Bryan Vale

Rules for Our Airbnb

1. No parties! We cannot have more than 8 guests in this house at a time.

2. Please, no loud noises after 10 o'clock at night. This is not our rule but our neighbors' requirement.

3. Checkout time is 11 o'clock in the morning. Before you leave, please remove the bed sheets, place used towels on the bathroom floor, and start the dishwasher. Thank you!

4. The second hall closet on the right is locked, as we use this closet for storage. Please do not attempt to open it.

5. Please remove shoes in carpeted areas!

6. If the second hall closet should happen to be unlocked, please do not enter it. The closet is dark and it is easy to bump one's head or shins on the supplies within.

7. If you do enter the closet, please do not panic. Move slowly and carefully backwards without turning around, then shut the door tightly.

8. Failure to obey rule No. 7 will result in the discovery that rule No. 6 is a lie. Be aware, however, that you do not need to be afraid of the dark void, although we don't recommend exploring it.

9. The discovery that the house is fundamentally hollow, containing multiple dimensions of emptiness, may surprise you. But please do not explore the alternate dimensions, as we have not yet mapped and categorized the spaces between the walls. Do your best to return to the portal in the second closet on the right through which you entered the hollow void.

10. You will have discovered, by now, that not just the house, but reality itself, is completely hollow and in fact illusory. If the entropy captures you, try to aim for the black hole, which — if struck at the right angle — may send you into a time warp and put you back into the hallway before the point in time at which you entered the second hall closet on the right. Upon striking the event horizon, remember to tuck your knees into your chest to avoid injury. (You may, of course, decay into nothingness well before you are able to do so. The entropy is no joke.) The other possibility is that the horror of the nothingness of the universe may consume you psychologically. To exist or not to exist? Remember not to dwell in the angst, but to choose. You are free even in the floating void of a dimensional vacuum, even when you are rapidly approaching the point at which your choices no longer matter. Embrace the terror of the cliffside of existence, aim for the event horizon, and tuck and roll (this all should have been covered in your sixth grade physical education class).

11. After rematerializing in the hallway, please make sure to remove your shoes, as this is a carpeted area.

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Bryan Vale is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. His fiction and poetry have appeared in several journals, including Streetcake Magazine, Paragraph Planet, Unstamatic Magazine, and Paddler Press. His work has been nominated for The Best of the Net, and he has read for the memoir journal Five Minutes. Learn more at bryanvalewriter.com, or follow Bryan on Twitter and Instagram at @bryanvalewriter.

David Galef

Two Streams 

I went back to the neighborhood brook, a meandering line at the base of a dead-end street, stippled with stepping stones, flowing past maples and willows bent over the water, populated with tiny translucent fish and tadpoles in season, the surface stirring in the breeze and dotted with leaves headed right to left, so that on a Sunday afternoon, all the kids came on foot or by bike, in pairs or in groups, playing games that had to do with almost falling in or teasing the fish or racing twigs downstream, or just lying on the far bank to stare up at the shade-woven sky till it was time to head home for supper, feeling heavy or light but full of the stream that flowed through the day,

            only it had been years since that time, now October instead of August, the wind fleecing branches pruned back to reveal a vacant parking lot on the other side, the brook reduced to a rivulet over a stony bed, and me standing there, yearning for something I hadn’t even recognized was gone, cold and alone.

---

David Galef has published short pieces in the collections Laugh Track and My Date with Neanderthal Woman (Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize), long-form work in the novels Flesh, Turning Japanese, and How to Cope with Suburban Stress (Kirkus Best Books of the Year), and a lot in between. His latest is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook, from Columbia University Press. He is a professor of English and creative writing program director at Montclair State University as well as the editor in chief of Vestal Review, the longest-running flash fiction magazine on the planet.

Cathy Ulrich

Something About a Balloon

And afterward, we’re on the crew helping clean everything up, broken plates and splinters from the wooden benches. You find something that could be the hollow shatter of someone’s tooth, show it to me in the cup of your gloved hand. I see you, later, slide it into your back pocket, and I want to tell you it’s not a thing you should keep, something cursed, something haunted. I can’t see your face under your mask, only recognize you by the way you turn your head from side to side before you bend to pick up another broken thing, put it in the black garbage bag they have provided, the way you only know me by the hunch of my shoulders when I see a yellow balloon draped over the edge of one of the tables. Something about it makes me think of the boy I saw on the news the night before, the way his body made that same sad arc before the camera cut away, and the balloon goes into my hand, and, then, into the bag.

---

Cathy Ulrich thinks there is something so sad about deflated balloons. Her work has been published in various journals, including Main Squeeze Literary Journal, trampset, and Washington Square Review.

Dana Hammer

A Biting Clown

“Where I come from, clowns don’t bite people,” says Matt, glaring down at me, with his arms crossed, like an asshole.

 Matt is in charge here. He’s a “rehabilitation specialist” which means he gets to sit around and berate me for my supposed crimes. Matt is short, and fat, with pasty, doughy chins that droop down, covering his neck. He wears a trucker hat, un-ironically.  He has never bitten anyone in his life, or made anyone laugh on purpose, and it shows. He is the opposite of a clown.

Not that all clowns bite. Obviously not, or very few people would hire us to perform at children’s parties. But I do. And that’s why I’m here, at Clown Rehab.

I try to answer Matt, but I can’t because of the ball-gag in my mouth. They placed it there as soon as I checked in, as a “precaution”. I tried to explain that the gag was completely unnecessary. After all, it’s not like I bite just anyone, at any time. I’m not a rabid animal for God’s sakes. But again, it was difficult to explain, because of the fucking rubber ball in my mouth.

The ring they made me wear buzzes. It’s an electronic ring, placed snugly around my middle finger, on my left hand. It looks like a simple black band, very plain and innocuous. But in fact, it’s anything but. It’s actually a high-tech gadget that notifies me when it’s time to go to the cafeteria, when it’s time to go to therapy, and when it’s time to go to bed. If I fail to respond to a buzz, the buzz turns into a mild shock. If I ignore a mild shock, it becomes a strong, painful shock. I have never ignored a strong, painful shock, but I assume what comes next is awful.

Matt hears the buzz and grimaces.

“Lunch time again,” he says, as if meal times were a personal affront. His girth would suggest otherwise, but I can’t say this. Ball-gag.

I nod and stand, eager to get away from him. He’s been lecturing me for the better part of an hour, and I can’t stand the sight of him much longer.

Most of the clowns are here for more ordinary reasons. They showed up to work high, or drunk,  or got into serious fights with obnoxious party guests. Maybe they stole things from homes where they worked. A few clowns are here for being creepy with children.

All of those clowns are allowed to eat in the cafeteria, like human beings. I, on the other hand, am forced to eat alone, in my room, where I don’t pose a risk to anyone. A guard removes my ball-gag, holding a stun-gun in case I start chomping. He escorts me into my room, where my sad plastic tray awaits me. He leaves, I eat, he comes and gags me again, and we repeat the process at the next meal time.

Today my meal is mashed potatoes and gravy, with chocolate pudding in a little plastic cup. Soft foods. Nothing that requires chewing. It’s all part of my program, you see, to wean me off the urge to bite.

It’s not working.

You’ve probably heard of Clown College, or Clown Academy. There are many of them, and they all have different philosophies, and different styles. The one I attended was called The Academy of Fine Clowning, and it was strictly about classic clowning, with a focus on mime, dance, and physical comedy.

In my own clowning practice, I performed solo shows with dark themes. My stage name was Jaunty, and I wore a traditional black leotard, with white face paint. I was not a birthday party clown. I was not there to make you feel good. I was not your dancing monkey. I was an artist, and my job was to convey EMOTION. Which I did. Well.

My most intellectually complex show was called “Shrubland” and it was a psycho-sexual thriller that took place in a heavily vandalized abandoned house that was haunted by the ghost of a serial killer. As you probably guessed, I was the serial killer.

Of course, it’s frowned upon for classic performers to involve the audience in the show. It’s called “breaking the fourth wall” and it’s strictly for hacks who don’t understand art, and nasty attention whores. However, because of the brutal nature of my piece, I felt it was necessary to add a real element of danger, something to wake the audience up, to shock them out of their complacency.

Hence, the biting.

After lunch, we have mandatory Clowning With Kindness Class, which is exactly what it sounds like. Matt, thank God, is absent from these proceedings. The teacher is a practicing clown named Lulu, who comes every day in full makeup, with a bright blue fright wig, reminiscent of Marge Simpson. Lulu is all about Clowning With Kindness. Lulu wants to bring smiles and hugs to the whole world.

I very much want to bite Lulu. But I don’t. Instead, I take my seat in the back of the grimly bland classroom, tightly gagged, alone in a sea of Bozos and Timmies and Flopsies and Buddies.

“One of the most important things we can do as clowns is to make our clients smile. Let’s all think of ways we can make people smile,” says Lulu, demonstrating with her own garish, pink smile.

“We can not steal from them,” says Kiki, giving a side glance at a thieving clown sitting next to her.

“Great!” Lulu says, and writes this on the white board.

The scent of institutional marker floats back and assaults my nostrils.

“We can read the room,” says Bozo, with totally unearned confidence. After all, he is here for doing inappropriate things with bananas at a children’s party.

“Excellent,” says Lulu, adding that to her sad list.

This is what my life has become.

My jaw aches.

At night, when I’m locked in my room and expected to sleep, the gag is removed, and I’m free to close my mouth and open it as I see fit. It’s a relief, and I savor the cramping as my lips close firmly, pressing together like hands in prayer.

I reach into the slit in my mattress, where I’ve hidden several paper clips, purloined from the various classrooms I’ve been forced to sit in over the past few weeks. A paper clip, by itself, is a silly, flimsy thing. But many paper clips, unwound and bent into sharp points, can be formidable weapons, in the the right hands. Or, in this case, the right mouth.

My makeshift dentures are now bent and fitted to my liking, nestled behind my lips, my secret weapons.  Tomorrow morning, the guard will approach me with the ball-gag, holding it out with both hands, as always. He will leave his soft white neck exposed when he does this. And then he will learn an important lesson about biting clowns — we are not so easily broken.

---

Dana Hammer is the author of The Cannibal’s Guide to Fasting, My Best Friend Athena, and Fanny Fitzpatrick and the Brother Problem, all published by Cinnabar Moth. She is the author of many short stories and novellas, which have been published in various anthologies, magazines, and journals. Her stage plays have received productions around Southern California, with a few upcoming productions in 2024. She writes a lot.

Kai Holmwood

Return to the Dam

After “At the Dam” by Joan Didion

Since it first shimmered into holographic form before me on a summer afternoon in 2361, the ruined Hoover Dam has slouched gargantuan in my imagination. I will be virtually exploring the interlinked trees of the Amazon, or soaring like a bird over Europe’s verdant ecocities, and suddenly the dam will spring to mind. I will be walking through the redwood forest and call forth the image of that structure, its once-smooth slope crumbling and worn against the distant desert surrounding it. I ask the image to expand until it fills my view, imagining the trees themselves are the pillars that once stood in the inhibited lake. In the forestal wind, I hear the water flowing freely over the structure now as it never did when the dam was in use, damaging the vertical concrete and slowly erasing the memory of who we were and what we did and what almost became of our world.

~

Something about that dam has always reminded me of San Francisco—the city that stood testament to the endurance and resilience of the human spirit, until one day it stood only as a faltering memory, its evacuated buildings lapped at by Pacific waves reclaiming the coastal land. The dam equally is a relic of a different past, a reminder that we were almost too late.

This particular dam is perhaps little different from any other except in its magnitude and in the fame it once held, with tourists flocking to see its sheer and deathly pale face. And yet this particular dam, Hoover Dam, is the one that carries something else for me, some whispered hint that it might be able to explain why they did what they did, what they were thinking, and how they could fathom that this scale of natural alteration was progress rather than devastation.

~

It would be too simple, of course, to make some Ozymandian comparison. Nor would it be entirely accurate. The desert around the dam is far from “lone and level sands.” Perhaps back then, when they built the dam, its unrelenting control of the area’s water deprived the desert of the necessary nourishing moisture—or perhaps this land was never lone and bare, and always blossomed with the resilient desert life that thrives there today, but the people who lived there then wanted more, as they so often did. Regardless, one can imagine the women and men who built the dam taking misguided pride in its construction, imagining that it would stand for all time, an eternal monument to the labors of their hands and their machines.

The hologram shivers before me as one of the giant concrete blocks, half-loosed after two hundred years of freedom, tumbles over the side and crashes into the water below.

~

Once, I visited the dam in person rather than viewing it as a hologram. I toured it with a man from the Bureau of Remembrance—a man who dedicates himself to these grisly skeletons of the past so that our future may be full of life. He spoke of “sediment dynamics” and “floodplains” and “river habitat.” We walked a few steps onto the decaying structure, holding our breath that it would not choose this moment to give way, and I stood at that liminal point between the desert and the dam. There, the absence of human voices other than ours didn’t feel regenerative or restorative, as it usually does when one is in the wilds. Instead, it felt eerily empty, almost haunted. It felt like a glimpse into the future that could have been—the future that was almost ours.

He took me down, down, down to the swirling pool at the bottom of the dam. There, at the edges, water rippled between fallen concrete blocks, lapping gently at the shores. “Touch it,” the Remembrance said, and I did, submerging my hands in the clear water. A minnow darted away, and a few bubbles rose to the surface. In that moment, it might have been any lake below any waterfall. The moment that should have been meaningful was peculiar in its ordinariness.

~

When I left the dam that day, the hot wind flung itself through my hair, carrying with it the scents of Mojave sage and misguided dreams. Later, as I drifted in my solar- and steam-powered drone over the desert, I turned on the holographic remembrance view of the desert below, set to the year 2017. What must once have been Las Vegas shuddered into view, its garish neon lights and unhinged buildings flaunting their spatial and temporal incongruity with the landscape around them. When the Continental Restoration Counsel met centuries ago to discuss land reclamation, rewilding, and relocation, these consumptive desert cities were among the few that were almost universally agreed to be destined for removal. Today, nothing remains except their optional holographic memories, inviting anyone who sees them to ask, again and again, the question we who were born two hundred years after the beginning of the revitalization have been asking all our lives. I hadn’t thought to ask the Remembrance man, but I thought it then, with the twilight falling over the desert and the wind blowing on my windows and the holographic lights below the only memory of the past. Of course that was what I had always seen in the dam: the question of what they had thought they were doing, how they had ever thought any of it would work, and whether they had ever thought of us at all.

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Kai Holmwood’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Stanchion, DreamForge, Solarpunk Creatures, Flash Frontier, and elsewhere.

Carol Phillips

Woman Who Would Be Wolf

I think of snow. I sense its freshness, its purity. Being alone in its stillness and watching light bounce off crystals formed in the dark. Seeing its whiteness stretch to the horizon, its translucent blue when it turns to ice. Breathing its newness. Surely the world was created from snow. Snow was what the raven pierced and fixed into place. Risen from the sea, a gift from the goddess Sedena, surely this was how the land was formed.

I was born on snow. I gave birth on its clean surface. The midwife was near and my mother and my father, my husband, our aunts and uncles, our brothers and sisters sang and drummed my daughter into life. I searched the northern lights for one who just died and, seeing her, I named my child as I washed her soft skin in snow’s melted purity.

I long to live there still, there on snow. Not here, not in this town. I long to feel soft flakes falling, watch them drift across the floes. I long to feel the silence, allow it once again to seep into my being. I long to know the secrets it hides: the crevices that carve its depths to the earth’s crust; the bones of my ancestors whose spirits drape wintry nights in the greens of the tundra of spring, the blues of the sea of summer, and sometimes reds, the reds of their passion.

I wish to run with my dogs over wide plains of alabaster, trusting them to find the packed snow covering ice, and skirt around the hardened skin covering soft billowy powder. Even in wind that cuts the surface into grooves and builds ridges. Even when air swirls icy mists around us as the dogs pull and I push the sled over the uneven ground. 

For I am like the one my mother spoke of, the one who became a wolf. The one who did not want her sons to support her. She built her own snow houses and so will I. She tried to fish, and stole when she caught none. But I, I will catch them. I will catch fish to eat. I will support myself. She was abandoned, and one day after catching no fish, she walked inland to hunt the caribou. I will walk inland too, me and my dogs, and hunt the caribou. She took off a shoe and was half wolf and half human. She took off her other shoe and became all wolf. When people come to hunt caribou, she knows they watch for her.

For I do not want to be crowded into a box, laid shallow in permafrost with all the others. I long to die in snow. I am happy thinking of this. Thinking of my body washed in its melt water and my hair braided and my jade knife placed in my hands. I long to be covered in caribou hide and taken inland and laid on luminous land, as my mother was, and her mother before her. I can feel even now the rocks that will protect me from the bear and wolverine. I can feel the cold embrace of the snow turning to ice. A child, a great granddaughter or niece, will be named after me and they will watch me dance in the winter night. And when they hunt the caribou, they will think of me.

This piece was originally published in the 2017 anthology Vision and Voice, from an Ekphrastic poetry event sponsored by Mariah Wheeler.

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Carol Phillips’ essay, “Waiting In Time,” appears in the Main Street Rag Publishing Company’s anthology About Time. Her short story “Driving Lessons” won Second Place in the Carolina Women’s 2020 Writing Contest. Carol has written columns about mild traumatic head injuries and invisible disabilities for the Chapel Hill News, part of the News and Observer group. In addition, her short stories and haiku have appeared in small journals. She has been a member of the NC Writers’ Network since 2006, and served as a Regional Rep for four years.

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.