The Riding Light Review
The Riding Light Review A sixteen-year old boy once imagined riding on a beam of light, and his simple thought experiment played an important role that would later change the world—it ushered in the age of Modern Physics. This boy was Albert Einstein. Einstein‘s use of imagination fueled his work in physics, which eventually lead to his famous 1905 papers on Special Relativity. The Riding Light Review emerged out of a desire to push the boundaries of creativity through language, ideas, and story. We believe in the power of imagination, the fuel for our ideas and innovation. This notion inspired the name of our magazine.
Masthead Editor in Chief Cyn C. Bermudez Managing Editor Taylor Lauren Ross Layout Editor Andrea Ellickson Associate Editors, Fiction and Nonfiction Ashley Johnson Melissa RaÊ Associate Editors, Poetry Michael Cervin Kara Donovan Readers Jamie Hoang R.L. Black Š 2014 The Riding Light Review ISSN 2334-251X This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from individual authors or artists. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without permission of the author(s) or artist(s) is illegal. www.ridinglightreview.com
Contents BUDDY‘S SPUTNIK Claude Clayton Smith FEELING YOUR HEARTBEAT IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND K.L. Owens THE WATCHING-OVER Don Russ THE NOTHING MOTHS: AFTER MISREADING A WORD IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Don Russ THE ETYMOLOGY OF HONEY Melissa Wiley THEY ALL LIE Joshua Kraus HERE THEY COME Michael Sidman CONSUMED Peg Montana OLD POET'S LAMENT Tom Montag STRONGER
John G. Rodwan Jr. IMPRESSIONS FROM THE LAND OF VANISHED BEAUTIFUL THINGS Stephen Mead THROUGH HER EYES Philip S. Goldberg DONNALYNN Doug Van Hooser SHOWERS C.C. Russell THE AFTER Disa Turner NO BIG Nels Hanson ILL-FITTING PAJAMAS Zachary Ginsburg GUERILLA BAPTISM Donna Girouard IMAGINE OCTOBER Marcia Loughran BLESSED SAMHAIN Rivka Jacobs
Artists Cover Art Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Houston and Chappell Hill, Texas. He has published a novel, The Dream Patch, a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky, and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. His short stories have appeared in a number of journals including The Southern Review, New England Review, New Orleans Review, Columbia, and Glimmer Train. He began taking photographs a few years ago while recovering from an illness. His photographs have since appeared in many publications, and can be seen in his gallery: christopherwoods.zenfolio.com. Interior Art Ian ―Plaidy‖ Stevenson is a teacher, photographer and web designer who lives in Oakland, California. He loves to travel, finding inspiration all over Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia. His goal as a photographer is to help society slow down and interact with our surroundings. He attempts this through his fascination with mundane bits of everyday life; taking photographs of things that may go unnoticed. It is his attempt to pull us away from our iPhones, knowing that we have the potential to experience something spectacular. His photography has been featured in various exhibitions in Santa Barbara, California including La Arcada, Fuzion, Montecito Gallery, OffLeash, Hutton Foundation, Faulkner Gallery, Gallery 1434, and at UCSB‘s Reel Loud FilmFestival. To view more of his work, please visit: www.ianstevensonphotography.com.
Editorial The autumn season is my favorite time of year: I love the gray weather—the perpetual twilight and dew kissed air, the way the cold touches my skin as it trickles in through my sweater. It‘s a time for reminiscing at family gatherings and laughing about old times with friends, a time for good conversation and warm drinks and pilfering/hocking white elephant gifts with co-workers. It is a time of letting go as the year wanes, as it falls away, making room for new experiences. It‘s also a perfect time to cozy up with a good book or set of short stories. I‘m pleased to present The Riding Light Review‘s Fall Issue contributors: We have original fiction from Claude Clayton Smith (―Buddy‘s Sputnik‖), K.L. Owens (―Feeling Your Heartbeat in the Palm of Your Hand‖), Joshua Kraus (―They All Lie‖), Michael Sidman (―Here They Come‖), Peg Montana (―Consumed‖), Philip S. Goldberg (―Through Her Eyes‖), Doug Van Hooser (―DonnaLynn‖), C.C. Russell (―Showers‖), Zachary Ginsburg (―IllFitting Pajamas‖), and Rivka Jacobs (―Blessed Samhain‖). We also have poetry from Don Russ (―That Watching-Over: In a Night Street, Waiting for a Tow-Truck‖ and ―The Nothing Moths: After Misreading a Word in the New York Times Book Review‖), Tom Montag (―Old Poet‘s Lament‖), John G. Rodwan Jr. (―Stronger‖), Disa Turner (―The After‖), and Nels Hanson (―No Big‖), and nonfiction from Melissa Wiley (―The Etymology of Honey‖), Stephen Mead (―Vanished Beautiful Things‖), and Donna Girouard (―Guerrilla Baptism‖). Our cover art this issue is from photographer Christopher Woods (―Late September Dawn‖) and our interior photo art is from Ian Stevenson. I hope you enjoy the hodgepodge of our first fall issue.
Happy Holidays! Sincerely, Cyn Bermudez
BUDDY‘S SPUTNIK Claude Clayton Smith They were in the backyard watching the Sputnik make its way across the pre-dawn sky. The stars were still out, the October air chilly and black. And suddenly Buddy saw himself as if from that satellite, the very first snapshot of himself in the universe—puny and cold, in pajamas and bathrobe, his bare feet wet with dew. He‘d shed his slippers on the back porch, not wanting to get them soaked in the grass, for he was already awash in puberty, a prerequisite for melancholia. ―Do they see it?‖ His father said loudly. ―Do they see it?‖ He was speaking for the benefit of the neighbors, who were looking skyward in the wrong direction. His father always played to available audiences, to Buddy‘s chagrin and embarrassment. ―It‘s 359 miles away,‖ his father continued. ―That‘s 577 kilometers.‖ He was the engineer now, self-taught, then night school, and he was determined that his three sons, huddled about him with their gazes trained upward, do better. As the sign he‘d taped above the kitchen sink proclaimed: TO EARN MORE YOU MUST LEARN MORE. But Buddy wasn‘t listening. Miles or kilometers, they might as well have been light-years, paralyzed as he was by the image of himself provoked by this winking, blinking satellite the Russians had launched, shocking the world. His eyes were tearing against the cold. But why bother? He was watching himself from the point of view of an infinitely colder immensity, and it overwhelmed him with fear.
―Time for breakfast,‖ his mother said, herding Buddy and his brothers inside. ―You‘ll be late for school.‖ Sputnik or no, her brood came first. She‘d been standing on the top step of the porch all the while, holding the storm door open. And so they hurried back into the warmth of their Connecticut kitchen. ―The Russians are Communists,‖ Buddy‘s older brother said. ―Isn‘t that right, Dad?‖ O.B. was two years older than Buddy and toed the family party line. ―You bet they are,‖ his father said. ―Behind the Iron Curtain.‖ Iron Curtain. It was a term Buddy had never understood. He‘d always taken it literally, imagining a chain mail version of the Swissdot curtains in this bedroom separating foreign countries overseas. The concept was somehow connected to a strange float permanently parked by the side of the road at the north end of town—a flatbed wagon with a graveyard of white crosses on a green rug, trimmed with a red banner and hammer and sickle warning of Communism. Every Memorial Day, Old Man Nemergut hitched it to his tractor for the parade down Main Street. One year, while marching with the Cub Scouts, Buddy‘s pack had followed right behind it. He was carrying the American flag at the head of his unit and could almost reach out and touch those white crosses. After the parade, when he had asked his father about the float, his father dismissed Old Man Nemergut as ―a kook.‖ ―Dad,‖ Buddy said now quietly, sliding into the breakfast nook opposite O.B. and sleepy-eyed Bob, ―what d‘ ya think Mr. Nemergut would say about the Sputnik?‖ He felt a burning need to know. He‘d been studying the solar system in school, making models out of wire coat hangers and balls of different sizes—ping pong balls, tennis balls, Wiffle balls—to show the distance of the planets from the sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. The Earth came third. And now there was the Sputnik whirling around it. And the Sputnik frightened him. The Russians had launched the Sputnik, and the Russians were
Communists. In his school he did drills in which he had to crouch under his desk and hold his hands over his head. And on television there were ads showing windows exploding and drapes billowing and large red arrows spreading across a map of Europe, and— ―Buddy?‖ his mother said. ―Buddy!‖ ―What?‖ His fork was poised mid-air. But it was his father who answered: ―Eat your scrambled eggs.‖
Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio Northern University, Claude Clayton Smith is the author of seven books and coeditor/translator of another. He has also published a variety of short fiction, essays, poetry, and plays. He holds a DA from Carnegie-Mellon, MFA in fiction from the Writers‘ Workshop at the University of Iowa, MAT from Yale, and BA from Wesleyan (CT). His work has been translated into five languages, including Russian and Chinese. His books are available on Amazon.com. For his ideas on writing and the writing life, see: http://iris.virginia.edu/2012/05/interview-with-essay-contest-winner-claudeclayton-smith/
FEELING YOUR HEARTBEAT IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND K.L. Owens Grab on to something—an object, a person, an ideal, anything. Grasp it hard and try not to let go. Not when your fingers cramp, not when the meat of your palm goes numb, not when you can feel each bone, each carpal and metacarpal and phalange, straining toward greenstick snaps. Clench your fist until the creases in your flesh fold deeper, lifeline and heartline furrowing inward, away from tenacity; until the mound of Venus meets its girdle and soft tissue connects to cold callous with enough pressure to obliterate life, time, love. At first, our conversations went like this: ―Why are you running the scrubbers? I was going to do that.‖ ―Well, I‘m doing it now. You do the other things.‖ ―I don‘t feel like doing the other things.‖ The general tidying, the jettisoning of waste via chemical toilet, which included scooping out the litter box of the cat kept on board ostensibly for experiment—first feline at twenty thousand leagues! except this isn‘t some Jules Verne shit—but really because someone had the prescience to know that a third life would be needed, a mediator between two other lives. ―I did them yesterday.‖ ―So do them again today.‖ ―How about tomorrow?‖
tomorrow?
Tomorrow
and
tomorrow
and
―Don‘t quote Shakespeare at me.‖ So I didn‘t, and I won‘t, and now I‘ll be Sycorax and Caliban because I have the magic in the language they cannot speak, all the prosperous, the Prosperos who sent us down there in the first place while they stayed up above, dry on their island. All the world‘s land is an island when seen from benthic-side. I‘d never thought about that before. How you can look out little bathyscaphic windows and above you there is land, the underside of land, black and craggy or sloughing and muddy, but if you look straight out, there might be nothing but abyss and what lives in abyss. The fleeting red veil of a vampire squid or the blinking green bioluminescence of a thousand possible creatures, the eerie glow of a viperfish, the glittering iridescence of ghosts. We named the cat Nemo. Not just for the obvious reasons, but because neither James nor I thought of the orange tabby as a pet. We didn‘t plan on getting attached to him, so he was No One. No Man. No Name. And I‘d love to say that Nemo saw the ghosts first, that he started acting strange when we reached ten thousand feet, started yowling at the portholes and scratching at the ballast hoppers, but cats are just cats and the world is the world, and life isn‘t magic—or at least not in any of the ways you expect it to be. Ours was the bathyscaphe to end all bathyscaphes, James said, back when he could say, because it was quite literally ALVIN cubed. On our initial descent, he told me all about how ALVIN‘s crew had 72 hours to get into Challenger Deep and get out, but we were getting triple that in a ship three times ALVIN‘s size. The final ALVINclass bathy, ALVIN‘s grandbaby, could only get to the bottom of the abyssopelagic, but James and Nemo and I were headed for the hadopelagic. Christened the Hyperborea because, James said, someone at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute or the Ocean Exploration Trust or one of the other big funders was a Lovecraft fan with a real twisted sense of humor, and despite having designed the Hyperborea, James never did play well with others. Expeditions like ours require bureaucracy and board meetings, and when people are Skyping across continents about naming a submersible, I guess
you pick your battles. So there‘s the Hyperborea. Her crew: (1) me, Katrine Stevens, marine biology PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Woods Hole lab tech, and assistant to and longtime student of; (2) Dr. James Anderson, commonly referred to around Woods Hole and OET as Dr. Doctor since he holds one PhD in subsea engineering and another in oceanography; and (3) Nemo. Her mission: exploration. Map Challenger Deep, see what lives down there, plus, my thesis project: confirmation of a rare, abyssal species, the hadal snailfish. Initial descent could still get my heart rate up, that slow sink through the euphotic, watching the hypnotic sway of sea lettuce, the swirling of wrack, all of it shot through with rays and angelfish and the veil dance of jellies. Then into the dysphotic, where I squealed like a schoolchild at the sight of a coelacanth, and James went all pedantic about varieties of ooze along the continental shelf, the smoker chimneys of hydrothermal vents. Hissing at a passing octopus who poked an alien eye in at us, Nemo clawed at the porthole. But any submersible hits the bathyal zone quick, and then there‘s nothing to see without the aid of searchlights. Routine kicks in fast. James would check the autopilot, make minor adjustments to course, and dictate readouts, which I‘d record. Silently marveling at life normally left unseen going about its business in the dull green of infrared, we‘d watch the stream from the cameras. If a school happened by at the right place and time, we‘d throw the searchlight on it for kicks. Watch blind things do the blind-thing-equivalent of blinking at this intrusion of the unknown substance of light. Nemo acted like a cat. Slept a lot, rubbed up on our legs, meowed for food, stole pens, and chased them in maddening circles of racket around the cabin. I saw the ghosts first. We‘d unlatched the small table from the wall, and we were having dinner. I‘d joked that I‘d cooked: a can of tuna mixed into MRE mac-n-cheese with freeze-dried ice cream for dessert. Nemo plopped into the center of dinner and slurped juice from the can. We were laughing, matching each other memory for memory from when we first met, when I was just an undergrad at UT Austin and James was a visiting professor. He had to bring up
how bad I used to be at filling out lab reports, but even then, he said, I‘d been better than the assistant the university had assigned him. I remembered her as a nervous, excitable woman who never managed to prep a slide without bluing her fingers with chemical stain, and I was giggling around a mouthful of tuna when our cabin‘s little porthole filled with flashing, whitely shimmering movement. A brief glimpse of something nearly solid and close, wisps that could‘ve been mantles or fins, the possibility of shape suggested as photophores caught and refracted. I gasped. Licking juice from his nose, Nemo looked up from his can, his yellow eyes darting with the movement. The cat hissed, tail bushed out, but James and I were too busy falling over each other to get to the controls. I got there first. The searchlight on that side of Hyperborea‘s cabin aimed aft. I tried to get the manipulator arm and one of the cameras around, but the school was gone before I could move the joystick. ―So what was it?‖ James asked, peering over sensors that indicated the mass moving off starboard. ―Headed that way.‖ He pointed. ―Want to follow it?‖ ―Hell yes, I do.‖ We slept in shifts. Sure, the Hyperborea came equipped with any number of automatic controls, but all the computers in the world can‘t stave off the terror that comes with the knowledge that you‘re floating around in a tin can thirty thousand feet underwater. The best subsea engineers in the world—and James was one of them— can‘t erase the fear of collapsed lungs, nitrogen narcosis, or the idea of your body getting crammed into the tiniest, most rigid, airtight space if/when all the pressure comes rushing in. I‘d thought about these things, but James was the one who insisted on shift-sleeping, which proved my point. I was having my go in the bunk while we followed our mystery species, the flimsy goldfish-printed shower curtain we‘d hung between the berths and the controls drawn, Nemo curled behind my knees. I found sleep while fantasizing that the shimmering mass we chased would be my snailfish and inventing the appropriate new
taxonomy. Pseudoliparis stevensis? Would that be unfair to James? How about Pseudoliparis stevanderonis? Pseudoliparis nemonsis? Did we have all the right equipment to live harvest them, to keep them alive until we got to the surface; were we about to cure glaucoma? James‘s startled yell woke me. Nemo had already left the bunk, and more than James growling, ―Jesus, fuck,‖ it was Nemo‘s screech that made me feel prickly and cold. The conversation went like this: ―Katrine, for Christ‘s sake, get up here.‖ ―What? What is it?‖ Nemo circled, jumping on to the panels. James pushed him off. Nemo jumped back up and glared at the viewer screen like he knew what he was doing and hissed, a surprisingly snakelike sound for something with fur. ―They weren‘t polychaetes. Not benthic jellies, and, I‘m sorry, Katrine, not even your mythic hadal snailfish.‖ ―They‘re not mythical. Priede and Jamieson caught the hadal snailfish on video in the Japan Trench in two thousand—‖ ―Well, this is fucking mythical.‖ ―What already?‖ ―It‘s ghosts. They‘re ghosts.‖ I stared at him. James was always so hardline, a scientist‘s scientist, the first person to make me self-conscious about wearing necklaces with crystal charms. In skepticism and methodological doubt, I‘d had no better teacher, but he only stared back at me. The Hyperborea crept along, navigating Mariana, still nearly two miles northeast of Challenger Deep and at least another five thousand feet farther down left to go. It might have been warm and bright in our crew cabin, but it‘s so dark and so cold down there. Hoping to spy what he‘d seen again, James inched the camera through the
water. The image jerked in time with his nervous tics, and he restrained Nemo in his lap with his other arm. The cat twitched and mewled. I gripped James‘s shoulders, peered over them, my chin by his ear, my body pressed against the back of his chair. We‘d never touched like that before. It wasn‘t intimate. He couldn‘t find it again, not with that aimless wagging of the camera, so he ended up reversing the film. Dull and motionless hosts of green-tinted sand and rock played backward, with only the timestamp to show that it wasn‘t forward. Something filled the screen, there and gone quicker than I could register its details, but something clicked. Something that made me dig my nails into James‘s shoulder until he said ―ouch‖ and batted my hands away. And then the glimmering. He stopped, let the footage play forward at normal speed. The tatter and flash, the wavering motion we‘d seen the previous day, the almost-photophore glint that made James say ―jellies‖ and me pray for snailfish. He slowed the footage down, which made everything out there appear even more weighted, moving underwater times five. The glittering slowed, coalesced, and gained shape. ―That,‖ I stuttered, pointing. ―That looks like—‖ ―Wait for it.‖ A face filled the screen. Nothing could have prepared me for it. Nothing. All hollow-eyed and hollow-mouthed, an elongated ―O‖ of a wail, right there like the thing looked right at the camera, ready for its close-up, Mr. DeMille, and I screamed. Nemo went bottlebrush-shaped, howled, and ran from the room. James hit ―pause,‖ both of us gaping at what we shouldn‘t see, what couldn‘t possibly be there, and yet. ―You see?‖ James whispered, as though they could hear us through five inches of titanium hull. ―Ghosts.‖ I nodded, mute. James hit ―play.‖ I watched the single ghost face recede, look behind it, raise an arm, and make a motion. The camera seemed to back away. Thinking back on it now, I believe the ghosts were the ones playing with depth. The congress let us
see them swarm. Through the dumbfounded awe, through the cold fear, I thought of that Disney film, Fantasia. That part somewhere in the middle, the animation of Mussorgsky‘s Night on Bald Mountain, when the giant, blackened demon figure rising up out of the mountain commands the dead from their graves and bids them Come to me, and the dead obey, ghosts spiraling up the mountainside to meet their god-king. It‘s only eight minutes of the movie, but I‘ve watched the Mussorgsky clip probably two dozen times or more since we resurfaced, and I can say: It was exactly like that. Turns out the deep sea is full of ghosts. They don‘t hang around on dry land; they‘ve lost the legs for it, and without a Heaven to go to, why bother floating up into the air? All that light, all that lightness. They‘re insubstantial enough. They don‘t need that atmospheric shit. They need what only the deep can offer: weight, gravity, pressure, and darkness to help them illume what light they have left. Ghosts don‘t look like they did in life. They are revenants. Crude, humanoid shapes with only the suggestion of features, limbs with only the suggestion of hands, and bodies without form. Billowing, ectoplasmic things. The Spiritualists might have been right about that, even if they were wrong about ghosts answering to the knocking of wood. No, I‘ve had the time to think, and ghosts answer to disturbances in the water. They don‘t—won‘t—dance for bored Victorians or Russian composers. It‘s Hurricane Katrinas they wait for, Gilbert Inlet-proportion tsunamis. They could give a crap for mountain demons; they know water devils and cyclone nereids and the spirits that rise from typhoons. They worship at the wells of Scylla and Charybdis, and the invasion of the living‘s submersibles is heresy. The Hyperborea would enter Challenger Deep in a little over an hour, and then we‘d have three days in the hadopelagic, the longest, deepest dive on record into the real final frontier. James and I watched the ghost footage a handful of times, and then we retired to the back of the cabin to try to talk ourselves and each other out of seeing what we damn well saw. We hunched over the small table with playing cards scattered between us. Not because we were playing a game, but because we both wanted something to
fidget with. We weren‘t paying attention to the mission. We missed the initial crossover. Nemo stalked unhappy circles around the crew cabin and cast baleful eyes at the portholes. He jumped when Hyperborea‘s electronic voice announced 35,756 feet. James stopped tapping his foot. I quit bending the corner of a two of clubs. All of our weak rationalizations died in our mouths, and we stared at each other. He raised a hand, open-palmed, his shoulder twitching, and I thought about it. Chewed my lip. Said, ―Floodlight it.‖ ―Really, Katrine?‖ I still wonder if it was disdain or fear I heard in his voice, but I told him yes, really, do it, just do it and get it over with, let‘s know, and I held my breath. I don‘t know what I expected to see out there. A city of ghosts crowded around the ship, staring without eyes, grimacing without mouths, making gestures of threat without hands? James counted down from five, threw on every searchlight the Hyperborea had to offer. Terrified, half-turnt, atheistic Prometheuses, Dr. Doctor and I: We brought light to Challenger Deep. And we gasped with a more familiar type of awe. To watch light puddle in absolute blackness, to know the true meaning of ―abyss‖ is something you feel in the gut that radiates from that pit of neurotransmitters all the way out to what I guess people call the soul. Wonder that this, this is the truth of the ―blue‖ in ―little blue dot,‖ a sort of horror that comes when the mind tries to conceive of the depth and the darkness. It‘s always down there, always lurking, always full of mystery, and we skip along the surface, going on with our lives. James and I jostled against the porthole, no longer concerned for personal space, and shoved each other aside to watch scalefish dart away from the lamps. Sea cucumbers curled and bent, trying to burrow into the diatomaceous ooze, their faint bioluminescence rippling with their contortions. We sighed with the outrush of steaming bubbles from hydrothermal vents. Our eyes danced with the glitter on the seabed floor when the light caught the clay test shells of foraminifera, those amoeboid protists that could tell us so much about the age and composition of Challenger Deep if we could get them back to a lab.
We forgot about the ghosts in those moments. Seeing the foraminifera, James rushed to the manipulator arm‘s pressure hatch, loaded it with sampling gear, and returned to the controls for the first time since the ghost-sighting. Then the lights went out. Not the cabin lights, but the searchlights, and I shouted at James, something about how he expected to collect a sample in the pitch, and him replying that he hadn‘t done it. ―What the shit, Hyperborea?‖ he barked at the ship. I could hear him stabbing buttons and flipping switches. The light returned. ―You got it,‖ I said. ―Wasn‘t me.‖ I looked back to the porthole. A caul of ghosts drifted away from the light, which brightened as they unmingled their substance and darted back to the protection of darkness. ―James,‖ I whimpered. Beside me, claws digging into the thick denim of my pants, Nemo made a miserable roow-roow-roow sound. ―James!‖ A ghost face pressed against the porthole, its hollow features twisting to approximate some emotion it remembered from life but which I couldn‘t interpret, and it backed away, motioning as it went to the tattered taffeta of its body. I felt paralyzed watching it. James briefly gripped my shoulder before letting go to point at the thing I was trying not to see, the frenetically whipping pink-white mass more solid than the substance that contained it, thrashing within the ghost. ―What…?‖ James said. ―My snailfish,‖ I moaned. And now I think five inches of titanium hull didn‘t matter. I‘m convinced the thing heard me, registered desire and despair in ears now attuned to the intangible, because as soon as I named its prisoner, the ghost reached inside itself, grasped the spiny, tadpolelike creature, and hurled it at the porthole. I yelled as the snailfish hit and turned inside-out against the tempered glass. The ghost
swam away. James looked at me. I looked at him. Then I stalked to the bunks. James tried to get the manipulator arm to scrape what little the sea left of the snailfish off of the porthole while I huddled in the bottom bunk and wept into Nemo‘s fur. The cat purred low, stayed mostly still, nuzzled my face, and snuggled ever closer. It surprised me when I started crying, but once I got going, I found it hard to stop. I couldn‘t remember the last time I‘d cried, and I wondered the whole time if I was crying this hard, this long, over a rare species. A species that would have made my career, sure, but still. Really? Was I crying for the hadal snailfish, or for my own sense of terror, for my helpless, useless wish to be back on land, to be back there now, to never—career be fucked—dive again? James knelt beside the bunk for a long time before I acknowledged him, and when I did, he only held a specimen jar out for my review. An unrecognizable blob of organic matter sloughed at the bottom of the jar looking like nothing more than a spoonful of sick-pale Jell-O with a spine sticking out of it. ―Enough to map a genome?‖ James asked with a false hopeful note in his voice. I nodded, reached for the jar, cradled it to my chest, and whispered a sniveled ―thank you.‖ We spent a lot of time in silence after that. I didn‘t know what James was thinking, or why he didn‘t talk. I didn‘t because all I could think to say was ―Send us home,‖ and that wasn‘t possible. Hyperborea had to register some self-diagnosed machine distress to begin ascent on her own. Otherwise, we‘d have to tell her why we were going back up early, and there were codes to enter for that, digital records for financiers who‘d be a little more than pissed if we aborted the mission for nothing. I thought maybe we could use the code for ailing crewmember, but what would OET and WHOI say when we came back up and no one was sick? There wasn‘t a code for being menaced by the supernatural, and even with the footage, would they believe us? We didn‘t have footage of the snailfish murder, or any other evidence of the ghosts yet at all. The
Prosperos would have James and me sent for psych eval while they stripped us of our privileges, degrees, and positions. We couldn‘t go back up early. We had to make it through sixty-eight more hours of Challenger Deep, seventy-two more hours of ascent, most of those spent in the aphotic zone, Ghost Land. Time is already wonky on a dive, even the recreational ones that stay in the euphotic. Go dysphotic and hours and minutes merge, and all divers start to understand just how irrelevant humanity‘s clock and calendar divisions are. Multiply the recorded deepest individual, unassisted dive by thirty thousand feet and some change. Throw in some trauma. James and I were on autopilot. He did better than I did. Dr. Doctor mustered whatever got him that nickname to begin with and fell back on being a scientist. Kept to the controls when it wasn‘t his turn to sleep, marked movement and depth, loaded, unloaded, reloaded the sampling equipment, and labeled and stored them by locking them in yellow containers. Tried to shake me out of my stupor when a species drifted by. ―Katrine, viperfish!‖ or ―Tube worms. Tube worms! I‘m taking video as we pass over. Would you get up here?‖ Keeping pace with the Hyperborea, the ghosts were constant in the hadopelagic. They swirled before her cameras and outside her portholes. I tried to keep my back to anything that gave me a view of the outside. My dream since the marine section of middle school biology, and there I was, living it, and trying my damnedest to see nothing. But Nemo, facing any direction I spurned, would hiss, and I would shudder, telling myself not to turn but turning anyway to see a ghost outside the ship making some arcane expression or gesture. How long between the snailfish murder and when the ghosts got bold? I don‘t know, but even if none of the footage remains, the mess of the Hyperborea‘s electronics—the crazy-cycling timestamps, the blocks and bursts of static, the depth readings gone haywire—ought to stand testament to her crew‘s sanity. The ghosts started entering the ship. Some chose to breech the hull, make themselves seen, however faintly in full light, in the cabin. One of these restrained Nemo, used differential pressure to pinion the cat while he spat and flailed and made impressive gouges
on a bunk with his claws. Others possessed more esoteric skills. Ghosts of the water who knew how to commune with the ghosts in machines, who sent dials and gauges spinning as they learned to insinuate themselves into the Hyperborea‘s electronic voice. ―Leave,‖ Hyperborea commanded us in its sexless, robot tone. ―Deep is dead‘s. Our place. You leave.‖ No one on land believes that this wasn‘t our idea of a practical joke. I gibbered, nonsense sounds stuck between tears and screams, and James blanched and shook in his seat for long minutes before bundling me up and dragging me with him to the controls. I slumped into the co-pilot‘s seat. Even Nemo kept his distance now and eyed me from a few feet away, his tail lashing. I stayed there, staring at the floor, while James futzed, and rubbed my hands together until my knuckles were raw, until I heard the sharp intake of James‘s breath. I felt woozy, bended with the bends when I leaned over the screens to see. The log screen, a tiny thing with a tinier keyboard, scrolled in binary-green capitals an endless series of the word LEAVE. I don‘t remember what I did, then. I suppose I went hysterical. I must have, given that James shot me with half a dose of morpho from the medical kit. He hauled me to the bunks and dropped me there. Later, when he could still say, he said that I slept for sixteen hours straight, terror-exhaustion and morphine lassitude—meaning he‘d gone two full shifts without sleep by the time I came to. Before sucking down a tube of protein gel and collapsing in the top bunk, he told me not to bother with the controls. Said he‘d set the ship on full automatic, both the navigation and the research functions, and had covered the portholes with blankets. He gave me a long bit of bungee and told me to play with Nemo, not to look out the windows, and that it would all be over soon. But there were a variety of items in the med kit that could aid in calming terror, and I catalogued them and figured a rough way of rationing them with a quick glance at Hyperborea‘s mission clock. I kept myself drugged to some extent or another almost all the way through Challenger Deep and would have done all the way back to the euphotic if the ghosts hadn‘t attacked.
Through the apathetic haze of morphine or Dramamine, I found myself able to revisit the controls. I still knew that what we were experiencing was unnatural, unreal, and wrong. I still had some sense that my insides were curdling with anxiety, but the pharmaceuticals put space between my thoughts and my feelings. They allowed me to detach, to act like a scientist once more. I aborted James‘s auto functions, ignored the list of readings and samplings we were meant to take, and started focusing exclusively on the ghosts. I filmed them, taking stills through different filters and transferring that information to flash drives and discs. These quiet hours, the only sound the drone of the ship‘s engines and Nemo purring in my lap, while James slept and I documented the dead living again in deep water, were when I developed my hypothesis about the dead descending rather than ascending. Because they were the dead, the human dead—they‘d said so, selfidentified, and I believed them. Maybe they‘d tried to float in air, once, sometime way back in ghostly history, but found themselves buffeted by wind currents they couldn‘t navigate and drifting against their wills into more rarified areas, empty and alone save when another of their cohort blew by. I wondered how they got back down—perhaps by clawing through air to plunge, finally, into the sea. I imagined the waters of the world‘s oceans bubbling as though with tiny maelstroms when the ghosts got there and sighed in contentment to find themselves weighty and visible again. I imagined them like scientists themselves, experimenting with depth, scouts relaying messages back up, aphotic to dysphotic to euphotic, saying, Come down, brethren and sistren. Come down. Push deeper. The things here are blind and pale like us. They mistake us for prey and bite, but cannot hurt. They mistake us for their own kind and play and it is fun. We move as we wish to move, here. Come, brothers and sisters. Here, in the deep, we will make our world. Sometimes, still, I can think about it like that and pity them, the dead. Then I can understand why they did what they did. They tried to protect their home, their life after death, and they were happy there until we came along to invade their space and remind them of what they had been, flesh and blood with sensation and voice. But sometimes when I try to reconsider these things, I go to
push my bangs out of my face and my hands won‘t move, and all my goodwill for the dead dissipates like a benthic jelly in air. I catalogue the last things I touched and felt in my hands: The scratchy salt-and-pepper growth of James‘ beard; the marshmallow softness of Nemo‘s fur and the cool, wet pinkness of his nose; my own familiar skin; the Hyperborea‘s smooth, cold controls. James found me, when he woke from his long nap, with the fingers of my left hand poised over the buttons that controlled the still readings, my right hand curled around the camera‘s joystick, silent tears reflecting off my face. Later he joked that he‘d wanted to say I looked like I‘d seen a ghost, in those moments after waking, before reality set back in. He said I‘d bit my lip hard enough to break skin, and I remember the salty taste in my mouth, but couldn‘t think of why. ―Katrine? What‘s wrong?‖ ―It . . . They started to tingle at first. Something . . . something cold and . . . and sparkly. Like peppermint. Peppermints all over. The way toothpaste feels if you hold it in your mouth. I could feel . . . I felt my own blood. Really felt it, rushing and hot. It made the peppermints go away, and then it got hot, and then . . . ‖ I shook my head, shrugged, and shimmied my shoulders trying to show him what was wrong. I couldn‘t say it. I think I thought if I said it out loud, I‘d make it true and as long as it wasn‘t said, it was something I still had control over. James probably thought I was still doped up. He sat in the copilot‘s chair and looked at his own hands for a long time. He sighed like he was marshalling himself. ―What is hot and full of peppermints, Katrine?‖ ―I can‘t… I can‘t move them.‖ ―For fuck‘s sake, what?‖ ―My hands.‖
I tried. I tried as hard as I had when the movement first drained away. I wanted him to see. Muscles in my forearms flexed and trembled. With a violent sideways jerk, I could fling my left hand from the controls. I flopped it, useless, into James‘ lap. I couldn‘t unwrap my right hand from the joystick. James had to pry my fingers open, and my right hand slid over the Hyperborea‘s panels to hang heavy by my side. We tried all sorts of things. James could open and close my fingers and make my hands into fists, though he said it was like coaxing rusty hinges. I didn‘t feel a thing. I let him prick my hands all over with the tip of a pin, let him massage my palms, and while I could move every other part of my arms at will, everything from the wrist down was gone. Nemo had been asleep. Otherwise, I believe he would have warned me that a ghost had entered the cabin. They‘re almost completely immaterial in the light. I didn‘t see it until it was right in front of me, half-sunk in the ship‘s dash, its Picasso face close to mine. And I would have screamed, but it raised a limb to brush against my mouth, and, like night terrors, no sound would come out. The lights in the cabin flickered, dimmed, ghost substance willing Hyperborea‘s controls. It wanted me to see it, wanted me to understand what it did as it lifted both arms in some conjuring, some summoning, ether drawing from ether, gathering dust mites and skin particles and bits of Nemo‘s fur to itself to give itself better form, to give itself hands. The ghost laid its hands on mine. The lightest touch like a shy teenager on a date, and I understood. What the dead touches also dies. It killed my voice when it brushed my lips, and so it killed my hands as it held them. I stuttered all of this out while James alternated hot packs and ice packs on my hands, and after a few hours, I got some movement back, but it was crabbed and arthritic, a dull ache. By the time I was ready for my go in the bunk, I could make a decent fist, hold a cup without dropping it, pet Nemo, even fluff up my pillow a bit, and though each movement caused a hot, sparkling pain to strike from my thumb to my elbow, I‘d convinced myself I‘d recover in full. We were nearing the end of Challenger Deep, a few hours left before the Hyperborea began her ascent. James and I sat together on the bottom bunk with Nemo curled close by. We reviewed our
mission dossiers and compared them to all we hadn‘t accomplished. I‘d like to say we plotted and rationalized, dreamt up things to say to the landed bosses, and made sure our stories would corroborate, but we didn‘t do anything of the sort. These things happen. I‘ve had a lot of time to think since we came back. A lot of time to spin out fantasies of how it could‘ve turned out with the first professor I had a crush on in undergrad. A lot of time to chastise and then forgive myself in a punishing cycle. My face can flush but my hands stay pale when I think about how Dr. James Anderson was my teacher, my boss, and I was his student, his assistant, and nearly twenty years his junior. Then I remember how much, for how long, I adored him, and I make justifications from biological tidbits. Neurochemistry based on anxiety and exhaustion, adrenaline spikes and traumatic experiences. I remind myself that ―fight‖ and ―flight‖ aren‘t the only two reactions an organism can have. There‘s also ―feed.‖ And also, there‘s ―fuck.‖ We‘d put the dossiers aside, laid them on top of sleeping Nemo as a joke, and we sat facing each other. James curled and uncurled my fingers and helped me flex them. He asked how much of the movement I could feel, or if I thought it was getting any better. I‘m still not sure why I reached up to stroke his beard or why he held my hand against his face, or why I responded to that by kissing him, but there it was, and another new contact was made. The snippets of conversation went like this: ―Mile deep club, eh?‖ ―That‘s not funny.‖ ―Is this okay?‖ ―Yes.‖ ―Is this okay?‖ ―Yes.‖ ―Is this—‖
―Stop talking. It‘s all okay. Everything‘s okay.‖ It could have been beautiful. The thrumming of Hyperborea‘s engines to match the thrumming of our bodies, the search and guidance lights illuming the hidden places of Marian Trench, the knowledge of where we were and what we were doing making it feel like we were the last two people on Earth. But everything is okay until it isn‘t, and I opened my eyes when James rolled me on to my back. I saw the ghost behind him, saw it shrinking, and I watched it become child-sized, and then Nemo-sized, and then no bigger than my fist in less time than it would take me to say the words, and I yelped. And James said, ―Are you okay? We don‘t have to do this.‖ Those were the last words he‘d ever say. The ghost plunged into his open mouth and settled in his throat. It curled around his vocal cords, killed his voice. I must have known what it was doing because I lunged for it, tried to grab ghost substance. My hands passed through it—hot and peppermint shooting from my fingertips to my elbows, that rueful second touch—and closed on nothing. We‘re dead-infected, Dr. James Anderson and I. The ghosts took his voice, and they took away my hands. It didn‘t get better, not with ascent and not with time. James kneaded my hands until I yelled at him to stop. I encouraged him to drink hot tea until he spit it in my face. I would have to tell him to feed Nemo, and he would have to feed me. I could do nothing on the ascent except stare at the readouts and watch as we rose and the ocean became lighter, livelier. With fish and cephalopods, sharks and crustaceans dominating the view beyond the portholes once more, the fact of the ghosts seemed impossible. Perhaps it was something we‘d dreamed, the three of us, a nitrogen-heavy hallucination. I would voice these things, try to gesture, feel the living-dead flesh of my paralyzed hands smack against my face, and James angrily scribbled in his log book. I felt awkward talking back to his abbreviated notes, guilty that I could speak. But then, which is worse? He may be mute, but I‘m the one who can hardly do for herself. I‘d managed to figure out a few basics during our three-day
ascent, ways to manipulate objects between my pressed wrists, scooping with my elbows, new chores for my teeth, and I‘ve managed more complex actions since then with the help of new research and prosthetics. If someone had told me, before we dove, that I‘d lose my hands down there, I don‘t know that I could have conceived of it. It‘s not as bad as I might have imagined. It‘s also worse than I would have thought. We quit the ocean so changed. A roar of rushing water as the Hyperborea broke the surface, the last few pellets of her ballast slipping from the hoppers to sink back down, down to the ghosts, who will play bocce or dropsies with the bathy‘s discarded iron. The cheering of the land crew that got louder as we passed through the locks until the final seal cracked, and I have a copy of the picture the over-eager photographer snapped, so I know how we looked, why the crowd grew quiet. Haggard and sick, like the ghosts had taken up residence in our eyes, both James and I stand on the lip of the bathy with red and distance-stained stares, faces slack and clammy, his suit unkempt and mine only half-zipped. In that photograph, Nemo sprawls clumsily in the crook of my arm, and I clutch him to my chest, my hands hanging limp by his feet, and I can see the tension around James‘ lips. The way he started clamping them shut as though he were refusing to speak rather than being unable to. Crews went into the Hyperborea to pull her data. We were trundled off to the medical unit, a standard procedure. James resented having to write the same responses to the same queries again and again. He complained to me that his hands cramped with the effort and then grew quickly abashed, since I could only wish to feel cramps in my hands. The psych evaluations were foregone conclusions, and both of us are still supposed to see a shrink once a week privately and once together. James quit going to the shrink a few weeks ago. He quit coming to visit me, too. James kept Nemo, and that seems fair. What good would I be to any animal? I can‘t feed or pet or play. Still, when James would answer my knocks on his door, Nemo greeted me by curling around my legs, jumping into my lap, and purring. He remembered me, remembered what we‘d been through, but he‘d bring me a
mousey toy I couldn‘t throw or butt his head against the lumps of flesh and bone I still call my hands, become bored with me, and wander back to James. I suppose James got tired of talking about it, or maybe he hated that we weren‘t colleagues anymore. He could keep his positions, could maybe forget that he‘d ever spoken, but me? The physical therapist remains unconvinced that my affliction isn‘t all in my head. Thinks it can be cured with enough talk therapy, enough force of will. I speak to my computer and grow impatient with the failures in voice recognition software. I painstakingly make contact with reiki technicians, mediums, self-proclaimed exorcists, and witch doctors—a new kind of science for a new kind of mystery. A girl comes twice a week to help me around the house. She cleans up the things I cannot and prepares me half a week‘s worth of meals at a time. Her name is Stephanie, and I thought we could be friends. But I‘ve learned that neither Stephanie nor anyone else wants to hear about the ghosts at the bottom of the sea. They pity me that I need to make up such a story to excuse my disability. Or they want to believe, want it too much, and think me a false prophet, and I wonder if I‘m obsessed. I‘m only twenty-seven years old. I should have a brilliant career and all of life ahead of me, and I did, until Challenger Deep. One of the last manual sensations I remember with real clarity was that of my own pulse. During our tryst, before the ghost appeared, I‘d reached behind my head. I grabbed one of the bunk railings and gripped it tight as my recovering hands would allow. At first, I thought the metal throbbed beneath my touch, that I felt Hyperborea‘s engines reverberating. But then I realized what I felt was my own blood, the beating of my own heart in a long-traveled circuit, intensified by my grasp. Some nights I dream of hauntless dives. In sleep, I feel again the joy of going under, the thrill of increasing pressure, the awe of species and abyss-scapes hardly understood by man. I dream of working in a lab, of adjusting sensitive dials, and preserving or preparing delicate specimens. Fur and silk, velvet and sandpaper, mud and Berber carpet and leather and spaghetti—a thousand, million tactile sensations visit me in my dreams. Then I wake, and I
have to use my forearm to push sweat-slick hair away from my face, and I don‘t even have a Nemo to hold, and in those sorts of moments, I wonder how I‘ll go on. Disability checks and empty houses and disaffected Stephanies forever. But the mind can also grasp a thing. A belief that one‘s conditions or situation will change. The surety that someone, somewhere, sometime will hear and listen and believe. The hope for a career that can be built despite an inability to do primary research. Faith in vindication, curation, revelation, another life, another lover. Clutch tightly enough, and it seems as if your entire life swirls and centers upon what you‘ve chosen to grab. The blood flows around this thing, this new heart. It pulses to a new, self-determined beat, a different sort of embrace. It wills. It begs. Hold on.
K.L. Owens is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans. The 2004 recipient of the Quarante Club Prize for Women in Literature, her work has appeared in Fur-Lined Ghettos, Grim Corps, and Ellipsis magazines. She lives and works in New Orleans with her partner of 17 years and three cats.
THE WATCHING-OVER In a Night Street, Waiting for a Tow-Truck Don Russ 1 The scene, grown still, is framed as if for presentation. I make myself look, but the glass is dark. In my rear-view mirror I see a windshield. I see him, something of him, hunched behind his own mirror. Headlightless and silent, close behind, he waits awhile then pulls away. I‘m afraid to look, to see his face. The empty street rises behind me crossing lighted thoroughfares. And then he‘s back, not my salvation. 2 ‗I‘m glad it‘s you,‘ I tell him. ‗Someone pulled up twice.‘ ‗Someone watching over you – ?.‘ ‗I didn‘t see his wings. If he had them, I‘m afraid they‘d have been blue skin folded up like a bat‘s.‘ 3
I can‘t say aloud I saw the red eye smoking, still fixed on me as he passed.
THE NOTHING MOTHS: AFTER MISREADING A WORD IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “This echoes a much-mocked line of Heidegger‟s: „nothing noths‟ („Das Nichts nichtet‟).” Don Russ Falling asleep now, I‘ll hear them, almost feel, the distant wings, the disturbed night like intermittent whiffs of ancient dust and desolation. Beyond the painted stars, the pasteboard corridors of this sensate house, moves something huge. Or is it all the little flies inside not taking flight? [Note: The word in the Heidegger quotation is the made-up verb “noths,” which is still easy for me to see—in English translation and in lower-case small print—as moths.]
Don Russ publishes regularly and widely in the literary magazines and is the author of Dream Driving (Kennesaw State University Press, 2007) and Adam‟s Nap (Billy Goat Press, 2005). His poem ―Girl with Gerbil‖ was included in The Best American Poetry 2012.
THE ETYMOLOGY OF HONEY Melissa Wiley No one wants to eat Thanksgiving in Savannah. Drinking white Zinfandel on a faded floral-print couch while seated across from a couple from Prague who have since moved to Ottawa, God only knows why. Canadians, slouching on the most costive vowel of the alphabet while drinking strawberry milk from a bag, because they‘ve lived there long enough to acquire an accent, you can‘t help but notice. So you scrape the flat of your shoe against the carpet grain, and smudging a vine leaf into a jellyfish as they talk of losing sight of each other in the snow walking to the mailbox a quartermile from their home. While the snow clots on their eyelashes, and they watch each other‘s faces dissolve halfway down the driveway, you try to forget your name, soft as sun filtering through coral, a lambent gaslight glow that might as well be no light at all in an Ottawan snow squall. And you don‘t repeat it when they ask, pretending you don‘t hear them, fixing your eyes on the fire that is not there inside the hearth, only a charcoal womb. Feeling the skin stretched over your ribs begun to molt. So that your breath escapes directly out of your ventricles, as if you were a bee instead of a woman, with no lungs at all. So that the air within doesn‘t bother snaking out your nose and mouth as it used to do, pulsing on its voyage to the mantle, where a fern waves, flaunting its spore show. And this is progress. You breathing without a mouth and directly through your internal organs. Becoming less and less of a person each moment. Almost a flying insect. Sure as tadpoles shedding gills for lungs to come, your sense of self is unraveling faster and faster as you sit here refusing to utter your name to the couple seated on the couch just opposite. You are
swimming in silence that warms you while staring into the Vs of the couple‘s V-neck sweaters, each with a stripe connecting their nipples, one red, one yellowish. No one here will light the fire, but you are stepping into its flames, because God only wants you once he has burnt all the apple skin off your face. And walking over hot coals is no more than theatrics for people with foundered toenails so long they scratch the roots of trees. No one gets burnt except on the balls of their feet, and you‘re not doing anything for appearances‘ sake. You‘re clipping your toenails as close as you can to the cuticle. Until there‘s nothing left to paint. God wants to see your eyes and nothing else anyway. One extant eyelash spoils the whole effect. God won‘t heal you, but he‘ll like you better this way, without a flammable exoskeleton or any stray cilia. But even inside the fire that incinerates your ego, it is there always, this aversion to benign people living in a benign country just north of Niagara Falls where the earth recedes into a nothingness. People with a way of saying ―snow‖ that you don't like any more than you do the pubic hair that circles your bathtub drain but refuses to disappear down its hole. God only knows where all that water goes. It is the things that cling that keep you from falling fast asleep. That are too lovely for too short a time, that cling the harder for being so fleeting. Brown leaves pendent from a tomato plant. The quivering of a butterfly‘s breath. Honey thinning into a spider web spindle as it falls from a spoon with a dented stem. And that is enough, is all in fact. The suspension. A hive hanging from a baobab hanging from a planet spinning like a ball of lint in an inkspilled emptiness. Roiling with desire as yet unmet, in one ellipse after another around some stationary star burning past all knowing. Hung by nothing but a single filament, thinner than a bee‘s spittle, from what kind of ceiling fixture I couldn‘t say. But just because you are falling too doesn‘t mean you can like every people and country under the sun bobbing in the firmament. You‘ve got your prejudices so long as your hair grows longer each day. So long as you‘ve still got your eyelashes, you‘ve got your limits. The same as everybody.
Fortunately, life doesn‘t require your liking, only a few short breaths, some in, some out, in a certain sequence. And this you grant it, because you have long been sure you are living more than one life at one time anyway. And it‘s hard to stop breathing—this life; it carries you, holds you aloft until its arms get tired, which takes longer than you think, pushing you closer to the sun than is really good for your epidermis. But then you are busy enough in other lifetimes to sit a moment on a faded floral-print couch in this one. You are stretched thin as a starfish in the snow with all this living, which is why you‘ve started taking naps. On these silken Savannah afternoons where there is nothing to do but shift your weight on a sewer lid etched into a Copernican universe, tilting its flat iron head with first this foot then that, rocking it back and forth to test whether you‘ll fall down a manhole where you‘re pretty sure there are no men at all. But you are in love, always in love. Even here, as you sit before the unlit fire and shuddering at the Ottawan cold by way of Prague. You circle the drain like lost pubic hair, but you don‘t fall down it. You give so much of yourself—your beautiful breadfruit breasts and your inner thigh sap and wheat-chaff hair to men cruising different dimensions like pilots charting shifting atmospheres, almost colliding but never, no not quite, not yet—that you have no love for Canadians left. And you can‘t finish even half your glass of wine, much too sweet without even a trace of honey some bee has just vomited to dry inside its hive. Exhume Egyptians embalmed thousands of years ago and all is rot. All save their jardinières of honey, manuka or avocado, mint or sage if you‘re lucky. Though the sage is only a plant, never a wise person whom you might entreat for direction, and the honey feeds no one. Honey, your namesake, originating from the Greek. So you rub your fists hard into your eyes, sending phosphenes like fiber optics to yourself in other lifetimes. When you almost remember beginning your life as a nymph of nineteen, feeding Zeus honey rather than milk as a baby, and trying to stop him from hurling thunderbolts so indiscriminately. From you, the bees learned to alchemize their nectar. So is it any wonder you‘ve never wanted offspring? Not when you‘ve already reared a race of gods, when the amber-colored blood flowing through your veins and out of your
tear ducts never sours. Not in the dankest sepulcher. Not when you yourself are too sweet for any bees to ever sting, over so many incarnations. When you could run barefoot in the dandelion grass all summer and never step on one‘s anus. You‘re having no children because children these days cannot survive on honey alone, not since the gods have left you to yourself, to feed on flounder the last Thursday in November. Because you don‘t want to order turkey off a menu when the flounder is the house specialty, recommended by the waiter. Served on the bone, drizzled with an apricot sauce that hardens into candy. Your providing days are over. You are a nymph no more, a minor female deity. You are drinking wine in Savannah in the company of Canadians simply because you can think of nothing better. The time has passed for deciding to do something different, however, to be either a child to parents long dead or birth children of your own to die upon too early. The time for deciding is at an end, and there is nothing left but to fly to Savannah from Chicago the day before Thanksgiving because you and your husband have never been and the earth there might be warmer. Though it is not, not enough to justify the trip, certainly. Temperatures are 20 degrees colder here than average, so you light the fireplace in your room in the evening, falling asleep as the flames heave their hollow breaths, suffocating on plumes of ash then coughing in your sleep so you wake exhausted. You left Chicago a day earlier than your husband to explore the city independently. He would do the same if he could, only on a different day, so he could be alone as well, but his boss will only give him so many days for vacation. You have long lost your nymph wings, but when you can fly away on a steel pair a day early, you do, always. With your seatbelt buckled low and tight across your hips just as the flight attendant demonstrates, crossing your legs and jutting your knee hard against the seat in front of you, into an old man‘s coccyx. But the truth is you left a day early not to tour any mansions or wander any cobblestone streets by your little odd lonesome but to spend a night in bed reading through a thunderstorm. Reading while trying not to love a boy in a
bookstore whose pale blue eyes followed you as you browsed the mystery section two weeks before. You don‘t read mysteries because every book has an answer, and answers are boring things and profoundly counter to reality. You prefer questions, mysteries where the mystery remains, though to questions you prefer kissing. But you trace the raised gold print on the books‘ spines, clinging the longer to cursive names so you won‘t have to lift your finger until the name‘s last letter. This is something you can do only in bookstores, however, because you can always read at home in bed or at the kitchen table for light that‘s brighter. But there you can strum a thousand spines like a Grecian lyre, though even you cannot hear the music anymore. But you play well enough by vibration, because even when sound goes, there is always the touch of the instrument. Lips always tell more when they‘re not speaking, so you speed the spines‘ circulation. And tracing successive nom de plumes, your forefinger grows a little stiff, but the rosebush between your legs begins to bloom. His eyes stay with your index finger and that is, for the moment, all that matters to you. The moment that hangs like honey falling from its hive. Trying not to love men you know only by their sidelong gaze while you read during thunderstorms has become what you do the day before Thanksgiving in lieu of baking pumpkin pie or making green bean casserole. Not that you ever liked casserole. Not that you can‘t buy pie at the market. And on the whole you prefer it, this languorous bid at non-loving at which you will never succeed, though if you didn‘t it would make little difference. You can eat all the honey you like from an Egyptian tomb, but you can‘t bring back the person buried within it. Only eat from his sarcophagus. The man in the bookstore was half bear. He wore an ursine sweater with an autumn beard clouding half his profile. But he was your same height and he asked your name, then repeated it to himself with a smile you couldn‘t see behind the bear‘s bristle but felt tickle in your pistil. If you saw him without his beard come summer when he might want a shave, you might not recognize him. And once the fire burns you up completely, once you return to Chicago from Savannah, he won‘t know you either. As you coax your love
into non-love, you might not recognize yourself, without any hair after all, only burn patches for skin long smoked to a crisp and brittle at the edges. So you walk closer to the fire and pluck an eyelash, squinting with the pain of detaching it. Unwrap yourself from the robe you found in the closet and sit before the flames in the lotus position. A chill at your back from the open window. Sweat pooling at your rump and running in between your toes. There is too much room in this room, like the inside of an atom. More space in this one bedroom in Savannah than inside your whole apartment, where you let the honey drip down the sides of the jar, shaped like a skep and no wider than three inches in diameter. When you lift it, the jar takes part of the cupboard paint with it, accreting a larger carapace each time you decide to sweeten your yogurt. The jar resists spiritual evolution, embroils itself in further ego enhancement—cloaking itself in white cupboard paint that looks like clown makeup—while you are the cupboard, which may and may not be made of driftwood. You are the one who strips the cupboard of its whitest layer of skin by not wiping down the honey jar, almost on purpose, because the damage is already done and what‘s a little more lost paint to your landlord? At breakfast the next morning, the cook‘s face registers surprise to see you seated alone at a table for four, facing a pineapple tilted sideways rested against a window, a symbol of fertility, you remember from a college course in Rome. But maybe it was a pinecone—all those seeds blown open by a furnace or a fire in the forest. But pinecones you can‘t eat, and fertility symbols you think you should taste in order to resonate. Two other couples sit pouring cream into their coffee at opposite ends of the dining room. But you eat in the kitchen, watching him—his name is Mario, and his eyebrows hover at different latitudes—fry bacon, poach eggs, cream spinach, then pour milk into a tiny pitcher you could balance on your palm because you don‘t drink cream, only whole milk, with your coffee, every morning. You apologize to him for being particular but have no intention of drinking cream either. You aren‘t really sorry, just trying to be polite, but you‘re about done with that—the Canadians already have that base covered, the Canadians who just laughed when they asked your name three times and you stayed silent. He asks what‘s on the day‘s agenda,
and you tell him that you‘ll likely just walk, eat, and read, the same things you‘d do at home were you not working. If Mario continues asking questions, you‘re prepared to be frank, but you don‘t begin to tell him that you‘re already tired from a night spent trying not to love someone you hardly even met in a bookstore where you bought nothing to read. That you‘ll sleep a good half the day in a summer dress it‘s much too cold to wear today. That mystery novels are more mysterious when you leave them on the shelf anyway. So long as you‘re awake, today you‘ll live as though there‘s another thunderstorm, even though the sky is clear and blue to blinding. But Mario advises you to have some fun; he curls the side of his mouth up into a snail shell spiral, saying you‘re too pretty not to. He examines you, sharpening his gaze and squaring his pupils over his eyeglass frames, advises you to watch out for Southern gentlemen, because not all of them deserve the name; some are just horny toads. This as he flips a slice of bacon lean as a lizard with its tail foreshortened. But this morning you looked hard in the mirror, harder than you really wanted to, and saw fresh confirmation the nymph has long since fled the coop. The truth, of course, is the nymph hasn‘t been around since Mount Olympus. This burning up of beauty doesn‘t have much further to go if it ever existed. But the cook is forty-five or fifty or maybe even fifty-two, and of all the women in the bed and breakfast you are perhaps the most one most shaped like an amphora ancient Egyptians slept with in their coffins. The only one here alone. The panicked yelp of a dog outside, and you laugh as he hands you a bowl of granola with strawberries, sliced into symmetrical mouse heart halves splayed over dried cherries. Smooth as the skin is, the strawberries‘ seeds make for large pores, green and gaping, hungry for dispersal in the soil‘s underbelly. A real fertility symbol here— or perhaps the opposite—because strawberries reproduce asexually, each so sweet it requires nothing but wind to spawn its offspring, like the fern spores in the parlor. Strawberries, you know, don‘t long for other strawberries. And once your sense of self evaporates entirely, once desire flakes off you like a poisoned chrysalis, you too will be a strawberry, at least metaphorically. Your
pores will be large for sure, but they will be your only hole for a stranger to enter. You‘ll have no such thing as a vagina, your largest lacuna by far, better sealed with rubber like a Barbie doll. Your skin will be redder, yes, your shape far rounder, and you won‘t be able to wiggle your toes, because you‘ll have no feet either to walk upon. No one‘s eyes—they were very, very blue—will follow your index finger to the mystery section once you metamorphose into an asexual fruit. You will be pink pineal flawlessness. Sliceable and sour if picked too soon. Pouring you more coffee, Mario says his dog just had puppies. A litter of six, three boys and three girls, imagine the burden. Like the Brady Bunch, you think, but keep silent, remembering Mr. and Mrs. Brady had their children from previous marriages, making Greg and Marsha‘s sexual attraction acceptable but not worth mentioning to a man you‘ve known only five minutes. But his dog, Perseus, Mario continued, smothered the three girls within their first few hours, leaving Bobby, Peter, and Greg alone, incest no more a question. When you gasp, he paces back to his skillet and sighs that was just nature‘s decision. Perseus knew she couldn‘t rear six dogs, so she killed the weakest, sitting on them until their breath died out of their lungs altogether. Six lungs for three little girls, a perfect, useless number. Does Mario get to take his share of leftovers home from the kitchen? You ask to change the subject. All the uneaten strawberries, red as flame tips resting on the window ledge with the curtains open. Ideal puppy food for three young virgins. Reaching for a pot of honey stacked on a macédoine of grape and orange jellies, you read the label: ―Pure honey, honey!‖ You think the exclamation mark sophomoric but still feel a little loved regardless. Your mother never said a thing to you about Zeus or his diet as a baby or the nymph responsible for it, and you still can‘t quite forgive her ignorance, which feels willful all these years later. As if she didn‘t want to know the kind of things you would do with your forefinger in bookstores once she had left you. You can‘t help thinking she would have made a good Canadian, because she was that agreeable. Dead eight years, she‘s that impervious to cold now also. Should have eaten more honey while she could, you think but cannot tell her.
Stepping outside, you zip your coat up to your clavicle and insulate your molting rib cage from the wind‘s shrill whistle, while letting the breath die inside your heart and reemerge through your nose and mouth, chilled by the voyage up your esophagus. Walking diagonally through a cemetery, you see a woman smoking a cigarette wearing a ruby sock hat. Beside her a Boxer is standing on a grave, flat and raised as tall as a coffee table. Riven by a tree root stretching from the nearby street corner, the grave looks a hundred years old if not more, and you smile to yourself at the dog‘s alert deportment as his eyes follow a squirrel racing up a tree trunk. Below the headstone lie the middens, fluted bones in a jumble, of a man or woman, probably a slave owner and, the inscription reads, a philanthropist. Someone who could afford a headstone five times the size of your parents‘. Someone whose inner thigh sap may have been as rich and honeyed as your own. The woman drops her cigarette on the cement and calls her dog to follow her shadow when she sees you approaching. A tiny fire still smolders at tobacco‘s tip, and when you pass the grave, you grind out the light into a darkness, scattering its ash into a slate-colored bruise across the sidewalk. You‘ve just hurt someone, but you don‘t know whom. No one knows for certain why Egyptians buried their dead with their arms crossed snugly over their ribs‘ cages. Perhaps they were just easier to wrap without their arms extending like branches. Perhaps they were folded in prayer and waiting to meet the gods and shrinking themselves in piety. But you think—you almost, with your fists pressed hard against your eyelids, now know for certain—it is because death is a cold dwelling place. And it‘s stealing on you here, in the Savannah chill, beside the cloven headstone. You have left your gloves in your room and cross your arms over your chest to keep warm, wrapping them tight inside your narrow sarcophagus, waiting for no god in particular. Tomorrow, Thanksgiving, will be warmer. And while you will not be thankful, you will be more comfortable walking out of doors, far from any fire. You will hold your husband‘s hand as you shuffle between parking meters dotting the riverfront like talismans, demanding coins to keep watch on evil dressed like Southern
gentlemen. Were you as sweet as your mother, you would drop spare change inside each of them, change saved in a purple pouch especially for the purpose. But you‘re not as sweet as she is, at least not anymore. Your honey-feeding days are over. You‘re closing your eyes waiting for the big burn and nothing more. But behind your eyelids your eyes are wide open, astonished by the veins‘ cerulean filigree inside the skin bordering your eyelashes. You can still see the eyes that followed you through the whodunits. You know the culprit without reading a word of any manuscript. You, not the butler, did it, and you‘ll have nothing but hell to pay for it. But hell is what you came here for, a day earlier than you need have done. Savannah, you might have known all along, is only warm in summer.
Melissa Wiley is a freelance writer and columnist for Storyacious living in Chicago. Her creative nonfiction appears in Stirring: A Literary Collection, Tin House Open Bar, Lowestoft Chronicle, and elsewhere.
THEY ALL LIE Joshua Kraus Know what a dead planet looks like from far away? A clump of dust. A booger rolled in lint. Something you‘d flick from your sweater in disgust as you dressed in front of a mirror. You never stop to think where the dirty little spec came from. You don‘t remind yourself that the dirty little spec wasn‘t always a dirty little spec, that it‘s merely an accumulation of what used to be living tissues and organic plant matter and fertile soil and cigarette ash. I‘m looking at the spec right now. So is Damian. Ortega‘s conscious again, not that it matters. Melba has finally stopped crying, thank god, but I think her mind is gone. That‘s probably for the best. Splitlip looks like he wants to eat someone. I say go for it. I say start with me, what do I care. I think I‘ll close my eyes soon. The trouble started this morning. Actually no, that‘s incorrect. That‘s completely false. The trouble started ten years ago when the Enemy made their grand introduction to the human race by hurling rockets at Beijing. They went for the most populated cities first – Dehli, Tokyo, Moscow – then worked their way out. Last was farm country, which was afforded a more patient and methodical military campaign. The only reason I‘m still alive is because when it happened, I was driving down some back road in South Dakota. I quickly holed up with this guy I‘d passed at a gas station named Gibbs. He and his family had a bomb shelter. We waited a few days, then got on the TravCom and heard about a bunch of people—military and civilian—banding together near a beryllium mine about a hundred miles west. Somehow we made it.
At first we called ourselves a militia. Then the Rebellion. Then the Movement. Leaders emerged. Roles were defined. It was all very Darwinian. But get this: we, the Movement, managed to stay alive longer than most. We'd been living near what used to be southern Utah for three years (before that we‘d been traveling back and forth between Wyoming and Montana) when I was chosen to take part in a peacekeeping mission. On the day of said mission, the first person I saw when I woke up was Gibbs. Now he makes me swear to a handful of gods that I won‘t do what I'm about to do and of course will still do after he's done squawking, which is to board the GoPod that will serve as our peacekeeping envoy. I tell him yes Gibbs, sure Gibbs, whatever you say Gibbs, lay down Gibbs, you‘ve had a rough night Gibbs. It‘s just that I‘m the closest thing to a lawyer this camp has, having just finished law school when the attacks began, and apparently the Movement Heads wanted a man of the law present at the signing. Never mind the fact that the subjects of this treaty are from two different galaxies, and that our legal system is to the Enemy‘s as a violin concerto is to a potato. So I promise Gibbs I won‘t board the GoPod and then I go to the edge of camp where the GoPods are kept and board the GoPod. There‘s a significant radiation hazard if you‘re stationed anywhere other than the cockpit during flight. These GoPods are old and clumsy from disuse, and the beating they take during launch bungles whatever shields the reactor; meaning, that unless you have a lead-lined carbon steel door encased in hardened barium sulfate between you and the rest of the ship, you might find yourself hacking up blood by month‘s end. See, some high-ranking Movement Head had decided, oh, five months ago that all newly built GoPods were to be destroyed. Like immediately. The Heads had been saying for a while now that one or more Enemy agents might be infiltrating our ranks, although they did a lot of saying and very little proving. I mean it was possible of course, but to this day no one‘s been caught, let alone
suspected. Still, a mysterious infiltrator was an easy excuse for any failed mission or sudden blow to the cause. Scouting errand ambushed by Enemy roving squad? Infiltrators. Half our fighters come down with debilitating diarrhea from tainted combat rations? Infiltrators. I guess the Heads‘ logic went something like: well since there might be infiltrators, and they might be working as builders or deck hands or even captains for all we know, then they might have seen an opportunity to sabotage any and all newly built GoPods, so why don‘t we blow three quarters of our transpo power all to hell, just in case. There were protests of course. Resistance within the resistance. The minute the Heads announced the initiative via, of all things, a town hall meeting (held in a burned out farmhouse that doubled as a mess hall) to discuss proper waste disposal procedures, there was a lot of screaming and pushing and throwing things at other things. It was shaping up to be a successful peasant uprising when the third GoPod to be demolished exploded within five seconds of being lowered into a HotVat, killing three builders and a little boy who had snuck past the barricades to watch big metal things melt. Suddenly, in the eyes of the people, the Heads had been right on the money. Damian knows what happened. See, some of the newer GoPods had faulty V2 sensors, which wasn't really that surprising considering the goddamn things were being built out of scrap from salvo yards and downed Enemy cruisers, and so some of the less educated builders took to patching up the sensors with your run of the mill gilk. ―That‘s the crap you sometimes find at the bottom of grease pits,‖ Damian told me. ―Now gilk is completely harmless, unless, you know, it's heated past something like two thousand degrees. Then it detonates. Big time. Well the HotVats aren't called HotVats for nothing.‖ So according to Damian, that third GoPod exploded because its gilk-patched V2 sensor went kablooey. According to Damian, the
explosion that killed three builders and a little boy had nothing to do with some Enemy agent sneaking bombs onto our GoPods. According to Damian, the Movement Heads were a bunch of delusional shits for brains. But when there‘s a big boom and a little kid dies, suddenly everyone is an expert on Enemy agents and high blast explosives. I mean talk about an I-Told-You-So moment for the Heads. One minute your people are breaking out pitchforks and demanding mob justice and the next they‘re patting you on the back and naming their first born after your grandfather‘s goddamn call sign. Suddenly everybody is a fervent supporter of the fatwa on newly built GoPods without even stopping to think. I remember passing Damian as I stumbled to the latrine the morning after the explosion. The air was thickened with ash and flimsy light struggled to break through. Everything was a dirty water grey. Damian was looking out past the half-mile of flapping, yellowing tents to the towering junkyard where GoPod after GoPod was being unceremoniously bulldozed up a ramp and dumped into a HotVat. There was something masochistic in his refusal to turn away from a thing that had ended. He‘d done something similar during the days following his wife‘s death - at the burial site. I think he was left dumbfounded at how the world simply continued. After the explosion things went from bad to worse, and from worse to hopeless. In two months we were down to fifty-odd fighters and a few hundred civilians. Most of us were sick with one disease or another. Our main water source was contaminated with a bacteria that burned you with a high fever until you broke into muscle spasms and your throat swelled up. There was no more food. The things we did in order to eat ... Even the Heads couldn‘t conjure up a reason to keep fighting, so we surrendered, and that‘s more or less how I found myself breaking my promise to Gibbs and boarding this pre-invasion GoPod. The two sides had somehow worked everything out over our embarrassingly out-of-date TravCom system, and five of us were chosen to attend a peace conference with the Enemy. Sorry,
former Enemy. Terms had been set, papers had been drawn, and now the only thing left to do was shake hands (or claws or tentacles or whatever nasty appendage the Enemy wields under those terrifying skin suits) and sign a few documents. A little too formal if you ask me. Pen and paper seem like tools of a different age. Like I said, these old cockpits normally hold three max, but the threat of a slow and painful death by way of radiation poisoning had all five of us sardined inside toe to toe. I‘m squished next to Captain Ortega as she hunches ludicrously over the controls, trying for all the world to maintain an air of professionalism and dignity while her ass rubs against Damian‘s chin. Behind Damian sits Melba, some low-level Movement bootlicker. She has a shiny gold ribbon pinned to her jumpsuit which reads ―For loyal service in times of struggle.‖ Taking up the rest of the cockpit is Splitlip, our resident bruiser. If things go south Splitlip is there to, well, I guess split some lips before we all get vaporized. Ortega does her thing and voila, lift off. We ascend slowly, the ship shuddering like a fawn getting to its feet for the first time. I‘d always imagined myself dying at the hands of an Enemy firing squad or midnight air raid or even diphtheria or some such disease - but now I play a fantasy number where our GoPod barely makes it past the tree line before breaking apart and spilling us all out like a handful of pennies. Yet somehow we pick up speed, and I think about how funny it is that no matter where one is in the world, it all looks the same through the viewscreen of a GoPod approaching escape velocity. The colors melt together like warm toffee until all that‘s left is a piercing hot whiteness that gets so bright, so impossibly bright, that it seems to get inside the ship. It eddies around the seated bodies and mixes with the chemistry. Closing your eyes does jack. You can feel it soak into your skin like water into dirt on a hot summer day. And then blackness. Silence. Coasting gently on Earth‘s exhale. When we‘re out, Ortega sets our coordinates and gives us the itinerary. We‘re scheduled to arrive at 0900 hours, which is thirty minutes from now. Upon detecting our ship, the Enemy will
request verbal authentication, which only Ortega can deliver. If we fail to comply, it‘s over. They dispatch all their cruisers and light us up. After verbal authentication, an Enemy cruiser will rendezvous with us and scan the GoPod for weapons. Once we‘re cleared, they‘ll taxi us into the Base‘s launch bay. This gets us talking. First Melba perks up and says she thinks we should prepare a speech, on behalf of the Movement, to let the Enemy know that just because we‘ve surrendered does not mean we‘ve abandoned our principles. Splitlip laughs and calls her a bad name. Melba acts like she isn‘t hurt. Damian says we abandoned our principles a long time ago when we first started using our hounds as food rather than scouts. Melba gets fussy, says we did what we did to survive, that the core of the Movement is still strong. I butt in here, because when there are sides to take I try to take Damian‘s. He‘s been through a lot. Ok we‘ve all been through a lot, but Damian takes it harder than most. So I say to Melba that the only people who still believe in the Movement are the Heads, and all they do is send everyone but themselves out to die while they hole up in Bunker C and hoard rations. Now Melba gets angry. She goes on and on about the Heads and all the good they‘ve done, how we wouldn‘t have lasted as long without them, how someone has to give orders, even if it means people die. Damian calls her a Movement whore, and I cringe because I know it‘s the wrong thing to say. I try changing the subject by telling everyone I need to piss, which happens to be the truth. Splitlip dares me to use the latrine. It‘s in the back of the GoPod, near the cargo hold, and if I go I‘ll be exposed to radiation from our leaky reactor. He jokes about taking a piss and getting ball cancer. Damian shakes his head at the cockpit ceiling and says, ―So the Heads send their handpicked peacekeeping envoy on the most crucial mission to date, and it‘s on a goddamn cancer ship.‖ And then he gets a look in his eyes and it reminds me of before the attacks, of how you might look when you realize you left the stove on, or the door unlocked. ―Ortega,‖ he says. ―What if the Enemy
confuses our leaky reactor for a radiation weapon?‖ Ortega says don‘t worry about it. ―Don‘t worry about it?‖ I say, because Damian, as usual, is right. ―They‘ll blow our GoPod to pieces if they think we‘ve come to fight.‖ Ortega sighs like I‘m a needy child. ―They know we‘re leaking radiation,‖ she tells me. ―Just like they knew about our scouting errands, and how half of our tents are empty and are just there to inflate our numbers, and that we used up the last of our dry rations two weeks ago. They know everything.‖ Splitlip eyes each of us with suspicion and says, ―So there are infiltrators.‖ Ortega says no, it‘s not that at all. It‘s that we‘re predictable. The Enemy is smarter than us in every way and they‘ve had years to study how we think. ―And they suspected we were running on leaky reactors once we started flying the old GoPods wearing ChemSuits,‖ Ortega finishes. ―You‘re sure about this?‖ Damian asks. Ortega nods and goes on to reveal how she was part of the initial peace talks over the TravCom. I always assumed those talks were just between the Heads, and I think Damian did too, because he starts looking at Ortega differently. According to Ortega, this surrender wasn‘t necessarily voluntary. The Movement was one of only a handful of militias left in the world, and the Enemy—tired of all the various standoffs—was ready to nuke the whole goddamn planet. It was surrender or die, so the Heads got on the TravCom and somehow convinced the other militias that it was time to submit. ―You should have heard them laugh,‖ Ortega says. ―Who, the Enemy?‖ I say.
―Their laugh – it sounds like something with gills trying to breathe on land. After we confirmed that the reactors in our GoPods were leaking, they couldn‘t stop laughing.‖ Ortega makes a big to-do out of them laughing, how we‘re a joke to them. The galaxy‘s village idiot. To them, a leaky reactor isn‘t a sign of hostility; it‘s a sign of incompetence. At this point they‘d rather humiliate us then shoot us. And then something starts bugging me. Something about what Ortega is saying, but that isn‘t all of it. It‘s like there‘s a puddle in my head, all brackish with rotting bits of half-remembered talk, and Ortega just stepped in it, making the gloomy broth ripple apart to reveal a brief sliver of something formed and solid beneath: the first inklings of a proper thought. A face in the murk. And before the puddle can repair itself, I spit out the first thing that comes: ―So we could sneak a nuke onto their base without them knowing?‖ For a moment no one speaks, not even Splitlip, but I can see the gears in Damian‘s head start to turn. Somehow I think he understands what I said better than I do. This was it, by the way. The moment we started sliding toward the abyss. We could have stopped it. Right here is where we could have stopped it. But we got lost in our outrage and kept sliding, faster and faster, until the ground dropped out from beneath us and there was nothing left but the long fall. Finally, Damian announces, ―I think we just discovered the Enemy‘s weak spot, their Achilles‘ heel.‖ Suddenly everyone is talking at once. Splitlip keeps saying he wants to see the Enemy's guts go splat on our viewscreen. Ortega points out it would be a suicide mission. Melba says it's a worthy sacrifice. Damian says it‘s a blind sacrifice. ―You don‘t agree with our cause?‖ Melba asks Damian. ―Oh I‘m all for killing the Enemy,‖ Damian says. ―But I won‘t die for your precious Movement. I won‘t die for the people who saw
the degeneration of law and order as an opportunity to hoard resources and wield power. Too many have died for that already.‖ He‘s talking about Makayla here. In one way or another, everything he says is really about Makayla. Melba accuses Damian of desecrating our leaders, and then she turns to me. ―You‘re the smart one,‖ she says, ―so tell me: if the Heads are as terrible as you all seem to think, then why are they surrendering? Once we sign this treaty the Heads go back to being just like you and I. If they‘re so evil, wouldn‘t they want this war to go on for as long as possible, just so they could stay in power?‖ I don‘t know what to say because, well, she‘s right. The Heads really would do anything to stay in power, and she‘s just sitting there looking smug, like she beat us, like her logic is impenetrable, and she doesn‘t even realize that she‘s only made it worse, that she‘s argued against herself. Looking back, it‘s clear that any attempt to discredit Damian‘s suspicions only revealed a bigger, more damning piece of evidence that supported them. ―You just answered your own question,‖ Damian says to Melba. ―They wouldn‘t surrender. Not a chance in hell.‖ ―That‘s not what I‘m saying!‖ Melba cries. ―You know what I think?‖ Damian says, and then he puts it all into words, making it real, shaping it into something we can see both ends of, and it loosens the strings holding my conceptions in place. My chest gets hot and there is a new and terrible clarity to how small this cockpit is and how close we all are to each other and how little I know most of these people. ―This is a suicide mission disguised as a peace treaty,‖ Damian says, and then he starts talking real fast, giving us the whole ―If I was a Head‖ routine. Apparently, if he was a Head, he would pick a few capable but expendable people for a supposed peacekeeping envoy. He‘d choose a well-respected captain who would do her job and not ask questions. He‘d choose an idealistic Movement representative eager to please and easy to fool. He‘d find the closest thing the camp had to a lawyer (despite the absurdity of the
very premise), and finally, he‘d find a mean looking piece of meat for the illusion of protection. Or maybe to ensure we didn‘t get cold feet. Splitlip wants to know who Damian is supposed to be. Damian says he volunteered—volunteered because of me. To watch out for me. After Makayla, I‘m all he has, he says, and the way he sounds when he says it, the way he is when he says it, well it‘s one of the last times he‘s all there, all human, and I feel both grateful and miserable for never having fallen in love. Melba is almost in tears at this point. Ortega has been doing her best to keep out of it but now she asks Damian, no, demands actually, that he come up with some sort of hard evidence to support these claims, because tensions are running high and hey, it‘s her ship. That‘s when I remember something and blurt out ―Gibbs.‖ ―The camp nutjob?‖ Ortega says. ―He lost his wife and three kids, that doesn‘t make him a nutjob,‖ I say. I go on to tell everyone about how Gibbs was a builder, one of the oldest in our camp, and how he used to work on the old GoPods. Mighta been he worked on the one we‘re flying right now. His wife died before the invasion, and he handled it alright. Then his first boy died and he started drinking. Then his second boy died and he started drinking more. Then his third boy died and he started stumbling around camp raving about infiltrators, how they killed his boys, how they were everywhere, how they were following him, wouldn‘t leave him alone. Eventually everything he‘d say would pass through one ear and out the other, like what happens with drunks. ―But now I‘m remembering some of it,‖ I say, ―on account of what we‘re talking about. Gibbs, he‘d say infiltrators were after him, and they‘d find him at night when he was too drunk to move and ask him questions about things he‘d done thirty years ago. I remember one time in particular. It was that morning after the explosion. Gibbs was flying but not too high, more coherent than usual, what with all the commotion the night before. He stopped me at my tent
and said, ‗One of ‗em came last night, came right into my tent and held me down. They‘re strong, stronger than anything! And it wanted to know about the old GoPods, the ones I used to work on. Stuff about radiation emissions and weight capacity and pressurization and god knows what else. It asked if I still had any of the old blueprints. Blueprints with dimensions. Blueprints, can you believe it? Well you know what I think? I think they want to build their own GoPod. To trick us somehow. Because that‘s what they do, you see. They don‘t just kill you. No. They trick you into killing yourself! They want you to die knowing it was your own damn fault. Evil. Evil evil evil things!‘‖ Everyone starts talking again. Damian declares that what I‘ve just said is proof. Melba says that Gibbs was a dumb drunk who didn‘t know up from horse meat. Splitlip is laughing and saying he figured it all out. Damian keeps saying the Heads wanted blueprints to pinpoint where exactly to hide a bomb. Ortega stays out of it. ―I figured it out,‖ Splitlip keeps saying. ―I know about the bomb, the bomb the bomb the bomb!‖ He looks at us like we‘re flies stuck in a web. Finally we shut up and listen. Turns out Splitlip went on a ration run not too long ago and had some funny feelings about it afterward. ―I drive to this abandoned military base with some other muscle ‗cause word is there‘s a crate of dry rations we missed the last time around. The place is all blown out, smells like burnt vomit, and I get told to stay in the truck. I ain‘t ever get told to stay in the truck, so I say fuck that, I ain‘t your goddamn chauffeur. I get out and walk around back and I see them loading this strange looking box into the hold. It‘s small but heavy. Real heavy. I mean these goons were bigger than me and they were grinding their teeth and digging their feet into the mud. Box of rations don‘t do that to a man. No way. But I say fine, whatever, and drive back to camp with the thing sliding around in the back. I never hear about it again. But now I‘m thinking, rations? Bull goddamn shit. Bomb. That was a bomb.‖ Damian demands to know where this was. Splitlip tells him west. Way west. ―Took all day to drive and we ended in some damn desert.‖
―Testing area,‖ Damian mutters. ―Missile silos.‖ Melba says we‘re all crazy. And now I‘m scared. Really scared. Half of me is convinced that there really is a bomb on our GoPod and any moment I might get vaporized. The other half of me thinks that Damian is completely losing it and bringing the rest of us down with him. So I suggest we search the ship and find out one way or another. ―But that‘s just it!‖ Damian says, leaning close to me. ―We can‘t search the ship. Not while the engine is on and the reactor is leaking. Whoever set this up knew exactly what they were doing. And wouldn‘t you know, this particular GoPod is mysteriously lacking in ChemSuits. They want us stuck in here, helpless.‖ ―Then turn off the goddamn engine!‖ Splitlip says. Damian thinks that could work, but Ortega shakes her head and tells us it takes a full hour before the radiation will dissipate to safe enough levels. Damian, of course, counters with the fact that our lives are at stake, and we should wait the hour. ―You‘re crazy!‖ Melba says. ―Please just stop and think!‖ Damian tells her that‘s what he‘s doing, thinking, and can‘t she understand that? ―No I can‘t,‖ Melba says. ―Because the Heads wouldn‘t do this. They wouldn‘t trick us like this. And if I take part in your your witch hunt, I‘ll be betraying them. You don‘t know what they‘ve done for me!‖ A humorless smile crosses Damian‘s face as he catches her. ―For us, you mean? Know what I think? I think you‟re in on it. That‘s why you don‘t want us to search the ship. You‘ve been against us the whole time!‖ All this is getting Splitlip really riled. We‘re so close to each other that I can feel his skin vibrating. It‘s like how the ground feels when a fleet of battle tanks roll by. He yells at Ortega to cut the engines. He wants to see a real live nuclear bomb. Ortega ignores him. She‘s holding her body in an unnatural kind of stillness, the kind that only comes from conscious effort. Then, slowly, like she‘s reading a manual, she says, ―We are scheduled to be received at 0900 hours. We‘re going ahead as planned.‖
Damian breaks into a fit of laughter. I‘d never seen him like this. He‘s experienced all ways of horror, all kinds of loss, but this was new. This was worse. ―This is exactly what they wanted, don‘t you see?‖ he says. ―This is why they assigned you, Ortega, because if we got to talking, if we start poking holes in this thing, they could always count on Ortega to keep her mouth shut and fly straight. You see!‖ Everyone starts shouting and it‘s hard to keep up. I have to play the words back to really make sense of them. Damian is telling Ortega to cut the engine and Melba is pleading with him to calm down. Then Splitlip is telling Ortega to cut the engine and Melba starts sobbing. Cut the engine! Cut the engine Ortega! Cut the fucking Engine! Ortega refuses to acknowledge us and just sits there like she‘s a world away. And then Splitlip is moving. His bald head, cut with blue veins like cracks in ice, nearly scrapes the ceiling as he stands to his full height and gets Ortega‘s neck in the crook of his arm. Then he squeezes. Her hands jump to the meat of his forearm, then fall away. There‘s a fluttering of eyelids as she slumps in her seat. ―The hell!‖ I cry. Melba just whimpers. Splitlip shoves Ortega out of the captain‘s seat and she lands on Melba who either yelps in pain or shock or both. Then Splitlip grunts at Damian, as if to say, ―This is what you wanted, so get to it.‖ For a moment Damian‘s face is unformed, and I desperately want to see a sort of horror materialize. But the bones shift and the skin settles and it‘s only a grim acknowledgement of what must be done. He nods and climbs into the captain‘s chair and starts messing with the controls. ―I thought it was the Heads you hated, not her!‖ Melba says, motioning to the limp body of Ortega. ―She might be one of them,‖ Damian says quietly. ―Can‘t you see how crazy this is?‖
―You saw how determined she was to get us to that base, on not letting us check the ship. You all saw.‖ ―She‘s one of the good ones,‖ Melba tries to reason. ―She‘s one of the honest ones. Anyone can see that!‖ ―They lie,‖ Damian says, and now there‘s a snarl to his voice. He turns from the controls. The engine is still on. ―They all lie. The people you serve, the people you worship. Maybe you haven‘t seen it, but I have. Those people - do you know what they did to my Makayla?‖ As he‘s talking, I crawl toward Ortega and put a hand on her stomach. I think I feel it rise. I put two fingers to her neck but I never know if I‘m doing that right. ―She was a captain once,‖ Damian is saying, and for the moment, he‘s forgotten all about the engine. In a way, he‘s forgotten all about us, too. It‘s like he‘s speaking to some metaphysical stenographer, desperate to immortalize all his love and all his pain—of what truly drove him all these years. ―We met in flight school, before I dropped out. I‘d have dropped out much earlier if not for her. But I‘d make myself get up, make myself do the runs, sit through the lectures, try not to vomit in the bathroom by the hanger. I‘d make myself do it all, just so I could experience her in this one moment. It happened during field training, right after Makayla would land her cruiser, and she‘d climb out of the cockpit and take off her helmet and her hair would be soaked in sweat and cling to her forehead in all sorts of funny patterns, and the color would be high in her cheeks and she‘d look at us all like we‘d caught her in the wild, caught her living exactly as she was meant to, and she‘d giggle and swat her hair to the side and do a nervous jog to the back of the line. Somehow I got to marry that woman. Somehow. And then the attacks happened, and then, four years ago almost to the day, the Heads tell her that an Enemy cruiser was seen going down not far from camp. They order her to do recon, check if anyone‘s alive, if there are good scraps for the builders. Later we found out that no one saw a cruiser go down. It was an unidentified aircraft, and
something the Heads had never seen before. They wanted eyes on it, so they sent Makayla in blind; they sent her in on a lie, the worst kind of lie, the kind of lie that can mean nothing or it can mean anything. The kind of lie that kills. And when she got close to the target, her GoPod blew apart. The next morning the Heads sent someone to my tent to break the news, some young kid with ribbons just like yours, and he gave me her ring, her wedding ring. Said they managed to find it in the wreckage. There were charred bits of flesh stuck to the band. My Makayla. My love. And it‘s because they lie. They all lie.‖ Melba is looking at Damian with a sort of sick understanding and she starts mouthing something over and over. I think it‘s ―oh no.‖ I think she‘s mouthing ―oh no, oh no, oh no.‖ And that‘s when the TravCom comes to life in a sputter of static. A voice speaks. It‘s sexless, precise - one might even call it polite. ―Hello, Captain Ortega,‖ it says. ―You have just entered our base‘s orbit and will be received shortly. Please comply with verbal authentication.‖ I think that‘s when I began to realize it was all over. I start slapping Ortega and shaking her by the shoulders and yelling C‘mon Captain! Wake up Captain! The TravCom makes a strange noise, like someone pulling ticker tape, and the voice says, ―Verbal authentication not recognized, please repeat.‖ I keep slapping and shaking. Meanwhile Splitlip is pushing buttons at random and mumbling about railguns. Melba is sobbing again and directing each mighty quivering heave at Damian, like her spasming body is a weapon whose mere sight can render incapacitating guilt. ―Y-y-you killed us!‖ she screams at him. ―There‘s no b-b-bomb, there‘s j-j-just you!‖ The voice speaks and we‘re told that Captain Ortega and Captain Ortega only must comply with verbal authentication or else we will be considered hostile, our GoPod will be ejected from orbit, and our people‘s surrender will be nullified. Oh, and we have twenty seconds to comply.
―Ortega!‖ I yell. ―You killed us!‖ screams Melba. ―Wake up, wake up, wake up.‖ ―Fifteen seconds to comply,‖ the voice says. ―I‘m sorry,‖ Damian whispers. ―Fuckin‘ railguns,‖ says Splitlip. ―Ten seconds to comply.‖ ―I‘m sorry.‖ ―Don‘t this ship got railguns!‖ ―Five seconds to comply.‖ ―Y-y-you k-killed us.‖ ―Wake up!‖ ―You have failed to comply.‖ The TravCom explodes in a multitude of bat-like shrieks and our GoPod lurches to the side and I feel us propelled forward. Through the viewscreen we watch thousands of Enemy cruisers race screaming toward Earth, and before the planet is reduced to a dirty little speck, before it‘s forever sealed in a dead grey gloom, our home glows brighter than we ever dreamed it could. And now we‘re quiet. Fitting that the Enemy spared us so we might look upon what we so efficiently unmade. After a time each of us turns away and closes our eyes to wait for the end. Each of us but Damian. Maybe he‘s replaying everything that happened, like what I‘m doing. Maybe he‘s thinking of Makayla. Maybe he‘s not thinking of anything at all. But he‘s the last thing I see, still looking at Earth, still turned toward the thing that ended.
Joshua Kraus is a writer/hat owner who lives somewhere in the U.S.A. His short story ―Replenished‖ was published in the Belleville Park Pages, and his short story ―The Moon Is Drifting Away From Earth‖ was published in The Mulberry Fork Review. He's also selfpublished an adult humor book called Is This Acid In My Applesauce?. You can view some of his work at www.joshkra.us.
HERE THEY COME Michael Sidman ―Shut off the light,‖ Brett whispers, and I do. The banging has gotten louder. At first we thought it might just be a deer or a bear rustling through the garbage, as often happens when we visit our house in the Berkshires, but this pounding on the side of the house is different. It‘s steady, rhythmic, menacing. It‘s meant to wake us up. I run in to check on the boys. Thank god they‘re still asleep. Miles is sucking on his blanket, which is wrapped around his thumb, and Felix, as always, is splayed spread eagle, taking up as much space as he can. They may be identical twins, but even at two years old they couldn‘t be more dissimilar. Then again, they are complimentary: the grounded and the ethereal, the yin and the yang. ―They‘ve moved,‖ Brett says. ―I think they‘re at the back of the house now.‖ He‘s carrying a wooden bat; he hands me a butcher knife. ―Did you call the police?‖ I ask. ―Nah, it‘s probably just kids.‖ ―I think we should call the police.‖ ―Just give it a minute, will ya?‖ ―I‘m calling the police,‖ I say. All the lights in the house are off, and we are moving via flashlights. The banging continues, like the
thump of a palm, and it moves one or two feet at a time, slowly crossing the back wall of the house and then outside the kitchen. ―It‘s just kids, I bet,‖ he says again. ―What kids? We don‘t even have neighbors! Where would kids come from?‖ I make it to the downstairs living room and pick up the only landline we have. ―It‘s dead.‖ ―What?‖ Brett says. ―Is it plugged in?‖ ―Of course it‘s plugged in! It‘s dead!‖ He bounces the bat on the floor. ―They cut the lines,‖ he says. ―Go upstairs and stay with the boys.‖ ―Where are you going?‖ He won‘t answer. He points the bat upstairs and I obey. Halfway up I hear the front door open, and before I can say anything Brett has slipped out and shut the door behind him. I run to the window in the study that overlooks the front lawn. Brett is there, bat at the ready, slowly turning in circles. In the moonlight you can see everything. I hear Felix turn over in bed. Since the boys were born my hearing has become finely tuned. I thought it was something only women experience, but I‘ve since discovered that it‘s all in the anxiety level of the parent, a level that is always high for me. I swear to god I can sense minute changes in air density around them from a mile away. Their room is still blessedly quiet. Miles hasn‘t moved. Felix now has his foot hanging over the rail of the crib. There‘s a terrible shriek from outside. I run back to the window hearing Brett yelling, ―Oh! Oh!‖ By the time I look out he‘s already
stumbling back through the door. He yells up to me. ―Where are you? Are the boys okay?‖ His voice is loud and panicked. He‘s not whispering anymore; he‘s no longer worried about waking up the kids. I dash back into their room, and immediately a shadow in their window catches my eye. I look out at the garden, but there doesn‘t seem to be anything. The gardenias are so still they look like they‘re sleeping. ―What happened?‖ I yell down to Brett. ―Are the boys okay?‖ ―Yes.‖ Miles and Felix are awake now. They haven‘t moved, but their eyes are fixed on me, still half in a dream. ―Shhhh,‖ I say, ―go back to bed.‖ Their eyes close on cue. I hear something at the window, but again I see nothing. The lawn is empty. But something is out of sorts and I can feel it. A blur moves in my peripheral vision. My eyes follow faster than my brain, and I see a face. I don‘t see it long enough to study the features, because whatever is looking in at us is clinging to the side of the house like a lizard. ―Brett!‖ I scream. ―Galinoids! It was a Galinoid!‖ I grab a kid in each arm and bolt from the room. My body is carrying me, so when I meet Brett halfway down the stairs I can‘t stop and we crash into each other. He stabilizes us and takes Miles, who I‘m carrying upside-down by the ankles, from me. ―It‘s at the window!‖ I scream. ―Okay,‖ Brett says. ―Okay, follow me.‖
Brett leads us into the living room and we plop the boys on the rug. Somehow they‘re silent. The suddenness of it all has kept them in a state of shock. But now that there‘s a moment of stillness, they begin to whimper. ―Why is it here?‖ I ask. ―I don‘t know,‖ he says. ―Aren‘t they extinct? The army wiped them out decades ago!‖ Brett just stares at the ground. ―Brett, it was climbing the side of the house.‖ In my youth there were only a few pockets of Galinoids, hiding in the woodlands, left in the country. My parents could remember the bad days when entire towns were wiped out overnight, but in the Great Mobilization all that was brought to an end. For my generation, Galinoids were the subject of many a dark fairytale, stories told while sitting around a campfire, or cautionary tales meant to keep kids from straying too far, but by then the few Galinoids that remained were so degraded, so desperate that their menace consisted of little more than the occasional murdered livestock or abducted housepet. By the time I was ten, the governments of the Americas had officially declared the Galinoids extinct. Still, they haunted my nightmares, wreaking havoc in my imagination when all was dark and silent. I have memories of my mother crying out in her sleep as she remembered some awful moment her entire generation had silently agreed never to share with us. ―Yes, they can do that,‖ Brett says. Only then do I notice that he is bleeding just above his left eye. ―What happened?‖ ―It bit me. Tried to take my goddamn face off,‖ Brett says. He removes a jagged tooth from his scalp.
A window breaks upstairs. It‘s the window in the boys‘ room. I can tell. ―Stay here,‖ Brett says and runs toward it. The boys are just looking at me and all I can do is stroke their hair and look away. Something falls over upstairs. There is a struggle. I hear Brett grunting. I‘m half sitting, half on my mark to run when I hear a very loud hiss from upstairs, and then a shriek, like air escaping through the cracks of my stifled fears. I scoop the boys up in one arm and throw them in the closet. ―Do not move, do you understand?‖ They just look back at me, helpless. ―Stay right here. Don‘t ever open this door no matter what. And be quiet! Don‘t call for me or Papa. Don‘t cry. Just stay right here and be quiet. I‘ll be right back. Be quiet!‖ I slam the door in their faces and take off toward Brett. He‘s wrestling with the Galinoid on the floor, but it‘s so dark I can‘t make out who is who. ―It‘s eating me!‖ Brett screams. I know which one he is now, and I stab my knife into the other‘s back. The Galinoid rears back, taking two of Brett‘s fingers between its teeth. ―Stab it again!‖ Brett screams from the floor. I run to retrieve my knife from its back, but I stop short when the moonlight falls on its face. I‘ve never known what a Galinoid looks like. Photos and drawings of them have always been banned, and of the pulp depictions that did make it through, no two were ever alike, and none prepared me for this. Its face is mushed and deformed, almost concave, having no real shape, as if there were no skull in its head. Its skin is gray and leathery. Its eyes are tiny and black, and when it sees me approach it hisses, showing me the blackness of its mouth and the sharp points of its teeth. It swallows Brett‘s fingers.
I hesitate, and in an instant it‘s gone out the window. I grab a towel and wrap it around Brett‘s hand. His pinky and ring ringers are gone. I try to prop him up but he pushes me away. ―Board up the window!‖ he says. ―What? How?‖ ―Stand the crib up. There‘s a hammer and nails in the drawer in the kitchen.‖ ―But—‖ ―Now!‖ Everything‘s happening faster than I can process it. My hands are shaking so badly that I spill the box of nails everywhere. Miles and Felix are wailing from the closet. Screaming. To hear it is like having someone tear my heart to shreds, but they have to stay there now. Their pathetic voices call for me, torturing me all the way back upstairs. ―Did it come back?‖ ―No,‖ Brett says. The crib isn‘t a perfect fit in the window, but by the time I‘ve finished nailing it into the wall there‘s only about two inches of space at the top of the window. Brett has sat himself up. The towel is completely soaked through with blood and is dripping on him. I get him another. I stand him up and lead him downstairs. Miles and Felix are inconsolable by the time I open the closet. Brett tries to help pick them up, but they‘re afraid of him now that he‘s covered in blood. He grabs at them anyway, but the blood loss is getting to him and he stumbles and falls. ―Lie down and elevate your arm. You need ice,‖ I say. Both boys are climbing on me and screaming into my face. I rush them into the kitchen and sit them on the counter while I pack ice into a sandwich bag. They‘re crying so hard they‘re hyperventilating.
―Listen, listen,‖ I whisper, cupping their faces in my hands. ―Stop crying, everything‘s okay. A clumsy old raccoon fell through your window. That‘s all! Just a silly raccoon!‖ I get a damp paper towel and wipe their faces. They‘re thinking about slowing the sobbing down. ―Everything‘s okay, all right? Just stop crying. Daddy and Papa are here, and we‘re not ever going to let anything happen to you. I need you guys to be big boys right now, okay? Papa hurt his hand and I need to take care of him. I need you to do exactly what I tell you to do, and I need you to be quiet. Do you hear me?‖ ―Daddy,‖ Miles whimpers, and sets himself off sobbing again. ―Stop. No more crying.‖ Their big eyes are pleading with me, and I can‘t bare it. ―All right. Enough. Sleepy? Want to go back to sleep?‖ It‘s all I can think to say. Now they‘re both crying again. ―Dadddddyyyyy,‖ they‘re screaming. ―Here, let‘s go back in the other room and lie down on the couch. You‘re so tired.‖ They don‘t lie down or go to sleep, but they watch as I ice and rewrap Brett‘s bloody stubs, and they don‘t stop crying. ―Say something to them,‖ I say. ―Say what?‖ ―Let them know it‘s okay.‖ ―It‘s okay?‖
―Say it.‖ ―Hey buddies,‖ he says. ―You can stop crying. Papa‘s fine. Just hurt my hand. But see, Daddy‘s making it all better.‖ ―Yup, silly raccoon got Papa‘s hand,‖ I say. From outside, there it is again, that terrible sound like a screeching tire. But now there are more of them, and they‘re all calling out together. Brett and I just look at each other. There is such deep sadness in his eyes. I can feel him withdrawing into despair, just when I need him most. ―Get up,‖ I say. ―What can we possibly do?‖ he says. ―Just get up.‖ But the boys are screaming again. The Galinoids, their chorus of noises, surround the house. I sit on the couch and put the boys in my lap. ―Wow, hear all those raccoons?‖ I say. ―Raccoons?‖ Brett says. ―Yes. Just raccoons. There are a lot of them around here. I know it can seem scary, but these are just the noises animals make. They live in the forest and the forest is their home. It‘s like we‘re their guests, so we need to get used to them. But when you hear these crazy noises just remember, that‘s the sound raccoons make.‖ Miles, so sensitive, reaches out for a hug and I draw them both in close. Their little hearts pound against my chest with such ferocious speed. Can toddlers have heart attacks, I wonder? I shush them and rock them till the shrieking outside dies down. Brett has turned a color less than white.
I hear something upstairs. Without saying anything I put the boys on the couch, climb the steps, and go into the boys‘ bedroom. Four of them are at the window now. They can‘t seem to get past the crib, but through the small opening they try to claw their way in, the way cats will claw at a toy stuck under the couch. I can‘t move. I just watch as they stick their tiny black nostrils into the narrow open space and take in deep breaths. One extends a massive tongue that crawls along the window and onto the edge of the crib. Then they all stop. They sense me. They can smell and taste me. Now they‘re trying harder, much harder, clawing at the crib with their sharp yellow nails. The wood chips away like paint. ―You guys ready? Let‘s play a game,‖ I say. ―Papa‘s going to take you into the basement and I want you to find the very best hiding spots you can. I‘m going to make a surprise for you up here, and when I‘m done I‘m going to come looking for you. But you have to be super quiet, because if I find you there won‘t be any fun surprise! Do you understand?‖ They nod with miserable little sniffles. Luckily the basement doesn‘t seem to scare them too much. A surprise victory. Brett hangs off of me like a wet towel. I lie him down behind the water heater and cover him with a blanket. He smiles at me. ―What do you think you‘re doing, huh?‖ he says. We both break out laughing. ―I have no idea,‖ I say. ―Just stay here with the boys.‖ ―You should stay here too.‖ ―No, I‘m going to see what I can do about the windows and doors first. Then I‘ll come back.‖ ―Don‘t be a martyr,‖ he says. ―Don‘t tell me what to do.‖
He brings me in with his good hand and we kiss. ―Be careful,‖ he says. ―I love you.‖ ―I love you.‖ In my most playful voice I shuffle the boys off to another corner of the room, leading them into dark corners and hinting at what I think are the best hiding spots. I want to hold them and kiss them and tell them how much I love them, but I fear any sentimentality will set them off, so I run back upstairs. ―I‘m going to get the surprise ready! Go hide! And don‘t come out until I come back!‖ I don‘t hear anything when I get back to the main floor of the house. The world is dark and silent and still, a state of being that I know can only be temporary. There are so many windows in the house. We wanted to embrace the view; now I wish we‘d never taken the safety of a solid wall for granted. What could possibly be done to barricade us in? There‘s nothing much to use, no time, no excuse to make more noise. And it‘s just me now. So instead I collect more weapons—knives, screwdrivers, a hammer—anything I can stuff into my pockets or hang from my belt loops. On all fours I climb the stairs as stealthily as I can, staying low to the ground, pausing in corners, peeking around doors. As far as I can tell, none of them are in the house. I crawl to my bedroom where the window overlooks the backyard, but I can hardly bring myself to look out. If one of them should be right there, scaling the wall, its horrible face waiting to meet mine, I think I might just fall over and die. But what I see is much worse than that. They‘ve all congregated in the yard. Twenty, maybe thirty of them. The one I stabbed is in the center and the others are licking its mouth, fighting for the remnants of Brett‘s blood, working
themselves into a frenzy. They lick and then they shudder, as if overtaken by ecstasy, and then claw at each other to do it again. Little ones, ten or so babies at least, slither on the ground watching their parents with rapt fascination. And then they see me. Somehow they see me. They begin to growl, to lick their chops, to shriek; and their babies join in simply as an act of mimicry. The Galinoids are teaching a new generation. Move, get out, I think to myself as they rush the house and begin to climb, but I‘m frozen. Now! Move! In a moment of adrenalinefilled strength I manage to flip over our king-size mattress and prop it against the window. They‘ll knock it down in a second, but at least it will hide me till then. I spill down the stairs to the sound of glass shattering from almost every room in the house. I need to get to the basement as quickly as possible, but when I get to the bottom of the stairs there are three of them already waiting for me and I slide right into their arms. In their frenzy they seem almost too excited to know what to do with me. They toss me about, pull me from one to the other with covetous jealousy, and hiss at each other. When a set of teeth bury into my neck, I reach for the screwdriver in my belt loop and jab at them until I finally hit my mark and bury the tip deep into an eye. It is enough for me to break away and scramble to the kitchen, where so many of them are fighting their way through the window that they don‘t notice me take shelter in a cabinet next to the stove. I count six, maybe ten of them, and more are coming. But through the crack I see my path to the basement door just a few yards away. My chest is warm with the blood pouring from my neck. When I bring my hand up to slow the bleeding I can feel that there is no skin there, no flesh, just a great gash, a hole, and for a horrible moment my fingertips graze veins and arteries, tissues and muscle. Why I thought I could linger, I don‘t know. The Galinoids have picked up my scent. Frantically, hungrily, they sniff at the air, flick
their tongues against the floor, and in no time there is a face sniffing against the cabinet door. They‘ve found me. A shriek and then they are all clamoring to get at the cabinet with such unbridled mania that they‘ve trapped me inside with their own force. Thud after thud after thud—they can‘t get out of each other‘s way. Prepared to make my last stand, I grab a knife from my pocket and a hammer from my belt, when the cabinet flies open and there are dozens of them ready to pounce on me. I lunge out at them, flailing my arms everywhere I can, and somehow the surprise of it all confuses them, helps me to break through the pack. They‘re just at my back when I close the basement door behind me, and though I take a moment to breathe, the pounding at the door sends me dashing into the basement. Soon they‘ll be here too. Brett has passed out. I slap him a few times, but it doesn‘t rouse him at all. I call his name, pinch his ears and elbows, and still nothing. Not now, this can‘t be happening now, when there are just moments left. I pound on his chest and scream his name through my weeping. He‘s lost. He‘s not going to wake up. With my head on his chest I finally think, Good—he won‘t suffer. ―I love you,‖ I whisper in his ear. ―Don‘t wake up.‖ And then it hits me. The boys haven‘t come out of their hiding spots. Playing hide-and-seek with two year olds is always an exercise in futility: they don‘t like being lost. They want to be found. How many times have I had to pretend I still don‘t see them when they jump out from behind the couch gleefully screaming ―Here I am!‖? This time it seems they might get it. ―Come out, come out wherever you are,‖ I call. Even this doesn‘t out them, and now I‘m worried. ―Miles! Felix! You win the game! Come on out, it‘s time for your surprise!‖ The Galinoids are pounding harder and harder on the door. They are a species without limits. They don‘t give up until the bloody end. With the pounding I hear sounds of the door failing—wood
bending against its own structure, moaning, cracking. Just hold on a minute more, I pray. The boys pop out from a dark corner and run to me. They‘re white and pale as skim milk and the weight of worry hangs from their faces. They look like adults. I wrap my arms around them as, shivering like puppies, they bury their faces in my stomach. Though they can‘t possibly understand what‘s going on, they can intuit everything; in a way I never expected, they are shutting down. ―Wow, you guys did such a good job hiding. I couldn‘t find you at all!‖ They want me to hold them closer, tighter, to try to absorb themselves into my body. ―Hey, show me where you hid. I‘m so curious and I want to see. Can you show me?‖ They point. ―Take me there. I want to tell you about your surprise.‖ In the far corner there is a bookshelf stacked with odds and ends: paint cans, old board games, a broken alarm clock, two lamps from secondhand stores that Brett and I bought before we could afford better. Miles and Felix had been crouching in the empty bottom shelf. It‘s not the shelter I hoped it would be. My last dream for them is dashed. What kept me from finding them was that this is a dark corner, but the Galinoids don‘t need light. They‘ll sniff us out in no time. And maybe for the better. Maybe it will be over with quickly. I take off my shirt and tear it in two. ―You hear that? That banging? That‘s your surprise! It‘s all our family and our friends, and they want to see you so bad. And they have tons of presents for you, but they don‘t want you to see them until they get down here. So I‘m going to blindfold you, okay? It‘ll be just like pin the tail on the donkey!‖ ―Noooooo,‖ they cry. ―I don‘t waaaaant it.‖ ―Come on, please?‖ ―It‘s scaaaary.‖
―I promise you it won‘t be scary. I‘ll be right here. You can even sit on my lap. Just please let me put these on you? Everyone will be so disappointed if you see the awesome presents they brought you before you‘re supposed to!‖ They‘re still saying no, but I smile and force a little laugh. ―Here, I‘ll show you how not scary it is.‖ I hear the door splinter, and then with each bang split open more. To my surprise the boys don‘t fight me when I tie my shirt around their eyes. Then there it is, the final crash, the one that shreds the door into pieces. The Galinoids stream down the stairs. A group of them rush to Brett and begin to feed, but the ones who can‘t find space are sniffing the air, licking the floor, and making their way toward us. ―Okay, just another second,‖ I whisper. ―Here they come.‖ The Galinoids are right in front of us now. They see us. They‘re licking their chops. Just don‘t make any scary noises, I pray to them. You‘ve got us. It‘s enough.
Michael Sidman grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, which led to a very early obsession with the occult. Since then, he has become something of a horror aficionado, gobbling up horror stories in everything from popular culture to the monsters and hauntings of old Yiddish folklore. Having received his MFA in Writing from The New School, Michael hopes to one day be responsible for creating the monsters that will haunt the dreams of a new generation and remain in the collective unconscious for centuries to come.
CONSUMED Peg Montana He clawed the snow away. The entrance to the cave was low. Even though it sat a few feet up the cliff wall, he was diligent to keep the opening from being covered by the snow, sealing him into an airless space about four to six feet high and ten feet in diameter. He looked out of the small opening he made in the snow, into a world of white. Snow was still snow coming down but it was light and coming down soft and innocent. The world looked like something on a picture post card. He knew better. The snow had let up a little a couple of times in the last two weeks. Then it would come howling in again, slamming down against the treeless heights like some monster out of a nightmare, a nightmare that wouldn‘t end. He crawled further into the darkness of the cave. He was careful to keep his face turned away from the far back wall. He refused to look at the stiff form lying there, refused to look at his son, dead now for three days. The boy‘s broken leg was carefully bound and wrapped in a bloody makeshift bandage. His pale and shrunken face turned toward the wall of the cave so it couldn‘t be seen. ―It‘s not snowing so hard this morning,‖ the man said to the lifeless body. ―Maybe it‘ll let up and we can get out of here. Your mother has to be worried sick.‖ He talked, refusing to look at the dead thing that had been his son. If he didn‘t look then he could see the boy as he had been: awkward and beautiful, with his long limbs that were strange and unmanageable to a boy growing so fast. He saw the look on his boy's face when his boy gazed up at him, part challenge and part
hero worship. He saw his boy looking up at him, with pain and pleading in his eyes. Trusting that his father could do something, could save him, but he couldn‘t, didn‘t. Now all that was left of his beautiful boy was the thing lying against the back wall of the cave. And it was nothing at all like his son. Keep talking, he thought. Talking kept him from thinking about the hunger and about that thing lying at the back of the cave.
Peg Crees is an artist, analyst, racehorse pinhooker, and briefly owned Kentucky Derby contender. She combines a love of life with the desire to understand the complexities of not just the broken mind but the healthy mind as well. She has published poetry, articles on the Civil War, and is writing her second book. Her first book The Sin Eater is looking for a home. Having passed through all but one state and lived in many of them, Peg now resides in a small town in Montana where the eccentricities of an artist/writer are still viewed with tolerance and some amusement.
OLD POET'S LAMENT Tom Montag
One by one, my poems will be forgotten, like dust motes in a shaft of light, blown away. The sweet sounds rolling off my tongue will be lost the way wind takes musk from the marsh to darkness. The way stars go out, galaxies disappear. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing forgotten.
Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013, as well as Middle Ground, Curlew: Home, Kissing Poetry's Sister, The Idea of the Local, and The Big Book of Ben Zen. Recent poems will be found in Hummingbird, Stoneboat, Split Rock, The Chaffin Journal, Foliate Oak, Hamilton Stone Review, and Digital Papercut. He blogs as The Middlewesterner and serves as the Managing Editor of the Lorine Niedecker Monograph Series.
STRONGER John G. Rodwan Jr. What doesn‘t kill you does not make you stronger. That‘s silly talk—as false as mayors‘ tales. Yet scars—rust, cracks, stains— signify that which sustains: endurance despite injuries. Strength doesn‘t deny weakness. It compensates for it and keeps a body advancing despite distress. The smart, savvy boxer wins even with broken, tender fists but still prefers unfractured bones. Willingness to face sad facts knowing they don‘t vanish with wishes doesn‘t kill people—or cities. It makes them stronger.
John G. Rodwan Jr. is the author of the essay collections Holidays & Other Disasters (Humanist Press, 2013) and Fighters & Writers (Mongrel Empire Press, 2010). His poetry has appeared in journals such as The Chaffey Review, Midwestern Gothic, Pacific Review, Pea River Journal, Red Earth Review, San Pedro River Review, Thin Air and Trickster. He lives in Detroit.
IMPRESSIONS FROM THE LAND OF VANISHED BEAUTIFUL THINGS Stephen Mead The bedraggled and frayed can have a poignant sort of beauty. I think of Grizabella, the fading, decrepit, formerly-glamorous feline from the musical Cats. Even her character did not make the cut in T.S. Eliot's Old Possums' Book of Practical Cats. In fact, her showstopping torch ballad, "Memory," was cobbled from a poem fragment found among Mr. Eliot's fusty papers. I imagine all of our lives have some sort of overlooked treasure like that. I can picture the various cats which possessed Grizabella's angora characteristics trying to dash into the back hall of the farmhouse I grew up in. At one point there must have been at least twenty, a glaring. They were a motley bunch of furry purring charm. This was a time before animal control and before ASPCA groups had stronger media clout when it came to informing the public about the importance of spaying and neutering. Not having such guidance, our cats were fairly inbred; some looking more mutant than others due to the fact that a tail-less trait had entered the genetics as a result of hanky panky with a dark tortoiseshell from another farm up the hill. Many of these tail-less wonders were named Bunny as, indeed, many of the others were called Mama Kitty. How many Bunnies and Mama Kitties can one farm have? As a matter of fact, over the years, quite a lot. I remember a number of them following me up the long gravel driveway and having a seat at my feet, waiting with me for the
school bus. (Unlike the goats from the next bus stop, these cats had a savvy anti-scholastic streak and did not try to board.) I also remember them following any member of our family either through the fields, the yards, and the various outer buildings (wood shed, smoke house, barn) surrounding the house. In the warmer months, protecting their nests, swallows would dive bomb them (and occasionally us too), but every once in a while the cat would have had enough and with one quick swipe, the swallow became kitty snack. During the months of stillest cold, when it was still at least sunny, the cats would huddle on the stony back stoop. It didn't help that my sister, and I had a soft spot and would give them milk and cat food back there when not sneaking them in much to my mom's displeasure. (Yes, she may have bitched about those ratty fleabitten things but often did the same herself.) It was the warmth of the round rag rug in the back hall which they sought, at least as a foothold until they could get past the next door and into the world of copper-piped heating. Ah, bliss! The rag rug is a story unto itself, but I do not know its entire plot. The rag rug, the back hall, was also the best Smokey, or any of our dogs, could hope for when muddy or wet. The rag rug, if not used as intended, today could actually be considered a wonderful piece of folk art. I imagine it was either my dad's mother or grandmother who made it, busy with what I think of as the weave and the woof, feeding durable strips of navy blue fabric up and under, in and out, other equally durable bands of black, charcoal and white. In the end, the three foot by five checkered pattern must have been sewn with sturdy backing attached since this rug was the focal point of the back hall for years. Retrospect gives it flaps of wide fringe at each end, ready for take-off should the correct magic words be summoned. There was only one light in the back hall, a bare bulb with a pull string, so no wonder the rug has a stained-glass sort of importance. The rest of the darkening rectangular space, (one end leading to the cellar), had a sort of dreary eeriness. I'm not sure where I got such a Bronte character's gothic streak to my nature, (boredom? rural isolation?, warnings to be afraid of just-about-everything-including
strangers-that-are-killers from my city-bred mother?), but this creepiness had a marvelous frisson I could easily scare myself with. Usually the evening or later was the best time of day for that. Earlier, though still dim, the back hall had fewer shadows so its details were more plain. Actually, in retrospect, this hall was more cluttered and dusty than scary. Along the wall abutting the kitchen, there was a long olive-green shelf with pegs underneath for flannel shirts, army jackets, farmer's jeans, whatever. The shelf itself always seemed to be overflowing with glasses, jars and old cans for nails and screws, with work gloves, tape, tool kits and anything else my father used to tinker with. The walls held plenty of nails for things like a cloth clothes pin bag on a hanger, various hammers and saws, while the floor could be lined with paint cans, toys, old shoes and boots to trip over. Along the wall abutting the exterior, next to a large rubber trash can, was a long white vertical freezer. This held of course not only animal remnants from cows and pigs we named (Arnold, Daisy, Clare...) until us kids got wise to the deal of what happened to these "pets," but also ice cream, home-made currant sherbet, breads, and boxes and bags of vegetables and fruits my mother snipped, snapped and steamed. In description it all sounds pretty innocuous, so why in the evening, if asked to go and get ice cream, would I imagine the freezer as a kind of mortuary drawer? Why imagine that one of those dangerous strangers from my mom's urban legends had managed to sneak in, was actually hidden by the clothespin bag or any of the other clothes along the wall; that he'd even conveniently put his feet in one of the boots underneath? Why did I know he was just waiting, ready to make use out of any of those tools on the walls, including the saw, then put me in the deep with Daisy and Clare? But wouldn't my parents wonder what had happened to me; what was taking me so long to get their god-damned ice cream? Of course they had no idea I was such a scaredy cat. That I, asthmatic, allergic, the overprotected baby of the nest, had inherited my mom's bad nerves was already self-evident enough, as my brother liked to point out. I would show them all, including the lurking stranger. I'd quickly grab a claw-headed hammer myself and have it
with me the whole time in the hall, bringing the ice cream back fast as The Flash. Across from the freezer was a door leading to one of the various attics of the house. This one was unfinished, without insulation; fairly small but big enough for Grace Poole to keep watch of her mad woman charge. I only went up there maybe two or three times in my life. I don't think anyone in my family hardly ever did simply because there wasn't much up there to see. I remember its scuffed dark varnished steps though, slightly curving at the top, and the grey gossamer light from its one window; the branches from the lilac tree scratching against it like fingers. The walls were slats of wood I think of as thatch, and I do remember an old accordion was stored amid the cobwebs. I don't know what ancestor must have played the instrument, but it seemed enchanting with its dusty squeeze box, and ivory and ebony keys. I figured a ghost must have made use of it, playing "Lady of Spain" to the bats that sometimes hung out there. Hanging out is literally how I pictured them, with natty spats and furry black velvet tuxedoes. The doors to the back hall changed with seasons; a wooden screen one in the summer which kittens often climbed and clung to, mewing; and the rest of the year, a good thick oak door with a large four-square pane in its top panel. This year-round door didn't always close tightly and while swinging loose, especially in the winter, it's lonely squeaking could be another source of fright, especially when it was pitch black outside and one of us had to go alone to shut it. Across either back door was a third interior one with two pairs of strong double locks. I have no idea if my mom— living in the middle of this godforsaken nowhere—had read one too many Capote In Cold Blood scenarios or exactly what sort of Zombie Apocalypse these double locks were supposed to keep out. As noted, the other end of the back hall led to the cellar. The walls leading down were made of cold bricks and stones. The lower one went, the surrounding shelf of paint cans, turpentine, and wooden paint stirrers seemed to loom fatalistically. The stairs were covered with peeling linoleum, and under one tread was a small child's vintage leather boot-shoe, the kind which required a hook to do up. Mom told us the placement of such footwear was part of a
Dutch ritual for bringing luck, but with my macabre temperament I invented other ghoulish tales about the boot-shoe for childhood friends. At the bottom of the stairs was a wide brown painted wood door slightly off its hinges and never closed anyway. For some reason it reminded me of the Count of Monte Cristo, and the whole basement a sort of functioning crypt. It was composed of two damp rooms full of dust and webs. I see now that it was always in some sort of eroding state: its bricks crumbling to little piles of pinkish powder on the floor. When my dad retired and had more time for endlessly troublesome house projects, I recall he put joists against the beams held in a vice grip so the upper floors wouldn't collapse. I see this as a kind of comic metaphor of how my family did upkeep and held ourselves together. The cellar did not scare me as much as the attic because I had to spend more time making use of it. In the first room, at its center, was a hanging shelf made of a thick wide plank. A rusty weighing scale was at one end of this while the shelf itself held antique jars. Antique jars was truly the central motif of the room, kept in two wall-sized large paint-flaking cabinets. It was a little spooky opening them since the hinges squeaked, and you had to bring a flashlight to see the interiors hoping there wasn't a mouse, but the jars of jam and pickled beets gleamed lantern-like as if lit by the earth itself. There were also old brown glass wine bottles with cork tops held by wire, at least two of which my sister and I later tried to store dandelion wine in. The process of making the wine was the fun part, gathering the yellow dandelions into brown paper grocery bags, the yellow seeming to secretly glow even with the bags closed. Something went awry with the fermentation, however, for yeasty white bits could be seen floating from the bottom of the brown bottles the longer the wine aged. I don't think we ever tried drinking it. Opening the bottles distilled a strong scent, like turpentine. The second room of the basement was the scarier and often darker, again with only a bare bulb and a pull string dangling from the ceiling. You had to dash in fast lest any monsters were waiting behind the large rackety furnace, the gurgling water heater, or ready
to pop out from the septic tank hole in the floor. As you entered the scariest thing was the potato bin with it tubers and feelers growing whitely through the dark. We had to bring a flashlight for seeing into the potato bin too, and sometimes the potatoes were mushy or fuzzy in the depths. It was enough to make a person's skin crawl. As I got older the leaky walls and puddles on the floor bothered me less, but by then dad was working on their problem; caulking, shellacking, even taking old metal swimming pool siding and burying it under the lawn above the basement windows. There were places outside where the ribbed blue and white pattern showed through like the sides of a buried ship. This did seem to keep the earth's natural water flow away from the house, however, and the patterns made by the shellac, the caulk, upon and adjacent to water stains, reminded me both of cave drawings and modern abstract art. Yes, the cellar, the root of our home, glimmered like obsidian. We would go on about our lives above it unawares and yet protected for, thanks to my thriftily ingenious father, the foundation would hold.
As a writer and artist publishing for the last three decades, Stephen Mead has finally gotten around to getting links to his poetry still online at various zines available in one place: http://stephenmead.weebly.com/links-to/poetry-on-the-line-stephenmead. His latest Amazon release is entitled Our Spirit Life, a poetry/art meditation on family heritage, love, and the evanescence of time.
THROUGH HER EYES Philip S. Goldberg James Woodcock lived in apartment 6-B. The woman referred to as Samantha Argio had occupied 4-F up to the moment she had been murdered in that apartment two nights ago. Her half-smiling, apple-cheeked face framed by honey blond curls (perhaps a driver‘s license photo) stared back at James from page three of The News. Sitting at his dining room table, golden sunshine cascading through the window, he studied the grainy photo. Fragmented images of their brief encounters projected through his mind: running into her at the building‘s mailboxes, passing each other while entering or leaving the building, riding the elevator together. Studying the newspaper photo once more, he focused on her most striking feature: her eyes, which possessed an aqua-blue hue unlike any he‘d ever seen. His own brown eyes were puddles of mud by comparison. No, hers shimmered like deep pools of water, glittered like polished sapphire. Enchanting eyes that brought to mind the verses of Byron, of Shakespeare, of Petrarch. Soulful eyes that strode straight to your heart. Staring at them, he remembered how unearthly they appeared in person. How forlorn. Looking up from the newspaper page and out the sun-streaked window, he sighed. After all, she was dead, murdered at night by some unknown assailant. The sadness snuffed out from those eyes. He knew that they could not belong to another person. Not any woman he had ever encountered, not even his ex, Kristen. And for a few moments, his thoughts drifted toward her. Their breakup pained him still. It‘s never easy shaking away the thought of coming home early to surprise your girlfriend only to find her in bed with a good buddy
of yours. No, the memory coils, unravels, and strikes out often. So much so that he had tattooed a thin band around his right wrist. A ―never again bracelet,‖ he called it. A permanent scar of what had happened months ago. Since the breakup, he had committed to spending more time alone, attempting to learn more about himself. Yet a few months later, he was still waiting to commence his self-examination. Instead he trolled bookstores, inhabited independent cinemas, populated bars, and sipped mocha lattes at small cafés. Wherever he was in his life at the moment, he put it aside. What concerned him more was the death of Samantha. Somehow it intrigued him, enticed him—even beckoned him. Raking his fingers through the scraggly goatee that squared his pointy chin, he felt a fire swelling in his soul. A burning he could not contain or explain. He rose from his chair and crossed to his front door and opened it slowly. In the hallway—the door smacking shut behind him—a paralyzing feeling of indecision overcame him. Gazing down the long hallway, he experienced the pull of the apartment two flights below, a place he had never been in the five-plus years he‘d resided here. A few deep breaths expelled from his lungs, and he tried to move on. For every few steps forward, he took a couple back. A shaking rattled his tall, slender frame as opposite forces played with him, rooting him to the carpet. He began doubting his desire to go to her apartment. He felt his fire burning out. The ping of the elevator‘s arrival jostled him. He watched Mister Cooper from apartment 6-D step from the elevator and turn toward him, and James nodded as Mister Cooper passed. ―Tragedy ‘bout Miss Argio,‖ Mister Cooper said from behind, his voice raspy. James faced the elderly man. ―Unreal,‖ he replied. ―Lived here almost twenty years and nothing like that‘s ever happened.‖
James eyed him hard, studying each line of the man‘s face to see if he could learn more about what had happened. Not finding answers there, he said, ―Any further news?‖ ―Heard that detectives are talking with tenants.‖ James caught his breath. Blood surged through his veins. His lips went dry. He stared at Cooper and said, ―Oh, really.‖ Focusing on the man‘s lined face helped drain the tension from his body. Cooper shook his head and quipped, ―Whatever. Another inconvenience.‖ He walked off, uttering, ―The whole thing‘s sad. Very sad.‖ James watched him open his door and enter his apartment before facing away. The conversation reignited the fire, and he entered the stairwell and bounded down the steps until he came upon the door to the fourth floor hallway and opened it. As he walked into the corridor, the acrid stench of overcooked oil assaulted his nose. A bulb flickered behind its wall sconce as he stepped along the carpeted floor, checking each apartment‘s door he passed, fearing the unexpected appearance of another tenant. He really didn‘t desire explaining why he was here. Where was Harry Potter‘s invisibility cloak when you needed it? He chuckled in his mind. He needed neither a roadmap, nor a GPS system, nor even a detective to find apartment 4-F. Two yellow and black strips of police tape formed an X pattern, blocking the door. If that wasn‘t enough, a yellow sticker affixed to the door screamed in bold black letters: KEEP OUT! POLICE CRIME SCENE! James halted before the barred entry. He imagined himself a character on CSI or Law & Order, a player with a bit part in a police procedural, only this was real. He smiled uneasily at the thought, placed a hand on the sticker, and ran the fingers of his other hand across the criss-crossing tapes, as if doing so would give him some hint of what had happened behind the door. Whether a bad decision gone horribly wrong, or whether Samantha had lived in a dangerous world where death was a constant risk, he could not fathom. What he did know was that his own safe existence, where a
breakup counted as the most dangerous thing he had done in years, was incomparable to it. Something crashing to the floor from within another apartment made him flinch. Again, fearing being found here, he spun around and bolted to the stairway. He raced up the stairs two at a time and quickly returned to the sixth floor. In no time he stepped back into his apartment, locked the door, and stood with his back pressed against it. He slowed his breathing. He examined the disquieting mix of excitement and fear he felt and pondered how close he had come to entering an apartment where a murder had occurred. How close his action had put him to death. And how close it had put him to Samantha. The thought amplified his sorrow as well as the image in his mind of the melancholy in her eyes. Shaking himself like a dog that had just come indoors from the rain, he calmed down and marched to the refrigerator. In one motion, he swung open its door and grabbed a bottle of beer. He returned to the living room, unscrewed the bottle cap, plopped onto the sofa, and stretched out his jean-clad legs as far as they‘d go. He pushed his back deep into the sofa‘s cushions and swigged some beer. He recalled the one time he had encountered Samantha when they had exchanged words. He had ventured to the mailbox alcove in the building‘s lobby. He‘d found her hunching against the wall, hidden from view, and gripping the contents of an envelope. She flinched upon seeing him, tightening her fingers around the paper and crumpling it. Their eyes met briefly. Hers appeared fraught with worry. His were tainted with curiosity. She smiled emptily. ―I‘m sorry.‖ ―No need to apologize,‖ he said. ―I have a knack for walking in on people at the wrong moment.‖ He smiled. ―My name‘s James. I live in 6-B.‖ She hesitated. A few moments elapsed before she replied, ―Samantha.‖ Her eyes darted. ―I live in 4-F.‖ Her voice sounded edgy.
―I‘ve seen you around,‖ he said, glimpsing at what appeared to be a now wrinkled legal document in her hand. ―Here and there.‖ Again he smiled, this time more out of nervousness. She peered down at her sneakered feet. Sensing her embarrassment, her uncomfortableness at encountering another human being, he stepped to his mailbox, opened it, and pulled from it a few envelopes and a catalog. ―You think you‘ve got things settled,‖ she muttered, ―but they just linger on.‖ As he shut the box, her curious words, followed by her scurrying footsteps, caught his ears. He looked up and watched her go out of the building. Stepping into the lobby, he peered out the front glass, but she had walked out of his view of the street. The ping of the elevator‘s arrival shifted his focus to a middle-aged woman exiting it, who nodded at him as she walked by. The ringing of the doorbell roused him from his daydream. He jumped up from the sofa and stumbled toward the door. ―Who‘s there?‖ ―Police.‖ A rumbling baritone voice replied. Police—the word fell to his gut like a chunk of granite. He stopped dead, placing the empty beer bottle on a small table. Gathering himself, he opened the door and eyed a stout, bald, black man with a pockmarked face and deep-set brown eyes. ―Afternoon, sir, I‘m Detective Clark of the Fifteenth Precinct.‖ He cracked a professional smile and added, ―May I come in?‖ James nodded, a gesture that appeared more like a tic, as he stood aside and allowed the man entry. He turned as the door shut and faced the man. ―Care for a seat?‖ ―Not necessary,‖ Clark replied in a crisp voice.
A tingling sensation gripped James‘ skin. His face flushed. He fixed both eyes hard on Clark and attempted to force away the sharpening, slicing sensation. The struggle was not lost on Clark. ―You feeling right?‖ James looked away. An awkward moment passed as he debated whether to tell this man something he hadn‘t spoken about in years. Finally he decided there was no reason not to. ―Cops make me nervous.‖ Clark arched his eyebrows. James shuffled his feet in embarrassment. Slowly the words worked their way from his mouth. ―When I was ten, a gang of us kids broke into a lot. We were horsing around when the cops came.‖ He stopped, searching with his eyes as if seeing it all happening again. ―One cop chased me down, tackled me.‖ He glared at Clark and added, ―He bullied me, dressed me down with his threats. Scared the shit out of me.‖ Clark‘s eyes registered understanding. ―Duly noted,‖ he said. ―Look, I‘m not here to do that. Just here to ask a few questions. Okay?‖ ―Okay,‖ he exhaled the word as if it were a held breath. The detective continued, ―You‘re aware of what happened in apartment 4-F.‖ ―Yes. Terrible stuff.‖ Clark nodded in a professional manner as he flipped open his small notepad and clicked his pen, which sounded a lot louder than it should have. ―Did you know her?‖ ―Not really, other than the usual stuff.‖ Clark‘s expression hardened a noticeable notch.
Sensing a misunderstanding, James added, ―You know, running into her in the elevator, at the mailbox, or in the lobby. That kind of stuff.‖ Nodding, Clark‘s tough-guy face softened. The momentary tension jarred James‘s memory. He recounted his story of surprising Samantha by the mailboxes. The words sounded strange emerging from his mouth, almost as if another person was reciting them. Maybe because his encounter with her that day had always felt unreal. Like he hadn‘t belonged there. Like he‘d intruded on her very private moment and should never have engaged her. Like he‘d been more of an observer than a participant—just as he‘d felt walking in on Kristen. When he finished his story, he sighed. The sound lingered in the air. They exchanged thoughtful looks, and then Clark jotted some more notes in his pad. ―And you‘re sure it was a legal document?‖ James nodded with certainty. Clark broke into another professional smile as he clicked his pen closed. ―If you think of anything more . . .‖ He pulled out a business card from his jacket‘s inner pocket and handed it to James. ―Sure,‖ James said. The men shook hands. ―Thank you for your time,‖ Clark said and walked by him. Then he stopped. A smile curled his lips. ―Now that wasn‘t so bad, was it?‖ ―Guess not.‖ ―Still scared of cops?‖ James held the man‘s face in his eyes before he said, ―Guess I‘m a work in progress.‖ Clark smiled and left.
As James locked the door, he heard the doorbell chime at his nextdoor neighbor‘s apartment. Detective Clark‘s voice boomed a greeting. The door opened. Words were spoken. The door closed and silence followed. A wave of relief washed over him. He had said what he knew, and yet he had hid what he felt about her: the curiosity, the odd attraction, the desire to learn more about her. A relaxing breath left his lungs as he placed Clark‘s card against the beer bottle on the small table. With quick steps he moved to the living room window. To its right stood a distressed-looking oak desk and a cushioned chair on casters. A closed laptop sat on the desktop. His look grew pensive as he stared at the desk, and he hesitated before opening a drawer. Frustration and remorse reddened his face as he fixed his eyes on the countless pages of double-spaced prose buried there. He shoved the drawer closed; he raised his eyes to observe the street below. He studied people walking by, cars driving past, and a small boy pitching a fit in front of his exasperated mother. Minutes ticked by and he turned, walking away, plopping down on the sofa, and kicking up his feet. He lay back and eyed the chipped paint and a long, thin and jagged crack that ran across the ceiling. Soon his eyes weighed heavy and he slipped off to sleep. James sat on the sofa, which in his dream was bright red. He felt her presence before he glanced up and saw her seated in an armchair facing him. An instant connection crossed between them. Was it a shared sadness? A linked loneliness? He was unwilling to admit either. But there was something he was willing to admit: the attraction between them felt strong, eternal. At this point in his life, he needed someone real or imagined. And if she were nothing more than a fantastic figment of his imagination, he‘d take it. She wore a sleeveless dress, lavender and cut short showing her shapely legs. Her honey blond hair appeared wavy. Her eyes did her talking. Through them, he felt her joy. Glowing warmth filled
two deep pools. In them, he caught sight of his own growing feeling of tenderness. Crazy as it sounded, he understood her desire, her need for him, and this ignited his passion for her. Crazier still, happiness overcame him, a feeling he did not fight. No, he embraced it. Because it was a feeling he had never experienced before, not even with Kristen. Samantha rose to her bare feet, padding slowly to him and standing above him. An alluring smile graced her lips, and she closed her eyes in a way that felt to him like a slow, lingering kiss. He rose, but his legs became entangled, and he fell. He awoke, sprawled out on the floor. Slowly acclimating himself, he realized that he had rolled off the sofa while asleep. He pushed himself up. The dream faded but didn‘t vanish, clinging to his thoughts as it would throughout the day and into the night. Hours later he trekked from bar to bar and went from woman to woman. In each face, he saw her eyes. On each face, he listened to the poetry of her eyes‘ unspoken words. He knew that Kristen had not affected him this way, even in the best days. Wandering the lamp-lit streets late at night, he wondered how this could be happening. How could he be falling for a woman he hardly knew—a deceased woman, no less? But even at a young age he‘d realized life was full of logic-defying mysteries, which tested the boundaries of what he considered the norm. And this thought satisfied his doubts as he continued home. Over the next few weeks, he made time to research newspapers and social media sites, to absorb all he could about her. She was born in Bar Harbor and migrated to the city five years ago when she got a job with a fragrance company. The oldest of three sisters, she graduated from the University of Maine. Her high school yearbook quote, which he found on Classmates.com, enthusiastically exclaimed, ―I want to take the world by storm.‖
Didn‘t we all, he mused. An English major from University of Missouri, a student editor for The Missouri Review, he, like most lit grads, wanted to pen the great American novel, but he now found himself toiling in a passionless job—in his case, a part-time legal proofreader, a position that paid well but satisfied little. On Facebook (he didn‘t even need to friend her and be re-friended to view her page), he discovered that she had 187 friends and liked liberal causes (he did, too) and animal rescue organizations. Yet even in what appeared a happy life, he saw the seeds that sowed her sadness. Her middle sister, Meg, was killed in a car accident two years ago, another drunk driving statistic. Her marriage to Joe Kane had ended in divorce only two years after the wedding vows had been exchanged. Her youngest sister, Jen, appeared to be battling an alcohol problem. The information swarmed him. It swirled around him. As he gained more of it, he trolled fewer bookstores, attended fewer cinemas, and populated fewer bars and coffee cafés. He became more inner-directed, spending more time in his mind with her. In his thoughts, they held hands. In his dreams, they kissed and made love. All without one word spoken. Through her eyes, he knew what she thought, what she felt, what she wanted. He believed she heard and felt him clearly through his eyes. Odd, he pondered, how their shared sense of sadness, of loneliness, had a curative effect on him. Better than Lexapro, he joked. Whatever was happening, whether it was in his mind or an out-of-world experience, he felt more at ease than he had in years. One day, he turned on the television and caught a news story about how police apprehended the prime suspect in her murder. His gut clenched as the reporter said, ―Joe Kane, her ex-husband, has been arrested on suspicion of murder. A police spokesperson said that she had taken a restraining order out on him weeks before her murder.‖ His emotions ripped away, he recalled the day he had encountered her by the mailboxes and seen the crumpled piece of paper in her
hand. His breathing thinned. What could he have done to change the destructive path on which she wandered? Nothing, he believed, not a damn thing. Just like he couldn‘t have altered his own path of destruction on which he had travelled with Kristen. Things happened as they happened. We play our part, he realized, but do so without taking responsibility until it‘s too late. Suddenly, an urge plowed through him; a field of feelings ripened in him. A strong desire to go back to her apartment door. An urge to explore more. Pensively he stroked his goatee. Turning from these thoughts, from the television, he left his apartment. He stood still in the hall before heading off. On the fourth floor, he found himself in front of her apartment door. The yellow sticker was still pasted, but someone had cut a slit down it. The taped X had been removed, which gave the door a naked, vulnerable appearance. He weighed whether or not to try the doorknob. In the end, he fully knew what he had to do. He grabbed the knob and rotated it slowly. His heart beat faster. He heard a click and knew the door had been left unlocked. A sigh of relief fled his lungs. His heart slowed. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, quickly closing it. Standing in the apartment‘s foyer, he gauged the space before him. A few half-filled boxes lined the floor. Clothing, cosmetics, and books rested on the sofa. Stillness consumed the space. A sense of dread dusted everything. And yet, the apartment felt and looked as if someone still inhabited it. Taking a few measured breaths, he inched into the living room and gazed at a bookcase, which held popular titles of the day. An iPod dock and a small flat-screen television sat silently on a narrow table. His steps soon took him into the bedroom, where he inhaled a trace of lilac perfume. Could it have been hers? Looking around, he saw her clothes draped over a chair. Her closet door was ajar. Shoes were scattered about the floor. A stuffed bear held court on her bed.
Without hesitation, he sat on the bed. An uneasy quiet filled the room. He conjured her up and saw her sitting on the bed next to him. Her eyes appeared curious. Through his eyes, he questioned her. A blank stare answered him. Soon, her eyes softened. In them, he read that she wanted to go, to leave him. In her eyes, he saw she believed he was ready to move on. He pleaded through his eyes. He protested. But her eyes refused him. In a blink, she vanished. He tried to feel her presence again, but all that came to him was a strong sense of loneliness. As time elapsed, he became less certain as to whom the loneliness belonged: Samantha or him. A child‘s joyful shriek from the street aroused him, and he rose off the bed and walked from the room. Back in the living room, he noticed that it was bathed in an orange hue. Daylight was dwindling, as was his time in her apartment, her life. He exited the apartment with a sadness of a life lost: hers. But he also felt sadness about his own life, and how it had derailed. How he had let it. And he knew she was right. It was time for him to move on. Once more he felt the fire within. By the elevator, he glanced one final time at her door and nodded an acknowledgement to her and what she had done for him— without ever speaking a word. Waiting, he recalled a verse by Byron: And all that‟s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes. The elevator arrived, and he entered. Moments later, the door slid open. The same orange light, which appeared appropriate to him, streamed through the lobby‘s plate glass front. He traversed the space with quickening steps. On the street, life played out before him. Cars greeted him with radios blaring. Mothers dealt with bratty kids acting out. A bemused expression owned his face as he headed away from the
building and everything it contained. Behind him, he left the bookstores, cinemas, bars, cafĂŠs, fear of police, Kristen, and Samantha, too. The manuscripts buried in his desk drawer flashed before his eyes. He wondered if the time had come to rekindle his passion for writing. The thought lingered as his steps gained momentum; in his heart he hoped that he had embarked not just on a new path, but the right path.
Over thirty of Philip Goldberg's short stories have appeared in both literary and small press publications including Straylight, Avalon Literary Review, Foliate Oak, and Write Place, Write Time. Three of his stories have appeared in ―Best of‖ collections and one was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Philip lives with his wife in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
DONNALYNN Doug Van Hooser DonnaLynn sat poised on her stool, her buttocks swallowing the cushion. She gently swirled the maraschino cherry in her brandy old-fashioned and smiled to herself. She was lucky. Jim, her husband, still smiled at her and grabbed her ass every time he left in spite of the fact it was way more than a handful now. Twenty-three days was longer than the usual time he was gone, which made for lonely suppers and evenings, even if all they ever did was sit in front of the TV. The days when she would ride along with him were history now that she had taken the job at the school. They needed the benefits. Truck driving wasn‘t as profitable as it once was. And the scare they got when she started throwing up and discovered she was pregnant was a chill she couldn‘t forget. Just the thought sent a quick shiver through her. They‘d be paying for medical bills for another year if not longer. The miscarriage was a blessing. There was no way she could have raised a child. Jim wanted no part of a baby in his truck, and she couldn‘t picture herself staying home, the baby wailing away and her trying to figure out what he or she wanted. She could service a man. She knew what they wanted. A baby just seemed fragile, too easily broken. ―Hey, DonnaLynn. How‘s it goin‘? Jim on the road?‖ Denny Boyd was a regular, and had been before Brett Favre adorned the walls. ―Hi, Denny. He‘s out on a long one. Three weeks.‖ ―Whew. I don‘t know how he does that. I gotta have Friday night.‖
―No. You have to have Saturday because of Friday night.‖ Donna smiled as wide as her butt. Denny put his arm around her shoulders and shook her. ―How‘s that man put up with you? You always been a smartass?‖ Denny‘s smile outstretched hers. ―I didn‘t start until I was in the sixth grade.‖ She tried to sound sincere. Denny didn‘t buy in. ―Why? Because that‘s when the boys started paying attention to you?‖ Well, he guessed that one right. Her mother had held her back a year, and she didn‘t start school until she was six, so by sixth grade she was developing, and the boys certainly noticed that. ―Denny, I know it‘s way beyond your time, but even today boys will be boys.‖ She certainly saw that five days a week. Teacher aids saw and heard it all. The classroom was bad enough, but in the hallways, it was on another level. ―Ah, you kept ‗em in line. You knew how to control them.‖ That was barely true today, much less in sixth grade. And she didn‘t get any better at it until her last year in high school when she missed her period one time. That completely freaked her out. It was four weeks of escalating self-torture. Even her best friend‘s pregnancy the year before hadn‘t sounded a loud enough alarm. ―Well you‘re easy to control. All anybody‘s got to do is let you be yourself until midnight and then walk away and watch you fall off the stool when you give chase.‖ That wasn‘t really true. Denny had his fried fish and four beers but never got fall down drunk. Just back slap happy. ―I don‘t chase anymore, DonnaLynn. I let ‗em come to me. It‘s just like fishin‘. A little patience lands the prize.‖ ―Now that‘s a fish story: A lie too good to be true.‖
―DonnaLynn. You don‘t believe me?‖ ―No. But tell me a few. I like to laugh.‖ That was certainly true. Maybe that was why men still talked her up. She learned at an early age to pet their ego and join in the joust of putdowns and kidding. ―Hey Denny, you owe me a beer."‖ Old Jack Doyle yelled from across the bar. He and Denny went way back. All the way to the ice age is the way they put it. ―What for? You broke?‖ Denny yelled back, cupping his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. ―‘Cause you took the Packers and gave me twenty. They only won by eighteen. Give a poor man what he‘s due, you cheapskate.‖ ―Lonnie,‖ Denny yelled at the bartender, ―give that old coot a PBR. He don‘t deserve anything else.‖ Pabst Blue Ribbon was the cheapest beer the bar sold. ―Put a good head on it so at least he‘s got one.‖ The bar was crowded and noisy as Friday night always was. The place smelled of fried food and beer. Ten years ago it would have smelled like a deep fried carton of cigarettes. That and the replacement of number four with number twelve were the major changes. Football stars came and went, but the hardcore patrons remained. There were some new faces. Some of them people DonnaLynn had gone to high school with who had disappeared for fifteen years and then reappeared like some kind of cicada. Many of them married now and settling back into the life their parents had. Many of them had tried to escape, but college and the big city didn‘t work for everybody. It was a return to the comfort of what they knew. ―Talk to you later, DonnaLynn. I gotta go make a bet with a bigger fool than me.‖ Denny touched her shoulder, gave her a smile, turned, and held his beer above his head as he sliced into the crowd.
DonnaLynn gazed down at the bar. She put her finger in her drink, gave it a swirl, pulled her finger out, and stuck it in her mouth. The ice was melting, diluting the drink‘s character. The noise of the bar seemed to recede as she stared at the drink, her mind numb, blank, like looking out a window on a night with a full moon after a snowstorm. You could see clearly, but things didn‘t look the same as during the day. Somehow the perspective changed. ―Hey, DonnaLynn, you want me to stiffen that for you?‖ Lonnie put his hand on her glass but waited for her reply. She looked up, feeling like she was waking up on the couch from a nap she hadn‘t planned on taking. ―You know I like it stiff.‖ She gave him the big smile. ―If you say so, ma‘am.‖ Ma‘am, what the hell was that? Lonnie was the owner‘s son. It was his first year behind the bar. He was ten or twelve years younger than DonnaLynn, and she had known him since he started busing tables at fifteen or sixteen. Ma‘am? She couldn‘t be a ma‘am. Lonnie returned with the refreshed drink. ―Jim out on the road?‖ ―Yeah. Gotta make a living.‖ ―Don‘t we all.‖ ―The checks just don‘t add up the way they used to. Got to stop and think every time, buy or not buy.‖ ―Well, when I look at my check, I think I‘m buying me a government.‖ DonnaLynn laughed. ―You are. That‘s what they put us here for. That and a little fried fish and beer.‖ She held up her drink. ―Or maybe a stiff one.‖ She got him to smile. He shook his head slowly. Someone across the bar called his name, and he turned and waved as he went to do his job.
Ma‟am. Did she look that much older? Maybe it was her weight? She‘d always been full figured, as they say, but didn‘t really put on the pounds until her twenties, after she met Jim. And then it was a slow, steady climb. Five or more pounds a year. He gained weight too. Said it was truck stop food and sitting behind the wheel. DonnaLynn had gone from job to job after high school and ended up a hostess out at the truck stop on the interstate. That‘s where they met. Jim had grown up in another town on the ―other side‖ of the road. He had just started driving a grain rig for his uncle, which got him hooked. Then he took a job with a freight line. They sold him his first truck. That was when he started long hauls and frequenting truck stops. Back then, she didn‘t want to date him. She had known more than one waitress who‘d fallen for a trucker she met while working and after a year discovered she wasn‘t the only truck stop on her man‘s route. But Jim persisted. He appeared two or three times a week. So one day DonnaLynn had decided to tell him to give it up. She told him she didn‘t want to be a truck stop floozy. He actually recoiled, wounded. Didn‘t come back to see her for over three weeks. Then came in and told her that if she didn‘t trust him he understood, but he wasn‘t that way. She had seen he was hurt by the accusation and she relented, agreeing to give it a try. In those days, he would make a run down south and return three days later. It had only taken a month: He asked her to quit her job and go with him out on the road. Another two months and they had decided to buy a house in the neighborhood she grew up in, two blocks in from the tavern. ―DonnaLynn, Denny and Jack are bettin‘ a beer on how long a polecat can live. For some reason they think you know the answer?‖ Lonnie asked with disbelief. Denny and Jack were smiling and waving from the other side of the bar. ―The only pole cats those two know work the gentlemen‘s club over on Route 14.‖ DonnaLynn shook her finger at the two men. ―Sorry, DonnaLynn.‖
―You should be sorry for those two old fools. Those are the only naked women they‘ll ever see.‖ She realized poor Lonnie was actually embarrassed. ―Go tell them I said that, and that they owe me a drink for the right answer.‖ Lonnie dutifully turned and headed for the two laughing men. DonnaLynn held up her glass and pointed at it with her free hand. Denny gave her a thumbs up. The noise in the bar picked up. It was becoming more crowded than usual. DonnaLynn had not acclimated to being by herself. She usually went home after work and called Jim at least twice if not three times. He never complained. He didn‘t like being alone either. Now that he was gone on a lot of weekends, he urged her to get out of the house and be with friends. Trouble was her high school friends were long out of touch, and she hadn‘t been at the grade school long enough to really get to know her coworkers. She hadn‘t seen anyone from the truck stop since she left, except for Sheila. But Sheila‘s two kids kept her busy, since neither father was around. Now, with her new job, DonnaLynn was surrounded by kids. They were all so different. Some were polite and respectful, but a few were like a downed electric line—sparking and whipping around. Many of them were actually fun to talk to. They acted like she was a teacher and asked her questions as if she had all the answers and sometimes she did. She would surprise herself but not the kids. They expected it. ―DonnaLynn,‖ Lonnie said as DonnaLynn looked up at him. ―Here‘s the drink from those two buffoons.‖ ―Thanks, Lonnie. I‘d better be careful, or I‘ll end up sloshed and acting like those goofs.‖ She took a big swallow. She was already feeling a little buzzed. She‘d better get something to eat. ―Bring me an order of the perch with cakes, Lonnie.‖ ―Sure enough.‖ She turned on her stool to check out the crowd. Her neighbors, the Donovans, were sitting at a table close to the door. They were
probably in their forties. Linda Donovan had said once they had been married for twenty years. No kids. They both worked and Donnie actually had a good job as a shift supervisor at the grain processing plant. Linda probably didn‘t have to work. Certainly without kids their expenses wuld be less, and she had said they bought their house right after getting married. Maybe she didn‘t like kids, or maybe she couldn‘t have any. DonnaLynn didn‘t know her well enough to ask that. The door swung open and an older couple walked in. The Donovans said hi but that was all; they probably recognized the older couple as fellow patrons but didn‘t really know them. DonnaLynn had seen the older couple before on Friday nights and recognized them but could never place them. DonnaLynn motioned to Lonnie. ―Time for another?‖ ―No, not yet. Hey, do you know that older couple standing by the door?‖ Lonnie craned his neck to look over the crowd. ―Nah. Not really. They‘ve been in before, but I don‘t know their names. They eat but never sit at the bar. Friday nighters.‖ ―They look familiar, but I don‘t know why.‖ ―Maybe because you've seen them in here.‖ ―Could be.‖ ―Want me to ask my Dad? He‘ll know ‗em.‖ ―No. Just curious.‖ She held up her drink. Lonnie smiled. ―I owe you one. Or those two old jerks do. I‘ll put another one on their tab.‖ He reached down and grabbed another glass and poured her a fresh drink. ―I‘ve gotta get back at those two somehow.‖
―Don‘t worry. Fools always give you another chance.‖ Lonnie smiled and shook his head. ―You‘re a smart one, DonnaLynn. I‘m counting on you to help me get back at ‗em.‖ He rapped his knuckles on the bar and returned to the other side of the bar where someone was holding up an empty pitcher. She drained her drink and switched the empty glass for the fresh one. She wondered if Jim was driving or if he had stopped for the night and was sleeping in the truck without her. She grabbed her purse off the floor at her feet. She dug around for her phone and found it. As she pulled it out she realized she would never be able to hear him. The bar was far too noisy. She relaxed her grip and the phone fell back into the lipstick, keys, wallet, and other occupants of her purse. Her food order would be ready soon. She squirmed on the stool. She needed to pee. She pivoted to her left to get up and put her purse on the bar. As she got up, she looked through the crowd to pick a path. She headed toward the entry and turned down the narrow hall to where the single-user bathroom was. At least, there was one for men and one for women. The unisex toilets she encountered once in a while drove her nuts. There was a small split in the crowd, a straight shot to the entry. As she gathered herself to move, two kids came in the door followed by a couple. She didn‘t recognize the woman, but the man was Toby Green. My God, she hadn‘t seen him since high school. He barely looked older: the hair, the smile, the six-foot-two body of an athlete. He was saying something to the boy, and then to the woman next to him. They must be his kids, and she must be his wife. Then he waved at someone and the kids bolted in the direction he had waved. DonnaLynn sat back down. The kids ran over to the older couple. She realized the older couple she hadn‘t been able to place were Toby‘s parents, and Toby looked like his father. Toby had been the crush of all the girls, the quarterback of the high school team. He got a scholarship to Eau Claire. He seemed so perfect, always friendly with everyone. So perfect that she had let herself get drunk at the first day of senior year party and had gone
off in the bushes with him. For three months, she had pined for him. Another party at the end of the football season, and again she had gotten drunk and pursued him. They ended up in the back seat of his father‘s car. Two weeks later her months of torture had begun again. She always assumed it was just a coincidence, him not coming around after their hook-ups. It took the rest of her senior year to realize that to Mr. Nice Guy—who had smiled and said hi to everybody—she was just another girl. The boy and girl were really cute. They hugged their grandparents. They were obviously happy to see them and instantly started chatting with them. The little girl climbed onto her grandmother‘s lap. The grandfather pulled a chair back for the little boy to sit next to him. The wife was pregnant. DonnaLynn saw it when the woman bent over to kiss her in-laws. Toby took off his coat and sat down. She stared at him. It was a good thing they were across the room. With the crowd, they wouldn‘t notice her. DonnaLynn was stunned. She shook her head. What was wrong with her? It had to be at least fourteen or fifteen years. He still looked perfect, and he had the perfect family. The son that smiled like his father and grandfather. The cuter than could be little girl. And the beautiful pregnant wife. ―Here‘s your food, DonnaLynn. You want another drink?‖ Lonnie placed the steaming plate of deep fried fish and potato pancakes in front of her. ―Those two fools said they‘d buy you another.‖ DonnaLynn realized someone was talking to her. ―What? What‘d you say, Lonnie?‖ Lonnie looked across the room where DonnaLynn had been staring. ―Oh, hey, that‘s Toby Green. You know him?‖ ―Uh, yeah. I used to. Knew him in high school. How do you know him?‖ ―He coached my little brother‘s baseball team last summer. He‘s a really nice guy. Great with that gang of jerks. They thought he was the greatest.‖
―He was the star. Football though. I forgot he played baseball.‖ ―He let me help out by hitting fly balls in Jeremy‘s practices last summer.‖ ―He‘s got kids. And another one soon, the way it looks.‖ ―I‘d say you‘re right. I think I‘ll go say hi. You want me to say hi for you?‖ ―Oh no. No. That‘s okay.‖ Lonnie gave her a puzzled look. ―You sure?‖ ―It‘s been a long time. No.‖ ―Suit yourself. Here‘s the drink from our favorite pole cat chasers.‖ Lonnie went to the other side of the bar and yelled out, ―Hey, Coach Green.‖ Toby and his father both looked up at Lonnie and waved. Lonnie waved back. Toby said something and Lonnie went and dug into a cooler for a couple of beers, opened the bottles, and held them up. Toby came to bar, took them, and engaged Lonnie in conversation. DonnaLynn bolted from her chair and, quickly ducking into the crowd, headed for the bathroom. They were still talking, but it didn‘t appear Lonnie had said anything about her since the two men remained face-to-face. She got into the narrow hall outside the restroom. The door was locked. She looked back into the room. She couldn‘t see the table the Green family was seated at, which meant they couldn‘t see her. She took a big breath and exhaled, twice. DonnaLynn went into the restroom, closed, and locked the door. She sat down on the toilet and rested her head in both hands. Those kids really were cute. Tears came to the edges of her eyes. She wiped them off and grabbed another deep breath. The pregnant but slender wife was right out of a magazine, soon to
bring another cuter than cute person into the world. DonnaLynn didn‘t know her name, but she looked as perfect as her husband. What had come over her? She had been pregnant, but to her relief she miscarried. She and Jim could have kids. They could be the perfect parents. Jim could come off the road. He could coach little league or whatever it was. She was a good-looking girl, or certainly had been a few years earlier. Good enough for a football star. Jim was a handsome guy, too. Their kids would be super cute. She and Jim weren‘t getting younger. They were in their thirties. Maybe it was the life the Greens, the perfect family, seemed to have. Or maybe it was too many brandy old-fashioneds. She sat up. She needed to get a hold of herself. Just go home. Call Jim. He would tell her everything was all right. And it would be. She got up and looked in the mirror. The last time she saw Toby, she‘d worn less make-up. She hadn‘t dyed her hair then. She certainly was thinner. Now, she still looked pretty good. Maybe not the same, but everyone changes. Except for Mr. Perfect. She took another deep breath. She‘d leave. Go home and call the man she loved. Who loved her. She opened the door and entered the hall. Toby was standing there with his son. He was waiting on the bathroom, the boy shifting from one foot to the other. Her jaw dropped and she caught her breath. ―Hi.‖ Toby smiled at her. The smile she‘d longed for every day for months on end in high school. ―Oh, hi.‖ She blurted and smiled. ―Oh, your son is so cute. He looks just like you.‖ ―Thanks.‖ Toby looked at her, and then he looked down at his son and roughed up his hair. DonnaLynn didn‘t know what to say. Toby looked back at her and smiled again. The noise-filled silence choked her. She had to say something. ―I bet he charms all the girls.‖
―Well, maybe not the girls but he does okay with the moms. Right, Toby?‖ He looked back down at his son. He was named after his father. Perfect, she thought. ―I always liked that name.‖ She said it with a wistful sincerity. Toby, the father, looked back up and squinted as if remembering something for a moment. ―The poor kid got named after his father. My wife‘s family tradition.‖ DonnaLynn suddenly realized. He didn‘t recognize her. She felt a surge of heat swell her face. She was flustered. Embarrassed. She needed to escape. He kept smiling. She turned but the hall was jammed with people waiting on the restrooms. She looked back at father and son. Her face flushed, stinging. ―Say bye to the lady.‖ The father instructed the son. ―Bye.‖ He waved a little wave. DonnaLynn said bye to the boy and tried to slip by the people in the hallway. She was the one he took into the lilacs, the one in the backseat of his father‟s car! She arrived at the entrance and hustled out of the door. She needed to call Jim. He would make everything better. Then she realized her purse was sitting on the bar, and her phone was in her purse. The sun was down and the air cool. It was a full moon. A quick shiver ran through her. No purse, no phone, no coat. She shivered and her eyes swelled with tears. No purse meant no tissue. She dabbed at her eyes. What was wrong with her? Now, suddenly, she needed kids of her own. She had never been jealous of other people and what they had. So what if he was perfect. Jim was perfect for her. So what if he didn‘t recognize her. Jim thought she was beautiful. And now she had to go back in there. Maybe she should just leave? Lonnie would get her coat and purse. But how would she explain that: I lost it over some guy from way back and his oh-so-perfect wife and
kids. Geez, this was nuts. The tears started running down her face. She rubbed them off with her forearm. That‘s why he didn‘t recognize her. Look at her arm, look at her legs, look at her chest and gut. Her weight hadn‘t doubled but it had put on pounds or whatever. Still, he should have seen it was her. A real Mr. Perfect would know. She had nothing to be ashamed of. He wasn‘t perfect. She and her friends had made him into that, a mirage. She had seen what she wanted to see, and it was the same way today. The door to the tavern croaked open. DonnaLynn quickly turned in order to not see and not be seen. She recognized the two voices: Denny and Jack. They were coming out for their after dinner cheroot, some small bourbon flavored cigars that she had never seen anyone else smoke, a left over habit from when they were young. ―Hey, DonnaLynn, what you doin‘ out here? You don‘t smoke, do you?‖ Hell, they recognized her with her back to them! She swiped at her eyes again, but didn‘t turn around. They came up on both sides of her. ―It‘s a little cool out here for enjoying the moonlight, girl.‖ Old Jack had four daughters. Claimed he knew everything there was to know about women except one thing. Whatever that thing was they were thinking. She didn‘t reply. They stood on either side of her. The smoke from their cigars put a sweet scent in the air. The smell wasn‘t annoying. Actually, it was like a comfortable memory when she inhaled. They didn‘t say anything. They both pulled in a breath on their smokes and exhaled. Denny spoke like a gentle back rub. ―You missin‘ Jim?‖ DonnaLynn nodded her head.
―It‘s gotta be tough havin‘ him gone so much.‖ She nodded again. A car went by on the street, and a second car. ―Would you like a cheroot?‖ Old Jack fumbled in his shirt pocket and held one out in front of her. ―Oh, no. No thanks. I actually like the smell but I‘ve never smoked.‖ She looked from one to the other and smiled, still embarrassed. ―Well, at least you don‘t have that vice.‖ Denny tried to loosen the tension. ―Now if you have some other vices, we‘d like to hear about those.‖ She tried to respond. ―I locked up all my vices a few years ago.‖ ―Then we need to find the key. Right, Jack?‖ ―Absolutely. Women need vices. That‘s what keeps it interesting.‖ ―I can‘t find the key. I think I lost it.‖ ―Something tells me you gave it to Jim. You‘ve got his key, don‘t ya?‖ She smiled at them blinking. They were like a couple of corn snakes. Scary but harmless. ―I should go back in and get my purse. My phone‘s in there.‖ ―That‘s a good idea. Let‘s call him up and harass him. That boy needs to spend more time at home. Let us straighten his ass out.‖ The two men turned and headed for the door. Jack and Denny got there, opened it, and turned. DonnaLynn hadn‘t moved. They hesitated. ―Stay out here with DonnaLynn, Jack. I‘ll go get her purse.‖ ―Grab her coat while you‘re at it.‖
Denny balanced his cigar on top of the small porch‘s railing and disappeared into the tavern. Jack took a pull on his cigar and walked back to where DonnaLynn had not moved. She kept her head down. Jack looked up into the moonlit sky, put his smoke up to his lips, and inhaled. ―You know, I like going for walks when the moon‘s like this. Everything looks different, but you know it‘s the same.‖ The smoke tumbled out with the words in small clouds that quickly dissipated, but the scent lingered. DonnaLynn took a deep breath and let it fill her lungs. ―You know, Jack, right after a snow it‘s even brighter. You see more of what you don‘t see during the day. It makes you realize things can be different.‖ DonnaLynn took another deep breath. ―You know, Jack, I think I will try one of those.‖ She held her hand out. Jack reached in his pocket, pulled out a cheroot, and handed it to her.
Doug Van Hooser lives and writes in southern Wisconsin and Chicago. He is a network playwright at Chicago Dramatists Theatre where three of his plays have been read. His poetry most recently appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal. This is his first publication of short fiction.
SHOWERS C.C. Russell Something hits the air outside of Cheyenne—a burning scar across molecules of sky. Something heats itself through friction to the point where it combusts, becomes pure energy. This is how your story begins. Your head turns toward a meteor flashing in an arc over the horizon, and you breathe nostalgia. August. Summer is ending and you sing ―American Pie‖ sitting on the beach of the reservoir while stars fall. Your two best friends harmonize. Two years from now, you will no longer know where they live. Two years from now, a frozen chunk of space gas will light your vision on fire and you will come back to this beach, this moment, the chorus ending, your hand bringing the long sweaty neck of a Budweiser bottle toward your lips. The harmony fades slowly, like any true pop song. You flicker in and out of time. Perseids. You‘re on a blanket while the girl reads T.S. Eliot aloud. She is afraid. You are afraid. Both of completely different ideas. Lines of The Wasteland tilt out over the fields of wheat while the sky lights up like the Fourth of July. You count burning trails, try to breathe calmly, quietly, to yourself. Outside of Cheyenne, you come back to yourself, to the sound of hushed voices in Japanese. Only there is one shooting star, and this is not a night for McLean or Eliot. This is a night for the warmth of whiskey and wish I may, wish I might. This is a night moving slowly enough for the ghosts of time to catch up, for you to rest.
Outside of Cheyenne, voices in Japanese filter through the air. Something burns its way toward being grounded. Outside of Cheyenne, for a second, you believe it is better to fade away. Outside of Cheyenne, you are remembering. This is how your story begins.
C.C. Russell currently lives in Wyoming with his wife, daughter, and two cats. In the past, he has also lived in New York and Ohio. His writing has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Hazmat Review, and The Meadow, among others, as well as on Kysoflash.com. He holds a BA in English from the University of Wyoming and has held jobs in a wide range of vocations—everything from graveyard shift convenience store clerk to retail management with stops along the way as dive bar deejay and swimming pool maintenance.
THE AFTER Disa Turner In the After, our bodies are more than their salt content. More than their ranges of motion or their vocal cord vibrations. In the After, everyone speaks in whispers if we speak at all Because the After is eggshell blue soap bubble early morning fragile. In the After, no one uses maps because we know how to read the signs. In the After, no one wears shoes or cares when it rains. The After is about the same size as a love poem that‘s not about love and roughly the same shape as a nervous glance inside a first touch. In the After, you wear your own bones in someone else‘s clothes. If you‘re lucky, the After tastes as good as it smells. If you‘re lucky, it lingers past noon, into the evening. If you don‘t believe in luck, the After sounds a little like fate, a little like coincidence. In the After, we don‘t use names. Names are for the before, when gravity pulls us under the surface and over the edge, one body in unstoppable motion, and Living
is our favorite way to die. Visiting hours are limited. The only ones who stay are the madmen and the poets. This place is the After.
Disa Turner is currently applying to MFA programs in creative writing. In the meantime, she amuses herself as a part-time fairy dog-mother, visual artist, volunteer, and guitarist in the alt-rock band Standing Under Streetlights. Her work has previously appeared in Warren and Digital Papercut.
NO BIG Nels Hanson There‘s not much to tell though it‘s not a simple story. My brother Howard and cousin John were standing in the barnyard, talking to the neighbor, Joe Winters, when Terry drove up. He jumped out of his pickup, yelling and waving both arms, about what I don‘t know, off his head or high on coke, then limping in a fast circle, lame foot from the old accident. He was wild, finally threatened to hurt the kids and Howard‘s wife heard from the porch and called the sheriff. Now Terry went up to Joe, said Joe was the ugliest man on Earth and later Joe said for a second he‘d thought Terry was lucid. The siren stopped and Howard told both cops to be careful of his back as they loaded Terry in the car to take him up to Fresno to Community Hospital‘s mental ward for three days‘ observation. The day before like Jesus at the Last Supper he‘d asked Howard and John to drink
red wine and share crackers with him. It was all strange – nothing about it was funny. Six months without seeing his friends – all their wives were scared – living alone at the farm with a divorced mother, maybe his Lakers game with Magic Johnson just over on TV, one winter Saturday in white paint he splashed Extreme Danger! Don‘t Enter! on the garage door, closed it tight, started the car. I‘d seen him once after his bad trouble, corner station for gas. He kept his head down as he hurried by me with his limp without stopping, just asking softly, ―I didn‘t hurt you, did I?‖ ―You didn‘t hurt anybody,‖ I said but Terry moved on. At his funeral an Armenian priest said that God was like the brilliant engineer who built Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. He‘d strung a net of strongest rope under the unfinished span for men who might lose their footing and fall to the far icy waters of the Bay. Terry who used to grin and say ―No Big‖ at any hardest job had slipped but surely in an open waiting hand he‘d landed safe and sound and I nodded and believe it.
Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher, and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation‘s James D. Phelan Award, Pushcart Prize nominations in 2010, 2012, and 2014, and has appeared in Antioch Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, and other journals. Poems appeared in Word Riot, Oklahoma Review, Pacific Review and other magazines, and are in press at Sharkpack Review Annual, The Straddler, Stoneboat, Meat for Tea, Squalorly, Sediments, Carbon Culture Review, Works & Days, Blotterature, Straight Forward Poetry, and The Mad Hatter's Review. Poems in Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine and Citron Review have been nominated for 2014 Pushcart Prizes.
ILL-FITTING PAJAMAS Zachary Ginsburg Two weeks after he returned home from his freshman year of college, Aaron finds himself in his backyard, holding a metal can of lighter fluid above his childhood teddy bear. His heartbeat rises as he smells the gritty fumes that waft out of the red plastic top. The teddy, whose name is Berry, has been Aaron‘s stuffed animal since the day he was born. It is Berry‘s time, and he should be grateful for his long warm life. Aaron whispers a battle cry, eyes widening with rage as he flips the can and squeezes with all his might. The clear stream of fluid dyes Berry‘s worn cotton fur a darker brown. It beads on Berry‘s round plastic eyes; the right one was chipped on a bed post when Aaron was seven. The sight of the drenched stuffed animal now disgusts him, and he doesn‘t hesitate to pull out a strike-anywhere match and press it against the zipper of his jeans. Aaron‘s neck seizes up when he hears the rusty hinges of the back door opening. He pulls the match and tiptoes backwards on the grass until he is safely under the porch. Through the gaps between the wood, he sees a figure walking to the railings. Her heeled shoes strike loudly against the wood, and she stands in the dim light of the porch lamp. Aaron quickly averts his eyes the moment he sees she is wearing a dress and waits with his head level in the darkness. She unzips her purse and fumbles with something that sounds like paper. He hears the flicks of a Bic lighter. He breathes softly, waiting for his little sister to go back inside. Cigarettes? This is the first time he‘s seen Catherine smoking, but he‘s not surprised. For two weeks now, he‘s been continuously
bombarded by her new persona of skimpy clothing, makeup, dyed blond hair, and attitude. Cigarettes push this transformation to a destructive level he never thought possible. He can only hope that she‘s over-stretched the rubber band and will slingshot back to her old self. *** The night after he arrived from downstate, Aaron sat with his mother in the kitchen while she cooked his favorite meal: breaded pork chops with mashed potatoes. In a state of post-finals euphoria, he rattled on about his Econ professor. ―Don‘t worry about exam. Go be with girlfriend or boyfriend,‖ Aaron said, impersonating the professor‘s Eastern European accent. He had perfected it by repeating it over and over for his friends when they would meet up in his dorm room and smoke weed out of an apple. His mother hung on his every word having waited since Winter Break to see him. She called upstairs to Catherine when the greasy brown pork chops were pulled off of the stove and stacked high on a plate. Aaron expected his tomboy sister to run up and hug him before asking him when they could go on their first bike ride of the summer. In walked a blond girl with an array of different colors penciled and painted onto her face. She was a stranger who sat at the dinner table. Without a word, she tapped on her phone. Very funny. Not at all sure what the joke might be. ―I didn‘t know we were having Lady Gaga for dinner,‖ he said. His words hovered in the room turning toxic in the silence. Catherine kept her eyes glued to the phone. ―If only,‖ she said, deepening her voice.
A few minutes after dinner was ready, Aaron knew this was not the homecoming he had imagined. The pork chops were delicious as always, but his sister was unusually quiet. He searched his mother‘s eyes for an explanation, but all he found was a glimmer of strategic acceptance, tucked away in a cherry facade. While Catherine‘s silence was deafening, she was not altogether mute. ―Were you still going to frat parties this semester?‖ His mother asked. ―Yeah,‖ said Aaron, ―There‘s usually a massive crowd waiting on the lawn just to get in.‖ ―You know,‖ began his mother, ―I was a little sister to your father‘s frat.‖ ―No one wants to hear about that,‖ said Catherine, her flat tone leaving a lonely echo. Speak for yourself. As he chewed his pork chop, he could taste the summer‘s optimism turning sour. It was time to start throwing away plans for family movies, new restaurants, and evening bike rides. You can‘t bike in short skirts. His mother surprised him with creme brûlée. She presented a tray of three custard filled ramekins. The not yet caramelized brown sugar was spread across the tops. ―Do the honors,‖ she said, handing him the silver torch. He stared at the gun shaped object in his hand. ―I‘ll let Catherine do it.‖ ―Naw,‖ said Catherine, fully committed to her curtness. Aaron squeezed the trigger that ignited the sharp blue flame. Smoke blew into the air as he touched the torch to the brown sugar. On Catherine‘s dish, he found his finger locked in place as
he burned the bubbling sugar to black. The charred smell made him feel guilty until Catherine reached for a less burnt one and dug right in. Then, she was gone. Apparently, some guy named Brory was ―out front.‖ Out front? In a car? Who‟s Brory? Aaron waited for details. ―11 o‘clock. Okay?‖ Their mother said. ―As always,‖ said Catherine. She took her last bite, grabbed her purse, and was off. She left an empty dish and a polished spoon. *** Catherine came and went, seemingly only to eat and change her clothes. The few times they ate dinner together, it always ended in ―out front‖ with Brory, and leaving Aaron to the solitude of his old bedroom. The action-movie heroes that hung on his walls were falling short of helping him come up with a new plan. With his sister out of the picture, he texted his high school friends, only to discover that they had taken advantage of the summer by scattering themselves as far away from home as possible. Slumped in his desk chair, he put up little to no fight against his ensuing boredom. He entered a state of catatonic TV watching, allowing his reality to mesh with that of a sitcom: a hilarious group of childhood friends, now in their working twenties, teased each other into becoming better versions of themselves. Aaron felt that he was going in the opposite direction. His insecurities feasted like kings on his wasted hours. He saw his former self at college, tossing and turning in his bed and having nightmares about his classes. His insecurities became opaque and dream-like. He chased them around his room and grabbed each by the scruff of their necks hoisting them into the air. He held one to the light longer than the others.
He had been at a party, drunk on peppermint schnapps. There was a girl. They were dancing. He put his hand on the bare skin of her lower back feeling her sweat. They rocked back and forth to the beats of shaking speakers. He looked at her and was absorbed by her dark eyes. They kissed and touched tongues while caressing each other. Everything in the background, the music, the people, faded away until she was the sole source of his senses. They separated. She was gone, suddenly following her friends out of the party. Aaron didn‘t just tell his friends that he got laid, he had told himself as well. The very thought of failing to have sex at college was unimaginable, so he lied. He packaged his lies into a small dense orb and locked it in a prism of carefully crafted, even ingenious, excuses for his lack of fulfillment. The more he squirmed in self-doubt the deeper he sank, like quicksand. He screamed, but he was alone. *** A few days later, he collapsed into a chair on his porch after a tiring bike ride. He gulped an iced tea and relished the pain in his sore muscles. The view from the Steel Bridge at sunset had helped him pump his legs pushing ever westward. ―How was your ride honey?‖ His mother asked. He described the details of the ride—Burnside was backed up with traffic, but the sky was clear enough to see Mt. Hood—and avoided taking the conversation further than that. ―I guess not,‖ he said answering a question about his sister. He took a gulp of iced tea. ―Did you ask her?‖ ―How could I? She‘s never around,‖ he said. ―She‘s still your sister,‖ his mother said lifting the empty glass from the table and shutting the porch door behind her.
Aaron leaned back in his chair, his eyes squinting into the warm sunlight. He thought about how he‘d just returned his bike to the stand in the garage, placing it right next to Catherine‘s. She had been wearing her favorite pajamas, the blue ones with the bunnies, when she came down the stairs on her eleventh birthday. The pants were silky but the shirt was super soft cotton and always smelled as if it was fresh out of the dryer. No matter the day, she was guaranteed to be wearing them after 9pm. ―Thank you, thank you,‖ she had said, as she laid her eyes on an adult-sized purple mountain bike. Her wavy brown hair bounced behind her as she ran to hug her mother. She hesitated slightly before she grabbed the handlebars, as if first touch meant ownership. Pajamas and all, she rode up and down the block until their mother had called her in for breakfast. Aaron flexed his arms as a refreshing breeze ruffled his matted helmet-hair. Aside from the pain in his legs, a part of him ached for summers past, when he and Catherine would ride across the Steel Bridge, heading for streets unknown. He had pointed at potholes, outstretching an arm and a finger so she could steer around them. The rule had been: if you know you are going to hit one, don‘t swerve. Hit it and hold on tight. *** ―I can hear you down there.‖ Aaron‘s heartbeat quickens as embarrassment floods the underside of the porch. Berry is soaking in the middle of the yard. Hit it and hold on tight. The porch light blinds him as he steps into the yard and looks up. Catherine faces him sideways, one hand on the railing, the other holding her cigarette loosely in the air. Her shadowed grin seems impossibly large. ―Smoking kills, you know?‖ He says with a smirk.
She takes a drag and tilts her head back exhaling toward the night sky. ―Who‘s the real killer here?‖ Aaron thinks about Berry, poor little Berry, sitting slumped to one side in the grass. ―I guess we both are.‖ ―So,‖ she says, ―what are you waiting for?‖ He feels the heat behind him even though the fire hasn‘t been started. His inability to collect his thoughts begins to overwhelm him. He squeezes the metal can in his hand digging with his fingertips. ―I‘m waiting for my sister to come home.‖ She drops her eyes and stares at the cigarette butt between her fingers. ―Funny that you‘re the one who‘s been gone all year.‖ He loosens his grip on the dented metal can. Bowing his head slightly, the chaos in his mind slows, and he lets his shoulders fall. She flicks her cigarette and takes a deep breath of fresh air. ―I‘ll turn on the hose,‖ she says. He holds Berry in the air with an outstretched arm while she sprays him down. Somewhere between perfume and lighter fluid, eye shadow and veiled emotions, Aaron remembers that you never forget how to ride a bike.
Zachary Ginsburg grew up in Chicago, where there are no firework stores. After hopping across the Indiana border and back, he would illuminate the night sky above the park next to his house. He eventually channeled his pyromaniac tendencies into the more precarious outlet of fiction writing, which he studied at Wesleyan University. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon. This is his first published story.
GUERILLA BAPTISM Donna Girouard A quick trip to St. Anne‘s before lunch and shopping. That‘s all. I suspected nothing when my mother requested that we swing by the Shrine in Sturbridge one afternoon during my annual summer visit to Massachusetts from Florida, where I‘d moved with my husband. My mother‘s best friend, a woman who had babysat me when I‘d first started school, accompanied us. Della Mallon, a widow and staunch Catholic like my mother, had never gotten her driver‘s license, so Ma‘s explanation that Della wanted to come along to light a candle for someone in her family made sense to me. Once a month or so, the two of them would visit the shrine; it was pretty much their routine when they went out to lunch. ―I know you don‘t believe,‖ Ma always said to me on the phone, ―but I lit a candle for you anyway.‖ I usually rolled my eyes, something I would never do in her presence, and just let her talk. One time, I did smart-mouth her on the phone. When she said she went to St. Anne‘s, I beat her to the punch: ―Did you light a candle and make a wish?‖ I think if my mother had been the type of person to hang up on people, my sarcasm would have been answered with a dial tone. I don‘t remember her response, but I never said anything like that to her again. When we arrived at St. Anne‘s, I picked up my infant daughter from her car seat and walked toward the shrine with Della and my mother. About ten feet or so from the door, I stopped and announced that I would wait right there in the shade while they went in. I‘m not sure why I didn‘t want to go inside. The summer
heat was brutal. I didn‘t know if the building was air conditioned or not, but I don‘t think that was my issue. I knew the layout; I‘d been to the shrine many times as a child, had even, in my devout Catholic days, gone up the Holy Stairs on my knees, while saying a prayer at each step. You can‘t get more ceremonious than that. However, something about the shrine struck me as fraudulent. Inside the Votive Shrine area, where my mother and Della were headed, in the corner, stood a statue of St. Anne herself. All around her were canes, crutches, and various types of eye glasses and eye patches, supposedly left by people who were healed through prayer. After my third eye surgery the year I turned eleven, my mother had taken me into that room and removed an old pair of my coke-bottle glasses from her purse. ―I want to leave these under the statue,‖ she said. ―Wait a minute,‖ I objected, ―Those are only my old glasses. My eyes haven‘t gotten any better. I just got new glasses.‖ ―Before you went into the hospital, I lit a candle for you,‖ she said. ―And while you were in surgery, I prayed to St. Anne. You came out of the surgery.‖ ―That makes no difference,‖ I insisted. ―People leave these things not because they got new ones but because they‘re cured.‖ Didn‘t they? ―My new glasses are just as thick as my old ones. My eyes are just straighter.‖ If this whole display was a lie, I would certainly not be part of it. We continued to argue in stage whispers until I finally turned and walked out. She followed. She hadn‘t left the glasses, but her mouth made a thin unhappy line. That thin unhappy line faced me again as I stepped back into deeper shade under the drooping tree branches. ―Go ahead, take your time,‖ I told Ma. ―Chloe‘s asleep anyway. I don‘t mind waiting.‖
My mother hesitated and then followed Della into the Votive Shrine. I watched them enter, two older women in shapeless polyester slacks, hanging onto each other for balance. Only a few minutes passed before the two emerged separately, a funny expression on my mother‘s face. Uncertainty? Nervousness? Is it only in retrospect that I see her pace as quicker and more determined, or did she really approach me that way? Perhaps I imagine that only now because what she did next took me completely by surprise. ―Here,‖ she said, thrusting her suitcase-sized faux leather pocketbook at me. ―Take my bag.‖ And before I could even react, she snatched, for there is no other word more accurate, my baby from my arms and hurried with her back into the shrine. For a moment, I simply stood there, mouth open, stupidly looking at the pocketbook in my arms where only a moment before my daughter had slept. Still speechless, I turned to Della, but saw only the back of her permed head. Deliberately avoiding my eyes, she looked up at the skies. ―What is she doing?‖ I could barely get the words out. My shock felt like a hard, hot ball in my stomach, and something started to pound in my temples. ―I think she‘s baptizing Chloe.‖ Della‘s voice was soft, perhaps apologetic, and she giggled as she always did in an uncomfortable situation. My child? Without any discussion, debate, permission? I realized then that the afternoon had been planned by my mother, and that I briefly foiled her plan when I‘d decided to stay outside, which forced her to improvise. In that moment, I hated her for openly overruling my position as the mother and decision-maker of my child; she reduced me from an adult to a child as she stripped me of my dignity along with my authority. Uncertain of what to do despite the anger forming a bitter taste in my mouth, I could only stand there, my indecision making me even angrier.
I waited in the same spot when Ma came out of the shrine, her face flushed. When she reached me, I took my daughter from her arms and handed her pocketbook back to her. Then I turned and walked toward the car. The three of us ate lunch at Friendly‘s in silence. I spent the entire meal planning my verbal attack. We dropped Della off, and when we got into Ma‘s kitchen, I turned on her. ―I cannot believe you did that!‖ ―Donna, what‘s the harm? I know you don‘t believe, but she‘s just an innocent little baby.‖ Clearly, my mother decided on playing the sympathy card. ―You didn‘t even ask me!‖ ―You would have said no.‖ She was right; I probably would have. I‘d graduated from college whereas my mother hadn't finished high school. I‘d long given up on the Catholic Church and God and decided I‘d outgrown them along with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. At twenty-six, I considered myself intellectually superior to my mother. In my selfrighteousness, I was sure that I knew more about the world than someone who‘d never lived outside of North Brookfield and that of course my wisdom extended to child rearing. I was uncompromising and intolerant and proud of it. So even though I knew that, as an Irish Catholic who had been taught by the nuns of St. Joseph‘s Church, my mother truly feared for her granddaughter‘s immortal soul and that her plot had not been to disgrace me but to let the sprinkling of the holy water save Chloe from eternal damnation (and, really, what harm could it do since Chloe would never remember it anyway?), I could not look past what I saw as a blatant contest of wills between me and the woman who still just assumed she could have things her way. ―That‘s not the point. She‘s my daughter. You can‘t just do what you want.‖
―You embarrassed me in front of Della. Didn‘t you see how uncomfortable she was at lunch?‖ ―I embarrassed you?‖ ―I will never forget this day.‖ My mother finished, unrelenting and unapologetic, believing herself to be the victim. But I was determined to have the last word. I met her glare with one of my own. ―Neither will I,‖ I said.
Originally from Massachusetts, Donna Girouard is an Assistant Professor of English at Livingstone College, an HBCU in Salisbury, NC, and faculty adviser of the college's literary-arts magazine. Her essays can be found in Embodied Effigies, Apeiron Review, Sugar Mule, The Oklahoma Review, and Border Crossing. Her essay, "Doppelgangers," was nominated for the 2013 Pushcart Prize. When not teaching or writing, she works on customizing her 1978 Ford truck.
IMAGINE OCTOBER Marcia Loughran After we cut down the trees, the leaves kept falling out of our minds– we knew it was autumn because of the big yellow buses. When we did away with the sky, we painted the ceiling cement gray, pretending to feel a chill in the dark that was no longer dark. We wrote postcards on soupcans to the pen-pals we saw on TV. We carved up milk cartons, handed out bullets painted like candy, and sang doorbell tunes. Waiting for winter, we drew moonlight from memory, listening to old records of dry rustling leaves. We were all that was left of the wind.
Marcia Loughran is a Family Nurse Practitioner working in drug abuse treatment and research in New York City. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2013. She has read her poetry for Writers Read NYC and the Bennington Writers Series at the Cornelia Street CafĂŠ. She is a frequent participant in the Irish American Writers and Artists Salon at Bar Thalia. Her work can also be found in Still Against War: Poems for Marie Ponsot, I, II, III, as well as in the upcoming IV.
BLESSED SAMHAIN Rivka Jacobs In 1967—the year of flower-power and social revolution—Althea Carpenter stopped lighting the bonfire, quit stoking the logs under the huge cauldron in her backyard, and bought a Viking gas range. Lucifer matches and a pilot light replaced embers from the community flames, rekindling the hearth at the start of a new year. Samhain was still Samhain, but Althea decided to celebrate in her own way. As she snapped off another of her plump sugar-pumpkins from its vine, and made it float into the belly of her wheelbarrow, she raised her eyes. There it was again—the high stone wall that defined and measured her real estate. Once upon a time, when the Swedes lived along the Schuylkill, before William Penn and his Welch Quakers moved in, when she was newly arrived in the colonies having fled the witch-hunts in her native country, she claimed an extensive tract of land. For over two centuries her home crowned a gentle hill and there were no neighbors in sight. Now her property was squeezed between 19th century mansions, surveyed into one of many rectangles fronted by clean sidewalks and paved streets. While she wasn't looking, a proper, complacent, and boring town had grown up around her, located somewhere between Haverford and Ardmore. She harvested the last of the eight-inch-diameter beauties and deftly rotated the barrow on the fore-wheel; the pile seemed precariously balanced but nothing fell. When she reached the steps that led to her kitchen, the back storm-door swung open. The pumpkins rose into the air one at a time and floated single-file at an upward angle, disappearing inside. Althea followed, smiling as she
pictured the people of the town and how they began pestering her about her puree every year around Labor Day. Throughout October, as the air cooled and leaves turned russet, gold, and brown, they stared at her house with eager eyes and licked their lips whenever they passed by. They stopped her when she shopped or ran errands, sharing their recipes, describing to her how they'd used her pumpkin the previous year. These denizens of the upper middle class, with their immaculate lawns and cars, their expensive, conservative jewelry and clothes, began to twitch and waggle their fingers when she revealed the day the sparkling jars with the pretty orange bows would be on sale again. The pumpkins had piled themselves on the linoleum at the base of her porcelain double-sink; Althea got to work. The process once involved a lot of boiling and toiling; ramming sunset-colored flesh with the wooden pestle into the aluminum cone sieve, cooking in the immense iron kettle that hung from an iron hook. Now a couple of stock pots, a food processor, and a pressure-cooker did the job. The hardest part was the initial cut; she heard them cry as each round baby was stabbed in the heart. After that, it took only minutes for her shiny carving knife to create a pile of crescentshaped slices. She moved to her long, wide basalt counter, the stove behind her hissing, the pots gurgling. She scraped off the pulp and seeds. She separated the seeds and washed them, laid them on linen towels to dry. These were reserved for planting the following year. "I've saved your children, and you will be reborn," she said, wiping her hands on her apron. She chopped the remaining pumpkin meat with rind into smaller pieces and carried these to the stove, dropping the chunks into the bubbling water for only a few minutes. Long enough to render the flesh, and remove the skin. A short time later, when the whirring of the food processor finally stopped, a row of large bowls marched down the middle of her enormous kitchen-work table, each filled to the brim with a unique, amber-orange mash preserved with just a touch of salt. Althea carefully lined up her Kerr pint jars parallel to the bowls. These had been washed with the spring water from her basement well. She then sidled to the right, to the beginning of the row. She
inhaled and exhaled and extended her arms sideways, fingers splayed. She concentrated. ―I can see you,‖ she sang to the snobbery, hermetic self-assurance, greed and self-satisfaction that tried to hide from her sharp third eye behind the comfortable sameness of her town. She lifted her carved maple-wood ladle and used it to fill the first jar to just below the neck. She held her hands; one crossed over the other palms down. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin. "You shall tell the complete truth," she intoned. She quickly grasped the metal plate with the gasket and plopped it on, then took the ring and screwed it as tightly as she could. She picked up the ladle once more, from where it rested in the first bowl, and filled the next empty jar. Hands in position, eyes closed, she said, "You shall shave your head." Althea again secured the top and ring, tightening with force. At the third jar, once it glowed pumpkin gold, she spelled, "You shall dress like your mother." She proceeded from jar to jar in a similar manner, trying not to repeat the mischief of the previous year. "You shall go barefoot," she invoked. "You shall spray whipped cream over the person you love the most," she said, trying not to laugh. "You shall be compelled to play death-metal music," she chanted, hoping this one went to a senior officer at a bank. "You shall reveal your inner most feelings to strangers." Nothing evil, nothing harsh or unduly negative, her pranks were good for twenty-four hours. The townsfolk came to her door in random order, on the day the pumpkin went on sale, and she had no plan as to who might receive what. Or when they'd use it. The only thing she made certain of was none of them ever made the connection. And they craved her puree even more the following Samhain. She reached the very last jar; each of her hefty babies produced two cups, so ninety-nine pumpkins equaled ninety-nine pints. She rose to her tip-toes and inhaled. She lowered and sighed. She felt, as she always did after this ritual, cleansed, happy, and just the slightest bit powerful. "You shall..." She paused, and concentrated, then brightened. She began again, "You shall praise and admire witches."
Rivka Jacobs was born in Philadelphia, grew up in Miami, Florida, and has lived in West Virginia for thirty-five years. She has a master's degree in sociology and another in mental health counseling. She went back to school in her fifties to earn a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Rivka is currently a Registered Nurse specializing in Psychiatric Nursing. She has one grown son, who lives in Philadelphia. She published several stories in the 1980s, stopped writing for a number of years, and resumed writing in 2009. Recently, she placed stories with The Sirens CalleZine and The Literary Hatchet.
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