The Emergency
by N.M. Campbell
The waiter scurried away from our isolated table on the terrace. Without taking a sip, I continued exactly where I left off when we were interrupted by our wine and olives. “Then he asked me when I gave birth.”
“But, it was his job to ask again, after all.”
I retorted, “He also had to have known it was a miscarriage, no?”
“Well… this part might have been lost in translation, but it was already a—what was that word you Americans use—a shit storm?”
Happy for the deviation from the dark memories, my friend lightened the mood and clarified. “English is a weird language. We call it a mis-born, or in your case, a missed birth.”
“It wasn’t anywhere near viable, bu—“
“Semantics,” she interjected and penetrated my heart: “You had a birth. You did not carry it badly.” Reaching out her hand, she held my trembling fingers firmly. “These things sometimes happen.”
My friend was doing what she needed to do. Having left me in my own hole for the right amount of time, I was pulled out into the daylight again since leaving the hospital with only a hastily packed overnight bag.
“I have fibroids. I accepted this outcome as possible.”
“If only we had more than one option for every female need. How many erection pills are churned out in your homeland?”
“I can’t fight that logic because logic cannot be avoided. I know these things are sometimes not meant to be. But that is the heart of the matter. Overall, I learned once again that certain people’s pain isn’t taken seriously—anywhere. At least this time my partner was there to speak for me on my behalf; given the language barrier—until the OR.”
Catching my gaze from wandering into the distance, she sang, “He’s a good man. I am shocked he took off a week, eh? I guess this is why you’re pretty stable actually.” My partner is quite industrious, but it was as if the internet, save Netflix and symptom clarification, had suddenly disappeared.
“But I do understand Dutch. I can even read it. I just cannot spit it out of my mouth.”
“Your hidden knowledge is not typical. I bet this guy was one of those old timers with a Calvinistic backbone? I’ve heard about him and his coterie before, honestly.”
“I hope this is a dying breed. In the end what mattered to me was that I was helped by the rest of the female team. There are some sharp young nurses and doctors who were having none of his stalling guff.”
“Well, let’s hope for the future. To them and to your first glass of wine since!”
“Proost!”
N.M. Campbell is an expatriated antiquarian bookseller living in the Netherlands. The author lives in an old house surrounded by a few antiques and a library of books wafting vanilla and lignin. A fellow world-traveller, a Maine Coon cat, permits people to live there. New to writing, previously published works are "The Hill We Climb" in April 2021's The Dillydoun Review and "The Other in Paris" in December 2021's The Write Launch. See more at www.nm-campbell.com.
Accelerating Appetites
by Autumn Bettinger
When you showed up in fourth period history, I knew you were going to be a mistake. You were brooding, sexy, clearly uninterested in learning as you sized up your new classmates. I wasn’t the only girl to watch you in your black shirt and worn jeans, your dark hair tousled just so. Even the popular girls wanted you, I could hear them whispering from the back of the room about your future chances for football tryouts. I knew better. From the moment I caught your eyes and we stared one another down, neither of us willing to blink. I wanted you then, when I saw you play with something in your jacket pocket, something that had worn its mark in the bottom right corner. I knew exactly what lurked in there and smiled as I saw you blink.
The day you kissed me I kept my hands on your jacket, feeling for the blade. Your fingers were pulling at my neck, my hair, uninterested in the knife. I realized I could have lifted it then, but I was hungry for that kiss.
Two days later you stabbed my ex in the leg, right in the artery, before jerking the blade up in a ragged series of cuts. My ex bled out behind the bleachers. That night we made love for the first time, and you were ravenous. John was declared missing the next day, and his body was recovered in the river a week later. I was part of the search party. You held me that night they found him. You held me and then your hands went from comfort to caresses and you were devouring me again.
On our one-month anniversary, you punched me for trying to keep you from attacking a group of drunk kids from the next town over. We were walking in the cool March air, frost under foot, and the kids started asking me for money, cigarettes, a kiss. I laughed it off, but I watched you tense up; I saw your fingers inch towards the right pocket, and I shot my hand out, yanking your wrist from your jacket. You hit me then, so hard in the temple that I fell and nearly blacked out. You watched me, quiet for a moment, and then you turned back to the kids.
I was dizzy, I don’t really know what I saw. I know what I heard. A lot of wet gurgles, some shouts, slicing. My vision was still dark when your hand gently threaded around my waist and picked me up. You were covered in blood and when I could focus, you were smiling. You didn’t have to say I couldn’t go to the police, or you would kill me. You didn’t have to say much of anything, and when you kissed me that night, you tasted like psychosis and menthols.
When you told me you loved me it was with a knife to my neck. I pressed forward, etching a thin line of red pearls along my throat. I wrapped my fingers around the blade and lifted it out of your hands before pushing you down into that black void of sex and consumption. While I slept you must have read my texts, because that morning you tried to stab my best friend for telling me I was in an abusive relationship. That’s when you realized I still had your knife, and after bludgeoning my best friend with a brick, came to find me.
I met you at the door, eyes locking onto yours just like our meet-cute. I smiled the same smile as my arm licked out to slice into your stomach. Your hands went to your wound, and I jerked the knife upwards. It was harder than I thought, tearing into you like that. I thought human flesh would slice easy, like in the movies, but it was thicker, more resistant. You growled and shot your arm out. Your hand found my throat, but your grip was weak, and I smiled wider. I pulled you into me, kissing you, as I felt your blood soak into my dress.
My mom sat on the living room couch, having a cocktail, and making a face at the blood that squelched along the tiles of the mudroom as I kicked the door closed and started dragging you deeper into the house.
“This is him?” My mom asked.
“This is him.” I said, letting go of your ankles as your legs flopped to the floor and you groaned.
“He’s handsome.” She smiled, looking over her glass to assess the growing puddle of blood. “You should finish him, honey. He’s suffered enough.”
“Has he?” I asked, wiping sweat from my forehead. “He hit me.”
“Yes, well, your father hit me too and I made it quick.”
“Fine.” I say, rolling you over and straddling you. Your eyes are cloudy, but you manage to focus on me. I wait for you to blink before ripping the knife out of your chest.
“We couldn’t just bury him at Nana’s like you did with dad?” I ask, looking for the gas can we tucked inside the pantry.
“Honey, two women in the same family with missing lovers is suspicious. A fire is not. He was a reckless boy; no cop is going to blame you for that maniac breaking into our house and trying to kill us. We just got the upper hand and managed to escape.” She took a sip of her cocktail and wrinkled her nose as the blood soaked into the hallway rug. “Now. Let’s make it realistic. I don’t think anyone saw him come here, so we’re going to have to do some screaming.”
And so, we did. We screamed for you to put down the gas. To put down the knife. We screamed that the house was on fire. And then we were running out, covered in blood, coughing. And the cops believed us because you were the psychopath.
You were.
You.
Autumn Bettinger is a full-time mother of two in Portland, Oregon. When not changing diapers or scrubbing jelly off the walls, she can be found in her office before the rest of the family wakes up, writing short stories and nurturing her coffee addiction. You can find her on Instagram @pnwmountainmommy where she documents her kids, her dog, and some of her writing accomplishments.
Thank You for the Hotdogs
by Lisa Cochran
Hello Hugo,
I am writing to you from a big, dark museum, Hugo. A big dark museum with big dark paintings of men contemplating in big dark fields in the Netherlands. Once in Amsterdam I went to the Stedelijk which is another museum that is not big and dark. I took shrooms there so that it’d feel big and dark – like our relationship – but instead it was labyrinthian, with Dutch words all over. Then there’s this room in which Sonny and I danced to a man shouting “GET OUT OF THIS ROOM, GET OUT OF THIS ROOM.” But we didn’t GET OUT OF THAT ROOM. We danced in it.
I saw your face there, Hugo. I saw your face in the museum when I was tripping. I cried.
I remember that you keep a little ceramic crane heroically under your lamp even though I’m in Berlin and just fucked an Argentine who I met at an abandoned East German listening station. Of course I pretended he was you. Of course I did.
I’m just a pulp at this point after all the blue Vogues. Do you like pulpy girls? Do you like girls who set thin papers on fire and suck on them?
I would do a lot of things if you liked them. I would put myself in a little curvy vase like an octopus. Apparently, octopuses are so smart but people often disregard that because they are not-so-smart, which is alright since I am one of such people and I can at least recreate the eyeshadow look from The Love Witch.
I wish you’d introduce me to your parents. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, like those people who are the last to get on departing subway carts and have to do that dehumanizing little shuffle so the door doesn’t crush their heads.
My friend Cecily, who worked at Whole Foods, said there was a couple who always came in. They were both blind and deaf and yet somehow managed to communicate with each other. And it doesn’t make much sense but they were in love and now Cecily, Sonny, and I say “that makes sense” every time something makes the least bit of sense. Sometimes I think you and I are them, Hugo. The couple who always came in, both blind and deaf, and yet somehow managed to communicate with each other. How did they find each other? We are not blind and deaf but we might as well be. We are mirrors mirroring each other. It’s too bad that a mirror looking at another mirror is as far from productive as I am from you. Please tell me you agree, Hugo. You are someone who makes a lot of sense.
I am a terrible person, Hugo. A Romani woman came up to me asking for directions because I was the only one to speak Russian. All I did was squeeze my purse and hand her a cigarette.
Remember the ferrets on the New York subway? On the way to my second vaccine appointment in my hungover stupor the day after my 21st birthday? In the pink and yellow dress resembling a pink lemonade QR code?
Ferrets are illegal in New York, you know. I don’t know why.
Remember when you moved in and Ralph peed off the fire escape and I couldn’t stop crying. You asked if you could hold my hand. At that point, all I could say was, Did you know it’s impossible to dance to Joy Division? It makes a lot of sense. And you said, Didn’t someone make a song about that? Then we found it and played it aloud as we sat on your mattress not speaking, squeezing the padding between our fingers.
Now, please, let me leave before it stops being good.
And I know you beat yourself up constantly for never finishing The Bhagavad Gita then telling everyone it’s your favorite book. There was a big church fire two doors down yesterday. As usual, I slept through it, dreaming of persian bread. Now, please put that belt in the suitcase before you get outdone by tears.
You are 4,000 miles away and yet I feel like I’m constantly inside an opaque bubble made out of you. Berlin spat you out in its form just like it will me, and then the next person will go to Berlin and feel as though they are living inside an opaque bubble made out of me. Then you and I will just be two Berlins walking around New York.
The garbage cans here are so funny – do you remember them? They say things like “Thank you for the hotdogs” and “Museum of Modern Trash.”
I’m writing to you from this dark museum but the second floor is well-lit and I’ve been walking behind the same guy for twenty minutes by accident. You know how annoyingly intimate that feels. Not as intimate as hugging you in front of the wax leg with the candle in it at The MoMa, though. There is a Manet here. The guide I eavesdrop on says it’s a little out of place and Kaiser Wilhelm II didn’t want it. I love you, Hugo. But that’s not your problem.
I just woke up remembering the German word for “nipple” – Brustwarze – which you taught me once in a context that’s escaped me. German becomes easier when you realize it’s the language equivalent of sticking Crayola markers together by the caps. And I’m in the Argentine’s bed. I pick up Hopscotch by Cortazar (a book you recommended) which is the namesake of a bookstore here that you never recommended but you might as well have.
I shove the book under the Argentine’s nose saying, Like you! Argentina! And all he says is Why’d you bring a book to our fuck? And it makes a lot of sense.
Lisa Cochran is a senior at New York University studying literature and creative writing. She grew up in Ames, Iowa to a Russian mother and American father, making her sympathetic to both sides of the Cold War. She can be reached via email at mlc716@nyu.edu or via Twitter @lisaacochran.
Aisle 10
by Jordan Nishkian
The dust on the dashboard was more visible under the parking lot lights. So were the smudges on the inside of her Jeep’s window, which was just starting to fog. She made a note to clean it, even though she had been reminding herself of the chore for almost six months. She decided to call Stacy. The screen of her phone lit up, illuminating the dust particles that surrounded her. They were everywhere: in the passenger seat, at the back of her neck. They were in her nose, in the branches of her lungs, in the space between her thighs and her skirt. She crossed her legs and pressed “Call.”
Four rings, five rings. She glanced at the silver ring on her right hand. Stacy’s automated voicemail. “End Call.”
She envisioned a wrinkled, alchorexic cashier with cabernet hair standing behind the counter. She imagined her name would be something tragic like Ellen-May, and that Ellen-May would be a nosey fuck. She switched the silver band to her left hand. It was too big for that finger, but it would do.
She left her purse on the backseat floor and took her phone, keys, and a bunched-up twenty into Walgreens. Her heels clacked against the asphalt in a tight, static rhythm. Despite a potentially rainy forecast, the store had its door wide open. The heater made its effect on her, gradually smoothing the goosebumps the night air had left on her bare calves. Even though this Walgreens was only a block away from her studio apartment, she had never been in it. Aisle 7 had the latex. Aisle 12 had the cotton. She wandered towards the pharmacy. A woman with a blue shirt was positioning bottles of vitamins on a shelf.
“Family planning?”
“Aisle 10,” the woman said, pointing towards the very center of the store. Her eyes never left the shelf.
“Thanks.”
It was where she said it would be. Between the lube and the baby formula, small card stock boxes covered the slim strip of shelving. There were so many tests. Fertility tests, ovulation trackers, sperm counters, paternity tests, and right below eye-level the kind she came for. There were too many brands, colors, and 99%s. She chewed on a scar on the inside of her cheek. She had read somewhere that the inner cheek is made up of the same tissue as the vagina, and that may be a reason why blowjobs are so appealing. Her phone vibrated in her hand.
“Hey, Stacy.”
“Hey, what's up?” Shuffling sounds were loud on the other end.
“I'm overwhelmed,” she said, tossing her hair out of her face. A single strand got caught in a crack between her nail and the “Ballet Slipper” polish. She looked at her nails. Her cuticles were growing back, and the surrounding flesh was chapped from the recent torment of her hangnails. She made a mental note to set up an appointment with Kimmy next Tuesday.
“What's the problem?”
“I don't know which one to get.”
“I always get First Response.”
“That's the pink box, right?”
“Yeah. Hey, I'm picking up the kids. I'll call you back.”
Three beeps. Call ended.
She picked up the purple box: two Walgreen’s brand pregnancy tests for $13. It would do. She tried to conceal the box under her crossed arms, but her long-sleeved shirt was too tight and her arms were too thin.
She passed through the snack aisle to reach the check-out. There was only one cashier, a young guy around her age with a nametag that—to some relief—read “Miguel,” not “Ellen-May.” He was scanning the items of a couple deciding about what to do for dinner. He wanted Italian or Indian; she said she just wanted a decision. They both had crisp initials tattooed on their left ring fingers. She spun the loose, silver band with her thumb.
She glanced at the tabloid magazines. One reported that three celebrities; Drew Barrymore, Nicole Richie, and someone she didn't recognize had all been divorced and one of them was pregnant. Bummer. Nicole’s eyes looked wet and puffy, which was probably why her picture was dead center. The cashier handed the couple their receipt and wished them a good night.
She stepped up to him, grateful no one was behind her. She removed the purple box from under the tight grip of her arm and placed it on the grey counter. Without missing a beat, he scanned it and concealed it in a plastic bag for her.
“$14.76 is your total,” he said.
She smoothed out the twenty and handed it to him. He overlooked her eyes. The register drawer popped open, and a wave of coins crashed against their plastic compartments. He expertly plucked four little Abrahams, two dimes, and one big Abraham from his count.
“$5.24 is your change,” he said, dropping it into her expecting palm. She made sure she used her left. She only noticed then how quickly, quietly her fingertips were bouncing off the counter. He placed the receipt in her bag and slid her purchase towards her.
“They say it's supposed to rain,” he said.
She slipped her fingers through the plastic loops and nodded.
"Have a good night," he said.
She grew still and watched as he turned away from her, picking up a spray bottle and a damp, tawny rag.
Jordan Nishkian is an Armenian-Portuguese writer based in California. Her work has been published in Overachiever Magazine, The Kelp Journal, the New Plains Review, The Yellow Arrow Journal, The Plentitudes, and more. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Mythos literary magazine and has recently published her first novella.
Winter Skin
by JR Boudreau
They say the first moon in January belongs to the wolf. Certain such moons grow complete as they approach the earth. The planet bulges, oceans shift, forests howl. And Lou slugs from a plastic bottle of vodka, charging around the living room to April Wine, pumping himself up. Through deep breaths and a cage of clenched teeth, he grunts, “Don’t forget my clothes.”
“I won’t,” says Shelly. She sips lukewarm beer, her eyes blue as Windex.
“There was nothin’ there last month.”
“I deserve a drink sometimes, too, Lou.”
“It was goddamn embarrassing, running home buck ass nude. Couldn’t even hitchhike! You drinkin’ tonight?”
“Might as well.”
He groans suddenly as if he’s stubbed his toe, and hesitates. He breathes through his nostrils, some form of prusten, as a muscle pops audibly within. He takes a final slug from the vodka bottle and tosses it empty onto the couch. His shoulder snaps as he grits his teeth, which are growing sharper. His five o’clock shadow thickens to midnight.
“Gotta go, baby,” he says and begins to strip. He bunches up his black t-shirt and hurls it to the couch, and then his jeans, too, until he stands naked in the living room, only his silver crucifix dangling from his throat like a collar. She winces at the thought of those years spent begging before the altar. Then the speakers blare, the tune crescendos, and he punches through the screen door, skin ripping as he stumbles down the porch steps.
“Be careful!” she yells.
He snarls, “Who do you think I am?”
Shelly goes to the doorway. By the time she glimpses him at the edge of those desperate acres, he’s fully four-legged. His fur burns copper in the full moonlight. The genuine boys, those wolves of all seasons, vacate the timberline to join him. They howl into the forest, into the night, as rainclouds amass on the horizon.
Shelly draws a blockish bag from the fridge, some vintage she picked up from the cooking club, and another beer. Then she grabs a grocery bag from the reserves under the sink, collects Lou’s clothes from the couch, and bundles them inside. Thoughtfully, she adds a sweat-shirt to the balled-up wardrobe. She slips into her coat and twists the key on the deadbolt behind her as she leaves. On her way to the truck, she hurries first to the barn. Sipping the new beer, she locks up the milk goats. They are pleading like people, strange and anxious, praying for one another.
At the crossroads, the truck stops. She exits, jetés the ditch, and aims for the tall oak tree branded with their initials. The carved heart glows white in the dark. On tiptoes, she stretches for the highest branch she can touch. She knots the handles of the bag around it twice and leaves Lou’s outfit hanging.
Back home, the bag of O-neg is perspiring on the counter. Twisting and sealing the blinds to the coming sun, she punctures the skin with a syringe and then dips in to the bend of her arm at the kitchen table. As the sap coats her pale-blue veins, she seeps from the wooden chair and puddles on the cold tiles. She pictures him in the woods, galloping through the frozen rain, automatic and demented.
The figure of torpor, she rises at dusk, skin dewy. But the house is hollow. Dusting pink crust from her eyes, she guides the engine along the roads, to verify the unburdened oak branch, to hitch him home. The branch still bows, though, and the clothes are still suspended in plastic.
The truck flies through the forest, gliding hills, parting branches. Her mind tastes the possibility even before she spots the lump at the roadside. She passes without recognizing and then hammers the brakes. A torn-up mess. A meal for other night creatures. In the red light of the blinking four-ways, she tracks a tire print in reverse to a ditch in the lacerated mound. It is clean and bloodless, washed out by the sleet and pale as moonlight. Eventually, she discerns the cross gleaming in the ruptured flesh, like a satellite downed in these north hills.
“Oh, Lou…” she whimpers.
Through cold tears, she kneels and gathers body parts to her jeans, hugging heavy chunks and lifting them into the truckbed like luggage. Somewhere in the winter distance, the boys salute him. Their howls crater the night.
JR is the best damn delivery driver that particular Shoppers Drug Mart location ever had. His stories have appeared in The Fiddlehead, New Millennium Writings, The Dalhousie Review, and The Puritan.
Story Patch
by Caity Scott
All I wanted was a ghost story.
Shovel in hand, I drift across the cobblestone bridge—the one above the milk-drunk stream without a name where black tentacles ebb like smoke through stars.
I do not make eye contact with the stone lions at the iron gate, but I leave whole cucumbers at the feet of the gargoyles; rub their claws and kiss their foreheads. The gargoyles are always your friends.
Crows chatter overhead in their proud, blatty language as my shovel cracks the soil clean as the shell on a hard-boiled egg.
It’s like chocolate cake crumble—the overturned dirt, that is—the way it smells, steams, and tumbles charm over the belly of the cemetery. The earthworms are jellied green. Against the dirt, they are the glowing plastic stars on the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. Weaving, they guide me left, then down, right, then down, until my shovel’s strike is a brass church bell.
Autumn stories: even though there are so many this time of year, so few are ready to be picked. These old soul tales need to age; need to fester, for years, years, years, until they really come into their own with notes of clove and tragedy, cinnamon revulsion, allspice, nutmeg, and terror most foul. True putridity takes time, and store bought just doesn’t cut it.
I find the ripest story bottled, corked, and cradled in the clenched fingerbones of a skeleton. Under scratched glass, ink ripples in the color of primordial nothing: not black, but close to the oil sheen on a crow’s feathers, or something like the swirling bruise tone behind your closed eyelids. Either of those, almost.
When I ask the skeleton if I could borrow the story for just a night, she is all too happy to share, (because aren’t we all when we find just the right story?), and I can’t tell you who came up with the idea, but we both decide to read together right there, right then.
So this dear skeleton and I, we sit in her grave with our backs against the eon-striped dirt. We don’t even notice the twig roots prodding our shoulders, or the nightcrawlers oozing from their sediment subways. I give her my scarf because her clothes rotted away a century ago or so, and her voice is the skip-scratch of leaves across abandoned dirt roads.
And yes, we pretend not to see the crows nestling overhead (and we certainly don’t comment on how quiet they’ve become). They always tell us reading isn’t cool anymore. We don’t want to embarrass them for borrowing a listen.
When we finish, I cover the skeleton in the softest dirt and sing her a lullaby about forgotten shipwrecks and knife-teethed mermaids. I pat the ground with my palms, listening through them for the heartbeat of the earth, and like always, it rings up along my vertebrae in crescendoing glass puffs: we tell stories because we are.
Caity Scott lives in the Pacific Northwest with her spouse and chubby, black cat. When she's not reading about cults or playing video games, she's pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Western Washington University and interning as the Assistant Managing Editor of The Bellingham Review. Her work is featured or forthcoming in The Disappointed Housewife, Sci-fi Lampoon, Sparrow's Trombone, and Infinity's Kitchen, and she can be found on Twitter @smarted_pants.
Lock Your Doors
by Mehnaz Sahibzada
Freshman year in college, you dream of a dormitory that was once a mental institute. Your roommate chides you for colonizing the dresser with your make-up. You gawk like a tourist at Arizona sunsets.
Sophomore year, you move into a two-bedroom apartment with a pre-med student who shares your passion for vests but cries often.
Next, a home with two students who fall in love until they betray each other badly. Soon their cats wage world wars.
Friends drop by to study Russian, then take sides.
Senior year, you reclaim solitude, finding a studio close to the university where you plant poems at the start of summer. Ten duplexes huddle into a U, their doors opening to a serene courtyard. Your neighbor, a blond nutritionist, is kind but aloof.
Tucson means desert and cacti, silver and moon. You register for an astronomy course. In lecture, learn about the stars, black holes, and dark matter.
You gaze at the sky through a telescope and shudder at your own smallness.
The professor’s face gleams like a lightbulb. Her hair, always in a bun.
Keys jangle around her neck.
During a discussion on safety she says, Always lock your doors.
You can imagine her in a nunnery, enforcing the rules.
***
The studio where you live now is shaped like a dumbbell. The walls, painted burgundy. Often you forget to lock the doors.
The bathroom with its little window would discomfort a ghost.
While cooking dinner, you utter fragments of French.
One evening, a friend drives you to the movies. You return near midnight. Exiting the car, you spot a shadow lurking near your neighbor’s house.
Inside your studio, you slide into bed and turn to page ninety-six of Madame Bovary, removing the bookmark.
Minutes later, a scream shatters the night. You hear someone running across the courtyard, then a pounding at your door.
The book falls out of your grip as you cower in bed.
Picturing a lunatic with a knife, you freeze.
Moments later, you hear shuffling. A door creaks in the distance.
Frantic voices reverberate across the garden.
***
Peering through your window later, you spy two officers searching the grounds with their flashlights. You step outside in your robe to learn a stalker crept into your blond neighbor’s home. She awoke to a stranger’s hand caressing her thigh. When her screams forced him out, she fled her studio and came thrashing at your door.
But you sank into a sea instead of swimming.
After that night, you religiously lock your doors. Your sleep turns restless, and a dream shudders you awake.
In the nightmare, you roam a desolate house where the doors and windows sway open. A large man with frizzy hair stands in the living room, gazing at a pool in the backyard. He wears a red t-shirt over jeans. His face, a conundrum.
You try screaming, but the sound locks in your throat.
You wake up drenched in sweat.
Days later, the nightmare surfaces again.
Then again and again.
After astronomy class ends, you visit your family in Los Angeles.
The dream arises in your old bedroom where you mix English and Urdu.
You reach for your Quran.
***
Your parents talk of arranging your marriage to a good Pakistani man. When you imagine such a life, you sense contraction. When you imagine traveling to another planet, you sense expansion.
In August, the fall semester begins.
The dream keeps knocking while you sleep.
The man in red hovers in your mind like a roommate.
You fear closing your eyes as monsoons quake through Tucson.
You finish Madame Bovary, wondering what it means to yearn for more.
‘I deserve what I desire’ could be the nation’s mantra.
But what you crave most is the spine of a shaman.
One afternoon in September your blond neighbor knocks at your door, says she’s moving out. You gaze at her pale face, feeling a wave of guilt.
She says detectives still haven’t found the stalker who crept into her home.
You want to tell her about the stalker in your dream, but you hesitate.
In November, you ache to break your lease. The landlord agrees to let you go, but you hear the disappointment in his voice when you call to explain.
You find a one bedroom apartment in the heart of Tucson where the neighborhood twinkles like a new star.
You lug boxes to the second floor and place potted greens on the balcony, but the dream churns like a madness.
The winter of your senior year, you become a detective, summoning Jung.
You journal feelings, call friends, tell your parents.
Consult a counselor and a psychic.
Sleuth the nightmare into a poem.
You burn sage and incense.
Praying, you chant mantras.
But the dream returns often.
The details, always the same.
***
One day, for lunch near campus you meet Amy, the girl with pink hair who sits beside you in Arabic class. When you describe the man in your dream, she says, write him a letter and ask him what he wants.
Lugging a gray notebook, you head to a diner the next morning and order coffee. On a blank page, you pen your epistle, then tear it out. In the lot behind the restaurant, you burn the page with a lighter.
Wordless smoke rises, and something shifts.
The man in red disappears.
With a shudder, your heart contracts.
But you sleep soundly every night, dreaming of tulips.
After graduation, you search for a job in Los Angeles.
Your face gleams like a lightbulb. Your hair in a bun.
Keys jangle around your neck as you enter the classroom to teach.
In your townhouse, daydreams bring waves of expansion. Restless, you reread Madame Bovary. Sometimes you spy a shadow lurking at the supermarket. Other times you fall asleep wondering if you should find a roommate.
Evenings, you place tarot cards on your bed.
Ask the hermit, Where is that stranger who haunted my dreams?
Mehnaz Sahibzada received her M.A. in Religious Studies from UC Santa Barbara. Her writing has appeared in Ellery Queen, Jaggery, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection, My Gothic Romance, was published in 2019 by Finishing Line Press. She is currently at work on her first novel, a coming-of-age story set in post-partition Pakistan. For inquiries, contact Mehnaz through her website at www.poetmehnaz.com.
Wet
by Tim Hanson
Pool crew mop yarn sweeps across my still-Stoli-soaked snout the morning after I passed out poolside. I either crashed the Russian wedding party or it annexed me during its total occupation of the River of No Return Resort, somewhere along the receding banks of the ridden-hard-put-away-wet Colorado River. It was an unforgettable night of prodigious drinking and possibly exuberant dancing that I will never remember. Must have been a wild party else how to explain the pool crew’s mistaking me for a hazardous puddle. My eyes sting from chlorine and vengeful Mojave sunlight. My stomach heaves the rhythmic surge and retreat of the Sea of Cortés at San Felipe, the last place I vaguely recall seeing my wife and daughters. Their sea-salt-saturated heads of blond hair hung in shame as the patriarch of their summer-vacationing clan was led away in handcuffs by unsympathetic Policia Federales to the drunk tank reserved for pinche gringo borrachos. Hell, I wasn’t even drunk on those two six packs of Tecate when I attempted that swan dive from the roof of the motel office into la piscina para niños. Las cervezas had about as much effect on me as a Listerine rinse. It was just unfortunate that the Acuario padres had delegated childcare duties to the inadequately supervised wading pool. They were such niñitos pequeñitos that I didn’t see them until I was plummeting towards them. A chorus of horrified screams led first by my own family and then quickly joined by the startled Acuarios did strike me as unnecessarily alarming, pero cuando ya valió madre…que será será. Arm floats and splashers spared los Acuarioitos any injury but did little to break my fall, which explains the saturated plaster cast disintegrating on my right – or is it my left arm? Hard to determine from my puddle perspective. Damn! Why won’t they stop mopping me up as if I were Russian wedding vomit? I finally manage to swipe away the ends of the sopping mop with whichever arm doesn’t have a cast on it and raise my head high enough to behold a beautiful sight – the remains of the Russian wedding party, like pale abandoned rag dolls flung about on scattered pool furniture and every slab of poolside patio as far as my drunken eyes can see. “Nostrovia!” I toast to no Russian in particular, and, with a synchronicity that suggests they might have rehearsed this while I snored, a chorus of Russian revelers replies, “Na zdrovie, comrade!”
Tim Hanson lives in Santa Monica, CA. His work appears in great weather for MEDIA's 2014 and 2021 anthologies, Coffin Bell Journal, Cease, Cows, Funicular, and Into the Void. His audio drama podcasts can be found at https://aptfprods.podbean.com/.
Having Just Met
You lick your lips and slide into his bed, inching towards him until you feel the warmth radiating off his body. You slide your hand down the curve of his back, eventually grazing his hipbone, maneuvering around until you remove his boxers. You slowly run your fingers around his pelvis, careful not to indulge him too soon and decisively kick off the covers from his waist down. You gasp and questionably eye what is in front of you. You try to ignore it and start to think of anything else, the weather, what you are going to have for lunch, what you are going to tell your girlfriends, but obviously, nothing makes the situation better. “Does it hurt?” You eventually ask him. “Only when it rains.” He responds.
Aleksandra Jones is a poet and fiction writer based in Los Angeles. She has lived in Macedonia, Austria, Washington D.C., the Philippines, Malaysia, and Poland. Having never felt a particular attachment to any one place, her work often portrays spaces where the fantastical and mysterious interrupt a sense of home and familiarity. She received her MA degree in English Literature from Loyola Marymount University. Aleksandra can be reached for inquiries about her work at: jones.aleksandra@gmail.com.
Runaway
by Claire Splan
My feet hit the asphalt road in a steady beat. The old, battered Nikes do little to absorb the hammering shock of each step but I don’t let that slow me. My toes curl slightly, cramped in the dingy, too-small shoes. They were a bad fit even when they were new but I kept them because … I don’t really know why I kept them. I guess I’m just not good at letting go of things.
It is barely daybreak and the sky is lit orange and a fiery red. I’m not used to being up at this hour and every limb is protesting, but I can’t stop and rest, can’t even slow down. So I pound on down the dry, dead road that takes me away, because away is all that’s left.
There’s no one else on the road at this hour but my ears are tuned for the sound of a car behind me. If I can make it into town without anyone stopping me, I can make my way to the bus station and catch a bus, any bus. There is a worn leather wallet in my zippered jacket pocket. It is not my wallet and I’m not sure exactly how much money is in it, but it will have to be enough for a bus ticket somewhere, anywhere.
If I have a choice, I’ll head north, maybe to Washington. We went to Neah Bay once, back when things were good, and I’d like to see it again. It feels like you’re on the edge of the world there, with nothing but emerald waters in front of you and ragged, tree-lined cliffs behind you. I could camp there or get a cabin. But then I remember that it is on tribal land and you have to get a permit to camp and that might not be smart.
I start to feel a stitch in my right side, a cramping that forces me to stop and bend over, gasping for breath. I put my hand to my side and it hurts, but I can’t tell where the pain from the cramping ends and the pain in my hand starts. My knuckles are swollen and bruises are starting to color, while my palm feels pulpy and tender to the touch. Later today I’ll need to find some ice to put on it, but for now it doesn’t matter.
As I crouch on the side of the road, buckled in pain, I notice splashes of blood on my shoes. The shoes are so dirty that the blood stains are not obvious, thank god. But then I spot dark rims of dried blood on my cuticles and under my fingernails. I’ll have to remember to go to the restroom to wash my hands again before I go to the ticket window. I wonder if there is more blood on me that I can’t see. Is it on my face? In my hair? I imagine I can taste it on my tongue, an ugly metallic taste.
I force myself to breathe through the cramp until it subsides and I start to run again. I wish I could have taken the car, but I didn’t dare. Too easy to track. But the bicycle! It just now occurs to me that I could have taken the bike. It would have been faster and easy enough to ditch. No one would have noticed it gone from the back of the garage. Not with the bloody mess I left behind at the front of the garage.
Too late now, so I just keep running.
And suddenly I hear a car coming up behind me. I swerve to the side of the road but keep my pace, not speeding up, not slowing down. I try to look like just another runner out for a morning run, so I throw back my shoulders and lift my chin, fix my eyes on the horizon ahead of me. The absence of a siren is disorienting and I fixate on the sound of the engine growing closer. I want to hold my breath, but instead I puff out my cheeks with each exhalation, one steady blow after another.
A black Dodge Ram that’s seen better days passes me by without slowing and I keep up my pace until it is well out of eyesight and then I fold up like a worn-out lawn chair on the side of the road, gasping with fear and relief and more fear. It is full daylight now and if I don’t get going, there will be more cars on the road, more chances of being seen. So I pick myself up and start again, walking first, then quickening into a grinding run.
I run like a person who no longer knows if they’re chasing something or being chased. Like a person who can’t remember who started the fight but knows all too well who finished it. Like a person who is sorry, but more than sorry, who is relieved. Sorrow and regret and shame—they’re like lead weights dragging at my heels. But relief—that’s what gives me wings, what makes it possible for me to fly down this dusty road, what helps me to believe, even if only for a few minutes at a time, that something better awaits me at the end of it.
And then I hear the siren.
Claire Splan is a writer living in Alameda, California. Claire is the author of California Fruit & VegetableGardening and California Month-by-Month Gardening (both published by Cool Springs Press) and her previous work has appeared in Waxing & Waning, Rosebud, San DiegoUnion-Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Firsts: The Book Collectors Magazine. She can be reached at CASplan@sbcglobal.net and you can follow her on Twitter @ClaireSplan.
The Damascus Burger
by Abigail E. Sims
Through limitless fog, on uncomfortable formulaic suburban streets, I saw a man.
I had gone out to find some chicken nuggets, and stood now confused outside the 7-11 in the dark, wishing I had not walked all this way to find that they didn’t have any. In my arms, I held the Doritos whose charms had seemed irresistible at the time.
It was too late for this.
In the middle of considering a dreadful compromise with a frozen taquito, I saw him.
A crumpled man in a pink windbreaker two sizes too large stood on the sidewalk opposite me. He clutched a folding chair under one arm, viscid plastic tucked into himself, and wore a beard that had long ago overwhelmed his face. That, or the beard wore him.
He shuffled along at a steady pace, hands crumpled around a greasy wrapper of something warm and fresh-grilled, that only his own wisdom could divine the nature or value thereof. I wondered.
As he crossed the street into a deserted park, he brushed the swing-set with an elbow—and a few day-old lettuce shards tumbled from supernal sesame buns. Just before he passed behind the old elementary school, he turned, and fixed me with a stern eye.
He stared at me. I stared at him. He raised his crumpled paper, white-crumpled and dripping with molten cheese. A wilted tomato disc leaked from one side, and inside, inside the heart of that fat-filled mecca lay a perfect beef patty, grease leaking from the lightly-charred edges.
My chips tumbled crisply to the ground from nerveless fingers, as understanding filled me. I was Saul on the road to ruin, or the Pythia at Delphi drinking in smoke until the fumes blew her brains sideways. Forget chips, forget nuggets, forget the sad bowl of cereal waiting for me at home.
I knew what I needed.
Far overhead, the In-N-Out sign blinked in the distance like the star of Bethlehem. The strange windbreaker man waved at me once more, burger held aloft, and then turned and vanished into the shadows, as strangely as he came.
I picked up my Doritos, and followed him.
Abigail is an emerging writer. She currently daylights as a content-wrangler for a technology company in the great city of Austin, Texas, and spends her free time playing with snails or swords, depending on the day. Her work has previously appeared at Beyond Words, Sand Hills, and Rusty Scythe. You can find links to all of the above (and more) on her website, abigailesims.com.
A mom’s junk mail
by Bahar Hoshyar
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Bahar Hoshyar is a writer from Calgary, Canada. Her pandemic-related poem was published in Oddball Magazine. Her flash fiction won first place in creatures magazine.
The Last Interview
by Joan Eyles Johnson
When Henry Miller wrote that stuff about earning a living by his paintings whereas his writing never paid him a cent he was acting the traitor’s part, don’t you think Jagway sat comfortably in a low slung chair His guest perched on the edge of its twin Words flapped windily above their heads dropping in front of the moderator who swept them away with a wave of his manicured fingers suspended for the interminable second of a Russian dancer performing a grand jette Henry Miller had a right to say anything about anything at all This was a case of the frozen in mid-air retort Anti-gravity at work Your daughter is a painter in Paris Jagway felt the keen thrust of his sharpened knowledge delighted in his voice The show was going well My daughter Who the hell cares Why don’t you ask her to come here if you are so interested give her a ring and invite her to his hell of lights Don’t expect me to work for you Jagway allowed a smirk to crack the well polished face Still your book about Giordano Bruno That was a clumsy segue Giordano’s been dead for a century Talk about here and now Bowing to your enormous talent I felt perhaps viewers want to hear the author speak about his latest work When Giordano Bruno was alive Shakespeare had just entered London and the city had already spread considerably outside of the confines of the great wall From the guest Hello Dolly Well Hello Dolly whaddyaknow Dolly Half sung half whispered Then much eye rolling as he fell back into his chair the way a diver releases his body to the sky Jagway leaning in Why do you always use an answering machine whenever I mean why would someone agile with words full of the old jeu d’esprit have need of a mechanical device for communication God was the solid gold Rolex on his elegant wrist the platinum credit cards in his pockets worth this job When you asked me here you said it would be literary conversation Why have you been going on and on about my daughter Giordano Bruno and my answering machine if I may get down to the real matter suicide is a very secret thing because it is so damned embarrassing to everyone Except of course the deceased How to deal with it Does one send flowers Jagway sat up straight Someday I may stroll off a bridge just after a good meal fall among the pleasure boats face down in a wave with a private smile Why tell us this now Jagway caught the cut signal from the floor director I don’t know To save you perhaps When you are next in the supermarket among apples and cantaloupes pinching bread waiting in line with a full cart you might hear a bell ring in your head you answer it and life falls from under you Why I am a very happy person Why would I do such a thing Perhaps to save something that needs saving Sometimes my hands fall off the typewriter when I think of things like that Let’s see You were a Rhodes Scholar were you not The producer in the control room now gesturing to cut but Jagway fighting People who walk around in a depressed state are embarrassing in their helplessness don’t you think Parry and thrust Did you know that right now in mental hospitals over the world there are people who have to be watched around the clock All they want is one split second alone really alone They will take any damned thing as an instrument of death a bathrobe belt some old Christmas gift a broken water glass Jagway raised his voice to change direction We have heard about psycho Softly interrupted Don’t tell me Jagway that suicide is a means of getting attention Don’t tell me suicides are pleading for help wanting to be saved no they are in love In love with death the same way nuns are in love with Christ Stifled cough May we go to a lighter subject before oh no our time is running out A fake surprise No it can’t be so soon ended Again, the flying words It is an act so complete that sex cannot compare Sex is never truly complete is it Jagway Such nonsense compared to dying Suicides are not wise men not apt judges of anything really don’t know any more than you do They just have more love in them that the world allows Jagway standing Well this has all been very enlightening though morbid and mostly disturbing but anything you have to say is always interesting to our audience and now we have run out of time may I hold up your book One morning I will wake up with the birds and whistle a stupid tune at my window or play the happy fool down by the river with my pockets full of marbles He stands with difficulty Or take a train get excited jump into a hobo nest of knives I may lie down on a night when stars are angry fists recite a litany to a bowl of pills Yes well, for those of you who are a bit squeamish about this conversation may I suggest a look at his newest historical holding up the book grown sticky with sweat from his bejeweled fingers The guest leans forward into the camera Cherish what you have in this world We are masters of the darkening light Each of us is in control of something very real Fade to black
Joan Eyles Johnson is a playwright, award-winning poet, and author of short stories. She won the Ernest Hemingway Prize for Short Fiction in 2016 for her story "The Night Packet" published in South East Review, judged by David Galef. Her stories have appeared in "Foliate Oak, Diabolique, Confluence, The Raven's Perch," and more. Two stories and a poem are anthologized in the book "Scream when you Burn" (Rothco PRess) a collection of LA underground writers in the 90s. She lives a mile above Los Angeles in the San Bernardino National Forest where she owns a writers retreat, a small getaway for 6 writers at a time. You can find her on Facebook and her retreat website: www.scribeaway.org.
The Closet
by Nina Keen
I've been in the shoe closet for three days now. Daddy said I was ungrateful before he locked me in this time. It's true, I suppose. I never said thank you for dinner. And he works hard to make money to buy me dinner. And I never said thank you.
I heard him leaving the garage and coming home three times. And that's how I know it's been three days. Because daddy never goes anywhere except work. And I know he cares about me and misses me and that's why he doesn't leave me alone for long. He doesn't even go grocery shopping. He orders groceries online even though it's more expensive and he says he spends money on me because he cares about me more than anyone else.
The closet seems to have gotten smaller than the last time I was in here. I have to fold my legs criss-cross apple sauce. There are somebody's new shoes here: red pointy heels. I move them to the other corner so they don't poke me. I'm happy I can't smell the dust or the ghost of feet anymore. The first day I could and that was bad and I thought I might throw up. But now it might as well be a rose garden in here my nostrils are so crusted over with snot.
Yesterday, I heard him pour a second glass of milk (for me) and I don't think he ever washed it down the sink. The day before that, he told me he loved me. And even when he told me to go to my closet, he said it was because he knew what was best for me. He says all the other kids lie to me. He says they don't know how Bad I am.
I can feel the glass of milk going sour on the table and I can hear the neighbors getting ready for the day. I hear them screaming at each other. Daddy never yells. His voice raises and his face turns red, but he's never yelled at me. He's never even hit me. I'm sure he'll let me out soon, but first I have to get rid of the Bad inside me. And only he knows how long it takes for the Bad to get out, because he's so good. Daddy saves lives at his job and he rescued our dog from being stray. When he tucks me into bed, he kisses my forehead. So I love him. Even though it's hard to sometimes. Like now. I would love him more if my knees weren't swelling and my stomach wasn't twisting. But he says when my body is Bad it just means I'm getting better. I pray three times a day and ask God to let me get better so I can get out soon.
After I fall into a black sleep in the corner I made for myself by re-arranging the shoes, I hear the garage door open. Or rather feel the vibrations of it. I hear Daddy walk over to where I am. He stands in front of the door. I can't think of anything, except that I'm so joyously happy. Everything feels bright like Christmas morning. I hear him shift his weight and I hear his fingers on the door knob. Though I know I will get in trouble for doing this, I push open the door. Gently, just to see him. I picture a bubble bath and my favorite pajamas and my teddy bear.
I sit still, like they tell you to do in case of an earthquake. Daddy isn't outside the door. No one is. This is my house ever since he went away. And those red shoes, I now know, are mine.
Nina Keen received her Master's degree in English literature from Loyola Marymount University. Her flash fiction pieces and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Fifth Di and Coffin Bell Journal. Her love of dark fiction was sparked by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." She enjoys happier things too — coffee, trips to Disneyland, and small animals (like mice). Nina can be reached for inquiries about her work at: keenninatales@gmail.com.
Platitude Latitude
by Gwen Pryor
31C, the window seat, was our opportunity. I promised my sister, Ellie, we would alternate, when the time came. Once we found 31C and 31B, we pulled out a Ziplock bag of pretzels, raisins, and cashews that Grandma had packed into our Lion King backpack. I tossed a handful of mostly salty raisins into my mouth. A yellow Post-It note fell from the bag. I read it to my sister: “Enjoy your first flight! Remember, you are never alone. Your mother is watching from heaven.”
Cold air burst from the nozzles above our heads. The loudspeaker cracked as the flight attendant called for attention to the safety demonstration. We mimicked her motions as the other passengers chatted, flipped through magazines, and snored. After her demonstration, the flight attendant brought us a pair of plastic winged pins for paying such close attention to flight safety. We reminded her that accidents can happen to even good people. The plane grumbled, shook, and shot up into the air.
Ellie asked if now was our chance. I pushed my nose against the glass and peered down at the green farms creating a checkerboard pattern. No. We were still below the clouds. We waited, clicking our heels against the seat. Ellie noticed a wisp of white in 30C’s window. “Clouds!” We grabbed our construction paper posters, shoved ourselves into 31C, and flung the plastic window open. Large empty clouds covered the sky. Ellie lowered her Hi Mom! poster. “Where is she?”
Gwen Pryor is from San Francisco, California.
Ragweed
by Avery Gregurich
Dan fixed most everything himself, except mowers, and when they broke he guided them up into his truck bed on top of short boards and brought them out to Len in the country. Len in the country worked on favors and care packages heavy on beer and sweeter confections.
Dan was owed one as he had finished out Len in the country’s porch and set up some security cameras on its roof. Len in the country wanted proof that a bobcat had been scratching up his deck and stealing his barn cats late at night and sometimes early in the morning. He had also made Dan do it in difference to a vague sort of paranoia that was sweeping through the county. It seemed to be everywhere now, just like bobcat sightings.
The mower was busted, which shook all the rest of the mower as it was moving, which was the problem. Dan asked Len in the country to take a look at it and he agreed and turned the radio back up when Dan drove away. It was still August and he worked on things with engines out in the yard with a tarp beneath him.
Len in the country laid all the pieces in the tall grass without order or planning and knew he could still get it together the same way. It’s just the kind of person Len in the country was: he did and knew how things were done without asking much more than when. Len in the country was known for, if not fixing the thing broken, knowing and pointing to exactly what was wrong with it. He lived alone.
He took the mower deck off the mower. From up above it had all looked good, which is always evidence of a greater problem somewhere else. He flipped the deck upside down and took off the pock-marked blade. As he did this, a bunch of pearls fell out, but they were sharpened at the edges and less necklace-like and more from freshwater mollusks.
They hit the flipped-up metal deck and made a grinding sound. Down in there also was a bunch of teeth or something gumming up the works. Len in the country had a styrofoam cup nearby and gathered all the bits down into it. He lubed up something that needed it, and after he’d put it back together, ran the mower out over the patch of yard he always tried to mow after he’d fixed a mower, crisp as a cadet’s head.
Satisfied, he put the mower on the trailer and drove to Dan’s real slow, something in the styrofoam cup distracting him. He got there and Dan was in the shop with the door open straightening the tools hanging on his corkboard. Grandkids or something had messed them up.
Dan said to Len in the country “Well?” and Len in the country said “Look.” He took the lid off of the styrofoam cup and tilted some of the contents into Dan’s cupped hands. They both looked and Len in the country was glad to see it wasn’t just him that was confused anymore.
Dan said that he had run over something when it had started shaking so bad, but this stuff wasn’t roots, limbs, fence, or rock even. He remembered the sound, though, and said it sounded like hitting a deer in a small car: cheap plastic on bone. Len in the country asked where it was and they walked out into Dan’s yard where the chicken coop sat abandoned and unsightly. The brood had been gone for a few months, gone the way that bees sometimes do: all at once, without explanation. The ragweed was head high and neither man was small. You could tell it was killing Dan to have his yard looking this way in front of anybody, even Len in the country, who didn’t care about anything anyways.
The men got down on their knees where the mower had made it before shaking so bad that he quit, and Dan said “Fuck” and straightened back up. He now had a hole in his jeans and his knee where blood was trickling through the front and down the back onto his sock. Len in the country reached down and picked up the thing that had done it to Dan.
They pulled some of the growth back and then they saw them all: dozens of chicken feet sticking straight up with their talons out, the skin picked clean down there in the shade. The bones hadn’t bleached.
“Weasel?” Len in the country asked. “Fox?” Dan replied.
Then they started naming culprits back and forth, each shunning the other’s suggestion for his own until there were no possible suspects left and it remained a mystery. Dan had a dog that would kill rats in the barn and bake them out in the sun until they were all bloated and stinking and then roll onto them and pop them, carrying that ugliness into the house and onto the furniture with fabric on its legs. It was possible that the dog had done this, but neither one offered it up.
His work finished, Len in the country left to let Dan douse the coop and surrounding effigy in red diesel and burn it. Dan stood close until the smoke was too much, went up to the house and sprayed the dog with the garden hose for a while until he cleaned his hands and arms with it as well.
Len in the country looked over and realized he had a little of that stuff left in the styrofoam cup in his cupholder, and so rolled down the window and pitched the cup and all into the gravel. It mixed in well with the road, and Len in the country drove back home quickly to check his cameras.
He just couldn’t stand a thing like a bobcat being so close, and him not being around to see it.
Avery Gregurich, a writer living and working in Marengo, Iowa, was raised next to the Mississippi River, and has never strayed too far from it.
Deadfall
by Ali Bryan
Desdemona, wet-haired, sat inside her boxy car with a breakfast sandwich and the cat formerly known as Prince. The trapping had been humane. Desdemona had put a whole salmon in the flower bed and when the cat finally scaled the fence and goose stepped across her yard like a Prussian diplomat, she threw a sheet over his head and wrestled him into a cage. She then removed his collar and tags and the cat mewed as if he knew he’d been stripped of his cathood, cast-off, homed. The declawing would have to wait.
The view from the cliff was spectacular despite the smoke from a distant wild fire that had been raging for weeks. Desdemona’s doctor had advised her to stay inside to protect her lungs, which were inflamed and uncooperative, not unlike her husband in the backseat. He’d been captured a few hours ago much the same way as the cat, except with a ribeye on the patio and his college football jersey—the horrible teal one he used to sport for home games—in lieu of a sheet. He went along with it of course, the jersey over his head, because he was macabre, curious, and German. But now he was getting squirmy.
“Can I take it off, yet?”
She killed the engine and got out of the car. She’d marked the spot where the ground was loose. Where a little scuff scuff of her flip flop could break off a piece of the geological record, chunks of story, entire eras. She kicked the edge with her heel and a section of rock detached and disappeared with a beautiful poof! It had a cinematic feel, a tang of danger.
Desdemona clutched her stomach. The breakfast sandwich was a bad choice. Just because the drive-thru offered all-day-breakfast, didn’t mean she had to order it. It was late. But she ordered the sandwich, because people would otherwise notice. She was a regular. News would get out and reporters would interview McDonald’s and McDonald’s would say, yes, it was odd, she ordered nuggets! She stared down at the beach below with its Toblerone rocks, spitty water and deadfall, and felt—for the first time since this adventure began—and it had been over six months—fear.
From the car, Helmut hollered. “Des, get this thing off my head.”
He’d have done it himself, but his arms were bound. He’d been willing of that too because she used pantyhose and he was a fan. They weren’t even clean. She’d fished them out of the hamper. The smoke was going to clear tomorrow and visibility would be improved. She didn’t have time to wash them. She wanted the haze. She wanted the air to be thick as a net.
“Whatever you’re up to, can we talk about it?”
Could they? Did anything ever get resolved by talking? Sex, maybe. Or violence. Never talking. In fact, talking is what brought her to the edge of this unstable cliff with an empty bank account, nameless cat and hooded husband. Desdemona could talk herself into anything. Just one more game. The casino was a generous listener.
“I smell a cat,” Helmut called.
Why hadn’t she given him a gag? He also had a problem with talking. Too much. His was ruining the mood with his questions and suggestions and cat-sniffing.
“I’ve arranged a picnic,” she said, opening the trunk.
“Are we eating cat?” he asked.
She did love this about him. He was boyish that way. Up for anything. Cruising, playing Mah Jong, eating cats.
“Dessert,” she replied. “I’m getting everything set-up.”
“For our anniversary?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s tomorrow.”
“We’ll be here past midnight.”
“But I have to work at six.”
Pity.
Desdemona spread a blanket at the edge of the cliff. She slipped off her pants, bum to the red moon, and pulled on a pair of shorts. The cat scratches were still fresh. She could smell the blood. She etched a few more with a stick, and then tossed the stick into the sea.
“Why’d you put this jersey on my head?” he called.
“I wanted to surprise you,” she replied. “You wore it on our first date.”
“Right,” he said. “Is the picnic ready? Will there be cupcakes?”
Desdemona had just finished placing the cupcakes on a paper plate. She opened a tin of tuna. Poured a shallow dish of milk. She’d always wanted to give a cat milk.
“Almost ready,” she said. The cupcakes had been a last-minute idea. She’d posed for a selfie with them, tagged it happy anniversary and posted it on Facebook. She reached into the front seat and grabbed the cat.
“I’m sorry I have to do this,” she whispered. “We’ll make it look like an accident.” She squeezed him between her arms.
“Okay, you can come out now.”
“I can’t see.”
She set the cat by the milk and watched it lap beautiful laps before helping her husband to his feet. What was she going to do with the panty hose? Her swim bag was still in the trunk. She stuffed the hose inside.
“Put your jersey on!” she coaxed, showing him the blanket where the cat was choking down tuna. “Happy anniversary.”
He chose a cupcake with chocolate frosting. “You got me a cat?”
“Yes,” she replied, “He’s a bad cat, but he will keep you company.”
He glanced at her legs. “Why is he bad?”
“Because he killed me.”
Desdemona leaned back. She wasn’t as close to the edge as she thought, so it took some effort. Some real thrust. She hadn’t practiced thrust. You couldn’t from a pool deck. Not when the lifeguard was watching.
The wind shook her cheeks on the way down. Her body folded. She imagined she heard her husband scream, the cat meow. She could smell the smoke on the way down.
Ali Bryan is an award-winning novelist and creative nonfiction writer who explores the what-ifs, the wtfs, and the wait-a-minutes of every day. She lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where she has a wrestling room in her garage and regularly gets choked out by her family. She can be found on Instagram @alikbryan, Twitter @AliBryan, and at www.alibryan.com.
The Correct Way to Make a Taco
by Cory Clark
“The order in which you build a taco is actually very important,” he said.
“Is it?” she replied, an amused expression on her face.
“Oh, definitely,” he said, “You start with the tortilla, obviously. Warmed in the microwave, but not fried. Then a generous smear of refried beans, followed by the protein of your choice, usually seasoned ground beef for me. Then, and this is the most important part! The cheese goes on top of the meat, and you want to make sure you cook your meat fresh because you want it hot so that cheese will melt.
“After the cheese, you add a few dollops of sour cream. Then a liberal helping of hot sauce; I prefer a nice jalapeno and poblano green sauce myself. After that it gets less essential, but if I’m feeling wacky I add some halved olives, diced tomatoes, and chopped cilantro.
“Then you wrap it all up in the tortilla, making sure to fold the end in first, so you can tuck it under the sides of the tortilla as they come around. Then you enjoy.”
“Hm,” she said, “If you’re folding it like that, isn’t it more of a burrito than a taco? And if you want the cheese to melt, wouldn’t it make more sense to put it in between two hot ingredients, like the beans and the meat?”
He stared at her for a moment, then frowned.
“Go to hell.”
Cory Clark is an amateur author from Nebraska. His first book, a collection of short stories, can be found in the bio of his personal Twitter: @CoryWClark.
Don’t Feed the Bears
by Suzanne Samples
I visit the bears one final time in late summer, when they have perfected their best tricks.
The one named Margot, identifiable by the white scar beneath her nose, stands on her hind legs and twirls her torso in a circle when the student researchers offer their tastiest treats. Margot must have performed this trick at least 300 times, but the bystanders never tire of the circus act. People ooh and ahh and hoot like owls when Margot rolls her body like she should be wearing a tutu.
Margot has human brown eyes. She connects with people. When I stare at her in the early evening, long after everyone has gone home, I feel like she can see beneath my soul.
Margot and I have been through some shit.
I have a scar similar to hers on the top of my skull.
My last scan did not look promising. I could do it all again—the surgery, the chemo, the radiation.
Or I could do nothing.
I could continue on with my life and wait to die.
This evening, I don’t leave after Margot’s performance. I hang back, like a punky kid at public school, and lean against the red brick wall. I have learned the student schedules; I know when the final feeding time occurs.
I am aware of the cameras’ positions.
The Bear Center for Research and Development, owned by the university like everything else in this town, got into some trouble a few years ago when a graduate student forgot to lock a door, and two cubs bumbled into an enclosure and were eaten by a spooked male grizzly, who probably thought researchers were coming to drain more of his blood with their thick needles and heinous test tubes. A local environmental group described the incident as “a horrific act of animal enslavement gone wrong, but how could it have gone right? How could it?”
They have a point, but I still connect with the remaining bears.
It was never their fault.
I hear the students crunch the gravel toward their cars. They discuss how Caden is dating both Leila and Elizabeth, oh my god, they are both gonna find out eventually! and how Sam is getting a B in inorganic lab, and everyone knows a B in grad school means you’re failing.
They remain a bit careless.
Finally, they drive off, and it’s just me and Margot. Although I lost a lot of my mobility after the surgery, the double fence doesn’t scare me; it will be my last big hurrah. When I reach the bottom of the enclosure, Margot knows just what to do.
I touch her scar like I’m reading a palm.
She stares beneath my soul, rips into my cancerous brain with her discolored teeth, and twirls like a happy circus bear with a fresh piece of fish.
I swear I can hear the bystanders ooh and ahh and hoot like owls as she snacks on my crushed skull.
In a past life, Suzanne Samples was definitely a calico cat. In this life, Suzanne is the author of two memoirs about brain cancer, Frontal Matter: Glue Gone Wild & Stargazing in Solitude (Running Wild Press). Both received starred Kirkus reviews. However, she's most proud to be the co-founder and fiction editor of Dead Skunk Mag, the only lit publication to openly brag about not stinking. You can find Suzanne on Instagram @never_sold_a_thigh_master and on Twitter @suzanne_samples.
The Rippling Pane
by T.w. Moran
Mosquitoes swarmed the metal-halide floodlights that muggy May night. I was always too wrapped up in work and whiskey to see a game. But suddenly there was Maggie, squatting at shortstop in a tank top and tight polyester shorts and three-stripe tube socks. She backhanded a grounder and flipped it to my second wife and I fell in love.
We carried on more than a year—“Ever tinkering with chance,” I’d quip—before our worse halves caught wind, but played on even after the rains came. And we kept playing for twenty more. I never did regret it. Not once. Not when my sons stopped talking to me. Not when my wife threw me out. Not when she spitefully took every penny I’d ever made.
When Maggie died, I promised myself and anyone around I’d never return to Conch Town. “That place was our place, and it died with her,” I’d say.
But there I was, against my better judgment, maintaining appearances, standing alone on that goddamned pier, a year to the day, crack of dawn, dumping her back into the sea.
I said nothing, but a message did cross my mind, like a banner behind a biplane:
And that’s how I let you go.
I was perched at Maggie’s favorite open-air joint as soon as they opened. This pretty young blond in bikini top and cutoffs tending bar strutted over. Reminded me of Cybil Shepherd in The Heartbreak Kid.
“Drink?”
“Beam, rocks.”
“Vacation?”
“Every February for nineteen years.”
She fixed herself a shot of Fireball, clinked my tumbler.
“Well, shit; here’s to twenty!”
I sucked down three fingers, rocks and all, then shoved it back, tapped the brim. She hoisted her eyebrows as she scooped some ice into the same glass.
“You okay, hon?”
“Maggie, my…well, she loved this place.”
“Your wife?”
“Something like that.”
“‘Loved,’ you said?”
“Huh?”
“Loved…?”
“Yeah…scattered her ashes this morning,” I said, stretching my eyes, nodding toward the water.
She clapped both hands onto her mouth.
“I’m so sorry!”
She reached out, laid her hand on mine, folded back the hair on my knuckles. No one had touched me in months.
Behind her this guy in a Marlins cap walked by, a leash dangling from his hand. He just stopped dead and stared; I figured his eyes got latched on Cybil’s caboose because when he went on, they stayed latched.
Cybil planted her elbows, rested her chin, reconquered my attention.
“What was she like?”
I told her how Maggie’d sneak out at sunrise to wade while I was sleeping one off, then crawl back into bed, wedging her wet legs between mine; how we’d sit on the balcony, drink añejo-spiked o.j. and smoke doobies she’d stashed in tampons to get past airport security; how she’d prop her feet and gawk at pelicans as I barked Miami Herald headlines, ad-libbing ledes in my best Tripper Harrison just so I could hear that throaty laugh of hers.
I told Cybil everything but the truth, then passed out on the bar before dinner.
Next morning, same balcony, I was ashing a doob into Maggie’s empty urn, trying to cloud year-old memories.
Ashes to ashes.
The deputy coroner employed the phrase, “serendipitous current,” to explain how Maggie’s bluish body had washed ashore.
“Hundred to one it dudn’t come back,” he drawled to two beach police before remembering me within earshot. “Apologies,” he called to me. “I meant, she…well, her.”
I recalled this lean guy, middle-aged, crisp teal cap, standing on the bluff, just watching. He cradled this dark puppy that was yipping up a storm.
You always did want a dog.
Two days prior, the pimple-faced concierge had stopped me.
“Hey! Passed on that message,” he said, very proud of himself.
“What now?”
“You know, ‘meet you tomorrow morning, got a surprise,’ all that…”
Kid had no clue.
I lay awake all night waiting for Maggie to slink out at dawn.
I grabbed her pelican peepers and found her standing about chest-high, just beyond the break. She waved, but not at me. I panned across the water, saw this guy hurdling waves to get to her. They embraced…kissed…gyrated.
I was four rocky martinis deep that evening when I slid the box across the table. Inside was this cheap Claddagh I’d bought Maggie as a joke: not married, but married to the idea of never being married again.
She placed the ring on her taken finger, pecked my cheek.
The waitstaff yelled, “Cent’Anni!”
Then she looked right into my eyes and lied when she said that she loved me.
Fool…first-class fool.
I persuaded her to go skinny-dipping like we used to, and she was eager, you know, to keep her mask up, and pliable from the Pinot Grigio, but I was still surprised how far out she let me tow her. The moonbeams danced across the rippling pane that night, and I remember, as I backstroked away, how she fluttered like a jarred moth for just a moment before slipping soundlessly out of sight.
You deserved worse.
Before my flight, I wanted to take one last swim. I ventured out to a distant sandbar. Once there, I toed the edges, my ankles drying in the breeze. I stretched my arms and confronted the rising sun.
Clearing my eyes in waist-high waves, I heard the dog barking. This lanky chocolate lab was chasing seagulls across the vacant beach.
I was knee-deep before I noticed him, but I recognized the faded Marlins cap. He was standing in the purling sand, my towel draped over his arm. He took a few steps into the water, dropped my towel into the surf.
A pistol glinted in his hand.
T.w. Moran (@tdubwrites) is an emerging author hailing from Humboldt, Illinois. His fiction has appeared in The Dillydoun Review and Emerge Literary Journal. Moran has lived and worked across the globe— including a decade-long stint in Beijing, where he taught writing at Beijing Language and Culture University. Currently residing in Riga with his lovely wife, Moran spends his days putting pen to paper.