Matthew Kasper

Bodie Has Abs

That day you remember from kindergarten was a cold November morning back in 1984. Ronald Reagan has just won re-election and is preening to the crowd with the false modesty of a freshly crowned Miss America. President Reagan wants to show his appreciation by visiting your school, Public School 66 in Baltimore, because he is on his way back to D.C.

To welcome the president, everyone is told to dress patriotically. The problem is that Reagan’s economy hasn’t trickled down. Jackie wears a brown paper grocery bag and uses the stubby crayons in the corner of the classroom to scribble red and white stripes and stars that look like tiny explosions. Tyrone, who wears black sweatpants and a black sweater, finds some scotch tape and sticks it on his chin and says he’s one of the founding fathers. Another girl in the class dresses like Madonna, and your teacher, Ms. Johnson, shakes her head at the makeup and ripped tights and tells her the president wouldn’t approve.

You dress like Hulk Hogan. Your yellow tights are okay. Unfortunately, the handlebar mustache is itchy and keeps falling off.

Even though the maintenance staff has worked all night, the halls still smell like Elmer’s glue. The wind outside rattles the caged windows. The American flag at the top of the pole, the one you all stare at when you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, ripples, as if a thousand little hands are punching back. Ms. Johnson wipes away a tear and says the flapping is a sign from God. A crackling voice on the loudspeaker tells everyone to report to the multipurpose room to greet the president, and the class lines up single file and marches behind Ms. Johnson.

Your friend Bodie, who is at the back of the line, whispers to follow him instead. Ms. Johnson does not see you and two other children disappear into the bathroom. When the door swings shut behind you, it is complete darkness. No one can reach the light switch. Everyone starts giggling until Bodie says: “this is what I want to show the president.”

You hear him unzip his coat. From a spear of light at the side of the door, you can see that he is wearing a stars and stripes tank top. He lifts his shirt.

“Touch them if you want,” he says. “These are my abs.”

‘Hail to the Chief’ plays from somewhere down the hall, a muffled echo, but no one knows what that song is called back then. A tight little circle forms. Everyone is shoulder to shoulder, staring down there as they might stare at the last embers in a fire. The pipes above you hiss.

And by the time everyone leaves the bathroom, there’s a crowd heading back to class.

When your parents ask about it later, you lie and say you saw the president. You never tell them about the warmth of Bodie’s skin, which in your memory stretches as smooth and endless as a desert of leather. You don’t tell them how, one by one, you ran your miniature fingers up and down the bumps on Bodie’s stomach, another thing you and the 99% will never have.

---

Matthew Kasper is an aspiring antihero who lives in Baltimore. He has an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University. His work has appeared in Points in Case, Bull, Dirtbag, and elsewhere. You can find more of his writing at matthewkasper.net ‍

KM Baysal

The Book of Revelation Didn’t Warn Us About This

It’s all fun and games at the rodeo until the angels show up, winging their way to the main arena where the dirt is kicked up by red-nosed clowns in cowboy hats while they ride satyrs in colorful silk pants. It’s unsettling, yet entertaining, to watch the half-men, half-goats of our storybooks and myths prance around the arena trying to buck the clowns off their backs. Everyone says we’ve reached the end of days; what else explains the appearance of so many otherworldly and celestial beings. They might be right, but we still need to find ways to pass the time.

We groan in unison as the sky grows dark, and the flapping of wings swallows all other sound. The show ceases as the satyrs scatter, and we look to the sky in annoyance and trepidation. It’s impossible to tell which kind of angel is overhead until it’s too late. The guardian angels are often a nuisance. They mean well, of course, but they like to step in and protect against even the silliest of mistakes, as if we’re all toddlers about to trip over untied shoes. The avenging angels are the worst.  The tiniest grievance can set them off nowadays, not like before when only the most heinous of crimes would bring down their wrath. Now anyone can be smote at any time. It’s unnerving to say the least.

The angels swarm above the arena like a murmuration of starlings, the hum from their wings so loud some of us cover our ears. It’s then that I see their chubby cheeks, their wide eyes, and mischievous grins. “Cherubs!” I yell as I leap from my seat and try to hurry past the legs of the people in my row.  The last time these guys showed up they dowsed the crowd with some kind of love potion. Within minutes the stadium was filled with people falling desperately in love and lust with whoever they looked at first. The lucky ones ended up with their original partners, but when the effects finally wore off many of us woke in beds with friends, strangers, enemies. Even the satyrs and clowns were caught up in amorous embraces. It was a nightmare to unravel the aftermath.

Slinking home to my husband after spending a week with one of the most annoying, but admittedly sexy, women in my book club was beyond embarrassing. I had been in line ahead of Jennifer at the concession stand when the attack happened. I turned to see what all the commotion was about and BOOM, I was hit with an all-consuming wave of lust for, and infatuation with, her and her infuriatingly perfect blonde ponytail.

“Two days ago you were complaining about Jennifer’s insistence on reading The Stand over The Parable of the Sower and now you’re telling me you spent an orgiastic week with her after the cherubs drugged everyone?” Steven asked after his relief that I was alive wore off.  He never attended the rodeo, said it was an abomination, and this cemented his stance. That wasn’t anything new, he was always against one exciting thing or another throughout our marriage. His latest vetoes, besides the rodeo, were couples massages, swimming in the public pool, and trying edibles. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, look me in the eyes for a few days after I returned. “It’s harmless fun,” I countered to little effect, not even sure I believed it myself.

Now, as the cherubs zoom menacingly closer, I cover my nose and mouth with my jacket and run for the concourse. The vibration from their buzzing wings pushes against me like a wave, urging me to go home. For just a moment, I follow the footsteps of Lot’s wife and stop to look back, curious to see who will end up together this time, wondering who will get to lose themselves to the foggy bliss of pleasure with no one to blame but the angels. I spot Jennifer lingering in the last row of seats, her perfect ponytail swinging in the wind. She sees me too and offers a shy smile. I lower my jacket from my face and take a deep breath as the cherubim hover in the sky. 

---

KM Baysal lives, works, and writes in NYC. Her work has appeared in Does it Have Pockets, Folklore Review, Inkfish Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Mulberry Literary (forthcoming). 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 novella-in-flash. Follow her on Instagram @kmbaysal.

Verdell Walker

Simulacrum: A Cottage in a Deep, Dark Wood

As soon as I clocked in for my shift, my boss Minerva tapped my elbow. “I’m adding a manual order to your queue. A Cottage in a Deep, Dark Wood.”

“Oh! Thanks a lot,” I said, meaning it. That was a premium offering, with the highest base rate and tip share. Rent was due next week, and this shift would pay better than wrangling food delivery drones. “What story?” 

“Little Red Riding Hood variant,” Minerva replied. “Details are in your packet.” 

I sighed. “No one wants the original stories anymore.” 

Minerva narrowed her eyes. “If the guest’s parents wanted a uniform experience for their child, they’d take her to one of those retro amusement parks.” She shuddered. “We’re above that.” 

“Of course,” I agreed quickly. I didn’t want her to regret giving me this opportunity, normally reserved for tier one performers. Two years in, I’d only moved up to tier two, which meant that I had speaking roles and had some wiggle room in terms of interpreting characters, but I still didn’t have completely free rein.

Even so, I liked amusement parks. They were fun 21st-century relics, and I envied the actors who got to perform live, even if they were stuck in sweaty costumes. My own acting career had gone nowhere, which was how I ended up here — playing wolves, witches, and wicked stepmothers for seven-year-olds in a simulated dreamscape. But I couldn’t complain too much; at least I got to perform, after a fashion. Even if I wasn’t writing my own content for Simulacrums.

Only tier one performers got to create new experiences. One day, I’d be one of them. Until then, I played my part.  

Minerva departed, and I stepped into my Simulacrum booth. The door slid shut behind me, and dim blue light bathed the space as my monitor flickered to life. Cottage was first in my queue. Beatrix, age seven, wanted tea with the Big Bad Wolf. No mention of whether this was before or after the Wolf devoured Grandma. 

I pressed a button on my chair’s armrest console. The chair flattened out, and my control device — a slim silver headband that tapped into my neural pathways — descended onto my forehead. The haptic sensors in my bodysuit, dispersed all over my arms, legs, and torso, hummed to life with a tingling warmth. I closed my eyes, and the Simulacrum pulled me in.

For a moment, there was nothing but static behind my eyelids. Then—

An ache, but the good kind, like stretching sore muscles. Then came the other sensations — the ones that never stopped being strange, no matter how many times I shifted. My bones realigned themselves into a quadrupedal stance. My jaw unhinged, stretching forward as my teeth multiplied and sharpened, my tongue thickening to accommodate the new, lupine dimensions. My ears pricked, lengthening into points.

Then came the fur, racing over my skin like a fast-growing weed. It was the last step, and I always felt it — an odd, tingling sensation, as if my nerve endings were momentarily on fire before settling into their new form. I shook myself as it finished, exhaling through my newly widened snout. The air smelled different here: sharp pine, damp leaves, a hint of woodsmoke.

Hunger gnawed at the edges of my awareness, an instinctual reaction coded into the character. The Algorithm had gotten better at that lately — at making the experience feel real without letting us forget who we were underneath. Not for the first time, I wondered if a film or theater director helped develop the Algorithm. 

I woke up in a bed of green grass, the blades prickly and wet with rain. I’d traded my brown skin and black hair for gray fur, three-inch fangs, and claws that sank into the soil as I stood. Somewhere beyond the trees, a cottage chimney puffed out smoke. 

I trotted over and nudged open the door with my snout, stepping into a warm little house. The Algorithm had set the stage well: a crackling fire, a rustic bed with a thick patchwork quilt, and a porcelain tea set decorated with pink roses waiting on a round wooden table. A costume of a pink nightdress and a white, frilly cap was laid across the bed. My avatar’s lack of opposable thumbs made donning the getup a chore, but I eventually wrestled it on before climbing into the bed.  

“Computer, make a note: it’s best to arrive in costume when not in human form.” A chime registered the system’s acknowledgment. 

I had barely pulled the covers up when Beatrix entered. 

She was adorable — small for her age, with brown pigtails, olive skin, and hazel eyes that beamed when she saw me. 

“Come in, my dear,” I growled. “You look good enough to eat.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Wolf.” Beatrix sat down at the tea table and opened a wicker basket almost as big as she was. “I brought treats.” 

I sat up. “Wolf? I am your own beloved grandmother.” 

“No, you aren’t,” Beatrix said firmly, setting out scones. 

‍ ‍Not indulging me, then. Fine. Be that way, kid. I sighed dramatically, throwing off the covers and padding over to the table, my claws clicking against the wooden floor. “Can I call you Bea?”

She nodded, pouring tea. “Sure, you can.”  

“Wouldn’t you rather have tea with a princess, Bea?” 

Bea scrunched her nose. “No. Wolves are cool.” 

“They blow down houses,” I reminded her. “Do you know that story?”  

“Yes. Maybe he was mad that the pigs didn’t let him in. Maybe he just wanted friends.” She hesitated, staring into her cup. “That’s what I’d want.” 

My right ear twitched. It dawned on me that Bea was alone. Most guests came with siblings or a posse of agemates. 

“Depends on the friend,” I mused. “Not everyone is good company.” 

Bea nodded seriously. “That’s true.” 

The tea was perfect — not too sweet, not too hot. The scone, to my surprise, had a savory meat filling, and in this body, it tasted divine. So thoughtful of her. 

“A good friend is hard to find,” I told her, licking a crumb from my fangs, “but worth searching for.” 

Bea smiled into her teacup. 

“Also,” I added, leaning forward, “I ate your grandma.” 

“How did she taste?” she asked sweetly. 

We stared at each other. Then, I was the first to laugh — a snarling, barking sound that made Bea giggle. 

“Your grandma tasted like old lace and butterscotch candies,” I said, snapping my jaws. This earned me another peal of laughter.

Something about Bea’s delight made my chest ache — not the simulated wolf body, but me, the person underneath. I’d taken hundreds of these jobs, played the villain for so many kids. Most squealed, a few cried. None of them looked at me like I was real.

But Bea did.

It had been a long time since anyone had. Most days I told myself performing was enough. It wasn't. I wanted to make something, something new that would matter to my audience. Even if it was an audience of one.

Bea was the first guest who'd ever made me feel like that was possible. In just a few minutes, she had elbowed her way past the stock character and engaged the person buried under layers of pre-programmed narrative.

I didn’t want to leave. Not yet.

I could make so many stories for her. Not just perform them — create them. Something new, just for her. I’d be so good at it, and it would mean something to her.

My gaze flicked to the session timer in the corner of my vision, ticking down with precision. I tapped a hidden button beneath the table. 

‍ ‍Computer, I thought. Redistribute the rest of my jobs today. 

A chime acknowledged my request. My schedule cleared. 

Bea didn’t notice — she was cutting another scone in half, carefully placing one piece on my plate. 

I reached for it, claws clicking against porcelain. 

“Tell me, Bea,” I said, grinning, “what other big, bad creatures do you like?” 

She lit up. “Definitely dragons! Do you like dragons?” 

And just like that, we had all the time in the world. I was going to get into so much trouble for this. Minerva was going to flip her shit.

Worth it.   

---

Verdell Walker is a writer of speculative fiction from rural Georgia whose work is inspired by her heritage and her research. Her stories are published and forthcoming in Tractor Beam, Reckoning, Adventitious, Zooscape, and other fine publications. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in Bustle, Vox, Forge, and ZORA. Verdell is a graduate of the Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop and Clarion West. She is a recipient of the Horror Writers Association’s Diversity Grant, the Gotham Writers of Color Creative Writing Scholarship, and the John Lewis Writing Grant for Fiction. She is also a 2026 Periplus Collective and 2026 Voodoonauts Collective fellow. She can be found on Instagram: @verdellwalkerwrites, as well as her book review podcast, The Book Up.

Rachel McCarron

I’m Glad I Found You

We found each other in 1964. You, fresh and eager on your first day. Me, barely a year on the force, responsible for a new recruit though I still felt like a rookie myself.

When I started, I’d been assigned to an officer twenty years on the beat, but twelve months on, staffing shortages meant that you had to make do with me. My enthusiasm hadn’t dampened yet, and perhaps this was better for you than a jaded old cop whose only concern was his next day off.

You looked so young in your new uniform, like a schoolboy at the start of term. Already married with a daughter, you showed me a photograph of them, then apologised for being soppy. How I envied that sentimentality. I envied you and your cosy family.

“It’s not like cop shows on telly,” I warned as you got into the passenger seat of the patrol vehicle – not a Zephyr like on Z-Cars, but the newer, cheaper Hillman Imp. Far less powerful, but for neighbourhood policing, we weren’t expected to tear up the tarmac. “There’s a lot of hanging about.”

“I know,” you said. “They told us in training that patience is as important as reaction. I just want to do my bit for the community. Protect and serve, and all that.”

“That’s the LAPD,” I said. “Heddlu Sir y Fflint is nothing like Dragnet.”

You laughed at my Scouse attempt at Welsh – unnecessary when everyone just called us Flintshire Constabulary.

“Why sure, Joe,” you said in a phony, wise-guy accent. “It’s a whole ’nother ball game. And how about them Dodgers, huh?”

“Well, hell, Dave,” I said. “I woulda bin there but for the perp still on the loose and them goddam dirty cops tryin’a bring me down all the goddam time.”

We made no sense, but your humour clicked with me, and our mutual indifference to sport, American or otherwise, was just one of many things we had in common.

You won me over with your love of American folk music, and we made a pact never to tell anyone of our harmonious renditions of “Tom Dooley” and “The Railroad Boy” as we drove around the neighbourhood, far more likely to come across petty theft and social disruption than the murder or suicide we were singing about.

“There was a murder hereabouts,” I said. “But it was before I started.”

“I remember,” you said.

Everybody knew about it. The verdict was Not Guilty, but the victim’s husband forever walked in the shadow of what he had or hadn’t done. I saw it as a sign of your respect and integrity that you didn’t express any opinion on the matter.

I admired your compassion when we had to break the dreadful news to parents of a young man killed in a hit and run. I saw your kindness towards teenage lads picked up for shoplifting. They were already terrified and didn’t need to be scared straight. You worried that you were too soft to be a copper, but you had all the right instincts. And I had enough aggression for both of us back then. We made the perfect team: classic good cop, bad cop. You were always the good. I could be as bad as required.

It was essential for the job sometimes – a show of force to any disorganised crime that threatened to emerge in our sleepy manor. You could handle yourself, but you preferred not to strike a blow, allowing me to administer the bigger dose of any unavoidable violence. I threw myself wholeheartedly into any punch-up demanded by the job and off duty if necessary.

It was all about defence and concealment. I worked at maintaining an image. I kept fit with running and boxing. The occasional date with a good-looking woman added credibility. I knew the sort of hatred, fear and ridicule reserved for poofs, fairies and fags like me. I saw and heard it everywhere – on the job, on the street, down the pub, on mainstream television. But not only could I pass as straight, I was the hardest bobby on the beat.

I did not expect to fall in love with anyone of either sex. I had no hopes of settling down. First dates with women never led to second ones, and I never had to fake more than a goodnight kiss. The men I encountered were as nameless as I was. I knew places just about safe enough up in Merseyside, anonymously far from anyone who knew me or my profession. Untraceable as long as I never retraced my steps.

You invited me to tea one Friday. I ignored your wife’s suggestion to bring a girlfriend and was welcomed into a household I would soon feel part of. Wendy fussed over me, and I could feel you watching as I tried to flirt with her the way I had learned to flatter women for the sake of appearances.

“Are all the nurses on your ward as pretty as you?” I asked. “Maybe you could fix me up.”

“Perhaps.” She eyed me quizzically as though she knew.

“How did someone as lovely as you get stuck with a bloke like Dave?”

“But Dave’s lovely too, don’t you think?” said Wendy. I couldn’t tell if she was being funny or if she had already seen through my macho bullshit. Standing behind you, she ruffled your hair where you sat at the kitchen table and planted a kiss on the top of your head. You looked across at me with an expression I couldn’t interpret.

Your four-year-old daughter broke the tension by stomping down the stairs, insisting it was too early for bed. At barely half-six, she had a point. “You must be Hannah,” I said.

“I must be,” said little Hannah. “Are you Uncle Joe?”

“I must be,” I said.

“Daddy says you’re his best friend.”

“I am.” I’d been unprepared for the emotional kick of this declaration.

“Mummy said I had to go to bed early because you were coming round. I don’t think it’s fair.”

“Hannah, don’t be rude,” said Wendy. “Say sorry to Uncle Joe.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “She’s right. It isn’t fair.”

“Can I stay up then?”

“If you’re a good girl,” you said.

She refused to go to bed until you sang “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” and she giggled with delight when I joined you in harmony.

“Sing me something, Uncle Joe,” demanded Hannah. But the only songs I knew were the murder ballads we sang in the patrol car. I sang what I could remember of “Twenty-four Hours from Tulsa” because I had heard it on the radio earlier that day. Wendy said it was an odd choice for a lullaby, but Hannah enjoyed it well enough and went upstairs to bed without further complaint.

“You have a great voice,” said Wendy. “You should try the folk club at the White Swan.”

So, we would go along to the pub if we weren’t working late on a Thursday. We sang our close harmony American folk songs about “Stagger Lee” and “John Henry” or treated them to a Bob Dylan number they could all join in with. I felt the intimacy of our voices entwined without our bodies ever touching. Hidden closeness in plain sight.

I got along with Wendy as if she were my sister, and she gave me chores around the house that you never got round to. I helped with Hannah after school sometimes. The three of us co-ordinated our shifts to take the pressure off your parents who had been the main babysitters until your dad became unwell.

You spent more time with your mum after your dad died, determined she wouldn’t be lonely, and I got to know her too. A widow not yet forty, she possessed stoicism and humour I had never known in my own mother who I hardly saw for fear she would recognise what I was. Your family accepted me without judgement.

I started seeing one of Wendy’s nursing pals. It was about time I had a girlfriend, Wendy said, and the four of us would go to the pub or cinema while your mum babysat Hannah. Pamela was young and sweet and Catholic enough that we never needed to consummate the sham of our relationship. I closed my eyes as I kissed her and imagined a rougher mouth and more stubbled cheek. If she got too frisky, as occasionally she did, I reminded her that it was the right and proper thing to do to wait until marriage.

“And when will that be?”

I didn’t have the heart to point out that I meant when she was married to someone else.

It was at some point during the Pamela months that you made your move. We’d known each other over a year, working together, spending most of our free time together. I still occasionally prowled Queen Square in Liverpool, but the relief I sought was now as regrettable as it was forgettable. I had come to accept that the part I played as an accessory to your family was as happy as I was going to be. That I would never have the partnership you shared with Wendy, mattered less than the time I spent as your professional partner and best friend. I would never have instigated anything more. Dave, this was all on you.

One night, we were first on the scene at an address in Connah’s Quay where an elderly woman had found her middle-aged son hanging from the garage ceiling. I cut him down while you took her statement and the pointless ambulance arrived.

Later, when we were parked up, reluctant to return to the station, I said, “What was he thinking? He must’ve known she would be the one to find him.”

“I don’t suppose he was thinking at all,” you said.

“But it’s not like that girl who took her mum’s sleeping pills, or the lad that got stoned and jumped out of a window that was only high enough to break his leg.” We had been superfluous in both those cases. The ambulances proved necessary, the kids survived, and no crimes were committed. “Hanging takes planning,” I said. “It takes bravery.”

“I can’t fathom why anyone would do something like that,” you said.

But I could. It had crossed my mind now and then. “I understand why people think about it,” I said.

We had been staring straight ahead as we talked, the way we usually did, natural enough for two people sitting in a car, and easier for me not to make eye contact. But now I felt your eyes on me and sensed panic in your silence.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I never think about it these days.” I started the car. “We should head back.”

Your hand covered mine as I moved to shift gear. You told me later, that if I hadn’t responded, if I’d snatched my hand away and recoiled, you would have passed it off as friendly concern. But I turned my palm upwards, threaded my fingers between yours and held on tight.

“Promise me you won’t ever think about it,” you said. “Promise you won’t leave us.”

Not me, us – your family, your shield.

“I’ll never leave you,” I said. “I promise.”

We drove back to base in silence. As we pulled in at the station you said, “You don’t fancy Pamela, do you?”

“Of course not.”

The next day, we behaved as though nothing had changed. But everything would change. We were only waiting.

I was saved from breaking Pamela’s heart when she dumped me to get engaged to a more suitable man. Being both Catholic and a doctor, he was a good catch, as Wendy put it when she broke the news on cowardly Pamela’s behalf.

“Are you alright, Joe?” asked Wendy.

“Oh yes, plenty more fish and all that.”

“What are you smiling about?” she said to you. “Can’t you see the man’s heartbroken. Take him to the pub to drown his sorrows and give me and Hannah some peace.”

“Is there more fish?” asked Hannah.

“No, pal,” I said. “We ate it all.”

“But you just said…”

“I meant, plenty more fish in the sea. It’s an expression.”

“Not in the fridge?”

“No,” you said, “but there’s a tin of sardines in the cupboard,” which only confused the poor kid more.

We didn’t go to the pub. We went straight to my bedsit where you kissed me as I fumbled to lock the door. I had never felt so nervous, and I marvelled at your eager confidence. “Hey, take it easy.” I pointed you towards the record player. “Choose some music. The walls are paper thin.”

“Does that mean play it quietly?”

“No, soft lad. Play it just loud enough to drown anything out.”

I poured some scotch while you put Simon and Garfunkel on. I laughed at them singing “You Can Tell the World,” knowing we could never tell anybody.

We kissed again, barely coming up for air. You were more frantic, hungrier, than I had ever imagined in all my imaginings of us together.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Desperately certain,” you said. “But I’ve never... only ever with Wendy.”

“Follow your instincts.”

Your instincts had you unfastening my belt and kneeling before me, not a trace of doubt. I could only hold back a few moments before I erupted to your splutter of surprised laughter, and you wiped my joy from your chin. What were you expecting?

I finished undressing and watched as you discarded your clothes revealing the pale, smooth skin I had been longing to touch. The faintest tremble in your hands belied your boldness. I stroked the scant, fair hair on your chest, a contrast to my dark, wiry mat that you curled about your fingers. I towered you in height, but you dominated me in every other way. You nudged me towards the bed, your enthusiasm overriding any lack of experience.

I could hear Simon and Garfunkel singing “Bleecker Street,” and I imagined us living together in New York’s Greenwich Village, comfortable at last among our own kind.

Afterwards, as I held you in my arms, I told you I loved you. I didn’t need you to say it back, but you did.

“But I don’t think I can leave Wendy,” you said.

“You mustn’t leave her. It would be the end of everything. We’d lose our careers as well as your family.”

“But shouldn’t I be willing to give it all up?”

“What for?”

“For you.”

“It wouldn’t be safe. Until we get an apartment on Bleecker Street, our chances are better as we are.”

And I was right. Our chances were good. We would be together for six years behind the mask of your family, as best friends and the most respectable of professional partners in Her Majesty’s police force.

I felt the wrench when you became a sergeant in the merger of ’67, and I got another recruit. I wasn’t upset about being passed over for promotion. You were always a better copper than me. And I was aware of my vulnerability as a bachelor nearing my thirties, happy to stay at a level well below anyone’s radar.

“Don’t fall in love with your new partner,” you said.

“Never anyone but you,” I promised.

You had my complete devotion, but we lamented the time we could no longer spend together. We’d already stopped singing at the folk club for fear any emotion might show through. We took Hannah for days out at Colwyn Bay and Chester Zoo and snatched moments to talk while she was distracted. We stole brief windows of delight at my place while Wendy was on duty and Hannah was at school or at her grandmother’s house. But perhaps we lingered too long, craving each other’s company.

“I don’t want Hannah to think I’m weak,” you said.

“Why would she think that?”

“You know… I’m worried that it shows. I’m worried she’ll think I’m less of man than other kid’s dads.”

I tried not to feel offended by what she might think of me. “You’re the manliest man I’ve ever known,” I said, and you laughed. “I mean it. You’re a wonderful father.”

“If she ever found out…”

“She doesn’t need to find out. Hannah adores you. Stop worrying.”

But your fears became a familiar theme, and you needed constant reassurance of your masculinity. Words would only go so far; submitting to your dominance in the bedroom was the only way to settle you. Not that I complained. The thrill never faded.

“I can’t understand why people think being gay is emasculating,” I said. “Two guys together – it doesn’t get more masculine than this.”

“Wendy knows,” you said one day.

“How? We’re so careful.” I was sure I behaved no differently around Wendy than I ever had. My presence in your household felt as natural as the first day you invited me, no pretence necessary. But we should never have taken Wendy for a fool.

“She says she knew from the first day she met you, and she sees it in me too. It doesn’t take much to work out the rest.”

“But she’s got no proof, has she?”

“I told her everything. I can’t keep lying to her. I do love her.”

“So, this is the end for us.” A grip tightened in me, a futile holding-on to something I never expected to last. How could it? You had a family to consider. I had no ties. I could go anywhere, request a transfer easily enough. I needed to plan an exit.

“No,” you said. “I don’t want it to end.”

“But you can’t leave Wendy. We talked about this. It’s professional suicide if nothing else.”

“Wendy says she can handle it.”

“How do you mean?”

“She thinks our marriage is better for it. Don’t ask me to explain.”

I didn’t ask, and the next time I saw Wendy, she hugged me and told me I was brave. You took Hannah to the park and left us alone. We cried on each other’s shoulders. She told me things she said she’d never told anyone, and she let me talk about my life before I met you. Things I never told you. Things you didn’t need to know. All my loneliness, all my sorrowful tears wiped away by the wife of my lover. And then life carried on with your happy family as if everything was so very normal.

It was Stonewall that changed things. Hannah was nine by then, and so used to me being around, she never questioned the intensity of my friendship with her father. We were settled and, I believed, happy. But my utopian fantasy of liberated gay life in Greenwich Village was shattered by news of the riots there, and it reminded me that I was still lying to everyone about who I was. The impact of events that summer of 1969 had me yearning to stand shoulder to shoulder with my queer brothers and sisters.

“Think of your career,” you said. “Think of my family.”

I went back to Liverpool, not to the cinemas or gentlemen’s conveniences where I used to go, but to a meeting at the university. I became educated about the challenges that faced us. Us in a broader sense, not you and me. You and I, Dave, we were okay. Safe. Strong. But I wanted to join the campaign for gay rights for all of us. I wanted to change the world.

It was a slow transformation, but I was changing, and on my thirtieth birthday, two years after Stonewall, I told you I wanted to leave the police force.

“But what will you do?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t stay in a profession where I can’t be myself.”

Wendy suggested I work at the hospital as an orderly or porter, but you refused to accept my resignation, and procrastination kept me rooted for the time being.

Looking back, I should have taken your paranoia more seriously. The script became repetitive:

What if anyone at work found out? Nobody knew.

They think I’m a weak sergeant. Your authority was never in doubt.

Why does Wendy put up with me? I was damned if I knew for sure but presumed it must be for the same reason I did – love.

Hannah will hate me when she’s older. Hannah adored you. She still does.

Please, please, please don’t leave me. My promises in reply eventually sounded worn out.

I could sense change everywhere – optimism as more people came out but fear too with the inevitable backlash against the gay liberation movement. It wasn’t fair to expect me to remain still while everything around me was in motion. You had your family and an upwards career trajectory which would leave me far behind. I needed to stand up for who I was.

“I’m handing my notice in,” I said.

You said you didn’t think I was serious.

“I need to be myself,” I said. “I don’t want to hide anymore.”

“So, you’ll get a job at the hospital.”

“I think I should get away for a while.”

“What about us?”

“You’ve got a career and a family.”

“It’s your family too.”

Was it? “I’ll come back and visit.”

“You’ll stay.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Don’t leave. I need you.”

“I’m doing it for you. And Wendy and Hannah. You need the chance to be a proper family.”

I thought it was such a selfless act – an overdue, noble sacrifice for the people I loved.

“Don’t be such a fucking martyr,” you said.

You made it look like an accident the first time, and I believed you when you said it was. You wrote off your car, but you and the tree were miraculously unscathed. You were instructed to take two weeks’ leave and were never charged with drink driving because no supervising officer could hold such a conviction nor go without an unblemished driver’s license.

It was Wendy who suspected there was more to it.

“You can’t leave,” she said.

“I’m doing it for you and Dave,” I said. “I just complicate things.”

“You make things easier, Joe.”

Sometimes I regret not asking what she meant by that, but if she was having an affair of her own, it was none of my business.

“He won’t talk to me about the accident,” I said. “Has he said anything to you?”

“He said he should have been driving faster.”

I’m glad I found you.

I’m glad you had the sense to plan it somewhere your mother, wife and eleven-year-old daughter wouldn’t be the ones to discover your lifeless body. Did you know I would be first on the scene? Or were you unconcerned which officer would pull you down and make a futile attempt to breathe life back into your cold lips?

“How’s school, pal?”

“I joined the choir,” said Hannah. “I love singing.”

“Your dad and I used to sing together.”

“I remember,” she said.

““Puff the Magic Dragon,”” I said.

“No, something called “The Railroad Boy,” but it had nothing to do with trains.”

“Go dig my grave, both wide and deep,” I sang. “Place a marble stone at my head and feet. And at my breast, a snow-white dove. To show the world I died for love.”

Perhaps it was the wrong thing to sing to a girl grieving the loss of her father, but all she said was, “I can still hear him.”

I still hear you. When I sing. When I sleep. When I’m wondering what I’ll do with my life without you. All I know is, I’m glad I found you.

Editor’s note: This piece was longlisted for the 2026 Leopold Bloom Prize.

---

Rachel McCarron is a writer from the Northwest coast of England. She is the winner of the 2026 Goldfinch Novel Award, and her short stories have been published in Mslexia and Thin Skin. Her first non-fiction, a work of autotheory about Virginia Woolf, will be published in an anthology in January 2027. She is the critique forum moderator at Litopia.com and the co-presenter of the Two Wayward Writers podcast.

Mandy Lange

Instructions to Launch Your Redemption Arc

Toss over your Hermés Birkin, your saffron-tinted pillboxes, the key fob to your Porsche. Add that new Armani Trenchcoat from Raúl to the pile of clothes collecting snowfall on the metal rail of your 35th floor balcony. Approach the wine lattice rack, grip the neck–cold, stiff, no pulse– of the 2008 L'Evangile. Smash it. If a shard of glass grazes your cheek: the better, the better.

Leave the caked blood–shouldn’t there have been more blood–under your shellacked nails. If it bothers you, suck the corners like your hangnails in 4th grade when pale Ms. Sneedle caught you stealing from her drugstore purse, demanding an explanation because What could a girl who has everything possibly have left to take? Breathe the answer onto the windowed balcony door, breath rushing from your lungs to fashion your mask, a defense. Imagine Raúl announcing to a sallow-faced judge, It was an accident. An accident years in the making, painted pretty by tears careening down your surgically hollowed cheekbones, bitten-off shellac on whitened teeth. She wishes–

Swipe the condensation away. Wishes never sated you. Only action.

Strip off your silk kimono. Step into the February flurry. Embrace the spatter of goosebumps on your neck and ask yourself, out loud, so the question slowdances with snowflakes onto city-dwellers crawling from one rapture to the next: when was the last time I allowed myself to suffer? Picture yourself as that fourth grader again, but she’s forever changed; she will always look like a bloodstained department store jacket, whitewashed in the Porsche's high beams. She will always sound like jeans scraping concrete and the felt-smothered thunk of a body in your backseat. Your innocence–if you ever had any–is lost to the poisonous adrenaline coursing through your barre-whittled biceps; strength you discovered at the worst time, for the worst reason.

Send your coat over the ledge. Watch as it squirms in the squall, sleeves frantic and grasping for atonement that sinks out of reach. Decide whether you can live with it.

---

Mandy Lange writes short fiction from her fixer-upper farm in Michigan. She's been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2026 and is a past winner of the Writer’s Playground Short Story Competition. Her writing has been published in magazines including Fictive Dream, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and wildscape literary, and is forthcoming in Uncharted. Read her work at mandylange.com.

Jack Morris

Grief is a thing with claws

         There’s a lion tethered to the whirligig. It arrived the day Jamie died. Every day Mae watches it from the kitchen window, which she’s long since locked against the stink. Every day the lion, chain taut, paces mud circles around Jamie’s once pristine lawn. This year’s tomato plants wilt in the veg patch, their fruit hard and green. Last year Jamie brought in the first crop and rubbed fresh leaves along the delicate skin of Mae’s wrist; held her hand against his cheek.

         ‘You smell delicious,’ he’d said. Mae tries not to remember these moments. It doesn’t do to poke the creature that lives in her chest, the one that roars when she thinks of all she’s lost. 

         Every dusk Mae stands by the window, washing dishes, and the lion stares directly at her with unblinking amber eyes. Jamie would’ve said it was lonely. Soft lad, Jamie. Tender-hearted. Mae closes the kitchen curtains and leaves the beast to the shadows.

         One night, Mae dreams of sunlight and ripe tomatoes and a warm body next to hers. She wakes to trampled plants and a bent whirligig, lying lopsided like the skeleton of an upturned umbrella after a storm.

         ‘What are you doing?’ She rushes outside. The lion is on the roof of Jamie’s potting shed, tail flicking.  ‘You’re supposed to stay on the chain,’ she yells. ‘Not wreck everything.’

         The lion grumbles, deep in its throat. Like Jamie’s breath towards the end. Rattle rasp, rattle rasp. Mae had held his hand for hours.  Rattle rasp. Kissed each white knuckle.  Rattle. Inhaled his new sour scent. Rasp. Yearned for an echo of his old one.

         Rattle. Rasp. Rattle.

         What would Jamie do if he had a lion loose in the garden?

         ‘Come here,’ she says, in as kind a voice as she can muster. ‘Come down.’

         She feeds it last night’s mince. It gulps the food then looks at her, head cocked, as if to say, ‘Is that all?’

         ‘I’ll go to the shop,’ she tells it.

         In the supermarket she picks lamb chops, Jamie’s favourite. The plastic-wrapped tomatoes, shelves upon shelves of them, make her eyes prick with tears so she takes a bag of rocket instead. Jamie always declared rocket too bitter. Bitter suits her fine.

         She eats at the garden table. The lion licks both of their plates clean then lies down in the veg patch.  That evening, Mae drapes a blanket over the lion’s broad back to keep off the chill. It doesn’t smell so bad, she decides. It's a musky, feral smell but not stale. Not sour.

         ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she says.

         The lion sighs, lays its head on its paws. Mae turns and heads for the door but it looks so forlorn, huddled against the first nip of Autumn. She knows what Jamie would do.

         ‘Come on, then’ she says, ‘you’d better come inside.’

Editor’s note: This piece garnered third place in the 2023 Propelling Pencil Competition.

---

Jack Morris lives in Brighton, UK. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from the Open University. She’s hopelessly dedicated to brevity and is proud to be in both Best Microfictions 2026 and the Fish Anthology 2026. Published work at https://www.thewavingnotdrowningblog.com/

Aldo Giovannitti

The Man with Parkinson’s

         From afar, watch the burning pixel in the blackness of sea and moonlight. Closer now, it becomes the glowing porthole of a vessel adrift. Inside, the mother and the father eat supper at the table. Their son, returned from a long absence, sits with them. As on each visit, he’ll be gone in a few days. The table is small; their knees touch beneath it.

~

         The man was relieved to see his son, but even more so that his visits would shut down the factory. That meant no morning nurse processing him from the bed to the armchair. No forced walks, no timed toilet visits, no drivers whisking him to rehabilitation. No evening nurse reprocessing him into a night’s larva. Canes and portable urinals vanished; rugs and non-disposable kitchenware reappeared.

         It was she who had built the system of routines she called the factory, and she held the sole authority to halt it. Halting the factory, however, meant doing everything herself—getting down onto the production lines in her overalls, to replace the entire staff with her bare hands. A labor that served and annulled the joy of reunion in the same breath. She did it each time to protect their grown son; she staged the ghost of what had been their world.

~

         The woman served herself last, and no one would speak as they ate. Only the kitchen fan, the black hills outside, and the man's spoon rattling against his bowl. She checked him from the corner of her eye. Rattle after rattle. She gripped her cloth. The son pretended not to hear, his luggage still unopened by the door. And at the next rattle, she shot out her arm, cut the man’s meat into rough pieces with her knife, and withdrew.

         They carried on, until the man's cloth slipped from his collar onto his lap. The man grabbed it, but his arm wouldn't lift. When the son moved to help, she raised her palm: she would handle it herself. She stood and crossed to him, and when she reached, he shut his eyes. She pulled the cloth, but he wouldn’t—couldn’t—let go, until she wrested the cloth from his hands and tucked it back into his collar. She noticed stew drops on his beard, briefly considered cleaning them, then let the thought slip, and returned to her seat.

~

         “Keep an eye on him,” she said as she moved to the sink. And for a good reason: left alone too long, the man tended to make decisions of his own. As if proving her point, the son distracted, and he had already removed his dentures, raising them like a trophy, with that demented smile of his. The son hadn’t even known his father wore dentures—she had managed to keep that from him for a year. In the reflection, the son reclassified his father: a man with dentures. His arms stayed high, stiff as wood; his hands, bolted at the dentures.

         And now, witness this. His arms began shaking, failing to bear their own weight. That demented smile, contorting into a snarl of pain. When she saw him she snapped, grabbed a plate, crossed the room, and slammed it onto the table. “Drop it here,” she said. His expression kept twisting into shapes no one knew his face could produce. “In the plate,” she said.

         He willed his arms down but no signal reached them. They shook harder and harder before his eyes. He forced them down in pain, a hoarse “Aah,” came from his now-visible gums. “Down!” he thought, eyes flicking between the wife and the dentures, hoping she would understand. The woman, the wife, the mother, the nurse, the operator—she looked at the ceiling, palms wide, muscles taut—one… two… three… four long breaths.

~

         If we let him work through it, he will rebuild motor control: it was the son’s non-intervention policy, likely born of the luxury of distance. Each time he dropped in, mandated principles cast in rarefied air, then left, to return when the seasons had turned. The woman, instead, belonged to the opposite school—one shaped by the urgency of daily production-line output. At first, when the air was still soft with reunion, she bore his theories to please him. After all, he only stayed a handful of days. But as the days wore on and the mood thinned, she began cutting scenes short, clearing obstacles herself.

         They let him struggle, stepping in only when the embarrassment became unbearable—not to him, but to the son. It was never the man who chose when to stop; it was always the son. Now the man’s eyes watered, and the shaking had grown so that it shamed those who watched. The limit had been reached: time for the son to press his father’s arms down. The arms’ block rotated down, hinged at the shoulders. A loud “Aah.”

         The man finally rested his elbows on the table, the dentures hovering on the plate. The son saw drops of saliva about to fall from his father’s hands but did nothing. It’s over, the man thought, and a smile brushed his lips.

         But the smile’s formation was cut short, for the woman now took charge. What’s next in the assembly line? She seized his wrists. “Let go,” she said. Nothing. She tightened her grip. A jolt. Still nothing. The man turned to the son for help that didn’t come. Back to his hands—still clenched. “Just drop them,” the man heard from somewhere. There had to be a way out for the man. But what was left for him to do? Flee, obviously.

         And that is what he did. Shutting his eyes so hard, he fled the room. The harder the jolts, the more he shut them. Tears bled through his eyelids—the kind that would have stayed in, had he kept them open. Shielded in the darkness behind his lids, he managed to spin off the body from the head. The jolts went on, but no longer on his body. Just the void around him. Her voice, softened by the darkness, flakes of coal falling about, almost pleasant. No, pleasant indeed. This, he could bear. Now you can carry on my dear, he thought.

         When the dentures finally fell into the plate, saliva sprayed around. The son hesitated to wipe his cheek, as though doing so would dishonor his father. When the man opened his eyes, he saw his hands, still in position, but holding air, and now a smile formed fully: he knew he had just gained about ten freedom-minutes, as he called them.

         The son watched the dentures in the plate. At first, he only glanced at them—chewed matter, fluids pooling. He looked away. On the second pass, with clinical curiosity, he lingered. The third time, he studied the corrugations on the palate—a negative of his father’s. An inner organ, extracted. Part or not part of his father? Its surface. Rough and tender, as a tortoise’s back.

         But no time to lose, for the curfew looms. She pinched the cloth from his collar and drew it from each finger’s base to the tip, rotating through the motion, squeezing harder than necessary. The automatism in the way she operated revealed an established protocol of two outcomes: fix the man, temper her own ire. A wipe, another, and another—each a micro-punishment to the man she nursed and that could not escape. Each, a blow to the walls of the prison she had helped the man erect around them, week after month after year—until they were both walled in alive, with no doors, nor vents. Her hands wiped; her mind excavated the walls. Then she ran through her checklist of the outstanding stations: pills, walk, toilet. Undress, diaper, re-dress. Put to bed, sleep an hour, toilet again. The early rise. Tomorrow even earlier. Can you hear it? The hammering cadence of her years-long days.

         He regarded his hands being wiped as if detached objects. He was grateful to his wife for sorting out the dentures business, until she would raise the next challenge. And immersed in these thoughts, the increasingly hard wipes rocked him into sleep.

~

         A sound woke him, and he sucked in to recall the saliva that had pooled in his mouth. The dentures incident had already left his memory permanently. He felt something had happened, but he couldn’t place it. Before him two figures moved. Maybe three. He checked his wristwatch, but nothing made sense from that dial of huge indices, designed for giant children. He looked up. Morning? Afternoon?

But for him, right now, there was no hope of figuring out what time it was. At least not outside of the golden window (as the son called it), the magic place from four to seven in the evening. There, time was the easiest he could grasp, and he would lecture on take-off procedures, loan amortizations, and the upcoming car overhaul—though, sadly, his condition discounted the value of all he said, for it coated, or rather soaked, each of his words with unreliability.

         They had hypotheses about the window. The pill cycles being the most popular—an opening between the phase-off of some medications and the phase-in of others, where his mind was clear. Contenders were the heavier rehabilitation schedule, or the newly introduced melatonin, which managed to stretch his sleep by a few inches. “And what about the remaining twenty-one hours?” she would tell the son to dismiss the topic.

         In the remaining twenty-one hours, time had ceased to be a measure of life to him. No minutes, no hours, no dates. No seasons. Only the grinding rhythm of the stages—processing and reprocessing him into someone bearable for the following few minutes. A loop of assembly stations, each feeding the next in a perpetual, headless cycle. The day was both the process and the product of the factory. The man kept checking his wristwatch, still, through days that weren't his anymore.

         Back to work now. Next station: evening pills. The son poured them before his father. “Your dessert, pa,” then refilled the pillbox with tomorrow’s doses. The man narrowed his focus. One by one, with his index finger, he slotted the pills into the squares of the checkered tablecloth—one, two, three. Well in order. Then he studied them. “This is Levodopa,” the man mumbled, brushing a fingertip over the pill, as if it were a pill-sized kitten. Then the next: “Or maybe this one is…” She called out, saying that it was always the same pills, as she marshaled the scene from the sink. But her words interrupted his focus, and his gaze glided from the pill to his finger. The nail. The cuticle. The skin, silky and reflective; taut and loose at once. This very finger—still his childhood finger to his eyes.

         From one side, his son saying, “Drink the whole glass,” to make sure he swallowed them, and from the other, his wife saying, “I warn you, don’t drink the whole glass,” to prevent him from waking mid–first sleep to empty his bladder, and having to throw away the diaper (he will soon wear). “And don’t spit the pill back into the glass,” she said. The son picked up the pill and shoved it through his father’s lips. “Quick now,” she said, “or it’ll glue itself to his lips.”

         The son lifted the glass—his father’s hands only attached to it the way children are trained to drink—and he swallowed, and swallowed, rivulets of water spilling from the corners of his mouth. With this, the man had won another batch of freedom-minutes. A small effort for such a reward, this had been an easy trade. Save that, when the glass was down, the pill sat at the bottom. Son and father met gazes and snapped to repeat the operation, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

         Next station: walking. One of acute pain, for after an hour seated, his feet had welded to the floor. Standing, let alone walking, was the man’s chief fear. When the son pulled the chair to extract him from the table, the man shut his eyes, hoping for a miracle, or a brief delay… anything. Then, in the dark, he felt the double tap on his arm. Familiar, expected. It was their code, developed to hide from her his moments of non-cooperation. Two taps: ready. Three: action. The signal meant imminent pain and filial love simultaneously, and the latter outweighed the first. To the man, walking was always a profitable trade, for its immense cost purchased three resources at once: freedom-minutes, his son’s approval, and a delay in his wife’s ire.

         And here came the triple tap. But those wooden legs wrapped in denim didn’t move. A few attempts. Then, at the fourth, he rose, with the son’s hands at his armpits. And once up—his son’s arms cocked round him for a catch—he clung to the table’s edge as if on a precipice. He stared at the miles-deep floor and thought danger, danger, danger. “Quick,” she told both, “or he’ll freeze in that position.”

         Imagine walking—just a normal walk of short strides from outside. Now imagine walking, with hundreds of needles sunk deep into your quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves. Not pricking—but well driven in, plunged fully, all embedded at conflicting angles, twisting, pressing deeper or wrenching back—as the flesh, both liquid and solid, inflates and exhales as each step commands. There are twenty-five pounds of this flesh in each of the man's legs. He struggles to control them—but the sensorial crucible, he retains fully.

         To complete a lap, he had to knock at the windows at either end of the apartment. He and the son moved arm in arm. The strides were so short. The floor a magnet, and his feet, feet of steel. At each passage by the kitchen she would say, “Lift those feet,” at the next, “Longer strides,” and the following, “Apply yourself.” And so on. On top of these mental obstacles were the physical. Rugs above all. To the man who could only move by slithering his feet, a rug’s edge was dangerous as vipers had once been to his former self. There had been talk of removing them, as well as of rearranging the furniture to clear the paths. But it wasn’t the case, she had concluded, to turn the place into some ward.

         What the man and his son thought as they walked round and round? In the first laps: pain took all of the man’s brain, and whatever attention remained, went to the rugs. He’s much worse than last time, the son thought.

         In the middle laps: “Enough?” the man asked at the end of each, as his son coached him into the next. Now the pain began to dull, and a few longer strides emerged. Knock the frame, turn, back again. Knock. Longer strides. Raise your feet. Repeat. His legs felt more fluid though.

         In the final laps: a shadow of pleasure crept through the pain. By now the longer strides outnumbered the short. The son felt his father’s weight lift from his arm—and then he got pulled forward. Speed. This was speed. “Look at this!” the man said, as they passed the kitchen. His greatest joy, after all, was still to impress his wife. Those are quite long strides, she thought. “Get rid of that left stoop, rather,” she said.

         (Walking was one of the two warheads left in the woman’s shrinking arsenal against his, meaning her, sleepless nights. The second: nap deprivation in the afternoon. A clap of hands, “Up, up!” she would say, breezing past the living room. “Up, up!” to the man folding in on himself in the armchair. “Up, up!” a cloth to his neck, for the saliva pooled and dropped, if not sucked back in time by this man awake and asleep at once.)

         The last lap ended in the bathroom, where they sat him on the toilet. “Call when you’re done,” came from the corridor. The underside of spousal privilege meant she had to handle this station of the factory. She waited a long time by the door. Then she glimpsed inside, saw, and clapped, “Wake!” and to this, the man woke.

         No need to put the trousers back on. Peel them off instead. He walked to the bedroom arm in arm with his wife, wearing only his shirt. The bedroom: she called it the FAL—Final Assembly Line. “Can I sit?” the man said. “You can sit,” the woman said. And he landed on his side of the bed, onto the blossomed diaper she had laid for him. She wrapped him—buckled him up for the night’s voyage—and as she worked, he checked his wristwatch and nodded.

         The son came in with melatonin. “Aaaah,” the son said. “Aaaah,” the man said. They counted the twelve drops under the tongue. Four weeks ago, it had been eight. Two weeks before that, six. “Add a couple,” she said, pulling her hand off the rings. The bedroom: dim. In the far corner, a cane in a plastic bag. Above the bed lamp, a framed photograph—a man taking off from a mountain with a paraglider. Well shoved under the bed, a urinal. (Not stained, no—painted in urine-yellow straight from the shop.)

         “I’m going to load up the car tonight,” the son told both.

         The woman gripped the bedsheet and hesitated. She had held back mentioning this all day, but now she went for it. “We can… still cancel,” she said. She released a deep breath.

         Each looked down and waited for the other to speak.

         Then the son’s “No,” broke the silence. He looked up, but not towards her. “We spoke at length about this. It’s his best chance.”

         Her eyes glossed, and she gripped the bedsheet tighter. With no other avenue available, she turned to the man and pointed a finger to him: “You don’t even think of waking to pee.”

         They would all rise even earlier than usual, tomorrow. Long, the trip ahead. The son reached and tapped his father’s shoulder four times. It meant: no more for today. The man smiled, his eyes already closed. Hours and hours of freedom-minutes. “Still my champ,” he mumbled.

         “Good night,” the son said.

---

Aldo Giovannitti writes about shifting perception, moral ambiguity, and transformation. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Open Journal of Arts & Letters, DIALOGIST, and Abstract Magazine, alongside essays in The Diplomat and South China Morning Post. He is a member of The Poetry Society and PEN America and is based in London.

Michael Drezin

Arrested at the ASPCA

       When I was seven or eight, I joined the Little League. Joined for the uniform. If only the game were called a swing and a miss, I would have been considered a star, but as it happened, I was known as a complainer.

       "Balls too small. Came in too fast. Got a toothpick for a bat."

       Coach Sullivan, a.k.a. R. G. for real grouch, at least as far as I was concerned, had his speech ready. Given that he was like 100 years old, I doubt I was the first to hear it. It was short and to the point. 

       “That’s life. Rationalize it any way you want.”  

       That was then.

       Now, at age 35, the lesson remains hard to apply. After ten years, my girl left me. No warning, just the announcement. “Nice knowing you.” She was only available to herself and had said so at the beginning. It took a while for it to sink in. She said she needed to heal from childhood trauma, and I knew she did, and I wanted her to; some of my feelings were selfless, some, relieved to be free from her erratic behavior. She understood that without my saying so.

       For three years after the breakup, I avoided people as if that would cure my loneliness.  It was time for me to move on. But people felt too risky.

The ASPCA closest to home got hundreds of one-star reviews, none better, and when I arrived that Saturday afternoon, I was the only visitor, intending to adopt a kitten or two. I was going down a well-traveled road. Nothing to worry about. What could possibly go wrong?

       Then the cops arrived with drawn guns. I assumed they were cadets, not authorized to carry the real thing. They shoved me against a wall and patted me down. Seconds later, I felt a handcuff on my left wrist, then my right arm was yanked back, and a cuff was placed on that one, too.

       The arresting officer, with the satisfaction of an FBI agent who had captured America’s most wanted, informed me of my charges.  I was accused of violating  “Animal Cruelty Law, section 101, subsection b. a class E felony with a sentence of 1 to 4 years, probation possible with the right judge.   It's the crime of “entering into an ASPCA or other adoption facility without the intent to adopt.”

       In short, I was accused of playing with animal affections.

       Seated alone in the back of the police cruiser, I was read my rights. However unlikely I imagined my conviction would be, there are innocent people in jail. I did not want to be one of them. I did not want to lose my teaching job, or my apartment, or my car, even though it runs like an elderly man who spent his life smoking. Even if I got probation my photo would be transmitted to ASPCAs everywhere with the caption, "Not Wanted," and I would be barred from adopting. Of course, I could buy a pet, but that would feel like buying a person.   

       As we rode to the station, I overheard the cops talking. I gathered Blake, the snake, with a personality to match, started a rumor. Must’ve figured he wasn't getting adopted; no reason for anyone else to. He was watching me as I watched the kittens, hoping to adopt the right ones without knowing how to judge.           

Cops stopped talking when they realized I was listening. Though the staff should have known better than to trust Blake, someone at the ASPCA wasn’t taking any chances.

       I was transported to the Carter Municipal Jail, where my street clothes were exchanged for an orange jumpsuit. My belongings were shoved into a tan, eight-by-eleven envelope sealed with yellow "do not cross" tape. I removed my glasses for my mugshot photo and placed them on the fingerprint desk. At the time, I was willing to trade looking good for seeing good; besides, I thought I could see well enough without them. Turns out, I was wrong.

       My name is Christopher Patrick Monroe. My friends call me Chris. In jail, they called me prisoner 62815.

       I represented myself at the arraignment. All I had to do was say "guilty" or "not guilty." That was it. One word or two. My choice. No need to improvise. The basics had worked for thousands of defendants before: why not me? I am a college graduate and high school history teacher, credentials enough to wing it at my first criminal proceeding.

       After spending the night in jail, cops brought me to the courtroom; a bailiff directed me to stand behind a table where my lawyer would be if I’d had one. Given the nature of the proceedings, animals were allowed to observe, as were children on a school trip, some hoping to be lawyers, some hoping to be perps.   

       Class was in session in the rear of the courtroom. The rabbits taught multiplication. The monkeys, arguing politics, taught division. Although no serious breach of good conduct was expected, the lions were separated from the lambs. Two snakes were playing Hearts. Both cheated. Due to crowded conditions, some spectators were left standing in the standing room.  

       "All rise," said the bailiff when the judge arrived. "This Honorable court is now in session." I thought, cool, an Honorable court.

       "How do you plead, Mr. Monroe?"

       I cleared my throat. I was ready for my courtroom debut, or so I thought. I had prepared a short speech in which I declared my innocence and love for animals.

       "This is all a misunderstanding," was all I got to say.

       I was interrupted by the bleating of a black sheep mocking me.    

       Where did she get the nerve?

       While waiting for quiet, I looked for the Big Apple Circus ringmaster, who ushered the jungle cats to their seats. Wearing a red velvet jacket, oversized black- frame glasses, and a top hat, he should have been hard to miss. I saw a tiger wearing a top hat. It was probably a different hat.  

       The judge banged her gavel to silence the courtroom, but the sheep kept mocking me until the bailiff threatened to seat her near the wolf.

       "How do you plead?" asked the judge.

       "Speak up."

       Given the way things turned out, that was her mistake.

       Are you going to plead today?"

       The subtext was clear. Get on with it. I got the message.

       I said, "Sure thing, Your Portliness."

       It could be I was nervous. Could be I left my glasses in the mug shot room, or maybe just maybe I should have had a lawyer do my talking for me.

       Soon as I spoke, there was silence, like there would be if the reverend said "F" you” instead of "amen" during a church service.  

       I realized my mistake; problem was I didn't know how to correct it. I tried again. Same problem. What am I supposed to call a judge whose name I didn't know?

       "Not guilty, Your Lordship?"

       Your Leadership?

       Championship?

       Apprenticeship?

       Chairmanship?

       Worship?

       Dictatorship?

       Your Spaceship?

       Your Courtship?

       Your Highness?

       Put yourself in my place. I'm in a room filled with animals. I am not the crowd favorite. I don't have my glasses. I'm nervous. I'm not a lawyer. I say the first thing that came to mind. Still, the judge threw the book at me. It missed and struck an older man standing in the standing room.  Now he’s lying in the standing room. I didn‘t know lying was allowed in court. Now, I suppose I do.    

       "You were foolish to represent yourself," said the judge, but by then, that cat was out of the bag.

       She didn't take into account my clean record or consider that my students needed me. And most important,  she didn't realize I was arrested for no good reason.

       Judge Elephant, or whatever her name was, held me in contempt. Ain't that some shit. I went to jail because she felt insulted. If everyone could do that, no one outside of jail would be left to insult. 

       My cell was a dog crate at the ASPCA. The staff kept it locked.  

       There was no way out of my sentence, at least none I could think of.

~

Six Months Later

       I woke up early that Saturday morning, showered, shaved, and by 8 a.m., was headed back to the ASPCA. I was apprehensive about going, afraid would be closer to the truth, but that’s where I needed to be if I was going to adopt a pet.   

Three months into my sentence, management at the Big Apple Circus hired a carnival snake charmer to get me out of the mess Blake the snake got me in. It wasn't my idea; it was more like the staff was trying to do me a solid or get rid of me. Saw no reason to ask which.

       After dinner and drinks, the charmer got Blake to admit (in a recorded conversation) that he lied, didn’t call it a lie; he said he was "stating facts of an unverifiable nature," which was enough for the DA to drop the charges. The judge ordered me released. All was forgiven.

       "Hope you learned your lesson."

       "I have, Your Loveliness."

       I was nervous about going back, but I wasn't moving in; I was going to adopt a kitten or two, a well-traveled road. Nothing to worry about. I read somewhere history repeats itself, where I teach its students repeat the class.

       At the door with a "welcome" sign that wasn't meant especially for me or me at all.

       I am now pushing against the door that has a small sign that says "pull." I reverse course. It's opening; I'm walking through it. I'm the only visitor there.

       Moments later, cops arrived with drawn guns.

       I assumed it was the same cops as before. My "NOT WANTED" picture remained posted, but a call to Judge Loveliness quickly resolved the problem. After passing the puppies and entering the home of the cats, I saw two black-and-white kittens sleeping. I tapped gently on their cage. They stood and looked at me as intently as if I were a passing parade.      

       They were girl kittens. They were so tiny, so very tiny; dollhouse kittens were what they were. Heads tilted, they stood perfectly still; their teepee-shaped ears were on alert. High alert. I knew I was going to adopt them. Just concentrating on their faces, they looked like old men with whiskers.

       When blessed with children, one does not quibble about looks.

       I drive Mia and Annie home, each in her own carry case, each case belted in. I take Interstate 95, driving the speed limit, while cars go around me. They are so quiet. I'm tempted to turn around and see if they're okay, but for obvious reasons, I don't.

       At home, after I opened their carrier cases, they ran and hid under my dresser.  I understood their concern; when in a new home with someone new, it's best to hide. They came out when dinner was served.     

       When they were through, Annie asked me to tell them a story. I lay on the floor. They climbed aboard.

       I began with Cinderella, but Mia interrupted.

       “Something real,” she said.

       I told them the story of America's first woman president.

       "Is that real, Daddy?" asked Mia, and I said it was "future real." They could tell I was putting them on, but let it go. 

       When the stories were over, I got up and turned out the lights.

       "Night girls. Sleep tight."

       "Night, Daddy." 

       I went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of locally brewed beer, twisted off the cap, sat on the couch, feet on the coffee table, feeling, oh wow, in just one day (not counting my first try), my family grew from one to three. 

       Being a parent will be the greatest challenge of my life. I'll buy one of those How to Be a Parent books, learn the ins and outs. I might practice on the kids hanging out on the street.

       Might say, "Shouldn't you be home studying?"

       It will be interesting to see how that goes.

       Then I turned on my computer and went to the local ASPCA website. When I was done, it had reason to be pleased. 

       My comment is above the comment, "No waiting.”  

       I left a five-star review. 

---

Michael is a lawyer who, in reaction to writing about the whereas and wherefores for his clients, began writing stories at night. “Arrested at the ASPCA” is one of them.

John Wegner

Illusions of Intimacy

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

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

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

Food will be the least of my problems today.

Mom              Wed Apr 16 11:08 AM

We missed you at Easter.

At least your sister called.

I’m not saying she was

pleasant but we heard her

voice. Not sure why you

don’t visit more often, Ray.

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

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

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

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

Ray Wed Apr 16 11:15 AM

Do you remember Easter the

year before Kevin died? You

Unpacked your grandmother’s

china plates. Cooked a turkey,

mashed potatoes, green beans.

We didn’t go visit your parents

because you weren’t talking to

them that year. Kevin wore a

bunny suit with one ear that

wouldn’t stand up. I was 7

and too old for Winnie the

Pooh shirts but young enough

to still believe in a magic bunny.

After dinner we played

basketball in the driveway

and Kevin crawled into your

lilies. He was 1 and toddling

around. You took a picture of

him covered in dirt. Dad was

holding him. I have that

photo now. We look like

a normal family.

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

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

Kendra tells me to ignore the text and not respond.

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

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

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

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

Mom               Thur Apr 17 7:23 AM

I guess you didn’t get my

messages yesterday. Call

your dad. He’s lonely.

Mom               Thur Apr 17 8:24 AM

Have you talked to Darla?

I can’t get a hold of her.

Mom               Thur Apr 17 9:14 AM

Are you at work? In a meeting?

Too busy to text? I guess you

don’t love us anymore.

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

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

Ray                 Thur April 17 11:32 AM

Do you remember the

Easter after Kevin died?

Dad had “food poisoning”

and was sick all day.

Darla got in trouble for

talking too loud. You had

a black eye. We stayed home

again. Aunt Joyce accused

you of stealing from grandma.

You hung up on grandpa

the night before. Yelled

at the phone. Got red-

Faced. Scary. Mean.

That morning Darla and

I went into the living room

looking for Easter eggs.

Our baskets were on the

ground. Plastic grass

everywhere. No eggs, no

chocolate but plenty of

empty bottles on the table.

You tried to convince us the

Easter Bunny left a note and

was coming tomorrow. Dad

asked when the rabbit

stew would be ready and

laughed when I started

crying. We didn’t play

basketball. Your lilies

died in an early freeze

that year.

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

Ray                 Thur Apr 17 11:34 AM

The Easter after Kevin died,

Darla was 11. Y’all wouldn’t

let her go to church with her

friend Sheila. Holidays are

for families you told her

even though nobody in

your family was getting

along. Easter grass was

scattered all over the floor.

At lunch, dad threw the

gravy boat against the

wall before knocking his

plate off the table. A week

later, Darla sliced her foot

on a piece of porcelain you

missed. She bled through

her sock at school and

the nurse called home.

Y’all grounded her for

a week for telling them

what happened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mom               Sat Apr 19 3:34 AM

were not geting any younger

you know is there some

reason you arent answering

your mothers texts

REMEMBER WHERE

YOU CAME FROM WERE

YOUR FAMILY WEATHER

YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ray                 Sat Apr 19 7:28 AM

I remember standing on a

driveway with a push

broom in my hands

watching you and mom

fight. You told us we had

4 yards to mow that

day. It was March or

early April and you’d

decided to start a yard

business on the side.

Darla was dragging

a black hefty bag

filled with leaves.

You said something

loud enough that

Mr. Johnson stood on his

driveway staring at us.

Kevin was 2 and playing in

the bed of the truck. No one

was watching him when he

climbed on top of the tailgate.

I delete my message and forward his text to Darla.

Ray                 Sat Apr 19 7:45 AM

What the hell am I supposed

to do with this? Have you

seen them lately?His text

makes as much sense as

Game Theory after

smoking a doobie.

(Sophomore year but don’t

tell the kids I didn’t

Just Say No.)

Darla              Sat Apr 19 8:02 AM

I had lunch with her the other

day. She started complaining

about “the illegals and

libtards in the media.” I

reminded her I was an

immigration lawyer and

married to a man named

Jose. I haven’t talked to

dad in months.

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

“Tell Darla I said hello.”

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

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

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

“Sounds familiar,” Darla whispered to me.

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

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

Ray                 Thur May 1 6:45 PM

Mother’s Day? I haven’t

said anything to the parents

yet, but Kendra thinks it

might be nice to go over.

You up for it?

Darla              Thur May 1 8:30 PM

Can we insist they leave

the TV off? Jose definitely

won’t go but I can come by

with the kids in the early

afternoon. Churches’ Fried

Chicken? It’ll be work

enough showing up. No

way I’m also cooking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ray                 Thur May 1 8:41 PM

Darla and I would like to

bring some chicken over

on Mother’s Day. Will you

guys be around?

Mom               Thur May 1 8:42 PM

Where else would we be?

Is everyone coming? Need

to know so dad puts on

some Pants. :)

Ray                 Thur May  8:42 PM

Ha. Please be clothed.

Everyone but Jose. He’ll

be out of town. Looking

forward to it.

Mom               Thur May 1 8:45 PM

home to mexico hope he

keeps his green card handy

and doesnt try to smuggle

any relatives over your

mom says to be nice but im

jokeing NOONE CAN TAKE

A JOKE any more

I forward the messages to Darla.

Ray                 Thur May 1 8:51 PM

We’re set for Mother’s

Day. For better or worse.

Darla              Fri May 2 6:37 AM

They’re like paint and

turpentine. If one of them

does something nice, the

other thins it out.

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

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

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

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

Ray                 Sun May 11 7:07 PM

That went surprisingly

well. Felt Like we were

a normal family and

everything.

Darla              Sun May 11 7:09 PM

Yeah. They aren’t

half bad sometimes.

Helped that the kids took

dad outside and kept him

off any screens. I haven’t

seen him dribble a

basketball in years. Jose

doesn’t believe me when I

tell him dad was all-state.

Ray                 Sun May 11 7:10 PM

The shorter the visit, the

better. Maybe things are

getting better. He seemed

almost sober?

Darla              Sun May 11 7:15 PM

Maybe. I’m betting

not but I want to bask in the

normalcy and not over

think it.

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

We try to call dad but the service is bad.

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

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

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

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

Kendra and Jose, I know, appreciate the effort.

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

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

Mom               Sun June 15 12:01 PM

I can’t believe you haven’t

called. He does care you

know.

Mom               Sun June 15 3:33 PM

He’s napping but at least

one of his kids should call.

Mom               Sun June 15 5:02 PM

Its bad enough you don’t

show up or call but not

even a text.

There are a variety of other texts in similar fashion.

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

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

Ray                 Sun June 15 9:45 PM

I guess you got all those

texts too. Who knew he’d

care?

Darla              Sun June 15 9:46 PM

We were celebrating Father’s

Day. You and Jose are fathers

who deserve celebrating. Is

he?

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

Ray                 Sun June 15 11:01 PM

Do you remember the Father’s

Day when Kevin was one. We

went to a Rangers game. They

had Nolan Ryan Bobbleheads.

Kevin bit the head off. We

laughed. You called him your

little Ozzy Osbourne. I missed

the joke at the time and you

explained why y’all were

laughing. A couple years 

after Kevin died, we thought

going to a game might help.

Dad’s sad, you told us. We

saved money, made him

a card and bought tickets.

You let us pretend like we

paid for everything. The card

had “Popcorn money.” Dad

bought beer instead. Drove

home. You let him.

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

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

Ray                 Mon June 16 8:02 AM

Happy Father’s Day. Sorry

We missed talking. We were

all in Concan. The trip

was last minute. Do you

remember that place with

the flume? Our cabin was

near there. Hope y’all did

something fun.

Mom               Mon June 16 8:45 AM

Dad said to tell you thank

you. Maybe next year he

can see y’all. Was that the

year Darla got the fish

hook caught in her ear?

Mom              Mon June 16 8:48 AM

i didnt say thanks to

anything you and darla

made you point do

whatever i hope the

grand kids had fun the

fishing was good at

that spot

No one answers when I call.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mom               Wed Aug 6 3:05 PM

Dad fell again. Some

stranger called 911.

We’re at the emergency

room. The paramedics

smelled his breath and

told him to go to the

emergency room or

they’d call the police.

He would have been

fine at home. I don’t

know why anyone trusts

doctors anyway. Them

and the insurance companies

want us to stay sick so they

can make more money.

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

Ray                 Thur Aug 7 7:15 AM

Have you gotten an

update?

Darla             Thur Aug 7  7:45 AM

I guess I should have

told you. I blocked her

last week. Mom posted a

Facebook meme showing

a lawyer with a noose on

his neck and a guy in a

MAGA hat holding the

other end. Dad liked a

post by someone calling

Mexicans “chili-chompers.”

I can’t handle the toxicity

anymore and there’s no

way I’m letting our children

anywhere near them. He’s

half in the bag by noon and

mom’s too old to babysit the

kids by herself. God knows

what she says to them.They

fight all the time now. There’s

too many years of this to

ignore anymore.

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

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

I respond to Darla. 

Ray                 Thur Aug 7 8:33 AM

Sometimes I worry the seeds

of his anger have taken root.

I hear his voice in my head

when I yell at the kids or

when Kendra does some

little thing I shouldn’t be

upset about. The struggle

is real. I’d consider

therapy but introspection

is overrated.

Darla             Thur Aug 7 8:34 AM

Hold tight little brother.

We don’t have to be

them. The sins of the

father can stay with him.

Sometimes the best we can

do is not be them. 

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

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

Mom               Fri Aug 8 8:47 PM

They’re keeping dad one

more night. The doctor said

the stranger who called saved

his life. Let Darla know if you

want.

Ray                  Fri Aug 8 9:13 PM

I wish that stranger had been

there when Kevin fell out of

the truck.

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

She reads the text.

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

Mom

Contact Photo

Mobile

(325) 555-1619

Facetime

Send Message

Share Contact

Add to Favorites

Share My Location

Unblock Caller

---

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

Claudia Monpere

Give Me a Push

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

        “She’s perfect,” I say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

        “Thank you,” I say.

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

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

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

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

What the Stars Want

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

~

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

~

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

~

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

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

---

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

Lauren Kardos

Chruściki

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

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

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

Dad couldn’t answer.

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

Colin Bishoff

Waffle House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m Charlie.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No filter?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The storm,” I said.

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

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

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

“High school English.”

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

“I was driving.”

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

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

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

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

“You’re busy.”

“Grading papers.”

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

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

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

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

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

Yi Jun Phung

My ama says I sell death like roasted char siu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I tell her that aba’s dead.

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

---

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

Anita Harag

Translated by Walter Burgess & Marietta Morry

Silky Smooth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

Brandon McNeice

Chain of Custody

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he sat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He did not eat.

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

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

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

Tray. Bag. Label.

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

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

“Maren. You got a minute?”

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

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

“I saw the email.”

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

Maren nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Client ID?”

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

“Is the household receiving services?”

“No.”

“Then they need to apply online.”

“They don’t have reliable internet access.”

“They can apply at the library.”

“The mother works during library hours.”

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

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

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

A sigh. “Go ahead.”

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

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

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

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I need yes or no.”

Jaylen’s thumb pressed the strap again.

“No,” Maren said.

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

“That’s it?” Maren asked.

“That’s it.”

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

“Can I—”

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

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

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

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

Provided resources. Advised family to apply online.

Save.

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

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

“Hey,” she said. “I’m Maren.”

He didn’t look up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maren waited three breaths and followed.

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

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

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

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

No face. No words.

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

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

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

Contacts. Referrals. Risk mitigation.

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

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

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

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

He kept rinsing.

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

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

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

He walked down the hall without looking back.

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

She opened the portal. Blank note field.

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

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

She hit save.

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

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

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

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

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

He didn’t eat.

“Open the milk.”

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

“Drink it.”

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

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

Here. Under eyes.

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

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

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

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

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

Chain of custody.

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

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

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

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

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

She did not open the portal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her computer pinged: reminder—documentation pull due Friday.

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

For three days, the bags disappeared.

On the fourth day, the bag was still there.

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

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

Not pleading. Not angry. Measuring.

He set the bag on her desk.

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

Don’t.

Maren’s mouth opened. No sound came.

He turned and walked away.

The bag was heavier than it should have been.

Inside was the kit.

Folded napkins, tight squares.

Plastic spoons—four—bundled with a rubber band.

Peeled labels, folded small.

The dried bus transfer.

An empty cracker sleeve flattened with care.

Proof. Work. An economy of survival.

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

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

She shut the drawer anyway.

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

She opened it.

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

4:10

A time.

She lifted her eyes.

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

The light turned green.

Cars behind her began to move. A horn sounded.

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

The horn sounded again.

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

The car rolled forward.

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

---

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

Libby Banks

Documentation of Absence

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

To: The Regional Development Authority

From: Dr. Eric Striker, Lead Investigator

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

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

1.0: Initial Sighting and Phenomenological Description

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

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

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

2.0: Methodological Attempts

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

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

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

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

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

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

3.0: Analysis and Unverifiable Theory

The village exists in the moment before perception.

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

4.0: Project Scope and Ethical Conclusion

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

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

The village exists and is inhabited. Life continues there.

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

I was hired to document so development could proceed.

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

ADDENDUM (Filed 6 Months Post-Initial Report)

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

They produced verifiable documentation of absence. I preserved presence.

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

---

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

Zach Shea

Maslow’s Heirarchy of Scam Texts

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###

From: 978-448-6026

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#####

From: 608-315-5408

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Who is this?

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

608-315-5408

Becky from the office, remember?

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

978-734-9891

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

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

608-315-5408

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

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

#####

From: Danny (Cousin)

To: 978-734-9891 + 34 others

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

Do you think Putin sleeps well? Trump?

Lol. NO.

WINNERS OPERATE IN WAR MODE.

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

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

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

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

#####

From: 608-315-5408

To: 978-734-9891

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

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

978-734-9891

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

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

608-315-5408

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

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

978-734-9891

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

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

608-315-5408

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

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

978-734-9891

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

Hello?

Are you there?

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

#####

From: lauramehard@yahoo.com

To: 978-734-9891

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

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

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

#####

From: 608-315-5408

To: 978-734-9891

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

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

978-734-9891

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

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

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

608-315-5408

I’m not trying to scam you.

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

978-734-9891

Then why do you keep texting me?

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

608-315-5408

Because I’m worried about you.

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

978-734-9891

Why?

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

608-315-5408

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

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

#####

From: +44 7957 155143

To: 978-734-9891

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

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

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

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

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

My bitcoin wallet is: 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa

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

#####

From: 978-734-9891

To: 608-315-5408

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

I’m such a fucking mess.

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

Sorry. I’m just having a rough day.

I just feel like such a waste of space sometimes.

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

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

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

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

608-315-5408

I know exactly how you feel.

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

978-734-9891

Thank you Becky.

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

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

608-315-5408

I’m sorry, that sounds really hard.

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

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

---

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

Craig Stockwell

Doctor Kissinger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay, let’s find a toilet.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Situational awareness dictates all,” Kissinger mumbled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Colony,” I cut in.

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

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

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

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

“—I am always right, never wrong.”

“—but your moral compass is…”

“Consistently pointed towards the right direction.”

“Towards whoever pays you.”

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

“Please don’t say ‘exception.’”

“What? How did you—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You tell me,” Kissinger joked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of?”

“Myself.”

“In what manner?”

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

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

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

“Thank you for the compliment.”

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

“Help build.”

“Help build,” I agreed with Kissinger.

“Do you see?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why would he?”

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

“Precisely, young man. You know.”

“I know too well.”

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

“Well, right now, get us both lunch…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why is that?”

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

“Makes the situation, shall we say…”

“—Complicated,” I filled in.

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

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

“Wait, what?” Hao asked confused.

“Foggy Bottom, it’s—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] “Immediately, all the same.”

[2] “Fuck your mother.”

---

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

Marc Kaufman

The Restless

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

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

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

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

‍ ‍When he was a baby, I said.

‍ ‍Where was I?

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

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

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

‍ ‍We left it at that.

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

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

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

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

‍ ‍Hey, Dad what’s the sudden interest?

‍ ‍It’s not sudden, Alan said.

‍ ‍Don’t you trust me?

‍ ‍Of course.

‍ ‍Then what’s your damage?

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

‍ ‍Don’t talk to your father that way.

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

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

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

‍ ‍Alan, What’s the sudden interest?

‍ ‍It’s not sudden.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‍ ‍Whichever one you want.

‍ ‍It seemed a conversation best not to have.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‍ ‍I fell asleep wanting nothing less for Billy than heartbreak.

‍ ‍Tell me about it again.

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

‍ ‍It’s like a class trip.

‍ ‍They leave you in the woods?

‍ ‍Not exactly.

‍ ‍Then exactly what?

‍ ‍Mom!

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

‍ ‍That’s not funny.

‍ ‍Neither is you being eaten by bears.

‍ ‍That never happens.

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

‍ ‍Mah, you’re being insane.

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

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

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

‍ ‍How much is this gonna set us back?

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

‍ ‍He looked down and grimaced at his empty plate.

‍ ‍Got any more?

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

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

‍ ‍I bet it won’t.

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

‍ ‍It gets colder. That’s what happens overnight.

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

‍ ‍You’ll see. Snow for sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‍ ‍You’re never wrong.

‍ ‍But I could be…

‍ ‍You’re not even watching.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‍ ‍I can’t wait that long.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‍ ‍The phone was persistent. Finally, I picked up.

‍ ‍Where are you? I asked.

‍ ‍On my way, he said.

‍ ‍I could hear the wind behind him.

‍ ‍Is it bad?

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

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

‍ ‍Be safe, I said.

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

‍ ‍I almost didn’t hear it. Who?                                                                      

‍ ‍A friend. He got stuck.

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

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

‍ ‍Take it easy up the driveway.

‍ ‍He made a sound and then hung up.

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

‍ ‍They stared at the TV.

‍ ‍It just went out? Alan asked. 

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

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

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

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

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

‍ ‍Edward took some more large bites from his coffee cake.

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

‍ ‍Do you eat in diners a lot?

‍ ‍Not a lot. 

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

‍ ‍He won them?

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

‍ ‍What did you bet?

‍ ‍That it would rain today.

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

‍ ‍Alan really saved me tonight…

‍ ‍What was the trouble?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‍ ‍Gonna make quite a graduation picture, I said.

‍ ‍I’ll always remember it, he said.

‍ ‍You would’ve remembered it anyway.

‍ ‍He shrugged and limped around the house without crutches.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

Karen Zlotnick

To the Replacement Dog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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