Save Your Yelling For Sex and Riots

Save Your Yelling For Sex

and Riots

I saw it scrawled on a wall - or maybe I saw a picture of it scrawled on a wall - and even though it was before I had sex, and even though it was just when I was first beginning to get a taste of rioting, it resonated with me.

I made one copy of one issue of the zine it eventually inspired. I don't remember much of it, except for the title.

Contents 2

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14

16

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Chapter One (Anna, 1988)

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Celeste Kaufman

A Television Drama Jennifer Stohlmann

A Note to My Students on the Last Day of Class

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Adrian Shirk Sweeney

Teachers and Preachers

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Clifton Butt

Outlaw Poems Amber Stewart

The Columbus Day Storm 21

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Robert Balkovich

still see the light of Sarah Cadorette

The Decider Alana Westwood

Disenchantment Sophie Johnson

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26

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38

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Dry Spell Jennifer Stohlmann

The Scents That Haunt Us Celeste Kaufman

Styx Sophie Johnson

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40

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Your name: masticating glass Sarah Cadorette

The White Mass Jennifer Stohlmann

Devil's Churn Robert Balkovitch

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50

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Artwork 1, 25

Alee Bloom

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Shani Francese-Smith

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53, 63

Sophie Johnson

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12

Celeste Kaufman

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44

Laura Szajkowski

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48, 62

Alice Stanne

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1

Alee Bloom

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Chapter One (Anna, 1988) Celeste Kaufman This is the first episode of a serialized fictional podcast I'm currently working on that will (hopefully) be released later this year.

Street sounds from window Narration

The heavy summer air was blanketing the city, making everything seem like a hallucination. I was sprawled across my mattress in a tank top and underwear, my fingers lazily slipped beneath the waistband. I had kicked the sheets off my bed some time during another fitful night’s sleep long ago. Now all I could think about was how my sweat was seeping into the mattress, never to be cleaned, but I couldn’t be bothered to exert the energy it took to make the bed again.

My mind wandered back to an old one night stand. I had woken the next morning to roll onto a patch of dampness. He was standing over me, sheepishly talking about how he had spilled some water. I let him tell his story, but as soon as he left an hour later, I threw back the sheets to indeed reveal a splash of yellow. So, the mattress had already been fucked for a while now anyway.

My cat, Bastet, jumped onto the bed and began stomping around indiscriminately, crushing my windpipe as she traipsed across my neck, smashing my nipple as she wandered over my chest, tickling my feet with her belly fluff, perilously descending her exposed asshole onto my cheek until I opened my eyes and swatted her away. I had forgotten to buy cat food and so for the last three days that I had been holed up in my apartment, Bastet - both to her consternation and delight - was kept alive by me sharing my meals. A miniature bowl of cereal each morning, a square of peanut butter and jelly for lunch, a pile of buttery noodles for dinner, and midnight bites of popcorn. I mentally scanned my kitchen cabinets and the shelves of my fridge. I had been playing it fast and loose with what cats were supposed to eat already, but I was pretty

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sure a dusty old box of Little Debbies and a shot of whiskey weren’t going to cut it. If there was anything cats were good for, it was getting you out of the house.

With a groan, I pulled myself out of bed with melodramatic flair and trudged around my room, picking up various pieces of clothing from the floor until I had assembled something resembling an outfit. I grabbed my bag and headed out the door, making my way down through the levels of smells: my floor - wet rice, next floor - curry, next floor - garlic. As I stepped outside, a rush of panic came over me, but I quickly stifled it, pressing forward down the sidewalk.

Musical interlude Narration

My bodega was just on the corner, a fact that had saved me plenty of times over the last six months I’d been living in this apartment. I ducked inside, bee-lining to the shelf of cat food in the back corner - an act that always made me feel self-conscious. Then I went to the deli and ordered a baconeggandcheese, even though I was pretty sure the last time I puked for reasons unrelated to alcohol could be traced back to this same sandwich from this same deli counter.

But, hey, for $2 you couldn’t beat it.

Emboldened by the sunlight, I decided to go to the library, get myself something to read so that at least I could be an educated hermit. I walked over to Flatbush and flagged down a van. I climbed my way to the second row and pulled out my sandwich as the van lurched forward, trying to ignore the sucking of teeth from the women around me. We swerved our way up Flatbush, screeching over to the curb as hands shot out from between parked cars or passengers called out street names. As the arch of Grand Army Plaza came into view I yelled out my stop and the driver hit the brakes hard, slamming us all into the seats in front of us.

I loved the bombastic display of the central library, how it always made me feel like I was on my way to do work of utmost importance as I rushed up the steps to the gleaming gold and imposing columns. The sheer reverence of it all for reading. It was something that made me feel at home here. I passed through the rush of the lobby to the elevators and made my way up to the old, hushed bowels of the building, picking a room and diving in. I snaked through the shelves, stopping here and there to pull a book out and flip through it. I had very distinct memories of visiting the library every week as a child with my mother and bringing home a pile of books chosen at random, not really believing my luck that I could just walk away with them. I mimicked my childhood self and brought a stack of books over to a sagging armchair and sunk into it with them resting on my lap.

I was skimming through the first chapter of the third book when I couldn’t ignore the pain in my lower back any longer. I didn’t want to fault the library for having a dingy old armchair,

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but no matter how I shifted it felt like some spring had come loose and was digging into my back. I blindly felt the cushion behind me, trying to find the culprit. When I landed on something hard I realized it was not a spring, but in fact the corner of a book that must’ve slipped in the crack between the cushions. I pulled it out. Not a book, but a notebook. A plain black notebook with the edges of its covers slightly fraying. I opened it, assuming I’d find the scribbled notes of a student doing research. But, instead, there were a few pages of names, and the rest was blank.

I looked around me as if its owner would be immediately in my sight, frantically searching the floor for their lost notebook. But, with the exception of the person I could hear shuffling along a few shelves down, I was alone. I turned back to the book and traced my finger along the list of names, taking an odd amount of pleasure from feeling the indents of the words into the page.

Some names had parenthetical notations next to them with other bits of information, a neighborhood here, a year there, sometimes a name of another country. I didn’t recognize any of the names, shooting down my best guess - based on my surroundings - that it was a list of historical figures. But I guess I’m not the biggest of history buffs.

The names tugged at some primal part of me. It was the feeling I had always chased after as a kid when I’d go digging around abandoned houses or the seemingly useless rooms of old relatives’ homes or my neighbors’ sheds I’d sneak into when I knew they’d be preoccupied with meals. I couldn’t help but have a thrill of intruding on something I was never meant to see. It could be a perfectly innocuous list of names, but nonetheless my imagination ran wild. I closed the notebook and slipped it into my bag with my crumpled sandwich wrapper and cans of cat food, grabbed two books at random, and headed downstairs to check out.

Musical interlude Narration

When I pushed my door open, Bastet came bounding toward me with a pathetic chorus of meows, winding her way around my legs as I went to the kitchen to give her her first real meal in days. The kitchen was the only other room besides my bedroom that wasn’t filled with boxes. I had kept a little pathway clear through the living room but mostly it was filled with small towers of boxes, some opened with their contents half-spilling out, others sagging from the weight of those on top of them. Underneath some were the old pieces of living room furniture: a chintzy couch with matching armchair, a garishly baroque dining table with two rickety chairs, a tarnished side table. They peeked out among the mess like faded Polaroids, memories of what the apartment used to be.

I had been sitting in a cafe when I got the call. My grandmother - my only living family member - had passed away, quietly, in her sleep, and the apartment was now mine. I burst into tears, ugly open-mouth sobbing, snot dripping into my latte. That’s one of the great things about this city - if you need to cry, people let you cry, all our emotions out on display, everyone

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in silent understanding that life is hard and sometimes you need to scream that. I’ve seen men in suits crying with their heads in their hands, messy public breakups, frenzied young professionals slamming the subway doors of the train they’d just missed, tears streaming down their faces that are clearly over something bigger than arriving seven minutes later than they were expecting.

I wasn’t necessarily crying because my grandmother was dead. Grandparents’ deaths aren’t really worth public sobbing past the age of ten. I was crying because I moved to New York three years ago, partially out of some self-induced sense of duty to be near her, to take care of her in her old age and make some effort to have a family in that Norman Rockwell sense of the word. And yet it took just eight months for my dedicated weekly visits to start happening at a less frequent rate. My commitment devolved to seeing her every few months, to a phone call now and then, to only bothering at the holidays. When I got the call, I couldn’t remember the last time we had talked. And for what reason? I kept telling myself I was busy, but in reality my time was being spent binge-watching TV, drinking until I blacked out, throwing myself into one whirlwind love affair with one aimless Byronic Hero after another. The truth was she just didn’t matter to me. I left her alone and forgotten. I was crying out of an ugly, guilty, desperate sort of sadness. I was crying because I was finally completely alone and I knew I deserved to be.

When I moved into her apartment - all arched doorways and crown moulding - I tried to do the adult thing and - I think they call it - take care of her estate. But after only a few days of attempting to sort through her things I became too filled with self-loathing to finish the task. I had unpacked half of my things and packed half of hers, and the boxes left behind from each had remained in the living room ever since. Her guest room turned into an odd mish-mash of both our lives that now served as my bedroom while her room remained pristine, just as she left it, a tower of boxes pushed up against the door.

There was a part of me that hated living here, constantly reminded of my own awfulness. But, I was living in a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn rent-free. Let’s be honest, I would’ve lived there even if her body was still decomposing in her bed.

Knocks at the door Narration

This would be Dorothy. It was something I needed to get used to again, knocking. I was accustomed to the warning of the buzzer, that distance that gave you time to prepare.

Knocking now felt so immediate, so invasive. You only have one door between you.

I peered through the peephole just in case, but of course I only saw Dorothy’s distorted face. She lived downstairs, on the garlic floor, and had been a friend of my grandmother’s. I didn’t meet her until the funeral, but she approached me so casually and confidently that I got the unnerving feeling I’d known her for years. By the end of sitting shiva, we were friends.

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Dorothy

Hello dear, hello.

Narration

She was carrying a Pyrex casserole dish with oven mitts and she pushed her way past me to the kitchen.

Dorothy

I brought you some kugel - no raisins this time! I don’t mean to be nosy, but I hadn’t noticed you outside the house in a while and I wanted to make sure you’re being fed.

Narration

I was about to brag to her about going outside today but then I realized that, while I’d remembered the cat food, I forgot to get human groceries, which somehow seemed like the more embarrassing option.

Anna

Thank you.

Dorothy

Now, where's your familiar?

Narration

On cue, Bastet came running into the kitchen, rubbing her forehead against Dorothy’s shins, causing her panthose to sag even further down. Dorothy scooped her up in her arms.

Dorothy

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times! This is the prettiest! Pussy cat! I have ever! Seen!

Narration

She punctuated this with wet kisses on Bastet’s head. She set her down and turned back to me.

Dorothy

It’s nearing dinnertime, so eat this before it gets cold. Should we just eat right now? Let’s eat.

Narration

She casually started bringing things out of cabinets and drawers as if it were her own kitchen.

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Dorothy

So, how are you? What’s new with you?

Anna

Oh, um, not all that much.

Dorothy

Find a job yet?

Narration

I had quit my job a few weeks into moving into the apartment. Without the burden of rent I didn’t want to waste my energy answering phones for an advertising agency anymore. It was time to focus on my dreams of being an illustrator. It was already my selling-out Plan B version of my dreams of being an artist, but it turns out your more practical dreams aren’t exactly easy to make come true either.

Anna

Just a couple freelance things here and there.

Dorothy

Fine, in that case, find a man yet?

Anna

Even less luck there.

Narration

Dorothy stopped mid-scoop to look at me, astonished, with her hands on her hips.

Dorothy

Anna, this I don’t understand. How can the most beautiful, most talented, smartest girl in New York have so much trouble finding a man? What’s wrong with these shmucks?

Narration

She said it with such passion I almost believed the problem wasn’t me. I shrugged at her.

Dorothy

This city is teeming with nice Jewish boys. I walk around the neighborhood on my promenades and my head’s swiveling all over the place thinking woo! If only I were fifty years younger.

What’s wrong with them, huh?

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Anna

They’re all with Asians and shiksas.

Dorothy

Pah! Fucking Woody Allen. He ruined it for all of us.

Narration

Dorothy dropped the serving of kugel onto the plate with such force I thought it would break.

She balanced the dishes on her forearm, went to the living room, pushed the boxes on the dining table over to one side without an inkling of judgment, and dragged the chairs out from underneath an armful of winter coats.

Dorothy

Sit. Eat.

Musical interlude Narration

Later that night I was back to lying in bed. Dorothy and I had talked for two hours over dinner.

Well, she had done most of the talking. People who loved to talk tended to be very fond of me.

They always thought I was a great friend and they never seemed to realize they thought that because I was one of the only people in their lives to be content to sit quietly as they unraveled an endless stream of words in my general direction without me much caring if I ever got a word in edgewise. This worked out just fine for me because I liked to listen, and sitting silently next to a person meant that I wasn’t sitting silently alone.

That ache was creeping back into the pit of my stomach. My mind was simultaneously running at 100 miles per hour and feeling like it was trudging through mud. As always after Dorothy visited, I was thinking of my grandmother, my parents. I let my thoughts wander to Nick, to the roommate in college I’d had a huge falling out with, to the best friend I hadn’t seen since fourth grade. I thought of Sue, and Martha, and Sarah, and David. I thought of Ben, Teddy, Linda, and Marissa. I thought of Tom Sawyer, the cat I’d raised from a kitten who’d died my first year of college and I devoted more journal pages to his death than I did for my mother’s. I thought of the boy who humiliated me sophomore year of high school when he announced to our table in the cafeteria that I had dick-sucking lips. I thought of the man in the subway who held his phone in front of my face to take pictures of me for five stops straight and how I sat there, motionless, afraid, and how when I got home that day I finally decided to buy pepper spray on Amazon. I thought of all the things I’d wish I’d said to him. I thought of dragging him to the swinging platform in between train cars and holding him down, his head inches from

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the tracks as we barreled through the tunnel, watching his face contort in terror, not letting him up until he could repeat the first three paragraphs of the SCUM Manifesto back to me without stopping to scream.

I let myself sink into that misery so delicious it was almost arousing. I leaned over my bed to get my vibrator, but instead I grabbed my bag and pulled out the notebook I’d found at the library.

I read the list of names again. I rolled onto my side and curled up, holding the notebook against my chest like a child. After a few moments, I felt around under the covers for my phone and pulled it out from under Bastet. I opened the notebook, picked a name at random, and Googled it.

To my surprise, I was greeted with the smiling face of a middle-aged woman. She had a Facebook and a few articles written about her to announce the opening of her cafe in Park Slope. I picked another name. He was on the staff page of the Museum of Natural History and had authored several articles for scientific journals I needed a subscription to a database to read. Another. She owned an esoteric shop in Bushwick and appeared to unironically be a member of a coven. Another came up only as a name mentioned on the Ellis Island Museum’s blog, in a post featuring snapshots of the pages of an old journal. The short blurb merely said “This is a journal of a man identified as Samuel Needleman, thought to arrive from Hungary in 1912.”

I sat up, my heart starting to race as I flipped through the pages of names. Who were these people? I had thought the answer was lost in the mind of some stranger I’d never find but suddenly they seemed...real. Tangible. The answer felt just out of reach. Something I could actually discover. I looked at Bastet who, sensing my stare, opened one eye at me.

Anna

Do you think I should do it?

Narration

Bastet closed her eye and curled deeper into a ball. I looked from the notebook to my phone and back again.

Anna

Yeah, I think I should too.

Exit music Outro

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A Television Drama Jennifer Stohlmann

she visited my house on her return her Saturn return if you ask about stars but mostly Alaskan return return from the fishing run return downstream return from a summer on the edge of it all where she returned with stories of returning to herself dropped several months prior a tiny thing a rabbit dropping on the floor of my brain drop of ink on the MRI but my phone dropped from my weakened hand when I read the news the screen cracked the droplet drop wet cheek drop dropped an adenoma in me sometimes on the Survivor reunion episode at CBS a chronically ill Survivor audience member recites the way they watch Survivor on Wednesday nights

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when they used to go out to church before they had Survivor in the vocabulary of their self I watched television before she went upstream to the fish camp and I watched television when I was well in body and mind I watched television before poetry readings became our liturgy I watched TV when she came to my house still watched television while she fished yet still watched a DVD of my head scanned television channels all night watched television with my house mates we watched Survivor on days I dropped low watched television when my eyes would open watched television between naps watched it when work became too heavy when I watched television I felt the same as before she went wherever she could go and all I could do is watch television and that's the way I greeted her return watching television in pajamas on a good day I got out of bed to watch this old episode of Survivor on the living room TV oh no she said watching television is exactly where I left you before I went away from you deja vu or spent the whole summer watching television and she went upstairs to her friend my other roommate not watching television with me for a little while and I will still go on watching television in the hospital when I can begin to see through my swollen eyes and only if the surgeon watches television carefully with his endoscope up my nose and camera knives in my brain watching out for my optic nerve so I can drop into the television watching finale party for this Survivor season cast return from camp

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Sophie Johnson

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A Note to My Students on the Last Day of Class Adrian Shirk Sweeney

“I’ve been teaching this (what was a surprise) class called Bad Girls in Lit/Art/Music, which is both a survey (& unabashed celebration) of all kinds of [female] artists (the transgressive variety, i.e. any that's ever been called too sexy, too snobby, too bitchy, too crazy, too scary, etc, etc) and an investigation/intervention into [the] reception of women artists/art made by women, and the efforts to de-legitimize [it]/gaslight [them], in academia and outside, in the 19th C. and today -- and it's been so fucking amazing, and at times so hard (partly because I was like, how the hell did someone give me this class?), and because it was given to me last minute I was flying by the seat of my pants for a while…”

- Email to friend, 11/15/14

I was terrified to teach this class. It was at the end of my first week teaching freshman English at Pratt when I was tapped, and then I had a few days—most of it at a Labor Day wedding in Wyoming in which I was a bridesmaid—to make a syllabus. The night before I flew out there, I called Amber and asked her to meet me at a bar. We holed up on its patio under a little ficus tree and generated ideas: Virginia Woolf and Judith Butler? What about the Grimke sisters?

Audre Lorde, perhaps, somewhere toward the end of the semester? Salt N’ Pepa and that amazing music video of Queen Latifah owning the block in—what was it called? “Just Another Day.” I continued brainstorming on my own, tried to think of texts my favorite professors had used, and Laura Minor, who created the class, sent along some materials to me, and the rest is history.

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And eventually I wasn’t terrified. Instead I was totally inspired by what was taking place in spite of my disorder and uncertainty, by the intellectual and creative prowess of all of you, and bowled over by how much I was learning. A great mentor of mine from grad school once told me that the best assignments she’s ever given out are the ones wherein student work is so good it “freaks her out”—and your work, through the journals, presentations, and final projects have done that. They’ve freaked me out. Plus we kind of invented something: we started with a class concept, and that concept deepened and expanded as we went forth.

“Bad Girls” is a rhetorical term; one pinned on, and one assumed; used to both demean and to embolden women artists. So the class is a celebration of their work and also an examination of their public reception, and the larger framework within which those responses exist—and the other parts of our lives, as women, men, and the multitudes within us, that that framework can elucidate.

As a student, I loved it when professors would invite the class to think of our work as entering a tradition, making a contribution to a field, and not just as a pose, but in earnest. This is what the academy is for, after all: to make knowledge, to discern meaning, by students and instructors. My decision to include the work and presence of some of my closest friends came out of this idea, too. Education is an ecology: it is what takes place in the class room, and the minute you leave the class room, and the conversations you have with your friends, and the work they make, and you make, and any number of other incidentals or accidents along the way that knit it all together. And I think I try to treat all of these things—in my own life, and in my students’ lives—as working toward the same end.

So I wanted to write a little something to open the The Book of Bad Girls with [ed. note: my class compiled all of their final papers into a single volume, so they could read their peers' work]. and I was trying to work out some of my ideas over coffee, recently and again, with Amber—and the stuff I was saying reminded her of some things she’d been thinking about. I suggested that she and I write each other letters. And so that’s what we did.

-

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Dear Amber, The funny thing is that all during college, you hiked the hour-forty-five up to the Bronx twice a week: first to participate in Radical Women meetings, and second to protect women walking into an abortion clinic on Saturday mornings. You figured a lot of this stuff out before me, and to you I am indebted. And just a month before I would start teaching Bad Girls, Rachel sent me -- out of nowhere -- a link to Born in Flames (“seriously this movie was made with you in mind”), this amazing 1982 faux-documentary about feminist organizing even after the “utopian” socialist revolution, and in a nearly-bankrupt real-life NYC to boot.

And it relates (the film, your influence) I think, to all of these female artists who started to reveal and include the inherent reality of collaboration in art making, like Judy Chicago and her guild of 27 women working on The Dinner Party, and other projects that said: art is not made by the lone man issuing genius in some dank corner of a conservatory, but is rather an ecology.

I rely a great deal -- in conversation, in writing, in teaching -- on exchange and accident, and this class was all of that for me, about the right thing, or the right person, arriving at the right time in the middle of a torrent, no matter how dark or irreconcilable it all seems. I guess what I learned or began to continue thinking about again in this class were all parts of this experience: the fact that so much of my thinking as an artist emerges from exchanges and conversations and collaboration and collaborative thinking with other women -- and men, too, but a lot of women. Which I think our book of essay letters (epistolary essays?) attests to -and a lot of other work, and our work nights.

In my own nonfiction, I resist more and more the critique that my essays needed to resolve the questions they raise -- because that’s not what I’m typically doing it for. Really, to raise questions, and maybe to conjure answers, like, magically. And I wondered where the expectation, the thesis-driven essay, had emerged from -- and what the alternative forms of examination could be. Can an essay be half a thought? Can it be multiple unrelated thoughts that the reader gets to string together herself? When I think of Woolf's A Room of One's Own -- which is remembered for its thesis on income and agency, but which asserts much more enduring thoughts -- I think of it as very much so working in this way. She inverts or subverts the academic essay, the thesis. She asks, what did writing novels in the drawing room (so to speak) actually do to the form of the novel? If Shakespeare's hypothetical sister died in the streets and could never have had a public voice like that of his female characters, let alone write her own plays, what does that say about other women in literature depicted by men?

And if Keats suffered like all artists because the world was indifferent to his art, how are women, who are met with not indifference but hostility, still dealing with their art? If there's any thesis, it's really that one at the end, wherein Woolf charges artists to have a mind that is "woman manly or man womanly," a mind that is boundary-crossing. But it's not like she was leading us there, so much as she discovered she had arrived there along the way. yrs, Adrian

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Teachers and Preachers Clifton Butt

She comes from a family of teachers and preachers. Those were your only choices she says. I wasn't asking. Righteousness and sanctimony in her voice as she scolds her dog for doing only what dogs do and then her husband for being slow to go get the dog. That tone the common denominator of both professions in these towns of dust. Her daughter raises dogs and that's why they have Sadie. Her husband a teacher too she says, and in these small towns where everybody knows everybody that can cause problems. Her hair is unwashed and blows in her face without her noticing or caring. Her white loafers worn through to the gray and her coat's pocket has a hole. Wendell's father though was a sheriff. She stops talking. Walks to a bench and sits down in the dirt with her back against it. Wendell still walking slowly towards Sadie who isn't paying any mind to the old man. Neither paying attention to her yelling, Sadie, Sadie, come back, Sadie.

The threads of her life On that wind, in our tense ears Hoping they come back.

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Outlaw Poems Amber Stewart

I. Those who squeal are usually found dying or dead II. They turned over the river looking for the jumper I am the ridgerunner you’re looking for I did not escape but faked my death Because each time they bury me alive I find I have not fought the law but put it in an egg basket with other myths and memories III. I was born outside the lines Let’s go to Vegas where the boys won’t find me

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IV. The most popular populists will know how to throw a party I shot a man or they say I did a solid for an old friend with my back turned batting my eyelashes Remember to vote for good government V. Criminal activity evolved with the economy Communist strike baloney Honestly this is a habit I get Sell me a cow Ride it out of town VI. It wasn’t worth a nickel to two guys like you or me but to a collector it’s a pretty piece VII. I paid the barmaid with time and a smile Left the boys ran home to their wives VIII. Who said the frontier was an edge and not a stomach or breast Find where the blood rests IX. I’m sure you can guess the cure for impotence

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X. Everything was fine I had nothing with him He was a cowboy in one of those seven day a week fights I’m riddled Burying the bodies XI. The only difference between the criminal and the innocent is that I can look you in the eye XII. Cut the line, the deal for a reduced sentence Cut some toes and get back to business XIII. Does a good father bail you or stone you?

Mother is the best bet Don’t let Satan draw you too fast XIV. The rich man threw back a few and said get a name, a crew and a family to leave it all to XV. When are we allowed to go home XVI. The bank was dry so we took their purses and

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asked their mistresses if they’d like a good time on the ride home XVII. We ran underground at the first sound of gunfire I save my body for desire XVIII. The tunnel to the river arms locked outside so I can hide unaccused for the time being XIX. All I asked for was a getaway XX. Pardon me I forgot I was not a defendant XXI. I ask for unconditional loyalty or surrender I am the captain This is my crew The walls are dynamite

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The Columbus Day Storm Robert Balkovich

It is just past the seventh switchback that my foot hits the loose rock wrong and goes out from under me – the start of a chain reaction that sends my body tumbling on mossy stones and ferns that are damp from yesterday’s rain. I am going downward because I left the clearly marked trail, which is headed up, and decided that I wanted to see if I could get a better view of the valley from the edge of a green and rocky cliff that I noticed when I parked in the near empty lot an hour ago. Although this is strictly forbidden I have done it many times all over the state.

The markers and signs – depicting hikers plummeting off of cliff faces, or sometimes just a simple drawing of a person with a backpack crossed out – are there for insurance purposes, so that if someone goes off the trail and slips and breaks their arm they cannot sue.

No matter the outcome I would not sue because I love this state, have lived here my whole life, was born to parents who had as well. I have been coming on these trails since I was a child and my mother and father would dress me in appropriately sized hiking boots and smear sunblock on my face until it stung my eyes and march me into the desert or to the top of a waterfall. It took me years to understand what you got out of it other than a nice view.

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My heart races as I pick up momentum and try to grab at anything to stop my fall, only to find that I can’t make my arms work. I have been in situations like this before. There have been falls, scrapes, broken bones, near drownings, and after each one for a moment there was the thought, “Never again.” But that thought, that alien voice, gets quickly quieted.

At the end of this grade is a sloped ledge just before the drop to the valley floor, which is so far below that the river looks like a piece of twine. If I can slow myself enough I will come to rest there. The other precautions have been taken: my friends know where I am, there is food zipped into my coat. It was a stupid move, I know, but now I can only think of how to stop this slide when it seems my arms won’t work. I think back to things my parents told me, pieces of advice that may help in this particular situation. Of course it is difficult to draw on particular memories at a time like this, and certainly not ones that are of any particular use.

The one that comes to me and stays is my mother’s story of enduring the Columbus Day Storm in '62, a rare and powerful hurricane that struck Oregon which all of our parents talk about the same way they do the moon landing or the day JFK was shot. My mother lived in Salem, far inland, but even there the winds lashed her house and blew down trees. I think of her and her siblings on that day – even through the sensation of my body leaving the rocky grade and launching into empty air – standing in their front yards, opening their jackets to catch the wind and fly.

24

still see the light of Sarah Cadorette

months since we’d seen each other like that, all blissed out, or maybe years, & you said: I have discovered, I mean, I might like feet & I said: feet are like calligraphy —years since you’d looked at me like that, or maybe never, like your heart was imploding, or had already imploded, a dead star in a distant galaxy we could still see the light of months later, or maybe always, you said: I don’t understand foot fetishes & I said: but, they carry our bodies —the way you looked at me, I wondered whether I’d ever seen light embroider the plush of night sky

25

Alee Bloom

26

The Decider Alana Westwood Their knees touch intermittently. Caroline’s foot drums on the stair—a repetitive creaking from the ill-fitting board. Dave’s gut is in knots, a fact he tries to ignore. He tells himself, again, that he’s already made up his mind.

They sit together, waiting for the Decider to arrive.

Though he does his best to conceal it, Caroline knows he’s on edge. It shows in his furrowed brow, which she still sometimes finds cute. The mark has been deeply etched there since his secretive phone call this afternoon. She’d strained to hear from the kitchen, but couldn’t make sense of his quiet mumbles. Who would he even talk to about something like this?

A knock at the door. Caroline leaps to answer it, pausing to smooth down her bangs. A short man stands on the other side, something of Italy or perhaps Lebanon in his slickedback hair.

“You’re our… Decider?” Caroline ventures. He is much smaller than the booming voice on the phone. Dave gets up to shake his hand, but the man doesn’t move to take it.

He lowers a bushy brow. “Obviously.”

Caroline grabs Dave’s outstretched hand and pulls it back between them, entwining her fingers with his. He shoots her a glance out of the corner of his eye. When did he make

27

that a habit? He’s grateful for the hand-holding, even since it’s become rare.

“Well, come in.” Caroline smiles. “Would you like anything to drink? Water?”

The Decider is all business. “I’m going to look around your house for about an hour. Then I’ll talk to each of you, alone.”

He walks in abruptly, turning to fit his belly past them in the narrow hall. He pokes around in the kitchen a few minutes, opening and closing drawers. Cutlery clatters, their fidgeting palms stick though it's impossible to tell whose hands are sweating. The Decider bends at the waist and sniffs the counter, turning to Caroline.

“Was it you or him who washed the counter today?” Taken aback, she tries to stutter a reply. The Decider simply shakes his head disapprovingly and goes for the stairs.

Five days earlier Rain tapped the glass window of the café. Caroline sighed into her latte and continued her train of thought.

“I love Dave, of course. But how am I supposed to know if we will work together, forever?

It’s been six years. Don’t you think he should have proposed by now?”

It was the morning before she called the Decider, and her weekly coffee-date with Miriam. Miriam’s advice was the only advice she trusted. After all, Miriam had been there from the beginning, coaching her through the first bumbling attempts with pimply-faced boys in junior high. And she’d been there to pick up the pieces every time since. Those guys, all so alike—stoic, emotionally unintelligent—Miriam had never liked any of them. Until Dave.

With Dave, the connection hadn’t been instant. She wasn’t even sure if she was physically attracted to him at first. Alcohol made things sexual faster than she’d intended, but surprisingly, their first encounter lacked its usual awkwardness. It had struck her, the first time, how immediately comfortable she felt. It was still comfortable now, even if it took more effort. Making time to actually do things together had become a bit of a chore. Unless it was watching TV or making dinner, they usually didn’t.

“First of all, why is it Dave’s job to propose? If you want to marry him, you should propose to him,” Miriam replied.

Caroline looked at her blankly.

Miriam sighed. “Like you said, it has been six years. Honestly, if you aren’t sure by now,

28

then you never will be.”

This set Caroline’s teeth grinding, but she should have expected it. With the devastation Miriam had been through after her engagement was called off, she had graduated from giving optimistic advice.

She looked back out to the rain. It often rained sideways this time of year, and Caroline used to love it when the wind howled against the walls of the 1880s apartment she rented downtown. She and Dave used to cuddle and watch TV by the fire, which he’d stoke and rearrange with bare, calloused hands. She liked their rock climber’s sandpapery quality, used to rub them like a charm. When was the last time she had done that?

Miriam watched her worry deepen.

“It’s good that you are making an effort to really think it through,” Miriam offered, “Certainty is overrated. I had true love. Now I’ll never get my cat back.”

The rims of Caroline’s eyes welled, gaze still fixed somewhere outside.

“You’re probably right. If he is the one, why don’t I know it?”

“Come on, Caroline.” Miriam made a face. “Do even you believe in ‘the one’?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Caroline wiped away tears with her free hand. “It seems like an unrealistic concept, fitting perfectly with one person for the rest of your life.”

She continued, “That doesn’t mean I don’t think people can’t have good long term relationships—they definitely can. I want that, and I think I have it with Dave.”

“Well, if you don’t believe ‘the one’ is possible, then it is definitely impossible for you.”

“Do you believe in the one?” Caroline retorted. Miriam didn’t want to reply. Instead, she rooted through her purse for her phone to check the time. It was far too early on a gloomy Tuesday for this sort of emoting. It wasn’t until her fingertips brushed the corner of her wallet that she remembered she still had kept the card, even two years later. Of course she had to keep it. She had nothing else left.

Miriam slid the business card halfway across the table.

“You could try hiring a Decider.”

29

Caroline inspected it, trying to seem composed while wiping the corners of her eyes with her free hand. It was white, a little smudged and fraying at the edges, with DECIDERS printed in compact Arial. Nothing else but a small phone number along the bottom.

“What do they do, exactly?” Caroline asked. She knew already, although Miriam had never gone into detail about what had happened. Not even after Miriam’s life fell apart, when Caroline stroked her hair, teary head heavy in her lap.

Now Miriam was steeled, her gray eyes fixed on Caroline’s.

“A Decider will tell you if you and Dave are able to hack it long term, or if you have just wasted the past six years of your lives.”

Caroline hesitated, feet drumming the linoleum. Miriam reached out to pluck the card back. “Do you want it, or not?”

“I guess I could always just call and see.”

Caroline flipped it over. The back was blank except for a small, hastily scrawled X. “They don’t come cheap,” she warned.

Caroline sipped her tepid drink. She could always just call when she had a minute, she didn’t have to commit. She’d think about it that night, next to Dave’s shallow breathing.

She had spent so many hours cursing the wheezing in his chest that often kept her awake. As she slipped the card into her wallet, she wondered if she’d forgotten how to fall asleep in silence.

Four days earlier Her phone call with the Decider was short. A low-voiced man uttered a grunt in place of a greeting, Caroline offered a tentative hello.

“Yes?” he barked back.

“Are you a… Decider?”

“Yes.” She chewed on her lip.

“Could you explain to me how this works?”

“I make the decision for you.”

“About the relationship, I assume?”

30

Caroline’s foot tapped violently on the stair, but she didn’t notice. Why she had said the relationship, not my relationship?

When did she start thinking that way?

Change, a subtle symbiosis, crept in, unnoticed, sometime in their second year. When everything she talked about became ‘ours’ or ‘the’; our friends, the curtains.

They were her curtains, though, as he rarely failed to remind her (since they took awhole-goddamn-year to pick out). Yet, she insisted on "the." It was easier that way; to remove any divides, limit the breadth and depth of the chasms they could push one another into.

The Decider pulled her from drifting. “Look, lady, either you book an appointment, or you sort out your own life.”

Caroline had planned to hang up at this point, but her eye caught a photo precariously magnetized to the fridge. The selfie was taken on the third anniversary of their first date.

Well, not date, exactly… but it was easier to tell it to family that way. Easier than explaining their unexpected hook-up in the laundry room at one of Trevor’s hazy college parties. The photo: wide grins, arms draped around one another, fingers splayed. That stupid red beard he was so proud of at the time. It could have just been the angle of the camera, but something about the faraway look in his eyes, cast well out of the frame, gave her pause.

“Okay,” she spoke quietly into the phone, “Do you have anything available next week?”

“Next week is all booked. How about this Friday, eight PM?” She gave him her address, glancing instinctively at the calendar on the wall, which was still from the previous year. She made yet another mental note to put up a new one. At first, she hadn’t changed it deliberately. It was a test of sorts, to see if Dave would notice and change it himself. That was six months ago. She would inevitably lose at her game of calendar chicken, and as for Dave… well, he would never even know he’d been playing.

“Okay. How much does it cost?”

“That depends how long it takes. I will see you on Friday.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

31

Dave follows the Decider, automatically skipping the creaky stair. The Decider suddenly stops on the landing between flights, and Dave nearly walks into him. Caroline, still downstairs, rifles through the fridge for a distraction. The Decider spends at least two full minutes examining a mounted photo collage as Dave hovers nervously.

The photos were taken four years ago, when Caroline and Dave hiked part of the Appalachian Trail with Miriam and Geneviève. Shots of the four of them against burnished autumn leaves casting everything in bright contrast. Dave sees a gleam of recognition in the Decider’s eye as he studies a photo of the others. Gen’s tattooed arm is slung affectionately over Miriam. No one thought in a million years those two would break up. Dave feels a twinge of something sad—perhaps empathy, perhaps anticipation.

Dave doesn’t push away the feelings, and instead thinks about that stupid thing Caroline said when they first met, about only liking the strong, silent type. She was leaning heavily against the doorframe in the kitchen of Trevor’s apartment, beer wobbling in her hand. She was complaining about being single, and Trevor was halfheartedly interviewing her, asking her ‘type’. Dave was fixing himself a mostly-vodka screwdriver when Trevor’s hand clamped down on his shoulder. Trevor was eager to leave for more scintillating, philosophical conversation, and pulled Dave in to replace him.

“Caroline, this is Dave. Dave, Caroline,” Trevor introduced them. “He’s a good guy. Not quite your type, but close enough.”

In front of her eager smile, Dave’s mouth had suddenly felt dry, and he gulped his drink to compensate. Fortunately, she took the lead, and began asking questions that might have seemed invasive but for her earnestness. The effects of the screwdriver took hold, and they were soon mired in quiet, personal conversation. He can’t remember their words exactly, only how her eyes sparkled, and how oddly comfortable he felt under her gaze.

She had only been twenty-two, Dave thinks. Perhaps the things she said then don’t apply any longer, or she never really had a ‘type’ in the first place. Perhaps what she wanted… and what she wanted to want… were two different things entirely.

--- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Decider scribbles something on his notepad. Dave tries to crane over the short man’s shoulder to read it, but it’s illegible. He looks to Dave and plants a finger on the glass frame, leaving a greasy smudge on Geneviève’s face.

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“This couple… are they still together?” he asks. Dave shakes his head. He continues, “Our office tried to contact them for a follow-up three months after their visit. The number we had was no longer in service.”

It must have been Gen who called the Deciders, then. Once they got engaged, Miriam’s parents wanted them to check, just to be sure. It was meant only to be a formality, but once the Decider left their shared home, their separation was swift and jagged. While Caroline was caring for Miriam, the day after the breakup, Dave went for a long walk with Gen, their fingers buried in pockets up to the knuckles, puffy from the cold. Gen was ashen—she felt the spectre of Miriam on every on every street corner, holding her hand.

Kissing her passionately in every park.

Gen told him she felt she had to leave town, and asked him if it was an insane thing to do.

Was it an overreaction? Dave assured her that it wasn’t. Gen was gone by the weekend, hanged her number and moved back in with her parents in Quebec. Dave understood. If he and Caroline ever split, he, too, would have to leave everything behind. His memories, yes, but it was her city first.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Finally entering their bedroom, the Decider scrutinizes their nightstands, picking up and reading the title of each book set on their tops. Caroline’s a mixture of political non-fiction and inspirational self-help. Dave a short stack of mostly-unread National Geographic and Gripped. He wants to explain.

“I read, I like philosophy… I just had some books overdue at the library and I haven’t gotten around to …”

The Decider silences him with one finger. Dave takes the hint and returns downstairs, passing Caroline in the kitchen on his way out the back door. She is nervously downing leftover take-out Chinese, I Ching marks all over the box. She doesn’t look up at him. He thinks back to the look she used to give him--the cross-eyed teasing that led to play fighting, and then sex. Dave wonders if he will ever see it again.

He wants a beer, badly, but thinks it prudent to wait until the Decider leaves. He sits on the back stoop with the door ajar, flicking through the news feed on his phone. The Decider has moved on to interviewing Caroline, and he’d like to eavesdrop, but all he can hear is muttering. He dreads his own turn, wishing it was over with. The entire exercise is futile. Dave has already decided, and doesn’t need to pay anyone to help him. Not that she’s asked him what he wanted; not that he’s told her. Well, she wanted the strong, silent type, didn’t she?

Earlier this afternoon Dave padded into the dining room, eyes fixed on the glowing screen of his phone. It was dark in there despite being early afternoon– it was those pretentious curtains (they took

33

her a-whole-goddamn-year to pick out). He didn’t spend much time in this room. He was at his best outdoors, hiking or climbing, and couldn’t abide how the heavy fabric blocked out light.

Dave thumbed through his address book, not really sure who he was looking for. But going into an interview with a Decider like this, his guts swirling, would be like shouting about bombs in an airport. Why had she decided to put them through this? He flicked through the names in his contact list, finding reasons to be unsatisfied with each one.

Trevor’s name scrolled by, and Dave’s thumb hovered.

Dave pressed it, hoping his number was the still same. Trevor picked up on the second ring.

“Hey, David,” Trevor was surprised. “This is weird.”

Dave laughed nervously. “Because we haven’t talked in forever?”

“No, because no one actually uses a phone for talking anymore.” Silence. “Dude, what happened to you?”

Dave considered pretending he had called by accident.

Trevor was quick to the rescue. “So something’s up, I assume--you wouldn’t be calling me otherwise. Is something wrong?”

Dave teetered back on two legs of the chair, eying the doorframe to the kitchen. A thought skittered across--should he go and check to make sure Caroline wasn’t hiding in there, listening? He shook himself of the ridiculous notion.

“Yeah, kind of.”

“Look, you called me. You want to talk about something. Quit screwing around and tell me what’s up.”

Dave took a breath.

“Have you heard of Deciders?”

Brash laughter echoed.

“Caroline called a Decider? Seriously?”

Dave frowned. “How do you know she called him?”

“Let’s call it a hunch.” A pause. “Anyway, I assume she made an appointment?”

“Yeah. The guy is coming tonight.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you, buddy. Good luck, I guess?”

Dave remembered why he hadn’t spoken to Trevor in so long.

“Seriously, I call to talk to you about something like this, something serious, and that’s all you have to say to me?”

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Trevor sighed heavily on the end of the line. “The two of you have been together more than long enough to talk about the future yourselves. Have you discussed it?”

“Well, sometimes. And things have been fine, we’ve got the house and work is stressful for both of us, but there’s nothing really wrong. She hasn’t brought up marriage. It just seems too soon to think about it.”

“Dave, you’ve been together for six years.”

Dave paused. “I know.”

“Look,” Trevor started, “it makes sense. Time slips by, and I think that happens to a lot of people. But that doesn’t make it right.”

Dave scratched at the stubble on his face with his free hand. He should shave before the Decider comes.

“Are you still having sex?”

“Yeah,” Dave was defensive. Even if it was only occasional, it was still good. There was a level of physical comfort he had with her that had been there right from the beginning.

It wasn’t exactly fireworks, but sexually, they were the best fit he’d ever known. The type of women he had always gone for—chatty, outgoing—muted as soon as the clothes came off. The resultant fumbling, though still exciting, mostly just made him anxious.

Caroline talked easily about sex and never faked orgasm, which Dave appreciated. She told him how to please her, making him feel strong and competent, like he’d solved a challenging puzzle. It was the same kind of accomplishment he got from rock climbing.

Based on the coded conversations he had with male friends about their sex lives, he counted himself lucky.

Trevor jarred him. “So what will you do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe go for a climb, clear my head.”

“What do you think Caroline will do?”

Easy to predict. “Clean the house, probably.”

“That’s not what I meant. I was asking if you think she wants to stay with you.”

Dave hadn’t considered that. Of course she did—this was her life. But then, why did he get the sense that… well, she’d chosen him with less deliberation than her goddamn curtains?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Caroline calls him back to the house, and he finds her sitting on the wooden stairs with her arms crossed, face drawn. He sits. The short, bulky figure announces he has decided.

Dave protests weakly as the Decider starts to leave.

“You haven’t even asked me any questions yet.”

“I’ve seen all I need to see,” he says, half out the door. “And it’s anything that your friends,

35

your family, or even you yourselves should have seen.”

Dave turns to Caroline. “How much do we owe?”

“I paid him,” Caroline says. “You owe me a hundred and fifty… if we’re splitting it.”

Dave scratches at his still-unshaven jaw.

The Decider holds out a business card. “Give this to someone who will use it.”

Caroline gets off the creaking staircase and takes the card. The orange of the setting sun coming through the doorway hits her face, and Dave thinks she looks tired, as she often does these days. He tries to remember how she looked when they first fell in love, but he can’t imagine anything other than what is in front of him right now.

Caroline flips over the card. On the back is a small X. “What does this mean?” she asks.

The Decider looks at her derisively. “This was an easy one. You two are mismatched and stagnating. Move on with your lives, separate, and find the one who is right for you.”

“You’re not even going to tell us why?” Caroline’s voice cracks.

“If I do that, you’ll make excuses to each other, and promise to do better. You will promise to change. You won’t. These are the facts… take them or leave them.”

The Decider starts to walk out, then pauses, turning back. “One more thing. Your friends, from the photos,” he gestures to the stairwell, “tell them to call our office. The Decider on their case was let go for misconduct, and they are entitled to a full refund.”

He pulls the door shut behind him. As the latch clicks, Dave looks to Caroline. She sits down hard on the stairs, stunned, the fresh ink on the card smudging under her sweaty fingertips. He places a palm on her shoulder, but she shrugs him off, stalking to the kitchen, sniffing back tears. Dave looks to the groaning wooden board that declares her movement. He had promised to try and fix the thing, but never got around to it. Who was he kidding? He has no idea how to fix a staircase.

36

37

Alice Stanne

38

Disenchantment Sophie Johnson

We thought it was enough for us; to know that we were here.

Even as our tongues Grew too swollen for our mouths; Throats raw And ears poisoned by our own voices.

Voices that made our eyes Roll back to gaze Into an eternity That shook from The contractions Of our brains We thought it was enough for us; to know that we are here, In this place Of ours,

My legs Broken, And you, Blind.

We lead One another Into this horror, And fed on it like the gulls At low tide Until we were Tearing scraps From our own flesh.

We thought it was enough For us to know that we were here: In this place of our creation.

But ohHow the truth would break Our hearts.

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Dry Spell Jennifer Stohlmann

You hear me; I can tell. When this bell rings once, clear, see the water you've let run ground.

It could have been an easy thing, no catching bad nights' sleep on some friend's dirty couch in the middle of a drought. Almond milk in a bowl with cereal I'd thrown out.

Don't know what a farmer does; only silt you've touched is slicked up pussy. Make a sound.

And then you're gargling salt, you, innocent man cannot build a garden without real help from women who can stomach sending good seeds right to hell. Young devil's dry deal.

When this bell rings twice, put your knees on soiled ground.

When this bell rings twice, open mouth so we'll be found.

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The Scents That Haunt Us Celeste Kaufman I’ve often witnessed this particular thrill a girl experiences when she’s complimented on something she’s wearing and she responds with revealing it was her mom’s, from when she was young. While my dad keeps being an accidental fashion icon over the years with his plaid flannel, loafers, or enamel pins, it’s one of the things I’m most envious of about having a mother. For me, her things have dwindled down to just a few objects over the past twenty years since she died of breast cancer. Every time I visit home, I pick through the jewelry boxes and random pieces of clothing, hoping that something will catch my eye enough to incorporate into my own wardrobe. Maybe our tastes would have aligned if I was sorting through remnants of a different era, but the eighties are the one decade of the past century that I don’t find at all aesthetically pleasing.

And yet, now and then, I pocket something nonetheless; a silk scarf or gaudy bauble to bring back to the city with me. There will always be a little pile of eighties costume jewelry among my statement necklaces, chains, and chokers. There is just one piece that I’ll wear, and rarely - a jade pendant on a long silver chain, the necklace she’s wearing in one of the only pictures I have of her. The rest form something of a totem. Somehow, knowing that they are there provides comfort.

There is one thing, however, that I know I will never take with me. A small blue bottle of her perfume sits at the bottom of one of the jewelry boxes. I hardly ever dare even open it. It is no momentous observation, at this point, to say how loaded with memory scent can be.

But there is something particularly unsettling to have that scent unleash such vivid images of someone you barely have any memory of. I can only remember a few things about her as a real, living person and not just as an entity, but when I lift that stopper suddenly I am five years old again, feeling watched, held, soothed. I feel my head resting against her chest, her warmth, her safety, inhaling that being I saw as my own personal goddess. I don’t remember her enough to miss her, but in that moment the pain of loss becomes too much to bear.

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The last time I opened her perfume was nearly two years ago. That same day, perhaps feeling especially masochistic, I dug out another small bottle of perfume, a short frosted cylinder with a gold top. There was another mother. There has been a great deal of mental effort to erase her from the narrative, and save for the letter she wrote to me from her deathbed, this perfume is the only shred of evidence left that she ever existed in my life at all. Smelling it is even more fraught. To me, my stepmother will always be this intoxicating mix of tea rose perfume and cigarette smoke.

I was eleven at the wedding. Five months later, we got the diagnosis. The lung cancer was caught early, and there was a lot of hope, and she said she would quit for us - my dad, my younger stepbrother, and me. But, over the next few months, I’d walk through the place she just had been, through that cloud of perfume and smoke still hanging in the air. I’d spot the cigarettes sliding out of their hiding places. I’d hear the door close below me when I was hiding away reading, and crawl on my stomach until I was just hanging over the roof, looking down at her furtively smoking, the setting sun glistening off of her bald head. She was supposed to get better. But instead, six months later, less than a year after they were married, she was dead.

I wish I could miss her purely, but my memories of her are too wrapped up in anger. It’s something I can never forgive her for. She is barely spoken of. Her bullet point is skipped over when sharing life stories. My stepbrother is gone.There are no photos. There are no trinkets. But there is this bottle of perfume, stored safely far away from me for so long.

During that visit I open it and tears reflexively fall down my face. I don’t know why I do it, then, but I twist the top back on, wrap it in another scarf of my mother’s, and put it deep in the corner of my weekend bag.

When I get back to my apartment it, as always, takes me a few days to unpack. After shoving a few clothes in the hamper, I remember the perfume. I see the scarf it’s wrapped in and pull it out. But it’s not there. I dig through my bag, turn it upside down and dump everything out. Nothing. I tear through the hamper, all around my room, the hallway, the living room. I can’t find it anywhere. I figure I must not have actually packed it. But I remember it so vividly, all of the care I took so that it wouldn’t be forgotten, lost, or damaged. The bottle is so small, it must have just rolled somewhere I haven’t thought to look yet. I’ll find it eventually, I thought.

It starts a couple of weeks later. My cat jumps up into bed with me and climbs into my lap.

As he rubs his face against mine, I’m hit with that smell. Tea rose and cigarettes. A shiver runs through me, but I shake it off, thinking that my cat must have just been sleeping in whatever nook the lost perfume had found its way into. Worrying more about the bottle leaking or breaking than anything, I resumed my search, crawling around my room and closet, trying to find where he had made a spot for himself. No luck.

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Another day, I was headed for the kitchen when it was like I was twelve years old again, walking through that cloud, making me stop short. Another, I came back into my room and it was as if someone had just sprayed the perfume seconds before I got there. I’d sit in my bed and it would drift right under my nose. Sometimes the smell would just be a whiff, so fleeting I could barely be sure I’d ever experienced it at all. Other times it would linger, pulling me around the room as I tried to find its source. It always seemed to happen right after I had forgotten about the previous time, right when I stopped bracing myself before stepping into the room.

After months of this, I cracked. Once again I halt on my way out the door, tea rose and cigarettes suddenly hanging in the air. I whirl around. I pull everything off the shelves. I throw everything from every drawer. I strip my bed. I comb through every pile on the floor.

I shove my hands down into every crack and rip of my armchair, scraping my skin on the springs. I flip my rug up. I tear through my closet. I dig through every possible place an object could exist. I briefly consider taking a hammer to the wall. I collapse in the middle of my destroyed room, shaking with tears and anguish and adrenaline. It was nowhere to be found.

The following fifteen months were, let’s call it, trying.

I moved three times and switched jobs twice, each change with its own whirlwind of drama surrounding it. I was the least financially secure I’d been in years with the highest overhead I’d ever had. A rare chronic disorder I’d been dealing with for years led to having surgery, the recovery for which was much slower and much, much more painful than I had anticipated. I couldn’t even be entirely sure it solved anything, and even so there were still many symptoms it was never meant to fix that persisted or, in some cases, worsened. I had a crushing heartbreak, and several truly bizarre flings. I raced across the city after my roommate and one of my closest friends publicly posted a suicide note, finding him covered in blood on the floor of our apartment but, thankfully, still alive. I spent the next several weeks visiting him in the psych ward and serving as the point of contact for his friends, family, and doctors, organizing hospital visits and ways to help.

Shortly after he came home, I learned that the weekend he had gone into the hospital was supposed to be when I found out my lifelong best friend’s mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer. (They decided to delay telling me the news, for obvious reasons.) We’d become friends while my mom was sick and, after she died, I was more or less adopted by her family, her mom stepping into the role of mother, her aunts my aunts, her grandmother my grandmother. This was, essentially, my third mother to have cancer. It was found early, it wasn’t an especially aggressive type, she had an endless amount of positivity, and she came from one of the toughest broads I’ve ever met who could conquer anything. Everyone was saying with such convincing confidence that she was going to be okay. But I had heard that before. I would try with all my might to believe them, but in the back of my mind, always, I’d be telling myself she’d be gone by the end of the year.

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For me, the worst part about depression isn’t when I’m in the throes of it. The worst part is that, even for those periods of time when I have lifted myself out of it, I am always aware that it’s still there, just below the surface. I am always aware that my phases of respite are finite, and that at any moment it could all come crashing down again. I am always skittish around happiness, suspicious of it even, more focused on when it’s going to end than actually experiencing it.

During those fifteen months, I was teetering on the edge of depression. It would bubble up, overwhelm me, recede. I’d wake up surprised to discover this is who I was that day, and then a few days later it would disappear without a trace as unexpectedly as it began. I was perpetually swinging between feeling like I still had a chance, and feeling crushed by its seeming inevitability.

I was desperate for it not to return. My previous bout with depression nearly destroyed me.

I couldn’t go back to that. I couldn’t go back to the lifelessness, the self-destruction, the debilitating anxiety and paranoia, whichever form decided to resurrect itself this time. I was in this strange limbo where I was still able to recognize what was happening and so was constantly engaged in this battle with myself not to succumb to the flashes of it temporarily taking control. When it would rear up I’d push forward, berating myself out of submission.

“Fuck you. Not again. Not now.”

The onslaught of blows, however, eventually slowed. One afternoon, when I was just beginning to catch my breath, I decided to paint. My mom was a painter - her standing at her easel is one of my most vivid images of her - and whenever I sit down with my paints I feel connected to her. It was the perfect self-medication to quell the unsteadiness of my current mental state. My canvases were on the top shelf of a closet, and I stretched up to feel around blindly for a corner I could grab onto to pull one down.

A small hard object came falling down, hit me right in the face, crashed to my feet, and rolled a few inches across the wooden floor. My stepmother’s perfume. I had packed and unpacked all of my belongings three times since I’d brought it back with me from that visit home. And yet, there it was, at my feet, fallen from its resting place between my canvases and a box of unidentified electronic things that seemed too important to throw away.

At first, I laughed. As a writer, my immediate response was to groan at literally being hit over the head with symbolism. But then I picked it up, and this wave of calm went through me. I felt safe, at peace. I didn’t open it. I closed my fingers around it and whispered “thank you.”

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It wasn’t the first time I had felt a prodding from my stepmother; the fifteen years since her death were routinely marked by strange occurrences that rearranged my understanding of the world as I knew it. Retrospectively, that scent haunting me around many rooms ago seemed like a signifier of the turbulence to come - a warning, or a notice that I’d be carried through it. And now, the bottle in my hands felt like closure, assurance that I had survived.

Surely, it was coincidence that my flirtation with depression stopped after finding the perfume. (Surely, many things involving the perfume were coincidence.)

The bottle now sits on top of my dresser, right in place with the three rows of my perfume collection. Each time I see it something stirs in me, but as with so many other things that I have lost, I’ve come to find that remembering is far less painful than forgetting.

"Medicine Cabinet"

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"Old Brooklyn, New Brooklyn"

"Tchotchkes"

Celeste Kaufman

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Styx Sophie Johnson

I died down by the banks As water bleached itself among blue stones And washed the smoke from my nostrils Three days passed before He came to pull me Up by my red hair; To free my mangled limbs, To teach me how to walk.

Three more days were gone Before the frosted glass Faded from my eyes, Becoming an aurora That ran out in shining rivulets All down my skin.

I would live all eight Of my remaining lives In swift succession.

I shivered as he counted Them upon his fingers; Each one marked with A tally on my spine. .

Beneath rasping whispers, We were writhing On the surface of A mirror; Smooth and silver, Damp with Condensation of our breath.

The light we wore for clothing By the window In the night Drew me back down to The river When he pulled me up By my red hair.

But this time, I would stand to Brush the silt from my pale thighs, And dry my shoulders In the sun

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Your name: masticating glass Sarah Cadorette Your name: masticating glass My tongue: a sandpaper swallower smoothing edges till I can digest it.

Time heals all wounds but the self-inflicted, and I commissioned your love like a slug eating sea salt.

How many days in your week start with my name?

Used to be couldn't look sideways without seeing you in double, heavy crushing heartsnap of lovebeating louder than your EDM played at 3 am.

Now you're a parade of amnesia, flaunting reincarnation, stilting on peg legs and wondering how to see past Tuesday.

You can't do now, too relatable— so you do tomorrow, you place your mirrors a little too high and erase goodbyes. The past is eternal.

Keep opening the trunk looking for something besides the wilted sandpaper tongue of a suffocated pet— no taxidermist in the world can reinflate your blown-out proportions of entitlement.

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Laura Szajkowski

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The White Mass Jennifer Stohlmann The world was suddenly full of threats to my body, so I grew the whiteness around me.

Soft pillows against which a friend's or stranger's fists would merely squish while I belly laughed.

Like Saturn's rings to defend me from selection for frisk by the space junk police officer who stopped my friend for making art out of advertisements.

The day I learn I am mortal is a very bad day. My mother lowers me, clothed, into the bathtub.

My father loved the Bears with all the ferocity a man could love sports in the 1980s, and The Fridge was a household hero about whom I knew nothing except that his team's athletic practice extended to ballet. He was the only ballerina I knew by name.

The Fridge. Prima. I imagine the whole defensive line levitating above their toes when I let loose in the kitchen, preserved in all my fluffy white, kicking my legs up high and stretching toward the goddess of the untouchable. Leaping from the ocean floor, buoyed by water into the ecstatic revolution of this planet beneath its sun. A body without mass, rising on the tide of its existential joy.

The evening my brain betrays me is a very bad evening. I abandon my head under a couch cushion. I grew this colony of white sponge across my chest around the time I learned about coral bleaching. That the ocean could become more ghostly or mysterious because of the warming sun was unimaginable until I saw it. For the next fifteen years, I wouldÂ

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casually add to the evidence. I had the privilege to subscribe to Scientific American. It came with me to my college dorm. I met an artist there whose hobby was bleaching bones, and that was the final exhibit my catalogue required. I accepted that my thick, white calves and thighs and hips and ass and stomach and breasts and arms, my wide open white face with wide open light eyes could crush down as well as float up.

The morning my roommate takes me to the hospital is a very bad morning. The last quilt my grandmother ever made is wrapped around my crying head, but the Uber driver takes it in stride. I grew this broad white boat to sail my brain in luxurious comfort. A yacht at sea.

Strangers at Riis Beach have complimented the control I demonstrate over my vessel.

They never saw the Fridge dance but they saw me spend all day at peace with the waves. I love this vehicle like I loved my first car. Like it is separate from me, but really fun to drive, plenty of room for guests in the seats. I live here in my brain, plenty of power to steer the boat if I bother and plenty of patience to solve a meditation or a text or any problem if I don't.

The night I squeeze into the MRI machine is a very bad night. It sounds as scary as one of the worst Bushwick noise installations I've heard, but I can't make out the technician's soothing words.

When I come down from the ritual height of kitchen dancing ocean floating self loving untouchable goddess worship, Google is there to remind me that The Fridge can't feel his feet anymore. He sold his Super Bowl Ring to pay for the care of the 175 spare pounds left of his body. The last time either of us had weighed so little was the fourth grade. We may both be private ballerinas. We may have this mass around us, but there is a clear difference. My white body has a defensive line, and his black body was a defensive line.

The day my mother arrives is a very bad day. I have no news yet, and for some reason the cat starts to die, gasping and shrieking, like I gave him my sickness.

I spend every day and night asleep in the ice cream sundae, my body supported into three dimensions only by the eight pastel pillows I keep tucked around me. I become pale in a way I never knew was possible, my hospital white blanket beginning to camouflage my presence from myself. From time to time I roll over to rattle more pills from the bottle. I have to eat two saltines to keep the drugs inside me long enough. I feel it in my forearms before my face. I can shuffle to the bathroom with one steadying hand on the wall or vomit into a shallow bucket I bought to soak my feet for at-home pedicures. A white paste of crackers and medicines.

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The night I tell my boss I can't pretend to work anymore is a very bad night. I am exhausted by the dynamics of our competing fears.

I keep the alien's egg in my brain, incubating, the price of my visits to the vacuum of outer space. But nothing happens. The Fridge, he will die in the end, but I am fine. I am fine. I am fine. I am fine. I am fine. I have Botox. I have insurance. I have put my pain in my bedside drawer for safekeeping. My spine forgot how to lift my mass from the sundae, but I am fine. I am fine. I have white pills. I am fine. My nerves are tingling and tingling all day. I am fine. My physical therapist touches my ankle with his thumb. I can see it, but the skin is numb. I am fine. I abandon the pills. I am fine. I put my spacesuit back on. I am fine. The egg won't hatch. I am fine. I deploy myself from gravity. My white mass at large. I am fine. I built this spaceship to sail my brain. I am fine. No space junk in sight. I am fine. The sun is out there, and I'll land in cool water. I am fine. But the Fridge, he will die in the end.

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Shani Francese-Smith

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Devil's Churn Robert Balkovich The house was an odd amalgamation of styles and tastes — coastal living chairs buttressed up against modern end tables and indigenous printed Pendleton blankets draped over everything. It was also a mess. Pillows were askew, none of the beds were made, crumbs coated the linoleum under the kitchen table, and there was a smell, which was not overpowering, but it was pungent enough that it hung in the air like heat. They hadn’t noticed it right away even. It took several minutes of setting down bags, turning on lights, inspecting the premises for it to hit their nostrils. It was a sour smell, like spoiled game or dirty dishes.

“Let’s just open some windows,” Pat suggested, grunting as she pushed one open in the kitchen. “The rain will clean the air.”

So they went around the house prying open the windows to let in the rain and wind. It was only 4:30 but already getting dark, and the cold that settled in the house was deep.

James and Hannah, who had flown in from New York City earlier that day, kept on their thick city coats, while Pat and Ken and Amy were dressed more appropriately for the Northwest: piles of sweaters with thin raincoats on top. When James and Amy were kids Pat had sworn by airing out the house when it rained, which it did often in Oregon.

Hannah, who was experiencing her first day in the state, seemed nonplussed, but willing to go along with it all. After a few minutes the smell subsided.

As night crept over they went about moving themselves in to the vacation home, hauling suitcases up the wet outdoor staircase, putting cases of beer and tubs of cream cheese in the fridge, which was already packed with half eaten food, presumably left by the previous guests (friends of James and Amy’s uncle, but their father didn’t know who).

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“I guess they didn’t read the house rules,” Ken said, referencing a binder full of laminated pages on the kitchen counter.

Once they had brought everything inside, Pat assigned rooms. She and Ken took the master bedroom on the first floor, and Amy the adjoining room with just a twin bed and a pile of cardboard boxes labeled “Halloween.” James and Hannah’s room was on the ground floor. It was more of a rumpus room than a bedroom, with a queen sized mattress on a box-spring tucked into a corner behind a bookshelf. The rest of the space contained an old couch, a non-functioning TV, several dying plants, and a boat engine. It looked out onto a concrete patio that was covered in blown-over plastic furniture and pine needles.

The only other rooms on the ground floor were a large, cold bathroom, and a bedroom that contained nothing but an ugly hook-rug on the floor and two sets of bunk-beds that made it look more like a barracks than a vacation house.

When everyone had assembled back upstairs it was decided that they would have crab for dinner. “Why don’t Hannah and I go to the store, I haven’t had a chance to show her around yet,” James volunteered. Pat motioned to Ken, who sighed and handed them a fistful of wrinkled money from his wallet.

James had not been to Manzanita since he was a kid, but the town had not changed much at all. The main drag was still exactly like any other on the Oregon Coast, and even in the hazy darkness he recognized the kite shops and restaurants and antique stores housed in molding wood buildings, half of which were closed for winter. Hannah looped her arm through James’, she was shivering.

“You okay?” he asked. She had been quiet all day, but he had chalked that up to the hours of flying and driving, the time difference, meeting his family for the first time.

“Yeah, just tired” she responded. “No I’m fine, it’s colder than I thought it would be. The rain is freezing.”

It had slowed down to a drizzle, but the dampness made it almost impossible to stay warm. He was glad to see that the grocery store was still open on Christmas Eve. They bought a bundle of king crab legs, giant and alien looking, that the kid at the seafood counter put into a clear plastic bag for them.

On the walk home a bus pulled off the main road. They moved out of the way to let its monstrous headlights cut through the drizzle, and stop at a small hut near the town’s only coffee shop. People shuffled out of the open doors, heads down, hands shoved in the pockets of their hoodies.

“Is that like a public bus?” Hannah asked. James shrugged, and when the bus departed, they went to the hut to investigate. A map showed the whole coast, with bus routes

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crossing north to south. It moved people from town to town, the winter people who could not afford to leave when summer departed.

“Weird, I would think you would have to drive around here,” Hannah commented as they started back toward the house.

Ken had fashioned an allusion to a Christmas tree out of one of the Douglas Fir branches that had been blown onto the deck of the main floor. “You know, I just didn’t want Hannah to think we were total heathens,” he explained, sipping from a mason jar that was full of some kind of brown liquor.

“Oh, of course not,” Hannah replied broadly.

“It’s great, Dad,” James said. He could hear his voice sounding overly enthusiastic, which made him grind his jaw. Ken had decorated the tree with ornaments from the “Halloween” box. Little skeletons and witch hats dangled from the needles. “Love the choice of decoration.”

“Well I thought it would be pretty sad if we left it bare. Amy here helped with the star,” he added gesturing to a crude drawing on a piece of lined notebook paper that was taped to the brick fireplace above the branch. Amy gave a brief salute to Ken from her spot on the couch, before going back to reading a glossy covered book.

“Enough with the tree, let’s get those crabs in the pot,” Pat called from the kitchen. She was standing at the ready with a giant metal cauldron full of water that was already at a boil.

“Alright, alright,” Ken said, shaking his head and taking a seat on a navy-blue recliner.

Once James had passed off the bag of crab legs to Pat she unceremoniously dumped them into the pot. “I can’t believe what a mess this kitchen is,” she muttered, gesturing to a used, dried out teabag that had been left on a paper towel on the counter. “They didn’t even take the garbage out when they left. It’s overflowing. That’s probably what the smell is, it probably soaked into the wood.”

Once the legs were pink Pat piled them onto a white enamel serving tray and they all sat at the dining room table and cracked the shells open to pry out the cooked meat. With everyone focused intently on the meal, conversation was curbed until Ken broke the silence. As he spoke tiny droplets of butter sputtered from the grey stubble that covered his face and fell onto the pile of eviscerated shells on his plate.

“So Hannah, James said you were from Baltimore,” he said. Hannah smiled politely while trying to quickly chew the piece of meat she had just shoved in her mouth.

“Yeah that’s where I grew up, my parents still live there,” she answered after finally swallowing.

“You know I’ve never been to Baltimore but I’ve heard it’s supposed to be nice,” Ken continued, wringing his hands on a paper towel. “One of the great American port cities. I guess it’s probably one of the most important cities in the country.”

“At one point yeah, but it’s not really anymore. I’m not sure why, I guess they lost all their industry,” Hannah said. “It’s pretty bleak now. A lot of dilapidated buildings and crime.”

“Oh really? That’s too bad.”

“Yeah I think it’s the murder capital of America or something,” she said, gingerly putting another fork full of meat into her mouth.

“Well I’m sure New York isn’t that much better,” Pat interjected while giving Amy a look.

Amy simply rolled her eyes. “You would know Amy, since you’ll be there next year. You know Amy is moving to New York City for school in August,” she clarified for Hannah, who nodded along.

“Actually I think the murder capital is St. Louis,” James said, although no one seemed to hear.

“Mom it’s not like I’m going to be selling crack or wandering through the projects at three AM,” Amy protested. “I’m just as likely to get killed in a car crash or washed out to sea here than shot in New York.”

“I know, but if you die here we don’t have to worry about flying your body back from the east coast,” Pat said. Her humor was so dry that James always worried those uninitiated would find her harsh. He made a point of chuckling loudly.

After dinner James and Hannah retired to the bedroom downstairs. In bed the possibility of having sex was not discussed, both were too tired and a little queasy from the richness of the crab. “I hope they haven’t scared you off yet,” James said of his parents. Hannah’s eyes were closed but he could tell that she was still awake.

“No, they’re great,” she murmured before rolling over and falling asleep.

Although he was exhausted, James found that he couldn’t sleep, and instead lay awake next to Hannah where he attempted to clear his mind. The wind and rain had puttered out, which left the house in a terrifying quiet. Not long after James finally dozed off, Hannah sat up with a startled gasp. James opened his eyes to a void-like blackness. He grasped to recognize anything, and for a moment he was sure a person stood at the end of the bed. “What? What?” James said, hoping for an answer from either Hannah or the specter, but he got no reply. Hannah had fallen back asleep, the dream gone, and the specter retreated into the darkness. Even after he determined that no one was there, he lay awake a while longer, eyes wide open, searching for anything.

That morning the wind was back to its lashing assault against the windows as everyone sat in the living room to open presents, which was an unceremonious affair. The smell had returned overnight, but everyone politely ignored it. James was eager to get it over

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with so they could begin their day, which involved driving up and down the coast to various landmarks and monuments.

“I want to make it to Astoria,” he declared.

“Well then we had better get a move on if we want to see it all,” Pat said definitively.

“Everyone take a military shower, in and out in five minutes.”

The showers took longer than Pat had hoped, and by the time everyone was ready it was midday. It was decided they would stay close to home. “Let’s just go down to the beach,” James suggested, giving up on his previous ambitions. “We haven’t even seen the ocean yet since we arrived.”

Everyone agreed and put on their coats and walked to the shore. It had stopped raining, but the sky remained a massive gray expanse, an endless concrete monolith hovering just above the earth. Under it the ocean was all aggression and movement, waves rising and slamming back onto the water, before eventually rolling out to the sand. They took off their shoes and scrunched up their pant legs and trudged forward, though the biting ocean wind bid them back to land. To the north, Neahkahnie Mountain, which jutted out over the ocean, was shrouded in fog.

“The ocean is so violent,” Hannah said. “Does anyone ever swim?”

“Some people do,” James replied. “The brave ones.”

“I couldn’t stand it, the cold water, the rain,” she said.

“Well it’s a good thing we live in New York, then,” James replied without sympathy.

Hannah didn’t respond; she chose instead to walk down to the water and look out to the horizon near where Pat and Ken were examining the tidal foam for treasure. He didn’t know how to explain it to Hannah, how powerless this place made him feel, and how much he loved feeling it while he was here. It was the end of his known world, beyond the beach there was nothing, and when he stood there he felt that nothingness. Pat and Ken’s home had been godless. They never went to church or said amens before dinner.

James was never taught to fear anything except for what he could see before him, or what might live inside of him. Powerlessness was as close to god as he could get; it was the violence of nature that made him feel spiritual. Those waves that could drag you under and pull you out to sea. You could not breach them alone, and even on a boat if they wanted it they would take you. He had known this since he was a child. He had felt it first at Devil’s Churn, a spot down the coast where the ocean crashes into an inlet ferociously.

It was during a school trip that he had stood right at the edge of the rocks as the water beat against them again and again not ten feet beneath where he was perched. They had ran down to see the churn in their flip flops, and it was raining, he remembered, a summer rain that was coming down soft, no match for the mist and splatter of the waves.

It would have been one slip, one strong gust of wind that sent him into the water, his body rolling over unforgiving stone, lungs filled with salt water before he could

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remember not to inhale. Even just the memory of it caused his chest to seize and his veins turn frigid. Occasionally it kept him up at night. James felt insignificant before it all – the ocean and these memories – and the feeling was like love and caused his face to flush and a warm, almost molten sensation to emanate from his chest. But there was no way to explain this to anyone. He wasn’t even sure if his family felt the same way, and certainly not Hannah. She was also godless, but from the east, where hopelessness and violence didn’t have such romantic connotations.

When everyone had exhausted themselves at the beach they split up for the rest of the afternoon. Pat and Ken went back to the house for a nap, and James, Hannah, and Amy decided to walk the main drag of town to patronize shops that sold shell encrusted trinkets, postcards, and multi-colored kites. Hannah had a list of people she wanted to buy souvenirs for, and even Amy purchased several commemorative shot glasses. “For my dorm room,” she explained as the old woman behind the counter gingerly wrapped them in dirty newspaper.

Although he wasn’t interested in becoming overly involved in his sister’s life, James did worry about her moving out east. He had moved to New York City when he was 18, and it had taken him years to adapt to life in what was essentially a different country. The lessons they had been taught did not apply there. No need to watch out for sneaker waves, or tsunamis, or to sew beef jerky in your sleeve in case you got stranded in the woods, or remember whether or not to get bigger or smaller if you saw a bear or a mountain lion. You didn’t have to watch out for poison oak or ivy, or black widow spiders in the garage, or rattle snakes if you went to the desert. There was only one thing to watch out for out east and that was people. Unlike a snake or a wave, the people you had to watch out for could change their behavior and trick you. A man might cry out for help on the street, and when you rushed to his side he would push you to the ground and steal your book bag, a lesson that James had learned the hard way. He had told Amy the story, but he didn’t know if she understood the moral: it is different there, the rules are not the same.

It was dusk by the time they wandered home. A light rain had begun to fall, and Pat had opened all the windows in the house again to combat the smell. “You should really call your brother,” she said to Ken, who was sitting on the couch watching the news. “I think an animal or something died under the house.”

Ken sighed deeply. “I’ll let him know.”

They had salmon for dinner and watched a movie they found in a cabinet by the TV until everyone was nodding off. The next morning, after they had breakfast, they tried to decide what they should do with the day. Ken had pulled an old visitor’s directory out of the house rules binder and spread it out on the kitchen table. The directory was a map

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with various attractions on the coast pointed out with a smiling sunburst. All of them were places James had been to at one time or another, on family vacations, class trips, or Saturdays with friends after they had started getting their driver’s licenses. He scanned down the map: the Astoria Column; Seaside; the Newport Aquarium. Devil’s Churn.

“What about going to Cape Perpetua?” James suggested. “We could stop at Devil’s Churn, too.”

“No, too far,” Pat protested. “Maybe on the way home.”

They went to Astoria instead, climbed to the top of the column — 125 feet straight up — and braced themselves against the forceful wind as they took in the views. Pat and Ken and Amy bickered about buying Amy a new computer for school on the car ride home, while Hannah sat quietly, her head pressed against the fogged up window.

“How you doing?” Ken asked her to fill a moment of silence in the car.

“Oh, great,” she said. “I just miss the sun.”

Everyone chuckled but James. It felt silly to him, but the comment stung. They had been dating for years and he found it was becoming harder to let simple things such as that go.

He chose to ignore it and sit in his own isolating silence.

The next morning, as they were preparing to drive back to Pat and Ken’s house in Eugene, the smell was stronger than ever. It smelled like a dock, dead fish and salt. James was checking the ground floor for any forgotten articles of clothing or toothbrushes. In the room with the bunk-beds the smell appeared to be worse than anywhere else. He checked under the beds (maybe the previous guests, in their haste to leave, had left a plate of food out?), and in the closet, but found nothing. In the middle of the room was the ugly hookrug. When James moved it out of place he found a hatch to under the house. He thought to call someone down, but decided to look himself first. If there is an animal it’s dead anyway, he rationalized, grunting as he tugged on the handle. The hatch popped open and clattered against the floor. It was like a movie the way the smell wafted out, clouds of it that he couldn’t see, but that seemed to wrap themselves around his face. He felt sick and retched. From upstairs he heard Ken’s voice, “Hoo eee, it’s getting worse!”

With a hand over his mouth and nose he peered into the hole, half expecting to see a deer or dead skunks. The basement was dark, but James could make out, just below the hole, a pile of luggage on the damp ground. Several rolling suitcases and reusable grocery bags, as well as the straps of a neon-pink child’s backpack peeking out from the dark stack. Had someone been using the unfinished basement for storage? It seemed hard to believe. It was visibly wet, and the ground was just dirt. No doubt there were spiders and centipedes and slugs abound. Next to the suitcases he could see the beginnings of another pile, this one covered in a clear plastic tarp.

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“What are you doing down there?” Pat yelled from upstairs. “It smells like death.”

James leaned up and took a deep breath and then stuck his head into the hole. Next to the suitcases, under the tarp, was a tidy row of bodies: two adults and a child, naked and cold and battered. James fell back. The sound of lumbering footstep began down the stairs. It was the distinct pattern of Ken, who Pat had surely sent down to investigate this mistake.

He wanted to close the hatch, put the rug back over it, pretend that the wind had blown in the scent of someone’s unattended garbage, or a seafood restaurant's bad catch. But the house was silent. The wind had halted its assault.

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Laura Szajkowski

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Shani Francese-Smith

Save Your Yelling For Sex and Riots Issue One March 2017 Edited and designed by Celeste Kaufman