THE MACHINERY Second Edition First published June 2016
Written and artistic work included in The Machinery may not be reprinted or reproduced in any electronic or print medium without the consent of either the writer/artist or the editors.
Themachineryindia.com
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Editor’s Note First of all, we thank all the readers who read our first edition in print and online. The response enabled us to make this second edition possible. The amount and quality of submissions we received for the second edition overwhelmed us in the best possible way. It has been a privilege to be able to read the rich poems and stories from writers around the world. We’d like to thank the Wordpress community; our number of subscribers has reached into thousands. Their comments and feedback have been truly heart-warming and encouraging. We have included the best of these at the end of the issue. The illustrators have been the highlight of The Machinery and this edition is no exception. The second edition features illustrators from Africa, Asia, Europe and America; every illustration having its own unique art style and personality -from traditional art to photography and digital art. The poems and the fiction in this edition are about social issues, fantasy, love and people. These are from a diverse collection of writers belonging to different cultures as reflected in their writing. This issue has award winning 3
writers to poets who have been published for the first time. We can’t wait to hear what our readers have to say about the second edition. We hope you enjoy reading this issue. Himanshu Goel The Machinery
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INDEX Poetry 1. Reasons to Skip Breakfast Laryssa Wirstiuk 2. We Wanted to Write the Poem Corey Mesler 3. I Blush for Erza Amanda Besserer 4. Upriver Cloud to Cloud L. Ward Abel 5. The Bruising Vanessa Crofskey 6. Mooneyed Elliott Freeman 7. Clarity Jason Elford 8. Wish Chris Stewart 9. Pathetic Fallacy Maximilian Heinegg
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10. Doppelgänger Robert Beveridge 11. Maria Saquina Guiam 12. Earthbound Words on a Flight of Fancy. Eta Uncertain Sangeetha Balakrishnan 13. When I get my Vacation Barbara Ruth 14. The Rank Thato Angela Chuma 15. To Union Square David Klein
Fiction 1. 1002 Jon Alston 2. Gone Riding Sue Ann Porter 3. Breaking Loose Nnamdi Nwaige 4. The First Plague Phil Temples 5. For Better and Worse Yi Han 6
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Reasons to Skip Breakfast Laryssa Wirstuik
Illustration by My Linh
Fasting can be spiritual. I like pain when its source is identifiable. I need time to process the advanced shock of being awake. I’ve already 8
eaten too much in my dreams (marble rye, oven-blistered pizza, cinnamon toast). I don’t want to hear milk. I don’t like the sound of people sitting at a dining table not speaking. I don’t like the pressure of competing before I’ve applied red lipstick. I don’t want to be asked why I add zucchini or to cringe when the blender whirs. I want to feel empty. I avoid washing dishes. I can’t wait for coffee. Scrambled eggs at times inspire regret. Oatmeal, on the other hand, doesn’t have a scent. It’s true I want everything bagels, but the secret’s in the water. I don’t have time. I will be late. I crave bananas later in the day. Pancakes for dinner are a novelty and so are pancakes in bed. Syrup is too sticky. I can’t open a cereal box without finishing it. I’m not seeking a prize inside. I don’t believe in breakfast of champions. Winners don’t get a break.
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About the Author
Laryssa Wirstiuk is a poet and writer based in Los Angeles, CA, where she lives with her miniature dachshund Charlotte Moo. Her writing has been published in Word Riot, Gargoyle Magazine, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among other venues.
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About the Illustrator
My Linh is a 19-year-old girl who lives quietly, loves reading and is always seeking for pleasure in every little thing. She mostly takes pictures of coffee, which provides her a sense of relaxation, and every beautiful scene that she catches when she’s traveling.
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We Wanted to Write the Poem Corey Mesler
Illustration by W. Jack Savage
We wanted to write the poem of the change. We wanted to document it with blood. 12
Someone wanted a leader. Someone wanted to go on alone. Someone wanted a lover and thought that the poem could deliver. We rattled along for as long as the idea of the poem stayed active. Naturally we feared the end. We knew to be wordless was the penultimate devastation.
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About the Author
COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and Esquire/Narrative. He has published 8 novels, 4 short story collections, and 5 full-length poetry collections. His new novel, Memphis Movie, is from Counterpoint Press. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart many times, and 2 of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. With his wife he runs a 145-year-old bookstore in Memphis 14
About the Illustrator
W. Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and educator. He is the
author of seven books including Imagination: The Art of W. Jack Savage (wjacksavage.com). To date, more than fifty of Jack’s short stories and over seven hundred of his paintings and drawings have been published worldwide. Jack and his wife Kathy live in Monrovia, California.
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I Blush for Erza Amanda Besserer
Illustration by Laura
Something in her simple ukulele finger brush and his tiny moans from the piano makes me wish for love, and perhaps the mystery
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of my body’s capabilities would come to light from this duet Something in her high pitched sway coupled by his studied vocal change to please her in their harmony makes me miss intimacy I’m embarrassed to say I imagine that he’d look to me as if to say: “How did we make something so perfect?” I become how I used to be lovely in a crawl toward freedom, for better and for worse My sabbatical from life has made me dream out loud The possibility that I could be loved, almost too beautiful for me to bear.
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About the author
Amanda Besserer comes from the small town of North Bay, Ontario Canada, but she currently resides in Ottawa. She is a past editor at in/words Magazine, and Vagina Dentata Magazine. She is published in in/words, Vagina Dentata, The Steel Chisel, and The Loamshire Review (now defunct). She hopes to move to Taiwan to teach English while she continues to experiment with creative writing.
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About the Illustrator
Laura is 26; she hails originally from the Midlands, and has been living in London for nearly 8 years. She currently works in HR for a retailer, but her head is mostly spent dreaming of travels and the wonders of space. She adores cats, cake, books, movies and Game of Thrones. She loves capturing her London life and sharing with the Instagram world.
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Upriver Cloud to Cloud L. Ward Abel
Illustration by Josh Sutton
She sings “Dust on the Bible” at the overlook. The sun’s going down all orange 20
in polite but scattered applause. Someone should paint this. A storm rakes upriver cloud to cloud; it’s only backdrop because it’ll die out long before getting this far west. The next one I think she wrote. Her songs reach conclusions. They are gathered they resemble birds and geography. Frontiers blend into zones and then open space she sings something like a sparrow that’s fallen.
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About the Author
L. Ward Abel, poet, composer and performer of music, teacher, retired lawyer, lives in rural Georgia, has been published hundreds of times in print and online, and is the author of Peach Box and Verge (Little Poem Press, 2003), Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press, 2008), Torn Sky Bleeding Blue (erbacce-Press, 2010), American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Cousins Over Colder Fields (Finishing Line Press, 2013), Roseorange (Flutter Press, 2013), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), and the forthcoming Digby Roundabout (Aldrich Press, 2017). 22
About the Illustrator
Joshua Sattan is a self-taught artist who works heavily in digital collage and enjoys creating colourful fantasy/sci-fi lands.
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THE BRUISING VANESSA CROFSKEY
Illustration by Adam Priester
3 hickeys blossom on my clavicle. My neck holds red hand graveyards overlaid in verbena. 24
Here, a bouquet of ankle. Foolish iris, a purple field. On my upper thigh, orchids. My mouth is pathetic, clumsy, desperate. Those who know how tenderly this garden creases sprout mottle marks beside me. Salvia in tall plumes. A memory made in elbows. And these, these foolish wanting hips, dig for lavender’s tartness.
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About the Author
Vanessa Crofskey is a writer and artist whose style has been described as both introspective and “on fire”. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, dreams of Wellington and studies sculpture. She was her last university’s former slam champion, and award-winning poet, and has performed and published a range of art and literature.
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About the Illustrator
Adam Priester is a Sustainable design student in Sweden, 24-year-old. He’s heavily inspired by fantasy and Sci-fi. Some of his favourite authors are R. Scott Bakker, Lovecraft, Stephen King, Mark Lawrence, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert.
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Mooneyed Elliott Freeman
Illustration by Adam Priester
Let your thoughts be moonbrittle —let them be moonboiled, moonmaddened. Let the waxy weave of moonsilk sieve away your better instincts. 28
Be what you would be alone, raised in darkness and in moonglow. Inhale the dark powder of moondust, let your veins purple with moonburn. Imagine simple violence, the way a moonfall crashes to the horizon. Know the moonlove, that you are loved like flame loves kindling. She is impossible without you. We look up, mooneyed and moonbound, fix her silver face with our needling attention. We are dreaming her to life. You are moonbloodied; moonblooded— prophet, lover, beaten child of a moon we all invented.
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About the Author
Elliott M. Freeman is the descendant of pirates and layabouts; as a writer and teacher, he spends his days saving the world (one semicolon at a time). His work has previously appeared in journals including Prick of the Spindle, Blue Monday Review, and Product.
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About the Illustrator
Adam Priester is a Sustainable design student in Sweden, 24-year-old. He’s heavily inspired by fantasy and Sci-fi. Some of his favourite authors are R. Scott Bakker, Lovecraft, Stephen King, Mark Lawrence, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert.
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Clarity Jason Elford
Illustration by Mawia Hunter
Currency flows in explosions paper covered in contraband obscure secrets in love with bureaucracy pretending to be isms around quotations deflecting war ideas idealizing red tape. 32
I cannot pretend to be isms when fingers meet keys when words touch eyes they affray in language making it stutter for clarity.
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About the Author
Jason Elford writes short fiction, poems, and novels. His work has appeared in STOPGap. He lives in Calgary, Alberta.
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About the Illustrator
Mawia Hunter is trying to reflect the art and beauty of Africa and rebuild his past and Roots of Sudan.
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Wish by Chris Stewart
Illustration by Daria Wollman
The moon is a gondola I wish would carry me away, I wish would carry me away. The clean bed sheets of my religion Must surely be saturated now 36
With these nighttime thoughts, The bad influences, Communicable diseases, My parents call them. Yet I see a happy dance, Skinny dippers writing psalms. They’re like diaries, I’m told. I return to my blank sheets, And wish for the moon, And wish for the moon, To cease its tug on me.
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About the Author
Chris Stewart has a poem forthcoming in the international annual Great Weather For MEDIA. He plays at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in 2017. He was long listed for the CYCLOP International Video-poetry Contest 2015. His poems and stories appear in a variety of magazines including The Wrong Quarterly, The Atticus Review, Freak Circus and Outdoor Photography. He’s anthologized in Break-Out (Ek Zuban, 2013). Tweet him @SideBurnedPoet. 38
About the Illustrator
Daria Wollman studies graphics in Academy of Fine Art in Katowice, Poland. She loves lithography (especially mezzotint on stone), painting and installation. She’s into portrait, geometry and cosmos.
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Pathetic Fallacy Maximilian Heinegg
Illustration by Mawia Hunter
Little ones want the sky to sing to them, the young ones want to sing to the sky, 40
the middle-aged want the sky to sing with them, the old want the sky to remember their song but the everlasting song is not of this world nor for the people in it though there are songs in the trees, they are not pitched to our hearing everything is not a mirror a sign, or an assemblage of ideas in physical form, more often than not, we do not speak the language of the world though we are one of the ten thousand things, better that the little ones sing to the young, that the young sing with the middle aged, & that the old want to hear it.
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About the Author
Max Heinegg is an English teacher, poet, journalist, rock musician, and brewer living in Medford, MA. Recent work has or will appear in Chiron Review, Stone Canoe, Misfit Magazine, The New Indendents. He recently won the 2016 Emily Stauffer Poetry Prize from Apogee magazine (Franklin College). 42
About the Illustrator
Mawia Hunter is trying to reflect the art and beauty of Africa and rebuild his past and Roots of Sudan.
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Doppelgänger Robert Beveridge
Illustration by W. Jack Savage
You have turned away from my kiss the fatality of it intrigues me I stand having been marred by my dreams 44
my innermost thoughts even betray me I do not want to be the thing I become when I sleep the fear of sleep my thoughts now betray me in daylight I remember nights entangled with women who are not you I remember love not like the love I have of you these visions are palely attractive washed-out images from mind, scrapbooks I have not opened in many months I stroke the skin you touched the last time you reassured me of our love it burns through my stomach 45
tonight will I hold you? You have turned away from my kiss the fatality of it intrigues me.
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About the Author
Robert Beveridge makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and
writes poetry just outside Cleveland, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in CultureCult, Chiron Review, and Random Sample Review, among others.
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About the Illustrator
W. Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and educator. He is the
author of seven books including Imagination: The Art of W. Jack Savage (wjacksavage.com). To date, more than fifty of Jack’s short stories and over seven hundred of his paintings and drawings have been published worldwide. Jack and his wife Kathy live in Monrovia, California.
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Maria Saquina Guiam
Illustration by Jon Pattle
(Departure)
Somebody tells you: “too many restrictions, her parents’ rules were enough of a chokehold 49
to make her pack her things and run away.” somebody interjects: “no, no, her husband put his hands on her and squeezed!” overheard: “her children died” or “she wasn’t able to conceive.” (Arrival) the butcher tells me her perfume doesn’t smell right, as if underneath the flowers something dead lingered there. the old lady by the chapel says her shadow’s crooked, bent at the wrong angles, a too wild darkness. (Residence) every month, a child disappears. every month, they crucify her with accusations pouring from their tongues. every month, a moon rises, blood-stained and whole; she pulls her blankets closer to her chest. every month, someone’s son or daughter is on the ground, with their throats open to the sky, and something that passes as their parent (or used to be) lies on the grass and coating the leaves a muddy black, sticky tar. (Routine) every month, her back and shoulders ache from the weight of never saving anyone 50
on time. you’d think, they’d be grateful to the lone woman, taking all their salt and spit, and putting it to good use.
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About the Author
Saquina Karla C. Guiam is 26 years old and a full-time grad
school student. Her work has been featured on The Rising Phoenix Review, The Fem Lit Mag, and Transcending Shadows Review. She is a member of Flood Journal, an art and writing collective of people of color, and the Roots nonfiction editor at Rambutan Literary, a magazine showcasing Southeast Asian literature. She can be found haunting Twitter (@plummeted) or Tumblr (@soften). 52
About the Illustrator
Jon is a digital designer, illustrator and photo manipulation fanatic from London. When he’s not messing around on Facebook, he’s either gaming, or watching his beloved football team Tottenham Hotspur.
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Earthbound Words on a Flight of Fancy. ETA Uncertain. Sangeetha Balakrishnan
Illustration by Shanna Cruickshank
My black socks took to flight out of my balcony and beyond the compound wall. Last I saw, the flight was ascending behind the Ashoka tree by the wall. The black socks promised to get me a multihued pair from their travels to lands far yonder. I wait at the 54
Arrivals terminal for my gift — eager and excited. I smile thinking of a striking pair with horizontal stripes of orange and purple and yellow and pink, with motifs of unicorns and pixies and dragons and cyborgs. Camped out here, I am excited. But I told you that already.
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About the Author
Sangeetha Balakrishnan teaches Chemistry at a college in Chennai. A scientist by training, she is a logophile by temperament.
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About the Illustrator
Shanna Cruickshank works as a full time Graphic Designer but her true passion is Traditional Art. She was born in New York City, but she has lived in Trinidad and Tobago for years.
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When I get my Vacation Barbara Ruth
Illustration by Daria Wollman
I’ve been dreaming of timeshares for 32 years as long as I’ve been disabled, dreaming a world where everyone shares disabilities 8 hours on, 16 hours off. 58
When I, able-bodied, branched out in the world this timeshare idea never occurred to me – I figure it might be a hard sell. So how about this instead: give us vacations from our disabilities no one need tend them while we’re away they’ll be waiting when we get back. When I get my vacation I will powwow with artists and herbalists turmeric lemonade will sustain us the sound of our jingles the stomp of our feet on the ground will sustain us I will dance my way down to the root.
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About the Author
In 2015 Barbara Ruth’s poetry was nominated for Best of the Net, was a runner up in the Wilda Morris poetry contest and won Rock the Chair sponsored by Yellow Chair Review. Barbara Ruth is also an essayist, fiction writer, memoirist and photographer. She lives in San Jose, California.
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About the Illustrator
Daria Wollman studies graphics in Academy of Fine Art in Katowice, Poland. She loves lithography (especially mezzotint on stone), painting and installation. She’s into portrait, geometry and cosmos.
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The Rank Thato Angela Chuma
Illustration by Pranav Kapil
The city pours itself here; within the damp smell of roasting maize, sweat, and the snores of taxis and combis travelling on half-dressed roads. 62
The city meets itself here; Where the air holds every scent Where mothers find hope in their vegetables, And everything is known to be cheaper– ‘A hub of solutions for poor people’ God does not exist here, Only sweat Here, Many layers of survival Meet in their silences Many lives are stitched together You meet the hustler, the dreamer, and the forgotten And those that wander In the spell of their lives.
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About the Author
Thato Angela Chuma is a Motswana singer, poet and writer. Her poetry has featured in literary magazines such as Saraba Magazine, Brittle Paper, Strange Horizons and The Kalahari Review.
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About the Illustrator
Pranav Kapil likes to dabble in many forms of art,
photography, painting, doodling, writing and so on; Creating art as he says is a personal necessity. It is a pursuit of finding the ideal escapist distraction for him. He admits to being greatly influenced by Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka and Arthur Rimbaud. He is also a big foreign film buff and a foodie.
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To Union Square David Klein
Illustration by BFXTG
A fat man sits across from me on the Lex Avenue 4 to Union Square taking two seats for himself. 66
There’s a catch in my throat of resentment. I look away The subtler failings of the others, their reflexive conformity makes the fat man seem a Buddhist in his alpine indifference to his difference, and how the others avoid sitting near him. What metastatic sorrow, what pandemonium of desire must be swallowed in the furrows of his convoluted skin! Why should I look at him? What claim can he make on me that I should look at him? Immobile/yet seeming to shift Or is that my own inward eye? No one to devour or be devoured by, heart buried in furrowed convolutions, free from desire with its taint of grief. Free. 67
Why should I look at him, why should I look? Mirrored monster, inward eye. I/not I Fat man– in my convoluting self, a longed for indifference to my difference, yeasty with shame and secrets, unloved and unlovable gargantuan of difference crouched in the comforting nearness of the others– I see you The Lex 4 stops and as I rise carried off with the crowd in its fevered chaos of purposefulness I glance at the fat man and hold him with a sense of something like love.
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About the Author
David Klein’s short story has been accepted for publication in The Hudson Review.Previous work has appeared in Columbia, A Magazine of Poetry and Prose,Film Comment, New York Stories, Camel Saloon, The Lost Coast Review, Art:Mag, The American Jewish Times Outlook, Glasschord: Art and Culture Magazine, The Lowestoft Chronicle, Mouse Tales Press, Drunk Monkeys, and The Lake. A short story is anthologized in Intrepid Travelers (review: “David Klein hits new heights with The Final Ascent.” A book review appeared in The Lost Coast Review, Summer 2015.
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About the Illustrator
BFXTG is a 36-year-old French photographer who observes, feels and photographs these places, people and things that make our lives here or elsewhere. Find out BFXTG’s pictures on unautreangle.tumblr.com.
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1002 Jon Alston
Illustration by Modita Kathpalia
It is written it took 1001 nights for Scheherazade to win over Shahryar, 1001 tales to calm his murderous temper with incompletion. She told another story, after their nuptial. With such a tradition of story, Shahryar desired Scheherazade’s entertainment to continue. So she revealed to him this dream: 72
A fall day. Thin brushed clouds add dimension to the thick blue sky. And between the white lines a large grey pelican drifts, wings carried with a warm zephyr. She floats with the clouds, west, a slow journey across the indefinite blue expanse. Mounted on her back, gripping her neck feathers, sits a young boy: Ahn-jin. His black hair snaps in the wind, the white sherwani trimmed in gold clings tight to his white churidars. He keeps his eyes shut, to feel the sky, the wind, the thin air above the mountains, to breathe the miasma between earth and the heavens. His grandmother spoke often of gods, that above the mountains they watched men struggle and fight. And die. Ahn-jin wanted to find the gods, to speak with them about his father. But he was unsure where to look, so much openness to explore, limitless from peak to peak. Along he brought a bowl of steamed rice, his grandmother’s stories filled with offerings. For years Ahnjin and the pelican hovered above the land, searching; always searching. He came to believe the gods were invisible, no need for form between worlds; the reason he closed his eyes the first time while in flight on the pelican: thirteen the last age he saw. Made no difference, he knew no truth existed in sight which his body could not feel. Over long years the pelican flew through all the sky, circumnavigating earth over and over, Ahn-jin never losing hope to find the elusive deities. But they never found them. And time stretched on until no one spoke of Ahn-jin, or the pelican. Or the gods. Those who once knew him said, while 73
they still believe he existed (somewhere), that he burned in the sun. Centuries pass, troubadours and storyweavers begin telling his tale, each ending Ahn-jin’s adventure differently: the pelican, with age, falls from the sky, the two disappearing in the trees; the two become one, conquering the sky, becoming god over the wind. But none knows for certain. When Scheherazade finished her story, Shahryar asked: “Is that the end?” She answered: “Yes.” Shahryar leaned close to kiss his new bride: “You will always tell me these stories, my love?” His lips graced her forehead, but she flinched. “Does the sky have its end?”
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About the Author
Jon Alston has an MA in Creative Writing. Good for him. He writes things from time to time, and sometimes people publish them. Good for him. On occasion, he will photograph things (or people), and maybe write about them; sometimes there is money exchanged for his services. Good for him. He is married and has two children of both genders. Way to reproduce. He is the Executive Editor and founder of From Sac, a literary journal for Northern California. How about that? Currently he teaches English at Brigham Young University, Idaho among the frozen potato fields and Mormons. Good for you, Jon.
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About the Illustrator
Modita is doing engineering in UIET, Panjab University, Chandigarh. She aims to travel the world, and has becoming famous as an artist on her bucket list. Her Plan A is to make her parents proud and Plan B is to open up an Art Gallery.
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Gone Riding Sue Ann Porter
Illustration by Hannah Shotkoski
I wanted to ride in the cool of the night; the fierce daylight overheated my horse and made the saddle uncomfortable. I waited until the sun set before mounting my favorite horse, Smiley. It would begin as any other night of riding, but then my horse would speed up like Secretariat, the American 77
Thoroughbred horse who won the triple crown of racing in 1973. Smiley stood motionless and allowed me to mount. He began a deliberate gallop, but then charged full speed ahead. My legs tightened as I straddled the horse. Something was missing: there were no reins to hold onto. I grabbed the animal’s neck with both hands in a desperate attempt to stay in the saddle as I bobbed up and down. My hips and thighs ached with each thump upon the saddle. My fingers grabbed the horse’s mane as I attempted to gain control of the animal’s motions. My chest slammed against his head as I struggled to hold on. “Stop! Stop!” I cried, but Smiley increased his running and bobbing. What hindered him from stopping? He never did this before. I ricocheted up; then back down into the saddle. I heard people scream in the distance as we all rode around the circle faster. I wanted to help them as I passed through the sounds of their screams hanging in the air, but I had my own situation to deal with. I clutched the horse’s thick neck, my neck buried in his mane, my chin upon his ear. My horse’s neck obstructed my view of others who clung to their horses. Strange music mocked me as I rode, becoming louder with each loop around the track. Suddenly my horse stopped. The last thing I saw as I flew from the horse to the ground below was the carousel operator’s toothless grin. 78
About the Author
SueAnn Porter is a two-time cancer survivor. She used to be a Computer Programmer, and wrote words for computers. She now uses the computer to write words for people. She enjoys writing Flash Fiction stories, and is now working on a novel and a modern-day commentary. Stay tuned. She lives in Upstate New York with her husband and a very spoiled dog named Bailey. You can visit her at her bloghttp://www.SueAnnPorter.com. Also, her twitter handle is @SueAnnPorterONE. 79
About the Illustrator
Hannah Shotkoski is a high school junior and she obviously loves to draw. She most often likes to work in pencil and acrylic paint, but she also uses chalk, markers, and charcoal. In addition to artwork she loves reading, and hanging out with her friends.
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Breaking Loose Nnamdi Nwaige
Illustration by Aishah Ahmad
The stigma will be unbearably immense, I decide, so I summon Gina’s number on my phone. She’d said to call when I make up my mind. I don’t want to confess to Father; his pious heart may fail and his congregations’ faith in him may waver. Mother will grab her breasts and fall backwards. It will have to be backwards, the same way she fell when 81
someone brought news of Uncle Tobias’ sudden death in a car crash. “It’s not yet a child after all,” Gina had scolded, “just a mushy clot of blood and water conniving to disgrace you and ruin your future.” Recalling those words took care of my indecision. I look at her name – Gina Love – sitting indifferently on my phone’s screen, take a deep breath, and thumb the green button. We choose tomorrow… I grab her hand as we approach the rusty gates of the compound, suddenly unsure of myself. “What?” She turns and shoots me an impatient look. “I’m not sure I want to do this, Gina.” She shrugs and turns to go. “Then tell your parents you’re pregnant for the choir master. Simple.” “Gina please, wait!” She stops. “I’ve not done this before, so I’m scared.” She walks slowly back to me. “I understand. I was also scared my first time.” 82
My jaw drops sharply in shock, my eyes widen. “You have…” “Yes, I have. And it’s better to do it now before it’s late. When you go home after the semester, your parents won’t notice. Just break loose from this obstacle and live your normal life again.” I look at her. She gives me a nod of encouragement, then a wan smile of assurance. I feel more confident as I give her my hand and let her lead me through the rusty gates. We step into the strong smell of disinfectants; a small room that is the reception. Some young girls are sitting on the chairs, their faces betraying different emotions: shame, defiance and indifference. Indifference is chewing a gum loudly, apparently blasé. “Ashawo,” Gina whispers to my ears in explanation and guides me to a seat. We sit and wait. My heart is clogged with fear. I think of the many girls who have threaded this path and did not return the same. I think of my parents. If this ends badly, what will they say? What will people say? I have looked at girls who have aborted babies with contempt. Raised the way I was, I have conveniently condemned them to eternal damnation and divine torture. 83
Of all sins, this was the one I didn’t think I would ever commit. I never imagined I would be confronted by the temptation, so it had no place on the to-do list of my mind. But now, it seems the most natural thing to do; the only path that slices a circle through this labyrinth of emotions and back to my former life—a path through which I must thread. I’ve heard of girls whose boyfriends accompany to places like this and I wondered what the world was coming to. But today, on my day, I am alone. I want Mike here. His presence may not be analgesic, but it will dignify my misery and make me feel less like an unclaimed luggage in the middle of an empty motor park. There is no Mike. He had exhumed many lifeless excuses so he could avoid today. I think of him as a pyromaniac. He has set me on fire and has climbed a distant tree to watch me burn. He will climb down only to check whether I burned properly or not. Gina nudges my life back into the reception. A doctor is standing some distance away from us. It is our turn; my turn. I look at Gina, the sharp sting of stifled tears peppering my eyes as though they are powdered glass. She gives me that supportive nod again, stands up with me and follows me down the passage, after the doctor. God bless Gina.
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But I know she cannot go all the way. There will be a point of separation; even a man’s shadow does not follow him to the grave. So as her footsteps begin to fade, as my heartbeat becomes almost audible, I decide not to look back in order to help her save face. Ahead, the doctor walks through a door and signals that I follow. As I take one stiff step after another, I mouth frantic prayers to God, asking for His grace, reeling off one promise after another in exchange for His mercies.
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About the author
Nnamdi Nwaigwe was born and raised in Aba, Nigeria. He presently lives in Owerri. His short story, ‘No Time’, has appeared on Brittle Paper.
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About the Illustrator Aishah Ahmad and is a 17-year-old from Quebec, Canada. She goes to college for Accounting & Management Technology. She loves sports, cooking and most certainly loves art!
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The First Plague Phil Temples
Illustration by Tamera
Fred opened the umbrella and raised it above his head as the first drops hit. The downpour started as a gentle patter against the cloth. Moments later, it intensified. Fred wondered if he would get drenched despite his large shield. He also worried that his lower pants legs would get soaked. 88
Just great. He had only four or five blocks left to walk before reaching his work place. Maybe I should wait it out under that awning ahead.
Fred arrived under the awning at the same time as an elderly woman and two businessmen. They had the same plan in mind. Fred closed his umbrella, and shook it to remove the moisture. Fred then nodded to the others with whom he shared the awning. No one said hello but the woman smiled back. One of the men wore an expensive looking fedora. He nodded to Fred in return. The second man glared back at Fred. Grandma looked as though she wanted to make small talk. But before she could speak, the rain intensified. Fred heard the racket; he assumed it was hail. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the round, white balls bouncing off the sidewalk and adjoining street. And bounce, they did. In fact, the hailstones bounced repeatedly. Wait! What? After a few seconds, Fred and the three
strangers came to a startling realization: the falling stones were, in fact, not hail—they were eyeballs! Fred could discern the dark pupil in one nearby eye. The surrounding iris was light gray in color. The eyeball looked human. He spotted another eye lying next to his right foot. It was smaller, and sported a vertical pupil. The iris was bright green. A cat’s eyeball, perhaps? Others rolled into view. One 89
eye came to rest near the curb. It was small, flat, and circular. Fred thought it must have belonged to a fish. The old woman spoke first. “What do you think it means?” Fred found her question interesting. She didn’t ask, What’s happening? but rather, what does it mean? Fred replied, “I remember reading a story as a kid that described a day in the 1800s when fish once rained down from the sky. They say some storm or waterspout picked up fish from the ocean and dumped them onto land. It didn’t mean anything per se. It was a curious scientific phenomenon.” “Fish is one thing,” replied the man wearing the fedora. “But come on—eyeballs? Where did they come from? And besides, human eyeballs! This is too bizarre.” “It’s the End Days,” said grannie. Fred watched the woman as she made the sign of the cross with her hand. “It’s the first of seven plagues.” “That’s ridiculous! You show me in the Book of Revelations where it says ‘God will send eyeballs to rain down on us’.” The comment came from the man who glared. The old woman began to quote scripture. “Revelations, Chapter 16, Verse 21: ‘And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and 90
men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great.’” Glaring man picked up and examined one of the eyeballs at his feet. It looked like it belonged to a large mammal, perhaps a whale. “Well, I’m not sure how much a talent weighs, lady. But these are eyeballs. Granted, abig, great eyeball. But not great hail.” Glaring man let it fall from his hand. It bounced once before rolling away. He shook the slime off his hand. Fedora man said, “You have a better explanation, I suppose?” “Yeah,” he replied. “Someone is playing a practical joke on us! In fact, I bet there’s a hidden camera that’s recording us now. A hidden mic, too. One of you is an actor, right? Like that old TV show—Candid Camera.” A moment passed. The four stood in silence. The eyeball storm subsided; only a few random eyes were falling to the ground now. Fred looked around. All he could see for blocks were eyeballs. There were eyeballs in the streets, eyeballs in the yards, and eyeballs on the sidewalks. He even spotted a few embedded in the grills of cars. It was a literal sea of eyeballs! Some were squished, but many were intact. Fred even saw one nearby that looked bloodshot. He reckoned its former owner must have tied one on the night before.
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It will be a treacherous trek to walk the remaining few blocks through this morass.
The four heard scratching noises behind them. Fred turned to look. He saw a large, scruffy-looking dog that had joined them. Scruffy was lapping up eyeballs, chewing on them as though they were some exotic treat. “Jesus!” shouted Glaring man. “That’s disgusting. Get out’a here, you mangy mutt!” The man kicked at the dog. He landed a blow on the dog’s rump, but in the process Glaring man stepped on an eyeball and lost his balance. He fell flat on his back onto the pavement, wincing in pain. Seconds later, a lone fish fell from the sky. Fred recognized the species as a Gadus morhua, more commonly known as the Atlantic Cod. It was a twenty-pounder at least. To add insult to injury, the cod smacked Glaring man in the head, knocking him unconscious. Fred knew his fish.
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About the Author
Phil Temples lives in Watertown, Massachusetts, and works as a computer systems administrator at a university. He has published over one hundred works of short fiction in print and online journals. He is the author of “The Winship Affair” from Blue Mustang Press, and “Machine Feelings” from Big Table Publishing.
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About the Illustrator
Tamera is a young artist and is ready to show the world the beauty in being different with a creepy twist
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For Better and Worse Yi Han
Illustration by Arushi Gupta
When he woke up there was a snowy horse standing in the corner of his chamber looking at him. He sighed. There were too many kidnapped princesses and distressed damsels, these days. The worst thing, so many of them offered their hand to him in marriage after being rescued. 95
No, he told each and every one who offered, we know not of each other, you reckon you are beguiled by me as I have saved your life and your heart is full with gratitude and your blood is singing, and it makes you act with haste. In the clear light of day, when your heart has calmed, you will find I am not as comely as excitement had clouded your mind to believe, and you are not as fond of me as you thought. If you desire to express your gratitude in some manner, kindly endeavour not to be captured by dragons or evil warlords, or ensnared in magical entrapments by crafty wizards and witches in the future. The clever ones understood, the foolish ones called him all sorts of names before they tossed their hair around and stalked off haughtily. His horse neighed in sympathy. Maiden saved, marriage rejected; patting his horse, they set off for home.
On the days he woke up with nothing in the corner of his chamber, but a vermilion fiery dragon flying outside his tower, striving to poke its stout into the loophole, he knew the castle’s treasures were under imminent attack, and he would ride his dragon to face the goblin or orc or dwarf hordes greedy for the King’s gold. These usually provided immense merriment and his dragon reveled in it too, breathing fire merrily. After they took care of the treasure96
raiders and fended off the raids, he would spend hours flying with his dragon, who would be mirthful with the chance to stretch its wings and soar, taking great dives off cliffs. It was a magnificent sight. At times his dragon would spin in the air to shake him off its back and rarely he would fall, but his dragon always caught him if he did. When enemy troops were attacking the castle, he would awake to find an ebony steed, decked in full armoury, impatiently snorting at him and thumping its hoof in the corner of his chamber. He chortled. Patience yet, I shall fetch my armour and we shall ride to battle. In melee, with his trusty steed, he had yet been undefeated.
On days when there were no impending attacks, no defences nor rescues required of him, mornings would bring a brownand-white hound watching him from the corner of his chamber. Those were favoured mornings, unburdened by duties for the day, the chance to continue with his research in the castle library, his hound by his side. On fairweathered days he would bring piles of parchment, scrolls and ancient books into the woods behind the castle. There was a great oak tree under which he would read, sheltered in 97
its shade, his faithful hound dozing on his lap, nudging his fingers for a scratch behind its ears. He always obliged.
On full moon nights he did not sleep, staying awake in bed. On the night of the fullest moon, in the hour of moonrise, in the corner of his chamber there would manifest a figure – not dragon nor steed nor hound but man – strong of build, pale blue of eye and dark of hair, once a knight, before a wizard’s spell had put an end to it, a spell shielded from a fellow knight in battle. He had put out the candles earlier, but still he could sense him in the velvety darkness. Come, please, his voice barely more than a whisper in the darkness, a slight tremble from want, need, guilt, too many emotions to give voice to. When the figure strode across the chamber past the loophole, he was illuminated for a moment by the moonlight falling into the room. Then he heard the rustle of coverlet being lifted, felt the dip in his bed, the figure climbing in next to him. He reached out, touched the expanse of chest under his fingers, warm, human, and sensed rather than saw the smile on the other knight’s face. Mere hours they had, before the sun rose again. 98
Someday, he thought, he would have this again by sunlight, not just moonlight. Someday, he would find the antidote, he would remove the spell. He would awake to the same pair of eyes looking fondly back at him every morning, watching over him, human eyes.
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About the Author
Teo Yi Han is an analyst with a degree in psychology that
has come in handy in the exploration of mental health issues in her writings. Her writing has won awards in a few Singapore-based competitions, including first prize in the 2015 Golden Point Award short story category and one of her stories is published in FLESH: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology.
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About the Illustrator
Arushi Gupta is a 20-year-old alien studying to be a dentist
in Chandigarh. She is a die-hard otaku and wishes to go to Japan soon. You can find her singing Japanese songs, making some artsy concoction or taking weird photographs in the streets of Chandigarh. You can find her works here.
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THE TEAM
Illustrators Modita (Cover art) Arushi Gupta
Poetry Editors Ankur Chhabra Inayat Pawar Gursaya Grewal
Fiction Editors Adarsh Raj Garima Mahajan
Editor Himanshu Goel. 103