Issue One by After Alexei Magazine

after alexei issue one december 2019

founding editor—fred nolan editor—michele fiore editor—wendy garfinkle cover design—keith rosson

price: $0.00 expanded kindle edition, coming in january 2020: $3.99

contents foreword

clipped

bildungsroman

the woman with golden tears

three poems

lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;appel du vide

the death of poe

indestructible

reinvention

when louise met the fisherman

for nichole

These writers amaze us. All of them. Any new venture is a risk, but even in the first few days we knew it had paid off. Keith gave us a look at his gorgeous cover design and then, as if on cue, Lucy submitted Bildungsroman: her restrained, magical homage to falling in love with a book. Taken literally the story is wonderfully impossible, yet read as a metaphor it makes a deceptively straightforward claim. We speak to our favorite characters. We hear when they answer. Chronologically our last acceptance was Molly’s Clipped. It is difficult not to envy her deliberate pacing, her perfectly odd details (“My mind fingers each worry like a prayer bead of dread”). We identify with every character here: the firm, caring hospital tech. The dutiful grandmother. The two mothers, one a defiant professor and the other, an anxious student. The children, caught between biology and social norms. Between those two submissions we received micro-poetry on drought and beauty, a flash fiction on suicide ideation and a second metanarrative on reading. We accepted two horror pieces and a wild-eyed experimental flash about climate change. (Or not. It’s hard to be sure.) We completed the roster with a wonderful commissioned reprint: The Woman with Golden Tears, by Lauren Davis. Any more of an introduction than this would be a disservice to you, and to the contributors. Suffice to say everyone has been kind, from these nine artists spreading the word about our new magazine, to hopefuls awaiting our response and to writers whose work we had to decline. We are honored to have been a part of it. Enjoy our first issue. There are more on the way.

Fred, Michele and Wendy December 1, 2019

Clipped by Molly Gabriel previously unpublished

You’re going to be fine, someone says. They’re all holding me down, placing the plastic half-pear over my face. Count back, someone says. I scream. Five four three mom’s voice floats through me, counting down, two one. I wake up, bandaged. My wings are gone. This first operation removed the wings; subsequent efforts will repair my damaged back. Five four three again and again, they send me back under two one and pull me back up to recover, lying face down. I’ll come to say countless regarding these operations. Only mom can bear to keep count. I leave for college finished with surgeries. I’m almost pretty in a way. I’m in love. I’m healed. * * * My anthropology professor eats lunch with her daughter on campus. My heart raises when I see the sway of fine feathers in the October wind. I call mom. I tell her about the small wings, pressed and whispering together against the girl’s purple sweater. Should I tell my professor I switch the phone to my right hand about me? Wind ruffles the pause. She says, for a young, scared mom, that might be an incredible relief. * * * I visit after her lecture on cultural norms. I tremble. I press a notebook to my chest. She says, If this is about the ethnography project, you’ll have to come to office hours. No. I say. I saw your daughter on the lawn. I wanted to tell you. I tell her everything: my wings, their removal, the operations and recovery. I say it proudly. My chin posed high. I tell her I’m okay—it all worked out—I’m stronger for it, actually. I offer this proudly, my charity.

She nods until she doesn’t. We’re not discussing removal, she says. They’re a part of who she is—and we want to embrace her. I thank her and leave. I call mom near tears. Everyone finds her way, mom says. She adds, I have no regrets. This buoys my sense of panic. * * * I’m still in love when I leave college. I marry. My son is born. Motherhood rearranges the body. Look at me now, you’d never see wings. Motherhood rearranges the mind. I worry over him. My mind fingers each worry like a prayer bead of dread. What if he grows wings? What if he needs operations? What if I have to pin him down and count backwards? What if and I know this answer already I can’t do it? I watch with terrible precision as gloved hands snake his back, examined again and again by specialists. I scour pamphlets on signs of latent wing development. Every quarterly check is marked clean. I avoid sleep. When I dream, wings sprout from his back, lift him into flight, send him higher and higher, while I watch from the ground, both of us crying. I call mom the night before our annual checkup. I confess I can’t sleep. I tell her I fear I can’t do it. I don’t know how you do it. I can’t do no regrets. She laughs. I have many regrets, she says, especially about your wings— —I feel a flutter at my back, an ache— But I love you and I tried, she considers this, and that’s all I will admit to.

Molly Gabriel is a writer and poet from Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Queen Mobs Tea House and Jellyfish Review. She is the recipient of the Robert Fox Award for Young Writers. She has been selected for flash readings with Bridge Eight Literary Magazine and the Jax by Jax Literary Festival. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida with her husband and toddler. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on Twitter at @m_ollygabriel.

Bildungsroman by Lucy Zhang previously unpublishedâ&#x20AC;©

The girl and the boy both grew up as orphans–the kind of children who skipped lunch and sat under that one tree, overgrown and perpetually green, with that one wood-plank-and-rope swing tied on the sturdiest branch–that is, children in possession of an unnatural predilection for stories. The boy read his stolen copies of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The girl dreamt about A Wizard of Earthsea and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. “The world is unfair,” the boy said. “And we have to live with that.” “The world is boring,” the girl said. “I want to live in a story.” No book ever told her how to deal with the girls who hit their growth spurts early and seemed to believe that entitled them to kick her in the stomach against the bathroom floor, adults inquiring about her whereabouts when she sought books over play time and meals and sleep, the Strange People who asked her how are you today, do you feel left out, aren’t you lonely. She read. She lived. She could be a fairy, subsisting on the breeze pushing her bangs to the side, the sweet scent of pine and wood grating against the nova odor mortis from blades of grass strangled in her fists, the dew collecting on the tips of leaves and her eyelashes. The girl grew up. Without paragraphs backing each character nuance and motive, missed whenever her eyes skimmed words, she failed to make eye contact with the unsleeping, flashing billboard lit world around her. She tried her best: she became a journalist–the type who wore her hair knotted in a bun impaled by a red pen, carried a handbag just large enough to fit an iPad, a book, and a small notepad crushed at the bottom, always hurrying somewhere in her light sneakers that gripped her feet like socks. The boy aged ten years in two weeks. Some call it a time skip. Or perhaps he outgrew his purpose as the orphaned underdog. He went on to save the world, as all good heroes do: traumatized by his first battle, disillusioned by the second, leveled up and resuscitated by the power of love for the last. There were instances when he felt as though his mind separated from his body like the way wax peels off cheese–his conscious drifted in and out until one day, it stood separate– watching, a bystander. He watched his first kiss like this: he noticed how his neck bent forward to accommodate his lover’s height, how the back of his collar turned up, how both of his eyelashes grazed hers, how his arm gripped her waist in what appeared to be romantic in a don’t-let-me-go way but probably hurt quite a bit; he

also noticed the line of ants crawling between blades of grass, cumulus clouds as ornaments to a why-does-it-have-to-be-sky-blue sky, the silence from the lack of the cicadas’ reverberations; he found he could not even hear his own humming as his glance diverted from the kiss to the ants–the scene muted in the perfection of the moment. He still returned to the orphanage, stood by the swing hanging under the tree, marveled at its ability to defy time–wood still fresh, rope unfrayed–as though the only thing permitted to change was himself. It was here that he met the girl, at first only a silhouette leaning against the tree trunk, face hidden by shade. “I know what’s going to happen,” the girl told the boy. “You’re going to die.” “Everyone dies,” the boy said. “Yes, but I know when you’re going to die, how you’re going to die. And what comes after.” Now the boy looked at her: she, in her blouse and suit skirt–likely freshly ironed; he, in his unchanging outfit of jeans and a leather sweater that never dirtied because tragic main characters can’t be doing laundry. But what he would give to toss a Tide Pod into a laundry machine stuffed with an odd number of socks and shirts finally picked off the ground: his romance with the girl who encouraged him to put his books aside and eat dinner with her, his first view of the ocean and how vast the world extended beyond his knowledge of the four walls enclosing him–expendable. “You’re going to drown in the ocean you love so much. You’re going to leave your childhood sweetheart behind,” the girl continued, her eyes focused on the boy and her fingers gripping the spine of a book hidden in her handbag. Not a death sentence, but a liberation, the boy realized. “Did you know that I have to cut open Tide Pods when I use the laundry machine? The water temperature isn’t hot enough to dissolve the pod so the detergent doesn’t fully get released,” he said.

The girl’s grip loosened, her creased forehead smoothed, her spine relaxed like she no longer had to hold up her head, the densest part of the human body. She laughed–a sound that the boy had never heard before–so bright and careless and ethereal. “Sounds like you need a new washing machine.” “Yes,” he said. “I’ll make sure to do that before I die.” “I’ll leave this here if you’re interested.” The girl pulled out a small book, the edges of the cover, once sharp corners, now rounded from wear and tear and its inner pages distributed unevenly with dog ears. She handed it to him. “In case you want to know what happens up until your death. It’s a good read.” “Maybe I’ll be able to plan out time between all that’s going to happen to buy a good washing machine and a gallon of liquid laundry detergent.” He took the book. “Yeah, you do that.” The girl and boy eventually got married–not to each other, naturally. The girl continued to read during the little time she could find: on her hour commute to work, while walking to meetings in separate buildings, at her lunch break with her peanut butter and jelly without the jelly sandwich. The boy conceded to the preordained, abided by his author’s dictation—but when he sensed no one was watching, he thought of the girl and the laundry he still had to do. He drowned just as the book said he would: in pain—the cold of the waters stabbing his limbs, seagulls swooping down to pluck at his eyes, his stupid character flaw of stubbornness forcing him to tread water until tension left his muscles. He wondered what the girl was up to, if she had grown old yet, if she thought of him as the boy in a self-contained tragedy or if she remembered him as the boy who just wanted freshly cleaned clothes, and the very thought of her made him believe he possessed a mind of his own. Only I will permit you to drown me, cruel author, he thought. The girl worked and ate and slept and read. At night, she tried to dream herself into fictional worlds only to be woken by her phone’s alarm clock or her husband’s snores. She loved each story and their characters, carried their hardcopy prophecies hiding half-sized post-its marking pages she especially

admired, and cherished their beginnings and ends. She loved the boy tooâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;how he came to life the moment she flipped back to the first page of this spare copy, how his death felt permanent.

Lucy Zhang is a software engineer and holds a B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science. She watches anime, writes poetry and fiction (when patient enough), and sleeps in on weekends like a normal human being. She can be found atÂ https://kowaretasekai.wordpress.com/.

The Woman with Golden Tears by Lauren Davis (originally published in January 2019 by Gingerbread House Literary Magazine)

The men of Silverkeep made her weep. They strung her up in the town square to a fat post, agreed to throw the key onto the lake’s floor. They fought over who could cut her next. One tried to dismember her hands. Another asked to wed her. She had stumbled into their town on a Sunday, gold littering her footprints. No one knew her name. She spit. She kept quiet. She never even whimpered. She learned to not cry. On the fortieth day that she stood chained, her last tear fell. Two men drowned diving into the lake for the key. The others passed her in the night, eyeing her, eyeing each other. They could not agree how close to bring her to death. How much to scald. How much to flay. She refused bread, water. All the while the women rushed in the streets, spending the last tears their husbands had reaped. Their purses became light. They considered the woman. One raised a knife. A chapman traveled through Silverkeep on the fiftieth day. He walked past, averted his eyes. He took a room, then in the dark he went to the fields and caught fire to every crop. While the townspeople rushed to witness their grains turn to ash, he took an axe to the woman’s post. He dragged her and the post to his covered wagon. Beneath scraps of string and cloth, he hid her. Down a black road they hurried away from the flames. Why did they chain you? he asked. Perhaps you’ll see, she said. In a limestone cave, he separated the chains from the post, but found he could not break the lock on her wrists. She rested on the ground, her hands weighted with iron. In her sleep, she wept. The cave filled with gold as she dreamed. It fell from the cave’s mouth. The chapman gathered some of her tears in his pocket. He woke the woman and told her to hide in the forest behind the cave. He returned in a few days with three hired guards and five stonemasons. I will build you a castle, he whispered into the trees.

The safer the woman felt, the more she cried. Gold fell to the forest floor. The more she cried, the faster the castle was built. Soon the chapman told her their home was complete. She climbed down from an evergreen. He led her through six sets of doors. She slept in her own bed of feathers, sheets weaved with gold thread. The chapman surrounded her with gowns and jewels and paintings. But he grieved that he could not remove her chains. They were so heavy she barely moved. She spent her days next to the window, considering the birds. He hired an army and led them to Silverkeep. He instructed the entire town to drink the lake. Everyone spread around the shoreline and cupped the salt water to their mouths. He promised them gold. They choked and coughed. Their bellies swelled. Soon all the town died drinking the lake, even the children. The chapman swallowed the few spoonfuls of water that remained. He pulled the key from his mouth. He turned towards the road to the castle, his army marching behind him, daydreaming of asking the woman for a dance, of how graceful she would be without chains. But behind the six doors, she had eaten away her hands. She danced alone, the chains cast aside. She wore a blue gown streaked with blood. Flowers fell from her feet. The birds gathered at her window to learn the new song she sang. They carried it back through the air, over the head of the chapman and his army. Blue petals fell from their flight. All the way to the castle—a dawn-scented path.

Lauren Davis is the author of the chapbook Each Wild Thing’s Consent (Poetry Wolf Press), and she holds an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Davis has worked as an editor at The Tishman Review, and she teaches at The Writers’ Workshoppe and Imprint Books. She is a former Editor in Residence at The Puritan’s Town Crier and has been awarded a residency at Hypatia-in-the-Woods. Her poetry, essays, stories, and fairy tales can be found in publications such as Prairie Schooner, Hobart, and Ninth Letter. Davis lives on the Olympic Peninsula in a Victorian seaport community.

Three poems by Margarita Serafimova previously unpublished

Εορτή του Δημητρίου (Feast of Dimitris) I was broken like an egg by a bird.

As Odysseus, an oar on my shoulder, I am walking through the land towards the grave of my father. All-consuming drought. Black snakes, breathless, are wrapping themselves around dry weeds. I cut down the stems. It is darkness. Cosmos.

Above the Arabian mountains, all at once, I fathomed my beauty. I was life on Earth.

Margarita Serafimova was a finalist for the Erbacce Press Prize 2019 and 2018, Christopher Smart (Eyewear Publishing) Prize 2019, Summer Literary Seminars 2018 and 2019, Hammond House Prize 2018, Red Wheelbarrow Prize 2018, Montreal Prize 2017; nominated for Best of the Net 2018. She has three collections in Bulgarian. Her work appears in, among others: Agenda Poetry, London Grip, Waxwing, Trafika Europe, Landfill, A-Minor, Poetry South, Great Weather for Media, Orbis, Nixes Mate, StepAway, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Leveler, Light, HeadStuff, Minor Literatures, Writing Disorder, Birds We Piled Loosely, Chronogram, Noble/ Gas, Origins, The Journal, millerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pond, Obra/ Artifact, Arteidolia/ Swifts&Slows, Memoir Mixtapes, glitterMOB, TAYO, Guttural, Punch, Tuck and Ginosko. Visit: https://www.facebook.com/MargaritaISerafimova

L'appel du Vide by Lo Potter previously unpublished

I stand at the edge of a rooftop overlooking the city as dusk settles in. A landscape of colorful roofs and concrete sit among the seemingly endless sprawl stretching to the horizon. I struggle to remember why I climbed here. I am encumbered by my job, my past, my anxious thoughts, and all else that is the sum of my life. It has culminated with this moment; in a fit of exhausted apathy, I weigh the consequences of leaning forward. I hear something whisper in the breeze.Â The call of the void, the willful loss of balance and sudden tumble as gravity, air resistance, and acceleration spin the body's orientation. As the inner ear reacts to the free fall and increased acceleration, my stomach would clench. My insides would turn and everything inside would seek release from its acidic prison. Thoughts in the form of images might flash before my eyes in a stream of incoherent recollections, each one introducing the next: a haphazard recreation of what brought me to this. But only for a second. I wonder which of the senses would go first. The eyes? The air blasting the cornea until little tears developed, eventually causing enough damage that I was blind to the ground below. The last sound I'd hear would be the crack of my bones against the earth, with an impact such that the nervous system's pain response would overload. Or would it be the ears? Would the moving air--changing pressure within the ear canal--strain the eardrum to the point of bursting at mid-descent? I shift my weight nervously between my feet as I measure the response of the concrete below to the weight of the imagined deafening silence. My stomach churns, and my muscles tense from the impending fantastical impact. I remind myself that the collision of opposing molecular structures obeys the laws of physics: equal and opposite. The impact would ricochet through my body and shatter apart my bones and internal organs. Would I feel the pain? Or would it be numbed by the sudden hematoma in my brain, assuming all of the major structures weren't destroyed instantly upon impact? The remaining ion gradients in the nerves and muscle tissue would immediately begin to work their way toward equilibrium, causing full body jerks until everything just stops. I would cease to exist. A hole would open, swallowing all that I am. No consciousness, no memories. I would leave everything behind with nothing afterward except the pain inflicted on others. The dark silence as my brain

completely shut down might not even register. Completely detached, the rest of the world would spin on without me, leaving those I love and those that love me to be the sole keepers of our shared memories. I step away from the edge, my heart pounding as I try to catch my breath. Inky blackness comes as stars emerge and speckle the sky. I turn toward the old steel fire escape without looking back. The void remains, but I avert my eyes and silently retreat. The ability to experience life is the joy in the darkest of times. For that, I am grateful.

Lo Potter is a newly emerging author based in Missoula, Montana. Their work tends to focus on mental health, though they prefer to balance this with absurdist humor if possible. They enjoy hiking in the mountains, playing with spooky ideas, and working to understand the seemingly impenetrable undercurrents of modern society in the company of their spouse, Jacob, and 5-pound â&#x20AC;&#x153;dogâ&#x20AC;?, Haskell.

The Death of Poe by John Grey previously unpublished

A man delirious on the streets of Baltimore, trembling frame in dirty shirt, unpolished shoes, stumbles into Ryan’s Tavern, flops into a chair, face thin as a rag, bony elbows on the table. One last pretense at being sober, a wave of a hand to the bartender, a courteous smile for the other drinkers, then his head collapses onto his chest. And a voice whispers, “That’s Poe.” My voice actually. My voice muffled by the pages of a book, my hundredth reading of “The Pit and The Pendulum” or “The Raven.” He’s done with pathetic protestations of love. With Annie Richmond. With Sarah Helen Whitman. He’s done with putting words to paper. With “Ligeia” and “The Masque of The Red Death.” He’s down to being merely human. And that’s not nearly enough. He’s dragged out of that drinking hole, dumped off in a hospital. And his body survives four days. Four days of fever and hallucination. “That’s Poe,” I repeat. A life of dwelling on the tick before midnight. And now midnight comes.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in HaightAshbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.

Indestructible by Simon Read previously unpublished

Assessment Notes - Entry #57: Slitter-40 almost always falls asleep at midday with that killer last line running through his head like a sugared blade: “I saw no shadow of another parting from her”. Today, an orange rain has been falling and the girl is still dead. Journal Extract - 15th June: The bed sheets and visions cling to me in the. Early mornings, the blurred pictures that come and then go. Are hideously tantalising, as they fade in and fade out. Field History – Epsilon Proximity: The bad news kept on arriving. The bridges of the city were disintegrating— corroding under the embrace of oxygen-rich air. They were becoming increasingly precarious—flaking apart, day by day, and crumbling into the chasms they spanned. Journal Extract - 16th July: Persistent among them is that outstretched hand – with its. Palm upturned and its fingers splayed, I read the. Network of creases but I can never decode them. Assessment Notes - Entry #63: Slitter-40 jokes to himself, on his good days. He tries to tell the one about the amnesiac, but he can’t remember the punch line. That always makes him laugh. Journal Extract - 17th August: I wear this regret like an old cardigan. It smells like what I used to know. I feel a tickle inside my head as. A memory tries to make its way out. Field History – Delta Proximity: Most people in the city had been living in and around the bridge camps. But each day they needed to travel a little further afield to find fresh game. And some of them were deciding not to come back. Journal Extract - 18th September: It’s almost there – from the verge of. Remembering to the tip of my tongue. I can almost speak it to myself. I can almost say how much I. Loved her, can almost vocalise that scream.

Assessment Notes - Entry #71: Slitter-40 understands that his mind can be switched from high power to low power. From blinding illumination to primordial darkness. He used to be in control of the switch. Journal Extract - 19th October: There’s a fine white mist of. Atomised gauze over everything, was it. Me screaming or was it her? Field History – Gamma Proximity: The problem with the bridges was symptomatic. It didn’t take long for the whole infrastructure to start falling apart. Faster than anyone could have imagined, the city was mutating into a conglomerate of isolated lesions. Journal Extract - 20th November: I didn’t know I was. Able to hurt like that. Until she was gone, I. Didn’t know it was possible. To wake up and for. A few short seconds to. Have forgotten and then to. Feel the acid reality of. It all flooding back into. Consciousness and burning up the. Possibility of anything ever changing. Assessment Notes - Entry #76: Slitter-40 feels the girl there with him. Young, beautiful and likely to stay forever. But then she’s gone—as though she never existed. Vague traces flicker while he sleeps, as if he is feverish. A smile, a look, a gently spoken word, a blush. The splintered remains of something indestructible. Journal Extract - 21st December: If there’s a way. Forward I can’t see. It, darkness is everything. Now, a candle may. Shiver occasionally but it’s. Soon extinguished, I’d never. Seen so much blood. Field History – Beta Proximity: Pretty soon all the bridge camps were deserted. The people had mostly banded together into hunting groups and located themselves in the old public service buildings, recovering as much as they could in terms of medical supplies and emergency food. Journal Extract - 22nd January: The blood was. Not on my. Hands, my hands. Were red with. Blood, they were. Red gloves, nothing. More sinister than. That, red

gloves. Of blood, my. Palms, my fingers. Under my nails. All spotless, the. Skin of my. Hands was crimson. As though I’d. Gutted some thing. Assessment Notes - Entry #80: Slitter-40 is now little more than what the insatiable mouth of life has chewed over and spat out. A stubborn mush, courageously attempting to recover the shape of what it once was. The girl recedes and returns on a rusty tide. Journal Extract - 23rd February: Somewhere inside. Me there. Is something. Inside me. Something that. Knows what. It is. That knows. What I. Cannot, I. Need to. Dig it. Out with. Something, dig. It out. With something. Sharp, I. Loved her. I would. Never have. Hurt her. Field History – Alpha Proximity: Water was the biggest problem. It haemorrhaged from the rivers and collected in the streets in orange puddles. But it smelt like nothing on earth. Journal Extract - 24th March: Then. All. That. Blood. Then. Holding. Her. Then. Letting. Her. Go. Such. A. Long. Way. She. Fell. Such. A. Long. Way.

Simon Read lives in the UK. His work includes short fiction, poetry, lyrics, songs, and word-based artworks. Simon’s work has been published, or is forthcoming, in a variety of magazines including Arlington Literary Journal, Riggwelter, The Blue Nib, Visions, and Unlikely Stories. You can find out more at: https:// ashadowfalling.wordpress.com.

Reinvention by Jonathan D. Clark previously unpublished

REWIND. STOP. PLAY. Aidan Michaels sat in front of his flat-screen TV and played back the infamous video. He fixated on the scene of a young man wearing a baseball jersey—in midbite of his meatball sandwich—being shot at pointblank range by an older gentleman, who wore a faded Air Force jacket and a titled baseball cap with a frayed brim. He grew more agitated with each subsequent viewing. It did not matter that the man’s face was whitewashed by the gleam of the sun coming from the camera’s lens. He knew the man who was about to perform the violent act, and he knew him well. Rewind. Stop. Play. Pause. The image displayed on the television screen rested on the older of the two performers; the resolve of his left arm as it rested horizontally toward the younger individual’s cerebellum—the firm grip on his father’s 9mm warm with intent. Careless. Fucking careless, he thought as he continued to scrutinize the final moments of visual coherence before hitting play again, allowing the video to descend into blurred chaos. Rewind. Stop. Play. He was torturing himself watching the act play back, rewinding it, playing it back, and stopping—without fail—on the final frame before his trigger finger went through with the violent gesture. The recent evolutionary boom in technology had turned everyone into new age pseudo-on-the-fly-documentarians overnight, and there was nothing they deemed unremarkable enough to not want to make a permanent note of it, leaving it to be forgotten as soon as the moment passed. The idea of brevity was no longer a consideration. Everything, even the mundane, knew the notion of permanence. Rewind. Stop. Play. It was a dreamlike experience, watching himself as he followed his unknowing prey. He watched as his lips began to move in slow succession—hoping the repetition of counting to seven would talk him out of it, calm him down and let the young man be—erasing the act from both the temporal and spatial planes

altogether and returning the world to its previous state. A state where the SideStreet Shooter was more akin to the boogeyman than a physical entity for everyone to examine in fear and disgust. He preferred it that way. Rewind. Stop. Play. He favored the idea of remaining a ghost. Nevertheless, the days of living as an enigma—an immortal myth—were behind him now. Both video analysts and police officers would advise to be wary of all male subjects between the ages of forty-five to fifty-three; a generous age gap, he thought. He would have to reconsider every fabric of his execution. His grandfather’s Air Force jacket was no longer a viable means of concealing the 9mm. Sure enough, he would have to rethink his posture, the way he walked— everything . . . every loose end had to be severed and forgotten—forty-four years of accumulating fragments of personality from others, discarded in an instant. Reinvention. Aidan found the concept daunting, having grown used to the conceptual frame of reference that had become Aidan Michaels for as long as he could remember. “Honey, why must you continue to watch that grotesque video?” Heather’s voice rang from the kitchen, among the clamor. “You and I both know it’s done nothing but put you in a foul mood since the first night it aired.” There was something about the way he walked—it was so distinct, especially when among a crowd of people—highlighted for everyone to witness. Unlike the rest of the anonymous faces—even those who had a stride in their step and who continued about their day with a purposeless sense of whimsy—he saw a stranger whose course was laced with intent. His eyes moved toward the part of the screen where his victim would be in a moment. He watched the way he moved. Everything about him was off. There was no rhythm, no rhyme or reason to the way he carried himself. The time signature of his footsteps, inconsistent; the metronomic swing of his legs always shifting in measure. Everything about the young man’s existence appeared to be without any semblance of a steady groove. Had it not been for his lack of attention to the outside world, his focus being on the mindless consumption of an

appropriated Italian sandwich and talking into his cellular device (disregarding the rest of existence), he still would have picked him out of the crowd for his violent exorcism. He was an anomaly in an already contaminated culture of human beings. The voice in his head would have kept screaming at him to take him out, even if he had somehow managed to talk himself out of it. He hoped he had erased the voice from his existence after Karen’s death. However, something aroused it from its fourteen year dormancy this summer. And unfortunately, despite his attempts to hold it at bay, there was no denying its hunger anymore. He would find himself forced to kill again and again until he was either stopped or could find a permanent solution to satisfy the need for such unnecessary carnage. Heather’s silhouette stepped in front of the television. Turning it off, she turned to face him. “Aidan. You know I don’t like it when you’re upset, and lately you’ve been coming home from a long day at work more irritable than I’ve seen you our entire marriage.” “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to hide his agitation. “Why don’t you go on one of those scenic drives you enjoy, or go for a walk? Those always seem to bring your mind at ease. Daniel and Rosemary will be coming over around 7:45pm and dinner will be ready at 8:00pm. Please, Pumpkin? I want this dinner to go over well. It’s been years since we’ve had them over.” He looked at his watch—5:40pm. Two hours to kill. If it were any other day, he would have gone for a drive or walk without question. As he continued to stare at the numbers displayed on his wrist, unable to make a decision, Aidan could feel the worried eyes of his wife observing him—concerned for his mental well-being. There was no arguing with her. “A walk sounds like a good idea,” he said as he lifted himself from his seat. “I’ll try to be back before Daniel and Rosemary arrive.”

He pulled her in for a hug—a silent thank you for always looking out for him through all their years together—but she caught him by surprise with a kiss. A warm sensation. Heather pulled back and smiled. It was the same smile he had fallen in love with fourteen years ago while he sat in a lonesome booth in a corner of Sweetie’s Diner —eating a Tabasco soaked breakfast—in memoriam of his father. A smile he could not say no to, no matter what it asked of him. He kissed her on her forehead and headed for the door—almost grabbing his grandfather’s Air Force jacket, but deciding against it last minute. He did not need the temptation, nor did he want to risk the chance of someone recognizing him through such a minor detail. Reinvention, he reminded himself. Reinvention.

Jonathan D. Clark (the writing pseudonym for Jourdan Dunn) is an independent author who writes primarily what he would call â&#x20AC;&#x153;philosophical fictionâ&#x20AC;? which he blends with other genres. A California native, he currently lives in Redding, with his son. He published his debut novel, DIVISION STREET, in 2016. He is also the author of IN PERFECT LINES and, most recently, ARCADIA.

When Louise Met The Fisherman by E.K. Lloyd-Williams previously unpublished

To say she was frightened would have been an overstatement; to say she was nervous would have been an understatement. Where did that leave her, then? It left her in an earthen basement, under two dimly lit hanging bulbs, strapped to a chair...across the room from a very tall man dressed in dark clothes. He wore a mask; it looked black but the light was too weak to truly tell. The painted mouth was as wide as a caricature, all sneering lips and vicious teeth. He heard every breath, saw every move. For a long while there was no sound except Louise’s breathing, and the smooth grating of a knife being run over a whetstone. Tied to a chair in a cellar, she struggled to think, there are only two ways this will go. Whole minutes passed.....the man in the mask kept watching her...the knife kept at its mesmerized scraping...Louise kept breathing... “I imagine you’re rather bewildered by all this,” he finally said. The fishing knife looked more wicked with every pass along the stone, its red handle glowing in the low light. “I would say you have nothing to fear, but I don’t expect you will believe me. Or that you would find it all that comforting.” There would be no leaving unless he decided to let her go. There would be no living if he wanted her to die. There was nothing she could do. Oddly, it was the latter thought which calmed her. It occurred to Louise, then, that he was waiting for her to respond. “I can’t shake the notion that you don’t intend to kill me,” she said cautiously, speaking slowly so as not to slur. A single nod. “That said,” she continued, “I don’t think you tied me up because you were planning to surprise little old me with sexy fun time, so what’s the deal?” He made a sound that might have been a snicker. The blade persisted in its tattoo of the whetstone. “I brought you here for an interview.” He was choking on a laugh. Louise furrowed her brow. An interview...? “Not for a job....” He laughed outright at that one. The knife kept at its work. “You could say that.” “Who are you?”

“I’m The Fisherman.” Fuck. A tilt of the head; the mask seemed to absorb the dim glare of the uncovered lightbulbs. Louise could finally see that it was deep burgundy, not black as she had originally thought. And then she realized he wanted some kind of acknowledgment. “What do you want from me?” The Fisherman withdrew into the shadows, and Louise saw that he had been leaning up against a wooden cadaver table. Okay.... In the absence of The Fisherman’s imposing frame in her field of vision, Louise saw the earthen basement was much larger. The dim light played at the wall to her right, but it didn’t touch the walls on the other side of the table, or the wall to her left. A second wooden chair dropped down in front of her, and Louise shifted her gaze as he lowered himself into the seat. His eyes were cast in shadow from the mask, but the small rays of light produced a weak glimmer. “I’ve followed your work,” he said quietly. “Young ones are never very careful, and while the police get stupider every year, it won’t do for you to be so sloppy.” Her first instinct was to argue, but Louise bit her tongue. It wouldn’t do. “I’m going to make a simple request,” he continued, leaning back into the chair. “I will let you live, and you will stop leaving your waste everywhere. Can we agree?” Louise stared blankly. “That’s the job?” It was too...stupid. Another laugh. “Are you refusing my request?” “No,” Louise said a little too quickly, “no, that is not what I said, do not conflate this.” “That isn’t the appropriate use of that word.” “Do n— Fine. I am not refusing; but that’s a stupid pretext as to why I’m really here, and you know it.”

“The interview is, as my grandmother used to say, a different gether altothing. If I let you live, will you clean up your mess, you mouthy shit?” “Oohh,” Louise hummed. "Yes, or no?" Louise sighed. “Yes, fine, of course. I didn't realize it was a graded assignment.” The Fisherman suddenly sat forward in his chair, as though to get a better look at Louise. “Does it hurt to be so stupid?" Louise sat very still in her chair. She knew she’d put herself at risk, but some streak of pride made her teeth hurt to say it. This must have been visible to The Fisherman, because he leaned back into the chair once again. “It stings, yes.” Louise could hear the corners of his lips being tugged upward. “It always stings to hear you’ve been sloppy. We all like to think we’re the cleverest creatures on God’s earth; serial killers more than the rest. Even so, I haven’t survived being the most hunted killer in United States history by being a sloppy cock.” He leaned forward, the fishing knife resting lazily in his fingers. “You see, the chase cannot be had from inside a prison, Miss Dee. These idiots who leave their victims out in the open, out for every fool to see, they do it because they want an audience. They feed on that fear, that mania. Everyone running mad, and nobody knows who is next. Afraid of...the unknown. It’s ego. Flee your ego, and you will be set free.” “You’ve left people out everywhere,” Louise pointed out defensively. Another pause. Louise hoped there was a rueful smile she couldn’t see, rather than an expression of suppressed rage. “Indeed,” he assented. “I was also young and foolish once. You’ll notice there hasn’t been a murder attributed to me for a very long time.” “At least fifteen years.”

The Fisherman nodded. “I was in my thirties before it finally occurred to me that I wasn’t going to be able to keep this up forever. If I hope to leave behind a disciple, I must live long enough to find and train one.” He leaned back into the chair. “When we met in the bar, while we watched the television—can you remember?—they were showcasing my ‘crimes’ alongside Dahmer, that disgusting creature. You asked my true tally; I’ll tell you: one-hundred sixty-four.” Louise tried to wrap her head around that number, and found it impossible. “How?” “Your thirst for the craft is not often seen in the fairer sex,” remarked The Fisherman. He watched her for a long time after that, getting a feel for her. “What is your purpose?” he finally asked. Louise considered the question. "I don’t like trash, and I don’t like it strewn all over my house.” The Fisherman laughed again. “So you’re just living life.” “Certainly.” “What is your purpose?” he asked again. “Is this one of those tests where you ask me a certain number of times, and depen —” “Don’t be smart, now is not the time.” Louise shut her mouth like a box, watching the strange thin man before her. What on earth could he possibly want to hear? If it isn’t true, don’t say it. “Look,” she said finally, “I’m not a preacher, I’m not an activist, and I’m certainly not into social justice. I’m a murderer. I don’t care about society, I care about the shithole I have to live in. At best, my behavior points to an amoralist, antisocial attitude. But I’m at my worst—I’m a murderer, and I don’t need a reason. I picked the homeless tweakers because nobody wants them, nobody will miss them, and

before the year is out no one will remember their names. That was convenience. I don’t need a reason.” “It’s your own little hobby.” It was said so softly, Louise had to strain to hear. The tone she caught wasn’t one she’d heard more than once or twice in her life. A reflective silence fell over the two; Louise didn’t like it. She felt the urge to fill the silence with speech, but recognized it as anxiety. He wouldn’t take urging. He tilted his head this way and that, considering her. A chuckle from The Fisherman. “Louise Dee, if I offered to take you on as my apprentice, would you be willing to follow my instructions to the letter?” “If I say yes, will you let me out of this chair?” “If you say no, I’ll have to kill you. Are you that eager to die?” "Well, yes, obviously, but I can’t do it myself, that’s so boring." He sat quite still, his face fixed on hers: a deeper answer was required. There are times in life when we arrive at a metaphorical fork in the road. These opportunities take us down many winding and unexpected roads, toward even more doors and metaphorical diverging paths. The path of life is made up of a series of choices. Whatever the choice, it can never be unmade, and it must be made with full presence of mind. Louise Dee had always been acutely aware of the progression of time, and the birth of choice and opportunity. When she gave her final answer to The Fisherman, she did so thoughtfully, without haste. The Fisherman was pleased with it, too. E.K. Lloyd Williams published her debut novel, How to Cure a Vampire Bite Without Losing Your Mind in 2011, but has since taken it off the market for proper rewriting and editing. How to Cure is planned for release sometime in 2020. Lloyd Williams reads, writes, and bakes bread in her spare time, and also talks to her dog and cat frequently. She can be found on Wordpress, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, but rarely updates any platform because she is busy writing.