Snow Falling Underground
by Robert Miner
Everyone watched the safety video, right? I’m not saying anything against it - the only thing I’ll say is the corporate types who made it don’t come down here so much. They’re busy up there with their spreadsheets and their PowerPoints and such - that’s all important, don’t get me wrong - but coal miners stay safe by watching each other’s backs.
Here’s something I want you all to remember as we walk through our tour. Things work differently down here than on the surface - air doesn’t circulate the way it does above. You can get pockets in the mines where there’s no oxygen at all - if someone in our party walks into an area and collapses do NOT run in after him or I’m going to have to save you both.
When I was a young miner, I was told the story of one man who walked into an empty section of a tunnel and passed out - three more men died as one after another went in to save his buddies and collapsed from lack of oxygen.
Let me tell show you something. Look up here at the roof of the tunnel, that’s a coal seam. Seams are soft and unstable – you have to be heads-up. Miners talk about snow falling underground - that’s coal dust. If you ever see it, move back – that means the tunnel’s roof is ready to collapse. And I’m telling you a chunk of shale can flake off and separate your shoulder or knock you unconscious even with your helmet on. And, the dust is explosive -one spark killed 111 miners in Centralia back in 1947. A fire down here is no joke – it can rip right through these tunnels – and it’s damned hard to put out. A mine near Hillsboro has been smoldering for four years -four years – that’s the God’s honest truth.
You can’t let your guard down when you’re underground. But I’m here to tell you there are days I feel like I belong down here more than above. Walking out into the sunlight can be pretty jarring – the light can blind you so you don’t see danger coming - and most times there’s no one watching your back.
Robert Miner works in government affairs on low carbon energy policy. This piece pays tribute to the men and women who did the hard and dangerous work of powering the world in the age of coal power. His flash fiction has appeared in On The Run. His poetry can be found @RobertMinerpoetry on Instagram and in publications including Ribbons, Whiptail Journal, Acropolis Journal, and more.
The Heat
by Tighe Flatley
The thermometer on the dash read 127 degrees Fahrenheit. The driver turned the air conditioning down to 68, and the fans up. They look like people who would want it to be cold, he thought.
In the shadowy backseat, James sat with his wife, Diane.
“It’s so hot that birds are falling from the sky,” James said, a headline glowing from his phone. Diane had seen the post earlier: the birds’ hearts were stopping, overheated in the Mumbai sun, their bodies crumbling to the scalding, caked earth.
“Just like I preached last week back home in Atlanta,” James said. “The signs are everywhere that God is angry with us.”
“You said it,” Diane responded.
And then she thought, But I wrote it.
The church was James’ idea 12 years ago. After three failed businesses, Diane was worried their relationship was over. But then James started talking about creating a purpose; he formed weekly meetings with men younger than he, men looking for an escape.
Soon, Diane was involved, and on the seventh month, James and Diane created Eternal Land Churches. She co-signed for property with a parking lot bigger than the mall’s.
Since then, Diane led operations, barreling the church to international growth. She planned the sermon. She hired the bands and fired them when they asked for money. She managed the Facebook account and wrote the posts, measuring likes, comments, donations, pitching the numbers to potential investors.
That’s how they arrived in Mumbai. A number of wealthy followers had reached out. It could be the next location to join the international group, if everything went according to plan – her plan.
“The traffic here is ungodly, isn’t it?” James said toward the driver.
“Sometimes, yes,” the driver said. “When it’s hot it partic-“
“Look at this place,” James said, looking out the window, oblivious to the stares from the driver in the rearview mirror.
Diane turned toward the window she had been avoiding. She focused on the hand mark on the glass – small, about the size of an apple. She had heard of the children, how they would tiptoe through traffic and ask for money or food. She felt prepared to see it. The children, all shirtless in the heat, came to their car on the first day. One girl, barely tall enough to see into the backseat, had pressed her hand against the tinted window and left a mark. It followed Diane like a ghost.
Suddenly, a smack from the front. There, at the base of the windshield, was a small bird, as red as fire, it’s neck a right angle from its body.
“Should we remove that?” Diane asked.
“We’re already 10 minutes late for the next meeting,” James said, his eyes locked on the dusk cast by his phone.
“Please,” Diane said, the small hand on the window pressing her further into the cold, pulling at her neck, grasping at her heart.
Hearing her plea, the driver pulled over without saying a word. Before he put the car in park, Diane opened the door. The heat pushed in so quickly that she choked. It was as if an enormous aquarium shattered, releasing an ocean that had long been held back by a wall of glass.
Sweat was already dripping down her back when she reached the front of the car. She saw the heat rising from the hood. The driver’s eyes went wide as he watched her pick up the bird between her thumb and forefinger and place it in her left palm.
She moved to the side of the road, golden clouds of dirt dancing around her white designer sneakers, and placed the bird onto the ground.
“Did you take a photo?” James asked, when she sat back in the frigid car.
Diane looked at him, still sensing the bird’s thin, deep feathers against her palm.
“What do you mean?” she asked. Sweat snaked down her forehead and neck; the cool, black leather of the seat seared through the wet of her blouse.
“We need to use this,” he said. “Make it a post. The investors will eat this up. Biblical heat, nature destroyed, a sign we should be here?”
The fans whirred.
“Let’s put it on Facebook,” James said. “Tell me: what should I say?”
Diane, the driver noticed, did not answer. He thought he heard her start to say something, but it was just a sigh, the kind he felt across the city when monsoon season arrived each year. It was a sound of exhaustion, a realization that your anguish is being answered even if it now risks a flood.
He waited to hear Diane’s response. The rains, he thought, better come soon.
Tighe Flatley spends his days directing marketing campaigns, his early mornings writing, and his late evenings editing. He lives in San Francisco where he is a founding member of the Page Street Writers. If you need him, he's usually by the snack table. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @tigheflatley, or contact him at tighe.flatley@gmail.com.
Greetings from Tree Land
by Robert Kostanczuk
There’s something in those pine trees.
Kenneth’s mother always warned him about that. She told him to take another way to the park, which was a short walk from his house.
He could get there in no time at all on his bike, but most times he liked to walk along the clustered row of trees that lined Appleton Way, a narrow side street.
There was much to savor.
To the rear of townhouses lay impeccably layered blue spruces -- rich and full.
Scotch pines and Eastern white pines added diversity to the arbor realm. A limber pine shot 30 feet into crisp Minnesota air.
There was even a ragged Jack pine, which lacked fullness of limbs, but bore twisted ambience Kenneth liked.
The more contorted the tree, the better for Kenneth.
Appleton Way was a one-block stretch of pastoral splendor for the 12-year-old boy.
On this November Saturday, Kenneth was ignoring his mom’s directive to steer clear of the thick mass of conifers. A brisk wind whirred through the branches with a rich, mellow melodicism.
Kenneth would soon be playing football with friends at the park; gridiron dreams abounded. As he began walking down Appleton Way, the thought of camping out among the pine trees proved enticing.
There, he would get lost, tucked under the protective shadows of evergreens in moonlit hours.
How Mother could view the setting as something ominous was a mystery to him.
Still, she persisted.
She was very careful with her only child. They closely bonded. No one else lived with them.
Before leaving home on his latest park outing, mom had spoken up: “I’ve gotten bad feelings walking past those trees with you. I felt like eyes were on me. And it seemed like whatever was watching, was grinning -- in an evil way. Very grotesque. I can’t explain it. Just stay away from there. It could be following you.”
Mother never told her son about the time she believed she actually saw spindly fingers parting the branches of a Scotch pine, as if to accommodate a better look. She couldn’t be sure if it was merely branches bobbing in the wind, or a squirrel flitting about.
But it didn’t stop her from admonishing Kenneth multiple times: “There are things in this world that can’t be explained; whatever may be out there, you don’t want to fool with.”
The use of the word “whatever” made everything stranger to Kenneth, but it did not dampen his attraction to his favorite route to the park.
He even named mom’s dreaded lurker Mr. Happy Guy.
Kenneth thought it was funny. Mom did not.
Kenneth and his pals had been tossing the football around for about an hour on the dull, browning grass when Mother thought she heard a dull knocking on the front door as she prepared the night’s dinner back home. She stopped cooking to make sure what she was hearing was indeed knocking on the door.
Two more barely discernible raps on the door were heard.
She made her way from the kitchen to a living room window, which overlooked the front porch. Peering outside, she saw the profile of a gaunt figure standing upright and rigid, almost pressed against the door.
The descending twilight contributed to the difficulty of discerning physical features. But she could determine the visitor was frighteningly thin -- no more than a stick-like shape.
“So tall!” Mother whispered to herself in disbelief.
The bizarre thing was cloaked in a shroud -- a loose wrapping resembling a sheet that flowed slightly behind the body. The head was riddled with sparse, scraggly hair and rows of fleshy ridges.
The visitor stared straight ahead at the door, motionless, unflinching.
As the arms rested by its side, Mother noticed knotty white knuckles jutting out from a fragile hand with prominent, purplish veins.
Then, a weak smile started to slowly stretch from a corner of the visitor’s mouth.
The lips quivered as they parted slightly to expose discolored teeth. She saw the glint of moist spittle streaming down the jaw.
Mother could not believe what she was seeing.
She turned her head away from the window to refocus.
Methodically returning her gaze to the front door, Mother no longer saw anything there. Joyous relief settled in.
But there was a small white piece of paper on the doormat.
Gingerly opening the front door, Mother bent down and picked up what turned out to be a note with a printed message in thick, orange lettering.
It said: Hello From Mr. Happy Guy. I Live In Tree Land. I Will Never Go Away.
A childlike drawing below the words showed a round face with small dots for nose and eyes, with a fiercely exaggerated, upturned smile.
Mother was never the same. She would show Kenneth the note, and cry uncontrollably.
She slowly descended into a state of paranoia and madness. She no longer felt like cooking, or cleaning the house.
The deterioration of his beloved mom devastated Kenneth.
His innocent boyish ways dissolved into depression, and cynicism of the outside world.
After her total mental collapse in six months, Mother was institutionalized.
Often suicidal, she required supervised psychiatric care around the clock.
Kenneth’s uncle moved in with him.
The note’s written declaration -- I Will Never Go Away -- haunted Kenneth.
The uncle had turned over the creepy message to the small-town police department following Mother’s nervous breakdown. No fingerprints were found on the paper.
Police soon lost interest.
Several weeks after Mother stopped living at home, Kenneth was cleaning out her bedroom dresser when he came upon several crumpled balls of paper tucked in the corner of a drawer.
Kenneth grew increasingly nervous as he uncrumpled each, finding they all began with written words he knew well: Hello From Mr. Happy Guy.
A pair of thin dress gloves were also in the corner of the drawer.
As he lifted them up, an orange crayon that was under them rolled toward him.
Robert Kostanczuk is a former full-time entertainment/features reporter for the Post-Tribune daily newspaper of northwest Indiana. Robert lives in Crown Point, Indiana, and can be reached on Twitter @hoosierkos.
Beach House
by Elizabeth Lerman
“That’s a nice color on you,” mom says and she is there in the doorway, in the mirror, where I do not expect her. I feel myself flinch. I turn around and know I’ve missed my mouth because she is smiling and Reggie runs past the bathroom pointing a fleshy finger at my face. His giggle is sticky and thick. I launch my arm into the hall and deck the little shit when he barrels back towards us. Mom’s scream comes at the same time as her slap and we are all crying by the time Ronny hauls himself upstairs, wheezing hard from one flight. Reggie takes after him.
I watch the two of them waddle away. They glare at mom and me as they go. Besides the blood blooming under Reggie’s nose, they look nearly identical, in their brightly colored board shorts and those swim shirts for people who want to hide their stomachs. Mom sees what I see and even though her baby is bleeding and my hand is hovering over the outline of hers, we start to laugh and the sound rises like the tide and Ronny looks disgusted as he takes Reggie downstairs, shaking his head, saying what are you two? Saying, really, what the fuck is wrong with you? But we keep laughing, mom mouthing sorry, sorry, blowing kisses to Reggie before shutting the door in his red face. She looks at me and wipes the tears from her eyes.
We sit together on the bathroom floor and draw lines in the sand. We play a game of tic-tac-toe and she wants to be circles, she says, because exes feel so violent. She doesn’t vacuum in the summer, she says, because that’s the point of a beach house.
“It’s supposed to be sandy.”
“I know,” I say.
“Ronny complains.”
“Yeah.”
“I wish you were here more.”
“I have school.”
“I know,” she says.
“Why did you marry him?”
“It’s boring.”
“The answer?”
“Life.”
“Is that good?”
“For me.”
“Since when?”
“Since now.”
“Those shirts are awful.”
“I know.” She laughs again, and so do I. We stare at each other until our smiles burn out.
“Don’t hit your brother,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
“Can I fix your lipstick?”
“Okay.”
“It really is a nice color.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you eating with us?”
“I’ll get something in town.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“You need cash?”
I say no but she gives me some anyway. She hugs me hard and breaks my heart. She smells like saltwater and it slips from my eyes. My cheek still stings.
Elizabeth Lerman is a creative writer based in Brooklyn. She loves woods, waves, wildlife, horror, highways, and alliteration. Her writing has been published by Curlew New York, Coffin Bell Journal, Blood Tree Literature, and Ruminate Magazine, among others. She thinks her current novel-in-progress will be the one she finally finishes. You can reach Elizabeth and read more of her work via her website www.elizabethlermanwriting.com and on Instagram @elizabethlermanwriting.
New Year’s Eve 19—
by Michael Martin
Like so many of the most foolish things young guys do, it started out as an attempt to impress the girls. Curtis challenged Harold to a drinking contest at Dinky's Bar up on the avenue. The bet was for twenty bucks, plus the loser had to pay for the booze. The whole gang would be there for the contest, not so much to see these two losers really losing it, but more so because the temperature was in the teens that night, and it was New Year’s Eve.
"Besides," Harold said, a sly grin. "It's a great place to meet women."
"No, Harold,” one of the girls said. “A shoe store is a great place to meet women. Dinky's is a great place to meet drunks."
Dinky's was like the Roman Coliseum of neighborhood dive bars, a kindred hangout for every level of low-life riff-raff in the community. If you weren’t legally supposed to have it, Dinky’s was the place to find it. Weed, coke, pills, firearms, fake driver’s licenses, bootlegged movies that hadn't even hit the theaters yet, and of course, heavily watered down beer. Built into the ground level of a ramshackle three-story firetrap, Dinky's was an uncomplicated place; you either belonged there or you didn't. Once inside, there were no comparisons to be made, no lies that could masquerade as truths. Even if you didn't think you belonged there, should you suddenly find yourself staring at the flickering neon clock above the cash register, as it danced and swerved across the wall at 1 a.m., your fraternity was guaranteed, and your options were limited. Anytime you wound up in Dinky's the devil did a happy dance directly underneath that bright spotlight in your mind that was once reserved for your greatest aspirations.
After his eighth shot of Old Crow chased with a Heineken, Curtis decided to go to the bathroom. He rose off the barstool with liquid eyes and rubber knees, and went straight to the ground. A lumpy crimson puddle spilled from his mouth, forming a shape that resembled a topographic map of South America as he hit the floor. A crowd gathered as Tommy the bartender put a dab of ammonia on a rag and passed it under Curtis's nose. It didn't work. He was out cold. Somebody called 911 from the pay phone in the rear.
The hospital was less than a mile away. An ambulance arrived instantly. The EMS crew strapped Curtis into a wheelchair. He was breathing and he had a heartbeat, but everything else had shut down. Harold, who wasn't far behind in the race to self-destruct, laughed out loud and shouted, "I win!"
One of the paramedics, a short stocky fireplug of a woman who looked like she could have kicked everyone’s ass without busting a sweat, glared at him with dagger eyes, "Hey, moron? You’re laughing? Your friend might die tonight. You find that funny?" Which only made Harold laugh harder.
As they loaded Curtis into the ambulance, the muffled 12 a.m. roar of “Happy New Year!” burst from within Dinky’s Bar. A young woman, whose name was Wanda said, “He’s gonna be alright. They gonna pump his stomach and let him go in the morning. This shit happens to my brother all the time.” She held a glass that was half filled with something dark, which smelled like pancake syrup mixed with turpentine. She threw her arm across the shoulder of the guy next to her, pressing the rim of her glass against his mouth with such force it knocked him backward off the barstool.
And on the static-riddled television mounted on the wall, Dick Clark pretended it was 1965, while thousands of people stood in the cold, tossing confetti and party streamers in the air, hugging and kissing, while yelling at the winking collage of colored lights in Times Square.
Michael Martin is a fiction writer and amateur photographer who lives in New York City. He is the author of two story collections, "Burning In The Heat and Other Stories" and "Funerals For Friends and Other Stories." He has photographed parades and cultural events in New York for close to two decades. He is currently working on a mainstream contemporary novel with an African-American genealogical theme. As one of the characters says, "Finding your roots can be dangerous. Sometimes they rise from the ground to strangle you." Michael can be reached by email at michaeld40x@gmail.com.
Pennsylvania Lullaby
by Alexandra Banach
BIRD
When I am sixteen, my father confesses that he loves birds. He tells me he had a bird once, when he was young. It was green, small-bodied. The bird used to perch on the edge of his cereal bowl and fetch cheerios with its beak. My father in middle school: knobby-kneed and nervous, hiding his nose in a book while his parents chain smoked around him. Coughing, once, then quiet. Smoke sticking in the black of his hair.
RING
I wear rings from mall stores that render the skin of my fingers green in circles. I think that maybe it looks like gangrene or ringworm, something that used to kill people but now is solved by a tube of cream. The green transfigures my hand into an alien thing.
I have been giving my boyfriend hand jobs for a month when he tells me that the rings I wear hurt him. I keep wearing them, just start spitting on my hand before reaching down between us. The gob of spit glistens in the blue light of his parents’ television.
LOOKING GLASS
In the line for the upstairs bathroom, I fight my older brother for the right to use the shower. I attack him from behind and rake my nails up the length of his forearm as he braces himself in the doorframe. My nails leave pink blossoming streaks of terror in their wake. He yelps and grabs his injured limb while I shut myself in the bathroom, victorious. In the circle of mirror that I wipe from the condensation, crusted drool rings my lips.
CART AND BULL
In our county, Amish people surround us. There is a law against passing them on the road no matter what the center lines say. My boyfriend does it anyway – speeding around the horse and buggies in his tan Camry, the heater exhaling onto the dry skin of my face. The horses are dressed in blinders, so they can’t see right or left, only the long road ahead, flanked by car dealerships and cornfields.
Maybe it’s sort of nice to have a dress code like that, I say in the passenger seat, staring in the side mirror at the wide, straw brim of the Amish man’s hat.
You would not look hot in a bonnet, my boyfriend replies, palming the gearshift.
A DOG CALLED
The man who lives across the street owns one Pitbull at all times. He does not keep her on a tight leash. Some days, she wander across the road and into our kitchen, through the back door that my mother props open in order to listen to the cicadas. Sometimes she brings my mother a dead bird in the soft of her mouth. Whenever the dog dies, from old age or failing hind legs or from wandering in the wrong direction toward the speeding cars of the freeway, he buys a new dog and uses the same name. They all merge into one this way. The old Precious, the new Precious, two Preciouses ago.
Ali Banach is an MFA candidate at Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in the Vassar Review, Observer, and elsewhere. She can be reached at arb2311@columbia.edu.
Dear Prudence
by Ross Rosenfeld
Dear Prudence,
Like many others, I’m writing to you out of a sense of desperation because I fear that my relationship with my wife is deteriorating. We seem to have lost the magic that was there when first we met. I try – truly I do – I bring her flowers and movies and chocolates. I even bought her a new TV. But all she ever says to me is “Let me out of this basement, you psycho!”
She just can’t seem to get over the whole kidnapping thing. I mean, I understand where she’s coming from, but my view is that I wouldn’t have to chain her to the bed if she didn’t keep trying to escape.
True, I probably should’ve just asked her out that day eight years ago when I saw her coming out of the mall, but dating is so arduous and I already knew that we were meant for each other. I also knew that she would eventually realize that as well, and come to love me for who I am.
And for a time things did work out. I even let her roam around the garden some, and there were weeks that she didn’t try to either bash my head in or attempt to dupe me into giving her a phone. And there was once a solid month that I didn’t have to give her the treatment even once.
But nowadays it seems that no matter how much I love her – how much I tell her what she means to me – she just keeps playing the incarceration card – as if the fact that I’m forced to imprison her somehow makes her right about everything. She just doesn’t appreciate a single thing I do for her, and – let’s face it – she has it made! She doesn’t have to work, doesn’t have to do any chores, doesn’t have to pay for electricity. And all I ask for in return is her complete and utter subordination (and some sexual requests that I won’t blacken this column with).
Honestly, sometimes I’m ready to just end the entire relationship. But then I look into her eyes and I just can’t give up on her.
Do you think it’s time to let her go? (From my heart, I mean – not literally – I still enjoy the sex.)
Your advice would be greatly appreciated.
-Chained Heart
Ross Rosenfeld lives on Long Island with a rather short wife named Laura and their three lively daughters, who know him as “Fat Dada.” He has a B.A. in Education from Stony Brook and has appeared in numerous publications, including the Daily News, newsweek.com, The Hill, Washington Press, Sad Girls Club, VOIS, and Caterpillar. You can also find his work on Amazon, follow him on Twitter at @RossRosenfeld, or email him at rosenfeldross@gmail.com.
Two Boys, Hunting for Bones
by John Powers
We found a pair of hammers in the garage. We climbed onto the largest rock and started swinging. Sharp little slivers of stone stung at my legs.
Kurt Winters went around the side to find a soft spot.
The really big ones are loaded with fossils, he said. Every rock this size has a dinosaur inside it.
He came back with a handful of broken bits.
Dinosaur eggs, he said.
He pointed at a sunny patch of grass. We gotta put them somewhere warm.
Rocks don’t grow, I said.
But these are dinosaur eggs.
I told him I don’t know about dinosaur eggs but putting pebbles in the ground wasn’t going to accomplish anything. This wasn’t some magic garden.
He made a fist and swung at me.
I pushed him away. It wasn’t hard enough.
He hit me in the face. I just stared at him for a second. I wondered why he suddenly looked like somebody else.
I put my hand to my mouth and it came away bloody. My lip had split against my teeth like a juicy slice of fruit.
Kurt Winters laughed.
Fartface, he said.
It was time to go home.
Chickenshit, he called out. That means coward.
At home my mother was angry. She said I was lucky I didn’t need stitches. She told me not to mess around with grown-up tools or else I’d hurt myself worse, next time.
My mouth felt swollen and strange. I sucked on my tongue. It was a baby habit but nobody was watching after I went to bed. The bullfrogs began croaking by the pond. They got louder as it got dark. I listened to them groaning late into the night and thought about Kurt Winters. Plus some other stuff. I started thinking about my father, about how things might be different if he were around, still swinging a hammer, instead of staring down from heaven or whatever. I couldn’t get to sleep. Thinking only makes things worse.
It was too hot to shut the window. I scratched the screen with my fingernail. My hand turned silver in the moonlight like something made of steel.
In the morning I put on my boots and went down to the pond. The frogs were silent, sunning themselves along the muddy banks. I found a nice heavy rock. I called their names out loud as the stone came down. Fatty and Blimpy and Fartface and Dumbbutt.
The last one was small and yellowy with black eyes that never blinked.
Kurt, I called it.
I didn’t touch him.
I left him there to think about his friends.
John Powers is a writer and investigator in New York. His work has appeared in Salon, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine. He can be found online at www.johnpowers.info.
After the California Sun Sets
by Philip Goldberg
The evening sun slips into its nightly bath. From the sand, I watch the dazzling wake of purple, orange, and red splashes across the Pacific sky. The air’s chill bites into his bones but not enough to make me seek warmer confines. I grab my prosthetic, titanium below the right knee, whose nerve endings still shoot out, a painful reminder of what was once there. I learned to live without the leg crushed in a car accident, but it’s still missed. I lie to others, telling them I don’t miss the limb. They probably know I’m lying. One thing I know is I did love Angela. My wife. Even now, I do, as the surf’s edge grows closer.
I came to this beach often with her. A beach blanket spread beneath us, toes digging into the sand. We played in the water like exuberant children. Drank beers hidden in paper bags. It was her special place. Mine, too.
Waves thunder, crashing over those good memories. Water fingers spread across the sand, reaching for someone. Me? Still, I stay, remembering how things were never the same with Angela after the accident. I tried to rekindle that spirit. But my efforts went unrewarded. She didn’t own the stamina to deal with my self-pity. Her heart was no longer invested. In time, what we once had drifted away until it was impossible to retrieve. And when the door snapped shut behind her, I felt lost in a swirling sea.
A phantom throb shifts my attention to my thigh, the fleshy peninsular jutting to nothingness. At least, that’s how I view the prosthetic leg. Alien, fleshless, and impotent, a lost limb, which I compare to her lost heart. Not a clean comparison, but it serves me. I force myself to believe that.
Darkness drops. Ocean sounds rise until reaching the feverish pitch of Angela and me screaming that night. I block out what the fight was even about. Self-preservation. Still, it presents a good moment for tears, but none come. It’s better to drown in my frustration, sorrow, and loneliness, especially with whiskey as a companion.
Enough.
I gather the bottle, less than half full, and heave myself up. The crashing waves sound like they’re assaulting me from all directions. Standing, I raise the bottle in my hand as if drowning, seeking help or attention, knowing the bottle can’t give me either. So I trudge across the sand until I limp up the boardwalk steps and onto the worn planks, the relentless waves throbbing in the night air. I stop. Smell the briny air, still hoping it clears my head. It never does. Then I head to the parking lot and my car, dented and paint chipped, wondering if I would still have the leg if I weren’t drunk during our fight that night. So angry, I took a curve too fast and slammed the car into a retaining wall. I like to believe that the crash was not deliberate, just like I like to imagine that Angela and my troubles began with my lost limb.
I stare out the windshield, hands tight on the steering wheel, wondering if I am going down that same path again. I squirm, then I decide one leg was enough of a sacrifice and drop the car key to the floor. Maybe Angela would want that. Maybe I want that.
Philip Goldberg’s work has appeared in many publications, including trampset, Dillydoun Review, Straylight, Raven’s Perch, Main Street Rag, and Evening Street Review. Microfictions have appeared in Blink Ink, 50 Give or Take, and Riding Light Review. Stories have also been included in Best of collections, earned the honor of being a finalist for the 2021 James Hurst Award, and received a Pushcart Prize nomination. He has finished a novel. Contact him at goldenpsw@earthlink.net.
Hold On Tight
by Melissa A. Morgan
Mama’s stomach was a balloon. Then it wasn’t. They said Lexi was born with a broken heart. The doctors had done everything they could. That’s what they told me.
I’d never been to a funeral before, but I figured it was a fancy party since Aunt Betty bought me pretty new clothes and told me I should be on my very best behavior. Adult parties were boring, that part I knew. She dressed me in a navy dress, white tights, dress shoes, and a gray peacoat and drove me to the funeral home. I don’t know why they call it that. It didn’t look like any home I’d ever been in.
She gave me crayons and a stack of paper and left me in a bright room with a table and vending machines. I tried to be quiet and still, but it was so hot and I was so bored. A crayon fell to the floor and a new game began. I got on my knees and rolled the green crayon all the way to the wall. The red one almost made it, and the yellow one got stuck in the hard, blue carpet. It wasn’t like the soft, warm carpet in my bedroom. I walked my fingers over the rough ridges, marching across foreign lands to rescue my yellow soldier.
“Where are your shoes and coat?” asked Aunt Betty from the doorway.
The disappointment on her face almost made me cry. She pulled at my dress, hair, and feet until I was hot again and led me to Mama and Daddy. They hugged me and walked me to the shiny, white box. Daddy picked me up so I could see Lexi. She was so pretty, just like the doll I asked Santa for.
“Can I hold her?” I asked.
Daddy shook his head. Mama cried and slapped my hand when I grabbed the beautiful, silver rattle out of Lexi’s hand.
“She can’t play with it,” I said.
Aunt Betty came. Just like that, I was back in the empty room.
I sat at the table and drew a picture of my family. Daddy, Mama, and me all in a row with Lexi in the air above us. I held a red string tied to her foot so she wouldn’t float away.
Aunt Betty folded the picture, put it in her pocket, and hugged me long and hard.
“That’s for Mama,” I said.
“It’s time for the service. You’re going to sit with me,” she said.
We sat near the back of the room. Mama and Daddy were in the front row, but there were a lot of people, mostly strangers, between us. I stretched to see Mama and was pulled back down into my seat. Everything was dark and yellow like the light in our oven, and it was just as hot. The smell of the flowers baking made me feel sick. I was going to melt right in the middle of all that talking and singing and crying. I wanted to leave, to run out, but Aunt Betty made me sit back down. I tried counting the pink and white flowers, but there were gazillions of them, maybe more. So, I gave up and decided to practice my magic skills. It was useless. No matter how hard I concentrated, I never did disappear. I was almost invisible once, almost.
Aunt Betty wanted me to stay with her for a while, but Daddy said I needed to be at home with them. I never heard Mama say much of anything anymore. Daddy went to work in the morning and came home at night. Mama cried a lot and slept even more. I’d tip toe into their room and find her asleep in the bed or on the floor or crying in the bathroom. Aunt Betty would bring food and talk to Mama and hug me too tight.
All day I watched tv and drew pictures and played in my room. Daddy and me would eat Aunt Betty’s dinner in the living room, which was against Mama’s rules. He even let me pick the shows we watched sometimes.
I worried a lot. Aunt Betty said Mama would be ok, but it would take a while because her heart was broken. Lexi’s heart was broken too. Would the doctors do all they could do for Mama too? Would she float away like Lexi?
I crept into Mama’s room when I knew she was sleeping and tied a string around her ankle. I held it tight and laid on the floor by the bed. I must have fallen asleep too because Mama tripped over me and almost fell. She threw away my string and sent me to my room until Daddy got home.
One day, Aunt Betty came to play with me. She said Mama needed to run errands and take care of some things. No one told me what those things were, but Mama must have gone to see the broken heart doctor for a shot to fix her. When she came home, Mama gave me a shiny, white box. Inside was a tiny doll dressed in pink ruffles. Her eyes would open and close and she came with a bottle she could really drink and a white toy rattle. I tore open the box and danced around the room with my new baby.
“Thank you, Mama. She’s exactly what I wanted.”
“She’s so pretty! What will you name her?” said Mama.
“Lexi,” I said.
“That’s a very good name,” she said. “Can I hold her?”
Melissa A. Morgan is a multi-genre fiction writer living in Pontotoc, MS with her wife, Lisa. Melissa’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Dark Onus Lit, Alice Says Go Fuck Yourself, On the Run, and Ligeia Magazine. Melissa is currently working on a collection of connected short stories and a novel. You can follow Melissa at https://www.facebook.com/MelissaAMorganauthor/
From Beneath the Brine
by Anna da Silva
In the month of June, when monsoons arrive on the island and the mermaids come ashore, the village rests. A stockade of fishing spears thrust in the sand lines the coast. Pearl divers’ baskets swing idly on listing palm trees. No one ventures out to sea, not a soul braves the depths. Instead, perimeter fires are set up, separating the village from the beach. And while a lavish festival careens on land from one hut to the next, the mermaids emerge from beneath the foamy brine. They clamber ashore, dragging silky ribbons of seaweed on their meaty fish tails and snake up the sandy paths between wild beach-rose bushes. There they lie in wait, awash in torrential downpour caressing their breasts and flowing through their braids. They never advance past the fires, trusting instead that their prey will come to them.
And indeed, one young man or another on a dare or lured by lust, downs one more swig of something strong for bravery and saunters beyond the fires. In the mermaids’ rainswept lair, their raspy moans can hardly be drowned out by the festival’s booming pipes and drums, not even by the mournful strings. Some men return, others don’t. The ones that drag themselves back inside the village circle are incoherent, satiated, spent. They come to their senses soon enough, but can never recall their own ravaging. Yet henceforth, their dreams are haunted by the seaweed’s iodine smell and they find human girls inexplicably lacking in sexual charm.
The few that don’t come back are never seen again and never found. Not their remains in July, when the mermaids retreat and setting foot on the beach is safe again. Nor their souls in December, when ancestral spirits descend upon the isle for the reunion and the living can commune with the dead. Those souls are said to be forever trapped beneath the waves.
Months later, when sweltering daytime heat evaporates all courage and swarms of black flies decimate flesh at dusk, the mermaids’ gifts show up overnight. One morning during the month of March, a crop of squirming newborns appears laid out on the sand, just above the high tide marks. They are all fleshy perfection and vigor, not a fish-scale on them, nor a pearlescent fin. All boys to the last of them, all ocean-eyed mermaids’ sons.
The lonesome fishermen’s widows come to claim them, one by one, and carry them back to their huts, each baby cradled sweetly in their weathered arms, each lashed instantly to a mother’s heart. They grow to be good sons and decent husbands, but in truth, they only have eyes for the sea. Their women endeavor in vain to sweeten their blood with mother’s milk or lover’s kiss. But these boys are bewitched by the depths and the color of their eyes changes to match the ocean’s hue on any given day.
Invariably, they disappear into the same salty brew from which they’ve come. Some vanish while still young, on treacherous dives or during stormy nights. Others wade into the surf for the last time when their hands are gnarled and their eyes have gone cloudy. The land-women weep for them and their tears flow back to the waves across the scorching sand, carving intricate paths crusted with salt that glistens under indifferent sun.
And when the heavens darken, and the beaches are caressed by the rolling swells – each a heartbeat, the island spins. It whirls gently round, propelled by the mermaids’ undulating fins, the kelp carpet upon which it floats tangled in the mermaid’s flowing hair. Together, they careen through the green of the sea and into the void, through the scalding meteor rain, as a thousand suns crumble out of the inky firmament above. And from beneath the brine, it looks like shimmering star dust is fluttering down from the skies and settling on the ocean skin.
Anna da Silva is a writer and a sociology professor at Lehman College, CUNY. She is the co-founder of The Salty Quill writing retreat and is currently working on her first novel. One of her short stories was recently published in Juked and another one is forthcoming in an OCWW anthology on Meaningful Conflict.
It’s Just Lunch
by Chris North
Jack yanked open the center console and fished out an airplane-sized bottle of cinnamon whiskey. At the light, he twisted the red cap and shot half of it back.
Why the hell did I agree to this?
His right foot went on and off the brake as he inched along with the traffic, while the other foot bounced nervously against the floorboard. The whiskey buzz softened his annoyance, but only slightly. He found himself hoping he wouldn’t make the light. Another red would mean another three minutes of glorious, guilt free, ‘me time’.
The podcast playing through the car’s speakers cut out and a soft robot voice announced that his wife was calling. Burying his nose in his palm, he squeezed his whole face with his hand and mumbled, “answer.”
“Hey babe,” she said, “just thought I’d catch you during your lunch break.”
“You caught me.”
She paused. “You sound upset. I didn’t interrupt your ‘eat-while-watching-YouTube’ routine, did I?”
“I wish. I finally caved to Ed’s incessant requests to meet for lunch. So, I’m on my way to waste the only hour of the day I get to myself.”
His wife sighed her exasperated sigh. “Jack, you can't be so antisocial. You’ve been dodging this guy for months. I know he’s a little odd but he wants to be your friend. It’s just lunch for God’s sake.”
The bitter emotions of being misunderstood immediately bubbled up. “Rebecca,” he pleaded, “I get so little time to myself. And the precious few minutes I do get, soul-sucking people like Ed seem hell bent on siphoning it away from me!”
She sighed that sigh again. And when she spoke it was flat, like the car’s robot voice. “Anyway. I called so you don’t forget your daughter has practice tonight. Make sure you’re home by five.”
Jack could hear his own heavy breath, a lifelong side effect of jamming his emotions down and canning them tight. It seemed his whole life he would always be nothing but a cog in a never-ending wheel. Everyday, at the mercy of his wife, kids, parents, teachers, professors, bosses… Was there ever an end?
With as steady a voice as he could manage, he said. “Okay, hun.”
“Thanks babe. Please, try to have fun at lunch.”
“Mm-hmm.”
She hung up and the podcast returned. Jack downed the other half of the cinnamon whiskey, preparing himself for the hour-long barrage of humdrum questions that made him want to rip his face off:
“How are you?” (The most pointless question of all.)
“How’s work?” (If I don’t care, why would you?)
“How are the kids?” (They’re fine.)
“What’s new?” (Not a goddamn thing.)
He wished he had the balls to say what was in his head. But, of course, he would be polite, and smile, and pretend like he was having a good time. Ed would never hear Jack screaming on the inside when Ed pulls out his calendar and asks when they can do this again.
Jack pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot. It was packed. He squirmed against his seatbelt as he crept through the little rows, searching for a space amongst the squeezing sea of metal.
If I get a door ding for this shit, I swear to God…
As Jack drove through the lot, he caught a glimpse of Ed sitting at a table by the window. Ed wasn’t looking at his phone or reading a paper or browsing the menu. He was just sitting there. Looking straight ahead. Blank faced.
Freaking. Psychopath.
Jack parked, again pawing through the center console, this time pulling up a tin of cinnamon Altoids. He swirled three in his mouth as he opened the door and squeezed out. This time it was his turn to sigh.
Let’s get this over with…
C.K. North was born and raised in a 200-year-old farmhouse in Virginia. He enjoys creating fiction that almost always includes some kind of moonshine. He worked in corporate sales for eight years and is an avid fisherman, woodworker, husband, and father. He has a flash fiction published with Compass Rose Literary Journal and forthcoming flash with Shotgun Honey. Visit him on Twitter @Author_CKNorth.
The Mom Tattoo
by Simon A. Smith
You think it’s a nightmare at first, but then she reaches for the high note, and her voice cuts out. There’s a dusty little squeak, like someone put their hands around her throat and strangled, and you are wide awake.
She’s trying to sing your favorite song, Prince’s “Diamonds and Pearls,” and at the same time, in between raspy coughs, she is scolding your son at the breakfast table.
“Don’t use your fingers. Pick up your fork!” she says.
If I could I would give you the wooooorld… (hack hack).
“It’s right there. The fork. Use it!”
Your fingers curl into fists. It comes over you, a reflex. Perhaps you are engaged in a dream brawl. You don’t even know if this is happening. How could she be singing that song? What are the chances? At this hour? You can’t recall telling her...
It has been your favorite song for decades, even before you became a drummer in the jazz band that you still play with professionally. You’ve been a full-time musician for almost twenty years, and your mom has been to exactly two shows, which infuriates you only when she repeats the story about her friend from high school, Alicia, who plays the guitar.
“She’s a real musician,” she tells you again for the sixth or seventh time. “You wouldn’t believe it,” she says. “She has her own band and everything. A real composer, you know, the kind who thinks about music all the time. Can’t get it off her mind. A true artiste,” she says, emphasizing the final syllable like some kind of French chef.
It is Christmas Eve, and she is in your apartment. Must have flown in early. You are not asleep. This is her warped gift to you. You will struggle to tell your friends later precisely how she needles you into belligerence. You’ll compare her to a scalpel and then a swarm of wasps, and then… you can’t put it into words.
Would you be a happy boy or a giiiiiirl… (hack hack).
She is reprimanding your son in the same way she still hounds you about things like crooked wall art and soiled cookware, and she is dismembering your favorite song. It’s an absurd kind of surgery. She has it lying on an operating table. The chest is cracked open. She’s removing the heart. And you think to yourself, this is it, this is the last time this will ever be your favorite song. So long, Purple One. Farewell to your exquisite 17-note descending melody. Thanks for the memories. You won’t be able to shake this mutilation. It seems so extreme, and yet… You are not dreaming. This is it, the thing. It’s just… there. It… can’t be defined but also can’t be denied. It took an invasive procedure to position it just so, and it would be an equal feat to remove it. It’s ubiquitous. Is that the right word? What does that even mean? It’s…
But all I can do is offer you my love…
It’s permanent.
Simon A. Smith teaches English to high schoolers. His stories have appeared in many journals and media outlets, including Hobart, PANK, Whiskey Island, and Chicago Public Radio. He is the author of two novels, Son of Soothsayer, and Wellton County Hunters. He lives in Chicago with his wife and son. Find him here: https://www.simonasmith.com/
The Best Guy I’ve Ever Known
by Danila Botha
He was six foot three, with eyes like twin waves at high tide, sculpted abs and sun kissed skin despite the fact that he spent all day in front of a computer, in an incredibly well paid finance job. So if you take anything away from this, it’s the shared assumption that Mark was too good for me. When you meet me, you’ll see. There’s nothing about me that screams extraordinary, but once we connected, Mark and I spent every free minute together.
Unlike my stay-at-home mom, construction worker dad and four siblings from a small town inexplicably named after a city in India, but pronounced Dell High, Mark just had a mother named Gemma, who had lived in twelve countries and spoke five languages. She wore silk scarves tied around her neck in a neat bow, and curly grey hair au natural. He talked to her on the phone everyday, and sometimes she asked to speak to me.
When I told people I went to art school they either looked at me like I’d just told them I was in clown college, or they asked me to draw their portrait on the spot, like I was a cartoonist on the sidewalk with a tip cup. Mark asked me who my favourite artist was, and it wasn’t like at school, where you can’t say Matisse or Picasso because they’re too obvious, and you can’t talk about Frida Kahlo anymore than you can talk about Sylvia Plath without people rolling their eyes. Mark was curious about the arts, so I told him the truth, and he took me to the AGO on our first date. He bought me a book on Picasso that was the price of my weekly grocery bill. He said he loved how much I enjoyed being taken out, how much I loved all the bottle service and fancy dinners, sake and tuna steak, salmon tartare and cabernet sauvignon. He was great in bed, especially compared to the other guys I’d been with. I never knew if he was going to stroke my face, tell me how pretty and talented I was, then pull me on top of him, or if he was going to tie up my hands and my feet with one of his Tom Ford silk ties, yank my hair and spank me. We always said I love you during, and after.
He paid for me to join his expensive, elite gym so we could work out together. When I lost weight and started seeing some muscle, he complimented me. When I said I wanted to go blonde, and get regular manicures, he was happy to pay for it. He bought me the acrylic paint sets of my dreams, and when I told him how insecure I’d always been about my bumpy Roman nose, he paid to have it turned into a perfect, pert button, and took care of me while I recovered.
I told my best friend about him and she seemed surprised but happy for me.
The night he got caught, we were at his condo, and he said he had to run out to do a work thing. It was 11:00, pm, and he’d seemed antsy but it happened occasionally so I tried not to worry. He got in at 2:00 am, mumbling about how hard he had to work, but assuring me that he did it for us.
I was still wearing the amethyst and diamond ring he’d me a few weeks before when he held my hand. “Do you remember what I said about this ring?”
I nodded sleepily.
“It’s a promise ring. Don’t worry, the real thing will be way better. I just want you to know how much I love you.”
“I know,” I answered, and he fell asleep.
The next morning, the cops came in, grabbing his laptop and his phones. His eyes flashed from anger to panic and fear when they handcuffed him.
After two of them escorted him out, I stumbled over to the tall, heavy one who stood at our front door. My eyes were bleary and I could hardly get the words out.
“What is this about, anyway? What did he do?”
The cop shrugged, and then shook his head. “White collar crime, Miss. It seems he’s been investing his client’s money in a Ponzi scheme. He owes millions…”
I heard myself make a retching sound. “But that can’t be. He loves his job. He works so hard. His bosses love him…”
He shook his head again. “What bosses, Miss? He’s the CEO, the mastermind.”
I stood there in shock while he told me to take care.
Once I was sure they’d all left, I let out a huge scream.
Later that night, his mother called.
I told her that I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t believe he’d cheat anyone. Then she said something that made my blood go cold.
“And that woman, accusing him of sexual assault.”
I thought about the Mark I knew, the generous, fun, open guy, the one who said I love you first. I needed him to be who I thought he was.
“Women don’t always tell the truth.” She said, “they have all kinds of motives for accusing someone.”
I didn’t know what to believe, my head hurt, but I knew I couldn’t go back to who I was before.
“Yeah,” I said, “I know. He’s the best guy I’ve ever known.”
Danila Botha is the author of three short story collections, Got No Secrets, For All the Men…which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, The Vine Awards, and the ReLit Award. Her new collection, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness will be published in March 2024 by Guernica Editions. She is also the author of the novel Much on the Inside which was recently optioned for film. Her new novel, A Place for People Like Us, will be published by Guernica in 2025. You find her at www.danilabotha.com, https://www.facebook.com/danilabothawriter, or https://twitter.com/DanilaBotha.
The Recluse
by Harriet Garfinkle
You think you know what life you are living. You are sadly mistaken.
I came to California tucked inside a leather valise, lodged between the freshly ironed European linens and tatted lace. I came from Alabama where my kith and kin still reside. They have large broods — hundreds of arachnid offspring with southern drawls, big hair that wilts in the humid summers. I’m a shut-in, a misanthrope, and a recluse. I live an undisturbed routine inside the carved Chinese cedar chest that you’ve stashed in the attic. The wooden warriors on the bas-relief fight a centuries old battle. I’m hoary now, and I struggle to move my feeble, bristly legs. All my hundreds of children have fled.
I am my mother's child. But I was born near the clang of the cable cars and the keening of the foghorns. I’m the adventurous one, traveling south a hundred nautical miles on the breath of the ocean to come to this place perched on a high cliff. I live in the small opening between the roof rafters of this drafty building. Awaiting the chance to spin a web. To make babies. To feel fulfilled.
You came to the literary camp late, so you got the dregs. Top bunk. You picked up a crazy woman — another writer — from the airport. You didn’t know her. It was a mitzvah, a kindness. A New Yorker. Not Jewish, and even more neurotic. But her flight was late. You hate to be late. You drove like Bertha Mason Rochester along the Big Sur cliffs. You might have a death wish. It’s a wonder you arrived.
The other bunks already sport hospital corners, pj’s laid out for the night, and suitcases stowed beneath the beds. Beside one low bunk, there’s a CPAP machine. Your upper bed quickly becomes snarl of scratchy sheets, tangled bedclothes, and your own duffel bags. There’s nowhere else to put your stuff. You hit your head on the low ceiling and start to cry. It reminds you of camp when you were a teenager. You’re always trying to fit into tight places, even now.
Lights out in the bunk room after a welcoming cocktail party. You pull out your kindle to read a little bit, and when you look at the ceiling less than 12 inches from your face, there I am staring down at you. When you when a kid, you were traumatized by the sight of a long -forgotten great aunt of mine. You yell, “Spider!” The writers you barely know are now your best friends. Lights on. CPAP mask off. A cup is found. Your lower bunk mate clambers up onto your sagging mattress and encloses me inside one of those red disposable party cups. She slides a piece of paper over the top. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Who knows what malice I could perform if given half a chance? Your bunkie carries me outside and deposits me in the bushes by the front steps. You all feel virtuous.
I feel lost, exposed. I crawl under the wooden stairs to cover my shame.
You came to the narrow street South of Market. The uneven pavement is littered with discarded needles, urine-soaked baby diapers, and stained mattresses, the wool batting mounding in drifts in the gutters. Human and canine excreta exhibit track marks — evidence of vagrants roving these streets. Hollow ghosts of plastic bags hover like sentinels, fluttering up and down the narrow passageway. You’re a writer and an actress. You came to this haunted alley to get a headshot.
I am also my mother’s child, one of thousands dispersed to the four winds. I was the shy, timid one, slow to mature. I never wanted to leave home, so I’ve settled into a discarded running shoe in this old brick building a mile from my mother. Any moment the photographer could decide to wear them. He never does. He’s too lazy to actually run. I worry about my mother. She’s on her last legs, but I’m reluctant to leave my own nest to visit her.
You ring the doorbell on the concrete blockhouse. It has an iron outer door. The alley has the same name as you, and you think that's funny, and maybe a good coincidence. It's not. The photographer has a round, friendly face and a paunchy belly. You think he's warm and cozy. He's not.
The photographer asks what you are wearing. You're embarrassed because you're always cold or too hot. It's a parka with a fur lined hood. He says you look cute and like the girl next door, and he's going to photograph you in your hood. You didn't know you looked like the girl next door. Was the girl next door Jewish? He takes a bunch of photographs of you, and then he tells you that you’re beautiful. He tells you you're the sexiest thing he's ever seen. He comes closer. His breath is sweltering. He touches you, and it's electric because the man you're married to doesn't touch you with any voltage. You melt a little but, still, you think, No. I'm married. You say it aloud. But he's on top of you, and the voltage is searing.
I bite him.
You put your parka back on and walk out the barricaded door, not knowing. You are a cistern. Your shame is runnels carved into the sides of your cheek and in your armpits, tainted sweat, dripping dirty rainwater.
The photographer doesn’t realize what I’ve done. He doesn’t know that his skin will fester and extrude pus, that his tissue will become necrotic, that he will writhe in pain and confusion, with fever and chills, the same way he has made women struggle to free themselves underneath his heavy weight. He will die without understanding. You will never have the satisfaction of seeing his anguish.
I will watch for you, dangling from a thread.
Harriet Garfinkle is currently shopping her literary psychological suspense, Waltzing on our Knees, to agents. She was one of the creators of the original production of the play, Purple Breasts, which, after receiving top billing at the Edinburgh Festival, had full-page coverage in the NY Times. Her short fiction has appeared in online journals such as the RiversEdge Journal of the University of Texas and Gris-gris Magazine of Louisiana State University, among others. She's been honored to win several Effie Lee Morris Awards from WNBA-SF. Her artwork can be seen at http://www.harriet-garfinkle.com, and she can be reached at harrietgarfinkle@gmail.com. She is currently at work on her second novel, “Fast Forward/Slow Rewind.”
Poet Eyes
by Autumn Bettinger
I once curated an art show at a community college. All entries had to be nature themed. Bonus points if they were made from sustainable materials. I had made dry and wet leaf mosaics, an amateur’s approximation of the Mona Lisa and Starry Night in torn maple leaves and fern fronds. I know there were other displays like mine: heavy-handed and on the nose.
There was one kid who came and stole the show. I say ‘kid’, but he was at least nineteen. I was only twenty, but he seemed so young. He was small and pale, had poet’s eyes—that’s what my friend called them—dark and sunken, but attractive I guess, if you’re into that sort of thing.
When I brought him to his table, I watched him pull half a dozen taxidermized pieces of roadkill from a scuffed, leather suitcase. They were misshapen, the stitching lumpy and raw. Some were missing eyes, some still had blood in their fur, some looked like they were screaming. I recoiled, but I was the outlier. The rest of the girls moved forward as one, touching broken tails and trying to capture poet eyes. The guys were congratulating themselves on knowing it was a metaphor for the brevity of human life.
I walked back to my table and said nothing. When the show ended, a few straggling artists helped me throw away half-full plastic cups and wipe down counters covered in crumbs and crumpled napkins. The kid lingered, putting his roadkill away with a tender, unsettling exactitude that I would later attribute to serial killers. I half-listened as my friend told me how she had always wanted to sleep with a moody artist. I looked over at the kid fondling a flattened squirrel and shook my head. Poet eyes clearly go further than I realized. When he showed up ten minutes later with a paper towel and started helping, I moved to the back of the room to pull trash bags from bins and let my friend shoot her shot. An hour later and I was the only person in the room.
Weighed down with packed up leaves and the remaining trash bags, I struggled down the stairs and into the alley where the dumpsters lived. It was cold, my breath puffing up to whiten and then slip away. The dumpster lid was already open, which was a small mercy. I’m short and easily winded, and those lids weigh more than you think. I threw a trash bag in and heard a muffled curse. I froze but wasn’t all that surprised when the kid crawled out of the dumpster; a half-dead mouse in one hand. I gagged but otherwise remained composed. I had been his boss after all, for at least two hours, the least I could do was not throw up on the kid’s shoes. Poets eyes were pinned to me, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I didn’t see any emotion, just flat pools. Two unbothered black marbles. When he closed the gap in two quick steps and grabbed me by the hair, kissing me, I was so surprised I kissed him back, like a reflex. I didn’t pull away, even when I felt the barely warm mouse brush my neck as he pressed me against the bricks.
Autumn is a full-time mother of two in Portland, Oregon. When not folding laundry or slinging snacks, she can be found writing once the kids are asleep. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Compressed Literary Arts, The Good Life Review, and others. She has been a finalist for The Prose Online International Flash Prize. All of Autumn’s published works can be found at autumnbettinger.com.
Homecoming
by Frannie Rooney
Sage, Kelly, and I went to the Homecoming Dance to kidnap Frank Wiggins, a senior at a high school across town. I had just learned his name the night before.
Kelly lured him into the parking lot, unnoticed, Sage hit him over the head with a shovel, and we dragged him into the backseat of Sage’s Kia Sorrentino, the one her parents got her last year for her 16th birthday.
After we tied his unconscious hands and feet together and put duct tape over his mouth, I asked earnestly, “Now what?”
Sage pulled her car keys out of her dress pocket.
“Ooo, that dress has pockets?” Kelly asked.
Sage ignored her and got in the driver’s seat.
Kelly went around on the other side. “You’re stuck with him,” she told me.
“Why do I have to sit in the back with him?” I groaned.
Sage drove for what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes, trying to get as far away from Palm Beach Gardens High and towards the Beeline Highway where it was pitch black, no streetlights.
Sage pulled to the side. There were no cars. There was no breeze, just humidity rising from the swamp around the highway. Palm trees swayed in the distance.
“What’s the plan now?” I asked.
Sage didn’t say anything. She quietly went to the trunk of her car and pulled out a gun.
“What’s that for?” I took a few steps back.
“Relax, Gianna.” Sage aimed the gun at the swamp behind the car. “It’s not for you.”
Sage rang out two shots from her small gun. They were loud, louder than I imagined coming from such a tiny thing.
“Jesus Christ,” Kelly moaned. “Why the fuck are you shooting at nothing?”
“I’ve never shot it before,” Sage explained, “I watched some YouTube videos last night, you know, after I heard this fucking pig was going to our homecoming with Rachel Chait. And you know these things have a lot more kickback than you think, so it’s hard to aim. Harder than it looks in the movies.”
“Where did you even get that?” Kelly asked.
“It’s my dad’s, duh.” Sage forced a laugh and immediately stopped. She turned and pointed the gun at the swamp again, muttering something to herself.
“I thought this whole tying him up and leaving him out here in the middle of nowhere was just to scare him,” Kelly continued. She pulled her thick brown hair into a ponytail. “Now we have to shoot him?”
“I have to shoot him,” Sage corrected. “He didn’t do anything to you.”
We were silent. She was right. We didn’t even know who he was or what happened over the summer until last night.
Sage continued, “You can both wait in the car. Plausible deniability or whatever it’s called.”
“Plausible deniability?” Kelly raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I watch Law and Order, okay? The point is you both don’t see me do it. You both aren’t involved.”
Kelly and I stood still in front of the car, blocking the door to Frank.
“Yeah, that’s how we’ll do it. Help me get it out, and then you both wait in the car,” Sage instructed.
Kelly and I didn’t move.
“You don’t want to ruin your life over him,” I squeaked.
Sage pointed the gun at us. I took a deep breath. I could feel Kelly shaking beside me. “Move,” she demanded. “Fucking move!” She screamed.
“Please,” she whispered, “please.” She started crying.
Kelly and I walked closer to Sage and embraced her lightly from an awkward distance, trying to avoid the gun by her side.
It was a beautiful moment until Frank kicked the door, reminding us why we were here in the first place. He was conscious again.
Sage broke away from us and opened the door. He fell to the ground.
“Fuck you.” Sage spit on him.
Sage and Kelly dragged him by his feet a few feet away while I got in the car. Kelly then joined me in the backseat. We waited for a few minutes. I heard two shots, but I don’t know what happened.
Plausible deniability. Or whatever it’s called.
Frannie Rooney is an MFA student at the New School in New York City, concentrating in fiction. She has previously taught English at a high school in Miami, Florida, an elementary school in Austin, Texas, and the University of Málaga in Spain as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. Originally from West Palm Beach, she writes about Florida whenever she can. She can be contacted at frooney561@gmail.com.
Missing
by Judith Yarrow
Alice Jason’s children are worried about their mother. She was supposed to be traveling for a month through parts of Asia, a trip she’d started planning on the eve of her divorce. Finally after fifteen years of hard-scrabble single parenting, her children out of the house and beginning families of their own, she’d announced her departure date and was seen off at the airport.
By now she’s been gone eight months, and her children have no idea when she’ll return, or even exactly where she is. Her postcards and letters continued to arrive at irregular intervals. They gave no explanations, just informed the children of her next probable destination. Sometimes they simply made cryptic comments: “Don’t worry, everything will be all right,” or “The path is sure to reveal itself at the next intersection.”
Because her children are responsible adults, they can’t leave their obligations to go in search of their elusive mother, so they asked me to locate her and persuade her to return home. I might be able to locate her, but could I persuade her? Once I thought I knew her; now I didn’t know. “I would try,” I wrote. It gave a certain poignancy to my travel, and a focus.
Her last postcard from Japan, where she’d stayed so much longer than originally planned, had said she’d be in Bangkok for a week. Her daughter had sent a letter to her at the Opera Hotel where the mother had said she’d be staying, but she hadn’t remained in Bangkok long enough to receive it, and eventually it was returned.
The daughter, being the efficient mother of two very busy small children, simply added a note to the letter and sent it on to Malacca, sufficiently far enough along on the itinerary her mother had sketched out to ensure she’d get it. The letter was waiting for Mrs. Jason at the Majestic Hotel. I’ve read it. It has a certain sweet innocence about it, as if it were following a camp form-letter, “Dear Mom, we are all fine. I hope you are too. When will you be coming home? Lisa’s getting a new tooth, Rob says hello. . .”
I had their mother’s initial travel plans, but whether she had given them up completely I couldn’t decide. It’s difficult to know where along the journey Mrs. Jason had left the course, or even if she’d left it. Perhaps instead I should say where she’d stepped out into the unknown land of the permanent traveler. It might have started in Japan, the place that looked so similar on the surface to her familiar world and turned out to be so utterly different in basic premises. When one thing is called into question, all things follow: who she was, for instance, and then, who she wanted to become.
Or maybe she began to slip off course in Bangkok. In leaving Bangkok she might have left behind more than she realized. But personally, I think that once she’d cut herself loose from the anchor of her home after the children had vanished, as children do, deep into their own lives; once that anchor had been cast off, she’d gone adrift, compass and sextant lost. Now she wandered among foreign islands trying for a landing that would yield up the golden answer to a question she hasn’t yet been able to frame.
I dropped the children a note to let them know I was still searching for their mother and would be bound for Singapore in a few days time, after a stop in Malacca. But Malacca’s weathered red Dutch merchants’ buildings and cluttered Chinese shops slowed my search. These were scenes Mrs. Jason might have paused to photograph, record for tedious recounting to her grandchildren when they were older: “When I was in Malacca...” I can’t bear that sort of thing anymore. My photographs are mysteries pointing the way from a past I leave behind with every step, signs and significations I will read again someday as if I were reading a Polynesian star chart: these shells, these twigs shape a wave that will carry you to another shore, one where existence is sufficient and wholeness is without question.
Of course, when I got to Singapore, that self-named “tropical city of excellence,” as clean as tyranny can make it, I couldn’t find her, though two letters from her son waited for answers to her absence, letters asking where and when, questions I knew she couldn’t answer, demands for reassurance that the mother still existed and was coming home. By now I knew that was unlikely. She was erasing herself, the mother they knew, in a steady deconstruction that had to end in bleached ribs on some uncharted atoll or a new person sprung overnight and ready for the thickening swell of life, ripe with herself at last.
Traces of their mother were vanishing, I wrote, but I’d try for her in Bali—Bali, where they dance in the temples to the sounds of golden gongs and brass drums, where choruses of cocks crow in the morning and in the night dogs fight; where the gods are fed every day on fruit and rice. I was finding true signs of the woman now, glimpses of recognition, shadows of her unnamed shape cast forward through time, all categories eliminated until only the fundamental self remained, not mother, not wife, not broken spirit. Now, seeker in the midday heat and the rainstorm chill. Now, voyager along the uncharted strands of a life that point me onward. Now, permanently missing.
In Ubud at the poste restante, more letters waited, frantic demands from both son and daughter to tell them what had happened to their mother, why my letters were so vague. I wanted to reassure them, but what could I say beyond the obvious? I sent them a postcard: “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right in the end. The path itself is the answer, though every intersection is a new question.”
Judith Yarrow has been published in Cicada, Backbone, Aji, Raven’s Perch, and others. She was the featured poet in Edge: An International Journal, and her poems have been included in the Washington State Poet Laureates’ 2014 and 2017 collections. She finally settled down in Seattle, except for four years in Japan, in the 1980s. These days she spends a lot of her time revising a science fiction trilogy. Find more of her work at jyarrow.com.
Kermit Flew
by Aaron Weltz
At first, all Kermit Brink knew was that he was flying—seemingly in slow motion. The sunbeams and shadows that dappled through the limbs of the oak, rather than flashing past in rapid staccato, crept by like days and nights. Suspended in the air alongside him and moving apace were sparkling bits of crystal, gleaming on and off in those same sunbeams. It was then he recalled the crash and realized that the crystal bits were in fact shards of windshield. The trunk of the oak, for its part, was growing closer, widening as he approached. It was clear that he would not miss it; being airborne he could not adjust course. And although he could not say why, he knew just as surely that he would not survive the impact.
So in this drawn-out manner, he flew.
He now recalled that his father was already dead. That seemed to Kermit to be a waste. So often he had dreamt of that very event, wishing for some moment of clarity when his father’s eyes would widen, a deep consuming guilt washing over his face as he came to grips with it all. Lashes with a belt (buckle out) expertly placed for concealment by hand-me-down overalls. That permanently odd angle of Kermit’s left forearm, the bone so poorly set by his mother in the barn by the light of an oil lamp. Cigar coals snuffed on the back of his shoulder, the marks of which still showed today. He’d fantasized all these things crashing home for his father, reduced to a teary-eyed, sobbing beggar of the deathbed forgiveness Kermit would delight in withholding.
But it was not to be. The steering column had skewered ol’ Pops straight through, and the only glimpse Kermit could catch as he launched from the car was his father’s bug-eyed disbelief, already frozen there for eternity.
Still, Kermit flew. And the oak neared.
And what of his own guilt? There was plenty of that to count, wasn’t there--apples falling near the tree and all. There had been years—sixteen of them now—of that broken lock inside of him never working quite right, the tumblers jarred and mis-fitting, never giving him any release from the tightly-wound mechanisms cranking up too high, to bursting strength. If only he’d unleashed that taut spring’s evil tension on ol’ Pops, things may have been different, some justice found. But the laws of fathers and sons are written in such a way that he never could. And flying now, he had to come to grips with it.
He thought briefly about his dog Beau, which he adored and who worshipped him, and who he’d often kicked—just because. But mostly he thought about the Peterson kid, who simply had the misfortune to be the smallest and youngest guy on the school bus. What evil broken mechanisms had Kermit created within him? And did he have a dog that he loved? By tomorrow the Peterson kid will hear about the crash, maybe even about Kermit’s brains slung high and low on a pin oak along Route 32. Would he be happy to hear it? Almost certainly.
Still, Kermit flew, seemingly in slow motion, amid sunbeams and shadows painfully unhurried in their flashing. How hard would it have been to be nicer to that Peterson kid? he asked himself. Easy enough, was the answer. Easy enough. But the laws of fathers and sons had not allowed it. And the oak neared.
Aaron Weltz lives with his family in Charlotte, NC, and crafts stories centered around his Appalachian roots. He can be reached at weltzam@gmail.com.
Silence
by Richard Daub
Lisa never spoke. She sat motionless at her desk all day, staring off somewhere, moving only when it was time for the class to go somewhere.
The other kids bullied her at recess. They tried to get her to talk, but she always refused. One day, Martin threw a pebble at her and hit her in the head.
"Leave her alone!" Angus exclaimed.
Martin, then the other boys, started throwing pebbles at Angus.
*
Angus was in the car with his mother when he saw Lisa in a backyard walking towards an old wooden playhouse. She didn't see him.
*
The following afternoon, he rode his bike past her house. The yard was empty and there wasn't a car in the driveway. He stopped at the corner and waited, then backtracked past on the other side of the street, but it was still the same.
*
He rode past her house again the next afternoon, and the next, with the same result.
*
He went again Saturday morning. The yard was empty, but there was a rusted, wood-paneled Dodge Aspen station wagon in the driveway. He rode past on the near sidewalk, then hit the brakes when someone called his name.
She was at the playhouse window. She motioned with her index finger for him to come over. He leaned his bike against a tree next to the sidewalk.
She was waiting at the door. Her hair was in the usual pigtails with the gumball rubber bands, and she was wearing pink shorts and a white tank top with a sunflower stitched on the front. The inside of the house was nicer than the outside, with a small table and chair that looked more like miniaturized versions of real furniture than playhouse décor. There were curtains on the windows.
She kissed him on the cheek, then turned away.
"It's okay," he said. "Can I kiss you?"
She moved to the corner and buried her face in her hands. She was trembling.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
She nodded. Eventually she peeked at him. He stepped to her and tried to kiss the side of her forehead, but she moved away.
In the middle of the room, facing him, she pulled down her shorts, revealing a pair of white boys' briefs. She then pulled those down.
"Do you still want to kiss me?" she asked.
Angus looked down at the floorboards and nodded.
She leaned over, offering her cheek. He kissed her, close to her mouth.
"I gotta go," he said.
She pulled up her underwear and shorts, then retreated to the corner and started crying.
"I won't tell anyone," he said.
She started crying harder.
Angus stepped closer.
"I'm like you," he said.
Richard Daub is a former journalist and essayist turned fiction writer. His short stories have appeared in Maudlin House, New Pop Lit, and The Dillydoun Review. He currently resides in White Plains, NY and can be found on Twitter @rdaub82.