The Sleepover

by Dan J. Vice

Last Thursday, late in the afternoon, an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in fifteen years showed up at my door and said some men were after him. I don’t know how he found my address or who gave him access to the building. Between the outside world and me, at all times, there is a high gate, a surveilled parking lot, a lobby door with a keypad, an elevator and a stairwell, both requiring keys, and four floors of ascension. Yet here he was, standing in the doorway, saying nothing more than “Hey” as he walked into the apartment.

He sounded unafraid but in a rush, like we had a long agenda and needed to get started. He moved briskly through the open living room, over the new gray area rug without taking off his shoes, and stopped at the east wall made entirely of windows. He looked down into the parking lot, then back at me, and gestured that I should hurry over.

“Hello,” I said when I got there.

“They’re after me,” he said, pointing.

Vacating a parked car below were two men, both in hats and long coats. It looked like they were each holding something in their right hand, but it was very hard to make out from this height. They ran toward the parking lot gate, then stopped and scratched their heads, like confused criminals in a Superman comic. “Who are they?” I asked him.

“That’s who I’m talking about,” he said.

“I gathered,” I said. “Are those guns?”

“Can I stay here for a little while?” he said.

“Are they coming up here?” I said.

“How could they get up here?”

“You got up here.”

He laughed. “You’re right.” He seemed to visibly relax. He walked away from the windows and flopped down on the suede couch. He looked around for the first time—the wall-mounted TV, the gas fireplace, the kitchen island and pendant lights and reclaimed wood stools. “You really love gray,” he said.

I looked around for his suitcase or a duffel bag, checked the outer hallway, and then, finding nothing, closed and locked the door. “Neutrals are in,” I said. “They don’t date.”

“And this is your pop of color,” he said, gesturing to the wall opposite the fireplace, to the painting that stretches out there, over six and a half feet wide: the heads and shoulders of three men in suits, radioactive in smeared neon blue, green, and purple. Their mouths are open wide, through which you can see the illuminated bursts of paint behind them. They look mildly disgruntled to be caught in an atomic blast. “Why did you go for this?” he asked.

“I like it,” I said. “It’s all cool colors. I guess it’s a portrait of the ’80s businessman, like a satire of work. When I look at it, I think about how silly capitalism is.”

“It looks like a commercial for fruit snacks,” he said. “Or T-shirts we wore in middle school, like a bootleg Bart Simpson where the colors were all off. Lots of pink and green. Remember? We wore those shirts down to our knees, and we were all bones. What did you pay for that?”

Somewhere in the central nervous system of the building I thought I could hear a sudden change in air pressure, the whoosh of an elevator car.

“How long were you planning to stay?” I said.

“I’m housebroken, and I don’t eat much,” he said.

In the back of the pantry I found an old bottle of ten-dollar gin, which I no longer drink but he still did. I made him gin and juice and poured myself some 12-year-old Glenfiddich. I preheated the oven and turned on the fireplace, and we sipped our drinks while the winter sky darkened. I roasted root vegetables and made polenta. I told him that no, I didn’t have any Bagel Bites, and admitted that yes, I was a vegetarian now. I heard metallic echoes that could have been trash cans on the street below, or cranes on a construction site blocks away, or footsteps running up four flights of stairs.

We sat in the living room and ate dinner at the coffee table, speaking only in dialogue from The Simpsons, like we used to do. I hadn’t seen it in over a decade, but every joke he quoted reminded me of a joke to quote. We laughed hard and ate and drank some more. I asked him nothing about his life and offered nothing about mine.

“Let’s watch a couple,” he said after I’d cleared the plates. So we put on episodes from when we were in high school, and recited lines along with them. Bart got a driver’s license. Homer fought with George Bush. Lisa became a vegetarian. The neon businessmen on my wall gaped at us. Eventually I brought some blankets for the living room couch and left him there, still watching. I brushed and flossed my teeth, rinsed my mouth, trimmed my eyebrows, cleansed my face, took my blood pressure medication, laid out running clothes for the morning, answered emails, set my alarm, checked my meeting schedule for the next day, turned off the lamp, put on my sleep mask, and fell asleep.

I woke at 3:30 to a tremendous racket—fists on the front door, the chain lock rattling, the deadbolt clanking against its plate. The floor seemed to be shaking with every blow. There might have been the faintest muffle of voices from the hallway, but the soundproofing in my building is top-notch, one of the things we pay for. The pounding grew harder. There was a rip of splintering wood. The violence of the noise was incredible. I got out of bed, locked my bedroom door, returned to the bed, checked my email, and went back to sleep.

---

Dan J. Vice lives in Indianapolis with his wife, their son, and two cats, fat and thin. He teaches at the University of Indianapolis and could really go for some coffee. 

Communion Cups

by Shawna Ervin

The girl pinches one plastic communion cup between her thumb and fingers, another, another. She stacks them in her left hand while collecting more with her right. The cups give under her grasp. There is dark-red lipstick around the edge of this one, dark purple dried around the edges of the inside of each cup she stacks. Grape juice.

She listens to the hum of the radiator, voices in the lobby, considers dipping her tongue into a cup, licking the dried juice, letting the sugar stay on her tongue, permitting herself the forgiveness that is withheld until she can recite the tenets of the church, commit her life to the service of the kingdom, to stand in front of the congregation in a white robe, be dunked under the water, let the people examine her. Only if she was found to be faithful, true, and pure would she be allowed to accept forgiveness for her many sins, to be made new, to taste the juice.

At eight she knows that she is not pure. She cannot forget the feel of her dad’s callused fingers under her nightgown, his wet kisses.

She picks up another cup. It cracks under her grip; the plastic slices her thumb. Bright red runs along the crack. She watches blood mix with juice, the two turning brown, dirty. She adds the broken cup to the stack, others on top of the broken cup.

More cups. More lipstick. The stack wobbles in the girl’s palm. She shuffles to the front of the church, a folding table covered with a purple tablecloth. She brushes cracker crumbs to the side, sets the stack of cups down. The stack tips to the side along the curved edges of the cups. She watches to see if it will fall. Not yet.

She returns to the folding chairs, retrieves cups from the plastic holders hung over the backs of chairs. She pauses to read prayer cards left on chairs. Please pray for my hip replacement surgery. Please pray for my nephew who has fallen from grace.

She continues along rows, the stack again growing in her left hand. Again she balances the cups on her palm, watches the stack tilt. She holds her palm stiff, walks fast against the momentum of the stack’s arc, sets this stack next to the first one. This stack, several cups taller, leans farther away from her.

She stands, her hands clasped behind her, how she has been trained to withstand want.

Slowly the cups fall. When the top cup hits the table, a drop of grape juice spreads onto the purple tablecloth. The spot darkens. The girl places her finger in the center of the spot, lifts her finger to her tongue, closes her eyes. She tastes only a hint of juice along with the salt of her sweat. The girl slides the stacks of cups over the spot, her secret covered. She stifles a smile, then turns and leaves the sanctuary.

---

Shawna Ervin has an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University. She attended Bread Loaf in 2021 and teaches teen poetry workshops for Tupelo Press. She also serves as a guest artist and mentor for Art from Ashes, which provides therapeutic poetry workshops to struggling youth. Recent publications include Bangalore Review, Synkroniciti, Rappahannock Review, The Maine Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and elsewhere. Shawna was a finalist in Ruminate’s 2021 flash essay contest and a semi-finalist in their 2022 poetry contest. You can find Shawna through her website, https://shawnaervin.com/. 

Train Story

by James Gyure

The young man said he was “kind of” headed home, explaining that his own house had burned down, so he was staying with a buddy, sleeping in his basement room, which was tricky, because his buddy’s wife is his ex-fiancée. He called things off just days before the wedding because he found out that she had cheated on him during her bachelorette bash. It wasn’t clear if this buddy was that guy. When he described his own bachelor party, it sounded tame, a little nerdy, video games and stuff.

He boarded the train in Newark, lugging a giant duffle, claiming the big open seat in the front of business class, taking a long time to get settled. Loquacious, loud, antsy, he snagged into conversation anyone who accidentally glanced his way, telling them he was in the military. “Special Forces,” he said, just back from a second deployment, although he wasn’t allowed to say exactly where. Everyone was more or less polite, because he was a soldier, although I suspected he wasn’t the resolute, reassuring type they liked to imagine soldiers to be. They got back to their phones and iPads as soon as possible.

Thin and wiry, in white t-shirt and olive cargo pants, he sprawled across his seat, stood up, sat down. He stared at a young woman across the aisle, and when she finally looked up from her laptop, he launched into a monologue about favorite video games, as if continuing a conversation that she had started. It turned out she did know some about gaming, and he was delighted to show her his game-themed tattoos, stretching out his ink-covered arms, palms up, and scrunching up his shirt. A small dragon spread scalloped wings across his bare chest. A couple rows behind, I ducked my head to avoid eye contact, pretending to be reading. The scene seemed destined to get awkward.

Later, in the cafe car, in line behind a guy with a gray ponytail ordering two vodkas and a hot dog for breakfast, I heard the young soldier again: the same stories – the house fire, the fiancée, the Special Forces – adding details, talking about secret missions he couldn’t describe. He was at a table with a middle-aged woman who was tapping her phone, looking up now and then to smile, being courteous. I took my coffee and laptop to the table across the aisle from him, and started typing: Note: maybe an interesting little story here, a quirky character. I typed what I saw and heard, like a reporter at a scene.

Behind them, a grandmother was playing rummy with two grandsons, chiding them impatiently when the boys put down the wrong cards. Maybe it was some sort of mock-strict, but she was really giving them a hard time. Between scolds, she listened in on the soldier’s talk. “Well, thank you for your service,” she said, nodding her head vigorously and tapping him on the shoulder. He nodded back, smiling, looking around the cafe car, then down at his own phone.

I typed: But, what if he’s not really a soldier? It’s not like anyone is going to ask him for proof. What if it’s all like a video game in his head, some kind of cosplay…

Suddenly the soldier laughed, staring at his phone, acting startled.

“Wow,” he said. “She wants to marry me!” Loud enough for the whole car to hear, he explained that he had just that moment received a text from a young woman he knew, a single mom with a baby. “Not mine,” he said, smiling impishly. He said he hadn’t known her all that long, but out of the blue she was asking him to marry her.

The woman across from him put down her phone and frowned. She looked perplexed, as if torn between wanting to offer some motherly advice and worrying that she was being played.

I looked at the wiry young soldier in his white t-shirt, grinning at his phone. I looked at the middle-aged woman frowning in confusion at his announcement. I looked at the cranky grandmother, who had returned her attention to her card game. I starting typing again.

The soldier stretched out his arms to the woman across the table, and started to explain his tattoos. 

---

James Gyure lives in Pennsylvania, where, in a former life, he had a long career as a university administrator. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in jmww, Baltimore Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Jabberwock Review, Epiphany, The Maine Review, and elsewhere. His short story collection was short-listed for the Steel Toe Books 2020 Prose Award, and he’s received two Pushcart nominations. He’s at work on a novella about eco-anxiety and can be reached at jfgyure@gmail.com.

What’d You Tell Her?

 by Tom Roth

“When can I get a phone?” she asks me.

We’re on our way to my parents’ place in the country. The apartment buildings and big box centers give way to fields and farmlands. Gray strips of snow thin out in the hard sun. Birds lift off the powerlines. I sometimes forget what this place looks like. It’s been too long since I’ve taken Taylor to see Mom and Dad, but it’s hard when Grandpa can’t talk or walk or remember anyone.

“You don’t need a cell phone,” I say. “You’re twelve.”

A fallen black barn rots in the snow. My father emerges in the center of the debris, sitting in his plaid recliner. The oxygen tube shines like an icicle on his nose. His mouth opens for nothing, and his head droops from an invisible weight, and the road seems to pull us past him before he can catch a glimpse of our car. Out here, the few trees, his only company, stand apart from one another. I don’t remember it all looking so desolate and bare and neglected. A stillness settles in me. When had that barn collapsed?

“When I was your age,” I say, “I talked on a landline.”

“A what?”

“A landline. You know, a phone connected to your house. Remember the one we had when you were little?”

“Oh yeah,” Taylor says. I can tell she doesn’t remember. “But I don’t see your point.”

Just like her dad, her Grandpa, too, always countering anything I say. My elementary school appears at the town intersection of low brick buildings. Chains wrap around the rusted fence. A few windows are boarded-up because people break in for shelter. I see Dad again, only now he’s younger, with a moustache, and he’s standing, his fingers curled through the fence, a ballcap on his head.

“My point,” I start.

We’re coming up on their place, a narrow house with a front gable. It sits on a wide stretch of brown grass and melting snow. My husband first wanted to stay out here, but I had said “What would we do?” and that was enough—we bought a house in a cul-de-sac. When Taylor was a baby, my father called our house almost every day. I’d press the wireless silver phone between my ear and shoulder, holding Taylor in my arms, and I’d listen to my father on the other line talk about the wild turkeys and geese and deer he watched that morning. I’d zone out through most of it until he’d ask to put Taylor on the line.

“I gotta tell her somethin,” he’d whisper.

I could see him on the other side of the line, looking out the window, the snow reflected in his glasses. I’d put the phone near Taylor’s little face. I couldn’t make out what he said, but I felt I was in bed and he was tucking me in.

“What’d you tell her?” I had asked him once.

“That’s between me and her,” he had laughed. “When you coming over? You should’ve seen the turkeys here earlier, Beth. There must’ve been twenty of em struttin around.”

“Soon,” I had said. “We’ll get there.”

He worsened when we got rid of our landline. They were going out of style then. They’re obsolete anyway, since everyone’s always got their cell phone on them. His daily calls about the fields had stopped, and I lost sight of this place the less and less I came back to it over the years. I can’t remember the last time we spoke over the phone, the last time he said something to me, to Taylor.

“Mom?” Taylor says.

I’d been looking at the fields, in search of a turkey, a deer, something I could tell to Dad.

“My point,” I say, “is that you never need to call someone all the time. You don’t always need a phone on you.”

I look out at the fields again but see no turkeys.

“Yes you do,” she says.

---

Tom Roth teaches creative writing at a middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. His most recent publications are in Great Lakes Review, Talking River Review, and Outlook Springs. He earned an MFA from Chatham University. He recently finished a draft of a novel titled Silva, Ohio.

Application to be My Nighttime Dreams

by Anna Mantzaris

Do you keep late hours?

Are you good at making a quiet entrance?

Can you accomplish a lot in three minutes?

Are you willing to travel?

Might you bring me my departed dad? Before he got sick?

Will you leave me hanging?

Can you visit 1,460 times a year?

Can I count on you not to bring a rabid raccoon on my bed?

Will you reoccur?

Are you insightful?

Please describe your knowledge of REM sleep:

Do you like symbolism?

Are you a fan of Salvador Dali?

Do you work closely with the moon?

Do you work in color?

Can you bring back the time I thought I could fly? Or when I met JFK?

Can you replace anxiety with euphoria?

Will I be able to control you?

Are you prophetic?

Will you confuse me?

Will you linger all day?

Will you judge me by my messy hair?

Are you boring to others?

Can I use you in my fiction?

Can you bring me to Easter Island?

Will you make me a world-famous cellist?

How do you feel about a tall version of me?

Can you make me a valued member of a circus troupe?

Will you let me eat Sacher torte in a hot air balloon with my dog above Vienna again?

Can you omit anything about tests, being naked and driving a car with no wheels?

Can you recreate the first man I loved? The time he showed up at my door with sunflowers in hand?

---

Anna Mantzaris is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work has appeared in publications including Ambit, The Cortland Review, Lascaux Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Necessary Fiction, New World Writing, Sonora Review, and Spry. She can be reached at anna@annamantzaris.net.

Breakfast

by Reid Delehanty

Jeffery woke up to the smell of Jeanine’s savory pancakes. She put sour cream in the batter along with chives and bacon bites, a recipe she got from her mother. Jeffery preferred these over regular pancakes. They felt like a full meal, a perfect way to start the day and he liked them even more now because it meant that Jeanine was still alive. He hadn’t killed her.

Jeffery never had a dream as vivid as the one he woke up from. In it, he could feel, taste, and touch objects like he could when he was awake. He could think thoughts that connected in tangible ways, where in his normal dreams everything was scattershot, never following a pattern that he would remember when he woke up. He could retrace his steps if he had to: he got up like he did on Sunday morning a little later than Jeanine. She was an early riser, and he valued the time he could rest in bed until his body was ready for him to get up. He went to the bathroom, took a long piss, and grabbed a drink of water by pressing his mouth to the faucet head. Jeanine hated when he did it, but it made him feel like a kid again, made him appreciate the mornings growing up, awake before everyone else and climbing onto the sink, too afraid to wake up mom and dad to get him a cup.

In his dream his reflection was familiar, hair out of place, a few arrant wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, but overall happy he was in his 30s instead of his 20s or God forbid his teens. He met Jeanine when he was 29 and she was 28, the crummiest years of that crummy decade behind them and he was thankful for that. There had been a few times in early adulthood when killing himself, whether by a bullet to the head or jumping off the nearest bridge, seemed like the right, even noble thing to do, as easy as flicking on a light switch or turning the ignition in his car. If asked, which he wasn’t because he never told anybody, he could not tell you what stopped him. It wasn’t fear, regret, or guilt but simple, stupid timing. He’d plan it all out, to the smallest detail, and then something would come up and he’d forget all about it until they would inevitably come back, a pattern of sick downturns and graceful upswings that left him out of breath. Eventually, he met Jeanine, and those ideas went away, but they left a residue that strengthen during Jeffery’s vulnerable moments, like in his dreams, and this one was strongest of all. He carried it with him downstairs, along with the smell Jeanine’s pancakes.

He saw Jeanine washing the dishes, her tiny butt swaying to the sound of an unheard tune. He would come up behind her and wrap his arms around her stomach and kiss the back of her left ear, but in this dream, those hands moved up her body and closed around her neck where his grip tightened. There was no struggle. Jeanine knew this was going to happen, more than Jeffery did, who tried to pull away but like in most of his dreams, he lost control until Jeanine crumbled to the kitchen floor. Jeffery started to panic, moving in the dream like he would in real life, from room to room, searching for something he didn’t know he was looking for. Lastly, he opened the door into the basement and then he woke up.

Jeffery was too scared to get out of bed, staring at the ceiling, reaching toward it to make sure his hands were really his hands, that the clock read 8:57 because it was really 8:57. He could not be sure until he smelled the savory pancakes.

Jeffery got up slowly, heading to the bathroom to piss but keeping the lights off so he didn’t have to look at himself in the mirror If she saw nothing Jeffery would find that to be worse, like after all the years together she didn’t know him that well.

He looked outside at the dogwood tree, at the broken section of sidewalk. A car drove by and down the street a little an old lady was walking her dog. He’d have to go downstairs sometime. Jeanine would get worried, and no matter what, he’d have to tell her about the dream.

Jeffery made his way down and saw Jeanine, sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee. Across from her were the savory pancakes, topped with butter and a little bit of hollandaise sauce left over from earlier in the week.

He thanked her and wished her a good morning before taking a few bites. Before his third, Jeanine said that she wanted a divorce. She had to say it twice, Jeffery choosing not to hear it the first time. He asked why and Jeanine said she didn’t love him anymore. She was apologetic, holding his hand as she told him she would move out by tomorrow and would be staying at her sister’s place.

He wanted to ask if it was the dream that did it, so he could tell her he would never hurt her, but Jeffery knew there was no use.

When Jeffery was finished, Jeanine got up and took his plate to the sink and started washing the dishes. He moved to come up behind her, to grip her and kiss her ear, but backed off, knowing she wasn’t his to touch anymore. Jeffery sat back down, and that old feeling, ever prevalent in his teens and 20s prior to meeting Jeanine, came back in full force with no plans of letting him go. He stared at the basement door, wondering if this was a dream to, and he could walk through that open door and be back in his bed smelling Jeanine’s savory pancakes cooking downstairs.

---

Reid Delehanty lives and works in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is currently an MFA Candidate at Antioch University in Los Angles. He can be contacted at rdelehan@gmail.com for inquiries. 

Cure

by Bennett Short

Defiant Summer still clings to our skin, even if Fall is here.

I’m outside. You’re outside. I get in your car. I don’t notice the car. I notice you. You tell me what we need to do for the interview. Camera looking at me. I’m just looking at you.

You had called me out of nowhere, freaking out over a project. You had a person in mind, and they fell through. Even over the phone, I could tell there was that edge of panic, your breathing was quick. You needed me, and I can’t help but admit that I loved being needed. It’s a feeling unlike anything else, being the hero. Being the saving grace, the Ogygia to your Odysseus, being there for you. I always want to be there for you.

Then the car stops. We are at a little cafe. It is small and charming. It is exactly like you. I get a coke. I’m not one for coffee. You get one too. Of course you get one too. You’re sitting across from me. You’re laughing. I love your laugh. It has layers. It is more than a laugh. You’re not laughing because I said something funny. I did say something funny. It’s still not why. You’re laughing because this is a moment of sheer and genuine happiness. Apparently I’m out of pocket. I don’t know what that means. It doesn’t matter what that means. All that matters is that it came from you.

You ask me these questions. Who am I? Why am I like that? What does that mean? How did I become that way? I don’t know where the answers come from. My personality is like a crow’s nest. It’s simply all the shiny things I see in other people. The interview is far from perfect. The construction workers make sure of that. The jackhammers are deafening. The hammers beat against steel. None of it matters. I’m making you happy. I’m doing what I have missed for so long. I have missed everything about you. Your mask is on. I don’t mind at all. I don’t need to see your face. I already know you're smiling. I know the smile is beautiful. We do the interview, take a couple photos, do covering shots. Then my heart drops. It’s over. We talked. We laughed. We mostly laughed. Then the laughter stops. We had arrived at the end. I hate the end. I’m going to lose you again. We embrace. You’re so warm. I wish I could hold you forever. I can’t. We’ve been sitting for a while. Our drinks are long emptied. We leave. You’re driving me home. I notice your car this time. I love your car. It’s so personal. It is so you. I’m begging on the inside. It was going so well. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s over. Icarus got his moment of joy, but he fell before long.

Then we are outside my house. I hold you one more time. You’re still so warm.

I tell you I love you. I savor it. I love how it sounds to say that.

I love you. It isn’t complicated. How can it be?

I love you.

I was wrong. It is complicated. I thought it would just be saying something and hearing something back. I didn’t expect the forever in between. The split second where I sit in horror and think of what I just said. The moment where you process what I said. The instant where your lips start to form a response. Time has come to a screeching halt. I remember when girls would rip off petals from a flower to see if someone loved them. I feel like that flower. She loves me, she loves me not. The petals are dropping. I’m being torn apart. One petal left.

I love you, too.

No more petals.

---

Bennett Short is a writer from Norfolk, Virginia and currently attending Emerson College studying Creative Writing. He released his first book, a children’s book called Scotch and Soda the Lions this past December. He is reachable at oneandonlybennett@gmail.com.

Cups

by Sean Lyon

It is better to do something than sit. That’s why I volunteer to walk to the grocery store to get the cups. The caterers didn’t bring cups, which doesn’t make sense.

The weather is frigid, and I do not have gloves. That’s probably best since I only own black gloves. I was told that white is the color to wear to a funeral in a Buddhist church. My only pair of white slacks are sheet thin. My legs get cold awful quick.

The Buddhist church is uptown on the riverside. The wind is so brutal. For just a minute I’m thinking about only the cold, and not about Glenn. The cold is kind of like the cups, and with both I feel for a moment a bit better, a bit distracted.

I pass people who I know will be there back at the church. There is a warmth in their eyes, a caring, and with it a frown. I was very close to Glenn and his husband Diasuke. In a way, I have received condolences, too.

Diasuke is grieving completely. That’s why I left to get the cups. After a whole week, I could not view anymore. His eyes look pummeled shut. His neck looks snapped the way his head dangles. Their daughter, his daughter, Lily, she is only seven. I’m her godfather.

“I’m here for you,” she says to him.

It is confusing. She doesn’t know that she is involved in tragedy. She has come to me in the past week to tell me, quietly, that she misses daddy—she calls Diasuke papa and calls Glenn daddy.

I tell Lily that grief is not just crying like after a failed test or bumped head, so it is not a matter of facing it and accepting it and not crying.

“Crying is an important part of loving someone who has died.”

Although I didn’t plan to say it, or didn’t know what it meant, that’s what I shared with her.

She will explode with issues when she grows up, I know it. She is already adopted, and now this. That’s the phrase I keep thinking when it comes to her. Adopted, now this. What is that?

I already lost my innocence, so there is little left to protect. I’m going to crack because old people are cracked. I want to protect Diasuke, and Lily especially, but instead I protect myself by getting the cups, and even that’s not working anymore. It’s supposed to help, but is no better than rubber bands wrapped around a broken arm.

I blow into my hands. I yell about how cold it is.

When I enter the grocery store, it is a relief to have to hunt for the cups. I should ask for help because the remembrance is beginning soon, but I would rather find the cups myself. There I am walking about the store, not looking at aisle placards to help locate the cups.

In the desserts, I have a look at the ice creams. There are as many ice creams these days as there are wines. I would like to eat some, but there is no time, and it doesn’t seem right. And I’m freezing already.

 After finding the cups, I’m unsure how many to buy. I should buy more than enough. Three hundred. Though, people won’t be drinking liquor at a Buddhist church. One hundred.

“Holiday party?” the young, male cashier asks me, eyeing my white suit. He is smiling, like I will tell him that me and all my friends are going wild on a Saturday night in December.

“Nope.”

“Well, good night then.”

On the walk back, I switch which hand to carry the cups with and which hand to bury in my pocket. The wind is treacherous. It raps against the plastic bags and tilts them nearly horizontal.

When I left for the cups, I was good and warm inside the church. Incenses were lit and the church filled with a pleasant smell. Things happened very quickly. Now though, now seems like a whole day in the span of a few solitary minutes.

I see a friend. She crosses the street and walks with me. I pick up my pace because she is harried and walking much faster, trying to make it in time.

“I can’t believe I’m running late,” she says, “I’m going to cry.”

“The narrative of the night will not be that you were late.”

“I walked the wrong direction. Damn it to hell.”

She is going to cry into her bright lovely floral-patterned scarf.

“It will be all right. We are right around the corner.”

She wonders what I’m doing, and I tell her that I volunteered to get the cups from the grocery store because the caterers, unbelievably, forgot the cups.

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” she says, and then, “How is Diasuke?”

“Inconsolable. Truly.”

“He loved him.”

It is so. He did. We cry, walking faster. We walk abreast through the front door of the church. Two friends with one less friend.

Someone thanks me for getting the cups. The smell of incense is thick as dirt.

I walk to the second row, ten feet from a framed picture of Glenn, smiling, an easy thing for a happy man. Lily sees me and waves like she waved at Glenn, Diasuke, and me at her Kindergarten graduation less than two years ago. My sobbing cannot be muffled. A big, brave girl, she leans over her chair and touches my chin, making me look her in the eyes.

I should think of her as a strong angel. Lifting me, the beleaguered, high into the sunlight, but I do not have such a buoyant heart. She has not yet been brought low by the inevitable pain of her life.

I hear the first bell of Glenn’s remembrance chime out, singular and clear, like a puff of cold air in a very warm place.

---

Sean Lyon [he/him] is a writer, and as luck would have it he has stories published online at Bridge Eight and Cleaver Magazine, as well as poems in print and online at Straylight, Literary Orphans, The Main Street Rag, Typishly, Washington Square Review, HOOT Review, and One Sentence Poems. A native Texan, Sean now lives in Brooklyn. He can be found on IG @ShoonLoon and reached at SeanRobertLyon@gmail.com.

Lighter and a Knife

by Melissa Goodnight

The bartender asks what two things I’d bring to a deserted island. I don’t know, I say as I slide my glass across the bar, bubbly condensation trailing behind. That’s a lie. I know exactly what I’d bring. I’d bring a lighter and a knife. I’m not stupid, but I never earned a fire-building patch, and you can’t skin a wild hog without a knife. I have wondered, if faced with the choice, whether I could slit the neck of an animal.

In a perfect world, I’d bring other things too. My phone, my television, and since we are imagining situations that are unlikely to happen, I’d bring along Bentley, my dead dog. She wasn’t much of a hunter, but she could tree a squirrel, chase it up the highest branch. The squirrel would jump around, its pulse detectable to Bentley through its hackled, gray fur. Bentley would circle the tree, occasionally snap her jaw toward the sky. Yeah, I’d bring my dead dog back to life and to the island with me. That’s not as crazy as the slurring guy in the corner making eyes at me. Isn’t that what the deserted island question is? Wishful thinking. Or maybe a poor man’s Rorschach. An attempt to delve into the psyche of another. The bartender wants to know my emotional functioning and subconscious desires. I just want another gin and tonic.

I finger my empty glass. The lime has fallen from the rim and slid into the melting ice. I shake what’s left. I try to fish out the lime with a finger, but the ice melts under the heat. I move my hand along the ring of lipstick caked to the glass. I don’t wear lipstick. I clear my throat. The bartender saunters over, snatches my glass and walks away. If I say I want to bring a lighter and a knife then I’m practical, and possibly sober. If I say I’d bring my dead dog, I’m probably drunk. I don’t know how to bring an animal back to life and voodoo seems hard.  

A lighter and a knife make sense. With a knife, I am always protected. Or at least I feel like I am. The bartender shoots another glass to me. Then he rolls a lime between his hands, places it on the wood, and digs in with his knife. I imagine squatting over a crackling fire. The sharp blade of a knife stuck inside the waistband of my pants. A small red lighter stuck deep inside my boot. My dead dog cuddled beside the fire. The smell of roasting pork. And I am content.

---

Melissa’s work has appeared in Mud Season Review, Lunch Ticket, and Litro among others. Melissa earned her BA from Missouri State University, her MA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and her MFA from Mississippi University for Women. She lives in Atlanta. She can be reached at www.missygoodnight.com or melissagoodnight@outlook.com, and found on Instagram @missygoodnight.

Shop Cat

by Michelle Neuffer

When I was small my father took me to a video store, not a Blockbuster, but a mom-and-pop place, with rows of tapes in hard grey plastic boxes, handwritten labels on the front. Friday nights we rented movies, although the selection never interested me. I rented E.T. nine weeks running. But the store had a shop cat, and that’s what I was after, stroking its soft white fur while I crouched next to my father’s sturdy legs in the New Releases aisle. In the colder months, the mittens clipped to my jacket scared the cat away, but more often than not it rubbed its fleecy jowls on the Velcro of my shoes. 

That kind of place no longer exists; it no longer exists to such an extent that I can’t be completely sure that I didn’t imagine it wholly, the handwritten labels in sepia ink on grey boxes, the cat’s blue eyes, how upset I was when I learned from a well-meaning employee that cats with white fur and blue eyes are statistically likely to be born deaf. 

The store is, of course, gone, and my father is, too, and I don’t even remember E.T. all that well anymore. When I, sobbing, asked my father why some kitties need to be born deaf, he used one of his clean white handkerchiefs to wipe my face. “You can still pet deaf kitties,” he told me, “As long as you approach them from the front.”

It didn’t make me feel better. There are things you can’t appreciate until it’s too late, and by then they’ve already made you who you are.

---

Michelle Neuffer grew up in Chicago and now lives in central Illinois. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Florida. She can be reached at https://www.michelleneuffer.com/. 

Put Another Soul in the Jukebox, Baby

by Samantha Dunne

Suze killed me on a Tuesday. I started haunting the bitch that Wednesday. Stealing my boyfriend and my life? Not okay.

She’s the reason I woke up drenched and bloodied, hovering over my lifeless body as it floated down the swamp. Pools of loose intestines purled around it as alligators gnawed through the flesh.

Not my best look. It’s almost like she wanted Steve Livingston to be repulsed by my open casket. (There’s only so much a mortuary cosmetologist can do.)

Getting ripped apart by gators is definitely not how I would’ve chosen to go. If it were up to me, I would’ve perished in Steve’s arms, my (ex, by death, I guess) high school sweetheart.

But Suze had other plans. Well, so did I.

Weeks of haunting her only gave me so much satisfaction. I relished every jump, every sharp inhale, every peek around the corner. Like she knew it was me.

Tonight I needed more. Thursdays were always half-off at Joe’s Diner, so after “getting ready” with Suze, telling her every outfit she tried on made her butt look big, that’s where we went.

It was out by the swamp, or as I liked to call it, the place I was murdered.

Suze pushed through the diner doors with unearned authority, sitting down at the red laminate booth, populated by the popular. All the seniors from my class (’84, baby!) were there, including my old group—Mike, Kelly, and Steve, looking svelte in the sweater I knit him back when I was alive. We weren’t Suze popular—you know, not assholes—but we got by.

Her seat shook as the jukebox reverberated with the sounds she shoved in there—all New Kids on the Block and no substance.

Conversation and laughter buzzed through the booths as people sipped milkshakes and split fries.

I floated over to the jukebox as Suze went to change the song, fitting my plasma perfectly within the confines of the machine to manipulate it just as Modern English’s “I Melt With You” reached its crescendo.

Eyes widening, she watched the phantom sheets of music turn without her lifting a finger. The machine, possessed by yours truly, lit up and whirred, emitting an electric spark before going dark. She struck its side and jumped back when the bass blared through the speakers.

“The Ghost in You” by The Psychedelic Furs. The song that played as she killed me. Prophetic, I’ll give her that. But it did make me sad. No high schooler’s ever ready for death, per se.

Did I mention she’s a bitch?

People craned their heads toward the thumping bass, concerned. Suze met their stares with a nervous laugh, sweat beads sprouting from her forehead.

I had her. She’d spill her guts like I spilled mine.

“Damn machine must be broken,” she said.

I wiggled my way out of the jukebox, peering into the sea of skeptics to lock eyes with Steve. He stared straight into my soul. Quite literally. The only one to see me. He winked, flashing a boyish grin, despite protesting the plan earlier.

Still my Steve. The same Steve Suze thought she could “steal” right before tossing me into alligator-infested waters. Would’ve pissed me off more, but my mind was preoccupied with other things at the time.

Steve approached Suze at the machine, “The Ghost in You” playing in an endless loop as her fingers twitched in time. 

“Need a hand with that?”

She looked up at him, glimpsing at the swamp out the window. The cypress trees swayed with the secrets they carried.

“Yeah, that’d be great,” she said. He tinkered with the wires.

“Y’know, that was Nora’s favorite song.” She gulped at my name. I ratcheted the sound up to 11, just for her.

“Oh, really? I didn’t know that. Never really knew her.”

“Huh, that’s weird ‘cause she said you and her hung out? The night you admitted your feelings for me?” He arched an eyebrow.

“Who told you that?” she said.

“She did.”

“But she’s dead,” Suze said.

On cue, Steve sent electricity through the speakers as Suze’s hand caressed them, connecting her to communication with the afterlife (me).  

“I am!” I said to the only two people who could hear me.

She screamed. Everyone turned to see Suze, Steve and the sparking jukebox. He waved casually.

“Nothing to see here, people. We got it under control,” he said, before turning to her. “Let’s take this outside.”

She nodded and they pushed the doors open, walking into swampy air. Her hair frizzed in the humidity. Mine didn’t—ghostly perk.

“Ho-how are you here?” Suze said, stumbling over the dock floating above the marsh, lily pads lining the way.

“Beats me. Kinda like you did, remember?” I replied. 

Holding her hands up, Suzanne started retreating toward the edge. “Please, don’t hurt me.”

I could hear my nocturnal audience waking up in the waters below. I was going to have fun feeding her to them. One of her legs dangled over the edge. I lunged forward to push her in when—

“Wait!”

I stopped, turned. Steve. I knew he had his doubts.

“What?!”

“Just… maybe there’s a better way,” Steve said.

“Am I about to get a ‘killing her won’t make your life any better’ spiel?”

He shrugged.

“Well. First: I don’t have a life. Dead, remember?” I gestured to my ghostly form. “And second, she killed me!”

He was silent, staring through me. I looked at the moon mirrored in his eyes, biting back tears, and saw the answer I’d been running from. It was time to move on.

I tried to cup his face, but my fingers ran like water, failing to resurrect a love lost to death.

“I don’t want to leave you,” I said.

“And I don’t want you to leave, but… The peace you need isn’t here.”

The moon in his eyes grew larger and larger, now just a blinding light, erasing the swamp and Suze and Steve until there was just—

---

Samantha Dunne is a digital journalist for a local news station in Orlando, Florida, who also writes scripts and short stories. When not getting into arguments with her co-workers over the necessity of the Oxford comma, she loves performing improv comedy and traveling around the world. She can be reached at samanthadunne229@gmail.com or found on Twitter @SamanthaDunne9.

Dog Days

by Richard Stimac

That morning Jimmie carried his new puppy to the tracks.

The puppy was small. Fat. Brown. With a short-haired coat soft like velvet. It could barely stand, let alone walk. Probably taken too soon from its mother. It never cried but held a constant look of existential desperation in its eyes, as if it knew, for certain, that it understood nothing of its life except that it was alive.

Jimmie’s dad always bought presents for Jimmie and his mom. A new TV. A dinner at Ponderosa. Jimmie’s mom even got a Ford Mustang that time she came back from the hospital with her arm in a cast. One time, Jimmie got two new pairs of Adidas. We were envious of the shoes and frightened for Jimmie. Both. At the same time.

They were the type of family that went through dogs. A black lab that growled at everyone. Then was gone the next month. A Pit that cowered in its dog house and low crawled across the yard. They even had a pedigreed French Bulldog that lasted the longest, a few years, but suffocated to death one night in its crate. Jimmie’s dad said those breeds do that.

After Jimmie biked to my house that morning, the dog hung over the handlebars, we rolled over to Benjie’s and picked him up. Benjie loved dogs. He was in the special class at school. The three of us pedaled to Hobo Jungle, a set of trails between the tracks and the back of K-Mart.

There was a small dugout, really a hole, that we romanticized as the foundation of a hobo shack from before the strip mall and subdivisions began suburbanizing the fields of thistle and kudzu-covered stunted trees. Jimmie set the puppy in the middle of the dugout and the poor animal collapsed like a sack. Benjie tried to get the dog to come to him but only its head bobbled. It barely had the strength to hold itself up. Finally, it slumped and closed its eyes. I followed suit.

Summer mornings like this were Edenic. I could just lean back against the dirt and breath in the moist, hot air that filled the canopy. I let my eyes half close as I drifted into a twilight where things became hazy. I wasn’t sure what was real and what was dream.

What you gonna name it? Benjie said.

Nothing, Jimmie said.

You gotta name it something. Benjie began to softly stroke the smooth-coated back of the small creature asleep before us three boys.

Don’t go touchin’ my dog.

It’s scared. I can tell. Benjie reached to pick the puppy up.

I said, don’t touch my dog.

He’s just tryin’ to make it feel safe, I said.

It don’t need to feel safe.

You got to give it a name, Benjie said.

Everything’s got to have a name, I said.

It don’t need no name.

If somethin’ doesn’t have a name, it’s like it doesn’t exist, I said.

I’m gonna call it Milk Chocolate because it’s brown, like milk chocolate. Benjie was proud of himself.

You ain’t gonna call my dog nothin’ like that.

Benjie cradled the dog and began to hum a soft, maternal lullaby.

Jimmie took a pocket knife from his jeans and cut a thin branch from a tree above him.

I’m gonna give it a name only me and Milk Chocolate knows. Benjie whispered into the dog’s ear.

If no one else knows the name, then it’s not really a name, I said.

I know the name, Benjie said.

Retard, Jimmie said. He began to sharpen the end of the stick. That worried me, but I let my eyes shutter against the dim light.

I’m not retarded, Benjie said. He held the dog as if it were suckling at his breast.

The rails began to hum, then the low, melodic sound of the engine. It was an Amtrak. The freight diesels growl but the Amtraks purr. The earth began rock in a soothing and primal rhythm.

At the sound of scuffling, I opened my eyes, Jimmie and Benjie were nearly pulling the dog apart, like the two women with the baby before Solomon.

You’re gonna break the dog’s leg, I said.

Jimmie stabbed at Benjie with the sharpened stick. I reached for Jimmie and he tossed dirt in my eyes. Benjie dropped the puppy. Jimmie grabbed the animal and bounded over the berm that acted as the entrance to the pit. Benjie ran after him. I followed Benjie.

The engine just passed, then the passenger cars, then the baggage cars. Jimmie had the animal by its feet. He reared back on his heels and readied himself. When Jimmie pulled his arms full back, Benjie tackled him. The puppy rolled, unemotionally, into a thicket of thistle and dandelion.

Benjie straddled Jimmie and beat him with open fists about the head.

God damn you, Benjie said. Damn you to hell.

Jimmie turned his head towards me. His eyes were blank, as if he understood nothing of what was happening.

---

Richard Stimac has a forthcoming full-length book of poetry Bricolage (Spartan Press), a forth-coming poetry chapbook Of Water and of Stone (Moonstone) and published over thirty poems in Burningword, Clackamas, december, The Examined Life Journal, Faultline, Havik (Third Place 2021 Poetry Contest), Michigan Quarterly Review, Mikrokosmos  (Second Place 2022 Poetry Contest; A.E. Stallings, judge), New Plains Review, NOVUS, Penumbra, Salmon Creek Journal, Talon Review, Wraparound South. He published flash fiction in BarBar, Flash Fiction Magazine, New Feathers, Paperbark, Prometheus Dreaming, Proud to Be (SEMO Press), Scribble, Talon Review, The Typescript, and The Wild Word. He has also had an informal readings of plays by the St. Louis Writers’ Group and Gulf Coast: Playwright’s Circle, plays published by Fresh Words and The AutoEthnographer, and an essay in The Midwest Quarterly. A screenplay of his is in pre-production. He is a reader for Ariel Publishing.

The Daydream Comes to an End

by Joseph Dante La Rocca 

A man is being haunted by himself. Not by his fears, his thoughts, nor any abstract ‘himself’; a doppelgänger is appearing in the corners of his life. Their first encounter was outside the corner bodega, below the same apartment he’s lived in since ‘15. A man walked out wearing a familiar Zig-Zag hoodie, the same kind he used to wear religiously in the chill of winter. There was a sense of nostalgia to the encounter, and he missed seeing the double’s face, instead lost in memories where his hands were nestled warmly within the hoodie’s pocket. By the end of its life, it was basically a rag caked with nicotine and budd stains, and it probably ended up getting thrown out whenever he last emptied his closet. A couple of hoodies went that way, each one seeming to stain up faster than the last. But the first one was the original, it lasted the longest, and who knows when it finally became useless.

During their next encounter, he noticed. He saw his double standing across the subway platform before work. As his anxiety flared up, he had to question if he was simply too stoned in that moment. But every subsequent day he saw himself somewhere, moving through crowds just too far away. It was a time of disbelief and curiosity and trepidation. Somewhere in the city was a man sharing his face. Whenever he saw himself, he was paralyzed. He felt an urge to put aside his inhibitions and solve this mystery. Do something about it; run up to it or follow it like a detective, anything, but he couldn’t find the conviction to do so, and after he had let the double disappear, he would berate himself for having done nothing. But after that, he daydreamed: that this man was a cousin he didn’t know of, or that it was a long-lost twin his parents had put up for adoption. At home his imagination would grow wilder: that he was special and a part of a secret cloning experiment, or that a ghost from the future was here to warn him about a catastrophe he could prevent. He convinced himself that at the end of this mystery something extraordinary would be revealed to him, the kind of thing it felt like he had been waiting his whole life for.

Weeks of speculation came to a boil when he spotted the phantom leaving the bodega once again, wearing that same sweatshirt. He let go of his hesitations and sprinted after it, shouting a couple of times before getting close enough to catch his doppelgänger by the shoulder, certain that it, too, had been waiting all this time to meet him. He let loose a big, smiley-grin over his heavy breaths, saying, half-ironically, “Hey, dude, got a cig I could bum?”

When the lookalike turned around, it did not reciprocate the smile. It was several years younger, thinner, without the beard he currently has, and it stared at its older counterpart. The older him retracted his hand. His smile faded. The younger one crept back slowly, grimacing as they gazed in silence at each other, until, finally, it walked away, looking back once more before leaving the older one alone. He stared at his hand in quiet and a sense of dread came over him. He had done something he shouldn’t have, but he did not know what that was.

The younger him has appeared as frequently as ever since then. The older one hides from it. His thoughts have been possessed by it. He wishes he never saw it. He searches through old photos to recount the details of his life, trying to understand what year it was from, what he was doing back then. Possibilities rage throughout his head: is it a ghost, is it a time traveler? He wonders what would have happened if they spoke during their first encounter, and if that would have changed anything at all.

His closet is stuffed, never having been emptied, and the hoodie lies below it all, stained, under nothing of value. What weighs on him above all else is that face, the grimace his younger self gave, how it lacked all emotion besides disgust. Intense disgust. He cannot escape that overwhelming feeling of disgust. All he thinks of does not explain that face. Just one worry comes to him. One where he isn’t the real him, and the younger one is truly real. That’s why his face, his judgment, is so inescapable.

He is alone in his room, looking the same as it has since ‘15, searching for what was so disgusting about himself. Isn’t he content? Hasn’t he done what he could have? Things just never worked out, what makes the younger one think that he could have done any better? He will never know the answer to these questions. His future does not exist. His eyes burn dry as he licks a rolling paper filled with tobacco and budd, and he can already feel the room, and himself, fading.

---

Joseph Dante La Rocca grew up in Somers, New York and now resides in Brooklyn, New York. He studied writing and poetry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and has been published by Sky Island Journal for his short story The Sound of Iron. Currently, he writes with Sackett Street and works in Sales and Marketing.

Fancy Cars and Footsteps

by Dave Newman

I always stop at McDonald’s because they have cheap coffee. I’m leaving, not coming home. When I see him, he throws both middle fingers like his hands are billboards.

You marry someone. You divorce someone. You learn love is not romance but pain and elation. Then other things kick in. I want to help, to keep helping, but marriage explained helping in the worst way. I roll my window down.

“There’s the boss,” he says, but awful.

I park in the McDonald’s lot and climb out. I always climb out. Otherwise, I’m too small, too trapped. I need to feel my size, to stretch. My voice is a mouse I’ve been trying to pull into an elephant since puberty. I spoke louder when we were married. I shouted.

I say, “I’ll meet you around 5:30. It doesn’t matter if we’re late.”

I don’t say anything about help or drugs.

We’re just two people with plans to meet at an abandoned strip mall.

I have no idea if he remembers conversations anymore.

I’ve been single for almost a year.

We’ve been single for almost a year.

Randall looks wrinkly.

He stands under the awning, mostly dry.

He says, “I’m tired of you showing up when I’m struggling.”

I say, “Quit walking past my apartment.”

He says, “That’s what I expected.”

I pretend he’s sober or at least coming down. That’s the wife in me. High is his agenda, morning to night. Sometimes his highs are so low he talks without moving his lips. I barely drink anymore, thinking of addiction, thinking of slurs and hard drops to the pavement.

One time, when he was hammered, and I was drinking, and we were in Ocean City, and a beautiful woman in a bikini walked by, and I said, “Holy shit, did you see her ass?” which was the kind of ass to stop a wave, he said, “There is no one I’d rather make love to in the world than you.” Then he stopped and kissed me and said, “The universe. No one in the universe.”

Now he says, “It doesn’t reflect well on you.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Everything,” he says. “The sun barely shines when you’re around. It’s like you make pollution. It was sunny then you swerved over here and turned the rain into a waterfall.”

He plays it all backwards.

I point to the sky.

The sun shines bright.

Before this, pouring rain.

He says, “I’m not meeting you anywhere.”  

I tell him he looks like a dry-cleaning disaster.

He says, “Some of us can’t afford cars.”

I’ve never called off, not even in high school when I worked at the ice cream place, when I thought I was a lesbian and my boss fingered me in the freezer. It was weird. I’m not judging. I worked the summer and had fun and made money and eventually had to ask my boss to quit pushing her adult lips at me. She stopped. Then I found boys.

He says, “Some of us are still on the shoe leather express.”

“Some of us have jobs.”

“Some of us are applying,” he says, and lifts his tie.

I say, “Some of us act like we want to work when we apply for jobs.”

Bodies look less like bodies when they’re full of excuses.

I know that sounds cruel.

My ex-husband once interviewed shirtless.

The clouds come back.

The sun dims itself like an embarrassed lightbulb.

“You’re too old to be getting pimples,” I say.

I never said these things at the beginning.

But now the caring makes me sound less caring, makes me sound cruel.

Randall touches his mouth like his skin is braille.

Once, when I found him dead on my porch and dragged him into my bathtub, which almost broke my finger, and after I turned on the cold water and stuffed two ice cubes up his butt and heard breathing, shallow and raspy but still breathing, I put some of my A/rrive soap on a washcloth and scrubbed his face, knocking the white heads off the skin around his mouth. Suddenly he gasped and woke and sat up and said, “Who washes a dead man’s face?” like he’d never lost sight, no matter how blue his cheeks and hands. He grabbed the washcloth and washed again, making circles around his mouth, until he passed out. I should have called an ambulance.

I should have called myself and gave directions.

If he doesn’t want to meet me then I don’t want to meet him.

I say, “Just go home. Go to sleep.”

He bends then stumbles.

He bends again and takes off his shoes and asks me to hold them.

I say, “I don’t want these.”

The shoes smell like roadkill.

I have never been less in love.

I drop the shoes.

His eyes turn to black leather, furious.

“You can’t even respect my fucking shoes,” he says.

I pull off my boots, fumbling with the laces, knowing I’ll shrink. I always need inches. I’d bought the boots at Designer Shoe Warehouse because I loved the hand-painted flowers that covered the leather. I own another pair but in yellow.

I say, “Here, you hold these.”

The rain comes back but as mist.

“Do I look like a closet?” he says.

He slaps his own face.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I say.

I slap my own face but gentle as falling paper to show him how fake.

Husband. Wife.

Ex-husband. Ex-wife.

I can’t imagine the next pair, the next set of words.  

He says, “I thought you knew me better.”

I take off my socks. I bend and make a production. The socks are damp and prickled with tiny stones. I think about hitting him but the opposite of paper falling. More like a meteor. More like a wrecking ball. The rain cools my face or my face drips sweat to cool itself off. I think about picking up shoes. I stand here in my socks.

---

Dave Newman is the author of seven books, including the novel East Pittsburgh Downlow (J.New Books, 2019) and The Same Dead Songs: a memoir of working class addictions (December, 2022). He lives in Trafford, PA, the last town in the Electric Valley.

Ponytail

by Joshua Wetjen

Hong Kong’s Queen’s Road East stumbled awake with the noise of car horns, shouting construction workers and clanging rods hitting lorry frames as they backed into alleys, a pile driver thudding a finale behind green webbing draped across bamboo scaffolding. My father raced to the tram steps as it pulled to a stop, dragging a shopping bag weighted with our broken disk drive. “No Radio Shack here,” my father had said when it had clunked off. We’d been in Hong Kong three months. Everything was mysterious.

I followed him up those steps, then felt a tug on my scalp. A woman held my ponytail in the tips of her fingers. She had a brown coat, pearl earrings, a jade bracelet and hair cut stylishly so that her bangs swooped across her forehead. She had a single mole on her left cheek, and she was beautiful. I jumped.

“Zou-san,” the woman said. She let the ponytail drop.

I was the only “gweimui” around, the only “foreign ghost girl.” I’d been told Chinese people tugged the hair of blonde kids for luck—lies, I assumed. Anyway, I had no friends. I wasn’t lucky.

My father hadn’t noticed and gave me several brown copper twenty cent pieces greening with rust, their little curved ridges like pie dough pinched the day before Thanksgiving. I plopped my fare into the slot. A bunch of people pushed us further on. The bell rang for the tram to leave.

I saw the woman’s shoes through the legs of the other standing passengers. Patent leather orange pumps, shiny in the light as the sun peaked across buildings. “What’s special about my hair?” I asked in a small voice drowned by street noise.

The floor rattled as we rode through several stops. The crunch of street signs and buildings and cars passed through the tiny front windows next to the tram driver who wore glasses with silver frames and a blue shirt.

“We get off here,” my father said. He yanked the “stop” cord near the window—windows open for ventilation, wooden-framed like those of a tiny American house, but windows you could never reach because the seats were always full.

The tram stopped, shrieking on the steel tracks. My father and I brushed past two teenage boys in their school uniforms. The accordion doors of the tram slid open. I leaped down its steps to join my father on the traffic median. A tram came the opposite way with a Winston Salem cigarette ad—the giant cigarette package looming.

My father said, “Here,” and he pointed us to the crosswalk where people ignored the crosswalk sign. “I think,” he said, with his pursed smile. My father said our neighbor was a computer expert. We had to trust his advice for the computer repair shop, though the man claimed to have quit smoking, smelled of stale nicotine tar, and combed a few threads of dyed black hair across his bald spot so that it looked like the start of a cartoon drawing against his gleaming, peach-colored scalp.

I saw the beautiful woman’s head bobbing through the crowds on the sidewalk, her gorgeously styled hair so much more fashionable than the average woman back in Connecticut where we were from. Our eyes met from across the block. She smiled, then walked into a beauty shop, where I assumed she worked. A beautician—a worshipper of beauty. To my mother such places were a sort of church. I thought, “Maybe I am actually beautiful.”

I felt so homesick and lost. Kids at the American school picked on me for my lankiness and bucked teeth. I wanted to be ugly on purpose, hideous, to not have anyone I didn’t want near me. I wanted to be a monster. I made sure my hair was especially ugly. The dirtiness of my hair was mine. The oily, tangled strands of my unbrushed hair often needed a shampoo, their unkempt ropes of wheat-gold held in place by the same ponytail the woman had touched.

My father pulled me forward by the elbow. His breathless walking made me wish I was with my mother, even with her judgment. Her hair was also beautiful, gorgeously dark brown, shining and lifting in curls when she didn’t straighten it, what she had inherited from her own Sicilian American father. “Shame on you,” she often said, when I didn’t brush my hair.

That night at home, my father cheered when the repaired disk drive buzzed and chewed files onto disks. But my mother’s hair had gathered in clumps by the shower drain like it often had recently, little dark and gray threads like calligraphy, falling from the stress of our move to Hong Kong. “You see. It doesn’t last,” my mother said as she pulled her remaining strands into a tiny braid.

It was my turn. My mother ran the water for my bath. For once, I yielded to her care. I said, “Let’s play beauty parlor.” She washed, conditioned, and brushed my hair like a beautician.

I touched my head afterward, wondering if there was such a thing as fingerprints on hair strands. I tried tugging my own hair has in hung down over my shoulders. It was wet and slippery. It slid right through my hands, like water.

---

Joshua Wetjen is a high school English teacher living in Minneapolis and working in St. Paul. When not grading or chasing his two children, he likes to tinker on his jazz guitar and try new restaurants with his wife. His work has appeared in Opossum, Newfound and Yalobusha Review.

Beware of Dog

by Ryan White

He found Doug dead beside a tree on the gravel roadside, as the kind neighbor had said he would. Fur dirty, tongue dry. He’d never seen a dead thing except Miss Ash’s goldfish when it’d croaked in the classroom overnight and the filter had sucked out its big egg-yolk eyeball.

The sky was murking into night. The only thing he could think to do was get Doug back to Grandma’s house. His house too now, really. Doug hadn’t learned the neighborhood yet. He never would.

He didn’t want to walk along the shoulder past the broad-lawned houses, fearing someone would notice him and ask what he was doing carrying that dog. And he’d taken the shortcut once before. It started at a dead end and passed through a big undeveloped parcel with a low point that got swampy. That’d been last summer when he thought he was visiting but it was spring now and the brush was overgrown—greens vivid like poison labels.

He carried Doug slung between his arms––heavier than he’d been in life. The colors faded with the light and so did any indication of a path. And though he believed he’d passed through the low place, and while he tried to keep moving straight, there were more rises and ravines than he’d remembered and soon he wondered if he’d circled back. It was full dark. Doug had stiffened.

He stumbled hard on a mound of soft dirt, landing on his knees. Paused, listening. All but a few birds had quieted. The undergrowth rustled with skitters and flits. Then he felt burning on his legs. Biting and needling. He dropped Doug, swatting at his pants. Slapping wildly. Stomping. He started to run, branches sharp like cracked bones reaching and pulling. He stopped again and sat, smacking his shins, shaking, crying. Without feeling its onset, he slept.

He woke and the sky was smoke blue shading into gum pink. He looked down at his pants. A million ant bodies were mashed and bent against the drape of his corduroys and in the ribbing of his socks.

He looked for Doug. For the remains of the hill he’d destroyed in his blind panic. But he found nothing.

To his left up a rise he could see a fence with a hand-painted plywood board stating “BeWare of DoG,” a Reagan-Bush ’80 sign and, atop a slat, the wigless head of a mannequin. He climbed in that direction. Grandma would be worried (but you couldn’t report someone for twenty-four hours, that’s what the officer said when his mom was first gone). He wasn’t sure about leaving Doug. Unfairness was in the nature of things but abandoning him to the forest like that seemed a rotten betrayal. He supposed Doug wouldn’t know the difference.

*          *          *

Syd couldn’t believe his luck. It was finally happening and with goddamn Mary Melnyk no less and what better place for it to go down than in his freshly waxed Arcadian Blue 1964½ Mustang? Sure, he knew it wasn’t Mary’s first, but how could he complain? That’s why she was here alright.

Easy as motor-oil, down she went into his merry, aching lap. Zip, pop, tug, rustle of jean flaps, flipping mousy hair from her cheek. Sweet Mary. Sweet paradise.

Eyes on the road, trying to keep his speed steady, he was close already—OOOHWEEE. And then the damn Holstein-colored bolt of lightning came out of nowhere and—TUNK—off the bumper.

In the rearview it kept running (or had it been thrown, spinning?) into the trees, a little crooked maybe.

“What was that?” Mary had paused her efforts but—out of modesty he supposed—was hovering her head below the wheel.

“Ah, it was just a branch.” And sure, that was likely enough, hooning around in this yawn-inducing Seattle suburb with its houses set back under cedar shadows and its big empty woody places still checkerboarded around. He looked for a turnout, someplace he could pull off and focus.

He checked the mirror once more. Nothing except the empty street receding in the musky dimming summer dusk. No trouble today. Not with Mary Melnyk nuzzled in denim depths in his palace of Arcadian Blue. He felt he held the key to life dangling right there off the steering column. Felt like whistling.

---

Ryan White is a writer and attorney living in Seattle with his cat, Django. He's currently revising his first novel, The Retreat. His work has appeared in J Journal and Litro and is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain Review. He’s been briefly jailed and hospitalized (separate incidents) while chasing waves in Mexico. He can be found on Twitter @The_CharmedLife.

Tea Time

by Dean Engle

It was four o’clock. It was Sunday. It was tea time.

The Society of Tea Lovers is comprised entirely of white-haired dowagers and meet every Sunday at precisely four o’clock. They are very strict about it.  However, once a year they invite a newcomer. A non-white-haired, non-dowager. Today, I’m afraid they invited you.

The society meets at Mrs. Abernathy’s house. From the outside (much like Mrs. Abernathy) it is white and stylish, built by a sea captain in the days when there were still sea captains. Well it hadn’t been built by the sea captain himself, rather by his unpaid help.

The creaking oak door beckons you inside. It wasn’t clear who had been dead longer, the stuffed Tasmanian tiger a visitor might see when they entered the sprawling mansion or Mr. Abernathy (1850-1914), who had been lovingly shoved into a festive urn decorating the mantle. The urn was kept above the fireplace. There were ashes in both and both were Mr. Abernathy’s.

If a visitor were to arrive at exactly four and venture into the cavernous Victorian, they would search, like some conquistador, for the kitchen. They would wander, as you are now, through long dark hallways that twist in and out like a labyrinth of old. In the middle of the maze is a minotaur. Don’t worry, it’s stuffed. A relic from a trip to Crete.

Vintage photographs line the walls. One is of a man with a rifle. One is of a woman voting. One is of a group of ladies having tea. If you had looked at these in greater detail perhaps you would have run. But this is just a museum, of sorts, and nothing bad ever happens in a museum.

There are no cobwebs in this dark home and no dust either. It is lived in and cared for, albeit by someone who has no need for electric light. You wonder why you came to this. Why did you accept the kindly written letter stenciled in elaborate calligraphy? You don’t even like tea, but these ladies are the talk of the town and this is your in.

Suddenly you’re there, in a warm and comfortable kitchen surrounded by friendly old ladies. They seem much older, much gaunter than you expected, but they all smile warmly. “Have a seat dear,” says one. You do. And suddenly you’re in heaven. The conversation is lively, the jokes fly fast, and the banter is fun. You’re enjoying yourself so much you forget to drink your tea.

“Don’t forget your tea dearie,” smiles Mrs. Abernathy. You take a drink. It’s warm and filling and painful. You fall to the ground screaming as the women surround you. They don’t seem as old, their wrinkles diminish and their hair, while still white and grey, is suddenly more lustrous. Their wrinkles now dot your face; their grey now coats your hair. You rise slowly on brittle bones.

The ladies pat you reassuringly, “It’s all part of the process” and “that’ll do for another year” and “you get used to it” fill your ears. They sit you down and offer you a real cup of tea, and talk to you like you’re one of them. So you sit in your old body and listen, pondering what just happened. This is a museum and you are a relic, but at least you’re in.

---

Dean Engle is a teacher and writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Humboldt State and earned his M.F.A. from San Francisco State, where he taught Creative Writing 101. His work has been published in Great Lakes Review, Santa Ana River Review, New Plains Review, Brushfire Review, the Ana, ideaFest, Toyon, and Transfer Magazine. In his spare time, he enjoys camping, making soup, and overwatering his beloved cactus. More information can be found on his website engledean.weebly.com.

Phobia

by Oliver Kammeyer

He slid off her, and she could hear him suppress a burp when he passed her rib. He was sweaty. Somehow so was she, and she barely did anything. Once he was off her, he sat up on his knees at the end of the bed and looked at her, holding her hostage with the sincerity in his eyes.

“I love you,” he said. “I know I’ve said that before, but it feels different tonight. It feels more significant, like this could be something significant. Do you feel that too or am I just hoping you do?”

Her head went up and then it went down. He smiled and then he leaned over and kissed her. She smiled back as he pulled away.

He lay there on her for some time, it was probably only a few minutes, but she thought she saw shadows panning across her apartment walls. After some time, he put on his pants, his shoes, and kissed her goodbye and left.

She showered just after that.

When she came back out into her bedroom that was also her living room, she was in her robe and sat down on her couch. She picked up a home and garden magazine off her coffee table. Before she opened it though, she noticed something black and tiny crawling by her front door. A living spot is what she saw. She got close to it, seeing that it was a spider, and got a little closer on her hands and knees, seeing that it was a black widow.

It knew she was watching, she could see in its stillness. She didn’t move for a minute, staring at the widow. Once she was entirely still, even her wet hair motionless on her scalp, the widow began moving again. One thin, sharp, black leg languidly moved at a time, centimeter by centimeter bringing the widow across the floorboard.

The more she stared, the more she saw. Its many shiny and lifeless but mesmerizing eyes were like river stones on the night of a full moon. She had failed to count the widow’s many eyes many times before she noticed it was on her hand.

The widow weighed much less than the feather of a baby bird, but her hand felt held down by it; the spot where it stood between her thumb and her pointer finger felt heavy. Once in place on her hand, the widow didn’t move, didn’t shift one sharp leg, like it felt her pulse through her skin. Suddenly and steadily, her hand lifted and brought the still spider higher up. Not a move. Her hand was completely still.

She looked down at its pinpoint of a black head and felt the widow looking back up at her. She thought a water droplet might fall from her hair onto the widow and scare it into biting as she moved back to the couch. She sat back down and brought her hand level to her eyes. The widow inched between two of her knuckles, and she stared at the spot on its black head which looked like her mouth. She couldn’t see her fangs. Were they retractable? Presumably they were sharp. If it was going to bite, would it rear back and give her time to react?

The widow was moving at an easygoing pace up her arm, to her bicep, closer and closer to her center of body heat and away from her could extremities. Then she saw herself in the mirror on the opposite side of the room where she was holding her arm up completely still, and the widow couldn’t be seen. To this widow, she was like an Everest, a living mountain that could kill the spider at any moment, but the spider could do the same. And here, Everest was immobile, while the widow crawled up higher and higher.

With it on her shoulder, she relaxed her arm on the cushion. She didn’t tense any of her muscles. The spider’s significant but absent weight had become like the feeling of room temperature. On her shoulder, the widow rested, and she let her own weight fall into the back of the couch.

She put her fingers to her shoulder and the widow crawled back onto her hand. She neither tensed nor had to think about her movements as she got up and walked back to the place near the door where she found the widow, and she let her down on the floorboard. She stayed there, looking at her for a moment, and then they both went back to their own spots: she to her magazine on the couch, and the widow presumably to her web.

Just then there was a knock on the door, and before she could get up to answer it or even ask who was there, he opened the door and came back in.

She stared at him, her mouth slammed shut to keep all the words she wanted to say locked up, and she pulled the top of her robe closed.  

“Well, I was thinking,” he said. “You said things were tight, and I was thinking that I could help you with this month’s rent, but then I started thinking…”

He got down on one knee.

“Will you marry me? I’ll have a ring later.”

Just then he jumped up from the ground and started stomping around the floorboards.

“Shit. Shit!” he said. “Spider, there’s a spider. I think it’s a black widow. Did I get it?”

---

Oliver Kammeyer was born in Tucson, AZ where he currently lives and received his BA in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. He earned his MFA at Emerson College in Boston, MA and his currently finishing his first novel. His work has appeared in Free Spirit, Fiction on the Web, Collective Exile, and Glimmer Train. He can be found on Instagram @oliver_kammeyer89.

7 Tips for Installing a Cheap Tombstone for Grammy (Under $639)

by Martheaus Perkins

1. Buy Online

What do crypto coins, uranium ore, 3D printed rocket launchers, urine-powered batteries, and gravestones have in common? You can buy them on Amazon (other retailers available)! Take advantage of that 10% off personalizedgravestones.org Facebook ad you got five days after Grammy died. Virtual markets will provide your family with enough variety—in price and appearance—to fuel weeks of bickering. Note that black and white options are cheapest.

2. Size Matters

Trust me, go for the 20 inch-wide one. This is Grammy we’re talking about. You loved her far more than 13 inches of shitty granite. (Check out our Top 5 Do It Yourself Gravestone Websites). 

3.  Don’t Burden Yourself with Logistics

Have it delivered to your front yard. 

4. Give Up

My, my, you really screwed the dead pooch on that last tip. Now, there’s a chunk of marble with Grammy’s face staring at ash-heavy skies and falling bird shit. Go figure, you (a high school freshman), your diabetic aunts, and tipsy mother—no matter how much cognac she’s infused with—can’t lift 325 pounds. Leave it for a couple weeks; it’ll give you something to wave at before catching the school bus.

5. Use a Dolly

Dolly! You’re a genius; I didn't think of that and I’m the God of Tips. Use a dolly to move the tombstone into your SUV. Remember to keep its receipt! She would’ve wanted you to recoup that $85. Don’t worry, leaving hideous scars in the marble is expected. Grammy always said beauty was internal.

6. Create Your Own Graveyard

If you couldn’t raise the dolly because adding 385 pounds to a dolly makes it difficult to lift, don’t panic. You have a gravestone; you have a front yard. I see a simple math equation. She was an introvert; maybe a private plot isn’t so bad. Plus, you get to up-dig her and bring her home.

7. Contemplate Death

Don’t get too carried away. Focus on the stone—an attempt to immortalize the mortal. Stones don’t get brain tumors the size of grapefruits. Stones don’t need their baby pebbles to order other stones from sketchy websites with a limited 10% off promo code. Stones don’t need their Grandpebbles to be the family’s rock. How heavy should your stone be? Unmovable? Try something gravity-stubborn, wind-ignoring, a testament your family will try to lift forever.

---

Martheaus Perkins is an undergraduate English major at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. He is an African American writer, and his heroes include Maya Angelou, Billy Collins, and Langston Hughes. He dreams of seeing a panda in the wild someday. Perkins can be contacted at martheaus.perkins@gmail.com or @mark__perkins on Instagram.

Love Me Like I Love My Demons

by Nadia Saleh

Grief holds my hand when we cross the street. It fears the steel and glass, fears everything outside, really. Its cold blue fingers scar my palms. I hold on tighter and pretend I don’t find relief in the bite of its frost. We keep ourselves where Grief can hide its face from the world and drown me in its tears. The tears burn at first and then drag me into sweet numbness.

Rage burns in a different way. Its flame is white-hot, scorching down to the bone. But I am not its target. No, its ire is directed at its surroundings, the small, cramped apartment where we all make our home. When everything is broken and smoldering, I cradle Rage like a child and soothe it from purifying white to hot red-orange. It will start again tomorrow, and I will be there to calm it again.

Envy wants my guts. It burrows in deep through layers of muscle and tissue and fat, drinks its fill on my stomach acid and blood. It wants my insides out. Only when my intestines dangle from my abdomen will it be happy. When the carnage is over, I stitch myself up with black silk. Envy pets its hands over the sutures and coos, waiting for its next chance to eat me up from the inside out.

Pride has long fingers. It digs them into the flesh of my jaw, peels my lips back from my teeth, pinches my tongue. Anything to keep me from speaking, from screaming, from begging. Even when those long fingers leave bruises, I stay silent. I give Pride a smile with a bloody mouth and it fluffs and preens under my care.

The ones that come at night don’t tell me their names. They don’t have faces, but I know them and love them just the same. I call them Desire and I take them into my bed and hold them close under the blankets. When they shiver and wail, I comfort them with kisses and squeezes.

And when the demons gather round, teeth and claws dripping, anticipation etched into their faces, blood in their nostrils, I wonder who will love me the way I love them. Who will let me burn, clutching me close all the same? Who will eat apricots for me, so that their insides are sweet? Who will not shy away from my touch, even when it bruises?

---

Nadia Saleh is a Romantic romantic from southern California. She holds a B.A. in English from UC Santa Barbara and is currently enrolled in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass Amherst, where she also teaches critical and creative writing. Her work can be found at Moonflake Press, among others. When not collecting shiny things for her nest, she can be found crocheting cozy things in spooky shapes. Follow her on Twitter @ghost_nadia