Te dec 2015 by Halcyon Magazine

January 2016

THE MAGAZINE FOR LOVERS OF UNPREDICTABLE PLOT TWISTS

Twisted Endings December 2015

Welcome to Twisted Endings The magazine for lovers Frequency: Mar ch & December Founding Editor: Monique Ber r y Designer: Monique Ber r y

of unpredictable plot twists Website: http://twistedendings.wordpress.com Email: monique.editor@gmail.com Twitter: @1websurfer

Table of Contents 2

Founder’s Final Word

English 101 by Dan Delehant

White Moths Fluttering by Susandale

Fear of Falling by Joan McNerney

Gliders by Martin Shaw

Panic Button by J. Andrews

Founder’s Final Word The one thing I love about being the founder is that I am privy to incredible talent before the world sees it. And what talent! Special thanks go to all the contributors who took a chance on being published in Twisted Endings. It was an honor and privilege to showcase your plot twists. The magazine has ended, but the “Wow, I didn’t see that coming” moments will live on through movies, novels, and life. Farewell.

Cover: © TTstudio / DollarPhotoClub This page: © robertosch / DollarPhotoClub Opposite: :© Kelly Young / Photoxpress.com

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And now letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s unwrap

the twisted endings... Twisted Endings December 2015

English 101 By Dan Delehant

Sometimes the most important things we learned in college did not come out of a book. One should not simply go to college to learn, but rather go there to learn how to maximize your ability to make money.

unior College or Community College as it is called these days, for many students was nothing more than an extension of high school. For me it was college “light.” Mostly just flirting, dating, and all the while playing at learning. I took English 101A at night only because some girl I was “dating” was in the class, although the class was required for my A.A. degree. There are two characters I’m recalling here. Short of Alzheimer’s I doubt I will forget either of them even if I live to some ridiculous age. The girl’s name was Cee-Cee. She had dark hair and darker eyes and a body that would give a male homosexual serious pause. She dressed for class like a Vegas hooker. On our first date I asked her what her career plans were and she informed me that she wanted to be a high-dollar escort/prostitute and she needed some education so she could better relate to, and impress her well-educated, wealthy clients. She asked me if I would be okay with her practicing her nascent prostitute moves with me. A young guy didn’t have to die to go to heaven. So I’m in Mr. Synick’s English class sitting behind my escort-intraining. (I swear – that was his actual name – Synick!) The first evening of class he stands in front just staring at us. He’s a goofy-

looking sort of guy, five-six or seven, a roundish bowling balllooking head with squinty washed-out eyes and a pear-shaped body. He’s wearing a cheap sport jacket that is missing a bottom button. His dingy white shirt was open a little at his belly exhibiting tufts of gross black hair. A minute went by and still he said nothing. Students were laughing a little but he just stood there stoic and silent. He looked like some beat-down, life-trodden Willy Loman. Finally he spoke, “How many of you are planning on being teachers?” About half the class raised their hands. “That’s what I figured – a classroom version of Ship of Fools.” (Ship of Fools was a Stanley Kramer film that was currently popular at the time.) Not too many in the class picked up on his sardonic remark. He laughed at his own joke and continued.

“Let me show you something, children.”

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Opposite: © jedphoto / DollarPhotoClub

He reached back for his wallet and as he did so it spread open his already open shirt and an even larger patch of his ridiculous hairy belly showed itself. The entire class chuckled in unison. He stopped with his hand poised at his wallet pocket, considered the smirks and laughter, and looked down at what his students were staring at.

“Oh people, for Christ’s sakes, it’s only hair. Some of us just happen to have more of it on our bodies than our heads. Now back to my hopeless task of educating you people.” He extracted his wallet and held it up. He opened it and flipped it over and shook it. A single dollar bill fell out and floated like a leaf to the floor. Then he turned the wallet towards us and held it open. It was empty of any more bills. “Here’s your future people – you’re gonna be broke!”

o I got my A.A. Degree (Liberal Arts, not Welding. Although, looking back, maybe I would have done much better financially with the welding thing.) Cee-Cee, pissed that she was defeated for Homecoming Queen and had to settle for being merely one of the Queen’s “Princesses” left the school at the end of that semester to start her “career.” I never saw or heard from her again. Then, in a pure and classic Shakespearian coincidence, twenty years later, I’m having a late night dinner with my wife at Morton’s Steakhouse inside Caesar’s Palace in Atlantic City and who should come sauntering by on the arm of some old dude but Cee-Cee herself! She looked magnificent, all showgirled-up with mile-high hair and stiletto heels.

“I know that woman,” I told my wife. “No you don’t,” she answered.

He glanced down at the dollar bill on the floor. “I’m forty-five years old and that dollar down there is my lunch money – for the rest of the week!” More laughter.

“This is no joke here people,” he said, raising his raspy voice, “so let me give you wanna-be educators some advice right off the top. My brother-in-law, who, like most, if not all of you, doesn’t know Beowulf from a werewolf, is a dentist. That wall-eyed, cross-eyed dolt makes a quarter million dollars a year! Not only that, but there’s not a single dental assistant who works in his office who doesn’t look like Natalie Wood or Kim Novak. So people, I strongly advise against this teacher merde. For you pedestrian pseudo-students, merde is French for shit. People! Go to dental school, or become a welder or a plumber. My brother is the latter and he owns six five-hundred dollar suits! You’re looking at the crème de la crème of my wardrobe right here.” So Mr. Synick was a real reflection of his name. He was a merdie teacher. No one in the class learned a freaking thing during the semester unless you count the admonition against pursuing teaching as a career. He spent most of the class time giving the more attractive girls “personal” instruction. He was forever bending over one or another of the several mini-skirted hotties with his salacious beady eyes riveted into their cleavage or their bare thighs. Cee-Cee got lots of his personal attention. He ignored me and most of the other guys in the class.

“You look like a welder,” he told me once as he was stooped over Cee-Cee at her desk. I had just asked him when our 3x5 cards for our term paper were due and that was how he answered me. After he told me I looked like a welder he thought for a second or two and then went on, “I don’t know,” he said without looking up from her half-exposed melons, “Hand them in or don’t hand them in? It’s not going to change the world either way. So do what you want with them. Hell, use them for toilet paper since that’s probably all they’re good for. But one thing I do know, you sir, would look good in a welding mask.” Of course the entire class busted up. Mr. Synick – the middleaged, horn-dog, comedian-teacher/asshole.

“Back in college I used to do her.” “No you didn’t – don’t you ever get tired of making things up?” A hostess was leading the now all grown-up and elegant Cee-Cee and her “date” to a prominent table. The three of them were coming right towards us. “Hi Cee-Cee,” I said. She looked down and stared at me. “Oh my God – Randy from college! Oh my God. What a surprise!” Her date stood there looking annoyed. He had to be seventy. Of course, being seventy is reason enough in itself to be annoyed, but no matter. The young hostess, menus clutched to her toga-covered bosoms, stood there patiently. I introduced my wife to Cee-Cee. “You are absolutely stunning,” she told Cee-Cee. It was no lie. “You are so sweet and not exactly a train wreck yourself, honey.” Everyone, except Cee-Cee’s date, chuckled. “Cee-Cee and I met in Mr. Synick’s English class back in our college days.” I informed my wife, the diffident hostess, and the annoyed old man, “What a piece of work that clown of a teacher was – huh Cee-Cee?” She laughed again and looked back at my amused wife and said, “So what has life been like for you my dear, being married to a welder?” I was impressed, she remembered. “Oh he’s not a welder, he’s a high school English teacher,” my wife corrected her. Cee-Cee looked down at me, then back to my wife and said, “That’s just an inside joke from our English class with old hairybelly Mr. Synick.” “He was a sarcastic and horny old goat wasn’t he?” I said, “And a worthless-ass teacher too.” “Hey – don’t be too hard on him,” Cee-Cee said behind a glossy red-lipstick smile, “after all, he was my first paying customer.”

Explanation: This ridiculous and ineffectual college teacher, who complained so often and so vociferously about educators being so grossly underpaid was spending his money on hookers!

DANIEL DELEHANT has had stories published in Western New York's The Other Herald Magazine, in Twisted Endings Magazine, and in Alfie Dog Publications in England. He and his wife of thirty years live in Whittier, California. Twisted Endings December 2015

White Moths Fluttering By Susandale The Cherokee Son climbs into a sink hole to discover underground villages. He is on his way out into the light of day when he is attacked by a deadly python. Will he manage to escape or will he metamorphose into another white moth of eternity?

bove the indentation in the earth, the trees and the underbrush shifted position; all together and at the same time. There was a great sound of the earth heaving. Rabbits and deer jumped high before they raced off in frightened flurries. The eyes of the Cherokee son widened to see the earth cracking open with fierce sounds to swallow the soft circular ground. Crashes and billows of smoke. The earth shook to wide gaps that cracked open and sunk deep. Then the dry river bed began filling with water. Astounded, the Cherokee son realized that he was witnessing the ground collapsing into a sink hole, half a mile long: a chasm that shook the river back into its long trench. He heard the splashing of water, and saw it coming in an onslaught. Hurriedly, he jumped out of the now-dry river bed before it filled with water. He turned to watch the water fill the trench as it splashed along merrily. The smoke puffing above the sink hole cleared enough for him to see that below the collapsed earth lie the barest remnants of a longago village: primitive and abandoned to the ages. He saw, too, a set of stone steps that climbed down into the ground, as was he. Down, he descended to inspect the long-ago buried village now being revealed. He wondered- ‘How far is the village below the earth; twenty, twenty-five feet?’ All around him rose a musty smell of the bowels of the earth. In front of him waved the roots of trees trying to climb back into the earth; thin and silvery roots struggling to find the ground to sink into. The roots waved eerily above him; they gave him the willies, even as he realized that they were only looking for directions on where they should go. And when he bent to inspect the earth around the forsaken village, to his amazement, he saw the ground was composed of living soil. Patches of dark, knobby growth formed tiny circles in the earth; it was crypto soil composed of living organisms. He ran his hands over the top of the soil and closed his eyes to hear the soil speak to him of the primitive village and of its peoples. Once alive, their presences were still within the soil. The jolts of energy he sensed were coming from the beings that once inhabited the stone dwellings: Asian ghosts with the background of the village showing through their white-washed presences. Here they were before him, eating, drinking, hunting, and hiding from their enemies beneath the earth. Here now propagating, nourishing their young, gone while simultaneously filled with life. The soil lived yet within their present selves: unspoken, unseen. He saw some climbing out of the ground to watch for enemies, some hunting, others foraging, and some were coming down the steps for protection from the elements. Hunkering on the rocks, they were watching him now.

The Cherokee son blinked to white moths suddenly replacing the ghosts. Fluttering about the stones; white wings to the cave; eternity to the villagers. Stones were stacked to form walls five foot high to separate the dwellings of the individual families. In the middle of the cavern, and over a stack of piled twigs, swung a community pot for cooking. Piles of ashes were scattered below the pot. And to the far left of the abandoned village, stretched other steps, and they were going further down. Wondering where those steps led, the Cherokee son walked over to see the steps descending to forty feet or better. He squinted through the darkness to see another dwelling place of stone walls and a cooking pot, too. One built upon another: one world over another. Time gone by into time being reborn within the living soil. In this habitat beneath the earth, birth and death - sleeping, awakening - eating consummating. And more. The buried village was brimming with life thereafter. Life to death, and death and life colliding to merge inside this living soil. And all flown back into life on the wings of the white moths. And then, something shining up at him: something compelling him to climb down the steps to have a better look. And in the shadowed darkness, as though it was meant for him, lie a knife with a wooden handle, and the long blade that coaxed him down with its gleam. All the way down the steps he descended to walk over then bend to pick up the knife. He ran his fingers carefully over the blade: the knife his now. With the knife in one hand, he looked around to see but another set of steps. ‘Can it truly be,’ he wondered as he felt his way down yet another set of steps. The mysteries of time were taking him deeper into other mysteries of other times. He was so far down now that he was having trouble seeing. He lit his lighter then jolted upright. There, below both stone villages, one stacked over the other, lie a burial ground of skeletons. Grinning white skulls and rattly bones lie scattered about in mad disarray. The sight of those picked-clean bones took the Cherokee son from revulsion to speculation. ‘Can this be the remains of a mass sacrifice? Or simply the burial grounds of the village?’ No matter. The anxiety running rampant within told him that it was time for him to turn around and go back up the way he had come down. With knife in hand and fear in his heart, he hastened to climb the steps. From one set of steps up to another, and then up another. Up through the stillness of here and gone. Up, and hearing the river of time being back in place and splashing into infinity. The river running from and back into time. And the Cherokee son running over the living soil with its breath of life. In transition he was, and within a cyclical bond with the earth.

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On the top step it laid coiled in a cyclical ring. Arrested while waiting with coiled muscles; taut and motionless, it waited on the step between exit and entrance; between life-giving sun and the dark village of yesteryears. Between escape and joining the white moths of eternity. Writhed up from the darkness of the underground, the Burmese python was waiting for him on the top step: a haughty look on its face, as though it knew that the Cherokee son had not a chance of escape. Thick muscled with head weaving on its neck, it moved with an exquisite grace, ever so slowly writhing while moving forward. Slowly, surely, moving towards the Cherokee son, who went zigzag back down the steps, his heart beating dirges of fear. The snake up quick with a twisting motion. Wrapping quickly, tightly around his leg. Twisting and climbing with utmost purpose, squeezing off the circulation of his leg. His leg burning like the fires of fear that jump-started his heart, now beating furiously. Gulping, swallowing his fear. The foot of his freed leg dangling in mid-air, was searching for escape. The snake was inching to the top of his thighs, squeezing, wrapping. Unconsciously, quickly, and from somewhere not known, the knife came down with a force of rage and desperation, into the body of the snake. Spurts of blood flying in the air. But still the

snake hung on; it was heading towards his groin. And again, the knife came down to stab once, twice, and with such force that the blood was spurting everywhere at once. The snake gurgled a death cry and fell back. It collapsed, as though the air had been released from its heavy body; its muscles were lying limp and lifeless. The Cherokee son let out a wail of release. And looked to see that he was covered with the snake’s blood: he was baptized with blood into life, and shaking uncontrollably when he stepped over the lifeless creature. His hands and his chin were trembling. His leg was numb and hot, and he drug it along behind him: over the bloody snake, and out. Silently, he said goodbye to the spirits in the darkness. He was leaving behind the villages beneath the earth. He was heading into the light of life, and moving into the sunbeams that were coaxing him forward.

Explanation: In the end it turns out that just as the Cherokee son was preparing to leave, he must first fight a python for his freedom.

Susandale’s poems and fiction are on WestWard Quarterly, Ken *Again, Penman Review, Inner Art Journal, Garbanzo, and Linden Avenue. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan. She has two published chapbooks on the internet: Spaces A mong Spaces by languageandculture.org and Bending the Spaces of Time by Barometric Pressure. Twisted Endings December 2015

Opposite ÂŠ Tyler Olson | DollarPhotoClub

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Fear of Falling By Joan McNerney Everybody and everything seems in a rush. We visit an apartment dweller who is living at a standstill but whose mind is frantic. The combination of fatigue and worry lead to … Children play in streets getting in that last game before racing home to finish schoolwork. Their calls ignite the air. Each night comes faster and faster. Winds blowing

stronger and stronger. In one hundred and one ways, it’s growing late. Gary wanted to travel far beyond the subway which crawls from Coney Island to the tip of the Bronx. Hurry, hurry before it’s too late. More and more of the surface of his life is covered by dust. Less and less energy to clear it away. Busted dreams heaped in cardboard boxes line the hallway. Black marks cover floors. Apartment 2D gave off a musty odor. Night after night, lights burned in his second floor apartment. One edge of the place speaks to the other. The fan purrs all summer, the basement boiler heaves all winter. The inner workings of the building sigh incessantly lulling him to sleep and dreams. Dreams down through blackness into dusty subterraneous passages where trains race. Silver rods sped through stations transforming tunnels with bolts of blue white sparks. On a steel car looking out the window...the train reeling off track. Now flying through space falling in air off track tumbling down falling. Dangling on thick utility cables through trees into lights, crashing against buildings. Careening through pitch black night, his silver train shattering glass.

Gary woke in a sweat, on the edge of the bed. He must do something but what he was not sure of…

Explanation: Reality and dreams are intertwined. A nightmare becomes a “wake up” call.

Joan McNerney’s poetr y has been included in numer ous liter ar y magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Blueline, Spectrum, three Bright Spring Press Anthologies and several Kind of A Hurricane Publications. She has been nominated three times for Best of the Net. Four of her books have been published by fine small literary presses.

Twisted Endings December 2015

Gliders By Martin Shaw

hat was a bomb, sir, and in case you didn’t know, it’s blown a great big gaping wound in your head. HELLO-hello-hello, HA-ha-ha. Ooh look- I can see a football pitch and a gaggle of geese that are honking at me. Honk-honk! honk-honk! Anyway -ah yes, let me see. I can see another massive hole inside there, where wood-boring insects are trying to escape the violent lashing of one of your severed neurons. Gosh, it’s like, a broken air hose on a generator. Oops a daisy, there goes an exoskeleton shell. Oh no, now the hose is whipping at the insect’s bare buttocks. Will you listen to it bray, sir? Err, are you still here, sir? Come on now, wakey-wakey! We can’t miss that big buttock lash. You didn’t with mine, did you; you naughty thing. Right! Okay, that’s better. Anyway, as I was saying, sir, there’s a show on inside your head tonight; I saw it advertised on the side of the bomb on the way in. It’s the first air show organised at night for gliders. We can all pretend to watch them as they, well, just glide I suppose, and then listen out for the tips of the wings whooshing above at head height. We’ll have to duck and rattle your head, or they will crash like, flies hitting a windscreen into the back of your eyes.

Don’t worry though, sir! We’ve all had crashing gliders in our heads at some time or another. The force of them over time is what created the crack in our skulls called, the coronal suture... Yeah! Smashing gliders inside of our heads; it’s the bane of mankind. Where are you going? Keep those eyes open now. Come on, sir, stay with me, stay with me. You’re making hard work of this, aren’t you? Ah, that’s better. You have never liked me, have you, sir? You’ve always seen me as someone continually brushing his teeth and have held me in contempt for spitting out in front of you. I must admit, I know that it looks complacent when I empty my mouth: taking that life essence that is water and letting it drain down a plughole. It’s just that I have done it since childhood and never given it a second thought. Like you, sir, just like you... We’ve all been your water really, sir, haven’t we? Me and the lads like, water, eh? Who’d of thought? Well, I don’t think there are any medics going to make it up here for you. Look at that popcorn exploding in that minefield. Actually, if you look closer it’s some of our boys, under the orders you gave. Ha ha ha. Also, there’s not much hope for you with the size of your wound. It’s all go today, isn’t it, sir?

Can I have one of those cigars you keep for a special occasions? Thanks... I’ll blow some smoke in for you. Umm, oh yes, this is jolly nice, isn’t it, sir. I shall stay right here with you until you pass on; not like we did to, Clancy. Do you remember Clancy, sir? If he’s alive now, he’ll be alive in the morning, you shouted to us. Well, morning came and he’d kicked the bucket. He wrote a note to his wife with his blood-soaked hands. Do you know what it said, sir? I have it here. It reads, Jena; you are my darling wife, the one that I have always loved. As I look up at the night sky at this moment, I hope that you will do the same and think of me. I fear I am leaving you now, but Please don’t cry; I know that you are. If

we could have changed things, we might not ever have met. So you see, I die the happiest man in the world. I love you, Jena and everything I do has always been because I love you. Ah that’s sweet, isn’t it? I’ll just tuck that back in my top pocket, nice and snug, eh.

I feel a bit despondent about the whole war thing now, sir. You see, since the twin towers collapsed, I’ve had to join the army to supplement my wages because I can’t sell my Porsche 911. A gypsy once told me that I’ll own a car that will bring me bad luck, but when I looked inside there is never room for anything at all. Stupid gypsy and her lucky heather, she should have been born a bee. Hey! When are bees born? Anyway, as I was saying, I use the army to supplement my wages because I already work for the government. I’m not a spy, it just makes things easier for my tax return, that’s all. Come to think of it, we all work for the government, and the only thing that isn’t taxed is masturbation; it’s a good job too, I’d be skint otherwise, ha ha. No, I just work in the houses of parliament’s main cafeteria and dish out re-heated chips to make the politicians feel in touch with society. Hey! Now there’s a thought. You could use a Porsche 911 to get away from a devastation scene pretty quickly, couldn’t you? I’m pretty sure you could. That’s good advertising and I don’t think it’s illegal, is it? But probably in bad taste maybe, like, the blokes shooting sparrows in Auschwitz to make the silence a tourist attraction. Anyway, sir, the end is nigh for you, old chap. Instead of dying in hand-to-hand combat, as you have always predicted, you’ll die in the flooded fields of blood red poppies, knocked out of your orbit by a stray bomb from a bi-plane. Cuh ... tut! They bomb their own kind, these bi-planes, don’t they, sir? Anything to be different, eh? You’re going now, aren’t you, sir. I can tell. You remind me of a song. Hold on, I’ve got it! Let’s both have a jig as I sing to you. Up you get. Blimey! You’re heavier than you look. Come on! Well at least hold your head up... Ready, a-one-two-three, one-two-three Ooooh! The Campptown races, la la la Doo-dah! doo-dah! Hm hm hm hm, hm hm hmm Oh, dee dooh-dah day. Goin’ to run all night, Goin’ to run all day. I bet my money on a bob-tailed nag, Somebody bet on the grey. Tadaa! Ahh... that was good. Well, got to go myself now, sir; be lucky. It is really me, you know. Do you know? Fucking idiot! Explanation: At the end sequence, the 'twisted' lives of soldiers in action come back down to earth with a bang (no pun). The first person is taking the micky out of the second person and calls him an idiot for sending his compatriots to their deaths.

Martin Shaw, 51, lives in Cleethor pes with his wife and four childr en. He’s been published in The Literary Commune and Pure Slush. In his free time, other than writing, he likes motorbikes and music. You can see more of his work at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010766329070 © Vasily Smirnov / DollarPhotoClub

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Panic Button By J. Andrews Sometimes you have to give everything to gain independence.

om fell off the bed today and fractured her distal humerus, commonly known as the elbow. A knock at the door in the early morning caused her to startle and jump, hence the tumble. Doc says she'll wear a ring fixator on her upper arm for the next couple months, or until the bone and soft tissue heal, nothing major, fear relieved. She is at Brookdale Oceanside Senior Living Center near San Luis Obispo, where grassy knolls tempt drought and panic buttons rest around the wrists and necks and in the hands and bed stands of the aged and infirmed. Where parents are sent for gauzy happiness in a locale so proximal to the sea they can, but usually can't, remember an ocean that showed promise in its vagrant sprays, briny columns and distal dreams. She should have moved to Brookdale eight years ago, when she had two back-to-back massive heart attacks, but her independence and pride prevented it. It wasn't until her cardiologist told her she was at high risk for another heart attack due to her 86 years and declining overall health that she conceded. Upon moving into Brookdale and with much resistance, she acceded to the reception of a panic button only if she could place it on her bed stand instead of around her neck or wrist. After the agreement, she smiled, as if she knew lifetime is only a glance and peace is eternal, a perceived peace most likely cultivated over the years she spent as a Pentecost. The ergonomic panic button fit comfortably in her wrinkled and vascular right hand, the same right hand that held my left and dissipated my insecurities as a child. I've imagined her final moments in my mind more than once since I was a child, keeping her alive until the bittersweet and final moment I am looked in the eye by an attending doctor wearing the expression of "she is no more." But I never imagined a panic button, or a cat, would play into it. On this morning, after a few timid knocks on the faux-bois aluminum door of her palace were met without response, the knocker increased the ferocity of his knocking with the logic being the owner of said aluminum door might be hearing impaired, which is sensible in this sense. Outside the entrance to her residence, unit E7, was a caring couple who came to inquire if the Siamese cat seen wandering about the Whispering Oaks section of Brookdale, where her domicile sat, was hers. Apparently this cat had a fondness for E7, and had been seen loitering around the unit for several weeks. Perhaps its former owner lived and died there, and, in the good Samaritan sense of this caring couple, they felt it would be a kind act to deliver the feline to its home that was not its home, unknown to them. Knocking on doors itself doesn't startle her, but knocking at an unexpected time, in this case around 7 am, does. She gets as much mail as she does knocks, so she considers a knock a signal that the postman is presenting the only correspondence she receives: photos and mementos from my life, wife and son, some piece of mail to let her know I still breathe and care. I send these things regularly, well-chosen signifiers of travels, vacations, sunsets, hugs, love and glee in the form of pictures and parcels. But I never sent her a cat at 7 am.

When the second round of knocks came, in her haste to leave the bed and peek out the window at the knocker, mom hit the floor, elbow first, knocking over the nightstand that held the panic button as she did, tumbling. On a good day, under normal circumstances, it takes mom 15 minutes to wake and exit the bed, which included the time to smoke half a Virginia Slim. Now I don't know what goes on in the course of an 86-year-old's waltz from REM sleep to open-eyed sunshine, but I surmise it involves checking if appendages are accounted for, if parts move and if breaths are in sequence. Not in that order, I'm sure, but if the primary movements present themselves to her satisfaction she doesn't have to consider pressing the red panic button on the medical pendant sitting on her bed stand. This was not one of those days. After a few minutes of consideration and pain, she succumbed to the red button and revoked her independence and cried. Mom has an unfavorable history with cats, specifically a Siamese that belonged to her first husband. Its name I do not know (the cat's, not his), it being born and dead long before I entered the reality of the cat and the circumstances in which it entered her life. Her husband hated women. He was a trainman, a stiff-haired miser, set in his own policy of not deferring his ways for the sake of a marriage to a 15-year-old girl, whose father was also a trainman. This is in Appalachia in the 1940's, home to the good old C&O railroad, hauling coal with enough swingin' dicks to shovel it. He kept his pennies, cultivated them and lived in a two-room house on a nondescript mountain he felt was above the lesser nondescripts that sat below. Mom was provincial and harbored nary a regret to have been anything but. I admire her for that, her simplicity has no known end—she never looked far beyond her children. She always perceived herself as independent, and I guess she earned that right, after three marriages to wealthful men—one financially, one emotionally and one spiritually, qualities that run together to those who dream of stability—men who in their finality left their coins, fading heavens and self-satisfied legacies to sons and daughters and foundations and rescues, but bequeathed her little, save acrid memories and ill will toward men. Especially men with cats. During his lifetime, her husband's wages compiled and accrued compounded interest, and propped him up on his mountain. He amassed a moderate fortune for his era, at the top of which sat his Siamese cat, which, to him, represented luck and was responsible for at least part of which he had attained. He was a drinker and a fighter and an abuser, but was more than once on the receiving end of abuse by those who saw him for the personality he was. He was superstitious at home and a Christian when he went to jail. He and that cat were kindred souls in meanness, perhaps his brother in a former life. He might have bought the cat or found it or it might have attached itself to him and followed him home. But he likely stole it, as he was the kind of person if something touched his hands he felt it his. He told mom he found it on the train, and since then, through the course of their relationship, the cat came to represent him and his debasement. She liked neither of them, but tolerated them like a good young subservient does. (Continued on page 14)

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She feared the man and felt anxious at what the cat represented. I'm sure she projected her distrust and disgust for her husband onto the cat. Mom didn't understand Siamese' personalities or the myths and legends that surround the animal, and anything not common to or outside of the Appalachians was an unknown to its people, so, to her, the cat's appearance and the name of the breed itself must denote something nefarious, infectious, scary, suspicious. Mom considered cats feral animals who need and do not give, but never realized that is their attraction, to pull personality out of them you must do, as they are careful creatures with an attitude that is not for the impatient. I am not a cat person, but I can appreciate the attraction of the cat. One night back in Appalachia, alone, with waddling baby girls 11 months apart in age drifting into sleep, and mom's stress slowly ebbing, she took a seat in the living room to spend the hour before the children's father returned from work. These brief moments of solace were her time to feel confident, alone in her kingdom of one, no one could hurt her there. Sitting in her chair with opened King James in her lap, she saw the curtains covering the closed transom window—which was about 8 feet from where she sat—swaying. I can only explain what happened next as an acute stress response, hyper arousal or some other as-yet-to-be named physiological reaction to her primal fear—her fear of some nut breakin' in on her and her babies while they're alone. She observed the swaying curtains a second or two before she acted. On the babies' father's liquor shelf sat an antique crystal Irish-cut brandy decanter. Mom was a quick thinker, but I'm sure that didn't make her choose the decanter over the half-empty bottle of Beam or full bottle of Mogen David Concord. Maybe it was because she knew it was heavy, maybe because it was closest, but that's what she grasped by its neck and swung and thrashed at the curtains with until a couple or several or many resounding thunks and piercing shrieks prompted her to stop. With heart racing and mind following suit, she thought, "I got 'im," and the curtains ceased to sway. From the ledge of the window fell the cat, making a final thunk on the trampled-thin nylon carpeting below. It slowly regained consciousness while mom looked on in bewilderment, fear, shame, guilt. The cat didn't walk right after that, nor did it walk left well, either. It merely put paw in front of paw as if it had a purpose but forgot what it was, its equilibrium scrambled and all but wiped out. Mom cleaned up the remains of the encounter the best she could and laid an old, brittle wool rug over what didn't come up with soap and water and prayer.

While pondering an explanation, and dreading retribution, she remembered it was her husband's night to go to the The Depot, a hole-in-the-wall joint for trainmen to congregate and drink and get a woman or two before they went home to the wife and kids. So she had a few hours to spare and some laudanum to calm her down and help her feign sleep before the creak of the door and stumble of work boots on the kitchen floor signaled his arrival. But in the drunken man's stupor he wouldn't notice anything different about the cat. He likely wouldn't notice anything different while sober, either, as the most attention he awarded the cat was in the form of hair-of-the-dog kicks and bad-day-at-work knock-arounds. He couldn't always kick his woman, so the cat was convenient. The cat "lived," a term used in the loosest sense, until the man drowned her and her litter in the creek at the bottom of the hill behind the house, because he was god on his mountain with his pennies and he had enough worry with one mentally diminished cat on the decline not to mention its newborn litter. The cat became a nuisance when he realized care means care and pain means pain. Unfortunately, he was not a cat deemed drownable.

ack in the confines of E7 in the Whispering Oaks section of Brookdale Oceanside, in a room on which the walls hung visions of things that might propagate a recall to those interned in it, or to give some inhabitant hope, or to give those with nothing something to look at—framed prints of the Eifel tower, sloppy slashes of the Adriatic with a sandy coastline or Jesus hanging on a cross, looking like he's really hurting. In that room sat my mom in her adjustable bed set at a slight incline, the type of bed to help you see the television at a comfortable angle or to reflect on how you arrived on a such a bed in such a place as Brookdale with a pictures of Jesus and the Eifel tower. The transom window was open a few inches, no breeze to note. The curtain swayed. A Siamese cat put his svelte head in through the curtains first, and, not sensing danger, contorted herself in such a way that she slipped through the opening and proceeded to plant herself on the polyester-upholstered chair that sat beside the bed stand that held the panic button. Mom's anxiety set in at the sight of the cat, her heart rate increased and the dreadful pain she at first attributed to her broken elbow spread to her chest and neck. The cat watched, licked its forequarters. The panic button beckoned, but was not pressed. She regained her independence. She looked at the cat tenderly, smiled as if she knew lifetime is only a glance and peace is eternal, and went to sleep never to awake.

Explanation: It turns out letting death take mom gave her a bit of control she never had. The Siamese cat represented her circle of life. It was there in her youth and first marriage, during her most repressed, unhappy years, and, in the end, it reminded her of the psychological prison she lived her life in, the one she never left. By actively allowing her sad life to end, she freed herself from her prison of existence.

J. Andrews escaped Los Angeles to live in r elative obscur ity in Easter n Eur ope and write about challenges to the human condition. His work has appeared in 5000Words, Grufenhaufen and International Letters. 14 | Twisted Endings December 2015

The End

Twisted Endings December 2015

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January 2016

THE MAGAZINE FOR LOVERS OF UNPREDICTABLE PLOT TWISTS

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16 | Twisted Endings December 2015