Hubba-Bubba Cephalopod

C.B. Auder was once half-raised. Their artworks, stories, and poems have appeared in numerous journals, both online and in print. They edit the online journal Claw & Blossom at www.clawandblossom.com

Shelly was born of a wad of gum that a jet-propelled stranger stored on the curb, and in the mornings she would wake up tangled in her own hair.

Peanut butter, mayonnaise, ice: nothing could scrape Shelly free from herself, no matter how hard her mother tried, so every week a little more of Shelly was cuttled clean--keratin excretions swept to the garbage: dreck, dreck, dreck.

Sometimes Shelly wonders which of her selves would now float if she'd been raised with bedposts, but isn't it tiresome to tread old water--aren't living fossils inherently embedded in everyone's fleshy, tentacled lives? Better or worse, Shelly's nights were spent in a Target rollaway bed. One blanket warm as sand, and no place to store an abandoned day's gum.

Still. She'd swum and swum in dreams. Those weaving whale-mouthed possibilities, the lure of a bone-blue ocean-sized home, a life abob with whistle-boats, and all the beaches dreck-free.

Now she's older--and behold: watch the seaweed wrap her close, see the wads of Kleenex bloom. Hey--she taps strangers on the bus--Why don't you pull up a slack-jawed couch and we'll binge my encrusted DVDs. Do you like Arrested Bazooka Development, or maybe Squid Squad CSI?

Shelly tells the driver how her father sank. She wants to confess to folding Mother up--rolling and storing those brackish memories in a closet-sized cove of what she wishes were some stranger's home.

The problem is the Pop! Pop! of lowest tide. Mother keeps molting, keeps wriggling free--and her steady current of highest priority? Report Shelly's latest failings to the Bubblicious Gang.

So Shelly chews her cheek, stays prepared. She Q-Tips her ears. Crabwalks those pavement cracks like a pro. She buys her Chap-Stik and Trident in bulk.

She keeps steel bedposts nearby, too--round and bald as Poseidon's scepter. A socket wrench stored beneath the mattress, and every night she hugs her newest oldest self. My mind belongs to me alone. I'm my very own wad of gum.

Maybe, she thinks, as she sinks into sleep, this is the best we can expect from a nautilus of days. And is it so wrong to stay jaw-hard? Dependably fist-curled in the fathomless dark?

But someone inside her can't stop curving--slowly, slowly--towards morning's hopeful mouth.

Two-Sided Coin

This is Ms. Alvarez’s first publication. She is a member of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She is also a flamenca, business process designer, wife and mother. Find her on Twitter @Caterina445.

“What did you learn at school today?” My mom wanted to know.

“Good versus bad, right versus wrong is idiotic because everybody thinks they are good and right.”

“Really?  But sweetheart, how could things like genocide or hate crimes be good or right?”

“Everyone has a right to their own opinion,”  I said.

“The right to kill off a race, destroy a bloodline, eliminate a language?”

That afternoon my bully called me. Her calls came most afternoons, a crop at my back as I dashed down bone colored hallways to my parents’ room to answer the phone. 

“Hello?”

“Pig nose,” she breathed and a swarm of girls breathed behind her. When they laughed I identified them by their cackles.  Making them like and accept me was my only goal. But my voice was paralyzed by my heart.  It pounded absurdly.  It sounded an alert I didn’t care to hear.

I resolved to enter a synthetic universe where love and hatred are anomalies, where I could exist outside emotion.  My family retreated to a mildewed sofa in a cavity in my brain. 

Two girls who swung off the periphery of the bully’s group became my curtain. I hid my good grades behind them.  I started going with a boy named Andrew.  We kissed in the plaza between the lockers, heads swiveling like actors on soap operas.  He tasted like Strawberry Pop Rocks.

One day Mother and I both answered, she downstairs and I up, when my bully called.  I heard my mom ask hello?

My bully said, “Your daughter gives head.  She sucked Andrew Montgomery’s dick.”

Mother leered at me over a dinner of bananas and sour cream sprinkles with Sweet n’ Low.  She never said a thing about it which scared me, badly. 

A dream walk later, on my way to class, my bully and her three cronies stopped me in the corridor.  They caroled in canon, “We’re sorry we were such bitches to you. ”

I weathered interminable pounding heart paralysis, then I said,  “Whatever, I don’t give a shit. I love you guys.” 

Heart, stop making a victim of me.

Later that year I gave head to Andrew behind a tennis court at a neighborhood street party. I didn’t know what to do exactly.  I’d heard penises are very sensitive, so I kissed it gently for a while and then asked him if he liked it.  He said yes and gave me a hug.  His embrace felt like an example of how some things are absolutely right and some are inscrutably wrong.

This letter was taped to my locker a few weeks later.

Dear Former Friend,

We notice you have been eating lunch on the other side of the cafeteria. We hope you like your new friends.

Sherry started soccer again. Missy got a horse for Christmas. I’m selling hand-painted chopsticks.

We heard a weird rumor about you.  We don’t like hanging out on the field after school with those kids who think they are cool. If you get bored of being cool or miss having real friends come find us at the magenta table by the bathrooms on taco Tuesday.

Emily and the Gang

What I Mean When I Say It’s Raining

Elodie Rose Barnes is an author and photographer. She can be found between Paris, Spain and the UK (usually mixing up her languages) while her words live in places such as Amethyst Review, Clover & White & Neologism Poetry Journal. She is guest editor of the Life in Languages series at Lucy Writers’ Platform. Find her online at http://elodierosebarnes.weebly.com and on Twitter @BarnesElodie. 

There are a hundred, or thereabouts, Scottish words for rain. Magical, fairytale words like spindrift (the playful spray whipped up by the wind) and haar (a sea fret that stealthily winds its way inland, suffocating the earth with the damp taste of sea salt). In Scotland a fine rain, or drizzle, is never just a drizzle but can be as complicated as your coffee order. Is today a mizzle (drizzle with a fine mist on top), or a smirr (an extra fine drizzle, minus the mist)? Is it a dagg (a drizzle that seems light, but can soak you in moments), or a hagger (a drizzle that really is as light and benign as it looks)? 

There are more words for rain, in Scotland, than for any other single thing besides snow.

My grandfather - the ‘French painter who ended up in Málaga by way of Paris and Morocco’ grandfather who always seemed too exotic to touch - had just one word for rain. God’s piss. I say one word because his strong accent, thick with cigar smoke and whisky and sunshine and spices, would swirl around the letters until they all blended into one and they came out as Godspiss. Rain was rain was rain, but rain was too depressing. He never painted the rain. Instead he painted my grandmother - the ‘bohemian writer who wore purple eyeshadow’ grandmother who also seemed to live just out of my reach. At her desk, typing away in the room that I was never allowed to enter. In the evening on the terrace, laughing with a glass of wine and a cigarette long after I’d been sent to bed. His pictures of her were like a watergaw - a hazy patch of rainbow that gives you a glimpse of something whole, and beautiful, before it disappears in the mist. 

When a stroke robbed her of her language, my grandfather stopped painting her and read to her; her own books that she repeated back to him, dully, without understanding. Lovers, journeys, shadows, stars. His voice, the only words she had left. It happened in February, the only month when Málaga really gets wet. Godspiss. It’s raining, querida. He painted her gravestone as a sunset, and followed her into it soon after. There was no poem. 

I didn’t stay in Málaga. I’m here; the adopted daughter of a hundred different words for rain. None of them are the one that I understand.

Puccinia Pittierana

Noa Covo is a teenage writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reckoning, Jellyfish Review, and Waxwing. Her microchapbook, Bouquet of Fears, will be published by Nightingale and Sparrow this July. She can be found on Twitter @covo_noa. 

I find you staring at your tomato plants, the ones you’ve been growing since your wife was devoured by a man eating bacteria. The leaves that replaced her are covered in a thin layer of rust. The heat of the pie in my hands begins to burn through the potholders but your garden has no flat surfaces only sloping curves and I cannot put it down. There are tears leaking down your face, and you are trembling. I never knew a man so solid could tremble, before this you were all half words and stiff sentences and you made us hate you with your dislike for the earth underneath our fingernails. Your wife was the one that would thank us for our pies. Any farmer could tell you that rust is a common disease, but you don’t know that because your bones are cement and only lately has your heart started sprouting daisies. I want to tell you I can heal your plants, I wish I could tell you I can heal your heart, as I stand behind you with the pie burning my open palms, but I don’t. I say nothing, and when you turn around and see me I deposit the pie in your hands and go. Maybe tomorrow I will write the name of the disease on a card and slide it under your door. Maybe one of these days we will eat tomatoes together.

Crown Fire

Dan Crawley is the author of the novella Straight Down the Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019). His writing appears or is forthcoming in a number of journals, including New World Writing, New Flash Fiction Review, Jellyfish Review, and Atticus Review. His work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Along with teaching creative writing workshops and literature courses, he is a fiction reader for Little Patuxent Review. Find him on twitter.

When she discovers her husband in the laundry room, standing in the open doorway leading out to the garage, her skin prickles. He’s firmly pushing on the bottom of the light switch, while he counts, “twenty-two-one-thousand, twenty-three-one-thousand, twenty-four-one-thousand…” and leans into the darkness.

When she tells him, “You need to get help,” he says, “I’m making sure the door is down and the light is off. Do you want the garage door up all night and the light on? Announcing to all, ‘Hello, come on in. Take what you want.’” 

When she tells him, “This is torture,” he says, “What if the light gets too hot? Like the stove, if I don’t constantly check the burners? Do you want to burn the place to the ground?”

When she holds his elbow, he unpeels her fingers.

When she’s back in their bed, her hands smolder, turn into pinwheels of sparks. Super-heated air roars across her ears, and she can only call out above the din, “I love you, please come to bed, I love you, please come to bed, I love you, please come to bed….”

Chapel Of Ghosts

Shome Dasgupta lives in Lafayette, LA. He is the author of i am here And You Are Gone (Winner Of The 2010 OW Press Fiction Chapbook Contest), The Seagull And The Urn (HarperCollins India, 2013), Anklet And Other Stories (Golden Antelope Press, 2017), Pretend I Am Someone You Like (University of West Alabama’s Livingston Press, 2018), and Mute (Tolsun Books, 2018). His work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Puerto Del Sol, New Orleans Review, New Delta Review, Milk Candy Review, Magma Poetry, and elsewhere. He can be found at www.shomedome.com and @laughingyeti

A blank day it was, the day we threw broken pieces of road at the blue and green stained glass windows. We were nowhere and that’s all we knew--being nowhere and doing nothing until nothing got us in trouble. The sun was fresh out from the horizon, and we hadn’t slept yet--walking along dew-ridden fields in the middle of the night was what made us sane--it was the only time we felt like we existed--when nothing was around, and it was just us and croaking frogs, walking in unknown lands. 

The stained glass windows were already in shards by the time we found the chapel, made of rotting wood and covered in messy vines, twirling in every direction as if they were searching for the meaning of their existence. We just made the broken windows more broken. There was no roof. 

She pointed to the door which was on the ground, covered in dirt, crumbling and looking sad. The entrance was there--waiting for us--and we walked in holding hands, leaving the morning fog behind us. Refracted light came through the teething windows, revealing crunched pews and a sliced altar. It was pure demolition and desolation and we were happy. She threw her last piece of road at one of the windows, and with her other hand guided me up to the front of the chapel where we knelt in broken glass and wood. And so we prayed.

And we prayed until our holy thoughts drifted toward the sound of footsteps coming from the entrance. We stood up and realized that there was no way really out except for the way we came in. There they were--two of them--or the two of us--our own ghosts in different forms of our own memories. Bruised--smiling--bloodied--crying--sleeping--laughing--beaten--holding hands. Our past before us as the entrance way to the chapel shifted backgrounds for each memory. And there we were--in her grandfather’s attic, she covered in blood, me, holding a pipe, listening to the sound of his footsteps. And there we were, in uncut fields, running through, feeling nothing because nothing was all we ever wanted. In the pond, underwater, holding each other as we count the bubbles from our breath. In cuffs, expressing our love for each other as the moon shone on the gloss of her eyes. And there we were--in the woods, looking for bear prints and red petals. 

We held hands and watched ourselves, her body trembled, my body trembled, we trembled, our cries became louder with each memory, our hands clasping tighter, until our legs gave in and we fell. No more, no more, no more, she said, banging her head against wood and dirt. More, more, more, she said, banging her hands against the wood and dirt. Let us go, she said, our tears dampening the land around us in streams and drips. The voices stopped. The silence began, and we were there inside of it. How many broken bones of love and sadness, we didn’t know. We never counted.

There went our memories--all gone, our backs on the broken chapel floor. We were inside of silence. We were nowhere again and happy. Our bruises, our scars, swept away in a dream, no longer to return. She said it was time to go and so we did, leaving the caved chapel, our tower of light, holding hands and never looking back.

Prayer Card

Jessica Evans is a Cincinnati native who practices uprooting and restarting her life every few years. Most recently, she lived in a Bavarian forest. Soon, she'll be calling Washington, DC, home. A previous Pushcart nominee, Evans' work has appeared in several online and print journals, with work forthcoming in Mineral Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit, and Collateral. She's the prose editor for Headline Press and a mentor for the Veteran's Writing Project. Find her in the afternoons sipping hand-harvested dandelion tea. Connect with her on Twitter @jesssica__evans. 

She smells like America, fresh laundry chemicals and bright new fabric dyes. Marcus leans in for a thick inhale that chokes in his lungs, scarred from burn pits dug too close. Irina tenses, pulls back. Micro bends for micro moments. Her body is softer than he remembers; leftover plush and comfort that stretched and pulled her belly, swelling like a watermelon, from carrying the child. This isn’t the homecoming he expected. Even in his fatigue, he senses this isn’t the way a cap on a tour downrange should feel. This is loss, thwarted, their mourning period abridged. A family adventure stopped before it had a chance to breathe. 

Snipped conversations muffle against the din of the pulsing crowd. Herded into the gym on post, hundreds of families await hundreds of returns, a sea of green punctuated against the bright red of cheeks fresh from crying, signs crayoned and marked with the colors of the flag. Small children reach for anyone wearing a uniform; a parent absent is a parent returned. 

Marcus steps back, anger and loss lodged somewhere between his throat and his fists. Seven months in, two to go. Counting for both the birth and the return, stop-walled precisely when Irina needed him. Hypothetical is never good for a war zone. 

Irina carried for another four weeks, unable to detach from the stilled child calcifying in her womb. She tried to pray, tried to grieve. Ended up sending shouting, angry emails in caps, blistering messages fired off in her night and his day, all punctuating her need to divide, to separate. So close to redeploying, unable to break from the mission. If there’s no birth, there’s no leave, command told him. 

At eight months, she waited in the long line to enter post, handing over her dependent identification card, young and fresh from basic, who called her ma’am four times, eyeballing her enormous belly. She arrived to the ob/gyn wing out of breath and sweating, her body quickly shifting from blossoming to decaying, alone. Dr. V spoke to her in hushed, soothing tones. She wore a white coat over her uniform, flecks of camo flashing like lighthouses. Marcus too far to be reached, mission first, god and country immediately after, family fourth, their forever pecking order. The epidural numbed her lower half, not originally part of her birth plan, but now Irina no longer needed to know what it would like to create life. 

In the gym, Marcus slows his breathing. He looks at his wife, ten years his bride. Laughter swirls, reuniting that which has been cleaved for so long. Irina flatlines her lips, sees the still body of her baby, Dr. V’s soft black hair. Marcus feels something deposited in his right hand. Irina squeezes his shoulder, holds his gaze, and nods. Opening his palm, her id card deposited like a prayer card. 

Nothing

James R. Gapinski is the author of Fruit Rot (Etchings Press, forthcoming in 2020), Edge of the Known Bus Line (Etchings Press, 2018), and Messiah Tortoise (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2018). His short fiction has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Hobart, Juked, Monkeybicycle, Paper Darts, and other publications. Find him online at http://jamesrgapinski.com

My parents told me I would not have a new baby brother or sister. They beamed and said “Our family is getting a little smaller.” At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. But I soon learned.

I noticed the changes in our house first. Voices no longer echoed in the halls. Clutter began to disappear from the extra bedroom. Eventually, Dad’s desk migrated from the basement and occupied the space. Our walls faded from lavender and pink to a muted white. Boxes of hand-me-downs went missing. Everything became more orderly. Contained. Smaller.

The change eventually hit Mom too. Her stomach caved inward. She ate for one, barely touching her dessert. Her clothes fell like thick curtains, and she bought new dresses to fit her slender body. The emptiness inside her collapsed in gradual increments, until one day she said “Honey, I can feel it happening. We need to go!”

We drove to the hospital.

Mom went into a back room.

Dad stayed with me.

Nurses came and got Dad first. Then they got me. There was urgency in their pace, but nobody seemed panicked. Excited, maybe.

Dad presented me with an empty blanket. “Careful,” he said, showing me how to cradle the void just right. I held the little bundle of nothingness close to my chest. Everything was dark and silent and vacant, and for the first time in my young life, I was utterly alone.

One More Toast

Jo Goren is a writer who has illustrated, raised two children, dairy goats, and honeybees. A nominee for Best of Net 2019 and Best Small Fiction 2019, her writing has appeared in Blink-Ink, Toasted Cheese, Literary Mama, and Litro Magazine. @drawing4dollars  email: jmgoren[at]gmail.com

Lily cringed when her husband winked at the dimple faced attendant who greeted them as the doors of the gondola slid shut. “Y’all have a good night,” she said, her tan cheeks glowed back at the old revelers on their way to celebrate Steve’s birthday. At the station in town, they stepped off the moving ride. And Steve’s arm wrapped around Lily’s waist on the brief walk to the restaurant. Garlic butter, seafood, and warm bread perfumed the air as Clyde, always the gentleman, opened the door. 

“I’ll let them know we’ve arrived,” Lacey said and asked the hostess, who was bent over the reservation book, about their table. “If she leans over any further, her breasts will fall out,” Lily said to Marie. And as if she heard Lily’s comment, the young woman straightened herself, left her stand and asked, “Can I take anyone’s coat?” Steve and the rest of the men handed over their ski jackets. 

“Follow me,” she said. Clyde rubbed his hands together, grinned at Ron and walked behind the girl who hugged the menus to her chest. “I wish I was a menu,” Ron whispered to Clyde

As the six friends sat at the oval table, Steve’s eyes followed the hostess who paraded by, hips swiveling in a body con mini dress. Lily, in good shape but not twenty-two anymore, tired of catching her man ogle other women. Marie also noticed how the woman’s cleavage and curves had their husbands putting down their forks and elbowing each other. 

“Men,” Lily said to Marie in the women’s room.

“Oh, come on,” Lacey said. “They’re just looking.”

“Humph,” Lily scoffed. “We better get back to the table before they bring out the cake.  You know how Steve hates to be the center of attention, but you’re only sixty once. Get ready to sing out ladies.”

“Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, stay plastered you bastard, Happy Birthday to you.” One more toast and the group rose to leave. Body con girl handed Steve a pile of coats. He slipped her a twenty-dollar bill. “Really big spender?” said Lily.

Arm in arm, drunk, sated, the party strolled under the half-moon back to the station. Huddled in the gondola as the doors closed, the old hippie attendant asked, “What kinda music shall I play? Jimi Hendrix?” Walking fast, hand on the gondola window, he chanted, “All Along the Watchtower.”

“Wahoo,” the chorus of six howled back in unison, the cable latched and jolted the enclosed into a lurch up the mountain. “It’s dark in here,” Lily said. “0h I’ll protect you,” said Clyde, slipping his arm over her shoulder. Lily shuddered, tried to get out of his grasp, and turned back to see the lights from town. Another bounce of the lift, Lily screamed. Loud cracks sounded, one after another. Thirteen minutes passed; the gondola lurched into the station. Lily stepped down onto the rubber walkway.

“Whoa lady, hold up,” said the operator after he pushed the emergency button. “What happened in there?” Lily, speechless, trembled beside the operator who’d thrown a blanket over her shoulders. Nobody else got off the ride. Their necks had been snapped each one.

EMS and the sheriff arrived. They couldn’t stop wrenching after they looked inside the gondola, where five bodies slumped together in a cloud of death.  “Never seen anything like this,” said the sheriff, kerchief over his mouth. “Take this little woman to Regional Med Center.” 

Lily shivered in the ambulette. A week of skiing, drinking, and high altitude lowered her tolerance, she thought. Something went awry. Just like the time her family had a cottage on the lake, the night Uncle Ted grabbed young Lily for a kiss, ‘tripped’ fell off the dock and drowned. She waited for the last bubbles to surface before she called for help.

Driving

Connor Harrison writes short stories, essays and poetry. His work has appeared at Literary Hub, Anthropocene Poetry, Jam & Sand Journal, The Critical Flame, and in accompaniment to the 2018 Flipside Exhibition at the Fold Gallery, London. He is based in the West Midlands, UK.

James wasn’t sure what time it was, but it was dark and they were driving to KFC to pick up dinner. He guessed six, and glanced at the radio’s display. Instead of the time there was a dragon, formed out of orange pixels, burning away the name of the station. His dad’s car was big. He stretched his legs into the deep foot well. It was awkward, just him and his dad in the car; the week before they had argued via texts, about him not coming over on Saturdays anymore, about his not phoning up to talk. Nothing of this had been mentioned since he turned up that afternoon, packed to stay overnight, and so now, in the car, he expected his dad to corner him. 

He watched things pass as they drove – closed shop fronts and huddles of smoking men outside pubs. Attached to the wall of an old market building was Santa’s disembodied head, left out since last Christmas. The weather had scoured it down to a drained, plastic white. His dad cleared his throat.

‘What’re you readin’ at uni?’

‘Um, Oscar Wilde at the minute.’

‘Who?’

‘Dorian Gray?’

‘Are you just saying names?’

‘He wrote a play we’re reading.’

‘Dorian Gray did?’

‘Oscar Wilde.’

‘This is why I don’t read.’

‘You’d like some of it. The science fiction stuff.’

‘Blade Runner was a book first, I think.’

‘Yeah, it’s called, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’

‘What?’

‘I’ll lend you it.’ 

The conversation faded out, but James could feel it wasn’t done. It had only paused while his dad tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. The sign for KFC was visible now, just past the roundabout. Colonel Sanders’s grinning face loomed over the passing traffic.

‘I’ve been to the doctors.’ 

‘What for?’

‘I’ve been throwin’ up. Still am. And my piss is a funny colour.’

This he said with a careful laugh. His thumbs drummed harder on the faux leather.

‘What colour?’

‘The doctor said it’s not lookin’ good.’

‘What’re they gonna do?’

‘Blood tests, see what they can find. Just got to wait for the results, but it’s not looking good.’

They could both feel, both taste that heavy, metallic word that waited to be plucked out of the car’s heated air. On that last ‘good’, James had heard something liquefy in his dad – something had trembled. They curved round off the road and into the empty car park. His dad switched off the engine and took the digital dragon with it. Outside it was growing visibly darker, and behind them, the glowing innards of KFC looked American, almost.

‘I’ll come over more often,’ he said into the footwell.

‘Ok.’

Climbing out of the car, they shut their doors in unison. This happened often enough that he knew, seeing his dad’s grinning face over the black roof, what he was about to say.

‘Just like the Men in Black.’ 

Locked-In

Alyssa Jordan is a writer living in the United States. She pens literary horoscopes for F(r)iction Series. Her stories can be found or are forthcoming in The Sunlight Press, X–R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Reflex Fiction, and more. When she's not writing, she's hanging out with her partner or watching too many movies. You can find her on Twitter @ajordan901 and Instagram @ajordanwriter.

Glenn had never given much thought to his future. He lived in a modest one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of the city, right where industry gave way to nature. He had a nice kitchen, a tidy book collection, and a balcony filled with plants and flowers.

Every day, he came home from work and tended to his garden. He kept a spiny succulent that reminded him of his temperamental boss. A tall, reedy plant resembled his father, and a flowering pink lady looked like a celebrity he’d seen in the newspaper.

Glenn’s newest addition was a tiny potted flower. When a woman recently passed him on the street, he stopped and marveled at her rippling gold hair; later, at the store, he picked a flower with leaves veined in gold.  

The color didn’t look quite as radiant in the moonlight. 

Glenn emptied the watering can before he went inside. He prepared a simple dish and sat on the couch, his hands twitching restlessly on either side of him. 

Sometimes, Glenn would linger in doorways, torn between the mechanical patterns of his life and the faint, nagging feeling that he was doing something wrong. 

Glenn finished his meal and slowly turned the pages of a newspaper for half an hour. Eventually, he went to bed, and he dreamed of nothing. 

Tomorrow, he would do it all again.

Block & Knot

emilie kneifel is a sick fish, goo fish, they fish, blue fish (artist poet critic and editor at The Puritan and Theta Wave). find 'em at emiliekneifel.com, @emiliekneifel, and in Tiohtiáke, hopping and hoping.

Block

big taps the bum of the mug we can only drink rain from. hope he says, and hops, but never too high, his heels always trying to check if he’s sure. little and big pull my legs for the curb as something settles between the sun and my head, some cool cups my cheek, and i think, this is how a cloud feels. as little says hey! a cat in a bush! which makes sense because of the doors, as he asks, where do we stop and other things start, his violet eyes humming, which is when i realize that he was the one who was blocking my light. we pick up sticks that still have the green in them and trace the only cloud we can find. roger, we call him. roger! but roger thinks we’re making fun of his name so he cries.

Knot

we can’t find little so we follow the rocks. we follow the rocks and they give us a tree. it pulls up our faces to look. what are you doing up there? we ask with the nuts in our cheeks. i’m trying to catch up to roger, says little. i’m trying to tell him i’m sorry. we swing up to him and we sit. oak trees are always just big for a three. i thought he would come, says little, our toes in a knot. i thought— big presses his mug to little’s left cheek— he would come. when the mug is a violet, little asks, do you think we could grow it up here? sure, we say. but it wouldn’t get homesick, you think? all this way up? all this way up from the ground?

The Mountain Lion

Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. His work is forthcoming in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, The Loch Raven Review, The Fiction Pool, Spelk and 101 words. 

I met Mike at a bar in Bailey, Colorado which was coincidence because I was only stopping through. He saved me from a pair of locals who’d had plenty of my drunk mouth; a reaction I fault no one. Once the locals oil burnt low for kicking the shit out of me, we got to talking. 

“Where you from?” Mike asked. 

“The south.” 

“Running?” 

I nodded. 

“Mind if I ask what from?” 

 “Let’s just say she’s got a story, it didn’t happen how she tells it, but if she tells it to Johnny Law, he’d have reason to come looking.”  

Mike nodded like he could relate and ordered whiskeys. 

 “What are you searching for out here?” 

I didn’t have an answer; a taxidermy mountain lion head hung over the bar. 

“I’d like to see a mountain lion.”

***

The cabin complex is outside of town and up at 9800 feet. Mike, his wife, Gabby and the baby stay in the cabin. They offered to rent me the efficiency over the garage. It’s not much, but the views are. Especially Pikes Peak to the south. 

Around dusk, the shadows paint the mountains in subtle variations of black that make the peaks still distinguishable in their distance. I heard a bible passage once at a twelve-step: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Whoever wrote that bullshit never gazed off Mike’s porch at dusk in the direction of Pikes Peak.

Some nights, when Mike and I drink and yap around the fire, he will hold up his hand for us to listen. I try but hear only the crackling fire. Then Mike clutches the pistol and we creep onto the porch. 

One night, a deer’s white tail bounced away into the darkness like a dancing snowball. Another, a branch cracked as a hawk pushed off and flapped away. Another, a black bear stood paces away pawing at snow, clouds of visible air rising from its snout. 

“Probably a dead marmot,” Mike said of the bear’s pawing. “Black bears are mostly scavengers. No thirst to kill, unless you’re a salmon.”

We returned to our whiskeys and the fire. 

“Black bears aren’t hunters,” Mike stared into the flames. “Mountain lions are hunters. All cats are. Watch one sometime. Even your most beloved lap cat. They’re lifeless predators. Give one something to claw to death and toy with, it will play with the carcass until you take it away. Cats lack feelings.”

It’s worth mentioning Mike is messed up about the baby, which helps make some sense of what he did. The baby came out wrong; doesn’t experience the world right. A never-crier, but a stay up all-nighter. Maybe deaf, can’t know yet. But not a sound.  

I’ve witnessed both when the other is away. Mike screaming at the baby. Not angry. Hoping for a reaction. The soft opposite of Gabby’s pining. Holding the baby close. Quietly pleading as it stares off into the distance. 

The one seeming Godsend is Gabby can sleep, but she sees it as punishment for some wrong committed along the way. A wrong she isn’t aware of. That she can’t place.

***

For the fourth night in a row Mike puts the baby in the carrier on the porch rail with several whole chickens in a bucket on the ground beside it.

“Dude,” Mike says amidst my protests. “Do you think I’d let something happen to my child?”

“It’s just…” I say. “Seems insane to me.” 

“Well you never knew shit from Christmas.”

We drink nights. A week passes. No mountain lion. 

At breakfast Gabby asks what we do so late. I say watch logs die. Talk politics. I don’t tell her Mike hands me the pistol sometimes. Explains how to use it. I don’t tell her what we use the baby for. 

Some nights Mike nods in an out, and I kick him.

 “Stop being a bitch,” Mike says, roused. “You think I’d let my own child get eaten?”

“I don’t like this shit, man.” 

“You said you wanted to see a mountain lion.” 

“Not like this.”

“What do you care how you see it?” Mike says. 

I wait a dozen more nights.

Days, I snow-shovel. Ride the plow. Town job Mike got me. Lunch breaks, I snow-shoe out, I see elk. I see deer. I eat sandwiches staring at where the rockies meet the plains. 

“Full moon tonight,” Mike says. “Cats might prowl.”

Moon over the mountains, big and close; I imagine a mountain lion reaching out a paw to bat it.  

Hours eclipse.

Pouring shots of very good whiskey. 

“Shhh.”

As if escaping from impenetrable black, the mountain lion soars through the air and lands silently on the rail, feet from the baby. 

“Don’t you fucking move,” Mike says. 

The mountain lion stalks forward. Mike rises with the pistol. 

“Hold your breath.” 

The mountain lion strides almost imperceptibly towards the baby. 

“Come here,” Mike says. “Come here, you.”

A light clicks on in the house, drawing a flash from the mountain lion’s eyes.

Mike theatrically rips a Ziploc of bacon from his pocket and holds it out wide. The mountain lion approaches like a house cat.

Mike tosses the bacon bag.

The mountain lion leaps, floats through the air, like in slow motion. Mike pulls the trigger. Gabby bursts through the door onto the porch hearing the shot.

The mountain lion bounds over the porch railing and vanishes into the darkness. 

Gabby’s eyes dart to the baby in the carrier. She levels Mike with a look so pained I’m forced to turn away. 

Inside, Mike trembles as he pours whiskeys. Gabby sits across from him arms-crossed, searing him with her stare. I can’t look at either one.

“He said he wanted to see a mountain lion,” Mike says and shrugs. 

The Street Performer

Tucker Leighty-Phillips lives in Tempe, Arizona. His Twitter is @thenurtureboy and his website is TuckerLP.net.

When the man grabs me, I am imitating a driveway, a long winding pathway covered in gravel. 

“Take me home,” the man pleads, his wet knuckles spider-legging my forearms. I try not to react; as a street performer, it is important that I perform a street as appropriately as possible. Sturdy, like a statue, like the pieta, like a great testament to God; even in the face of lane closure. I am the best street performer, I can make myself incredibly broad or narrow, depending on the scene—but always very flat (unless of course I choose to be cobblestoned, or potholed, which always coaxes a reaction from the crowds, as they feast on government ineptitude) and again, I can stand very still.

“Take me home,” the man repeats. The hapless sap is sobbing as he tatters at my arms. I break my hold, bring him to my shoulder. I feel his blathering heart knocking against my own. A car pulls forward and honks at the man, believing he is blocking the street. Sometimes cars mistake me for the actual road and try to rumble over me to get to the boardwalk. 

“What makes you think—” I start to ask but he babbles into my sleeve, leaving slippery conditions all along my side, phlegm and snot and tears. 

“You look like my childhood driveway,” he moans. A crowd is gathering, touristy and curious. Many think it is a performance piece, two thespians playing out an unlikely scenario, a small sidewalk tragedy, a story worthy of viral fame or dive bar chatter. A parent gives her toddler a crumpled dollar, a Washington, or a Lincoln, and she drops it in my bucket. 

“Take me back, please, take me home,” the man begs.

And I’m forked, my lanes split at the thought of steering away this hurt man, this weary broken traveler. Who is not unlike him, trying to return to their childhood home, or trying to escape it for good? Who is not crooning a song of somewhere else? O fear, to be this man’s dead end, but what else have I got? He writhes on the sidewalk, his hand gripping my shoe, clawing my ankle, trying to hitchhike the length of me. 

“Please,” he croaks. He is rain water funneling down a storm drain. I am an intersection, a roundabout, a cul-de-sac circled by cars with the volume turned down as they try to read each house number. He is weathering and I am eroding—letting nature run its course as I reduce back to something more earthly—and the crowd is hooting, hollering, ham-fisting money into my bucket, and I extend a hand, offer the man a lift, and he makes his way up the driveway, past the mailbox and up the hill, past the row of aging oaks, and together we head home.

The Cat with the Face

K.C. Mead-Brewer lives in Ithaca, NY. Her fiction appears in Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Joyland Magazine, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Tin House's 2018 Winter Workshop for Short Fiction and of the 2018 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop. For more information, visit kcmeadbrewer.com and follow her @meadwriter.

That cat has a face, says Zoe, but of course it has a face. All cats have faces. 

Not like that, she says, amazed that she puts up with us. That cat has someone else’s face.

We finally look where she’s pointing, but the cat’s gone, face and all.

***

We play street hockey, street baseball, wolfpack, car dodge. One girl, Laylah, chases around the shadows of windblown tree branches. She says there’s a woman trapped inside one of the trees; the sun god chased her into it and now she’s stuck there. Okay. Zoe draws pictures for her brother who’s left for the army. Jeremy has a close call with a pick-up who knows about our dodge game and hates us for it. Huffing for air, Jeremy says it was the cat that distracted him. The cat with the face.

Whose face? we ask him.

I don’t know, he says. He’s still breathing like his lungs are on fire. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.

***

Some days pass and, though we keep a lookout, no one spots the cat with the face. Not even Zoe, who’s been keeping watch this whole time.

Was the cat eating the face or wearing it? Holly asks. Was it a human face?

It was a face, Zoe says, a hand on her hip and a hand on her forehead like her tired mother. I don’t know! Just a face!

There’s no cat with anyone’s face, Laylah says, hopping into another shadow. 

Did it have a different face the second time? Brian asks.

There didn’t use to be so many kids in our gang and there wouldn’t be for long. It all just kind of happened that summer. Like someone finding kittens in a barn.

***

Lying alone in our beds, we know we’re all still secretly together, diligent in our watch for the cat with the face. Laylah’s moving away next month. We all keep hoping, Brian most of all, but it doesn’t look like any god will be chasing her into a tree and forcing her to stay.

Anyway, Brian’s gonna die soon, probably. He keeps wanting to play car dodge even though he’s super bad at it. 

Why can’t he just be happy playing wolfpack? You should hear him howl.

***

Years from now, sitting at cluttered desks and cafés, making dinner at home, we’ll hear a scratching sound like claws and look around our feet. Our shadows will move when we do, in the shape of us but faceless. We won’t recognize ourselves. We’ll wonder why and how and where it all went. We’ll look in on our children and make silent promises. The cars will drive by outside, knowing there’s nothing we can do to keep them.

Suicide Culture

Leah Holbrook Sackett is an adjunct lecturer in the English department at the University of Missouri - St. Louis, where she also earned her M.F.A. Leah's stories explore journeys toward autonomy and the boundaries placed on the individual by society, family, and self. Leah has published short stories in several journals including Connotation Press, Blacktop Passages, Halfway Down the Stairs, The Writing Disorder, Crack the Spine, and more. Learn about her published fiction at LeahHolbrookSackett.com

Schadenfreude and dripping with sex, we'd found each other in the open chasm, empty of fear, of the internet. Undone by online anonymity,  we were tempted by the facade of security in a face-to-face meeting. And so, we stepped out of the shadows of our avatars and met in the open air of a crowded cafe. 

We peaked quickly, and the decline was a plummet. Our last meeting, we were in costume. I was an inappropriate Alice in Wonderland, and you were a priest. The first strike, it wasn't Halloween. Next strike, we entered a local tavern we'd never been in before. A tavern filled with old-time bikers and their thick-waisted bitches. We huddled up to the bar where the inquisition began. Under our breath, we debated how many each of us could take. It turned out we couldn't take any. The problem was all we had was Hollywood bravado. I was a secretary. You were the manager at an Office Depot. The fantasy of the costumes upped the tension making the moment intoxicating even without the whiskey. The fall from fantasy left us beaten fools. I was molested and had a split lip. I think prejudice toward my gender saved my ass. You were beaten within an inch of your life, despite the priest get-up or maybe because of the priest get-up. Thankfully, someone had called the cops. 

My mother sent me an arrangement of delphinium for the anniversary of our break-up as a wish to live life to the fullest. Mental Illness was the umbrella my mother stood under to keep her image of me as inculpable. I pressed the flowers between the pages of our scrapbook. I've snagged the pictures and dirty text messages from my phone to build this touchstone. It is my effort to be wholesome while not forgetting. Yes, we had been into pedophilia cosplay, and we subjected each other to little tortures that would never reveal us when clothes were on.  Filled with saudade, I hunger to return to our dark side. At the wrong end of a telescope, I see me digging an early grave. But it means nothing if I cannot share it with you. I shovel memories out of the debris of cupidity. I forge a speculative future. Are you there? My mind blurs a delectation of hard images and our voices layered in caresses. Then the phone rings, why do I even have a landline? I refuse to answer. My choleric mood applies pressure to the gawping mar in my heart. My condo is not large enough to hold these skirmishes of the past and present. I venture out in the twilight. I walk and walk to lengthen my dreams. I curb my strides to return home. My desire to cut our paper dolls out of the fabric of time are wanting. I do not know how. I channel my desire into deep threaded sign posts of help in my arms.

And now, I am pacing in some shrink's office. I cannot stick in the chair. The shrink jokes that I'm going to wear a hole in his carpet. I'd like to fuck him on this industrial carpet. We'll see who is the boss then. I feel like a teenager: hostile and horney.  I am coming of age, again. Pills or blades  are not the destination, they are just methods of transportation. My fetish is not cosplay, it is not you, but it is a suicide culture where I am a statistic before I even arrive. Grounded in a circle of jerks that haven't had the will to pull the trigger, just to give voice to their desperation, to ask for help. This is the second time I've sat through group therapy. What have I learned? There are many ways to wear suicide, and everyone here stinks of failure.

Application

Jesse Salvo’s short fiction has been featured in Barren Magazine, Pacifica Review, Cowboy Jamboree and BULL, where he now serves as a recurring columnist. He spent three years as an at-large contributor for Cracked.com and The Portalist. His first novel Born Secrets is represented by Nordlyset Agency. He lives and works in Seville, Spain.

1 Year Ago

Dear Sir Or Madame,

Hello, 

My name is Oscar Louder and I am a 35 year old college graduate with an undergraduate degree in History and a minor in Religious Studies. Attached you will find my resume and cover letter. I am emailing because I do not know who to contact about volunteering to be part of the project, but to say that I saw your profile in GQ and am interested in applying. To explain a little about me, I graduated with honors from Michigan State University and have held several past leadership positions. I am currently working at Hogs & Heifers on 16 John Monteith Blvd in the capacity of Manager. I am affable and a good communicator. Despite my age I have maintained peak physical conditioning throughout my life and would be happy to submit to any tests you would need on that note. While I currently reside in Wattle, Michigan I do not have strong attachments here, am happy to move, and could relocate, as soon as necessary to your testing facility in Mountain View. I do not know if you pay your employees relocation fees but we can discuss further down the line. I am available for interview at the phone number listed below, as well as for Skype call. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

Oscar Louder

“Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.” — Howard Schultz

11 months ago

Dear Sir Or Madame,

Realized I had forgot to attach this to my last email! ;)

Best,

Oscar Louder

10 Months Ago

Hello,

I would just like to follow up on my application (see above) to be part of the program. If there is anything you need, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Best,

Oscar

9 Months Ago

Dear Ms. Shotwell,

I suppose you are wondering why I am contacting you. My name is Oscar Louder and three months ago I sent along my application to be a part of your company’s inaugural Mars colonization program. I sent my CV and cover letter to careers@redshift.com but unfortunately I am afraid whoever monitors that account may have missed them. I understand that it is unorthodox to contact the Vice President in Charge of Innovation about a job opportunity, and that I do not have a normal resume or science background but I think I could bring a uncommon perspective to the team. As someone who has faced adversity and understands the hardship of life, I would be in a unique position to lead and bring the crew together in our journey together to the stars. Please call me.

Best,

Oscar M. Louder

9 Months Ago

Oscar,

I have passed your CV along to the H.R. Department. However, we usually do not accept unsolicited applications for positions on shuttle launches. I also would ask you not to contact this email again, as I have very little to do with the day-to-day hiring or firing decisions for the crews. 

Respectfully,

Maryanne Shotwell

Vice President in Charge of Innovation

9 Months Ago

Maryanne,

Understood. Is there someone you can put me into contact with, so I can check in on the status of my application?

Best,

O

“Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.” – Richard Branson

8 Months Ago

Hello Maryanne, 

I know that as a general rule I should not be following up with you regarding the status of my application, however, do you have the email of the person who would be in charge of interviewing me for the position? There are a couple things about my resume I would like to clarify with him/her.

Best,

Oscar Michael Louder

“Choose a job that you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius

7 Months ago

Maryanne,

I don’t know if you have read my previous email (see above) but I need to speak with whoever is currently overseeing my application so that there is no confusion. My sudden change of careers in June of last year was due to my daughter’s illness and my divorce. Please get into contact with me as soon as your schedule allows, so I can explain in greater detail.

Best,

Oscar Louder

7 Months ago

Mr. Louder,

On my advice, Ms. Shotwell has changed her intra-company email address and will not be responding further. Should you continue your attempts to contact her, we may pursue legal action. Consider this email notification that you are no longer being considered for a position of any kind on any of the shuttle launches.

Best, 

Jeff Jones

Head of Global Physical Security

7 Months Ago

Jeff,

While I understand that everyone’s safety is a priority, I think Maryanne (and you) are being a little silly here. I understand that Maryanne is not privy to the hiring/firing decisions for the Mountain View team. I believe if I have the chance to speak to the team leader there he will be interested in what I have to say. Please do not let this opportunity pass you by.

Best,

Oscar Louder

5 Months Ago

Hello Jeff,

I would like to follow up about my application status. One of the references I put down (the franchise owner of Hogs and Heifers) and I have recently had a falling out. Please let me know if I can provide another in its place.

Best,

Oscar

4 Months ago

Hello Jeff,

Just checking in on my application.

Best,

O

3 Months ago

Jeff,

Just wanted to check in. I think I could be a great addition to the team.

Best,

Oscar

2 Months Ago

Jeff,

Please contact me. I really want to go to Mars.

Best,

Oscar

Broken

Sheree Shatsky writes wild words. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of journals including Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art, Funny Pearls, Back Patio Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fictive Dream, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Bending Genres and New Flash Fiction Review. She is twice-nominated for Best Microfiction 2020.  Read more of her work at shereeshatsky.com . Sheree tweets @talktomememe.

Father gives you the Love Story music box for your anniversary.  Two lovers entwined for eternity revolving on a sturdy base. Silver gilds the hard bodies, muscles chiseled with burnished youth.  Youngest traces sinews up and beyond to heaven.  Inappropriate, you scold and slap his hand.  Father centers the steely nakedness on the piano for anyone to see.  People less uptight than your mother, he says.  I wind the music box afternoons after school and play duet.

It’s date night. I’m thirteen, old enough to sit the monsters. You mother-babble the boys.  She’s in charge, listen to your sister.  You turn on me.  Anything happens, it’s your fault.  Father winds the music box on the way out.  Brother sneaks a closer look at the ceramic nudes. He climbs the piano bench and bobbles the hand off to Youngest.  Love fractures against a field of royal blue wall-to-wall carpet.  I look out the window.  The car backs from the drive. I’m in charge.  We scramble for super glue.

Later, you discover the broken music box.  A willful scheme, a bald-faced lie, you say and ground me for a month.  Sometimes, I think you were more angry at you than me.  After all, you dusted the piano for months, oblivious to the break. The boys and I think the chip was the tip off, beneath the base where we thought you wouldn’t notice. Like you and Father and your own broken Love Story.

Toxic and Fugitive

Richard-Yves Sitoski is a songwriter, performance poet and the 2019-2021 Poet Laureate of Owen Sound, Ontario, as well as the 2021 Artistic Director of the Words Aloud festival. He has released two books of verse, brownfields (Ginger Press, 2014) and Downmarket Oldies FM Station Blues (Ginger Press, 2018), and a CD of spoken word poetry, Word Salad (2017). His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Maynard, Barren Magazine, and as part of Brick Books' Brickyard spoken word video series.

The planet might shake beneath me but the line will not waver. So I use both hands to hold the brush. Right to grasp the ferrule, left to hold the right wrist firmly in order to keep things steady. 

I load the brush with cadmium red. In the 18th century they sometimes used minium, a bright red lead oxide. It had some disadvantages. It was toxic and fugitive. It killed then ran away. Those rosy-cheeked maidens and hearty swains in fêtes galantes – all over time became pallid harbingers of the artist's own demise. So much for symbolism. 

Then the thought occurred to me. You couldn't really paint a bowl of fruit except from memory, the apples advancing imperceptibly toward rot each time you looked back at your canvas. Some kind of Zeno's paradox, the tortoise always one step closer to death than you, who are also dying. Who needed skulls and candles?  

Oh, and erotica. That especially. Even erotica was a momento mori. Which is perhaps why in love I so often shake and waver. Then kill. Then run away.

Precious Afterthought

Nedjelko Spaich is a queer Serbian-American writer and ghostwriter living in Los Angeles. He is a graduate of Bennington College in Vermont. He formerly served as the Membership Director for the Los Angeles Review of Books. His work has appeared in Jellyfish Review, MoonPark Review, Cagibi Literary Journal, Reflex Fiction, and LAist. He is a reader for Pidgeonholes. Find him on Twitter @Nedjelko and nedjelkospaich.com.

After his mother died in her bedroom one hot yellow California morning, Viktor spent the following days avoiding the room altogether. Even the thought of the bedroom carried with it something enormous and thick with dread. It was not that the room held memories, happy or otherwise. It was that he felt certain the room was primed and prepared to kill somebody else.

Viktor knew grief was an unreasonable season, vast, blind, and oblivious to any form of human logic. When he was a boy and his father passed away, his mother made Viktor sit shiva at the dinner table and wait for the visiting mourners. When no mourners materialized, Viktor found himself in an empty and quiet house, his mother absent entirely. Years later, he learned she had snuck out and gone to a bar.

Now, both parents gone, Viktor felt relief the house was not a family house anymore. How could it be? There was no family. After the paramedics - or whomever those men were - retrieved the body, he lingered in the bedroom and saw that the wall with the stained glass window was, indeed, breathing. The cells of the walls moaned as the ceiling fan above him spun around faintly ticking like a watch. He did not return to the room until a week later when his sister, Tatiana, arrived unexpectedly, one day after the funeral.

“Where is it? The will?” She asked immediately. Viktor already knew they were to split everything. Of course, there was only the house left to be split. When Tatiana skipped town, decades ago, it was to find her soulmate. She originally wrote dozens of letters to Viktor about her special quest. She traveled from town to town meeting people, wondering is this the one? Is this her? Has she finally come, after all this time? Her homosexuality was the one indiscretion she could not apologize away. The one sin she could not hide. Their parents did not allow it. There was nothing left to do except run away.

“Don’t worry,” Tatiana said. “I won’t fight you for anything. I’ll sell myself cheap. Cheap even for me.” She explained why she needed some money over drinks in the cold, blue kitchen. The same kitchen where they had spent so many nights making botched versions of macaroni and cheese or pancakes from whatever was in the pantry. Tatiana got herself into trouble after a bad gig in Bakersfield. She had to return there to pick up a car. Not her car. But a car. “I get into more trouble in a day than you’ll do in a lifetime.”

“Do you even want to know?” Viktor asked. “Her last words? They were for you. Not me. ‘I’m sorry. Tell Tatiana I’m just so, so sorry. And I love her.’”

Tatiana waited a moment, then sighed. The sigh was caught, suspended in mid-air, between them until their eyes met and she next spoke. “What a precious afterthought,” She said and left.

That evening the white moon hung low with all the promise of a worthless beacon, not even bright enough to help guide the way. Viktor attempted to walk off his thoughts but all the noise from the preceding weeks, months, years clouded his head like a ceaseless source of black smoke. “You’re squandering your life sticking around. I don’t need any more taking care of. I’ve had enough!” His mother screamed. But if he did leave, even for only a night out, when he returned she would admonish him, “Just abandon me like your sister and we’ll see if you end up in the same gutter.” Viktor did not exactly believe her bedroom was haunted. Yet it was only in that room where the cruelest things were said and the very worst memories made.

He walked until he conquered just enough emotion and returned to the house. Tatiana was asleep on the couch. He walked upstairs to find the door to his mother’s bedroom wide open. He peeked inside and saw the room was ransacked. He hoped Tatiana found whatever it was she was looking for. But, after a moment, he realized if she had found that she would be long gone by now, on the road, instead of asleep on the ancient and sunken-in sofa downstairs. He felt guilty for lying to her about their mother’s last words. The feeling passed when he remembered that the truth is sometimes worse than a lie. That much Viktor learned from their parents.

The Last One

MK Sturdevant’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Orion, Flyway, Alluvian, Newfound, Kestrel, x-r-a-y Lit Mag, Oye Drum, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Montana Prize in Fiction 2019. She lives in the Midwest.

This man, he comes into the gas station and starts browsing a rack of winter hats in the far corner. He tries on one with ear-flaps, checks himself out. He reads the specs on the tag inside and puts it back. 

The AC kicks on over my head. I’m just getting into a taquito, I feel like he’ll hear the crunch and turn around so I bite down slow. He turns around. He looks into the space of the Casey’s, then looks back at the hats. I swallow quietly. He tries on a different one, hunter’s orange with a visor. He compares prices. He doesn’t have much to choose from. It’s all sunscreen and sunglasses in here.

I eat while he deliberates. My hands smell like windshield cleaner. The ammonia’s interfering with the food. Used to be, when we were little we’d drive out here in the summer and the windshield would get so crusted with moth and bug splat, we had to pull over. My older sister and I had the job of dipping the squeegees, cleaning the glass, wiping the drips. Anymore, I don’t have to do this as much. I can wipe a few wings off the blades and it’s good to go. 

The winter hat man is tall. He nods, holding a black winter beanie in one hand, then flaps it down on his open palm to let it know it’s been chosen.

He looks like he keeps land, so maybe it’s for sunburns I imagine, crunching into my second one. But he’s got hair. Mounds of wilding silver hair. 

When the AC clatters off I feel the sweat on my skin getting crusty again. I can smell things: materials, textures, the way humid, months-old, relentless heat like this starts melting everything and exposing every element that makes it up. I can smell the chip-seal over the parking lot. I swear to god the plastic table has a scent. It isn’t bad. 

At the register, the hat man waits in line. There’s a lottery player in front of him with lots of questions and pockets of change to count, nickel by sliding nickel. There’s room for two more people at least on the bench bolted to my table. I could easily fit three in my car. I think of it, the weight of friends, all of us sharing a plan. 

The winter hat man turns around while he waits in line. He looks out at the parking lot then towards the frontage road. Its aura quivers in the heat. A coin slides across the counter. Then another. I listen to the scrape, amazed that a coin still holds any power between two humans. I can’t afford to fly home. I’ve got to go help my sister take care of her kid and go through paperwork. We’re calling it housekeeping. But it’s the kind of paperwork that needs to be notarized and kept in a fireproof box. If someone sat down here, I’d chat about all that. 

The winter hat man is next. I sit up. He’ll have to explain his purchase now, surely the employee will say something, make a joke or just ask. But the AC roars on again and if the hat man does say anything, I miss it. The guy behind the counter pops his gum, taps the till, no questions, not even a raised eyebrow, not two fucks given. 

I slump. I scroll. I guess stranger things have been sold to the customers of I-80. I guess I could chat with anyone, make a heatwave meme, like something, post something about this drive, this long drive I’ve taken umpteen times. I grew up here, I might say, on this long stretch of here. I battled my sister for hours on these trips, playing the alphabet game, both of us waiting to drive past the liquor stores in Ogallala to get a ‘Q.’ Everything out the window felt like a constant, a given. I don’t think we ever wore sunscreen. 

The AC stops. In the stillness, the winter hat man turns my way. The light of day hangs on his face. He looks like a sweaty Saint Joseph. I see that his creases are deep and long. There’s a line down one earlobe, maybe it was pierced once. He looks at me. He comes over. His brows are feathery gray, his eyes are full of me now, when I break his gaze I look at his hand and see that his wedding ring is melded into his finger under the knuckle the way fences grow into trees. 

I wipe hot sauce off my wrist.  He looks down at his purchase, then back at me. “I think it’ll be the last one,” he says. 

He walks past me to the door. In the particles of air that fill in behind him, I smell creosote, leachate, coffee. “One what,” forms in my mouth, disappears.

I can’t listen to music or anything for 280 miles. I want him to linger in the space around me, in my mind, in my car, but I can’t overthink him. If I try to fill it in, try to answer it, I loose hold of the feeling that he’s right.

Gentleness

Erika Veurink is a writer living in Brooklyn by way of Iowa. She is receiving her MFA from Bennington College. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Entropy, Hobart, and x-r-a-y.

Greg N. and I matched on The League yesterday afternoon. He was “looking for a dog mom” and belonged to the Westside Runners Club. The governor had ordered the closure of non-essential businesses at 8 pm that night. “You can’t spell quarantine without ‘q-t,’” he wrote. Then he asked if I would come over and drink with him. He was healthy, he promised, and punctuated the message with a fire emoji. 

Greg N. was all the things every person on that dating app was: 6’1”, in Private Equity, and looking for something casual. I weighed the pros for a minute and the cons for half. My therapist told me it was time to be gentle with myself. I thought, why not be gentle with the government mandated self isolation restrictions? 

I responded to him that I would walk to Tribeca, could he send his address, and was there anything he wanted me to pick up on the way? He lived in a building I’d been to before for a Bible Study. He told me he would kill for some Whole Foods hot bar. I waited six feet away from everyone and covered my hand with my sweater as I scooped virus dense food into a waxy box. The total was $11.41. I already felt so gentle. 

I carried the food past a masked doorman. I rang Greg N.’s doorbell with my elbow. I was sweaty, having walked from Brooklyn in the spring weather that starts cold and then jumps to hot. Shit, global warming. He opened the door in his boxers. His two dogs bombarded me. 

“Hi, Greg,” he said, extending an elbow. “Greg N.,” I corrected, elbowing him back. He was busy staring at my breasts under my parka. I felt jolted to life. I loved the Male Gaze. I’d missed it so much! I’d been dressing and undressing in front of my windows four times a day just desperate to be gazed at.

The apartment was as conventionally beautiful as Greg N. was. He supposed we could open a Veuve Clicquot. I said, “Pop a bottle, baby!” He retracted his offer, grunting about bubbles giving him congestion. I drank consolation vodka from a paper cup like I used to wash my mouth with as a child when cups were disposable. 

“Wanna watch something?” he said.``I didn’t break the law to watch television,” I replied annoyed, forgetting to make it sexy. He looked hurt by my sharpness, but then remembered that my being there skyrocketed the likelihood of him getting laid. His dogs panted excitedly like they were in on it. Fire emoji.  

I tried not to think about the germ colonies buried in his microsuede sofa. I just got on my knees, shoved a dog nose out of the way, and gave him his money’s worth. The act was fast, impersonal like a pleasure assembly line. Neither of us shut our eyes. Right before it was over, I realized my left hand was in my pocket. I proceeded to complete my first one handed blow job. Before I could say I didn’t want to actually have sex, he fell asleep. So I wiped off my puffer and headed to the kitchen. I’d forgotten all about the hot bar food. I was disgusted by its layers of Tribeca cough, but figured a microwave could kill anything. I opened his fridge: meals wrapped in tin foil with instructions written on the top under “xox Mom.” He really was in the business of single use containers. I lunged to pop open the microwave door before the ding awoke him. The salad was warm and the pasta was chalky. “Bon appetit,” I whispered to my reflection in the coffee machine. 

He was still asleep, so I wandered into his bedroom. I laughed at his bedside mastrubation station of lotion and a magazine ad of Jennifer Aniston straddling a water bottle. His clothes were sort of nice and eerily well pressed. He had a mounted TV across from his bed. I checked his last watched show--House Hunters International. 

I opened the top right drawer of his dresser. There were silk ties shoved into what looked to be a ceramic egg carton. There was a stolen hotel Bible. There was an envelope, thick and unsealed. I opened it to find something like $10,000 worth of hundred dollars bills. Suddenly, I was Robin Hood or Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman or maybe Annie the Orphan. He definitely owed me for the hot bar food, that was at least one bill. He owed me for the walk, considering I would have expected a car normally--another bill. He owed me for the dogsitting I was doing while he was asleep. So two for that, since two dogs. He really did need a dog mom. I deserved at least two bills for letting the offer of opening champagne slide. Then I had to decide how much the one handed blow job was worth. 

I went to do some research on my phone but decided against touching it with my money/virus/blow job/hot bar hands. Instead, I landed on seven bills. It was God’s number, why couldn’t it be mine? I added one last bill as a tip. I put everything back. I grabbed a tin foiled lasagna from the fridge. It only had to go in the oven for twenty minutes, according to xox Mom. I grabbed the roll of toilet paper from the bathroom as a sign of the times. I surveyed the apartment, the three of them curled up on the sofa. I asked myself if it was worth it, a life of crime. I walked onto Franklin Street, pulled my mask into place and hoped I would live gently enough to find out.