Passengers Journal 10/15/21 Passengers Journal 10/15/21

Doughnut

by Anna Genevieve Winham

Having determined that the middles of things are the worst parts of things (examples: stomachs, midtown, the Midwest, plot) and the edges the most interesting (examples: genitals, fingertips, beaches, last words) a woman came to the natural conclusion that the absolute perfect form of food is the Möbius strip style bagel (doughnuts also acceptable). The surface area to volume ratio should always be maximized. Unfortunately I cannot truly wrap my head around a Möbius strip. Neither could the woman, who starved to death.

Editor-in-Chief at Passengers Journal, Anna writes at the crossroads of science and the sublime, cyborgs and the surreal. A Poetry Editorial Co-Lead for Oxford Public Philosophy and a performer with the Poetry Society of New York, Anna is also Ninth Letter's 2020 literary award winner in Literary Nonfiction, Mikrokosmos 2020 Poetry Contest's 3rd place winner, Writer Advice Flash Fiction Contest's 2020 3rd place winner, and was long-listed for the 2020 Penrose Poetry Prize. Her prose appears in Brooklyn Magazine, Meetinghouse Magazine online, Rock & Sling, Gold Man Review, and others. You can find her poetry in Meniscus, Wild Roof Journal, High Shelf Press, Cathexis Northwest Press, OROBORO, and others. While attending Dartmouth College (which was the pits), she won the Stanley Prize for experimental essay and the Kaminsky Family Fund Award. She can be reached at passengersliterary@gmail.com.

Passengers Journal 10/15/21 Passengers Journal 10/15/21

Serial Killer Woman Chefs who are Vegans

by Anna Genevieve Winham

They helped her.

Passengers Journal 10/1/21 Passengers Journal 10/1/21

How to Rob Banks

by Jack Smiles

March 1951, somewhere in the Midwest:

*There’s only one way to rob banks — rob the damn banks. You don’t go in there and pass some wimpy this-is-a-robbery note with a peashooter in your pocket. If it’s a fucking robbery, then rob. When that hippy kid with the ponytail or the granny with the glasses on the end of her nose looks down at your note she’s gonna look up, put her hand to her throat and hysterically scream oh-my-god-are-you-kidding. Well, if that’s what you’re doing, you are.

Note shit takes time and you ain’t got time. You run in with sunglasses, a turtle mask, and a big scary gun. Point it at tellers and yell “open your drawers and take three steps back now” point at the customers and yell “all you raise your arms and don’t move.”

Vault the wall or kick your way through the teller door. Go down the line, empty the till drawers into a briefcase and get the hell out. Don’t hold a gun to some manager’s head to get the vault open, this ain’t the fucking movies. Take the tills and get the hell out.*

Kellertown cop Ronald Hall collapsed into his chair and groaned. He looked over at officer Bill Boyler and said, “Bank robbery in broad daylight an’ we got nothing. Ten people must have seen him, but their stories and descriptions are all over the yard. He scared the shit out them, got in and out so damn fast all they can do is babble.”

“Yeah,” said Boyle “they can’t agree if he was tall or short, fat or thin, white or black, an earthling or a fucking spaceman.”

“Why here? Why Kellertown,” Hall thought aloud. “He’s lucky he got two grand.”

*Pick a string of tiny crossroads farming towns a couple miles apart along a rural main drag. Hit three, one every other day. You ain’t gonna get 20 large or anything like that. But it’ll add up.*

“He pulls the jobs by himself, but he’s got to have an accomplice. A driver,” Hall said

Boyler answered, “You’d think so, but nobody we talked to saw him or noticed a cruising or idling car.”

*Work alone. No driver. As you walk out take off the glasses, put the brief over your shoulder, pull the turtle neck down, open your overcoat to show your suit jacket, get the sandwich out of your pocket and eat it as you walk, fast, but not running, to your van on a side street a couple blocks away.*

“Another bank job. That’s the third call this week,” state detective Wills said as he put the phone down after talking to Kellertown cop Bill Boyler. “By the time we investigate every scene he’ll be long gone. And we got no starting point. None of those local yokels even got a description of his car.”

“We checked every boarding house and motel,” said his partner. “So I’m stuck on where the hell was he between the jobs.”

*Drive a street legal van you can sleep in. Do a little homework on campgrounds? Nobody going to suspect a fucking camper to be robbing banks. Stay a few nights. Do some fishing, hiking. Then move on to the another area with a string of small towns, Barney Fife cops and lots of farms and do it again.*

“Hey look at this,” said the detective Wills said a month later, when they got back to the office after an accident call. “Note from dispatch. Police up in Treverton called. Bank job up there. Identical.”

“I’ll give ‘em a call and I think we should call the Feds,” his partner said.

*These are federal notes being stole and eventually the news will filter up to the FBI. J. Edgar’s boys aren’t going to love a six-little-farm-banks-investigation 75 miles away. They got bigger fish to fry. They’re not gonna go in all Elliot Ness.*

“Can’t the local and state out there handle this? Nobody got hurt,”said FBI agent Tobinski with his feet on his desk in the Ames field office.

“I don’t know, they’re crying poverty,” said his rookie partner.

“Ok, so what do we know.”

“Hits local independents in different towns mid-mornings. First spree was around Kellertown. Then three more up around Treverton, that’s 60 miles north. He doesn’t make them open safes. His takes aren’t huge, but he hits three in six days and then three more a month later and it beats working. Does ‘em early in the week. Never on a Friday.”

“I guess he likes long weekends.”

*Go in when it’s quiet like Tuesday or Wednesday about 10 - 10:30. Yeah, the banks are chunked on Friday but there’s always money, that’s why they call them banks. There’s some mining towns in Montana ripe for pickin. But for now it’s time to rest. Time to take a nice long weekend.*

Jack Smiles is a former newspaper feature writer collecting fiction rejections for a hobby in retirement.

Passengers Journal 10/1/21 Passengers Journal 10/1/21

A Sudden and Unexpected Conclusion

by Brian Hobbs

He had not expected the sidewalk to meet him so abruptly. Figuring the refusal to meet it rude, he met it head on.

Brian Hobbs is a guy that does occasional writing he likes. He has a daughter that is his heart outside his chest. He teaches, sometimes getting a little crazy about it. He has found a local restaurant that serves excellent green beans. He has been published in Crack the Spine, The Broadkill Review, Scissors and Spackle, and Glass Poetry Press.

Passengers Journal 9/17/21 Passengers Journal 9/17/21

Pancakes with Rocket

by Kylee Webb

It was after the day your father died that you wanted to become a hermit crab. When you saw the car he was in and how it was crumpled like a soda can, you lamented how he would have survived if he only would’ve worn his shell—the one you made him at school. I’d never seen his marine biologist’s face light up more than when you gave him that paper maché shell, as childishly crafted as it was. You knew his favorite crustacean to study was a hermit crab, the Paguroidea.

Anyway, I’m rambling now, but after that day, you never took off the shell. You even wore it to the funeral. I remember the stares when you shuffle around in the pews and the paper shell crinkled, sounding like soft rain, for everyone to hear. The sounds even made the pastor pause his eulogy at one point.

Another incident where your behavior took a troublesome turn was the day I received a call from your school. You had stolen sand from the playground and stuffed your backpack with it. They discovered this when you collapsed under the intense weight of your backpack while coming back from recess . I remember sitting with you in the principal’s office, your tiny legs not even touching the floor, swinging like newton balls. He said, “Why did you take all of that sand, son?” No one called you “son” besides dad. So you didn’t answer him. When I took you home that day, I asked you to please, please tell me why you did that. You told me, “I need the sand to build my habitat.” The word “habitat” sounded so silly coming out of your five-year-old mouth, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to laugh at that time. Instead, I just let the tears trickle silently down my face and hoped the beating summer sun would somehow dry them up.

After the school incident, you refused to crawl out of your room. When I called you to come down for breakfast, you never showed. I remember it was especially unusual because I made your favorite pancakes that day: chocolate chip banana. Your dad always made them better than I did. I remember scuttling up the stairs to fetch you from your room. When I opened the door, there you were staring blankly into your fish tank, your face pressed against the glass. I asked you why you weren’t coming down and you just shrugged, then tapped the glass where your pet hermit crab was. You said, “I want to be in there with Rocket.” I told you you couldn’t go in there with him, that it would hurt Rocket if you did. You frowned deeply. I hated seeing that. I then asked you if there was anything else you’d like to do today. Your face perked up and then you said, “I wanna go to the beach!”

So I called you out of school that day and we drove for about an hour, trying to count the gulls as we went. You still wore your shell which made it hard to apply sunscreen. The whole time you had this thousand yard stare toward the ocean’s horizon. I wanted to ask you what was going on, but I decided not to. I wanted to enjoy the peaceful silence, the waves calling out “hello.” I couldn’t stop thinking about your father and how on our first date, we went to this beach and he kept on telling me the scientific names of every creature we saw squirming in the tide pools. The way the summer heat enveloped me and the way his charming, unassuming intellect enticed me, ensured me that I would have you with him someday. Gross, I know.

You slowly stood up, phasing me out of my recollections. You began to step deliberately toward the ocean. You were nearly at the edge of the foam when I finally called out to you and asked you what you were doing. You turned to me and smiled and I will never forget what you said. You told me, “Mama, I’m going home. I’m going where I belong.” And I don’t know why I let you go, but I did. You walked into that water, barely knowing how to swim. Then, a powerful wave smashed into you and swept you up underneath it. Immediately my heart propelled into my neck. I dashed to the water. Faster than I have ever done anything in my whole life. But you had disappeared, enveloped by the salt water.

The whole beach and I searched for hours to find you, calling your name left and right. By the end of the night, my vocal chords were torn to shreds and I could feel the judging stares and pained grimaces hitting me like crashing waves.

I finally felt you when I was on my way to leave the beach for the police station. There you were, pinching my foot with your claw, your shell looking exactly like the paper maché one. Maybe I should have left you there, but I couldn’t. Plus, you were so happy here with Rocket. It gives me endless glee to see the times when you come out from your shell and sidle up against the glass to see me. Everyone around me mourns the loss of you and blames me for your disappearance. But little do they know that you were here.

When you eventually left this world, I buried you right next to your father. Good thing there was already a gravesite for you there. Now, I sit here and wait for you to return to me in any form you wish, no matter how long that takes. I hope you still like banana chocolate chip pancakes.

Kylee Webb is Editor in Chief of Last Resort Literary Review and a graduate student in the English Literature program at Arizona State University. She’s a member of Phi Beta Kappa and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a major in literature and a double minor in Spanish and Political Science. She’s primarily interested in absurdist, surrealist, and feminist works, and enjoys the films of David Lynch, Ari Aster, Luis Buñuel, and literally any feminist director. Her work has appeared in volume 3 of 𝘈𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘙𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦'𝘴 𝘈𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘨𝘰 fiction anthology and 𝘛𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘓𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘴 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭'𝘴 inaugural issue. You can find her on Twitter @KyleeNikole13.

Passengers Journal 9/3/21 Passengers Journal 9/3/21

Kansas Avenue

by Ankur Razdan

In my pigpen, waiting for the news to break. In my poverty suite, where the rent’s worth it. Fondling my two jeweled treasures, always. They’re red like shiny blood, their shape mundane, they’re off the pedestal. I wait for two days. Two days? Two days before the alarms. Two days before the news slots.

I was meticulous, but not that. Cased the museum. Learned what the guards loved. Astonished to be bribed, never been before, like other uniforms. Asked for outrages. The Spear of Destiny. John’s Cabaret Device (who is John? What is that? It took years to uncover). The world’s first railroad tie. One of them asked for the most outrageous thing: the, you know, themselves. Then what am I doing here, I asked over coffee, bleeding myself for you? White as? So I slipped her, and only her, ten thousand dollars cash. Took a minute.

My camouflage like cans of beers over the decades. Hogging my one room-minute. Thank God for masks. Snuck in my funny-monies—cowboy boots made from rusty nuts—and grabbed the “exhibit” with two curled fingers and the opposition, same as an eagle’s would in bunny’s skull or sneakers.

Easy. Harder: walking out onto the hot city streets not laughing, not dancing, not waving red around. Not kicking my feet off bare.

Went home crazy. Put the slippers on, watched the movie, stabbed around in circles while Jack Haley sang about a heart condition. The shoes were too small, they hurt my feet, it made me cry. Don’t put them on anymore. Did anybody ever did?

The height of the heels makes me dizzy as. Now I just sit and rub them, usually with my fingers.

The quiet quiet like a boulder sitting on top of you. Went back to Smiths, Son &. Already installed a display about the, ahem, role of legwarmers in the national public imagination. As if waiting on me to. The curator is as ahem as.

I stood there staring at a warm-leg nude on the pedestal where my slippers used to stood, slack-jawed at the unworthiness, until people coughed and I left, sweating and huffing. I’m so so poor but called a car anyways. Had to get back home fast as, back to my underbed friends.

It’s gone wrong, with people. Just a shruggy half a minute spent the anchor. No reward, no a million, no, not nothing. People don’t care? About a priceless treasure? A deathless art? A witless performance? A lifeless footwear? An immortal immortal? An American American? A classic classic? A crime of skullduggery and cultural significance deserving retribution and comeuppance? Well. I didn’t do anybody anything but a favor, I guess. Now the only article on the whole wide web says—it’s fine. Don’t worry. What’s the big deal? Everything’s going to be alright.

If it didn’t make me angry I’d be happy, happy in my trinity. Not happy as. Just happy. See? Sgone wrong.

Ankur Razdan is a writer based in the Washington, DC area. A regular fiction contributor at Sterling Clack Clack, he has also appeared in The Westchester Review, The Tiny Journal, The Chestnut Review, and many more. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mukkuthani and visit ankurrazdan.com for his professional editing services.

Passengers Journal 9/3/21 Passengers Journal 9/3/21

The Back Room

by Andreea Ceplinschi

Coming to, Marcus found he could only open his left eye. He also tasted blood and came up short several teeth when counting with his tongue. He tried reaching for his glasses, but his hands were still bound around the back of the chair.

“Combination,” Marta slapped him again.

Marta. For two years he’d watched her large, polyester-swathed ass around his office, thinking she was just another incompetent secretary. Quiet Marta and her salami-greased fingerprints all over the visa applications she dropped on his desk at the end of day, her thick Romanian accent, and the insufferable way she said take decisions. At least she never asked questions, Marcus liked that. Never until now, that was.

“Combination,” Martha interrupted and man, could she throw a hand like she meant it.

“My glasses,” he managed.

Marta’s hands smelled like garlic as she hooked the wire frames over the broken bridge of his nose. Beyond Marta’s vast bosom hovering in his face, Marcus recognized the Back Room. His sphincter tightened at the sight of two teenage girls behind Marta, wearing t-shirts with Foundation for Innocence in blue across the front.

Fuck, Marcus thought. That’s what this is.

Yes, Marta read him and grinned.

…

When Marcus Grant was appointed US Consul to Romania, The Foundation for Innocence was celebrating 15 years as the most successful children’s charity in Romania. They took in orphans older than the desirable ages for adoption, matching them with foster and adoptive families in Western European countries. With 15 years of galas and fundraisers, CEO Traian Oneaga had gained backing from elected officials, public figures, and private donors, so when Marcus received an invitation to the Foundation Anniversary Gala, he relished the opportunity to rub elbows with the elite. Mr. Oneaga received Marcus with genuine warmth:

“Call me Tati,” he laughed, “that’s daddy in Romanian.”

Marcus was even more thrilled to be invited to the exclusive Back Room after the event, where he joined Tati and three other guests, head swimming with 18yr Macallan and affluence. The Back Room was a private theater where a semi-circle of armchairs faced a small stage framed by red velvet curtains, with squares numbered 1 to 10 on the back wall. A young woman in a red dress served scotch in crystal tumblers, as Tati ushered in four girls and two boys, no older than 12-13, dressed in white t-shirts with Foundation for Innocence in bright blue across the front. Marcus expected a talent show, but his body tensed in the chair with a low wave of flight adrenaline.

“We have a small room tonight, so we’ll start the bidding at 2000,” Tati began, pinning Marcus in place with his hazel eyes.

The kids walked up on stage in front of the numbers and undressed. Marcus took off his glasses, pretending to search his pockets for something to clean them with, cheeks on fire, mind racing to his browser history, encrypted downloads, and the shoebox full of pictures and videos at the back of his closet. Out of the corner of his nearsighted vision, he could still clearly see hairless bodies walking up, blue tattoos of the letter T inside a circle on their skinny shoulders.

Tati called numbers. The men raised their hands. The evening turned to sludge. The woman in the red dress, now clearly just a girl, came back with a stack of forms typed in Romanian, of which Marcus could make out the words “adoption agreement.” On stage, the t-shirts looked like shed skins, Foundation for Innocence tattooed across the front in bright blue.

“Mr. Grant,” Tati spoke softly, and Marcus realized they were the only ones left in the room. Macallan came up hot in his throat.

“I…” he stammered “I don’t...”

“Mr. Grant, my team has been keeping track of your online activities since you arrived,” Tati said, ice and scotch clinking angelically in his crystal tumbler. “We also know about the shoe box.” Tati sipped, tapping a gold pinky ring on the side of the glass, eyes boring into Marcus’s large, sweaty forehead. “I have a business proposal for you.”

…

Marta brought him back by squeezing his nose. He knew what she wanted. He also knew that if he gave it to her, Tati would kill him. But if he didn’t, she might.

“Marta, listen…” he started in a practiced diplomatic tone.

“No,” she cut him off, right fist cocked. “You make passport and visas. 23 kids you make, I see paperwork!” A vein the size of a finger bulged on the side of her neck. “You work for trash man, help sell kids to America.” Her fist made a slight forward motion.

“No, Marta, they’re getting fostered. Adopted. By families out in California. And Texas. And Michigan. America, Marta, they’re going to a good life…” the diplomatic tone trailed off into a whimper as her fist connected with the hinge of his jaw, and he lost light. When he came to, she was inches away, the heat off her breath stinging the gashes in his cheeks and nose.

“I know good life.”

She took off her tracksuit jacket, revealing a torso bulked with the iron and rock of a millworker rather than the white bread softness of sagging flesh on a grown woman Marcus had pictured. On her right arm, under dozens of white, crisscrossed scars, a circled T tattoo. Marcus started sobbing.

“I… please… I don’t want to die!”

Marta straightened her back with a crack and started laughing.

“You shit man!” she bellowed “He don’t want to dieeeeee!”

She towered over him, a woman mountain of rage, laughter, and tears. He stopped mid-sob, as one of the girls behind Marta plugged in a power drill, then handed it to her.

“Please, don’t,” he whispered.

“That’s what we all say,” Marta replied. “Combination.”

Marcus gave up the combination, the contents of his bowels and several small pieces of brain matter on the ½ inch drill bit.

Andreea Ceplinschi is a Romanian-American writer currently living on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Being multi-lingual, she’s interested in the role etymology can play in creative expression, and how finding the right words can help a writer find the true core of their message. With her free time, she looks to burn down capitalist patriarchy, but loves all mankind, dogs, socialist ideology, and walks on the beach. Her work has been featured online in Passengers Journal, La Piccioletta Barca, Into the Void, Prometheus Dreaming, Fly in the Head, and in print in the 2019 Prometheus Unbound finalist issue. Her poetry has won first and second place in the Filitsa Sofianou-Mullen Creative Writing Competition, 2019 and 2020, and her prose was awarded an honorable mention in the Women on Writing Q2 2021 Creative Non-Fiction Essay Competition.