Mikki Aronoff

Why We Can’t Lose Weight

Before there was arguing there was peace, and before there was peace there was war, and after the Second World War there were feelings, some specific, some vague, all floating around the heads of those who had them, like cartoon balloons with words inside, and my parents argued back and forth, back and forth, usually over pot roast and potatoes, that that’s not the way it should be, that floating is not what feelings should do— they should stick to bodies or more accurately reside inside them, bumping against organs and bones, and it should be a fineable offence for bodies to let go of them and let them be seen, or, worse, heard, and I wondered weren’t those feelings, but of course I kept quiet.

Today we extrapolate about such things, because that’s fun to do, and we explain, without saying how, because reason doesn’t count, that’s why we can’t lose weight, and we say this about everything, leaning back on our recliners with our calorie-controlled frozen dinners and dim the lights and wish for simpler times, when our grandparents maintained, simply, that balloons are simply for floating and really not much else, and when one is tired of holding on to them, one can simply let go, along with all those newfangled, fanciful ideas, but they did understand (since balloons seemed to be everyone’s favorite topic) how it was reasonable to be drawn to the Hindenburg, like my mother and father, who by then were starting to express their feelings—for airships, for each other, for painting and science, and for ideas about how we should all live and behave.

Sometimes my parents resembled Miss America contestants, world peace their motto, starting at home, everyone greeting in apartment hallways, helping folks carry groceries upstairs, but they’d turn three times, spitting ptooey, ptooey, ptooey, when they saw balloons, which they remembered first fearing then hating, though they hated the word hate (eschew, they’d say, with a lift of their chins) and, because they were good at subtraction, they knew what they loved by what they renounced— so much evil abounding then, as now—now, when we’re all trying to lose weight, when it’s something else we need to lose.

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Mikki Aronoff lives in New Mexico, where she writes tiny stories and advocates for animals. She has stories in Best Microfiction 2024 and in Best Small Fictions 2024. 

Dave Clark

my world, my way

Dr Farida Singh brushed aside the usual chitchat. ‘I asked you to come today, Robert, because I want you to hear this in person.’

Oh, that’s her good news voice, thought Robbie. Almost shat my dacks for nothing. He leant forward, gingerly, like a praying mantis faltering into the shade. ‘What is it, Doc?’

‘You know how we’ve been developing procedures that help partially blind people see?’ He nodded as her speech picked up pace. ‘Well, it’s at a stage now where it also works for those born blind.’

Robbie’s body flinched. ‘What do you mean?’ His hands started shaking. He heard his doctor step around the desk to sit in a chair next to him. A trail of orange and jasmine followed her movements.

‘Robert, I’m going to help you see.’

‘Get stuffed! Really?’ He grabbed hold of his armrests, for stability. ‘Doc, are you tricking me?’

‘Robert, I’ve always told it to you straight. I’ve already performed the surgery on three patients.’ And? ‘And all three can see.’

See. A delicious word, one Robbie hungered for daily. But his hopes had crashed and burned before, much like his mate’s cheap dirt bike on their last camping trip. Smack bang into a tree and up in flames.

‘For real?’ He tried to wrangle his hopes back in before they sped off again.

‘Yes. I wouldn’t do it if I was less than 100% confident. Here, put your hands in mine.’

Robbie wiped his clammy hands on his trousers and slowly reached out. He let Dr Farida take hold of them.

‘Now Robert, tell me what you’re noticing?’

He felt a steadiness from her thin hands. No sudden rises or falls of temperature in her fingertips. No sweating of her palms. He listened to her breathing. Slow, even. Calm as. He released his grip and heard a single clap of her hands. He bet she was smiling.

‘Doc, you’re not one bit nervous.’

‘Exactly. This isn’t some pipe dream. Bosses said they’d cut our funding if we didn’t get it right. I’m not giving those fat cats the chance to derail me a third time. It’s not just your eyes on the chopping block.’

‘So…?’

‘So, if you want this to happen, we can book the surgery in for three months’ time.’

He felt his posture shoot up. Spain. TAFE. See which girls have their eye on me. ‘Do it! Book it in. And move me up that pecking order. We both know I’m your favourite patient.’

Farida laughed. ‘I thought you’d say yes. There will be a lot of work involved for you though. It won’t be as easy as taking the bandages off and voila!’ He guessed that her hands were twisting through the air like a cheap magician. ‘Parts of your brain have nineteen years of inactivity to overcome. It’ll be like culture shock, except for your vision.’

‘Whatever it takes. You know I’ll do the work.’ Robbie had taken on all her approaches over the past five years. Bonding with his guide dog Betsy. Using the GPS and earpiece like a spy to map out where he was walking.

‘You always have been dedicated.’ A warm coating on her words. ‘I wouldn’t have suggested this for you if I didn’t believe in your ability.’

His grin filled up the whole room. His body felt like it was crowd surfing again at Schoolies, held up by a sea of partying hands. ‘Far out Doc, this is happening, isn’t it?’

‘It is. It’s a lot to take in. That’s why I’m emailing you a voice recording of all the information. Think it over. It’s okay to take your time.’

It’s already been nineteen crawling years. ‘Stuff time. Let’s do it.’

~ ~ ~

The bang-crash of Friday night dinner preparations swirled around Robbie as he sat in the lounge room at home. He picked up the muttering of Dad’s obscenities as a saucepan hit the floor, the clinking of cutlery on wood as Mum set the table. His older brother Michael’s two daughters, Sophie and Kiara, were running amok, playing Princesses and Dragons down the hallway.

The room was warmer than Robbie liked, the air-con spluttering more than operating. Hurry up and get it fixed already, Dad. The TV was turned onto the nightly news, prattling on about a jam and pickle festival. The reporter was saying, ‘As you can see from the footage…’

‘Hey Mum, what can I help with?’ Robbie asked, as he turned down the volume on the TV.

‘Nothing, darl,’ she said, her voice wafery. ‘You just stay comfy right there.’

Dad yelled out from the kitchen. ‘Wash your hands, girls. It’s almost dinner time.’

‘Oh, not fair,’ Sophie and Kiara cried in unison. Robbie heard one of them stomp their foot on the floorboards. Salty princess.

‘We were about to get the dragon. He might get away,’ Sophie complained.

‘It’s okay, Soph,’ said Robbie. ‘I’ve got my eye on it. I won’t let it out of my sight.’

‘But you’re blind!’ said Kiara, the youngest of them. She plonked herself on his lap. Almost knackered me there, K. ‘Can’t see how many fingers I’m holding up, can you?’ Her words softened at the end, like ice cream left out of the freezer.

Easy. People always hold up two fingers. Robbie rubbed his chin, pretending he was solving a complex equation. ‘Is it two?’

‘What? You can see!’ Kiara hopped up. Robbie heard her little feet scurry to the kitchen. ‘Pop, Uncle Bobby’s not blind at all.’

‘Well love, he is. But not for long. A doctor is going to help him see. Now up to the table, Missy Moo.’

Michael called out to Robbie, his voice coming from about four metres away. ‘Grub’s on. Need a hand up, bro?’

Robbie flicked him the bird. Michael meant well, but irritation flared anyway. I haven’t escaped this prison like you have, choofing off to Ballarat. I know this house better than anyone. Three steps forward from the couch, a ninety degree turn to the left, two steps before the floorboards turned to tiling. Then four more large steps or six small steps forward to reach the head of the table. It had been in that same spot since he first started primary school.

Robbie felt the edge of the table and shimmied around to his chair on the right. He sat down, Kiara chattering away next to him about dinosaur stickers. Dad and Mum sat at opposite ends, like sentinels, and Michael and Sophie were on the other side.

Robbie could smell the mountain of parmesan that Dad had grated. Keeping the cheese industry afloat. Robbie felt the steam off the pasta tickle under his chin.

‘Dig in,’ said Dad. Bowls were passed back and forwards as they loaded up for their end of week feast.

‘What would you like, dear?’ Mum directed at Robbie.

‘He’ll sort himself out, love,’ said Dad.

‘I don’t mind,’ replied Mum.

Yeah, but I do. ‘I’ll dish up my own,’ Robbie said, hoping he’d covered the frustration in his voice with enough false sincerity. ‘You go first.’

Her tongue clicked. ‘Nonsense, dear. How much pasta do you want?’

Even Soph dishes up her own food. And she’s six.

‘Pile it on. Thanks, Mum.’

She began humming, happily. She’s gonna hate it when I can see. No one to fuss over.

‘So, Robbie,’ Dad said with what sounded like a very full mouth, ‘what are you looking forward to seeing once the surgery is done?’

‘Frozen!’ called out Sophie.

‘Yes. Yes. Or Frozen 2,’ said Kiara.

Michael jumped in. ‘Those movies will make you want to reverse the procedure, bro.’

The girls, oblivious to their dad’s comment, continued their suggestions. ‘Rainbows. All of the colours, Uncle Bobby.’

‘I only know one colour, girls,’ Robbie said. ‘Black.’

‘Not even blue?’ asked Sophie.

‘Not even blue. I don’t even know what colours are.’

‘What? Well, imagine a blue curve. And it’s like that, but in the sky. With other pretty colours.’

‘Sounds amazing, Soph. Can’t wait to see it.’

‘Could we see one together?’

‘Sure! That would be fun.’ It really would. He beamed her way. ‘And we’ll eat all that rubbish that Dad won’t usually let you have. Gummy bears. Chips. The works.’

Giggles spilled from both Sophie and Kiara. He felt Kiara’s affectionate hand on his forearm. ‘And we could wear our favourite dresses!’

‘Well, you wear the dresses, and I’ll bring the dragon on a leash. Don’t worry, I can still see him over there.’ Robbie flicked his head towards the lounge room.

‘I knew you weren’t really blind,’ she whispered.

Soon, Princess K, I won’t be.

~ ~ ~

The following Monday, Robbie walked into one of the city’s parks. After sweeping his cane over a bench, to make sure he wouldn’t sit on anyone, he eased onto it. A soft wind skimmed over his face, bringing with it traces of pine.

He could hear raspy cries behind him. Birds? He tilted his head to the right. A musical string of notes floated up and down, a song to attract a partner. Then the loud snapping of a beak. You gotta ask for consent, mate.

He folded up his cane and slipped it into his backpack. He pulled out his mobile and earphones to continue listening to the notes from Dr Singh:

After the surgery, you will see swirls of colours, not clear shapes or objects. It will take time for the brain’s visual pathways to come online and strengthen, as they have withered from a lack of use since birth.

Since birth. His parents hadn’t known he was blind until he started crawling and bumping into things. Bumpy Bobby.

He had been born seeing nothing. Even his dreams had no images in them. He smiled to himself as he remembered explaining it to one condescending teacher, ‘What can you see out of your butt? Nothing, yeah? Well, that’s what I can see.’

Was so worth getting detention for that.

…Simply seeing colours for the first time will be intense enough. Your brain won’t have the visual language to understand what it’s experiencing.

His shoulders dropped. It’s gonna be like learning a new language. I sucked at French. Je suis un blind as a bat.

…Early on, your brain won’t understand depth perception. Objects will be flat, in 2-D. Everything will seem close to you, even things that are far away…

He pressed stop on the audio file, feeling gut-punched. Why is my life so bloody hard?

Something soft brushed his left arm, startling him. He took out his earphones.

‘Sorry Robbie, didn’t mean to sneak up.’ A voice dripping with honey. Emily. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting too.’ He felt her sit next to him on the bench, her leg briefly brushing his. ‘Uni lecture dragged on. Then the line-up for coffees was out the door. Worth it though. I’ve already had a sip of mine. It’s divine.’

He sensed her holding out something to him and reached for it. A rippled cardboard cup, still warm. He lifted it to his nose. A rich, chocolatey aroma.

‘Sneak up on me anytime, Em, if you’re bringing drinks.’ He drank from the cup. The perfect blend of bitter and sweet. ‘Beats the iced coffees we used to knock back after Maths. That’s a ripper!’

‘Much like this park. I’ve never sat here before. It’s stunning. Do you want the play-by-play?’

‘Sure do. What’s happening?’

Em began detailing the park; lush grass bordered by tall grevilleas, not yet in bloom. Kids throwing frisbees, their parents lounging on picnic rugs. Most people wearing summer clothes, a few in suits and pencil skirts. Her words rocketed along, and even though Robbie couldn’t picture what she was reporting, he relished everything she said. Robbie usually hated his reliance on others to describe places. Most people only described the larger scene. A handful zoomed in to the patterns and intricate details. They either went macro or micro. Emily was one of the few people who did both.

 ‘One of workmen near the fountain has the greasiest mullet, Robbie.’ She rolled her r’s as she said his name. ‘I can’t wait for you to see things like this.’

And I can’t wait to see your face. I’m sure it’s perfection. ‘Call him over and ask if I can rub my hands through his hair.’

He felt her playful slap on his shoulder. ‘No way! How embarrassing. Nope, this mullet must be seen to be believed. And oh, there’s Trevor right behind them.’ Robbie felt a pang of disappointment. Emily continued. ‘We should hide from him, yeah? Give him a taste of what it’s like for you.’

Hide and seek. That’s my jam. Robbie had always been good at the game. He listened for where people went. The creaking of floorboards. Footsteps that turned left. The faster, louder breathing. The opening of wardrobe doors. Tiny giggles, the cracking of knee joints.

‘Em. Robert.’ Damn it. Spotted us before we even got off the bench. A firm mitt grabbed Robbie’s right hand and shook it. The smell of sandalwood floated by. ‘Sucks you can’t see how good this day is!’ Trev’s breath was minty, cool.

‘Yeah, it’s lovely,’ Em said. ‘Pity I gotta scoot back to Uni after this.’

‘Just pull a sickie. Plenty of people do it in first year,’ encouraged Trev as he moved to the other side of Em and sat down. Robbie felt the bench vibrate underneath them.

‘Not today,’ said Em, ‘but I will for a week next term if Robbie likes our plan.’

‘What plan?’ Robbie asked. People deciding stuff for me. Again.

Trev spoke up. ‘Mate, to celebrate your surgery, Em and I want to drive you to Uluru the week after it. Our shout. You deserve it.’

Robbie felt thrown, like he was playing catch-up. ‘Hey? What are you talking about?’

‘Just say yes,’ said Trev. ‘Trust me, it’ll blow your freaking mind.’

 ‘I think that seeing anything will be mind-blowing.’ He felt heavy in his stomach, for poking holes in their plans. Well, to Em’s part in it, anyway.

Em said, ‘Sorry Robbie, that’s probably a bit much to dump on you with everything that’s going on. We should’ve run it by you first.’

‘No, no Em, it’s more than fine. In fact, it’s lovely for you to think of it. Both of you.’ Good save. ‘It’s a great idea. Seriously. One day. No, it’s just…’ He held up his earphones. ‘My Doc said it’ll be ages before I can make sense of colours and shapes. Uluru would just look like a blob.’

Trev’s voice lifted. ‘So, we just need to start you off with mundane things and then build our way up once your eyes are rocking and rolling, yeah? Maybe kick off with Em’s taste in shoes?’

‘Nothing wrong with my boots,’ said Em, her voice slightly wounded. ‘Maybe you’re the blind one.’

Robbie wanted to smack Trev. He clasped his hands over his stomach, pressure building in his fingertips. ‘Hey look, that trip sounds good. Really. I can’t wait to see Uluru with you two.’ We can always leave Trev by the side of the road as dingo fodder.

‘And don’t forget that filthy mullet, Robbie.’ Em place her hand on top of his and gave it a squeeze. ‘It really is magnificent.’

Your touch is magnificent, Em. You can keep your hand there forever.

~ ~ ~

Friends and family became obsessed with telling Robbie all the things he should see after the surgery.

‘Ballet. It’s such majestic movement.’

‘Expiry dates on milk.’ I can still smell things, you muppet.

‘You must go to the art gallery.’

‘You have to see my backyard. I’ve landscaped the daylights out of it.’

‘Gotta see your own name, written down.’ I have wondered what it looks like.

Even the checkout guy at the local fruit and veg shop had an opinion. ‘Your own eyes, in the mirror. Or stare at your balls. Whichever’s more interesting to ya!’

Shut. Up. All of you.

His mates continued peppering him with ideas as they sat on the sidelines of a suburban oval a few Saturdays later.

Every summer weekend, over the past four years, they’d played blind cricket together. He’d loved listening to cricket on the radio as a kid and felt jubilant when he was selected to play for the Division 1 blind team down the road from his place.

The ball they used was a cane ball, a rib cage with a bell in it. Like my chest when I’m around Em. They had some helpers from the local club, who told them where the ball was once it stopped moving. Robbie’s team knew when one of the sighted helpers was new, as they’d be telling the batters to take their time and get their eye in.

We see with our ears, knobhead.

The bowler yells out, ‘Play,’ then delivers the ball. It had to bounce at least twice, giving the batter time to hear it. Robbie had smacked a few shots around that day, before getting clean bowled.

‘Didn’t see that one coming, did ya?’ sledged the bowler as he walked off.

‘Nope. I was too distracted by your ugly mug!’

They both laughed. The stuff we get away with.

Robbie sat down on the grass, on the sidelines. It was soft beneath him. He untwisted the cap off a sports drink, and his teammates kicked on with the conversation about what he should do after surgery.

‘Rob-Dog,’ said Pete, one of the sighted coaches, wearing enough aftershave to knock out a cat, ‘I was just telling the lads that you gotta see this chick at my work. If you only see one thing in this life, let it be her.’

‘I won’t be able to see the details of her face.’

‘Her face? Trust me, you won’t be looking at her face.’ Howls and hoots from some of the younger lads.

‘You’re a sick man, Pete.’

‘Forget that chick,’ said Steven, another of the helpers. His voice came from the middle of the group and sounded like boots trampling on gravel. ‘Wait ‘til you hop in my Tucson. One drive of it and you’ll want the same car for yourself.’

‘You reckon they’ll let me behind the wheel straight up? Dream on, Steve-O.’

Some of Robbie’s frustration tempered as the blind players took over the conversation, their suggestions quieter, more personal.

‘Gotta tell me if the missus smiles when she’s around me. Does she still give a toss, or have I become her charity case since my accident?’

‘If there’s ever food around my mouth, let me know. I’m sick of looking stupid.’

‘Enjoy a sunset. Every day finishes with something beautiful, so I’m told. Make the most of what the rest of us can’t do.’

After fifteen minutes of being hounded, Robbie was getting pins and needles in his legs. Felt like it in his head too, from all the badgering. He hopped up and went for a brief walk without a cane, counting his paces. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. He turned around when he sensed someone following him, hearing their deft steps on the grass. ‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s Macca.’ Their best bowler and their worst batter. Cooked a mean burger at their annual team BBQ.

‘You stalking me? What if I’m taking a slash?’

‘Are ya?’

‘Nah. Just moving about. My legs were stiff.’

‘Fair enough. The best trees for a slash are the other direction.’

‘Good to know. Probably would’ve just gone on Steve-O’s tyres anyway.’ Only a grunt from Macca. C’mon man, that was gold. ‘You’re not here to tell me some other thing I gotta look at?’

‘Well, kind of. Robbie, this might sound a bit weird.’ Macca stopped talking, a rare thing.

‘Go on mate.’

‘You’re going to come and see us play after your surgery, yeah?’

‘Of course, I am.’ Damn. Robert hadn’t thought about it. I won’t be one of the Blind Boys anymore.

‘Well, can you do something for me then?’

‘What is it? Sure yeah, whatever you need.’

Robbie could hear that Macca’s words were directed towards the ground. ‘I want you to tell me if I’m as hideous as some people say I am.’

‘What are you talking about...’

Macca cut him off. ‘Let me get this out. I want to know from someone who hasn’t seen colour before. Am I disgusting to look at?’ The air around them stiffened.

‘Is this about what those blokes said last week? Those cruel, racist pricks. We reported them. We all have your back.’

‘I know that. But Robert…’ Robert? Geez, he is serious. ‘I want to hear it from someone who sees me for the very first time. No bull. Just your gut response. I need to know why some people treat me like crap. Can you do that for me?’

Silence stretched out between the two of them. Loud chirping from a flock of birds overhead saturated the space, followed by an audible whoosh, their collective dive towards the ground.

‘I’ll let you know what I see.’

‘Thanks mate.’

‘And Macca? I’m certain that the only thing that will disgust me is your batting technique.’ Chuckles from both men. ‘God, you know the aim of the game is to actually hit the ball, right?’

~ ~ ~

Three months passed. It felt like three years to Robbie.

The day before the surgery, Robbie went to Dr Singh’s office to talk over the final aspects of the procedure. The deets. Farida gave Robbie a braille copy of the paperwork. Robbie was happy to sign anything that gave the go-ahead.

‘Doc, what does my signature look like?’

‘It looks slightly neater than the graffiti in the bathroom stalls.’

‘Is it that bad?’

‘It’s messy. But the person who wrote Kellyz a hag scrawls worse than you, so that’s something.’ She tried unsuccessfully to muffle a snort.

Robbie felt glad that he’d stayed with Farida as his doctor, even when his parents pressured him to change to practitioners who had bigger ads in the phone book. She was the one who, after learning that students were mocking Robbie at school for his ‘old man’ cane, helped him order a custom-made one. A gear stick head on top, to show who was in the driver’s seat. His creed carved along the side of it:

[my world, my way]

All those jerks at school wanted to have a go using it after that. From pauper to king, with one wave of my royal sceptre.

Farida was the one who pushed him to trust his other senses. On his second visit to her, she whispered out of earshot of his mum, ‘She babies you,’ then threw his hat across the office, getting him to hear where it landed. One time she took him to a shopping centre he’d never visited before, telling him to find her at the exit without asking for help.

She was the one who helped him adjust to living with his seeing eye dog, Betsy, and was the one who advocated for other technologies when she saw that he couldn’t face losing another Betsy again.

His attention snapped back when she asked, ‘Robert, how are you feeling about the surgery tomorrow?’

Robbie paused. ‘Freaking out. Nervous. Excited. Can’t wait. I don’t really know. Is that weird?’

‘All normal things to be feeling. After tomorrow, your life will change.’ Her last words dropped with the heaviness of Easter Island-sized stones.

 ‘That didn’t sound positive, Doc.’

‘Every change brings some grief. You’ll lose some of life’s innocence, like seeing people’s faces crumple when they think your ideas aren’t good enough. Your other senses will dull somewhat, as you won’t rely on them as much.’

‘Oh.’ A dam wall broke inside Robbie. Doubts he’d held back flooded in. His eyes watered. Suck it up. Suck it up.

‘Don’t get me wrong. The benefits will far, far outweigh the sad things. I wouldn’t do the surgery if I didn’t believe that. But Robert, it’ll take time to see things clearly, and it may be more frustration in the short term before the good things kick in.’

‘Is it really worth it?’ For the first time in months, fear smacked him in the guts.

‘Every patient who has had the procedure is glad they’ve done it. But the final call is not up to me.’

‘I just signed the paperwork though. I can’t back out now, can I?’

‘Well, I bought a really good shredder recently. It wouldn’t take long to turn your signature into confetti.’

Robbie tried to stop his uncertainties from overflowing. ‘People keep telling me all the amazing things I’m gonna see. You should see this. You should see that. See this. See that. Is sight really that good?’

Farida let out a long, slow breath. ‘Robert, it’s a wonderful feeling being independent and making more decisions for ourselves, but it’s also damn scary. You will gain your sight but lose your safety nets.’ Her voice strengthened. ‘I believe it’s worth doing. But if you want to put off the decision, I’m happy to do so.’

The idea of delaying jolted through Robbie’s bones. Hell no. ‘Nah, Doc. We’re not delaying. No way.’ He sat up tall. ‘Let’s do it. These eyes have been slacking off for way too long.’

‘Excellent. We’ll get you prepped at nine o’clock tomorrow morning in the surgical room.’

‘Done.’ He felt more strength kick into his arms and legs. ‘Hey, before I head off, could we give that shredder a go?’

Her voice sounded the most joyful it had all appointment. ‘HR dumped some stupid policy about lifting boxes onto my desk, as if I don’t know how to pick up a box! I think it’ll shred nicely.’

~ ~ ~

He could hear Doctor Singh next to his bed.  ‘You’re okay, Robert. You’re just waking up after surgery.’

His eyes were stinging as she gently explained that she believed the surgery was a success. Her voice was confident, solid as oak. She told him to rest and keep his fluids up. Over the coming days she would remove his bandages. If I don’t rip them off first.

Robbie was visited by streams of people. Should’ve charged an entrance fee. His parents carried in flowers that smelt sour but felt like the velvet lining of his guitar case. Mum fussed all around him. Dad told her four times to relax. She ignored all four.

Members of his cricket team dropped by. They gave him a ball. He shook it, but there was no rattling sound. Smelled like real leather.

‘This is to help you get your eye in,’ joked Steve-O.

Em brought daily coffees, waving them around the room like incense sticks, trying to cover the stench of hospital bleach. Robbie didn’t want Em to leave each time. Gonna sign up to the same course as her once I’m outta here.

On the third day, it was time to remove the bandages. Robbie asked for his brother to be there for support. He’ll be a less of a pain than Mum. He knew when Michael arrived with the girls, because he felt two bundles of limbs clamber all over him like play equipment.

‘Can you see how many fingers I’m holding up now, Uncle Bobby?’ asked Kiara, her voice more sugary than usual.

‘Girls!’ pleaded Michael. ‘Sorry bro, they’re just so excited you’ll get to see the fairy wings they’re wearing.’

‘I hope you’re wearing some too, Michael!’

‘Always, Robbie, always.’ Michael’s voice broke. ‘I never thought this day would come, bro.’

‘Me neither, hey.’ Robbie’s voice broke too.

Michael cleared his throat. ‘I haven’t always been good to you. Probably treated you like my kid brother too much.’

‘Yeah, you have been a pretty rubbish brother! But I’m glad you’re here for this. And I’ll finally have proof that I’m the better-looking one!’

A punch landed on Robbie’s left shoulder. Deserved that. Robbie could feel happiness radiating off his brother.

Footsteps approached the door of the room, to his right. Flat shoes striking the floor at a medium pace, a waft of jasmine. Doc’s back.

‘Robert, it’s time,’ she said.

His body fully relaxed, then tensed right back up a second later.

‘Here we go,’ said Michael. ‘Let us know how we can help.’

‘You can dim the lights of the room, thanks,’ said Dr Singh. ‘Right down.’ Michael did as he was told, then ushered the girls to the end of the bed.

Robbie felt stuck to the mattress, as though held down by guards.

Farida spoke with a calm reassurance, reminding Robbie of the feeling of having a quilt pulled up to his chin when he was a kid. ‘When your eyes experience light, it may be confusing and overwhelming. That’s okay. It’s normal.’ She unwound the first loop of bandages from his head.

Anticipation filled his whole chest. He heard the echo of his pounding heart. The second and third loop of the bandages came off. He gripped the bars of his bed. One more to go.

‘Robert,’ Farida asked, ‘is everything okay?’

‘So far, so good.’ What if this hasn’t worked?

The last layer of bandage and padding was removed. Robbie lay still, eyes closed. The ticking of the wall clock thudded, each second weighted.

‘Is he okay?’ Sophie eventually whispered. ‘Can he see us?’

‘Robert,’ Farida asked, ‘do you want to slowly open your eyes?’

‘Not yet, Doc.’ His shoulders relaxed. His breathing slowed right down. He kept his eyes shut, savouring the moment. ‘Give me a few minutes, yeah.’

Light and colour and everyone else can wait their flipping turn. For the first time in nineteen years, Robbie chose to see nothing.

---

Dave Clark is a reliable human with unreliable health. He is a writer-poet with chronic fatigue syndrome, living in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). His writing speaks into grief, illness, justice and how we love and laugh together. Dave works as a counsellor, creating space for stories of significance. Instagram/X: @DaveClarkWriter

Spencer Nitkey

The Wanting, 2011-2023

Luka Andersen

steel, desert, glass pane

“The wanting is the rainstorm,” says the artist, when asked to describe this challenging piece of mixed media geosculpture. When viewing the piece from the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall observatory window in the gallery today, you may not witness art at all. The wanting, the art, is not the desert. It’s not the morning sun’s whisper across the steel. It’s not the steel: twenty-nine corkscrews, each thirty feet high, installed like skeletal cacti across the landscape. It’s not your mother asking if you want to wait a little longer to see if the clouds will come today. The wanting is the rainstorm, and rain comes only twenty to thirty days a year in this cracked land. On a clear, cloudless day, as the sun pools over the desert sand like red paint spilled over a carpet, you will be looking at a canvas. An artfully arranged canvas, yes, but a canvas, 3 hours outside Phoenix where the saguaro peer with blue eyes along the horizon.

The wanting is the rainstorm. It is the lightning that strikes and the thunder that curdles. The rainstorm is the wanting. Want, the artist says, is true miasma, a black cloud of not-enough that never dissipates. You want the rain to come, for the long trip here, from the hotel where your cousin will be married tomorrow, to be worth it. You want to be lucky. For it to happen for you. More than that, you want to be more than the pedestrian worries and pettinesses you have begun to suspect constitute the vast majority of adulthood. Better and larger than your neighbor Lydia’s weekly arguments with the butcher. More than Gio’s patronizing gestures from his porch toward cars that deign to go the speed limit and not ten miles an hour slower. You want to separate like an aged balsamic from the oil of everyone else.

This is your wanting, the first time you see this installation on a washed out Saturday. The sun makes shadows and spears of the steel screws. Their interstices tangle along the flat desert. It looks so very much like a painting: the reds, the black lines, the sky like a dome. It could be art. But this plaque, these very words etched at the artist’s insistence remind you that no, this is not the art. The wanting is the rainstorm. So you leave, want a steel shadow across your chest.

You leave. You change. Your wanting transforms. You begin to long for this vision of the ordinary you once loathed. You want the energy to be angry at the butcher, to wish the cars would drive slower—children play on this street, after all. You want these concerns, rather than your own: worrying whether the speech therapist will make it through traffic in time for your mother’s appointment; whether the exercises you do with her after dinner each night as she scowls and tries to point at parts of her body after you name them will work; whether the consonant and vowel sounds you repeat together every day will ever find purchase on her tongue; whether her right leg has grown strong enough to conquer the stairs or whether you’ll need to take out the last of her 401K, a full decade early, to replace the broken stair lift. You want to vanish from these midnights spent crying over insurance claims on the kitchen table, the future like a cracked, empty desert, either sweltering or freezing, but always unlivable. You want normalcy as you knew it before, as butcher meat, as talking to your mother on the phone during Sunday night football and caring about anything normal.

In time, like the earth's mantle, this wanting shifts, too. A dozen years after your first visit, you return to this gallery. You have thought about the wanting, the pregnant promise of it’s almost-art, many times since you left. Now you enter, alone, and stare out the window at a blue sky. You are asked by the absence of the artwork to think about your wanting. Inside your chest, you find a new miasma, a new normal, a cliche until it isn’t. You want dinners out where the staff has served someone in a wheelchair before, a night where the Eagles win by 7 and not one of your family members cries in your arms. You want her to gain one new word this month, just one. You want to keep your blood pressure below 130 and your mothers below 120 and you want lychees to be in season. This is your wanting, and the wanting is ambrosia and just within grasp some days. So you stare out the gallery window toward the barren and bountiful desert and find you do not mind the sun. You do not mind this gentle assurance of normalcy. You do not even mind the bitter-edged memory of being here with your mother, there is light in it, too. You are fine without the wanting, today.

But the wanting does not care. The sky shawls itself gray in an instant. Athenaic bursts of rain dehisce the clouds, and the screaming of a storm reaches you, the gallery, and the steel all at once. Rain smears the window. You watch as each flash of lightning extends in white searing arcs, cracking against steel corkscrews, veining between them, creating primordial shapes your mind recognizes before your eyes can register them. This is the wanting, as certain as laughter, ignorant of you and your newfound contentment. This is the wanting. All twelve years of it bearing down upon you. This, all this, the rainstorm, your tears, your mother back in California, your sister texting you updates, the lightning striking, the cars driving too fast, the butchers cutting too sloppily, all this is the wanting, and God, isn’t it heavy.

---

Spencer Nitkey is a writer, researcher, and educator living in Philadelphia. His writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Does it Have Pockets, Apex Magazine, Diabolical Plots, Lightspeed, Flash Fiction Online, and others. He was a finalist for the 2023 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction, and has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, the Pushcart, and Rhysling awards. You can find more of his writing on his author website.

Claudia Monpere

If I Write I’m Not Thinking of You, Old Man, Does that Mean I Am?

This avalanche slope glows with purple asters, trillium, pink mountain heather. How we’d scour the web for wildflower sightings each spring, think nothing of driving 6 or 7 hours to see blooming meadows, hills, deserts. These are smart flowers here at Glacier National Park. To survive in extreme wind and snow and intense ultraviolet light, their flowers are often shaped like a parabola to focus the sun’s warmth on their reproductive parts. Or drooping bells to capture heat radiating from the earth. But you know this, my love. I wish I hadn’t rolled my eyes when you spoke flowers. I wish I’d learned instead of simply being greedy for color. You said your biggest fear was me seeing the future you: dying neurons, shriveling hippocampus. You said we’d have to stop seeing each other: your daughter’s demand. That she couldn’t cope with the awfulness of your diagnosis, couldn’t be there to support you if I was in your life. That this was her mother’s job in spite of the divorce, that her mother longed to care for your shrinking brain, your vanishing memory. You said you were too old and sick to stand up to your daughter. You said I could make you happy by not thinking of you anymore. You were crying, so I nodded. I lied. You’re in every bloom, waterfall, mountain peak. In every shrinking glacier. Dear aid, dear nurse, dear anyone. Please read this aloud to him, then shred. 

---

Marigold

Drip, drip. From the ceiling into the pail. Sara curses herself for not getting the roof repaired, the ceiling already discolored from last winter’s rain. Her dying mother’s words: “Take care of Marigold. Promise me. Cherish her.” When diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, her mother didn’t worry about dying; she’d go to Heaven and be with her husband who—never without his toolbelt— was probably remodeling the clouds. She told this joke often: to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, adding, “It’s not the dying. What I can’t bear is the thought that Marigold will be neglected.” She named the 118-year-old house when she moved in, a new bride, charmed by the marigolds out front.

Sara empties the pail, returning it carefully to the floor. Dry rot around windowsills. Deteriorating knob and tube wiring. Plumbing problems. The fireplace, the only thing she loves about this house— unsafe. The chimney’s crumbling.

The house contains all her mother’s nurturing. She babied the red pine floors, oiling them regularly. She spotted wall and door smudges before they happened. Whenever Sara played indoors as a child, her mother lurked with a rag and spray bottle. In her last days of life, pain controlled by the hospice nurse, she rarely spoke. When she did, her labored voice rattled words like Mari and promise. Once the word love. Sara leaned in. Finally, after all these years. But no.   

The rain stops. A roofer makes repairs. The furnace goes out again. Sara talks to the broken furnace, who she’s named Haley. Tells her she’s exhausted by promises. Tells her she wants to burn this house down. Tells her about those glorious thirty-two months when she had her own apartment, rooms her mother never entered. A job working with people who smiled. Before her father died. Before her mother’s heart disease worsened and she pressured Sara to quit her job and move back home. Before Sara shrank to a speck. Vanished.

Like the fireplace. She awakens one day and it’s gone, the wall empty. She feels the wall; maybe she’s in a dream and the fireplace is invisible. But the wall is smooth, as if the fireplace has never been there. Outside, she sees the chimney is gone. She takes one of her mother’s sleeping pills, returns to bed. Late afternoon she awakens, groggy. Heads upstairs for the bathroom. It’s vanished. She showers in the second bathroom and wonders what else has disappeared. Maybe the antique curio cabinet with the creepy bisque and porcelain dolls. But nothing else appears to be missing even though she examines every room, opening closets, drawers, cabinets.

 A walk to test her sanity. Everything seems normal in the neighborhood, and she has a lovely conversation with her neighbor, Blake, whose cocker spaniel is at dog boot camp. She’s too embarrassed to ask Blake whether or not he can see her chimney. She goes to the bookstore and buys a level 4 Sudoku book, completing some of them easily in a café. Good brain, she says. Thank you. Back home, the entire second floor is gone. Google is no help. She goes to the basement. Perhaps Haley can talk now. But the furnace is silent while Sara tells her about parts of the house disappearing.

She can’t sleep. She roams the remaining rooms in the house, grateful she lives mostly on the first floor, searching for what is most important to her. What must not vanish. It turns out it’s only her old leather boots, the emerald earrings her dad gave her for her sixteenth birthday, a framed photo of him on a ladder waving, and a few novels and collections of poetry. And of course, her wallet, laptop, and phone. She places everything in a backpack next to her bed, dresses in several layers of clothing, and lies down. Maybe she should take the backpack to a hotel, spend the night, drive back to the house in the morning and see what’s left. But no. She’ll sleep here tonight. She shuts her eyes. Something glows inside her, like she’s swallowed stars.

---

Alphabet

My pet ghost apologizes that she’s not a very good ghost. She can’t do any tricks. She’s uncomfortable scaring people. She’s only a gray blob the size of a toddler, not like other ghosts who prism and shapeshift. I tell her she’s perfect. I tell my husband about her but he thinks the medication is making me hallucinate.  He’s so earnest, leaning in, holding my hand, running his fingers through my hair.

My pet ghost is full of opinions. She’s furious when my friend Sharon finally visits. “Does that bitch think she can just waltz in here with a box of bakery goods and you won’t remember that she hasn’t been in touch for months?! And you were so nice to her!”

I shrug. “It’s too sad for her. She doesn’t know what to say.”

“You’re too nice,” she says. “You need to grow some balls.”

No one can make me laugh like my pet ghost.

One day she surprises me by shaping herself into some letters. She can do C, D, I, and O perfectly and she’s close to getting some other letters. My husband hears me clapping and thinks I'm watching tv, then shakes his head sadly when he sees nothing. He asks if I’m up for a short walk. I’d rather be with my pet ghost, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings and the sun on my face feels good as he pushes me in the wheelchair. He talks yet again about how he wishes we had a child. Back when we went out a lot, our friends were full of funny stories about potty training and sleep routines.

My pet ghost says I’m lucky because few people in hospice get a ghost.

By the time I can’t leave the hospital bed that has taken over our bedroom, my ghost can do the entire alphabet. She knows I’m impressed even though I spend most of my time sleeping. But I notice something—she’s shrinking. I try to ask if this is a new trick but it’s getting so hard for me to speak. But she understands and shakes her head. Over hours or maybe days – time is a mirage--she shrinks and shrinks, still doggedly practicing her letters. When she is the size of a pencil stub, she shapes herself slowly into seven letters: g-o-o-d-b-y-e. Then she wraps around my right pinkie, like a ring, and I feel the pulse of her warmth and I know that she is me and I am her and really, there’s no need for either of us to say good-bye.

---

Claudia Monpere’s flash appears in Craft, Split Lip, SmokeLong Quarterly, Trampset, Atlas and Alice, New Flash Fiction Review, and elsewhere. Her poems appear in such journals as The Cincinnati Review, Plume, Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, and Hunger Mountain. She was the winner of the 2024 New Flash Fiction Prize by New Flash Fiction Review and was awarded 1st place in Refractions: Genre Flash Fiction Prize 2024 by Uncharted Magazine. She received the 2023 SmokeLong Workshop Prize, and her story, “Solar Flare” appears in Best Small Fictions 2024.

Amy Marques

Chorus Line of Silent Protests

You couldn’t argue with Alex’s brother Sean because he won any argument, not because he actually knew what he was talking about, but because he kept repeating himself louder and louder and was the kind of stubborn that thought if you just heard and understood what he was saying you’d obviously agree with him because there’s only one way of thinking of things and that was however Sean believed things should be, so Alex had learned to retreat into stillness and order his thoughts like a chorus line of silent protests while Sean went on and on about how people these days had no work ethic, not like when he’d been a postman in the 50s and never complained about what was mailed because that was before people started making up words for everything and giving you all these forms with tiny letters you couldn’t even read with magnifying lenses, besides it couldn’t be illegal to mail their mother’s remains to their sister in the East Coast because it would be, after all, fitting since, as an infant, she’d been mailed—sealed and stamped and all legal and everything—and carried by the postman from her parent’s house to live with her grandmother a dozen miles away and it was obviously much harder to carry an actual live infant than it was to carry a box of dust and you should, of course, agree.

The Sea is Kindest to Poets

~ after Neruda’s The Sea & also after the legend of Labismena

Year after year, ferryboats deliver them to Mena’s shores: wild-haired intellectuals with a penchant for stroking island cats, baby poets who walk the beaches, notebooks in hand, seeking lessons in the crunching shells and ceaseless waves, wanting to harvest the grace of the wind and the rhythms of the tides.

Year after year, they gather at Mena’s table. The guests digest ideas with fervor as she refills their cups. She wonders if they know she’s been hearing much of the same for decades, that her sea has lulled others who’d spoken similar thoughts, who have themselves to have achieved unprecedented vastness on these shores.

Year after year, sabbaticals done, they leave. The kindest among them have learned her name and promise to send word, to send books, to send invitations to fulfill her dream of knowing what lies beyond her shores.

Once, she believed them. But after years and years, Mena is no longer susceptible to words spoken under the spell of the sea. She knows that when the guests are gone, their promises disappear like the sun when it sets a torch to the horizon; the water reflects its flames for a moment, before pulling them into the deep. Her sea endlessly crashes against the shore, against the shattered shells, the grains of sand, once whole mountains, which now wash out beneath her sinking feet.

---

Amy Marques grew up between languages and places and learned, from an early age, the multiplicity of narratives. She’s been nominated for multiple awards, longlisted twice in Wigleaf 50, and has visual art, poetry, and prose published in journals such as Streetcake Magazine, SoFloPoJo, Raw Lit, Ghost Parachute, BOOTH, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Gone Lawn. She is the editor and visual artist for the Duets anthologies and author and artist of the chapbook Are You Willing? and the found poetry book PARTS. More at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.

Check out Amy’s featured gallery in DIHP’s November 2024 Art & Hybrids section.

Kathy Hoyle

Humbug Shark

On the funeral director’s desk there’s a jar of black and white humbugs. An old-fashioned glass jar with a shiny silver lid, like the ones you see in sweet shops of yore. And don’t ask me why I use the word yore when I would never ever use that word usually, it just seeped into the room of its own accord, alongside a thin woman in laced boots and a white cap and apron, stark against her high-necked black dress.

The woman has veined hands, which she uses to take those glass jars down from heavy oak shelves. She unscrews the silver lids and fills a bronze scoop with humbugs from the jars. She pours the humbugs onto an iron weighing scale. They clink-clink and the dish tilts. The woman tips the humbugs into striped paper bags, carefully folds the top of the bags and hands them to children in bright bonnets, while indulgent mothers look on. The woman has a kindly smile and a gleam in her eye. A gleam that says, you chose well, your decision will bring you happiness, well done you.

I wonder if her name is an old-fashioned one, a name of yore (what even is yore?) And I’m thinking maybe it’s Marjory or Ethel or Mrs Ada Quinn. I wonder if Mrs Ada Quinn was taken to her final resting place from right here, in this very funeral home - established in 1913 by Messrs Banbridge, Bolton and Sons - and I wonder if the money from her family paid for those swirling gold letters etched onto the shop front window and I wonder if the humbugs on the desk were her humbugs, and are still.

I wonder why humbugs. Because humbugs are sharp, not soothing at all, they’re sombre sweets that nip at the tongue. They taste like shit. I wonder if the slick funeral director is even aware that they’re there.

The funeral director is talking, flashing small shark teeth, talking, endlessly, talking about colours, Dove White, Genteel Cream, Break of Dawn Blue, and now he’s telling me about fabrics, silk, velvet, satin or calico and he leads seamlessly into caskets, oak, wicker, steel and cherry, and he’s talking, still fucking talking, about flowers, lilies, orchids, roses or irises.

 I wonder if Ada would sigh, like he does, if I took my time choosing things from her shelves. Or would she kindly make suggestions? Maybe not humbugs at all. Maybe she would carefully bring down each jar for me to peer into and inhale the sugared smells? Give me all the time in the world to consider the overwhelming myriad of coloured candies, my tastebuds tingling. Maybe she would smile and say, ‘it’s okay, it’s important to take your time,’ until finally, I could breathe and make my decision.

The funeral director is smiling now, actually smiling, and it makes his face look even younger, and I realize that he’s probably not even the funeral director at all, just the funeral director’s son. My father did not warrant the funeral director… just the funeral director’s son.

The smiling funeral director’s son pauses. His words float just above his head, like little drops of candy, like little humbugs. He pushes his pale hands through his slick dark hair. He is waiting for me to answer. I think his hands must feel slippy now, and slick, and if he were to try and open a jar of humbugs, say, his hands would be too slippy, he would have difficulty, for sure. So, because I’m feeling ornery and feisty and a more than a little pissed off at his stupid shark teeth and his smiling and his talking and his slicker-than-slick business-like manner, I lean forward and nod into the hanging silence. I nod toward the glass jar on his desk.

Confusion creases his brow.

‘Oh, please do,’ he says, with his leering shark-smile. He holds his hand out for me to help myself. But because I’m apparently in the anger stage of grief, I lean back in my seat and wait. I wait and wait, until finally he stands up and walks around his stupid way-too-big oak desk and smooths his stupid pale hands through his slick dark hair and runs them down the legs of his expensive trousers - paid for with the bones of people like Mrs Ada Quinn  since 1913 - and I watch him pick up the humbug jar and struggle with the lid, hands slipping, shark teeth clenched, a snarl of slipping, clenching ick, until finally the lid pops and he thrusts the jar toward me with a sigh of relief.

I peer inside the jar and say, ‘Oh, humbugs, no, thank you. Do you have anything else?’

 I watch him turn toward his desk and then back to me and slowly shake his head. He holds the jar steady. Ada stands in the corner of the room, eyes downcast with pity because she cannot help me and she knows, she knows, that all I need is a little more time, and for him to stop yapping, even just for a minute, for a second, and let me breathe before I have to make a decision, but now I’m forced to put my hand in the jar and pick out one of  those fucking humbugs and seethe at the funeral director’s son with his stupid shark smile.

I shove the humbug in my mouth and suck hard, the sharpness nipping my tongue, almost bringing tears to my eyes. Almost. And when the funeral director’s son starts talking again, talking, talking, about colours and caskets and flowers, I keep sucking, harder. I let him talk and talk, trying to force me to make a decision, any decision, anything at all. I sit there sucking on that sombre, shit-tasting humbug, refusing to say a word or, even for a second, let that shark-faced fucker see me cry. 

Ada looks on. She gives me the gentlest nod and whispers, ‘you just take your time.’

---

Kathy Hoyle’s work is published in literary magazines such as The Forge, Lunate, Emerge literary journal, New Flash Fiction Review, South Florida Poetry Journal and Fictive Dream. She has won a variety of competitions including The Bath Flash Fiction Award, The Hammond House Origins Competition and The Retreat West Flash Fiction Competition. She was recently longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 and her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and The Pushcart Prize. She lives in a sleepy Warwickshire village and when she’s not writing, she spends her time singing Dolly Parton songs to her long-suffering labradoodle, Eddie.

Karen Walker

The Meaning of Words Unknown to Doug

·      matutinal: occurring in the morning

Doug is not at the kitchen table with his oatmeal. He's in the garage under the Chevy, stuck in a pool of thick oil. 

·      jentacular: pertaining to breakfast

Louise stirs You could've died in a pot on the stove. Pours it into her bowl and his. Despite a kiss on the cheek and an extra spoonful of brown sugar, Doug denies needing anyone's help or ever wanting oatmeal.    

·      dès vu: the knowledge that something has become a memory

As the dealership changes the Chevy's oil, Doug sinks deeper and deeper into a leather tub chair in the customer lounge. There's only complimentary latte. No coffee. What's a latte?

·      acatalepsy: the impossibility of comprehending the universe

At least six—!—building permits would be required to convert the spidery garage into a den or other living space. 

·      umarell: a retired individual who stands and watches construction sites

When the strip mall was finished, the guys signed a 2x4 and presented it to Doug. They gave him leftover insulation and wire, promised to come see his garage renovations. They haven't, and he hasn't applied for a single permit.

·      catastrophize

When Louise's preliminary results come back, Doug paces the garage. It's thirteen of his Please-God-save-her-I-can't-be-alone shuffle steps wide and twenty-five long.

·      saudade: a longing that's as hazy as it is powerful

He grew up a grease monkey in his father's garage. Mechanics taught him how to change a Chevy's oil. Doug recalls them slapping his back, tousling his hair, shouting, Attaboy! and maybe even, Proud of ya! Doug's father, being forever busy with oil changes, did not.

---

Karen Walker (she/her) writes in Ontario, Canada. Her most recent work is in New Flash Fiction Review, Exist Otherwise, Misery Tourism, Switch, The Ekphrastic Review, and EGG+FROG.

Marijean Oldham

What the Heart Wants

Fate finds Junie in the Taco Bell parking lot, a cup of ice pressed against her swollen eyelids, Diet Coke coursing through her veins. A wrapper floats from her fingers to the floor. She’s smuggling her broken heart into the secret compartment in her chest, girding her body before driving home. She scrolls through her phone, deleting the professor’s texts, his number. A broken heart is harder to hide than the affair ever was.

Her phone rings. “Where you at?” her husband asks, putting Junie’s teeth on edge.

Stan is a courier of human organs, packed in ice, gentled into coolers. He speeds down the highway from hospital to hospital. When Junie thinks of Stan in his vehicle, cooler next to him on the passenger seat, she imagines the heart inside red and beating. 

“On my way home,” she says, cutting her eyes to the wrapper.

Stan, that courier of hearts and livers, a devout eschewer of fast food, cannot know about the way she takes her hurt to Taco Bell, sinking into the soothing comfort of a cheesy double beef burrito. The affair with the professor would be a more welcome revelation than this; her drive-through dalliance. The weight of her secrets hardens like plaque in an artery until she’s an impenetrable wall of pain.

Junie looks in the rearview and uses the condensation from the cup to clean the ruined mascara from under her eyes. She rolls down the driver’s side window and tosses cup and wrapper into the trash can with its long, wide neck, there for just this purpose, there to receive deceit, the driver never having to come fully to a stop.

Keeping it Together at the Falling Apart Salon

I settle in the chair at Rose’s, careful not to bump my broken elbow. She fusses, getting the cape just right. “Washing my hair one-handed isn’t really getting the job done,” I say, embarrassed at the state of my faded crowning glory.

“Of course it isn’t, honey. I don’t know why you didn’t call sooner!” She teeters behind me on sky-high heels and, as always, I marvel at her pinup figure.

Theresa pops out from under the dryer hood with a head full of green curlers and scowls at me. “Aren’t you the one who swapped husbands with that other lady?”

“Theresa! Let’s mind our manners,” Rose says, trying to come to my rescue. Theresa’s memory might be fading, but this salacious detail remains.

“Not exactly,” I say, reaching for my cup of takeout coffee, the question still a gut punch after all these years. “It was more a matter of my husband dumping me for her, and her dumping her husband for mine. Later, the two of us dump-ees decided to get together. But that’s old news!”

Claire, her white hair already coiffed and gleaming, chimes in from the manicure chair, where Louanne is just finishing painting her fingernails a bright coral. “Theresa, you know that’s none of our business.” She pauses a second, cocks her head with a smile and says, “Now, whatever happened to those other two?”

Rose leans me gently back into the washbowl and begins to rinse my hair, “They got married just as soon as they could,” I say, looking at the ceiling.

Rose gets to lathering my head, rinsing, conditioning, and rinsing again, suspending further conversation. When I’m upright again, I find them all looking at me, Theresa, Claire, and Louanne. There’s nothing this bunch likes more than a little gossip.

While Rose combs my hair into tidy sections, Claire takes the seat next to mine and pats my leg. “That must have been hard, dear.”

“It almost broke me, at first, if I’m being honest,” I say, patting my elbow in its formidable splint, the result of a misstep on a steep gravel hill. “But if it weren’t for them dumping us, my husband and I never would have gotten together! Every year on the anniversary of simultaneously being asked for a divorce, we say we ought to send them a fruit basket.”

The ladies hoot with laughter.

Rose’s eyes meet mine in the mirror as she uses a round brush to dry my hair, the sound drowning out all conversation, and holding me in a cocoon of my own thoughts. I give her a grateful smile. Rose has heard it all. It was in this exact chair that I dissolved into tears when I got the text from my daughter telling me her dad had set a wedding date. She saw my hair fall out at the worst of it, my eyes and skin wrecked from sleepless nights and tears. And when I first told her about Sam, she said she thought I should go for it, and in the years that followed saw me lift and brighten, along with my hair, which got blonder and bigger with every visit. She squealed and kissed my cheek when I asked her to do my hair for our wedding.

When she’s finished smoothing and curling my unruly mane, Rose turns me in the chair so the other ladies can cluck their approval.

Rose says, “Honey, every single person who has sat in this chair has fallen apart from time to time. There’s nothing like a good friend and a blowout to put you back together.” Rose has been the glue for each and every one of us; Louanne, getting back on her feet after a bad marriage, Claire when her husband passed away from a heart attack at fifty, and even cranky old Theresa, when her dementia became undeniable. I reach back with my good hand and hold Rose’s for a minute.

Louanne says, “Are they happy?”

“Who?” I ask.

“The other couple—your exes?”

“I assume so,” I say. “They divorced each other and are both married to entirely other people now.” And again, the tiny salon fills with laughter.

---

 Marijean Oldham is a public relations consultant and writer. In 2003, Marijean set a Guinness Book World Record for creating the largest bouquet of flowers. When not writing, Marijean is a pie enthusiast and competitive baker.

Sophia A. Montz

6174

You hadn’t heard of Kaprekar’s Constant before you died. If you had, it may have given you comfort. If you had, you might have looked at me with half-hooded knowing eyes, see, I told you there was a meaning to all of this. I told you. You wanted me to believe so badly, and I called it ancient divination, desert ravings, limerence with prophecy, ketamine for the human spirit. Ah, but I’ve learned about Kaprekar’s Constant now. I would have explained it to you with all the ecstasy of the converted, the tenderness of a sermon—did you know that almost any four-digit number can be distilled into a single, ecstatic fixed point, a syllable in integers, an om ringing through the nitrate pepper of the stars?

I see why they study biblical numerology, why they find the divine hand in single and double digits, secrets in tens and hundreds and thousands. Did you know that three and a half in the Old Testament is a week severed in two, an arrest, a stopping of the heart? Three feels unfinished anyway, twin half-circles curling into nothing, dead air and absence. Is that not what happened to you and me, some ethereal tyranny that stopped us midway? I see you too in this recursion of numbers, in the dyscalculia of us. The curve of a seven is like the curve of your back, the twist of a six the round of your cheek.

I think now—too late—that there is a hidden code to the universe, some great secret underlying the surface of our lives. The script of a melody, the measures and rests of a symphony breaking like waves around the stony figures of us. Imagine hearing music, singing music, feeling and being music, with no knowledge of the notation, the written shape, the translation of sound upon the page. Kaprekar’s Constant must be that sound upon the page, the glimmer of a hidden truth just beyond the veil. Six thousand one hundred and seventy-four. 

Translate us into this cosmic dialect, read our numerals in back-room tea leaves. Arrange our lives on a page in numbers—I’ll be eight, you six, my mother four, your father two. Rearrange us, subtract us, subtract us, subtract us, and you are left with this strange universal constant, this magic that underpins all the pain and suffering and joys and triumphs of it all.

One Zero Three One.

The day we met. The night rang with a tympani of plastic cups and in a single breath I was twenty-two and burning with innocent life. I was dressed as a priest in some satirical impotent rebellion and you were a rabbit, I think, but I don’t remember the costume. I don’t need to, because all I saw in the rearview of your cheap half-broken car were your eyes rimmed with plastic jewels, alive with the corona of youth. I learned the tell that you were lying that first night, when you told me that my outfit offended you but your eyes crinkled in the corners and you blew just a little too much air out of your nose. And from that too-hot fall evening I knew you weren’t much of a liar, not when a smile gave your bluff away.

One One Zero Three.

The first time I kissed you under the neon marquee of the movie theater and you tasted like popcorn and salt and benediction.

Zero Three Two Six.   

We moved in together and we sat on our Ikea sofa drinking whatever liquor store clearance rack wine you picked up on the way home and I knew, I felt in the faraway blood cell spaces of my marrow that you and I were everything, everything, everything.

One Zero One Zero Zero One Zero One One …

We collapsed into binary, into infinite repetition. Alike digits, you see, escape Kaprekar’s Constant, and can’t be distilled into that single fixed point, into that peculiar universal alchemy. Our days crumpled into dyads, into routine, into a kiss goodbye and an increasingly halfhearted hello and arguments about dishes and coworkers and checking accounts. One—we fought, I raised my voice and you said I was just like my father, and I said something hateful and stupid and cruel that I regretted as pride smothered the apology in the back of my throat. Zero—I kissed your lips in the underwater light of a full moon, where your hands on my back and in my hair and over the thick denim of my pants were delirious fire. One—you stared out my sedan window, mute, arms crossed and eyes fixed on the downy gray of rain. Zero—we curled into the corner of the sofa like satisfied cats, mouths wet with gin, hands pressed together in reverent worship of each other.

Zero Two Zero Nine.

You told me that you couldn’t justify the bad days anymore, that someone else would fill your life with only good days, and that you would find them. That you had to find them.

Zero Two One Zero.

I let you.

Zero Eight Two Nine.

Calculating the collision of objects in space is an imperfect poetry, but I would have twisted any probability and committed any sin for my car to collide under that banner of August summer. I fell to my knees, crying in great, gulping anguish to something I knew did not exist, to something that I wanted so badly to exist I could collapse from hot burning want into a pillar of ash.

But now I understand what you could never make me understand together, that there is, somehow, a mysterious harmony in the bones of this world. If we are numbers, and if Kaprekar’s Constant is true, then we may change and rearrange and transform, only to be resurrected, all of us resurrected, into a single ever-burning perpetuity. I don’t pretend to know why, to be able to justify it, to be able to draw if-a-then-b-then-c. But I stare at the number two and in it I see the eighth rest in a canticle of us, consecrated in smoke and incense, the melody one day to begin again.

---

Sophia Montz writes legal memoranda by day and literary fiction by night. She lives in Miami, FL with her husband and two cats. Her work is forthcoming in The /tƐmz/ Review.

Ken Foxe

The Three Burning Castles Problem

My mammy always said to me I should never get a tattoo, and good son that I was, I did exactly what I was told. When she passed away though, her gentle heart packing in after a lifetime of cigarettes and dry cider, that cleared a path for me. It was a month or so after Dublin had done the six-in-a-row, and I was flush with cash. Mammy had a few thousand euro – a few old punts included – stashed away under her mattress. I’d known nothing about it, which was good in a way. I would probably have ‘borrowed’ half of it before she departed, may the lord grant her eternal rest.

As an only son, I’d been making solid progress in spending my unexpected windfall. But I’d nothing to show for it bar new jeans and t-shirts to replace the old ones that had gotten a little too snug from all my bonviverie. I’d the day off work from my job in the bean factory and had frittered away much of the afternoon drinking down in Phibsboro. There was a spring in my step as I headed home and as I made my way up towards Connaught Street, I noticed a newly opened tattoo parlour just across from the shopping centre.

It was called Idle Ink, its lettering in an old playbill font, and I liked the ring of its name. The outside was decorated like an old saloon from one of those Western films my daddy loved. And as I pushed open the door, a little bell chimed to inform the proprietor of my arrival and mid-life crisis.

The tattooist was beautiful in a way that left even an inveterate raconteur like me without words.

“Hello,” was the best I could muster.

“Hi,” she said, her voice deep like you could swim in it. “Can I help you?”

“I was thinking of getting a tattoo,” I said as I counted her piercings. One in her nose, another in her cheek, both eyebrows, half a dozen in each ear, her bellybutton … God only knew where else because I never would.

“Have you something in mind?” she asked, my eye drawn to a green and yellow Brazilian flag stencilled on her upper arm, which almost seemed to billow with its blue disc turning.

“Maybe something to do with Dublin.”

She smiled at me, and I was doing all I could to stop my mouth opening and closing like an old trout.

“You’ll have to give me … well, a bit more to work with,” she said.

I pulled out my phone, which helped focus my mind, because it meant I wasn’t looking straight at her anymore. I searched Safari for Dublin and Gaelic football, and the old county crest with the three burning castles popped up.

“Something like this maybe,” I said, showing her the screen.

She took the mobile from me and even her hand was able to draw my eyes helplessly as I noticed the teal nail polish on her delicate fingers.

“I’ve seen this before,” she said.

“So, how does this work? Do I make an appointment and come back?”

“We could do it right away if you like.”

“And do you do it exactly like the photo on my phone?”

“I could,” she said. “Or you could trust in my imagination?”

And I’ll be honest, she could have asked me to go swim across the Liffey on a snowy January morning in my y-fronts, and I would have caught my cold, and probably drowned.

I laid out on the black leather reclining chair, eyes closed. It put me in mind of being in the dentist’s but with the scent of recently smoked marijuana befogging the air instead of antiseptic and mouthwash.

“What’s your name?” she asked me.

“Christy,” I said. “And you?”

“Gabriela.” Each of the four syllables, gentle waves breaking on warm sand.

“Ga-bree-ay-la,” I whispered.

“How are you with pain?” she asked.

What answer could I give except to say ‘grand’ even though the flu jab from the nurse every November would make me wince. And while the vibration of the needle was sore, it wasn’t so bad. Moderate pain, when you know it won’t get any worse and will soon be over, tends to stay self-contained and tolerable.

“How long has the shop been open?” I asked her.

“Just this week,” said Gabriela. “A pop-up until our main parlour is ready.”

“Pop-up?” I said. “Hmmm.”

By the time I left, three hours had passed, which was peculiar because it felt like a quarter of that. Perhaps the lingering aroma of cannabis had caused some mild sedation because all I wanted to do was sleep. My eyes were heavy as I looked at the finished tattoo. It was exquisite. I don’t own the words to describe it well, except to say that Gabriela seemed as gifted as anybody I had ever met.

She sent me on my way, upper arm wrapped in clingfilm, and a sheet of instructions on how to take care of my freshly inked body. In the living room of my small house in Cabra that evening, I read through them. How I could expect soreness and sensitivity. That this might last for up to a week. If it didn’t seem to settle, that there could be an infection. But that the chances of this were low. I fell asleep right there on the couch, the A4 page landing on my mammy’s well-worn Persian rug. I found it there the next morning, ink smudged, the text indecipherable.

It wasn’t my priority though because when I first awoke, my skin was clammy, and I had an overwhelming nausea. I was sure I was going to get sick but when I raced to the toilet, nothing came. My stomach though; it felt like a tumble drier filled with citric acid. Growling. Cursing at me.

I took a Nexium tablet from the medicine press, washed it down with a glass of full fat milk. That seemed to ease the gurgling, but I still felt a little feverish and had to wipe my brow with a dishcloth. I didn’t link it to the tattoo at first, instead blaming a bad pint from the previous afternoon. Talking to the factory supervisor on the phone, I knew he thought I was on a bender again when I told him there was no way I could make it in.

I dragged myself up the stairs and flopped down on my bed. I hadn’t changed my clothes from the night before and I stank. But I couldn’t muster the energy to change into pyjamas or go for a shower. Lying there, I would sometimes wrap myself tight in the quilt. Other times, I could hardly stand for an inch of the duvet to be touching me. My tattooed arm was burning but so too was the other undecorated one, along with my forehead, neck, chest, legs, and every other appendage.

The hours simmered away so that when my temperature finally came down, it was already getting dark outside. It was drizzling, dark clouds in the sky, one of those winter days where the sun seemed hardly to have risen at all. By then I felt okay, given the circumstances. I heated chicken soup in the microwave, drank it directly from the Tetra Pak, and gulped down two Solpadeine. I looked at my covered arm, the three burning castles blurred beneath the cellophane. It was itchy but I was able to resist the urge to scratch.

North by Northwest was playing on the TV, and I remembered how my mammy used to love Cary Grant, and that famous suit he wore. She used to say daddy looked like him when he was younger, but I’m not sure who she thought she was fooling. The warm soup settled my stomach, so that I was able to eat a banana sandwich as well. I stayed watching the telly, dozing off for a few minutes here or there. And by the time I headed back upstairs, I had a hope like the worst of what ailed me was over.

It was a little after 3am when I awoke feeling like my arm was ablaze. Not just where the tattoo was but all down through my forearm, wrist, and into my fingers. My hand instinctively went up to where the clingfilm was before I grabbed the crook of my elbow tight hoping it would ease the pain. I staggered to the ensuite bathroom, turned on the light, approached the mirror. Terrified as I wondered what I would see.

My entire arm was covered in ink now, from top to bottom. I tore off the wrapping and I could see the tattoo was in motion. There was a Viking longboat sailing down along the central vein, the one doctors use for taking blood. I could see the meandering Liffey and the Black Pool as they were before the quays tamed them. There were bonfires on each riverbank, and it was there that my arm burned most intensely. The wooden ship scythed through the water, pushed forward by twenty lines of fierce bearded Norsemen, the strokes of their oars rippling and fluttering on my skin. It seemed as if arrows were being fired toward the boat, and each would land like a sharp pin on me that would dimple and pierce the surface, then vanish subcutaneously.

I’m not sure what happened after that, but I must have made it back to bed and I didn’t come to until midday. I looked first of course to my arm, the protective film removed, the tattoo at peace. It occurred to me that what had happened was a dream until I stood again before the mirror, and I saw smoke rising from the top of the three castles and felt skin that was warm to the touch.

Strangely, I felt fine otherwise. The fever seemed to have passed and I was well enough to walk back down to Phibsboro to speak to Gabriela. It was a crisp day, the barest tickling of winter sun on my back. I tried to think of what I was going to say as I passed by Eddie Rocket’s and came to the pedestrian lights.

‘That can’t be right,’ I muttered to myself as I looked across to where the tattoo parlour should have been. The premises was almost derelict, its large display window boarded up. It was covered in anti-fascist posters and tagged with graffiti. ‘Am I after getting confused,’ I wondered? ‘Was it further up the road?’ But as I looked along the streetscape, there was nowhere else it could have been – all the other buildings were occupied.

There was a charity shop next door, so I went inside and spoke to an older lady at the cash register.

“Did the tattoo shop next door close down?” I asked.

“Tattoo shop?” she said.

“Yeah, a pop-up shop or something.”

“That building’s been empty these years.”

My arm began to burn again, and I could feel beads of sweat on my forehead. It was like a hot flush, as the strength wept out from my legs and left me wobbling. I wondered if it was a panic attack; mammy had suffered that affliction.

“Have you a bathroom?” I asked.

“No,” she answered, “try McDonalds.”

With every step, it felt as if I might topple over, like a Slinkie teetering on the top of the stairs. I tried to gather myself in the restroom, sitting on the toilet seat, my t-shirt pushed up above my shoulder. The fire atop the three castles was raging now, and for the first time in my life, I wondered if I was going insane. All I could see was myself in the fraying armchair of a psychiatrist’s office, talking of hallucinations and hospitalisation.

Maybe it was the fever. I remembered a teenage flu when my temperature soared to 102 and how dreams, nightmares, and wakefulness began to coalesce and fuse. Perhaps it was just an infection and so I took my phone and called the office of my GP, Doctor Devlin. I told them it was urgent, and they said there had been a cancellation.

“Could you come in at 5.20pm?” the secretary said.

“I’ll be there.”

Dr Devlin was visibly tired when I arrived. I must have been the last appointment in a long day of chest infections, mild depression, lonely pensioners, and suspicious lumps. He was a white-haired man in his early sixties with the demeanour of a school principal. Whenever I sat at his desk, I always felt like a naughty boy banished from his classroom. It was hard to know what to say either and I was terrified of looking foolish. I knew the strange phenomenon of my dancing tattoo was better kept secret.

“Christy,” he said. “I haven’t seen you since your mam’s funeral.”

“Yeah, and I meant to thank you for coming.”

“And what can I do for you today?”

“I did something stupid Doctor Devlin; I got a tattoo and I think it’s infected now.”

“You’re a bit auld for that,” he laughed.

He asked me to take off my top. Around the edges of the burning castles, there was an obvious redness, but at least they were no longer moving. There were a dozen small angry bumps too around the perimeter and as Dr Devlin moved his head from side to side, shining a tiny torch, he pursed his lips.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “I think there’s a bit of an infection all right. Nothing of too much concern but I’m going to give you a script for an antibiotic. It’ll bring that redness down and if there’s pain or tenderness, paracetamol should do the trick.”

“Thanks doctor; it was a silly thing to do.”

He sat back and rubbed the palm of his hand on the crown of his head.

“Ah,” he said, “if I was a young man these days, no doubt I’d have one myself. Do you know the story of the three castles by the way?”

I gritted my teeth in ignorance, a touch embarrassed. I’d never really given it very much thought.

“Was it that Dublin Castle was burnt down three times?” I asked.

“That’s what you’d think all right. But nobody really knows. Some say it’s that the people would do anything to defend their home. Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas, the obedience of the citizens produces a happy city.’”

“I was never much good at Latin in school.”

“It was an acquired taste.”

I managed to get the prescription filled at the local chemist, just minutes before they were due to close. I dry-swallowed the first amoxicillin tablet as I walked home, thinking there was no point in wasting any time. And as I sat on the sofa that evening, taking my time over three cans of Tuborg, checking my arm every other minute, it felt like the redness was dimming.

Falling asleep was never easy for me. Unless of course I’d enough drank that I might fall into a stupor, readying myself for the hangover to come. But that night when I stretched out on the bed – ear plugs snug, eye shades on – I must have dropped off straight away. I have no remembrance of tossing or turning, or a racing mind despite all that had happened. And that made my sudden awakening just after 3am even more jolting.

It is hard to describe how it feels for every centimetre of your arm to feel in motion even as it is still. It was as if it had been invaded by a colony of ants that were searching out breadcrumbs or grains of sugar. In one moment, there would be burning, the next pulling, stretching, and piercing. And that was only in the sixty seconds it took me to regain my equilibrium and stagger to the bathroom.

In the mirror, I could see my arm pulsing and quivering. Two ferocious gangs of men – the weavers and the butchers – were at battle. Forty men on either side, armed with clubs, pikes, stones, and cleavers slashed and hacked at one other, and my skin. Routed, the butchers fled to their shambles but were followed and attacked again. Six or seven died, dozens more were injured; arms, backs, legs, heads twisted and broken open. The bloody skirmish only ended when soldiers came to disperse them.

As the confrontation ended, my arm returned to normal, like ink was spilling from a fountain, but in reverse. All that remained were the three burning castles, light smoke drifting up from the crenelation. And then that too ceased, so that peace descended upon my body once more.

It doesn’t happen nightly, only every three or four days. I saw firsthand the Fenian Rising and the execution of Robert Emmet. I watched shells rain down on Dublin from the Liffey; the GPO and Four Courts left in rubble. Nelson’s Pillar exploded on my bicep, and along my brachioradialis, the Invincibles stabbed Lord Cavendish with surgical knives.

I spend my free time poring over history books trying to piece together the lesser-known events that unfold on the skin that covers my ulna, radius, and humerus. The tattoo occasionally spreads so that my chest and other arm become illuminated too. Will it someday cover me entirely?

I’ve learned to live with the pain as it ebbs away when each spectacle ends. My body has become a cinema screen, an animated portal to the past. All I wish for now is that it would happen every night.

---

Ken Foxe is a writer and transparency activist in Ireland. He is the author of two non-fiction books based on his journalism and a member of the Horror Writer’s Association. He has had around three dozen short stories published in a wide variety of journals, magazines, and anthologies. You can find him on Instagram (@kenfoxe) and Twitter/X (@kenfoxe). www.kenfoxe.com/short-stories/

Mark Fellin

The J Line

Becca steps to the edge of the platform for the fifth time in the past four minutes and bends in half to look into the tunnel. The late-night J train to Brooklyn is the goddamn worst. Followed closely by every other line on the colorful subway map sprawl. All aboard a crumbling relic built in 1904. Congestion ahead, track issues, sick passengers, we appreciate your patience. Don’t worry, the latest fare hike will fix it all. Becca steps back and scans the empty platform before leaning against a rusting girder. She adjusts the backpack hanging over her shoulder and pulls her coat tight against the icy December air.      

It’s three in the morning and Becca’s on her way home after eight hours of proofreading. Reviewing forms and fine print is mind-numbing work, but identifying other people’s errors feels a lot better than dwelling on her own. It’s therapy in paragraph form. She scored the overnight gig a few months ago after acing the copy editing exam; maybe those AP English classes actually paid off. But today, just before punching out, the shift manager tells her the position is being eliminated. AI is cheaper and faster with less sass and fewer coffee spills. Thank you, good luck, fuck you.       

She pushes her giant headphones over the top of her tight black wool hat, maxes the volume and is assaulted by the new Deathalon album, Somnolent Scream, the band’s loudest yet. Her frozen breath billows around her head.

When the J eventually limps into the Essex Street station she doesn’t hear it. Deathalon rages through her brain at one hundred twenty decibels. The doors slide open. Becca enters and falls into a seat. It’s three fifteen. She assesses her four fellow travelers as the doors close.

The girl directly across the way is crashing hard. She looks a little younger than Becca, maybe twenty-two. It’s hard to say with pretty little party girls. Across and to the left, a small stiff man studies the bible, his mahogany hand glides down each sacred page, CVS readers grip the tip of his nose, a gold bookmark ribbon extends down between his knees. He’s wrapped in a long black coat, a burgundy scarf twirls around his neck, a green Yankees cap is pulled down tight. To Becca’s right, one bench over, a teenager is sprawled out on his back. His head is shrouded in a grimy gray hoody. His left arm is extended, palm up, panhandling even in his dreams. The kid will freeze when he gets outside, if he goes outside. They say lots of the homeless winter in the subway; it certainly smells like it.

And at the far end, in the corner, a long narrow figure sits up straight, legs crossed at the ankles, hands jammed deep in the pockets of a silver Canada Goose down jacket. He reads the ads that ring the car, lips moving slightly. He smiles at Becca. She looks through him subway-style and shuts her eyes.

The next stop is on the other side of the East River. The Manhattan-to-Brooklyn crossing is a six-minute, slow-motion rumble over the Williamsburg Bridge. Becca taps her phone and “Möbius Man” slices through her soul. Nodding in time with the gouging base, Becca’s upcoming weekend flashes by like a bad poker hand: shopping for the ancient aunt she lives with, six hours of court-ordered community service, getting high with Paul, dodging sex with Paul. She knows he’s boning her friend, but Paul has the best weed in Ocean Hill. The best bone too. She’ll break up with him soon. Or move in with him.  

The J pitches forward with a spasm, reconsiders with a jolt and starts its eastward crawl. Becca watches the young girl stretch like a kitten before slinking along and disappearing into the next car. The train emerges from the depths and begins its slow ascent over the bridge. The tall guy is looking at Becca again, or still, so she looks out the window. Through the dirty glass, the city spreads out northward, a dash of glitter tossed on a black cat. Becca pats the Marlboros in her coat pocket. She quit five days ago. She’ll quit again.

Becca replays yesterday’s conversation with her father. It’s the standard artificially flavored peppermint Christmas call from Indiana, with the merry-merry morphing seamlessly into The Checklist: work, boyfriend, come home and give college one more try. Becca’s clipped answers chill the holiday cheer, so they mumble through their I-love-yous and hang up. Her father means well but in the decade since her mother died he hasn’t upped his parenting game.     

Another drum avalanche slams through Becca’s skull and her eyes crack open. The tall guy is standing now, looking down the length of the car. He’s trim but sturdy. His face is straight lines and clean edges, more efficient than handsome, like an IKEA bookcase. His eruption of thick, black hair sways with each dip in the tracks, a smirk slides across his lips. Becca’s eyes close again.

Without a job she’ll be out of her windowless one-room basement apartment soon. Her aunt is not unkind, but she’s a bottom-line lady on a fixed income. A guitar solo plows down Becca’s spine and makes her knees ache. Her eyes twitch open long enough to see the tall guy standing in front of the man reading the bible, who’s looking up and shaking his head. The J train’s jangle pushes her heavy lids down.

Is it bad breaks or bad decisions that have her slouching home to a secondhand futon in the pre-dawn frost? A bad attitude, she’s been told more than once, coupled with a toxic ego and sprinkled with stubbornness. She came to New York two years ago. It has wrestled her to the ground and tapping out may be her only option. She’s heard that Portland is a great place for exiles and castaways, with plenty of rain to keep expectations sufficiently low.

Becca absently fingers her lip rings. When she opens her eyes again the bible reader is lying on the floor, face down, mouth slack with death. His hands are tucked under his body, against his belly, failing to hold in his life, which zig-zags down the black rubber floor of the subway car, thick and red. The bible is nowhere in sight.

The tall guy sits directly across from her now. He’s leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees, a long silver blade hangs down from his clasped hands. He’s looking to his left at a second motionless pile on the floor, the kid in the now very bloody hoody. The tall guy looks at Becca and yawns, wide and long.

“That’s rude,” Becca says. She can barely hear herself so she slips off her headphones, drops them in her lap. The savage beat thumps across her thighs. “You should cover your mouth,” she adds flatly, the words thick, heavy.

He responds with a toothy weatherman’s smile, his head bobs along with the train.

Becca glances to the left at the dead man, at the dead boy to the right. “Did you do this?”

“Do what?” He waits a beat. “Oh, yeah. They don’t matter.”

“According to you?” Becca is not surprised that she’s not afraid. Being gutted on the subway by a psychopath will not be the worst part of her week.

“They didn’t know my name when I asked them so they don’t matter. According to me.”

“I don’t know your name, either.” Becca’s eyes are stapled to his. She knows somehow that this is essential, vital.   

“That’s too bad,” he says, still grinning.

“You know what’s too bad?” Becca shakes her head. “These people were killed by a joke. A sad, tragic joke.” She wants to look down at the victims again, for emphasis, for confirmation, but she will not break her focus on him. It’s all she has, all she can control.

“I’ve lived here my whole life and these people don’t care.” He taps the bloody knife against his chest a few times, spreading a bright, crimson constellation across the metallic sheen of his coat. “Nobody shows me any respect.”

“Why would they?”

“I take this train every goddamn day and nobody cares, nobody knows,” he says, pointing the weapon toward Becca. “I have to show them.”

“This is your big reveal?” Becca leans forward for emphasis, her face now only a few feet from his. “If you’re going to kill everyone who doesn’t care, you’ll be on this train a long time.”

“I know that.” His smile thins.

“This is a big city little boy.”

“I said I know.” He stands, unfolding in sections, one fist wrapped around the overhead handrail, the other clutching the knife, tapping it against his thigh. His stare circles Becca’s body. He is a nightmare, an absurd baneful giant in a narrow metal tube tumbling through the night.

Becca realizes she has stopped breathing and gasps. “You need to sit down so I can tell you what I know.”

The J groans as it reaches the apex above the river. The lights flicker then go out. In the darkness Becca imagines crushing his windpipe with her fist, smashing his Roman nose flat, ripping his tongue out. The lights flutter back to life. He’s still standing there, looking at her, expressionless.

“You don’t know anything.” He peers at the bodies again and drops back onto his seat.

“What I know is that you can’t figure things out so you’re angry,” she says.

“Shut up,” he shouts. “I will carve that dirty mouth off your ugly face.”

“What I know is that you’re not a coward. You just have it all twisted around.”

His gaze passes through her now, through the window behind her, through the frigid night and across the river. He shifts back against the pale blue plastic bench. The knife dangles loosely between his fingers

“If you want respect give them something to remember, something only you can do. This here,” Becca nods toward the lifeless passengers, “anyone can do this. It’s gutless, it’s ordinary.”

He toys with the knife, tests the point against his thumb.

“You think I should do it?” he asks, lifting it to his throat. His smile is back.

“I don’t know that you have a choice. If you want to control your own story.”

“You might be the only person who gets me,” he says, tilting his head back against the window, holding the blade just below his jaw.

“I don’t give a fuck about you.” She doesn’t recognize her voice. “But you should.”

Becca sees her reflection in the window behind him. It’s the best she’s looked in a long time.

The steely scent of blood hovers between them, sharp and urgent. The J train slows.

The recorded MTA announcement barks. “This stop is Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn. Thank you for riding with us.” The J grinds to a stop. It’s three twenty-one.

Becca stands, slides her headphones on, winces as the singer shrieks through a chorus. She turns to face the exit and waits.

The doors stutter and split apart. Becca steps into the cold, blue-black opening and onto the empty concrete platform. She looks back into the train, at the knife lying on the floor, until the doors slide shut.

---

Mark Fellin lives in New York City, always has. His stories have appeared in Berkeley Fiction Review, Criminal Class Review, Daikaijuzine, Literally Stories, Rock and A Hard Place Magazine, and The Realm Beyond.

KM Baysal

Pink Camellias (Longing)

It was the line of pink camellias trailing along my husband’s spine that finally convinced him to go to the doctor. They had been popping up here and there—bright pink blooms springing from his armpit, his shoulder, tucked behind a knee— for about a week before he said anything. When they sprang up along his spine and in that unreachable spot between his shoulder blades, he had to tell me.

The doctor said he had been seeing a lot of this lately. People of all ages and ethnicities were spontaneously growing flowers. It wasn’t as alarming as it seemed; no injury or disease was associated with their existence. Preliminary studies suggested the blooms were manifestations of unprocessed or unspoken emotions. Just a theory, he said, as my husband frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. The doctor recommended we keep plucking the flowers until someone developed an inhibitor cream.

A stoic man, my husband dismissed the doctor’s theory and continued to grow flowers. He didn’t only grow camellias. He’d wake to find daffodils, or geraniums, or camellias in every shade imaginable growing in patches all over his body, embarrassed but forced to ask for my help in their removal. As long as I’d known him, he was shy about being naked. Even when we were first dating, our mid-twenties bodies in their most attractive state, he’d only shed his clothing for as long as it took to have sex, donning a tee shirt and boxers as soon as he could afterward. Meanwhile, I’d prance around the apartment with abandon, exhilarated by the kiss of the cool or warm air on parts generally kept covered, reveling in the effect my nakedness had on him. Over the years as age and familiarity set in, we revealed less and less of ourselves. There was comfort and ease to be found in the dark.

I suggested we make a game out of his condition to lighten the mood. Together, we’d pick the morning’s offering, attempting to identify each flower as we went. It was awkward at first, this reacquaintance with his body in daylight. I traced the half-moon of freckles behind his left ear with my fingers. Gasped at the tuft of hair on his chest that had turned salt-and-pepper without my notice. Marveled that the scar on his knee from a bike accident once red and angry had faded to a ghostly white. All the while, plucking gorgeous blooms of sapphire, violet, and gold from his olive skin and arranging them in vases throughout the house. Our lives were suddenly full of vibrant rainbows and intoxicating perfumes.

As I arranged a vase full of purple forget-me-nots and pink morning glories, I recalled Ophelia distributing flowers and how each had a special meaning. It didn’t take long to find an internet guide on the symbolism. Forget-me-nots meant just that, and morning glories represented affection. I researched other blooms we had picked: light pink and peach peonies (bashfulness or shame) and violets (watchfulness and modesty) the day after the doctor’s appointment; red geraniums (folly) and yellow chrysanthemums (slighted love) the morning after an argument; pink and white hollyhocks (ambition) cropped up all over the day he planned to ask for a promotion to regional manager.

I waited a bit before sharing my discovery. I liked having such a visceral guide to his emotions every day, and I loved the closeness our morning ritual had reignited. He started to insist on checking my body for flowers, too, even though we both knew there weren’t any. A soft touch on my hip, a brush of my thigh, a light kiss on the back of my neck inevitably led us to more intimate pursuits when we had time, lingering over and delighting in each other’s bodies like we did when we first fell in love. I didn’t want that to end, but I began to feel guilty, as if I were sneaking peeks at his journal.

One night after we searched for errant blooms on each other, my head resting on his chest, his arm circling my waist, I told him. That morning’s blooms were red roses, white heliotrope, and honeysuckle (all representing love)— an auspicious sign. He smiled and told me he already knew. He had looked them up as well. I reluctantly offered to stop checking the meanings to give him some privacy, but he shook his head, pulled me closer and asked now why would he want that. The next morning, every inch of him was covered in purple and blue hydrangeas (gratitude for being understood), and red tulips (passion), an entire field of flowers waiting to be picked.

Aftermath

It wasn’t until much later, after our parents rushed to our high school and all us kids in our sequined prom dresses and cheap polyester suits were accounted for; after we found Coach’s wife, Mrs. Owens, calling his name as she ran in and out of the gym, saying Coach was chaperoning the prom, but only Billy recalled seeing him there early in the evening, chatting with Ms. Green, the school secretary, as they manned the beverage table, and Caroline said the table was empty when she arrived an hour late claiming she had a hair mishap, but we all knew it was really because she was making out with Mark in his dad’s old Mercedes in the parking lot; after the mayor and the volunteer EMTs and firemen and police followed the route the tornado took to barrel through town like a bulldozer, proclaiming it a miracle that the there was so little damage, that the funnel mercifully picked a mostly clear path, lifting a shingled roof here, an old rusty car there; after they found Coach’s body in his red Toyota by the river crushed under a massive oak tree that was rotted inside, and people wondered what he was doing down there, in the backseat no less, when he was supposed to be chaperoning the prom; after our mothers circled together and spoke in whispers at the funeral, none daring to say how grateful they were that it wasn’t their husband but each of them thinking it, and all the while keeping a close eye on our fathers standing a few feet away; after they dropped off pierogies and casseroles and chocolate cakes to comfort Mrs. Owens and people talked about what a good man Coach was, recalled how he announced the raffle drawings at the school carnival each summer with gusto, how he always had a smile and a word of encouragement for even the worst basketball player on the team, voices trailing off into the distance as they imagined their own lives being cut short in such a sudden way; long after our classmates mowed Mrs. Owens’ lawn, shoveled her driveway, paused to chat when she sat on her porch drinking her morning coffee and rocking in Coach’s favorite chair with a sad, lost look on her face that never went away, a look of grief and heartbreak and something that we couldn’t quite name; years after we graduated and some of us moved, some of us stayed, some married our high school sweethearts, some divorced those sweethearts and married others, some had kids, some adopted pets, all found and lost jobs, gained and lost weight, acquired wrinkles and a few gray hairs; after a group of us met at the rec center for our twentieth reunion, sitting at folding tables with purple plastic tablecloths, drinking cold Miller Lite from red plastic cups and laughing about the time that Billy lit a stack of papers on fire in the restroom trashcan so our trigonometry final would be postponed; it was after all that reminiscing when Billy somberly recalled the night of the tornado and Coach’s untimely death, and Caroline remembered seeing Ms. Green huddled by the ambulance down by the river wearing Coach’s prized varsity jacket, the one he wore on all but the hottest summer days, and after Mark recounted finding Ms. Green a week later in Coach’s office cradling his favorite basketball—signed by the 1995 state championship team—and watching the principal, Mr. Long, escort her out while she clutched the ball to her chest and fought back tears, that we finally realized Ms. Green’s grief was not the same as ours, and what we thought we understood about the lives of the adults in our little town was not as simple as it had seemed.

---

KM Baysal lives, works, and writes in NYC. She can often be found haunting the New York Public Library or cozy coffee shops, tapping away on her keyboard. She is currently working on a fantasy novel.

Stuart Watson

Unfurnished

Avocado-green shag carpet lay between my sleeping bag and the one wrapped like a tortilla around Ellise. I felt like throwing up, not from the carpet, although it didn’t help, but from the too-much-of-everything the night before. We struggled, trying to find the zipper pulls.

Ellise wore a T-shirt, sexy as day-old mashers. Neither of us offered an invitation to romance, no surprise, since neither of us ever did, much, anymore. Like marriage for her was a place she could hide from all that. After six months, I had given up. Ellise had declared victory.

In the front room, we scanned our new space in the light of day. Rented the night before. Floor-flopped shortly thereafter, without the walk-around. Avocado shag in the living area, decorated with the red velour overstuffed chair we had hauled south from Redding. I wondered a lot during the drive, what other motorists thought of this relic hanging from the Cortina’s trunk beneath the tied-down lid. Did they steal it? Are they destitute? Do they have a bed?

It was our only piece of furniture. After we signed the lease the night before, I sat on one arm while she occupied the seat. She flipped through an old Sunset magazine we found in the laundry room of the apartment villa.

“Look at this,” she said, and held the magazine up. “Polka dot.”

“Dining table?”

“Sure. Festive. Better than what we got.”

We had no table. We needed jobs, but Ellise was all about getting a table and chairs to clash with the floral-print linoleum in the part of the living room we called our kitchen. All electric.

“But … jobs?” I said. We had spent all but a hundred bucks on first, last and security, for two bedrooms up across an alley from the fenced yards of one-level ranchers. No gunshots yet.

In fresh light, Ellise put on her fake-leather fur-lined-collar coat and we went to the thrift store.

A woman behind the counter brought to mind a polyester eclair. Ellise went one way, I went another, in search.

“Paul!” Ellise’s voice, but I couldn’t see where. Half yell, half squeal. Like a 12-year-old. Oh, lord, what have I done. “Come look. It’s magic.”

I followed the sound until I saw her, decked out for a faux winter.

That is where we made the acquaintance of an actual polka-dot dining room table, formica top and four chairs with matching print Nauga crap upholstery, ripped from the pages of Sunset. I imagined us dining there in silence, jaws masticating pasta and ground cattle with a flavor packet.

We were verbally ejaculating all over it. “Look at the chairs,” I said, not really sure what I wanted her to see.

“I know,” she said. “Chairs. It’s got a leaf.”

“Don’t buy anything here,” snarled a guy with a beard to his waist and black-on-black attire. “They’ll rip your ass so bad it’ll feel like you were fucked with a vacuum cleaner.”

He kept moving toward the exit, while I mentally parsed his advisory. Vacuum cleaner? Upright or canister? What about …?

Ellise tugged at my hoodie. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’d hate to get fucked like that.”

I wanted to ask her how she would prefer to get fucked, since she hadn’t shown much interest in that aspect of our married life, and she had few other aspects to counterbalance that  void. We had a list of thrift stores. The next one featured furnishings salvaged from roadside “free” disposal. A big maple monster with a ruined finish could be ours for a fourth as much as the polka dot model.

I looked down at its top. Somebody’s family had etched it with history. Initials carved into the surface. Simple excavations that looked like things. Cars. Dogs. A baseball and its stitches. Two of the initials matched mine. I felt a sudden craving for a table just like this, minus the other family. Blank. Ready for my own.

“You can’t have it.”

I turned. Red lipstick spilled a bit beyond the natural edges of her lips. A woman maybe a couple of years older than me, in tight jeans with big frizzy hair and a sleeveless blouse.

“It’s mine,” she said. “My dumbass boyfriend left it at the curb and it was gone in the morning. Him too. Asshole.”

“Didn’t you try to stop him?”

“I was out. Late.”

She pulled cash out of her pocket and paid the cashier.

“You’re paying? It’s yours.”

She looked at the cashier, then me.

“Not when it’s in here,” she said. “These doofs don’t know, don’t care.”

 Ellise slipped her arm around my waist. “I liked the polka dot model better,” she said.

The other woman smelled nice, not perfumey. Like shampoo. I wanted more.

“Can I help you load it?”

She smiled, turned toward the door.

I turned back toward Ellise. “Would you grab the other end?”

“Shouldn’t the store people load it? They sold it.”

The woman behind the counter lifted a smoldering cigarette to her lips and ignored us. She opened her mouth to talk and the cigarette stuck to her lipstick, flapping as she said “I’m sales, not warehouse.” I looked at Ellise. She didn’t know what to say. I waited for her to lift her end, then led the table toward the double glass door.

The other woman had a pickup. She helped us hoist the maple monster into the bed.

“You got a way to unload it?” I asked.

She looked at the table, then me, then Ellise, then the table.

“We’ll follow you,” I said.

“Really?” Ellise said. “What about our table?”

“Won’t take long,” I said.

It didn’t. After we set it back in her dining room, she brushed her hair back, smiled my way, extended her hand with a limp wrist. “Donna,” she said. “Can I … pay you?”

I shook my head, her words clacking around like billiard balls inside. Ellise and I drove back to the first store, bought the polka dot number. It seemed OK. I looked underneath, to see if there was any clue about how it might fuck me in the ass.

We strapped it to the top of the Cortina, stuffed the chairs inside, went back to the apartment. I still have nightmares about that rental, the sliding glass door off the main bedroom, onto a cheesy deck that sloped away from the building, like it wanted to fall off the minute somebody stupid stepped onto it.

Once we set it up in the kitchenette, where the carpet ended at a tack strip and the fleur-de-lis linoleum began, I thought it would benefit from decor. I went to our bedroom and brought back my box of used Playboys. I set them in the center of the table, then pondered how we could get phone service if we didn’t already have a phone. I told Ellise I would take the car to the Bayside Bell store and order a hookup.

I did, but when I emerged from the store, I thought about Ellise. Why had I married her? I was twenty-one. She was two years younger, a kid with memories of things her dad did to her. She didn’t want me doing anything.

Instead of turning toward the apartment when I pulled out of the lot, I aimed our car toward the house with the maple table. The sun had set by the time I pulled up in front. The engine purred as I sat there, thinking. I turned it off. Stared at the lights inside the other woman’s house. Ellise and I hadn’t done anything in awhile. Sex with a beautiful woman was all I could think of. I started getting hard.

Is this the day?

I thought of Ellise. She was a sweet person. She didn’t deserve me, cheating on her with the table woman.

I’ve come this far. What am I going to do about it? I want it. I know she wants it. She’s probably inside, looking out, waiting for me to get out and knock on the door.

I sat there into the night, frozen, on the cusp of betrayal. Wanting. Fearing what that last step would bring. My addled brain ran through an endless list of what ifs.

What if I went inside and did the thing? Then I would have to lie?

What if I didn’t lie? What would Ellise do?

What if I did lie? What would the rest of my life look like, staring back at me from my morning mirror?

What if I didn’t go inside, and thought of my big fail every night, before falling into tortured sleep?

What if the table woman got tired of waiting for me to get out of the car and come up the walk and knock on her door, and she came outside and walked down to my car and got inside and fucked me silly? That would be hot, but what if it didn’t happen that way?

What if she called the cops, scared shitless that I was some sort of psycho stalker about to …?

It was brutally dark, no traffic on the road, when I heard the tap on the window beside my head. It was her. I rolled the window down.

“What are you waiting for?”

I stared at her. Luscious. Inviting. Off-limits. Just like my wife. I smiled weakly, rolled the window back up. She stood there a second, then turned away. Dragged her index finger through the dirt on the window and disappeared. Eventually, I fell asleep.

The glare off the rearview mirror of a garbage truck woke me. I started my car and made a U-turn and drove back to the apartment.

The phone guy was fiddling with wires when I got there. The manager stood there, watching the phone guy to make sure he didn’t steal our sleeping bags or rape Ellise. Without a word, I stood next to Ellise and watched him work. I wondered how he knew which wires to connect when he removed the thingy from the wall and all the wires suddenly looked like hairs on an old man’s ear.

I picked up Miss March 1963. The lass had pigtails and a perky bust. Like Donna, back at the house. Probably. I wondered what she looked like, without clothes. Napping after sex. Slightly sweaty. Maybe I would feel surprise, to see a mole beneath her arm, faint blonde hairs.

I looked up to see my wife in her faux coat, looking around, at the walls, the floor, the sink. Wanting to say something. Not knowing where to start, so not starting. Likely, her thoughts went like this: So this is it. Home. For a month, at least.

Then looking around, to see if something anywhere in that apartment offered her a reason to be there, with me, with the phone man. With a polka dot dinette.

When the phone guy left, we looked in the directory for employment agencies. She got a job taking calls from home buyers.

I got a job ringing up sales of munchies to graveyard ghouls. Every night, I waited out the wee hours, hoping nobody high on dexy came in waving a gun without a clue how to keep it from going off accidentally, the terms of what would be this numbskull’s defense at trial for manslaughter. Then I went home and slept while Ellise was at work. We rarely saw each other until we decided to move back to Seattle.

I never went back to Donna’s. I had the spine of a banana slug. Twenty years, four jobs and five relocations later, I rose one night in the dark, packed a bag and walked out and downtown to the bus station.

I didn’t leave a note. What could I say that had gone unsaid every day since my night outside Donna’s house and her table full of family history?

Before I left, I set the car keys on the polka dot table, so Ellise could go somewhere of just her choosing.

---

Stuart Watson has been honored for his work at newspapers in Anchorage, Seattle and Portland. He has fiction in Bull, Yolk, Barzakh, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Bending Genres (Best Microfictions nominee), Erozine, The Writing Disorder, The Rush, Reckon Review, Sensitive Skin, The Muleskinner Journal and others. Poems appear in The Muleskinner Journal and The Broadkill Review. He lives in Oregon with his wife and their current “best” dog.

Susan Emshwiller

Welcome, C’mon In 

The beginning can be pointedly precise or obliquely obtuse. After all, it’s hardly more than a greeting.

Dangle the bait. Hook. Reel in slow. So slow you don’t even feel the pull.

I’m no expert but I’ve caught a few. Would have mounted trophies if that were possible.

Wording is the thing. Easy going. Easy flowing. Friendly-like. Adding a smidge of slang to put folks at ease.

Most don’t even notice the words I sprinkle for the subconscious. Red is common but I like to thresh it up with surprises. Like thresh. Gives a sense of danger. Danger draws you in. Gives zest to cozy lives. Makes you wonder—What is going on?!

Sometimes I set out pedestrian things. Everyday items.

Spoons.

Or a cheese grater.

The captive mind leaps into action. What will be done with these!? A cheese grater?

Basement. Sounds of something dripping. Flies circle under the glaring bare bulb. A cheese grater is removed from a worn leather satchel. The cheese grater inches closer. Near a most tender part. It hovers over bare skin and then —

Can you see it? 

Where does it gravitate to? What can it toy with? Images fly. The forbidden. The unthinkable becomes visible behind the eyes.

 Can you see it?

The swinging bulb seems brighter. Muffled voices echo. What’s being done with this cheese grater? You know. Something disturbing.

There’s a terror there. Down in your gut it rumbles, in that hidden place. It isn’t me. It’s you.

Every time you see a cheese grater, remember what you imagined.

I offered the seed. You did the rest.

I’m not a bad sort. I don’t make you feel anything I haven’t felt. I’ve done it all to myself. Everything.

I know if I push too hard I lose you. I’ve lost a few by going too far. So let’s stop now and move on. To spoons perhaps?

I call forth great geese to fly you on their smooth muscular backs feathered in brown and cream. A wide V formation of determined companions all heading —somewhere. They fly, calling out over the green and gold patchwork below. You’re with them, surrounded by them. 

Listen to that honking!

Listen to the great wings thresh the air.

Listen to the chimes.

Chimes?

There, behind,—

—tied to the black webbed feet with red ribbons

—dangling in the wind

—spoons.

The spoons chime together as bells, ringing out to churches underwing. Bidding the church-bells join the joyous cacophony.

And? What next?

Well—if the satin ribbons are frayed or brittle with age, they might break. They might break and release the spoons and there is no telling where those might land.

Perhaps the spoons plummet, tarnished bowl-head first, and splash in that pond below, zig-zagging past algae and green bubbles to silently stop on the silty bottom.

Can you see them?

Down there, nibbled on by curious tadpoles.

This might not go further.

Let’s rewind.

Perhaps the ribbon breaks and the spoons drop in a slow arc to the landfill. They land in the landfill and they plop atop the favorite photograph. Why is this favorite photograph in the landfill? A photograph that didn’t mean to be discarded but got mixed up with the junk mail when—when what?—when the grandchildren knocked everything off the mantle.

Can you hear the crash? The anxious cries?

The spoons frame the precious discarded black and white picture of—

You can almost see it.

Of—

—the departed father.

A derby-hatted man—who’s almost smiling. A man who almost never smiled is almost smiling—and amidst the cawing gulls, we’re at a landfill remember, amidst the cawing gulls—only you see—the spoons and cherished photo become covered by the last truckload of trash, not to be seen again for one hundred years.

Not long enough?

Not to be seen again for a millennium!

And in a millennium they are uncovered by—let’s say by future archeologists! Discovered, and methodically uncovered by future archeologists trying to get a clue as to what went wrong. What went wrong with—

No. Let’s rewind.

The ribbons break. The spoons tumble through clouds down to that suburban home, there—the last one at the edge of the development. And as the sun heads for its bed, the spoons hit the roof, clatter and clang on the tiles, bouncing like goats down a hillside, skipping off to land noisily on the front step—just as the teenage boy, his courage finally summoned, taps on the door.

And so?

The two ribbon-tied spoons glisten at his feet.

And so?

This is not the greeting he expected.

And so?

This is not the greeting he expected but he picks up these spoons, these gifts, and when the teenage girl opens the door, he presents them. The two watch the flock honk overhead, and because they both are aware that her parents have left for the evening, she accepts the spoons and, barefoot, leads him to the kitchen when—

When what?

—when all across the county the power goes out.

Perhaps a goose landed on the lines.

And in the surprise darkness of the kitchen, the girl pauses her walk but the boy doesn’t, and the accidental bumping becomes a fumbling which becomes a quickening of hearts and unseen reddening and neither knows what to do but they make it up as they go along.

And maybe the naked boy licks one of the spoons and slides it over the naked girl. And maybe she guides him and they do things with the spoon because they’re artists at that moment and in a state of grace, without shame to halt their inspiration.

And only you know what they do with those spoons.

And the next morning their respective Moms and Dads talk about the power outage. As Dad grates cheese into threshed eggs they talk about emergency kits and flashlight batteries. And in their respective homes the boy and girl lift sacred spoons with cereal or yogurt and smile at their secret.

And you know their secret. You made it.

It could end there. Or there could be a coda of sorts.

Perhaps—no one understands why they give spoons to each other on every anniversary. Or why their wind chimes are made of spoons hung from red satin ribbons. Or why they always look up at the honking V of geese and touch fingers. Or why, well into their eighties, the wrinkled hand of one slides a cool spoon gently over the blue veins of the other.

But you know why.

If a spoon falls from a goose or a cheese grater shines in a basement and no one’s there to read it, did it happen? Does it mean anything?

Without you, these are just squiggles of ink on a page. 

---

Susan Emshwiller is a produced screenwriter (including co-writer of the film Pollock), a filmmaker, a published playwright, novelist, teacher, artist, and short story writer. Her novel Thar She Blows debuted in 2023 and All My Ancestors Had Sex came out this year. Other writing can be found in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Independent Ink Magazine, Black Heart Magazine, Gone Lawn, and Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine. Ms. Emshwiller was a set decorator for many years in Hollywood and a featured actress in Robert Altman's The Player. Her feature film, In the Land of Milk and Money, a wild social satire, garnered awards and rave reviews at festivals in the US and internationally. Susan has taught screenwriting at North Carolina State University, OLLI at Duke, the Met Theatre in Los Angeles, and in conferences and festivals around the country. She lives with her husband and dogs in Santa Fe, NM where she enjoys inventing stories and backyard contraptions. Find out more about Susan in a DIHP interview: https://www.doesithavepockets.com/features/susan-emshwiller and her website https://www.susanemshwiller.com/. Follow her on Facebook.

Heather Pegas

The Mermaid Has Finally Had It 

The mermaid surfaces, and for once, just this once, there is nothing about or below. No ships, no dolphins, no noisy gulls, just quiet. How can she process this blessing?

The mermaid is alone, but she doesn’t feel great. She’s too hot. Her skin and scales feel dry in the air.

It is the mermaid’s birthday, and she’s feeling her age. Sailors still like the shape of her tail, it gets their attention, but they turn away at the missing breast, the scarred floor of her chest. They see her hair has turned grey-green, call her a merma’am, and laugh.

The mermaid’s daughter and her friends need constant reassurance and talking down from erotic encounters with fickle seamen. They are forever falling in, and painfully out of, “love” but they reject her hard-won wisdom.

How could she understand?

Most mermen are not around much, cannot be counted on in any meaningful way. Loud, voracious, eating almost all the catch as soon as it’s caught. Then swimming, swimming away, their asses as prominent as cats’. And so aggressive in their swimming (unlike the maids, careful and controlled—no splashes, no tipoffs, so as not to be snatched out of the sea). The mermaid’s former stepson, for instance, is unspeakable. Seriously, don’t speak of him.

The mermaid’s mother is elderly now and needs a lot of attention. The mermaid must swim a hundred miles each week capturing and transporting oysters, anemones and squid for her. She rubs her mother’s sore fin, and sits many hours listening to old stories, of how much better things were when the sea was old and cool.

Mermaids! They always give too much.

The mermaid had entered the fray once. She’d sung her own ocean songs in a voice that felt, to her, clear and important. But the others turned cold, wet shoulders, and drowned her out. She lost the will to sing and now prefers to be by herself. In caves, in trenches, on rocks…

Or sometimes with other creatures of the sea. The otters show her how to crack clams on her still firm stomach, and many early mornings, she confabs with the albatross. She remembers. There are a million dying jellyfish, but their stingers don’t sting her. They glow, even at the darkest depths. The mermaid feels lightest with them.

The mermaid has taken to eating sea bream, maybe too much, but it heightens her mood, relieves her stress. She is not proud of this, says she’ll quit later. Her shoulders grow ever more round.

The mermaid’s fears are myriad. What if her illness returns? Will her child be safe? What of her mother when she can no longer swim? Why is she always so hot, and why is there never anyone, anyone, to lend a webbed hand?

Has all this irritation and pressure made her a pearl? It certainly seems not. This birthday, in particular, she feels forgotten and alone. Awash in the past, and desire. Time was, she lived in a creature-teeming sea. And planned to swim around the world! She thought one day she would color her hair some un(sea)mly color. Pink. And oh, how she wanted to be heard—or at the very least, held.

On this day, basking by herself on the warm water, the mermaid remembers her fond father, her first sailor, many heart-held mermaids who have gone below, true friends. Nothing is as it was, and she’s not sure how much longer she can float on.

But her kind, they’ve always had an out, a way to escape. For those who think deeply, for those who dare, and when it gets bad enough, she will follow those who chose that way. If it ever gets so bad she can go, she thinks, and is it now time to go, she wonders, down into the deep…

into the deep…

into the deep.

---

Heather Pegas lives in Los Angeles where she writes grant proposals, essays, stories and flash. Her work is featured in publications such as Tahoma Literary Review, Tiny Molecules, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, Roi Fainéant and Weird Lit Magazine.

Cheryl Snell

Samsara

Homing Strategy

The man approaches the woman slowly as a cat stalking a mouse. Motion camouflage helps dragonflies catch prey, so why not? The man smiles and tongues his teeth to dislodge a bit of muffin, inching closer to the window that frames his target. The man wonders if the woman could pick him out of a lineup in his loud Hawaiian shirt. Moving objects with disruptive camouflage are harder to identify than plain ones. Leopards. Jumping spiders. Hey! she yelps when she feels his breath on her neck. Don’t sneak up on me like that! She slaps his arm with her black-and-white dish towel. He stares at the confusion of stripes in the air and says, Dazzling. She thinks he means her. In a sense, he does. He resumes his approach. He knows where home is.

Artificial Intelligence

The moon, lit with anxiety, is afraid of shifting; it never takes its own view for granted. Lint in the night sky is one thing; a parade of planets lolling as if on a piano lid is quite another. It complicates the blackness. But when the galaxy shakes itself like a wet dog, and clouds glower with thunder, she wonders what it will take─ considering she’s not a magician─ to promote the illusion that the moon is moving. Because isn’t that how it works these days? Appearances are deceiving; the way a thing looks is as real as the thing itself.

Vacation with Quid Pro Quo

He grabs her shoulder and points to the crocodile just now closing its mouth over the plover cleaning its teeth. It’s their pact, he says. This way they both get what they want. His hand, wrapped tight as a bandage around her arm, squeezes tighter. It feels like a threat.

Wings

Fluttering kites rained down on roof shingles. Windshields. Asphalt. They left to find his lost kite. Looked everywhere. Windows. Basements. Behind shelves in the public library. Found someone else’s kite instead. There would be no coming home without his personal kite. She needed air. Had to fly, no strings attached.

Buddy

Before he decides how to take the hint, before she reminds him not to lose the plot, before she teases him that he’s in the friend zone that has no benefits, before explaining, “When I love someone, I want to crawl right under his skin,” before he sees she isn’t joking, before she tells him that if she met Mick Jagger she’d make him do bloodwork, before she makes him jealous when she admits she still gets crushes on old rockers, before she reaches for his dangling hand, before she tells him how long it’s been since a man touched her.

Marco Polo

Then she wanted him back, but not like this─ locked between worlds─ so she canvassed the sky for the whereabouts of his broken promise; and while a twist of bats rose like smoke to spell a reply across the orange sky, their entangled bodies practiced the false starts and furious back-pedaling that had her chasing after them, her black silk robe flying, putting the man’s allegations of abandonment to rest─ although she would have rather have been the one to slice open the sky like a peach from a bowl, if only the bats had shown her how.

---

Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and novels. Her most recent writing has appeared in Eunoia Review, BULL, Ink Sweat &Tears, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Book of Matches, and other journals. She has work in several anthologies including Best of the Net and has been nominated ten times for Best Small Fictions, the Pushcart, and BOTN.

Susan Israel

Everything Is Going to Be All Right, Honest

Honey, what did you do in school today, oh, you’re going to be so happy to hear this, I hope you’re happy to hear this, but what would you say if I told you I was going to be here with you to drive you to school every day so you don’t have to take the bus any more, and pick you up after school too, you told me you don’t like the bus, kids pick on you, well, now you won’t have to deal with that any more, and if you have to stay after school for play dates or detention, I’ll pick you up afterwards too, all you have to do is call, no, my boss won’t mind because, well, frankly, I don’t have a boss any more, I was ‘let go’, let’s just call it laid off, yes, of course we’ll still be able to live here, I’ll make sure of that, I’ll tell you what, I’ll make cakes and cookies, I’ll open a home bakery business and while you’re in school, I’ll bake like mad and bring you cookies when I come pick you up, what do you think, you love cookies, everyone loves cookies and cakes and we’ll do fine, honey, why are you crying?

---

Susan Israel’s work has recently been published in MacQueen’s Quinterly, JAKE, 50 Word Stories, Flash Boulevard, and is forthcoming in The Dribble Drabble Review, Okay Donkey, & Blink-Ink. She lives in Connecticut.

Linda M. Bayley

The Cure for Sleep

My best friend Sidney is a narcoleptic: ever since I’ve known her she’s gone to sleep in the strangest places, not just on the bus or in algebra class but I mean like leaning up against her locker or on the street in the middle of a pro-choice rally, or there was that one time she fell asleep in our garden shed while we were playing hide and seek and we didn’t find her until long after it got dark out, and that’s when her parents freaked out and wouldn’t let her play outside anymore.

We used to call her Sleeping Beauty but now we understand it’s a medical condition, not some fairy-tale curse, and we’re not allowed to make fun of her anymore since that day Mrs. Rowe sent Sidney out of the classroom and then yelled at us, but I was never really making fun of her because I thought she really was beautiful when she was asleep.

She was most beautiful that day she pricked her thumb with a needle in Home Ec, which I only took because Sidney made me, because it’s not just girls who need to learn how to run a household, and before we knew it she was down on the floor on a pile of throw pillows the class had made that week, golden hair spread out in a fan around her face like it was the movies.

Well, what would you have done?

So I knelt down and kissed her, real slow and soft, and her eyes fluttered open like a Disney princess, and I never knew what a collective gasp meant but now I’ve heard a whole class sucking in wind all at the same time, and her eyelids stopped fluttering and she stared up at me and said, Did you just kiss me, Jason? and I nodded, still breathless, and she sat up, suddenly all pissed off, and said, Well, if that’s not just one more example of the rape culture that permeates our society and works to keep women down.

There were mutters all around us like Yeah, not cool, dude, and Dude, that’s just cringe, and Sidney pushed me away like a plate of cold, half-cooked Brussels sprouts, and now she’s still sort of my best friend but not really, and we still hang out sometimes, but now, whenever we’re together, she always stays awake.

A Car, A Bank, A Bowling Alley 

You are parked outside a bank / a bowling alley.

Your daughter is with you. She is 16 / 23 / 50. You are discussing the weather / the tournament / her painful, poisonous attitude.

When you get out of the car you crack the window so she won’t stifle / turn on the heat so she won’t freeze / let her decide for herself whether she wants to stay in the car. You’d rather she stayed in the car to watch it because you are idling in a handicap space / in a fire lane. You’d rather she got out of the car to go into the bowling alley and roll strikes like you taught her.

But nobody with a wheelchair / fire truck is going to need this space in the next sixty seconds. But the tournament won’t start for another hour. It’ll be fine.

She doesn’t want to get out to go bowling / stay to watch the car. She’s not in the mood / doesn’t drive. Sometimes she argues.

What a loser / nobody / bitch. Fuck it. You leave her in the car.

You could argue that spending your tenth birthday in the hospital with the polio that left you with a bad hip is a good enough reason to park in a handicap zone. You could argue that you didn’t know this was a fire lane. You could argue that your daughter was just about to move the car, officer. See her there, sitting in the driver’s seat?

You leave the bank / the bowling alley without a parking ticket / trophy. You are elated that you foiled the cops. You are furious that your daughter embarrassed you in front of the other parents.

At the yellow light you slow down / gun the engine / honk at the car in front of you. You are laughing / fuming / lecturing your daughter on the importance of being a champion.

She says, Don’t do that to me again.

You apologize / acknowledge her / have no clue what she means.

---

Linda M. Bayley is a writer living on the Canadian Shield. Her work has recently appeared in voidspace zine, Five Minutes, BULL, Short Circuit, FlashFlood Journal, Underbelly Press, Stanchion, and Tiny Sparks Everywhere, the National Flash Fiction Day 2024 Anthology. Find her on Twitter @lmbayley.

Michael Costaris

The Rub

 I

The video is horrifying. Take morality out of it, simply view it as an objective document and it is impossible to come away with anything other than a visceral, unshakeable feeling of disgust. I’m not one of the legions who succumbed immediately to the animal instinct to destroy Mr. Grayson, but I felt its pull; it was something I had to actively resist. Even now, years later, I still have to fight it.

II

“Hello Rebecca.” His voice is pained and small. I offer my hand (instinct) and realize upon touching the clammy cold of his palm that he has given me his right one. I either give off a reaction or he too forgot its significance until we made contact, but he dashes it back and shoves it into his pocket.

“I’m so happy to see you,” I say (lying) as I guide him to the conference table. He sits and I say (a bigger lie), “Mr. Devlin will be joining us shortly.”

Sitting across from him, this shell of an already unimpressive man, I am struck by how durable the authority of a teacher is: I cannot stop myself from calling him Mr. Grayson.

“Would you like some coffee, Mr. Grayson?”

I am standing before he responds. Devlin is never earlier than thirty-minutes late (“It sets the precedent Rebecca.”) and I cannot take another moment of this torture: the video fills every silence.

“Thank you,” he says. “I would love one.”

I set to give Mr. Grayson the works: I boil the water, grind the beans, warm the milk (in two separate frothers) and am, for once, grateful at the needless complexity of this espresso machine.

It is Devlin’s idea to have me on this case. The thought process being that I, both a woman and former student, am the perfect prop to establish Mr. Grayson as respectable. Devlin can only think in optics and neglects how incredibly awkward this is for me. But I accept anyways because I have no other choice.

“I’m here.” Devlin arrives early (20 minutes late) and grabs Mr. Grayson’s coffee from my hands, sipping it on his way to the conference table. I recede comfortably into the wallpaper and watch the magic. Devlin does not stop talking. I hear the words hero and martyr and millionaire. Mr. Grayson grows perceptibly stronger during this spiel: his back straightens, the pallor fades and he looks at least three years younger when Devlin slides the contract over. He is so buoyed at this point, he signs happily despite our horrendous terms.

III

Mr. Grayson was my teacher but he was not my teacher. I mean this in the sense that every student has a teacher, who, through passion or apathy, irrevocably alters the course of their life. Mr. Elmore was my teacher. He wore a bandana to class. He had a tattoo. He smoked during lunch and if you asked, he would share. He taught core English and ignited my love of reading and writing. He deliberately spurned the classics in favor of his own, insane curriculum. We read (and love) Naked Lunch even though (because) it made no sense to us. We analyzed music videos from the nineties and read excerpts of his novels filled with swear words, sex scenes and characters taking drugs. He was a rock star and we idolized him.

He changed my life when he told me, after reading my first ever short story, “Do not be a writer.” He says this in my twelfth Grade Writer’s Craft class, after telling me the story is brilliant. “Be a lawyer Rebecca.” His eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of three-day-old marijuana smoke. “It’s all making up stories anyways. All bullshit.” He continued in this vein for twenty-minutes and when he started to compare jurors —  “undiscerning retirees allergic to truth; hack fiction loving boomers needing to be told exactly what to do, and buy and think.” — to the audience that spurned his fiction, I decided to pursue law. Mr. Elmore, by simply existing, could not have made a better case against writing.

I recall this seemingly random anecdote now for two reasons.

One, Mr. Elmore is right. The law satisfies my creative urge. The truth arrives in an amorphous blob of data —thousands of call logs, interview transcripts, therapist notes and text messages— and it is my job to bend it into shape. I am the truth’s narrator. I become omniscient.

And two, the chaos that engulfed Mr. Grayson could not have happened to Mr. Elmore, or any of the other, less professional teachers. Mr. Elmore’s inner life blared right through the opaque facade of school. Nothing about Mr. Elmore could surprise. But Mr. Grayson is the opposite. He is indiscernible from the beige, cracking walls of the school. Watching him in the video is akin to watching a math textbook come to life. It’s unnatural; it feels wrong.

IV

Fuck, spoken with a trepidatious confidence, is the first audible noise. The screen is completely black and a long silence follows. They are testing the water. When it becomes clear there are no repercussions, no adults to quiet them, a horde of cackling pubescent voices join. The word is repeated. It grows louder with each successive utterance —(FuckFuckFuckFuckFuck)—  until it becomes indiscernible from their high-pitched squeals of unhinged delight.

“Yo.” The voice of Mark Smelt, age 12. He owns the phone. The camera shows his shoe: a red and white, high-topped Nike Air-Max. “We’re about to fuck things up.”

The camera lifts. 292 Newton Road, the home of Richard Grayson, becomes visible. A light is on in the upstairs window. A 2006 Hyundai Sonata sits in the driveway.

“He’s home.” William Thacker —age 11; off-camera— finds this fact hilarious.

It is 7:03 pm on a Wednesday.

A middle finger enters the frame. Mark Smelt. He whispers, but with the intonation of a scream. “Mr. Grayson. We’re here.”

William Thacker also whisper-screams. “Bitch.”

Ethan Yau, 11, leaps into frame. He gives seven crotch chops to the house and then says, “Mr. Grayson’s such a lesbian.”

William Thacker joins the frame, twirling chaotically with both middle fingers out. Ethan Yau exits and reemerges in the background during this scene. Behind William Thacker’s hypnotically flailing limbs he is visible approaching the basement window of the home. He squats beside it, stares, transfixed, and then waves frantically beckoning everyone over.

The next moments show rapid, nauseating images of Mark Smelt’s thigh and then, eventually the ground.

The boys whisper.

“Can you see?” Ethan Yau.

Chamber music plays. Faint but audible. A woman’s voice can be heard. She appears to be in pain.

“Look.” Ethan Yau again.

Mark smelt leans forward. The camera tilts and shows his shoe once more.

“Oh.” It’s Mark Smelt. The voice of a child now, the bravado gone. “Oh no.”

The camera is lifted with purpose by Ethan Yau and pressed against the basement window. The music grows louder. The screams grow louder. The image is fuzzy and then everything crystallizes in a moment of adjustment.

Richard Grayson lays on a bed. His knees bent. He is nude from the belly-button to the quadriceps. A cellular phone rests against his right thigh, illuminating his genitals. His penis is erect. His right hand mechanically strokes it and his left hovers above, holding a sock. His mouth is half open and his tongue darts in and out.

His eyes appear lifeless.

He completes after a minute: shuddering joylessly and clasping the sock over his penis. He lays still, eyes shut and chest rising and falling.

The phone still plays.

He abruptly stands and then shuts the phone off using his right hand. He slides off the bed. His limp penis rests atop a prodigious bush and he waddles, pants around his ankles, out of frame.

The video ends.

V

The video is shot at 7:08 PM on Wednesday, November 9th, 2018.

At 7:13 PM the video is sent to BOYzzzzz an iMessage group with thirty-three members. The video is accompanied by the message: NSFL.

By 8:00 PM the video is on three-hundred-and-eighty-five unique devices.

At 8:04 PM University of Michigan Student Arnold Jennings, the older brother of Tyler Jennings a student of Richard Grayson at Humbermede Collegiate Institute, sends the video to a WhatsApp chat with 29 members, including Rebecca Cauldry a pre-law student with no prior affiliation to Humbermede.

Transcript, ‘Mocha French’ November 9th, 2018 -- 8:04 PM

Arnold: check this out lol ✓✓ 8:04 PM

Rebecca: wut is that ✓✓ 8:04 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 1: wut the fuck am i watching??? ✓✓ 8:06 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 2: who is that ✓✓ 8:08 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 3: wut???? ✓✓ 8:08 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 4: yuck. ✓✓ 8:08 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 1: look at that bush ✓✓ 8:09 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 3: who is that ✓✓ 8:10 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 4: y am i watching this ✓✓ 8:11 PM

Arnold: its my bros math teacher rubbin one out  lollollol ✓✓ 8:12 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 5: ewwww ✓✓ 8:12 PM

Rebecca: im like legitimately concerned ✓✓ 8:13 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 1: lol the bush ✓✓ 8:13 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 6: sock technique on point hahahaha ✓✓ 8:13 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 6: like a fuckin ninja with that sock ✓✓ 8:13 PM

Rebecca: y do u hav this? ✓✓ 8:13 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 4: ur fuckin nuts ✓✓ 8:14 PM

Rebecca: how did u get this Arnold? ✓✓ 8:14 PM

Arnold: he sent it to my bro! ✓✓ 8:15 PM

Arnold: hes making the whole class watch it and calling it extra credit ✓✓ 8:15 PM

Rebecca: that is fucked ✓✓ 8:16 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 4: ya wut the fuk? ✓✓ 8:16 PM

Rebecca: that is assault ✓✓ 8:16 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 7: absolutley ✓✓ 8:16 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 5: tnot funny arnold ✓✓ 8:17 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 8: isnt ur bro like 12? ✓✓ 8:18 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 6: jesus arnold wuts wrong with u ✓✓ 8:18 PM

Rebecca: thats assault arnold its not funny ✓✓ 8:18 PM

Arnold: i no its y i sent it so fucked ✓✓ 8:19 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 8: why did u think this was funny ✓✓ 8:19 PM

Arnold: i didnt say it was funny ✓✓ 8:19 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 6: u totally said it was funny ✓✓ 8:19 PM

Arnold: i didnt think its funny ✓✓ 8:19 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 5: u said lololol dude ✓✓ 8:19 PM

Arnold: it wus autocorrect ✓✓ 8:19 PM

Unknown University of Michigan Student 9: wuts wrong with u ✓✓ 8:20 PM

Arnold: im tramatized ✓✓ 8:21 PM

Arnold: im not thinking straight ✓✓ 8:21PM

Arnold: its tramatic ✓✓ 8:21 PM

Arnold: wut should i do ✓✓ 8:21 PM

Rebecca: u call the police? ✓✓ 8:22 PM

Arnold: obv ✓✓ 8:23 PM

Arnold Jennings does not call the police but forwards the video to his mother.

Susan Jennings is the first parent to access the video. At 8:32 PM she forwards it via email to forty-four other parents with the subject line: Mr. Grayson (Math Teacher) of Humbermede Disturbing Video. She includes a trigger warning for sexual abuse in the text of the email.

At 9:03 PM the answering machine of Humbermede Collegiate Institute reaches capacity.

At 9:14 PM the personal voicemail of Veronica Melon (Principal of Humbermede Collegiate Institute) is at capacity.

At 9:18 PM the police are called for the first of eighteen times.

At 9:20 PM the video is messaged to local news station CJOH-TV-8.

At 9:46 PM Veronica Melon messages Richard Grayson.

Transcript, ‘Richard Grayson’ November 9th, 2018 — 9:46 PM

Veronica Melon: Do not come in tomorrow. ✓✓ 9:46 PM

Richard Grayson: Is something wrong?  ✓✓ 9:52 PM

The message is never answered.

At 10:05 PM Mr. Grayson is taken into custody by local police.

VI

I receive an email on my work account from Mr. Grayson. I ignore it. I have become the de facto lawyer of the entire small town I escaped and about once a month, a message comes in requesting my legal expertise: 'My neighbor is burning logs when I hang out my laundry and I know it’s on purpose; A garbage truck clipped my side-mirror; I’ve been arrested for shoplifting from the Wal-Mart.' I typically answer, in some cases even send a typed letter on Devlin, Carlaw, and Burke stationary because I like this invented, superstar version of myself better than the real, glorified waitress to rich lawyer assholes version of myself and am desperate to keep her alive in the minds of my former acquaintances. But today, I am busy with Devlin, who has me spell-checking his briefs (he does not trust computers) and it is only when I get home at midnight and see Mr. Grayson's face on every news channel, learn that he is apparently a rampant pedophile who has defiled thousands of students, that I respond. This seems like a Devlin, Carlaw and Burke case.

VII

November 11th, 2018

Three social workers hijack the Rememberance Day assembly and deliver a four-hour presentation on sexual assault. By the end of this presentation, it is likely that any student who had not yet watched the video of Mr. Grayson masturbating has done so.

November 12th, 2018

Mr. Grayson is released from detention following a message from the law firm Devlin, Carlaw and Burke.

November 13th, 2018

Mr. Grayson is officially suspended by Humbermede Collegiate Institute.

November 14th, 2018

Aspiring social media influencer Sandra Tenor-Sherbrooke, and Humbermede student, posts a video on Tik-Tok calling for the abolition of all male teachers. The video, a thirty-second clip of her speaking over the score from the 2003 film Seabiscuit, cites an unverified statistic that 89% of all sexual misconduct cases in education involve males.

The video is shared two-hundred-and-eighty-thousand times.

November 15th, 2018

Mr. Grayson travels to Toronto and meets with Devlin, Carlaw and Burke. He officially signs a contract to be represented.

November 18th, 2018

Sandra Tenor-Sherbrooke appears on the local news as an expert in a panel discussing pedophilia in the public school system. During the panel she stands, stares directly into the camera and states: “100% of men are not pedophiles but 100% of pedophiles are men.” She clips this moment and posts it on her Tik-Tok.

It is shared three-hundred-and-thirty-seven-thousand times within two days.

November 19th, 2018

Sandra Tenor-Sherbrooke changes the name of her social media accounts to onehundredpercent.

November 21st, 2018

During another panel on a syndicated news network, Sandra Tenor-Sherbrooke is asked whether she is really advocating for the abolition of all male teachers. She responds, “You will find out.”

November 23rd, 2018

Sandra Tenor-Sherbrooke announces a protest scheduled for the following Friday.

November 27th, 2018

Students at Humbermede arrive at school with pieces of duct tape across their mouths. The symbolism behind this gesture is debated greatly, but the image, all agree, is undeniably powerful.

November 28th, 2018

Mr. Grayson is officially terminated.

November 29th, 2018

Students across Ontario arrive at school with pieces of duct tape across their mouths. The new protest slogan, “We are the voice of the voiceless!” further obfuscates the symbolism of the duct tape.

November 30th, 2018

Ethan Yau initiates a conversation with Mark Smelt and William Thacker on iMessage.

Transcript ‘Astro Boyz’ (Ethan Yau, Mark Smelt, William Thacker)

Ethan Yau: guys ✓✓ 3:12 PM

Ethan Yau: u see the duck tape everywhere? ✓✓ 3:12 PM

Ethan Yau: wuts happening? ✓✓ 3:13 PM

Mark Smelt: I have hired council and suggest you do the same. Please refrain from contacting me further at this time. Thank you for respecting my wishes,  Mark. ✓✓ 3:18 PM

Mark Smelt exits the chat.

Ethan Yau: the fuk? ✓✓ 3:19 PM

            William Thacker: i did nothing ✓✓ 3:19 PM

            William Thacker: u cant even see me in the video✓✓ 3:19 PM

            Ethan Yau: whatd i do ✓✓ 3:19 PM

            William Thacker: u filmed it bro ur fukked ✓✓ 3:20 PM

William Thacker exits the chat.

At 3:39 PM Ethan Yau makes four phone calls to his parents.

At 3:43 PM the video is deleted from Ethan Yau’s phone.

At 3:50 PM Ethan Yau retains council.

At 3:52 PM Ethan Yau’s lawyer sends a message to Mark Smelt’s lawyer (the contents of which are privileged.)

At 4:58 PM William Thacker retains council.

November 31st, 2018

Devlin, Carlaw and Burke file a lawsuit against Ethan Yau and the Chester Region District School Board.

VII 

The presence of lawyers, as they always do, frighten everyone into silence. Mr. Grayson is not teaching. December is a quiet month. Ethan Yau, Mark Smelt and William Thacker are suspended. Sandra-Tenor Sherbrooke is purported to have signed a six-figure deal with a Chinese Tea Company and no longer posts about Mr. Grayson. Her brand —posting teacher misconduct stories, bizarrely unrelated memes and the occasional gluten-free recipe— thrives across all major platforms. A future presents itself in this quiet: the boys returning in time for second semester, graduating on pace; this episode a blip in their otherwise unblemished lives. Mr. Grayson returning too; bent, twisted and severely battered but not quite broken and still living a life in approximation of normal. Perhaps, in this future, Cheryl Darning would have made good on her ninth-grade aspirations and become the third Canadian female astronaut. We will never know. Callum Sanderson kills this future on the evening of January 22nd, 2019.

VIII

Callum Sanderson: Aspiring DJ, aspiring influencer, D-student, ex-boyfriend to Sandra-Tenor Sherbrooke and host of the twitter account PervertedMaleTeachers. Callum takes credit for the duct tape idea. He maintains he is the first to call Mr. Grayson a pervert. He maintains Sandra-Tenor Sherbrooke stole this idea and every other idea related to the ‘onehundredpercent’ movement and that he should be the face of a Chinese Tea Company. His rage manifests in a maniacal desire to break news on the Mr. Grayson story and right these perceived wrongs. He does this by comparing the pixelated, barely visible phone screen at 2:32 of the Ethan Yau video to, what one must assume is a lifetime’s worth of pornography, until he finds a video titled BBW NERD TAKES MONSTER WHITE COCK. It is, incontrovertibly, what Mr. Grayson watched the night of November 9th, 2018.

Cheryl Darning: Aspiring astronaut, chair of the ‘Women in STEAM’ committee and one of 150 students to record a perfect score in the Tenth Grade Euclid Math Contest, Cheryl Darning, by most accounts, is on track for big things. She credits this to her ninth-grade mathematics teacher. Though he is universally despised by for the fact that he grades homework (thus forcing students to actually do it), Cheryl finds herself thriving with this consistent practice. For the first time in her life, she succeeds in math. This scholastic confidence seeps into all of her other courses and she finishes the year on the honor roll. That summer she begins to formulate her plan to become Canada’s first female astronaut (after a google search she revises this to third). The following year, she musters up the courage to ask her former ninth grade math teacher to supervise a ‘Women in STEAM’ club. He agrees. The club proves incredibly unpopular (never surpassing one member) but these weekly meetings are the highlight of her week. She begins, at the urging of her teacher, to enter Math Contests on weekends. Cheryl’s parents, Lydia and Kevin Darning, call this teacher a ‘miracle worker’ and on three instances he is permitted to drive her to Waterloo for their Gauss Contest. This is done above board. Both teacher and parents file the appropriate paperwork. There is nothing factual to suggest anything inappropriate in this relationship, except for her uncanny resemblance to Zenya Frost.

Zenya Frost: Age 23, successful entrepreneur, and self-described performance artist, Zenya Frost is the star of three-hundred-and-ninety-four films including BBW NERD TAKES MONSTER WHITE COCK.

January 22nd, 2019

At 8:02 PM Callum Sanderson posts a side-by-side image of Cheryl Darning and Zenya frost with the caption ‘twinsies’ on the PervertedMaleTeachers twitter account. He continues, posting more than forty images of Mr. Grayson and Cheryl Darning taken from the 2016 and 2017 Humbermede Yearbook. At 8:56 PM Sandra Tenor-Sherbrooke tweets: Developing story at Humbermede.

At 9:02 PM she messages Callum Sanderson.

Transcript of messages Sandra Tenor-Sherbrooke and Callum Sanderson

Sandra S-W: r those pics real ✓✓9:02 PM

Sandra S-W: on twitter ✓✓ 9:02 PM

Callum: ya ✓✓ 9:03  PM     

Sandra S-W: thats fucked ✓✓9:03 PM

Callum: i no ✓✓ 9:04  PM   

Sandra S-W: hes actually a perv cant believe it ✓✓9:04 PM

Sandra S-W: so fuked ✓✓9:04 PM

Sandra S-W: can i post on 100p?? ✓✓9:04 PM

Callum: let me have half the account and deals and stuff u got ✓✓ 9:05  PM

Sandra S-W: huh ✓✓ 9:06  PM

Callum: partners we can work together and share money and stuff ✓✓ 9:05  PM

Callum: u can hav my stuff too that i got from pervteachers ✓✓ 9:05  PM

Sandra S-W: no ducking way ✓✓ 9:06  PM

Sandra S-W: duckin ✓✓ 9:06  PM

Sandra S-W: ducking ✓✓ 9:06  PM

Sandra S-W: fuk i meant fuck ✓✓ 9:06  PM

Sandra S-W: and also u hav nothing on perv teachers u got like 8 followers ✓✓ 9:06  PM

Callum: it was my idea neways ✓✓ 9:06  PM

Callum: u sole it ✓✓ 9:06  PM

Callum: stole ✓✓ 9:06  PM

Sandra S-W: how was it ur idea ✓✓ 9:07  PM

Callum: i wus the one who said mr grayson was pervy ✓✓ 9:08  PM

Callum: and the duck tape me i always talk about duck tape protests ✓✓ 9:08  PM

Callum: it wuz all me ✓✓ 9:08  PM

Sandra S-W: fuck off im gnna post neways ✓✓  9:08  PM

Sandra S-W: was just being nice asking  ✓✓ 9:08  PM

Callum: re-tweet mine from mine at least ✓✓ 9:08  PM     

Sandra S-W: no ✓✓ 9:08  PM

Sandra S-W: ur names 2 dumb ✓✓ 9:08  PM

Callum: ill change it ✓✓ 9:10 PM   

Sandra S-W: kk ✓✓ 9:10 PM

Sandra S-W: to wut??? ✓✓ 9:10 PM

Callum: idk ✓✓ 9:10 PM     

Callum: 100% but like no letters just nums??✓✓ 9:10 PM

Sandra S-W: stop tryin to steal my shit ✓✓ 9:10 PM

Sandra S-W: make it like maleteacherssuck or sumthing ✓✓ 9:10 PM

Sandra S-W: but not as dumb as that ✓✓ 9:10 PM

Callum: kk ✓✓ 9:10 PM

At 9:15 PM Callum Sanderson renames his account to Maleteacherssuck. At 9:19 PM onehundredpercent begins to retweet all fifty-two images of Cheryl Darning, Mr. Grayson and Zenya Frost. At 9:45 PM the story is reported on in the Guardian. At 11:54 PM onehundredpercent crosses one million followers.

XVIII 

The perception among most, is that Mr. Grayson is a pervert: the similarities between Cheryl Darning and Zenya Frost are too potent a coincidence to ignore. Even I, upon witnessing this, feel my pity calcify into judgment. Luckily for the sake of me and his other lawyers, the law does not deal in perception but facts; and the facts of this case are unalienable.

Fact 1: it is illegal to film a man masturbating in his own home without consent.

Fact 2: the illegality of filming a man masturbating in his own home without consent is compounded by the act of sending it to thousands upon thousands of people.

Fact 3: Ethan Yau has (had) an incredibly wealthy family.

Fact 4: One can quite easily manipulate two lawyers to turn on a third when it benefits the interest of their clients.

Fact 5: The Chester Region District School Board is also incredibly wealthy.

Fact 6: The money, when it comes, is obscene.

XIX

This is how it ends:

Mr. Grayson moves to Portugal. He does not teach. He does not need to. He sends me postcards every year at Christmas. He seems to be happy.

Ethan Yau, Mark Smelt and William Thacker are expelled. This delays their graduation by one year. The three boys end up in University. The delay means they are old enough to drink in Freshman year. They appear, from what I can see on their Instagram, happy.

Norman Yau delays his retirement as a consequence of the settlement. By my most recent calculations, he should be able to comfortably retire at the age of ninety-seven. He is, I imagine, profoundly unhappy.

Sandra Tenor-Sherbrooke has more than ten-million subscribers across all of social media accounts. She no longer posts about teacher misconduct and instead chronicles her ongoing difficulties living with celiac disease. Her sister account, ‘onehundredpercentglutenfree,’ has spawned three cookbooks. She is currently working on a podcast which she describes as Call Her Daddy meets Red Scare. She, according to her twitter bio, is ‘gr8ful.’

Callum Sanderson studies business at Canada’s thirty-third worst University. He never pushes Maleteacherssuck past thirty-nine followers. His Instagram suggests he has not abandoned his dreams of DJing. I don’t really care if he is happy.

Cheryl Darning jumps from her bedroom window and breaks her right femur, left ankle and right wrist. This jump is attributed to acute stressors and after a three-month period of observation at CAMH she is released back into the care of her parents, where she remains today. She does not currently attend University. There were inquiries from her parents about a lawsuit but Devlin, Carlaw and Burke declined. I explained that in cases like Cheryl’s, where no single entity can be deemed wholly responsible, it is incredibly difficult to extract money. When I explained this, they did not appear happy.

And me. I’ve done well since bringing this case to the firm. I am now the specialist in cases of this type. Whenever a man is (wrongfully, I am legally obligated to say) labeled as perverted, abusive, deranged, predatory or generally disgusting, I am lucky enough to represent them. I work a lot but I’m pretty rich. I think I’m happy.

---

Michael is a writer and screenwriter living in Toronto, Canada. His fiction can be found in The Baffler and BULL.

Soramimi Hanarejima

Second Chances for First Times

When we finally manage to meet for weekend brunch, you tell me there are two things in particular that you’re excited to do during your second childhood: climb trees and swim in lakes—activities that weren’t possible in the cityscape of your first childhood.

“I made sure my second childhood would start in July so I can do these things,” you say from across plates of pancakes and fruit.

“That’s practically around the corner now,” I reply, a little jealous. “My second childhood isn’t until next October.”

“Too bad our second childhoods won’t overlap. It would be fun to play together.”

“Yeah, but we can still play together. Come over during your second childhood, and we’ll play a board game or hide and seek or whatever you want.”

“OK. But wouldn’t it be fun if we were children again at the same time? Maybe we could play together during our third childhoods.”

“I’m sure we can get those to coincide. We’ve got a whole decade to figure out the dates. We should be able to arrange at least a week of overlap.”

“Definitely.”

With work being what it is, I don’t see you again until you’re well into your second childhood, when you come over to play. I almost expect you to be a little kid when I open the door, but aside from the cargo shorts and baggy t-shirt, it’s of course you as usual. Childhood is at its core a psychological state.

“Did you climb some nice trees and swim in a lake or two?” I ask once you’re inside.

“Not yet,” you answer.

“So what have you been doing?”

“Playing video games.”

“Isn’t that what you did during your first childhood?”

“Yeah, but these new holographic games are so amazing.”

“Well, we could go swimming now,” I offer, hoping you won’t suggest we climb trees instead.

“Nah, let’s play house.”

For the rest of the afternoon, we pretend that my apartment is a suburban home we live in with our three children. One of them is having a birthday party, so you tell me to bake a cake while you decorate.

The next time you come over, you still haven’t climbed a single tree or gone swimming once.

“Why don’t I take you swimming then,” I offer.

“But I brought over this new video game.”

You hold up a game cartridge, the kind that will stream data our smartglasses.

“You can play that any time. Let’s go to Sunset Lake while the weather’s nice,” I say.

“But the two-player mode is supposed to be really good.”

“OK, then we’ll play it after we get back.”

That settles the matter, and we’re off.

The drive passes quickly as we tell each other jokes and riddles.

At the lake, we put on our bathing suits in the changing area then cross the sandy shore and wade into the water. When we’re knee deep, you complain about it being too cold.

“You’ll get used to it,” I assure you. “Just start swimming.”

Before you can object, I take my own advice to show you how it’s done. I plunge myself below the surface then launch into a vigorous sidestroke. Once I’ve gotten a fair ways out, I look back, hoping you’ve followed my lead. But there’s no sign of you in the water or on the shore. I assume that you’ve gone back to the car to get the game cartridge and your smartglasses.

Then I notice tree branches shaking over by where the lakeshore meets the woods, and there you are among all the leaves, working your way up. At least you’re doing one of the two things you wanted to—and one of us gets to do some swimming. Which I might as well enjoy. So I get back to it, taking my time to sidestroke further into the calm expanse of water.

When I look back at the shore from the middle of the lake, there’s an ambulance parked by the roadside and a small crowd gathered by the tree you were climbing. I swim furiously back to the shore.

“So much for swimming in lakes this summer,” you say as we leave the emergency room.

You’re in an oddly good mood considering your left arm will be in a cast for the rest of the season. Maybe you’re grateful that you weren’t more seriously injured.

“You can be the first to sign my cast,” you say cheerily.

“Oh, I’d be glad to,” I answer, my tone far from matching your enthusiasm.

“Just don’t write too big. I’m going to ask everyone I know to sign this. But you can draw a little picture with your name, if you want.”

“OK, got it. Small signature with a little picture.”

I’ve never seen anyone so happy about having a cast. Then I remember that you’ve never broken a single bone, until now.

“We can still play that game,” you say. “Even with the cast, I can do all the gestures.”

“OK,” I agree, even though it’s gotten late after all the waiting and x-rays and bone setting and plaster wrapping.

The sky is purple with twilight, and the parking lot lights are on, but how can I say no after what you’ve been through? If you asked me to, I’d join you in playing video games every day for the rest of your second childhood. And now you have an excuse to do just that.

But there are still some outdoorsy summer things we can do in what’s left of your second childhood, like go to the sunflower maze. And there will be other chances to go swimming. Maybe you can go skinny-dipping one night during your second adolescence—and I’ll go with you. I never got to do that during my first adolescence or since.

---

Ever yearning to be spellbound by ideas of a certain fanciful persuasion, Soramimi Hanarejima often meanders into the euphoric trance of lyrical daydreams, some of which are chronicled in Soramimi’s neuropunk story collection, Literary Devices for Coping.