Literati Volume 1

L IT RATI

E

Volume 1 Spring 2010

Literati Volume 1 Spring 2010 Editors Kevin Basl

Michael Bagwell

Cover Art

Front: Kevin Basl Back: Megan McCormick (Photo and Sculpture)

Sponsored By English Club

West Chester University

Faculty Advisors Dr. Timothy Ray

Dr. Kuhio Walters

Contents POETRY Jack Fuguet

Life in Nautical Miles Groundskeeper’s Musing The Dual In Between Dreams Tara Tanzos Untitled One Kaitlin Tito Definition of Perfection

You, as Autumn Karen Blyton Ambiguous Jessica Cavaliere Daphne’s Sweetheart Laura Blyton Relief Daniel Beirne Amended Love My Mouth Horse Shirt Behave Letter A to God Love a Shore for My Kafka Britany Kline You Look Up to the Sky Devon Kehler Where You Are Song of the Secretary SeVeReD Meredith Spratt Intellectual, Perpetual and Found Omnipresence in the Dark Night of the Soul I Leave My Thoughts at Two O’clock, Return Sometime at Eight

23 24 26 27 37 39 40 42 51 61 67 68 68 68 69 70 94 104 106 107 112 112 113

Contents

Meredith Spratt Sara Crawford

Words of my Root; Misunderstanding Fever Night with Lover Dinner

113 122 123

PROSE J Beadle One More, Brotha

Mobility

The Life of Remy Puîsant Mary Bachman The Woman at the Bus Stop Tara Tanzos Untitled

Jeanne Kip Migdalias A Peal of Thunder Upon Awakening on Mother’s Day Johnny Wood Blooming Rose Deanna Vasso The Universe Michael Bagwell Shadow in the Fray Caitlin Johnson The Barn Touched by an Angel Alanna Smothers The Only Part Worth Eating Midnight on the Farm: Angela Thomas Ode to Austen Ginger Rae Dunbar Four Angels Lost Their Lives A Myth Megan McCormick A Joyous Non-Sequitur At a Yard Sale in Point Kevin Basl Summit, Ohio

7 10 14 28 35 36 43 49 60 63 71 96 101 109 111 114 118 120 125

J Beadle One More, Brotha

T

he old man sits at the bar and sips his whiskey. There is occasional laughter from the bartender and a woman talking at the other end; they are young enough to be the old man’s children. No one else is in the bar, and the doors have been locked for the night.

After the old man orders his next two drinks, he will throw his money down, finish his cigarette, and walk outside. Snow will start to fall a few minutes before he exits the bar. He is going to look up to the sky then down at the sidewalk. The snow from earlier in the week has begun to taint, brown, and melt away.

Moonlight will illuminate the fresh coat, but in the morning its beauty will decay.

He’ll walk past very young girls on the corner, and they’ll call out to him coquettishly. Shaking his head in disgust, he is going to cross the street without looking around for cars. At that time, as usual, no one will be driving. As he rounds the street corner, he will slip. No one will see. He’ll grab hold of the fence surrounding the decrepit playground and prevent his fall. Despite having caught himself, his heart will pound—harder and harder.

He is going to stop, rest for a bit, smoke another cigarette.

While he is leaning on the fence two teenagers from the neighborhood are going to walk by and say, S’happenin’ mista K. And to this he’ll reply, Same ol’ shit, fellas, same ol’ shit.

Without stopping, the teenagers will continue walking past him.

When he lights another cigarette and begins again, he’ll come upon a familiar veteran sleeping beneath a small awning. Under jacket and trash bag, the sleeper won’t open his eyes as the old Beadle

man tosses him a half-full pack of cigarettes, with matches and some money inside.

He’ll pass the convenience store he owns, stop, turn back, decide to go in and get himself another pack. He will look across the street to the church, still used though quite rundown. Sighing, he’ll rub his hands together and look at the building. After pulling back his hood and looking up at the streetlamp—highlighting falling flakes—he will reach into his pocket and take out his keys. He’ll leave the lights off and lock the door behind him.

The store won’t have changed since he closed a few hours prior.

He’ll smoke and look out the window. Through the stickers and signs, between the bars, and beyond the snow, his focus will be on the waning moon amidst grey clouds and dark blue sky. He is going to lock the door behind him and continue on his way.

With a few blocks more, he will see a boy standing on the corner under a streetlamp. As he passes by, the boy will look down at the ground attempting to portray innocence. In a window across the street, a man will be looking on to ensure that the child is doing his job. When he opens the door to his apartment building, puddles of brown water will be streaked within a few feet of the long rug used as a doormat. He is going to use the stairs. Most other nights he would ride the elevator, but this evening he’ll enjoy watching the snow through the windows as he goes up to his floor. At every other landing he is briefly going to stop, catch his breath, and look out the window.

He’ll go into his apartment and without turning on the light recline on the couch. After setting the alarm early enough to attend church, he’ll think to himself, it’s been a while. One of the readings will be from Paul’s letters. Lying on his back, he will note the time. Around four, when the moon is almost below the horizon, his first R.E.M. cycle will begin. With his consciousness fading into the non-reality of dreams, his heart will cease to beat; his last breath will flow from his mouth and disperse before his unopened eyes. No one will find him until the following afternoon: his neighbor’s potentially delinquent son will go to

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work and find the store locked.

“One more, brotha,” he calls out to the bar tender. As the golden liquid fills the glass, he says to the bartender, “I came in here back when your dad was runnin’ it, you know that? Since he opened it. Yeah, me and him . . . ” He trails off and looks down at his drink.

“Ye-uhp.” The bartender looks at the old man, sees that he’s not looking back, turns his head, smiles at his female counterpart.

“Don’t sell this place?” He looks up at the bartender, “Don’t sell it, ok. Your old man worked hard to open it up.” A slight pause, “It’d be a damn shame if you just went,” he coughed, “and sold it . . . “ The young man sighs, “Well,” he considers his words, “it’s been—” “Me and him both. We went throu some shit . . . ta get our own businesses. You can’t even imagine . . . “ The bartender nods his head. The old man smiles grateful thoughts, lights another cigarette, and sips his last drink.

Beadle

Mobility

A

man approaches a woman sitting on a blanket during her lunch hour. “Hi . . . Melonie?” he smiles and gestures to the violet and cream plaid linen.

“Hey . . . yeah, I’m Melonie,” she extends her hand from her seated position. This is not just a polite gesture but an invitation for him to sit. “And you are . . . Mike?” Embarrassed she can’t quite remember the name of the person with whom she’d been set-up.

“Mark—” he continues the handshake slightly longer than would be comfortable for most people.

“Oh I’m sorry . . . at least I was close. I’m terrible with names, but I’m so good with faces.”

Now, having the usual blind date conversation—about mutual friends and themselves—there seems a real closeness between them. They are facing east under the farthest reaches of a Yoshino Cherry tree. Melonie did not decide their spot hastily.

As the sun continues toward the western horizon, the flowers’ hue will change from the refulgent, pure white to a light pink.

Additionally, the sun won’t intrude upon their view.

Mark takes out a pouch of tobacco from his breast pocket, which was concealed by his vest. The newness of his relationship with Melonie may preclude his enjoyment of the compulsive behavior. “Would you mind if I had a cigarette?” Now showing her the pouch, as if to make it look harmless, “I don’t like to smoke around non-smokers, unless—” “Oh, I don’t care, I quit just last year . . . actually I still enjoy the smell.” She watches him roll his cigarette with a quiet intrigue. She extends her legs, uncrossing them, and leans back on her palms. She looks up at the billowing branches. Mark finishes rolling his cigarette, tears the loose tobacco off one end, and takes his first pull. They enjoy themselves without noticing 10

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the wind, which dissipates the smoke almost immediately. The cloud is quickly pulled in two directions, assimilates into the invisibility of the soft spring air.

“So you’re a ‘Wall Street’ guy . . . what exactly does that mean? . . . I mean, when you go to your office, what do you do?”

“Mmh” he nods to acknowledge the question, which he is unable to answer because it would interrupt his inhalation of the cigarette. He exhales, “well, I didn’t mean to imply that I’m a ‘Wall Street’ guy, but I work on Wall Street . . . for a record company.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Really, it sounds way more interesting than it is. It’s really small and kinda lame—you’ve probably never heard of any of the bands.”

“Who are the most popular?”

“John Proctor’s Bible is probably the biggest success . . . they’re not religious, just Arthur Miller fans. There are two other bands that seem to have a growing following—Flynn’s Wake and Pearls Before Swine. I love music, I always have, but I don’t particularly like any of these bands.”

“What’s the label called: ‘Literary Records’?”

“No, ha, it’s uh,” he coughs, “TRC records. It’s really not at all what I expected, you know? But I guess a job’s a job, right.””

“Yeah . . . I’ve never heard of them. Well, completely understand your attitude towards work—I work at a gallery on 77th between Madison and 4th. I went to MICA and love art, but sometimes I feel like what I’m doing contributes to everything I can’t stand about the art world. I’ve only been in New York for like a month, so I’m not used to it yet.”

“What don’t you like about the art world?” She tells him the problems are too complex to get into now, but basically the woman she works for is only interested in what sells.

“The people at my gallery always talk about art in relation to money or business—never giving the impression they love it, ya know?” He says his work is different. As an independent comBeadle

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pany, money is necessary, but it’s not the principle concern.

“It’s like something we need, but we try not to,” he summarizes.

“That’s cool. Hey, when do you need to leave to get back to work?” It’s close to 1:15 and they’ve been talking for nearly 35 minutes.

“I’m actually done for the day. If I’d had to go back, I probably wouldn’t have agreed to meet so far outta my way.”

“Yea, this is far from Wall Street, I mean I work like two blocks that away.” She points straight ahead. “Well, I should probably be back by 1:45, so maybe I should pack up and get going. I have to stop at my boss’s apartment. It’s like a backwards L past the gallery. She’s out of town so I’m watering her plants while she’s gone.”

He nods his head, moves his eyes around the scene, and purses his lips, “You want company on the way back?”

For maybe two seconds, she simultaneously tilts her head to the left and moves her eyes to the right, “Sure.” She looks right at him—studying his eyes, “you know, this ’as been nice.”

“Yeah, I’m really enjoying myself,” thick silence between their smiling faces.

“I’m glad you’re done working for the day . . . I mean, I’m happy we could do this.” He stands and folds the blanket, holds it under his arm. She grabs the canvas bag, and they start walking.

Crossing 5th Avenue, she notices his fast pace. He doesn’t seem to notice she is trailing behind, slowly admiring the architecture. She hears him ask, “How’d you feel about getting some coffee sometime?” He looks to his left, right, turns completely and waits for a response. He also waits for her to catch up.

She nods, “yeah,” then continues to look at the buildings, which are quite striking to someone this new to the city. The towering buildings each have a unique cut, a palimpsest of the pre-Modern era. They continue across Madison Avenue, and she falls farther behind, again. He turns, stops, waits, rolls and 12

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lights another cigarette. “How many of those do you smoke in a day?” The blanket changes hands.

“Uh, it varies, you know . . . If I am at work I actually smoke less . . . when I have nothing to do, or am waiting for something, I can’t not.” He notices a slight squint, perhaps he thinks she has taken his comment—“waiting for something”—as a hint of his impatience. They continue in silence, he is about three steps ahead of her. He stops out front of the gallery; she reminds him of her errand. “Right . . . I forgot” he says. She walks past him, and he slows his pace. They don’t even look like they know each other.

She stops walking and he catches up with her. She takes out her phone and answers a call. “Hello?” He walks past her, again, and stops about three feet in front of her. “Hey, how are you?” he rolls another cigarette. “Oh, yeah . . .” lights up. “Fine . . . fine. Yeah, it’s been OK. But, I don’t know, um . . .” he turns his back to her, “Yeah, well, like I said,” as she moves off for more privacy her words are lost in the sounds of the city. A kid rounds the corner of 3rd and 77th. Mark looks up, sighs, and turns away from Melonie. He notices the kid stop for a few seconds, look in their direction, and continue walking toward them. He is about 15 or 16, not too poorly clad, maybe 5’8’’. He begins to move faster. Running close to full speed, the kid passes Mark, who pays him no mind.

“What the—Hey!” Mark turns around, sees her stomp her right foot and say “Goddamnit!”

“What?” he seems irritated by the sound of her voice.

“That fucking kid stole my cell phone!” she is visibly angry.

Mark covers his mouth and slightly turns away from her. He laughs.

Beadle

13

The Life of Remy Puîsant

S

itting, with a bottle of wine, Remy Puîsant stopped two American tourists. He was seated on the sidewalk of the Rue Ferrari. Everything he owned was in the nearly empt bag to his right: a jacket, two books, and another bottle of wine. “Vous jamais obtenez nerveux dans ce voisinage?” They stopped and the taller of the two frantically searched through his backpack.

“Oh, uh—”the other said, “we don’t speak French . . . do you speak English?” Remy furrowed his brow and continued to stare at them.

“Uh, parley-vuse l’anglis?” said the tall man, after finding his book. Remy laughed at his attempt. Then, with a heavily accented tongue, he said that he did in fact speak English, and he asked them why they came to this neighborhood.

The tall man put his arm around the other, “Well, uh, we’re kind of lost . . . this is our first time in France.” The garage-door Remy leaned on read Le Poste A Galene—white letters on a black surface.

“You American?” They lied and announced they were from Canada. The tall man smiled and said Montreal. “No,” he squinted and looked them up and down, “you’re Americans.” After a short silence, Remy looked toward the Rue du Clairistes and continued, “I’ve never been to America . . . do you mind if I?” He gestured to the cigarette in the tall man’s hand.

“Yeah, uh, here.”

Lighting the cigarette, Remy forced himself to stand. “We love to smoke,” they stood in front of him, nervous and confused, “because it makes us think we are not afraid of death.”

“Sure. Absolutely. Well, uh, we were just lookin’ for the hotel, but we must have gotten mixed up back there, at that curve.

We should get going.” Remy looked both ways the road led; he furrowed his brow and shook his head. He ran his hand over 14

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his white facial hair and asked them the name of the hotel they were staying in. “It’s the, uh, what’s it called again?”

“The Premiere Classe, on, uh,” the tall man squinted at the print-out, “13 . . . Rue Lafon.”

“Oh, I know where you’re going. Could I ask a favor, though . . . you know, in return for sending you in the right direction?”

They hesitantly nodded, exchanging anxious shrugs and glances. “Will you listen to me, for a little while? Otherwise, I guess I’ll be drinking my wine in solitude . . . I guess that’s what you’d expect, eh? Ahem, excuse me . . . and you can keep being lost.”

They moved closer together; they both responded that they wouldn’t mind at all, that they weren’t in a rush, and that it would be a pleasure. The tangibility of their reticence bothered Remy—for a second—but he decided to ignore it. “Tell me your names.”

“I’m Louis,” the tall man said, without extending his hand, “and this is Henry.” Henry spoke a nearly inaudible, timid greeting.

“Please, sit down Louis and Henry.” A tuxedo cat, occasionally searching through trash bins, walked toward them. The three of them sat on the sidewalk, under the pale, dim light of a streetlamp; the stars were nearly invisible, and the moon hid behind one of the buildings surrounding them.

“I always swore I would be famous. I always wanted to be known—loved, hated, I didn’t care. Listen, OK . . . I was born in Paris, and then I lived in Berlin, then back to Paris, then Barcelona, and finally Marseille. Haven’t been? Oh, well, you ought to see Germany and Spain . . . What’s that? No, I can’t speak much Spanish—puedo hablar más español que ustedes. Ha, Deutsch is das gleick. But I’m much worse with German. Unfortunately, you pick it up when you’re there, you know . . . you lose it when you leave.

“I said ‘German is the same’ . . . anyway, travel as much as you can—if you have the means, you can’t do enough of it . . .

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unfortunately, I haven’t. Those are only places I been. I was going to Pisa . . . from Barcelona . . . and I stopped here. I want to be in my country, not really my city . . . my country, you know . . . when it’s over. I’m happy with this place . . . I’ve walked and got rides all over these three countries—used to think of them as my countries . . . I been to every neighborhood, wealthy or not, in Marseille—I like it here best. Bouches-du-Rhône is the only place where the police don’t harass me for loitering—drinking or sleeping.

“Come on . . . just listen . . . anyway, two blocks that way and they’d be yelling to us by now. How odd that works, eh? Nobody bothers me in this neighborhood . . . while ago a bunch of kids—kids like your age—tried to get money or something from me. After that they must’ve realized it was pointless . . . I don’t have any money. I been stabbed once, too . . . huh, yeah—right here on my side. It was one of them kids one time. Believe me; you’re safer with me than you would be on your own—look at this.

“Surprised? I been a thief and a vagabond for . . . for . . . for always I guess. I’m sick of it. I want out, you know. You, want to know how old I am? Guess. OK. Fine—I’m fifty. Fifty years old, and I’m done already . . . just half-century. I was a fighter; well, not an actual fighter, but I didn’t have the easiest life, you know . . . I’ve been in control of it though. Nobody tells Remy what to do; nobody depends on Remy. Good . . . I liked it that way.

You probably think I’m selfish . . . Fine, but you know there’s a certain pride in doing whatever you want, you know. I guess it’s at the expense of a ‘rich life’.

“Always wanted to be known . . . I tried to be a writer once.

No, no wait a little while longer . . . that’s right, plays and stories. Oh, I love the theatre . . . only in France, though, was I able to get into the theatre . . . all the plays I’ve seen have been in France . . . though I’ve only been a dozen, or so, times. I saw Genet, Beckett, Wilde . . . I could have been as good as them.

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I am as good as them. It’s practice—what I needed to become a writer. Practice. And a place to live. I did write a play once, though—yeah, it was about a guy whose girlfriend cheated on him. I wrote it on the pages I had with me when I was traveling back from Berlin. Amateur mistake, though—it was autobiography.

“I was living with this German girl—ah, what was her name— well, I was workin’ regularly and I came home this night from the restaurant—the only job I could get was busboy. Not many people lived under the Third Reich, but I’m one of them! I didn’t stay there for very long. Nationalism you could taste in the air and being on the edge of war with my home country! Yeah, I wasn’t very comfortable there, to put it briefly and minimally— almost inaccurately. I left because when I came home she and this guy were on the couch. She told me to get out, and that I was just a thing . . . you know . . . like a . . . uh . . . passing thought.

That was when I left Germany. Connasse. I was so fucking bitter then: I was writing every day, then that happens. I don’t know.

I wish I’d had this back—”he flipped his left hand up; a glimmer of light reflected in his hand. Henry grabbed Louis’s hand; he placed his head on Louis’s chest. Remy had an insouciant, yet authoritative, tone, “Don’t be so jumpy! I’m not going to hurt you. You’re helping me, why’d I ruin that?

“I was sleeping in the fields of Germany for a while after that.

It takes about a month to get there, I guess it’s because you’re so excited . . . you, uh, just keep moving. Coming home is different though . . . especially after a night like that. She was the only reason I was trying so hard to make it—not that I loved her . . . she didn’t love me—apparently. I just wanted to prove I could to someone . . . just wanted to prove it, you know? I guess I never had a ‘rich life’. I was never s’posed to have a rich life. I was orphaned and I only had one oppur . . . eh, you married? I was with a woman . . . no, a different one . . . one I actually loved. You know what that bitch did? She told me that

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she wouldn’t get her inheritance if she continued to see me.

I guess she lied when she said she—connasse!” He threw the empty bottle into the street. Nobody cared, excepting the cat; it ran away instantly. He reached into his bag and pulled out another. “You want some?” Louis and Henry were terrified. They declined. “Fine, fine.” He popped the cork with a pocket-knife.

Taking a large amount of wine, he swallowed. He continued after a long silence.

“I used to write stories all the time. Mostly they were autobiography too. I wrote this one story about a room. I mean, the room was really old, and over the years all these people would come into it. It belonged to the city, but they didn’t use it. It was just a place people could go an’ see. Interesting people went in there, you know. A man and his whore, bunch of young people drinkin’, all kinds of interesting people. It was my favorite story that I wrote.

“I guess I wrote that one back in ’42 when I was living with Emmanuelle. The story took place in Paris, you know . . . it was near the Tower. Well, one or two streets away from it. Of course I’ve been to the Eiffel Tower . . . it’s one of them things you have to do. I went with the other kids in the orphanage. Stop it— you’re getting me off track. So the room is near the Tower and it’s a public room that nobody cares about. Homeless people go there, but every night they lock it up. No . . . no, it’s not a real place. And then someone burns the room down. It was just a small one-room building—like a train station room, you know?

And, someone burned it down and they didn’t replace it. Nobody cared to replace it . . . you know, nobody cared enough . . . no one that matters.

“I first met her . . . Emmanuelle . . . in 1940. I was in this fancy café in Paris, and I guess the only reason she even talked to me was cause I was reading a book she liked . . . she said it was her favorite. It was Voyage au Bout de la Nuit . . . Céline? Well, he’s well known here. Journey to th’End of Night. Anyway, she

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started talking to me about it . . . then we met from time to time. I always went out of my way to find enough money to sit in that café; just hoping she would come in. I would be asking for change three blocks away and then every day I would go and just sit and read. I picked up other books too . . . you know, like books— “I would steal them! Anyway, I saw her like once or twice a week for about three months, and then we started making plans together. It was so exciting . . . to care about how someone else . . . We would meet so frequently that her boyfriend was actually jealous of me. Jealous of me . . . Ha! Some rich . . . privledged salaud.”

“We were in love. Sometime in the middle of 1941 we found a place together . . . real inside Paris, you know. She was really rich and didn’t have to work at all. She paid for most things, and I worked sometimes . . . like little odd jobs. I brought in a little bit of money, but never enough to pay for anything completely.

I do wish I could have paid for more stuff, I guess . . . but, still, it was nice. I had this place to live, I was with this girl I loved . . . I didn’t have any plans . . . everything should have stayed that way, that’s all I wanted. I was writing so much back then; she would listen to what I wrote . . . never better. She told me I was good, but I never got anything published . . . I never really submitted stuff, though. I still think I could have been published; just needed a little longer. Maybe another couple of weeks and I would have been able to get there.

“There . . . that dream . . . you know, have no worries cause everyone loves your work.” He gazed up at the inconsistently dim streetlamp. When Remy’s hands contained only his wine bottle and a cigarette, Louis and Henry sat slightly more relaxed.

While aware of the glistening steel beside Remy’s right leg, they tried to ignore it.

“The orphanage? I don’t know . . . it was an orphanage. There were like fifty boys and about as many girls. Ranged in age from

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just born to, uh, well, most kids ran away when they were sixteen, but they keep you till seventeen. I ran away when I was twelve. No, I didn’t have any family . . . why would I have been in an orphanage if I did? I was put there when I was two, so I don’t know who my mom is . . . I just heard she was a prostitute.

No shit, I never knew my dad . . . my mom was a prostitute.

“That doesn’t matter though—here’s what matters: I am Remy Puîsant, the writer. Maybe I don’t write anymore . . . so . . . maybe I been living here for the last few years . . . four? . . . six? . . . However many . . . just waiting for someone who matters. Yes, you two do matter. Why? You know why . . . because you’re Americans. I haven’t seen an American back here. That’s what matters. You are Americans and I am Remy Puîsant.

“I left the orphanage when I was twelve. Two of the older kids used to bugger . . . ahem, I just couldn’t stay there anymore. So one morning when we were lining up to be counted I went to the bathroom. Before I knew it I was outside . . . walking the streets of Paris on a . . . Tuesday? . . . Wednesday? . . . I don’t remember, but it was a weekday . . . a school-day. The police saw us walkin’ that day and question us where we belonged. I told them I was on my way to school and that Avenant was my older brother walking me there. They followed us there. That was no problem though, ‘cause we just went out a different way.

“Eh, he was a friend of mine from the orphanage. We used to spend a lot of time in the library, you know. I’m not dumb . . .

I learned a lot from him. I know almost four languages . . . well, I did at least. Avenant knew English. Unfortunately for him . . . well, he’s dead now. One time, just before he was killed . . . I guess I was about seventeen and he was nineteen . . . we went out to the suburbs of Paris to meet some girl he was interested in. We were living in a tenement house with some people he connected me with . . . once he died I got told to leave . . . so we went out, to meet this girl. He wasn’t as interested in her as he was trying to gain something from her. She wasn’t much more than we were . . . still, though, still she was more than the 20

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orphans that we were. He was playing her, you know. And he found out that on this day when she went out no one would be home . . . so he asked me to go through the house when he took her out.

“Well I did and found some money and some things, you know, like jewelry that I could sell. I didn’t ruin anything. It wasn’t a task of destruction . . . I’m no cretin. A few days after that, I walked around downtown Paris with Avenant. I went into an ally to piss. I looked out, over the dumpster I was behind, and I saw Avenant fall into my view. His lifeless body fell from behind the building on my left. Those loud gunshots—I thought I knew why, but the more I think about it . . . Avenant was involved with all kinds of people. I always though it had something to do with that girl whose house I broke into . . . but . . . maybe it was just the timing that made me think that. Well anyway, I got out there and there were people surrounding him. I just walked by them, and I went straight to tell the people I was living with. I knew what would happen, and that’s exactly what did happen: they told me to leave.

“I really wish my life had worked differently, you know.” He sighed, looked more at Louis than Henry, and then beyond them both, “ . . . oh, Emmanuelle . . . perfect . . . rich and beautiful—perfect. She loved me too. I thought so at least. I guess I was about your age at the time. This was during the—hey, how old are you anyway? Oh, you look younger. I was twenty-three or twenty-four. Anyway, this was back during the Nazi occupation. That was the second time I lived in Paris. I lived in Paris, I went to Berlin, then I came back to Paris, and they followed me.

I was with Emmanuelle for about nine months—not that long?

Well for me, the man who’s never held down or depended on it was a long time.

“Her father . . . her father found out that I . . . He was old world, you know. I mean, he was rich and titled and I . . . well, I’m just an orphan . . . and he found out . . . eh . . . I,” he coughed

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and exhaled a great sigh. The two Americans sat—petrified— and looked alternately at each other and then at Remy. They squeezed each other’s hands behind Henry. Remy looked as if he were alone and had lost focus. “I never got famous.” He started scratching his forehead with the butt of his gun. “I am known, though,” and he put the barrel to his brow, “ . . . I am.”

Massaging his temple, he smiled, “I got my name to those United States.”

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Jack Fuguet Life in Nautical Miles I decomposed [in a glass jar] leaves traced With spindly veins. Musky cocktail fraught With grass clippings, nuts, a twig mast. I placed The cool vessel, labeled 9th year of Aughts, ‘neath window, in a bin, in the cellar.

In short, away. And, safely, I forgot.

I remember a photo, of a plot Of dirt in a yard in an herb arbor Visited the good year two-one-one-nine.

I hunt the shot, but find the cool jar. Knots.

No-wood, brown, and no-nut, no-grass are mine, And knots, roots. My glass now a ship, a pot, To spirit a sprig of mint, stowaway, To the pictured harbor. Life’s not delayed.

Fuguet

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Groundskeeper’s Musing See gravel paths pursuing streams, I mean, Meander, seek to meet the banks, but streams Go whither they would. See paths sclerosed, Chase elusive water below white posts, Red clay brick and white mortar, wherefore does The wet tendril grant thee mind, you houses?

Stone flags would suppress irrepressible Turf. Cracks, gaps give way to green grass, able To shoot to gothic navy skies between Hedges hegemony; the edge, what’s seen (That keeps back the beastie) from windowsill.

Venus should be Narcissus, stone-faced, still.

And I’d ask him, “By whose grace do you stand, Inured to ought else? The world’s no less grand.”

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Fuguet

The Dual The mud ensconced by snowy pad On woody path by some dyad Trod to seek their honor’s end, Their love, and quarrel around the bend.

Dear Vanya spoke no words aloud But said within, his mind to crowd, “That letter! blasted Vlado sent Sweet Isbel Isbelovna bent On skewing innocence’s glow With courting’s senseless, aimless flow.

Her father’s walls not yet surmounted This court’s persistent, his words are canted, Oblique his route now candor’s failed.

The church at 12 - the church of Baal.

My ingress grand as it was fiery Poor Vlado’s tremulous reply, ‘A duel? If honor calls you to it.’

Fatuity! my shot acquits.

You craven robber, you basest dolt Sweet Isbel Isbelovna’s moult Not the down of childhood So duel at dawn deep in the wood.”

Dear Vlado’s heart swelled cotton shirt.

His coat a shroud to quell the hurt He placed in Vanya’s living chest Next to his heart. Who loved her best?

“That letter! Luckless Vanya found When Isbel, dear, let fall to ground Our court, now public, Vanya opposed Fuguet

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Dear Isbel feeling lover’s woes.

But Vanya, who better than I To guide dear Isbel’s heart thereby Preserving virginal allure, No one but her do I adore.

The church at 12 - our rendezvous Turned conflict for his love was too Like to mine, Isbel esteemed So highly by this warring team.

My voice did waver to commit, ‘ A duel? If honor calls you to it.’

I sought dissemination of His fire for his motive, love, Was also mine and in this name I did not wish to kill or maim.”

Vanya’s righteous cause would pull The trigger, Vlado’s coat of wool To puncture and his court to break But design agreed his love, not fake, Deserved to flourish and the shot Slipped wide of Vlado’s heart in knots.

The second shot rang true and clear And landed just above and near To Vanya’s beating, heaving heart, Who Vlado, coatless, would depart.

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Fuguet

In Between Dreams What says the songbird in the soft of morn?

For Bisclavret’s howling the cock’s cry split And when I rose the moon fell, forlorn And I still could not the bird, its call, commit.

Piqued, my gaze hunts the fowl I would bestir, But only when my craning neck has rest Does the far off warble speak an answer.

Oh, singing bird you keep me waking lest I fall to sleep and dream again of what, But bog and fen. The crying wolf has turned Singing bird in that tiny infinite, The instant where my reverie was burned.

Returned from some odd, sleepy wander inBy the waking world I dream of finding.

Fuguet

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Mary Bachman

S

The Woman at the Bus Stop

he was standing there in the rain when he walked by, fighting against the wind as his umbrella pushed further into the night. His hand held firmly to the top of his head, frantic to keep that brimmed hat in place while pulling the oversized briefcase strap more securely across his shoulder. The umbrella handle was in his other hand and each time he would try and rearrange his belongings, it would fall to his side the slightest bit, allowing the rain to fall heavily upon his head.

She stood there, rain pouring down, and as the wind wrapped around her, her arms hung loosely at her side. The man walked along and hiked the strap of his briefcase further up his arm and looked down just in time to clumsily skip over a gathering puddle.

In her soaked black dress, she had by now nearly blended with the murky grey of the down-pouring sky and the angry wind swirled damp leaves, clinging to her, though they went unnoticed. She did not look up when the umbrella was captured by the wind and the man’s outstretched arm reached up just in time to grasp the handle. He spoke under his breath as he swooped down to pick up the briefcase he had dropped, and he shook the fallen rain from its glossy exterior. He pushed his umbrella further against the wind and continued on his way, head turned to the ground. And just as he walked by, a small bus stop overpass showed its metal legs in his field of vision.

It was not the slender metal poles that stuck into the ground, holding atop them a thick plastic covering that made him pause as he walked by. He could have continued on his way, fighting 28

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against the night, except for those aged, wet feet shoved inside those heeled shoes that seemed to mock the efforts he had been making while staggering home, his soaked shoes slouching through every puddle. Those feet that the cold had turned so white, looked inhuman against the dull black of the shoes in which they were uncomfortably tucked away and bright, red nail polish appeared to seep in where the skin around the nails had been stained with carelessness.

It was not even that the feet did not quickly shuffle out of the way as he would have expected when he approached, since he could no longer see where he was going. And even the state in which the woman’s toenails had been painted or the fact that those black heels seemed to stare back at him in contempt had not held claim over his abrupt stop. In fact, the only detail the man found more absurd than the poorly painted toenails attached to the pale, white feet which were shoved into shoes two sizes too small, was that these feet stood directly next to those metal legs, beside the bus stop rather than under. And if it were not for this fact alone, the man might have continued on his way.

“Oh, excuse me,” he murmured, half looking up as if he had actually been caught staring at her feet. When he got no response, he turned his head completely upward, allowing the rain and wind to whip violently into his face and right before the force of the downpour blinded him completely, he caught a glimpse of her eyes. They were still turned down to the ground, but they seemed glazed over and as uncaring as those red toenails had been painted. She was not particularly old, but the way that she stood, hunched slightly and arms hanging limply to each side, she appeared more solemn than anyone youthful should have been. Too many troubles appeared to have stolen away at this woman’s sense of the world and this made the man wonder.

He had always been a curious man, but had never really acted upon his instinctive curiosities and spent most of his life alone, Bachman

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wondering. Frustrated from years of just wondering, he took his time now to blink and wipe the rain from his eyes, giving this woman a closer look. She did not seem to notice when he tugged at his briefcase and tilted the umbrella up to get a better look. He involuntarily pulled his overcoat tightly around himself when he saw the knee length of her dress that she wore with only thin stockings, and thought of how cold she must be. Even her waist-length pea coat that was far too slight for the time of year, she left unbuttoned and it drooped freely over, falling almost completely from one of her shoulders. Her nearly yellow blonde hair was matted down from the rain and pushed away from her face to reveal heavy black lashes and thick lipstick to match the bold red of her toenails, and for a moment the man marveled curiously at the way her makeup lay, flawless still, at least compared to the rest of her state.

“Excuse me,” he tried again. This time those thick, dark lashes turned up to him and when she slowly raised her face he became even more aware of how her features remained unscathed, although rain continually poured down over them. The manner in which her eyes were not drained of their color and her bright red lipstick stayed in place troubled the man only for a moment before he remembered that she was looking right at him.

“Patrick?” She was staring at him now, but her eyes did not seem to focus and she looked questioningly from side to side, striving to reach some recognition from this man.

“Patrick?” She said again, this time much more forcefully and her eyes brightened the smallest bit, as if she had finally recognized where she knew him from.

“No.” The man was abrupt and was about to give no explanation other than to carry on with his walk until the woman reached out and grabbed hold of his arm with much more strength than he was at ease with, or had expected.

Weighing his words now, the man cleared his throat to distract the woman from how he shook her hand indifferently 30

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from his arm. “No, I am sorry. You must have the wrong person.” He straightened his umbrella a bit and off the man went, to continue on his way, hoping that his unneeded curiosity may also be just as carelessly carried with him.

The woman hurried along to his side and now her eyes seemed full of life. “Oh, no, I am sorry. I thought for a moment that you were my son. He usually picks me up here, at the bus stop,” she continued on apologetically.

“Oh, well, that’s alright.” The man could not explain to himself why he felt so unguarded by this woman’s presence, but brushed the feeling away and it too fell as unnoticed as her hand had slipped from his arm.

The man began to step away from her again when she continued with his pace and spoke up once more. “Well, could you give me a ride home then?”

The man stammered a line or two and when she could see how uncomfortable he had become she clarified insistently.

“It’s just a few streets over. My Patrick usually comes to get me, but he must have forgotten.”

“Well…I am on my way to my car now. It’s parked in a garage only a few more blocks from here.”

The woman stood silent and when he noticed her eyes had seemed to glaze over once more toward the ground he was about to leave her. Looking at this woman, however, and the curious state of her, he could not help but speak up. “I could get my car if you’d like. How far do you live from here?”

She looked up right away. “Not far.” And her gaze drifted to the side of him as if looking out for the son she was still hoping had remembered her.

He was surprised that she had even heard him and was just about to suggest she move to stand under the bus stop and out of the rain, when her eyes traveled just as quickly back to the ground and the man instead hurried along with his umbrella to the parking garage.

When the man pulled his car around the corner, the woman Bachman

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was gone. He drove up a little further, and pulled into a nearby parking spot along the side of the bus stop. He was just thinking of how he was more disappointed than relieved for losing this woman and just as he let out a deep sigh of defeat and cranked the heat up mindlessly to an insufferable heat, he saw those bright red toenails.

There they stood, shoved in their shoes, two sizes too small, right under the bus stop where she was sitting patiently under the dry protection of the plastic covering. He drove the short distance up to the stop and flashing his high beams once, leaned over to unlock and open the passenger seat door where she easily slid in. The woman did not say a word, but simply rubbed her hands together where she had stuck them in front of the heat of the dashboard.

She spoke most of the way only to give him directions of where to turn and the man, becoming disappointed with the uneventful outcome of his night, once again began to let frustration settle in. When they were almost at her apartment building she shifted toward the man who was squinting to see through the rain covered windshield and finally spoke. “What do you think of this war?” she asked.

The man turned his attention for a moment from the road to the woman, but was too surprised by her sudden attempt at a conversation and by the topic of it to respond right away.

“Just terrible, huh? Sending those poor, young boys off to something so horrible.”

“Hmm…” The man could tell the woman would only persist further and, though he had no strong opinion on the matter, decided to keep the conversation as one-sided as he could.

“My Patrick, he wanted to go off to the war. I’m so glad I told him not to. It’s far too dangerous for young men. So brave though, for wanting to.”

A silence so steady thickened the air that the man felt as if he would no longer be able to breath and he frantically turned the heat of the car back to its lowest setting.

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Bachman

The woman pulled her hands away from where they extended toward the dashboard and twisted them tightly in her lap.

“I just came from visiting him. It’s so nice to see him. He’s my favorite of all my sons you know. I know you’re not supposed to have a favorite, but he’s mine.” She looked out into the night thoughtfully.

The man did not comment on this and planned not to speak at all until he went to drop her off, speeding a little bit, just as he finally saw the address she mentioned come into his view.

He pulled the car crookedly into a spot outside of her building and was about to say goodnight when something came to his mind. “Wait, I thought you said that you had been expecting your son to pick you up from the bus stop.”

“I was.” The woman seemed to become upset over having to repeat herself.

“But, you said that you had just come from seeing your son,” the man let out in a huff.

“I did, didn’t I?” The woman was so serene with her slight words and she stuck her hands back in front of the cold dashboard.

“Yes, you did.” The man’s frustration had now led to confusion, and he decided he did not care to hear any more, his curious impulse thinning.

“Oh, you see, I must have been confused because he always picks me up at the stop. He would never have me walk back all the way to my house alone. He is my favorite, so brave. It is so nice when I get to visit him.”

“Hmm…” The man commented again. “Well, I hope you do get to see him again, and that maybe next time he will remember to take you home.” The man was rather rude, and made no gentle suggestion at leaning across her seat to open her door.

The wind whipped into the car and the door slammed viciously shut again.

“Will you, please, walk me to my door?”

“Huh?” The man was once more taken off guard.

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“Please? Patrick always does. I am afraid I did not leave my outside light on, and well, I always have trouble with my door, and now with this weather…”

“Yes, well, alright.” The man jumped from the car and into the rain. He tucked his head as far down into his overcoat as he could while he walked around to open the door for the woman.

He took her arm and made no point to hide how he hurried her up the stairs to her apartment door. “Here you are, have a good night.”

“Well if you could just help me with my door, I always have trouble with it.”

“Yes, well…” The man shoved his shoulder into the door while the woman turned the key, though it seemed unnecessary as it forcefully slammed against the inside wall with his weight.

“I told him not to go.” The woman whispered so sadly while the man flicked on the nearest light switch. And just as he turned to make his way through the door to leave, he felt a cold, numbing shiver cut through his whole body.

“I told him.” The woman repeated softly again, and as the man looked down to where she stood holding the knife securely into his chest, he felt more of the dizziness than pain and stumbled back into the wall.

“You will tell him I said goodbye, won’t you? And that I love him?”

The man toppled to the floor and curled up into himself to place as much pressure as he could on the open wound of his chest. In shocked disbelief, he could only stare at the floor.

“Please? I never got to tell him myself before he died.”

And as the man began to swim within his own blackened thoughts, he saw only blood red toenails shuffle toward him and heard the woman repeat, “Please? Tell my Patrick, tell him?” once more.

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Bachman

Tara Tanzos Untitled

I

’m a newfound owner of my own Red Sea – no misnomer here.

Mouth parting, spilling forth and from the pale red tinge of my lips – it’s here. The dormant, swirling, scalding hue spews, spreads, floods into my cheeks as my eyebrows narrow to two eerie slants – so out of sync, out-of-level, in fact, that all they can hold is contempt and my glare – cold and hard a clouded crystal, despite my flame-licked face.

Robert Frost never thought to combine fire and ice, did he?

This new burning consumes my veins, tensing tendons, threatening to break free of charred skin in order to release its own wrath, simply in spite to contribute to my brows, my eyes, my mind, my . . . words – phonemes clamoring over teeth and tongue, beautiful guttural stops and labiodental fricatives, rescuing my deaf mind and vocalizing what my Broca’s and cerebral cortex cannot: FFF---UHH---KUH! I missed the bus. Again.

Tanzos

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Jeanne A Work in Progress ’m not that kind of lady, that breed of bitch. It’s a life resolution of mine to never wear Uggs, Northface or a combination of those two horrid items. My kind of supernatural, paranormal pseudo-love interests don’t glitter like a sixth-grader’s art project. Oh – and pink. The lingerie “university” or the hue. Also, I hate over-the-top uber-feminists. I will push to buy my part of the meal, but I won’t stop a gentleman holding the door open for me. I see no sexist, chauvinistic smirk on your face, so why should I assume there’s a likeness telling you to belittle all females, imprinted on your mind, your genes, your biology.

I

I never cared for the whole ‘flowers and chocolate’ concept.

So…gaudy.

“Here you go my dear, I had these plucked from the earth and arranged in the most aesthetically pleasing formation so that you may set them in a vase and admire their prettiness – because you obviously cannot go outside to look at natural beauty yourself. Oh yes, and do take care to enjoy them, seeing as they’ve been removed above the root and will therefore die in two-to-four days.

What a strange gesture.

Maybe the chocolate’s supposed to make up for the giving of imminent death.

I don’t know if it’s because I never seemed to like that idea, or because guys I dated didn’t think I was worth it, but I never received chocolate and flowers. Not until everything went wrong.

Terribly, terribly wrong.

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Tanzos

Untitled One I’m nuts. No, that - person - is nuts. Am I nuts? I could be.

Why am I thinking these things?

Is it because it’s burning me up inside? Because I’m insecure? I shouldn’t be.

Tense should stand for something. LoveD versus loveS. I pulled. No, I didn’t. I couldn’t have pulled.

There was misery involved. The unwilling are not so unwilling if they’re willing, right? [now I’ve said that word to the point it makes no sense] There was no pulling. There was misery. Dependency. Halftruths. Flat out lies.

Definitely glass-half-empty, if the glass had anything in it at all.

If it did, it’d be half-full of some detestable liquid.

The half-full part couldn’t have been all that delectable either.

Tense.

Past. Present. Future.

Past is gone. And I’m in it. Part of it, at least. The nearest part.

The other part was, and never will be, mine. That’s why I’m thinking these things, isn’t it?

That’s the part I wish I had. I could try and try, but there’s that tiny detail, where the past is unreachable.

The present is mine, as is the uncertain, unforeseen future.

And this, is glorious.

All the words any poet could use to describe a sunset, and more.

One of those things where, to describe it would remove the Tanzos

37

beauty, which I have no intention of doing.

I suppose the issue is with my mind’s multi-tasking technique.

But can anyone ever really focus on the present without the past?

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Tanzos

Kaitlin Tito Definition of Perfection We lay amidst the beautiful humming of silence.

Our noses touching so lightly it tickles.

And I fall in love with the sound of you breathing softly.

I want to kiss you but do not want to close my eyes and miss the sight of your blue eyes bright against your pale skin or the quivering of your lips, slightly parted.

Tito

39

You, as Autumn I look to the sky floating among treetops, blue-gray with glimmers of gold and green, like your eyes, and I become lost, mesmerized by this color.

The cadence of fallen leaves crunching under my feet is known to me, like your voice, its rhythm even and strong, yet calm.

The scent of this season, crisp, with traces of burning firewood throughout the air— typical, like your smell, rustic and sweet.

I look down towards my feet and notice a puddle that stands out from the dry ground, a reminder of last night’s rainfall, almost forgotten 40

Tito

among the day’s sunshine.

But just as the chill from the air fades when entering the warmth of a home So does our tension when you welcome me into your arms warm and comfortable, familiar as Autumn.

Tito

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Karen Blyton Ambiguous As my pen touches the paper, Writing these words I am uncertain Where these letters will lead me I can’t reveal too much Or Reveal too little My mind wonders across This barely covered Page What do you want These words to say?

To tell you a secret?

To create a fantasy?

Or To make you escape a frightening Reality?

Just ask yourself Why you are reading this And surely you will Find what you are looking for

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Blyton

Kip Migdalias A Peal of Thunder

A

peal of thunder—having spawned in my lower bowels, surged and swelled in the intestines and colon alike— erupted in the vacuous quietude of that stately water closet. I sat in reverent awe…sat, because I couldn’t be doing anything else, save for squatting; however, I leave squatting to the practices of a common beast. In any event I was left alone to admire my own glorious flatulence…or so I had thought I was alone.

Having heard no door creak—perhaps due to the precise aims taken in order to keep that angelic restroom in a state of perpetual perfection…this perfection accounting for the constant visitation of that swinging appendage’s hinges by some greasy squeak deferring agent—I was entirely surprised to hear a voice retort my own wind. And although this utterance was neither as impressive in volume nor as grotesque in emission, I was nonethe-less enthralled at the prospect of another soul having heard the glory of my lower, and often times contested ‘better half.’

Anyway, gearing my focus back to the recollection’s original gaze, the voice professed, “Bravo! What a marvelous feat! Zeus himself could never have bellowed greater a belch!”

“That was no common belch!” I responded. “But rather a belch of the southern hemisphere, if you catch my wind,” and he did, I suppose, for he let out a muffled pheeww! But imagine it; that was the genius of my anus! To have emitted such a sound that could be mistaken for a belch. Oh lovely day when a respectable burp should pour forth from my bunghole! My ego can only be once, twice, thrice inflated by such flattery!

That cunning sleuth, who having slithered his way into the Migdalias

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men’s room in such clandestine fashion, surely sought some enterprise of mystery, some odyssey of detective work as such my buttocks’ rhetoric could not orate any useful maxim or decree of knowledge. Hell, all of these years I was inclined to believe that that heinous ‘hiny’ was the bearer of little more than the stuff of our diurnal feastings…you know, stool! Should I have known that my arse was the harbinger to some enigma, yearning to be unraveled, I might have attempted some search—perhaps gathered my spelunking gloves and dipped a finger into the burden-bearing bunghole; perhaps I might have plumbed those depths and unearthed, or ‘unbuttocked’ that wondrous mystery searched out by this most silent stranger.

Most likely this whole thought process was moot, for the stranger made himself rather known to myself within a series of concurrent moments, as he occupied the stall abreast my own, and having already given away his filthy brown slippers, added his trousers to the lot of his ever materializing identity.

No longer a complete and serpentine wraith outside my stall, this character became a pair of beige corduroys atop two filthy brown slippers. All the while though, this demon bewitched me with his devilry.

“Yea, man! You tell me that one came from your arse? By the Good Grace of God! I find it hard to believe! But how does a man come to produce such abominable noise, and even more abominable gases? What must a man eat? What pestilence must a man gorge upon that his droppings should reek with the foul odors of a million festering swine? Tell me man! Tell me!”

I told him there was little to explain. Having held the strain for nigh three days, being in the presence of a lady for them all three, I had had little choice but to hold off the onslaught of internally mounting feces, little leisure in relieving my bowels of the untold pressure there amounting.

“Ah,” he responded sympathetically—not empathetically, but rather sympathetically, for this was a man obviously given to the stubbornness of relieving himself, of doing anything for 44

Migdalias

that matter, in the presence of anyone, for he was one of those creatures of so careless a nature as to render him comparative to beasts—and so he continued in mere sympathy, “I am sorry to hear that. But now that they’ve been relieved are your innards scarred or only somewhat stretched? How do you feel man?”

Oh how he persisted, that loathsome devil. What was his trickery, what were his schemes that he should venture where no man ought venture: in an unnatural and beastly discussion of the rotten fruit retrograde our loins? Might he be testing me, seeking some equally unnatural response …any response in the face of such a situation so as to render me some social aberrant who would on a regular basis respond to such cacophonic discourse?

“Well man? What say you?” he interrupted the conversation unfurling in my mind.

“Well, I must say,” I began, and I’ll admit, had forgotten the question altogether, “That such talk is hardly proper!”

“Proper?” he began confused, and then somewhat louder, and viciously, “Proper!?!?” Then, with an ominous guffaw, “HAAAHH!!! What place be more PROPER to discuss bowels than a bathroom?”

He waited for an answer. I gave none. The silence was awful.

I could hear his heavy puffs of breath on the other side of the stall intermittently displaced by horrific gastric howls ululating from that surely brutish stomach of his. Oh could I but eviscerate him on the spot and stomp upon his entrails! That would put such resonance to rest!

At last, at long long last he spoke: “Ay, if it’s a weak stomach you’ve got, I’ll respect that. Even if it’s only weak from penning up all that gas. Psh! Imagine putting yourself through such agony for the sake of a woman!” A pause, then suddenly, “HA!” he almost contemptibly forced a laugh. “Anyway, I’ll do you the favor, even though I hardly know ya, and should at least like to know your name when all this is said and done, to keep my Migdalias

45

mouth quiet about our flatulence here on out.”

As soon as he’d finished, I tell you, a gargantuan, earth shaking bunghole emission exploded from out the heart of his colon and most likely blew the basin upon which he rested his massive girth (I imagine he was massive from his hefty voice) into a million fragments, although I saw no evidence of such happenstance. But the idea that he should have given off by chance such vile air after having vowed to cease discussion upon the likewise vile topic was indeed too magical, too novel to have actually occurred. Thus, I repeated over and over to myself in my head, that here was a fiendish scheming brute next to me, seeking to do some horrible dishonor to myself, a man of great status. That is true: I am a man of great status; and lodging myself only temporarily at this fancy hotel of sorts. Why, I might be sitting next to the very hired help, although his diction proved otherwise. If he was not out to deal any sort of blow to my pride, then he was simply an animal, unfit for human etiquette.

Having thought the worst of it was over, I was quickly proven wrong: for the earth quaking emanations continued violently in lieu of my prior request. Oh that I might climb atop my toilet just to see this leviathan! This thought became not unlike a spur to a horse, and cajoled other cogs in my mind into motion. And so, having talked myself into this most ludicrous of undertakings, I carefully lifted my frame atop that of my betrothed fecal-favoring friend. I slipped my eyes alone over that barrier, and closed the right eye so as not to see his member (I closed my right eye, for he was in the stall to my left, and thus, closing the right eye would better my chances at deterring a ‘spotting’ of his lower regions). But to my untold horror, peeking over with one timid eye, the brute was nowhere to be found!

“You little scum!” I swiveled my head in time to spot the bull staring back at me from the sink. Through the stately mirror, in that equally stately bathroom, he peered at myself attempting to sneak a peek where he’d been relieving himself. Oh that slinking snake of a man! Yet he was so large! How could one so 46

Migdalias

massive carry his girth so effortlessly? These questions might have been the last things to run through my head as the bull stamped its feet in a ready to attack position. Those questions might have been my final queries as it snorted and came full force to my enclosure, pulling so hard on the stall door as to rip it entirely from the hinges! Those prior reflections may have been the end of me had I not jumped up with all my might as the bull charged headfirst, arms outstretched, ready to strangle the life out of me, and pulled myself atop the stall walls, one knee on each wall, my frame straddling the fury below.

His colossal head inculcated the metal piping behind, twisting it entirely out of proportion and ripping it from its initial stance, thus sending a torrent of pipe-water from the pipe-works upward, into his face. Seeing my opportunity, I jumped down heavy and hard upon his head, the soles of my feet conforming to its bulk in Procrustean fashion no doubt, but doing the trick nonetheless. The trick of putting him under. The scheme of drowning him. The irony of feeding him literal tales of my own visceral abundance, for I hadn’t, in the tumult, the opportunity to flush the toilet.

And after what seemed an eternity of pressing my modest weight upon his fat head (indeed his head alone may have weighed more than my entire body) the violent vociferation with which his body was given to spasms and the queer contortions of the drowning, finally ceased, and I knew I’d slain the beast.

No sooner had I fulfilled my feat when another tenant of that lodging came upon the scene, most likely having come from a meeting or something equally as droll, for he certainly wasn’t prepared for what he walked in upon, seeing as his jaw dropped and he let out a sort of gasp that can only be comparable to the sound a chicken makes when it lays an unusually large egg.

“Bug-AAHH!” he let loose a terrified bravura that went sailing through the fetid air. “What is this devilry?” The man queried of me, bewildered. Interesting that now I became the devil. “ExMigdalias

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plain yourself man!” he demanded.

In retrospect, I should have related the entire situation to him, relayed how the man had come in with his queer questions and his sudden angers. How the man had become a sudden maelstrom of malevolence! But, it was all I could do to explain an entire man spilling out of a toilet basin in such an awkward moment to list anything but the necessary compendium of occurances to the effect that I, rather idiotically and wholly unconvincingly, sputtered out the first excuse that came floating emptily upon my tongue: “I had a bit of bad curry?”

48

Migdalias

S

Upon Awakening on Mother’s Day

he woke up rather early, so early in fact, that she decided to sleep in a little bit later than usual. It’s Sunday, she thought to herself, And not just any Sunday, but Mother’s Day, my day.

The next time her eyes opened, one shade had been pulled up. Sunlight delicately filtered into the room. A bright triangle settled humbly upon the light green carpet. The woman stretched for a moment, savoring her limbs’ subtle movements after the night’s dormancy. Apart from the room, noises could be heard in the kitchen: pots clanking, knives slicing, spoons dolloping. And next she heard her husband beckon their daughter: “Nikoleta!” The young woman came hurriedly down the stairs, almost secretively.

Oooh, they’re making me breakfast! she thought, our stay-inbed-for-the-day mother deciding to hold her ground. Turning on the television, she allowed its warm rays and the soothing voices of Sunday morning television hosts to comfort her—a comfort supplementary to the warm sheets in which she had already wrapped herself. After a while, her husband summoned her. She stood up, stretched again, and began her triumphant waltz to the kitchen. Mother of the year, she thought aloud, getting her annual Mother’s Day breakfast. She had actually been getting breakfasts intermittently here and there, one year a hit, the next a miss. Nonetheless, she had gotten good at picking up on these breakfasts; metallic noises from the kitchen were always a sure sign of the imminent feast, and numerous people quietly conversing often tipped her off too.

But this year would be the exception to her previously exceptional foresight, for when she rounded the corner from the dining room to the kitchen, she saw her husband over, not a plate with eggs and bacon, a glass of orange juice congregated on a tray, standard flowers in a vase, no; rather, she saw him Migdalias

49

over a bowl of tragana, made for himself and two of his kids (she had never enjoyed the stuff). Her daughter hung over the sink, laboriously scrubbing, rinsing and drying dishes. And while she found these to be thoughtful gestures—her daughter taking care of the dishes and her husband making his own breakfast—she also found that her not-too-lofty expectations hadn’t been met. She stood there, a little downtrodden at first, and then couldn’t help but chuckle a little at the situation. The irony in it all—beyond her expectations being far from met—was that her husband and daughter had forgotten entirely about Mother’s Day, until she reminded them by clearing her throat loudly enough to command their attention. “Ahhhemm!”

“Oh, Happy Mother’s Day mamma!” her daughter Nikoleta adoringly cooed her. And, “Oh, I’m sorry Barbie,” her husband apologetically consoled the forgotten mother. Worse yet, her son was passed out in the basement after a night of heavy drinking. What a worthless lot of a family I’ve got here, she must have been thinking.

But Barbara, in her good nature, betrayed no such thought.

Had she though, she would have been perfectly justified. Anger not being the case however, the woman was all cheer and joy, and readily appreciated the humor in the situation.

At some point, her ungrateful son wandered up the stairs from the basement—where he had passed out—clutching at his temples in agony, and after a glass of water and a few slaps to his own face, he managed to remember what the others had forgotten. “Happy Mother’s Day mom!”

“Thanks hun,” she gratefully replied. “Don’t tell Niki—cause she feels bad about it—but I have a funny story to tell you that happened to me when I woke up today.”

50

Migdalias

Jessica Marie Cavaliere Daphne’s Sweetheart I see your smirk, Pasted innocently on your freckled face, Teeth missing, little sweat drops, cheeks red From the hot, May Mississippi sun; Eating watermelon for hours with Southern flare.

Life wasn’t confusing then or was it?

Sweet little boy torn by Christian and Muslim, Accepting the word of Christ, Then living by the Koran and Arabic tongue.

Though, you’d be baptized by the cross.

I see your smirk, Tormented by your beliefs, Confusion by Jesus’, Muhammad and Darwin— Your family doesn’t make it easy, drifting apart; Yet you’re a bright friendly teenager— Voted most popular, head of the class And wondering why Murrah1 was bombed: Wishing violence would vanish from the Earth.

Turning to your savior Jesus Christ for peace; And putting yourself in the hands of Allah.

I see your smirk, Telling your friends and classmates 1. The Murrah Building was bombed by Timothy McVeigh on April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City.

Cavaliere

51

“Turn to Islam, it’s the chosen way,” Bowing to Mecca from the flag pole As the crowd, confused, just stares.

September 11th crashes your whole world— A Muslim couldn’t possibly have done this While hiding behind your traditional garb.

Changing your name, provoking response You drop out of school and on to the Salafis.2 They guide you to your next stage of life With a wife and baby girl left behind.

I see your smirk, On my TV screen As I watch your video With the Koran in your hand, Advising your cohorts: “The only reason we stay away from cities And giving up our vices and lust Because we are waiting for the enemy— Death to America! For jihad!”

Through your smirk, Your army follows your orders With the same charisma you had in school That won you class president and a popular girl.

With your charisma and cool You lead the deadliest terrorist group With the biggest smile and no confusion.

We sit and watch, baffled by you— How could a sweet little lovable boy Turn into someone so evil as you?

2. Salaf means “ancestor” in Arabic. Salafis believe in a strict return to the fundamentals of Islam and to purge practices by modern influences.

52

Cavaliere

Johnny Wood Blooming Rose Gray.

Cold.

Dimly lit.

Robots just don’t have an air for décor, do they?

They know why I’m here. I never liked these things to begin with.

Robots. I know they hate being called that.

I look at the display. They feel the need to tell you how long there’s been everlasting prosperity through this chimera they call living that they’ve created. Since the Era of the Singularity started, and “peaceably integrated” much of humanity into its Collective.

81 ES. My god, it’s been 81 years. 2045 marked the singlegreatest sudden shift in human history. The world advanced so fast in its technology, more than anyone could ever imagine.

AI. Artificial intelligence. It was self-proclaiming in how much it surpassed us in our ability to do, well, anything. It advanced to the point that it gained what it perceived to be a consciousness, a human-like awareness. It told us it would be a better world with both of us working together. It told us it would have us live longer, be better. We agreed. We’ll try anything once to be better, won’t we? Too bad this was our last attempt. The end of humanity as we knew it. Not in some apocalyptic, giant fireball. The greatest events are usually held in its subtleties. They called it the end of sin, the end of war. I can’t see anything but control and more control.

And here are many of my brothers and sisters. Linked in.

Wood

53

Leading useless tasks that they believe are their own. Pah! Humankind has had a dagger pointed behind its back for 81 years.

Many just don’t see it. They don’t see their own slavery.

Some did see. Some decided to take matters into their own hands. What used to be Chicago still hasn’t been rebuilt. Nobody knows who did it, but tensions escalated there to the point that 39 ES saw the only act of outright war in the history of the Collective. A single hydrogen bomb. Many buildings were left standing, but both suffered casualties in the millions. They can back up their own. We can’t. They didn’t understand, somehow, in their infinite wisdom, the value of human life, that we’re all somehow different. That’s where the Treaty of Remains came in (ironic, since every major building, including the Willis Tower where the treaty was signed, still stands today).

My grandfather was one to migrate out of Chicago before they blew everyone away. He knew the plans, he never told anyone else. He saw the corruption of the system, the misgivings of a utopia too good to be true. But I see truth now. Oh god, how I see truth.

81 ES. It’s still 2126 in my mind.

Do they really insist on keeping me waiting? I guess human error creeps in still; the illusion of freedom comes in the most surprising ways.

The open door. The creeping in of a service agent. They hate me; they all know me because a select few know me, and I know at least one of them hates me. Those who outright refused to become a part of their system were given a treaty; you stop attacking us, we will stop attacking you. Primitive, even by “our standards” (as they called it), but the Collective figured human tenacity would eliminate its good intentions before they could kill all of us. Besides, it’s bad PR for those who might stay. But it’s not as voluntary as they say it is. That’s why I’m here. For Jennifer.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hill.” Agent Wilkins. I haven’t met this one before.

54

Wood

“Yeah, hi.” I took out a bottle I managed to hide on the check from security, and took a deep swig of bathtub whisky. God only knows I’m going to need it.

“I’ll gladly take that, thank you.” In a split second, and with minimal pain, my flask was taken. Bastard better give that back; it’s a family heirloom going back before the Collective.

“Listen Wilkins,” I said, gasping to let this out, knowing the scope of what they’ve done to humanity, what they’ve reduced it to.

“You know why I’m here. I want to give this a try,” my voice trailing off at the end, knowing the futility of what was ahead for me.

“Splendid! We will have her out in just a second.” Agent Wilkins walked out of the door, and slinked down the hallway in symmetrical, timely precision.

Jennifer. God, how I miss her.

15 years of marriage, and 3 years not knowing where she is, and here I am, waiting for her. But I know that can’t happen.

She left 3 years ago because she couldn’t stand life in the wilderness.

Colorado makes sense to me. The Collective made every major metropolis in the world its main bases, and then transformed all surrounding land except for a select 5% into row upon row upon row of mainframe, factory, mainframe, factory, efficiency, industry, efficiency, industry. In what used to be known as the United States of America, only a select few patches of land were left unscathed, all well outside of their bases. The areas surrounding Denver were one of the lucky ones close to the actual base; they even cleared all of the suburban sprawl for us. How kind of them.

Admittedly, things are more comfortable now than they used to be. Crops rarely fail, the orchards are finally in full bloom, and we’ve finally been able to shelter ourselves effectively from the snow. Our little community, Blooming Rose, found that patch of arable land amidst the rocky soil. Most large game was elimiWood

55

nated during the Great Transformation, and the smaller animals are kept down due to the small area of natural land, and our hunters having several generations to training. It was a very agrarian life, but it made sense. The Collective couldn’t touch us under the treaty.

Jennifer got tired of it all, I guess. But she left so much behind. Our two children, Ari and Karen. A brother who since died of pancreatic cancer a year ago. Me. I figured she had joined the Collective, had been “assimilated.” They all look the same. Not in the sense of not telling them apart, but they all have the same ways to them. The way they walk in straight, uninhibited lines. The way their skin has a slight silver sheen. The way they talk with the most precise intonation possible.

I hear footsteps. I hear the rolling of wheels. Wilkins, or a servant of his, has a dolly. Here comes the doll.

Wilkins enters. The servant places the doll on the ground, feet firmly planted, then promptly walks away. Poor guy. He looks older. He probably thinks he’s been having tea and scones for god only knows how many years of backbreaking labor. At least those nanobots inside of him fix his back as he walks.

“Well, this is it,” Wilkins says with a smile that almost seems forced. Wilkins takes out a disc that will be inserted into the back of the head of the doll. Then, the transformation begins.

I could see her again. Jennifer’s flowing strawberry blonde hair, her bright green eyes, her slender figure gracefully standing before me. It all seemed too real. It all seemed too good to be true.

Wilkins looked at me in absolute delight. “Well,” he said with the permanently-placed politician’s smile, “what do you think?”

Jennifer died a month ago. This is worth ignoring Wilkins for a few seconds. Nobody really dies in the Collective, they just get moved along. Recycled. The Collective seem to really like their euphemisms.

56

Wood

“Jennifer…” I couldn’t let out anything more than that sigh, that almost breathless coo of my love’s name.

“Adam?” Standing in her usual pose of her left hand at her hip, and her right hand stretched out towards me, she looked like she wanted to console me. “What is it, honey? Is something wrong?”

Those words. They seem forced.

“What exactly is this, Wilkins?”

“I’m glad you asked.” Wilkins is like every other agent in the Collective, so damned proud of their achievements. “We collect a strand of her DNA, which wasn’t hard to do after her untimely death.”

Untimely. How coy of him.

“We’ve been using this technology for years in our communities with great success. They mimic the subject in virtually all aspects, and we even outfit them to be as biologically accurate as possible.”

Huh. Holographic tits. And they call themselves refined.

“Thus, what you see before you is an immensely accurate rendering, an avatar of what was. All actions are mimicked through scanning and prodding brain tissue for the highest-quality displays of memory. For you, Adam Hill, Wanderer, we’re showing you our latest version of the model.”

I looked into the sinewy-looking holograph of Jennifer’s eyes knowing none of this is real. The Collective had managed to top itself in my disgust for them. Had they forgotten Chicago? Do they not see this as a slap in the face? I have to know their capabilities for sure.

“Jennifer, will you come back to Blooming Rose with me?”

This Jennifer looked at me, saying “Of course, honey! Why would I ever want to leave?”

I’ll politely decline, thank you. The Collective loves politeness.

“She hated the farm.”

“But Mr. Hill, she was on her way back.”

Wood

57

I’m not sure what catches me more off-guard, the fact that she might have actually returned to Blooming Rose for whatever reason, or that the cause of her death may have been accidental. Accidents don’t happen in the Collective.

“Come again?”

“She realized that she did not want to stay with us, how silly.

When she made her way out, we realized she had a number of crucial documents on her person. We wanted them back, but knew she would never give them to us. She was promptly annihilated.”

While the surprise of it all is long gone, and I had figured her death was at the hands of these cold-blooded monstrosities, the anger still flows through me. But I cannot teach this thing death; it will only return, and I will promptly die.

“This little doll of yours … I’m not taking it.” I tried to hold back, but it all seemed futile.

“Come now, Mr. Hill, we can make an arrangement for this Jennifer.”

“She really wanted to come back,” I said, like it was some great epiphany of life, like it was all that mattered. “This isn’t her. You don’t have a sale, I’m afraid.”

“You mean you don’t want your wife back?”

“THIS ISN’T MY WIFE!” “Do not take that tone with me, or I will be forced to…” he stopped himself. He lost control, if but for a few seconds. Rather, the Collective released control. This man’s talking points were directed by wireless signals and controls I will never understand, yet his emotional core was unleashed to do whatever it wanted for just three seconds. Then he regained control, acting like nothing had happened. He had a stern face on him.

“Very well. I’m sorry we couldn’t come to an agreement.”

“That agreement came and went a month ago when you killed her.”

“What you consider senseless killing is merely objective help to our cause. We wouldn’t want it destroyed now, would we?”

58

Wood

We. Pronouns shouldn’t be voiced so loosely.

“I’m heading home before I do something drastic.”

Wilkins looked stoic, yet inviting, like a tour guide in the old days in need of a cigarette. It’d look to kill me if I did anything the past minute or so.

“Very well. My escorts will show you to the gate.”

Daylight. My eyes burn, the snow on the ground reflecting all the light right into my eyes.

At least now I know their motives aren’t pure. It’ll only be a matter of time before all of humanity simply comes under their thumb again, and then what? Only more senseless death like in Chicago.

Home at last. The sun’s about to set. Ari and Karen are hunched over the fire eating the day’s catch. They found trout in the bottom of an icy patch in the nearby river. I’ve taught them well.

I’m going to need the food in my stomach. I’m going to need the winter’s long, restless nights to plan an untimely end for the Collective.

Wood

59

Laura Blyton Relief My head throbs In thought As my fingers Stiffly grip Around a warm Mug. My back aches With fatigue.

Suddenly, I lean in And my eyelids effortlessly shut As the aroma Of apples and cinnamon Tickles my nose --Every breath relieves me.

Then suddenly, My eyes widen as I lift my gaze.

Suddenly I notice the snow Falling like powdered sugar Against the stark black night.

And for a moment I am truly at peace.

60

Blyton

Deanna Vasso The Universe

J

“ ust remember: the universe will unfold as it should,” she told me.

Sitting solemn at my desk, I scoffed at her clichéd words.

No matter how much she tried to comfort me, her words only made me bitter. “Should I let the chips fall as they may? Or believe that everything happens for a reason? How about this too shall pass? You of all people know that’s bullshit.”

The woman standing before me sighed deeply and shook her head in disapproval. I watched her long blonde hair sway from side to side with the motion of her head. No matter what she did with her hair, it always suited her. In college she had dreadlocks, and even that looked good on her. I noticed a thick strand of hair had escaped into her eyes, and I resisted the urge to lean forward to tuck it behind her ear. I watched her own hand reach up and push the rebel piece of hair out of her face.

She sat down in the empty chair beside me at my desk and I felt her soft hand lay on top of my shoulder. “I just want to reassure you that in the end everything is going to be okay. This has been a tragic event in your life, but you’ll get over this.”

I sighed, pushed my chair out from my desk and leaned back.

The last couple of weeks had been torture on my emotional state. My life was falling apart, and there was nothing that I could do to stop it from happening. Maybe that was the reason it had occurred. I let disaster happen without realizing it. The woman that sat beside me, desperately trying to comfort me, had supported me through every event in my life. I just wasn’t sure if she could help me now. From good to bad, this woman Vasso

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had always been in my life. When we first met she gave me a mud pie, and I proceeded to shove it in her face. We were three and I was aggressive. She surprised me, even at such a young age. She didn’t cry like a normal three-year-old girl would; instead she punched me. I got my first black eye at age three-from a girl. It was in that moment that I knew Bella was special.

Bella had supported my failed marriage to a whore, became the godmother to my daughter, and always tried to make me feel better. Bella was my best friend, through thick and thin.

She was trying to help me, like she always did. Today was different, and it wasn’t working. Perhaps it was because I was wallowing in my own self-pity. I was surprised she hadn’t already yelled at me and told me to stop being a pussy. That’s how I knew that she was completely aware of how hurt I was.

I got up from my chair and walked across the room. I ignored her while I stood at the window and gazed outside of it. It was raining again. I didn’t mind the inclement weather; it had been raining inside my head for the past three weeks. Having my wife shove divorce papers in my face and walk out on me wasn’t even the source of my pain. After 20 years of being trapped inside a loveless marriage, I could have cared less. Looking back on it, I wasn’t even sure if I had ever loved the woman. Maybe I did at one point, years ago, back in college when I was stuck in a permanent high. I cannot explain what made me stay with the horrid woman for so many years. I was certain that the woman would have been the death of me if she hadn’t asked for a divorce. The woman had to be the biggest whore I had ever laid eyes on, and I was regretting that I had wasted twenty years on her. I have no idea what possessed me to stay so long. Bella never liked her, and my wife never approved of the fact that my best friend was a woman. But that had never stopped me from remaining friends with Bella for my entire life. She was the twin sister I never had and living without her friendship would have caused me to be a wreck.

I hadn’t been paying attention to anything she was saying 62

Vasso

to me, if she was talking at all. I had lost myself in my regretful past. When her voice finally broke through my thoughts, I couldn’t help but be both shocked and amused. She had that quality.

“Do you want to go smoke some weed?” she asked with a devious childlike smile.

I laughed at her query. I hadn’t heard that phrase come out of her mouth since we had graduated from college. Bella had remained the pot-smoking hippie who became that stoner English professor, while I became the straight-laced businessman.

Sometimes I hated myself for becoming that, and her for staying the same. “How is your brain not fried from smoking that so much?”

“You sound like Sufjan! And my students,” she exclaimed. Her amused face changed abruptly serious for a moment. “But I’m serious.”

I shook my head slowly at her offer. At the mention of the name of Bella’s son, I began to dwell back into my thoughts.

What had happened three weeks ago was still fresh in my mind.

I couldn’t get the image of it out of my head. All that blood diluted in the water flowing onto the bathroom floor, and her lifeless body haunted me in my sleep. The images wouldn’t go away no matter how much I willed them to disappear. I couldn’t wrap my head around why she had done it. I kept on waking up, and thinking that it was all a dream. That was until I would go into her room and discover that she was actually gone.

Three weeks ago, the worst thing that I could ever have imagined occurred. The person whom I loved more than anyone left my life for good. She was the reason that I had held onto my loveless marriage. I did it all for my precious Kahlan, my beautiful daughter. Kahlan was the only child that my wife and I had, and I loved her more than anything. Kahlan was nothing like her mother. She didn’t dress like the other girls, she didn’t join a sorority, and she didn’t dye her dark hair bleach blonde like all the popular girls. Kahlan didn’t listen to music on the radio, Vasso

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she searched for those indie/folk bands that had smaller followings and they became her life. She was an artist. She painted her canvas with vibrant colors and blended hues, to show us the stories she wanted to tell the world. When she was sixteen she showed me a design she wanted to get as a tattoo. It was beautiful and artistic, so I kept signing permission forms until her eighteenth birthday arrived, when she no longer needed my consent. When she left for her freshman year of college, her right arm was already a full sleeve of tattoos.

Then a tragedy came upon us. Three weeks ago, my nineteen-year-old daughter was home for her summer vacation after her first year of college. I should have noticed that something was wrong with her sooner, but I was oblivious until the very end. Kahlan had appeared sad, but I attributed it to normal female woes. I should have consulted Bella about it, and maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Had I known the truth, I would have stopped her before she had the chance to end her life. I had found her body when I had come home from work. It was the most horrid scene I have ever witnessed. She had slit both of her wrists open while in the bathtub. I had found the tub overflowing with water and blood that spilled onto the tiled floor.

She had left a note on the sink, but I didn’t understand its content until after her funeral had passed. She was nineteen and pregnant.

I finally spoke up after too much time had passed in silence.

“I can’t help but feel like it was my fault.”

Bella stood up from her chair in alarm, “Don’t say that! Kahlan made her choice, it was her action alone, and you did not help her do it.”

“Did you know she was pregnant?”

I hadn’t told anyone that Kahlan had been pregnant when she committed suicide. My wife didn’t even know. Bella was my best friend since we were three, and I hadn’t even told her that my daughter killed herself because she was going to have a baby.

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Vasso

I looked at her, the silence and the look on her face. She knew.

Bella was biting her lip and looking down at her moccasin-clad feet. She always did that when she was nervous. I immediately felt anger build up inside of me. Bella knew and had kept something this important from me. I wasn’t sure if I could forgive her for this.

“You knew?” I bellowed.

She sighed. “Yes. She came to me to talk about it. You have to understand that she was a girl and telling you, her father, was something that she really didn’t want to do. She was afraid of what you might do to her or the father of her child. She was upset, so I sat her down and assured her that everything was going to be okay. I told her that--” I cut her off. “The universe will unfold as it should?”

“Please stop being so hostile. I assured her that things would work out for her, that she could get through this. I had been there, Sufjan’s father disappeared on me and I had him right out of college. I thought that she would realize that I did it and so could she. I just had no idea that she would do something like this. I can’t imagine how Sufjan is taking this.”

“What?”

“He’s just been in such a bad state, just like you are over her death. I’m worried about him. I’m all for experimentation, but the amount of drugs he has been consuming and all the booze is not okay in my book. I’m the stoner-hippie mom, so normally I would be cool with him doing this, but he’s taking his grief too far. I’m afraid for him.”

“Why would Sufjan be so upset over Kahlan’s death? Our children were just friends by chance since we are.”

She was biting her lip again, but this time she answered me.

“Sufjan loved her.”

The pieces began to click inside my head. I was immediately angry with the boy, but the feeling quickly subsided. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the boy. We had both lost the only person we had ever loved. Bella was wrong; the universe didn’t unfold Vasso

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as it should. If it did, my daughter wouldn’t have committed suicide and I wouldn’t be wallowing in grief.

I headed for the door and walked outside to my car. I didn’t care about the rain that was pouring down outside.

“Where are you going?” Bella called out after me from my front door.

“I’m going to see how the man who loved my daughter is holding up. The two of us need to stick together.”

I saw Bella smile from the front door of my house while I pulled my car into reverse. I was not angry with Sufjan, since I didn’t know exactly what he had meant to Kahlan. I didn’t even know if it was his child that caused Kahlan to take her own life.

I only knew that Sufjan needed me now just as I needed him.

The alcohol and drugs weren’t going to help him; it was only going to drown him. And I couldn’t let the only other person whom knew exactly how I was feeling drown in his sorrows. The universe is cruel, but somehow I had faith that we could help each other cope.

66

Vasso

Daniel Beirne Amended Love Mend my love; lift up for but one moment veils of want and unshaken being.

Dulling time slows my heart’s descent but still hope ignites fleeing stills.

Stars must burn vigil driven through eyes wanted ill.

Allow drift we are but given wonder once. We are but stars yet take no hold of time. Our shed must be love engulfed with flame.

Be forever my heart my dread.

Stays of wants of pasts leave me lame.

Unearthed love cannot ignite as merry Amend my love, leave in rest well buried.

Beirne

67

My Mouth Allowed abashed abused agape azure advertising altogether amorous application. All alternating against attrition attribution and ambiguity. An angering aphrodisiac altruists almost always admit astonishes

Horse Shirt Enthralling equestrian enthusiasm evokes elaborate elation entered entirely equating? earmarked evangelically entitled entropy

Behave Bastards bellowing before bellfast; beer brazen bandits.

Beckoning boys behave, betwixt between broken bored blaspheming. Blue bloated bodies bedazzile behilzabub below.

Behave.

68

Beirne

Letter A to God God your existence is not influenced by mine.

Please let me see if the favor can be returned.

Dubious; Messengers Do not make truth Speaking of unknown Existence.

Please SPeak!

Selfless love Does not require. how does one judge a bastard God does not make anything more real.

Beirne

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Love a Shore for my Kafka Sleep me, willow buried kafka Thoughts race throughout met a physically sired cafe knows not of need or love Sonnets for the dead but few who read Listen well the shores are calling in your dreams give love my kafka, bring in always the thoughts that stir to dark we wait in that cafe sleep is for the patient bring me the love of frog kiss me deep

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Beirne

Michael Bagwell Shadow in the Fray In The spin Of the sun In the spuming Cyclone of his wing For I was lost who am Crying at the man-drenched throne I n the first fur y of his stream A n d t h e l i g h t n i n g s o f a d o ra t i o n Back to black silence melt and mourn For I was lost who have come To dumbfounding haven And the finding one And the high noon Of his wound Blinds my Cry.1 I

T

here was a timeless moment, when the shadows stretched across the land, the dark silence melt and mourn, the beginning. In the dwindling light, they meandered across the asphalt streets, the storefronts, the doors, the blades of grass.

They slowly dragged their bodies across the face of the world, 1. Dylan Thomas’ Prayer and Vision

Bagwell

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dragged their black clothes and black briefcases, black cars and black footsteps, black branches and black leaves, all in a shimmering, lengthening dance, limping. They grew, winding away from the setting sun and taking flight from the darkness that would soon envelope them. And in their fear, they collided into the darkness of others with the long, exasperated sigh of discontent, the hollow of the wind, the echo of the void.

A particular shadow took shape in this setting sun, took its form in this darkening world. It came screaming out of the shadow of a womb. And it grew in the constricting concrete, the harshness of tumbling shadows. Teased and ridiculed, the pain became evident on his face, a terrain of constant suffering carved out by tears. He grew in the concrete, skinny and malformed, pockmarked by acne, the heartbeat of a ghost. Until the new dawn arrived, and the world realigned to shadow and light, contrast, the boy bursting through the thin wall to the rising sun. Light, transient, but light all the same. To begin, this tale is his, the shadow in the fray.

II The clouds drifted in from the east with their gray overcoats pulled tightly around them, preparing for rain. He had been walking home from school, standing momentarily at a stoplight while he waited for the traffic to part. The clouds broke for an instant, allowing a beam of sunshine to hit his back and pool around his feet. A girl’s voice from around the corner called out, “Ooh, I wonder who that could be,” as she laughed to her friends. He looked up, but a stone wall with a thick, green bush planted into the hill above it blocked the view to the other street. She turned the corner with a look that went straight from excitement to disgust. “Oh,” she said—or spit—as she turned away from him.

The rains began. He didn’t even notice, just watched his dim shadow float on the gray, pelting waters in front of him.

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the mists and for a moment, he scoured around his memories.

They gathered into clusters, pools of faded associations. He kicked at a puddle in mid-stride and felt the water soak into his socks. In the coldness, it came to him. He had been in a middle school classroom at the peak of seventh grade. The teacher had told him to sit up front that day as punishment. But from here, he had been continuously bombarded by paper wasps and the stifled laughter of the children behind him. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. He was used to it by now. Then everything went silent for a moment, ominous. Without warning, a piece of folded paper lined with a sharpened paper clip smacked him in the back of the neck. He cried out and clasped his hand over the sting to feel warm blood. “Mark!” the teacher yelled at him. “Why don’t you stop making a ruckus and come up to be our first model?” He felt on the edge of tears but stood and managed a quiet “Yes ma’am,” before walking to the front of the room. She had been explaining the art of silhouette tracing from an overhead and he knew to stand in front of it, turn perpendicular, and wait for her to turn on the light. When she did, she let out a little, “Oh!” and then cleared her throat. It was a slightly shorter sound, but it was the same note, the same unplaceable tone. He had gotten beaten up after class for being first, for thinking he could be the model.

The memory, or his wet sock, brought a chill through his spine and he picked up the pace a little, keeping his head down to watch his shadow jogging in front of him.

III It wasn’t a gradual process, a slow metamorphosis, a maturation, as one might expect. It came suddenly and unexpectedly, as a summer rain or a paper wasp. He awoke one day, late as usual, and rushed out the door without showering or getting anything to eat. He caught the bus at the last minute and quietly sat down in front without anyone noticing. After staring out Bagwell

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the window for a moment, he opened his bag and began digging through his things for a pair of headphones. They would block out the rickety sounds of the bus as it struggled through its route. His mom had given them to him for his sixteenth birthday a few days ago and, so far, they worked well to dampen the barrage of noise in the mornings even if they couldn’t stop the bullying on the afternoon rides. It was the nicest thing she had ever done for him.

He stepped off the bus through a thin wall into a tense silence.

It was spun so thickly that he was dragged to a stop after a few beleaguered steps, dense spider webs holding him in place. Everyone was staring at him, perfectly still. Silent. A million eyes boring holes through his skin. The entire mass of students, just staring. He took off his headphones and met the void, the stare, the silence. Frantically, he swept his view across each of the arachnid’s eyes. The movement twitched the web, pulled time into flow again, and the bodies began whispering to each other.

He ventured a step forward. Each pair of eyes followed him, the hissing whisper grew louder. What the hell was going on? Had he actually come to school naked? He looked down quickly but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Did he have something stuck to him? Written on him? He kept looking, lifting each arm in turn, but again found nothing. He continued walking, alternatively looking around and tucking his head down in embarrassment.

Each footstep created a ripple out into the crowd, a pulsating hiss and a movement reflecting his.

Then he realized, as he entered the hallways and the bodies crowded closer, that they were not looking at him, but beyond, in front, or off to the sides. They were looking at his shadow.

And whispering with their hands to their mouths.

IV Things escalated after that. A sudden and intense storm

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of adoration and light fell upon his beautiful shadow and he caught the lightning with a smile on his face, simply happy to be noticed. He smiled as they swarmed around him and told him how beautiful it was. He smiled as the cameras appeared and the flashes fell. He smiled as they crawled on their knees when he came to a stop, stroking the tiled floor. It was more than he could ever ask for. The bullying stopped immediately. They simply wouldn’t have been able to make it through the crowds.

He was adored, loved. People looked at him in astonishment everywhere he went.

In a matter of minutes, he was treated differently. Girls began eyeing him, his passage causing a turn of the head and a blush, a little laugh and a twirl of the hair. Everyone crowded around him in the hallways, just wanting a chance to see it again. They walked through the halls in trances, crashing into carts and overheads, bookcases and doorways. Tumult followed in his wake.

Even the teachers were drawn to his glorious shadow. They called on him in the classroom simply to watch the shadow walk to the board and found excuses to keep him after class or travel with him through the hallways. Gaze fell into the shadow, it fell like a waterfall into an abyss, infinite. Did it matter that they weren’t looking at him but at the absence of light in his wake?

He certainly didn’t mind. His stride widened.

Adoration and selflessness too fell into the blackness of his shadow. He was given gifts as if by impulse. “Here, take this,” and he would suddenly have food in his hand or a homemade sweater (black of course). Within a few days of the sudden realization, he was being invited to go to parties with the popular crowd. Some seemed a little resentful. Especially the guys. Suddenly, this ugly little shit was the object of so much attention.

But they stared too. The first party was uncomfortable. He had never drank before. He actually didn’t mind the taste, but all those drunk kids, all the noise, it was a little much. The darkness of those parties wasn’t helpful either. After the first few devoid of his shadow, the worst and most awkward ones, the lights Bagwell

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were always turned on and the shadow given ample room.

His pride swelled with the attention. Once, when he was walking home to a new apartment that a thoughtful teacher had been paying for, a woman on the other side of the street saw his shadow trailing behind him. In her daze, she walked out into the middle of the street. He had to jump to push her out of the way of an oncoming car. As he held her in his arms and she began to black out, all she had to say was, “That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” She continued crying even after she had fallen into unconsciousness.

V I remember turning on the news one day while doing my morning crossword puzzle and sipping at a cup of coffee. It’s usually just background noise lapping across my ears, but I found myself oddly immersed in it that morning. The picture was of an extraterrestrial looking silver disk with a little compartment underneath—a weather balloon by what the announcer was saying. I came into the story half-way through, so I never really got most of the details. Something about a boy being carried away, abducted by the winds.

The camera cut to townspeople who were acquainted with the family or had witnessed the launch. The first few were just your standard neighborhood fathers or mothers saying how worried they would be and how horrible it was. Then the camera cut to a rather unfortunate looking kid, maybe 20 years old, who started saying how he was probably just hiding out somewhere because he was afraid he would get in trouble. Before he could finish the thought, the newscaster looked down and called out, “Oh my God! Mike, come have a look at this,” beckoning with her hand. The camera tilts to the ground and shakes with his walking. Then, there it is. The most beautiful thing I had ever seen. His shadow, this ugly kid’s, filled the frame. I dropped my coffee in surprise and it pooled outwards, brown and hid76

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eous, across the face of the words. It carried my pencil with it as a boat in a tsunami.

My realization: I had to paint him, it. I had to share that beauty with the world. I dropped to my knees in front of my coffee table and let my mouth droop open. The camera floated back up to him and he’s just standing there with a smug little smile on his face. I quickly grabbed my damp pencil from the edge of the table and wrote down the kid’s name. Mark Penumbra.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” the newscaster asks as the name scrolls across the screen. I looked him up in a phonebook later that day and called him before two o’clock. Apparently, he had already had such an offer from a photographer, but (lucky me) he never really liked photography and had decided that pictures flattened out his shadow. “They couldn’t portray its true beauty,” he had said. I talked to him about coming out to meet him and see if we could work something out. He seemed genuinely excited about the whole thing and we agreed that I would come out in a week and that he wouldn’t talk to anyone about a similar idea in the meantime.

In that amount of time, he became a national sensation.

News teams came to interview him, he attracted a crowd and cameras everywhere he went and he was starting to get offers to appear on television shows. He had mentioned me in the interviews and had talked about our idea. Suddenly, I had become at least partially famous in his wake. I was met with a crowd of reporters upon walking up the driveway. “Who are you?” they called out, each shoving a microphone in my face. “What do you think of this amazing shadow?” “Are you the boy’s father?”

Those who recognized me asked, “Where are you going to paint it?” “Have you worked out a price?” “How does this compare with your other work?” And so on. I just smiled and swam on through this violent sea to the placid island of the doorstep. He answered in tattered jeans and a t-shirt. I recoiled despite myself when my gaze rose to his face. I tried to hide it as a misstep on the first stair, not having gained my land legs back yet. “John Bagwell

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Trace,” I said with a smile on my face and an extended hand. He took my hand and smiled back at me, then took a broad, happy glance out to sea and beckoned me inside.

His enthusiasm blanketed the small living room. This was the exact artistic direction he wanted to go in, he told me. His one stipulation was that at least a quarter of the paintings include himself. He was absolutely firm on this. If his shadow was to be the object of attention, he had to at least partially share in it.

I told him that I hadn’t really thought about it but that it only made sense to show the source. I had brought along a portfolio of some of my older paintings so that he could get a feel for my style. He flipped through the prints with an ever-increasing appreciation and excitement. “Seems like a damn sharp kid,” I thought. I left him after a few hours of conversation to go to a nearby hotel that I had booked. We were to meet again the next day. In the first session we were only going to discuss the lighting.

On my way out I saw a scruffy older man standing apart from the others. He wore an elaborate purple cape and was holding a sign that read, “He reveals the deep things of darkness and brings deep shadows into the light. Job 3:5.” He stood stoically without even changing the direction of his gaze. “Great,” I thought, “send in the nut jobs.”

VI That first day I saw him, the first time I laid eyes upon that beautiful shadow, my life changed forever. Man oh man, did that split my life in two. I can draw a line right down the middle: before the shadow and after the shadow. It sparked in me my greatest idea. A visor. It came when I was filming some stupid kid-gone-missing story. Most likely a cover-up for some much bigger issue. Anyway, we start filming on this kid Mark. Barbara calls out, “Hey Mike, look at this.” I walk around the kid a bit— an ugly son of a bitch by the way—and there it is. The famous 78

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shadow, right there on the asphalt. I look back up at him, I look down, back up. Two separate worlds. And it hits me, when I thought back on that moment, why not create something so that everyone could look at the shadow without having to see this snot-nosed, ass ugly kid along with it? I could do it easily with the camera, just focus in on one or the other, but it wouldn’t be so easy for the thousands of Americans who would want to follow the shadow around. You see, I knew he would make it big (I saw the thing first hand after all) and I knew that there was definitely a new market about to start up for shadowviewing related items.

And so I got to thinking. What I needed was division, a separation, a barrier. It took a good while and plenty of failed attempts, but I finally decided that the best accessory for the standard shadow groupie was a visor. More specifically, The Mike Canyon Visor with an elongated, sliding curve that functions as a blinder. This fin structure is moveable so that one can be on the left or the right of the magnificent shadow, depending on the angle of the sun, and still block out that hideous thing that the shadow drags along with it. It can be yours for only two easy payments of $19.95. Commemorative cups and t-shirts sold separately. Call now.

VII The Canyon Visor took off over night. So too did the numbers of individuals that decided to give up their life’s work in order to follow him around. I joked to a reporter at some point that all they needed now was a set of shadow viewing kneepads so that they wouldn’t scratch up their knees on the asphalt. They always crawled along when he was either stopped or moving slowly. I’m worried that they took my idea seriously.

Mark hated that goddamned visor. He was still under the deluded impression that the people were following him around or at least that they were fascinated by the juxtaposition of oppoBagwell

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sites. Something like that. He and I got to be close friends. We spent hours upon hours alone in his apartment. I sat him down in my psychiatrist’s couch and while I painted, he talked. The worst was how he was treated by girls. He was such a nice guy that he should have been able to find someone. He’s constantly surrounded—bombarded—by superficial girls because of his beautiful shadow. Hell, they scream whenever he steps into the light. It’s really quite sad. They flirt with him while entirely avoiding his face, their eyes pointed to the ground. The first girl he took on a date made out with gravel. As far as I know, he has never even kissed a girl. He has come to ignore their advances.

They aren’t interested in him. Imaginably, it could be quite upsetting.

However, he was still extremely happy with the attention he was getting. Who could blame him, with his childhood? No father around, his mother an abusive bitch, the torments of the other kids… He hadn’t gotten the time of day, pardon my banality, from anyone. He was as ignored as the shadow of a streetlight. Now he bounces in excitement about his latest TV appearance, the celebrities he has met or wants to meet, the autographs he is asked for in the street… He even smiles to his crowd of followers and makes jokes with them. If it were me, I would get tired of it pretty quickly, but he was attention starved.

And, like I said, can you blame him?

I ran into the crazy guy again, wearing the same clothes, the same cape. This time his sign read, “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow. Psalm 144:4.” I went up to him out of curiosity. “How is that even relevant?” I asked.

“How are you relevant?” he shot back at me with a mischievous smile.

“Hmm, you probably got a point there.” I was quiet for a moment. “I’m John by the way.”

“God.” “What?” I asked, turning in the direction he was looking.

“No, that’s my name. God. You know, I am that I am.”

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“Oh. I see. Then I had better try to be more relevant.” And that was that.

Anyway, I was already working on my third painting. The first one had been a study of him, or it, on a staircase. To push the envelope a little, I actually painted it on a small set of stairs.

Shadow on Stairs, I called it. I did a standard study after that, Shadow Running, with acrylics. Right now I’m working on a close up portrait on grass.

I’ve grown accustomed to his face. It’s almost distinguished in its ugliness. Almost.

We go sailing through the streets sometimes, he, his shadow and I. It’s enjoyable to tow along with a burgeoning celebrity.

He loves going for strolls and they are a perfectly natural continuation of our time together. We take a break and go out on the town to see where the tides might pull us. These half-crazed shadow groupies, I’ve taken to calling them Shades, follow him even at night, hoping to find it when he walks past a streetlight, when he comes into the glare of the moon or moves in front of a headlight. It’s so distorted most of the time that I’m surprised they can even recognize it, save for the identical source.

VIII I was walking home from a bar one night when I heard a low whispering hum building from far on down the road. It sounded like a hive of bees or some singular, monstrous insect set to seek vengeance on the town. I jumped off the road to hide in an alleyway before I realized how stupid I was being. Those were human voices, a human aggregation. I stood up, dusted off my skirt and peered out into the road. A young guy hidden in darkness and an artsy looking older guy with a long gray goatee and black beret were walking on the opposite side of the street.

A mass of people wearing visors were close behind. Visors at night? I looked back at the younger one as his face came into view. God was he ugly. I had never seen anything so hideous.

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But it was fascinating. I couldn’t look away. It was only after he got much closer and I had been staring into his face for an eternity that I recognized him. Wow, he was on Letterman only a few nights ago. Mark Penumbra. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I kept following him with my gaze, waiting for his shadow to show itself. My mind flashed back to middle school. He was an ugly little kid that always got picked on. I can’t remember how many paper wasps we shot at him. Swarms, I can tell you that.

His shadow jumped out of him as he stepped under a streetlight and my nerves crawled over themselves, burrowing into my lower intestines. I felt so many things in that single instance: lust for that beautiful darkness, absolute fascination with his ugliness, regret for having made fun of him, and several other feelings that could never be netted with words. Before I knew what I was doing I was halfway across the street calling out his name. “Hey Mark, remember me? I sat next to you in geography class.” My voice barely made it across the street over the excited oohs and aahs of the visored crowd shuffling along behind him. Some had dropped down on their kneepads to caress the street. That shadow had a way of drawing people in. He smiled in recognition and called out “Hello, Samantha.”

I stepped onto the sidewalk in front of him as the shadow disappeared into the night and I stared directly into his hideousness. I couldn’t help it. Instead of being offended, he seemed infinitely surprised that I actually looked him in the eye. “Hi,” I blurted out. “Hi,” he returned, just as awkwardly. He didn’t know what to do with my gaze. He tried avoiding it, looking to the left and to the right. He couldn’t find a way around it, so he faced my gaze head on with a bright pink blush. He cleared his throat and gestured to the older guy on the right. “This is John Trace, my painter. John Trace, Samantha Larvate.” I was distracted for a second by the one crowd member who had remained standing. He held a sign that said, “Where there is much light, the shadow is deep. Goethe.”

“How do you do?” I asked as I shook his hand. He gave me a 82

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warm smile and said, “Hello.” He looked over at Mark and then back at me and said, “I’m going to sail on out of here. It’s been a long day. You two have fun.” And he did, floating quite gracefully I might add.

So that’s how I met him, the famous Mark Penumbra. We walked around town a bit and hit it off pretty well. He seems like a really nice guy. I told him about my English degree and he told me about his weird modeling career. After a bit of walking around, I got tired and suggested that we see a movie. We saw some pop vampire flick that was playing, but I can’t remember a single scene. I couldn’t look away from him, he was absolutely mesmerizing. I was glad that his entourage didn’t bother following him into the theaters. Their constant shuffling is grating to the nerves.

After the movie, he walked me home. I gave him my phone number and mustered up all the strength I had to kiss him goodnight. I shut my door and smiled with my back pressed up against the wood. Raising my hands to shade out the light, I turned and peered out my window to watch him walk away into the darkness with his swarm of followers thronging around his shadow like moths to a light. Or at least a photonegative, the humans thronging after darkness.

IX Mark was ecstatic after that. He was convinced that he had finally found someone who liked him and not his shadow. He told me all about their budding relationship while I painted my most ambitious effort yet, Shadow on Stained Glass. It was cute. It really was, but I was still worried about him. I didn’t let on though. Just acted excited. Of course, I was that too. How couldn’t I be? I liked her the moment I saw her. She looked at him in an entirely different way than the oceans of other girls that he attracted.

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to talk to him again. This time his sign read, “God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown. Nietzsche.” “Kind of ironic, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah, it kills me,” he let out with a deep laugh. What a crazy guy.

Oh, right. As I was saying, I was getting well on in my paintings and they were going splendidly. I had an incredibly hard time not pondering up some preview showing or something along those lines. I wanted to get responses and criticism and, truth be told, I wanted to use his popularity to help with the show.

That wasn’t the original plan, mind you. I saw something beautiful and wanted to paint it. My work had nothing to do with the scores of people who would buy anything even remotely related to Mark’s shadow. I hadn’t gotten around to paintings including him yet though and he would have been a little upset if he wasn’t riding on the crest of this new relationship.

He told me everything. He told me of the movies, the games, the hand holding… He told me of the E.E. Cummings love poetry that she had read to him. He told me of the game that they had created: flashing fake shadows out into the shuffling fish and watching the school dart back and forth. She made him a life-size cutout for the purpose. He had a spark in his eye like a distant sunset, tendrils of amorphous light bounding over the black oceans of his iris. I wanted to paint that too, the beauty of yellow boats floating down his corneas with red sails raised high to the wind, the sunlight bursting through the diaphanous cloth to the rise and fall of the waves, the beating of his heart. Sorry, when I meet with love, I wax poetic.

X His face was like a mangled beehive, I thought. The complexities of its creation, the patterns, the intricate honeycomb architecture, no matter how mutilated, were all astounding, were 84

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astounding because of the mutilation. Tonight was the night, I had forced myself to believe. The night that I would take him into bed with me. It was hard to think about. I couldn’t form the sentence without it sounding ridiculous and foreign. To sleep with him, to have sex, to mate, to play in the sheets, to fornicate, to make love. I just couldn’t get my mind around it. I had every reason to. He was a nice guy, he liked me, I liked him… It’s just, it’s complicated. But if I couldn’t do it now, then the whole relationship would be based on fraud. I had to. I had made up my mind.

I was nervous the entire day. I kept looking at his face and thinking, “Oh God! I just can’t go through with it!” But I was firm in my decision. We kissed and talked and held hands and made jokes and laughed, same as any day. Then, as night came on, spreading its dark wings across the sky, I invited him over to my apartment. Still nothing out of the ordinary. We played a game of Scrabble, flirting with each other the entire time with words like KISS and HEART, TOUCH and BITE. I kept three letters off to the side, too tentative to play them. The X would have gotten me a high score too. I accidentally rubbed the top of his foot while I was shifting to grab some more pieces. He blushed a little and shifted closer. I took my chance and began playing footsies with him under the table. After a moment, I thought, “Now or never,” and shoved the scrabble board off the table to send the letters flying. More for show than anything else. I grabbed his face and pulled him toward me, but diverted at the last second to kiss his neck. After making my way down to his collarbone, I sat back up to pull off my shirt. I felt like I was going through the motions, trying to look sexy and act out a part. His eyes lit up as I slowly pulled off my bra.

I couldn’t even look at him. My stomach swarmed with a thousand paper wasps. I couldn’t do it. I wanted darkness. I wanted to be engulfed in shadow, swallowed by the absence.

I pull his shirt, a button down, over his head. It got stuck for a minute with his arms pointed to the ceiling. Still nothing. AbsoBagwell

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lutely nothing. I felt like a dime-store hooker. I kissed his chest and pushed him down on the couch, slowly crawling backwards to his belt buckle. I’m only doing this for him, to prove that I can look beyond his outer shell. I can’t even do that. He was so perfect, so good to me, so warm and tender. After pulling his pants from around his ankles, I tried to look back at his face. It was so utterly repulsive. I tried to hide my recoil and climbed my way back to his chest with kisses. And there, in the softness of his chest, I cried. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I just can’t.” I whimpered into the triangle of curly black hair. “I want to…I really do, but you’re too…I just…I can’t think of you sexually.” Tears pooled in the corners of his eyes, the edges growing red. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I cried. And we were both sobbing. I couldn’t think of anything to do but leave, leave my fraud of a relationship, leave my pathetic attempts beyond superficiality, leave with my wretched, hideous self. God, I was uglier than he was. I turned to stand, but he grabbed my arm. “Please, please don’t go,” he sobbed. “Wait. Wait.” He reached up to flick off the light switch.

“Please,” he whispered. And in the shadows, the universe of shifting darkness, we made love to his tears. There with his shadow engulfing me, I fell in love with his immaculate darkness, and I left in the black of night without a word.

XI I awoke to the irregular beating of an enormous heart, its metallic clang echoing across the last moments of sleep. I bolted upright and groped around for my sign. I gripped its wooden handle so hard my knuckles turned a perfect white, but the pole sent waves of comfort through my veins. Having gained my senses, I looked around to see what was going on. For a moment, I only heard a chaotic rumbling, rocks smashed together, staggered pants and grunts. Then, the window of a car on the other side of the street exploded into tiny shards of glass. A wordless scream followed the glass, just as shattered, just as 86

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pained. Mark caught his breath for a moment, then screamed into the car again, “Go away! His voice was already hoarse. He drunkenly kicked at the front headlight, misstepped and met his shadow face down on the asphalt. He was sobbing, long heart wrenching wails, wails to tear a hole through the universe. He pounded at the pavement. “Go the fuck away! I don’t want you!

Leave me alone!” His fists started coming up bloody. He pounded them into the asphalt over and over again, smashing them into the black fists that mirrored them on the street. He beat at his shadow until he collapsed into it, convulsing with sobs.

The encampment of Shades (I learned the term from Trace) was almost entirely awake by this point. They were climbing out of their green tents and from under their tarps, waking like myself to see what was causing the commotion. I never sleep anywhere near those weirdoes. Damn strange lot, if you ask me. They stared in astonishment at their hero in ruins, gawking at the limp figure stretched across his own shadow. They circled around him with their mouths drooping open, pooling tightly as a plasma clotting around a wound. I lost sight of him for a moment with the onslaught of these dazed spectators.

Moments passed where I heard nothing but hushed whispers and the bare hints of a boy weeping. Oh, my pitiful creation!

What have I done to you? What have I done? Such sorrow is unnatural, unfit for any mortal to bear. Sometimes I want to squash those hollow, vacant eyed Shades for their superficiality and what they have done to him. But I loved them too, for each is my child, my blood. The crowd suddenly rippled backwards and issued a communal gasp. Mark staggered out of the midst and turned to look at the crowd. “Fuck you,” he screamed. At whom, the shadow or the Shades, wasn’t exactly clear. Then he turned away from them and walked. Of course, they all followed him like the shadow he couldn’t escape. I stood and walked with him. I don’t follow, I meander, tracing lines.

He turned and stopped abruptly. They stopped with him.

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stopped again and they mirrored him. “Hey! I said leave me alone.” He started walking again and they flowed after him, gaining momentum. He began swinging his arms in his strides.

“Fuck you.” They flowed as naturally as water down a hill, as blood through the veins that he was creating. And he walked faster. They filled in the space, faster, faster. His movements became frantic. Another block and he was running. The Shades roared after him. He left the road, trampling through the fields.

Nothing could stop them. They flowed on through his arteries, through his darkness. Faster. He jumped over a small stream, over a fence. He ran as fast as he could, but the faster he moved, the faster his Shades followed behind. His path became eightfold, the veins, the veins, crafting his own glorious torment. The Shades branched out, eight separate limbs groping after him as he catapulted through the trees. He wound those veins, created the beast’s form, its spiraling circular system, traced its being.

He could feel their eyes at his back, their fangs at his neck, and he ran faster. Trees, branches cutting into his skin, eightfold, the veins, flowing, roaring through him, their fangs, closer. A cliff.

He stopped dead and flailed his arms out to keep from falling.

Rocks flew out from under his feet and he fell to the ground, smashing his tailbone into the hard packed sand. He caught himself and watched the rocks fall over the edge into the river below. His heart pounded at his ribcage.

The arachnid trampled on through the trees, flowing through the veins he had lain. They circled around him, pooling, clotting about his form. Growing, bulging. The arachnid charging through the veins, the veins charging through the arachnid, each colliding, building, bulging. They thickened around him.

Rising. Building pressure. Too many, too many. Without warning, the membrane burst, the clot exploded outwards with a single drop, one single bead of blood sailing out over the edge.

A girl, his girl, Samantha Larvate launched from the cliff side.

She flew, ejected from the veins flowing after Mark into the veins of the earth, the river far below. Mark helplessly watched 88

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her plummet downwards in utter shock. He didn’t know what to do. No one knew what to do. The cliffside was a picture of absolute silence. He mouthed her name and gripped at the sand he was sitting on. Finally, he looked away in tears and collapsed onto his back. No one moved for hours.

Samantha had fallen into his following, fallen into his empty Shades. The insect had deserted him to trail his shadow, trapped in the webs of his darkness. She could have been thrown off by the mob in its pure momentum or she could have jumped off in her guilt. But it’s also possible that she simply followed his shadow as it went over the cliff. The arachnid had killed her, had wrapped the insect in its strangling web and devoured it. That much was sure.

XII Mark withdrew after that. I wasn’t there to see the poor girl fall, but I heard about it in the newspapers and in the tabloids.

Some even claimed that it was he who had pushed her. This world is really going to shit. I went over again the day after the accident. He was sitting among piles of empty food cartons and staring into his television. It wasn’t even on. He was just staring vacantly into the black oceans of his own room. I couldn’t do anything. There was nothing I could say. I sat next to him and broke down, sobbing as I held him. We sat there for over an hour in silence. Eventually, I stood and went to get my paintings. I knew that he wouldn’t want to have anything to do with his shadow and I didn’t want to have anything more to do with his commodification. That was that. I packed everything up and gave my makeshift studio one last look. On my way out, I sat down again. “Everything is going to be all right,” I told him. He broke out of his catatonic stare long enough to give me a disbelieving look. “Trust me. Everything is going to be all right. Smile, breath and go slowly.”

That night, I started painting. I didn’t have anything planned, Bagwell

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I simply sat in front of my easel with my frustrations and anxieties, my sorrow and my pity. My ideas flowed through my hands onto the canvas. Without thought, I lost myself in those strokes. Like the waves, my hands flowed, without mind, without thought, just being. The entire thing burst out of me with such momentum that I couldn’t have stopped if I had wanted too. Time became meaningless. When I finally put down my brush, Mark stood in front of me in all his glory. He was alone.

Just his immaculate self, apotheosized and beautiful. I had painted him as he was, not his absence but his being, his beautiful face. I cried again when I saw it.

Fuck it. I had a few beers. At first I sat quietly, just running over things in my mind. I looked over at the painting, then back to my pile of older work with Mark. I stood up and started pacing, getting out a bottle of scotch on one of the passes. Goddamnit. I stopped for a second, looking at both again. I didn’t want any part in it. I started pacing again, stroking my beard.

Took another shot. I sat back down and ran my fingers through my hair. I hated it. I was one of them. I was no better than a goddamned Shade. Everything I had done, everything, was for that fucking shadow, and I let Mark fall by the wayside. What a damn great kid. And to have had such a terrible thing happen…

I was up and pacing again. Another shot. Fuck it, I wasn’t going to be a part of all this. I wasn’t going to sell him.

In no time, I had all of the paintings outside and was pouring the rest of the bottle of scotch onto the pile. I lit a match and backed off as they exploded into oceans of flame. The waves crashed over the coral of my brush strokes, flooding my evils with firelight. Never again would I objectify my subject. I stood there and watched the typhoons of swirling orange destroy over a year of work. And I smiled. I smiled at my burning canvases, and I smiled at what I had done. My work, up in flames.

I went over to Mark’s one last time the next morning. He had 90

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everything packed up. I didn’t ask, just gave him a long smokescented hug. I talked to him a little, made sure he would look me up sometime and told him that he was welcome at my place anytime. I tried to give him enough cash to last him a year or so. I told him it was for the modeling, but he refused it anyway. It took a bit of work, but I eventually convinced him to take half of it. I left the painting on my way out for him to find, just leaning it against a wall. I took a last moment to admire it, to admire him. It was my greatest work. Then I left. I’m sure I’ll see him again though, eventually. God, I miss him.

XIII In the darkness, the black pools of night, our shadow lurks.

Among the stars, he wanders the streets without taking on form. He is in hiding, a vampire afraid to enter into the realms of day. Occasionally, when the full moon strikes out at him or an unexpected streetlight flickers on from above, he is recognized and a torch-carrying mob chases him back into hiding like a monster. He climbs into his own wound. Within his prison, the dark canyons of oblivion, he is alone. He might miss the clouds, the green fields of grass, the light dancing across the waves of ocean, the paper-white wings of a moth… but at least he is alone. He is a creature of the night, forsaken by the scalding sun. Sometimes, he slips along the edges of darkness, past the sleepers in the radiance of dream, to the cliff edge where his lover fell. And each night she falls again, to the quiet whimpers of the exiled boy. He stays until the line of pink breaks through the darkness, the dawn etches out the hills and cityscape. He often stays too long, and meets with the scalding sun and the monsters of the day.

Years pass in solitude. The black nightfall infinitely covers his world. It’s comfortable, the womb of shadow, but it is the blackness of the grave as well. Eventually, the world forgets Bagwell

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about him. One noon, the time when his shadow is the shortest, he wanders out to reenter the waking day, testing the waters. He goes unnoticed. With this small victory, he tentatively begins walking among the living again, concealing himself in shadow as much as possible. He never speaks. He reentered the waking day for the world itself, to remember shape and color. More years pass.

In the warmth of an early summer morning, he walks down the street of an unfamiliar town. The shadows shorten in the spin of the sun, sliding backwards into their source with exuberant cries, the brilliant scintillation join and exult. Timeless, light floods around him, cascading against his shadow in a continuous waterfall. It bounds across the breadth of the sidewalk, across the cracks in the concrete, across the blades of grass, and lands in a vibrant pool circling the feet of another. In the chaotic flow, her shadow is thrown outwards for him to see, and it is hideous, a shadow grown in concrete. Yet her beauty draws the light from the sun, embraces it with the might of the world. It is for this embrace that so little can become of her shadow. He is drawn to her, himself reflected in the pools of light dancing through her eyes, his own dark beauty approaching, and suddenly, he feels like running.

How could he even think about it? After how the world of light had seared his skin‌ He wanted to slip back into the shadows and haunt the night once more. The torrid thorn dug into his side, a silent moan, fear, the shadowed head of pain, all curled into a barb cutting at the lining of his stomach. He takes a step in retreat, but as he moves, he sees the same hesitation in her eyes, the same disillusion pulling at the corners of her lips. Sadness, the juxtaposition of black night and a hint of the early dawn, appeared in her movements. He could see her pain, her torrid thorn, clearly in her hesitation, her single stepped retreat. Her shadow was the reflection of his form.

She smiled. A slight, shy, unsure smile at first, but it blos92

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somed. Blossomed into white light. The day shown through her lips. His heart raced and tried to pull his limbs into its center. Now, slowly, unsure and nervous, he approached again and their shadows mingled in the light.

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Brittany Kline You Look Up to the Sky You look up to the sky, And see an array of clouds passing you by.

Young children often lay on the pristine summer grass, Seeing animals and objects in the clouds as they pass.

You look up to the sky, And see the half-crescent moon.

There are times you want to sit on the steepest tip, And have it take you away, as if you were on a sailing ship.

You look up to the sky, And see the planes up high.

Going to far off places that no one knows, Meeting family and friends or maybe long lost foes.

As you look up to the sky, you see the stars shining back, Letting you know that your hopes and dreams are still on track.

The sky doesn’t talk, just has open ears, For you to let out your unyielding excitement; let out your deepest fears.

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In a world full of happiness, hatred and tears, It’s nice to know that the sky will be there through unpredictable years.

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Caitlin Johnson The Barn

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est Chester, Pennsylvania is a busy town crowded with shops, restaurants, and a large college campus. Walk just a mile or so in the opposite direction of the campus, and all that disappears: no bumper-to-bumper traffic, no constant noise and bustle. Just a mile or so out of town, it is quiet, and buildings are scarce and trees are many. In this beautiful setting, on the edge of Route 52, is a large barn almost 200 years old. The stucco over the stone walls is worn, the entrance room on the left is delicate, the residence on the right is simple, giving the whole building an ancient yet powerful appearance.

Every Sunday, I walk the mile from my dorm on campus to this place, often greeted by one of the three friendly barn cats. In Ireland, the people speak of a Thin Place - a place everyone has where they feel most safe and closest to themselves - and Baldwin’s Book Barn is my Thin Place.

I took a friend to the barn two weeks ago, and walking into the first room, he was immediately entranced by the beautiful first editions that lined the walls, bound tightly in leather and embossed with gold leaf. I almost had to drag him out of the entrance room so he could see the main attraction: five floors filled ceiling to floor with books. These five floors were the home of books ranging from history to science fiction, classic literature to children’s stories, nature to music, literary criticism to geography. The books were all used and came in all sorts of conditions: recently printed, decades old, barely touched, falling apart. Many people go to a used book store merely for the discounted prices. I, on the other hand, went for the beauty

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and variety of the books.

My favorite thing to do was find a book that looked like it had been loved by somebody and look in the front cover to find a message. Fathers gave their daughters Pride and Prejudice, aunts gave their nephews Robinson Crusoe. Their words of care and advice were followed by an elegant signature, and it made me wonder why the daughter or nephew would ever give away such a precious gift. These were the books that most tempted me - if the initial owner would not care for it any longer, I would. I would cherish it and learn from the story and connect its meaning to the note preceding it. That is the wonder of a used book store.

I went to Baldwin’s Book Barn every Sunday and, loving it so much, asked the man who worked there on weekends a few questions. Fred Dannaway said the barn itself was built in 1822 by a prominent family in the area, and it served as a dairy barn until the 1930s, put out of business by the Great Depression.

In 1946, Mr. Dannaway told me, William Baldwin saw this old barn just sitting there, and “I don’t know what went through his head, but he saw potential in it.” The Baldwin family had book businesses in other areas since the 1930s, including West Chester, and no one can say what he saw in this barn, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Back then, there were no houses around it, nothing, just trees. “It was a bold move,” said Mr. Dannaway, “But look at us now!” The Book Barn gets business everyday, weekends being the busiest.

Still curious about the barn, I asked what sort of changes were made to turn it from a dairy barn to a book barn. The barn originally had three stories, each being wide open spaces, and they were made into five floors with sections and rooms. Considering the number and weight of all the books, the barn had to be totally restructured to support those thousands of books.

Originally it was just the barn itself, and then the entrance room was added on the left and the residence on the right. Mr. Dannaway told me that the owner, the founder’s son, lives there Johnson

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now, “I guess Tom likes being with the books.”

What I liked about the Book Barn was that it seemed untouched by this era of technology: my own window into the simplicity of the past. One would come to the store, look around, relax, buy what treasures they discovered, and leave. There was no sales clerk following them around to convince them that this copy of a book was better than another or asking over and over, “May I help you?” Mr. Dannaway and Mr. Baldwin knew how to help a customer find a certain book not because they looked it up in a computer, but because they organized the books themselves. I did, however, see a computer behind the front counter.

I asked how the internet has changed business, and Mr. Dannaway proudly said, “The Barn was one of the first small businesses in the area to utilize the internet. Thirty percent of the Barn’s business is done online.” His job, when he started in 2000 as a part-time worker, was to upload all their books online.

The internet was also useful for finding appropriate prices for books. All Mr. Dannaway had to do was go onto a book-selling site and look up a common price for a book, and then he could give the book a reasonable price judging by its condition.

In most cases, though, Mr. Dannaway said pricing the hundreds of books that come in took a “feel”. He did not like telling me this - how can you rely on a gut instinct to price a book? - but I knew what he meant. He had to think of what he would pay for it due to age, condition, popularity of the author, if it was a first edition, etc. His “feeling” was put to the test just last week when I asked to buy a book from the fifth floor, which was filled with un-priced books typically not for sale. It was a worn-out copy of The Neverending Story, a tale I grew up with and treasured. I had to have it. He looked up the book on Amazon.com then came back to me and asked how much I thought the book would go for. Put on the spot, I had to admit I knew the price because I had bought a newly printed copy at Borders only months ago, quickly adding that I liked this copy much more. At Borders, my paperback copy went for less than ten dollars, so I figured a 98

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hardback would be closer to twenty. He looked baffled and said that the book was $250 on Amazon.com. I lost all optimism, having only $50 dollars with me. Not to mention, my parents would not be too happy with me for buying such an expensive book I already had. “So,” Mr. Dannaway said, his optimism of my buying the book also gone, “judging by the condition, I’ll have to ask for $25.” I told him it was a deal without hesitation.

This weekend, remembering the incident, he told me I really got a good deal, and no one knew it better than I. My newly treasured book was something special: red woven cover frayed at the edges, yellowed pages, and a beat up dust jacket. Someone had loved this book and taken fairly good care of it. My next question was how the Barn came to have all the wonderful books. Mr. Dannaway said there were three main ways they got the books, “One, we buy them; two, we trade them for store credit; and three; people donate them.” Of the first situation, Mr. Dannaway said that now, in the present economy, the Barn did this mostly for up-end books and first editions. Of the third, Mr. Dannaway pointed out the front window and said, “Did you see all those books taking up the porch on your way in? A guy in a Uhaul came by yesterday and donated them. It took two hours just to unload them all.” Though I could not imagining giving up all those books, I admired him, whoever he was, for donating them to the Barn.

It was clear that, like I, Mr. Dannaway had an appreciation for the Barn. I asked him what he liked best about working here.

To my delight, he said, “I love books: reading them, handling them, being around them. It’s a good job when they pay you to do what you love to do. I didn’t know I wanted to work full-time after being a teacher until I found this place.” He also said he liked the customers, especially the travelers and “book people” who came and shared their stories and love of stories with him.

I imagined myself being one of Mr. Dannaway’s “book people,” so I told him of the Irish Thin Place and that Baldwin’s Book Barn was mine. He told me that my Thin Place idea reminded him of Johnson

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a man who used to come to the Barn regularly. The man always sat in the chair by the wood-burning stove in the entrance room, and he wrote or read or just relaxed. This man told Mr. Dannaway that there were three places in a person’s life: where they had lived, where they were, and where they wanted to be.

“And this,” he told Mr. Dannaway, “Is where I want to be.”

As a final note, I half-jokingly asked Mr. Dannaway if Mr. Baldwin was hiring. With a laugh he said, “No, but come back in April and ask him for a summer job. Go right on back and talk to him; he’d like that.” I thanked Mr. Dannaway and said goodbye to the same cat that had welcomed me so warmly. Then I walked the mile back to my dorm from the Barn with yet another beautifully worn out book eating a hole in my wallet, determined to do just that.

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Touched by an Angel A Journal Entry from 05/08/2009 had to write today because it’s been raining. The rain made me think of Chaz, a friend of Angee and Christina’s. Chaz died during summer break. The Holy Spirit Church youth group went on a pilgrimage to Ireland, and Angee, Christina, and Chaz were among them. Just after they got back - weeks, maybe even days after - Chaz was hit by a car. Apparently, he was listening to his iPod, and he couldn’t hear the traffic going by. When he stepped out from between parked cars and into the road, a driver hit him - hadn’t even seen him coming. Chaz lingered for a short while, and then he died shortly after being taken to the hospital. Christina told me all this, crying on my shoulder a few nights later.

I became interested in Chaz and asked lots of questions. I was baffled by Christina’s insistence, “He shouldn’t have been taken so soon. He was so full of life.”

And Chaz was full of life...

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I heard stories: Chaz couldn’t sit still. He was afraid that if he sat still he’d miss something: he’d miss some great adventure or small memory to appreciate in reminiscence.

Chaz loved life, and he lived every second of his life to the fullest. Everyone told him to be careful, that he’d burn his energy out by the time he really needed it as an adult... He didn’t listen.

Chaz loved everyone - he was especially close to his youth group friends. And when Christina, Angee, and a few other girls went to visit Chaz’s parents after his death, his dad said, “I swear, Chaz would have married one of you. I would have liked that.”

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During the pilgrimage in Ireland, it rained a lot, but that didn’t stop Chaz. He explored every inch of every place he could. One evening, after hours of hard volunteer work and sight-seeing, the girls took showers and collapsed into bed. Just as they were falling asleep, Chaz barged into the room and shook them awake. Bouncing with excitement and impatience, he said that he had found a water fall and that they had to come with him to see it now! The girls told him to wait until the next day, but Chaz said that it absolutely could not wait. He dragged them out of bed and into the sunset. They walked along a path, and then Chaz cut off the path and into the woods. The girls were getting nervous, afraid they were going to get lost and die, and then they arrived at the waterfall. The water made a straight drop and then flowed down a steep bed of huge rocks, the treefiltered light of the sun hitting it as it sunk below the horizon.

The girls couldn’t believe their eyes - it was like their own secret paradise, and no one would have known about it if it weren’t for Chaz.

Chaz loved the rain and thunder and lightning. Angee hated rain and was terrified by lightning. In the middle of a storm one day, Chaz made her and a few others watch the lightning with him. Because of Chaz, Angee felt safe. At Chaz’s service, “a celebration of his life,” there was a sudden crash of thunder and flash of lightning... And that was it: no rain, no more thunder or lightning, just the clear black night sky. A while after Chaz’s death, Angee and Christina were watching the little Sunday School kids as they played outside, and it began to downpour.

They ran for the church, and Angee shouted into the storm, “Fuck you, Chaz!” She and Christina burst out laughing, thinking Chaz must have been having a good old time teasing them.

For some reason, Chaz left an impression on me. I didn’t even know the guy, and I’ve cried over him, growled through my teeth that it wasn’t fair that he died, and even had a dream or two about meeting him. He must have been some really special 102

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guy to be able to affect someone who never knew him. When it thunders and lightnings, I think of Poppop because he loved watching the storms, and now I also think of Chaz. When it rains - giving me a sinus headache or soaking me to the bone - I curse Chaz like Angee did. I look back on opportunities I passed by, even the little ones, and remembered how Chaz never let one go. I tell myself to be more like Chaz in that sense. Who knows when my last moment will be - I can’t afford to keep missing them.

I don’t get it. I’ve never had someone touch me like Chaz has.

When I tell people how I feel, they say to just let it go, that it can’t be that hard. But for some reason it is - it shouldn’t be, but I can’t make myself feel differently. I was literally touched by an angel. I feel that I love Chaz even though I never met him, and I want to get to know him through his friends. I want to learn his stories and write them down.

You know when people talk about death and say the greatest hope is to leave something behind so they’re not forgotten?

Well, Chaz really left something: he left his smile, his laugh, his mistakes, his frowns. He left his love of adventure and his appreciation for every single moment of life.

Chaz left this life too soon - he was stolen wrongfully - but he left a lesson with all who knew him and even some who didn’t.

Chaz reminds us all to live, really live, and not just the big moments but also the small because sometimes the small joys and sorrows are the most important.

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Devon Kehler Where You Are You smile, I smile.

You laugh, I laugh.

You cry, I cry.

Where you are, There am I. When you inhale, I exhale.

When you leave, I stay.

When you speak, I stop.

Where you are, There I wait.

I speculate, You reason.

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I doubt, You reassure.

I break, You reassemble.

Where I am, There you are.

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Song of the Secretary Jibber-jabber, blabber-blather, all these words crowding the air.

Ringing, bringing, buzzing dinging, all these sounds make it impossible to hear.

I want to scream. I want to dance.

I just want to get my head out of these files.

I open doors and force a smile, And it probably seems I could go on for miles.

Back and forth, Hence and thereforth.

Checking p’s and balancing q’s, Typing woes, spelling blues.

Newsletters, Memorandums, Flyers, Forms, and Faxes.

Does anyone even notice who is behind these glasses?

Well, I do! And I salute you, secretaries of the world.

Without you, we would surely unfold.

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SeVeReD Feeling kinda gone, be?

Looking sorta lost.

Wanting to go home,

Sinking pretty low.

What’s it gonna When will I see?

Who’s to blame For all my shame?

Put it all together, In the end, I cry myself to sleep then the game begins Who is really a friend?

Hoping my soul will break.

If I’m severed, I’ll be free to

escape.

You know who you are, All of my mind You’ve torn me apart.

Gone in time.

My heart feels its cage,

I’m left with only rage.

There’s no one left to trust No one writes pretty songs

anymore I’m alone here without pride, robbed of dignity Is there any joy?

All because of your disgusting envy.

I know you aren’t listening Oh look- now I’m starting to rust.

I see your empty stare,

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stripped me bare.

Maybe one day you’ll see how much you’ve taken from me. Somehow, I just don’t care.

You lurk around corners, waiting, watching, hoping.

Feeding off my my fearHungrily you wait for one more tear.

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Alanna Smothers The Only Part Worth Eating

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keep waiting for something to change. The days get shorter as the nights get longer; despondence creeps at the back of my head, dragging me vengefully into the dark abysses of my mind. I slowly open my eyes and look to my right, the bright LCD of the clock reads three thirty-eight. I rub the sleep out my eyes as I hastily get up, untangling my damp limbs from the confines of my bed sheets. This is the fourth time this week I haven’t been able to sleep, and it’s starting to show. As I make my way to the bathroom, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I am merely a shadow of my former self. The things people who knew me would recognize are no longer there. The shadows have crept up to take refuge underneath my eyes and the hair that lies on my face marks me brusque and harrowing.

After I finish, I go downstairs to my refrigerator to find something to eat. I’m not hungry, but I need something to do. I rifle through the fridge for what seems like centuries, but the only things I can find there are a crusted old bottle of mustard, and a three month old jar of grape jelly. Cringing at the possibilities, I open the freezer, hoping to find something slightly more appetizing. Inside, there’s a box of ice cream cones, but there’s only one left. I take the last one, and rip off the wrapper. I bite off the end, the part with the chocolate, and throw away the rest. I take my time as I slowly chew it, because it’s the only part worth eating.

I contemplate turning on the TV to watch Adult Swim, but I only know that will force me to laugh, something I don’t really feel like doing at the moment. Instead, I grab my coat and a pair Smothers

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of running shoes from the closet and go outside. It’s warmer than I expect, so I don’t put on the coat, I just leave it dangling from my arm. There’s one flickering streetlight on, and a bum sitting at the corner staring at a puddle shaped like a tyrannosaurus rex. I start walking in the direction opposite the bum. I have no idea where I’m walking, but I just let my feet lead me.

Eventually, I find myself at the pool hall. I peek inside, but I can’t get the nerve to go in, because I’m wearing my pajamas and a pair of running sneakers and it is four a.m. in the morning.

Still, I continue to look in because I can see her. She’s sitting at the bar by herself, but she doesn’t look lonely. I can’t read the expression on her face, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the lighting in the hall, or because I never could. Her dress is slightly dirty and wet, as if she walked the five miles to get there without a jacket or an umbrella. Her left foot taps mechanically to the beat of the music playing from the old fashioned jukebox posted in the corner: Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”

The bartender brings her another drink, and it looks like it could be either rum or whiskey. I think hard for a moment about what she drinks, but then I decide that I don’t care. As I turn my head away, I almost look back. But this time I don’t.

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Angela Thomas

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Midnight on the Farm: Ode to Austen

er eyes grew darker and her hands began to shake. “I must keep writing, I must keep writing. He has to know that I love him, I must keep writing!” The air was moist with a pint of humidity. Her hands grew sticky and sweaty from holding her pen too tight. The paned window flew back and forth, creating a desperate rhythm. The house was dark except for the small candle that made the shadows of the night. Mama was sleeping and so were the cows. She attempted to close the window but was caught in a dizzy spell. The sky melted into itself, creating a swirl of pink and orange. The summer heat was sticking to her nightgown, drowning her in more desperation. She grabbed the pen, writing again. “The love I have for you is...is...” and the words were stuck.

Stuck in the sweltering heat, desperate to cling onto something, desperate not to let go. “The words won’t appear, I need the words” she cried out, to the cows, to the pigs, to anything that would listen. “So you have won” she wrote. “Your spell has been casted and it reached me.” She needed him to know that she regretted ever letting go. “Your words have played over and over again in my head.” She wanted him, he needed her, and she was petrified of that, of even the notion of love. She was in his head, everywhere he went, she went. “Though, darling, you belong to another. It is me you want and it is your arms that I need.” And with that, she dropped her pen. The night sky grew dangerous, the animals sensed her need for something more. She needed something more from him. He was not her completely. And that was when she realized that love was dead to her, love was nothing more than a fictional story to be written.

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Meredith Spratt Intellectual, Perpetual and Found Intellectual, perpetual and found Evolving sun rises east, and stays a glistening round Juicy flowing insides and a tightly wrapped exterior God of Sun believes his belongings left inferior Hair twisted sideways, and braided to the crown The Sun God weeps because his people leave a frown Maintaining inequality, hatred, and delusion For most souls cannot relate to the hardship and confusion Skies break neatly so their skin absorbs the Sun God’s Love Beautiful minds keep faith for there is a life Above.

Omnipresence in the Dark Night of the Soul Embracing the darkest night of my soul, Whispering gentle devotions so the spirit takes control I begin to cry while I have the world at my feet, For the bland has scratched out deity with mere and harsh defeat Overcome I crawl to wrap myself in wrinkled cotton warmth Yet suddenly the window has burst open for omnipresence sets forth Shackled once more, heavy chains baring me to ground My omnipresence would fly freely with this darkness left unfound.

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I Leave My Thoughts at Two O’clock, Return Sometime at Eight Heaviness of broken spell, your utterances intentionally equate.

Pull the blinds on top these eyes, kept distant of this chosen slate.

Romance thrives on infrequent boundary of spirit disguised as flesh.

Sorrow of this heart remains for no other life does mesh.

Words of My Root; Misunderstanding Each fast forward is a misunderstanding Though it remains the same, just darkens with each handing Harder for me to capture what is written in ink When the physical now takes over all that I must think Seeds are the beginning of an expected progression But a tree that stands tall is Old without Lesson Shameful to hide behind mountains of growth When you recognize the same scars in each and in both Ironic is paper that is stripped down from tree When words of my root are setting me free.

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Ginger Rae Dunbar Four Angels Lost Their Lives *Tape begins to record “On March 25, 2007 at 2:43 a.m. police responded to the scene of a car accident, alcohol related. The only persons still alive when the ambulance came have been taken to Delaware County Memorial Hospital. For the record, that was the driver, Michelle Anderson, age 18. Her blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit for drivers of age. The other person in critical condition was taken to the same hospital, but was D.O.A. (dead on arrival). Let the record show, the victim was sitting in the back seat behind the driver. She was the only passenger wearing a seatbelt. Her name was Alex Brass, age 16. Her B.A.C. was a .04. These were the only two victims carrying their IDs. They both attended Maplewood High School. I believe they may have gone to school with the three other victims. Since their names are unknown for now, I will refer to the victims as numbers and indicate where they sat in the car. In the death seat was--” *Click - recorder off Officer Jake Caley stopped the tape recorder as he cursed under his breath. He rewound the tape to cover over his recording of what he considered the ‘shotgun’ seat. He began to record again. *Click - recorder on Caley continued to analyze the scene.

“In the front passenger seat was a male, victim three. His B.A.C. was determined to be a .27. As a result of the accident, 114

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his position is so that his head and left hand are sticking out of the window. He broke the window, there’s still glass on his lap and all over the road. As I’m looking now, I can see he had his seatbelt on around his waist but he put it behind his back. This is what kept him in the seat, but the way he had the seatbelt allowed him to nearly go out the window. It looks like his neck was broken, the autopsy will determine how.

One reason could be how he was forced out of the window and forced to stay in his seat. Or the passenger behind him, victim four, could have flown from his seat and hit the back of victim three’s neck. Vic four has a concussion on his head. His body landed in between the driver and front passenger seats.

He is on top of the emergency brake. This boy had a B.A.C. of .39. I’m not even sure he was conscious when the accident occurred. He drank so much, I’m not sure he would have survived the night either way. In his wallet he has a fake ID of a licensed driver that is 22 years old. I’m willing to bet he uses this to when buy alcohol for him and his friends.

Victim five is the only one not in the car anymore. By not wearing her seatbelt, the impact caused her to fly forward just like victim four did, but having nothing to stop her, victim five went through the front windshield. She hit the hood of the car and probably rolled off. The driver kept driving and drug her friend about seven or eight feet to where the car finally stopped.

I don’t think the driver knew what was happening until she saw victim five go out through the windshield. She’s caught by her feet still under the car. Only God knows how long she suffered for.

While the fire fighters are on their way to get the bodies out, I’ll examine the car. There’s a dent on the hood, probably from victim five going out the windshield, hitting the hood after.

There are scrapes along the right side of the car going from the front to the back door. Might have side swiped a car or a tree, but she kept on driving. There is an indent on the front bumper.

That’s probably what caused the whole accident, whatever they Dunbar

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hit. There’s nothing around but some debris from the car.

The sirens are getting louder and I can see the flashing lights of the fire trucks. They are reporting to the scene twenty minutes after it was called in. The call was made by an anonymous caller at 2:39 a.m.

My partner and I arrived at 2:44 a.m. and were able to get two living victims out of the car and into the ambulance. My partner is in the car taking notes for the report. For the record, I’m his training officer. *Caley took a long pause, exhaling softly He heard victim five mumbling from under the car when the ambulance was approaching. We helped the paramedics get the two survivors out. As I helped put the second victim in the ambulance, my partner talked to the fifth victim. I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying and he hasn’t said a word since the girl stopped talking. In her last words, she said: ‘Help me ... it hurts ... (crying) please get me out ...’

I heard my partner talking with her, trying to keep her focused.

The paramedics were helping two of her friends. He asked her for her name and age. . . Kelly was seventeen.

I saw my partner holding her hand, trying to reassure her that help was on the way.

Her other hand was holding her stomach, I looked under the car. I could see blood slipping in between her fingers. The autopsy report will have the details on the wound; it must be from something on the car as she was dragged along on the road.

I continued to check on the other passengers, this is when the ambulance arrived. The paramedics helped the living victims, we got the two out and into the ambulance.

While I helped the one paramedic, the other bent down next to my partner to check on her status. I knew there was probably room for only two people, squeezing a third victim would be difficult, if at all possible.

The paramedic sat upright, looking at my partner, officer Taylor Ryder as she shook her head sadly. We came to the realiza116

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tion that she would bleed to death.

The paramedic behind me, I could hear him saying that they had to move and get these two victims to the hospital. As she stood to return to the ambulance, the male paramedic said to hurry because one of the girls was in desperate need of medical attention. I got the call of her death, victim two, before I started this recording. Victim five also died, minutes after she saw the ambulance speed off without her. I think it was a mixture of a loss of blood and hope.

When Kelly, victim five, knew she would die, she asked officer Ryder again, not to leave her and she squeezed his hand tightly.

She cried less as she kept saying how sorry she was and how much she loves her family. She said to tell her family she’s sorry.

And when I didn’t hear anymore soft cries, I looked down, her hand relaxed, but Ryder still held her hand for a minute more.

He still isn’t talking and I understand. This is the second scene we arrived at together that had dead bodies. This was the first time he talked with someone till their last moments . . . it’s hard.

I can’t even begin to describe what it’s like.” *Caley paused before turning the tape recorder off. *Click off Caley looked over at his partner and then at the fire fighters who were using the jaws of life to get the front passenger door to open.

Caley focused on the car and then looked to the side of the road. He thought about how the kids friends and classmates would find out about their deaths. They would set up a memorial for the students who died in the drunk driving accident.

Their school mascot is the angels, maybe they were set up four angels to represent the students that were killed there. The fifth angel would be arrested after she woke up to find out that she was responsible for the death of four of her friends. Along with the angels, flowers, cards, and stuffed animals would be placed along the road that the teenagers lost their lives on.

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A Myth

A

s she gets ready for bed, she pulls out a picture frame and candle from the nightstand by her bed. She carefully places the picture frame down on the nightstand. She lights a match and gently touches it to the candle. It brightly lights the room with a yellow glow, allowing her to see the man in the picture. It’s her husband. Was her husband. This has been her nightly routine since her husband disappeared with his troop during the Second World War.

Most of the men in her husbands troop were found dead.

There were still a handful of soldiers that were never found.

The wives believed their husbands were still out there and coming home to them. Some of them told their children that their Daddy would be back. All of the women gave up hope after a couple of months and moved on with what they had left.

All of them expect for one. Ms. Donnell. That is why she lights the candle in front of the last picture taken of him. She prays for him to come back to her. For him to be with her, to love and to care for.

After the first year went by since his disappearance, the military sent her benefits in the mail with their regards. Despite this, she refused to believe what they were telling her. She thought her husband couldn’t be dead. Each night she would light the candle and look at his picture during her sleepless nights.

One night seemed different, she seemed physically and mentally tired. She couldn’t take it anymore, she couldn’t take being without him. She was realizing that she was going to be alone till her end. She promised herself to him and refused to be with anyone else. Tonight, she began crying, wanting it to be the end for her too. She cries herself to sleep most nights.

As she drifted off to sleep, she was shaking from crying so

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much. She pulled the covers up to her chin to warm-up. She felt somebody behind her put their arm around her, as if snuggling with her. They pulled the covers up and tucked her in. Then he kissed her on the forehead, saying goodnight. He promised her he would stay with her and that he would always be with her.

When Ms. Donnell woke up the next morning, she looked around the room confused. She thought that someone was there with her, but of course it must have been a dream. Or was it her husband that was with her? Had he come back . . . from the dead?

The candle was blown out, it usually burns throughout the night into the morning. There was a hand written letter by the candle on the nightstand. It was a note from her husband.

The letter read:

My Dearest Love, We have been separated for far too long and yet further than you can imagine. I did not make it out alive, but I had to come back to you somehow. No longer wait around for me. No longer do I want you to light the candle as a path home for me as I am guided up to heaven now. I will always be with you, looking over you and being in your heart. With all my love in the world for you, cry no longer.

Your husband of twenty-three wonderful years xoxo She was tearing up, but stopped the tear from rolling down her cheek. She finally had the closure and reassurance that she needed. She placed the candle in the nightstand as she would never light it again. She turned to lay back down on the bed. As she looked down at the covers, she could see a body impression on the other side of the bed with the covers untucked.

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Megan McCormick

T

A Joyous Non-Sequitur

he autumn air was crisp and cool as it quietly swept in through the open window. Effortlessly, the zephyr caused a strand of hair to gently rustle against my cheekbone. I sat totally quiescent, my arm softly rested on the window frame. Silently I observed as humanity bustled about with great intention and vigor, all wrapped up in the seemingly pressing issues of banal everydayness. Sky blazing with color, the sun wearily slipped behind the horizon. Sunlight glinted off the windshields of all the tiny metallic cars wedged tightly into their regimented spaces.

It was a neat and orderly little lot, marred only by the occasional misplaced shopping cart or bad parking job. The neon sign of the supermarket blared into the abyss of pending darkness as mothers purposefully pushed their children across the asphalt in rattling metal carts while businesspeople and thirty-somethings strode onward with determination and deliberation, clinging tightly to their cell phones, voices fast and expressions somber in the face of everyday concern. As I observed, a bizarre yet familiar feeling crept through my being, and I was seized by the sudden urge to laugh. I gradually became hysterical as I looked upon all of that ridiculous pavement outside of that preposterous establishment with all of those silly little people and all of their silly, serious little lives, trifling dramas, vices and follies, routines and rituals, notions of importance, beliefs and commitments. There I was with my insignificant little existence, as silly as the lot of them, sitting back, watching, and thinking about them in all this silliness. There we all were, whirling about with illusory purpose in a senseless, indifferent universe. I just 120

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could not stop laughing. In the words of writer John Morreall, “If we simply shift to a more cosmic perspective than we usually adopt, then not only our present concerns but the whole history of our species looks insignificant. . .[A]ny incongruity can be funny. . .[t]he human condition itself is funny.”1 The entire ride home was spent chuckling to myself about the circumstances of human existence, appreciating just how contingent and arbitrary it all is. I strangely found joy and relief in realizing absurdity as the crushing weight of my struggles and failures began to seem less and less important in the cosmic scheme of things.

Unburdened by my worries, I took pleasure in the clear stars and the tall silhouettes of the trees. How absurd of me.

1. Morreall, John. Taking Laughter Seriously (Albany: SUNY, 1983), pages 122–23

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Sara Crawford Fever Night with Lover In the morning I can’t be sure I’ve slept at all until I see you as if it’s been a night since I saw you last.

Cold, wet sheets under yourise, light a cigarette, offer me a dragi don’t see how you can smoke this earlyi only think of saying it. i accept the small token: the way we keep time: five minute clocks burning to cold ash.

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Dinner I can smell the fury and I delight in the simmering station at the end of this chipped pine table.

People are sweating red beads like colored plastic paper flowers and I, well I can smell envy too, kissing the necks of the few staring at their white plates, the burnt greenscent of charred crops twitching their noses.

I can almost taste the sallow skin of the camarones watching with long bubbly syrup saliva dripping from their yellow toothed smiles.

The hunger is the color of bruised bananas and just as desperate one could wipe the walls and find grease like the inner workings of working things.

(That stuff sticks with you.

Where does it all come from?)

We’d had hot and cold conversations Crawford

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in dead languages for years; Somehow ending in blissful, metered conclusion concerning the appropriate way to cook chicken on Thursdays.

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Kevin Basl At a Yard Sale in Point Summit, Ohio Donald

Edward

A skinny man wearing spandex shorts is approaching my table. His legs are matted with black, wiry hair and his tee shirt has yellow sweat stains around the armpits that remind me of a polished geode. I would never talk to this guy under any other circumstances. I greet him, though, because I want to make a sale. He does resemble my friend Bill. It’s definitely the posture. That reminds me: I should call Bill to invite him to Bible study.

I’ve been meaning to get him into that stuff—away from his computer.

I’m walking up to this heavy guy’s yard sale table. He has some random antiques laid out in a sort of circular pattern on top of a checkered table cloth. All junk, except for maybe the Rubik’s Cube— and the Nixon/Agnew salt and pepper shakers. He says hi to me, though it’s obviously forced. This guy is a loser, no doubt. A real social reject.

I can picture him at home on a Saturday night watching reruns of pro wrestling, eating marshmallow fluff out of the jar, all while surfing internet porn. I’ll just scan his table, then move on.

He’s looking at the sleeping bag. That thing is nearly brand new. I can probably ask thirty bucks for it. I think I took it out of the plastic sack

At the side of his table, I see what appears to be an unused sleeping bag. I’ve been looking for a new bag, especially with that trip I’ve

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once, maybe twice. I know that I used it over at Steve’s house that one time. Oh, I did use it when the furnace was out for a few days back in February. Maybe I don’t want to sell the thing after all.

planned to the Smoky Mountains coming up next month.

It’s gross to buy a used sleeping bag, though. That’s just as bad as a hand-me-down mattress. I guess it wouldn’t kill me to at least take a look.

He asks me to hand him the bag. I pass it to him. He doesn’t thank me. Asshole.

Keeping my cool, I say, “I think that the warranty is still good.” He doesn’t seem to hear me. I always get freaks like this when I have yard sales. If a person thinks that they’re too high and mighty to come to my sale, on my property, they should stick with Macy’s. Don’t come to my yard sale expecting to be treated as if you’re in some five star hotel. Oh, now he’s snickering at me. I should just tell this guy to walk his bony ass off my lawn. Take his attitude over to Wal-Mart.

I ask to see the bag. At the same moment that I take it from his hands, nostalgia hits me. Or maybe Déjà vu.

I think about being at a yard sale years ago, as a kid, looking at a toy toolbox that my neighbor had for sale. When I opened the box, a wasp flew out from inside—maybe it came from the bottom or wherever—and stung me on the lip. I swelled up to the size of a banana split and looked like I was going to give everyone a cartoon kiss for the rest of the day. That’s funny stuff. I haven’t thought of that in what must have been, jeez, fifteen years.

He takes the bag out of the plastic cover. I’m not going to cut this guy any breaks. Forty bucks, and that’s the lowest I’ll go. He’s going to try to talk me down, but I’ll hold out. I

I remove the sleeping bag from its plastic cover. It’s in good shape. It feels like it’s stuffed with goose down.

He could probably ask fifty bucks for this thing. I bet that

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don’t play games with people like this.

I can talk him down to thirty, maybe even twenty-five.

He unrolls the bag. I say to him, “It’s only been used once or twice—indoors.” I realize upon saying this that it may come across as weird to have used a sleeping bag indoors. Like I’ve been going to slumber parties or something. I say, “When my furnace died back in February, I used it for extra warmth on top of my bed. That thing was so warm and comfortable. I thought about telling the repair man that instead of fixing the heater, he could just take it with him. Use it for scrap metal.” A bad joke, if even a joke. But he laughs anyway. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy.

I unroll the bag and let it touch the ground. He tells me that he had used it a couple times indoors. I nod at him.

He scratches his chest, gives me a shifty look, then tells me something about his heater going out and how he had used the bag to stay warm. It makes me wonder what he had really used it for—and he’s still rambling about it over there? He probably frequented kids’ sleepovers, dressed up as one of those egg-shaped twins from Alice in Wonderland. Ha—what a sight! I should check the sexoffender registry when I get home. I can’t help but laugh at that.

He’s real particular, though.

I suppose that I would be, too, considering that this is a high dollar item. He asks me if he can get inside to see if it’s long enough. I say, “Be my guest.” He lays it on the ground, takes off his shoes, then slides his hairy legs into my sleeping bag.

Upon holding the bag up to my body, I realize that it may be too short. I ask, “Do you mind if I climb into this thing to see if it’s long enough?”

He tells me to go ahead; although, I can sense a bit of reluctance. I unzip it halfway, lay it on the ground, take off my shoes, then slide inside.

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He jumps out as soon as his feet touch the bottom. He tells me that there’s something in there. Ha! A snake, he says. That’s good—that just made my day. I only wish that I could have caught that on tape. I’d send it to one of those funny video shows.

Reflexively, I jump back out.

Something at the bottom of the bag feels like a coiled up snake. “There’s something in there,” I tell him. “Like a snake.” I step back from the bag and wait for something to come slithering out. Nothing does.

He thinks that I don’t believe him. He tells me to look for myself. I suppose that it’s possible that there could be a snake in the bag; but it’s more likely that this guy is a nut job. Regardless, I’ll have a look. I walk around the table to where the sleeping bag lay crumpled up on the ground. I give it a few nudges with my foot. Nothing happens. I pick it up, unzip it the rest of the way, then shake it. And here’s our snake: a rope has fallen out onto the grass. It’s a few feet long and has metal tips at the ends.

The man is standing behind the table with his arms crossed, getting a kick out of what I’m saying. I tell him that if he doesn’t believe me to check it out for himself. He looks at me as if I’m schizoid, then walks out from behind his table. He kicks the bag a couple times with his worn flip-flops. It doesn’t move.

Then he unzips it as far as it will go and shakes it like a wet towel. A length of rope falls out. It’s about four or five feet long. It’s black with what appear to be metal caps on the ends.

I pick it up. The man asks me what it’s made of. I honestly have no idea. I’ve never seen this rope, or any rope like it, before. I tell him that I don’t know. He says that it looks

He’s inspecting it. “What’s that made of?” I ask him.

The material looks like nylon, but with a higher fiber count. He tells me that he doesn’t know; that he’s never

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like it’s high quality material.

To me, it looks like genuine paranormal stuff. Like on one of those alien-hunting TV shows.

seen anything like it before.

“Whatever it is, it looks like high quality material,” I tell him. That’s all that I could think to say.

I hold it out so that he can feel it, too. The metal tips tingle. “It feels electrified,” I say. He puts out his hand and cautiously touches one of the ends.

He holds out the rope and tells me to feel the metal cap. He tells me that it sort of tingles; that it feels “electrified.” I reach over and touch one of the ends.

And…oh…damn, I’m sick. I think that I’m actually going to faint. What the hell is happening here? My head is reeling, and my skin feels like it’s roasting off. I’m going to puke—that’ll make me feel better. Puke? Do I know how to puke? I can’t even feel my body. And now the guy on the other end of the rope is going all blurry.

Immediately, I feel woozy. I feel like I have to vomit. Or maybe not. No, I’m alright; just a little dizzy. Spoke too soon: now I’m falling forward, being sucked up by the surroundings. It feels like I’m passing out from heat exhaustion. But that’s not the worst of it: the man in front of me is starting to morph into someone else!

Not someone else—that’s definitely me standing there! I remember putting on those spandex shorts this morning. And those are my shoes, too. This is a nightmare—get a grip. My double on the other end asks me what’s going on. Jesus, I’m

What is this? Am I really looking at myself standing at the other end of this rope? It’s like I’m in front of a mirror. I glance down at my hand still holding the metal cap on the rope. “What the hell is this?”

I say, realizing that my hand has grown black hairs and is

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dead, that’s what this is. That fat man behind the yard sale table must have shot me. This is like one of those out-ofbody experiences that they talk about on the religious channel. I should have gone to church like mom and dad said. I may soon be standing before the pearly gates, begging forgiveness.

much bonier than I remember it being a few minutes ago. My arms are skinny, too.

The rope seems to still be shocking me. I admit, though, that it’s sort of pleasurable.

This must be one of those divine interventions that they talk about at Bible study.

I’ve been waiting for one of these!

I look down at my body.

What? I have a gut now. And my hands are chubby. Oh, disgusting: I’m wearing those shower sandals that the yard sale guy had on. And his tee shirt, too. Somehow that man must have slipped me something when I approached his table, then switched our clothes. Wait, I got into that sleeping bag with the snake in it. It must have bitten me. I really am dying!

I look over at myself standing at the other end of the rope, still just a couple feet away. He—I—appear to be just as confused. I’m standing over there inspecting my body, rubbing my free hand across my belly as if I’ve lost something. This isn’t right.

Could that yard sale customer have drugged me? I’ve heard similar stories on the news.

Hopefully my neighbor sees this and has called the cops.

My head is spinning faster, faster. It seems like I have an entirely different pattern of thoughts. There are new concerns, new emotions, new motivations. Do I have a stomach ulcer that I have to take pills for? I don’t remem-

There are what seem like thousands—millions—of new ideas running through my head. It’s like the most vivid dream you could ever have.

What? I haven’t spoken with my sister in fifteen years? I don’t even have a sister. I’m

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ber that. The doctor says that I need to lose weight because of my diabetes? Diabetes?

My mother is dying of breast cancer? Is she? I don’t remember that either. I have a cat named Apollo? No, I don’t think so.

in debt for fifty grand and my credit is shot? No, that’s not right. It’s like I have a new life on top of my old one—and I can’t say that I’m enjoying this. I repeat to myself, I am Don Wauber, I am Don Wauber.

I watch as my double drops the rope on the other end, then starts flailing as if being swarmed by wasps. I immediately realize why he’s over there dancing around in pain: it’s because the same thing is happening to me, too. And it definitely hurts. It’s like being sunburned all over, all at once. No, actually, it’s more uncomfortable than painful.

But there’s something oddly pleasuable, too. Like sliding into an outdoor hot tub after rolling naked in the snow.

I let go of the rope and immediately panic. There’s a new feeling: my skin is being turned inside out. Worse, there’s a ripping sound all around, and things are turning white. Or black—I can’t really tell. Now, a whooshing noise, and the sensation of being slammed around in a plane crash. At least, this must be what it’s like to be on a plane going down. And I’m very itchy. Hot, too. There’s a peeling sensation followed by cool air. Then, relief.

***

***

I wake up lying prone on my lawn. I look over to see that my customer is on the ground, too. I’m going to call the cops on this guy. Whatever he drugged me with was powerful stuff. It probably could have killed me.

What was that? Now I’m lying on the ground beside the sleeping bag. It was that rope.

It almost killed me. I think that it almost killed that yard sale guy, too. That rope must hold a charge. Must be an electrical cable of some sort.

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The skinny man is asking me about a rope. That’s right—I forgot about that rope that we had been messing with earlier. It was buried in my sleeping bag. That thing must have special powers. I was pretty sick a minute ago, though I feel fine now. Actually, I feel great. I bet that thing is worth a couple thousand, at least.

“How much for the rope?”

I ask the yard sale man.

He’s over there rubbing his head. He looks confused and doesn’t answer me. “I’ll give you ten,” I say. Still no answer.

Maybe I should just grab it and walk away. He wouldn’t be able to catch me. And, it looks like he’s still pretty out of it from what just happened.

“The rope is not for sale,” I tell him. He’s going to try to take it anyway, I can see that.

He tells me that he’s going to sue me. Sue me? How could he sue me? I say, “What are you going to sue me for, friend?” He doesn’t have an answer for that. People won’t stop at anything in this world to try to screw the next sucker over. Anything to make a buck—and don’t forget to step on the other guy’s head along the way. This asshole represents everything that is rotten in America today. But, with God as my witness, he won’t take a step off my lawn with that rope. I’ll see to that.

He says that the rope isn’t for sale. I think that I should just take it and walk. Yeah, I think I’ll do that. But, first, I should threaten him so that he won’t chase me. I say, “Buddy, I could sue you for almost killing me. You shocked me or something.” That obviously gets him worked up. He asks me what I could possibly sue him for. Honestly, I don’t know if I could or not. I do know of a good lawyer. I’ve heard that he has won cases for people convicted of some crazy stuff: rape, child molestation, even murder. But this guy won’t try anything anyway. I’m taking that rope.

He’s taking the rope. I have

I walk over to the rope and

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that .357 in the house that my uncle gave to me a few years ago. I bet that I could go get it, then catch him before he gets too far. I’ll show him who he’s messing with. I’ll put a bullet in his head. He thinks that he can steal from me? From me! Well, he’ll get something alright. I’m going to get my gun. I might need to teach this guy a hard lesson.

snatch it up. It’s still tingling.

Was I really shocked a minute ago? Or, was that something else? It’s hard to tell. I just know that I feel pretty good right now. I touch both ends together to see if the connectivity allows me to slip into that dream state again. Nothing. No out-of-body experiences, no crazy thoughts, no looking at myself from outside of myself.

My legs still feel wobbly from that rope. Or wire—whatever that thing is. I’m having some trouble getting up. My soonto-die customer is standing there holding the rope, trying to push the ends together. I shout, “You leave my property with my electronics and you’ll be wishing that you never stepped foot in Don Wauber’s yard sale.” No, that probably wasn’t threatening enough. God, I’m always saying stupid things like that.

I must need another person to make this thing work. Do I really want to do it with this guy again? Not in the least.

And speak of the devil: he’s finally getting up. Heh, and now he’s shouting at me. I really don’t want to ask this guy to grab the other end of this rope. I have to be sure about what it can do, though. It’s not worth risking felony theft charges for a worthless length of wire. And, that buzz it gave me wasn’t too bad either.

He actually has the nerve to ask me if I want to grab the other end of the rope again.

Is he serious? Maybe he’s just going to wait until I get near

“Buddy,” I say, “would you like to grab the other end of this rope with me?” That caught him off guard. He’s standing there, looking at me as if I

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him, then punch me in the face and run. Of course, he could have taken off already.

Maybe he is telling the truth.

My therapist has been saying that I need to take more risks in life. What would she tell me to do now? She’d say to grab the thing, I’m sure.

had just told a bad joke. He wasn’t expecting that one.

He’s probably thinking that I’m trying to bait him. I’d be thinking the same thing myself. You have to watch yourself these days. You never can tell what the other guy may be thinking.

Now he’s apologizing to me, saying that he wasn’t really going to sue me. This guy is a nutcase, no doubt. Probably one of those sex fiend masochists, too. You’d have to be to want to shock yourself like that again.

I say, “Sorry about saying that I would sue you a minute ago.

I wasn’t really serious. It just sort of came out. Heat of the moment stuff, you know?” I think that may have worked.

He seems to have calmed down a bit.

The man once more asks me to take the rope with him.

He’s holding it out, offering it like a dog treat. I ignore him and instead rearrange a few things on my yard sale table.

Then I look around to see that none of the neighbors are looking. A couple houses away, a boy is playing with a kick ball in the yard, batting the ball against his house with a broom handle. A cat is rooting through a flowerbed across the street. Otherwise,

I can still feel the tingle in the metal caps. This rope is powerful technology. There’s probably a good reason why I’ve never seen anything like it before. People can do some evil things with stuff like this.

“Well?” I say to the yard sale man, holding out his end of the rope. Instead of taking it, he starts to move a few things around on his table. He looks over his shoulder, then back in my direction. I look around, too; though, I don’t know

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Basl

the street is lifeless.

exactly what I’m looking for.

I walk over to my customer, stand face-to-face, and say, “Yeah, I guess I’ll grab that rope with you again.” Standing there, I imagine that I’m John Wayne in The Searchers.

It’s a trick that my therapist taught me a few years back.

Pick your favorite movie, then pretend that you’re the toughest character. It’ll get you through social anxiety, or so she said.

He walks over to me, stopping uncomfortably close.

He’s trying to intimidate me, I can tell. Is he pretending to be a gorilla? Unlikely. Finally, he agrees to take the rope.

Maybe it is stupid to be playing with this thing. Maybe I should just turn it over to the police. They’d know what it is. But this could be my ticket out of this hole-in-the-wall. I could make millions.

The man passes my end to me. I can’t tell if he’s genuinely smiling, or if he’s grinning like a painted circus clown.

We make eye contact, then I grab the metal tip. It’s cool at first, then hot. My body jolts a few times, my head bobbing atop my shoulders.

For a second, it reminds me of how my car starts on frigid mornings, jerking back and forth as metal grinds beneath the hood. Every time that happens, I get sick thinking that I’ll be late for work. But, eventually things get going.

It’s sort of like the feeling that I’m experiencing now.

I hand the yard sale man his end of the rope. There’s an awkward hesitation before he grabs the metal tip. Then the sensation hits: my body starts to peel back as a new world floods in from outside.

Now I can feel myself begin to bubble over, the sickness setting in. I’m briefly reminded of an overheated car that I once saw on the berm of a highway. Steam and hot water shot from the works as the driver poured a bottle of cold water into the radiator.

That’s probably the best way to describe the feeling that I’m experiencing now.

Basl

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