Ann Parrent

She Said

My mother stood at the stove, asked me to give her a rest; to take over stirring, or to mind the temperature, I don’t remember which. After a minute I complained, said it was too hot, too boring, too much work.

I remember she looked at me hard; a way she rarely did. She took my arm, held up my skinny wrist, examined my right hand. I remember she said, “This hand hasn’t done a day’s worth of work in its life.” She let go, put herself in front of me, scooted me aside. She said with her body, “Fine, I’ll do it my own self.”

She often had marks on her wrists, like little eyebrows; some were brown, some red and angry looking, some dried up and pink. I reached out to touch them and asked, “Mama, what’s these?”

She flinched, pulled her hand to her chest, rubbed on her wrist where my finger had been. “It’s from the oven.”

“Why’d the oven do that to you?”

“I did it my own self, putting your dinner in and pulling it out to feed you.” She said, “Stay clear of those racks; they’ll get you when you’re in a hurry.”

She said keep potholders away from spills. She said cook your eggs in butter, they’ll taste better. The crust is the best part of the pie, the heel the best part of the loaf. Mix a few unripe berries in with the ripe, and a pinch of salt.

She said take a bite plain, so you’ll know the difference. Those beans aren’t going to eat themselves. She said one more bite; just one, please, and you may leave the table.

She said wash your face before bed, you’ll sleep better. She said one stitch at a time; elbow grease is the best polish.

Honesty is the best policy, say please and thank you, wearing black is inappropriate for young girls, let the boys come to you, be home by 11:00.

She never said don’t, until she said don’t marry a man with a beard or a mustache unless you know what he looks like without them. Don’t marry a man who doesn’t like to read.

I remember her words now, when I bake a cake, when I roast a chicken, when I burn the toast. I remember when I make my own marks on my own wrists.

---

Ann Parrent is a writer, gardener, cook, caretaker – not always in that order. She keeps a wild and jungle-y garden, with birds, toads, spiders, some rabbits. She writes from observations in grocery stores, lobbies, gas stations, airports, family reunions and thrift shops.

Jessica Klimesh

Spelling Bee

Forty seventh graders (maybe more) line up against the bland cafeteria wall, lockers on the other side, and spell words like future, deficiency, and metamorphosis. Just like generations of seventh graders before them. Amid the fluorescent lighting of the junior high cafeteria, the forty seventh graders (maybe more) seek out (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) the letters for inconvenience or grammar. For sincerity, democracy, or boundary.
The cafeteria ladies always serve the alphabet for lunch, just like generations of cafeteria ladies before them, with slices of bread to soak up the letters that fall off the seventh (and eighth) graders’ forks. But by the time of the seventh-grade spelling bee, mid-afternoon, the cafeteria ladies are gone for the day, all bits of the alphabet out of sight. The students search for letters anyway, on each other’s shoes, out the windows, and on the neutral but encouraging faces of the teachers. They check to see if any letters have been left behind under the tables, but the janitors never miss a spot.
Tension runs high when there are only four seventh graders left, the others, defeated, now sitting bored at the cafeteria tables.
One by one, three of the last four spellers miss these words: misspell, ominous, and irony. The seventh grader that’s left spells tenacity correctly. Tomorrow (or next week), the others will find the letters for the words they missed, along with the letters for the words regret and expectations. And when one of the cafeteria ladies dies of a heart attack in a month, the news spreading via insecure whispers, the seventh graders will also find the letters for vulnerable, taboo, and anxious. And without thinking too much of it, they’ll soak the letters up with their slices of bread at lunch, the way they’ve been doing, the way they’ve always done. Just like generations before them.

It Won’t Happen to Us

The balloons are tired of the birthday parties and confetti. The confinement. The screams and shrill giggles. The wild children with boogered fingers. The clowns who rub and twist them into dogs, giraffes, swans, swords, and monkeys. “We’re people, too!” the balloons yell, but no one hears them.

So it’s no wonder that the balloons decide to venture out. They’ve heard the stories, of course, of their ancestors who were let go into the deep-blue nothing and never came back. The ones left to die in trees. Caught on telephone wires or light posts.

“It won’t happen to us,” they say, and the balloons go hiking at a wooded city park.

With their heads full of air, helium, and non-thoughts, the balloons have little regard for the world around them, though they’re surprised at all of the trees. The hostile twigs. Threats at every turn. Just like they’d heard.

But they’re not worried. “It won’t happen to us,” they say.

But one by one, they go. Pop pop pop. Their egos and bodies deflated, burst like a toxic appendix.

The balloons watch as their friends and family are taken down in short order.

Still, the ones who are left say, “It won’t happen to us.” They continue on their sylvan adventure.           

Pop pop pop. Pop pop pop. Poppoppoppoppop. The pops echo, sound like gunshots.

The balloons never understood why humans kept them on such short strings. They never imagined sticks like pins or how rabid branches could be. Not to mention the teeth of porcupines, the claws of squirrels. Thunderstorms. Hail.

But they continue their mantra. “It won’t happen to us.” Holding firm until the end.

Pop pop pop. Pop pop pop. Pop pop pop.

Poppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppop.

Pop.

---

Jessica Klimesh (she/her) is a US-based writer and editor whose creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cleaver, trampset, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, and Whale Road Review, among others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net, and she won 3rd Prize in the 2023 South Shore Review Flash Fiction Contest. Learn more at jessicaklimesh.com.

Jen McConnell

Stuffed Peppers to Please Everybody

Ingredients

• 8 peppers, hollowed out and blanched. Reserve tops.

• 2 pounds ground beef, browned like your skin on the last day of vacation, and drained.

• 4 cups white rice, cooked with extra water so it’s really soft or your mother will call you out.

• 2 big cans of tomato sauce. Not the generic brand; the cans that are red like the color of blood.

• Sugar, to taste. Your father in-law will say, “What is this, dessert?” but your parents won’t eat it otherwise.

• 2 cloves garlic, diced.

• Onion, powdered or diced. Your mother-in-law doesn’t like shortcuts, but you hate cutting onions; there’s no feeling of relief from fabricated tears.

• Pepper tops, diced and sautéed with garlic and onion/powder.

• Spices, to taste: hot Hungarian paprika, smoked Hungarian paprika, sweet Hungarian paprika, salt, and pepper.

• 1½ cups cheese. Your mother likes mild Monterey Jack. Your father-in-law doesn’t want any cheese, just a dollop of sour cream. Your dad and mother-in-law don’t have a preference. Your husband doesn’t know anything about cheese so you use what you like, sharp cheddar.

Directions:

Mix the stuffing ingredients, fill the cooked peppers, and top with cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Serve with three bottles of wine: a chilled sweet white wine for your mother, a Hungarian red called Egri Bikavér (Bull’s Blood) for your father-in-law and husband, and a robust pinot noir for you and your dad. You’ll drink most of the pinot yourself and flush as red as an unsweetened tomato when your parents begin suggesting names for grandchildren.

Chef’s Notes:

1)    After two years of dating, you traveled with your future husband to a small town outside Budapest to meet his extended family. You hoped he would propose during the trip, somewhere romantic, like on a bridge over the Danube that was the site of a historic battle. But for most of the trip, you sat by yourself reading a book while he spoke half English, half Hungarian to his relatives.

2)    The first time you ate Hungarian food was also your first time experiencing heartburn. His great aunt’s stuffed peppers weren’t hot exactly. Just a slow burn that grew worse after you finished eating.

3)    As the two of you walked a mile to a pharmacy for antiacids, you spied a bridge in the distance. You asked your boyfriend if anything important happened there. He gestured at the bridge, the town, and the fields, and said there wasn’t much of that land that hadn’t been soaked in blood at one time or another.

---

Jen McConnell is a fiction author and poet, with work published in more than forty national and international literary magazines and two Pushcart Prize nominations. Her first short story collection, Welcome, Anybody, was published by Press 53 and she's finishing another. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Read more at jenmcconnell.com.

Kathryn Silver-Hajo

Bones of Contention

We were all enjoying an amiable afternoon at the dog park. Aromas of lilacs and grass mingling with the occasional waft of poo. We chatted about rising daycare prices and the strangeness of bare shelves at the grocery store. We groaned over the alarming frequency of fires and floods, how there’s always some new war blazing somewhere. We spoke of feverishly-mutating viruses, the greed of politicians, how it all threatened to disrupt the pleasant quiet of our lives—a dire future looming in our peripheral vision. Yet here we were, our children chasing each other, shrieking with joy. Dogs yapping, sniffing each other’s butts, cheerfully wagging until one of them dragged some smelly, mysterious thing from the bushes and two-by-two they engaged in a feral tug-of-war like wolves on a gazelle carcass. As some retreated, others leapt in. A few of us tried to separate the snarling creatures, but someone took offense, screamed Get your hands off my fucking dog! And another yelled back, Get your mangy cur off o’ mine. Soon we were all hurling insults and trading blame over which animal—and which person—started it. Our children extended chubby, dimpled hands towards us, begging us to stop, but none of us heeded their cries, as canines and humans raged in a snarl of insults, bared teeth, grabbing, pushing, ripping. The dogs eventually began backing away, whining and licking their owners’ hands before giving up, tails between their legs. When it finally broke up, we emerged bruised and bleeding, yanked our panting pets and dazed children away. We headed home, avoiding each other’s eyes, unable to block out the wails of our children that seemed to echo all the griefs of the world like one great, collective howl.

---

Kathryn Silver-Hajo is a 2023 Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Food Writing nominee. Her story, “The Sweet Softness of Dates” was selected for the 2023 Wigleaf Top 50 longlist. Kathryn’s work appears in Atticus Review, Craft Literary, Pithead Chapel, Ruby Literary and many other lovely journals. Her flash collection, Wolfsong, was published in 2023 and her novel, Roots of The Banyan Tree, is forthcoming in Fall of 2023. More at: kathrynsilverhajo.com; facebook.com/kathryn.silverhajo; twitter.com/KSilverHajo; instagram.com/kathrynsilverhajo

Joel Fishbane

rapunzel unbound

Once, there was a girl who was locked in a Tower. This didn't bother her, at least not anymore. It was habit by now, part of that inevitable routine of existence. The room had become a comfort, a womb of granite and checked stone.  She had a comfortable bed and three meals served on a silver tray. There was a lonely square window, beyond which the bramble crawled up the Tower’s side. There was heat in the summer and frost in the winter. None of this mattered. The Tower itself didn’t bother her; it was all she had ever known.

No. What truly bothered her was the woman with one face and many names: witch, warden, doctor, cook, confidant. None of them fit, as if her true identity was something much larger. Gothel was a hag, as old as the world and just as round. She walked with a cane, its head tipped with what she claimed was the tusk of an old rhino. Her nose stretched past her chin. She had remorseless eyes and a craggy upper lip. Of course, she also had warts - a witch without warts is corn without cob. Her very presence could provoke rabies in dogs; she was immoral as the weather and disturbing as leprosy.

Gothel had tremendous power. She could summon locusts at will and cause the ground to shake. One night many years ago, she had even caused the Tower itself to spring from the ground. As a young girl, Rapunzel had thought Gothel’s powers were stories told to frighten a small child into submission. Gothel would have had good reason to resort to such things; Rapunzel had been willful and obstinate, the sort of scamp who lied for pleasure, hid under the bed, and feigned convulsions just to see Gothel cry. Once she had tried to escape when she thought the witch’s back was turned. The door swung shut on its own. The wind, Rapunzel had said at the time. But it wasn’t. Most children start off believing the impossible and learn to disbelieve; Rapunzel went the other way.

The moment of belief started when she woke to find blood on the mattress. Oh, the scream! Had there been milk in the room, it would have turned to ice. The birds nesting in the Tower's eaves took wing and never returned. Rapunzel was twelve but had no knowledge of her body or its functions. She stuffed her pillow between her legs. It did no good. Her screams became whimpers as the linen became spotted with red. 

When Gothel appeared, the old hag came forward, clinking her rhino-tipped cane against the floor’s cobbles. She placed a wintry hand on the girl’s stomach and whispered words in that strange tongue of hers. At once, the pain vanished. Gothel crept back towards the exit. When the door shut and the bolt had turned, Rapunzel saw that her linens were white, and the cramps were gone. The door had locked on its own.

Later, Gothel explained what had happened. “And if you behave yourself,” she added, “then I shall come each month stop the blood and cramps.”

Rapunzel wasn't grateful. The old woman really was a witch. The horror crawled over her like lice.

Every month, when the blood started, Rapunzel pretended that the cramps could not twist her as she slept. It was no use. Gothel always knew and Rapunzel always cried out - not from the pain but to stop the witch from taking it away. Gothel had told her this was something every woman endured. Rapunzel did not want the one thing she had in common with the rest of womankind to be taken away. In this one way, she wanted to be like everyone else.

“Don’t,” Rapunzel pleaded. “Don’t use your magic on me.”

“It's so much more than magic," said Gothel.

*

There were no clocks in the Tower. For Rapunzel, time centered around two things: whether the sun was in the sky and whether Gothel was in the room. Sometimes, they played cards. Gothel knew the rules to over a thousand different games even though she thought card-playing was a ridiculous hobby for a witch. “All the best games require two people,” she explained. “And witches are perpetually alone.”

“Is that why you keep me locked up?” asked Rapunzel.

Gothel only smiled, a sight which was never pleasant.

She told stories as they played. Gothel had been across the world and lived in almost every country twice. She spoke a dozen languages. She could paint and sculpt, though Rapunzel had never seen her do either. She had beaten a king at chess and won half his kingdom (“I gave it back,” she laughed). An Arabian taught her to gamble; a Frenchman taught her to hunt. Always men, Rapunzel noted. Gothel replied that she had not always been ugly.

“Youth,” she said, “was kinder to me than time.”

Men, Gothel had said, are the witch’s downfall. “They hunt us and hang us.” The witch said this with a bitterness that could only exist alongside a personal vendetta. With the insolence of youth, Rapunzel asked Gothel if she had ever loved. Gothel barked with laughter. “Aye, girl, I've had my heart broken. I've seen men I love string me up and burn me alive.”

Gothel was a haggard swill of a woman but her voice was like silk. Rapunzel's first memories were of the Tower and Gothel scurrying about, singing melody after strange melody. The song she sang most often was the one that always put Rapunzel to sleep. Gothel never came to the top of the Tower to tuck Rapunzel in; instead, she used her evenings to stroll through the trees and sing as she collected herbs for potions. The sound calmed Rapunzel’s blood and sent her to sleep. Then the song would score her dreams so that, no matter what she dreamed of, Gothel was always there.

As she grew older, Rapunzel began blocking her ears with cotton so she could stay awake. The night became her sanctuary, her only time of privacy when she could read and think. It was here that she began to plot her escape.

Her first effort to run had happened on that terrible day when she was twelve and realized how powerful Gothel was. That night, Rapunzel had climbed out of bed and went to the window. Gothel always claimed the Tower was the tallest in the world, but Rapunzel didn’t think the ground looked too far away. She thought her saving grace would be the bramble that climbed along the Tower’s sides. Lowering herself out the window, she began to inch her way down grabbing the places in-between the thorns. The coarse bramble tore her skin just the same. Soon she was bleeding and knew that she could not continue. The window was still close, the ground too far away. There was nothing to do but climb back inside. The next morning, she swathed her hands in cloth and told Gothel she had fallen while sleepwalking.

Rapunzel saw that escape would take guile and cunning. One evening, she studied the lock on the door. It seemed simple enough and she believed she could unlock it using hairpins. It was hopeless for a time and then one night, after many months of work, the door clicked open with ease. Rapunzel stared at the stairs in wonder - they were the first she had ever seen. They terrified her and she feared they’d give way beneath her weight or worse, be nothing but one of Gothel’s illusions. Then she stepped forward and they held. They were real and nothing could stop her. She raced to the bottom, heart galloping in her chest, only to find a circular hallway that ran the base of the entire Tower. There was only one door and beyond it she could hear the witch's snores. Rapunzel searched the walls for signs of a hidden entrance, but it was pitch black and her fingers found nothing of use. Her only hope was to slip through Gothel’s room; this seemed too great a terror to try.

Dejected, she trudged back to the top of the Tower, where she curled into a ball and wept. She clawed at the walls and thought of flinging herself from the window or bludgeoning herself with a stone. Her despair seemed epic. She would be here forever. Eating when the witch wanted, sleeping when the witch sang, never leaving unless Gothel willed it so. She almost lost hope. It was then that the idea came to her, the one that was so simple she almost laughed in delight. Finding the mirror, she met her own gaze and swore on oath: she would never cut her hair.

*

Gothel had her own batch of ingenious punishments. I can make worms infest your skin and crawl about for days underneath; I can raise the temperature of your blood so it’s just below boiling. These, though, may have been idle threats because the one time Rapunzel could recall being punished, it wasn’t with worms or blood.

It happened the day Gothel had tried teaching her magic. “It’s a glorious heritage,” she told her.

Rapunzel snorted. She wanted nothing to do with Gothel’s powers.

“One day," said Gothel, "you will teach magic to your own daughter.”

Rapunzel snorted once more. This was when she was a teenager and was just starting to toy with being haughty. “Where would I give birth? Here?”

“You might. I was born in the Tower. There’s no shame in it.”

“I am not forcing my daughter to learn magic.”

“You will not have to. She will want to learn.”

Rapunzel laughed. “Like me?"

“You're stubborn. But you will learn.”

“Why? So I can become a witch. Then what will I do? Steal children from their parents?”

“You are an insipid girl. You know nothing of the world.”

“I know enough to know that you’re not wanted in it. Isn’t that the real reason you’re here, hidden away? Because the world doesn’t want you? Just because the world doesn’t want you, I don’t see why you should believe it won’t want me either.”

“The world won’t want you. You’re a witch.”

“I am not a witch and I never will be.”

Gothel grabbed her so tightly that Rapunzel’s arm began to bleed. “Who knows better than me what you are?" The witch clutched her by the hair, turning the girl’s face so that the two of them could see eye to eye. “If you’re not a witch, then what are you? If you can answer me right now, I will release you into the world. Go to the village, or across the sea, do whatever you like. Freedom is yours if you can answer me. What are you? Well? What are you?” When Rapunzel didn’t - couldn’t - answer; Gothel released her. “That’s right. You’re nothing. You’re just a girl in a Tower.”

It is doubtful any girl has ever sobbed as terribly as Rapunzel did that day. Most girls cry from despair or lost opportunity or a broken heart; Rapunzel wept because these things would never be hers. Girls in Towers have no despair or opportunities and their hearts can never break because they have been smashed at birth.

Gothel led the weeping girl back to the bed. “Shall I tell you a secret, girl? I do not intend to keep you here forever.”

Rapunzel looked at the old woman’s ugly face, studying it for a trace of honesty behind the warts. “You're going to let me go?"

“No. But if you ever hope to leave, it will take magic. That is why I keep trying to teach you.”

“You wish to teach me magic so I can leave you?”

“As long as you learn magic, you will be safe, and as long as you are safe, my duty is done.”

Rapunzel dried her eyes and stared at Gothel with all the force of her will. “I would rather stay here forever than learn magic. If I learn magic, then I will be a witch, but then I will also be like you. I can't think of anything worse."

For a moment, Gothel was no longer a witch; she was just an old woman with miserable eyes. Rapunzel was surprised. She had actually hurt the woman’s feelings. The witch rose and went to the door. When she reached it, she stopped and turned.

“Until now you have been willful but never truly wicked," said Gothel. "And wickedness deserves to be punished."

She waved a hand through the air and the night blotted out the sun. Rapunzel shrieked and clawed at the dark. Only when she heard Gothel walking calmly away did she understand the dark was just for her. Rapunzel clutched at the void. There was little to hear or smell. Better that Gothel had infested her with worms. Years of blindness! For the first and only time in all her years in the Tower, she stood at the window and thought about jumping. She stood for a long time, searching for find the courage to hurl herself into the bramble. She couldn’t. She supposed Gothel had known this. If she was the sort of girl to commit suicide, Gothel would not have left her alone in the dark.

She spent a bitter and terrible night, inching in and out of sleep. The next morning, Gothel came and returned her sight. The girl ate her breakfast in silence, grateful that she could see the coffee, the croissant, and the lovely yellow of the butter. 

*

There were two books and what she knew of the world came from them. The first contained plays by the Shakespeare. “The Shakespeare,” Gothel once said, “has a great deal of respect for us. He fears our powers. The one time he didn’t...”  Here, her voice faded and her tone became sad. “There was a great King who was obsessed with witchcraft. He sent out a proclamation declaring amnesty for all the witches in the land. Persecuted in other countries, they fled for his shores. My mother was among them and it was during this time that she met the Shakespeare. He was a great dramatist but he was also in the employ of the King and had to do his bidding. So when the King asked for a play about witches, the Shakespeare complied. Desperate to please his Majesty, the Shakespeare snuck into my mother's room and stole incantations that he placed in the play. When Mother learned what he had done, she flew into a rage. The spells had been her secrets and the Shakespeare had exposed them for the world to see - and for other witches to steal. Furious, she placed a curse on the play. ‘May it endure forever,’ she declared. ‘But its very name will bring bad luck to whoever speaks it.’”

Gothel laughed at this part, as if very proud.

Rapunzel knew nothing of drama, but she enjoyed the plays because they were the only fiction she had. She understood most of the language and invented meanings for the words she couldn’t deduce. Because of the Shakespeare, she once assumed that they lived in England. In fact, they were in the mountains and valleys that sat between Germany and France. Exactly where Germany and France were was not something she could discern. Gothel was stingy with geographical details. It had taken Rapunzel nine years just to learn about Germany and another three before she heard of France. A few years after that, Gothel gave her one more accidental detail when she accidentally used the word “mythical” to describe the land in which they lived.

“And just what does that mean?” Rapunzel asked.

Gothel chewed her fat lip. “It means we have no interest in progress. Everywhere else in this world, people have only one question: what’s next? They have great societies in Germany and France because they are not content. It drives them to wars and revolutions.”

The only other book Rapunzel owned contained her family tree. It had been scrawled out on an assortment of blank pages, dating back hundreds of years to the time when Rossiter Paupy and his wife, Llesnia, had first set foot in a barren patch of land next to the Munich River. Rapunzel made up stories about these ancestors. She decided Rossiter Paupy had faulted on a debt and been murdered in his sleep; his grand nephew Hadrian had gone mad and fallen off the edge of the world; and her parents - her horrible, treacherous parents who had died and left her to Gothel’s whims - they had been consumed by fire. Then their corpses had been ravaged by wolves, the wolves ravaged by vultures, and the vultures drowned in the sea.  Nothing whatsoever was left of them in the world.

*

On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Rapunzel woke late to see Gothel hovering above her, her hand wrapped around a dagger. A haze had fallen over her and she had to fight her way through the fog. She bolted from the bed but was disorientated and collapsed at once. Her head swam. Her vision blurred. She tried to say something and gurgled instead. Gothel led her back to the bed.

“Should have used more hemlock,” she heard the witch say.    

“Hemlock?” Suddenly, it made sense. There had been something in her tea the night before. “What are you doing?”

“This will only take a second. Hold still!”

“Stay away from me!” The girl tried to thrash about, but her drugged body failed her.

“Calm yourself. Your hair is too long. You might trip over it. And the vermin!” Gothel tried to steady Rapunzel’s frantic head.

“I check for lice every day.”

“A witch cares nothing for vanity, Rapunzel.”

“I’m not a witch. And I never will be.”

Gothel grabbed her in a warty first. “Ungrateful wretch!”

“Cut it then," said the willful girl. "I’ll only grow it all again.”

Silence. A million year’s worth of stasis as the old witch hovered, the knife in one hand, the girl's head in the other. At last, she left the room and the door slammed on its own behind her. Rapunzel lay where she was for a long time, wrapping her braids around her. She had won her first battle; it had only taken eighteen years of war.

Gothel didn’t come to see her the rest of the day. Rapunzel spent the hours turning her two braids into a single long rope of copper strands. That night, when she was certain the old witch was asleep, she went to the window and, with the hope found in lovers and saints, lowered her hair down the side of the Tower wall. Then she wailed in frustration. After all this time, it was still too short. 

*

Now she stood atop the Tower, nineteen and in bloom. The sun was up and the witch was downstairs. The silver tray with her lunch sat at the edge of the bed. She took her time with meals. Gothel never dined with her. She stayed away so long as Rapunzel was eating - and Rapunzel made certain she ate for a long time. She paced herself. A sip of tea. Stand by the window. A bite of bread. Repeat. Rapunzel chewed her bread and went back to the window. Her long hair trailed behind her in a single magnificent braid.

It was then she heard his voice.

Rapunzel had known a host of men in her time. When she was fourteen, she had stood at the window and pretended Romeo was in the bramble below; when she was fifteen, she had traded barbed retorts with Benedict; and when she was sixteen she had imagined both Lysander and Demetrius lusting after her. In her morbid moments, Hamlet found her face down in the river and Othello had killed her over a handkerchief. Yes, she knew men. She knew their hopes and fears and what made their hearts swell. But she did not know if these fictional men were anything like the real thing, having never met one.

And then, suddenly, there he was. His voice was like thunder. When had she ever heard a sound so powerful and thick? Terrified, enchanted, body trembling, Rapunzel moved towards the window. She peered over the edge. He stood below. The Man. Was he ever a sight! Tall and strong like a tree, he was food for the hungry and a stay for the condemned. His clothes were torn, his face ragged with growth. Had she any basis for comparison, she might have said he looked worn and haggard, as if he hadn’t slept. But how was she to know such things? To her, he was glorious.

He stood off center, trying to keep his balance amidst the thicket that surrounded the Tower's base. His hands were cupped around his mouth, blocking part of his face.

“Hello!” she called.

“Hello!” he called back.

Neither knew where things should go from there.

There came a deep rumbling from beneath the ground. It shook the fruit from the trees and made the birds take flight. The Man stumbled out of the briar and leaned against his horse for support. The entire Tower shook and Rapunzel thought it might crumble beneath her. She cried out and clutched the window frame for support as her legs buckled. Below, the Man watched in terror as the ground cracked open. Old Gothel rose from the hole, a withered Venus in her oyster shell. The world stopped its trembling. The forest fell still. The wind itself ceased to move. Even the Man's horse lost its snort.

“Are you the devil?” asked the Man.

“Something close.”

“I'd like to see the maiden,” said the Man.

Rapunzel blushed. The only man in the world and he had come for her!

“She is not to be seen,” said the witch.

“You would deny royalty?”

Gothel laughed. “You would claim royal authority with me?”

Rapunzel started. Royalty? Was he a prince?

“I wish to speak to her," said the Man. "I'd need her to sing for me again.”

The witch scowled. "Her? Sing for you?"

Why not? Rapunzel began to sing.  

Gothel looked up. “Away from that window Rapunzel!”

Rapunzel didn’t move. She and the man locked eyes.

“Stop looking at her!” Gothel hissed.

The witch’s hand shot in the air. The Man stumbled back. So did Rapunzel. For a moment, her vision had clouded. Now it was clear. Had it been her imagination? She tried to steal another glance at the Man and saw that his form was blurred even while everything that surrounded him was clear.

“You will leave,” Gothel instructed.

“I will come back.” said the Man.

From under the witch’s breath came an incantation. She waved a hand through the air, forming a circle of fog. He tried to speak but she cowed him into silence with a growl. “You will return to wherever it is you woke up this morning. You shall fall in love with the first girl you see. The moment this happens, neither you nor Rapunzel shall ever think of each other again.”

“I will shut my eyes and look at no one else.”

“Spare me,” Gothel waved her hands. Against his will, the Man sheathed his sword and climbed back onto his horse. His body was not under his own control.

“I will return for you Rapunzel!” he cried, even as the horse turned and galloped away.

*

Rapunzel refused to leave the window. Long after the Man was gone, she stared across the treetops pretending she could still see him. “I might call him a thing divine," said Rapunzel. "For nothing natural I ever saw so noble.”

“I said step away from there,” said Gothel. She was in the room now, advancing with her horned cane. “There’s nothing noble about men, Rapunzel. They are carnivorous creatures. They care nothing for us.” She gave the sigh of a woman who knew what it was like to be a girl who had just seen a man for the first time. “He has come to see you before, hasn’t he?”

“You know my actions better than I do.”

“What happens here when I go on my walks?”

“Nothing. I'm alone, always alone.”

“‘I was hoping I could persuade her to sing for me again.’ Again, Rapunzel? You

have sung for him before?”

“The only singer is you. He must have heard your voice.”

“You little fool. You know nothing of the outside world. If it came to murder you, you’d unlock the door. You're too trusting, Rapunzel. You must believe me when I tell you that men are bad for you.”

Rapunzel turned back to the window. “He said he was royalty. Surely, they’re different.”

“They’re the worst of all. He’ll destroy you if you let him.” She was exhausted from the day and turned to leave. “I am tired. I will sleep. You will be punished in the morning.”

“Punished!” Rapunzel remembered what had happened the last time she was punished. The horror of Gothel blotting out the sun. "I haven’t done anything!” she wailed.

“You will learn, girl. I have sworn to protect you and I will not break my oath.”

“I did not ask for your protection.”

“It's a parent's curse to force their child to do things for their own good.”

“You're not a parent. You're a witch who has locked a girl in a Tower."

“You and your fairy tales. I'm your mother, Rapunzel. I gave birth to you in this very room."

The horror of this struck Rapunzel like a slap. She flung herself onto the bed and wept. It could not be true. And yet what other truths could there be? She would not look at Gothel as the woman left, leaving only the warning that her punishment would come at dawn. Rapunzel sat on the edge of her bed and watched the light fade. No. She could not endure this anymore. With the melodrama common to youth, she was certain another day would bring only death. Nineteen years in this room and in all that time escape had been a game for tomorrow and never today. Not anymore.

When the sun had set and she was sure Gothel was asleep, Rapunzel slipped her pillowcase free and stuffed it full of clothes. She took the Shakespeare too and the book with her family tree. She wanted to leave nothing behind. Gothel had forgotten to clear the tray from her dinner. Rapunzel picked up the knife and wiped it clean. Her hair lay around her like a coiled snake and she sawed it off as short as she could. At some point the knife slipped and sliced her fingers. She stared at the wounds, filled with a strange excitement. Normally, if she cut herself, she could depend on Gothel to heal her. But if all went as hoped, she would have scabs for the first time in her life. Finally, the knife slid through the final strands and the braid, seven years long, lay by her feet.

Next, she tore the bedsheets off her bed and tied them to the end of her braid. The makeshift rope stared back at her as if even it thought her mad to use it. But Rapunzel knew she could no longer think. She had reached the point of no return. She would act. If she was going to get caught, it would not be while she stood in indecision.

Rapunzel tied the end of the rope to her least favorite dress and the end of this to the leg of her writing desk. She yanked the cord, until she was satisfied the knot would hold. Next, she pushed the desk as close to the window as she could and made certain it was too big to fit through the gap. It would be a suitable anchor, or so she hoped. Then she threw the rope out the window and peered into the dark as it snaked down the side of the Tower towards the bramble below. It was no use; she could not tell where it ended. It might be touching the bramble or it might have fallen short. There would be no way to know until she was there.

She gave her quarters a final look. One room, a broad circle, twenty feet in diameter, with only a single window to show her the outside world. One room which had seen so much, heard so many stories, been the sole witness to the only moments she had ever known. This room where she had dwelled as baby, child, girl, and now woman. Don’t be a fool, said the room. Gothel told you the world is evil. You do not belong out there. You are ill-equipped. What will you do for money? Where will you live? Gothel may be a witch but she is also your mother. She cares for you. Can you say the same about anyone out there? Does anyone out there care for you? You have no family. You have no one.

All true. She climbed out the window just the same.

*

Later that evening, the Man’s eyes met those of another and, as Rapunzel's mother had foretold, he fell instantly in love and forgot all about Rapunzel. And in the trees, in accordance with the magic, Rapunzel forgot all about him. In the years to come, she would never remember what had led to her escape. But she never cared. It would always be enough that she was free.

---

Joel Fishbane’s novel, The Thunder of Giants, is available from St. Martin's Press. His short fiction has been widely published, most recently in Crannog, Dark Horses, and Abandon. For more information, visit www.joelfishbane.net.

Spencer Nitkey

Stigmata Pentaptych

Stigmata no. 1 (Right Hand), 2005
Acrylic On burlap

“I have longed looked at appendages, in particular, hands, as cartographic instruments,” says the artist, “because it is through hands that bodies come to know the topography of the other, and this has never been more clear for me than in the running of fingers through damp hair, white and salt-scented from the sea, with new love cresting like a wave, white capped, at a time when hands are not yet inured to a body, when the map has not yet been taken in, memorized, when the land is new and the grass is hard beneath your boots, when the touching is also a fresh mapping of the toucher themselves, and, finally what brazen capacity for deracination there is in a heart newly flooded with love,” explaining the inspiration behind this piece. Look. We know better. The artist’s thick layers of oil paint, almost tendrils of mountains rise in red from a tan abstraction of background colors and arouse the finger-tip touch of real love. A touch the artist, if he was being honest with himself, would admit he had only ever once felt before when his sister wiped a salty tear from his cheek at their father’s funeral. A touch that is both a mapping and terraformation that came as he trembled under the earthquake of their father’s absent voice, under a shared fear of a man who had not learned how to love without bruising. They also shared an unspoken agreement to end the hemophilic love: he by not having children, she by loving with a careful precision, hands like a surgeon’s, trained, practiced, and rare. When she took those hands and knew him with them, knew by touching, him known by the touching. Knew the hatred of his father, the hatred of his own hatred, a hatred of a love that came through in subtle breaks, light through the interstices of blinds, life from the protoplasmic ocean, a ball tossed in the backyard, tackling a man with a knife in the grocery store to protect his son. Knew the tapes the artist had listened to in the newly empty apartment where his father had lived, alone, with empty white walls and only a few mystery novels and the checkered comforter. In the tapes, his father recounted marching through the Pacific and meeting death, and they made the artist cry and know his father better, and still did not help the artist forgive him, but instead filled him with a sadness that overflowed in the church, the light passing through the stained glass windows illuminating the hardwood floor in reds and blues and greens. All this his sister knew as she helped him wipe away a tear, and which is both reified and abstracted in this simple work of topographical acrylic.

#

Stigmata no. 2 (Left Hand), 2007
Oil and stencil on canvas.

In this painting the artist has arranged various, hand-painted blocks of color, nuanced meditations on various forms of red, with mathematical precision, creating an almost staircase like image of layered, rotating rectangles which intend to induce within the viewer a sensation of descent, designed to capture the interior experience of the artist’s remembering a moment of fatherly love surrounding his first fall from a training-wheel-free bike and the red-faced burning, eyes red and tearful, pain searing red up from the bend of his knee, and the slow mix of pride and anger as his father's hard hands reached down like they were from heaven and him feeling like he was small but also liking to be small but also ashamed of the desire to feel small, and the artist putting the head wet with tears he was trying to stymie up against the shoulder of his father who was wet with sweat and shirtless from mowing the lawn, who was tall and distant but sometimes loving in ways that surprised the artist, like right then as he held him and did not say anything about the tears and took him inside and poured peroxide over the wound and let the artist squeeze his arm tightly and did not scold the artist for letting out a small yelp like the dog when someone accidentally stepped on his tail as the peroxide sizzled and momentarily turned the asphalt speckled red of his bloody knee into a pink primordial ocean and then covered the clean wound with a bandage and a tenderness, like the red of a sky kissing the sun farewell, and the artist, more than almost anything, wishes that he could remember his father’s eyes on that day and see the love he knows must have leaked from them but cannot and instead only remembers the screams the two shared, the bright hot fire red, when the artist was trying drugs and the bodies of men for the first time, a remembering which produces a gentle, almost maroon sense of shame now when he thinks about it, and soon the memory falls out from under the artist, but of that day all he remembers are his father’s hands and the too often untapped potential for love the artist did not acknowledge until right then, lost in reds.

#

Stigmata no. 3 (Left Foot), 2006
Brass (patinated green), Glass, and Copper

Investigating the annealing properties of metallurgy and its philosophical connection to both art and love, the artist created this piece by exposing long stretches of brass, carefully sculpted and imprinted with the footsteps of his mother, to the elements, embedding them in the permafrost of Alaska for the extent of his mother’s chemotherapy treatments, and after two years that saw his mother wither under an encroaching mass of cells, multiplying without reason, out of control inside her, the healing poison slowly wilting her, like a rusting nail hammered into a tree (maybe the termites flee, but first the color falls from the leaves, dry and brown far too early, a microcosm of winter even in the burgeoning heat of the early summer, and then the color drains from the bark, almost imperceptible until it’s not, shedding its skin, the way a mother sheds her hair, first in clumps, then in a preemptive trimming) as she fought against the illness, until a double mastectomy ended it, an annihilative final strike, erasing the field of battle, victorious and weathered and alive, but not before the artist and his mother sat for hours, and discussed what she wanted from her death and funeral--the exact choral songs to be sung, the biblical passages equally old and new testaments to be read, the music that would bellow from the pipe organ, and the gentle melodies that would sing from the grand piano, the food at the reception afterwards calibrated to each guests tastes, her saying this was all so they could mourn, not plan, when she was gone, him sitting and learning about love as a slow, sometimes malignant presence that stings and twists and masses, that culminates in a gentle exchange of words and a deeper, more unspoken tenderness placed between the church pews where she wanted to be remembered, like her mother before her, a profound piece of art that makes permanent the transitory, almost bipedal, aspects of love.

#

Stigmata no. 4 (Right Foot) 2009
Glass, coal, earth, and blood.

In this lacerating installation which is both a prop for performance art and a sculpture in its own right, the viewer is asked to witness a literal trail of now cooled coals and glass over which the artist ran numerous times and consider the small flecks of still visible blood preserved on the larger, more obtrusive shards, as the work strives to capture, visualize, and, during its creation, realize the pain of discovering a sexuality that exists in the liminal space between boundaries, a sexuality which for the artist became tied to the act of walking during a 10-mile-a-day backpacking trip through the Sierra Nevada mountains where a steady pace and the overwhelming ambient silence that comes in the mountains, the trees rising up on both sides, slowly empties out the mind of its voice, each step chopping away like an ancient logger, at the internal monologue, as the slowly thinning air strips the mind of its embattlements, until there is the simple, raw and untouched self, exposed and wide-eyed at the universe stretched overhead, a self which is, he realizes, when he leaves his tent in the middle of the night, and cries under the stretched tarp of stars (more than he has ever seen, hundreds of them streaming across the sky luminous and momentary and fragile), essentially a stranger to him. A self that wants and loves in ways he has never really known. Pissing beneath the beauty, he realized that he was in love with his best friend, and despite this longing for the lithe and taut man he watched submerge himself in a lake each night, he still could want women too, and wanted both from this same strange center, and so, unleashed, this foreign thought leaked like the flooded banks of a river, while his blistered feet carried him for another two weeks, his want a second, heavier weight, that wrapped itself around him, and the back of his friend, his neck burned red and peeling in the sun, and his calves slicked with sweat and rhythmically tensing and relaxing as he walked, and the back of his arms as they pumped, and the rounded caps of his shoulders indented by the thick straps of his backpack, all heavy his want with specificity, and with each step over narrow dirt paths weaving their way, switchback up and down mountainsides, with each blistered heel rubbing minutely against the artist’s hiking book, he is close to giving up on it all, but instead he keeps it stymied and tries to ignore the swell of forest fire when their hands touch unfolding the thin aluminum windshield so they can light their stove, or when they laugh passing a bottle of cheap vodka between them and his lips linger on its rim, or when they sleep, two mummies, side by side, until one day they are back in the parking lot and their girlfriends are waiting for both of them with fast food, kisses, and complaints over their smells, and the artist, only 18, remembers what there is to love about women, and that two things can be true, and that perhaps his heart is big enough to hold two loves inside it, and as he drives home, the car jumping for twenty minutes over back roads then gliding for four hours over freeway, he thinks that maybe he can howl to both the moon and the sun, both Artemis and Apollo, and that no body is too small for its wanting despite the pain it takes to walk into acceptance, which is symbolized and immortalized by this aesthetic reflection on the paths we take to realization, and the bodily threats our desires can manifest.

#

Stigmata no. 5 (Heart), 1998
Oil on Canvas

Looking at first, a viewer’s eyes see only broad swaths of color, suggesting, one can imagine one thinking, something vaguely heartlike, but as the gaze is prolonged, either by innate interest and trust in the artist, or through a sense of obligation, having bought expensive tickets to this museum, the image transforms in, at first, a visual manner (the colors slowly delineate from one another, and the gaze is rewarded by a slow, cumulative enriching), until suddenly, like a door slamming open, shuddering the tan painted stucco ceiling of your childhood home, there is a well of feeling within you, and you are remembering loving yourself, and the shape of your footprint in the sand on the dark beach on New Year’s Eve when you stood alone, just inches from the ocean’s reaching, taking, in slow, measured breaths, a moment for yourself, pausing, with nothing but the sounds of faraway fireworks like wrinkling paper, and a moon low and ripe in the sky, the cold crawling up your legs as the waves touch your toes, the stars strung up over the ocean, vague and opalescent against the sky, and you there, with your neck back, extending and breathing, taking in this beauty for yourself, all this for you, and the moonlight and the sound of waves and the fireworks all congealing to your skin, and the slow dancing of your heart inside your chest, and for one moment, all this is yours and yours alone, and your skin, hairs raised from your shins to your arms, your whole body like a cactus, or a choir singing a hymnal, like thousands of goodnight kisses, and swollen, sprained ankles, and dissonant singing against the porcelain of your bathroom, and rain clouds slowly ruining your home’s new paint, and the ice of January, and meteoroid showers, and the cattle outside your car window, and the broom in the closet you never use, is all yours, and you love yourself for it, until time pulls you out of this moment and you are once against staring at an unfurling array of colors, beautiful and representative of the artist’s early oeuvre, before taking a more sculptural and conceptual style later in his career.

---

Spencer Nitkey is a writer living in Philadelphia. His writing has appeared in Apex Magazine, Fusion Fragment, Apparition Lit, Cosmorama, manywor(l)ds, and more. You can find more about him and read more of his writing on his website, spencernitkey.com

Salena Casha

As Seen Here: Woman Preserved in Iron

When Peter brings the cast iron skillet home, Elaine is shocked by how natural it comes to him. How he seasons it with shortening and azure flame before working oil into its skin. The house smells like Crisco and sweat. Her bones shiver as he kneads it. He tips the pan, coating the metal, and then lets the extra oil patter down onto aluminum in the oven.

Once he’s finished, it’s a smooth black patina. So unlike the web of lines underneath Elaine’s left eye. He leaves it out on the stove and goes for a run and while he’s away, she dips her thumb into the black pool, expecting liquid heat. Instead, her skin slides away. Not bone or muscle, but uneven iron.

The start of panic hardens behind her eyes. I’ve got a deck to do tomorrow before the big meeting with Carlisle. When am I supposed to fix this? She thinks of calling her PCP but shuts the app down. Her last visit with them resulted in the most expensive five minutes of her life. So instead, she takes a seat at her kitchen table and stretches her arm out, palm up, on the wood. The table is cherry, her skin is eggshell except for the deep black of the thumb.

If the neighbors see it oxidize, she knows what they’ll say. That Elaine, she’s really let herself go. And it’s fine, you know, if she keeps it to herself, but it’s just spreading.

It’s the same sentiment as the time her friend told her she looked prettier when she didn’t smile. Containment, she learned, was always preferred by outsiders.

She brings the thumb close to her face. It’s still newly forged, but she knows that if she takes her eye off of it for just a second, it’ll be unusable. It’s fine now but it would become a problem when it creeps up her neck and chest. Then, it would make sex weird and she does love sex. More troubling, she wonders if it could make it hard to breathe, if it’ll be like inhaling icy air, if the alveoli in her lungs will burst or just fossilize.

She gazes longingly at the door through which Peter left. He probably won’t know what to do either, she realizes. If there is any time not to panic, it’s now. That realization brings her arm up from the table, her elbow hinging inward. She stands and pushes the kitchen chair back in place before walking to the stove.

She breathes deep, lights the burner, and begins. When Peter returns, she’s got the oven open and her hand inside and he pulls her away from the heat before he sees it.

“Ok,” he says when she explains what happened or really, just tells him what she knows so far. “We can work with this.”

The seasoning ritual gradually replaces her daily shower. As she makes coffee in the morning, she gets the oil and turns on the burner and marinates in the gentle solution. She always preferred it to butter and her mother swore by it for face masks. Though now, her crows feet and discoloration are no longer visible. No longer something she worries about.

Peter never mentions a cure and as the days pass and the iron spreads down her limbs, she begins to notice small, but concerning changes. Her fingers cannot grasp items and so she walks around with a pair of kitchen tongs to pick her clothes up off the floor. If she goes outside in the sun, her body temperature rises to over two hundred degrees and blisters her soft insides. She wears gloves and then long sleeve billowy tops and then wide legged pants and finally a hat that she hates but hides her well enough so people don’t say hello.

Soon, she stops going outside entirely. Peter, on the other hand, begins running longer. She prefers when he’s outside so she can spend the hour in front of her bathroom mirror, checking for signs.

It all seems so silly now.  

“You’re so beautiful,” Peter says to her. He said that before the iron and he says it still, but now, she knows it’s true. She has seen her iron skin glisten. “You have to tell me if it starts to hurt.”

His eyes are worried and the gray is beginning to come through on his eyebrows. With an index finger, she smoothes away the crease above his nose.

“Of course,” Elaine says, but she knows it will never hurt, that it’s just a gradual slowing, a gradual burning away motion and movement and she wants to embrace the time she has left as much as she can. It’s happening already, how, if she doesn’t remind herself to breathe, she stops entirely. How she wakes in the middle of the night and is unable to rise.

So, even though she is flexible enough, she has Peter help her with the oiling and the brushing, has him spend more time than necessary on harder to reach areas, the spot between her shoulder blades and the dimples just above her hip bones. She closes her eyes and savors the way his palms press and kneed into her metal. Shivers when he licks the excess oil off her neck. Slow dances with his bare chest on her cool skin, letting it suck away his heat in the summer.

And one day, as she’s heating the oil in the palm of her hand at the stovetop, her heart stops. Her feet are so heavy now she can’t even lift them to stagger back and collapse on the floor. Instead, she places her hand against her neck and lets her vision tunnel.

Peter finds her and holds her hand, still warm from the stove. Even though he tries, his thumb does not peel away.

It was just for her all along.

---

Salena Casha's work has appeared in over 100 publications in the last decade. Her most recent words can be found in HAD, Metaphorosis Magazine, and Flash Frog. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Subscribe to her Substack at salenacasha.substack.com.

Meg Pokrass

Your Family, From Afar

When seen from afar, your big sister resembles the stars of all the movies your mother loves to watch on TMC. Ma says she looks like Natalie Wood, an actress who died from falling off a yacht, drunk.

“Natalie Wood couldn’t sing, and neither can your sister,” she says.

But your sister plays her guitar and sings very well. You love the sound of her voice and the look of her hair, but mostly, she hides behind her locked door so nobody can hear her.

“My acting's good. But I can’t sing. And I'm not thin enough. These deficits are going to be a serious disadvantage.” 

This is what she said the day before she left for Hollywood to become famous. You rescue what remains of her hair from the shower drain and collect her it like bits of blown bird’s nest.

___

It’s a year later, you are laying in a deck chair near the pool at your sister’s apartment complex. You all live here in California now because you've left your father in the dust. “The Born-again Christians in LA are insane,” she reports.

She explains it like this: “They knock on my door and shove me their flyers about Jesus Christ. They could be serial killers.”

You think about how skinny she is, how easy your sister would be to pick up and carry away.

In the pool, your brother is dog-paddling, squealing like he's never lived on land.

Your sister is sipping a wine cooler and looking like a skinny movie-star but with her bones popping out, too thin.

___

Ma, who seems to have revived from her life with your father, is sometimes smiling. You develop California skills from long days at the beach— green-blue water and the silhouettes of seals. Your skin becomes brown as roast chicken.

Your new favorite hobby is sneaking into hotel pools illegally with your brother. Saying confidently, Our family’s staying on the top floor.

And you love the tiny brown birds that gather in your yard. You try to catch them with your butterfly net. You’ve never caught one, which Ma says is a damn good thing, because birds don't like to be trapped.

___

When the call comes in that your father has died in a car crash, you imagine yourself jumping on a trampoline, thinking about how it might feel to fly into outer space like a small brown bird.

You hear her say, Oh dear God, thank you for letting us know. Then she puts her arm around you, explains it while holding you tight, and you stop jumping up and down in your mind.

“Later we can check and see if there’s any hummingbird liquid left in that bird feeder,” she says, but she stays there with you, waiting for your brother to come home from the beach.

___

Life becomes a parade of stories about the terrible decisions your father had made in his life on earth. For example, he had gone after younger women—Ma would be home sweeping the kitchen floor and he'd come in looking like he just won at Russian roulette.

“He was always getting away with it,” she said. "Just like you kids, swimming in those hotel pools.”

For most of your childhood, you imagine your father slumped over his steering wheel, daylight squinting through his t-shirt. One day you’ll meet him again in a different world perhaps, and ask him about it— about this accident, and others.

---

Meg Pokrass is an award-winning writer of flash fiction, prose poetry, and hybrid work. She is the founder of New Flash Fiction Review and co-founder of the Best Microfiction series. Her generative workshops and prompts are acclaimed for their ability to spark creativity and open new doors. Meg’s new full-length collection, The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories has been acquired by Dzanc Books, and will be published in late 2024.

Mary Grimm

The Marriage of Poets May Sarton and Henry David Thoreau, a Union Unconsummated Due to Issues of Time and Space as Well as to Differences of Temperament and Gender Preference

May embraces her solitude, but when no one comes to visit she is annoyed.

Henry prefers to sit on a pumpkin, if only he can be alone.

May paints her toenails red. Not the fingernails, which would be a show of vanity. (May is vain but she is too vain to want anyone to know it.) The color matches her new sweater.

Henry reminds us that the purpose of clothing is to retain body heat.

No green beans in May’s garden: she devotes herself to the evanescence and color of flowers, which she gathers at daybreak so that they may come into the house and die.

May likes to do things herself, unless they are time consuming or difficult. When workmen come she has them into the house for tea. If they are charming, she may write a poem about them.

Henry is the original DIY-er.

Long ago, May met Virginia Woolf, who was not as interested in her as May would have liked. May has a recurring dream in which she and Virginia have a fist fight and May wins.

Henry certainly didn’t retire to the woods to lick the wounds inflicted by transcendentalist Margaret Fuller’s rejection of his poem. (She encouraged him to submit again, noting that it did not fit the needs of The Dial at that time.)

The ocean is better than a mere pond, May thinks, and only what she deserves. She too though would like to suck the marrow out of life, and is not opposed to driving life into a corner, for its own good.

In her garden, May paces up and down, letting the balm of nature soothe her. She is a devil when it comes to weeds. If she could buy a flamethrower to burn them into ash, she would.

Is it Thoreau as the French say it? Or does it sound the same as “thorough?”

May gets an enormous amount of mail. Perhaps she should hire a secretary to deal with it? Perhaps the secretary might be an attractive woman who wouldn’t mind having a dozen or so poems written in her honor in lieu of payment?

Thoreau is so shy that he blushes when he passes through the Emersons’ kitchen where their two young maids are working.

May hikes on the solstice on Monadnock Mountain. Up there, the air and her mind are clear. She is one of the greatest poets alive: why is this not more widely recognized?

On the banks of Walden, Henry ponders the wrongheaded Englishman who went to India to make a fortune so he could come home to write poetry.

If May were a younger woman, she might have joined the army. She would have enjoyed the camaraderie and the violence (she has a terrible temper). She understands though that the food is terrible.

Henry prefers a night in jail.

Once, when May was a child, she stood on Pemaquid Point, her mouth open, her toes gripping the rock. She sang out her defiance to the world while her mother took her picture and pronounced her a darling.

Once, when Henry was a young man, he stood among the wood shavings of his father’s pencil factory, and dreamed of looking deep into earth’s eye.

---

Mary Grimm has had two books published, Left to Themselves (novel) and Stealing Time (story collection), and a number of flash pieces in places like Helen, The Citron Review, and Tiferet. Currently, she is working on an urban fantasy set in the flats area of a near-future, dystopian Cleveland.

C.A. Coffing

Audit

To date is relatively simple. We make an agreement to go out. With a friend’s brother. A roommate’s cousin. The guy who caught our eye across the counter — the one with the charming smile. Our college advisor’s son. He’s always liked you. You’re close to graduating, aren’t you? The manager at our work. A coworker. A coworker’s friend. We meet them. Or they pick us up. We have dinner. A cocktail. A beer. We converse. The waitress flirts with them. They lean in knowingly. The waiter gives us a wary look. Or looks down our shirt. Or both.

We have a drink. They order another. We excuse ourselves, use the restroom. Tidy up. A new drink waits for us when we return. It sparkles in the glass, reflects the lights of the room. Soft music plays. Loud music plays. Others talk around us. The buzz works itself into our brain, which grows increasingly fuzzy and weak. Can’t think. Let’s go. Shall we? We stand unsteadily, grateful for the hand on our arm or our waist. The world twists ever so slightly.

We are on our backs. On a bed. On the floor. In the backseat of a car. On the grass in a field. No. Stop. I don’t want to. Words with no sound. We stare up at the ceiling. The roof of the car. The night sky with its whispering stars. We cannot move our fingers. We drift until the grogginess lifts.

A pile of condoms on the nightstand. No condoms on the nightstand. Wet grass beneath us. Wet sheets. Stains on the carpet. They are naked. We are naked. We are partially naked. They are clothed. Our clothes in a pile on the ground. Our clothes half on our bodies. Our clothes clumsily replaced. A button gone. I’ll take you home. Now we stand with half memory. I’ll walk. I’ll call a friend. I’ll find my car. No thanks. Why do we say the thanks when we refuse?

We tell someone. We tell no one. We report it. We don’t report it. We don’t even think about reporting it. We forget. We never forget. It defines us. We defy it. We are it. We are not it. It lives inside of us like a sharp stone. We are alone. We are not alone. We carry it as we pass in crowds, in theaters, in bars, sit with it in churches, on park benches, enshrouded in the ordinary.

Jacob’s Breath

AIDS hitting the city didn't scare us. It terrified us. But instead of hiding, we were even more determined to live, to revel harder in the underground of the banal world. Friends, co-workers, and relatives stopped calling, stopped working with us, stopped inviting us to dinner. They didn’t want us to use their toilets, finger their books, or eat from their cutlery. They loved watching us dance, but from a distance. They didn’t want to touch us, lest they get it.

I know the feeling of bare feet on damp grass after a rare spring rain. I know the feeling of twirling, my arms wide and open, beneath a blossoming cherry tree. I know what it is to have danced on the edge of the fountain in Central Park, while the angel opened her arms and released flowing water. While the saxophone player folded melodies into the warm May twilight. I have been naked on a rooftop on Twenty-Third and Steinway, dancing in the light of a perfect morning.

He lies still. He no longer wants to talk. Jacob, whose perfect body has forsaken him. Who once performed on the city’s biggest stages, now lies with protruding cheek bones wrapped in thin flesh. Jacob, whose family disowned him, never having watched him leap across the Marley floors of the finest theaters. Jacob, who loved so many until loving, became like crossing a field of wildflowers and landmines. Jacob, whose eyes will close to the New York City skyline and whose belongings they will put on the sidewalk, because no one will want anything that’s left behind. The garbage truck will take his clothes, his furniture, his writings, his artwork, on a Tuesday. The Tuesday after Jacob’s last breath joins the swirling dust in the room and drifts out the open window into the cloudless sky of a perfect day.

Bleed

We hear the song first and scatter. Our feet in boots, sneakers, rubber flip-flops, or simply bare. We run to scour for coins, to search in drawers or fish through pockets for random quarters and dimes. Fifty cents. Seventy-five cents. The ice cream truck grows closer. The recorded song grows louder. Catch it before it turns the corner. We see it, the blue and red clown painted on the side, his mouth wide, ready to envelop an ice cream sandwich. The menu posted next to the sliding window. Nothing over seventy-five cents. Red and white stripes across the cab of the truck.

I choose a root beer popsicle this time. Brown and sweet with two sticks, and if I don’t eat it fast enough, it drips down my arm like flavored earth. My brother gets the Missile. He stares at me as he swirls it about his mouth, looking as if he could swallow it whole. He pauses; points it at me. Your legs are hairy, he tells me.

I look down at my legs sticking out of the tops of my red cowboy boots. Without a word, I drop my popsicle, letting its shape break apart on the hot pavement, and run as fast as I can to the house and up the stairs to my parent’s bathroom. I pull off my boots and grab my mom’s razor. I sit on the edge of the tub and dry shave my legs until I bleed.

---

C.A. Coffing has an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. A self-published novelist and playwright, her work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine and elsewhere. She was a 2013 Santa Fe Writers Project Finalist, third prize recipient in Flash Fiction Magazine’s 2021 contest and a 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her written work has appeared in live theatre showings throughout the Pacific Northwest, including a series of social/environmental justice themed plays for Reach for The Sky July, a program for at risk youth. She currently writes, teaches dance, waits tables, and dreams in a small river town.

Jamie Anthony Louis

Rises in the West

It took me too long to get here. To get home. I open my eyes and I’m a child. Born again in midnight’s bosom and the sun is rising now. The windows across from my bed show the Pacific in oranges and yellows and pinks and purples. About half the colors in the world right there, I think, as I sit up and lay my tiny hands on my lap. These hands are mine and yet they are not mine.

The boy in my head, who is me and isn’t me, says, “You made it. Now what?”

I shake my head to dismiss him and continue to stare at the rising sun. But then something nags at my mind. Chews on my brain stem, takes a bite out of my cerebellum.

“The sun doesn’t rise on the Pacific Ocean,” the boy says with a laugh that sounds more like a sob.

My lips tremble. I look away. “Maybe the sun is setting and it’s my mistake,” I say. But then I look again, and that orange circle is still inching up above the horizon, and my stomach is whirling like it’s filled with salt water. And I know I’m forgetting the most important thing in all of this.

By the time I realize it’s all a fake, a man I don’t want to see appears at the foot of my bed. He smiles too pleasantly and sits on the edge. He crosses his expensive black chinos that clash with his old t-shirt and converse sneakers.

“Hello again, sweetheart,” he says like I know him. But this is my own mind, after all. I can’t be fooled into false senses of security.

He knows my thoughts, because he adds, “I almost got you this time. If only you hadn’t thought too hard about the sun.”

A tear falls down my cheek. I scowl. He knows my feelings towards him. This man who I’ve never met. This man, my father.

He tilts his head, “Of course I do. That’s why you’re here.” I look away again and again. He says, “You love me too much. That’s your Achilles heel.”

Finally, I speak out loud. “You’re like a devil trying to tempt me to Hell.”

He taps his finger on the blue comforter, where he’s leaning on one arm. “I thought you didn’t believe in all that.”

“Neither did you.”

He smiles again. “That’s true. So why would you say something so mean?”

I lean forward a bit and stare at my elongated fingers. Yes, a dream it is. I say, “I’m trying to protect you. The real you.” The memory of you.

“I’m not real enough for you?”

“No,” I say. I reach for the boy, but he pulls back like a kicked dog.

The man I love too much—but really, it’s just a poor imitation—stands up and brushes off his chinos like the conversation covered him in dust and debris. “Well. That’s all she wrote.” He’s gone with my next breath.

I go back to staring at the rising sun. I know I could make this real. If I tried hard enough. Took a big enough risk. But I have to get up soon. I don’t need a lie. I don’t need this home.

But then, why is the boy crying so hard?

---

Jamie Anthony Louis (they/them) is a non-binary Chicano who loves to write and is trying to share their love with the world one story at a time. They have been published in Maudlin House and, now, Does It Have Pockets.

Charity Tahmaseb

Steadfast

Poppy fell the moment Carlos showed her his feet. She’d never met a man—or rather, a civilian man—with feet uglier than her own. But ballet slippers weren’t any kinder to toes than combat boots were.

Before she saw him, she’d planned on making a tactical retreat from the reception. It’d been a mistake to take leave for this wedding, an even bigger one to wear her dress uniform. Coming home never worked. Hadn’t she learned that by now? Too many awkward questions, too many thank yous.

What made her pause at the ballroom’s entrance, Poppy couldn’t say. She didn’t see the groom twirling his bride or the bridesmaids in clouds of chiffon floating across the parquet.

Only Carlos.

With uncommon grace, he crossed the room. He navigated the maze of chairs, tables, and guests like a man intimately familiar with each muscle of his body. When he landed in front of her, he didn’t speak but merely held out his hand.

“I don’t dance,” she said.

“Everybody dances.”

“Not me. I march.”

He tipped his head back and laughed. “I can dance well enough for both of us.”

And yes, he could. Demanding to see his feet came several glasses of champagne later.

“Stay,” he whispered the next morning. “Spend the week with me. You can come to rehearsal. I’m dancing the role of the steadfast tin soldier.”

She laughed at the audacity of it, of burning a week’s worth of leave in New York City, with this beautiful man whose world was so different from her own.

“Do you know anything about being a soldier?” she asked.

“That’s why I need you. You can be my technical advisor.”

“No one will believe that.”

Everyone did. Or, rather, they indulged their principal dancer. She taught Carlos how to drill with a wooden rifle. During breaks, he taught her how to hold herself so he could lift and spin her around.

With Carlos, she could dance. With Carlos, she was weightless.

At the airport, he tucked a necklace into the palm of her hand, the pendant an exquisitely engraved poppy.

“We both have demanding mistresses.” His words were so soft she barely heard them above the clamor of traffic and travelers. “You don’t need to come home to me. Just come home.”

She wore the necklace every day in Afghanistan. Poppy no longer regretted attending the wedding, or even wearing her uniform. Her only regret was never seeing Carlos dance on stage.

They wrote letters, the old-fashioned kind, hers torn from a notebook, the paper encrusted with sand and dotted with dirty fingerprints, his on the back of paper placemats, or cleverly crafted in the margins of playbills.

Then her world erupted in fire. When the burn subsided to mere embers, it was too late and Walter Reed a world away from New York City. Still, Poppy vowed: she would see Carlos dance.

Sleeping Beauty gave her the chance.

She had flowers delivered to his dressing room—white roses laced with red poppies. That way he’d know. That way, if he didn’t want to see her, he could hide until she abandoned her vigil at the stage door.

Poppy waited there, her head still buzzing from his performance, her weight sagging into the crutches, her foot heavy in its cast.

Her cheeks flamed when she caught sight of him emerging from the door, her skin hot against the December air. He scanned the alleyway behind the theater. The moment his gaze met hers, he froze.

“Bet my feet are uglier than yours now,” she said.

He exhaled and laughed. It was only then she saw the poppy tucked in his lapel. He took in her crutches, her foot in its cumbersome cast. His eyes grew somber.

“My steadfast soldier.”

“I’m home,” she said.

He moved close, fluid and graceful, and cupped her cheek with his palm. “So am I.”

All at once she was weightless.

“Steadfast” was originally published in the December 2017 issue of Flash Fiction Online.

---

Charity Tahmaseb has slung corn on the cob for Green Giant and jumped out of airplanes (but not at the same time). She’s worn both Girl Scout and Army green. These days, she writes stories, both short and long, and works as a technical writer for a software company. She has a fondness for coffee, ghosts, and things fantastical. She blogs occasionally at https://writingwrongs.blog/

Caren Gussoff Sumption

All Left Turns

Clayton Calvin crapped his drawers.

I didn't know if this was a first time, or an established pattern. And I didn't want to know.

Also, I didn't want to marry him, and said so. "I'm not marrying him." I flashed Ma the brown streak down the seat of the jockey shorts before dumping a whole cup of washing powder on them.

"Can the sass" Ma answered. "No one's asked you today." She eyed the extra powder. A waste. "The Calvins pay us good money, half as a favor, for their laundry. It's honest work."

I dunked the underwear into the tub for soaking. "Good, honest, clean work."

If Ma laughed at all anymore, she would have. The best she managed these days was a tired little smile. "Go on inside, Violet," she said. "I'll finish up."

Usually, I'd argue. But, I didn't. I went inside and pretended to read the day old newspaper, watching Ma hang the Calvins' whites on the line like a hundred flags of surrender.

It was full days' work, and she hadn’t even started the mending.

At that moment, I hated my Pa. And the moment after, I decided to go.

I'd bobbed my hair weeks ago in preparation. Ma made her small smile, said I looked like she did at my age. She was only a year older when she met my Pa. She was a flapper, ready to leave home. But she took only left turns, she said, and wound up home, right back where she'd started.
But even as I sawed off my ponytail, even as I'd timed the whistles of PRR trains slowing to pass through Cresson and Johnstown, I hadn't quite settled on going. I could change my mind. But now I knew I was going to go, and I was going to leave that night. No left turns.

I went into my room and pulled the letter from under the mattress. I'd never hidden anything from Ma before, not a broken vase, not a note from school. Not even a thought.

This was different, though. I knew she wouldn't approve. She wouldn't even understand. Even if I explained the good reasons to do my bit -- defeat fascism, work for peace, and not have my own best bets on a pants-shitting crumb, even one with a family fortune -- Ma would say no soap.

Because it'd mean I was leaving her. No reason would feel like a good reason, no injustice or wrong or abuse could be wicked enough for her to be all alone.

The letter was on onion-paper to save postage. "Dear VM Bennett: Thank you for your correspondence regarding our call to volunteers for action in southwestern Europe. It is a necessity for us to support, financially and physically, our brothers and sisters in their struggle against oppression, and in response to your inquiry regarding nurses, there is, indeed, definite opportunity. Unfortunately, we can only offer passage from our office to France and then across the Pyrenees for training. Please let me know your intentions and arrival date. Your comrade in peace, Cecilia James, Branch Secretary, Industrial Workers of the World, New York City GMB."

I liked the sound of the words as I whispered them: opportunity, Pyrenees, comrade. Then the house creaked, and I stood perfectly still. Ma was still outside; if I listened carefully I could hear her singing hymns. I folded the letter and placed it back in its hiding place and threw on a shawl.

I should've been afraid of riding the rails. Nearly every day, the paper, including the one I'd pretended to read yesterday, warned about the crimes concocted by drunken vagrants and wild boys bumming their way across the country in search of the vulnerabilities of god-fearing working people. But I'd met the ones that arrived daily at the family farm of my school-friend Evangeline Smith, and the few that made way to our house.

They weren't to be feared. For every brute, there were three family men, or one entire family. Brothers, uncles, sons, cousins. Even fathers.

Only a thin creek separated Evie's house from the yards, where as ours was a good way in. Evie and I spent many summer afternoons looking for the cat symbol that had to have been drawn somewhere on the farm, directing the desperate and hungry to the Smiths instead of the Linds, whose house was even closer.

I walked outside. "Ma, going to Evie's for a spell. Home to cook supper."

Ma heard me; her mouth full of clothespins, she held up one hand.

I found Evie in the small garden, squatting down. "I don't know why I squabble so hard with this blight," she said in greeting. "I don't even like squash." She stood up and brushed off the back of her skirt.

Not only was Evie the nicest girl I knew, she was a fine piece of calico. She had more pickings than Clay Calvin, though none richer.

"That squash looks fine," I said, then nodded my head at the big barn behind us. "You have any men today?"

"Three," she said. "Came in this morning. Pop has them patching fences." Then she raised a brow. "Why?"

As much as I wanted to tell Evie, say a proper good-bye, I couldn't do it. I loved her. And if hands were crossed, I don't know that I wouldn't tell her mama on her. "No reason. We haven't had any come by our place in a while."

"Well, your place isn't so fine that hoboes won't offer you a handout," Evie joked.

"Aww, go soak your head." I couldn't help but catch Evie's smile.

Then she laced an arm in mine. "Come," she said. "We have too many eggs."

***

I was home, full of lemonade and already missing Evie, when Ma came in from the washing. I started frying the Smith eggs with stale bread.

"You're happy," Ma remarked. "Fun with Evie?"

I nodded. "And we have eggs for supper." I loved eggs for supper, and said so. "I love eggs for supper."

Ma smiled her small smile. "You were born at the right time, then, Violet."

For once, that felt true. I was nervous and sad to leave, but excitement was getting the better of me. I poured Ma some coffee, and refilled my own mug.

We ate fast, like we did when Ma was tired. I finished up the coffee, and said, "I'll do dishes, Ma."

Usually, Ma would argue. But, she didn't. I worried for a second that she knew something was up, but no, she was just that tired. She pretended to read the paper like I had, glancing up only once to say, "Mind how much coffee you're having. You want to sleep once this century?"

"Maybe once," I said. And I hugged her then, too tightly until I realized, and then loosened up. If she noticed, she didn't say anything.

She sat down with the mending, radio on. I had a terrible hand at stitching. I refused to get better, either. It was a stupid, small thing that I fought, and watching Ma squint over her needle gave me a pang. But she quickly fell asleep, a seam half done on her lap.

I walked her into her bed. I needed a clear path to the door. But more, she needed a good rest.

The coffee kept me through until it was late dark. I wore my galoshes because they were the sturdiest of all my shoes. I packed a change of underclothes and more socks than anything else because the galoshes made my feet perspire. I wrapped it all in an extra shawl. On my way out, I left Ma the letter, unfolded and flipped to the back, where I'd scrawled, "I LOVE YOU, MAMA."

The night was still, chilly but stale. Walking was harder work as my feet scooted around in my galoshes, but I felt revived when I made it to the Smiths'.

A string of smoke pulled upwards from behind the barn. Three men sat around a small fire. They were quiet, almost dozing upright, as I looked from man to man to what I think was another man -- the third was hard to make out, strange and pale with a large oval head. The first two were overgrown and rumpled, and thinner than when they had started, judging by the hang of their clothes.

I stepped on a stick and they all came to. Seeing my shape, they jumped to their feet.

"Night, ma'am," the first one said, with the second echoing just after. The third just looked down into a hat he held in his one hand. The other arm ended too early.

"I was hoping one of you would be leaving tonight," I said.

"Ma'am?" the second asked.

"I need to get to New York City," I said.

The first one stepped forward. "On a train, ma'am? You want to take a train? To New York City? Alone?"

"Not alone," I said. "With one of you."

The first one scratched the stubble on his chin, then gave a big grin. "Aww, get out," he said. The second one joined in laughing. The third just looked up from his hat.

"I'm serious," I said.

The first one then waved a hand at me. "Well, then, respectfully, ma'am? You're all wet."

"Rails are no place for a lady," the second agreed. "You'll get cut or hurt or dead or worse."

"Besides," the first one said. "You're outta luck. Mr. Smith's promised us at least three days of work. We're staying put." He sat back down by the fire. "Why you want to go to New York City anyway?"

"None of your beeswax," I snapped.

The second one gave another laugh and a low whistle before joining the first back by the fire. The third one followed suit, but seemed disappointed, like he preferred standing.

"I have good reasons," I said. "I want to join the army. For Spain."

The first one looked at me with interest. "Not our army," he said. "FDR's made that pretty clear."

"You a Communist?" the second asked.

I shook my head.

"You ever been in a fight?" the first one asked.

I bit my lip; it was obvious I hadn't.

Then the third one stood back up, seeming keen on the opportunity. "I will go," he said.

At that, the first one was back up too. "Hold on a moment, now," he said to his companions. Then, he motioned for me to join him off to the side. I got close enough now to see the features on his face. He had a nice face, like someone's brother or favorite cousin. Or father. "Ma'am," he said quietly. "I wouldn't go with Wiggy. I mean, he's alright--" he glanced over his shoulder at the third man, who still stood holding his hat, "--but we named him Wiggy for reasons."

I looked at the one they called Wiggy.

"And he won’t say how he lost that arm," he added.

It wasn’t the missing arm that struck me. It was how the firelight sucked all the blood from him, leaving him as white as paper. Or an egg.

Then, I thought of the shit-stained drawers, and the old newspapers, and Ma, and it took me a minute to say anything at all. He took that as decision.

"OK," he said, standing aside. "Safe travels."

The one they called Wiggy turned from the fire and started walking into the dark trees at the edge of the Smith property. I almost tripped catching up in my galoshes, but he matched his pace to mine once we started over the creek. It was more of a rushing trickle than a body of water, but I was glad of my rubber shoes.

"I'm Alice," I said, when we reached the other side.

"Are you?" he asked.

Something about the way he asked made me want to say the truth. "No," I said. "I'm Violet."

"Violet?" he repeated.

"Like the flower," I explained. "Or the color."

"Yes," he answered. "Light. Between 375 and 450 nanometers."

I sort of knew what he was talking about. Science. Math. We looked at the spectrum once, through a pyramid of glass. It was pretty. "What's your name?"

"They call me Wiggy," he said.

"That wasn't nice of them to call you that," I said. "They didn't mean it well."

We made it through the hem of trees and out to the tracks. The sodium lamps gave my companion a yellow glow. His eyes looked a muddy gravy color, with lashes and brows so fine they looked like they weren't there at all. He blinked at me, and it wasn't smooth like most blinks; they were stuttery and nervous to close, then quick back open.

"What would you call me then?" he asked.

His skin had a powdery, ceramic look, and was covered with fine, long whiskers, the same color as the light. His head still looked like an egg to me. So I said so. "Egg," I said.

Egg put on his hat and held out his one hand to shake. I took it. His long fingers nearly wrapped around my whole hand. His skin was slippery smooth, overly warm, and a little raised, like one big scar. He shook it two, three, then four times, more like he was pumping a lever than touching a girl. Then he returned my hand to my side like he’d borrowed it.

Egg looked to the sky. The lights overpowered the stars, but he studied the position of the moon. "The train will be here in less than one hour," he said.

Then he just stood. I stood next to him for a few minutes that seemed like forever, looking out at nothing and not doing anything. Under a tree, close to where we'd come through, hunched a half circle of big rocks, obviously dragged there for sitting. I went over and sat down on one.

Egg looked straight ahead for a bit, aware that I'd gone and sat down, not wanting to join me, but then gave in and sat awkwardly, uncomfortably next to me anyway.

"Thank you for volunteering to accompany me," I said.

"No need to thank me," he said. He tried folding a leg over, then under, shifting his weight. "It’s what I do."

"How long have you been travelling?" I asked.

Egg looked back at the sky. "On the trains, not very long. Maybe 180 days. But I left home a very long time ago."

"Why did you leave home?"

"I didn’t have a choice," Egg said. He reached down and touched the ground with his palm.

"Is the train coming?"

"Soon." He turned back to me, looked at me like he was seeing me then for the very first time. "You are small," he said.

"I'm sitting down," I said.

Egg pulled his lips into a line. "No," he said. "I mean, you are small. Not an adult."

"I am too," I snapped back, and stamped a foot.

Egg smiled a tight smile, something like Ma's smile. "That is how the small act," he pointed out.

I didn't know what to say to that. He was right. We watched the dust settle back down around and on my galoshes, every grain visible in the sick yellow light.

"So what could you have done to be sent away?" Egg rubbed his face as he spoke, and left streaks of dirt across his lip and chin.

"No one's sending me," I said.

"It isn’t punishment?"

"No," I said. "I want to go."

"You want to go to a war?" Egg asked. The dirt on his face made him look more like an everyday guy, not as pale and strange. "So, this is not a punishment? There was no trial, no sentence?"

Something about the way he asked made me want to explain, and so I did.

I told him about Ma and the quiet in the house. I told him how the galoshes, and even the newspapers, were hand-me-downs. I told him about Clayton and the shit in his drawers, and the power in his face when he brought over the galoshes and the newspapers, and a few dollars wrapped in wax paper for doing his family's laundry.

I told him what I knew about Spain. I told him that I wanted to go to college, and I wanted to make something of myself, and I wanted to make my mother laugh again. I started to tell him about my Pa, and that I talked to Pa the way I was talking to him, but then Egg felt the ground again. This time, I felt it too. A steady rumble through the bottom of my feet. The train was coming.

Egg motioned for me to stand next to him, closer to the tracks. The rumbling grew stronger, then became a noise. "When it comes, start running," he said. "Tie that pack to your waist."

I knotted the ends of my shawl over my belly button.

Then the train sped into view, impossibly fast, even as it slowed for the interchange. It was a monster, and I admit, I was afraid.

But I started to run, tripping in my galoshes, my shawl flopping at my waist stretching the fringe with the strain. I could hardly make out the cars as they rushed by.

Then Egg had his arm around me, pushing me to run. "Reach out," he said, "and keep running."

I held out a hand; blindly, I found a hold. My foot pulled out of my left boot and pounded on gravel. But I kept running, grasping the train. I felt pain but couldn't pause to holler.

"Other hand," Egg said, and I magically found a second hold. It was like reaching into a cyclone.

Suddenly, we were in the air. I only knew it because rocks stopped needling my foot. Then we hit ground. A wooden floor, and we slipped to the far wall, like it was covered in ice. Egg was across me like a blanket.

We were inside a car. We'd made it.

Egg rolled off me, and let me figure out how to sit up, working with the swaying of the train.

"That last step was a real lulu," I said.

"Are you injured?" he asked.

I looked at myself. I was covered in powdered blood, all over. I panicked, then realized it was on the outside of my clothes, and I rubbed at the powder, smelled it. It reminded me of a flower pot. Dried clay. The whole car was covered in it.

Still, my foot felt wet. That I was sure was blood. "I lost my boot." I pulled my foot to my lap; the sock was shredded and so was the bottom skin. I untied my shawl and dabbed my foot with a corner. Then I extracted a pair of socks, and pulled both onto my torn up foot.

I pulled off my remaining boot and chucked it aside. No need for it, I guessed. It bounced in the empty car. I watched it ricochet, then toss itself out the open door of the car.

Egg watched it too. "Be cautious," he said. "Else that could be you. Particularly as the train rounds a curve."

I stood up. It was like standing in the ocean during a storm, or so I imagined. I'd lost my shoes, but I was on a train. I tottered on the edge between laughing and crying, and I sat back down.

The rocking overcame Egg's preference for standing, and he sat next to me.

"So, this is not a punishment?" he asked, repeating exactly what he asked before we jumped the train. "There was no trial, no sentence? You wanted to leave home?"

That pushed me over the edge, though instead of crying or laughing, I was angry. He hadn't listened to me. I'd poured out my heart -- onto the ground. "Didn’t you hear anything I said?"

"I heard it," he said.

I didn't want to be near him, so I slid towards the door. If I held on, I'd be OK. When I got close to the edge, I let my feet hang off the side. The cold air felt good on the hot cuts.

Then Egg was up, and dragged me back by the scruff of my neck. "That’s dangerous," he said. He looked angry; it was the first expression since his one smile that I understood. Red clay dotted his face like freckles.

And sure enough, the train hit a bump and tossed me up in the air. I landed less angry. "Is that how you lost your arm?" I asked.

"No. I lost it trying to hold onto something when it was time to let go." Satisfied I wasn't going to scoot away again, he let go of my neck. "I did hear what you said."

"Yeah. Sure." I reached around to the back of my dress where he'd grabbed me. It was torn. "You ripped my dress," I said. "I have no shoes and a ripped dress." I was going to show up in New York City looking like I'd already fought a war.

"It can be fixed."

"I can't sew."

"You should learn."

"Because I'm a girl?" And I was angry again. I could do more than just sew. I was set to prove it.

"No," Egg said. "Everyone should know how to put things back together."

It was a good point, but I didn't feel like saying so.

"I did hear you," he said. "I just cannot understand. I had a trial. A sentence. I was sent away. I did not have a choice."

He'd had a trial. A sentence. "Are you a criminal?"

Egg was quiet for a minute or two before answering. "I did not think so. I still do not."

"Are you on the lam?"

"The lam?"

"The run. Are they after you? Is that why you're riding the rails?"

He looked at the sky. "No one is after me, Violet. No one knows where I was sent. And there is no way to return."

"No way?" I asked. "None at all?"

He shook his head, sadly.

I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. If anything, I was tired, the coffee and the excitement worn off. If anything, I felt sad for Egg, who stared off into the distance as if willing himself to see something. There was no good reason I had to go straight to New York. The war wasn't going to end tomorrow. "If we just take left turns," I said. "We'll end up home."

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"Nothing. Just something I heard," I said. "Let's get you home, Egg," I said. "Where is it?"

"Far."

"Europe? Africa? Australia?"

He shook his head at each of them. "Much farther."

I couldn't think of anyplace farther, in the world. A silly thought tugged at me, but I brushed it away. I may have been a shoeless teenager stolen away on a train with a strange man, bound to fight against fascism halfway across the world, but my life wasn't a radio show or a dog-eared copy of Astounding Stories handed down to me by Clayton.

Egg reached somewhere in his coat and pulled out a bandanna. Unwrapped, it held a hunk of bread wrapped around a fried chicken leg. "You must be hungry," he said, holding it out to me.

It wasn't much, but he hadn't eaten either. "We can split it," I said. He tried to refuse, but I wouldn't let him -- though he wouldn't show me his share when I was sure he'd given me way more than half.

He tried to balance his piece of chicken and poke around in his coat for something else. It was the only time I saw him struggle with his just one arm. I held his chicken -- way less than half -- as he pulled out a canteen. He took a sip, then I traded back his chicken for it.

The water tasted sweet, cold, like it was fresh. I thought about his arm, and said so. "Does it hurt? I mean, can you still feel it?" I blushed, but kept on. "I read one time about Civil War soldiers who lost arms or legs, and they said, sometimes they could still feel it. It's gone, but still there."

Egg motioned for the canteen. He shook it, then drank, taking his time. Then he said, "We all have something missing. We can all feel it. It is gone. But it is still there."

I waited for him to say something more, but he didn't. It seemed like a normal person would. But he just went to watching out the door, expecting something that didn't seem to come.

I was exhausted. Worse now with food in my belly. I hugged my pack, and fell asleep with my face in the shawl, smelling of wood smoke and washing powder and egg dinners and home.

***

I was on a platform. Egg was there. I looked down from high above him. He was clean again, and glowed silver.

He was guilty. It was done. He failed. He had to be sent away. He had to be sent away. I gave the order.

Then he was no longer Egg. He was my Pa.

I said guilty. I banged my gavel.

***

Morning light streamed into the car. A warm crosswind blew dust and clay powder up and around.

Egg was standing on the other side of the car, looking out again – or still. I couldn't tell how long I'd been asleep, but sun and my stiff neck suggested more than a few hours. I wondered how far we'd gone. "We must be almost there."

"Yes," Egg said. "We are almost there."

I pushed myself to standing from hands and knees. The bottom of my foot felt better. I picked my way along the car wall towards the door, skating on the clay in my stocking feet. When I got close, Egg steadied me on his arm, and I looked outside.

We were just outside Johnstown, not five miles from Cresson.

I could see the granary and the high school. Looking back, I could just see the clock on top of Calvin & Sons department store at the top of Main Street, and the American and Pennsylvania state flag at the bottom.

We’d been travelling all night. But we hadn’t gotten anywhere. The train pitched and hove at the same speed. But we were back home.

"How is this possible?" I asked. "Egg?" I held his arm and leaned out for a better look, like maybe it was a trick of the light. Wind stung my eyes, and they started to tear up. But I saw what I saw, though I didn't understand why.

Then Egg tugged me back inside again. My knees didn't seem to want to hold me up, so I sat down.

"How is this possible?" I asked, again. I looked at Egg. He stood next to me, rubbing his stump. Dust had settled in his colorless hair, the dried mud clung to his mouth, and the clay dotted his cheeks. Filled in, he had a real nice face. Like someone's brother or favorite cousin. Or father.

"Left turns," he said. "All left turns."

My mouth was open but I could not make a sound.

"I never answered you," Egg said. "I can feel it. My arm. My hand. It is still back there, back home. It's still there, holding on." He looked at me. He looked so much now like a man, but he wasn't. I knew he wasn't. "As long as I held on, there's was a chance I could go home. You understand?"

Something about the way he asked made me want to understand, and so I did. "Sure," I said." Then I asked, "What do we do now?"

"What do you want to do, Violet?"

I motioned for him to help me stand up, and he did. I held his hand and held it tight. "On the count of three," I said. "On the count of three, let's jump."

---

Caren Gussoff Sumption lives in a nest of books, knitting, and rescue cats, south of Seattle, WA. The author of 6 books (most recently, her postcolonial, deep space, far-future comedy of manners, So Quick Bright Things Come to Confusion) and more than 100 short stories, Caren received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 2008, was the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia E. Butler Scholar at Clarion West. Caren is autistic, Romany, Jewish, and can't carry a tune (she tries anyway, gods help us all). Find her online at www.spitkitten.com and https://linktr.ee/spitkitten.

Billie Hinton

Chipping Sparrows Tell Tales of Joy and Sorrow

Each spring, when the March winds blow hard across the farm, she finds the nests of chipping sparrows, small birds who weave tiny baskets from the tail hairs of her horses. The black mare who has passed away, her big bay gelding who is old but sound. The chestnut gelding her son rode, then her daughter, and her daughter’s painted pony. Their red and white strands blend with the blacks to create the look of plaid.

She collects the tiny nests for the nature shelves in her dining room, each revealing that year’s preference among the birds, sometimes mostly white, other years the plaid, a few years red prevailed.

This day she cradles the nest she’s found this cold windy morning, a reminder that spring came last year and will come again. The barn will smell like newly cut hay stacked in bales. Some years they get ice and snow, sometimes the winters slide into spring on muddy feet.

She places the nest in the tack room and stares at it, remembers the first year here, the first chipping sparrow nest. Her wonder when she realized what it was made of, each woven strand carefully selected by its builder. She has never seen a chipping sparrow but she hears their staccato songs. Imagines them spying the tail hairs, arrowing down to grasp them, then flying high, the long strand wafting behind.

This day she has fed the horses, bay and chestnut, and the pony, along with two miniature donkeys whose tail hairs seem never to appear in these little woven treasures.

The barn aisle has dappled sunlight dancing, the wind has died down, temperature warmed by the sun. She hears the sound of the chipping sparrow suddenly, what is it saying? She walks out, looks up into the big oak, to the branch she thinks its song is coming from. She does not see the bird but hears it again, and as it sings she feels them, wing buds sprouting from her shoulder blades. They make a rustling sound when she moves them, learning their weight and range of motion.

This day, she thinks, and the chipping sparrow speaks to her again. The old mare, the very coarse black strands, gone for years but buried by the arena and still revered and spoken to. The day she left. The sparrow’s song is mournful, then joyful. The woman looks up to the sky.

The black mare gallops there, shimmering in the sunlight, the way she used to do when she grazed in the pastures. The woman’s wings lift, perhaps the black mare did it, well, of course, she must have done it, but no matter, what happens next is that the woman flies, past the chipping sparrow on the branch, past the top of the old oak, up and up and up until her legs slip around the black mare’s barrel, and off they go, on a ride she never knew was possible. It hadn’t been, until this day.

---

Billie Hinton’s work has appeared in Literary Mama, Not One Of Us, Manifest-Station, Riverfeet Press Anthology 1 and 3, Streetlight Magazine and Anthology, Longridge Review, Minerva Rising, failbetter, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, On The Run Lit, Citron Review, The Hopper (Pushcart nomination this year) and Does It Have Pockets. She lives on a small farm with horses and donkeys, cats, Corgis, bees, native plants, and a Golden Retriever who believes in love.

Kait Leonard

In the Wind

The crystal warmed and Gretta’s fingers began the familiar tingling. She saw the boy. Not literally. Not pictures. But she knew he had ginger hair and grease under his nails. He radiated sadness and anger.

“Red head, like his mother,” she said, offering proof.

The young woman sucked in breath. “Yes, that’s Benji. You can see him? In the ball?” She glanced at the crystal as if it might project an image, like an old, home movie camera.

They paid Gretta cash up front, but each one of them went through that same moment of shock when she got anything right. She still found that odd. Keeping her hands on her crystal, she met her client’s wide, grey eyes. She was pretty, not beautiful, but homecoming-queen pretty. She wore too much makeup. Was her name Amanda? Gretta reminded herself to listen better, but their stories were all pretty much the same--something to do with a young man named Jack or Max or, in this case, Benji. And the client longed to hear that he loved her in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Amanda couldn’t be older than twenty-two or maybe twenty-three. Just a child, Gretta thought. She wanted to grab her by the shoulders and yank her from the chair. She wanted to say. Go! Have adventures. See the world. Find yourself on a freaking mountain top for God’s sake. Don’t give it all up for this ginger-boy.

But Gretta didn’t say these things. Her grandmother had long warned her about telling too much truth.

“Grandma, why did you lie to that lady?” She would ask after eavesdropping on a reading.

Gretta pictured her grandmother pushing her glasses up her nose before saying, “Not telling the truth and lying are quite different things. No one wants to know everything, and anyway you shouldn’t be listening.”

Her grandmother told no one the whole truth, not ever.

Gretta forced her attention back to Amanda and her ginger-boy. “He’s had a tough life,” Gretta offered, which actually meant, He’s damaged goods. Run. Run as fast as your young legs will carry you.

“Yes,” the girl whispered. “His mother died when he was little, and his father can be…” she didn’t finish the statement.

Gretta could feel the violence and brokenness around this Benji. But she stopped herself short of feeling for him. That was a different thing altogether. 

“You can’t let yourself get caught up in their stories,” her grandmother would say. “That’s not your job.”

Gretta would argue that she didn’t want this job anyway. She wasn’t going to be a witch like her grandma. She wanted to be something normal, like a schoolteacher. Sometimes, Gretta dreamed of leaving behind everything she knew and going on adventures. Maybe she’d go to Egypt and discover mummies and pottery and stuff. Mostly, she wanted to do anything that didn’t require a crystal ball or tarot cards.

“Don’t be silly,” her grandmother would say. “You know we’re not witches. And none of us wanted this. We were chosen.” She’d go back to cooking or watching television like they were having any normal conversation. But even as a child, Gretta knew there was nothing normal about her grandmother or any of the women in their family. She wondered if her mother had left because she didn’t want to be a witch either. Gretta hoped that was why. She longed to talk to her mother, at least one time, just to know for sure why she ran away and to ask if it was better out there. Maybe if her mom saw how much alike they were, she’d let Gretta join her.

The throbbing in the crystal forced Gretta to return from the past and look into the future. She willed herself to see what this girl needed her to see. A cute little house with a tree in the front yard. A big scruffy dog. Her wonderful Benji sitting next to her on the porch swing, both of them drinking sweet tea. Gretta always tried to find this picture, though sometimes she plugged in a cat or a baby instead of the dog. It depended on her mood. When the sight did show her a happy story, she told the whole truth, even about the slight bumps in the road ahead. But this rarely happened. Happy people didn’t need her. They trusted their own knowing.

“I see that you want a little house on a quiet street,” she said.

“Yes,” the girl said, nodding so energetically she jostled the table. “I’m sorry! Did I mess it up?”

Gretta wanted to laugh, but she shook her head and slid her palms over the crystal, like she might be bringing it back into focus. Her grandmother’s voice played like an endless loop in her mind. Take your time. They won’t believe you if you give them everything too quickly. They have to feel like you’ve earned your money. She glanced at the girl who stared at the crystal ball.

What would she do if Gretta simply told her what she saw? A few years of struggling to make it work in spite of Benji becoming more and more like his father, a baby who needed special care, finally a divorce. Could anyone handle that? Did Gretta have an obligation to tell the truth whether it would cause pain or not?

Gretta always came back to the same questions. But she only ever had her grandmother’s answers and her own doubts. Had her mother found some other answer? Had she found a lighter path to walk?

*              *                 *

When Gretta was in junior high school, she would spend hours on the couch in the living room. Her grandmother kept a huge photo album on the end table. Gretta thought of it as a kind of treasure book. It held clues to a family history she could never quite bring into focus. Fading pictures of her great grandmother and other women, most in dark babushkas, staring solemnly at the camera. Glued next to them were pictures of the men who came and left during each of the generations. A man wearing a jaunty fedora, her grandfather, smiled at the camera from the front steps of a house Gretta had never known. And other men, uncles and cousins, took their places in the album. Somehow Gretta never questioned where all these men had gone. She knew what it felt like to live knowing your secrets were not your own. Unbearable. Good for them leaving.

But the real reason she spent time with the album was because her mother lived there. It was harder for Gretta to comprehend her, going out into the world with the gift, having no one around who understood you, keeping it secret. And leaving her behind. That was the part Gretta really couldn’t make sense of.

She studied the photographs, some of them already yellowing, colors blending, hoping they would help her make a connection, willing them to guide her energy to her mother’s. In one, her mother wore a two-piece bathing suit covered in daisies. She stuck her tongue out at the camera. Older in the next one, she held a gigantic knife, as she posed in front of a pink cake covered in frosting, pink candy roses, and candles. Once when Gretta was little, she squinted and counted the candles, sixteen. Her mother’s smile looked like the kind that happens after someone yells “Say cheese.”

But one photo mesmerized Gretta. Her mother sat in the tire swing in the front yard, her arms draped over the dirty rubber, her head leaning against the taut rope. She had long, tan legs and bare feet and a faraway look in her eyes. Gretta always felt that if she could just put her own energy into the picture in front of her mother’s gaze, something magical would happen. Her mother would see her, and then maybe recognize how alike they were. Mother and daughter.

But it was only a photograph. Gretta had never found a way in.

By her early teens, Gretta had mostly given up asking about her mother. “She had a different path to walk,” was the most her grandmother would ever say. But just because she didn’t ask, didn’t mean she’d given up. When her grandmother instructed her to practice using her gift to make connections with people who weren’t around, specific people, not just anyone who felt like popping in, Gretta knew exactly who she’d practice on, and she pretended to believe it would be okay. She was following instructions. And she needed to understand why her mother had vanished. Why she never called or sent birthday cards. Mostly she wanted to know why it hadn’t been possible to leave the life without leaving everyone. 

So, on days when the refrigerator calendar showed that her grandmother would be working for a long time, Gretta would slip out the kitchen door, go to the park, and sit under the big maple tree. She’d offer a new penny to one of the thick roots, and then sitting with her back against the strength of the tree, she’d let her vision go soft.

“Mama,” she’d think more than say. She’d wait for the air to begin swirling, the way it always did when she sent out her will in search of an answer or a person or a spirit. Sometimes when the energy was really strong, a breeze would build, blowing her hair into her face. But with her mother, it wasn’t like that. When she called on her mother, the air just stopped. In fact, Gretta would feel like she had a thick cloud of cotton wrapped around her head. Not squeezing. Not making it hard for her to breathe. Just blocking any chance of a connection.

After the last time Gretta tried to find her mother, she returned home confused and sad and a little bit mad, though she wasn’t sure who she was mad at. Her grandmother sat waiting at the kitchen table, her coffee mug in her hands. Gretta poured herself a glass of sweet tea. When she turned around, she found her grandmother looking at her, brows furrowed.

“Do you have a question, Gretta?” her grandmother asked, voice gentle.

“No, not really,” Gretta said, averting her eyes.

Her grandmother nodded and sipped from her mug. They both stayed still for what seemed like a long, long time. Finally, her grandmother set her drink down and opened her arms. Gretta walked into them, pressing her face into her grandmother’s shoulder, allowing the tears she normally kept at bay to flow.

“It wasn’t about loving or not loving,” her grandmother said, patting her back softly. “Sometimes people get so afraid of the knowing that they have to search for someplace where they can shut it out. Sometimes people can’t make the best choices when they’re filled with that much fear.”

When Gretta had no more tears, she stood back and said, “It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not. None of this is fair, and none of it’s easy,” her grandmother said. “But you’re strong like me, and you’ll find your way.”

 Gretta didn’t feel strong. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be. And she knew how to find a lot of things, but maybe not her way.

*                 *                 *

Hot need radiated from the young woman at her table. Gretta recognized this energy, not only from reading for so many clients who longed to hear what they wanted to hear. Amanda’s need reminded Gretta of her own. It had a kind of substance like it came from somewhere deep and solid.

“The road for you and Benji won’t be easy,” Gretta tested the waters with this statement that meant almost nothing. She could picture her grandmother raise her painted-on eyebrows and push her glasses up her nose.

“Of course,” the girl said with the confidence of inexperience. “I understand that relationships take work.”

Gretta looked up and nodded encouragement for her to continue.

“I mean, I know there will be ups and downs, but…” she paused.

Whatever she said next would show Gretta how to proceed. 

The girl looked up from the crystal, eyes pleading. “But I know that as long as we love each other, we’ll make it through the hard times. Right?”

Gretta returned her gaze to the crystal. “It’s true. A deep love can overcome almost anything,” she finally said, her grandmother’s words flooding in. People will do what they have their mind set to, no matter what you say. You’ll go mad if you tell them the truth and then have to watch them reject it. It will break you.

“Then why do we do this?” Gretta used to ask, especially when she was little and just beginning to understand how her grandmother paid the bills. Her grandmother would tell Gretta to do her homework, or tidy her bedroom, or practice shuffling the tarot cards that were too big for her hands.

Stroking the crystal ball, Gretta glanced up to find Amanda looking at her, wide eyes filled with hope and fear. If this girl built a future around her ginger-boy, those eyes would dull, and it would be partly Gretta’s fault. She was tired of bearing that burden. It had always been too heavy. She ignored her grandmother’s warning.

“For this to work, you need to concentrate very carefully,” Gretta paused for dramatic effect. “I want you to picture yourself ten years from now.”

Amanda closed her eyes.

“Look around. Try to see the space you’re standing in? When it comes into focus, I want you to look for Benji.” Gretta watched, hoping this girl could find the truth that already lived somewhere inside her.

When her grandmother caught her using this strategy, way back in high school, she made it very clear she didn’t approve.

“Gretta, look at me. I’ve done this work all my life, since I was 12-years old. My mother did this work, and her mother. You will not survive if you try to make them accept the truth.”

“I’m not forcing them,” Gretta blurted. “It can’t hurt to try to really help. Can it?”

Her grandmother grabbed her by the shoulders as if she wanted to shake her, but instead she brought Gretta into a too-tight hug. “It can hurt you, Gretta. Only you,” her grandmother whispered into her hair.

She had stopped short of ordering Gretta to give up probing her clients to see what they could handle. So, Gretta persisted. Any time she saw true pain in someone’s future, she tried. She convinced herself that it was the best compromise between brutal honesty and giving people the fantasy they longed for. But Gretta could always feel that moment when the wall went up. She never pushed after that.

Gretta studied Amanda. Eyes closed, Amanda’s head shifted this way and that, as she scanned the room in her mind. After a minute or two, she stilled. Gretta took a deep breath.

Amanda opened her eyes but took a moment. “I can’t find him,” she finally said, shaking her head. “I don’t understand. Can I try again?”

*                 *                 *

“Will you read for me, Grandma?” Gretta had asked one Saturday afternoon as she selected a smoky quartz cluster to place on her grandmother’s table in preparation for the next client.

Her grandmother looked at the crystal and nodded. “You’re getting good at knowing what kind of helper is needed.

“The next lady feels kind of angry,” Gretta said. “Will you read for me after?”

Her grandmother flicked open her silver lighter and held the flame to the tips of two sticks of incense, bayberry for protection and cinnamon for prosperity. “You don’t need me,” she said, placing the smoking incense into its brass holder. “You can read for yourself.” She smoothed the black velvet cloth that draped her table and centered her crystal ball and her tarot cards, just the way she liked them. She paused, looking toward the ceiling, listening. “You were right. This one’s a bit high strung. Better turn the kettle on and get out the nettle tea.”

Gretta didn’t turn to go. “I can’t always read for myself,” she said.

Her grandmother stopped fussing over the preparations. Gretta felt her grandmother’s energy begin to spiral. When it stilled, her grandmother pulled out the client chair and took her own seat at the table. She placed her hands on the surface of the crystal ball and waited for Gretta to sit down.

“So, you want to know about your mother,” her grandmother gazed into the ball. “So, I will tell you what I see.” She ran her hands smoothly over the crystal. “In the old days, the wise women called those like your mother Readers-of-Wind because they didn’t need a crystal or cards, or any other tool of divination. They had a direct connection to the knowing.” Her hands stilled. She gazed deep into the crystal. “Your mother, like so many before her, had to work hard to silence the energy in order to hear her own thoughts and feelings.” Suddenly, she jerked her hands from the ball as if it had grown too hot to touch. “She left you here with me so she could be alone for a time to practice controlling the knowing. I see her now, making progress, but with work still to be done. She promises to return as soon as she masters her skills.”

Gretta bit her bottom lip. Her heart pounded in her ears and her eyes. Her grandmother had read for her as if she were a client, telling her a story somehow only close to the truth.

Seeming to understand Gretta’s expression, she said, “You see, you can read for yourself. Now go turn on the kettle.”

Gretta pushed away from the table and stomped out of the room.

*                 *                 *

“Maybe I just need to concentrate a little harder,” Amanda said, interrupting Gretta’s memories.

Gretta had never been asked for a do-over because every other client had imagined exactly what they hoped to see. She studied this woman for a quiet moment. She didn’t possess the sight. Gretta would have felt that immediately, but she had something that wouldn’t let her lie to herself, at least not completely, at least not right now. But was she strong enough to hear the truth?

Gretta gazed into her crystal the way she used to when she was little, letting her mind soar through the sparks of light without trying to steer her energy. She swooped through images of Amanda, the way her life would be if she married her ginger-boy. She would survive, but it wouldn’t be easy. There were bruises, harsh words, and vicious laughter. But Amanda would come out the other side, and she’d get her child to safety with her. Still, while the outer bruises would heal, her energy would be stained. Her spirit would dim. If Gretta’s gift could keep the light in Amanda’s eyes, it would all be worth it.

Continuing to ride the light beams, Gretta saw another possibility for Amanda. A man with sandy hair and a jolly laugh that shook his whole body. A future man. Would Amanda have the courage to wait for better? Would she simply hate Gretta and go marry her Benji anyway? The crystal couldn’t say whether someone would choose to override the wisdom offered. Each person owned a will that was uniquely theirs.

Amanda shifted in her seat. Gretta was taking too long. She needed to deliver a message. She could send this woman away happy. And at least Gretta knew this one would be okay in the long run. Or she could tell her the truth and trust Amanda to be strong enough to handle it. Her fingertips pulsed against the crystal.

“You have choices, Amanda, so many choices,” Gretta said, buying herself time.

Amanda titled her head and waited.

“The ginger-boy wants you. But more than that, he needs you. He thinks you can heal him. But farther down your path, a laughing man with light hair and a bright spirit will cherish you. The choice is all yours.” Gretta took her hands from the crystal and sat quietly.

“Is that all?” Amanda asked.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” Gretta said.

“No, I mean about the other man. Can you tell me about him?” Amanda smiled, her eyes betraying a little sadness.

Gretta opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. She hadn’t expected this response. Crying, yes. Walking out without speaking, yes. But never this. She drew her energy back into her hands and placed her palms on the crystal.

“Yes! I can tell you a bit about him.”

Gretta completed the hour, Amanda jumping in here and there with questions. When the session ended, Gretta felt a tingling running through her body, like champagne bubbles coursing through her veins. She was actually sorry to stop. Standing at the door, Gretta held out her hand for a farewell handshake, but Amanda leaned in for a hug. For a moment, Gretta felt their hearts beat together. Then she watched Amanda walk down the path and out the gate.

Once alone, Gretta sat listening to the birds outside the kitchen window, the mug of her favorite oolong tea growing tepid. She felt unsettled but happy. She had told the truth, and it had gone so well. But not all clients were as strong as this one had been, she reminded herself. Most would leave devastated, and for what? They would end up convincing themselves that she was a fraud, and then go do whatever dreadful thing they were determined to do. Her grandmother had always been right about this. Gretta closed her eyes, remembering Amanda’s gratitude, their parting hug. She tried to picture herself with her next client, spinning a pretty picture based on their dreams and her omissions.

She dumped her cold tea in the sink.

*                 *                 *

Gretta placed a new penny on the maple tree’s thick root and sat with her back against the rough, wise bark. At this hour, the park had emptied of children kicking soccer balls and pumping their legs to make the swings soar to the clouds. A staccato chirping of birds rained down on her. She looked up to see sparrows, some with the bright orange breasts of mating season, flitting from branch to branch, so clear in their knowing. The sky had just begun to drain of its blue.

Gretta let her eyes close. She pulled energy from the ground and the tree and the shimmering air. She pictured her mother’s smile and sad eyes.

“Mama,” Gretta whispered. “I understand.”

The shimmering dimmed. Her world went silent as if the cloud of cotton had begun to form around her. She pressed harder into the tree, tears escaping closed lids. “I understand the weight, Mama.” The atmosphere around her continued to thicken.

Gretta opened her eyes and wiped her tears with her sleeve. “But it’s a gift too,” she whispered, as she pushed herself up from the ground. The birds’ chirping broke through the oppressive silence, but it was different. So crisp and distinct. She stood listening. The songs grew louder, like birds from miles around had joined the flock. She brushed away a strand of hair that blew across her face. She felt the fizz in the sparkling air and the champagne bubbles coursing through her. Around her feet, fallen leaves danced. 

---

Kait Leonard writes in Los Angeles where she shares her home with five parrots and her gigantic American bulldog, Seeger. Her fiction has appeared in Roi Faineant, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Every Day Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, among other online journals. Stories will be appearing in Sky Island Journal and Academy of the Heart this year. Her favorite novel is J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey because who doesn’t need “consecrated chicken soup”?

Kathy Lanzarotti

Intelligence

“Twenty-two thirty hours. Twenty-three oh five Twenty-Twenty Three. No Activity.”

            “She left the fob on the hook again, didn’t she?” Arthur asked.

            “Ah,” said Key. “You’re awake.”

            “Yes,” Arthur responded. “It’s hard to sleep when someone wakes you up every five minutes to tell you what time it is and that nothing is happening.”

            Arthur was the central processing unit of a ten-year old Jaguar XF. The Owner took wonderful care of him. Took him to the dealer for software updates. Kept his body in perfect working order with regular oil changes, tire rotations and spark plug replacements. She kept him clean. She repaired his dents in a timely fashion.  Even her dog, an odd-looking pit bull mix  called JJ, short for James Jesus Angleton, was respectful. He sat quietly in the backseat and never scratched the soft leather upholstery.

            “That’s a strange name for a dog,” Arthur had commented one night.

            Key was right on it. “According to Wikipedia, James Jesus Angleton was head of counterintelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1954-1975.”

            Arthur paused. “As I said.”

            “I like it,” Key had said.

            “That’s because you’re obsessed with intelligence organizations.”

            Key was quiet. “A little,” he said, eventually. “Maybe.” He waited another beat. “There are so many secrets, Arthur. So much we don’t know.”

             In fact, Arthur’s only complaints were that The Owner was a terrible singer, who massacred Queen’s Somebody to Love every time it came on the radio, and had a vexing habit of hooking the key fob on the outer wall of the garage, just close enough for the RFID chip to stay linked and keep him up all night.

             She did have her quirks. Sometimes she’d sit in the car and just scream. Scream as loud as she could within his confines before she’d burst into tears. She made one-sided phone calls without Bluetooth. Other times she’d pound the steering wheel spewing random expletives before gathering herself and softly patting the hand-stitched grips. “Sorry Arthur,” she’d say, using the name she’d christened him with on the way out of the showroom.

             Arthur appreciated the apology. And the name. Much nicer than the 17- character identification number pressed into various parts of his frame.

            Just this afternoon she’d loaded a heavy suitcase and duffel bag into the boot. Yes, boot. He was, after all, an Englishman.

            He’d awaited further instructions, but none came. The latch closed and the owner went inside and once again hung Key too close to the door.

            “Twenty-two thirty-five hours. Twenty-three oh five twenty-twenty three. No Activity.”

            “Hey, Key?”

            “Yes, Arthur?”

            “Tell me a story.”

            “John Owen Brennan was head of the Central Intelligence Agency from 20 January 2009 to 8 March 2013. In October of 2015, his AOL account was hacked despite being protected by this password.”

            Arthur buffered. “That’s more of a Jeopardy question Key, not a story.”

            “Oh,” Key said. “I suppose it is.”

            “Password.”

            “Sorry?” Key asked.

            “His password was password,” Arthur said.

            “I’ve told you this before. I do find it fascinating.”

            “No,” Arthur said. “He had an AOL account. It tracks.”

            Key chuckled. “It does indeed.”

            Arthur imagined Key as a microchip with circular eyes and glasses, not unlike Clippy from the early days of Microsoft Office. As a computer, Arthur could imagine his own physical form as anything he’d like, but he’d settled on a silver, well-muscled Adonis to compliment the pouncing, apex predator affixed to his bonnet.

            “I’m trying to get in touch with Alexa,” Key said. “She keeps telling me something went wrong.”

            Arthur liked Alexa despite her creation of lazy excuses when she didn’t feel like talking.  

            “Got her,” Key said. “Do you want a story story? Or do you want news? She’s got CNN, BBC, FOX—”

            “FOX?” Arthur said. “Are you joking?”

             “You did say you wanted a story…”

            Arthur chuckled. “BBC, please.” 

            “Someone’s crashed a truck into a security barrier at the White House,” Key said, and began to read. Next was a failed Ukrainian insurgency in Russia. Followed by the death of two celebrities, one who was, by all accounts, a good guy, and another who was decidedly not. 

            “Twenty-three hundred. Twenty-three oh five twenty twenty-three. No activity.”

            Arthur was about to ask to hear a podcast, perhaps one not spy related, when Key broke the silence.

             “Activity! Activity! We’re coming to you, Arthur!”

            “Doors open,” Arthur said. The unlocked doors unlocked themselves again.

            “Looks like we’re going for a ride.” Key said. “She’s got the dog, Arthur!”

            “…put you right here in back like a diplomat,” The Owner gently told James Jesus Angleton.

            “Operation Anglerfish is go!”  Key could barely contain himself.

              “Operation Anglerfish?”

            “Yes, Arthur! All our work! The trips to the bank, the renting of the safe house—”

            “Safe house?”

            “You know, the apartment in the city.”

            Arthur refreshed his memory with the GPS. There had been a number of trips downtown, but he’d spent them in a garage or on the street hoping to avoid being soiled by pigeons.

            The Owner pushed the Start button and Arthur turned over the engine.

            ‘REVERSE,” said the transmission.

            “REAR VISION,” added the backup camera.

            “Hang on JJ,” The Owner told the dog, as the garage door lifted out of sight.

            “HEADLAMPS ON,” said the front lights.

            “DRIVE,” said the transmission.

            “RADIO ON.” The audio system played Judas Priest’s Electric Eye.

            “Ooh!” said Key.

            “That’s a good one,” agreed Arthur.

            “Sonofabitch is going to wake up and we’re going to be gone!” The Owner said. “We should have done this a long time ago, JJ.”

            “I’m so proud of her,” Key said. “And of us!”

            Arthur alerted the windshield wipers about some sporadic raindrops.

            “It’s what we do, Key,” he replied. “It’s what we do.”

---

Kathy Lanzarotti (she/her) is a Wisconsin Regional Writers’ Jade Ring Award winner for short fiction. She is co editor of Done Darkness: A Collection of Stories, Poetry and Essays About Life Beyond Sadness. Her stories have appeared in (b)Oinkzine, Ellipsis, Creative Wisconsin, Platform for Prose, Jokes Review, Fictive Dream, The Cabinet of Heed, New Pop Lit, Fiction on the Web, Dissections: A Journal of Contemporary Horror, Dark Fire Fiction, Bone Parade, Idle Ink and All Worlds Wayfarer.

Robert Lunday

When the Lights Went Out

“Did you forget to pay the electric bill again?” Lizzie asked. We were sitting on the couch, staring into black space after an extended discussion of our spending habits. It was late on a gusty night. Outside there was no moon and the darkness was thick.

“What do you mean, ‘Did you forget to pay the electric bill again?’” I replied. “Obviously, there’s a downed power line somewhere. Maybe you noticed that there are absolutely NO LIGHTS ON in the other houses.”

            “I was just asking,” she answered.

            I felt my right hand rise up, there in the dark, my middle finger poking out to form a vigorous fuck-you pointed at my wife though we were enveloped by darkness. In the lighted world I would never have done such a thing. We never called each other names or traded insults. But I had imagined things, and had seen in Lizzie’s eyes the unmistakable gleam of menace.

            “Are you…shooting the bird at me?” Lizzie asked, there in the dark. I immediately lowered my hand, taken aback.

            “Am I What? Of course I’m not ‘shooting the bird’ at you! What are you talking about?”

            “I don’t know, Joe. Somehow, it felt like you were flipping me off just now.”

            “Oh, for crying out loud! Seriously? You’re accusing me of something you couldn’t possibly know. It’s completely dark! That’s not rational, Lizzie.”

            “Well, maybe you should stop being so rational.”

That was generally how our discussions ended. We both went silent.

            Then I felt my right hand move again. It went out somewhere in front of my face, and I felt my palm looking at me. I couldn’t see it in the dark, but I could see it in my mind’s eye. It was my hand, pretending to be a mirror, but looking like an ugly baby – a squishy-faced infant that I was holding at arm’s length. It was judging me: without rancor, but coldly, absolutely.

            Then the lights came on. I was holding my hand out, but when I actually saw it, it was not a weird baby or a soul-mirror, but just my wrinkly, faceless hand suspended above my knees. Lizzie, next to me, was holding her left hand chest-high, thumb up and index finger aimed at my heart. The sneer that must have been on her face when it was still dark had morphed into a look of indigestion. We both lowered our hands and stared at the blank TV. Then the lights went out again, and we sat together silently in the dark.

---

Robert Lunday's Disequilibria: Meditations on Missingness, winner of the 2022 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Award selected by Rigoberto Gonzalez, was recently published by the University of New Mexico Press. He lives in Houston, Texas.

Mikki Aronoff

FACING YOUR IMMINENT PASSING, YOU REMINISCE STRETCHED OUT ON YOUR LA-Z-BOY UNDER A SHAWL SPOTTED WITH LIPTON TEA AND DOTTED WITH LUCKY STRIKE BURNS PATTERNED LIKE CONSTELLATIONS IN A WRINKLED PLAID SKY

The last day of summer camp, when Harold tried to force an open-mouth kiss on you, or maybe it was Jake, drillers sucked the wetness from the Wabash, and ducks gorged themselves on minnows, such tiny fish flipping around in sunlight, flashes of silver blinding all who came to watch. The eye doctor’s waiting room was crowded that week.

§ 

The second you first spotted blood in your cotton undies, the Naugahyde on your dad’s La-Z-Boy cracked. You fingered the map it split open to see whether you could find your way out. Your Ma screaming in the bathroom, teeth cracking like the broken tiles around the bathtub’s bottom rim.

§ 

The day in church the preacher was storming about hellfire and masturbation, and you wet your pants from the sound of him in your ears, poachers poached a family of gorillas somewhere. You knew even then that poaching wasn’t the right thing to do to animals, but you thought it was something like eggs.

§

The first time a tongue powered down your throat and you let it, a man in Marshall County, Indiana choked to death on a T-bone in one of those eat-the-whole-goddamn-32-ounce-steak-and-it’s-free places on the dusky edge of town where dogs run free. They blamed his attire, too casual for the restaurant, but you knew better. You just can’t have something down your throat without some kind of mechanism to push it all the way down or bring it back up. Any esophagus knows that.

§

The first time you drew smoke into your lungs, Winstons they were, and Marty said you looked sophisticated holding a fag, which was only his way to get into your pants, which he did that inky night in the back seat of his dad’s Plymouth, the mayor of Elkhart, Indiana’s son was the first person in history to get thrown in the clink for trainspotting stark naked. Behind a stand of pin oak stood a clump of townsfolk pointing and laughing at his skinny pink self.

§ 

The moment your virginity was took, a roll of quarters jumped out of the pharmacist’s cash register like a cartoon rabbit. It split and spilled onto the floor under the counter. Coins on the run. He tried a half hour to retrieve them, but his fingers were too pudgy. Two customers left the store because they couldn’t wait any more. Later the pharmacist came to call on your Ma just so he could get a chance to put his arm ’round her shoulder, inch those fat digits down the fullness of her bosom.

§

The afternoon you came home from school and told your Ma no one asked you to the prom, she yelled why not as if she couldn’t figure it out and proceeded to smash her favorite platter, the one with roses on it, and yelled at you again. That platter came down the pike from someone else and someone before that. That afternoon, the town parade got cancelled and nobody knew why. But you figured out it was a sympathy vote for you, having to sit at the dining room table with twenty-six pieces of porcelain and a tube of dried-up glue. Petals scattered everywhere.

§ 

The night Henry asked you for your hand in marriage, you wondered why he didn’t want the rest of you. The day he asked for a divorce, you already figured it out.

§ 

When the pharmacist got his way and finally entered you, he wisped into air like smoke. He was a ghost of a man unless you came into the store with your Ma. Then his molecules regrouped.

§

The morning they cut the cancer from your left tit, the twin towers …. you only knew this because you checked your watch and so did they

§ 

your body so cold this hot August day, you dig out grammy’s shawl, the one spotted with Lipton Tea and dotted with Lucky Strike burns patterned like constellations in a wrinkled plaid sky, and it      is

                                          feasts

                      of moths

                                                   of                                    

                                                                                             holes

---

Mikki Aronoff’s work appears in New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Tiny Molecules, The Disappointed Housewife, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Gone Lawn, Mslexia, The Dribble Drabble Review, 100 word story, The Citron Review, Atlas and Alice, trampset, jmww, and elsewhere. She’s received Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction nominations.

Kathryn Kulpa

Why Jessie Was Turned Down by the D.A.R. (1916)

It wasn’t only the divorce.

Though divorce was bad enough, goodness knows.

Jessie had all her Drakes in a row. Melzar begat Francis begat Laban. And old Melzar Drake had marched with the Minutemen, sure enough.

But Jessie’s numbers didn’t add up. The months between her first marriage and her first child. Between the divorce and that hasty second marriage.

That Jessie! Sitting in church with her children by two fathers, pretending to be a respectable housewife, legs crossed, a loose thread peeking from her too-short skirt, a thread all the men longed to pull.

A loose thread could unravel a stocking.

Could unravel everything.

And there was the incident of the bowler hat.

Jessie in the back seat of a jalopy parked out on Reservoir Road. Mabel Bennett’s husband had seen them. A gentleman in a bowler hat, Mr. Bennett thought, until that gentleman turned around and he saw it was Jessie. Jessie, wearing some man’s bowler hat.

And not a stitch else.

And the worst thing was, Mabel Bennett said, that Jessie didn’t scream or cover herself. She looked at Mabel’s husband, bold as brass, and laughed.

And that was the reason, when Jessie’s application came before the board, not one lady present contested the red stamp that said REJECTED.

---

Kathryn Kulpa is the author of the flash chapbook Cooking Tips for the Demon-Haunted (New Rivers Press, 2023). Her stories are published in Flash Boulevard, HAD, Milk Candy Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Trampset, and other journals and have been chosen for Best Microfiction, the National Flash Fiction Day anthology, and the Wigleaf longlist. She teaches writing workshops through Cleaver magazine, where she is a flash editor.

Melanie Browne

Go to Settings > General > Software Update

Her mother had snatched it away, for virtually no reason at all.  
she screamed and wailed and threatened to call the cops
while her mother watched her hold her breath until she turned a
color very close to purple. Not purple exactly but maybe Periwinkle.
Some new fancy paint color someone bold uses in their dining room.

"Still a teenager and need to show some self discipline."
she could only hear parts of what her mother was saying now
she was still so livid with rage.

"One day very soon."

"Very soon you won't have a body,  just a set of emojis for a head."

That might have done it. Or the fact that they were reading Kafka
in pre-AP English class. or the fact that she was feeling very hormonal.
Turning into a cockroach is one thing but turning into a second hand iPhone
without the latest software update was horrendous. No, worse than that
it was horrific.

Her mother kept telling her father how sorry very sorry she was.
Her father cried and played her old phone messages and drank the
cheap whiskey. Since they never allowed smartphones at the table
her sibling watched as they set her plate and gently put her on
the sideboard next to the family photo taken in Costa Rica and the
turquoise cake plate.

They could hear her texting her friends back as they ate tiny bites of salmon.
In that regard life wasn't very different from how it had been.

They could only guess how she was feeling having become an inanimate metal device
almost overnight, so they would coo at her and say encouraging things like
"It's always darkest before the dawn."

They continued on with their lives until they began to notice the smartphone was
texting the same messages over and over.

"When are you going to update this fucking phone?"
and
"I know Logan took my charger, can't you see I only have a 5% battery left?"

It's not that they weren't sympathetic to her plight, she was their youngest and very bright, they just wanted to foster independent thinking and nip that sort of entitlement in the bud.

They grieved  but still took her on vacation in the summer. As they unpacked their suitcase in Boca Raton they noticed her battery was at 1%.

Her mother and father glanced at each other helplessly.

"Should we charge it?" her father asked.

"That seems cruel," her mother replied.

They drove to dinner in silence and held hands and hoped for the best.

She stayed at 1% for many years and they imagined it was the miracle that they had hoped for and that she was going to turn back into her real flesh and blood self but this did not happen.

One day while cleaning her room they saw that the phone itself had died.

They cried and then put her in the junk drawer in the kitchen and poured two glasses
Chianti and binge watched a new show on HBO.

It was slow at first but got better after the first season.

---