BUFO 2010-11

BUFO 2010 - 2011

The Literary Magazine of Western Reserve Academy

BUFO

The Literary Magazine of Western Reserve Academy

2010 - 2011

BUFO 2010 - 2011

EDITORS Martha Miller Zach Wendeln & Claire Ilersich

FACULTY ADVISOR Jeannie Kidera STAFF Becca Cartellone Lillian Carter Micah Collins-Sibley Alex Fellows Camry Harris

Briana Jackson Daniel Miller Mitch Pollock Max Rosenwasser Rachel Silver

SPECIAL THANKS TO The Dads’ Club The Pioneer Women The Green Key Society Sarah Hulver

I

sn’t it funny that the hardest part of putting this whole maga-

zine together is writing this letter? (Is that too rhymey?) Part of being an artist is about expressing oneself; and yet, as we sit down to plunk this baby out, it’s kinda difficult to say what’s on our minds.

Maybe it’s because we find ourselves plagued metaphorical Vampires, who drain us of confidence and worth. Who knows how our public will react to what we write? What if they don’t even read it?

Perhaps it’s because this is Zach’s final year as Editor-in-Chief and he deeply desires to lay down some scrap of inspirational knowledge to be forever enshrined in this edition of BUFO. Or maybe it’s because we’re all creative people, and let’s face it, writing letters is just boring.

Whatever the case, we hope this magazine inspires you to pick up a pencil, a pen, a painbrush, or a camera and express yourself in any way you feel fit. Let the art take control, let it move you and create something wonderful. And then submit that stuff to us!

Lick and enjoy!

Zachary Wendeln Martha Miller & Claire Ilersich

Bufo, a journal of young creative writing, is distributed annually by students at Western Reserve Academy, and was published in 2011 by Michele Scourfield of Hudson Publishing. This edition was printed using the Palatino Linotype typeface. Editors can be reached through Bufo Advisor Jeannie Kidera c/o Western Reserve Academy, 115 College St., Hudson, OH, 44236.

CONTENTS 2010 - 2011 POETRY Jessie Wilson, Aubade Zach Wendeln, John Gen Bettendorf, Kismet Eilidh Jenness, Construction Aaron Segal, The Boardwalk Melinda Nanovsky, Distant Life Camry Harris, Things You Should Probably Never Lick Inga Wells, Awaiting an Awakening Caroline Griswold, Prose Poem Maggie Craig, Telling of Silent Rain Sarah Ramras, Lost at Sea Martha Millers, April 14th, 1865 Zach Wendeln, Sterbebette

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 21 22 23

A RT Camry Harris, Frank Sinatra Micah Collins-Sibley, Lady Kristina Graham, Broken Blue Bowl Abby Hermosilla, Live Through This and You Won’t Look Back Tatiana Pavloff, CrayCray Claire Ilersich, Chandelier Briana Jackson, Summer Treat

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

FICTION Drew Wise, Who Cooks for You? Aaron Segal, The Tattoo Maggie Craig, Canned Pineapple Kafka Daniel Miller, Word Puzzle Mitch Pollock, Blinding Lights Caroline Griswold, Glass and Other Sharp Objects Martha Miller, Tom and Leon Jessie Wilson, La Belle Rebelle

38 41 44 45 48 50 51 54

Cover art by Briana Jackson

POETRY

JESSIE WILSON

Aubade A wisp of hair curls out from under my bandana, like a young corn silk.

I’ll tuck it back.

Your eyes slide over like two cool river rocks, flecked with blue, softened by streams, bright as Ozark gloaming, that languid time when motes of cloud float, brilliant for only an instant.

I move, and you mirror, catching my hand in yours in the rising light.

Skin touches to skin and for a moment we sit like sculpture in a forest of fracturing sunbeams breaking on dewdrops.

Sunrise again.

You’re to flee back to the dusk and leave my small-town, broken-down backwoods, clapboard heartache to gallop off to your big-city girlfriend, cloistered in a dim cement box, god knows where. Doesn’t matter.

I remember our night, all I can have, since your desires like the mountains unyielding to the keening wind remain, immutable.

And so I’ll wait in my paisley kerchief for the dark again.

ZACH WENDELN

John I brush the cinders from your acid-washed jeans; thick skin firms beneath my fingertips.

Tap. You touch the butt to the ashtray.

I like the way it crumbles, the way you don’t give a damn.

You chew my tongue like gum, sweet songs chopped and rearranged into cries of pulled teeth and cracked ribs.

Your arms bandage my side. You pull away to extinguish the cigarette on your palm— prove you’re a man.

You tell me to touch so I poke my finger through palm lines calluses muscles tightening.

I’m dizzy from the coke and the ceiling fan, and my finger’s too big.

You laugh and swig your beer, set the sweating glass down on my favorite record.

I watch the condensation melt rings into the deep, dark face of Lady.

Lady wailing Lady moaning Lady loving.

GEN BETTENDORF

Kismet And as we let the Fates unroll The fortunes of us men, We let our minds recall for us The cycle each and every.

Hands dainty of Clotho Draw our lines from spool; Lachesis sweet and lovely Clocks merit from beneath, While Atropos graceful bears Night dark and sorrows prolix.

Let me not forget, O prizĂŠd troika, That my days are select, Numbered by Parcae three: A sacred triumvirate Judging the fate of me

EILIDH JENNESS

Construction We are tents of pliant flesh, Stretched taut over skeletal support We are mobile sanctuaries of tender spirits Contained Our mouths, one-way doors Through which thoughts pour out Housekeeping is necessary, Extravagant decoration is not Occasional renovations are encouraged

AARON SEGAL

The Boardwalk The record player perspires, embalming the room in enchanted smoke, sex, and sweat.

Their bones decay into the mattress.

Consciences writhe in the room’s dense smog.

Nicotine loiters like whores on the boardwalk.

The room bakes warm as naked flesh.

The gold bed frame creaks no more.

The cloud of skin and sheets has settled to dew, while exhausted limbs stir atop the mattress.

Night has been suffocated by the sun’s penetrating stare, burning across linen curtains.

His arm slithers gliding slickly under her neck. Polished with the evening’s tangled fervor, it’s the only sign of affection in Atlantic City tonight.

MELINDA NANOVSKY

Distant Life She pulls her hair back into a spiral bundle her blue eyed glimmered like stars set on a clear sky her lips pressed tightly against another’s with a certain firmness and strength that is unbreakable.

Inner twined with another’s grip she pushed herself back from the beating wall of muscle and skin and planted her back on the wall.

Their stories would remain and their words would only stay between them.

It was forbidden yet welcome between the two.

Gripped on her luxurious finger was a gold band of another life.

Its depth could not be shown but its secrets lived on.

They hung on and moved forward.

The future hung ahead like a distant light.

CAMRY HARRIS

Things You Should Probably Never Lick A bath tub.

A pencil stub.

Anything with fur.

A steak knife.

Someone’s wife.

An urchin in water.

The sidewalk, including chalk.

A figure made of clay.

A dead cat.

An old hat.

A strawberry turned gray.

Cre paper.

A paint scraper.

Grandmother’s old clothes.

You will be curious, (or possibly furious) to lick any of those.

INGA WELLS

Awaiting an Awakening Yearning, searching.

Waiting for that moment of revelation Hits, Chopin-style changing the path, either way it turns.

The form a cryptic message, an earthquake, a sign from a higher power Culminating in a sudden synapse of exposure.

The burden of the wait and what to occupy?

To search for the pinnacle moment or to sit patiently?

The confusion of what is and what will be maybe.

What purpose? What drive?

Yet another to be found.

A ceaseless chain of unrelenting probing Masked by the quotidian life.

Sudden doubt, shock, wavering The existence of such, not proven, the question a search to no avail?

CAROLINE GRISWOLD

(untitled)

A man sits all the way at the end of the bar. His black rubber work boots squeal against the gold rod underneath as he takes a swig from a pint. He watches the dirt under his finger nails very carefully, his fingers sticking out of ratty beige gloves. Wisps of stringy grey hair poisoned black by dust protrude from a dingy auburn woolen cap. With a crippled hand, he slowly etches the grooves in his face; the furrowed brow lines, the wandering crows’ feet, the terrible canyons of a grimace. Completely unsatisfied, he throws some limp bills on the counter and limbers out into the sunrise, yawns. He adores the nightshift, especially last night, everyone home safe this morning. He grabs up his bicycle from the stand and peddles home, passing the town cemetery laden heavy with snow. He collapses into bed, dreaming in nickels, thinking about all the flowers he can buy Penny with last night’s pay. She turns in bed to face him, and with eyes closed, familiarly traces the outline of his worn face, wrinkles and all. Suddenly they seem much smaller

MAGGIE CRAIG

Telling of Silent Rain Tell her.

What is the rain and why does it fall?

Did she used to splash and delight in the wet when all the world was her coming rainbow?

Now it is but a murky puddle, bleeding bullseye.

The clock still breaths under the droplets.

Tell her of the sun.

Did it rush like a sprinkler, whipping laughter in all directions?

Did it taste of the reckless joy of life savored upon her tongue? Did she swallow it or did it swallow her?

Now stale shadows grip the ashen brander, burning away once flawless childhood.

Bandaids to fix a splintering existence.

Tell her of the ocean, the calling gulls, footprints pressed into wet sand, only to be wiped away by the anxious hands of the wave. Tell her of the wild glory of the storm, of the stillness of the morning, holding its breath until the sunrises. Tell her of discovery, mouth fogging telescope, of dancing carefree with the one she will love under the winking night sky.

MAGGIE CRAIG

Telling of Silent Rain (cont’d) Tell her I am not worthy to experience the rain, the sun, the storms, the oceans; empty though they may seem to be. A river swells the impending shores And I will be willed.

Tell her to deny heartbeat, conscience, letters in red. Tell her and I will show you the hundreds of millions they have drowned In the silent rain.

SARAH RAMRAS

Lost at Sea The ocean hugging this little house, erodes the walls and family.

Their words are cut, when salty foam, slices their tongues.

One walking towards charred cliffs, another scrambles among the sea’s grasses.

As the tide rolls in like a yearning handshake, Mother calls that dinner’s ready.

The greasy steam seeps into the crumbling walls.

The seagulls pick at their plates.

The waves bite the siding off, and the roof sags overhead like snow laden branches.

Children drift out to sea, and off to school.

Only to return when the broken moon shivers above cobalt waters.

And there are only echoes atop the salt stained cushions.

MARTHA MILLER

April 14th, 1865 Horses, frothing at the mouth pull to a stop and the party descends.

They’re late again, like a stubborn seed below dark earth.

A line of applause catches the air with brief head turns and the lights dim.

Poorly written punchlines dodge bullets of laughter.

Heavy breathing opens the door soundlessly like a phantom hand.

Sparks fly up in dialogue.

A shot, a swirling sea of gasps— they’re really killing them tonight.

It’s not a new scene but improvised, a line more permanent than stone.

Exit assassin, stage right, as the martyr is carried out black powder clinging to his ragged head, smelling of beeswax and blood.

ZACH WENDELN

Sterbebette 1 I. Der Alte Mann2 His hands are wrapped in words, pages of Woolf and Plath exposed in his palms, their bindings cracked and skins leathered brown by mortality. I fold Sylvia’s mouth shut, slip Daddy back onto his shelf with the Tulips crafted from azure and magenta folds.

Hübsche Papierblumen3, he whispers from a cloud of oxygen, wheezing like the machines pumping his breath.

So pretty, mein Kind4, ticks his tongue as it strikes his clenched teeth like flint.

His lips spit sparks; I shudder at the intensity of each gasp. Glass rattles in his lungs as if he swallowed the shards of the broken hand mirror dropped by his nurse.

Consume the face so that the Devil can’t decipher your Geschichte der Sünde5.

II. Die Krähe6 She hits the window, beak contorted in a sharp-tongued skaaaawkikaaaw like a record torn from the turnstile.

The sound shatters his staggered breath; the window, her skull. Her eyes burst like blueberries between a child’s fingers.

The wings multiply on impact, fanning the shadows on the window sill higher against the harvest moon. She waves a farewell to horizons, handprint staining the glass red. Blood on the moon! he howls through a choked accent, thick and bubbling from his throat. He points a grey, grizzled finger at my eyes. Blut auf dem Mond!7 Tugging at his beard, at the tangle of sheets, he shrieks like a screech-owl. I muffle these caws and hoots beneath a pillow stained with snot and vomit. Gute nacht, Herr8.

ZACH WENDELN

Sterbebette (cont’d)

III. Der Engel9 I roof-jump, arms spread as if feathered to catch the clouds between the hollows of my fingertips. I fumble, fall, and cling to the fabric of night, thin and streaming through my fists like oiled hair. Ropes of water pour from stone snouts, Wasserspeier10 mouths weaving answers to prayers pleaded in minor chords and staccato beats.

They cannot bear my blood-bloated weight.

I collapse in your arms, spread to catch fallen stars still steaming from the aether, the hearts of demons torn from their chests

by Die Heiligen11. Our kind always plummets.

Your unpainted eyes gaze past me face, carved neck craned so that He might note its scars. I beat your naked chest till purple blooms appear on the sides of my hands, till I wring them clean of the water of his heart.

1

Deathbed.

The Old Man. 3 Pretty paper flowers.

4 My child.

5 History of sin.

6 The Crow.

7 Blood on the moon!

8 Good night, Sir. 9 The Angel.

10 Gargoyle.

11 The Holy Ones.

2

ART

Camry Harris

Micah Collins-Sibley

Kristina Graham

Abby Hermosilla

Tatiana Pavloff

Claire Ilersich

Briana Jackson

FICTION

DREW WISE

Who Cooks for You?

T

he snow-covered trees glistened softly in the dying light of the

day. Night was coming on quickly, the time when the air would smell of slow cooked meat and apple cider. The small, isolated houses would turn into individual orbs of artificial light and heat, but that was far from here. Here, in this spot, it would be dark and cold.

Maddy walked slowly, enjoying the gentle crunch under her feet as she stepped on the fresh snow. Now and then she would reach down, pack some snow, observe it thoughtfully as she walked, and then let it fall to the ground. The cold air began to bite at her face, first playfully, then fiercely.

She didn’t seem to mind all that much.

Coming away from the peace and simplicity of the forest, Maddy approached her house. She stood for a moment in front of the road leading to her house, breathed in as deeply as she could, and continued on. Coming up the driveway she was greeted by the kind of pensive Jazz that her mom liked to play softly on her record player as she cooked.

Maddy’s mom yelled to her from the kitchen, “How was your walk, dear? Did you get the groceries on that list I gave you?”

“My walk was great, Mom. I saw a couple of deer in the forest looking for food under the snow, and I even heard an owl. But the store…”

Maddy trailed off.

“The store…?” Her mother asked. “What is it, honey? You can tell me.”

“The, um, the stamps. They wouldn’t take them. The owner told me to get lost and find a job.”

Maddy’s mom wiped her hands on a towel and looked at Maddy.

She had a look of sad determination on her face. “Well, what’s that all about?” She could barely get the words out correctly. “It’s just my luck. As soon as I decide to let the government ‘help’ me, this happens. Well, God almighty!” Her head drooped as if under a great weight.

Maddy stared down at her feet, going over things she could say to get away from this topic. Nothing in particular came to mind, so she just went with what she liked. “The owl, I mean the owl I heard that is, I’m pretty sure it was a barred owl. I could tell by its call. The barred owl’s call is easy to remember; it sounds like the owl’s shouting ‘Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?’ I’m not entirely sure, but I think it was a barred owl.”

Her mother looked up, a slight smile on her face. Her daughter’s anxious flurry of words reminded her of when Maddy was younger and obsessed with animals. Maddy’s face used to light up whenever she talked about animals and nature.

“Well, I do like the call of a barred owl on a winter night.” She grinned softly. “Go grab the encyclopedia. We’re going to learn a thing or two about Northwestern owls.”

Maddy and her mother sat down on a couch, reading all they could about the owls of Oregon. The Jazz record, an old Thelonious Monk album, still played quietly.

DREW WISE

hunger in her stomach. She cussed in her head. After a deep breath to collect herself, she nudged Maddy awake.

“Hm?” Maddy sleepily inquired. “What is it?”

“We never ate.”

“Oh.” Maddy was still too tired to really care. “Weren’t you cooking something when I came in tonight? Bread, was it? Let’s just eat that.”

She looked at Maddy in a way that reminded Maddy of a wolf backed into a corner. “No.” She said passionately yet softly. “That bread was supposed to just be the appetizer. No, we’re going to get those groceries.”

Maddy hesitated, nervous. “Last time it worked when I innocently diverted the topic, could I be two for two?” She thought to herself. She decided to give it a shot. “Um, Mom, how about we sit down with the encyclopedia and eat that bread? We can learn all about the rodents around these parts.”

Her mother was already headed to the door. She was outside, coat on, car keys and food stamps in hand before Maddy could do anything to stop her. The car lights flickered on and her mother was gone. Maddy slumped down in front of the window. With a long sigh, she put on her coat and boots and went for a walk.

Maddy’s mother paid no attention to the speed limit. She knew the icy back roads like her daughter knew nature. She made it to the store with the rage inside of her growing with each passing moment.

The small grocery store door swung open forcefully. “Hello, Ma’am.

How may I help you this evening?” The owner asked, politely enough.

“Don’t give me that,” she said. “Earlier you sent my daughter home empty handed because she wanted to pay with food stamps. Now, let me tell you something. It’s disgraceful enough to be getting food from the damn government, and you have the nerve to turn her away and tell her to get a job!” Her indignation was barely contained.

“Look lady, I didn’t open this store so a bunch of Communist leeches could come in here and pay with money that ain’t money. If you weren’t such a lazy slacker, you could afford to buy your own food. Now you can either leave or I can call the police on you.”

The man’s words were too much for Maddy’s mother. No one had ever threatened to call the police on her, and certainly no one had ever called her a communist before. Her anger was instantly replaced by a sense of guilt and defeat. She left the store like a badly beaten boxer walking to the locker room.

Watching her hot breath move like smoke through the Oregon air, Maddy listened carefully to the forest. It was a particularly still night; all she heard was her own stepping. She found a log to sit on and stopped to think.

DREW WISE Her thoughts all stayed centered around her mother. “Such a strong woman, so proud…” She thought. “It’s all the fault of those damn food stamps! I just can’t take it sometimes. If only I could get a job and raise a little more money!” Her racing mind made Maddy so agitated that she stood up and paced.

She was interrupted from her pacing by a familiar sound, a welcoming and friendly sound. A barred owl, somewhere off in the forest, cried into the night. Maddy stopped where she was and listened intently.

The call kept coming. She slowly relaxed and returned to her seat on the log.

“Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” Maddy thought to herself. All the other worries were now replaced by a sense of peace and this one phrase. She remembered why she always came to the woods, why she loved animals so much. She sat in this moment as long as she could, but she knew that she had to move on. Before too long, Maddy headed back to her house.

Maddy arrived home a little after her mother. Again she paused at the top of her driveway to breathe and prepare, but this time she didn’t hear Thelonious Monk call out to her as she approached the house. It was a little darker out this time, but the house was lit up well.

Maddy entered the house to find her mother sitting alone at the table, slowly chewing on some bread. She held her head in one hand and ate with the other. She didn’t greet Maddy this time; she just stared at the table and ate.

Maddy sat down at the table with her mother, who gave her some of the bread. They ate together in silence for awhile, until Maddy got up and put on the Monk record. The soft piano filled the small house. Maddy led her mother to the couch, and together they read from the encyclopedia about owls.

AARON SEGAL

The Tattoo

W

here the fuck is this place?” Jessica whined, her high heels chaffing

against the dilapidated pavement. She looked towards the sky. The worn out clock atop the bank tower read two thirty-six in the morning, glowing like a gentle voice of reason. A silent calm had been winding its way through the streets of Miami Beach, while traffic lights changed colors to allow the darkness to waft through the desolate roads.

It wasn’t an eerie feeling; the soothing hush blanketed the evening in a sense of calm. The night air was warm and sticky; the ocean perfumed the air with salt every time the gentle splash of a wave dissolved into the sand. “I feel like we’ve been walking for like, days. I’m not even drunk anymore.”

“This seemed like a better idea after our sixth shot,” Sammi replied as she spotted the neon sign across the street. “Wait, I think that’s it next to the pizza place.” The tattered neon sign was barely decipherable, the majority of the letters either broken or in need of fresh bulbs. The sign sunk into the nighttime façade of the shabby plaza, its letters giving off the dull beam of taillights. A pool of hot pink neon reflected onto the sidewalk, spilling onto the street.

The harsh fluorescents lights of Beachside Tattoo’s interior sharply contrasted the lackluster neon sign.

“THAT’S IT?” Sammi snuck a glimpse at the map that lit up her Blackberry’s rhinestonecoated screen.

“That’s it,” she replied. “421 Collins.”

“The place looks like…herpes. “ “Yeah? Well I’m going in. You want to know why? Because I’m from La Jolla, California and I don’t know any other tattoo shops open at three in the fucking morning in Miami Beach. You want to go back to the hotel? Get a cab, I’ll meet you there,” declared Sammi, forcefully waddling off the curb and crossing the street with her high-heel-blistered feet.

“Wow, real cool asshole. Leave me standing here on a street corner like a hooker,” Jessica retaliated.

She examined her surroundings, gave a curt stomp of her foot with a disgruntled huff before shuffling off after her comrade. As they swung open the glass door, the two were greeted by an obnoxiously loud chime from an off-white box at the base of the door the size of a deck of cards.

Sammi and Jessica glanced at each other under the first legitimate light the two had been in since they prepped in the hotel bathroom together. The mood lighting and strobe lights of the nightclub did not offer much of an opportunity to evaluate appearance, nor did the dimly lit night air as they walked. However, the florescent lighting of the shop beamed down from the thinly plastered ceiling like a magnifying glass, intensifying every make-up smear and loose article of clothing.

Jessica’s bright red feet were still jammed into her shimmering gold high heels, while her factory-tattered skintight jeans appeared to be painted along every curve of her body. Her glistening gold sequence tank top lay loosely against her body like a sheet draped over the clothesline of her tanned shoulders. Her mascara had created a black stream between her left eye

AARON SEGAL and nose that stopped just before a small freckle near her mouth, while the same mascara consumed her right eye in a charcoal cloud. Sammi stood holding her opaque purple heels by the back straps, one nail on the hand split from the body like a severed limb from the war of the nightclub. A strap of her black and purple lay gently against her arm, fallen from its place atop her shoulder. Her blistered, swollen bare feet lay camouflaged against the cold, khaki tile of the shop. She would be spending the entire morning peeling her jeans off like they were a layer of skin. The shop itself was jarringly immaculate. Beachside Tattoo reminded the girls of a hospital more than anything, the stark, thin white plaster ceiling, the hot florescent lights, the cheaply leathered maroon operating table that lay in the center of the shop. The walls were coated in grey patterned wallpaper that resembled smoothly polished granite, while the linoleum tile floor looked as clean as the glistening needle gun that lay adjacent to the operating table.

There was no cash register. No generic glass counter, no back storage room, no cubicles for multiple artists, no posters or scrapbooks for customers to select the graffiti to ruin their innocent bodies. Adjoining a small, plastic two tier white desk containing three rows of inks was a man.

“Good morning, ladies,” the man exclaimed in a gentle, kind voice as he stood from his metal stool. His upper lip rose into something between a smirk and a token smile as he began walking toward the girls. His short, black hair stood on end with a perfect amount of hair gel, his white wifebeater tank top pressed firmly to his body as if ironed in place. His frame was bold and strong; his tanned muscles seemed to be swelling out of his overly snug tank top and bulging through his generic navy sweatpants. His facial features were gentle and soft, a stark contrast to his body, tan with scattered freckles that seemed so perfectly placed they could have been made with pencil. His skin was flawless. There wasn’t the faintest sign of an acne splotch, a mole, a wrinkle, or a scar. Certainly, there were no tattoos.

An inexcusable atrocity it would be to blemish such perfection with the poison of chemically produced ink.

“He’s cuuuute,” Jessica whispered, arching her spine sideways to be a few inches closer to Sammi’s ear in order to keep her observation a secret.

“Please, come. Take a seat. Long night?” he inquired, casually gesturing toward the long, cushioned bed of a chair that it his operating table, before softly landing back in his stool. Sammi went first, crashing onto the chair like it was going to suddenly disappear. It took her a minute to get her bearings, the sensation of dancing in the club still alive tearing through her bloodstream, so real she could have sworn she was still grinding.

She gave a quick snort and a giggle, “Oh. My. God. We raged SO hard tonight. So first, we like met these guys by the pool today and—” “I’m sorry to interrupt but did you guys have something in mind?”

The girls looked at each other puzzled.

“Wha?” “The tattoo.”

“Wow we are complete retards! Could you do like matching pink and yellow flowers on our wrists, with like an M in the middle for Miami? That’d be so cute.”

“Of course, the wrist is perfect too. OK, keep going.”

Sammi cocked her head to the left and flung it back, shooting her blonde highlights in orbit from the front of her eyes to her back. Jessica wrestled

AARON SEGAL her pink Blackberry from the pocket of her jeans and began to text, waiting her turn. Sammi rambled on about their night, from the pool, to dinner, from one nightclub to the next, while a pink and yellow flower the size of a half dollar appeared on her wrist. The best friends switched chairs, and with the switch came Jessica’s opportunity to reinforce every meaningless, minute detail of their night. Sammi stood adjacent to her friend, admiring both her own wrist and its mirror image forming on the wrist of her partner. With two fresh fifty-dollar bills in his sweatpants pocket, the girls were ushered off with a thank you and exited as abruptly as they had entered.

High on the first rebellious activity either had ever taken part in, the girls each lit up a cigarette outside the shop, awaiting the taxi the man had called for them. A pause in the conversation came while each took a long inhale of the smoke, to savor the taste of tar slithering down their throats. Jessica was the first to notice her arm.

“SAM!” Jessica shrieked, mortified as she peered down at her forearm.

Sammi collapsed onto the humid pavement, the crack of her skull on the concrete echoing throughout the vacant night air. The veins of Jessica’s arm turned into rigid blue wires, slowly inflating until they appeared as if they were going to pop. She dropped to the concrete, as unconscious as Sammi, their cadavers resting lifelessly on the cement. The man rose slowly from his stool and meandered to the door, opening it to the same awful shriek from the off-white box at the base. He held the door open with his foot while effortlessly gliding the girls’ bodies into the shop, letting them crumple onto the linoleum. He wandered over to the master light switch next to the front door and switched off the neon sign, turning the night to black.

MAGGIE CRAIG

Canned Pineapple Kafka

S

harim gave a dry sniff in the interior of his taxi cab, inhaling the

stale taste of every cigarette to pass his lips. He told his passengers that he smoked three packs a day, lighting one up at every red light as their money wafted out the windows like his smoke. If they wanted to do the math, they could see from his plexi-glass protected identification papers that he’d smoked over thirty two thousand in this dingy vehicle alone. He was quite proud of this and would imagine his body decaying at the speed of his clicking turn signal. He’d often ask them, his hairy hands gesticulating through the air, if they thought about this, about their bodies drying out like pieces of fruit in the wrong season, exported from their homeland and dying slowly in the many suns of squealing tires and spitting rain. His passengers’ mouths croaked open in amusement at his thoughts, their Blackberries vibrating and their earbuds crawling up their necks like white ivy. Their fingers scraped against each other to pay him torn bills, but he fed their pennies to the pigeons, wishing he could swallow change as easily.

Halfway through cigarette thirty two thousand and fifteen, an eighteen wheeler fatally crumpled his cab like a soda can clenched tight in a fist. Sharim wasn’t an organ donor, and while his cheek rested on a gravel pillow, realized he didn’t have a favorite flower. As he glimpsed the fireworks popping behind his drooping eyelids, he wondered if the pretty young university student next door would ever ask about him. His passengers ripped the buttons off his shirt and stuffed them into their eye sockets, traipsing away down the hardened tar and dotted lines in search of the next yellow cab.

DANIEL MILLER

Word Puzzle

I

was reading in my room at Broadmoor, England. That’s all there

was to do there, really. I could either read, or I could think, and the latter I could hardly do at all. It was like going through a shifting, seething labyrinth. Each alleyway was a dead end, walls with eyes, speaking in words that I could hardly understand. It was like being in a crowded room, with all persons speaking to me; all I could discern from the din were bits and pieces.

So I read. With my pension from the Army, I bought novels, biographies, essays, anything I could lay my hands on and that I could afford. We were allowed minor “vacations” from Broadmoor, or at least that is what our doctors called them. I found it strange that it was declared that I needed a doctor for doing what any man would have done in his own self-defense.

Whenever we were let out, I would go to a local bookseller. I tried to enjoy my time there but, my watcher, the spy sent with me to “keep me in line,” was forever coming and checking on me, trying to figure out what I was reading. It was the most irritating thing in the world to me.

But one day, as I was returning to Broadmoor with my purchases, something caught my eye. A little leaflet was stuck in-between the pages of a novel I had bought.” An Appeal to the English-speaking and Englishreading Public”, it said. I read through it and discovered its purpose. A scholar by the name of Murray was trying to write the world’s largest English dictionary. The leaflet pleaded that any who were able should send letters to the address containing “obsolete and obscure words with particular or peculiar definitions or use in sentences.”

I walked back to my room, my cell, passing the vagrants whom I was obliged to share a roof with. I could never forget the other vagabonds of men that I had known, and what I had done to them. I had given them a title that none of them had truly deserved. I had even put the damn letter on them. A letter of death, destruction, and desertion. The men were right in what they did. I wish I could have seen it then.

I sat within the confines of my room and read. I continued to think upon what the leaflet had said, about the project started by the noble scholars at Oxford. I went to my door, and knocked on it so that I could get the guard outside my door’s attention.

He looked at me very dully. I felt my indignation rising in my chest.

I would have felt a great deal more justified if our places were reversed.

“Wassit you want, sir?” He muttered, ignoring all rules of dictation and clarity of sentence. I was glad that he at least remembered my station.

“Pen.” I said. I was now afraid to speak more than simple words.

“A what, sir?” He asked, putting his hand up to his ear like a deaf man.

“Damn God man it, pen!” I said in exasperation. I felt like crying until I had no more tears in me. I could no longer talk with as much clarity as I once did. My mind could never form the sentences when it came to the spoken words.

DANIEL MILLER He smiled.”A pen, sir? What do you need it for?”

Damn the man, what did it matter what I needed a pen for? “Will write books I in my.” I said, almost in tears.

He laughed, almost reaching cachinnation.”You are one deranged lunatic.” He said, and went off for a moment, returning with a pen.

I snatched it from him, went over to my bed, and pulled out one of my books, one from the 16th century. I began to read and underline words I knew but didn’t hear used nowadays. I had decided. I would rebuild myself, reconstruct everything I had lost, and I would do it through this project to find words that were also lost.

This occupied me for years. I would find books, purchase them, list them, quote them, and send my lists to Murray in Oxford. He would write back, thanking me for my contributions, which were sometimes more than a hundred a week. I could simply lose myself in the activity of finding what was once lost. I cherished each word, each and every one that I sent. Each was a discovery, a possible stepping stone to my recovery.

Eventually, my contributions became so numerous that Murray wrote to me, saying: “Dear Dr. W. C. Minor, If you would so honor me in the acquaintance, I would very much like to meet the man to whom this project and I owe so much. If deemed acceptable, I would like to visit you within a week, but the date of our meeting is entirely your decision. I await your reply with great anticipation.

Your friend, James Murray” I replied that I was willing to see him anytime he would wish. I tried to avoid saying exactly how he would find me. Broadmoor is not exactly a place for men of caliber. It was a “sanctuary of criminally insane persons.”

I had killed a man—George Merrett I was told his name was—because he had been spying on me and had a premeditated plan to assassinate me. I know how incredible that sounds, but I swear it’s true. When I saw him, it all just…seemed to fit in my mind.

Anyway, Mr. Murray arrived at Broadmoor, and was shown to my room. I was very nervous about meeting him. He entered, and smiled when he saw me.

“You must be Dr. Minor. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Murray, meet pleasure to you. Sit, please.” I responded. I winced at my own words.

We sat in silence for a moment. I felt that he was glancing about the room. He must have been thinking about what strange accommodations I had.

“Sorry I about room meager-” I started.

“Oh, they are fine! Please don’t worry about it,” he interjected, hurriedly. I felt very awkward with him. He seemed to be trying to ignore the fact that my sentence structure was greatly deteriorated. He seemed like he was trying his best to put it all together very quickly.

“May I see your library?” he asked suddenly.

“Oh. Yes.” I replied.

DANIEL MILLER We stood up, and we went to my other room. I had about three bookshelves, and a small table and a desk.

“This it is.” I said.

He smiled.”I really can’t express just how much I appreciate your contributions every week, Dr. Minor.”

I suddenly felt like striking him. He seemed so unreal, like he was another illusion of my mind, some small part that still had hope for me. But there was none. Even with the thousands of submissions that I made, my mind was still deteriorating. Could hardly think even straight anymore.

Lost. I cause was a lost.

He left. I submitting kept. I even more lost. I sent was to Elizabeth St. Hospital, diagnosed doctor me schizophrenia with. Not even language, with all rules its and structure, help could me.

MITCH POLLOCK

Blinding Lights

I

t seemed like just another moment. We stood there in the

terminal, arms wrapped around each other in a warm embrace. I remember it all now: the smell of flowers in her curly brown hair, her eyes like tiny sapphires staring into my brown ones, the line of freckles splashed across her nose. The past year had gone by too fast. Jennifer and I had grown so close, and now I would not see her again for three months. Little did I know that when we walked to different gates that day, I would never see her face again.

That past summer was great, but the entire time, I could not wait to return to UCLA in September to see Jennifer again. With her in Massachusetts and me in New Jersey, we hadn’t seen each other all summer. I remember the last time I heard her voice… “I miss you, Jon. I’m about to leave the ground. See you in Los Angeles!” She sounded so excited. That was September 11th, 2001, in the early morning. I decided to walk to the airport that day. After all, New York is a beautiful city, and that was my last day until Christmas. I walked out of my apartment, smelling the distinct aroma of the Upper East Side. The pavement was cracked under my feet, and grass was jutting out of the cracks like hair sprouting from a toddler. I began to think back to my first trip to this great city…

“Mom, I’m cold.”

“Well, you should have brought your jacket.”

Young Jon and his mother walked on the pavement, grass jutting out of the cracks. It was the boy’s 13th birthday and his first trip to the city.

“So, did you enjoy the concert?” his mother asked as they crossed the busy street. The jet-black puddles splashed under their feet.

“Yeah, U2 rocks! And New York is more amazing than I could have imagined.” Just then, a cab turned, and its lights shone brightly in the faces of mother and son, illuminating them. “New York is so bright,” said Jon. “The lights are almost… blinding.”

I crossed that same busy street years later, watching out for wild cab drivers. The city was just as amazing on September 11th as it was that day of the concert, but at night, the city really comes alive. One such night came back to me that day on my walk. The night that I first met Jennifer…

“Excuse me?”

Jon turned towards the customer and was awestruck. An angel was sitting in the booth, legs crossed, holding a glass aloft. He was speechless.

“Hello? Waiter?” She shook the glass, ice jingling in the cup. “May I please have a refill of Coke?”

He slowly moved forward and took the cup. She smiled, and his heart raced when he saw her curly brown hair, and her eyes like tiny sapphires. He backed away, and soon, Jon came back with the drink. As he turned to go, she asked, “So, when do you get off?”

It was night by the time they left the diner, and the “OPEN” sign shown as a red neon beacon against the night sky.

MITCH POLLOCK The light was still shining, and I was tempted to stop in for a cup of coffee, but I passed on by. I had to make my flight. I received more than a few harmless shoves as I made my way to midtown through the congested sidewalk. This city used to be home to both of us, until her family moved away to Boston. Countless nights were spent exploring the maze of lights and sounds that make up New York. I showed her my secrets, she showed me hers. The night before she left was especially memorable…

The young couple strolled past the theater. They held hands, smiling at each other.

“I’m cold, Jon,” she said.

He laughed, remembering a walk from his first New York concert. It was not unlike this one.

“Did you enjoy the concert?”

“Yeah, U2 rocks!” said Jennifer, grinning. They fell silent again, except for her humming. After a while, she sighed. “I don’t want to leave you, Jon.” “You have to,” the man replied, halting.

“But I love you. And I love New York. Look,” she said as she dragged him along. “Look at our city. It’s the city of blinding lights. The buildings look like they have fireflies all over them. And look here,” she whispered, ushering Jon to a nearby window. “Look in the window. Purple irises. You never know what you might find here!

They’re even advertising in the skies for us!” she said, pointing to a billboard that read, “Come and stay a while!” Jon took Jennifer aside, looking into her deep blue eyes.

“You look so beautiful tonight. Let’s just enjoy this and not worry about tomorrow.”

Suddenly, I was thrust back into reality. A loud boom shook the street. Men, women, and children all ran in the opposite direction. I looked up and saw a pillar of smoke rising a bit ahead of me. I ran, almost falling, two blocks ahead. Then, finally, I saw it. The World Trade Center, in flames, stood before me. As I got even closer, mouth agape, I heard the words of a newswoman being filmed near me. “… huge catastrophe… dozens killed… a plane was hijacked this morning, and it flew into the Twin Towers… unsure why… flight from Boston to L.A., departure at 8…”

And then I lost it. Jennifer’s flight… it was too much to bear. The floodgates opened, and tears dripped on my UCLA sweatshirt. I tore my hair, I cursed, I yelled, I fell to my knees, I moaned in despair. I tried to get up, get to my senses, but I only made it to a less-congested area a few blocks away before I collapsed. My love, gone in an instant, on the eve of our reunion! I could not believe it, I was floored.

Since that day, I’ve been through a lot. I dated again, but never found anyone like Jennifer. I think now that I’m older, I know less. Back then, I had it all figured out. Time has changed me, and so did 9/11.

The airport was a zoo the day I finally left. It took a while after the tragedy for New York to return to its normal business. After that, businessmen, travelers, and students like me were crowding the terminal again, but there was an aura of uneasiness all around us. The plane had a late start, so as we left the ground, I saw the lights of New York twinkled like little fireflies against the night sky. That’s when I knew that I’d always have those lights there to bring me back.

CAROLINE GRISWOLD

Glass and Other Sharp Things

M

y mom had a photograph hanging on the wall in her bedroom,

the wall to the right as you walk in, the one with the armoire and the chest of drawers. It wasn’t a picture of me, or of Lauren, either. Not Maddie, or Lisey, or Simone or Alex; no, those pictures were scattered around the house, collecting dust on the mantle, or worse, lying in old boxes in the back of her closet.

No, the photo that hung so proudly on my mother’s bedroom wall depicted a lighthouse. It was giant, taller than me when I was younger. From memory, I could describe it perfectly; I used to stare and marvel and memorize every detail, because in the back of my mind I had a creeping sensation that we would soon be separated, the photo and me. The brown rippled stone like frozen liquid. The greening mortar holding the massive bricks together. The shocking crimson door. The man holding it ajar just seconds before a motionless wall of water blooming behind him encircled the balcony where he stood, petrified. It was obviously taken just moments before he had to close the door, I used to think, or he would have been swept away. I was always so terrified for that man, that he wouldn’t close the door in time, that he would be swept away. It was sad, he was always seconds away from his demise, always seconds away, and he could never close the red door. Maybe he wanted to be swept away, my mom used to say.

The day came when my mom had had enough, and she smashed that favorite photograph of hers over the dark wooden railing of the third floor landing. Glass shattered and skidded over the carpet like sparkling ice cubes in champagne. The sound reverberated through the hall, and the old house groaned in response. Maybe if we’re very, very quiet, I whispered to the little ones, she will pick up the little pieces and hang the pretty picture back on the wall. I pulled away from them like elastic, to see if I could make out the reason, but they insisted on following, and Lisey got a sliver of glass wedged in the fleshy arch of her foot. Maybe she’ll put it back on the wall, I told them.

But the illusion had already been marred. I gingerly stepped in between the glass to where the lighthouse lay limp and unprotected, and in this vulnerable state, it appeared so unthreatening that I threw my head back in laughter. Don’t mock me, my mom hissed in a way I will never forget, don’t mock me.

That was a long time ago, and now we pretend these dark times never happened, even though there are still bloodstains on the carpet from where the glass had sliced into her fingers. Lauren got the photograph reframed, and it’s still up there on my mom’s wall, the new glass gleaming when the glare hits it from the back windows, so now my mom averts her gaze.

And when we’d all walk in the bright sunshine, my sister and I, and my mom, down North Negley Avenue, I’d see the wall of water coming; suspended, almost upon us, always almost. Close the door, I would scream, close the goddamn door!

MARTHA MILLER

Tom and Leon (excerpt)

“O

h man—augh, gross oh my god!” Tom began laughing

hysterically, his head tilting up over the couch as the large scaly monster on the screen began to eat the blonde woman in the most graphic manner possible, obviously-fake blood pouring down the screen in waves.

Leon snorted, beer flying out of his nose as he watched another scaly monster-this one less convincing than first, more like a man in a really bad Halloween costume than a terrifying beast. It attacked the main hero, easily cut down in flurry of bullets. “Oh man ow! Beer should not touch your sinuses.” He grabbed a napkin and vigorously wiped his nose as the burly hero of the movie sliced down the more realistic monster and stood above its ‘corpse’. There was a horrible one-liner somewhere in there, but Tom couldn’t hear it over Leon’s cackles.

“What?” Tom demanded as Leon practically began choking on his beer, his face turning raw sunburn red. “What did he say? Come on, Leon, what did he say?”

“I can’t—I can’t—oh god that was hilarious. Oh my god. Is there something on next?” Leon flopped forward on the couch, reaching for the remote.

“Leon!” Tom said. “What did he say?”

“Something about—I don’t even know, man. ‘Well that tipped the scales’ or something. Which—god I totally just butchered it, sorry. It’ll probably be on next week, this station can only afford so many bad monster movies.” Leon clicked through a couple of channels. “Stupid news.” He sat back on the couch, flicking off the TV and taking a long sip of his beer. He sighed.

Tom drained the beer he had been drinking. He had made it through one glass of wine with Leon berating him the whole time before he had succumbed to his roommate’s peer pressure and switched to whatever Leon had in the fridge. He ran a hand through his dark, neatly-trimmed hair.

“I should probably hit the hay,” he said, though he didn’t make a move to get off the plush couch.

“Yeah, probably,” Leon said distantly. Tom glanced at his roommate who was staring up at the ceiling, the bottle of beer resting on his chest.

“Hey Tom?” “Yeah, Leon?” Tom replied.

“I’m sorry about tonight.”

“About what?” Tom tried to quickly counter, doing his best to just sweep the conversation aside, but apparently Leon wasn’t having any of it— they were probably due for one of their Long Talks, talks which Tom hated but Leon seemed hell-bent on having every couple of months.

“About what’s-her-face. Eileen.”

“Elinore,” Tom corrected, gritting his teeth. “With an i.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” There was another pause as Leon slowly calculated his next words. Tom took a long swig of beer in the meantime, swishing the bitter liquid in his teeth like he was gargling mouthwash. “You liked her a lot, didn’t you?”

MARTHAMILLER “Not so much, after the way she reacted,” Tom said, studying his beer bottle intensely. “I mean. It’s not worth it. That.”

“You should have called,” Leon mumbled before bringing his (now empty) beer bottle to his lips and placing it there, like the physical barrier between his lungs and the open air was going to do anything to keep any more words from leaving his mouth.

“I didn’t know she was gonna freak, Leon—” Tom started, but Leon quickly cut him off, raising the bottle from his face to blurt out some more words before replacing it again.

“Not her reaction, Tom. Her reaction isn’t—whenever you bring people over to the house, you should call. Is what I’m saying.”

Tom stared at Leon for a second. “Are you—does it make you uncomfortable—” “I just need time to prepare. Is what I’m saying. For me. Because.”

Leon seemed to twitch as he lay there on the couch, and he shut his eyes tightly as Tom’s eyes fell to his roommate’s unbound chest before quickly averting his glance.

“I didn’t mean to make you... uncomfortable.” Tom looked straight ahead at the blank TV screen, reflective darkness sucking him in like a strong undertow. He saw himself, a grown man sitting on the couch on a Friday night drinking a beer, and he saw his roommate, who in the distorted screen looked like a tiny child, his curves just as unnatural-looking as they must have felt to Leon.

There was an undercurrent of annoyance that Tom couldn’t put his finger on as it churned in his chest, annoyance with Leon and the way he was and the way things always turned out with Tom and people who weren’t Leon. Tom didn’t really have friends who weren’t Leon’s friends first, didn’t have girlfriends because of the effect on Leon, didn’t have a life because sometimes Leon would get lonely. But whatever. Whatever Leon needed, right?

Except there were things that Tom needed, things that Tom wanted that Leon got in the way of. How to articulate that without coming across as completely selfish and insensitive to Leon’s needs was something that Tom hadn’t figured out yet, and so it just lay in wait, itching under his skin as Leon asked yet another thing of him, even the little things that were just doing favors. Instead of saying anything, Tom picked at the label on his beer, the edge lifting up and ripping off into a small piece that he laid carefully on the coffee table in front of him.

“Yeah,” Tom finally said. “I’ll call next time. Promise. I won’t forget.”

Leon nodded silently, and they just sat there, listening to the cars rush by outside, the honking and the squeal of breaks and tires emphasizing just how small the space they shared really was. It felt like a zipper being zipped and unzipped right next to Tom’s ear—it dragged a little bit, set his teeth on edge, and he thought of the noise of Elinore’s nails on her wine glass on their second date as she had tapped it nervously. Another girlfriend lost and he had a meeting in the morning.

“I have to go to sleep,” he said, just to puncture the penetrating closeness. “I’ve got this meeting in the morning at work.”

“Okay.” Leon was still staring up at the ceiling. Tom nodded quietly and rose to his feet, bending down to pick up the shoes he had discarded not long after Elinore had left. “Sleep well.”

MARTHAMILLER Tom nodded. “You want me to take your beer into the kitchen?” he asked, reaching for the empty bottle in Leon’s grip. Leon shook his head vigorously, pulling his hand away.

“It’s fine,” he said almost distantly. “I’ll get it when I go to bed. I’m just gonna. Think some more, I guess.”

Tom nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said, straightening. “Well. Don’t forget to wash it out and throw it in the recycling, okay? I’m gonna take that to the drop-off place after I get home from work tomorrow.”

“Will do,” Leon nodded, still not staring straight up at the ceiling.

“And I have that meeting from nine to ten, ten-thirty in the morning, but I should hopefully be home by like noon, one o’clock-ish if all goes well.”

“I got it, Tom. It’s not like your schedule changes any week anyway.”

“Right.” Tom waited one more beat, wanting to say something else, something reassuring, but his eyes were tired and he had to go nurse his breakup with some sleep. “Good night, Leon.”

“Night, Tom.”

JESSIE WILSON

La Belle Rebelle

B

elle leaned back in her chair, one leg pushing against the

windowsill, the other drawn up to her chest. Rocking slightly back and forth, she watched the purple sky lighten to lavender above the disorganized crowd of blue-uniformed soldiers. Her lips tightened as more forms gradually materialized from the grey pre-dawn fog, and she continued to observe the confused herd of men mill about the distant fields with tensed jaw and furrowed brow.

She sat for a moment until the sounds of pounding and raised voices coming from the front of the house drew her from her brooding.

Startled by the sudden noise, Belle quickly sat up in the chair, her hand briefly twitching toward the time-worn LeMat revolver concealed in her dress’ pocket. As she rose to her feet, the sound of a door banging open rang out like a shot, and she heard the angry voices grow more distinct as they entered the house. Men’s voices, with nasal, reedy accents. Yankees.

How very much like them to simply— Belle froze when she saw two soldiers stumbling towards her. Her mother and a maid followed behind.

Shouting a slurred “Where’s the secesch flags?” the leading Union soldier roughly shoved Belle out of the way and staggered down the hall towards the morning room. As Belle reeled from the shove, she cast her mother a fearful glance. Nearly all of Martinsburg knew that Belle decorated her room and parts of her house with dozens of Confederate flags, and obviously knowledge of this had spread to Union troops. Anticipating that the soldiers would wreck her room or the house if they found the flags, Belle nodded to the maid and motioned hastily towards her room at the end of another hallway. Quickly, the maid slipped out of sight as she dashed to Belle’s chamber.

Belle and her mother stood in tense silence as the soldiers slowly retraced their steps, evidently discovering that the first hallway had led only to a simple parlor. The maid returned at this moment, and the men pushed past her, ambling down the hall towards the room she had just left.

The noise of the soldiers’ search echoed down the long hallway. None of the women spoke as they heard a bang and a clatter as a nightstand was turned over, then a tinkling crash of glass shattering, then the growling protestations of fabrics torn apart.

As the men reduced the bedrooms to shambles, the maid winked at Belle. Noticing the glimmer of crimson peeking out at the bottom of the basket the maid clutched, Belle smiled approvingly, momentarily relieved that while the house’s bedrooms were certainly wrecked, at least the soldiers had not succeeded in defiling her Confederate pride.

Disappointed, the soldiers emerged from the rooms, lurching past the three women and out the front door. Belle followed, her mother in tow.

As the men ambled down the steps of the house’s porch, one pulled a Union banner from his pack and strode unsteadily over to the edge of the porch, his manner suggesting that his designs were to hang the flag from the roof.

JESSIE WILSON Shuffling across the clean-swept cedar decking, he approached the porch railing, mumbling loudly enough that Belle and her mother could hear: “We’ll at least make this family look loyal.”

This casual aside awakened a hot spark of indignant rage in Belle, but before she could open her mouth to speak, her usually meek and quiet mother stepped in front of the soldier, passionately interjecting, “Men, every member of this household will die before that flag is raised over us!”

The soldier barked a rough laugh, shoving Belle’s mother to the side.

Belle’s fierce pride could bear no more. A sharp breath whistled through her clenched teeth as she watched her mother stumble. Time seemed to slow as Belle whipped the LeMat from her pocket, cocking the hammer with her thumb as she raised it to eye level.

A shot stunned the two soldiers and Belle’s mother into motionlessness silence. The soldier holding the flag met Belle’s wrathful glare, then slowly turned his face toward the scarlet rosette blooming on his left breast. Raising his eyes again, he exhaled a long, slow breath and let his body slacken. Belle watched him falling slowly forward, crumpling on top of the Union colors.

Arm still extended, Belle watched the soldier’s blood pool around him, staining the flag’s white stripes and stars the same color as its crimson.

Her wide-eyed gaze stayed fixed on the fallen man, and her shoulders rose and fell quickly as her breathing quickened. Now shaking, she focused her whole mind on maintaining her courage and on not dropping the gun, forcing her icy hand to grip the gun ever tighter. Belle did not notice the angry throng of Union soldiers advancing on the house until her mother grabbed her arm and pulled her into the house.

The front door slammed as the soldiers opened fire, and the sound of gunshots like cracking branches drummed in staccato bursts against the walls of the house. Belle, jolted out of shock, considered picking off a few of the attackers through the windows by the door, but instead retreated to the safety of the house’s interior when a salvo of rifle rounds shattered them.

Belle’s skirts whirled around her like the vermillion wings of a startled bird as she turned to run. Some of the rounds caught her, pockmarking the voluminous taffeta of her dress with a scattering of holes.

Belle ushered her mother and the maid toward the house’s cellar, but before the soldiers advanced too far towards the house, the sputtering of the gunfire faded. One voice rose above the clamor, yelling for a halt. The speaker seemed to be standing in the front yard, shouting indistinct orders to the men. Belle looked towards the speaker with suspicion—a captain, perhaps?

The man finished his chastisement of the troops, and the yard fell silent. Belle heard footsteps mount the creaking porch stairs, and then after slowly pacing their way over to where she knew the fallen soldier lay, the footsteps paused a moment. Resuming motion, the footsteps sounded out a brisk, sure gait towards the front door of the house. Again, Belle heard pounding at the door, and the captain’s voice resounded from behind it: “This is Captain Daniel Keily, 25th Ohio Artillery Corps. All persons inside this house, come out with hands raised.” Belle glanced down the cellar stairs at her mother and the maid, then stepped lightly to the shattered window by the door. Peeking out at the captain, she quickly concealed the LeMat in her pocket and affected an ingratiating expression.

JESSIE WILSON Belle took a last breath to calm herself before facing the soldiers, and her mind raced as she tried to invent a way to extricate herself from the peril of this situation. Remembering how Southern gentlemen in her experience would always treat a lady with respect, Belle quickly decided to capitalize on her femininity; as a tomboyish teenager, she had found she could escape consequences by innocently looking at men through her long eyelashes. Though her face was not terribly handsome, Belle knew she had a fine figure, and, outnumbered and outgunned, she necessarily entrusted all of her hopes in this female charm, her last resort.

She felt her pulse pounding in her throat as she pulled open the latch of the door, finding herself standing face to face with Keily. She gazed up ingenuously at the captain, her naïve expression masking her calculating inventory of the man before her. He looked to be in his early twenties, barely older than her, and his dark, curly hair indicated a touch of Irish in his ancestry. She batted her eyes at him. Belle felt silly, but she saw some of the hardness behind his glower soften for a second as he took in the image of her as a defenseless woman. She smiled falteringly, pushing her luck a bit farther.

His response was a glare and a demand that she extend her wrists to be bound with a pair of cuffs. Keily led Belle to a waiting wagon, and she was summarily whisked off to a hastily-convened hearing at the Union Army camp in the center of town. * * * To her mother’s great surprise, Belle returned in the late afternoon uncuffed and with only two of the soldiers as escorts.

“Come with me. I’ll explain,” Belle offered as she dismounted the wagon and led her mother into the house. The two soldiers waited on the front porch of the house. Taking her mother’s hand, Belle quickly narrated what she had learned at the hearing. The soldiers, Belle found out, were celebrating the Fourth of July at their breakfast that morning. Made rowdy by drink, they had entered the town, looking to vaunt the Union occupation of Martinsburg over its proudly-Confederate citizens.

Belle explained that she had made her case carefully, tempering her earlier flirtatious behavior with a touch of ignorance. She had poured forth both tears and smiles, pleading that she was so very confused and sorry for the chaos of the day. Belle suspected that she had gone free because the Union officers did not believe a woman could have killed a soldier so efficiently, but she kept these musings to herself.

As Belle considered the effectiveness of the strategy she had employed in escaping the danger associated with the hearing, she nearly forgot to mention the men on the porch. Belle finally explained to her mother that the soldiers had been assigned to watch the Boyd house, keeping an eye on Belle and her family. Belle’s mother muttered an anxious word about the untrustworthy Yanks, then left Belle alone in the foyer. Belle regarded one of the soldiers through the shattered window, and her lips curled up in a smile as she thought of a plan.

The following morning, Belle found two new guards at the door: an enlisted man and the captain, Keily, from the day before. Belle sidled up to Keily, a thin smile playing on her lips and began a casual conversation:

JESSIE WILSON “How do you do, sir?”

Keily was taken aback by the unexpected civility, but responded in kind, having fallen prey to Belle’s deliberate, submissive manner at the hearing. Belle kept their conversation flowing, and her coy speech soon had Keily wholly in her thrall.

She started with small, innocuous questions: “How many men are in the camp on the hill?” “Do the other soldiers find the establishments in Martinsburg to their liking?” Then, she guilefully slipped in more significant inquiries: “What have you heard of General Shield’s orders?” “Where will the troops at Front Royal go?” This last question sparked sudden loquacity in Keily, and Belle listened intently, absorbing every detail and masking her excitement at the divulgence of this vital intelligence with a sappy and vacant-eyed look of adoration at Keily. She hung on his every word, but not for the reason he supposed. * * * A productive day, she thought later while writing in her diary: regarding Keily, she wrote that today she was “indebted for some very remarkable effusions, some withered flowers, and last, not least, for a great deal of very important information.” She pulled out another sheet of paper, transcribed the same information Keily had revealed to her, folded the missive and wrote the name of its addressee on the front in her bold, spiky handwriting: GEN. T. J. JACKSON. Smiling at the service this intelligence would do for her rising, young country, Belle slipped the letter in her pocket, then strutted to the front door and flung it open with a flourish. Pausing a moment in the chilly summer twilight, she peered at the two soldiers standing watch. She recognized Keily by the distinctive shape of his captain’s hat, and tucking a rogue strand of hair behind her ear, she strode over to where he stood by the porch steps. Belle stood just behind his right shoulder, listening to the change in his breathing as he sensed her presence. Left hand resting on the letter in her pocket, she lifted her right hand to his face and slowly drew her fingers across his cheek. It felt rough and cool, like sandstone.

Trying to maintain his military composure, Keily stuttered out a pleasantry: “Ev-evening, Miss Boyd. Will y-you be going out-t tonight?”

Belle responded in a breathy voice, batting her eyes distractingly, “Just for a quick ride.”

“Alone?”

“Why, yes.”

“You know I can’t let you do that, Miss Boyd.”

“I’m only going out for some air. I shall return before anyone can notice. Don’t worry.” With a playful toss of her hair and a vapid smile that didn’t touch the passion in her eyes, Belle melted into the growing darkness, gliding across the lawn to the stables along the side of the house. She quickly threw a saddle and bridle on a dark chestnut stallion, mounting him sidesaddle and giving a firm kick to send him into a trot as they left the barn.

Reaching the road, Belle broke into a full gallop, stirring up dark clouds of dust as she galloped off toward the Confederate Army post.

MARY CARTER

The TV

I

t began when the husband wanted a new TV. It was a typical

fight—the wife thought that they should save their money for a new dishwasher; the husband thought that watching the Eagles in hi-def was much more worthwhile. They went to the home store together to “look around” (those were the husband’s words) and “scope out some prices” (the wife really just wanted to see the dishwashers). As soon as they entered the store they went their separate ways, the wife clutching her purse protectively under one arm and nervously patting her hair as she walked over to the appliance section, her husband heading over to the television section as he winked in the general direction of the girl twirling her hair at the cash register. He walked around for a bit, LCD kaleidoscopes swarming in front of his eyes. He was a financial analyst at a polished and lucrative firm downtown, he was bringing home the money, and he thought they should have a new TV. His wife did nothing; her days were filled with scrubbing already pristine windows and meticulously weeding already perfect gardens. She couldn’t have children, they had found that out. Not that that really bothered him; he supposed he wouldn’t have been a good father anyway. He was too selfish. Besides, they really didn’t need a new dishwasher.

He spent a few minutes staring at the TVs lined up tantalizingly on the wall, their screens glowing in unison. He had always found vaguely unsettling the way the televisions all flickered at the same time, with the same image, in an unbroken line. He was able to recover from the momentary shock however, and saw one that looked about right within moments. It was silver with a sort of pearly sheen. The plastic was smooth and cool to the touch; the screen sharply projected a game of college football, where the green grass on the playing field starkly contrasted against the snowstorm pounding vehemently on the windows of the store.

He stared at it for a minute, his eyes locked on the artificial light that beamed from the game straight into his heart. He realized suddenly that his nose was a mere 3 inches from the screen, though he didn’t remember walking closer. Television had that effect on him—it sucked him away from reality into an alternate universe where everything was brighter and more alive. From his close proximity he could see the individual squares of color that together created his game. He could see their symmetry, the way the pixels expanded in diamond-like shapes outwards. It was perfect and he wanted it. He glanced over to the other side of the store, where his wife was deep in conversation with a pierced-lip employee, who was trying to politely stifle a yawn. His wife was nodding in agreement at something the guy had said as she ran her hands over the side of a stainless steel dishwasher. Her hands moved elegantly to the knobs on the front and turned them gently, surveying them with intent. Her hair was twisted into this complicated knot, held together by one of those huge banana clips he never understood. A piece of blonde hair had fallen out and was casually brushing her cheek each time she moved. She was the picture of perfect. Even the jeans she