Flytrap Uprising, Issue #1, Winter/Spring 2016

Flytrap

UPRISING

Winter/Spring 2016

Issue 1

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Title Page/ Intro

Flytrap Uprising Issue #1

Meet the Mascot Joe-Fly the Blowfly

“There’s no time to waste,” he says. “We must take back what is ours!”

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Contents Prose S“Photosynthesis”- Timothy Tanner, 21 S“The Secret to Happiness”- Joshua Mallett, 23 S“The Peculiar Odor...”- Andrew Boylan, 27 S“Propitiation”- Charles McGregor, 29 S“Where is Spider?”- Windsor Potts, 33 S“Two Years After”- Dr. Allen Berry, 34 S“Vagabond”- Candice Mizell, 38

Photography SAddam Mizell, 44 SChristopher Woods, 46

Poetry S“Last Resort”- Gary Beck, 8 S“Happy Mother’s Day, Earth”- Dr. Philip Kolin, 9 S“Things I Wish I’d Said”- Baisali Chatterjee Dutt, 10 S“Of Cats and Spiders” - Jade Metzger, 11 S“Drones and Chanters” - John Stupp, 12 S“for jews who struggle...” - Sister Lou Ella Hickman, 13 S“Selecting My Gift...”- Ace Boggess, 14 S“In the Grade-School Gym”- Ace Boggess, 15 S“Simulacra”- Dr. Allen Berry, 16 S“The University...”- Jeremy DeFatta, 17 S“Owen Canaan: Career Cadaver”- Jeremy DeFatta, 18

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from the

EDITOR

To those of you reading this, I want to thank you for giving us a shot. I know it isn’t always easy to take a new periodical seriously in a world where the market is over-saturated, but we are hoping to distinguish ourselves as we go. I feel we already have quite the remarkable list of contributors. Candice and I are working to make sure this lasts for many more issues.

I consider myself to be many things—an unashamed nerd, a sometime teacher, a scholar—and I can, without doubt, speak for many hours about the things that interest me. Flytrap Uprising, for me, is a way for us to hunt down unpublished work that speaks to us intellectually and emotionally—and, yes, that certainly speaks to our interests. We created this magazine to give people who are tired of the usual song and dance of big publishers and academic journals a fair and unbiased chance at publication. We are looking for quality and entertainment value foremost, and we love anything not afraid to step outside lit fic Ivory Tower boundaries, though by no means will we deny those works a fair shot as well.

Within these pages, you will find samplings from established poets and playwrights, as well as first publications from some rather promising writers and artists. As befits the tone of intellectual rebellion we seek to establish herein, the works included in our inaugural issue deal with problems (and the solutions to them) we all face: whether to tear ourselves down or love ourselves, whether it is too dangerous to stand against the status quo (or too dangerous not to), how we deal with authority that may seem entirely alien to us, and how we deal with deep, irreplaceable loss, among other themes.

It is my sincere hope that you all find something in Flytrap Uprising that will interest you. Again, thank you for giving us a shot. We look forward to reading your feedback and interacting with you on our website, www.bluespiderpress.com. Now, get to reading!

Jeremy A. DeFatta

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WHO WE ARE

Publisher’s Corner

Jeremy DeFatta | Editor-in-Chief Candice Mizell | Publisher

I cannot begin to describe the level of excitement I’m feeling as I write this, because this means that we have completed our very first issue of Flytrap Uprising. Whew! What a ride it has been!

Blue Spider Press, LLC and Flytrap Uprising are two babies hatched from the “What if?” egg. “What if we started a publishing company?” “What if we designed a literary journal?” As Jeremy and I tossed the questions back and forth across the table that night, I don’t think we truly thought we’d see this project come to fruition. I certainly don’t think that Jeremy thought I was serious, or that I would move forward so quickly with getting all the legalities lined out. And yet, here we are!

Both the journal and the company have presented equal shares of struggles, the main struggle being the utter incomprehension of what it meant to create a magazine from blank pieces of paper. It has been a labor of love and intrigue that has pushed me from the realm of the clueless, into the “Hey, maybe I’m getting the hang of this! ...where did THAT little box come from and why are my fonts all purple now?!” realm.

The most important thing about all this is that, somewhere along the way, we have discovered a passion for something that was once thought to be a “Maybe one day” dream, but is now a tangible thing that can grow and be molded into whatever we choose to make it. It’s an equally fascinating and daunting prospect to wield that much power over something and to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this thing is what really holds the power.

And it is powerful, this journal and these words hosted inside. There are emotions here, thoughts and feelings that are described in a variety of ways, yet leaving a spark of something we can each relate to. That is the power— that connection— and that’s what we’re hoping to relay to you, dear reader.

Enjoy the issue!

Candice J. Mizell

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Poetry

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Last Resort Gary Beck

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I lost my job when they hired a kid at half my salary.

I lost my home when the bank I bailed out with my taxes foreclosed and put us on the street.

Unemployment insurance will last for a while, but what then?

I play the lottery, not believing I’ll win, but fantasizing about buying a Warhol or a Senate seat, but that’s no consolation for my troubles, just temporary escape.

Happy Mother’s Day, Earth.

You miraculously spin out more and more children from the peaks to the deltas, savannahs, deserts, and swamps.

Below sea level the air is heavy with your humid, birthing breath; yet your pangs pierce the thin air of the Rockies or the Himalayas.

Happy Mother’s Day,

Earth.

Dr. Philip C. Kolin

The sun cannot keep his hot clasp from you for more than a few hours each day; and each month, the moon, your soul sister, swells, honoring your fullness.

You nurse everything that slithers, hops, walks, runs, gallops, swims, or soars.

Your children glory in every shade of the pallet of life creating a canvas we marvel at from cells to cities to constellations.

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I’m sorry, maa.

I’m not fat, you’re stupid.

I want that piece of cake.

I hate school!

Can I play with you?

I want my daddy!

And I want to go home!

I’m not fat.

I just like reading.

No. I don’t want to.

No, it wasn’t really good for me.

No. I’m not fat.

I’m not ugly.

I’m not stupid.

Would you like to dance with me?

I am a nerd.

So? I want him.

And her.

Yes, I am feeling cold and I do want to go home actually.

I’m so lonely.

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Things I Wish I’d Said Baisali Chatterjee Dutt It’s too noisy in here!

I hate dancing and tequila!

Can I be next?

I’m not fat, you’re stupid.

And mean.

He’s not a nice man, maa.

Don’t touch me!

I will break your fucking hands if you do that to me again.

Yes, I would love some more pizza.

No, I don’t like this sari.

I can do it.

No, that colour doesn’t look good on you.

Will you dance with me, can I call you, why don’t you kiss me more?

I’m NOT fat you’re just mean.

I love food.

No, I’m not strong enough.

I am enough.

I am not

FAT.

Of Cats and Spiders Jade Metzger If my love for you were an animal, she would have gray and black fur with long silver whiskers.

She’d be the size of your massive and calloused hands, but you would never know that. She would never let you hold her. She’d hiss and spit at you from underneath the radiator of your parent’s bedroom, leaving kitty claw scratches on the wooden boards when hands drag her out by her hindquarters.

If my love for you were an animal she would glare at you, beneath the warm and safe silver of the radiator, only coming out to throw shy backward glances at you.

My love perches. Perches on the windowsill.

Perches on the windowsill two stories up.

Perches on the windowsill two stories up from a crunch and shuffle metro subway.

Maybe she was contemplating suicide.

Maybe you wouldn’t be wrong.

And when you sleep, she’d hunt barefoot on cold floors. She’d devour poisonous spiders before they devoured you.

My love for you would be quiet perching atop your chest.

She’d kiss you with a dry tongue, and scamper back beneath the radiator, digesting the poison of the spider.

The poison which tells her to jump.

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John Stupp

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Drones and Chanters A piper walked Garden City beach at low tide playing bagpipes his belly expanding and contracting plovers and seagulls keep a respectful distance as Flower of Scotland bloomed before the rising sun and skidding waves then Jenny’s Welcome to Charlie— there was no fear of being found in this tricky meadow harnessed to a plow he was alone on the sand before God pushed by a salt breeze from the pipes he blew overturning so many fish scales like chaff rising in the highlands

for jews who struggle with the life of edith stein: jacob wrestling with the angel Sister Lou Ella Hickman i have a stone from the jabbock river—

a black pillow i hold in my palm to remember jacob’s combat once i fell asleep with the thought— i will never know her as they do: for such knowing is the intense embrace of mystery that only battle brings during night and dreams while I, a bystander, hold a black stone pillow how little comfort it is as i watch them dance with the paradox she lived

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Selecting My Gift from the Sears Catalog ACE BOGGESS

it’s not that I wanted so much a few action figures a spaceman’s ray gun mini-cars & toys with pretty lights “what about a sweater?” my father would say “no no sweater thanks” children desire whatever they don’t have like skateboards with rockets in back whereas adults crave most what we’ve had before now that we’re wiser to appreciate the value of a thing like trying to remember that perfect Shakespeare quote we spent our school years trying to forget

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In the Grade-School Gym ACE BOGGESS

where most days we played games like kickball or crab soccer all classes sat together on the floor the projector rolled & we watched a movie starring Larry Moe & Curly-Joe there was plenty of woo-woo-woo & why-I-oughta a rocket ship plus violence from a gun that didn’t fire an ax that wouldn’t cleave a skull in those days a movie screen meant life with more imagination than substance I swear death can have what’s left after all the laughter gets there first

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Simulacr a

Allen Berry

With the ringing of the phone my plans for defenestration go right out the window.

The rules of our telephone game do not dictate that I answeronly that I be there to.

In a few hours I’ll phone her voicemail, leave her something appropriately cryptic, to make her squeal: Bernie quit the band, Karen’s coming for Richard, Tonto has taken his last beating.

I take a blown up photo of my fifth story view and hang it over the window.

The phone stops convulsing, I key in the access code, wait to hear her voice.

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The University, or the Wine-Dark Sea Jeremy A DeFatta

The deep, hazy nights come and go, wrapped in the overcast embrace of some British girl’s voice— “Transistor radios,” she croons.

I laugh, and awake laughing.

The Ivory Tower is not impressed With excuses for my tardiness.

I should change my medication.

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Owen Canaan: Career Cadaver Jeremy A DeFatta Owen made more money as a corpse than he ever did in his 9-to-5.

There was always a market, an audience, for the poor in some state of death.

Pumped full of a sleeping preservative specifically engineered to maintain life and limb while imitating what follows that last, great hurrah, Owen racked up quite the list of appearances: John Doe #36, Plague Victim #7, even Dead Guy in Rest Stop—now THAT was a moving non-performance!

He was so impressive, in fact, that he now only lands big-budget summer action hits; As many times as he’s been catapulted into the air by some explosion, he should be earning some frequent flyer miles For when he comes back to life after earning enough with his death to reduce his student loan debt by half.

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We asked, you answered.

Q&A We posed this question on our website: http://www.bluespiderpress.com/flytrap-uprising.html

Which book(s) fostered your love of reading?

Here’s what you said:

as w e n i l a r ’s Co n a m i a nce G i S . t f i “Neil g e as a m o t hole w n e a p giv u ened p o s a h ing.” * d a e then it r n o ficti world of

“I reme dinosa mber check ing o urs for old from my loca ut books ab out l libra learnin er kids, but I was o ry. They wer g all I c e b se s se ould a From t b d o w h u e turn aw re, I realiz t the thunde ith ed I r liz ay whatev from feeding was only a ards. pa er was m hidden y imaginatio ge n in thos e shelv with es.” *

* Anonymous

Thanks for participating!

Would you like to see your response in our next issue? Surf on over to http://www.bluespiderpress.com/flytrap-uprising.html to find the survey. Check back often as the questions are likely to change at any time.

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Prose

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Photosynthesis

Timothy Tanner

$

He ran his fingers across a typewriter that had an unfinished letter in it. On the top it read Dearest Frederick Norb.

The drink in his hand spilled a little on the hard wood floor. For a moment he thought about cleaning it up, then he shrugged the thought away. Passing his grandmother’s display case, he looked at himself in the reflection of the glass: her face appeared melted into his. She laid right arm over the left, eyes closed, and a slight smile. He, stumbling, made his way over to his grandfather’s display case and, to no real surprise, found it open and grandfatherless.

He sighed.

“Don’t be such a nag,” said the grandfather.

“I’m not,” he said. “Just wish that I could have the night alone.”

“Drinking alone, son? Not good for a man.”

The grandfather sat in the living room watching a fire burn down through wood in the fireplace. He, after finishing and replenishing his drink, came and sat down beside him.

A crack of lighting let him know that a storm was coming. The empty pots and pans sitting around the old house waited in anticipation of heavy downpour.

“You have those dark circles around your eyes,” the grandfather said.

“So do you,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid. You know what I mean. You haven’t been sleeping well.”

“How do you know?”

“Not much gets past me here.”

He flicked off some pieces of the couch with his thumbnail.

“Noticed you started writing the letter again,” the grandfather said.

“Been walking around here long?” he said. “Some people would find that disturbing. What if I would have had company?”

“I think it’s a good start, that letter. Sort of a chicken-shit approach, but it’s a start nonetheless.”

“Thanks.”

“Named him after me did you?”

“Oh yeah. I never told you?”

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“Is that an honorable thing now-a-days?”

“Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“Now-a-days. It’s a stupid thing to say.”

The clouds released a heavy shower. Lightning flashed through the murky windows. For a moment the grandfather was transparent. He stuck his finger in his glass and fished out an ice cube. He sucked on it.

“What would make you drink so much, son?” the grandfather said.

“Life,” he said.

“Can’t be too bad. You are still young, smart, successful.”

He laughed a little.

“None of those things make sense,” he said.

“You don’t see it, but I do,” said the grandfather.

“You can’t see.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Anyway, I’m not young or successful.”

“So you made a few mistakes. That’s life.”

He laughed a little.

“The constant interaction with people who have no idea how to identify with me,” he said. “And the continual dismissal of every single female I try to pursue. All the failed relationships.”

“Just give it time,” the grandfather said. “Time heals everything.”

“I’ve spent my whole life waiting. It’s gone.”

The lightning lit up the entire house for seconds at a time. The more he drank, the more descendants, though transparent, entered the living room. The grandfather turned and looked at him.

“You still have time to make amends,” the grandfather said. “You can still know your son.”

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He got up and threw his glass across the room. It passed through uncles and aunts, cousins and nephews as it shattered against the chipped and faded wall paper.

The grandfather got up and walked slowly to the grandmother’s display case.

“You know you remind me of her at times,” said the grandfather. “You can be such a stiff.”

The grandfather then climbed into his own display case and closed the lid loudly. The rain dripped in the pots and pans like an awkward metronome. He got another drink and sat in front of the typewriter.

A smile appeared on the face of the grandfather as the sounds of fingers hitting keys made soft vibrations through the house.

The Secret to Happiness Joshua Mallett

Bill Tellis sat in a blue polyester recliner, bathed in the pale glow of his television, and grinned blankly at the images flickering across the monitor. Two reporters sat on-screen, discussing an upcoming presidential election. Or maybe it was an impeachment. He couldn’t really focus on the topic because of his glowing good mood. He owed this happiness to his government-issued personal computer implant, or PCI, located behind his left earlobe, and in thanks, he patted the dime-sized disc.

Bill scrolled through channels with the barest thought, as he tried to remember how he had even put up with life without the little wonder. Back in the old days, before people could interface with electronics with their minds, when they had to work for a living. Now everyone could spend their time doing whatever they wanted, and the government provided food, housing, and anything else a person might need. However, the more he tried to remember life without his PCI, the clearer his memories became, until eventually an odd thought struck him; he had never really wanted the thing.

He’d never been a huge lover of technology, and was not the type to follow the latest trends. As he struggled to make sense of the gadget’s appearance, Bill began to remember the dark days that led up to it.

When the majority of jobs were taken over by the rising force of automation, hundreds of millions of people were left without jobs, and Congress locked up trying to find the money to support them all. As the politicians fought over the best way to properly fix the problem, many people quickly ran out of savings and supplies. Eventually the masses turned to protesting to try and fix their problems themselves, but as the lack of relief dragged on, many protests turned to full-blown

riots. A shortage of tax revenue led to an underfunded police force, one woefully unequipped to handle the crushing wave of humanity that the riots ballooned into.

Come to think of it, he had been involved in the protests, at least initially. Hell, not only was he involved in one, he led one.

He had been nothing more than a well-spoken welder from Detroit, with just enough charisma to draw a crowd, happy to lead his fellow citizens against their mistreatment, and his heart began to burn with the same righteous indignation that had fueled him back then.

His memories kept coming, clearer and faster, and at the height of this mental clarity, Bill remembered something terrible about his implant. They soared to popularity as the successor to the smart phone, to be used as a personal, thought-controlled computer, but could supposedly be hacked by the government to discreetly control a person’s mind.

He remembered hearing a rumor about it right before a speech he made denouncing the ineffective measures by the

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government, his last speech before the first major riots threw the country into chaos. Shortly thereafter, he heard reports that some of the riots were started by people who were behaving erratically, destroying property and attacking people. As soon as the rumors about the PCI spread, conspiracy theories began to run wild, and just when the country seemed to reach a fever pitch, the riots just... stopped. It was like someone had flipped a switch and totally pacified the nation’s anger. Bill had tried to gather his old supporters, but it seemed like everyone he talked to just smiled blankly and told him he should think about getting a PCI of his own.

He had decided to take to the Internet, to try and gather anyone who would still stand against the government’s ineptitude, but then... something happened? He wasn’t sure. It was like his mind hit a wall, and there was nothing past that point to remember. From what he could tell, he had been living in his old home with no implant, and suddenly woke up here with a fancy new piece of neck jewelry. Even his time in this apartment seemed to be a nondescript blur. The more he struggled to bring up any piece of information he could about this amnesiac period, the angrier he became with the stupid silver button that protruded from his neck. He knew the PCI was the culprit behind his missing memories, and eventually his anger rose to a boil. He would not have his thoughts being suppressed by a piece of scrap metal, nor would he allow the bastards behind the device to get away with whatever their sick plan was. With his mind clouded by anger, Bill jumped to his feet and clawed at the damnable little disc on the side of his neck. His implant activated in response, making three small chirps in his head before releasing a wave of pure ecstasy, which quickly smothered his thoughts like a warm velvet blanket.

He melted back into his recliner, for a while unable to process anything but bliss, and returned to staring thoughtlessly at the TV. In the place of news, an advertisement was now playing which consisted simply of a list of food items on a white background, with a pleasant jingle filling in what would otherwise be total silence. After a few seconds of absent-minded gawking, Bill finally recognized the food ordering system for what it was, and began scanning the menu excitedly. He hoped they would have his favorite meal, spaghetti and meatballs, but the option only came up rarely. After scanning the screen multiple times, he was on the verge of losing hope, but then suddenly, at the end of the list, he finally laid eyes on the treasure he sought. Deep in his mind, a part of him cried out that he needed to focus on his memories and try to figure out what was going on, but his excitement over the option being available drowned out all other thoughts. The TV chimed in acknowledgement, picking up on his desire for the classic Italian meal that the PCI instantly broadcasted, then shut itself off.

Like always, a slot in the wall next to his armchair opened up, and out popped a tube of “spaghetti and meatballs” style food paste.

Bill unscrewed the cap and started sucking down the flavored nutrient gel excitedly. He knew that it was paste made from genetically modified seaweed, but in his altered state he enjoyed it as much as the real thing. The commercials said that it was processed and enhanced with vitamins and minerals to the point that it could keep a person perfectly healthy if they ate three tubes a day, and Bill glowed about that fact. Back in the old days, people had to eat so many different things to be healthy, and he thought how grand it was to have life be so much easier. Of course, he did miss cooking, and fresh produce and meat. He tried to remember the last time he had eaten bacon, or had a cup of coffee, but the memories came to him sluggishly.

It had been after he lost his job, but before he “arrived” here.

The last time he had eaten real food was the night right before... the last time he... had been doing something important. The knowledge refused to come to him at first, no matter how he pulled at the murky threads of his past.

Eventually, the same memories of the rise of automation, the crisis over shortages, and the mysterious appearance of his PCI trickled back, and once again Bill rose to his feet. The silver disc chirped in response, but after the second tone, the sound died out with a pop. He waited for the PCI to cover his thoughts in a rose-tinted haze, but it made no further response. In that instant Bill’s thoughts became perfectly clear. He looked around his room, for the first time noticing the fine details of his housing. It was a square, about twelve feet on each side, with undecorated pale blue walls and thin off-white carpet. The TV was built into the wall, and the only furniture occupying the room was the ratty blue recliner, a small bed and a toilet in the corner partially hidden by a dark navy curtain.

Bill’s mind was unusually quick in providing a name for these accommodations. This has to be a prison cell, he thought. Wait, I can think? The sensation of forming coherent thoughts was strange to him at first, the skill having been in disuse for some time, but eventually he adjusted to the feeling. This newfound coherence brought with it the memories he had been fighting to recover, the missing pieces of information he needed to understand his situation, all in an overwhelming flood.

Weeks after the riots mysteriously ended, the few former protesters Bill managed to find who were still willing to work for the cause gathered with him to organize a new movement, one dedicated to continuing the fight for the people. They all shared only one common trait: no implants. They knew that refusing the PCIs was the only thing that allowed them to think for themselves, and as such, named themselves the Free Thinkers.

By the time the Free Thinkers formally came together, it had become obvious that most of the PCI equipped citizens were no longer themselves. Non-implanted people seemed to be vanishing left and right, only to reappear with a shiny new accessory in their neck. Things changed within the government as well. The nature of legislation changed from trying to take

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full care of every citizen, to barely providing the most basic animal necessities for some, and the people still applauded.

It was around this time that the government announced its development of the nutrient gel, and unveiled their plan to keep everyone fed with the “miraculous” benefits of the flavored seaweed goo. The powers that be also decided to absorb the police forces of the country into the National Guard, forming the new National Police Force. The members of Bill’s group vowed to fight against whatever was going on, but they knew that trying to liberate the populace would get them labeled as radicals or criminals. Everyone knew that they might be arrested, or worse, but they all accepted the risks.

The Free Thinkers decided to go into hiding while they built up the operation, and chose to set up shop in Bill’s home turf of central Detroit.

During the recession and the following shortages, many major cities developed large slums as the swelling population of unemployed and homeless people struggled to find shelter, and Detroit was no exception. Most of central Detroit had been swallowed up by a growing ghetto of repurposed abandoned buildings and cobbled together shanties known as Motor City, after the old automotive plants that many had turned into habitations. One of those very plants proved to be the perfect home for the fledgling group, as the government had long ago given up on policing the slum’s interior, favoring instead to simply patrol the border and keep the impoverished contained. As an added benefit, the area had the lowest population of implanted people, and the terrible conditions and lack of change meant there was no shortage of volunteers.

After a few months of recruiting, even with an unusually vicious winter gripping the city, the Free Thinkers had become a force to be reckoned with. They numbered in the hundreds, and had many more who supported them indirectly. Bill decided it was finally time to make a change, and set the group to the task of liberating one of the food shipments coming regularly to the NPF base that monitored all of Detroit. He thought surely, obtaining some real, non-seaweed-based food would give the citizens something positive to talk about. They planned for weeks, mapping the delivery routes of shipments and studying the patrol routes of NPF forces, until finally they had everything in place.

The night of the operation was bitterly cold, with howling winds that threatened to pull off the hoods and scarves obscuring the faces of the Thinkers, who hid in their assigned spots along I-94, right outside of the Detroit limits. The plan was simple enough. They would use a fake car accident to block the convoy’s path, and seize the food shipment after eliminating the guards. Then, they would offload the food into multiple getaway trucks to make it even more difficult to track down and distribute it to their supporters in Motor City. Bill sat in the getaway truck closest to the main event, hands gripped tightly on the wheel, and waited for the show to start.

Right on time, three sets of headlights popped into view, and the convoy continued straight for the ambush point. The Thinker agents assigned to the distraction team began putting on a show in front of the already damaged cars they used to block the roadway, pretending to be crash victims. The NPF convoy slowed to a halt at the scene, and the officers got out to investigate the situation. There were two squad cars and one eighteen-wheeler, with six men between the lot of them, yet they stood no chance against the sudden surge of Free Thinker fighters. With more than five times the numbers and the element of surprise, the Thinker forces managed to wipe out the NPF squad with no casualties of their own, and within a few minutes Bill was taking his planned escape route in an old moving truck laden with foodstuffs and smiling agents.

Once safely inside one of their bases in the Motor City slums, Bill set to the task of distributing the food they obtained. They opened the crates of supplies, and many agents oohed and aahed as they laid eyes on real fruit for the first time in close to a year. Others marveled over the refrigerated containers stuffed with cuts of beef and pork, and one man nearly cried with joy when he found another container full of bacon. Other containers held coffee, medicine, spices, and alcohol, all the things the Free Thinkers and their supporters were desperate for. After most of the supplies were moved into pick-ups and sent out into the slums to be spread further, Bill and his comrades used a little of the extra to throw a party to celebrate their success. They had a team of agents manning propane burners, cooking everything from ribeyes to pork chops to chicken strips.

Everyone cheered, and danced, and drank, and it seemed that there may actually be a chance for them.

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That was the last time Bill ate real food, and the last time he felt happy of his own volition. Later that night, when the revelry died down, the NPF assaulted their base. Everyone there, close to a fifth of their forces, was captured or killed. Bill was knocked unconscious by a blow to the head almost immediately, and when he awoke, he was in the “apartment” he’d been stuck in ever since, with a brand new PCI jutting from his neck. The reeling of his mind eased as his memories reached the present day, and suddenly, words slipped from his mouth. “I have to get out,” he murmured. He looked around the room for a door or vent, anything he may be able to squeeze through, but the walls were totally flat and featureless. He repeated the phrase over and over again as he searched the room for some means of egress, his words becoming more frantic with each second that passed.

He finally found the portal he was looking for, when a section of wall slid open with a soft pneumatic hiss, and in stepped three men in white protective gear. One was armed with a device that looked similar to a supermarket bar code scanner, and the others approached first, barehanded. Bill backed away, screaming at the top of his lungs, “You bastards! You have to let me out! This isn’t right!” The two unarmed men slowly cornered him, trying in vain to calm him down with lies like, “We’re here to help you.” and “Everything’s gonna be fine.” Bill tried to run past the two hulking guards, but was quickly tackled to the ground. As he squirmed underneath the mounds of flesh that simultaneously pinned his upper and lower body, Bill continued to rage against his oppressors and yelled out, “You can’t just keep me here forever! I deserve to be free like anyone else!”

At this point the third man crouched in front of Bill’s face and began to fiddle with the device he carried, saying nothing. Finally, he looked directly into Bill’s face, and even though most of the other man’s was covered by a mask, Bill could see the cold hatred burning in his eyes. “You think you deserve to be free?” the masked man asked incredulously, and his gravelly voice dripped with disdain. “You were the leader of a terrorist group! You murdered innocent officers who were just doing their duty, and to top it off, your group stole supplies meant for civilians and kept them for yourselves!” He punctuated his remarks by jamming the device against Bill’s neck, right at the spot of his implant. Bill heard the device chirp, and suddenly it clamped down around the silver module tightly.

“Just because it’s been almost five years since your band of criminals pulled that twisted stunt,” the man continued, “doesn’t mean anyone’s forgiving or

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forgetting. I think it’s just about time we fixed that implant of yours.”

Five years? Bill thought in disbelief. There’s no way. Sure, my stay here was lacking in means of telling time, but surely I would’ve noticed years passing. Suddenly, the man’s last words hit him like a ton of steel. “No! Not another implant! Anything but that!” he cried, trying pointlessly once again to shake off the two men that held him like a vice. His thoughts raced wildly as he tried to think of some way, any way, out of this situation. I have to get out of here. I can’t let them fix my implant. There has to be a way out! The gadget chirped once more, and in one smooth motion, twisted the PCI core loose. The man holding the device pulled out Bill’s charred, old core, stuck it in his pocket, and loaded a fresh core into the machine before reapplying it to Bill’s neck. Bill shrieked inside his own mind, trying desperately to think of anything he could do, but it all slammed to a halt when the gadget sealed the new core in place with that familiar trio of chirps.

The tsunami of euphoria that followed left him momentarily dumbfounded, so much so that he didn’t even notice when the men in the cool white outfits released him. They helped him to his feet and held him steady while he gained his balance. “Now, isn’t that better?” the gentleman with the nifty little device asked. Bill couldn’t think of the proper words to respond, so he just grinned and nodded his head in agreement.

They helped him back into his chair, and as Bill prepared to hunt for a television program, the men turned to leave the room. As they left, Bill saw that the backs of their heads and ears were plainly visible, and something he noticed spurred him to speak up. “Excuse me,” he called out to the them, “but have you men thought about getting a PCI of your own? They make your life so much happier!”

The Peculiar Odor of Bad Dreams Andrew Boylan By the time we moved into the house my family kept in the line for a century and a half I couldn’t have made any more bad decisions than I already had.

My wife would say, often during breakfast, then again at the end of the night after the children were in bed and I returned from work, You have that house.

There were a dozen reasons I never answered her.

It damn near turned her mad. My silence. A house standing empty. The idea of having enough room to spread our arms wide and not having our fingers touch one wall or another. These things meant something to her.

Space.

There were plenty of other things to argue about. One for instance: The fact I lost every dime I ever earned at the card table. That fact is, of course, the top of a pyramid, and a thousand manifold problems trickle down from there like the fictitious money Ronald Reagan claimed flowed down from the rich.

I knew money. It is immobile.

This isn’t working, she would say.

I had no ground to stand on. I played two hours of really great cards. Then I played seven hours of really bad cards.

One or the other finally bore me down. The losing. The fighting. Something broke me. We packed the car as a family. The four of us. Drove east on I-40 until we passed the last cactus somewhere outside of Oklahoma City and turned north.

It was my son who told me about the first dreams--someone over his bed.

Did he say anything?

How did you know it was a he?

But when the storm came in late February, and the roads closed, and the power went out, that’s when my daughter mentioned something.

She said someone was on the third floor.

I reminded her how no one was allowed on the third floor. I reminded her about the asbestos, the mold climbing inside the walls, the lead infecting the paint. I applied every great twenty-first century fear to the rooms of the third floor.

Someone told her to go up there, she said.

What do you mean?

I knew better than to ask a four year old that kind of question. Four year olds are never responsible for their decisions. It’s always the brother’s fault. I didn’t know, she would say. That was her favorite answer. I didn’t know. The brother came in second place.

It was the third day the snowplow didn’t arrive when she told me how she went to the third floor. Everyone was feeling the walls close in. Most of the time a storm like this was called a nor’easter. Not this time. This was a blizzard. Everyone agreed. The governor had to ask the college kids to stop jumping out their dorm room windows.

My wife had made it a point not to argue after I uprooted the family and moved us into the house. She spent most of the time before the move on the phone with the contractors picking out the color of paint for the different rooms. She would find programs online that allowed her to see the difference in shading between one company’s green and another company’s green once it was applied to a wall.

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After the storm bore down for several days, she came to my office on the second floor, and asked how many children died in the house.

I looked out the window at the river. Three boats were trapped in the ice. The owners left them at the mooring and as the river froze it did the best it could to push the boats out of the water. Now the boats stood at peculiar angles with either prow or bow almost clear of the ice.

You know, she said.

I wasn’t comfortable with the answer so I continued to stare at the boats. I tried to imagine what would cause someone to be so neglectful.

I hadn’t played cards since the first flake of snow fell and the tips of my fingers itched.

Your daughter wants to know, she said, as though that might change my answer.

I turned. I said, She went to the third floor.

My wife nodded.

I reminded her how I made it clear she needed to put the fear of God into those children.

She said, You know what your daughter said to me? Your daughter said to me she likes to get scared down to her core. Where do you think she gets that from?

I was perfectly happy in the west, I reminded her.

You were destroying your family.

Did you look for yourself?

I knew by her face the answer.

Are you threatening me? She said.

It’s an aftereffect of the instability of living with a degenerate card player that everything comes off as a threat. It happens as soon as the revelation comes that what they really want, what I really wanted, wasn’t to win, it was to lose, to lose everything. That I felt most alive when I lost. It’s a tough thing for a reasonable person to wrap their head around.

Did she tell you what she saw?

That’s when the color drained from her face. I wasn’t certain until I said that she didn’t believe a word the little girl said. She was a little liar, my daughter, so I couldn’t blame her mother for not believing her. But her face turned to alabaster. Her hands trembled like a drinker in the morning.

How could you? she said.

I told you, I said.

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my wife’s legs.

There are women hanging on the third floor, my daughter said.

My wife covered her mouth with her hands.

One day my wife would be one of them, too. Once our children stopped breathing, she would walk up to the third floor and sling a rope over the beams herself.

Propitiation Charles McGregor

The day before he died, Frederick Downey, slimiest fellow ever to set foot in Lake Bourbon, oozed into my office. I don’t know why my receptionist didn’t stop him, but I can guess. He was handsomer and wealthier than most, and a lot of people mistook his slime for charm. The man could get pretty far with his perfect smile and stylish business-casual dress, and weaseling by a receptionist just so he didn’t have to wait half an hour was exactly his speed.

“Are you Jim Miller?” he asked, bright and cheerful, acting like he didn’t interrupt anything worth worrying about.

“I am.”

“You’re that old fossil’s lawyer, right?”

“You mean Al?”

“There’s only one old fossil that’s been harassing me lately, Jim.”

“As I understand it, Mr. Downey --”

“Call me Fred.”

“Mr. Downey, all Al has done is speak to you regarding a few minor offenses he believes you’ve committed.”

“He’s threatened to sue me, Jim. And he got me fined for littering. It’s ridiculous.” He laughed a little bit as he said the last sentence, as if inviting me to join in on some joke.

“Did you litter?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “I threw an empty beer can off my boat.”

“That’s littering.”

“I was fined one thousand dollars.”

“That’s the fine.”

“It was one can.” The manner of his voice was shifting. Anger? Stress? It didn’t show on his face. “Who goes to the effort of reporting one can?”

I shrugged. “Al takes that kind of thing personally.”

“Crazy old bastard. What about this

lawsuit business? It’s bullshit, right?” I had been raised never to swear, especially in a professional environment. Whoever Downey’s people were, they obviously had been somewhat negligent in teaching him etiquette.

“Al thinks you’re disturbing the peace,” I explained. “He felt a lawsuit was the best way to bring your attention to the seriousness of this issue.”

“So I drove my boat by his dock a few times. That’s not disturbing the peace.”

Downey’s fancy matte-black speedboat was the envy of many of the younger townsfolk who had previously been content with their family’s sailboat or fishing craft, and he rode it all over the lake whenever he got the chance.

“Al’s dock is in a no-wake zone.”

“There were no signs posted.”

“It’s Al’s dock.” There didn’t need to be signs.

Downey paused, and stared for a few seconds, as if in confusion. “Can I be honest with you?” he asked.

“I would hope.”

“I’ve got a friend who’s looking to build some condos,” said Downey, “and I’m trying to convince him that Lake Bourbon is a good location. The fact that one of the locals is suing me for driving my boat too near his dock, and being taken seriously, really isn’t helping my cause. It’s already difficult enough, with the weather lately.”

“Condos?” I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral.

“Condos,” Downey confirmed. “You’re an educated man, Jim. You’ve spent some time outside Lake Bourbon. You understand what that could do for the economy around here.”

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“The economy around here doesn’t need any help.”

“Half the town is barely scraping by.”

“Nobody is truly lacking -- we have what we need.”

“You can’t honestly expect me to believe everyone here is perfectly content. I heard Myrtle -- you know, Myrtle at the diner --”

“I know who Myrtle is.” I ate breakfast at her diner every morning. I’d seen Downey in there a couple times, but I usually left before he arrived. I didn’t want to have to watch him leer at Myrtle’s daughter while she waitressed.

And, of course, Myrtle didn’t stop him, because she figured that, even though Downey was slimy, he was rich, and a rich husband could only be good for her daughter. It didn’t occur to her that Downey had no marriage on his mind.

“Right,” said Downey, “Small town. I keep forgetting. Of course you know who Myrtle is. Anyway, I heard her grumbling about needing new cookware only this morning. Clearly not everyone has everything they want.”

“I said ‘need’, not ‘want’. It’s not good for folks to have everything they want. The town’s doing fine, and there’s no call to throw that out of joint.”

“How about we agree to disagree?”

“Sure. Fine.”

“Great. Now, can you help me out with this Al business, or what?”

“I’ll see about talking to Al.”

“Thanks, Jim. I appreciate it.” He shook my hand, and left. As he passed back into the anteroom, I heard the receptionist giggle, and I shuddered a bit. I felt like I needed to take a shower after talking to that man. #

The next day, I was walking to Myrtle’s diner for breakfast, as usual. The diner was located right on the lake, and I stopped outside to look out at the water. The sun was rising over the lake, and it may have been something I’ve imagined, but to me, it seemed shaded a deeper, bloodier red than most mornings.

Clouds hung low and brooding over the water, making the whole scene a flat and menacing gray in the predawn light. Most days, Lake Bourbon was uncommonly warm and sunny, with the occasional gentle, nurturing rain to keep the trees healthy and the crops growing in the fields outside of town. For the past couple weeks, however, the clouds had been massing and the water had been choppy. Chill winds blasted off of the water, buffeting and slicing in alternation. I squinted against them, but the wind seemed to cut right through my eyelids. When I was young, I had likened the soft breeze over the water to the breath of some great water spirit, and reveled in it – but this was nothing like the zephyrs I remembered. The lake was resting uneasy these days.

When I went into Myrtle’s, her daughter, Molly, came to greet me as I entered. “Al wants to talk to you,” she said. “He’s in the corner booth.”

“Al’s here? I thought he only came into town for necessities these days.”

She shrugged. “He comes in for a coffee every once in a long while. Likes to make sure we’re doing all right, I guess.”

“Are you? Doing all right, that is?”

“We’re doing well for ourselves,” she said with a grin. “We found a box of cookware in the back earlier today.

Must have got it years ago and forgotten about it. It’s a stroke of luck; we were just needing some new things.”

“Good. Good,” I said absentmindedly, turning towards the corner booth. “Did he say what he wanted to talk about?”

“No, just that he wanted to talk.”

“I bet it’s about Downey,” I said.

Molly frowned. “Slimy bastard. Not raised right.”

I nodded.

“Who are his people, anyway?” asked Molly. “Do we know the Downeys?”

“No. Never heard of them.”

I realized that Al was being kept waiting on my account, and cut the conversation short. “Bring me a coffee?

Two sugars?”

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“There’s one waiting for you. Al ordered it a minute ago.”

I nodded, not particularly surprised, and ambled over to the corner booth where Al sat. He was a short but broad-shouldered man, muscular in a squat kind of way. His skin was tanned, wrinkled, and leathery – Al spent a lot of time on the lake, but didn’t believe in sunscreen. There was no hair on his head, but white stubble sprinkled his chin and neck. His prominent nose reminded me of a sailboat’s prow, and his eyes, set beneath bushy whitecap eyebrows, were the deep, almost-black green of the darkest parts of the lake bottom. His mouth, as always, was set in a line, neither smiling nor frowning. I remembered him looking exactly the same twenty years ago, when I was a child, and my father had told me that Al was old when my granddad was young. Clad in faded jeans held up by suspenders over a threadbare plaid flannel, he gazed intently into his coffee, exhaling slowly to create tiny waves in the cup.

Al grunted as I approached. “The Miller boy,” he said by way of greeting. He spoke in a whisper, but it was a crashing, resonating kind of whisper, one that sounded like waves heard from underwater. When he spoke, the rest of the world seemed to grow quieter, just to keep from drowning him out.

“Yes, sir. You wanted to talk to me?”

“Heard Downey met with you yesterday.”

“How did you –”

“I keep up. You didn’t listen to him?”

“Of course not, sir.”

“That’s good. Downey dirties up this town.”

“Sir?”

“Spiritually speaking, I mean.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He goes off to the shops every day. Throws his money around. Makes people less content with what they’ve got.”

“I’ve seen it happen. They look at his shiny things and his nice clothes and his plastic smile, and they decide that they want shiny things and nice clothes and a plastic smile.”

“They forget that their life is already good. That they don’t need what Downey has.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that damned jetski.” Al paused, and seemed to brood. “Disrespect, is what it is. Chopping up the water. Scaring the fish. Killing the plants. Shameful.”

“Yes, sir.”

Several seconds passed where nobody spoke. I took a sip of my coffee. Al blew on his, and more little waves raced across the surface.

“He’s a gar,” said Al abruptly. “Downey is.”

“The fish?”

“Mhm. Big and toothy. Moving around with all sorts of arrogance, like it’s the most important thing in the water. Doesn’t realize it’s at the mercy of the lake, just like everything else. Storm comes, gar is in just as much danger as anything.”

“I see, sir.”

“That so?”

I looked away a bit, as his eyes came up to meet mine. “Not really, sir.”

“Mhm. Look at me, boy.” I turned to make eye contact. “Gar lay poisonous eggs. Worth thinking about.

Some people leave poison behind wherever they go. Unless you go and do something about it.”

“People like Downey.”

“Could be.”

Another pause of several seconds before Al spoke again.

“You’re not with him?”

“No, sir.”

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“You won’t help him?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re a good boy. Parents raised you right.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Knew your dad, I did.”

“He spoke of you highly, sir.”

Al grunted again. “How’s your law business coming?”

“Well, sir.”

“Good.”

“I should actually be getting there soon, sir. It’s almost time to open. My receptionist will be waiting.”

“Should get home. Storm’s coming.”

“A storm, sir? The weathermen haven’t said anything about that.”

“Weathermen don’t know the lake like I do. Storm’ll hit in a couple hours.”

“I’ll stay home today, then.”

“Good. Told Myrtle, too. You’re good people — should be safe.”

“Thank you, sir. How will you be getting back, though?” Al was the lone inhabitant of Limpet Island, a little dribble of land that poked out of the water in the middle of the lake.

“Sail. Same way I got here.”

“But the storm —”

“Storm isn’t a problem for me. I’ve sailed worse.”

I waited expectantly; I have found it is in the habit of old men to tell tales, and this sounded like the beginning of one.

Al raised one eyebrow minutely. “I won’t tell you no tale, son. That one’s not for you. Just saying a fact.”

When I went out the door, I heard the roar of a jetski. Downey was headed towards Myrtle’s dock. Not wanting to talk to the man, I turned away so he wouldn’t know I’d seen him, and kept walking. As I walked, I dialed my receptionist and told her about the storm. No sense having her just sit in the office when I was going home. #

The storm hit shortly after I got home. It was more violent than any storm I’ve seen in my lifetime. The lake, whose surface had been so smooth and placid that morning, was thrown into chaos and fury, a roiling madness punctuated by jaw-rattling crashes of thunder. The wind was intense, and I could hear its howling even inside. I soon gave up on watching, and took refuge away from such breakable things as windows.

By some miracle, nobody in town was harmed, and property damage was fairly minimal. A few power lines were lightning-struck, and out for nearly a week, but by and large the town stayed intact.

However, a couple days later, someone found Downey’s jetski washed up on the shore, and it came out that nobody had seen Downey since he had left Myrtle’s, not long before the storm hit. At first, there was a big push to search for his body, but that seemed to unaccountably die down, like something deep in us just didn’t want to, and we never did locate it.

The storm made the condo people even more jittery about building here, and when they found that Downey had been killed by it, they just went off to find another place. I hear they found some nice beachfront property in the next state over.

I haven’t seen much of Al since -- no more than I did before the Downey incident, anyhow. It may not be just, considering what the man is to the town, but when I see him, I get a bit of a chill, and try and be real polite.

I don’t know for sure what happened to Downey, no more than anyone else does, but I’ve got my thoughts on the matter -- though something tells me sharing them would be ill-advised.

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Where is Spider?

Windsor Potts

Suzette doesn’t check the caller ID as the phone vibrates on the Yukon’s dash. “It’s pissing rain and, of course, someone calls.” Wipers swish, slapping folds of returning rain across the windshield.

She blindly gropes for the phone. Sliding her finger across the screen, she squints ahead.

“Hello?”

A static hiss is followed by a man’s intake of breath, and then silence. Suzette moves to press the red “end call” button when the singing starts. In a muddled Romanian accent, he lulls out a twisted rendition of Frére Jacques.

“Where is Spider? Where is Spider? Here I am. Here I am.”

Panicking, she looks down, desperately clicking on the red button, but her thumb is sweating.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god.” As the screen goes black, she swallows her fear.

Looking up, headlights flash, transforming her windshield into a blinding panoramic. “Shit!”

She swerves as a horn deafens her in its passing. Whipping the SUV onto the shoulder, she slams on the brakes two feet from a concrete retainer wall.

The voice jars open memories of her childhood, the horror forcing its way into the theatre of her mind. The nightmare appeared as a twisted, skeletal man, pursuing her with a spider’s jagged walk.

With black eyes the size of hen’s eggs, it would sing, “Where is Spider? Where is Spider?” A bushy, black moustache splayed above the maw full of needle teeth. Always the last thing to enter her vision before it closed in, devouring her.

Tears brim her eyes. She slaps her face, pinches herself. “Ok. I’m awake. Think, think. Danny!

I’ve got to call Danny.”

Barely able to grip the phone, she presses the icon of her fiancés’ face. The line rings once, and from behind her, Danny’s ringtone breaks through the noise of the rainfall. Unmoving, Suzette looks in the rearview mirror. Beyond the third row seats, a phone screen flashes once more before it is answered.

The delayed signal through the phone’s speaker doubles the Gypsy accent singing from behind her. “Where is Spider? Where is Spider? Here I am.”

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Two Years After Allen Berry

Wednesday, July 2, 2008: 8:45 PM, Two Years After

“Can I ask you a personal question?” It’s July 1, 2007 and I’m standing over the grave of my best friend. I’m remembering the first words she ever spoke to me. Dressed to the nines, a little over five feet tall, and all of 15 or 16 I imagined. We met one night at the Burning Nun, a sort of independently run lending library, operated by our common friend CD. I volunteered there as a part-time librarian. I felt like I was giving something to the community, and it was a break from my day job at the Comcast cable. With the diverse crowd the Nun attracted, it wasn’t unusual to have a complete stranger ask you some off-the-wall question. Short and direct as a bullet, the first time Amy spoke to me, a near total stranger, she said: “Can I ask you a personal question?”

I was taken by surprise, but at the same time I admired her audacity. “Of course you can,” I replied.

It’s Sunday, July 1, 2007 and I’m wondering why Amy’s headstone bears a last name I’ve never heard before. In five or six months time I’ll learn the answer from her mother. As hard as the reality of Amy’s death is for me, having the truth engraved in stone— that’s still just too much to bear.

It’s Saturday, July 1, 2006, shortly after midnight and I’m watching Amy get slowly, and for the first time legally, hammered. I’m the relief hitter. CD, the man she was supposed to be taking her first legal drink with, the man she loved, had betrayed her trust. The more she drinks, the more she cries and the more I try to comfort her. This is akin to slapping bandaids over a bullet wound; you may staunch the flow of blood for a second, but ultimately your 34 | Winter/Spring 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

efforts are futile. After doing this for a while, you can’t tell if you’re bleeding or the other person is; by that point it doesn’t matter—it’s both of you. Sartre would have us believe that hell is other people. He’s right up to a point. Hell is watching people you adore suffer and realizing that there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.

I’m approaching the end of a vigil I began some 14 hours earlier when Amy’s hysterical phone call shook me from the relative quiet of my morning routine. The details were unclear, but I got from her that the man she loved had been seeing someone else. Disregarding the speed limits, I rushed to the backside of the mountain where I would find Amy alternately weeping and raging at her betrayer.

The problem is, he is our mutual friend and my de facto employer from the Burning Nun. The problem is, for reasons too complicated to go into, he and Amy had to keep their relationship quiet. Lucky me, I was one of two people whom she confided in about it. The problem is, if you can maintain one secret relationship, you can just as easily maintain two. The problem is, I was in love with my best friend who had told all of us that she wasn’t into men. Even so, when she told me they were dating, I was happy for them. I thought our mutual friend CD was what they call in the gangster movies “a stand up guy.” The problem is, I was wrong.

For the next hour, I watch helplessly as the person I love most in the world goes through agony.

An hour and ten minutes later, I’ll follow her out of the parking lot. I have every intention of asking CD some very personal questions. When my efforts are stymied by Amy’s presence and CD’s absence at his house, I’ll take a permanent leave of absence from the Nun and spend the next two days avoiding CD for fear of what I might do to him.

It’s July 1, 2006, right around 2:30 A.M., and I’m walking back downtown after making sure Amy made it home safely. At the corner of Washington Street, a woman is screaming at the front of a hardware store. I decide it’s in my best interest to take an alternate route back to my truck.

In one week’s time, every detail of the first few days of July 2006 will become blindingly significant. I will come to believe that the unfortunate screaming woman was actually a Banshee, heralding Amy’s impending death. I’ll come to believe that all the signs were in place, but somehow I missed them.

I will convince myself that because I failed to read the coded messages that must have been all around me—my best friend died.

It’s Sunday, July 2, 2006. Amy and I are at a coffee shop on Bailey Cove Road. I relax for the first time in forty-eight hours. This is the first time since Friday that I don’t think Amy is going to hurt herself. I talk to her about the events of the last few days, and she tells me that she and CD met the night before and made peace. I say that’s good for her, but I can’t forgive so easily. She talks about getting back to school and starting on making a life at Auburn where she is working on her second bachelor’s degree.

We spend the next four hours driving and listening to music, and for the first time since this mess began, I have my best friend back. Not completely of course, nobody comes back from that kind of hurt so quickly, but enough that I see traces of the Amy I knew. Passing over the Flint River Bridge, I notice the outfitter I canoe with every summer is closed. There’s a sign on the gate I can’t make out; only later will I learn that the outfitter passed away from a heart attack. Amy touches my arm and I look up just in time to see the trailer attached to the battered Chevy pickup in front of us go twisting and spinning over the shoulder of the road and disappear. Had I been driving, this scene would have been greeted by the slamming of brakes, and some quick, panicky maneuvers. Amy just chuckles and keeps driving. Recalling this day in weeks to come, I will convince myself that this too was a warning I failed to heed.

It’s Monday, July 3, 2006 and I’m back at work. I leave Amy a voicemail to confirm lunch.

Fifteen minutes later my cell phone rings; it’s a police detective on the other end. He tells me that

he has some personal questions to ask me. I ask him what they’re in regard to, and he tells me Amy. I immediately ask if she’s OK, but he won’t tell me anything else.

I’m pacing up and down in front of Comcast, waiting for the detectives to arrive. I make a call I don’t want to make to the last man in the world I want to talk to. The first call goes to voicemail, the second time CD answers; panic displaces my anger and hatred. He tells me that Amy won’t be meeting me for lunch. He tells me that she was struck and killed by a train four hours after she left me. Immediately I start to bargain, “But she was fine when she dropped me off! She was fine!” I protest. “I know,” he says, “I know…”

You hear people say sometimes: ‘You look like you just lost your best friend.’ The fact is when it actually happens you look nothing like it sounds.

The truth is it’s not about what you look like.

What it is about is that you’re bulletproof. Nothing can touch you, because that thing you take for your soul withdraws deep inside. You feel numb because suddenly your body is too big for you, you have a thousand mile stare because you’ve pulled back a thousand miles inside yourself. You get numb because you realize that no matter what happens next, nothing will hurt as much as this one moment does. That’s what it’s like.

In an hour and a half, the man I wanted to beat to a pulp 24 hours earlier will be one of a handful of people I want to be around. He and I share an immeasurable loss. Little by little, those of us who formed Amy’s inner circle gather at CD’s parents’ house. With us is the girl he was seeing behind Amy’s back, the only innocent victim in all of this. I can’t imagine how she’s feeling.

Like any family in a time of trouble, we close ranks. Between breakdowns and unanswerable questions, we form an ad hoc crisis management team. We take a quick head count, and figure out who’s out of town, who we need to reach, what can we do for Amy’s family. In a perverse tableau of the Last Supper, we gather around CD’s parents’ table; they’ve been kind enough to order Domino’s. Over the next two days they’ll become parents to all of us. Like the good siblings that we are, we become protective of one another, keeping tabs on where everyone is. Finally, we work out how to control the Flytrap Uprising | Winter/Spring 2016 | 35

flow of information. What do we know collectively and who outside the family needs to know which details. I don’t know it at the time, or maybe I do and don’t want to admit it, but we’re closer at this moment than we ever will be again.

It’s Monday, July 3, 2006. I explain to my supervisor Steve that I’m not in any trouble. I explain that the police needed my statement because my best friend has died under questionable circumstances. He winces, and then tells me that work is the last place I need to be. I manage to stammer out something that I hope sounds like thanks.

Twenty minutes later CD and I, the last two men Amy was close to, the scoundrel and the fool, make a pilgrimage to the last place she was. There are little bits of her along the tracks; I suppose that the EMTs couldn’t account for everything. There’s nothing left you could identify, nothing that feels familiar. I had hoped for some essence of Amy, some of her incredible energy left behind, but there is only the wind.

It’s Monday, July 2, 2007 and I’m standing at the railroad tracks. I’ve come to have a drink and a smoke with my best friend. I never understood Amy’s love of cigars, or her taste for Scotch, but they’re her vices and out of respect for her memory I partake. After I toast her and knock back a swallow of scotch, I pour the rest on the tracks where she fell. I wonder where she is; I wonder if God grades on a curve, most of all I wonder if she’s seeing me there, like a Buddhist pilgrim feeding a hungry ghost.

Knowing that Amy was never one for solemnity, I imagine her laughing at me, coughing cigar smoke and spewing scotch. I won’t be the only visitor to this place; CD will come later just as I did, skulking through the night to visit the last place she was. Amy’s Dad will come down to the tracks the next day. He’ll chuckle at the memorial I left behind, an empty whiskey bottle and a cigar in its protective tube. These items accompany a decaying flower arrangement that fellow family member Gan and I left. We took the bouquet there as a favor to Amy’s mother, who couldn’t bear going to the place where Amy died.

In seven months time, I will learn from Amy’s father that her death was accidental. He’ll tell me that the police were wrong. He’ll tell me that his private investigator found out that there was footage from the railroad. The video showed Amy unconscious on the tracks when the train struck her. He’ll confirm for me that there was nothing I could have done, but that’s the future. Standing on the tracks this night, I am tormented. I believe that she threw herself in front of a train out of grief. I believe that I let her down, that I wasn’t there for her when she needed me most.

I have a personal question: if a man can’t protect the people he loves, what kind of man is he?

It’s July 5th, 2006. I’m sitting in a pew listening to a smiling preacher deliver the most inappropriate eulogy I’ve ever heard, and I realize the tragedy is a zip code with a very small population. The night before, this grinning ghoul had questioned us about Amy, cherry picking our memories for pieces of the Amy we knew. Today, with the studied delivery of a used car salesman, the minister is taking advantage of our friend, our Amy’s funeral, to try and bring all of us into the fold. Of all the members of our circle of friends, I’m the only one who is religious, and even I’m offended. In a room full of broken people, this grinning abomination is a comfort to no one. Beneath the cadence of the preacher’s words, I become aware of a slow, constant thud. When I begin to feel the vibrations in my back, I turn to see my friend Bob beating his head against the burnished wooden pew. He looks up at me; reading the concern in my face he says, “Amy would have hated this.” I nod my head in silent affirmation.

Gritting my teeth, I wonder how much longer my friends can listen, sitting by as our thoughts about Amy are distorted and thrown back at us. I want to scream; I want to curse; I want to reach for a hymnal to throw at this loathsome grinning salvation pusher. I want to shut him up, but there aren’t any hymnals in the songbook racks. I imagine that they’ve been removed for the protection of people like him.

It’s Tuesday, August 4, 2006, and I’m standing by the tracks. I watch the train pass by. It will be another year before the sound of a train stops making me flinch. I’ll repeat this pilgrimage again, and again for months. By September, I’ll stop blaming Amy for dying. In six months’ time I’ll stop blaming myself…mostly. Sometimes that which doesn’t kill you--disappoints you.

It’s Wednesday, July 2, 2008, and I’m standing alone by the tracks after dark. Amy’s death has made a time traveler of me, returning here again and again, trying to reach her in the past… I pour two shots of Scotch whiskey and light a cigar in Amy’s honor. I knock back just over an ounce of the vile stuff and flinch. I want to curse, but I’m 36 | Winter/Spring 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

afraid to open my mouth, for fear it will feed the fire that’s currently immolating the lining of my throat. I still don’t understand the appeal. An hour before, over Thai food, I toasted Amy with Gan and Dan, two of the other members of her inner circle. It’s good to know I’m not the only one who remembers. I worry about that each time I visit her grave.

I imagine that somewhere Amy’s laughing at me, a stumbling poet of Scotch-Irish descent, who has no tolerance for his ancestors’ contribution to the culture. Here I am, drinking to the memory of a girl who meant more to me than anyone in the world, the girl I called my best friend, and loved, and failed. There are so many personal questions I want to ask her. Can you see us here, two years later, still missing you? Are you safe where you are now? At the end, did you know you were loved? No answer is forthcoming.

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Vagabond

Candice Mizell

From a listener’s perspective, she was dull. Boring to the point of suicide—if only that spared him having to hear

her monotone speech one more time. But he listened, and although the tiny veins that shot from his eyebrow to his hairline like tunneling antennae were pulsing, he smiled as if on cue, even clapping heartily when she finished. If you can’t clap because it’s good, clap because it’s over.

“Well done, Miss Shaffer.” His plastic smile convincing, the result of years of practice.

Miss Shaffer could only be described as a pale, limp girl. Her distinguishing feature—a pair of octagonal, black-framed glasses—perched atop her nose, gripping her cheeks. She closely resembled a frog if one stared long enough.

And he’d had plenty of time to stare, to imagine the toad-glasses leaping from her face, causing a ruckus that graciously saved him from listening to another monosyllabic speech.

Was he the only one who felt the yearning for a 747 to crash-land through the window? He turned his head toward the other students—the only four left in the class after an initial enrollment of eighteen. The missing ones, he often thought, were lucky bastards, able to escape the slow death of the class. The others, poor saps the lot of them. Probably couldn’t afford to drop another class, or perhaps this slot was the only available time for them.

He cleared his throat loudly while straightening the perfectly aligned sheaf of papers lying before him.

“Class!” he bellowed, noticing with appreciation that he’d roused at least one drooling student from a catatonic stupor. “Dismissed.” This word, whispered.

Each of the four students jostled their books and bags and stumbled from the room as if hung over. Miss Shaffer, of course, lagged behind.

“Mr. Blair.” She approached him as if being led to the gallows.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled the final ounce of patience he’d brought for the day. “Yes, Miss Shaffer?” The plastic smile surfaced, only weaker.

She halted, repositioned the bulging backpack on her sloping shoulder. “I need to drop your class.” The words spilled out in a wave of waning courage.

Words failed him. Could it be true? The one student whom he’d prayed would drop the class was coming forward now? With the semester nearly complete? “Why?” he heard himself ask. Did he really want to know?

The magnified eyes wallowed like fish eggs behind her glasses, that gelatinous vibration that signals budding life. “Well…it’s personal.”

Personal? Nearly three months of contemplating death in the most spectacular ways—spontaneous combustion, a sudden outbreak of guerilla warfare, human sacrifice—to escape her monotone voice and now she decides to clam up? He adjusted himself atop the desk he’d perched on and fixed what he thought was an understanding look on his face. “Personal?” He couldn’t help the cynical smile she witnessed before he stowed it away. “Miss Shaffer, I’m sorry you feel that way, especially since the class will be cancelled should another student drop.” Another failure to add to the list.

Suddenly she snapped to attention, her grim mouth forming an O. She slumped again, too limp for good posture. “Well, Mr. Blair, I—”

“Look, Miss Shaffer, give me one good reason why you feel you cannot continue in this class, and I’ll allow you out. I’ll even allow your current grade as my final report.” ***

Steve Blair seemed to have sprouted from a sapling and dropped like an apple from a tree. At least, that’s what his few acquaintances and colleagues would say. No one knew much about him except that he carried an impressive CV, beginning with a Master’s in Education from an ivy league school and five years of experience as a High School Administrator straight out of college. This tidbit he embellished. Drop in a couple of night-class adjunct positions and VOILA. He worded his experience in such a way that reviewers couldn’t believe their luck 38 | Winter/Spring 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

at having found such a gem. Undoubtedly, there were more impressive candidates, but the diversity of experience proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Steve Blair was qualified and flexible.

It seemed his experience was irresistible. He could (and had, in the past) roll into town one dusky evening and before the following sunset, have a job at whichever university he applied. It was some kind of magic—far beyond luck—that allowed him to find work so easily when some couldn’t even hire on at the local fast food joint. It wasn’t magic, exactly. It was him, his shiftless spirit. It was nothing for him to pack his bags during the final week of the semester and already have hired into another position hundreds of miles away before grades had even posted. Never let the dust settle.

That was his motto.

It had been his father’s motto, too. In fact, by the time Steve was old enough to count, he’d run out of fingers to tally up the number of places they’d lived.

“Yesterday doesn’t mean a damn thing, my boy,” his father would say. “What we’re after is today.” And he’d laugh and swallow down another mouthful of beer.

Steve never knew his mother, knew nothing of her other than the faded and creased photograph his father carried in his wallet, which Steve resorted to slipping out once his father passed out. He stared at the photo often enough that he memorized her features— some, like her nose and chin, so much like his own.

Some days, though, he couldn’t find a single likeness between himself and this mystery woman who stared at him from behind cracked paper.

He dreamt up scenarios involving him and his mother: mid-day outings for ice cream, occasional forays to small country churches, mundane things like grocery shopping—all this and more he imagined while his father dove into an alcoholic slumber.

They weren’t always alone when he passed out.

Sometimes they’d still be seated at some roadside diner in the middle of nowhere—the type of greasy spoon where old strippers and hard-luck girls waited tables.

Most of the time, the waitresses would treat Steve to a slice of pie and they’d listen to his dreamt-up stories while his father drooled all over the scarred tabletop.

Sad, they’d whisper. Just sad.

By Steve’s twelfth birthday, he’d imagined an entire lifetime with his mother, such that he convinced himself that when she was out of sight, she was only away at the supermarket and slated for return at any moment. He knew, just knew, that she’d never miss his birthday. He imagined that the waitress who brought the

chocolate cupcake with the single blazing candle posted in the center was his mother and he smiled and smiled.

His father wasn’t the best. He was lousy, in fact, but one great thing—possibly the only great thing— was that he insisted on celebrating Steve’s birthday.

No matter what town they were leaving or heading to, there was a birthday celebration of some sort. And maybe those celebrations were the only things that kept Steve from hating his father like he wanted to, like any normal kid probably would have.

His father was a drunk, but that wasn’t all.

When he grew wise enough to wonder where the money for anything came from, he started paying attention.

Long hours spent roasting in the pick-up truck his father had managed to acquire after the station wagon blew up somewhere along the West Coast made Steve antsy. In the parking lots of shopping malls, grocery stores, laundry facilities, Steve spent hours sitting while his father was—where? Sometimes he would daydream about his mother, but those moments fell by the wayside as he grew older. He eventually realized that he’d never see her again, and besides, what did he care?

You can’t miss someone you don’t know. He’d taken to reading magazines and penny papers lifted from freeway truck stops, but he’d finally read everything he had.

After a long while staring out across a gigantic parking lot filled with cars and people, Steve finally spotted him. Three rows over, helping an old woman load her groceries, appearing to passersby like a nice citizen just helping—but then the dirty hand slipped into the lady’s purse and came away with a bulging wallet, the motion so quick, so practiced, it was almost missed. And then a quick smile to the lady, a friendly parting, and he was on his way back to the truck.

By fourteen, Steve was a successful thief, a pickpocket modeled after the old man. They worked crowded boardwalks and loud summer carnivals, sometimes hauling in a thousand dollars on a good day. During the cold winter months when the tourists hibernated, they’d rent a small trailer, sometimes staying for six weeks—a record!—before moving on.

By sixteen, Steve was a lustful youth, starving for affection, but never allowing himself to make friends because they were only just passing through. Always just passing through. Each time he caught a girl smiling coyly at him over a diner menu, he battled with himself to say hello, to make a friend, just this once. Instead, he built his wall a little higher. He blamed his father for their transience and one day, after a tiring and fruitless round of working the boardwalk, his patience crumbled.

Flytrap Uprising | Winter/Spring 2016 | 39

“Why can’t we just be normal? Jesus!” Steve stared eye-to-eye with his father.

The familiar crack of a fresh beer, the audible swallow, and the convulsing throat. “Normal, you say? That ain’t normal, my boy,” he’d say, gesturing toward anything except himself. “Being in love ain’t normal!” Slamming the beer back and tossing the empty can to the ground at his feet.

“I’m sixteen, seventeen soon. Never had a conversation, not a real one, with a girl. Never had a friend. Never even been to school! How is that normal?” Toe-to-toe.

A punch in the face, Steve thought, must be the worst feeling in the world. His nose dripped blood onto his dirty shirt. His father shook his fist and cursed so loudly that people turned to stare.

“This damn sure ain’t normal,” Steve said, pointing to his face. He’d walked away then, out into the dusk of a town that could be anywhere. He’d never seen his father again.

Steve had been lucky to land a job with a farming family. He slept in a small shed, but the wife, Mrs. Low, made sure he was comfortable. He helped with farm work, housework, anything and everything he could do to help him forget his wasted youth. They couldn’t afford to pay him, but he ate and slept for free, plus Mrs. Low tutored him with math and reading lessons where his father had provided only a basic understanding.

“I want to go to college, to better myself,” Steve told Mr. and Mrs. Low over dinner one evening, the first time he’d ever spoken about the future.

Just after his eighteenth birthday, he finally earned his equivalency degree. He enrolled in college the following semester, leaping into the opportunity like a man possessed, determined to prove to himself and to his nogood father that he was capable.

His undergraduate years were tough. Long hours of tutoring followed classes during the first year. His grades suffered, but by the second year, he excelled and continued on the path through graduation. An excellent GPA and a sturdy essay highlighting the incredible circumstances of his youth gained his admittance to an ivy league graduate program. He could have followed up with a doctorate, but he’d grown tired of the structure.

And now, standing before Miss Shaffer, his mind had begun drifting to the next town he would blow into.

She stared at him as if he’d posed his question in Greek.

“Well?” he prompted. “Do you have a valid reason, or are you just the type who loves to spend numerous weeks boring people to near-death? Hmm?” His stance mimicked a prize fighter who felt certain he could never lose.

Miss Shaffer swallowed her breath. Her cheeks glowed and her brow furrowed. She pushed her glasses tight against her face. “Mr. Blair,” she began, adjusting her bag again. “I find you…disagreeable.”

Steve laughed. Disagreeable? “Say it ain’t so, Miss Shaffer,” he said between chuckles.

Miss Shaffer’s nose jerked into the air, haughty, and at a dangerous angle for the frog’s leap. “Mr. Blair, this,” indicating his helpless guffaws, “is one reason. You’re callous, inhumane, and just downright hateful.”

Her words had bite. In fact, each one, like a knife, chipped away at Steve’s carefully constructed wall, a wall built to bury a childhood of hurt.

Miss Shaffer’s anger subsided, apprehension crawling into her glassy eyes. She stood silent, awaiting the verdict.

“I see,” Steve muttered and stared at the busted seams of his sneakers. “Well, Miss Shaffer, I suppose your grievance may have merit, but why wait until now to say anything? Why not cut out in the beginning like everyone else?”

“Benefit of the doubt, Mr. Blair. But after today, I see no reason why I should continue in a class where my best efforts are belittled.”

Steve bristled. “I’ve never belittled you or anyone else in this classroom.” He found it comical how he’d adapted to the teaching role, all the while feeling like a fraud. No matter how hard he worked, he’d always feel like a thief.

Miss Shaffer smiled, a cold and striking gesture. Gone was the dull, limp girl. Here stood a young woman defending herself. “Your face is very expressive, Mr. Blair. You really don’t have to say anything.”

Steve slapped his thigh, on the verge of laughter except that anger derailed his humor. How dare she rebuke him? She knew nothing of him! He wanted to rail against her, but reality stung him. What has she really said, besides the truth? Only the truth.

He straightened, giving the barest nod. “You’re excused, Miss Shaffer. Your drop is granted.”

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She looked as if she would ask a question. Perhaps she suddenly worried over the fate of her classmates who would find themselves with a cancelled class so near its end. Nevertheless, she ate her would-be question, accepted the permission form that he hastily scrawled out, and left.

Steve sat atop the desk and stared at the empty seats before him for a long time after the door closed behind Miss Shaffer. He’d not given her a fair shake, he admitted, and it pained him to do so. She’d walked out on him just as his mother had. Just as his father had—although he hadn’t walked out, only traded time with his son for booze and theft. Miss Shaffer had passed her judgment, just as all those before had—the quiet boy with the drunk father and the dirty clothes and the vagabond lifestyle. Sad, they’d whisper. So sad.

“Well, Steve,” he said aloud. “You’ve done it again, my boy. Time to move on.” He heaved himself from the desk, collected his things, and walked out—heading toward the next town that could be anywhere.

Flytrap Uprising | Winter/Spring 2016 | 41

Artists’ CORNER

Do you paint? Have an interesting hobby? Do you collect unusual things? Perhaps you upcycle everything you can get your hands on into Wonderland-esque planters?

If you answered YES! to any of these, then we have a space for you here on the Artists’ Corner. If you would like to showcase your special talent or quirky hobby, reach out to us at bluespiderpress@ gmail.com and let us know what talents you possess. We’ll follow up with a request for print-quality photos and an artist bio (possibly in an interview-like format.)

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Untitled Acrylic

Jackie Dixon

What do you find to be the most daunting aspect of your favorite hobby? How do you overcome?

Let us know on our Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/BlueSpiderPress

Flytrap Uprising | Winter/Spring 2016 | 43

Photography Photo credit: Addam Mizell

Portrait Rock, Garden of the Gods

A Texas Sunset

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Portrait Rock, Garden of the Gods

Flower, Panama City Beach

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Another Childhood Journey

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Photography Photo Credit: Christopher Woods

Apocalypse Seating

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Contributors -- Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press), Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays (Winter Goose Publishing), and Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). Perceptions, Fault Lines and Tremors will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Blossoms of Decay will be published by Nazar Look. Resonance will be published by Dreaming Big Press. His novels include Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press), Acts of Defiance (Artema Press), and Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth, was released by Sweatshoppe Publications. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced off-Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.

-- Allen Berry is a poet, teacher, and an avid hiker. His latest collection of poetry, Sitting Up with the Dead, has recently been accepted for publication by Writing Knights Press. He currently teaches English composition, business writing, and technical writing at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

-- Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire, 2003). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

-- For the past ten years, Andrew Boylan has written for film and television while quietly clicking away at stories once the work was done.

-- Jeremy DeFatta holds a BA in English from Wabash College and a Master’s in English from the University of Southern Mississippi. He has accumulated more than five years of proofreading and editing experience, along with assistant editorship roles on academic publications.

He is currently working towards his goal of becoming a professional writer, and he looks forward to the opportunity to help you do the same. Jeremy’s personal fiction interests include science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comic books, and he also enjoys discussing history and real life mysteries at length.

-- Baisali Chatterjee Dutt is a former columnist and agony aunt for Mother & Baby Magazine and contributor to Parent & Child Magazine. She has compiled and edited two volumes for the Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul series, namely the volumes “On Friendship” and “Celebrating Brothers and Sisters.” She has also contributed to ten of their other titles. Her biography, Sharbari Datta: The Design Diva, on one of Calcutta’s leading luminaries in the fashion world was released this year.

Her other great passion is theatre. She has performed with some of the country’s top English theatre groups such as ART and Theatre Club in Bangalore, Raell Padamsee’s ACE Productions in Bombay, and of course Calcutta’s Red Curtain and Spandan. Currently, she is a drama facilitator at the Creative Arts studio run by Ramanjit Kaul as well as for South Point School.

Born in New York, schooled in Bangalore with college in Delhi, Baisali Chatterjee Dutt now lives in Calcutta with her husband, two sons, mother and mother-in-law. She has an MA in French from Jawaharlal Nehru University and when not writing or acting, she’s either busy resisting chocolate or storing up on as many hugs as she possibly can from her not-yet-teenage boys.

-- Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a member of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. She has been a teacher on all levels and she has worked in two libraries. Presently she is a freelance writer as well as a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been published in numerous magazines, as well as a poem in After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, edited by Tom Lombardo, and a poem in Down to the Dark River, edited by Philip Kolin. Her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released September 1, 2015.

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-- Philip C. Kolin, Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus) at the University of Southern Mississippi, has published more than 40 books on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, David Rabe, Adrienne Kennedy, and Suzan-Lori Parks. A poet as well, Kolin’s most recent book of poetry is Emmett Till in Different States: Poems published by Third World Press in November 2015.

-- Joshua Mallett is a twenty-one-year-old university student pursuing a major in English. He’s a Mississippi native who grew up in Lucedale looking to get a foot in the door of the writing world. His hobbies include creating and destroying worlds, dancing poorly to good music, and occasionally putting some good ideas to paper.

-- Charles McGregor is primarily composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. In the past, the assemblage of those elements has performed the functions of high school English teacher, graveyard-shift gas station attendant, and grad student. He also suspects that nobody cares about his personal life and encourages the reader to skip ahead to the story.

-- Jade Metzger is a Communication Studies Ph.D. student at Wayne State University in Detroit. She leads a quiet, happy little life, punctuated by kitchen disasters and the ever present threat of a computer malfunction. She is owned by a 15 lb Maine Coon/Ragdoll cat named Mogget, and that seems to be going well for both parties involved. She believes in magic; meaning she believes in coffee. Most of her creative and academic pursuits involve gender, sexuality, transparency, and agency.

-- Addam Mizell hails from the southern states but lives in the wild west. Taking photographs has been a hobby of his for years. He pursues mostly nature and product photography. If his services are required or desired he can be reached at atom.mizell@yahoo.com.

-- Candice Mizell is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi, where she studied literature. She enjoys spending time gathering writing advice for Scribble Writer’s Community on Facebook. Candice is a firm believer in finding redeeming qualities in any piece of work.

Her favorite stories blend elements of well-loved fairy tales in interesting, new ways.

-- Windsor Potts is an alchemist, philosopher, minister, and poet. He has a collection of short stories and sayings set to release posthumously, entitled Bones in the Playground, Children at the Grave. He engages in general debauchery and hedonism, mostly in the form of smoking cigars and alcohol consumption. You can find him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/WindsorPotts.

-- John Stupp is the author of the 2007 Main Street Rag chapbook The Blue Pacific and the 2015 full-length collection Advice from the Bed of a Friend (also by Main Street Rag). Recent poetry has appeared or will be appearing in Timberline, The New Guard, Slippery Elm, Eye Contact and Uppagus. He has lived and worked in various states as a jazz musician, university instructor, taxi driver, radio news writer, waiter, auto factory laborer, and paralegal.

-- Timothy Tanner is a science teacher who loves to read detective novels and scary stories.

-- Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Houston and Chappell Hill, Texas. He has published a novel, The Dream Patch, a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky, and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, New England Review, New Orleans Review, Columbia and Glimmer Train, among others. His photographs can be seen in his gallery at http://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/. He is currently compiling a book of photography prompts.

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Call for Submissions •Submissions for our second issue (Spring/Summer 2016) are now open!

•We will accept submissions for this issue until mid-Summer. Feel free to continue submitting after this date for future issues.

•Though we will continue to accept general submissions, our theme for our second issue will be noir— noir stories, noir poetry, critical articles about noir novels, review articles of noir films, you name it! As always, all types of writing will be considered.

•Noir (simply black in French) is usually identified by a sense of post-war pessimism coupled with an impossible search for truth, often carried out by gritty anti-heroes, emotionally damaged detectives, or other relatable sources of authority. It is the idea that the world is hopelessly big and broken, so much so that irreversibly anonymized individuals get swept away all the time. Given the style’s preponderance in the 1940s and 50s, many contemporary works (particularly in the detective genre) are still set in this era. Notable period piece examples include L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia in film and L.A. Noire in video games.

•Contemporary crime and detective fiction with a noir slant are also alive and well today, with distinguished authors such as Stephen King (The Colorado Kid, Joyland, Mr. Mercedes), Lawrence Block (A Walk Among the Tombstones and other Matthew Scudder stories), and Frank Miller (Sin City and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) carrying on a tradition that includes such departed masters as Dan J. Marlowe (The Name of the Game is Death), Elmore Leonard (Pronto, “Fire in the Hole,” and other inspirations for the TV series Justified), and Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye, et al.).

•There is a lot of room for numerous interpretations and iterations of noir, and we are eager to see what you can do with it. Have a detective story you’re not sure what to do with? Send it our way! An ode to a barren, soulless modern city? Lay it on us! Want to share your carefully edited thoughts on why Humphrey Bogart would have made a good Raylan Givens? We’re interested in that, too. As always, email us with any questions. Can’t wait to hear from you!

Unless otherwise noted, all artwork, photographs, and graphics found throughout this publication are used under a Creative Commons license.

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Winter/Spring 2016 Contributors List Gary Beck Dr. Allen Berry Ace Boggess Andrew Boylan Baisali Chatterjee Dutt Jeremy DeFatta Sister Lou Ella Hickman Dr. Philip Kolin Joshua Mallett Charles McGregor Jade Metzger Addam Mizell Candice Mizell Windsor Potts John Stupp Timothy Tanner Christopher Woods

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