Ron-Tyler Budhram

Training Isabel

by: Ron-Tyler Budhram

CW: Animal abuse.

Isabel’s parents are concerned with teaching their child about responsibility and how to keep something alive—rather than simply to teach the four-year-old about death. They figure life is dreary enough, and teaching Isabel about death by getting her a fish would be cruel, a little too macabre, a senseless waste of money. They are not that lazy. Her father takes the reins on this endeavor and makes it his own. He has embraced the hobby of fishkeeping and now he wants to do something fun with his daughter, even though their personalities seem to demonstrate the beginning of a fundamental clash. Isabel doesn’t appreciate his insistent, forceful approach. She doesn’t like him. Generally, she rebels against him.

But specifically, she decides to experiment with the fish. Instead of dechlorinator, she puts bubble soap into the tank. Her father’s shimmering school of neon tetras die. The child is at once shocked that the fish die so immediately, that she really did kill his fish, but she is also pleased when she sees her father’s crestfallen face.

The neighbor comes over that afternoon, the babysitter, twelve-yearold Quinn, whom Isabel idolizes. From her time-out on the stairs, Isabel tells Quinn what she did. But the older girl has already taught the younger one all about death while playing in the woods. In fact, she’s made Isabel kill a number of bugs and frogs in the most gruesome way they could: rock bashing. Both got so carried away with the glee of the activity that they thought nothing of it. When Isabel tells Quinn about the bubble soap, her face draws down into a gloom; she feels guilty as Quinn stifles laughter with hands clamped over her face, with gaps between her fingers like the bars of a cage.

Don’t worry, Quinn says. They’re just fish, and fish die. They were gonna die anyway. Isabel’s mom stomps down the stairs in her black boots and says, No, they were not going to die. Isabel killed them on purpose, and now she’s being punished. So, go home Quinn honey, it’s late.

Isabel’s mom, an animal-rights activist on Facebook, has just gotten off

the phone with a dog breeder in Iowa. She has been on a waiting list for a Newfoundland puppy, priced at $3,800, for over a year, and has a 25 percent deposit down. The puppies have finally become available. It’s something she’s always wanted, and she thinks it will be the best opportunity to teach her daughter responsibility—but with a gentler hand than that of her husband. Puppies are little babies, she tells Isabel on the way to the farm in the country that weekend. And they need you to be very gentle and kind, she says. Isabel is overexcited and bangs on the insides of her father’s Range Rover. She tries to unbuckle the belt on her car seat to bounce better, but cannot. Stop that! her father shouts, and Isabel’s mom rests a hand on his knee.

When they arrive on the rolling green acres, Isabel’s mom names the puppy Archie, a designation that bears no connection to its appearance: floppy ears attached to a charcoal-gray fluff ball. It bounds around the barn with its overlarge mother one last time, and Isabel’s mom hands the breeder a fat envelope full of cash. Archie is deposited into a small kennel beside Isabel’s car seat. It cries most of the drive home. The little girl slaps her hands over her ears. She shouts at Archie to be quiet, but the puppy howls over her. Isabel’s father stops the Rover to join in the shouting. At home, Archie chews on everything when he isn’t sleeping. Only a few days into owning the puppy, Isabel screams as the baby canines drag heavily down her arm and rend bloody an inch-long portion of her skin. His teeth are like tiny daggers! says her father, and the family must leave Archie in his crate to cry while they get their tetanus boosters. Pain pulses in their shoulders at the site of the shot for days.

Now Quinn wants to come over to help Isabel’s mom train Archie against biting and nipping and chewing off-limits items like shoes and power cords. Isabel is in charge of Archie’s training treats. She rewards the puppy when it releases the tennis ball on command, and she bends down to hug it in imitation of her mom. Good boy, she says. The dog licks inside her ear, and she is breathless with laughter. Archie’s tongue is tiny, pink, and pristine like it’s made for a toy—for Isabel’s toy. When the puppy is napping and Isabel’s mom gone to tend laundry, Quinn grips the younger girl’s arm to inspect the bite. She unsticks and lifts the bandage, and she moves her jaw as she’d done all afternoon, wincing so that Isabel can hear it clicking and cracking. The older girl’s thumb and fingers bear down into Isabel’s arm. She picks at Isabel’s scab so it bleeds out.

Ouch! says Isabel, attempting to pull her arm free, but Quinn’s grip is too tight. Archie’s ears perk up. He bounces over from his chosen spot at the

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side of the couch, where the vent spews cold air and the lamp stands five feet tall. Quinn shoves him away, and he yelps and doesn’t try to approach again.

Quinn smiles into Isabel’s eyes. Wouldn’t it be funny, she says, if you put your blood on the lamp cord?

The lamp cord?

The power cord. Quinn points to the lamp in Archie’s spot.

Isabel can’t think of why this would be funny, nor can she grasp Quinn’s meaning. Yeah, she says and imitates Quinn’s smile. The girls are in Archie’s spot when Isabel’s father enters from the kitchen. Girls? he says, and Isabel raises her head over the arm of the coach to look him in the eyes. She ducks and avidly smears her blood all over the cord, which trails behind the furniture to the power outlet.

What are you doing? he says in his rush to them, skipping over Archie. What are you doing? He grabs Isabel’s injured arm and shakes it. Why did you take off this bandage? You leave it on! Isabel tries to pull her arm from him and begins to cry. Her father releases his grip and falls back onto the couch, breathing deeply several times. Quinn, he says, I think you should go home. It’s getting dark. He turns the lamp on, and white light floods the place. Quinn crosses the room with the loudest pop of her jaw yet. She says, Bye, and then she is gone. Isabel continues to smear blood on the power cord, unnoticed until Archie notices.

the escape artist

by: donald e. gasperson

reading quietly and quite content but behind my back the deplorable decide to snicker and bait me

at last count

where’d they learn this such potent young men it must be compulsory in every public school library

pick up nihilism all these point the finger and laugh and that’s that they won’t give it up

why

it’s not that they could read but couldn’t find anything interesting it was a waste of time they couldn’t

morally stupid

I still cringe at the sight of someone breaking the spine of a book having no more interest in it than to kill time

canned

school was an unnatural place walking around with my head down growing withdrawn and introspective guided by dead reckoning be plain I left school before they knew I was gone unable to conform to what maintaining but a tenuous presence

stand excused

as a child I could read well after the lamps were lit and find encyclopedia brown under the blanket with a flashlight square enough

and the small local library was orderly and quiet I was there every few days borrowing books owe somebody something

catch 22 slaughterhouse 5 fahrenheit 451 of mice and men the catcher in the rye I know why the caged bird sings finding a lost thought the best used bookstores were mysterious and dusty a fine place to haunt sifting through the contents a poor man’s fate economics marxist theory political science statistics human sexuality clinical psychology poetry

soon enough

reading quietly and quite content following a simple thread through the library stacks lost in thought

reason to be inferred language making of man and poetry a sacred pact

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Technicality

by: Alex Andy Phuong

Technically Life can be technical Yet people are not machines Human beings have brains With the gift of intelligence But only the ones willing to think Can change the world for the better Especially since the mind Is more powerful than any computer