Crack the Spine Literary magazine
Issue 171
Issue 171 November 12, 2015 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2015 by Crack the Spine
This issue is generously sponsored by:
Outskirts Press
CONTENTS Adam Hoss
The Last Sermon of Blind Isaac Cooper
Devanshi Khetarpal
Here We Are
Melissa Hammond
To the Guy Outside Pimanti’s…
Kelly McNeal
That Dichotomous Like
Robin Landa Bottled Up
Kim Magowan Sorried
Ceridwen Hall
Walking Around the Block
Adam Hoss
The Last Sermon of Blind Isaac Cooper
Most school days I roll out of bed around noon. Oh, hey, missed the bus. At least I tried. Today I’m up early and thank Christ for that, because Grandpa Isaac’s lost his damn mind. He’s locked himself behind the glass double doors to his office, face full of brimstone, screaming something about Hiroshima and the Devil and tearing his bible to pieces. Arteries pop from splotched yellowed skin. He rips pages straight from the spine like a strung-out crankhead clawing out clumps of his own hair. His behavior alarms Emily, who comes staggering up the basement steps behind me. I try to tell her that this is performance art for the elderly, some real Yoko Ono shit, but she’s not buying it and dials 911. When the operator picks up she stumbles and stutters, trying hilariously to describe the tantrum in medical terms. “My boyfriend’s grandpa is…” she begins. “He’s, um… He’s been bit, or something. Send help.” Grandpa leans back and gets both feet into the action, sweeping his desk clear of calendars, staplers, stacks of notepads, numerology textbooks, and equations scrawled onto every surface – the backs of business cards, toilet paper, receipts, and, on his “heavy days,” carved right into the desk itself. Then the fury dies. Scraps of scripture settle into the carpet and Grandpa Isaac rests his forehead against his desk. “Tonight,” he croaks. “The rapture will happen tonight.” Grandpa Isaac’s been predicting doomsday for decades. Trouble is, the
world’s still here. An ambulance leaves skid marks on the curb. Paramedics pound on the door. Neighbors have drifted onto front lawns. Outside’s full of blue skies and raised voices, flashing lights and police sirens. The preacher peers up at the world, flashing the delirious smile of madmen and treasure seekers. “Take me to the mountaintop,” Grandpa Isaac says. “I must speak to my flock.” A confused paramedic presses his face against the strip of glass by the door. I look Emily’s breasts in the eye. The perks of being the short kid. Christ, I’ve been up all of five minutes and already I’ve got a hard-on. Long day ahead. Emily stinks of lousy pot and nostalgia. She tells the paramedics to fuck off and shuffles her socks across the linoleum. Emily’s allowed to spend the night because Grandpa’s senile. He’s also blind in both eyes. “It’s really gotta be a mountaintop?” she asks. “Can’t he just, like, do it over Skype?” “Hey,” I snap. “This is the end of days we’re talking about. Serious business. The man wants to go to the mountaintop and we’ll take him to the mountaintop.” “Dude,” she yawns. “I really just wanna eat Doritos and watch Veep. Where are we gonna find a goddamn mountaintop in Ohio?” I test the door to Grandpa’s office. Still locked. “Relax,” I tell her quietly. “We’ll just walk him up a hill somewhere. Dude’s blind.” She groans zombie-like guttural noise. “Yeah, okay. Whatever. Lemme smoke a bowl. Then we’ll take Gramps on an adventure.” Grandpa Isaac’s been cast off by the whole family. Between the failed meteor cataclysm of ’89 and the Archangel Gabriel’s no-show the following summer,
amid a flurry of humiliation and bizarre lawsuits, his cult following – once in the thousands – began a decades-long death spiral. Sharing a last name got a bit awkward. Mom and Dad even talked about taking out a restraining order. Still, I like to come visit. Someone’s gotta check on the old man. My folks aren’t too keen on me these days either. Something about my grade point average, I guess. I check the clock. Missed the bus again. In a way the apocalypse – the rapture, whatever – is the best thing that’s happened this week. Saves us the trouble of dealing with things like final exams and graduation, student loans and lying to the career lady. Last semester I wrote an English class essay expositing the merits of to-the-death cage fighting as an organized Olympic sport. They sent me to the office, the purist snobs. No way. I can’t work in an environment like that. They’ve stifled my creative flair. Instead I spend my schooldays diving for stray pennies in the couch and eating Cheetos. I’ve found my calling. I could do it professionally. Good and stoned, Emily runs a hand through her frayed black hair, slips into her Chuck Taylors and jangles the keys to her Honda. Grandpa grins like a manic dog. Emily and her brother are orphans. His name’s Jeb or Jim, I think. He’s at Yale studying something called “molecular biophysics.” He’s real into TED talks and Malcolm Gladwell and changing the world through science. Emily’s into sleeping and, well, sleeping. Most days we just wander around Grandpa’s crumbling mansion at the edge of town, three black sheep in a barn all our own. I’m far too busy beating off to deal with things like employment and a driver’s license, so Emily’s gotta drive. I settle into the passenger seat, clutching a stack of Grandpa’s doomsday pamphlets over my raging boner. I’m feeling pretty stoked about handing these out in the center of town. I begin
brainstorming a deranged sermon but get hung up on the details. Am I warning the good folks against the coming of Cthulhu or Quetzalcoatl? Should we pray to Jesus or send Bruce Willis into space? Nobody thinks about this shit until it’s too late. “Where the fuck are we gonna find a goddamn hill?” “The mountain,” Grandpa Isaac corrects her. “Take me to the mountain.” “Right. Yeah. Whatever. How do we get there?” “The angels will show us the way.” “Helpful.” Full of rebellion and getting great gas mileage, we tear out of the gravel driveway in Emily’s Honda, drawing horns and hard looks. Chilly April air washes across my face. I’m bored in the passenger seat so I decide to jack off. Emily swats and scratches, telling me we’d end up in jail. I shrug. As long as there’s TV. “If the world’s ending tonight we’ll need guns,” Emily explains as we tear through another red light. I’ve never seen her like this. The rapture’s really getting to her. “We’ll also need fireworks and lots of pot. I know a guy. You alright back there, old man?” “The mountain,” Grandpa croaks. “Sure. Couple errands first. Hey, Aiden, could you do be a big one and put your dick away? It’s weird, your grandpa being in the car and all.” When I was five I fell out Grandpa’s second story window. He lived alone then. Grandma had gone off to that great Stieg Larsson book club in the sky. The old man’s apocalyptic preaching had soured some recent Thanksgivings, so Mom and Dad didn’t come by much. Begrudgingly they agreed to tote along the grandkids every so often, but only after a stern and well-researched lecture on
how to separate cyanide from several varieties of flavored drink. My brother Brian was old enough to have discovered girls, and spent most those days in Granddad-land sobbing love letters through the phone to his future wife. Grandpa Isaac was a mess of a man even then. He’d made a career of being wrong. He’d sampled every flavor of humiliation. Miscalculating the apocalypse left him second-guessing his every syllable. Abandoned by his cult and children, left gaping after his wife’s wrinkly soul, Brian and I were his only contact with the world. He wasn’t one for lobbing baseballs or tossing Frisbees. Too afraid that he’d somehow damage us too, he fretted and stuttered, tripping over his own feet, keeping quiet most of the time. Grandpa owned eight acres of woods, a pond and a sledding hill. At five years old I felt like the king of a caliphate covered in mud and mossy rocks, and I remember darting tree to tree, eyes clenched, spinning wildly, trying my hardest to get lost. But a storm blew in and the skies turned dark. Windows were bolted shut. The TV cried Armageddon. Grandpa had me stack a few packs of bottle water in the basement, just in case the National Weather Service had begun employing clairvoyants. Thunder rattled the house. The tornado siren wailed. I remember rushing upstairs, my burden unloaded, to find him stoic before the living room window, gazing out as lightning kissed the sky, wondering if this might be the big one. He was standing right there when I fell out the window. Don’t ask how it happened. I watched the storm from an unused upstairs crawlspace I thought no one knew about. Then I was falling. Then I was bloody and broken against the stones of Grandpa’s garden, a pool of warmth growing cold against my back. I’ve always told people that I lost consciousness right away, but I remember
fragments. Grandpa nearly kicked down the door. He leaned over me, sheltering my fragile corpse from the rain. I could see he was speaking. An incantation of softly spoken words reached my wounds. Mysterious syllables. Esoteric healing. His eyes were empty of biblical fire. His sermons ceased. He was just Grandpa, a scared old man with swirling blind egg whites for eyes, playing search and rescue by sense of smell, terrified that he’d lost the last person he could love. Wind whipped hailstones against my face and the world went dark. We get a couple inches airborne as Emily maneuvers, squealing, into the liquor store parking lot. We leave the engine running and burst through the grimy, sticker-coated doors. “A bottle of your finest champagne,” I demand. “Something fitting to sip as tonight’s hellfire rains upon ye heathens.” The liquor store attendant, a dour-faced fortysomething with ruffled auburn hair, sets down his handgun enthusiast magazine and stares over a glass counter stuffed with cheap cigars, tins of chew, flashing neon and lottery tickets. Air conditioning rattles overhead vents, stirring the stench of spoiled milk. “Normally I’d at least humor myself and ask for ID,” the attendant said. “Shouldn’t you kids be in school?” “Have you met my friend Jesus, as played by Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage?” I ask, shuffling one of Grandpa’s doomsday pamphlets across the glass. “Get lost.” “Oh, the bottle’s not for us. We’re buying for my grandpa.” “Sure.” “Really,” I insist, pointing towards Emily’s Honda. “He’s got the scurvy. One too many outings across the seven seas with Blackbeard and the boys. He’s
felled a dozen Englishmen. The Queen’s still got a bounty out, so we leave him in the car.” The attendant does a double take. His eyes grow wide. Color fills his chalky cheeks. “Holy shit,” he gasps. “That’s Blind Isaac Cooper! He’s the nut who used to go on TV and scream about the apocalypse. What a kook! Hey,” he says, shooting his eyes back to mine. “Tell you what. I’ll give you my finest bottle, on the house – just take whatever you want – if I can go snap a selfie with the old man.” Emily shrugs. “Sure thing, guy. He’s a vegetable. You can do anything you want to him.” The attendant rushes with such frenzy he forgets his phone. He performs a jogged two-step, pirouettes and, in a frenzy of lotto cards and flying ledger paper, snatches the device and makes for the exit. “That vegetable saved my life,” I snap, suddenly pissed off. Emily rolls her eyes and studies wine bottle labels as though she had a clue what they mean. “Doctors saved your life.” “They called it a miracle.” “Figure of speech.” “Every doctor that saw me – every single one – said that fall should have killed me.” “And what, you think he whispered a prayer to Poseidon and saved you?” “He did something.” I pout a moment in the cramped aisle as Emily makes her selection. The giddy attendant snaps a cell phone shot with Grandpa in the backseat. The old man doesn’t seem to mind. “Pick your poison quick,” I say. “I think Dick the liquor man here needs to be
taught a lesson.” Brimming with fury I kick my way out of the store. I yank the attendant from the backseat and shove a finger in his face. “Fuck with my gramps again and I’ll find where you live and I’ll put arsenic in your son’s crib.” He stares, slack-jawed. The muscles of his face twitch through every known emotion. Emily darts out the doors, two bottles in tow, and leaps into the driver’s seat. I cut off the attendant as he began to speak. “Ye shall be judged!” I scream loud enough to turn heads at the gas station across the street. “Lord Xenu commeth! L. Ron Hubbard! Tentacle porn!” I shove another leaflet into his shirt pocket and slide beside Grandpa. The man stands there, stunned, growing smaller in the rear windshield as we peel away. “Grandpa?” He clears phlegm from his esophagus. “Yes, Aiden, my boy?” “Tell me a story about Grandma Anne.” He sits quietly for a moment, contemplating. “Who’s that?” I sigh. She’s been dead a dozen years, true, but I expected better. Still, he has his lucid moments. Most days he’s at least semi-sane, carrying on conversations about chess strategy and Exodus, listening to Catholic radio and slicing fresh tomatoes from his garden untouched by sin. He likes it when I read him the news which I do faithfully save for certain details. He never buys my lies. Frail as his synapses have become, he laughed at my suggestion that Obama rode a live dragon into battle against ISIS. Even small fabrications were easily sniffed out. The meatier bits of reality still seep through. Well, most of the time. Emily blasts death metal and Grandpa waves his arms
erratically. “Did you hear that?” he asked. “The man on the radio said demons had set the world on fire. Has it started, Aiden? Is judgement upon us?” “Don’t think so. But I did hear something about the Cleveland Browns winning a game, so someone might want to check the temperature in Hell.” “The mountain,” moans the old man. “With haste we must make for the mountain.” I clamber over the center console beside my girlfriend and sip her champagne. “Dang,” I report. “This bubbly’s dry as a bone.” Emily scoffs. “You don’t have a fucking clue what that means.” “I’m picking up notes of elderberry and cyanide. A real heady vintage.” We drive an hour out of town, racing through cornfields under a sky laced with contrails. My head’s buzzing pretty good from the booze and the afternoon air feels incredible on my skin. We cross the state line and stop at the first fireworks store we find. In a McDonald’s parking lot we light off bottle rockets and gorge ourselves on hamburgers, barking gibberish rap songs into the drive through speaker until a well-dressed manager chases us off with a broom. An aging lumberjack stands at his mailbox on Route 53, watching traffic. His only joy in life. Emily squeals tires with admirable accuracy, skidding to a stop inches from the man’s knees. He jumps into his mailbox, stumbling with fright. Emily leans over the center console and grabs my still-hard cock. “End of the world, motherfucker!” she shouts. I arch my hips to show the man I’m indeed being jerked off. I want to leave no doubt in his mind. I throw pamphlets out the window. “Pray to Jeebus,” Emily says, really enunciating the b. Then we pull away, having forever ruined the car watching pastime of a kindhearted old
man. Grandpa Isaac reaches forward and tugs my sleeve. “Aiden, my boy. It just came to me.” “What’s that?” “Your birthday, of course. I’m so sorry, Aiden. I’m old. Things slip my mind.” “Grandpa, it’s not my…” “How old are you, anyways? Eleven, twelve?” “I’m seventeen, Grandpa. But it’s not my...” “Ah, youth. So much time.” I return to the bottle. We’re back in Ohio, making double time towards town. Emily’s realized she might miss her appointment with Jesse the joint roller, a real artisan who rolls them tight as cigarettes. We meet him in an alley behind Mike’s Music most Thursdays around sunset, and he’ll be on vacation next week so we’ve gotta stock up on our medicine. “You’ll be done with school soon,” Grandpa says, surprisingly lucid. “Have you decided what you’ll do next?” “Well, I figure someone’s gotta take up the torch amongst heathens once you’re raptured to the big house. I’ve written my first sermon in my own blood and everything.” Grandpa waves his arms. “No, no,” he groans. “Don’t end up like me.” Emily eyes me and adjusts her mirror. I crane my neck around the headrest. “But you’ve been on TV,” I reason. “Speaking at least for the planets of the inner solar system, nothing’s holier than color television.” He shakes his head. “I’m a sad old fraud.” I’m not sure how to react. “But… the rapture. Right?” “Oh yes,” he says, curling his thin lips into a wry smile. “The rapture. Maybe
I’ve finally got it right this time.” The freshly paved Main Street of Lenore, Ohio, feels like clouds beneath our tires. Emily signals right and slows to a stop before the cyclops eye of the town’s only light. We pass through a gauntlet of faded storefronts and flaccid flags. A light in a hardwood store casts shear-shaped shadows on the window. Seven or eight parked cars – a glittering BMW nestled between girthy Jeeps and rust buckets – looked like they’d been left driverless at the curb, their owners spirited away without warning. Storefronts line the street, shuttered or lit in neon, signs screaming LOTTERY, KELLY’S DRUG MART and PNC BANK across from the old theater. Insurance offices, run-down apartments, a house peeling with paint, temp agencies, A.J.’s Pizza shack, a church spire piercing the sky and leafless trees piercing the pavement rot mutually. The distant glow of Walmart rises like a palace of light at the strip’s far end. Evergreens swallow homes whole. We pass under flickering street lights. It feels like we’re the last people on Earth. Emily pulls up to the dumpster behind Mike’s Music. Sandwiched between aging brick and the bloated backside of a neighboring warehouse, the alleyway cuts a rat-infested corridor behind the quaint storefronts that the upstanding folks of Lenore never get to see. “Weedman meets us here,” Emily explains. We wait ten minutes, then fifteen, then we start getting nervous. Has the cartel come to town? Jesse the joint roller’s decomposing in a tub of acid in a nearby basement. A heavily-mustached muchacho known only as “The Claw” now makes the rounds. Prices have doubled. We’ll need revolvers and tumbleweed, twangy guitars and a showdown in the center of town.
I yawn and close my eyes. Time for a nap. Grandpa had inspired a movement. I’ve seen pictures of him preaching to packed stadiums, weathered like a wandering messiah, holding a gnarled walking stick to the sky. Each failed prediction thinned the herd. Earth missed a 1994 appointment with the wrath of God. The sky failed to rain fire. The oceans didn’t boil. Office workers worldwide shuffled into conference rooms and cubicles instead surrendering the flesh to flames. Grandpa Isaac said he’d misplaced a decimal. He didn’t account for the wobble of the Earth’s axis. Let’s all meet in a shallow grave one year from today. He’d faced lawsuits and humiliation, but had never lost hope that one day a fiery sinkhole would open beneath our feet. Now he’s the laughing stock of the planet. They’ll start Twitter hashtags when he dies. But, hey, maybe I’ll get the house. And what then? Certainly I’ll lose my taste for Cheetos eventually. Grandpa’s wasted his whole life and he knows it. I aspire to become a vegetable in old age. But that’s not for a while. What happens when I exhaust Netflix? I think about Emily’s brother hemorrhaging brain cells into a stack of dusty textbooks and calculators. Some good his degree will do him when the Earth’s splitting apart beneath his feet. But he’s trying, and maybe there’s something to that. Emily’s shaking me awake. “Aiden.” “Ugh,” I groan, stretching. “What’d you do that for? I was having a kickass dream, with fire-breathing cats and I could finally grow a beard and everything.” “Your grandpa.” “And then there were these two Spanish chicks, and, don’t worry, I love you, but they had breasts and firm buttocks and…”
“He’s gone.” I blink and check the mirrors. Backseat’s empty. “I walked around the block looking for Jesse,” she explains. “When I came back he was gone.” I stumble out of Emily’s Honda and scan the alley. No Grandpa. Jesus. He’ll be wandering around town, screaming nonsense at terrified pedestrians, walking headlong into the street and hexing the cops as they try to hit him with the stun gun. The thought mildly amuses me. Then I spot the rusty fire escape, running up the back of Mike’s Music all the way to the roof. No way did he mistake some metal steps for his magic mountain. Old brick buildings don’t resemble snowcapped peaks. But they do have ledges. And pavement below. And Grandpa’s blind. I leap up the fire escape, taking three steps at a time. I trip and bang my shin, falling forward and scraping my hands against years of caked rust. The sunset paints the sky’s cirrus scraps a menagerie of blood and roses. Someone had coated the backside of Mike’s Music with graffiti skulls and unreadable fonts. Ancient iron bends as I punish it with my sneakers, creaking like a submarine under pressure. I move faster and leap from steps to roof. For a moment I’m blinded by impending dusk. Afternoon’s sliver of remaining sunlight blasts me like a mushroom cloud after the permanent dusk of the alleyway. I’ve never been on a building’s roof. The concrete slab is a graveyard of bird shit. An air conditioning unit rattles near a graffiti-laced doorway. Heavy black clouds grumble in the distance. My eyes adjust. Sure enough, there’s Grandpa Isaac. A raised ledge runs the rooftop’s circumference, knee-high, keeping him from stumbling into the abyss.
Grandpa Isaac waves his walking stick to the sky. He’s maybe five feet back from the ledge. I don’t know what he sees in his mind’s eye, but for a moment I think about the black and white stadium photo showing a thousands-strong throng crowded at the feet of their soothsaying messiah. His hands tremble and he lifts his stick like a gladiator’s sword. Emily bounds up the steps behind me, wheezing from the effort. I’ve never felt the ecstasy of revelation, so I don’t know what’s going through Grandpa’s body, but he’s shaking like he’s at the gates of Heaven, knees wobbly, gasping gargantuan gobs of air. Trembling, he climbs onto the ledge. “Grandpa!” I shout. He cranes his neck in the direction of my voice. “Are the crowds assembled?” I step forward cautiously, unsure how to back him down. Over my shoulder Emily looks alarmed but indecisive. “You’re on a roof, Grandpa.” Alarmed voices waft upwards from the street below. A siren wails in the distance. “Easy, old man,” Emily says. “Grandpa, you’ve gotta get down from there.” “No,” he snaps. “My flock needs me.” I take a cautious step forward. His ankles are within reach. “How about you address them from ground level?” I suggest. “We’ll turn over a couple milk crates. Er, mountains. That’s what I meant.” He shuffles forward a hair. His toes dangle over the awning. Over the ledge I spot a handful of gob smacked gawkers drifting across Main Street, shielding their eyes from the sun. A yellow Volkswagen skids to a halt
near the median. Concerned faces press against glass in the candle shop across the street. A pre-storm breeze carries with it the smell of freshly fallen rain. “The storm is coming,” Grandpa says. “I can feel it. How many are out there?” “You’re just talking humans, right? I spot a couple goats headed for the guillotine. I’m not sure PETA’s on board for this sort of extinction event. Might wanna call it off.” If I snatch his ankle he’ll fall forward, I decide. What I need is to get up on the ledge and ease him down. Mike Hutchinson, the Mike from Mike’s Music, darts out into the street. “Get down from there!” he snaps. “Don’t do it!” screams an unseen onlooker. Grandpa smiles at the sound of voices. He has an audience. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying. Emily flanks Grandpa’s opposite side, stroking her chin. She seems to be brainstorming some sort of strategy. Even from here I smell the marijuana on her breath. I knew it. While Grandpa escaped she was ascending her own magic mountain. We’ll talk later, I decide, trying to sound tough in my mind. “Children of God!” Grandpa bellows. “Today the time for flesh has come to an end. I can see…” He drifts off. We shouldn’t have taken him out. We should have called his nurse and binged on Netflix in the basement. The nurse could’ve given him shots, or whatever nurses do, fed him lettuce and Alzheimer’s pills and kept the rapture at bay at least another day. Why not a hill? That was the original plan. Yes, a gradual rolling hill rising from farmland could have served as a safer pulpit, abandoned tractors and sheep staring dumbly from the valley below.
I carefully maneuver myself and climb onto the ledge. It’s just a thin levy of bricks. I struggled to find my balance. “My faithful,” Grandpa continues. “I knew you would never leave my side.” Emily sees what I’m doing and looks concerned. She nods and positions herself behind the old man, making that I should shove him backwards and she’ll catch him. Seems like he’d break a hip. Grandpa smiles and turns towards me, sensing my presence nearby. For a moment he’s filled another stadium, surrounded by throngs of devoted doomsayers who’d traveled the world to hear him speak. In those minutes before his first wrong prediction he was a walking saint, a medicine man, a holy healer and messiah. People worshipped him. He’d whip the masses into a frenzy and they’d scramble to kiss the ground upon which he walked. For a moment it was as though he was never wrong. “Aiden, my boy,” he said. “Do me a favor.” “Yeah, whatever. Come off that ledge and we’ll talk.” “Make me a promise.” “Sure, Grandpa.” He smiles and turns to face his imagined crowd. Then he steps off the ledge. It’s a two-story drop. Grandpa’s frail and there’s no cushion but concrete sidewalk. He lands with a sickening splat. His limbs sprawl at unnatural angles. Onlookers gape in shocked silence. The world stands still. Then I’m off, tearing back down the fire escape. Tears swell in my eyes. I’m not processing reality. I dart past Emily’s parked car – its rear door swinging ominously open – and out of the alley into the crowd.
Grandpa’s face down in a swelling mass of black blood. As I near I hear him gasping for air. “Grandpa!” I can’t tell if he’s conscious. His mouth is a crumbling row of bloody stumps. Through his skin I can see jagged edges of shattered bones. “How did you save me?” I ask. “When I fell out your window. Remember? How did you save me?” From the dust-eroded crevices of the world a steady stream of civilians emerge. A lady in a red sweater stares at the bodily wreckage from the doorstep of Tina’s Timepieces. Two young boys run giddy across the street, stopping cold when they see the writhing corpse. Their mother screams at them in tongues. A young couple cling to one another behind a glass door. Two middle-aged men stoke their chins on the sidewalk and mumble fifty variations of “how about that.” Murmurs sputter through the crowd as it grows. Mike shoos away onlookers with flailing arms. “Make room for the ambulance,” he says. Hands touch my shoulder. “Are you okay?” asks red sweater lady. I study Grandpa’s bloodied face. “The boy’s in shock.” I am not in shock. I can hear my own heartbeat. When I was seven Grandpa took me for ice cream. He couldn’t see A.J. Green give me a bloody nose. Red raindrops colored my vanilla cone like splattered food coloring. We watched cartoons together and I held an ice pack to my face, wondering how I’d get Grandpa out of the blame. Grandpa’s breathing slows. His whited-out eyes catch the color of the setting sun. Orange beams bounce off a lightning-laced canvas, casting a celestial searchlight across distant farmland. The sky is a battlefield. The clouds are
ablaze and for a moment the storm looks like an encroaching plague, a cataclysm built by a wrathful God, like Heaven spilling fire upon the Earth.
Devanshi Khetarpal Here We Are
foot after foot stopping to evolve bare and breastdeep into tarmac like an ocean knitting a ship mast heaving the sea into a spill as the spill from heart to vein a small bearing heavy with distance leaning to sag with its cleft of noise
Melissa Hammond
To the guy outside Pimanti’s who asked me to hold his sandwich and his corgi - w4m - 25 (Pittsburgh, Southside)
I was waiting outside the Southside Pimanti’s wearing a green Death Cab for Cutie t-shirt. You came up and said, “I love that band too.” I said I’d watch your stuff because you had to pee and because you had a black, hairy mole under your left eye, which reminded me of my father. Anyway, while you were gone I peeked into your sandwich to see what kind it was and who would have guessed it would be my favorite: kielbasa and swiss and double French fries. I’m really sorry, but I ate the sandwich and took Sampson home with me. It was super delicious. The sandwich, not the Corgi. Sampson was just acting so cute and smiley that I had to take him. I’m keeping him in my backyard, but I’m running out of ham, so I need you to come get him. When you reply, let me know what kind of tattoo you had on your left arm so I’ll know it’s you. And honestly, I’m just really curious about that tattoo. I mean, I know what it is, but I don’t know what it means. Anyway, since we have the same favorite sandwich, I figure we might be good for each other. Want to meet up at Pimanti’s again sometime? I’ll bring Sampson. But just so you know, I got that Death Cab for Cutie shirt at goodwill because it had bears on it. I didn’t know they were a band. Do you like bears?
Kelly McNeal
That Dichotomous Like Ode To the Dichotomous like Meek World where Like Like Like Equals goals Wicked World where Like Like Like So deliberately denied Will you like This Ode To that Dichotomous like
Robin Landa Bottled Up
“Hand that bottle of Tait red to me, the one with the cool name,“ my husband said, without so much of a please. “I’m going to chill it for dinner.” “Here’s your Tait ‘Ball Buster’. Of course you’d think that’s a cool name,” I said as I handed the cheap red to him. Hubert always sits at the head of the table while I always sit to his left, near a small table where at least a dozen of bottles of wine line the tabletop. On each dining room surface, Hubert keeps a dozen bottles of wine—more or less. I know where to come if I need a drink, guests and even the building’s superintendent would remark when looking at the bounty on display in our dining room. Refusing to purchase a wine refrigerator, Hubert keeps his younger wines in sight and his older ones in the hall closet. The only exceptions are two extraordinary bottles, which sit on top of our home bar, at the heart of our apartment. “Come back when we’re celebrating big and I’ll open these beauties,” he’d say to guests time and again. My eyes moved towards one of those bottles, “Our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary is coming up. How about we open that Screaming Eagle cab to celebrate?” “I’ll think about it,” Hubert replied. “Come on, this is a big one. It’s our first anniversary alone together in a long time without the kids at home. I’ve been thinking that we can go see a
Broadway show, eat at that Greek restaurant everyone is talking about—and then come home to the Screaming Eagle.” I continued, “Wouldn’t it be heady—just you and me and that whole bottle? Just think of how good we’ll feel. I have a new mini dress that I think you’ll like on me.” “I’ll think about it,” he replied. “Though definitely wear the mini and throw on fishnet stockings, too. Seems like you've been holding back lately. If it’s my heart or anything else you’re concerned about, don’t be. The doctor gave me meds,” Hubert said raising his eyebrows not realizing what that oft-used facial expression revealed. "I was listening to Howard Stern talking about how a wife shouldn't let her husband leave the house wanting, if you know what I mean. Maybe that's why he divorced his first wife," Hubert said with a peculiar laugh attached to his words, hoping I would take the hint, I suppose. With that and a loud pat on my rear end, Hubert left for work. “I just have to go over a brief and I’ll be back early for dinner.” Howard Stern. How could I have married a man who listens to Howard Stern? My thoughts turned to the slightly smutty joke Hubert told at our friend’s party—one of his other indecorous behaviors. How could I have married a man who listens to Howard Stern? For a long while, I sat at the dining room table, sipping my morning coffee, glancing at the New York Times laid out in front of me. My eyes kept floating up to the Screaming Eagle that adorned the bar top. I didn’t drink alcohol before I met Hubert. Now I frequently give thought as to what we’ll be drinking each evening. Hubert taught me well about the general character of a wine. “Do you taste the fruit in this pinot?” “See…this cab is full-bodied and woody.“ “Notice
the body—feel the wine in your mouth,” Hubert would instruct. After almost twenty-five years together, I know good wines as well as I know Hubert. He had changed his mind about having The Ball Buster. As soon as he arrived home, Hubert walked straight to the refrigerator to chill a California cab. “I don’t understand why they serve red wine at room temperature,” he would say, “I prefer it slightly chilled. Getting it just the right temperature is an art.” With that, Hubert took the chilled red out of the fridge to warm it up a bit. As Hubert turned towards the dining room, he noticed my short dress. Grabbing me with his hands on my rear, Hubert kissed me. Looking right into my mascaraed eyes, Hubert buzzed, “Mary, you look hot! Now this is what I like to come home to.” As soon as he let go of me, I walked over to the stereo to put on his favorite salsa music. “Look, I cleared the living room floor. We have plenty of room to dance like we used to before the kids. Let’s loosen up a bit first—let’s have a glass of wine,” I said as I unbuttoned Hubert’s collar and removed his tie. I went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of wine. “I’ll be right back,” Hubert whispered as he rushed off to his bathroom, no doubt to ready himself for our private after-dance and wine party. All the pressure of being an attorney and providing for his family had taken a toll on his heart and manhood. “It’s not easy being successful,” he often would say.
“You were superb,” I purred. “I love the way you lead, always have. Let’s dance a tango—that’s your best dance.” Hubert still had a few moves. He led me into backward “ochos”—an Argentine tango step I always enjoyed executing when we first met.
“You see—was that so hard?” I held. “I mean, I don’t ask that much from you—just a little fun.” “Dancing in the living room—no cover charge. You’re a cheap date,” Hubert laughed out loud at his own coarseness. I offered up a smirk. “I’ll bring the cab and glasses in here,” I said exiting our living room. My dance heels clacked on our hardwood floors as I walked away. I poured another glass for Hubert. “Do you taste the spice in this cab? It’s so bold,” Hubert said. “I made reservations for our anniversary dinner at our usual Greek restaurant because you love the bread there. And we could celebrate with the Napa cab for a corkage fee,” I said, watching closely for Hubert’s reaction. “Do have any idea how much I paid for that cab? That bottle of Screaming Eagle set me back a couple of grand,” Hubert said. “Hubert,” I said, as I took his wine glass out of his hand, “Relax, darling. Don’t get excited. Don’t think about money or what we’re going to drink. Let’s dance some more.” “Whoa! What’s gotten into you?” This time I played fast salsa music. After keeping up with the beat, Hubert panted, “This is good. Really good, baby. I feel twenty-five again.” “Here, have another glass. Replenish your bodily fluids—you’re sweating like crazy. I know how to make you feel eighteen again!” I suggested with a titter. “I need to take a break,” Hubert replied. “Oh, come on, sweetie. Just one more dance—I’m having more fun than I’ve had in years,” I implored. With the remote in hand, I pumped up the music volume. I’ll put on a slow number. Marvin Gaye sang, “Let’s get it on...”
Hubert pushed me away, motioning to stop. His legs went slightly slack. Hubert intended to walk over to the dinning room to eat some bread but he was totally drained. He said he was feeling kind of woozy. “Let’s get it on...” I sang, not taking him at his word. “No, no. That’s it. I’m done. What’s gotten into you?” He headed to his bathroom, his face rather pale and his skin clammy. Suddenly I heard a big thud. When I arrived at his bathroom, there was Hubert on the floor. I screamed but no sound emerged. Get the phone. I grabbed my phone but my hands trembled so. Call 911, I thought. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling. Dial 9-1-1. He’s going to be fine. He’s not dead. He’s not dead.
Wearing Hubert’s bathrobe over my dress, I sat at the dining room table with clean wine glasses and a corkscrew. I took the Screaming Eagle. I began to uncork it. I’ll just have a glass until the ambulance arrives, I thought. “Ma’am. Does your husband have a heart condition? I see he was drinking. Does he take any medications?” I stared blankly at the paramedic who was speaking to me. “I need for you to answer some questions about your husband’s medications. Ma’am, are you OK?” I replied to the nice, young paramedic silently. I slid a wine glass towards the young man, offering him some Screaming Eagle.
Kim Magowan Sorried
Sitting on the back deck, Daniel cracks open a pilsner with the crappy can opener that he keeps forgetting to replace. He looks through the glass sliding doors at his wife, whom he loves, who is cheating on him. Beth sits cross-legged on the living room floor, playing Sorry! with their three-year-old, Eliza. Several feet from them, his back to the wall, their son Gideon pages through The Little Blue Engine that Could. Gideon will not play games, or, more precisely, no one, not even Beth, will play games with Gideon. Any time a piece of his gets sent Home, he wails; his face folds into a fist. “Oldest child,” is Beth’s diagnosis, which Daniel (oldest child himself) takes personally: there go Beth and Eliza, calm and unruffled, while he and Gideon, the orchids, wilt and brood. Beth looks up and smiles, a wry shrug of a smile. Daniel nods, but can not bring himself to return it. What to do, what to do. The words cycle through his brain, a paralyzed version of that book Gideon has on his lap, about the determined little engine who chugs up the mountain, chanting “I think I can, I think I can.” It amuses Beth that this book drives Daniel batshit, though she worries about Daniel’s “bleakness.” Beth insisted he start seeing a shrink nine months ago. “Shrink”: it’s a noun Daniel takes literally. He imagines Beth trying, through elegant Anita Kopchik, to make Daniel’s moroseness smaller, manageable, something that can be folded into one of their cabinets with the nickel-plated knobs.
Through the glass, he watches Beth throw up her hands in mock despair as Eliza Sorries her, gleefully bonking Beth’s yellow plastic piece with the butt of her blue one, pinching it between her small fingers and twirling it Home. Beth’s nickname sounds like a caress: Beth, as soft as socks. Her blond hair (dyed), her silky throat (circled with a thin gold chain, a Mother’s Day present, through which Beth strings different pendants, Eliza’s crescent moon, Gideon’s acorn): everything about Beth soothes. Daniel has known about Beth’s affair for nearly thirty-six hours. That’s how long he has known-known. Days ago suspicion felt as intolerable as an itch. So far, only one-and-a-half other people know: his best friend Teddy is the half, his therapist Anita the whole. Two nights ago, over beer at their local, Teddy agreed that Beth’s behavior of late was “pretty fucking suspicious.” Really, this is why Daniel told him about Beth’s dreaminess, about the panicky way she closed her laptop; he needed someone to grant him permission to read Beth’s email (“Well, I fucking would”). Anita took it in stride, steepling her beautiful fingers. (In their sessions Daniel finds himself transfixed by those fingers). “So what do you want to do, Daniel?” To do to do to do. Run together, it sounds like what his British mother would exclaim in her kettle-whistle pitch: “What a todo!” There are plenty of tasks Daniel does for the pool-playing adolescents with whom he works, “the kids,” he calls his dot-com colleagues, in their expensive jeans. But the most relevant part of his job is risk assessment. Sometimes, Daniel conceptualizes the green, rolling hills of a golf course, studded with sand traps.
A course of action is what Daniel needs. “Course” makes him think of navigable routes. This can be survived; Daniel will not simply lose Beth, his Beth of ten years. Beth from whom he would check out library books (Daniel a graduate student, Beth an undergrad whose work study was at the reference desk) until he could ratchet up the nerve to speak to her; who would smile at him after she stamped each unnecessary book. He pictures shaking her emails at her, the stack he printed. He pictures Beth begging him to forgive her while he looks coldly into her wet, blue eyes. Then the image pops. The golf course becomes overwhelmed by sand traps, a desert. He winces at the whiplash of grit. What if he confronts her and her face becomes red and blotchy? If she says, “Fuck you, you hypocrite”? (Yesterday, Anita made this point more diplomatically: “Does this make you think about Lecia?”). Or if, instead of getting angry or defensive, she says, simply, “I love him”? Words singe Daniel: no fault state, alimony, custody. Can he do nothing at all? Already, in this last thirty-six hours, Daniel is avoiding Teddy’s texts: “You OK?” and then “Well?” and then, simply, “???”. Is it possible to avoid Teddy for the rest of his life? To avoid his own burnt-black memory? To kiss his wife? To fuck her, like he did last night, from behind, holding her hips, so he didn’t have to look into her eyes? So he could feel only the heat and grip of her? Can he become the little engine that could, can he will himself to carry dolls, stuffed bears, bags of peppermints, and dimply oranges up that mountain?
Ceridwen Hall
Walking Around the Block
Why, you keep asking. We’re looking at flowers—pink, blue, yellow—listening to the birds sing. It’s warm and bright, but you want to know. We’re going to visit the fish in their pond. Why, again. We’re concerned with reasons, underlying motives. Look, there are masks hanging on those trees, a large stone face sitting in the garden. It’s becoming an existential quandary. Because is such a funny sound, isn’t it—the bee and the cause sitting on a bench like old friends. While we go bumpity-bump over the sidewalk, repetition making abstraction. Why? It hasn’t been repaired in a while. I wonder about this most difficult question coming in first, like a front tooth, instead of what or where, when or how (a personal favorite these days). But who am I to tell you which questions are worth asking, answering. All the fish are underwater, in the lilies, some swimming towards us, some away.
Contributors Melissa Hammond Melissa Hammond lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she writes technical documentation for operating room software. She likes strawberry jam on her pizza and doesn’t know how to whistle. Ceridwen Hall Ceridwen Hall grew up in Ohio and spent formative years on both coasts before returning to the Midwest to complete an MFA at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), where she now teaches composition and serves as an editorial assistant at The Ninth Letter. Adam Hoss Adam Hoss is a writer, educator, holder of a semi-useful M.A. in linguistics and all around good guy from Cleveland, Ohio. His writing has appeared in Epiphany Magazine, Lark’s Fiction Magazine and 140 Fiction. He currently resides in Fremont, Ohio, with his goldfish, his plants and his regrets. Elias Keller Elias Keller is a Philadelphia native and earned degrees in Anthropology and Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. His fiction has appeared in Every Day Fiction, APIARY, Slush Pile, Forge, Pindeldyboz, The Legendary, and elsewhere. His novel, “Strange Case of Mr. Bodkin and Father Whitechapel” (2012), a reinvention of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” was named an Indie Groundbreaking Book by Independent Publisher. He currently lives in New Orleans. Visit his website.
Devanshi Kheterpal Devanshi Khetarpal is a junior from Bhopal, India. She is the author of “Welcome to Hilltop High” (Indra, 2012) and “Co:ma,to’se” (Partridge, 2014). She is an attendee of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio 2015 at the University of Iowa. She is a Poetry Editor for Phosphene Literary Journal and the Editor-inchief of Inklette magazine. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming in The Cadaverine, Eunoia Review, Textploit, Polyphony HS, Glass Kite Anthology, The Noisy Island and The Lipstickparty Magazine among others. Robin Landa Robin Landa holds the title of Distinguished Professor in the Robert Busch School of Design at Kean University. She has written more than twenty books about design, creativity, advertising, branding, and drawing, including: “Nimble: Thinking Creatively in the Digital Age” (HOW Books, 2015); “DRAW! The Guided Sketchbook That Teaches You How To Draw” (Pearson/Peachpit, 2014); “Build Your Own Brand” (HOW Books, 2013); “Graphic Design Solutions, 5thedition” (Wadsworth, 2012); “Advertising by Design, 2nd edition” (Wiley, 2011); and “Designing Brand Experiences” (Thompson, 2009). Modern Dog Design Co. illustrated her first children’s book, “The Dream Box.” Robin writes, teaches, designs, and speaks at international conferences. She has won numerous awards, including awards from the National Society of Arts and Letters, the National League of Pen Women, Creativity, New Jersey Authors Award, the Art Directors Club of New Jersey, Graphic Design USA, Rowan University Design Education, andKean University Creative Research awards. She was the 2013 Kean University Professor of the Year. The Carnegie Foundation counts Robin among the “Great Teachers of Our Time.” She was a finalist in the Wall Street Journal’s Creative Leaders competition. In 2014, Robin was the sole judge of the International HOW Design Logo Competition and she is a favorite speaker at the HOW Design Conferences.
Kim Magowan Kim Magowan lives in San Francisco and teaches in the English Department at Mills College. Her fiction is published or forthcoming in Arroyo Literary Review, Bird’s Thumb, Breakwater Review, Corium Magazine, Fiction Southeast, The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, JMWW, Parcel Magazine, River City, SNReview, Squalorly, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and Word Riot. Kelly McNeal Kelly McNeal is a professor at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersery. She has a Ph.D. from Fordham University in NY, NY. Her recent or forthcoming work is published in Slink Chunk Press and Yellow Chair Review.
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