Imitator

Jaime Alysha was born in Edmonton, Canada and no matter how far she moves away, the harsh winter snow always sneaks back into her stories. Now living in the UK, she spends her time writing, illustrating, and searching for ghosts.

Madeline tells me that shaping a tongue is the hardest part of making a body. I watch as she rolls it slowly between her two palms, taking care to keep it as symmetrical as possible. If it isn’t the right shape then all of the words will sound a little bit off and Madeline hates playing guessing games.

The recipe she found is old. It is written on paper stained the colour of coffee with ink faded to the same colour as the veins in my wrist. She told me she had to re-write parts of the recipe but the parts she still couldn’t figure out have been left blank. Her pages have become stained themselves, with splashes the same colour as her lips. I’m only starting to notice these sorts of details as I watch Madeline work.

The room we are in is covered in mirrors. Small ones, round ones, broken ones, and a few that reach from the floor to the ceiling. It’s been a long time since I have seen Madeline sleep. There’s a smell in the air now but I’m not sure if it is coming from Madeline or the older bodies.

Watching her make the toes was my favourite part. She moves like an artist at times, trying out new shapes of nails and lengthening different toes on each foot. We both know that the body will be able to walk no matter how strange the toes end up. It’s the insides, the invisible parts, that cause her the most stress. We can’t see inside her body.

I read on the original recipe that it shouldn’t be a difficult process but Madeline is becoming a perfectionist. The trash pile has been steadily increasing in size. I sort through it time from time, organising it, finding parts that Madeline can re-use for different bodies. She likes the new challenge and happily tells me that nothing is ever totally wasted. The finished bodies that suit her standards can have other uses.

She hands me a palm and a sharpened HB pencil. If I press hard enough I can draw the lines into the palm and fingers. I watched her do it before and I know that it’s a gentle sort of pressing, trying to not rip open the palm. Madeline favours curves and properly calculated intersecting slopes but I am interested in trying something different. I push the pencil onto the skin. It’s tight and resists it at first but soon I can slide the pencil tip down. The lines becoming the words that are stuck in my head but cannot come out of my mouth.

AN A-Z INDEX OF U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENCIES C: CITIZENS’ STAMP ADVISORY COMMITTEE

JL Bogenschneider has had work published in Strix, Isthmus, Bridge Eight, 404 Ink and Pank. Find him on twitter @bourgnetstogner

I lived in the USA for many years. I had to leave in the end because my visa had expired and I didn’t do anything about it, which sort of thing is frowned upon in immigration circles. I think I left my scarf in a coffee shop there. One day I might write to the coffee shop and ask if they ever found it. It was a gift, so I’d like to be able to wear it again someday.

There are several criteria for deciding what goes on a U.S. postage stamp. The first is this:

U.S. postage stamps and stationery will primarily feature American or American-related subjects.

The scarf was a gift from someone I’d quietly loved. Through some quirk of the universe, it turned out that they quietly loved me also and we were together for almost ten years to the day before it ended, without my really knowing why. With hindsight that might have been the problem.

Another criterion is this:

No living person shall be honored by portrayal on U.S. postage.

This means I will never see myself depicted on a U.S. postage stamp. If not for this, I might have hoped that my non-Americanness would not be a total barrier to such a wish, the general policy as quoted in the first criterion presumably being exactly that – general – and not the be-all-and-end-all. This may seem like an unusual wish to have, but I assure you: I know stranger.

There are other criteria of course; at least ten, but much of them don’t concern us here. 

After we broke up, I became a kind of sadness, the kind – I guess – that we all morph into when a love we’ve made ourselves vulnerable to and for turns. I lost my job and home as a consequence of becoming this sadness and ended up living in a squat for a while, along with about fifteen other people. We never really spoke, but I guessed, from the dazed look in many of their eyes, at least half of the residents were there for the same reason as me: that is, while we weren’t looking, life came along and hit us, hard.

Actually, another criterion is:

Events of historical significance shall be considered for commemoration on anniversaries in multiples of 50 years.

Who knows what history will be deemed significant in the future? Perhaps not all hope is lost.

There is a group of people that decides what does and what doesn’t go on a U.S. postage stamp. They are called the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, which sounds like the exact sort of title you might want to give yourself if you were part of a group of people charged with deciding what does and doesn’t go on a stamp. If you want to suggest something that you would like to see on a U.S. postage stamp you can write to them. Here is their address:

Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC)

475 L’Enfant Plaza, SW 

Room 3300 

Washington, DC 20260-3501

USA

When I began to divest myself of the sadness I’d become, I started looking for somewhere else to live and applied for new jobs, which was when I found out about the visa thing. I’d forgotten to renew it because that was the kind of thing the other person – the person who’d once quietly loved me – would remind me about.

Now I’m back at home, where it all began. I’ve written to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee to ask if they will reconsider their criteria on portraying living non-American subjects on postage stamps. I think it would be a nice thing to tell people that if they ever mailed a letter, package or postcard from the USA, they’d see my smiling face. Also, every time the person who’d once quietly loved me – and who, b.t.w., I still love – sent or received a letter, they might think of me, and of happy times. I won’t mention my deportation to the Committee though; I suspect it might go against me, even though the whole thing was very civilised: the officials were understanding, sympathetic, and they didn’t remonstrate with me, raise their voices, beat me, or anything.

Intermission

Carly Bush is a writer with a passion for highly visual and evocative storytelling. She strives to write quietly subversive fiction. She has worked as a professional ghostwriter for several years and is thrilled to finally share her original work.

On the East Coast, a blazing green summer swept into an abrupt autumn. The sloped hills bloomed with wildflowers, shivering in the sudden frost. The auburn leaves turned our quiet neighbourhood gold. 

Two thousand miles away, a wildfire ravaged the canyons east of Los Angeles, and we watched the narrative unfold on the news: ruthless flames, skeletal trees, collapsed lungs and ambulance sirens and charred homes. 

Thick black smoke billowed from an engorged home with a Spanish roof. A firefighter, twenty-four years old, was reported dead alongside a family of four.

A week later a headline caught my attention: Should we be concerned? As I wandered downtown the gossip seemed less provincial and shallow, old and young huddled together to whisper their collective fears. 

A universal feeling of uncertainty hung about, dark and morbid. I did what I always did when faced with such things that I knew to be out of my direct control, and looked straight ahead, determined not to engage.

As I laid a crisp five-dollar bill on the counter and retrieved my flat white at the corner coffeehouse, the baristas mulled over the practicalities of living in a frozen world. 

“Crazy, huh?” one young woman asked me, leaning over to hand me my drink. 

“Yeah. Crazy.”

I drank my coffee shivering by the window in a rough leather chair, listening to the tinny news report from a nearby student’s phone.

It wasn’t just here, then. It was happening everywhere, nationwide. Most notably, the south was experiencing this strange autumnal interruption. The temperature had dropped considerably in the Southwest, a blessed reprieve from the blistering drought. 

I scrolled through social media to examine the photos shared by baffled Californians, unprepared for the sudden cold front. There were leaves turning backwards in Thousand Oaks, celebrities in winter coats in Calabasas, freezing smog in San Francisco. I felt a sick swoop in my stomach, the guilty thrill that came with disaster.

“The world makes no sense,” he remarked that evening as he stirred the pasta. 

I was already on my second glass of merlot, feeling light and warm, and the wind was howling outside, complementing the jazz record I had chosen as he dutifully boiled the water. I had married him before he realized I was a terrible cook. Through some brilliant stroke of luck he loved me in spite of it.

“I don’t know, babe,” I murmured, turning over the record to its B-side. “This feels pretty routine.”

He smiled crookedly at me, a lick of dark hair falling in his eyes. It had been ages since we had paid for any luxury besides our daily coffee. I leaned against the counter and admired him, wondering at the strange lurid reality that was our life against a backdrop of what felt increasingly dystopian every single day.

“It might pass,” he said.

“It might,” I agreed.

We ate by candlelight, and talked only of the music, stubborn with some deep ancestral resilience. Our grandparents had not stopped laughing and drinking just because of the war.

the magician, attempting telekinesis 

Laura Dorwart is a writer who lives in Oberlin, OH, with her family. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Catapult, Midwestern Gothic, McSweeney’s, SELF, and many others. She has a Ph.D. from UCSD, an MFA from Antioch University, and a BA from Barnard College. Follow her work at www.lauradorwart.com.

i. disappointment

“Nine,” he thought—no, saw first, 

the number glowing in the hollow of her throat 

like a glow-in-the-dark Pez lozenge. 

He imagined he could have removed it whole (click, click) 

if only he opened her jaw and snapped it shut again. 

Nine, the same number he saw burning at the raw edges of his mind 

like a flicker in a dream. 

“It’s six, actually,” she said, disappointed, 

against an awkward thrum of laughter from the audience behind her.

She had wanted magic. 

ii. the reveal

He dug into the raw of her throat, fishing for proof.

(Bloody stuff, that.)

He flipped over the nine, now six. It lay there like a crooked piercing.

“Nine,” he said again, standing back, now more confident. 

“Nine,” she repeated, bone grating just so against throatflesh

as she swallowed. 

He grinned. 

iii. wedding day

Nine met nine.

Nothing else to do now 

but get married.

The wedding is in September. 

The bride has requested no gifts. 

Draugr

Jenny Fried lives in Virginia. Her work has appeared previously in magazines including Cheap Pop, Milk Candy Review, and elsewhere. Find her on twitter @jenny_fried. 

I stood outside when it was cold, stripped my coat my open belly. The snow iced over, I liked it, how it splintered under my borrowed high heel boots. How much it hurt to walk in them, one foot too big, the other small beneath my shorter leg. How good it felt to feel it broken along my empty midriff.

It’s funny, skin turns red before it blues. It’s funny, I can never stay outside. Made a ball of snow and laughed, how useless my fingers. How I punish me later with a lighter in hand.

Grandma

Christopher Iacono lives with his wife and son in Massachusetts. You can learn more about him and his works at cuckoobirds.org.

After the rat everyone called Grandma rubbed its hair against my bare feet, I jumped away from the table.

“What’s wrong?” asked Linda, a seventeen-year-old girl who had been staying with Grandpa for the past few years.

“I can’t eat with that rat in the kitchen!” I shouted. 

Grandpa waved for me to sit. “Calm down, it’s just Grandma.”

“No, I refuse to believe that’s Grandma.” My heart fluttered. My voice cracked. Before tears came to my eyes, I ran out of the kitchen. Grandpa kept calling my name, but I ignored him and climbed the creaking stairs to my bedroom. 

I wished my parents hadn’t shipped me almost a thousand miles west to Shithole, Indiana, to stay with these lunatics the summer before I started high school.

I sat on the bed and cried. 

When I was done, I wandered over to the window facing the backyard. Resting my forehead against the glass, I stared at the weeds growing around the line of broken lawnmowers in the backyard. It was between one of those lawnmowers and a two-gallon jug of piss-colored pesticide that Linda had picked up a rat and called it “Grandma.” 

Someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” I said.

Linda walked in. “Grandma’s gone. You upset her. And Grandpa. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know how else to respond to this girl who was not related to us yet acted as if she were. 

According to Grandpa, Grandma had “found” Linda several years ago and had been living with them ever since.

“Don’t you care?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Oh, forget it!” She stormed away.

An hour later, I went downstairs. Grandpa, who was watching TV in the living room, told me to help myself to leftovers in the kitchen.

Although I wasn’t expecting any more rats, I had worn my sneakers just in case. I filled a plate with boneless chicken breast and mashed potatoes and microwaved them. On my way to the table, something scurried in front of me. I nearly dropped my food.

It was the rat, standing on its hind legs.

At first, I just stared into its oily eyes while my pulse quickened. Then I walked around the rat and sat at the table. The rat turned toward me. 

I cut into the chicken. I was about to eat it when I stopped and remembered what Linda had said earlier. So I put the piece on the floor next to my chair. The rat scampered over and ate it. 

I picked up Grandma and put her on the table. She stuck her nose in the mashed potatoes, while I cut into another piece of the chicken. 

THE SEEMINGLY ENDLESS UNIVERSE MAY EXPLAIN WHY THE DEAD DON’T STAY IN TOUCH

Colin James has a book of poems, Resisting Probability, from Sagging Meniscus Press. He lives in Massachusetts.

I have been reaching out to some old friends of late with mixed results. I wouldn’t mind some details. You know, toast or bagels? What became of that Chagall print? The

               one in the green metal frame with the mold that couldn’t put you off. Any large object resembling Jupiter was always going to be your favorite orbiting doppelganger.

The Difference Between Eight And Sixteen Is Nothing

Amanda McLeod is an Australian writer of fiction and poetry. Her latest words can be found in Elephants Never, Ghost Parachute, and Mookychick, and elsewhere. She is also the assistant editor for Animal Heart Press. When she’s not writing, she’s seeking the quiet. Find her on Twitter @AmandaMWrites

As soon as Martina gets off the bus, Aaron is right there in her seat, his body taking over all the space, sucking up all the oxygen. I watch my friend’s backpack bouncing as she walks towards her house, until she slides away as the bus takes off. I bite down on the end of my braid as Aaron leans over me, encouraged by the loud guffaws of his friends. The sour stink of him makes bile rise in my throat and he smiles at my squirming, leaning in closer. The remnants of his lunch are plastered around his crooked teeth like hastily applied grout around broken kitchen tiles.  He leans forward, sniffing, like a lion that can smell my fear. I think about how far my house is from the bus stop, and whether my schoolgirl legs will be able to outrun him. I run. And I run.

With each passing year the number of strides from the bus stop to my front door gets fewer, like the number of seconds I need to take them. We go to high school. We learn to drive. Nobody takes the bus anymore; they pile into each other’s clapped-out cars, those tattered keys to independence. I run. Every morning, every weekend, all the way onto the state track team. Nobody knows what I’m running from. I never tell them and they never ask. But still, I run. And I run.

I am sixteen years old, dawdling home from Martina’s, late on a warm Saturday afternoon. The air is thick with cut lawn and summer fruit; dragonflies hum on their way to the pond, a silvery disc in the middle of the park. I kick idly at a stone on the pavement and watch it skitter up the street, where it stops as if afraid to go further. A shabby pickup truck parked on the side of the road ahead rumbles dark and ominous. I heed its warning; I know whose truck that is.

Aaron emerges from the drivers side door as I step sideways into the park. My hands tremble but I feign ignorance, even as every nerve in my body screams, silent sirens. The crunch of my shoes on the gravel has an echo just a few steps behind. I am eight years old again, and that sour smell has never left my nostrils. The leonine bulk of Aaron stalks my shadow, emanating covetous hatred. Adrenaline dilates my pupils, fills my lungs. I run. And I run. 

The Last Shia Labeouf on Earth

Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology and he is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Out of the Sky (Hester Glock, 2019).

Shia Labeouf sits by a crackling fire as the flames lower. He has been coached on survival tactics by the host of a popular television show. The man, who seemed to be made of hair and taciturn witticisms, gave him a three-step process for dealing with any bear that might invade his campsite. Luckily, no bears have pulled a Ghengis Khan on him yet. He only remembers step one: “Remain calm.” 

Shia Labeouf walks down a random street in LA. Of course he notices the gentrification but he didn’t notice it happening. The process. It was just suddenly there. He pauses, realizing he doesn’t recall his destination. Bewildered, he reaches for a phone but he doesn’t have one on him. Must be one of my stunts, he thinks. Ascetic and Luddite on the streets of LA. Unreachable. A nearby streetlight blips out as if God moved his thumb across a star. 

Shia Labeouf is on a plane. He is in the middle of deciding whether he thinks the passenger next to him ends up recognizing him or not and if so, from where/what?. The plane is going to Denver. His apparent seatmate engages the overhead compartment in a one-sided war of attrition, paying him no mind.

Shia Labeouf is in a conference room. There is a bag over his head. One thought running through his head: waking up in the morning is an act of militarism. It is flowing like a mantra through his brain and he thinks he is on to something. 

Shia Labeouf is in an elevator. He is not alone but he has the unquenchable wish for solitude in this moment. The anger is hard to contain. He jabs a few of the numbers at random. The people riding with him recognize him as he jabs “23”. He didn’t even think the building had this many floors. They ask him for a photo, they ask him to reenact his “Just Do It” video, they ask him something incomprehensible. All of this in rapid-fire. The elevator jerks into motion and the world loses its train of thought. 

Shia Labeouf is in the woods. Every crack of a twig sends him back to one of the roles he has played. He wonders what his last role will be. Is it this?

Shia Labeouf is in a car in Denver. He has recently disembarked a plane. The feel of recycled oxygen clings to his skin. He thinks of organizing a stunt involving a plane. Choosing to sit in the wrong seat, but a seat whose number is easily mistakable based on his actual ticket number. Swearing up and down that he is in the correct seat when asked to move. Then, when confronted with the prospect of physical removal, claiming dyslexia. Making a big deal out of finding a lawyer and prosecuting this flagrant discrimination. All this time a compatriot will have been filming. All this time Shia will have been wearing a disguise. But when the prank has been played to fraying point, he will reveal himself, proclaim what he set out to do, find his correct seat, begin to rethink the whole charade over the course of the flight. His seatmate will be too shaken to even start a conversation. He thinks all this as the car drives him somewhere in Denver. He has forgotten where it is taking him. In this moment, it feels enough to know that whoever is driving knows, freeing him of that responsibility.

Shia Labeouf watches the campfire fizzle and sputter. He just now remembers the vegetables he wrapped in foil and placed where the embers were beginning to form. They should be ready now. He realizes he has nothing to take them out of the fire with. He waits for the fire to die, for the space about him to cool.

Shia Labeouf, not for the first time, wonders if he is the last Shia Labeouf on Earth. He wonders if this is the last time he will wonder this.

Shia Labeouf is doing an interview and the interviewer means well but the longevity and the lights are beginning to wear on him and Shia can only think about what he’s going to eat for dinner that night. He wants to tell the interviewer something insane. Fuel the tabloids. What does he care? Shia Labeouf wonders if Wittgenstein ever thought about his reputation before making a public statement. Shia Labeouf wonders if he’s been missing something this whole time. Suddenly, Shia Labeouf knows he is the last Shia Labeouf on Earth. Knows it. Indisputably. Without question. He has never been this certain about anything. He opens his mouth to answer the most recent question from the interviewer. He can’t recall the question that just got asked. The lights are too bright. He decides his silence will be his answer. Maybe that is the right amount of insanity.

Shia Labeouf falls asleep and does not wake until morning. The fire pit has been scrambled about and his foil-wrapped vegetables are gone. He has never felt more bereft than in that moment. He knows a bear did this. At least he thinks so. He tries to remember the survivalist’s advice. What are steps two and three in the process of avoiding a campsite bear invasion? Wait. It doesn’t matter now. The bear has come and gone. Inadvertently, he has abided by the only rule he could remember: “Remain calm.”