Snowgators
Snowgators by Patrick Hueller “As far as I’m concerned,” Jay says, “this is humanity’s last chance. Its very redeemability is on the line.” He lifts an armful of snow and dumps it on a pile that is going to be the alligator’s head. Nathan isn’t paying attention to him. He’s back closer to the gator’s haunches, on his knees, gently dusting loose snow from its flank. His ear is right up next to the snow sculpture, like he’s checking for breathing. “Redeemability?” It’s Clint who says this. Clint, who’s new to this small group. Clint, who makes the group three instead of two—but just barely: He’s not a very active member. Mostly, he just stands there, stiff-legged and towering. He isn’t helping the other two build the snowgator. In fact, he hasn’t even taken his hands out of the pockets of his winter jacket. “Yeah,” Jay says, turning to Clint as if he’d forgotten all about him, but nonetheless grateful to have a responsive audience. “My faith in the capacity for human goodness is at stake.” He bends down for another armful of snow, dropping it with a splat on the same pile as before. “If they destroy this one too, the jury will no longer be able to hold its tongue. Evil will have once and for all conquered all that is warm and fuzzy. Case. Fucking. Closed.” Unlike Nathan, who ignores Jay entirely and continues gently sanding away some snow with a gloved hand, Clint nods and smiles. He wants Jay to know that he has his full attention. Nathan stands up to inspect the section he’s been working on. Jay stands next to him. “What do you think?” he says, clapping Nathan on the shoulder. “Should we give him plates on his back like a dinosaur?” Nathan doesn’t hesitate. “Alligators don’t have plates.” “How many times do I have to tell you? This isn’t an alligator. It’s a snowgator. And snowgators totally have plates.” When Nathan doesn’t seem impressed, Jay turns to Clint. “Isn’t that right, dude?” he asks, because by now he knows Clint will agree with whatever he says. Actually, that’s pretty much all he knows about his new roommate. He doesn’t know why Clint transferred. Or what Clint plans on studying. Or what Clint typically does with his free time. He certainly doesn’t know that currently, behind the fabric of his winter jacket, Clint is clutching a carving knife. Clint wasn’t always tall or skinny. Along with being the sort of spacey kid who frequently forgot his deodorant and his shoes, who routinely spent the day stinking and clumping around somehow-unashamedly in winter boots, he was pudgy and paradoxically puny. Vertically challenged enough to fit in lockers. Infinitesimal enough to get weighted down by his own backpack. Shrimpy enough that he couldn’t carry his textbooks under his arms. (Instead, he had to hold the books in front of him, tilted toward his soft chest.) He didn’t ever actually get stuffed in a locker—as far as he could tell, that was mythical bullying behavior—but sometimes, back then, he wished he did. A few seconds of brutality, followed by dark isolation: it seemed preferable to the constant and public brutality he actually faced in school. In the hallways, the other boys knocked his books out of his arms and then scattered, tossing the books in various trashcans and recycling bins for him to retrieve one by one. In class, they sat behind him and pushed his desk into the middle of the room with their feet. His teachers would tell the boys to knock it off—but that was usually all they’d do, at least in part because Clint would laugh off the treatment he received as though he were in on the joke. What else could he do? Nothing, according to his parents. When the boys took and cracked his graphing calculator, his parents bought him a new one. When the boys spread a rumor, in seventh grade, that they found him masturbating in the bathroom, his parents told him to . . . well, they didn’t tell him anything, because Clint didn’t mention the rumor. For one thing, he didn’t know exactly what masturbating was—a fact that was perhaps more embarrassing than the rumor itself. He could tell, by the ways the boys talked about it, that the act was somehow illicit, and he was pretty sure he hadn’t been doing anything other than peeing, but he was also just barely savvy enough to know that admitting ignorance would only make matters worse. At best, it would lead to him asking more and more questions, the final and most basic one being: why does everyone hate me? And by everyone, he meant everyone. For years his parents had encouraged him to try hanging out with these boys, then those ones over there, then . . . . They’d bought him baseball cards and Magic cards; they’d given him manga and motorcycle magazines. Several times, for his birthday and Christmas, they re-did his whole wardrobe. For his part, Clint was as committed to figuring out where he fit in as they were. But nothing ever worked. When students sang along to songs on the bus to school, he’d write down the lyrics so frantically that unbeknownst to him he was making a scene; after he’d Googled the lyrics at home, after he’d listened to it over and over again and gotten all the words completely memorized, he’d wait with twitchy anxiety for the song to finally play on the bus radio again. When it did, he’d sing along too aggressively, too perfectly, too . . . something . . . while the other kids watched in dismay and gave each other looks. So, yeah: at some point it became official. They all hated him, and there was nothing he could do about it. He understood, at some level, that this was his fault, that the problem, clearly, was Clint himself. But—more devastatingly—he also understood,
Carp of Surprise
Carp Of Surprise by Kris Willcox When the nursing unit director calls to say that his father has died during the night, he is lifted without warning from coffee and newspaper into stinging, new air. She gives condolences and details: time of death (four, clocked by an aid), the hour the mortuary man will come (nine, unless later). While she speaks his mouth hangs open like—he can’t help it—a hooked fish. A student of his once wrote a story about a man who, after a shock, stood “gaping like a carp,” and whether it was the student (difficult) or the story (not bad) he’s never escaped the connection. It lives in him, a lipless Oh surfacing in moments of surprise. She asks if he wants to leave the body. What? Does he want his father’s body left in the room. He works his mouth, No. If the mortuary is coming, let him be moved. Good, she says, and he knows it’s the right answer. She hurries on: death certificate, lease, belongings. No need to respond now, she says, and he doesn’t.When they fished—he and his father—they dropped their catch on a line in the shallows, where the silver bodies twisted and flashed. Sir? His head swivels as if she’s caught him by the jaw. Yes, he’ll meet them at the mortuary. Return later for paperwork. She hangs up and he is released.He taps the steering wheel on the way to the mortuary, trying to recall where they camped those summers ago. And were they rainbows or browns? Mouthfuls of bones. He complimented his student on that image of the man-carp. Memorable! (Had he known). Down the road, the mortuary sign. Traffic sweeps him on. Mouth open, body slit. The stunned, wet contents fall away: his father’s voice, the student’s name. But that fish. That goddamned fish will live forever. Fiction Home Art by Bryan Price
Fiction_V17-0
Fiction Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories #ratgirlsummer by Melissa Rudick Fiction Volume 17.0 Lil’ Gullivers by Kye Roper Fiction Volume 17.0 Soil and Water by Angela Townsend Fiction Volume 17.0 Cloudbursts by Scott Dorsch Fiction Volume 16.2 On The Other Side of the Wall by Andrea Bianchi Fiction Volume 16.2 In Eternal by Lauren O’Donoghue Fiction Volume 16.1 Message In a Romance Novel by Anuradha Kumar Fiction Volume 16.1
The Crash
The Crash by Ashley Espinoza Inspired by Aftermath by Elane Johnson After my car slid on the ice and another car hit me. After you had said you weren’t sure you wanted to be a father. After I googled if my seven-week-old fetus could die during a low impact car accident. After I searched and searched every website for an answer. After I found out that, while pregnant, I shouldn’t go on roller coasters or horseback rides, and I shouldn’t be in a car accident either, but no websites would tell me an answer for a 15 mph car crash. After I called to ask if you had made your decision. After I learned the due date was September first. After you didn’t answer the phone, but you did answer the text– you said you hated to say it, but you couldn’t do it. After you never called ever again. After the hospital staff asked if I was sure there wasn’t a name I could put under the father section of the birth certificate. After I cried because my daughter does not have a father. After no one held me. After no one but me held my daughter when she cried in the middle of the night. After I saw you once and hid from you. After I saw your truck as I drove down the highway. After I still look for your truck even though I know you no longer drive that one. After I looked you up on Facebook. After I still look you up and stalk every post looking for an answer. After I am still single six years later and I see you on Bumble looking for something casual. After I cried for years and years and years over you. After I stopped wondering if you would ever care for my daughter. After I drove down your street to see if you still lived there, even though I would have no way of knowing that answer. After I stopped wondering if you would call and change your mind. After my daughter is all grown and probably looks like you. After she asks me to caress her arms in the same way you used to. After she looks right at me and says, “Anyway I don’t even want a dad.” Home Nonfiction Home Art by Dominick Williams
Soil and Water
Soil and Water by Angela Townsend We did not see the mermaids coming, but surprise is the prerogative of mythical creatures and Executive Vice Presidents. Ten years into fundraising for the arboretum, I thought I knew where to find all the knotholes and gnome settlements. They are mostly in Sol’s office. Sol founded New Jersey’s only arboretum for endangered trees. He tells people that he does not, “by and large,” like people, but then he sits on the floor with them when they cry. I do not think I would have lasted so long at an arboretum where people do not cry. Sol favors the forest’s urchins. This attracts a certain genus of donor. Sol calls them “toasty.” I call them “Sequoia Souls.” Sol scolds me for using the word “soul” like table salt. In the lunchroom, our gypsy moth experts and soil scientists want to recap shows about dragons or debate the merits of vegan cheese. I always have to bring up souls. I remind Sol that he poached me from my plan to become a pastor. He reminds me that my gift is convincing people they have empathy for trees. One inch into the topsoil, my blurbs are all about the understory. Sol allowed me to name our major gifts society “Sequoia Souls.” He did not love it, but the “big giant donors” might. People who donate five thousand dollars to save objectively unattractive trees deserve a name. I reminded Sol that nobody feels grown, whatever the spoor on the sides of their eyes may say. Sol reminded me that he does not, “by and large,” like people. The local gazette ran my press release, and Cornelius Wagner Jr. called to enroll as a Sequoia Soul. I should call him “Corn.” His father was born in Germany, so the Black Forest was in his blood. He would direct his foundation to send the check. He would be a Sequoia Soul. I looked up his name online. Corn was the Executive Vice President at Manatee Memories, LLC. At this news, Sol pronounced Corn “burnt to a crisp” before I could go further. I bristled. Since I was born without bark, I maintain a moderate-to-severe case of donor infatuation. Corn was already in my ventricles. Sol had to understand. Corn told me he gave his days to “feeding the ocean of joy.” Sol asked if I was planning to accept Corn’s hand in marriage. That could be good for the arboretum. I insisted Sol pull up Manatee Memories’ website. He did, then took the Lord’s name in vain. Manatee Memories is an “aquatic imaginarium.” Manatee Memories is the world’s preeminent manufacturer of biologically accurate marine mammals, designed for “compassionate thalassic play.” A solemn Corn greets you on the home page, moist eyes behind trendy glasses. “I’m Corn Wagner, and I invite you to the place where the sun meets the sea.” At this, Sol reached for his recycling bin and placed it over his head. “I’m Sol Diamond, and I have just contracted a stomach virus.” I reminded Sol that Corn was sending us five thousand dollars. Sol peeked under his blue plastic shroud and grabbed at the air. I knew this meant he wanted one of the individually wrapped pretzel rods on his desk. I knighted him with it, dropped it in his hand, and let him know Corn would be visiting for the first time on Monday. Sol spent the weekend on a scavenger hunt. He emailed me twenty-nine times. Since I was going to be a pastor, Sol knows I am never off duty. Souls call on Saturdays asking if we received their Snoopy checks for the cherry trees that do not bear fruit. They write on Sunday afternoons to tell me that their nephews died, which is a strange thing to tell the Development Director in the arboretum unless you have sat on the floor with her. I call them from my personal number. They text me pictures of their cats, and then I need to flag them in our database as my personal friends: “Do not solicit without Lizzie’s permission.” Sol suggests we name this group “The Invasive Species.” Sol knew I would be checking email as he found Corn facts. Sol has two doctorates. Sol founded an organization without rival in the deciduous sector. But when Sol writes on the weekend, he blows his cover as the boy in the backwards baseball cap. His emails to his “defrocked priest Development Director” read like graffiti. “PopCorn has too much butter.” “Corn done lost ALL his kernels.” The evidence would be embarrassing, if Corn were not a soul. Every video on the Manatee Memories website seemed to feature Corn, in various states of pathos, confessing why sea lions or belugas meant so much to him “as a human being.” He clasped the toys so tightly, it appeared he might pull the walrus wrinkles taut. He spoke about three-inch rubber baleen whales with the ecstasy usually reserved for shamanic activity. He spoke, mostly, about himself. “Whatever he’s doing is working.” I felt protective of Corn. “They are a jillion-dollar company.” “Not much competition,” Sol fired back. I shimmied up my remaining memories of Pastoral Counseling 101. “Maybe he’s doing generational repair work. His father came from a landlocked country. Corn claims the sea.” Sol had his own hypotheses. “Corn feels like a SMALL stalk. Maybe his mama invented dessert pierogi, and his papa was the bass player for a band called Untrustworthy Eyebrows. Corn wants to be BIG WHALE. Corn feels like PLANKTON.” I was tempted to remind Sol that such speculation is unbecoming of a grand soul who has repatriated thousands of trees. I was laughing too loud. There was one last message on Sunday night: “If he doesn’t bring us both a humpback, I repudiate his five thousand dollars.” Sol needn’t have worried. Corn had a briefcase of mermaids. I was not privy to this when I gave him the grand tour of the
Lil’ Gullivers
Lil’ Gullivers by Kye Roper “The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that… they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.” – Paulo Freire “They talk. They think. They’re ready for adventure: Introducing Lil’ Gullivers – Playtime’s never been so alive!” – AstroGo, Inc.® “HEY.” A man steps out of his suburban home at the cul-de-sac end, wearing the contemporary attire one might expect a middle-aged member of the bougie class to wear on a casual Saturday morning (old teambuilding t-shirt from work, khaki shorts). He is pissed. The USPS driver is hustling halfway back across the lawn when he halts mid-step, startled at the yelling, and swivels around. At the threshold, the homeowner puts on his best power stance – though little more than a minor landed gentry to the world, while on his lawn, inside his doorstep, he is secret King of his single-family detached home. Also, he’s been tracking this package all morning. “Hold on,” the man yells. “I’m right here.” The delivery man crosses back. “Just need you to sign here, please.” The man impatiently scribbles something resembling a child’s crude line graph atop the signature line. “You didn’t even ring the doorbell.” “And here, please.” The man impatiently scribbles again. “I was waiting right inside. You didn’t even bother ringing the doorbell.” The delivery man scrunches his face. “I did ring the doorbell,” which is true. “I rang it several times,” which is not true. But also, screw this guy. He doesn’t know his ‘customers’ – who are only sometimes right, but in this case a right asshole – and likewise doesn’t know the man had just prior been locked away in the basement when he arrived. Doesn’t matter. He is constantly delivering packages to this address, packages of identical dimensions, same company, multiple times a month, and has come to feel mild apprehension pulling up at this particular curb due to exactly this sort of interaction. He figures the guy’s got an online shopping problem. Sees it a lot. 9-to-5ers burying themselves under credit card debt because damn, is it satisfying, the click of snagging some unneeded new thing, the tiny hits of endorphin bursts that one hopes in their sum will add up to some greater happiness, maybe even equal to the sort of halfway decent vacation they wish they had the time and/or cash to afford. A vacation, those bite-sized luxury purchases – it’s never really about the receiving. The real hit’s in the waiting, the jitters of expectation for alleviating, maybe even curing the malaise of it all. The problem with next-day delivery is that there is no waiting. That’s why the clicks keep clicking unceasingly. It’s kind of sad. Or would be, but again, screw this guy. “Here you are, sir,” the delivery man intones. The man gives no reply. He grabs the package. Kicks the door shut behind him. His right hand is turning the basement knob when a woman, his wife, calls down from the upstairs study. “Jaaaaaassooooon.” “Yes?” He answers, annoyance in his voice. “Was that the doorbell?” “No, he didn’t even ring the doorbell.” “Who is he?” “Nobody. Nobody rang the doorbell. It was the wrong number.” “What wrong number?” “Wrong house number, I don’t know.” “Jason. You didn’t order another of those creepy things, did you?” “No,” tearing the tape off with his teeth, “of course not.” “We’ve talked about this.” Under his breath, half-muffled since the tape’s proving quite hard to tear off, “feels like all we ever damn talk about.” “If you’re wasting more of our money on those things then I swear, I’m not kidding, we’re returning it.” “Our money?” He scoffs to no one but himself, descending the basement stairs. “My money.” In the inner circle of the inner sanctuary of the basement, he sets the contents on the table. It’s a toy. No, an action figure. No, even worse: A collectible. The clear case is a classic plastic display box, the top of which reads, LIL’ GULLIVER. The tagline reads, Like You, But Small! This particular model’s label reads, LIL’ VELVET GULLIVER. Jason removes the figure and positions him standing up atop the table. Lil’ Velvet Gulliver is a 10-inch-tall plastic figure, wearing an early 18th century, Georgian era style of dress. Knee-length, double-breasted coat with fitted silhouette, accentuated by decorative buttons; high-collared shirt and thigh-high breeches, lots of lace; delicate stockings held by garters of elastic fabric. Everything, from the cravat tied around its neck down to its buckled shoes, is made of purple velvet. Eggplant purple. Beautiful, sensual, eggplant purple. Lil’ Velvet Gulliver blinks its tiny eyes three times and cranes its neck up at the moon-faced giant. Its voice is high-pitched and squeaky as befitting a lil’ figure. “Why hey there big buddy.” “Welcome,” Jason says. “My name is Jason.” Lil’ Velvet Gulliver smiles a big smile. “Hi Jason, nice to meet ya… Don’t know who I am.” “What you are.” “Don’t know that either,” it says, its carefree smile still plastered on. “No, I’m saying you’re a what. I purchased you off ToyBuy.” Shrugging amicably, “If you say so.” “You’re a Gulliver.” “Gull-ehh-ver,” sounding out each syllable as if committing it to memory. “Correct. More specifically, you are a Lil’ Velvet Gulliver.” “That sounds fun.” Jason shakes his head. “It’s a literary reference.” “Oh wow, I’m a literary reference.” Lil’ Velvet Gulliver scratches its head with a pause. “I can’t read.” “Of course you can’t. In short, Gulliver’s Travels was a satirical travelogue published by the Irish author Jonathan Swift in 1726, featuring Lemuel Gulliver, a fictional surgeon also trained in navigation and mathematics, who visits strange and fantastical lands on several voyages after his ships are destroyed, blown off course, and attacked by pirates.” “Sounds like our Gulliver shoulda stopped getting on ships.” “Well, he wasn’t a real person. Like you.” “Oh.” “You see, Lil’
#ratgirlsummer
#ratgirlsummer by Melissa Rudick We sit on the toilet, our inside-pants around our ankles. We sprawl on IKEA couches covered in weighted blankets. We rot in our beds, having laid down for just a minute many minutes ago. Blue light reflects in our eyes. Our thumbs in constant motion, swiping up again and again. The thrum of the air conditioner plays in the background. Outside, cars honk at jaywalking pedestrians. Inside, a smoke detector beeps again, reminding us we better change that battery later. We are bored and dissatisfied and we want something different. We have been let down. We believed if we just did what was expected of us, if we stayed nice, if we shrunk down, if we performed happiness, that happiness itself would find us. We would be content, finally. Now, we are wising up. It’s a rigged system, we tell each other. There’s another way, we say. We look into the front-facing cameras on our phones. We talk to our mirrored selves. We proclaim that there will be a vibe shift. There will be no more Hot Girls, Chill Girls, Not Like Other Girls Girls. We will have a new energy, what we dub B.R.E.- Big Rodent Energy. It is #ratgirlsummer, we say. We heart each other’s posts. We comment in all caps. We write YES. We write LOVE THIS SO MUCH. We write THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. We find each other. We see clips of a rat carrying a giant slice of pizza down the subway stairs. We think how we could really go for a giant slice of pizza. We leave our homes, dressed to please ourselves. We wear shorts, some of us for the first time since childhood. Our thighs spill out. We feel the hot night air on our legs. Legs that are pale or hairy or dimpled. We are too skinny and too fat. We are wild and unwanted and beautiful. When we see each other on the streets, gulping hot cheese as we scamper by, we smile big toothy grins. “Crush that slice!” we shout. “Your hair is EVERYTHING!” we reply. We find treasures on our excursions—shiny things, precious things. We collect them and bring them home to surround us. An incomplete inventory of our hoard is as follows: friendship bracelets, gel pens, trading cards of BTS members, water bottles, books, yarn, iPods, and earrings that dangle and sparkle. Some of us gather stuffed animals and pile them high on our beds. One of us has a penchant for outer space, spending hours each day in the sourcing and acquisition of cosmos-related paraphernalia. We are unapologetic in our enthusiasm for these things. There is no cringe in a #ratgirlsummer. You scrunch up your faces and ask, “but why a rat?” The girlies that get it get it and those of you that don’t, don’t. How could we explain that to have a #ratgirlsummer means to have freedom from caring how the world sees us and to do what we want to do, when we want to do it? We quote Mary Oliver and say, “We choose to let the soft animal of our body love what it loves.” “But a rat?” you ask again. “A filthy, disgusting rat?” We stop talking. You prefer us as kittens or bunnies, to be held in your hands, petted, cooed over, and contained. There is no point in the explaining, we know. You are incapable of understanding. Only we can hold space for this. We learn that a group of rats is called a mischief and we decide right then and there to host a mischief. That night we light up the group chat. There are details to figure out, plans to make. Initially, there is division over where to hold it. We consider whether the venue ought to align with our values. Finding none that do, we focus on other matters. Margaritas, for example. Let’s not forget the apps, we write. We would NEVER, we reply. We send images of rats in sunglasses. Rats on skateboards. Rats in tutus. We laugh react to each one. YESSSS, we write. LET’S CAUSE MAYHEM. We arrive as individuals still getting used to being part of a group, a collective, a community. In each other’s company we feel at ease and we think this is how we were meant to live- together, not alone. We are young and old, mostly female but not only. All are welcome, we say, being a rat girl is more about attitude than it is about gender. We dance and drink our margaritas. We gnaw loaded potato skins and we roar with laughter. The servers give us looks and sigh as they clear our dishes. We take turns connecting our phones to the bluetooth speaker, selecting songs that make us move, make us sing from our bellies. You poke your heads in the door to see who is causing this ruckus. You leave quickly upon seeing us intertwined and bound together, an undulating and ecstatic dancing mass. We are UNBOTHERED, we shout. We are happy, at last. We make our way home, piled into taxis. We look out for each other. No rat girl left behind, we cry. Once home we don’t bother with changing out of our clothes. We make a nest of our covers and we fall asleep, quickly for once. It is a deep sleep. As we awake in the morning from easy dreams we find ourselves transformed in our beds into gigantic rats. We look at the pink of our tails curled around our bodies, the tips reaching our faces. We are covered in brown fur, we stroke it with our fingertips. We giggle at our softness. We notice our thumbs are gone. We don’t miss them. We are not alarmed nor surprised by this change in our forms. We are not Gregor Samsa. We do not feel shame about who we are. We know we are us, made better. We sit up and our whiskers
Cloudbursts
Cloudbursts by Scott Dorsch You are special. Right now, you are in the middle of the living room with your hands out in front of you like a conjurer. Just above your brow is a cloud about the size of a rabbit, raining miniature rain onto a potted lemon tree. A black sheet hangs from the ceiling behind you and scrolls under your feet. It is coarse and sodden with rain. Your feet, too. Holding this pose is painful, but you do it anyway for your father. Your neck and shoulders ache and that familiar sharp bloom of sparks, of a hand gone numb, is back. But you must stay focused. Be still. You are your father’s favorite subject. You were a subject before you could walk. The uncanny prints of a child producing miniature clouds sell like hot cakes at fairs and gas stations all over the Midwest and make your father just enough money to afford the oils and canvas and printing fees. But it is the commercial jobs that earn him a living. Spray guns, ventilators and satin-finish eggshell are Monday through Friday. This latest portrait could change all of that. It could be a showstopper. The sun radiates over your father’s shoulder onto the easel like a spotlight, illuminating ancient dust above, waves of hair that could be your mother’s. It’s a dramatic illumination: the deep, crow-black shadows in the background, contrasted by the bright, angelic subject summoning rain onto lemons in the foreground. The raindrops clinging to the rinds are bright and phosphoric. The cloud, a near-black. The subject, bored. So baroque yet so surreal, critics would say. Perhaps they will comment on the inspiring use of light, the emphatic, no, deft chiaroscuro. But your father’s aim is more specific than that. His vision is more tenebrous, more Caravaggio, more dramatic than just simple deep shading for the sake of depth of field. He thinks this portrait could make him into something more than just a sideshow amongst the beer-can artist at the fairs. He may be hailed as the surrealist Rembrandt of Michigan. Perhaps he could sell more than just postcards and 10x12s, earn an honorary degree from Western or be invited to shows in high-rise New York or the Tate Modern. It could wretch him out of the gaff tape scrum and suffocating fumes of another credit union. Out of this sad cabin, north of town. Perhaps even your mother will come back. Perhaps. It has been ten days and oil has yet to touch more than just swatches and thumbnails. A house is only as strong as its foundation. His eyes dart from subject—you—to the parchment laid in his lap. He crosshatches your cheeks with charcoal in rough, staccato strokes, lifting the portrait to the light every so often to check his work. Satin-finish eggshell forever ornaments his curly black hair (it’s where you get your curls). Satin-finish eggshell hazes his jeans and even his bare feet. Satin-finish eggshell is his scent, his aura. You can’t remember a time when he wasn’t pocked with paint. He works in near silence. Never speaks. Music is distracting. Kids are distracting. You find his new mustache distracting. It seems to be an extension of his wispy nose hairs. Look away. Don’t laugh. Don’t look him in the eye. He hates that. You don’t want to agitate him. He moves like the weather in November. Mercurial, cold. Warm when you don’t expect it. You never know what father you will get. Producing clouds—controlling clouds—requires deep focus. Keep watching the dust dance in the light like krill. Imagine you’re at the bottom of the ocean, the cloud a turtle. Ignore the pain in your shoulders and feet. The feeling has always been ineffable, this making of clouds. You tried to explain it to your mother when you were eight. She was looking out the window when she asked about it. You told her that you could sense the clouds in the room like fish tugging at a line, and you just need to pull them into view. Like this, you said, lifting your hands overhead. A small loaf of a cloud appeared. She smiled. It kind of itches. Stings sometimes. Like static, you said. You’re losing the cloud. Concentrate. There’s a meaty scar on your lower lip from biting it. Tongue the scar tissue and stay grounded. Listen deeply to what’s around you. You can’t lose this rabbit-sized cloud. Your father is so happy with this one. He said it is perfect. Focus on the pencil strokes, the ticks of rain on the lemon leaves. On the texture of the black sheet below you. Your feet. The fan whirring in the other room. The clicks of juncos outside. The brawl of grackles and blue jays. The crying of gulls overhead. The gulls are inland. Storm is coming. Or is it you? Sometimes you can’t tell the difference. The birds make you restless. Behind your ear is a tickle, an itch. You swear it’s a spider. A thick one, like the ones that splay your windowsill at night. Wait for a break in the glances from your father before moving to check. You don’t want to upset him. Minutes pass before your father finally huffs, looks away, and bends to swap his charcoal pencil for a tortillon. He pushes up his glasses and tugs at his mustache. As he rubs his eyes, reach to inspect your nape. “Don’t,” he says without looking. You stop. Shudder. The rabbit-sized cloud expands by an inch, as if it were shocked, hair now standing on end. The rain tightens into a finer mist. Your father raises a brow. Deep breath. Focus. The grackles in the yard. The rain expands. It’s audible once again on the floor, the
On the Other Side of the Wall
On the Other Side of the Wall by Andrea Bianchi When I hear the girl’s scream pierce the cracked plaster between the new guy’s apartment and mine, I do nothing. My eyes widen, waiting toward the wall in the 1:00 a.m. dark. My back tenses against the mattress. My legs stiffen beneath the covers in the center of the bed. My breath halts. the way it froze in the grip of Rod’s icy fingers on that night two winters ago when his elbows pinned my breasts to our bed and his hands compressed the tissue of my throat, his thumbs collapsing my airway. Flattening my larynx. So when I opened my mouth to try to scream, it did not make a sound Silence now. And then a thud. Perhaps a faint scream. Perhaps I am imagining. I unclench my fingers and pull apart the heavy covers. Test my feet on the floor. My knees wobble. I tiptoe barefoot to the bedroom wall and press my ear against its smooth cool. Maybe thudding with the bass of the new guy’s stereo. But just the ticking of a pipe swishes within. I tip-toe across my apartment, to the opposite wall, maybe echoing with the shrieking laughter of the old woman’s favorite late-night talk show. But against my palm, the plaster flattens, as lifeless as a blank TV screen. Then a thump. A far-off wail. Maybe out on the city streets below. I tip-toe to the balcony and peer down to the sidewalk, where teenage girls used to squeal beside the boys they liked as they pedaled toward the last suburban train. Back before the sidewalks emptied, eerie, silent, save for the wailing sirens of police cars, flashing their blue rays into vacant storefronts as if with some kind of ultraviolent cleansing agent, some cure for the strange new virus that has come to hover above the whole earth, to choke the air, strangling the lungs of the rare masked pedestrians who dare to sneak down the downtown sidewalks beneath my balcony. But tonight, far below, no one is wandering. The only wailing is the wind. I clutch the railing. Inhale to slow the palpitations in my throat—a heart condition that the doctors in disheveled white coats on TV have warned might turn deadly, even in young people like me, if I were to breathe a contaminated stream of air down there, beyond the safety—and the isolation—of my apartment walls. A crash against the plaster. A rattle of the dishes on my kitchen shelves. I march across the floorboards to the wall that separates me from the new guy’s fist. But as I raise mine in response, to pound my reprimand, shout my threat to summon the police, I hear Rod’s long-ago curse, spat out after my hands grasped at our old apartment’s doorframe, after my feeble cry for help bounced and slid down the outside hallway’s walls. “Now you’ve done it,” he declared as he slammed the door against my fingertips. “Now the police are going to come, and now I’m going to get my gun.” I know that if the blue beams of police flashlights were to sweep up tonight from the streets and pierce through the new guy’s door, he too might flash a revolver in response to the police pistols, and then bullets might rip apart the plaster. My hand drops. My palm opens, empty. The silence stretches out the length of the wall. As the blue-lit numbers of the clock on the stove flash past one by one, cleansing the last echoes of the girl’s screams from the quiet darkness of my apartment, I imagine a corresponding blue glow in the room next door. Perhaps a football game replaying on the TV screen. Or maybe a more scripted sort of gore, flashing through some slasher plotline, perhaps prompting the girl’s frightened screams. Perhaps that crash was simply the slamming of a cabinet as the new guy retrieved snacks to accompany the horror film. Perhaps any actual horror was only my imagining. ***** I started imagining the details of the new guy’s life the night he emerged, mysterious behind his mask, from our building’s elevator. As the doors slid open, his frame blocked the entrance with the bruising bulk of a football player, perhaps an offensive tackle a few years ago on his college team, his torso wider than the pizza box in his big-knuckled grip, ready for the game later. The bill of his back-turned cap, which bore Rod’s favorite team logo, tried to suppress the tufts of brown hair punching out in all directions from his head. The edge framed his blue eyes, steady above the blue edge of his mask, as his eyes pierced the hem of my miniskirt and scraped down my bare legs to my heels. I stepped toward the elevator to slide down to the mailboxes—to the packages of stilettos and party dresses I had begun ordering in my isolation, in anticipation of far-off, imaginary parties—when the girl materialized. In the shadows behind him, she wore no mask. Only a kind of grimace, her lower lip twisting. Her eyebrows arched, as if trying to form a protective canopy above her body. She shuffled off toward his new apartment behind the stubborn wall of his back. Then the elevator doors closed into a barrier again between me and them. Through the wall later, though, I heard him yell. “Football, baby!” he said. “Let’s pound some skin!” His bare feet no doubt thumping one after the other up onto the coffee table, his hand stretching out with a beer bolted to one knee. On the other knee, perhaps the girl’s palm was
In Eternal
In Eternal by Lauren O’Donoghue Mary stands by the window, her fingers making cat’s cradles in the air. It is a winter afternoon, and the light is pale. It rimes the floral-patterned bedlinen, the hem of her long camel coat. There are water spots on the mirror. She would like to give the place a good going-over, to scrub the dust from the skirting boards and brush the cobwebs from the light fixture. Not that the room is dirty—not really. Only cheap. Only a little grubby at the edges. The hotel is a nondescript new-build on the outskirts of the city, near to the train station. Mary walked quickly through the lobby when she arrived, fearing questions, but the girl behind the reception desk didn’t even look up from the magazine she was reading. Perhaps this sort of thing is common here. The man Mary has come here to meet is in the en-suite bathroom. She can hear running water through the walls. Making himself ready. Her pulse chatters in her throat, rapid as a baby bird’s. She should take her coat off, she thinks. It seems like the thing to do. But every time her hands move to her lapels they flutter away again, coming back to rest in a spot just above her navel. Her stomach turns, the lurching of it somehow not unpleasant. Under her coat she is wearing a dress of green rayon, the one with the rosette at the collar, and underneath a plain slip that is fraying at the seams. Below that she has on a peach-coloured brassiere and knickers of a similar colour, the closest thing she has to a matching set. Her nylons are new, purchased that morning with money she took from Bridget’s piggy bank. Mary hopes their perfect sheen will distract him; from the weight of her breasts, the soft flesh of her thighs, the lightning tracery of stretch marks across her hips and belly. He has already told her that she is beautiful, but she fears he will shrink from the fullness of her. The pipes give a sudden, high shriek as a tap is turned off. Three heartbeats of silence pass, and then the door to the en-suite bathroom opens. The man Mary is here to see is not particularly handsome. His hair is thinning at the crown, and there are dark spots on the backs of his hands. But he smiles when he sees her, a broad and honest smile that deepens the creases around his eyes, and after years of not being seen at all, that is more than enough. Where and how they met is immaterial. She is here now. Mary removes her long camel coat, folds it over her right arm, and lays it neatly on the chair by the window. The coat had been John’s gift to her a week after she first stepped foot on English soil. Her good tweed overcoat, inherited from her mother, was ruined on the crossing from Dublin to Liverpool. A summer squall had bruised the sky not long after the ferry came out of port, and the vessel was bobbing queasily on the choppy water. Christopher had picked that inauspicious moment to make himself known, two weeks ahead of schedule. Mary’s waters broke as she was clinging to the guardrail on the ferry’s top deck and were sluiced away by the rain within moments. A woman called Agnes, a navvy’s widow from Kildare, acted as midwife. She’d six children of her own and knew the workings of it. It was her who folded up the tweed overcoat and propped it, businesslike, under Mary’s hips, to be spoiled beyond salvation in a rush of amniotic fluid. Mary’s screams, she was told later, had the lads in the engine room crossing themselves. Later she would hardly remember screaming at all. Only Agnes placing the squirming, wailing infant in her arms, his body red and wet as a skinned rabbit, and the way she couldn’t keep herself from laughing. She called him Christopher, the name she and John had agreed when he left to work the beet harvest. One of the crewmen opened a bottle of sherry to wet the baby’s head. By the time the ferry came into port an hour later, Christopher was asleep at Mary’s breast, and the sky was so cloudless you’d never know it had rained at all. Her fourth child will be born in a hospital room, a modern phenomenon that her mother would never have approved of. Mary will be brought in on the advice of her doctor because of the high levels of protein in her urine, and she will be grateful for it. It will not feel right, somehow, to birth this child at home, in the same bed where Declan and Bridget filled their tiny lungs for the first time. Mrs McKee will mind the children when Mary is admitted, albeit reluctantly. She will have heard the backyard gossip, same as everyone else. Mary will not require Mrs McKee’s approval. All Mrs McKee needs to do is keep the children fed until Mary returns home and to keep her cat’s arse of a mouth closed while they’re in earshot. It will be a difficult birth. There will be moments where Mary will be certain that she will die in that room, with its bare lightbulb and walls so white it hurts to look at them. She will tell the doctor that she needs her rites, and he will pretend not to hear her. The maternity unit will have opened its doors for the first time less than a month before. It will smell like paint and antiseptic. Mary will be sick into a metal dish that a nurse will hold beneath her chin, again and again until there is nothing to bring up but bile. When it is over, the midwife will ask Mary if she wants to hold the child, and Mary will say no. She will ask