Crack the Spine
Literary magazine
Issue 186
Issue 186 March 16, 2016 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2015 by Crack the Spine
CONTENTS Corie Adjmi Tick Tock
Torrin A. Greathouse God in the Fury
Katherine Forbes Riley
Fight or Flight
Kaley Tedesco
The Textbooks will Tell You the Moon is a Face
Bobbi Nicotera
The Mattress
Susan M. Botich Afternoon Date
Doug Van Hooser Louie’s Tale
Corie Adjmi Tick Tock
On the night of the breaking of the fast, June felt a strange sensation throughout her body and excused herself from the table. In the bathroom, a lifeless blob exited her body and floated in the toilet water. She tried desperately to discern one body part from another but couldn’t; and was mesmerized by how uncanny and yet remarkable it was that the silhouette resembled a bean. She eyed it intently for a long time, trying to distinguish if it looked more like a red bean or a black bean. There was a difference. The miscarriage wasn’t a surprise. In fact, June had known for two days since leaving her doctor’s office. This kind of thing happens all the time, she assured herself. I’ll try again. She flushed and returned to the table. June passed a platter of lox to her husband, Hal, and took the platter of scrambled eggs from her mother. She scooped some onto her plate. June’s father buttered pita toast, and her older brother, Fred, bit into a bagel with only a sliced tomato on top. Recently, Fred convinced himself he shouldn’t eat dairy products; they were fattening and bad for his heart. He became repulsed, even went so far as to gag, every time he got a whiff of melted butter or cheese. Instantly foods he’d loved his entire life disappeared from his repertoire; no more bagels with cream cheese, pizza, baked ziti, eggplant parmigiana, or ice cream. While Fred was considered eccentric in their family, June, who refused to dry-clean her clothes, smell wet paint or new carpeting, own a microwave, or
use a cell phone for fear of dying, held the family title for most neurotic. The next day June went to the grocery store. She bought a variety of organic fruits and vegetables, organic milk and eggs, a free-range organic chicken, and every Seventh Generation cleaning product available, believing what was printed on all their labels, “In every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” At home, sticking to family policy, June removed her shoes at the front door before she carried the groceries to the kitchen. She sautéed onions for a new potato recipe, and chopped a salad. She gave her children, Ivy and Bea, ages six and three respectively, a bath, and allowed them to play in the tub with their new bath puppets while she sat cross-legged on the bath mat and read Bon Appétit. Her husband came home at 7:30, as he always did. He read the girls a bedtime story and by 8:00, as was the routine, the kids were in bed. It was as if nothing had changed. Three days later June developed symptoms. When she couldn’t get out of bed, she called her doctor, who diagnosed her over the telephone, informing her she had a urinary tract infection due to the miscarriage. June hadn’t taken an antibiotic in over ten years but her doctor scared her into believing she didn’t have a choice. June, feeling weak, acquiesced. She took Cipro and when her symptoms got worse, her doctor doubled her dose. Two weeks later, June still couldn’t get out of bed. She read about Cipro on the Internet, and learned that it was like using a hand grenade to kill a cockroach. Cipro had side effects, some of them lifelong. She discovered it could cause leg pain, loss of appetite, anxiety, flu-like symptoms, nightmares, sleeplessness, lack of energy, and depression.
“You’re not sick because of Cipro,” her sister insisted. “You have the flu,” she said, believing June was overreacting, obsessing, as usual. “It’s not that,” June said. Her sister rolled her eyes. “I know what I’m talking about,” June said. When June still couldn’t eat, her doctor suggested she see a gastroenterologist. The gastroenterologist took a blood count, checked for mono, HIV, Epstein-Barr, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease, and meningitis. All the test results came back negative. “According to these findings, you’re healthy as a horse,” the doctor said. But June knew better, and she also knew time was of the essence. She searched the Internet, addictively looking for answers, becoming her own doctor. She did nothing else; she wouldn’t read unless what she read related to finding health. She couldn’t cook or clean or watch TV. No other topic was up for conversation, thinking obsessively about her illness, as if recovery correlated exclusively to how much she focused on it. “You’re making yourself crazy,” Hal said shoving Mr. Potato Head pieces back into the box. “What do you want me to do, Hal? I can’t move.” Over the next few weeks, June saw a cardiologist, a gynecologist, a neurologist, an infectious disease specialist, a psychiatrist, an herbalist, a chiropractor, a kinesiologist, and a rabbi. She had a colonoscopy, an EKG, and an endoscopy. She went for acupuncture, reflexology, massage therapy, and iridology. She tried EFT, HBOT, and Reiki. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus. She was barely able to walk, as if paralyzed, and getting from her bed to the bathroom was a production. Sometimes it was
easier to crawl. “Leg pain is a symptom of depression,” her sister said, sitting at the edge of June’s bed, visiting. She had on a full face of makeup and stood in brand-new high heels. June saw that simple act as a tremendous feat, as if she’d just trekked up the highest mountain; and June wondered if she’d ever be able to live life so simply again. “I’m depressed because my legs hurt, not the other way around,” June snapped. As much as it killed her, June hired a housekeeper, named Bertha, who took over, feeding and bathing Ivy and Bea. Bertha read to them—Chicken Little, The Carrot Seed, and The Little Engine That Could—and from down the hall, June heard them laughing. When she didn’t have the strength to go see Bea dressed as a tomato in her preschool play, Bea asked her father why Mommy didn’t love her anymore, and June cried. Her sister thought June’s symptoms had to do with the trauma of losing the baby; postpartum blues. “Chronic fatigue,” Hal guessed. June’s mother blamed June’s predicament on June’s father and the fact that there was emotional instability, even insanity, in his family. Looking for support June went to see her obstetrician. He put his arm around her like a patronizing father and, missing the point, assured her that she had nothing to worry about, that she’d get pregnant again. But by then, June couldn’t fathom having a baby. As her health was stripped from her, so was her desire to parent. She was keenly aware of the fact that she couldn’t take care of the kids she already had. Her legs hurt more than she could express, one day tingling, one day numb; and joy these days was marked by something entirely different than in the past. In the past joy would’ve come
the night Ivy read her first book, or while watching Bea roll Play-Doh at the kitchen table, or during the hour before bedtime when she and Ivy and Bea blasted music—the coffee table their stage, an eggbeater their microphone— and danced wild and free, all three of them, waiting for Hal to come home. But these days joy was finding a failed meter outside the doctor’s office so she wouldn’t have to hobble back to the car, feeding the meter quarters. Her only relief was in the tub; warm water soothed her aching body, temporarily washing away the pain. “You’re gonna be fine,” her sister said. “The doctor, all the doctors, said there is nothing wrong with you.” “I can’t stand up.” June lay like a corpse, motionless in her bed. “You’re just sad,” her sister insisted. “I don’t blame you. If I’d lost a baby, I’d be sad too.” The pain in June’s face was evident, but this time the hurt didn’t come from the aches in her legs, her back, or her stomach. This was a new pain stemming from anger and frustration; a realization that she was deteriorating, becoming invisible. She was voiceless and alone. The leaves on the trees fell and June still didn’t know what was wrong with her. She held on to the frame of her window and stared out. “I’m dying,” she said flatly. Hal wasn’t overly concerned mostly because he wasn’t the type to fret, but also because he believed Cipro caused June to experience distorted thinking, and while he saw his wife going crazy, he thought this would pass, as would her sickness. Nonetheless, he dutifully reported this new development to June’s parents. “There she goes again,” her father said.
“I’m worried,” her mother said. “Stop it,” her father said walking away. “She’s thought she was dying since she was six years old.” June had always been obsessive- the focus often on her health- and this fact lessened her credibility. Her father blamed this whole ordeal on yeshiva, resentful his wife insisted June attend. “They put the fear of God in you in those places,” her father said. “They mess with your head.” From the time June was in kindergarten she knew about sin and punishment, and was petrified. At school, the rabbi, as if he were God himself, warned her about the consequences of not observing Shabbat. Every Saturday, throughout her childhood, as her parents got in their car and drove away as if they weren’t being cursed, June was in a state of panic, unable to focus on anything else, barely able to catch her breath as she waited by the window, counting bricks on the neighbor’s house, until they returned home—safely. With each passing Saturday she became more and more convinced that something bad would happen to her, or her family; death always on her mind, always a possibility. As a precaution, into adulthood, she attempted to control what she could, minimizing risk whenever possible. Hal knew June had a fear of flying, but for their honeymoon convinced her to put that fear behind her. He planned two weeks in Saint Martin. June boarded the plane with a surgical mask on her face. “Do you really need that?” Hal asked. “I do. And if you were smart, you’d wear one too.” “I don’t think so.” “Suit yourself.” June proceeded to whip out a package of disinfectant wipes and used them to scrub her seat cushion, armrest, and tray table. She buckled
her seatbelt tightly across her lap, refused to use the bathroom, and thought nothing of hushing the passengers around her when the flight attendant demonstrated how to operate the life preserver. When the woman sitting in front of her wouldn’t turn off her cell phone as the plane taxied down the runway, June snatched the phone from her hand and shut it. “Can’t you relax?” Hal asked. “I am relaxed,” June said, carefully enunciating every syllable, but the words still sounded muffled through the blue surgical mask. After that Hal preferred to drive, keeping their trips simple and nearby: Connecticut, Upstate New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. June visited her doctor again for the tenth week in a row, and after examining her he sat her down in an oversized leather chair in his office. “This has been going on for quite some time,” the doctor said. “Yes,” June said, looking past him to the accolades behind his desk, “it has.” “You plan to make weekly visits here for the rest of your life?” “No, that’s not my plan.” “Let me ask you a simple question. How’s your marriage?” “Excuse me?” “Well, it seems to me we tested every possible thing we could test. According to the results, you’re fine. Maybe,” he said, leaning across his desk toward her, “there is something at home you don’t want to face?” He scribbled notes in a folder and handed her a prescription for Xanax. Even Hal, who’d been more than patient up until then, was getting fed up. “Then do something,” June begged. “What can I do?” he shrugged. “You’ll figure it out. Just do it fast. This is costing us a fortune. Look at this,” and he flipped over a wicker basket, spewing
hundreds of bottles of pills across the bedroom floor like confetti. “And check this out,” he said, holding out a piece of paper. It was a form letter: Insurance Coverage Terminated. By Chanukah, June was desperate, and went to see a holistic MD who practiced both eastern and western medicine. “Candida,” she said. “You have candida.” “What’s that?” “Yeast. The antibiotic you took gave you yeast.” “Are you saying the medicine I took to make me well, made me sick?” “You could say that.” And while June was miserable she’d taken the antibiotic, something completely against her nature, she was grateful for a diagnosis. After all these months, at least now she could make a plan, and follow it. She kept an extremely strict diet. Sometimes it was easier not to eat at all. Rapidly she lost weight, weighing barely ninety pounds. On her way to the bathroom one night, she passed a mirror and was shocked at her appearance; not recognizing herself, she sobbed. She was a skeleton, a collection of bones, and she was frightened. That night she dreamed of white yeast multiplying inside her, growing, out of control, and taking over her body. Snow covered the ground. “I can’t live like this anymore. I want to die,” she said to her mother the following morning. June’s mother and her sister rushed her to the psychiatric ward at New York Hospital. The man in charge of security behaved like a prison guard, his neck rippled and thick as a tree trunk. He confiscated June’s belongings: her purse, coat, scarf. The hospital staff asked her to strip and, following strict hospital rules, insisted she give them her bra, worried she’d hang herself when left
alone. June was given a blue paper shirt and a pair of blue paper pants that would’ve been baggy on someone who weighed four hundred pounds, so June at ninety pounds looked particularly pathetic. “I look like a blueberry,” she said, feeling small and diminished. June was questioned and observed for three hours in a cold white room with florescent lights. She was freezing, her only protection the thin blue paper outfit she wore. The hospital staff eventually confirmed June wouldn’t kill herself. From what they could piece together she was severely depressed but not suicidal. They dismissed her, allowing her to go home. That night, after everyone fell asleep, Hal went to the kitchen to get a snack. A sliver of light shined across the kitchen floor, and he saw ants. He saw hundreds of them, maybe thousands, carrying crumbs on their backs, hauling heavy weight. Hal, furious because June refused to allow an exterminator to spray chemicals in their home, stepped on the ants at first here and there, one by one, but soon found himself in a tizzy, out of control, stomping with vigor, jumping up and down, killing them as if they were a great danger. When he saw more ants, clusters of them, traveling in the nooks and crannies of their kitchen, he reached for the hose on the sink and sprayed the floor creating a sea of floating dead ants. “Here today, gone tomorrow,” Hal said. And like a madman he aimed the hose as if it were a weapon. “Bull’s-eye,” he chanted, pulling the lever. June heard the racket from her room and dragged herself to the stairs. She gripped the banister; fearful she’d fall, and screamed down, “Hal, what’s going on down there?” The sound of her voice jolted him and he shut the water. “Nothing, everything’s fine,” Hal said, cleaning up the mess.
Pain moved through June’s body, slithering like a snake, creeping to her head, crawling up her legs, slinking inside her stomach. It was Passover, when she told the holistic MD the pain from her legs moved, that now it was in her hands, the doctor looked at her as if she were a child blatantly fibbing. “Now,” the doctor said with a tinge of disgust, “you’re being a hypochondriac.” June, furious, insisted on another test. “You were checked for Lyme disease back in October.” “Test me again.” This time the results were positive. June had Lyme disease. Livid that not one of her doctors mentioned Lyme results could be falsely negative, and that she’d been ill unnecessarily for over a year, she called each one of them giving them a piece of her mind, and then hung up, smashing the phone to the receiver before they could refute, defend, or apologize. One doctor after another professed Lyme disease was hard to get and easy to cure. Two to four weeks of antibiotics and you’re done. Doctors claimed that when patients didn’t recover within that time, they had some other ailment, not Lyme. But after a four-week course of oral antibiotics, June wasn’t better. If she’d been diagnosed early on it might’ve been enough but at this stage, she knew it wasn’t. Her doctor said it would take time for her to get her strength back but she no longer needed antibiotics. “In fact,” he went on, “long-term antibiotic use is harmful to your health.” June, still not having the strength to stand, sat. “What could be more harmful to my health? Look at me.” She searched the Internet and found what was called a Lyme literate doctor, a man who was in jeopardy of losing his medical license for unsafe medical
practices. He’d been hauled to the Medical Review Board a number of times because he persisted in treating patients aggressively with long-term intravenous antibiotics. People who went untreated could become crippled, go deaf or blind, or die. That day, she had a PICC line put in. She had her first Herxheimer reaction that night. June was prepared for her body’s response, knowing that a herx, or cleansing crisis, could get severe as the bacteria in her body died off, but Hal was unprepared. To him, it looked as if she wouldn’t survive. She lay in bed, lights off, a washcloth covering her face. She couldn’t speak and was in excruciating pain. At one point, she stopped breathing. Hal called 911. “You’re going to get worse before you get better,” her doctor warned. “I’m ready,” June said, as if preparing for war. By the end of the week, after experiencing her third herx reaction, which looked like a full-fledged seizure— her family, petrified, became cynical, wondering why she had to be so extreme. But this was the fight of June’s life, a battle against the bacteria in her body, her family and the medical community. It took months but, little by little, miraculously, June got better. She made a pot of soup. She sang with the radio. After three months of intravenous antibiotics, and nearly a year and a half after she first felt sick, June had the PICC line taken out; but continued with a strict regimen of supplements and maintained a limited diet in an attempt to rebuild her immune system, and her life. Three times a week she injected herself twenty times, up and down her thighs at acupuncture points, with bee venom. It wasn’t the life she’d imagined, but this was the life she got. On Chanukah, June made potato latkes. Ivy and Bea played dreidel. Hal tinkered with music. When June’s favorite song came on, she danced to the
music, allowed herself a moment to think about the baby she’d wanted so badly but couldn’t imagine having for fear Lyme would be transmitted in utero. She held her empty belly and quickly let it go. She made her way to the menorah, which sat like an anchor in the window. Hal, Ivy and Bea joined her. Hal struck a match and they each lit a candle. Four brilliant flames flickered, reflecting against the pane.
Torrin A. Greathouse God in the Fury
"There is so much beauty in a storm" -Jordan Dreyer The storm began with the soft patter of rain, like the feet of a dozen children rebounding concrete, rushing toward some unseen schoolyard fight. Bodies pressed up against bodies pressed up against bodies pressed up against bodies pressed up against the cold steel barricade as thought if they just push close enough, they will all become one. And the wind rises at first like a high note pushed through a broken flute, dog whistle sharp, then like the howl of a wounded animal, all of that terrified air escaping from its lungs, then at last the storm reaches a crescendo battering against the windows hidden behind every pair of eyelids in this city, and our bones ring like a forest of tuning forks struck by the rain. I imagine a weatherman, the last weatherman alive in this city, standing, back pressed to the buffeting roar of the amplifiers staring out over an ocean of earthquake bones
every body trembling, muscles tensed like they are ready to tear, his arms raised like a conductor, and I swear that I can almost hear him say: There is a storm front coming,
I do not know if we will weather this one.
And then the crowd explodes with the whip crack of lightning arcing its way through 10,000 water molecules or one suicidal child's urgent blood. And here are 100 suicidal kids, packed so close that no one's sweat is their own, and all of their blood is burning. Every body is fury, everybody is moving, and the singer with the wolf's jaw forcing its way up through his throat from the inside is howling: Everybody better be fucking moving. I am lifted, a crimson Icarus and these bodies— storm vanes and lightning rods of bone—are my wings, and I am lifted so far above all this electric wind that I can finally see how someone could mistake all these swirling bodies, these twisting-in-the-gut knives of skin and rage and mercy, for a storm.
How from the right angle 150 pounds of limb flailing, blood boiling, wishing they were dead looks exactly like a hurricane. How one body with enough blood trying to escape it is a force of nature. Up here, back pressed to the palms of a storm, where I imagine god hides all unanswered prayers I see the patterns, the fury, and the mercy in the storm, here I understand, then the hammer of the ground rises up to meet me, and spreads my urgent blood across the floor.
Katherine Forbes Riley Fight or Flight
Jill was always up for anything. She was also extraordinarily quiet, and still, with blank rounds for eyes, all of which made her very hard to read. Sometimes she’d croon as she rubbed my neck. From that I knew she wanted me. But I had no desire for her—none at all—it was unmanufacturable, even when I might have wanted to. Like when she was rubbing my neck so hard it felt like it might break. Her hands were as strong as a man’s. Some nights I’d strip to my bra and underwear and let her rub my whole body; back then every muscle always ached. But I wouldn’t give an inch more. It was like this block in me. I didn’t want to be a whore, and part of it too was this certainty that it would ruin it—for her, although I guess also for me. We’d talk around it, about whether I’d ever considered it; I don’t think she ever explicitly said she was gay. I never saw her with a girlfriend either. When she was with me she was there so completely, I always figured she must be in between. She’d court me for weeks and then disappear for a while. I didn’t care either way. When you’re that lonely you don’t miss anyone. It’s like Elliot Smith says, in isolation suffering becomes a game, and also Woody Allen quoting Groucho about how he’d never belong to any club that wanted him as a member. I was pretty on the surface, and somehow that made it worse. Because I was ugly inside and I knew it. And I also knew that was why she liked me. Or loved me even, if anyone like us could love anything.
I liked her though. I was quiet too. We’d sit in my apartment and listen to my music and smoke her weed and then she’d rub me. To be honest it felt like a fair exchange. Twisted, I know. But I was constipated with need. Those tiny tendons connecting my inner thighs to my pelvis held so much tension; pressure there left me limp as a rag doll. I barely thought about what it was doing for her. Long slow strokes up my spinal column and then hard pressure along the base of my skull—for as long as it lasted the pain in my brain would evanesce, and I could see with a kind of crystalline clarity how bright everything would one day be.
I was twisted but strong. You couldn’t kill me. Maybe that’s what kept her coming back to me. At one point she tried setting me up. Offered me a girl fresh out of high school, someone she said wanted to try it too. She took us to a motel. Had one drink and then left. Which was awkward, but not that much. We drank more— straight vodka, kind of competing over it, but only a little. She was cute. Had a snub nose and ready blue eyes. Curls the yellow of a home dye job. A little chubby, soft and puffy, she looked like a doll, but a used one. I could tell she’d done a lot and all that freshness would fade soon. We took turns. When it was mine, I found it exciting to pretend I was a man.
Everybody experiments. I believe it’s a flight response, learned young. My mother was a fighter who never lost—no matter what—so really flight was my best option. When I got older I discovered drugs, and man those were some of
the best flights I ever had. But you need friends for that and there came a point when I didn’t have any, and didn’t know how to go about making any either. Jill bummed a cigarette from me. I was in a doorway, smoking. That was about the only time I felt brave. Lighting up, and then that rush, brimming up and out of me—tip to filter, I’d be invincible. So when she came up I didn’t run. I just looked at her and thought, Here’s someone who can’t scare me. Her hair was brown and flat, a little dirty, tucked behind her ears. Her skin was pale but thick, with a few pimples big as bites—the kind you knew she squeezed every time she passed a mirror. She dressed like a boy but without pleasure, plain and shapeless. Her eyes were the only pretty thing on her, sea blue and round as pennies, and like I said, hard to read. But I couldn’t look at faces long back then. So I’d focus on her hands a lot. Long and white and strong, they held a cigarette kind of awkwardly. I thought for her they were more of a currency. Because after that first time, she always brought them for me, a pack of blue American Spirits. It got so I wouldn’t even take mine out because I knew she’d give hers to me. Twisted, I know.
She didn’t care though. Nothing I did ever turned her off me at all. Sometimes I’d hole up for days, and then she’d come and knock a soft beat on my door, sometimes for a really long time, before I let her in. And she had this car, this rickety coupe. She’d take me on drives, late at night, in the woods. Totally stoned, music blasting, bumping up and down dirt roads through pure blackness, tree trunks coming at us out of nowhere. If it were me I would have crashed us but she never did.
One time she drove us a couple hours north to a Grateful Dead concert—this was maybe a month before Jerry died. She liked deadheads, or at least hung with them a lot when she wasn’t with me. But I didn’t. David Foster Wallace has this story where he blasts them for being so convinced of their own nonconformism without ever considering its rigid uniformity. And even now thinking of it I feel this little victory, because that’s what I thought too, instinctively. But she convinced me to go to this Dead concert, saying she could get us X and crystal meth on the way, from this doctor guy she knew. And man was it grand, flying around those fairgrounds with her, all those deadhead boys chasing after me.
I met my husband at that concert. I ran, but he kept catching me. He’d rub my neck, and my inner thighs too, and for a long time I forgot completely about Jill.
Then just the other day a couple of deadheads came to town and called up my husband, wanting to reconnect over lunch or whatever. I went along, even though they hadn’t asked me to. I guess I was scared to leave him alone with them. Like the years might fade and he’d go back to whoever he was before he’d ever wanted me. They still looked the same, except slicker, with a kind of hard shell over it all now. Tension arced between me and the girl the entire time. Maybe the years faded for us too. She ignored me, or maybe I sat out on purpose, to show her how little she still impressed me. Either way I barely heard them talking over the sound of my own thoughts until she said, “We saw Jill a few days ago.”
That girl looked at me then, she had to, and I could see she still thought no differently. But I’m drug-free now, with a PhD and a mother I don’t see anymore, so I stared back into that abyss, and smiling, showing my teeth, said, “So is she married yet?”
Everyone experiments. It’s a part of life so you might as well learn from it. From Jill I learned to appreciate the beauty of a woman. To think, I could hit that, in another life, another existence. I learned women don’t have to compete; they can be together intellectually wherever they are in the abyss. I learned that if the right person came along, at the right time, a lot of us might be gay. And theoretically at least, it was possible that what I asked was true. Jill could have been married by then—to a man, I mean. She could even have gone back to Alabama where she’d had it so bad, treated like she was sick if not evil by her holy roller mother and racist father. Because it’s hard to escape no matter how fast you run. But if I’d thought at all before I spoke I would have known this wasn’t true in Jill’s case. All I had to do was remember her eyes. She was already gone. “Actually, she’s in the hospital,” the deadhead girl said, “for trying to kill herself after her girlfriend broke up with her. Again.”
Kaley Tedesco
The Textbooks will Tell You the Moon is a Face
I know this isn’t true. It’s more of a knee-cap flexing itself back-and-forth so that it might kick the stars about. Stones are only stones. No. I can creak them open like rust lockets and expose the chunks of sea inside, all crag and ice boned. You see black when your eyes are closed. Black is not always nothing, though. If you close them long enough, you’ll sky full of birds. Sometimes a murder and sometimes a cloud.
Bobbi Nicotera The Mattress
And so we spent our days wandering the streets of European villages, soaking up a culture, listening to stories, drinking warm beer and then our nights were spent naked making love across the continent and when we returned to the states a month later I discovered I was pregnant and I figured it had to be a mistake because I had been (faithfully) on the Pill for more than two years and we had used condoms every time. Every single time. So I went to the GYN and she said Yes it could happen, like in .000001 % of the time or something like that because honestly I wasn’t paying attention and I am bad with numbers anyway. So I called him on the phone because he had gone back to the city then and we decided to agree that it was a good thing—that someone, somewhere wanted me to be pregnant because those little guys squirmed through chemicals and hormones and latex and still managed to hit the target and so we decided that this was supposed to happen and we also decided that we were going to be happy about it. Then about two months into our decision to be happy about our little blessed event I had a miscarriage in the middle of the night and it looked like something out of Sid and Nancy, the bedsheets soaked and wet and warm with my dark baby blood, but then I realized what was happening and so I called him and he was just getting in and told him very matter-of-factly that I had lost the baby that we convinced ourselves we were supposed to have and I told him I guessed that god or someone decided that we weren’t supposed to have this baby and I
was going to clean myself up and go back to bed. I also told him I would flip the mattress tomorrow after work and he seemed surprised that I was going to work the next day but I told him I was fine and I’d talk to him later and I wanted to put on clean clothes and go back to bed. The next morning I shut off my alarm and called in sick and then began taking the now dried, rust-colored sheets off the bed and there was a similar colored stain like one of those Rorschach tests on the mattress, but when I tried to flip the naked-except-for-the-stain-that-would-never-go-away mattress, I could not budge it. In fact, I just wanted to go back to sleep, but instead I called him and told him: You must come down here right now because I cannot flip the mattress and if I cannot flip the mattress then I will have to sleep on the couch again but the couch is really uncomfortable to sleep on so I have to flip this mattress because I do not want to sleep on the couch and how am I going to flip the mattress if you are not here so please can you come down here now? Or something like that. I hung up the phone and curled up on the part of the mattress without the Rorschach stain and stayed that way until he came over a few hours later and he walked in the door and picked me up and drew a bath an cleaned me up and flipped the mattress and dried my hair and made the bed and the lowered me into it and so I curled up again into the fetal position because I was beginning to like it and he curled up behind me and nestled his face into the nape of my neck. It was then that I became aware of the fact that I was breathing, so I started to cry.
Susan M. Botich Afternoon Date
The sun-hazy afternoon plays out like a tired jazz combo laying down some worn-out blues in a smoke-filled bar huddled somewhere between a used bookstore and an antique shop. The traffic hugs its own noise and stench like a strained romance moving so slowly all anyone can do really is jaywalk a crazy jagged line through the sections of the stretched machine. Now wandering into this musty joint seems mandatory to your agenda. So here we are. Black and white tiles. Salt and pepper on the tables. I wonder can I stand pulling the weight of my lack of enthusiasm for this out-of-tune rendezvous into anything good? Will I make it all the way to that foregone conclusion?
The windows are smudged and the waitress is in a bad mood. She looks tired. Real tired. The coffee’s cold and bitter and she forgets the cream. The conversations we try keep slipping off the table spilling sloppy embarrassing stains of silence onto the vinyl booth seats. We try not to make a big deal out of it. Could we please have a wipe-down rag? I don’t know how this is going to end and that always bothers me. A laminated clock with a moose photo glued to its face refuses to move its hands. I swear it's actually enjoying itself taunting me just because it can. It has all the power right now. I find myself humming a staggered version of “We Are the Champions” under my breath hoping (okay maybe actually praying) while sticking to the wet Naugahyde that someone might (oh please!)
burst in and rob the place. Then in the middle of all the confusion I’d quietly slip out the back. Later over the phone in my most convincing tremble of a voice I’d explain my medically diagnosed phobia (and therefore completely justified panic) of being held up in stuffy small places with people I'd just met especially on hot afternoons like this one; it makes me go kind of crazy and forces me to avoid at all cost any future chance of having to endure that experience again. So though I'm terribly sorry (I'd say with tremendous sincerity) I simply can't see you again. My doctor says it could be very harmful but thank you for an otherwise lovely time.
Doug Van Hooser Louie’s Tale
Sit! So I sat. Down! I stretched out and put my chin on the floor. Over! Roll over! I pulled my abs in. Flipped. I actually made it in one motion. Up! I scrambled to a sitting position. Up! I rocked back on my rear, stuck my tail behind me, my spine straight, my forepaws dangled, my tongue lolled out the side of my mouth. Good boy! He patted my head. He commands. I perform. Speak! I barked. And I barked again. That’s a boy! Now the rub with both his hands. Does he really think I get some kind of thrill from this? You want a treat? Not really. They’re pretty awful and lately I’ve had a soft stool. Ah, but what the hell. It’s what he expects. I must want it. I bark. Here you go. Good dog.
Why doesn’t he call me Louie? I mean, geez, that’s my name. Come on. Let’s go for a walk. Ok, Ok. Here, let me wiggle my butt, wag my tail, act excited. Yea, get a leash so I can drag your ass. Make you feel like you’re in control. The alpha dog. Dominator. Hold still. Let me hook this up. Geez, if I don’t act excited you’ll be disappointed. You can’t have it both ways. Come on, you’d think by this time you could hook a leash to a collar. I mean that room you’ve got with all that leather. You sure don’t seem to have any problem getting those pieces hooked to each other. There were are. Come on, let’s get going. I’m waiting on you, sir. Get the door. Slow down. I gotta lock the door. Don’t pull. Sir, yes sir. Whatever you command, sir. Don’t pull. If I don’t pull we’ll be out here until Sunday. Explain that to Pam. You’ll get a real whipping then. That’s a boy. There’s no rush. Let’s go this way. Ah, come on man, we go this way and I have to stop to pee every twenty feet. I have to let the bitches know I’ve been here. Come and get me Honey! You know, maybe you should try a little Honey on Pam. It’s bound to work better than whore and slut. Geez Louie, how can you hold that much pee in your bladder? No dog pees more than you. Hey, I’m no different than you. You want some action you have to advertise. I can’t use the internet like you. And if it weren’t for me, you would have never
met Pam. Never gotten into that conversation about collars and harnesses. She noticed me first. I’m the one she was attracted to. Come on Louie, I’m meeting someone at the park. Wow. This is becoming a regular thing. I have to figure out that internet thing. Find me some bitches into all things leather. Geez, not another piss. Look, you don’t even go. You’re going through the motions. Just lifting a leg. It’s just an act. An act? What the hell do you do? All that rough talk. Pretending to be someone other than mild mannered Mike, the accountant. Be a good dog, move it. Your command is my desire, Master Mike. Don’t pull so hard. I’ll choke you. Keep up, Big Boy. My Master. She’s supposed to be by the swings wearing black leather boots and a black leather coat. Don’t jump on her. I wouldn’t do that without your permission, Master. Your job is to be adorable. Follow my commands. Yes Master. I don’t want to be naughty. There she is. Put on your adorable look. Yes Master. The one that begs to be touched. Hi. I’m Mike. I recognized your dog just like you said. He is cute. Pet me! Pet me! Oh, you behave so well. I can tell you’re excited but your master has trained you well. Pet me, please!
You’re begging for a good rub, and you deserve it. Oh yes. That’s good. Not too rough. Just right. What’s his name? Louie. Why did you pick that? After the kings of France. Really? You told Pam you named me after the first safe word you ever used. We can use it as a safe word. It will be like calling off the kings. Wow, I’m named for kings but treated like I’m the servant. Oh, Louie, that’s a really nice collar. It has your name on it. You have one too! Nice rhinestones. Leather is your thing, girl. I love the scent of leather. That coat smells brand new. Oh wow, you’re naked under there! So, you want to stay with our screen names. I’m good with that. I think the unknown heightens the excitement. You think not knowing someone’s name is exciting? I know I’m just a dog, but that’s really just confusing. I brought my own cuffs. Wrist and ankle? Yes. I have three or four harnesses we can hook the cuffs onto. And he’s got this pulley set up hanging from the ceiling above the bed. Pam won’t do that. What kind of whips do you like? Cat o nine tails. Not the cat thing! It’s nothing like a cat tail. Much less nine of them.
That leather coat has to be warm. Not really. I love the feeling of leather on my skin. Oh wow, she’s a flasher. You know how to pick ‘em, Mike. Hey sweetie, the public thing is reserved for dogs. Oh Louie, that really excited you. I think your dog is a pervert. A pervert! Give me a cocker spaniel! Then you’ll see some perversion. He normally behaves himself. Sit Louie, sit. Alright, alright, Pam likes it when I get excited. That’s a good boy. Do as you’re told. Yes Master. Hook Louie’s leash to my collar. I’ll be the good girl and follow you home. No! Not my leash! No. You walk in front of me. Yes Master. Hey, that’s my line! I obey! Come on Louie. Walk beside me. Screw that! You put my leash on her. I’ll show you! Louie! Louie! Get back here! Who’s a bad boy now? Come and get me Master! Naughty Dog! Yea! Yea! I’m naughty! What are we going to do? Run after him! We’ll catch him and tie him up! Not until I find me a cocker spaniel. Louie!
Don’t worry. He’ll come back. He’s probably taken off looking for my neighbor’s poodle. She’s a hot looking bitch.
Contributors Corie Adjmi Corie’s work has appeared in Crucible, The Distillery, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Evansville Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Indiana Review, Licking River Review, The North American Review, Out Of Line, Pangolin Papers, RE:AL, Red Rock Review, Red Wheelbarrow, RiverSedge, South Dakota Review, The TalonMag, Verdad, and Whetstone. Corie’s story “The Devil Makes Three” received the first-place prize for excellence in prose by Whetstone in 2004. Her short story “Dinner Conversation” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. You can read more of Corie’s writing, humorous and personal stories about family, friends and relationships, on her blog, From The Core, at fromthecore.net. Susan M. Botich Susan M. Botich has published her poems in Margie, The American Journal of Poetry, Rattlesnake Review, The Meadow, The Danse Macabre, Illya’s Honey, Wildflower Magazine, The Tonopah Review, Avocet, The Inflectionist Review, About Place Journal, Edgar Allan Poet Annual Journal 2013, Edgar Allan Poet Journal #2, PIM Publishing, The Seismic Thread, and The Bleeding Lion. Ms. Botich has been the recipient of two Nevada Arts Council (NAC) Artist Fellowship awards, two NAC Jackpot grants, and one NAC Professional Development grant. Since 2005, she has been working as a freelance writer for regional and national magazines, news publications and businesses. Ms. Botich resides in Bend, OR. Visit her website.
Torrin A. Greathouse Torrin A. Greathouse is a Literary Journalism student and governing member of the Uncultivated Rabbits spoken word collective at UC Irvine. They were the 2015 winner of the Orange County Poetry Slam. Torrin’s work has been published in several magazines including Rust + Moth, Cultured Vultures, and The Metaworker, and one chapbook “Cosmic Taxi Driver Blues.” They are currently employed as the executive assistant of a sustainable lighting firm. Their previous jobs include security guard, farm hand, antique store clerk and tattoo artist. Visit Torrin on Facebook. Bobbi Nicotera Bobbi Nicotera lives and works in Baltimore, MD. In 2009, she received a Master of Arts in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and has published fiction in Echo Ink Review, Grasslands Review, and the Journal of War, Literature and the Arts. She has also worked with Los Angeles-based composer/conductor, Jenni Brandon, on several projects. Their first collaboration, “Dog Tales,” a six-movement piece about (wo)man’s best friend, was commissioned by the chamber music ensemble, Conundrum, and will appear on their forthcoming CD, A Feast for the Ears. She joined the editorial staff of the Baltimore Review in 2013. Katherine Forbes Riley Katherine Forbes Riley is a computational linguist, writer, wife and mother in Vermont. A graduate of Dartmouth College with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, her professional writing appears in many places. Her creative writing appears in Storyscape, Lunch Ticket, Whiskey Island, Eunoia Review,
Literary Orphans, Eclectica, BlazeVOX, McNeese Review, Akashic Books, andBuffalo Almanack, from whom she received the Inkslinger’s Award. Kailey Tedesco Kailey Tedesco will soon hold an MFA in Poetry from Arcadia University. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Rag Queen Periodical. You can find her work in FLAPPERHOUSE, Jersey Devil Press, Hermeneutic Chaos, and more. She is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee. Feel free to follow her on Twitter @kaileytedesco for chats about 90’s television and macarons. Doug Van Hooser Doug Van Hooser lives and writes in southern Wisconsin and Chicago where he is a network playwright at Chicago Dramatists Theatre. His fiction recently appeared in The Riding Light Review and his poetry in Stoneboat Literary Journal, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Star 82 Review and Foliate Oak Literary Magazine.
Visit www.crackthespine.com to review our submission guidelines or to subscribe