The Doorman
by Amanda Punt
“Good morning, Davi,” the curly pigtails bobbed by the desk, her small voice unable to pronounce the “D” at the end of his name.
“And good morning, Izzy,” he smiled back as she and her mom walked out the front door of the complex. Her mom, Machaela, gave him a genuine smile as she struggled to push the diaper bag, her purse, and stroller through the door.
David started to rise to help her but she pushed through and was gone before he could get across the lobby. He chastised himself for not being more helpful but had been distracted by the way her leggings hugged her slim form, the pilates was definitely working for her. She seemed to have sashayed a bit when she had walked by the desk so who was he not to appreciate the show she had given him.
“David, my boy,” another man, pushing into his 70’s waved as he stepped out of the elevator.
“Good morning, Mr. Jeffers, how can I help you today?” David gave a rigid smile.
“I’ve got a package being delivered sometime between 1-6 pm, it’s vitally important that it does not get lost in the shuffle like the last one.” Mr. Jeffers emphasized the “vitally” as if David couldn’t fathom the importance of this delivery.
“Absolutely,” David said while looking at Mr. Jeffers’s order history and account. “The last package was sent up to your apartment directly by one of the other associates, I’ll verify with them where they placed it and track it down for you.”
“See to it, it shouldn’t be too hard to find if they did their job correctly,” his tone implied that rarely people performed to his standards. Mr. Jeffers turned on his heel and walked briskly back to the elevator and pressed the up arrow with his thumb. His foot tapped impatiently as the elevator numbers counted down from 24.
David turned his attention back to the computer in front of him, grateful that Mr. Jeffers had not started one of his long-winded political conversations that poorly disguised his feelings about the younger generations and minorities.
He sat for another 45 minutes, flipping between the security footage of the parking garage levels and the websites he was accustomed to browsing. He was not the night doorman who liked to circulate between porn websites. Though, if he worked nights and had fewer interactions with the residents he may have been inclined to the darker parts of the internet.
People came and went. Regular guests greeted him with the geniality of some of the residents. They exchanged pleasantries while signing the guest book before heading to the elevator. Other residents bustled in and out, some giving him a quick acknowledgment and others just rushing past him.
It used to bother David that some people seemed as if he were part of the structure of the apartment complex. After living in the city for 2 years those feelings dissipated. He was a part of the landscape, and rarely deserved the recognition of the elite as they carried on with their busy lives as day traders, real estate investors, or corporate lawyers.
The few people who did notice him on the street or at work were a different breed of people altogether. The teachers, bartenders, and civil rights lawyers almost always made eye contact. They were amongst the first to ask his name when he started at the front desk. They were the ones to step aside for him when they crossed paths at the busy intersections. Words were not always exchanged but he could rely on the recognition of a fellow human being from this variety of people.
“Davi!!” Izzy’s giggle pulled him from his reverie.
“Hello, Izzy, how was the park?” David leaned over the front of the desk so that Izzy didn’t have to pull herself up to peek at him.
“Fun! I saw my friend Jenny and we played tag and lava and then had some snacks and then did the monkey bars but then Jenny fell and she got scraped so we stopped playing and came home.”
“Oh! Was there a lot of blood?”
“Nope, or else I woulda fixed it.”
“Doctor Izzy is one of the few doctors I trust in this city,” David winked down at her.
“Oh yeah, I woulda done stitches and tape to make sure she didn’t bleed all over my favorite swing.”
“And now, Doctor Izzy needs to get cleaned up for lunch and get ready for her afternoon nap.” Machaela chimed in.
“Will you be there when I wake up? Like yesterday?” Izzy’s innocent question froze Machaela and David, eyes barely flicking to each other.
“Now, Izzy, David has to stay here and work then he gets to go home to his family at night, just like daddy comes home to us every night.”
“Yeah, but last time he was there,” Izzy’s eyebrows scrunched as she tried to remember the details from yesterday.
“I was just there to look at something in the kitchen to see if we need to call for a repair,” David answered quickly.
Izzy made a face as if she was going to press the issue further, but Machaela quickly grabbed her hand and turned toward the elevators. David gave himself a minute shake before waving them off, “have a good rest of your day, Mrs. Madden and Ms. Madden.”
Izzy turned and waved while Machaela stared at the elevator, not meeting his gaze.
David released a long breath and quickly typed out a text message.
I’m sorry. We will stop immediately, I don’t want to cause any issues.
To his surprise, his phone buzzed less than a minute later.
I expect you at lunch.
David smiled down at the phone before a jolt of anticipation gave him the energy to get through the two hours until lunch.
Amanda Punt is an emerging fiction author. She received a BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2017. From there she explored life in Los Angeles until coming back home to pursue a career in teaching in 2019. Though she loved discussing literature (and life) with her high school students she took the leap to leave education and focus on her writing. Her first published piece “The Doorman” was published by On the Run Fiction on December 9, 2022. Amanda loves cooking & baking, board games, and the idea of starting an urban garden someday. She currently lives in Aurora, CO with her husband, newborn, and their dogs & cats. You can reach Amanda Punt by email at amanda.punt.writes@gmail.com.
Cacophony
by Debra Bennett
The moment she opened the front door, the brilliance of the sun slammed right into her. She felt the edges of herself cracking into bits like crumbing eggshells.
The ozone layer. Climate change. Melting ice caps. She thought of Greta Thunberg, planted in front of her school, frowning and resolute with her posters and signs.
And those huge white bears she's seen pictures of, floating now on tiny ice islands, looking, somehow, ridiculous, ridiculously misplaced, like cartoons. They've lost their whole wide white wilderness.
Her feet, slimy now, slid back and forth in her saddles, squeaking repeatedly, hurting her ears. And every seam on her clothes was scraping at her skin. How could she stand it? She looked down, counting breaths, the way her therapist had shown her. Slow inhale. Hold. Slow exhale. Hold.
But luckily, she was almost there, almost at the bus stop. Inside the bus, she could climb into her own shadow, she could just sit, letting the low rumbling of the motor sooth her. She could forget that the high pitched discordant shrieking of the sun, the noise of her sandals, the textures of clothing that rubbed and scraped, scoured her skin.
Long ago, she’d found that most people didn't hear such sounds, or feel the same sensations. She’d discovered the reasons behind those half-hidden smirks or the perplexed glances, sometimes the sly eye-rolling…or the too-bright smiles of some.
She’d been amazed.
The counsellor had leaned forward, her voice gentle. “You see why your reactions are different? There is nothing wrong with you. Your perceptions are different.”
Yet, she felt as out of place as those giant white polar bears, surviving on shrinking bits of ice.
Here it was, finally. She climbed up the stairs in her slippery, still-sliding sandals. She shut her eyes again the shrill clanging of the coins into the slot, and moved quickly into a seat.
She’d only settled, though before some odor began stinging her nose. Sun-screen? Hair shampoo? A face moisturizer? She leaned forward, trying to not be seen, and wiped at her nose vigorously, willing the smell to vanish. But it was in her nostrils now. And no. No. She would not, she could not, allow the odor to make her sick.
At the next stop, she stood and slid into to a back seat.
“You alright?”
It was a whiskery old-sounding voice that spoke, just across the aisle. And since it was a quiet type of voice, she dared look up and over, and she didn’t need to look away. The eyes were quiet. They didn't try to pull, push, probe, intrude. They just were.
It was the eyes that pushed the words out from the back of her throat. “It’s just, um, autism,” she murmured and then stopped. “I’m on the autism spectrum.”
But, she thought, it was like explaining light to those who lived in dark, or dark to those, always in light. Two different worlds.
Yet the old man simply nodded. “Yeah, so’s my granddaughter.”
There was nothing startled in his voice, nothing curious, or condemning: no judgments, and no happy, bright assurances.
She saw that, unlike most people, this man didn't need to pretend to be anyone but himself.
The old man reached over and pushed the button. At the stop, he heaved himself up, heavily, grabbing the cane that hung over his seat. The cane shuddered in his hand briefly before he found his balance. He glanced over. His smile wrapped around her, sheltering. A warmth moved toward her, but he knew not to touch.
Then, he was clumping slowly to the front of the bus, his cane thumping, step by step. He waved a hand at the driver as the door gusted open.
“You take care now,” the driver told him, watching as the man climbed
She leaned back in her seat. For a moment, her brain could bypass all the noise, the noxious smells, her own racing, frightened thoughts.
She felt a smile beginning from inside herself. It reached up from her chest, into her face, the warmth of kindness, of human acceptance.
She breathed into it.
For now, that was enough.
Debbie Bennett was an Early Childhood Educator for many years. She has published poetry in various Canadian journals: The New Quarterly and The Capilano Review, as well as in an American publication: The Last Girls’ Club. She recently published a piece in Brilliant Flash Fiction. Debbie has a granddaughter on the Autism spectrum and has some attributes in that direction, herself. Debbie lives on Salt Spring Island, BC with her husband and, during the school year, with their granddaughter.
WTMMG
by Benjamin Eric
He never drives with the window open. Today he does.
The weather is pleasant. It is rare for temperature to have a perfect balance, whether you are measuring in Celsius or Fahrenheit.
The old neighborhood is green. Radiance from the lush vines is juxtaposed to the city’s concrete, and the sprouting nature gives the gray and black blocks an illusion of invisibility.
His friend’s music plays through his speakers. One hand is out the window with spread fingers to let the breeze slip through like a stroke in the ocean. Tires roll through memories of their youth. He exerts the speakers to make sure psychedelic sounds can travel, because he knows sound is not similar to light, which is so fast it defines our sense of instant. He wants to make sure the music can travel no matter how slow.
Perhaps it moves so slow that it can fade to the past.
Perhaps the music will crawl back fifteen years and meet the two boys in their youth and intersect at a particular moment in their lives. Even if the sound is faint to the point of being mute, maybe they will still hear a whisper that will plant the seed for the song to bloom.
Does the present own a collage of sounds that crawled back from the future?
He brakes at the corner where the two boys would catch the city bus to their special education school. The catholic school kids would laugh and call them retards. Back then, ‘learning difference’ was the politically correct term for the neurodivergent. The normal kids did not care.
In his car, beside the bus stop, he turns the volume dial to the limit. He plays “WTMMG” (Will This Make Me Good). If sounds can travel through time, he hopes the boys hear that song. Maybe that is what gave them the confidence to give the finger to the catholic school boys who got off four stops before them.
###
Despite the nice weather, he lays in bed. He is tired. “G.O.M.D.” (Get Off My Dick) plays and a hush proceeds the fading instrumentals.
His room is quiet. He tries to listen.
There are noises he hears. There are a few he can’t identify, like creaks in the house.
Maybe, he thinks, they are from footsteps that belong to whoever will live in this house some day. Will he still live here years from now? Is he hearing himself walk in the other room?
He squints his eyelids and forms a droplet in his socket. He tenses the muscles around his brows, creating a prism of light patterns like a crystal sitting under the lingering sun.
The sun is over ninety-three million miles away from him. He continues to play with the light.
Because light is not like sound. Light is not slow.
Light gives us our concept of instant.
Benjamin is a writer whose stories have been featured in New Plains Review, East by Northeast, Prometheus Dreaming, Querencia Press, and Suburban Witchcraft Magazine. He will also have photography featured in Months to Years. Previously, he was a member of The Washington DC Comedy Writers Group. WTMMG is inspired by 'Will This Make Me Good,' a studio album from Nick Hakim (a dear friend since childhood).
This Belongs to You
by Aimee LaBrie
She was my 57th client. I remember that because the house number was 75 Leipzig Street, and I thought that it was significant that the numbers were reversed. Back then, I was always searching for signs, making meaning out of birth dates and billboard signs, license plates and fortune cookies.
I worked for twenty years as a professional organizer. I'd seen hoard before, that was my job. You must imagine that my own house was as neat as a pin. And it was until Margaret Pieman. After her, I let things stay where they fell, began to like the towers and the path I wove through to make it to the microwave or the recliner where I slept after my bedroom was overtaken by cast-off clothes, stuffed animals, jars of jam, black umbrellas that had been turned inside out by the wind. I liked the accumulation of things. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Margaret Pieman lived in a three-bedroom ranch in Fort Worth, Texas. When I first got out of the car, the sun reflected off the windows and I thought, Oh, wow, this is beautiful, because the whole house was lit up like it had a halo around it. The windows were blocked off with blankets, so it was impossible to see inside.
She met me at the front door, beside a faded sleigh with Santa at the head of it, his mouth open in as if he had just finished a string of "hohohos." Nine plastic reindeer lay on their sides, looking like that had been fallen into a sudden sleep.
Margaret shook my hand firmly, a tough grasp with hands in gardening gloves. She said, "You are not going to believe this."
I thought, Yes, I will. I'd been to the house of a gentleman the month before who had kept every single store receipt since he was fifteen years old. He wore an adult diaper because he could no longer make his way to the toilet. The hallway was blocked by boxes of fly-fishing magazines. A jar of discarded dentures earned space on a bookshelf stuffed with Russian newspapers. That is one example.
At the time, I thought it was a tragedy.
We went inside the house. I had my mask with me, in case there was a smell. Bug spray in case there were roaches. Cell phone on speed dial in case one of us tripped over boxes and tipped headfirst into a collection of broken shells. But I was not prepared for what happened when she opened the door. First, the smell. I was accustomed to human feces, animal waste, food rotted past the maggot stage and well into fly development. That is what I braced myself for, the odor of decay and neglect. Instead, what I got was cinnamon and yeast, like baking bread. It reminded me immediately of my grandparent's bakery in Jersey City.
What in the world, as my grandmother would have said.
Margaret gripped my hand, saying, "I won't let you fall."
I moved forward in the pitch black. I heard the roar of a roller coaster so loud, I ducked, thinking that a track ran above us, then the jingle-jangle of fun house music, mixed with the murmur of people talking, as if we'd stepped into a crowd. It reminded me of a family vacation to Atlantic City from 25 years ago. We kept moving forward in the dark. It was like being plunged into the bottom of a cave. But I could feel this very particular bite of wind on my face--a brisk wind, cold, the slicing type only found on New England cliffs, where I had been when I was fifteen or so. That was the summer I fell in love for the first time with Haskell Jenkins. Best kisser in my life. I hadn't thought of him in forever.
Margaret said, "This is the hardest part. Step over that rope there and now you can see."
Like a switch had been flipped, light flooded into a room that may have been a place to eat or a place to visit with guest. It had become something else entirely. "Oh," I said. "Oh, my God."
At first, it looked like a typical hoarder's property. A sea of seeming garbage, random objects, piles of clothes, worn, cardboard boxes with caved in sides. But when I got over the initial and familiar shock of the hoard, I noticed that everything in the room looked familiar. The broken clock looked like one that belonged to my great grandmother. The china dolls whose heads I could just see peeking from a cabinet across the room--they didn't belong to anyone I knew, but I remembered them from the doll museum we visited when I was twelve. A stuffed seagull in a cage from the boardwalk in 1987. The square desk of my fifth grade English teacher, Mr. Calise. The red dog collar from our Collie, Bolt, who got hit by a car.
"It's all here," Margaret said. "Everything you can remember. I saved it for you."
That whole day and into the night, I wandered through her house, marveling at the collection of things from times and places I had forgotten.
Now, my house is like hers. I go to yard sales. I save bits of paper I find blowing across the street. I collect chess sets with broken knights, stacks of playing cards whose aces are missing, photo albums of strangers, knives locked up tight in wooden boxes. I have a system. I was a professional organizer, after all, so things are kept in categories. Mostly, I'm just guessing what they mean, why they might matter to someone else.
I am waiting for that person to arrive and find the things she lost.
Aimee LaBrie's short stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Minnesota Review, Cagibri, Zoetrope, North American Review, Mortar Magazine, Gulf Stream Literary Review, Cleaver Magazine, and others. Her work has been nominated three times for Pushcart Prizes. Her first short story collection, Wonderful Girl, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for fiction and was published by the University of North Texas Press. Aimee teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. She can be reached on Twitter @butcallmebetsy and by email at aimeelabrie@gmail.com.
Phantom Words
by Geeta Johal
Syd searches for the daily crossword, he folds the paper on the kitchen table and clicks open his pen.
Sadie pours herself a cup of coffee.
There's a pile of dishes from the night before, soaking in brown water. Syd's clothes hang over the furniture to dry. His empty beer bottles are stacked in a pyramid by the door.
Sadie peels off a wet t-shirt from the dining chair. There's a gnawing feeling in her stomach, she wonders if there will ever be enough room for her in Syd's apartment. Sadie takes a sip of coffee and lets out a sigh.
Syd chews on his pen.
Sadie fidgets with her bracelet, twisting it over her wrist. He always feels so distant, she thinks. She folds her arms on the table and fixes her gaze on Syd. Just tell him what you're thinking. C'mon, stop stalling!
Syd sees Sadie looking in his direction; he gives her a polite smile and returns to his crossword.
Sadie clears her throat. "Syd we've been going out for about six years. How do you think things are going?"
Six across, a place you fetch water out of.
Syd tilts his head and writes into squares. "Well!"
Sadie bites her lip. "I need more out of this relationship. I'm twenty-seven. I want to get married and have a family. Do you see me as just a girl you sleep with? How do you really feel about me? Where do you see us three years from now?"
Twenty–seven down, a five-letter word starts with A, found in a grocery store, he thinks.
"Aisle!"
Three across, type of sheep, type of sheep? Type of sheep? Type of…….
"Of ewe."
"I love you too," she smiles. "I wasn't sure if you felt the same way. We've been together for so long…don't you think it's time we got serious? How do you feel about getting engaged?"
Seventeen across, found at a beach starts with an S.
"Shore!"
Sadie's eyes grow wide. "Really? I had no idea you felt this way! Maybe we can set a date? What works for you?"
Thirteen down, month named after Cesar.
"July."
Sadie flashes a nervous smile. "That's so soon…I mean I would only have two months to plan the wedding but if you're ready…"
Two across, the river runs its ______.
"Course!"
"Of course we are!" Sadie leaps out of her chair and kisses him on the cheek. "I can't wait! I have to call my mother and tell her we're getting married!
Syd finishes his crossword, puzzled.
Geeta Johal is a fiction writer from Montreal. She was selected for the 2021 QWF fiction mentorship program and is a 2019 Disquiet Alumni. Her previous publications include The Carnival in Esoterica Magazine. When she is not writing, she can often be found checking out live concerts, boxing, or reading. Follow her on Instagram @gj_writer or contact her on Linkedin (Geeta Johal Writer) for inquiries related to her work.
Fairy Door
by Jacob Austin
Arboreal scar tissue webs the air in a fountain’s frozen spray above the dark stump. Invisible, but there. It rises up in a solid trunk high above our backyard, and up there, far above our heads, explodes into a network of branches, reproducing itself fractally in a labyrinth of lines and leaves. Shannon, our daughter, cries as we stand in the backyard after the men have left, surveying their devastation. Jules picks her up, tries to comfort her as I wrap my arm around her shoulder.
The tree’s ghost hovers there above us. I wish it would go off to that northern forest where the trees rise and fall like waves, the forest floor a sea of mixed nutrients, each new tree a fresh combination of tree spirits, growing as high as they can before diving back into the moss pad to be hugged into the earth, again and again, an unbroken forest, the eternal paradise of trees, but this one will not leave us. It has one root still caught in the yard and will not let go.
We stand for a while as the sun sets on the opposite side of the house. As the fireflies begin to appear, I steer us inside where I try to cheer everyone up by putting on The Beatles and making Shannon’s favorite dinner, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. She sits glumly at the window bench and stares into the backyard.
None of us wanted the tree cut down. Never. We loved that tree. A live oak in the full glory of its life. Over two hundred years old, according to Jules’ brother. Its limbs had grown so heavy that some drooped to the earth, and then, with the added support, sprang back towards the sun. An overturned bowl of a tree. To stand near its trunk was to be enveloped in shadow. A vegetal hug some ten degrees cooler than the yard beyond.
What we refer to as our backyard is not truly our backyard. We had simply been early homesteaders in this new subdivision. The vast field behind us is to be the final tract they develop. Shannon was born in this house. She grew up with that unfenced field as her domain, but we have no right to it. We could not stop the men who showed up to take down the tree.
After dinner, none of us feel any better. Shannon goes to sleep early, and I make drinks for Jules and myself, but they offer no relief, and Jules goes to bed not long after. I make another round and walk with it out to the trunk, hoping to shoo away the lingering spirit, but I cannot convince it. Heavy sadness like a cartoon rain cloud has permeated the area. The stench of freshly cut wood is nauseating. I step through the new mulch, but my heavy feet sinking into the bouncy turf is obscene and I must excuse myself. Ducking away, I make my way back inside and sit down with my computer in the den.
The internet is entered into much as a dream. A dream takes us to the underworld where it requires lucid concentration not to become disoriented. Almost immediately, the blue glow begins working on my brain, the sea lapping at edges, ocean glass shorn of its sharpness, the deep melancholy of whales…Holding my family in mind, I fortify myself against it and continue my search. In that way, I manage to surface with something useful still in my grasp. I immediately shut the laptop before it can suck me back in and go to the kitchen where I write down my idea on a piece of paper and stick it to the fridge, then go to sleep.
There are many routes to the same places.
Fairy Door, the note reads, and it had been all Shannon needed to go on, apparently, for, when we awake, we find her in the backyard, already busy with the work of its installation. We decide not to disturb her. Instead, Jules makes coffee while I fry a couple eggs, and we sit at the kitchen bench and watch. It is nearly lunchtime before she finishes up and heads inside. Beyond her, in the far reaches of the field, large machinery is at work tearing up the earth. She looks tiny against their backdrop. She comes in smudged with dirt, hungry as a fiend, and puts away two PB&Js and three dino nuggets before she is ready to discuss her work.
“What were you up to out there?”
“Building a fairy door,” she beams.
“What’s that?” Jules asks.
“It’s a door for fairies. They just need someone to put in the door,” she explains, panting between gulps of milk. She runs a grimy forearm across her dairy wet lips and continues: “Once they get inside the tree they can set up the rest.” More milk and a mouthful of stegosaurus: “I don’t know why, but they need help with the door.”
“Ooh,” Jules coos with interest. “How do you know so much about fairies?”
“I dreamed it,” she says, biting a t-rex in half. “Dad was there. He told me.”
“I told you this in your dream?”
“Yeah,” she says with a you-were-there-dummy-don’t-you-remember tone that is cute for now but will find its true expression in a few short years. I look towards the fridge and see the note still clipped where I left it. When I glance out the window, towards the tree, the great shadow is folding inwards, inverting itself to enter its own trunk through the recently installed sunflower yellow door at its base.
Jacob Austin moves boxes in a supermarket distribution center. His published work is collected at jacobottoaustin.com.
Anyway
by KC Henderson
I couldn’t even see her. Well, not her face, anyway. Was she in pain? Of course she was. That part I could hear. A moan here. A groan there. A doctor’s bloody hand. I knew there might be trouble with the labor. The baby wasn’t ready — yet.
I looked down at my feet, covered in these weird baby blue paper things they’d forced on me.
She screamed. This time so loudly acid crawled up my throat.
No one was telling me anything. The only telling was from my partner’s screams.
Should we have gotten married?
Maybe not, not if the child wasn’t going to make it. Anyway.
A former journalist, Kristen Henderson now writes flash fiction and memoir. Her recent work has appeared in the 101-Word Story Journal, Nymphs, BOMBFIRE, amongst others. She splits her time between her homes in Los Angeles and Lamy, NM, where the skies never end. She can be reached at akchenderson@gmail.com.
The Evening News
by E. Deshpande
Vatsu does not mind when everyone is told to stay inside. Others do: she sees them scream and carry on to reporters on the seven-o’clock news. They brandish signs about freedom and society and haircuts, demanding that the world open up for them.
Vatsu has cut and dyed her own hair since she was a teenager. She has months’ worth of black hair dye stocked in the downstairs bathroom. She is not worried.
She has no need for society. She retreated from it last year when Nikhil died, though if you asked her she would say that society retreated from her. First the acquaintances, the nosy women and that horrible young priest, demanding that she bleach herself into their version of a widow. They complained about her behind her back, then to her face. When neither tactic worked, they ignored her altogether. She prefers it this way. Now that the world has shut down, she does not even have to see them at temple.
Her family hung on a little longer. They felt sorry for her, all alone in Amrika. But she did not feel sorry enough for herself: she refused to come home when they offered, and their pride would never allow them to offer twice. She has not heard from them since all this began. She is waiting for them to call first—she has her pride, too.
Her children would say that they are the only ones who have stayed. They call her at regular intervals, to check in. Hi mom, they say in broad American accents that she still cannot quite believe belong to her children, Just checking in to see how you are.
They used to call once, maybe twice a month, but now that everyone is stuck at home with nothing better to do, they call twice a week. Two calls a week from her three children. Sometimes Vatsu feels as though she spends her entire life on the phone with them, which would not be a bad thing if the calls ever varied. They all list the same updates: work, the food they ate this week, the shows they watched on television. Often they make a remark about the weather on the west coast. Then they ask her what she has done. When they say goodbye, they are all, always, a little too audibly relieved to be done with that day’s filial duty.
Vatsu sees young people visiting their elderly relatives in the lighthearted segment that follows the evening news: from outside their grandparents’ windows, students report their accomplishments and new parents show off infants. Vatsu does not have any grandchildren. All her children are unmarried—her oldest daughter is nearing thirty-five with no sign of settling down. Her sons, both with girlfriends, offer more hope. They always have.
Grandchildren or not, her children make no effort to present themselves at her window. It’s still not safe to fly, they say. And the drive would take days. Besides, where would we stay?
This is the latest in years of excuses. The weather is bad and a friend is getting married and the holidays are coming up so they’ll visit soon, anyway. It’s Nikhil’s fault, even though he’s gone. He drove them away. He drove everyone away, which is why Vatsu is already used to being alone, why she does not mind this state-enforced isolation.
Her children, influenced by their therapeutic Western educations, use words like alcoholic and addiction. In the months after Nikhil passed, they wanted her to get help. Grief counselling, they said. Antidepressants. Support groups.
Vatsu ignored them. Nikhil’s problem was that he got sloppy: he would spill, knock things over, let the car drift up onto the curb.
She stopped letting him drive years ago. She kept the keys hidden in a zippered pocket of her purse where she thought they were safe from his careless eyes. But she underestimated him, because the night it happened, he went through her things and found the keys. She fell asleep in the sitting room to a television program on chocolate factories. A moment of weakness. She woke up as the credits rolled and shuffled sleepily out to an entryway in chaos: coats on the floor, her purse upturned, wallet open on the carpet. Nikhil, gone.
She told the police that she didn’t know why Nikhil went out so late that night, but she did know. They had run dry. Usually restricted to foot travel, he relied on the cheap liquor at the shop a few blocks from their house. He took the car to treat himself to something nice.
Alcohol. The great equalizer. She and Nikhil downed bottle after bottle and pretended they were not spit on, yelled at, accused of invading and stealing jobs. They drank beer from Boston and wine from Napa Valley and finally felt like Americans. American alcohol embraced them the way it embraced everyone else. It did not mind that they were brown immigrants, that their passports weren’t navy blue stamped with a proud golden eagle.
Their children have the passports. They have the accents, which Vatsu and Nikhil could never master no matter how hard they tried. They only had to say hello to receive the fatal question: Where are you from?
Her family never left India. They have no idea what it’s like to live here, in a country that professes to be perfect while it breaks you again and again.
The priest, the women from temple—they could never reconcile their image of her boisterous, warm husband with the headline: Drunk driver dead in car crash. She doesn’t blame them. It was hard for her to reconcile the two versions of Nikhil, and of herself.
But she was always stronger than he was: better at holding in her sadness and her alcohol. She will survive this as she has survived everything else.
The seven-o’clock news is starting soon. Vatsu sits back on the couch, turns up the volume, and pours herself another glass.
Emma Deshpande writes short fiction and is currently at work on two novels. Her work has recently appeared in Passengers Journal and the 2020 anthology More Time. She was shortlisted for the 53rd Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest and won the University College London Publisher's Prize in 2018. She lived in London for four years and now lives in New York City. Her work has received support from Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, Aspen Words, A Public Space, One Story, and Tin House. You can find her on Instagram @deshpande_writes.
Apex
by Alex Kipp
“Ughh,” Leo thought, as the sound of the alarm clock carved its way through his head. “Morning already?” Lately, the clock had become the only way he could keep on schedule. “Windows would've made it easier,” he mused with a little resentment. But Leo also cherished his privacy in his off hours, so really the cavernous bedroom suited him well. The thought made him feel better about the room, but didn't relieve the resentment, just pushed it over to another topic.
“Totally fucking arbitrary,” he fumed. What was the point in getting up and starting at the same time every day when the work could be so spotty? Leo sometimes waited for hours for the first client to arrive, but had to spend all of that time in full performance mode, as if he was being observed.
“It's not 'as if', dipshit,” Leo said to himself, admonishingly. It was true. Every moment in the field was being observed by the executives on Twelve. (Leo was pretty sure they weren't ACTUALLY observing EVERY moment – they were probably too busy coming up with new policies to fuck him over – but there were cameras everywhere. Rumor had it that the cameras fed directly to a wall of video screens in a sort of open lounge area for the executives on Twelve. Rumor also had it that most executives chose not to visit it because the organization was in an “austerity” period and anyone seen in the lounge would be viewed as “lounging” and therefore redundant. But the point was that they could be watching at any time. And all it took was one moment of lying down on the job, or seeming to, by the people on Twelve, and boom! another reason for them to turn the screws, or have another interminable one-on-one about “goal alignment”, or, even worse, bring in some very well-meaning outside consultant to humiliate the staff with yet another team-building workshop.)
“I'm just not set up for this,” Leo thought. It wasn't without guilt, but it wasn't also the first time that Leo had felt that the 40-hour work week was not for him. Again, the word that jumped back into his head was, “arbitrary”. Left to his own devices Leo felt he might sleep twenty hours a day. That seemed crazy, but why did it seem crazy? Because the people on Twelve expected something else? Because some little claque of Robber Barons who simultaneously lived lives of incredible power and privilege off of passive income, but also lived inside the heads of every living thing on the planet, needed to maximize everyone's productivity? Honestly, Leo thought, he could probably give a lot more to the customers if he only had to deal with them four hours a day. It might not even feel like work, then. More like a really fun time. A chance to work on craft. To make each moment count.
“Quality was never the goal,” he thought with a resigning yawn, the only act of rebellion he could muster at the moment. He'd had thoughts. Violent fantasies, sometimes, where he'd be face to face with a some smug man in Brooks Brothers shirtsleeves, with a little button that said “CEO” on it. Just as the man turned to explain Leo's “authentic work” to his gawking, similarly-attired friends, he'd have trouble finding the words. Because his head had been severed from his neck and his face would be sliding down Leo's gullet.
Leo shuddered at this act of wish fulfillment, frustrated as much with its lack of originality as its pointlessness. Tony, an old grouch of an acquaintance, had mumbled this fantasy for years. “Fucking authentic? I'll give you something authentic!!” Everyone thought it was funny, if a little tasteless. Until the day he actually went through with it.
God, the blood was everywhere. On the ground, on the wriggling body of the CEO, on Tony, who, it must be said, looked more satisfied than Leo had ever seen him. The screams seemed to go on forever, most annoyingly from people who were much to far away too have been materially affected or even seen the event. The whole place was shut down for a week. Everyone was interrogated and “goal-aligned”. Tony was never seen again. But within six months things were right back to where they had been, complete with a new CEO in Brooks Brothers shirtsleeves, who, understandably was more of a delegator in his particular management style than his predecessor had been.
The thunder of rails came overhead. Leo suddenly felt a pang of hunger. He sniffed around his dark room for some morsel, anything. The hunger started to quake in his belly. It drove him to the exit and into the daylight outside where, atop his reserved spot, a meal had been placed as if by magic. It was the same thing, as always, but so meticulously arranged. “Presentation is everything for these fucking people,” Leo thought, as he lumbered over.
Leo took his perch and chewed into the first bits of flesh, immediately basking in the massage they gave to his digestive system.
“Mom, it's the King of Jungle! He's an apex predator!” Leo heard a fascinated eight-year-old exclaim. Leo marveled at the modern education system, which seemed to have drilled “apex predator” into every single eight-year-old's head. The boy watched for a moment. Leo ignored him and chomped another big serving of flesh.
The boy's attention waned. “Where's the petting zoo?”
“Hold on for a second, Michael. Maybe he'll give us a roar,” his mother said.
Leo yawned and continued to eat.
Alex Kipp writes funny things, some for performance, some for print, some for social. He works in the Big Apple (the Manhattan you've probably been to). He's from the Little Apple (the Manhattan you've never heard of). He lives in Brooklyn, like every other smart-ass from Kansas who thinks he's hot sh*t. Alex wrote a mockumentary pilot about an idiot running for Mayor that won some awards, called "Man of the People". He wrote a short story about a terrible place to work called, "Better! Faster!" which recently placed as a finalist in the Roadmap Write Start Competition. He wrote a short comedy screenplay called "Options" about a man and his double, which was a Blue Cat semi-finalist. Alex used to be a Clown (theatre-type, not the f***ing birthday-type). Now he does ethics for money. More than once, he has been in a promising local band. His portfolio can be seen here: www.alex-kipp.com
Sweet Dreams
by Theresa
“Last night I had the strangest dream/I sailed away to China/In a little rowboat to find ya/And you said you had to get your laundry clean/Didn’t want no one hold you/What does that mean?”—Matthew Wilder. We sang that song for Mother when she was in the hospital dying. She couldn’t talk. I wonder if she dreamed.
I dream of North Korea. The Olympic athletes were going to be publicly killed because they embarrassed their dictator by talking to us Americans. They were the swimmers. They swam, anyway. I wondered why.
Once a boyfriend said to me, “I love you, but honey, you’ve got some crazy shit going on in your head at night.”
I had to stop taking statins because of the nightmares that ensued. My doctor thought it was a small price to pay. I disagreed.
Earlier than that, the meds that were keeping me alive made me want to die. The meds that were supposed to solve that problem made me dream of crabs eating the flesh off the fingers of a beautiful woman at the bottom of the ocean.
Rest is not rest.
In the bureau there was a scrap of paper. The words were written in Mother’s beautiful handwriting.
“Hi, baby.”
“Hi, Mommy.”
“You’ve been having some bad dreams, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Don’t you worry about them. It’s because of the medicine they have to give you, right now.”
“Okay.”
“I love you, baby.”
“I love you, Mommy.”
They say they thought Father Clarence told Punky she was dying. Each day he came to give her communion. One day, he wanted to see her alone and they talked for a long time. When he left, she was just quiet. Thirteen is very young for such a terrific burden.
When the final crisis came, my other sister was too frightened to kiss her good-bye before the ambulance took her away. My father vowed to piss on the grave of his supervisor who gave him trouble about coming home from work.
She never came home from the hospital. She never was taken off the medicines that made her have bad dreams. When she died, Mother and Dad were at her side.
Mother said, “Oh look, Joe. She’s crying.” Tears slid down her cheeks from under her closed lids.
The fat, coarse nurse said, “Oh, they always do that.” Her children were among those who had made fun of my sister before she fell ill. They were among those who later begged for forgiveness.
Mother never recovered.
Kneeling at the grave of the sister I never knew.
I am glad Mother is dead: now she is with you.
An inveterate adventurer and a chronic writer, Theresa has lived all over the United States but spent most of her life in California. Before her current professorship in Asia, she spent two years in her RV while writing her novel. Generally, she writes Grit Lit, always pursuing the hero in the ordinary. You can reach her at www.facebook.com/TheresaSanfordSchmits or theresaschmits.com.
Guts
by Emmanuelle Christie
The first time I tried a pill my stomach- a horse drugged to run on a bad leg- careened out of my body, broke apart, and died. I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands clamped over my knees until I could feel my organs again, too-heavy and sulky in my bones. I hated alcohol for the sandbags it weighted me with, the way my body dragged through molasses and disembodied laughter. In luminous wine spills like the bruises rose under my clothes and my teeth felt blunt in my mouth. I wouldn’t touch pills again, I wouldn’t smoke or drink. But every bad girl deserves a vice. Every bad girl needs a sword to throw herself on: pain reminds us bad girls that we’re alive.
My vice becomes emptiness, the sharp beautiful hollow of an empty stomach. I don’t like food for the same reason I don’t like drugs or alcohol: like everything else food is a substance. Hunger is a lemon-flavoured Popsicle. Hunger is ice water. Hunger is a cold spoon. Hunger is a deep sea crystal cave. Or the citric remnants of Sour Patch Kids. Hunger is the opposite of human. The lived-in taste of mouths, like hoarder’s bedrooms. The reek-salt crevices of human bodies where nobody goes. Hunger tastes like the opposite of genitals.
In a circle with other girls I listen to my stomach crack and groan. Hunger is a fickle mistress with narrow hips and perfect skin. I lust after hunger in lecherous and unholy ways. I et my body break for her because the agonies she gives me run out of my mouth with the self-emptying sweetness of sugar-thick spit. I relish my emptiness with the puffed-lip hedonism of a libertine. Spread on our shared therapeutic couch in stifling summer heat, wearing only underwear under my sundress, open to the choke-smell of powdered lemonade and bad sunlight drifting as libidinously over my skin as a teenager’s hands.
We are given pads of paper to sketch with, Crayolas instead of pencils. I find black and draw a corpulent outline, vaguely human shaped, and fill it in from crown to heel, except for a perfect white egg in the middle, in the guts. A red mouth like a wound.
“What’s this?” our therapist asks.
“Me,” I say, knowing this will get me a good grade in therapy. “Before everything, when I was better.”
“Interesting. Why did you put her in your stomach?”
I shrug.
“Did you eat her?”
“No. That’s just where she lives.”
Clara, with chin-length bleach-silver hair, sweats vodka and draws hands over and over, phalanges like buttered sausages, greasy with graphite. Her skin is polished like sugar and her lipstick is perfect cherry red, as if she does not pop laxatives like a ruined starlet. She gives me a sennoside in the bathroom, I suck cold water from the tap.
“I hate it here.” Exhaling mint vapour towards the cracked window. “Sitting in a circle talking. Like that does anything.”
“Who made you come?”
“My dad.” She rolls her eyes. “Like he’s trying to say sorry for everything.”
We are just alike, Clara and I, reflective and luscious like two halves of the same fruit, two buds from the same tree. We have traded our history like recipes. Passed back and forth I have learned what made Clara, the hands that moulded her into shape, and she has learned how my fear, kneaded properly, becomes straight-edge. For me it was at a party. For her it was in someone’s basement, just a regular night when she was cracked open and turned into something else.
My mother is late picking me up. Clara and I sit on the curb watching licorice tar bubble in the heat, sweat glazing our skins.
“I think it’s going to rain,” I say. “The air is so heavy.”
“Yes. I think there’s a storm coming.”
She leans across my body to point at the sky, the bruise-darkness of an incoming deluge. Her hair is a butterfly kiss against my upper arm. When she leans back it slides down to my wrist and leaves instructions for how to make me shiver. I let her tongue seek my lips and trace the shape of my mouth, smooth as eggshell and slick as yolk. I open my mouth for her. My guts are quiet for once, satiated and full.
Emmanuelle Christie was raised in British Columbia and now lives in Toronto. They hold a degree in literature and now study theology at the University of Toronto. Their work has been published in Pedestal Magazine and Acta Victoriana. They can be found on Twitter @_itcannothold and Instagram @itcannothold.
My First Gun
by Penny Jackson
I’m in Hollywood but it’s Florida, not L.A. Five minutes to midnight, New Year’s Eve. A boardwalk filled with glittering shards of smashed beer bottles. Girls wearing stiletto heels and too much eyeliner teeter across the boardwalk like acrobats. Strobe lights from clubs wash our faces with green and red lights. Already someone in an alley is throwing up. Josh, the boy I love, is walking six feet ahead of me with another girl, Claudia, whom he just met at the hotel pool. Claudia looks like Julie Christie from an old movie I saw on the plane, but if possible, she is even more beautiful. I am devastated.
I love Josh too much. I am sixteen years old and never had fallen in love before. And it’s really falling. Every time I see him, my knees buckle and I see the ground rushing toward my face.. If I touch him, the feel of his skin, the smell of his skin, stays with me like a tactile scent. His eyes are green and hazel and his lashes are longer than mine. I didn’t realize until now that boys can be not only handsome, but beautiful. Handsome seems trite. Beautiful really hurts.
The boy in front of me, an ordinary boy wearing a Miami Dolphins sweatshirt, jeans and red high top sneakers, suddenly sways and falls onto the boardwalk. Something shiny and hard falls out of his pocket and suddenly the crowd just stops. Freezes. No one says a word as the boy’s gun lies next to an abandoned carton of popcorn. A gun. I’ve never seen a real gun before. I stand there, curious and strangely not scared. Perhaps it’s because Josh is killing me. Maybe I want to die. Maybe I want someone else to die.
Josh is gently touching Claudia’s cheek and then leans over to kiss her. I kneel down to pick up the gun. It’s heavier than I thought and feels cold even in this heat.
I point the gun at Josh and Claudia, who lean against the wall, heavily breathing. Can I do it? My ears are filled with the explosions of the fireworks. How loud can a gun’s blast be? Will anyone notice? I wonder if Josh’s blood will be the same color as Claudia’s. Maybe after I shoot them, I’ll place the gun against my forehead and pull the trigger. When you love someone that much, you can do anything.
“Hey that’s mine!’
The boy in the Miami Dolphins sweatshirt roughly grabs the gun away from me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hisses before disappearing back into the crowd. I watch him walk into the bright lights and clanging bells into a pinball arcade.
Josh and the girl are gone. I look up into the sky. The moon is as silver as the boy’s gun. Could I have really shot Josh, the girl and even me? I am sixteen. I sink down and weep.
I will never see another gun until twenty years later, when the man who is my husband is slamming my head hard against the refrigerator door. He is shouting obscenities. This is not the first time. Once he broke my arm in three places. “Accidents can happen,” my husband explained to friends, claiming I slipped on ice.
He turns to pick up his whiskey bottle and I see the gun on the table. Although my head is spinning, I grab his gun and point it to the back of his head. He doesn’t see me as he holds his whiskey bottle to his mouth. My husband’s gun is heavy but my aim is steady. When you hate someone that much, you can do anything.
Suddenly, I remember that New Year’s Eve in Florida so many years ago. I am transported to that boardwalk, the smell of sulfur from the fireworks, hear the applause of the crowd, see Josh gently stroking the cheek of his new girlfriend. I didn’t shoot Josh that night. I didn’t shoot anyone. But this time is different. Accidents can happen.
Penny Jackson is a writer who lives in New York City. Her stories and poems have appeared in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, StoryQuarterly, Real Fiction, The Croton Review, The Edinburgh Review, The Ontario Review, and other magazines. Her stories have been published in the collection L.A. Child by Untreed Reads and her novel, Becoming the Butlers was published by Bantam Books. She has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow in Fiction and also a Mireliies Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University. Penny is also a playwright and a screenplay writer and can be found on Instagram @Pennyjackso_ and Twitter: @pennyplaywright.
Running in Time
by Ellis Shuman
“Are you going running tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? Maybe.”
I didn’t run every day, but there were days when I needed to. It wasn’t only about getting back in shape; it was also about getting back in time.
As my wife turned off the bedroom light and kissed me goodnight, I closed my eyes and smiled to myself, remembering how wonderful a day it had been.
I had gone on my morning run—3 miles in the park, which was pretty good for a 60-year-old man, especially after what had happened—and came back to find breakfast laid out on the table for me. I hopped into the shower and then joined her at the table, a cup of steaming hot coffee already placed at the side of my plate.
“The kids are coming today,” she informed me.
“That’s great! They haven’t been here in a few weeks,” I replied, picking up my coffee. Two sons, their spouses, and four granddaughters. What more could I ask for?
“Let’s do a barbecue,” she suggested. “I’ll bake the pecan pie the kids love.”
“Sure.”
That morning, sitting on the patio with my offspring while the young ones frolicked on the back lawn, my older son asked how I was feeling. Everyone had been very concerned when I was in the hospital recovering from the car accident concussion and now, during my convalescence at home. They worried that I had changed, that I was not right in the head. That my mind was affected, injured. Before I had a chance to answer, my wife spoke up.
“Your father goes running nearly every day.”
“It’s not too much for you?” my son asked.
“I’m fine,” I assured them.
“You look like you’re getting younger, healthier,” my daughter-in-law noted. "As if you’re turning back time."
I fired up the barbecue and grilled steaks for the adults and hot dogs for the children. Baked potatoes and fresh green beans; coleslaw and a tossed green salad—a full, tasty meal accompanied by ice-cold boutique beer. We lingered at the patio table, enjoying the summer breeze and steering our conversation away from politics, and finished with coffee and the scrumptious pecan pie.
“Too much food!” my younger son said, patting his bloated belly.
“We’ll all get fat,” his brother said with a laugh.
“Not him,” my wife said, resting her hand on my shoulder. “He’ll run it off.”
Later, after the children had left, we sat down for a romantic film on Netflix and then, because we were alone in the house, we retired to the bedroom for some romance of our own.
“A wonderful day,” my wife said that evening at dinner. “If only every day was like this.”
I nodded my head in agreement. Weekends were never long enough, but there were ways to make weekends last.
All of this was going through my mind as we lay in bed that night, hearing my wife’s light snoring. “If only every day was like this,” she had said.
It is still dark when I lace up my running shoes and adjust my headphones. What should I listen to today? I open Spotify, set my running app, go outside, and take a breath of the brisk morning air.
I prefer running before the sun comes up, when the neighborhood is still sleep. I’m not a fast runner, and I’m self-conscious. I wouldn’t want the neighbors to see me—my amateur running form and my slow pace—as I make my way to the park. But once I’m there, circling the open expanses of green grass, I couldn’t care less what anyone might think. I work up a sweat, my muscles ache, and I lose myself to the music.
I return home to find that my wife has laid out breakfast on the table for me. I hop into the shower and then join her at the table, a cup of steaming hot coffee already placed at the side of my plate.
“The kids are coming today,” she informs me.
“That’s great!” I reply, picking up my coffee. “They haven’t been here in a few weeks.”
“Let’s do a barbecue,” she suggests. “I’ll bake the pecan pie that the kids love.”
“Sure.”
When everyone arrives, our granddaughters run down to the lawn, and we sit on the patio. My older son asks how I am feeling.
“Your father goes running nearly every day.”
“You look like you’re getting younger, healthier,” my daughter-in-law notes. "As if you’re turning back time."
I fire up the barbecue—steaks for the adults and hot dogs for the children. Baked potatoes, fresh green beans, salads. Ice-cold beer and pecan pie for dessert. We enjoy the summer breeze and there is no discussion of politics.
Later, after the children leave, we sit down for a romantic film on Netflix and then enjoy some intimate time in the bedroom.
“A wonderful day,” my wife says that evening at dinner. “If only every day was like this,” she adds, and I nod my head in agreement.
That night, when we are both in bed, and before she turns off the light, my wife asks me, “Are you going running tomorrow?”
It has been a wonderful day, indeed. I turn to her and reply.
“Tomorrow? Maybe.”
Ellis Shuman is an American-born Israeli author, travel writer, and book reviewer. His writing has appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The Oslo Times, and The Huffington Post. He is the author of The Virtual Kibbutz, Valley of Thracians, and The Burgas Affair. His short fiction has appeared in Isele Magazine, Vagabond, Literary Yard, The Write Launch, Adelaide Literary, and other literary publications.
Universe on a Stick
by Isaiah Hunt
Hi! Johnny Pluto here with another as-tro-nomical product.
Can we all agree that the ordinary universe can sometimes be dull, unattractive, full of disappointment?
Well, no longer will you have to face the monotony of this world when you’ve got a Universe On a Stick. That’s right, a Universe On a Stick! Any world, big or small, the Universe On a Stick will build them all! The Universe On a Stick includes:
A universe
A stick
And that’s it! It’s as simple as that. The only thing more simple is using it. Pop it right out of the box and right in your mouth, like a lollipop. Think pleasant thoughts, and all your dreams will come true. Yes, even the weird ones!
Now I know what you’re thinking. “Mr. Pluto, how do I know this is real? “
Homegrown in the most secure facilities of our lord and savior Perspective Incorporated, they’ve ripped the formula straight from our universe and embedded its code right here in this tiny stick. That’s as real as can be!
But it’s up to your brain to finish the job. Hero of your own story? You got it! A loving, capable family you can finally call your own? It’s all here! Skiing in space? Sure, why not!
Just look at these satisfied customers, straight from their own worlds!
When I first bought my universe on a stick, I wasn’t sure what to think. It was just a ball full of lights. Now, I’m a 21 year old successful man sitting on the balconies of my own L.A., sipping pink moscato with two kids-- a third one on the way. It feels good to be real.
You really can’t tell what’s what when it comes to a Universe On a Stick. But that’s the point.
It’s like your own choose-your-adventure.
I’m not coming back.
All this for just $5,000,000!
But wait, Call now and receive two for the price of one. It’s an out of this world deal!
WARNING: Refrain from using Universe On a Stick for a prolonged amount of time. Perspective Inc. is not responsible for neglect of bodily functions that includes (but is not limited to) eating, drinking, sleeping, and excretion. Comas, delusions, and sleep paralysis may occur. Contact your doctor first before using Universe On a Stick. Do not use Perspective’s Time-O-Rama 3000 to distribute this product throughout your timeline.
Born and raised as a proud Cleveland native, Isaiah Hunt focuses on near-future stories of his community, the entertainment industry, and transhumanist capitalism. When he’s not fiddling around with music, he’s dreaming of worlds adjacent to our own. He has recently finished his M.F.A. in Creative Writing and is a forthcoming Hopkins Fellow for John Carroll University. His work can be found at the Wick Poetry Center, Luna Negra, and Camel Coat Press. You can reach him at ihunt@kent.edu or Instagram @casual_dream.
Hauntings
by Liliana Lule
The argument stretches across weeks, gnawing at them day and night. She thinks they should name the baby after her mother. He thinks they should name her after no one at all. Before long, her sleep starts to suffer, and she wakes up to phantoms moving at her periphery. When she asks her husband to double-check locks, he tells her it’s in her head. Soon, doors begin to slam by themselves. The walls’ paint jobs warp, the windows fog at noon. She demands to know why he won’t listen to her, and off they go in circles again. Eventually she calls her mother, who reminds her all walls have ears. Her husband insists they’re both being ridiculous, but he doesn’t complain when she sends him to sleep on the couch. In her dreams that night, she sees him with no face, and the unnatural silence in their bedroom wakes her. At the witching hour she stands over him in the living room, his sleeping body vulnerable in the dead of night.
“I think we should stop arguing,” she whispers, and he stirs. Inside her, their daughter shifts. “The house can hear us.”
Liliana Lule is a recent graduate of Emerson College, where she completed an MFA in Creative Writing with a focus in fiction. Her writing interests include questions of identity and culture, particularly of Latines in the U.S., as well as issues of representation and diversity in literature. Her work focuses on issues of belonging, both in terms of interpersonal connections and of the supernatural. She can be reached by email at lilule@rocketmail.com.
Tommyknocker Love
by Gavin Kayner
“Tommyknockers,” Annie said. “You’ve got Tommyknockers.”
They were in bed. For the first time. Steeped in sweat and sex.
“Hear them?”
Nathan did. A distant rapping against the wall beyond their heads.
“They’re like pixies only spelled differently. Wee folk who warn miners in Cornwall of cave-ins.”
“And you believe in mythology.”
“I believe in what I know,” she said, her grin something of the huntress in it.
He kissed her.
She bit him—playfully.
The knocking continued, but their ardency excluded even mythical creatures disguised as tree limbs tapping on the house.
And omens.
Being young and insatiable, only the moment mattered.
And moments of carnality were all that Annie wanted.
“Whatever happens,” she said—later, “never say I love you. It’s a burden I won’t carry.”
They met in English Lit class. When Nathan said Hemingway had lost his charm, she responded, “How can a person lose what they never had?”
“I meant figuratively.”
“Even though he wrote literally,” Annie countered signaling it would be difficult to keep up.
Still, he invited her “to coffee.”
She accepted after pointing out coffee wasn’t a verb.
“Yet,” he said.
The Columbian Urn evoked a cliché: Counterculture media scattered on tattered couches. Earnest students fixating on screens and arcane texts. Various ways to get plugged in and turned on—electronically and otherwise. Lack of irony.
“This is not a date,” Annie proclaimed while sitting and pushing back at that thick tightly curled crown of hair inviting speculation.
“Really? Why?”
“Keeping your expectations in check,” she told him the feral glint in her eyes both promise and threat.
Nathan’s expectations were minimal so he carried on. “Okay, it’s simply coffee with a—beguiling English major.”
“My parents want me to be more marketable. Pharmacy.”
“Drugs.”
“Sounds like an indictment.”
“I have nothing against drugs. Just drug companies.”
“One without the other, anarchist,” Annie said, shrugging, and added. “Social calculus is complexity itself.” Her smile mischievous—sensual. Haunting. They were intimate that afternoon. It sabotaged the arc of Nathan’s life.
Weeks passed. Their intimacy became a narcotic though he chafed against the vocabulary restrictions put on their relationship.
“We’re not dating. We’re not seeing one another. We’re not—lovers,” Annie made clear.
“What are we?” Nathan demanded one night, a cockeyed moon outside his window.
“Definitions are boundaries, Nathan. Boundaries enslave. I won’t be chained by words to you,” she insisted, and left.
Seemingly for good—which Nathan should have accepted.
But withdrawal pains drove him back to her despite the cost of his dependence. Despite his escalating emotional bankruptcy.
Enraptured, he refused to call it lust. And never anything but love. At least to himself.
Annie allowed him renewed access to their sexual gymnastics. His compulsive need. The cost of ecstasy an exhausted surrender. A hunger for more.
In November Nathan paid for his addiction when she announced, “I’m going home for Thanksgiving.”
“I’ll go with you,” Nathan offered.
“No.” Declarative.
“I’ll be good company.”
“I don’t need company—good or otherwise.”
“It’s at least a week apart.”
“We need it.”
“We need each other.”
“That’s why.”
“What are you afraid of?” Nathan demanded sitting up.
“Being consumed!”
“But I—"
“Don’t say it, damn you! It’s a four-letter word and means possession. Obsession. I won’t have it!”
“Fuck it, Annie. I love you!” Exclamatory.
The earth shifted. Cracks appeared in the ceiling. Annie’s eyes hooded over.
She backed out of bed. Her body feline. Sleek and dangerous. Something—malevolent.
She went to the kitchen.
Nathan could hear cutlery being sorted through.
And Tommyknockers at the wall behind his head.
Knocking.
Knocking.
Knocking.
Gavin Kayner's prose, poems, and plays have won numerous awards and appeared in a variety of publications. Most recently, Passager published his short story "Right With God" and Ekphrastic Review "Morning Sun" and "Joesph - 1942." You can contact him at nckgwk75@gmail.com.
The Roof Comes Off
by E.P. La Brecque
It did not happen with all of them, my wives and girlfriends, but it happened with a few. Often enough for me to look for it, hope for it: the loss of the ceiling. Opiated by orgasm, I lay on my back, starfished, staring upwards, waiting for the reveal. Sometimes the ceiling peeled away, curving like the top of an anchovy tin. At others it dissipated like mist. At still others it slowly retracted like an observatory door. What skies they were! The ones with the craquelure of branches, limned in gold, at the edge of the frame. The limitless inventory of the clouds. The birds and other winged creatures crossing singly and in flocks, their cries, their buzzing, insisting on existence. Most of the women wanted to snuggle, watch videos, or simply get up and move on to something else. For a while, thanks to them, I was lost to them. Most didn’t understand, which saddened me, given the gift they had given me. One did, though. She took pride in sending me away and then summoning me back—first, unsuccessfully, with a shake, then with a sharp pinch, and then, finally succeeding, with the tip of a just-blown-out match to the arm.
E.P. La Brecque is a writer and essayist who lives in Northern California and Detroit. He makes his living as a brand strategist and namer. His story "Merv" appeared in February in On The Run. His stories have also recently appeared in The Fabulist and Switch. More at @appstory and at eplabrecque.com.
No Cream, No Sugar
by Naomi Anne Goldner
“You drink your coffee black? Remind me?” she asked as they stepped into the breakfast room at the small boutique hotel she had booked herself into the evening before to get away from her family. To think. To rest. They had that touch-not-touch feel to them, her and the man who was following her trail: excited by one another’s company, freshly showered, rosy cheeks distracting from the lack of sleep in their eyes. His were older eyes, and his hair was graying handsomely. A good ten years older than this girl who was wearing a purple sparkly dress and tall cowboy boots.
She began prancing around the ornate breakfast room filling two glasses with orange juice, two mugs with coffee, smiling sweetly at the scattered couples reading their morning news, sipping coffee. She placed his mug on the table she had carefully chosen for them for this glorious morning after, and repeated her question, seemingly to herself.“Black, right?” She then chuckled, looking at an older bleached-white couple at the table next to theirs who were now looking up from their newspapers and staring at her.
“Yup. Black. No cream, no sugar.” He joined her at the table and raised his eyebrows at her secret smile. He might have known what she was thinking. “What?”
“Oh. Nothing.” But she couldn’t stop the smile that was left over from her chuckle which would soon become words jumping out of her mouth a little too soon once their food was off the plate, and the morning turned to noon.
“Why were you laughing?”
She was really a lovely girl, he liked her dimples, the way her hair fell on her shoulders at different lengths, her high cheekbones, everything that he could touch that was under her dress. Even her knees. He thought of her as the kind of girl you'd see at the market examining peaches or red apples for long stretches of time, holding them up to the light and even taking in their scent before placing them in her basket. She took a sip of orange juice and sighed, still smiling with secrecy and delight. Almost giddiness.
“I just made myself laugh at the situation. At my question.” She stabbed a cluster of scramble on her plate and took a bite, still smiling.
He watched her chew quietly, noting again the imperfections of her face that he liked from the first time he saw her.
“You know what I mean,” she continued, and leaned in to whisper, “How do you drink your coffee––as if we met just last night and don’t know a thing about each other. It’s funny.” She motioned with her eyes to the older couple who was now back deep in their food and news.
“I can only imagine what they’re thinking about us. About me.” She knew they themselves must have their coffee routine down perfectly after what was likely forty years of marriage––maybe the woman had stopped drinking coffee years ago but he knew which tea was her favorite morning substitute and he’d ask the hotel staff for honey before she’d have a chance to even pour the hot water into the hotel’s white porcelain mug that was never as satisfying as the generously rounded ceramic mugs they had at home.
Turning her attention back to the man with whom she was so happy to be sharing a morning table, she pulled her dress back over her shoulder, realizing the black strap of her bra had been exposed all this time; this affair had made her shed the last few pounds she shouldn’t have shed, her clothes fitting her differently, unexpectedly.
He smiled back at her, nodding. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.” They waited before taking their eyes off of each other, lingering in this moment when the realization of how little they knew each other made the depth of their connection even more exciting.
Truth be told, she knew very well how he liked his coffee. They had shared coffee more than once before, and often first thing in the morning, hidden in the sanctuary of his city flat where they could stay in the realm of maybe, of perhaps, of is this really happening? She knew he only drank black coffee, and she knew what moved him and where he liked to be kissed, what certain music did to his insides, what kind of a home he kept, how he watered his plants with love, how he made his bed every morning. She knew which was his favorite spot on her body and how he liked to touch and kiss it, and when. She knew how his heart had been broken and that he wished he had jumped off cliffs into lakes before this pool they were now swimming in. She knew he was afraid to hurt her and that he was a good man. She knew that he knew what she wanted, and that even with his resistance, that this was not going to be their last time having breakfast together. And she knew that even if she couldn’t know that for sure, that she was ready to risk the heartache that came with unfulfilled desires.
Breakfast over now, they watched as the room emptied of others, the older couple walking slowly arm in arm up the steps to the hotel lobby. Their coffee mugs empty and bodies jittery with lack of sleep and far too much caffeine, reality began to seep in between them: his long workday, her children and husband at home, the sunny day they wouldn't be able to share. They got up––he following her up the stairs quietly––a good enough girl with questions that made them laugh. A man with a broken heart who couldn’t risk another.
Naomi Anne Goldner is a San Francisco-based writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She holds an MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University, and her work has been performed, published and anthologized in various journals and publications including Entropy Magazine, The Blue Nib Literary Review, Quiet Lightning, The Festival Review, and Qu Literary to name a few. Founder of WordSpaceStudios Literary Arts Center and editor-in-chief of Chariot Press Journal, she is currently editing her first novel which spans four generations and three continents.
My Father’s Ex-Girlfriend
by Rachel Federman
At first, I loved how much space she left between words. Then it started to feel like, Could you give me something? And then like maybe it had been a mistake to move to her crooked house on the coast of Maine.
Dinah was my father’s ex-girlfriend. Or rather she still is. I lived with her for two months during my junior year of college to study the effect of climate change on raphanus raphanistrum. “The summer of radishes,” she called it. But these aren’t the radishes you eat, typically. They’re a wild variety. “They’re both edible,” Dinah said rubbing sunscreen on her forehead.
To me it seemed reckless.
Each morning after a breakfast of toast with the good Irish butter and whatever berries Dinah had picked along Marginal Way, I rode my bike to the cliffs by the ocean where wild radishes grew alongside sea rocket and honeysuckle vines. I felt like a spy, jotting measurements in my notebooks. Was I one? In a slow, distant way? The decay of late-stage capitalism didn’t have many secrets left.
Most evenings Dinah would ask how the radishes were coming along, as if I’d returned from a community garden on the outskirts of town.
I once tried to explain what my work had to do with climate change. “I’m collecting data,” I told her, between bites of corn. “On seed morbidity.” We were on the front porch. The closest neighbors were moving to Nashville the following day. I could see the four children crouched down around a puddle, digging with sticks. Here they were on their last night, but they were just outside playing in the yard like everything was the same.
“And then what?” Dinah didn’t seem to mind butter dripping onto her lap.
“I send the data to the lab.”
She took a sip of wine and nodded. “So are you trying to stop climate change or just say goodbye?”
It’s not like my dad and Dinah were even friends anymore. They were simply part of a recent kind of media that connects you to the detritus of your old life and makes you think it’s still alive. When we stopped talking, I could hear the voices of the neighbor kids, not what they were saying, but the melodies.
I didn’t even know their names.
On Locust Road, a week or so after the neighbors moved, I met Mountain Man. He was tan and had a beard but not in that hipster/craft beer style like the boys I knew at school. More like he didn’t even know it had overgrown. I was biking home when I saw a purple violet. I tried to pick it without fully stopping the bike, but my foot caught in the front wheel and I went flying. Both knees were bleeding when Mountain Man pulled over and offered me a ride. I told him no and waited for him to keep driving. Instead, he picked up his phone. “Mind if I snap a pic real quick?”
“Why?” I hopped on one foot as I pulled up my bike.
Mountain Man shrugged and rummaged around in his glove compartment then handed me a Blow Pop. Finally he shifted into gear and drove off. I pretended to unwrap the Blow Pop and lick it in case he was watching from the rear-view mirror.
When I hobbled around the last bend of Dinah’s unpaved driveway, there was Mountain Man sitting on her porch.
Of course.
“This is Craig,” Dinah said. She had on a man’s blue button-down shirt, open, over a black cocktail dress. “I would have been worried about you, Asherah, but he said you were okay.”
“Why would you be worried?” I let my bike drop to the grass.
“Because you fell.” Dinah gestured toward my bruises.
“But—" I looked at Craig and my legs felt that shiver of something that’s just beginning and probably won’t ever happen. “You wouldn’t have known anything was wrong—" I gave up. Something was off with almost all of Dinah’s logic. She thought she would have been my mother if my father had stayed.
“I’m just glad you’re okay.” Dinah gave me a little hug.
I pulled away from her grasp. She let me go easily, then crossed her arms and looked beyond me, at the empty house next door.
“We were going to sauté ramps,” Craig said, bringing his feet down from where he had been resting them on the railing.
“Ramps?” I started up the front steps.
They gave each other a look, like, Isn’t that charming? City kid.
“I know what ramps are.” I pulled the screen door open.
Craig waved his hand to show he couldn’t care less about ramps. Or, no, he was gesturing for Dinah to follow him inside.
“He likes to forage, too,” said Dinah. “I knew you would get along.”
Was it the sunlight? Suddenly Dinah looked much older. She was still lovely, with her black hair and green eyes, but it was like I could almost make out the ghost she would one day become.
“This is rather unconventional,” Craig said once we were in the kitchen, chopping up rosemary.
Which part? I wanted to ask.
Craig didn’t know that once in the forest behind my house when I was twelve I picked an unknown stalk and dared Nicholas Renshaw to taste it. Craig didn’t know I spent hours that summer pouring through illustrated botany handbooks trying to identify the cursed plant. How I never told anyone what I’d done, but for two years I did not leave that boy’s side, searched his eyes for signs of jaundice, pressed my head against his chest to listen to his heart.
Rachel Federman is a freelance writer who lives with her family in NYC. Rachel has worked in the nonprofit sector for over two decades primarily for organizations that advance minority education. Her band, Dimestore Scenario, used to play in clubs around NYC. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Literary Mama, Palm-Sized Press, Hoot Review, Writers Resist, and Willows Wept Review. Rachel holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from Fordham University. She can be found at rachelfederman.com.
Baby on Board
by Mea Cohen
Every morning when I wake up, it’s Baby on Board. As I wash my face and brush my teeth and sip my coffee, it’s Baby on Board. The news anchor speaks to me through the television screen. She says, back window, black letters, yellow diamond.
My boss says hello to me in the office, he says, didn’t you see the sign, it was fixed to the glass. The colleague in the cubicle next to mine chimes in, she says, yes, didn’t you see, in the bottom left corner, the back windshield, Baby on Board. I run reports on my computer, and they all produce the same outcome, metal scraping metal, spiderwebbed glass, one blinker blinking, Baby on Board.
In the gym, the radio blasts a pop song. The band sings, how could you, how could you crash your car, your car, into one with. I know these lyrics, I sing along, how could you, how could you crash, your car, crash your car into a car with, a Baby on Board.
Mea Cohen is a writer based in New York, NY. She received a BA from Marymount Manhattan College and an MFA from Stony Brook University. Her journalism has been published in Ladygunn and Milk XYZ. Her first short-short story was published in Passengers Journal this June. She can be found on Instagram @meacohen.