Mark Wagstaff

Burning the Chairs

One of the cheap hotels. Three stars, on someone’s rating. What she saw was a man ill at ease in tight space. Who pushed the door on the glass, not the wood. Who stared at the modest Christmas tree five seconds before looking at her.

What he saw was a nicely broad young woman, round face, big glasses. Who pleasingly didn’t rush to pay him attention. Whose striped shirt stressed all the right motions. Whose badge, bigger than need be, said Jackza.

He wondered how people landed in these backstreet places.

She wondered if he needed direction.

“I don’t have a reservation.” He made it a positive statement, like a thing to avoid from the get-go. “I know it’s late.”

Jackza checked the screen. But that was for show. “We have a single available.”

“I use a double.” Another glance at the tinseled foliage. “You assume I’m alone?”

“We don’t have parking. I see no one outside. How many nights?”

“One night.” He answered her eyes. “No luggage.”

“Spontaneous?”

“Business.”

What she saw, he seemed deep with detail.

“Is it not still November?”

“Our guests like a festive greeting.” She had an interesting voice. Those East European shapes of harsh light against frosted concrete. The cadence of mildewed spires in tourist towns. Fluent enough to survive the last shake out. That inflection, though, the knotty flavor of home that put everything in quote marks.

“They like festive early?”

“We provide the comforts of home. On a budget.” The set up was old, she still had to print the sheet of tight-bundled data. “This is the rate. These are the taxes. Fill your name, address, contact number. You have identification?”

“Identification?”

“We are required. For walk-ups.”

“Because I might be wanted someplace? Because men in sweat stains and baffled expressions might have done mileage to find me?” He was satisfied with her smile.

“We stay the right side of the rules. That is good for us all.” What she saw, he took time filling the form, like its questions were a surprise. He made physical business clutching the pen, compressing his moves to feed ink to lines and boxes. Rabid tension across his shoulders barely contained by that coat. From a cold climate, she knew the measure of warm material. “You pay digitally?”

“There another way? Is cash possible?”

“We are not equipped.”

With a show of cramp he signed the line. “Well, that’s a pity. I could pay cash.”

“We have no facilities for it.”

“I pay cash in your hand.” He saw eyes green as the sea.

She saw weariness and caution. “What would I do with that?” When she woke the keycard it gave a small shiver, as though dismayed at this late hour.

For a fraction of time, they shared a touch through its plastic. “If I want something to eat?”

“We have no facilities for it. There’s a bar down the block.”

“I saw. It’s a dump.”

“It’s only one night, Mr. Richards.”

“Jerry. Says Jerry right there.”

“Third floor. Left from the elevator and keep going.”

“I’ll be back presently.”

“There’s no rush.”

What he saw, a room that hadn’t been painted a while. Perhaps cleaned, the carpet bore vacuum scars. But fittings so old, so grimed with wear, cleaning could make no difference. The door to the safe was loose. It rattled as he walked by. Took ten minutes of spit and wadding to chew a paste from the vanity tissues, for makeshift cement to hold the door steady. Once he shut the window and smelled the damp he knew why it was left open. But the night was cold and with machine noise from neighbor yards, the smell was a lesser inconvenience. He cranked the heat and the old pipes seethed and whistled. The shower stall floor was yellow and it pleased him, like always, to see stray hairs by the drain. A sense of connection to those before. A legacy to those after.

By malevolence or stupidity the toilet seat was set skew, bolted to the ceramic at a comical angle, so to sit on it squeezed one leg to the wall. No sense to it, the bathroom had space enough, the pipes weren’t intruding. The seat could have been fitted normally from the start or adjusted later. The task poorly-finished, no doubt with a trail of complaints about it unactioned. He wondered how anyone could think they achieved a good job with it. Or maybe, in all sincerity, they didn’t care. That would be better. The TV’s glowing standby light watched him. Maybe a camera, easy to hide, picking up smut from these casual sleeping arrangements. “Is that right?” he asked the red beam. “Is that factual?”

Heading back to the lobby, the elevator smell more apparent. An accident of polish and grease and spilled sugar drink: a child’s, or adult that drank like a child. Sickly, becoming synthetic.

She was still there. Still busy with not much. “Jackza?”

“Jerry?”

That was familiar, that rise, that spit of light on her chin. “I’ll be at that bar. Two drinks, if that. Do you arrange connection?” Whenever he said it, it tasted like dirt he ate as a kid. Dumb and curious. Wanting to taste the whole world. His mom, with her hair down over her shoulders, leaving flesh wounds of love and despair.

Jackza had options in this situation. Play the foreigner, that was a strike. Not knowing the language, not knowing where to begin. But she couldn’t deny what cost her so much to acquire. “I think the bar may be better for that.”

Her solidity brought him, unexpected and unasked, a hopelessness, a cold mist through his skin. “These bars, they’re not always clean, you know.”

What to tell him? His discomfort annoyed her. Sympathy was for mothers. “We have no facilities for it.”

“But you know people.” He wasn’t used to his voice landing so dead. Irreligious, almost, spitting chewed dirt on his aesthetic. He deserved that shrug of her wide shoulders. That look she gave him.

“We are a small establishment. For one night. Two nights. For business sleep. Convenience. Not this.”

If he said, ‘How is this not convenience?’ he’d complete her picture of him as an apparition of night, desperate for substance to fill his frame. That he asked at all was already listed among the failings his mom – her shoulders bare, with intimate light in her hollows – told him would stalk his life if he didn’t fix up. Circles of glass cased Jackza’s face, her hair gabled across thin plastic. “I understand,” he said. Though understanding fixed nothing.

In meager, dead end November, the bar’s few takers were tenants of one night hotels. They drank and talked, unwillingly, with strangers. The women were all civilians.

Again, stunted festivity – in hanging chains, in fiery scenes of hoodwinked hospitality – dutiful and painted-on, not eager but premature. Too quiet for staff, the older man working bar most likely the owner. Jerry Richards recognized and hated the man’s despondency. “I’ll take a draft. Whatever’s strong.”

Suds bellied over the glass. “You starting a tab?” Roughly, the landlord tried a friendly maneuver.

“It’s late.” Cold sweetness, empty carbon, riled him. “In fact, I’m looking more for professional input.” He frowned at the landlord’s blank face. “Connection.”

Gesturing round the bar, plain the man disliked all he saw. “I can’t tell you what we got here. You see this? It’s not your requirements.”

This moment came too soon. With too little endeavor. Jerry slid cash across the stains. “That do to make things happen?”

“You can’t land it yourself?”

“It’s late. I’ll take that second beer.” Waiting, he skimmed his phone. He had business, genuine reasons. The morning would come, he’d dress and go. No luggage, no onward itinerary. But this moment, this would stay. Set in the walls, seeped with dregs in the cellar. These opportunities, stark and resistant, sank as each day diminished. Where once was grandeur, now was routine.

“Where shall I say?” The bar owner stomped out to find him, a heavy tread as though gaining weight with each step. The phone patterned his face with uplight.

“The hotel by here. How long am I waiting?”

“Long enough to spend money.”

Jerry would have been satisfied with a shift change. But Jackza was the all-night welcome, keeping sharp with zombie movies. If anyone asked why she watched that stuff, she said to remember home. Nearly, she asked if he had his two drinks, if that. But this man wouldn’t play. Just a cordial greeting, the receptionist standard. He hesitated at the counter. She paused a bloody wound ripped wide. It refreshed her.

“Someone may call for me soon.” He didn’t want to sound certain of it. These guys in bars worked grifts. “If they get here, call my number.”

“Your number?”

“On that piece of paper. My number. It’s important I see them.”

“Connection?

“You know it.”

Just past the point where the hero takes vengeance for the death of a friend, the survivors still in peril, a middle-aged woman, dressed young, tired-looking, twitchily jangled the door. She glared at the Christmas tree.

Jackza paused a scene of flight, blurred figures slicking the screen. The warmth she felt for this woman held her voice low. Back home she sang contralto in the church choir, appreciated for her tender, masculine sound. She hadn’t sung in anger for years.

The woman approached the counter with reluctant fervor, eager for something important she didn’t want to share. “I have a meeting,” she spoke jagged. “Mr. Richards. I think he stays here?”

“Jerry Richards?” Jackza, thinking how she looked, the light of screens on her pale skin. “He just got back. He said to expect an associate.”

The woman seemed knee-deep in nettles. Her mouth chewed air. “Yes, I have an appointment with Mr. Richards. Business, you see that.”

“Always be closing.”

“Pardon?”

“I saw that in a film. Always be closing. I learn much English from films.”

“Your English is very good.” The woman slapped stinging bugs from her arms. “Where do I find Mr. Richards?” 

“Yes, it would be best to tell him you’re here.” Needlessly, Jackza shuffled papers. “I have his number. I’ll call.”

“I’ll call.”

“It’s no trouble. Who shall I tell him?”

Robotic, the woman’s head pivoted, her neck racking tongues of flesh. “The decorations, they some corporate thing? It seems early.”

“We get into the spirit. Our guests appreciate the season.”

Red nails, chewed and sharpened, tapped the laminate. “You work Christmas Day? Here, with whoever’s staying? Who stays here on Christmas?”

“Many people.” Jackza shifted up. “People can’t be home. They need to travel. We make festive, everyone welcome. I will be here. Who shall I tell Mr. Richards?”

“Tell him Misty.”

Pleased she held her mouth on that, as system noise told Jackza Jerry Richards stalled on taking that call. Wary not to seem keen. When he answered, his voice was steamed, like he filled with air too fast. “I have your business here.” Jackza made it pretty. “It is Misty. Shall I send her up?”

“Misty?”

“It is.”

“Please ask her to my room.”

He’d rush. Jackza could see it. Tidy his clothes, brush the thin blanket smooth. Sweeten his beer breath. Make the toilet bowl clean as it could be. He might make a joke of the off-kilter seat. They all noticed, who stayed in that room. No matter how experienced the man, they suffered doubts. Jackza felt sorry for them. What would Jerry do, what would any of them do, among zombies?

That embarrassing wait for the elevator. She watched Misty on camera. A woman old as Jackza’s mother, that pained, striving female. Jackza had seen things in the rooms, but always the hotel was hers. Not this nomadic life: new places, new voices and hands, all the same. What would Misty remember, except the carpet was tired and headboard came loose? Jackza unfroze the movie. Zombies never learned.

Jerry wedged the door, so she’d not have to knock. His courtesy pleased him. And it meant she could find him arranged to some advantage, in the sagging armchair, checking reports. Casualness spoke of affluence, that unconcern for discovery that said a man was paid in full. Not true. Not yet. But should be.

She gauged the room like a supplicant at the wrong church, trying to see it all at once, despairing of the familiar. She kept one thigh, one leg and foot, out the door. Someone just mildly curious.

He waved her in and kept her on the end of those fingers, maneuvering her without touch. She found the edge of the bed with the back of her knees. It jolted when she sat. Long ago in another city, Jerry Richards, one Ash Wednesday morning, swam in a crowd replete with ritual. Women with crosses of ash on their skin, mouths babbling redemption. Fervid ill-ease, and so this woman. Her pattern keen as religion. “The lobby girl said Misty.”

From habit, maybe, of doing this well, Misty lifted corkscrew hair back over one ear. The intention seductive, her skin geographic. “It expresses me. Mysterious. But revealing close-to. The magic you half-perceive.”

“It’s pretty. The bar guy said you work rate.”

“You want to close now?”

He felt no reason why she should look puzzled.

“I mean, we could talk some. It’s girlfriend experience.”

“You give in the end.”

She pinched her knees something dainty. “Some guys like call-and-response.”

“I don’t.” He stood, then realized he had nowhere to move to. Absurdly taller than her, his arms hung dead, real zombie. “I don’t want your whole night.”

“I’m on call. You want the rate?”

He backed to the inadequate desk, rearranged stuff, to give reasons for motion. “I want to know what I’m in for.” Not that he cared for the money and her price points were a fair median of the market. For that city. That time of night. On call. “You need cash with this?”

She scowled, like he suggested her shoes were a season late. “It’s all through the connected worker app. I got nowhere for bills in this blouse.”

A few swipes the transaction was done. “Let’s get started.”

“You want lip-locking first? Close holding?”

“I’m okay if we just get on.” An hour went too fast. A new day spawned through the digits. That crank on the desk would still be streaming her blood shows. Sweet shift, paid to watch movies all night. Morning would bring things to do. Already, he was late.

“Some guys like a mood.”

“Some guys like coleslaw.”

They got started and worked her options for two solid hours. Strong, with surprising agility, Misty could pull a head of steam, more than her light frame and distracted manner suggested. She got respectable mileage out of him and didn’t complain at anything. 

Long ago, when he started nights like these, they’d share a cigarette after. Now people only smoked fruit pipes the scope of chivalry was diminished. He made coffee on the little machine. But the water was gritty and not hot enough and the blend in the pack was sour. He could order in coffee. But silence against the window drew the night off-limits. Who knew what tedious dangers might waylay the delivery boy.

He got dressed and told her she couldn’t, playing at power. It had less endurance than stains round the sink. “What you do with your Christmas?”

She rotated the cup, pulling noise from the saucer. “I’m on call. It’s a busy time. Men get cooped with family. Stacks blow if they’re not vented.”

“You understand that.”

“Men need an outlet. You don’t lock a dog in the house. Does the heat in here work any better?”

The radiator’s failing warmth no challenge to his skin. “Maybe they switch it down at the main.”

“Just when you need it.” Light from her phone trawled blue veins through her chest. “I have a three a.m. Close by here. Maybe they have heat.”

“I can speak to the desk.” 

“I doubt she’s concerned. See? My skin puckers all here. These bumps. I always had this.”

He stewed more coffee. “It’s vile but it’s warm.”

“I grew with cold. You have sugar for this? It’s nearly okay with sugar. When I was a kid we were always cold. We had a big house. Big and cold. There never was heat.”

Not what he wanted, this talk about stuff. They should do their job, drink their coffee and leave, not talk about stuff. “Your parents say it was good for you? Some kind of strict observance?” Next time he’d specify one with no stories.

“They should have had money. There was some, before.” She folded empty sugar packs in a neat shape. Soon as she set them down they unraveled. “Alcoholics. That’s the start and end of it. Nobody cared, there’d been drunks in the family forever. It went with money and a big, cold house. Hard working, hard drinking. Till work faded out. Each drunk year they made a new baby they couldn’t pay for. I only had summer clothes because girls look pretty in summer. I’d go grifting coins in the park. That was my start in this business. One day I got home, they were burning the chairs.”

Grotesque, that stillness, the hiss of cold pipes, her voice on and on. Her body perked but off-rate. She should get dressed. It was too late to give her permission. He should dump her outside, sling her down the hall. This was madness. “They did what?”

“The gas was off. The bill not paid. Always someone chasing for money. And dad was drunk and invincible. So he cleared the grate and got burning the chairs. Mom broke them up. She could swing an ax. These chairs that her mother and grandmother oiled and polished and flattered with lace. Best parlor chairs, grandma once said. Chairs to make visitors royal. Twenty minutes they were chopped to bits. They didn’t burn well. The rot was in. There was no heat.”

“When did you start working rate?”

“When I realized there’d never be heat.” Frowning, she picked at the phone screen. “I have a three a.m.”

“You getting dressed before you leave?”

“You want that I don’t?”

“You do that?”

“It’s all on the rate card.” But she hitched her lingerie.

This floored him, this waiting for them to go. Misty went better than most. A quick dresser, she fixed her makeup and hair without fuss. She didn’t say, ‘When you’re next in town’, none of that crap. But she used the bathroom and that kept him waiting. And there was nowhere to move in the poky room and nothing to hear but darkness. 

“You should complain, with that seat in there.” 

“It was put in wrong.”

“It’s ridiculous. I nearly peed the floor with that stupid angle.”

Making game of their dying seconds, he said, “I should ask if that’s on the rate card.”

Her bag slung neat from her shoulder. “Everything’s on the rate card.”

Hallway light painted her with tense, spiny glamour. He’d not seen her walk, not properly. She moved like distance was nothing. “What happened to them? Your parents.”

The elevator was right there waiting. “Me.”

Under a lamp that was only off or on, Jerry Richards saw the future. Each day, each year stretching to cemetery road. He’d continue in this fashion as long as money and health allowed. He’d settle only when a reason to settle became compelling. If he had to buy furniture, chairs and such, he’d get steel.

No one believed how many zombie movies. Hundreds, thousands maybe. She never minded watching a movie again. Always something refreshing, some gore, some necessary humiliation of the dumb humans. Without checking the security feed, Jackza knew that woman was in the elevator. Who else would it be? Nothing was open and guests had early calls. “You have a satisfactory meeting?” She liked how she knew English so well, she could mess with the verbs to sound artless.

This Misty – why such names? – saw no need to conceal her resentment. “We made progress. You have a good evening watching cartoons?”

“I am in charge here.”

“Nice for you.”

“Can I get you a cab? There are dangers at night.”

Misty gripped the counter, staring at the over-big name badge. “Jackza? That it? What you think those dangers are? Some crowd of rabid sub-humans might pull me apart and eat my brains? You think that’s the risk?”

Those glasses came off nearly never. A sacrament, unhitching them from her ears. Her eyes stained with nights awake. With awful attention. “I think that is exactly the risk.”

“Then I’ll walk.”

---

Mark Wagstaff’s work has appeared in The New Guard, Open Doors Review, Abraxas Review and Shorts Magazine. He won the 39th Annual 3-Day Novel Contest with off-kilter romcom Attack of the Lonely Heart' published by Anvil Press. Mark’s latest novel On the Level was published in 2022 through Leaf by Leaf, an imprint of Cinnamon Press. www.markwagstaff.com

Ann Graham

Crapshooter

Gambling on a Tuesday morning // parking lot full // gives people a rush // I, we need a jump start // Cynthia’s been on my back // keeps saying Knowlton we should do this // Knowlton we should do that // Knowlton, Knowlton, have sex go to a party go to a movie // work every damn day // what am I doing at the casino // last thing we need is money trouble // I should confess to Cynthia // wish I could leave //

Hey that’s Knowlton —  haven’t seen Knowlton or Cynthia in a while — can’t believe she married herself a greenhorn — have to say he’s done pretty good — I should give up these cigs — let in some air — I didn’t know he gambled — he’s always so righteous — so busy doin’ one thing or ‘nother — he’s got new fencin’ — new barn on their ranch out there —  a 2020 Ram — a beaut of a truck —

I should go to work // if I shake things up maybe Cynthia’ll be happy // can’t believe I actually fucked Iris // what was I thinking // can’t shake this sense of doom // damn damn // I hope to hell she never finds out about Iris // Cynthia’s not one to mess with // Iris always acting hot for tips // then she whispers it’s me she wants // now I’m sitting in the parking lot of a casino instead of going to work // a woman I don’t give a damn about has something over me //

I’m not goin’ in yet — don’t feel like chattin’ with Knowlton — he hasn’t spotted me — well I’ll be a sumbitch Knowlton is still sittin’ there in his truck — sumthin’s up —

I might as well go on in // aw damn text from Cynthia // wants to know where I am // shit // busybody // if  I say running errands she’ll ask what errands // can’t say I’m at the casino // she knows I don’t believe in gambling // I sure wish I hadn’t messed with Iris // stupid stupid // I cried in front of her // I hate myself for breaking down // won’t hurt to go in // I’ll stop at a hundred bucks // sad looking saps in here // who, who // taps me on the shoulder // geez // Iris //  

I’m gonna call wifey — hey lovey how’s yer mornin’ goin’— I’m at the casino — haven’t gone in yet — feelin’ lucky — you know who’s here — come on guess just guess — Knowlton — yeah that Knowlton — how many you know — you might give Cynthia a ring see what's up — yeah I’m nosey — he’s just sittin’ there in his truck, kinda slumped over — yeah me too sittin’ here — don’t look right — don’t look right — he’s finally goin’ in — wait a sec — he’s comin’ back out —  you won’t guess who he’s comin’ out with — come on guess you never wanna guess — no — no — Iris — yeah that Iris — shit they gittin’ into his truck —

---

Born in Kansas, Ann Graham (she, her) is a retired Visual Resources Curator. She attended the Community of Writers workshop. Publications include: Texas Observer, Press Pause Press, October Hill Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, Digging Through the Fat, The Oddville Press, Panther City Review, and Writer’s Garret. She comments on some short stories at www.ann-graham.com/

Phebe Jewell

 Hemispheres

Sofia shivers through twelve months of winter in wool socks and sweaters while I bounce around the house in shorts and tees, my arms and feet scored by summer tanlines. She only leaves our bed to go to the bathroom or plod into the kitchen draped in a down comforter, warming her hands over the kettle. Most days I am out before it gets too hot, meeting friends for ice cream or a cold beer after a swim in the lake. I come home late from the beach, a damp towel on my shoulder, opening the door to a dark house - windows shuttered and locked.

I slip in bed beside Sofia and we touch each other like blind strangers traveling from far off seasons. Our fingers trace lips speaking words we don’t understand. Sofia drops ice cube adjectives into a never ending darkness; I open my mouth and chili pepper verbs fly out, rising to join the sun. Her sentences are weighed down by wet snow. My phrases are shaped by days without rain. My body is a beam of light, reaching for the sun. She is a fern, curled into her own darkness, not ready for the journey toward light.

One morning I pass Sofia in the hall and call her name. She cringes, as if my greeting will singe her hair and skin. I retreat to the garden, searching for words we planted years ago, words small enough to put in a pocket. Spare keys that neither freeze nor burn. Looking around our yard, neglected for months, I hesitate. Did we hide them under a rock, or in the corner that remains in shade? 

Keys to the City

Marcus sees the couple first. They stand just inside the park entrance, taking in the blaze of red and orange leaves. Good thing Harry’s with him, sniffing for rabbits. The white couple will read him as just a man out early, walking his dog. Marcus wants to let Harry off his leash, but not with this couple walking through the park. Too unpredictable when spooked. He urges Harry toward the path to the red arched bridge. It’s early enough they might see a great blue heron.

The man and woman don’t mind the soft rain. They breathe in the moist air, the scent of evergreen. Their new city, just as they imagined. The man squeezes the woman’s hand as the path curves.

On the red bridge, Marcus scans the vista for herons. They blend in with the brush, so it’s hard to see them unless they take flight. His gaze lands on the woman and the man, and he raises a hand in greeting.

When the woman spots Marcus, she links her arm through her husband’s. She knows she shouldn’t be nervous. When her husband sees Marcus he slows, then waves back, and the woman lets out her breath.

Marcus asks if they would like him to take their picture. When he graduated high school his father insisted they take senior pictures here, with the red bridge as backdrop. Bridges symbolize connections between worlds, he tells them.

He takes three pictures, just to make sure. The woman smiles and asks if he comes here often. Every day before work, Marcus says. He suggests they follow the rocky path up along the waterfall to the highest point in the garden. With all the rain the stream should be full now.

Harry picks up his pace, hungry as they head home. Standing on his front porch, Marcus reaches in his pocket. Coins, a receipt, but no keys. Of course. On the kitchen counter. Again. Marcus hurries to the side of the house, kneeling as he lifts the rock hiding his spare key.

A police cruiser slows to a stop, flashing lights. Dammit. The cops flash the lights again, and a bullhorn orders him to stand still, hands up. Marcus freezes. Safer to stay on his knees than to turn and face them, telling him this is his home.

Years later the woman will hold a framed photograph in her hands. The first morning in their new city. The Japanese garden, gravel paths winding behind screens of maple and spruce. The sweet young man who took their picture.  

---

Phebe Jewell's work appears in numerous journals, including Milk Candy Review, Your Impossible Voice, New World Writing, Bending Genres, Molotov Cocktail, SoFloPoJo, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. A teacher at Seattle Central College, she also volunteers for the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, a nonprofit providing college courses for incarcerated women, trans-identified and gender nonconforming people in Washington State. Read her at https://phebejewellwrites.com.

Pat Foran

In a Nest of Kindly Arms

In a nest of kindly arms, your trembling heart tells me you love me. You’ll hear it in her song, your heart tells me. Your song says you’ve never known how to sing it, that you hate the sound of your voice. Especially the way it sounds when you sing your song. To you, it sounds like people walking away, your heart tells me. To you, it sounds like not being loved.

In a nest of kindly arms, my restless choke hold of a heart tells you I love you. You’ll feel it in his kiss, my heart tells you. My kiss tells you I can misread kindness for love. That I don’t articulate my thoughts very well. That I don’t speak clearly. That my nights can be the nullifying kind, like an Ibis you send to yourself COD. Or a heart transplant you talk and talk and talk about but never schedule, and you and your Ibis catch a bus to Reno instead.

In a nest of kindly arms, you work on listening to your singing, on feeling better about your voice. I sound Ok I sound Ok I sound Ok, you say and say and say, until you think you might believe it and fall asleep. In the nest, you dream about a singing heart, a heart that might be breaking, but at least it’s out there, this heart, out there singing. Singing and feeling. So soothing, this singing, you think. So gentle, this breaking. If this singing heart is actually breaking. Either way, it’s Ok, your trembling heart tells you in your dream. It’s Ok.

In a nest of kindly arms, I work on my elocution skills — sentence stress and intonation, in particular. I love YOU, I say. I-I-I love you, I say. I LOVE you, I say. I WON’T walk away, I say. I WON’T, I say. Not bad, my restless choke hold of a heart tells me. Listen and absorb. I’ll take it from the top: “I love YOU …”

In a nest of kindly arms, our hearts cheer us on while we do nestwork. I bring big sticks, you bring small ones, to reinforce the structure. We both bring moss and lichen to line the nest. Our hearts bring baked ranch zucchini strips and cucumber wasabi martinis. Sensing a party, people gather below.

Kiss me, you say to me.

Sing me your song, I say to you.

Tell me you love me, you say.

I won’t walk away, I say.

This could work, your heart says.

It could, yes, my heart says.

The nest extends its kindly arms, one hand gently reaching for my heart, the other reaching for yours. Gently, the nest holds our hearts, holds them and kisses them.

As you sing your song, night falls. The crowd leaves. A Greyhound bus arrives, an Ibis with a ticket in his bill ready to board.

It’s Ok, the nest says to us, restless and trembling, and to our hearts, possibly breaking. It’s Ok.

---

Pat Foran lives in a nest in a hemlock tree that isn’t anywhere near Reno. His work has appeared in various places, including Tiny Molecules, JAKE the Anti-Literary Magazine and Best Small Fictions 2023. Find him at neutralspaces.co/patforan/ and on Twitter at @pdforan.

Karen Chaffee

Fellow Traveler

“I had a dream about the mountain.”

The young woman who’d announced this wore a raincoat covered with wet splatters. I’d noticed this as she climbed aboard the bus, and I’d wondered about it, because the sun shone brightly now. Perhaps she’d had a long walk or waited a long time. She stood in the aisle now, a bulky, much-used paper bag, slightly damp, clutched in both arms.

Opposite my seat, a woman of ironed smooth clothes gave our newcomer a disapproving look. Life hadn’t given me the option to be that kind of woman. I don’t know whether that is good or bad. I shifted to take the window seat and patted the place where I’d been. “Here’s room.”

She shrugged out of her wet coat and made a neat little bundle of it. Bag and raincoat in lap, she perched on the seat, head forward, nervous. The bus pulled onto the highway and picked up speed, rocking us in our seats. I finally asked it. “What mountain?”

She spoke quickly. “You’ll see. It’s about halfway to Clarksburg. It’s a big landmark around here. You’re not from around here?”

I’d been traveling seven hours already. “I’m going to Wyoming. I’ve never been here. Or there.”

She turned full and looked at me then. Heart-shaped face, brown hair, thin features. A decade or more younger than me. She said nothing, but I suffered her gaze only seconds before I added, “My friend has a job for me in a hotel. In a resort town.”

“A resort. Ranches. Horses, like. And tourists.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” What it was: I was starting over. At almost forty.

She said, “Well, then. That’s a connection, there. Between you and me. Horses. I knew we had a connection before I even sat down. There were all kinds of horses, running and jumping. And others. Maybe a zebra.”

I remembered. “The dream on the mountain.”

“Yes. Squirrels. And a mountain lion. There was a puppy. A real precious sweet little thing. Her name was Kat. Little Kat. Katherine.”

An unusual name for a puppy. I didn’t ask.

Outside, sloping hills curved up to meet sunbeams, the after-rain, foggy beautiful up high. Lower down, sharp-edged shadows across the hills suggested the presence of an immense rise in the distance, still hidden in the window view. The bus shifted to a lower gear.

We rode in silence for a while, she clutching her hands together, me just thinking.

Finally: “I just said that.”

I looked at her.

“I said it but it wasn’t true.” She stared down at those hands, nervousness furrowing into her brow. “She was real. Young, real young. Not a dream. I wasn’t going to tell you.”

If I’d lived a different life, I would have asked, “Who?” But I’d lived my life. So I asked, “When?”

Not too recently, I thought. She’d lived with it a while.

She shook her head, her answer to my question. “She was real enough. Animals are, too. Real, I mean. Around here. Out in the country, you know. Maybe not zebras. I wasn’t going to tell you anything. But I guess I just did.”

Now the mountain appeared, immense, unreal, overshadowing everything. I imagine that she eventually told everyone, or at least anyone who would listen long enough to let her work her way to it. Kat. Katherine. It didn’t matter. As for me, someone moving across three states to a place she’d never been wasn’t leaving behind happiness. Was leaving behind nothing. And here was this young woman next to me. I’d heard the ‘was.’ I knew that place, that place that had her now. I turned and gave my seatmate the smile of welcome I save for my kind.

---

Karen Chaffee lives in New Jersey. She has published stories in Orca and Bending Genres. Her story will appear in the upcoming June edition of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine.

Lisa K. Buchanan

Window Dressing

She lifted an obedient chin to the white, hot light. Tears trickled over her crowfoot wrinkles while her eyeballs swooped down across the tray of tiny instruments, then fixed on the tip of her own nose. Having ditched my mother’s grasp, I hid behind scented ladies and observed the procedure through an eye-level clearing between two unacquainted sleeves: one, fur; the other, something silky. In reverent silence, we watched the white-coat technician place a clamp on the eyelashes and attack the brows with a sharp, gleaming tool. The lady was docile, but for the toes curling in her sandals.

“Edna,” said the white-smocked technician, “you’ll be transformed.”

The sleeves wandered off. Two ladies behind me rustled their shopping bags and whispered about lunch. Nobody held Edna’s hand or gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Why was this gruesome procedure not happening in a hospital? Why had they not put her to sleep as they had done for my brother when they took out his tonsils?

When a second technician appeared, I fled. A lady with rabbit teeth and big hair tried to spray me with something. A baby in a stroller screamed to spare her life. Hurrying past a row of velvet, decapitated, pearl-strung necks, I found an upholstered platform and sat down. Just inches from my fingertips, was the pointy toe of a black evening shoe, its owner a tall beauty, gazing straight ahead. Her eyes were dry and unblinking and her lips were parted, but fixed. Even her hair was stiff. No heat rose from her body, no perfume or perspiration, or smell of breakfast. The backs of her legs had seams. Her fingers were petrified mid-air, as if reaching to open a door. Never again would she eat a drippy tuna melt, talk on the phone, or braid a daughter’s hair. How long before her kids would find her, sealed and mounted, a human trophy?

Rummaging through a sale table in the lingerie department, my mother was annoyed that I had strayed. But I didn’t mind her frown. Behind her on the escalator, I checked her legs for seams. I pressed my cheek to her freckled arm: warm. When she wiped her wet, sneezy nose with the back of her wrist, I knew the technicians hadn’t come near her. After lunch across the street, I pestered my mother for an ice cream I didn’t want, knowing the errand would take us past the store’s grand plate windows where even now, I expect to find Edna—fingers splayed, eyes painted open.

“Window Dressing” first appeared in Flashquake, December 2005

---

Lisa K. Buchanan (www.lisakbuchanan.com) lives in San Francisco. Her writings can be found in Bending Genres, The Citron Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. Notable, Best American Essays 2023; First Place, Short Fiction Prize, CRAFT, 2022. Current favorite book: Music Stories, Editor Wesley Stace

Patricia Caspers

The Blue Victorian

Eden locates the Victorian two blocks from Midtown. She climbs the dim stairwell, and the scent of garlic, dough, and pizza sauce waft through the door as it closes behind her. The building had been beautiful once; she sees it in the carved, scratched banisters, the intricate, green wallpaper, torn, and patterned with painted moths.

She opens the envelope half expecting to find a skeleton key dangling from the end of the tarnished chain, but it’s a solitary silver key, shining new. Nik probably made a copy of their own key, and something tingles in Eden’s chest as she imagines Nik at the hardware store, waiting in line for the key maker, for Eden’s key.

She finds Nik’s door on the top floor. There’s an opaque window in the top half of the door, and the hinges complain as Eden turns the lock. She hears water splashing close by and Nik making kitchen noises at the end of the hall.

“Hello!” Nik calls, as Eden glances at the walls and takes in family photos, the light obscuring small faces.

“I’ll wait in here.” Nik says, tinging a spoon against porcelain.

Eden turns back to the door and sees a kind of foyer to the left, and inside, an IKEA chair, a small, battered table, from a yard sale, and a beaded reading lamp. As Nik said it would be.

On the other side of the foyer is a narrow door, stained dark with a round brass knob. Eden opens it and steps into lavender-scented steam. A large clawfoot tub fills with water. She kneels, pushes up her sleeve and touches her elbow to the bath. She sees lavender buds floating circles in the water and turns the silver tap with the H on it. Righty-tighty, she thinks. After a few seconds she turns off the cold, and the apartment is silent, except for her breath, which she tries to slow.

Breathe out as if you’re blowing up a balloon her therapist often tells her, and Eden does that now. It’s a big, red balloon, like the one her daughter Kendy wanted at the carnival last September, the one Eden wouldn’t let her have because of the birds, how they swallow bright colors that tangle in their bellies and starve. She remembers Kendy’s gulping cry and catches herself holding her breath. She whistles her lips and releases her breath slowly.

A cup of jasmine tea steeps on a stepstool beside the tub. She breathes the milder scent, closes her eyes, sits on the bath rug, and pulls off boots and socks, revealing her wide, pale feet. The bathroom looks like it hasn’t been renovated since the 1950s—pink tile with burgundy trim—and Eden loves the clashing colors, how the design was outdated for years before it became chic again. Who else had soaked in this tub? A lady of leisure? She snorts at the thought.

Once submerged, she hears Nik’s footsteps. She hears the chair settle under Nik’s weight, the scrape of the lighter against thumb, the gurgle of a bong. Eden waits for the smell of cat pee she remembers from the college dorms to find its way under the bathroom door, but when the scent arrives, it’s a solitary skunk wandering a forest.

“I should’ve left a bowl for you,” Nik calls through the door, softly, raspy.

“I’m good,” Eden says.

“We’re all good,” Nik says.

“Have you always had this hopeful view of humanity?” Eden laughs.

“Honestly, I have to work at it,” Nik says. “Every morning I remind myself that I want to be the kind of person who believes we are more than the choices we make.”

There’s a pause full of silence then, on both sides of the door.

“What will you read?” Eden asks, finally.

“See if you recognize it,” Nik begins.

“From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.”

The poem reminds Eden of last summer when she and Michael bicycled through Capay Valley with Kendy in a baby seat attached to Michael’s handlebars. He doused Eden and Kendy with sunscreen but refused any for himself claiming his skin was too brown to burn, though Eden knew that wasn’t true. As they rode, Kendy pointed at cows, sheep, and pigs, and made their animal sounds until she grew cranky and made her own animal sounds. They stopped at a self-service roadside stand, bought peaches with sweaty dollar bills they tucked into a locked metal box, and then picnicked in the shade of the orchard. Kendy chose her own peach and carried it with her until it was a puddle in her hands, its juices covering her face, clothes, hair, and by twilight Eden swore Kendy would smell of the sweet fruit forever. Peach, Peachy Baby, and Frutita were the nicknames Michael gave Kendy for months after.

Eden’s thoughts wander back to the poem as her brown hair floats on the surface of the water and tiny air bubbles rise, tickle her scalp. Though she can’t see them, Eden pictures Nik as they read, leaning forward, elbows on knees, the book in both hands. Sometimes Nik pushes their glasses up the ridge of their nose when they read, and Eden thinks she hears those slight pauses in the poem, imagines Nik’s long fingers touching black frames, the tips of their fingers, the pink lines of their knuckles.

* 

The dogs bark furiously at Eden until she opens the door, and lab and dachshund, equally greedy for attention, rush at her, pressing their noses into her body. Her own nose is numb from the cold, but she smells that Michael built the first fire of the season. He shoos the dogs and kisses her hello.

“Did you get a new perfume?” he asks, nuzzling his nose into her hair. “Is it eau de—weed?”

“Oh, I—”

“Was the Lyft driver baked again?”

“I think she was, actually,” Eden laughs. “What’s for dinner?”

Eden knows, of course. Wednesday is grilled cheese. Michael always makes hers with tomato slices.

“Surprise!” Michael said. “I ordered pizza from that new place on Q.” The plates are already out, and he’s made a salad, sliced carrots for Kendy. Her drawings and crayons are piled at the far end of the table.

“New place?” Eden asks.

“The one you said you wanted to try, next to that blue Victorian.”

Eden feels a blush clawing her neck.

“In fact, you have a doppelgänger. We saw someone who could have been your sister. Didn’t we, Kendy-Bendy?” he asks, turning toward a polka-dotted elephant sprinting from her bedroom and cradling something red in her arms.

“I said, ‘Hi Mama,’” Kendy said, jumping. “Hi, Mama. Helllooooo …”

“That wasn’t Mama, sweetie,” Eden says, hoping it’s true. “Mama was working—what do you have there?”

“Gwobo!” Kendy shouts and runs away patting the balloon against the dark curls on her head.

Michael shrugs. “I couldn’t say no,” he says.

“The albatrosses wish you had,” Eden says.

“Don’t be dramatic,” he says kissing her cold mouth again. “We’re a long way from the ocean, and you know I love birds as much as I love you.”

*

The lights are off, and they’re side-by-side in bed on separate devices, their faces glowing an underwater blue. After they take turns reading Kendy sleepy-time stories, after Eden washes the brights and scrolls Twitter, and Michael gathers the city chickens in for the night, lets the dogs out one last time, and watches a documentary about homesteading, that’s when he turns to Eden.

“What does it mean?” he asks.

Eden raises a single eyebrow, not turning away from her screen.

“What does what mean, Darling?” She began calling him darling ironically soon after they were married, and then one day—she doesn’t know when it happened—it wasn’t ironic anymore.

“The text about blossoms—on your phone,” he says flatly. “You know I don’t get poetry.”

“That’s not true,” she says, turning toward him. “You’re a great reader of my poems.”

“Eden,” he says.

“It’s a friend from work,” she says, lifting one shoulder. “We share lunch poems.”

“Lunch poems,” he says. “You’re not going to leave me for a smoldering hot rhymester?”

“You know I don’t like rhyme.”

“Have you stopped taking your anti-depressants?” he asks. “You seem—.”

“Thank you for picking up dinner,” she interrupts. “I liked the pizza.”

“Do you still like me?” Michael asks. “Would you still run away to Spain with me, open a bed and breakfast?”

She leans toward him, tugs his earlobe between her lips.

*

The camellias are blooming outside Nik’s building when Eden arrives, white sails tossing against waves of siding. She breaks one at the stem, carries it upstairs and leaves it on Nik’s chair before making her way to the bath.

There’s a tall glass of sweet tea with lemon beside the tub, and Eden takes a long drink before undressing. Afterward, she presses the cold glass between her breasts and holds it there until she can’t feel her chest.

“You promised to choose someone contemporary this time,” she calls as she steps into the tub and pokes a toe at a fizzing bath bomb. It shimmers and smells of honey and citrus. “I’m done with Donne.”

“Would I break a promise?” Nik asks quietly, their voice close to the other side of the closed door.

Eden startles. In all these months, Nik has never once crossed the threshold while Eden was in the bath.

Before Eden responds, there’s a sharp knock on the front door, and she startles again.

“Be right there,” Nik calls, and Eden hears them move away. She lets out her breath and is about to lower herself into the hot water when she hears his voice.

“I’m Michael,” he says too loudly. “You must be the person who’s fucking my wife.”

Eden lurches out of the tub, slips, stubs her toe on the stool, and sloshes glittery water over the bath rug and pink tiles. How did he find her? She wonders, thoughts flashing. Maybe it will be OK. Where’s Kendy? He rehearsed that line. As she tosses her bra and underwear aside and scrambles to put on her t-shirt and shorts, she imagines Michael behind the steering wheel driving over, silently mouthing the words, fucking my wife. In the hall, she sees Michael standing in the doorway holding a large, white pizza box.

“You should come in,” Nik says, calmly taking the pizza box. They jerk their head toward the kitchen, suggesting silently that Michael follow.

Eden’s legs tremble as she follows Nik. She doesn’t look at Michael, and she isn’t sure he’ll stay. In the kitchen, Nik slides the pizza box on the table, fills a dented silver tea kettle, clicks a gas burner until it lights with a small whoosh of blue flame.

“Where’s Kendy?” Eden’s voice scratches. Michael steps into the kitchen, shakes his head and holds his arm over his eyes to shelter his face. It’s a gesture Eden’s seen Kendy make a hundred times, and in it she sees the little boy Michael once might have been. She tries to reach for him.

“With my mom,” Michael says, pulling away, his voice deep, pressing against a dam of emotion.

“It’s not sex, Michael,” Eden says, looking at the floor. “Please don’t think that.”

“Why are you always wet?” Michael asks. “You’re always damp when you come home, and you always smell—herbal.”

“I—” she looks at her bare feet, bright pink on black and white kitchen tiles. “I take a bath.”

“You’re just getting naked together then?” he asks, his voice rising again. “Forget it. I don’t want details.”

“I bathe alone,” Eden says quietly.

“What the fuck does that mean, Eden?”

“Dude,” Nik says, pointing to a chair. “Take a seat.”

 “Dude?” Michael snarls. “I don’t want a goddamn seat. What I wanted was to surprise my wife with pizza. Pineapple and mushroom—because that’s her favorite. Did you know?”

Nik shakes their head slowly, and a black twist of hair falls over their forehead. It’s been so long since Eden has seen Nik, and—even with Michael in the room—she wants to touch that curl, those ears, so sweet they remind Eden of the sand cakes she collects at Bodega Bay.

“I know her favorite poets,” Nik says, handing them each a cup of mint tea in handle-less mugs. “Bishop, Komunyakaa, Olds—.”

Nobody drinks. In the silence, Eden hears a harmonica drift from a neighbor’s apartment. Simple Twist of Fate, she thinks. No, it’s not coming from the neighbor’s apartment. It’s coming from Nik’s bedroom, across the hall where the door’s ajar, and Eden sees a sliver of Nik’s unmade bed, and a framed linocut, maybe of Paris’s Pont des Arts.

“Nik’s a poet,” Eden says, snapping back into the conversation. “We met at a reading last summer.”

“Eden said she was lonely,” Nik says.  

“I didn’t say that exactly,” Eden cringes, “I said. Well, I said—"

“‘I’m floating above my life like an albatross spreading wide and brilliant wings above the sea,’” Nik recites. ‘Like joy, and yet I’m alone against that blue backdrop of sky.’”

An angry sob comes from Michael’s throat. It’s not a sound Eden has ever heard him make.

 “Michael.” Eden interrupts. “Nik offered to read me poetry. That’s all it is. It was. I want to talk about poetry.”

She watches Nik place their mug of tea on the table. They could have been siblings, Michael and Nik, their short, dark, wavy hair, kind deep brown eyes, the way they care for her.

“To be fair,” Nik says, looking at Michael. “I’m not a marriage counselor. I do want to know your favorite kind of pizza, Eden. Your favorite dessert, too.”

“I’ve never hit anyone in my life,” Michael says, slamming the tea cup on the table so hard it sloshes over.

He’s burned his hand, Eden thinks.

He grabs the pizza box as if he plans to leave and take it with him, but suddenly frisbees it against the far wall. It smacks hard and falls upside down to the checkerboard floor, still neatly held inside its cardboard box, leaving only a small splatter of red sauce.

Eden sinks, her back against the refrigerator.

She watches herself dive. The wind presses against her, and she nears the shush of waves. She splashes, scoops prey and saltwater, gulps it hungrily. She shakes the sea from her feathers and senses the wrongness. It’s not squid. Of course, it’s not. It’s a tired bouquet of balloons, someone’s lost celebration, faded red latex deflated of helium. The tangled, sun-bleached rainbow of ribbon dangles from her golden beak.

---

Patricia Caspers is an award-winning writer and the founding EIC of West Trestle Review. Her work has been published in journals such as Ploughshares, Sugar House Review, and Cimarron Review. Her third full-length poetry collection, The Most Kissed Woman in the World, was recently released from Kelsay Books.

Kat Meads

Weekend Events

The shore liners had recently feasted on crispy chicken, chutney deviled eggs and sandwiches stuffed with exquisite, redder-than-sunburn garden tomatoes. They had been lolling in folding chairs, under small and larger umbrellas, in the shadow of the pier or on shadeless sandy towels when their collective attention was drawn to the alarming sight of one of their own in an oversized inner tube, apparently asleep and drifting out to sea. Her name was Flora, though everyone called her Sis, and besides coming to community picnics at the beach, she drove a school bus and, as needed, helped ladle food mush onto beige plastic plates for always starving kids. No one had a harsh word to say against Sis; equally true, Sis lived short on compliments—which is a far cry from saying her absence would not be noticed if in her skirted swimsuit she dozed her way to the middle of the ocean, meaty toes dragging, and attracted a feeding shark. A faster-than-the-company-he-kept reactor broke from the line-up of spectators to sprint as fast as sucking sand allowed to the pier office to telephone the Coast Guard. Meanwhile, the more courteous fishermen along Sis’s side of the pier reeled in their lines to prevent hooking Sis or her inner tube, either development a catastrophe. One fisherman later claimed to have shouted “Lady! Lady! Wake up! The current stole you!”—in support of his claim that he’d contributed more to the Saving Sis Operation than his fellow fishermen. Whether he did or didn’t call out, Sis slept on, dreaming about who knew what. Maybe crispy chicken or weightless flight or spiky bob jacks. As the shore liners kept watch on Sis and her inner tube, someone wondered how it would feel to drift so far beyond the breakers, surrounded by the immensity that was ocean, a mere rubber circle between you and its depths, and because that someone wondered aloud another of the shore liners fell into a fit of nagging envy, her heart and mind suddenly flooded with the desire to close her eyes and float away. You’ll be wondering whether Sis’s predicament ends with rescue or disappearance, but for the nonce stay with the suspense, endure the uncertainty, make peace with either outcome—because it very well could have flexed either way. This time, with one minor hiccup, it went the way of rescue. Startled awake by the CG’s approach, Sis’s sleep-befogged brain initially mistook her saviors for pirates (she’d in fact been dreaming of gold doubloons) and in reaction attempted to paddle even farther out to sea. Undaunted, professionally resolute, the CG gave chase, overtook Sis and her inner tube, hauled both woman and inflatable aboard and saved yet another civilian from oblivion and sharks. Aside from that single blip of panic and a more painful than usual sunburn, Sis survived the outing unaffected and in good spirits, returning on Monday to her bus driving and lunchroom assisting duties. But the shore liner who’d discovered envy in her heart, watching Sis float free and unencumbered out to sea? Different story. She’d caught a glimpse of her shadow life. Never would she be the same.

---

In addition to Does It Have Pockets, Kat Meads's recent flash fiction has appeared in Maudlin House, Gone Lawn, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Your Impossible Voice and elsewhere. She lives in California. katmeads.com

Will Willoughby

While I Have You

To: Research Validation Division <a.acton@underpil.com +52 others>

From: Dave Fitner

Subject: Help?

Hi, all,

Does anybody know, or could help me find out, how I could donate or otherwise pass along what’s probably several 30-gallon trash bags of women’s clothing? It’s blouses, slacks, dresses, pajamas, robes, and such, but shoes as well, including sandals and water shoes, and accessories like belts, scarves, head bands, and things I don’t know what to call. Also jewelry.

Maybe Goodwill? I’ll need a pickup situation, is all. Since we all went home, I’ve been having seizures, so I’m grounded for a while. And it’s all free. I just need to get it out of the house.

Dave

* * *

 To: Dave Fitner

From: Kenn Graves

Subject: RE: Help?

Attachment: CommChannelsFinal.docx

David,

I’ve stripped everyone else from the string to surface the Comm Protocols (attached) for your review.

The salient sections outline the framework for deploying comms via the Division distribution list reserved exclusively for Leadership to disseminate updates on matters related to Divisional operations. For personnel seeking a forum for business-appropriate messaging such as items for sale, as in your case, a Community Chat has been mounted on the What’s U&P Connections4U page.

Once again, Leadership is deeply sorry for your loss.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

Hi, Kenn,

Right—forgot about the chat. My bad. Since I got back from leave, I’ve been off. Like there’s this hissy static in my head all day. And I don’t sleep. I rest, or I stay in bed for a long time without moving, but that’s not sleep, not really. I’ll get there.

Anyway, I’ve grabbed some sets of the uplift project. Figured that’d be a good way to ease back into things.

Dave

* * *

David,

Understood.

Please see attached EAP Guide to Mental Resources and Dental Plan. Contact HR via the Benefits Portal with any questions.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

Thanks, Kenn.

I’ll take a look. Maybe it’s the way to go. Things haven’t been great since the thing. Working at home doesn’t help. The seizures super don’t help. It’s hard to explain. It’s all the time now. I just stare into space, and my arms get crawly, and I lift off the floor and drop again, over and over, and want to puke. And I know—I’m sure—I’ve dreamed all whatever’s happening. Even the smallest thing—clicking that file, seeing that crumb on my keyboard, glancing at my phone just like that. And I have to remember what’s going to happen, based on the dream. I have to stop whoever’s going to do it. I don’t know who it is, just that he’s somebody I know. Or somebody I know but don’t know. Sometimes I see him in gallery meetings. He jumps into each face on the screen, one by one, but if I look right at him, he goes away. Next day, same thing.

Anyway, I’ll keep chugging.

I tried logging into the portal when I got back, but it gave me an error. It’s just my regular credentials, right?

Dave

* * *

David,

The Benefits Portal is under the purview of HR. Outreach them to troubleshoot your access.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

Kenn,

I’m not sure how to outreach HR to troubleshoot my portal access if I need to access the portal to outreach HR.

Do you have the HR phone number? It must be someplace, right? Maybe the portal. (ha ha)

* * *

David,

I’ve done some digging. Call the main line. They’ll connect you to our HR rep, Carla H., who can help you troubleshoot.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

Dear Kenn,

The main line people are pretty convinced the portal’s the way to get HR’s attention. After I explained the access issue, they said they’d have HR call me. Which, fine. But that was last Tuesday.

Does Carla H. have an email? I couldn’t find her in the directory, especially since I don’t know what the H stands for.

* * *

David,

I can’t resolve your Portal issue. It must be handled by HR.

Carla’s real name is Saundra. It’s s.holder@underpil.com.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

That makes a lot of sense, Kenn. Thanks for the clarifying clarification. Wondering: Why does she go by Carla if she’s really Saundra?

* * *

David,

I don’t know.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

Hi, Kenn,

Your assistance with the reopening of the portal is much appreciated! (Carla/Saundra says hey! Kind of a hey-yah, actually. Frankly, it’s unnerving friendliness, like you’d probably back away if you were in person, way beyond six feet. But hey—that’s classic Carla/Saundra, amirite?)

Turns out I just needed to clear my browser cache, should you ever need to avail yourself of well being and/or dental services.

Not sure what to expect from this portal now that it’s gaping open for the conquering! Will they put me through to a healthcare professional right there on the spot? Will they divert me to a receptionist who channels me to a second portal to scroll through an index of therapists so I can leave a voice mail for a scheduler who will schedule an appointment for two, three months out? And say I’m eventually connected to a healthcare professional, what then? Will I get a movie therapist (I hope!) who steadies me on my journey from grief to epiphany? Or will I spend a month or months spilling my guts (feat. blubbering) before I discover that this therapist abides by an Important Philosophy of Mental Health that emboldens them to constantly interrupt me in the name of disrupting my equilibrium, which just means I have to find somebody new, and then the cycle repeats, and I wait a month, another month, for a new therapist, who asks me to re-explain what’s wrong with me, but by then, I can’t even remember?

I’ll keep you in the loop! ;-)

* * *

David,

Glad to hear you found a therapist. Let me know if I can help.

While I have you, I’ve been asked to quietly update folks so they’re not caught off guard when this is socialized at the Quarterly Town Hall. Leadership, consulting with the Workload Task Force, has decided to merge the SNM and LOP divisions into a new entity, S&OL, which will be a streamlined functional group operating with an appreciably smaller workforce than the two original divisions combined.

Please keep this under your hat, as no personnel adjustments have been executed on.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

Kenn,

Bummer! Wonder what all those personnels are going to do for mental and tooth insurance.

* * *

David,

As always, I’ll assume good intent here and that you’re not cognizant of this, but the tone of your recent emails has drifted into quasi-professional waters. While I appreciate and even encourage positive (respectful) candor, please be aware of how an individual’s tone may be perceived by others, regardless of intention. Does that make sense?

Also, could you please update me on your progress on the uplift project, percentage-wise? I’m a bit worried you’re stretched thin.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

Kenn,

I wouldn’t say I’m stretched thin, but thanks for the compliment. ;-) Percentage-wise, the uplift project is somewhere between getting started and nowhere near being done. I grabbed the uplift stuff because it seemed to be a low priority. Is that no longer the case?

Re: my tone, I’ll keep that in mind. To exercise some positive (respectful) candor, I’ve got a cleanout project in flight at home that’s been claiming much of my energy. Between that and navigating the wellness waters, my plate’s been full. The at-home initiative will, I admit, take some time, as the volume is prohibitive. My primary end goal is to offload her items, including but not limited to her clothes, her shoes, her toiletries, her winter coats, her spring windbreakers, the backyard games she wanted, the camping gear we never used, the bedding that still smells like her, all her knickknacks, all her sheet music and books, all her sketches and paintings, all the photos, all the Post-its she left me in the morning, all the food she liked, and all the rest of whatever was hers and sometimes ours but now nothing at all.

Let me know your thoughts on the uplift project, and I can redirect my energies as need be. :-) ;-) :-( :-|

* * *

To: Saundra Holder

From: Kenn Graves

Subject: Personnel Question

Attachment: RE_ Help_.eml

Carla! How’s things? Sorry I haven’t checked in lately—it’s been a lot to deal with <gestures in every direction>. Since we went home, I’ve missed our lunchtime chats. Maybe do virtual lunch?

Wanted to get your thoughts on a direct report, David Fitner. His behavior’s been erratic lately. His performance hasn’t exactly been exceptional either. Hoping you can give me some viable options for a path forward. I’m sure we have to be careful, liability-wise.

Could you take a look at the attached email string? Let me know if you have time to chat.

Kenn

* * *

To: Kenn Graves

From: Saundra Holder

Subject: RE: Personnel Question

Mr. Kenn! Great to hear from you. :) Virtual lunch sounds awesome – let’s do it!

Looked over that email, he does seem out of sorts. I don’t think he crossed a line, he’s just venting. He was like that when I talked to him – real verbal. He’s looking for somebody to talk to.

I get what you’re saying with the “path forward” but there’s not much to do unless there’s a super obvious pattern. Performance would need to be coached and then a performance improvement plan given etc. before you get your path. Unless he just decides to move on.

All the best,

Carla

* * *

Thanks, Carla. I’ll monitor and let you know. But I like your idea—wait him out, see how he handles some more work. I’ve got a truckload. With the right catalyst, the situation could resolve itself.

See you for remote lunch tomorrow.

Mr. Kenn

* * *

To: Dave Fitner

From: Kenn Graves

Subject: Incoming Work

David,

I need you to jump on a request right away—it’s got a tight turnaround. Kevin S. will send you the details. We’re pushing the uplift project over to the contractors.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

To: Kenn Graves

From: Dave Fitner

Subject: RE: Incoming Work

Kenn,

What kind of job?

I’m partway through one of the sets. It’d be hard for somebody to pick that up midstream. Should I finish that one at least?

* * *

David,

Good question. No, leave that set unfinished. The contractors will do it. Your focus will be the packet Kevin S. is sending you. Have you heard anything yet?

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

Kenn,

No, he hasn’t outreached me in the five minutes since your last email. Want me to drive to his house and see what’s taking so long?

* * *

David,

Let me know as soon as the packet arrives. I’ll need a quick rundown on your tack and a guesstimate on your ETA. See attached template JobRoadmapToT_final.pdf. You’ll need to convert it to Word. You have that software, yes?

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

Kenn,

My license expired—meant to tell you. Could you just convert it to Word for me?

* * * 

David,

I could convert it but would rather take a teach-a-man-to-fish approach here. Please reach out to Ken B. through the Help Desk to have him reinstall the application this afternoon.

To summarize

1. Contact Ken B. for reinstallation of the software. A lengthy reboot will be necessary, and you’ll need to enter some basic job info. If you don’t have that on hand, it’s in the Portal.

2. Convert the template to Word format. Careful! The conversion process often dislocates labels from their related fields.

3. Notify me when Kevin S. contacts you. (He hasn’t outreached you yet?)

4. Complete the Word template, including your plan of attack and time estimates, remembering to update the total field for that column.

5. Give me an update on your progress on the packet. 

Make sense?

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

David,

Haven’t heard back from you, so just a friendly reminder that you should be diving in by now. Kevin S. pinged me to say the packet got sent over. Have you cracked it open yet? Any do-ability blockers? Any word from IT on your software?

Keep me updated, please.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

David,

Shutting down for the day, but I’ll have my cell with me. Contact me first thing tomorrow.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

David,

You’re not logged in. There’s no answer on your cell. Check in asap.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

David,

Call me.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

* * *

To: Kenn Graves

From: Dave Fitner

Subject: Update

Kenn,

Got your notes. Thanks.

I’ve been thinking about the bedroom. It’s funny. Most of it’s painted pale mocha, but half of the east wall is an expanse of Granny Smith, this vibrant green that starts in the far corner and spreads toward the white window frame, where it terminates in a crisp vertical line. The wall behind my desk, to the right of the window, is still that milky brown. There are no curtains on the window, no shade or curtain rod. I’ve moved the paint cans, rollers, brushes, and drop cloths to the basement. But a strip of blue painter’s tape runs along the ceiling where it meets the wall. In the morning, the sun comes through that window and wakes me up, and I sit on the bed awhile. Today the bare branches of the oak outside my window are covered in ice. They droop and sway and turn the sunlight into pinpricks. I open the window so I can hear the branches tick in the breeze.

It’s been open all morning, the window. The cold feels heavy in my lungs. My feet are bare, but the radiator warms up the air near the floor. I imagine currents of cold pushing through the window over the warm air, shearing it off and spreading it out as the bent back of that warm pocket bulges up and then falls again. Particles of dust float through a column of sun.

Sunlight, I’ve read, is unspeakably ancient. Or it can be. Did you know that? Photons born in the heart of the sun take maybe tens of thousands of years to push their way through the churning plasma to the photosphere, where they streak at the speed of light across ninety-three million miles in only eight minutes to glint in the icy branches outside my window and lift the dust in my room. Moving that fast, the photons themselves don’t experience time. From the outside, though, billions of years have passed since the sun lit up, and billions more will follow until the sun swells into a gigantic red mouth that eats the inner planets and burns the life from the surface of our little world.

I’ll close the window eventually. I’ll take the painter’s tape down. I’ll put the curtains back up. I’ll get a new shade, one without a rip. I’ll dust. I’ll vacuum. I’ll put socks on, and then shoes. I’ll drink coffee. I’ll shovel the driveway in the winter, mow the lawn all summer. Kids will squeal in the sprinkler next door. I’ll rake leaves. I’ll take walks. Read. I’ll pay the bills, buy groceries. I’ll drive again. I’ll take my meds. I’ll do those things. I’ll do one thing and then another and then something else. The bedroom wall, though, will stay the way it is. I’ll leave it like that, half one thing and half another. Both and neither. I’ll see it there, just like that, when I wake up in the morning. I’ll think of it while I’m doing what I’m doing during the day. And I’ll see it there, as it is, when I eventually, quietly, go to sleep.

Be well, Kenn.

You have my address. Please send any hard-copy comms, including terminal remuneration, there.

David

* * *

To: Research Validation Division <a.acton@underpil.com +51 others>

From: Kenn Graves

Subject: Praise for a Fantastic Team!

All,

I wanted to extend my heartfelt kudos to all of you who participated in the audit and reconfiguration project! It’s heartening (but not surprising) to see such thoughtful dedication and continued resilience. What a team!

Quick update: Dave Fitner has decided to part ways from Underwood & Pilch for greener pastures. Effective immediately, any in-flight work should come directly to me. Thank you all for supporting him during his recent time of need. We appreciate you!

Finally, this time has been a trial for us all, and we’d like to remind you of the great support services available through the EAP. If you or anyone in your family is struggling with mental health, please contact HR through the Benefits Portal.

Warm regards,

Kenn Graves

Associate Director, RVD, Underwood & Pilch

#####

Author’s Note: “While I Have You” was inspired by the Reedsy.com prompt: “Write a story in the form of a letter, or multiple letters back and forth.”

---

Will Willoughby’s short stories, often populated with characters facing absurd, comically sad situations, can be found in Epiphany, Defenestration, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and daughter in southern Maine and can be reached through the contact form at www.willwilloughby.com.

Jude Potts

For sale, one womb, unused. Buyer collects.

A woman in a green kaftan wants to use my womb for an Etsy craft project. A light-fitting. It will “cast a diffuse pink glow and throw fascinating shadows”. She’s brought a Tupperware box. I place my womb inside, a soft click locks away unfulfilled dreams of unheld children. 

She checks that the womb’s empty. 

‘Never used,’ I remind her. 

You always demurred and deferred decisions about kids, until it was too late. You seemed relieved about my early menopause. Joked about saving money on condoms. You saved money on condoms with your new girlfriend too. I hear she’s six months pregnant. My womb ached at the news.

The Etsy lady usually uses fire extinguishers, car parts, old roller boots to make her lamps. This will be her first womb. 

‘Rare to find one in such pristine shape.’ she remarks, explaining how she’ll replace the fallopian tubes with LEDs.

I use the money to fix the kitchen ceiling you were always promising to get sorted, but never did.

Next, I sell an ovary. No use without the womb. I market it as an artistic ‘talking point’ sculpture. I show it carefully backlit, on a dark wood shelf, white wall behind. It gets snapped up by an interiors shop in Chichester. I sell the second, regretting I didn’t sell them as a pair. More valuable that way, like vases, bookend, or plant pots. And people.

Your new girlfriend still needs her ovaries, already talking about baby number two, a brother, a sister, to make sure your child doesn’t grow up alone. No one thrives when they’re lonely. I spend the ovary money on a cat. I name him Egg. He spends most of his time outdoors. Like he can smell need on me and can’t bear the stench.

I think about the shit-eating grin you gave every time my fingers beat a twitching tattoo of pleasure on the mattress, and I can’t sleep. My heart heaves. I want a new mattress. I think about selling the heart I don’t want anymore because it hurts. I toy with the idea of renting it out. The price of property is sky-high; I’m sure it would do as a bedsit. I empty it ready for rental, throwing out the ache from hearing you’re engaged. I send a text filled with congratulations I almost mean. I tell you I’m having a clear out, ask if there’s anything here you still want. You say - nothing.

The insurance needs paying, I decide I’ll lease part of my brain. I clear out memories I can’t use anymore. Your hand holding mine as we strolled cobbled streets one summer’s afternoon. Ice cream melting in my spare hand. Your tongue as you lifted my hand to your mouth, following the trail of vanilla down my wrist. The reassuring warmth and heft of you curled around my body one winter’s night, the wind rattling the tiles on the roof, your gentle kiss on my shoulder as I twitched awake, your breath tingling on my neck as you ssshed me back to sleep. 

A tech-bro rents the space. He uses it to store defunct cryptocurrency, old social media sites and other techno junk he really should just throw away. He swears some of his NFTS will be collectors’ items. He pays over the odds and I replace the mattress with leftover money. I hear him rummaging sometimes. I find it comforting. Like the sound of neighbours chatting as they cook together like we used to; drinking wine and sharing each other’s days. 

I wonder again about selling or leasing my heart. The house, once our home, costs too much on one income. In the end, I hang onto the heart and sell the house, easier without the memories that gave it meaning. 

I move into an apartment. Egg befriends a neighbour’s tabby. The neighbour invites me round. We talk cats, tech bros and lost love as he chops carrots and we drink wine. 

Egg and the tabby strut past the window with knowing looks on their furry faces. They stop and sniff at the open window, Egg slips in and winds himself around my legs. I don’t stink of loneliness that offends him tonight. 

A warm twinge in my chest. I’m glad I kept the heart.

---

Jude Potts is a full-time carer and sometime writer with work in WestWord and Free Flash Fiction, plus forthcoming work in Pure Slush’s Loss Anthology and Urban Pigs’ Hunger Anthology.

Eliana Megerman

Liminal

My left toe disappeared first. I thought perhaps my vision was just blurry, or that the morning sleep remained in my eyes. A ring of burgundy had formed under the empty wine bottles I'd left on the white countertop the night before, and a quick survey revealed dishes in the sink—again. All the self-help books recommend clean sinks, and also making your bed. The taut blanket leads to positive feelings about your life, and actually, for a few days I did feel better. I googled hospital corners and that motivated me for almost a week of mornings, but I could never keep it going. Other things always became a priority, like washing my hair or brushing my teeth.

When my boss offered the work-from-home option, I jumped. The daily commute was wearing me down. Merging onto the highway, the glare of sun in my eyes and the visor not quite blocking it, the honking, the gas tank constantly teasing towards empty. Plus, eventually I grew tired of podcasts, and working in pajamas sounded appealing. I did experience a mischievous joy the first time I attended a staff meeting dressed only from the waist up. How many others on the call were only in their underwear? Not those poor suckers actually in the office.

As I glanced down at my feet, reflecting on my need for a pedicure, I started wondering if there was a way to get to the salon without leaving my house. Of course I knew that I could paint my own nails, but now that I was working from home and most of my conversations were with myself, thoughts like that often popped in uninvited. Could I send only my legs to the salon while my upper half sat in on the staff meeting? A nice azure blue would look good. Or a lilac.

Suddenly, I saw it - or didn’t see it – out of the corner of my eye. My left pinky toe was missing. I tried to keep my face neutral on the screen as I stretched my legs long. But every angle held the same view; the toe had vanished. The cool hard tile beneath my feet felt the same, and I reassured myself that it was a trick of the light. In the meantime, the meeting dragged on and Phil presented my data as if it were his own. My boss congratulated him, and I curled my toes in frustration. Warding off a muscle cramp, I gripped the bottom of my chair and squeezed hard. When I relaxed my feet, I saw only seven toes. A panicked urgency tugged at my gut. By the time the meeting was over, I had to get outside. Desperately seeking confirmation, I dashed to my bedroom and slipped on a pair of straight fit black pants. As I slid my leg along the lining I waited, but no foot dropped out of the bottom. I buttoned them closed at the waist and plopped onto my unmade bed. Would my disappearing foot fit into my shoe? I pondered this dilemma until the light pouring through my bedroom window became a shadow.

When I swung my legs out of bed the next morning, they were both missing from the knees down. The secretary at my doctor’s office sounded exasperated, but she booked me a virtual appointment at two-fifteen. I shuddered at the word virtual. But the next in-person visit was three months out, and what would be left of me by then? When my doctor finally appeared on screen, an initial sense of hope surged through me. I swung my legs in front of the camera multiple times, but no matter how I tried to demonstrate it, she just couldn’t see their absence. Her brow furrowed. She asked if I’d been drinking again. If I’d been sleeping. She suggested going to the ER. I’d last been there four years ago with my mother. They brushed off her months of bloating as a consequence of her croissant-heavy diet. But the real cause, the tumor on her ovary, left her dead within five months. I didn’t want to go back there.

The next morning, as I pulled my socks over invisible feet, a toenail snagged on my left sock. A quick chirp from the smoke detector sounded, an assault on my nerves. Why did the battery have to run low at the worst times? I rummaged through some drawers, pushing aside worn-down pencils, buttons, paper clips, a hole punch, super glue, a bottle of whiteout, and a sparrow’s nest of cords – but couldn’t find a rectangular battery. If smoke detectors were so important, why couldn’t they run on regular AA batteries? The chirping became louder and more frequent. A Zoom meeting was scheduled to start in twenty minutes. It wouldn’t work to have that maddening sound in the background; my coworkers would think I was crazy. I climbed a step stool and removed the battery.

It continued to chirp, refusing to be ignored. I put a pillow on top of it and covered it in blankets, only to see empty space where my hands should have been.

By the time I got onto the Zoom, opening my computer and clicking and typing with hands unnoticeable to the human eye, I was six minutes late. Phil was showing off his work – my work.

I’d had enough. I unmuted my microphone, turned on my camera, and interrupted.  “About that data,” I began, and Phil cut himself short.

“Did somebody say something?” my boss asked.

“I did,” I replied.

The shortest extra moment passed, a half-beat. “That’s weird,” he continued. “Phil, go on.”

Was my microphone working?  I looked at the bottom of the screen.  My microphone was on. I then looked up at my icon, into the mirror image my computer camera afforded me, and there was nothing there. Nothing at all.

Phil continued presenting m–.

Phil continued presenting his work.

In the Palm of Her Hand

The mango was firm in her grip; it would not be ready by that evening. Nevertheless, she squeezed it again. Still no give. She thought of his heart—that of the young man, a kid really– which she’d held in her hand the night before. Except that his heart had been softer, more slippery, like the inner flesh of a ripe mango. Had it been wrong to hope? But he was so young, and no one regretted heroic measures for the young. Someone had felt a pulse in the few minutes before they’d scooped him up, lights blaring, sirens screaming. As they wheeled him in, his pale body limp on the stretcher, his youth dared them: You can do it. She swallowed hard. There was a mother out there, likely asleep in her bed, unaware that her son’s heart had bled dry. She grabbed a scalpel and cut through skin, yellow blobs of fat protruding through as she exposed his chest, slicing through membranes, slicing through muscle. Her scissors cracked against bone, retractors ratcheting open a space between his ribs. His lungs, pink and spongy, poured out; they were speckled with little black dots. But it wasn’t the cigarettes that killed him in the end, was it?

Tubes were everywhere, and as they transfused blood, it drained out even faster through the holes that had been shot through him, his body a grotesque colander.

“Come on,” she’d pleaded to his lifeless body as she squeezed his heart, like a rolled-up pancake in her fingers.

She sorted now through the pile of mangos and found another one. Her thumb left an indentation when she squeezed it. The inside was likely halfway to rotten. Another customer wheeled her cart around, reached in, and grabbed a mango. Didn’t even squeeze it for ripeness.

Eventually they’d had to stop. There were critical blood shortages. You couldn’t keep emptying bags if there was no return of life.  She would try to forget the look of his mother’s face as she broke the news.

She squeezed one last mango. It had just the right give. She could slice it into her salad that evening.

Lending Library

A slick spot hid underneath the pile of maple leaves, and she nearly lost her footing as she scurried down the sidewalk. The trees were magnificent this time of year, with their oranges, reds, and yellows, and she’d always marveled at their beauty, even though the raking and bagging were endless. This year, she’d hired a company. Pulling her jacket tight as she righted herself, she hoped none of the neighbors had seen her stumble. Maybe she should have driven. She’d wanted to, but it was only a few blocks away, and it would have been ridiculous to arrive in her hybrid car. Her breath came out fast, like little wisps of smoke in the cool air. She shuddered as she thought about the irony. He’d never even been a smoker. Not one puff. Now, the sight of someone casually dragging on a cigarette could send her whirling. What right did they have to be so reckless?

Donating the book had seemed like a good idea, but the moment she’d placed it on the shelf, a pristine hardcover copy of “Shogun” amongst tattered paperback thrillers and beat up baby board books, she’d regretted it. Why hadn’t she taken it back right then and there? Instead she’d trudged home, her legs heavy, crunching the leaves on the walk.

“It’s part of the process, Mom. You have to start moving on.” Marlene was always so practical. And she was right. She’d even helped box up his things. The blue and green striped terry cloth robe that hung on the bathroom door, the one he’d wear on Sunday mornings working the crossword while his coffee got cold, his white cotton shirt poking through at the top. Sweaters, polos, rain jackets, khaki pants, joggers, button-downs and a handful of ties. It was only about three boxes. He’d given away much of his stuff after retiring.

“Someone else can use it now,” he’d laughed as he’d packed the boxes. Proud of himself for making it to that stage.

But now they filled the boxes with his things, and they did not laugh.

“No one ever died from a cough,” he’d told her as she nagged him to go to the doctor.

“But I might smother you in your sleep!” she’d teased back. The cough had been irritating. She had to admit it: that constant, raspy hacking had interfered with TV shows, movies, and sleeping. Finally, he’d relented. They’d sent him for an x-ray “out of an abundance of caution,” but as soon as he came out of the radiology suite she saw the look on his face. The tech had asked him to stay. His x-ray looked like it was filled with cotton balls where his lungs should have been.

Stubbornly, she’d purchased a hard-cover. The book was supposed to represent permanence. They would beat it. There were new treatments all the time. There was hope. Eventually, after a few months of the treatment coursing through his veins, he’d looked up at her, his bald head, gaunt eyes and ghastly thin body. He nudged the book towards her, but his arms could no longer lift it. They could have found an audio version, but she hadn’t even blinked. This was only a detour. She’d started reading it to him every day. Some days, she was unsure if he was listening. His eyes were often closed and it was hard to tell. They only made it to page 800, at the point that Alvito begins to get suspicious about the relationship between Blackthorne and Mariko.

The book had since remained on his nightstand until three days ago, when she carried it to the neighborhood lending library. She had been trying to complete the process, to try to feel lighter. Her steps were faster now as she approached the little free lending library, a pale blue house with a gabled roof, just a few feet away from the road. The book had to still be there. The lending library was a wonderful idea, but she rarely, if ever, saw people actually taking books from it. And Shogun was hardly a new release. She undid the latch and opened the door.

---

Eliana Megerman is an emergency medicine physician and writer. She leaves the knife fights and heart attacks behind to write novels and stories between shifts. She was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, and when she is not writing, enjoys spending time with her husband and children, one of whom has adopted her love of coffee.

Susan R. Morritt

Behold! The Wrath of Gordon

“I still don’t see why we have to bring all these animals aboard the ark,” Jethro complained. He slouched against the side of the gangplank that led up to the hold of the huge ship, and watched as his two older brothers struggled with a pair of uncooperative ostriches. “There’s going to be mud everywhere, never mind the stink of their shit.”

“The Lord has spoken, Jethro,” his father, Norm, replied. “We alone were chosen to be spared—

“Yes, yes. I know,” Jethro interrupted, impatiently. He glanced up at the dark and threatening sky. Rain had been falling lightly all day, but now it appeared that a downpour was imminent.

“It’s raining cats and dogs,” Jethro sang out in a child-like voice. He cackled with hilarity at his own wit, before being brought back to reality by the force of his father’s open palm as it glanced off the side of his head.

“Go help your brothers, you good-for-nothing boy.” Norm strode past Jethro, and inched gingerly by the ostriches, whom were in the process of being prodded up the last few steps onto the ship. What a useless excuse for a son.

~

Age before beauty. Norm’s three young daughters-in-law stepped back with respect to allow Edna, his wife, to approach their patriarch, unimpeded. Edna, his rock, the matriarch of his tribe, had a steely control over his sons’ wives, which was seldom challenged.

Barb, big boned and bosomed, was the spouse of his eldest son, Sam. Marie, squat, and already broad-of-the-beam, was wed to his middle boy, Hank. As for Annie… Norm’s eyes roved over his youngest daughter-in-law with pure delight. Annie, of the spun-gold hair, and eyes the colour of a cloudless summer sky. Norm licked his lips as he observed the plump curve of Annie’s round breasts through her thin cloth dress. How in Hades name had his son, Jethro, won this maiden’s heart? And why was there no swell of her belly as yet to be seen?

Norm started, when from the bowels of the great ship came the distinct sound of children’s laughter. Children— his grandchildren. His other sons had no problem begetting heirs.

“So, are you and the girls almost finished with the livestock’s feed?” Norm asked, tearing his eyes away from Annie, to meet the sombre gaze of his wife. He spun around, to inspect the piles of stacked hay, bagged grain, and dried meat hanging from the curved ribs of the rafters.

…And the Lord, Gordon, sayeth: let there be a great flood over the land, and let the sin and the evil that man doeth be washed away…

Norm rubbed his hands together, briskly. He was ready.

~

The oasis of billowing clouds spread out across the heavens; shades of apricot and fuchsia, intertwined with rivulets of magenta and lemon yellow, floating in a sea of exquisite turquoise blue. From amidst this riotous colour, sat the Almighty Lord Gordon, perched on his magnificent bejeweled throne. His ponderous, silver head was lowered in absolute concentration.

“Check.”

Across the elaborately carved gaming table, his twin brother, the Dark Lord Lucian, chuckled.

“Checkmate,” he counteracted, tossing back his mane of salt and pepper curls with a grin.

Lord Gordon stifled an oath, and heaving a sigh, he turned away with considerable irritation.

“I’ll take Earth, thank you very much,” Lord Lucian stated, fixing his fiery gaze upon his brother. “Our agreement—”

Lord Gordon’s eyes blazed. “We made no such agreement!” he thundered, rising from his throne with indignation. “I will give you Pluto, or any star you so desire in the next galaxy. Earth is off limits!”

Lord Lucian frowned. “You’re a sore loser, Gordie.” He arose from his throne with the fluidity and grace of a large cat. “A sore loser, and your Word means nothing.”

Lord Gordon sniffed his displeasure, and gazed about to survey the majesty of his realm. “Enough of your insolence! I have spoken, Lucie… and I have work to do.”

Lord Lucian smirked. “Yes,” he replied, “so do I.”

~

Forty days and forty nights… So it was that the Almighty Lord Gordon conveyed through a waking trance, the details of the imminent flood to Norm. Norman, son of Arnold, whom had begotten a legion of sons…with Norman the sole “chosen son.”

Visions and dreams. Of late, holed up in the bulkhead of the great Ark with his family, and the multitude of animals, with the rain pelting down upon the roof, Norm had been plagued by torn emotions. Just this night past, Norm had heard the voice of the fearsome Dark Lord Lucian, whispering in his ear as he lay in a sleepless stupor next to his slumbering wife, Edna. Whispering words in a honied tone, about Annie. Beautiful Annie.

“Go to her, Norm. No one will ever know. She must bend to your will. You are the Patriarch— the chosen one. Your useless eunuch of a son, Jethro, will never beget a child, so it is your duty to do it for him. Give Annie a child of your own loins. Do it, Norm. No one will ever know."

Norm crossed to the forecastle of the rolling ship, and gazed at the rising sea stretching to the empty horizon. Tomorrow…yes. No one will ever know.

~

Forty days and forty nights have come, and gone. Norm and Edna stood alone on the rain-soaked quarterdeck of their great floating Ark home, and watched as the first rays of the sun rose over the eerily calm water.

Where was the rainbow of which the Lord promised?

Norm picked up the bamboo cage at his feet, and opening the hinged door, reached inside to gently grasp the cooing dove within. As he flung the startled bird into the sky above, he shouted aloud. “Lord Gordon, where is the sign? Give us a sign the great flood is over!”

Suddenly, the ship listed with a groan to plunge into a swirling whirlpool, and the cries of both humans and animals filled the air.

Thou hast broken one of my commandments! Thou shalt not commit adultery!

As the booming voice of the Almighty Lord Gordon faded away, Norm grasped the railing, and gazed up at the heavens with horror.

Down, down, and downwards plunged the mighty ship, sucked into a furious vortex of raging waves. Just before oblivion struck, Norman, the chosen one, felt Edna’s hot breath on his cheek as he heard her final words. “You asshole.”

~

“Gordie, I see you’ve been busy,” Lord Lucian remarked, dryly. “You pulled the plug.” He leaned back on his throne, and gestured towards the chess board on the table before him. “Another game, perhaps?”

Lord Gordon, seated across from his brother, shook his head. “No. I’ve work to do, again. Heaven knows the drain will probably be plugged. This creationism sure works up an appetite, though.” He inhaled the breeze that wafted across the shimmering oasis of cloud. “Smells like ribs tonight.”

---

Susan R. Morritt is a writer, visual artist, and musician from Waterford, Ontario, Canada. Her prose, poetry and art appear in various journals including 34 Orchard Journal, The Rabbit Hole Writers Co-op Anthology VI, The Speckled Trout Review, and Third Estate Art Decapitate Journal. She was short-listed for The Staunch Short Fiction Prize, and long-listed for The Redbud Writing Project Coppice Prize. Susan is a former racehorse trainer who has worked extensively with livestock, including talking turkeys.

Jessica R Cull

This Too May Kill Us

He asked where I wanted to eat. I said a Chinese restaurant, covered in wall-to-wall glow-in-the-dark stars and with the smell of burnt oil so strong it might have made me sick.

He always chewed his food on one side of his mouth, munching down as though he was afraid of scraping his teeth against an ulcer or -

“You’re chewing on the left side tonight,” I said. Then the clang of metal against ceramic as he dropped his fork.

“For fucks sake, Ellie.” I watched the words spit themselves out in small pieces of broccoli and tofu. “Why do you always bring that up? It makes me so damn self-conscious.” I shrugged. I didn’t think anything could make him self-conscious. For a middle-aged accountant eating shit Chinese food with a twenty-nine-year-old, he was absurdly sure of himself.

“It’s not a bad thing,” I said, picking up my chopsticks and flinging a noodle into my mouth. I ate them one at a time, taking forever and never tasting anything.

It wasn’t a long walk home but he called for a taxi and I didn’t bother arguing. We bundled into the back, me going first so that I had to clamber across the back seats whilst trying to keep my skirt from flashing my ass. I sat down and laughed, a real bark and squawk of a thing.

“What?” he said, lowering himself into the car after me.

“I almost flashed my ass!”

He sighed, huffed, and buckled his seatbelt like a good boy. The city moved slowly past the windows as we began to move, and I looked upon it with famished eyes; the meadows of my youth replaced with all this steel certainty of skyscrapers and seduction. I smiled at the giant face of a woman who looked down at our car from a flickering billboard, lying out on a sofa in her underwear.

“Do you mind that my bra and knickers never match?” I asked, pressing my face right up against the glass.

“What? No, of course not,” he replied.

The car moved forwards and the woman disappeared out of view. Her pastel pink lingerie lingered in my mind and I thought that perhaps I had a crush on her. Or maybe it was just marketing. I moved away from the glass, then, worried about the other giants who might try to lure me in and turned to him instead. He was on his phone, scrolling through either his favourite tailor's website or looking at porn (he made the same face for both).

“Have you heard that the world’s going to end?” I said.
“No.” He continued to scroll.

“Yup,” I nodded. “Next Tuesday. So there are only eleven days left - if you count today and Tuesday. Do you think we should? Or should we say it’s only nine days? Or ten?”

He sighed and locked his phone with a swift click. “What the fuck are you talking about?” He was swearing a lot these days and it didn’t suit him. He swore as though his mother was going to hear.

“The world. It’s ending.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“But it’s not.”

“But it is.”

The driver looked at us in his rearview mirror and raised an eyebrow. Perhaps he knew what I knew.

We got home and had sex. He was having sex with other women, too, and he didn’t do much to cover it up. At first, I viewed his adultery as a mirror. The sadness I felt was closer to guilt; something that I tried to turn into a reality but could find no proof for. Such introspection didn’t suit me, though, so I drowned my guilt in persistent indifference and quelled any lingering anxiety by reminding myself that no matter who he slept with, I was the one who lived in his flat. His two-bed bachelor pad had me all over it.

I lay naked in bed afterwards, on top of the covers and listening to the world through the safety of a closed window. He had a shower and came back in pyjamas. A set of them; a button-up shirt and trousers with an elasticated waistband, both in green check. He was most vulnerable in his pyjamas and it made me sick. He got under the covers and put on his reading glasses whilst I tried not to vomit on the bedsheets.

“What do you think we should do before next Tuesday?” I asked, batting my eyelashes in his direction.

“Have you got a twitch?” he frowned.

I gave up and rolled back, looking up at the ceiling.

“No,” I mumbled, consciously petulant. Then I thumped the mattress with my fist, saying “We need to talk about what we want to do before the world ends.”

“Jesus,” he sighed.

“Personally, I don’t have a lot on my bucket list. I would’ve liked to go to Iceland - or maybe Norway - but that’ll be too late now. I doubt there’ll be any plane tickets left, anyway, what with everyone flying home to be with their families. Speaking of which, I definitely don’t want to see my parents. I can’t stand the thought of dying whilst Dad fills out a crossword. Besides, I’ve cut my hair short and Mum never likes that.”

He took off his reading glasses. “Why are you so hellbent on the world ending, for fucks sake?”

“I’m not hellbent on it. I’m a realist,” I nodded, waving my feet up in the air.

“This is the opposite of realism, Ellie. I wish you’d fucking stop.”

I rolled over onto my stomach and crawled over to him. I put my face close to his, my eyelashes almost touching his cheek. “When are you going to face up to the fact that we’re going to die?”

He shook his head and moved away from me. “I’m going to sleep,” he said and turned off the light.

Despite my pleading, he continued going into the office. I’d been working in data entry since moving to the city; it was an easy job I could do from home and I didn’t have to talk to anyone apart from Steve. He was my ‘direct manager’ and he sent me an email every day, attaching the reams of data I was to upload to the system. Every Monday, he would start his email with “I hope you had a good weekend” and every Friday he would finish it with “Have a good weekend!”. I liked to imagine he was an old man - about the same age as my dad, maybe - and had a silver beard and a beer belly, and a dog called Barney that slept under his desk. I was sad to tell Steve I was leaving him, but I didn’t want to waste my last days plotting data into spreadsheets. Besides, I hadn’t been able to see any numbers on the screen for the past two weeks. Steve never replied to my email. I was happy that he’d gotten out, too.

He didn’t come home from the office, so I spent the evening washing all of our clothes. I emptied the wardrobe and put everything in the washing machine; then I emptied the drawers and did all of that, too. The smell of detergent reminded me of babies and the spinning barrel made everything else appear still and solid. When the final wash was done, I added the fresh clothes to the pile on the floor and stuck my nose into it until I could taste the cleanness. Then I went back to the washing machine and climbed inside. I was an acrobat, with my knees touching my chin and my nose touching my toes. The smell of cotton and detergent all over me as I spun around, and when I came out I was baptised. I knew, then, that everyone should get in their washing machine before they die.

His key turned in the door. He smelt like whiskey and tasted like perfume. I pushed him away when he tried to climb on top of me and he gave up, falling back against his pillow.

“I have one thing to ask that you do between now and next Tuesday,” I said.

He rolled to face me, breathing his cheapness all over my face.

“I want you to stop having sex with other people,” I said. He reached out and blindly found my face with his hand, doing a strange impression of stroking my cheek.

“Only you, Ellie. Only you.”

We fumbled our way around the kitchen making breakfast and I tried not to laugh at how absurd it was. We were children, playing make-believe at being grown-ups and in love. He threw me the mixing bowl and I dropped it on the floor, covering my ears as the metallic noise spun around and around. We tried to make pancakes but forgot to add the eggs. He ordered croissants and coffee from the local coffee shop.

“Do you know what I’d like to do before Tuesday?” I said, spitting flaky crumbs all over the kitchen counter.

“What?” he replied.

“I’d like to have a picnic. I’ve never had one before, not even when I was a child. My mum didn’t like the idea of mixing food with the outdoors. She wouldn’t even let me eat crisps outside. Can you believe that?”

He nodded.

“Is that a yes to the picnic or my mum's neurosis?” I asked.

“To both.”

On Sunday afternoon, we took supermarket sandwiches to the park. I thought about Steve at home with Barney, feeding him pieces of apple pie, and it made me want to cry. But I didn’t. Instead, I lay down on the picnic blanket and tried to spot clouds in the clear sky. He was reading a book and checking out women as they walked past — even the ones I knew weren’t his type.

“You’re chewing with the right side, now,” I said, sitting up.

“Fucking hell!”

We didn’t speak for the rest of the picnic. It suited us, not to have to hear each other talk. I think we both worried we’d catch a glimpse of what the other person was really like if we said too much and the glue in our papier-mâché romance would finally melt. We ate, we drank. I had a nap whilst he crossed the park to chat up a woman on a bench, and when we went home we had sex. It was the perfect last Sunday. Before we went to bed I thanked him for it.

“It’s going to be a shame not to have weekends anymore. I always enjoyed them - every one of them.”

He grunted and turned off the light.

Monday was cheerful. I skipped around the flat, waiting for him to come home from work. I ordered takeaway meals four times and went to the local supermarket to buy a chocolate birthday cake. At the checkout, I did my best impression of a full-toothed grin at the old lady behind the counter and said, “I’m surprised you’re open. I thought the world would have gone to shit by now.” She looked at me from beneath bushy eyebrows as she scanned my cake.

“Of course we’re open. It’s Monday.”

At home, I ate the cake with my hands in front of the window until I was sick.

He came home and I surprised him with a hug. He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back, raising his eyebrows.

“What’s this?” he said.

“I’m excited, I’ve missed you!”

“You never miss me.”

“Well, I do now. We only have one day left to get all of this done.” I waved my arms above my head.

“The end of the world shit. I’d almost forgotten.” He walked past me and into the kitchen, getting out his phone to order food.

“I want pizza!” I shouted and began to run around the flat in giant, overlapping circles. Energy burst outwards from within me and I felt, at last, like a star.

We ate the greasy pizza in bed and, afterwards, I attempted something close to intimacy.

“Are you trying to hold my hand?” he asked as I foraged around under the covers.

“Yes.”

“But we don’t do that.”

“Well, I thought it might be nice to try.”

“Okay.” He found my scrambling hand and held it still in his. We sat like that for a few seconds, not looking at each other. Somewhere a clock ticked, which was odd as we didn’t have one.

“No,” I said, pulling away. “You’re too clammy and your skin feels like raisins.”

“Ha!” he huffed. “Fucking charming.”

During the night I turned off his alarm. By the time he woke, he was already thirty minutes late for the office.

“Shit!” he shouted, jumping out of bed and fumbling to unbutton his pyjama shirt. I waltzed in, completely naked and holding two takeaway coffees. He was red in the face and had only managed two of the buttons. “Why didn’t you wake me?” he asked.

“I called the office,” I said. He stopped. “I told them you were sick and wouldn’t be coming in.” He shook his head. “It’s the last day, silly!” I laughed. “I thought we could spend it together.”

“Oh,” he said, dropping his arms to his side and leaning his head back towards the ceiling. “But I was meant to have a meeting with John…” his voice trailed off. Then he shook his head. “Fuck it. You know what? Let’s do it. Let’s have your end of the world. John can wait until tomorrow.”

We spent the last day in bed, having sex, eating leftover cake, and ordering coffee. Somewhere in the midst of it, I told him I loved him. It wasn’t true, but he was chewing with the left side of his mouth and it moved me. I felt I had to say something. I think he pretended he hadn’t heard me.

The sun dipped below the skyscrapers, then below the office blocks, and then below the few bungalows that stood their stubborn ground in the high-rise city, and I knew it was time to go. He was asleep, wearing his god-awful pyjamas, but at that moment I didn’t even care. I kind of liked the vomit-green checks. I woke him up. “Come with me,” I whispered. He may not have been empathetic or witty or anything close to spontaneous, but he was obedient when I wanted him to be. He stood and dressed in the suit I’d laid out for him and I stepped into the nicest red dress I owned.

He followed me up to the roof of our building as dusk slipped into twilight.

“I should’ve brought a jacket,” he mumbled behind me. Our block of flats was tall and the wind buffeted around us, but the view of the sky was clear and unbroken. I laughed, delighted at our front-row seats.

“It’s as if it were made for it!” I cried into the wind.

“What?” he yelled back. I laughed and skipped and danced. Then I stopped and looked up, the pure darkness of space revealing itself from under its violet-hued cloak.

“It’s starting,” I whispered.

In the distance, I watched two stars spark and glow in a sudden culmination of energy. Then they went dark. “I have regrets,” I began, maybe to him, maybe to myself; maybe to something else. “I wish I’d read more books and spent more time looking at other people. I wish I’d taken more cocaine and less iron tablets and eaten chocolate cake every day.” The wind stirred and groaned as another star, smaller than the tip of my fingernail, went black. “I wish I’d tried to love something. Even a houseplant. Why didn’t we have any houseplants?”

“I don’t know,” he said, squinting up into the sky.

“I wish I’d had matching underwear - something pretty; something pastel! Something I might have felt something in. And I wish I’d talked more about how meaningless this has all been because at least that would’ve been worth saying.” I was shouting now, reaching my voice over the wind as it chased the violence of a hurricane. A star closer to Earth burst into a plethora of light, painting the universe in a watercolour of gas and ancient atoms before it, too, faded into nothing. “I wish that I had told you that your sleeping with those other women made me hate myself!” He looked at me then, his face raw and bright. “I always thought that I was the reason you did that; that it was some hardwired fault everybody could see in me. Even when I told myself I didn’t care anymore, I couldn’t stop looking at my damn reflection and wondering what it was about my face that made you fuck other people.” I laughed, then, and began to cry. “Which is funny, because I never loved you anyway. And you never loved me.” All across the infinite expanse of the universe, suns were burning out in a glorious triumph of inevitable ends and new beginnings. A final wave to those that had been gazing upon them for millennia; a standing ovation before they left the stage. Sirius, the second brightest star in the sky, grew impossibly magnificent and shook the planet, sending the tallest buildings plummeting to the ground and raising the ocean from the sea bed. Somehow, our block of flats stood, solemn and stubborn like a well-bred soldier. But the Earth was rocking and I knew it was almost time. I’m here and I’m ready. I wish I’d said goodbye to Steve. Is that my final thought? I won’t be angry if it is.

He’s swearing, looking up at the sky and saying, “Is this it?”

---

Jessica R Cull is a content writer living in Sussex, England. Her short story "Fifteenth Year" was published by Literally Stories.

Alyson Smith

Winter

Cast

• William Winters (M) Actor.

Supporting roles until winter when alter ego Winta reappears.

• Winta Wick (M) Dame.

  Nanny to Sleeping Beauty. Typical dame role, with warm and tender character traits beneath bravado and brashness.

Act I

• Prologue 

William Winters carries a small, battered suitcase down the rickety stairs of the bed and breakfast in which he has boarded every year since the 1940’s with only a break for his three years’ service. He exits left and walks the relatively short distance to the Palli, once a majestic building its green paint now peels, and the sea wind whips through the tears in the box office awning. He nods to the man on the door, one of the few men he knows that are older than him, and enters backstage right comforted by the familiar smell of damp and mold.

• Scene 1 Meeskite

William Winters comes alive the time of year others hibernate. He shakes out his dresses and accompanying petticoats, releasing must and lavender before hanging them on the rail, which looks barer now than it did unclothed. William blows the dust from his towering, faded wig with its worn, yellowing curls. His mouth is dry and he breathes in cold air and cobwebs whilst he dusts the mirror, a faded rag held tight in his pale, wrinkled but soft hands.  

• Scene 2 Willkommen

The air feels warmer as he moves his head closer towards his reflection, his fingers tingling as the cream he uses spreads over the skin of his face with long, sweeping strokes. He tries to focus on its smell; floral and sweet and there she is … a year older ... but there.

‘Hello Miss Wick. How are you? What’s that? You didn’t expect another year? Cheeky Mare, stop your bitching. Open that bottle and get the bloody lippy on.’

• Scene 3 Beedle Dee, Dee

There used to be an urgent voice and sharp knocks on the door, but now an intercom crackles pushing out a thin, monotone, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your ten-minute call. Ten minutes please.’ The phoenix rises, not quite resplendent but grand enough, pushing up trussed cleavage and downing some more Dutch grog in a single swallow, a tart punch in the throat as swallows a belch and arthritically lifts her coarse petticoats.

• Scene 4 Mein Damen und Herren

Winta owns that stage. She is bathed in light and raises her arms towards the audience who drape her with applause as she dances with precise movements, awaiting the inevitable moment their eyes turn to a spotlight shining to her left where the bit celebrity will enter. Winta will be left alone, her show stolen, and presence forgotten.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, and the rest of us Beauties, I had a job as a pantomime horse, but quit while I was ahead.’

Act 2 

• Scene 1 Nicht Mehr

Winta returns to her dressing room for an interval refresh. She knows what she will find but smudges still appear under her eyes as she looks into the mirror, but not at her face. The words, as always, are there in smeared red lipstick:

‘Still See You.’

‘Still Miss You.’

‘Still Here.’

She tissues under her eyes and takes out an old Polaroid camera to photograph the writing that he will now see in a snapshot. He takes the old rag, dabs it with nail-varnish remover and wipes the greasy make-up from the glass. She is momentarily distracted and imagines the queue of parents in front of the ice-cream seller. She remembers when they used to dress correctly. White, elasticated frilly caps, starched aprons with lace stitched on edges over short pink striped dresses, small pots of ice cream tucked tight into a ribboned tray. Now it's just a bored denim swathed student counting down the days until they get back to the city where the lights are bigger and shine brighter than those on this worn-down pier.

 William Winter cries inside; Winta Wick drags him back to the stage.

A pie in the face, sweets for the kiddies, the scare of the demons behind you.

‘IT’S BEHIND YOU.’

‘IT’S BEHIND YOU.’

• Scene 2 O Wie Wunderbar

It’s an age-old story; boy meets girl and the problem is solved. Just like all the pantomimes since time began. William wonders if it will ever be boy meets boy but he pushes this thought to the back of his head where the gassed and the mutilated lie and wills Winta back. She helps him empty his mind so the shell-shocked stares of those left behind can’t bother him.  

• Scene 3 Mein Traum

The kiss of life. Sleeping Beauty awakes, gasping for air, her eyes opening, sitting up as the orchestra plays. Golden confetti is dropped from the rafters covering the performers and the stage with glistening shimmers as the Handsome Prince wraps her waist in his strong arms as the audience cheers their passionate kiss.

• Scene 4 Toodle-oo

They’re all together now. The air is stagnant, unmoving in its heavy humidity and smelling of stale greasepaint and the perspiration of anticipation. Winta holds her breath as she studies the course, gray lining of the red velvet drape. She is sweating under her imposing wig, causing her scalp to itch before beads roll down her forehead.

Crossed fingers: when the curtains swish the audience will still be there. Nothing so much destroys the soul than a curtain call to emptiness.

But here they are. They clap and cheer and shriek as the actors bow to the blurred mass.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, and the rest of us Beauties, an actor I know kept falling through the floor, it was just a stage he was going through.’ 

Finale

William Winters struggles to take off Winta Wicks, but eventually he is stripped, her garments lay crumpled on the floor. He is naked apart from her cloying perfume. He doesn’t manage well without her. The silence is oppressive so he starts to whistle a tune about a soldier and his love but still the stage fright twitches as he contemplates the three seasons he is now to endure.

---

Alyson Smith works as an administrator in a Nursing Home in Newcastle upon Tyne. Alongside this she has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing though the Open University and is working on her first collection of short stories. Alyson has a long-standing diagnosis of Bi-Polar and a recent diagnosis of Level I Autism which has helped her to understand why she doesn't always see the world as other do.

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.

---

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.

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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.