Shadow express volume 5 issue 2

Shadows Express

Volume 5: Issue 2

Summer 2013

Shadows Express

Although we never plan themes for Shadows Express, we inevitably see one emerge. In this issue, many of our stories and poems deal with change in our lives.

Change is inevitable; however, our reaction to it is not set in stone. Maya Angelou reminds us, “If you don’t like something change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” Despite the circumstances, we can always maintain some control. By adapting a healthy attitude

to change, we learn to cope, and by coping, we grow.

This maturation allows us to face new challenges, whether it is the birth of a newborn, the death of a loved one, or any of the myriad changes between.

Be an instrument for positive change with a smile, a gesture, or a good deed. At the same time, find solace during difficult times by remembering that this too shall pass.

Our Mission Published four times a year, Shadows Express strives to bring new voices to discerning readers. We pride ourselves on being the stepping stone for new writers as they begin their published journey. We welcome quality work from all writers at any stage of their careers.

Managing Editor: K. Wall managingeditor@shadowexpress.com Fiction Editor: P. L. Scholl fictioneditor@shadowexpress.com Non-Fiction Editor: Winnie Kay Davis nonfictioneditor@shadowexpress.com Poetry Editor: Liam O’Haver poetryeditor@shadowexpress.com Poetry Assistant: Aundria Kenning poetryassistant@shadowexpress.com

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Volume 5: Issue 2

Columns Burning the Midnight Oil ~ Let the Journey Commence………..….……….………………….….…...4 Rhythmic Reflections ~ Put Poetry into Your Poem….……………………………………….…………..5 Fireside Conversations ~ Say What?………………………………………….…..…………………...………...7 In the Spotlight ~ To Err is Human; To Edit Divine…….…………..………………….………..…………..9

Fiction Wolf by Colin Shaw.….………….……………………………….………………..…………………………………..…15 Blurgie’s World by Benjamin Cooper……......….……………….…..….…..…….……....….………………..25 Home from the Dead by Tom Sheehan..….…………….………………..…………………….……………..….39

Poetry That World Away From Here by Laxmi Chichra…………….………………………………….……………...11 My Protector by Gayle Willardson……………………………..……………………….………………….…………14 She-Sloth by Tracy Lynn Hill.…….………………….………….……………….………………………….…….……19 Bumming Around Europe by John Grey.…………………………..…………………..………………………...24 Because Bark by A.J. Huffman..……………….……….……….………………………….…………………..…….32 I See Summer in Your Eyes by Karen Marie Crump…………………………………………………………….38 A Heartbeat Away by Debra Shipman……………………………..……………………………………………….46 Hope Defiant by Aundria Kenning………………….……………..………………………………………………….47 I Hate to Travel by Fergas Dunne…………………………………………………………………….……………….50 Two Rainbows and the Moon by Donna J.T. Smith……………………..…………………………………….51

Non-fiction The Indignity of Dying by Madge Kaplan………….……………......….……………….……………..………12 Counter Clockwise by Quinn Redfield…..………………………..……………………………….……………….20 Berlin Wall: A Memoir by Wendy Van Camp………………….………………………………………………….34 Vignettes: Basking, Preemie, Customer by Bill Vernon…………………………………………………….48

Contributors…….......….…………………………………………..……………………………………………52 Staff………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….55 3

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Let the Journey Commence K. Wall

At this time of year, young people cross the stage to receive their diplomas. As strains of Pomp and Circumstance fill the halls, parents wipe an eye, focus their camera, and swell with pride. Thus ends twelve years of public schooling, four years of undergraduate studies, or the completion of a Master’s or PHD. What now?

This should not be the end of education but the beginning of a life-long pursuit of knowledge. It is the commencement of life and an opportunity to reach our highest potential.

Yet some people become content to rest on their laurels. Their school years become the best years of their lives. Without the push of teachers, the pull of competing against peers, and the stimulus of achieving high grades, some graduates begin to drift through life. The knowledge they have allows them to be good enough.

In their jobs, they do what is required, but seldom show initiative. Their pursuit of excellence falls by the wayside without an extrinsic measure to goad them on. Sure, they achieve the goals required to receive their paycheck, even gain that promotion, but are they growing? Are they learning? Are they seeking to reach their full potential? Or are they satisfied with the knowledge they have and willing to stop growth with the simple words I know.

What happens then, when years of this complacent thinking takes its toll? They find 4

themselves without passion—living day to day, week to week, year to year—just getting by. Without the ability to gain intrinsic value in their daily lives, they continue to pursue extrinsic rewards: the better car, the bigger house, the newest gadget. When asked to take on something new, something exciting, something challenging, they find themselves saying, I can’t.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The promise in those young faces is still there in each of us. We still can graduate from the roles we have embraced. We can commence on a new life, one with challenges that inspire us.

It does not matter how old we are or how long we have mired ourselves in the phrases of good enough, I know, or I can’t. We can choose a new direction.

Never before has knowledge been so accessible for so many people. With the internet, we can research virtually any subject from isolated tribes in New Guinea to the plans for colonizing Mars. Now, with the rise of MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) education, there is no excuse for us not to pursue our interests, grow our passions, and reach our potential.

Don’t rest on your laurels. Ask yourself what you can do to make things better, challenge yourself to discover what you don’t know, tell yourself you can, and join me as we commence our journey.

Volume 5: Issue 2

Put Poetry into Your Poem

By Liam O’Haver

While it is commonplace to use the terms poetry and poem interchangeably—I do it myself sometimes—the truth is they are really not synonymous. They are hierarchical like the terms primate and human. That is to say, as all humans are primates, but not all primates are humans, so it is that all poems are (or should be) poetry, but not all poetry is recorded as poems.

Poetry is everywhere around us. It can be found in how an eagle soars effortlessly on the wind or in the aroma of that dish that only your mother was able to master. With poetry, we touch the softness of a summer breeze or hear the rhythm of waves as they crash upon the rocks. And poetry is recorded in various media by artists of all types.

In short, poetry is an image or copy of a specific reality or occurrence based upon the perception and perspective of an individual poet. As such, it is much like a mirrored image and may be represented with great fidelity or with manipulation, like you may experience in a carnival mirror, and all of this is at the whim and will of the poet. The poem is simply

the medium that the poet uses to share this poetry with others.

Then the challenge of the poet is to recreate for you the poetry as he beheld it—to see as he saw, feel as he felt, wonder as he wondered.

I should stress here that I did not say see what he saw, feel what he felt, and wonder what he wondered. In fact, the poet may choose not to share the actual occurrence, but rather use devices such as symbolism and metaphors or similes to reveal this poetry to the reader.

It’s not important that you agree with the poet’s assessments. Of course, the closer your point of view and perceptions are to the poet’s, the more likely that will occur. However, it’s not the poet’s job to convince you to agree with his viewpoints, but simply to fuel your imagination.

In closing, for your reading pleasure, I have included William Shakespeare’s thoughts about his own poetry as written in Sonnet XVII1.

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Shadows Express Continued from page 5.

Sonnet XVII Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?

Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say 'This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'

So should my papers, yellow'd with their age, Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue, And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage And stretched metre of an antique song: But were some child of yours alive that time, You should live twice—in it, and in my rhyme. .

1Shakespeare,

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William (2011-03-24). Shakespeare's Sonnets. Kindle Edition

Volume 5: Issue 2

Say What?

By P.L.Scholl

It’s not what you say, but how you say it.

Though normally applied to verbal communication, this phrase is even more critical for writers. I’ve seen a lot of great stories rejected by Shadows Express because the author failed to use dialogue effectively.

To prevent your story from becoming one of the casualties, consider a few of these points:

you live, you might find a class at a local community college or other organization. You can also research your trouble spots. Two of my favorite websites are Grammar Girl’s: Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing at http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/ and The Purdue Online Writing Lab at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/.

#1: Mechanics

#2: Dialect

Yes, some rules are meant to be broken, but not universal conventions such as punctuation or paragraphing. Ignoring them or changing them because your creative side demands to be unleashed will only cause confusion. For example, I recently reviewed a story in which the author did not use quotation marks to indicate dialogue. Instead, he used a different font for each new speaker.

I had to reread the first page three times before I figured this out. Now, the last thing you want is for the editor who is reading your submission to get confused. This story didn’t even make it to our Acquisitions Board.

If these mechanics give you grief, don’t despair. Ranging in price and intensity, classes populate the Internet. Depending on where

“My momma didn’t raise no fool.” Who said this? A high school drop out or a Harvard professor?

Most writers and readers understand that dialogue must reflect the speaker’s dialect. That includes not only the accent but the grammatical errors that come with it. When we try too hard to be grammatically correct, we lose the authenticity of the speaker.

Try this experiment. Go to a crowded place like a restaurant or train station and just listen to people. Do you hear their different speech patterns? Now using one of these characters, write a scene and read it aloud. Can you still hear the character?

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j can also research your trouble spots. Two of my favorite websites are Grammar Girl’s blog at http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/ and The Purdue Online Writing Lab at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/. #2: Dialect “My momma didn’t raise no fool.” Who said this? A high school drop out or a Harvard professor?

Most writers and readers understand that dialogue must reflect the speaker’s dialect. That includes not only the accent but the grammatical errors that come with it. When we try too hard to be grammatically correct, we lose the authenticity of the speaker.

Try this experiment. Go to a crowded place like a restaurant or train station and just listen to people. Do you hear their different speech patterns? Now using one of these characters, write a scene and read it aloud. Can you still hear the character? #3: Accent

Continued on page 8

Next, consider more specialized accents such as someone from Ireland or Japan. The

tricky part is finding the delicate balance between portraying an authentic accent and still making it readable. I just gave up on a book about a Romanian gypsy because I couldn’t follow half of what the characters were saying. The author, a prolific writer of historic fiction, went just a little too far in trying to phonetically replicate the accent. It was authentic, but it wasn’t readable.

So what do you do if a character has a foreign accent? Believe it or not, the simplest thing is to just suggest the accent and leave the rest to the imagination of the reader. A simple comment from another character can often do the trick. You can also pick one or two words that the character pronounces differently. For example, to suggest an Irish accent, I had a character use the phrase me laddie when speaking to his son.

So, for your next story, pay close attention to your dialogue. Follow the rules for mechanics, but allow your character to speak in a natural way. Also, remember that a little bit of an accent can go a long way. While you want to be able to hear the character, your reader has to be able to read it too.

Ernest Hemingway 8

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~~To Err Is Human; To Edit, Divine~~ Winnie Kay Davis

My apologies to Mr. Alexander Pope for butchering his famous quote, but I found this title appropriate within the concept of writing.

In a sense we are all writers. From the moment you grasped a stubby pencil and struggled to stay within the lines as you wrote that first letter to Grandma, you became a writer. Some of you carried your newly discovered ability to communicate to a higher level as you took the time to edit your work— evident by the eraser smudges splattered throughout the paper. This added effort demonstrated your dedication and hard work to offer your beloved granny a well-written account of your adventures and your dreams.

Over the years, your writing skills developed, and now that novel of yours—sure to be a best seller—is finally ready for publication… or is it? Have you checked your masterpiece for typos, misspelled words, punctuation and grammar errors, POV infractions, sentence structure integrity, and inconsistencies with exposition of settings and characters? Can you even see the holes in your story-line anymore?

Traditional publishers (the ones who pay you for the right to publish your work)

certainly include a complete edit of your manuscript as part of their process in order to protect their investment and their reputation.

If your story manages to break through seemingly impossible barriers and you’re one of the rare authors offered a book deal, it is most likely due to the fact that you hired a freelance editor prior to submitting your work.

The Self-Publishing industry offers editing and/or proofreading services for an additional fee within their varied packages. If your submitted manuscript is riddled with errors too numerous to count, reputable selfpublishing establishments will reject your work or charge you dearly for a complete edit in order to maintain their integrity. A professional edit outside the employment of their services can save you thousands of dollars.

E-book self-publishing services like Smashwords, Kindle Direct, and Publish Green have recently joined the indie (independent) book publishing market, allowing authors to digitally upload their manuscripts to their sites. These are not publishers and they take no responsibility for the quality of your work. Since they are distributors and retailers, authors do not forfeit 9

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any rights to their work and are free to sell their rights to a traditional publisher if the offer arises. Some of these services are free, but you receive only a portion of the sales.

Some charge a fee upfront and the author keeps 100% of the sales. Typically, these services do not offer editing assistance. What you upload is what goes out to the public.

Proofreading, formatting, designing, and marketing are solely in the hands of the author.

No matter the route you take to have your work bound and printed, it is vital to the success of your book and to your reputation

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as a serious writer to present a polished, professional product that will generate a positive response from your readers. Though you feel you have the skills to self-edit, be aware that because you have caressed and molded your written work of art for months, even years, your eyes are no longer capable of seeing your own errors. The fresh eyes of a freelance editor will spot any flaws that you would overlook. After all, you’re only human.

Volume 5: Issue 2

That World Away From Here Laxmi Chichra

Take me to that world away from here where love isn't slayed by deception, where people are not divided into fractions.

Take me to that world away from here.

Where love isn’t slayed by deception, a place where this night won’t be our last together.

A place where the traditions aren't the reason for slaughter, where love isn't slayed by deception.

A place where this night won’t be our last together, where the fire of passion won’t be doused, where demons of responsibilities won’t be aroused.

A place where this night won’t be our last together.

Where the fire of passion won’t be doused, this suicide won’t be my only resort, where silence won’t be my only consort, where the fire of passion won’t be doused.

This suicide won’t be my only resort in a society where I can grow old.

In a society where blood does not run cold, this suicide won’t be my only resort.

In a society where I can grow old.

Take me to that world away from here, howsoever harsh, howsoever austere, in a society where I can grow old.

Take me to that world away from here where love isn't slayed by deception, where people are not divided into fractions.

Take me to that world away from here.

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Shadows Express

Madge Kaplan

Leave it to a French film to pull no punches with regard to death. Actually, the new movie by Michael Haneke, Amour, brought me back to a time in my life when I couldn’t seem to think about anything else. I was around six when I stumbled on the reality that everyone dies and that at some point, you no longer get to do this thing called living. I don’t know if it was something someone said, something I saw on TV, or some enlightened children’s book that got me going, but once I grasped this awful truth, I couldn’t fathom how it was possible that one day I’d stop being. Poof. Gone. Who thought up such a thing? Right around this time, my father’s father died of cancer. The fact that he was an older man—or perhaps because of his illness, he looked a lot older—and death was many years into the future for me, offered little comfort. Death seemed like a cruel joke and an unfair capstone to all the effort people put into living.

In the land of adulthood, feelings like these fade and become pinned to more intellectual and philosophical framings, which is why I found the film Amour so jarring in a way. It reminded me of a much rawer and more difficult set of emotions I still grapple with, even as I applaud efforts to make the end of life more comfortable, humane, and aligned with one’s wishes. That’s all for the good, but filmmaker Haneke seems to be saying that’s not the half of it. Facing one’s own or a loved one’s inevitable death can also be shocking and, in some instances, for some people,

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emotionally unbearable. It may be what nature intends, but acceptance or resignation about things one cannot control, such as mortality, isn’t the same thing as the actual experience, including the emotional pain of letting go.

Amour is a film about how an older French couple sizes up the situation and their options once one of them becomes seriously ill. And the calculation starts immediately after Anne (played by Emmanuelle Riva) suffers a stroke and surgery cannot correct the underlying, life-threatening problem. This is unambiguously the beginning of the end.

Everything that happens after Georges (JeanLouis Trintignant) brings his wife home from the hospital in a wheel chair, paralyzed on one side, foreshadows that the new circumstances will not be tolerated by either one of them for long. There’s Anne’s physical incapacitation and steady decline as well as the incapacitation and erosion of the life they had. If the couple has an understanding from prior conversations and a long marriage of what’s to be done in the interim, precisely, or how it might all come to an end, precisely, they certainly don’t discuss this in front of others, including the moviegoers.

Was there an advanced directive? No mention, but probably not. Can outsiders help? A little, mostly with practical things like carrying up groceries. And a nurse’s aide does become part of a daily routine for a little while, helping to care for Anne at home. But this necessity of an outside caregiver has a temporary, ominous feel to it,

Volume 5: Issue 2

its value overshadowed by the indignity of the whole ordeal.

The same four walls of a well-appointed Paris apartment that nurtured their love and the magnitude of their lives as musicians and music teachers for decades are now closing in and sealing the couple off. In a way, it’s a self-imposed exile, a way to withdraw from what comes across as the inanities and preoccupations of those who still have a lot of life ahead. A chattering, self-absorbed daughter (Isabelle Huppert) with a life and family of her own, elsewhere, shows up a few times, equally anxious about her mother’s state of health as with the high cost of real estate. She has no role in what’s unfolding with her parents; she’s still making plans among the living. So is a former student, now concert pianist, who comes to visit. Despite his clear sympathy and recognition of the magnitude of what’s happened to his former teacher, Haneke seems to be saying, “What does he know, really know, about what is transpiring among the dying and why pretend otherwise?” He doesn’t belong anywhere near this scene. Neither, apparently, does the daughter, despite her efforts to be of some use.

Some have felt her father’s rejection to be cruel and unfair…she’s family after all. I think Haneke is trying to say something else: that at the end, the circle of who and what’s needed gets smaller and smaller and more intimate.

The daughter lands outside.

That death and dying can slowly but powerfully suck the air out of a life together and turn one’s physical surroundings, finally, into a sarcophagus, doesn’t necessarily erase what went before or suggest that it was all meaningless, in the end. But it takes a French film to call a spade a spade: living is living, and dying is dying, and for some (not all), almost too much to bear. In one scene, Anne asks her husband for the family photo album, and, as she flips through the pages of everyone at much younger ages, she refers to the

discontinuity between that story and the one she’s part of now. When I was six, this was the tough truth I found so unsettling. And like a lot of things children figure out early on that are, at their core, honest and unadorned, this is where Amour dares to tread.

How we die does, of course, matter— being at home, for instance, with loved ones who know us, if we’re lucky to still have those people around, rather than plugged into machines in a hospital. But a good death and the very public discussion about end-of-life taking place right now doesn’t mean we’ll avoid pain altogether or loss or deep sadness or depression or loss of function. We want to lessen the pain and soften this demise, and many can be comforted by the fact that they led a good life or a good, long life and are ready and have religious or spiritual or philosophical outlooks of all sorts to rely upon to guide them. But let’s also be honest about the sheer magnitude of what we’re talking about so as not to exclude anyone.

The couple in Amour have their own way of making sense of end-of-life options and outlooks and what’s befallen them. They are independent and private and unwilling to soothe or smooth our way. It’s a French cinematic discourse on death and dying that confirms our worst fears and, yet, brings some relief because it’s better, finally, to take in the full range of experience, truths, and what love may look like at the very end.

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My Protector Gayle Willardson.

An unwilled cry escaped my lips.

In that moment, she expelled her last breath.

A pause of silence, that chasm of waiting, hoping, longing, praying.

Then realizationshe was gone.

My face tore with anguish, my loss exposed naked on my face.

Hands clenched about my mother’s tired hands.

The very grip, that proved to fortify the embankment to my soul.

Ripped apart.

Solitary.

Pain is harsh, anguish stronger, emptiness even more hollow.

No protection is offered.

I ache for the harbor from the ever-raging storm, Winds of disappointment abated there.

Anchored in, secure in my mooring, no heave or hurl could launch me from my port.

Standing near the burial box, reaching out for one last navigational clue.

Vulnerable and frightened, releasing my ballast in the storm.

I rise to bare the tempest all alone.

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Volume 5: Issue 2

Colin Shaw

Cyrus sat alone atop the ridge, which ran through the middle of his pack’s territory.

Fifty kilos of bone and raw muscle; he was old and weary. His coarse grey fur, flecked with snow-white strands, kept him warm from the chill winter winds. He had been the alpha male for ten years. Over the last two months, he had faced three challenges to his leadership. The result had been costly to the pack. His two rivals had been injured, and for a moon they had been unable to hunt. The last battle had resulted in a death and injuries to him: a long cut along his flank and a torn ear. He knew he did not have the strength to survive many more disputes.

His one good ear pricked up with the sound of someone approaching. From his high vantage point, he could make out the distinctive coloring of his mate. Her coat of pure black shimmered silver in the morning light. With care, she manoeuvred through the twisted trees and climbed up and around the scattered granite boulders to lie with him.

They lay in silence. The sounds of the forest flowed around them, and the rays of the sun warmed them. It was Saskia who broke the stillness.

“You're not to blame Cyrus. It wasn't in Shen’s makeup to admit defeat. Courage and obstinacy run in your line. She moved closer and began to lick the blood from his ear. He leaned into her and squirmed with both

enjoyment and pain at the gentle ministrations she was inflicting on him.

“Shen had no choice. He recognized I am slowing and that my decisions are becoming more cautious. He did right by challenging me, but I will never relinquish leadership of the pack. I intend to fight till the end. A new leader should rise victorious over the old for the pack to have confidence in him.”

Cyrus tensed and pulled away from Saskia. His hearing had alerted him once more. Something was wrong. He focused on the sounds of movement below and spied the shadowy outline of a white wolf, battlescarred and as large as he. The wolf moved in a sinuous manner through the dappled light reflected from the trees. Saskia had also sighted the interloper. She raised her muzzle to the heavens and let out a long sustained howl. Ten others, unseen, joined her chorus from many scattered points of the compass.

The white wolf froze. Surrounded, he assumed a relaxed position and waited.

They negotiated the path to the forest floor to greet their “guest.” Cyrus drew to within five meters before stopping. They locked gazes. From the surrounding trees, ghost shapes appeared and drifted in until the pack encircled them. Low growls emanated from the watchers. The white wolf showed little concern. As Alpha, it was up to Cyrus to speak for the pack.

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“Welcome. What brings you to our territory?”

Disregarding the others, the white wolf concentrated on Cyrus.

“My name is Tyree. I come from Baltazar.”

The forest stilled and the sun lost its warmth. It was a name spoken in whispers. A name used to terrify cubs and make all wary of shadows; a name of a conqueror and destroyer.

“My Lord Baltazar has decided to honour you with his protection.”

Cyrus’s mind processed the words that the white wolf had spoken. There had been many rumours whispered on the winds as it whistled through the trees—of territories being overrun and control of the packs being handed to Baltazar. He was forging an empire with thousands of wolves and many hundreds of square kilometers of land. If what Cyrus had heard was true, his pack would be wiped out and become but a memory. His peripheral vision showed the shocked expressions exhibited by the rest of the pack at this declaration. They bared their fangs at this harbinger of threats and destruction to their way of life.

“Why has your master decided to turn his face in our direction?”

“Yours is the last free clan this side of the mountain. Ren to the north and Filip to the south have both capitulated. Otis to the east and his followers said no. They are no more.”

Cyrus’s voice was unemotional as he replied, “So our choices are few. We either live under your command or die!”

Tyree answered, “Yes.” So much meaning packed into one simple word.

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Cyrus sat on his haunches and thought; his eyes, though, never left Tyree. He must not let this happen. His pack must survive, no matter what the cost. What alternatives did he have?

“How long do I have to think about your kind offer?”

“Till the sun rises high and casts no shadow.”

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“What is to stop us from tearing you apart and scattering your body to the four corners of our territory as a warning?”

Tyree did not flinch at this threat. The sides of his mouth turned up into a lazy grin.

He drew himself up and let loose a howl that reverberated and echoed through the trees for kilometers. It reached a crescendo and stopped. There was silence. An answering howl gave voice in the distance. Then another…and another…and another, till the

forest was alive with the sound—then there was silence once more.

Cyrus realized Tyree would make good his threat if they did not capitulate. He closed his eyes, tired beyond belief.

“Is your master an honorable wolf?

Does his word hold true?”

“Yes and yes.” Tyree looked hard at Cyrus. He put his head to one side, trying to work out where this conversation was going.

“Then, I challenge Baltazar for leadership of this pack.”

Eyes swung to Cyrus and then back again to Tyree. Tyree looked amused.

“Baltazar will not fight you. I am his champion, and I will fight if we must. If I win, your clan will bow before Baltazar. If you win, your clan will be free wolves, untouched and free to live life as you will within your territory. Do you accept these conditions?”

“I accept your terms. Go now and tell your companions on what has transpired here.

When you lose, will they honor the terms we have decided?”

A chuckle escaped Tyree's throat, and he grinned as he answered, “They will.”

“Then go now. On your return we will settle.”

Tyree stood up and with a salute of his tail headed back the way he had come. Cyrus watched until he disappeared. He turned to Saskia. From the droop of her tail and the down-turn of her ears, he could sense the sadness within her. The others from the pack now closed around him pressing close, offering comfort and strength to their leader.

They knew the odds did not favor Cyrus.

Time passed.

Cyrus sat at the front of his pack. He appeared relaxed. The others of his pack had 17

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taken up station behind him, outwardly showing every confidence in their leader.

Tyree walked into the clearing followed by two huge black wolves. He gave a rumble deep in his throat, and his companions retreated to the outskirts of the clearing. He moved to stand before Cyrus.

“It doesn't have to be this way. You can instruct your clan to surrender to me. They will not be ill-treated in any way.”

“No. It is their only chance of living free. Are you sure your master will honor of what we spoke?”

“Yes. I have brought two of my commanders to witness the outcome. Win or lose, what transpires here will be respected.”

Cyrus, in a low voice growled, “So let us begin.”

With no hesitation, he flung himself at the white wolf. Tyree managed to avoid the first rush and countered with a snap of jaws at Cyrus’s leg. He managed to extricate his paw with minimal damage, but first blood went to Tyree. They faced each other. Ferocity etched on each other’s face, neither giving ground to the other. Guttural rumbles echoed from the throats of both as they charged and met in mid-air. Claws slashed, and jaws struggled to find a solid grip on the other’s throat. Cyrus stumbled and fell on his side. Tyree followed with his full body weight, trying to pin the struggling wolf to the ground. A veteran of many fights, Cyrus managed to roll away from the younger wolf.

They stood and faced each other once more. Their hearts thundered in their chests as they struggled to draw breath. Again and again they launched themselves at each other, each trying to achieve the vital clamping of jaws about their opponent's throat. They separated.

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Tyree bled from a rip across one eye. Cyrus had fared no better. The blood flowed from multiple minor scratches, and his damaged leg now had rivulets of blood coursing to the ground. He knew he could not continue the fight much longer. He staggered, and his leg collapsed beneath him. Tyree saw his chance and rushed in to finish him. With a sinuous contortion of his body and exquisite timing learned from his many years, Cyrus rolled under Tyree’s attack and came up behind him.

He caught hold of Tyree’s throat and squeezed with every ounce of energy he had left.

Heaving and tossing, Tyree struggled to break the hold but to no avail. Cyrus’s jaws clamped even tighter. He would not let go. He would not let his pack be destroyed. The struggling wolf became weaker and weaker. A low whimper of submission slipped from the white wolf’s throat. Cyrus released him and limped back to his pack, who rush to surround him, nuzzling and licking his wounds.

The two black wolves stood over Tyree as he struggled to rise and face the pack. He raised his head high, finding difficulty in speaking.

“Well fought old wolf. Your pack’s destiny is not tied to Baltazar. This territory is yours to control with no interference.”

Cyrus labored to get his own words out.

“Are you sure Baltazar will honor the outcome?”

A wry grin spread across the face of the wolf known as Tyree. “I know this for certain for I am Baltazar.” With that, he and his lieutenants turned and moved off through the trees never to be seen again.

Volume 5: Issue 2

She-sloth Tracy Lynn Hill

Look at that girl up the elm tree— Thinks she's a secret.

(Not quite.)

Safe, sound, and shrouded in leaves, Toes to that overhead bough clinging tight: A stuck, frozen, dormant trapeze.

She moves so discreetly, sub-glacial, Nibbles a leaf in Each paw; Eats what's in reach 'til she's full.

Half of her weight is the food in her craw, The rest slack, shrunk, atrophied muscle.

Cozy, snug, dry, sleeps in shade— The weather can't touch her High clime.

She functions in years, months, weeks; days Aren't even countable measures of time In her stark, stagnant, still colonnade.

Perched out of bad luck's domain— Wise if her goal's to Survive— But someday, perhaps down she'll swing, Break her own bough and discover this world Full worth the risk, ravage, and rain.

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Shadows Express

Quinn Redfield

Time and I never really got along when I was growing up. It was this mysterious and merciless thing, periodically kicking my ass up one side and down the other while I did my best to pretend it couldn't dictate my life.

In fact, mostly I just ignored it entirely.

That is… until the day my watch died for absolutely no reason. I mean, it wasn't even a year old yet. I bought a new one, but it died a few months later. My mother gave me her spare, which had run well for years and had a brand-new battery. This one was guaranteed to last, right? Nope. It died even faster—we're talking mere weeks here.

“Time hates me,” I muttered, starring at the motionless second hand in disbelief.

This had to be punishment for disregarding time. I’m a hard-headed student though, so rather than a lesson, I looked for revenge. If time was going to abandon me, I'd abandon it right back.

I put on all three dead watches and asked around for others. Soon I had a whole collection running up both arms, watches of every variety—digital and analog, small and large, old and new, cheap and pricey—as long as they were dead. And for the first time in my life, I was one of those people who never knew what time it was. I learned to approximate by the sun, and estimates were good enough.

Meanwhile, I became a hit at school.

People would ask me for the time, and I'd pull

20

up my sleeve to study the clocks for a moment. I'd ask, “Digital or analog? Black or gold?” and offer them my arm. If they hesitated, I'd pull up the other sleeve, adding to their selection.

One day, a friend of mine asked for the time, and I offered her the usual arm. She studied it a moment, then asked for the other set. All the while, a classmate watched curiously.

“This one! Then we can go home in fifteen,” she said, pointing to an old, motionless Timex stuck at two forty-five.

“Unless it's 2:45 a.m.,” I teased.

“What are you guys doing?” the curious onlooker asked.

“Picking the time.” She smiled, flipping her long hair.

I offered him my arm, and he studied the watches with a confused look on his face.

“But this one's dead, I think…”

“None of them work.” I grinned.

“Not even the digital one?”

“Nah, it displays alien messages.”

“You pick what you want it to be.

That’s the whole point,” my friend explained.

He smiled hesitantly, probably trying to decide if we were nuts or what, then leaned in. “This big, gold one then; my show comes on at four,” he explained.

“You better get home quick then,” I joked. “You’ve only got three minutes.”

Volume 5: Issue 2

He laughed. “Nah, it's okay; I set it to auto-tape.”

That gave me an idea, though. The watches became a sort of day planner. I set one for when I had class and another for the time of a show I wanted to catch. Meaningful or not, my classmates seemed to enjoy the game, as long as the times kept changing. So whenever they weren't in use, I'd randomly twist the knobs around—without looking, of course—to reset them. They weren't gonna update themselves, after all.

This went on for about a year, until the summer heat set in. I didn't like the feel of all those sweaty bands up and down my arms.

One particularly hot afternoon, I broke down and took them off. It felt so good to let my skin breathe I struggled to make myself put them all back on again. I started leaving the watches off more and more, and by the time school started back up, I was kinda done with the whole thing.

I swapped out one of the broken watches with a new one.

When it didn't drop dead immediately, I saw that as a sign I was finally cured of my watchkilling curse.

“Hey, this one’s ticking!” a friend announced, pointing to the moving second hand a third of the way up my arm.

Over the next month, concern grew as I took off all but my favorite few.

“You can't lose the watches,” one classmate protested. “You’re the dead watch girl!”

But it was time.

While I never had a problem with watches dying prematurely anymore, my relationship with time was still strained at best.

You could count on me being ten to fifteen minutes late everywhere. In high school, no one really cared, but college was a whole 'nuther ball game, and I was determined to master the clock.

Merciless as ever, though, time never spared me a second. I picked my clothes the night before, rushed showers, and ate on the run. Still, my mornings vaporized. And once you’ve botched your mornings, your whole day is off. What's worse, I had no idea what I was doing wrong... until I met Casey.

Casey was a girl who had to be not only early but ridiculously early to everything.

Even going to movies was an ordeal. She

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Shadows Express

always took over the planning—since I was useless at it—and turned into a time-nag.

“They should open the doors by sixthirty, so let's get there at six,” she explained, pulling out the bus schedule we both already had memorized.

“Six? But the movie starts at seven.” I pounded out an irritated beat in my cocoa.

“I wanna be early.”

“Six thirty is early enough.” My spoon clicked away violently.

“Not if we get snacks. And what if there’s a line? I wanna be seated by six thirty.

Besides, I know you’ll find some way to make us late, and I hate when people watch you come in; I wanna be the first ones there.”

I sighed as I sipped, letting my eyes roll.

“Let’s see… the 5:21 bus, I think”—one manicured nail tracing the schedule—“so we need to be out the door by 5:06,” she concluded, obviously forgetting the stop was only across the parking lot from the dorm. She slapped the schedule down on the table, bringing me back to attention. “Be ready to go by 5:05, okay?”

Arguing was always pointless. I gave a non-committal shrug; her attempts to get us there early always failed anyway. She'd spout off all these numbers at me like they were supposed to mean something, but I barely grasped the difference between 5:00 and 5:15, let alone 5:06. I mean, whoever cared about 5:06... besides Casey, of course, who cared so much she’d follow me around with timechecks.

“Twelve minutes!” she’d call out, rapping at the bathroom door.

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“Okay.” I sighed and kept combing my hair.

“Four minutes; let’s move it.”

“I am.”

“We need to leave now, or we’ll miss this bus!” She paced the hall, watching me dig for my bus pass. “Seriously! We may as well just forget it at this rate.”

“No, I’m hurrying; we’ll make it.”

Panicking, I’d fumble around and somehow take even longer.

We always made it, though. Sure, sometimes we'd have to run—something I was used to but Casey hated. And I'd hear all about how she hated it for at least a good third of the trip. Once you make your bus, though, you’re back on schedule, and after I’d convince her of that fact, it was all good.

Disregarding the lectures and timechecks, I kinda liked our system; together we were always just a little bit early. And through it all, Casey taught me how fast the second hand can move and the benefits of being early.

Just because I saw the benefits, doesn’t mean I really understood the process. What can I say? I learn best the hard way.

I thought the trick was to move faster than the clock, so I became an expert at jumping out of bed, dressing, and being out the door in a matter of minutes. I got so good, in fact, I took to sleeping in past my alarm.

One day, I woke up ten minutes before my first class. It took me about five minutes to walk to campus, which left me the other five to shower, dress, and grab something to eat. I wasn’t that fast. But I couldn't not go, so I threw on my clothes, covered my hair with a hat, and grabbed the first edible thing I could

Volume 5: Issue 2

inhale while I booked it to class. Despite all my short cuts, I was almost fifteen minutes late for class. From the hall, I could hear the professor already lecturing and looked at my phone in dread.

I’d always thought that being late was my own loss, but it suddenly struck me how incredibly rude I was being to the professor and my classmates. By the time I reached the door, this fact had chewed all the way through my heart and left my hand frozen on the knob.

I couldn’t walk in this late, but I also couldn’t miss another lecture. I’d already missed three, and it wasn’t even mid-terms.

The longer I stood there, the later it got.

I had to make a decision!

Defeated, I sat down beside the door, took out my note book, and made do. The awkward looks from random passersby served as a reminder of my shame. Even making my next class on time didn't relieve my guilt. I may as well drop out of school at this rate.

That realization did the trick, because the next morning, I jumped out of bed earlier than I had in weeks and found myself sitting in class a full ten minutes early. I even had time to look over my notes! And, just like running late, being early set the tone for my whole day. Things just fell into place somehow. Suddenly I had not just spare seconds but full minutes; it was amazing.

That's when I understood what it was Casey was so hooked on. I was on a time high.

And from that vantage point, I could finally see clearly: I found the trick, how Casey could figure out what bus to take and when to start the time checks. Apparently, it’s not so much about knowing what time you need to be somewhere as it is knowing how

long it'll take you to actually get out the door.

Okay, I know that sounds simple, and I should have figured it out years earlier, but you're talking to the girl who wore nothing but broken watches for a year. Let's face it; I'm a little odd in the head.

I’d find an analog clock, point to my class time, and then move my finger counterclockwise around the face, allowing fifteen minutes for travel and thirty minutes for showering and dressing. I’d end my calculations by rounding to the nearest quarter, effectively adding ten to fifteen minutes for cushioning. Why? Because something always happens. Especially when you're already running late. That’s always when you lose your keys or dump coffee down your shirt; it never fails.

And then there are all those little timeeaters—you know, the real-quick and just-asecond extras. I mean, it can’t take that long to check the mail or load the dishwasher, right? And, no, individually they don't take that long, but when the gang gets together, you're in trouble. Suddenly, a minute here and a couple there turn into ten. And while ten minutes never seemed like much to me before, when I'd only allowed myself thirty total, and it took forty, well, you see my point. That bus was gone before I even got out the door.

If you watch yourself, though, you can cut out the time-eaters. And you realize it's impossible to spend ten minutes in the shower or walk two blocks in two minutes. And one day, you show up to class early, and you didn't even have to think about it. You discover that you've finally stopped trying to beat the clock and learned to work with it. And, trust me, you can't beat time; it always wins.

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Shadows Express

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I scr p o et in eam ex Ah p f oetry rom the ile, a hu p a ra nchb , pets ack of N for w otre Da m o rd s . e.

24

Joh nG rey

Volume 5: Issue 2

Ben Cooper

5:05 A.M. The lights in the cramped hospital room were dimmed, shining dully on the patient, illuminating his face, gray shadows creeping over his features. All was silent except for the whirring of machines and IV drips that encircled the bed. An armchair at the foot of the bed offered the sole haven for visitors. A hand-woven white and brown checkered blanket rested on the back of the chair, waiting for its next customer. Blurgie’s mother had brought it, a familiar sight on his apartment’s sofa through the years. Despite the heat pumping in from the metal ceiling grate, a chill came over Haley, and she shuddered.

Gazing out the frosted window to the parking lot where cars were covered with a layer of ice reminded her of the petrified mummies at the museum. It was the middle of winter, and there were four inches of snow on the ground. The cold always found a way in, through the insulated walls were meant to keep Old Man Winter at bay. She could not help but pace. Worry and guilt seeped in every time she was still. Her feet ached. Exhausted, she collapsed in the chair, covering her legs with the old frayed blanket.

Blurgie lay motionless on the hospital bed covered in a white sheet as he’d been for five consecutive days. The accident had been so unexpected. A wind storm had knocked over some debris from the scaffolding above his building at work. Mere coincidence had brought him out of the building at the worst possible moment; he had gone outside to take a private call from her. No one knew that

except her, and the guilt ate away at her like a ravenous flesh eating bacteria.

The doctors were adamant everyone remain optimistic, despite the head trauma.

But Haley could sense their reluctance, the subtle uncertainty in their voices. They had said the critical and most difficult step of Blurgie’s recovery would be waking from his coma. After that insurmountable hurdle, he could begin the arduous road of rehabilitation.

No telling if his motor skills or memory would return. The doctor labeled the window of awakening to one week; after that he was likely to remain in a comatose state forever.

She could not bear the thought.

Sighing, Haley nestled into the armchair before rummaging through her bag for her People magazine. She had been taking the night shift, while his mother visited during the day. She preferred to keep him company throughout the night. Looking into his mother’s desperate, brokenhearted eyes one more time was liable to drive her mad. There were no intruding visitors or smug doctors around to probe him, only the occasional check-up from a nurse. The hum of the furnace kept her company, as did the celebrities in People. His mother took comfort in knowing her son was in the presence of someone who cared deeply for his well-being. Of course, Haley’s romantic relationship with Blurgie had ended several years ago, but they had remained close friends, unwilling to stay out of each other’s lives. There was a magnetic quality between them that was impossible to deny. Inexplicably, they were meant for each other but, simultaneously, never meant to be.

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Shadows Express

Blurgie had always been there for Haley through two job firings, a pregnancy scare, her brother’s passing, and many other life crises.

Like clockwork, she always leaned on him in times of need, even after they had broken up.

Despite his unwavering loyalty, she had spitefully kept her distance as of late—a bitter fight sparked by some childish insecurity. But he needed her now, more than ever.

His sweet mother was devastated, crying and praying during the day and barely sleeping at night, emotionally drained. She didn’t have much money, somehow surviving on her measly social security checks. Blurgie had always strived to support his ailing mother, whose chronic back pain had kept her from working for nearly a decade. After years of dead end jobs, he had been well on his way to comfortably supporting the both of them thanks to a recent promotion. She still occupied the modest ranch house in which he had grown up as an only child in Slatesville, a small hospitable southern suburb of Cincinnati. Despite the commute into the city, he had moved back to Slatesville several years ago, determined to be close to his mother and to the town that was so much a part of his life.

His close friends had come to visit, one by one. She knew them well, many since high school. One’s first impression of Blurgie was that of a soft-spoken, well-mannered Ohio native with a playful sense of humor and a quirky name. To his friends, he was freespirited, adventurous, diligent and loyal about everything from family to his passion for Cincinnati’s sports teams. His dedication and perseverance had finally begun to pay off in his early thirties. He was successful in his own right—a promising career, assistant coach of the Slatesville High School baseball team, and co-founder of the website BarsofCincinatti.com. His life was more fulfilling than ever, until the accident.

26

Half-heartedly, she flipped through her magazine studying the pictures and skimming the articles. After several minutes, it dawned on her that she had already read this issue the previous week. With a lofty sigh, she set the magazine down and glanced up at Blurgie: the stubble etched on his cheeks, the IV’s and tubes hooked up to him, a constant reminder of his fragile mortality. She could not bear to stare at his endless hollow expression for more than a few seconds. Such an abundance of bandages were wrapped around his head that she imagined his brains spilling out should they unravel. How torturous not be able to talk to him when she needed him the most.

Another chill overcame her. Haley pulled out the frayed checkered blanket and draped it around her neck. The distinct scent of his apartment wafted from the blanket, soothing her. Wrapping the blanket tighter around her shoulders, she inhaled deeply, letting the familiar smells fill her. Tranquility washed over her troubled mind like an enveloping wave, and her thoughts drifted to fond memories.

The only respite in the mounting culpability was a remembrance of when it had all begun. She had met Blurgie years ago during their senior year of high school; it was within the dreary confines of a homeless shelter’s kitchen on a bleak Christmas day.

She had been there with her family, a holiday tradition meant to instill humility, build character, and give back to the community.

Blurgie’s warm, genuine smile over a tray of steaming mashed potatoes was forever imprinted on her memory. After a witty comment about the shelter food being better than their school’s cafeteria, they had flirted like young kids often do. She playfully made fun of his unusual first name, which he explained was a family name. He, in turn, poked fun at her name for being so plain. It turned out he had been there to fulfill

Volume 5: Issue 2

community service hours, a punishment handed down for a childish prank he and his friends had pulled. They had somehow managed to turn the principal’s Cadillac upside down in the faculty parking lot. The cops had gotten involved, and Blurgie had ended up taking the fall.

The cherished recollection reminded her of his genuine sensibility. Gently, she caressed his pale, limp hand before interlocking their fingers. During their tumultuous relationship they had never been the couple to publicly flaunt their affection.

Holding his hand reminded her at first of their bitter arguments, but the sense of security and love was there as well. The sad, tragic truth was that they were soul mates destined to be apart. He was the only man she had ever loved.

And now she was so close to losing him forever.

The biggest hurdle of their post-breakup friendship had been shortly before his father had passed away. Blurgie had called her late one night, clearly intoxicated and slurring his words. For nearly an hour he had blabbered on about being dumped by his most recent fling. But soon his thoughts had turned to her.

The outpouring of emotion was both uncharacteristic and unexpected. He had rambled on about their thwarted plans for the future and their promises of making each other’s dreams come true. But his ill-timed attempt to reignite old feelings had inevitably led to a heated argument. After all, he was drunk, and she wasn’t thrilled about being a consolation prize, his backup plan.

Regrettably, they hadn’t reconciled until well after his father had passed months ago. She had been absent in his darkest hour, and the guilt grew like a cancer.

Haley squeezed his hand, as if transferring her strength to him. Ever so gently, Blurgie’s grip tightened. Like many couples, they had a way of knowing what the

other was thinking. But their bond was more acute than that. When they had lain together in bed, holding hands, their hearts had seemed to beat as one, their thoughts fusing together in some sort of lover’s mind meld. They would doze off and have eerily similar dreams.

They’d dream of a wonderful future, a blissful alternate reality that would never come to fruition. They had envisioned supporting one another along their respective journeys.

Blurgie, fueled by his boundless creativity, had lofty ambitions as a writer, and Haley had dreamed of becoming a successful business woman in the fashion world. Gradually, she drifted off, overcome with exhaustion and fatigue, all the while still clutching Blurgie’s hand, unknowingly linking herself to the one man who understood her better than anyone.

6:04 A.M. Haley found herself standing in the middle of an all too familiar street in downtown Slatesville. Her vision was a bit blurred, but her surroundings were unmistakable. The street was completely empty; there was not one car parked along the curb or any old ladies struggling with their groceries. The ominous sky was filled with dark, billowing clouds. The hazy, burgundy horizon line was reminiscent of a Monet painting.

Instinctively, she hopped over the curb to the sidewalk and began walking. She was unsteady and slightly queasy, but soon the sense of vertigo passed. Feeling foolish for not noticing before, she suddenly realized that it was no longer blistering cold out, but in fact, a pleasantly mild spring. The shock of her sudden appearance in her hometown began to wear off. Reality was sinking in. Was she trapped in some alternate world? No, it was impossible for a dream to be as vivid as what she was experiencing. It seemed too simple of

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Shadows Express

an explanation for her apparent transportation to the main drag of Slatesville. Her thoughts were fluid; her motions controlled. It did not feel like a dream but some sort of virtual reality. Delirium or hallucination must have been the culprit because she couldn’t bear to entertain the notion that she had transgressed the world of the living.

Haley kept on walking, trying to calm herself, but her distress did not subside. Her surroundings were odd, details off, such as signs missing from familiar buildings and peculiar window displays. It was as if she was a part of someone’s skewed recollection.

Would she ever escape from this extraordinary, surreal place or was this to be her new reality, stuck in this bizarre version of Slatesville forever?

Along the walk she admired a flowerbed of vibrant pansies, petunias, and daisies. The arrangement reminded her of Blurgie’s mother’s garden. In fact, all the greenery, from the clusters of tall, meticulously pruned shrubs to the crooked birch trees were reminiscent of the front yard of Blurgie’s childhood home. Then she noticed a billboard on the side of a brick wall.

Blurgie was in the advertisement! He was pouring a Miller Lite, his beer of choice, into a glass with an exuberant yet gratifying expression. His influence could be seen in all the billboards from his favorite sports teams, the Bengals and Reds, to his favorite radio station. There was no longer any doubt that he had some connection to her sudden appearance in this pseudo Slatesville.

The discombobulated feeling gradually gave way, replaced with a focus on figuring out the dilemma at hand: getting back to reality. In the middle of the residential block of row homes sat a Taco Bell, Blurgie’s favorite fast food joint. The restaurant seemed out of place, tucked away in the middle of two recently renovated properties. Minutes later

28

she spotted yet another Taco Bell. She checked inside, but it was empty—not even cashiers manning the registers. Blurgie must hold the answers, but where was he?

A white Ford Focus slowly puttered down the drag. As it cruised by, she studied the driver, an elderly woman with curly white hair. She looked familiar, and after a few moments of hard thought, Haley finally remembered: she was Blurgie’s grandmother!

On the nearest cross-street another white Focus whizzed by, followed by a rusty Civic, and a black Corvette, all cars Blurgie had previously owned.

“What is going on here?” Haley asked, as if thinking aloud would aid her in cracking the case. She checked her pockets for clues.

“Nothing?” she muttered. “Guess I’m not hailing a cab. And another Taco Bell! Not many choices when it comes to dining in this neighborhood.”

After walking another block, she passed some kids playing football inside a fenced front yard. Seconds later a boy on a dirt bike zoomed past her, almost knocking her to the ground. The bike came to a screeching halt, and the boy turned to her with a contemptuous stare before sticking out his tongue. As he sneered at her and rode off, she picked up on the resemblance to her ex. He was Blurgie as a young boy!

“Brat,” she grumbled. Suddenly, pedestrians, familiar faces of Slatesville, filled the streets. She smirked when she saw that every dog being walked was an energetic golden retriever. Blurgie and his loyal companion, Piper, had been inseparable until he had died of old age a few years back.

Unending questions swirled through her mind as she noticed more connections to Blurgie’s preferences and memories. Could she even get back to the hospital? It was imperative she find Blurgie and quickly. If he

Volume 5: Issue 2

lapsed further into his coma, would she be stuck in Blurgie’s world forever?

Block after block, she walked. The street was endless, and each side road led back to the main drag, a labyrinth with no exit. Her feet throbbed under the thin soles of her slip-on shoes, a stark reminder of her new reality. No matter how urgent it was that she found Blurgie, a short rest had to take precedence.

6:55 A.M. Haley spotted a neighborhood pub up ahead on the corner. A faded, hanging wooden sign read Finley’s. She remembered the place well, a familiar haunt of their past. Her thirst and sore feet beckoned her to enter. The quaint pub contained several booths and tables, an extended bar that had seen better days, and an outdoorsy décor featuring a life-like stuffed grizzly bear brandishing his claws near the jukebox. Classic rock played softly in the background. A burly, baldheaded man was behind the bar casually drying pint glasses.

The place was empty except for a disheveled drunk slouched over on the bar, his face buried in his arms.

She took a seat on a duct tape covered stool. The bartender looked her up and down.

Would he ask for identification, or worse, ask why a woman by herself wanted a drink in the middle of the day? Despite her assurances that this place wasn’t real, her nervousness did not subside.

“I’ll have a Michelob Ultra, please,” she said to the bartender in her most polite voice.

“Don’t have it,” he barked out. “Only got Miller Lite.” She then noticed all the beer taps were Miller Lite.

“Okay, a Miller Lite then I guess,” she resigned, rolling her eyes. “And a water please.” The bartender groaned as he prepared her order.

“My friend Blurgie would love this place. He only drinks Miller Lite. Plus, you have the Reds game on. He’s an obsessed fan, never misses a game.” The bartender grunted as he plopped a pint in front of her. Foam spilled over the rim, soaking the glass and coaster.

“Thanks,” she muttered sarcastically.

She remembered she didn’t have any cash, but the bartender did not ask for payment.

The only other patron in the bar, the passed out drunk sporting a raggedy red flannel, struggled to lift his head as if it was weighed down. He yawned lackadaisically before clearing his throat and croaking, “Reds are losing; that figures. But you should see the song selection on the jukebox, has all the Rolling Stones and Zeppelin albums, and it doesn’t cost a thing.” The familiar voice was unmistakable.

“Blurgie? It’s you!” Haley gasped. He was almost unrecognizable: pale; unshaven; greasy, scraggly hair; and eyes so sunken that he could have passed for a zombie.

“It’s me!” he announced, hopping down from his stool with his hands raised like a preacher on Sunday morning. They embraced in a long hug. Haley could not stop smiling.

“You look like crap,” she joked.

“I feel like crap. Man, am I glad to see you! When did you get here?” The relief in his voice was palpable.

“So, this is where you’ve been hiding!

I’ve been looking everywhere for you.

Everybody’s worried sick about you!”

“Is my mom okay?” Blurgie asked.

Haley nodded.

“Thank God. Please be there for her,” he said. “I’m not sure she can handle it.”

“You have to leave this place. You have to come back with me. You can’t stay here,” she said flatly, cutting to the chase.

“I can’t leave,” he admitted. “Besides, I really do like it here, anyhow. This is my

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heaven. Everything is just the way I like it.

Just the way I remember it. It would be perfect if you could stay.” Blurgie peeked up at the television. The Reds had two runs to the White Sox’s five.

“If it’s so perfect, then how come the Reds are losing?”

“You can’t take the sport out of the game; that would be a crime! I think the Reds are going all the way this year. The coach knows pitching and defense wins championships,” he explained as his eyes remained glued to the television suspended over the bar.

“Will you forget about baseball for a second?” Haley said, annoyed. Like a mother having a stern dialogue with her troubled child, she prompted him to sit. Looking him in the eyes, she asked, “What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?” he questioned, as if he hadn’t the slightest inkling as to what she was referring.

“I mean, you know what happened, right?” Haley had assumed he knew about the accident.

“I know if I’m here, then something happened.” His expression soured. “I was betting you’d stop by. I knew you couldn’t go that long without talking to me.”

Smirking, he asked, “You remember Finley’s, right?”

“Of course! After that Reds game, we came back here and drank ourselves silly.

You proposed to me, in front of the whole place!”

“I know we were just having fun, but I’m still glad you said yes. But this is also where I got that text about my father….that he was gone,” he murmured.

After a composing sigh, she reluctantly divulged, “You’re in a coma. Are you going to come back with me?” Blurgie grimaced. He ran his hand through his short

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brown hair, his brow furrowed in deep thought.

“I wish it was that easy, Haley. I really do. You know, it isn’t all that bad here. It’s all so realistic; that’s probably why it took me so long to figure out something wasn’t quite right. I mean, it seemed as if I was in a trance.

But as time went on memories began to come back to me. I met people here, saw family and friends. But they were soulless, shells of their former selves. Talking to them was like torture. They don’t come around here anymore.” Blurgie began to sob.

“I’m here for you now. You’re not alone any longer,” she promised him.

Composing himself, he wiped away the tears on his sleeve and hopped off the stool.

“Let’s take a walk. I need some fresh air. Barkeep, put the drinks on my tab!” The bartender nodded with a wry grin.

They left the dark confines of the neighborhood pub and went over to a park across the street. They walked along a gravel path that encircled a pond infested with water lilies. Sparrows and robins chirped from the trees, and beautifully patterned butterflies fluttered above the colorful flowers. The towering branches of the oaks stretched

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upwards to the reddish sky. Blurgie stared solemnly at the trees for several moments.

Haley dared not interrupt the introspective moment.

“I know you want me to go back, but I can’t,” Blurgie said through clenched teeth.

She began to respond but he interrupted. “You see those kids playing football over there….

They look so happy, so carefree.” She looked over to the grassy clearing and the group of teenage boys playing tackle football. After an incomplete pass, one of the kids must have made a joke because they all erupted in laughter. “Why do we ever have to grow up, huh?” Blurgie asked. “Things were so much simpler back then. Like when we first met, you know? Before things got…complicated.”

“Time just marches on…. That’s life,” she responded, regretting saying the words as soon as they came out of her mouth.

“You always were a realist, but there’s truth to that cliché.” They came to a bronze statue that seemed vaguely familiar, a landmark from a distant memory. “Remember this statue?” he asked. “I always despised Ulysses S. Grant after that day.” The Civil War memorial suddenly jogged her memory.

She had broken up with him next to this very statue. Needless to say, it hadn’t gone well.

She recalled Blurgie turning away from her as if she no longer existed. No matter what she had said, he had continued to stare blankly at the plaque on the statue, as if hypnotized. This had only further infuriated her resolve, and she had stomped off, mumbling what a jerk he was under her breath. But she now realized she was the one who had broken her own heart that day.

“Stay with me, here,” Blurgie suggested, his voice hopeful. “At least for a little while. It’d be like a vacation. We could go out to the country or rent a cabin in the woods. Go hiking during the day, make a campfire at night, cook some s’mores and drink beer. You know, just like we used to.”

“Please, Blurgie…stop,” Haley begged, grabbing a hold of his arm. The hope drained from his face. Gently, she raised his head with a finger and looked into his dark eyes. “You’re in a coma, and this isn’t heaven. This isn’t real.” she insisted softly.

“Why would I want to leave?” Blurgie roared as his dejection manifested into anger.

“Because much like our relationship has been for so many years, it’s an illusion!

While you are here, your body is rotting in a hospital bed. Your mother is having a nervous breakdown! I can’t stay here. I might never get back! If you can’t come with me then you have to let go, Blurgie.” They could feel each other’s anguish; their emotions were impossible to keep at bay. Tears began to well in both of their eyes.

“I know…. I just didn’t want to, not yet. There was still so much I wanted to experience. To see the Bengals in the Super Bowl or the Reds in the World Series. Last time it happened, I was too young to appreciate it. I want to travel out west, see the waterfalls of Yosemite Valley, wine country. I wanted to have children and watch them grow up in Slatesville, like us. I wanted

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to be a freelance journalist. But mostly, I wanted to see you again…one last time.”

“You don’t know how hard it is,” Haley said between sniffles, “to let myself let you go. And to do it again, in the same exact place I did it last time.”

“Can’t you just stay for a little while longer? Just one day, please stay one last day?” he begged.

“Blurgie, please,” she whimpered. “I want to. I want to so badly, but it would just make it harder.”

Crestfallen and with eyes downcast, he shook his head empathetically. “I know. I had my extra time here. I’m grateful for that.

Besides, I don’t want people thinking you’re in a coma too. I can’t put your life in jeopardy.”

7:46 A.M. Their walk around the pond segued into a stroll down memory lane. Blurgie reminisced about the happy times they had shared, which happened to be some of the most lasting moments of their lives. His strength in the face of such insurmountable adversity was something she’d always admired. By the time they came back around to the statue, Haley knew Blurgie had decided it was time. Haley knew Blurgie had decided it was time. Despite the inevitable, she found comfort knowing he was able to determine exactly when to say goodbye.

“Thanks for finding me. To see you, it means everything to me.” He was barely holding it together, hands shaking, brow drenched with sweat, his voice stammering.

“Take care of my mom for me. She always liked you.”

“Of course.”

“I love her so much. I love you so much.

I should have asked you to marry me years ago. You were the only one.” Their final embrace continued for a good minute, ending

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with a tender kiss on the lips. At last he pulled back and said with raw feeling, “Be happy.

Live the life you love. We’ll see each other again one day.” Paralyzed with emotion, she could not bring herself to respond.

“I’ll miss you so much,” was all she could say, sobbing uncontrollably. She closed her eyes to quell the flow of tears. When she opened them again, he was gone.

Instantaneously, Blurgie’s world disappeared.

Stunned and disoriented, she collapsed.

8:21 A.M. When she came to, she was laying on her side on the floor of the hospital room, her exposed arm pressed against the cold tile.

After a few moments, she was able to collect herself and get to her feet with the aid of the side rail of the hospital bed.

Blurgie was as he had been before, motionless. As if she expected him to awaken, she stared intently at his eyes, suppressing her rapid breathing the best she could. A note sat on the table from Blurgie’s mother, saying she had wanted to let Haley rest and that she had gone to pick up donuts and coffee. She must have fallen out of the armchair onto the floor after she had left.

His toes were sticking out of the bottom of the blanket, and as she covered them up, her fingers brushed against his ankle. Her touch seemed to jolt him to life. His eyes flickered open momentarily, a thin smile emerging from his sedated expression.

“Blurgie!” Haley exclaimed, elated.

“When I had called you, right before the accident, I wanted to tell you.…” But the smile was fleeting, and his face soon went slack, his eyes rolling back. The steady beep of the cardiac monitor flatlined, setting off alarms.

“I love you,” Haley finished in a whisper. “You were always the one for me, always and forever.”

Volume 5: Issue 2

A.J. Huffman

Because Bark captures every angle of fading light, the texture glistens, a rustic rainbow, fading from red to gold to earthly gray.

It is a visual display, emulating fiery process of centuries’ rejuvenation.

Each ring a lifetime of fighting its way toward the sky

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Wendy Van Camp

As I stood in the late afternoon sun surrounded by the rose garden of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library, I placed my hand on the warm stone of the monolith before me and felt a sense of completion. It was a piece of the Berlin Wall, covered in graffiti and moss, the symbol of the fall of the old Soviet Union. While there are many interesting exhibits to see at the Reagan Presidential Library, what had driven me to visit this afternoon was a need to see this fragment of the Berlin Wall. I wanted to be able to touch the wall as a real and tangible object. For you see, while President Reagan had successfully opened the gates of the East to liberty, before the wall had come down, I also had fought against this barrier between the United States and Poland. However, instead of bringing down the Berlin Wall, as President Reagan had done, I found a way to leap across it. ****** I had been a serious young woman, recently graduated from college, enjoying my first media industry position. I landed a job as the Unit Production Manager of a nationally syndicated radio news program on NPR. While I did write the daily promo, which was broadcast to the stations that carried our program across the country, my duties were more geared toward being an assistant to the

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news editors and a liaison between our program and the other departments of the parent production company.

One morning, I had finished the promo, when the head of accounting walked up to my desk. She placed a file on my desk and gave me a stern look. I sensed her frustration, but felt that it was not directed at me, but rather at the issue she was bringing to my doorstep.

“We’ve been trying to pay this reporter in Poland for over six months, but every time we reach the Berlin Wall, the money just stops. He is your reporter and your responsibility. You will have to figure out a way to pay him.” With that, she returned to her office without looking back.

I stared at that file without opening it for a good five minutes. What did I know about accounting and payroll? Nothing. I knew that we had dozens of freelance reporters scattered all around the globe, but they all spoke directly to the editors, not to me. Accounting had always handled the processing of their checks in the past. It was not part of my regular duties.

My next task of the morning was to check the paper supply of the UPI and Reuter’s news feeds. These were large printers that were connected to the news services by phone line. It was from where our editors obtained the news of the day. At that time,

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there was no internet to search for information. As I put new rolls of paper into the machines, resetting them to start printing out fresh batches of stories, I asked one of the nearby editors if he knew anything about this Polish reporter and his situation.

He did. The situation had been common knowledge among the four editors for quite some time, and they were concerned about it.

It was a matter of the reporter’s mail being opened by the government officials when it reached the Communist Block. No letter from our company to this reporter could pass through the Berlin Wall. That was always where the paper trail ended. The editor was worried about losing this reporter, and I was told again that this situation needed to be fixed—and quickly. I walked back to my desk, thinking about this man in Poland. He had been a stranger to me before, just a name on the top of a file, but after this conversation, he was now a real person in need. I could not fault the man for considering not working for us any longer due to lack of payment, and that he had chosen not to do so spoke of his dedication. I admired this and I wanted to help him.

I sat at my desk and stared at the wall, both the physical drywall before my eyes, and at the same time, the Berlin Wall that had become a barrier to my desire to help this far away reporter. I needed to bring down this wall, to find a means of connection between our American company and Communist Poland in a legal manner. I dismissed idle visions of cold war spies and mail drops over transoms.

I still had not opened the file on my desk, but in this case, I did not feel that

anything in it would be of help to me. If the information in the file had stymied an entire accounting department for half a year, what use could it be to me now? What I needed to know was a means to get money through the gatekeepers of the Berlin Wall and into Poland. It was a matter of connections across international lines, not accounting.

As I sat there, a sudden idea popped into my mind. Why not call the United Nations? Were they not people who worked to solve internationally charged situations? At the very least, perhaps they could direct me to someone who I could ask questions of.

I called information and got the number for the United Nations building in New York City. Once I was connected, I told the operator that I was the Unit Production Manager of a national radio program and needed to pay a reporter in Poland. Was there anyone who could help me?

“Of course, Ma’am,” the operator said.

“I will connect you with the Polish Ambassador. One moment, please.”

I believe that my jaw must have dropped when I heard those words. I was just a kid right out of college who had not even left her hometown for her first industry job, and now, suddenly, I was about to speak with the Polish Ambassador in New York City. I gripped the phone more tightly and reminded myself that I was calling with legitimate business. I thought again about that reporter and steadied my nerves. I could do this.

The Ambassador picked up the line and gave me a cheerful greeting. He sounded like one of my old world uncles, speaking with impeccable English, but with a slight accent.

“And how might I help you?” he finished after

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a few simple pleasantries had been exchanged.

I gave the Ambassador a brief description of how our accounting department had been trying to pay our reporter in Poland for six months, but was always stopped at the Berlin Wall. The Ambassador indicated that he understood the problem I was speaking of and explained that even he did not send money to Poland in this manner.

“Then how do you send money to Poland across the Iron Curtain?” I asked.

The Ambassador suggested that our accounting department send the money to an account in a Polish bank that had a branch in New York City. From there it could be transferred to a sister bank in Warsaw, Poland.

Since they were both branches of the same Polish bank, the international element was removed and the money would not be touched.

An account could be set up in the reporter’s name, and he could withdraw the money in Warsaw. The Ambassador said that he would personally speak to both branches and make sure that the transfer would happen.

“It is the least I can do to help a countryman,” he said.

The Ambassador apologized that he could not get the money closer to the reporter.

Warsaw was one hundred miles away from the reporter’s address, but legally that was the best he could do. I thanked the Ambassador for his time, and told him that I would confer with our accounting department and the reporter to make sure that this solution would be acceptable to everyone involved. If they were, our people would talk to his people and get the job done.

Next, I called the reporter in Poland and explained about the long distance that he

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would have to drive in order to get his paycheck. The reporter was grateful that he would finally be receiving his money and would have a method of getting his checks on a regular basis in the future. He assured me that this method of payment was acceptable to him. His sincere thank you and the sound of relief in his voice touched me. The Berlin Wall was conquered and justice would prevail.

At this point, I looked up at the clock.

It had been around two hours since the head of the accounting department had come to my desk and left that file. I picked up the thick file, unopened except to look up the phone number and address of the reporter, and made the trek through the building to the accounting department.

I knocked on the doorframe of the head accountant’s office and asked, “Might I come in?”

She glanced at the file in my hands and said, “Look, I told you that paying that reporter is your responsibility—” I interrupted her and explained how the Polish Ambassador would set up the connection between the two banks, effectively securing a pipeline that she could use to pay the Polish reporter—now and in the future.

“You called the United Nations?” She seemed flabbergasted by the idea. The annoyance that my appearance had generated vanished from her expression as she said more to herself than to me, “Why didn’t we think of that?” She called for her assistant as I placed the file on her desk with the contact information I had provided of the banks and the Ambassador’s staff. I left her office, returning to my regular duties of the day.

That afternoon, I received informal

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congratulations from reporters in our Boston NPR office and from an associate editor who called in from South America as word of my deed spread throughout the company. For the first time, I realized I was part of something much larger than myself. I saw just how wide-spread our program was throughout the world, yet how close the journalistic community was as well. ****** As the Southern California sun beat down on my shoulders, I gave the monolith

one last pat and moved on to see more of the exhibits available to view at the Library. My admiration for Mr. Reagan remains intact, and he will forever be one of my favorite presidents. Having that piece of stone under my fingers made the events of that long ago day seem more real to me. It was not bits of information I had been dealing with, mere pieces of papers I shuffled. It was real places and people for which I had made a difference.

The solid stone of the Berlin Wall under my hand proved that to me.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr.Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Ronald Reagan June 12, 1987

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I See Summer in Your Eyes Karen Marie Crump

see summer in your eyes, bright light from visions seen and moments caressed in loving memory.

Unlike the season which passes, your spark still shines in winter when cold and gloom would encompass all.

But, no, there you are a reminder that this too shall pass.

I

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Volume 5: Issue 2

Tom Sheehan

Earl Chatsby, six years ceased being a father for real, felt an odd distinction coming into his place of being. The newspaper for the moment loomed an idle bundle in his lap, the way it stayed weighty and rolled and unread.

Walls of the kitchen widened, and the room took in more air. He could feel the huge gulp of it. The coffee pot was perking loudly its 6:00 a.m. sound, and the faucet drip, fixed three nights earlier at Melba’s insistence, had hastened again its freedom, the discord highly audible. Atop the oil cloth over the kitchen table the mid-May sun continued dropping its slanting hellos, allowing them to spread the room into further colors. Yet to this day, he cannot agree to what happened first, the front porch shadow at the window coming vaguely visible in a corner of his eye, a familiar shadow, or the slight give-away trod heard from the porch floor—that too familiar, the board loose it seemed forever and abraded by Melba’s occasional demands to fix it.

Change, evermore to be remembered, was at hand.

In one desperate moment, before trying to make up his mind between the selection of the shadow or the footstep as being the initial impact, Earl Chatsby ran his engine of recall.

Morning crowded him into the past with a push so harsh and thorough his head spun atop his shoulders. The fleetness of crowded memory was punishing. He saw that other sun, the high sky with endless blue, that other day itself crowded with so many small glimpses of personal data that he shuddered. In a pale reflection there was Paul Moffie, peering out his front room window across the street; Paul

had leaped back so many times after his death with a constant apology that he had neglected to say goodbye to Purly. It had happened hundreds of times, that ghostly re-appearance becoming Paul’s legacy.

Purly’s steps that last morning had a pause to them, an intricate measurement, as he came down from his bedroom, the sound coming off as a slowed-down metronome full of careful cadence. Earl had measured that tread too, that slow tread, knowing the hesitation in it, the built-in delay in getting on in the world, as though it was all visible to his son seeing what was out there in front of him.

That other day was also a May day, and still holding its breath, a treasure to be kept and hidden and only used when absolutely needed for the spirit. Earl once tried to categorize that treasure and only found plausible options, forced memory or forceful memory, and then he tossed them each aside.

Earl looked up and saw his son’s uniform pressed so clearly and squarely that Melba must have outdone herself. The corporal stripes appeared as sharp as razor blades on the sleeves of his army shirt, what he called his sun tans or summer issue. The pants, bloused into his boots, seemed sheet-metal stiff as he stepped away from the stairs, stiff enough to break apart.

“Looks like Mum honed you up on a razor strop, Purly. Them pants appear like she had them corrugated.” Pride rode a small flush in Earl Chatsby’s face as he looked upon his son so near to departure. That he was going off to the war was a hidden fact for the merest second, and then it slammed home, overtaking

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and overpowering the pride he had felt flushing him so deeply inside it must have shown outside. The felt redness was proof. A knock began in his chest, a dreadful music marking him—sighing, not singing—as mean as a flag waving in front of his eyes. It was almost wanton from then on, that feeling. He had always hated the prideful thought that hung forever in his mind: my son looks like he’s a soldier ready for anything out and about in the world.

The young corporal, just turned twenty years of age, nodded agreement. “I won’t sit down in them until I get on the train.” He grinned further. “If I skip breakfast, Mom will get upset, so I have no way out of it. They’ll get creased up plenty on the train anyway.”

He sat stiffly at the table. A bright patch of sun, an amber touch of gold alive in it, caressed his hands spread on the table, letting the warm rays bathe the backs of his hands, his wrists, accepting the final comfort of home.

“What time’s the train?” Earl said as a portion of morning silence began to eat at him, the kitchen spreading with the sun, yet thinking how the room would diminish in days to come. Perhaps before this day was all the way gone.

The shoulders of his son had widened in the few months since basic training began.

Melba, on the other hand, had seen the facial lines develop in her son, the shaving traces, the worry lines, the light shadows in the blond boy’s face. The endurance marks, she had called them in her contemplative hours getting ready for bed, shutting down her day. Earl, at counter, had noted the progress of body mass, how the chest deepened, the neck thickened, marking the quick run to manhood. He was no longer the slim defenseman who had little bulk but who had to skate faster than others to stay competitive.

Purly maintained the bright freshness in his face he had always sported. With it he had hidden pain on odd occasions… two broken

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bones, a collapsed rib or two, and teenage disappointment in the “girlie department” as Earl had called it. “It’s running early,” Purly said, “real early, collecting other guys on the way here, all the way from Gloucester and Rockport and Ipswich. It’ll be here just around 7:30. Six more from here being picked up; Bob Mercer and Chet Russo and Mac Duval, all getting aboard, with some others. Like we’re going off on a hockey trip to Canada.”

He went right to that bright freshness.

“Weren’t those great days.” A heavy laugh rose from his chest, the corporal stripes carried sharper edges, a young man with memories.

“I was just thinking about Smitty’s father.

When I tell that story to some of the guys in the barracks they crack up.”

Earl joined the masquerade, his laughter loud and joyous. “That time on the bus?” He had played such games before.

“Oh, yah. How everybody had to keep an eye on him all during the trip so he wouldn’t get caught up in the booze, on his best behavior for a final run. We were all watching him in that last stop in Canada, buying those little nips, then sitting at the back of the bus and getting ready to knock off the first one.”

Both of them roared. Earl finished it off, as Purly knew he would. “Tipped that first one and almost drained it off, thinking he had something like Southern Comfort, only Northern Comfort nips were plain maple syrup. ‘Member how he almost gagged?”

The two were still laughing, when wife and mother, in full Sunday dress, came into the room.

“What are you two laughing at so early on this morning?” Her whole posture accented her question, her surprise on this last morning.

She was dressed for Sunday at church, her hair tied back in a bun. In half an hour she’d have her Sunday hat on her head. The question marked her face, departure of her only son at hand.

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Purly got right to the situation. “Mom,” he said, “I’d really rather say goodbye here at home, rather than down at the train station in the Center. It’d be a lot easier to cry here.”

Earl could never forget the look on Melba’s face as she turned to look at her husband, the well-veiled look hidden from her son so that only her husband would know it.

“Of course, Purly. You’re right. I know I’ll cry like a baby, and we don’t want that.”

Earl could easily recall that Purly, even a month younger, could not have said that to his mother. Broader and thicker, he thought, and older.

In a shake of her head she was at the stove, scrambling eggs, bacon cooked beforehand and sitting under a paper towel, coffee aroma hanging in the air. They half joked in talk, a note about where Smitty and his father had gone, what one old girlfriend of Purly’s had said one day when Melba was in the market. Melba never mentioned the suffused blush on the girl’s face, and never mentioned it to Earl, even in one of her contemplative moods at the side of the bed.

Breakfast, on that harsh morning trying to be casual as ever, was quicker than Earl wanted, but Purly was having his way. He hugged them both in an abrupt moment, grabbed his bag, hugged them again, and strode out the front door and down the street.

He looked back a few times, locked them on the porch, turned the corner.

In a minute’s time they sped out the back door, Earl going behind the wheel of the old Dodge in a sharp move. Melba closed her door as softly as she could, seemingly fearing the echo would rumble down the street, chase her boy around the corner and down Summer Street heading to the center of town, a half mile away.

Earl drove around odd corners, breath heavy in his chest, pulling at unknown parts, scattering in dim places. The knots were there being tied tighter. He tried not to look at

Melba stoic in her seat, and he was thinking that she knew then, at one instant, more than he’d ever know. She was made that way. It was partly why he loved her; the way she noted the noisy board on the porch and that he would never fix it because there was a reason for its being. He felt stupid being stupid, and then clarity hit him bordering on the omnipotent; he too had his values, and the wheel turned in his hands as part of his minor celebration. Past Vinegar Hill he drove, on the far side, and came out behind the fire station.

In two more turns she would never have found, he had them three houses down from the railroad station and across the small creek.

From the side of friend Greg Satchell’s garage, they watched Purly and five or six others in uniform board the train and leave home, outbound, bound for war.

They never saw Purly again.

A little over a year later, the fire chief started up the front walk, his uniform so crisp it looked brand new, the white hat with dark visor square on his head, and the yellow telegram in one hand. He was the emissary, the arch volunteer, the wound carrier, the harbinger of death, the missing period at the end of a life sentence. His step was hesitant, his chin stolid and grimly in place, all of it making his uniform crisper, neater, deadlier.

Purly was officially lost in combat in Asia someplace. No country named, no town named, no battle site named. Lost. Missing in action. Just twenty-one, blond and, gone forever. When tulips went haywire each May after that, Earl and Melba could put themselves right beside Greg Satchell’s little plot of tulips and jonquils, their eyes locked on one figure in uniform. There were days they hated May, days when they waited desperately for the tulips to leap out of bulbs put down in October.

Earl, as personalities continually develop, was the dreamer and Melba the curator of best memories, and owner of tears

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that Earl had never seen. Earl wrote survival scenarios in his mind, series on top of series of them, plush with dialogue, revelations, possibilities, options, and ultimate survival escapades. Such selections of joy gripped him sometimes for a solid minute of his life, a minute he could carry for an entire day. His thoughts were never clear of them, one or the other hanging by at the back of his head, at immediate bidding.

Now, on this new morning six years later, the war over—and never over—his mind at odds, his eyes working extra cautions, his ears like tonal islands except for the most familiar sounds, he saw the shadow in a corner of his eye from a corner of the window. Then he heard the tread on the middle board of the porch.

What? How? He had seen and heard all this before, a hundred times. A hundred times or more. Six years worth of loss and he had seen it all, had heard the same sound, the same shift of weight on one board, and the shade and shape of the shadow now falling into his house again.

Earl Chatsby came up in his chair, erect, mouth open for sound.

He wanted to yell to Melba, but he found no voice. He wanted to believe what he had seen, what he had heard. He wanted to shout, but nothing was down in his throat except an expanse of air. He could not negotiate its passage. It jammed tightly in one place.

When he opened the door to the porch, a blond man stood there, heavy in the face, twisted mustache hanging bars at each corner of his mouth, shoulders not so broad as to mark him. All the scenarios Earl had written for six years fell away, all the survivals, all the hopes, for he had seen this moment coming, but not this man… not this narrowshouldered man, not this bearer of a wide mustache, not this stranger.

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Yet Earl Chatsby also knew he himself had come into a new place, or gone back to an old place.

The man’s hands were folded, as in prayer. “Mr. Chatsby,” he said in a half voice, as though only half of him was making this visit, “my name is Carl Bollis. It’s taken me years to knock at your door.” He wrung his hands tighter. “I was with Purly when he died.” He started to cry with deep and cumbersome sobs. His body shook. “I always meant to come, but something always held me back.” Then another torment broke from him.

“It was all my fault. All my fault and he laid down on top of me and took the bullets, took them all.”

Earl Chatsby thought the man was going to collapse. All the signs were there. The distinctive ones leaped out; haggard eyes, malnourished face, a man beaten by an awesome enemy without a name as yet. Earl grabbed his arm and ushered him inside. “You have to tell my wife, you have to tell Purly’s mother. Please sit down.” He thrust him into a chair.

Melba came into the room. The mother’s steps took her back into the kitchen. “Bring him in here, Earl. I’ll get him something to eat.” She banged about the kitchen as Earl sat their guest at the long kitchen table that he and Purly had built.

“You talk,” she said, “and I’ll cook. Do you like home fries and sausages and eggs?

Don’t say no because that’s all I have right now.” She broke three eggs into a mixing bowl, lit a fire under a frying pan and turned to him. “Please go on.”

There followed a long morning between the three, the grieving parents, the grieving comrade, but, with minor patchwork, changes began to incorporate themselves into and about the trio.

Carl Bollis, ever at odds with peace of any kind, at odds with his world for months at a time, felt comfort slowly squeezing

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around him, like a blanket draping on his body. “I woke in the night, for a long time, with a whiteness all around me. Not darkness, but a whiteness. It’s a blinding light. I am always trying to find out where my place is in all this. Now, I feel Purly here. He talked a lot about this house, about you folks, about hockey trips. I think I know some of your friends, some of his friends. That’s hard to say, seeing what I did, what happened back there.” A cup of coffee appeared at his hand.

One leg stretched out under the table, then the second leg.

Earl and Melba understood Carl Bollis was reaching for something, trying to find a

place or a way to a place. Melba placed a full dish in front of Carl, the eggs golden and piled high, the sausages brown as fall, the toast buttered and cut, just the way she set it out for Purly.

Carl Bollis continued. “We were in Burma, part of a special group, specially trained, in great shape. We wanted to do our part. We were ready for it. And Purly was an exceptional soldier. We all knew that from the very beginning. But we were captured by the Japanese because a native betrayed us. We were captives for two years or more. I’m not sure how long, or didn’t know then, because everything ran together in the two camps

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where we were kept prisoners; abuse, pain, hunger, sickness, and more abuse. I won’t give any of those details, but Purly always had an idea we could get away, always saying we had to do it by ourselves, not depend on the natives. They were on the sorry end of everything and we couldn’t blame them, yet we couldn’t trust them. At least, not in the face of torture or worse for their families.”

Earl watched his wife, the ever-mourning mother, as the young man talked and ate in their kitchen. Her face gained color, her arms.

To Earl, it seemed as though something new had become something old, something reaching for her. He watched with expectation as air filled her lungs. All Earl’s scenarios had been related and retold, but now, he knew, it was her story. She was, in essence, searching for, in this stranger, a composite trait, a characteristic move that she would recognize in an instant to be what it was, a piece of her son. A composite, but nevertheless a piece of her son. Anything was better than nothing.

Anything! he thought. The fork full of scrambled eggs moved slowly and precipitously to Carl Bollis’s mouth, a small chunk falling back on the plate. A speared half link of sausage was chewed only on one side of his mouth. Soon his jaw hung loose, as if he were enjoying a lingering taste. Earl knew she was looking for Purly, even as the visitor kept talking, kept trying to re-insert her son into her life, right there in her kitchen.

“Purly was working it all the time,” Carl Bollis added, “his vision, seeing how we could do it, how many ways and how many pitfalls.

But we did it! One night it happened, and come morning, we were at last five miles from the camp and moving down a stream, three of us. Purly said we couldn’t run forever; we’d have to live off the land for perhaps a year, maybe more. We’d have to learn, he said, more than we knew. Stagner got sick and died.

We buried him at the back end of a cave, away from animals and the enemy. We were free

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for a couple of months and were learning. I think Stagner ate something bad or poisonous, because he just rolled over one night sick as hell and was dead by morning. He bloated up terribly.”

Earl’ s mind moved within each descriptive passage delivered by Carl, seeing it all, how Purly moved, how his shoulders were carried by attitude and disposition of the moment, how certain physical motions, precursors or stimuli, were followed by other reflex actions. He remembered all the signatures of his son. And he also saw his wife’s intensity filling the room, coming up as wide as life itself.

“We were comfortable, but careful, worried mostly about getting sick. But we had plenty of food. Once we found an aircraft that had crashed in the jungle, and we got supplies we hadn’t dreamed of, some medical stuff we wanted desperately. Purly said we were more than a hundred miles by river from Myitkyina, but river travel would seriously expose us. It was the Malikha Stream and would only expose us to the enemy unless we had a target to get to and traveled by night. The odds were against us. Often he talked about waiting out the war, but also laughed at the thought; it was so far out. He had a way of control that was sparkling. He was responsible and he knew it.

Smarter than me he was, all the way. We moved away from that place then, worried that the Japanese would find out about the plane, or the natives would kick something loose on us. It took us about a week to find another place. We hid from every contact with the natives, afraid to put them at greater risk.

“All the time, we watched the skies, and the frequency of our planes. We could feel things changing for the better. Then we were surprised again. They shot at us. I was hit in the leg and the shoulder and fell down. Purly jumped on top of me. They shot at us, straight down at us. Purly took all the bullets. His blood flowed down across my face, flowed

Volume 5: Issue 2

into my mouth. I drank his blood. Can you believe that…? I drank his blood. I could not cough or gulp or move my eyes. I couldn’t blink. I didn’t dare blink. The pain was horrible, but I couldn’t blink. They kicked us and laughed and got ready for night.

“Later, one of them, really young, stood over us, his weapon pointing down at us, at me. I swear he was looking at me eye to eye.

Firelight was in our eyes, the flames bouncing around. His comrades yelled at him, maybe calling him or ridiculing him. I don’t know.

They made silly gestures by the fire, as though they were having fun. But he looked hard at me, pointed his rifle and then shot into the ground, right near my face. Right beside my face. I could have been dead. I was thinking all the time that I’ll never get away with pretending. Then his buddies began heating water, for making tea I’d guessed. I think I could smell it. It was almost totally dark, the fire was bright in the jungle night, and suddenly a plane leaped right out of the sky and strafed us all, killed some of them, scattered the rest. The plane came back and dropped a bomb, and then went on its way.

But that soldier who fired into the ground, my comrade evermore, was killed. The bomb practically dropped right on top of him. I saw him go into pieces. But he was my comrade.

Purly was my comrade. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here. Both of them were my comrades. That means forever.”

That oath was a fire in his eyes.

He continued his tale, his plate now empty. “In the morning they were gone. I buried Purly under a small tree. All I knew was what Purly had told me: we were on the Malikha Stream above Myitkyina in Burma.

Next day a native boy found me and took me to his village. A runner went off and three days later some of the Marauders came by and brought me to a pick-up point. Later, I was flown out, came home, was discharged after

a few months in the hospital, and have worried about this visit every one of my days since.

“It’s been a bad time of it for me. I’ve had jobs and lost jobs, maybe dozens of them, but I’m always going back there in my mind, back where Purly is. I have a hard time concentrating. I’m amazed I can tell you all this, mostly because I didn’t want to, but I’ve talked to a lot of guys, and they said I owed it to you—and Purly. And mostly to Purly, at that.”

The pause was a long duration. For heavy seconds, he turned inward and the kitchen filled with silence floating on air. A heartbeat was heard. A final pronouncement came.

“What is not strange is whenever I get a paper cut or nick my finger or bite my lip and try to stop the bleeding, I taste Purly’s blood.

Without fail,” he said. “Without fail.”

And there it was, that absolutely identical tone of his voice, the way his words were finally carried out of his mouth, the way his lips closed down on some words and his eyes cast further explanation. As if he had lost a hockey game, and he was at fault. Hockey had never been important to Melba, but now it was. It was a piece of her son, this sign, his blood having made its move. The sound of Carl Bollis’s voice was filling the kitchen with a tell-tale recognition. They heard other sounds; a minor sob, a secret laugh, a last word at the door on the way to school. Whole years rushed at them.

Melba leaned across the table and looked at him directly. “I figure you may not want what I’m going to say, but you can always hang your hat with us.”

Earl stepped in as Carl Bollis stared at his wife. “It’s like you brought Purly home with you, Carl. Brought him right back to us from halfway around the world. This is home.”

For a fraction of a second, Earl Chatsby thought he heard the loose board on the porch give itself away and a shadow loom in a corner of his eye.

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A Heartbeat Away Debra Shipman

A heartbeat away is splendor by a rolling crystal sea.

My Father's there with eyes of love watching over me.

Empirical winds of freedom will carry me someday, to shores of eternal splendor; One heartbeat away.

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Volume 5: Issue 2

Hope Defiant Aundria Kenning

When the world is cold and all seems lost

When the lightning rips the sky When the endless night is closing in And the waves come crashing by No shelter from the raging storms No rest from the angry sea No path to lead out of the dark Hope's a distant memory Yet hope has many voices And comes in different forms Sometimes it’s hard to find it In the violence of the storms A warning static in the air Heralds the lightning’s reign And a patient hush waits to calm The thunder's desperate pain The ocean rock is battered By the whims of a petulant sea No help against the endless tide Lies abandoned, useless, and lonely But what seems so forsaken And lost among the waves Offers solid ground in shifting seas To those who’ve lost their way Like shadows changing with the light Hope shows so many faces For all its promise, peace, and love It’s in the darkest places Hope is never really fleeting It stands forever strong Defiant and loud it proudly says Stand fast, keep holding on..

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Basking I hadn't seen Nancy Chambers in months, but there she was, sitting on the top step of her sidewalk in front of her house at the dead end of Shire Street, head back, eyes closed, hands braced behind her, her large round belly bare to the sun. My brakes squeaked as I stopped. I put the kick stand down, got off the bike and grabbed a copy of today's edition.

Her eyes opened, but she didn't turn her head. Her eyes swiveled my way was all.

"Hi," I said. "Do you want the paper or should I put it in the door."

"Toss it on the porch is fine." She closed her eyes again and stretched her legs straight out, then her bare feet. Her toenails were painted bright red. "Um, that sun feels so good."

"Yeah, it's a nice day."

I walked on the grass around her. Nancy had always seemed nice to me. She was three years older than I was, in her senior year of high school, five years younger than my sister Joan, very pretty, a trend-setter you might say, a friendly person. "Too friendly," my mother would have said.

I'd heard that Nancy and her mother were attending the 6:30 Sunday Mass now, not the 10:00 o'clock, which was what she always went to before. That early Mass only attracted ten or fifteen old people or farmers. Stan Williams, the 6:30 altar boy, told me Nancy sat in the farthest back pew in the darkest corner like she was hiding, but she also went right up to the rail and took the sacred host during Communion. I told Stan, “Why not?� She would have gone to Confession, so her sins were forgiven.

I put the paper inside the door and started back. I'd heard about Nancy being in the family way when Mom said to my sister, "What do they teach girls in that school you went to?"

Joan had a bun in the oven, a kid on her hip, and one she was chasing around her living room. There were toys and clothes all over the place. Joan raised up with Jimmy's upper arm snagged in her fist. "What are you talking about now?"

"Nancy Chambers is in trouble."

"No!" "Oh yes. It makes me think that we should've sent you to a Catholic high school, and Margaret Chambers should've sent her girl there too."

Joan laughed. "Like that would've stopped anything."

Mom said, "And she's not marrying the father."

Joan shook her head. "That'll make it harder on her."

"Nancy won't even say who the boy is," Mom had said.

I got back to my bike and said, "Well, goodbye."

She said, "Thanks for the paper." Her eyes remained closed.

I stared at her belly, then said, "When's the baby due?"

She looked at me and smiled. "July 10th. Two months from now. I can't wait."

"Is it painful?"

"Not yet. I can't wait to see if it's a boy. That's what I'm hoping for. My mother says it'll be a boy because she thinks I'm carrying the baby low. But the doctor told me last week the baby's not low, so maybe it'll be a girl. Nobody knows. I can't wait to find out."

"Does he kick? My sister always talked about her kids kicking."

"Watch right here." She put a fingertip on her belly. "Did you see that?"

I shook my head.

"Come here." When I went over, she took my hand and put it flat on her belly. "He's been kicking like mad since I came out here. He likes the sun."

Right on cue, the baby kicked my palm. It was a hard little jab that made me raise my hand off her belly and laugh at the same time. Nancy laughed too.

"That was probably his foot."

It was the weirdest thing I'd ever felt. Somebody that wasn't even born yet had touched me. It was like being touched by the future.

"That was neat," I said, getting on the bike and releasing the kick stand.

The rest of my paper route, I'd hold the handle bars and my right palm would kind of throb where the baby had touched me. That smooth, round belly glowed in my mind, and I liked the way the sun that warmed him was warming me. Nancy would make a swell mom.

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Pre

It was three weeks before Tommy told everyone, and I thought she mean four pounds at birth, and then he los pounds when Mom carried him into th He was so tiny, John and I were af him squalling between us, his little hand his little tongue kind of vibrating, his his hand with my little finger and he gr was hardly a dot on the big double be lungs, holding onto his older brothers' l in the sea of life. We lay there beside hi He was so little I could lift him in o perfectly with the tips of my middle fi hand underneath him, get it into posit off the mattress, just high enough so I c He weighed less than our phone book.

His skin seemed transparent. The He'd cry, the blue would become almo up like a mummy in soft, three-foot-squ would stop. Then he'd lie there complete one bright thing to another, tucked in a Mom, minus the liquid. Almost any mo move my hands back and forth, up and eyes, as if they were birds.

A bath was his other refuge. At firs hands quickly turned into play and he'd him. He'd cry again, though, when sh different tone from his normal cry. T around showed he was angry. We'd lau All of us would tiptoe into his room watch while he sucked on nipples and em around him and stare. We'd chuckle an the house with returning in mind. He w touch everything. He was with us what

eemie

came home. "A miracle," my mother nt he was a miracle because of his size: st weight. He was almost back to four he house and laid him on her bed. fraid to touch him. We lay down with ds jabbing the air, his mouth wide open, shrill voice filling the room. I touched rabbed it. Then John did the same. He ed, crying so hard I knew he had good little fingers, as if they were his anchors im until he tired and dozed off. one hand. He fit the palm of my hand ingers holding his head up. I'd slide a tion, then lift. Not high, an inch or two could feel his entire weight in that hand.

slightest breeze made him turn blue. ost purple, and Mom would wrap him uare blankets. As he warmed, his crying tely awake, his eyes flitting around from as warm and secure as he'd been inside ovement would catch his attention. I'd d down, and he'd follow them with his

st he'd cry, but his thrashing arms and d gurgle while Mom washed and rinsed he took him out of the water, but in a That and the way he jerked his hands ugh. The little guy had a temper. m and watch him sleep in the crib. We'd mptied his bottles. We'd stand together nd comment. Because of him, we'd leave was tiny, but his presence spread out to tever we did, anywhere.

Volume 5: Issue 2

Bill Vernon

Customer As usual, I'd saved Carter's Nursing Home for my last stop, even though that put it out of the way. About ten residents were on the porch with shawls or blankets around them.

"Hello," I said. The ones that used walkers liked to say hello. The others were dozing.

"It's a beautiful day," a lady said. "Isn't the crabapple nice? It smells so good."

"Yes, it does."

What I actually smelled was urine. During the winter the smell got bad, but now with some windows open, the odor wasn't as obnoxious.

"I haven't seen Judith," the lady said. "Isn't that who gets the paper?"

"Mrs. Simms," I said.

"She must still be in her room."

"Okay, thanks."

I opened the screen door, went in, didn't see Mrs. Simms in the lounge, and looked in her room. She was in bed with her eyes closed. I tiptoed in, laid the paper on the night stand, and noticed her head was twisted funny on the pillow.

I leaned toward her. "Mrs. Simms, can you hear me?"

Then rushed out and found two nurses in the kitchen. "You better check on Mrs. Simms."

They hurried past me, and I followed, but stopped in the doorway. They bent over Mrs. Simms, checked for a pulse, covered her head with the sheet, and came out into the hallway.

"That's unexpected," one of them said.

I said, "I delivered her paper and found her like that."

"I'm afraid there's nothing we can do for her."

The other one touched my shoulder. "You can take back your paper if you want to."

Two huge grandfather clocks suddenly started bonging. It was 5:00, a half hour before the Home served dinner.

I walked out between the bonging clocks, through the front door, and stopped on the porch. The sun in the crabapple was making its pink blooms shine bright red. They smelled wonderful.

"Did you find Judith, young man?" It was the lady I'd talked to before.

"She's dead," I said. "I told the nurses."

"Oh my. Well, don't worry. The attendants will take care of her."

"Okay." I put my right foot down on the first step.

The lady said, "Judith was your only customer, wasn't she?"

I said yes and the lady asked me to deliver a paper to her from now on. So I wrote down her name, Katherine Wellman, thanked her, and left.

I coasted the rest of the way down Mechanic Street hill, crossed the bridge, parked the bike, and walked through the brush down to the edge of Turtle Creek.

It was high after the rains, but still clear enough to see minnows and crawdads messing around in the water. The bushes and trees had foliage, but I could see Carter's Home gleaming through the leaves on the other side of the creek. I sat down on a large rock with fossils in it, watched the water flowing, and cried.

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I Hate to Travel Fergas Dunne

The Travel Agent books our reservation, perhaps a summer voyage or early fall.

This journey to an undiscovered nation that fills man’s mind with great anticipation but over complicates the port of call.

Uncertain of the final destination, just what we’ll need is difficult to know.

We spend our days in endless preparation, the nights are spent in facing this frustration— the more we pack, the less we want to go.

A quite unnecessary occupation, this irony that’s shared among the blind.

It’s better not to yield to this temptation as all we’ve stowed for our emancipation must be unpacked by those we leave behind.

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Volume 5: Issue 2

Donna J.T. Smith

I wish for you bright days ahead, Joys full within your soul, A happiness that grows within, As waves to shoreline roll.

I wish your days be long and light With butterflies and breezes; I wish for you the clearest skies And nights with firefly teases.

When rain quenches the dry land's thirst, May drops pit-pat a tune And after that, be overhead Two rainbows and the moon, Reminders that forevermore Is just around the bend; The past has just slipped past us and To that we've put an end, Today is what we have to live, To love, to laugh, to dream; Don't let it slip away without Your dance, your song, your gleam.

And though some days hold back the sun Remember very soon To look above and see my wish: Two rainbows and the moon.

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Shadows Express

Our Contributors Laxmi Chichra (The World Away from Here) Laxmi Chichra is a resident of New Delhi, India. She is a full-time Engineer and a part-time writer. She dabbles in poetry and short stories. Apart from writing, she loves listening to rain and music. Chocolate is another obsession she harbors.

Benjamin Cooper (Blurgie’s World) Benjamin Cooper is an author from the Chicago area and studied creative writing at the University of Iowa.

He writes fiction of all kinds from short stories to novellas. He plans on publishing many on his website www.mindofBenjaminCooper.com for complimentary viewing or download.

Karen Marie Crump (I See Summer in Your Eyes) Karen Marie Crump is a 66 year old Christian, conservative married woman and poet born in Kansas, moved to Texas where she now lives with her husband, 10 dogs, 9 cats, 2 horses, chickens, and 2 ringnecked doves. She also writes short prose.

Fergas Dunne (I Hate to Travel) Mr. Dunne has chosen not to provide a bio. He prefers to let his work speak for itself.

John Grey (Bumming Around Europe) John Grey is an Australian born poet, works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Chrysalis and the science fiction anthology, “Futuredaze”with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Sanskrit and Osiris.

Tracy Lynn Hill (She-Sloth) Tracy keeps her left brain busy by working in a stem cell research laboratory developing treatments for cancer and other diseases. In the spirit of balance—and to allay her fear of waking up one morning with a noticeably lopsided head—she also writes fiction and poetry.The pursuit of mind-body balance is equally important to her. She enjoys running, hiking, cycling, and yoga. Tracy's poem "Habanero Night" was published in The Writing.Com Anthology 2012.

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Volume 5: Issue 2

A. J. Huffman (Because Bark) A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has published six collections of poetry, available on Amazon.com. She has published her work in numerous national and international literary journals. She is currently the editor for Kind of a Hurricane Press literary journals www.kindofahurricanepress.com Madge Kaplan (The Indignity of Dying) Madge Kaplan, Director of Communications, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), is responsible for developing new and innovative means for IHI to communicate the stories, leading examples of change, and policy implications emerging from the world of quality improvement. In addition to a 20-year career in broadcast journalism for public radio, Madge began exploring creative non-fiction and playwriting a decade ago. Her first play, The Last Appointment, was produced on Martha’s Vineyard in October, 2011.

Aundria Kenning (Hope Defiant) Aundria Kenning is a mother of four daughters. She discovered her love of creative writing in high school while writing for the Expressions magazine. Aundria has worked in health care, but has spent the past 15 years raising her daughters and fighting a seizure disorder that limits her mobility, but not her creativity. She loves to travel and is a prolific reader of fiction and poetry.

Quinn Redfield (Counter Clockwise) Quinn is just starting out in the Seattle area; she recently graduated with a BA in English and Marketing and is working to establish herself as a freelance writer. Her emphasis has been on non-fiction in the past, but she has had flash fiction and short fiction pieces published or awarded in contests. She currently has a fantasy novel in the works and two soft sci-fi shorts near completion.

Colin Shaw (Wolf) After a life time of many and varied jobs, in many and varied places, he has now settled down on a cattle station in the far North of Australia. He is an avid reader of many genera’s. He started writing two years ago and has been lucky enough to have had several short stories and poems published in both Shadows Express and Separate Worlds. He resides in Australia with his wife and two dogs, Bella and Zeus. He can be reached on shawlyn1@hotmail.com Tom Sheehan (Home from the Dead) Tom Sheehan served in the 31st Infantry Regiment, Korea, 1951-52. He has 20 Pushcart nominations, 350 stories onRope and Wire Magazine, and many internet sites/anthologies including Best of Sand Hill Review and Best of Frontier Tales.HIs latest eBook, an NHL mystery, is Murder at the Forum, 2013, by Danse Macabre. Scheduled for 2013 are Death of a Lottery Foe and Death by Punishment. His eBooks from Milspeak Publishers are Korean Echoes, nominated for a Distinguished Military Award, and The Westering, 2012, nominated for a National Book Award by the publisher.

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Debra Shipman (A Heartbeat Away) After working as a nurse for over twenty years, Debra Shipman is pursuing a writing career. She has had children's and Christmas poems published with Elves Of Camelot, and dark traditional style poetry published with Green Meadows Horror. Her short story, "Where Spinsters Rock Sewing" received an Honorable Mention in the 75th Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition. She lives in South Carolina with her husband, Joey, and their Jack Russell, Abby Rose.

Donna J. T. Smith (Two Rainbows and the Moon) Donna JT Smith remembers at an early age enjoying the flow of words and images in “A Child’s Garden of Verses” by Stevenson. As an adult, she began writing poetry for pure enjoyment. She graduated from the University of Maine, with an Education degree. After a lifetime of teaching, she has retired. She and her husband reside with a Maine Coon cat and a Golden Retriever on the coast of Maine in their log home.

Wendy Van Camp (Berlin Wall: A Memoir) Wendy Van Camp began as a municipal television director of city council meetings, parades and local church services. Later, she developed two television performance series, one for musicians and one for poets. Wendy currently writes articles and short stories for magazines and is at work on a trilogy of fantasy novels while continuing her work as an artisan jeweler and gemologist. She is married and has one furbaby.

Bill Vernon (Vignettes: Basking, Preemie, Customer) Bill Vernon served in the United States Marine Corps, then studied English literature. These many years later, he is still recovering from those experiences. Writing is his therapy, along with exercising outdoors and doing international folk-dances. His poems and stories—both fiction and nonfiction—have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, and Five Star Mysteries published his novel Old Town in 2005.

Gayle Willardson (My Protector) Gayle Willardson is a happy wife, loving mother of four daughters, one son and currently enraptured by her new role as grandmother of five. She recently felt directed to leave her job as a registered nurse and return to school in pursuit of a degree in writing. This transformation brought her to a new love of words, poetry and stories. She benefits from her fifty one years of adventures waiting to be brought back to life.

Graphics Cover: Alex Grichenko, DigiDream Grafix A Heartbeat Away: Carolina Jimenez-Garcia Once again, we would like to thank the generous artists at Morguefile who choose to share their beautiful creations with the world. Without you, we would not be able to produce an e-zine we can be proud of.

Clean out a corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.

Dee Hook

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Volume 5: Issue 2

Our Staff Publisher S. Randez enjoys taking new writers under her wing, encouraging them to work hard toward achieving their writing aspirations. She is an avid novice poetess and also enjoys writing flashfiction and short stories in many genres.

Managing Editor K. Wall returned to editing and mentoring after a ten-year hiatus. Now in her second year, she continues to enjoy working with an incredible team of professionals assisting new writers as they grow, soar to new heights, and achieve their dreams. In her spare time, she writes fiction delving into relationship dynamics and the human condition.

Fiction Editor PLScholl is a professional writer and educator. She holds a BA in English, a BS in Education, a MS in Literacy, and has won numerous awards for both her writing and her reviews. Currently, she is an adjunct professor for Sinclair Community College. When not writing or teaching, she enjoys spending time with her two children and husband of 22 years.

Non-fiction Editor Winnie has been on the Staff of Shadows Express for two years. She is an instructor for New Horizons Academy, an on-line writing school associated with the global writing community WDC and has taught the fundamentals of proper comma placement and sentence structure for over two years. Winnie enjoys writing traditional poetry and short-stories designed to stir the emotions of her readers. But her greatest delight is polishing and editing promising works for new writers in preparation for possible publication. She established Walrus Editing and Proofreading in 2010. In addition, she is a member of the editing staff of Wynwidyn Press Poetry Editor In his youth, Liam O'Haver was taught that with diligence you could reach any dream. This has generally proven true. In his life, he has been a student, paperboy, soldier, private detective, printer, technical consultant, and teacher. As a husband and father, along with his wife, he has raised four children, enjoyed seven grandchildren so far, and has looked into the eyes of one greatgranddaughter. Despite being an accomplished poet, even in his wildest dreams, he never anticipated being a poetry editor.

Poetry Assistant Aundria Kenning is a mother of four daughters. She discovered her love of creative writing in high school while writing for the Expressions magazine. Aundria has worked in health care, but has spent the past 15 years raising her daughters and fighting a seizure disorder that limits her mobility, but not her creativity. She loves to travel and is a prolific reader of fiction and poetry. Aundria brings a fresh vision and valuable insight to the Shadows Express Staff.

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