck, Uck, Uck!”

My knees want to fold. If Nosey finds me now, this will be the end. The end of my Wyatt dream. I start shoving everything into my backpack, stop.

“When unfinished, a piece of art is like an incomplete sentence, a thought left hanging,” Ms. Garcia said. 

I cannot, should not, stop. Not now. I tape the stencil to the wall. Once it sticks, I hold my right hand with my left to still the shaking. I reach, I bend, I sweep paint. When I finish, I gulp air before I yank off the tape, remove the stencil. I thrust everything into my backpack, glance at my flower. My hibiscus is lame. Messy. Ill-defined.

“Uck, Uck, Uck!”

I fast-tiptoe on the concrete path to muffle my footsteps. At the car, I press my hand to my chest.

I take another look at the wall.

The hue of the hibiscus on the wall is the explosive red of my childhood, the petals a rich crimson. A hint of turmeric yellow offers sunshine to the stamen.

I pull out my phone, take a picture, send it to Ms. Garcia.

My fingers pause, before I add: For you.

---

Sudha Balagopal is an Indian-American writer whose recent work appears in Fictive Dream, Doric Literary, and JMWW among other journals. In 2024, her novella-in-flash, Nose Ornaments – runner-up in the Bath novella-in-flash contest, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction, UK. She has had stories included in Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions and the Wigleaf Top 50.

Deborah-Z Adams

Small Town Witch Makes Do

She meets her coven—Kayla P, Cayla G, and Caila K—in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church after Tuesday night choir practice. She’s sure the hymns they rehearse send a vibratory magic into the ether and open the portal to possibility. Invocation is just another word for prayer. She’s a rising senior, and she dreams of riding the prom queen’s float, of hiking the Alps, of bushwhacking a jungle, feeding the hungry, winning an Oscar.

She understands that Forever is a serious thing, and demons of change are always trying to steal your treasures. Tonight’s ritual will guard her and her BFFs against the dark magic that dissolves and disperses. Her black-handled paring knife and Yeti mug were sanctified in the kitchen where once upon a time her mother warmed formula, hid vegetables in spaghetti sauce, baked brownies for band fundraisers. Grandma’s cast iron pot holds a potent brew of McCormick’s spices: black pepper for clearing energy, anise seed to bind, and cloves to guarantee their friendship continues.

On a full moon night in July, in the company of her tribe, beneath the warm glow of a security light, she shivers. Her blood already knows what she’s doomed to learn.

Small Town Witch Spoils the Fun of Time Travel

During lunch at the Silver Moon Cafe, she listens while I whine. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I had dreams. I had plans. I swear the universe throws obstacles in my path, forces me to turn left when I mean to turn right, thwarts my every move. Nothing plays out the way it should. I tell her “I wish I could go back in time and give my young self advice, warn her, guide her, help her—help me—get to the life I imagined.”

She leans in to whisper: What makes you think you’d get it right this time?

Small Town Witch Teaches the Fine Art of Sorcery

No one listens to what she doesn’t say. That’s her art—the tacit spell. She can curse anyone without a word spoken, and this serves her well. Her specialty is justice, the distribution of retribution. Take the neighbor on the corner, the one who revs his monstrous truck’s engine when decent people are asleep, or should be. Tires go flat, fluids leak, belts fly off. No reason. Just happens.

She’ll tell you if you really want to know. You don’t, but she would. The secret of sorcery lies in plain sight, ripples with gooseflesh on bare arms or quivering chin in the bumpy night. Her life is a how-to manual, complete in two sentences: Smile them on their way. Trust karma to do the heavy lifting.

---

Deborah-Z Adams is an award-winning author of novels, short fiction, CNF, and poetry. She served as executive editor of Oconee Spirit Press for ten years and is currently a reader for Boomerlit. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Roanoke Review, Litmosphere: a journal of Charlotte Lit, WELL READ Magazine, Dead Mule and other journals. You're invited to visit her website where you may read more of her work: www.Deborah-Adams.com