John Wegner

Illusions of Intimacy

My phone swooshes, letting me know I have a new text. I don’t like any of the standard notification sounds, but I’m too cheap to pay for anything less annoying. In a perfect world, I’d hear the sound of a shooting arrow and Concorde from Monty Python and the Holy Grail say “Message for you sir,” but most of the people I work with think I’m socially awkward already. No need to prove them right. 

I assume the latest swoosh is from my wife about supper. She wants something healthy the kids will eat without complaining. I want Thai noodles or Korean Fried Chicken. We’ll probably settle on Rosa’s Taco Tuesday so we can trick the kids into eating a little lettuce and Spanish Rice with carrots and peas. Raising kids, I’m convinced, is about managing disappointments and reducing tantrums. Trying to make everyone happy is a rookie mistake.

I look away from my work computer, tap my phone, and see a message from my mother instead.

Food will be the least of my problems today.

Mom              Wed Apr 16 11:08 AM

We missed you at Easter.

At least your sister called.

I’m not saying she was

pleasant but we heard her

voice. Not sure why you

don’t visit more often, Ray.

Pack your bags, I thought, mom wants to take you on a guilt trip.

We’d taken the kids camping Easter weekend, something I told my mother more than once. Her memory is increasingly selective and her world view set to outrage.

I get back to work and try to ignore her text. Not every journey people invite you on is worth taking.

The past is too much with me, though, and I pick up my phone.

Ray Wed Apr 16 11:15 AM

Do you remember Easter the

year before Kevin died? You

Unpacked your grandmother’s

china plates. Cooked a turkey,

mashed potatoes, green beans.

We didn’t go visit your parents

because you weren’t talking to

them that year. Kevin wore a

bunny suit with one ear that

wouldn’t stand up. I was 7

and too old for Winnie the

Pooh shirts but young enough

to still believe in a magic bunny.

After dinner we played

basketball in the driveway

and Kevin crawled into your

lilies. He was 1 and toddling

around. You took a picture of

him covered in dirt. Dad was

holding him. I have that

photo now. We look like

a normal family.

I stop typing. The cursor blinks. I delete my response and get lost in my spreadsheets.

“We’re not exactly churchly people,” I tell my wife that night after she reads the text from my mother. “Caring about Jesus twice a year isn’t going to balance the ledger. We were more in tune with God hiking in Big Bend Easter Sunday than they’ve ever been.”

Kendra tells me to ignore the text and not respond.

Once my parents learned how to text and created a Facebook account, my mom never stopped typing. 

“Your mom believes in illusions of intimacy. The more she texts the more you’ll think she cares so the performance matters more than the content,” Kendra tells me. “Maybe you should block them and save yourself the aggravation.”

Kendra’s parents died when she was in her 20s, and she’s an only child. Familial advice from her is like listening to a priest talk to you about sex.

My phone chimes early the next morning, and I wonder again why I don’t silence it.  Life was simpler before answering machines and voicemail. Back then we could ignore a ringing phone and pretend we weren’t home. Sometimes I want to stop the world and get off the merry-go-round.

Mom               Thur Apr 17 7:23 AM

I guess you didn’t get my

messages yesterday. Call

your dad. He’s lonely.

Mom               Thur Apr 17 8:24 AM

Have you talked to Darla?

I can’t get a hold of her.

Mom               Thur Apr 17 9:14 AM

Are you at work? In a meeting?

Too busy to text? I guess you

don’t love us anymore.

Some mothers might add a smiley face to make sure you know they’re joking.

I’m at my desk trying to focus on work, but I spend most of my time mulling over a response while the numbers in front of me go in and out of focus. 

Ray                 Thur April 17 11:32 AM

Do you remember the

Easter after Kevin died?

Dad had “food poisoning”

and was sick all day.

Darla got in trouble for

talking too loud. You had

a black eye. We stayed home

again. Aunt Joyce accused

you of stealing from grandma.

You hung up on grandpa

the night before. Yelled

at the phone. Got red-

Faced. Scary. Mean.

That morning Darla and

I went into the living room

looking for Easter eggs.

Our baskets were on the

ground. Plastic grass

everywhere. No eggs, no

chocolate but plenty of

empty bottles on the table.

You tried to convince us the

Easter Bunny left a note and

was coming tomorrow. Dad

asked when the rabbit

stew would be ready and

laughed when I started

crying. We didn’t play

basketball. Your lilies

died in an early freeze

that year.

I sip my coffee and delete the text. Start typing again.

Ray                 Thur Apr 17 11:34 AM

The Easter after Kevin died,

Darla was 11. Y’all wouldn’t

let her go to church with her

friend Sheila. Holidays are

for families you told her

even though nobody in

your family was getting

along. Easter grass was

scattered all over the floor.

At lunch, dad threw the

gravy boat against the

wall before knocking his

plate off the table. A week

later, Darla sliced her foot

on a piece of porcelain you

missed. She bled through

her sock at school and

the nurse called home.

Y’all grounded her for

a week for telling them

what happened.

I meet Kendra for lunch at a deli near the office and show her the unsent text.

“You should just call them or go to therapy. You can’t keep fighting these demons typing and deleting texts.”

I erase my text. Sometimes the best battles are ones we never fight.  

Saturday morning, I get up early. After our second child was born, we bought five acres outside of town. We wanted privacy and a place to drink coffee where we could watch the sun come up.

Weather permitting, I sit on the deck and enjoy the quiet solitude before the necessary noise of family life begins. Like most of us, I rationalize carrying my phone like an extra appendage. Sometimes Kendra texts me from bed to remind me of soccer games or suggest we have a big country breakfast. She could tell me the same things in person but the best technology helps us confuse efficiency with laziness. The demarcation between being connected and tethered are increasingly blurry these days.

The text this morning is, unfortunately, not from Kendra. Next time we’ll have to buy land where we have no cell reception.

Mom               Sat Apr 19 3:34 AM

were not geting any younger

you know is there some

reason you arent answering

your mothers texts

REMEMBER WHERE

YOU CAME FROM WERE

YOUR FAMILY WEATHER

YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

My dad doesn’t have a cell phone. He says he prefers the landline, but mostly he wants an excuse to avoid talking to people. Every once in a while, though, he’ll take my mom’s phone and text.

A podcast I listen to had an episode on the Infinite Monkey Theory not long ago. Basically, the idea is that a thousand chimps hitting typewriter keys could, given enough time, write a Shakespearean play. My dad’s texting calls that statistical theory into question. I doubt a thousand people could randomly generate anything he writes, much less a bunch of monkeys.

Before retiring, he spent 32 years working for Dow Chemical checking flanges, pumps, and other equipment that kept him outside and out of the office. Guys he started with got promoted or found better work after a few years. I think he needed the solitude of working alone more than a cushier job or forming lasting relationships. He wasn’t one to attend company picnics or stop at the bar for a cold one after work. When he retired, there was no party.

For about a year after he retired, he volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. At his best, he’s a decent carpenter and electrician. At his worst, he says something he thinks is funny that the rest of us don’t. 

These days he spends his time watching the news or piddling around in the garage “sorting buckets of old nails and keeping away from mom,” Darla says.

He’s certainly not spending his free time working on his writing skills or paying attention to the all caps button.

I reread the text and sip my coffee. There are deer on the fence line, eating berries off the eastern red cedars. A couple of rabbits scurry around by the deck. The sun peeks above the tree line.

Everyone else is still asleep. I try to keep his message from disturbing the quiet, but the past rolls in like thunder through the hills. I start typing.

Ray                 Sat Apr 19 7:28 AM

I remember standing on a

driveway with a push

broom in my hands

watching you and mom

fight. You told us we had

4 yards to mow that

day. It was March or

early April and you’d

decided to start a yard

business on the side.

Darla was dragging

a black hefty bag

filled with leaves.

You said something

loud enough that

Mr. Johnson stood on his

driveway staring at us.

Kevin was 2 and playing in

the bed of the truck. No one

was watching him when he

climbed on top of the tailgate.

I delete my message and forward his text to Darla.

Ray                 Sat Apr 19 7:45 AM

What the hell am I supposed

to do with this? Have you

seen them lately?His text

makes as much sense as

Game Theory after

smoking a doobie.

(Sophomore year but don’t

tell the kids I didn’t

Just Say No.)

Darla              Sat Apr 19 8:02 AM

I had lunch with her the other

day. She started complaining

about “the illegals and

libtards in the media.” I

reminded her I was an

immigration lawyer and

married to a man named

Jose. I haven’t talked to

dad in months.

Kendra walks over with a cup of coffee and sees my phone.

“Tell Darla I said hello.”

I put my phone face down. Out of sight but not out of mind.

I feel sympathy for my mom. She was the oldest of nine children by a wide margin and spent most of her teenage years raising her siblings.

Her father was an alcoholic. He was emotionally distant but always within swinging distance. His words carried farther and could hit harder, she told us at his funeral.

“Sounds familiar,” Darla whispered to me.

Still, she was a good mother-in-law to Kendra and a better grandmother than mother. To both their credits, they never missed the kids’ birthdays. The kids think PawPaw’s a grump but harmless, but there’s a fine line between grouchy and asshole. At least he hasn’t crossed it with them yet.

I realize a few days later that I never answered his text. Or hers. Life’s difficult enough without courting problems so I think about mending a fence or two and text Darla.

Ray                 Thur May 1 6:45 PM

Mother’s Day? I haven’t

said anything to the parents

yet, but Kendra thinks it

might be nice to go over.

You up for it?

Darla              Thur May 1 8:30 PM

Can we insist they leave

the TV off? Jose definitely

won’t go but I can come by

with the kids in the early

afternoon. Churches’ Fried

Chicken? It’ll be work

enough showing up. No

way I’m also cooking.

I put the phone down and make a drink Kendra watches me from the sofa. Puts her magazine down.

“Liquid courage? It’s a text, Ray. Just press the buttons and ask. Your mom will be happy we’re all coming over.”

I take the last sip of my bourbon, lift the glass, and rattle the ice at Kendra. When we were dating, my dad did something similar and she told him “your legs aren’t broken and I’m not your servant.” I’ve loved her since.

She laughs and walks out of the room while I pour another finger into the glass.

“My mom would have at least handed me the bottle,” I joke as she turns the corner.

“Do you really want me to be like your mom?” I hear her say as the bedroom door closes.

I’ve put off texting as long as possible and start typing before I can find a reason not to.

Ray                 Thur May 1 8:41 PM

Darla and I would like to

bring some chicken over

on Mother’s Day. Will you

guys be around?

Mom               Thur May 1 8:42 PM

Where else would we be?

Is everyone coming? Need

to know so dad puts on

some Pants. :)

Ray                 Thur May  8:42 PM

Ha. Please be clothed.

Everyone but Jose. He’ll

be out of town. Looking

forward to it.

Mom               Thur May 1 8:45 PM

home to mexico hope he

keeps his green card handy

and doesnt try to smuggle

any relatives over your

mom says to be nice but im

jokeing NOONE CAN TAKE

A JOKE any more

I forward the messages to Darla.

Ray                 Thur May 1 8:51 PM

We’re set for Mother’s

Day. For better or worse.

Darla              Fri May 2 6:37 AM

They’re like paint and

turpentine. If one of them

does something nice, the

other thins it out.

There is no fine china, but mom has plates out on various placemats Darla and I made in school. The kids enjoy seeing our primitive, pre-digital media artwork. Mom shows the younger ones how to make a turkey with their hands.

Darla brings the fried chicken, and Kendra and I pick up sides and a pie from HEB.

“Seeing her grandchildren will be gift enough,” I tell Kendra when she asks about a present. She brings her flowers anyway.

After we’re home, I’m watching the Rangers blow another lead to the Blue Jays wondering what Darla’s thinking about the day. 

Ray                 Sun May 11 7:07 PM

That went surprisingly

well. Felt Like we were

a normal family and

everything.

Darla              Sun May 11 7:09 PM

Yeah. They aren’t

half bad sometimes.

Helped that the kids took

dad outside and kept him

off any screens. I haven’t

seen him dribble a

basketball in years. Jose

doesn’t believe me when I

tell him dad was all-state.

Ray                 Sun May 11 7:10 PM

The shorter the visit, the

better. Maybe things are

getting better. He seemed

almost sober?

Darla              Sun May 11 7:15 PM

Maybe. I’m betting

not but I want to bask in the

normalcy and not over

think it.

On Father’s Day, Kendra and Darla surprise Jose and I with a weekend trip to cabins outside of Concan. Our shared deck is about 20 feet from the Frio River. During the day we float and play with the kids. In the evenings we sit on the deck, enjoy a beer or two, and watch the kids play.

We try to call dad but the service is bad.

The next morning, Darla and I remember that we’d been here as teenagers. There was an algae covered flume about half a mile away. We’d spent most of the day sliding into the river, and dad grilled some fish he’d caught that morning.

We don’t tell Kendra and Jose that we got kicked out the next day when dad got in a fight with the couple staying nearby. Their music was too loud. Or the wrong kind. We couldn’t remember the details, just the embarrassment.

Kendra and Jose have learned not to ask questions when we talk about the past, and Darla and I have vowed to keep things light when we travel. The devil is in the details and sometimes it’s best to leave him there and paint the scene in broad strokes. 

“We need to live where we’re standing, especially if we’re paying this much for a room,” Darla said a few years ago when our families met down on the River Walk in San Antonio.

Kendra and Jose, I know, appreciate the effort.

“All families are psychotic,” Jose said once when we started talking about our parents, but “allí esu el detalle, here’s the rub, your parents are totalamente loco. Don’t tell your dad I spoke Spanish to you, though. He might think I corrompido a su hija.”

On our way home, somewhere close to Kerrville, my phone blows up with missed messages. The kids are asleep in the backseat. Kendra reads some of the texts out loud. 

Mom               Sun June 15 12:01 PM

I can’t believe you haven’t

called. He does care you

know.

Mom               Sun June 15 3:33 PM

He’s napping but at least

one of his kids should call.

Mom               Sun June 15 5:02 PM

Its bad enough you don’t

show up or call but not

even a text.

There are a variety of other texts in similar fashion.

We get home, sunburned and tired. The kids are tucked in, and Kendra is asleep on the couch. I’m trying to relax with a beer and a ball game on tv. Nothing wears you out more than a weekend away.

Even after a 6–pack and another Ranger’s loss, I can’t get mom’s texts out of my head.

Ray                 Sun June 15 9:45 PM

I guess you got all those

texts too. Who knew he’d

care?

Darla              Sun June 15 9:46 PM

We were celebrating Father’s

Day. You and Jose are fathers

who deserve celebrating. Is

he?

I want to live more of my life on vacation and less in my head. Without thinking, I start typing to mom.

Ray                 Sun June 15 11:01 PM

Do you remember the Father’s

Day when Kevin was one. We

went to a Rangers game. They

had Nolan Ryan Bobbleheads.

Kevin bit the head off. We

laughed. You called him your

little Ozzy Osbourne. I missed

the joke at the time and you

explained why y’all were

laughing. A couple years 

after Kevin died, we thought

going to a game might help.

Dad’s sad, you told us. We

saved money, made him

a card and bought tickets.

You let us pretend like we

paid for everything. The card

had “Popcorn money.” Dad

bought beer instead. Drove

home. You let him.

I think about calling Darla, but there’s no reason to ruin her mood, also. I delete my text and go to bed.

The next morning, I text from the parking garage before going into the office. 

Ray                 Mon June 16 8:02 AM

Happy Father’s Day. Sorry

We missed talking. We were

all in Concan. The trip

was last minute. Do you

remember that place with

the flume? Our cabin was

near there. Hope y’all did

something fun.

Mom               Mon June 16 8:45 AM

Dad said to tell you thank

you. Maybe next year he

can see y’all. Was that the

year Darla got the fish

hook caught in her ear?

Mom              Mon June 16 8:48 AM

i didnt say thanks to

anything you and darla

made you point do

whatever i hope the

grand kids had fun the

fishing was good at

that spot

No one answers when I call.

“I was going to invite them downtown for lunch. I guess I feel a little bad,” I tell Kendra on the phone. “Maybe Darla would meet us for a late Father’s Day?”

They keep not answering their phone or responding to my texts.

Parties and summer sports keep us busy enough to miss the passing of time.

Mom texts an aggressively patriotic meme that doesn’t mean what she thinks on July 4th. No mention of the 5 or 6 texts I sent in mid-June.

“I guess they’re ready to grace you with their presence again,” Kendra says when I show her the text.

We’re able to engage in enough small talk to keep the peace for a while. Things go back to normal.

Mom               Wed Aug 6 3:05 PM

Dad fell again. Some

stranger called 911.

We’re at the emergency

room. The paramedics

smelled his breath and

told him to go to the

emergency room or

they’d call the police.

He would have been

fine at home. I don’t

know why anyone trusts

doctors anyway. Them

and the insurance companies

want us to stay sick so they

can make more money.

“At least she didn’t ask you to come down there,” Kendra says when I tell her. She pauses. “I wonder if Darla’s there?”

Ray                 Thur Aug 7 7:15 AM

Have you gotten an

update?

Darla             Thur Aug 7  7:45 AM

I guess I should have

told you. I blocked her

last week. Mom posted a

Facebook meme showing

a lawyer with a noose on

his neck and a guy in a

MAGA hat holding the

other end. Dad liked a

post by someone calling

Mexicans “chili-chompers.”

I can’t handle the toxicity

anymore and there’s no

way I’m letting our children

anywhere near them. He’s

half in the bag by noon and

mom’s too old to babysit the

kids by herself. God knows

what she says to them.They

fight all the time now. There’s

too many years of this to

ignore anymore.

Her text comes while I’m driving. Siri skips the “chili.” AI is more polite than my parents.

When I get to my desk, I turn on my computer, check today’s tasks and meeting schedule, but those compartmentalized and repressed memories won’t stay in their designated space today.

I respond to Darla. 

Ray                 Thur Aug 7 8:33 AM

Sometimes I worry the seeds

of his anger have taken root.

I hear his voice in my head

when I yell at the kids or

when Kendra does some

little thing I shouldn’t be

upset about. The struggle

is real. I’d consider

therapy but introspection

is overrated.

Darla             Thur Aug 7 8:34 AM

Hold tight little brother.

We don’t have to be

them. The sins of the

father can stay with him.

Sometimes the best we can

do is not be them. 

How, I wonder, do we not become who we are raised to be?

I focus on my computer, hoping to lose myself in datasets.

Mom               Fri Aug 8 8:47 PM

They’re keeping dad one

more night. The doctor said

the stranger who called saved

his life. Let Darla know if you

want.

Ray                  Fri Aug 8 9:13 PM

I wish that stranger had been

there when Kevin fell out of

the truck.

I hit send without thinking and hand my phone to Kendra.

She reads the text.

She taps the screen a couple times and holds my hand while I wonder why I’m not more upset.  

Mom

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John Wegner has published creative works, including Love is Not a Dirty Word & Other Stories (Lamar UP,) and scholarship discussing Cormac McCarthy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, & other writers who write sentences he wishes he could. Blissfully devoid of all social media platforms, he teaches all online so he and his wife can travel across the US as often as possible.

Claudia Monpere

Give Me a Push

        Opening my baby shower gift, I’m thrilled to see all six inches of my very own cheerleader. Smiling, she leaps out of the box, shaking her pom-poms. I can’t believe Kate’s gone to this expense. Rolled eyes from other guests, women like me without a nanny and second home.

        My cheerleader does a roundoff and back handspring, her tiny, pleated skirt twirling, her cheer briefs sparkling silver.

        When I’m in the hospital in labor, she perches on the bed shouting through her megaphone: “Gimme a push! A push! A  P-U-S-H.” Later, I stroke the soft fuzz on Elena’s head, smell her newborn skin. In her brown eyes, I see my husband, Max. The nurse instructs me about breastfeeding, but Elena has trouble latching. My cheerleader guides me: “No hunching. / Sit up straight! / Mouth faces nipple. / Yay, that’s greaaaat!” 

        My parents visit. My father watches football, changes diapers—a lovely surprise—

and requests routines from my cheerleader that show her tiny ass. My mother cooks, cleans, criticizes my mothering. My cheerleader cheers everything: how I cuddle Elena, sing to her, walk and walk during her forever cries. She cheers my nursing, a miserable mess. Elena still has trouble latching, falling asleep at my breast. The breast pump hurts and has a million parts and my breasts are sore and red and my mother insists the lactation consultant return for the third time and my cheerleader flips her batons and Elena wails in my father’s arms.

        The hardest thing about sleep deprivation is its randomness. One night Elena wakes up six times, falling asleep while nursing. Next night: seven straight hours of sleep. Next night: cries for four hours except when at my breast. High-pitched wails. Scarlet, scrunched up face. She’s a needy, ungrateful blob. She’s my baby girl; I’m terrified she’ll die. I watch her sleep, checking her breathing.

        One day, my cheerleader drops her baton doing a triple toss. She apologizes profusely. It's then I notice that the middle and ring fingers are fused on her right hand, which she hides when not cheering. On a night when Elena won't stop crying and she's been fed, changed, and cuddled, my cheerleader uses that hand to stroke her forehead. Elena stops crying.  Smiles. I try not to feel bad that I didn’t bring on that smile.

        When my right breast swells and burns horrendously and I go on antibiotics for mastitis, when my mother trips over Max’s climbing equipment and insists we donate Max’s belongings although he died only 256 days ago, I weep and weep. My cheerleader brings a troupe with tiny ukuleles singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” I want to scream, disappear.

        My cheerleader nudges me to switch to bottle feeding against my mother’s objections, bouncing her pom poms, singing, “A breast-fed baby with an overwhelmed Mom/ Will never be happy, never be calm.” I switch to the bottle. I go on Zoloft, allow myself a daily shower. I sleep whenever Elena sleeps. I tell my parents to go home when my mother sneaks a box of Max’s ropes and harnesses into the trash. I let friends bring dinner.

        But tummy time. Kate’s obsessed with it. Her baby, Rose, at three months holds her chest up while on her tummy, rolls over and smiles.

        Elena despises tummy time, making no effort to lift her head. She shrieks endlessly. Or lies on her tummy like she’s already given up on life and is just waiting for the end. My cheerleader ups her game, juggling tiny stuffies, rattles, bottles. One day, nine tiny cheerleaders join her, forming a pyramid. Elena wails into the rug.

        I explain this to Kate. She’s relaxed after the gym and lunch with friends. I say maybe I need a nanny instead of a cheerleader. Kate says nannies are tricky. What I need, she says, is a different cheerleader. “I’m embarrassed, but your cheerleader was on sale. You know, that weird hand.” She grimaces.

        “She’s perfect,” I say.

        The next night Elena is up a lot. After the third wake up, accompanied by diaper changes and bottles, she’s finally back to sleep. I’m tired. But. I’m grateful. Elena is healthy, loved. My breasts need nothing from me. No cold compresses, no pumping. I say the bottle cheer: “Go team bottle/ Say it loud/ Bottles rule/ We’re so proud.” Maybe my cheerleader can come up with cheers saying tummy time is bullshit.

        It’s nearly morning. I put on my robe and walk in the garden, breathing in the clematis, its airy vanilla scent, admiring the yellow pompom mums. I’ll show them to my cheerleader.

        Then I hear music. Coming toward me, a tiny marching band playing a John Philip Souza march. Brass, woodwinds, percussion. Band members wear dark pants, gold braided jackets. My cheerleader, in pink sequined leotard, follows on a float, sitting on a high trapeze. The band stops, drums beating. She hangs from the bar swinging, faster, faster, flipping to a second trapeze. No net below.

        There was no net below Max. He was on an ice cornice when it collapsed. In my dreams, it’s always snowing. Max drifts, sticking his tongue out to taste snow, speaking to the macaws who perch on his arms, a flash of blue, green, and orange feathers.

        I call to my cheerleader to stop but she’s in a world of muscles and spirit. She leaps to the platform, dashes to the lawn and does a kick double full twist. She trips. I go to her. 

        “I’ve worked so hard,” she says, crying.

        “Thank you,” I say.

        “I’ve been returned. Twice. I’ve worked so hard,” she repeats.   

        I put out my hand. “Hop aboard.” I hold her against my shoulder, then bring her close to my face. “Elena and I don’t need your fancy routines.” She looks stricken. “We just need your company.”

       “What do you mean? Like a pet? I’m not a pet.”

        No, I say, “like a sister. A daughter. Like another woman.”

What the Stars Want

After eating her Salisbury steak dinner, the old woman, Edith, fell asleep over an Eleanor Roosevelt biography.  Awakening at 10:22 pm, she pulled herself up to her walker, struggling to the bedroom. Floating over her bed: something large and white and puffy. Damn if it wasn’t a cloud. Magic? Maybe she’d call her granddaughter. They used to do magic tricks together. But Amber was busy with swim team and piano and friends, and Edith remembered how last Christmas her daughter sighed. “Mom, don’t you remember? She thinks that magic stuff is babyish.” Edith opened her window. “What’s going on out there?” she called to the stars. The cloud over her bed was larger now, drifting slowly toward her. She phoned her daughter who said she was seeing things and should go back to sleep. She’d be over first thing in the morning. It was time to sign the contract at Oak Hills. “Please don’t cry,” said her daughter.

~

Jennifer forgave her husband after he wept saying he’d slit his own throat before he ever hurt her again and yes he knew this was the third time he was a piece of shit hell should swallow him up he didn’t deserve her and yes maybe they should return to marriage counseling and he brought ice packs and Advil and she tried to sleep but his sleep breathing made her furious and she was glad she was wearing the nightgown he hated faded blue checks in soft flannel and she went to make tea but when she opened the cabinet there was a white cloud inside and it floated out, growing to the size of a raft hovering just above the floor, and she opened the window, sat in the cloud, and floated into the sky.

~

Katie had an accident again during the night; Ma Wilson would be furious. 7 years old, she’d say. Disgusting! The girl crept out of bed, not waking the other foster kids. She peeled off the wet sheet and the bottom of her pjs, getting a spare pair from the bag under her bed. She went to the bathroom to rinse everything.  But when she swept aside the bath curtain, there was a wedding gown laid out in the tub. Katie put it on. It hung from her tiny frame in shiny, glittering folds of white satin. She twirled, then tripped, a bloody gash on her knee. She removed the gown, bandaged her knee, put on clean pjs, rinsed the pee part of the sheet and the bottom of her pjs and sat on the bathroom floor drying them with a hair dryer. When she felt herself falling asleep, she thought of Ma Wilson, spit flying from her mouth. Katie thought of  Sammy and Oliver who called her diaper girl and peed in her bed sometimes to get her in trouble. Finally, she returned to bed, putting the still damp sheet back on. She took the pillow out of its case and carefully folded the wedding dress inside. Then fell asleep, her dark hair feathered on her wedding gown pillow.

~

Katie awoke to a woman in a blue checkered nightgown stroking her check, whispering, “Come on, sweetie, come with me.” The woman was a stranger, but her voice was gentle. “Let’s get your slippers on. Do you have a robe?” The girl shook her head, but removed the wedding gown from the pillowcase, holding it out. The woman wrapped the girl in it, taking her hand and heading to the open window. A cloud hovered just outside, an old woman seated inside, waving. “Am I dreaming?” asked Katie. “No,” said the old woman “This is much better than a dream. Come on in.” Katie and the woman stepped into the cloud which felt both fluffy and sturdy. “But we do need a sail if we’re going anywhere,” the old woman said. “Hmmm.” Katie shook off the wedding gown and held it out. “Perfect. This is a three-person job. Let’s all stand and shake it. Ahh, my damn hip.” But it took just a few shakes and the gown bloomed and split into two sails. A mast and rigging appeared.

        The sky shimmered silver as they floated. Katie whispered, “Where are we going?” “I’m not really sure,” the woman answered. “Somewhere better.” “I’m kind of scared,” Katie said. “I know, Sweetie, me too,” said the woman. “Are you scared?” Katie asked the old woman who shrugged and smiled. “Maybe a bit.” “Well,” Katie said, “We could sing.” “Ah,” said the old woman, “the stars would love that.”

---

Claudia Monpere lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her debut collection of flash, The Periodic Family, is forthcoming with Cowboy Jamboree Press. She received the New Flash Fiction Prize from New Flash Fiction Review and the Genre Flash Fiction Prize from Uncharted Magazine. She has stories in Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. More at https://claudiamonpere.com/‍ ‍

Lauren Kardos

Chruściki

We learned through Aunt Julia, shrieking through the phone: JaJa died in his assisted living apartment across the state. I remember Mom held the receiver away from her ear, plucked a cicada that had gotten inside off the kitchen windowsill and held that in her other palm. Too far away to be useful for arrangements, we waited in hushed limbo, ate nothing but French bread pizzas and freezer-burnt appetizers from the Schwan's man. I crept from kitchen to bedroom, a fieldmouse in the tall grass, avoiding the talons of Mom’s grief. She didn’t want hugs. She didn’t want to share memories of the grandfather I met few enough times to forget the color of his eyes. She wouldn’t answer questions about the relatives my father and I would have to identify by dusty album photos. “What should I pack,” I asked Dad. He shrugged and said, “Whatever will make them think we’re mourning.”

JaJa was born in Warsaw, like his parents and his grandparents and their parents and grandparents, all the way back. Something I learned through Mom, since JaJa never talked much when we visited. Though his English sagged with a Philadelphian accent, he preferred to speak Polish to Mom and Aunt Julia, who mostly understood but could only respond in English. At fourteen-years-old, I stopped wondering if JaJa was knowable: his thoughts on Babcie’s snow-sky perm, what age he coughed through his first Marlboro, how he chose the cologne that still haunts his pink recliner I inherited from the care facility.

“Why do we have to make the six-hour drive when they hate us?”

Dad couldn’t answer.

Each trip ended the same when I was younger. JaJa yelling at Mom over some small thing, under-scrambled eggs, an errant sock I’d left on the living room couch. Babcie pretending Dad wasn’t there when he stepped in to defend us. Aunt Julia would sit at the kitchen table, chain smoking more than JaJa ever did, staring at me like I was some many-eyed bug. She’d turn to prophesy. I’d turn out exactly like her sister. I’d never leave the shitstain town Dad moved us to.  Silent treatments followed the shouting, so the three of us would play tourist, leaving Mom’s family to stew. I swear we sampled every cheesesteak in the city over the years and one time I raced up those museum stairs faster than Rocky. Often we returned home days ahead of schedule. Visits spaced out and, eventually, Mom let go of those annual road trips. JaJa, Babcie, and Aunt Julia rarely called.

“Aside from us, kiddo, they’re the only family your mom has,” Dad said as we packed our bags and helped Mom with her laundry.

The day before our long drive to the service, I woke to a clanging and clattering around the kitchen. Oil splatters on her dingy bathrobe and her forehead slick, Mom stood over a sizzling Dutch oven. A rolling pin and pie cloth decorated the kitchen table. Powdered sugar and eggs formed a countertop mountain by the microwave.

“Want to help me make these Polish cookies you’ve never tried? Angels’ wings?” Mom asked, but her eyes said something like, I couldn’t bear to make them until now.

All day, we flattened dough until our biceps ached, laced the paper-thin strips through tiny central wounds, fried our feelings and everything we wanted to speak but never did and probably never would, because Mom wasn’t like her parents but in some ways she was. When she took the first bite of the cooled dough, she didn’t wipe away her tears but said, “It tastes like home.”     

---

Lauren Kardos (she/her) writes from Washington, DC, but she’s still breaking up with her hometown in Western Pennsylvania. Cold Signal, Milk Candy Review, Flash Fiction Online, Lost Balloon, and Best Microfiction 2022 are just a few of the fine publications that feature her stories and poems. You can find more of her work at www.laurenkardos.co.

Colin Bishoff

Waffle House

This is the story of how a Waffle House saved my marriage. Sort of.

It’s never easy being married to an academic. Get hitched to a tenured math professor while you’re still teaching Gatsby and Julius Caesar to high-schoolers and you can double that bet. I guess I knew that before I married Jessica, but knowing didn’t make things any easier when our vows began to crack.

In our twenties, it wasn’t so bad. We bounced around college towns across the Southeast, finally landing in a mid-sized town in southern Georgia. At parties, I became the token professor’s spouse. I’d get a nice meal, share a few cocktails, then fend off the inevitable questions of “what do you do” with assurances that I was quite happy as the steward of the five-paragraph essay and AP lit exam, thank you very much. Quite happy to take charge of after-school study hall while Jessica led faculty meetings and developed her CV. I started drinking not because I was bored, but because I was lonely.

By the time my principal called me into his office and requested I take some time off—for my health, he said—the rest of the faculty had taken to avoiding me as if they were afraid I’d keel over and explode while trying to diagram a sentence. I wasn’t a ticking time bomb. I was a goddamned Molotov cocktail. 

My first weeks at home, I felt pretty indifferent about the whole thing. I checked email and graded papers. I even wrote a couple poems. Blame it on the writer every English teacher thinks he’s got in him. From Faulkner to Fitzgerald, Carver, to Cheever, every one of those sons of bitches drank like fish. I figured as long as I eased up a bit and stayed afloat, I’d be no different. I’d earned my master’s degree while teaching full time, had taught AP classes for three years, and knew twentieth-century literature like I’d lived through the entire thing instead of just the last two decades of it. Once everything blew over, I’d land right back where I’d been before: teaching impressionable young minds to appreciate the genius lyricism of modernism and the jazz age. 

Jessica had different ideas. The first thing she said the night she kicked me out was that she’d set up a dating profile. That was news. Last I’d heard, online hookups signified everything that was wrong with the twenty-first century. The second was that she wanted me out of our condo by the weekend. It was Thursday. From what the news anchor was saying about the tropical storm blowing up from Florida, there was no guarantee there’d be a weekend left. I told Jessica as much around the time she poured my last bottle of scotch down the kitchen sink. Johnnie Walker Black: expensive. The next thing I saw was my bottle collection smashed to pieces on the linoleum. My record cabinet went next, all my Zeppelins and Sabbaths and Stones and UFOs flying like saucers out the window. My dignity took the next hit, and after that, my jaw. The rain had only just started when I grabbed my briefcase, climbed into my red Nissan Frontier, and headed south on Route 300.

Two hours later, I was driving down a river. I’d never seen so much water. Back when we could still laugh about my drinking, Jessica’d told me that if I kept it up, I’d grow gills. If only. As soon as the fishtailing started, I latched onto the first glowing thing I saw: a Waffle House sign, like a beacon in the storm.

I took a booth in the corner near the restrooms. A stocky waitress with a buzz cut and neck tattoos and a pimpled griddle cook who looked younger than my freshmen glared at me from behind the register. Graveyard shift: all I needed was a coffin. The only other customer was a small, balding man in a blue sweater vest and plaid bow tie who stood beside the jukebox with a newspaper and roll of quarters in his hand. Music crackled as he sat down on one of the stools. I recognized “Hotel California” by The Eagles. 

I ordered coffee and watched the waitress scribble my order on a pink notepad. When she walked back to the kitchen, I became transfixed by a sweat stain on the back of her smock. For some reason, the stain bugged me. How long had it been there? A long time, probably. Maybe forever.

The view from my window wasn’t much better: all black clouds and dizzy lights where the streetlamps fuzzed in the raindrops. I checked the weather on my phone and put my head down in disgust: it was raining Genesis all the way to Atlanta. Through the gloom, I studied the outline of my truck beneath the sign and hoped the windows wouldn’t leak. I’d had that truck since high school. I’d have sold my soul before buying a new one. 

I spent a good half hour grading some old papers I found in my briefcase, taking perverse pleasure scribbling red markings over each page, then started an apology letter to Jessica. The news about the dating app still bothered me. How long had she had a profile? Had she already met someone else? I tightened my jaw and stared into the dark parking lot. Fuck it.

When the waitress returned, I drained the sour dregs of my coffee and ordered an All-Star Special. Though I hadn’t realized I was hungry, the smells of grease and waffles and sizzling onions had awakened an animal in my belly I now struggled to tame. I tried and failed to remember my last full meal. Shortly thereafter, the ink in my pen ran out. I searched my briefcase for a spare and, not finding one, eyed the man with the newspaper. All night, he’d kept up a steady stream of hits—Jimmi Hendrix, Boston, Queen—and now hunched over his newspaper with a pencil in his hand. I hesitated, then walked over.

“Uh, hi,” I said, watching him scribble an answer into the crossword he was working on. He’d almost finished it. I summoned a smile. “You wouldn’t have an extra pencil, would you?”

He lowered the paper and stared at me. He had a long nose and large eyes that seemed too far apart, like a bird’s. An unclean smell I couldn’t put a name to—a mélange of ancient sweat and motor oil and tobacco—emanated from him. Wordlessly, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a yellow pencil with the eraser chewed off. 

“Thanks,” I said, reaching for the pencil. He offered his hand instead.

“I’m Charlie.” 

“Marshall.” I shook reluctantly. His fingers were cold, arthritic, and covered in coarse, black hairs. 

He released me and made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Storm’s one filthy motherfucker, huh?”

“Yes,” I said, too surprised to say anything else. “Yes, it is.” 

The waitress arrived with a gap-toothed smile. “Here’s your All-Star, hon,” she said, setting down the plates. The smell of fried meat and sight of the food spilling across two plates turned my stomach: eggs, raisin toast, grits, bacon, a waffle. A mug of coffee and a tall glass of orange juice followed.

Charlie whistled. “Breakfast of champions, right there. Think a featherweight like you can handle all that?”

“I’ll manage,” I said. I’d been a runner in high school, and though I hadn’t maintained my fitness well in recent years, I’d retained something of a runner’s body. A flabby one. Jessica, a former gymnast, used to tell me I looked like a scarecrow. I buried the memory behind a forkful of eggs. The grease settled like a warm blanket over my stomach.

Charlie thumped the countertop. “Worst goddamned storm I’ve seen in my life,” he said. “And you know”—he poked my shoulder—“a lifetime’s longer than you think.”

“Sorry?” I choked down a mouthful of toast and rubbed my shoulder resentfully. 

“Time,” Charlie said. “When shit happens, time slows down. Like a car accident. Or purgatory.”

“Never thought of it that way.” I crammed down more toast and poured syrup onto my waffle. In the same moment, I saw an image of myself sitting at the kitchen table grading papers between shots of Johnnie Walker. Instead of music, I heard Jessica’s sobbing. With a gulp of coffee, I suppressed the image. “I don’t believe in hell,” I said. “Or purgatory.”

“Different things,” Charlie said.  He smiled, his forehead creased with wrinkles. “Care for a smoke?”

I pointed at the “No Smoking” sign on the door. Was he for real?

Charlie laughed. “Look around,” he said, gesturing toward the kitchen. “No one will kick us out.” I followed the motion of his hand. He was probably right. The waitress stood in her corner with her back pressed against a cabinet, staring into space. Nearby, the griddle cook sat on a stool with his phone out and sipped from a glass of chocolate milk. Charlie smiled at me and reached inside his sweater. One by one, he removed a leather pouch, a pack of thin white cigarette papers, and a brass Zippo.

“You make your own?” I asked, curious but cautious. I’d smoked Pall-Malls before I got married. I hadn’t been looking to start again.

“Can’t stand the store brands,” Charlie said. He pressed a wad of tobacco into one of the papers and rolled it through his fingers, then licked along the crease and rolled up again to seal it.

“No filter?”

“These don’t give you cancer.” Charlie winked and offered the cigarette.

I stared for a long time before taking it. “Thanks,” I said, holding up the cigarette for Charlie to light. I pressed it to my lips, inhaled, coughed.

“First time?” Charlie asked, rolling another for himself. He lit it but didn’t inhale.

“In a while,” I said. The next puff felt smoother and calmed my nerves. I felt like I was nineteen again. “My wife made me quit.”

“Married, huh? Boy, what a bitch.” Charlie wiggled his fingers at me. No ring. “She’s why you’re here, though, isn’t she?”

“Sorry?” I asked, almost choking on a bite of waffle. I gulped my juice and washed the sticky sweetness down.

“Your wife. She’s the reason you’re sitting here with me at three o’clock in the morning. Or am I wrong?”

“The storm,” I said.

Charlie nodded. “You sure as hell picked the right spot to ride it out. What is it you do?”

“I teach,” I said, loosening my shirt collar. Despite the coolness inside, I felt hot. The damp creases beneath my armpits had nothing to do with the rain.

“Teach what?” Charlie asked, taking no notice of my distress. 

“High school English.”

“A bit late for a school night, isn’t it?”

“I was driving.”

“You asked me about rolling my own cigarettes,” Charlie said. He studied his palms. “There’s a reason I do that.”

  “Fascinating,” I said. I was beginning to regret leaving my booth. Jessica was better at avoiding these types of conversations. She didn’t bullshit—just spoke her mind.

Charlie poked my shoulder. “Hold up and let me tell you something. I don’t know what you’ve been up to or where you’re going, but I get the sense that there’s more to the story when a man who says he teaches high school shows up at three o’clock in the morning smelling drunker than a skunk and smokes a number with me like he’s got no place in the world to be. I want you to hear me out.”

“I’m busy,” I said, no longer trying to be polite.

“You’re busy.”

“Grading papers.”

“Papers?” Charlie laughed in a way I didn’t like. “Look around, champ. Neither of us is going anywhere. Not for a long time. For all you know, all that puffing you did will put you out until Christmas and you’ll wake up in the gutter with your wallet missing and your hands tied behind your back.” A cold tremor ran through me when I considered that I hadn’t seen him inhale yet. He held the cigarette in front of his face as if to make his point. Finally, he took a puff. “Hear me out.”

Hearing the storm outside, I relented. Maybe thinking about someone else’s problems for a change sounded nice. The lights flickered and thunder grumbled in the distance.  “Five minutes,” I said. “After that, I’m going back to my booth.” 

“Five minutes?” Charlie studied his fingers as if to divine some mystery in the thick, black hairs. “All the time in the world.”

Charlie ordered more coffee for both of us and cracked his knuckles like a boxer gearing up for a brawl. “Let me go back to the beginning,” he said. “Plain and simple, I roll my own smokes because I watched my daddy do it every day until I was twelve years old. I’d stand at my window and watch him blowing out in the yard: puff, puff, puff, like a goddamned steamboat. My mother never let me within ten feet of him once he lit up, but she never stopped me from watching him roll them out. He had such smooth, brown hands. Not like these old things.” Charlie wiggled his fingers. “It was like poetry. I smoked my first one the day he died.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.

“Don’t be. He wasn’t a good person. Gambler. Cards, mostly, but he sometimes bet on boxing matches or football games or horse races. He wasn’t violent. He never laid a finger on my mother and me. But he never gave us a dime, either. If there’s a hell, he’s there.” Charlie studied his hands. “These days, I think this life’s all we got, but back then, the shock of losing him shook the fear of God into me. I believed in…something…for a while. Studied religion. I kept looking for some way to bring him back, always telling myself it was only so I could spit on him and put him back in his grave.” He took a drag on his cigarette.

“Fast forward things a couple of years. I graduated from college in 1972. Maybe I got all the luck my daddy lost because I felt like the most fortunate son of a bitch alive whenever I thought about how my number hadn’t been called. I knew lots of boys who went to war and a few more who did wild things to avoid going. Crippling themselves, for instance.” He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Maybe I’d have done the same thing myself. But all I could think of when I took my diploma through those arches was that I wanted to find me a job where I’d never have to worry about going to war again. Seminary seemed a good bet.”

“For safety,” I said. It made sense: not everyone wanted to be a hero. Not everyone could be Ernie fucking Hemingway.

“Call it whatever you want. My mother was dead by that time and I’d long since decided religion was bunk, but I’d saved enough money to go to school and needed something to pay the bills. And besides that, I wasn’t finished with my old man. So I started in the divinity school over at Emory, figuring if push came to shove, I’d object to war on religious grounds. I stayed in seminary just long enough to regret it.” He wiggled his fingers again. “I was telling the truth when I told you I don’t know much about being married, champ, but I never said anything about falling in love.”

I stared at my own hands and realized I’d gotten red ink all over them. Jesus. I eyed the bathrooms, not sure I wanted to stay and listen.

Charlie kept going. “I met Martha during my second year, same time she started in the nursing program. To this day, I still believe that she was the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. Brown eyes; long, black hair; a bit of a crooked smile that was all the more beautiful because it was human. Back in those days, I was a pretty good-looking man myself if you’ll believe it. I had hair, anyway. What we had was real for a while. Magic. Say what you will about chance, champ, but there was no logic to any of it. She happened to walk by me one day while I was sitting on a bench rolling up a cigarette. Next thing I knew, she was sitting down next to me asking if I wouldn’t mind rolling up another. I could tell right off by her uniform what program she was in, and I told her I’d be right happy to roll her a cigarette except that it was 1973 and I didn’t think nurses were supposed to smoke. She took the cigarette from my hand, puffed on it a little, and said she wasn’t that kind of nurse. Well, you can’t argue with a girl like that, so I did just what she asked me to. I reckon she must’ve seen my bible, because the next thing she said was that she didn’t think preachers were supposed to smoke cigarettes, either. I told her I wasn’t a preacher yet, but if I ever became one, I sure as hell wouldn’t be that kind of preacher.

“Things took off after that. For about a year, we lived in a one-room apartment a few blocks off campus with nothing but a bed, two desks, and a record player. She loved her music, that kid. Hendrix, Rolling Stones, Queen—you put her in a room with a Crosley and the best tracks of some of those cats and she’d have danced right on through the night. Not that there was always time for dancing. Money was tight. School was hard. Her parents were deader than mine. Even in the beginning, some part of me knew it wouldn’t last. Every night as we lay in bed, I swore I’d never let anything happen, that I’d never become my father. And I didn’t. But I couldn’t stop myself from being his son.

“The first time I won money at a card game was after final exams. I was ecstatic. I’d been drunk before. I’d done speed. Hell, I’d even gone bull-riding and was bound and determined to never repeat the experience. Those were nothing compared to what I felt like when I was winning. It was like I was…spitting…on my old man for all he’d never been to me. I’d seen what gambling did to him, but goddammit, I thought I could prove I was better. I don’t need to tell you I thought wrong.

“Martha and I spent Christmas in Savannah. She asked questions, but I just shushed her. Said I’d been saving my change for years, waiting for the chance to do something extraordinary with someone I loved. Such romantic bullshit. It wasn’t until we got back home and I started staying out late on school nights and coming back blue and bloody as a prize-winning turkey that she finally asked me where all our money was going. It was little losses at first, little fires, but pretty soon it seemed like every dollar I earned was going to some junkie or other who didn’t know a hooker from a horseshoe but still played the game better than me. 

“Mid spring, she had her breakdown. It must’ve been near Easter because I remember all the goddamn decorations at the hospital. Such beautiful weather, all flowers and new life, but all she would do after she came home was stare at the wall. Every record we had, she broke. Then all we had to listen to was drunk men smashing bottles on our steps. Her grades plummeted. She quit going to classes. And then”—he inhaled deeply from his cigarette—"and then I killed her.”

My throat tightened. I could hear the rain pounding outside. And in the midst of it, I heard sobbing again. “You killed her?”

“I mean it was my fault. I never laid a finger on her, champ—my old man taught me that much—but I chased her to it. There used to be this old bridge near our room where we’d meet some days and walk home together. It was a nice place to just sit. You could stare out at the skyline; count the stars; watch the tail lamps blur with the city lights. I chased her there one night after we’d had a fight. Our worst. It was the only time she got physical, and if it’d gone on any longer”—he paused—“if it’d gone on any longer, I’d have probably hit her, too. I think she realized that.

“To this day, I’ve never seen a human being run so fast, her in that purple night gown that blended with the dark. When I reached the bridge, I found her panting over the guard rail, hair hanging down her face in long, black coils like they were snakes. Even then, she looked beautiful. I’d never seen such a calm night, blue and quiet and filled with starlight and chattering insects. I’d been smoking like my daddy taught me and could taste the tobacco on my breath. When I reached Martha, she pulled away like I was some beast. And when she looked at me…what I saw in her eyes that night was something that should never be on the face of another human being, certainly not someone as beautiful as she was. That look was animal. Disgust. Anguish. Terror. I went for her again, saw her stumble, catch herself, clutch the rail. And then she was gone: a flaw in the guardrail we’d held together a hundred times. Tell me, champ, what are the odds of that? What are the goddamn odds?” He rolled the cigarette between his fingers. “Each fire I light, I light for her sake. Each breath of poison I inhale”—he took a deep, long pull—“is a penance for my soul.”

We didn’t speak for a long time. When I checked my phone, I saw that nearly twenty minutes had passed. My palms were drenched in sweat, the ink from my fingers leaving a red film on the countertop. I felt dizzy. Sick.

“Listen, champ,” Charlie said, startling me. “There’s more than one way to live through hell. Best you learn that.” He put out his cigarette and hopped off his stool. I expected him to go back to the jukebox and was surprised when he walked the other way. Toward my booth. 

“Where are you going?” I asked, mostly to myself. I couldn’t take another round of him.

He stopped and faced me with a thin, wrinkled smile. “Going? I’m not going anywhere. But one thing you realize once you live through as many lifetimes as I have is that the old pipes don’t work the way they used to.” He cupped his hand across his genitals. “So if you’ll pardon me—champ—I’d rather not piss all over this floor.”

It was morning before I realized I’d slept. I found myself sitting alone again at my table, my head propped against a stack of papers, not quite remembering how I’d gotten there. Dazedly, I looked around and saw Charlie slouched against the jukebox, a stack of quarters bouncing against his palm. The waitress and griddle cook spoke softly behind the register and polished the countertops. I had a funny taste in my mouth, like tar and syrup and sleep. My head felt like a truck had smashed into it.  I massaged my temples and thought about what Charlie had told me. Some story. Someone could make a novel of it. Maybe me. I brushed the crumbs and ashes from my shirt. They sparkled like little fires as they drifted through the air.

I heard thunder in the distance. Though the storm clouds blotted out the stars, I watched the tips of pine trees swaying around the perimeter. I checked my phone: six o’clock. Shit. I had a new day in front of me and had never felt so lonely and bitter about it. I checked my messages and found one Jessica had sent two days ago, telling me not to wait on her for dinner. I wondered if she was up yet, drinking her earl grey, making our bed, collecting whatever bottle fragments she’d missed the previous night. If she’d slept at all, she’d slept better than I had. Her number, when I dialed it, went straight to voicemail. Of course. Sighing, I opened the web browser. Time to start looking for hotels. 

I was chatting with the receptionist at a Motel 6 when the music started. I listened for a moment, slowly losing track of the sounds of the rain and the receptionist’s voice. There was something comforting about the tune—something that brought back first fragments, then images, then memories. Slowly, I lowered the phone. I recognized the song. 

And then I was in a cornfield east of Athens where Jessica and I had gone for a concert on one of our early dates. I’d parked on the edge of the field so we could watch the concert from the bed of my truck. REM was playing, along with a few other no-name bands lost to time. It was one of these bands I heard playing now: the opener. I could taste the words but couldn’t remember the name of the song. I didn’t need to. That night wasn’t my first concert, and it wasn’t my first time picking corn, but it was my first time getting lost among thick rows of it that towered above my head. It was the first time Jessica and I slept together, too. Not that either of us slept much. We laughed a lot, though. Sweated. All the corn silk sticking to my fingers made it difficult for me to slip into the condom, and I remembered her sitting there and laughing at me the entire time, warning me to hurry up so we wouldn’t get caught. But getting caught was the last thing on my mind. I was too relieved to find out she wasn’t a virgin and scared shitless she’d realize that I was. We were a good quarter of a mile from my pickup when the clouds broke and soaked through the clothing we’d barely put back on. She ran from me when the rain started, and I chased her all the way back to my truck, screaming as we ran. Wet, laughing, spry with sex, we slid into the cab and felt the warm leather sucking at our skin. We shivered so much that I turned the heat on even though it wasn’t cold. All the way back to her dorm, we drank beer and lost religion and ran the lights without ever thinking we would stop. It was past midnight when I dropped her off at her room. It wasn’t until she closed the door and I saw the light click on inside that it occurred to me she’d never been wearing panties or a bra.

The song ended so abruptly I could almost feel the quarters grinding to a halt. I felt as if the walls were spinning. I stumbled to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I could hear the rain falling outside. My head pounded with the steady, ceaseless drum.

When I got back to my table, I found the waitress sweeping beside my booth. Through the window, I saw a thin mist creased by starlight falling over the parking lot. My truck remained where I’d  parked it—wet but undamaged. The clouds were thinning, and the light shone pinkish gray across the sky. 

I stuffed the loose papers into my briefcase, left five dollars on the table, and paid my bill up front. The  waitress barely looked up as she printed my receipt. When she turned her back, I saw the grease stain, dark and livid as ever. The griddle kid had fallen asleep, the fuzz on his face a milky shade of brown. Charlie slouched on his stool, his face buried behind the newspaper. A peal of thunder sounded as he flipped the page. Outside, the rain began to fall more heavily. Without another thought, I grabbed my briefcase and went out into the storm.

Later, when the sun appeared, I pulled into our empty driveway and stared through the dark windows of our house. Of course: Jessica would be at work. The storm had broken tree limbs and knocked loose some shutters, but the home was whole. I saw some records in the yard and prayed one or two of them still worked. If not, so be it. There were bigger fires.

I crept through the back door, feeling like a criminal. In the darkness, I found the lights, turned on the record player, and fished a garbage bag from beneath the sink. John Fogarty’s swampy voice filled the space, my CCR record having survived the night, maybe many nights, atop the spindle. “Fortunate Son.” The place smelled of Earl Grey and liquor and something else. Hope, maybe? Fear? Disgust?

I searched for a note from Jessica and, not finding one, told myself to forget about it. Later. Everything else could wait. But for now? I studied the war zone of our kitchen, inhaled the fiery smell of the spilled liquor. For now, this.

Carefully, I knelt on the cool linoleum, grabbed the first bottle round its shattered neck, and dropped it into the bag’s dark, gaping mouth.

---

Colin Bishoff lives and writes in Hull (basically Athens), Georgia. He has an MFA in fiction writing from Georgia College and State University and is a PhD student in the creative writing program at the University of Georgia. His work has recently appeared in failbetter, Vast Chasm Magazine, the Southern Review of Books, and elsewhere.

Yi Jun Phung

My ama says I sell death like roasted char siu

And tian ah, no one should willingly buy it, from me or anyone else. Every time I bring up estate planning, she reacts like water flicked on hot, screaming oil. Says she saw aba coughing up steak-red blood the other day — my penance, she adds, for packing up dead people like dead meat. I’m not supposed to correct her; the doctor believes it might derail her recovery if she remembered aba was really dead. So I hold my tongue, let her describe how red aba’s blood was. The nurse nearby hushes her, says we’re scaring the other residents. Ama waves her away like she’s more fly than human.

I notice how her arm flab, once soft and tender, has fallen off her bones, how the rough sourplum-coloured skintags on her wrist reaches, reaches, reaches her elbow, how her tofu-white hair frays at the end, like cracking vermicelli noodles she’d loved to cook for the kids. But to ama, I’m the one who looks like death, being in the business of one.

I try to tell her about Mrs Trin, who came into my office alone smelling like honey and hot oil, her skin glazed with some kind of liquid gold. She announced she wanted her own burial plot next to someone who isn’t (wasn’t) her husband, asked for the highest point of the hill so her fat, greedy children won’t be able to visit her. Giving birth to a char siu would have been better, she said. Fed them until they were adults and now they still ask for change back. I tell ama there are people like Mrs Trin, the ones with zest, the ones who look death in the eye and cackle, the ones who rip up the box of chocolates instead of never knowing what they’re going to get.

All ama does is blanch at my story. Most of my customers are like her, who think death is a dirty word, who think one should not have to choose to be buried or burned. Customers like ama often have to be dragged, whipped, tugged by their adult children into my office. When they’re inside, they’re quiet, simmering in their own petulance until boiling point. Once, I was explaining our ala carté burial services, how embalming is the common add-on to make the body look presentable. The old man became a flambé of hot bubbles, his cheeks torched red. I am not a slab of meat! he screamed. His children had to temper him down, with sweet words, with an icy drink, with a good rub, and eventually, he lost steam. They said they’ll try again next week, but they came back the next day: his heart gave out. I told the embalmer to go easy on the blush.

I get an ill-timed call from the office, and ama’s thin lips shape into a thin line, because that means someone’s either dead or preparing to die. I want to get her out of this sour mood, so I talk about safer topics: Mark’s not retiring yet, the kids are off to college soon, and her other daughter is still too busy to visit her. The last time I heard from her, she had called me selfish for dumping our mother here, said ama should be staying with one of us as long as it’s not with her. Ama pretends to listen, but I know she’s still brining in salty au jus like the old man was.

A nurse interrupts us, says it’s time for ama to have her medicine. I don’t let ama wave me off, and in a rush of words, I ask if she wants to be cremated or buried. She spits at me, says she wants to go home. I wipe her saliva off my chin, ask where she’d like to be laid to rest. She calls me ungrateful, says I want her dead so I could get her inheritance. I tell her she has no money.

She tells me giving birth to a char siu would have been better than giving birth to me.

I tell her that aba’s dead.

Then we both sit there, stewing in the words we cannot take back.

---

Most of Yi Jun Phung's past work revolves around retail & fashion, having contributed to Inside Retail Australia and Inside Retail Asia. Now, she's having a (mostly) splendid time diving into the world of fiction. Her work was previously published in Gown Lawn, National 2024 FlashFlood and Free Flash Fiction. Find her work at https://yijunphung.blog/.

Anita Harag

Translated by Walter Burgess & Marietta Morry

Silky Smooth

            The grains of rice keep dropping from my sister’s plate onto the tablecloth.  She spears the wiener schnitzel with her fork; there is oil seeping out of it.  Her elbow touches Mother’s.   Mine touch Father’s and Zoli’s.  I glance at Zoli to see if he notices that my sister is stuffing herself.  He doesn’t pay attention; he is trying to extract a pickle from the jar.  His finger reaches inside, if Mother saw it, she would tell him off and say use a fork.  She looks at my sister and pats her arm.  They share a smile.  Aren’t you hungry, she asks me.  You've hardly touched your food.  The soup filled me up a lot, and I push my plate aside.  It knocks against the pot. 

            After dinner, my sister even eats two coconut balls.  Mother put sour cherries in them.  She formed a ball from the chocolatey dough, pushed a sour cherry into it with her thumb and rolled it in coconut flakes.  This is both Father’s and my sister’s favorite; when I was a child, we made them every Sunday.  It was hard to get the floury dough off my hands when I helped.  It colored the water in the kitchen dark brown, black residue remained under my nails.  I pick up a ball with two fingers.  Do all of them have a sour cherry, I ask.  Yes, all of them, aren’t they to your taste?   You know I don’t like them.  Then just take it out.  My sister is stroking her belly.  She is stroking her flat belly around and around as if she were at least five or six months pregnant.  It is only six weeks.  She says that she felt it when she got pregnant.  Some women can do that. Father takes the lid off the pickle jar and drinks up the left-over brine.  Behind him the volumes of the Treasury of World Literature are lined up.  A lot of worn-out colorful spines with golden letters, an inheritance from my grandmother.  I never understood the system, after Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” comes Aitmatov, there are volumes of Dostoyevsky on both the highest and the middle shelf.  In front of the books are scented candles as well as kindergarten photos of both me and my sister.  After graduation from high school, I asked Mother what I should read.  In those days my grandmother still had the series, but even without those we had plenty of books.  She recommended Marquez, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” or “Love in the Time of Cholera”.  I chose the latter; all day I lay on the small bed and kept reading.  If my sister came in, Mother told her to let me read.  Now she has two copies of the “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. 

            My first memory of my sister is watching her in Mother’s lap.  Mother is wearing a blouse with yellow and red flowers.  One of the flowers is bigger and lighter than the rest, that flower is my sister’s drool.  It is everywhere, on toys, on Father’s arm, on my hand.  I rub my fingers together and smell them.  I cannot compare this odor to anything.  I am not even sure that it is an odor at all.  I cannot touch my sister without getting covered with drool, nor Mother.  Everything on her has drool. 

            We need to buy a new dining table she burst out when my sister told us that she was pregnant.  Then she started crying and kept hugging her for a long time.  Father was glad in his own way.  He shook hands with Peti and gave two pecks on my sister’s cheeks.  I hugged her for a long time.  I felt her heartbeat, she was so excited she almost trembled.  They got married a year ago.  It just happened, Peti said, as we sat down in the living room.  He put his hand on my sister’s belly.  It’s going to be a boy, he said.  No way, it’s going to be a girl, my sister answered.  Of course, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s healthy.  I looked at them trying to decide whether they looked like parents of boys or girls.  Perhaps, boys.  No, rather, girls.  I roll up the sleeves of my pullover just high enough to show the mole in the shape of a bat on my forearm.  My sister is due in June, by that time we won’t need pullovers.  We'll be sitting here in the living room, sweating even though the blinds are down. 

            At home I put the coconut balls in the fridge.  Zoli doesn’t have a sweet tooth, and I don’t like sour cherries, but even so Mother packed a boxful for us.  I go to the bathroom to wash my hands.  I am no longer surprised by the hole in the floor, my eyes got used to it.  We’ve been going around it for three weeks.  The workers removed the tiles and prepared the hole, then their car broke down.   They will come when they manage to borrow another car.  Every morning, I worry that Zoli will step in it while half asleep and break his leg.  One night I fell into it up to my waist, my legs were swinging in the air, my hips are too wide, I couldn’t climb out.  Then I woke up.  Zoli was lying on the other side of the bed with one arm touching the floor.  I moved closer to him.  If I reach out a few centimeters I can touch his back with my fingers, perhaps he’ll sense my breath and wake up.  Turn around and embrace me.   Or sense that I moved closer, that I am here watching his back.  I move closer.  A few more centimeters and I can touch him.  Perhaps, two.  One.

            My sister is in the thirteenth week; I always need to convert that in my head to months.  I can’t get used to it that she measures time by weeks.  She doesn’t only say which week she is in but also how much time is left to the birth.  She is due on June 16, but according to her, it will happen earlier.  During ultrasound exams the doctor always tells her that the baby is bigger than expected and that they perhaps miscalculated the time of conception.

            We are shopping, Mother is holding a maternity dress across her body to check the size.  She touches her belly and says that she looks as if she were in her thirtieth week.  Uh-huh, that’s the seventh month.  I laugh too loud, the salespeople at the cash turn my way.  Mother is also surprised; I don’t usually laugh at her jokes.  My sister smiles and takes the dress from Mother and holds it in front of herself.  She can’t button up her slacks properly and needs to pull her blouse down to hide her belly.  I’ve outgrown my clothes; she says and shows how her pullover no longer covers her waist.  She carries a couple of T-shirts and slacks into the dressing room.  I didn’t like it when I outgrew my clothes.  When I was seven, I kept pleading for a pink dress with white polka-dots that I saw in a shop window.  We passed by it every day.  Finally, Mother bought it but I could only wear it for four months.  The sleeves got too short and cut into my arm.  Mother put it away and gave it to my sister a couple of years later.  She wouldn’t part with it, that is what she wore to the year-end assembly.  She recited a poem.  She usually hated it when she had to wear my hand-me-downs.  I hated to hand them over to her; she hated wearing them.  The two of you are carbon copies of each other, the teacher said at the assembly and started praising my sister. Emmácska is very smart.  Emmácska is always the first to finish her assignments.  Emmácska is a quick learner.  

            Mother shows me a pair of socks.  They are thick and blue with a penguin on top.  A penguin and a cat.  When we found out it was a boy, Father took a plank and carved Ármin into it.  Had it been a girl, it would have been Viola.  I don’t know what pet name can be used for Ármin.  Ármika.  My sister says that no pet name is needed for Ármin.  She doesn’t have a pet name either, not everyone needs one.  Stay here and when Emma comes out, try to stall her, Mother says. What do you mean?  Tell her to try on another dress or push something in her hand, I don’t know, for example, this elephant.  The blue plush elephant fits in my palm.  Mother rushes over to the cashier and I sit down beside the dressing room.  The light brown curtain moves every now and then, she must be getting out of her slacks.  She tells me that her body changes faster than she can get used to it.  Sometimes she loses her balance and almost falls.  I watch her feet under the curtain, that’s all that shows.  She is standing barefoot on a white shag rug.  She doesn’t budge, she only moves her toes.  It’s a soft silky sensation.  Her toenails are red.  She can still reach her toenails.  Or Peti puts on the polish, or she goes to a pedicurist.  She stands there for a long time without moving, she must be sizing up her body.  She stands in front of the mirror and caresses her belly.  She looks to see how different is the outline of her hips, her waist and breasts also seem a bit bigger.  Her behind will grow bigger, too.  She will need to buy new panties, they are already too tight, the elastics cut into her and show through her jeans.  Mother returns with a smile on her face.  I got them, she says and holds up her bag for me to look inside.  The socks with the penguins on them are there.  That’s the very first thing she buys for my sister’s son. 

            For our seventh wedding anniversary, we get a vase and a card.  It’s my sister who hands me the box, it’s harder and harder to hug her because of her belly.  First, I read the card.  Happy Wedding Anniversary!  The years disappear but your love will never disappear.  To my godparents, Ármin.  I let Zoli see it, too.  Do you want us to be the godparents?  They nod, who else.  I stroke my sister’s belly.  I stroke it often hoping Ármin would kick when I touch it.  Her belly is taut, I don’t feel anything.  It looks like the one Grampa Laci used to have.  We always wanted to touch it and ask how far along the baby was.  I am holding her belly, inside it is Ármin, my nephew, my sister’s child.  Yet it still feels as if I were holding Grampa Laci’s empty beer belly.  She lets everyone touch her belly.  Even strangers at the bus stop.  They keep stroking it and ask her how many months.  Boy or girl.  Has it got a name already.  That’s a very nice name.  I find it disgusting when strangers’ hands touch my sister’s belly. 

            At home I place the blue vase on a shelf.  They bought it at Ikea, they have lunch there almost every weekend; my sister has a craving for cheesecake.  I look at the white wall behind the vase.  We should paint the place, I tell Zoli when he comes out of the bathroom.  Paint?  We painted it three years ago.  I know, but it is to make the place cleaner.  It could use it.  OK, he answers and wipes his hands on his trousers.  I have reminded him so many times before not to wipe them on his trousers, he should use a towel. 

            After we paint the living room, we rearrange the furniture.  The bookcase goes to the other side; we remove the pictures from the wall but after we took them off, we can’t find a place for them.  We lean them against the wall in the hallway and push the sofa in front of the bookcase.  Don’t put it here, it’s not right there, let’s push it over there.  Zoli gets more and more agitated.  Finally, we hang the pictures in the bedroom and put the poster that was in there, where the bookcase had been.  For days I am startled when I get home.  It astounds me how many books are lined up on the shelves.  Somewhere there must be “Love in the Time Cholera” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.  It surprises me how large the coffee table is, how well the carpet matches the sofa.  The curtains have too many flowers, I notice for the first time that they don’t go with the carpet.  Zoli and I go to pick two simpler ones.  When we get home, I remember how a month ago we returned from Ikea just like this, we bought a drawer organizer and that was the last time we had sex.  Half a year ago we never missed an opportunity. 

            I try not to notice Mother’s disappointment when she opens the door.  I hold an orchid in my hands, but she doesn’t know that yet, it is hidden in the purple tissue paper.  Come on in, she says and rushes back to the kitchen.  I hear the oil sizzling.  We follow her and when she takes the latkes out of the frying pan, we hand her the flower.  Happy Mothers’ Day, I say.  She unwraps it carefully.  It is a lilac-colored orchid.  My sister and I agreed that she would bring a white one.  It is very pretty, thank you.  She puts it in the window.  My sister and brother-in-law arrive.  Mother gets an orchid from them, too, lilac colored because the white one at the florist’s was not nice enough.   

            After dinner Mother and I do the dishes.  My sister has started her eighth month, she is not allowed to do anything, not even get up for a glass of water. Not that she wants to.  She asks Peti to bring her one.  Peti comes to the kitchen, we turn off the hot water for a second and start the cold.  It mustn’t be too cold, Mother warns him.  He goes back and we continue with the dishes.  As soon as Mother puts the clean plates on the rack, I pick them up and put them where they belong.  Let them drain for a while, she says, then your dish cloth won’t get so wet.  I wait for a couple of minutes, wipe the tablecloth and arrange things.  Zoli is going on a trip for two weeks, I say.  The clean plates are piling up on the rack.  His boss insists that he go.  Glasgow.  A three-hour flight.  Even though he hates flying but I think this time he wants to go.  Uh-huh, that’s good, Mother answers.  I pick up the dish cloth again and continue wiping the dishes; I put the plates in the cupboard.  That plate doesn’t go there and takes a small plate out of my hand; she opens the upper cupboard; the edge of the plate gets wet when her hand touches it.  The other day I felt that Ármin was kicking, she gushes.  I touched Emma’s belly and just then he kicked.  In the very second!  Uh-huh, that’s good.  I wipe the last plate and put the dish cloth on the cold radiator and look at the Kőbánya brewery through the window.  That’s where the zombie movie with Brad Pitt was made a couple of years ago.  The crew was here for weeks while the movie was filmed until one or two in the morning and when they finished their applause, and cheers could be heard all the way here.  One night Mother was woken up by the fireworks that illuminated the whole room.  Afterwards there was some scandal over the filming and all the scenes from the Kőbánya brewery were cut from the movie. 

            We make coffee, for my sister it is café au lait made from chicory.  Her cup has a blue handle, ours are yellow.  We put the sugar and small spoons on the coffee table.  I sit down in one of the armchairs, Peti and my sister sit on the sofa holding hands.  In the background the TV is on, a porcupine fish is swimming slowly on the sea bottom, then it turns night, its quills are glistening, my thighs get sweaty in the armchair.  My sister pulls up her shirt, takes a tube out of her bag and spreads a thick layer of lotion on her bare belly.  It is to prevent stretch marks; she explains when she sees that I am staring.  Her belly button protrudes.  And after my skin gets smooth and silky.  She always says that on such occasions.  Until she lifts her shirt, I keep imagining that she has stuffed a pillow under it.  We used to play this a lot.  We grabbed pillows and stuffed them under our dresses.  We played that we were pregnant and stuck a note on the door with “Maternity Ward” written on it.  We stuffed socks where our breasts were supposed to be, without breasts we would have looked like fat children.  We made a list of the expressions: Expecting.  Pregnant.   Bun in the oven. Up a duff.   My sister had heard this last one somewhere and I didn’t find it funny.  Mother disappears in the small room and returns with a bouquet of flowers.  She hands it to my sister.  Now, you’re also a mother, she says.  I look at the bouquet of tulips.  Mothers usually get orchids or tulips.  My sister looks at the bouquet and sniffs it.  What are you sniffing it for, Emma, tulips don’t have scent. 

            You should tell them, Zoli says on the way home.  What?  You know.  There’s nothing to tell, I answer.  Yes, there is.  We’ve been trying for three years.  We drive by the brewery, almost all its windows are broken.  There are flowers and curtains in a few of them.  It seems that there are people living there.  I watch to see if someone leans out of one of the windows with the curtains.  Brad Pitt let’s say.  Brad Pitt leans out and waves.  Or I see a hand as it waters the flowers while I’m looking.   In twenty minutes, Mother calls to check if we got home.  We did.  Your sister called back ten minutes ago.  Fine, I answer, we are just putting the food away.  We end the call, and I toss the two boxes in the garbage bin.  I go to the bedroom, I pull out the drawer of the night table, the thermometer is not there.  I don’t remember when I last took my temperature.  I put it down somewhere, but where.  I walk around and around in the apartment, opening drawers and look behind the sofa. 

            Along with the socks decorated with the penguins, Mother also buys a teething ring and a white squirrel for Ármin.  I look at shop windows, go inside the stores and touch the plush animals.  They are all soft and silky.  The bath toys are kept in a separate area.  I squeeze an octopus, it has holes in its tentacles, you can squirt water through them.  I picture the baby sitting in the tub, splashing the water with his hands and feet.  You have to change your clothes after bathing him.  As the octopus sinks in the bathtub, tiny bubbles rise to the surface.  The baby watches them and squeals with laughter.  I put the octopus in the empty basket.  May I help you; the salesperson asks me.  No, or rather …  I don’t know what I’m looking for.  Some kind of a toy.  For a newborn.  I follow the salesperson; she shows me a piece of cloth the size of a handkerchief.  A lot of people buy this, handling it calms the newborn babies.  She pushes the crumpled cloth in my hand.  How many weeks, she asks, smiling.  I look at my raincoat, it is bulging as if I were pregnant.  Twenty-three I say.  And do you know what sex it is?  A little girl.  Adél.  That’s a very pretty name, she says, and I put the cloth in the basket.  I take the octopus back to the bath toy area.

---

The Author: Anita Harag, was born in Budapest in 1988.   In 2020 she won the Margó Prize, for the best first time author of the year, for her first volume of short stories.  Her second volume of stories, including “Silky Smooth,” was published in September 2023.

The Translators: Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess are Canadian.  In addition to stories by Anita Harag (twenty have been published), they also translate fiction by six other authors; many of these translations have appeared in literary reviews in six countries.  Gábor Szántó’s book, 1945 and Other Stories, with six of its eight stories translated by them, was published in 2024.

Brandon McNeice

Chain of Custody

He did it the way people do things when they don’t want to be seen doing them.

By the time Maren noticed him—really noticed him—he’d already worked the habit into his body. Not dramatic. Not furtive in the way adults imagine furtive. Practiced, almost boring: the movements of a child who had learned that ordinary was the safest disguise.

He came through the line with the rest of them, palms out for the tray. The cafeteria at three-thirty had a different air than it did at noon. Less shouting, more clatter. Same fluorescent panels, same gray tables, but the room felt emptied and refilled for a second shift: after-school programs, late-bus kids, the ones who didn’t go home right away because there wasn’t anyone to go home to.

Maren stood with the other adults without meaning to. Lanyard at her neck. Keys on a retractable clip. Clipboard like a badge. On paper, she was a case manager—student support specialist, depending on which form you read—bridging families and services. In practice she filled out portals and made phone calls that became voicemails that became nothing.

The boy took his tray and moved as if he knew where the blind spots were—where the staff table’s sightline broke against the soda machine, where the security monitor glare made a face harder to catch. He chose a table against the far wall, the one with a wobbling leg and a strip of duct tape across the surface.

He set the tray down. He didn’t sit right away. He looked once over his shoulder at the adults. Not panic. Inventory.

Then he sat.

The food was the same as always: sandwich sealed in plastic, fruit cup with a foil top, carton of milk, packet of crackers. Today it was all things you could keep.

He peeled the label off the side of the fruit cup and folded it once, twice, into a small square. It disappeared into his pocket as if it were money.

He turned the milk carton in his hands and didn’t open it. He set it in the corner of the tray, away from the other items, like a piece set aside.

He opened the crackers just enough to slide the sealed sandwich beneath them. He tore two napkins from the dispenser, folded each into a tight rectangle, then into a square, and placed the squares on top of the sandwich as if to keep it from bruising.

From beneath the table he brought up a drawstring bag. The kind kids got for free from somewhere—field day, a camp that no longer existed. The fabric was faded. The strings were frayed where they met the metal eyelets. For a second he held it against his stomach under his shirt, then set it on the chair beside him like it belonged there.

He slid the sandwich into it. The milk. The fruit cup.

He did not eat.

He wiped his hands with a napkin—each finger, as if he’d been wearing gloves—and then wiped the table, quick, like removing prints. When he stood, he left the tray almost as it had been, leaving behind an empty cracker sleeve, a napkin, the foil lid still attached to nothing.

He carried the bag on his shoulder and blended into the stream of kids heading toward the gym.

Maren’s pen clicked without her meaning it to. She wrote on the clipboard even though she had not intended to write anything.

Tray. Bag. Label.

The urge to count rose in her, familiar as thirst. Seven was her number. Seven was what the trainings told you to do when your body tried to sprint while you sat in a chair: count to seven, name seven things you see, seven you hear. Some days it worked; some days it only made her aware of her own skin.

Behind her, Kelsey from the after-school program leaned in. Tablet tucked under her arm. Everything was on the tablet now: attendance, food counts, incident reports. Proof.

“Maren. You got a minute?”

Maren turned, gave the smile she kept for meetings. “Sure.”

Kelsey’s smile was the kind you learned in trainings: warm, neutral, professional. “Just a heads-up. Midyear review’s coming. They moved it up.”

“I saw the email.”

“They’re going to ask for the documentation pull,” Kelsey said, lowering her voice. “Contacts. Referrals. Follow-ups. Measurables.”

Maren nodded.

“And listen,” Kelsey went on. “If there’s anything in here that could become an incident… we can’t have surprises. If it isn’t in the portal, it didn’t happen.”

Maren felt the phrase land in her stomach, heavy and flat.

Kelsey glanced toward the line. “Parents get funny about food. Liability. Kids taking stuff out. Just be aware.”

Be aware. Maren nodded because nodding was compliance in miniature.

The next morning she spent twenty-seven minutes on hold with the county office while a boy named Jaylen stood in her doorway with a backpack strap looped around his fingers. Every few seconds his thumb pressed the strap as if checking that it was still there.

When a voice finally came on the line, it was tired and brisk.

“Client ID?”

“I don’t have an ID,” Maren said. “This is a family referral. I’m trying to see if there’s emergency assistance available.”

“Is the household receiving services?”

“No.”

“Then they need to apply online.”

“They don’t have reliable internet access.”

“They can apply at the library.”

“The mother works during library hours.”

“Ma’am,” the woman said, and the word was a flat hand. “I can’t bypass the process.”

Maren looked at Jaylen. His eyes flicked to the bowl of mints on her desk and away again. He was trying not to want.

“Okay,” Maren said, softening her voice as if softness could change policy. “Can I ask a few eligibility questions?”

A sigh. “Go ahead.”

Maren asked them. Address. Household size. Income. Employment. Then the one that always sounded obscene in its simplicity.

“Does the household have reliable access to meals? Yes or no.”

Maren stared at the words on her screen and thought of sealed food disappearing into a bag.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I need yes or no.”

Jaylen’s thumb pressed the strap again.

“No,” Maren said.

The woman hummed as if checking a box. “They can apply online.”

“That’s it?” Maren asked.

“That’s it.”

When the call ended, the silence in Maren’s office felt too clean. Jaylen cleared his throat.

“Can I—”

“Yes,” Maren said, too quickly, and slid the mint bowl toward him. “Take one. Take two.”

Jaylen took one mint and put it in his pocket without eating it. His hand brushed his pocket once as he left, as if to make sure it was there.

Maren opened her bottom desk drawer and pulled out the small manila envelope she kept there, creased and overstuffed. In black marker on the front: NO’S. Denial emails, scripts, printed “guidance,” anything she might need later if someone said she hadn’t tried. She slipped the county office printout into it and pushed the drawer closed.

Then she opened the district portal and typed what she could.

Provided resources. Advised family to apply online.

Save.

At three-thirty, the boy did it again. Same table. Same sealed logic. Same label folded and pocketed like currency.

Maren stepped away from the staff table and crossed the cafeteria, the way you cross toward something you know you shouldn’t touch. She sat across from him, not too close. Hands on the table. Palms down. Safe hands.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m Maren.”

He didn’t look up.

“I work with kids here,” she said, and hated how small that sounded.

He slid the sealed sandwich into the bag. Napkin squares on top. Milk carton last.

Maren reached into her tote and pulled out a packet of snacks she kept for this exact kind of day. Granola bars. Fruit strips. Things you could give a kid without asking a question that made them lie. She set the packet on the table between them.

He paused. He looked at her hands, then at the packet. Then he pushed it back toward her with two fingers, slow and deliberate, as if returning contraband.

Maren felt her face go hot. “Okay,” she said quietly, though she didn’t know what she was agreeing to.

He stood, lifted the bag onto his shoulder, and walked away.

Back at the staff table, she pressed her heel down under her chair and counted to seven, then forced her pen to move anyway.

Two days later she stayed by the cafeteria doors and told herself she was monitoring dismissal flow. The kids filed out toward the gym, chatter bouncing off the walls. The boy with the bag peeled off at the last second and slipped through the side exit that led to the parking lot.

Maren waited three breaths and followed.

Outside, the air smelled like exhaust and old winter. The lot was mostly empty at this hour. A few staff cars. The maintenance truck. The delivery van.

At the far end, near the fence, a sedan idled in the shade of a leafless tree. One taillight was cracked, the red plastic spidered. A temporary parking pass lay on the dashboard, taped at one corner, curling.

The boy walked toward the car without hesitating. The passenger window lowered an inch. A hand appeared—adult, not his. A cuff of a sweatshirt. Fingers that looked cold.

He slid the bag through the gap. The hand took it. The window rose.

No face. No words.

The car idled for a beat, then pulled out and turned onto the street.

The boy stood at the fence as if listening, then turned and walked back empty-handed. He passed Maren like she was a lamppost.

Back inside, Maren opened the audit checklist and stared at the items that required numbers and proofs.

Contacts. Referrals. Risk mitigation.

She made a mark, then stared at the mark as if it had made itself.

She caught him in the hallway three days later near the supply closet where the smell of bleach lived. He had an empty plastic container in his hands and was rinsing it at the fountain with small precise movements. He snapped the lid on when he was done, as if sealing evidence.

Maren approached slowly. He heard her and didn’t turn.

“I’m not going to get you in trouble,” she said.

He kept rinsing.

She stood beside him. “Who is it for?” she asked.

The water ran loud in the narrow hall. He paused. She saw his mouth part slightly, the start of a sound.

Then he reached into his pocket and placed an unopened milk carton in her palm. His fingers brushed hers—cold, dry. He closed her fingers around it, firm, and stepped away.

He walked down the hall without looking back.

In her office, Maren set the carton on her desk. Her calendar reminder pulsed: midyear review — documentation due Friday.

She opened the portal. Blank note field.

Her supervisor’s voice, not joking at all: No surprises. If there’s an incident and you didn’t document, it’s on you.

Maren typed: Observed student attempting to remove sealed food items from meal program. Concern re: food security.

She hit save.

Her fingers moved without thinking. She peeled the small barcode sticker off the side of the milk carton and folded it into a square. When she realized what she’d done, she held the square between her fingertips, then slid it into the NO’S envelope and shut the drawer.

The next day the cafeteria felt different—not because the kids had changed, but because the adults had.

A new staff member stood near the exit with arms folded. A teacher sat at the staff table with a notepad. The security monitor over the doors had been tilted downward.

When the boy reached the counter, the staff member pointed. “Open it.”

He opened the sandwich wrapper. He peeled the fruit cup lid.

He didn’t eat.

“Open the milk.”

He pressed the edges, tore the tab. The smell of milk bloomed.

“Drink it.”

He took one small sip. He swallowed like it hurt.

Across the room another adult hovered by the trash cans. A third stood near the doors. A kid tried to slip a sealed cracker packet into his pocket and the staff member snapped, “No. Here.”

Here. Under eyes.

A staff member picked up an unopened milk carton from a different tray. “You didn’t drink this.” The kid shrugged. The staff member walked to the sink and poured it out. White liquid spiraled down the drain. The room heard it.

Maren saw the boy’s head turn just enough. His eyes followed the milk for a second and snapped away. His jaw worked as if he were chewing something that wasn’t there.

At the staff table Kelsey said, low, almost casual, “We can’t have kids taking stuff. Food is a liability.”

Maren turned on her. “Who told you to do this?”

Kelsey blinked. “It’s come up. Guidance. It’s a chain of custody thing.”

Chain of custody.

“We can’t verify where it’s going,” Kelsey added. “And if something happens…”

Maren looked at the kids with their open wrappers and felt her throat burn. She wanted to say, Something is happening. Instead, she walked out into the hallway and pressed her back to the wall, counted to seven, and still couldn’t settle.

On the third day after the new rules, she found a damp bus transfer stuck to the pavement near the curb where the car had idled. The ink was smeared, but the date and time stamp were there. Issued that morning.

She lifted it with two fingers. Paper that existed because someone had to move.

Back in her office, she opened the NO’S envelope and slid the transfer inside. The envelope was becoming something else now, not just protection—emails, scripts, stamped answers, printed refusals.

She did not open the portal.

She arrived early the next afternoon. Lanyard. Clipboard. The look of compliance.

She went to the storage closet and opened it with the spare key she’d signed out under “safety inspection.” Copier paper boxes, cleaning supplies, a lost chair. Bleach and dust.

She slid a small paper bag onto a top shelf behind a box labeled Laminate Pouches. Sealed items. Portable. Time-resistant.

Then she closed the closet and went back to the cafeteria.

During the meal line she watched the boy. He opened everything. He took two bites. He drank three sips. His bag stayed flat.

When the kids filed toward the gym, Maren opened the closet door a crack and walked away. She returned to her office and stared at her screen, forcing herself not to get up and check.

Ten minutes later she heard the soft click of the closet door closing.

Her computer pinged: reminder—documentation pull due Friday.

She opened a case note and typed: Performed safety inspection of storage area. She stared at the sentence until disgust rose in her throat. She clicked save anyway.

For three days, the bags disappeared.

On the fourth day, the bag was still there.

At three-thirty, the boy came through the line and drank half the milk. He chewed, swallowed, performed. When the kids filed out, he took the main doors, the bright front hall where cameras were obvious.

Twenty minutes later he stood in her doorway without entering, drawstring bag in his hand, empty. He looked at Maren for the first time.

Not pleading. Not angry. Measuring.

He set the bag on her desk.

Then he placed a folded fruit cup label on top and tapped it once.

Don’t.

Maren’s mouth opened. No sound came.

He turned and walked away.

The bag was heavier than it should have been.

Inside was the kit.

Folded napkins, tight squares.

Plastic spoons—four—bundled with a rubber band.

Peeled labels, folded small.

The dried bus transfer.

An empty cracker sleeve flattened with care.

Proof. Work. An economy of survival.

Maren set the items on her desk one by one. Her hands shook. After her note, the monitor over the doors had been angled down. The adults had moved closer. Her attention had turned his work into a liability.

She opened the bottom drawer and took out the NO’S envelope. Habit. Proof. Fear. She slid the don’t label inside as if filing it. Then she stopped with her fingers on the envelope flap, feeling the wrongness of that motion—how quickly her hands filed it.

She shut the drawer anyway.

At the red light on 58th Street, the bag pressed against her thigh through the tote. She looked down and saw the faded fabric and the frayed strings.

She opened it.

The kit had been rearranged. On top was a peeled label, clean, with a time written carefully.

4:10

A time.

She lifted her eyes.

Half a block down, behind a row of parked cars, a sedan idled with its lights off. She couldn’t be sure it was the same one. The angle was wrong. The streetlight caught only a slice of its back end—just a flare of red plastic that might have been a cracked taillight, just the pale rectangle of something in a windshield. It sat there anyway.

The light turned green.

Cars behind her began to move. A horn sounded.

Maren’s fingers tightened around the drawstring without thinking. Inside the bag, a plastic spoon snapped, brittle under pressure, breaking cleanly. The edge of it pricked her thumb through the fabric. She looked down and saw a small crescent of red on her skin, bright and immediate.

The horn sounded again.

Maren placed the bag on the passenger seat and took her foot off the brake.

The car rolled forward.

In the mirror, the idling shape stayed where it was, half-hidden, and Maren rubbed her thumb against the jagged plastic impression through the bag and counted without meaning to—one, two, three—until the numbers slipped loose and she couldn’t find the place to stop.

---

Brandon McNeice is a Philadelphia-based writer and educator. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Commonweal, Plough, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Terrain.org, BULL, and Hunger Mountain. A two-time Best Small Fictions nominee, he writes about the daily negotiations by which people seek dignity, faith, and decency inside systems that are anything but simple.

Libby Banks

Documentation of Absence

FINAL REPORT: Project ECLIPSE (Ethno-Cartographic Logging of Intermittent Perceptual Settlement Enclave)

To: The Regional Development Authority

From: Dr. Eric Striker, Lead Investigator

Subject: Conclusion of field study regarding spatial anomaly at coordinates 30.761393017998063, -96.08541285480268

I have failed to provide the documentation you requested. I have no verifiable photographs. My field notes, when reviewed directly, are illegible. The following is not a record of what I found.

1.0: Initial Sighting and Phenomenological Description

I was recruited to analyze the anomaly on 23 October. During my initial pedestrian survey, in my peripheral vision, I registered structures inconsistent with existing topographic maps. Initial architectural impressions: slate roofs and brick buildings. The phenomenon persisted solely as a peripheral recurrence. When attempting direct ocular engagement, only grass was perceived.

The enclave demonstrated stable, internal weather systems. I smelled baking bread and heard children at play. A subject appeared daily at a central well.

The village was undeniably real. It could not be seen under the conditions of direct observation.

2.0: Methodological Attempts

2.1: Photographic Documentation: A high-resolution camera was positioned on a tripod to record directly while I maintained peripheral visual contact. Result: 236 images of an empty field. Conclusion: the photographic lens constitutes a form of direct observation.

2.2: Acoustic Recording: Digital audio equipment captured wind and avian fauna, but failed to record any of the perceptible human activity (voices, a bell tower) that I could hear clearly while standing in the same location.

2.3: Geodetic Measurement: All measurements returned data consistent with a flat, empty grassland. The structures present in phenomenological experience were absent in all empirical data.

2.4: Census Attempt: Attempts to count inhabitants of anomaly were ineffectual due to incapacity for direct observation. However, a relational dynamic is possible. For five months, I have waved to the woman at the central well from a distance, using peripheral vision. She waves back.

2.5: Corroborative Witness (Subject B): I brought my daughter, age 10. She identified the settlement immediately in peripheral vision.  She asked to visit the settlement, and turned toward it. Upon her looking directly, the village vanished from her line of sight. She has not mentioned the village since. I sometimes observe her gazing past things with her head tilted.

2.6: Written Description: Attempts to document my observations in a field notebook appeared accurate while writing, but all notes devolved into nonsensical scribbles upon subsequent review. Hypothesis: immediate transcription constitutes direct capture. This report, however, is written from memory. It describes the echo.

3.0: Analysis and Unverifiable Theory

The village exists in the moment before perception.

I cannot determine whether direct observation harms the village or merely destroys the observer's capacity to perceive it. Whether the village would cease to exist if all peripheral observers were eliminated remains unknown.

4.0: Project Scope and Ethical Conclusion

Your commission, sourced from reports of a "spatial anomaly," was clear. You needed to know if anything of value existed in the planned location of "Springborne Commercial & Residential Expansion." I was hired to perform the advanced work of erasure.

Here is my central finding: if I had succeeded in documenting the village completely, there would be no village in my perception left to document.

The village exists and is inhabited. Life continues there.

Relationship is possible - I wave to the woman at the well most mornings. Knowledge of internal workings of the village is possible - the children play in the late afternoon. Community is possible - we coexist without demanding each other's full legibility.

I was hired to document so development could proceed.

Some truths die when pinned down. Let this one live.

ADDENDUM (Filed 6 Months Post-Initial Report)

Three subsequent researchers have been commissioned to study the phenomenon. Each succeeded in obtaining the data I declined to collect: comprehensive photographic archives, full-spectrum acoustic analysis, and topographical scans. Their reports are flawless, comprehensive, irrefutable. All three confirm: nothing exists there.

They produced verifiable documentation of absence. I preserved presence.

The Regional Development Authority has approved the project. Construction begins next month.

---

Libby Banks is a therapist and writer in New Mexico. Her work explores neurodivergence, legibility, and the ethics of knowing. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Wordgathering, Heavy Feather Review, Disappointed Housewife, and elsewhere.

Zach Shea

Maslow’s Heirarchy of Scam Texts

From: 608-315-5408

To: 978-734-9891

Hey, are you on your way?

(Sent: 6:20 PM; Read: 6:21 PM)

978-734-9891

Who is this?

(Sent: 6:23 PM; Read: 6:33 PM)

608-315-5408

It’s Becky from work!

(Sent: 6:34 PM; Read: 6:36 PM)

978-734-9891

I don’t know a Becky. I think you have the wrong number.

(Sent: 6:36 PM; Read: 6:53 PM)

608-315-5408

Is this Marcus?

(Sent: 6:55 PM; Read: 6:56 PM)

978-734-9891

No, I think you have the wrong number. 

(Sent: 6:57 PM; Read: 11:36 PM)

608-315-5408

Oh lol, sorry about that. How are you doing?

(Sent: 11:37 PM; Read: 11:37 PM)

978-734-9891

Is this a scam?

(Sent: 11:38 PM; Read: 11:40 PM)

608-315-5408

Haha, no, not a scam. I just wanted to know how you were doing. You seem nice.

(Sent: 11:55 PM; Read: 11:56 PM)

978-734-9891

How would you know? We’ve barely talked. 

(Sent: 11:58 PM; Read: 12:15 AM)

608-315-5408

I just have a good feeling about you. I think we could really be good friends if we got to know each other. What do you say?

(Sent: 12:18 AM; Read: 12:19 AM; Reported as spam)

###

From: 978-448-6026

To: 978-734-9891

Hello! My name is Emily, and I’m a recruiter at Indeed. We came across your resume, and we were really impressed by your background and experience. We are currently offering a flexible, part-time opportunity that you can work on in your free time, helping merchants update data, as well as increase visibility and bookings. The work is 100% remote, and we will provide free training. The daily salary ranges from $300 to $500, and you can receive payment same-day, in addition to maternity and paternity leave, and 15 to 20 days of paid annual leave. Other benefits include a health and dental plan, child care, and free gas and groceries monthly, and eight hours of guaranteed restful sleep a night. The only requirements are you must be 21+ years old.

If you are interested, please contact us on WhatsApp: +19784486026

(Sent 12:44 PM; Read 12:53 PM; Reported as spam)

#####

From: 608-315-5408

To: 978-734-9891

Are you feeling better today?

(Sent: 11:13 AM; Read: 11:18 AM)

978-734-9891

What?

(Sent: 11:19 AM; Read: 12:01 PM)

608-315-5408

You seemed grumpy last time we talked. I wanted to see if you felt any better.

(Sent: 12:01 PM; Read: 12:03 PM)

978-734-9891

Who is this?

(Sent: 12:04 PM; Read: 12:48 PM)

608-315-5408

Becky from the office, remember?

(Sent: 12:50 PM; Read: 12:51 PM)

978-734-9891

I told you I don’t know a Becky. I’m blocking this number. Please leave me alone.

(Sent: 12:52 PM; Read: 1:13 PM)

608-315-5408

I’m sorry 😢 I hope your day gets better. Let’s talk later, okay?

(Sent: 1:36 PM; Read: 1:38 PM; Number Blocked)

#####

From: Danny (Cousin)

To: 978-734-9891 + 34 others

Life as a man is wanting sleep you can't get. Because your mind and soul are plagued by battles—past, present, and future. Sleeping soundly is for overtly homosexual men. The world is at war, people are dying, and BTC breaks a new all-time high every day. Money moving in every single direction. Elections are overthrown in “democratic” nations.

Do you think Putin sleeps well? Trump?

Lol. NO.

WINNERS OPERATE IN WAR MODE.

Nightmares are masculine. You should shoot awake with sweat multiple times a night. That’s why you need a nootropic that can keep up with your warrior drive. Do you think your ancestors slept soundly? They hunted mammoths to extinction and still had the energy to please their women. Because they knew what “experts” want to hide from you.

Alpha Power™ is not just a supplement. It’s a network of alphas mentoring each other, fostering entrepreneurship, men’s health, and a warrior mindset. Alpha Power™ can improve cognition, reduce fatigue, clear up that lump on your dick the doctor said was just impacted skin, clear up the congested follicle on your balls, build muscle, burn fat, and reduce acne.

Reply I’M IN if you’re ready for the alpha life.

(Sent: 3:18 AM; Read: 8:32 AM; Left Group)

#####

From: 608-315-5408

To: 978-734-9891

Good morning sunshine 🌞 Did you see the moon last night? It was so big!

(Sent: 8:18 AM; Read: 8:53 PM)

978-734-9891

I thought I blocked this number. How are you texting me?

(Sent: 8:53 AM; Read: 9:15 AM)

608-315-5408

I was worried about you. I know you’ve been working really hard. I hope you are taking some time to rest.

(Sent: 9:17 AM; Read: 9:17 AM)

978-734-9891

What are you talking about? You don’t know me.

(Sent: 9:18 AM; Read: 9:49 AM)

608-315-5408

I know you deserve to let yourself relax once in a while.

(Sent: 9:50 AM; Read: 9:51 AM)

978-734-9891

What kind of scam is this? What exactly do you want from me?

Hello?

Are you there?

(Sent: 9:52 AM; Read: 11:41 AM)

#####

From: lauramehard@yahoo.com

To: 978-734-9891

😘👉👌💦💦❤️ I have a special surprise for you tonight 🔞 Don't delete this one babe 😘Chat with real girls in Roanoke who are horny and ready to f🔞ck 🍆🍆👀🤤😍 Talk to them about anything 🍈🍈 👅Tell them about how lonely it is living all alone in a new city, everyone you love a thousand miles away 🍑😈 Or how hard it is to make new friends, how you feel like you’re constantly trying too hard or not hard enough 💋💋Read them your poetry, the stuff that no one seems to get🍒👅💦🤯They will text you back and always let you know that you aren’t annoying them 🌶️🔥🔥And they will never remind you that self-consciousness is just narcissism masked as a socially acceptable anxiety 🙈🙊

🔞   https://l.wl.co/l?u=/is.gd/oXABu💣😏

(Sent: 11:49 PM; Read: 1:04 AM; Reported as spam)

#####

From: 608-315-5408

To: 978-734-9891

I’m sorry I didn’t see your last text! How have you been feeling? Are things getting less stressful?

(Sent: 6:37 AM; Read: 7:06 AM)

978-734-9891

Why do you care? This is just a scam, right?

I read something the other day about scams where you try to make someone fall in love with you and then get them to buy crypto or something. Is that what this is?

(Sent: 8:44 AM; Read: 12:34 PM)

608-315-5408

I’m not trying to scam you.

(Sent: 12:35 PM; Read: 12:35 PM)

978-734-9891

Then why do you keep texting me?

(Sent: 12:38 AM; Read: 1:04 PM)

608-315-5408

Because I’m worried about you.

(Sent: 1:16 PM; Read: 1:17 PM)

978-734-9891

Why?

(Sent: 3:08 PM; Read: 3:09 PM)

608-315-5408

Because you’re a good person. And you deserve to be happy.

(Sent: 3:15 PM; Read: 3:19 PM; Deleted)

#####

From: +44 7957 155143

To: 978-734-9891

Hi, I know one of your passwords is hannah061994!!

Your computer has been infected by my private malware, and it gives me full access to all your private accounts. I can also spy on you using your webcam and see the rest of your search history and all your documents.

I’ve collected all your private data and saved it. I know you’re thirty-three years old. I know you were making 60k a year. I also know you quit your job to “focus on your writing.” I’ve read your poetry and it’s shit. Everyone who reads it knows it’s shit, but they’re being nice to you. I can publish all of it on the dark web where very sick people are. They will read it all and tell you the truth. You’re a fraud. You waste everyone’s time. You’re just a burden, and I’ll show everyone.

I will delete everything if you send me $1200 in BTC. It’s a very good deal. I’ll give you three days to pay.

I have access to your inbox so I will know when you read this.

My bitcoin wallet is: 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa

(Sent: 12:30 PM; Read: 5:30 PM; Forwarded to cybercrimePD@roanokeva.gov)

#####

From: 978-734-9891

To: 608-315-5408

You’re wrong. I don’t deserve to be happy.

I’m such a fucking mess.

I was out at the bar the other day with some friends, and I managed to make everyone laugh with a couple of jokes. It felt so fucking good, and all I could think about for the rest of the night was doing everything I could not to fuck it up. I get like that and I start overthinking every single word I say. I feel like a fucking robot pretending to be human. It’s fucking disgusting. I just want to be normal. Why can’t I be fucking normal!?!!

Sorry. I’m just having a rough day.

I just feel like such a waste of space sometimes.

No, it’s more like I’m taking up too much space.

Like everyone else is where they belong, but I’m fucking it all up. Pushing everything out of my way. I just want to fit.

Sorry, I don’t know why I am sending you this. I know it’s fucking stupid.

(Sent: 2:03 AM; Read: 2:04 AM)

608-315-5408

I know exactly how you feel.

(Sent: 2:04 AM; Read: 2:04 AM)

978-734-9891

Thank you Becky.

Sometimes I have this dream where there’s this hole in the universe, and it’s my hole, the hole I fit into perfectly, it’s the place where I belong, but I can’t find it. I can feel it tugging at me, trying to pull me in, but no matter where I look, I can’t find it. I just want to feel like I’m in the spot where I’m supposed to be.

(Sent: 2:04 AM; Read: 9:15 AM)

608-315-5408

I’m sorry, that sounds really hard.

Have you considered investing in crypto? I’ve been using this new app to invest and it’s really helped me obtain financial freedom. I can work from home, set my own hours, and I’m my own boss: https://l.wl.co/l?u=/is.gd/OPl6kd

(Sent: 9:17 AM; Read: 9:17 AM; Reported as Spam)

---

Zach Shea (he/they) is an emerging writer from Madison, WI, and an MFA candidate at Hollins University. His work has previously appeared in F(r)iction's “Dually Noted” series.

Craig Stockwell

Doctor Kissinger

On one lovely October weekend, my boyfriend Hao and I decided to visit New York from Providence to see a drag show. We were staying in Manhattan, so we decided to visit Central Park. Hao was holding my arm, and we were enjoying the sunny, cool day. Unlike Hao, however, I was unable to, shall we say, enjoy the moment.

I observed, “For fuck’s sake, everything about this city is a fucking EA microtransaction festival. Like New Netherlands never ended, and the patroons became ‘asset managers,’ or just remained as landlords. Pay for this, pay for that, a service charge for things they don’t tell you about, tips added onto bills and expected toute de suite, toute de même.[1]”

“MY GOD, WILL YOU SHUT UP! YOU SOUND LIKE FOX NEWS IN FRENCH!”

I did not. I proceeded, “—And my God, the literary scene. Yes, everyone in America wants to read about the same damned neighborhoods in Brooklyn: I have a perfect mental map of what that bodega looks like off that subway line. Who the hell cares? Know who lived in Brooklyn? Fucking Lovecraft. No wonder people still talk about Gordon Lish and Raymond Carver, because that’s when corporate money paid for copy and their booze bill—”

“SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP. YOU. ASS!” Hao yelled back.

I stopped, exhaled, looked out at The Lake, and then said, “Fine. I’m probably hangry. I could use a hot dog.” So, we made for the southern side of Central Park to leave.

After a bit, Hao said, “Daddy, I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Okay, let’s find a toilet.”

Not long after, we found one, so Hao went in. I didn’t have to go myself, so I stood outside. After some time appreciating the greenery, I noticed a very aged man sitting alone in a wheelchair. He had white curly hair, and his head was bent down and forward. He was wearing a dark grey suit, black tie, Brown oxfords, and old man cotton socks. No one else was with him.

“No, it can’t be…” I muttered as I started walking towards him instinctively. “Oh my God, it is. It’s Henry Kissinger,” I gasped.

My neurospicy mind was piqued. The architect of late Twentieth Century American foreign policy. The cause of most of the world’s problems today. Decrepitude personified. I had to talk to him about China, or AI, or anything. I had recently seen interviews with him where he had a delusional sense that he alone could solve US-PRC diplomatic issues. My brain began churning. The possibilities were too exciting. What if I just… took Kissinger?

To avoid spending the rest of my days in Guantanamo Bay, I had to frame this as a fun expedition for Kissinger. He needed to want to go with me. Thus, I decided to frame my “outing” with him in a way he would relish.

“Doctor Kissinger,” I said as I looked into his sad, depressed, lonely face. His mind was still sharp, but his body was a round ball of realpolitik. His sad face looked up at me.

I said, “We must get you to Beijing, because only you and you alone have the power to resolve the current diplomatic issues between the US and China.”

Kissinger stared into my eyes. He said, “Only I can do this. But the politicians do not listen to me. They refuse my advice, experience, and knowledge. The young people these days, they reduce everything to emotion. They think bombing Cambodia made me a war criminal, but no, I was right, and they will remain wrong. Biden and Trump do not understand the depth of their ignorance. I am still capable of determining outcomes.”

“Precisely, Doctor Kissinger,” I cajoled. “The time has come for your final, penultimate return to Beijing. You and I shall show Xi Jinping the force and power of American dominance, as you did with Mao in 1971.”

“I opened relations with China in 1971 under President Nixon,” Kissinger murmured.

“Yes, Doctor Kissinger, and you shall do so again…” I was now standing behind his wheelchair and disengaging the brakes.

“I shall return to Beijing… The third world will again obey the dictates of American interests. The good old days shall return. I miss Gerald Ford…”

We began walking together, me pushing Doctor Kissinger, through Central Park. I asked, “Doctor Kissinger, do you like ice cream?”

“Yes, I would like a vanilla soft serve.”

“Very well, Doctor Kissinger, I shall buy you an ice cream.”

I wheeled Kissinger over to an ice cream truck once I saw one and bought us each a vanilla soft serve, “Here, Doctor Kissinger, enjoy.”

“Thank you, young man. Few people your age appreciate my genius. Tell me, what do you know of my work?”

I knew exactly what to do here. I stopped driving Kissinger for a moment, unzipped my backpack, and handed him my copy of Edward Luttwak’s Coup d’Etat: a Practical Handbook. He started laughing as well as a nearly 100-year-old man could.

“YOU KNOW THE SECRET OF POWER! YES! WE SHALL RETURN ORDER TO FOREIGN POLICY! MY LIFE WILL HAVE MEANING AGAIN!”

“Yes, Doctor Kissinger. Here, have a napkin, you’re getting ice cream on your tie.”

“I appreciate your sincerity. Many people would simply ignore the ice cream on my tie and make me look silly. But you know that, to paraphrase Otto von Bismarck, honesty is the most confusing weapon a diplomat has.”

“I do, Doctor Kissinger. Tell me about ‘the good old days.’”

Kissinger rambled about the 1970s as I walked him towards the edge of the park. I knew I had to take Kissinger somewhere besides simply around the park, as I’d be very visible with him. Plus, I was getting hungry, and I wanted pastrami on rye. Fuck the hot dog.

At this time, Hao called me. I declined the phone call and texted him back a picture of Kissinger’s bald patch and him holding onto his soft serve. Hao texted back “PUT. THE. FUCKING. WAR. CRIMINAL. BACK.”

Instead, I replied to Hao that I would be taking Kissinger to Katz’s Deli on East Houston Street, and he should meet us there. Hao took a bit of persuasion to convince, which is to say, he reacted very aggressively until I pointed out that I was the one paying for lunch anyway, and the idea of meeting the man who opened relations with Mao was too strong for Hao to ignore. Besides, this was too absurd to not see through.

“Doctor Kissinger,” I asked, “would you like to go to a deli?”

“Yes, we should go to Carnegie, the owners know me and provide me with a discount.” He was now slightly drooling on his suit jacket.

“Unfortunately, they closed in 2016. When was the last time you have been to Katz’s?”

“That is a good idea, young man, we shall go there. ONWARD!” Kissinger pointed towards the 59 Street / Columbus Circle MTA entrance for us to take the subway. I was laughing so hard inside that I could barely control myself.

“Tell me,” I asked out of curiosity, “why did you give the Chinese atomic secrets?”

“Leverage, my young colleague. The Soviets would never do that, whereas we would. This created the impression that we were the superior alternative.”

“I understand, Two Bombs, One Satellite. But are not nuclear secrets our most protected? Did you not provide China with too much information? What about DOE?”

“The DOE is the most privatized government department. Bechtel was quite eager, so, so very eager, to get contracts in China, which they did over the 1980s and 90s. Opening relations with China made Bechtel, Goldman Sachs, and everyone else significant sums.”

“I understand, Doctor Kissinger. Please forgive my naivety,” I said sarcastically.

“That is fine. Please, tell me about your thoughts on our relations with China today.”

“Yes, Doctor Kissinger, but let’s get you into the subway first…”

“Situational awareness dictates all,” Kissinger mumbled.

I got Kissinger into an elevator and gently pushed him through the station. Neither Kissinger nor I had MTA cards, which added to the complexity. Once we bought tickets, I advised Kissinger to hold on as I balanced his wheelchair using my foot.

“AHH, be careful!” He yelled as I got him over the gap. He was being dramatic, I think.

Once I parked Kissinger in the handicapped section of the subway car and sat next to him, people started staring at us. One guy was quietly muttering under his breath that the lizard overlords were among them. I instead focused on speaking with Kissinger.

“Well,” I said, “China is one of the US’s oldest trading partners, going back to the Revolution and Canton Era of the Old China Trade. There was the Open-Door policy, early Dollar Diplomacy under Taft, then enmeshment with the ROC. One can argue that what forced the hostility between the PRC at its founding and the US wasn’t simply ‘communism,’ but rather, US capital being kicked out of China.”

“I see you do not believe in the Domino Theory,” Kissinger croaked.

“No, because the Soviets, and especially China, couldn’t fund global revolution. They’d go bankrupt before seeing any meaningful return. Look at Cuba; that cost the Soviets how much for essentially a few boxes of cigars for the Politburo, sugar, and sub bases?”

“Which is exactly why we needed to resist communism’s spread: identify choke points, then use overwhelming force to break their political will.”

“But it wasn’t Soviet or Chinese political will to break, but rather, the individual peoples resisting colonialism, like what happened in Vietnam. Thiệu’s government had no—okay, minimal—support, and the US spent how much propping up that corrupt puppet?”

“You are merely focusing on the failures, not the larger number of successes.”

“I swear to God, if you say Papa Doc was a success—”

“Did he or did he not curb communism’s spread in the Caribbean?”

“Oh, I am so making you do Rhum Barbancourt shots after Katz’s,” I joked. Kissinger broke out laughing as well. My mind flashed back to The Comedians.

“Had Duvalier fallen,” Kissinger continued, “we would have another Cuba on our hands. Right next to the Dominican Republic, a key American ally—”

“Colony,” I cut in.

“—ally,” Kissinger said, “which would have led to continued destabilization in the region. This, we, and our allies, could not afford.”

“How much of ‘cannot afford’ is Wall Street and the City of London speaking?”

“More than they will admit in public, young man.”

I nodded. “You’re not wrong, Doctor Kissinger—”

“—I am always right, never wrong.”

“—but your moral compass is…”

“Consistently pointed towards the right direction.”

“Towards whoever pays you.”

“So what?” Kissinger laughed. “What is right and wrong? Who decides the—”

“Please don’t say ‘exception.’”

“What? How did you—”

“‘Sovereign is he who decides the exception,’ Doctor Kissinger. You know the line, I know the line, we all know the line, now, where are you going with this?” This was starting to feel like Seinfeld or a Borscht Belt comedy with a war criminal discussing Carl Schmitt on the MTA, which is to say, quite absurd.

“Okay, bad word choice, perhaps… But permit me to continue… who are you to decide what is right and wrong?”

“I have no right to, I’m not the moral arbiter of the universe.”

“Precisely,” Kissinger smirked. “You understand; not acting is almost as powerful, or, more powerful, than acting.” Lizard Overlords Guy sitting near us started glaring. “Let me explain how the British handled the Palestine mandate, I think you will enjoy that story—”

“I would, Doctor Kissinger, but our stop is coming up soon,” I said to, first, shut Kissinger up and prevent him from being protested in public, and second, to actually go get Katz’s. But I wanted to continue the discussion.

Once we were back above ground, walking down East Houston Street, I joked to Doctor Kissinger, “Okay, if ‘sovereign is he who decides the exception,’ whose sovereign now, given that I’m pushing your wheelchair?”

“You tell me,” Kissinger joked.

“Well,” I conjectured, “if I know you, you’re likely guarded by at least five different government agencies, still have a handful of security clearances, and perhaps have already accessed my EB personnel file. So, I’d say, you’re letting the exception happen, and I’m simply the Marinus van der Lubbe pushing you to go get deli food. Fair?”

“I cannot confirm or deny that statement,” Kissinger said robotically. I nodded and smirked, meaning, that was a yes in Kissinger-talk.

Kissinger continued after a bit, “I have not had a sandwich at Katz’s since the Clinton Administration. I am debating between pastrami, tongue, or Knoblewurst.”

“Pastrami would be the classic choice. That’s what I’m getting. Tongue would be most appropriate for Machiavellian shenanigans, as it would likely inspire fear in other diners. The Knoblewurst would likely be intense, but too cliché.”

“I wish to be feared, young man, so I shall go with the tongue.”

“A wise decision, Doctor Kissinger,” I sarcastically joked. We went silent again for a moment, then Kissinger noticed that my mind seemed occupied.

“Indeed,” I said. “Meeting you reminded me…”

“Of?”

“Myself.”

“In what manner?”

“Well, everyone calls you a ‘war criminal,’ right?”

“They are merely ignorant of the realities of power, young man.”

“—Morality aside, Doctor Kissinger, money is power. You are, well, were, the personification of American foreign policy over how many administrations?”

“Thank you for the compliment.”

That wasn’t intended as such, I thought, but I kept talking regardless, “You’re the upstream source for the money that funds the military-industrial complex. I’m the recipient as a guy with a regular job at a submarine shipyard. I make the nukes move silently under water by just filling out paperwork all day. If someone— well, you would know, you and Nixon ordered Task Force 74 to the Bay of Bengal during the Bangladeshi war of independence—wanted to express US interests in a region, they call for a carrier force with subs. Subs that I—”

“Help build.”

“Help build,” I agreed with Kissinger.

“Do you see?”

“Unfortunately, I do,” I replied. “Like Eric Arthur Blair in Burma-see.”

“And how does that make you feel,” Kissinger needled.

“Implicated because of the Goddamned Rhode Island job market.” While I loved my job, a regular guy doing something as boring as compliance, I was the center of a web of complicity.

I continued, “You think you’re nowhere near danger, until you realize, no, you in the metropole only exist because you benefit from it. That’s what I was going to say about Schmitt, by the way. He doesn’t consider cui bono.”

“He does,” Kissinger replied. “‘The concept of sovereignty is the one most governed by actual interests.’”

“Right,” I clarified, “which ‘can be enlisted to serve the most varied political interests.’ But he never says who those ‘varied political interests’ are.”

“Why would he?”

“He wouldn’t, not under his ‘friend/enemy distinction.’”

“Precisely, young man. You know.”

“I know too well.”

“So,” Kissinger asked, “what will you do about it?”

“Well, right now, get us both lunch…”

At this point, I pushed Kissinger into Katz’s. I waved to Hao as I got in line to order. Hao’s head slumped down onto the table in sheer disbelief. I ordered Hao and I two pastramis on rye with Swiss, mine with mustard, Hao’s with mayo, two sodas, plus a jar of pickles. Kissinger ordered the tongue sandwich with mustard and sauerkraut, as well as an iced tea. Everyone also got a piece of cheesecake. I covered Kissinger’s tab because… what else could I do?

I parked Kissinger at the table Hao was sitting at and engaged his brakes, then served everyone their sandwiches. Hao just stared in disbelief.

“It really is him. Him. 肏你妈…[2]” Hao gasped.

“Hello, young woman,” Kissinger said to Hao. Hao cackled and flapped his arms.

“Thank you, thank you so much for saying that!” Hao said about being misgendered, before posting a picture with Kissinger on Instagram.

Given the Lich Lord Kissinger’s extremely advanced age, I then prepared the table so that we could all eat comfortably. I cut Kissinger’s food, moved his iced tea so he wouldn’t knock it over, and opened the pickle jar. I then decided to bib him.

“Doctor Kissinger, that is such a nice suit, kindly permit me to place a napkin under your shirt collar so that it does not get mustard on it,” I said sarcastically.

“Thank you, I bought this suit in 1992,” he murmured. I have no idea how he was able to still wear a suit from about thirty years prior, but hey, here he was.

I started eating my sandwich, which Hao had already taken a bite out of (yes, mine, not his), when Hao asked Kissinger, “So, what was it like negotiating with Mao?”

Kissinger perked up as he was slowly, gradually, and noisily putting the pieces of sandwich in his mouth with a fork, and said, “Mao by that time was quite old and decrepit, as he constantly smoked and drank and never bathed. Most of the negotiations were handled through Zhou Enlai.”

I joked, “Did Zhou tell you the story when he lost his notebook full of CCP agents within the KMT security apparatus in 1946 on a plane, and General Marshall gave him back the notebook neatly wrapped and tied with string?”

Kissinger found that droll, then continued, “I enjoyed working with the Chinese, as I appreciated their directness and focus on long term strategy over temporary results. In a totalitarian state like China, there are no meaningful elections, and thus, you can develop a consistent, long-term strategy in foreign relations.”

Hao and I shot confused, shocked glances across the table at each other. Kissinger was comfortable. We knew this because of how… open… he was with us. Then, Kissinger asked us about us being a gay couple.

He said, “How do you two navigate geopolitics and the bedroom? Or do you, like most people, simply claw at the mud and hope?”

“Ideally, not clawing in the mud, no, Kissinger,” Hao joked.

I stopped eating to cut in, “It’s becoming a problem, quite frankly, Doctor Kissinger.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, Hao’s family is back in China still, and me having a clearance—”

“Makes the situation, shall we say…”

“—Complicated,” I filled in.

“Indeed,” Kissinger continued. “Have you considered working for the State Department? It worked… rather well for me.”

“Doctor Kissinger,” I replied, “if my concern is the morality of American foreign policy, do you think I’d want to work in Foggy Bottom?”

“Wait, what?” Hao asked confused.

“Foggy Bottom, it’s—”

“What, a drag queen?” Hao joked. I rolled my eyes.

“If I may,” Kissinger said, “if you wish to see systemic change, why not embody it and ‘be’ the change, as you young people say?”

“Because, Doctor Kissinger, if you’re change embodied, is there change?”

“An apt question. You see, I asked myself the same question during my time as a Harvard PhD student, writing my dissertation about Metternich and—”

By this time, Hao and I had finished our sandwiches, and Kissinger was almost done with his. I was cleansing my palate with a few pickles. There were so many things that I wanted to discuss with him. Discuss is not the right word, rather, I wanted to tease out admissions from him to fully realize how evil he was. Hao probably wanted to get into the question of how Kissinger diplomatically isolated Vietnam and influenced Deng to attack Vietnam. But Kissinger would spin it so that he was right and I was wrong. Try arguing with Jello; it simply returns to form.

I also knew that Kissinger would likely be leaving us soon. People had noticed that he wasn’t just any old Jewish grandpa getting a tongue sandwich at a deli. Besides, Hao took a selfie with Kissinger, so it would only be a question of when someone took him away from us. Not to mention that he could quite simply die at any moment. I therefore decided to wrap up all this blood on his hands into one question.

“Doctor Kissinger,” I asked in a lull, “how do you evaluate the worth of human beings?”

Kissinger was chewing the last pieces of his sandwich like a cow chewing cud. He made all the loud, coughing, unaware noises typical of old men chewing food. He stopped for a moment once he swallowed, and then replied, “An appropriate question, young man. The answer is that, in short, I don’t.”

This left Hao and I stunned, staring at each other across the table. Hao’s nose started to twitch like a rabbit. I could tell Hao was going to start attacking Kissinger, so I put my hand on his to calm him down, then wrapped our fingers together.

Kissinger took the last pickle out of the jar and loudly, obnoxiously, and cluelessly started chomping on it. Kissinger’s napkin bib was covered in bits of tongue, mustard, kraut, and pickle juice: a perfect metaphor for all the blood he let pool around the world, from the Khmer Rouge to the Congo. He then swallowed the pickle and smiled.

“Thank you for taking me out to lunch, young man, I found this experience very enjoyable. Shall we now enjoy our cheesecakes?”

“Yes, Doctor Kissinger, I think we will,” I agreed out of sheer lack of options.

About halfway through the cheesecakes, a group of NYPD, bodyguards in suits, and someone who appeared to be either Kissinger’s professional handler or caretaker relative, an older man in his upper fifties wearing a black overcoat with grey, curly hair like Andrew Cuomo, headed straight for our table. The game was over. Kissinger was now going to leave us forever.

“Doctor Kissinger,” the Cuomo clone said, “we’ve been looking all over for you! Where have you been?” The handler was quite exasperated.

“This kind young man bought me an ice cream and lunch. I was very alone and sad before he found me. I was in Central Park, all alone. We will go to China together to repair relations with Xi Jinping…” Kissinger kept monologuing as the handler started talking to me.

“Please don’t mind Doctor Kissinger, he’s been having a hard time recently. Did you really take him out for ice cream and lunch?”

“It was the least I could do,” I said. “He looked so, well, sad and lonely.”

“Well, thank you for taking care of him, at least it looks like he’s enjoyed himself.” The handler then disengaged the brakes on Kissinger’s wheelchair, before the old man started yelling and waving his arms around.

“WAIT! I HAVE NOT YET FINISHED MY CHEESECAKE!”

The handler then opened his eyes wide, and decided, fine, let him finish his cheesecake. Kissinger looked into my eyes as his spoon scooped up the last piece.

“Thank you for listening to me, no one ever listens to me anymore.”

Kissinger’s eyes began returning to their sad, depressed, mopey look, like when I first saw him in Central Park.

“Of course, Doctor Kissinger,” I said. “Thank you for letting me ‘kidnap’ you.”

“It was my pleasure. If you had been a serious threat, you would have been immediately eliminated, but we knew who you were from your clearance.” I gulped at this line.

Kissinger continued, “Next time, we should go to the Bohemian Club, I think you will fit right in there. I will talk to the club president about bringing you as a guest.” Kissinger gave me one last smile before he finished his cheesecake, and they wheeled him away.

Kissinger died a month later. His estate sent a black rose when Hao and I married. See you, Space Cowboy—you dirty, arrogant, war criminal.
‍ ‍

[1] “Immediately, all the same.”

[2] “Fuck your mother.”

---

Craig Stockwell (he/him) is a queer Rhode Islander writing from Scotland. He attends the University of Aberdeen MLitt in Creative Writing. His work appears in mnemotope magazine, Scottish Left Review, The Helix Magazine (Central Connecticut State University), and elsewhere. Instagram: @c__stockwell ‍ ‍

Marc Kaufman

The Restless

For most of our lives together we lived without TV. We had built on the side of a mountain between High Falls and New Paltz, all that hilly and green New York no one out of state believed existed. We were told from the beginning: no cable service. It didn’t matter. We survived the winters with word games, long nights of rented videos that became rented DVDs. Once or twice our son, Billy, came in the house complaining of things he couldn’t watch. We stayed firm. He didn’t really care. His heart was outside anyway. 

‍ ‍But that spring was late in arriving, the cold and the snow held on longer than any of us could bear. We stayed in more. One night we sat next to each other in silence for almost two hours. It should have been okay, but it wasn’t. We shouldn’t have minded so much, but we did. Two days later we had a satellite dish put in. I thought the distraction would save us from each other.

‍ ‍So many choices, we watched whatever held our interest for more than a minute. I liked the dramas; police, medical, mystery. The single serving shows. The ones where you didn’t need to follow characters, where everything that could be resolved would be in an hour. I couldn’t be bothered with details. Alan worshipped the news. All of it. The Russian pipeline, the struggles of the yen, the rise in expeditions to Everest, the two Democrats bloodying each other over the nomination. Of course, there was the problem of the lingering wars and all that death. He watched the reports with a beer he hardly drank. I told him not to take it so to heart, not to take it so personally, it wasn’t our boy over there. It was sad, sure, and a real tragedy, but our boy was strong and safe. Our boy was at the ski mountain working on some new girl to replace the last one. He hadn’t been sick for more than a day since that illness visited his breathing for those two long weeks when he was a baby.

‍ ‍When was that? I don’t remember that, Alan complained.

‍ ‍When he was a baby, I said.

‍ ‍Where was I?

‍ ‍You were here. You slept with him in that chair. We were afraid. But it all turned out okay.

‍ ‍I don’t remember. You think I’d remember something like that.

‍ ‍Doesn’t matter. No use figuring out the mind, I said.

‍ ‍We left it at that.

‍ ‍There was some breaking news. A bomb had exploded on a road outside of Fallujah. Alan’s face became stolid.

‍ ‍I told him to turn the news off if it bothered him so much.

‍ ‍I told him many things. Like everyone, he listened when he wanted.

That month, he worried over Billy more. Whereabouts, destinations, departures, and arrivals, like one of trains he piloted from Fishkill to Manhattan. Billy reacted the way a boy his age does—first with indifference and then with anger and then with defiance.

‍ ‍Hey, Dad what’s the sudden interest?

‍ ‍It’s not sudden, Alan said.

‍ ‍Don’t you trust me?

‍ ‍Of course.

‍ ‍Then what’s your damage?

‍ ‍Neither of us knew what that meant, but by his tone and the way his shoulders were hunched and his gaze pointed, we figured it wasn’t complimentary.

‍ ‍Don’t talk to your father that way.

‍ ‍They both looked at me as though I should stay out of it.

‍ ‍Once or twice, I thought they’d come to blows, but Billy had a new girl and couldn’t be bothered. He yessed us to death and then did as he pleased. The girl’s name was Angelica, and I knew why he couldn’t stand to be away from her for long. There was something instinctive and sexual about her, someone you learned things from for later in life. Maybe I had been her. I hoped they were being careful.

‍ ‍Billy was late coming home one night, a particularly bad evening on the TV. Everything I wanted to watch was a repeat. We had talked about going out for dinner, but the temperature had dropped again, and we couldn’t find the energy or the courage to venture out. The driveway was long and steep and recently, with the buildup of ice, we’d had trouble getting the cars back to the garage. I tried to steer Alan away from the cable news channels. We even tried to have sex there on the couch, but I couldn’t hold his interest. He wanted to watch a debate over the word quagmire.

‍ ‍Alan, What’s the sudden interest?

‍ ‍It’s not sudden.

‍ ‍Do you have some other kid, I don’t know about?

‍ ‍His face turned against me. I sometimes said things I thought were funny but he thought were callous. Usually we would laugh about them later. He would let a similar comment fly, and we would joke about all the ways we were hypocrites and didn’t care. I could tell this wasn’t going to be one of those times.

‍ ‍No matter what I said he was going to wait up until Billy got home. 

‍ ‍I went to sleep without him. It was cold in our room. The month before, the heating bill almost put us in the ground. We were still trying to find a lower temperature on the thermostat where we all could survive. The men in the house were proving better at this than me. I complained when I shouldn’t have. I knew all the reasons: Billy was off to school soon, money didn’t grow anywhere in our lives. We were comfortable enough, but only because we knew not to want what we couldn’t have. The satellite dish was our only real extravagance, and no matter how much I loved the shows, how addicted I’d become, I would have horse traded it in a second for fewer blankets, more heat, three more degrees, my husband in bed. How brittle and fragile my body felt those nights it dropped below zero.

‍ ‍I had lived here all my life and never liked the cold.

I was turning pancakes over when he came into the kitchen. Billy had been out late and still hadn’t gotten up.

‍ ‍The groundhog saw his shadow, Alan said, almost distraught about it.

‍ ‍Which one? The Pennsylvania one or the Staten Island one?

‍ ‍The Pennsylvanian one. The famous one. Wait…There are more than one?

‍ ‍That’s what I heard. And the reports conflict. Staten Island predicted an early spring. I said this to offer a hopeful alternative. It had the opposite effect.

‍ ‍Staten Island, That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Which one are we supposed to believe?

‍ ‍Whichever one you want.

‍ ‍It seemed a conversation best not to have.

‍ ‍Wait, is the other one a rookie? I’ve never heard of two. I can’t believe they’d let a rookie predict something as important as Spring. You figure they’d test him for a while. A controlled setting, with lamps maybe. How do we even know he knows what a shadow is?

‍ ‍Maybe the famous one is losing his edge. He’s old, like us. Maybe he’s more easily frightened now. Maybe the rookie is sharper. Either way, darling, it all comes down to math. Six more weeks of winter on the calendar.

‍ ‍I don’t think I can wait six more weeks.

‍ ‍At the time, I didn’t know what he meant, but I knew I didn’t like it.

That night I lay in bed listening to Billy down the hall talking on the phone with Angelica. His voice was hushed and guilty and in love. I couldn’t make out the details of the conversation, only that he kept saying her name in a tone plaintive and tender, the way you might when even the next room is too far away. Without knowing when it happened, my son had learned how to call someone to bed. I could tell, with both leaving for school soon, they were sure to cause each other problems. They would begin to believe things that weren’t true, that what was between them was stronger than it was, that they could survive the distance, the absence, or worse, that they’d want to.

‍ ‍Downstairs, Alan had burned another bag of microwave popcorn. The smell entered my nose and wouldn’t leave. I turned into the pillow. A little less hair these days for him meant a little less hair gel, a little less shampoo. He was hardly there.

‍ ‍I fell asleep wanting nothing less for Billy than heartbreak.

‍ ‍Tell me about it again.

‍ ‍Billy ate in giant forkfuls. I swear his jaw was hinged.

‍ ‍It’s like a class trip.

‍ ‍They leave you in the woods?

‍ ‍Not exactly.

‍ ‍Then exactly what?

‍ ‍Mom!

‍ ‍Can’t you just take a trip to Washington, see the monuments, maybe join a protest. It would make your father so happy.

‍ ‍That’s not funny.

‍ ‍Neither is you being eaten by bears.

‍ ‍That never happens.

‍ ‍It happens all the time. Those bears are thorough. They don’t leave much evidence.

‍ ‍Mah, you’re being insane.

‍ ‍Is that any way to talk to me? You wouldn’t even get past the first sentence with your father…For my class trip we stayed a couple of days in Manhattan. Time Square was dirty and dangerous. We were so excited. For the guys, if you looked old enough to be harassed by a prostitute you were beyond cool.

‍ ‍Manhattan is so over. There’s nothing to do there. The Midwest is the new center of power and influence.

‍ ‍He kept chewing as his headphones hugged the bottom of his ears and his thick sandy hair fell over his eyes. The conversation, like most things with him, was set to autopilot.

‍ ‍How much is this gonna set us back?

‍ ‍Nothing. I’ve been saving. The winter’s been awesome. Nice and long. Lots of private lessons at the ski hill. I made just enough and, if the spring holds out for another week or two, maybe I’ll make a little more. Put it to that college fund you guys are always whispering about.

‍ ‍He looked down and grimaced at his empty plate.

‍ ‍Got any more?

I guessed the ending to my police show five minutes in. It had to be the restaurant owner who didn’t like tomatoes. You can’t trust someone who doesn’t like tomatoes. It took the detectives another twenty minutes to even suspect him. You can’t blame them—they’re held back by the writing. Alan wanted the remote but wouldn’t reach for it. He knew it wasn’t his turn.

‍ ‍It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, I said to him during the commercials.

‍ ‍I bet it won’t.

‍ ‍Don’t be so negative. You never know what can happen overnight.

‍ ‍It gets colder. That’s what happens overnight.

‍ ‍Well, I think it’s gonna rain. We’re due.

‍ ‍You’ll see. Snow for sure.

‍ ‍He peeked at the remote with small traces of larceny in his eyes. I gripped it tighter so he knew I knew.

‍ ‍What is it? A speech? A debate? An update on another investigation? What this time? Another bomb, another shooting, another death?

‍ ‍Don’t talk that way…it’s ugly. Next commercial? Can I just check for a second?

‍ ‍Sorry. I know that one. I saw that movie where Jimmy Stewart goes to Washington. You yield the floor for a second and you never get control back.

‍ ‍The wind howled outside. Snow whirled about the porch. Alan peered out at the small satellite dish, the way you might at a dog left out in the rain. The picture on the TV compressed and bent for a moment but returned strong.

‍ ‍For a year when I was twelve, while my mother was going to night school for her accounting degree, my father took a second job fixing TVs in the back of a small appliance store in Fishkill. He had no training but had always been able to teach himself how things worked. He’d take me with sometimes, and I’d watch him test the circuits for small breaks. He knew if the tube was shot the problem was too expensive to fix. If he didn’t know an answer, he’d look up part schematics on microfilm and do his best. People most often complained of static. On the repair tickets he called it snow.

‍ ‍Alan turned back to me, Babe, you already know how it ends.

‍ ‍Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’ll be surprised.                               

‍ ‍You’re never wrong.

‍ ‍But I could be…

‍ ‍You’re not even watching.

‍ ‍I pulled myself away from him. He tried to follow with his arms, but I wouldn’t let him.We sat in silence for a few more minutes. Alan closed his eyes. It was the only way he could be still.

‍ ‍I think we should go somewhere. A trip. After Billy is off at school. 

‍ ‍I don’t know, he said. Tuition is going to be expensive. His voice was low, resigned.

‍ ‍I have to get out of this house. Don’t you want to get out of this house?

‍ ‍I love this house – we built this house. Maybe you should go visit your father.

‍ ‍Florida’s not for me. Let’s go somewhere on our list, I said.

‍ ‍The list is for later. After we’re done paying for college.

‍ ‍I can’t wait that long.

‍ ‍We have too many expenses right now. He opened his eyes again, turned back to the TV, and pointed. See, you were right. It was the restaurant owner. You’re always right.

‍ ‍It was the worst thing you could say to someone, even if it was true.  

The snow fell like exploding sacks of flour, blowing without weight or accuracy or direction.

‍ ‍Yesterday the TV said rain, now the weather people predicted the snow could last for days.  I’d bet two of my coveted coffee cakes and a back rub on the rain. The cakes were already cooling. I used the last of the cinnamon and had to short the vanilla in the second batch. The cupboards were unprepared for a blizzard in April.

‍ ‍Billy had gotten clear a day earlier for his Montana school trip. Exposed in the woods, nearly alone was all I could think. He called in the morning to say he was safe. Cold, but lots of sunshine, he said. The air smells different here, Mah, like laundry. After breakfast they’re gonna teach us how to filet a fish.  He sounded beyond alive, free in the world.

‍ ‍I stood at the sliding glass door that led to the small patio Alan had built some years ago. It was the one thing in the house he cared for more than the news. At the sign of the slightest accumulation, he was out there, clearing the planked boards. The satellite dish perched along the thin banister. I had thought it was going to be bigger. I thought we’d have to clear cut trees. Instead, it sat like a small, hooded child on the wood rail, face turned into the storm.

‍ ‍Looking back into the empty living room I could see us sitting paralyzed amidst the litter of empty popcorn bags, sharp edges of unfinished arguments, news of so many dead. The glass door was stuck, but I forced it open. The weather blew in violently past me. I stepped onto the inches of soft powder and wondered how much there would be by morning.

‍ ‍The satellite dish was clamped to the railing with two screws that were wet and difficult to loosen, but I was determined. It was at least ten feet to the yard below. My fingers slipped and burned in the cold as I worked the turns. Anger has always been my secret strength. Behind me, on the TV, a reporter stood on the side of 87 North, snow falling all around him, telling us what surely, we already knew: that the roads were slick, soon impassable; that wherever we were was safer than where we wanted to be. I felt the last screw come loose in my hand and before I could decide if it was exactly what I wanted, the satellite dish fell. I spun back to the TV screen, thinking the result would be static, but instead the screen blipped blue.

‍ ‍A message appeared offering some strange clairvoyance: No Usable Signal.

An hour later the phone rang. I was lying on the couch, a blanket wrapped around me—my punishment for going outside was not being able to get warm. I let it ring. It stopped for a few minutes and then rang again. The bright blue screen overpowered every other light in the room, but I couldn’t turn it off. Any life before this was a dream. No Usable Signal. I stared at the screen.

‍ ‍The phone was persistent. Finally, I picked up.

‍ ‍Where are you? I asked.

‍ ‍On my way, he said.

‍ ‍I could hear the wind behind him.

‍ ‍Is it bad?

‍ ‍We’ve seen worse. It’s gonna take more than this to stop the trains.

‍ ‍For the first time that season, he sounded brave and defiant. I almost forgot every fear that kept me awake over the past month.

‍ ‍Be safe, I said.

‍ ‍Babe, he said, I’m bringing someone with me.

‍ ‍I almost didn’t hear it. Who?                                                                      

‍ ‍A friend. He got stuck.

‍ ‍Reluctantly I said, Okay…I’ll make food for us. Please, just take it slow.

‍ ‍Don’t go to any trouble. We’ll just have a drink and watch some TV.

‍ ‍Take it easy up the driveway.

‍ ‍He made a sound and then hung up.

His name was Edward, and they worked together. Edward walked up and down the cars taking tickets, checking passes, while Alan piloted the trains along the route. They had been on the same Metro North line for over a year, but I had never heard his name until now. For most of the night Alan called him Ed. Sometimes when they laughed or agreed, he was Eddie. I called him Edward, a choice we both seemed comfortable with. His face was ruddy, his head shaved bald. When he came in, he was wearing four or five layers under his uniform, making him seem bulkier than he was. If I found out he was over twenty-two I would have been surprised. They drank from a bottle of Macallan. I was into my fourth glass of cheap red wine. I couldn’t tell where the time had gone or if the world outside was still moving at its usual pace. The snow continued with conviction.

‍ ‍They stared at the TV.

‍ ‍It just went out? Alan asked. 

‍ ‍Yeah, just, I said, and did my best not to meet his eyes.

‍ ‍Alan worked at the connections behind the TV. Nothing he did had any effect. He went to the wall and turned up the heat for the second time in an hour. Are you warm enough? he asked Edward. I’m gonna check the TV upstairs.

‍ ‍Some storm out there, Edward said. Wonder if we’ll be running tomorrow?

‍ ‍Of course, we will. This is nothing, Alan yelled as he left the room. Maybe we’ll get a foot, foot and a half, tops.

‍ ‍I don’t know, I said. It’s coming down fast and heavy. We might wake up covered.

‍ ‍Edward took some more large bites from his coffee cake.

‍ ‍Top notch, he said. You can definitely taste the difference between this and the store kind. Even the diner I go to…maybe ‘cause it sits out for so long.

‍ ‍Do you eat in diners a lot?

‍ ‍Not a lot. 

‍ ‍Alan must be very fond of you ‘cause he usually never lets anyone near those cakes. Even our son has to fight with him. And these two he won fair and square.

‍ ‍He won them?

‍ ‍Yeah. I made a bet with him. I lost.

‍ ‍What did you bet?

‍ ‍That it would rain today.

‍ ‍Edward turned and looked out the patio doors and smiled. He had a way about him that reminded me of Billy, utterly lacking in guile.

‍ ‍Alan really saved me tonight…

‍ ‍What was the trouble?

‍ ‍Who knows? Maybe the alternator? The transmission is near shot. I was hoping to get it through one more winter and then junk it. I thought I was in the clear ‘cause it started so easy, but just when I turned onto the access road the thing seized on me…the whole panel lit all to hell. Then I called Alan. He’s a stand-up guy. Everyone at work thinks so.

‍ ‍Alan came back into the room and made a desperate sound. He walked to the patio doors and peered outside. It was clear what he was searching for. It made me sick to look at him.

‍ ‍Alan…forget it. We’ll worry about it in the morning. Just sit down. Relax.

‍ ‍His head snapped back at me like a whip, cracking at an idea so frightening that he would do anything to keep it away.

‍ ‍Edward got up and went to see what he was looking at, to see if he could be of any help. It’s okay, he said. Quiet news day anyway.  

‍ ‍That scares me more, Alan said. When things get too quiet, I’m always expecting the worst a day or two later.

‍ ‍Edward put his hand on Alan’s shoulder and gripped tight. Yeah, it’s a real mess these days.

‍ ‍Alan turned towards Edward. His eyes were sad and calm and couldn’t, if they tried, hide how he felt for the man. They nodded in unison as though everything between them was understood. My plan, if it was even a plan, fired back at me. I’d thought it was an addiction. I had forgotten the small abundant tenderness in even pretending to understand.

‍ ‍They sank into the couch cushions, saying nothing. In their uniforms, they looked like separated Russian nesting dolls. Alan turned on the TV once again and found what he could have expected: nothing, only the blue screen.

‍ ‍The wine was starting to make the room spin. I felt insulated, warmer than I had in months. I got up, thinking for a second I was going to fall, but I managed to stay on my feet. I went over to them. I kissed them both deeply on the lips. Alan first. I held his face between my hands so there was nowhere he could go. I couldn’t remember the last time we really kissed. When I turned to Edward, I fastened my left hand to Alan’s. Edward smooth face seemed neither expectant nor surprised. No one said anything. I kissed them both again. Alan ran his hands over me the way a stranger would. He seemed to forget Edward was sitting there and it might have continued that way, if Edward had said nothing, if he had done nothing, but he also reached towards me and their hands came together over my breasts and for a second something dangerous and dark passed between us. Alan tugged me back to his attention, pulling fiercely. He said my name. I never liked my name.

‍ ‍I slid from him onto the cold floor. Edward leaned backed into the cushions and tightly closed his eyes.Minutes later he was fast asleep.

‍ ‍Alan switched the TV off and went to stand at the door.  It’s really coming down, he said, maybe you’re right. Maybe by morning we’ll be covered.

‍ ‍No, I said, it’s nothing. Like you said, we’ve seen so much worse.

Three days later Billy came back to us banged up, his leg broken. The details of his accident were still unclear. Something about a tree he was climbing, a view he was chasing. He had a series of small cuts along the left side of his face, his lip was split, and he needed stitches to close a gash over his eye. The doctor predicted a small scar; Billy was over the moon. When Angelica came over to take care of him, he made up stories. He told her he wrestled a bear. He told her he fell trying to save a robin’s nest. She loved him enough to believe every iteration. I was furious at him and then furious at myself for being so angry. Every parental I told you so instinct I thought I’d be able to outrun, switched on. I couldn’t control them.  When had I gotten so old?

‍ ‍Gonna make quite a graduation picture, I said.

‍ ‍I’ll always remember it, he said.

‍ ‍You would’ve remembered it anyway.

‍ ‍He shrugged and limped around the house without crutches.

‍ ‍With Billy back in the house the sex became quieter, but continued, as it had every night since the storm. I couldn’t tell if we were trying to prove something to ourselves or to each other – either way I didn’t care. Alan never mentioned Edward again. He came home quickly after work. We went to sleep at the same time each night. We never talked about it, any of it.

‍ ‍Spring came. We knew it would. We turned the clocks ahead.

‍ ‍My father flew up for the graduation. Off the plane I couldn’t believe what I saw, my father, near seventy, a child of the northeast his entire life, the first out of all of us to burn at the beach, now tanned and browned, as though he had lived forever under southern skies. He bought Billy luggage and gave him an envelope of money. He said he wanted him to travel. He said he wished he could have done the same for me.

‍ ‍We all went and brought flowers to my mother’s grave.

‍ ‍For the two weeks my father was there, my father’s voice filled the house with a deep baritone. He sat with Alan every night to talk about the souring and divisive mood of the country. When he spoke, I remembered every command he had ever given me, every story he told.

‍ ‍Billy joined them. He had opinions and deep beliefs about the war and surprised them both with what he knew. They let him drink beer. He did his part, acting like the taste was new and he was honored to be so trusted. He abandoned Angelica the whole time his grandfather was there. She would call and plead with him, sometimes arriving to disappear into his room for unaccounted minutes, but mostly they stayed separated.

‍ ‍It’s dangerous, I told him, to neglect her like that.

‍ ‍He didn’t care. He had yet to lose anything he couldn’t get back or replace.

‍ ‍Alan had the satellite dish repaired but we never turned the TV on.

‍ ‍One night we got drunk. All of us. We laughed at anything everyone said and passed out one at a time. I dreamed that nothing would change, my father would stay, Billy would never leave. When I woke up in the morning, Alan and I were frighteningly alone. I pulled myself up from the couch. Alan remained asleep in the same chair he had held Billy, new and sick, all those years ago. I thought something terrible had happened. I thought time had pushed forward. I couldn’t get my bearings until I heard voices outside. My father and Billy were throwing a ball around the yard. Even barely mobile, Billy was graced with effortless agility. I stood on the porch without a jacket and watched them. Billy hopped after every ball. He never fell.

‍ ‍The grass was slippery and wet, and I thought it would be dirty and brown for a long time, a month at least, to forget the weight of so much snow.

---

Born and raised in the Catskills in New York, Marc Kaufman moved to Tokyo more than ten years ago to take a teaching position. His work has most recently appeared in Cleaver Magazine, -Ette Review, Narrative Magazine, and F(r)fiction Online. He has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is currently an associate professor at Tokyo's Sophia University, where he teaches writing and serves as the faculty editor for the student writing journal, Angles.

Karen Zlotnick

To the Replacement Dog

If you’re reading this, it’s because you have been taken in by The Girl and her mother who are mourning the loss of me. There’s no reason for modesty here; I was an integral part of The Girl’s development and at least partial healing from Her illness. But Her journey is not complete, and you must take over where I’ve left off. I’ll be at peace once this message is delivered.

She might seem older, but The Girl is only fifteen, and since I’ve known Her, She has suffered from a problem with food. Never laugh at this, though at times it will seem ridiculous to you–with your voracious appetite for anything that smells louder than a lemon. Make no mistake: The Girl wants to eat, but She is afflicted with fear. It started years ago with anything that could melt (butter, chocolate, cheese), but it spidered into other areas: sticky foods (honey, barbecue sauce, marshmallows, gum), crunchy foods (which could cause teeth to shatter), and fruits that must be peeled (bananas, kiwis, oranges). While you are outside licking deer scat, She will be fighting the urge to call a glass of water “dinner.”

You are a Newfoundland Dog, same as I was. Our reputation is love. Our character is love. Our bones, our muscles, our jowls are love. The Girl’s mother believes that God might actually exist because the Newfoundland exists. The fact that we suffered trauma in our past lives and were placed in Rescue makes us even godlier in the mother’s eyes. The mother might be right.

However, your past is the past. Perhaps, like I was, you were beaten by an owner for having an accident in the house and thrown into the icy yard for days. Right now, let go of that experience, do what you can to control your bladder, and overcome the impulse to wince when you hear the rustle of a newspaper. Perhaps you were once “corrected” at night in thick silence, dragged by chokehold out the door and into the darkness, an owl in the oak your only witness. Immediately, you must let go of the urge to cower any time you see a flashlight. Perhaps in this despicable circumstance, a bone or two cracked and your young body is already signaling that arthritis will color the years ahead. You have no choice but to work through the pain of it. That’s simply the way it has to be. In your new role, you will experience nothing but safety and love. Your trauma will become inconsequential.

The Girl, She is everything. Silence on thunderous days, mist when the air is dry, a speck of green when the ground has frosted. She will spend hours studying you to understand your preferences: ear rubs that morph into a full face massage; peanut butter off a spoon, not on celery; warm water after meals; a slicker instead of a comb. She will whisper her directions: “Stay here, and I'll be right back,” and “Thank you for letting me know about the delivery, and you can stop barking now.” She will bake what She calls Shareables, a recipe She created with us in mind. It contains some of our favorites: carrots, sweet potatoes, a pinch of parmesan. Sit with her on the living room rug and pretend to watch reruns of New Girl while you nibble on the soggy crackers. Try not to drool on her pajama pants.

In turn, you must study Her–Her moods, Her rage, Her elation–and remind Her that She is the reason you exist, that without Her, it’s possible, you would have grown old under the care of well-intentioned folks who could only afford to make you a bed of shavings in a chain link kennel among other dumped Newfs whose breathsongs mimic sorrowful wails.

Pay attention. The Girl will need you when She gets off the phone with a boy named Dagger. Put your snout under Her elbow when She clutches the hair on either side of Her head. When storms roll in, She might resist taking you for a walk, but it will make Her laugh when you shake off the rainwater and drench Her clothes. On weekends, take in how proud She is to introduce you to young children in strollers, how She says to their parents, “Oh, the friendliest!” Once in a while (because this can get old), if you see She’s a little bored, steal Her yellow baby blanket off Her bed. Don’t ever chew it. Just carry it around the house like you’ve scored a prize. She might look at you sternly, but She won’t mean it.

Understand this: The Girl has a simple and also complicated life. Her father is long dead, and Her mother is lovely but broken. Occasionally, The Girl will be late getting off the bus, and in order to be let outside, you’ll have to nudge Her mother’s hand as it droops off the side of the bed. Her mother will not ever get angry with you for doing this, but you’ll see in her eyes that she is a disappointment to herself. Lean into her legs once you come back inside. She’ll appreciate the gesture.

The mother believes she has nothing else in her life beyond her daughter. (This is a lot of pressure on both of them.) Often when the daughter comes home, the mother will pop out of bed and make it look like she’s been fixing a snack plate for hours. She lives for the look on her daughter’s face when she places one slice of muenster cheese on a lightly toasted English muffin and the timing is so exact that She can eat it before it begins to melt. They joke that the mother can read Her mind.

Sometimes you’ll notice that The Girl is aware of Her mother’s suffering. Her mother will talk aimlessly about getting her act together, about getting a part-time job, about volunteering at a local rescue. The mother will say she is thankful for the money her husband left them, but she feels purposeless. When the mother’s sadness feels suffocating–you’ll know this because The Girl will tug at the skin on Her neck–lie down so that your face rests on The Girl’s feet and your tail is under Her mother’s legs. Simultaneously, they will call you Our Rock. In this moment, it is better to close your eyes with humility than to dance with pride.

If the deer scat makes you vomit, aim for the floor, not the carpet.

The Girl is fragile, a single standing vase in an aftershock. When Her mother gathers enough strength to host a backyard gathering in summer, there’s a risk that the cupcakes’ frosting will begin to liquify in the sun. Though you likely will overheat from this–July in New York is a Newf’s worst month–don’t just walk, run to Her as if both your lives depend on it. Beg to share a cupcake with Her. Spin in circles, whine through the sides of your lips, lift a front paw as Her relatives cheer you on. “Please stop begging,” The Girl will say. But the fact is, everyone will think you’re adorable. When She caves in and kneels down to share Her double vanilla, make sure you only take half. Beam with pride when She stops shaking and licks melted frosting off Her finger.

There will be other occasions when you must insist on sharing the food in front of Her. These are opportunities to model food joy. You see She’s paralyzed by a homemade cinnamon bun? Don’t underestimate the power of a Cupid Shuffle happy dance. The popcorn Her mother wants to share is extra crunchy? Paws to the left, to the left, to the left. Paws to the right, to the right, to the right.

In the wild our ancestor wolves learned to be stoic. Weakness meant being cut out of the pack, left to die on wintry plains. Our reason for stoicism is different, my friend. Her life depends on it. So, for as long as you can, do your best to hide the signs of your own aging. Drink when you’re not thirsty, take your Metacam religiously, greet the neighbor’s puppy with more enthusiasm than you believe you can muster.

When The Girl cries because your hind legs have splayed out for the second time in a day, wag your tail immediately after She gets you on your feet. When She gets up in the middle of the night to make sure you’re still breathing, offer a little snore, especially if you don’t have it in you to move. When the decision is made to say goodbye, lay your giant head in her lap, and with your giant heart, say to Her that this is right, that you know She’s letting you go, not for Her, but for you. Take your last earthly breath knowing you’ve been so well loved.

In the years leading up to that goodbye, take mental notes of the glorious life you have with Her. We Newfs are here for only so long, and the next letter will be yours to write.

---

Born and raised in New York, Karen Zlotnick lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and their Newfoundland dog. Some of her work has been featured in Pithead Chapel, Typishly, jmww, Stonecoast Review, and Moon City Review. In addition, one of her stories was nominated for Best Small Fictions.

Matthew Jakubowski

The Lord in Action Behind the Counter

It’s a weird flex, man, and you’re barely even looking at it, you’ve been on your phone since I got here except for when you stared at that girl in the drive-thru instead of the huge gilt-edged Bible spread out on the table in front of you. Maybe you’re the manager of this Taco Bell on break showing your values or maybe this is just your lunchtime thing, hard to say, especially since I’m absolutely fried from driving eight hours solo to see family in Ypsilanti for Thanksgiving tomorrow, so maybe this actually is a church and in here my brain can perfectly simulate the experience of scarfing a Crunchwrap Supreme and soft-shell taco—actually two tacos—I ordered one, but the kid behind the counter gave me two, saying, “That’s on me, thanks for your patience, sir,” even though I only waited two minutes, before he shot back to work to keep this whole beautiful machine running smooth.

After I’ve eaten and refilled my Pepsi you finally start reading your Bible, maybe it’s Jesus and forgiveness or the plagues and ten commandments, either way you look tired and confused, you’re tapping both feet like you want to enjoy the Bible but it’s hard. I’ve got a couch in my sister’s basement waiting a few blocks away, then we’ll start cooking and—wait—am I supposed to invite you to Thanksgiving, is that what you’re angling for, sensing me watching you and wondering who you are?

Okay, maybe this has been a little set-up with the free taco, the Bible, the foot tapping, you all alone, trying to make me imagine I’ve got a choice so okay, I’ll bite—between you and the kid behind the counter, the kid wins. That kid is alive in the divine present seeing moments while he works so hard to go sneak people a free taco and he lets you do your pretend Bible-study and I get that you want to represent and I know the Good Book says judge not, so I won’t but I will say, for me, if I had to offer you anything, man, or send a good thought your way, I’d say for at least a minute or two look back there and watch the Lord in action behind that counter—just look at that hustle, look at that grace.

Big City Ghost

Ghost at the bus stop in a lime-green parka and silver snowboots pretending to be asleep. Ghost jumping up, running after the bus, and falling through a closed manhole.

Ghost winning every staring contest with the sewer alligators. Ghost subway surfing in a swimsuit, bursting out into daylight on top of the train and high-diving off a bridge, making no splash at all.

Ghost under the river watching fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Pious ghost on a lunch break in the lotus position three feet above the art museum steps. Ghost collecting garbage. Ghost in a cubicle. Ghost at the unemployment office trying to cheer people up, getting cursed out by an old lady with a rosary.

Ghost at the funeral home giggling in a showroom casket. Ghost hanging outside a hospital emergency room eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and laughing, then trying to calm down a bunch of angry families and ambulance-ghosts. Ghost in court, prepared to testify, but unable to be sworn in, hand passing through the Bible every stupid time.

Bored ghost reading Jane Austen on the subway and scowling. Ghost writing confessions in the best cafés, staring at sentences that almost seem true. Ghost with no memory of its death, dunking journal pages into yesterday’s lattes, watching truth turn to mush.

Ghost who hears and feels every last curse hurled at the landlords and the gas company. Ghost who figures out how to turn people’s heat and power back on, but can never figure out plumbing, which is impossible.

Ghost drawn to the park at night, quickly obsessed with watching things that happen only at 3 a.m. Ghost who sees too much but can’t stop looking, growing sick and invisible in an abandoned car. Brittle ghost who refuses to leave the city beaten and bitter. Ghost growing small to survive, hiding in the shadows of the ferns and the rats.

Ghost out in the street during a midnight thunderstorm, flowing back underground again with the rain and the garbage. Ghost humming an ancient song with other cherished souls surrendering themselves to the gloom of the sea.

---

Matthew Jakubowski (he/him) is a multi-genre writer based in Philadelphia. His debut chapbook of microfiction and flash, “Ghost in the Rain,” was published by Bottlecap Press in 2026. His stories appear in Identity Theory, Doric Literary, Boudin, Temple in a City, Scaffold Lit, Gone Lawn, Variant Lit, JAKE, and the Best Microfiction anthology. Links to his work are available at mattjakubowski.com/fiction

Susannah Rigg

Eight Stops Back

The first stop comes quickly. You barely have time to get yourself to your seat, lower deck, by the back window, when the bus begins to slow to let old passengers off, new passengers on.  You’d normally sit on the upper deck, but you don’t trust yourself with the stairs today. A woman carrying a chihuahua in a bag skuttles out of the rear doors. The little dog’s ears flap back, caught in the wind, making it appear startled. An elderly lady wearing a long black coat dawdles by the front door, digging around for her bus pass for so long that the driver hurries her on, “don’t worry about it love, I trust ya.”

‍ ‍Eight stops and then get off the bus. Count them so you don’t miss it. You repeat the mantra to be sure. Your head hasn’t righted itself since the phone call that morning. You look at the piece of paper in your hand, Farnham Street, Cherry Tree Elder’s Home. It was always eight stops away, she was always eight stops away, you never knew. Are you glad you never knew?

The bus pulls into the next stop, the breaks squeaking metal upon metal. A young guy sits down next to you, his headphones wrapped around his head giving him Mickey Mouse ears. You wait to be annoyed by his music but you realise you can’t hear it over the loud hum of the engine. You watch his head bop to the inaudible beat as he scrolls through his phone, looking intently at pictures of amps and mics. For a while you look too, until he turns his head just enough to let you know that he’d like you to stop. You stare out the window instead, repeating the number two to yourself, so you don’t forget. Two stops down, six to go.

The street passes by in a puddle of greys. It was raining that morning when your phone rang, the droplets trickling down the window in your kitchen. You’d been planning to stay in and work on the play you are writing, the one that was due last month, the one you already spent all the money from. Now you are on a bus heading along the road to your past. When would you get back to the play now this had been thrown into your world? When you answered that call you may as well have grabbed your script and thrown it into the air, letting it land, as a sombre confetti, wherever it pleased, to be trampled on, lost under the sofa. But then, that’s how life always felt with her, before.

Out of the window, you watch a man in a dark suit appear from a narrow alleyway and ponder how you wouldn’t have seen him if the bus had passed a few moments earlier. What if you had popped to the shop when the phone rang, missed the call? Would they have called back or chalked it up to a wrong number? Could you still be at home with a warm cuppa, browsing the internet while your play blinked at you from the corner of your screen waiting to be finished? Would you be enjoying some morning TV, watching other people’s lives, rather than being tossed around in your own?

Someone presses the bell and you repeat three over and over in your head and then wonder if you should wait for the bus to stop first in case you get confused and think four when the bus pulls in. Stop overthinking it. You’ve been on a bus before. You’re an adult.

At the third stop you notice a café. You’ve been there before, although you don’t remember ever coming to this area of the city as a child. You remember hot chocolates that tasted like muddy water and a croissant that was so hard you dropped it on the plate from a height just to hear the thud. It had made you laugh. She’d hissed at you to stop messing around though and told you to go up to ask for a new one. You were embarrassed, six years old and shy around adults, scared of them. Rightly so. You resisted, asked her to go, but she told you it was your croissant, your responsibility. You said, you’d just eat it stale. She screamed at you then. A few people turned to look and you scuttled up to the counter to ask for a new croissant from the angry-looking man, who threw another one into your tiny hands. You’d had a stomachache that night, you blamed the croissant. Misdirection was all you had.

You’ve never much liked responsibility as an adult. Maybe you used up your quotient as a child? She said you were like your dad, not a fan of responsibility. You believed her, until one day you realised you were just tired, so tired.

As the bus rushes into stop number four, dragging a wheel against the kerb, a string feels like it is being pulled around your heart, like those cuts of beef in posh pubs, ready to roast. Halfway there, halfway back to a life that you chose to leave. No, it wasn’t a choice, it was a necessity. It was survival. Stay and live with your lungs always working on restricted air or go and have a chance at something.

Had you made anything out of that ‘something?’ Sometimes you wondered. But you never regretted the decision, except when the guilt flooded in, except when the emails about Mother’s Day or the Christmas adverts caught you off guard. Then, you were left in puddles on the floor. A normal day could turn in an instant, forcing you back under the duvet from which you’d already struggled to emerge. Your mind played tricks, Christmases were ok, weren’t they? You had presents to open. Society played tricks she’s your mother, she gave you life. Oh yes, she gave you life and then sucked it back from you, using your heart to pump blood around her own, as if you owed her that.

An elderly man gets on at stop five, along with the scent of rancid chip oil from the kebab shop outside. A teenage girl in a baby-pink tracksuit gives up her seat so that he can sit his frail bones down. He drops into it without bending, his sinews no longer flexible enough to lower him with grace. His body showing him up. You wonder if he is alone. Who he has in this life? Who joins him for Christmas? You stare at his wrinkled face for clues, expecting the wrinkles to write out his sadness, instead you notice contentment scribbled in his brow.

The sun has come out now and it shines in through the bus windows, making a little rainbow on your lap. You place your hands on your denimed knees and try to hold the colour-filled arc, but it disappears against the lightness of your palms. You remember being told at school that you looked pale, maybe you were getting ill. You feigned feeling fine, even though a fever was rising, pooling sweat under your ponytail and dripping down your shirt collar. Illness wasn’t tolerated in your house. Once, hallucinating from fever, you finally called out, convinced you were dying, not wanting to die alone and go to little kid heaven. No one came.

As the bus rolls into stop six —or is it five, no it’s six, you are sure it is six—it glides to a stop as if the driver has found his stride. A flustered looking woman drags a pram and a toddler in through the back doors. Standing bodies move to make space, some taking it as their cue to go and sit upstairs out of the way of the elderly and the babies. The woman locks the pram into place and pulls a hand through her knotted hair, the bags draped over the pram handles bulging like the ones under her eyes. She leans against the inside of the bus, smiles weakly at the old man. The toddler asks questions and flicks at the toy that is hanging on the side of the pram. She stops him by placing her hand over his and flashing him a warning look. The chaos around them whispers with the secret you already know, motherhood is impossible. You have shirked that responsibility too. Or was it taken from you? Depleted from mothering both her and you. Scared of patterns repeating.

‍ ‍Your mother had a stroke they told you on the phone as the rain pattered outside like any other rainy day, as the smell of toast from breakfast still lingered in the kitchen air, May not survive it, they said. Your coffee bubbled on the stove. Next of kin, Had to let you know. You stared at the photo of you and your friends celebrating the opening night of your first play. You had wished that night that there had been family there to share it too. It's complicated you said down the phone, as the guilt rose up above your nose and mouth, pulling you under water, a sensation you recognized. We understand. They’d heard it all before, a relief and a mockery of years of acute pain.

The bus clatters into stop seven and your head bumps against the window with a muted thud. When did you move so close to the glass? You spent so much of your life making yourself small, it comes naturally, but it no longer feels comfortable. Taking tiny breaths for your entire childhood, it took years of training to fill your chest as if life wasn’t yours to absorb, as if someone else needed the air more than you.

Your voice too, always so quiet. The actors performing your first play had taught you how to project. You’d thought you might explode from all the stagnant, crushed down words that seemed to rise up from inside you as you called out across the empty theatre, as if they were being pumped from you, like alcohol from the stomach of a drunk.

You see stop eight approaching.

“Excuse me,” you say to the people next to you. Your voice comes out as a whisper. They don’t hear you.

“Excuse me,” you say again forcing the words out.

You go to stand up but your whole body is heavy, you can’t lift your arm to grab onto the seat to pull yourself up. Your legs have no strength.

“Sorry, do you want to get off?” the man next to you wearing a buttery coloured Shalwar Kameez asks. When had the boy with the headphones left?

You open your mouth to say yes, instead you hear yourself say “No.” Your voice sounds different. You let go of the seat in front and make a show of settling back down. “Sorry, I thought we were at a different stop.”

The bus pulls in. You watch each passenger as they get off, searching for your face among them, sure you will find it, but you don’t. You chose something else. No, not a choice, a necessity, the only way you get to live.

The door closes. The space on the bus feels like it is expanding, a sponge dipped in water, you grow again alongside it, taking up your rightful place on your seat. The bus pulls away from stop eight, rushes on to stop nine. Your mind wanders to your play, you know now, how it will end. 

---

Susannah Rigg is a writer, editor and writing mentor. After over a decade as a travel writer, she now devotes herself to writing fiction. She is Assistant Fiction Editor at Wallstrait Literary Journal and her short stories have been published in Inkfish, South 85, Westchester Review and others. Susannah recently relocated to London after 15 wonderful years living in Mexico and is finding her hometown to be far more beautiful than she remembered.

Rachel Attias

Pond Scum

            Ryan and I have our fingers threaded through the chain link of the barbed wire fence. We’re staring at the pond that Libbie jumped into two-and-a-half minutes ago and hasn’t surfaced from yet. People used to call it The Pond by the Fish Hatchery, back when it was a place to picnic and play chicken while our parents held our little siblings up by the bellies so they could splash around with floaties on their arms. Now the hatchery is shut down and nobody calls the pond anything, except for Walker Gold and Metallurgic Corp, which drained it and lined it with something plasticky and permanent, and re-christened it Tailings Pond 2.

            “She’s dead,” Ryan says, and claws at his hair. “Oh my fucking god.”

            “She’s not dead!” I grab his arm and pull it down to his side, squeeze his hand tight. Libbie’s not dead. She’s going to surface now, and now, and now.

            The water in Tailings Pond 2 is an unnatural, vivid green. It’s cloudy like a cup someone has been using to rinse their brush after painting poison treefrogs. The green has long since closed around the space where I last saw Libbie’s body. The ripples she made have stopped.

            We don’t have a plan for this. Here’s how it’s supposed to go: Libbie jumps in the water and comes out a second later, and pretty soon she starts displaying the early symptoms of cyanide poisoning, which are headaches, dizziness, shortness of breath, vomiting, et cetera, and Ryan and I take her to the hospital and we call the local press and they report our protest against Walker Gold, who’ve been pulling rocks and ore out from the hill outside town, processing them with cyanide, and dumping their waste chemicals into the pond we used to swim in, which is probably leaking into our drinking water. National news syndicates will pick up the story because folks pay attention when an American teenager puts her life on the line—all that potential, potentially wasted—and Mark Ruffalo will petition Congress, and they’ll shut down the gold mine, and we’ll all be saved.

            It was always going to be Libbie who jumped in. We agreed it had to be a girl for feminism’s sake, and Libbie is blonde in a way that will elicit sympathy even from the staunchest right-wingers. I knew Libbie’s counterargument—"but you’re so pretty, too, Nat!”—was perfunctory, but I still tingled when she said it. Anyway, I’m way too chickenshit to do this. Plus, there’s a part of me that knows the whole design is flawed since nobody actually gives a fuck about American teenagers at all.

            At last, Libbie’s head and shoulders pop out into the cool Saturday morning air. Her skin is extra pale, almost glowing next to the green water. She’s gasping for breath. Ryan and I slip through the hole we already cut in the fence and we get in the water despite our revulsion, despite the way our shoes sink into the silty bottom past the ankle with each step, and then past our shins and up to our knees as we get waist-deep, until Libbie is in our arms, and she’s laughing hysterically, and lime green water is streaming off all of us, and weird, oily droplets cling to her throat like pearls.

            We get back to land and I wring out Libbie’s hair. I pat her cheeks with my one dry sleeve. I help her back into her jeans, her socks, her sweatshirt, her jacket. I glance at Ryan who, as the boy of the group, doesn’t get this privilege. I tell myself that at least I have this one thing he doesn’t, even as Libbie searches the sky for his face until he’s looming above us both, asking over and over again, “Do you feel the poison? Do you feel it yet?”

            Libbie pushes me off and sits up. “I went somewhere,” she says. She looks at the pond. “In there. Through the bottom. Another world.”

            “Another… world?” I ask.

            “A nether world,” she corrects.

            “The poison’s kicking in!” Ryan throws his hands up.

            Libbie says she got turned around when she was underwater, like she’d been roiled in waves even though the pond was completely still. She thought for sure she’d drown—“and then we’d really get their attention!”—but she surfaced and sucked in mouthfuls of air, not caring that she was swallowing the green cyanide water, too, because actually it wasn’t green, it was a normal dark blueish brownish color and she felt something against her leg and when she looked down the pond was thick with seaweed and a little fish swam past her ankle, meaning it was thick with life in other words, and when she looked up Ryan and I were on the shore waving her in, and we sat on our towels and ate salt and vinegar chips until our tongues hurt.

            “You have to see it,” she says.

            Ryan and I look at the water. We look at Libbie. We don’t say it, but I know we’re both thinking that the cyanide is working faster than we expected.

            “I’m not poisoned!” Libbie says. “I’m fine. Trust me. Please,” she says, and then grabs onto Ryan’s arm. She looks into his eyes. I get the feeling I get all the time, when Libbie texts me or touches me or looks at me, like a wet wool blanket has been wrapped tightly around my heart and is dragging it down, painfully, to my guts. Ryan thinks for a moment and says, “Fuck it,” and takes off his sweatshirt, because even though he doesn’t love Libbie she’s still a wet girl pressed against him.

            He strips down to his boxers and takes tiptoe steps through the mucky shore until he’s at the edge of the water and then he’s in it, and gone, and I feel so sick standing next to Libbie, who’s watching the place where Ryan used to be, that I know I’ll go in if he makes it out alive. When he comes up spluttering, I’m already in my bra and panties and splashing into the cold water myself, and it smells metallic and farty and I blow bubbles out through my nose until there’s no oxygen left in my lungs and then I keep on going, and when I rise to the air there are spots in my eyes and I can’t see anything and have to tread water until they go away.

            All I see at first is a gray day, the water around me still green, still farty, and somebody alone on the shore. I swim closer. It’s a middle-aged lady who looks like me, wearing my oversized green hoodie, except it fits her better. She’s staring at the water and her posture is bad and she just kind of looks like one big frown. She gives me a little nod of recognition, and I dive back into the water and swim as fast as I can to the real world.

            “It’s a nether world that gives you what you want!” Ryan is shouting to me even as I’m still dog paddling back to land. It gave Libbie a clean pond, and it showed Ryan himself and Katie V. sharing a picnic blanket, on a date. Libbie is sorting and passing us back our clothing so efficiently I can tell she’s trying not to cry. On the way to the hospital Ryan asks, “What did you see, Nat?”

            “Same as Libbie,” I say.

            No news outlets covered our protest, not even the school newspaper, who said they “couldn’t condone trespassing.” What happened instead was that Ryan told Katie V. the whole story about the nether world at the bottom of Tailings Pond 2. The night she became his girlfriend, they went to the pond together and jumped in. Afterwards she told all her friends. Some of them tried it, and they told their friends, and the rumor spread, and suddenly adults were diving into the pond too. Libbie and I thought for a couple days that this was it—the whole town would get sick, and finally we’d have Congress, and Mark Ruffalo, and everything. Some people did get dizzy and threw up but nobody paid any attention to that, and pretty quickly Walker Gold found out what was going on and put in a new fence, this one with a gate and an employee with a laptop so people could e-sign waivers and use their credit cards to pay for entry and rent towels for an extra three bucks. Ryan and Katie V. actually worked the Gold gate together, for minimum wage, through the end of high school.

            In the beginning the lines were longer. Some people would swim to the nether world, swim out, and run straight home. Divorces in our town and the surrounding areas skyrocketed that year, as did the number of affairs—which, Libbie pointed out, really meant that the number of known affairs rose, but probably the same amount had been happening all along. She and I would sit in camp chairs at the top of a hill and watch the circus from afar, passing a pair of binoculars back and forth. I was aware of the infinitesimal drift of the lenses as she pressed them to her eyes, how they lingered not on the pond but on the gate where Ryan and Katie V. laughed and made eyes at each other over customers’ heads. Libbie’s bitterness ran off her in cyanide ripples, and I tried in vain to mop it up.

            People quit their jobs.

            Three of our teachers walked out of school and were never seen again.

            A few bands were started. Some bad art was made.

            Mostly, though, people didn’t do anything after they came dripping out of the water. But as they toweled off they had a particular, private look on their faces you’d see flashes of every now and then, forever.

            Things leveled off pretty quickly. The line dwindled to a handful of people a day, the ones who kept coming back. They stood around in all kinds of weather and looked stooped and sad, before and after. They looked like the old guys who waited outside for the pub to open at three p.m. Some of them were those guys. The pub actually lost some business to Walker Gold. It was around then that Walker Gold instituted their subscription plan. You paid a flat monthly rate, which let you enter the pond any time and pay by the hour by scanning your member card on the way in and out. If anyone was tempted to swim to the nether world and never come back, Walker Gold assured them that they would be collecting dues on the other side, too.

            Libbie got bored of watching, bored of everything. Every time she said the word “bored” I knew she was trying not to cry. I knew she would leave, and she did, like Ryan, like most people, after high school. She doesn’t come home for holidays.

            I’m not one of those sad souls on the Walker Gold subscription plan, in case you were wondering. I only jumped into Tailings Pond 2 that one time. Sometimes the memory of the me I saw on that gray day fills me with horror, but more often she comforts me. She understands what I’m still learning, which is that in the end my loving Libbie never had much to do with being loved back. One day soon I’ll stand on the shore and look at the water and my own teenaged head will pop up like a buoy, and all I’ll do is nod. I’ll cross my arms in my green hoodie, and try to recall that feeling, any feeling, which could have compelled me to swim on such a chilly day.

---

Rachel Attias is a writer, educator, and editor based in Portland, OR. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Porter House Review, X-R-A-Y and more, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. She holds an MFA from Oregon State University and teaches composition at Portland Community College and creative writing workshops around the Pacific Northwest. She is at work on her first novel.

Eirene Gentle

Independence day

Phyllis was 52 when she became a mushroom. It was a sensible decision, even her kids approved. They held her hand, bleached and withered from decades of exposure when she informed them. She was hard to see through the glare but her voice was firm and anyway Phyllis was more halo than mom since they were teenagers. A kind of visual psychotropic, or headlights of an oncoming truck if you’re churlish. She piled on clothes and makeup, doused herself in vats of ice but still beamed like a solar flare. She couldn’t contain it.

At 42 her sweat glands dried. Phyllis smelled like roast pork as she convected and passed out if no one hosed her down. The kids wore protective suits against the splatter.

Her tear ducts dried at 46. Unable to cry, Phyllis let out a kind of hiccup at her mother’s funeral and saved cremation costs by draping over the casket in the backlot of the funeral home, hic-moaning ‘mom’ until the everything was ash.

Ordinary people spend 3 years of their lives just blinking but there was no point in that for Phyllis so she saw everything. Flickers of deceit, the tiny tells of worst selves exposed daily in thousands of unblinking nanoseconds. She was like a psychological x-ray at the office, so uncomfortable they asked her to work from home. Then she was fired. There wasn’t much to pack up from her desk. She dumped it all in the trash just past the revolving door.

She made dry sounds like ceiling mice when she walked.

She stopped crossing her legs in case of fire.

Coincidentally her husband, Darren had been a cloud for a decade. Frequently stormy but cirrus when she needed him, he rumbled when hungry, puffed like soft serve when happy and only rained when he was out. Anyway, he was useless.

The family struggled. Darren was too changeable for regular work and no one was hiring a nimbus. Even her emails had a disquieting glow. Phyllis earned what she could through black-market cremations, happy to ease the burden of cash-strapped families but most of her dead got that way through extralegal means. Clients drove her to dubious locations in white or black vans where she smelled blood or solvents but they paid well and were usually polite. She liked that they didn’t ask questions. They liked that she was thorough and smelled deliciously of spareribs.

The job brought her to a lot of scenic places. Rivers, lakes, snowy mountains and especially woods. She loved the darkness of forest. Whispering canopy, sheltered from the broiling sun and moon. She dug her charred toes into cool earth, ran blistered fingers through pine needle carpets. Surprisingly soft. But mushrooms were the most comforting of all. So tenderly luminescent she hiccupped. Acres of cottony mycelium far from cruel sun.

Her farewell party was thrown on fireworks night so no one questioned the few extra flares. Phyllis got drunk and danced until morning. Goodbye to all this, she thought and dreamed of clammy soil with wide-open eyes.

A few of her regulars picked her up at dusk. Five vans slow-driving in a row, a thoughtful tribute. Her kids waved from their door while Darren rained over the lake.

It was a somber affair but not maudlin. Her clients wore black and called her ‘the best cremator we ever had,’ with an emotion that would’ve burst her tear glands if she had any. She settled on springy emerald moss by a chirruping creek. Everything peppery, damp and growing.

We’re the only things that burn

My timer, set for 1 minute and 31 seconds, begins counting down at exactly 1:31 pm.

A brief moment of serendipity. What to do with such a chance?

~

My brother had a firefly that danced on a pin. I don’t know where he found it. He pulled me from my bed to show me, down the small hall to the left, three normal steps for him, giant ones for me. His lamp splashed like chocolate coins in gold crinkly paper that disappeared when he flicked it off. My feet itched from cold. I was about to whine when something tiny bounced on his little wood desk.

‘So pretty!’

‘Don’t scare it!’

He held back my hair to stop it swooshing down on the firefly dancing teeny and green on the edge of a safety pin.

~

We’re born now, in this era of decline. Everyone feels it. We attack each other with nails and teeth in our cages. Any weapons we find. After killing everything around us, it’s natural we’d turn on ourselves. It’s never otherwise.

What to do, then?

What to do? 

~

My brother had three names in his short life:

1 - Len-Len, a cute approximation of Leonard, from birth to age four. Len-Len with a broad, placid face that puckered when I was born.

2 – Leo, from four into his twenties, the big brother I knew best though I didn’t. Know him. Leo walked me to school sometimes. No-talk walks. Just traffic blur and the skip-scuff of my sneakers on the sidewalk.

3 –Leonard, after he died, in emails from colleagues, documents and official papers. Leonard was paystubs and utilities bills, the ghost trail of a stranger. He was ‘close this account, please, the accountholder is dead.’ Spitting it out multiple times a day. Dying is an official act. Institutions insist on involvement.

~

The primitive mind is disturbing. For what reason did they learn to count? What was the moment someone needed five of something and instead of just bashing a head they invented a way to communicate the notion of five?

Five was what Leo said when he didn’t have a real answer. Five = I don’t know.

What’s the name of that tree? Who made you the boss?

‘How did your brother die?’

‘Five.’

~

Death certificates are incomprehensible. I don’t know if you know that. Something is clearly written but the mind can’t keep it in place. Letters scatter. I keep Leonard’s on hand for institutions to gnaw but I don’t know what it says.

I waft through his boxes, closets and shelves, trying to see what he kept versus didn’t throw out. Did the smushed paper cup fall accidentally and unnoticed or touch the lips of an early love, carry vital DNA, represent his first sale? Was it Leo’s or Leonard’s?

At night cords and cables slither to my bed and attack. One slips around my wrist, another my ankle. I hang from my arms or trussed like a hammock. Upside down, dangling. Blood heats my face, my skull shatters. I think I’ll die from the pressure but they know when to release me. I wake flushed and aching with my phone beside me. Battery 100 per cent. 

~

Leo was nine when we found out he couldn’t sweat. He’d get hot, red. Eventually he’d faint. They called it anhidrosis and said there’s no cure but it disappeared when was 15. How did it feel when moisture finally oozed from his pores? The humidity of it. The unleashing. Did he drip six years out in one go or just a little at a time? 

There was no celebration of the occasion but Leo needed something stuck inside him so anger stacked in. He piled it like firewood. He was his own effigy.

When Leonard died I tried to light up all he owned. House, garage, boxes, anything. I wanted flames visible to passing planes. But inferno is against city ordinances. City ordinances are like cables, I hang in them for days. 

 ~

Numerologically 1:31 = 5. 1+1+3=5.

1:31 and 1:31 is two fives. Two I don’t knows. Do they cancel each other out? Does I don’t know + I don’t know = knowing?

What to do with such a chance?

What to do? 

~

When Leo’s firefly danced I wanted one of my own. I wanted to hold it in my hand and feel it’s yellow-green kick, bounce, wave, step. I wanted to brag ‘my brother has a firefly and it dances on a safety pin.’ Like a fairy tale.

But Leo flicked on his lamp and pushed me out in the hall.

‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘You can’t hold light.’

---

Eirene Gentle writes lit, mostly little, usually from Toronto, Canada.

Elizabeth Rosen

Content Warning

This story contains a number of potential trigger topics, including:

Unwanted Sexual Attention

Misogyny

A Really Badly Stubbed Toe

Stalking

A Toaster That Startles When the Toast Pops Up.

Sexual Assault

This story also has content that may be emotionally challenging for those who have:

Encountered a co-worker who catches you when you snag your toe on a chair wheel and stumble.

Encountered a co-worker who misinterprets gratitude.

Dealt with a co-worker making repeated overtures, but is awkward so you initially feel sorry for him.

Experienced a second, unwanted invitation to go out with him.

Given an awkward but polite decline.

Received yet another invitation to watch the game together this weekend in a faked but-we’re-just-friends tone.

Been forced to manufacture a gently delivered excuse.

This story also contains graphic descriptions of: 

A rose left on your desk with no note.

A Fisher Price Little Person propped against your office telephone, its frozen smile turned toward you.

A neon blue Koosh ball left on your seat.

A pack of Pop Rocks taped to your computer screen with a winking smiley face drawn on it.

Male colleagues who shrug and say to just ignore it.

Please be aware that this work also contains potentially upsetting descriptions of:

A series of phone calls with no one on the other end of the line.

A sense of being watched.

A knock at the door in the middle of the night. An empty doorstep.

A sound in the attic that resembles neither squirrels, nor mice.

A breathless call to 911.

A perfunctory search of the house by the police. A bored officer taking a statement.

The purchase of a deadbolt.

Hours lost to reading online discussions about whether a gun or Doberman is the more effective deterrent.

The purchase of a second deadbolt.

Panic attacks whenever you have to enter your home after dark.

Hours lost to exploring how to purchase a Taser.

Moreover, the story has content that might not be suitable for some readers, such as:

The co-worker with eyes as black as a shark’s knocking on your office door and inviting you to have a drink after work. Again.

A blunt refusal. A warning to leave you alone.

A period of uncontrollable trembling in the ladies room that ends on your knees in front of the toilet, throwing up.

A rose, the bloom carbonized black, left on the doormat.

A breakfast appliance that makes you scream in fright when its timer dings.

Finally, the reader should know that this story deals with:

The feeling of a sharp-object pressed into the space between your shoulder blades as you unlock your car door.

The smell of the heat-degraded fabric of the back seat your face is pressed into.

The grip of strong fingers at the base of your skull.

The sound of nothing at all, after the zipper.

The brush burn on your forehead. The bruises on the back of your neck. The flash of a camera too close to your body in the E.R.

The painful glare of fluorescent lights as you listen to the resident on the other side of the curtain give the police officers a description of your injuries.

The knowledge that you will never be able to read a story again without first reading the trigger warnings.

---

Colorwise, Elizabeth Rosen is an autumn. She mourns the loss of Tab and still wants her MTV. Her stories have appeared in journals such as the North American Review, Baltimore Review, Pithead Chapel, and Flash Frog, and been nominated for the Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net awards. Her story “Maw Maw’s Cheese Balls” is the 2026 winner of the Raleigh Review Flash Fiction contest. Find more of her work at www.thewritelifeliz.com.

Joel Tomfohr

Triples

Inside the heart is a chamber but not a cell. Or maybe it is a cell. A red blood cell and the whole thing a fist. Do I write a horror story about a hospital? Yes, I do. There is a walking cadaver in the corridor. He is me. He died in the hills with the coyotes and the vultures.

When I go home, I also stay in the hospital with myself. That means that there are three of me. My cadaver and I go down to the cafeteria, scavenging for food even though we are not hungry. We are entombing ourselves for the evening. We sit at a table. My cadaver looks at me and I look back at him. His eye sockets are empty. He has a bruise on his right cheek from punching himself in the face. The rays of light from the streetlamps are scimitars.

Back at home I am watching TV with my wife and the dogs. We cuddle. I feel her warm body and I would never let the cadaver come between me and her. I am in the hospital taking care of the cadaver.

How’s it going?

It is good.

What do you want?

I want your family.

Why?

I will tell you why:

See my nightmare. A litany of horrors. My stomach is a wet rag being wrung out. Save me from my pain.

I watch the cadaver walk the hospital corridors. First floor, second. Third floor, fourth. I would like to 5150 my cadaver, bit I think that one day he will 5150 me. I see him outside room B. I join a religious cult when I am four. Praise the Lord! Submit to corporeal punishment. Pull my pants down. Now my underpants. He spanks my bottom. A cadaver now hug my dad. He loves me. I tell myself in the hospital See him hug me while I wail. Take me to the hospital. I know what it’s like to be dead and live at the same time.

Back at the house, the living room is washed in blue television light and the dogs are curled up with us on the couch and we are curled up with each other and my wife has no clue that I am also a cadaver in the hospital.

---

Joel Tomfohr's chapbook, A Blue Hour (Bottlecap Press), was a finalist for the 2025 Orison Chapbook Prize. work can be found in Expat Press, Rejection Letters, Farewell Transmission, Maudlin House, and many others. He lives in the Bay Area.

J.R. Angelella

Cyclone

1.

The last time Noah saw Joy she was his girlfriend. It was Coney Island, and they rode the Wonder Wheel because she refused to ride the Cyclone.

“I’ve never been good at being scared,” she said. “I can’t commit to that.”

“Fear is only the absence of humor,” he said.

The Cyclone rose behind the park like something old enough to remember time.

“Then you must live an entirely fearful life.”

“Turn your frown upside down.”

“Don’t beat me with child psychology.”

Noah ate a Nathan’s hot dog with sauerkraut and spicy mustard. Joy licked a lemon Italian ice from a paper cup with a little wooden spoon until the ice went soupy and she drank it. They shared watered-down daiquiris out of plastic flutes while walking the cracked planks of the boardwalk, the ocean to their right, all pitch and muscle beneath the dark, and the rides to their left flickering like a cheap heaven.

They stopped to watch two street crews dance-battle to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.” This, thought Noah, was either art or tax evasion. Maybe both. All one needed, apparently, was a speaker, some athletic children, and an empty bucket for tips. The crowd cheered in uneven bursts, deciding who won not by anything measurable but by whoever made them yell loudest.

The dance-battle, said a teenage boy nearby, was epic.

One team twisted and dropped and spun, their limbs turning like garlic knots. The other answered with backflips and windmills and a lot of face. It was all very Coney Island’s West Side Story. Noah wasn’t particularly interested, but Joy was, so he feigned enthusiasm. He clapped when cued by the teenage boy. He nodded. He said, “wow,” in the proper places.

When one team clearly won, Noah cheered for them.

Joy, predictably, cheered for the team that lost.

“I guess this means opposites attract,” he said, leaning in for a kiss.

“We’re more alike than you think,” she said, sucking melted daiquiri through a straw.

After the crowd began to disperse, the youngest dancer from the losing team — a kid, probably thirteen or fourteen — walked up to the captain of the winning team, who was older, maybe nineteen, maybe twenty, and flashed a knife.

He stabbed her in the thigh.

“Oh no,” Noah said.

Joy laughed, unaware of what had happened.

“How does it feel to have humor?” she said. Then, mocking him: “Oh no.”

Blood pumped hot and immediate through the captain’s tights. She stumbled and dropped to the planks. The crews exploded into a clumsy fight, all elbows and panic and flailing loyalty. Cops on foot and horseback stormed through the chaos, breaking it apart and tackling dancers in batches. The kid who started it all rode away standing on the back pegs of someone else’s bicycle.

“There goes the boy,” Noah said.

“It was a girl,” Joy corrected him. “And it happened because they lost. Nobody likes to lose.”

This was Sunday. Six days ago. They were not asked for a statement, and neither of them offered one. On the walk back to the Stillwell Avenue station, Joy asked, rhetorically, how it was possible she had never heard “Smooth Criminal” before. This disturbed her more than the stabbing.

“Everyone knew the words,” she said.

“Everyone pretends to know the words,” Noah said.

“Everyone knew the music.”

“You’re right,” he said. “Everyone did know the music.”

She did not laugh at his sarcasm.

“Next time,” he said, “the Cyclone.”

“I really don’t think,” she said, “there will be a next time.”

As the F train pulled away from the ocean, he kissed the back of her hand and sang quietly, “It was Sunday. What a black day.”

She let him keep her hand but turned her face toward the window.

That was the part he kept revisiting. Not the knife. Not even the blood. It was the hand. How she let him keep it without squeezing back.

2.

The man checking into the bedroom across the hall from Noah introduced himself as Large Charlie.

He was, according to him, seven-foot-two and four hundred pounds, though Noah had no way of verifying either figure or was too tired to challenge them. Large Charlie smelled like sausage pizza and discount cologne. Sweat shined across his skin without ever fully rolling free. He dragged a large black suitcase behind him and greeted the technicians as if he were a regular at a resort.

“I love this place,” he shouted to Noah across the hall as Tech Crystal fastened a plastic hospital bracelet around his wrist.

“This is his first time,” Tech Crystal said, nodding at Noah.

Large Charlie looked him over with interest.

“I love this place,” he repeated. “Best place in Manhattan, if you can get past the electrodes.”

The hallway of the New York Sleep Institute was carpeted, anonymous, and too brightly lit. Every door looked the same. Every room had two narrow beds, one desk, one chair, and the kind of television mounted high in a corner no one ever watched voluntarily. The whole place felt less medical than disciplinary, as if children with bad habits had once been sent here to be corrected.

“What are your problems?” Large Charlie asked. “Most people have more than one.”

“Sleepwalking,” Noah said.

“That’s a symptom, not a problem.”

“I don’t know then.” Noah pressed through his confusion at the question. “What are yours?”

“Sleep apnea and night terrors,” Large Charlie said, opening his suitcase. “Which is a nice way of saying my body tries to murder me in my sleep.” He unpacked with reverence: slippers, a folded robe, three over-sized Henleys, sweatpants, a travel pillow of unusual girth, earplugs, his own soap. “Did you know,” Large Charlie said, “the average person swallows six spiders a year in their sleep?”

“That can’t be true.”

“Afraid so.”

“Not possible.”

“Ten might be pushing it,” Large Charlie said. “But six…six is totally doable.” He stopped unpacking and wiped his giant hand across his forehead, clearing away sweat. “Six is a fucking lot of spiders.”

Noah decided immediately he did not want to be part of that statistic.

“Who’s counting these spiders?” Noah asked.

“No idea.”

“Based on how many people?”

Large Charlie looked up. “The question isn’t how many people. The question is how would they know?”

Noah thought about it and nodded in agreement. He wished they would stop talking about eating spiders now.

“What do you do for a living, neighbor?” Large Charlie asked, pulling off a sweat-staining t-shirt. His upper body didn’t look fat. He looked like the mythical creature.

“I’m a bankruptcy analyst,” Noah said. It was lie. He was not. He always lied when asked questions. “What about you?”

“I’m an exterminator,” Large Charlei said, rubbing his belly.

Noah didn’t even smile.

“What is it?” Large Charlie asked.

“You like to tell stories,” Noah said.

Large Charlie nodded and turned to Tech Crystal, setting electrodes on Large Charlie’s chest now. “Skeptic,” he shouted. “Tech Crystal, add that to your chart. This man right here doesn’t believe in truth.”

3.

Earlier in the week, a doctor diagnosed Noah with acute somnambulism.

“Put simply,” the doctor said, “severe sleepwalking.”

“Impossible,” Noah said. “I don’t sleepwalk.”

“That is often the opinion of sleepwalkers.”

“I think I would know if I got up and roamed around.”

“Would you?”

There were, in fairness, some recent incidents.

One night he woke standing barefoot at the kitchen sink, eating a square of feta cheese with chopsticks. Another night he woke on the couch with one leg crossed over the other, a men’s magazine in his lap opened to an article ranking the best hot dog stands in America. And yet another night he woke in the hallway of his apartment building urinating on his neighbor’s welcome mat. The mat said, in cheerful script: Good Guests Shed Their Shoes. He was aiming for all of the G’s.

After this incident, he called his therapist and begged for an emergency appointment. She sat with him through the details. The feta. The magazine. The hallway. The mat. The G’s.

“This has never happened before?” she asked.

“Not unless I’ve been incredibly efficient about forgetting it.”

And so, she referred him to the sleep specialist. And the sleep specialist referred him to the Institute.

“Likely causes include stress,” the doctor said. “A sudden lifestyle change. Anxiety. Substance use. Sleep deprivation. Any of these ring a bell?”

“I don’t even need a daily vitamin,” Noah said.

“That’s not really the defense you think it is.”

When the session ended, his therapist stood and walked him to the door. Before he left, she said, “I have never seen you be this honest before.”

He almost turned back to ask what she meant by that. Instead, he thanked her and went downstairs and called Joy.

She didn’t answer.

He hadn’t seen her since Coney Island.

Three days after that, she texted: I think you want me around because I make you feel like a person who has a life. That’s not the same thing as love.

He read the text six times before not responding.

She didn’t text again.

That had been enough, apparently, to teach his body the ancient art of sleep escape.

4.

The New York Sleep Institute sat between Ninth and Tenth Avenue on Fifty-Fifth Street in a building that looked like accountants might work there. By ten-thirty Noah had been wired with electrodes. Tech Crystal, a dental hygienist during the day, attached leads to his scalp and chest while Tech Dawn, a kindergarten teacher during the day, explained the bathroom protocol in a voice so calm it could have narrated executions.

“Try to sleep normally,” Tech Dawn said.

As if that were an option.

Through the thin wall he could hear Large Charlie speaking to himself in full conversational cadence. “I am relaxed,” Large Charlie said. Then, after a pause: “I am extremely relaxed.” Then: “Spiders aren’t real.”

Noah lay on the narrow bed in socks and an institutional T-shirt, staring at the ceiling. The monitors beside him glowed and clicked. There was no television. He had no book. He only had himself, which was clearly part of the problem.

It was sometime after midnight when he finally slept.

Suddenly, he was back at Coney Island. The boardwalk was empty. Not the normal bustle of things. No dancers. No tourists. No laughter. The newer rides glowed neon in the distance. And the Cyclone stood above it all. A giant in the night. Rising up against it all.

Joy stood by the Cyclone this time.

“You ready?” he asked.

She looked at the Cyclone rising and dropping. “I told you,” she said. “I’m bad at being scared. I really wasn’t kidding about it.”

“Fear is the absence of humor.”

“You keep saying that like it means something to me. I assure that it doesn’t.”

“It should mean everything to you,” he said.

“No,” she said. “It’s just something you say when you don’t want to admit you’re frightened.”

He tried to laugh but couldn’t.

The train rolled into the station. Empty. They climbed aboard. The bar dropped across their laps. The wooden car lurched forward and began to climb. Below them, the boardwalk shrank. The ocean widened. The whole city became a carbon copy of itself.

At the top, the train paused. The air changed. Joy turned and looked at him. “Why didn’t we ride this before?” she asked.

“Because you were afraid.”

She smiled, but not kindly. “No,” she said. “Because you were.”

Then the tracks vanished. The front of the train tipped into blackness.

Noah woke standing in the hallway of the sleep clinic with electrode wires dragging from his chest like seaweed.

Large Charlie stood in his doorway watching. “Sleepwalker,” Large Charlie shouted.

Noah looked down the long hall. Covered in fluorescent light.

“What was I doing?” he asked.

Large Charlie shrugged. “Heading for the stairs. Said something about going to the Cyclone.”

The technicians descended fast, ushering him gently but firmly back into bed. No one seemed alarmed. To them, this was simply a Tuesday.

“We got enough data,” Tech Crystal said.

“Enough for what?”

“To tell you what’s wrong.”

“I already know what’s wrong.”

“Do you?”

“I think I lost my sense of humor.”

In the morning, after bad coffee and a stale blueberry muffin in a waiting room full of people, the doctor reviewed the findings.

“Your body is mobilizing during sleep.”

“Mobilizing toward what?”

The doctor folded his hands. “Something unresolved. You don’t need a prescription,” the doctor said. “You need sleep.” Then: “you can pay your bill at reception.”

Outside, the city looked fake and impossible. Too much light. Too many buildings. Too much glass. He stood on the sidewalk for a while, then pulled out his phone. He called Joy. To his surprise, she answered. He heard traffic on her end. A siren far off. Her voice was careful.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You okay?” she asked.

There it was. The question.

When he was in second grade, he watched his dad fight a man at a gas station. His dad knocked the man to the ground with two punches to the head and then stomped him repeatedly. When he was exhausted and panting for air, his dad looked at Noah in the passenger seat of the truck and laughed. He said, “you gotta find the humor in it all, son.” The ambulance came and took the man to the hospital. Later, he heard his parents talking and that the man had lost one of his eyes. Noah remembered the blood. It was everywhere. Later, when Noah was in his late teens, he remembered the incident again and asked his dad about it.

“Why did you fight that man?” Noah asked.

“Because he fucked your mom.” Then his dad laughed and said, “you gotta find the humor in it all.”

Joy asked him again. “Hey…you okay?”

He should have said yes. I am okay. That was the adult answer. Instead, he said, “Not really.”

“That’s more honest than usual for you,” Joy said.

“I went to a sleep clinic.”

“That sounds glamorous. Proud of you.”

“I tried to leave in my sleep.”

“Where to?”

“Coney Island, I think.”

“What a terrible destination for your subconscious to want to go. Were you trying to get to The Cyclone?”

“Of course I was.” He looked west, although there was nothing to see. Only traffic. And windows. And sky. “I think,” he said, “I was scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of being by myself.”

“Of being alone?” she asked.

“No, I said what I was scared of.”

She was quiet for a moment, before she said: “You know, I’m not getting back together with you just because of this strange, dramatic medical journey.”

“I wouldn’t get back together with you if you had one either.”

“But,” she said, “if you want to go ride the Cyclone this weekend, I might be willing to watch you throw up.”

“Will you hold my hand after?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “But I’ll let you try and make me laugh.”

The line clicked dead.

Noah stood there. For the first time in weeks, he felt tired in what he could only think was an ordinary, regular way. Human tired. The kind that suggests the possibility of sleep rather than escape.

5.

Noah woke up already standing.

He was in his kitchen. The overhead light was on. The refrigerator door stood open, humming. Noah held a glass of water he did not remember pouring. He drank it because it was there. His body felt heavy and delayed. He set the glass in the sink.

The apartment door was open. Not wide open. Just enough for the hallway light to slip inside. Noah stared at it.

For a long moment he stood there. Existing. Then stepped into the hallway. Down the stairs and out onto Seventh Avenue. Brooklyn at three in the morning was less empty than paused. Streetlights buzzed overhead. A delivery truck idled at the corner. Somewhere someone’s television played something.

Noah turned left. He saw himself move that way. He did not protest. He followed. As it felt a necessity.

At the subway entrance the metal gate was halfway down. The wind descended the station and wrapped around him. The F train platform was nearly empty. A man slept sitting upright with his arms folded across his chest. A woman in scrubs stared into space while eating potato chips from a plastic bag. Noah sat and waited. That was something that felt important somehow. The waiting.

When the train finally arrived, he boarded. His body automated. The doors closed. The car lurched forward. For several stops he sat without moving. He watched his reflection bend and distort in the cloudy windows as they passed through tunnels. It looked like someone else sitting there. Someone calm. Someone with intentions.

At the end of the line, the doors opened and his body stood. The air smelled of salt. The boardwalk was mostly empty. A few fishermen stood along the railing, their lines cast into the black water. The amusement park behind them was dark except for a few security lights that turned the rides into enormous skeletal shapes.

The Cyclone rose above everything. Even in darkness it was unmistakable. All those wooden ribs. They ached in the wind. Noah walked toward it. The chain-link fence surrounding the ride was eight feet tall. He stopped in front of it. Not a deterrent, he felt like he thought. Then grabbed it. Climbed it. Not elegantly. Like a n early human discovering it. At the top he swung a leg over and dropped into the gravel on the other side.

Noah walked toward the loading platform. The ride sat in the station. Empty rows of seats waited beneath the yellow glow of a security light. He climbed into the front car. The lap bar rested tight across his thighs.

Nothing happened.

Then Noah woke up. Not gradually. But all at once.

He was sitting in a roller coaster car inside a closed amusement park.

A flashlight exploded across his face. A voice shouted. “Sir.” A police officer stood on the platform below him. Hands on hips. “Would you care to explain yourself?”

Noah looked around. The Cyclone. The ocean. The fence he had apparently climbed. He nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. “I would care to explain that.”

The officer waited.

Noah considered how to explain. “I believe,” he said finally, “I may have been confronting my fears.”

“You being funny?”

“Unfortunately, that’s the problem.”

“You climbed an eight-foot fence.”

“Yes.”

“You boarded a roller coaster.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think I was hoping it would start.”

The officer lowered the flashlight slightly. “Sir,” the officer said carefully, “are you intoxicated?”

“No.”

“On drugs?”

“No.” Noah thought. Then said: “I’m beginning to suspect that I may be escaping from myself.” Noah looked down the long wooden drop of the first hill. “Do you ever ride it?” he asked.

“The Cyclone?” the officer asked.

“Yes.”

“When I was a kid.”

“Was it scary?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But that’s kind of the point.”

Noah nodded. “That’s what I’m starting to realize.”

He looked past the officer’s shoulder and noticed something delicate trembling in the security light. A spider web stretched across a nearby wooden railing. The web swayed in the wind. At the center…a spider. Small enough not to worry about being blown away. And yet large enough to eat.

The officer tapped the flashlight against the rollercoaster’s frame. “Let’s get you off the ride before you confront anything else tonight.”

Noah stood slowly. His legs trembled.

“You okay?” the officer asked.

There it was again. That question.

“I am,” Noah said. Then he shook his head. “Actually, no.” Noah looked out toward the black water of ocean. “I am categorically not okay.”

Noah thought about his parents when he was a kid. The frozen dinners. The bottles of wine with handles. The thin walls. The long silences between arguments. The way the television stayed on all night like a third person in the room. The way his father once said everything’s fine in a voice that meant the opposite.

The spider scampered across the web.

“You know,” Noah said, “someone told me something interesting recently. He said the average person swallows six spiders a year in their sleep.”

“That can’t be true,” the officer said.

The spider sat motionless in the web now.

“That’s what I said,” Noah said, and then reached out and pinched the web between two fingers. The spider skillfully clung to the silk. He brought it closer to his face. Noah opened his mouth and placed the spider on his tongue. He chewed thoughtfully once. Then swallowed.

The officer’s flashlight lowered toward the ground with sadness.

Noah wiped his fingers on his jeans.

The officer sighed. “You know what?” he said. “I’m not even writing this part down in my report.”

Noah could still feel the faint grit of legs and silk at the back of his throat. Large Charlie’s voice floated back to him from the sleep clinic hallway: Six spiders a year is a fucking lot of spiders.

“Well,” Noah said, “that’s one.”

---

J.R. Angelella is the author of the irreverent, darkly comic coming-of-age novel Zombie (Soho Press, 2012). His short fiction has appeared in various journals and most recently in the crime anthology Eight Very Bad Nights (Soho Crime, 2024). He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he directs Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House, a literary center dedicated to creative writing across cultures and languages. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature from Bennington College. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and two children.

Judy Slitt

The Appendage

My wife, Shirley, and I walk in on my dad rubbing ointment into my mom’s leg stump. It’s our first morning visiting my parents. Mom’s laying back on the brown Barcalounger and Dad’s bending over her. Mom looks angry. She says, “You have to really get it in there!”

            Dad’s face is scrunched into a little ball, focusing, and they’re both so in the zone that they don’t see us standing there.

            I can tell this isn’t a hit with Shirley.

            Shirley says, “Uh. Hi.”

            Dad looks up. He’s sweating. He says, “Rob. Shirley.”

            Mom makes a face at Shirley, a not-very-nice face, but you see, she had her leg amputated just last year due to her diabetes and she’s still sensitive about it. I mean, I think she’s embarrassed. That’s what I tell Shirley later that night, when we’re alone in my childhood bedroom.

            “Yeah,” Shirley says. “I could tell it was an intimate moment.”

            The stump looked puckered and angry. Like the end of a sausage. Like a butthole.

            “It’s not like I wanted to see it either,” I say. Last time I saw Mom, she wore a muumuu to cover it up. This was my first time seeing the stump in its full glory.

            Last year, Shirley said we should pay for Mom to get a prosthetic. “We have the money,” Shirley had said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Your dad shouldn’t have to cart her around all the time.”

            But my parents refused. “We won’t take money from you,” Dad said.

            “I’m perfectly happy with my appendage,” Mom said.

            If I’m being honest, I’m not in the most stellar mood. Visiting home makes me have mouse poops. My feces congeal into a brick inside me.

            Mom isn’t pleased that Shirley and I won’t have kids. Mom says things like, “Oh, did you see the pictures of your cousin Jeannie’s baby? Let me show you,” and spends forever hunting for the pictures on her phone.

            That night, Shirley says, “They don’t give a shit about cousin Jeannie’s baby. They’re just trying to pressure us.”

            I say, “Yeah,” because she’s right, but what am I supposed to do, tell Mom not to show us any baby pictures? So I say, “That’s just the way they are. We’ll be home soon.”

            “I still can’t shit,” says Shirley. She takes off her earrings and puts them on the dresser.

            “Tell me about it,” I say.

            “I mean, I haven’t had a shit this whole week,” says Shirley. “It’s like World War III in my colon.” She changes into her pajamas, a Dead Kennedys shirt that goes to her knees, and I have to say, she looks pretty fetching. Her curly hair is out of its bun and she looks like a lion.

            “Yeah, totally,” I say. “So, you wanna have sex?”

~

            On the last day, Shirley and I are with my parents in the living room, watching football. Dad grunts from time to time and says, “Seriously?” and sips his beer. It’s a more mellow vibe, I think, because Shirley’s anticipating a return to her routine and French press coffee and also regular shits.

            Mom turns to Shirley and says, “Dear, can you fetch my ointment? It’s in the cabinet above the bathroom sink,” and Shirley brings it back and holds it up awkwardly – it’s like a jumbo toothpaste.

            Shirley says, “Here you go, Mom,” because Mom likes her to call her ‘Mom’ and has made this clear on multiple occasions, even though Shirley’s face always twitches when she says it.

            Mom rolls up her tie-dye muumuu to expose her leg stump. We all have to keep our faces neutral. But the stump looks angrier than last time. Maybe on account of Mom being too embarrassed to apply unguents in front of us this week. Maybe Dad still applies the unguents at night, when we’re asleep, but it’s not cutting it.

            Mom can’t apply the ointment herself, on account of her stomach being in the way and her lack of flexibility. I expect her to ask Dad to help.

But she says, “Shirley. Dear. Can you rub in the ointment? My appendage gets so dry in the winter.”

            Shirley stares. Then she sinks to her knees. She sneezes and shoos away my parents’ cats. Shirley’s allergic to cats and always says, “I can’t breathe with all this fur,” but I can’t tell my parents to give their cats away, can I?

Shirley uncaps the tube and squeezes ointment onto her manicured fingers. The smell of menthol fills the room.

It dawns on me: I wonder if I’m watching my marriage fall apart.

            Mom smiles. Her teeth are gray. Her eyes sparkle.

---

Judy Slitt lives in Virginia. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Bright Flash Literary Review, surely magazine, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Moss Puppy Magazine, M E N A C E, Crow & Cross Keys, and BULL. Her website is judyslitt.com.