sphere

table of contents

“root canal” by Hannah Hoover

“accident” by Hannah Hoover

“Nana and Haha’s” by Julia Robertson

“Splitting open” by Allegra Solomon

“creatures of night” by Natalie Dupre

“Truman” by Maddy McFadden

root canal

Hannah Hoover

pushing my thumb against the flesh 

of an overripe heirloom tomato, 

i forget tomorrow and everything else. 

until the shriveled up old man 

(looming over bags of potatoes) 

Asks my natural hair color. 

i stare at the black holes in his teeth, 

try to retrieve whoever i was before this.

when i can’t hold my breath any longer

i pull back the hat, exposing my roots. 

he nods slowly, as if understanding.

i am afraid his teeth may pop out,

like candy from a pez dispenser. 

i’m just joking with you, he says, 

and finally leaves (no potatoes). 

i watch until he turns the corner. 

it isn’t until i look back down that i notice

the juice, dripping from my wrist like blood.

accident

Hannah Hoover

I came from potholes puddled by

the cries of my fatherless friends

and the stale piss stench of Shae

Beasy’s two-bedroom one-bath.

space

Three Bath and Body Works candles

in every room never masked the scent,

only gave a sugar plum balm to dog shit.

I spent many nights washing my own feet

space

in the sink of her bathroom, watched

intently by the Mickey Mouse wallpaper,

after stepping in piss or shit or vomit,

careful not to use a white towel.

space

We didn’t talk about it, just

breathed through our mouths,

while her mother collected coupons

for more three-wicks to burn.

space

When the other girls came over

I wondered if they could smell it, too.

Or if their cloud of Pink perfume

was enough to smother everything. 

space

If Shae noticed the scent,

she was good at ignoring it,

the same way she ignored Haley

holding a pair of scissors to my ponytail.

space

Once, one of the many Yorkie puppies

took a leak on my sleeping bag.

The other girls giggled and screamed,

grateful, as always, not to be me.

space

Sinking to the tile of the bathroom floor,

feet sticky and face flushed,

I called my father and asked him

when the laughter would stop.

Nana and Haha’s

Julia Robertson

Three stories of memories, 

where a dead dog’s bones tremble under the anthills, 

where honey-oak branches rustle in quiet winds. 

Untouchable, unstained: barefoot baseball and movie marathons, 

holiday parties and swing rides to the sky. 

Tucked away under the midnight staircase lies mother,

sweating out vodka and swishing leftover powder

around the crevices of off-white teeth. 

This once wild-haired, bony-freckled beauty 

rots here in the darkness:

broken dreams, bursts of tears, yellow bones. 

I dream of her drowning in pills; 

I dream of her leaving me on a busy street to die. 

She echoes in my brain like a ringworm swirling under skin. 

I can smell old leather and peach perfume and 

the stale breath of a once-familiar old man. 

I can feel the cold, soft skin of his doe-eyed wife on my fingertips; 

I can see the sunlight swirling through the beautiful stained glass; 

I can hear the hum of the wooden ceiling fan,

the phantom clippings of a family dog that died moments before I came home:

My First Loss. 

But mostly I feel bits of her in me, 

when I cough or sniff or go to the doctor’s.

Yes, I feel bits of her in me, 

when I breathe or cry or ask for help.

Oh god, I feel bits of her in me, 

toenail clips and leather and peaches, 

and the once golden part of her skin

begging me to run far, far away.

Splitting open

Allegra Solomon

Today I thought about the way 

words form in our mouths— 

the air pumping our cheeks basketball round 

and flaking chapped lips turning inward, 

forming mere consonants into metered sound, 

tongues sneaking through parted teeth 

and spit oozing through the cracks 

down, down, down, 

into the hollow pocket of our lower lip

space

I thought of how the feel of the construction 

of the Portuguese word “cafuné” is nearly

as gentle as the act itself—

tiptoeing around a beauty that can’t 

be directly translated into English 

but can be wholly felt in the light 

breath released mid-word,

the gentle bite of the lower lip,

and the knowledge that the word exists at all 

space

How exactly are you meant to gather yourself— 

pucker and round your lips appropriately— 

to tell the person across from you 

that they played an intrinsic part in the 

construction of the You you currently are 

without feeling you are giving yourself away

space

Do the parentheses and crescent moons forming

in the outers of my cheeks not bellow admiration

because I can’t seem to say I love you without

touching my tongue to the roof of my mouth 

and bleeding through the next syllable on impact

space

Is that book I’d given you still dusting above your television 

and could you not infer that my willingness to part 

with an extension of myself meant I’d memorized your phone 

number the day we’d first met 

space

My arms are fully extended and shoving 

crinkled eyes and borrowed things and brushing knees 

and calls in threes and diverting looks and 

worn out books and quality time and shaky sighs 

under your eyes I’m sorry I can’t curve my lips

and chew on vowels correctly I’m sorry I’m swallowing 

niceties whole and you can’t shove your arm down the 

narrow of my throat and sift through all the goo for the Good Stuff

aphasia’s a lousy thing and I never learned to move my mouth that way

creatures of the night

Natalie Dupre

Burned into my eyelids is the memory of my mother

leaning over my thin body, blonde hair coated in moonlight, 

pulling a blue blanket up to my chin, whispering ghost stories

of girls we don’t know or care about. 

space

I picture their dismembered bodies in shallow graves, severed limbs, 

sputtering bloody hearts, purple necks. Shadows spin across her face

from a night-light in the wall, words unravel from her mouth 

the same endless twisting stream.

space

Don’t be like these girls, these dumb girls who trust too easily and 

wake up dead in the bed of a man’s truck. Men chase and men coerce 

and men capture and men kill. Those are just things men have done 

and will always do. Men are not like us. 

space

Boys are not inherently bad. I think bad is a thing taught and

groomed and played with, and boys are precursors to men 

who either know suffering or don’t. Once, you were just a boy,

I was just a girl. There’s something romantic about our past states of being.

space

Now, I know you like I’ve known my own shadow, 

biting at my heels, stretches of darkness down the sidewalk behind me.

You are bright glowing eyes, a hot weight pressed into my spine.

Give me decapitated roses and breathe vodka down my nose again,

space

follow me through the dark and haul me off into uncertainty,

where nothing exists except the two of us and your cold little eyes.

If I were a bird or an angel you might clip my wings–, stroke my chin

until I learn comfort in this cage you’ve made.

space

So, when she finds my purple heart writhing on your floor, she’ll say,

 I told you so, I told you so. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, that she 

assumed the worst of you. I’ll lick the blood from your wound like a good girl 

and sharpen the knife you intend to kill me with if it makes you feel better.

Truman

Maddy McFadden

Metered Dose Inhaler with a spacer clenched in the sweaty hand while

and cherry blossoms fall like smoldering 

I wish I had a daughter to forgive me.

Do you feel that? An endless breeze when Eve doesn’t eat

the apple. Do you smell that? Tulips. (Ad Rem,

but not quite).          Perfect. Soft,

but not quite. Canted towards the sun, but never swallows.

The pistil is the first to shrink.

space

The little girl thinks under her shower, 

“What if there was no sin?”

She fears Jim Carey in The Truman Show.

You have to feel rage to feel good, she knows, but she hates

when her mom chokes her for being a pig and—

space

did you hear about the Sockeyes

bearing their children just to die?     Useless.

Like

treadmills or plastic plants or forgiveness when you try.

If self-respect causes pride and desolation, then

what’s wrong with grace or a different type of nothingness?

I’m still unsure. Irresolute. Unresolved.            Scared-of-fucking-

everything-but-masked-

as-a-mild-mannered-prick. Un-absolved,

I guess.

space

The girl squeezes her eyes…

a neck topped by sweaty curls running inside the sun and—

I wish I didn’t have asthma.

table of contents

“Coming to Terms” by Anonymous

“The Things I Wished My Mom Remembered” by Kate Nichols

“Love is Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Alyx Scherich

Coming to Terms

Anonymous

CW: Eating Disorders

A Standoff in the Kitchen

My mother on one side of the counter, me on the other. A plain Eggo waffle and miles of misunderstanding between us.

“Please just eat something.” 

“You’re smarter than this.” 

“You’re not fat.” 

“I weigh more than you do, do you think I’m fat?” 

“Please.”

I greeted every word with silence and tears. Once the begging, rationalizing, and guilting stopped, the threats to pull me out of school started. I took a bite of the waffle. When my mother wasn’t looking, I spit out the bite into my napkin. I sat at the counter for thirty minutes until I had a mash of waffle balled up in my lap. My biggest fear was that my mother would catch me with the disgusting mess in my hands, and that the confrontation would start all over again at double the intensity. I didn’t know what compelled me to spit it out; all I knew was that I didn’t want to eat.

This sort of kitchen standoff was commonplace. This wasn’t the first meal I tried to refuse, but this was the first time I got away from the table just as empty as I had sat down. She smiled when she saw I had cleared my plate. She thought all I needed was some food in my belly to keep me healthy. I thought all I needed was to lose weight to be happy. What we both failed to realize was that I needed help. I used my spit trick to win every other kitchen standoff for the next 7 years. 

That day, at 13, I learned that if it goes unseen, it gets left alone. Now, at 20, I realize when it gets left alone, it goes untreated and remains misunderstood. 

Black and Blue 

At 14, I mapped out the places I hated across my arms and legs with the swirling blues, purples, and yellows of self-inflicted bruises. Three on the inside of my left thigh that faded into and out of one another; two on the top of my right. Small bursts of color spotted my upper arms and the sides of my hips. When one faded, a new one would take its place. 

Each ache and throb that settled into my flesh was a release for my mind; it was easier to express what I felt on my skin than to vocalize it. I was hungry. I was skipping more meals and my thoughts were constantly consumed by my weight. The surface level pain paired nicely with the hollow groan of my stomach and provided a distraction for when the hunger pains got too intense. 

I imagined the bruises were black marker lines that dotted the areas of removal before a surgery; these were the places I planned to carve away. 

After a few months, the relief I felt went away. I was numb, and I needed a different avenue for release. There was a pair of tweezers on my dresser: a black metal handle and two sharp silver tips. One night, after slipping away from the dinner table, I grabbed them and pressed them onto the softest part of my forearm, just hard enough for them to cut through skin. 

One two-inch line, and above that, two small one-inch cuts. It stung and bled, but it felt good.

There was a bruise on my right leg, just above my knee, wide and dark and fresh. In big letters, through the deep purple center the tweezers scratched out “F-A-T”. 

The bruise faded after a week or so and left the carved-out word behind, visible for months after.

Body Over Mind

At 15, my parents sent me to therapy after my sister told them about the bruises. I bounced from doctor to doctor, always with the excuse that I didn’t feel comfortable with them. I don’t think I went to see the same person for more than three appointments. The truth was I just didn’t feel comfortable talking about it at all. 

I told the last therapist I went to see that I would try to starve the weight off my body. I told her that the bruises and the cuts and the sadness and the sleeping were all side effects of the way I saw my body. I didn’t think I had an eating disorder by any stretch of the imagination; I was “too fat” to qualify, but I so desperately needed to talk about it. I was reaching out and hoping someone would take me seriously; that they would acknowledge the health of my mind over the health of my body. 

“Well you are within a healthy BMI range for your age and height. I don’t think you need to worry about the way that you look. We don’t need to talk about that. Now, what I really want to talk about are the bruises.” 

I didn’t go to any more therapy appointments after that. 

I smiled and told my parents I felt better. I was more careful to hide the injuries under my clothes and the dinner in my napkin. 

Diagnosis

At 19, I called my mother with the news of a diagnosis. I went to see a doctor for medication management and left with a few too many pamphlets titled “EATING DISORDER RECOVERY” and a follow up appointment to monitor my weight. Something inside of me held the hope that if a medical professional had attached a title to my behavior, my mother would accept that something was wrong. I knew she noticed my weight loss, my irritability, and the way the only thing I had enough energy to do was sleep. The last time I’d seen her, she’d said I was “shrinking away”. I had lost 16 pounds in less than two weeks. When she asked me if I was eating while I was away at school, I changed the subject.

“She wants me to see a nutritionist. She said I have an eating disorder and it started when I was about 13.”

“Well I don’t know about that, I mean you’ve always been a picky eater but I don’t think that means-“ 

“No. Not picky. Anorexic.” 

She didn’t say anything after that. I didn’t go see the nutritionist. We still don’t talk about it, and I don’t have hope that we ever will.

What Anorexia Looks Like on Me

I am 20 years old. I am 5 feet, 8 inches tall. From ages 13 to 20 I have weighed anywhere between 125 and 160 pounds; completely within a healthy BMI range. When I do eat it’s not always healthy. My bones don’t seep through and poke out through my skin. My ribs only show when I stretch, and my spine when I bend over. I’m not, nor have I ever been, underweight. I’ve never been hospitalized. My story is not the story I expected to have the title of “Eating Disorder.” Anorexia is like the clothing I wear; I am sometimes convinced that I am too fat to fit. 

What Anorexia Feels Like to Me

I passed out once in the high school bathroom after four days of fasting. Some days I take showers with my eyes closed so I don’t have to see my body. I am both obsessed with, and terrified of, weighing myself. When I haven’t eaten in more than two days, I’m grumpy and mean and exhausted and quiet and sad. I prefer feeling completely empty to feeling “comfortably” full; there is no comfortably full to me. Most of the time my stomach doesn’t growl very loudly. I am almost always thinking about the excessive fat on the bridges of my toes, and the tops of my feet, and on the fronts of my ankles when I crouch down, and on my calves, and on the sides of my knees, and on the circumference of my thighs, and on the pouches of fat on my stomach that feel suffocating when I slouch, and the dimples on my back, and the sides of my ribcage, and the edges of my armpits, and the backs of my upper arms, and around my wrists, and on the attachment point of my thumb, and the first bone of all my fingers, and on my neck and chin and cheeks. I wear sweatshirts and jeans in the summer to cover up the soft edges of my most vulnerable parts, to hide as much as possible. I am sometimes more anxious than turned on when a guy touches my body during sex. I’ve taken caffeine pills and smoked cigarettes to suppress my appetite. I am embarrassed and ashamed and sensitive and hungry. 

Body and Mind

At 20, I grew tired of the constant mental battle surrounding food. A diagnosis wasn’t a cure; simply having a name attached to my behavior wasn’t going to get me to change. I decided to give therapy another try. I don’t know if my mother would have objected to the idea had she known I wanted help with the eating disorder she didn’t think I had, but she agreed to help me set something up under the impression that I was sad and wanted someone to talk to.

Noon on a Saturday: My mom drove me to the doctor’s office, and I walked in for my first session. It didn’t look like anything I had expected; there was no long couch, no motivational posters on the wall, just a large wooden desk with a chair on either side of it. 

“Why are you here?” 

The short answer was that I wanted help. When I told the therapist that, she asked for the long answer. After she was caught up on everything, she asked “Do you think that anorexia is an accurate diagnosis for you?” 

I was afraid that if I said “yes” I would face another rejection. If the doctor said I didn’t have an eating disorder, that meant that nothing was wrong. If nothing was wrong, I wouldn’t get help, and I’d be resigned to a poor relationship with food for the rest of my life. 

Hesitantly, I nodded. 

“Well, I don’t specialize in eating disorder recovery, there are doctors out there who might be better equipped than me to work with you, but if you’d like to continue, I think I can help.” 

I left the session with a follow-up scheduled for two weeks later. In the car with my mom on the way home, she didn’t ask about the session. I was thankful; I didn’t want her to. We sat in a comfortable silence for a few minutes before she asked, “Do you want to grab something to eat?” 

I responded with the usual, “I’m not hungry,” and like always, she put up a fight. I found that it didn’t bother me as much as usual this time. I knew  this feeling of comfort at my mom’s well-intentioned worrying would disappear, but in the meantime, I could enjoy the progress I had made. She could take care of my body and I could take care of my mind. 

The Things I Wish My Mom Remembered

Kate Nichols

I was probably nine when I realized that my mother was an alcoholic. I remember slowly making the connection between her drinking from various containers, the disgusting smell on her breath, and her altered behavior. I think the moment of realization came when she was sick. When I say sick, I don’t actually mean sick. I mean drunk.

I wish she remembered the time that I came home from school and found her passed out on the couch again. The large glass bottle of clear liquid was beside her, and she had a hand covering her eyes to block the light streaming in from the window. Quietly, I shut the front door, and bent down to shake her awake. I asked her if she was okay.

She said something along the lines of “I just don’t feel very good, baby,” and “Go be quiet in your room.” Her alcohol tainted breath made my nose scrunch up in disgust. I glanced between the near-empty bottle and her. I thought about the other times when she’d been sick: when the same revolting smell was on her breath, a similar bottle at her side. I thought about how this sick seemed different than all of the times that I’d seen her have a cold. There were no tissues at her side, no cold medicine; just the bottle. 

Instead of confronting her, I went to my room and closed the door. I may have figured out what was causing her to act funny, but I knew not to argue when she was like that. Arguing was considered talking back, and talking back meant getting yelled at, grounded, or hit. By that point I’d learned to keep any invasive questions or comments to myself.

I remember being uncomfortable with this new knowledge. My stomach knotted as I put my backpack down and curled up on my bed. Instead of worrying, I sat in my room and made up stories in my head where I was out in the world on my own, fending for myself with fictional characters nurturing me in the way that didn’t often happen when I was at home. I would think of these stories for hours, trying to drown out everything in the world that was wrong. I did what I could to take the image of that bottle beside her out of my mind, to get the smell of her breath off of me. Later that night, I sat in my room and listened to her and my stepdad argue. I always tried not to listen, but from their screaming matches I learned a new word: drunk. 

One time when I was around that same age, we were in a store, and I asked for this giant teddy bear. Instead of saying no, like I expected her to, she agreed. As we were walking out of the store, she did a double take at the teddy bear, and asked me if she had really bought it for me. 

“Well that was an Absolut moment,” she told me. At the time, I didn’t know what she meant, and I didn’t really care—I had the teddy bear, after all. But I’d hear that phrase more and more and I realized that she blamed her strange actions on alcohol. By the time I was a teenager, I’d roll my eyes and scoff at the phrase.

I don’t know exactly how much she drank, but I do remember the cleaning days. Those were the days that we would spend emptying her hiding places of alcohol bottles. I’d follow my mom around the house with a large black trash bag. We’d usually start in the kitchen, opening various unused cabinets, to reveal the empty (or mostly empty) bottles of vodka. We’d occasionally head down to the laundry room to find a bottle or two. Then, we’d make our way to the bedroom, where there would be a few small bottles in the drawers beneath her bed and some in her walk-in closet. Her favorite hiding place was underneath the master bathroom sink. I remember that was where we’d find most of the empty bottles.  

And then there were the airplane-sized bottles in her SUV. She drove a dark green Chevy Tahoe with beige seats. The center console’s cupholder had been ripped out, leaving a gaping hole and a lot of room to hide bottles on the go. On the days that we cleaned out the Tahoe, she would reach far into the console, grabbing every last tiny bottle of vodka. One time we counted the bottles, but I can’t remember the number. Fifteen? Twenty? Twenty-five? Too many.

Growing up, I loved visiting my friends’ houses, but I was always confused about why no one would visit my house. When I asked my mom why my friend’s parents wouldn’t let her come to our house, her replies were “it’s probably because I smoke,” or “maybe it’s because we’re poor.”  Now I realize that neither of those things were the case. 

I was playing outside in the sprinkler with a friend. We ended up getting all muddy. My mom called for me from across the street while my friend’s dad told me to wait so he could rinse me off with the hose. I turned red with embarrassment and trembled with fear. She drunkenly screamed for me as the cold water rinsed the mud from my legs and feet. 

The thing that stood out to me the most was the look that my friend’s dad gave me as I said goodbye. He was frowning, his eyebrows drawn together in concern. I remember feeling ashamed, uncomfortable—feeling at fault for causing his discomfort. He looked like he wanted to say something, but before he could, I was sprinting across the lawn toward my screaming mother.

When I got home, I think that I narrowly avoided getting beat with my explanation about the mud, but got sent to my room regardless of the reason. It wasn’t the first time that I got sent to my room for something so silly, but it was definitely better than the alternative. Sometimes I wish she’d remember this moment, though I doubt she’d remember it the same way. Like a hose, alcohol rinsed that memory out of her mind.

Upon moving to Ohio when I was ten, it appeared that my mom was drinking less. Things seemed to get better for a little while. I’m not sure if it was simply the fact that I had marching band to focus on, or if it was because she ended up in a relationship and her boyfriend slowly became my father figure. He didn’t try to be my father, but he was present, offered advice, and often stood up for me when I couldn’t find the words to stand up for myself. Though he didn’t have an alcoholic as a parent growing up, his father had abandoned him at a young age, as well. He comforted me when I felt like I wasn’t good enough; when I thought that my father’s absence was my own fault.

When I was thirteen, my mom and her boyfriend got in a nasty fight. They were having a party downstairs while I was upstairs, sleeping. My mom was too drunk to function, and went to bed early. She kept yelling that no one cared about her, and that she should just go and die. Hearing this was upsetting, because as her daughter, I cared. I didn’t want her to think that she was better off dead. Despite being upset, I stayed in my room. My mom’s boyfriend went upstairs to confront her and to try to get her to stop yelling. I was still inside my room, but the rooms were so close together that I could hear every word of the argument. They yelled at each other, and then I heard the glass lamp beside their bed smash, and a body being slammed into the wall. 

The two separated, and my mom called the police. When they came, my mom’s boyfriend had bruises and scratches all along his arms and neck from where she had grabbed him. Despite the fact that she called the police, she was the one who ended up going to jail that night. This was because she was so drunk, and because of the marks all over her boyfriend. As she was getting ready to be arrested, she started to give the police my social security number before correcting herself. She was handcuffed and put into the back of the police car. I went to spend the night with two of our family friends. I was too upset to sleep in the same house where everything had happened. My mom later criticized me for it, saying that those people had started doing hard drugs, and that I should’ve stayed in the house. But clearly she didn’t remember me crying and needing comfort as I watched her get into the back of a police cruiser. She doesn’t remember how upset and afraid I was the night she was taken away, and I wish that she did.

A couple of months later, our neighbors called the cops when they heard my mom and her boyfriend screaming at each other, slamming each other into things. The fist through the drywall is probably what did it. She probably doesn’t remember that I was awake and almost answered the door for the police. She definitely doesn’t remember how scared I was. I stayed in my room with a pillow over my head, crying and trying to imagine myself anywhere else. But it’s hard to pretend when the yelling is so loud that it shakes you to your core.

When I look back on moments like these, I often wonder why none of the adults in my life did anything. No, I didn’t go around telling everyone that my mother was an alcoholic who liked to use excessive force when disciplining me. At the time, I assumed that everyone got the shit beaten out of them for not cleaning up after themselves. It wasn’t until high school that I realized that what she’d done wasn’t okay, but when I was younger, there were many signs that I didn’t have a great home life. I often didn’t want to go home—I loved school because most of the teachers were so kind and caring. Despite this, I still cried a lot while I was there. Well, I cried a lot in general. I cried when people picked on me, I cried when I got in trouble, I cried when I thought that adults would get mad at me, and I cried when I got things wrong. Crying was  how I communicated. I didn’t talk much, and I was always timid around adults. 

One of the few times when I’d gotten in trouble was for putting my backpack in the wrong place. My teacher had yelled at me, and I ultimately turned into a sobbing mess. I cried so much that I couldn’t breathe—I gasped for air as I tried to explain my mistake, constantly sniffling, unable to stop the tears from flowing down my cheeks. It wasn’t until I was away from the teacher, safely in the guidance counselor’s office that I finally calmed down.

Despite all of these things, not once did a Children’s Protective Service representative talk to me. I talked to therapists, to teachers, to other adults, and they should have known that something was wrong. Yet, nothing was ever done. No one ever asked about my home life— not for specifics at least. 

There were adults in my life who knew my mother was an alcoholic, but did nothing to get me out of my toxic household. No teacher ever considered that I cried so often because I was afraid of what would happen when they got mad, because the most constant adult in my life could, at the flip of a switch, be the scariest person in my life whenever I did something wrong. 

Most of these adults aren’t even in my life anymore, and even if they were, I don’t think I’d get an apology anyway.

My mom stopped drinking when I was around the age of fourteen. This was due to her long-term boyfriend claiming that he wouldn’t stick around to watch her make a fool of herself as a drunk. It wasn’t for me. She stopped for him. She slipped up a few times, to the point where I thought I would lose the only real, stable father figure in my life for good. But he stuck around, and she says that she hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol in at least four years. It’s hard to believe that sometimes, but I try to be supportive. They say that’s what alcoholics need. Support. 

We’ve had conversations about the past since she’s sobered up. We remember things differently. One time, we argued about whether she was ever sober enough to teach me how to play basketball. She fails to remember the times that she screamed at me over forgetting to put the dishes in the dishwasher, over my room being messy, over saying something in a way that made her think that I was getting an attitude with her. She fails to remember all of the times that she grounded me, and then forgot how long she said I was grounded for. She fails to remember always hitting me over the smallest things, and being so drunk that she didn’t realize how hard she was really hitting me. I wish that she remembered, so she could apologize for more than just drinking too much when I was younger. I wish she remembered how much she hurt me, so then maybe she could apologize for it.

But the thing about traumatic memories is that sometimes they can’t be recalled easily. Sometimes, if someone suggests that something happened, you can create a false memory based on the suggestion. The only other person who could possibly tell me whether these things were true either doesn’t remember, or doesn’t want to remember. We remember differently, but her memory is as fallible as mine. She was under the influence of alcohol, and I was just a kid experiencing some form of trauma. I wish she remembered correctly what happened when I was between the ages of seven and fourteen, but more than anything, I wish that she wanted to remember.

Love is Rock ‘n’ Roll

Alyx Scherich

CW: Self-harm, suicidal ideation

Love is thought to be a universal experience. Maybe this is true. I’m not entirely sure myself; I don’t know every person to have ever existed. What I do know is that love— true love, the kind you hear about in every genre of music— doesn’t apply to me. Sometimes I get glimpses of it, small crescendos that eventually fade away. I’m still waiting for the triumphant anthem to kick in, all fanfare and ornamentation. So far, it’s just been twenty years of rests.

In kindergarten, I found myself an early entrepreneur. Only looking back now do I realize that I had made myself into a five-year-old playground prostitute. Boys would give me gifts, snacks, bathroom passes— anything I asked for, as long as I held their hand or kissed their cheek. 

One afternoon, my teacher had caught me kissing the cheek of my most loyal customer, a boy named Justin. Everyone but me was dismissed early for recess. I spent the entire hour being slut-shamed by my teacher at the tender age of six. 

Stop distracting the boys. They need to focus so they can learn.

A fine young lady like you shouldn’t be messing around like this.

What would your father think if I told him what you’d been up to?

None of this made sense to me. Distracting the boys? They were distracting me. Any time I was working on my homework, a customer would approach me, asking for a kiss. It was  annoying, but I was learning just fine myself. I didn’t see why their lack of ambition was in any way my fault. 

As soon as recess was over, out of spite, I began offering kisses on the lips. The price: two chocolate bars. It was a surprise I didn’t become obese within a month.

As a child, I always loved music. Then again, who didn’t? My parents failed to capitalize on my musical fixation, but I worked with what I could. There was a particular CD that I played on repeat, singing harmonies to the soundtrack of Remember the Titans. I still haven’t seen the movie, but it’s dear to my heart nonetheless.

The only thing I knew about the movie was that it was about football. I desperately wanted to play. However, being the only female cousin out of fifteen makes it hard to join in such reindeer games. It quickly became routine.

You can’t play with us. You’re a girl.

No, honey, the adults are talking. 

Go play with your cousins.

Luckily, we lived in the middle of nowhere. Farming was in our blood. My uncle to the north was a sheep farmer. To the east, a cow farmer. And to the far west, my aunt kept pigs. Sheep are  skittish animals, yet they’re curious if you prove you’re not a threat. Cows, on the other hand, pretend to be the boss until you get too close— then it’s stampede time. Pigs, intelligent as they are, couldn’t care less about you. You bring food; that’s all they need to know.

Despite their differences, all these animals have something in common. If you play music, they will come. Once banished by cousins and adults alike, I would move to the middle of the cowpen. The trick is you have to start off small. Don’t spook them. I’d sing until I was surrounded by curious cows, feeding them grass I had pulled from the banks just outside the fence. Soon enough, I had become one of the herd.

As middle school approached, the talks of puberty began. Sex was introduced to us way too early, a concept I likely would never have gotten in my brain if it hadn’t been for all the abstinence speakers. When will adults learn that teenagers are going to do the opposite of everything you say?

I was more than upset, to say the least, with this situation. I was getting the short end of the stick. Guys were getting deeper voices and growing taller. Meanwhile, I had to bleed for a week and worry about getting pregnant. I’d also lost all my chances to walk around without a shirt. The bright side was that it gave me another toolset with which to exploit others.

Can I touch your boobs for ten bucks?

How much will it cost to make out for an hour?

How far are you willing to go?

I started turning tricks in the guys’ bathroom. Twenty bucks, and you bought yourself a handjob. Make it thirty and you’ve upgraded to a blowjob. It never lasted long. I never saw the appeal; it was simply a way to make money. 

That’s when I first started to skip classes. Not because demand was high. Though it was, and I got to pick and choose my customers. If I didn’t want to do anything, I didn’t have to. I had just lost interest in learning the same rules over and over again. I wanted time alone.

Band gave me a daily escape. Every morning at ten, we’d explore the ranges of our skill. For most people, that range was limited. I tried my hand at a lot of different instruments: trumpet, saxophone, trombone, even clarinet for a hot second. But I eventually landed myself in the percussion section.

I was terrible when it came to classical training. Melodic instruments were too hard for me to grasp; there was too much going on in my head. Counting rests was never easy; I’d get lost, wing it, and get yelled at. 

You’re playing out of tune.

You came in three beats too early.

Stop rushing.

Everything was too organized, too sterile. Notes that seemed so strictly set to my classmates danced around on the pages, impossible to read. In a way, I found myself musically dyslexic. That was, until I was placed on the snare drum. Rhythmic in nature, there only needed to be one tonal note written. All I had to worry about was the beat.

From there, things began moving smoothly. Rolls came naturally. A drumstick became an extension of my flesh and bone. I provided the heartbeat for the rest of the band and pumped blood from the conductor to each player and back. It was easy to lose myself in the music.

I lost my virginity at the age of fourteen. Coincidentally, this was also the year I started having suicidal thoughts. I had lost all interest in my education and saw no use in pursuing it any further. The days at school were spent in the band room, either downing a bottle of vodka or sucking some guy off. Not particularly in that order. 

My time at home was spent avoiding my brother at all costs. Marching band had taught me how to move silently. Any mis-timed journey to the kitchen or out-of-place noise could mean hell. My door still has holes from where he punched through it. The doorframe still hangs there, half-knocked out of the wall. He always pretends nothing happened.

I’m going to fucking kill you. 

Why are you so sensitive, bitch?

Say you love me.

The consequences for disobedience were never worth it. It was simple. Three words. They didn’t have to be true. But each forfeit from me added another arrow to his quiver. He built himself a high horse out of those three words, yet never said them back.

His torment even extended to my mother. One night, the two of us fled the house during one of his fits. A broken TV, a smashed window. Nothing important. My mom drove us around in the rain, knuckles white on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. She told me she’d have killed herself long before now if it weren’t for me. I didn’t tell her that I felt the same.

It’s easy to forget your problems when you forget that you’re human. You begin to convince yourself that you’re part of a machine, a cog, easily replaceable. As part of a bass drumline, you live this feeling every day. You’re one of five people playing as one. If someone messes up, the unit cannot function.

You begin to think and move as one. Play as one. When I stepped out onto the football field every night, my mind melted away. All that remained was muscle memory and blind trust in the four people around me. If one leads you astray, you must follow them off the cliff like lemmings. But the trust from the field never followed to the stands.

You know she talks about you behind your back, right?

How can you deal with his constant whining?

I can’t wait to leave you assholes behind.

I knew nothing about those nearest to me, and they knew nothing about me in return. I liked to keep it that way. Made things simpler. There was no way for them to use anything against me. 

Rumors began to spread that I was going to shoot up the school. Seems keeping your distance isn’t the best idea. Didn’t help that I joined the rifle team. Despite that, I wasn’t violent, and any idiot would know that you can’t effectively shoot up a school with a bolt action rifle.. Instead, I dropped out of high school.

In a dark movie theater, two idiots drunkenly stumbled into a trash bin, sending popcorn everywhere. It was my first time witnessing someone amicably drunk in person. Fascinating as they were, my fellow patrons seemed to think otherwise. 

They sat down behind me, in the last row of the theater. As soon as they entered, all my attention was gone from the forgettable action flick playing. Instead, it was on their  loud conversation.

Yo, this is the part where he fucking dies.

Don’t get attached to her. They kill her in act three.

Plot twist, he was in on it the whole time.

The redhead had seen the film before; had it almost memorized, by the sound of it. The brunette was taking in everything he said like gospel, adding in his own comments or questions every now and then. 

They were kicked out pretty soon after. Some people don’t have a sense of humor, I guess. Finding the movie lacking without the play-by-play, I kicked myself out as well. I found them lurking outside, the brunette kicking rocks and the redhead smoking idly. I went home with them.

The redhead, Sam, was a guitarist. He tried teaching me a thing or two, but the idea of chords sent my brain into a frenzy. That didn’t stop me from singing his melodies while writing on his bed. The brunette, Marco, was his boyfriend. He was an anxious thing, unable to do anything without at least two shots in his system. 

Our escapades never went without a soundtrack. Dumpster fires were matched with EDM. Smoke breaks on the roof were to the tune of jazz. Our long trips were spent belting out rock anthems. What was supposed to be one night of stupid decisions turned into three years. 

We’ve been talking. We like you, you know?

I was thinking the three of us could all just date each other.

We’re basically dating as is. Make it official, yeah?

For the first time, I found myself in a relationship that lasted longer than a month. I started looking forward to life again. The symphonies were starting to crescendo. This was it, what I’d been waiting for all along. 

Sam was the first person I told about the cutting. He helped me recover, in his own way. Replaced one vice with another. That’s the issue with falling into the rockstar lifestyle. It’s feast or famine, and the fanfare only lasts for so long.

Sam killed himself at the age of nineteen. I don’t remember telling him that I loved him. I’m not sure if I did. He helped me through a lot, taught me a lot about the person I am today, but love never feels like the right word to use. It’s broken, overused, twisted.

Marco moved away, cut off contact. Last I heard, he found someone new and moved in with him. Deep down in my heart of hearts, I know he blames me. I know because I blame him right back. I stopped leaving the house, started cutting again, and wondered what it would feel like to fade away. My father was tired of my moping and mooching.

Have you looked into college yet?

You need a change of scenery.

There’s plenty of people to meet out there if you just walk out the door.

I found myself in Athens shortly after, unhappy and in desperate need of drinking money. These were the circumstances that led me to Brian. He was quiet, bisexual, sober. Perfect for a recovering alcoholic worried about how they carried themselves in the world.

I was perfect for his needs as well. A fragile female toting around male pronouns, a perfect scapegoat to use for coming out to his family. If they freaked at the title “boyfriend” he could tell them I was actually a girl and the problem would be solved.

This was the era of Mother Mother. To the uninitiated, they’re a Canadian band specializing in the art of optimistically depressing music. Brian could pretend that the major chords meant everything was fine, while I could continue singing a sad tune on my own.

We settled into our cadence well. He’d play video games while I hummed familiar melodies beside him, slicing into my own skin like it was butter. He never minded as long as I was bandaged up well enough to fuck in an hour. It didn’t matter to him that I was asexual.

Why don’t you smile more?

Do homework later. I’m bored.

Are you done yet? I’m horny.

I dumped the asshole, slept with his roommate for good measure, and left to figure out my problems on my own. He’d left a scar on me that I tried my hardest to ignore. It was a cacophony, playing in the background at all times. It’d been building up ever since Sam died, but now it was fully realized; a part of the harmony in its own right.

I’ve given up on trying. I’ve decided to focus on graduating and I’ve abandoned my old money-making schemes. Any moment not spent in class is spent listening to music, drowning out that creeping feeling; the chorus of voices echoing in my ears from years past. I’m not a strong person. When they become too much, I’m quick to relapse. But it always helps, a manageable addiction that quiets the heavy metal, soothes it to something folksy, something rock ‘n’ roll. 

table of contents

“A Murder of Crows” by Allegra Solomon

“Slate” by Ben Ervin

“Micky’s Happy Fits of Rage” by Noah McGeorge

“Second Chance” by Alexander Petras

“Escape” by Peter Russ

A Murder of Crows

Allegra Solomon

“Where’s Mom and Dad?” Emile leaned in the passenger window, dark stubble catching snowflakes. The sound of the gate numbers droned through the airport curbside.

“They sent me,” Cleo said. “You’ve got coffee on your shirt.”  

“I’ve always got coffee on my shirt. Trunk or backseat?”

“Backseat.”

Emile opened the backseat of his sister’s silver 2005 Honda Civic and shoved in two full suitcases and one duffle bag. They sat upright in their respective seats like human bodies. Cleo watched him.

“Jesus. Plan on moving back?”

“Pardon?” Emile opened the passenger seat and climbed in.

“Pardon?” she mimicked. “Lot of luggage for a week’s stay.”

“I like to have options. You have three shirts in the back seat—I’m sure you could say the same.”

“Nosy, are you?”

“It’s good to see you, too.”

Cleo’s forehead was shiny and dark spots were creeping through her cheeks. Her brown skin swallowed the light around her like the dark of a pupil consuming an iris. She was un-made up. Her face undressed. Tight dark braids were spun into her scalp. He hadn’t seen her this bare in a while, he thought.

“Will you get out of the car, please?” Emile said.

“What for?”

“Because I’d like to hug you. People hug at airports.”

“Fucksake, Emile. Just do it here in the car.” Cleo undid her seatbelt and cheated to her right.

Emile looked at the stoic brown of her eyes. Her wavering, cautious smile—teetering around a feeling she wouldn’t allow herself to access fully. 

“Four years, Cleo. A proper hug, please.”

She stayed with her body towards her brother. “Hug me in the car or hug me at the restaurant.”

“Are we getting food?”

“I assumed you were hungry. That’s what you do, right? You pick someone up from the airport, then take them to a restaurant, and they tell you about the time they spent away.”

“I don’t think there’s enough time for me to cover all four years.”

A crossing guard in a yellow holographic vest began waving for Cleo to move.

“Then we’ll just eat.”

Cleo put the key in the ignition and began to pull out of the loading zone. She rolled down the window on the driver’s side, but just barely. November breeze crept across her bare forearms. It felt familiar, the cold. She’d grown to know it intimately. Emile sat with his shoulder pancaked against the glass of his window. His bare fingers were drying in Midwestern air, growing gray and chalking on his brown skin. The jacket of his ill-fitted navy suit tickled his wrist like an insect. 

“Brilliant. Where should we go?”

“Ooof.” Cleo shook her head and grinned. “Not getting used to that anytime soon.”

He already knew where she was headed. “Can we please just— “

“Brilliant, mate. Brilliant. Are you mad?”

“It’s very normal to pick up on the vernacular of the country you’re living in.”

Cleo could feel his face twisting even while focused on the road. She had always enjoyed chipping away at him in this way; forcing cracks in his demeanor. 

“Fair.” Teeth poked through her straight face. “Dottie must hate it, though. She marries an American boy, then he’s not so American anymore. It must lose its novelty.”

Emile shrugged and loosened his tie. “Dot’s fine with the way I talk.”

“I guess I can’t speak on behalf of Dot. Don’t really know her, anyways.”

“Playwriting,” Emile sighed. “Tell me about how that’s going.”

“Good. Working on getting a one-woman show funded as we speak.” Cleo turned right onto a long country road.

“I wasn’t sure one-woman shows were actually a thing.”

“Ever heard of Twilight Los Angeles, 1992?” Emile shook his head. “It’s a one-woman show about the LA riots. She’s this black playwright. It’s been nominated for a Tony and all that. Anyways, yeah— they’re a real thing.”

“That’s mad,” he said. Cleo resisted her urge to confront him for this. “What’s yours called?”

“A Murder of Crows.”

“About?” He fully took his tie off now.

“I can never describe my work as well as I can just write it. I’ll send you the script when everything’s touched up. Or you can just come see the production sometime.”

Emile began sifting through the glove compartment. “I’d like that.”

“Maybe Dot can come too. And the little one.”

“Little one’s named Milo.”

“I know my nephew’s name.” She turned her head to see Emile’s head fully ducked and cocked to the side, profiling the glove compartment. “Jesus. What are you looking for?”

“CDs.” He pulled one out. “You’ve always got the most obscure music.”

“It’s not obscure just because you don’t know it.”

 “Don’t you have anything I know?”

“No, sorry. Did not plan for the one time you decided to come back for Thanksgiving. I’ll get College Dropout for next time.”

He ignored her. “What’s this?”

“Brotherhood. By New Order.”

“Hm.” He inspected the bluish cover. “Okay. Play me your favorite song off this.”

Emile slipped the CD into the disk drive and waited for a sound that wasn’t Cleo’s gritty car engine. “It’s kind of special, actually.”

“What is?” The car’s interior released mechanical noises as it tried to process the CD. 

“Having CDs. Feeling music in your hands. It’s so personal.” 

Cleo’s right shoulder met her ear in a shrug. “I’d like to think so.” The two of them remained in silence.

 “You gotta give it a little—” Cleo banged on the dashboard three times with her fist, ejected the CD, then re-entered it. She clicked down to track six. “Bizarre Love Triangle” began to fall through the speakers. “There you go.”

Cleo and Emile sat quietly for a few moments, stirring in the eighties synths around them. Emile listened intently to his sister’s music. He realized he’d heard this song before, a long time ago. He imagined she was driving him to school back in his senior year. He hadn’t gotten his license until he was twenty. Cleo was in the middle of the same memory.

“Do you smell that?” Emile pulled his suit jacket over his nose and turned towards the window.

“Smell what,” she said, discreetly lowering the driver’s window a bit more.

“I don’t know.” He put his window down a bit too. “It’s not bad per se, but it’s like, lived in. Like Grandma and Grandpa’s basement.” He held the fabric more firmly over his nose like he was trying to pop a zit between his fingers.

Cleo turned the volume dial up a bit louder. “Why didn’t Dottie come? I was looking forward to—you know.”

Emile turned the music up a bit more. “Thanksgiving is an American holiday. She doesn’t see the appeal. I’m into this song, by the way. It’s good.”

“What—was it the mass genocide or the overeating that turned her off?”

Emile pulled his face out from his suit now, finally. His dark face scrunched up and pulled lines all around his eyes. His nose was as broad as a linebacker’s shoulders; it was the centerpiece of his everything. “Can we stop by your place before you drop me at Mom and Dad’s?”

“No time,” she said.

“We’re on a schedule?”

Cleo nodded. “If we waste another moment before getting to the restaurant, I’ll starve and die.”

Emile started sifting through the glove compartment for more CDs. 

“It’s very fitting that you’re in the theater. The theatrics in everything you do, I just…” He pulled copies of The Sundalic Twins, Disintegration, and Skylarking out of the glove compartment. “Cleo.” He said this warily.

“What’s up.” She knew already.

“These all still have the security tags on them.”

“They do? That’s strange.” Her nerves pulled her mouth into a shaky grin. 

“Is it?” He held the CDs in his hand like they were a bomb. Those nervous lines were back on his face. “Is it strange?”

“Not sure,” Cleo retorted. “Let’s both sleep on it and come to a consensus in the morning.”

“Cleo, are you stealing?”

Cleo drove past the Kroger by their old middle school— past the gutted remains of what was once their family’s go-to Chinese take-out restaurant, past the odd cluster of trees outside the guitar store where she had her first kiss—and into the potholed parking lot. 

“We’re here. Time for your hug, I guess.”

When Emile looked up the two of them were facing a Diner. The bulbs in the “I” of the light up sign shorted out. Dner.  

Cleo was out of the car as soon as it was placed in park. Emile pulled himself out of the car slowly, as if savoring every movement for a memory later.

 Emile looked at his little sister. Her white t-shirt and blue jeans. The same black Chuck 70s she’d been wearing since before he’d gotten married and moved to England. The way the bridge of her nose came together like the peak of a mountain and fanned out widely at the bottom like butterfly wings.  

Cleo looked at her older brother and thought that he looked more twenty-two than the twenty-eight he was. How poorly tailored his suit was—the pant legs rising far above his ankles. How there was a young, English-sounding Milo with his genetic make-up throwing blocks at a wall somewhere. How bare Emile’s left hand was. Too bare.

“Okay, hug me,” she said. 

“Don’t make it a chore, kid.”

Kid, she thought. Cleo was instantly fourteen again. 

“Please do it so we can just go eat.”

Emile walked over and hugged his sister lightly, awkwardly. Their shoulders brushed like repelling magnets. 

“Must you make everything so difficult…” He pulled away and watched Cleo’s legs carry her into the restaurant. Her seamless, placid gait—like she was walking on the buffed wood of a bowling lane. 

“Do you have your wallet on you?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“Good.”

When the two of them entered the restaurant Cleo walked up to the hostess and leaned on her podium. “Table for two please.”

The hostess was wearing a Christmas-green vest and her name tag said “Jerika” on it. 

“Are you two twins?” Jerika said this with two menus in-hand and a smile that reached her eyes.

“No,” Emile sighed. “She’s twenty-seven. I’m twenty-eight.”

“Oh. Well you could pass as twins if you wanted to. It’s the nose, I think. The eyes, too.”

“The Stillwater nose,” Cleo said. “A fucking curse if I’ve ever heard of one.”

The two of them were led to a table overlooking the parking lot. They could see Cleo’s car from their booth. Emile started working on his third coffee of the day. Light brown liquid distilled with mounds of cream and sugar dripped down his chin and onto his white shirt.

“Jesus. You’ve got so much damn coffee on your shirt,” Cleo said. She took a swig of her water and crunched the ice between her teeth. Her brother’s harsh adult features looked softer, younger in that moment.

“I told you, I always have coffee on my shirt. And stop saying the Lord’s name in vain. Mom and Dad’ll kill you.” He fell victim to another coffee stain.

“Fuck. I know. Sorry.”

“Stop swearing, too. You know them.”

“I know.” Her mouth was agape, as if more was coming, but she just left it there.

“Will you tell me what your play’s about?”

“I told you. It’s called A Murder of Crows. It’s a one-woman show. I’m working on getting it funded.” She chewed more ice.

“Okay, but what’s it about?”

“Is this you trying to find a reason not to come to the show?” 

“No, Cleo. I’m just curious about your life. Can I do that? Can I be curious?”

“I’m curious about your life, too,” she said. Emile looked at her with heavy, muddy brown eyes, and neither of them turned away. She pushed her water to the side. “Should I just say it?”

“Say what?” He knew an instant after he asked.

“Your left hand. Where is it?”

“Fuck.” The panic flashed on his face as he dug around in his wallet and placed his wedding ring back on his finger. Cleo had never seen it in person. It was smaller in real life. Emile did his best to avoid eye contact.

“Profanity,” she teased. 

“Please just leave it. At least for now.” He was no longer drinking coffee. The anxieties of the conversation had his heart in a marathon.

Cleo finished her water. “Just explain yourself to me. You don’t have to explain yourself to them. Just do it for me.”

“You don’t want to know.” His voice wavered like a waveform. 

“Did she cheat on you?” He shook his head. “You cheat on her?”

“Gosh, Cleo—is that what you think of me?” 

“What?” 

Emile’s eyes were studying the family sitting across the walkway from them; how all of them were on their phones.  “I don’t understand why that’s where your mind goes.”

“I mean, I just—I just can’t think of other reasons.” Her foot was knocking ferociously against a metal pole under the table. 

“People divorce for all kinds of reasons. Love is complex that way—it’s never been just one thing.”

“Explain the complexities of love to me, then. I’ve always wanted to know.”  

“No, Cleo. Just give it a rest, maybe. It’s not fun.”

“Explain, Mil.” It was her childhood nickname for him. His chest tightened.

There was a pulse in his jaw. “It’s not fun.”

Cleo let her eyes bear into his in a plea; her face molded soft and true.

Emile shrugged. He looked out the window as he spoke. “I’m leaving her.”

“Because?”

Emile focused on a stop sign. “Because I don’t love her anymore.”

Cleo tried to pull his gaze but his eyes remained out the window.

 “That’s it?”

 “What do you mean, it? Is that not good enough for you?” 

“No, no. It’s just…kind of shit, you know. You just stop loving someone, and then everything you’ve had just disintegrates. I don’t know. It’s just shit, I guess.” This was one of the few instances she wished she could lock away her bluntness in a dark room. Emile also wished this.

“Thanks for informing me. I didn’t know.”

“I’m real sorry, Emile— “ 

“Sure. Thanks—” 

“—and I know you don’t want to hear this, and I’m not trying to kick you while you’re down, but—fuck. Mom and Dad are not gonna—”

 “You’re so smart, Cleo. I wish I was as smart as you.”

The waitress stopped by their table. She read their faces. Emile said they were going to need a couple more minutes.

“I bet you’re glad you didn’t waste the money on getting me to the wedding.” She’d meant to say this as a joke but her vocal chords betrayed her. They wavered sincerely; the hurt seeped through. To distract herself, Cleo scanned the menu. Chicken tenders and fries were juvenile, yet reliable.

“I’m glad you just said it. I was tired of your discretion.”  Emile was drawing towards the Caesar salad, knowing he would eat half the fries off his sister’s plate anyways.

All intended humor had dissipated. “Why would you have the wedding in England when your whole family lives here?” A side of broccoli, too, maybe.

“Because my fiancé lived in England. Mom and Dad came.”

“Mom and Dad could come.”

“You could’ve come.”

There was a warmness in her chest that was traveling upwards. “I couldn’t come. You had the wedding in England.”

“All you had to do was buy a ticket.” His voice echoed slightly in the air.

“I didn’t have any fucking money.” She closed her menu and waved for the waitress. “You knew that.”  

 “I didn’t believe you.”

A long pause hung between them. “You should’ve.”

“You’ve always…exaggerated. The theatrics, you know.”

Cleo felt her chest tighten, and just repeated. “You should’ve.”

Their waitress came over to their table and took their orders. There was no need to jot them down. She had an impeccable memory, she told them.

 Cleo sneered when Emile ordered his salad.

 Once the waitress left, Cleo reached across the table and drank the rest of her brother’s coffee. The waters inside of her stilled.  

“How do you just stop loving your spouse?” This left her mouth with full sincerity and wonder. 

“Just like any other thing: time and circumstance.” Emile looked down at his shirt. A muddy brown trail from neck to sternum. “Can I please stop by your house and change before we go to Mom and Dad’s?”

Cleo blew air out of her nose. “Why do you wanna see my house so bad?’

Emile lowered his face into his hands.

His voice muffled in his palms. “Everything’s so difficult with you. You’re my sister, that’s why. Because I wanna change my shirt, that’s why. Can you just answer a yes or no question with either yes or no for once in your life?”

“Sure. Ask me again.”

“Okay.” Emile looked up. “Can we please stop—”

“No.”

“Why not?” Emile’s thumbs were tight in his fists.

She turned her head to the window and tapped on the glass right where her car was parked. “You’re too tall. It’s hard enough for me to change in there.”

Emile’s eyes traveled to the silver car and scanned the backseat where his bags were. He imagined his little sister sleeping back there in the cold of a Midwestern fall. He let the tension in his hands breathe. Emile wanted to apologize or give his sister money, but he knew how she was. Instead he said:

“Do Mom and Dad know?”

“Nope. They’d kill me.” Her eyes avoided his for the first time. 

“They’d help you. You know that.”

“I don’t want them to.”

“They would’ve bought your plane ticket, too.”

“I didn’t want them to.”

“What did you want then? What do you want now even?”

She let this sentence sit for a while, draining the air. Cleo never pulled the veil back too quickly.

 Their waitress returned and set their food in front of them. Emile reached over his sister’s plate and took a fry before she’d even gotten the chance to say grace. She dipped a chicken tender in barbecue sauce and chewed slowly. She still had not looked at Emile. 

“I don’t know. I just wanted you to have the wedding here.” There was a long pause. “I want them to think I’m doing alright.”

The tension in Emile’s shoulders released slightly. “You are doing alright. You’ve written a play and you’re getting it funded. That’s more than alright.”

Cleo took a handful of fries and decided to chew them all at once. “Haven’t written.”

Emile was chewing on his salad like a rabbit. He wished he’d gotten what she’d gotten. “Pardon?”

“Pardon? I haven’t written it. I’m not working on getting it funded.”

“A Murder of Crows?”

“God—Emile, yes. Leave it alone.”

They ate for another five minutes with the rumble of the restaurant as their soundtrack. Emile would slip fries from Cleo’s platter. She let him. 

“You should write it,” he said finally.

Cleo looked up at him, eyes slightly red. “Everything I write is shit. Rubbish, you might say.”

This dig tugged at him kindly. “I don’t believe that.”

“You should.”

“I’ve read the things you’ve been putting on your website. Your poems and essays. Dot, too. We think you’re quite good.” The sound of his fork scraping his bare plate made her itch.

“Glad someone thinks so.” She smiled internally at the thought that he’d secretly been keeping tabs on her.

“I’ll help you brainstorm sometime while I’m here. We’ll figure it out.”

“How long are you staying?” Emile just shrugged and pushed his clean plate further toward the edge of the table. “You haven’t bought a return ticket?” He shook his head. Cleo looked out the window again and at the many bags in her backseat. “Figures.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s…well.” 

“Well, what?”

“You know. Milo.”

 “I know, okay. I’m shitty. People are shitty. People do shitty things. Just let me help you work on this play.”

“Fine.” She pushed her nearly empty plate to the edge of the table. The following words came hesitantly. “Did you—like—know this day would come? Like, with her?”

His sigh travelled upwards from his toes. “In a way.”

“Is that why you never brought them home?”

“You tell me.” His eyes were to the floor. “You’ve always known everything. I didn’t.” Cleo knew this wasn’t actually true, but in some ways that proved Emile’s point. 

She looked back at the window and saw the translucent reflection of the two of them posing back. They really did look like twins.

“Do you think they would hate us if they really knew us?”

Cleo’s mouth grew dry when Emile said this. She knew who they were. Emile’s face was hanging so low, like gravity was beating at it with a mallet.

“Not hate,” she whispered, slightly unconvinced. Emile thought she might say more, but she left it there.

Their waitress returned and cleared their plates. Emile paid for the bill like Cleo had hoped he would, though she would never ask, not directly. They sat there while the orange leaves fell and painted Cleo’s car, while the tearful toddler a couple tables from them seethed, and while the waiters moved through the aisle like a conveyer belt. Cleo’s eyes were covered in a light film, dewed over like May grass. Emile’s white shirt was covered in artifacts of his previously eaten food like a young boy in a high chair. Emile wondered if Cleo’s pride may kill her one day. Cleo continued to wonder how you just stop loving someone. How anything in life could ever be that simple. She thought about their parents. Was anything really, truly, ever unconditional? 

Emile watched a cluster of birds launch themselves from the top of a building and travel into the sky. 

 “Why ‘A Murder of Crows’?” Emile asked this as he moved to the other side of the table and sat next to his sister. His arm rested lightly on the back of her chair. She let it. 

“Like, what do you mean?” 

“Why that title? What’s it mean?” 

“It’s the technical name for a group of crows. All bird groups have them. There’s an unkindness of ravens—or a congress of ravens—whichever you prefer, I guess. A group of swans is a bevy. Owls, parliament. Crows, murder.” 

“But again,” Emile pried, “Why?” 

Cleo began digging in her pocket for her car keys. The jingle of them was an omen. “It just sounds nice,” she uttered softly. “You just know that they’re looking out for each other.” 

Emile stood up from his chair.

Slate

Ben Ervin

The darkness settled between monotonous strikes. The only lights were on their helmets, and to keep them producing a light source equivalent to a match in a warehouse, they had to rub the soot off with their thumb. Chunks of coal fell between their feet, and were either picked up by the man who broke them off the wall or anyone small and quick enough to reach down and grab them. They chipped away at the deposit, as though they were peeling away layers of some rock being. Each strike they moved closer and closer to its core, but by then it would be long dead. Ellison worked with the group, but not with the group. He wasn’t different; he ate the same way, prayed the same way, but he was new to them, and that was something to fear. Sikorsky spoke like a seer, leaning on his tool, observing Ellison. “New guys always slip.” They believed Sikorsky, excluding Ellison who had experience to argue otherwise. In light of these facts everyone wanted Ellison to fail, just to prove themselves right.

At lunch he had pone and a sliver of venison. Sikorsky led the other men to the far-side of the shaft to eat and play cards. Ellison wasn’t a part of the game, and he didn’t mind it at all. He sat and daydreamed, using their words to build a world he could understand. He imagined a place of anthropomorphic deer, though he didn’t know what anthropomorphic was or meant, he knew what it looked like. For the deer, food collection was like working in a mine. One of the new season’s bucks was outside the group while the others rucked between food picking. The deer daydreamed of Ellison sitting daydreaming of him. Ellison felt the exchange in full, as though they were two aspects of a coin. Between bites of his pone and the deer’s rucking against a tree, Ellison found some common ground.

“Back to work,” yelled someone down the shaft, though Ellison couldn’t see him, he knew he was standing in the dark yelling down even darker sections.

Ellison picked up the axe and went at it.

He worked till late into the evening.

Sikorsky stopped to take a drink from his canteen a few feet to his right.

Ellison struck, the wall shifted, sunk in, and a piece of slate shot out from the wall, just to Ellison’s right.

It went through Sikorsky and crushed into the far wall, decapitating him just below the chin.

His eyes looked at Ellison through the dark, and everyone took a moment to stop. One man picked up his emergency light and flipped the switch. Ellison looked away as a brute of a man picked up a hammer and smashed the slate stuck between the walls. The head met the body on the floor. Ellison thought of his paycheck as he took the man by the feet and helped drop his body into a cart. Someone gave the mule a whip, and it began to pull the man to the landing, then the lift, so he could go right back into the ground.

The man with the hammer patted Ellison’s shoulder, “Good idea moving your first day mistake on Sikorsky. Hated that pecker faced freak.”

Ellison looked into the man’s eyes, the light was blown out with someone’s last breath, and it wasn’t Sikorsky who did it, else the wick would still be hot. “I barely knew the guy, and I didn’t do anything. He was unlucky. Guess you could say we’re all lucky ‘til we run out.”

“Whatever keeps your head on your shoulders.” The man with no light in his eyes was Alan, Ellison would later find out. On the lift, the men said that as a boy he would wrestle the family bull, until one day the bull tried to gore him, and he killed it with his hands. If you asked him, Alan could show you where the horn entered his thigh. Ellison never asked him, but he could imagine Alan taking his hands to a bull’s neck. One hit and he may be able to split a vertebrae. He was a hulk of a man, and when he held coal in his palm it looked like pebbles, as though he was ready to skip stones.

Riding on the lift with all of the other men, Ellison felt like a line in a wood etching, a portion of the composite. They were picking on someone smaller than Ellison, younger maybe. They said things that Ellison tried to ignore. He tried to think of Sikorsky. Behind him, the chortle of a dying man’s cough created the landscape, and Ellison moved out of the shaft and into the impossible.

Ellison imagined that the funeral service for Sikorsky was held that night. It was short, and few people came: his tearful wife, his grandmother, the family dog, and his eight kids. He could name three of them, while he still had use of his vocal cords. The two oldest would work in the mine, eleven and twelve, respectively. The youngest stuck with it, the oldest ran from home, never straying from the shadow his father cast. In the snow of an Iowa river bank he would be shot six times by a marshal, for robbery. That’s how Ellison imagined it would go. As the man spit black phlegm at Ellison’s feet, he knew that wouldn’t be the case. Most men who worked in the mine died there, consumed by their work, devoured by their labor.

Ellison walked home. It was a coal mining town, so looking for your house didn’t help. Each was a copy of the last, and in the night, the few distinguishing features that existed were obscured by the thick veil of darkness. He had to find the number, and, in the dark, even that was difficult for Ellison, but his wife was always on the porch willing to help him find his way. From the far end of the street he could see her moving in the twilight, guiding light with her lamp. She was dumping out scraps in the pig pen, and as she walked back she turned and waved to him. Her name was Ines, and she was the only woman he ever loved.

Born on a reservation in Oklahoma, she had taken up one of the few skills the West provided: shooting. She became one of the best shots, a repeater and revolver were one and the same in her hands. Ellison had seen her take the ears off rabbits, and branches from trees from distances that he could only squint at. She stood by the fence and looked at Ellison. He had the look of a shaved gibbon covered in coal dust, and she loved him for it. “I made brown beans and corn pone.”

“My favorite,” Ellison said flashing his teeth, small stars in his astral form.

After cleaning off in the wash basin by the door, he walked into the kitchen and got out bowls and plates and set the table. He filled her bowl, then his and took a seat at one end of the table. She led the prayer, and they broke bread together. “What did you do today?”

Ines looked at him with warm eyes, “I got us another deer. We’ll have enough venison for winter. It’s out back hanging up in the shed. Thing was rucking a tree, and I put a shot clean through it’s lung, loaded it up, gutted it, fed the entrails to the pigs, checked the potatoes, fine, checked the peppers, fine, checked the sunflower, fine, and picked a few tomatoes. Then I went to the general store, didn’t buy anything, just looked around a bit.”

“You can buy anything you want, you know, don’t feel it’s not your money.”

“I know, but I didn’t see anything I really wanted. So, I didn’t get anything. What happened to you?” She began to eat her beans, the time she’d taken to tell about her day had let them cool off enough to eat.

“A man died today.”

“Which one?”

“Sikorsky.”

“How’d that come about?”

“Piece of slate severed his head.”

“Lot of blood?”

“I didn’t look.”

“Be bad if there was, you hammering away at those rocks, you’d be bound to slip on some and then you’d be worse for wear. Have to be on the mend, get fired probably, they wouldn’t let me work, too scared to see how a woman would do it. Afraid of us sweeping up your shit is all, some men don’t maintain their space and the presence of a woman haunts them like a witch. It’s a civilized ennui. I once met a party who had shacked up in Rockies, they all did the same labor, they all cut wood, made food, read the same stuff. The fact that they needed every hand to survive opened their eyes to the idea that we’re all equal. But what do I know?”

“More than any of us ever could. They’ll probably cover it with saw dust, if there was that much.”

“Had to be instantaneous.”

“We could only pray.” They finished dinner and went to bed. Each night by light of kerosene lamp, Ines helped Ellison read. He never got a formal education on the farm, while Ines had found opportunities in her travels. They were reading Alice in Wonderland. It inspired a lot of Ellison’s dreams.

The next day Ellison stumbled outside to the outhouse. Inside, the coffee pot was on the stove. He couldn’t get back to sleep now, so he started his breakfast, his pre-work routine. The coffee was percolating when his wife came in, she was tired and took a seat in one of the chairs beside him. “Bad dream?”

“No. Could I hold your foot?”

“Yeah,” she lifted her foot and sat it across her husband’s lap. He rubbed the pad, ball, and each toe with his middle finger and thumb working along the bone. He felt a scar across the pad that he was amazed to find every time. She stepped on slate as a child and split her foot open, they said she was lucky to have it, but Ellison knew she had more than luck.

By the time the coffee had finished, Ellison was working on the second foot. She went to stand, but he gave a slight squeeze on her toe, turned and lifted the pot up and sat it on the table. He kissed her foot, once because he loved her and once for her luck beyond luck.

“You’re an odd man.”

He looked up while she poured his coffee.

“Would you have it any other way?”

“Never.”

Micky’s Happy Fits of Rage

Noah McGeorge

Barry was the dad with the bike and he thought it made his son cool. His passcode for the bike lock was POOP. He didn’t have the money for the lock with letters, but his son Micky made a good case. Micky said, “Look, just think about this: poop. See?” and Barry was sold.  

 He rode that all-broken-speed to Micky’s school. “Yo, Barry!” said the crossing guard. “Don’t speed in a school zone!” Barry laughed and nodded, per obligation. He kicked a Nike out and braked among the fit of fourth-graders—Micky’s contemporaries. One plucked another’s homemade rubber-band Rolex and when the other cried, the one said, “Look, Scooter, that’s why they’re called slap bracelets.” Scooter said he was “‘bout to square up” when the crossing guard said “go go go!” Barry hitched himself up and was the first to go. 

At the top of the hill sat Shakertown Middle School. Barry had paid eight years of his life to its bursar before spending just two at Shakertown High (when Barry decided he ought to get a refund for this whole “school” thing). He locked his bike at the post as he did yesterday and as he had many years ago. His Nikes tracked the hill’s mud, his jacket fanned like a cheap cape.   

“Micky!” said Barry. “Hey dude, how was your day?” 

Micky’s little arms guarded his chest, his black cowlick an offset crown. “Longer than others,” the boy said.  

“Aw, dang, why do you look so sour?”  

Out from the shadows of Shakertown’s doors stepped Mrs. K. Without realizing it (or possibly with realizing it), she answered for him. “Micky had another incident today, Barry,” she said. “Son, why don’t you tell Dad all about it?”  

“Well,” said Micky. “I was insulted by this craney neck’d little—”  

“Tabitha,” said Mrs. K. “Tabitha hurt our feelings today. At snacktime.”  

“She insulted me. She—that’s not even to say, she touched all my food, my viktals.”  

“‘Victuals,’ son. And none of that invites, justifies, or excuses the decision that you made.”  

“Well what’d you do, Micky?” said Barry. 

Micky tightened the grip around his chest. Barry had seen it before: a boiling look of disdain the important people make before leaving for anywhere else forever. It was not any cooler in the eight-year old’s thin body. “I threw Tabitha’s chair.” 

“You didn’t hit her, did you?” said Barry.  

“No, but I wanted to.”  

“Micky,” said Mrs. K. “Micky, why don’t you go wait down by Dad’s bike. Say Hi to the crossing guard.”  

Micky marched without a word of hesitation. He was resolved to say Hi to no one. 

As the children fled, time gelled around the two adults. Barry fought the silence. “You know I’m pretty sure I did the same thing, Mrs. K. When I was in your class.”  

“Listen, Barry—”  

“Except, I think I might have gotten switched. But you know that was alright, as long as Rob Johnson—do you remember Rob Johnson?—as long as he got switched with me, you know that was alright then.”  

“Barry, do you know what I went to college for?”  

“I, uh—”  

“I went to school for childhood education. I’m trained to teach your kids. But with your son it’s not teaching anymore. It’s . . .well look at my pants, Barry. He knocked that chair right into my desk and it knocked over my coffee. He’s just unpredictable anymore.” 

“I’m sure he’ll grow out of it like I did—” 

“Take a look at the paper I put in his take-home folder,” said Mrs. K. 

Barry knew what homework for his son meant for him. “You gave him more homework?”  

“Homework for you,” said Mrs. K. “It’s a pamphlet for a local clinic.” 

“Like a dentist?”  

“Like a psychiatrist,” said Mrs. K. “For children. For Micky.”  

“A shrink?” Barry laughed. “You want my son to go sip tea with a shrink?” 

“Barry, last week I had a copy of The Stand on my desk,” said Mrs. K. “The next day, Micky showed up carrying a copy into class—and he was carrying it because it didn’t fit in his bag.”  

“He reads! Isn’t that what you want?”  

“That day I asked him, ‘Hi, how are you?’ He looked over the top of the book like he hated me. It’s as if he can’t stand the little things that keep people normal. It doesn’t matter how well he reads. If he doesn’t learn to socialize, that boy’s not making it through high school. Do you want him to be a dropout?” 

Barry turned away. “I’m sure he’ll be fine, Mrs. K,” he said. “Thanks.”  

Micky got on the spokes of his dad’s bike and they rode home.  He was silent until he had the thought: “Hey,” he said. 

“What’s up, dude?”  

“Can we stop by the library?”   

Barry wasn’t sure how to get his mind where it needed to go. He imagined himself looking ahead, stern: the picture of a father making the right decision. Then he thought of the familiar stains on the school doors and Mrs. K’s face. He hated how much she had aged, yet here he was just the same. He pedaled faster and said to his son, “Yes.”

Micky spread a copy of Duma Key and a much thinner dictionary in front of the TV. The librarian had said he couldn’t check out a reference text. Then she saw Barry walk in with a box of Little Caesar’s, realized the books were for Micky, and said, “As long as you bring it back.”   

Barry watched cartoons with a slice of pizza and a Mtn. Dew. Micky held the first page of Duma Key open with his toes and flipped open his dictionary. C—Con—Contracting (Noun). “Ok, cool, contracting,” said Micky under his breath. H—Hun—Hunch (Noun). “Ok, Hunch.” P—Pocket. Pocket . . . ? Micky clapped the dictionary shut and Barry spilled some of his drink. “Why isn’t ‘pocket-rocket’ in the dictionary?”  

“What rocket?” said Barry with a mouthful of cheese.  

“What does ‘pocket-rocket’ mean?”  

“Um, I have a guess, but I don’t think it’s right.”  

Micky tried reading again but the words were wiggly, uncontrollable. He tied his attention to the text. It bucked away. “Can I play the Nintendo?”  

“No.” 

“Why?”  

“Well you tried to square up with your friends today.”  

“Square up? I don’t think you can say that.”  

“You say that all the time.”  

“I don’t say that. You sound like—you sound like Scooter. I don’t like the way he talks.”  

“I don’t like the way you act at school. So no Nintendo. Now eat your pizza.”  

Micky swung his arms and his breath stuttered behind his words, leagues behind his thoughts. “But she was so mean, she was—veal. First of all, she put her hands all over my food, and second of all, she bent her neck all ugly and she said I was stupid.”  

Barry stood up and turned off the cartoons; he realized this was the part to listen to. “That’s silly, Micky,” he said. “You know you’re not stupid—what’s stupid was messing with her when she was being a bully. We don’t do that, right? Don’t mess with the Mess Around, Micky, it’s easy, isn’t it?”  

“But I hate Tabitha!”  

“Micky, sit down. Eat something, Christ. If you want to play the Nintendo tomorrow, eat and get in the shower.”  

Barry restrained himself from turning on the cartoons. Silence, he remembered from his childhood, was even more useful than a switch. It was too unwieldy for him. He broke it by ruffling through Micky’s backpack. The sharks on the homework folder bit at the calluses on his finger-pads. Micky’s thoughts burned in the silence of his mouth, so he went away to pee.  

Mrs. K had stapled her note—a Post-It that looked like it had dried from being dunked in coffee—to a blue pamphlet. Barry saw where Mrs. K’s long nails smudged the otherwise spidery ink:  

“Barry—it’s time to assess Micky’s behavior. Don’t throw away his future.” 

On the front of the pamphlet sat a white, nuclear-sound family around a puzzle. Above them read Southside Childhood Psychiatrics. Barry turned the leaf, disgusted. In outpatient settings, we offer individual and group therapy to work with families and improve behaviors. Our psychiatrists are trained to work with your community and family doctor to . . .  Contact us at . . .  

Barry crumpled it all and smashed it against his forehead like a finished beer can. He stayed like that, hoping the right thoughts would come to him.  

The apartment was on the highest floor. Neither Barry nor Micky cared for decorations, but Barry had bought some posters before Micky was born. Three hung above the TV: a profile of Al Pacino, Hunter S. Thompson, and one of Heath Ledger. Barry would wait for Micky to look up from his book to ask who the men were. Then he’d know.  

Micky walked in, drying his hands on his pants. “You look sour, dad.”  

“What? I was just thinking.” 

“Ok.” Micky sat down to Duma Key.  

Barry watched Micky’s brows cut a deep frown as he opened his dictionary.  

“How about we pretend the power went out?” said Barry. 

“I don’t want to do that.”  

Barry switched off the lamp.  

“Dude!” said Micky. 

Barry switched off the kitchen light. The hallway light. He unplugged the fridge because it leaked light on the sides. He gathered some candles and threw them in Micky’s lap. “Light em up, dude.”  

“I want to read my book.”  

From his bedroom around the short hall, Barry hollered, “Society’s gone through the tubes, Micky!”  

“This is a dumb game anymore,” yet he lit a candle and set it on the coffee table. “I’d rather be grounded.”  

Barry rushed into the sphere of candlelight. His guitar had a gold finish and a strap that might have been dried in the Vegas desert. The candle burped arcs across the varnish.  

“The whole world is burned to a crisp, son. You and me are the last people on earth. What should we do?”  

“Are you going to sing?”  

“There’s nothing anymore. No more TV, no more work, and no more bitch teachers. So what do we do, Micky?”  

“There’s nothing we can do—” began Micky. 

“Yeah?” 

“—but bite our time and sing a rhyme.” 

Barry’s left hand walked the frets and his right threw out the chords. Micky would fall asleep after crashing from a fit of jumping and dancing.  

“I didn’t call them,” said Barry.  

“You didn’t call them?” said Mrs. K.  

“No, I didn’t. There’s nothing wrong with Micky. He’s healthy, he’s smart, and he reads fine.” Barry looked down the hill to his bike. “He’s reading right now.”  

“He needs a diagnosis of something.”  

“For what? Don’t you want him to like himself?” 

“It’s not about what’s likable.” 

“What’s the point of telling him that something’s wrong?”  

“So we know how to work with him, Barry.”  

“It’s just like school, isn’t it? You want some shrink to grade him. You want my son to be checked off on all these little boxes so he makes sense to you guys—”  

“You have a cliché idea about psychiatry—”  

“—and I don’t even have the money for all of that! So I’m not fucking up my kid by having a shrink tell him what his bad thing is.”  

“Micky’s suspended for a week,” said Mrs. K.  

Barry’s head landed. “Suspended? Suspended from school?”  

“It’s in his folder. I caught him pinch Scooter and to my face he called me a bitch. I can only imagine where he heard that word.” Barry became hotly aware of the other parents, all much older than himself. “So you should take some time out and think about what’s really going to fuck him up. Because Micky has a shot at going somewhere and doing something. Think about that.”  

Micky climbed on the spokes of his dad’s bike. Barry thought he seemed sleepy and resolved to pedal slower than usual. “Can I play the Nintendo when we get home?” asked Micky.  

The crossing guard waved goodbye. “Don’t get ‘er too fast, you hear, Barry!”  

“You bet, Micky,” said Barry. His eyes were lower than an animal’s with little left to guard.  

Many before him have died in these vines but the jungle never scared him. He ran right on ahead, never flinching and never ever pausing. Crocodiles dripping with wet flesh lurched for his body and darts without origin all flew with the same target. He ran, jumped, swung, and right before he could slip behind the secret rock, he ate a boomerang and died.  

Micky huffed and restarted the level. He had not immediately started playing Nintendo after school: he had tried to read. But The Stand and the dictionary had both been flung much farther away. Donkey Kong seemed like something he could get right and he turned it on without asking.   

“Why don’t you just skip the bonus?” said Barry.  

“You don’t get it. I want the golden coin.”  

“You don’t have to be perfect. You just got to get to the end of the level.”  

“No, I want the coin. You don’t get it.” 

Barry bent his to see the kitchen clock, subtracted an hour in his head because it was fall. “You should get in the shower, dude. You have to go to work with me in the morning.”  

“Why can’t I stay here?”  

“Because you’re eight. And suspended.”   

“I don’t want to go to the grocery store. What if the kids at school see me there?”  

“At the grocery store? It’s a grocery store, Micky, there’s no crime in being at the grocery store.”  

“I don’t want them to see me there. They’ll call me stupid.”  

Barry’s patience tapered. “I told you—you’re not stupid. It doesn’t matter what the kids say, so forget about it.”

On his third time restarting the level, Micky hit up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-start. He was invincible. “But they’re right.”  

“You’re not stupid!”  

“They said people with their names on the board are stupid. And my name’s always on the board.” Micky jumped on the head of a crocodile. “They all act so good just so I’m alone.”  

Barry tried to grab Micky by his little shoulder, but it was mostly the back of his neck. “You’re not stupid. You’re my son, and I was a really smart kid in school, and you’re really smart too.”  

“Scooter came up to my face and said, ‘Why’re you so stupid Micky?’ And he’s right. I am stupid.” 

“Micky, shut up!” 

“I can’t read the stupid books from the library and now I can’t go to stupid school anymore and I can’t win this level!” The screen flashed gold as Micky got the coin. “I’ve beat this level a billion times but I can’t do it without cheats.” The controller flew. “I’m stupid because I use cheats!”  

“Dude, the TV!”  

“I don’t want to go to the grocery store! You’re stupid because you work at the grocery store! I want to be a teacher like the real parents, not like you! I hate you!”  

Micky ran down the short hall to his room. Donkey Kong’s victory lost form in the splintered glass.  

Barry had bought the Nintendo from a pawn shop. “Could have been the same Nintendo I pawned when you were born,” he had told Micky. Without putting words to it, he had hoped the game would take Micky back in time, a time like tonight: Barry playing Nintendo alone. There would just be familiar characters and colored motion while everyone around him was displeased. Barry would hope that the child would know this exclusion and just fucking get it. Except now the child was older, displeased, and had truly become his son. Barry was lost and he too threw the remote at the TV.  

Then, one at a time, he plucked the shards out of the carpet. He knew Micky didn’t like wearing socks at home.   

As Barry scanned tangerines, Micky sat under the counter. He read The Stand and ate Twizzlers.  

Barry saw the crossing guard’s neon garb five customers ago. He wondered if the old man had picked the longest line on purpose. Among other sugar free snacks, the crossing guard bought sardines, wheat bread, and Diet Mtn. Dew.  

“Barry! How’s it going? How’s your bike?”  

“It’s all good.”  

“I heard Micky took some time off from school. Is he home?”  

“No, he’s right here. Micky, say Hi.” Micky poked just his eyes above the counter and flicked a wave. 

“Micky! How’s it going, boy?” The crossing guard broke off a can of Diet Mtn. Dew and dangled it over the counter. Micky said “thanks” and popped it open at once.  

“Hey, man, he’s not supposed to drink pop.” Micky looked ready to fight for the gray and green can. 

“Aw, lighten up, Dad. A little caffeine can help some kids calm down. It should help him read that big ol’ book.”  

Micky turned to page ten, uninterested in the adult conversation.  

“I guess since it’s diet,” said Barry, rolling the receipt around his hand as it rushed out. “How do you know that for sure? Did you read a book about it?”  

The crossing guard laughed. “No, I don’t have the patience to read. I just heard it from the mom of some of the kids. You can learn a lot by just talking to people.”  

The person behind the crossing guard, a busy mother herself, started stacking her boxed pasta onto the belt.  

The crossing guard continued. “For instance, last week I was talking to a fella who had an intolerance to linoleum. Said when he took his shoes off at the doctor’s, his feet would get all itchy. I said, ‘Well, you know, my feet get all itchy at the doctor’s too.’ And it was only ever at the doctor’s, I could never figure it out. Isn’t that wild? Now I don’t walk on the floor when the doctor asks to see my feet.” The mother ruffled the candy bars as loud as she could. “Just talking to people was the same way I learned not to put lotion between my toes. It’s not good for diabetics, son—don’t put no lotion between a diabetic’s toes.”  

“Wow, thanks man, good to know.” Barry began scanning. “I think you’re going to have to move your cart over so I can help this lady.”  

“Oh, right,” said the crossing guard, gathering up his cart. “So try asking people about their day, son. People seem to do that less and less. Now you and Micky have a good one.”  

Barry’s shift ended at two-thirty. He left with a six-pack of Diet Mountain Dew. 

With just the two of them, there wasn’t much trash in the can. A few black TV dinner trays, receipts, pop cans. (Beside the trash can sat an entire television, but Barry tried not looking at that). The crumpled pamphlet for Southside was near the top. Barry threw the Post-It back in out of a bit of spite.  

He read the rest of the pamphlet. Although he brushed over a lot of them, words like adjustment, consultation, and safe didn’t seem so threatening.  

Micky drank Mountain Dew with his SpaghettiOs. Getting to bed was less eventful. 

Micky asked, “Do I have to go to the grocery store tomorrow?”  

“No, I took the day off.”  

“Aw, cool, what’re we gonna do?”  

“Well I was thinking, we could go to the doctor’s office.”  

“Are you sick?”  

“No, I’m not sick. You’re not sick either, but I’m taking you.”  

“Well if there’s nothing wrong with me, then why am I going to the doctor’s?”  

Barry sighed and waved his hand. He willed the right thoughts and was grateful that they were there. “It’s not that anything’s the matter. It’s just—the thing. It’s like—well I think everyone has things, like . . . maybe an allergy to the floor. We don’t have to say it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but we ought to know about it. So like, you know when to wear socks. If you do have a thing.”  

Micky’s eyebrows looked to be over a puzzle with a lot of defects. “What?” he said. “I’m not allergic to the floor.” 

“No—never mind. You have to go to the doctor’s tomorrow. It shouldn’t take long. Then we can go to the library or something.”  

“You never go to the library.”  

“Maybe you can show me the books you like.”  

“I guess.” Micky still seemed suspicious, but he was losing patience. “But I hate the doctor’s. I—loaf it.”  

“I know and I don’t care. But hey—do you wanna hear an old song I like?”  

Micky unfolded his arms. He fell asleep on the floor to some rough improvisation.

Second Chance

Alexander Petras

“I told you it was real,” Jimmy said, and he took another hit of the dwindling joint in his hand. The radio on his nightstand was turned up as loud as the dial would allow and tuned into a grainy news channel. Where they lived, any connection (from radio to cell service) was never very reliable. Now that the power had gone out, the signal seemed to have gotten even worse. 

“More and more photos of the planet are being released as we speak,” the announcer said, her voice distorted. Aaron, who was sitting on a beanbag chair next to the radio, tried to re-adjust the antenna. 

“NASA scientist, Dr. Ea Atsumi, has been quoted saying that this may be the most important scientific discovery of the last 50 years.”

“You guys never believe me,” Jimmy said without venom and shook his head. His hair was curly, but it never stood up the way he wanted it too. If he could grow much of a beard, he imagined it would be curly and disappointing as well. He passed the joint to Dante, who sat next to him on the bed. Dante rolled his eyes.

“That’s ‘cause you always make shit up,” he said, tucking a braid behind his ear.

“I do not!” Jimmy protested. He turned to Aaron and Frank for support, but they weren’t listening. Frank stared at his dirty shoes, and Aaron stared at the radio like he needed to watch it in order to hear the story. 

“It is estimated that with current technology, a manned spacecraft could reach the planet in 20 years. No news yet about a mission like that from NASA, but I’m certain planning is underway. There are—” The woman’s voice dissolved into clumps of static instead of words. It took them all a moment to realize they couldn’t understand it anymore.

“This shit sucks,” Aaron said, trying to adjust the antenna again. Dante passed the joint to Frank on the floor. “This whole town sucks.” Aaron was heavy and strong like a wrestler. He kept his hair around his shoulders and had several tattoos on his forearms. He said his dad was from Puerto Rico, but Jimmy had never seen him. 

“Try the TV again,” Jimmy said, even though there had been no indication that the power was back on. He glanced at Frank to imply that he should turn on the TV because he was closest to it, but Frank just stared back and exhaled smoke. Frank usually looked a bit ill with his pale skin and sunken eyes. Jimmy sometimes worried that he didn’t eat enough, but Frank always assured him that he did. And, despite his appearance, Jimmy was inclined to believe him.

“Gotta do everything myself,” Jimmy muttered, and Frank grinned. He pushed himself off his bed slowly, feeling his heart beat all over his body. For a moment he stood there, trying to let his blood pressure reach equilibrium again. 

He hit the power button on the old television, but nothing happened. Just to be sure, he pressed the button several more times.

“It’s not gonna work, dumbass, the lights aren’t back on,” Aaron said.

“I thought we turned the lights off,” Jimmy said. He sat back on the bed, struggling for a second to keep his balance. Aaron flipped the lamp next to the radio on, then back off, but nothing happened. He sighed.

“The storm’s passing,” Dante said, pointing to the window.

“Let’s go get food then,”Aaron said. He gave the radio one final smack, and the signal cut back in suddenly.

“Right now we are making calculations to land Voyager 4 on the planet’s surface. Its, uh, its cameras were not designed for close range photography, but we will hopefully get a clearer view of the surface,” a male voice said with a sharp Russian accent. He sounded breathless. 

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Jimmy said, reaching over to pat the radio. Aaron smacked his hand away to protect whatever balance he had achieved.

“Based on the pictures we have now, well, I’m seeing green,” the announcer said. “Is it possible we have vegetation down there?”

“Well, we originally noted the planet because it falls within the hospitable zone. I think there’s a good possibility something’s alive down there.”

“Something?”

“It’s possible that this life might not reflect life as we know it, but, based on the apparent content of the atmosphere, I’d say carbon-based life is not out of the realm of possibility.” By the end of his sentence, his voice was mostly static again. 

The announcer’s response was unintelligible. 

“Damn, we gotta see it,” Dante said. Frank nodded.

“They got a TV at Taco Bell?” Aaron asked. He finally abandoned the radio to finish off the blunt.

“Nah, but I think they got one at McDonald’s,” Dante said. Aaron shook his head and coughed violently. He hit his chest several times but couldn’t seem to unclog his lungs.

“Smoke much?” Jimmy laughed. Aaron flipped him off, then cleared his throat loudly.

“I want Taco Bell though,” he said. 

“We always gotta do what you want,” Dante sighed.

“Shut up,” Aaron said.

“We can go to both,” Jimmy said, “It’ll take 5 minutes if we drive.”

“I’m not getting a DUI. I’m walking,” Aaron said. Jimmy didn’t blame Aaron for that, although he didn’t want to walk in the rain.

“It’s a mile, quit whining,” Aaron said.

Jimmy shook his head, “I didn’t say anything.”

The radio spit out several more clumps of static.

It was gray outside, but the rain had stopped for the moment. Jimmy looked at the clouds and tried to picture himself on another planet.

“Y’all think there’s aliens there?” he asked.

“Probably like, bacteria or something,” Dante said. Though it had poured, the street was still a mess. Bottles were crushed so fine that the fragments filled in the sidewalk cracks. Fast-food wrappers and styrofoam cups were soaked and smashed into the dirt. Aaron kicked at a bottle cap as they went.

“I mean like, Star Wars level aliens,” Jimmy said.

“Nah, no way.” Aaron let himself fall a step behind them to smoke a cigarette. 

They walked for a while in silence.

“I guess it’s possible,” Dante said eventually.

“No way. If they were intelligent they would’ve blown up the probe.” Aaron finished his cigarette and tossed the butt behind him. Frank scowled at him, but he ignored it. “Or at least sent their own probe out to contact it.”

Dante shrugged. “You shouldn’t throw cigarettes around like that.”

“It’s gonna rain again,” Aaron said, pointing up to the dark clouds.

To get to Taco Bell they had to walk a small ways along the road, unless they felt like cutting through the woods. But even the grass and weeds along the road were too tall and muddy to traverse, so they walked along the shoulder next to the guardrail. As they walked, they approached a bloody mess on the road. It was a deer— a young male, with the nubs of fuzzy antlers on his crooked head. 

“You know if you hit a deer, you own it,” Jimmy said. They meandered into the road, giving the deer as much space as they could.

“Who’d want a deer?” Dante mumbled, pinching his nose to try and avoid the smell.

“I dunno, a hillbilly probably,” Aaron said. He waved his hand in front of his face like the smell might dissipate.

A car came at them fast with the driver laying on the horn.

“Shit!” Jimmy grabbed Aaron and pulled him back towards the shoulder. Frank and Dante both grabbed Jimmy, pulling him over as well. The car blared by, swerving only at the last second to avoid the deer carcass. Frank looked like he might be sick.

“Motherfucker,” Aaron said. He spat into the road. Cars on the other side of the dividing wall sped by without a care. Jimmy watched an old woman roll her window down slightly and flick a cigarette out. They kept walking.

They reached a large hill in the road, over which Taco Bell would be just visible in the distance. Jimmy could already see the dollar menu in his head. Since he’d just gotten paid, he imagined getting one of everything. And, since in this fantasy he had one of everything, he made sure that Frank ate a lot too. A light, misty rain began.

“Aw, this all sucks,” Aaron said. He started to pull out his pack of cigarettes, but then shoved it back into his pocket. They passed through a pile of crushed beer cans and bottles. Jimmy wondered if someone had dumped them there or if people had actually hung out and drank on the side of the road. Aaron kicked one of the broken bottles into the road.

“Don’t be like that,” Dante said. “You’re gonna blow someone’s tire.”

“I don’t care.”

“Come on, that’s shitty, man.”

“It’s not my bottle!”

“Imagine if that happened to you. You can’t buy new tires.”

Aaron groaned. He knew Dante was right. He trudged into the road as the rain picked up.

“You’re like my fucking mom!” he yelled.

“You wish your mom was this pretty!” Dante called back, and they laughed as Aaron grumbled. Another car came speeding over the hilltop. It didn’t have time to stop or swerve out of the way.

“Aaron!” Jimmy yelled. The brakes wailed, and the car skittered sideways as it slowed down. Before Jimmy could see the driver’s face, he righted the car and sped away.

“Aaron!” 

His body was a wet lump on the black road. 

Frank stuttered on the phone with the police. The rain came down harder and harder.

“Did you catch the plates?” Dante yelled. Jimmy stood halfway between the guardrail and Aaron. He wasn’t sure if he could drag him to safety before another car came.

“Did you catch that motherfucker’s plates?” Dante yelled. 

The planet news was on all the screens in the emergency room. There was a plethora of grainy videos that the probe had taken as it descended through the atmosphere. It reminded Jimmy of Luke Skywalker descending onto Dagobah. They’d been in the emergency room for hours, though, and they had started to recycle the footage. Jimmy could now distinguish the clips by their minute differences. There was one that seemed to be all smoke. One that looked like it was travelling through grey clouds. One where the clouds seemed more red than the others. Jimmy, however, didn’t take his eyes off the screen. If he did, he had to remember he was in a hospital and that Aaron was somewhere hidden from them, going through God only knew what.

A nurse came by to tell them that Aaron was going in for surgery and that, even though his condition was still serious, he was expected to stabilize once the procedure was finished. Jimmy wasn’t sure what to do, so he just nodded. Her presence made him look away from the screen and think about Earth and death and not the lovely new planet, and he resented her for that. Every part of him felt heavy and tired.

He looked around the emergency room. Though she didn’t work in town, he figured that Aaron’s mom would’ve been here by now. Maybe she went right to his room.

Next to him, Frank sniffled again. Jimmy was fairly certain he’d stopped crying, but his breathing still seemed strained. Jimmy squeezed his hand because he really didn’t know what to say. He’d still bought them food even though it was overpriced and from the hospital food court. The red bar at the bottom of the news screen said the Chinese government had announced a manned expedition that would depart for the planet in 2020. Jimmy wondered why it would take the next six years to build the rocket. The program finally cut away from the atmosphere footage to several people discussing this development.

“Damn, now it’s another space race,” Jimmy said to Dante. He turned before he remembered that Dante had left to make it home in time before work at least half an hour ago. Though he resented him for leaving, Jimmy was jealous that he had something so concrete to distract his mind with. He’d promised to send him any updates. With his free hand, he pulled out his phone and sent a short text: Going into surgery. Jimmy turned to Frank, who looked miserable with his reddened eyes, which focused on the TV nearest to them.

“You think we’ll beat them?” he asked in an attempt to distract him. He supposed the “we” was America. Frank blinked slowly, then moved over to rest his head on Jimmy’s shoulder.

“I guess it would be better if we did it all together,” Jimmy added.

“I don’t think we should go at all,” Frank said in his soft voice.

“What!” Jimmy raised his eyebrows. “A whole new world and we just ignore it? What if there’s aliens? What if there’s a plant that cures cancer?”

“That planet’s better off if we leave it be,” Frank said. 

“Imagine, dude. We haven’t even explored the whole ocean yet. We have no idea what’s out there. Could be anything.”

“It’s not worth it.”

“What do you mean?” Jimmy almost laughed, but he knew Frank was serious.

“I just think that we’ll ruin it, is all.”

Jimmy frowned. He wanted to be excited about the discovery. Some part of him even wanted to travel to the planet, six years of rocket-building and twenty years of travel be damned, to be able to see it with his own eyes. But he thought about the day he’d had, and then the lifetime he’d had before that. 

He shifted his weight so he could rest his head on top of Frank’s. He closed his eyes and listened to the nurses shuffling around and the phone at the desk ringing, ringing, ringing.

“Maybe you’re right.”

Escape

Peter Russ

“You’ve been asleep for too long, open your eyes and come back to me.”

I was shaken out of my slumber. The world around me felt hazy and distorted as I tried to grasp at the fleeting images from my sleep. I was in a city. A large, loud city that glowed a dazzling silver from afar, but the closer it was to me, the dingier it became. I remember the feel of the dirt that covered the once-paved  road beneath my shoeless feet. Someone might have been calling my name. I couldn’t remember exactly what they were saying, if they were saying anything at all. I remember being hungry and angry— really angry. Then, there was the woman in the blue coat and pencil skirt. She smiled at me and offered her hand. I didn’t want to take it, but she grabbed mine. Then I woke up.

I could see her on the other side of my confinement. She wore a long, grey coat with a dim, blue stripe down the front, and hair pulled back tightly. Her features were blurry. Something around me obscured her, but I knew it was her. As I watched her walk around me, observing the tablet in her hand, I wanted to scream and get her attention. She had to let me out of here. A sizzling jolt of heat assaulted my spine, and my eyes shot away from her. The sensation continued until I looked straight at the screen that appeared on the glass wall that confined me. It projected a glinting chrome tower with little vehicles darting from its open hangars high above the ground. The sun was rising from behind the building’s peak as the charismatic voice began to speak.

“Zenith is humanity’s guide toward the next step in our evolutionary chain. Nothing is impossible with Zenith; together we can make you the Human you’ve always wanted to be!”

The screen droned incessantly as the picture shifted and a learning module began. A young man  appeared on the screen and spoke slowly, going over the speech lessons from yesterday. I didn’t know how much more of this guy I could take. Every day he talked to me like I was some idiot who didn’t know how to speak. The screen shifted to show the city with the Zenith tower at the center. Every time I saw that tower, all I could think of was that I was stuck in here, in a tube somewhere in that giant tower. In a stupid way, it was kind of funny. It reminded me of something I couldn’t really remember.

҉

Edith circled the Augmented Reclamation Tank as she checked the reports on the metallic statpad. She pressed two fingers to her right temple and squinted as her eyes adjusted to the data.

“Bodily functions: normal,” she mumbled to herself. “Heart rate: slightly elevated. Neural output: elevated. Well, you just woke up and your module is going so that’s normal. Power and pressure look fine . . . and growth rate is steady. This all looks very good, Six. Zenith is proud.”

A thunderous thud startled her, and she looked to specimen Six. He continued to pound on the glass tank as his eyes remained glued to the telescreen projected on the protective barrier. Edith laughed at the thought of him hearing her and focused back on the statpad. She didn’t care if he could hear her, though she knew he couldn’t. That was fine. She just wanted someone to listen to her. She was tired of always being the one who listened.

“You’ve been quite active lately, haven’t you?” Edith swiped from his vitals to his rest analysis. She frowned as the charts that were usually a healthy green turned a bloody red. Six had entered into REM sleep several times over the eight-hour rest cycle. 

“A little too active,” she corrected herself as she looked at the AR tank. Six had his fist balled and pressed against the glass as he focused on the screen that now displayed various words and letters. He lifted his fist to strike the glass again but stopped and convulsed. Edith had expected him to experience a shock sooner or later. The Pseudos aren’t supposed to move while their learning modules are active. She always thought the shocks to be a little much; the plexiglass tanks were already several inches thick, even Pseudos with augmented physical capabilities couldn’t get out of them with the restrictive fluid holding them back. It was just another safety precaution. Edith shrugged as she continued pacing around the tank.

“I’ll have to administer sedatives before he sleeps for a while. The same thing happened with Twenty-Two before – “

“Dr. Wren!” A gruff voice barked as the white doors of Six’s chamber slid open.

Edith turned to see Dr. Ahrst approaching her quickly. His pale face was covered in brown liver spots and featured a sharp, hawk-like nose descending from the center of his now reddened head. Edith deactivated her statpads screen and pressed her fingers to her temple.

“Sir?” she said .

“Dr. Yantz wanted all of the observatory personnel in the conference room ten minutes ago and you’re in here, just talking to the thing! Get down there now with your reports before I have you  put in one of these damned tanks!”

Edith nodded and rushed out of the room without looking back at Six. As the doors closed behind her, Dr. Ahrst sighed and rubbed his wrinkled hands on his deeply lined forehead. His fingers attempted to ease the irritation and stress from the aged crevices of his skin to no avail. He inspected the room slowly, looking for the specimen analysis statpad. 

“She must’ve taken it,” he grumbled as he walked toward the statpad embedded in the AR tank’s base. “What has she done to this? Ugh, what am I going to do with that woman?”

The power and pressure gauges on the tank were normal, but they were on the lower side of the security threshold. Dr. Ahrst began to slide his fingers across the statpad’s display as smaller screens popped up, changing the security settings as he pleased. The old man could hear his own labored pulse over his thoughts as he swiped out of the smaller screens. He had pulled up the electrical input and suspension matrix to tweak them when a reverberated explosion knocked him off his feet and jolted the statpad from its connection base. Landing painfully on his backside, the old doctor looked up to find the specimen smiling down upon him. The chromium reclamation cords descended from the top of the tank and writhed around his body, eventually attaching to his spine.

“You! You stupid little. . .” Words began to fail the old man as he scrambled frantically to his feet, “You think that was funny? Ha! The second I tell Dr. Yantz that I’ve observed aggressive behavior in you, you’ll be euthanized and dissected!” Dr. Ahrst smiled to himself before shaking his head, “Look at me, talking to these things like they can hear me. I feel like Edith.”

Specimen Six slammed his fist against the glass again, causing Dr. Ahrst to flinch and retreat. The doctor turned and left with his face even redder than before. 

҉

Edith hurried down the slender corridor that connected the various Pseudo growth rooms together. She pushed her hair behind her ear and let out a flustered sigh. She never did enjoy the corporate side of Zenith, nor did she care for the scientific side, but it paid well enough. Yet, the corporation itself was growing repulsive. It was too cold, too abrasive. The board always wanted what they couldn’t have when they couldn’t have it. Edith and the other Reclamation Specialists had only just perfected the domestic Pseudo. A wonderfully familiar servant that was docile, hardworking, and eager to pleaseーbut that wasn’t enough. Of course the board wanted more. They always demanded more.

I could leave this all behind, she thought to herself, they wouldn’t care. They would replace me within a day. The thought hurt her pride momentarily before rationality soothed her. That was how the world worked now: everyone was replaceable. She scanned the hallway for room six to finish off Six’s stats and to fix whatever Dr. Ahrst surely had changed. Edith always knew that Ahrst didn’t trust her judgement; he was too old to understand change and the fact that there were people around him who were smarter and more competent than he was. Although, he never critiqued Dr. Durachii, whose constant blunders and idiotic oversight brought about the Twenty-Two fiasco.

That’s the board’s problem, Edith thought as she hovered her hand over the genetic scanner for access to Six’s room, they take on too many projects without giving us time to perfect them. The experimental batches were originally intended for the corporation’s protection and to see how far we could push the human genomes, until the government’s spacing agency offered a bid too high for the board to refuse. The scanner produced a thin chime and flashed a blue light, allowing her entry into the sealed room. There’s really no helping it though, Edith lamented, all I do is grow the damn things. The thought of leaving Zenith behind swirled about her mind again for a moment before she pushed it away.

“Sorry I’m late Six, Dr. Yantz always drones on with his. . . his. . .” Edith’s words trailed off as she pressed her temple to focus her vision. Her ocular implants must’ve been malfunctioning, and she regretted not saving up for the organic replacement program. As her vision adjusted, her heart sank and she cried out as her fears were validated.

Six was free from his confinement, detached from his reclamation cord, and drying from the synthetic amniotic fluid he had been submerged in. Thick shards of glass piled around his feet as he walked toward her slowly with his hand out, reaching for her. Edith stumbled backward; her sense of balance abandoned her in the face of the Pseudo. In a single moment, her world was flipped. It wasn’t so much that he was out, even though that did terrify her. She could easily grab the command switch on the wall, press the auto-off button, and he would be pacified. It was his expressionー one of sadness and longing. His piercing yellow eyes were partially hidden behind the damp curls that dangled in front of his face. Six had always been an angry Pseudo; their natural emotions were always fixed by the reclamation cords upon their rebirth, but now his anger was gone. It was replaced by something else.

“Please don’t.”

Purely out of fear, Edith pressed the button and held it as Six grabbed at his neck and screamed a primal cry of pain before crumbling to the floor.

҉

Every inch of my body burned. There was a high-pitched grating from the back of my neck that ricocheted around my mind and the rest of my being. I felt the coolness of the white tiles on my shins as I knelt on the ground. I held myself in the hope that it would keep my body together while being ripped apart from the inside. Somewhere, some part of me had felt this before. There was a pressure on my forehead, right above my nose, that didn’t hurt. I remembered this pain, but without knowing why. It was like being dropped into a tub of liquid fire that filled my every cell, roasting me alive. But then, it stopped.

“How did you do that?” The woman stammered, “T-talk like that?”

I looked up at her. She was afraid. She held something tightly in her hand with her thumb hovering over it. I didn’t want her to hurt me again.

“We only teach you the basics in responding, you – you shouldn’t be able to initiate conversation.”

I pushed myself from the floor into a kneeling position and gazed at her. She looked much different from outside my confinement, but almost as I had imagined. She wasn’t the woman I had seen in my dream taking me away after all. She was different; I could read her name woven in the fabric of her coat. Edith Wren.

“Please…I can’t go back in. Please.” I struggled to speak through teeth that felt like they would vibrate out of my skull.

“D-don’t move,” Edith said as I blinked away the fading pain and confusion. “You aren’t supposed to be released until you’ve been taken to your work site. I have to call.” I watched as she squeezed her earlobe and whispered to herself. Work site? First, they torture me. Then they make me work? I moved slowly, keeping eye contact with her until I was kneeling, just as she was, and held out a halting hand.

“What do you mean work site? And who are you calling?”

“Didn’t you pay attention to your learning modules or did you only pound the glass to distract yourself?” she spat.

“Distraction.” I nodded.

She scoffed, “Pseudos are servants, workers, they’re things that perform the work that people don’t want to do. Pseudos like you are sent to Ganymede to work on sustainability projects. For humans.”

“I don’t want to do that.”

Edith just shook her head,  looking at me.

“That’s what you were made for. That’s the only thing you’re supposed to do. That’s why you shouldn’t be out.” She was standing now, with her finger still trembling over the button. 

If only I could take it from her, then I might not have to feel whatever she did to me again. I couldn’t bear it. She began to pace slowly without taking her eyes off of me. I could see her sweating. She seemed just as afraid as I was.

“If I’m only supposed to know that, why am I allowed to dream? I already know more than this,” I said as I motioned to the room, “at least sometimes I do. Like this floor. I’ve smelled something like this before. I’ve seen floors dirtier than this. I’ve had dirt under my feet and between my toes. I’ve sweated like you’re sweating now, and it was all before I was in there,” I said pointing to the tank.

“No you haven’t,” she laughed nervously, “just stay there and be quiet.”

“Yes I have!” I knew that what I’d seen was real. What I felt was real. I remember that empty city behind the shining tower that was Zenith. I could remember seeing it from those little dirt roads during the night. The silver skyscraper twinkled with gold lights as if the sun never set on it. I had been there. I knew it. “Kecarine,” I said, “I was from Kecarine city. I remember it now!” I laughed before I knew what was so funny. “I remember seeing Zenith from my house! It was always so far. So bright. I remember wondering why the buildings near me didn’t shine like that. They were old, dilapidated. Most of them didn’t even have power. The streets were never clean, either. I remember going with one of you; my feet dirtied the white seats of that car we got into.”

“What else do you remember?” she asked, moving closer to me. I could see that she was wary, still gripping that thing in her hand tightly. But she was more interested than afraid now.

“Not much, really,” I admitted. “It comes and goes in blips sometimes. I see things in my dreams, but I can tell they’re real.”

“I knew it,” she said as she shook her head. “Memories can never be fully erased. I tried to tell them that. It would regress the brain to unworkable states. You can’t empty a brain of all the content that makes it up and expect it to keep working.”

“Right,” I said, “I don’t really understand any of that, okay? All I know is that I don’t want to go to Gano – Gan –”

“Ganymede.”

“Yeah, Ganymede. I just want to get out of here. Will you let me go?”

“I can’t,” she said. “Security forces are already on their way. I tried to call them off once you mentioned your memories, but they still have to come and make sure everything is secure.”

I could hear yelling outside of the room. My heart began to pound and the palms of my hands grew hot and restless. Edith turned and looked at the closed door.

“They’ll be here soon,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Six.”

“Six?”

“Oh,” she chuckled, “that’s you. You’re the sixth augmented Pseudo we’ve made for the endeavors on Ganymede. There are hundreds growing now, you’re the first of many.”

“Then they wouldn’t really care if I got away, right?” I pleaded as I detected the sound of footsteps, “I’m replaceable if there are hundreds more like me.”

“That’s not how it works, Six. Zenith wants their products. They let them go only for the right price.”

The door opened quickly with a low hiss, revealing five men dressed in blue padded uniforms and toting heavy, black weapons while standing in the hallway. Edith faced them and stepped forward. One of the guards on the left aimed their weapon at me. Before I thought about what I should do, I was behind Edith. I grabbed her arm tightly and pulled her back toward me. I snatched the harrowing device from her hand and crushed it in mine. I felt a twinge of pain before a feeling of release emanated from the back of my neck.

“Pseudo! Let the Doctor go!” the guard in the front shouted. The men behind him fidgeted uneasily and cocked their weapons, waiting for the signal to fire. Without speaking, the guard turned his head and acknowledged Dr. Ahrst. 

“Sir,” Edith shouted, “call the guards off! This one’s different from the others we’ve released. He has his memories! This could be a different type of breakthrough!”

“Shoot them,” he ordered coldly. “The Pseudo gets reclaimed and the Doctor gets disposed.”

I felt Edith’s arm droop in my hand. She shook her head slightly, then gave an  unsurprised laugh. Why would she laugh now? Before I could try to understand it, one of the guards fired their weapon. Its sound was deafening, and produced a thin cloud of smoke that was whisked away by a vibrant, blue net riddled with electricity. I didn’t have time to think, all I could do was shut my eyes and cower as I waited to feel that approaching pain.

“Six! Six!” Edith exclaimed.

I opened my eyes to find her looking at me. I hadn’t been harmed. Had the net missed? I could still hear the sound of it sizzling nearby. Looking back at the soldiers, I saw the net spinning mid-air, like it had been nailed to an invisible wheel.  Someone had stopped it.

“How did you do that?” I asked Edith as I stared at the terrifyingly beautiful sight.

“I didn’t do anything,” she said, ripping her arm from my grasp, “you did that. I told you, you’re  augmented. You were made for more!”

“Why are you all just standing there?” Dr. Ahrst screamed from behind the safety of the guards, “Get them! Shoot them!”

A flurry of shots rang out and assaulted my ears. Just as easily as I thought about how much I didn’t want to get hit by those nets, each of them stopped in the air as if they were stuck to an invisible wall. I couldn’t just stand there and watch forever. I started to feel the strain of holding them up. My temples pulsed and a knot formed in my stomach. There was only one way out of the room and guards were blocking it. I envisioned the nets twisting backward and blanketing the guards in their electrical embrace. To my pleasant surprise, the nets mirrored my thoughts, wrapping themselves around the armored guards and the old screaming doctor.

Edith ran out of the room first and I followed her.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I tried to keep up with her. She ran faster than I had expected.

“You wanted to get out, didn’t you?” she huffed as we passed a doorway that read ‘Ninety-two’.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t let me go, now you’re helping me?”

“That was when I still had my job,” she explained, “but Dr. Ahrst was perfectly content with shooting me like I was one of you– the perfect reason to quit.”

One of you? “Won’t you get in trouble? For helping me, I mean.”

She laughed, “I’m already in trouble, Six. I’ve been in trouble. That’s all Zenith is.”

After a moment, she spoke again, “What you said before, about remembering… What else do you remember?”

Her question briefly stopped me in my tracks before she turned and motioned for me to continue following her. I thought about what I knew. It seemed that the longer I was away from my confinement, the more I could remember. Before, I would only see things in my dreams; quick images or thoughts that would envelop my mind and wouldn’t leave me even after waking up. They would only drain away once the monotonous learning modules began. But just then, I felt different. The smell of the air in the stairwell reminded me of somewhere else. It was musty and stale, like it had been cleaned years ago then forgotten about. It reminded me of home.

“I remember that where I lived was somewhere like this.”

“Like the Zenith building? You must’ve had it nice. We don’t really have–”

“No,” I cut her off, “like this,” I said gesturing to the stairwell around us. “I lived in a place that was older than everything around it. Somewhere forgotten. It was kind of run down, now that I think of it. And I could see the Zenith building from where I lived. It used to block out the sun in the morning when I would watch my mom head off to work…” I remembered that last part only as the words left my mouth.

“That makes more sense,” Edith said solemnly. “You were someone else before you were you, that’s why Zenith is trouble. All the Pseudos were children, very unfortunate children, before Zenith took them and re-made them. You’re not supposed to remember who you were. None of our other Pseudos do.”

I was stunned into silence for a moment before I blurted, “How many more people are there like me?”

“Pseudos,” she corrected, “and just one for now.”

“Who’s the other one?”

“A Pseudo called Twenty-two –” 

I tried to wrap my mind around what Edith had said before I heard a symphony of doors burst open, followed by a chorus of footsteps charging into the stairwell. Edith peered over the edge of the stairwell and scowled. I didn’t have to look to know that they were close. As we neared the ground floor, I paused at the door labeled ‘1’.  Edith kept descending. I glanced at the door and then at Edith’s back.

“Where are you going?” I called out.

“To the basement. There are more guards on the first floor and we already have enough trailing behind us.”

I turned to follow Edith just as a slimy splat sounded behind me. I looked back as I ran and glimpsed a blue mound of goop plastered against the first-floor’s door, where it sizzled and sparked as it spread out and thinned. The echoing yells of the guards above us signaled their arrival as their footsteps drew nearer. I had held us up.

“Hurry up, Six!” Edith urged as she descended the last flight of stairs and stopped by the large, grey double doors that led to the basement.

I ran in first and Edith followed, closing the door behind us. I barely took three steps before halting out of sheer shock. The room wasn’t a small space like the door had suggested. Though the ceiling wasn’t remarkably high, the floor extended farther than I could have imagined. Before me were thousands of people stuck in liquid-filled tubes, just like I had been. There were fifteen rows that stretched all the way to the back of the room. The pods confined infants, children, and globs of cells that descended from the top portion of the confinement chambers. I wanted to scream. Some of them woke up and looked straight at me; all of their eyes glowed a pale yellow through the clear liquid that engulfed them. Why would anyone do this? I could feel them scrutinizing me. They wanted to know how I got out. I wished I could tell them that I still wasn’t free.

“We have to hide,” Edith hissed as she ran between the large tanks and toward the back of the impossibly large room. The sound of muffled yelling grew behind us. She shooed me away toward the other side of the room before we both squatted down and hid behind the thick, metallic base of the tanks closest to us.

I heard the door slam shut and footsteps prowling slowly around the first row of tanks. I turned to Edith and saw that she was just as afraid as I was. She silently mouthed the word, “Exit”. It seemed no closer to us now than when we had first burst in. Before, I was almost sure that we’d be able to escape. Now, as I cowered here, I could feel the numb rush of despair filling my body.

“I can’t pick up any reading on my Audibio-sensors, too much interference from the other growths,” a female voice echoed.

“We’ll find them eventually,” the other responded. “Hear that? It’s only a matter of time now, Pseudo!”

Edith slipped forward and I followed suit. The Pseudos that floated in the tanks surrounding us were all adults. Some of them looked older than I was. They must’ve had some understanding of what was going on because none of them looked at me. There was a silver lift at the back of the room that could ascend the wall and pass through a small port toward the ceiling. Would it really be that easy? Just stepping on a platform and being free?

Help me.

Startled, I turned to Edith. Why did she whisper? No, it couldn’t have been her. She was looking over her shoulder and watching the guards. But I knew I heard someone, someone close, as though they were right on my shoulder trying to talk to me.

Please. Let me out.

I hate it here, please help me.

That wasn’t a whisper. Confused, I looked up only to meet the gaze of a woman with lengthy black hair that floated above her head like a dark cloud. Her yellow eyes implored me as I cowered in front of her, searching for my own way out. It was her. I didn’t know how she infiltrated my mind, but I knew it was her. I closed my eyes and tried to push her voice out of my head, but it only grew and multiplied. I opened my eyes and noticed that more of the people around me had turned and began looking at me. They all pressed their hands against their glass tanks as if they were trying to push their way toward me. They all wanted to get out. I couldn’t stop myself from hearing them, from feeling their pain. It overwhelmed me – dozens of voices asking of me what I couldn’t even ask of myself.

Let me out.

Help me.

Save me.

I tried to tune them out, to push them back and imagine that there was a wall around me.  It felt wrong, but it was all I could do to save myself. Edith was pressed against one of the tanks in the last row adjacent to the lift. I was two rows behind her. From her apprehensive stare, I could tell that the guards were dangerously close. I had to move now. Hobbling on my aching legs, I hunched forward like an animal past the last rows until I reached the tank that concealed Edith. Ahead of us, I could tell that the lift was small. Smaller than it had seemed from far away, which was unsettling. Edith swung her head around to look for the guards then quickly redirected her attention to me. She held out her hand and counted backward from three.

Two.

One.

She darted first and ushered me onto the lift, where she whacked a dim, orange button on the wall. Immediately, the lift lurched upward and produced a loud, automated beep. Edith had jumped up, but the platform’s ledge was angled and smooth, causing one of her legs to slip. I reached out to grab her and hauled her halfway onto the lift before I heard the quick decompressing sound of a weapon being fired. This time, a projectile latched onto Edith’s leg.

“They’re on the lift going to the warehouse! Miza, up and around on the first floor!” the man yelled out as he fired another shot.

I yanked her up and out of his aim as the wall before us opened and cast us into darkness. With the last particles of light, I could discern the static, blue goop that had spread itself across Edith’s calf. The substance seemed to spread slowly, ripple, then shock her. She squeezed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth, and stifled the pain with audible strain.

“Edith–” a wave of her hand halted my words.

The dim blue light pulsing from Edith’s injured leg softly lit up the dark corridor . We were being transported through a tiny metal duct lined with an automated rail system. 

“I’ve only been in here once, but I know there’s an exit that leads right out into the city,” she muttered. “The warehouse is big, probably a little larger than the room we were just in, but usually it’s a little more empty unless we have shipments.”

Shipments. I knew that she meant children. The ones that were kidnapped from the streets and used as material. Edith claimed that they were re-made, but when I saw those tanks with globs of cells floating within the restrictive fluid, I knew that those children were murdered first, broken down, changed, and then manufactured into something Zenith didn’t classify as human. I tried to remember what I felt like before I became a Pseudo. It was hard. The memories were hazy, slippery, as if I couldn’t hold them in my mind’s eye for more than a second before they vanished. But I knew how I felt then, and could feel it, still: human.

“We’re almost there, don’t slow down now,” she warned as we approached the door.

“Where do we go after this? You’re coming with me, right?” I asked her.

She nodded, “Probably back to the lower east side of Kecarine. That’s where you’re from anyways, and from there we can get out of the city. No place is remotely safe from Zenith around here.”

Five more steps before I could grab the handle, throw the door open, and set us free. But I didn’t have to; the door opened for me. The city looked just as it had in the education modules. It was dazzling, each building taller than the last, but I knew that the tallest building was the one I was running from. The male guard from the basement stood triumphantly in the doorway, his face glistening with sweat as he grinned hatefully at the sight of us. The sunlight shining behind him nearly blinded me. He aimed his weapon and fired. I couldn’t do anything. I closed my eyes and shrunk away, waiting for the pain. I felt nothing but a heaviness on my right arm. I opened my eyes to see Edith tearing herself away from me. She was weighed down by four more splatters of blue goop that shocked her body relentlessly. Three globs of the substance floated in the air before me. I had protected myself but not her. I didn’t even think to protect myself; I didn’t think I had the strength left. Why didn’t I protect her? Edith shrieked as the substance riddled her body with shocks. She curled into a ball and let out blood-curdling screams. The guard aimed his weapon again. I reached out with my hand and grabbed the air; the guard’s chest was pulled upward while his feet kicked helplessly inches above the ground. I squeezed. A sound akin to the wet slush of the blue goop attaching to skin escaped him. I relaxed my hand and he dropped hard onto the cement.

“Edith,” I muttered as I tried to grab her, her body shocking me as I touched her arm.

“GO!” she shrieked.

I tried to grab her again only to retract my hands in pain. Her shrieks slowed to low wails of agony. I heard the swarm of footsteps rushing toward us. I could feel the warmth of the sun caressing the back of my neck. Freedom was so close, but I couldn’t bring myself to tear my eyes away from Edith. All I could see was her pain.

“Go, go, go, go, go,” she repeated slowly between the jaw-clenching bouts of shocks, “go, go, go.”

“Edith, come on! They’re coming,” I pleaded as I reached for her. She looked at me and grimaced, repeating herself over and over until her body shuddered and stopped. “Edith?”

“I’m sorry.” I croaked through the heavy lump in my throat, “I’m so sorry.”

I turned my back on the warehouse and ran. The image of Edith still burned in my mind. I passed building after building, hundreds of people on the street – some of them turned to look at me while others paid me no mind – and countless roads. I didn’t stop running until Zenith was a distant building, like it had been in my memories. I could still hear the hundreds of Pseudo voices around the city complaining about the mundanities of their life, but I tuned them out. I couldn’t deal with anyone else in my head. I stopped behind a short red-brick building and collapsed.

Goddamn, Zenith guards are everywhere out here. I’ve gotta get out of this city.

I sat up straight, feeling revitalized by the phantom voice echoing in my head. That thought wasn’t mine. That voice was unfamiliar. Smooth and cold, yet angry and full of apprehension. I sat down, confused, and listened to the voice spout its anger while I tried to figure out why I was still hearing it. I thought I had tuned the other Pseudos out. 

I struggled to stand as I recalled what Edith had told me— there was another like me: Twenty-Two. I couldn’t ignore him like I did with the other Pseudos. I had to move on, move forward. I had to find Twenty-two. I didn’t know what Edith had in mind for us, but surely it wasn’t this. She’d be happy to know that I didn’t perish in an alley after everything. As I stood  up straight and breathed deeply, I decided that I would pay her back. I had to. But how?  I wracked my brain as I took my first step, guided by the firm voice in my head.

My first real step of freedom.

Table of Contents

“The Least Contaminated Moments from 2011-2016” by Riley Hensley

“Hot Potato Birthday Cake” by Noah McGeorge

“Clean Kill” by Aaron Brant

The Least Contaminated Moments from 2011-2016

Riley Hensley

I.
The Alaskan waters swallowed my violating experience as a teenage boy on a boat for the first time. As I stood on the edge of the white, independent shuttle, the icebergs appeared to crop up in the middle of the waters just for me, along with the seals, the whales, and the mountain goats on the nearby lands. Grandpa paid for my ticket, my lodging, my souvenirs; but I forgot all that in the sway of the waves. Sea-salt air clung to the electricity in my lungs. The hills and valleys offered me their gentle hands for a brief moment and my shell cracked. I didn’t have to be brave in this moment. I just had to exist. Feel the painstaking awe. Be vulnerable without fear of repercussions. The pristine waves’ vow and breath of my “good enough” presence was the most comforting expression. So when I look back at him offering me this experience while wearing his ragged jeans worn to tatters, I sympathized. Then his invasive hands moved around my waist and I felt obligated to stay there so I vowed to remember salt water salt water salt water. 

II.
We were dipped in the amber core of the crackling fire. We set one almost every weekend, sat around an iron pit on the other side of the renovated trailer. We watched the passion build and consume the bark in bites, transforming it into crackles and displays of vermillion, persimmon, burnt orange, brown. Simply staring into the dancing flames like it was an abyss with answers on how to save the world. I thought of justice, peace, whirlwinds of trust. I thought of the human body like a lightbulb—lighting with filament friction and illuminating brilliantly until our energy inevitably runs out, leaving behind a carcass. An empty wish that keeps wishing, paling in comparison to what it used to be. I wondered if, after I was gone, the flames would take bites of me too, if I would disintegrate like this maple bark into the belly of something holy. If I was living a life that could make something else pale by comparison. I stared not in anger, not exactly fear, but like fear tinged with ash—hope? Not hopeless. Like tingling in your arm after sleeping on it. Dipped in molten lava with the consistency of honey, coated in a protective armor of what I thought could be divine. I learned I could not be holy with him. 

III.
When I looked out the window of the plane, I thought I was in Heaven. Stretches of pomegranate, periwinkle, and lavender kissed the sky. Our plane traveled over and through the clouds with ease, like a newly sharpened knife. I had never touched the brim of this life that held me captive. I conclude I am a dot on a map of my city and a speck on a map of the world. Zoom out and I am spectacularly miniature on this planet, in this galaxy. Yet I feel my entity consumes every delicate emotion that has ever existed, in all its tenacity and vibrancy, the entire spectacle to scale. My meager existence alone is enough to question cosmos and, for me, there is no life outside myself. There are some things on this earth I will never experience and, in many ways, I wonder about the potential my life holds, what it could’ve been, what my other alternative selves with different decisions are like. I wonder if there is a me that exists in true happiness and what that might look like realistically. I hold this indecision in my hands and welcome it. The world once felt futile and as expansive as my forearm, now lunged into opportunities of perspective and raw growth. What does it mean to be relative, or be a relative? He squashed my perspective to a few aching breaths and I was ecstatic to find I still had use of my lungs, that he was not all there was. It was not the world keeping me captive; it was him. It would be five years before I could put my lungs to practice, but they would slowly expand to their potential. 

IV.
My feet pounded the dirt floor of the woods. Entangled in the forest’s secret swarms of thorn bushes, the unkempt weeds circled my feet while the upturned roots tried to tangle me. As I ran farther into the woods it got darker. On my left was a path directly on the edge of a fifty-foot drop. I ran this trail, compacted with impact, in meets and conditioning. My first year, I only ran in my moth- er’s old shoes. Then he bought me my first pair of running shoes. As I sweat, I was no longer paralyzed by the parasite of stillness and obligation. I felt peace in feeling connected to the most sacred elements of the earth in her natural state of being. And to think, I only kept running out of habit my first year, which turned into seven years in the blink of an eye. I began to view my own worth when I cut three minutes off my time in my first season, and Coach yelled to me, “You don’t know how good you are, do you?” It is still everyday work to forgive myself for the ties he continues to hold and not dismiss the sanctity and power of these years, despite what they’ve taken from me. 

Hot Potato Birthday Cake

Noah McGeorge

A young man grew up playing and up walking Huffman Hill. For as long as I lived there, we called him Jimbo, although he had aged past the point of young and even man. His spine was a Roman arch without a keystone, his skin those monkey brains that brown in the road. He had a nose for Crown Royal, I of repul- sion. Camouflage jacket was typical. Furtive looks at the passing cars standard. He liked cleaning roadkill. 

His birthday was delicate. If we had accepted it, we’d nudge him closer to the edge. If we ignored it? 

“Why’d you even ask him about his birthday?” Dad was eating fish sticks and taco cheese broccoli. “Don’t look at me in your way. You know I always give him money.” 

“It’s not like I offered to throw him a party,” Mom said. “He just mentioned buying himself Smirnoff for tomorrow, said it was his birthday.” 

Here I began to wonder at what point a person became a hot potato. 

My cousin stayed the weekend. Our feet dangled above the floor precisely parallel. She sniffled, “Let’s make him a cake?” 

I sobered my open mouth; cake cannot be eaten until dinner deals have been honored. I knew Jimbo got dinner at Speedway, ate roller dogs and red Tornados. I never saw him when I went to Aldi’s with mom, so the man probably never had vegeta- bles in his life. Can anything go in your body at a certain age? 

“Yeah—a cake oughta be nice,” Mom said. “I think he has a son around here, but they never see each other.” My cousin and I followed her into the kitchen. “I’m pretty sure I already have batter.” 

It was batter for brownies, but that didn’t stop us from helping with every step and licking every spoon. By morning, we had a brownie mass iced with funfetti. We topped it with a candy cane candle; any more would have challenged the lungs. 

Like any respectable gentleman of his era, Jimbo got around. I’d see him out from Dad’s Grand Caravan, walking under the dim Blockbuster sign. My cousin and I would run to the Cir- cle-K and there he’d walk. We played life in our complex lot. When we were other people it was fun to watch him. 

One time he walked by my bus stop. He wanted to say hey. The driver asked me if I knew this guy, really knew this guy. Is this a test? I know Obama, the alphabet, and Jimbo. I knew Jimbo. The driver had a high spot from which to get a good view of us. Jimbo didn’t mind. Many forgive the injury: he forgave the contempt, too. 

I carried the cake down Huffman Hill. From all I knew about cake, the thing might have very well melted. No one told me my summers were cool because of perpetual fall lighting. I kept my head down and my eyes on windows. The sun reddened the clouds like a penlight pressed against skin. 

Down in the Huffman valley, we waited by Jimbo’s con- crete bungalow. No amount of knocking produced him. He wasn’t there. 

“Well,” Mom said. “We’d better get headed back.” A possum I knew lay dead in the road. He had been there since the day before. Jimbo never got to him. We moved on from the dead possum and on toward home. After some silent moments I opened my mouth to ask for cake but here we heard a shuffling slam. 

Jimbo exited a Circle-K pay phone. He came over, and that may have been the first time I witnessed him sit down. He said hey, giving us each a moment of his tired eye contact. He didn’t notice any cake. 

“Hey’d you see the possum by Vicky’s?” “Oh, no! I don’t think so, Jimbo,” Mom said. “But how are you? How are you doing?” 

“Well, good. Just got off the phone with my son now.” 

“How’s he? Did he wish you a happy birthday?” “What? No. Just called to see if he wouldn’t clean up the possum by Vicky’s.” On the exhale we reserve for family news: 

“He’s workin’ over at Rumpke, now.” 

Satisfied some agent would clean the possum, Jimbo stood. “Gotta stay on my feet,” he said. “Won’t die that way.” 

“Wait,” my cousin chimed. “We made you a birthday cake.” 

Here I realized that Jimbo could not see the birthday cake. His eyes were wet as pickled eggs and they were rolling along the road. He wanted dead things. He bore them up and down Huffman, up and down. He took our orphaned highway too. Our school and its kiss-you-night bed bugs. The city glow night light—the only stars our good grubs see are sin glitter stickers. Together we hate these treats and lay them to Huffman’s fettered drifter, Jimbo. It’s good: even the roadkill he shrugs up and on he goes. 

“Better get up this hill to get some breakfast,” he said. It too was good when Jimbo crested the hill, no happy birthday to be heard.

Clean Kill

Aaron Brant

A fierce, icy wind rolled over the crest of the hill and swept through the dormant autumn forest that surrounded our hunting blind, the newly fallen leaves twisting and dancing over the rotted duff that carpeted the frosty earth. A chill ran through my shivering body and I shifted in my seat, tugging the collar of my winter coat higher over the nape of my neck. My friend Tylor, who sat cross legged on the ground before me cradling the muzzle- loader in his drooping arms, stirred only slightly as the icy breeze swiftly came and faded. We had been there little more than twenty minutes, but with each passing second the anxiety that churned in my gut crept further into my tightening throat. I wanted to talk to him, about what I didn’t know, but I hoped a temporary break in the silence might alleviate the awkwardness I was feeling about the hunt. 

What baffled me as I sat there burying my face further beneath my coat collar was Tylor’s calm and oddly indifferent de- meanor. Only minutes before he had been reading a cheap, dollar store novel and bemoaning how exhausted he was. It irritated me that he could be so collected while I was so nervous, and in a vain attempt to cut through the tension building inside me I began to say something. 

“You need to be quiet,” he snapped. “Sorry, I’m just nervous is all.” He shook his head. “There’s no reason to be so wound up about all this, it’s just hunting.” 

The thing was, Tylor had done this nearly his entire life. Even from an early age, he and his younger brother had been hunting and trapping with his father. Killing and butchering wild game was commonplace for him, as his family relied on the meat they could acquire. For someone like Tylor, a day such as this was nothing more than a typical afternoon hunt. 

For me, however, it was much more. After performing the ritual of killing and butchering my first deer, the people who had hounded me about my somewhat timid nature could no longer question my masculinity. After all, I wasn’t tall, athletic, strong, or tough and I had no idea how to fight. But I could shoot, and if I could do that, I could hunt. Therefore, in my quest to prove my worth, I saw this long-ingrained ritual of acceptance and manhood as my only hope. 

The anxiety that crippled me as I sat there gritting my teeth was fueled by that fact that, despite my eagerness, I harbored a strong aversion toward killing. Even killing something as seemingly insignificant as a fish had been almost impossible for me as a child. So, while I had hoped my more mature age of seventeen would help assuage the contempt I felt, it was apparent to me, sitting in the hunting blind that cold autumn afternoon, that this endeavor would be far more difficult than I had hoped. Bashfully, I shrank back into my seat, quietly accepting Tylor’s harsh criticism. Maybe he’s right. I just need to man up and focus on the outcome. The wind had almost died away completely and the forest was unnervingly calm for a moment—only the birds above us seemed to make any sound. As we sat in brief silence, I heard a faint rustling amongst the underbrush to our immediate right. Leaning forward, careful not to make any noise, I peered through the westward facing window overlooking the hill that lead down to the creek. From behind a thicket of briars, nestled at the trunk of a gargantuan Oak, a lean, muscular figure came confidently trotting up the hill. My hair stood on end and my skin tightened. 

“There it is,” I whispered. 

---

The buck wasn’t far from our position, perhaps twenty yards at most, but it was well out of my field of view. Tylor opened his bloodshot eyes and looked up from the ground, ask- ing what I had seen. 

“It’s a young buck,” I whispered. Tylor hunkered down to the ground, hiding himself below the netted windows of the hunting blind. Lifting his Muzzleloader, he prompted me to take hold of it and reiterated his command to be quiet. So I was. I sat as silent and motionless as I possibly could, not even breathing. The only sound now, aside from the buck, was my racing heart which pounded deep in my chest like a thundering bass drum. The buck methodically stepped its way up the hill toward our hunting blind. With each step the buck took my heart beat faster and faster, the pounding growing louder and louder inside my skull, and before I knew it, the buck came to a stand-still directly in front of me. 

This didn’t leave me much of a shot. My position inside the blind left me at an awkward angle and the only option I was presented with was its neck. I didn’t want to shoot the buck in the neck, as I’d always been taught to aim for the heart given that it was the quickest and most humane way to kill. Reluctantly, I leveled the muzzle of the gun at the buck and peered through the scope, resting the crosshairs over the upper portion of its twitch- ing neck. Steadily I brought my trembling index finger down over the trigger and applied the slightest amount of pressure. I’m going to do it. I’m going to kill this young buck. 

I sat paralyzed in my seat for what felt like an eterni- ty, the muzzleloader clasped tightly in my frozen but sweating hands. Slowly, I loosened my grasp on the weapon and untensed my finger, debating if I should spare the buck and let it run free or finally take its life. I’d almost decided to drop the muzzleload- er from my shoulder and admit to my defeat when I thought of Tylor lying on the ground in front of me. What would he think of me if I let the buck go? How could I look him, or any other man in my community, in the eyes and expect them to treat me as an equal if I shied away now? As much as my mind willed me to lower the weapon and let the buck escape, there was no way I would allow myself to come all this way only to leave empty-handed because I didn’t have the courage pull the trigger. 

I was going to shoot. My hands were shaking so violently I could hardly keep the muzzleloader steady as I readied my shot. Faster and harder my heart pounded in my chest. A lifetime of angst and anxiety crept over me as I cleared my mind of any second thoughts. My body was shivering. My heart was racing. My lungs inflated in my chest like two balloons filled to bursting, and I began stiffen- ing my finger, tensing it around the trigger. Everything in that frigid forest slowed to a snail’s pace. My heart froze. My muscles tensed. I drew one last breath. 

---

I had practiced for such a moment for as long as I could remember, standing in my backyard struggling to steady my grandfather’s old twenty-two caliber rifle as I took potshots at a small tin soup can propped up on a rotted stump. The pride I felt welling up in my chest every time I made contact and the can skipped and tumbled wildly into the weeds at the edge of the forest. My grandfather would always commend me on my shooting in his tender but critical way, mentioning how much I had improved. 

All of this in preparation for my big hunt, the moment in which I would be like my grandfather, father, and uncles. I was still naïve enough at my carefree age to liken the shooting of a can to the shooting of a deer, never fully realizing the terminal consequences of doing such a thing. Still I would excitedly prop the can up on its top, run back to the mark I’d made in the gravel with the heel of my shoe and take aim; beading the front post as close to the center of the rear notch as I could. Subconsciously repeating a single phrase every time I was about to shoot: That can right there, it’s a deer’s heart. If you can hit that can then that means you can shoot a deer and kill it, just like grandpa taught you. Then, taking a deep breath and exhaling steadily, I squeezed the trigger. 

---

The muzzleloader spoke with the utmost authority, spitting fire and a blinding cloud of white, sulphurous smoke from its muzzle, choking the blind and screening my view of the target. The deafening boom tore through the cold, tranquil forest and quickly faded over the countryside. My head pounded with each rapid pulse of my heart and my ringing ears stung horribly. As quickly as the moment had come, it had gone, and a morbid peace again fell over the forest. The gentle wind had resumed its course across the knoll and the dense cloud of white gunsmoke swirled away with it. Coming into view twenty yards from our hunting blind was the buck, now lying limp on the frigid ground. 

I couldn’t believe it. I had killed my first buck. As I looked upon its struggling body, things seemed almost surreal. I had seen dozens of butchered carcasses before in the beds of my neighbors’ pickup trucks or hanging from the rafters of a decrepit barn somewhere. This, however, was the first time I had looked upon a carrion and realized that I was the one responsible for its death. 

My hands trembling and heart still pounding, I laid the smoking muzzleloader across my knees and nudged Tylor with my boot. 

“I got it.” I said, the words sticking in my raspy throat. Tylor rose from his knees and looked through the tattered window at the buck. 

“I’ll be damned. You sure did,” he grinned. “Come on, let’s get out to it.” 

Tylor clambered through the small flap door while I stood and leaned the muzzleloader against the arm of the lawn chair. My body was numb, my head was hot, and my limbs shook violently as the adrenaline that coursed through my veins slowly began to dissipate. Quickly, the shaking subsided and my nerves regained control of my body, the dull sting of the recoil swelling up in my right shoulder as I stepped through the doorway and headed toward Tylor who was now standing at the buck’s side. I was silent, and to my knowledge, so was Tylor. If he had said anything to me as I approached, I didn’t hear him. I was miles away from the scene. I loomed over the buck’s crippled body, taking the full brunt of the emotions that were spinning rapidly inside my skull. As I stared into the buck’s black, emotionless eyes, I noticed some- thing. A chill fell over my body and a cold memory that troubled me far more than I expected raced through my mind. It’s still alive. 

---

The first time I remember killing an animal, I was still quite young, and far too innocent to fully understand the state of death and what it meant to be the cause of it. My father and I had just returned home from an afternoon fishing at my uncle’s pond. I had only one fish in my bucket, but at eighteen inches from mouth to tail and five and a half pounds even it had been the biggest largemouth bass I’d ever caught. 

Proudly, I marched up the gravel driveway, my prize sloshing lazily in the murky pond water I’d poured in earlier. Once standing on the sidewalk, I sat the bucket on the broken concrete, my tiny arms too strained to carry it any longer, and asked my father when he was going to clean it for supper. He studied me for a moment, breathing a heavy sigh. 

“I think it’s time you cleaned it.” Naturally, I protested, arguing that I’d never done such a thing before, but he insisted. 

“Boy, you’re gonna have to start doing this sooner or later. As you get older, I’m not gonna be able to do these things for you. Now, you’ve seen me do this dozens of times. Just go slow and you’ll be fine.” 

He pulled a small, cheap fillet knife from the plastic tackle box he carried and handed it to me. Reluctantly, I took it, laying it beside my knee as I reached inside the bucket for the bass. I took hold of its large, fleshy belly and lifted it from the stinking water. A chill came over my body, and I glanced up at my father. 

“It’s still alive,” I said. “And?” he asked. “You want it to be fresh when you clean it.” 

“But I can’t kill it, I – I can’t,” I protested, having no viable reason not to kill it. 

“It’s gonna die anyway and we can’t take it back to the pond. Now do you want it to suffocate or do you want to end it right now?” 

“Can’t I just put it back in the bucket and let it die first?” I asked naively. 

“If you put it back in the bucket it’s gonna suffer, son. You don’t let an animal suffer.” 

With a trembling hand I took hold of the knife, press- ing the fish against the concrete with the other. Tears welling up in the corners of my eyes, I placed the tip of the knife against its slimy scales and applied the slightest amount of pressure. I drew a deep breath and thrust the knife into its flesh, severing the spine. 

---

The buck lay sprawled out in a bloody pile of duff and dried leaves between two fallen, rotted logs, its chest quivering as it drew its last breaths. The bullet had severed the spine and its head lay cocked at an awkward angle. A ghostly cloud of steam wafted upward from the stream of crimson blood that oozed from the thumb sized wound in its neck. My shot had only crippled the buck, not killed it, and it was still fully conscious as it lay there suffering in a spreading pool of its own blood. 

Tylor, a wide grin plastered across his face, patted me on the shoulder. 

“Great job, man. Clean kill, and it only took you seven- teen years to do it. I told you I’d make a man out of you.” 

With my eyes still fixated on the dying animal I said nothing. I breathed a heavy sigh, the last of my pent up anxiety flushing away with it, and turned toward Tylor who had walked back toward the hunting blind. 

“You know, I feel bad for it,” I said, fadingly. “I mean, it was just standing there grazing and I fucking shot it. Shot it right through the neck.” 

Tylor turned, his face twisting with disapproval. “Jesus, dude. You ain’t gonna cry are you?” 

“Oh, fuck you, dude,” I returned. Tylor laughed then ducked through the door of the hunting blind for his muzzleloader. He told me he was walking back to his garage to get his ATV as he didn’t feel fancy dragging the buck back through the mess of trees and underbrush we’d struggled through earlier. I nodded in agreement, but said noth- ing. 

Tylor jogged off into the woods toward his house and I turned back toward the buck, sitting on a decaying, moss covered stump just a few feet away. The most complicated feeling of tri- umph, shame, and sorrow came over me as I watched the buck’s life drain from its limp body—any sense of pride or masculinity I had gathered from the hunt dribbling away with it. At last, the buck’s chest grew still, the bleeding stopped, and I knew it was dead. 

“Clean kill…” I said, burying my head into my hands. 

Table of Contents

“The Diner” by Gina Gidaro

“Everyone Here But Me” by Gryphon Beyerle

“The Congressman’s Appointment” by Katilin Gossett

“Poor in Indiana” by Marissa Artrip

“Pharos” by Olivia Sturtvant

The Diner

Gina Gidaro

Between the rain and the dark, I almost miss the silver diner. 

It looks abandoned, deserted, except for the flickering OPEN sign hanging crooked in the window. I’m tempted to contin- ue driving, make it all the way to my parents’ house without a single stop, but this storm is only getting worse. My car is swaying from the strong winds, the pitter-patter of rain falling onto the metal is making it increasingly difficult to hear my own thoughts, and although the windshield wipers try their best to clear my vision, the rain is relentless. I can barely see the white and yellow lines in front of me. 

Reluctantly, I swerve into the lot and park the car, inward- ly cursing the gods for forcing me to delay my already treacherous journey. I can hear my mother now, “My god, Joanne, had you left earlier like I told you, you probably wouldn’t have needed to stop.” Yeah, yeah, mom. You’re right. As usual. 

Despite my annoyance toward needing to stop, Seth would be proud of me for it. His cool voice echoes in my head, a pleasant comparison to my mother’s harsh one. A clever person knows how to solve a problem. A wise one avoids it. He loved to use that line whenever I was doing something he thought was impulsive or irrational. I never thought I’d miss it. I never thought I would have to. 

Shoving on my hat and grabbing my purse, I hop out of the car and into the rain. Water splashes around my feet as I run through puddle after puddle before rushing into the diner. The familiar smell of banana bread wafts around me. My dad’s favorite. Mom and I made it almost every weekend. She only ever gave me the simple jobs, like stirring batter or setting out ingredients; but nevertheless, I was always there to help. Even better—she would let me. 

The place is quiet, except for the jukebox playing Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me in Your Heart.” No hostess comes to greet me, so I take it upon myself to claim a spot at the bar. The place looks vintage, with worn, red-cushioned stools, old-fashioned ketchup and mustard bottles, and red-and-white checkerboard placemats. 

“Wicked storm, isn’t it?” says a man a couple stools from where I’m sitting. He appears young, maybe late 20s, but has a slightly gaunt look to him, and is wearing a suit and tie. I assume he’s been here a while, considering, unlike me, he’s completely dry. Removing my hat and coat, I nod. “I’m surprised I made it out alive.” 

“It’s a good thing you stopped,” the man says, squeezing some mayo onto the cheeseburger in front of him. “It’s looking pretty nasty out there. Not smart to be driving.” 

“True,” I say, side-glancing him. “But my mother can be a real pain when I don’t visit.” 

My mother is my biggest critic. She fights me on every- thing and has a knack for always finding something about me to disapprove of. Dad says it’s tough love, her way of making sure I never settle for any less than I deserve. But there is only so much I can take. When she found out I wanted to study culinary arts, she used her infamous line: “I’m not judging you, Joanne. I just think you could do better.” And that’s practically a compliment from her. “You could’ve chosen a better college to go to. You could’ve cho- sen a better major to study. You could’ve chosen a more suitable boyfriend.” Lucky for her, that last one ended up in her favor. 

The businessman nods understandingly and tosses a bun on top of his cheeseburger. “Mothers. They’re almost as difficult as bosses.” 

“Speaking from personal experiences?” I ask him. “Oh, yeah,” he replies after taking a big bite of his cheese burger. “Where is it that you work?” I ask. Call me nosy, but his suit looks expensive. “Hell,” he says with complete seriousness. Accepting that this guy doesn’t want to get personal, I check my phone for a signal. Nothing. “Sounds like the kind of job you should quit.” 

“Trust me kid, I would if I could, but it’s not that sim- ple,” he mumbles, his mouth full. “It’s not the kind of business you can just up and leave.” 

Even though I try holding it in, a chuckle escapes my lips. “What are you, some kind of hitman?” 

The man grins, mayo on the corner of his mouth. “You have no idea how much that fits the job description.” With a sigh, he continues, “I knew the difficulties when I signed up for the job, so there’s no one to blame but me. A clever person knows how to solve a problem. A wise one avoids it, am I right?” 

I snap my head toward him. Before any more words can be exchanged, the door leading to the kitchen whips open. A waitress comes out, apologizes for the wait, and immediately pours me a cup of coffee. She’s older, with short, gray hair. The name tag pinned to her flour-covered apron says Ruby. 

“Could I have a piece of your banana bread?” I ask her. The woman shakes her head at me. “We don’t have ba- nana bread here.” 

“Oh,” I say, puzzled. The smell is still as strong as it was when I first walked in. “Are you sure?” 

“Honey, I’ve worked here for longer than you’ve been alive,” she retorts, looking at me like I’m a child. She tosses me a menu. “I think I know what we serve.” 

“I just thought…” I mutter. Someone needs a smoke break, I think to myself, eyeing the waitress, who is eyeing me back. 

“They’ve got the best cheeseburgers around though,” the businessman says. He holds up his half-eaten, greasy burger. An ear-piercing clap of thunder sparks the sky then, causing me to jump out of my skin. 

“Someone must be angry upstairs,” Ruby mutters as I scan the menu. Chili fries, milkshakes of all flavors, apple pie, fish fillet sandwich, and cheeseburgers. There’s a whole page dedicated to their different types of cheeseburgers. My eyes skim down the list, and stop at the bottom. 

Cheeseburger with extra pickles—for Joanne My fingers slip from the menu and it falls all the way off my lap and to the checkerboard-tiled floor. Neither the business- man nor Ruby seem to notice. Hastily, I lean down to retrieve the menu. Taking a deep breath, I reopen it and peak inside. My name is gone, along with the way I always took my order at Seth’s diner. I swallow hard. 

Beside me, the businessman scoffs. “The worst is yet to come. Wait until my boss finds out I missed an appointment this morning. Now, that will be a storm.” 

Ruby shoves the coffee pot back into the machine and says something to the businessman, something I don’t hear. Laying the closed menu in front of me, I try to stay calm. I can’t get what I saw out of my head. Not only because my name was printed on that menu, but because I’ve seen it there before. 

When I was a freshman in college, I found myself in a quaint 1950’s diner up the road from campus. There I met Seth Hanson, the boy who loved quantum physics and said my emer- ald eyes could play tricks on him from the way they caught the light. He worked behind the grill for little pay and claimed to love his job. Even though he was in the kitchen almost the whole day, customers came in specifically for his easy-going attitude. 

After a couple weeks of returning to the diner, I was considered a regular. I sat at the bar and did my school work, letting Seth assist me with my physics assignments. He always knew what I would want to eat, and even took the measures of making sure everyone else did too. A couple weeks before things went south between us, he somehow got his manager to agree to dedicating my favorite lunch to me in the menu. 

“Check it out, Joanne!” I remember him saying. I sat at the bar, homework scattered in from of me. Seth held the menu up in front of my face, and when I told him I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, he pointed to the bottom of the page. 

Cheeseburger with extra pickles—for Joanne Snatching it from him, I surveyed the new addition to the diner’s menu. “How did you do that?” 

With a smug smile, he said, “I asked the manager for a little favor.” 

It was a small act, but it warmed my heart and made me laugh. Once Christmas arrived, I thought—foolishly—that Seth would be able to pass my mother’s test. 

“He’s not ambitious enough, Joanne. You need some- one who can carry a family. Not someone who works at a silly, little diner,” she had said to me in private. I ignored her as best I could because by then, I was used to her constant fault-finding. Somehow, Seth had overheard the exchange and couldn’t ignore my mother as well as me. He let her words dig into him like a bullet and after several weeks, the relationship dwindled in the most depressing way; neither of us thought we deserved the other. 

He was the kindest person I’ve ever known, but by the time I realized that, it was too late. Kindness doesn’t matter to a robber with a gun. 

“Hon, do you want anything to eat or not? I’m very busy,” Ruby snaps. 

“Uh…no. No thanks.” Something in her tone reminds me of my mother, and I can’t stop myself from digging my fingernails into the palm of my hand. Ruby rushes off, and even though the diner is completely empty other than me and the businessman, there are loud cooking noises coming from the kitchen. 

“What kind of business did you say you’re involved in?” I ask the businessman, giving him a skeptical look. 

“I didn’t.” Putting his half-eaten burger down, the man reaches deep into his breast pocket. From there, he retrieves a small, black business card with white text on it. The corner is greasy from his fingers. I take it. 

Reaper of Souls. A business of international travel. “Seems like a pretty demanding job,” is all I can think to say as I stare hard at the card. 

“Oh, it is,” the man continues, taking the last bite of his burger. “And there are no vacations. My boss always has a new list of appointments for me. A construction worker in Ontario, a house fire started by a curling iron in New Hampshire, a pile-up in Tokyo. And that was only this morning!” 

I watch the guy out of the corner of my eye as he wipes his hands on his napkin. Between glancing at the card in my hand and back at the man, I’m having irrational thoughts— thoughts my mother would have a field day with. I can practically hear her snickering at my foolishness and voicing her questions on how I ever got into college with that kind of ludicrous think- ing. “Wake up, Joanne. This guy is screwing with you,” she’d say. Wake the hell up… 

“And Ohio?” I ask, talking over my mother’s bickering. She’s always hated that. “What’s brought you here?” This part worries me, because for some reason dread has begun to cover my body like a cold sweat. The man looks over for what I realize to be the first time in the whole night. His dark eyes narrow as he studies me, and I shrink away. 

“What do you regret?” “Excuse me?” I demand, taken aback by his question. “Regrets. You must have a lot.” He begins searching through the different packets of sugar for his coffee. “Or else you wouldn’t be here.” 

Glancing around the empty diner, I ask, “Here? What do you mean here?” 

“You could call it…a pit stop,” he answers, his tone light, like he’s telling a joke. Something clicks in my mind, something unsettling. It’s as if subconsciously I’m aware of where I am, of what’s going on. I just need someone to remind me. 

He clears his throat when I don’t crack a smile. “So, regrets?” 

“I have regrets,” I announce, as he rips open a yellow sugar packet and pours it into his coffee. Seth immediately comes to mind, but even more so, my mother and how I always let her get her way. “Everyone does. Don’t you?” 

“When you’ve lived as long as I have, kid, you’re bound to have regrets.” He pauses to think. “Like that time I was supposed to get onto flight 185 where there was a terrorist on board.” 

As the businessman talks, the song on the jukebox changes. “Unfortunately, I mixed up the departure times and got on the wrong plane.” He stirs his coffee as he recalls the memory. “Yeah, my boss made me work overtime for that one.” 

The familiar acoustic intro, accompanied by a bass line and cymbals, catches my attention. The man’s story gets drowned out by the song now playing. I look over my shoulder. The red and blue jukebox sits by the door, spinning the record shamelessly… 

Mama told me, when I was young… The song reminds me of the smell of freshly cut grass and my plain, black dress, the one I only wear to funerals. 

Come sit beside me, my only son… It was his favorite, that’s why they played it while he was being lowered into the soil. That was the last time I heard the song. I always change the station when it comes on in the car. I leave the bar when the band begins to play it. A loud crack of thunder ignites the sky outside, as if to remind me that I can’t run away this time. 

“Anyway, this visit isn’t about me,” the businessman continues. “It’s about you.” 

The last time I spoke to Seth, he was telling me how he worried that my mother was right about what she said about him, that he wasn’t good enough for me. I told him he was ridiculous, that my mother was wrong, completely wrong. He struggled to get it out of his head though, and I couldn’t convince him. I didn’t know about the robbery that took place at the diner until the day after it happened. It was in the college newspaper, Crossroads. At first, I thought it was a joke. Who would rob a diner? The guy who did it was desperate. He brought a gun, but told the cops after he was caught that he’d never planned to use it. That it was an accident. When I read that someone was killed, I had a sinking feeling I knew who it was. 

He tried to be the hero. I’m sure of it. Seth risked his life and got it taken away from him. 

Haphazardly shrugging my coat on and snatching my bag from the counter, I jump off the stool. “You know what, I think the storm is lightening up. I should probably get back on the road. It was nice meeting you,” I say while racing for the door. The businessman watches casually. He doesn’t try to stop me. 

I practically slam myself against the diners’ front doors, des- perate to get out. Fully prepared for the impact of sheets of rain, my body is shocked when it doesn’t come. Because somehow, I’ve walked right back into the diner. The businessman is still in his seat, watching me. 

I rush out the doors again and again and again and again, los- ing count after ten. My heart is hammering in my chest, causing my ribs to ache from the repeated impact. The businessman is laughing. Make it stop make it stop make it— 

Ruby shoots out the kitchen door with a greasy spatula in her hand. “What, do you think heat is free? Leave the doors closed!” And then she’s gone again. 

“Is this happening?” I ask no one and anyone at the same time. “How is this happening? This can’t be happening.” 

“It’s happening, kid,” the man says, spinning back around in his seat. 

“Alright,” I start, conjuring some courage to sit back down by the businessman. He takes a sip of his coffee and cringes. “How does this work?” 

He looks at me with a puzzled expression. “How does what work?” 

How can he not know what I’m talking about? “I’m dead, right? Don’t you have to take me to the afterlife or whatever?” 

“Is that your choice?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “I get a choice?” “Of course you get a choice,” he announces, as if I’m clueless. “Why would you be here if you didn’t?” 

“Well, I don’t know!” I snap, baffled that he expects me to understand all of this. “Sorry that I’ve never done this before, that this is my first time dying.” 

“Wow, are you always this sarcastic?” He asks, giving me a look. 

“What?” This situation just keeps getting stranger and stranger. “Just do what you have to do.” 

I squeeze my eyes shut and wait to be struck by lightning or sucked into the Earth or set on fire. Seconds pass and nothing comes. When I reopen my eyes, the businessman is looking at me the way mom did the first time I attempted to make spaghetti sauce and forgot to use wine. 

“Don’t do that,” the man orders. “Don’t do what? Accept death? Leave my life willingly? Make your job easy?” I retort, annoyance taking over my fear. 

“Easy?” He rolls his empty eyes. “Easy is when I don’t have to have these conversations. I swear, spirits are getting snippi- er and snippier after every revolution. You know, there was a time when the spirits didn’t get to choose. Then the Roman Church was like ‘Hey, why don’t we start handing out indulgences?’ so now my job has turned into a combo of therapy and guidance sessions in which I find myself drinking bitter coffee and being asked to explain myself thousands of times a day.” 

The diner is silent. I watch the man dump three more sugar packets into his coffee. I let what he said sink into my brain, pre- tending to understand most of it. Roman Church… indulgences… thousands of times a day… spirits? 

“So…” I timidly start. “I’m…a spirit?” Shrug. “Of sorts.” Great answer. “And…everyone gets to choose?” “Do you always ask so many questions?” he retorts. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. The last time I was in this situation I forgot to get all my questions answered,” I snap sarcastically. 

“Fine,” he says, setting his coffee cup down. “Here’s the rub. There was a buck crossing the road, you were in a car accident, and now you’re on the brink of death. But since you carry many regrets throughout your life, you get to choose. Do you live, or do you die?” 

You get to choose. It doesn’t seem fair. People die every day. Why should I get this advantage? I don’t feel like I deserve it. 

“Makes it a little more difficult, doesn’t it?” He adds, stirring a spoon around in his coffee. I look down at mine, ice-cold and untouched. I forgot it was there. Ruby continues to clang dishes around in the back and the storm screams louder than ever. I think of my mother, her dedication for perfection and the tight grip she holds on my life, my father and his endearing encouragement. I think of Seth, his benevolent manner and how I should never have let him let me go. 

“To me,” the man continues, “the choice has always seemed simultaneously blindingly simple and fiendishly counter- intuitive. You see, the only people who end up here are the ones who carry too much regret. So, you’d think the choice for those people would be extremely simple. Go back and fix what they broke. Right?” He continues before I can muster a response. “Wrong. Almost everyone who makes this pit stop has a prize,” —he gestures between the kitchen door and the front door— “on either side of the door.” 

I stare at him, intensely and for a long time. He can’t be saying what I think he’s saying. He just can’t be. I can’t bring myself to believe it, and yet… 

“What’s going on back there?” I ask, staring at the door Ruby disappeared behind so long ago. Loud cooking noises—slam- ming pots and pans, sizzling grease, and running water—continue to emerge from it. All noises that remind me of being back at school, the one doing the cooking. Even though I’m months away from graduation and becoming a professional chef, my mother won’t let me step foot in her kitchen. “I’m the mother. Let me cook,” is her excuse. She claims my food lacks the feeling of a home-cooked meal. 

The man shrugs. “Beats me. You could go find out.” I look at him. He’s staring expectantly at me, waiting for my reply. “If that’s your choice, of course.” 

I smell my mother’s wonderful banana bread and imag- ine the warmth of it, the softness of it. It wouldn’t be back there though. Ruby already told me that. And that is one recipe I have never been able to perfect. I’ve tried over and over, desperate to re- member the ingredients I set out a dozen times, but it’s no use. Mine always comes out short of something. 

“I’m only 23,” I blurt to no one in particular, but the busi- nessman answers anyway. 

“True,” he considers. “They say your 20s are the best years of your life. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.” 

“What would you choose?” I ask abruptly. “Me?” He exclaims before erupting into a roar of deep, echoing laughter. “I did have to choose. And isn’t it obvious what I picked?” 

“Right,” I mutter, even though it’s not very obvious at all. The sharp corner of the menu digs into my arm, and I think of Seth. Of our last conversation, his cheerful face falling slack when our relationship began to wither. How I never got the chance to make things right. 

“It’s not particularly welcoming, is it?” I say to the man as we stare out the front doors. Blinding lightning followed by furious thunder, overwhelming rain, and roaring winds. The world really can be a scary place. 

“The real world rarely is,” he replies, and then with a shrug, “But people really seem to enjoy it.” 

The man is watching me, anticipating my decision. I can hear Seth’s laugh in my ears, a sound I never thought I’d hear again, so tempting, so welcoming. It’s mixed with the delicious smell of my mother’s homemade banana bread, the recipe I have never been able to perfect. 

“Tick tock, on the clock…” the businessman teases. “There’s a deadline? What if I don’t choose in time?” I exclaim. 

“Someone else will for you,” he replies, sending shards of ice down my spine. “Look, if it’s any consolation, my biggest regret remains to be not having the courage to go back and fix mine.” 

The world outside is gray and drowning, with mere moments of clarity when lightning strikes. Would it be wise to take advice from a guy who claims to be the Reaper? I suppose there are worse choices to make… 

It’s still dark when I return.

The ground is cold and wet. My body is numb. My fingers dig into the earth. There is rumbling above me, and rain is falling. I soak it up like a plant in the spring. I can feel my senses awakening, my bones hardening, and my blood thickening. The stars shimmer and watch me carefully. Several feet away from me, there’s a large animal lying motionless on its side. It’s a buck. Memories of screeching tires, aching fear, and a vigorously spinning steering wheel flood my mind. There is a rough, almost painful thumping in my chest, reminding me that I am, in fact, alive. I can hear sirens in the distance. It’s the eve of coming home, and I’m almost there. 

Everyone Here But Me

Gryphon Beyerle

They’ve got me strapped to the bed again and I’m supposed to be watching Judge Judy. Judge Judy gives me bedsores, which I explained a dozen times to every nurse in the wing. This time, it’s Nurse Hello Kitty setting me up with the food-slurpee straw right into my stomach—clearly revenge for the nasty cat scratch I gave her while she dragged me out of the operating room. I remind her again about the bedsores and how Jell-O gives me red bumps. She says nothing and puts Jell-O on my overbed tray, where my strapped hands can’t reach it whether I want to throw it in her face or eat it after all. When she leaves, Judge Judy smacks her gavel, and I gnaw through my feeding tube. 

I’m more pissed every time they wrangle me into the wrist restraints. It’s like the healthcare equivalent of death by electric chair. It started as a way to babysit me when they were understaffed, but now it’s some routine pacification, like their solution to all my needs. He’s dropping weight? Strap him in and give him a direct flight to fatty, bedsore, Jell-O bump nightmare! He’s disrupting a surgery? Tie him down for two days and make him piss through a catheter. 

It’s not my fault that they can’t recognize talent. They hate Doctor Brady Angel, so they won’t issue him a hospital ID. Easy fix, though—this morning, I swiped the lanyard from a hungover fourth-floor nurse while she slept at her station, her head lolling like roadkill. Armed with security clearance, I readied myself for a 10 a.m. operation. 

When I burst into the room, the blue-blob docs seethed with jealousy. Everyone knows Doctor Brady Angel; he does the best cosmetic surgery in all of California. 

“Doctor Brady’s here! Can’t start without Doctor Brady Angel!” I snatched a wad of latex gloves from the wall like a fistful of maggots from a dumpster. 

“What a charity case we have here! For God’s sake, the poor girl’s not even knocked out yet. Snooze her, and let’s get the beak off this bird.” It would’ve been a simple rhinoplasty: scrape off the girl’s dorsal hump and lift the tip of the nose; a life-chang- ing sweet-sixteen birthday present healed in time for homecoming. Perfect, like Mom’s. 

I bitched and bitched while they escorted me out of the room. Hello Kitty was the queen of Tourette’s, slinging slurs at me like darts. 

So I’m strapped in bed, with Judge Judy and the Jell-O. 

---

The hospital’s got a fat influx of whiny, teat-suckling, sniffling hypochondriacs now that Christmas is around the corner. Same as last year. Since all these lonely, lost attention hogs are max-ing out the bed space, I’ve got to share my room with a geezer who snores hard enough to suck flies right out of the air. 

Last Christmas, I was a treacherous piglet, too—fresh meat to burden the staff of St. Jesus God is King Mega-Church Medical Shitshow Emporium. Oh, but the scrubs all started out so kind and doting with their pity and their mercy and their prescrip- tion pill abuse. Mom fit right in: at my terminal ward drop-off, she put her hand on my cheek and a lipstick kiss on my forehead like it was summer camp, and voila!, she glowed with a holy corona. That’s all it takes to be saintly I learned. 

She returned two days later with a professional photog- rapher who set up his tripod at the foot of my living casket. Mom wore a violently red dress like she was off to prom. I was in boxer briefs. The photographer combed my sweat-heavy hair off of my forehead and swaddled me in pallid bedsheets like Jesus on the cross. With a little airbrush retouching and some photoshopped snowflakes, the photo became her Christmas card that year. The gold script sentiment read: Pray for a Christmas miracle! 

I haven’t seen Mom in a week. Last time she came around, I woke up to find her reading Cosmo in the chair by the window that overlooks a Taco Bell and a juvenile detention center. She asked me if I’d made any friends. I couldn’t answer before Doc Lumpy 

Neck pulled her aside to introduce her to Doctor Brady Angel and Homeless Howard, whom he described as “products of the agitation and delirium associated with the spread of his cancerous mass.” She asked him if I was stable enough to come home for the holidays. Lumpy Neck is like a yes-man on opposite day. What a dickhead. I’m thinking, Doctor Brady Angel is the only MD who isn’t a fraud. 

The doc ran off to stroke his dick in a supply closet and Mom looked at me like she’d opened the liquor cabinet to find that I’d looted all her vodka or flushed her postpartum antide- pressants down the toilet. Like it was my fault that the aggressive cancer hadn’t been cured. They’d taken the mirror out of my room to hide me from my hideousness, but I could see my sickly bird bones reflected in her plastic face. I hate you, her eyes were telling me. I resent you. You are my greatest disappointment. 

I wasn’t petty like that. Just petulant. “Cancerous mass! Cancerous mass!” I yelled. “Brat with the cancerous mass misses Christmas mass! Is Mommy mad? Poor Mommy! Poor thing! Should’ve had your tubes tied! Should’ve had—” 

She took her purse and her Cosmo and left. 

---

Doctor Brady Angel got his inspiration from his mother’s all-star, reconstructive plastic handyman who’s based in swamp-haven Miami. The God of Florida had given Mom the best upturned nose, the sweetest Angelina Jolie lips, the most brilliant veneers, and so on. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world. Doctor Brady’s her spitting image, with his slinky eyes and charming grin. I love being Doctor Brady Angel—he does good work. He’d make Mom proud. 

The Thanksgiving before my big boo-hoo diagnosis, we had this grandiose family dinner. Mom was beaming with trophy-wife pride, as it was the first holiday spread she’d cooked herself rather than booking a caterer. My dad was kind of bitchy about the turkey, but I ate my way through everything thinking it was a godsend. That was the last time I remember being hungry. 

I could stuff that memory full of Christian bullshit, saying it was the Last Supper. Maybe it was the last of its kind, but it wouldn’t have been a Da Vinci masterpiece; none of us in that house were holy. My dad split within two weeks of his turkey-bitching, and Mom started to smash wine bottles on the kitchen floor. It wasn’t the best time for my brain-rot to steal the spotlight but, like I said, the worst of the worst check into a hospital around Christmas. I know Mom spent a full week asking around if anyone knew my dad’s new address so she could send him one of those awful Christmas cards with my sticky chemo face pressed up next to her post-breakup boob job. Or divorcée boob job, or abandoned-wife boob job. She left one of the cards in the drawer next to my hospital bed, just in case he swung by to visit me. It’s still there. 

---

I’ve never been a great actor, but ever since my brain got me stuck in palliative care/solitary confinement, I’m like a rat rooting through trash just for something to do. I took on Doctor Brady Angel as a skin to wear after a couple months in the same room, re- fusing the same Jell-O, looking out the same window over the same Taco Bell and kid prison. Sometimes I’d be Homeless Howard and score pills off of emergency room waiting area chumps, or I’d steal dollar-store lipstick from Nurse Hello Kitty’s blindingly bedazzled Hello Kitty purse and assume my drag persona, Kitty Licker. Out of the many characters, Doctor Brady Angel is my favorite. I’m closer to him than anyone else, but that doesn’t really make him a companion. So Mom asking if I’d made friends was like a letter opener to my jugular—my answer would’ve been “No.” No, I have not made friends. If the doc had let me, I would’ve said, “Honestly, Mom, everyone I’ve met here is either dead or dying.” That includes the staff. And myself. 

The only med worker I like is Laura. I see her on Tues- days. She’s got an office in the west wing, which is painted all pink like the maternity ward. Laura’s a social worker, so she listens to me whine about what a black hole my shrinking life has become. After this morning’s bed restraint, I know Lumpy Neck asked her to work me through Doctor Brady Angel. 

She starts our session by asking me if I wish I could be Doctor Brady full-time. 

“No. I mean, docs are shit. Even if he’s the best, I wouldn’t want to be him forever.” 

“But didn’t you say that you applied to medical school? Before you were admitted?” 

Committed, I’m thinking. Restrained. Put on death row. Held. 

“Yeah.” She looks at me, waiting. “He does plastic surgery. I don’t fuck with that, you know? Making people into what they’re not. But I wouldn’t go to med school anymore, even if I could. Sick people are either faking or on track to die.” 

I’m being blunt and dramatic, but this is true. Even if I were miraculously cured by the divine strike of a suddenly merciful god, I wouldn’t be able to go to college. Mom just spent my savings fund on a facelift. So the money for my dream has ended up in the grabby hands of a Doctor Brady-type while I wait around to die. 

As I’m leaving Laura’s office, I tell her from the door- way, “I am not Doctor Brady Angel.” 

---

They took me off chemo six months into my stay. Doc Lumpy Neck asked Mom if she’d allow them to test some new sci-fi research drugs on me to slow the growth and assess the results for use on future patients. Mom agreed, and asked if my hair would grow back post-chemo because she wanted a nice, recent picture of me. Recent, or last. To everyone’s disappointment, being a crash test dummy has turned out to be a painful and mostly bald existence. 

I’m back from seeing Laura, and Judge Judy is still on. I’m balling up my blankets and positioning them underneath me to take pressure off of a bed rash when Mom comes in. Tossing her bag next to my feet, she glares at the TV. 

“Why do they make you watch this crap?” She shuts it off and Judge Judy disappears. Mom confiscates the Jell-O from my tray and eats a spoonful while she settles into the chair beside me. I see the fresh scar under her ear glint while she swallows. Behind her, snow falls past the window for the first time this winter. 

Mom reaches her hand to my scalp and fusses with the few patchy clumps of hair that have resurfaced since switching treatments. “Not much better, is it?” she says. Not really a ques- tion. 

We’re quiet, which is nothing new. Sometimes pain is exhaustion, and speech is a marathon. Sometimes we just have nothing good to say. 

“Your doctor caught me in the hall and asked if I want- ed to put you on antipsychotics because of the Doctor Angel thing. I said no because you don’t need that shit, do you?” 

I shake my head, and I’m looking at her with the snow in the background like I’ve never seen her before. She’s cussing like she stopped going to church, or maybe she’s drunk. 

“Right, good. I told him you weren’t insane. I mean, you cause trouble, but you always caused trouble. It’s nothing new.” Mom finishes the Jell-O and tosses the cup in the trash. “Sometimes I think these doctors are completely full of shit. Es- pecially that fat one with the lumps. He always hits on me, too.” 

I want to tell her, yes, exactly, you’re getting it, but I’m in mind-numbing pain. I consider buzzing for a nurse to hook me up to some painkillers, while Mom checks her lipstick in a com- pact. Taking low, careful breaths, I watch the snow fill my room with light. 

She sees the twist in my face and puts the compact away. “Listen—I know you wanted to be a doctor and I didn’t ever want to spit in the face of your dream. But after this last year, I swear they’re doing you wrong. And God is, too. Isn’t it just so unfair?” 

I smile. Yes. She’s looking at me, and she smiles, too—a full, real smile. It’s got life to it, so much life that I can see through her modifications and her choices. And she’s seeing me, weaker than I’ve ever been, but she’s seeing the life. The not-psy- chotic life, the not-dead-yet life. 

Mom’s running her thumb over my eyebrow, where the hair hasn’t grown back. I’m breathing slow and shallow through the pain. I’m tired, but I’m not dead. I’m thinking: quiet is a new peace. Silence is a new face. She gets up to leave. 

“I’ll be back tomorrow, Marcus.” She’s quick out the door, and I chant my name in my head like I’ve forgotten it. Tomorrow is Christmas. Doctors are not saviors. God is unfair. I am not alone. Snow makes every- thing look new. Dying is not dead. 

Marcus. Marcus. Marcus.

The Congressman’s Appointment

Kaitilin Gossett

“I won’t do it,” said Congressman Stephens, sitting on my examination chair with legs open a little too wide for his hospital gown, arms akimbo. There’d be no small talk. The Congressman was here on a mission. I put on my examination gloves. “I’m never shoving anything… up there,” he continued. “You’ve gotta give me something else.” His square, Mr. Middle America face still had a bulldoggish look to it, even if it was a little softer these days. His eyes were hard without being unfriendly, his jaw set in an assured smile. This was a man who was used to getting what he wanted. When he gave people that look, things happened. 

Things like getting booked with one of the nation’s top gynecologists for a basic consultation, with no referral, all because he couldn’t tolerate tampons. He demanded a cure for menstruation, and he wasn’t waiting around. 

I remembered, vaguely, bloodstained ballet tights. A middle school bathroom stall with peeling paint. And a cardboard applicator. All that stage makeup running down my cheeks. It never occurred to me to do anything but hide, and endure. They say one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. If only Simone de Bouvoir had lived to see the the Annandale virus, she would have had known how truly right she was. 

Any doctor could’ve examined the Congressman. All gynecologists are trained for Annandale Syndrome these days. I would probably prescribe a hormonal birth control with no placebo pills to slowly suppress his cycles, same as any other doctor. But no, it had to be me, and it had to be right now. Thus, I had a full slate of rescheduled patients and the beginnings of a tension headache. I wondered what kind of donation check the University of Michigan was cashing off of this. My department hardly needed the money; ever since the Annandale outbreak the ob/gyn department of the university hospital had been getting grant after grant approved. There was a whole new ob-gyn facility being built on campus.

“Let’s get your exam done first,” I told him. “Then I can make some recommendations.” He grimaced as I adjusted the chair and unfolded the stirrups, but complied with a soldierly air. His vulva was healthy, with the telltale abnormalities we’d come to understand as normal for victims of the Annandale virus. Still, not a bad looking vulva considering that, just over ten years ago, there had been a penis and scrotum here. The clitoris was still noticeably enlarged, a reminder of its previous life. 

Though he’d been infected in the initial outbreak ten years ago, the Congressman had only recently begun having periods. Just in time for menopause, I thought. He’d be back pounding on my door the second he had a hot flash. 

Some Annandale victims never started cycling. The effects of the virus tended to vary a little from man to man. The virus only produced full Annandale Syndrome in around forty percent of men; ten years in, we were still learning its pathology, with a cool two billion infected to study. Sweet, sweet vindication for whoever wrote those worst-case-scenario pandemic warnings at the CDC. 

“Are you sexually active, Mr. Stephens?” I asked. He snorted, one unshaven thigh twitching. “I’m not here for a full workup. I just need something for the—” 

“—we don’t have a full history on you,” I interrupted as gently as I could. I’d seen the Congressman on C-SPAN, and I didn’t put it past him to try and give me the Lyndon Johnson treatment, paper gown and exposed genitals or not. “According to the records transferred to us, you haven’t had a gynecological exam in six years. We need to get a history before we can decide on any treatment options.”

Should’ve made sure a PA had this part done already, I thought regretfully.

The Congressman nodded, eyes fixed somewhere on the ceiling as I myself often did when it was my turn in the chair. Finally, he seemed to come to an agreement with himself. 

“I am sexually active with my wife,” he said.

“Only your wife?”

“Only my wife.”

“And how long have you been monogamous?”

“We’ve been married thirteen years.”

“And how long have you been monogamous?” The Congressman looked innocently surprised. 

“One of the leading causes of complications from An- nandale is comorbidity with an STI,” I reminded him. “Men who were infected with an STI before contracting Annandale are at a high risk for pelvic inflammatory disease, and other problems.” The Congressman grimaced. 

“I’ve had a few partners,” he said, and then quickly add- ed, “before I got Annandale. All women. I used protection.” 

I noted that in his chart, and then got out fresh gloves and swabs, and the speculum. 

“What we’re going to do next is called a speculum exam,” I told him. 

Truly, he didn’t know how pampered he was. The speculum was one of the new designs. It was gentle and silicone, and it opened without the dreaded ratcheting noise that had caused generations of women to shrink back in terror, never to return to the ob/gyn office. These new, humane speculums had actually been around for decades. Problem was, nobody had ever funded the scrappy little women’s health startups that manufactured them. None ever got to mass production. Until Annandale. Now, you couldn’t find a practice without them. 

Congressman Stephens looked at the device, carefully designed for women’s comfort, with naked disgust for a second before he caught himself and smoothed his face back out. 

“I saw the construction on my way over,” he said, possibly to distract himself from what was to come. “It’s good to see our legislation in action. You know, I’m damn proud of that bill. They said the Freedom Caucus would never go for it, but I brought them over, despite the extremists trying to play football with millions of American’s lives. With my life.” 

Can’t imagine what that would be like, I thought. This chatter was a little less smooth, trying too hard for a masculine edge as I carried out a most unmasculine examination. But he was doing better than a lot of Annandale victims do for their first few exams. I’d had dozens of runners. They panic and break for freedom, gown and all, the second the speculum came out. I had to admire the toughness of this guy; with resilience like this, it’s no wonder he became such a political star. Who else would have the balls (too soon?) to spike VA funding measures because he didn’t get one of his riders attached? Oh yes, I’d been watching the news long before Annandale. His donors were some lucky people indeed. 

Congressman Stephens wasn’t a fan of the Pap smear.

“Tax dollars at work!” he grunted, flashing me a wry smile. I smiled back. Tax dollars indeed. I wondered what the Congressman remembered of those pre-Annandale days. I wondered if he thought about how he’d been redirecting and funneling those tax dollars back then. A Freedom Caucus superstar. I sure remember. I was there. 

My dissertation was on the reproductive care of poor women. I spent my PhD years in crowded, run-down waiting rooms, where too few doctors would try and keep women and their babies healthy. Those little buildings had been full of suffo- cating pressure, weighing on the staff and the patients. There was a feeling like being slowly strangled; one measure after another signed into law, sucking funding away, chipping away at those clinics bit by bit. The women could feel it. They were afraid, like refugees huddled in the middle of the holy war the government was waging against abortion. 

Funny how the pro-life groups had shared the fate of the Congressman’s gonads after the Annandale outbreak: shriv- eled, withdrawn, transformed. 

He listened with annoyance as I explained the bimanual part of the exam. 

“You know what the secret was, to getting the bill passed?” He asked me as I put on fresh gloves. 

“What was that?” I asked, because it was better to keep the patient relaxed before this part. 

“The name,” he told me. “Nobody remembers what it used to be called, when the first draft was brought before the House. It was the Emergency Appropriation for Women’s Health Infrastructure in Response to Annandale Syndrome. No wonder it got tanked five times in the House. No, the new name was what made it.” 

I smiled appreciatively. Sometimes, at home, I had to shut C-SPAN off. The things I’d hear just made me too angry. 

Congressman Stephens continued. “All the good things we’ve accomplished since that bill became law. Teen pregnancy is down, cancer screenings are up, infant mortality is down, maternal mortality is down—did you know we used to have the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world? Can you believe that? Barbaric. It all came down to the name.” I nodded and mhmmed. “When I renamed the bill, I knew that my colleagues in the House just needed to be reminded of what was at stake. Those of us who contracted Annandale didn’t choose to suffer this. Victims shouldn’t be punished by a chance of biology. These are human beings we’re talking about!” He paused. Keeping me hanging onto every word, I guessed. I could see him giving this speech next year during the midterms race. 

“And so,” the Congressman concluded, “I was able to bring together a divided House by renaming it the SOS Act.” As if I didn’t know the name of the law that had transformed my field. That had changed everything, more so than the virus itself. 

“It is much catchier,” I agreed lightly.

“And it unified Congress at last,” the Congressman said, grinning. “Just by reminding them that the purpose of this great law was Saving Our Sons.” 

Poor in Indiana

Marissa Artrip

“Thwack!” slams the old screen door. It clings to its rusty hinges more for show than for effectiveness, as the mosquitos fly in through the welcoming holes that permeate the mesh. Little bare feet slap against the concrete floor of the breezeway and hurry up the wooden stairs, careful to hop over the third stair that splintered and collapsed two weeks ago. 

“I’ll fix it on a rainy day,” Grandpa rumbles from his lawn chair in the shade of the garage where he makes camp each day with his ration of cigarettes and Diet Pepsi at his feet. “S’too nice to fix it today.” 

It’s June in Indiana. The rain doesn’t come. The little feet are muffled by the threadbare carpet of the first floor, but the rotting floorboards underneath release a cacophony of creaks and groans that remedies the quiet. 

“Grandma!” calls a little voice that belongs to the little boy with the little feet. “I found momma!” 

“Huh,” says Grandma from her easy chair. It’s not a question, but the boy in his red Spiderman pajama top and too big basketball shorts answers anyway. “I said I found momma!” 

“Huh.” Grandma says, with all the same concern as the time the boy announced that he found treasure down by the riv- er. What he called the river was a drainage ditch, and the treasure was the chipped remains of a glass insulator from the old power line. Grandma’s eyes never left the grainy television. 

To the little boy, his grandma and the worn brown La- Z-Boy she sat in were one and the same; it seemed her pudgy, round arms were too heavy to lift from the fraying armrests, and her thick, veiny calves glued to the floor at the base of the chair. Bulging out from beneath the faded fabric of her long blue dress, those legs frightened the boy for they were so unlike the toned, smooth legs of his mother who never seemed to stop moving. 

“Sit down, Brianne,” Grandma used to say to her. “You’re wearing a hole in the carpet pacing like that.” 

But Brianne didn’t stop. Her legs kept pacing, moving, run- ning. In high school she ran track: the 400 meters, the 200 meters, the 4×100 relay. She ran the five miles of muddy dirt road that separated her from the squat brick building that was Loomington High. She ran at practice each day on the black, cinder track that surrounded the mud pit that was the football field, and she ran home from practice each night as the sun was setting on the cornfields that seemed to line every road in town. 

When she was eighteen, Brianne ran to Colorado to go to school on an athletic scholarship. She made friends who had parents who took her out to dinner to places that did not serve their food in paper sacks. When her coach’s wife accused Brianne of seducing her husband and chased her down the hall of the student center, Brianne was asked to leave. So she went back to Indiana. 

When Brianne was twenty she fled to California to become a singer. She stayed with a friend she’d met in Colorado and performed in bars and cafés for applause and little else. When Brianne punched a producer for telling her she’d sing better topless and was charged with assault, she decided it wasn’t the career for her. So she went back to Indiana. 

When Brianne was twenty-one she escaped to Florida to be a bartender where she ran into her coach from her brief stint in university. He went back to Colorado with his wife. She went back to Indiana with a baby. 

“Once poor in Indiana, always poor in Indiana,” her daddy said. When Brianne’s Greyhound from Florida pulled into the station in Loomington, and she saw her daddy’s rusted red Chevy waiting in the parking lot, she cried. 

She named her son Jesse, and he made her happy for a time. “You keep my feet on the ground,” she told her baby boy with a smile on his first birthday. After six long years of waitressing at the local diner and enduring the false pleasantries of her peers from high school who married and had families, she found it difficult to see it as a positive anymore. 

Three days ago when the little boy told his Grandpa he’d walked home from school alone because his mama wasn’t there to meet him, the old man lit another cigarette from the half-empty pack on the ground. Grandpa showed just as much interest the day Jesse came home from school and told him he’d found a real dinosaur bone. The scratched rib Jesse produced looked identical to that of the deer that had decayed on the side of the road near their house after having been hit by a car. 

“She’ll be back,” Grandpa said in his raspy voice, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “S’too nice a day to go worrying about where Bri- anne’s got to now.” 

The boy stared at Grandpa, his backwoods Buddha whose tobacco zen couldn’t be interrupted by a pack of wild dogs. Bunching up his baggy shorts in his little fists, the little boy wandered out of the garage, kicking at the cracked concrete with his bare feet. Grandpa just stared down the vacant dirt road. 

The corn in the field next door shriveled up and died. The rain did not come. 

Two nights ago when Jesse asked Grandma where his mom- ma was, she said “hmph,” and kept watching the TV just as she had months ago when he had asked her where his cat, Whiskers, had gone. Jesse had called for Whiskers out his bedroom window every night for two weeks, but she did not return. 

The little boy watched the veins in his grandma’s leg bob sluggishly as she shifted her position in her chair, and then he ran out the door into the suffocating heat of the Indiana summer. 

The little boy looked for his mother among the shelves in the library where she had read him Love You Forever, and she cried and clutched his hand. The little boy looked at the post office where they had gone to send a picture of the little boy to Momma’s special friend in Colorado. He looked for her at the playground with the purple and green jungle gym where they played hide and seek the day she had received the same unopened letter back from her special friend. 

Finally, he looked for her on the tallest ledge of the quarry where they watched the sunset over the man-made lake bordered by walls of jagged gray limestone decorated with green and yellow graffiti that proclaimed “God is dead.” As the sky turned red, Brianne held her son to her chest. “One day we’ll leave Indiana,” she told him. There was a rumble of thunder from far off and the air smelled of rain. “One day.” 

“She always comes back,” Grandpa said to Grandma one night after a long day of smoking in the garage a week after Brianne had disappeared. “And she never asks for money. That’s something.” 

“Pfft,” snorted Grandma. “She doesn’t ask for nothin’ but she sure left us somethin’,” she said gesturing at the little boy with her can of Diet Pepsi. 

“She’ll be back,” Grandpa rasped. But Brianne didn’t come back. The next day passed, and it felt like an eternity to the little boy. Grandma sat in her La-Z-Boy. Grandpa sat in the garage. The little boy searched. 

“I really found her!” Jesse says again to his grandpa while the old man folds up his chair and tucks it against the wall next to the dusty bocce balls and the cobweb covered lawn mower. “It’s bedtime, kid,” Grandpa says without looking at his grandson. 

The little boy feels his throat begin to tighten and his eyes burn with impending tears. He hangs his head as he turns and steps over the cracked wooden transom, the slam of the screen door sending a spray of mosquitoes swirling into the tense evening air. The boy drags his feet up the wooden stairs, barely remembering to skip the third, collapsed step as uneven breaths shake his chest. In the squeaky bathroom with its ancient knobs and faucets, he brushes his teeth lethargically with a large glob of Crest, splattering his Spiderman shirt with white flecks of toothpaste. He shuffles across the hall to the baby blue room that was his momma’s when she was a girl and both of theirs when she came back from Florida. He drags his Spiderman pajama bottoms out of the lowest drawer of the wooden dresser as the first tears begin to well over the edges of his eyes. Kicking his loose shorts into the wicker hamper, the boy pulls on his pilling PJ pants and then pulls his knees up to his chest. 

On top of the dresser sit the cracked insulator, the deer bone, and a number of other bits and pieces, treasures in no one’s eyes but Jesse’s. 

All at once, Jesse’s longing and frustration overwhelm him. The sniffles he’d been holding back overflow, and he begins to shake and heave in earnest as tears carve raw lines down his ruddy cheeks. His uneven breaths are now punctuated with involuntary moans and gasps that fill the stuffy air of the little white house. A light flicks on in another room, and the boy tries to suffocate his sobs as heavy feet creak down the hallway. 

Jesse does not turn as the door to the room opens, and he does not respond when his grandma calls his name. He hears her step closer, feels the shifting of the warped floorboards beneath them. When she asks what’s wrong, he does not respond. She reaches for him, and he scrambles away, putting his back to the wall like a cornered mouse. She demands to know what’s wrong, and he relents, explaining as best he can between his shuddering breaths and uncontrollable whimpers. When she puts a meaty hand on his shoulder, in that room that belonged to him and his delicate, light-footed mother, Jesse jerks back again, pushing himself tightly against the wall and then up to a standing position. Shoving past his startled grandma, Jesse runs out of the room and then out of the house, leaving the screen door banging behind him. 

He runs, runs through the cornfield next door, up the power line, and down to the base of the old quarry. He stumbles along the thin, rocky trail to the small lake in the center of the pit. When he reaches the looming shadow of the highest point of the quarry, he pauses and looks out over the water with its little islands and idle ducks all tinted red in the fading sun. The air is heavy and a strong breeze whips around him, and then up out of the quarry and across the fields to the little white house where Jesse’s grandma is quickly dialing the phone. 

Then the little boy turns to face the ground at the base of the cliff where a pretty blonde woman lays with her arms spread wide and her left leg bent at an odd angle beneath her tattered, white dress. Her eyes and mouth both hang partially open. Lady- bugs and flies speckle her face and cluster at her sticky hairline. Resting on a large, smooth stone, her head is encircled in a rust-col- ored halo. Sirens begin to wail not far off. 

Jesse lets out another rattling breath and steps over to his mother. Ignoring the splotchy bruises on her skin and the unfamiliar bloating of her limbs, he sits next to her and curls up in the space between her arm and her body. The little boy rests his head on his mother’s shoulder and waits for the rain to come.

Pharos

Olivia Sturtvant

The first time I saw her was on a dark night in mid- April. I had set out on a walk in search of beer but ended up on the beach. The Atlantic ocean spit its bitter cold salt at me as if it, too, were questioning what my intentions were. To its credit, I would also be suspicious of any twenty-some-odd man wandering aimlessly on my shores. I glanced around to see if anyone was nearby to share in the ocean’s wariness. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of her. 

She stood tall and sea-worn, each brick bent slightly to the position the harsh waves demanded of them. The green hue of neon light illuminated the fog around her skirt and made the tower appear to be much more formidable than what it really was––an old lighthouse at the edge of town, only remembered by those who depend on her for guidance. 

I drew closer, curiosity behind every step. The green light was emanating from a sign blinking into the darkness, broad- casting OPEN to all souls who may find themselves awake at this terrible hour. 

Upon further inspection, I saw the open sign belonged to a bar that had taken up residence in the bottom nook of the lighthouse on this rock-fortified peninsula. 

I noticed that the glass door was cold against the palm of my hand; I pushed it open with some force. A rusted bell alerted all four of the bar’s inhabitants to my presence. The floor- boards let out a loud creak, and the smell of spilled scotch, leather boots that would never be completely dry, and damp driftwood hit me. 

The bartender briefly took his attention off the glass he was cleaning to glance at me. His eyes didn’t quite fit him, the edges of them too hardened by time to still have that vibrant spark of youth inside them. Something about him rang with familiarity, yet also fear. He turned back to the glass and addressed me without looking up again. 

“First time in,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah, yeah.” I shrugged off my coat and tossed it onto the bowing wooden stand by the door. Bits of residual sea spray and rain rolled off the coat’s grimy black sleeves and fell to the floor. My boots tracked in more water as I made my way to the comfortable looking bar stool. 

Without saying anything the bartender placed a shot glass in front of me and began to fill it. The bottle, smaller than the rest on the shelf, was covered with a thin layer of dust. From where I sat I could see that it was hardly full at all and the label had been torn off, save for a small scrap with a red letter I could hardly make out. I swore the bottle could have contained part of the sun, judging from the bright orange floss that flowed from it. The floss turned to liquid in the glass and when the man stopped pouring, the drink began to shimmer and swirl. 

“What is that?” The bartender looked me directly in my eyes and it hit me how much I had missed at first glance. The creases around his eyes and on his forehead weren’t what made him look so old, nor was it the silvery gray shadow of a beard. It was his hands that aged him so drastically. The skin by his nails was peeling back, liver spots stained the fragile, cracking skin, and it looked like his fingers were permanently bent forward as if he had never really stopped scratching at something. 

“Hope,” he said, “Not much of it around these parts any more, so drink up.”

“But I didn’t ask for this,” I said as he made his way over to the other end of the bar to carefully put the bottle back on the top shelf. 

“Well, yeah,” he grunted, his shoulders still facing away from me. 

The bell above the door solemnly announced the arrival of another patron; the sliver of the bartender’s attention I held shifted to the newcomer. 

“Frank,” the bartender said as he nodded to the man walking into the bar. From the tone of his voice I could gather that these men had known each other a while, yet the sweeping note of hostility that the one word carried filled the room with palpable tension. 

Frank made his way to the bar and chose the stool three seats from mine, leaving me well within earshot. 

“Thought you wouldn’t be back for a while,” the bartender grunted. 

“Believe me,” said Frank, “neither did I.” I watched as the bartender let his hand hover in front of the array of bottles that lined the set of shelves in front of a dingy mirror. He didn’t move. I was beginning to think time had stopped when finally he moved. It wasn’t a large motion, just barely enough to disrupt the still air around him. In fact, it almost looked as though the bottle ap- peared in his hand. 

He placed a champagne flute in front of Frank and coaxed the cork out of the neck of a glass bottle that shone a brilliant blue in the light. The color held my eye. I watched as the bartender began to pour––instead of the effervescent pale blue liquid I was expecting, a dark gray sludge speckled with bits of what looked like mold and moss oozed out of the bottle and landed in the flute. The sound and smell of it reminded me of every Thursday night in college spent regretting every sip of lukewarm alcohol that had passed through my lips only hours before. 

“What is that?” I retched. With hardly any regard to me, the bartender turned the bottle toward me so I could read the label: A TASTE OF ONE’S OWN MEDICINE. 

The ink was bright and bold, and shimmered as he placed the bottle down. He turned the label so that Frank could read it too, and then watched as Frank picked the flute up and held it under his nose as if it contained a dark red wine. He took one sip and winced. 

“You know the drill,” the bartender said ominously.

Frank simply nodded.

I began to feel out of place. Every gaze up from the bar, and away from the drink, seemed to bring the walls in closer. The air suddenly felt thicker; each inhale coated my lungs like coal smoke and lingered until the exhale. I could only tell time was passing because each second was counted off by a beat of my anxious heart. 

“Can’t leave ‘till the glass is empty,” Frank said, glancing at me with a look that was hard to place. It bordered on sympathy but with pangs of jealousy in his irises. He looked, begrudgingly, at the bartender and lifted the flute from the stained oak bar. He brought it to his mouth and paused before touching it to his lips. 

“What is this place?” I asked. 

“No one is really sure,” Frank said, the drink clinging like plaque to his teeth. “It’s a sort of otherworldly space––some think it’s an isle that Odysseus once visited, others say it’s like the lost city of Atlantis, and some say it’s a twisted version of Fate.” 

The bartender ignored him. “It’s called Pharos,” he said.

That was all the explanation he gave.

I looked to Frank for more but he was busy trying––and failing––to chug the liquid that was now coming out of the glass like tar. 

Curiosity drove the words out of my mouth before I had time to think them through, “What did you do to deserve that?”

Frank eyed me from his seat. “Nosy, ain’t ya?”

I held my hands up in defeat, but something about the old man’s eyes softened and a moment later he began to tell me of his sins. 

“Everyone in town knows––there’s no use trying to hide it anymore. It was me who bought the paper mill.” 

The paper mill employed more than half of the town. It was powered by the river that cut through the east side of town, and emptied into the ocean about a mile back from the part of the beach I had been walking. The mill was the symbol of Penobscot; its brightly colored roof had become a sort of emblem. Those that worked there took pride in that fact; they carried themselves differently from the people who were employed elsewhere. That pride had evaporated last week when we learned that soon we would all be people who were employed elsewhere, or nowhere. The mill was shutting down. Worse, it was being torn down. 

The old owners, the Lyins, had fallen on hard times recently––we all had. The downturn of the economy had left the mill in trouble, and ultimately up for sale. This meant one of two things, depending on the buyer: a significant injection of capital, with which the management whispered the old mill might well turn a profit again, or a quick buck for some out-of-town scrap dealer. With one mind, a whole town hoped for the first option, but feared and, on some level, expected the second. When we walked up to the mill’s great oak doors to find them locked from the inside with no explanation but a scrap of paper that read CLOSED, we knew the worst had happened. 

Abruptly, I was hyperaware of every strand of hair on the 

back of my neck, because they all were standing straight up. I could hear the blood pumping through my heart and rushing into my veins. Every part of my body was begging me to find a way out, or hit someone, hit Frank. I couldn’t move. I felt like I was made of lead. Now I could sympathize with the dead flies in my mom’s kitchen. This is how they must have felt when they hit the bright yellow fly paper––calm at first and then suddenly excruciatingly stuck. 

The bartender eyed me, “Do you not listen, boy? You can’t leave without finishing your drink. Fighting will only make you tired.”

I eyed the glass in front of me. Beads of condensation had started to form and fall down the sides. I took it in my hands. It felt surprisingly light for how full it was. I held it briefly under my nose and inhaled deeply. It smelled like sour candies and vanilla. 

“Might as well just get it over with,” Frank said, now halfway through his own glass. He gulped the rest down. He left soon after, making eye contact only with the floor. 

I figured I should do the same; maybe I could catch him on his way to the car. Give him more than just a bad tasting drink. I braced myself, then drank it. 

Strawberries exploded in my mouth. Fresh, picked right at the beginning of summer, just before they got too ripe. Only it wasn’t strawberries. It was as if I was drinking the sunlight that was stuck inside the berries when they were harvested. Their lifeblood. 

The next sip gave me a similar sensation, only this time I was sucking the sun out of a mint leaf. Then an orange. Ginger. Then a mango. At the very bottom of the glass was a ring of sugar. I stuck my finger into it and hastily scooped the sugary paste into my mouth, as much as I could. 

“Enough,” the bartender said yanking the glass back across the bar. 

“But––but––I!” My hands shot out after it.

“Stop.” The warning in his voice gave me pause. “It’s addic- tive, that’s why there is so little. Too much hope is a dangerous thing.” 

“How?”

The bartender turned towards me for the last time, his gaze heavy. “I’ve seen men turn to beast for a fifth of what you just had. Commit unspeakable acts––murder, treason––for one small sip.” 

“Then why did you give me so much?” 

He held my gaze for a beat, then went back to cleaning the glass he had been holding when I first came in. 

I blinked, and then I was outside on the cold sand. In the distance the morning sun was rising over the hills, illuminating the spot where the tower had stood. Now it was just a pile of rocks being beaten by the sea.