Jersey Devil Press October 2015, Issue 71 ISSN 2152-‐2162 Online Editor: Laura Garrison Production Editor: Samuel Snoek-‐Brown Associate Editor: Monica Rodriguez Readers: Rebecca Vaccaro, Amanda Chiado Founding Editor/Publisher: Eirik Gumeny All stories and other contributions are copyrighted to their respective authors unless otherwise noted.
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Table of Contents:
Editor’s Note
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Where’s the Best BBQ in This Town?, Matthew Myers
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Nothing Contributes So Much to Tranquilize the Mind as a Steady Purpose, Brian D. Morrison
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Fingers, Shannon Noel Brady
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Paper Cities, Michael Berkowitz
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A Taste of Fame, Chad Schuster
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Editor'ʹs Note Welcome to issue Seventy-‐‑One! This month is also our sixth anniversary, which has us so excited we just peed a little. (For you mathemagicians frantically gesticulating in the second row, the issue count is off because we briefly flirted with going quarterly during a transitional phase in 2011.) We are deliriously happy to welcome five new voices to our warm electric pages. Matthew Myers kicks things off with demented and nightmarishly detailed directions to "ʺThe Best BBQ in This Town."ʺ Next, Brian D. Morrison explores the bucolic longings of Mary Shelley'ʹs tragic creation in a poem that perfectly complements the season. Shannon Noel Brady keeps things moving with a sweetly sad flash piece in which a spoiled child'ʹs destructive greed is observed from an unusual yet familiar vantage point. After that, Michael Berkowitz finds a surprising impermanence of place in "ʺPaper Cities."ʺ Finally, Chad Schuster spoons up a "ʺTaste of Fame"ʺ that packs the sort of BAM! you can'ʹt get from an ordinary spice weasel. — Laura Garrison
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Where’s the Best BBQ in This Town? Matthew Myers Ooo-‐‑hoo. Oh man oh man oh man. You really want the best? This is what you have to do: Make sure you have plenty of cash. They don’t take credit cards or any of that. What hotel are you staying at? Okay, head south from there, go two miles down whatever road that is, two blocks past the third gas station. There'ʹs a little shack of a place with bars over the windows and all the lights out. Park in the back near the pile of old Christmas trees. Watch your step. The asphalt’s like waves. If you become disoriented, look up and try to find familiar stars through the sodium lights. There will be nothing but a swirl of yellow-‐‑glazed bugs. Despair and then strengthen yourself. Let the shivers run down your spine and out like gutter water. Knock on the door marked DELIVERIES. Use your knuckles. Don’t use the palm of your hand. Knock three times, each one louder than the last. Don’t knock again. Don’t doubt that you knocked right. You did just fine, just fine. Make sure your shoelaces are tied. Be on guard. There are killers and thieves in the shadows of the laundromat across the lot. They will strike if they feel you'ʹre not on point. They may strike anyway, so keep your wits a-‐‑fucking-‐‑ bout you. A woman will answer the door. She’ll ask you if you need to talk to Arturo. Don’t answer. After the silence becomes unbearable, she will ask you if you have a reservation. Say Yes. You won'ʹt, but say Yes anyway. She'ʹll ask your name. Say ‘Frankfurt Burns, party of two.’ Make sure you have two in your party. Say you'ʹre Rich'ʹs other nephew and cough twice into your fist. Don'ʹt forgot to mention that you'ʹre Rich'ʹs other nephew or she’ll become suspicious. Technicolor spiders will appear on her shoulders and you won’t know whether you’re awake or dreaming, and you may forget your mother’s maiden name. 4
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She will open the door and hand you a manila envelope. Accept it immediately. In the envelope will be a map and a postcard with a picture of a horse on it. On the back will be a number written in pencil. Memorize this number. Say ‘Thank You, Sharon.’ She will crinkle her eyes as if her name is not Sharon. But it is. Return to your car. Pray no dogs come out, but do not pray out loud. Watch your corners. Make sure no one'ʹs in your back seat before you open the door. Drive back to the gas station. Fill up your tank and buy a two-‐‑gallon container. Fill that as well. Turn off your headlights and flip the map upside down. Follow it to the letter. The drive will be long, and you will abandon hope of ever reaching your destination. Keep going. You can'ʹt fail. Your appetite is on your side. The moon will appear to pixelate and shudder. Night clouds will turn blood red and take on a horrific majesty. Suicidal ideations may take hold, and your steering will pull left a bit. If you’re a praying man, pray. If you’re not, don’t. Hold fast and breathe slowly into your hunger. In your rear view the road will chase you. You will know sorrow and you will know fear. Your bones will make sounds that your ears will doubt. You will come to the end of the map and still you’ll see nothing but corn, and the howls of animals will remind you of past loves. Don’t ignore the rush of nostalgia. Feel it fully, cry until you'ʹre dry, let the memories become small enough to fit into the glove box, then place them there beside the flashlight, the tire gauge and the gun you didn’t know was there. If you must doze, doze. The rumble strips will bring you back. Press the radio on and scan the AM band until you hear something like the laughter of children. Signal right but turn left and drive until the laughter dies. Pull over and kill the engine. Leave your keys in. Get out of the car, take three deep breaths and follow the sound of footsteps through the kicked-‐‑up cloud of gravel dust. Feel free to fear, but don’t doubt the maker of
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the footsteps. Just follow and keep your own thoughts hidden from you. A screen door will find you like a spider web in the dark. You’re here. Squeak the screen door alive and open. The cicadas won’t be there to cheer you on any longer. Step inside and go blind from the neon light of beer signs. When your eyes tune in, your Hostess will be standing there. Her hair is a black majesty. The scar on her forehead will do nothing to hide her beauty but don'ʹt gaze too long or she will own your soul and the pink slip to your car. She will take your coats and offer you salvation. Let your face fall down into her breasts without embarrassment. She will hide you and heal you. There is a blue rose tattoo on her collarbone. Count the petals. This will come in handy in future lives. The number on the coat check ticket will feel strangely damning. Hand her the postcard and tell her your number from the postcard. It’s no longer written there, but you remember it, don’t you? Of course you do. Follow her into the dining room and when she offers you a seat, ask her for another; for a booth, closer to the window. She will try to talk you out of it. Do not, for Christ’s sake, let her talk you out of it. Your Waitress will come by about a half hour later. You’ll think it'ʹs Sharon but it'ʹs not. You’ll then think it must be her twin sister, but Sharon has no twin. She'ʹll ask if you want the buffet. There is no buffet. Say No. She'ʹll ask if you want to hear the Specials. There are no Specials, but don'ʹt, Do Not, let her know that you know this. When you'ʹre very sure she'ʹs done with the Specials, say you'ʹd like to see the Tuesday menu, unless it actually is Tuesday, in which case simply ask for ‘The Menu.’ A doughy-‐‑faced man at the next table will grab your shirtsleeve and ask how'ʹs the weather in El Paso. If you happen to be from El Paso and have only left recently, feel free to tell him, but use plain English and avoid meteorological jargon (this will enrage him and you’ll have to fight him to first blood in the parking lot with silverware and jumper cables and you will lose). Otherwise, laugh 6 Jersey Devil Press
like it'ʹs an old joke and say, ‘Oh no, I'ʹm not that easy,’ then give a little laugh, then he will laugh too and slowly release his grip from your sleeve, leaving a runish mark that you will ponder in your old age when all of your friends have died. Study the menu. The words will spin slow and settle onto the page and into the sauce-‐‑smeared fingerprints of past diners. The fingerprints are mysteriously, Pygmi-‐‑ish small. The jukebox will cue up Walter Pitchfork'ʹs Pigfucker Lacrimosa No. 4 and it will make you fear for the lives of your children. Especially if you have no children. Resist the urge to call and check on them or all will be lost. Concentrate hard on the menu. There is a troubling wisdom in the description of sauces if you’re the kind who can find it. Now order. This is your time. Do not falter. Easy now. The Burnt Tips are gone by the time you get there. Don’t even ask. The Pickled Sow Cunt is what the place is known for. Order it with beans and slaw or not at all. The Pulled Pork Platter has tons more meat then the Sandwich but costs the same. The Chicken is just okay, but if you'ʹre a chicken guy, I guess you'ʹll like it just fine. The Ribs are excellent, but they'ʹve been known to induce temporary blindness in whites and Chinese. Small price to pay, some say, but know the odds. They only do full racks, no halves, and don'ʹt even think about splitting it with your partner because fingers are lost that way more often than they’re not. The Devil'ʹs Cock-‐‑n’-‐‑Balls is exactly what it sounds like. Do not order this unless you literally want to eat the Devil'ʹs cock and balls. The 66-‐‑n’-‐‑6 Sampler is the way to go. I always get the ol’ 66-‐‑n’-‐‑ 6. It of course comes with the Devil’s Cock-‐‑n’-‐‑Balls, but just let them lie there if that’s not something you feel comfortable digesting. The needle will mysteriously jump from Pigfucker Lacrimosa No. 4 three bars from the end, and either Whammy Bar Mama or Slaughterhouse Kate’s Cuntrag Blues will come on. They have
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identical guitar solos but are otherwise nothing alike in sound, substance or mettle. The sauce cart will sidle up hot and loud and Gravy-‐‑Face Gary will ask you what sauce you fucking want in a voice that brings to light all of your father'ʹs infidelities. There’s Miner’s Lung No. 6, Death Throes Rose, Bonnie'ʹs Special Red, Ragwater No. 5 and Bonnie'ʹs Xtra Special Red. If you'ʹre braving the Devil'ʹs Cock-‐‑n’-‐‑ Balls, I'ʹd use the Xtra Special Red and man oh man let it flow. Otherwise you can’t go wrong with the Special Red. Miner’s Lung is an acquired taste but if you’re like me, you should always be acquiring more tastes, right? Ragwater No. 5 doesn’t hold a candle to Ragwater No. 4 but that recipe died violently with its progenitor Polly ‘Pretty Please’ McGuillicutty at a Greyhound station in Joplin. Death Throes Rose gives me fevers and the shits so I rarely touch the stuff. The bathroom is to the right of the aquarium. Don'ʹt mind the chickens hanging from the Bible-‐‑blackness of the drop-‐‑ceiling grid with no drop-‐‑ceiling tiles. Those are just the Voodoo chickens. The chickens they use for cooking are in the mop closet, which is inspected quarterly in accordance with local bylaws, so breathe clear and easy. When you exit the bathroom, mind the Irish Wolfhound chained up to the slop sink. He doesn’t bite or leg-‐‑hump, but lose yourself in his gaze and you risk a hellish vision quest, suspended in a mist between two waxing crescent moons, descending into a bright blue madness, remembering all pre-‐‑verbal pains and soul scars, before reemerging awash in glory fire and a new soul-‐‑skin, released from his spell and placed safely back in your seat by the mighty oaken arms of Gravy-‐‑Face Gary, also in accordance with local bylaws. Also, the Wolfhound will own the pink slip to your car (if you’ve already lost this to the Hostess, you’re fucked, brother). If you'ʹre lucky, your food will be waiting for you when you come back. 8 Jersey Devil Press
Enjoy your food and eat sloooow. Chew each bite thirty-‐‑seven times or the chef’s allowed to leave a trace of his soul in it (again: local bylaws). Chef’s a decent guy but I wouldn’t want a goddamn mote of his soul in my belly, and I eat most anything. Now when you’re done, and if you still own the pink slip to your car, pull out and drive in an easterly fashion with the headlights off until you hit the main road. Take nothing but lefts until you’re back on the highway. If you sweat something that doesn’t smell like your own sweat, don’t worry, that’s situation normal. Ignore the sounds of hooves clopping beside you. Now suck on that starlight mint and let that toothpick do its work and drive, drive, drive. And of course there’s Porkin’ Mama’s just two blocks that way. They’re pretty good too.
MATTHEW MYERS studied film at New York University in the 90s but somehow ended up working on an ambulance in the Midwest. He now works in an office, where the leftover adrenaline from his past profession had been redirected and is now secreted as fiction of both short-‐‑ and long-‐‑range capability. Apart from one accidental short-‐‑form publication, this is his first published work. October 2 015 9
Nothing Contributes So Much to Tranquilize the Mind as a Steady Purpose Brian D. Morrison Frankenstein’s creature tried sincerely to be machine but could be only problem. He wind-‐‑ milled his arms tilling dirt, rocks and clumps flying. Seed from his hands fell perforce. The creature sliced an ancient septic tank. A repugnant blob from the gush, he ran, a nightmare dripping into town. A warning like any relic sprung to breath and panic, he was fear become reality. A storm swept in, lightning snagged his bolts, and his hulk arms flailed. He was a marionette from hell, howling, and the townspeople came at him; clubs and knives, mace and gunfire— one woman threw a pumpkin at his face. He took it, all of it, because he was trying to remove lichen from rock, rage from knowledge he couldn’t break. And his wheat, his dream, miles of life, gone because he was now a known, no longer the silent enigma at the back stretch of the county where no one dared
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plant. A freakish reek in grunts and ragged hitches, he ran back to his field, fast and so alone. He buried himself piece by piece between the rows: An arm here, a leg there, his heart and head together. Time carries the farm over him. He sleeps in pieces, hopes for firm ending of shivers at oddity, the black in the world that compels a person to break what doesn’t. Brian D. Morrison completed his MFA at the University of Alabama, where he was an assistant editor at Black Warrior Review. His poetry has appeared at West Branch, The Bitter Oleander, Verse Daily, Copper Nickel, Cave Wall, and other journals. Currently, he works as an Assistant Professor of English at Ball State University.
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Fingers Shannon Noel Brady The purple monkey hugs my kneecap with his armpit. Squashed into my front is the yellow dinosaur, her spinal ridges prickling my belly every time she shifts. The blue elephant’s hindquarters press against my ear, which is unpleasant, but not as much as the child’s face flattened against the glass. From my vantage point atop the pile, I watch as the small human points and taps and slides its hands across the window with covetous delight. It leaves prints fossilized in some wet, pink substance, as if moments ago it had dipped its hooks into a bucket of strawberry jam. What a waste of fingers. So many things the child could do with its flexibility, those joints and thumbs— thumbs!—but instead it sticks them in jam and smears them across everything as if the world were its bread. The child rubs its face through the mess, sliding down so its nose pulls up into a nostril-‐‑flaring, porcine snout. I glance at the polka-‐‑dotted pig nestled against my teddy bear shoulder, and imperceptibly to the human she frowns at the likeness. It’s been a long time since someone visited our glass enclave. With the flashing lights, neon colors, and chirping, whooping sounds of the other games, the arcade-‐‑goers had left us in peace. Such stability gave me time to get to know my neighbors, especially the pig. She’s an observant one. In lush detail she described the factory she came from, the others she met on the bumping trip over, how between assembly line and truck the blue sky swelled above her like a balloon the instant before the pop. She would make up funny stories about the humans that walked by, or embellish what she saw for those too buried to know the difference, and I would laugh at how outlandish she was. Sometimes I’d wake in the dark and, 12
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when she didn’t think anyone was listening, I’d hear her humming sweetly to herself. During business hours, while the others lazed about, the pig and I would talk and talk, and somehow I could sense that it wasn’t the cramped space that made her hear me, but that she really, truly wanted to. She looks at me, I look at her, and then together we wince at the squat human that has resorted to banging its fists. A taller one appears, its flowery cardigan the only part visible through the window. It takes the child’s hand, inspects the filth, then rummages through its purse. It whips out a tissue and wraps it around each grubby finger, digs jam out of the pits in between. The child shrieks and we wince again at the stitch-‐‑splitting noise while it yanks and strains at its parent’s grasp. At first I’d considered its face a minor annoyance, but now I can’t help feeling unnerved by its mounting, contorting greed. The parent finishes, but still the child slams its slightly drier fists against our window until my threads feel ready to burst. Dragging the small human proves fruitless for the tall one, and its torso sags with a sigh. It folds the tissue over to an unsullied spot, wipes its own hands and unzips a purse. The silver gleams in the arcade glow as the parent passes over a quarter. Howls of glee replace the screams, but they sound no less malicious. The coin clanks through the machine and a bright light flicks on, hurting my lidless eyes. It’s been so long since I’ve heard that sprightly tune of the game starting that I forgot what it sounded like. The claw above us jolts into life as the child rips the joystick back and forth. Nobody wants to go with this monster. Just imagine what it would do when it got one of us in its devilish digits. I can tell this creature has ripped apart a few toys in its time. Yet there is nowhere to escape. Glass packs us in on all sides, plush shoves against plush. Those buried below give hushed thanks for their safety and for once I wish the pig and I didn’t have this viewpoint
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atop the pile. My belly stuffing clenches, and my friend the pig whimpers and huddles closer around my shoulder. The child peers through the window, mouth open and forming a jellyfish of fog upon the glass as it deliberates. If it takes too long, the game will shut down, and we all pray for indecisiveness and a coinless purse. But the human does decide, and with a fangy grin it lowers the claw. The pincers snap together around the tail of a green shark, but her flaccid fins slip through. Two more tries. The neck of a red horse feels the metallic clutches next, but he’s wedged too snugly amongst his brethren. One more try. The claw comes down over the polka-‐‑dotted pig. It pinches her ear. Tight. No! Of anyone here, not this one, not her! She trembles like a dew drop, fighting to unlock herself as she ascends. With all the strength my teddy bear stuffing can summon, I reach to her. She reaches back. Closer . . . Closer . . . Just a little bit more . . . Yes! Our limbs touch! But, unlike the humans, neither of us has fingers. Nothing to latch onto, nothing with which to grip. Only soft, rounded, plush-‐‑ filled stumps. The claw freights her up, drops her down the chute into the child’s talons, which clamp onto her with dexterous might. Her deep black eyes watch mine as she and her captor retreat, getting smaller and smaller, further and further, until I can no longer see my friend the pig as the throng of people fills that ever-‐‑widening canyon of space. For the first time in ages my shoulder touches air, and it is cold. 14 Jersey Devil Press
Hailing from California, SHANNON NOEL BRADY is a multi-‐‑genre author of novels and short stories. Her tale about an overdramatic houseplant has been published in Vandercave Quarterly, and her blog can be found at snbradywriter.wordpress.com. If you like dog photos, then BOY OH BOY does she have the Twitter for you: @snbradywriter
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Paper Cities Michael Berkowitz As it turned out the light of creation was the soft glow of the lamp outside a general store. One hour to the north, there is a bend in the Willowemoc known only to fisherman and map-‐‑makers, where the golden hour hooks the trout, scales refracted silver below the surface. Along Route 17 nothing is drawn to scale. Distances are measured in days and everything slopes toward the east. When the sun has risen and the trout have all been caught and the house behind the general store has been torn down, what is to say this town on the map was ever anything more than some cartographer’s folly? 16
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MICHAEL BERKOWITZ is a poet, web developer and aspiring trapeze artist living in Somerville, Massachusetts. Some of his recent work has appeared in Bird'ʹs Thumb, Quarterly West, and Tinderbox Poetry.
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A Taste of Fame Chad Schuster You know her from the Cooking Network. She'ʹs the thick girl, pale, generously freckled, sweating over the purple flame. Beads gather on her brow and in the crease above her lips and on the follicles of her frizzy red hair. They drip onto sleeves of ink that pop against her white chef'ʹs coat, an article of clothing that tells you what she does but not what she is: a lunatic, a child of fleeting forgotten love, simmering ambition brought to a boil. Before she was in your living room she was my girlfriend. She lived at the edge of a nature preserve in a cabin overwhelmed by trees. She inherited the place from her father, a man who raised chickens and rolled his own smokes and chopped wood for sport, as if the perfect cut would bring back the wife who'ʹd lost her mind and left him alone to care for their young daughter. The Chef discovered her passion in that cabin. She and her father would sit at a spare wooden table to eat meals she learned from the handwritten recipes her mother had left behind. At least that'ʹs the story she fed me. I never met her father, but she talked about him often during that strange autumn, the year after he accidentally shot himself by the wood pile, when we were new and thus mutually enthralled, before I went and ruined everything. I loved her then. We would wander through the forest smoking pot, swapping stories about all the terrible things we did as teenagers. I told her how I blew up the mailbox of the prick who worked the counter at the local minimart; she told me how she burned down half a county. She and her dad were camping on the plateau, the land baked by an unkind summer, the scrub brush and pine trees tinder, and she snuck off to smoke and saw the expanse of land below her, the chance to feel something bigger, and she tossed her burning cigarette into the tall brown grass and walked 18
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away and watched the rest on the news from the little black-‐‑and-‐‑ white television that sat atop a cable-‐‑spool table at the cabin. She seemed plucky as she told me the story, like a purebred Midwestern girl in a pantsuit delivering the weather. The other thing we did during our walks was daydream about which one of us would become famous first. We were headed to the top together, and the one who got there first would help the other one up. We made vows, dark-‐‑hearted promises, and then we would realize it was dusk and we didn'ʹt have a flashlight and we'ʹd stumble back to the cabin laughing, cursing ourselves for being perpetually unprepared. Sometimes we'ʹd bring food or water to the transients who lived in the woods. They would show us the things they did to survive, little tricks they'ʹd developed to make it through, and we would marvel at their ingenuity and the capacity of humans to summon pride amid bleakness. She told me she and her father had been conflicted about the men living in the trees. They wanted to help them but several times came home to find that someone had broken in and rifled through their things. There are people who can'ʹt be part of the world, her father told her, and she understood just what he meant. It was raining one evening when we came across a camp that disturbed us. From the trail we saw porn magazines strewn about the site. The rainfall felt like paper-‐‑cuts on the back of our necks, and we were waterlogged and ready to go home when we noted a pair of dirty red sneakers protruding from the open door of a tent. The man heard us and emerged, black-‐‑eyed into the gloom, scraps of dried leaves lodged in his beard. He was a small man, all bone and bluster, demanding money. When we refused, he became enraged. "ʺI know where you live, you cunt,"ʺ he shouted at the Chef. "ʺI'ʹll cut your throat in your sleep."ʺ
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She ran her hand through her hair, grabbed a clump, grinning, eyes locked in. "ʺGo ahead and try,"ʺ she said calmly. "ʺI would fucking love that."ʺ They stared each other down for a long time before I took the Chef by the hand and led her back down the muddy path to the cabin. That night she cooked pork belly with brown lentils, caramelized onions and a nice cucumber salad. I sat at the table and watched her work, admiring the way she moved around the kitchen, always focused on the task at hand while simultaneously plotting her next step. The economy of her movements was breathtaking, totally at odds with her demeanor outside the kitchen, which was at best methodical, at worst lazy and lumbering. It was like every time she tied on an apron she was cooking for a ghost, her mother, I assume, though I never thought to ask. We ate like hogs and drank three bottles of wine and later, lying together in her tangled flannel sheets, I asked her whether she thought the transient really knew where she lived. "ʺI'ʹm not worried about it,"ʺ she said. "ʺOh, really,"ʺ I said, laughing. "ʺMaybe you should be."ʺ She shrugged. Then she rolled over and hung her torso over the edge of the bed so she could retrieve something. While she was rustling around my index finger traced the line of a tattoo down her back to where it met an ancient scar. I had asked her a few times where the scar came from, but she never really answered. She just smiled and said she had lots of scars, and at times like that I couldn'ʹt help but think of her dad and how unlikely it was that a man with his experience had inadvertently shot himself. When she lifted herself back onto the bed I noticed she was holding something, a handgun. She lay down on her back and set the gun on her bare stomach. "ʺSeriously?"ʺ I said. "ʺYou keep a gun under your bed?"ʺ She laughed that spooky, gravelly laugh of hers. "ʺAbsolutely,"ʺ she said. "ʺI'ʹd be crazy not to. You wouldn'ʹt believe the things that
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come crawling out of those woods."ʺ With her other hand she produced four bullets that she loaded skillfully into the chamber. "ʺHave you ever had to use it?"ʺ I said. "ʺOnce or twice,"ʺ she said. "ʺOnly when I needed to."ʺ I gave her a look. "ʺWhat the hell does that mean?"ʺ "ʺI never got into hunting like my dad,"ʺ she said, ignoring my question. "ʺBut he taught me what it means to kill something. When I was little he made me behead one of the chickens. He wanted me to learn that all food came from somewhere, that every creature was sacred, even if you had no choice but to take its life. Anyway, I murdered the thing with his axe and cooked it for dinner."ʺ Having grown up on microwave food, I didn'ʹt know what to say. I just lay there, dumbly, watching her draw little circles around her belly-‐‑button with the barrel of the gun. After an uncomfortable silence, she turned on her side to face me. "ʺJust remember I have this thing,"ʺ she said, holding the gun up in the air. "ʺAnd I'ʹm not afraid to use it, okay?"ʺ She pointed it at my head and chuckled, squinting down the barrel, and then she stopped chuckling and pressed it to my forehead, leaving it there for much longer than any good-‐‑natured joke would allow. "ʺOkay?"ʺ She repeated. "ʺOkay,"ʺ I said finally, trying to hide how much I enjoyed that kind of recklessness. We put the gun away and opened another bottle of wine, and before it was gone we had fallen asleep without turning off the lamp on the bedside table. The lamp was small and made of weathered brass, its shade a work of stained glass, square and white but for a large red-‐‑glass question mark. Thinking back on that lampshade, knowing it had been crafted in the cabin by the Chef'ʹs mother, told me everything I needed to know about their family. They were strangely luminous but imperfectly soldered, a source of brilliant fractured light. The red question mark had been seared into my vision by the time a noise at the front door woke me up. It was four a.m. Thirty years of stove-‐‑smoke saturated my pillow. At first I didn'ʹt move. I
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listened to the rain tapping at the window. Then I heard the noise again and steeled myself for battle. I visualized the bearded transient'ʹs empty eyes in the darkness and was ready to match him. I tiptoed down the hall, shirtless and ready to die, but no one was there. Outside on the porch I felt the rain on my bare chest and saw the moon through the trees, partially obscured by clouds, and wondered why I wasn'ʹt more afraid. My indifference was illogical. Then I thought I heard something, maybe even saw a flash of light in the trees, but I couldn'ʹt be sure. I took two steps toward the edge of the porch and realized I was just being paranoid. Across the yard a chicken bobbed its head in the moonlight. I went back to bed feeling disappointed. Of course I was using at the time. Heroin, mostly, along with other things. I was on a downslope; my band was gaining stature, and so I was riding the momentum of a frenetic summer of praise and excess. Which is a roundabout way of saying I started cheating. First I ran into an old girlfriend at one of our shows and we slept together in the passenger seat of my sedan. I woke up with her on top of me just before daylight and wanted to kill myself, not a dramatic daydream but something I truly considered, partly because I loved the Chef and partly because I hated my lack of restraint, the way I so thoroughly submitted to urges I knew would disappoint me. Instead of reforming I shriveled, partaking in a series of indiscretions that aren'ʹt worth mentioning other than to say they gave the Chef every right to do more than the she did. Or what I suspect she may have done. I'ʹll never know for sure. I went to the cabin one evening after sleeping with a girl she knew from culinary school, one of the connections that would soon jump-‐‑start her television career. When I arrived the lock on the front door was broken and it was snowing and raining, a combination that made it very difficult for me to decide how I felt about anything, especially the fact that the chef was standing in the 22 Jersey Devil Press
kitchen, elbow deep in blood. We had been bickering on the phone before I came over. She somehow knew I had been unfaithful, she was smarter than me, and also stronger, but she didn'ʹt confront me directly. Trickery was her way, and so she insisted I come over. She was cooking something unforgettable, she said. If I was lucky, it wouldn'ʹt be our last supper. "ʺWhat happened to the door?"ʺ I said when I saw her standing there near the sink. She smiled at me domestically, the smile of a repressed housewife but with more force, more contempt than any traditional patriarch would stand for. "ʺOh,"ʺ she said. "ʺI locked myself out."ʺ This was not her. She had become someone else, a character invented to shock and frighten me, the same person I would later come to recognize on TV. This, it turns out, was just the kind of person America could love. She washed her hands, dried them with a dish towel. "ʺWhat a mess that was,"ʺ she said. I eyed her for a moment, trying to determine what she was up to. "ʺWhat was a mess?"ʺ I said finally. "ʺIt'ʹs a surprise,"ʺ she said. "ʺOne of those unplanned things that just fell into my lap."ʺ I thought of the time she accidentally hit a coyote with her truck. I remembered the look on her face when she realized it wasn'ʹt going to survive, the pang of disappointment. Then, standing there in the glare of the headlights, her expression changed. She suddenly looked determined. We loaded the animal in the car and took it home. She butchered it in the iron sink her father had installed near the shed. Then she cooked it with purpose, with love, for the art of it, so that when she was done there was an answer where before there had been a question, a thing that might survive in the absence of magic. She minced the meat and served it with risotto and roasted peppers, and it was horrifically delicious. She turned her back to me now, but I could see her smile reflected in the kitchen window. Fresh scratches trailed down the
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back of her neck, disappearing below the collar of her green tank top. I heard the drawer slide open, the rattle of the corkscrew. "ʺWine?"ʺ she said over her shoulder while hail pelted the glass in front of her. "ʺSure,"ʺ I said. "ʺIn a minute. I'ʹm going to take a shower."ʺ "ʺTake your time,"ʺ she said. "ʺ Dinner won'ʹt be ready for a bit."ʺ I made my way down the hall and stopped in the doorway that led to the bedroom. The bedding was lying in the floor, and the lamp was tipped over on the nightstand, its shade broken. Shards of red-‐‑and-‐‑white glass littered the floorboards. I stepped past them toward the bed. "ʺWhat the hell happened in here?"ʺ I yelled. "ʺOh, nothing,"ʺ she yelled back. "ʺJust clumsy."ʺ An undisturbed glass of water, mine from last night, sat on a coaster next to the overturned lamp. I got down on my knees and looked under the bed. The gun was gone. When I saw the dirty red sneakers set neatly near my side of the bed my pulse quickened. Suddenly I felt sick. I stood in the shower for a long time, letting the water overtake me. I was still unsure what to make of the scene. I convinced myself that nothing unusual had happened. In addition to being crazy, the Chef was known to make prank calls and jump out from behind doors. The whole thing was probably an elaborate hoax, a way to make me pay for my infidelity. But then who knows what someone is capable of while you'ʹre out disregarding them? I shut off the water and stood there for a moment listening to pots rattling in the distance. I dressed and walked down the hallway, stopping short of the kitchen. Not knowing where the gun was terrified me. "ʺSeriously, what happened today?"ʺ I said, speaking to the empty halfway rather than her specifically. It was quiet for a moment. I felt my heartbeat in my neck. I heard no footsteps. Suddenly the Chef'ʹs face shot around the corner. "ʺCome eat before it gets cold,"ʺ she said. Her eyes were wild, threatening. I looked down and saw the gun in her hand, trembling. "ʺIt'ʹs the least you could do."ʺ She softened, started walking back into the kitchen, gesturing with the gun in her hand 24 Jersey Devil Press
as if it were a baton and she were some kind of homicidal conductor. "ʺBesides,"ʺ she said. "ʺThis is the freshest cut of meat you'ʹll ever have. You really just missed the kill. And you know I can make anything taste like magic."ʺ I was frozen for a moment, deciding whether to comply. I heard the hail pick up outside, propelled by a gust of wind rushing through the rafters. I took a deep breath. She was smiling devilishly, and I was starting to feel like a lifeless animal stretched out on a plate. I death-‐‑marched into the kitchen and sat in the chair, tapping my foot while the Chef plated the food. She had turned on music while I was in the shower, one of her dad'ʹs old records, some dead woman was trying to sing jazz over the crackle of the vinyl. When the Chef sat down across from me I thought about making a run for it and calling the police, but I was high and not exactly on good terms with the law. So I ate. I avoided the meat at first and focused on the rest of the dish. I knew the preparation was intentional. The roasted vegetables, the risotto, the wine—all if it was meant to remind me of the night we ate the coyote. She loved measuring my discomfort, her pleasure increasing with each bite I took, her fingers working the charm on a necklace her father had given her, a crescent moon cast in silver. Finally there was nothing but a pile of meat in the center of my plate. She cocked her head sideways and smiled a hostile smile. "ʺSaved the best for last,"ʺ she said, tapping the barrel of the gun on the wooden table. "ʺGo on."ʺ I felt myself breathing, felt the churning of my stomach and I met her gaze and knew that our time together was over, we were already strangers. I was sorry to have hurt her but not sorry that I'ʹd loved her. I took a deep breath. Then I stuck the spears of my fork through a piece of meat, whatever it was, and took a bite. * * *
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She begged me to stay, so I slept on the couch that night and when I woke up the next morning I packed my things and left without saying goodbye. On my way out I walked to the shed and stood there in the wind hoping her old man'ʹs hunting sink wasn'ʹt stained with fresh blood, that it was just dirty and rusted. I drove a little way down the two-‐‑lane road that wound through the forest. I pulled off to the shoulder, locked my car and set off for the red-‐‑ shoed man'ʹs camp. When I got there it looked much the same as before; magazines and food wrappers were scattered about, but the man was gone. Same thing the next day and again the following week. The final time I went there I decided to do a more thorough search. The smell of rotting food nearly knocked me over when I zipped open the door of the tent. I crawled inside and dug through the man'ʹs belongings. Grungy socks, a denim coat lined with dirty fur, an old hand-‐‑held radio. It was mostly junk, the kind of things you'ʹd expect to find in a homeless man'ʹs tent. I discovered it in a brown leather bag: a Polaroid camera and dozens of photos. The Chef as seen through her kitchen window, the Chef chopping wood, the Chef walking to her car in the rain. In the middle of the pile I found a photo of me. I felt the edge of the thick photo paper, saw the rainbow sheen of potassium hydroxide that had brought the image to life. There I was at the center of the blurry picture, standing shirtless on the porch two hours before dawn, looking in vain for someone to kill. I stumbled out of the tent holding the photo, running the whole way back to my car. I called the police and filed a report, telling them I was certain the red-‐‑shoed man was missing. I said I'ʹd visited him several times and that he'ʹd been gone now for weeks. I stopped short of implicating the Chef because I didn'ʹt have any evidence. Plus I loved her. I owed her. An investigator called me after visiting the camp. He told me they'ʹd found an old driver'ʹs license in the man'ʹs things, he'ʹd been reported missing by his family three years ago. ”Probably crazy,” the investigator said. 26 Jersey Devil Press
“Sometimes these guys just wander off. I'ʹm sure we'ʹll eventually find him sleeping on a bench or holding a sign on an off-‐‑ramp.” It'ʹs been a few years since all this happened. The red-‐‑shoed man is still missing. I check on his case every few months, hoping he'ʹs turned up. I keep the photo he took of me tucked away in a drawer, something to pull out and look at when I need to remember who I am in the loneliest hours of night, when there'ʹs no one there to see. By the time I began to accept the possibility that my wildest suspicions were at least plausible, the Chef was ascending toward stardom. She had cooked her way from that smoky cabin to an extravagantly outfitted kitchen in a television studio, and I was alone, a part-‐‑time junkie and unemployed guitarist. If I ran into her on the street I'ʹm not sure she'ʹd recognize me. When I see her on TV now, I think about how the tattoos I once traced with my finger have since become something like an American monument. I try not to wonder if things could have been different, but there is a thing she says at the end of every show, a catchphrase: make your next meal magic, she says, and then she winks one of her green eyes and I get the feeling she'ʹs winking not to her legions of viewers but directly at me. That'ʹs when I remember how much fun we used to have, how much I miss her, and I push aside my memories of that empty tent, those red sneakers, the mysterious cuts of meat, the meal designed in obscurity for two men who had wronged her. I wish to God I hadn'ʹt been one of those men. I'ʹd love the chance to apologize, to show her I'ʹm better. The truth, though, is that I'ʹm not far from being the kind of man who crawls out of the woods looking to satisfy some animalistic urge, forgetting how little that urge matters, how likely it is to deceive me. If she welcomed me back into the cabin we'ʹd light a fire and drink wine and talk into the night and everything would be like old times. Then dawn would come and life would beckon and I'ʹd kiss her
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forehead as she slept and slip out the door into the outside world, hoping like hell that my next wrong step wouldn'ʹt leave me cooked. CHAD SCHUSTER'ʹs fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Glimmer Train, Hobart, Bartleby Snopes, Literary Orphans, Per Contra and elsewhere. He lives near Seattle with his wife and two children. Find him at www.chadschuster.com or on Twitter @Chad_Schuster. 28 Jersey Devil Press
“WEED” Jakub Gazmercik JAKUB GAZMERCIK is a hobbyist, once in a while regretting not studying art. He is originally from Slovakia, but he currently resides in Auckland, NZ. When drawing, he usually tries to hide some message (thought, emotion, belief) into his drawings, not making it obvious on the first sight so there may be some space for an imagination of others as well. His work is available at nidraj-‐rion.deviantart.com.