Fractal Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 2 by Fractal Magazine

FRACTAL

Vol. 1, Issue 2

FRACTAL LITERARY MAGAZINE VOLUME I, ISSUE 2

Established in 2012, Fractal is a literary magazine founded and edited by students of the University of Southern California. Fractal publishes fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction in print and electronic format. Jackson Burgess, Editor-in-Chief Dalton Banh, Creative Nonfiction Editor Kelly Belter, Fiction Editor Sonali Chanchani, Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Editor Shelby DeWeese, Poetry Editor Winona Leon, Fiction Editor Submit your work and visit us at fractalmagazine.com. Email us at fractalmag@gmail.com.

Dear Readers,

Welcome to Volume 1, Issue 2 of Fractal. Here youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find a wide range of work, with poems about warships, pornography, luchadores, and loss, and a story about a dead dog. What permeates through the collection is a tangible desperationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;these are things that had to be written. By publishing them side-byside, we hope to allow the works to play off each other, as they explore similar (and different) themes, images, and techniques. Whether they made us smile, cringe, swear, or sob, these pieces made us feel. As always, thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely, The Editors

S T N E T N O C Steven Rahbany

Salamander Art If Ever There Were a Title So Elegant

Ruth Madievsky Meditations on Paris Honeydew and Sea Salt Richard King Perkins II Out of Season Paul David Adkins 13 November, 1919... Amelia Earhart... Jeffrey MacLachlan Scrambled Code Fragmented Video Games The Luchador Mask

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

David Romo Valentina Cano Andy N John Michael Flynn Nick Johnson

Kindle In All Honesty

The End of Summer III

Metro Retro Millenial B-Girl Makes Her Way Home

Local Hero

STEVEN RAHBANY

Salamander Art Your hips are handles, A beach trip along the sunrise. I salt your arm and take a bite— Sweet. Your tallowed breath makes me hungry, Drawing me in for a kiss—but your windowpane Collarbone shuts me down— Prick only one of my ten fingers to wake me! Salamander sensation of wet dreams and lust, Your breasts make any boy unable to stand, Away from the littering waves of brains, Your hot-totty silhouette sprays charcoal Among the peasantry hoofing we call dance. Your roses aren’t red, Nor your violets blue, But the hue of your stipples strike All ten of my bowling pins down! Your sweet pea knobbed knees drinking the drink Of your shiny quarter fibula—just because they’re fused— And as your rustic arms jut along the lines Of the wall, my Florence-stead rosebud eyes Are wilting in the sun.

STEVEN RAHBANY

If Ever There Were a Title So Elegant

I am a bat In the starry night, And my peas Are still frozen. Pee in the fountain of Everlasting life! Life is a soupy mess And no one around Here can clean.

RUTH MADIEVSKY

Meditations on Paris

City of street art and cigarettes, of poetry and broken glass. City of human piss on the metro, of children with faces thin as rags. City of orange-jugglers and bible-thumpers, of five baguettes under your arm, and dog shit in the street. City of Piaf and absinthe, of men teaching deaf kids about Chagall. City of disillusioned bohemians, of hopeful cynics, of children running barefoot through the Louvre. City of glazed nuts crunching in paper bags, of midday rain filling a beggarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cup. City of suicide in crowded cathedrals, of croissants thrown to one-legged pigeons, of libre? dripping in black from boutique walls. City of floorboards leaking sex and wine, and the hopeful clink of locks around a bridge. City of angel song wafting from gilded church doors, drowning out the whimpers of the street.

RUTH MADIEVSKY

Honeydew and Sea Salt

After honeydew with sea salt comes the ten minute walk back to your apartment, pitch black except for the Christmas lights, which remind you that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been three months since youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had sex. You never liked honeydew, always felt under-stimulated by its watery vitamin C taste, but tonight it was thick and pulpy on your tongue, like nails digging into a muscular back, head pushed down on the bed, biting the edge of the pillow. It dripped out of his open mouth, pastel juices running down his chin like able fingers down your thighs.

RICHARD KING PERKINS II

Out of Season

Forget spring, its predictable eruptions dialing an ageless code: magnolias and acacia absorb soft orange flutes, the cat skates in the ditch, mousing leaves in the wind, unencumbered by thistle, pouncing up to startle a rabbit into motion, stretched to a sprint, leaving behind a spread of honeystalks arrived on limpid wafts, freshly arisen from the peat of sighs and vines, revealed as the heartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rarest seedling, forgotten women who have given comfort in every hour, above the Chinese restaurant, the stacked columns of take-out containers, soliloquies of open tables, celebrations of nourishment and enrichment, how our bodies parted after being so intimately linked, the mind of truth, where one movement only prevents another, rain spread lightly as butterflies, reversing flight, the first element of darkness, fear departs as fog, a supple plea attaching to the pink mist of morning that rises to my eyes. How vital and random the dew on my lashes, the burrs clinging to the calico hair. So much greater are we to see above the slope of this minor stillness.

PAUL DAVID ADKINS

13 November, 1919: SM UB-138, Abandoned Incomplete in the Hamburb Shipyard Before Being Scrapped

Laid in the slip but unfinished, if one couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell by rusted diesels and keel, the tubes for the warheads unfitted but visible as veins on an old womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fingers. Her steam pipes rose bare as the lattice of a rib cage in grass. Weeds, dandelions pierced the hull,

the gaps in the metal like strips of a code.

A single propeller, snipped from the stem of its shaft,

black as the bell of a lily at dusk.

PAUL DAVID ADKINS

Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan Ditch Their Electra Near Nikumaroro Island

After twenty thousand miles of flight, we had to kickboard eight hundred yards through surf past a looming dorsal fin on wing shreds of the plane. On my back a bag with tins of jelly, a sextant, flint, flare gun, and my last full jar of freckle cream. Fred stuffed in his knapsack two litres of champagne we hoped to pop in California, shower the waiting crowd, a corkscrew, penknife, and three cans of peppered sardines. I yelled Grab the maps! as the aircraft sank. But that really was stupid, now that I glimpse them trailing us soaked in the foam of our kicking like light off the waves -those tiny white tatters of sun.

Scrambled Code

JEFFREY MACLACHLAN

I wrote a program but got whipped off Xannie Bars and Jim Beam and barely remember anything. I choked up wasps dreaming in my esophagus and my clothes were so crispy that I fed them to the furnace. I met a woman in a devil’s mask. Fuck the factory. The code went something like this. If the counter reaches zero then the building breathes fire. Nested tables of pocketing fractions of fractions. If the webhost queries often, then suffocate in plastics. Compile run and execute backwards. They didn’t want me to know it’d be my last shift. Comments // Bienvenidos el diablo blanco // Bienvenidos piña granadas // My husband pestled me, mortared the children. Front steps cluttered with satellite dishes. Pistols outside our complex chant 1s and 0s as they input flesh. Comments // Stabbings at laundromats claimed my last friend // Never made the paper. The factory’s monitors resemble black holes as they churn in the explosion. Awaiting instructions.

JEFFREY MACLACHLAN Fragmented Video Games Just once I’d like to enter the wheezing portal of hypoglycemia shakes without it being a fragmented video game. Everyone’s faces blur and flash seizure colors when I ask them what my goal in life should be. There’s a looping melody of documents shredding. Grass glitches to sand to vines to swarms of code. When strangers careen into my torso I glimmer transparently and bleed. I get so hungry and the only food available are portions of pork knuckle covered in cream. Highway shards bend into striped tornados carrying sword clangs and car horns and grapeshots. I die. I die over and over again. I’m born into different towns in different clothes with my hair conditioned. Night and day switch by the second, revealing a new stage and the final boss is me atop a giant mumbling in a fury. The timer accelerates into an erratic heartbeat.

JEFFREY MACLACHLAN The Luchador Mask Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m at the point of my career when ghosts never stop knocking on locker room doors. I am the colors of a ruptured sky, the colors of unsolved murders. Under certain steel cages I resemble blue flames trapped below stove burners. After crashing from the influence of Estrellas, ghosts parade around with my mask. They are teenagers with slashed toes and throat holes who laugh as they moonsault, enzuigiri, and body splash with the impact of throw pillows. By morning they slip through windows and inhabit passerby faces to begin a fresh life.

Kindle

DAVID ROMO

We tilted our heads to decipher tits. As if collapsed necks could unscramble cable. Freshmen with a penchant for soft-core porn. Usually after playing football in my front yard. Or basketball at the nearby park. Red-blooded boys who sat around my bedroom sipping soda, awaiting a glimpse of thigh, ass, breast. Sex Ed. for the SoCal teen. Carefree like (eye)candy, before days became muddled with putting stock in the correct social scene. I routinely ate melted ham and cheese throughout high school, but hadn’t an idea whom to hang out with at lunch. Suburban white boys I shared daily classes with, or barrio brown boys I went out and snuck beer with on weekends. Depeche Mode or Lowrider Oldies? Personal Jesus or Angel Baby? I wandered back and forth, half-absorbing stories of surfing and talk of Tu mamá es... I didn’t get out much. The beach was foreign. I never learned Spanish. How many Latinos are born in Oregon? Scratches became scars. Bouncing between cliques became too risky for my psyche. I took to walking around campus alone, pretending each step forward wasn’t counterproductive. I decided to hide from hiding. Though little comfort lied in loneliness. When the bell rang I hurried to class, despite being a disinterested C student. A model of consistency in mediocrity. But it was better than being caught socially empty-handed. Nowadays I flip through channels and catch moments of porn on my high definition TV. Nudity in 50 inch 1020p. I no longer linger on women’s body parts I did as a kid. The allure of forbidden ass and breasts is too easy to access. I turn down the volume so I don’t wake my family. But I recognize the cries. As if the women’s artificial moans don’t really want to be heard. Their exaggerated acts don’t really want to be seen. And the glow of the TV and hum of hurt burns brightest on these nights.

In All Honesty

VALENTINA CANO

She is a woman who has never learned how. To speak without her teeth falling out; to love the crackle of her family eating cereal; to understand why her motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s voice spins out on a thread of alcohol. What she does know: the tingle of a television suddenly on; the sunburnt smell of blood on her hands; the multiplying of days inside a crystallizing house; the catâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tongue of cracked ceramic on her skin; the endings.

ANDY N

The End of Summer III

Coastlines and arcades Turn grey And shutters on gates Dangle in the wind Like clapping hands Leaves carry themselves Across the road Like they are mourners Looking for a funeral, Until the nights and days Sink into one another Making it appear That nothing else will rise above The tip of the horizon. Nothing. Nothing but the coldness Of the air Which makes the kiss Of young lovers In the distance Seem like A necessary sacrifice.

JOHN MICHAEL FLYNN Metro Retro Millenial B-Girl Makes Her Way Home Each person tries so hard to exist! Simenon She asks herself if we are not all gambling on migrations, from fears, fatherly paragons and overrated motors to hand-stitched leather shirts and meaty lies seasoned with despair. Who is she to pass judgment on those who risk this end of Wilshire on foot at night the way she does. She feels freakish, likes it, and suspects growth needs unfamiliar stresses under the burdens of malleable inconveniences. Growth is the sure payment for any gamble. She’d like to define life’s essence. Tongues share rules. Bonds break losses just as they water and keep all cures intact. All is strange, strange motion. She pauses at the Bullocks Building, once a celebrated LA sandstone department store, when a dollar meant lodging and a meal. She sees 30s-era urban ghosts in their wondrous hats and suits. She hears the unemployed weep. It will be dawn soon. The indigent and the rich will appear to remind her the past is not superfluous, nor is the collection of shoes she’s let flood her closet.

The past speaks to her, defies and regulates norms. Regards her as more than race, gender and a motive hidden behind the shadows that cavern her Greer Garson eyes. She’ll be more than another itinerant in the dark. If it’s impossible then that’s what she’s after.

NICK JOHNSON

Local Hero

Sam was a good dog and a hero, too. The past few years he mostly slept during the day and grumbled, but that’s the way things go for dogs his age, especially Bassets, which tend to already have that personality-type; and although Sam didn’t go outside much anymore, you could see in his dreams that he was still running and jumping, legs twitching and eyes darting back and forth, just like the old Sam would do when he’d play with Bill’s wife and daughter, Marcy and Daisy, in the big backyard. Sometimes Bill’d sit and watch Sam sleep in the afternoon, which was when Sam’s dream-spasms seemed to happen the most. When Bill visualized Sam’s dreams, they were as vivid as his own. Bill had known it when he’d opened the door, had even known it when he’d left this morning. Death swallows up a room. The feeling, now, is an extension of the feeling Bill’s had every Sunday afternoon for the whole of his life – that sort of lonely hopelessness of a whole ’nother weekly cycle of get-up-go-to-bed shuffling along, the groaning saturnine feeling of Lifetime movies and lame local news’ special reports. So it’s only appropriate that it happen today after 4 o’clock Sunday Mass, Sam in his favorite spot under the coffee table, head buried beneath the couch. And, even though Bill doesn’t really believe in clairvoyance or whatever, instead of his usual prayer for Sam’s health and longevity, he prayed today at Mass what seemed to him even then a sort of anticipatory eulogy along the lines of: Sam was a good dog and a hero, too. Thank you, Lord, for he saved a life and he was loved and he will be missed. By now, Bill’s past tears and all that. He sits himself on the sofa and for an hour-and-a-half he watches dust waft ceaselessly through the sunshine while the lonesome rawhide in the corner preaches the Word of the Lord: Blessed are the meek, the persecuted, the poor in spirit. Blessed are those

who mourn. Yes, Lord, Sam deserves a proper send-off. Bill’s thought a lot about Sam’s burial, symbolic and otherwise. There’s only one place it could be. But before that, he’ll have to notify them, notify those who’ve been touched by Sam, who have loved him, who will miss him, even if they don’t know it. It’s this part that he’s maybe thought about the most in the weeks leading up to Sam’s death – the good-byes. Because Sam was special, and Fern and Marcy and Daisy should know. Fern. He would do what is necessary. Today’s the day and then a new chapter. Fern should know, and who could blame him? After he drags Sam out from under the sofa and rests there for a moment watching sunlight lower into the room, he dials the number and places his phone to his ear while staring at Sam’s imperceptibly dead body – the sort of dead that the imagination negates with each twitch of the eye or flick of the tail he thinks he sees, he thinks he sees. The phone’s ringing. It was only three years ago that Sam (11, then) and Bill (33) had saved little Fern Cartmill. Out there on the ice with her friends, even though her parents must have warned her not to be. Seems like ten. It had been Sam, on their walk near the pond, that had heard her and her friends screaming for help and, even at his old age, had taken off barking towards her in one of those weird dog-sense reactions you only see in Lassie movies. It was Sam that had forced Bill out there on the ice; Bill had honestly only been trying to save his dog. He’s no hero – it was Sam. Now the phone’s ringing and, no, Sam’s not breathing or moving or dreaming like it seems he is. It goes to voicemail after only a few rings, which means it didn’t do so on its own. The Cartmills don’t answer his calls. He knows that. Worth a try. He’ll do it in person. Better that way. So now the sun is low and the shadows soft and what he’s about to do is trouble, but it’s the way things should be. He calls Marcy (although of course he knows she won’t pick up) and sends her a text: Just thought you should know. Tell Daisy I’m sorry.

All he asks is that she read the text. Sam got fat towards the end, so wrapping him up in the sheet and carrying him out the front door is difficult. There are no neighbors outside to see Bill setting Sam gently in the bed of his truck and closing the gate and getting in and putting on his sunglasses so that he can back safely out of his driveway and head west towards Lindeman. His truck doesn’t have a radio and his tape player’s jammed, otherwise he might listen to R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” or something numbing and slow like that. The sound of the trees as he passes by is fine, too. The sun’s at a dangerous angle, but he knows all the stops and turns anyway. There’s Smitty’s on the left, the ice cream shop Fern frequented her freshman year (Smitty’s is dog-friendly, too – everybody used to get a kick out of it when he’d bring Sam in; he doesn’t go much anymore, and he hasn’t seen Fern in there either since what happened). And in another quarter mile up here also on the left is Mascoutah High School, whose baseball fields used to be great for playing with Sam and his daughter Daisy and the frisbee, and where Fern is probably just about finishing up finals for her junior year. He hopes she’s happy and planning for the future, which is something he never really did much of. Although, it sometimes makes him sick to imagine those college-entry essays and Personal Statements, all of which’ll no doubt be littered with bull-crap accounts of the restraining order and whatnot, and which’ll miss the whole point entirely, omit the part about him saving her, for goshsake, and which’ll probably just make him out to be some creep or a pedophile or whatever they want to call him based on the very limited facts and uninformed assumptions. Because nobody ever stops to see things from his perspective. The neighborhood sign on the corner as he turns onto Francis Street says “Oak Springs” in beveled black letters etched into stone. Unfortunately, this is one of those swanky subdivisions with the speed bumps and speed slaloms staggered along each side, forcing you to swerve back and forth, which seems cruel now because all Bill hears is Sam’s body

sliding around in the back. If his “Best of R.E.M.” tape hadn’t gotten stuck in the player, he’d try to drown it out, but he’s just gotta take it all the way to 355 Francis. The last time he and Sam headed down this street, over two years ago now, he’d been in a sort of fever and intent on delivering a package for Fern’s birthday. He just hadn’t gone about it the right way. He knows that now. At that point, it’d only been a couple years after losing Marcy and Daisy to that Asian dirt-bag in California, and not even quite a year after he and Sam had saved Fern from her “icy grave” (as a local newspaper had phrased it in “Man, Best Friend Risk It All,” which Bill cut out and taped to his bedroom mirror). But he’s better now, he’s better now, that’s what they’ve taught him to say, even though he’s not entirely sure what he was before. 355 Francis sits in a cul-de-sac at the end of the street next to other cookie-cutter houses, and as Bill approaches, a wave of nostalgia-vomit bubbles up in his throat at the sight of the gold and red wreath on the front door. After the incident at the pond, Bill and Sam had started to make it a sort of habit during their daily walks to stop by around the time Fern got out of school; they’d bring the paper up to the door and he’d ask Fern how she’s doing, and so on. At first, Fern’d answer the door and pet Sam and talk to him in her teeny voice. She had this habit of never making eye contact with Bill, always looking down at Sam, which to Bill screamed lack of confidence – a shame, seeing as how beautiful and smart she was. He’d tell her to perk up, that she was a great girl with a bright future. Not like him. After the initial visits, Fern eventually opened up a bit and Bill became a sort of confidant, standing there in her doorway with Sam; she took to liking Sam especially, and he could tell the way Sam’d wag his tail that the feeling was mutual. The two of them would play in the Cartmills’ front yard, and he eventually made it a habit to bring by Smitty’s ice cream, which he’d known by then that Fern enjoyed. And when it was time to go, he’d give her a hug, never squeezing too hard, her body friable and weightless like clumps of brown sugar. All of these memories

rise with tide of nostalgia-vomit as Bill circles the cul-de-sac. Everything had been fine. That’s why he can’t make sense of it. It had been well after the TV interviews and the medal ceremony, after the Cartmills had taken him out to dinner and had gotten Sam a batch of those smell-so-good-you-wantto-eat-them-yourself dog cookies – after all that goodwill, Fern just all of a sudden stopped coming to the door. He’s tried his best to remember something he’d said or done that changed things, but he can’t for the life of him figure it out. It happened overnight. Instead of Fern, he got Mrs. Cartmill saying: No, Fern’s busy; No, Fern can’t come to the door; We appreciate your kindness, but no, Fern can’t talk right now. Bill would tell Mrs. Cartmill that he was just in the neighborhood, and she’d respond that this was a no-outlet street, you dummy (she didn’t say it, but he could tell), and suggest that there were maybe other places he could walk Sam. And then one afternoon, peeking past Mrs. Cartmill into the house, he caught Fern standing there in the living room staring back at him like she was caught in a lie, and when he said hello, she sidestepped out of sight. That’s when he knew they’d turned her against him. That’s when he knew they’d planted some ridiculous nonsense regarding his intentions and whatnot, like they thought he had bad intentions, which he did not – it was not like that, and it frightened him and he just wanted to explain himself, that she was a friend, nothing more, that he liked her company, that he ought to be able to get to know her and have some interest in her life, the life he saved for goshsake, without people accusing him of having bad intentions or being like that. The problem was that he had to find a way of explaining without using certain unspeakable, self-nullifying words. And then, after he’d finally gathered up the courage to confront them about the whole misunderstanding, there was no paper in the yard, and when he knocked, no one answered. He returned day after day and knocked and rang the bell and left notes and even got Sam to bark. One time he thought he

saw Fern looking out through her bedroom window, but then she was gone. He still believed that she must know, deep down, that he was just a friendly neighbor who’d saved her life and who meant well, that her parents were just confusing her, feeding her misinformation. If he could just show them how things were, make them understand, clear his name. No harm done. It was when he’d decided to drop off a gift for Fern’s birthday (a necklace and a letter explaining it all, which he’d even had Sam sign by dipping his paw in blue paint) that the police came by. And then, after he’d tried to talk to Fern at Smitty’s, the temporary restraining order went through. After that: court, counseling, can’t sleep, couch potato, stupid idiot, get better, get over it, get it through your skull, think it through, please God I’m sorry, no more feeling sorry, no more eye contact, no more letters, no more walks, no more jerking-off, no more pictures, no more dumb thoughts, no more calls, no more 355 Francis, and no more no more no more. But just this once for Sam. He’s thought a lot about this moment. He parks in the cul-de-sac on the curb opposite the Cartmills’ house. There’s a fever behind his eyes and the nostalgia-vomit’s gurgling in his throat. They may have already noticed him out here. In that case, better get a move on. He counts backwards from ten, his foot tapping double-time, 8-tap-7-tap-6-tap, and he closes his eyes for 2 and 1 and then opens the door and opens the gate and pulls Sam out. He’s not even sure Fern’s home, but there’s a car in the driveway and lights on. Now or never. The sheet falls back once he picks Sam up, and now, as he approaches the door, he’s imagining himself through Fern’s eyes, peeking out through her bedroom window at her hero cradling an 80-pound dog-baby in swaddling clothes, staggering up the paved walkway, resting him on the doormat, and holding his finger just centimeters from the doorbell. He’ll make her see. Because they should know. They should know that it hurts to have so many people looking at you that you gotta join another congregation, drive to another freaking town just to get away from the eyes. They

should know that it hurts to see your dog die by extension, to feel the tumors in his inactive body, to see the heartbreak in a Bassett’s already heartbroken eyes when: no more walks, buddy, I’m sorry. He rings the bell and they should fucking know that what happens when your wife finds out about the restraining order is No More Visits from Baby Daisy, no more visits from just about anybody who’s not a cop or a therapist. Knock, knock, knock, and they should know about Sam and pay their fucking respects or else. Somebody better open up. He knows she’s in there. He’s only here for Sam. He deserves that at least. Sam’s innocent, never did wrong to anybody, so why isn’t anybody fucking answering? She’d be dead if it wasn’t for him. He’s knocking harder when someone from behind him pulls his arms back, cuffs him, and slams him against the door, twisting Bill’s head to the side so that just below him on the ground he can see Sam sleeping, oblivious to it all. I just thought they should know, he tells the cop. As the cop frisks him and speaks words, Bill sees Mrs. Cartmill peeking through the blinds, and he suddenly feels like he’s inches from the top of the mountain. But the cop turns him around and leads him back toward the car. The lights are pulsing through the cul-de-sac and now looky-loos are coming out to see what’s happening – but fuck them, he doesn’t care anymore, as long as they don’t touch… Sam. Please don’t leave Sam here. I’ll leave now, officer. I didn’t mean to do anything. Please, I won’t come back ever again, but I can’t just abandon him here… Don’t you remember who he is? They won’t do it the right way – I need to do it. Fern. Fern, I know you’re up there, and please just remember: I’m not like they say. Look at what they’re doing to Sam – you owe him this! Everything you have, and now nothing! Come down from there and tell them. Tell them how it is. From inside the cop car he can see Mrs. Cartmill silhouetted in the doorway with Mr. Cartmill’s arm around her like: It’s OK, honey. Stop that. The cop’s going back up the

walkway and when he gets to the door he nudges Sam with his foot and writes, “Dead Dog,” or something disrespectful like that on his notepad, no doubt – please, God, please, he messed up, but don’t take this out on Sam – and now the Cartmills are telling the officer the whole one-sided story – but don’t listen, Fern, tell them: we just have to get him to the water, and then a new chapter begins. This is all a misunderstanding. Fern. Where’s Fern? * * * Fern’s at Clay’s house getting stoned and listening to music and fucking and generally enjoying a taste of the summer-to-be. Clay’s parents are out of town, and she has Late Start tomorrow morning before her final, so they’ve got all night. She’s lying on his bed in her underwear and visualizing the music, her mind’s eye racing across notes threaded into a big laffy-taffy rolling constantly wave-like through rainbow-colored groove-patterns; it’s trippy, man. She’s hoping Clay’s ready to go again while this high lasts, but when she looks over, he’s sleeping, which is a bad habit of his – smoking and sleeping. She scoots and he groans. Her phone’s vibrating… somewhere. She nuzzles Clay’s nape, little pecks, and nudges him with her nose. Still vibrating… Ughhh, she’s up, she’s up, fuckin’ hell, and now she’s picking up clothes and tossing them around looking for her phone. She finds it in Clay’s shoe, and – shit, her mom. She lets it ring and slides back onto the bed. Come on, baby. It’s ringing again. Seriously? And then voicemails, texts: Call me ASAP, WHERE R U? Jesus-Maryand-Joseph, mother. She shakes Clay, who opens one eye and scrunches his face like: What the fuck? She tells him she’s probably gotta go because her mom’s freaking out again, and asks if he can get her some water or something because she’s too fucked up to go anywhere. He rubs his eyes and tumbles onto the floor. Fern splashes some cold water onto her face in the bathroom and leans toward the mirror: she’s baked. Her eyes

are totally blitzed-out, so she’s administering liberal amounts of Visine to each eye when Clay comes in with a glass of water and places it on the counter without, seemingly, ever opening his eyes. Fern practices in the mirror: Hey mom, what is going on? What is wrong? I am just at Clay’s house right now and we are studying for Becker’s final and it is going OK. She does this a couple of times and then closes the door and makes the call. Her mom picks up after the first ring. Apparently it’s that fucking guy again. What, the actual, fuck. She focuses on her words and says she’s coming home now and then hangs up. She has to once again wake up Clay in order to ask him for a ride, and he grumbles and tumbles out the door. In Clay’s car, quietly: My mom said he just, like, left his dead dog there. Trippy. Yeah, it’s fucked up. At least you won’t have to take your finals tomorrow. Yeah? Hell yeah. And I was up all night, like, giving you moral support and shit, so me neither. Heh-heh. His eyes are glazed and droopy and his mouth sags like a retard’s. Fuck you. What? Fuck you, this is really creeping me out here. Well I mean, make the best of what you got, you know? What? Might as well find the silver lining. As they pass the high school, she feels like she’s gonna throw up, so they pull into Smitty’s parking lot, of all places, where she gets out on the grass and dry-heaves a bit. Her

phone’s ringing again but she ignores it, and by the time she’s finished, Clay’s inside getting ice cream. She climbs back into the passenger seat as he dilly-dallies back to the car. What the hell kind of person would –

What? This is serious, Clay. I got you one too. Just fucking drive.

When she gets to her house her mom’s outside talking to the neighbors, but other than that everything’s normal – no cops or anything. She’s hoping they got rid of the dog, and she avoids looking at the ground in case it’s still there somewhere. Clay waves to nobody in particular and drives away. When she gets to the door, her mom and dad hug her and say they love her and that they just wanted to make sure she was safe, and tell her to answer her phone, that they were worried sick, and Fern says she’s just tired, that’s all, but she might stay home tomorrow because it’s been a weird night, and then she goes up to her room and locks her door. Lying on her bed, she can hear the neighbors describing to other neighbors what they heard and saw. Someone, sounds like Mrs. Hesse, says the man had his dog wrapped up in a sheet and that he had a big beard and a crazy look in his eyes and kept talking about getting to the water. Fern turns on some music and tries to get back to happy laffy-taffy mode, but the music is too loud, even when she turns the volume down to 2 and 1, so silence it is. She’s hungry but she doesn’t want to open the door. The best thing is probably sleep, so she undresses and climbs into bed and puts her head under the covers, where, in order to avoid the water, she focuses on a frayed thread in her comforter and tries to rip it off, which results only in more loose thread, the seam vanishing an inch or so, but which at least does the trick mentally for a while. Jeezus, Mrs. Hesse is still going on about the dead dog – Sam was his name. He’d always had his little medal hooked onto

his collar – very mellow, sweet. He’d come out of nowhere that day. She tries hard to avoid thinking about that poor dog living with that man and his bad breath and clammy hands and body odor. Her heart might be beating too fast (the stress of the evening mixed with the marijuana and caffeine pills, perhaps), but she breathes and tells herself not to think about it anymore, which is her way of not getting too freaked out: no more, no more, no more. She can feel herself sinking into that wakeful dreaming state that you get just at the precipice of sleep. All things swirling and bottomless. She hadn’t asked for any of the attention, had just wanted it all to go away, back then. It could have been any one of them out there on the ice. Spring, freshly-cut grass, ponytail and blue backpack, his fingers around her (the electric touch), at bra’s edge, towing the unspeakable line, the day her mom explained that some people have problems and sometimes aren’t who they seem – she hadn’t fucking asked for any of it. Freshman year was hard enough without some jerk-off offering her a ride from Smitty’s in front of her friends. She’d been polite, but now she knows that’s just an invitation. Bunch of fucking creeps out there, right in front of you, and you wouldn’t even know it until... Things imagined are somehow way more vivid than memories because she can see the whole slow-motion scene: the dead dog in the sheet and the man pounding on the door with his black eyes, pictures of her in his bedroom, jerking-off, violation in absentia, the dog’s body rotting, the fatty stretchmarks under the man’s chin as she squirms away from his arms and runs then rolls down a hill towards the surface of the ice where she sees the dog’s head in the water, eyes open and sinking backwards, air bubbles rising and body receding into dark green shadow, at which point she looks up and sees Clay rowing her away in an canoe built for two, shirtless, his nipples large and swollen, ridiculous, ice cream all over his mouth and a grin on his face that makes her want to jump overboard, but she doesn’t because she’s scared of the water. And the rest frays and does not stick, and sleep makes things fine.

* * * The problem was that the cop had reported resistance and a violent disposition, and so the minimum time spent in jail, given the restraining order, was 48 hours, which was too long for them to keep Sam’s body, even though Bill posted bail. From what he could tell, there was considerable discussion over protocol, but at the end of the day they were forced to have Sam cremated, and so even though his Personal Inventory List says, “(1) Dog, deceased,” he’s really only getting a jar. He’s already contacted his work and let them know there’s been trouble, so now that’s over with. Once he gathers his wallet, keys, the sheet, and the jar, he walks out of there in the morning and climbs in his truck, which they’ve so generously had towed to the station. He’s thought about driving straight into the water, something symbolic like that to send a message, but he’d probably chicken-out, or at the very least, survive, and he just can’t bear more humiliation. When he arrives at the park he stumbles out and autopilot leads him to the pond where he chucks the jar into the middle of the water. The jar lands with a plop that’s mostly masked by nearby construction, and not even the ducks are disturbed. He immediately regrets not taking time to say a few words and arrange for more suitable conditions, but what can he do? It’s not the way it was supposed to be. The middle-aged women speed-walking around the lip of the pond break the mood entirely, and the sun is hot and bright which, again, is not what he’d envisioned. There’re no tears as he stands there looking for something to happen. Nothing does. The Lord God as his witness, he meant no harm – he only wanted them all to acknowledge Sam and what he’d done. But it’s like his actions betray his intentions. He’s noticed that often what he thinks and means to say produce words and actions, but those words and actions can’t at all be reduced to what he thinks and means to say. Like it’s a oneway street, if that makes any sense, and he’s worried now that hope is lost for just about anybody to understand what he’s

thinking. He’s even questioning whether he himself really understands. That’s what he says when he calls up Marcy to try to explain, and he ends up leaving a couple of voicemails after the beep cuts him off. All he asks is that she listens. When he gets home, he sidesteps Sam’s tennis ball and respects the orphaned rawhide’s resting place. He’ll not disturb them. There’s dried-up vomit under the coffee table, but that can stay there too because he just can’t deal with that right now. He’s in the mood for something symbolic, but everything must stay where it is until he can figure it out. He’s not tired but he curls up on the couch anyway. He used to let his arm dangle over the side of the couch where Sam’d be just below him sleeping and listening, which always seemed to do the trick. The tweed couch is frayed and faded and covered in hair. They’d gotten this couch in the first year of his marriage, when they’d moved into the house to make room for Baby Daisy. He hasn’t had it reupholstered for that reason: it’s sacred in the life that it’s had. Baby Daisy used to pick at the fabric, and he’s respected these frayed threads, too. Now sleep spreads, but it won’t make things fine – Bill’s lost that privilege; Fern’ll be there in his dreams, too, against his will, the temptress. Still, he lets his eyelids drop because maybe Sam’ll be there as well, running and jumping in the big backyard. This is the place, says the Lord, the Big Backyard, where go those persecuted for righteousness’ sake, where all will be gathered before God and judged not by their sins, but by the depth of their understanding. The impurities of his thoughts were planted by their suspicions and accusations, after all. Which came first: the thoughts, or the fear of the thoughts? No, they’ve done this to him. They were all too caught up in their moralizing to understand. Sam understood. He loved unconditionally because he could not judge. Such is the life of a dog.

CONTRIBUTORS STEPHEN RAHBANY, 21, is a Junior at the University of Southern California, where he studies Fine Arts with an emphasis in Drawing, Painting, and Graphic Design. He is originally from Alvin, TX. Originally from Kishinev, Moldova, RUTH MADIEVSKY currently lives and writes in Los Angeles. She studied creative writing and biology at the University of Southern California, where she received the Edward W. Moses Creative Writing Prize. Her poetry and fiction have most recently appeared in The MacGuffin, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, The Smoking Poet, and Revolution House. RICHARD KING PERKINS II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He has a wife, Vickie, and a daughter, Sage. His work has appeared in hundreds of publications including Prime Mincer, Sheepshead Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Fox Cry, Two Thirds North and The Red Cedar Review. He has work forthcoming in Bluestem, Poetry Salzburg Review and The William and Mary Review. PAUL DAVID ADKINS lives in New York and works as a counselor. He served in the US Army for 21 years. JEFFREY MACLACHLAN also has recent or forthcoming work in The Minnesota Review, Skidrow Penthouse, and The Nassau Review, among others. He can be followed on Twitter @jeffmack. DANIEL ROMO is the author of Romancing Gravity (Silver Birch Press, 2013) and When Keroseneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Involved (Second Edition, Mojave River Press, 2014). His poetry can be found in The Los Angeles Review, Gargoyle, MiPOesias, Hobart, and elsewhere. He teaches English and creative writing, and accepts and rejects prose poems as the Poetry Editor for Cease, Cows. He lives in Long Beach, CA and at danielromo.net.

VALENTINA CANO is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either writing or reading. Her works have appeared in Exercise Bowler, Blinking Cursor, Theory Train, Cartier Street Press, and others. Valentinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize.You can find her here: www.carabosseslibrary.blogspot. com. ANDY N is a 41-year-old writer, performer, and sometimes experimental musician from the North West end of England but is frequently seen around Manchester, Trafford, Tameside, and Bolton. He has published one book of poetry, Return to Kemptown, through N Press in 2010 and his second book, a split book with Jeff Dawson (aka Jeffarama), was also published through N Press in 2011. He is currently working on his second full-length book, The End of Summer, which will follow in either 2014 or 2015. His official website is www. andyn.org.uk. JOHN MICHAEL FLYNN is a professor of English at Piedmont Virginia Community College. His newest poetry chapbook, Additions To Our Essential Confusion, will be out this fall from Kattywompus Press. Samples of published prose and poetry can be found at his website: www.basilrosa.com. NICHOLAS JOHNSON is a USC alumnus currently splitting his time between writing short stories and working as a film and television editor. He lives in Los Angeles.

FRACTAL LITERARY MAGAZINE JANUARY 2014