Jeff Burt

The Boxers Protest

Rain collected in the soft indentations in the yard. The wind ruffled the water like a lazy spoon cooling coffee. A car had turned the ess curve a little too sharply, and was bogged down, wheels whining with increasing anger, splattering mud and mist from the tires’ frictionless spin.

The driver, a young man in his late twenties, reluctantly got out of the car to survey the ground. When he took his first step near the right front fender, his shoe and lower nine or ten inches of his trousers disappeared into the mud. I could hear the woman laugh as she scooted to the steering wheel. He looked around and mimed using a pry bar.

They were stuck, and I was stuck, mired by the insistent voices of my father and mother decreeing I should help travelers in trouble.

I opened my door and waved for them to come in. The woman shut off the engine and sprinted toward me. The man strolled, looking skyward, as if God had caused these indignities.

My dog sniffed both of their behinds, and satisfied, went to the stuffed chair and laid down. I was also less energized by guests than I expected.

No tow truck would come at this hour and in this weather. I had two spare bedrooms, so invited them to stay overnight.

I outfitted them the best I could; my sweats and a tee for him and, for the woman, my late wife’s sweats. My wife had been dead for four years, and I’d never been sure why I’d kept her sweats. At first, it was awkward seeing the young woman in them, but I was glad they’d finally come to use. When you get old, you look for reasons to justify hanging on, and this was one: those sweat pants brought a little magic back to my life, magic I had been missing for those four years.

They retired early, and I didn’t hear a peep.

I thought about my wife that night, how she always praised my ability to fix things, put two and two together. By profession I leveled buildings, piloted cranes, drove dump trucks, occasionally set explosives. For her, I did delicate repairs. Once I repaired her favorite tea cup , the crack undetectable, and she told me I had a little magic to me, a line she repeated for many years. When she died, the magic disappeared. I was run down, the cabin was run down, and everything seemed to be running downhill.

~

Snow fell overnight. It was not snow in a flake form, but an accumulation of flat hail and slush. The little wooden table I had set out on the side of the house had about three-quarters of an inch of what might’ve been mistaken for chunks of quartz. The dog slipped and slid on the porch, licking every step, at first with razored hackles up, then, finding it unusual and amusing, raced forward, skidding, scampering in place, until she became wild, and circled the yard eleven times before remembering she had a duty to do. She entered the house with steam pouring off her back and haunches.

When they came into the kitchen, the young couple lamented how cold the house felt. I had a pot of coffee on, and they quizzed me about the grounds:  how old they were and whether or not the coffee had been approved by some council.. I couldn’t answer any of that, and they drank it all the same.

I had enough oatmeal to share, and the woman seemed thankful. They kept looking outside as if yearning alone could lift their car – which had sunk perhaps another two inches overnight – from the rut.

I told them the tow truck could not make it until nine, and that seemed fine with the woman. She plopped herself into the dog’s chair, opened a shade, and peered out into the snow, her brown eyes seemingly glazed blue. She stretched in an intentional way, as if doing yoga.

The man fidgeted. Nothing pleased him. Nothing seemed to work for him. He kept re-tying the robe I’d given him, and pulling up his socks over his pajama leg-bottoms to keep the air from the skin of his shins. He smoothed his hair back with both hands as if he were stuck beneath a waterfall, shaking his dry head back and forth and rubbing his eyes.

He asked if the tow truck driver could do all of his work without opening the car, and I said he might need to put the transmission in neutral.

That’s it though? he asked.

Yep, I said.

No trunk? Or opening the hood?

Nope.

I’ll have to be there, of course, he said.

You should be, yes.

In case he needs the keys.

Or help. Another set of eyes is always good.

Should we pack our dirty clothes and be ready to go as soon as he pulls the car out?

If you want to get going right away. I don’t mind some conversation if you want to stay a bit.

The woman perked up, almost leaping to her feet.

We aren’t much for conversation, unless it’s on Zoom, she said, and laughed. Maybe if you were in one room and we were in another we could Zoom.

We’ll be ready to go, the man said.

They went to the bedroom to change, and came out with a trash bag of dirty clothes and their luggage. I had one spare toothbrush and offered it to him, but he pushed it away.

The woman said they had used their own, but I hadn’t heard the water run, so knew that wasn’t true. My coffee brewed strong, and I could smell it on their breaths.

My dog had taken back her chair as soon as the woman had stood, and now rose to inspect their luggage, wagging her tail.

Must be a mouse in there, I said.

Oh, probably just my lotion, the woman said. Unless she’s a drug-sniffing dog. She laughed again.

The man scoffed. We don’t have any drugs, don’t use any drugs.

He pulled the woman toward the door and there they stood, staring out without speaking for the ten minutes before the tow truck showed.

~

People can leave behind sensitive things when they pack too quickly. My wife’s brother and sister-in-law would routinely leave medications – prescribed and non-prescribed – in plain sight on the bathroom on the counter: beta blockers for the heart, nicotine patches and gum, and over-the-hood-of-a-car opiates, presumably for pain. My father often left a small stack of dirty clothes, which usually meant I should launder them and invite him back to pick them up, both of which I did.

This young couple left behind hair dyes, and in the corner near the outlet, a small pair of clippers.

I figured they were on the run, though from what or whom I could not say, and tried not to imagine. From the window, I saw them standing near the tow truck, inspecting the damage to the right front bumper as the tow truck driver hosed off the wheel and hub watching for axle damage. The woman was still laughing, though nothing was very funny out there – while the man frowned, paced, and glowered. I assumed he was not high and probably upset that she was.

The axle was broken. The man kicked the tire, aiming about three inches away from the tow truck driver, who responded with a swash of water on the man’s coat. The woman laughed.

Hesitatingly, the couple made their way back to the house and asked if they could stay until they arranged for a rental to be delivered. I said yes, and handed them the dyes and the clippers. The woman nodded and smiled.

This may not go well, she said, looking directly at me, somewhat sad and dreamily.

The man shook his head and stomped loose mud onto the entry rug. Not true Persian, is it? he asked.

No, I said. Home Depot, on-sale. Cheap. Lasts forever.

Not well, not well, not well, the woman sing-sang.

I’m going to have to disable your phone, and I need you to give it to me now, the man said, inverting the order of his steps, a not unusual thing to do in a moment of stress.

I handed over my cell phone.

Landline doesn’t work. Had it disconnected after my father died.

The man checked the wall phone anyway. He pulled out a snub revolver, somewhere between a derringer and a pistol, large enough to be a hand gun, but small enough to resemble a toy. He waved it, motioning for me to sit down. I sat.

He used my cell to call Enterprise and my credit card for the charge.

They can have a car here at 9:30, he told the woman.

Enough time, she said, to have coffee. You don’t know who we are or why we are here, do you?

Nope, I said. Just that you dyed your hair and cut it shorter.

Good, she squealed. You can live!

The dog came over and looked at me with eyes that said you are sitting in my chair.

I slid over to the couch and she clambered into the chair, her head over the armrest so she could see the road.

What do you plan to do with the car?

It’s a rental. We plan on leaving it.

Whose name is it in?

Ah, now, you don’t need to know that, do you? Let’s cut the questions and keep on living, okay? By the way, do you like my hair? The woman giggled and patted her head.

It’s well cut, I said.

But the color? The color?

Looks a tad too rusty, for my taste. Not an Irish red. Too dark.

I know, I know. But what can you do? CVS doesn’t carry Irish red.

But the cut is good, kind of sassy, I said.

Sassy? I like that, she laughed. I’m sassy, darling, she said to the man, who insistent on pacing a hole through my faux Persian rug.

Wonderful, he said. Fits you.

She scooped coffee into the filter, filled the coffeemaker with water, and then with her head in her hands and elbows on the counter, watched every drop stream into the pot until the beeper sounded. She smiled.

She poured two mugs, one for herself, and one for me.

Caffeine doesn’t make you agitated, does it? she asked. It does me, but I’m more proficient when I’m agitated. At work, I’m a dynamo in the morning, a slug after lunch, and then a vortex after my mid-afternoon cup. A fucking tornado. How about you?

It stimulates me, but I keep it to a cup a day so I don’t start clenching my teeth. My wife said she could hear me grinding my teeth by eight in the morning.

Your wife? She’s where?

Dead. Cancer. Four years ago.

Oh, sorry. You’re alone here. Get along with your neighbors?

Hardly know them. They keep to themselves. I’m a little rough for them, which is to say, maybe a little too poor for their tastes.

Oh, their rugs are real Persians?

Something like that.

Are they snoops? Are they gonna ask about the car?

Eventually. They’re East Coast snoops, which means they won’t ask for the first day. Midwestern snoops would ask within the hour.

She laughed. Guess I’m a Midwestern snoop. Do you know about estate scams? That’s our specialty. Buy an entire estate one day, sell it overnight, leave town the next morning before the wire transfer clears. Do one big one, you’ve got money for a year. This last one—big money. Four semis. Almost two million dollars. We get twenty percent.

The man abandoned his pacing to put his hand over the woman’s mouth.

She’s just making conversation, I said. She’s proud. It’s okay to be proud. I would have heard about it in day or two anyway, and put things together. I can still add things up, you know.

The man told me to stop talking, and strip down to my underpants, no socks, no shoes.

I protested, but did as he said.

When I was a teenager, I told the young man, I got arrested for walking down Main Street in just my boxers. The deputy held me in the lobby of the jail and called my dad. It was around midnight on a Friday after a basketball game at high school. I had taken off almost all of my clothes to protest against that very deputy. The deputy who had raced a classmate on a highway where she died in the resulting crash. I had stripped to my boxers because the deputy had tried to get my girlfriend to go off with him in his police car, and I knew the result. I had stripped down because I couldn’t think of anything else to do to draw attention.

I assumed that my father would bail me out, or talk my way out altogether. All he did, however, was chat with the deputy and examine the edge of the desk where he drummed his fingers. He didn’t acknowledge me once.

The deputy didn’t put me in one of the two cells. He let me sit in the lobby in my boxers under the fluorescents so that every person in a car or walking on the street could see.

Death by public humiliation.

Except I didn’t die.

When morning came and I got my release, I took the folded clothes under my arm, tied my tennis shoes, and tromped the eight blocks home in the early March cold.

My mother saw my outfit and did not bat an eye. She told me, this, pointing to my naked torso, this is a more serious problem than what you did last night. You’ll ruin your father’s honor. And mine.

I snorted and feigned throwing up. Honor, I said. You call siding with liars and cheats ‘honor?’ Saying nothing about the deputy murdering my friend when he raced her on County G and forced her off the road into a tree so just so he could have some fun?

And that’s how you challenge us? my mother snapped. Parading through town in your boxers? You need to go to college. You’ll learn there are better ways to protest than this small town can offer.

So I went to college. I learned new ways, and tried almost all of them. Sit-ins. Marches. Protests by word. Protests by deed. Letters to officials. Even a fire.

Deep in my heart I am still proud of wearing those boxers down Main Street, drawing attention to that murdering cop. No one listened to my protests. No one read my letters. Hell, they let the fire burn, didn’t even douse it.

But those boxers. The deputy was investigated, fired, arraigned, and found guilty for manslaughter. Imagine that. The power of a kid in his underwear.

This is all to let you know, I said, that sitting in my underwear I am more proud and more dangerous than I have been in decades.

The young man grunted, and said I was crazy, stupid, old.

I agreed.

~

Some argue awareness is consciousness, others that consciousness is always there, but not necessarily awareness, meaning even if a being is alert, it may lack the intellect to notice things profitable to its well-being.

These two could think, plan, react, and even steal. However, they were unaware of the danger lurking in their specific surroundings.

Scammers get frustrated when they can’t find another victim, or their costs rise necessitating bigger, more lucrative, and thus, riskier scams. I was no victim, either, unless they straight out shot me, which I mentioned the neighbors would overhear and report, as they did any loud noises, East Coast or Midwest.

They couldn’t abduct me, I told them. I was large, lazy, ornery, and had a terrible prostate. I peed a little every hour.

I knew their faces. I knew their names, at least their current aliases.

The woman banked with First Third. I could see the logo in the reflection of the computer screen on the window behind her. I saw the same logo on the man’s iPhone, along with app logos from Hertz, Enterprise, Zoom, and Airbnb. I told them a skilled detective skilled would identify them within an hour .

They clutched their phones even tighter. I was a threat.

And still the woman laughed. They were cooked, done. How could they still be giddy about a getaway? Was she sociopathic? Her giggling started to annoy me and her partner.

I told them I needed to pee and I needed to wear my pants or my kneecaps would turn into breakable glass. She laughed. He relented.

I peed in privacy, drew up my pants, and removed my belt.

When I opened the door I snapped the belt across the man’s face, then spun it around his neck before he could take a step. I had planned it, but my success surprised me.

The woman sat as if in a stupor, continuing to giggle. I dropped him to his knees, then used my chest to bully him to the floor, squashing him like a bug. I stood, with a foot on his lower back. Where’s the gun, I yelled at her.

She looked outside. The Enterprise car slipping on the snow into the driveway.

We packed it, she howled. It’s in his luggage.

A friendly double toot of the horn sounded.

It's a Prius, she said, mocking a pout. I wanted an SUV for the snow, but he wanted something inconspicuous. He said no one would expect criminals to drive a Prius. Scam artists aren’t Eco-friendly.

She closed the computer. She put her right hand on the table, flat, smooth, and then from underneath the table came an explosion. I thought at first she had fired a gun, but it was my dog barking at the driver coming to the house. The woman knew exactly why I had a stunned look on my face, and rolled into a ball on the couch, and began laughing.

The Enterprise driver knocked. I yelled for him to come in.

He clocked the woman in her spell of hilarity.

She’s high, I told him. They robbed someone, something.

I told him to call the police, and he dialed.

Is that a leash, he asked, pointing to the belt. Role play?

It’s my belt, I said. I use it to keep my pants up.

The woman rolled from the couch to the floor. My dog bathed her hands with licks as she covered her face.

That’s when I saw consciousness without awareness. The Enterprise driver’s eyes were wide open but he wasn’t seeing anything. Danger had called, and without fear, he had opened the door. He stood with an older man, shirtless, in saggy jeans with a belt around a man’s neck, a young woman helpless in mirth, and a dog sniffing his pants, yet all he could think about was sex.

They’re going to jail, I said.

He shook his head side to side. What about the car?

They won’t be needing it?

He got on his cell phone. There will still be a charge, he said, muttering that he would still need some paperwork signed.

The cops will do that, I said. What is their ETA?

ETA? I don’t know. I called my dispatch, not the police.

The woman erupted in long waves of laughter, holding her sides, crying, and then just crying.

The driver called 911. He turned to me asking what role she was playing.

In ten minutes, this will all be over, I told him.

I am sure if you asked the driver what happened that day, he would tell you a story featuring the belt with a side of kink.

If you asked the man with a belt around his neck, another story. The woman, a third.

They would tell of how consequences did not seem to flow from their actions.

The world tends toward disorder, and I had tried a little to hold it together.

A little magic had returned.

---

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife and a Labrador that thinks she's a horse. He has contributed to Gold Man Review, Lowestoft Chronicle, Per Contra, and won the 2016 Consequence Fiction Prize.

Mike Itaya

I Knew Conway Boom: Toot Maudlin’s True Hollywood Story

I knew Conway Boom. He was glorious. The real article. Hanes underoos. Buns of steel. Spanish fly. And for a period between the spring and fall of ’93, I tried very, very hard to fuck him. Problem being, he didn’t seem to care if I lived or died. And living in his dispassion was as lonely as the moon.

Which is why I had to go for it.

That fall I threw a wrap party for Cop Movie at my dojang. Box wine. Two types of cheese. A brand-spankin’ Hitachi boombox. Then our co-star, Burt McHands, showed up, and the first thing he did was take a King Kong shit in my can. And he was all—from inside my bathroom—“I don’t think anyone should come in here again.”

That’s when Conway Boom (who was also legendary for kicking down doors) kicked down my apartment door. From inside my half-bath, McHands said: “I have a drinking problem.”

“McHandsy, that you?” Conway yelled. “C.B. has got the funky feels about this commode-abode.” He held up my best box of wine, chugged the remainder, and massaged his areolas.

“So, you know what looks great on Conway Boom?” I drained my Solo cup and chucked it on the ground. “Me.” I framed my face with my fingers. I was going for it, before anyone else showed up.

Conway looked at me with bored concern like I’d just swallowed a mouthful of spiders. He picked up the block cheese, sniffed it, then dropped it like a turd on the table. He yawned right in my face. His breath smelled as bad as I felt.

“Don’t do it, C.B.,” McHands said, still in the can. “She bought shitty cheese.”

I kicked my bathroom’s plasterboard door.

“I’m worried about Burt,” C.B. said.

“He’s fine, everybody’s fine.”

“He just told your hand towels he has a drinking problem,” C.B. said, as if I hadn’t just said he was fine. 

I pushed play on my Hitachi boomer. To “Thriller,” I furiously shook my fanny.

Conway stared at me like I had snakes coming out of my clothes.

“That sucked grapes,” McHands said.

Conway cleaned his cuticles with the arrogance of the handsome-bored.

“Sorry, but I never boogie for free.”

I pulled out a Jefferson and handed it over. C.B. examined the mint, holding it up beneath my flickering fixture. He passed it under the door hole to McHands, who inspected the bill for a long time before saying, “It’s real, C.B.”

Conway shrugged: “Let’s get retrosexual.”

This was all before a lot of things happened, long before Conway got me blackballed from the Cop Movie franchise, and before (but not long before) Conway left me alone in a Motel 6 under an assumed name with rather significant room charges.

Before all that: We boogied like I’d never boogied before.

We danced across the face of the moon.

---

Mike Itaya lives in southern Alabama, where he works in a library. His work appears in New Orleans Review, BULL, and Storm Cellar, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University.

Kait Leonard

After They Removed Your Body

When I opened the door, the room sucked the air out of me. A path wide enough for a stretcher had been cleared through the piles of boxes and stacks of papers and overturned chairs.

I kicked at a pyramid of food wrappers and pizza cartons and found your collection of snow globes and ashtrays from all the states. Except New York. I’ve spent hours now searching for it. Through drawers and piles. We went there together. I have a vague memory of a plastic globe with an apple inside, but it’s nowhere. I found stacks of books stolen from libraries, due dates stamped clearly inside. A history of Pythagoras and one of Vlad the Impaler. A series of slim books on the American presidents, minus McKinley and Kennedy. Notes, letters, unopened bills long overdue, faded reminders written on post-its. Torn tee-shirts and greasy ball caps. Newspaper clippings reporting car crashes, openings of pizzerias, and Y2k prophesies. Stacks of obituaries from all over the country, even one from Canada. A piggy bank with “p-i-g” written on the side. It rattled when I shook it. Seven cheese graters and twice as many corkscrews. A box of feathers that might have come from a pillow. Cocktail napkins, wrinkled from the sweat of glasses, now dried. In your closet, a pyramid of the tubes from rolls of toilet paper. A deflated football. One crutch from that time by the lake. I found pictures of holidays and birthdays and vacations, of people I recognized and people I didn’t. But also pictures of isolated body parts, feet in shoes and bare, hands, knees, a bearded chin I recognized as yours. Prescription bottles, some almost full. Percocet. Dilaudid. Valium. Wine bottles. Vodka bottles. Soda pop cans, some full but not cold. Pay stubs and tax forms and insurance cards. A golf ball with something unreadable scrawled on it. An antique silver picture frame. I’d chosen it carefully at a little boutique downtown. I inserted the perfect photo of us and then wrapped the gift in purple paper with mint ribbon and hid it in my undies drawer until your birthday. In your care, the frame tarnished. The picture was nowhere to be found.

Sharing Secrets and Old Movies

I leaned over and puked on the passenger seat of my Pinto, shoved my seat back, and closed my eyes. I prayed the nausea would pass soon. 

~

I jumped and looked around. In the window, A man’s face shifted, doubled, and blurred. My head felt like an autumn melon, heavy and full. I closed my eyes. 

His voice pounded through the glass: “Are you alright?”

A cop, or maybe a security guy. My car. The clinic parking lot. I cranked it down and squinted, trying to get his face to hold still.

“Can I call someone?”

I wiped my sticky mouth on my sweatshirt sleeve. “I’m fine. Just need a minute.”

He spoke slowly, syllable by syllable. “You been here for hours.” He explained that I couldn’t camp in the lot. 

The sun had begun to drop behind the clinic, a weird neon disk mounted on the roof. It would disappear soon. 

~

I drove out of the parking lot and around the corner, away from the watchful eyes of the security guard. The clinic probably needed security just in case crazy protestors showed up to taunt women trying to get inside. I thanked God they hadn’t been there that morning. They wouldn’t have changed my mind.

Everything looked fuzzy, and my empty stomach tightened. I steered to the curb, turned off the engine, and threw my seat back again. 

The sky transitioned from blue to silver. I wished I had a someone to call who wouldn’t ask a bunch of questions or even try to console me. I wanted my grandpap, but I didn’t want to walk through their front door and act like everything was fine. My grandma would want to know why I was there, why I wasn’t home with my husband. She’d want to know when I would come to my senses and grow up. I dreaded having to listen one more time to all the things that made Danny a good man and why I should count my lucky stars because he’d chosen me. As I thought about it, there were so many things I didn’t want. I wished I could figure out what I wanted. 

~

When cramps woke me, the sky had gone heavy black. The dashboard clock read 11:43. Good. My grandparents would be asleep. I’d deal with everything tomorrow. The hollow pain in my abdomen kept me alert, as I navigated the dark streets toward home. Their home, I reminded myself.

A blue light shone around the edges of the metal blinds in the window of the TV room. Grandpap always fell asleep with the TV on. He devoured old westerns, staring at the images he’d seen a million times. Since his hearing had gone, there was no reason to turn on the volume. It also meant my grandma wouldn’t know what he was watching and scold him for wasting time on reruns, especially on those old cowboy movies.

I’d kept my key when I moved out, just in case. Now I turned it carefully and tiptoed through the little entry and into the kitchen. I shook three aspirin from the bottle my grandma kept with the spices, washed them down with milk from the carton, and leaned on the open refrigerator door. The cold felt good.

“You okay?” my grandpap whispered. He stood in the doorway, the little hair he had left pillow-mussed, his pajamas mismatched and baggy.

I couldn’t speak. It was like when I was little and he’d ask what was wrong. I never knew what to say because I didn’t want to make him sad. I pressed my palm against the cramping in my abdomen.

He looked at my hands and then at the clock on the stove. He held out his arms, ropy with purple veins and scarred from hard work. “I got you,” he said.

I crossed the room and fell into him. I cried, quietly so my grandma wouldn’t wake.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll share the couch. John Wayne’s on. It’s the good part coming up.”

On the couch, I leaned into him and pulled the blanket to my chin. I told him everything. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but it was okay.

---

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 a number of journals, among them Does It Have Pockets, Roi Faineant, Sky Island Journal, The Dribble Drabble Review, and other wonderful journals. Kait completed her MFA at Antioch University.

Tighe Flatley

The Bed

Move-in day, freshman year. Kevin noticed Bryan’s wide shoulders; Bryan noticed Kevin’s acne, but forgave him for it, because under all of those bumps, his face was handsome with the kindest, deepest green eyes he had ever encountered.

Neither of them shared these observations out loud. They let it flood the private chambers of each of their hearts, and held it there.

“Which side of the room do you want?” Bryan asked. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

Kevin pointed to the left, knowing he slept on his right side and could face the wall, ensuring it was the first thing he saw each morning.

The first weeks of fall floated by, the Georgia sun still hot on the green campus. Bryan darted between ultimate frisbee, parties and class, while Kevin stayed in the room, priding himself on not missing an assignment.

“You’re always studying,” Bryan said one morning, as Kevin pulled out the chair from his desk and turned on the lamp. Bryan had just come back from the showers, a wet towel wrapped around his waist.

“Don’t you ever have any fun?”

“Studying is fun,” Kevin said, feeling his ears burn red. He tried to look Bryan in the eye, but his dark, flat stomach was right there, the hairs from the center of his chest climbing straight down into the fold of the towel. Kevin dug through his bag for a book to put on his desk and mime reading. He grabbed one blindly, not caring if it were for Calculus, Quantitative Analysis, Physics – anything but Anatomy.

“If you want to come to this party my friend is having tonight, you can,” Bryan said. “Think about it.”

It wasn’t until Bryan left a few minutes later that Kevin realized the book on his desk was still closed, light shining on the cover.

~

It was raining that night when Kevin agreed to join. The two talked the whole night by the keg, under the awning of the house, warm beer in red cups.

“These are my people,” Bryan said. “I’d never fit in before, not until college.”

I’m not sure there’s anything for me to fit into, Kevin thought, as he watched Bryan gleam a bright smile toward anyone who approached them.

They a shared cab home after midnight, after standing in the rain to hail it down. In the room, they both threw their water-soaked shirts in the hamper.

“You have a great body you know,” Bryan said.

“Thanks.”

He reached out to put his hands on Kevin’s shoulders, first the left and then, when he didn’t react, his right. Kevin leaned forward, close enough to share a secret.

“Can I?” Bryan whispered. Kevin was still nodding when Bryan’s lips touched his.

They woke up the next morning in Kevin’s bed, Bryan laughing, teetering on the edge. They stayed in the room all weekend, ordering pizza, playing video games, swapping between Kevin’s bed and Bryan’s.

“What does this all mean?” Kevin asked before classes started Monday.

“What do you want it to mean?”

“I don’t know, but I like it.”

“Me too.”

“What will my parents think?” Kevin asked.

“Who cares,” Bryan said. “They don’t need to know to think anything. This is your life now.”

Kevin blushed.

By the start of spring semester, Bryan suggested moving the beds together.

“It just makes sense,” he said, holding Kevin from falling off the edge.

“What will we tell people?” Kevin asked.

“We don’t have to tell them anything.”

It took Kevin longer to think about it and agree than to rearrange the room. No one in the building batted an eye. Even the RA said, oh, cool, and moved on. It wasn’t long before friends would come over to visit. They’d see the beds put together and put it all together themselves. By the first frisbee game in spring, when the blossoms were popping out of the trees, Bryan and Kevin left the field hand in hand. 

~

Bryan and Kevin signed up as roommates for sophomore year. They were in the next building over, and on the first day, they wedded another two bed frames to each other, this time in the center of the room, a desk on each side.

They didn’t tell their parents until the end of the academic year, when they decided to move into a one bedroom off-campus the upcoming fall.

“As long as you’re happy,” Kevin’s father had said.

Bryan’s parents simply hung up the phone. It’s not natural, they told him.

Kevin burned. As if there were an engineering formula that could explain love in the first place.

Bryan barely slept that night, knowing he couldn’t afford the rent on his own. Early the next morning, still lying in bed before the sun rose, Bryan whispered to Kevin he was prepared to call the whole thing off. He could live at the frisbee house; Kevin could do his own thing.

“Why?” Kevin asked.

“I need my parents.”

Kevin reached over and put his hand on Bryan’s chest.

“No you don’t,” Kevin said. “This is your life now. We’ll figure it out.”

That’s how Bryan fell asleep, Kevin’s hand blanketing his heart.

~

Two years passed in that house, with a full sized bed covered in cotton sheets the color of mud. Junior year, Bryan quit frisbee for an on-campus job at the library, stacking books in the back shelves to make the rent without asking his parents for help. They split the rent evenly, each paying $350 a month. By the last week of the month, they ate bread and cheese for dinner, climbing into bed early with no beer money, but they would always make it work.

It was the spring of senior year when Kevin got the call for the job offer. A twelve-month international rotation for an engineering firm, with a salary higher than his father’s.

“You have to take it,” Bryan said.

“But what will you do? Where will you be?”

They had been here before. An ocean had separated them once already, a dark, swirling depth. Kevin still remembered the continental groan of the four posts against the tile floor as they dragged his frame toward Bryan’s bed, two lands, rich with loam, crashing into one another with a final, settling hush. It sounded like relief; it sounded like love.

---

Tighe Flatley spends his days directing marketing campaigns, his early mornings writing and his late evenings editing. He lives in San Francisco where he is a founding member of the Page Street Writers. If you need him, he's usually by the snack table.

Rhea Thomas

The Third Eye

Most people couldn’t see Sam’s third eye, but when he was tired or drunk, it tended to make an appearance, winking suggestively at other men, indiscriminate.

Sam was both super tired and beyond tipsy, so he shouldn’t have been surprised when he felt it open. His third eye was a problem for several reasons: 1. He wasn’t gay, 2. He hated being seen as a freak, and 3. It was the first time Rebecca, his girlfriend of two months would witness its appearance.

The party was opening night for a hip new restaurant located on the top floor of a downtown hotel. Rebecca worked for a monthly Texas magazine as a food critic, receiving a coveted invite.

Deep in a discussion about avocados with a guy named Beto, Sam’s third eye opened. He could tell by the brief tightening of skin and the fluttery feeling of eyelashes on his forehead as the eye awoke and stretched. He considered excusing himself, but it was too late.

“Avocados were originally called alligator pears in Florida, but in California – “ Beto stopped midsentence to stare. “Are you seeing this, too? Or is it just me?” he asked his date, whose name Sam didn’t remember.

Beto’s girlfriend pointed, mouth open wide.

Rebecca gasped sharply.

Sam felt all eyes on his forehead. He usually grew his hair long enough to cover his forehead, but Rebecca had talked him into a haircut last weekend. He usually carried a beanie around too, but realized it was unhelpfully in his car downstairs in the hotel garage.

He had planned to tell Rebecca about his unique condition, but kept putting it off, and now, well, there was no hiding.

He felt the eye wink at Beto and flutter suggestively. He turned to Rebecca and whispered, “I’m sorry, maybe we should go?”

“Oh my god, look at that! What’s wrong with his head?” someone blurted from across the room. Other exclamations filled the air as people turned to look.

He ducked his head, cheeks burning, that familiar sick feeling roiling his stomach. 

Rebecca looked appalled, and tried to angle her body to put herself between Sam and the onlookers. She replied quietly, “I need to stay, but maybe you should.” She looked around at staring crowd. “Yes, I think you need to leave.” She pivoted away, and headed toward the bar.

Beto spoke up. ‘“So, I’ve never seen that before. How does it work?”

Staring after Rebecca, Sam said, “Well, I see chakras. I can tell if they are out of alignment or need to be unblocked.” He glanced around to make sure other people weren’t listening.

Beto looked impressed.

Beto’s girlfriend spoke up. “Can you look at my chakras?”

Sam sighed. “Yeah, your root chakra is out of alignment.”

“I knew it! Beto, I told you something felt wrong. I’m going to schedule a massage!” She stood, fishing a cell phone from her cavernous bag.

Beto shrugged and rose to follow her.

Sam found himself alone. This was the story of his life; always slightly apart from others. Even his parents hadn’t understood, pushing him to hide his third eye so other kids wouldn’t treat him differently. But it was like everyone sensed his differentness. He’d only found true acceptance from his grandmother, Seraphina, who never made him feel weird or asked him to hide. In fact, she encouraged him to embrace the third eye, told him to lean into his gift, and learn from what he could see . 

“Hey, it’s Sam, right?” a voice piped up behind him.

He turned to see a coworker of Rebecca’s. He thought she’d been introduced to him earlier as Teagan.

“Don’t let these losers upset you. They don’t appreciate anything that’s different.”

“That’s really nice of you to say. Teagan, right?”

“Yeah. And I mean it. Don’t worry about these people, they aren’t the kind you should care about anyway.”

He looked at her dubiously.

She continued, “No, really, only pretentious snobs here today. All restaurant openings are like that. The people who feel the need to name-drop and be the first to eat somewhere new and trendy. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”

Curious, he asked, “Aren’t you one of those people too?”

She mocked offense, and then laughed. “Ha! I’m undercover.”

“You’re what?”

“Undercover. I write a food blog under an anonymous name. I don’t blow smoke up these celebrity chefs’ asses. I tell it like it is. I get invited occasionally, like tonight, because my dad’s a chef, but if they knew I wrote that blog, they wouldn’t want me here. Critiquing and bitching is kind of my thing.” She grinned and shrugged.

“Sam, I thought you were leaving.” Rebecca reappeared at his side, her voice quiet but firm.

He flushed and noticed Teagan’s eyebrows rise. “I am leaving, not because you think I should, but because I don’t want to spend any more time with you and other rude people who think it’s okay to stare and point.”

He heard someone clapping and saw Beto, his girlfriend frantically trying to shush him. He caught and held Rebecca’s gaze. “I’m so disappointed. I thought you were different.”

Teagan caught up with him at the elevators. She smiled. “Want to grab some coffee?”

Her chakras were perfectly aligned, not a single one blocked. He nodded. “I’d like that.”

They stepped into the elevator. As the doors closed, she leaned in and whispered into his ear, “When I get turned on, I grow a third nipple.”

All three of his eyes widened in surprise.

---

Rhea Thomas lives in Austin, Texas where she works as a program manager in the digital media world. She spends her free time hoarding books, kayaking and swimming in rivers, searching for mysteries and writing short stories that explore magical moments in the mundane.

Will Willoughby

The Projectionist

There’s a sleeper down in the theater. I’ve seen them before, these sleepers, and never know what to do. From the projection booth, I watch them through the port window beside the projector—people who’ve paid good money just to nod off in one of the lumpy, torn leather seats. Most don’t outlast the credits. Dazed and sheepish, they stand, stretch, address their mouth-side spittle, and scuttle off. This one, though, is dedicated. This one’s top-notch. This one’s slept through the final courtroom scene—the verdict uproar, the cracking gavel, the swelling music—and has slept through the credits as if sleeping is all he’s ever done and all he’ll ever do. He’ll need a prodding for sure. And nobody—not the sleeper, not the waker—likes a prodding.

But I go downstairs to administer the prodding.

He’s a gawky, sedated thing jammed in his seat and propped, Weekend at Bernie’s style, against the wall. He’s wearing a pale white shirt and gnawed-on jeans. He’s knock-kneed and up-palmed, mouth agape, eyes sewn shut, a plume of gray hair spattered up the carpeted wall. His breathing is rapid, shallow, mechanical. He’s as old as I am now and as old as my father ever got.

I stand in the aisle at the end of his row and consider the options. There’s the obvious: kicking his seat, clapping, and so on. Yelling’s always good. Maybe “Hey! or “Wake up!” or “Not sure what your deal is, but you’re super vulnerable right now! People could pile popcorn on your face! Also! This kind of sleeping seems concerning! Maybe it’s a condition!”

However you do it, though, there’s risk. Especially with sleepers like this, sleeping as hard as a father sleeps after work or on weekends. Sleep as escape. Sleep as a fortress. Sleep as a satisfying middle finger to anyone outside who wants in. These fatherly sleepers are somehow both imperturbable and ready to pop. Speaking, even at low volume, could make them suck air and flail their limbs and gush profanity. So they are, traditionally, best left alone. And they’re fine, totally fine. They rest their eyes. They snore. They do their time. And when they die, they’ll die the way they lived—truculent and shrunken in their bed. Surrounded by a jagged circle of disacquainted family members who, having driven a great distance, aren’t thinking straight and don’t know where to look, what to say, or who to blame for the way things are.

Just, you know, for example. Hypothetically.

So what do you do with sleepers like this? A case can be made for doing nothing. Because it’ll end. Time will decide the matter, one way or another. There will be some sound—maybe a rumble and whoosh from the air-conditioning—and he’ll stand, stretch, address his mouth-side spittle, and scuttle off, looking at you like you’re not there, like you’re the ghost in this situation. And he’ll stagger like a discontent marionette down the hall, swing open the doors, and vanish, leaving behind only a half-eaten popcorn, an untouched Coke with no ice, and a lot of questions.

Mainly: Why come to a movie—a courtroom drama built on tropes—just to bag some zees? Is he homeless? On the lam? In a fugue state? Or just fed up? Is his life full of the wrong people? Devoid of the right ones? And how many layers of insulation does this freak need? He’s already wrapped in the dark and then wrapped in a movie. Why would he need the dreaming? Where does it end?

I could walk away. Put this behind me. Move on. But the biggest question remains: How do you wake a sleeper?

I think I know. I know I do. I’ve always known. Now I see it.

But all this would be easier in a movie. In a movie, there’d be a law about fatherly sleepers. Take action or else. Things would make sense. Accountability would exist. There’d be right and wrong. A clear struggle. A resolution.

If I were in the movie, charges could be leveled. The evidence, the prosecution would say, is incontrovertible.

Consider, they’d say, the staggering simplicity of the waking act. Consider the mandate of the first projectionist on the scene. Dereliction of this clear duty must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We can all agree on that.

Consider the sleeper himself. There he sits: splay-limbed and scream-faced, discarded, repugnant, untended to, unmissed by a loved one. Is this a creature driven and derided by spite to impose a malicious, obstinate self-isolation? Perhaps. But whatever has pushed him here is immaterial. He’s here. For some reason, he’s here. Cut off from whatever he loves. Alone and frozen and clearly in pain. That’s all we can know. All we need to know.

We must therefore reframe the question. It is not, as the defendant claims, “How do you wake a sleeper?” It is “How do you wake a sleeper in pain?”

The answer is, once again, brutally simple. You do whatever’s necessary. You do what the sleeper needs. You move him from where he is to where he should be. You wake him quietly. You wake him gently.

Do not clap.

Do not yell.

Do not kick.

Speak to him, and speak in a whisper. Sleepers are, by nature, looking for something—something lost, longed for, or denied—and they’ll strain to hear what’s hiding in your whisper, even as they refuse to speak themselves.

If the whispering alone fails, whisper while rocking his arm, gently. He may gasp or lurch or scream what the fuck is wrong with you, you stupid fuck. Do it anyway.

If you don’t know what to say, tell him everything’s okay. Even if it’s not. Tell him anyway. Tell him, gently, what he needs to hear and what you need to understand. Tell him it’s over. Tell him you’re sorry. Tell him, quietly, that it’s time to go.

---

Will Willoughby is a copyeditor and writer living in southern Maine. His first published short story was “Splice” which appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of Epiphany. His work often features characters in absurd, funny/sad situations. He enjoys woodworking, astronomy, and talking to his potato-colored dog, Charlie.

Nicola de Vera

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Nicola de Vera (she/her) is a queer Filipino writer currently residing in Los Angeles. She holds a BA in Communication from Ateneo de Manila University and an MBA from Cornell University.

Rina Palumbo

Wingspan

They had told you that, as you flew higher and higher above the earth and closer and closer to the sun, the heat would melt the wax on your wings, and you would plummet into the ocean.       

They had lied.

The first feather fell off when you leapt from the rocky cliff and started a long, slow ascent on a rising column of warm air. You watched it slip away as you moved your wings in counterpoint to lesser breezes. Flight was relatively easy once you understood what your body had to do to the fabricated machinery of wood, leather, wax, and feathers. Flight was relatively easy once you found the currents in the air that would lift you and those that would propel you forward.

But winds are precarious. Just as some move you in the direction you want, others push you back; flapping uses energy and strains the tendons and muscles in your arms and upper body. The only release in that tension is gliding; to glide, you must keep rising.

But, as you rise, the air temperature gets colder. Cold temperatures shrink the spaces between the molecules in wood, leather, wax, and feathers. What you feel, beyond aching muscles, is how stiff and tight everything becomes. The leather straps that connect you with the wings contract, becoming less subtle and more challenging to move. So, you must climb higher into the sky, farther from the earth's surface, to hold out your wings.

There is a point when you move in slow circles, climbing higher and feeling the wind lift you and carry you forward. But it is so much colder now, and the wood that felt so soft yet had hard tensile strength becomes more brittle as the moisture still trapped within it evaporates. As it dissipates into the atmosphere, acute fractures begin to erupt, minimal at first, but each a threat to the integrity of your wings, the very objects between you, the sea, and the sun.

So, you stay at that altitude as long as possible. The coastline had disappeared long ago, but you can see the vague outline of the island in the distance. Follow the sun and let the wind carry you.

And, for a while, it was almost exhilarating. Until that is,  you need to climb even higher. The wind was biting now, and in that thinner air, your pounding heart and aching lungs made each necessary breath an agony. You feel yourself growing tired, almost sleepy, so high above the earth, between the sea and the sun.

And then, the wax. Wax does not melt at high altitudes. The wax that bound the feathers to the wood, which had been carefully placed on each quill, was allowed to dry and harden and then overlapped in tessellated patterns that repeated from smaller to larger along each wing and from apex to nadir, that binding medium was contracting. The wax was cracking, and as it did so, it separated itself from wood and feathers. You saw more and more feathers loosen and then be pulled away by the currents of air.

You started tumbling in the sky, fighting to follow the sun.

The cold had seeped into the wings as much as it had into blood and bone. You stretched the wings out as far as you could, and, for a little while, the spiral currents found you again, and you circled with them, looking at your shadow on the ocean below.

But the wood, leather, wax, and feathers no longer worked as they should. You felt each tightening, each break, each contraction, and each loss; you felt the pain in your lungs, the muscle ache, and the growing shadow.

---

Rina Palumbo (she/her) is working on a novel and two nonfiction long-form writing projects alongside short fiction, creative nonfiction, and prose poetry. Her work appears in The Hopkins Review, Ghost Parachute, Milk Candy, Bending Genres, Anti-Heroin Chic, Identity Theory, Stonecoast Review, et al. Read more at her website.

Kati Bumbera

Afterlife for Rent

Sometimes, in stiff-necked, midweek snooze-button dreams, it turns out that Dad is still alive. I find him towering in the kitchen, wearing that green cardigan, waiting to catch me out just like when I was young, when I’d come home from school and I’d be forced to walk past him, risking his glare, if I wanted anything, like a snack from the fridge, a Nirvana t-shirt, or a boyfriend, or a lift to the train station where I eventually left him. He waved me off in that same cardigan, the scratchy strands of childhood already fraying in a new light.

And now he’s here. But this time round, almost as old as Dad was on that platform, I am the one who looks askance at promises and late arrivals. His cardigan snags on rusty memories of hospitals and graveyards, threatening to unravel the fragile dream. I don’t believe in robins on windowsills. I know he isn’t bringing wisdom, I know he hasn’t come to seek forgiveness.

And then I think, maybe he’s not here for me at all. I can just leave him, one more time, to have his kitchen to himself and be a little bit alive. Sit by a window, listen to dust carts empty the bins. There’s beer in the fridge, Dad, I say to him, then turn around and tiptoe back into the light.

---

Kati Bumbera is a video game writer who is happiest in the mountains with a notebook in her backpack. She has short fiction published in The Fabulist, Roi Faineant, The Fantastic Other, The Disappointed Housewife and The Selkie. She lives in France and occasionally posts as @KatiBumbera.

Mark Powers

Rabbits

When the pan-seared pieces of rabbit reached a perfect golden brown, he emptied chopped cloves of garlic from a cutting board into the heavy cast iron pan. He inhaled the heady aroma then poured a cup of a dry white wine over it all to deglaze the tasty fragments of fat and meat. A second portion of the wine went into a glass from which he sipped while scraping the pan’s bottom, enjoying every bit of waiting for the liquid to evaporate into thickened flavor.

His wife had called an hour ago to report her safe arrival at their daughter’s Washington, D. C. townhouse. He’d be alone at home for the next several days. Her call had been short and perfunctory, and among his wife’s parting words was a reminder for him to “get that rabbit” he’d bought on impulse months ago “out of the freezer.” She wanted no part of “that nasty thing.” He’d already defrosted it. Obeying her emphatic orders would at least fill this solitary evening, the first of the even emptier nights that would follow.

His cell phone’s ring startled him. If his wife were home, he’d have let it go to voicemail. There’d been so many junk calls lately. But there might be a problem in DC. He pressed his cell to his ear. “Hello?”

“Hello. Thank you for answering.” A young woman’s voice, sounding surprised that he had answered. “My name is Jenny. How are you this evening?” The words confirmed hers was a cold call, but warmth came through her tone. Maybe she was alone too and elated to speak to a live person and not the usual answering service or machine.

“Fine.” He’d been tempted to hang up, but her friendliness touched him. He waited for the inevitable sales pitch.

“I hope you have time for a short survey. I promise it won’t take three minutes. Okay?”

Why not? It would take about that long to deglaze the pan. A cup of broth was measured and ready to add. “Sure, Jenny. Ask away.”

“Thank you. Just answer yes or no. Here’s the first question. Are you in favor of reinstituting an assault weapons ban, like the one in place from 1994 to 2004?”

“Yes.”

The questions flew by, and he found himself looking forward to hearing her attentive voice with each one.

“Final question. Would you support a national buyback program for assault weapons?”

“Yes.”

The wine in the pan had almost completely evaporated. “Excuse me for a moment please, Jenny. I’m cooking dinner and need to put you on speaker.” He wanted to ask who she worked for, so she might stay with him longer. He set the phone on the counter and poured broth into the hot pan. The boiling broth’s sizzle filled the kitchen. He opened the oven and slid the rabbit’s pan beside a pan of roasting potatoes.

“Wow! I could hear whatever you’re cooking. I haven’t talked to any men who cook.”

“Then you should talk to other men.” Cooking was an artform for him, from the visual presentation to the olfactory and gustatory responses. His wife never cared much about food except as sustenance, although early in their marriage she’d kept him company in the kitchen while he cooked. He missed those tender evenings. Lately, even while home, she seemed as far away as Washington.

“So, Jenny, who are you working for?”

“An online company. I just get the questions and a list of numbers to call. They don’t tell me who pays for the survey. It’s a second job that I can do evenings.”

“If it’s the DNC or Sandy Hook, I suspect you’ll be asking for a contribution.” Her cheerful voice in his lonely kitchen was worth a donation.

“Oh no. That’s not one of the questions.”

“Pardon my nosiness, but I’m curious. What’s your day job, Jenny?”

“I don’t mind. I’m proud to say that I teach second grade.”

“A noble profession.” And why she’s working a second job. “Do you have student loans?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” she muttered.

“Most of those I teach seem to worry about them.”

“You’re a teacher too?” Her voice was upbeat again.

“Well, I work with residents at a teaching hospital.”

“So, you’re you a doctor?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“No wonder you feel the same way I do about guns.” A deep breath in. “Imagine taking sweet little children through active shooter drills.”

“My grandson was subjected to one of those drills in his preschool…He still has nightmares about it.”

“You’re a grandfather?”

“I am. Do you have children, Jenny?”

“Heavens no! I’m only two years out of college and not even married…and no one’s even close to asking.”

“That’s something you’ll want to take your time on—to make sure you get it right.” He’d overstepped, giving a stranger such advice. “Sorry. I’m sure you know that, and you probably have other calls to make.”

“Oh I’m fine. When you live alone, it’s good to have someone to talk to. Most people don’t answer, and if they do, they hang up as soon as I start talking.”

“Folks are busy and tired this time of day.” He might have hung up if his wife were home and close by, but he wasn’t ready to let Jenny go. It was good to have someone to talk to.

“So, Dr. Chef, what are you cooking?”

“Rabbit. Something I acquired a taste for while traveling through Europe.” Joyful times with his wife—but he shouldn’t have brought up travel. Jenny probably couldn’t afford such a trip. Maybe his mistake would make her decide to hang up. “Do you like rabbit, Jenny?”

There was no answer for what felt like a long minute. Then muffled thumps like something bumping her phone and a soft sniffing sound. He must have said the wrong thing.

“Hello? Still there, Jenny?” He knelt to peek in the oven window. The broth had mostly evaporated.

“I was letting you talk to Peter, my pet rabbit.” Her voice had become distant, like she’d also switched her phone to speaker and then stepped back. “He’s my best buddy and our class mascot. The kids love him. Want to tell Peter what’s for dinner?” Her interrogation pierced him.

“I’d rather not.” He cracked open the oven, and a wave of heat struck his face. “I’m sorry Jenny, but I should get back to my cooking.”

“You wouldn’t want to burn your rabbit.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” There was nothing he could say now to keep her from also deciding to leave him. “Good-bye, Jenny.”

“Good-bye, Doctor. Enjoy your dinner.”

He pressed the end call button, and Jenny was gone.

When he pulled the pans from the oven, the irresistible fragrance of roasted meat and vegetables offered him steamy comfort. The rabbit was done to perfection, its meat falling from bones to his gentle probing. He spooned portions onto his and another plate across the table, filled two glasses with wine, and lit a candle. The first bite took him to a French bistro where his wife’s knees touched his under a cloth-draped table.

---

After almost forty years practicing and teaching pulmonary and critical care medicine, Mark Anthony Powers retired from Duke University as an Associate Professor Emeritus of Medicine and began his exploration of other parts of his brain. Writing, growing fruits and vegetables, and magic courses were just some of the enjoyment that followed. A deep dive into beekeeping led to his presidency of the county beekeeping association and certification as a Master Beekeeper. His previously published novels include the medical thrillers A Swarm in May, Breath and Mercy, and Nature’s Bite. His fourth novel, The Desperate Trials of Phineas Mann is scheduled for launch April 16, 2024. To learn more or connect with Mark, please visit hawksbillpress.com/.

Darlene Eliot

The Disinheritance of Mr. Chiweenie

It is my intention to make no provision herein for the conniving squatter, Mr. Chiweenie, for reasons which are well known to him. I give and bequeath two insulated dog parkas, three marble bowls, and one automated treat dispenser to the Society for Incorrigible Canines. I leave Mr. Chiweenie to his reckless life of biting fingers, hoarding shoes, ducking under credenzas, relieving himself at dinner parties, and no longer running off with Harold’s pocket watch (yes, we know it was you). He is free to unleash his treachery on another innocent benefactor who mistakes his boldness for loyalty when, just as it was with the kitchen staff, my former spouse, and that Hyacinth Macaw formerly known as Minx, he will turn on them in their greatest hour of need even though he is, without question, the least of their acquisitions.

---

Darlene Eliot lives in California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Flash Fiction Review, Cleaver, Crow & Cross Keys, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere.

Jonathan Pais Knapp

The Rain Never Lasts

A man entered the plaza and walked towards the ravaged fountain. He wore a gray, three-piece suit and a pencil-thin mustache. His hair was white and thinning, though neatly combed. He had a dancer’s posture—shoulders back, chin held high—and moved with measured strides, limiting the swing of his briefcase to no more than a few inches with each step. Despite his age and formal bearing, his electric green eyes beamed with youthful pride, like a child entrusted with a special errand.

The plaza occupied two square blocks in a small port city. Low, pastel-colored buildings fronted the plaza on three sides, their colonial era facades dutifully maintained in compliance with local ordinances. On the remaining side of the plaza, a yellow cathedral with two bell towers dwarfed the surrounding structures. The midday sun reflected off the colorful stucco. The heat was stifling.

Before the drought years, atmospheric rivers saturated the cloud forests in the mountains each rainy season, nurturing banner coffee harvests, infusing the local economy with productive capital, liquidity, as it were, that manifested, most importantly, in an abundance of jobs. The fountain in the center of the plaza had been a symbol of civic pride and a beacon for young and old alike. Water would cascade from the rim of the mushroom shaped basin as cherubic feet tottered over a cool mosaic of blue and white tiles. Young mothers would gossip on the periphery, keeping one eye trained on their screeching toddlers, while teenagers furtively circled each other, whispering commitments, and old men shook off their wives to caucus, some debating politics, others exchanging dirty jokes, periodically erupting in laughter, inevitably followed by fits of coughing.

The fountain became one of the first casualties of the dry years, which decimated the coffee export and reduced the port’s marine traffic to a fraction of its capacity. When the city shut off its water, a new force was released and wholly directed at the concrete reminder of more prosperous times.  Each arid morning revealed the aftermath of yet another late-night drunken assault on the fountain: shattered tiles, crude graffiti, cigarette butts and broken glass.

The man set down his briefcase near the fountain, whisked a thin layer of dust off a concrete bench with the back of his hand, and took a seat. He unfurled his handkerchief, wiped the sweat from his brow, and closed his eyes. His body was completely still; only his eyelids flickered. He visualized a circle and then willed it to expand outward and multiply, like ripples in a pond.

The man’s eyes opened as a dense flock of pigeons fluttered overhead; the frenzied beating of wings echoed in his ears.  Four brothers in threadbare jeans and faded t-shirts chased after a few remaining birds in front of the cathedral, laughing like a pack of hyenas. Their eight-year old sister sat perched in a tree, partially concealed by a sparse canopy of wilting leaves. Though her hair was braided in two pristine pigtails, she wore red overalls with fraying holes in the knees. The girl scanned the plaza as if it were a great savannah populated with wary prey.   

The man checked his watch. The gold timepiece lacked a conventional face, which enabled one to peer into its skeletal labyrinth of slowly rotating cogs and cranks. The man polished the watch with his handkerchief, peering across the plaza at a glum man selling popsicles from a pockmarked ice-chest on wheels. As the ice-cream vendor traversed the plaza, rolling his makeshift cart over the cobblestones, the small bell affixed to the cart’s handle clanged erratically.

The man crossed his arms and tapped his left foot. He tracked the movements of an exhausted bricklayer on a bicycle slowly trundling past, carting a basketful of tools and a wooden ladder on his shoulder.  The bricklayer hummed a popular ballad as he pedaled.

The man’s watch emitted a staccato rhythm of high-pitched chimes. He silenced the alarm and bowed his head, as if in prayer.  A cellular lattice of clouds, like rows of giant cotton balls, materialized in the sky, casting dark, if uneven shadows over the cobblestones. He felt the dappled shadows pass over him but did not look up.

The ice-cream vendor peered at the plump, celestial fingertips in disbelief. The bricklayer stopped singing in mid-breath, mouth agape. The four brothers howled in unison. Their sister regarded the man intently. A clap of thunder resounded through the plaza.

The man remained seated with his forehead resting on his clasped hands for what seemed like an eternity to the girl who, watching him from afar, quivered with anticipation. Finally, there was movement; the man slowly extended his right arm and opened his hand as if he were soliciting a tribute. Raindrops wetted the thin lines that transected the loose skin on his palm. He tilted his hand and the rainwater dotted the bright, parched ground, forming a dark circle between his feet.          

The man coaxed a small brass key from his vest pocket and inserted it into both keyholes on his briefcase. The locking mechanisms disengaged. He extracted a red bathing cap and a pair of dark goggles.  He donned the bathing cap, carefully tucking stray hairs that poked out around his ears under its elastic ribbing. He removed his watch, took off his suit jacket, folded it in half, down the spine, shrugged off his vest, loosened his bow tie, and stowed it all inside the case. 

The man extricated his cufflinks from his starched, white shirt – two glistening gold ovals with bright orbs of lapis lazuli in the center. Thin lines were etched in the blue stones, radiating outward in elegant whorls.

The boys on the far side of the plaza paused to consider the man as he slipped off his polished burgundy loafers, balled up his argyle socks, and removed his slacks, careful to follow the crease as he draped them over his forearm and placed them in the briefcase. He unbuttoned his shirt and folded it with some ceremony. The boys exploded in raucous laughter at the sight of the man, stunningly unclothed except for his red speedo swimsuit and bathing cap.  Their sister did not laugh, or even smile, but instead, remained transfixed by the man as he fell into a methodic stretching regiment. 

The man placed his right heel on the top of the bench and then doubled over grasping his toes. He felt his rigid, stubborn muscles begin to loosen and switched legs. Though puzzled by their exuberance, the man peered at the boys, fondly recalling how nimble he’d been at their age. One of the boys dropped to the ground, giggling hysterically. The man stepped on to the waist-high wall that encircled the fountain and completed his routine, shaking out his shoulders and rolling his neck.

Cold droplets filled the air, dissipating the heat. The bricklayer tilted his face upwards, relishing the feel of the raindrops on his skin.

The man put on his goggles. The precipitation intensified; sheets of rain buffeted the plaza.  The drops seem to be growing larger, congealing.      

The boys chased each other, racing in concentric circles with their arms outstretched like wings and then dove headfirst into a splotchy patch of grass, now transformed into a muddy runway, sliding on their bellies, tumbling over one another at the end of the line.  Their sister ignored them.  Nothing could pry her focus away from the man as she climbed down from the tree.

Blinded by the sudden downpour, the bricklayer lost control of his bicycle and slid to the ground, dropping his ladder and scattering his tools. The bricklayer scrambled to his feet and managed to catch two triangular trowels—used for smoothing wet concrete—before being carried away by a torrent of rainwater.  He stuffed the trowels in his waistband and sprinted after his ladder.

The man kneeled and clutched the edge of the fountain as if preparing to spring off a diving block. He felt a familiar, dull ache in his left knee. Giant globs of rainwater descended on the plaza with such velocity that the watery explosions seemed to defy gravity, rebounding back to the clouds. The man sprang off the fountain and surged upward, through the rain, dolphin-kicking into the darkening sky. 

The bricklayer clutched the lowest rung of the ladder as water swirled around him, like an inverted whirlpool. The other end of the ladder jerked into the air, disappearing into the frothy vortex. He held on with all his strength. As his feet lifted off the ground, the ice-cream vendor grabbed the cuff of the bricklayer’s trousers with one hand while anchoring himself to his cart with the other.  

Fifty meters above the plaza the man fell into a leisurely backstroke. He let his mind drift; thoughts flitted through his consciousness like leaves floating past on a trickling stream. He imagined his late wife standing in the doorway to their small backyard, fresh from gardening, her hands redolent of moist earth. Sorrow burrowed into his chest.   

The ice-cream vendor lost his hold on the bricklayer’s fraying trousers, the cuff shearing from the pant leg. Untethered, the ladder rocketed into the sky at breakneck speed. The bricklayer desperately wound his arms around the lowest rung.

The brothers solemnly followed the ladder and the dark figure piloting it into the clouds. The oldest brother crossed himself. The three younger brothers followed suit. 

The bricklayer peered down at the shrinking cathedral and gasped loudly at the thought of plummeting back to earth, a mass of flesh and splinters on the cobblestones.    

The sound of the bricklayer’s panic interrupted the man’s thoughts. The man transitioned into a freestyle stroke, propelling himself higher into the sky. A few moments later he appeared at the bricklayer’s side. He tapped the bricklayer’s shoulder and smiled reassuringly. The bricklayer’s lower lip trembled. The man motioned with his hand, molding a descending slope in the rainwater that retained its shape for a moment before dissolving. 

The bricklayer’s eyes brightened. He withdrew one of his trowels from his waistband and began shaping the rainwater around him into slowly dissipating walls. The man nodded approvingly.  The bricklayer reached overhead and smoothed the rainwater into a dome. The bricklayer’s body pressed against the watery ceiling as the ladder folded over into a horizontal position, parallel to the ground below. The bricklayer shifted on to the top of the ladder so that he was laying on its wooden rungs, like a surfer resting on his board between waves. 

At the man’s urging, the bricklayer cautiously moved to one end of the ladder, sitting on top of it like a toboggan.  The ladder pitched downward, starting the descent.  The bricklayer smoothed the rainwater in front of him as he plowed ahead, controlling his speed by adjusting the pitch of his path. He leaned forward and flattened the angle of his trowels—like opening the throttle on a motorbike—and sped up. Then he straightened his posture while rotating the tools backwards and slowed down. Moderating his speed in this manner, he slid back down to earth.

The ice-cream vendor and the four brothers rushed to the bricklayer, embracing him. They proudly clutched his shoulders and mussed his drenched hair, while the youngest brother tugged at the bricklayer’s torn pant leg. Hopping with excitement, the boys picked up the ladder, clamoring for a chance to sail into the sky.

The bricklayer and ice-cream vendor exchanged a hesitant look but then gave into the boys’ pleading. The ice-cream vendor parked his cart below the inverted whirlpool. The bricklayer hoisted himself atop it, and the four brothers formed a line behind him. The ice-cream vendor laced his fingers together. The bricklayer placed his right foot in the ice-cream vendor’s hands and held on to his shoulders for balance. With a wink and a nod, the bricklayer straightened his legs as the ice-cream vendor jerked backwards and heaved. The bricklayer sprung up and was immediately drawn into the sky. The four brothers queued up behind the ice-cream cart, eager for their turn.

The girl’s heart thumped in her chest—she was determined to intercept her brothers, to stop them from plunging into the unknown, baiting death. Why were they so stupid!  And reckless!  She raced towards them, channeling her mother, how, in these moments, infuriated by their idiocy, she would grab for a belt or whatever was in reach. The girl picked up a baseball-sized rock. She felt like the world was spinning too fast, and if she didn’t grab her brothers in time, they would be flung off and she’d never see them again.

The brothers heard the heavy thud of the rock striking the ice-cream cart before they saw their sister, violently motioning for them to back away. The boys laughed but hastened their pace, trailing close behind the bricklayer to follow his example precisely, including the pre-launch wink and nod. With tears of fury blurring her vision, the girl threw more rocks as the boys streamed into the sky, well out of range. 

The bricklayer shaped the contours of the four brothers’ ascent, molding a watery tunnel that curved and corkscrewed like a roller coaster. As they slammed into each new bend, the boys whooped with delight.

Pausing for a moment to regain his bearings, the bricklayer eyed the man once again. He was dancing the Tango, making long, fluid strides as he lifted his right arm to turn an imaginary partner.  A trickle of rainwater fell from his hand like a climbing plant’s tendrils, weaving together, forming an inverted replica of his open palm, only the fingers were thinner and more delicate.  As the narrow wrist and forearm took shape, the bricklayer could see the watery appendage revolving, following the man’s lead. 

The bricklayer leaned his shoulder into a tight turn and formed a coiled flume around the man, providing a clear view of his ethereal dance. The bricklayer motioned to the boys, who, at the sight of the man dancing with the phantom limb, hollered even louder.  

With his chest held high and his spine rigid, the man took a few more short steps and then threw his torso in the opposite direction. He flicked his right wrist sending his nascent partner swiveling. The head, shoulders and upper torso of a woman comprised entirely of water emerged. The man took two steps backwards and then raised his arm to turn her.  She completed the revolution on her own legs.  A beam of sunlight refracted through her tall, slender frame, illuminating the meticulous details of her creation: the high cheekbones, fine lines around her eyes, sinewy muscles in her calves, flowing skirt.  She rested her back against the man’s chest and they rhythmically swayed in perfect synchronicity as if they had danced together a thousand times.      

In the plaza, the ice-cream vendor launched popsicles into the sky. He wound his torso backwards like a discus thrower, and then rotated his shoulders forward, swinging one tightly packed handful of popsicles after another in a circle and then releasing them at the optimal angle. The brightly-colored projectiles rocketed up into the dissipating clouds. The boys elbowed each other, jostling for position, straining to catch as many popsicles as they could until their arms were filled with bouquets of strawberry, lemon, cactus fruit and mango flavored ices.

The man led the woman through a rapid series of perfectly executed turns; as she spun around, the crystalline filaments of her hair brushed against his cheek. The man’s hands dropped to her waist and he lifted her. The woman extended her legs in a front split with her toes pointing away from her body. Though straining from the exertion, the man continued to spin her for several more rotations. Then he abruptly came to a halt. He gently lowered the woman until her tightly muscled frame was parallel to their aerial stage. Kneeling, the man gasped for air, his chest heaving. She tenderly cupped his face in her hands, softly kissed his lips, and then let herself fall. She seemed to float, weightless, for a placid moment and then disappeared, dissolving into so many glistening droplets. Thin shafts of sunlight pierced the clouds, like water streaming through fissures in a dam, casting a filtered spotlight on the man, his eyes brimming with emotion.    

The brothers erupted in cheers, fragmented popsicles exploding from their mouths. The rain subsided.

The bricklayer throttled back on his trowels and the ladder slowed to a stop a few feet above the plaza. The ice-cream vendor was standing nearby, waiting for them to touch down. He clasped the youngest brother’s hands and helped the boy disembark as the ladder slowly dropped to the cobblestones. The boys then darted through the plaza, bounding uncontrollably, seemingly in all directions at once. Looking on from a distance, the boys’ sister quietly thanked the heavens for their safe return.

The bricklayer collapsed to the ground, exhausted. The ice-cream vendor fished through his cart and pulled out two purple, cactus-flavored popsicles. He plopped down beside the bricklayer and offered him one. The bricklayer used it as a microphone, serenading his new friend with an old love song. The ice-cream vendor playfully elbowed the bricklayer in the ribs and both men laughed.

The man landed a few yards away. He appeared stunned, lost in his own thoughts.  The bricklayer and the ice-cream vendor grew quiet, respectful of the man’s solitude. They smiled at him affectionately and the man bashfully bowed his thanks.      

The man opened his briefcase on the bench. He removed his bathing cap and goggles and stowed them away.  Then he took out his slacks and put them on. Next, he extracted his white shirt. He slipped his arms through the sleeves, buttoned up the front and then reached inside the briefcase for his cufflinks. 

But the cufflinks were gone. And so was his watch.

The man scanned the plaza and the surrounding streets that emptied into it, potholed and crumbling concrete tributaries into a long-forgotten estuary. People were returning to their normal routines following the downpour: waiters unfolded signs advertising lunch specials onto the sidewalk, contractors removed makeshift tarps, and stray dogs resumed their interminable search for scraps. The man spied frenetic movement on a narrow side street—it was the girl, the boys’ little sister, sprinting away from the plaza with clenched fists.  She rounded a corner at the end of the block and disappeared from his view.

The man inserted his index finger through the hole in his shirt cuff. He solemnly stroked the cuff’s starched fabric with his thumb. Moving cautiously, as if wary of aggravating an injury, the man rolled up his sleeves, slotted his belt through the loops in his slacks, put on his socks and shoes, and draped his suit jacket over his arm. He did not trouble himself with his vest or bow tie.    

The man peered into his briefcase. He closed his eyes and lipped a prayer, or perhaps it was a farewell.  The taut muscles in his back released, allowing his shoulders to slump forward. A warm breeze ruffled the man’s wispy hair. He looked up, studying the disintegrating clouds.  His lips curled into a grin. He shut the case. The locks nestled behind each of the keyholes engaged with a patter of clicks.  

~

The girl raced up a steep street, away from the city’s center, towards her neighborhood, a cluster of brightly painted cement buildings in varied states of completion protruding from the hillside.  She rounded a sharp corner and, on instinct, flattened herself against a brick wall as a speeding green and white taxi nearly clipped her face with its passenger mirror. Unfazed by the near collision she peered over her shoulder to see if anyone followed. The street was calm; a few middle-school boys waited for a mini-bus and an old woman slowly climbed the steps carved into the sidewalk, groaning with each footfall. The girl was relieved, yet remained vigilant, unwilling to rest until she was home. She continued on, resuming her breathless pace. 

At the blue house she darted to the left up a narrow alley passable only on foot. As the grade steepened, the cracked and crumbling cement gave way to patches of gravel and then dirt, now sodden with rainwater. At the broken chair—a rocking chair cleft in half and partially entombed beneath a small pile of discarded rebar and jagged concrete debris and the point at which her four older brothers invariably slowed down—the girl, as was her custom, pitched forward, digging her sneakers into the wet soil, scrambling ahead. It was a chance to distinguish herself, prove she was faster. And even though no one was there to see her as she summited the peak and strode across the vacant lot next to her house, she felt triumphant, confident that she’d set a new personal record. 

The girl pictured her mother somewhere in the city below, selling bread from the basket she balanced on her head until long after sunset. Her mother was a butterfly in the street, smiling at would-be customers, cheerily drumming up business. But by the time she emerged through their battered screen door, she was an angry wasp, ready to sting at the slightest infraction. 

Safe in her room, sitting on her bed by the window overlooking the vacant lot, the girl marveled at the interior workings of the watch and the delicate circles etched into the blue stones of the cuff links. These were the most beautiful objects she’d ever held. But it wasn’t their beauty that captivated her; it was the promise, the possibility, the power they seemed to possess. 

She surveyed the empty lot where nothing grew but a smattering of weeds and dry grasses.  Narrow rivulets of rainwater filled the parched cracks in the dirt.

When the girl’s uncle had visited from the countryside, he’d held the powdery, desiccated soil in his palm and explained, because of the drought years, the earth on the hillside was now afraid of rain. He tossed the useless dirt aside, shaking his head. The girl asked her uncle what it would it take for the hillside to change, to accept the rain. He shrugged and said that things would have to return to the way they were, when the rainy season gently soaked the hillside each year, taught the sloped land how to retain all that water. 

The girl clutched the treasured objects in her palms, knelt beside her bed, and shut her eyes.  She imagined a bounty of fruit trees and neat rows of vegetable plants, a productive plot that she, her mother, and her restive brothers, who roamed further afield each day, could all farm, together. The girl held her eyes closed for as long as she could.

Outside the rainwater washed away with the topsoil, disappeared into storm drains, or simply vanished, evaporating, as it were. And then there was silence and heat once more. 

---

Jonathan Pais Knapp lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two sons working as an energy attorney and writing fiction whenever possible. He previously published a short story in the pacificREVIEW.

Gita M. Smith

A Gardener in February Thinks About June   

I want to be that daring gardener who ploughs up her front yard—to the horror of the Neighborhood Association—and plants Birds of Paradise, waist high. 

I want the confusion of their orange and purple plumage to lure the staid widow from her manicured veranda across the street. 
She will enter my jungle yard, throw up her skirt and dance like a Cossack’s bride.

I want musicians to gather on my porch in late afternoon, get drunk on the perfume of four o'clocks, and play their revolutionary love songs through the night.

I want my neighbors to abandon their mowers 
and bland green lawns 
and plant old strains of corn and persimmon trees
and share their harvests as freely as they now share scowls and prohibitions.

When autumn comes, I want to walk among my Birds of Paradise, push their firm stalks aside, 
and find the widow lying with the banjo player, 
their bodies tightly curled like roots of salvia.      

First published on Fictionaut in 2013.  

---

The Counter Where Names Go to Die

Inside Ellis Island 1912, arriving immigrants are being processed. At one counter stands a middle aged man whose job it is to give people their new American identities. He changes their foreign-sounding names to more American-sounding ones. Paderewski becomes Drew; Ystremskaya becomes Strong; Wjohowicz becomes Howard. 

The immigrants—so malleable—will do anything to become Americans. They suffer this indignity, which is far less onerous than many they have suffered in the past, for the sake of getting the papers needed to begin their new lives. 

 This man does his job efficiently and rotely. It doesn't occur to him that people have a right to their names as part of a long blood line stretching back thousands of years. To him they are just sounds—problematic in some cases—just strung together in chains that can be unlinked and made shorter. It is of no concern to him that these names have substantial meanings in other languages. 

They may be place names, signifying battlegrounds or vinyards or lakes wherein the bones of generations now lie. Or they may mean “son of so-and so,”  signifying precious relationships and lines of succession no less important than those of Tudors or Hapsburgs: Shlomo Ben Levi—Solomon son of Levi.  Ibrahim Bin Saud—Abraham from the house of Saud. Genetic history is seated in these names and yet, with a few pen scratches in a registry, he erases those connections forever. 

He doesn't hear the music in “Delaprovatti,” or the rhythmic susurration in “Sipsizimani.” 

One day a woman, one of several translators at Ellis Island, asks him why he has changed a passenger's name from Checzowicz to something else.

“The name was too long,” he says. “Ten letters.”

She replies, “But you didn't change O'Shaughnessy, and it has 12 letters.”

She waits for an answer but he doesn't have one. Finally, “How does it hurt to shorten a name?” he asks. “You can dock a dog's tail, but he is still a Rottweiler.” 

She turns away and doesn't speak to him again.

Sometimes, when he is in the great City of New York, going about his usual life at a Chinese shirt laundry, for example, or the fish market, he sees the hostile looks of the immigrants around him. He has been bumped in lines and glared at from vegetable stalls, and he is not sure why.

He doesn't recognize the faces, but they recognize him. He is the man at the counter where they lost their names. He is the man who stands on the spot where names go to die.

This piece was first published on Fictionaut in 2017.

---

Gita M. Smith lives and writes and gardens passionately in Montgomery, Alabama. She spent most of her working life writing non-fiction for newspapers and experienced immense joy when she allowed herself to make stuff up. Her fiction has appeared here and there, and so have her poems, but she never kept a list.

Leslie Cairns

Cassiopeia

My Mom was ivy spires, rivets with edges jagged

from being cut off with pliers, the way she screamed with fists.

I aspired never to be like her. I hoped that if you opened me

like a butternut squash, fresh from the vine, to turn into baked boats in ovens,

you wouldn’t find half of her there, when you split me down the middle.

She was once in a hot tub with churning water & cradled heads

near rose & merlot & sprawls of IPAs around her like a fallen down canopy.

& her falsetto voice singing Adele was the bluest, somber, ombre note. So much so

that I almost thought her hair would turn into mermaid. I almost thought

she’d never hurt me at all.

Standing, hugging the doorframe – almost staying behind – almost not

saying goodbye to her, in silence. Her voice could do that to you.

She could hit the high notes. My aunt saying in the car once, at 8, that:

mymomsvoicewasanangels, & Ibetternotforgetit. Speaking so fast about mom

& in ways that didn’t seem to match how she treated me, that I was wondering

if we were talking about the same person. But, yes, my Mom was a soprano.

No one could take that away from her. & when she sang,

you almost thought she loved you. 

                                                            ***

Now, I would kill to be a mermaid in manufactured & too scalding water.

“A dollar, or spare change?” I ask the strangers as they drive down I-95.

People around me look: raised brows, noticing.

Acting almost like I don’t belong there.

A weird sort of homeless.

We flail until we lose

love, until we lose home,

until words that used to lull us to sleep are

cross bones on a skull.

Help me.

I’d love sparkling water one more time.

My stomach gurgles. I don’t drink like she did; I just can’t afford home.

I’m making a pine tree my living room; the stars I name

with different flavors of tea.

Orien’s Belt is ginger,

North star is ginseng.

Cassiopeia is lemon or peppermint.

And, then, I almost convince myself that

I am sipping tea instead of stars & that

my belly is fully of galaxies.

I pivot towards the biggest crowd (about 20), waiting for brunch.

I used to love eggs benedict, made the way my friends made it.

I open my mouth. Remember when I sang

Blackbird, or ‘Maybe’ from Annie, that my voice echoed hers.

Soprano notes in bathtubs. A way we sang something – something – that we shared.

“Maybe this time…” I start.

A few people turn at me, eyes widen.

Fear like mountain tops.

“Maybe this time, I’ll be happy…”

            “Maybe this time, you’ll stay…”

Speeding up: I’m sparrow & I’m flying notes that match yours,

the way you used to sing in hot tubs and

I would almost think you loved me.

           
           As I sing, people keep putting money into my fedora.

I sing & spurt the way you taught me. 

Maybe – tonight – I’ll sleep in a bed,

instead of stars that wait for me.

---

Leslie Cairns lives in Denver, CO. She has a prose chapbook, The Food is the Fodder, with Bottlecap Press. She also has upcoming work in Ellipsis Letters, Fulminare Review, Moss Puppy Mag, and others.

Kat Meads

The Hers

Say, for starters, you are a girl with a grudge, someone who has lived with a grudge (the cause immaterial) for long enough to self-identify as a grudge holder. And say you have this thing about people, total strangers, who feel free to eddy up alongside you in the grocery store or drug store or cut-rate clothing store or wherever to brazenly stare at whatever item you hold in your hands. And say one day, one of those days when there seem to be too many objects in the world but not the right objects, a ripe, old, bruised shell of a woman whom you fear you’ll one day see in the mirror edges up beside you and instead of staring at your pending purchase brazenly stares at you, trying (you’re convinced) with that stare to snatch your age and height and hair density and very life. And say to prevent that theft you start shoving the old woman and shouting “Get off me, hag! Get your death breath off me!” and say the old gal, as if you’ve yelled none of those hateful words, continues to press closer still, and just as you’re about to bolt the line, the checker asks “Will that do it for you today?” and say you, the horribly conflicted, compromised girl, find you cannot speak.

___ 

Say, for starters, you are a woman who can’t recall exactly when you began to pick at your face but never mind since the picking is a private matter between your finger and your face. Say, nevertheless, you have for years been exceedingly careful about the when and where of separating one piece of your flesh from another and during your mid-morning break this day assiduously check sinks and stalls to confirm you are without company in the office restroom. Say the light, in the restroom, has recently been upgraded, a boon to picking, and when a colleague enters you surprise yourself and her by carrying on. And because your colleague does not immediately take herself elsewhere, you surprise yourself still further by digging deeper, drawing blood. Then she does depart, she and her pitying concern, and back at her cubicle will start the first round of Pass the Message. Soon your colleagues en masse will believe you are bleeding out on the restroom floor and wonder if they should “get involved.” Say you consider the entire episode wildly liberating and next day take less trouble covering the inflammation and divots and scabs with fresh makeup, eagerly anticipating the morning you will arrive in the office makeup-free, the first step in no longer disguising any private facet of yourself. Say you follow through.

___

Say, for starters, you are a child weaned on the phrase “Let’s not get our hopes up.” And say, as a child, you infer that hopes (always plural), while possible to lift, are better off un-lifted, that any attempt to do so will be taken by those in your immediate circle as unseemly, an act of bravado, a show-off-y performance. To “come to grips” with that imperative lesson, say your strategy (at first) is to picture hopes as the equivalent of an immensely heavy beast, most likely a bear. Not even your strongest uncle has wrestled a bear, much less lifted it. Then, say a year or so older, still struggling to tamp down your natural childish enthusiasm/optimism/belief in magic, you reframe the imagery. Hopes = a very tall ceiling and you, midge-sized, beneath. A midge could fly within reach of a ceiling, sure, but lift it? No way. Say one rainy afternoon, stuck inside, ceiling overhead, you decide to share your midge and ceiling decoding. And say you imagine (i.e., hope) that when you reach the end of your little presentation, the mood around you will instantly transform and you’ll be celebrated with nods, grins and maybe even complimented on your ingenuity (a word you don’t even know yet) rather than told: “it’s just a saying.” And say this time they are actually telling the truth and all the while you were making up stories to control and comfort yourself they assumed you knew it was “just a saying,” assumed it was just you being you.

---

Kat Meads's flash fiction has appeared in Your Impossible Voice, Fairy Tale Review, Necessary Fiction, Hotel Amerika, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and elsewhere. She is the author of the flash fiction collection Little Pockets of Alarm. (katmeads.com)

Mary Biddinger

Too Much Charge

The new year loomed like a pair of torn pantyhose in a ditch. Neither of us wanted to touch it. My roommate kept flipping our Scarecrows of America calendar back to November. I couldn’t reach the bin where we stored our cat’s Baba Yaga costume. Somebody kept buzzing our apartment intercom looking for “Sheila.”

My roommate had decorated the radiator covers for Christmas: cloven hooves trimmed from spare felt, Dickensian waif silhouettes in charcoal. I was obsessed with a scratchy blue flannel even though it felt like aggressive dermatitis. It belonged to yet another ex-boyfriend, the one who relocated to Yellowknife because Chicago “lacked authenticity.”

On our new year resolution roster, my roommate applied one glittery holographic sad face sticker to the category of romance. We killed a few hours roller skating in the utility room. The housekeepers laundering Victorian garments of ancient inhabitants of the top floor—left over from the building’s vaudeville days—called us hookers in Polish. My ancestors were straight out of Podlaskie Voivodeship, which I couldn’t even pronounce, and I think the housekeepers could tell.

In 1986, a crime show film crew working in our apartment building released an accidental fireball that cascaded up to the twelfth floor, blowing doors off hinges and melting a few kitchens. Too much charge, the stunt master had claimed in a newspaper clipping. We reeled around a corner and down the half-flight of stairs, claiming to catch a shiver of ghost smoke left over from the inferno crew. My roommate shared an old trick of enveloping yourself in the nearest floor-length drapes, becoming virtually invisible. The housekeepers shuttled past us with their borax, curses, and bundled reeds. 

Trick Ethics

For such an old hotel, the doors of the Sheridan Arms sure were flimsy. I thunked and thunked in borrowed platform boots. Down the street, workers and their sledgehammers pledged to make the artisanal cheese chateau more modern. I tried to touch nothing but found my fingerprints everywhere. My hands always felt greasy in 1999, whatever I was doing, swabbing a stray cat’s ear mites or assembling a fake authentic vaudeville hatbox. Arranging dates with a fake boyfriend as cover for dates with an even more fake boyfriend, keeping my roommate in the double dark. 

Some roommates are tragedy-proof. Know them by the cuffs of their khakis, the reliability with which they conceal a mini-pack of tissues in an oxford pocket. My roommate never identified as tragedy-proof, and perhaps I did, but only on paper. Filling out the university housing survey felt like a flashback to my old summer job at Clothestime, with all the trick ethics. If your roommate secrets a mock-pieta necklace retailing approximately $8.99 and returns it the next day, packaging intact, is that a crime and do you report? I nicked the backs of my hands with a tag-trimmer, stood in line for grilled cabbage at the end of my shift.

According to the Tribune archives, a total of seven people had been murdered at the Sheridan Arms, two in the same night, and this brought a chill. Which was the more hideous crime: taking off all your clothes in front of a semi-stranger and watching each item fall to the floor, stepping outside a hotel room door for one minute in nothing but bracelets too byzantine to remove, or inventing a story that involved both? Dishonesty with a roommate is like sitting down at the piano and playing a fake song, then claiming the lyrics are too provocative to sing.

Even the most stereotypical hotel neon evokes pounding Rolling Rock on an empty stomach while perched on a bar stool in denim booty shorts. Once inside the Sheridan Arms hotel room I opened a solitary bar of Dial like it was a freak condom. Peered across the alley at my apartment building, as if I was leaving one body at home while the other hovered in two inches of hot water. Meanwhile my roommate was underlining every sentence in a research article using yellow highlighter.

How long until my date was standing at the door whispering something original like knock, knock? The rubber gloves in my purse belonged to my roommate. Cherry Chapstick on my bottom lip belonged to my roommate. 250 square feet of almost-lake view belonged to me until exactly 5:00 pm EST. I entered my ritual of peering under the bed, opening the closet, unfolding the ironing board that smelled like divorce and damp ribbons.

Curator of the Year

It was a period of “laying low” after the pedagogy awards ceremony fiasco. I was still mortified after penning a mini invective against the presumed winner, drinking two pitchers of beer (out of the pitcher), then unexpectedly winning and performing a revolting dance at the podium. But within the confines of my favorite Potterybarn, which we frequented daily, I was simply another style curator. Sometimes I finessed the merchandise into more positive angles. Polished the weekender spoons against my tank top. At the awards ceremony podium I could barely hold the novelty award check steady, but still executed the drop it low as if no time had passed since undergrad. I tried to abandon this memory in a glass carafe filled with seashells.

One Pottery Barn sales associate lingered next to my roommate, who was pondering the cost-effectiveness of homemade rattan, and then fifteen minutes later that same clerk was perched on my roommate’s knee talking about Swedish up-dos and pillows stuffed with alternative down. I was doing a great job of not thinking about the particulars, such as what kind of beer was in those pitchers (Miller Lite) and which jukebox songs I’d played on repeat to pump up my outrage before the awards ceremony. After the ceremony my roommate hand-fed me dates and made guillotine gestures at the bartender, but I just kept railing on about Scott Fennell and his feckless pedagogy paper on passive assessment.

At least I still had Pottery Barn, I thought, running through every retained fragment of dialogue from the post-awards reception, where my roommate claimed to be re-clasping my bracelet but actually tied my wrist to a railing. Around 8:00 pm we needed to make a purchase before Pottery Barn closed. My roommate strolled to the cash register with an armful of wooden beads, a six pack of plastic lemons, and a perfumed drawer buddy. I (accidentally) slammed one tiny sweet dreams bar soap onto the counter.

The Autumn Spark

Fall semester clocked in like a hung-over cashier. My roommate double-fisted dissertation hours, while I enrolled in a full load. Two classes overlapped by twenty minutes, which felt like a not-so-secret affair. Philosophy of Rhetoric, Wharton and James. Any time away from campus I spent attempting to read two books at once (one for each thigh.)

I was dating a guy who thought bats hatched from seeds. Let’s wash this beach blanket, he said, we might have picked something up from the trees. Beautiful like a roast beef sandwich. I had to stop my roommate from pinching him when he dozed on our secondhand divan, surrounded by my students’ “Remembering Events” essays.

One autumn afternoon I was cramming two novels at once, boyfriend snoozing in the center of the living room floor. His garments swayed in a breeze from the ceiling fan, which only had one speed. I lingered simultaneously on a description of clams and a treatise on liminality. Then the party girls on floor twelve started tossing lit matches out their window.

We had to spend three hours on the curb. My roommate lugged a typewriter down the fire escape, bit the head off a gingerbread scarecrow. The boyfriend kept running hands through his hair, even though it had long ceased being cute. I imagined my student papers drifting into the flames, at this point merely a smolder, then hunkered one book into the crease of the other.

The One Where We Trick Tourists into Learning How to Dance

I own three different tourist disguises, but the most convincing includes three layered tank tops, low-rise distressed jean shorts, and a straw hat with plastic feather in the brim. I whisk on silver-pink iridescent lipstick and grab my shell necklace and I’m ready to rock the plaza. 

Historically the plaza was dominated by flamenco demonstrations and noncustodial fathers herding children to the cotton candy cart. The flamenco demonstration was equally compelling and off-putting. The dancers wanted nothing to do with onlookers. It made us feel like we’d walked in on a stranger who forgot to lock the bathroom stall.

My roommate purchases a performer permit template and ream of 20-pound paper from a guy named Eddie who has a tiny office on Clark. The bootleg template spits out of our living room printer and I endorse it with my finest bureaucratic flourish.

Of course we have to arrive at the plaza separately. My roommate brings the boom box, bag of marabou boas, and mini trophies purchased from the party store.

It pains me to pay for a taxi, but we need to maintain verisimilitude. I smile at the taxi driver and tell him yes, it’s my first time in Chicago and I can’t believe how big and clean it is.

My roommate convenes a modest crowd, the plaza sidewalk chalked with foot outlines like we stood on in junior high when learning the electric slide. The flamenco dancers are nowhere to be found. A few weeks later, a fifty-word diatribe will appear in the Chicago Reader regarding the loss of culture downtown.

I stop at the cotton candy cart and order two pink-and-blues.

My roommate works the crowd. Speaks into a microphone that isn’t connected to anything, but does not need amplification. Are you ready to rock? Are you ready…to rock?

A couple with matching Cubs jerseys ventures into the circle my roommate has drawn in glitter chalk. I set down my cotton candy and step in like a dorky cartoon rabbit.

Have you ever danced before, my roommate asks, tips the mic to my face.

Um, just square dances back in my home in Iowa and whatnot, I say.

I follow my roommate’s lead, align flipflops with the footprints. I’m clumsy at first as if dancing had been banned in my hometown and I only attempted it in a crawlspace under my family’s split-level where I stashed a JC Penney catalog since its families looked so happy with their untangled dogs and unnaturally green lawns.

Then, as the kids say today, the beat drops.

I rip the straw hat from my head and fling it into the crowd, where a noncustodial dad catches it in his teeth. Peel off two of the three tanks, revealing a nude cami that matches my skin.

Almost everyone screams.

I slide my body across the plaza with sick delight, like a lava lamp cracked open and spilling forbidden contents.

My roommate shrieks with excitement as I writhe up the plaza stairs and whip my hair.

From the cornfields of Iowa, can you imagine, my roommate exclaims, then passes my hat to the crowd, waves copies of a dance how-to pamphlet (printed on 20-pound paper) for sale. Now she’s ready to take her show to the finest nightclubs and boudoirs in the Midwest.

Afterwards we dump the contents of my hat onto the Bennigan’s bar counter—mostly singles—and decide to split an order of seasoned fries.

---

Mary Biddinger's flash fiction has recently appeared in Always Crashing, DIAGRAM, Gone Lawn, and Southern Indiana Review, among others. These stories are part of a project that chronicles the adventures of two graduate school roommates in late-1990s Chicago. She is also co-editor, with Julie Brooks Barbour, of A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers, forthcoming from the University of Akron Press in spring 2024.

Jim Gish

Harvey Dollar’s Used Cars

Harvey Dollar tried to sell Miss Lucille one of them cut rate cars he has got at Dollar Used cars. He smiled like a possum eating shit and said, “Sure, it is ten years old, but the odometer says forty–two thousand miles, right on the money.”

For a long time now, Miss Lucille had been nursing her ’78 Pinto’s death rattle wheeze, with which it practically begged to be shot and put out of its misery. So Miss Lucille asked Ethel May Kurtz where she could get a good, cheap car, and Ethel May, who is in her Missionary Society group and a trusted confidante, said she would try Harvey Dollar because she’d sent several friends in his direction, and they were all satisfied.

Now, what Ethel May did not tell Miss Lucille was that Harvey was married to her ugly niece, Eunice. What Ethel knows for the sure and righteous truth is that the niece wants to leave Harvey, who is a tightwad and a sleazeball, and unless Harvey sells some cars, Eunice will bring her obnoxious four-year-old son, Melvin, back to Ethel’s house to “stay a day or two” which might turn into six months or a year, at which point Ethel might just catch the Greyhound to Louisville and get her old job back at the Woolworth’s grill in order to escape her relatives and their tendency to suck a person dry down to the moldy core. So what Miss Lucille is getting is a slanted representation of Mr. Harvey Dollar, which she will find out soon enough, as will she rue the day she ever considered Ethel a friend of virtue and veracity.

Miss Lucille dickers in that way she knows to dicker on the price of the ‘96 Taurus saying, “I want you to know I ain’t got any money.”

And Harvey smiles with those two gold caps he’s so proud of and says, “Yes, but Personal Finance has got some money right over there across from the courthouse, and, anyways, everybody gets a loan for a car. It is the American way.”

So finally, Miss Lucille lets herself be persuaded over to Personal Finance where Tiny Kenny Roll gives her thirty pages to sign, which, for all she knows, says that she is pledging to sell her house and kill her cats and offer them to pagan gods, but she has put her trust in Ethel and Ethel believes in Harvey Dollar and Harvey trusts Kenny, although neither of them looks very prosperous or trustworthy. It is like a miracle when, half an hour later, Harvey gives Miss Lucille the keys to the Taurus.

Harvey Dollar is smiling and crossing his fingers, praying fiercely that the car will actually start and the transmission will not fall out. Kenny Roll is standing over in his office door smiling as he imagines taking the sales document home to his girlfriend, Thonda Lee, to show her that he is on his way to his first million and maybe she will let him make love to her again like she did two months before.

Miss Lucille is smiling because now she has got a car which does not have rusty quarter panels and will no longer be the ugliest car in the parking lot at the Pentecostal church where vehicle status determines who gets to sit in the front of the choir.

Miss Lucille starts the car and turns on the gospel station where Elvis is singing “How Great Thou Art.” She drives around the town square twice and stops at every stop light long enough to wave at her friends. And she is aware of how they wave in that tentative manner and then bend to whisper to each other, “I think Lucille has stolen a car,” although Lucille imagines they’re saying, “Look! Lucille has gotten herself a fine automobile.”

The trouble starts the following morning. Miss Lucille goes out to her car, meaning to go the Piggly Wiggly and get some of that cut rate bacon they mark down on Thursdays because the expiration date says it will be rancid within twenty four hours.

“You just put it in the freezer,” she announces to Tollie Dowler, the man who runs the meat counter, “and when you thaw it out, it tastes just as good as new.”

Tollie nods in an agreeable way because it is always easier to agree with Miss Lucille. If a person disagrees with her, she gets red in the face and sputters made up scripture until one no longer cared about the initial question.

Anyway, Miss Lucille slides into her new car and turns the key, taking a deep whiff of the interior which has a new smell to it. What she gets in return is a moaning noise and then a hissing sound. Neither of these, she notices, is a starting sound, the kind one promptly expects from a new car the second day one drives it. Miss Lucille turns the key three times and gets the same noises. At which point, she gets out of the car and closes the door and goes into her kitchen where she sits down for five minutes and reads the Bible.  

She has just finished the verse that says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” and was wondering if that meant it would be all right for her to go next door and throttle Stacy Delrepp, who sometimes sunbathed nude in her back yard and once called Miss Lucille a “silly old bitch” right to her face. But her attention returns quickly to the matter at hand, which is getting her car started and going to the Piggly Wiggly.

Miss Lucille gets her sweater on a second time, feeling like the car has had time to cleanse itself of whatever evil spirits were circulating.

She crawls into the car, turns the key, and right on cue, the car starts up and runs as sweet as a morning song. Miss Lucille nods her head emphatically as though to say, “I may be an old woman, but I know what I know.”

It is only two blocks later that the car wheezes once more, spits out a huge cloud of dark smoke and stops dead in the middle of an intersection.

Miss Lucille tries to start the car three times. Then she closes her eyes and says a little prayer that nearly always works in bad situations.

“Dear God, help me in my hour of need. I am sorry that I ever had bad thoughts about Darl Farkinson when I hoped he would die from a lightning strike and then it happened a month later. Keep me ever in Thy mercy, Amen.”

She opens her eyes as the horns of other cars around her begin squawking. She closes her eyes one more time and says, “Make this damn car start.” Then she turns the key and hears a high whining noise that sounds like her car is pretty much finished with trying to do what it is supposed to do.      

Miss Lucille exits the car and walks off into the Piggly Wiggly parking lot, leaving the car sitting there and muttering to herself that Harvey Dollar is an agent of the devil, and Ethel, who recommended him, is now an ex-friend who can damn well find herself a new ride to the Frisch’s in Hopkinsville for the Friday Fish Special.

In the Piggly Wiggly, Miss Lucille goes straight to the office and asks Lazy Ass Leonard if she can use the phone. His lips get that bee stung look that he has copied from his idol, Elton John, when Miss Lucille reaches past him and grabs the phone and starts to dial Triple AAA.

“If that is long distance, you will paying for it, Missy,” Leonard says.

“Eat shit, Leonard,” Miss Lucille tells him, completely forgetting about her seventy-two years in the Baptist church and her sainted mother’s admonition against profanity.

“I thought you was saved,” Leonard says dramatically, covering his mouth like an ingénue from a 40’s movie who has been told her slip is showing.

“I was saved until about ten minutes ago, but now I am ready to kick some ass over this damn car I bought from Harvey Dollar. I think God will understand, and if he don’t, I will just go straight to hell and burn for a million years. I don’t give a damn.”

Missus Cloyd Wilson, the Baptist piano player, overhears this standing in the green bean aisle ten feet away, and she promptly swoons, clipping her head on the edge of an aluminum shelf.

Triple AAA is busy, and Harvey Dollar does not answer his phone. Miss Lucille steps over Missus Cloyd, speaking down to her silent form in rapid, clipped syllables, “Sorry, you had to hear that Missus Cloyd. Life is full of sharp surprises.”

Out on the street, Hoke Lord and Dickie Varbel, who have been smoking dope all morning, decide that someone needs to move the car out of the intersection. So they abandon Hoke’s ’87 Ford Ranger and walk to where the offending car is clogging up morning traffic. The Clugg traffic cop, Buster John Holloway, is standing there writing a ticket when Hoke nods to him and reaches in to pull the gear shift into neutral. By the time Buster John thinks to yell for them to stop, Dickie and Hoke have thrown their weight behind the car and started it across the intersection and toward the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly. Dickie is trying to steer and push at the same time, but when the front wheel hits a man hole cover, the steering wheel jerks out of Dickie’s hand thus detouring Dickie and the Taurus and Hoke down Water Street.

By now the Taurus is picking up speed down the grade. Buster John is chasing after the boys to tell them they cannot move a car when he is giving it a ticket. Dickie keeps digging in his heels and yelling, “Whoa! Whoa!” but the Taurus is not a mule and does not understand commands, although it understands momentum really well.

The car is now doing fourteen miles per hour. Hoke trips on some loose pavement and falls on his face. Dickie turns it loose because he can’t run that fast, especially with his pot saturated lungs begging for relief. Buster John stops because he sees very clearly that Taurus is about to run through an intersection, jump the curb, and probably slam through Phyllis Detrick’s redwood fence.

So as Dickie and Hoke and Buster John watch helplessly, the Taurus hurdles the curb, shatters the fence and dives nose-first into the swimming pool, missing Phyllis, who is sitting in a deck chair, smoking a Salem Light and drinking a Chocolate Raspberry Cappuccino, by about fifteen feet.

Phyllis sits there, observing the Taurus as it gurgles and becomes submerged. She looks up to see Buster John, Dickie and Hoke walk through her shattered fence.

“I never had a Taurus in my swimming pool before,” she says.

“That car nearly killed you,” Buster John tells her.

“Yeah, but it didn’t,” Phyllis says. “My mama said God does everything for a reason, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what lesson I am supposed to learn from this.”

“Nobody knows the mind of God,” Dickie says, and sits down in a deck chair next to Phyllis.

Hoke hunkers down on the balls of his feet like he does when he sitting with his uncle and cousins around a fire listening to the coon dogs run.

“Reverend Bill Chase thinks he knows God’s mind,” Hoke suggests, “but he is just sad because he has got a short pecker. I tried to tell him six months ago, but he just said he would pray for me. I don’t think people with short peckers like to discuss it much.”

Just then Miss Lucille totters up and stands with her hands on her hips, taking in the whole breadth of the scene, her Taurus, and Buster John, Hoke, Dickie and Phyllis.

“Phyllis Ann,” she admonishes, “cover up your titties.”

Phyllis Ann squints at her.

“Miss Lucille, you mind your own business. I did not invite you or your car into my pool or my life.”

Miss Lucille shakes her head in a meditative manner and sits down in a lounge chair.

“I am sorry, Sugar,” she apologizes. “Up until fifteen minutes ago, I was a Christian and I tried to save folks my whole life. It is none of my damn business if you want to sit around with your titties out. I am going to burn in hell anyways since, as soon as I get some energy back, I intend to catch a ride over to Harvey Dollar’s car lot and cut off his nuts.”

Buster John has been watching, first one person and then another, trying to decide at what point he needs to assert his jurisdiction. But he is completely baffled and lowers himself to a sitting position against what is left of the redwood fence.

Dickie rolls a joint and offers it to Hoke, who takes a hit and hands it to Miss Lucille.

Miss Lucille takes the joint and shrugs.

“I can only burn in hell once, and it looks like I am going to, so I don’t think it matters what else I do.” 

Phyllis asks if anyone would like a cup of coffee. She emerges two minutes later with four cups on a serving tray.

As Buster John sips his coffee, he looks over the scene. The car is still gurgling a little in the pool. Miss Lucille is toking on a joint while she and Phyllis speculate about what it will be like to live a million years in Hell together, sort of like roommates discussing a color scheme.

Dickie is sitting on the edge of the pool with his legs in the water looking placidly at the blue sky.

“I just think the world is going crazy,” Buster John says. “I might as well go, too.”

He sits down between Hoke and Miss Lucille and waits for the joint to come his way.

---

Jim Gish was born and raised in Western Kentucky among the rogue Baptist tribes. The author is a writer, a college instructor in psychology, and a counselor for the Lotus and Phoenix website. Gish has published over 50 short works of literary fiction, humorous fiction, and horror fiction; and has won a number of prizes including first place in the FISH FOOD fiction contest and first place for a national contest sponsored by PHOEBE, the James Mason University writing magazine. The author hopes he will be remembered as an admirer of the grand human pageantry in all its raucous diversity.

Cheryl Snell

First Date

“You got kids?” she asks him.

“Who knows? I came of age in the sixties,” he says with a wink. “You?”

Her kids had made themselves scarce after they warehoused her, so she tries a lie on for size. “I’m nobody’s mom,” she says. The lie is a snug fit.
 
“So what made you finally say yes to me?” He is the only man at the nursing home who still drives at night, but she can’t very well tell him that.

“I only said yes to dinner,” she reminds him.

One booth over, a woman is curved against her young man like a comma. They are both wearing wedding bands, but the rings don’t match.

“Hey, pretty mama,” the old man growls, comically imitating the young man.

“Hey baby,” she coos, playing along. She takes the man’s raw hands in hers. The gesture startles him, but he’d be the first to say it’s not his first rodeo. He gives her a slow smile, a light he’ll keep on long after the young cheaters have left, fortified for their fight to be together but leaving separately, the woman leading with the bump she’s already named.

Creeper

She returned home from visiting her mother to find her rosebushes dead.  She knelt down to hug them, and looked closely into their collapsed petals. Dead.

“Why didn’t you water them?” she asked her boyfriend.

“Didn’t get a chance. We had a heat wave while you were gone, and they all died, like overnight,” he said.

They entered the house. “What about my plants? Did the heat wave get inside and turn off the AC? Each one is withered!” She squinted at the bent stems with her blurry eyes.

“Weirdest thing─ they all shriveled the second you left. Must’ve missed you. So what’s for dinner?” he asked brightly.

While they waited for the delivery man, he said, “How is your mom? Which one of the kids is living with her now?”

He liked to poke fun of the fact that the siblings kept coming back home after divorces and firings. She stared at him as he mocked them; as his face went in and out of focus; as the doorbell rang.

After they finished their cartons of Chinese food, he went into the mud room and wordlessly handed her the watering can. It was empty, of course.

She filled it and went outside to try to coax her bushes back to life. On her knees, hands deep in soil, she looked up at the ivy she had planted not long before. It had scrambled up the siding fast, and now smothered half the house like a dark curtain coming across someone’s field of vision just before blindness sets in.

Higher up, a sling of moon pantomimed a warning about time, and she saw that although the roses had given up on her, the creeping vine had not. It had even grown a little.

---

Cheryl Snell’s poetry collections include chapbooks from Finishing Line Press, Pudding House, and Moira Books. A full length volume, Prisoner’s Dilemma, in collaboration with the late expressionist artist Janet Snell, won the Lopside Press Chapbook Competition. Cheryl’s work has appeared in a Best of the Net anthology and been nominated seven times. Her collection of novels is called Bombay Trilogy, about the Indian diaspora. She lives with her husband in Maryland, twelve miles from DC.

Eric Roe

Infinite Flow 

Autumn proposed to Winter. Winter ditched Autumn and melted into Spring, but Spring was swept off her feet by Summer, who took his sweet time before he finally started eyeing Autumn. Autumn gave Summer a dance, the two of them spinning breezy through the leaves. But Winter was Autumn’s true love. She blazed for him, drew him close from where he shivered. Later, Winter grew embarrassed by Autumn’s nakedness. He covered her in snow and resolved to go it alone. He marked her as the past tense of infinite flow.

As if she would never come around again.

Gathering 

Because it was going to rain. Because I had not gone out to clear the drainage ditch and I knew the water would flood the yard. Because the tree had rotted and would drop its limbs at the first gusts of wind. There is no shelter here. That's what I tried to tell them. And Dad? Dad just stood there, smoking a cigarette, and he said, “Some things you just can't save, son.”

---

Eric Roe’s stories have won the Chautauqua’s Editors Prize and The Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, have been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, and have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Story, Redivider, december, and Best American Fantasy. The writer lives in Chapel Hill, NC, and serves as the editorial assistant at UNC's Marsico Lung Institute.

Charlotte Larson

If I Drink Whiskey

If I drink whiskey, I dream of that motel room in Butte. How I stuffed my socks into my boots, and stripped the soggy sheets off the mattress, leaving them in a pile on the floor. You stood up on the bedside table covered with leftover lottery tickets. With the box cutter from your back  pocket, you worked on the painted-shut window. I snuck away to the bathroom to wipe my face, to splash cold water under my armpits. Above the mirror, a water stained picture of Jesus looked down on me as I peeled off my cotton underwear and tossed them in the garbage. A miniature statue of Mother Mary handed me blue bar soap.

When I came out, you were fed up. You sucker punched the window. One.Two.Three. You busted the frame right down the side. Jumping up and down on the bed, you held up your fist like a prize fighter. That’s me Baby, you shouted. I’m always the last one in the ring! Splinters dripped from your knuckles, and I wrapped them with a wet towel while you finished a beer with your good hand. Even though the evening smoke made it hard to breathe, you tugged me to the bed so we could lie together. Waiting for some kind of dry breeze. We were afternoon shadows in the sun-drenched room. There was no outside world, just us.

I was on your chest and you asked for more kisses: just one more. One for good luck, one for healing, Babybabybaby come on, you know I need them. I straddled you, hooking my fingers into the loops of your dirty jeans. My chin was raw from your scruff, but I kissed you deep. Whatever you said, I probably needed you worse. Your tongue found its way to the back of my throat. You tasted like Hams and river water and you filled me up up and up.

You had called it our motel getaway. A night away. Something different. You didn’t have to convince me. We were bored searching for quarters and waiting for pool tables and pitchers. We’d run out of our usual hideouts: the bar by the train tracks, our sandspit down by the green river that was only big enough for a towel and for me to stretch out so you could put your hands up my shirt. No one liked us together. At night, my friends hid my phone and pulled me onto the dance floor. They taught me how to swing, to shoot sunflower seeds like darts, anything to distract me.

I would never admit that I liked running into you. Finding you outside in a cool alley. We’d share a smoke in the dark, passing it back and forth. I’d touched every scar on your body, folded up and kept all your white T-shirts, seen how you reached out for me in your sleep. For those few sticky weeks, I stayed out for last call. I’d wait till I felt you touch the small of my back. For you to ask if I was ready to walk home.

On our way, you stopped for smokes, jerky, and cheap matching sunglasses from the gas station. Somewhere outside of Anaconda, the mountains turned lavender and you started singing. You had a husky singing voice, but you belted it out, tapping along on the steering wheel. You were the only man I had ever heard sing besides my Grandpa in church. You taught me campfire songs, boy scouts songs, wait, wait Baby what about this one? You gotta know this one songs. You wouldn’t let me be shy. Really sing. Come on, do it, I know you can. Just try. I leaned over, squeezing your inner thigh. I’ll sing when I get a little drunker, I said. You started driving with your knee and swerved when you bit my lip. You’ll do anything if I get you a little drunker.  When we weren’t singing or kissing, we were quiet. I counted every antiabortion billboard and picked at my knuckles, cracked from scraping too many breakfast plates. I stuffed them under my legs so you wouldn’t see. We never really had much to talk about. All we could do was watch the ash fall on the road.

I stood outside while you paid for the room. I pressed my back to the dusty car door, the air was tight, like it is before a storm. I was just buzzed enough to steal one of your last smokes. Across the parking lot, men, who were really boys, were drinking out the back of their Rams. One waved me over. Come on Baby. There’s a seat right here next to me. I made it special for you. I didn’t move. He licked his lips and howled. The rest of them yipped.

When I go find you, you were still filling out paperwork, signing our names as Mr. and Mrs. Newlyweds. The woman at the front counter didn’t care until she saw me. She turned down her gameshow, stuck her gum in the ashtray. You tipped your imaginary hat and said thank you. She watched you grab my hand and pull me towards the room. She shook her head, turning her back to see who the winner was. It was like she felt sorry for me.

I was drunk when you took my picture. In the picture I’m rolling on the grainy brown carpet, eyes heavy, my face cherry red from giggling. The bottle was so heavy I held it with both hands. Half a sip trickled out and down my cheek. You handed me the photo and I studied the girl’s face. She looked like a baby.

We’d been there all afternoon, you with your Ham’s and me sipping Tennessee honey out of the bottle. The plastic fan whirling whirling whirling. The more pulls I took, the more I let my braid fall out. The more I scanned the room for leftover jewelry, the warmer I got. The more I drank, I was someone else.

Even with the window open, the room got hotter, everything smelling like fresh asphalt. The beers eventually ran out, and you started calling me sweet names. I knew you’d had too much. You flopped down on the floor, pulling your Stetsons off and throwing them at the wall. Hard enough to leave a mark. You were breathing heavy, words slurred together, calling me something like a delicious dream. I was sticky with sweat and whiskey. I liked seeing you like this, kind of helpless for once. Standing above you, I hiked up my dress. Just enough. I was the burlesque girl hanging on your bedroom wall. I was the stripper who called you “a regular.” I was the girl in the corner of the bar with the see-through tank top. I was someone else.

My brown butter. You stood up so quick you scared me. You were taller than me by two heads. You locked and bolted the door. Yanked all the blinds down. Turning up the TV to drown out the boys smashing bottles in the parking lot. My girl. It was just you and I, and your eyes never left me when I started dancing. One tug and my freckled shoulder slipped out. My zipper snaked down, until my dress was on the floor with the sheets. You took out the camera again and I twirled, I skipped, I laughed, the room was spinning and I was too, leaping across the room, I moved like a deer, arching my neck back, pausing only for a better picture, for one more pull, the whiskey tasted like water, I scissor kicked my legs, spread myself open, the room trembled, headlights flickered on the walls as I reached out and sucked on your fingers, you ran out of film and patience, I couldn’t slow down and you moved closer and closer.

I never thought it would end like this. By you chasing me into the cool bathroom. Your mouth like a rabid dog. You kept screaming I need you.I need you.Ineedyou. I don’t remember getting in the shower, but there we were. Together, under cold water.

It must have been the last time. What I remembered most were your eyes. When you were inside me, they stayed wide open. You put your hand on the back of my neck and pulled. Pulled till my face was against yours. It was the closest we ever were. Warm period blood leaked out, running down my legs and drained in between our toes. I was too drunk to be embarrassed, too drunk not to love you. You turned me around, pressing my face against the glass–Baby, you feel so much better than she does, you said.

The taste of honey coated the back of my throat. I stopped breathing but I came anyway. Shaking and squeezing myself into you. Until it was over. Until it was just us again.

I slipped down to my knees. The shower floor gritty and yellow. Water filled my ears, drowning out everything. I would have stayed there forever, but you picked me up. Carefully. Pushing my hair out of my face. You washed me. Like I was a little kid, you scrubbed my back with bar soap. Wiped my bloody legs till the water ran clear. Before I got out, you wrapped me in a damp towel and cradled me to your chest. You smelled like sweet smoke. You smelled so familiar. You didn’t know what you said and I didn’t tell you.

If I drink whiskey, I dream of that motel room in Butte. I wake up wet and thirsty, like you were still there, somewhere in the dark. It took a few moments to remember that those weeks in August happened years ago.

Like most things, we didn’t last, and by winter I had gotten used to sleeping alone. But you were everywhere, at stoplights, in the same aisle of the grocery store. Every Sunday, sitting at the diner counter, waiting for me to come over. Waiting to look at my tired eyes and my apron covered in crusty ketchup and huckleberry syrup. I’d pour you a drip coffee and you’d ask for two sugars, the real sugars. You know what I like. You’d leave a big tip and linger until there were no more crosswords left. I’d flip hash browns, roll silverware, refill salt, pepper, oil, wash my hands again, again and again with a swollen throat. Waiting for the bell on the door to open and close. So I could breathe. I moved away by spring, and I hadn’t been back since. I never had the chance to ask you who she was. I’m not sure you’d even remember.

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Charlotte Rose Larson received her BA in Creative Writing at University of Montana. She writes copy for an advertising agency by day and works on her debut novel, So Long Honey, in between meetings. This is her first published short story.