Flytrap Uprising | Issue #2 | October 2016

FLYTRAP UPRISING

OCTOBER 2016

*Mature Content* May not be suitable for all readers

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ISSUE 2

Unless otherwise stated, artwork and/or clipart is used under a Creative Commons license with images procured from PixaBay.com ISSN 2471-5786 2 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

FLYTRAP UPRISING Editor:

Jeremy DeFatta Designer/Artistic Director:

Candice Mizell

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 3

In This Issue: • “Early 20th Century Garbage” | Graeme Tennant, 7-14 • Overturned Woman | Ofir Dor, 15 • “A Bar Scene” | Windsor Potts, 16-20 • “The Mists of Juneau” | David B. Cox, III, 22-25 • “The Corkscrew Finds Love in Southeast Portland” | Jerry Cunningham, 26-33 • Photography by Dakota Wilkinson, 34-35 • “Spurious Incantation” and “New York” | Justin DiCristofaro, 36 • “Envy” and “LA Fee Vert” | Justin DiCristofaro, 37 • “The Devil That You Know” | PT Sand, 38-48 • “A Lady I Used to Know” | Kegan Doyle, 49-52 • “Jubilation!” | Philip Kuan, 53 • “Wanton Lane” | Malcolm Macdonald, 54-58 • “Foundation” and “Guards Waving Flashlights” | L.B. Sedlacek, 59 • “Faith at the Heart and Hoof Tavern” | Thomas M. McDade. 60-62 • “Nostalgia Man” | Alexander Brown, 63 • “Shut the Door to Keep the Cold Air In” | Moshe Prigan, 64 • “The Clarinet, the Fedora, and the Ashes of Us” | Allen Berry, 65 • “The Music of Leaving” | Sam Marlowe, 66 • “Fashionista Noir” | Philip Kolin, 67 • “The Well” | Jason Fedora and R.J. Holmes, 68-81 • “The Canary Sings” | Candice Mizell, 82-89 • “Go Somewhere You Don’t Want To” and “A Mugging in Utopia” | Colin James, 90 • “Murder.com” and “Too Much American Justice” | Salvatore Difalco, 91 • “Disturbing the Peace” | Salvatore Difalco, 92 • “The Wolf Out There” and “Nature Boy Confesses to His Wife” | John Grey, 93 • “Shadow City” | Kirk Duponte, 94-95 • “Diary Entry of a Depressive” | Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb, 96 • Artist Spotlight Interview: Sarah Cole, 98-100 • Contributor Bios, 101-103

4 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Letter from the Editor My dad once told me a story about one of the first jobs he held as a teenager. He worked in a local zoo, cleaning the monkey cages. It could be horrible; the monkeys would often throw their feces at each other in drawn out battles. But there was one day more horrifying than the others.

There were two closely neighboring cages——one held a small, friendly female monkey, and the other held an old, grizzled male monkey who was significantly larger. The female monkey was young and playful, and one day she decided to reach into the old male monkey’s cage to make friends. The male monkey turned around, grabbed her to him, and bit her entire hand off.

This, for me, is the essence of noir, as well as where it intersects with horror. The core of noir often involves someone young and/or naïve being utterly destroyed by the established order, which is the existential horror inherent to the form. Beyond that, we are also left with a troubling question--which is the natural state of human interactions? Though the example above is of our close primate cousins, such behaviors are not difficult to extrapolate from human relationships as well.

And it is this darker side of humanity that populates our noir issue. The depravity of unchecked desire, incredibly unhealthy coping mechanisms, overwhelming needs to escape one’s life, and even deals with the devil highlight this issue’s sampling of fiction and poetry. We hope that each of you finds something to appeal to your darker half this go-around, but be forewarned that not every entry herein will interest everyone, and some things may even be offensive to some readers. Thank you for reading!

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 5

Letter from the Editor

For this issue of Flytrap Uprising, I will also be including a list of (relatively) recent noir reading recommendations for those of you interested in looking into more published work similar to what we have included here.

Prose: The works of Lawrence Block, particularly his series featuring Matthew Scudder, recently featured in the film A Walk Among the Tombstones starring Liam Neeson. The series begins with Sins of the Fathers.

Bard Constantine’s tales of detective/tough guy Mick Trubble, the Troubleshooter, and his adventures in the simultaneously diesel- and cyberpunk megacity of New Haven. His first book in this setting is New Haven Blues, though chronologically its prequel, Red-Eyed Killer, may be a better place to start.

Victor LaValle’s short novel The Ballad of Black Tom is a fascinating intersection of 1920s Harlem culture and race relations and the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft. The protagonist, Charles Thomas Tester, is a young jazz guitarist acquainted with the occult who steals cursed tomes and ancient artifacts for extra money, and who falls into the machinations of beings beyond human understanding.

Comics: Lady Killer by Joelle Jones and Jamie S. Rich and published by Dark Horse is the story of unassuming 1950s housewife Josie Schuller, who also happens to be a successful contract killer in a man’s world.

Image’s Hadrian’s Wall by Kyle Higgins, Alec Siegel, and Rod Reis is a 1980s-style science fiction murder mystery set on the titular deep space explorer vessel. There is some serious Bladerunner aesthetic going on here, and it’s wonderful.

Valiant’s Britannia by Peter Milligan and Juan Jose Ryp is touted as the story of the world’s first detective, which sees Antonius Axia, disgraced Roman centurion, sent to the western frontier of the empire to solve a case that may threaten the reign of Emperor Nero.

--Jeremy D.

6 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Early 21st Century GARBAGE

Early 21st Century Garbage

by Graeme Tennant

I’m awake long before my alarm clock goes off. I fidget under my sheets for a few minutes, laying there with my eyes closed until the shrill beeping from my alarm clock squeals like a cat being run over by an SUV. I pull my blue cotton blanket off my head and roll out of bed. A hologram of a woman floats above my dresser.

Azuza-chan looks down at me, her curly blue hair obscuring her face. She brushes stray strands behind her ear and stares at me with her gentle anime eyes. The sound of her coy laughter and her saying, “Wake up, sweetheart. It’s the start of a new day,” in Japanese, of course, loops until I hit the snooze button.

I grab my armlet off my dresser. I feel naked without it. A thin translucent menu screen opens above my wrist as soon as I put on the armlet. The pale blue screen flashes for a moment. An hourglass symbol appears. The hourglass begins rotating slowly. I always get a

Graeme Tennant

couple seconds of double vision before everything synchs up properly. I steadied myself by grabbing the corner of my dresser. I grabbed the dresser so hard I shook the dust off the condoms resting in the clay bowl I made in fifth grade. The armlet chirps when it finishes its synch.

The armlet synchronizes with my eye implant with another loud chirping sound. A holographic envelope appears above my fingers. The envelope bounces up and down; I tap on it with my index finger. The envelope opens and a letter flies out. The letter unfolds, bright Comic Sans letters start to scrawl across the paper. Your father comes home tomorrow.

Remember to clean the apartment. Love, Mom. I sigh and delete the message. “He ain’t coming home tonight, Mom. He’s never coming home. Dad left a long time ago.”

My feed appears directly over my field of vision. I log in online, open my profile and check my stats. The menu opens up to a status screen with my doppl spinning counter-clockwise. My doppl has a comically oversized head with curly hair like mine. He is wearing black pants, a white shirt, and has a red tie with flashing polka-dots around his neck. His hands shine from the greased palms accessory I won a week ago. In the top right corner of the screen a limited edition Onyx Kingdom wrist watch rotates slowly. Once I get that then my Crisp Kut set will be complete.

I already have the tie and the greased palms, and once I get the watch I’ll finally have the Dressed to Kill perk added to my profile. It gives me a recruitment bonus when applying for contracts.

As soon as I click on the watch Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 7

Graeme Tennant

thumbnail a thermometer pops up next to my doppl. Red mercury begins bubbling up within it. My doppl cheers and pumps his fists as the mercury rises. The mercury stops just a few points short of my goal. My doppl slumps his shoulders and pouts. A small cloud of dust floats up as he kicks the ground.

Every morning I always upload a vlog post. You need to keep your subs entertained. There’s nothin’ sadder than an account with no subs. I think up a quick blurb and post it right away. Mornin’ y’all just makin’ my first post o’ the day. Hope you all get to sleep in some more. It’s another early mornin’ fer me. But you have to get online early if you want the best contracts. I post a picture of me with my bed-head to go along with my post. I make sure to get Azuza-chan in it as well.

My mother knocks on my door three times.

“Eoin. Eoin. Is you up? You hungry? How ‘bout somethin’ to eat? You want some leftovers? I’ve got some spicy eggplant. It’s vegetarian. Do you want to try some? I’ll leave it in the fridge in case you get hungry later, K.” I don’t answer. I just pretend to be asleep. I think she is lonely and just wants to say something out loud so that someone else would hear it.

My mother is really into food porn. She just camps out in front of her webcam and chows down on food that her freak-ass subscribers ask her to eat.

Sometimes I can hear the subs talking to her through the wall. I rarely see her. Most days the only sound I hear from her room is burps and farts creeping out from under her door along with the fug of cigarette smoke.

Foodies are bunk. Sitting in front of a camera in your undies while people watch you eat shit. Gross.

I turn on the television once I hear her bedroom door close. A woman with long blonde hair tied in a pony-tail leans towards the camera. “Hey, Eoin. Do you like to party?” She leans back, dragging a finger down between her breasts. “Of course you do, and Kaisha Corporation wants you. Sign up today and get one hundred and fifty credits in advance. Get paid to party, and the best part is there’s no hangover. Join Couch Potato today. If is the middle word of life, so live it.” She winked and she was gone.

I change the channel. The screen cuts to a 8 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Early 21st Century Garbage

front-lit shot of a man standing in front of the sun rising over a mountain. “Good morning, people. It is time for another edition of Addicts of Communication. Your Zero Hour’s Power Hour,” the host said in a hoarse baritone.

The program’s logo surrounds the host. Written in bold cartoonish letters, it bursts into a shower of digital confetti followed by the sound of a Drop G guitar riff.

The mascot for the show, an animated baby seal, flops on its belly across the screen. The seal has a pink soother in its mouth, and it makes a loud smock, smock, smock sound as it sucks on the soother. It looks into the camera with its black eyes, tilts its head, and flutters its eyelashes. Smock, smock, smock.

The host yells directly into the camera, “Rub the sleep from your eyes kiddies. It’s time to get to work.”

He always wears the same outfit: a red hunting cap with a beige shirt, khaki pants, and an orange hunting vest.

The camera zooms in on his face. The host smiles and shouts, “Here’s a list of this hour’s Zero Hour Contracts.

Get those texting fingers warmed up and get ready to start bidding.” He always acts like he has had too much caffeine. Probably has.

The animated seal starts to dance. It claps its flippers together as the jobs scroll along the screen.

“Oh, too fast. Too fast,” it said, pouting. The host makes a gun sign with his hands and pretends to shoot at the seal. “If that was too fast for you, you can always check the links after the show.” Exaggerated gunshot sound effects ring out as the host blows imaginary smoke from the tips of his fingers. “We’ll be right back with more Addicts of Communication.” He smiles, “Remember people; time is money, and making money is time well spent.”

I make a gun with my hand and shoot at the screen.

On the Addicts of Communication website, I thumb through the message board looking for open bids for contracts. These job ads all sound so bunk. They fluff up the descriptions so much, even cleaning toilets is made to sound like rocket science.

Most of the jobs I want I can’t even bid on since the database keeps a file of all your personal data and what jobs you are qualified for. Plus, there are all these

Early 21st Century Garbage

career development games you have to do to raise your stats, but I haven’t done any of them except for the Newbie ones since those are a pre-req. I’ve also got my physical activity level set really low, so it’s not showing me any jobs with high phys levels. You can get some good badges from those but the work sucks.

I click on a link. A six-hour shift as an art gallery tour guide. My feed flashes red, and shakes back and forth emitting a loud buzz. You do not have the proper qualifications. You cannot bid on this job. I swipe the job away and click on another. This job is for a shift as a barista at a coffee shop. My feed flashes red again. You need the Customer Service Ninja badge to bid on this job.

“Erggh. Bunk.” I let out a long sigh.

I open another search window. I filter the list to show all of my pre-approved jobs. I scroll down the list. I don’t even bother looking at the descriptions, I just pick one at random. Just a couple more shit jobs like this and then I get my watch and then maybe I can finally get that Customer Service Ninja badge.

While I wait for the auction to end I start to do some sit-ups. I usually do twenty-five. After twentyfour a message opens in my feed: You can do it, Eoin!

Fifteen more reps get you ten extra Prestige points. I keep exercising. Another message scrolls across my feed, +10 Prestige Earned Trophy achieved. A healthy body equals a healthy mind. The image of a small trophy appears in my feed. I tap the thumbnail and brush it aside with my thumb.

My inbox notice pings. I open the email right away. Bid for job #1346 Burger Pro unsuccessful.

Thanks for thinking of us.

“As if,” I say, flustered. “That jerk got was probably using a bot.” I click on the next auction on my list.

Lemon Valley. Morning Shift. Main and Front Street.

Four-hour shift from 06:15. The auction was nearly over. The wage bid is at twenty-five fifty for the full four hours. I wait until the final seconds of the auction before I delete the old price and enter a lower bid. I don’t know how they expect people to work like this.

A message opens in my feed. Congrats, you are the top bidder for Lemon Valley’s morning shift. A

Graeme Tennant

description of the job and wiki-map will be emailed directly to you. Upon completion you will receive twenty dollars and the Hands-on Employee badge. This job will also enable access to other work with Lemon Valley.

I grab an old pair of jeans off the floor and squeeze into them. I have to suck in my gut as I fasten the belt. I put on one of the dress shirts that I have hanging on the hook on my door. I check myself out in the mirror. My shirt doesn’t hold its shape well anymore; it clings to my skin, exposing the flabby rolls around my belly. Before leaving the apartment, I open the door until the deadbolt chain goes tight. I press my ear against the crack. I listen for the noise of any footsteps, or the sound of people’s voices in the hall. Nothing.

Silent as an alcohol-free karaoke night.

A message pops up in my feed. Are you sure you want to leave without having breakfast?

I ignore the message.

Skipping a meal will result in a nutrient deficiency and a -5 to your Prestige.

The carpet in the hallway always smells like cigarettes, booze, and weed. There are dozens of dark stains soaked through the fabric. The ceiling lights in the lobby flicker every few seconds.

I see a shimmer out of the corner of my eye.

Plastered on the lobby’s front door is a crudely drawn anime dog. When I glance at it the dog winks and smiles. My eye implants begin to crackle. White bars of static run vertically down my view screen. Little circles of light begin to appear in the static. When I focus on the circles they disappear. It’s prob’ just my eyes playing tricks on me. Words begin to form from the ether. Thirty-five years old, and living at home with your mother. No wonder you’re still single. I scratch the design with my fingernail. The words disappear as the paint crumbles off.

I hate these Enhanced Reality tags. You never know what kind of spam you might pick up when you blink on them. I only signed up for it when they were giving away a selection of limited edition Pin-up girl tattoo skins for doppls. I thump the side of my head with the palm of my hand three times. Static fills my eyes Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 9

Graeme Tennant

again. I shake my head, and hit myself again. Harder this time. My ears pop as the connection re-establishes itself. I blink twice and keep walking.

Shit. I better not have another virus. I can’t afford another purge. You go to the wrong streaming site once, you pay for it for the rest of your life.

I pull up the job description from the link in my email. As soon as it opens a video begins to buffer.

After four seconds the video begins to play; the wifi connection around here is shit. A fat bald guy with beads of sweat dripping down the side of his face fills the screen. I could practically smell his cold-cut, garlic sweat stink. “Congrats, Dread_Head807. You are the newest member of our team of contractors.” The camera pulls back as he holds out his hand. Tiny CGI fireworks explode above his palm. The fireworks form the words Hands-on Employee.

In a calm voice a woman says, “Follow the GPS link to your job location. Bonus multipliers are not eligible for this contract. Do you wish to complete the

necessary game to enable multipliers?”

I clear my throat and mutter, “Nah.” “I’m sorry, was that a no?”

“Yes.” “I’m sorry, was that a yes? Do you want to enable multipliers?”

“No. I do not want to enable multipliers.”

“Okay.”

When the video finishes, a map of my neighbourhood appears in my feed. The map buffers for a moment. A blinking red dot appears on the map.

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Early 21st Century Garbage

My position is marked by a blue triangle. The triangle realigns itself as I move. I blink on the red dot. A yellow line appears at the tip of the blue arrow and outlines the most efficient route to the red dot.

The chain on my bike creaks, grinding against the gears. An anime girl hologram with bright green hair tied in pigtails blows me a kiss as I pass by a storefront window. The kiss floats towards me. Just as it nears my face a jerking motion pulls me down as my right pant leg gets caught in the chain. I lose control and crash into a garbage can. A message pops up on my feed, Can you even drive, bro? Run over fifty objects with a bicycle achieved. +50 Prestige points achieved.

When I reach the blinking red circle in front of the Lemon Valley store a trumpet sounds. I blink on the red circle once more. It fades to a dull yellow.

Text scrolls across my armlet: Achievement unlocked!

Prompt employee.

Another small trophy flashes across my viewscreen before disappearing. I look up at the Lemon Valley sign above the door. The capital letter L was embedded within a circular slice of lemon. When I blink on the sign the phrase Lemon Valley Found. +150 Prestige points achieved scrolls across my feed.

Large yellow footprints form on the pavement and go directly into the store. I lock my bike in a rusty bike rack and follow the trail inside. A statue of a chubby, pimply kid stands next to the doorway. The statue is wearing a backwards baseball hat, jean shorts, and a candy stripe shirt; its arms are folded across its belly. A half grin is carved into its face.

I stare into the cold, dull eyes of the statue. I hate that stupid grin it has plastered on its stupid face.

I rub one of my e-tags on to the statue’s shirt. It’s a Luchador that my buddy B-Downs did up for me. When I pass my armlet over it a message opens on my feed.

Making a tag costs 30 points. Will you do it? I blink yes.

As soon as I attach the message to the tag I get another notice: +90 Prestige points earned. I blink on the tag. The luchador flexes his muscles before a word bubble appears above his head, “Lemontastic, my arse.

Your bloated, flabby muscles are worthless without a spine.”

Early 21st Century Garbage

I tap the statue on its shoulder before going inside.

The automatic doors open slowly as I approach, followed by the annoying sound of a ringing chime. A woman’s voice shouts, “Welcome to Lemon Valley. A world of sweet treats. Right at your feet.” Lemon Valley is the best because the whole place is filled with vending machines, and you don’t have to talk to anybody. Ever. Everything in the store activates as I enter. Muzak fills the store like second-hand smoke in a bingo hall.

Flashing brightly coloured lights and rhythmic pings of machinery ooze out from multiple machines. Many of the machines start emitting high-pitched sound effects in synch with the flashing lights. Light pollution from the dingy overhead fluorescent lights spills out into the night, pushing out towards the skyline before becoming lost in the halo of smog that hangs over the city.

The store’s mini-map opens directly into the top corner of my feed. My contract log updates itself. In red letters it indicates a new status update: Check in for your shift. I take a deep breath and start walking towards the back of the store.

A holographic cat wearing a battered astronaut helmet crawls out of one of the vending machine screens and points a small ray gun at me. “Maxi Blaster. Our most absorbent, flexible pad yet. Blast your period,” it cooed in a thick Canadianesque voice. I ignore the hologram. I can’t trust a cat that’s trying to sell me tampons. The hairs on my arm stand up as I walk through it. * I’ve been stuck in the tutorial room for like forty minutes, and I still haven’t even begun working. Since I’ve never worked for Lemon Valley before I have to watch all their promotional public safety videos. A stack of DVDs is stacked next to the television. I have

Graeme Tennant

to watch them all. All this just to stock vending machines, jolt.

I make a game of work. I time myself to see how many soda cans I can stock in one minute. So far, I am up to seventeen. I work fast, speeding through as many boxes as I can before my contract hours are finished. Lifting the boxes really kills my back. After finishing the third box I stand up and my back gives out a loud crack.

I stop to rest and to post a message on my feed. Hey subs. I’m out here at Lemon Valley working a shift. Ain’t nobody around. Got the whole place to myself. I’m bored so let’s spice things up. Send me some retweets and let me know should I keep working? Or should I do a little smash n’ grab? Y’all think I should keep working? Or ya want me to cause some mad baka shitz?

I scan another box and load it onto the dolly. A robotic monotone voice says, “This box will take five minutes to finish at your current level of productivity.” I hate these pop-up messages, but I can’t get rid of them since I only have the free versions of all my job software.

Two hours and fifty minutes of the shift down. The dolly’s wheels have begun to wobble. I kick it with my left foot and the bolt holding the wheel drops off taking the wheel with it. I pull the box off the dolly and pull it by hand. I follow the faint glow of the line on the floor to the right vending machine. My hands are sweating so much I lose my grip. I fall backwards, hitting the floor.

“This sucks,” I said, to no answer.

I roll over to push myself up. From the corner of my eye I notice a phone underneath one of the vending machines. I reach under, pull it out, and turn it on. The front screen begins to glow. The phone begins to ring and vibrate. The vibrations from the phone send shivers up my arm. I drop it.

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The cell phone continues to ring. It skitters back and forth on the floor with each vibration. I stare at the phone, holding my breath. After the fifth ring I bend down and pick it up and say, “Um, hello?”

“You’re fudged now, ass-hat,” a man’s voice says. “Game over. I knew I’d get a hold of you again.”

The voice is calm, emotionless. My armlet begins to quiver; multiple info screens activate. The screens layer themselves on top of one another. “I told you that when I got a hold of you that I would make you pay. I’m gonna make you wish that you woke up dead this morning.”

“Who’s this? Why are you talking like that? I don’t even know you.”

A black screen automatically maximizes itself in my view-screen. An animated pirate hops along the screen brandishing a chipped cutlass. A parrot on his shoulder flaps its wings and squawks. The pirate laughs and the screen goes blank.

Behind the voice I can hear fingers clacking quickly on a computer keyboard. “It’s on now, Tosspot. I will beat your ass and laugh while I do it.”

The line disconnects. I hold the phone to my ear listening to the dead signal. I let it slip out of my fingers.

The phone’s casing shatters when it hits the ground.

I kick the broken phone back underneath the vending machine.

“What a creepster.” * As soon as the contract timer on my feed reaches zero a loud gong sounds. My contract log auto updates: Shift Completed! my armlet pings, and a video begins to load. The fat man appears on the screen. “Good job, H.O.E. Thanks for all your hard work.” He flashes a cheap white smile. Another chime.

A small trophy symbol pops up on my view screen. You have earned a new badge. Hands-on Employee badge unlocked. Please scan your armlet to complete your contract.

A cheerful woman in a bubbly voice announces, “Thank you for your service. You are awarded fifteen Lemon Credits.”

“Credits? What a load. That’s bunk. Where’s my cash?” I say, hitting the side of a vending machine with 12 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Early 21st Century Garbage

the palm of my hand.

“The correct amount of points and credits have been tallied and added to your account.”

“No they haven’t. I was supposed to get twenty bucks.”

“There is a deduction for new contractors,” the voice calmly responds.

“Eat a dick, you jerk. That’s bunk.” I slam my fist into the side of the vending machine again.

“Violence against company property is not

tolerated,” the woman says flatly.

“Tolerate this,” I shout, slamming my fist into the vending machine a third time. My punch cracks the machine’s thin plastic outer casing. The skin over my knuckles breaks. Blood sprouts from the cuts. I punch the machine a final time on my way out. My blood smears across the smiling face of some clone K-pop idol.

A woman’s voice calls out over the intercom, “Thank you for visiting. Come back soon. I miss you already.” Her high pitched giggle rings in my ears.

Early 21st Century Garbage

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* “Wake up, sweetheart. You’ve slept long enough. It’s time to get up.” Azuza giggles. There is a momentary pause before the message begins to loop once more. I slam my hand down over the alarm clock.

“Wake up,” Azuza-chan stops in mid-sentence.

When I open my eyes I realize I’m face down on the floor. A semi-damp cloth is laid over my eyes. I sit on the corner of my bed. My eyes are still burning. My mouth is dry; I can feel a thin layer of slime on the roof of my mouth. My face feels numb. Every part of my body aches. I take a couple of deep breaths before I rise up and head to the bathroom.

As I let the hot water run in the sink, I can see that my bathroom mirror is smudged. I wipe away the steam with my fist and rub out the smudges with my thumb. When I press my thumb on the glass a status window pops up in the middle of the mirror. The window displays the image of a sunrise while a modulated voice says, “Good morning, Eoin. How are you today?”

“Meh.” I drag the window to the top corner of the mirror. I stare at myself in the mirror for a while. My eyes are red and swollen. I look like a rotten tomato. Also, I can’t believe how fat I look. My gut hangs over my pants.

Jesus, I need to exercise more.

I keep one of my luchador tags in the top corner of my mirror. When I blink on the image it begins to spin. As the image spins, text spills out. One letter after another until the message is complete. The modulated voice in the mirror reads out the words, “Eoin is number one. Eoin kicks ass. Eoin is ready for anything.” The voice repeats the message twice.

I tap the mirror and pull open my doppl’s window. His shoulders are slumped and his mouth is hanging open. He is almost totally nude. The only clothing he has left is his ripped boxers. He scratches the back of his leg with his right foot. He gives me a thumbs up, but it looks ridick with him just in a pair of torn, old, dirty boxers.

I queue up the replay of the pirate attacking my doppl. I play the video on repeat. All I can focus on is the shitty pixelated teeth of that laughing bastard as he kills my doppl, over and over again.

I open up my stats window. All my trophies and prestige points have been jacked. I open every folder to see if I have any items or, or something. Anything. Nothing. Fucking hacking bastards. Jacked all my stuff. Jolt. I worked so hard to get the Clean Kut set, too.

My reflection stares back at me. “So this is your life,” I say, looking into my own eyes. “You’re a loser.

Can’t get a job. Can’t even get a girlfriend. The trolls are right. Ain’t nobody following you.” I clench my fist and punch my reflection. It hurts. I pull my fist back and rub my knuckles until the pain stops pulsing through my bones.

I minimize the video window. The pirate’s maniacal chuckling cuts off mid-laugh, and my doppl pops back up on the screen. He gives me the wink and the gun. I give him a wink back. “Goodbye, good looking. It’s been fun,” I say, tapping the delete profile icon. A final notice pops up: You are about to delete your current profile. Do you wish to proceed? I double tap yes.

A frown spreads across my doppl’s face. “Hey dude, we was good together. It didn’t have to end like this. We can fix things,” he said. He gives me one last pouty, puppy dog face and is gone.

The purge begins moments after a loud paper crumpling sound spills out from the room’s speakers. My vision starts to get blurry. My arms and legs begin to spasm as convulsions spread through my body. I grab the corner of the sink so hard my knuckles turn white. When I close my eyes I see flashes of menu screens from my feed opening and closing one after the other. My head starts to pound as my settings are deleted.

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After the purge, I puke. A lot. My stomach starts to feel like shit, and I start to puke again. I get most of it in the toilet, but there is still a trail of puke on the floor. I wipe things up as best I can.

I get up off the floor and rinse my mouth out with water. When I look at my reflection, an advertisement for Couch Potato opens in the glass. The woman with the long blonde hair tied in a pony-tail leans into the camera. “Morning, Eoin. Are you looking to make some extra cash? Need a boost to your stats? Sign up for Couch Potato today. Get paid to party.” She leans back, hooking her finger in the corner of her mouth.

She sucked on it for a moment. “Of course you do.

Kaisha Corporation needs you. Sign up today and get one hundred and fifty credits in advance, plus a bonus multiplier. Better hurry, though; this is a limited time offer. Get paid to party, and the best part is there’s no hangover. Join Couch Potato today. If is the middle word of life, so live it.” The camera pulls back to show her whole face. She winks and the advertisement disappears.

14 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Early 21st Century Garbage

I click yes and wait for the email link to open in my inbox.

The email opens automatically. Congrats, Eoin.

The world needs more Couch Potatoes. There’s a bunch more text, but I don’t bother reading the rest. I close the email, log into the Addicts of Communication job board, and start scrolling through the newest zero hours. ###

Overturned Woman OďŹ r Dor

Overturned Woman, 2007. Oil on Canvas, 198 x 246 cm

Find more works from this artist at www.ofirdor.com (May not be suitable for all audiences)

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 15

A Bar Scene by

Windsor Potts

Tori gnaws his cigar. Ignoring the latest fad of Lucky Strikes and Pall Malls, he doesn’t mince words when accused of clinging to passé habits. Instead, he dips the cigar butt into his glass and draws on the stogie with relish. In his thick Dublin brogue, he’ll reply through a cloud of sweet-scented smoke. “Now, ye try that with your fancyass cigarette.”

Torrence “Tori” Phillips had been a patrolman in Dublin, but disappeared after an assassination attempt by a “freedom fighter” recruit. An unexplained warehouse fire claimed the life of the resistance leader. A week later, both of his lieutenants were found butchered in their homes. One by one, the resistance fell.

The newest recruit, Dewey Phillips, realized he was the last member of the group when he walked into the dimly-lit bar serving as their safe house. Waiting for him was his brother, Tori, with two pistols drawn. Dewey’s last words were: “Had Oi known it twas you, Oi’d have shot twoice.”

Using money recovered from his victims’ homes and hideouts, Tori immigrated to New York. Prior to the first World War, he opened “The Dog’s Bowl” in the second floor of the Mantz hotel, operating all throughout the Prohibition as a fine diner and speak easy.

After tossing the chewed, gnarly cigar butt into a spittoon, Tori dries glasses. He joylessly goes through the motion of cleaning, while staring disgustedly at his only customer. Mumbling, he inspects a glass. “Three in the afternoon? Of course he’s drunk.

Idle prick.”

Slouching against the window sill, Adam finishes his fourth drink. Using a silk handkerchief to wipe his mouth, Adam tosses it out the window. It glides down, lighting on a passerby, causing Adam to giggle.

Tori watches Adam’s childish behavior. “Idiotic fop,” he grumbles, shaking his head in disgust. “I’ll be damn glad when Del gets here.”

Del was twenty-nine when Reginald, Adam’s father, hired him as the Sanders’ family accountant. The family possessions were vast and Reginald Sanders felt that Adam, a feckless womanizer and drunk, wouldn’t be able to shoulder the responsibility.

Six months after hiring Del, the stock market crashed for a second time in ’33.

Reginald despaired at first, but Del had a knack for knowing what was worth selling or keeping. Three months after the collapse of Wall Street, not only was Reginald’s family not suffering from Black Tuesday, they had made money.

16 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Windsor Potts

Six years have passed since Del hired in. Today, Adam waits on Del, drinking with abandon. Checking his pocket watch, he pulls out the note from his shirt pocket.

The Dog’s Bowl. 4pm. Tell no one, not even Sera.

Adam shakes his head, musing to himself. “Poor Del; he has no idea. I never tell my wife anything.”

The evening sun warms Adam as much as the whiskey. Leaning against the sill, he sighs as he scans the cars below.

A blaring trumpet note from the Victrola behind the bar breaks his ruminations. He stares past Tori with a pained expression.

“Tell me, Torrence, what the fuck are we listening to?”

Having bored of polishing glasses, he pulls the plug out of a glass bottle tucked deftly in his vest pocket. “Tis Cab Calloway’s newest record. Not yer style?”

The tattered label reads Doctor Phineas Baum’s Miracle Corn Oil and Tori winces as the alcohol burns down his gullet.

Setting his cup on the window sill, Adam shakes his head. Tapping his cigarette case against his palm, he lisps, “I don’t see how you listen to that goddamned jigaboo music. Honestly, I don’t.

There’s nothing appealing about it. Just a bunch of damn noise, if you asked me.”

After lighting his cigarette, Adam throws the match on the carpeted floor beneath his feet, grinding it out.

“Funny that. I dunna recall asking ye what ye thought. So why don ye shat the feck up so Oi can listen?”

Adam charges forward, but draws up short of the bar as Tori levels a pistol at his face. “Ye will check yer’self there, Mr. Sanders, before Oi’m pleased to scatter yer face all over de barroom floor.”

A Bar Scene

Red with anger, Adam regains his composure. Looking to the drink in his hand, he walks slowly to the bar. Ignoring both Tori and the gun, he places the tumbler on the counter top and then turns to face the empty room. “Make me another bourbon, boy.”

Tori places the barrel to the back of Adam’s head, cocking the hammer.

“Ye can stow tha boy shite. Oi’m no’ yor fecking barman. Oi’m the owner.” With a flicker-fast move, he slides the pistol into its holster, relieving the hammer. With the same speed, he pulls a bottle of bourbon from under the counter. “However, since Oi am the proprietor of this establishment, Oi’d like to offer a peace token. Tis a boddle o’ pre-Prohibition bourbon from Tennessee. Twas made a-specially for me, on account Oi saved the head distiller’s loife during a card game where he held a right wicked hand of three kings. He’d won the hand, but unfortunately the gents he was a-playing were only using a single deck and he had two King o’ Doymands. Very rough business that.”

While finishing his diatribe, he adds fresh ice to Adam’s glass, a shot and a half of whiskey, and a teaspoon of water. Handing it over, he smiles.

“Tis on the house.

Nay hard feelings and all.”

Adam’s normal color returns Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 17

A Bar Scene

and he slicks back his hair. Taking a drag from his cigarette, he lifts the drink and walks back towards the window. “I’ll be glad when Del gets here. How in the hell he ever got mixed up in a shit dive like this is beyond me.”

A voice from the doorway answers, “I like Tori’s accent and he lets me drink for free whenever he works drunk.” Del walks towards Tori, smiling as they shake hands. “What have I missed? The conversation seems tense.”

“It seems ye friend tisn’t much a fan of Cab Calloway,” observes Tori. “Oi thought it best te resolve the matter diplomatic loik.”

Adam retorts, “The fucking mick pulled a gun on me. Can we leave for Christ’s sake?!”

Del fixes Adam with a hard stare.

“No. What I have to say is important and when I’m done talking, I want a drink. I want to drink here. So wait over there, we’ll be done shortly.” In a huff, Adam returns to looking out the window and sipping his drink. Del bellies up to the bar. “Jeez Aunt Louise, did you really pull

18 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Windsor Potts

a gun on him?”

“Fer fecking sure, Oi did. That fecking twat. Oi use to have dealings with Al Capone and Darty Joe Brown; Oi’ll be damned if Oi let that useless dandy treat me with less respect than Oi deserve. In me own place of business, at that.” He shoots a glance at Adam and mumbles, “Idle prick.” Looking back to Del, the scowl on Tori’s face softens. “Look lad, Oi like yer company and all, but why’d ye have te bring that priss here? Ye know Oi can’t stomach the dense feck.”

Closing the distance, Del speaks in a near whisper. “Listen, I’m about to level some bad news at him and I need help. I’m going to ask you to be active in this revelation and I need you to tell the truth. Only the truth. I hate to ask this.

Will you help me?”

Solemnly, Tori nods. “Aye. Oi can do that.” Placing another tumbler on the bar, he pours himself a shot of bourbon.

Knocking it back, he watches Del walk off. Taking the needle from the record, a sleepy silence fills the room as he rounds the bar to join them by the window.

Del is finishing his explanation to Adam as Tori walks up. “That’s why I told you to meet me here. Now, do you still have your watch with you? The one with her picture in it?”

By reflex, Adam produces the pocket watch. With a press of a button, the lid opens and he passes it to Tori. Del points to the picture in the watch case.

“You’ve seen this woman here before?”

Tori looks from the watch to Del’s face. Searching his friend’s blank expression for answers, Tori tells the truth.

“Aye. She’s been in hare before. Several toimes.”

A puzzled look crosses Adam’s face.

Windsor Potts

“She has? Sera? You’re sure? When?”

Now not the only one baffled, Tori searches Del’s indecipherable look once more. Again he finds no signs but to tell the truth. “Aye, Oi’m sure. Every Monday noight, with the same fella.”

Turning his head from Del to Tori, Adam blunders aloud through his thoughts. “Monday nights? She’s at her bridge club. Or her garden club. Or something. What the hell is going on here?”

Del closes the watch case and speaks flatly. “I believe Sera is having an affair. I’m sure Tori had no idea who she was or he would have mentioned it sooner. Am I right, Tori?”

Eyeing his friend shrewdly, Tori nods. “Aye. Oi’d have made mention to soombawdy, that’s fer certain.”

“Thank you, Tori. That’s all I needed. If you’ll excuse us, I need to talk with Adam a moment longer.” Del studies Adam as Tori walks away. Cradling his drink, Adam sips it no more, his face scrunched up in thought.

Once again behind the bar, Tori reaches into his vest pocket. After a long pull on the bottle of Corn Oil, he mutters, “What de bleedin Hell?” Hesitating before another sip, he recorks the bottle. Feigning wiping the bar, he listens intently to Del’s low whispers. Unable to hear anything, Tori moves from behind the bar, wiping down tables closer to the window.

Adam stops pacing but continues muttering. Del grabs his arm, shaking him.

“Will you listen to me, damn it? There’s more. They’re blaming you for what happened to Jessica!”

Adam’s face pales and his mumbling ceases. He fumbles through his words, in a trance. “It was a suicide. I wasn’t even in the state.” Shaking his head, he

A Bar Scene

straightens his back. “It’s all lies. Can’t you get me out of this? Are these guys just trumping up charges?”

“Adam, they don’t have to make this stuff up. The whole damn thing was suspicious. You and her were lousy at covering it up. Her friends identified you as her lover. Using fake names didn’t help when you paid for the baby’s delivery by check.

The police came to me today, showing me the bank’s copy with your signature on it.

What the hell were you thinking?”

“Why are you talking to me? What about those lawyers from New Orleans?

What do they have to say?”

“Nothing, Adam. They say nothing.”

Pulling his hands across his face, trying to drag away the frustration, Del shakes his head. “The legal team abandoned you after your father died. You’ve been cut off from the will, cut off from the company.

You only get a stipend, which frankly, you’ve exhausted on a monthly basis.

Legally speaking, you don’t have a leg to stand on.”

Setting his drink down on the windowsill, Adam resumes pacing. “Well, ok.

So what? Like I said, I wasn’t even in Georgia when she died. How are they going to prove that?”

“You have no alibi for the night it happened. Hell, I don’t even know where you were when she died. Does Sera? Will she cover for you?”

Adam halts in his tracks, shaking his head. “No. I was- I was with somebody else. And I can’t ask them. It would mean the end of me.”

Grabbing Adam’s arm, Del turns him, their faces within inches of each other. “Don’t you get it? This is the end of you! You are going to be tried for murder.

You need to find this woman right now Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 19

A Bar Scene

and get her to speak up for you.”

“I can’t!” Choking up, his voice is barely audible. “I can’t.”

Placing a hand on Del’s shoulder, Tori gently pulls him away from Adam.

“What Oi think he’s troing to say is he canna ask her, ‘cause there is no her.”

Closing his eyes, Adam casts his head down. Del’s silence hangs heavy and Tori pulls his hand away. Finally, Del coughs. “I see. Well, Adam, you have to decide whether or not facing a jury would be worse on you than this affair coming to light.”

Lifting the glass from the window sill, Adam focuses his attention on the melting ice. In his gentle whisper, he chants. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

Tori pulls the bottle of Corn Oil out and fills Adam’s glass halfway. “Drink that. Get yer’self te-gether, man.”

With a swift gulp, Adam drains the drink. Placing the empty tumbler on the sill once more, he nods his thanks to Tori.

“I’m fine. Yes. Now, I’m fine. I just need a few minutes. I think. I think I need some air. Yes. I’m going to step outside to get some fresh air.” He pushes past them, making his way to the elevators.

Walking behind the bar, Tori sets the empty glass in the sink. Del sits on a nearby stool. Tori silently washes the glass and places it on a rack to dry. He eyes Del with distrust and asks him, “What was that fecking shite?”

“It’s what needed to be done.”

Turning crimson, Tori gropes blindly along his vest until he pulls out a cigar.

“You’ve been bringin’ that woman in here fer months now. Ne’r, nay not once, were ye tellin’ me that she was Big Poppa Fop’s ol’ lady?” Biting the end off, Tori spat the wad of torn tobacco into the spittoon.

20 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Windsor Potts

Calming himself as he moves through the ritual of lighting a match, then a strip of cedar, he puffs a fine red cherry on the cigar before speaking again. “What’s yor angle here, lad?” He pours Del a tall glass of gin and tonic as he waits on a reply.

Also biding his time, Del sips the drink, and then winces. “Difficult to swallow.” Taking a large swig, he coughs lightly. “Like I said before, I’m sorry to involve you, Tori, but something had to be done. Something had to make him stop.”

“Make him stop? What do ye mean?”

The sound of a crunch from outside the window interrupts their conversation.

A spilt second later, a woman’s scream pierces the air, followed by blaring car horns. Tori rushes from around the bar and Del follows calmly, alternating between sipping his drink and coughing.

Looking down, Tori watches the crowd gather around a car by the curb. Splayed atop it is a mixture of blood and gore trailing out of a man’s mouth and ears.

Tori looks to Del. “Adam.”

Del nods, focusing on his drink.

“The squandering money, the cheating with men and women; I’d known about it all along. But the beatings, they had to stop. He’d hit Sera when they first got married. When she took a frying pan to his head, he moved on to beating his lovers. Nearly killed a hooker in Boston.

The final straw was when he punched Jessica in the stomach. The baby died.

She ended up topping herself off once the hospital released her. I did what had to be done.” Finishing his drink amidst a series of coughs, he shakes the glass at Tori. “Can I have another?”

“Aye, lad.” Tori nods, his eyes sharp.

“Aye.”

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Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 21

the mists of juneau

By David B. Cox II

Hello, and welcome to News of the Capital. We’ll keep today’s broadcast short, as we could not do a lot of story research. Everyone is busy updating their lighting and other electronic devices to deal with the most recent avalanche at the Snettisham Hydroelectric Plant.

This has of course happened before, and will likely happen again. Let us not be too concerned, even as we turn to the diesel backup generators. The citizens of Juneau reduced our power consumption considerably last time this happened, and we even kept much of our power use down for years after. So think of it like this: you’re already halfway there.

And if this reporter could editorialize for a moment, it might have been nice if Sarah Palin, in her Vice-Presidential bid, had been living in the capital beforehand. Then it might have made the national news that so much power had been saved by just a few smart moves and replacements. And that it had a real impact. Maybe everyone could have done the same.

Ah well, it does not do to dwell. Everywhere we looked people were updating their power situation, and we need to do the same. Don’t worry, as before, the higher costs of diesel power won’t last for long. For helpful hints to reduce your power use, check out our website.

For now, this has been News of the Capital. # Hello, and welcome to News of the Capital. Today’s top story, the sewage treatment plant out towards Thane. You may only think about it when the smell wafts out and fills the surrounding area. Or perhaps you think about it in terms of avalanches. If it’s avalanches you think of, then this is the story you are expecting to hear.

That’s right, another avalanche has hit the Juneau area, this time sweeping right over that smelly utility building and taking it out of commission.

Road access to Thane, meanwhile, is completely cut off. Our thoughts go out to the people of Thane, who hopefully have enough supplies stocked up to make it through this time until they can be dug out. It might take a while, because oh wow, is that a lot of snow.

In other news, a correction from yesterday’s broadcast. We had stated that you could find help with energy tips on our website. However, there have been major disruptions to Internet connectivity all over the Juneau area. Providers have told us to not be alarmed, as they are working on reestablishing connection. Maybe it’s just me, but having to reestablish a connection does not sound good. In fact, it sounds alarming. But maybe that is only because we make

22 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

David B. Cox

The Mists of Juneau

most of our money online.

Today’s weather. Expect more snow followed by rain, which may be what’s causing the heavy snowpack which is becoming these avalanches. Also, there have been multiple reports of a heavy, dense mist. Hanging low and menacing over areas of town. Moving and shifting, but not dispersing. We’ve heard that when people go into the mist, they don’t come back out. For now, the best we can do is to advise you to not go into the mist. If you have any reports about the microclimates of Juneau you would like to call in, please do so at any time. This has been News of the Capital.

Capitol moved, would I move too? Or would we rename the broadcast?

In other news, reports have come in that the mist, malevolent in its silence, and which settled in overnight above the Mendenhall Glacier, has moved, and beyond it could be seen evidence of a Jokulhaup. Freezing, torrential glacier water came pouring off from the lake above, and went careening out into the Mendenhall River.

Oh, you know, I think I’ve figured this out. Maybe you have as well, listeners. Yes, I think this is definitely the cause of our recent Valley flooding. Well, there’s one mystery solved! And you heard it here first, on News of # the Capital.

Hello, and welcome to News of the # Capital. Our top story. We reminded everyone Hello, and welcome to News of the yesterday that they can report weather conCapital. Officials have declared that clearing cerns to us, and report them you have. The the constantly rising piles of snow out of the main concern has been a rising water, a flood road has become too much, and that they are in the Valley. Seeping towards people’s homes, giving up on the whole enterprise. Residents melting the snow and then freezing it solid. are asked to please do their best living off the We here at News of the Capital would like to land, or to make their way to any of the deswarn you, please, if you need to go along Back ignated emergency evacuation points, where Loop Road, don’t. From the stranded, roadside a personal craft will come and collect them. drivers who have been calling us, they warn Hopefully, if we can find brave enough capthat it is a solid sheet of impassable ice. tains, and boats that are seaworthy this time of Protestors have been seen outside the year.

Capitol building, wanting to see the Capitol A public service announcement from moved from Juneau to Anchorage. This move- Alaska Airlines. They have suspended all ment always seems to spring up every couple flights to and from Juneau. They cite the newly of years, but just because we’re dealing with reduced population of Juneau, the fact that no massive volumes of unseasonable, wet snow, one seems to be able to make it to flights on that doesn’t mean it’s any better in Anchorage. time (or in fact at all), and of course the fact I mean, they have snow there too. And if the that none of the planes that do the Juneau route

Flytrap Uprising Upris | October 2016 | 23

The Mists of Juneau

David B. Cox

have been seen for some time now.

It’s a good thing we still have water access, Juneauites. With no road access--and it would be blocked now anyway--and no air service, there’s only one way in or out of town. Well, two, if you know the old joke--there’s still birth, and its opposite, death. But we should all be fine avoiding that, so long as we stay away from the mist, now reported as being seen in all directions, and in many places at once. Stay safe, neighbors. Stay away from the mist. This has been News of the Capital. # Hello, and welcome to News of the Capital. Reports are coming in that the personal craft ferrying--which has been transporting stranded people from out of Thane and out of the road--is nearing completion. It is unclear whether people are saying this because they have saved all the stranded residents, or because of the sightings of the patient, creeping dread of the mist. I know I wouldn’t dare pilot a craft into that. We have heard reports of those who have. Reports of boats seen leaving, but not returning. Boats... never seen again.

In other aquatic news, no one can remember the last time they saw a barge or a ferry.

Supplies at all of the grocery stores have grown threadbare, between a lack of supply, and all the people running in to buy eggs and toilet paper and bottled water. It always seems, doesn’t it readers, like those are the first things to go? I myself have not seen any fresh produce in quite some time, and I’m wondering if I will still like it when I see it again. Salad, dear listeners. I’m talking about salad.

What--what’s this?

Reports coming in now-and a great commotion and crashing noise here at our studio--dear listeners I believe that the bridge to Douglas has just collapsed! I have to--I need to go find out... # Hello, and welcome to News of the Capital.

Hopefully there’s someone out there, still faithfully listening. In the movies, they always show people huddling around the radio when times are bad. Perhaps in this new, electronic, connected age, maybe that’s still what we’ll do when things fall apart.

24 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

David B. Cox

The Mists of Juneau

Reports yesterday were accurate. The bridge to Douglas, the main and only access point to Douglas Island and all its residents, collapsed. Stranding everyone... stranding my family.

I went out, listeners. I had sat here, heard the reports of the mists, but I had not seen them with my own eyes. I tell you, they are a sight to behold. Where once there was something, they come, and that thing--that thing is no more. They, they--I say they as though it is conscious, as though it is alive. Isn’t it, though? Can’t you feel its malevolence? Their malevolence? What is in the mist?

Perhaps my family is now in a position to answer that question. I saw it--the small fleet of private boats, heading out to try to save who they could on Douglas. I saw the mist coming, hunting them, coming to the shore and eating the island whole. I saw the last remaining boat, not quite to shore, turn about face and come back. Its lone captain a silent, solemn survivor.

Perhaps the last living person we will ever talk about in relation to Douglas Island. This has been, for whatever’s left of it, News of the Capital... # Hello, and welcome to News of the Capital. Hopefully we can get this broadcast out, as even now my producer is telling me that the generators are about to go, that the last of the diesel in town is burnt and we are about to go dark.

But I had to broadcast the news--there have been no new sightings of the mist! I saw Douglas this morning, and it was... well, it was still there. And that gives me hope.

If you are out there, somewhere, listening to this broadcast: do not go into the mist! I hope, oh I hope that there are indeed listeners out there somewhere. That we are not the last people on Earth. But I do not have any evidence to support that claim--nor any against it. And so I hope.

I was reminded, too, that in Juneau everyone has a tide book. Well, at least one, usually several. You know--one for the house, one for each car, one for the boat. Never know when you’re going to need it. Well, we consulted our handy copy in the break room, and there’s going to be an extreme low tide in one hour. That’s right, that means there will be a land bridge across the Wetlands, to Douglas. I’m going, listeners. I’m going to look for my family.

If you are there, on the island of Douglas listening, take note of this message and head for the Wetlands! Perhaps we will see you there. Perhaps you are, indeed, still alive, and not utterly gone from this world like the mist made it seem. Please...

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 25

The Corkscrew Finds Love In Southeast Portland

by Jerry Cunningham

Althea, leaning against the kitchen counter, spoke into her phone: “I’m a middle-aged bartender so you know I’m not crazy, and I’m a widow so you know I know how to deal with reality, but I’m telling you, Claire, I still hear a man’s voice with a French accent at night and the whispering of a woman. But I don’t care, because the wrecking ball is coming, and I finally took the settlement; I mean, twenty-five years in one apartment is worth something. I’m gonna travel for like a month, like I told you, if Raymond doesn’t give me a hard time.”

All of this was true.

Althea always used the word “widow,” though it was a word that was hardly ever heard in Southeast Portland anymore.

Althea had been bartending at The Stop Cuidado on Burnside for over twenty years. After Pierre died, she briefly thought of going to school and getting a degree in Mixology, but thought better of it one day at the jukebox when she realized that her sales were mostly from serving thin beer along with a daily splurge in well vodka with cranberry during Happy Hour. The men, mainly her age and older, had been through a wife or two, and a job or five, but had stuck with the bar of their youth; the changes over the years at the bar were all improvements: hot food in the 80s; a pool table in the 90s; a new pool table and a new jukebox in the aughts. Peanut shells had their time on the floor, but since Althea was the one who ended up sweeping at two in the morning, she had convinced Raul to buy only shelled peanuts, and he did so, partly because he is a decent cook and a decent man who doesn’t write down her meals when Raymond, the owner, isn’t around, and partly because he is afraid of her infamous temper; years earlier Althea smacked a tipsy customer over the head with a plastic pitcher, and the guy lost a tooth when he fell against the edge of the pool table; she also once stabbed

26 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

a regular in the hand with a fork. That customer ate his dinner while sitting at the bar every night, which was fine, but that night, after months of paperless tips from him, he had requested and received extra dressing for his salad four times as Althea was juggling a large Happy Hour crowd; then the customer, with only three soggy french fries left on his plate, requested that Althea put the plate in the microwave.

“Yeah, I snapped,” Althea told Raymond. “But he had it coming.”

The fork incident occurred when Althea was much younger tatless then, with no piercings. It was many years before the letter arrived at her apartment from the Peruvian authorities about Pierre.

Pierre had never gotten around to giving Althea an engagement ring, and they had never officially married, but he was the love of her life, and they had made plans together, and his trip on the freighter was supposed to bring them happiness and wealth, for, just ask him, Pierre was a genius and had the sensibility of a true artist, he said. And, he said, in any event, he was French.

“Pose for me,” Pierre had said to her in that romantic way of his during his sculpting period in his late twenties. From what Althea had been able to piece together, Pierre was born in Portland to a father who been born and raised in Paris, and an American mother from Corvallis. His father never lost his accent, and his mother never had one. Pierre had gone to a French lycée in Portland until third grade, and had learned to speak French “like a Frenchman,” said the principal one day in the hallway. Then his parents didn’t have the money for tuition anymore, because his father, at middle age, developed a love for multiple sports cars, so Pierre went to Franklin High School and forgot pretty much all of his French by fifth grade. Later, after six years in a local college, Pierre graduated with a degree in Media Studies, and, he said, had become an expert in film noir, but he never had the chance, he said, to visit Paris, or, for that matter, to travel out of Oregon.

“It’s the interplay of light and shadows that makes those old crime movies so beautiful,” Pierre said to Althea one night as he exhaled from his thin clove cigarette.

After Pierre had moved into Althea’s old apartment on Salmon Court, he flirted with baking French pastries, but burned his hand one night and never returned to the oven. Thus, a bag of flour was placed in the back of the top shelf in the kitchen cabinet, next to the inevitable box of unused pasta for lasagna.

Jerry Cunningham

Boxes of lasagna are purchased by Americans in their endless optimism and in good faith; one day, they believe, they will cook a full-on lasagna, filled with ١٪ ground round and imported cheese and drenched in a thick, salty sauce, and it will be a good sauce, made with oregano and stewed tomatoes, and the sauce will simmer for hours and fill the home with an Italian vibe; there will be grated parmesan cheese sprinkled atop the lengthy strips of pasta, according to taste. But the boxes of lasagna end up unused on the top shelf, the plans for a full-on lasagna are forgotten--too much trouble--and eventually the long, flat, cheerless pasta ends up in the back of the top shelf in the kitchen.

Pierre could pronounce French words like “beaujolais” and “chardonnay” in what--to Althea’s ears--was exquisite French, especially when he stood at the kitchen counter in his underwear and made a list of items for her to purchase at the market.

“Someday, baby,” Pierre always said at such moments, “my ship’s gonna come in and we’ll be taking baths in champagne.”

In the meantime, Althea worked extra hours and scrimped and saved. Raymond heard that Althea made an excellent corkscrew pasta salad and offered her twenty dollars for each bowl that she brought to the cooks at The Stop Cuidado.

“We need some good, healthy sides,” Raymond explained. “The customers are sick of cheese sticks.”

Then Pierre went through a period of sculpture; he longed to be seen covered in white dust like the old masters, but never got past gray clay. Pierre sculpted heads, but they seemed either too large or too small, and the ears were more complicated that he had expected, what with the cartilage and all, and men and women ended up with identical chins. For months, the living room was chock full of small sculptures with wet rags over them; Althea disliked the smell.

Not long after Pierre had abandoned sculptures for oil paints, Althea filled out all the paperwork for Pierre for a job in the HR department at the community college, since he had, for years, not gotten around to doing so, and when the time came for an interview Pierre shaved and Althea ironed his shirt on top of a towel and he was off early in the morning.

That night, in his underwear at the kitchen counter, Pierre explained that he had spent all day at the indie coffee shop, and had never gone to the interview.

“I don’t want to waste my degree and my biggest fear is that my creative juices will be sucked right out of me at a real job and I will lose my savoir faire,” Pierre explained. “And anyway while I was at the coffee shop I was thinking how lousy the coffee is that Americans drink, because the coffee shops buy any old bean from any old country with hot weather, and then I thought how lousy the American wines are, because you don’t have the

The Corkscrew Finds Love in South Portland

chalky soil that we have in France. It’s all about the soil. It’s all about the source. So I bought a chocolate bar to make myself feel better and give me that sugar boost that helps me with my painting. And it was an American chocolate bar and it was so bland and so, so tasteless, that I swear to you that it’s probably illegal to sell it in Paris. And then I had my eureka! moment, and we should celebrate my insight. Get us three bottles of good beaujolais: My ship’s come in, baby! This town doesn’t have one bean to bar chocolate shop. Until me! I’m gonna be Portland’s first sole-source chocolatier!”

Pierre said “chocolatier” in such a fancy way that Althea, as she counted out the cash from the previous night’s tips, got goosebumps. As Althea made her way out the door to pick up dinner and wine, Pierre said: “And pick up some foie gras, too: we’re gonna be bathin’ in champagne soon!”

It was just as well that Pierre was going to become a chocolatier, for the painting--he was in his blue period--was not going well. Althea, who paid for the paints, and the canvases, and the brushes, was seeing blue in her dreams. The two years of painting began with nudes--there was no money for models, but Althea modeled with a shawl, and then with an otterskin fur hat, and later as a ballerina with satin ballroom slippers with tiny buckles and a tutu, but she felt funny, so Pierre dressed her as a Spanish lady with a swirling dress and castanets, but Pierre, admittedly weak on perspective, concluded that he now knew what was preventing him from any success in portraying humans.

“I stink at doing faces,” Pierre said. “But, every artist has a weakness. Toulouse-Lautrec used too much orange.

Picasso was short. Flaubert wrote run-on sentences. Victor Hugo ate ten-course meals. Rodin sculpted human heads, sure, but the feet are forgettable, and don’t get me started on the toes: too big! Renoir painted landscapes only because his wife wouldn’t let him smoke in the house. So my weakness is the human face? I erase noses because of love, not ill will. I shall carry on.”

Pierre then turned to abstracts; he often painted all night. One day, he told Althea: “yesterday I blossomed in yellow like Cézanne.”

Althea liked the triangles and gave Pierre the benefit of the doubt for his rectangles, but Althea, distressed that day by rent and phone bills, had, after Pierre cleaned his yellow brushes in the bathroom again, exploded and insulted Pierre’s paltry attempt at circles before she took a kitchen knife and slashed the canvas.

Pierre, in a torpor and sulking and with flecks of yellow oil paint on his groomed eyebrows, suggested couples therapy.

The therapy, which in those days involved foam bats, kept the lid on things on rent day for months, allowing Pierre to return to his abstracts.

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The Corkscrew Finds Love in South Portland

“Free form is the pièce de résistance,” Pierre told Althea.

“You’re gonna marry a genius.”

The bills piled up and our couple wavered between biblical rages (Althea) and brooding moodiness (Pierre). The couples therapy, too expensive given Pierre’s lack of sales of the abstracts, was replaced by Althea with self-help books from Powell’s and long phone calls, when Pierre was out “gathering material,” with her best friend of many years, Claire. Around this time, Pierre developed a taste for liqueurs and cherry brandy and insisted on oysters and carafes of white wine on Friday nights.

One night, as the wine and brandy gave the latest painting of an abstract sunset the truthful look of a rigorous, yellowish mistake, Pierre announced the solution: from then on, he swore, only water colors.

The water colors, light and lively, seemed to improve Pierre’s mood, but it could just as well have been the joy of springtime and the sight of Althea’s geraniums on the balcony and the sound of the robins and bluebirds in the morning. Pierre began a series of paintings he called “The End of Mustard”: portraits, all, of Althea’s crimson geraniums. Encouraged by the results, Pierre began to paint fruits--plums, cherries and wobbly apples--along with the occasional walnut. Pierre said, with aplomb, that he had “found my métier” after a watering can filled with violets looked decent, and by late summer he had grown a pointy chin beard and was wearing a black beret. Sadly, Pierre made the tactical error of requesting a bottle of expensive cognac just as the rent was due, and Althea, stressed over bills and reminded daily by Claire that she, Althea, was already past thirty and sans ring, took a sponge to the watering can, and the violets wilted.

“You can’t just dream your way to putting a ring on it!”

Althea cried.

It was then that Althea, during the most introspective months of her life, got her first tattoo - three small roses on her wrist - and then, shortly after a profitable New Year’s Eve, a second: the Queen of Diamonds on her arm.

“I love the Queen of Diamonds,” Althea explained to both Claire and Pierre at separate times, “for the way she shines.”

That spring, Althea also replaced her jeans and sweatshirts with colorful dresses and then, for the first time ever, went short short with her hairstyle, died the top orange, and shaved the sides. She decided to pursue therapy on her own, and scoured the ads in the back of Willamette Week for just the right type: group therapy seemed too messy, and Althea found to her dismay that foam bats were not only out of style but had been banned by the Portland City Council because, its spokesman had said at a somber press conference: “Venting as a treatment just makes people worse.”

Aromatherapy appealed but Althea feared that, if Pierre returned to oils, the fumes would ignite. But “anger 28 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Jerry Cunningham

management” classes were then flourishing all around town with advertisements at bus stops and on telephone poles that asked: “Want to end the rage circuit? You need to understand the triggers.”

It was that same summer, while attempting to understand her triggers, which Althea felt were mainly the rent and secondly the slow, aimless existence of her slacker boyfriend, himself approaching thirty-five and with no prospects, real or imagined, when Althea saw the ad: “Handwriting: Revelation of Self,” it said.

Dr. Verner Wolffe’s office was in a brick building on Belmont, between the movie theatre and Belmont Bikes. The tiny waiting room held his books atop a cabinet: “Handwriting: Clue to Mental Health,” “Grapho-Diagnostics In Personality Research,” and the bestseller that got him on Oprah, “Handwriting Analysis: Know Your Triggers.”

“I have reviewed the samples you brought me,” said Dr. Wolffe. “Your handwriting slants to the right--that tells me that you are outgoing, generous, good with people.”

“I’m a bartender,” said Althea.

“I’m not surprised,” said Dr. Wolffe. “And your angular style shows mental acuity: natural intelligence, if you will. The middle zone--letters without lower or upper loops, like i, o, and m, obviously--is the world of the soul, as of course the lower zone is the material world--where your practical functioning is, if you will.”

“I have the feeling that my lower zone is unhappy around the time the rent is due and also when Pierre doesn’t shave,” said Althea.

“Yes, well, we will get to his sample. But for the moment I want to reassure you that your upper and middle zones show you as hardworking and steady, quite trusting and blessed with a healthy libido. Perhaps you simply need to better understand your threat-detection mechanism. After all, isn’t that what we mean by a ‘trigger’? Something that pushes your buttons is the hunter-gatherer in you perceiving a threat,” said Dr. Wolffe.

“I get all cranky when I think too much about money,” said Althea, “and when Pierre leaves dishes in the sink.”

“There’s a whole range of empirically-supported interventions for people with anger,” said Dr. Wolffe, “but I must say to you, that, as your psychographologist, I’m concerned about your pen pressure.”

“My pen pressure?” said Althea.

“The lower zone is getting all of your pressure, while the upper zone is much neglected. Your intensity of pressure in the middle zone is quite healthy: I trust that you are a reliable worker and rarely late. But your intensity of pressure in the lower zone, along with your small lower loops, suggests to me that, from time to time, you must have quite angry outbursts with your partner,” said Dr. Wolffe.

Jerry Cunningham

“Oh yeah, Doc. I could kill him sometimes. He thinks I’m made of money. He drinks cognac out of a fancy glass. But, of course I love him,” said Althea. “He’s my world. We’re gonna get married when his ship comes in,” she said.

“About this Pierre person,” said Dr. Wolffe with a concerned look, “I reviewed his sample, and I must say that the only time that I’ve ever seen such blatant undesirable qualities was during a forensic examination of employees in an industrial setting, wherein I investigated a case of embezzlement. One sample simply popped out at me and I recommended a secret camera for this man; he was caught red-handed within a week.

Such egotism, materialism, shrewdness, secrecy and dishonesty to a degree that I never thought I’d see again! Then you gave me Pierre’s writing sample.”

“I love him, Doc,” replied Althea, “but you’re right, he’s got to get his act in gear.”

It was a Friday. Althea worked late, The Stop Cuidado was crowded, the pool balls crackled like thunder clouds. The jukebox went happy and sad. Laughter reigned. Althea came home late and Pierre was sitting at the kitchen counter, writing down ideas in his spiral notebook for his career as a chocolatier.

He then stayed up the rest of the night.

The following morning, as Althea yawned into the day, a lively Pierre said, “Let’s go window shopping today. And put it all on my tab, mi amour.”

And so it was that on a lovely summer afternoon in Southeast Portland Althea and Pierre strolled down Hawthorne, she in a flowery dress, he in cargo shorts, a t-shirt, a beret, and sandals. They passed the famous cigar store, with the dozens of international newspapers inside and in the window they saw the matching cherrywood pipe and corkscrew under the sign: “Genuine Parisian Workmanship.” They went inside and enjoyed sniffing the jars of tobacco; Althea picked a cherry-vanilla mix for Pierre.

Outside, Pierre lit up.

“Baby, you picked the one that smells like it is smoked by a sole-source chocolatier. And I did some homework this morning and I made some calls. My paintbrush has been retired.

There is one place on earth that has the chalky earth for the right kind of cocoa bean. I need the cocoa beans from the hills of Peru.

And I know how to get there: by freighter,” said a confident Pierre.

“Freighter?” said Althea. “You’re not the type to handle heavy ropes, dear,” she said.

“Nah, it’s not like that,” replied Pierre. “It’s a cheap way to get me down to Peru and back and it’ll give me time to write my business plan and begin my memoirs. I’m also gonna dedicate my first book of poetry to you. I think I’m a frustrated writer, deep inside. That’s why the sculpture and the painting was so important, don’t you see? No clay and water colors, no chocolatier, is the way I see it.”

The Corkscrew Finds Love in South Portland

“How much?” asked Althea.

“Like a month on board with them and the trip back, and my, you know, expenses in Peru, like six thousand bucks, total, baby. S’il vous plait. You can deduct it, baby, because we’re business people now,” said Pierre.

“You are talking my life’s savings,” said Althea. “I mean, a lot of years of drunk, lonely men.”

“It’s a down payment on our future, mi amour,” said Pierre, with a winsome smile. “Let’s stop at the store and pick up real French champagne. We’ve got a lot to celebrate!”

That night, Althea played her favorite dance CDs and the corkscrew did yeoman’s work in opening the bottles of champagne: “Black grapes make such fine white bubbly only because of the chalky soils of the Champagne region. We will visit there someday,” gushed Pierre. “Viva la French!” he cried.

Then, with aplomb, Pierre made a toast: “To chalky soil!”

The Parisian corkscrew teared up when it heard his fellow countryman profess undying love for his amour. The corkscrew thought: “What a lovely couple! I will be with them for the wedding bells.”

The freighter would not sail for another month; in the meantime, romance blossomed in Southeast Portland.

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The Corkscrew Finds Love in South Portland

Althea and Pierre strolled down Hawthorne, hand in hand, window shopping and smiling and looking for a good space to rent for the chocolate shop. They passed the women’s center and the guitar shop and the dog grooming place; the vintage clothes store had a line into the street, the short strip of food carts was busy and smelled good, the used leather boot and purse store had a 10%-off sale, the primeval hipsters, sat-waiting for an acoustic band--on their straightleg black jeans outside Fir Tree Lounge, and the telephone poles were draped with handmade missing cat fliers and slick posters about the latest neon-punk band at the Tornado Room.

Back at the apartment, the geraniums bloomed like madness. The apartment was filled with cheerful dessert cookbooks and catalogues of silvery restaurant equipment.

During this romantic waiting period before Pierre sailed, whenever Pierre winked at Althea, she winked back. Althea, throwing caution to the wind, used her savings to buy a steady flow of champagne. Pierre began drinking only an earthy merlot, with hints of regal berries, with dinner.

After dinner he smoked his pipe, pinching Althea as she cleaned up. They smiled at each other all the time.

The corkscrew felt that he was playing a key role in this romance. It was a wondrous thing, thought the corkscrew-- his

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thoughts were a mixture of French and English, for that is how he was raised as a boy-- to see young adults with such playful habits and sincere plans for their future life together. The corkscrew took pride in making each bottle of champagne or wine sing as the corks were twisted.

“It is the least I can do for such a lovely couple as they plan their future,” thought the corkscrew. “And I have a weakness for anything musical.”

The corkscrew often thought about Fate: it occurred to him that he could easily have ended up being bought and placed in a household filled with arguments, or with tenants with a penchant for cheap wine, and he often shook with disgust at the thought of a life as an opener of bottles of bad wine in a household without romance or foie gras or plans for the future or healthy geraniums.

Althea bought a clay flower pot with a picture of a carrot on the side and these words painted on: la carotte une dame qui a une robe toute rouge et des, cerveau vers?

It was a fine, bright morning the day that Pierre shipped off on the giant container ship that was out of Singapore and flew a German flag and was named The Don Juan. The Filipino crew smiled at Althea and Pierre as they said goodbye to each other.

Althea was sad; Pierre was perky.

“It’s old school on these freighters,” said Pierre. “They mail off letters from each port. I’ll send you updates. See you in a couple of months!” cried Pierre, jauntily flinging on his backpack and wearing his jaunty beret as he walked past the imposing cranes and containers and forklifts and disappeared from Althea’s last sight of him. Pierre, with a last wave and a loud “Au revoir!” walked into the belly of the ship and was directed to a pleasant, small bedroom with a writing table; on his way to the first dinner with the other guests, he signed the guestbook. Under “Occupation,” Pierre wrote: “Poet/ Chocolatier.”

Pierre’s first letters were from ports of call in California.

There were only a handful of passengers. The kitchen was spotless, the crew and the guests ate their meals on deck, and Pierre saw dolphins for the first time in his life. The Captain was German and the little white refrigerators were stocked with Beck’s. One guest, a mystery man, gave him the creeps. The business plan for the chocolate shop was going fine. Pierre was considering an expertise in truffles. They should marry on a Valentine’s Day. They should stay home and eat bonbons and drink French champagne at least one day a week, forever.

For his part, Pierre spent long hours on deck watching the sea; he began to think about his first poem. Late one evening, drinking steins of beer with the thick-mustachioed Captain Mueller at a picnic table, Pierre explained his passion for poetry and said, with a sigh and a long look at the waves, that he burned for a topic.

Jerry Cunningham

The Corkscrew Finds Love in South Portland

“I just need to get started,” said Pierre, “then my creative juices will take over. I’ve been taking notes. But I need a topic.

What is my muse?”

“I don’t know about your muse,” said Captain Mueller with a thick accent. “Such matters are not for a humble officer who gets his pay from a grubby shipping line. I float heavy metal on the high seas and my ships are filled with God knows what and we sail from Shanghai to Long Beach to the lands of the Spanish speakers to Rotterdam and back again for our wages!

What does such a pedestrian as me know of High Art?” “All of what you have said, my Captain, is truth,” said a philosophical Pierre. “You are a humble wagon driver on the high seas; horseless, of course.”

“What a gift for the spoken word!” cried Captain Mueller.

“You must write it all down! Today, even Goethe’s notebooks are High Culture! But he did not think so at the time - God knows what is lost! Do you have a notebook?”

“Goethe had a weakness for the bon mot, and who could blame him? Yes, I have a notebook, my Captain, but it’s a lot of pressure. I feel the gaze of future art historians whenever I jot down a note about laundry, much less poetry. It stresses me out,” said Pierre woefully, guzzling a beer as he shook his head.

“My American artist-friend,” replied Captain Mueller, “you are under so much pressure! As for me, all I do is sail a ship over the seven seas, for I am just a simple man. I could not handle the pressure of the true artist. But, from a humble officer, I say that if you need a topic, you must listen: what does your heart say to you? Surely your sculptures and paintings are products of a deepness?”

“I have trouble with faces,” confessed Pierre. “And shapes.”

“So forget about faces and shapes!” cried Captain Mueller, who slammed his stein on the table. “Paint what your heart sees!”

“What I see is a lot of water,” said Pierre, quietly.

Captain Mueller choked up and then said: “Then paint the Pacific Ocean with words, my son.”

Here is the first poem that Althea received; she sat at the kitchen counter and read it aloud.

“Formless, I paint with words.

Goethe’s notebooks are High Culture but so is the sea.

The Pacific Sea. One of seven.

The fickle Pacific Sea. Homeland to the dolphin.

Birther of waves.

Windy, on a whim.

(It seems).

Heavy metal. Spanish speakers.

Ocean: do you care?

Or do you stick to the planet?

Gravity is good for water.

Where is my gravity?

What is the secret to my wind?

My words?

My water colors the universe.

There are fish down there by the millions.

Can we agree, dear reader, on billions?

Of fish.

Humble officers of the ocean deep.

Each with a nose - but I cannot paint you fish face.

I long for you, fish face.

But I cannot reach.

Cannot touch. For you have scales.

Weigh the scales of watery justice!

Scale the heights of big waves!

The waiter cried “Ship’s ahoy!”

The waiter waves at the moon!

But, it’s the cocoa bean he craves.

Can you weigh the bonbons of a man’s art!

Can you eat a bonbon off a spoon?

Fish face: you are coy.

Splash of wave. I hear you. For I am a good listener, I have found.

To your watery heart--scale the deepness!

Deep and watery doom.

In the end, my muse was aboard all along I found her at the Lost and Found.

Behind the laundry room.”

The poem was entitled “The Frenchman Sails Today.”

Althea wept.

The corkscrew wept.

In Pierre’s absence, Althea spent more time with Claire, who visited Althea at The Stop Cuidado during Happy Hour.

One afternoon, a man with a drink and a sizeable paunch, who was eating cheese sticks whole, told Althea that Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 31

The Corkscrew Finds Love in South Portland

she was “a knock out,” but she just smiled and checked another customer’s Keno ticket. Then the paunch-man leaned over to Claire, whom he did not know, and said: “She’s okay, if you like geezers, but you’re the real peach in this bar. I mean, she’s the one who makes those side-orders of the weirdo pasta: I’m no cook, but I know a gallon of vinegar when I smell it. All the guys hate it.”

The next day, by phone, Claire told Althea what paunchman had said. Althea took her unopened boxes of corkscrew pasta and one opened box and threw them on the top shelf, in the back, next to the box of lasagna. Late that afternoon, in The Stop Cuidado, as paunch-man reached to dip a cheese stick in a little paper cup of tomato sauce, Althea stabbed his hand with a fork.

Raymond offered to pay for therapy. “I don’t care who you go to, I’m footin’ the bill,” said Raymond. “But you can’t go around stabbing customers with forks all day.”

Dr. Wolffe was in the same brick building; he looked up from the writing samples.

“I’ve read a couple of meta-analytic reviews in the treatment literature and they conclude that, if you come here regularly, you will improve at a moderate to strong rate. But you can’t go around stabbing customers with forks all day,” said Dr. Wolffe.

“I know that Doc,” said Althea. “But the next night I dreamt that I stabbed that guy in the hand with a fork and I felt the bone and cartilage crush like a piece of dry toast, and it felt good.”

Dr. Wolffe responded: “You are under a lot of pressure: Pierre is far away, your savings are dwindling, and, frankly, neither you nor Pierre has any experience operating a retail shop. I’ve examined your most recent handwriting specimens, and the stress shows: your failure to close your lower loops indicates failing strength. The pressure on you is taking its toll; one’s worries are often displayed by an unfinished loop. It is nothing to fret about, but you no longer curve your t-bars like a garland, as you did in the past. Self-knowledge, my dear, is power.”

“Plus I miss my fiancé like crazy, even though he drives me crazy,” said Althea.

“I was getting to him,” said Dr. Wolffe with a scornful look. “I am, of course, glad--from a treatment point of view-that you brought me his poem. On the other hand, it is a troubling specimen. Aside from the so-called poem itself, his sample shows that he fills in the small letters with ink, a habit often encountered in people who are habitual concealers. The letters of his primitive script tend to dwindle, a feature typical of shrewdness bordering on dishonesty. His pasty, muddy pen pressure, combined with his clumsy lettering and atrophied endings, along with his pinched and formless loops and 32 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

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bombastic capitals, not to mention the spelling errors, lead me to an unfortunate assessment.”

“That he stinks as a poet?” asked Althea.

“That goes without saying, my dear,” replied Dr. Wolfe.

“But also that his personality traits are those of, if this is possible.

I am struggling for words. Let me say it this way: I have consulted with many large businesses in the past and helped them with their personnel selection. I have spent many years predicting vocational aptitude. And if we were in an industrial setting, my dear, I would tell you that your fiancé’s handwriting suggests to me a career as a pickpocket,” Dr. Wolffe said.

“But I love him,” replied Althea, her head in her hands.

“Pierre must frustrate you to no end,” concluded the good doctor. “No wonder you reach for the fork.”

Althea left, and she was angry at Dr. Wolffe.

“I think it’s hocus-pocus,” Althea said to Claire on the phone. “The snob insulted my fiancé. Pierre may have a sketchy past, but he’s a chocolatier now, and I’m gonna show you that old Wolffe-man is full of it.”

Althea found an old love note from Pierre; she dipped the corkscrew into a jar of old black paint and rolled it over the bottom of the love note.

The following week Dr. Wolffe bit the top of his thumb.

“I have misjudged your fiancé, my dear,” said Dr. Wolffe.

“Perhaps the ship was caught in a storm when he wrote the poem that you showed me, and that caused me to misjudge him.

For this signature of your fiancé, on this note, demonstrating a healthy speed and an ascending form indicative of sensitivity and intuition, has been made by a fine, fine man. The entire gestalt of the signature speaks to idealism and steadfastness, with a touch of Gallic good humor and joie de vie. I wish you the best of luck in your future, my dear. With such a fine man in your life, you have no reason to seek further therapy.”

The next day, all of this was explained to Claire on the phone as Althea cleaned out the refrigerator and the cupboards and threw away old grimy pots. The corkscrew smiled and swelled with pride and flexed in a manly way as he heard Dr. Wolffe’s assessment of his signature. Then, when Althea placed an unopened box of shell pasta on the top shelf, she knocked over the opened box of corkscrew pasta.

A particularly curvy, perfectly shaped piece of corkscrew pasta fell next to the corkscrew.

It was love at first sight.

She was an Italian girl, an immigrant from a sturdy family of copper-colored wheat that had dominated the hills above the port city of Bari for centuries and she had curls and swirls and a shy smile that beguiled the corkscrew because she had quickly proved to also be as tempestuous as a tornado. She liked to dance and twirl to Althea’s CDs and her favorite song was “Twist and Shout.”

Jerry Cunningham

The Corkscrew Finds Love in South Portland

The top-shelf relationship blossomed. The corkscrew promised to be a good provider. “You know what, baby?” he would say.

“We’re gonna spend our days and nights around champagne and imported chocolate: I don’t live to work, I work to live.”

A long letter by Pierre from the Port of San Diego arrived for Althea during the third week after Pierre’s departure. The letter explained the uniqueness of the soils of Peru beyond the mountains, the types of equipment that the chocolate shop would need, and the hard cash that would be required to swing the doors open. The letter also said that Pierre had misjudged the mystery man, who, it turned out, could be helpful in getting the business off the ground. The letter closed with a request that Althea continue looking for an empty store on Hawthorne.

The following week, a postcard arrived from Guadalajara with three words: “Next stop Lima!”

The time passed slowly for Althea during the many ensuing weeks of silence; she had heard nothing from Pierre from Lima, which surprised her because she expected to only hear from Pierre erratically once he had left Lima to cross the mountains to the cocoa farms. After a month, calls by Althea to the American Embassy in Lima turned up no information, but many nights after leaving The Stop Cuidado she would put the key in the door to her apartment and expect to see Pierre in his underwear by the kitchen counter; such imaginings faded over time, though no calendar marked their passing.

Late that fall, the letter from the Peruvian authorities arrived, on exquisite paper and in exquisite Spanish. Althea knew no Spanish, but did not need to in order to understand “muerto” and “banditos.” She brought the letter to work, and Raul confirmed the worst.

Althea, from then on, referred to herself as a “widow,” an old-fashioned word, and never married.

And so it was that, fifteen years later, on her last night in the old apartment, Althea, with two sleeves of tats, many piercings and short, dyed-orange hair, spoke with Claire on the phone about taking a settlement and leaving the apartment without raising legal issues, and about the coming wrecking ball, and about packing up her things and her memories, and about the nightly sounds of a man speaking French and a woman laughing.

On the top shelf, the corkscrew said: “I’ll miss her too, baby, but with new tenants, you’ll see: voila! Champagne and chocolate night and day!”

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 33

In Memory of Justin Schmidt 1988-2013

“Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.�

Christina Baldwin

34 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Photo credit: Dakota Wilkinson

Photography by:

DAKOTA WILKINSON

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 35

Poetry

Marissa Mireles Hinds Spurious incantation I play some sounds while you sleep, a rhythmic tantra vibrates from my mouth an electric coil as a tongue, it rips me from my very essence into yours attempt to seize yourself, as you froth from the mouth the abstraction of the self a myriad of congenial faces, warped to distract to not be mistaken, it is not hypnosis of the mind, too simple I would rather see your heart pulsate outside your body and in my hand dripping ego down my bent wrist

New York Arms are aching not for touch it has been a long time since that no, rather it is these bags i have been carrying while i hop scotch down sidewalks the concrete creaks and struggles to keep my feet from sinking in. do dreams come true? running to keep pace manifestations are occurring simultaneously with me. the flesh, it does its osmosis, melting away mind, it is synthesizing itself let us see how far we can take this.

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Poetry

Justin Di Cristofaro Envy The dead fall asleep in the arms of Mother Night.

They spin like ballerinas in The Other Worldrejoicing in their freedom.

LA Fee Vert We are the affliction of the Silver Spoon, baptised by flame, hallucinating and eternal.

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The Devil That You Know

Pyran Taylor

THE DEVIL THAT YOU KNOW

by PT Sand

Something big shot out across the dark road through the headlight beams of Jackson’s pickup. The truck lurched with the impact and fishtailed across the asphalt, skidding to a halt as he braked. Jackson swung the heavy metal door open with a loud creak, and stepped out into the darkness. Skeeter popped the door on the other side and they both walked to the front of the truck and looked down into the trees to see what they’d hit.

Jackson rubbed his hand across the right fender, where the impact had been. It was crunched a little and one of the headlights was busted. “Goddamnit. I just changed those bulbs.

You see anything out there?”

Skeeter was walking out toward the road’s edge where the remaining beam of light ended and the darkness began.

“Nawp. Dark as shit. You still got that spotlight?”

“Momma made me leave it in the house. Sheriff’s been sending deputies out at night to catch people spotlighting deer.”

“Well I can’t see a damn thing. I swear the moon was out ten minutes ago. Ain’t never seen it so dark out.”

Jackson walked past him through the headlight beam and stepped down into the ditch. His boots lost grip and he slid into some mud. The night was pitch black, but the shadows of the tall dark pine trees slowly faded into focus. Whatever he’d hit couldn’t have gone far. Had to be a deer. Wasn’t anything else in these woods big enough to make a dent like that in his truck.

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anything. Cleaning a deer this late at night would be a pain in the ass. He heard Skeeter slide into the ditch behind him.

Skeeter called out, “See anything?”

Jackson glanced over his shoulder and called back.

“Too damn dark out.” He stood up and turned but his foot hooked on something heavy and he fell flat on his chest in the cold mud with a splat, and knocked his elbow on a rock. “Motherfucker!”

“The hell are you doing over there? There was a flashlight under the seat.”

Mud squished cold and wet between Jackson’s fingers and soaked his jeans as he picked himself up. His hand closed around something soft and hot. Fear sank into his stomach and he jerked it away. Though his eyes were still struggling with the darkness, he could scarcely make out the rough shape. “Hey, bring that light down here!”

Skeeter made his way noisily through the bushes. “It’s a deer, ain’t it?”

“Give me the light.” Jackson sliced the beam erratically through the dark, illuminating trees and bushes and mud. It slowed in the area where he’d fallen, scanning the mud and bushes, and the large rock sitting in the mud. The light finally came to rest on the shape he’d touched in the dark. “I’ll be damned.”

Skeeter walked over and nudged the limp form with his boot. “Sure looks an awful lot like the Devil.”

Jackson walked over and sighed. “Guess we’d better

Pyran Taylor

load him up in the truck. Momma’d be pissed if we just left him out here.” ~ Jackson pulled the truck up behind Momma’s minivan, driveway gravel crunching under his tires. He shifted into park, glanced in the rearview at the limp body in the bed of the truck, and then down at the gold watch on his wrist his daddy had worn before he died. Eleven twenty-three. Shit. He killed the ignition.

“Alright, let’s get him inside.”

As they bore the heavy body toward the front porch on their shoulders, cloven hooves raked trailing lines behind them in the gravel rocks. A single light shone through the curtained windows from where Momma’s chair sat in the living room, while another light flickered from the other side of the room. Jackson squirmed out from under the dark red arm and leaned the Devil’s weight fully onto Skeeter, who grunted. “He’s heavy as shit.”

“Stop crying. Just wait here a minute.”

Jackson pressed a key into the thin brass doorknob and pushed the door open. The air conditioning felt good, especially across his neck and shoulders where the Devil’s arm had been.

Momma looked up from her chair, newspaper on her lap and pen in hand. A news anchor’s voice spoke softly across the room.

She picked up a slim wristwatch from the end table, tilted her head back to peer at it through her reading glasses. “Why are you late?”

“Me and Skeeter hit something out on Old 51.”

She put the watch back down. “What happened? How fast were you going? I done told you about a hundred times to slow down around them turns.” She slapped the newspaper on the end table and pushed herself out of her chair. “Y’all hurt?

You bang up your daddy’s truck?”

“We’re fine. Busted out one of the headlights, though. I just replaced the goddamn bulbs, too.”

She pulled her robe up over her nightgown, and tied the belt in the front. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Where’s Skeeter?”

“On the porch.”

“What for?” She moved past him toward the door.

He stepped in front of her to block her way. “Momma, you might not wanna go out there just now.”

“Jackson Ladner, don’t you tell me what to do in my own house.” She swept past him, flipped the switch to the outside light, and swung open the screen door. “You might be bigger than me, but I’m still your momma.”

He followed her outside. Skeeter sat on the swing that was raised too high off the porch. His feet dangled, barely scraping the floor with his toes. The Devil sat slumped against him, still unconscious. Momma exhaled and all expression fell off her face.

“I think we ran over the Devil.”

The Devil That you Know

Skeeter wriggled beneath the weight. “Sure is a heavy bastard. Stinks like matches.”

“You okay, Momma?”

She blinked a few times and cleared her throat. “Well.

It’d be a sin to leave him out on the porch to catch his death. You boys better carry him on up to your daddy’s old room. And don’t wake up your sister. After that you need to go ahead and get Skeeter home. It’s late.” ~ The Ladners’ pond was in the valley of an old cow pasture that sat adjacent to their yard, though there hadn’t been any cows in the pasture since Jackson’s daddy had died some fifteen years ago. Momma didn’t like fooling with them so she’d sold them to an old man across the highway. Barbed wire separated the field from the pock-marked asphalt road that ran alongside it all the way from the house to a long steel cattle gate.

Every now and then during the summer, Jackson or Momma caught trespassers fishing in the pond without permission and had to run them off.

Out of everybody, Uncle Robert spent the most time at the old pond, having shown up every Saturday and Sunday, weather permitting, for as long as Jackson could remember. He wasn’t Jackson’s real uncle, just an old friend of the family. After Jackson’s daddy died, Uncle Robert had been keeping the fields on the property bush hogged so Momma wouldn’t have to pay somebody to do it. Even after Jackson got older and offered to take over, Uncle Robert insisted on keeping up the pasture himself. Said it was the least he could do to repay Momma for all the fishing he did there, though Jackson figured he’d have done it, anyway.

The next day, Jackson and Skeeter drove through the gate and into the field, keeping the wheels of the truck aligned with the dirt tracks that cut through the high grass and led down to the pond. Uncle Robert’s rusted old truck was parked down beside the water, and as they got closer, they could make out the old man’s chair and coolers set up nearby. Pulling up alongside the truck, Jackson grabbed his .22 rifle off the rack above the seat, the box of shells from the glove box, and they both got out of the truck.

Uncle Robert’s lawn chair had seen better days. A fishing pole lay on the ground beside him next to the grimy Folgers coffee can he always kept his bait worms in. A few bent red and white beer cans lay strewn on the grass near his white Styrofoam cooler. The old man’s gnarled brown fingers moved quickly across the fretboard of the worn acoustic guitar on his lap as they walked around the truck. He flicked the ashes off his sickly sweet cigarette. “Evening, boys.”

“Hey, Uncle Robert. Catch anything?” Jackson sat down on the tailgate and laid the rifle in the bed of the truck.

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The Devil That You Know

drinking for a while now. You boys want a beer?” He nodded toward the cooler. “Go on, getcha one. Damn near men now, anyways.”

They each reached into the icy water and pulled out a can.

“Jus don’t tell yo momma. Sho’ wouldn’t ever hear the end of that.” He grinned and went back to picking the guitar.

“Y’all comin’ down here to shoot them damn turtles?”

Jackson nodded and took a sip of his beer. It was only the fifth or sixth one he’d ever had since last year when Uncle Robert had started sharing with him. He still didn’t really like the bitter flavor, but figured he ought to go ahead and develop a taste for it early.

“Ain’t seen none today. Usually a whole bunch of ‘em out there.”

Skeeter’s face scrunched up as he brought the beer away from his mouth and set it on the tailgate beside him. “This tastes like rooster piss. How’re y’all drinking this shit?”

Uncle Robert almost fell out of his chair laughing. “How old’re you, boy?”

“Eighteen.”

“And you ain’t never had a beer?”

He shook his head. “My cousin Francine gave me a wine cooler at her wedding last year. Didn’t taste this bad, though.”

Uncle Robert shook his head. “You better finish that damn beer, boy. Can’t be drinking no wine coolers. End up wearing dresses like your cousin Francine.”

Skeeter took another sip of his beer and frowned.

“Where’s all the damn turtles anyway?”

“Hell if I know. Couldn’t even cast a line without hitting one in the head last Sunday. One of them bastards snatched a catfish right off my hook. Ain’t a single one here this week, though. Thank you, Jesus.” He turned up his can of beer and tossed it onto the pile where it clinked against the others. “How’s your momma doin? I been meaning to get by there and see her.”

Jackson shrugged. “She’s fine, I guess. Been cooking meals for Old Mister Pete down the road. His wife’s in the hospital and he can’t cook for himself, so people from the church been helping him out.”

“Well, that’s too bad for Mister Pete. Fine old fella. The shell shock he got from the war been doin’ him somethin’ bad these past few years. He ain’t come back the same man as shipped off to the war all them years ago.” He sat his guitar on the grass and sloshed his hand in the cooler, pulled out another beer and dried off the top with his shirt tail. “When you gonna get back to your guitar lessons?”

Jackson shrugged. “Don’t know. Been too busy with school and all, I guess.”

The old man nodded. “What else y’all been up to?”

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Pyran Taylor

Skeeter tossed his empty can onto the pile and burped.

“We run over the Devil last night in Jackson’s truck.”

Jackson scowled at him. “Damnit, I told you not to tell nobody.”

Uncle Robert set his beer on top of the cooler. “The hell you talking about, boy?”

“We was in Jackson’s truck, driving last night out 51 Extension, and the Devil shot out across the damn road. Fast as hell. We got out and found him knocked out in the woods.”

The old man’s forehead crinkled. “That’s down there by that old crossroads, ain’t it? He still in the woods out there?”

Jackson shook his head. “Naw, we brung him back to the house. Momma put him up in Daddy’s old room. He was still out cold when we left this morning.”

“That don’t seem right. Where’s Cindy?”

“She went with Momma to Mister Pete’s house.”

“That’s good. Don’t you leave your baby sister in that house with the Devil.”

“Don’t matter, anyway. He ain’t even awake.”

Uncle Robert nodded and picked up his guitar. “Oh, it matters, boy. The Devil’s always awake.” ~ The Devil slept for six nights in Nick Ladner’s upstairs bedroom, and on the seventh day he woke and walked downstairs and into the kitchen.

Jackson was frying bacon and Cindy slumped behind a bowl of cereal at the small-framed kitchen table, as much reading the back of the box as she was eating. They both looked up when he walked into the room, hooves clicking on the linoleum floor. “Morning. Smells good down here. How long was I asleep?”

Jackson spoke. “About a week, I guess.”

“Quite a while. I can’t seem to remember a thing. What happened?”

“I’m Jackson. This here’s my sister, Cindy. Me and my buddy found you on the side of the road. You’ve been sleeping in my daddy’s old room since then.”

The Devil sat down at the table. “Interesting. I wonder what could’ve done something like that to me.” He picked up the box of cereal and sniffed the crinkled bag protruding past the cardboard, reached in and pulled out a handful of sugar frosted corn flakes and munched them idly. “However, it was nice of you to take me in.”

“Ain’t no problem.” Jackson turned back to the stove.

“Momma would’ve killed me if I’d just left you out there in the woods.”

“Where is your mother, then? I believe I owe her my thanks.”

Cindy interjected. “She’s down at the church helping Brother Mark get ready for bible school next week.”

Pyran Taylor

The Devil smiled. “Of course. What a lovely thing for such a courteous woman to do. When will she be back?”

Cindy took a bite of cereal. “Before church tonight, probably.”

“Excellent. So, what are we doing until then?”

“Me and Cindy gotta do some chores before Momma gets home.” Jackson pulled a pan of biscuits from the oven and put them on a plate, which he set on the table beside the plate of bacon. He pulled two small plates, white with blue floral edging, from the cabinet above the sink, considered their guest, and pulled down a third. Cindy was already chewing a piece of bacon and grabbing another piece, but he set a plate in front of her anyway. He placed one before the Devil and the last, which had a chip in it, he took for himself and sat down in the wooden chair.

The Devil inserted clawed nails into a biscuit and tore it open. As the steam rose from the two halves, he spread butter and grape jelly across it with a knife. “Well, the least I can do in return for your charity is to help with your chores.”

Jackson carefully folded four pieces of bacon in half and placed them inside a biscuit. “Alright. Thanks. There’s plenty of bacon here, too.”

The Devil smiled. “Unclean is the flesh of the swine.

This biscuit will do just fine.” ~ After breakfast, the three of them went outside into the large garden that had been there as long as Jackson could remember. The thirty some yards of dark tilled soil was only visible at the edges. Neatly sectioned according to plant type, its layered greenery began low in the front with the butter beans and crowder peas. Tomato plants crawled upward on wooden poles behind them. And the corn stalks loomed in the back, towering over everything. A few plump watermelons grew up front among the peas, having been accidentally seeded. Shiny pie tins hung from tall sticks that rose up above the green, peeking out of the leaves and shooting beams of sunlight at the crows.

Cindy walked between the rows of peas with her sun hat on and a metal bucket swinging in her hand and knelt down among the leaves, while Jackson and the Devil stepped around the side of the garden and into the corn rows with large tin tubs.

Methodically, they located and picked the full grown ears of corn from the stalks and dropped them into the tubs. The Devil never asked him how to do anything, just fell into a steady rhythm of picking and dropping like he’d done it all his life. It looked like he was smiling.

After a while, he spoke. “Strangely relaxing isn’t it?”

Jackson looked up from dropping an ear of corn into his bucket. “The corn?”

“The work. Considered undesirable by many, but without pretense. It just is what it is. Seemingly so simple,

The Devil That you Know

though it takes a certain amount of skill and talent to make things grow.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s just corn.” Jackson reached up and pulled another ear from a stalk.

The Devil closed a clawed hand around one of the stalks and ran it upward through the leaves. “So you say.

You’ll miss it one day, when the experience is no longer at your fingertips. It’s funny how that works. However, I suppose we all outgrow the hallmarks of our youth.”

It had to be better than ninety degrees outside, but the odd smile on the Devil’s face made Jackson’s skin cold. He asked the Devil, “Why’d you come here anyway?”

The Devil looked up from where he was squatting down beneath the shade of the corn stalks. “Business mostly.” ~ It took them a couple of hours to finish up in the garden.

When they were done they carried all the buckets, placed them on the screened-in side porch, and set a pair of ripe watermelons on the painted wooden floor beside them. Cindy dropped the last bucket of peas and walked inside, leaving the door open behind her. Jackson and the Devil pushed all of the buckets close to

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The Devil That You Know

Pyran Taylor

the wall and out of the way, grouping them together according to their contents. Cindy walked back outside sipping iced tea from a tall glass with yellow flowers printed on it.

Jackson looked up at her. “Why didn’t you bring us some?”

“You know where the kitchen is.” She opened the screen and walked down off the porch and out into the yard.

The Devil watched her and smiled. He pushed the last tub of corn against the wall and stood up straight to stretch his back and dusted his hands off. “Let’s go get some tea. Then we can go look at that old tractor in the barn out back.”

“I told you it don’t work. Damned thing ain’t cranked since Daddy died, anyway.”

“We’ll see. The field out back needs to be bush hogged.”

“Uncle Robert usually cuts that one every month or so.”

The Devil nodded but didn’t say anything.

Cindy was swinging back and forth on a tire swing as they walked out toward the old barn in the field behind the house.

She’d always been strange and Jackson saw her watching them with a weird look on her face, eyes squinted, head cocked to a side as she hung limply from the rope. He called out to her, “You better make sure them peas are shelled before Momma gets

Momma was gonna slap her face for mouthing off in the grocery store a couple days ago.”

They ducked and stepped between the barbed wire and into the pasture where the broom straw had grown up past his waist. The weight of the sun pressed down on their backs as they walked the fifty yards toward the barn, their shadows skulking ahead of them. While his shadow lumbered along, the Devil’s writhed and convulsed, dancing unnaturally on the grass.

The big slide bolts on the barn door were rusted over and stuck when they tried to open them. The Devil walked around the side of the barn and came back with a claw back hammer with one of the claws broken off. A few hard swings and the bolts slid off the door. He tossed the hammer off to the side and swung open the right door, pointing for Jackson to get the left.

As the doors swung wide, dust swirled in the sunlight that broke through the gloom of the barn. More light shined in from a window high up on the right wall close to the ceiling, dropping another beam through the shadows to fall on the tractor parked in the center of the space. Wooden beams supported a simple second level, which sported a few scattered and broken hay bales. The flood of light from the opened doors sent unseen

home today!”

She closed her eyes and spun the tire slightly so he couldn’t see her face anymore, the slightest smile curled across her lips as her face turned away from him. He shook his head.

“Momma lets her get away with too much.”

“All children have their moments. I’m sure you’ve been through them, too.”

“Not like her. She’s been acting up a lot lately. I thought

creatures skittering away and into the shadows.

The Devil wafted the motes of dust away from his face.

“Been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Ain’t nobody been in here in a long time. Me and Uncle Robert tried to get the tractor cranked a few times over the years, but that’s about it.”

“And how is Robert these days?”

“I guess he’s alright. Mostly just fishes and drinks.

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Pyran Taylor

Plays guitar at some old bar for drinking money. You know him?”

“We’ve met. What’s wrong with this tractor?”

“Uncle Robert thinks the carburetor’s messed up.”

“Your Uncle Robert wouldn’t know a carburetor from his asshole. Pop the latches on the other side.”

Jackson walked around to the other side of the tractor and unhooked the hood latches. Then both of them together swung the heavy rusted hood upward on the hinges at the front of the machine.

He could only see the tips of the Devil’s tall horns bobbing and swaying over the top of the tractor’s engine, clawed nails clicking on steel as he worked. Jackson heard his muffled voice from the other side, “Go crank it.”

“That old battery’s gonna be dead.”

“A little faith?”

Jackson climbed up onto the seat as the Devil took a step back. After a few struggled tries, the engine turned on over with a deep rumbling that resounded throughout the barn. A little faith had got it running, but it wasn’t going to run far sounding like that.

The Devil nodded as he listened to the sputtering and popping that worked its way through the engine. He knelt down and cocked a pointed ear toward the noise for a minute before he motioned for Jackson to kill the engine. “Surely, your dad left some tools somewhere around here. Why don’t you fetch those for me?”

His daddy’s unpainted steel toolbox had sat behind the driver’s seat of the truck since his daddy had driven it, and Jackson had only used the tools inside it for little things. Once when he was younger, he’d taken out one of the yellow-handled flat head screwdrivers to play with and had ended up dropping it in the pond. Momma had been so mad that he’d never taken anything else out of the box for longer than he needed it to fix something. The box itself hadn’t left the truck at all until Jackson ran back to the house to get it for the Devil.

When he got back to the barn, the Devil was walking slowly through the shadows, running a hand along one of the beams supporting the ceiling.

Jackson said, “Ain’t any big tools in here.”

“I don’t think we’ll need them. How long’s it been since there were animals in here?”

“I don’t know, Momma had an old milk cow named Jersey when I was little, but she died a while back.”

“That seems about right. Still a good smell, isn’t it.

Clean smell. Bring the tools over here.” He knelt and pulled out a pair of pliers and handed them to Jackson. “Gonna need new spark plugs for sure, but I think it’s a little more than that. They look a little rusted, but take one of them out. Don’t disconnect it from the wire.”

Just as the Devil had said, the spark plugs were rusted,

The Devil That you Know

but he finally got the third one to twist enough so he could unscrew it all the way. “Alright.”

The Devil handed him a screwdriver. “Touch the plug to this. Don’t touch the metal.”

With the spark plug still held in the pliers, Jackson touched the end of it against the shaft of the screwdriver.

“See how there’s no spark? Means you’ve either got bad plugs or a bad coil. Easiest thing to do is replace the plugs, but this thing wasn’t working when the plugs were good, was it?”

Jackson shook his head. “Reckon not. So, how do we get the coil out?”

With the Devil’s help, Jackson found the ignition coil, unfastened it, and pulled the heavy black cylinder out of the engine.

“Good. Now why don’t you take these to town and get new ones. I’m guessing it’ll run just fine when we switch these out.” ~ Momma’s van still wasn’t in the driveway when Jackson pulled in. Probably still down at the church. Apparently, Bible School was going to be a big deal this year. They had some big name Christian rock singer coming and they had plans to bus kids in from other churches and counties. Momma hadn’t shut up about it for the past month and, even though he tried to stay out of it, she just kept after him to go help out with it. He figured he was just about to have to tell her straight that he wasn’t a kid anymore and he had better things to do with his summer than finger painting for Jesus with a pack of eight year olds.

He grabbed the brown paper bag that held the new coil and the spark plugs and walked around to the side porch to see if Cindy had shelled the peas like he told her. The screen door creaked when he pulled it open and, of course, she wasn’t anywhere to be seen. And the peas sat in the same bucket they had been in since they were picked this morning. He hoped Momma grounded her.

The air inside the house was cold when he stepped inside, but he didn’t hear the window unit air conditioners humming from the back rooms. He set the bag down on the kitchen table and walked into the living room. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark except for the television flickering silently in the corner. When he walked over and turned it off, a high pitched whining settled into his ears.

The dining room they only used on special occasions sat vacant and undisturbed. Ancient china cabinets stood tall against the far walls, facing both entrances to the dusty room.

Grandma Liza had left them to Momma when she died and the dishes they held were older than he was. The only time he’d seen any of it outside the cabinets was last year when Cindy got caught playing with it under the house. Momma had whipped her good enough to keep her from doing it again.

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The Devil That You Know

He walked out of the room and onto the stairwell.

The smell of sulfur hung in the frigid air and the wooden stairs creaked beneath his feet as he climbed them, his right hand trailing along the banister. When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw that all the doors were shut, which blocked the sunlight and created a languid twilight in the corridor. Even the door to his own room was shut, though he couldn’t remember doing it, so he walked over and opened it to let some light in.

Momma’s room was next to his so he opened it and let in more light. The sunlight lit up the wall where their family pictures hung. There were photos of him when he was younger, his hair as blond then as Cindy’s was now. A picture of Cindy in a cradle with pink frills around the edges. A small stuffed panda bear lay beside her. Finally, a picture of Momma and Daddy.

She was younger then and wore her hair long. Daddy’s face was placid, with a slight grin curling the corner of his mouth on the right side. Lots of people said how handsome he was and how Jackson looked just like him, but he didn’t see it. Seemed like that’s just something people said to make kids feel better.

Jackson turned and opened the door to Cindy’s room.

More light came into the hall. Cindy had never played with toys much, so her room was generally neat. A large dollhouse dominated one corner of the room; otherwise, there was no real indication that it was a child’s room at all. The last door at the end of the hall was his daddy’s old room. He walked over to it and turned the knob.

The Devil sat in his daddy’s old chair near the foot of the twin bed he’d always slept in. Cindy knelt on the floor in front of him, facing the door. Her ponytail was gone and with careful strokes of his dark red hand, he gently pulled a brush through her long hair. While he didn’t seem to notice Jackson enter the room, Cindy’s eyes slit up at him. “What do you want?”

“The hell’s going on in here?”

Cindy glared at him. “What’s it look like, stupid?”

The Devil looked up at Jackson. “Let’s go for a ride.” ~ Jackson drove along in silence as the sun slowly abandoned the country. The Devil rode shotgun, gesturing here and there, navigating them along the old country roads lined with trees and fields. Every now and then they passed another car or truck, but it was Sunday night and most everybody would be in church right now. His passenger spent most of the ride looking out the window, apparently, watching the trees race by them.

After twenty or so minutes, Jackson asked, “So, you gonna tell me where we’re going? Or maybe what the hell was going on back at the house?”

Still watching the trees, the Devil replied, “Nothing inappropriate, I assure you. As for our destination, we have several. You’ll see when we get there. It’s the business part I mentioned earlier.”

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“What kinda business?”

“Happiness mostly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re a smart kid. You don’t need me to spell it out for you. I’m in the business of making people happy. Let me out here.”

Jackson pulled the truck off onto the shoulder and the Devil got out and walked off into the woods, disappearing into the brush. By the time he reappeared up the hill, carrying two green army duffel bags, twilight had crept in around them. He swung the sacks up and into the back of the pickup, got back into the cab and closed the door. “Sorry that took so long. Almost didn’t remember where I put these.”

“What’s in the bags?”

“I told you already. Happiness.”

“Happiness must be pretty damn heavy. It’s weighing down the bed of the truck.” Jackson glanced down at his watch and pulled back onto the road. “It’s already after six. I’m missing church.”

“Joy is often a burdensome thing. And I imagine God won’t mind if you skip a prayer meeting from time to time. Bigger fish to fry and all.”

Eventually, the Devil had Jackson turn into a long gravel driveway that cut down between two cow pastures. A large white house sat at the end of the drive among a handful of pecan and oak trees. Though it was getting dark and it had been a while since he’d been there, Jackson knew they were pulling in at John Molton’s dairy farm. He’d worked there a couple summers ago, and had taken Mister John’s daughter, Sarah, to prom last year. “You know Mister John?”

The Devil drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “I know lots of people. Pull across the grass around behind the house. There’s a big live oak. Pull up next to it.”

None of the lights in the house were on. Mister John was a deacon at the church and Sarah and her mother sang in the choir, so they hardly missed church unless there was an emergency. He imagined Mister John asking Momma where he was tonight and wondered how much trouble he was going to be in later. He pulled up close to the massive live oak. An old pair of work boots hung from one of the gnarled branches.

“This won’t take long.” The Devil got out, grabbed one of the sacks, and slung it over his shoulder. The yard glowed blue with moonlight as he walked over to the tree and dropped the bag down against it. He pulled the boots off the branch and set them down beside the sack, then, reaching into the sack with long hands, he began scooping out fistfuls of something, and dropping it into the boots. As Jackson squinted to make out what he was doing, the Devil’s head jerked up to face him. His eyes glowed yellow in the dark like a cat’s. After a moment, he looked back down and continued his work until he had emptied nearly the

Pyran Taylor

whole sack into the boots. Then he hoisted the bag, walked over and dropped it into the truck, and got back into the passenger seat. “All finished. We need to go to the hospital.”

They spent the next few hours driving from one place to the next, stopping at lavish two-story houses, and lowly lean-tos and trailer homes alike. Most often money from the sacks was left in a shallow hole or under a porch. But more than once, the Devil went inside for a while, there was a bright flash inside the house, like all the lights inside were turned on at once, and the Devil walked outside a few minutes later with a slight grin at the corner of his lips. Then he’d get in the truck and they’d drive off to the next place. They must have visited a dozen or more houses that night, before they made it back to the house. It was well after midnight when they finally walked through the door.

When they stopped in the driveway, the Devil thanked him for the company, pulled the full sacks out of the back of the truck and went upstairs to Daddy’s room and closed the door.

Jackson went to his own room, exhausted, and fell asleep in his clothes on top of the blankets. The only thing he could think about as he waited for sleep was the last house they visited.

Before he finally fell asleep, he thought he heard the sound of a doorknob clicking down the hall. ~ The next day, when Jackson woke up, it was almost noon and the whole house smelled like fried chicken. Momma

The Devil That you Know

was standing over the stove when he walked into the kitchen behind her and sat down at the table, bracing for her to yell at him for missing church the night before.

She turned and looked at him for a moment. “About time you got outta bed. It’s almost noon, you know.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Save your sorry for someone sad. Go get cleaned up.

Lunch isn’t quite ready, yet.”

He got up to leave. “Where’s He at?”

“Out bush-hogging the back field. Been at it since daylight. Told me you and him got that old tractor running yesterday.”

“Yeah, the coil was bad. We just put in a new one and it ran like a charm.”

She nodded and smiled. “That’s good. I expect you to be careful whenever you’re on that tractor, you hear. I couldn’t abide you getting hurt out there.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He rubbed some of the sleep out of his eyes. “You making cornbread?”

She turned back toward the stove. “It’s in the oven.”

“Where’s Cindy?”

“She’s out there riding on the tractor with him.”

“What? Why?” “It’ll be fine, Jackson. He don’t mean her any harm.”

Before he could say anything else, she added, “Now, hurry.

Food’ll be done soon.”

When he came back downstairs, Momma and Cindy were sitting at the table. He walked into the kitchen and grabbed a piece of cornbread from the pan on the stove. “I can’t stay. I need to go see Uncle Robert for a minute.”

“Well, sit down and eat first,” Momma said.

“Ain’t got time. I’ll be back in a little while.” ~ Uncle Robert lived in a dented trailer about five or six miles from the Ladners. The trailer was situated on about fifty square yards of grass, fenced off and surrounded by fields.

Come to think of it, Jackson didn’t know who the fields belonged to, just that Uncle Robert had been keeping them up as long as he could remember. He pulled the pickup truck onto the circular gravel driveway that cut into the grass and parked behind Uncle Robert’s truck.

After he knocked a couple times, the old man opened the door and waved him inside, cold air spilling out into the summer heat. “Lettin’ all the cold air out, boy. What you doing here, anyway?”

“Ain’t been over in a while. Figured I oughtta stop by.”

He used to ride his bike over here all the time when he was younger, but things had changed. Now there was school, and church, and girls, and a ton of other things to think about that didn’t seem to leave him with enough time to come visit an old Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 45

The Devil That You Know

man who’d treated him like one of his own family. He promised himself he would get over here more often in the future.

The old man walked through the dark living room and into the kitchen, where sunlight streamed through a small window over the sink. He opened the refrigerator door and called out. “You wanna beer?”

“Yeah, okay.” He sat down on the couch across from the black and white television that Uncle Robert used to watch old cowboy shows. There was barely any furniture in the house.

Besides the couch, there was a recliner in the living room, a small table and a couple of chairs for the kitchen. His guitar leaned against the wall near the recliner with a white pick stuck between the strings on the neck. It had a black body with white lining and a worn spot just below the sound hole where years of finger picking had eroded the varnish and exposed the wood.

Jackson reached out and strummed his fingers across the strings, then ran his hand up the neck and pressed his fingers into the only chord he could remember. He couldn’t think of what it was called. It had been too long since he’d played.

Uncle Robert walked into the room holding two beers, handed one to Jackson and sat down on the recliner. “Gotta move your pinky down for a B seven. That’s it.”

Jackson popped the top on his can and took a sip. He noticed a small black suitcase next to the door. “What’s the suitcase for? You goin’ someplace?”

The old man leaned back in the recliner and took a long swallow of beer. “I s’pose I might be. Bout that time, I reckon.”

“Where to?”

“Can’t rightly say.”

“Is it got something to do with the Devil coming over here last night?”

“No, boy. Got something to do with the Devil coming a long time ago.” He took another drink of beer.

“What are you talking about?”

“Ain’t important. Everybody gotta pay their debts when the man come to collect. Now you better go on and get outta here. I got some business to take care of here in a little while. Here.” He leaned over and picked up the guitar by the neck, and handed it to Jackson. “Take this with you. I ain’t gonna be needin’ it no more. Maybe you can get some use out of it.”

Jackson held the guitar down by his side, his arms limp. “Maybe we can talk to him and you won’t have to go.”

Uncle Robert smiled and shook his head. “Deal’s a deal, boy. Always be a man and live by your word.

Ain’t no man at all if you can’t keep your word. I expect it’s your job to keep them fields cut now, you hear. I heard you and him got that old tractor runnin’ again. Carburetor wasn’t it?”

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Jackson shook his head. “Coil was bad. We changed the spark plugs, too.”

The old man laughed. “I never did know nothing about working on engines. Now go on and get outta here. Take care of your momma and baby sister.”

Jackson walked out of the door and into the bright sunshine, got in his truck and drove away. The old guitar sat on the passenger seat on the ride home. ~

By Sunday morning, a storm was brewing. Dark clouds drifted overhead, the wind buffeted the sides of the house, and when Jackson finally woke up, Momma and Cindy had already left for Sunday School. Just like every other Sunday morning he could remember, sausages and biscuits were on the stove. As he passed through the living room, the Devil looked up at him from the recliner where he was sitting, reading the Bible, his tail curled up over the plush arm of the chair. “Morning. Better hurry.

Gonna be late for church.”

Jackson looked at his watch. Ten-sixteen. He continued through to the kitchen and grabbed a sausage and a biscuit and ran back upstairs to get ready for church.

Despite the weather, Faith Point Baptist Church was bustling when Jackson pulled into the gravel parking lot, the Devil in the passenger seat. The lot was scattered with people making their way from their cars to the church house, walking in pairs or alone, with the occasional kid who hadn’t made it to Sunday School running ahead of his parents toward the building’s large white double doors. Another large group of kids chased each other around the side of the red brick building from the direction of the Sunday School building that ran alongside the church. The lead kid nearly slammed into Brother Mark where he stood at the doors, smiling and greeting everyone as they

Pyran Taylor

entered, shaking hands with his right hand and touching arms with his left. He smiled and tousled the boy’s hair, ushering him inside with a hand on the shoulder.

They got out of the truck and made their way toward the church alongside everyone else. Gusts swirled around them as they walked. Thunder rumbled behind the trees behind the church, and a cold front seemed to be moving in as they walked.

The Devil spoke. “Nice day for a service, ain’t it?”

“It’s gonna rain,” Jackson said.

“Getting wet can be a good thing, though. Adversity affirms faith. Every day can’t be sunshine and rose petals.”

Sprinkles of rain fell from the sky.

Brother Mark smiled at Jackson, and shook his hand— left hand on Jackson’s arm—when he made his way up the steps.

“Morning, Jackson. Nice day for a service, ain’t it?”

Jackson nodded. “I reckon it is.”

“Your momma tells me you’ll be helping us out with Vacation Bible School next week. We all greatly appreciate that.

I know you grown boys got grown boy plans, but it’s awful nice of you to take time out to spread the word of the Lord to the little ones.”

Jackson nodded and let go of his hand.

The Devil walked up the steps behind him and shook the preacher’s hand, touching his left hand to the man’s arm.

“Morning, preacher. Fine day for a church service.”

Brother Mark smiled. “It is at that. I don’t believe I caught your name.”

The Devil smiled. The first sprinkles of rain sizzled when they landed on him and white wisps of steam rose off his shoulders and arms.

The preacher maintained his smile and retracted his hand. “Enjoy the service. Good to have you visit us today.”

The weather outside had done nothing to diminish the spirits of the people inside the church. Many of the older members of the congregation sat, while the young people milled around and greeted each other, smiling, laughing, and clapping shoulders. Miss Ellen, the church pianist, played a slow song, though Jackson couldn’t remember what it was called.

Something about Calvary, maybe. Momma sat among the choir, behind the pulpit, whispering something to Cindy. Sarah Molton sat in the row behind them; her mother wasn’t with her.

Jackson and the Devil walked up to the second pew on the right and sat down close to the inside aisle. Momma glanced up at them briefly before pointing something out in the hymnal to Cindy. A few up-and-coming young men in the church passed by and shook each of their hands in turn before smiling and walking away to greet someone else. At eleven o’clock sharp, everyone took a seat in the pews, and Brother Mark stepped up onto the pulpit. “Good morning, brothers and sisters. Mighty fine weather the Lord has blessed us with this morning. Can I get an amen?”

The Devil That you Know

Several amens rang out from the pews, among a smattering of slow claps, and punctuated by a distant boom of thunder.

Brother Mark continued. “Let’s begin by taking out our hymnals and turning to page one-thirty-six. ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ Let’s stand up and sing, and shake some of the sluggishness out of our bones for the Lord.”

Like snakes from a basket, the congregation rose above the pews as the piano played the introduction to the hymn.

Jackson pulled a worn hymnal from the back of the pew in front of him and the Devil did the same. They both stood, thumbed through the yellowed pages, and found the song’s beginning with their forefingers. Though he’d been singing hymns all his life, Jackson still never knew when to begin, so when everyone else sang, he started a second or two later.

Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!

E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me, still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to thee; nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee!

Jackson zoned out a little and glanced across the aisle, the thick pitch of the Devil’s voice resounding in his ear.

Standing and singing as loud as anyone else was Old Mister Pete, and beside him was his wife, Carol. She didn’t seem very sick, and they both looked healthier than ever. Mister Pete’s hair had been pretty thin the last time he’d seen him, but now it wasn’t very thin at all. His head wasn’t even bobbing from the shell shock like it always had.

He glanced back at the Devil, who didn’t seem to notice him. His eyes were raised toward the ceiling and glowed with a soft yellow light. His hymnal was lying on the pew beside him, yet he never lost the words of the song. Jackson had to step nearly into the aisle because of the heat coming off his body.

Brother Mark spoke over the music, until it eventually faded away completely. “Brothers and sisters, that was one of the best hymns I’ve ever heard in any church in my whole life.

And let me tell you, I’ve been in a lot of churches in my twentyfour years of ministry work.”

Lightning flashed through the windows.

“Now let us pray: gracious and merciful Father, we seek you in this life. Sometimes we forget that you’re seeking us, too.

Sometimes we just don’t know where to look for you, Lord, and don’t seem to notice when you show yourself to us in so many ways, every day of our lives. Every day we have proof of your existence and love, yet so many of us remain doubters.”

A baby cried from the back pews.

“We ask that you draw us into your presence, Lord, and take away our doubt. Show the doubters and sinners of the world-- undeniable proof of your existence and love. As we begin our service, Lord, we confess our sins. We know we have Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 47

The Devil That You Know

trespassed and violated your ways, but Lord, please hear us as we make our confessions to you...”

He paused then, giving everyone in the congregation a moment to confess their sins. Jackson couldn’t come up with anything, so he tilted his head and watched the rain clink on the other side of the window.

Brother Mark continued, “Thank you, God, for hearing our confessions and our prayers and thank you for forgiving us.

Making us new and clean again. Your word tells us that if we confess our sins to you, that you are faithful and just, and will forgive us. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”

A chorus of amens resounded through the room, one lady somewhere behind them louder than the rest. Another familiar voice rang out behind him and he turned to see who it was as the people in the congregation took their seats. Uncle Robert was sitting down in one of the back pews, his eyes on the preacher. Jackson took his own seat and Brother Mark continued his sermon.

The next forty minutes were spent singing and praising the Lord, with a sermon devoted to seeking salvation and avoiding the perils and temptations of the earth. No collection plate was passed around that day and Miss Louise Sanders caught the Holy Ghost just like she did every Sunday. Three kids

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were saved as well as a newlywed couple who’d just bought land out past the Granger homestead. Thunder grumbled and shook the walls throughout the sermon, and lightning ripped across the dark sky every so often, bringing momentary light through the church windows. But sometime toward the end of the service, the storm clouds dissolved and a more permanent light shone down on the small church. By the time they all walked outside, everything, including the air, was wet with rain, but the relentless heat had brought in a miserable humidity.

Jackson made his way through the crowd of smiles and shaking hands, but didn’t see Uncle Robert anywhere. As one of the few black people in the congregation, he eventually spotted him making his way through the crowded parking lot. Jackson jogged to catch up to him, dodging around the other people walking to their cars. The old man turned around as he got closer and smiled at him.

“Well, hey there, Jackson. Awful nice sermon today wasn’t it?”

As Jackson caught his breath to speak, Uncle Robert looked past his shoulder. The Devil’s thick voice came from behind him. “Afternoon, Robert. You just about ready to head out?”

“Ready as I ever was.” The old man patted Jackson on the shoulder and nodded before he got into the truck.

“All right.” The Devil looked at Jackson. “We have to go now.”

“Why?” “Just the way things are.” He grabbed Jackson’s shoulder, his hand so hot it burned him through the button up and undershirt and his claws dug into the back of his arm.

“Take care of your momma and Cindy.”

The Devil let go of his shoulder and walked around to the passenger side of Uncle Robert’s truck. “Check under the house during the next full moon.”

With that, he climbed into the truck and Uncle Robert drove them out of the parking lot and down the old country road, until they disappeared behind some pine trees.

A Lady I Used to Know

by Kegan Doyle

You knew convenience store food was slow suicide, brutal for your arteries, and bad, bad, bad for your thirty-sevenyear-old heart, but so what? You knew a lot of things were bad but that didn’t stop you doing them. Only Holy Rollers and other religious fuckwits stopped doing what they liked and look where it got them—dead in the dirt like everybody else. And it was autumn cool in there. Your basement apartment was an oven that summer and so was your Skylark and you were another Jew-boy being cooked. So you zipped in every day and loaded up on grub, on smokes, on caffeine, and you lingered. Only later did you think that it had all come down to air conditioning, that if it hadn’t been there you wouldn’t have got to know her and your life might have continued on its fine and shitty way.

You told people that you didn’t go looking for her, that you didn’t prowl or hunt or stalk, that you weren’t a pervert. You told them the truth--that one day she was just there--a shy dirtyblonde twenty-year-old from a place faraway whose name you couldn’t pronounce--Haaksbergen. You told them that it was her under-bite and not her tits that you noticed. But they still didn’t believe you. They never did.

Maybe you should have known it was different this time and snuffed it before it snuffed you, but you kept coming back several times a day to lean on the counter, to chat, and to watch, always, always, to watch. Even under that white fluorescent light with a pot of stale coffee in her hand, she looked like an angel, like she really belonged in some gold-framed painting, holding a watering jug. “Back again so soon, my best customer?” she would say, handing you some beef jerky or car freshener or whatever it was that you pretended to need. It was that thick accent--those G’s and K’s came from some sexy dark part of the throat-- that really put the granite in your pants, that and her complete innocence.

My best customer! North American girls knew better.

One day you asked her out on a picnic and you brought her to the cliff in Lighthouse Park to watch the sun set. There had been a forest fire that afternoon. You had thought the smoke would blow off, but it didn’t, and so you sat in the haze with the sun looming in front of you like a giant cue ball. She coughed and apologized and coughed again. “Nice view of the apocalypse,” a tourist beside you joked. You couldn’t do anything right.

For years your poker buddies had told you that you had a dream job, a wet dream job, they would say: a booking agent for strippers, all that access, all that endless T and A! But you

told them that novelties wore off and that it was all professional regardless and that you didn’t get to know the girls in that way, that it was water, water everywhere and that Stella, the midget, was your only friend amongst them all and that that relationship was strictly Platonic. You told them that once a “nice” girl--the kind you wanted so much now that you were getting fat and old and used up--found out how you earned your living, you might as well have been a junkie or a leper. Yes, you were lonelier than Nixon in his last days in the White House, but they didn’t want to hear that. They hated their jobs and they hated their wives, and they wanted to believe that somebody somewhere wasn’t being ripped off and shat upon.

And then you found a nice girl--beyond nice--and you couldn’t believe it, couldn’t trust it. You said this isn’t me. A drop out dime store sleazebag doesn’t get the Rembrandt girl. All summer on the radio some English prick was singing, “Is she really going out with him? Is he really going to take her home tonight?” You couldn’t get away from it. When people stared at you two--the pretty woman out walking with the kike gorilla-they were thinking about that song, and if they weren’t, you were.

Look over there. Where? There’s a lady I used to know. Yes, things like this didn’t happen to you, and so you fucked it all up.

Day and night, you convinced yourself that she was your ticket, your means, that she was more than a girl, that she was money.

Yes, and once you had convinced yourself, you convinced her, and once you convinced her, you convinced her parents (you even used some Dutch, you sneaky cunt), convinced them that you were going to make her famous and everybody rich. When you wanted to, you could talk. You were good. You told Mom and Dad that the magazine was classy, tasteful, historic, that there was a proud tradition: Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Raquel Welch. And to prove how sure you were, with your last three hundred dollars, you paid for the studio and photographer yourself.

You should have known after the shoot that it wasn’t going to work. You hated that photographer--leering little Dago with a lisp and a handlebar moustache. When he handed you the final portfolio, the grin on his face made you want to smash six cameras on his skull and drive a tripod through his heart. You were in love.

You should have torched the photos on the spot. But you sent them down to California and the phone call came soon after--too soon--and then you and her were jetting down to Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 49

A Lady I Used to Know

Kegan Doyle

LAX first class. You spent the flight squeezing her hand, staring down at the mountains and the desert. If something was alive down there, you couldn’t see it. The magazine wanted more pictures, better pictures. Always more and better. Another shoot was arranged, and you weren’t invited. Three months later her face was on the cover. Only it wasn’t her. They had airbrushed her into somebody’s idea of the small-town cheerleader slut.

And now every American male from Lodi to Lafayette was at

So you stayed and lived it big in the City of Angels--cheques and invitations were rolling in, and in the land of cocaine and make believe you could make believe that this was about the two of you.

Then came the movie. The boss had decided that the Euro sweetheart was more than a photo spread. She had that natural ease before the camera, that rare magic. It was a bit part, yes--five lines--but this was Paramount Studios. You remember

liberty to gawk, drool, and wank. Mission accomplished. Were you satisfied? You should have gone home then, started over.

Learned to forget. But you had that apartment. It was a mangocolored palace, wasn’t it, with its sunken living room and three sofas and ocean view and tropical plants and glass tables and lighted mirrors and air conditioning and that bedroom upstairs.

her jumping around from sofa to sofa like a six-year-old yelling that this was a dream come true—Paramount. You used to go nuts for that accent but when she repeated that word it made you sick.

Instead of celebrating, you proposed to her. Were you trying to keep her or punish her? She froze, looked hurt. A few

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Kegan Doyle

minutes later she agreed--to shut you up no doubt. And the deed was done, a no-class quickie in Vegas.

But soon she was gone for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day. One day you met the director--an arrogant Hollywood twat with fancy glasses and an oily perm--and you sensed by the way he gave you the north-south that something had gone rotten, that he and others were telling her that she had to ditch this guy, had to lose the loser. Look over there. Where? There’s a lady that I used to know.

And you? You were losing yourself. You had to do something. You couldn’t just waste away in that apartment with your lines and your vodka and your soap operas and so it was that you got work as a bouncer at the Zoom Room on Sunset Strip and so it was that you invested in two more apartments in West Los Angeles. And all the while you waited for the axe to fall, watched and waited, watched and waited. And one evening she came home late from the set and told you she was leaving you, temporarily of course. She wanted to spend some time apart. She said you could keep the apartment for when she came back, and you tried not to laugh. You knew it was the director, and you knew it wasn’t temporary. You surprised her and yourself, and you let her go, telling her that she could take as long as she wished. You even helped her pack and walked her to the car.

And then she was gone. And so soon was your money.

She offered you some, but you were too proud to take it. So you sold your investments at a loss and started hawking exercise equipment door-to-door. Dumb bells and bar bells and a bench-all stuff that would, if you used it right and often enough, give you the body you always wanted. That’s what you told the lonely fat fucks: Here buy this--it will give you the body you always wanted. Cosmic California bullshit. But they believed you--you could talk when you needed to-- and on you went.

And at home, in your own little mango Alcatraz, you worked out, tried to become more and better, bigger and stronger. You gave yourself that body. But you felt like less and less. Beneath the swollen muscles and ridges of veins, you were shriveling up. She didn’t call, so you relied on the wind, on rumour: her movie had finished production, you heard, and she had become a fixture at the Playboy Club, everybody’s bunny, you heard. And then one afternoon you went out to get smokes and coffee and you ended up in an outlet of that same store where all those months ago you had first laid eyes on her and there she was. Only now she was on the cover of that magazine.

Yes, she was on it again--the Playmate of the Year. You bought it and the pimply teenager at the counter said, “Nice tits.” And you said, “Well, I like the under-bite,” and laughed. Back at the apartment, you jerked off over the new pictures and then stood on the balcony and set the magazine on fire. But it was too late. The pictures weren’t yours to burn. After, you loaded up

A Lady I Used to Know

the bench press--two hundred and eighty pounds-- and pumped away like you never had before. Your arms were pistons: up and down, up and down, up and down, they went. You hoped you would give out, that the bar would crush you, bust your ribs, push that dead air out of you once and for all.

Why you? That was the only question left worth answering. Why you? You had found her, Miss Haaksbergen. You had created her. You had rolled the dice, and now everybody was cashing in but you. Now she belonged to everybody but you.

Did she still even think about you? You should have gone home, back to your rat life, back to that basement shit box. You still had the chance. But you couldn’t go home a failure. You hated explaining, and there would be weeks of it. Even Stella would want to know what went wrong in L.A. Soon you stopped leaving the apartment. Sometimes, you would lie there on the bed with your face stuck in a pillow, smelling her. Yes, she was still there, still there if you breathed hard enough, still there in the fabric, but soon her scent mixed with your own rancid pong. Why bathe, you thought. Why do anything? So you stared at the waves out the window, at the ceiling, and watched the plants die on the balcony. Those mango walls were closing in, and one day you butted a hole in one of them with your head. Stay back. Another day you punched out one of the lights around the mirror in the en-suite bathroom and it felt so good that you punched them all out, one by one, until the mirror went dark. You hadn’t talked to anyone, really talked, for weeks and weeks. And in your head a voice had begun to babble then command. Soon that voice was the only thing left. Look over there! Where? Look over there!

Where? Look over there! Where?

And then came that last afternoon. You were almost good, a perfect killer, but even that was a little beyond you. You cleaned up the place yourself, vacuumed and dusted, aired it out.

You moved a picture to cover the hole in the wall, replaced the mirror, and even found some new plants for the balcony. Spring had arrived. When she appeared at the door, blonde and beaming and radiant in a green print dress, you smiled back--remarkable, you were--and you invited her in and sat her down on the living room sofa and offered her coffee and mint chocolates.

You talked, ever so calmly, about her family, of all things, and you even said how much you missed them and you showed her the weights and talked about your business and she agreed that you were a natural salesman and when you sensed that she was searching for an excuse to leave, you, calmly, calmly, pointed at a little miracle out on the balcony--a yellow songbird was hovering near a cactus--and you wrapped the extension cord around her neck. She thrashed and flailed and swung at you with her elbows, but you were stronger. Of course you were--you had the body you always wanted. It should have taken only a couple of minutes. But you fucked it up again, didn’t you? A moment of weakness. Another fucking Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 51

A Lady I Used to Know

Kegan Doyle

moment of weakness--that’s all you were--one after another after another. You relaxed your arms, and she fell on the floor, panting, gasping, and coughing. She no longer looked or sounded like that nice Dutch girl, did she? Her face was swollen and splotchy, almost purple. And for a moment you thought that she had learned her lesson, that she knew what she had done, and that she would ask your forgiveness and that you could go back to how it was. You sentimental fuckwit. She didn’t plead. Of course, she didn’t. She crawled away, and as she did, she spat out a stream of curses in Dutch. Stomme klootsak. Stomme klootsak. Rot op. You didn’t understand them, but you knew her meaning--asshole, loser, moron. You had been hearing it your whole life, but still it startled you, coming from a nice girl like her, and you lost your cool. You picked up a dumbbell, forty pounds of dead lead, and you swung it down on her skull.

You were going to do it again, but she had collapsed on the floor, unconscious, her skull crushed.

To finish, you choked her lifeless neck, this time with your own big and hairy hands, a true professional. But as you sat astride her torso, with her face in the carpet, and squeezed and counted, something happened. You got hard. You hadn’t planned on this. You weren’t a creep--not that kind anyway--but you were turned on. Yes, you wanted to fuck her one last time. Necrophilia with a nice girl--that was you. You carried her up the stairs to the bedroom and peeled off her skirt and blouse and her panties and bra and flung them aside. Her head was bleeding and her hair was matted and dark. And you rammed it in and started thrusting away and as you did, the first Dutch word she had taught you came into your head--alstublief-and you said it out loud. “It can mean please or thank you,” she had said, and you said it every time you came into the store. How she giggled! Alstublieft. Alstublieft. Alstublieft. Then as you felt what it was like to be inside her again you had another moment of weakness--your biggest one yet--and started to cry. Yes, you started to blubber away. It streamed out of you, and didn’t those tears feel strange. You hadn’t cried since you were eleven years old.

And as you cried, something inside you changed. The voice went away, and for the first time in months you stopped hating her, you stopped hating period. For you knew that in a few minutes’ time, you would pull yourself out of her, walk across the room, open the top dresser drawer and reach down beneath the socks and underwear and grab that cool beautiful single-shot .22 that you had bought months ago from that pawnbroker in Long Beach. Yes, you knew that in a few minutes you were finally going to get something right.

52 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Jubilation!

Philip Kuan

What revelations await me on this amazing day? The minutes before dawn press against my window, greeting me with winter’s crispest silence before trumpeting heralds of productivity bundle the world into its rhythms. Whether it’s because of a car’s backfire or garbage truck, it hardly matters. What matters is the promise of something divine reaching through the fog, to alight the halo that I tend to imagine above my head.

Anticipation! I don’t resist the urge to jump out of bed and stretch my bones, to rinse my mouth and piss in a porcelain toilet as smooth as the tip of my chubbed up head. Baldness my friend would tease about if she weren’t herself so laid bare, too amicable to tease anything other than her own swimmer’s skin.

Hesitating thoughts like these lead me to spend too much time nurturing frivolous thoughts, letting ferment this urgency to meet her for that morning hike we’d promised so long ago yesterday. My doorman is vigilant, already faced forward as I step off the elevator, all smile and blush on his cheeks. Mr. Frosty prior to his miracle resurrection. I don’t mind that he doesn’t bother standing because my friend is already there, a different sort of smile beneath her cosmetic wool cap as she holds the world open. With winks and nods we greet one another, before setting out like a pair of teenage hooligans.

Cold breezes season us with wafts of freshly baked bread so well that our salivations feast upon imaginary loaves, trickery for those on a budget. Crackling sourdough dipped in a French onion soup, from a recipe that I’d love to try someday.

The park entrance bench seats two more of our friends on either side of an older man who refuses to move with a smile so rosy, so accommodating that I can’t help but chuckle at his defiance.

Before rising one of our friends warms my heart by covering the stubborn elder’s with a jacket, hushing his blushing skin from the mischievous frost.

We set out through a path of colorful beaches strewn with concrete and metal, manicured palms protruding from either side at intervals and draping us beneath canopies of crooked steel leaves.

Spotlights steam in from between their cracks as the laugh track of a thousand magpies scream out of the surrounding speakers, huddling us closer for comfort.

At some point I recognize that we’re but a dog and witch away from a striking advertisement I once found so many years ago, the plexiglass of an independent cinema mistakenly crumbled, explosions of local volunteers emerging from the woodwork so willing, so happy to rebuild the venue to its classic architecture, proud of the collective for allowing it to outgrow its former glory, to evolve into a perfectly respectable indoor farmer’s market. If I

weren’t ashamed, I’d be ashamed for forgetting the owner, kind as he was to the neighborhood children.

As we skip down our concrete road, chain-linked arms hopelessly coiled, we expand our borders with carefree steps until one has to stop. It’s the tin man, oil already evaporating as we huddle over him, offering our collective warmth to his limbs and joints and leaks as he waves us away with his loving smile. His repeated reassurances that he’ll catch his breath before catching up really are touching but hardly surprising, accustomed as we are to his mended heart.

Daffodil gardens, restless clouds, ponies taking flight, tainted rainbow bears, watermelon halves. Fudgsicles, just beginning to melt. It’s our cowardly lion who finally comprehends the beautifully crafted wall approaching the end of our journey, a historical landmark adorned with murals so haunting that he insists upon heading back for his camera, but not before stooping beside a flowerbed to scoop a rose into his lapel.

Crash! Hoopla! The arrival of a marching band flailing their brass and percussion scores is inspiring enough to bring us to our knees in prayer, brittle hands curving into hieroglyphs for some divine deliverance from the kindly musicians now approaching, now offering their guidance. One by one, we’re approached by strangersturned-friends, Peters and Wolves putting aside differences and C sharps to escort us home. The lion they leave to its roses.

Dorothy finds comfort within the crook of a flutist’s elbow, hanging on even as we’re blessed with a brief reunion, Tin-man all smiles as his hollowed chest blooms a garden of roses. The park entrance is where the last of us finally part. She’s been spending most of her time with her newest friend, and so we wink and nod out casual farewells while embracing so silently the true significance of parting.

My luster returns back in the city, when I notice my new companion taking a gander at my wrist. Barcodes, I explain. We’d decided to get them on a drunken birthday whim, though I still can’t remember when or how. My friend doesn’t respond, but he does take a picture. As we continue, a meditative shroud drapes over us, gradually binding us together. A different sort of wall is approaching me now, less cheerful, prompting me to ask how they found us this time.

It was your happiest thoughts, I think he replies. ***

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 53

Wanton Lane Malcolm Macdonald

The white and green pickup traversed east onto Wanton Lane. Cumbersome, the vehicle’s left front tire rolled over a steep curb, which started the driver, still groggy from the early hour, to a warier level of consciousness. The humid summer fog hung low under the wet, drooping ash tree branches, enveloping the already claustrophobically narrow street. The rectangular brick apartments seemed to lean on each other in stuck rows. Lusterless and dented station wagons sealed the two-way road to a one-way whenever a vehicle meandered through it.

The driver put his foot on the brake and eased slowly between two of the parked cars. The space was good but in front of a driveway so he had to be fast. He fumbled to find the order slip through the mess of paper, tools, and wrappers occupying the passenger seat beside him. Darting his eyes past the dash and just before the windshield, he found the yellow sheet.

“Fucking bullshit,” he slurred through his bared teeth and a strategically held pen. Yellow sheets were for recalls: if a customer was unsatisfied with the service of their lawn, they could call and complain and have the lawn redone for free. This one was specifically for the job he had been assigned last week: 86 Wanton Lane for a Christina Bataglia.

This property was particularly slim and precariously located (even for the cramped apartments on Wanton). The driveway up to the garage was almost vertical and the tight fit with the siding apartments left no front lawn for grass to grow. It was a backyard job, beyond a wooden, rickety fence. For most of these kinds of jobs the fence would be locked. The driver hated this; the owner of the backyard would usually come out and indignantly demand why the landscaper was trespassing on her property, amnesiac of the prior transaction with the company.

Today the driver found the latch on the other side easily enough with little maneuvering of his arm over the gate. He would much rather remind the indignant homeowner why he was there than explain to the overseer why the work was left. He, of course, had no recollection of Missus Bataglia: her appearance, her personality, or how long she had been a customer were blank to him.

Working for Lush Turf meant constant turnover both in clientele and in employees, and those who stayed employed saw hundreds of different properties per week.

Immediately, the driver saw that the yard was an atrocity. Amongst the burnt grass and exposed soil, weeds and nettle beds provided the only colour to the lawn. In the back, just to the right, stood an immense willow tree, its sickly turquoise and wooly leaves staining the rest of the backyard’s floor. The driver threw up his hands and let them fall, slapping down on his upper thighs in a massive shrug. What the hell was he supposed to do here?

“You want?” came a voice too close to the driver’s ear. He started and looked around to find a small, frail, elderly woman wrapped in a violet shawl, standing on the back stoop. The tanned epidermis of her shrunken, angular face betrayed what the driver presumed to be liver spots. “You want?”

“Uh” the driver started. “I’m sorry?”

“Nothing” she grumbled, just audible enough for him to pick up. “Sonny,” she restarted. Her voice sounded like the rusted hinges of a slowly opening door. “I need you. I need help.”

“Well, uh, ma’am” he said. “Where specifically would you like me to start here?”

“Not out here,” she croaked. “Inside.” She pointed, with her thumb to the glass patio doors.

“Uh, Missus Bataglia...”

“Christina” “Christina, we are not allowed to enter a client’s house under any circumstances. We are simply to fertilize either your back or front lawn. That’s it.”

“Please,” she begged. “Won’t take more than five minutes.”

The driver wavered then finally gave in, following the hobbling battle-axe into the tiny square of her home.

The driver’s broad shoulders barely fit through the tiny doorway, which led to the kitchen. The tiled floor, what he could see of it from damp discarded rags and pet rugs, was off-white with filth and neglect. On the counter and hanging off it were flattened leaves of lettuce, black around the curled edges, lying beside a square patch of a lighter shade, presumably where a television set had once been. He looked around only when the old woman’s back was turned so as not to seem rude by his expression, which he could only 54 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Malcolm Macdonald

Wanton Lane

guess was of complete awe and disgust.

“Do you want some tea?” he heard her voice. From his vantage point, her face was entirely hidden by her shawl and hunching shoulders.

“No,” he said rather sternly.

“Whisky?”

“Ma’am, could you just tell me what you need help with?”

“Just a minute,” she mumbled, to which he just audibly sucked his teeth.

She stopped at a wooden staircase, which looked bare as though it was in need of carpeting, and tossed her hand up indicating the second floor.

“Up there,” she said, half-heartedly. “I need a dresser moved.”

“A dresser?”

“Yes, a wooden dresser from one of the rooms. I was hoping to move it down to the front door. Please.”

A repressed sigh escaped from the driver’s nostrils.

The dresser was in a room that seemed transplanted in the squalid house; the bright flower pattern on the wall, along with the Victorian style mirror and a bed of furry toys, embraced the protruding light from the windows, not obscured by any curtains or blinds. The wooden dresser was the only bare object, in an otherwise decorative and joyous space. The driver felt lured to idle in the splendor of the infantile sanctuary, a much welcome break from his daily kaleidoscope of banal and disagreeable sights.

The dresser itself had a smooth surface and curved edges, leaving no sharp ends, and was of a handsome mahogany colour. The shelves were empty but still this would be no simple task by himself. He eased half of it out of the door, which was too snug for him and the dresser to pass through at once. From behind he pushed it forward until there was a small bang and it would only yield half an inch and then back if pressed further.

“It’s the banister,” he heard the old woman yell. He moved close to the door and peered out. The banister railing was too close for him to slide it out, even to slowly align it, and the door was too narrow to allow any other angles to push or pull. Sweat beaded down his face and dampened his uniform.

“Don’t worry,” the old woman said. “Why don’t you just come down and take a break.”

The driver pushed the dresser as far as he could to the other side of the door and sidled his way through. His belly and hips rubbed against the sides of the snug sandwich opening, leaving a trail of sweat on the wood. He walked down the steps slowly, hoping she wouldn’t say anything so he could go. But then he caught something in the old woman’s eye, what looked like tears forming, when she stared at the dresser. Her chin was beginning to tremble but she coughed and turned away, catching him looking at her.

“Come, sit down, will you?” she begged in a composed tone.

The driver felt a simmering wave of anger sweep over him. Elderly homeowners always wanted to talk and landscapers for Lush Turf were on commission! Regardless, he stepped over to a free throne-like chair with the pattern faded and the cushions torn open. He produced a cigarette from his breast pocket. He looked at her, hoping she would protest. Perhaps they would argue and it would escalate to her demanding he leave, but she just hobbled over and sat on the arm of a sofa opposite to him, it’s cushions nowhere in sight.

“You have a wife? Children?” she asked after an unbearable silence.

“No,” came the answer. He took out a plastic lighter and burned the edge of his cigarette, inhaling the first precious puff.

“What do you work for, then?” she asked.

“I work for Lush Turf, ma’am,” he reverted back to a professional, rehearsed tone. “We provide fertilizer for your Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 55

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lawn in the summer as well as moderate pesticide for weeds and white grubs and mole crickets.”

“No,” she said. “Why do you work for them?”

The driver paused at this and was quiet, having no answer to the question. Instead he brought back his cigarette and took a long pull. He exhaled a long breath and the answer came to him, but it was not one he would share with a stranger.

“That’s alright,” she answered. “You don’t need to know. Who knows anything about why they do things?”

The landscaper sat there with his cigarette pressed between his index and middle finger and thought. “Whose dresser is that?” he asked, his voice timid.

The old woman looked up in surprise.

“Sorry,” the driver said after a long answerless pause. “Not my business.”

“No, no, it’s alright,” she assured, seeming to gather her courage. “It’s my granddaughter’s room,” she explained. “That dresser is hers. I-- I’m glad you couldn’t get it out. I don’t want to sell it.”

Sell it? the driver thought. While the old woman prattled on about the room, which she had kept pristine and exactly how it was when her grandchild had lived there, he noticed the veins on her arms protruded with great definition from the skin of her emaciated wrists. Talking at further length, her frail fingers fidgeted up her arm, revealing blackened, purplish scabs close to the crook of her elbow, the cause obvious to the landscaper.

Not my business, he thought.

By the time she had finished discussing the room, its contents, and how pretty her granddaughter was, her face was wet and her voice choked with sobs. The sight should seem surreal and bizarre--and it did to the landscaper--but was, somehow, also liberating? He took another long pull of smoke before he interrupted her from revealing herself further.

“I don’t like being with people,” he said. “Being close to them. That’s my answer. That’s why I work this job.” The old woman had stopped crying. “We work 10-12 hours a day. Every day. Sometimes I don’t get home until nine. And then I have to be up the next morning at five so I can leave at six-thirty for work.” He took a drag. “No real time to be close to anyone then. Yup, I don’t do this for the money. Worst I get is some coot wanting to shoot the breeze. I don’t mind that; they just talk cause they’re lonely; they don’t want to know anything about me.”

The old woman took a moment to wipe her nose with her forearm, no tissue box visible in the house. “What about the people you grew up with? Your folks?”

“I didn’t grow up here,” he said, almost as a correction. “I grew up in Glenboro. I came here just two years ago.”

“Why?” “For the same reason. I don’t like being close to people.”

“Why’s that?”

He said nothing but looked around for a place to ash his cigarette. He saw that the old woman did not seem to care so he let the butt drop to the floor and stamped it out with his shoe. “I told you. I don’t like being close to people. I don’t like telling people about me either.”

The old woman wiped at her noise again. “They took my Esther, my granddaughter, away from me,” she began.

“Stop.”

“Said the living conditions were not fit for a child-- a dependent, they said. That I wasn’t a-- a fit guardian…”

“I said stop.” he snapped. Their eyes made contact for the first time. “It’s not my business. I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Oh, God,” she wailed. She crossed her arms to grab either bicep while her shoulders writhed up and down. Sickeningly, the sobbing, which animated her tiny, ancient frame, transformed her.

The landscaper sucked his teeth loudly and bit his lip. He hastily dug in the carton for a cigarette then offered it to the old woman.

Looking up through hooded, depraved eyes, she shook her head and let out a shrill, girlish giggle.

“No,” came the hollowed voice. “I need more than that.” She spoke as if to herself. Her hand, quivering, reached into the opening of her shawl, pulling out a yellow pill, the size of an egg, between her thumb and forefinger.

“Come on, lady, don’t.” he said, but she did not return an 56 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

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Wanton Lane

answer. It was as though she had decided his presence no longer warranted her attention. She sunk down from couch’s arm onto the springs and webbing. She hunched lower and dug around under the legs, finding a package wrapped in a discolored towel. She unrolled it, revealing two syringes, a lighter, and a hideously rusted silver spoon. Her jagged, sallow fingernails pried at the yellow capsule. Seeing the old woman’s hands fumble to uncork the top and release the narcotic inside, the landscaper breathed deep and made his decision to answer her question in full.

He began slowly: “In Glenboro I had an uncle.” She stopped moving, her head still down. “My father ran away when I was little, so he raised me. Or, he helped with it. My mother was young and her mother wasn’t much better to raise kids. My uncle worked in the mine, made pretty good money, so…they figured he was the closest to a success, I guess.

“I saw my mother and grandmother mostly on the weekends. I had to figure out something to do with myself after school until he came home. Otherwise, it was just me and him, right up until I was nineteen. He’d get laid off every once and a while, months at a time sometimes, and we’d get to know each other better. It was okay, because he could claim unemployment; the unions had his back. Anyway, we got real close. It was on one of my birthdays, the year he was off for four months straight, that he, I suppose, crossed the line. We crossed the line,” he corrected himself. He was now squirming in his chair while the old woman was still and observant.

“I was home--my uncle’s home--in tears. I didn’t have any friends. So, birthdays were spent alone, which was bad enough. I didn’t want anyone to know it was my birthday. But, one of the teachers that day got the bright idear of telling my class. She, I guess, wanted me to get out of my shell, you know? So word got around to a bunch of boys, bigger and older. They got hold of me during lunch and gave me fourteen punches in the arm apiece. One after the other-- hard too. That wasn’t so bad but except…it was in front of everyone in the cafeteria…and it was on a day that I hated.”

The old woman leaned in a bit closer. “Your birthday?”

“Right,” he replied, and lit the cigarette he had offered her for himself. “I didn’t ask to go home, didn’t tell anyone what they’d done. I just left. Left right at lunch. I knew no one would care, least of all my uncle. I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen by myself, crying. Worst of all it was a bright, sunny day, like this one. The kind people tell you is beautiful.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, my uncle gets home, loaded from the bar. He sits down across from me and listens. Listens to me just spill my goddamn guts all over the place. Crying away like a little girl. He listens and doesn’t say a word. He just sits there like a fucking…doll. After I’m done bawling, he tells me he wishes people weren’t like that. Tells me he wished the world wasn’t like that, but that it is. Tells me I’m sweet but that the world’s not.

“Then he gets up and walks around. He walks behind me and I can’t see him but I hear his breathing and smell the stale yeast. On my neck I feel what I think is his hand but it’s... wet. I feel it move and realize it’s his mouth; he’s kissing me. On the neck. My whole body goes numb and I’m scared.”

“And?” asked the old woman.

“Nothing. That was it. He told me the next morning we couldn’t do anything--shouldn’t do anything-- until I was done high school.

In the meantime, he said not to get close to any of the girls, and especially not any boys. Which was easy. So, we didn’t do anything else until some years later, on another birthday. When he said I was old enough. We got real close. Too close.”

The old woman rubbed her lips together and rearranged the kit without putting it away. Her question had been more than satisfied and she seemed to not want to hear any more.

The driver carried on anyway: “My mother found out about it first. She freaked at him but was even madder at me. She told me I was disgusting and that I was a disgrace and all this other melodrama, right? All these other condemning phrases that weren’t hers to make because she had never bothered to raise me.” He leaned back in the chair and the front legs lifted off the floor. “Wasn’t right. My uncle shouldn’t ‘ve done that to me. He was the adult, the older one.”

“Maybe he was just trying to keep you from how ugly the world is,” the old woman’s voice creaked. He shot a fast cold look Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 57

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at her.

“What?”

“It’s easier this way” she said, and appeared to resume her process of preparation. “It is easier to do things, pleasant, wonderful things, out of people’s eye.” She finally split the capsule in two and peppered its contents onto the end of the spoon. “I would like company,” she said, “and you’re welcome to share in my escape.” Her skeletal thumb’s knuckle rapped against the spark wheel of the lighter, creating split dashes of yellow and orange over the guard. The driver stood up.

“No,” he insisted, extinguishing his second cigarette, not nearly finished, into the floorboards before walking back where he came.

“Pain and suffering,” she persisted to the retreating visitor. “You work--do what you’re told and for loneliness? To suffer? Why is escape--pleasure--any different or worse than suffering doing what other people call good?”

Her words, despite his efforts to deflect them, seized his ears. Still, he continued, sliding open the glass patio doors without closing them and rambling out, back to the truck as fast as he could without running.

Once in the truck, he didn’t allow himself the chance to settle and continued his panicked flight. He turned the ignition and pulled back the gearstick. The vehicle slid down the driveway too fast and before he could put his foot back on the brake, the truck came to a crashing, quaking halt.

Meekly, the driver turned his head and looked back, over the truck bed, and saw that the back bumper was driven into the side of one of the parked station wagons, cracking the windows and compressing the driver door. The idling engine shook the frame of the pickup and growled loudly until he turned the engine key. For a moment he sat there in peace, until disturbed by the distant sound of juvenile laughter, which he could not place. Reluctant but resigned to his destiny, he turned the ignition back on, put the gear in drive, and treaded on the gas, only to park back up into the old woman’s driveway so he could get out and go back in. Past the rickety, brownish grey gate. Past the barren lawn and concrete steps to the patio doorway, the glass stained with mosquito guts, water drops that lingered too long, and black festering mold. Back in, to the escape offered and waiting for him.

58 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Poetry

L .B. Sedlacek Foundations Language is useful when unspoiled a powerful production one unrivaled interpreted distributed by birth unexpected arriving and joining forces undeniable

Guards Waving Flashlights Tonight’s performance isn’t sold-out or even half-full, the tickets were cheap, free for students.

Distortion creeps through the seats.

The sound check complete, volume looming. I whisper to my neighbor, “It’s too cold in here.” He says he’s been here for hours to get a good parking place. I see him after the show. He drives a royal blue Camaro. He’s parked beside the exit, but the guards won’t let him leave until the cars in back go first.

I wave to him as I pass.

He stares at me and turns his head like he doesn’t know me at all.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 59

Faith at the Heart and Hoof Tavern

by Thomas M. McDade

Pipe and other dreams stay that way for boring girls was a line Faith heard on a soap opera and she spoke it anytime an occasion called, followed by “Faith ain’t one. She’ll shove a sewer pipe up your dull-ass dreams.” All the drinking, smoking, ranting and raving she’d done during the pregnancy, now full-term, was not only a dream, it was a miracle. There she was, about to deliver the son of the movie idol looking outlaw she’d sainted and idolized before and after the state police shot him dead at a hijacking scene. She was sprawled on her favorite chair by her beloved oversized oak card table in the Heart and Hoof Tavern, long auburn hair cut short for the occasion but she didn’t swear off the hot pink lipstick that made her mouth sex symbol true. There was no clamping her tongue.

Moon-faced Keenan in his forties who’d been dizzy ever since falling out of his infant crib and four-foot-nine Todd who acted like he was six-ten and as tough as his Marine haircut spread the Tavern’s holiday flag to prevent splinters. Keenan continued bragging on his one try lock pick entry. Todd shut him up by threatening to yank out his tonsils. Howitzer, the bloodhound bequeathed to the Heart and Hoof by a WWII artilleryman named Arnie Perk, plopped down on some newspaper comic pages in a corner after whimpering twice.

Faith ordered Todd to cover the clock over the bar with a towel. She said she was going to keep her own time. She put her watch and Francy’s in her purse, said she could figure her contractions in her head as a jockey does fractions in a race. Francy Small was Todd’s sixteen-year-old sister, pretty, petite and shapely, rosy cheeks and perfect teeth. She’d plucked my brass ring of a heart against the wishes of her father and brother Otis. They never said a word but I could sense building objections to my interest.

Otis was a shipmate on the USS Mullinnix who’d invited me to his hometown of Harper’s Ferry for an afternoon of horseracing at the Charles Town races, plus room and board. He deserted me when an old girlfriend showed up at the Heart and Hoof. I had to take a cab to the track.

Saluting the flag turned tablecloth, Todd said, “Young Ellis will know America from the start,” and marched around singing “Yankee Doodle.” I imagined the American Legion, VFW, and DAR stringing us up for using the colors as a welcome mat. Gazing at the fifty stars I almost wished to be underway checking out live ones. That longing slipped away after a glance at Francy. Our lives at the Heart and Hoof went on as if nothing extraordinary was about to happen. We played Gin, shot bumper pool and fed the jukebox quarter after quarter. Keenan said Todd “moidalized” Buck Owens’s “Together Again.” Then he joined the massacre with Roger Miller’s “More and More I Think About You Less and Less.” “Never,” vowed Faith. Francy sang Patsy Cline’s “I Go out Walking after Midnight.” She winked at me. Faith sang George Jones’s “White Lightning” and called Kentucky Derbies featuring two winning colts her dad had picked on his tip card: Needles and Venetian Way. We were one hell of a revue. I tortured the hell out of “Sounds of Silence.” Todd walked the bar on his hands after saying he might someday be a circus acrobat and Keenan did a hundred pushups without Todd forcing him to!

Just after I had a boilermaker which I promised would be my last, those fifty stars caught my eye again and it struck me I’d gone from thirteen colonies on my bells that I’d told Faith were thirteen chances for a gal to say no, to fifty states in less than twentyfour hours. Keenan swept the floor for the umpteenth time and I scrubbed my hands with Boraxo, my count not far behind his.

We gabbed like a family at a reunion but sometimes I felt we were stuck in an air raid shelter in London, WWII. Tales of Ellis abounded, his fights, larcenies, and big heart and the record twin double he once hit. Everyone was so damned sad he was gone. I felt like disputing them; he seemed more everywhere than God did but I kept my trap shut. Faith made labor look easy. I’d always imagined bullet-biting pain. She kept talking despite breathing maneuvers and winces. Francy tried to get her on the table but she refused. “I’d feel like a stiff on a morgue slab unless it was my time.” She finally broke the smoking ban and on the strength of her breathing, the cigarettes burned like speedy fuses. The drinking never stopped. It hit me that the baby might be born dead and I prayed against it.

“Should we get your mom?” I asked Francy.

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Faith at the Heart and Hoof Tavern

“Leave well enough alone,” she advised.

I figured she meant don’t take any chances on her blabbing to old man Small.

When Faith told them about the thirteen colonies business we’d gone through when we’d met, I offered my “Thirteen Colonies to fifty states line.” Francy ran her hand over my thigh and moved her finger from one button to another, smiling seductively. Then she pulled her hand away and blushed.

“Sounds like a promising country song title”, she said.

We composed a tune about our crazy time together. Todd insisted on a verse about me barfing at the finish line when I’d carried Francy across it earlier in the night. We hopped the fence to get into the track like Saint Ellis used to do. The night watchman was a friend of the Small family. Dream Count was my horse name after my big winner that afternoon inspired by Faith’s jukebox pick.

Francy’s lines included gems such as “If you can’t tackle love, tie its shoelaces together,” remembering she’d hid then ambushed me after we’d exited the Small residence by window and porch roof.

Faith supplied a verse that began, “Is it bad luck for a gal to say ‘yes’ thirteen times?” She got sillier and sillier until Todd surprised me by asking if I’d say a rosary because it was Sunday and he’d never heard one before. He’d asked to see my dog tags earlier, saw the “Catholic.” I figured he was setting me up for joking but went along, saying one on my fingers. They were as reverent as clergy would be and were praying along at the end. We had a big hug session after I finished. Man, if the Jesus hating boatswain mate could have seen me.

They were practicing crossing themselves when I went to the men’s room. Sitting down, I dozed and dreamed that stuntboy Todd was Peter Pan. Never Land would be a good name for a bar, I thought, snapping awake. I noticed something scratched on the

wall over the condom machine. On the way out, I read it. “All Horseplayers Die Broke.” I took out my fingernail clipper and edited.

When I left it read, “Tall Horseplayers Die Broke, But I Love Francy Small, bigtime.” I figured they’d all gag over such sappiness.

A step out the door I saw Faith on the table naked, a sight that nearly paralyzed me. Francy led me to the bar to scrub my hands in a special solution. Walking to my battle station, I slipped where Faith’s water had broken and nearly fell. Keenan gave me a whisky bottle which I started to put to my lips but stopped. Francy had me scrub my hands again.

“Hey, Tom,” said Keenan, “’The pleasure’s all yours’ is going to be part of the song!” That was his favorite comment after he shook someone’s hand.

“Congrats, Keenan,” I said. I whipped off my jumper and Todd went nuts when he saw the crossed anchors.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 61

Faith at the Heart and Hoof Tavern

Thomas M. McDade

“Holy shit,” he shouted, “Sailor Boy Tom’s got a tattoo, anchor clanker, anchor clanker.” He continued until Francy took a swing at him. She touched my anchors like something precious.

“Come on,” I said, trying to sound brave, “we’ve got work to do.” My eyes roamed Faith’s body and I wasn’t as embarrassed as I’d expected to be. She was a masterpiece. I imagined Francy on the same table someday, full of our child. I figured delivering Ellis, Jr. would easily outrank my two Dream Count experiences. I damned myself for even comparing. I couldn’t wait to tell my shipmate Rabbit, who was hooked on the sky. We’d find a commemorative constellation!

“Now!” cried Faith. Keenan braced her. Todd held her hand and positioned the mirror so she could observe. Francy chanted breathing instructions. Howitzer was sitting at my feet. Faith moaned “Amazing Grace.” We hummed along. I got my fingers on the baby’s head. I was scared it would disconnect, but all went as smoothly as a fixed horse race and I felt like a magician. When the shoulders were out, Faith shooed me away and finished. Francy cleaned off the mucus. Of course, it was a boy. He didn’t’ cry, just yawned. I guessed it would take Ellis, Jr. a long time to sleep off all the booze and nicotine. They skipped slapping his butt, called it too violent. They jump started him with rubs. I figured I’d be following the kid’s life as I would Dream Count’s races and beyond. I wished Faith had taken better care of herself.

She held Ellis to her breast and I thought of a little girl with a rope tied to her doll so she wouldn’t lose it.

“What about the cord?” I asked Francy.

“Nothing to rush about,” she assured me.

Todd wrapped mother and son in the flag and with a Magic Marker he’d gotten from Keenan’s pocket, traced around Faith as if he were designing a new state. “I’ll make it permanent later,” he said.

“He’s not sucking,” said Faith, “sucking is what forces the placenta out. I hoped that wasn’t an indication he would be a ‘boring’ boy; nah, impossible. Get over here, Barnacle Tom,” she ordered. I froze, looking at Francy for permission. She nodded and smiled. I took over for Ellis Jr. I thought I was perverted because I was enjoying her tit so much and my mind kept flashing back to Faith’s legendary sex experience on that table that I continued to believe was a fanciful pot pipe dream one of Ellis’s enemies loosed on the Heart and Hoof. Everyone taking a nipple turn made me feel less weird.

“Custom says the placenta should be buried in a garden,” said Francy, “But what’s customary about this crew?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ll bury it at the track where we tossed Ellis’s ashes!”

“Under a full moon,” I said.

“Let’s baptize baby Ellis,” suggested Todd.

“God bless America,” said Keenan, placing his bottle of Early Times over his heart as the newborn figured out nourishment.

62 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Nostalgia Man

by Alexander Brown

Nostalgia Man sat quietly in the back of the darkened theatre, baseball cap tugged down over his bearded face, his shoulderlength hair tucked delicately behind his ears. He couldn’t let them see him-- the “normies”-- the kind of folks he so often had to save. He couldn’t let the job get too personal. It was hard enough on him as it was.

The party was a dull one, but this was why he was here. He took a deep breath.

“Hi, folks!”

“Nostalgia Man!” The jubilant masses replied.

The screen flashed to life. One ad. Then another. Five more. A couple strolled in late.

They almost missed the trailers, he thought.

He loved the trailers.

In the hours to come he would put on his little show, rescuing friends and strangers from small talk about work and house hunting and maybe getting a pet and all the other types of ennui that take up every waking minute of your day once you realize that childhood was just an early vacation from an otherwise soul-crushing existence.

The trailers played. Some were pretty interesting.

Too much CGI, though. Movies used to rely on practical effects.

The film started. Batman was fighting Superman, for reasons that to this day remain unclear.

He afforded himself a smile. His head was ringing and his body ached from the night before, but he could still find fleeting, simple pleasures.

When it was over he stayed in his seat until the theatre was empty, before making his way down a labyrinth of escalators to the world below.

He was thinking how it wasn’t quite as bad as the reviews suggested, when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He was needed.

A quick change in a back alley and he was on the move, sliding over the hoods of moving cars, slipping through back alleys. A blur in the night.

He took the fire escape to the apartment, scaling heights that would make even the most ardent rock climber blush. The bedroom window was unlocked, and as he made his way gently down the hall he saw why he was needed.

He’d push them to talk about their hopes and dreams and artistic endeavours. He’d celebrate their little, personal accomplishments, the kind that really mattered. He’d take up space in their heads, teasing out the slightest of interests and the fondest of memories.

“It wasn’t as bad as _____,” he would say. And, “do you remember _____?”

And when asked, “what did you think about ____?” his energy would grow, as if you were feeding quarters into a machine.

And the stories, all those stories. Complete memory recall. His greatest power. He had something for everyone.

He couldn’t put out a kitchen fire or hold down a steady job, but he could tell them all about the one time he ran into David Cronenberg in a Starbucks-- he was really nice-- or how he was also a big fan of whatever it was they were into. And those friends or strangers would end up heading back into the night, having had a better time than they expected. Not ever knowing precisely why.

He’d take their pain, and once it was done, he’d find himself again sitting in an empty room, trying to figure out if he had ever really been there at all.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 63

SHUT THE door TO KEEP THE cold AIR IN

by Moshe Prigan

Once while alone in the kitchen I committed a daring act of intrepidity and opened the fridge door as I wanted to snack on something and my mother called out from her room shut the fridge door to keep its cold air in and I always wondered why she was saying that give some cold should flow out when something is taken out but I gave up and closed the door like my unanswered question about what had happened to her family during the war because all I knew was that she had left home at the age of seventeen and when I tried getting her to talk saying she was a heroine or a revolutionary figure I should adore she shrugged until I found a book where I read German soldiers shot her father and brother on the edge of a soggy pit and then failed to drown her mother in the nearby half frozen lake because it wasn’t deep enough so they shot her by the order of their General who called them bandits because they resisted which I wished was true since I could have had more heroes in my family and after the killings they took pictures while shaving and barbecuing Knackwurst sausages by their horses that were stretching their necks toward the ground to browse the grass popping out of the snow as seen in winter scene postcards and I wanted to go to Germany and kill the General pictured adorned with medals and a sword but I didn’t do anything as I wasn’t a hero nor a revolutionist as my mother was and when I open the fridge door I take out quickly what I need and close the door fast before my mother who’s already gone calls out from somewhere shut the door to keep the cold air in.

64 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Allen Berry

THE CLARINET, THE FEDORA, AND THE ASHES OF US You know the sound that a clarinet sometimes makes, the sound that you sometimes hear in old detective stories, all sad and low, the soloist speaking in a voice that no hopelessly cheery Benny Goodman could ever hope to achieve… something sad, dry, and lonely…wearing a fedora.

It’s this kind of accompaniment that I long for tonight, sitting alone, the shadow of venetian blinds playing across the ashes of us, scattered over my coffee table.

A melted candle from our romantic dinner, a snapshot in front of some tourist trap on the road to some far off place.

And finally, as that solo clarinet player and I meet and pass each other on the darkened street of my mind, our fedoras tilted at just the precise angle…

I find a penny in the ashes, the one with the heart-shaped hole in the middle.

I wonder did all the love leak out through that hole?

Fading away, like a clarinet solo in the dark.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 65

THE MUSIC OF LEAVING After it’s done, I toss my heater into the bay, and head for Louie’s to wait. After about twenty minutes, she strides into the place and her feet aren’t even touching the ground. We find a booth in the corner, as Chet Baker plays on the jukebox. He’s singing “The Thrill is Gone.”

She tells me that it was all a lie, and that she’s leaving me to be with some other schlub who can make her scream things in Spanish, even though she’s never studied a foreign language. Says lots of luck, then she throws a drink in my face for no reason other than dramatic effect; gets up, and saunters out.

On the street, a taxi driven by a sleep deprived Lithuanian immigrant jumps the curb, and plasters her to the sidewalk before what she said to me can sink in ... and it strikes me: with the right music, anything can sound romantic.

- Sam Marlowe

66 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Fashionista Noir Philip C. Kolin

She insisted on the timeless-the purest pearls from Mikimoto formed over eons in the ocean; gowns dreamt only by Versace but never worn twice lest she duplicate her uniqueness; handbags made from the cultured hides of extinct animals; she boasted she outlived and outshone them and designer watches crafted for eternity.

She lived on the top floor of the Bellagio, her walls a rotating gallery of portraits-seraphic angels and saints whose bodies never decompose.

Her pillows were stuffed with soothsayer tongues promising longevity.

At parties she entertained guests with recorded party chatter extolling her ageless beauty in the background.

She swam in infinity pools until she died one night and went to hell and learned the devil wore cheap flip flops that fell apart after only a few days and all she brought were her winter clothes.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 67

The Well Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

Raven leaned back in a chair with her feet propped up in another, sipping a Coke. She wore a large white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up with a laminated badge clipped to the right sleeve, faded blue jeans with holes in the knees and white running shoes. Dark sunglasses sat on the table beside her.

She looked around the large room dominated by tables and chairs. Around many of the tables sat groups of people talking, eating, or playing various role-playing games. Every now and then someone or the entire table would cheer or cry out in dismay at whatever number was rolled on the many-faceted dice used to play the game.

The smells of sausage dogs and pizza had Raven’s stomach growling in displeasure for her negligence in not feeding it.

Raven put a hand over her protesting stomach and let out an irritated breath. She quickly grabbed up her sunglasses and slid them on her face. “Where are you?” she grumbled to herself as she checked her watch.

Raven looked around the room again hoping to spot her late friends. As she did she saw a man wearing a red t-shirt, tan shorts, flip flops and a laminated badge hanging around his neck from a lanyard standing by the door. Next to him was a woman wearing a brown pants suit with a white blouse underneath. Her hair was cut even with her jaw line so that it framed a severe face.

The man pointed at Raven and said something to the woman, who nodded. They started walking toward Raven but had to stop as a group of women rushed by them dressed as Slave Leia from Return of the Jedi. The woman watched the group of scantily clad women with hard eyes and a disapproving frown.

The man touched the woman on the elbow, and she nodded and followed him over to Raven.

“Miss Blackwood?” the man asked as he and the woman stopped at a respectful distance.

“Yes,” Raven replied, eyeing the two people in front of her.

“Hi! My name is Andy Reid and this is my aunt, Virginia Huntchenson,” Andy said. “I apologize for just barging in like this, but my aunt would like to ask you a few questions about the panel you just hosted for your paranormal magazine, Unknown.”

“Sure,” Raven said, taking her feet out of the chair and sitting up. “Please sit down.”

Andy pulled a chair out for his aunt and took the chair Raven’s feet had occupied a moment before. As he eased into 68 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

the chair Andy held his side as if it pained him.

“So what would you like to ask?” Raven inquired, looking at Virginia, who sat rigid in her chair as if the back had thorns sticking out of it.

“Why are you wearing sunglasses indoors?” Virginia asked, giving Raven a disapproving frown.

“Aunt Virginia,” Andy said in a harsh whisper. “Does it matter?”

Virginia looked at Andy with an unconcerned look. “Of course it matters.” She looked at Raven with narrowed eyes.

“Not long ago she and her colleagues were giving a lecture on… ghosts,” she said, making a face as if the word left a bad taste in her mouth, “and showing blurry photos and questionable short films of supposed evidence of their findings. Now she’s sitting alone wearing sunglasses indoors. If I am going to ask her my questions I want to make sure she’s not high off some drug.”

Raven raised an eyebrow as she stared at Virginia in surprise.

“Aunt Virginia, please be civil,” Andy pleaded. He looked at Raven. “I do apologize for this.”

“Andy,” Virginia snapped. “Be quiet and let Miss Blackwood answer my question. It’s bad enough I let you talk me into coming to this,” she said, looking at the people at the tables with a disapproving look, “around these people.”

Raven toyed with the thought of telling Virginia the truth. That five months back she and her colleagues had fought a Comanche who had given up his life to gain dark powers to become a Revenant. It was during that case Raven learned she had a power within her. A power that had the side effect of literally making her eyes glow if she became angry.

After a moment, Raven had two thoughts against it.

First, telling Virginia that would come across as if Raven were mocking her. Second, it was evident Virginia was not one who frequented science fiction conventions. Something bad had forced her out of her comfort zone to come here, and Raven was curious as to what it could have been. “I have an eye problem,” Raven lied. “Bright lights can give me a headache. But if it would make you more comfortable I’ll gladly take them off,” she said, taking off the sunglasses.

Virginia looked into Raven’s emerald green eyes a moment. When she was satisfied Raven’s eyes looked normal, she nodded approvingly.

“See, Aunt Virginia. She’s ok,” Andy said, giving Raven an apologetic smile.

Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

“I said be quiet,” Virginia said, giving Andy a hard look.

“I will conduct this meeting as I see fit. And stop rubbing your side. You’ve been doing that all day.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Andy replied, putting his hands in his lap.

“What is it you would like to ask me?” Raven inquired.

“I’ll try to answer your questions as best as I can. And if I can’t, I’m positive one of my friends will be able to.”

“Speaking of which, where are your friends?” Virginia asked, looking around. “I was hoping to speak to you all at one time.”

Raven nodded in understanding. “Ethan, River, and Candy went up to the room to put up the equipment. They are supposed to meet me here so we could go get something to eat.”

“Yes, I saw,” Virginia said. She looked over at the Slave Leias. “I was going to try to speak to them after your lecture. But your friend Ethan was surrounded by some…” Virginia hesitated a second, “by some energetic young ladies.”

Raven rolled her eyes. “Yeah, they have been doing that since our first panel Thursday evening.”

“You have troubled the village of Fimar for the last time, knave!” someone yelled in a bad Scottish accent a few tables away. “You shall feel the painful kiss of my blade.”

Raven watched Virginia turn to look sternly at the person who had yelled. The look quickly turned to shock when she saw it was a middle-aged man wearing a green t-shirt that read “hobgoblins the other, other white meat,” stretched over an ample stomach, a blue and red kilt, and polished combat boots.

He was vigorously shaking something in his hand.

“Roll for your attack,” encouraged an older woman wearing elf ears, sitting at the head of the table behind several

cardboard screens.

“Huzza!” yelled the man in the kilt, as he threw a purple die onto the table. “Twenty, I hit him,” he said, holding a fist up in victory.

The Well

The woman behind the screen nodded approvingly. “And a mighty hit it was, Sir Knight. Now roll for damage.”

“If you want, I could call my friends and we could all meet in our hotel room,” Raven offered. When she saw Virginia hesitate she quickly added, “It would be quieter and you could ask your questions without fear of being overheard. And you would be getting away from that.” She pointed at the man wearing the kilt who at the moment was giving high fives to his fellow role players.

Virginia nodded. “Please do. I don’t know how much more I can take of this… this… lunacy.”

Raven stood up and pulled a cell phone from her pocket.

“If you’ll follow me,” she said, calling Ethan.

Fifteen minutes later Raven was sitting on a bed beside Ethan Night. He was dressed in a t-shirt that had a scroll work of tribal bands going up one side of, faded blue jeans, and hiking boots. A two inch soul patch hung down the front of his chin.

River Snowfell sat on the other bed. Her Native American black hair was bleached white with the tips dyed purple and blue. The hair was twisted up in a bun held in place with two chop sticks. She had piercings in her nose, lip and cheek and wore an anime schoolgirl outfit with calf-high thick-soled boots that would have made Gene Simmons envious. Beside her was Candy Shrivers. Her long main of blond hair was braided and hung over her shoulder. She wore two tank tops of black and white with a blue pullover mesh shirt, blue jeans, and high top shoes.

Leaning against the bathroom door with his arms crossed was Liam Hollingshead. He wore a light green polo shirt tucked into loose fitting khaki pants and brown leather shoes.

Sitting on the floor beside him was a golf bag.

“How can we help you, Mrs. Huntchenson?” Ethan asked in an Austrian accent. To Raven he sounded a lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Virginia sat quietly for a moment. “I am president of the Biloxi Historical Society. For several years we’ve had our eye on a beautiful plantation house, the Alistair House. Several months ago the Alistair House went up for auction and was bought by an anonymous buyer.

“To our surprise,” Virginia said, looking intently at Raven and Ethan, “the buyer donated the Alistair House to the society. We immediately set plans into motion for its restoration.

“I hired a local contractor,” Virginia said. She looked down at her hands. “After only two-and-a-half weeks the contractor called out of the blue to tell me he quit. He gave no explanation as to why. Only that he wanted the payment for the work done. A few days later I hired a second contractor. He lasted just four days before calling to say he quit. I demanded to know the reason for his sudden departure but he refused to give an explanation as well.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 69

The Well

“A week later,” Virginia explained. “I hired a contractor from Butler, Alabama, who was recommended by a very good friend of mine. Two days he worked at the Alistair House, then he called to quit. I asked him why. And he told me something was in the house, something that did not want to be disturbed. The contractor said if I wanted the house renovated I’d need a priest or a… Ghostbuster. I asked him what had happened but he hung up on me!”

Virginia took in a breath and let it out slowly. “That’s when I contacted my nephew here,” she said, with a negligent wave of her hand indicating Andy who sat on the floor. “He’s…

He’s into ghost hunting so I asked him to look into the problem of the Alistair House for me.”

“I was lead investigator and founder of the Biloxi Midnight Society,” Andy said, taking up the story. “It was just me and four friends: Kyle, Dave, Trisha, and Thomas. We were fascinated by the paranormal. We don’t have the kind of gear you guys at Unknown have, but we had some decent equipment.”

“You said was,” River said, looking at Andy intently. “Did something happen while investigating the Alistair House?”

Andy swallowed nodding his head. “It did,” he said, looking away, his face pale.

“What happened?” Ethan asked gently. He slid off the bed and knelt down in front of Andy. “As investigators ourselves, we’ve seen and experienced a lot of paranormal activity. So you can tell us with no fear of being ridiculed.”

Andy nodded and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Aunt Virginia called me up last Friday. She asked me if I would investigate the Alistair House to see why the contractors kept quitting. I was somewhat surprised by her request since most of our family doesn’t believe in the paranormal.”

Andy looked down as his right hand moved to his left side. “Me and my friends showed up at the Alistair House about two hours before dark. You know, to have time to get to know the lay of things before night fell. When we got out of the Blazer we could tell something wasn’t right,” he said, looking at Ethan. “I’ve felt that feeling before on other cases but… but never like it was at that house.”

Ethan nodded. “Go on,” he encouraged.

“Kyle and Trisha went to look around the property while me and Thomas went to do a walk-through of the house. Dave stayed at the Blazer prepping the equipment and getting it ready to set up.”

“Does the house have electricity?” Candy asked.

“Yea, in most areas,” Andy replied. “I guess that’s what the first contractor was working on before he quit.”

“What happened next?” Ethan asked.

“Nothing really during our walk-through,” Andy said. “I carried a digital recorder with me but nothing showed up on it.

We went through the house and Thomas marked the best places 70 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

to set up the cameras.” Andy was quiet for a moment. “Now that I think about it, the air inside the house felt heavy and seemed to get heavier the closer we got to the center of the house. There was also a strong sense of being watched.”

Hollingshead stepped over to the mini refrigerator, opened it and pulled out a bottle of water. He handed it to Andy.

“Thanks,” Andy said, twisting the cap off. He took several swallows of water and screwed the cap back on. “It was full dark when we finished setting up the cameras. We broke up into teams. Trisha and I went outside, Dave stayed at base to watch the monitors, and Kyle and Thomas went up to the attic.

We all had walkie-talkies, E. M. F. gauges, flashlights and digital recorders.

“We were all eager to start the investigation. From the intense feeling we all felt from the house we just knew we would get some great evidence,” Andy said, giving Ethan a half smile that quickly faded as he touched his left side. “Not two hours into the investigation, Dave called Kyle and Thomas on the radio and said camera four had gone down. Kyle said he’d check it out. Not long after that, Kyle radioed me and said I needed to come up to the third floor. Kyle is not easily spooked. But by the way he was talking something had gotten to him.”

Andy took another sip of water. “Number four camera was set up to film the master bedroom on the third floor. When me and Trisha got to the bedroom, Kyle and Thomas was looking at the wall. Sticking out of the wall were the legs of the tripod the camera had sat on.

“As we were looking at the camera, Trisha abruptly screamed. I turned around and saw… saw this black mass behind her. It had her bent backwards by her hair. A deep guttural voice yelled at us to get out.”

Andy clenched his hands into fists. “I screamed at it, telling it to let go of Trisha. The shadow seemed like it rushed me,” he said, breathing hard.

Ethan moved toward Andy, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

Andy nodded, trying to slow his breathing. When he was in control, he looked at Ethan. “I don’t know what happened after.

I guess I blacked out. Cause when I came to, I was in the Blazer with Dave spinning the tires to get us away from the house.” He was silent a moment. “I don’t know why but I told him we needed to tell Aunt Virginia about what had happened.”

“They showed up at my house at an ungodly hour,” Virginia sniffed. “Telling me about shadows throwing cameras into walls and such.” She looked at Andy, her eyes softening.

“But I have never known Andy to lie to me. And I could tell something had frightened him and his friends. They stayed in my guest room that night and they never turned the lights off.”

“How did you feel after you came to in the Blazer?”

River asked. She stood up from the bed and walked over to Andy.

Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

“I felt tingly and really itchy all over,” Andy said. “It seemed like it was hard for me to take in a good breath.”

River nodded. She knelt down in front of Andy. “Was there anything on your side?” she asked gently.

“Yea,” Andy said, standing up. He grabbed the bottom of his shirt. Hesitating briefly he pulled the shirt over his head. What was on Andy’s left side made Virginia gasp.

Candy put her hands to her mouth. “Oh my God!” On Andy’s side starting from his arm pit down to his waist and up his back were inch-round black circles evenly spaced. His whole side was bright red as if the skin were fevered.

To Raven, the pattern of the bruises looked like teeth marks.

“Andy!” Virginia cried out. She stood up, her eyes wide as she looked in horror at the teeth marks. “Why didn’t you tell me it did that to you?”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Virginia,” Andy said. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

“River?” Ethan asked as he watched her examine Andy’s side with Hollingshead.

“It’s nothing serious,” River replied, gently touching Andy’s side, “other than being painful.”

“Nothing serious!” Virginia said, outraged. “Andy needs to see a doctor.”

“I’m fine, Aunt Virginia,” Andy protested.

“No, you are not,” Virginia snapped. “I’m taking you to a doctor!”

The Well

“No!” Andy snarled. “You’re not.”

Virginia flinched back as if she had been physically struck by Andy’s harsh words.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Virginia,” Andy said in a quiet voice.

“It doesn’t hurt all that bad. And I’d rather not have to answer a bunch of questions on how I got the bruises.”

Virginia looked at Andy for a long moment. She reached out and put a hand on the side of Andy’s face. “You’re a good boy,” she said, smiling. “I’ve always been proud of you.”

“Thank you,” Andy said simply.

“So how can I help you, Mrs. Huntchenson?” Ethan asked, looking at Virginia.

“I told Aunt Virginia,” Andy said quickly, “since you work for a paranormal magazine and do investigations for a living that you would know people who could either exorcise the spirit or help it cross over.”

“Very well,” Ethan nodded. He looked at Virginia. “Is that what you want us to do?”

“It is,” Virginia said, raising her head. “I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars tonight and another ten when the job is complete.”

Ethan nodded. “I need to call Unknown’s owner, Stewart Mathers. He’s the only one who can ok an investigation.”

Virginia nodded her head. “Very well. And if you would,” she said, licking her lips nervously, “keep this off the record, so to speak.”

“Of course, Mrs. Huntchenson. Neither this investigation

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 71

The Well

nor any evidence found will be included in Unknown or any other publication. You have my solemn word,” Ethan said. He chuckled.

“There is one small detail I feel you need to know about.”

Virginia looked down her nose at Ethan. “And that is?”

“If Stewart gives us the ok, which I know he will,” Ethan grinned. “We won’t be taking your money.”

Virginia stared at Ethan in shock. “You would do this for free!”

Ethan laughed at the look on Virginia’s face. “Shocking, I know. But we don’t take money for our services,” he said, taking out a cell phone from his pocket. He motioned for Raven and Candy to follow him to the door as he scrolled through his contacts.

Raven and Candy followed Ethan to the door.

“What do you need us to do?” Raven asked in a low voice.

“Go get our gear from my room. It’s in the closet,” Ethan said, digging his room key out of his pocket and handing it to Raven.

“Candy, when we get on location I want you to get on your laptop and find anything you can on the Alistair House.”

Candy nodded and went to retrieve a backpack from the side of the bed she had been sitting on.

“There’s something in the Alistair House that’s more than a typical haunting,” Raven said. “Whatever attacked Andy took the Breath from him.”

“Oh, way more,” Ethan said, winking at her. “So you have been keeping notes in between your whining and complaining about learning to control your gift.”

“One day I’m going to knock that condescending attitude right out of you,” Raven said, giving Ethan an evil smile.

“When I do, it’s going to hurt.”

Ethan laughed as he touched the screen on his phone, calling Stewart. “That’s my girl.”

“What do you mean by, ‘took his Breath from him?’”

Candy asked Raven, shouldering her backpack as she followed Raven out the door and down the hall to Ethan and Hollingshead’s room. “Did the spirit knock the breath from him or something?”

“I’d forgotten you hadn’t been formally briefed on the nasties we have to deal with,” Raven said, stopping at the room Hollingshead and Ethan shared. She slid the Key Card into the lock and was surprised she got the green light on her first try.

She opened the door and held it open for Candy. “Ok, demons, entities, and other nasties one-oh-one. When I said it took Andy’s breath I meant it literally. When the super creatures of the paranormal attack they don’t go after the energy stored in the batteries of your flashlight or the heat from your body. They go after the Breath. As in the Breath God breathed into you when you were conceived as defined by the Organization. But in 72 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

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layman’s terms it means your life force.”

Raven opened the closet door. Sitting on the floor were four duffle bags with red tape around the handles.

“I’ve heard some of the teams talking about the Breath before,” Candy said, bending over and grunting as she picked up two of the duffle bags. “I never quite understood the concept behind it.”

Raven laughed. “I guess that happens when you work for a secret Organization acknowledged and sanctioned by the heads of every government on the planet to hunt down and destroy paranormal threats.” She grabbed the other two duffle bags.

“Everyone assumes everyone knows the same thing.”

“And you’re what they call a prophet in the Organization?” Candy said, dropping a duffle so she could open the door. She gave Raven an envious look. “A real life wizard that makes Voldemort look like an amateur.”

“Please,” Raven said in a pained voice as she squeezed through the door with the heavy duffle bags. “He-who-must-notbe-named could at least hold his own against River and Ethan for a minute or two. I just look like Mickey Mouse trying to control the brooms.”

Candy laughed so hard she snorted.

Raven gave her an irritated look. “Gee, thanks.”

“Sorry,” Candy said, laughing harder.

Raven rolled her eyes, trying to ignore her best friend.

As Raven and Candy neared the door to their room, it opened and Ethan stepped out, holding it open for River, Hollingshead, Andy, and Virginia. River had changed out of the school girl outfit and now wore a black t-shirt and black cargo pants tucked into combat boots.

“What’s up?” Raven asked River, who took one of the duffle bags from Raven.

“Stewart gave us the go ahead,” River said as they walked down the hall to the elevators. “Andy gave Hollingshead and Ethan directions to the Alistair House. He wanted to lead us out there.”

Raven glanced over her shoulder at Andy, then looked back at River. “He wanted to go back after what happened to him?”

River stopped at the elevator and pushed the down button. She nodded her head. “Mrs. Huntchenson and I talked him out of it.”

“That’s good.” She glanced back at Andy. He was pale and sweat was beaded on his forehead. “He needs to see one of our doctors. That attack took more out of him than he lets on.”

River nodded. “I know. When that entity took his Breath, it also ripped into his psyche. I explained that to Andy and gave him the phone number to our doctor in Arlington. Mrs. Huntchenson said she will make an appointment and personally see that he gets to it.”

Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

The elevator door opened and three people dressed as stormtroopers got off.

“Good afternoon,” one of the stormtroopers said, his voice modulated like it was in the movies.

River giggled as she got on the elevator. “Cons, you gotta love ‘em.”

After a quick stop to pick up food and a twenty minute drive later, Ethan turned off of an old black top road onto a dirt drive. The dirt road was wide enough for only one vehicle at a time. Evenly spaced along the sides of the road were large oak trees. Their low hanging branches scraped the roof of the SUV and occasionally slapped the windshield and side mirrors.

Weeds and bushes grew in such a thick intertwining mass between the oaks that it was impossible to see anything beyond them. Raven felt as if they were driving down a row of some huge hedge maze.

Ethan followed the road until it made a sharp turn to the right. He eased the wide SUV around the curve, making faces as branches scratched the sides of the large vehicle.

As Ethan cleared the curve, the woods abruptly ended.

And sitting before them, dominating the small clearing where it sat, was the Alistair Plantation House. Ethan pulled to a stop in front of the house and turned off the engine. Raven, River, Candy, Hollingshead, and Ethan sat in the SUV studying the huge house before them.

The Alistair House was a three story home. Its once white-washed walls were now chipped and turned yellow and black from dirt and age, making the house look unwholesome, as if it were diseased.

A wide sagging staircase that led up to large, warped double doors hanging haphazardly across the door frame on the second floor dominated the front of the house. It spoke of a time when the masters of the house lived the life of luxury while slaves labored in fields collecting that soft white plump of fiber known as cotton.

The second and third floors had wraparound porches with iron railings. They were so rusted that the rust hung down in globs as if it were coagulated blood. Both floors at one time had floor-toceiling windows. Now the glass had been broken out, leaving black gaping voids within the face of the house. What remained of the glass glinted like jagged teeth in the waning light of the sun. Every so often Raven saw glimpses of tattered curtains fluttering just inside the windows, as if beckoning for her to come inside.

Four columns once held up the two porches. Now only three stood with deep cracks gouged into their length. The fourth had broken off at the top leaving it split down the middle from the splintered end as it leaned drunkenly out past the roof.

The few oaks close to the house were twisted things.

The Well

A black and purple fungus grew in scattered clumps across the massive trees that oozed a thick, reddish-yellow liquid.

Candy made a rude noise and leaned back in her seat crossing her arms. “This is not cool at all.”

Ethan looked in the rear view mirror at Candy. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve seen how this movie ends,” Candy snapped.

“Everyone gets eaten, possessed, or butchered by a machetewielding psychopath.”

“What the--” Raven said glaring at Candy. “What the hell are you talking about?”

River burst out laughing. She looked over her shoulder at Candy. “It does have that B-rated horror movie look to it.”

“B-rated,” Raven said looking out her window at the house. “This looks like something from a Rob Zombie film.”

River, still laughing, opened her door. “You have to admit he’s got great vision when it comes to making horror movies.”

Raven rolled her eyes. “It’s not horror; it’s pornographic gore.”

Hollingshead opened his door. “I have to agree with you on that,” he said, getting out of the SUV. “See, even Hollingshead agrees with me,” Raven declared.

“Please,” River huffed as she slid out of the passenger seat. “Hollingshead’s idea of a good horror was…” she was saying, but stopped when her foot touched the ground.

“Was what?” Raven asked as she got out of the SUV.

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As soon as her foot made contact with the ground, a cold slimy sensation slithered through her body. The feeling slithered across her deepest parts that were never meant to be touched. The sensation left a foulness behind that made Raven feel unclean.

“Something isn’t right about this place,” Candy said, walking around the back of the SUV with Ethan. She looked at Raven who was gritting her teeth as she looked up at the house.

“You don’t feel that?” Raven asked. She tore her eyes away from the house to look at Candy.

“I don’t feel anything,” Candy said. She looked between Raven and River. River was hugging herself as if she were cold. “I got a really creepy feeling when I got out of the car as if something was wrong.” Candy shrugged. “But that’s about it.”

“The land is crying out in agony,” River said softly. She knelt down, placing the fingertips of her right hand upon the ground. Her hand began to glow in a soft silver light. As River’s hand started glowing, Raven saw the ground sink down as if it were trying to get away from River’s touch.

“There is a stain upon this land,” River said, looking at Ethan. “It’s forcing the land to change in ways it was never meant 74 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

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to.”

Ethan’s eyebrows drew down as he studied the house and the surroundings. “Can you tell how far the corruption has spread?”

“Not far,” River said, “about fifty yards from the house.”

She stood up, brushing the dirt off with her other hand.

Raven had the sudden, intense feeling somebody was watching her. She looked at the house, studying the windows, trying to see what was watching her. All she saw was empty windows filled with an inky blackness. Even though she didn’t see anyone in the windows, Raven could feel the naked hatred and rage in the unseen watcher’s gaze.

“You feel it, too?” Hollingshead asked, looking up at the house with Raven.

Raven nodded. “Something really doesn’t want us here.”

“Let’s gear up,” Ethan said, walking to the back of the SUV. He opened the back door, and sitting on the floorboard were the four duffle bags. He handed Raven, River, and Hollingshead each a bag.

Raven unzipped her duffle. Inside was a utility belt, an assault rifle, boxes of ammunition, a walkie-talkie with an ear piece, a head lamp, several water bottles and different pouches tied up by their drawstrings. Raven pulled out the utility belt and snapped it around her waist. The belt had a drop down leg holster with a Glock 23, three magazine pouches, and a sheathed tanto dagger tucked into a custom-made holder.

Raven checked on Ethan, River, and Hollingshead.

Ethan’s belt was like Raven’s, except he had a large Bowie knife like the kind used in the Rambo movies. River’s utility belt had two drop down holsters, while Hollingshead’s had one leg holster.

He pulled out a bandolier holding shotgun shells and a sawed off pump action shotgun.

“Candy,” Ethan said, loading a magazine into his pistol and racking back the slide to chamber a bullet, “while we’re in the house I want you to stay in the car researching the house and relay any information back to us with this,” he said, handing her a walkie-talkie.

Candy took the radio as she watched with a puzzled look as Raven and River loaded their weapons. “How are bullets supposed to hurt a ghost?” she asked, looking at Ethan. “I mean, they’re insubstantial.”

Ethan chuckled. “These can,” he said, holding up a brass casing with a white tip. “The bullets themselves are made of a hard plastic filled with blessed water and salt from the Dead Sea. The bullets will hurt anything supernatural they hit.”

“Here,” River said, stepping over to Candy, with a back pack slung over one shoulder. She tied a wide, white leather bracelet around Candy’s wrist. The bracelet had a large jade stone in the center of two gold circles. Two gold arrows pointed to the green stone on either side. Silver wavy lines at the ends of

Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

the bracelet touched several blue stones.

“Thank you,” Candy said, admiring the bracelet. “Did you make this?”

River nodded. “I made it to give to you on your birthday next week.”

Candy grinned. “I like it,” she said, giving River a hug.

River smiled. “I’m glad,” she said, returning the hug.

“There is just one more thing to do.”

River held Candy’s wrist up and gently blew across the jade stone. The stone began to glow a dark green then started to blink.

“It’s pulsating with my heart,” Candy squealed, holding two finger to her neck.

“The bracelet will protect you against the supernatural, but it has its limits,” River warned.

“What happens then?” Candy asked timidly.

“When the jade stone reaches its limit, the stone will crumble,” River said. “And it will no longer protect you.”

Candy nodded, looking at the bracelet. “Ok.” Ethan turned on Candy’s walkie-talkie and put the ear piece around her ear. “Check. Check,” he said, keying up his radio for a check. Everyone nodded as they heard him through their radios.

“Ok,” Ethan said, opening the back passenger door for Candy. “Stay in here with the doors locked.” Ethan handed Candy the keys. “No matter what you may see or hear, do not get out unless we are with you.”

“I won’t,” Candy said, climbing into the SUV. Ethan closed the door and the doors all locked as Candy pressed the lock button on the keyless entry.

Ethan gave a quick look over Hollingshead, River, and Raven’s equipment. When he was satisfied, he turned on his head lamp.

“Let’s go.”

Ethan led them around the large stair case and was surprised there was no door, only a few windows. “To get into the house you have to go to the second floor?” he asked confused.

“This house was built during a time when people owned slaves,” Hollingshead said, shining the light of his head lamp into one of the windows. Paint peeled off the walls in long strips. Pots and pans were scattered about. An old stove lay on its side and a refrigerator sat in the middle of the floor with its doors open.

“The slaves entered through a back door.”

Ethan glanced around the side of the house at the tall weeds and bushes. “Let’s go up the stairs.”

Even though the stairs sagged in the middle, they supported everyone’s weight. Soon they were all standing on the second floor balcony.

Hollingshead and Ethan went to the doorway, shining the lights from their head lamps into the dark interior. Raven and River did the same through a broken window next to the door.

The Well

Inside was a spacious room. A huge chandelier hung from the ceiling. At the back of the room was a staircase leading up to the third floor with open doors to either side and another two doors on the left and right walls. The floor had been covered in marble.

Now, that marble was cracked and broken. In the center of the room was a small upside-down folding table. Scattered across the room in pieces were monitors, a laptop, EMF gauges and batteries.

“Looks like this was where Andy and his friends set up their base camp,” River said, stepping carefully through the window. As she did, River was careful of the sharp edges of the broken glass.

Hollingshead followed River into the room. “Something didn’t like their equipment,” he said. Hollingshead flipped over the laptop with the toe of his boot. Gouged into the plastic were three long scratches.

Raven stepped through the window. Inside, the air in the house felt heavy as if a pressure were pushing into the back of her head. The air was thick with the smell of damp wood, dust, and something else she couldn’t describe.

Raven eased over to the door on the right wall. Each step caused the marble to crunch under her feet loudly. Inside the room was a large desk facing the windows. On top of the desk were two cloth bags used to carry bowling balls. Papers, yellowed with age, lay scattered about. An old leather chair sat at the desk. The stuffing stuck out from the dry-rotted leather.

Fungus and mold grew thick along the walls. In the back of the room were several overturned bookcases. Their rotting books spilled across the floor.

“Anything in there?” Ethan asked.

“No,” Raven replied, turning away. As she did she saw something move in the back corner of the room.

Raven jerked her head back around to shine her light into the corner, her right hand gripping the handle of her pistol.

Raven swept her light back and forth trying to see what had moved. Nothing was there but the bookcases and the strewn books.

River moved up beside Raven to look into the room.

“What is it?”

Raven eased her grip on the pistol. “I saw something move as I turned away.”

“It didn’t take long for it to let one of us see it,” Ethan grunted.

“Raven!” Candy yelled through Raven’s ear piece. “Can you hear me?”

Raven winced as she turned down the volume of the radio. “Not so loud, Candy. Just speak normally.”

“Sorry,” Candy said. “I found something interesting.”

Ethan pushed the talk button on his radio. “What did you find?”

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Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

“Well,” Candy said, pausing as something in the background was being tapped on. “The Alistair House was built six to eight years before the War of the States. I couldn’t find any record of the original owners. If I had a few days I probably could.

But after the Civil War the house changed owners frequently.

Around 1881, Ronald Milstead bought the house. He and his family lived there until 1903. That’s when Ronald was arrested for murdering his wife, Clair, and his brother, Charles, in the attic after catching them in bed together.”

River looked at Raven with a raised eyebrow. “Anything weird recorded about the house after Ronald was arrested?”

“Just snippets,” Candy replied. “While the house was abandoned, strange lights were seen in the attic windows and the curtains would be seen moving. On a few occasions gunshots have been heard.”

“The house stayed empty until around 1940 when Edwin Alistair, a prominent businessman from Georgia, bought the house,” Candy answered. “Edwin spent six years restoring the house to its original grandeur. I’m still looking into the Alistair

the sides, she felt the concussions from her friend’s weapons as they, too, fired. The blessed bullets ripped into the creature, leaving long rents in its shapeless form. The specter screamed in pain as the mixture of blessed salt and water seared into its ethereal body.

The slide in Raven’s pistol locked back signaling it was dry. Raven pushed the button to drop the empty magazine even as she reached for a fresh clip. Before Raven could load the new magazine, the shapeless mass turned and was up the stairs and gone.

“Raven!” Candy cried through the radio.

Raven jerked at the sound of Candy’s voice.

“What is it, Candy?” Hollingshead said coolly, watching the corners and doorways as he pulled shells from his bandolier to load into his shotgun.

“Is…” Candy said hesitating. Raven could hear the worry in Candy’s voice.

“Is everyone ok?” Candy asked timidly.

“We’re fine,” River reassured.

family. I just thought you may want to know about the murders.”

“Thanks, Candy,” Raven said.

“No problem,” Candy replied cheerfully. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I find out more.”

“Everyone hush a moment,” Hollingshead ordered, holding a finger up. “Do you hear that?”

Raven cocked her head to the side trying to hear. At first she didn’t hear anything. Then Raven heard it. A soft tinkling sound followed by a soft squeak.

Hollingshead looked up. “It’s the chandelier.”

Raven looked up. The chandelier was going around in a slow oblong circle, making the crystal beads bump against the brass fixture.

As Raven watched the chandelier slow, a deep guttural growl filled the front hall.

Raven’s pistol was in her hand as she scanned the hall with the light from her head lamp. When Raven turned around to shine her light on the stairs, a solid black mass was standing in front of them.

“Get out!” it roared. Its harsh voice was filled with hate and rage.

Raven screamed as she fired into the black mass. From

“Ok,” Candy said. “I heard shooting and I got worried.”

“Everything is cool, Candy,” Ethan said in a soothing voice. “Have you got anything more on the house?”

“Almost,” Candy replied. “Give me a bit longer and I’ll have most of what you need.”

“All right,” Ethan said. “When you have it let me know.”

“I will,” Candy said.

Ethan walked over to the door to the right of the stairs. “I think we got its attention,” he said, pointing his pistol at whatever his light shown on in the room.

“You think?” Raven snapped sarcastically as she moved to the other side of the doorway with Ethan.

Ethan grinned at her.

Raven rolled her eyes and looked into the room. Junk filled most of the room, from old radios to fishing poles and motheaten cloths. A few stuffed deer heads were stacked up against the wall next to an antique sewing machine.

“Ok,” Ethan said, nodding. “Let’s check the next room.”

Raven followed Ethan to the doorway to the left of the stairs.

“What do you think is haunting this house? It’s not just a simple ghost.”

“No,” Ethan said, shaking his head, “you’re right about

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that.” Ethan paused a moment as he looked into the room. The room had dark paneled walls thick with mold. Carpet had once covered the floor but now it lay balled up in a heap at the back of the room blocking a door. A broken table leaned up against the left wall. Sticking out of the middle of the right wall were the crumbling bricks of an old fire place. “The apparition is not a Revenant yet, but it’s very close to becoming one.”

“Once it becomes a Revenant it will be able to break the bonds that hold it here,” River said. She frowned. “There is something here that’s feeding the apparition, giving it power.”

“And that is?” Hollingshead asked, looking at River.

“I’m not sure,” River said, looking around. “This house is saturated with negative energy. Way more than it should be, even given the presence of an apparition. The excess of that negative energy is bleeding off into the land around the house, corrupting it.”

Ethan looked at River. “You think this house has a Well?”

River shrugged, making a face. “I’m not sure.”

“Shouldn’t you be able to detect something like a Well?”

Hollingshead asked. “I saw one when I first joined the Secret Service. Being around it was the most disturbing thing I had ever felt in my life. It…” he was saying but stopped. Hollingshead rubbed a hand across his face and cleared his throat. “When it was all said and done, Vice President Al Gore assigned me to Venus Thirteen.”

“I sense something,” River said, struggling to understand what it was she sensed. “I just don’t know what.”

“Ok,” Raven said, holding up a hand, “before we go any further. Someone tell me what the hell is a Well?”

“It’s a place or object used to tap directly into the destructive energies of Nod,” Ethan said. “And just like a Well, a dark prophet can draw upon that negative energy to enhance his power.”

“Well that…” Raven was saying when she saw a dark shadow step out of the doorway she had looked into when she first entered the house. Before she could shout out a warning, a large black ball was streaking toward her at an impossible speed.

The world around Raven slowed down. She could suddenly see the front hall in perfect clarity. The quartz crystals hanging from the chandelier suddenly looked like clusters of stars shinning down from the ceiling. Each unique crack in the floor stood out distinctly against the milky white marble. Raven could see the tiny particles of dust as they floated through the light of her head lamp with agonizing slowness. A stray lock of River’s hair swam gently through the air as she turned her head.

Before Raven worked for Unknown, she didn’t understand why time seemed to slow whenever she was in danger. And to be honest she didn’t care to know. The fact that it

The Well

happened at all scared her more than the danger to her life ever possibly could. But that all changed when Unknown bought out a tiny hole-in-the-wall paranormal magazine. Raven learned from Cheveyo, her mentor, and her co-workers, Ethan and River, that she had been born touched by God to be one of his Prophets. A wizard who could call forth and wield God’s wrath and use it to seek out and destroy the terrible things that hide in the darkness.

Even as Raven’s gift sped up her body and heightened her senses, the black ball hurtled toward her with incredible speed.

Raven could hear a loud hiss as the globe streaked through the air.

Raven leaned to the side and jumped out of the way. As she did, she saw her ponytail trailing behind her in the air. The black orb hit the tip of it, tearing it away.

Time sped back up as Raven landed on her back and slid across the floor. The sphere slammed into the stairs with tremendous force, ripping through and destroying a large section of steps. Dust, bits of marble, and splintered wood exploded into the air. The ball smashed into the wall behind the stairs, tearing off the wood paneling and crushing the brick underneath into gravel. The black orb bounced back into the stairs and rolled wobbly across the floor. Raven stared wide-eyed at the sphere before she realized a bowling ball had been thrown at her.

River held up her right hand, palm up. Green and brown energy slithered up her raised arm. The energy reached her hand and a silver globe of light exploded into being above the center of her palm. The silver globe blazed forth like the first rays of morning light just peaking over the horizon.

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The Well

Raven cried out as she quickly turned her head and threw an arm across her eyes. Purple after-images swarmed across her closed eye lids.

Raven forced herself to open her eyes. She looked to where the shadow person stood at the doorway. The inky darkness surrounding the apparition dissolved away in the silvery light River held in her hand. It left behind a tall specter of a man dressed in a white button-up shirt with a red and black vest and dark slacks.

The apparition’s face and hands were emaciated. What would have been the skin was shriveled and peeling away. The ghostly skin hung down from the specter’s jaw like a grotesque beard, revealing the teeth and bone underneath. The scalp was split down the middle with the skin sliding down the side, leaving a perverse bald spot. The creature’s eyes were sunken in and its nose was just a hole.

“Get out of my house!” the spectral creature roared.

Hollingshead fired his sawed off shotgun, pumping in a new shell as quick as he pulled the trigger. Ethan quickly joined in, dumping rounds into the specter’s ethereal form. The blessed bullets and rock salt tore into the creature’s face and body. Large globs of milky liquid sprayed into the air, spattering the walls and doorframe behind it. The face of the specter contorted in pain as it howled in agony.

The apparition, unable to bare the pain any longer, darted through the door with a burst of inhuman speed.

“Raven,” Candy called over the radio.

“Go ahead,” Raven grunted, as she got up from the floor. As she was getting up, Raven saw Ethan and Hollingshead rushing to the door. Hollingshead nodded to Ethan and they both entered the room.

“What the hell is going on in there?” Candy demanded. “There is God-awful screaming and shooting and the house just lit up like it was Christmas.”

“The room is clear,” Hollingshead alerted, as he and Ethan walked out of the room.

River nodded and the silver light winked out, plunging the front hall back into darkness. To Raven, the light from the simple headlamps looked feeble compared to the light River produced.

“The ghost attacked us but everyone is fine,” Raven assured Candy as she went to River. River was breathing hard and her face dripped with sweat.

“Here,” Raven said to River, grabbing a bottle of water from the pack River carried on her back. Raven handed River the water. River nodded her thanks and unscrewed the cap and took several gulps of water.

“You sure no one was hurt?” Candy asked urgently.

“I promise no one was hurt,” Raven replied, glancing 78 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

at the damaged stairs.

Ethan pushed the talk button on the radio. “Candy, have you found anything on the Alistair Family yet?”

“Yea,” Candy said. “Between 1920 and 1957. A Damon Alistair owned the house. He was an eccentric bachelor known for his parties that only out-of-towners were invited to. During several of those parties the neighbors complained of odd sounds, smells, growls, and sometimes screams coming from the Alistair House.”

Ethan looked at River with a raised eyebrow. “That’s interesting.”

“If you think that’s interesting, wait till you hear the freaky stuff,” Candy said. “During the summer of 1957, Damon was found dead. He had thrown one of his parties the night before. The reason he was found was because the mail man saw the front door open and went in to investigate. During the autopsy, the coroner found half-digested remains of human hearts in Damon’s stomach. Two weeks before Damon died, six prostitutes went missing. The police searched the house but never found a body.”

Raven shivered, hugging herself. “Now that is freaky.”

“There have been--” Candy was saying but suddenly

Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

stopped.

Raven wrinkled her forehead in concern. “Candy?”

“Candy, answer the radio,” Raven demanded when Candy didn’t immediately answer.

From outside they all heard the breaking of glass and the screeching of metal.

“Raven!” Candy screamed into the radio. In the background they could all hear a deep, guttural growl and something pounding on metal.

“It’s attacking Candy,” Ethan shouted, as he ran to the front door.

“Candy,” Raven screamed, following Ethan, Hollingshead and River out one of the windows onto the porch.

Raven rushed to the stairs and looked at the SUV. A solid black mass was tearing at the back passenger door. The window had been smashed and the metal frame around it was bent out. Raven could see Candy was backed up as far next to the other door as she could. Every now and then the dark figure would stick its arm into the SUV. When it did a bright green flash would make it jerk its arm back.

“Keep your damn hands away from her!” Raven screamed, running down the stairs. Rage hot and thick boiled through her veins. Raven’s green eyes blazed like green fire.

Ethan glanced over his shoulder at River. “Light it up.”

River held up her hand and the silver light burst into being. The trees and bushes leaned back in fear as the silver illumination pushed back the night. The solid darkness that surrounded the apparition was blown away by the light.

Raven ran down the stairs, and as she did she reached deep within her being to that heavy presence that was her gift. T he power rose eagerly to her call. As the magic filled her, Raven shaped it to her needs. Black and red energy arced across her body. A silver glow wrapped around her arms.

Time slowed for Raven.

“Damon!” Raven yelled, jumping over the last two steps.

The specter turned his head at hearing his name called. When he did, Raven’s silver fist slammed into the side of his head. Damon cried out in pain as he was knocked away from the SUV. Damon slid to a stop and rolled into a crouch. His shrunken eyes stared wide at Raven with shock and fear. His jaw dangled down from the left side of his face. Damon grabbed it and pushed it back into place, glaring at Raven. “How can you touch me, mortal?” he asked in a rasping voice.

Raven stared at the ethereal man, her green glowing eyes making him flinch back. “What you should be asking is, will I do it again?”

“You was lucky the first ti--” Damon was saying, before Raven’s foot slammed into his chin and throat.

The force of the blow knocked Damon onto his back.

The Well

Damon rolled away with a growl. “What are you!” he snarled in frustration.

Raven heard the stairs creak and she knew Ethan and Hollingshead were rushing in to join the fight.

Damon looked at the stairs and cried out in anger. “This is impossible!” Damon yelled, before he dashed off toward the back of the house.

“Raven,” Candy cried out from the back of the SUV. Raven went to the back passenger side, reached though the broken window, and pressed the unlock button. Candy threw open the door and grabbed onto Raven. Great sobs shook her body as she cried into Raven’s shoulder.

Raven stroked Candy’s hair. “It’s ok,” she said soothingly. “He’s gone.”

After a moment, Candy’s crying slowed, then stopped.

She pushed herself away from Raven, wiping her face with the tail of her shirt.

River walked up shaking a half empty bottle of liquid.

“Candy, sweetie, I need you to drink this,” she said, offering the bottle to Candy.

Candy looked at the dark liquid in the bottle suspiciously. “What is it?”

“It’s something that will calm your nerves,” River replied.

“It will pep you up but relax you at the same time.”

Candy looked at Raven.

“You best do it,” Raven said. “If you don’t she’ll force feed it to you.”

Candy reached out and took the offered bottle. She unscrewed the cap and took a timid sip. Liking the taste, Candy smiled at River and downed the rest of the bottle.

River smiled at Candy “You like it?”

Candy nodded, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “It was good. It tasted like vanilla with a hint of cinnamon.”

“I added the vanilla and cinnamon to hide the bitter tastes of the other tid-bits in it,” River replied.

“Other tid-bits?” Candy asked.

Raven put a hand on Candy’s shoulder. “Trust me when I tell you this,” she said. “You don’t want to know.”

Candy nodded, holding up the empty bottle to look closer at the last few drops. “OK.” “We need to go back in the house and find Damon’s power source,” Ethan said. “We destroy it; we cleanse the house.”

Raven shook her head. “We can’t leave Candy out here by herself.”

“Don’t worry,” Hollingshead said. “I’ll stay out here with her as you go mop up.”

Candy put a hand on Hollingshead’s arm. “Thank you.”

“If we’re looking for Damon’s power source,” Raven Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 79

The Well

said, frowning. “I think I know how to find it.”

Ethan looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “How?” River grinned at Raven, impressed. “A tracker. Nice.”

“It won’t last long,” Raven said with a shrug, “but it should last long enough to find it.”

Ethan nodded. “Do it.”

Raven held out her right hand, palm up. She called forth her gift, forming it into her need. Red and black energy flowed gently up her arm and consolidated into her palm. With a little pop a bluish-white orb floated above her hand. Raven tossed the globe into the air. “Seek,” she commanded.

The seeker ball bobbed in the air for a moment before it dashed off toward the stairs leading up to the second story.

River, Ethan, and Raven followed close behind it.

The ball led them up the stairs, through the front hall, and to the left door at the back of the hall. When Raven, Ethan, and River entered the room the ball was bobbing in front of a wooden panel at the back of the room.

Ethan looked at the panel and smiled. “Looks like a secret door,” he said, kicking a hole in the panel. He reached through the hole and grabbed the panel with both hands. With a quick jerk, he tore the panel off, revealing a dark tunnel surrounded by bricks.

Ethan looked at River and Raven as he pulled out his Bowie knife. “No more games,” he said. The knife started glowing blue, and as it glowed the knife elongated into a large broadsword.

River pulled the chop sticks from her hair. As she did they started glowing green and turned into a pair of hooked knives. Raven pulled out her tanto. Red and black energy arced down her arm. The Tonto started glowing red and elongated into a curved sword. Each of their weapons was bathed in a silver light.

Ethan looked from River to Raven. “Let’s go.”

The steps they followed twisted around then went straight down for thirty feet. As they followed the steps, Raven felt the pressure at the back of her head increase. An odor of things long dead and feces burned Raven’s nose and threatened to make her gag. Near the bottom of the stairs they saw a thick wooden door with a pale sickly yellowish light shining out from underneath. From behind the door, Raven could hear what sounded like something massive breathing inside. With each inhale the light would dim until the exhale when the light grew brighter.

As they reached the end of the steps, the smell was burning Raven’s nose and making her eyes water. She tried wiping her eyes with the back of her hand but that only made it worse.

Ethan pointed at the door. “Look,” he whispered.

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Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

Raven blinked back the tears, forcing her eyes to focus on the door. The door was covered in strange orange glowing symbols, circles and triangles with lines cutting back and forth through the drawings. Words written in an unknown language flowed around the drawings. Just looking at the blazing symbols made Raven light-headed.

“There is a Well here,” River whispered. “Those symbols were meant to hide it should someone come looking for it.”

Ethan nodded and stepped off the steps to the dirt floor before the door. Raven followed Ethan onto the dirt floor. As she stepped into the yellow light, the unclean feeling Raven had experienced when she had first stepped out of the SUV ripped through her. Raven felt violated by the light.

“We must close the Well at any cost,” River whispered.

“How?” Raven asked.

“The Well will be surrounded by the catalyst that brought it into being. I don’t know what it will be but you’ll know it as soon as you see it,” River replied. “Those must be destroyed and the Well plugged with salt. I’ll handle that. You two keep Damon off me.”

“Let’s go,” Ethan said. He raised a booted foot up and kicked the door in. Ethan, River and Raven rushed into the room.

The room was long with bricks forming the walls and ceiling. It had a simple dirt floor. The same glowing orange symbols and writing on the door were scrawled across the wall and ceiling but Raven didn’t notice any of it. Instead, she was staring at what was sitting in the middle of the floor.

In the center of the floor were six shriveled, almost mummified women. Wide gaping holes had been torn into their chests where their hearts used to be. Their naked bodies sat in a circle shoulder to shoulder, holding hands. Their heads were twisted around to look back behind them. Coming up through the floor in the center of the women was the sound of the breathing and the yellow light. Bathed in the light, Damon floated.

“How dare you violate this holy sanctuary!” Damon roared, stepping out of the Well. As he did the yellow light flowed around his head like a halo while some of it flowed down his arms, solidifying around his hands.

“That’s not good,” Ethan said, backing up.

“What?” Raven asked, backing up with Ethan. “What’s not good?”

Before Ethan could answer, time slowed.

Damon had been quick when Raven had fought him outside but she had been just a bit faster. Now Damon was unbelievably fast. Before Raven, Ethan, and River could raise their weapons, Damon was on them.

Damon punched out at Raven’s head with the tips of his skeletal fingers. Raven was just able to dodge out of the way. Damon’s hand hit the wall, tearing through the brick as if it

Jason Fedora with R. J. Holmes

were soft clay. Raven brought her sword up into the underside of Damon’s arm. The blade, with its silver radiance, barely bit into the yellow-glowing extremity.

Damon roared and slashed out at Raven with his hand.

Raven tried to block the blow with her sword, but the power behind the swing was too great for her to stop. In a desperate move, Raven leaned back, letting her knees buckle under her.

Damon’s hand swooshed just above her face.

All the while Damon had been attacking Raven, Ethan and River had been hacking away at his back and legs. Damon howled as he turned away from Raven, swiping and punching at River and Ethan.

Raven scrambled to her feet. “This isn’t working.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Ethan yelled, slamming his sword into Damon’s face when he turned to attack River. Damon roared as he started attacking Ethan with a flurry of slashes and punches.

“Raven!” River shouted, pointing at the Well.

Raven gritted her teeth and nodded as she ran to the Well. As she slid to a stop Raven sliced off the head of one of the women. Damon screamed. Raven glanced over her shoulder and saw Damon standing on his toes with his back arched. The breathing she had been hearing began to struggle with each new inhalation. Raven quickly began slicing and hacking at the six mummified women. With each cut and slice Damon screamed in pain.

“Switch out,” River shouted.

Raven turned and ran back to Damon as River ran up to the Well. She saw the yellow glow around Damon was faint and in some places was gone completely. His ethereal body was ripped and cut.

Damon staggered back as Ethan slashed him across the

The Well

chest. Damon fell to his knees facing the Well. As he watched, River dumped a pouch of salt onto the ground where the yellow light emanated from. The breathing stopped and the yellow light flickered and died. The blazing orange symbols and words written across the walls flared up briefly, then winked out.

“Nooo!” Damon screamed, his ethereal body starting to melt. Globs of milky white liquid oozed and dripped onto the dirt floor.

River walked up to the melting Damon. She pulled out a blue water bottle from her back pack, unscrewed the top and poured the silver glowing water over him.

Damon screamed in agony.

River watched as the last of Damon’s body dissolved into the dirt.

“May you find your judgment.”

“Amen,” Ethan said.

A fresh smell filled the room. Raven looked around trying to locate its source.

“What is it,” Ethan asked.

Raven looked from Ethan to River. “This room suddenly smells like it does after a cool spring rain.”

River shouldered her backpack. “The house is now clean of Damon and the Well’s presence,” she said. “It will take some time for the ground around the house to heal.”

Ethan’s broad sword shrank back into a Bowie knife. “Come on,” he said, heading for the stairs. “We have to call in the cleanup crew and finish a convention.”

River laughed suddenly as she followed Raven and Ethan up the steps.

“What’s so funny?” Raven asked, looking over her shoulder at River.

“I can’t wait to see the look on the guy’s face at the rental place when we bring the SUV back.”

Ethan laughed. “They do tend to get that openmouth, deer-in-the-headlights look.”

Raven rolled her eyes. “You two need to get a hobby.”

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by Candice Mizell

Betty watched the new arrival pause inside the doorway of the speakeasy. He wasn’t so bad looking, not really, but the wide scar tracing the curve of his left cheek lent his face an odd contour. Betty considered his broad shoulders, noting how they stretched the thin wool coat and followed the line of his body down to trousers that didn’t quite reach the top of his shoes.

She took a deep breath as she tracked the man’s progress toward the bar. She knew he was the one Callahan had told her about-- Sal Vittorio--but she thought it odd that such an unimpressive man could be considered a threat. Still, she had orders. Orders from Callahan were orders from Fleming, and Fleming was one man she couldn’t afford to cross. Not yet. With the ownership of half the clubs—and more than half of the law-- in the city, Callahan thought he was King. While she occasionally did favors for Callahan, many of which she wasn’t proud of, she was biding her time for the right moment to make her escape--from him, from the city, from everything she’d grown to despise. She smoothed the front of her dress and strode over to the bar.

Sal’s eyes slid down the length of the glossy bar poised along the right wall. He counted six heads bent over half-shot glasses of whiskey.

Morris, the bartender and proprietor of Frisco’s, wiped spots from the bottom of an empty glass. The buttons of his white shirt strained against the massive expanse of his chest and sagging belly. “Evening, Sal.” He dipped his chin. “The usual?”

Sal nodded tightly. He draped his coat over the back of the stool and flung his hat on the bar. A cheap, shallow glass cradled an even cheaper grade of bourbon, but Sal expected that.

“You know, your tab’s climbing pretty high this week. I’ve got to cut it short tonight,” Morris said, looking Sal straight in the eye.

Sal nodded and swallowed the bourbon with an audible gulp. He rolled his shoulders, shrugging them up and down as if the motion would cast off his worries. He pulled the stub of his last cigar from the band that encircled his hat, noting it was longer than he thought. “Small miracle, that,” he mumbled and stuck the moistened bit between his lips.

“Need a light?” Betty asked.

Sal turned slightly and the flame leapt from the match to his cigar. He gave the stogie a few puffs before removing the stub from his mouth.

“Obliged,” Sal said.

“Betty,” she offered after a pause. “Betty O’Reilly.” Crimson-painted lips curved into a languid smile.

“Miss O’Reilly.” Sal nodded. “A pleasure.” He found it difficult to be friendly when all he wanted was to get drunk and pass out for a few hours.

Betty smiled again as she reached up to pat her halo of platinum ringlets. “I’m seconds away from taking the stage and I’m afraid my throat is parched. Buy a lady a drink?” She pursed her lips and fingered her curls before dropping her hand to the hollow of her throat.

Sal gave a quick grin, turned, and slapped the bar. “Morris!” he called. “A dash of lemon for the lady!” Morris promptly produced a glass into which he poured water from a nearby decanter. He crushed a quartered lemon in his meaty grasp, allowing the juice to drip into the glass. With a wink, Sal produced the beverage.

“Well, thank you,” Betty said, “but I was thinking of something a little more, well, stout.” She held the glass gingerly, as if the contents offended her.

Sal propped his elbow on the bar and leaned closer to the woman. A terse smile hardened the lines creasing the corners of his thin-lipped mouth. “I’ll have one for you, Miss O’Reilly,” he said and turned back to the bar.

With a huff, Betty sat the glass down on the bar. Gathering the length of her dress in one hand, she pasted a smile on her face, and turned toward the raised platform where the pianist sat waiting.

Morris filled Sal’s glass. “Downtown Hooch. Compliments of the gentleman at the end,” he said. His grin lifted the ends of his bushy moustache.

Sal chuckled and raised his glass toward the stranger in the stiff tweed coat before downing the tinted liquid. The stranger nodded and when he turned back to his colleagues, Sal turned his attention to the stage.

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herself. Eyes closed and lips parted, Miss Betty O’Reilly unleashed a sultry sound that spilled out into the dingy speakeasy, capturing the attention of every man in the bar.

Sal turned his eyes from the stage, redirecting his attention to the man still seated at the opposite end of the bar. In deep conversation, the man and his associate pounded the bar with their fists for emphasis. Though he didn’t know the man, he could guess who he worked for.

Sal cast off a shiver as the melody of the next tune crept up his spine. He knew it was well past time to leave when the music started getting to him. Staying any longer would only result in careless mistakes that he was trying hard to avoid. He wished, not for the first time that day, that his father was well enough to travel back to the city. Instead, Sal had come to the city to take his place at Vittorio’s while his father rested in the country. Weekends spent helping his father out were one thing, but running the restaurant on his own? He had yet to decide how he truly felt about it. Frustrated with his thoughts, he crammed his hat in place and headed toward the door.

The stranger reached out to touch Sal’s elbow as he passed. “A moment,” he said. Shrewd blue eyes stared from beneath the crumpled brim of his cap. He thrust out his hand.

“Oliver Callahan,” he said.

Sal shook the man’s hand. “Sal Vittorio.”

“Vittorio, eh?” Dark eyebrows rose. “The same Vittorios that own the restaurant a few blocks down?”

Sal nodded. His eyes shifted between the man’s face and his scarred hands that moved with every word spoken.

“Well, now. Small world. An acquaintance of mine keeps tabs on that place.” Callahan adjusted his posture atop the stool.

A half-chewed toothpick jutted from the corner of his mouth.

“I wasn’t aware of anyone keeping tabs on Vittorio’s, Mr. Callahan.” Sal knew, but he opted to let Callahan think otherwise.

Of course he’d noticed the batch of new faces standing on the sidewalk outside Vittorio’s: Fleming’s men. They’d been hanging around a lot more than Sal wanted them to, but what could he say? To the average person, the guys looked no different than anyone else who frequented the restaurant. Not to mention that any confrontation with Fleming’s men meant a confrontation with Fleming, and Sal wasn’t ready for that.

“It’s under the table, Mr. Vittorio. Ya follow?”

“I’m afraid, Mr. Callahan, that I don’t understand.

Perhaps we’re speaking a different language,” Sal replied.

Callahan cast a glance at his comrade. “Hear that? Mr. Vittorio don’t follow.”

The man’s grin faded. “I heard.”

Sal’s pulse hammered. He cleared his throat and the corners of his mouth twitched into a half-smile. “Well, Mr. Callahan, it’s been a pleasure, but I’m afraid I must be on my

The Canary Sings

way.” He tipped his hat and continued toward the door.

With his hand poised on the handle to escape, he felt a tug on his sleeve. He pivoted on his heel, expecting to find Callahan, but saw Betty instead. He hadn’t noticed the hush that had fallen over the crowd.

“Leaving so soon?” she asked sweetly. “And here I was hoping we could have a drink.” She glanced over her shoulder and Sal followed her line of sight back to Callahan.

Sal thumbed the brim of his hat. “Apologies, Miss O’Reilly. Maybe some other time. Looks like you already have your hands full.” He nodded toward the bar and took his exit.

Betty watched Sal leave. Of all the patrons of Frisco’s, she knew Sal least. He wasn’t a regular in town, that much she knew, but over the years she had seen him around. Callahan seemed interested, but why, she didn’t know. Attention from Callahan was never good news.

With Sal still on her mind, she stared out across the barroom, crowded with reddened faces. Some faces she knew well. Too well, in fact. Her dream to escape the violence of the city, a dream that helped soothe her during those lonely nights as she gave her body to strangers for survival, crumbled. At one time, she’d thought those faces would help her live her dream.

She thought back to nights lying dormant under fleshy, sweating men whose breath reeked of stale liquor. If she didn’t get away from the city soon, she would be forever stuck in the cesspool

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her life had become, and she was tired. Tired of drunks and thieves pushing her around, tired of being treated as less than a woman, tired of being used.

The sordid memories evaporated into a lingering fog when Callahan caught her eye. His expectant expression twisted the knot that lodged in the pit of her stomach. Every moment she stayed burst another dream, but she needed money. Money to survive. Money to escape. The singing job added a little cash to her purse, but it never seemed enough. But she’d been watching for a way out and she thought it might be closer now than ever before. All she had to do was play her cards right.

enough to hatch a plan that could destroy Fleming.

On some base level, Sal admired Fleming and the gangs that ran the city. While he envied the respect the bosses commanded, the brute force they implemented went against the smear of morality he still carried from his childhood of Sunday school. Sal craved respect; something he would never have as long as he lived in the shadow of his father. He couldn’t understand why Sal wanted more than Vittorio’s offered. It has been enough for our family for two generations, he remembered his Pop saying. Sal didn’t want to run the family restaurant, but he didn’t want Fleming to take it. Over the years, Sal had

She walked into the cave of men surrounding Callahan as if she knew no fear. *** “Vittorio acts dumb to the scene,” Callahan reported to the man seated behind the enormous desk. His boss, a beefy man with a bulldog’s face, slicked an extra glob of pomade into his hair and propped his wingtips on the desk.

“Callahan,” he sighed, “since Armand got sent up, you’ve stepped into a position that I normally wouldn’t reserve for a palooka like yourself, but I have no choice.”

Callahan’s mouth gaped open like a fish.

“When I asked you to tighten the screws on Vittorio’s dive, I didn’t mean for you to go flappin’ your gums.”

Fleming’s feet slapped back to the floor as he sat up in his chair. “Now, I know you stool pigeons are accustomed to ratting out your own mothers, but I swear before Christ, if you let loose another word about the comings and goings of my enterprise, even the slightest whisper, you’ll find yourself in a jam even butter won’t get you out of. Are we clear?”

Callahan stared at the floor. “Yeah, boss. Clear.” *** Sal’s father rented a room at a flophouse near the restaurant and while his father was away, Sal took up residence in his stead. The place was a dump, but at least he could eat and bathe occasionally. The other house patrons were a sleazy lot who seemed to know a great deal about Fleming, especially Big Bill and Jim. They liked to talk and Sal warmed up to them just

witnessed the change in the city since Fleming took control. If Sal sold out to Fleming, Vittorio’s and the rest of the block would end up as a string of whorehouses and gambling halls.

Sal loved the city. The eclectic virtue was enough to woo any man with big dreams. He admired the towering buildings as he dodged between window shopping women who tugged small children along behind them. He breathed in a lung full of air and smiled. The frenetic daily life of the bustling city could never compare with the modest shanty he owned in the country. The air smelled better there, however, and he wondered if he would ever go back. Lately, he wasn’t so sure. He’d been staying in the city only a short time, but something in him was changing, growing with the ebb and flow of daily life. The energy of the city made him feel alive and capable of having anything he wanted, but it also made him feel dirty. *** Sal stomped his way through the flowering weeds that grew in a wide patch between the outside of Morris’ apartment and the edge of the street. Sal knocked twice, waited, and knocked again. The door finally swung open and Morris stood glowering out from the darkness within. His barreled chest was naked and he looked at Sal with squinted eyes. Morris was a crude sort, but Sal trusted him as his father trusted him.

When Sal’s father had inherited Vittorio’s from his own father, the restaurant was barely able to make rent. Sal’s father had worked tirelessly, pouring every dime he had into the failing business. It was during this time that Frisco’s opened and Sal’s

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father and Morris met and fostered a relationship over a pint every evening. Now his father was ill, dying maybe, and it was only natural for Sal to visit with Morris in his father’s absence.

“Why you coming to bother a man’s sleep?” Morris asked with a crooked grin.

“Just came to talk,” Sal replied, pushing his palms out.

“Lots of blokes doing lots of talking lately,” remarked Morris as he withdrew. “Come in.”

Sal stepped across the threshold into the small oneroomed apartment. Morris offered a seat to Sal at the cluttered table near the door as he sank into his own chair. The wooden slats creaked beneath his weight.

“Talking about what?” Sal asked.

Morris scrubbed his beefy paw through his matted chest hair. “That Callahan fella was asking after you last night. He cornered up the canary, too.”

“Miss O’Reilly, you mean?”

Morris snorted. “Miss O’Reilly. The prostitute? Yeah, that’s her.”

Sal’s grimace coaxed a belly-shaking guffaw from Morris. “Well,” Sal said, “that aside, what was Callahan snooping at?”

“Claims Fleming has some interest in Vittorio’s. He pumped me on what I know about you.”

“What do you know about me?” Sal leaned forward.

“I told Callahan that your tab was running up and that I hadn’t laid eyes on you for a few.” Morris crossed his arms over his chest and relaxed into the stiff chair.

“True enough. What was his aim?”

“He’s a sneaky rat, keeps beatin’ around the bush. I suspect Fleming has an eye to buy out Vittorio’s. Has he been down there?” Morris asked.

“Not Callahan. Some other goons, though. Did he mention Pop to you?”

Morris shook his shaggy head. “You think he cut a deal with Fleming?”

Sal sighed. “I wish I knew. But if he had, I think Fleming would’ve insisted I make good on it by now. Pop…he’s looking bad. I think Fleming wants to cut in on Vittorio’s while Pop’s in the country.”

“Seems to be his aim. Vittorio’s isn’t the only place.

They’ve been hitting me to claim their hooch, but I don’t care to rub elbows with Fleming.”

Sal stared at his knotted fingers. “He keeps sending his rats to stir up trouble, but what can I do? I know Fleming’s got the badges in his pocket, so that’s no help.”

Morris agreed. “Everyone that can be bought has been.

The rest of us are hanging on, but it’s only a matter of time before they sell out or pay out.”

The Canary Sings

“Have you been approached with a payout?” Sal inquired.

“Callahan made mention of some numbers.” Morris scoffed. “I’d burn that gin mill to the ground before I’d have guns coming in trying to turn Frisco’s into some hood joint.” Morris banged his fist on the table. His nostrils flared.

“Men like Fleming won’t take no for an answer. They’ll have Vittorio’s busted up soon.”

“What’s up your sleeve?” Morris’s squinted eyes held a spark of camaraderie.

“It’s too easy to say we’ll drive them out, but that’s what I’d like to see done. Have them all thrown in the can.”

Morris snorted. “Easy to say. If that’s your aim, you’d better watch your back. Like you said, Fleming won’t take kindly to refusal.” His eyes narrowed as he leaned closer. “I hear Fleming has his sights set to take over the entire city, starting with the smallest fish in the pond. Us.” Sal inhaled deeply and exhaled in a rush. “That’s big time. Why not scratch him out before he gets that deep?” The words tasted funny. He’d tossed the idea around, but saying it aloud was a different story. It felt both wrong and right at the same time. The glimmer in Morris’s eye prompted Sal to continue.

“I mean, Big Bill and Jim rattle so much that I know Fleming’s schedule, down to his visits to the crapper. Creature of habit.” Sal

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The Canary Sings

laughed a nervous sound that bounced across the table.

Morris was silent, dumbfounded by the suggestion. “Just how do you propose to do that?”

“The main problem I see is getting past his goons without the guns coming out,” he paused, meeting Morris’s gaze.

“I have an idea about how to bypass that wrench in the wheel.”

Morris leaned forward, interested. “Let’s hear it.” *** The thinnest silk skimmed over the gentle dips and swells of Betty’s body. The neckline plunged dangerously low, threatening to expose her soul with the slightest gust of wind.

Her plump lips were perfectly painted.

Morris whistled. “You’re the cat’s meow, baby.”

Betty smiled, but her mind was far away from the dusty interior of Morris’ apartment where she stood. She never would’ve thought that Sal would have come to her with such a hair-brained scheme, but as terrible as his plan was, she could use it to her advantage. He wanted to take down Fleming. She wanted to run away into the sunset. If she played her role right, she could have all the money she needed to get out without ever having to look over her shoulder again.

“Where’s the piece?” Sal asked briskly.

The corners of her lips lifted as she slid the split-hem high on her thigh, revealing the lacy garter into which the tiny Derringer rested. The dress flared at the hip just enough to skim the thigh, adequately concealing the weapon.

“Won’t they catch it if they pat her down?” Morris asked.

“I have it on good authority that Fleming’s confident enough not to check his skirts.” Sal winked at Betty. “We’ll hope he hasn’t changed his standards.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “My hands are jittery.”

“Everything will be fine. Do exactly what we hashed out. With the goons occupied by the cabaret show downstairs, Fleming will be more open. Just get in and get out,” Sal advised.

“One slip and this whole business is wrecked.”

Morris stood against the wall with his arms crossed. “I really don’t think this is a good idea, Sal. What if it goes south? I can’t lose Frisco’s to Fleming, or get caught up in a mess if this thing--” Sal walked over and squeezed Morris’ shoulder. “We’ve been over this, Morris. Betty knows what to do.”

Betty blushed under the scrutiny. What if Morris saw through her act? What if, at the last minute, they pulled the plug?

Where would that leave her? “I can handle Fleming.” She stared into Morris’ glassy eyes. “I know what I have to do. Fleming is like putty in my hands.” She winked.

“If this thing goes south, I’m heading out,” Morris said to Sal as they stepped away from Betty. “I’d rather burn Frisco’s than see Fleming have it, but offing a man, Sal. That’s big time.”

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straight. Big Bill and Jim, they’ll take it from there. Let Betty do her thing. Relax,” Sal said, speaking in low tones as if talking Morris down off a ledge.

Morris didn’t relax, but he nodded his shaggy head.

Betty could still hear them talking about her. Sal was so confident that his plan would work, but Betty had been in the game long enough to know that it wouldn’t go as they planned.

She had to remind herself that she only agreed to be a part of it for her own benefit. She wanted out and she would do whatever she had to do to get out. She looked over at the men and suddenly felt sick. Would she have the guts when the time came to end this thing? Could it really be that easy? Morris knew her well enough to be comfortable with her, but would he let his guard down? She needed to get moving before she talked herself out of the whole thing.

“All right, boys. Time’s ticking,” Betty said with a nervous smile. “Let’s get this show on the road.” *** Betty’s heels echoed in clipped phrases as she strode down the white-walled hallways leading to Fleming’s office. As she drew near the last door, she nervously patted her curls. The sight of the muscle-bound brute stationed outside Fleming’s door agitated the butterflies in her stomach. I should’ve known we wouldn’t be completely alone.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Fleming.” She flashed a smile, but inwardly, she groaned. Her plan hinged on being alone with Fleming. He had always sent them away when she had come to him all those times before.

“Yeah, Miss O’Reilly. Mr. Fleming’s ‘specting you,” the man replied before opening the door.

“Miss O’Reilly,” Fleming greeted. He moved from behind his desk and crossed to her.

“Mr. Fleming.” She dipped into a curtsy. Every nerve in her body stood on end. She hated Fleming; hated what he stood for and how he treated people, especially her. At one time, he’d been one of her best customers, but he was a cruel, unyielding man and Betty had done her best for a long time to avoid him-until now.

“I’m a little confused as to why you’re here, my little canary.”

Betty’s eyes widened. She had a part to play and she had to play it well. But she had to think fast. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be, Mr. Fleming,” she whispered. “But I am a woman who remembers helping hands. I certainly remember yours.” She trailed her fingers along the lapel of his satin jacket. Her warm breath kissed his skin as she pressed her soft curves against his chest.

His hands were on her in an instant. Calloused fingers chafed her sensitive skin. “Miss O’Reilly,” Fleming spoke against

Candice Mizell

her hair. “I trust you don’t think me daft.”

She stepped back, blinking. “Daft? I don’t--” “Why are you here? A dame like you doesn’t invite herself to me without some motive.” Flicking some unseen fiber from his coat sleeve, he asked, “So what is it? I have a show to get to.”

Betty stood straight as she pulled a cigarette from her silver case, taking her time while contemplating the next move.

She hadn’t expected him to turn her down. She’d always been able to use her body to get what she wanted with any man, even Fleming. What had changed? Had she been too confident just because they had a past? Even if she pulled her gun out and shot him right then, she would never make it out without his goons catching her.

She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. She knew what she had to do to get herself out alive. “I have information that will certainly interest you,” she said with a smile as she snapped closed the silver case. She felt torn in half; wrestling with what she was about to do, and feeling both elated and horrible for it.

“Oh? And I suppose you expect some grand reward?”

His hands fluttered in the air like a stage performer.

“Of course,” Betty said. “I can leave without disclosing this information, if you wish.” She watched the battle in his eyes.

“The nature of the information?”

“It’s life or death, Mr. Fleming,” she replied.

“Come and have a seat,” he instructed as he settled into his throne. “Now,” he began. “Tell me about the bargain we’re about to strike.”

“Twenty large,” she announced. “The bounty on your head and the amount I require for this information.” Betty cursed herself. She wanted the money, but she wasn’t willing to pull the

The Canary Sings

gun out.

Fleming laughed. “A stake on my head, eh? Twenty grand is quite a sum. No street rat around this city has that kind of dough. Who’s funding?”

“Mr. Fleming, surely you realize it would be bad business on my part to give a name without some compensation.” Betty’s palms grew moist. How much longer could she keep up the cat-and-mouse game? Could she still get the money and get back in time to warn Sal and Morris?

“Ah, of course.” He relaxed into the creased leather chair. “And you, Miss O’Reilly, must realize that amount is a rejected offer. I’m willing to barter, however.”

“I’ll just go now,” she said, making to leave.

“Sit down, Miss O’Reilly,” Fleming ordered, his words like knives slicing through the air. “Claude!” he bellowed.

The door man stepped into the room and leaned against the door, effectively blocking Betty’s only exit. She was close enough to shoot Fleming, she knew, but would she be quick enough to shoot the bodyguard? She studied the distance between them, finally deciding that it was impossible. Sal had expected her to get the job done, had relied on her to use her assets to get him out of a jam. And for what? What would she get out of it? Jail time? A bullet?

Fleming directed his attention back to Betty. “I’m willing to offer ten grand for your information. That would serve as insurance against you coming back and pulling this stunt again.

You tell me who sent you here and I might let you get out of town.”

“Ten? But, I--” Betty forced herself to breathe deeply.

She had come for twenty thousand, but ten thousand? That would still be more than enough to set up a nice life somewhere far away from here, wouldn’t it?

Fleming scoffed. “I’d just as soon shoot you with your own piece, Miss O’Reilly.” He took a long look at her thigh and the gentle outline of the derringer that wasn’t quite concealed. “Take it or leave it. Don’t mistake my good graces.

I’m being very gracious.” One eyebrow cocked.

She thought about Sal and Morris.

She didn’t owe them anything, so why this doubt, this guilt over ratting them out? One way or the other, someone was bound to die and she didn’t want it to be her. “When do I get the money?”

“Lay out the specifics and we’ll square this up.” Fleming signaled his door man and he moved toward a large cabinet.

“Vittorio,” Betty spat. “He promised me Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 87

The Canary Sings

and the ‘tender from Frisco’s a cut if we helped.” She didn’t want it to be this way. She needed to warn them, help them get out of there.

Fleming’s lips flattened into a tight line. “Vittorio,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s time to squash that bug. Where is he?”

Betty hesitated long enough that Fleming leaned forward. He grabbed a fistful of her hair. “Where? Tell me now or this is all over. Doesn’t matter to me.” He leaned back and spread his hands out, releasing her. “Speak or I make you speak.”

“Frisco’s. I’m supposed to meet them there.” Betty’s eyes opened wide. Fear tiptoed along her spine. She longed for a stiff drink and a long taxi ride to anywhere else.

Claude dropped a bulging envelope on the desk.

Despite Betty’s desire to make off with the money, she dared not touch it. She cursed herself again for her weakness. She felt the weight of the pistol against her thigh and her fingers itched to pull it out. She had ruined Sal and Morris’ chances, had ultimately signed their death warrants. But if she took that money, she could get out. She could start a new life out in the country, away from the city, away from people who knew her only by her profession.

“Claude, gather the boys from the show and bring a car or two. We’ve got a visit to make.”

With Fleming’s cruel glare on her, Betty stuffed the envelope into her bag. Blood money. That’s what she’d taken. He walked around the desk and pushed his hand into the split of her dress, ripping the small gun from the garter. “Old habits die hard, eh, honey?” He clicked his tongue. “Remember that this is my city. This is my game.” He tapped the gun against his thigh before slipping it inside his coat. “I’m only allowing you to play along.”

He pulled her from the chair and shoved her out the door. *** Morris stalked a path behind the bar and back again.

Sal rolled scraps of paper into balls and flung them toward the trashcan. Morris already had his bags packed to leave town for a while. He hated to leave his customers hanging, but he knew 88 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Candice Mizell

staying in town after a hit like this would be impossible. He wanted his money so he could leave, but there would be none until the job was done.

“It shouldn’t take this long,” Morris grumbled. “I should’ve left already. There’ll be people showin’ up, expectin’ me to open.

Never should’ve trusted a skirt to pull something like this off.

What if--” “Quit bumping your gums.” Sal growled as he stood from his seat to join Morris’s pacing. The dim, moldy-smelling interior made him itchy, a nervousness that made him want to run.

“I don’t trust the dame. How did I let you swindle me into this?” Morris grumbled, more to himself than Sal. The door rattled as someone pounded on the outside frame. Morris jerked the door open, his pent up nerves ready to explode. Betty stood on the stoop, flanked by two men. Morris drew up to his full height. A feral smile crept into his eyes. “Well, well.” He turned to Sal. “I warned you about her.”

Betty cleared her throat. “Mr. Fleming would like a word with Mr. Vittorio.”

“Son of a bitch,” Sal muttered. He looked past her to the hulking forms of Big Bill and Jim. “Son of a…” He moved closer to the only exit.

“Mr. Vittorio,” Betty pleaded, “you’ve got to understand. This is my only way out of the city.”

The words sounded empty, were empty.

She wanted him to understand, but she knew he wouldn’t. She was finally taking her shot, only it was at the expense of others; others who may have helped her in the end.

Sal groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“What about these guys, Betty? Plants of yours? Swindling me?

Swindling me? ” “Mr. V--” Betty started.

“Can it, Canary!” Morris yelled. To Sal, he said, “I told you.”

A solemn expression stole across Betty’s face. Her eyes welled with tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I have no other choice. I’m sorry...”

Betty stepped back and the men, Fleming’s men, stepped forward. Morris swung his clenched fist into Big Bill as

Candice Mizell

The Canary Sings

he stepped through the door. His fist skidded across the man’s cheek and snapped into his shoulder. In a flash, Jim pinned Morris to the wall and slammed his fist into his nose, sending a thick trickle of blood leaking down and pooling into his moustache.

“Vittorio,” Big Bill growled. “You’re coming with us. One way or another.”

Sal hefted the nearest chair toward the man, but he sidestepped and the chair tumbled out the doorway, crashing near Betty’s feet. She skirted the chair and for a moment looked as if she may call it off, but her face hardened and she stepped back instead. Sal dashed toward the exit and just as he tasted freedom, a stiff forearm smashed across his windpipe.

Betty dropped her head, feeling more regret in that moment than she had ever felt. She felt certain that Fleming wouldn’t leave them alive. She could stop it, could call it off. She could give Fleming his money back. But would that save their lives? She’d already put the noose around their necks when she gave Fleming their names. And Sal, so wrapped up in his half-cocked scheme, that he hadn’t noticed that the men from the flophouse knew so much about Fleming because they were Fleming’s men, plants installed by Fleming himself to draw Sal out. Fleming’s plan had worked. Betty had helped to ensure that. They were all here because of her. Now, it was over for them.

But it didn’t have to be over for her.

In the car behind her, Fleming sat watching the men fighting, spilling in and out of the doorway as they were. After a brief hesitation, she moved toward him with resolve. She crawled into the car beside Fleming, leaned against his side, kissed his cheek, and whispered, “You’re the cat’s meow, baby.” In one fluid movement, she pulled her gun from Fleming’s coat, pressed the barrel against his chest, and shot him. His men were so busy with Sal and Morris that they never heard the shot.

Betty scrambled from the car and made it a safe distance away, all the while hearing the slapping and smacking sounds of the fight. She smiled at the thought that Sal and Morris were holding their own after all. She hadn’t had the chance to thank them for saving her life, but then, they hadn’t had the chance to thank her either. She paused long enough to light a cigarette from her case.

With one final glance, she pivoted on her heel and walked away, leaving a trail of smoke behind.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 89

Poetry

COLIN JAMES GO SOMEWHERE YOU DON’T WANT TO When near enough to puke on a white picket fence, have you noticed the car tracks that trail off into empty lots?

Those of us who consult with ourselves think this is a fine place to live.

A dumpster has been turned on its side and is basically irretrievable fodder to the scrap merchants who eye it from a safe distance.

Incongruous weapons we have them lined up against a partial wall.

We are very willing to intimidate those Darwinists who arrive so unprepared, otherwise the lack of conveniences will get to you.

90 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

A MUGGING IN UTOPIA Congratulations on successfully reaching the eighth level of consciousness.

Although, I can’t help but notice a certain lack of style regarding your approach to procedure.

The wearing of two different brands of sneakers for example.

This is very confusing to the mark and considered unsportsmanlike, even going back several generations in the existing annals of indoctrination.

Also, your use of the word Yo is not exactly socially acceptable, nor does the word actually explain your need to initiate a dialog.

Some reference to the weather is usually considered a more benign beginning.

I would hope you would keep these simple truths in mind as you pursue your, otherwise, very promising career.

Poetry

Salvatore Difalco MURDER.COM

Two hitmen front the brickwork of a warehouse, all in black, one fatter than the other whose eyes resemble small spoked wheels yanked from a coke oven gutter.

A green tea rain dabs the evening light; the hitmen fit their hands in pockets holding weapons specialized for noiseless kills. They fetishize the tools of their trade but nonetheless stake the warehouse, with its terrible doors and empty windows, wracking their brains for an anecdote or witticism.

Someone will meet heaven soon, or hell, depending on the math-not a saint, one would hazard, not a stand up fella gets whacked.

Ah, whacked--a perfect word coined thoughtfully one day by a hitman tapping the perfect skull of a mark expecting a handshake.

Meanwhile the hitmen kill time.

How mundane it is, how dull, killing to pay rent or send your kid to ballet, killing to grind out a tolerable living.

TOO MUCH AMERICAN JUSTICE

Skeletonized human remains, half-dressed, wearing paper bracelets--evidence of illness or madness or a consequence of actions not yet apprehended.

The dead end needs a pile-driver to smash through its many layers.

Nothing exists without forensic evidence.

Histories are made from it.

But the horror story continues apace.

Suspects appear, sing false confessions . . .

Only science can unmask the pitted faces of the perpetrators.

Monstrom in fronte, monstrum in animo— by their molecules they will be known.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 91

Poetry

Salvatore Difalco DISTURBING THE PEACE After the TV time-out, time became sauce BĂŠarnaise.

A lack of Dresden shepherdesses led to internal anarchy and sadomasochistic gadgetry hit the modest stage.

Julia Child emerged from the mouth when a barking ludic Labrador rarified the mild suburban setting.

Melodies cease when the rainbows of our dreams produce no gold bullion. Thus, we reach beyond the flawlessness of watered lawns and blooms; we take the tablecloth in the dining room and yank it as fast as we can, masticating Oxycontin tabs once the guests have departed.

Digging around, a bottle of Knob Creek resurfaces, and a white pith helmet for later, when the grip is lost and hydrochloric vomit bubbles the esophagus: reductio ad absurdum.

Then the blood is Mr. Cleaned off the walls.

Not evidence of an accident here, the splatter.

Someone beat the hemoglobin out of the head at the bottom of the stairs; hair on the banister, blow poke on the landing, who are we kidding?

What are we hiding? A life insurance policy?

A love triangle hitherto kept under wraps?

The deadpan of the prosecutor thrills no one outside of pokey procedural lovers.

But none of this should worry anybody.

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Poetry

John Grey THE WOLF OUT THERE It lives for each successive moon, cries loudly when my heart is in its agony, naked, unkempt, and my mind is just dead matter in my skull.

Each wail’s imagined skyward though it digs under my skin, traps the gloomy architecture of my lungs mid-breath, when there’s nothing there to tell myself it’s just a sound, just nature gratified that it has voice.

Here, in the woods, where I feel on the edge of me, and my thoughts can’t get out from under and love is just some useless relic from ten years before, a bay, a yowl, is the complete survivor.

It’s dark in the cottage.

I’m alone.

The wolf is out there somewhere.

Not even God can always make that claim.

NATURE BOY CONFESSES TO HIS WIFE I could live in the forest.

At least, part of me could live in the forest.

The part that doesn’t have to eat decent meals or sleep in a comfortable bed.

And I could converse with animals.

At least, whatever there is within me that doesn’t mind being ignored.

The forest doesn’t whine.

Animals sense when a guy needs some space.

Neither of them suffer from guilt trips.

And, if they did, they wouldn’t insist I come along for the ride.

A tree doesn’t want to own anything or anyone else.

A squirrel is modest regarding its accomplishment.

If I wasn’t a person, if I didn’t need the company of other people-I could live in the forest.

There, I’ve said it.

That’s as close as admitting I love you as it gets.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 93

KIRK DAPONTE SHADOW CITY Behind the eight ball The heat seizes my nostrils Smoky city air.

A box job gone bad, Thought I could make a clean sneak Hop a rattler out.

Shamus proved me wrong, One false move and I’ll get made, And put under glass.

I need to lay low, At least ’til the heat dies down, Here’s hoping it does.

Just down the alley, An old familiar hash house, A good enough place.

It’s dimly lit here And not too overly packed, Mostly bindle stiffs.

Beyond the last booth, A telephone, a lifeline, A glimmer of hope.

I’ll call my fixer, I’m sure he’ll know what to do, Save me getting pinched.

I pick up the line, Drop two bits in the blower, My guy isn’t home.

I hang up the phone, Hear sirens close in distance, Heart palpitations.

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I breathe in the air, The scent that rides with the heat, Heavy with anguish.

A snitch turned me up, Taking the bounce in nippers, Off to the big house.

This is my penance, Nothing left to do but wait, For absolution.

Shadow City

Kirk Daponte

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 95

DIARY ENTRY OF A DEPRESSIVE

by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb

There is nothing more inconvenient than death. It disrupts everything--the most well-laid-out plans, critically time-sensitive endeavors, and the best intentions to get things done. And this is why I so resented the passing of our dear friend, Morgan.

Of course, an unexpected call at 3 a.m. is never good, but when Morgan’s wife called to inform us of his fatal heart attack, the news took us completely by surprise. He had been happy. He had worked out. He had eaten right. And it even had been at his suggestion that the four of us scheduled a hike down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon next month.

However, for me, the fact we would now never accomplish this was not high on my list of disappointments because I knew, due to other reasons, that the trip was never going to happen, anyway.

While my husband and friends had been eagerly exploring websites displaying light-weight camping gear, non-BPA water containers, fashionable but practical boots, and freeze-dried foods, I was surfing sites that showed particularly petite but efficient guns, potentially poisonous combinations of antidepressants with OTC pills, and instructions for novices on how to slash wrists.

The method I had decided upon isn’t pertinent here. What is important is how irritating this turn of events is. Now I have a crisis--a dilemma of etiquette.

I know Morgan didn’t mean to do it, that is, to die. Apart from Morgan’s persistent joking about my morbid sense of humor, there was no way for him to know that, unlike him, I did mean to die. In fact, I had been planning to commit suicide for a long time. That decision allowed the humor into my otherwise “morbid” temperament.

But now I felt stifled. Had Morgan’s death not occurred, I suspect those who knew me would not have found it unlikely that I would end up taking my own life. Everyone knew I had “issues” (the polite word) with depression, although strangers often thought my mannerisms were simply rude or unsocial. Children often thought I was “mean.”

Clinically speaking, it’s really a matter of genes and environment--I know this, so I carefully had planned to dispatch both.

It was almost time. The loose ends of my life were all neatly tied and in order. Today was the day. The window of opportunity had approached, and I had everything I needed ready. But here I am, instead, pulling up black stockings, disgruntled and dressing for Morgan’s funeral, as it would be of utmost inconsideration not to attend. As I said, there is nothing more inconvenient than death.

96 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 97

Artist Spotlight Interview Sarah Cole Our Artist Spotlight for this issue shines on Sarah Cole, an artist and writer who, after earning a degree in English Literature, found herself on the unlikely journey of becoming a tattoo artist’s apprentice and onward toward managing a tattoo shop. She spends her days painting human canvases with a tattoo machine rather than a paint brush, and spends her nights and weekends juggling single parenthood and writing books, songs, and anything else she dreams up in the wee hours of the morning. Read on to learn more about Sarah Cole and her work, and find her sprinkled throughout social media online.

Pen Name: Sarah E. Cole

Current City/State: Philadelphia, MS

Previous publications: “I Am a Fragment” - poem “Scenic Route” - poem “That Side of Friendship” - short “Benji” -short Raising Libby: An Aspie’s Tale - novella Escaping Serenity - novel The Prepper’s Guide to Foraging - illustrations

• Please describe the types of artistic expression you currently practice (including music and artistry across all mediums).

They say I’m versatile. a. Painting – watercolor, acrylic, oils b. Drawing – graphite/charcoal. c. Tattooing d. Photography e. Music – vocal and instrumental f. Writing – fiction, non-fiction, and prose/poetry.

• On an average day, what might one find Sarah Cole doing?

Before noon and after I send my daughter off to school, I try to write as I can. After noon, I run Shiners Tattoos, and do so until the shop closes. During shop hours, you can sporadically find me either tattooing, consulting with a client, consuming coffee, or creating some sort of artistic whatnot.

Once I am off from work, I venture home and become jealous of my simple dog, Shadow, who more than likely napped throughout the entire day.

• Tell us about your current job and how you discovered it (or it discovered you).

I drew on a chalkboard wall at a tattoo shop, and was invited to apply to the apprenticeship program at said shop: Shiners Tattoos. I accepted. I went through a horrible experience of an old school apprenticeship program, where I learned a whole bunch about the industry of tattooing. Three years later, I’m running the shop and also tattoo legally and professionally. When coming into this job, I clearly thought it was like any other 9-5 job… But what I discovered is that I got adopted into a type of family…

And while people tell me that my determination and talent has been a blessing to Shiner’s, I will tell anyone: Shiner’s has not only blessed my life, but also, it saved me.

98 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Artist Spotlight

Interview

• Tell us about the book you’ve recently released. Include where it can be purchased and a photo of the cover.

Escaping Serenity is a second edition publishing. It is the story of Grace Richards and how she copes in dealing with the death of her mother, Annie, an undiagnosed bipolar schizophrenic woman who raised her (Grace). It can be purchased (online) through Amazon, Books-A-Million, and Barnes and Noble.

• Tell us about the current writing project. What’s the basic premise? When is the expected release date?

The current book I am working on is titled Heirs of Our Father. It’s about two men who are soldiers, and are connected through chance, friendship, and a sense of war. I don’t want to give away too much about it, but I can tell you that I am excited about it and proud of it thus far. I hope to have it available by Spring of 2017.

• What is your current mantra or outlook on life?

My current outlook on life: Don’t die.

• Favorite author? Favorite piece of writing?

Favorite author(s): Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Gaiman. a. The Sun Also Rises b. The Great Gatsby c. Sandman series

• What are you currently reading?

Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman.

• If you could choose only one album to listen to for hours on end, what would it be and why?

Illumination by Jennifer Thomas. She is amazing.

• If you could have drinks with one famous person, alive or deceased, who would it be and why?

A toss-up between Jesus and Ernest Hemmingway…

Ernest Hemingway because he seems like he was the type of asshole I could have gotten along with.

Jesus, because he turned the water directly into wine… He could have very well turned it into Tab or Fresca if he wanted…

Plus, the whole dying on the cross bit-- that has to come with a cool first person POV story.

I kid…

Hemingway.

Final answer.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 99

Artist Spotlight Interview Sarah Cole

Sarah says:“Each piece is for sale, but they are individually priced. If anyone wants to contact me, they can do so through the shop’s website: shinerstattoos.com or on Facebook: Shiner’s Tattoos.”

100 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

CONTRIBUTORS 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.

Alexander Brown is a freelance writer living in Toronto, Canada. His work has appeared in Writer’s Bone, Across the Margin, Feathertale, and Provocative Penguin. He is the editor of TRACER, a short story publication (www.tracerpublishing.com).

David B. Cox II is a managing editor at ComparativeGeeks.com, where he also has a webcomic and a podcast. Is he a librarian who writes, or a writer who works at a library? Time may tell. He lives in Juneau, Alaska with his wife Holly and their Geek Baby.

According to Justin Di Cristofaro, “The only thing I know for certain is that I am 26 years old, and I’m from deep in southern Appalachia. I have a horrible time talking about myself. I am a published poet. I’m a co-author on a book called Not Taking a Fence that was just released. It’s a collection of poetry from authors across the Appalachians. It’s listed on my Amazon author page.”

Jerry Cunningham has been writing full-time for two years and has written a play about Guantanamo Bay, an essay on the education laws during the days of slavery in the U.S., and short stories. Prior to that he practiced law in Los Angeles for many years, publishing copiously in the legal realm, and then taught at a local college in Oregon. He was born and raised in the Bronx. He lives in Oregon.

Kirk DaPonte dabbles in creative writing when not programming in Java. Currently attending college for a BS in Software Development. Answers to “Captain,” and is sometimes prone to holding an entire conversation with friends consisting of nothing but Charlton Heston photos.

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.

Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto. His poems have appeared widely in print and online. His novel Mean Season (Mansfield) came out in 2015.

From Kegan Doyle: “My writing has appeared in Geist, SubTerrain, Critical Sociology, Canadian Literature, Aethlon and elsewhere.

I was awarded second prize in Geist’s long-story-short contest earlier this year, and an article of mine has won the Russell P. Nye award from the Journal of Popular Culture (best article of the year).”

Jason Fedora’s writing career started when an elementary teacher had her students write an Easter story. While everyone else wrote of fluffy bunnies and family, Jason wrote about an Easter egg hunt that became the battle ground between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Jason has come a long way from that five-page short story. He has recently had The Truth of Betrayal, an epic fantasy, published by Dark Oak Press. The second book to The Truth of Betrayal, Gates of Worlds, has been accepted by Dark Oak and is undergoing edits. Jason has “Dakota Bell and the Cintamani Stone,” an alternate history short story, slated to be released by Prose Press. He’s also a contributor to the up-and-coming Prose Press release of The Shadow Sees the Sun: Creatives Surviving Depression. Jason is currently doing edits for Unknown: War Drums, a modern-day paranormal horror story with his father, R. J. Holmes.

John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident. He is recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Gargoyle, and Silkworm, with work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry Review.

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 101

Contributors

R.J. Holmes has this to say: “When I was growing up, I had a problem; I could not read or write. I was very frustrated and ashamed until in my early teens I learned I had dyslexia. I knew what was wrong with me, but I still had to struggle with it. When I was in my early 20s I was taught to read and write. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. I always wanted to write books, so when my son asked me if I would like to write one with him I jumped at the chance. I told him about a story that I wanted to write. Unknown: War Drums is that story and “The Well” is our first short story. Currently, I have completed a short story call ‘Project Moonbase,’ a science fiction tale that Prose Press will release, and I’m currently working on ‘Moonbase Armstrong,’ which is based on my short story.”

Marissa Mireles Hinds is a creative director, poet, performer, photographer, and activist. Marissa has recently spent six months training in film, poetry, and performance in London, UK working with The Roundhouse, Media Trust, Film London, The Museum of Archives, Vivienne Westwood, The Amy Winehouse Foundation, and The Heritage Lottery Fund. Marissa’s first commissioned short form documentary Future Revisited had its first screening at The Bruce Castle Museum of Archives on February 20th in Tottenham, London.

Marissa has published three books of poetry, one of which is titled Poetry for the Mute and is available online on Amazon and is on the bookshelves inside Mellowpages, a community library in Williamsburg, New York. Marissa has also studied Improv at UCB in New York on a diversity scholarship.

Colin James has poems forthcoming in Whet, Poetry Repairs, and Of/With. He is currently once again a student.

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.

Philip Kuan is an aspiring Californian writer with a passion for befuddling readers. Some of his favorite authors include Charles Dickens, Tolkien, and Franz Kafka, among others. He has been published in several short story magazines, and is always looking for constructive feedback at http://philkuan.wordpress.com/.

Malcolm MacDonald is a Canadian writer currently living abroad in England.

Sam Marlowe is a one-time sap who got wise the hard way. He’s been hung out to dry by more twists than a flophouse bedsheet. He was a stand-up guy for a gumshoe, who was making bank til he got mixed up with the wrong frail and found himself on the outs with the hammers and saws. They pulled his ticket after she fingered him for a flimflam artist. After that he wound up a bindle punk on skid row for a while, peddling stories for a finn. How he’s avoided a Sheriff’s Ball is anybody’s guess, but somehow he’s never been braced. Half sauced on Giggle Juice most of the time, he occasionally manages to rub two brain cells together and come up with something the local rag will print. Don’t underestimate him, though. He’s as hardboiled as they come.

Thomas M. McDade is a former computer programmer living in Fredericksburg, VA with his wife. He served two tours of duty in the U.S. Navy. McDade is a graduate of Fairfield University. His fiction has appeared most recently in Five on the Fifth.

Candice Mizell is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi where she studied literature. She has worked as assistant editor with another small press on a number of projects, and currently spends the majority of her time building The Attic Box business. A lover of the written word, she 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 ways. Fantasy, YA, memoir, noir, and nonfiction subjects are a few personal favorites.

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.

Moshe Prigan is currently a freelance writer living in Haifa, Israel. He was an International Flash Fiction Contest Finalist of the Museo de la Palabra, Spain (2015). His fiction has been published in magazines such as Tales from the Shadow Realm, Genesis Science Fiction, The Bear Review (Ireland), Witch Works, A Quiet Courage, Fuck Fiction, HOOT Postcard Review, and Mythical Legends Publishing Anthology. Another work of flash fiction is forthcoming in Polychrome Ink. 102 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising

Contributors

PT Sand is an author of strange fiction and other sundry works. He is a native of the Southern United States, and has an MA from The University of Southern Mississippi. After traveling the world as a soldier in the US Army, he returned to his home state of Mississippi, where he currently resides with his two dogs, Rook and Anga.

LB Sedlacek’s poems have appeared in numerous publications such as Third Wednesday, Word Riot, Main Street Rag, Poesia, Illumen, Big Pulp, Mastodon Dentist, and others. LB is a former Poetry Editor for ESC! Magazine and is the author of 11 chapbooks.

As Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb attests, “Just in case this brief piece of fiction captures your interest, my work has appeared in The Conium Review, Watershed Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, SLAB: A Literary Journal, The Broken Plate, Foliate Oak, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environment, Dark Matter: A Journal of Speculative Writing, the anthology Talking Back and Looking Forward: An Educational Revolution in Poetry and Prose (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group), and other anthologies, journals, and online forums, with poetry and prose forthcoming in Eastern Iowa Review, Spirit’s Tincture, Weber—The Contemporary West, and others. A past Pushcart Prize nominee (Poydras Review) and a recent Best of the Net nominee (Dirty Chai Magazine), I hold an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College and am co-founder of Native West Press, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit natural history press, which exists to enhance positive awareness of some of the noncharismatic creatures who dwell in the American West.”

As Dakota Wilkinson says of herself, “At a young age I started to see the world through a camera lens. This new passion consumed my soul and I had to learn more. I started out simple with a 35 mm camera and took so many photos I still have rolls somewhere in a box needing to be developed! Mainly the pictures were of the animals we had on the farm, and various nature spots; I always loved to be in the woods. I truly fell in love with this form of art and my passion for nature photography grew, and I started to self-teach and learn everything I could from the internet. Now as a stay-at-home mom and step-mom, I still learn new things daily to achieve my goal in the long-term of getting to the school that I know can kick start the career that’s been my goal and dream since my junior year in high school. That is to live my life doing both of my passions, being the voice for the voiceless with my camera, and for the animals and natural world with the Nat Geo team!”

Flytrap Uprising | October 2016 | 103

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104 | October 2016 | Flytrap Uprising