The Rusty Nail, August 2012, Issue 6

Issue 6, August 2012 Editor-in-Chief Craig A. Hart Cover Design Paul Brand

Published by Sweatshoppe Publications 1

The Rusty Nail CONTENTS How to Build a Broken Home on Good American Soil

by Brian Le Lay, Page 32 Tierra Blanca

by Chad Patton, Page 33 The Museum of Clowns’ Faces

by Kate Smith, Page 34 Garbage Men

by Martin Frankson, Page 35 A Pause on the Road

by JR Rogers, Page 38

Foul, Strange, and Unnatural

by Daniel Davis, Page 3 Crush of a Mountain

by John Swain, Page 5 Red Leather Yellow Leather

by Jon Boisvert, Page 5 Rubber Tomahawks Golden Bowerbirds Carry the Spirit Forth

by Dan Hedges, Page 6 The Elephant Room

by Melina Papadopoulos, Page 7 Ealing Broadway

by Kimberlie Orr, Page 8 About Biking (Bikers and Joggers in Love)

by Daniel Vlasaty, Page 14 What I Envy Most About Bruce Wayne

by Jon Boisvert, Page 14 Shadow

by Rachel Kolb, Page 14 Sexual Healing

by Alan W. Jankowski, Page 15 Plague Dogs Who Love Sunsets

by Dave Gregg, Page 16 The Bridge Game

by Jerry Guarino, Page 17 It Has Come To Our Attention

by Allen Kopp, Page 19 Bitter

by Shannon Callsen, Page 20 The Chair

by SJI Holliday, Page 21 Windowpane (1969)

by Joseph Han, Page 22 Vilipend Me

by Shannon Callsen, Page 24 Veracruz in Fragments

by Alex Pruteanu, Page 25 In Front of God

by Brian Le Lay, Page 26 Shelves

by Dave Gregg, Page 26 A Voice for Your Voice Feature with Ann Swann, Page 27 shut me up

by John Grochalski, Page 29 gallows humor

by John Grochalski, Page 30 When the Champions Left Us

by M.W. Fowler, Page 31

The Rusty Nail Staff Editor-in-Chief Craig A. Hart Associate Editor Dr. Kimberly Nylen Hart Graphic Design Editor Paul Brand Contributing Editor Jacob Nordby

www.rustynailmag.com rustynailmag@gmail.com The Rusty Nail magazine is based in Pocatello, ID. 2

by Daniel Davis

Foul, Strange, and Unnatural H

a bit too much makeup; a prime mark for robbery, and I felt that I should scold her. But her eyes didn’t move towards me as they should’ve. And her mouth stayed open in that strange, twisted position.

Also, she didn’t have a body.

The torso, as I was told later, was several yards away; the head had been severed and thrown into some bushes.

We never learned why, because the killer was never apprehended, and that used to bother me—why would you rob someone, get their money, and then cut off their head?

I didn’t vomit at the crime scene. That came later, when I went home to my apartment. I threw up, and then I fell onto my couch and lay there, staring at the ceiling. I watched the fan as it made its lazy circles, and I didn’t think of the head, and I didn’t think of the blank look in those eyes, and I didn’t think of the bloody stump I had caught a glimpse of before turning away. I didn’t think of any of that.

But I still cried.

er name was Carrie Jenson, and she was sixteen years old. She had light blond hair, which hung past her shoulder blades. Her eyes were a crystalline blue, the kind of blue that sparkles with youthful vigor and anticipation.

When I met her she was naked, crumpled into the corner of her second floor bathroom, three holes in her chest and her blood-splattered cheek resting against the back of the toilet.

The forensics men had already done their work, leaving my partner and me alone with the body. I didn’t know what they expected us to do—they were the experts of dead bodies, we were the experts at apprehending live ones—but Jeff and I stood there, staring down at her. I wasn’t sure what to say.

There was of course the obligatory “it’s such a shame,” which Jeff uttered without much enthusiasm. It was a shame, but what could we do about it? All we could do was find her killer—and that would most likely be done by finding out who else shared the house with her, as she was the only body on the premises.

“What size caliber do you think they are?” I asked, staring at the holes.

“Thirty-eights, maybe. Couldn’t say for sure. They’re probably still in her; I don’t see any blood on the wall behind her.”

“True.” I looked up at her face, blushing. I’d seen plenty of women naked—young, old, alive, dead—but it was always more embarrassing, somehow, with the dead ones. At least when they were alive, you usually had their permission. I always wondered if the souls that once inhabited the bodies I viewed were looking down from Heaven or wherever we go when we die and cursing me.

“We should probably let DuPaige dig them out,” Jeff said..

I nodded. I’d dug plenty of slugs out of corpses. I’d long ago decided to leave it up to someone who was paid to do it. Me, I was just paid to walk around in a suit, flash a badge, and make people feel safer.

The next time I saw Carrie Jenson was at the place I usually see bodies for the second time—the city morgue.

The coroner, Michael DuPaige, had finished his autopsy, and was making some last-minute notes on his clipboard.

“Three thirty-eights,” he told me, as I looked down at her face. A sheet covered the rest of her, but I still felt guilty.

“Two through the left lung. One nicked the heart. If I had to guess, I’d say it was the last one that killed her. But I’m only guessing here.”

His apathy towards the dead was only one of the reasons I despised him.

“She wasn’t on drugs or anything, which is a bit of a shocker. Most of the little punks we get in here are so doped up, they probably didn’t even know somebody was holding a gun on them. This little sweetie-pie, though, she’s not a doper. And I’d guess she doesn’t drink much, if ever.

Healthiest fucking kidneys I’ve ever seen. And her liver should be put in a museum, it’s so good. She wasn’t bad to look at, either. Alive, I mean.”

I wanted to punch him. His routine bored me. He only went through it because it made him feel important—which he was.

“Any idea who killed her?”

I didn't answer him. He would've ignored me anyway.

“If I had to guess, I’d say robbery. You know? She wasn’t raped—I swabbed her out, every hole, even did her ears and nostrils just for shits and giggles. Nothing. So I guess she’s lucky with that, you know? Girl as pretty as her, they’re usually raped. Lot of sick fucks out there, like to get their kicks raping little girls. Little boys, too, some of ‘em. This girl, I suppose she got off easy. Heard a story of a girl her age kept in a cellar, raped and tortured. Kept her in handcuffs, fed her just enough so she didn’t die. Did horrible things to her. Horrible things. Our little girl here got off easy.”

He was right, in a way. The things that happen these days, Carrie Jenson did get off easy. She was shot, three

During my first year of patrol, I came across my first murder victim. Fresh, too. I blame 911 for much of the stress cops go through these days. Crimes are reported sooner, and cops arrive on the scene before the blood has dried.

The body was in some rundown city park, and I just happened to be the closest unit. I probably arrived within ten minutes of the killer’s departure. The witness—if she can really be called that—was sitting on a bench, clutching a cell phone, staring at some bushes. She didn’t even notice when I walked up beside her and asked her what the problem was.

She just kept staring into those bushes. I didn't like the expression on her face, and if I hadn't been wearing the badge I would've turned away, but it was my job so I went on over there.

I first saw a face, and the kill was so fresh I thought the victim was alive. A middle-aged woman, fairly attractive, with 3

Of course, in this city, being alive is a good way to get shot.

“I guess the first clue that she wasn’t raped was the fact that she’s still a virgin. You believe that? She’s what, sixteen, and still a virgin? In this city? Shit, Anderson, you believe that shit?”

I nodded.

DuPaige clucked his tongue. “A girl lookin’ like her, and still a virgin? She must’ve been religious. Did she go to a Catholic school or something? I tried getting into a Catholic schoolgirl’s pants when I was a kid. Wasn’t easy. Took me three weeks and a lot of liquor.”

I clenched my hand into a fist, let it go. Did the same with the other.

“You see any crosses in the house? Any Bibles?”

I shook my head.

“I guess our little girl here must’ve been a good kid, huh?”

“Seems so.”

“Damn.”

Damn indeed.

times in rapid succession, died before she was even aware that she was dying. Kind of like going in your sleep, but noisier.

I met Christine, my wife, four years ago at a police function. She had moved to New York to be a model; I didn’t have the heart to tell her she wasn’t cut out for it. I think she found that out for herself. She’s pretty, beautiful even, but she doesn’t have the stage presence that models typically possess. I wonder if anyone ever explained it to her; I wonder why no one ever suggested that she pursue a different career path.

She was dating a patrolman at the time, someone I didn’t know. I worked patrol as well, and it scared me shitless; the city isn’t the kind of place you like to drive around, especially when your uniform is one giant target. A surprising number of people resent you for carrying a badge. Apparently, if you drive a squad car, you’re a racist, a bigot, a jackass, a communist, and a Jew. As far as I know I’m none of those things, though one of my best friends growing up was Jewish.

When I saw her she was wearing a green dress that looked awful on her. That was how I noticed her—the dress brought out the color of her eyes, but even the most beautiful eyes can’t make up for the most horrible dress. It showed a bit too much cleavage, and she had plenty to show. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a tight little bun, and you could tell she hated it. It wasn’t until a week later that I found out she was from southern Illinois, and had actually heard of the Indiana town I grew up in.

She and the patrolman she'd arrived with had a falling out, and she wound up with me. Simple as that. I had introduced myself after one too many shots; she had reciprocated the introduction after one too many glasses of wine; and we made out in the parking lot, sneaking glances to make sure her date wasn't watching.

When she ditched him, she came to me, and we’ve been together ever since. We still make out in public, sometimes, just for the hell of it. It helps us pretend like we’re still dating, and not married.

I once saved a kid’s life. I saw a little boy prancing across the road, in some anonymous business district, taking his own sweet time about it, lost in whatever song he was singing. There was a truck coming up, and that instinct that comes as part of the job told me the driver couldn’t see the boy, or didn’t care, or was too drunk to realize what was about to happen. So I ran out into the street, scooped up the boy, and jumped for safety. The truck clipped my foot; I was off-duty for a week and a half. I landed on my gun, and it left a bruise that lingered for several days. The kid got a cut on his elbow and cried a lot. I can’t blame him. I almost cried too. My foot hurt.

There’s something about a morgue that makes a detective feel out of place.

Jeff came in after about fifteen minutes. Ignoring DuPaige, he approached me, the blank expression on his face telling me everything I needed to know.

“They caught him.”

I just stood there, but DuPaige perked up. “Who was it?”

Jeff didn’t give the coroner so much as a side glance. “It was the father, Chris. It was the goddamn father.”

I just nodded.

“They found him in a hotel room just ten minutes ago.

Probably shot himself with the same gun.”

DuPaige tossed his clipboard down on a nearby table, then turned to Jeff and me. “Why the fuck would he kill his own daughter?”

We ignored him. I said, “So it’s finished, then.”

It had taken less than five hours.

Jeff nodded. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

DuPaige was scowling at us. “But goddammit, why?”

Jeff shrugged, turning to him. “Who the fuck knows?”

That shut him up.

There’s something about a morgue that makes a detective feel out of place.

It has nothing to do with the dead bodies; in fact, a morgue is convenient in that way—you always know where the bodies are, who they are, and usually how they died.

They’re all there, each in their own little drawer. All you have to do is flip a latch, open the door, and slide out the tray.

No, what gets to you is how overdressed you are when you walk in there. The coroner always wears a white smock with a doctor’s gown on underneath it. The walls are bare, the floor clean, the tables stainless steel. Everything is a shade of white or gray. Even the bodies are pale. Standing there in my black suit and slacks, I couldn’t help but notice how much I stood out. A detective doesn’t like to stand out.

It’s a good way to get shot.

4

Crush of a Mountain

I turned back to Carrie, laid out on the tray. The sheet had drifted a little; she was still covered, mostly, but I began to blush anyway.

DuPaige was now staring at the girl, too; I wondered how her soul, up in Heaven or wherever, felt about that.

I wondered if she was born here, in the city. I hoped not.

I’ve lived here several years now, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to live in the country. To grow up there, to be raised there, to know what it’s like to have grass under your feet on a daily basis. I sometimes question why I came to the city in the first place. I wonder why I chose this career.

Christine was lucky—she wasn’t cut out to be a model. Me, I’m a damned good cop, and I can’t help it.

I looked into those lifeless blue eyes, imagining the intelligence that had once sparkled within them. I didn’t know much about Carrie, not yet; but I figured she was a bright kid, a straight-A student, a go-getter, a cheerleader maybe, or class president. Something, anything, other than an ordinary girl shot in her ordinary home by an ordinary handgun.

by John Swain An undeserved comfort like a sheet to lay on the bed then the air.

The day pressed my bones into powder for a husk keeping the seed grown on earth.

Leave me and let the crush of a mountain raise me on stones of sky to the light of birds.

I have seen many eagles and here I would like to fall on the claim like the breath God said.

I found a dead sparrow once. It was lying just off the little cement patio, in the small bit of grass Christine and I glorify as a yard. How it had missed the patio, I don’t know. It had either fallen off the roof, and been pulled by some breeze, or had dropped dead from the sky. Or, perhaps, it had dropped alive from the sky, and had died upon impact.

I grabbed the shovel we keep in the little storage bin. It’s a heavy thing, with a wooden handle that’s prone to splintering, and a blade that rusted over several years ago.

We hardly ever have cause to use it.

I walked back to the bird and used the shovel to turn it over. The bottom side of the bird and the ground it had been laying on were covered in maggots. They writhed ceaselessly, a pool of rippling white. The bird must’ve been there a while.

I stared down at those maggots for I’m not sure how long.

I leaned slightly on the shovel, somewhat stooped over. I didn’t throw up. I’d seen maggots in worse places.

I eventually dumped the bird in the dumpster and shoveled some earth over the maggots on the ground. I then washed the shovel off with the hose and put it back in the storage bin, and that was that.

• • • John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. His work has recently appeared in Yes Poetry, Up the Staircase, and Rufous Salon.

Red Leather Yellow Leather for Michael McNall

by Jon Boisvert Stop is what we should have said of that kid they'd beat up on his way to voice lessons should have said just leave him alone leave his white hair & see-through skin alone he's hurt & already knows he won't make it here

• • • Daniel Davis was born and raised in Central Illinois.

Currently, he is the nonfiction editor for The Prompt Literary Magazine. You can follow him at www.dumpsterchickenmusic.blogspot.com, or on Facebook.

But pale children are too elemental!

They should be stopped in space with the other bright white things b/c nothing so peaceful & strange should learn to sing!

• • • Jon Boisvert is originally from a small farm community in Wisconsin, and now lives in Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in many journals, most recently in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review.

5

Rubber Tomahawks

by Dan Hedges Whilst the literary control mongers ‘alouette’ to hopeful derivatives of ‘art freedom’, we Xerox a certain field-guide aesthetic, and defend it now with our rubber tomahawks. We proceed angle-find America to a new ritual of orange, while the neo-cliché hipsters triangulate the set-list at will, one last time.

Then, in some strange spontaneous rapture, the Resplendent Quetzal casts all doubts aside, while field-guide aesthetics burns visages through the haunting tense, sacrosanct forever.

• • • Golden Bowerbirds

by Dan Hedges While Marx surfs the cobble-stone with alpha-thoughts of social Buganvilia, the Golden Bowerbirds scourge the aesthetic field. Optional Warhol now makes it possible for the humanimal aesthetics to agrammatically strike again.

• • • Carry the Spirit Forth

by Dan Hedges Out among the ptarmigan we debunk our attention from everything that crosses in the night. Suddenly the mind goes blurry and with shifting abstraction the pixels shift to the Hyocinth MaCaw, dizzying the mental storm, and allowing for moments of Albatross to enter the visual field. In our sublime encounters with field-guide aesthetics, we carry the spirit forth.

• • •

Dan Hedges currently teaches English in the Sir Wilfred Laurier School Board of Quebec. He has also taught English at Sedbergh School, and the Celtic International School. His degrees are from Trent University and Queen's University. He has lived in the Yukon, Spain, Mexico, Wisconsin, Algonquin Park and Quebec. His poems have appeared in The Maynard, Ditch Poetry, Haggard and Halloo, The Camel Saloon, and others.

6

As far as I know, they've become the first animals to understand the old people who complain that blizzards begin with their bones.

No, don't blame me when you start seeing the osteons of angels in snowflakes after you have caught a few on your tongue.

Nothing I've thrown at the sky has gotten that violent.

My slingshot retired the day I realized I am greedy because I pick the bluntest stones from the tallest of piles when there is so much of me sitting around that's not even marble, at least not in the foundation of anything worth standing for The problem with the elephant room is that I built it right before REM sleep began. At this point, to build a house on anything metamorphosing like a nightmare is to be the foolish man, but eventually my eyes will open and I will stop gazing like a sandstorm. There is no time to free the elephants and there is no time to remember my mirages into a blueprint. That's the problem with remembering a place only by its skeleton and then coming back to it later in the night when it's gotten itself an elevator or a spiral staircase in its spine.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Elephant Room

by Melina Papadopoulos

The problem with the elephant room is that the zookeeper doesn't require you have tusks or trunk to live there.

You don't need a memory that runs so deep you'll scrape your knees on your own nostalgia if you dare to swim down there with your eyes wide open.

When you dream, you don't have to know where you're going or why you're going there. Just get yourself a zoo map once you've gotten your grogginess out of bed.

The elephant room is not a place to roam free, there are cages. Wolves, grizzly bears, and one polar bear who paces his anxiety into a gaping hole during visiting hours.

The elephants are the only ones who can stand their ground without knowing its name.

Homesick, it's Kenya cloudy enough to make the swelter flicker.

Forgiving, it's Cleveland Metroparks Zoo before they're lost and out of place in a misfit November blizzard.

Then again, sometimes the weather is as eagerly out of place as we are, spending the time between forecasts and tornado warnings deciding the best way to be overcast without feeling left out.

7

and just so you know, I'm taking you right back to the elephant room before you die, once the visitors have gone. I'm going to bury you so deep inside the polar bear's anxiety ravine until you remember to leave your worries to the will.

If you begin to feel like a snow day, let me know.

I want to run to the window and watch every one of your aches cause a traffic jam. I want to understand the pain of a red light when you don't want to go, you want to leave.

• • •

Ealing Broadway

by Kimberlie Orr

T

playing games or drawing pictures with Paint. Trying to draw pictures, anyway. I wonder if Long Gone is coming to collect it, if he just pretended to forget it so he’ll have an excuse to pop in again.

Last summer, while Mum was at work, he’d do all sorts of stuff with me since he didn’t have to “gig,” as he used to say, until late. Mostly, we’d hang out in Ealing Common, throwing his scuffed-up, imitation Frisbee back and forth or having a picnic. Once we took this silly walking tour of Notting Hill and got to see where parts of the film were made, the one with Julia Roberts and that git Hugh Grant. I’ve sat through it with Mum a couple of times when there was nothing else on. It’s all right, to tell the truth. I’ve seen worse.

But now, my summer holiday has outlived its welcome and seems a bit sad, even when the sun is out. It was like this long before the shooting, by the way.

I wander over to the window after I finish the leftover curry. My breath makes a mist on the glass – it grows and shrinks and hides my view of the pavement and shrubs below. I get hypnotized by it, and I’m not really sure, once I sort of wake up, how much time I’ve spent there with the side of my face pressed into the window frame.

So far, today has been quiet, too quiet. It’s brightest near one or so, before the light flattens and slides in and out of clouds throughout the rest of the afternoon.

Mum shifts beneath the throw and rewinds the tape to play it again. I start forward, about to say, “Are you ever going to get up from that stupid, stinking sofa?” But I don’t.

I stop myself just in time, even though I’m shaking from holding the words in.

So instead, I stomp back and forth a little, trying to let her know that I’m not at all happy about us having another go at the wedding. After a while, though, I find myself hovering behind her. The beginning of the tape is actually all right, to tell the truth, because it shows the soldiers, or whatever they are, riding in the procession. They’re perfect, really. Squares of color, moving and separating into lines and patterns. Better than any special effects around, even in 300 or that new version of Alice in Wonderland.

If Stun could see me standing here staring at the shiny black cars and the toffs waving from inside, he’d call me all sorts of names. But maybe not so much when that Pippa comes out and gathers those kids. Wow, her arms are nice.

Her skin, too, smooth and tan against that dress. Is that shade even possible in real life? Mine only gets red in the sun – like the time a year or so ago when Long Gone took us to Brighton – but for the most part, it’s white. A sickly, not very nice white, if you ignore the spots, which aren’t particularly nice either. At least my teeth are all right. Mum makes sure of that.

Pippa’s not nearly as pretty as that girl at school, Annie, the one who doesn’t even seem to know I’m alive, but she has her good points. Stun would appreciate the shot where

his morning, Mum must’ve called in sick (I hope she did, anyway) and collapsed on the sofa, even though she spent most of the weekend there. I peek over at her when I shuffle into the bathroom.

Only her thumb is moving, to push buttons on the remote.

After that, I go back to bed and try to sleep, but I can’t, not really. Maybe because I keep thinking of Mum. So, after a little while, I’m up, really up, showered and dressed and hungry, hoping I’ll be able to find something for breakfast. But before I ransack the kitchen, I wander over to her and ask, “Are you all right?" My voice is all crackly. I clear my throat. "Do you need anything?"

“I’m fine,” she says. She points the remote at the TV. “The Pippa special.”

I shrug. I mean, come on. Does she really think I care about any of those people? Not that it matters. I’m behind the sofa so she can’t see me. I can hardly see her either because she’s wrapped herself up in that fake-fur thing. A throw, she calls it. Someone gave it to her when we moved here a couple of years ago, but back then, it was clean. Now the fluffy bits have gone all matted and gray, like the stray dog that used to come round last summer.

It seems more cramped than usual in our flat – maybe because the newsreaders make you so worried about going outside that you end up feeling trapped. All the rubbish piling up in our sitting room doesn’t help. Half-empty Diet Coke cans and takeaway containers cover almost every surface – both side tables, the ottoman, even the floor. Apparently, Mum doesn’t mind. She rewinds the tape Long Gone Rob recorded for her months ago – yes, an actual VHS cassette in an actual VCR – and settles in. Six hours’ worth of the Royal wedding. Is it possible to wear out a videotape? I don’t know enough about them to say. But if anyone can do it, Mum can. She seems to watch that thing all the time, especially lately.

I hate that we don’t own a proper DVD player, by the way. We used to, but that mean bloke Rafe ran off with it when he walked out on Mum. We never bought another one.

Never could afford to, really. Ever since then, I’ve had to watch DVDs on the old laptop that Long Gone left here.

Brilliant films, like the new X-Men prequel, but hemmed in by a little screen that’s too glossy half the time and too smudgy the rest. And then there’s the tinny sound from the speakers, if you want to call them that. None of this has stopped me, though. I’ve seen everything I could get my hands on, even a couple with Russell Brand. I mean, it’s been a long summer, after all.

Stun Gun’s half-brother is the one who burned the copies for us. He used to video films in the cinema and sell pirate versions. As it turns out, they threw him in Feltham for that and loads of other reasons. Which means no more DVDs for me.

Even so, I still spend most of my time on the laptop, 8

scrunching up his eyes and nose in a way that made me laugh. He could always make me laugh, Rob. “Mum,” I say now. But she’s caught up in the video. The stupid prince. His stupid brother, who probably gets more action in a night than I'll get in a lifetime. “Mum.” And she drags her eyes from the TV and looks over at me like she doesn’t know, for a few seconds, who I am. “When are you gonna get me a new phone?” I hold up my lousy Sony dinosaur, a hand-me-down from Long Gone. I imagine Stun watching me, judging me, starting to inhabit my body. “Or at least change my plan so I can text on this piece of shit.”

“Watch your language.” And she stares me down until I drop my eyes from hers. “What’s happened to you? It’s that boy, isn’t it?”

There’s this thing Mum can do, even without raising her voice, that makes me feel like I’m seven instead of fourteen.

Maybe the slow way she has of saying things, a bit roughly, like I’m letting her down. Whatever it is, I get all hot and flushed, the way I used to when I was about to cry, that old prickliness spreading through my throat and making it hard to swallow.

She seems more tired than angry all of a sudden – she hasn’t said that much in ages – and then gets distracted by the close-up of Wanker William trying to press and push the ring onto the girl’s finger. Kate. Her skin is wrinkling and almost fighting back, in a way. She’s not fat. If anything, she’s the opposite – close to anorexic. So why doesn't the ring fit right? As though, deep down, she doesn’t like what she’s getting into.

I can’t really blame her. Marriages never seem to work, do they? They always fall apart, even for the Royals. As far back as I can remember, Mum’s never been married, like she knew this all along. There have been boyfriends, some lasting longer than others, but none for more than a year.

Except Long Gone, the last of the lot.

Long Gone. A character, that one. The wrong side of fifty and still trying so hard to be a rock star. A scraggly mess of too-brown hair. Faded bandanas tied round his neck and right wrist. And the trousers – he always wore those plastic trousers – still does, as far as I know. Sometimes, depending on the length of his T-shirt, it could be a little embarrassing to be seen with him when we walked round the corner for a takeaway.

Still, I have to admit that our place is pretty quiet with him gone. I mean, he was all right, really. Slipped a time or two when him and Mum were first going out, but in a way, how could you blame him? Imagine being the bassist in an Iron Maiden tribute band, with all the girls in the audience closing their eyes or drinking loads so they can pretend you’re the real bloke. Would you be able to ignore the attention? Night after night after night?

Long Gone had promised Mum no more straying, but then there was the time in early July – the last time – the latest one pounded on our door and wanted to know why he was ignoring her Facebook messages.

“Aw, Christ,” Long Gone said. He’d just come back from

she bends over. I appreciate it. So, as you might have already guessed, I’m keener on a Pippa special than I would ever let on. In fact, sometimes at night I picture her in that clingy dress – and then out of it.

Not good to be squirming behind my mum, watching the TV and thinking the sort of things I’m thinking. A three-tone alert gurgles from my jeans pocket, really surprising me and causing me to let out this funny little “Ah!” sound. I grab hold of my mobile, juggling it about, almost dropping it in the process. I didn’t even hear it ring, and, talk of the devil, there’s a message from Stun Gun. His real name is Stanfield or something like that. Course, he hates it. I can’t really blame him.

A few months ago on the Common, Long Gone Rob talked to me about Stun. One of our “discussions.” That’s what he called them, anyway. We were under the huge oak tree, me sitting cross-legged, Long Gone lying back with his head propped up on my rucksack, and Mum cradled against him, fast asleep. Back then, the lines between her eyebrows weren’t so bad, and she looked pretty, even for a mum. It was nice out, that one day every year when you know winter’s finally over. The sun had been shining almost all afternoon, white and calm.

Long Gone reached over super carefully so he wouldn’t stir her and grabbed hold of the Marlboros he had laid on the grass. Guess he wasn’t Long Gone at that point – Stun’s name for him, really. Back in the spring, he was just Rob, wearing a band shirt with the sleeves cut off, his shiny black trousers, and boots decorated with all sorts of studs and swirls. After he had somehow found a way to shake out a cigarette and light up using just one free hand, he puffed away and looked at me, and I mean really looked at me, for a long time. That’s how I knew he was about to give me some advice.

“Your mate, Stun,” he said. “Pretty cool, isn’t he?”

I shrugged. Ever whistle with a blade of grass pressed between your thumbs? That’s what I was trying to do just then. I’m crap at it, by the way.

“Just remember this, Ben, my boy.” Long Gone was pointing his cigarette at me, and the smoke was stringy and circular and framing both their faces, his and Mum’s, like a garland. “You can make your own path. You’ve got it in you.

Don’t let someone else call the shots.”

I thought that was pretty funny, considering he made money by imitating an old, washed-up bass player. But I nodded because, in the scheme of things, I reckon, it was good advice.

“You’ll go far, lad. You’ve got a good heart, like your mum.” He turned towards her and touched his mouth to her forehead. After a while, he looked over at me again. “You favor her more and more these days, don’t cha? The same big brown eyes.” The dangly ash broke free and swirled up in flaky pieces above our heads. “Are the girls queuing up yet?”

“Yeah. For miles and miles.” I threw my useless blade of grass at him and he took it straight on in the face,

“You can make your own path. You’ve got it in you. Don’t let someone else call the shots.”

9

Mum to take him back. And when I say ‘begged’ I mean it – he even got down on his knees last week. Funny to see him like that. I told Stun about it the next day, but the more Stun laughed, the less I did. I wished afterwards that I had just kept my mouth shut.

The archbishop or whatever is droning on and on now.

Dead boring. As I’m wandering into my room, I realize that for a few seconds I forgot all about the mobile clutched in my hand. I forgot pretty much everything but the memory of Mum sitting so cold and still on that stool and Long Gone on his knees.

Stun answers straight away when I return his call.

“Texting is so much better,” he says.

“I know.”

“When are you gonna join us in the 21st century, son?”

I clear my throat and say, “Dunno.”

“Ringing you is such a drag.”

All right, I want to say. I get it. But I don’t dare. So instead I stare at my messy bed and my pathetic attempts at starting a graphic novel scattered all over the floor.

“What are you up to, then?”

“I hear there’s some good stuff going on tonight.”

I tilt my head to make sure Mum isn’t listening in.

“What do you mean ‘good stuff’?”

“Riot Rampage: the adventure continues.”

I don’t really understand. Or maybe I don’t want to. Is he saying that whatever went on over the weekend is actually being organized again for tonight? In other parts of the city?

It doesn’t seem right to happen this way. To force a reaction, getting upset, feeling angry, something that should be coming from the gut, just for fun.

“Meet you outside the King’s.”

I nod, and before I can say more, he rings off.

So I leave. Without even telling her. Pull on my ratty army jacket and slip out the door. She won’t notice anyway. I wonder why I even worry about her listening in on my phone call. She hardly pays attention to anything these days unless you scream at her about it or put it right in front of her face.

Outside is all right, not raining, for once, but I feel antsy as I speed down the stairs to the ground floor of our building.

It looks nice in the twilight, peaked roof, whitewash glowing.

Mum worked hard to get us a flat here, doing that disgusting job – picking at patients’ teeth, showing them how to floss – until she became the best hygienist in the office. Still, I wonder how long we’ll be able to stay, now that Long Gone has left. We do without so many things that everyone else takes for granted – the DVD player, decent phones. Even food gets a little scarce sometimes, right before her payday.

I’m beginning to wonder if there will ever be enough of anything, if we’ll always need.

one of the shows at the Half Moon and was pouring him and Mum a couple of glasses of Guinness. Now he had to turn around and go out again. When he did, I got to see her for a second, this very noisy woman who’d apparently followed him all the way from Putney. The weak hallway light was shining on her head and making her look so alone. Older than Mum, no question. Maybe even older than Rob. Blonde and sort of fake, with all these black streaks on her face from crying. He closed the door behind the two of them, in a quiet, careful way.

Mum just sat there on one of the tall stools in her big T-shirt and joggers, playing with her foaming glass of Guinness, turning it round and round. She didn’t seem Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net upset or worried. It was like she had finally decided something and didn’t even mind that this person was waking up all of Kenilworth Road at midnight and shouting about how Long Gone had used her and thrown her away. How all men ended up using her but she really thought he was different.

You could still hear them outside the door, Long Gone and his groupie, even though he had calmed her down, for the most part. Now their conversation was turning into a low, steady rumble. Every once in a while, her voice would peak up, but Rob was good. It didn’t take long before he got her evened out again.

He finally came back in and leant against the door. I guess I could understand what Mum saw in him, you know?

And it had nothing to do with the geezer he played on the stage, by the way, because she’d only gone to his show once, long after they met. Anyway, if the room was dark enough, he looked decent. Skinny, even fit. And he had a nice laugh. I don’t know why I was thinking that, especially since he wasn’t laughing now, not even close, but I must have been remembering something that happened earlier, when he was taking the cans out of the fridge and joking about one of his bandmates in Prodigal Son. So, this weird, hard silence just hung there for a while, between the two of them. Mum stared past him, sort of at an angle, but he was looking straight at her. All of a sudden, he said, “She’s off her head, you know,” right when Mum told him, “Get out. We're finished.”

“Em.” He walked towards her, but she just sat there like before, cold and still, and said, “Get out. Or I swear to god I’ll call 999 and have you arrested.”

I started to slip back into my room because I wanted to disappear, but Long Gone saw me. He gave me this sad little shrug before he picked up his guitar case and left.

He hasn’t given up, though. Almost every time afterwards when he’s shown up to get his stuff, he’s begged 10

little of those blokes who march through town when their club is playing. The shouting gets nearer and nearer and seems barely contained, like a brawl or a riot or a massacre will burst out at any moment, until the noise is almost unbearable. But right at the worst moment, right when you think you’re going to lose your bloody mind, they make their way down another street, and their voices get smaller, funneling down. Everything is so quiet afterwards, you can hear yourself breathing.

“That way.” Stun starts walking, but I don’t. I suddenly want to be in my cramped flat, watching Mum’s wedding tape, especially listening to the organ in it. I realize right at that moment how much I like the music, how soothing it is.

He notices I’m not there behind him – strange, because he hardly notices me when I am there – and says, “C’mon, you fuck. Let’s see what’s happening.”

The whole situation in Ealing Broadway is weird, a little unreal. More and more kids appear, from nowhere it seems, like a Bollywood film when everyone starts showing up for the big dance routine. But the people tonight aren’t dancing, not really. They begin to randomly pick up things – boxes on the pavement filled with rubbish or metal stands holding newspapers – and slam them around. Denting the door of a Mini parked on the street. Thumping the window of the chippy.

“Why are they doing that?” I say. “No one got shot tonight, as far as we –” “So what?” Stun presses himself against the window of the shop and watches the customers inside. They’re acting like squirrels on the Common that don’t know what to do when he rushes them. Jerking their heads round, sorting out how to escape. “Rag heads!” Stun yells. “Scared, are ya?”

I think of our mate Manish. I reckon he’s more my mate than Stun’s. Anyway, Stun doesn’t seem to be thinking of anyone just now. He half-runs, half-bounces away.

You can see more people waiting in corners, for a sign, for instructions. They’re bent over their gadgets, iPhones, BlackBerrys, whatever it is they’re using. It’s strange – no one’s really looking around. Everything that matters is contained in those little screens, just like everything that matters to Mum anymore is on the TV. When it finally gets dark, night-time dark, you can hear more voices mingling in the air. Faster, high and anxious.

All of a sudden, as we round the corner, I feel the heat, solid against my face and chest, causing sweat to form in strips under my eyes and circle my neck.

Stun stops in his tracks, panting now, and says, “Fuck me. Look.”

I am and can’t believe it. Have they torched a whole building? A warehouse? Whatever it is, I’ve never seen a fire like that, not in real life. Reddish-orange and rippling, almost as though the lights have been projected onto the sky. And just in the few seconds we’ve been standing here, it’s getting louder. Crackling – almost deafening.

“Yes!” Stun says, as though he has set the fire himself, as though he’s watched it grow from a little flame to this.

I start to turn round and make my way back to our flat.

What if someone is doing the same thing to it? With Mum inside, moving too slow these days, like she’s doesn’t really know what’s happening. Right on cue, my mobile starts ringing in my pocket. So the thing works after all.

Before I can reach for it, Stun grabs onto my elbow. His

I smell the diesel in the air. It’s so heavy and dark, I can almost feel it in my mouth. I hadn’t realized how much I was used to breathing it in until we got out of the city during our day trip to Brighton. That was a good time, by the way. One of the best I’ve ever had, to tell the truth. I’m so caught up in remembering the sound of the seagulls and how mad the water was, a bit scary too with those huge, murky waves, that I arrive at the King’s Arms before I even realize it. Stun’s waiting on one of the benches outside, tapping his foot in that nervous way he has.

I worry about my spots, but I have no reason to. Stun’s are so much worse. Course, I’ll never tell him that. They connect in shiny purplish patches below his eyes, up his temples, angry splotches of color and texture. Sometimes I don’t even hear what he’s saying because I’m so busy looking at them.

“What took you so long, asshole?” He says that last bit in an okay American accent, sort of broad and nasal. And then, before I can move away, he jumps to his feet and punches me in the arm. It isn’t at all like Long Gone messing about. When Stun hits me, it hurts, a dull, lingering pain that often turns into greenish-purple rings decorating my skin.

“Got here as soon as I could.” I don’t look him in the eye.

It’s rare when I do.

He consults his BlackBerry. A gorgeous gadget, polished and shining with really flash colors, especially when everything around us is getting dark. He takes better care of it than he does himself. I wonder how it would feel to have something like that, something that would destroy you if it got lost or broken. “C’mon. I hear there’s action up near the Broadway.” He hands me a knit beanie hat, the ones you wear in the winter.

I take it. I don’t know what to do with it, though, and shake my head slightly.

“Big brother.” I must really look dim right then because he says, “CCTV.” I’m surprised he isn’t more impatient with me, but ever since I’ve shown up, he’s started acting so careful and cool about everything, like he’s Daniel Craig or something, like we have an audience. “I was gonna use it, but this’ll do.” He pulls the hood of his sweatshirt over his head.

I shrug and follow him. As usual, I keep a pace or two behind, always floating in his trail, a stale smell, a bit like fried batter and vinegar. As far back as I can remember, even when we first arrived at school in the morning, he’s smelled like that. His flat isn’t even close to a chippy. I don’t get it.

Mum hates me being out and about at night but, in a way, I feel safe here. Invisible. People don’t pay much attention to me, really. I’ve never been very tall, and everything about me is so ordinary, I reckon I can understand why no one ever seems to hear me when I ask a question.

Well, it bothers me when I want an answer, but most of the time, I sort stuff on my own and get by.

Stun, on the other hand, well, he makes himself the center of attention. Talking in a very loud voice when he enters a space, causing others to look up at him. Even if they mutter “wanker” or something worse, which they seem to do a lot, at least they notice. That’s all that matters to him, I reckon.

And that’s when we hear it, people yelling in the distance and making a big thundercloud of sound. It reminds me a 11

People are walking around us as though they have all the time in the world, in pairs and groups, a mass of hoods, laughing, discussing how many gigs this gadget has, how the 4G network is a crock of shit. I watch them crunching over the glass. The policeman always seems to be hovering there, at the edge of my vision, getting lighter than his fluorescent vest. I’m afraid to look at him straight on, though, the way you’re afraid to let your guard slip, even for a moment, when you’re running in a dream, or else that sharp panic in your stomach will take you over and make you stumble and fall and get caught by the horrible, faceless thing chasing you.

I start, automatically, for the abandoned cashpoint, but Stun has his hand on the back of my head again, not as rough this time, and steers me back towards the window, where, I notice now, the glass is opened in a huge, almost perfect hole. “How did they do that?” I ask. As usual, no one answers, so I continue on my way, clutching the new packages to my chest, not even bothering to hide them. I realize, somewhere in the back of my mind, that the plastic casing of one is cutting into my skin.

More heat. A car across the way, bigger, a Land Rover maybe, is on fire now. A mass of flames, shaped like one of those flowers I saw on the Notting Hill tour when Long Gone took me – a tulip. All yellow, the brightest, purest yellow you’ll ever see, curved in near the top before flaring out. I stand there watching, Stun too, as a bunch of people dance around it, laughing and chanting. Another stupid song. That old Doors one this time, “Light My Fire.”

“C’mon.” Stun leads the way further down the Broadway so we can find more toys. He’s almost bouncing again, that iPad held closely, completely his now, molded to him.

We wander through crowds of kids. Some ignore us, but others are interested in what I’m carrying. If they get too close, if they start to yank at my shoulder, Stun will shove them away, and I wonder what makes him so protective of me, so interested.

A movement in the corner catches my attention. I don’t know why, but there’s something about it… the dull, dark hair, the glint of plastic trousers. I look more closely and see him. Long Gone. He’s leaving another shop with a crumpled shutter, the place that sells cheap electronics. Carrying an awkward cardboard box, one he can’t hold really well because it’s too big to put under his arm.

I stop, and he stops. We just stare at each other, me and Long Gone, without saying a word. That’s when he does that thing again, that sad shrug he gave me the time I was trying to hide in my doorway, when Mum was throwing him out. I watch, not able to warn him in time before more hoods, three of them, knock him down with a cricket bat. A swing across the shoulders so that he falls to his knees, still holding on to his stuff. Holding on for dear life, because it’s the way he’s going to prove himself to Mum, to me. But they hit him again, and even from this distance, I can hear the funny, groaning noise he makes when he finally gives up and slumps forward, draped over the box.

One of the kids kicks him aside. “It’s a fucking DVD player,” she says.

“Not even Blu-ray.”

And then they kick him more, hard in the side now, in disgust. I keep walking then because, if they know what I have, they’ll do the same thing to me, I’m sure. Keep walking

hold is tight. Frantic too, like he’s afraid to face all this alone, maybe. All his Casino Royale cool has disappeared. I reckon he wishes his brother was here with him. The pirate.

“Let go!” I can’t believe I say that to him. I don’t regret it either.

“Shut up. You can’t leave now. It’s just getting good.”

He drags me past a bunch of kids, just a few older than us, most our age or even younger. “Get your phone, then.”

And he shoves me forward, under the broken, half-raised shutter, through what used to be the front window of an electronics store. Shards of glass fall around me and I kick more ahead as I half-fall inside, causing a slurry sound like gravel being pushed round. All the while, Stun’s voice echoes in my head, high, piercing. “BEN-ny! BEN-ny!” The bit from that Elton John song.

The shop is filled with stuff, loads of stuff, sitting on displays, gleaming, lit so perfectly. iPods, iPhones, computers, tablets. Like an advert. Like a dream. As I stand there, taking it all in, people pass me on both sides, hoods shadowing their faces. They saw at the security cables with pocketknives and blades of glass. And if that doesn’t work, they use bricks and rocks to break off the locks.

I pull on the damp hat I’ve been clutching all this time, catching a whiff of Stun in the process, and move towards the phones. Any sort you’d ever want. And that’s when I see the policeman. He’s lying in a big pile of the sparkling green-edged glass, his head cradled by his arm, almost like he’s at a picnic on the Common. You’d think he was hanging out, being entertained by all the activity around him. He looks so relaxed, but that’s when I notice the blood. It’s seeping through the glass, bubbling and coating surfaces, the way Mum’s Diet Coke meandered around the ice cubes when she used to pour herself a drink, before she resorted to just opening cans and leaving them strewn about. He keeps pressing his other hand underneath him, against his side, trying to hold the bleeding in, I reckon.

I move towards him. “Hey,” I tell him. “Hey.” But then, I somehow lose control, and I’m veering towards those gadgets again.

“Don’t bother with him,” Stun says in my ear. “He’s just gonna slow you down.”

Everything is a blur, but I know, somehow, that I’m still reaching for the policeman. I can’t get near him, though, because Stun has put his hand, his whole hand, against my head. It feels like some sort of torture helmet in those awful films he likes to watch, with his fingers cupping the back of my skull. “Ben, the bloke is gone. You can’t do anything.”

I hear myself take in a huge gasp, ragged and wet. And then some spit or air or something goes the wrong way, so for one blind, panicked second, I can’t breathe and think I’m going to die too. Stun shoves me forward, like before. “Get your fucking phone.”

I can see the policeman out of the corner of my eye. He gives a little shake, small and tight, like a shudder. Right then, I feel ill, something hollow whirling deep inside me, rising up into my throat, watery and quick along my jaws.

But, to keep myself distracted, I finger the boxes that are available now under the broken displays, the disposable mobile that can be activated month to month, the new Android with the huge screen, the iPhone. I take all three.

“Good lad.” Stun has a long package under his arm. An iPad. “Come on then. Let’s go.”

12

sweat, it looks a bit like the reddish moon above. “Get back to your flat. Lay low for a while, all right?”

I nod. My mouth is too dry for me to speak.

“Reckon I still can’t text you,” he says. I remember my three new phones, lost somewhere in Ealing Broadway. I don’t care, and I’m surprised how much I don’t. “I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.” But then, it’s as though he knows what I’m thinking before I do. Now that we’re actually standing still, now that tonight is almost a memory, I can’t seem to stop picturing the people in the chippy and, even worse, the policeman. “If you want.”

I’ve managed to swallow a few times, but even then, when I straighten to my full height and open my mouth, nothing comes out. So I just shake my head.

“No?” He leans forward, confused.

“No,” I croak out.

A pause. I can’t find the energy to say more, to explain.

I just stand there and look at him, waiting.

“Fuck you, then.” He shuffles backwards, then turns and runs off, holding up his iPad. His words hang in the air like background noise. Not worth paying attention to. “Fuck you, all right?”

I watch him go, just staring and staring. His yelling has been replaced by sirens, stringy in the distance, all tangled together. Every part of me hurts, even my skin when a breeze blows past. And I’m so tired, more tired than I’ve ever been in my life. I begin to wonder, with a little dart of panic, if I’ll ever feel normal again. I peel off the stifling knit hat and drop my head back. I can feel my hair, stringy and wet, against the back of my neck. The sky is glowing near the horizon, and I know why. First hand.

I shiver and make my way inside, but it’s hard going up the stairs now. My legs aren’t working very well.

Mum is standing there when I open the door. Off that sofa for the first time in ages. She has the phone in her hand.

“Oh, my god.” She starts for me, but I slink away, towards my room. “What happened to you? Are you all right? Oh, Ben, you’re not! You’re not all right.”

I pull my mobile out of my pocket. A light on the edge is blinking, and the tiny envelope has showed up, the one telling me I have voicemail. I press a button to find out how many messages, but I’m having a hard time of it because my hand has started trembling in a loose, uncontrollable way that scares me. There are five, by the way. All from Mum. I lie down on the bed then, clutching the pillow under my head, trying to wait out the trembling. But it’s got worse. I’m shaking now, all over. The sheets are cool and smell of bleach and the lavender fabric softener we use. I try to lose myself in them.

She comes into the doorway. I can feel her there. “Ben?” And then she gets even closer.

I bury my face in the pillow when she lies down behind me. After a second or two, she wraps her arms around me.

Even though I’m not all right, and she isn’t, and Ealing Broadway is in shreds, I’m here at least, at home, with her.

That’s what I need, more than anything else, and it’s enough.

even though I can’t see the pavement any more, even though the rubbish bins and small cars they’ve set on fire just up ahead are blurry and pointed, star-shaped. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”

“What’s the matter?” Stun is looking back, even as he stays by my side. “Do you know him?”

“It’s Rob,” I say. I can barely get the words out.

“Fuck me. So it is…”

I drop the phones then, almost throw them down on the pavement, and whirl around, towards those awful shadows that are still kicking and hitting. All of a sudden, I don’t feel angry or scared or anything. I just know I have to turn back.

I hear my name being called from somewhere. Maybe it’s Stun. Or Rob. Doesn’t matter. I dive in to that mass of arms and legs and push them off, even as I feel fists cracking against my face, even as the flat side of the cricket bat slams down on my back with a sting so sharp and white I think I’ve been cut. “Get away from him,” I say, scratching and slapping and heaving them away. “Get back.”

And they do, so suddenly that I feel cold and exposed, even with the wavy air caused by the fires all around, even with the ashes floating past me. I stand there, over a wheezing, coughing Rob, my hands spread in front of me, as though I can hold anyone or anything back with that stupid pose. My mobile rings again, over and over, sounding miserable at first, then desperate.

“Ben, my boy,” Rob says. “It’s your mum, you know. We worry about you so much.”

I can’t face him. Not just now. Instead, I see the policemen, two of them in the distance, pointing at us.

“Aw, Christ,” Rob says.

Stun runs up, grabs hold of my arm. “C’mon,” he says.

“No.” I jerk my sleeve away. “Get off me.”

“Fuck you,” Stun says. “I’m just trying to help you. You wanna end up in jail? Like my brother?”

“Go.” Rob says. He sits up a little, his hands braced behind him. “Do what he said. Get out of here.”

I shake my head, but Rob is on his feet now, somehow, and tries to push me away. Those kids must’ve bruised him to the point of breaking bones, yet he’s still functioning.

Barely, though. The low, bluish light doesn’t favor him tonight. He looks older than ever, and one of his eyes is swelling into a purple slit.

When I still stand there, refusing to move, he takes a breath and then roars out in an awful voice, “Get out!” I’ve never heard him yell like that. I make the weird strangled noise, like the one that came out when I saw the policeman lying there in the glass.

Rob pushes me again so that I stagger forward and have to break my fall with my palms. I feel the pavement scraping against my skin, rough and raw. And then I get up and run.

I haven’t run like this in forever. My chest is burning in a stretched out, almost unbearable way and, after not too long, I feel as though I’m going to collapse. Stun stays close, though, right behind me the whole time, past the outside of the Broadway Centre, past the King’s Arms where we met earlier, everything getting quieter and quieter around us, until we reach Kenilworth Road. Then we skid to a stop, taking in great gulps of air, me bent over with my hands braced against my knees.

“Go on.” Even though he’s pushed his hood back, I can only see half of Stun’s face. Cratered with spots, shiny with

• • • Kimberlie Orr lives in Alexandria, VA. She has an MA in Writing from The Johns Hopkins University and recently published her first short story in Timeless, a young adult anthology.

13

About Biking (Bikers and Joggers in Love)

It's that weight he has on him I want that urge to spill the beans at every party take on the unbelievers prove it's the truth smash some glass chandelier with a grappling gun and disappear into the shards silently screaming the most satisfying yes I AM

by Daniel Vlasaty The lakefront path is quiet at five in the morning.

And not so hot yet.

I still sweat though.

It is dark.

A lot of the streetlights along the path do not work.

So I taped a flashlight to my handle bars.

I cannot afford one of those fancy LED lights.

There are not many people out so early.

Mostly just people working out or whatever in stupid-looking clothes.

They jog like drunken stumblers.

I have to swerve around them.

I like to ride really close behind them so that when they jut out this way or that I have to swerve really fast to not hit them.

I make car racing sounds when I swerve.

They laugh at me if they are with a jogging buddy.

If they are alone they stay quiet.

They are afraid of me.

I am not afraid of them.

I am too fast for them.

while the hole in the ceiling shows it like a moon with his name on it, milky-hot, faithful because it can say nothing else

Shadow

• • •

by Rachel Kolb

Daniel Vlasaty lives in Chicago. He works at a methadone clinic and reads comic books. He has a wife and some cats. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Mustache Factor, Three Minute Plastic, His Cock is Money, Smashed Cat Magazine, Bizarro Central, and elsewhere.

In another tragic melody We scream together in harmony And succeed to tear the lining down The house of thorns you burned Within the demon’s love reborn And with the stolen jewels from the good man’s crown

What I envy most about Bruce Wayne

I’m stronger for the time I’ve spent alone Than for any cruel thing said or done This won’t end until the battle’s won Until the mourning songs block out the sun

by Jon Boisvert

Beneath the homes of crooked sins Lie these hands that hold forever’s end For when the words written in red can turn to gold

is the Bat-signal I want to be wanted by the sky like that wanted by the dark corridors and thorny backdrop of city the granite-colored clouds flashing me their thigh telling me to put on my leather & come swinging but never (ever) to reveal our secret to anyone

Before the lights became our fight We’d run together into the night And reminisce in stories never told I’m stronger for the time I’ve spent alone Than for any cruel thing said or done This won’t end until the war is won Until my shadow blocks out the sun In another tragic melody We scream together in harmony And we can’t even tear the lining down

14

me out of my downhill alcoholic spiral. Nancy did more for me than anyone else in my life ever had. I vowed to myself that I would do anything I could for her. Since our marriage, I always made it a point to be a good provider. To keep Nancy comfortable in any way I could. Alas, all too often that has meant providing her with material things. I wanted so much to help her right now, but I felt so powerless. That feeling was eating me alive from the inside out.

Heading towards the job, all sorts of thoughts started racing through my head. There was a bar on the corner of the block where I worked. I thought about having a drink again. It had been nearly twenty years since I had a drink. I actually walked to the bar and stood in front of the door, literally shaking. Thoughts and emotions were running through me that no human should have to endure. As I stood there momentarily, looking up at the still light sky, a girl walked by selling flowers.

“Flowers, sir?” She asked as she passed.

I just shook my head 'no.'

As I stood there for a few short moments, something suddenly hit me. It was as if all the tension was suddenly released from my body. I ran down the block and caught up with the flower girl.

“Flowers.” I panted.

“Yes sir?” She responded.

“Um, flowers. I'll take a bouquet.” I said.

After paying the girl I stood there for a moment savoring the delicate scent of the colorful bouquet. A few minutes later I started down the block to the nearest pay phone. I called the night job.

“Um, hello Bill. Yeah, this is Gary. I won't be able to make it in tonight.” I started into the phone, “In fact, I am going to have to quit the job. Personal reasons. I'm sorry.”

I walked back to the car and got in. In a little while, I was back in my driveway. I parked the car and walked up to the door. Opening it, I concealed the flowers behind my back.

“Gary. You startled me.” Nancy exclaimed, “You're home.

Don't tell me you lost your job. What happened Gary?”

“What happened is I quit.” I answered as I handed her the flowers, “It's more important that I'm home with my wife.”

“Oh, Gary. Flowers! I can't remember the last time you bought me flowers. How sweet.”

The truth was, I couldn't remember the last time I bought my wife flowers either. The other thing I couldn't remember was the last time I saw Nancy's eyes light up like they did when I handed her the bouquet. It warmed my heart to actually see a happy look on the face of my own wife for a change.

“I think we need some music.” I said calmly.

I walked over to the radio and put on a cool jazz station.

I then took my wife by the hand.

“May I have this dance, my dear?”

She smiled up at me in a way I had not seen in quite some time. I looked in her eyes as we began to sway gently to the music. Emotions started to build up inside of me. I pressed Nancy against me. She was still clutching the bouquet between us as I rested my head on her shoulder. I didn't want her to see the tears that were welling up in my eyes. As I held my wife close, I wished there was some way her disease could pass into my body. I truly wanted to heal this woman. I truly wanted to take away all her pain.

Sexual Healing

by Alan W. Jankowski

recall the evening as if it were yesterday, even though it's been over ten years. I stared down at the table and mindlessly picked at my food while my wife sat silently across from me. Nancy and I had been married almost 25 years at the time. We had been through so much together in those years, good times and bad. Of all that we had been through together, nothing was as tough as this. I just stared down at my plate. I really didn't want Nancy to see the tears that were forming in my eyes.

“What did the doctors say anyway?” I managed to ask.

“They said I have less than a year to live, Gary.” Nancy answered, her eyes diverted.

“You know those doctors never know what they're talking about.” I said indignantly.

There was clearly anger in my voice. Anger that Nancy might actually be taken from me. Anger that there seemed to be nothing I could do about it. Anger mixed with my sadness as I sat there just staring at my plate.

After a while Nancy got up to clear the table. I had barely eaten a thing.

“You done with that?” Nancy asked as she reached for my plate.

“Yeah, just not hungry.” I answered mindlessly.

I watched my wife clear the table. She moved so slowly these days, never really smiling. Her eyes seemed so blank, without a trace of joy. The cancer had taken a lot out of her.

She bore little resemblance to the woman I fell in love with just over 25 years ago. In fact, I barely recognized her.

I sat at the table silently for a few more minutes before getting up. I had to get ready for my night job. I had taken a job as a security guard several years ago when the kids started college. Our youngest had graduated just over a year ago, but I kept the night job. I figured we could always use the extra money.

As I walked out the door that evening, I took another look at my wife. She was still in the kitchen cleaning the dishes from dinner. I walked out without even saying goodbye.

Just going through the motions as if in a trance, I got into my car. As I drove off, my emotions ran the whole spectrum from anger to hurt. I didn't know whether to cry or scream as I drove away. I believe I did both. I felt like cursing God. I cried out loud, “God, why her? Why not take me?” I was like a raving lunatic with tears in his eyes. Nancy meant more to me than you'll ever know.

I thought about all that Nancy and I had been through since we had met. When I first met Nancy, I had already been through one failed marriage. I went through a rather debilitating depression following my “failure” and my “solution” was to drown my sorrows in alcohol. In spite of it all, somehow Nancy saw something in me that nobody else saw. A real human being who was hurting and didn't know how to cope with the pain. She showed me love, and helped

I

15

That was just over ten years ago. As I sit here holding Nancy's hand on the eve of our 35th anniversary, I reflect back on how truly lucky I really am. Lucky to have someone to truly love and who is always in my corner for me.

Sometimes I feel like I am the luckiest man in the world.

Perhaps I am. It's just a shame it took so much to get me to realize it.

Even after my wife and I stopped dancing in the middle of the living room, we just held each other close for some time. After a while, I suggested we take a bath together. The last time we did that, I could not tell you.

Gently I led the woman I loved into the bedroom by the hand. I began to run the bath water as I went into another room to find some scented candles I knew we had stashed away. Returning, I lit them and placed them around the room.

I also threw some bath beads in the tub. We both helped each other with getting our clothes off, and I held my wife's hand as she stepped into the tub.

We took turns washing each other's hair. Afterwards, I started to lather my wife's body up in delicate fashion, applying massaging pressure where I thought she would enjoy it. I paid special attention to her feet, working the balls of her feet with my thumbs.

“Oh Gary. That feels so good,” she sighed, “I can't remember the last time you did that.”

Again, I couldn't either.

As a man, I felt this thing was unfair. But then, life is a lot of things but fair is not one of them. If life was fair this cancer would show its ugly face. I would get it in a ring and deliver it a knockout punch that would make Ali proud. But, I couldn't. All I could do was make my wife's last year on Earth the best it could be. All I could do was be there for her. It was the least I could do for the woman I loved, the woman who bore my children. If God chose to take her from me in a year, that was his decision. But making her last days on the planet as enjoyable for her as possible was my decision.

After we got out of the tub, we took turns toweling each other off. The areas I dried off, I followed with soft kisses.

Then, taking her by the hand, I led Nancy into the bedroom.

We then made love, and as we did, I took my time to ensure that she received all of the pleasure this woman I loved deserved. Afterwards, we lay side by side together for some time just holding hands.

As I lay there next to Nancy I realized how much I had been neglecting my own wife. Certainly not in any material or financial sense, but in what she really needed. Me. After that night, we continued to make love on a regular basis, always slow and unhurried. I never felt more satisfied in my life. We also spent far more quiet times together, just taking walks and holding hands.

Then one day something amazing happened. Nancy had what was considered a fairly routine oncologist appointment for some testing. A few days later she got a call from the doctor with her results. The cancer seemed to be in complete remission. There was no detectible trace of the evil cells that were attacking my wife's beautiful body. This was almost seven months to the day since the same doctor told my wife she would have less than one year to live. The doctor said he has never seen anything like it.

They say that love conquers all. Perhaps that is true, we'll never really know. All I know is that my wife is still cancer free to this day. Why the cancer disappeared is something no one on this planet will ever know for sure.

There is something I learned a long time ago. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. I had been neglecting my wife's needs. The needs of the woman I truly loved. The fact that it took a major illness and threat of death to get me to realize that was a major wake-up call. A call that I answered, fortunately.

• • • Alan W. Jankowski is the author of well over one hundred short stories, plays and poems. His work has been published online on various sites, in e-Zines and print since 2009.

When he is not writing, which is not often, his hobbies include music and camera collecting. He currently resides in New Jersey. He always appreciates feedback of any kind on his work, and can be reached by e-mail at: Exakta66@gmail.com

Plague

by Dave Gregg They knock so often We leave the screen open “Another!” sister shouts Father storms to the door As if unhappy with its location “What are you selling?” he demands of each salesman His tone sharpens With each intrusion Finally Father cries “Where are they coming from?”

Mother whispers of a plague By evening the dog no longer Bothers to bark at bed time We count their footsteps “A plague of peddlers” he says We shiver and clutch One another a bit closer

Dogs Who Love Sunsets

by Dave Gregg In a new snow I find a red dress where’s it from I wonder and in my search learn faces on TV go home at night that dogs love sunsets (given a chance) the dress belongs to a woman whose honor student son slipped off a roof adjusting antennae and fell to his death “a’s” and “b’s” and excellence seeping into the ground where she cradled him in her dress which the dog stole and later abandoned in the snow where I found it red like a bursting sunset which dogs love (given the chance)

16

“OK. That sounds like fun, as long as you don’t expect us too early on Sunday.” She gave Hannah a knowing wink.

“And just make sure you don’t run into us on Friday night by accident.”

Hannah reassured her. “Don’t worry. Just tell me where you’re staying and what restaurant you’re going to.”

Kate was playing right into Hannah’s plan.

The

Bridge Game

by Jerry Guarino

Jim was well aware of his friend’s upcoming birthday.

“So John, your 25th is coming up, right?”

John smiled. “Yeah, Kate has some special surprise planned involving a 2-hour drive. I have to wear a blindfold; good thing I have an audible book to listen to.”

Jim laughed. “Well, I hope she doesn’t kidnap you until you propose.”

John smiled at Jim like he had just discovered something.

Jim’s mouth opened. “You are going to propose! Good for you my friend. You two are perfect together.”

John pulled out the ring. “What do you think?”

Jim pretended to be blinded by the sparkle. “Nice. Will it be a surprise?”

“Yeah. Completely. And since it will be on my birthday, I won’t forget the anniversary date.”

“Smart, now if you can set the wedding date for a year later, you won’t forget any of those dates women want us to remember.” Jim and John high-fived. “Just like when we would take the lead with a few minutes left, keep it simple, score, and then play defense.”

annah and Jim were bridge partners. They knew each other’s moves and had an instinct for finessing. No matter what the situation, they were able to adapt and play the right card.

Bridge wasn’t just a game for them; the deception and gambits were part of their personality. Their best friends, Kate and John, were experienced players, but they didn’t have deception in their nature.

Hannah secretly wanted to make John her partner, but not in bridge. She decided she could use Kate to bridge her way to John, if she played her cards right. Not that she didn’t care for Jim; she just wanted a little change, if only for a night.

“Would you excuse us gentlemen?” said Hannah. Jim and John rose out of their seats chivalrously while the women went to the ladies room. The two couples had been friends since college, the boys playing on the same soccer team while Hannah and Kate both played field hockey.

Athletes make such beautiful mates but sometimes have trouble with commitment.

Hannah examined her makeup in the mirror. “Kate, isn’t John’s birthday coming up?”

Kate brushed out her chestnut brown hair. “Of course Han, it’s this Saturday. “I’m planning a surprise trip to a B&B in Maine.”

Hannah feigned interest. “And have you picked out a gift yet?”

Kate looked at her good friend suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

Hannah took out her lipstick. “Just curious. Jim’s birthday is coming up too. I’m looking for ideas.”

Kate relaxed. “Well ok then. I found this lobsterman that will take you out when he gets his traps to choose two choice lobsters. Then when you get back to shore, their restaurant will cook them for you as you sit beside a fireplace listening to jazz, all of John’s favorite things.”

Hannah held her long, blond hair back and pulled it through a red velvet scrunchy. “Well, that will certainly set the mood; did you also get something new to wear?”

Kate winked and held out her phone. “Soma’s new chemise, black satin and lace.”

Hannah reapplied her lipstick. “Very nice. That should do the trick.”

“What about you and Jim? Do you guys have plans?” said Kate.

“I have an idea. You’re going up Saturday morning, right?”

“Yes” said Kate, now intrigued.

“Well, I’ll get Jim to take me there too. We can have the boys to ourselves all of Saturday, then get together for a surprise Sunday brunch and spend the afternoon together.”

She gave Kate an encouraging smile.

H

Driving into Freeport, Hannah put her plan into action.

“Jim, dear. Here’s what I’d like to do today. Let’s check in, make love, then do some shopping. Bean’s has the new season’s clothing in and you need a new jacket.”

“OK. And what about tonight?”

“I have a surprise for you. The Celtics are playing the Bulls. You go have bar food and watch the game and then come back to the room at 9pm for dessert.” She gave Jim that wink.

“And what are you getting for dessert?” said Jim. “There’s a gourmet cupcake store next to a Victoria’s Secret. I’ll find something you like.”

Chocolate cupcakes and Hannah were two of Jim’s favorite meals. “Maybe I should skip the game?”

Hannah shook her head and reminded Jim of post game celebrations in college. “No, you were always hungrier after soccer games” and she leaned over to kiss his neck.

“Besides, I want to have an elegant lobster dinner by myself after shopping, not burgers and beer.”

Meanwhile, Kate and John dropped off their bags at the B&B, and then joined the captain on his boat to get the lobsters. The salty air and romantic scenery might be the place for John to propose, but he thought he should wait until dinner. He wouldn’t want some bounce from a wave to send the ring into the Atlantic. They returned to the restaurant and were seated for dinner, next to a fireplace with jazz music playing, just as Kate had planned.

Kate and John had an intimate dinner, taking their time.

John was waiting for the right moment to propose. “During dessert would be perfect” he thought. But when Kate finished her lobster, she got up and motioned John to stay seated.

17

Kate. “Thanks Hannah. You know I’ve been wanting to do that since college.”

Hannah gave him a goodbye hug. “Me too lover. Now back to your room, 2D. Kate's waiting for you.”

John found Kate asleep under the covers. He undressed and cuddled up next to her. He began stroking her hair when Kate regained consciousness.

“John, hi. Guess I fell asleep. Happy birthday sweetheart.”

“You shouldn’t have Kate. This was the best birthday ever and I want to make it even better.” He took the ring out.

“You are the one I want to spend my life with. Please marry me.”

Kate perked up. “Yes, of course I will.” Then the newly engaged couple made love and slept until morning. Kate never remembered seeing Hannah or being drugged.

Back in room 3D, Hannah had to clean up before Jim returned from the bar. She arranged the cupcakes along with champagne on a table. She took a quick shower, brushed her teeth and hair, and then changed into the new lingerie from VS. She was careful not to leave any clues of her deception. Then she heard a knock on the door, noticed that it was 9 o’clock and answered sweetly. “Come in.”

Jim came in and quickly undressed. “Perfect.”

“Would you like some champagne and cupcakes, sweetheart?”

“Those can wait, I’m ready for dessert first.” Jim and Hannah were very good together and Jim never realized what had happened earlier that night. They made love, had champagne and cupcakes and then made love once more.

Then they both slept in.

Hannah got up first, showered, dressed, then woke up Jim. “I found a great place for brunch. We have a reservation for 11. You get ready. I’m going out to get some last minute things at Beans.”

Jim gave Hannah a hug and kiss. “OK, dear. I’ll wait for you downstairs at 10:45.”

Hannah left the B&B quietly, before John and Kate would be leaving for brunch. She got in her car and headed for L.L. Bean, about a mile away. As she drove, she remembered her night with John, how she finally got to make love with him and wondered how life would have been different if she had been with him. One night was not enough for her; she was considering a longer affair, something she would have to keep from Kate. She decided to send John a text. But it would have to be innocent enough to keep Kate from getting suspicious.

Happy Birthday John! I hope I can find something special for you when you get back to Boston.

After hitting ‘send’, she looked up and realized her car was heading straight for a canal, as the winding roads in Maine will do. She turned the wheel just in time to avoid the water, but hit the bridge hard. The air bag deployed and she lay there unconscious.

“Sweetheart, we’re going to have dessert and your birthday present upstairs, ok? I’ll text you when I’m ready.

Relax and enjoy the fireplace.”

Kate walked out of the restaurant to their B&B across the street. When she reached the entrance, she saw Hannah.

“Han! You’re not staying here too, are you?”

“No, Kate. I was just going to meet Jim for dinner. He’s watching the Celts at the bar over there,” pointing down the street. “Do you have time for a drink?”

Kate looked her watch. “Sure, a quick one. John is still in the restaurant but I told him that I would let him know when to come up. Come, I want to show you this beautiful room we have on the second floor.” They quickly walked up the stairway to the corner room overlooking the marina.

“Han, pour us a glass of wine, while I get ready.” Hannah nodded as Kate went into the bathroom.

Hannah poured out two glasses, then added a hypnotic to Kate’s glass. Hannah knew that the drug would only make her fall asleep for an hour or so, without any memory of what happened.

Kate returned with the sexy new lingerie on. “What do you think?”

“Wow, he’s going to be taking that off you really fast.

Hope he doesn’t tear it.” Kate smiled at her best friend’s suggestion. Hannah toasted Kate with the wine. “Here’s to a great night for both of us. Then we’ll see you again for brunch tomorrow at 11.”

As they talked, Kate began to sway, and then fell over on the bed. Hannah tucked her in, took Kate’s cell phone and texted John.

Your present is waiting in room 3B; get the key and hurry.

Hannah made sure to clear the history of texts from Kate’s phone after it was sent. Then she rushed over to her room and got ready for John.

John read the text, left his after dinner drink half-finished, a hundred dollar bill on the check and hurried to the innkeeper. “Room 3B please?”

The man smiled at John, gave him the key and sighed.

“Bostonians.”

When he got to the door, he found a darkened room, with soft, flickering light from candles and moonlight from the window. Jazz music was playing from a phone on the dresser. The air had a slight scent of Kate’s perfume. He undressed quietly, got under the covers, then unknowingly began making love to Hannah; his caresses were received with soft moaning.

“Mmm, John. Don’t stop.” When John reached her face and kissed her, he realized that this wasn’t Kate at all.

Hannah smiled sweetly and whispered “happy birthday, sweetie.”

“Hannah?” Thinking that Kate must have set this up as his present, John enthusiastically continued making love with the blond schemer.

Meanwhile Kate was sleeping in her room.

After an hour, John was tired but wondering what was next. “Ready to go again?” he asked her.

“Sorry handsome. Time for you to go.” Hannah stroked his face. “Wish you could stay. Maybe we can do this again sometime.”

John gave her one more kiss, realizing this might be the last woman he would sleep with before getting married to

Jerry Guarino writes short stories and plays. Visit his website at cafestories.net. His stories have been published by dozens of literary magazines in the United States, Canada, Australia and Great Britain. His first collection, Cafe Stories, is available as a paperback on Amazon.com and an e-book through kindle. He is currently working on his second book of short fiction, Cafe Stories Deux.

18

“All right,” Delores said. “Moving on to the next topic: On Monday of last week you went into a meeting with your superiors without pen and paper. This was noted and commented upon by several people present.”

“I wasn’t planning on taking any notes.”

“You never go into a meeting with your superiors without being prepared to write down what they say. It’s just a matter of professional courtesy. We want our managers to believe that we think every word they say is important.”

“It’s the way to get along,” Cletus offered, suppressing a burp. Too many donuts. The one with cinnamon gave him a case of heartburn.

“When somebody says something interesting,” Ellery said, “I’ll consider writing it down.”

Delores turned down the corners of her mouth in a sort of grimace and referred again to her notes. “Um, let’s see here,” she said. “I see that one of the girls in accounting has lodged a complaint against you.”

“That’s absurd! I don’t know any of the girls in accounting.

I don’t want to know them.”

“She says that on several occasions she attempted to engage you in conversation and you ignored her. In her own words: ‘I tried to offer him a cookie and he turned his back on me’.”

“Oh. It’s the one with the harelip and the gray hair down to her ankles, isn’t it? Everybody avoids her.”

“You must be friendly and receptive toward your fellow co-workers,” Cletus said, wagging a finger to emphasize his point. “Do unto others before they do unto you.”

“That’s a new one on me,” Ellery said.

“Section ten, paragraph sixteen of the employee handbook,” Delores said.

“And that brings us to another point,” Cletus said.

“Several people have mentioned that you didn’t participate in our recent company ball game.”

“That’s right. I didn’t.”

“May I ask why?”

“I had a headache.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very good reason to me.”

“I don’t like ball games.”

“They are important team-building activities,” Cletus said.

“You can’t be a part of the team if you choose not to play.

Nobody ever got ahead by sitting on the sidelines.”

“Sports activities are great morale builders,” Dolores said.

“The next time you choose to remain at home because you have a ‘headache’, remember that you are conspicuous in your absence and it reflects very poorly upon you. It makes us think you don’t like us.”

“There isn’t anything you do that’s not seen and judged by your superiors,” Cletus said. “You want them to be on your side, don’t you? The next time they’re handing out raises or promotions, who do you think they’ll remember?

They’ll remember the ones who embody the team spirit.”

“Read section two, paragraph twenty-one in your employee handbook,” Delores said. “Everything you need to know is right there.”

“Which brings us to a question of punctuality,” Cletus said. “It has come to our attention that you are not always at work on time in the morning. Our start time is seven forty-five in the a.m. That doesn’t mean that you arrive at work at that time. It means you are in your seat working at that time.”

It Has Come to Our Attention

by Allen Kopp letus Willard and Delores DeFane sat in the closed room at the end of the long table. They both had cups of coffee in front of them and notepads.

Cletus had his hands folded over his huge stomach and Delores jiggled a pen nervously in her left hand, occasionally raising it to her mouth and taking small, absentminded puffs as though it were a cigarette.

Ellery Martin gave a timid knock on the door and entered.

The first thing he noticed was that inside the room the air was ten or fifteen degrees warmer than anyplace else in the building. No windows and no ventilation. As he closed the door, he looked around for a means of escape and saw none.

“Sit down,” Cletus said grimly.

Ellery went around to the other side of the table and sat in a chair facing the door. He sighed audibly and loosened his tie. He wondered if he was going to be sick.

Cletus and Delores were both looking at their pads as if to avoid looking at Ellery. Delores read from her pad, turned the page, cracked her knuckles like a longshoreman, cleared her throat.

“Do you know why we wanted to talk to you today?” she said in a voice that could best be described as a nasal whine.

She wore red eye shadow that made her appear to have an eye disease.

“No,” Ellery said. “Should I?” “You’ve been here now for a couple of years. You know how important rules are, I’m sure. If we didn’t have rules, we’d have chaos. We have a hundred and thirty-two people here. Can you imagine a hundred and thirty-two people, each doing exactly as he or she pleases, without any rules?”

“I never thought about it,” said Ellery.

“Rules are as important to a company as laws are to a society,” Cletus said importantly, in a voice that was surprisingly high pitched for a man of his girth. “It has come to our attention that you have broken, have violated, a number of our rules.”

“It has come to our attention,” Delores said, “that in the last thirty days you’ve had three inappropriate telephone conversations during business hours.”

“You listen in on my private calls?”

“That’s not what we’re saying,” Cletus said.

“Then how do you know they’re inappropriate?”

“You are allowed personal calls during business hours,” Delores said, “only in cases of genuine emergency. Refer to section six, paragraph eight, of your employee handbook.”

“You need to study your employee handbook and commit it to memory,” Cletus said. “We want to set an example of good citizenship to others.”

“Do you not even have a copy of the employee handbook?” Delores asked.

“I have one copy in my desk, one copy on my desk, and another copy on the shelf above my head. Do you think that’s enough?”

C

19

“You know our policy about being on time,” Delores said.

“It’s covered in section five, paragraphs one through eight of the employee handbook. If you need a copy of the employee handbook to read and study, stop by the personnel office and ask Fritta for one. It’s the holy gospel while you’re employed here.”

“I hope you don’t think we’re being unduly harsh by talking over these little matters with you,” Cletus said with what he thought was an avuncular grin. “This is not an official reprimand; it’s just a warning. We’re giving you a chance to correct your infractions and move forward with the determination to do all things according to company policy.”

“Now, are there any questions?” Delores asked.

“Is there any truth to the rumor that you’re really a man?”

Ellery asked.

“Well, I think that will be all for now,” Cletus said, standing up. “I’m glad we had this little talk. I always think it’s good to get everything out in the open and discuss it like the sensible adults we are.”

When Ellery returned to his cubicle, he sat down heavily in his chair and looked out the window at the sky for almost an hour. It was a bright spring day with a lovely sky and nobody was paying any attention. He looked at the pile of work on his desk that urgently needed his attention and swept it all into the trash can. He didn’t feel like working and would probably never feel like working again.

He looked at the clock and, seeing it was almost lunchtime, put on his coat and went down the stairs. A couple of his co-workers looked questioningly at him but he ignored them.

At the bottom of the steps in the foyer was a fire alarm he had never noticed before. He looked all around to make sure he was not being observed and then he approached the alarm, put the first two fingers of his right hand over the little lever and pulled downward. He smiled with satisfaction as he heard the alarms ringing frantically throughout the building. Loud voices, followed by urgent footsteps.

He left the building and began walking down the street.

Within two or three minutes he heard the wail of the fire engines as they raced through the crowded city streets toward the supposed fire. The next time it will be more than a false alarm, he thought.

Bitter

by Shannon Callsen Most of the time I feel Like a bodiless mind.

Perched upon stilts Grasping with claws Pursuing an idea I almost forgot.

I am Thought without face Absence without void Insanity without diagnosis Story without end.

I am not Typical In a female sense Deniable In a male sense Human In a racial sense.

Most of the time I want to escape This bodiless mind In this mindless world.

So I Flea beyond dark mountains of troubles Float through red rivers of loss Until the ladder of infinity Is mine to touch.

My stilts and claws come alive Aiding in my treacherous climb.

I hurry on, the entrance in sight

• • •

Home welcomes me Washing my soul in waters of peaceThe place of all my clarity.

Allen Kopp lives in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, with his two cats. He has had over sixty stories appearing in such diverse publications as Ethereal Tales, Planetary Stories, Skive Magazine, Short Story America, Midwest Literary Magazine, Abandoned Towers Magazine, Planetary Stories, and many others. He welcomes visitors to his website at: www.literaryfictions.com

But here is where My journey turns 360 A force ripping me Back to earth.

An escape, a portal, Gritted its teeth.

Because even my exits Are afraid of me.

20

‘Your turn,’ Steve shouts back. ‘Hurry up!’

Matt appears, brandishing a teaspoon he’s just dipped in the water from the boiled kettle, and while Steve shines the torch in the man’s face, Matt presses the back of the spoon into the soft skin just below the man’s ear.

‘Nggggaaahh!’ the man says. Matt laughs now, getting into it.

‘Heat it up again,’ Steve says.

They do it another couple of times with the teaspoon, before Steve complains he’s getting bored again. He asks Matt what they should do next.

‘Well,’ Matt says, ‘I read this thing about pouring ice cold water right into an ear… Apparently it hurts like fuck and leaves no trace…’

‘Brilliant,’ Steve says. He goes through to the kitchen, and Matt hears him rustling about in the freezer, looking for ice.

The man starts rocking the chair from side to side, making more noise through the sock. ‘Oi!’ Matt says. ‘Shut it! Stop wriggling, you’ll only make it worse!’

Steve appears back in the room just as the man crashes to the floor on his side, whimpering. He holds his torch towards the jug of water and ice that he’s carrying, showing Matt what’s he’s got. ‘Perfect,’ he says. ‘Idiot’s just made it

The Chair

by SJI Holliday hey’ve taped him to the chair using three rolls of duct tape. It’s wound tightly around his hairy chest, holding him upright against the back of the chair, then around each of his bare legs, fixing them to the two front legs of the chair. It’s gonna hurt like fuck when they pull it off; if they ever do. His arms are pulled tightly behind him, bound together and secured to the two back legs of the chair with yet more tape. The fourth roll of tape from the multipack that Steve found in Matt’s shed has been used to attach flattened chip cartons to all of the windows, both to keep prying eyes out and to keep them enclosed in near darkness inside. The only light comes from the torches that they both hold, which they occasionally shine in the man’s eyes when they hear him whimper.

They didn’t plan this. Well, not seriously, and definitely not today. But the man had pushed his luck and now it was time for him to pay. Now that they’ve started, they have to carry on. A couple of times, Matt has protested, saying they’ve gone far enough, they should stop now. But Steve is in the zone.

‘We need to teach this bastard a lesson,’ Steve says. He walks slowly round the bound figure, flashing the torch-light into his eyes. ‘What’ll we do first, Matt?’

Matt sighs. ‘Dishcloth?’

‘Yes!’ Steve says. He loves the dishcloth. Their old man was a champion at the dishcloth and especially liked to use it on Steve, often leaving him with painful bleeding wounds on his bare legs when he’d gone a bit over the top.

Matt dampens the cloth under the kitchen tap and throws it to Steve, who catches it easily in one hand, despite the near darkness. Matt shines the torch into the bound man’s face and watches his eyes light up with fear as he realizes what they’re about to do. He can hear rather than see what Steve is doing; he’s spinning the dishcloth into a tight rope.

Flick.

‘Mnnaaaggh!’ the bound man squeals. It’s muffled, coming through the rolled up sock they’ve stuffed into his mouth.

Flick.

Matt shines the torch into the man’s eyes and watches as tears roll down his face, soaking into the makeshift gag.

He directs the torch down to the man’s thighs, now sporting angry red welts, and he remembers their dad; he doesn’t want to catch Steve’s eye. ‘That’s enough now, Steve,’ he says.

‘You’re right,’ Steve says. ‘I’m getting bored with this…

What’s next? Teaspoon?’

Matt says nothing, just goes through to the kitchen and switches on the kettle.

‘Pleeessh,’ the man says, through the sock.

‘What was that?’ Steve says, poking the man in the ribs.

‘You want another flick, do ya?’

‘Nnnngg!’ the man says, and Steve just cackles.

‘Kettle’s boiled,’ Matt shouts through from the kitchen.

T

He stops mid-sentence at the sound of a key in the lock.

The front door opens wide, bathing them all in a bright ray of outside light. Wendy, Matt’s wife, is standing in the doorway, her arms filled with shopping bags and her mouth hanging open in shock.

‘Matt? Steve? Jesus Christ, what the hell are you two doing?’

‘It’s not what you think, babe….’ Matt says.

‘Yes it is!’ Steve butts in. ‘He fucking deserves it, giving you that third ticket… for parking outside your own house, for fuck’s sake…’

Wendy’s expression changes. She walks fully into the house and kicks the door shut behind her. Her initial shock at seeing the naked Parking Attendant taped to one of her new dining room chairs had thrown her at first, but she recovers quickly, dropping the bags of shopping on the floor.

‘Ok then,’ she says, grinning at them. ‘Have you done the dishcloth?’

• • • SJI Holliday has several short stories published online at 5 Minute Fiction, Five Stop Story and What the Dickens?

Magazine. Her WWII story 'Ben and the Bomber' will soon be published in the Chapter One Anthology. She lives near London and spends her time reading, writing and trying to wish away the day job. You can find some of her work at www.sjiholliday.com

21

Outside the house window by our television, another crowd is marching and shouting, and it’s as if the whole world is announcing my mother’s words. I read in the paper that Allen Ginsberg visited Stonewall earlier and danced there, called all of them beautiful. He said they didn’t look wounded anymore.

I’m a dull apparition in the window’s faint reflection, and both of them look like a blur. I rub where they are with my thumb, trying to focus on the squeaking instead of the sound of my mother calling me over and over. The windowpane is clean from within, but hard water stains from rain remain on the exterior glass, and I can’t clean the outside because it can only open so much. My arm would get stuck, trapped.

My mother once told me that she felt free as she cried and drove the car. I was just a kid so I felt excited for what I thought was a road trip, watching beads of rain trail by on the glass and grow as they collided with other drops. She explained to me that my father was possessive, something she once mistook for love. I was both proud of her decision and upset about it. For a while when I passed by strangers in the city, I thought any one of them could be him. My superhero toys became father figurines. Even though she shed the layer of wife and seemed new or free, like a Russian doll, there was more to her that she had not shown.

It’s been a few weeks since the visit and the last time I ran, which I enjoy doing on an empty stomach because it makes me appreciate food and water afterwards. When I came home from classes today, Natalie was waiting for mother, and I had to leave. I feel a light nausea, a choking feeling brimming in my throat while I’m running on the streets. My mother has been filling me with this news like taxidermy, freezing me in my shock. Earlier, she confessed Natalie was the one she went out with, told me about Stonewall and the love and life she felt there, how accepting all of the men were, how she discovered herself. Now she tells me where she’s going and with who. And where she has been all this time. Mother told me that when the white bulbs flashed at Stonewall, the police were coming so they had to stop touching and dancing.

My shirt is damp and clings to my sweaty skin, and when I get home a wind of music meets me at the door. My mother and Natalie are dancing to Marvin Gaye’s “That’s the Way Love Is” in the living room, twisting legs and flailing arms with their eyes closed. Natalie’s movements in her grey, long-sleeve sweater are hypnotic under the apple-cider glow of the overhead light. She catches me in my trance and pulls me by the hand to join them. I see my mother look up and smile, unwounded, over Natalie’s shoulder. Natalie’s grey arms are outstretched with her fingers spread open as she’s swaying and shifting her body from side-to-side, wide like a wall coming between us.

When the song ends, my mother changes the record to her favorite song, “La Vie en Rose”, and I go to the kitchen for a glass of water.

“This song is beautiful, darling,” Natalie says, wrapping her arms around my mother, framed in the doorway.

“It’s my favorite, Lily. Edith’s singing voice is lovely, but only second to yours.”

Natalie takes my mother’s hands into a waltz, singing la-dee-da’s imitating the record.

“Daniel, you know this song, right?” my mother says.

“Don’t you think it’s great?”

Windowpane (1969)

by Joseph Han s I’m rolling bits of tissue at the sink for a nose bleed that came out of nowhere, a spasm jolts from my chest to my throat and a red sneeze splatters everywhere—on the mirror, rinse cups, toothbrush bristles—and my mother’s yelling at me to tidy everything, especially to hide that comb entangled with hair. She’s busy cleaning dust away in the living room, moving things around, and wiping windows. We’re having a very special guest over, which is surprising because mother doesn’t have many friends and she rarely goes out. I try to wipe everything with a towel and rubbing alcohol, blood keeps dripping from my nose onto my lips, and there’s a loud knocking at the door.

Just a few weeks ago, they rocked and pounded on the doors and windows of our taxicab on our way back from my university. We were surrounded on Greenwich Avenue, where men held hands and kissed, stood in chorus lines shouting and kicking in unison. Right before I cranked the backseat window up, I heard an officer yell that he was

A

that it was a very Freudian comment before running off. One man uprooted a parking meter and smashed windows in, while others threw bricks and bottles at the uniformed hordes. A man wearing red heels climbed onto the cab and stomped on the roof, but someone noticed we were harmless and managed to lead the driver out. Closer to Stonewall, the Tactical Patrol Force flailing night sticks looked like swarms of hornets attacking butterflies. When we got home, mother cried and I thought it was because she was scared.

After cleaning the mirror, leaving a few light maroon streaks, I disinfect the toothbrushes and the sink faucet. I walk out to the doorway hall and the guest, a woman, holds her cupped hands near my mother’s chin.

“I’m so nervous,” my mother says. Her eyes are glossy, and her lids are pinkish.

“Don’t worry,” the guest says. She has emerald eyes, and the skin around them crease when she smiles. “Guess what I have in my hands? It’s a roach!”

“Ew, Lily, get it away from me!” Mother giggles, an awkward, almost childish series of yelps. The guest opens her hands and there’s a flower.

My mother puts it in her hair bun. “Daniel, this is Lily. An appropriate name, as you can see. ” She tilts her head. Her right hand slides down the guest’s arm and it unravels down her wrist, slipping in and interlocking with the woman’s fingers.

“It’s Natalie, actually. But you can call me Nat, Natty, whatever pleases you.”

I’m not looking at either of them, just their hands squeezing hard, my mother’s arm shaking. Inside her skin, the blood outlining her fingers is trapped in their grip while all else is a pale white, and I can taste rust on my lips. I walk away and what I hear next from my mother’s lips is soft like a whisper, but it’s bold and in large type hammered in my thoughts.

22

“Yes,” I say. “Of course I know it. You’ve played it many times. She’s singing about a man, you know.”

As they’re spinning around the room, my mother’s pursed lips and glare of disapproval alternates with Natalie’s look of calm. I know it’s about a man because I’ve translated the lyrics for one of my college French classes. It doesn’t seem suitable for the room right now. Maybe it’d be more fit for a queen, not mother. A drop of sweat from the hair above my forehead falls into my glass, and I dump the rest of the water in the sink.

After the slow dancing, my mother invites me to Natalie’s performance with her band, but I decide to stay in my room.

My wristwatch and the wall clock tick in sequence and I keep my eyes open in the dark, listening for the pauses in between. If being gay were a part of my mother’s identity her entire life, then my birth is invalid and this undermines my existence. I’m an absence, a silence between her and a father I’ve never known.

time, I grab Natalie’s arm and pull her back, but it slips out of my mother’s.

The brakes screech but they’re outmatched by my mother’s screams. She’s lying outstretched on the pavement, holding Natalie’s hand, and crying. The heels lay toppled, both of them broken. Another vehicle runs into the one that hit my mother, and the car moves forward. A line of cars trailing behind keeps honking, and the headlights and searing white bulbs illuminate their faces spellbound in fear and pale in the night.

“Shut up!” Natalie yells, squinting in the light.

The man in the vehicle doesn’t move, just stares at Natalie kissing my mother’s cheek and forehead. My mother looks so small on the ground, damaged like the last doll in the sequence.

“Do you see what you’ve done? My mom, you hurt her!”

I bang my fist on the window over and over, as if I’m going to break through the glass.

It’s been a few months since it’s been official. I’m supposed to turn around to make my way back home, but I keep running. Passing by men together or women together, I already assume they’re lovers if they’re laughing or smiling.

There’s a father and son playing catch on the street, and the boy throws it too far and the ball rolls by me as I’m running.

When the Mets won the World Series recently, I leapt out of my seat and joined the roar of the crowd. Even though I don’t watch baseball, I decided to go to game five on my own because I knew Baltimore would lose. I wanted to celebrate with the crowd and feel a communal joy. I pick it up and toss it to the father, who becomes a surrogate for the moment when he catches it and smiles thank you. If the boy’s father came out to him the way my mother did, I wonder how his life would change, and I grit my teeth.

I end up at a vacant lot in the Lower East Side. A shirtless boy wearing long white pants stares at a pile of mattresses from atop the jungle gym. He dives and the mattresses fold inward where his body lands, dirt smoking around him. He hops over the railing surrounding the lot where I’m leaning to go climb back up for another take off.

“Hey kid.” I say. “How do you feel when you do that?”

“Like Superman.”

There’s a long way to go before I get home. When I cross the street, I look back and the boy is already going up again for the third time.

About an hour later, a few blocks away from the apartment, mother and Natalie are stumbling together with their elbows locked. People coming from the opposite direction turn around to watch them go, shaking their heads, frowning, and I hate them for it when they pass me. In their eyes, it’s as if they’re blaming me.

At the crosswalk, I’m closer to my mother and Natalie, and figure that it’d be better we were all together. My mother is resting her cheek on Natalie’s shoulder, lifts her head and kisses her cheek. As they’re crossing, my mother’s ankles wobble in her red heels, and it looks like Natalie can’t hold her steady. On my right, halfway ahead of me in the intersection, a pair of lights speeds in their direction. In the approaching car, it looks like no one is driving. I can see the man hunching over with just his hand on the steering wheel as it gets closer. They lift their heads towards the bright beams and my mother raises her hand to stop the driver. In

Mother is in bed sleeping, medicated, and stiff with her broken legs. Her arms are too weak for crutches to support her body, and she complains that they hurt her armpits. She hasn’t been able to do much lately. I sit in her wheelchair until she falls asleep.

Natalie is sitting in the living room drinking a glass of wine and watching Tom and Jerry. I grab another glass and join her on the couch, and she pours herself a glass before mine.

“You know why television became so popular in the late fifties?” Natalie speaks while holding the glass to her lips, and her voice is trapped in the dome. “Escape. Families that couldn’t stand each other could escape the moment, leave each other in the dust.”

“Are you trying to escape now?”

Natalie smells strands of her hair. She has long eyelashes. “I don’t know. Life is shit, you know? Things are going, and then they’re not.” She has been over constantly ever since the accident, and they haven’t been able to do much. I think I know what she means. She’s bored with my mother. Natalie and I watch television for a while, drinking the remainder of the bottle. Tom drinks a bowl of milk but there’s dynamite in it.

“Daniel,” She turns and sits cross-legged closer to me.

“What do you think of me?”

“I think that’s a very self-conscious question to ask.”

I notice a few drops of dark purple on my shirt. Natalie puts her forehead on my shoulder and I hear her sniffing.

She uses my shirt to wipe her face.

“What’s wrong?” I put my glass down on the table and place my hand on her shoulder.

“I’m not sure.” Natalie’s cheeks are reddish. “It’s such a pain in the ass being gay.”

Light remnant trails of tears stain from the corner of her eye, down her face around her cheek. I stare at my legs before looking up.

“Is that what this is about? But you’re a woman, so you don’t need to worry about that pain.” I squeeze my hand and smile.

In her laughter I feel safe. Her emerald eyes are clearer, bright with gloss. I lean in closer, and the overhead light reflecting in the green resembles a sun brushing a grassy plain while morning drops of dew nest on her eyelashes. The blades of grass a cool, natural bed. In those identical world 23

I see a defined, double reflection of myself. On my lips I feel Natalie’s, a soft mesh with the taste of wine we shared in a perfect symmetry.

Natalie gets up from the couch and pauses at the doorframe of my mother’s bedroom. I follow and try to grab her arm to stop her before she leaves, but the door is already slammed. Moving aside the pair of sandals my mother borrowed from Natalie, I straighten our shoes off to the side.

In her room, my mother’s eyes are open, twitching and drowsy, her body so still. Through the cloudy, milky window, I watch Natalie crossing the street out there in the murky world, but it only looks that way from where I’m standing.

Vilipend Me

by Shannon Callsen

My mother is waiting outside in the hall while I’m setting up her birthday decorations and listening to Edith Piaf. She pounds on the door.

“Daniel, will you hurry up already?”

I bring out the dobosh cake from the refrigerator onto the dining room table. In a rush to purchase it, I forgot to ask the baker to write a message with frosting, so I bought many red candles instead. Starting with one in the middle, I place each candle in a swirl, lighting each with the one before it until the whole surface is covered and burning.

Natalie didn’t come back for her sandals. She couldn’t stay around. She had a band and they were going on tour.

My mother was supposed to go with her, but things change.

Maybe Natalie felt that my mother was possessive, that she’d have to oblige to stay because of her broken legs. It wasn’t until then that I realized that my mother was the stronger of the two. But still, I haven’t seen mother cry the way she did since that night we came home after witnessing Stonewall.

She covers her eyes with her cupped hands as I wheel her into the apartment, rolling over the sandals and flipping one over. One of the black handles is upside down, so I turn it back to where it is supposed to be.

I push my mother’s wheelchair into the space under the table so she’s close to the cake, and I turn off the record.

Her dark eyes reflect the candlelight and she smiles. The candle wax bleeds from the tip of the flame, and I begin singing happy birthday while holding her hand.

“Oh, Daniel. Thank you. Your singing voice is so lovely.”

She grips my hand and closes her eyes to make a wish.

“I can’t blow these candles out on my own. There’re just too many. Could you help me?”

“Of course, mom.”

My chin rests on her shoulder after I wrap my arms around her. Her cheek and the heat of the candles feel warm on my face. We blow and the lights disappear, and as I’m hugging my mother, the only thing between us is the thin, black sheet of the wheelchair.

Drops of red candlewax are spread on the cake, and I scrape off what I can with the knife mother used to cut it.

After I take a bite of the cake, I wet a napkin and reach out of the windowpane, managing to clean the outside glass.

Although I can only get to half of it, at least it’s the half that I can see through, and things are a lot clearer than they were before.

So many years spent Drowning in an ocean I’d Like to call my own.

I had inches, I had miles Safety furnished my haven A sanctuary for me alone.

The water tangling my voice Was comfort and the waves Crowding my lungs were bliss The salt burning my sight was Release. It was easy living All by myself with friends Without fingers to point And a life without Dreams to fulfill.

So many years passed and I shed the skin of who I was To become a skeleton With a jailed mind Crooked captivation Through empty eyes.

But a wandering soul Took sight of me and peeled Me from my peace.

Thrusting ever so gently out Of ocean and onto land Bystanders shriek and point As light shimmered down my Pruned and crippled body.

I was pierced with thought as My head buried into sand.

I cursed the man who saved My life and cried And cried in vain.

• • • Joseph Han lives and writes in Honolulu. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Hawaii Review and Metazen.

24

“The beach. It’s black.”

“Oh yea?”

“Yea. It’s volcanic sand.”

“Really? I’ve never seen that.”

“You provincial gypsy wanker. All you people ever talk about is the Black Sea and corn on the cob from a steaming bucket. You ever actually go anywhere?”

I spat just next to him to show off the practical, savvy side of the mother country. “ Classy. But seriously. We ought to go,” Wolfie said and crushed the butt of his cigarette on the concrete.

“All right. We should get a drink first.”

We sat on chaise lounges on the black beach sipping five-cent Coronitas and read about some American fatcat getting picked off by a Russian-made pistol fired straight into his temple in the early Mexican morning outside Boca del Rio. I adjusted my headdress and Wolfgang said: “Christ, you look like Lawrence of Arabia.”

“Seven Pillars of Wisdom.”

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s the book he wrote.”

“The book who wrote?”

“T.E. Lawrence.”

“Who?” “Lawrence of Arabia.”

“I’m talking about the movie,” Wolfgang said.

“I know.”

“What in hell does that have to do with a book?”

“Nothing. Let’s get another drink.”

The barkeep was a pretty, brown Mexican woman with no front teeth. Wolfgang had to look away each time she smiled.

“It’s like the goddamn Wild West,” Wolfgang said later, out of nothing. “And stay away from the green cabs. You’ve been warned.”

“El Tajin later? You know, to complete the tour. Like proper Gringos.”

“The hell is that?”

“The pyramid.”

“They have pyramids here?”

“Yea. They’re different. They’re Aztec. They got steps.”

“I don’t know.”

“They have temples and altars, too.”

“Blood shed, little girl sacrifices, and all that?” Wolfgang said.

“Probably.”

“All right, let’s go.”

Veracruz in Fragments

by Alex Pruteanu e met him downstairs in the hotel bar. He was working on a Martini with a spiral onion floating in it. A Gibson, maybe, is what they call it.

Wolfgang thought he might be worth something.

“I’m Seu,” he said. “I’m from Sao Paolo. You know where that is from, man?”

“Yea.” “I facking hate this Mexico. Brasil is number one.” He held up his index finger and jabbed the air above. “You like futbol?”

“Yea.” “Is number one. But in Sao Paolo, you haves to walk with bodyguards, man. You know why?”

I told him I had friends in Rio and knew all about the kidnappings and the ransoms. He asked if they needed good bodyguards. I told him they probably had the best security in town. My friends’ parents owned a mining company.

“What mine?” he said. “For what? The fossils? The gas?”

“Mica.”

“Ah, of course,” he said and put his hand on Wolfgang’s knee.

Later we went to his suite and inhaled freon. He killed a few lines of blow and then he put on a porno tape. After a while, Wolfgang got up and followed him into the bedroom.

I popped the tape out and watched Alf, dubbed in Spanish.

I sat on the couch, smoked his Indonesian clove cigarettes, and drank his Irish whisky. I waited for them to finish their business.

“They found that Brazilian guy in the alley back behind the Chicken Man’s shack,” Wolfgang said.

“Really?”

“Yea. All jacked up. They cut off his bollocks and stuck them in his ears.”

“Jesus.”

“Goddamn savages,” Wolfgang said.

“What you think he got into?”

“Who in hell cares? These bastards always got something nasty going on. He should’ve gone out with a bodyguard,” Wolfie said and laughed.

“Let’s get a drink downstairs.”

“You shoulda clipped that can of freon, you useless cunt.

I could use a good battery high right now.”

W

At Zempoala he had his first breakdown, feeling stifled by the gang of federales with machine guns milling about the site. I had to grab him by the shoulders to stabilize the tremors, and we took a cab back to the hotel. Halfway there it started pouring heavy-dropped rain and I thought the wall of water was going to crack the windshield. I held him to keep from shaking the whole way over. The cab driver kept looking back at us in the rearview and I thought we were likely going to be eviscerated by his fish-gutting knife for the mere change we had in our pockets.

In the small Polaroid, Wolfgang is shaking my hand across the net, mocking the professionals. The paint lines on the boiling, Mexican court are peeling, and there are tall

In the afternoon we went to the pool and smoked cloves.

I hung a towel over my head to save my brain from the sun.

“We ought to go to the beach, for Chrissakes,” he said.

“Been here three days and haven’t set foot on the beach.”

“All right.”

“It’s black, you know.”

“What?”

25

weeds growing from the cracks in the green asphalt at the baselines.

“We’ve got to get out of this god-awful bloody country,” Wolfie said.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

He slapped a roll of bills on the table.

“I can’t take this. I can’t fuck these guys anymore.”

“Why? What happened? Did you get in a jam with that old rich fag?”

“Nah, that went fine,” Wolfie said and lit up a joint.

“What then?”

“We just…we need to get out of here. This place…I don’t know. We just gotta go. We gotta go now. We gotta go home.

We don’t belong here. They don’t want us here.”

“Listen, it’ll be all right. We don’t belong home, either.

You’re just going through a jam, that’s all.”

“This guy…he had silver teeth,” Wolfie said and started to pace. “…like the Devil.”

“What guy?”

“The old guy. The rich one. Like the bloody Devil.”

“Come on with the Devil business. It’ll be all right.”

“Silver teeth. Silver teeth is fucked up. My grandfather had silver teeth.”

“It’s all right. Wolf. It’ll be ok.”

“Fuckin’ teeth.”

“We’ll go to the bar and have a drink.”

“We got to go home. Fuck the bar. I can’t do this anymore.

I want to go home.”

I drove back to Mexico City while Wolfie slept in the back seat. We had to share the narrow road with a battalion of horse-drawn buggies and carriages. It took us almost eight hours. Wolfie woke up once, as we passed the VW Bug factory in Puebla. He wiped his nose and switched sides on the bench. I looked in the rearview and thought he was sobbing. If he was, he was doing it quietly. I didn’t know what to say. The mud huts on the side of the road and the horses and peasants reminded me of my country.

We flew back to Philly. Wolfie’s money bumped us up to first class. He slept the entire flight. We sat across from a famous rock singer. He was a grotesque-looking man with horrible big lips and long, curly, frizzy hair. I wasn’t happy to be back in the States. Twice I had to keep the roll of cash from sliding out of Wolfie’s pocket. He just slept.

Last I had heard, he was delivering pizzas in Tempe, Arizona. He was living with a fifty-nine-year-old bisexual man who would drink and rape him repeatedly. I don’t know why he stayed there.

In the Polaroid, Wolfgang is shaking my hand across the net, mocking the professionals. He is happy. On the back of the picture, in small, near-perfect calligraphy he has written: “How’s it all going to end?” And then, underneath that:

In Front of God

by Brian Le Lay I prayed to god and it ain't got me nothing But arthritis of the knees So now I sit folded like an accordion I prayed to God and said, "God, Why you got me bent?" I figured God musta just been asleep, so, still, I sat still, prayed to God and it ain't got me nothing But rug-burn, bent knees, loss of bloodFlow to the feet. I rolled myself out Through city streets, sat curbside contemplating The good graces of God. God is love! God is love!

God is love! God is love! God is a glove.

Any day, I'll be on my way. At midnight, Delivery boys see me sitting in the lamplight Folded up like a briefcase assuming I'm a shoeshiner or a shaman. I tell them I see the future in post-rain puddles And I'll shine your shoes For a copy of the Daily News

• • • Brian Le Lay is a poet, author, and musician. He is the editor for Electric Windmill Press. His first full-length book of poems, Don't Bury Me in New Jersey, is available from Electric Windmill Press. His second book, Smile for the Customers, is forthcoming from Piggybank Bandit Books.

He blogs at http://www.conceiveyourself.blogspot.com

Shelves

by Dave Gregg he's sixteen an on-ramp boy a pistol locked and loaded if there ever was his strut suggests the bases full an unread ad yesterdays' news one you eye in the rearview mirror of forget Cain and Carver occupy his bookshelf Hannah is there too Small wonder those Books can’t get along

• • • Since emigrating to the United States from Romania in 1980 Alex M. Pruteanu has worked as a day laborer, a film projectionist, a music store clerk, a journalist/news writer, a TV Director, and a freelance writer. Currently he is an editor at NC State University. Alex has published in Pank , Camroc Press Review, Specter Literary Magazine, and others. He is author of “Short Lean Cuts,” (Amazon Publishing) available as an e-book at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and in paperback at Amazon.

26

A VOICE VOICE FOR YOUR

An Exclusive Interview with Author Ann Swann

The Phantom Pilot…tell us about that. What is the premise? What are the major themes in the book? What inspired you to write it? What would you like people to take away from the book?

novel. Yes, he’s a writer. In both of these stories (and in the third one, which I am currently writing), I hope my younger readers will realize that everyone feels different in some way…but some differences are simply more obvious than others.

One note: my publisher, Cool Well Press, originally released The Phantom Pilot only in digital format because of its novella length. When The Phantom Student is released, The Phantom Pilot will be included in the same print version. A two-for-one deal, if you will. Of course, both will also be available in digital format as usual.

The Phantom Pilot is the first in a series of tales about a couple of junior high school kids, Jase and Stevie-girl, who are introduced to the spirit world when a small plane crashes behind Jase’s home. When the pilot of the plane begins to haunt Jase, he enlists the aid of Stevie-girl to help him figure out what to do. He thinks she is brave because he saw her entering the local “haunted” house alone. The story is about their paranormal experiences, but it is superimposed upon their budding friendship and everything they have to deal with in their young lives. It is set in the decade of the 70s because that’s when I grew up, and to me it seems like we had so much more freedom back then; I think I just wanted kids of today to have a glimpse of what it was like.

The second story in the series introduces a new spirit— The Phantom Student— as well as another new student by the name of Derol Pavey. He has Tourette Syndrome and that makes him an outsider at the small school. The underlying theme here could be described as “Bullies and Freaks.” In fact, Jase says that will be the name of his first

How long did it take to write The Phantom Pilot? What was the process of writing this book like for you?

The book began as a short story which I wrote one evening when a small plane flew low over my house. It made me wonder what it would be like if it had crashed and I was the only one around to help. I gave myself the voice of a preteen boy, named him Jase, and the story took off. When it won first place in my writing group’s (The Abilene Writer’s Guild) annual contest, I knew I was on to something. And since I really liked the characters of Jase and Stevie, I decided to see if they had anything else to say. They did.

27

been published because they need updating or polishing.

One of my best tricks is to sit down at the computer and tell myself I only have time to write a few paragraphs. It’s reverse psychology, I suppose, because I always end up writing for hours or wishing I had time to write a few more hours. Also, if I’m really stuck on a new scene, I go back and reread the previous day’s work, and that usually gets me back into the story.

What is the greatest misconception that people have about writers?

That we don’t actually “work.” I put in twice as many hours now as I did when I taught elementary school. The only difference is, now I don’t mind the hours, (and I no longer have to dress up to go to work).

Do you think anyone can write? In other words, is it a natural thing or can it be learned?

I think there has to be a writer’s bone inside, but after that, it’s mostly a learning process. I believe if you truly have the desire to write, then you will learn the craft any way you can.

As a writer, what is your opinion of the field and craft?

Would you recommend it to others? Do you think people choose writing or does writing choose people?

I think writing chooses. For me, it’s always been about emulating something I’ve read. When I was a child I read The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart, and I remember thinking, “I want to write a story like that.” I’ve never gotten close to that level of expertise, but I’ll never stop trying.

As for recommending writing to others as a profession…I would not recommend it to anyone. I wouldn’t have to. The “real” writers will write no matter what.

Do you use any specific writing techniques, such as outlining, a daily word limit, any tricks of the trade you’d care to share with us?

Do you have any major projects in the works that you’d like to share?

The few tricks I have for writing are really simple: I always have something to write on for that odd moment when inspiration strikes (even if it is just the notepad on my iPhone). And I write whatever strikes my fancy without worrying about spelling, punctuation, or even chronological order. In fact, I write out of order most of the time. I find it easier to write the most interesting plot points first whether it’s the ending, the beginning, or the middle. Then I sort of fill in the blanks in between the scenes I’ve already written.

I seldom start at the beginning unless you count the prologue. In the Phantom series, the prologue sets the tone of the whole book(s). I think it’s because the time period is the past rather than the present.

I recently wrote out an outline for a new novel, a romantic comedy. But it’s the first outline I’ve ever done, and it’s very general…

I never think about page-counts or word-counts. I just sit down at the computer, and if nothing comes to me on the current work-in-progress, I start a new story or pull an old one out of the file. I also have tons of ideas in the idea file—plus a number of novels and short stories that haven’t

I do! I’m on the final round of edits for my women’s novel, All For Love, which will be published by 5 Prince Publishing in September right around the same time The Phantom Student will be released by Cool Well Press.

I’m also working on Part Three of The Phantom Series, The Phantom of Crybaby Bridge. And I’m re-working a romantic suspense novel called Stutter Creek. That’s why I made an outline for the romantic comedy that I hope to write soon—so I won’t forget what I had in mind—it’s tentatively titled Moonbow.

Tell us about yourself, your background, and how you started writing.

I started out as a preteen writing my first stories in spirals with psychedelic covers. This was not encouraged in my strictly blue-collar household. That’s why I never shared them with anyone until my first creative writing class as a senior in high school. My first published pieces were in my college literary magazines—contest winners each year.

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Those stories and poems gave me the confidence to keep trying even while I was working as a 911 dispatcher, a waitress, and later, as an elementary school teacher. Now, I have a wonderful husband who cooks, a lovely daughter who is also an author (check out A Heart on Hold coming out in September), a stepson who is the spitting image of his father, and a whole passel of precious grandchildren.

shut me up

by John Grochalski

• • • About Ann Swann

friday night the wife and i on the couch on wine

Ann Swann lives with her handsome hubby, Dude, and various neurotic (rescued) pets, in far West Texas. Her first book, The Phantom Pilot, is a Middle Grade/Young Adult ghost story. It is book one in The Phantom Series. Book two, The Phantom Student, will be published in October.

The series is published by Cool Well Press.

All for Love, Ann’s Contemporary Romance novel, is being published by 5 Prince Publishing in September.

Ann also has short fiction in the paranormal romance anthology, Timeless, edited by Denise Vitola. Two other short tales are included in the upcoming anthology Campfire Tales (also by Cool Well Press). She also has short fiction in several literary magazines such as The Rusty Nail.

Chems is Ann’s first attempt at self-publishing (don’t laugh). It is a Middle Grade/Young Adult pseudo-zombie tale, which is currently available on Amazon.

telling stories about the past she goes into one about an old boyfriend and i stop her careful, i say men don’t want to know we don’t want to know about our woman’s past what do you mean? my wife asks the number of men you’ve had what you guys did that kind of stuff

• • •

to men, all their wives and girlfriends are virgins and porn stars, i say

Contact Ann You can contact Ann via the options listed below. Her books are available on Amazon.com.

my wife nods, downs her wine and says look, you know who i’ve been with and at least i don’t write poems about ex-lovers

Website: www.annswann.com Email: swannann76@yahoo.com Blog: www.annswann.blogspot.com FB: www.facebook.com/annswann.author/ Twitter: @ann_swann

do you know how many poems i’ve read of yours that have you going down on some ex-girlfriend or her going down on you? or you fucking some ex-girlfriend?

Or you can find her on Goodreads or even Pinterest!

no, i say many, my wife says then she hands me her glass and i pour us a couple more drops of red and i don’t say a word until it’s time to put on a relaxing movie.

29

gallows humor

by John Grochalski

every hour hope became more and more of a lousy joke a trick being played on me

in buffalo, new york i used to sit in this bar across the parking lot from my miserable job

but still every lunch i sat in the same stool drinking beer sometimes eating something off the menu

i’d drink pint after pint for my lunch and read bukowski books like a stereotype of a stereotype

reading bukowski as if i were the only man to have discovered him

i’d watch the old men at the bar wondering how’d they made it all of these years

i’d sit on that stool and look for something and the occasional dim flash of genius would shine across me

watch the old couples eat lunch in silence or with muted bickering confounded as to how they hadn’t put a knife in each other’s back

words, lines or some other philosophy telling me to hold my breath and wait it out and i’d become rejuvenated if only for the hour

i’d drink my beer and watch the television or exchange small talk with the bartender who had the same name as me

then i’d laugh and laugh to myself at my own brilliance

so whenever anyone said it we’d both look i lived in fear of going back across the lot to that job being controlled by small men in cramped offices by trolls with bad breath who worried more about the stains on my pants than their own families

like a happy, fat buddha

I wondered what in the hell it was that i was doing in buffalo, new york working terrible jobs and blowing thousands more on an advanced degree because the regular degree had failed me

and the old men at the bar who’d stopped to watch me unravel would go back to talking about whatever it was that had kept themselves jocular and alive

and the poor bartender who thought that i was insane would give me a pint on the house

through all of the bullshit and all of the years.

or, rather, i had failed it for me, every morning in that gray city was a march to the gallows and every evening i prayed my heart would give out 30

When the Champions Left Us

“You want to head over to Sciron’s Leap after?”

I felt Betsy let go of my hand.

“Nah,” I said. “We’re good. You have fun.”

Truth is, I never liked making-out in front of other people.

They either stared at you, you felt like you were in a performance race, or you had to hear their clothes rustling in between heavy breaths and slurps of sucking face. It was like an orgy, but without the touching.

No one in the theater seemed to have the same hesitations.

In the dark, when Orpheus stepped onto the boat with Chiron, the slowest part of the film, the silhouetted heads inside the theater became monstrous and erotic, delving into lust to bide them time until the river had been crossed.

The couple in front of us, an excommunicated Vestal and a Cyclops, stared longingly into each other’s eyes. It was the first time I had noticed them all evening, and seeing them embrace caused me to look at Betsy. She noticed them at the same time, and she practically clawed at my arm as she leaned over for what I hoped was a kiss. I was disappointed.

“That’s Ben Colbert and Janet Paige!” she said. Seeing my dull reaction, she continued. “They were a year ahead of us. She’s dating Mike Harper.”

Mike Harper was the star quarterback of the football team. He made us believe we were all invincible, all gods, demi-gods, and truly, the Champions. He and Janet had dated since middle school, maybe even before puberty, when dating is just something cute your parents say. They were supposed to be married soon after graduation, or so the rumor went. But there Janet was, the ex-head cheerleader, ex-student body president, in the row in front of me, sucking face with the king of the art freaks, Ben Colbert. His spiked hair and earring glistened as his head turned this way and that to find the real Janet. “Oh baby,” I heard him whisper when they stopped for a brief breath, the air between them confused and electric. For some reason, fate seemed more trivial than ironic at that moment. I whispered as much to Betsy.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “This is what fate is all about.”

She squeezed my hand gently as she rested her head on my shoulder. I knew there was something more behind her sudden rekindling to me, either something her parents had said about dating me—they didn’t like that I attended the alternative church at the edge of town, where new gods were being invented and old gods were reinvented—or something to do with her ex-boyfriend, Peter Hilton, who was rich and lived in Elysian Hills with Betsy. He had told Betsy all sorts of things about me, that I was the liar, a thief, a braggart who told everyone about all of the girls I had been with. All of these things were true, just about Peter, not me.

But at that moment, I decided to not care. Why would I with Betsy’s cute little hand in mine and her ambrosia scented hair on my shoulder, something I had dreamt about the better part of high school. I sipped on my soda and relaxed in the chair for the end of the final act.

And that’s when it happened, the deus ex machine that changed Olive Branch forever. Just as Orpheus told his sad

by M.W. Fowler

W

e had waited in line all day with the cosplayers—Orpheus, Eurydice, monsters, and all the gods in between. Tartarus was more than a cult phenomenon in Olive Branch.

The entire movie had been shot here two decades before, and every year since its release, it has been shown 24 hours straight at Olympus 12, beginning Friday at midnight. The event coincides with the annual Bacchus Day: Festival of Wine & Tarts, and is complete with contests for Best Costume and a poetry reading at the film’s intermission. The night was nippy, yet the line outside Olympus 12 went down Main Street; shops stayed open later to sell their Bacchus Day wares, baked goods, and wine.

Inside the theater, a Minotaur rammed his horns into a seemingly unsuspecting maiden before the previews. Red yarn bled out in streaks upon the moviegoers. Hercules and Herakles had a strength contest—the prize, a kiss from Miss Olive Branch. All of this, plus popcorn, nachos, hot dogs, and the surround-sound of straws against plastic tops. Then, the film rolled.

People clapped, whistled, and cheered at all of the major scenes— the dashing intro of Orpheus, the nude swimming scene with Eurydice, the beheading of a monster who tried to dissuade Orpheus from his journey, and many more.

It was my first date with Betsy.

Both newly eighteen, it was the first time we were able to see Tartarus, and we’d made it a double date with Rob and Tessa. Rob was a Tartarus fanatic, so he came dressed as Orpheus: a simple enough costume of toga, sandals, and leaf headband fitted into his natural curly hair, along with a healthy dose of eyeliner to accent the toll of the descent into Tartarus. Tessa was dressed as neo-gothic Aphrodite, which is to say she was dressed as herself. Betsy and me were dressed for a date, neither of us with a proper costume, and I bought us plastic leaf headbands outside; they were fitted with glow sticks that waned after the first act.

All in all, the evening had been great. We sat in theater three—all twelve theaters play Tartarus on Bacchus Day— and were surrounded by the cool kids who graduated the year ahead of us. The popcorn tasted really good for a change, and Betsy let me hold her hand when the lights dimmed.

Rob tapped on my shoulder just after Eurydice was bitten by the vipers.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “This is what fate is all about.”

31

story on the screen through a dance routine, causing all of Tartarus to weep and sing for him, as Hades passed down his ultimatum that Eurydice could live again, so long as Orpheus did not look back at her until out of Tartarus, the theater door burst open. A man ran through the rectangle of light, followed by the cries of the cinema staff, then that of the moviegoers. The man knew exactly where he was going, as if he had been there a thousand times before. He stood in the walkway that divided the lower and upper seats, a shotgun in hand.

“Mike!” said Janet.

“I knew it!” was his reply. “All this time, after everything we have been through—I knew, I knew.”

Mike leveled the two barrels on the lovers in front of us.

Ben said nothing.

I remember the shots, the blood—not yarn—spraying us; Mike reloading the shotgun and pulling the trigger on himself; people running, stills like the fall of Pompeii or invasion of the Visigoths. I remember standing there when the lights came on; Betsy holding onto me; Rob checking himself for bullet holes, and Tessa holding herself with both arms.

And there they were, locked in their final remembrance, forever in the fade to black—Orpheus and Eurydice on the big screen, and Ben and Janet in the row in front of us, Mike in the aisle. The credits rolled, the theme song played, and our heads turned to each other, ourselves, the scene of the bodies, as if we were waiting for someone to ask a question, any question, so that we could have an answer. When we lost them, no one made a sound. We were just men and women now.

You'll be too tired to fuck And we'll be going through the motions-Only on holidays. Mechanical moans.

You imagining I'm another man Someone who reminds you of the president Someone with a bigger bank account Someone who nods and listens, nods and listens, And me imagining you're anyone but you Someone like Lucy Ricardo Someone like the girl in the porno Someone who nods and listens, nods and listens And we'll be going through the motions-My underwear hanging from a doorknob I push the cart at the supermarket Hold your purse at the mall.

Hairballs clog the bathtub drainpipe.

Our child weeps at the bottom of a staircase While ashtrays and candleholders take flight O my Darling Dysfunction if I were half the man Tom Hanks is I'd make you an honest woman So will you please scream at me And tell me how I never made you orgasm And dig your fingernails into my neck While we drive to your sister's wedding during a blizzard?

Will you please sit at Starbucks drinking Oreo frappuccinos on my dime While talking to your friends about how horrible I am As I'm sweeping corridors at the Catholic School For an itty bitty boost of my minimum wage machismo?

Will you please vacuum the living room right at kick-off, Blow-dry the dog during Sportscenter?

Am I a demon if I want to play an 18-hole game On a Saturday afternoon? Am I a demon if I want to get drunk and smoke marijuana in the garage?

If I were half the man John Wayne was I'd make an honest woman out of you We could be mister and misses Dead Weight-Two car garage, mailbox with a red flag That hangs half-mast on Holy Sunday And in the summers we'll part the apple-print shades Open the windows, watch the stems slump In their flowerboxes and scream at one another Through megaphones while the neighbors watch Through thrift shop binoculars And our children drape themselves Over the banisters knowing they're a part of this Natural-born error, knowing they will be mirror images Made in matrimony, masquerading this exact same Mass-produced, artificial love.

The way our mothers loved our fathers And our fathers loved our mothers The way our ancestors look miserable in photographs The way the faucets drip at midnight The way the days and decades are never kind Our daughter will hate me the way you hate your father Our son will hate you the way I hate my mother Am I a demon if I sleep Through Sunday mass?

Am I a demon if I think kissing you is like kissing An OUT OF ORDER sign? Will you marry me?

• • • M.W. Fowler received an M.A. in Writing from Coastal Carolina University, and has worked as an assistant fiction editor for Waccamaw. His work is forthcoming from Otis Nebula, Used Furniture Review, Specter Magazine, and Little Fiction. He is the author of Ezra Sound: How I Became a Giant, and is from Myrtle Beach, S.C.

How to Build a Broken Home on Good American Soil

by Brian Le Lay It's always exciting when two new lovers Get together for a good 'ole game of Battleship And a rip-roarin' round of Please Throw a Teapot Full of Boiling Water at My Skull While we Argue About Oral Sex and anniversaries American Idol, tax receipts and golf clubs Perfumes and eight-hundred dollar panties How I "never buy you nothin" And before long I'll be too tired to talk

• • • 32

Tierra Blanca

by Chad Patton

T

“Get them paws away from me, boy. That ain't helpin no one.” He looked down at his shoes, then back at the boy, “That name'uh yers. What was it again?”

“Tierablanca” “Hm. White land. Ain't that right?”

“Sí.”

“Well, I'll tell you somethin, White Land. I’m aiminta let you through here. But with two little reminders.”

“Oh thank you, sir.”

Tom pointed a finger in the air. “Now hold on. You don't know what’s comin. Don't be thankin me yet.”

The boy nodded.

“The first reminder is the name. Fore you walk through here, I want you memberin’ whose land this really is.”

The boy nodded.

“And if that ain't good nough, then this'll be yer second reminder.” Tom dipped his paintbrush in the paint and washed the boy with a wrist-heavy blood-lust. The boy coughed and spat, but held still enough for Tom to cover his whole body with the white paint. He brushed the sludge from his eyes and looked up at the man like two pin-pricks in a piece of printer paper. Tom let the boy walk through the hole in the fence toward the life he so desires. He ran, and before Tom went back to work, he admired the boy’s innocence, watching his gaucho fall as he ran.

he boy ran, rather clumsily, but still he ran. With a black gaucho’s hat falling over his eyes and immediacy driving the sweat down his face, the boy wasn’t planning on stopping. Tom watched the boy with a paintbrush in his hand and a cockeyed smile on his face. He squinted his right eye, now with the sun passing under the horizon, and marveled at that sand dune that looked as if it were kicking the little one’s ass down the north end and past it too. Tom’d been hard at work.

He had an important task, but maybe he’d worked enough to entertain the seemingly possessed boy before sunset.

Tom painting a fence. The fence. The one that kept the Livelihood on one side and everything else on the other.

Tom’s days, ones of perpetual hours, were defined by busy-work: a multitude of steady brush strokes that, like most brush-driven artisans, had an extensive amount of wrist, an amount one might even say was moderately flamboyant.

From its bristles, the white paint flowed to the fence’s rusted face like the inexplicable creation of land.

The boy stumbled closer. A Mexican for sure. Tom didn’t see many people around these parts unless they were Hispanic, and this one happened to be Mexican. There was no doubt in his mind.

“Perdón” the boy said in exasperation, stopping at a hole in the fence that served as some invisible wall. “¿Libertad allí, no?” he asked, pointing toward a land that was, physically, not unlike his own.

Tom stopped painting and looked at the boy who was too fearful to cross. He examined him, looked him head to foot and even placed the gaucho hat back in its rightful place.

“Son, I ain’t gointa speak that languagea yers.”

When he heard this, the boy replied with “lo siento” as he tried to find some shadow on the other side of the fence behind which he could hide.

“What is it that you want, boy. I got me a shit-loada paintin to do and not a lotta sunlight to do it.”

The boy bowed his head, “sorry, sir-” “Quit apologizing. I ain’t the Virgin Mary” The boy cowered, “Please permit me passing. Me kills, this land behind me.”

“And what's your name, boy? I'll see'fyer on the guest list.” The man lifted his arm like a waiter holding a towel, a fake pencil in hand and a tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth.

“Tierablanca. Diego Tierablanca.”

Tom laughed. “Stop it. They ain't no guest list.”

“Sir. Please.” The boy pushed two interlocked hands toward Tom's face.

• • • Chad Patton is a graduate of Grand Valley State University with a dual degree in English and Spanish. He works as a Spanish Immersion Interventionist at an elementary school near Grand Rapids, Michigan. His works have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Unstuck Magazine's Twitter Fiction Contest, Specter Magazine, and Cause and Effect Magazine. He is a contributing writer for Construction Magazine.

33

The Museum of Clowns’ Faces

before. I watched him pick up the egg and hold it out to me.

‘Proof,’ he said, frowning. ‘Evidence.’ I took the egg and put it in my coat pocket. I didn’t laugh in case he wasn’t joking.

I nodded. Marko had stolen my father’s face; we were stealing his. We left the way we had come, the egg bouncing as we ran.

On weekdays, mum was irritated about being late to places she didn’t want to go. In the car, she would look at me in the driver’s mirror and tell me off for looking like him.

I was not to become mercurial, did I understand? No doubt I had fun at the weekends? Was he funny? Funny people were in fact the angriest. Had I noticed?

Saturday afternoon. My father took me to the pub. I had hoped it would be a football day or maybe one of those days where we just threw stones at the flat sea, but we had business to attend to, he said. It was always the same pub.

Dad ordered me a Coke and crisps. He pretended to be pondering which flavour to go for but I know he was looking at the barmaid’s breasts. ‘Go on then, cheese and onion,’ he said, eventually.

My job when in the pub was to try to look 14. It was a sticky place. All the tables and chairs were too small for the men with their thighs and their bellies. There was a tiny TV fixed high on the wall in the corner showing horse-racing. We found two empty chairs and my father spoke to his pint. ‘Hello, beautiful.’

The next one was beautiful, too, and the one after that. He smoothed out his newspaper, which wasn’t really a newspaper like The Times or The Sun but a special clown’s quarterly, called The Joey. At school, ‘Joey’ was code for retarded. He pointed at a page without looking at it, stabbing the table with his finger until I said, ‘Ok, dad’. He had ringed a reminder about a Clown’s Conference. Clowns International Calling All Clowns, it said. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Still got the egg?’ I could feel it there, cold like a secret. ‘We’ll find this Marcus and make him pay.’

I said, ‘It’s Marko, dad,’ but he didn’t hear me. I said, ‘Maybe Marko just got there first? Dad?’ Dad was watching the racing, his third pint almost gone.

That night, I lay on the sofa bed, not sleeping. I held the egg in my hand. It looked at me, tight lipped. I felt its smooth, bald head with my thumb, turned it over and round, over and round. I don’t know if I actually dropped it on purpose or if it just slipped. It didn’t smash like I thought it would. As it hit the wooden floorboards it made a thud crack sound, like a marble dropped from a height. I waited for my heart to slow down. I got out of bed, picked up the egg and climbed back in. Not so smug now, are you, I thought, as my thumb traced the little hairline crack.

The next day, at noon, my father’s bedroom door opened.

He looked a bit sheepish. ‘I have a mother of a headache,’ he said, rubbing his head. I turned the TV down.

The Clown’s Conference was awful. No one dressed up except my father. It wasn’t that kind of conference. They looked him up and down. It felt like we were at the wrong place, or the right place but on the wrong day. There were

by Kate Smith y father woke me from a dream about an egg.

I had blown it with a straw and climbed inside to live there while things calmed down. Its shell was misted like a window. His breath reached me before his voice; it was peanuts and crayons. I was curled tightly on the sofa bed in the lounge of his new flat, my fists bunched under my chin. He wore full clown regalia, slightly dirty. The face, the braces, everything. He stood with his hands on his hips, impatient, watching me. ‘Wake up, Billy, I’ve got a job for us,’ he said, radiating nerves. ‘We’ll be clown detectives!’ He tilted his head and grinned. ‘I’m Bobby the Baby, let’s have an adventure.’

I don’t remember how we got there, or how he got hold of a key to the Museum of Clowns’ Faces. ‘Don’t blow our cover, son.

Ssshhhh.’ It was neither night nor morning and the yellow air of the building sneered. He made us tap dance down the corridor to the special room. He made a name a verb: ‘Let’s Fred Astaire this bit.

Come on!’ His clown feet slapped the stone floor. ‘We’ll be clown detectives!’ My feet sounded prissy next to his. The lock on the door was reluctant and I thought that was it, game over, but then we were in. The room was a room in miniature, as if pulled like a Russian doll from a larger replica.

It was full of china eggs, on shelves, in boxes, on the floor.

All were labeled, each painted with a face. The sign on the door to the room said: ‘Welcome to the Museum of Clowns’ Faces.’ My father pointed to the italics underneath and twitched his painted eyebrows up and down so that I would understand the significance of the words. I read: It is an unwritten law amongst clowns that one must never steal the face of another.

He produced a furry custard crème biscuit from his huge pocket like he was pulling a rabbit from a hat. Ta-da! I laughed, although it didn’t sound like my laugh. He put his arm round me. He made me say the names of the clowns out loud like a circus register. I looked for one with a friendly face. ‘Clown Bluey, Tommy Trouble, Jack The Jukebox – ’ ‘Louder than that, Bobby can’t hear you!’

‘Jack the Jukebox, Albertino, Nicko –’ ‘They used to use real eggs,’ my father said. ‘Chicken eggs - blown. Boom!’ ‘Mad Neville, Spike, Spaniel Eyes.’

The eggs breathed the air cold. ‘Which one are you, dad?’ My father pointed to an egg whose face was turned to the wall, aloof. I read the name under the egg. It said ‘Marko’. It looked a little bit like my father’s face used to when my mum still did his make-up. I thought, we’ve been here

M

He wore full clown regalia, slightly dirty.

The face, the braces, everything. He stood with his hands on his hips, impatient, watching me.

34

talks called things like Clowns in Education and Clowning About in the 21st Century. We didn’t go to any talks. We stayed in the bar, mainly. ‘What’s the point of a clown’s conference if you don’t go to town, eh?’ my father said to the barman. ‘We might as well be fucking accountants at a fucking accountancy conference.’ A bit later, he said, ‘Look at this.’

He clicked his fingers without looking at me. I handed him the egg. The barman put down his tea towel and the pint glass he was cleaning to get a better look. He held the egg up to the light.

‘Who’s this then?’ he said.

‘It’s me, obviously. Do you know where I might find a Marcus?’

‘Marko, dad.’

The barman looked at my dad until my dad looked away.

‘Do you think you’ve had enough, mate?’

My father took a big breath in and held it for ages like he’d never let it go.

‘I have,’ he said, breathing out all hard like a belch. ‘I’ve had enough.’ To me, he said, ‘Got to see a man about a dog.

Get yourself some lunch.’ He dug his hand in his pocket and pulled out a tissue, then his conference name badge, then another tissue. ‘I thought I had a fiver in here. Sorry, Billy.

You’ll be alright, will you?’ He got up and ruffled my hair really hard like I was a dog.

After he left, the barman gave me back the egg with some money from the till. ‘There’s a refectory down the end on the left,’ he said. ‘They might do you a sandwich or something.’

When mum found out later that dad still had his clown habit, she asked me if I found clowns as creepy as she did.

‘I think I’d rather he’d dressed up in women’s underwear,’ she said. ‘But there you are, you can’t have everything.’

Someone came and got me from the refectory. My dad had been taken to hospital after he punched someone who punched him harder. It wasn’t even Marco. He didn’t have the egg with him, for proof. It was in my pocket. They said dad shouted a lot. ‘You stole my face, you stole my life.’ The police got involved. It was even in the local paper. I don’t know what will happen now. I called mum and she collected me like she wasn’t surprised at all.

I read that when a clown dies, they break the egg to make space for the next one. Dad said they can make a clown omelette with that bloody egg for all he cares. He knows he’s blown it. Boom. When mum arrived, she didn’t say anything.

Just pulled up next to me in the car-park. I could tell she’d been smoking. ‘Hang on,’ I said, as she nodded her head for me to get in. I felt for the egg in my pocket. ‘What’s that?’ mum said. I hurled it, hard as I could. It felt good. It went so far I didn’t even hear it land.

• • • Kate Smith is currently doing an online MA in creative writing with Manchester Metropolitan University. She has had flash fiction published in The Pygmy Giant and The Molotov Cocktail and is currently working on her first novel. By day, she's a law lecturer. Talk about spoil the mood with one sentence too many…

Garbage Men

by Martin Frankson I came home and found my friend dead on the living room floor. He seemed to have hit his head on the edge of the art-deco coffee table that I had bought the other week at Ikea.

There wasn’t much blood on the carpet. It had dried into a dark red crust against the brown thread.

The same consistency as spilt chipotle sauce.

I had planned to visit my second friend tonight but my first friend is dead. I have to make re-arrangements. I got undressed and changed into my brown pants and red shirt and picked up my address book. I then phoned my first friend’s mother and told her that her son had died in a household accident while I was out at work. She asked me if I was his homosexual lover; a question to which I replied ‘No’. That seemed to cheer her up. She told me in this case, his chances of his soul being saved stood a better chance.

I remember watching a television advertisement for Golden Pages. “Let your fingers do the walking” was the catch-phrase. I must congratulate their copywriters from afar.

That’s a clever idea, instead of letting us walk the streets with our legs; we can do it metaphorically with our fingers through a business directory. I would never have thought of that in a dozen years. If it was up to me, I would come up with a slogan like: “Use Golden Pages to Find the Shops You Want to Shop at” I am not considered to be original. Golden Pages were a place I could really find a good undertaker. I phoned one who then asked me if I could produce a death certificate. It turned out that I had to call a doctor to pronounce death officially. I told the undertaker that it was obvious that my first friend was dead and it seemed a waste of time to call a doctor out just to state the obvious. He sympathised but he reminded me that it was the law.

The doctor came and issued the certificate. Death was not suspicious. It made me think of a clever thought; ‘How can the inevitable be suspicious?”

“Wise guy, it’s the cause of death that is suspicious” Clever thoughts are seldom challenged. I shall write these down and memorise them and use them at social gatherings.

June 1st 4 weeks have passed. The rent and bills are too much to cover on my salary. I need to place an advert in the local newspaper and the local store. This way, it is guaranteed that my next room-mate is literate and is able to buy milk and other assorted household goods. My first friend paid two thirds of all the bills despite only owing half. It was a convenient arrangement which led to me having a considerable disposable income. I am my only grateful dependant. I am my only recipient. The restaurants I frequent are of the highest calibre. The clothes I wear are fantastically well sewn and beautifully packed in the glossy carrier bag that I carry with pride.

I plan to be of calibre if I work hard enough at my job. At school, I was a good boy. I think it was out of total respect

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on the adult channel before going to bed. I am reading a book on virtual history at the moment. I read before going to bed. I never read before going to bed. I open a page, feel how smooth it is and leave it at that page by turning the book upside down on the bedside cabinet.

for authority. I wanted to be special at school. The bad boys who made noise and threw pencil and plasticine in the class room tended to get low marks in homework and were told-off a lot. My mother said such boys become garbage-men. My mother said that quiet well-behaved boys like me would enter respectable professions and earn lots of money. My teachers concurred with my mother’s view.

I never understood the mentality of boys who disrupt classrooms and annoy their teachers. Did they want to be failures in society? Why didn’t they want to have good jobs?

What sort of homes did they come from? Probably the kind of slack homes where their parents enjoyed themselves by going out and not tending to their children’s educational needs. The kind of homes where homework is done but not followed up with revision or study but playing. The kind of home where children could pour themselves a drink from the fridge without being told off for wasting the family budget.

My mother said that children who went outside to play games after school were going to fail their exams and end up as garbage men.

Garbage-men.

My father was a garbage-man.

I was once admonished for being lazy and being told that I would end up with a job like my father’s if I wasn’t careful.

This was said in my father’s presence. My mother never cared for the feelings of others. On the few occasions my father challenged her, she would threaten to leave. He would then back down. This deterrent kept a marriage together.

I hated those children who laughed. I couldn’t understand how children could enjoy themselves with so much to worry about in the future. When I did laugh, I felt guilty about laughing. The children destined to failure were carefree and cheerful. If I aped their frivolity, I could end up on the slippery slope to failure. Failure was and is my sole motivation. I do everything for the wrong reasons. When I decide to enjoy myself, I feel rebellious and criminal. I feel common. The criminals and the drop-outs laugh. I will not add my voice to uncouth choirs.

Tangents are my favourite mode of transport. I value high standards.

Standards.

I am the 1950’s in the 2010’s.

June 28th I have a new room-mate.

I do not know his name.

I call him ‘Other One’.

He calls me ‘First One’.

This was how names were. Descriptions of how and what we are served were the fabric of names. I do not know any smiths but I know Smiths. He works to pay to pay my bills.

I am helped.

The manner of our meeting and the laying of rules is not an issue. They happened. Other One cooks a lot in the kitchen and I eat what Other One prepares.. I drink what Other One prepares. I wear his clothes and pretend to be another person. I pretend that I am wearing a chequered shirt. I pretend that I am wearing the clothes the people who enjoy themselves wear. Clothing is the outer aspect of personality. I have animated his slumbering personality with myself. Aspects of my personality coalesce with his. I raise my left arm and stand staunchly. These threads have never been sculpted into these positions before. Puppetry, I bring his death to life. I am animate when I wear somebody else’s clothes. I hope he will not walk in unexpectedly. I do not appreciate embarrassment..

July 6th I smash the mirror.

I am alone again.

I once met a woman with whom a relationship was had.

I was taking Prozac at the time and got into the habit of trebling my dosage before dates. She thought I was hyper and gregarious.

Attractive qualities.

The rough diamond.

Women like that.

They have an urge to polish and shave us down into shining men. I missed appointments with my psychiatrist that led to my being discharged from treatment and placebo. I reverted to lethargy and melancholy within weeks. My masks are slippery. My hands are too smooth to hold them.

She left me three months later. Other One is outside.

Listening to the sound of broken mirrors. Wondering it this is the sound of a new, cruel language. Will I speak to him in syntax of shards? Questions as glass in the skin? Its lexicon will mince hands. Tongue tender – tongue as knife.

He listens incessantly to my conversations when I am alone. The spoken word is absorbed within his ears. Other One has stopped paying his rent. He has lost his job and spends his day playing the X-Box on my television. He squats down before the totemic screen with a console in his hands, clutching tightly. These are the sounds of the electronic fun machine. There is something clean about the co-operation of man and machine. The machine is the penultimate manifestation of man as an evolutionary being.

The symbiosis of flesh, mother board, chip and brain.

June 23rd I took a day off work to shop for food and bathroom bleach. I came home to find a cat pissing on my front door.

It’s a short hair and I remember her as a kitten. I pissed on the door once and it spotted me. Clever animals learn from example. Children do the same. January Jones appeared on the television tonight. She is nice. I would share a home with her. She looks very clean. She lives in New Jersey and commutes on a daily basis to New York by helicopter.

Statistically, she will die in a helicopter crash. So will modern-day prime ministers and presidents. Not many have been killed in this fashion but some day, dozens will die in the sky within weeks of one another.

The obituary columnists will have a field day. Shares in aviation will plummet.

I feel tired now. Social calculus drains my mental resources. I will watch Fox News and catch something dirty 36

the party, the guests shall engage in polite conversation.

Careers, children, summer vacations, house prices and the lives of the other dinner guests shall be discussed. These are the conversational topics of the new middle-class who graduated at least five years ago.

As one.

Our destination as a species. To co-operate with the ancestors of our future is a collective, yet unconscious acknowledgement of our destiny. Other One has made that important step for himself. I admire that. Thousands of people have. I haven’t. I will not. I am truly human. The last truly human being alive. An awesome responsibility.

The new money.

The new clothes.

The old words.

July 30th

The conversations never change. Voice intonations and the locale of the conversation change but not what is said.

The same, tired words are trotted out like circus ponies.

Words that haunt me like unimaginative ghosts, never changing the pattern, manner or timing of movement. Ghosts fade in time. It must be the height of impotence to be a ghost that does not scare anyone. When the clanging of chains and thuds on the wall merge into the background noise is the time for a dignified exorcism.

Tonight, I shall exorcise ghosts. In the meantime, I shall return to my flat and check on Other One. To find out what he is up to while I am outside

Other One is getting on my nerves. He never leaves the apartment. I am at work. I do not know what he gets up to and who with. I may take a look in some lunchtime and pretend that I have forgotten something. That is something to look forward to. A colleague has invited me to a dinner-do tonight. It will consist of four married couples, five dating couples and two homosexual couples – and me. The couples are his personal collection. Meals and wine will be prepared and supplied. I am only single person attending and I do not believe that there will be any single women there. I am not invited to such occasions for my witticisms or warm company. I am not witty. There is no fun in me. As I said, I was not brought up with fun. Nor am I warm. Warmth attracts the cold. I do not have the emotional quilt to cover cold, wanting people

July 31st Yesterday I did two things. I went home and met Other One, with his feet up on my sofa. He was watching television in the afternoon. A nervous nausea come over me while watching him. To be in the midst of sloth makes me sick.

The irresponsibility of it. To be there made me feel as bad as him. Saying ‘Hello’ was an endorsement of his sin. I went to my room and opened a drawer of the pine dressing table that is positioned with the mirror facing the window. I took a gun and went into the living room. I then shot him. To have abided his behaviour could have led to my downfall, going to bed late, being late for work, unkempt and untidy and slovenly. I could have lost my job and way of life by being with a person like that.

I have good recognisance capabilities. I am successful.

Events and the ether are in perpetual conspiracy of my failure. Things are jealous of me and my achievements. I can smell such rats a mile off. I need to. Naivety is blindness.

Potentially fatal. Everyone is part of the entropy with which I am in vigilant combat. The gutter beckons me. When invited to go to the pub, the gutter beckons. I’d be drunk.

Respectable people who get on do not get drunk. Blue-collar people who enjoy themselves instead of working, get drunk.

An invitation to the movies is an invite to pay ten dollars to witness deviancy. If a bomb exploded in the theatre, my body would be dragged out and identified. Newspapers would place my photograph with those of the other victims and refer to us as ‘revellers’.

I would die and be labelled as a reveller.

No-one knows Other One. He had no family nor friends. No-one will miss him. The social security will not investigate his cessation of dependency. I will tell them that he did a bunk without leaving a forwarding address and then say in an exasperated fashion how the world is going to the dogs and then politely close the door. He lost his job recently. They will not miss him.

Vulcan is my image My blood is bleak Dank streets are my veins The cityscape of mindkill Is an innerspace of the twisted The image is unsound Mirrors are cruel friends Honesty – the sanitised insult Love - the band of self adornment Hate – the heartcancer You, my reason of mode ‘continue’ There is comfort in coldness. I do not sweat. There is no ‘missing piece’ for which I am told to look for by trendy magazines. I am invited to attend for the benefit of the human jig-saw pieces. I am the personification of the moral of how horrible it is to be alone. They are supposed to look at me and feel sorry for me because I do not share my bed. My purpose is to remind them how fortunate they are to not be alone.

They do not know that I think like this. They believe that I am wanting. I do not share my bed. Nor do I share rows.

Nor do I share the anxiety of whether my lover is unfaithful.

Nor do I have the concern for someone else. I am my own worry. I see them and I do not see happy people. I see people living in the daily dread of being abandoned. I see people who live in dread of their partner looking at someone else. I see people frightened to relax because the dogma of ‘cool’ is upon us like a secular edict from the popes and ayatollah’s of fashion and haute couture The homosexual couples are invited because the host is a collector of the unusual. I am supposed to admire my host for his eclecticism of dining companions.

I seem homophobic. It is not so. I object to their being used merely as accessories. I object to anyone being an accessory. At 37

The second thing I did was to attend the dinner party.

The theme of cookery was Indian. I had Chicken Jalfrezi in a bed of saffron rice. Pakora and bhajis occupied the table like a calorific army.

The guests bored me.

The homosexual couples bored me.

They had nothing to say.

I attempted a conversation about electronic music but they were guitar fans. The conversation did not get very far.

People who like guitars are rough and lack sensitivity. The guitar is the instrument of the commoner. The penny whistle, the penny dreadful of era we are in. I made an excuse to go the bathroom and left the apartment. I did not receive any phone calls from the host asking me to explain my absence.

Perhaps they have all died of kidney failure, waiting on me to leave the toilet. I could have misjudged them. Maybe, after all they were polite.

Polite to a fault.

oncoming lane. He saw their signals flashing and the lead car attempting an improbable left hand turn across the roadway in front of him.

“Don’t miss the driveway, hon. It isn’t marked.”

“I heard you.”

His headlights found the break in the curb and he turned over the wheel, the reassuring crunch of the gravel intrusive after the many miles of smooth, silent road.

Jake watched her out of the corner of his eye applying lipstick as he parked the car. He wished she’d hurry up and finish, and wondered why she hadn’t started sooner. He was thirsty for a beer.

“OK, let’s go,” he said impatient and opened the door.

Iris snapped her compact shut and started to put her things away.

Jake didn’t bother waiting, just took the keys, slammed the door and started walking. He pulled to the side of the lot to avoid the stream of incoming cars. The place was filling up fast. As he walked, he aimed for a naked bulb pinned to the side of a building that lit the way.

“Jake?” He heard her call suddenly. “Hold up, will you?

I’m sinking into this gravel.” She waved the heels she had taken off as if the motion alone would slow him down.

He turned to await her. It didn’t make any difference how many times he complained, or where they went, there was always some last minute delay, some problem. He waited, and put up with it, only because they were living together.

Jake watched silently as she tiptoed toward him, her bare feet awkward on the gravel. She was laughing now. She was much older and different, but something else, too. Something he hadn’t yet put together in his mind. But like all women not altogether perfect, either. And she sold Chevys at the dealer in town.

Headlights flooded the lot and Jake caught the glaring polish on Iris’s toes as she approached. Earlier that evening she had asked him to choose a color. It seemed important to her to think he could exert some control over her life. She’d lined up the little bottles on the sink while he shaved. Then she put the lid down and sat on the toilet. She smoked silently, watching him, awaiting his decision.

“Put your shoes on,” he said, his face dark when she finally caught up to him.

“Honey, I was just trying to catch up. It was faster . . . hold on a minute then.” She was breathless. She used his shoulder as a prop to balance herself.

He smelled her perfume, heavy and sweet in the sultry evening air. He almost wished he’d lied and told her he had something else to do. Annoyed, Jake took her by the hand and they made for the light.

At the door, an old man sitting on a stool took his money and rubber-stamped their hands. They could hear the loud vocals of the house band as the group worked its way through the first number of the evening. Jake recognized the tune at once, This Magic Moment, an oldie. And it sounded right springing from that improbable roadhouse and that night he was anxious to get inside, have a beer and listen for a while.

Iris proclaimed them the South’s greatest bar band. She swore they played the most glorious rock and roll music on Earth. Inside the plain black room with no tables it was sweaty and tight and the sound system overwhelming. But when she heard the crashing sound of the band launch into

August 2nd I am Other One. First One did not kill me.

I wore a bullet proof vest.

I played dead.

I play dead all the time. I am not unemployed. I am an agent for a foreign power. I am a compatriot of the people I live amongst. That is my ruse. Beyond suspicion. I am under orders to feign death on gun attack or ambush. I am under orders to feign life on social discourse attack. First One left the flat as soon as he left me for dead. He did not check for death or sign of life. He cannot differentiate them.

I sit and wait for his arrival home, with a gun in my hand.

I hear his footsteps approaching the door.

He is coming home.

He’s only moments away from being happy.

Happy Happy.

Happy.

• • •

A Pause on the Road

by JR Rogers “There, honey,” said Iris. She put down her compact and tossed her head to the right to indicate the unmarked building. “We’re here.”

Oak Grove was miles out of town. Jake saw a lone, ramshackle building by the roadside, windowless with a peak corrugated roof. It lay nestled under the dripping Spanish moss of a dense coastal forest. There was a wide expanse of gravel alongside. It was dusk, the shadows long as they drove up.

“Yeah, I see it.” He slowed, but he didn’t need to be told.

Jake had spotted the long Saturday night line of cars in the 38

“Hottest car on the lot, soldier. Whaddya say. Want to take her out?”

Her voice was practiced and pandering. Jake glanced at her again and tried to guess her age, but he was out of practice. He watched her move over to the driver’s door and found himself tracking the way she walked. Jake liked the way she dressed, everything just a little too tight. He said no thank you, then corrected her. He said he’d been discharged a week ago. He was no longer a soldier, but he was impressed by her insight.

It was the haircut and the posture, Iris said smiling. And often the shoe shine.

Jake grinned self-consciously.

She came up close. He saw the tracts of her life etched on her face and the lipstick on her tooth.

They both looked down. He was wearing new leather hiking boots already scuffed and dirty from his days on the road.

They laughed together.

“Right on two counts, I guess,” he said. He watched her sweep away the hair from her face, silver strands in the long brown tresses catching his attention.

She propped up her hand and said “hi.” She handed him her business card and said her name was Iris.

“Jake Moore,” he said. “Pleased to meet you, Ma’am.”

They didn’t shake, but he took her card.

“Buying or kicking tires,” she asked pleasantly enough leaning back against the car in her sleeveless white blouse and black pants, her hands on her hips.

Her pose reminded him favorably of old pin-up models he’s seen on the Internet. He was drawn to her immediately. “Kickin’, I guess.” He nodded and looked around, his hands awkward in his pockets. Jake said it would have to be something less expensive, more practical, maybe a pickup truck. He pointed to a shiny red one across the lot.

Iris turned to glance at it then tried to talk him out of it.

Jake was distracted by the string of multicolored plastic pennants. They fluttered noisily in the hot afternoon breeze as he tried to listen to her, trying to be polite, but also struggling with his fascination. He stepped away and disengaged himself from her spell. He told her he’d have to find a job, first. He was just looking for now. Just passing through.

Iris sized up the situation quickly and invited him to stroll over toward a row of used cars and trucks. She talked knowledgeably about every one and easily about herself.

She’d been married to a soldier who’d left her, she said. She laughed scornfully. They’d made plans together, but one thing led to another. Iris paused to light a cigarette as if the details of their breakup were still stressful in her mind.

Jake wondered whether it was the bitterness in her voice that made her sound so much older than she must have been. He felt sorry for her, but didn’t know why. Jake

their next song, and the powerful vocals of the lead singer, Iris tugged at his hand like a fish on the line.

He turned and said no, not right now, and then they were afloat in the impatient, mostly college age crowd, inching past the band up on the stage, the surge moving them inescapably toward the bar. Jake saw her face light up when later, as they clutched their bottled beers to their chests, the band launched into a pounding version of her favorite song.

“I told you! Aren’t they great? I love this song.”

He watched her eyes flash as she mouthed the words he could not hear. For a second, she was drowned in the lights from the whirling mirror ball, her dilapidated face now suddenly years younger. He felt her arm outstretched and pumping his and wanting him to dance. And, despite himself, he nodded and smiled and let himself be led away.

He first met Iris on the car lot in Frederica. It was a small, coastal Georgia town, but inland, so that the beach was only twenty miles away. Marsh grass and sea oats and sand flies.

Halfway between Charleston and Savannah. Jake didn’t have any family nearby and was on his way back to Texas after an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps depot in South Carolina. He was hitchhiking back to the Southwest.

He was walking, after four years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, to reconnect again with his country.

A country that had sent him off to war. He needed a fresh look to take it all in and remember what it was he had been fighting for.

“I see you found her without my help,” she said approaching him her white heels clicking on the hot asphalt lot. When she joined him they stood side by side for a moment admiring the shiny black Corvette. Jake watched fascinated as she moved over to it and smoothed her hand lovingly across the glossy hood just like a man, her bright nails like polka dots on the paint. That put him at ease right away. He sensed she had a way with men. She seemed to understand their affection for horsepower. Jake took a step back to better appreciate the sleek low car. He thought briefly about the reception he’d get pulling up in it to his parent’s house in his little home town. His mother, thrilled to have him back alive, wouldn’t even notice. But his step-father would and would be drawn to it right away.

And not for the first time his plan to hitchhike back to Texas paled again, an odyssey he’d constructed in his mind.

He was troubled and it showed in the way he moved restlessly over the lot. Jake saw it again for what it was; a mindless plan hatched between boredom and sheer terror while on their endless foot patrols as they trudged slowly across the mine-infested Iraqi desert and, in the dead of night, picked their way through the deadly valleys of Afghanistan. He was disappointed it had taken him so long, almost three days to travel the sixty-some miles from the South Carolina depot. Drivers weren’t friendly. Truckers wouldn’t always stop. People were glad he was home, but didn’t seem to care about his service. They couldn’t see the point of it and it upset him because of what he’d been through.

Jake wondered whether it was the bitterness in her voice that made her sound so much older than she must have been.

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plastic trays, he told her about his plan to hitchhike back home.

“Oh, you should one day. I think that’s a wonderful idea.

You’ll get to see the country.” After dinner she led him into the living room. “Now, sit here,” she said. She patted the seat on the couch next to her.” Then Iris told him about Oak Grove.

They made love for the first time in his cinderblock motel room while listening to the voices of the maids chatting in Spanish as they rolled their cleaning carts outside. It was short and quick and after it was over he lay with her awhile.

And it was Iris who suggested he move in with her, out from his dreary room, until he decided to find a place of his own. The thrust of her argument was fluid and easy and he found himself swept up by the possibilities. But he hesitated, uncertain for a moment whether to commit. He was out of touch with life back home and often thought about his friends and so he worried about the arrangement and staying longer than intended. And as he watched her stand in front of the mirror and comb out her hair she suddenly turned and ended his concern; she told him firmly there wasn’t any reason not to and he reluctantly agreed.

The circumstances of their lives had drawn them together in a way Jake couldn’t quite understand. He thought about how dispassionate she had seemed when she told him to store his backpack in the closet, gave him an extra key to her apartment and showed him an empty dresser drawer lined with wrinkled yellow paper. In the weeks that followed, they got along well enough, though at the end of each day both understood it was an arrangement that could not last. And at night, listening to her breathe noisily alongside him while she slept, Jake watched soundless late night TV and wondered often how many times she had done this before.

remembered a situation with his cousin when her husband was sent away to jail.

Afterward, in the silent, refrigerated showroom that smelled of rubber and factory paint, she bought him a Coke then sat with authority behind her metal desk.

“Now, let’s see,” she said. “If you’re going to buy a car you’re going to need a job.” She dipped into her large white handbag and pulled out a little address book. Iris wrote out the name of a man who managed a store in the mall outside of town. It was a place, she said, as she disappeared for a moment behind a cloud of smoke, that was always looking for help.

He nodded and thanked her and took the referral. Jake cast a last look out at the colorful lot that shimmered in the heat of the afternoon and wondered why he had ever stopped at all.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she said. Iris winked at him as she stood. “And listen, Jake. Call me if you get the job, OK?” “I’ll call you,” he said flustered and smiling. He was puzzled by her maternal sounding concern, but also encouraged. Jake wondered whether it was the prospect of a sale or something else again that had suddenly attracted her.

Later, as he rode the short, green city bus across town, he made up his mind. The thought of hitchhiking over a thousand miles now no longer gripped him as it once had; it could wait. There was no one to disappoint but himself.

And he wanted to think more about Iris. Jake thought there was something intriguing about her, some force pulling them together. He moved troubled in his seat in the midst of a crop of older riders who muttered amongst themselves. Jake viewed the town from behind dirty, scratched windows. There wasn’t much to see: Main Street, turn-of-the-century buildings, ante-bellum houses, cemeteries and fast food chains. The town seemed asleep, slumbering under a Geechee sun that had once burned brightly over a vibrant plantation economy long since faded away.

After a short interview, with a red-faced man named Newman, Jake was tempted by his offer to sell shirts and pants in his discount department store. It wasn’t much – it was relief work, mostly – and the hours were all over the clock, but it would be honest, a steady source of income. He thought again briefly about the sudden disruption to his trek back home caused by the power of a woman he hardly knew.

He could guess what his buddies would have thought. So he filled out the paperwork, and the manager showed him the time clock, and then he called Iris and she invited him to dinner.

Iris lived over a locksmith. A large metal cut-out key hung over the sidewalk above the door.

He went around back as directed and knocked. He heard the casement window above his head slide open, then close abruptly. Jake listened as she descended the steps and watched through the screen door as she pushed it open and told him hello. He thought Iris looked half put together as if she hadn’t been able to decide whether to dress for him, or let him see her again in the clothes she’d worn to work. She’d only changed her top, but he didn’t care. He was drawn to her and he knew then he had to get to know her better. In her little kitchen with its yellow appliances, over a take-out barbeque rib dinner and creamy cold slaw served in little

• • • JR Rogers' work has appeared in Steam Ticket: A Third Coast Review and online at TrainWrite and VelvetBlory. He has also published two e-book novels, The Counterfeit Consul and Leopold’s Assassin, and is at work on a third.

He blogs at www.authorjrrogers.com and tweets about books, literature, writers and writing @authorjrrogers

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