The Motel Room

Mary Christine Delea

You are given the worst room, the one where the vent broke years ago. It’s the room farthest from the office. Upon entering— before putting your suitcase down—you recognize the choking stench of unfiltered Camels. The few towels are just a mass of woven threads, their odor unfamiliar. The closet door doesn’t open, thankfully keeping its secrets to itself. The window has a crack shaped like a broken finger; the carpet has no pad but sports brown, circular stains in a line from the bed to the door. Or the door to the bed.

The remote’s batteries are almost dead. The sink has no water pressure, but the shower’s powerful stream slams you into the wall, causing your back to feel sticky all night. The clock sends random static noises into the room, as if trying to contact someone who never answers. There’s a landline phone with loose parts, but the flies seem at home in its cradle, which was hot to your touch when you called for the maid to bring a pillow. She never did.

Every time you look out the peephole, a skinny man with few teeth is standing just feet from your door, grinning at . . . what? Your room?

You?

His plans for you in that room?

He is there throughout the night. He came with the room.

Saturn, Inverted Trinnity Sistrunk

“ Six months ?”

“I’m telling you, man. The paycheck is worth it.”

Francisco sucked in a sharp breath. “I don’t know, Thomas, that’s a long time to be away from home. I don’t think I can leave Katie alone for six months. I mean, come on.”

“For Christ’s sake, Frankie, Katherine is seventeen. She’s been just fine when you go on work trips!”

He frowned, stirring the rice with one hand while holding the pan still in the other, phone balanced between his ear and his shoulder. “Yeah, for two weeks. Not half of the fucking year! I mean, she’d have to worry about groceries, chores–”

“Which she already does.”

“Taking out the dog, taking care of the yard. And what if she needs me? I have to–”

“Jesus, man. Quit hovering, she’s nearly eighteen, you know.” He knew.

He knew from every moment she smiled at him and he no longer saw a mouthful of electric yellow braces or a head with pigtails he used to neatly braid. He knew from taking her prom dress shopping and holding his tongue as she gushed about potential dates. He knew from talks of graduation and college visits. He knew from looking at his sweet baby girl and wondering how in God’s name she grew up so fast. Francisco sprinkled red pepper over the pan. He always added extra when he was making it just for himself and Katherine; she had inherited her father’s love of spicy foods. He taught her the same recipe years ago, but she always insisted it tasted better when he made it. Deep down, he thought she was just trying to make her father feel needed.

“Listen, man–” His friend sighed. Frankie could picture him now, running a hand through his hair and one hip jutted out like a frustrated mother. “I know it’s hard. I mean—Shit, I was there when Lydia left. I’ve seen that kid grow up the same as you. I’m just saying that–”

“It’s not the same.”

“What?”

“It’s not the same,” he ground out. His knuckles turned white, grip tightening on the pan handle. “She isn’t your fucking daughter.”

“Frankie, come on. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“She’s my daughter. Not yours, mine. ”

“I know, man, I just meant–”

“You didn’t raise her alone. You didn’t go sleepless nights with an infant praying to God her fever went down. Or rushing a twelve year old to the emergency room with a broken arm or teaching her about periods and dating, and fucking algebra. You don’t fucking know, Thomas. You aren’t her father, I am.”

“Alright, Frank, I get it, I was just–”

“And last time I checked, you don’t even have any fucking kids of your own. So don’t start talking to me like you understand what it’s been like. Okay? Because you don’t.”

All that could be heard was the sizzling of the pan he still held with an iron grip.

“I’m–” Thomas’ voice turned quiet, soft and broken at Frankie’s outburst. “I’m sorry man, I didn’t mean it like that.”

He looked at the fridge. A picture of her hung on the door pinned by a magnet shaped like a pineapple. Thomas stood on one side of her, Francisco on the other. A ten year old Katherine Gonzales stood between the two men, grinning wide as she held the trout she had caught that day in the lake. She was still missing her front tooth.

At the sight of her, bright and sweet and innocent, his anger simmered away just as quickly as it arrived. A hot wash of shame waved over him and sank into his skin. “Fuck, man. Don’t apologize, I shouldn’t have snapped like that. I’m sorry.”

“No, no. You’re right. I was out of bounds–”

“I’m just– What if–” Horrors ran through his mind. Fire, robbery, home invasion, each one growing worse and worse with the same image of his Katherine scared and alone, crying out for him to no avail. “What if something happens? I can’t… I can’t let anything happen to her, man. She’s my world.”

“Nothing is concrete,” Thomas promised him. “Just, think about it, alright? Mull it over for a bit and I’ll get back to you.”

He nodded, suddenly feeling drained. “Yeah. I, uh, I’ll think about it.”

Thomas was right, Francisco thought to himself, piling food onto the plate. Katherine was seventeen. He couldn’t coddle her forever. No matter how much he wanted to.

He trusted her, he raised a smart young woman with a good head on her shoulders. His daughter wasn’t the issue. God, she never was. It was him. He just wasn’t ready for the day where she would no longer need him.

Testaments of his love, of his devotion to her, lined the walls as he walked through the house. Framed photos of her first theater performance, despite her having no speaking lines and only being a tree in the background. Honor society certificates, report cards, soccer trophies and debate plaques presented on an oakwood bookshelf built by the same hands that put bandaids on her scraped knee when she was seven. Francisco came to his daughter’s tightly shut door.

A closed door in the household was something many parents would outright ban. Not him. He wasn’t the type of father who would punish her for finding her own place of comfort, he didn’t snoop through her phone or take the door off the hinges for shutting it.

Katherine was seventeen, after all, she needed a place of comfort. He was just grateful that it was at home and not anywhere else.

He balanced the plate in his open palm and knocked with the other.

“Got your dinner, kiddo.”

He waited for a noise. Usually a holler of “Come in!” or an incoherent mumble, if she was watching a movie. But there was nothing. Maybe it was because of her music.

He could hear the soft singing of her favorite artist that he could never remember the name of, Lana something-or-other, crooning about heartache and cigarettes.

“Katherine?” He knocked a second time. “You hungry?” Nothing.

“Katie-Kat? Can I come in?”

He pressed his ear to the door. Beneath the soft, melancholic trills of the music he could hear something. Faint, but still present.

Wet noises and muffled voices stuck in the air, digging into his ears like a rusted nail and twisting until it stung.

A voice, his daughter’s voice, accompanied by another, groaned. Was she with someone? Did she sneak somebody in?

He was a good father –perhaps a touch too protective at times–but he still let her have her freedoms. As long as she respected his rules. Be back home before curfew.

Tell him where she’s going.

Keep her grades up.

And no boys over without his permission. Especially behind closed doors.

His face grew red at the implications, the betrayal of his rules, of his trust.

The rational part of him whispered that it was normal. Teenagers lied, they snuck out, or snuck in, and kissed in secret. They drank and had sex and lied to their parents. Hell, he did far more than that when he was her age.

But he couldn’t hear the logical murmur over his own booming voice as he swung her door open and shouted.

“Katherine Helena Gonzales, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Francisco had lost his sense of smell years ago. While he was deployed, he had taken a hard fall that left him concussed for a month, and in the process damaged the nerves of his sinuses. Since then every spice, every perfume, every sweet spring breeze was numb to him.

But when he burst open her door, even his fried nerves prickled at the overwhelming smell of rot.

Blood stained the entire front of her body, his old college sweatshirt that she loved to wear so much clung to her shaking form, wet and red and vile. The moment Katherine saw her father, her eyes widened and she began to shriek.

“Help–Please–” she choked out, delirious and shouting at her father. “Help him! Daddy, please help him!”

The plate fell from his hand and shattered, sending food flying and scattering among the viscera already on the floor.

His daughter sat over the tangled mess of limbs and shredded clothes, shaking and stained red. Tears streamed down her face, mixing with the crimson that caked the bottom half of her face.

The sight of his daughter’s bloodied and shaking body made his heart drop into his stomach.

He fell to his knees and pulled her to him, checking her over for wounds as his heart beat out of his chest. “Are you okay? Where are you bleeding? What happened?”

“Something– Something happened and I don’t–” She choked and heaved on her words. Stammering before she collapsed against his chest and sobbed. “I think he’s really hurt, daddy. I don’t know what to do! What do I–”

Francisco found no cuts on his daughter, no open wounds or scratches as she wailed in his arms. He realized then, that none of the blood was hers.

Her father saw the sports jersey that sat on the corner of her bed. Too big to be her own.

Katherin sobbed like she was the victim. A sad, wet wheeze rattled her body every time she tried to breathe between words. What she was saying was damn near unintelligible, just frantic wailing and heaving that he had to strain his ear to find each word in.

“I don’t know how it’s just. One second we were on the bed and then-” She wound her fists in her hair and pulled, curling into a ball and whimpering. “Please, help! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, daddy, I don’t know how this–”

Francisco quickly grabbed her wrists, forcing her to let go of her hair and pull her into his chest. “Katie. I need you to look at me.”

She continued to cry and shake against his body.

“Katie… Katherine. ”

The sudden hard baritone of his voice made her look up with scared eyes. But she saw no anger, only the same concerned frown she saw when she had failed her first algebra test.

“Honey, I need you to listen to me, alright? Can you do that for me?”

She nodded, numb.

He cupped her face in his hands and his thumbs stroked back and forth, back and forth, spreading the blood against her skin.

“It’s going to be alright.”

Her breath stuttered. “Wh-what?”

Her father was calm. Why? It wasn’t in a way that made her think he was in shock, like when she had gone out for a sleepover and come back with her hair dyed orange in the sixth grade.

No. There was no shake in his hands or tremble in his voice, even as his eyes glanced at the mutilated body torn open on her bedroom floor.

“It’s going to be okay, baby. I’ll take care of it.” He pressed his lips to her forehead, blood smearing from daughter to father. “I promise you.”

Everything was fuzzy. She tried to remember what happened. How she got to this point, trembling and bloody with something foreign sliding down her throat but try as she might, she didn’t know. What she did know was that her father was there, looking at her like she was his world, as if the carnage laid at her knees hadn’t changed it all. It hadn’t changed the fact that she was his little girl and he loved her. At that moment, she believed him.

His knees popped as he stood to his full height and held a hand out to her. “Do you trust me, Katherine?”

His daughter said nothing, she didn’t trust her voice yet. So she simply took his hand and quickly curled into his side as he led her out of her room, not once looking over her shoulder.

The rest was a blur. She didn’t move so much as her father moved her. One arm wrapped tight around her waist and rubbed small soothing circles into her side as he guided her to the bathroom.

“It’s alright, honey. It’s all gonna be okay.”

He repeated it like a prayer. Everything melted away, except for her father’s voice.

The sound of rushing water roared in her ears. She watched him move around the bathroom with a routine. One he hadn’t had to do since she was a child.

Dragging his hand through the quickly filling bath to check the water. Grabbing a towel and washcloth from the closet. Running the cloth under the faucet before bringing it up to her face.

When she was little, he would be cleaning off the remnants of dinner from her cherubic cheeks as she wriggled and fussed in his arms.

Now Katherine sat still, eyes unfocused and glazed over as he wiped away the blood from her mouth. Her father said nothing about the pieces stuck between her teeth, but he was slowly beginning to put together what had happened.

He didn’t ask yet, of course. About the body, or its name or story or why it was in her room. No, not yet. She was still trembling, confused and in shock to the point where he wondered if she could even give him a cohesive answer if he asked.

Not yet.

“Just leave your clothes in the hall and I’ll take care of them.”

She wasn’t sure if that meant cleaning or burning them.

He stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him but freezing when she called out for him in a rasping, broken voice.

Francisco turned around and Christ–

She looked so scared. So small.

Sometimes he got so caught up in his baby girl growing up, he forgot just how young she still was.

“Dad?” she whispered.

“Yeah, honey?”

“What’s–” A weak sob ripped from her throat. “What’s gonna happen to him? Is he gonna be okay?”

She was seventeen years old. Old enough to drive, old enough to go out with her friends with no chaperone, old enough to make Francisco wonder if she still needed him.

But seeing her now, scared and shaking, looking up to her father for guidance, for safety, he knew his job as a father was far from done.

“I don’t… I don’t know. But we’re gonna figure this out. Okay? I promise you, it’s gonna be alright.”

Even given the carnage Katherine witnessed, the blood that stained her trembling hands, she believed him.

“Just rest for now, alright, honey? Settle in the bath and I’ll be back with some fresh clothes for you in a little bit.”

“Okay.”

The door creaked.

“Hey, dad?”

“Yes?”

She sniffled. “I love you.”

“I love you too, honey.”

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, Katie. It’s all gonna be okay.”

He shut the door behind him with a soft click.

As Francisco turned away from the bathroom, from his daughter, from his everything–

His eyes went flat.

The carpet would have to be trashed. That much was obvious. He could take her to Ikea for a new one in a week or so, enough time for it not to be suspicious.

Basement steps creaked and groaned under his weight as Francisco descended into darkness.

The reigning question on his mind, as he gathered his tools and tucked a roll of saran wrap under his arm, was why.

She didn’t just kill him. She fucking ate him. Cracked open his ribs and ripped him apart like a wild animal.

He thought back to the way he found her. Sobbing and crying. She was horrified and confused. The way she looked up at him, eyes wide and asking him to save him with his flesh still in her teeth and blood on her tongue.

It was involuntary. An instinctive, primal need that she couldn’t fight against no matter how hard she tried. She didn’t even know what happened.

Yeah.

Francisco curled his fingers around the handle of a bleach bottle that was halfway empty.

He would have to look into that later.

The fairy lights of her room bled out into the hallway, their pink glow creeping along the doorframe. The music was still playing; in all of the shock and chaos he never bothered to turn it off. Francisco didn’t mind it much. It was her favorite, after all.

He set his bag down next to the body, back turned from it as he started pulling out tools.

Just as his hand wrapped around the polished wooden handle of a saw, he heard it.

A faint rapsing wheeze.

A cry for help.

A sign of life.

Francisco turned to the mess of torn clothes and open limbs. It was hard to tell at first. The ribs were cracked, open and like a blooming flower of the macabre. It was hardly human anymore. He held his breath and watched.

Slowly, the chest rose, and blood gurgled from its open neck.

The one eye that could open darted around the room frantically. A twisted hand began to twitch and spasm, the two fingers connected to it scrambling against the carpet, despite bending at an odd angle.

Francisco sighed. “Well, fuck me.” His fingers curled into a fist. “You’re a resilient one, aren’t you?”

Blood trickled from the body, jaw snapping open and shut in some attempt to speak.

“I’d save your breath if I was you, uh–” Frankie frowned. “Sorry, I don’t even know your name.”

He crouched over the groaning mass, rooting through the blood and slaughter until his deft fingers clasped around a leather fold.

He pulled the wallet free, the leather fold making a slick pop as he flicked it open, blood smearing on a crumpled twenty dollar bill inside. Standing to his full height, he pulled out a driver’s license.

Brady Madison. Eighteen years old. Caucasian. 6’1”.

“Brady?” he asked aloud. More so in shock than to expect an actual response. The head jutted up with a groan, then dragged its chin down.

Brady Madison was a boy from Katherine’s school. A basketball player, if he recalled correctly. The type of boy with wandering eyes and foul humor that made teenage girls giggle and their parents frown. Katherine had a boy over without telling him. With her door closed.

What happened? Did he scare her? Hurt her? Try to force her to–Brady groaned. His arm, bone broken, exposed and raw, jutted out, shaking fingers just barely grasping at Francisco’s pant leg.

Maybe that was it. His Katherine, his daughter, his little KatieKat was just trying to defend herself. From this monster. This sack of shit and filthy hands who tried to force himself upon his daughter.

He looked down at its broken jaw, hanging ripped and crooked from the rest of its head.

She was just defending herself.

Several fingers missing, nowhere to be found. She didn’t do anything wrong.

Her attacker moaned again. Twitching against the floor, it’s hand catching the pant leg of the vigilant father staring down at it.

“That’s enough.”

Frankie pulled his leg free before bringing his boot down on the hand and emitting three loud crunches.

It cried out, a desperate plea rippling from its open chest. Panicked eyes darted around the room, searching for anything, anybody, to save him, to help him.

To put it out of its misery.

Francisco pulled the saw out of his bag. His fingers fit into the well-worn grooves of the handle.

He looked down at Brady without any sign of disgust or fear before bringing the saw down with hard-earned strength and precision.

Katherine’s bath would be lukewarm by the time he was done. He would bring her a fresh change of pajamas with her favorite hoodie and guide her to his room. Put on a movie that they would both stare at, but not truly watch. A plate of untouched food sat on the nightstand next to them, but she didn’t bother to grab at it. Not when she could still feel bits stuck between her teeth when she pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth.

“You need to eat something, honey.” His voice was quiet. Concerned. “It’s been hours now, Katherine, please.”

With her fingers curled in the collar of his shirt, she would finally find her voice and speak.

“Is Brady okay?”

Francisco looked at the dried blood still caked underneath her nails. “No.”

She sniffled and tucked her head into the crook of his neck.

“We were gonna go to prom together,” Katherine whispered. “He was gonna ask me at the basketball game next week.”

He thought of his daughter at prom.

Surrounded by her friends. Ethereal, dress moving with her as she twirled and laughed like a little fairy. She would come home, tired from dancing, voice hoarse from singing but still smiling wide. She would tell him all about it, hug him tight, and go off to her room. Later, he would find her asleep on her bed, so exhausted from the night that she hadn’t bothered to get under the covers. He would smile, before grabbing a blanket and draping it over her sleeping body. He would press a kiss to the crown of her forehead.

Then, he thought of her at prom with Brady.

Dirty hands on her waist. Eyes leering at her in the dress that Francisco had argued had a neckline that wasn’t appropriate for a young lady to wear but still caved in after an hour of arguing because he just wanted to see her happy and she promised to call him right after the dance when she was on her way home. His foul mouth sinking into her soft skin in the back of his parent’s truck after prom, rotted tongue slithering against her neck, her broken voice crying out. Mascara running down her face when she came back home, arms drawn in around herself. That bright smile he loved so much, nowhere to be found.

He clenched his jaw.

That would never happen. Because Brady wouldn’t get the chance to touch her. He was gone. Cut into pieces and stored in the freezer tucked in the dark corner of the basement. He couldn’t touch her. He couldn’t hurt her.

“You can go with your friends instead. It’ll be fun.” She curled her face into the crook of his neck. “I’ll take you all out to dinner beforehand, we can take pictures.”

“But Brady–”

“Brady isn’t the type of boy I want you around. He hurt you.” She pulled away from her father and frowned. “Brady didn’t hurt me, dad.”

Francisco took this moment to turn the conversation toward what had been avoided. “But didn’t he…”

“No. He just–”

“You were just protecting yourself. And he–”

Katherine furrowed her brows and looked down at her shirt, then her nails. Her breathing grew heavy. “He didn’t hurt me.”

“Then how did–”

“He didn’t hurt me! I just…”

Francisco sighed. “I need to know what happened, Katherine.”

“But…” Tears welled up in his daughter’s eyes and her lip began to tremble. “I don’t want you to be mad at me.”

Francisco sighed and pulled her into his arms. She whimpered against his neck.

“I...” She looked up at her father with ashamed eyes. “I broke a rule.”

“Damnit, Katherine.”

His sweet little girl.

“I promise you I’m not gonna be mad, okay, honey? I just need to know what happened so we have the same story. Just tell me what you can remember, alright?”

“We were on the bed together, talking about the upcoming game. And then he looked up at me and we–” Her breath shook in her father’s ears. Painted nails fisted into his t-shirt, digging into his back. “And we… We started kissing.”

He shut his eyes, as if to will-away the image from his mind.

“After that it all gets hazy, but I remember being hungry. Really hungry. Like I was starving. And I’ve–” Her voice cracked. “I’ve never felt like that before, dad. It was really scary.”

“When you say hungry…” Her father’s words were slow. Tentative, like approaching a frightened animal. “Do you mean… Did you?”

A broken sob fell from her mouth and she nodded. She was scared.

“I’m sorry, daddy!”

Scared and confused and still in need of her father.

“Oh, Katherine. ”

In some twisted way, he was happy. Happy that his daughter still needed him to hold her tight as she cried into his chest.

“I was so hungry–”

Needed him to keep her safe.

“I know, sweetie. It’s alright.”

To bury the bodies and wipe her clean of the blood.

“Did I–” She hiccuped. “Did I hurt him, daddy? Did I kill Brady?”

Francisco didn’t answer her question. He only sighed and tucked a hand under her chin.

“You need to eat, Katherine.”

Her stomach churned at the thought of eating. If she focused on it too hard, she could remember a little bit of what happened. Fleeting sensations and tastes. She could still feel the tearing of skin and bone breaking against her teeth. The sweet iron on her tongue, the way her stomach lit on fire in a way she didn’t even know was possible. It was horrifying.

So she lied.

“I’m not hungry.”

But Fathers can tell when Daughters lie.

He pulled away and for a moment Katherine panicked. Did she upset him? Disappoint him? Scare him? She couldn’t handle the thought of upsetting him after it all. She couldn’t lose him. She needed him. More than she thought she ever could.

Her father turned back toward her, a ceramic plate balanced in one hand and fork outstretched in the other.

“Please, Katherine,” he begged softly. “Eat.”

Like she was once more a child, eagerly waiting in a highchair babbling with joy, she opened her mouth and let him feed her.

“It’s gonna be alright Katherine, I promise. I’m gonna keep you safe.”

Nose to nose, her father looked down at her. Her jaw shifted with each breath. She moved her tongue within her mouth. Pressing against her teeth, moving to the root of her mouth and running over her lips. Savoring the phantom taste of the body still inside of her.

As her father began to stroke soothing circles on her back and whisper reassurances, Katherine’s eyes slowly began to close before she finally fell asleep in his arms, the one place she truly felt safe.

You Laugh and I Don’t

Sarah Parmet

You laugh and I don’t.

ISaid the wrong thing and scissors snip away at the words that emit like smoke from my lips. Ribbons that hit the ground in scarlet red.

I diverged from the chosen path— Snakes of thread that wrap around me, coils that slink through my limbs and pull tighter. I couldn’t run so I crawled instead, felt the chemicals burn my lungs and the sun fizzle pale gray.

I kneel before the altar, Just another social pariah. The kind that has their bones strung up as ornaments To decorate that tree of fear.

The needle glints silver in candlelight, The thread colorless.

I ask for forgiveness and you smile—

But I think you like it

When I don’t understand

The needlepoint rules that you stitch Out of tasteless conformity.

Like that my refusal Is a reason for you to sew me into your picture.

And you tried, stitch by stitch. The point pierced through muscle and bone, Each thread yanking at my “mistakes.”

I won’t pretend like it didn’t hurt when The needle sliced up ligaments and nerves, Each thread barbed wire that stings and grates. It did hurt. Hurt so much that

I took the needle and thread into my own hands.

I have already tasted blood. Besides, a droplet is barely an ocean in the grander scheme of things, and

Blood tastes sweet when you’re the one sowing it.

I draw it up from the ground, watch it pool at my feet. Cup my hands and raise them to my charred lips. This time

I laugh. You don’t.

Fever

Sarah Parmet

Fever

Carries me in its Burning arms, Mine

Like strings.

My marionette body

Sways

With each turn and stop, Head

Pulsing under Fever’s gentle touch, But my mind is silent with Sick.

From a distance

This music

Reverberating, This music I can’t control.

Wrists aching as Sick crunches up the bones, My dry mouth sweet with Tears.

Chills run races up my spine, Fever’s sharp nails

Prickling my Ashen skin.

Sick laughs, a soulful laugh, And I laugh with it, Weakly, of course, For I barely have the strength to mutter

“No more.” But isn’t this what I wanted?

Never Made it Home on the Range

Terril Shorb

I grew up on a ranch and we always took good care of the cattle and gave them a proper burial when one died on the range, usually from lightning strike or rattlesnake bite. When I came across these remains strewn carelessly by the road on a regional ranch it made me sad and inspired me to record it so that in some odd way the departed cattle would be memorialized for having lived.

The Great He-goat Master Study

Donald Patten

This is master study drawing of the oil painting Witches’ Sabbath The Great He-Goat. Painter Francisco Goya made the painting around 1820 as a part of his Black Paintings series. I make master studies of master artworks as a form of practice to improve my drawing skills.

Quinn of County Cork

Michael Bemis

Hails from an isle of plain and crag

This Quinn of the crimson tresses

With her silk and satin dresses

All as green as the Irish flag

First saw her in a misty room

Beat of drum, fiddle, pipes o’ pan

Sad and sweet the melody ran

Then sudden parting of the gloom

There sat Quinn in emerald gown

Playing her notes both flat and sharp

While caressing a golden harp

Voice soft and warm as eiderdown

She sang of druids, ancient rites

That ethereal voice on high

What sounded like an angel’s sigh

Intoned she of the soul’s dark nights

Break time: Quinn drifts off to the bar

I soon followed, watching her there White flesh; torrent of red, red hair

Spied ‘neath a wayward lock a scar

Took a seat at the polished oak

Bought her a Dublin cocoa crème

All slow motion, like in a dream

She looked at me through haze of smoke

Pierced me through with hazelnut eyes

Then said in a most lovely brogue: “A wee dram is always in vogue,

But will ye tell me truth or lies?”

“Honesty is best policy

Or so I’ve often heard it said.”

Replied I, then a tear she shed As if it were a fallacy

“I’ve been hurt more than once before By men. I hope you’ll understand.”

She drained her glass, and then she ran When she bolted for the door

I quick gave chase, but she was gone Nothing to do but to go back To my cold, lonely, empty flat To sleep, await another dawn

In restless dreams, I held her near “And when you hear the banshee cry, Then, my sweet, is when I shall die.” Her words, in truth, my soul did sear

“Nooooo!” I wailed, the sheets soaked with sweat

Flash of dagger, must stay her hand Mark on her neck, burns like a brand No sin will I condone, abet

First light of dawn, I shaved and dressed

Stumbled across a filthy floor

Half fell from out the splintered door

Half-mad it is to be obsessed

Sore surprised was I. Standing there

Was Quinn. “I heard you calling me.”

Swathed in a shade of ripened pea

“Escort me to the county fair?”

Arm in arm, did we gaily go Down the long, winding gravel way

Sun shone down on two hearts at play

Henna tendril in breeze did blow

She told me of a dream she had

“From this, I’ll write a vision poem, ‘Aisling’ as said back on the loam, To free my soul from irons clad.”

Strange, I thought, for this made no sense No matter, for I held her hand

Some day to wear a bejeweled band?

Festival nigh, let mirth commence!

Games of chance. Barker: “Try your best!”

I to Quinn: “I’ll show this carny.”

“Begorrah! Bit o’ the blarney!”

Playfully slapped me on the chest

Hell After Hieronymus Bosch

Laura Vitcova

What is this frosted pit of hunger where eggs expel like feathers—

Study this eviscerated stillness where brimming unduly is never enough—

Where each the cardinal profane remains nihility left untouched

Look this with eyes pinned and naked watch the marching skinned and affixed

While monks share a chalice of roasted oblivion keeper and convict share pig

The Guardian

Rachel Coyne

I Dream Someone Stands Outside and Inside the House

Merridawn Duckler

Someone stands outside the house, face downcast, reading papers. I say to you, is that person praying, what are they doing out there? I close the curtain. Now they are inside. I see more have wandered in, emphatically ordinary but also like an infestation I can’t contain. They are at home, examining dishes and household items, taking things out of cupboards, causing disorder. I try to dial 911 but cannot get all the numbers to display. I go around. There are more and more of them. Some begin playing cards at a round wooden table. Some are children. I’m afraid to interact with them. I get the feeling that they want me to engage but only so it can deepen their hold on me. They are very ephemeral, and at the same time it is clear they are real people. Some have old-fashioned dresses, like a cult. I go upstairs, looking for you. You are submerged in a tub with wooden sections squaring the top, nailed down. I try again to call 911. You have given up. By now these people are crowded into every part. There are many more in the yard, I see from the window. I go back into the kitchen. They have scattered some items on the floor, in a pattern. Before they only touched items. Now they’ve started to move them. Escalation. Previously I recognized an emergency. Now I wonder if there will be anything I can ever do.

Nguyen Paints

Brian Bruso

Nguyên Paints, En Plein Air, a Maltese Dog in The Bow of Monet’s Boat Studio ninety-nine years earlier she is brushstroking Camille’s white Maltese dog photobombing the studio boat. Rudderless and slightly adrift as canvas ripples with every moist Fall draught rushing through the cabin. Plein air oil as medium predates Impressionism by as many years. Landscapes and foxhunts~bloodhounds working (not photobombing) across the

Binh Nguyên arrives in Giverny soon after Saigon fell on her parents. Ghost boats up and down the Seine; anchoring, picnicking beneath September moustiques in mist.

Champigneulle hillsides for Desportes. Sporting rubber missionary conquests of Binh’s familial tree, branches dripping mist. Mystical Maid of Orléans stroking linseed across unfinished stretched sexcentenary linen filigree. Jeanne d’Arc, Alexandre-Francois, and Monet canceling Nixon’s Vietcong promise. When poplars kneel spiritually, with praise, all falls fail public humility.

Tour of the Castle

Merridawn Duckler

A scarlet fox follows our taillights for eight miles. The bridge is weak, says the sign.

The guide waits for our silence, pulls the punishment chair tilted slightly forward.

Maids slept four to a bed. Eyes scarlet. The smallest was tasked to stay awake.

In the woods, where no children run, birds perch on the spikes.

Our car door slams against the rain, sweeps the neglected garden like a backward clock.

We drive on the wrong side. The face of the maid, small and pale, a bump over the bridge, her hair trails down the castle’s red and narrow stair.

Oshibana

Erica Berquist

Detective Kate Reid sat outside the house, eyeing it from her cruiser. The engine of the vehicle was clicking as it cooled, then fell into silence after a few minutes. As she looked over the writing in her notebook, she knew there was nothing there she hadn’t already memorized before leaving the precinct, yet she looked anyway one last time before knocking on the door. Her captain had trusted her with a big assignment, since she was just a rookie detective.

What had at first seemed a mundane missing person case from first glimpse at the file had quickly become more complicated as her captain explained the case. Today, she wouldn’t just be checking in with the wife of a missing person and delivering an update, she’d also be looking for signs of suspicious activity while trying to find a lead.

Sighing, she shut her notebook and looked at the house, a small white ranch-style house surrounded by roses in every color. Just then, the curtain twitched, and Kate knew it was time to go. While she didn’t particularly mind making a suspect wait, in all likelihood this was just an innocent woman wondering where her missing husband was. Kate knew that the police cruiser in the driveway was either filling her with dread or hope. More likely dread.

She might as well hurry to deliver the news and gauge the woman’s reaction. The detective tucked her notebook under her armpit as she exited the vehicle and strode up the walkway to the front door. Kate had her badge ready at her hip to flash at the door. Before she could knock, the door opened, and a woman in her midsixties stood in the doorway. She was wearing a large sweater that swallowed her small body, and her faded blonde hair, streaked with silver, was pulled back in a barrette. Gesturing to the badge, Kate said, “Hi ma’am, I’m Detective Reid, I—”

“I think I know what this is about,” the woman said as she cut her off, swallowing heavily.

Kate didn’t think that was entirely true, knowing the unusual contents of the notebook she held. She said, “Ma’am, I know how you must be feeling, but would you please allow me to finish? I need to verify your identity before I can say anything. Are you the wife of Dr. Archibald Taylor?”

She nodded. The gesture made her head look very large on such a small neck. “Yes, my husband is Archie Taylor. I’m Ruth Taylor. Has there been news?”

Following her training, Kate kept her face neutral, not giving the family false hope and also not playing her cards to a potential suspect who had yet to be ruled out… as unlikely as Kate found it that this woman might have killed her husband and hidden his body, when it looked like a stiff breeze might blow her over. That wasn’t just Kate’s hunch either, since if the captain really suspected this woman, he’d be here doing the interview himself. Kate asked, “May I come in, ma’am?”

“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Taylor said, stepping aside to invite Kate into her home. She looked like she still wanted answers as quickly as possible, but she was willing to bite her tongue momentarily as she shut the door behind the detective and led her through the house. The woman walked slowly, like there was a lot weighing on her shoulders, which had just started to bend with age. When they arrived in the living room filled with antiques and outdated patterned furniture, she gestured to a plush sofa. “Please, detective. Sit.”

As Kate crossed the room, her eyes were drawn to the art hanging above the sofa, a realistic rose drawn in earthy browns. It wasn’t until she got closer that she realized it was a pressed flower preserved under glass, and a finely done job as well. Returning her attention to the woman in the room with her, Kate sat and opened her notebook. She tapped her pen on the side of it as she said, “Mrs. Taylor, I just want to make sure I have the facts straight before I get started, so I’m going to talk, and I might be going over some information you’ve heard before or asking questions you’ve answered before, but this is just part of the process.”

“Of course, detective, and you can call me Ruth,” she said wearily, like she’d expected this. “But detective, may I ask first… have you found a body?”

“No, Ruth. We didn’t find a body,” Kate said, keeping her eyes fixed on the woman’s face as she answered. She didn’t see anything she’d expected. No exhalation of relief. No loosening of tension in the shoulders. Ruth just nodded, like she’d expected to hear that.

Interesting. Kate made a tiny note on the page before continuing. “So, just to get started, your husband is employed as an experimental physicist at the local university. You reported him missing approximately a year ago. Have there been any updates on your end that you haven’t reported to the police since the last time you spoke to them? For example, has he attempted to make contact? Have friends told you he reached out to them?”

“He hasn’t contacted anyone,” she said and swallowed heavily like the words hurt. “Now, will you tell me the update? What’ve you come here to say?”

There had been more questions—facts that the police procedurally go over during each interview to see if a suspect’s story had changed since last time—but Kate turned the page. She could return to those if needed, but for now there was a woman in pain, and Kate wanted to help her if she could. She said, “There’s been an update. We found his cell phone. The investigation is ongoing, but I just wanted to let you know about it.”

Ruth blinked. She clearly hadn’t been expecting that. She asked, “Where was it found?”

The detective stared down at her notebook, unwilling to say the words due to their absurdity. Finally, she said, “This is going to sound strange. We’re still looking into how this happened. But the cell phone was found inside a time capsule.”

“Time capsule?”

“Yes, you might have seen a story about it in the paper,” Kate explained. “A time capsule is a collection of objects put together to preserve the memory of a place, experience, or group of people at one point in time. This particular one was a centennial time capsule, buried in the courthouse steps for a hundred years. It was opened earlier this month. Everything looked to be in order in the capsule, except for the one addition to it—the phone, which was confirmed to be Dr. Taylor’s phone once we got it working.”

Ruth was wringing her hands in her lap, and the bulky silver rings spun idly beside her large knuckles. After absorbing what the detective had said for a moment, she asked, “How would my husband’s phone have gotten inside a time capsule? Were there any clues about his disappearance on the phone?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, ma’am. The police have been looking into this from the start, at first thinking that public property—the time capsule—had been tampered with. And then the phone was handed over to Missing Persons once the connection to your husband was made.” Kate reached into her pocket and pulled out an evidence bag containing the phone, which she laid down on the coffee table. “Our forensics team has thoroughly looked it over. Apparently, the phone was in rough shape. It was full of dust, some components needed replacing, and the battery had been removed. They got it working. Unfortunately, after all of that, there was nothing on it. Our biggest lead now is the phone itself and how it came to be in the time capsule.”

Ruth’s entire body froze when the detective pulled the phone out of her bag, and her eyes stayed fixed on it. She sucked in a shuddering breath and asked, “Can I see that? Please.”

“There’s not much on it. No photos, nothing on the calendar,” Kate said, but as she spoke, she recognized that this was more than a desire to snoop through the device—this woman just wanted to touch the only piece of her husband that had finally resurfaced after all this time. Relenting, she slid it across the coffee table toward Ruth and said, “It’s been unlocked by Forensics. You can look at it, but please keep it inside the bag.”

With a grateful smile, she picked up her husband’s phone and started tapping at the glass screen through the plastic bag. It only took a few moments before she stiffened, and Kate could tell she’d found something. Glancing up in anticipation of the detective’s question, Ruth said, “There’s an undelivered text on here. He tried to send me a message.”

Kate nodded, looking at her notes since she had been planning to ask about this. “January 25th, 1920. We haven’t been sure what to make of that. Does it mean anything to you?”

She shook her head and said, “That would have been a few years before the time capsule was buried…”

“Well, yes,” the detective said. Her pen had been poised to make a note about the wife’s reaction to the text, but she didn’t bother with this. It seemed like Ruth was reaching to make a connection between two unrelated events. Kate continued to her next question. “Ruth, did your husband have any colleagues at the university who might have known something about how to hermetically seal and preserve the contents of a time capsule?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question,” Ruth said, shaking her head. “Are you implying that my husband had a contact at the university who tampered with the time capsule to put the cell phone inside before resealing it? Why would someone do that, even if it were possible?”

The pointed question made her uncomfortable since the suspect had so quickly caught on before she’d volunteered any information, but Kate read from her notebook, “The theory is that this person put the phone there intentionally, in an attempt to get the police to revive their investigation of the disappearance. This person was well-intentioned and just wants Dr. Taylor found.” Kate turned the page on her notes and added, “But the thing is, we don’t know how they did it. There was organic plant matter preserved in the time capsule, and all of our expert consultants have said that this plant would have been discovered in a damaged state if the capsule had previously been disturbed to put the phone inside, even if hermetically resealed… we can’t make sense of it. Which is why I was wondering, was your husband friends with someone in this field?”

Ruth’s face got an odd color to it, which Kate didn’t understand until the older woman burst with a cackle she had been suppressing. Once she settled down, Ruth said, “Darling, this is science we’re talking about. It’s not magic. If something is impossible, it’s impossible. Just accept what your experts are telling you. My husband didn’t know anyone who could have opened that capsule for him.”

“Then how do you think the phone got in there?”

Ruth shook her head and said, “All I can tell you with any certainty is that my husband isn’t here and it’s not within his power to get back to me. There are thirty-nine rose bushes in the front yard. You can count them if you want. Just thirty-nine, yet we’ve been married forty years. He would have brought me my anniversary present if he could’ve. That’s how I know he’s not here.”

The yard suddenly made a lot more sense, and that wasn’t something Kate had to put in her notebook to remember. She shut the book and asked, “Would it be possible for me to walk around for a moment? I’d like to see if there’s anything that might give me a better impression of who your husband is as I look for him. Maybe there’s something the previous investigators missed. Is there a particular room in the house he spent a lot of time in, like an office?”

“He called it his lab, not his office, but you can see it if you like,” Ruth said, and she rose slowly like her limbs were heavy. Rather than bringing her hope, the news Kate had brought was weighing on her.

Pausing only to collect the cell phone in the evidence bag, Kate followed as Ruth led her down the hallway and gestured to a room at the end. The door was open, but the lights were off, giving no hint to what was inside the gloom of the room. Either there were no windows in there, or the curtains were drawn.

“The light switch is on the wall to the left,” Ruth said. When the detective hesitated, the older woman noticed and continued into the room with a shrug, switching on the lights as she went. Looking around the room, she said, “I haven’t been in here for a while.”

Kate also took in the room. There was shiny lab equipment and computers, which she knew any school would covet. Some of the machines looked nicer than the ones even the lab tech at the police department had. More than anything else though, the room was filled with whiteboards, and every inch of them was filled with equations scrawled in small handwriting with markers of various colors, almost as much variety as there were in the roses in the yard. Having not studied much science since high school, Kate couldn’t make sense of any of it. She commented, “Your husband must be a very smart man.”

“Smartest man I ever met,” Ruth said, reaching out to touch the text on one of the boards with a light touch, careful not to smudge the writing. Now that she was looking closer, Kate saw that there were actually two types of handwriting on the boards, one a bit neater than the other.

Spinning in a slow circle to take in one last look of the room, Kate said, “Thank you for showing this to me. I feel like I have a better sense of who your husband is now.” This was usually the part where the family member asked the police detective to do everything they could to bring back the lost person, but Ruth didn’t do that, almost like she knew it was pointless to ask. She just stood there, staring at the writing her husband had left on the board. Kate cleared her throat to break the woman out of her trance and said, “Mrs. Taylor, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. Thank you for speaking with me today.”

Ruth blinked for a moment before returning to the present. “Yes, of course. Thank you for bringing me the news. I’ll walk you out.” They walked in slow silence down the hallway, and the detective could tell that the older woman was thinking very hard about something, but she didn’t say anything until they reached the front door. Rather than opening it, Ruth hesitated before asking, “The organic plant material they found in the time capsule with the phone… was there any information about what plant it came from?”

The detective looked down at her notes, though she already knew the answer, and said, “It was a rose. It had been dried and preserved, so it didn’t decay in the capsule and didn’t disintegrate until after being removed from it.” Kate looked up, seeing the older woman leaning on the wall by the front door for support, and her brows knit together as she asked, “Are you okay, Ruth?”

Ruth closed her eyes and swallowed heavily, but she nodded. After a moment to collect herself, she reopened her eyes yet didn’t seem to completely focus on Kate’s face. She said, “I’m fine, detective. Today has just been a bit overwhelming. I think I need to rest.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Kate said, though she knew this was just a polite way of asking for the cop to leave her house. There was something off about this that made her think leaving this woman alone was a bad idea, yet Kate couldn’t come up with an excuse to stay. Instead, she extracted her business card from a pocket, handed it to Ruth, and said, “My personal number is on the back. Call if you think of anything that might help the case, or just call if you want to talk. I’ll be there to listen.”

“Thank you, detective. I’ll do that.” The older woman still had a faraway look in her eyes, and she held out a hand to accept the card without really seeing it. There was something about her eyes that Kate hadn’t noticed until now, finally looking at Ruth in this moment that the woman was refusing to look back at her.

“Thank you for your time, ma’am,” Kate said as she reached for the doorknob, unsure if the woman had heard her. Ruth was in an entirely different place now, looking in her memories at people who weren’t there, and Kate felt like if she reached out to touch Ruth’s face that she wouldn’t be able to feel it.

“Look at the mess you’ve gotten me into, Archie…” Ruth said to the empty room. She had to shake her head at herself for talking to someone who wasn’t there. She’d been raised by a widowed grandmother who spent her days walking around her house, talking to an absent husband. Her grandmother hadn’t been insane, Ruth knew that now, she’d just been trying to keep the memory of the husband she loved alive. At the time it had looked so strange, and Ruth had never wanted to end up an old woman talking to a missing man. Yet Archie had done this to her. He had known the risks. He knew their experiment wasn’t ready. But he tested it anyway, perhaps worried Ruth would step into the machine first and get hurt.

“If you were just here, I wouldn’t be talking to myself,” she mumbled under her breath. These days, she felt like blaming everything on him. If it rained too hard, it was Archie’s fault. If the rabbits ate the lettuce in the garden, Archie had sent them. If her toast burned, that was Archie’s doing too. Being mad at him for trivial things was easier than missing him, and she told him so.

“And now after all this time, you’re finally talking to me again…” she mumbled as she walked down the hallway once more. As she turned on the light in the lab again, she said, “1920, was it? That number wasn’t written on your part of the board.”

The numbers on the whiteboard stared back at her, confirming what she’d said. This had been the piece of information she was missing, and Archie had finally given it to her in the most unexpected of ways. All this time, she had known where he was, the past, but not when he was. “You darned fool,” Ruth grumbled. “I can’t believe you’ve done this to me. You left me all alone, and now you tell me 1920? After a year? What do you expect me to do?”

Still, she wanted some confirmation. Ruth wasn’t just the wife of a scientist, she’d been one as well. Scientists don’t assume things. She sat behind Archie’s desk and turned on their computer. It only took a few minutes of searching to find the news article about the centennial time capsule when it was buried. A photo published in the historical newspaper showed a crowd in the town gathered to see it being interred at the steps of the courthouse.

“You darned fool….” Ruth repeated, but hollowly this time, and with no force behind it. She slapped the button on the computer to shut off the screen and looked away, but when she turned her head, another photo of Archie faced her on the desk. It was taken ten years ago on their anniversary, and Archie was hugging her from behind. “You got yourself into this mess, not me,” she snapped but then regretted it. She continued to look at the photo as she spoke with less heat, “I know you didn’t mean to get stuck. I know you were trying to take the bigger risk to keep me safe. But what is it you expect me to do now? Are you just trying to let me know you survived? Or do you want me to go to you? Leave this life behind? Sacrifice everything for you? It’s too much, Archie. You’re asking too much this time.”

She didn’t realize that she was crying until she felt the tears on her cheeks and wiped them away. It occurred to her that if Archie were here, he’d be doing that for her. Once again, she repeated hollowly, “It’s too much.” Turning her head, she looked back to the screen where the historical photo she’d found had been displayed, but the screen was black since she’d shut it off. Yet she didn’t need it on to see the photo that was now burned like an afterimage into her memory. She said, “Archie, you’ve made a mistake. You were always the one who made me brave, and this is the scariest thing I’ve ever considered doing. I know where you are now, but I can’t follow you.”

Ruth stood and turned in a circle in the room. Since her husband had vanished, she had felt him all around her, as she was surrounded by the things they’d gathered over a lifetime together. But for the first time, now knowing when he was, the house felt different without Archie in it. She hugged herself and rubbed her arms for warmth. Any words she’d had for her husband suddenly halted on her lips. She couldn’t shout at him. She couldn’t call out for him. She couldn’t even cry to him. He wasn’t here, and it felt wrong to continue pretending otherwise.

Ruth felt the emptiness of her house echo inside of her chest, and she stood swaying indecisively for a moment. She felt like a leaf fallen in a stream, waiting to see where the current would take her, and that bothered her, as she’d never been the type of woman to hand her fate over to another. She took a step forward. Just one step. But it felt like after a year of standing still, she was finally walking somewhere. Some place. Some time. And that was an improvement.

Detective Kate sat once more in front of the house in her cruiser. Unlike last time, she wasn’t lingering in the car to look at her notes—as she eyed the house, the ominous vibe of it kept her away. She had last been here in summer, and the roses had been bountiful. Now, an early frost had crisped the leaves that were about to fall from the bushes. Kate didn’t believe in omens, but it seemed a bad one somehow.

Ruth’s neighbors had reported not seeing the older woman in some time. Her newspapers were collecting on the sidewalk before becoming pulp in the rain, the lawn was overgrown, and mail was starting to spill out of the letter box. The sight had concerned the neighbors, who requested a wellness check, and now Kate was concerned too. It had been months since she met Mrs. Taylor, but she had never forgotten her—the unsolved case file on her desk was a constant reminder.

After daydreaming for so long about when she’d finally return to this house with more news for Ruth, perhaps even with the missing husband in tow, she was here again. But not under the circumstances she’d hoped. Kate walked up the sidewalk and smiled professionally at Ruth’s neighbor, who had already unlocked the door with a spare key but had been too wary to go farther into the house when Ruth hadn’t responded to any attempts to call her name from the threshold. The neighbor had the look of a busybody, eyes in a permanent squint from peeking through her drapes at others’ houses, but that curiosity apparently ended at the possibility of discovering a body. Kate didn’t blame her, as she was already holding her breath. She’d made enough of these wellness visits to know what she was likely to find inside. Car in the driveway. No relatives the woman might be staying with. This looked bad. After walking as far as she could into the house without encountering anything, the detective took a cautious breath, but there was no hint of decomposition in the air. There was no Ruth Taylor either though. She continued deeper into the house, down the dark hallway that led to Dr. Taylor’s lab. Not much had changed about the house since her last visit, so when she flipped on the light switch, Kate was surprised to see something new—a dress form had been moved into the room. Kate stepped closer to take a look. There was no dress on it now, but she would guess that one had been here recently, if the pins, scraps of fabric, and pattern on the table were any indication. Kate turned the paper to get a better look at what Ruth had been working on, and she saw a vintage dress pattern, something from around the turn of the century.

Looking in the room for any other signs of activity, she saw a notebook near the computer. She flipped it open and saw printouts from newspapers tucked inside. The one on the top of the stack was related to the time capsule, which didn’t seem odd to Kate given where she had found the cell phone, since of course that would have piqued Ruth’s interest in the event. Kate had started to move away from the printouts in the notebook when something out of the corner of her eye drew her attention. Picking up the photo of Archie Taylor on the desk for comparison, she held it up beside the photo printed in the historical newspaper of people gathered beside the time capsule the day it was buried. There was a man in the back with white hair and a mustache, sort of a Mark Twain-ish look about him, but… no, it couldn’t be.

There’s an odd sort of perspective that comes with being a modern person. People of this era are too jaded to believe in magic and mysticism but not futuristic enough to believe in a world where technology can solve all of humanity’s problems and fulfill their wildest wishes with the push of a button. It’s like being stuck between two eras in time where nothing truly incredible is possible. As Kate turned in a circle, taking in the room once more—the inconceivable photograph, the empty dress form, the theorems scribbled on the whiteboard, and the machinery cluttering the room—she had to wonder… But no, she couldn’t let herself believe.

Rejecting the idea, the detective hurried out of the lab that was hurting her brain the more she thought about it. She just focused on doing her job, searching each room of the house for a sign of where the wife might have gone. There wasn’t much food in the fridge. There were no upcoming appointments on the calendar pinned to the fridge. Her closet was full of clothes, and her purse was on a table near the door. Her jewelry box looked half empty, but that was hard to judge since Kate had never seen it before. There were no signs of a disturbance, no sign at all that anything was wrong except for the houseplants that had dried to a crisp in Ruth’s absence. Everything else looked like she had just stepped out for a moment and would return any second.

Shaking her head, Kate started to walk to the front door. She had no theories and hadn’t made a single mark in her notebook, as she had no lead to follow… no logical lead, that is. Something stopped her, though, on her way through the living room before she reached the door. She turned, seeing the sofa where she’d sat and talked to Mrs. Taylor, and she pulled out her work phone as she walked closer and flipped through the photos. It must’ve been that this was the last thing Ruth had asked her about since it finally clicked now. The organic plant matter from the capsule had been confirmed to be a rose, and not just any rose but a pressed rose.

A photo had been taken of it when the capsule was opened before it degraded. It had been perched at the top of it, a fleeting beauty that had been preserved, a wondrous hundred-year-old rose. The pressed roses hung on the wall in frames were considerably younger, but as Kate held up her phone to compare the roses, she swallowed heavily at the sight. They looked so similar they could have been cut from the same bush… or more likely, had been preserved by the same person.

Kate tucked her phone back into her pocket with shaking hands. Her mind was already composing her report with the usual words: missing person, no leads at home, will follow up with contacts. She didn’t expect to find anything. She couldn’t bring herself to think of the impossible, the unthinkable words time travel , though she struggled to come up with another theory about what had happened.

In the same way that Archie Taylor had vanished, Ruth Taylor had just done the same. No one would find them. And yet, they had found each other.

Poison of Hate

Priya Chouhan

White foam on the outer edges of lips, stains of foul red at the center, disgusted words forming the saliva.

The tongue adapting to the taste of poison of hate, throat repressing its anger, tonsils all over.

Nerves pounding the thin skin of envy, blood flowing half-heartedly, the air of optimism stilled, grew heavy, suffocating the lungs.

Ash-gray rust seated on once a beautiful mind, poison seeping down the already bloated abdomen.

Nose bleeding with darkness, skin hair falling, dehydrated pores of affection, a purple soul.

A severe cough of defeatism, nails painted with hues of aggression, Will I ever change?

The tongue - - -- all over!

The Demeanor of Human Monsters

Anshi Purohit

In some deep well within ourselves, we are empathetic to those who lap the traces of blood in our souls. This time, we meet an individual passing her Self-Assessment.

I. Detachment

The individual is hard-pressed for an answer as the love that once circulated alongside her cells is purged from her skin and examined in a small orange test tube. Our skin may be of different shades, but blood runs from our bodies the same way Nature runs from us. The doctors ask her why she is here, if she has been experiencing any… strange thoughts. The room becomes more claustrophobic by the minute.

How does the individual tell the doctors holding vials of her blood up to the light that she is both a negative and positive charge? She is anything but neutral. The world is constructed of atoms, but the individual does not feel constructed out of insignificant particles. To exist is not enough for her, and such beliefs defy the physics of reality. She is tested for abnormalities and passes, triumphant with her strange thoughts and hollowed mind. The doctors jot down numerical figures that don’t look like her.

In some place on the other side of the Earth, the individual realizes as she settles on an umber couch, somebody’s sun will rise as hers sets through the window in the testing room, smudged with handprints, a small square in the wall for the individual to seek refuge. Life challenges the unquestionable, and “human nature” is but a scolding term giving an identity to the first creatures willing to accept that they will never accept what they don’t know. Yet we name hurricanes, label robots, and cannot help but bury barbaric creatures in a grave finer than ash mounds of corpses that once called themselves “humans” before wartime. The door opens and closes like the subtle swish of a guillotine.

One of the differences between humans and monsters is that humans don’t address their complexities without an otherworldly, often gothic creature as a backdrop. Our ethics are not values; they are fickle comparisons we will argue about until we are eradicated from the universe, along with the planet we have squeezed life from. We make monsters to debate the morals of our existence.

The individual is subject to a number of tests, and during the intervals of time between each examination, she allows herself to dream her bloodlust away. She does not know why she is like this. She does not know why she doesn’t want to change. A doctor comes back with a result: she is the only one who can help herself.

II. Rebuttal

The woman who brought the individual in for treatment argues with the doctor because sickness is relative. She paces in the waiting room while the individual sits inside the small brown room, her hands twitching in her lap. The woman knows she did not give birth to the child staring out the window.

In some deep well within ourselves, we are breeding monsters who thirst for entropy and salt water when we lie on our sides, letting the wetness staining our cheeks slip through the parting of our lips. The individual is ashamed of the fabrics she has wet with her failings, or the neat stacks of paper she is compressed between like a shriveled leaf.

The orange test tube matches the fabric of the stricken woman’s coat as she strides in, patting the individual’s shoulder. The individual remembers it was that shoulder on which she slept the previous night, sinking into cold bedding.

Who did she hurt? Who was she responsible for?

The woman smooths the individual’s hair and waits for the doctor to sign her out on a spreadsheet that seems to scroll down for eternity.

Yesterday, the individual was afraid to breathe in the same room as the woman because the individual does not know how to define boundaries. On some days, they embrace, laugh, make tea for one another, or watch movies. She never entered a room like this. The woman never sprouted daggers from her eyes like this. You weren’t sick until— excuses. Let us hope God is merciful to the parents of abnormal souls.

III. Cleansing

There is another way , the woman repeats during the car ride home as she said in the session, whispering to herself as she rocked back and forth. Self-Assessments were not final. The individual did not see the pain behind her mother’s tinted sunglasses.

The individual is scrolling on her phone, her feet up against the seat. Guess what, she wants to tell the world. I was right. I passed.

Maybe intolerance is the problem, for what else is a brute but a human who does not know what to feel?

All this was confirmed by a vial of blood, through trials progressing after years of mistakes and false promises.To be freed is a fantasy; there is no reprieve from persistent dissonance. The individual looks out the car window at a blurred world and sighs because she will never be content.

The scarred woman keeps forgiving, and to forgive is to succumb to a silent degradation they both are beginning to tire of. At the optometrist, the individual switches perspectives without problems, moving the black patch from her right eye to the left.

But now, the world prefers dragons, princes, and a wooden stage that does not forget pairs of dancing feet. To cleanse is to replace the floorboards and extract the fragrance of the roses that once graced the stage. To cleanse is to forget the wonder of the performance.

The individual plays a solitary game—what will she do today?

Whose blood will she spill?

In the bottomless well within ourselves, we are empathetic to those who reflect evil through mirrors. Peace dies when it is scavenged by those who once searched for it, its blood pooling under a pile of unnamed corpses who died at the hands of their monsters.