The Bit-Hacker
by David Hash Miller
“Hi, excuse me, I’m in 17A, can I scoot by?”. The new autonomous passenger trains were spacious and comfortable, but my seatmate in 17B had a laptop plugged into the USB port on the seatback entertainment screen, its silver braided cable blocking my way. He looked up at me, eyes dark and quick.
“One sec.” He made a few final taps on his keyboard, then unplugged the cable, clearing my path. “All set.”
As I slid by and settled into my seat, I noticed that my entertainment screen - showing a graphical “Welcome to Acela2” intro - was markedly different from his, which displayed rapidly scrolling text. I’m not a technical guy, but I do work for a technology company and have learned a thing or two through osmosis.
“Uh, why is your screen booting Linux?”
He shrugged. “I hacked it. That’s why.”
“How? These trains are secure.”
“Nothing is secure, guv’nor.”
“That is fundamentally untrue. Look, I know. I work for TechBold - I’m in marketing in the election systems division. And I assure you, our systems are very, very secure. We guarantee free and fair elections.”
“Any tech I touch, I can get into. Just may take a little effort.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He looked at me, dark eyes making me uneasy, before turning again toward his laptop and typing a few commands.
“OK, don’t believe me.”
What an ass! Rather than wasting any more of my time with this fool, I instead looked out the window at the speeding landscape and pale sunset.
“Excuse me, Mr. Drayman?” I turned to see a smiling attendant bearing a tray.
“Yes??” I replied, wary.
“Your order, sir! Two beers and two deluxe turkey sandwiches. With extra chips!”, delivered with enthusiasm.
I looked over to my neighbor, who had helpfully opened up both of our seatback trays to accept the proffered food. As the attendant departed, he lifted his beer in a toast to me.
“Thanks for the snack!”
We ate and drank wordlessly. I had many questions, and was about to ask when he began packing up his belongings, typing a few final commands into his laptop before closing it.
“Where are you going?” I asked. “I need to understand -”
“This is my stop” he interrupted, gesturing out the window with a thumb as the train unexpectedly slowed to a smooth stop adjacent to a cornfield.
“Wait—what—what’s your name?” I asked, desperate.
“My friends call me WhiteRat. See you around.”
Moments later, the train smoothly accelerated again, passing through a rural railroad crossing. Before the angle of the window occluded my view, I watched him get into a waiting autonomous Ryde, the small white car automatically opening its door for him. I sat back, chuckling. What a character!
I pulled up my phone to message my wife about this encounter; she’d appreciate it and we’d both get a chuckle out of it. As I did so, a new message notification popped up, from “Transmittor”. Strange...I didn’t remember installing that app. I tapped, and read the message: “Mark, great to meet you. Let’s keep things free and fair! Your new friend, WhiteRat.”
David Hash Miller is an information security professional living and working in New England. After many years of work-related non-fiction writing (including the publication of two technical books), he decided to explore the creative, unstructured, and remarkably adjective-rich world of fiction writing. He can be reached on Twitter @DavidHashMiller.
Instructions
by Emily Fontenot
After three years of having a period, I know it’s time to use a tampon. People have been telling me it’s easier. You’re not as scared of bleeding through. But to stick such a foreign object into your most secret place…
I’m old enough to do it. Eliza said her mom taught her how. Marie said her sister taught her. My mom is awkward, and my sister’s already given me enough grief about not yet using them. I’ve read through the instructions at least seven times.
I can do this.
The instructions are good. They give you options—whatever makes you most comfortable. They remind you to relax.
The illustrations make me nauseous though, so I pick up my pants, still tamponless, and cut them off. I return to the bathroom.
I rewash my hands. The instructions say to choose a position. You can start by standing with one leg up on the toilet seat or sit with your knees spread. I’ve tried both plenty of times, but I try again anyway. As I stand with my foot up, bending and deciding if I’m comfortable, I see the several discarded tampons from my failed attempts blossoming out of the trashcan. I throw some toilet paper over them, attempt to hide them.
Seated it is.
I take a few deep breaths and widen my legs. Wrapping removed, held in the correct directions—that was the most helpful illustration, I remember. I move on to step two. I touch the tip of the tampon to the tip of my ____ (I can’t even force myself to think the work) and take two deep breaths, forcing my body to relax.
As I feel the ____ opening, I go for it. I insert the applicator slowly, until my thumb reaches my body, as the instructions indicate.
I open my eyes. Then I proceed to step three and use my index finger to push the “plunger” into the barrel. The tampon is now securely in place.
Step four. I remove the applicator and throw it in the trash can among the rest.
I breathe again. The instructions say if I’ve inserted it far enough, it will feel comfortable. This does feel almost normal—it doesn’t hurt like the previously removed ones did.
I pull up my pants and stand. I feel the tampon shift a bit and slightly pinch. But I guess when there’s something gouged in your vagina it can’t feel completely normal. So I shift my weight as I walk to try and shift it back into its more comfortable spot.
I steel myself. This is what adult periods feel like and I’ll just have to get used to it.
I walk out of the bathroom.
“Why’re you walking like that?” my sister asks.
“I put in a tampon,” I say and lift my head. “But it kinda hurts a little.”
“Then you didn’t put it in right.” She walks off.
“But I followed the instructions,” I call after her.
Emily Fontenot is a writer from south Louisiana. She is currently working on her PhD in Creative Writing at Illinois State University. Her fiction has been published in Children, Churches and Daddies, Quail Bell Magazine, Gone Lawn, The Southwestern Review, and others. Her poetry has appeared in Antenna::Signals and in Buddy, a lit zine, where her poem, debris, won their first annual poetry contest. You can follow her on Twitter as @EmilyReece16.
The Balcony
by Batool Alzubi
Talkalakh, Syria
Before March, Sameera and her parents lived on the fifth floor. She felt like she was on top of Talkalakh whenever she stood on their long balcony. The balcony, Baba would say. The balcony is the reason why I bought this apartment. She watched Baba turn into a still figure whenever he talked about one of his decisions. She would watch him as he held the metallic railing, and it almost looked like his long fingers were blending with the metal. The metal absorbed the heat during Syria’s hot summer, burning any hands that touched it. Sameera and Omar eventually turned it into a game: for how long can you keep your hands on the railing? She loved watching Omar lose. You are crazy, he would cry as he walked away from the balcony. The balcony was used for all of the Dandashi family’s celebrations. Birthdays, graduations and Mama’s fortune coffee readings. Sameera watched Aunt Lama swirl the leftover coffee grounds of Mama’s cup. Three times, she counted. Sameera sat next to Mama, and she could feel her hesitation in the process. Aunt Lama turned it upside down, the dark grounds spilling on the round glass table they placed between the three of them.
“Wait for it to dry,” Aunt Lama said as she crossed her long legs and leaned away from the cup. Sameera knew that guilt crept inside Mama’s chest whenever she believed in the process Aunt Lama completed.
“You know, Lama,” Mama said as she played with the tassels of her hijab. “I heard that our prayers aren’t accepted for forty days and nights if we believe in what’s inside the cup.”
“We are doing it for fun. Do you really believe in this?” Aunt Lama held the cup, pointing it towards Mama.
Mama murmured something under her breath that Sameera tried to make sense of. She loved watching Mama in moments of doubt. Mama always seemed like a believer in everything around her, a woman with no questions, and Sameera envied her for it. She wondered if Mama came out of her mother’s womb with answers to everything. She never saw her miss a prayer or argue against a verse. When Mama questioned her fortune telling actions, Sameera noticed Mama’s crossed arms and the rocking back and forth in her chair.
A bird. A bag. Look at the road. No, that’s a door. An Ear. A ring. An arrow. A bee. An eye. Oh no, that’s a big eye. A boat. A tree. At least, you have a tree. A cow. A rabbit. Do you see the mouse? A snake. Look at your sun. Sameera continued to listen to Aunt Lama as she swirled the cup. Sameera saw the bird and the eye.
“Do you see a ring for Sameera,” Mama said.
Sameera grabs the cup from Aunt Lama’s hand. “I see a bird.’
“I see a small ring,” Aunt Lama moves Sameera’s hand and the cup closer to her eyes. “There is a road connected to the ring. It looks like it’s not happening anytime soon.”
Sameera looked at Mama’s hopeful face. Even when Sameera held the cup, Mama’s attention was on what Aunt Lama was going to say next.
Sameera was familiar with Mama’s habit of fixing her hijab when she tried to ignore what she heard. “Do you really believe this superstitious nonsense?” Mama said.
“A bird means news,” Sameera could sense when Mama was uncomfortable, and she wanted to continue.
“I’m going to pray,” Mama stood.
Batool Alzubi is a first-year English PhD student with an emphasis on creative writing and Middle Eastern Literature at Oklahoma State University. She published two fiction pieces, "Illegally Alive" by Bacopa Review and "Not One of Ms. Aisha's Stories" by Santa Ana River Review.
Where Are They Now
by Cristina Legarda
Kathleen flew to Italy for a conference, but she had signed up for the conference to find a lost love. Not because she wanted to rekindle anything – that long-ago summer in Florence belonged in the past. But she was curious as to what had become of Luca. Luca, the folly of her college years; the love that had made her lose her mind for a season.
She was staying in one of those old pensiones with a roof terrace, a grumpy-friendly concierge-porter-handyman, no air conditioning, tired upholstery, and a passable continental breakfast every morning. She glanced through the conference program while she sipped the last of her coffee: Brunelleschi’s Dome: A Second Look; Secrets of the Brancacci Chapel; The Frescos in the Basement: What Happened in Siena; so many presentations she wanted to attend. But even the most captivating session couldn’t distract her from The Plan.
The Plan was to leave the conference toward the end of the afternoon and walk toward San Miniato. Perhaps she would get an espresso or a gelato on the way. She would sit in the little piazza where she knew, from stalking him on the internet, Luca’s office was located and wait for him to exit. She would be wearing sunglasses, of course, and she wouldn’t speak to him – just watch, perhaps tail him for a while. Maybe he would stop and buy flowers for someone– a wife, a mistress, a girlfriend – on his way home. Maybe he would, as he often had when they were young, sit at a café to sketch and unwind. Perhaps he had some gray hair by now, and with that infuriating gift men of a certain age have, he would look distinguished and even more handsome, rather than old and washed out. Or maybe he had a married man’s little potbelly – a dad bod – and she would smile at how they were both sagging a bit now, so removed from the taut and energetic bodies of thirty years ago, gleaming with sweat after an afternoon of lovemaking.
Kathleen’s heart was pumping faster than she thought possible as she approached the little piazza, sat at an outdoor table across from where Luca’s office was, and ordered a limoncello. She was too jittery for espresso. She pulled a copy of Oggi out of her bag and started leafing through it without registering anything she was looking at. After what felt like an hour, but was only minutes, she finished her limoncello and her page turning, all the while glancing intermittently at the door of Luca’s building. This is stupid, Kathleen thought to herself. This is completely, insanely stupid.
She paid the bill and gathered up her things to leave, making an awkward scraping noise of metal against pavement when she tried to push her chair in. As she started to head back to her pensione she heard a voice behind her, deep and warm, and very surprised.
“Catalina.”
Holding her breath, she turned to face him.
Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to Bethesda, Maryland. She is now a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared in America magazine, The Dewdrop, Plainsongs, FOLIO, Lucky Jefferson, HeartWood, Coastal Shelf, The Good Life Review, and others.
The Last Bet
by William Falo
It never failed. Every time I quit gambling, the call came. A sure thing. A guaranteed winner.
“Jake, this is straight from the stables. Stargazer is ready to run the race of his life.” Scott told me.
“You talked to the trainer?”
“Yep.”
“I told Emily I quit gambling.”
“Make this your last bet.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you at the track parking before the race.” I needed to gather money. A big bet on a long shot means a big payoff. I could get the video game I’m developing into the market; maybe developers would jump onboard. The first stop was the bank. I drained our joint accounts. I used the cash advances on our credit cards. I ran home and took the money we saved for emergencies.
I looked up at the entrance pillars and a horse and jockey statue on top of one of them in the parking lot, and I felt lucky.
Scott waited in his car. I got in and gave him all my money.
“This is it, buddy.” He set up his laptop.
I hesitated. Online gambling made it seem easy and almost like it wasn’t real. It was like we were just playing a video game, and the games were my life work. Once he clicked the enter key, there was no going back. All the money Emily and I saved was on the line.
He hit the key and placed the bet.
What did I do? We watched online as the bell rang, freezing all the betting. Scott turned up the volume, and the announcer yelled. “They’re off.”
The horses thundered around the track, and I struggled to see Stargazer. When they turned for the final stretch, a few bumped into each other.
“Foul,” I yelled.
“They never object to that here.”
The number 3 horse raced ahead of Stargazer right before the finish line. I lost.
“No. No. No.” I stormed around the house. “It was rigged.”
“Let’s wait until it’s official,” Scott said. Obviously, he didn’t bet all his life savings.
I glared at him and stormed out of the car. I headed to a wooded area nearby. I kept a rope already tied in a hangman’s knot in my trunk. Emily said if I gambled again, she was leaving me. There was nothing else to live for. I let go of the branch. The rope held. My phone fell out of my pocket and landed on the ground facing me.
My eyes blurred. The phone buzzed, and a text message appeared. I made out the words; an objection, winner disqualified, Stargazer won. I tried to grab the rope as I fell into darkness.
I heard the creaking of wheels. I thought a group of demons was rolling me into hell.
A hoarse voice spoke. “Hold on.”
I saw something sharp like a knife, then I hit the ground so hard I blacked out.
When I opened my eyes, a man stood over me.
“Are you okay?”
“I think.” My neck burned, and my head pounded. I saw my phone near the man’s foot when I looked around. I crawled to it, grabbed it then shoved it in my pocket.
He turned to roll the shopping cart away. A small dog inside the shopping cart barked. “It’s okay, Tinker. He will be okay.”
“Wait. Thank you.” I reached into my pocket, but I had no money.
He rolled on. “What’s your name?” I called out.
“Peter.” He started to walk away then turned back.
I tried to stand up but staggered. My mind raced ahead, and I planned to put all the money back.
###
One month later
I stared at the entrance to the track and saw Scott. He got another hot tip, and I agreed to meet him outside the track.
I walked toward the gate until I heard a creaking sound. I saw the shopping cart and the small dog inside it. Peter looked worse than before, thinner, weaker, and he walked with a limp.
I rubbed my neck. It still burned.
“Peter,” I called out.
“Hey.” He stopped. “The tree hugger.”
I laughed and petted Tinker. She let me. The love that came through the small dog’s big eyes made me not want to stop.
“You’re back to the track?”
“I. No.” I lied. “I have to thank you again. My life has changed since you saved me. A game I was developing was picked up by a big company. I even hired some workers.”
“Good for you.” He rolled the cart away.
“Wait. Do you want a job?”
“I don’t know much about video games.”
“That’s why I need you. The young people I hired know nothing about real life. It’s a perfect match. You can help them set up the characters.”
“We’ll. I could use a job, but Tinker is my therapy dog. She comes with me.”
“Of course, I need therapy too. Everyone in that office does.” I still have suicidal thoughts, and I struggle to handle triggers like the temptation that brought me to the track again.
“Okay.”
“I know where there’s an empty apartment you can live in. It’s near the office. I’ll pay for it.”
He smiled, unsure to believe me or not, but I would do it. I waved goodbye to Scott and took out my phone. This was like the birth of a new life, and I wouldn’t throw it away again.
I took out my phone. “Emily, I have to tell you something?” It was a gamble. My last bet, but I had to tell her the truth. Peter nodded, and he rolled the cart with Tinker in it alongside me. He gave me a second chance at life, and I hoped that Emily would give me one too.
“Yes, I will get professional help, and I already know a therapy dog,” I told Emily.
Peter smiled at me, and he rolled his cart toward my car.
William Falo lives in New Jersey with his family, including a papillon named Dax. His stories have been published or are forthcoming in various literary journals. He can be found on Twitter @williamfalo and Instagram @william.falo.
David Gets Out of It
by Kenneth Pobo
At the cleaners I’m waiting for my best suit to be handed back to me, clean and perfectly pressed. I’m going to my twenty-fifth high school reunion, and I want to look good. For nobody. In high school I didn’t care about looking good. Why look good for a geometry test or boys who waited by the door so they could mock me and beat me up? “Hi, little girl.” “Hey faggy boy!” “You’ll never escape us, not now or ever.”
They were wrong, somewhat. I did escape them, went to college several counties away, and eventually got a job selling furniture at Gabby’s Furniture Mart. The pay wasn’t great, but no one bothered me. I fell in love a few times, liked being in love, but mostly at the beginning. After three months the other person was a finished crossword puzzle.
Bobolinko was different. I thought maybe that would last. Something in me started to pull away—even when we seemed most happy, most connected. Bobolinko really was very sweet, maybe too sweet. Chocolate is delicious, but too much chocolate and I end up sneaking peanut butter crackers.
I tried to let Bobolinko down easy, lowering him gently into the grave of love. We “could still be friends.” We both knew that was a lie, the kind that gets said at such times. I wish that lovers were like a good commission. I can put it in the bank or use it for mad money. I never save. Everything is mad money, even time.
Kenneth Pobo has a collection of micro-fiction published from Deadly Chaps called Tiny Torn Maps. His chapbook of poems, Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose, was published this year by BrickHouse Books. His flash appears in A Coup of Owls, Blink Ink, Apple in the Dark, Ran Off With The Star Bassoon, Brittle Star, and elsewhere.
Hair
by Catherine C. Con
“She is the only infant with a whole head of dark hair, there is no mistaking her with the other bald ones.” The overworked young nurse sneered at my father. It was the first maternity hospital in Taichung, Taiwan. And it was his first born.
But he went into the nursery and checked my wristband.
“Just to be sure, you never know.” He murmured.
He was ushered out of the nursery.
Looking in from the pixie glass, he was amazed. “I made her. A life. I made. My dark hair, sallow skin. My life.”
He bathed me, wiped my face with soft warm cheesecloth. Trimmed off a lock of my hair, taped it on the front page in the baby journal. Fine, silky, black hair. The beginning of a journey. My mother put a yellow bow on a strand of hair on top of my head and took a picture of me. A red, angry, wrinkled face, eyes shut tight, determined not to be bothered. Knowing nothing except survival. Cried when hungry, tired, wet, hot, cold, uncomfortable. Demanding little tyrant that ruled the house. All the adults minded her whims.
First hair cut strapped down on a toddler’s high chair. Wriggled. Screamed. Nonstop. Uneven hair, late winter lawn trying to return to spring, patches of sprouting yellow green, and patches of bare dirt holes. They decided to go for long hair. Two long braids on my shoulders. Then one long braid on my back. The best wigs were made from Asian hair. Donation for cancer children’s wigs.
I cut my long braid and donated. Then I let it grow, wait, cut, and donate.
College life. Short hair, efficient. Pixie cut, fashionable. He liked bob cut, got married in a short bob cut. A dark-haired bride, next to a blond curly groom.
She came, my shrieking oppressor. Her father’s blond curls and blue eyes. Easier with short hair. Professional children’s hair salon in America. Coaxing, candy, small toys after. Neat short hair without tears or accidents. No pain. Children’s haven.
Catherine C. Con, English Literature (BA) Fu-Jen Catholic University, Taiwan. System Science (MS) Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.; a Computer Science instructor, University of South Carolina, Upstate. Published in Emrys Journal, Tint Journal, The Bare Life Review, The Petigru Review, HerStry, Shards (Shards.glassmountainmag.com), Dunes Review, Emrys Journal Online (Medium.com), National Women's History Museum, Catfish Stew, Change Seven, Longridge Review, Limit Experience Journal.
IL N’Y A PAS, THERE ISN’T
by Vincent Houp
“And then in G Minor…”
The piano plays off key a few times.
“No.”
The man says sternly, he grabs ahold of the boy’s hand and forcibly goes over the desired keys with his fingers over the boys. He can’t break his look at the boy after he does this, his frustration crude and sick but he tries and contains himself before saying.
“Now C Major.”
The boy barely taps on the keys, almost afraid while looking up at the man.
“That’s enough for today, now go into your study, alright?”
The boy’s shoes can be heard tapping in a rush upstairs behind the room empty aside from the piano and the man. His hand covers his mouth, as he sulks looking into the piano, almost motionless, lost in that thought. The room has curved arches on its door openings, the window has a light drape over it, the sun barely enters the room. A telephone ringing interrupts his contemplation. He sits there as he hears it ring and eventually rises to the kitchen where the landline is on the wall adjacent to the countertop.
“Hello?”
“Yes, is Jason in?”
“This is he.”
“Oh wonderful, it’s Mr. Rodrick- “
The man’s face loses all expression as if stolen away from him.
“I’m back from Austria and I’d like to come around and see you sometime, I hear you have a son now? Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure he’s quite the protégé if he’s your son- “
“I’m not sure it’s a good time, he’s come down with something and he better get some rest.”
“Oh, that’s quite unfortunate news isn’t it. Well, I’d like to come around and see you if anything-“
“The doctors say that it’s quite serious, no one should come to the house…”
“Oh, I see, very well…”
“Thanks for calling up.”
And the response is muttered to the man as he isn’t listening anymore and after Mr. Rodrick is done, the man hangs up the phone. He notices the boy peering over the doorway’s edge into the kitchen.
“It wasn’t anybody, go back to your study now, go on.”
He listens as the boy’s shoes tap against the wood of the floors and stairs to his room. The man goes into the piano room and sits down again resuming his gaze at the keys then slowly, like reaching out a handout to touch a wild animal, with both curiosity and fear, he places his right hand on a key and starts pressing it in its singularity. Then the melody adds other notes with his right hand, without much of his own choice, his left hand rases automatically to the bass notes and he’s carried away like swimming, lost in the primal yearning to reach, his body language is ecstatic, to him, he is no longer in a room, there is no sight, the world is sound and the melodies story and his own soul are intertwined, there’s nothing but this tune. Again, the same movement but in hastier time, he’s swimming faster out, out toward the endless sea before him on the evenings start. Again, and again, quicker and quicker like it’s a dance with himself and the song, swimming faster and faster and then all of sudden the crescendo to end the swim, to end the dance, smashes out and he’s left out in the sea, lost without sight of land, breathing heavily and coming out of his trance. He’s still for a moment. Breathing a little loud enough to be heard. It was now dark in the room; the sun had gone down; he hadn’t noticed a thing. He turns and sees the boy standing watching him as if he were an angel or some kind of being above a man. The man gets an idea impulsively and gestures for the boy to come closer with a wave of his hand and the boy comes and the man puts the boy’s fingers on some keys and says.
“Go on.”
And the boy plays and then the man says.
“And then G minor…”
Thinking he’s figured out the magic to it all, through his trance then the piano plays out of key again…
“You can’t tell the difference, can you?”
They can’t see each other in the darkness of the room.
Vincent Houp is a writer from Lexington, KY. He has self-published a poetry chapbook, Red Knuckled Pups With Drinking Problems. He also has been published in the thirteenth issue of the Bluegrass Accolade. For all inquiries: vinhoup@gmail.com.
Ingrown Hairs
by Abigail Mathews
I counted nine black dots on his jaw and neck, where the hair had trapped itself under the skin. He let me take tweezers to them: poking holes deep into the dark spots, pulling the long hairs through and out. And he didn’t even flinch. Not even once.
There was an intimacy in the act of grooming each other. And as I dug far into his pores, weaving between pieces of overgrown stubble, I could feel his chest rise up and down- bouncing my own chest up and down as I lay across him- and our bodies moved together. My tongue contorted with concentration inside my mouth, twisting around itself and moving across the sides of my cheeks as I scrape the skin off the top of one of his bumps. This one is shallow, and so it pops out easily.
My body relaxes into him as every hair reveals itself: twisting, dark, and wet. My stomach rolls on the sides from my hunched spine, and I allow my skin to wedge itself between his. And I allow my body to linger there for an uncomfortably long time. But he doesn’t tell me to move- even as the tweezer metal begins to warm against his cheek. Even as my eyes begin to burn- searching for another spot where a hair is shy. I would allow my eyes to dry completely, and my back to always stay locked into a roll, for you- in this day.
He needs to shave.
I was twelve when I shaved my legs for the first time. I wore a bathing suit, one that was a size too small and cut into my legs- carving red lines into the creases above my thighs- and I made my mom help me with the razor blade cap. I liked the way the shaving cream felt, and when I was younger my dad put shaving cream on my head while he was breaking in my brother’s baseball glove, and we flung the shaving cream onto each other for a long time, and he told me that the shaving cream was supposed to help soften the leather.
I accidentally cut myself the first time I shaved my legs, and I cried. I had a wart on the front of my ankle, and I drug the blade over the bump at an angle which shredded the skin. It bled much more than I expected, and my mom told me that shaving cuts always do.
I shaved my legs the day I met him, and thankfully so, because he touched them, and he admired their smooth finish. He took me to his house that night and in his room, in the corner, on a navy folding chair, was a big, brown, leather baseball glove, and I wondered if he also had shaving cream fights with his dad. I met his dad two months later, and he had a bushy beard, and I shaved my legs that day too.
It was in his car that I first told him I loved him: trapped between the padded walls of the summer before college and pulling ingrown hairs. And he said it back. And we kissed. And it was slow. And it felt like my heart grew roots, and the green, wettened vines climbed up the sides of my tongue, blooming into his lips. Pollinated.
We were bees then.
My aunt bought me Burt’s Bees chapstick from a convenience store off highway 74 one day. It sat between the travel-sized shampoos and the shaving cream, and I was delighted in the way it tingled my lips. She took me to the zoo that day, and I looked at the polar bears longer than I should have, and I wore a sweatshirt that was two sizes too big, and I wondered if the bears were as hot as I was.
I did a presentation on polar bears in grade five, and I cried at the end, and on my birthday last year he bought me a stuffed, white bear, and it was the color of shaving cream. He kissed me, and he was starting to grow stubble, and it tingled my lips like the chapstick did.
When I moved in with him, he let me paint the bedroom. I chose a color called Chantilly Lace, and it took us two days to finish. We bought new bedsheets, the silky kind, and we got a new chair for the corner. He moved his baseball glove to a shelf in the closet, and I remembered that I had forgotten to shave my legs the night before.
There is an intimacy in the way his memories blend into mine. The way his first pop fly reminds me of a bathing suit that is too tight around the seams. And there is safety in the way he lets me linger uncomfortably, looking at him for a moment longer than I should. The same way the polar bears did. And in grade five I told the class that a polar bear has black skin beneath its fur, and as I am curled here, between silk sheets and lace walls, I see that you also have black skin beneath your fur. Only in some places.
Nine black dots and my tweezers on the bedside table.
Variation No. 3
by Siarra Riehl
The gravel of the alleyway is rough against the soft soles of your cloth sandals. The dust that whips in the breeze and settles in your right eye, sharp.
When you first see the dancer—face and body covered in shimmering purple, holding a gold water can and sporting a selection of colourful, construction paper flower petals atop his head—you imagine the smooth fabric of his costume on your own skin, the crack of your ankles in his gem-encrusted heels. The shoulders of fellow audience members are too far to touch, but the comfort of your wife’s cotton t-shirt envelops you from behind. You watch, as the dancer moves effortlessly toward a nearby tree, imagine the water he drenches it with spilling over your hair—wet and sticky—causing goosepimples on the flesh of your neck.
You lose time in the imagining, and it is only when you hear others applaud that you know he is finished. You cheer—the palms of your hands lingering a moment, as if to hold each other—enjoying the tingle of appreciation.
In under an hour’s time—to settle your quickened pulse after the infectious energy of the performance—you cool fried potatoes with sweet sauce and place them slowly on your tongue, savouring the salt crystals that scrape against your tastebuds. You think of the dancer, imagine biting the very essence of him, and swallow the experience whole.
Siarra Riehl (she/her) lives and creates on Treaty Six land in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with her wife and two cats. A transdisciplinary writer, performer, and teacher, she holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Siarra’s fiction received an honourable mention in AWP’s 2020 Intro Journals Project, and her work has appeared in Zone 3, Fatal Flaw, The Dillydoun Review, and elsewhere. Embodiment, magic, and queerness are at the heart of her writing and research. You can find her at siarrariehl.com.
Phantom Existence
by Atom Cheung
On a highway built on the backs of an infinite series of dormant dinosaurs, we created a teleporter. Did this by maintaining max velocity in a compact “X”. If I rolled down my window, I could touch Miracle’s hand, or make eye contact, at least. Physical interaction, however distant and miniscule, was vital in sustaining the fight. I asked if she was ready.
“Of course!” Miracle gestured by tapping her visor five times – her code name spelled-out across a pink helmet plastered by stickers, a pink glove gripping twelve o’clock on the steering wheel. I opted for a silver gear to go with Megatron, which I thought could be changed later if needed. Names were just metaphors to keep us going, give us shapes and colours on a stony drive that was endlessly straight. But the teleporter was real. A cluster of five raging vehicles we were. A five of spades, forever gunning for the next hill, with a fresh airstream brewed and bottled up.
Miracle eased into the centre. Together, we jacked up our speed by fifty, held it for five seconds. Then we gave Miracle the green light to lift her foot off the gas. We called it ‘teleport,’ but it was more like a ‘sling,’ and she’d end up way ahead of us at the top of the hill.
Towards the downhill, she’d press all her weight onto the gas so the rest of us – Marx, Maverick, Muffins, and I – could be teleported forward. Then we’d resume our formation, the blue digits on our speedometers doubled. “Phantom boost” was the term. I just called it teamwork.
“What took you guys so long?” Miracle taunted on the radio. She made way for the next car to take centre, the next hill looking bigger and bigger. This was always the most testing manoeuvre. Even with muscle memory built up from countless reps, we were constantly a twitch away from death, or worse, restart. The road was dusty and opened to interpretation, with stretches that didn’t come into view till we got very close. The end was near, had been for several years. “Phantom existence,” they said, could be attained when our ever-increasing speed had rendered every physical object to its vaporous, untouchable state. As always, I tapped my visor five times, after running my finger across the dent on my silver helmet.
Atom Cheung is a radio presenter on RTHK, the public broadcasting service in Hong Kong. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Canto Cutie, LickZine, and Voice & Verse. His introspective soliloquies are collected in the podcast Atomic Heart, available on Spotify. More at www.atomcheung.com.
Judgment Day
by Abigail Diaz
Arnie was always a strange character - nothing particular, really, but ever since I moved into the neighborhood, he rubbed me strange. Something about his eyes, maybe, the way they never seemed to rest anywhere too long. Or maybe the assortment of crosses visible through his front window. I’d heard of people with cross walls - natural enough, I guessed, albeit tacky. What wasn’t natural was his prize piece: a miserable, life-size rictus of the dying Christ. The Lord’s mouth was stretched into a grimace, and sweat, blood and tears had been lovingly molded onto his plastic face. I thought any man with a bleeding Jesus hanging in agony right next to his TV might have a screw or two loose.
Last week I caught him lugging cases of water into his house - not just one or two, but at least a dozen. I crossed the street and watched him struggle, then spoke. “Hey, Arnie.”
He turned, took a breath, wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Hi, Duke, how goes it?”
“Fine, fine. Arnie, what are you up to, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“What do you mean?”
“All the cases of water. It looks like you’re getting ready for the H bomb to drop.”
He lugged water to his doorstep, smiling. “Funny you should say that.”
“Funny?” I smiled in spite of myself. “Care to explain the punchline?”
He put the water down. “Duke, have I told you about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?”
“Sure have, Arnie. I can see him through your window.”
“Well, He talked to me last night, Duke. Clear as day.” I blinked at him. He read my silence as interest and continued. “Just about scared the tar out of me, I’ll tell you what. He said to buy as many cases of water as I could fit in my car and bring em home. Gonna be a judgment day.” He looked up at the sky - which was clear and bright blue - like a man looking for rain. “I can feel it.”
“Yeah? What all’s gonna happen, or did Our Lord and Savior leave out the details?”
“Gonna be a storm. Hail, lightning, thunder. All that good stuff. Flood, too.”
I looked up into the sky’s blue eye. “Arnie, it’s the clearest day we’ve had in months.”
“The will of God defies nature, Duke. Haven’t you ever read Genesis?”
I hadn’t picked up a Bible in about twenty years. “Maybe. What’s the water for, though?”
“Water’s in case the plumbing goes out from all the flooding. Gotta have clean water.” He paused; then: “Anyway, it was God’s command. I’d be crazy to ignore Him.”
I looked at the water stacked in the trunk of his SUV. “Yeah. That sure would be crazy.”
***
The next day, I woke up and stepped outside to a dry lawn and the smell of spring heat. No rain in sight.
I crossed the street to ask Arnie what he would do now that his Lord and Savior had failed to deliver on His word. I knocked on the door and waited. There were lines in the dirt from his driveway to his front door - at some point, he must have gotten tired of carrying the cases of water and started dragging them. When he didn’t answer, I knocked again. “Arnie? You there, buddy?”
Again, nothing. I shrugged and turned back to my side of the street. We’d talk later.
***
A couple of days ago, on a late gray afternoon, I turned into my driveway after work and was greeted by an ambulance and cop cars in Arnie’s driveway. I got out of my car and crossed to see what was what. Whatever had happened, it was over - paramedics and cops were there, but they were strolling in and out of the house like fat flies crawling over a conquered corpse, absent of urgency.
I approached one from behind and put a hand on his shoulder. He looked up from his clipboard and turned, eyebrows raised. “What’s going on?”
“We got a call for a wellness check on the resident. Apparently he didn’t show up for church on Sunday and his fellow parishioners were worried.”
“Is he okay?”
He shook his head. “Had a stroke. He was lugging in a package of water and the strain must’ve done him in. He fell and his body smashed some of the water bottles open. He drowned in spilled water, right at the feet of Jesus.”
“Hm. That’s how he would’ve wanted to go, I guess.” The cop stared like he didn’t get the punchline. “At the feet of Jesus, I mean. Not by stroke. Or drowning.” He was silent again. “Thanks for your time.”
I turned to cross the street. Arnie’s words echoed in my skull: Gonna be a judgment day . . . Flood, too.
What would become of the bust of Jesus? Would I see Him in Goodwill next week? The landfill, maybe, making rats into disciples? Arnie’s crosses would be separated like puppies being sold one by one from a litter, dandelion puffs blown by the breath of God. He was old, unmarried, childless. At best, his fellow church members might take his shrine in and give it new life.
As I walked up my driveway, a raindrop plunked onto the back of my neck. Thunder grumbled overhead. When I got inside, I drew the blinds. If there was anything I didn’t want to see, it was lightning illuminating Jesus in Arnie’s open front window.
Abigail Diaz is a Pushcart-Prize-nominated author of poetry and fiction. She has been published in the Blue Marble Review, the San Antonio Public Library 2019 Young Pegasus Anthology, and HauntedMTL's 101 Proof Horror Anthology, among others. She is currently finishing her Bachelor's degree, with hopes of publishing writing full-time. She can be contacted at abdiaz878@gmail.com.
Sections
by Liam Lachance
🍊
When the ground shakes, the fish retreat to the bottom of the pond, near beer bottle reef: if the fish could look, above the surface of water, they would see boots, DO NOT CROSS tape, and a body, beneath the stretched trunks of coconut trees.
🍊
Cassie feeds pigeons, in part, so that her walks aren’t consumed by anxiety at what happened before or might crumble next: abstract thoughts are replaced by a simple search for birds. Feathers. Soft bench.
Today, when Cassie sees the police tape, she closes eyes. Exhales. Reopens to scan the area for feathers.
🍊
“Investigation still underway,” a spokesperson says to a camera crew, “blunt object.” The class of teenagers laugh at the pigeon that has landed on the body’s head. One of the students, Emilia, is looking up, at the coconut trees, wondering how they survive in the cold, before noticing Cassie.
Sir? she says to the teacher who is yelling at the class to move on!
Yes, Emilia?
That woman is going to kill the ducks—they can’t digest the bread—isn’t that what you said?
Well, says the science teacher, turning to examine the woman. Part of the cycle—remember how we discussed in class last week?
To murder? Sorry I was sick one of the days.
🍊
Josie hears the story from Cassandra while dissecting a tangerine. As her teeth tear through pith, she wants to focus on the beginning and the middle of the life of the poor person in the news.
🍊
Later, at a diner with no soul, Cassie removes a cara cara orange from her purse. A server delivers hibiscus tea so red that a baby thinks it blood. The baby cries with their single father at the nearby table. When Cassie sticks out her tongue, the infant stops, the father laughs, and she manages to finish the orange.
🍊
Generally, grapefruit split into fourteen liths (sections). Navel oranges—like that cara cara—split into twelve. While cara caras taste mostly of your classic orange, the cara cara is pink, on the inside, like a grapefruit.
Surprises aside, the skin of a cara cara is generic: looks like an orange. Ask around: it tastes like one. However, if the twigs of a cara cara tree bear fruit, those fruit will break from the general patterns of branches and emerge striped.
🍊
Although Emilia signed the Off Campus Permission slip on her own—and paid the trip from OT at the grocer—she has concerns about becoming her mother and failing to find Independence; if she will forever feel a visitor to her own body; how beige Autumn leaves that split beneath her sneakers no longer give the joy that she once felt as a kid, when the crackle would prick at her ears.
🍊
That night, Emilia opens the door of her single room—for which her mother paid extra—and finds the hallway empty. She sneaks past the room of the science teacher—a nice woman who was resentful about teaching anything beneath university—and finds the door shut.
Outside, Emilia is welcomed by cool rain. She’s thankful for the isolation it will provide: how it will cloak her near the scene of the crime.
🍊
The science teacher, of course, wakes.
🍊
The body should not have been left at night, the investigator knows, but has convinced the captain that this killer will return to visit the body. When Emilia arrives in her hoodie, at 23:45, a police officer pretends to retire for the night.
🍊
Cassie knows that she should not be smoking in the park at midnight. When her partner calls her smoking unhealthy, she says I don’t smoke for health reasons. She notices someone near the body.
🍊
Emilia is pleased to find that she is arriving just as the person supervising the body is going on break. She approaches the tarp over the bulge of body. Now: a movement near the trees.
Pigeon-woman smoking alone on bench. Emilia contemplates pulling up the tarp to see the body, or walking over to join the woman in smoke.
Looks like a grapefruit, says Cassie, as Emilia sits. Tastes like an orange.
Will we die from this? says Emilia, ignoring the stranger’s fruit.
Stress will kill you just as likely. Although won’t be as quick as death-by-coconut.
Smoking saves: I like that.
Me too—but you should quit. You should really quit. While you’re still young.
Liam Lachance's work has appeared in The Feathertale Review, Headlight, and In/Words, among others. While he works in the beautiful town of Hochelaga, he was raised in the haunted village of Merrickville, Ontario, which borders the Rideau river.
Confessions
by Lukas Tallent
You breathe through your mouth way too much, and we haven’t been together long enough for that to be cool, and, since we don’t have a/c anymore, your breath, which smells like all of those poor animals you insist upon eating, hangs around the apartment for days because we’re out of Febreze, and Lysol smells too much like my grandmother, and I know you’ve got yoga four times a week and whatever you do on Thursdays, but your voicemail inbox has been full for like twenty years, and sometimes I need to talk to you because, let’s be real, the only time you say my name anymore is when I go “too far” like when I told you “bitches be trippin’ ” at the nursing home where we volunteered on Thanksgiving, after that old sack of Werther’s Originals said that it was so cute that I write stories, and if I’m going to tell it then I’ve got to tell it all, that shh-ing you do when we make love is a real turn-off, and that blowjob at the drive-in back when we first started dating has unfortunately turned out to be one in a million, and you never shave your va-jay-jay, and I know you’re not that hairy, but there are always these little course hairs in the back of my throat that I only notice when I’m in front of my classes, and, just when I thought I’d said all I had to say, this would be a better story if you refused to tolerate my drug habits, but no, you just cradle my head in your lap and make sure I don’t overdose, and I understand that’s because you love me and all, but love is just a social construct, and I don’t know how much longer that’s going to cut it because honestly, the only time I get a hard on anymore is when we’re walking to school, and you get ahead of me, and you could almost be anyone.
Lukas Tallent lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. His work has recently appeared in SORTES, autofocus, Spartan, and many other places. You can find more of him at lukas-tallent.com.
Deportees
by Walter Lawn
“I just so much wanted to kiss you,” Morgan said using a more intimate word, when they met once again a year later in the hotel bar. After several drinks it was clear that no amount of alcohol was going to comfort either of them.
“And what do we do now?” Cameron asked.
Neither one had an answer.
What had started then as drinks after work, a half-guilty respite from the usual rush to be good parents and spouses, had surprised them both with an unexpected surge of lust. They had known it would be a betrayal of both their spouses. They had sensed, too, it would be a betrayal of their friendship: the sapping of a foundation of trust, shared tastes and distastes, and a certain amount of wit and charm, by the introduction of the uncertainties of sex and romance. Anticipation, fear, affection, lust, and guilt in uncertain quantities are an acquired taste, and neither Cameron nor Morgan had been sure it was one they would ever come to like. Nor had they been sure they wanted to give it up.
Either fortunately or unfortunately, then, both their phones had rung before they had so much as kissed. Gabriel and Deiondre, both coming home from picking up kids, both sorting through the stack of ads for restaurants, repairmen, and day spas, both opening the government envelope to find deportation orders with their names on them. Not their spouses’ or children’s names, just their own: Gabriel. Deiondre.
At the hotel bar, Morgan and Cameron had barely paused to say goodbye.
The year following was a marathon for which neither of them was in training, but they ran it together. The habits of friendship served them well.
Phone: “Laurie says her lawyer got her husband a stay. And he’s willing to do pro-bono work.” “For people like us with jobs?” Silence.
Coffee shop: “What is this?” “Samizdat. How to find the right embassy official and how to bribe him.” “Do you think it will work?” “Doubtful.”
Phone: “They’re called ‘Documentation Fees.’ When you go to the courthouse, bring at least $500, better $1,000. Cash is best.”
Phone: “Keisha’s only four, and what do I tell her?” “The truth, I guess. That’s what I’ve tried to do with Beth and Donnie.” “They’re older. And even so, how much can they really understand?” “I can’t really understand.”
Coffee shop: “There’s an Assembly of God church with a mission to pray for people under deportation orders. I’ve given them Gab and Deiondre’s names.” “Have you come unscrewed?” Tears, and eyes lowered in shame.
Cameron and Morgan abandoned their friendship, becoming instead partners in a startup whose sole product was to be the stay and reversal of the deportation orders for Gabriel and Deiondre.
They never got to market. Their company went bust.
Denied visas, they could not leave with their spouses. Each one, nominally a good citizen here, was persona non grata there.
When Morgan and Cameron met again in the hotel bar on a summer Saturday, Deiondre and Gabriel were months gone into the silence that separates countries planning war. Their children, variably with age, sex, and time of day, were depressed, angry, tearful, and acting out.
Morgan and Cameron were much the same, and when Morgan said, “I wanted to kiss you,” Cameron snapped.
“And what do we do now? Drink? I at least want our friendship back.” Cameron set the empty glass on the bar. “I can’t lose you too!”
Morgan signaled the bartender for a refill.
“How can I ask you to trust me,” Morgan said, “When I’m not sure whether I could have worked harder, thought smarter, maybe just stayed up a little later each night? Maybe I gave you a disastrous bit of advice. Maybe you did to me.”
Cameron called for the check. “We used to enjoy complaining to each other about people who back their cars into angled parking spaces, or stop to read their iPhones in revolving doors. Now all we think about is injustice. You can’t build a friendship on passion.”
Of years’ habit, Morgan and Cameron split the tab. They walked out of the dim-lit bar and through the lobby.
“If we’d been lovers we at least could break up,” Morgan said.
Their eyes met askance. After a moment, they both smiled. Neither was yet ready to laugh.
“Wit,” said Morgan. “Or a stab at it.”
“And charm will follow, god willing,” Cameron added.
“They’re a start.”
A bit unsteadily, they passed through the outer door and stood blinking and sneezing in the unexpected light.
Walter Lawn writes poetry and short fiction. His work has been published in Lily Poetry Review, Every Day Fiction, and River Poets Journal. Walter is a disaster recovery planner, and lives outside of Philadelphia.
The Food Store Diaries: Hunger
by E.A. Midnight
He hovered over the curvature of the barrier. A bird beginning its pecking dance. The cooled choices glistening under the glass, separated from his ravenous body. His fists remained balled and burrowed in the pockets of snug-fitting jeans till the plastic-clad person behind the counter asked and he answered. His bony finger pointing till it bonked into the divider. The Meatloaf.
His shirt wasn’t as tight as the jeans, but one could still see his hunger underneath. You have to be really good at looking at someone to see where the poverty ends and where obsession with the body begins. She was really good at this. Or maybe she was good at looking at him. She, after all, had a year of practice. A year that began with casual flirtations at the front desk, then meandered into mouths consuming one another and hands sliding up skirts in dim lit back streets. Their dance had grown into a kind of unspoken agreement, halved into their public and perceived platonic friendship and their private, stolen rendezvous. She would disappear from her life into his basement garage, and he would appear at the car window. He would pull the door open and press himself into her. The harsh fluorescents never doing any damage to his chiseled features. They occasionally would watch a movie when his roommates were out and she would fit into the cavity his body created for her on the couch. But mostly, they fucked. They fucked in his room, the kitchen, the shower, the floor in the living room, against the door, in the garage, in alleys. Anywhere they could. Anywhere they were just out of the space surrounding anyone else’s eyes. It was easy to get lost in one’s appetite.
But as his lips bent out the word, meatloaf, she began to feel bored. The consistency of the word, mushy and malleable, in her teeth. Two blue-gloved hands reached into the chilled chamber and gently began plucking out rectangular, wiggly slabs. He held up four fingers to the eyes that peered over at him for some kind of confirmation to stop. She could already taste the ground bits in his mouth. She leaned back away from him and the glowing options, fighting a gag. Protein, he shrugged at her. The meat pile giggled in the clear plastic container that was placed atop the barrier. The separation between where one’s day was over and the other’s was ongoing.
She wanted to spill out a story from when she was twelve and first learning to cook. The clean Better Homes and Garden New Cookbook, 12th edition, handed to her as a present. A pretext to domesticity. To what would be expected of her when she was one day in the position of being another’s. Her mother took no active role in the process, other than presenting her with the book, and buying the ingredients. Or maybe she objected to any assistance from her mother and thus was left alone to experience learning on her own. Her quick-to-please-and-leave brain lusted fast through the directions and changed the ¼ a cup of carrots to 4 cups of carrots, creating the carrotloaf that remained a family joke to this day.
She wanted to unbore herself with him. Create a cavern where he would need to come looking for her, where he would take more than a bodied interest. An investment in a woman who couldn’t cook for shit but could keep him entertained in other ways. Instead of relaying intimate details of who she was before he knew this body, she said nothing and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Pretending to check her texts. The glass object only reflected the ceiling lights back into her face. She clicked into the messaging app, hoping that she created for him a portrait of vague disinterest. An expanse in which the pin prick of diverted attention was hot enough to burn the tongue. A gap for him to want to enter. To dig into. Desire, the backbone of hunger. She subway-eyed him, but he was gathering his meat container and rustling with the items in his hands. When his eyes met hers, a weak smile limped across his teeth, and he started to walk toward the checkout lines. The wake of him in front of her would quickly be filled by someone else.
She didn’t move. Instead, she stared at the smudge which was the transfer of oils from his callused finger lingering on the glass of the food barrier. The residue from him, the foundation of memory. She knew soon she would cling to him tight, which would cause him to push away in search of new, and likely younger, feasts. But for one moment, everything she had of him was preserved right in front of her. Before she had the chance to lick it up, the person behind the counter appeared again,
Anything else?
Isn’t there always.
E.A. Midnight is a neurodivergent artist specializing in multi-modal, cross-genre hybridities. She is a strong advocate for challenging the boxes creative bodies are put in. In 2017, she was the recipient of the PEN North American/Goddard Scholarship Award and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She is currently serving as the Assistant Editor for the literary project, The Champagne Room. Her manuscript, landscape of the interior, was longlisted for the Dzanc Books 2021 Nonfiction Prize. A full list of her published work can be found on her website, www.eamidnight.com. E.A. Midnight resides in the Colorado wilds.
Jury Day
by Michael Kozart
It’s ten a.m. and the opening credits of Savage Passion give way to Rex Hausmann in tattered pants washing ashore on Puerto Seguro. He’s escaped from a pirate ship where, for several episodes, he’d been shackled and fed mostly moldy bread. Exhausted, he limps to the island’s interior, discovering a coca plantation run by a kingpin.
The screen cuts to a commercial. I nibble chocolate chip pancakes, waiting for the show to resume. There’s a knock. Shamus, curled up on the floor, flares his canines. I head to the front door and look through the spyhole. There’s no one, though that doesn’t mean there is no one. Of course, they’d send someone around to rope us in.
Slipping into sweats and cross trainers, I sneak out the rear, Shamus prancing behind. We scamper through the neighbor’s yard and back to the street where the car’s parked.
Racing to Costco, there’s no sign of the government, at least from what I can see in the rearview. In the electronics department, with the sales rep super busy, I punch in Channel 5 on the remote-control. Rex Hausmann returns, on 200 screens no less.
Blonde hair flapping, pecs flexing, he races up the slope of a volcano, chased by a burro-riding posse which includes the kingpin. Then the picture cuts to a mysterious priest on a pulpit in a dark chapel, stone goblet in one hand, crucifix in the other.
Another commercial break. Scrubbing Bubbles toilet bowl disinfectant. I look around. There are just some bored security guards here and about. The action resumes, again, on 200 screens.
Rex is at the rim of the volcano, lava bubbling like tomato sauce. The posse reaches for shotguns. I reach for Shamus. The priest’s voice bellows in the background, Benedictus Dominus Deus, deep and serious. A fireball erupts and the posse scatters, but not before firing shots. Rex is twisted in pain. A brunette in a leotard appears out of nowhere and leads him through a secret door in the basalt.
There’s a tap on my shoulder. The sales rep wants to know who said we could change the channel. He says we even though Shamus is hardly in on it.
Run, I say to Shamus. We break for the parking lot. There are sirens in the distance, so I motor through a yellow-light to the next best option, Nails by Laura, in a strip mall next to Baskin Robbins, keeping one eye on the rearview.
Ms. Laura greets us in a blue kimono, says I look pretty, and directs me to a recliner. A tub of water appears at my feet and my sleeves get rolled up. Shamus receives a rawhide. Fortunately, they have a nice 55-inch. I request Savage Passion instead of the noisy game show that no one’s watching.
No English, says one attendant, followed by all the other attendants. There are at least six. I’m the only customer. Kids peek through a curtain that leads to a room with bicycles and futons. I smell steamed rice. Ms. Laura’s on the phone talking about tonsilitis. I reach for the remote control, knocking over another tub, and Shamus scampers away. Sorry, I say to him while racing through channels. There must be a thousand, mostly international. Ms. Laura approaches, seizes the remote and the TV clicks to Channel 5. Thank God.
Now Rex lies on a cot in the chapel, bleeding, organ music in the background. The priest leans over him while the leotard lady tears up, beating her chest.
The attendants giggle. Why? There’s another break: Arctic Crystal window cleaner followed by Sheen and Shine, four detergents in one.
A man without teeth in flappy corduroys, needing a belt, hobbles through the curtain. America number one, he says, smiling, and all the attendants smile too.
Action resumes. Rex kisses the leotard lady and assumes a yoga pose (cobra) while the priest looks to the sky and the closing credits arrive with violin theme music.
As I get up—now with turquoise nails (feet and hands)—Ms. Laura offers coupons and lets Shamus keep his chew toy while everyone cleans up around the recliner and the old man disappears again.
Back home, I expect a bench warrant taped on the front door, but I know they have to serve you in person, so it will be illegitimate.
What I find is a nice handwritten note inviting me to a church service in the neighborhood. Inside, there’s been no break in. Nothing’s ransacked. I glance at the summons and my eyes catch the date. Oops. I am supposed to appear tomorrow, not today. Best to read the instructions, I suppose. I put on my glasses:
Prospective jurors must call the night before to see if they’re required to appear the next day.
That’s a ploy to ensure that the government knows that we know so we can be held accountable. Do they think we’re naïve? I rip up the letter, exactly what Rex Hausmann would have done because there are times when you follow what’s in your heart even if there are risks attached.
Shamus barks.
Good boy.
It’s settled. We’re staying home, and if they send someone around like a truancy officer, we’ll just give them the slip. I have a feeling that love is in the air for Rex Hausmann and Ms. Leotard, and peace will prevail on Puerto Seguro no matter how many commercials get in the way. We just have to keep watching. I’m sure there are some who’d rather serve on a jury, but to each their own. Not to get melodramatic, but that’s what makes this country great.
Michael Kozart lives in Northern California where he works in a non-profit community health center. His story ‘Polaris’ won the Summer 2021 Sixfold competition, and his flash piece ‘Hock’ placed second in the Fall 2021 Flash Fiction Magazine contest. His work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and been published in many literary journals including Into the Void, Every Day Fiction, MoonPark Review, and more.
The Other Side of the Wall
by Ann Yuan
One Saturday evening, I was stir-frying beef noodles on our shining cooktop, humming along with Ed Sheeran and planning on the next day’s furniture shopping. A sudden bang shook the wall on my right-hand side, about a foot above the cutting board. It seemed like the old construction had reverberated with our new stereo system, yet it ran at a different tempo. There was one stroke, a few seconds later, two consecutive ones, as if someone impatiently knocking on the door. Mark and I exchanged a puzzled look. He jumped up and turned off the stereo. Everything went quiet.
That was the first time Mrs. Walter greeted us with her fist hammering at our shared wall, two weeks after we moved into this semi-attached house at a gated community.
When our agent first showed us this house, she actually included Mrs. Walter as a bonus — nice, quiet old lady living by herself, no pet, no grandchildren, only her daughter coming once a week with some groceries. “Never bothering anybody or anything,” she said, shaking her head like adding “no, no, no…” to the end of the line.
How could Mark and I be fooled by her words? “Not bothering anybody”, as we all knew, was the euphemism for “Don’t you ever bother me”. Bothering, in our case, was nothing but some soft rock music, a thorough vacuuming, occasional and benign arguments between Mark and me. Well, I had to admit, I might unconsciously raise my voice when I tried to convince Mark. Nevertheless, all these would be far from the definition of “bothering”. However, any of these would guarantee a knock-knock on the wall, from which I conjured up an image of a green-faced lady, one hand on her hip, the other gripping a broomstick, scowling at the wall separating our houses, with the purple potion bubbling away in a pot on the stove.
What’s more, she’d magically worked out the exact place to punch. One night, Mark and I sat on the couch watching young James Kirk, in our 75” TV screen, racing the stolen red vintage car on a dusty road in Iowa. A formidable thud hit the wall behind us, right next to our heads. The wall was, I supposed, just two thin plasterboards with a hollow space in between. Mrs. Walter beat it as if it was a drum. Under her fist, the wall was vibrating along with rhythm that rippled to the couch, to my back, and eventually in the air…
I never saw her face, only caught a glimpse of her once from the upstairs bedroom window. She stood on the deck, wearing a loose blouse and carpet slippers, clutched a four-wheel walker and stared at the backyard. Her white hair was fluffy, unkempt, resembling the knee-high grass on her lawn. Her back was, in an inexplicable demeanor, straight and rigid. Just before she turned her head, I tucked myself back behind the curtain.
Six months after we moved in, all my friends had learned to lower their voices once inside our house. There was always an exception, though. My cousin Jenny, for instance, drove two hundred miles south from Chicago, stood in the center of my living room, in her crisp voice and blade-like words, flayed her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend alive. I gave her the “Shhh” sign, wiggled my index finger and pointed it to the wall. All warnings were in vain.
The pounding came in no time. It was not a couple of blunt beats, but a chain of thumping and booming, like the raging sound effect often heard in an accident or emotional breakdown. I gazed at the wall that seemed painfully ugly despite the subtle yellow paint I’d chosen by myself. Unbelievable! I picked an album, pushed the button of the stereo system, and turned up the volume to maximum. “Shake It Up”, literally, shook up the building. The whole house vibrated like a huge music box, floor rattling under my bare feet.
Jenny’s eyes widened in excitement, Mark jerked at the first note and instantly shot me a dubious look. I ignored him, opened a bottle of Zinfandel. We (I meant Jenny and I) sang and laughed, reveling in the satisfaction brought by the revenge that conquered the dark force and claimed our solemn rights. Our appetitive self sneaked out of the cave and took control. It was the housewarming party I never had.
I had no idea when we got tired and went to sleep. One thing I knew, that night, the wicked witch was gone.
The next morning, I woke up to some noise — there were people outside. I peered through the curtain. An ambulance parked on the driveway. Several cars, including one police vehicle, stopped at the curbside. Two paramedics wheeled a stretcher and shoveled it into the back door of the ambulance. I scrambled down the stairs and walked out of the front door, feeling a spiking drill inside my temple.
“What’s going on here?” I asked a middle-aged woman standing in the driveway.
“My mom didn’t answer my call this morning,” she said. “I left my work and raced here. She was on the floor, unable to move.”
“Is there…is she OK?” I stammered.
“She is a tough cookie. ‘You come early this week.’ was the first thing she said to me,” the woman squeezed out a grin. “Most likely it’s her bad knee. But strange thing is, next to where she fell, there is a big dent on the wall.”
I froze up, the repeated pounding, urgent like an SOS signal, the song, the wine…
The woman continued, “Dear God, I hope she didn’t bang her head on it. Did you hear anything last night?”
Ann Yuan lives on Long Island, NY. She loves reading and writing fiction. Her first flash fiction was published in Flash Fiction Magazine.
MaryAnne and Patty Have a Chat
by Deb Nordlie
Hi, MaryAnne, it’s Patty. Glad you answered the phone. Got a sec to talk?
Good. Hey, I just had a thought: whatdya say we get together so I can fill you in on recent a situation I sorted out. I think you’ll be interested. And I really wanna crow a bit about what I accomplished—have you pat me on the back. You’re alone, right? Your door closed?
Why? Because this is pretty personal, MaryAnne, and you know me, you know I’m not normally immodest. It’s not really in my DNA to be so proud or brag, but yes, I wanna boast about this to a pal. I resolved that problem, I talked about before, remember, MaryAnne? I did! Would you ever have guessed I could pull it off, Sweetie? That I could be so darn clever?
Well, hold your horses there, MaryAnne, I’m gettin’ to it—give me a sec to explain. Good God, you’re so impatient!
It’s about Carol; you do remember ol’ Carol, right? Oh, I know neither of us liked her especially, but that’s why I’m telling you this. I thought you’d appreciate this episode, applaud the conclusion.
You remember too how I met Fred right after I met Carol, right? And you know that Fred and I, well, Fred and I became, uh, involved and of course that demanded the greatest of secrecy, especially considering my security clearance and all. We were having a fine time—very hush-hush naturally, and well, we had no reason to think we couldn’t keep it going. It was exciting, it was harmless, at least I thought it was harmless, but then, damn it to hell, Carol found out. Soooo, now we had a lit-tle problem, Fred and me: how to handle the Carol Situation. And as you’d expect, Fred was hopeless, and I was left to figure it out. Naturally.
Men, right?
But actually, MaryAnne, it was so much simpler than I thought.
December was God-awful, remember? And everyone was tryin’ to get outta town to somewhere warm. I knew Carol would be leaving for Florida because I did my research, and I’d watched her carefully. Took notes. So I knew my stuff. Knew about her trip. I knew she’d be at the station the next morning with the others; all jammed together—foolish, silly creatures—all wanting to get in that train car and be first. The warmth, MaryAnne, the warmth seduced them; they wanted to be out of that horrible wind here in D.C., and they were awfully darn close to the tracks. Carol was easy to spot, even in that mob. I mean, she was wearing that ridiculous leopard hat, you know the one? Dear God, call the Fashion Police because there was the real crime that Tuesday.
Well, all it took was one teensy weensy push at the small of her back, and that was it. And, well—
MaryAnne? MaryAnne, you OK? Your voice sounds off—
Well anyway, MaryAnne, afterward, like everybody else, my hand went to my mouth. And like everybody else, I shrieked. But my shriek was of pure pleasure. Triumph. Joy.
Why? Because I had done it, MaryAnne, that’s why! Good God, get up to speed here, Sweetie! The Carol Problem was solved. All gone! Easy peasy!
What’s that? Now, why would you even think to ask me that question? No, it wasn’t painful, MaryAnne. I mean, I didn’t feel a thing.
So, you have time to get that drink later, just you and me about nine-ish? Let’s drink to ol’ Carol even if neither of us liked her. I mean, it’s the respectful thing, the gracious thing to do, right? An alcoholic sendoff to good ol’ Carol! And we might as well drink to her asinine hat as long as we’re at it. And then, yippee, swill to me and Fred! Toast to my success and drink ‘til the crash of the glasses, no, no, ‘til the crash of bottles is distinctly heard all over this hick town. Let’s celebrate my sweet victory!
But keep in mind, MaryAnne; I still do want this kept quiet. Sure, we can discuss it more if you want but I’m counting on you to keep our little chat confidential, right, just between us gals? You know, just girl chatter between good friends? And if you won’t tell, well then, neither will I.
So, okay then, see you nine-ish. Ciao, Sweetie!
Deb Nordlie has taught English since dinosaurs ruled the earth. After a lifetime of writing assignment sheets, she’s branched into life stories, believing “we are all anthologies filled with short stories and poems.” Occasionally though, she pens uncharacteristic oddball lit. She teaches writing in adult school currently and continues to scribble away at the Great American Novel. You can view her work at the Chestnut Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, Coffee + Crumbs, Reminisce, Crown City Magazine, and the San Diego Reader.
The Hospital Stay
by Sheri Sherman
The marriage had its problems, because, among other things, it was a very long marriage, 40 years long. None of it was easy either. He snored, he cheated, and he worked too many hours; always had. This is what the wife thought when she looked out to the ocean, thoughts as relentless as waves. So, her affections naturally, turned toward their demon of a Jack Russell. She spoiled that thing to twice its size the vet would have preferred her to be. The husband was a product of an obsessive workout routine with not just one but two trainers. So, it was a surprise (kind of because, food) he started to have weird feelings in his chest and maybe hand. But then, he was a bit of a hypochondriac as doctors often are, especially those so well trained. Soon it was off to the hospital in an ambulance he called for himself, because the wife was busy putting the dog in her crate and making sure she had water and a treat since no one knew how long they’d be away.
In the hospital there were tests most of the night which determined not a whole lot, but he reasoned that he was already there so why not have the procedure anyway—in and out easy. He knew since he was a surgeon himself. He could tell if he needed a stent if they let him watch the procedure. Naturally, he was directing his own care. That night and the next morning he was on the phone with his office several times while simultaneously sending emails all over the world to other well-known surgeons. “Put him to sleep already,” said the wife. “He clearly can’t give himself a rest.” The husband smirked lovingly because he knew she was right as usual.
Just before the doc started to wheel him on the hospital bed toward the operating room she said, “see you on the other side” meaning in the recovery room, but everyone stopped in horror of what she said. Not “I love you” blah blah blah and no kisses either. So, defending herself, she said, “What? I know I don’t have to worry about him, (she paused for effect), because only the good die young.” Trying not to laugh, the doctor put his head down and ordered a forward motion. They disappeared behind those huge swinging double doors like an albino whale into a wide sea.
In the recovery room he was all smiles and opiates. He said, “I knew it” and “I’m bionic” and other stuff the wife didn’t listen to, because he asked her to facetime his best friend to say hello. The wife thought, ok… and dialed. Finally, after the show and tell and all the laughter ended, she said, thinking about the other side, “by the way, it’s not til death do us part, and certainly not eternity.” The husband laughed this time knowing she meant every word. She wouldn’t ever be seeing him on the other side of anything, now or later. The wife can picture the light outside falling into the dark waves as it does every day around this time. “Besides, it’s late,” the husband says. They call the kids to let them know everything is fine and they’d be headed home in a couple of hours.
An MFA graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, Sheri Sherman has worked as a copywriter and freelance journalist as well as a horse trader and appraiser for equine show jumping. Having lived in every region of the United States, she grew up in Virginia and now resides in Southern California. Sheri graduated with a B.A. in English Literature from American University in Washington D.C. She has also attended the summer Iowa Writer’s Workshop, taught by James Galvin. Her writing has been published in Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts, has an upcoming critical essay in The Ashville Review, and has been published in the University of Ljubljana journal. Her landscape photography and poetry show her affinity for the natural world. Her Instagram handle is @silverhairdontcare, and her email address is sheriffc999@gmail.com.