The Rusty Nail, September 2012, Issue 7

Issue 7, September 2012 Editor-in-Chief Craig A. Hart Cover Design Paul Brand

Published by Sweatshoppe Publications 1

The Rusty Nail CONTENTS On the Day Without Sandals That Afternoon Doze

by John Grey, Page 36 What Water Taught Her Grass Blues

by Ali Znaidi, Page 37 Love Story Standing Out in the Rain

by Gregory Luce, Page 37 Part of the Herd

by Paul Phillips, Page 38 Lost.

by Michael Stimson, Page 39 Three Vignettes on Love

by Michael Dwayne Smith, Page 40

My Life As A Local Band Groupie

by Amye Archer, Page 3 Miss Sunshine

by Ed Gutierrez, Page 5 Footbridge

by Sarah Gamutan, Page 8 2012 Poetry Contest Winner with B. J. Jones, Page 9 Spellbound

by Calum Kerr, Page 10 Blindfold

by Jonathan Butcher, Page 10 Writing Blog Viewed by an Optimist

by Eve Gaal, Page 11 Bad Luck

by Joseph Daniel Lewis V, Page 12 Rose Tattoo

by Mary Incontro, Page 14 Drop Dead Fred

by Lori Lopez, Page 15 Bright Side

by Anthony Ward, Page 16 A Voice for Your Voice Feature with Vishnu Rajamanickam, Page 17 Little Green Flowers

by Anna Bohn, Page 19 The Green Door

by C. N. Nevets, Page 21 Overcome Again

by Jonathan Butcher, Page 23 Nothingness

by Anthony Ward, Page 23 Teardrop’s End

by Michael Adams, Page 23 Washing Dishes

by Amye Archer, Page 24 Ants

by Joseph Daniel Lewis V, Page 25 The Boy Who Dug Worms at Mussel Flats

by Tom Sheehan, Page 29 For the Taking

by Keith Rebec, Page 31 Porch Light

by Anthony Ward, Page 32 Stories of Smoke Dry Mouth

by Erick Mertz, Page 33 William and the Pink Snack

by Carly Berg, Page 34

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

My Life As A Local Band Groupie

by Amye Archer Bllllaaaagghh” I roar from deep within my belly as yet another reincarnation of tonight's dinner comes hurling down the pike. The headlights from the passing cars allow me to inspect my vomit for two second intervals. I can see three things pretty clearly , some form of tomatoes (maybe sun-dried? I can't remember what I had for dinner, it's all a blur now), the brownies, yes, definitely pieces of the laced brownies, and the hideousness of the situation I am in right at this moment. On the side of Interstate 81, drunk, stoned, and now, covered in my own vomit.

“Get in the car!” Smithy yells from the parked car about fifteen feet behind me. He's mad now. This was a pit stop he wasn't counting on making. I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and get off my knees. The gravel stuck into the bare skin on my legs, my skirt sitting somewhere around my hips, my hair bearing the perfume of the moment. I walk back to the car and slip into the passenger seat. I sit silently as Smithy gets in and starts the long drive home. I watch the street lights blur by and try to recall the night. Someone's party…but whose?

Oh Amanda, that's right.

Leaving the party, hearing my cousin John play...I hope I didn't throw myself at him again, damn him and that guitar, wait a minute... Someone bringing out a cake, with hash? Oh, that was it. My stomach flutters to corroborate my story, yes, it was the cake.

“Bllllaghh!” Another sour reminder of the cake flies from between my lips onto Smithy's floor mat.

“What the…? Fucking Christ!” He slams on the brakes. “Get out!”

“What?”

“Get OUT!” He reaches over me and opens my door.

“You can't throw me out here!”

“NOW,” he snarls.

I gather my purse and step out of the car. I stand in shock as he drives off, his taillights the only color in the black of the night. I am only two blocks from home.

This is the end of yet another chapter in my ever changing life, a chapter filled with marriage, divorce,

transformation, and now this, standing here on a street corner in Wilkes Barre, covered in vomit, dressed like a prostitute.

“

Six Months Earlier When my husband left me for his boss, it spelled the end of the world for me. I was twenty-seven and divorced. I detested that word, I hated the fact that I had to carry around that badge so early in life, and I hated that I had wasted ten years of my life on this man.

I had no idea how to date, since I never had, I had no idea how not to be married, or how not to be one of two.

I had also lost almost a hundred pounds, and for the first time in my life was feeling “sexy”, a word I didn't even know the meaning of before. So, here I was, lonely, desperate, and not too bad looking, all of these elements combined to create what would become a perfect storm.

Meet Tom. Tom is a simple guy, he's in his earlythirties, he's short, he's bald, and carrying an extra thirty pounds around the middle.

After barely squeaking through five years of college, he has found a job at the same TV station I work at, that pays barely over minimum wage, and requires almost nothing of him.

Now meet the other side of Tom, the side I met.

After being introduced to him at work, he asks me and my girlfriend, Jen, to meet him and his friends at a local show. Afroman is playing, do I remember him? I laugh, bat my eyelashes, and throw my hair over one shoulder, of course I do, I thought he was dead.

Looking for any type of entertainment in the midst of my otherwise lonely life, I agree to go.

When we arrive, I discover Tom's band is headlining the show, yes I said band. He's on stage now, known to his fans as “Smithy” and he's really good. He's causing quite a stir among the twentysomething's waiting to see Afroman, and they are beginning to gather at the front of the stage.

My opinion of him starts to change now. Under the hot lights of the stage, his bald head and huge eyes don't look too bad, he actually looks...kind of hot up there.

When my husband left me for his boss, it spelled the end of the world for me. I was twenty-seven and divorced.

3

Then I hear it. Smithy on bass, begins the baseline for Tool's “Sober”, and he stares right through the small crowd at me. I hold up my beer to show my appreciation and he winks at me. Jen looks over at me and sighs “Oh, no.”

“Well we aren't boyfriend and girlfriend. You can see whoever you want.”

“Uh...okay,” I say, suddenly aware that I am in an abandoned parking lot in the backseat of a local musician's car. “Can we go home now? I'm tired,” I lie. The tears are screaming to be released, but I won't let them loose.

“Sure,” he answers zipping up his pants, completely unaffected.

The next few months go by in a blur. I begin going to every show Smithy's band is playing, even during the week. How I manage to keep my management position at the TV station is beyond me. It's a mindless job I can perform on no sleep, hell, even still drunk, thankfully.

I get to know Smithy's friends, the local bar owners, the other local bands. I know who hates who in CatFight, why Scotty left CueBall, and that Joe from PineFish is sleeping with Alex from Hellions' girlfriend. I begin getting invited to after-parties, then I start throwing them myself. Soon, I am “Smithy's girl” to everyone, except Smithy.

“Oh my god, did you see those guys there tonight?

They wanted you, they wanted to go home with you.”

Smithy is drunk and slurring in my ear.

“Shut up and kiss me,” I slur back. Like two blind fools fiddling in the darkness, we are in the backseat of his Chevy Malibu parked behind the Staircase Lounge in Pittston. It is three o'clock in the morning, on a Thursday. He has just finished a show, and I have work in five hours.

“You were so fucking hot tonight,” he whispers.

“I'll show you fucking hot,” I say back.

He's kissing my neck now, right up the back, just like I showed him. It's my spot. His hands are up my shirt, and he's taking my bra off. I'm almost thirty years old and I have my own apartment, yet I'm having sex in a parking lot. He slides under me now and pulls me on top of him, taking my shirt off. I kiss his chest feverishly, ignoring the mounds of hair, and begin to undoing his pants. The windows of the car are starting to fog, it's the middle of March, it's thirty degrees outside.

“Why didn't you go home with them?” Smithy whispers in the dark.

“What do you mean? Home with who?” I ask, still making my way into his pants.

“Those guys back there? They both wanted you, why didn't you go home with one of them?” he wonders aloud.

“Uh, what?” I jerk to a sitting position, and throw my arms across my breasts, shielding my sexuality.

“I'm just curious, I mean, they really wanted to go home with you, did you see them watching us walk out?

That was fuckin' great,” he says, tugging my arms away, trying to find what I have hidden from him.

“What do you mean why didn't I go home with them? Because, I'm with you. Aren't I?” “Well I guess, but we aren't together-together.”

“We're not?” I ask.

In 2000, five years before I was in the backseat of Smithy's average priced car, Smithy was drinking his way through his fifth year of college. The local band he was part of began to grow more and more successful.

The demanding schedule was too much for Smithy to handle, so he quit the group. A year later they signed with Hollywood Records, and are now...Breaking Benjamin.

Now it is April, 2005, and I'm throwing a party.

Since meeting Smithy, I have begun playing guitar, and often have “guitar parties”, where several of us sit in a circle with our acoustic guitars on our legs and play until two o'clock in the morning. I'm usually the only girl, but it doesn't bother me, I like the attention.

Tonight's party breaks up early, it's about eleven when people start to leave. The stragglers are Smithy and Joe, my single friend who keeps hanging around hoping to catch me with my guard down, just once, to let him sleep over. It never happens. Smithy and I sat on the couch strumming a Green Day song, while Joe sits on the love seat flipping through the usual crap on TV. “Hmm, that sounds like it should be an A, but it's not,” I say.

“It's A minor, move your finger here.” Smithy reaches over and slides the fingers on my left hand around like pieces on a chessboard. “There, try it now.” and it works.

“Um, guys? Look who is on,” Joe says, motioning towards the TV screen.

Smithy looks up from his guitar and freezes. There in front of us is Jay Leno welcoming the band Smithy left behind. The lead singer looks like an old friend as he and the Leno chat about their new album, their tour, and the band's small town roots. Smithy's stare has changed. The blood has now returned to his face, and in a flush of emotion, his eyes begin to well up. Joe and I exchange glances in desperation, to see if the other has any idea how to handle this unprecedented situation.

“I'll get us another beer”, Joe says, “Smithy, you want another?”

“Yeah, please,” Smithy answers.

“Are you okay?” I ask as the band starts to play a song for Jay Leno and half of America.

“I helped write that album you know, the first one?

Now he won't even take my calls.”

4

“We'll I'm sure there is a reason why this all happened,” I lie.

“Yeah, they're rich, and I'm not.”

I sit in silence. Smithy looks at me for some sort of condolence, but I have nothing. What would I say?

That even though the odds of it happening the first time are astronomical, it could, possibly, happen again?

That he would be the only person on earth to receive two offers to become famous? He blew it, he knows it, and so do I. We sit there for another twenty minutes, pretending what just happened on the Tonight Show didn't. Soon, the night ends as it usually does, I have too much to drink, Joe goes home disappointed, and Smithy gets lucky.

“Will you do something for me?” I ask, after one whole hour of mediocre sex.

“What's that?” he asks.

“Will you stay with me tonight?” I hate this, I hate this side of me. The side of me that is paralyzed with the fear of spending one more night in this bed by myself.

“I can't, I have to get home, I have some shit to do,” he says, hopping out of bed and into his clothes.

“Like what?” I ask, I can see the outline of him from the streetlight outside. He is hurried.

“I have to take my mom to the doctors very early, I need to get home and sleep.”

“Oh, okay, well I will see you at work tomorrow?”

“Of course, beautiful!” He smiles, and leans down to kiss my forehead. Sensing my disappointment he adds “Hey, listen, we'll grab dinner tomorrow okay?

I'll buy.”

I hear the door close without the lock clicking. I waste no time throwing on my robe and running over to the oversized windows of my apartment. I know from experience it takes him about a minute and a half to go down the corridor of my building, out the back door, and through the parking lot to where I can see him getting into his car from my window.

In the building next to me, a party is brewing, a bunch of local college kids. I stay hovered in the window with the lights off behind me. I watch from the left hand corner, hiding myself, in case he turns around to pick a leaf off his shoe, or to investigate a noise, and spies me watching him. Soon he appears and I watch as he pulls his keys from his pocket.

Suddenly I see a girl from the building next door waving her arms to get his attention. Through the closed window I can hear a muffled yell of what I think is his name. He spins around and smiles as she runs towards him. She has a beer in one hand and hugs Smithy with the other. They talk for a few moments then, with me watching, they walk happily into the building next door. I sit and wait for almost two hours before I decide to cry myself to sleep. When I leave for work the next morning, his car is in the same exact spot.

Miss Sunshine

by Ed Gutierrez t’s disturbing to receive hate mail, and it’s even worse when you don’t know who it’s from, though I’ve narrowed it down. In the letter it states that I don’t know how to love and will never know, which is strange, because I feel in the past year I have never loved so much.

The short invective is written in bad English, either purposefully (if it was written by Andrea) or accidentally (if written by one of the other women). The mysterious mailer’s pen name is the innocuous sounding “Miss Sunshine”, so unlike the cruel text.

Andrea might have written it. Actually the seeds for the letter must have been planted with Andrea. I met Andrea at a summer writing program in Madrid about a year ago. I soon learned she lived in the U.S. and was married. When you are in love, you sometimes can’t help yourself though. I waited until she left for good until I wrote her a long letter expressing my feelings, letting myself go for once, as the school taught us.

I thought that was that; nobody but her would see my declaration; it would surely go into the trash, or perhaps merit a clipped, embarrassed “thanks but no thanks.” So imagine my surprise when she not only responded but responded with equally strong feelings of her own. Ardent, you could call them.

I ached for her more after she responded and the letters that we started to exchange caused a wild, fluttery disturbance under my ribcage that lifted me like a hot air balloon. On paper I felt free, wild, yet somehow restrained, and I occasionally used words like “belabored” and “reverent”, perhaps because she was a college professor of literature and a published poet.

She wrote that she read one of my letters just before going to lecture, she was late, then she couldn’t concentrate on Chaucer.

A month or two later, I can’t remember, I met Barbara. The way I met Barbara was that I was sitting on a bench in a plaza writing Andrea. I was sitting in the middle and a woman around my age sat on one end, almost comically far away, as if I had a disease. She pulled out some papers from her bag and started writing something on the top one. I could see little green boxes. They looked like forms.

“We both have paper work today,” I commented.

I felt happy not only because my Spanish had become pretty good but also because Andrea had responded with a long nice letter that morning, and I would have spoken to whomever happened to sit next to me, man or woman, fair or foul.

“Are you a writer?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

I

5

“I wish I could be a writer too.”

“Anybody can.”

“No, not if you don’t have time. I’m on my way to the immigration office. A terrible place,” she said. She added, “It’s much better to sit here and write.”

“There might be some good stories at the immigration office.”

The edges of her lips on one side momentarily snarled upwards in an expression of “you got that wrong.” She was cute, but her eyes were a bit too squinty and her lips, though full, were a bit too liver colored, nowhere near as beautiful as Andrea’s, but then I chastised myself for comparing, for judging, for thinking anything more.

Barbara was from Peru, a foreigner like me, but since I had inheritance money and relatives in Spain her worries were much more numerous. Barbara listed a string of part-time jobs she’d attempted. She was caught in a typical immigrant Catch-22 : if you don’t have a work permit, you can’t get a job, and if you don’t have a job offer, you can’t get a work permit.

She didn’t begrudge the fact that my relatives had helped me to get a visa or my financial fatness, but it’s also true I started to pay for the both of us when we went out. Barbara was very humble and would always order the bare minimum, knowing that I would bear the financial burden. Over dinner Barbara would fill me in on her job woes.

“I’m delivering flyers. It’s good exercise but my feet hurt.”

Next time I saw her I’d ask about the job.

“I’m doing food import now. I want to kill my boss.”

“Well, that’s a step up from flyers. No?” Then the next time….

“I’m stacking boxes now.”

“Empty or full?”

“Empty.”

“Well at least that’s something.”

What I liked about Barbara was, despite her dire circumstances, she radiated enthusiasm and a make-do attitude, or maybe that’s how I felt and she was the pessimistic one. I reminded myself that, according to the Bible (not that I am religious but I respect that text as a distillation of human wisdom), coveting a married woman like Andrea was against one of the 10 Commandments, but it was harmless to write her. I could tell Andrea anything, stumbling into philosophical digressions at will. Andrea wrote back about the “biological imperative of the male” and “It’s perfectly natural to be attracted to other women. A relationship is all about compromises. Believe me, I know.”

Barbara the Peruvian was very high-strung, a bit like I am now. When we went out, she jumped at car horns and any sudden loud noise as if someone had jumped out at her from behind a door in a haunted

house. But a night out with Barbara was more soothing than mere letters though, and her laugh and stories about her dead-end jobs and ex were like live poetry.

Barbara invited me over to her apartment to cook something Peruvian. We were sitting in the cramped kitchen and I was considering how close her lips were when a pretty girl appeared in the doorframe.

“My flat mate,” said Barbara.

“One of them,” said her flat mate.

“Ceres,” said Barbara.

Ceres wore a pretty sky blue scarf wrapped around her neck which set off her eyes which looked right at me. At that moment Barbara’s phone rang. Another call about a job interview, Barbara shouted out, as she rushed down the hallway for her room. Ceres began leaning against one side of the doorframe. She designed computer programs for gas companies to calculate pre-paid credit. “So let me get this straight,” I said because it was hard for me to keep up with how fast she spoke (Ceres was a Madrilena), “you do this for people who drive to gas stations so that they can pay with a credit card.”

“And collect points,” she added.

I still think what occurred, occurred perfectly naturally. I reasoned that since Barbara and I were just friends (there had been no physical contact other than the jovial pats and forearm squeezes of camaraderie) and since Barbara was still talking on the phone, another call from her ex, and since Ceres and I could talk about many topics too, I asked Ceres for her phone number. Ceres could have not given it to me.

I arranged to meet Ceres in a place located discretely far away from the apartment, in consideration of Barbara’s feelings, mind you, just in case. Meeting Ceres for the second time I was surprised by how short Ceres was. You see, I’d been sitting down in the kitchen the whole time she’d been standing in the doorframe. But then I chastised myself for being superficial and a perfectionist. I also believe a bit in the Indian philosophy of matchmaking and Ceres and I occupied a similar income bracket, I could tell, by how she ordered drinks and food without a thought about expense. I also readily admit I had no, or hardly any, Spanish friends at that time and to be with a native who lived smack in the middle of society and held down a regular job and received a regular salary and visited nearby relatives on the weekends was like an aphrodisiac.

So when I did start dating Ceres, I was excited. A real girlfriend at last, I thought. It was strange hearing Barbara referred to as mi companera de piso when before Ceres had always been the nameless companera de piso. Ceres admitted that she was better friends with the other flat mate who she called La Cordobesa and that Barbara often didn’t pay her rent and bills on time, as well as not clean her dishes, which caused problems 6

for everybody. This was news to me. “I know she’s your friend and all, and I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true,” said Ceres.

When I went to visit Ceres and invariably ran into Barbara in the kitchen, or on her way to the bath, or toilet, or in the long corridor, I tried to act normal and fair, and not give in to hearsay and slander. I would be happy to see my old friend, of course, but if I stopped too long to chat, Ceres would get jealous, or angry, but I couldn’t just pass Barbara by as if we had never been friends, no matter how lax she was in her domestic duties, but already I sensed Barbara was acting cooler, or maybe I was siding more with Ceres than I had originally planned, and I felt uncomfortable in the apartment.

In my free time I wrote Andrea and told her about the dilemma, about the friction between Ceres and Barbara, and I described Ceres’ blue room, the penguins huddling on icebergs and the breaching whales and the blue scarves she kept to stop the chill at night and provide a chic flair around her rather small neck.

I could tell Andrea anything; she was happy for me; she said she probably wanted to stay with her husband and have kids, he was definitely pushing her in that direction, only that she felt like a rabbit racing around the same track chasing the same carrot of the same question about what to do, and, at her age, it was probably better for her to stay with him and have kids.

We live two different lives, she wrote, but I hope you never stop writing me.

All was fine until I finally met the other flat mate La Cordobesa. She lived away most of the time doing “social theatre performances” as she called them for troubled individuals who hung out in counseling groups, recovering drug addicts and such. I am sure she had a stage presence, as she had an apartment presence. When she was around, it felt like a storm brewing and I felt the electric charge all the way from Ceres’ blue room. Ceres and La Cordobesa would talk excitedly in the common room, or kitchen.

“That prisoner kept asking me,” said La Cordobesa, “we hit it off, the attraction was electrifying, really, but I refused to meet him once he was released.”

“Even for a coffee?” asked Ceres.

“Even.”

“Tia, I would have done the same.”

“I was too scared, tia. After the coffee I would have been scared to be alone with him. He was wanted for murder, you know.”

“You had to keep a professional distance.”

“I’m already with the theatre director. His girlfriend is coming back from the States any day now.”

“Tia, that’s going to be a mess. What are you going to do?”

“What can I do? Like I said, he’ll go to her when she arrives. He’s already told me that. At least he’s been honest.”

“Enjoy it now then. Later, you can always go to your prisoner.”

La Cordobesa wasn’t as pretty as Ceres or as friendly as Barbara but she radiated an unmistakable charge that was pure, almost overpowering, sexual, even her smell (smell is something I usually never think about) La Cordobesa’s room was right next to Ceres’ room, and I could feel/smell the charge/smell right through the wall, and sometimes when Ceres and I made love (I’d already gotten into the habit of keeping the noise down out of consideration for Barbara), I would imagine making love with La Cordobesa as if I were the prisoner or theatre director and I would feel ashamed, glad that our thoughts are not printed across our foreheads in glowing digital letters. But these imaginings thankfully never lasted long as La Cordobesa would leave on another tour.

“Oh you are the unlucky one!” Andrea wrote. “Tell me all, all!” Maybe Andrea thought my literary confessions to her insured her of my heart. Andrea liked to hear about my temptations, as well as the stable weekends. I wrote her about the trips I took with Ceres, about a hike or swim in a relatively clean mountain lake and I wrote “we” hiding nothing, or almost nothing.

Andrea knew perfectly well that I was not exploring Spain alone, not bravely trekking or forging mountain lakes alone, and Andrea knew about Ceres, and her roommates, in the same way I knew about Andrea‘s significant other.

Things were stable for a while but then La Cordobesa stayed in Madrid for an extended period.

I’d see her in the late mornings, after Ceres and Barbara had already left for work. La Cordobesa might be talking loud on a phone or wearing a towel, on her way to the bath, her door ajar, the foot of her bed clearly visible, and we’d chat in the cramped quarters, her terry cloth towel hitching up in all kinds of tantalizing directions. We even brushed our teeth together, but I was in no way comfortable being alone with her. But why delay in telling you the inevitable? She showed me photos and costumes from her travels, and her fingers were touching mine more than the photos, or maybe mine were seeking to interlace around hers, it’s hard to tell who started it, north and south magnetic poles just seek instant unity, we’d switched to her room, and again I don’t know if I invited myself or she invited me,

We live two different lives, she wrote, but I hope you never stop writing me.

7

the room was red, it seemed as if we were about to explode to smithereens, and she wasn’t the type to think ahead either.

After we finished, she said, “Don’t you work?”

“I’m going to right now,” I said. Just as I left her room, I saw Barbara who had returned to the apartment. She saw my messy hair and said “Bathroom is the other way.”

For a brief intense period I could only think about La Cordobesa. I wanted to follow her as a troubadour, my next performance my only commitment. Of course Ceres sensed something was wrong even before La Cordobesa left. “Why are you so uptight?” Ceres asked me, meaning neither Barbara nor La Cordobesa had revealed anything. I wanted to make a clean break and confess everything to Ceres, better I confess first before Ceres found out, but I kept thinking about La Cordobesa, the fires were consuming me, and still I wanted to burn, and then, instead of confessing, I told Ceres I needed a break, I needed to be alone. We were that stable and I could talk like that, and Ceres was so open she said she understood and granted me time.

I thought all might blow over if I self-flagellated enough but then, a few days after my self-imposed exile, Ceres sent one short message, vaguely stating “Good luck, bye.” This could have been a real goodbye or just an expression of good luck. She often wrote short messages and I couldn’t tell. I tried to call her multiple times to no avail, so it was probably a real goodbye. I tried to contact my old friend Barbara to find out how much Ceres had learned, Barbara was an insider, if anybody had inside information Barbara would, but Barbara had moved out and had a new boyfriend.

Barbara wrote that she didn’t have much time to meet, let alone any time soon; she’d also just gotten a new job.

La Cordobesa was impossible to contact even in the best of times. I wasn’t even sure what country she was in, or if she wanted to talk with me anymore, since the one time she had wanted to talk with me, a day after our “affair”, I’d told her I was going to stay with Ceres.

I had to talk with somebody so I wrote my old trustworthy flame Andrea a long letter to tell her everything in vivid literary detail. I was thinking that perhaps Andrea was really the one who I loved the most, but then she didn’t respond either!

A month went by, no responses from anyone, then I received this hate mail!

Maybe there are limits to how much you can love.

Maybe Andrea grew disgusted by my actions and purposefully wrote the hate mail in the vein of a non-native speaker; she is that skillful in writing. Or maybe Barbara or La Cordobesa could have written it, which is strange, since I never heard either of them speak English, but if either of them did write it, it would be better if it were from La Cordobesa, since I knew her the least. The most painful possibility is that Ceres

wrote it. The level of English in the letter is at her level, approximately, but I don’t detect any pet peeve words or phrases.

I have thrown the letter away so that the words “pathetic” and “you will be a lonely old man” stop searing through my mind like a curse, keeping me awake well past midnight, the tightening pain in my chest shortening my breath. Voodoo, I now believe, is a real force, the doll tossed silly and pricked by an angry god who vents his rage, and the pins stick so deep you begin to question your own conscience.

How all that love has bloomed into one black malignant flower.

• • •

Footbridge

by Sarah Gamutan These impending steps are Unfamiliar just as I don't count How many times he left Me and this lonely road At first this was frolic to be Defective or to proceed poorly As in the development of an Argument in logic or in the Rhythmic structure of verse.

This gangplank is just like My psycho. Cut in half.

Sarah Gamutan's poems have been published in many online literary journals including Carty's Poetry Journal, Western Australia Poets Inc., The Beat, Literary Kicks, Haggard and Halloo Publications, The Camel Saloon, Rainbow Rose, and The Sound of Poetry Review. She lives in Philippines where she works as a Customer Support Associate by night and a poet at heart by day.

8

been so nice to me, he’s trying to break it to me gently.

But maybe while he’s looking away I can just… oh shit!

That’s actually a pretty good answer she’s giving.

It’s certainly worth the raise we’re planning. Yes, very interesting. Maybe I can look back now, maybe it’s safe.

Oh, no, it’s still… she knows! She’s moving her hand to cover it! She thinks I’m a pervert!

He’s looked back, and my hand’s slipped, and the cardigan’s going to slide all the way…

She’s pulled it down, she thinks I want her. Oh God, what am I going to…

He thinks I’m coming on to him to stop him sacking me. This is definitely it! Oh no, he’s standing…

“Well, thank you, Miss Tyler, I think that’s enough.

You’ve confirmed our faith in you and I’m happy to say we’ll be giving you a five percent pay raise.” He offered her his hand.

She lifted hers to shake and with her other hand scooped her cardigan up onto her shoulder and covered the strap.

Sigh…

Sigh…

Spellbound

by Calum Kerr

O

h God, I can’t stop looking at it. I’m talking, trying to be informative and approachable with maybe a hint of humour, and trying to look her in the face, but it’s not working. My eyes keep being drawn, however hard I try, to her bra strap. I don’t want to. I really don’t. I’m not that kind of guy, but I can’t stop it, every so often I can feel my eyes flicking downwards, just checking it’s still there.

Please don’t let her notice. Please don’t let her notice.

Please don’t let her notice…

I thought Annual Performance Reviews were supposed to be boring, but this is okay. I always thought Mr Roberts was a bit of a dick but he’s quite funny when he’s on his own. I suppose he’s usually showing off to Mr Gilbert. He’s not too… Have I got something on my shoulder? Did I spill some coffee or something? Why does he keep looking at it? He’s trying not to. I can tell because every so often he fixes me with that really intense stare, but there’s definitely something there.

What is it? Why is he glancing all the time?

It’s not that she’s not attractive, she is, but I’m just not that kind of guy. I don’t want her to think I am. It’s just the way her cardigan’s slipped off her shoulder.

She has one of those strappy tops underneath and her bra strap’s twisted round it. Or is it? Is it just twisted and sticking out round the sides? I can’t tell and for some reason I really need to know. That’s why my eyes keep slipping down. But I know – oh God! – she’s going to think I’m trying to sneak a look at her breasts, and I’m really not. Just keep talking!

Should he not be asking me questions? He just seems to be talking and talking. And looking at my…

Oh no! It’s my bra strap isn’t it? I knew I should have straightened it earlier, but I didn’t have time. I didn’t want to be late. I didn’t think it’d matter. It’s this damn cardigan. If it didn’t slide off all the time, it wouldn’t have mattered, but it has again and now he thinks I’m half-dressed and shabby. That’s why he’s not asking questions, he’s getting ready to sack me! I could pull up my cardigan; just reach up casually and straighten it. But he’ll know that I know he’s been looking. Then he’ll come straight out and sack me. What can I do?

Maybe I should ask a question. I’ve just been talking and she must be wondering what’s going on. If I ask a question I can look away while she talks and then when I look back, maybe I can have a good look at it and that’ll be that. There, done, now she has to talk and I can relax.

Oh, he’s asked me something. I have to talk. Maybe I can shift while I talk and move my cardigan and it’ll all be okay and he’ll forget that my bra strap is twisted under my top strap. Oh no, he’s looking away. He’s working up the courage to sack me. That’s why he’s

Calum Kerr is a lecturer at Winchester University, and Director of the UK's National Flash-Fiction Day. His stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies, and also on BBC's Radio 4. www.calumkerr.co.uk • • •

Blindfold

by Jonathan Butcher They bask in empty pleasures, with statements held up by drinks, cigarettes and past drug glories.

The record collection holds all the right names, in alphabetical order, under the weight of the frowning lava lamps.

And let no one dare stand in their way, or so their motto goes, and any that question can stand back and bask in the reflection of their ever present mirror.

And a round of applause now due, as another weekend of frustration glooms, ready to be washed down with the stagnant water, filtered through fading blindfolds.

Jonathan Butcher has had work appear in various magazines including: Underground Voices, Black Listed Magazine, The Shot Glass Journal and Fade.

He lives in Sheffield in the north of England.

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Writing Blog Viewed by an Optimist Maecenas

by Eve Gaal

The shard, Dangerously missing from the glass Edged into my consciousness-Cutting away-Vestibulum semper enim non eros.

Brutally slashing my ideals.

Pouring out-Alongside old, brazen fools, Calling themselves professionals-With nasty criticism, Passionate rants, Torrid vulgarities Wrapped in concealed pseudonyms of superiority.

Flummoxed, I clicked, Deleted and watched-Disbelief sinking deeper into The virginal crevices of my soul.

Safe behind their window, Their monitor-A nom de plume, An avatar-Holding a cynic's party, Alienating With barbs and disinterested haughtiness.

Point taken. LOL Cautiously, Quietly, I step back to carefully refill another glass-My curiosity like a gnawing, unquenchable thirst.

Hardly seduced, Repugnance grounds me.

I sip softly, Lingering Leaving it-Half full.

Eve Gaal's writing has appeared in The First Line Magazine, and in various anthologies such as Fiction Noir-13 Stories or God Makes Lemonade, My Funny Valentine or Goose River Anthology, all available on Amazon. Find more of Eve’s writing at: http://thedesertrocks.blogspot.com.

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BAD LUCK

by Joseph Daniel Lewis V

t’s night. On the side of the road, in the rain, sits a young man in a dark blue suit. To his left lies the smoking twisted wreckage of a bright red sports car. With a white flip-cap lighter, he tries over and over to light the wet crooked cigarette hanging from his lips. Achieving nothing but a spark from the lighter, he chucks it out into the road and stares blankly in front of him as it begins to rain harder and harder. He sighs and stands ups. Dusting off his pants, he tightens his soaking wet skinny black tie in a mechanical fashion before walking out into the road to retrieve the thrown lighter. Wiping it against his jacket, he stuffs it within an inside pocket of his suit jacket before returning to sit in his spot on the side of the road.

In the distance, two lights shine through the dark night illuminating every shiny drop of rain crossing its path. Roaring down the road, the black Cadillac sedan races past the young man and the wreckage before screeching to a slow stop. Reversing into an adjacent position to the red ruined sports car, the car parks, its engine goes off, and an old man in grey sweater and black slacks steps out of the car. With great care, he unfurls up a pink umbrella and walks around the car.

Soon he stands at the feet of the young man, shielding them both from the rain with a small smile on his face.

“Good evening, mister James. You all right?” says the old man.

The young man looks up at him. “Well, Keaton.

Life’s shit, car’s fucked, suit’s wet, lighter’s broken, and—” he stops to squint at the old man’s pink umbrella. “What happen to the green one?”

Keaton smiles and throws the red sports car a glance before extending a hand towards James.

“It’s raining, mister James. Let’s get you in the car before you catch a cold.”

James suddenly sneezes dropping his cigarette. He grabs Keaton’s hand, who pulls him to his feet.

party of all parties to— rendezvous with a lady of all ladies, when I spotted your mess on the side of the road.

Now here I am, late for my date.”

James frowns. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not,” says Keaton looking into the rear view mirror. "Plus your father had a transmitter installed in that new car of yours." “...What’s her name?”

“Adriana.”

“How do you know her?”

“Bumped into her at a Salsa for Seniors class two nights ago…” Keaton sighs.

James takes off his suit jacket. “Oh c’mon, tell me more.”

“I had a crush on her in the eighth grade, fortythree years ago and…” “…And what, Keaton?”

“Let’s just say, mister James, I’ve heard it said that dinosaurs are long gone, but the sight of Adriana resurrects a Tyrannosaurus Rex in my trousers.”

They both laugh.

James then peels off his soaking wet socks and rolls down a window to toss them out. He unties his tie and pulls it off. “Well don’t let me get in the way, Keaton.

Just leave a window down and I’ll wait for you in the car— unless you need the backseat later.”

“She is not that breed of lady, mister James…and frankly I find it a little hard to concentrate due to your recent brush with death.”

“It was more a caress, Keaton, a tease. Don’t let my tragic life ruin yours.” “‘Tragic life’? You’re wearing a four thousand dollar suit made in Italy—” James interrupts, “— It’s wet.”

“Because you were bored, you bought a two hundred thousand dollar blue sports car and had them paint it red—” says Keaton stone faced.

“You don’t drive a car that’s the same color as your suit, Keaton, it’s bad luck.”

“Then what do you call crashing it to smithereens on the side of the road and almost dying?”

James pauses for a moment and scratches his head, “— Evidence of taste, Keaton. A lesser man would’ve bought it blue and died tonight.”

“You almost died, mister James. What is your fascination with not valuing the life of luxury you have?”

I

Keaton drives the black Cadillac sedan through the night. James sits in the back, wrapped in a big white towel. The radio plays opera at a low volume still heard through the rain.

“How’d you know where I was?” says James drying his short wavy dark hair with the towel.

Keaton looks into the rear view mirror for a second.

“I didn’t. You see, mister James, I was on my way to a 12

“I. Am. Insatiable. Keaton. Now enough about my good taste and situational immortality— let’s get you laid.”

Keaton exhales and drives further on. The black car roars down the road. In the distance are city lights, tall and low, an array of colors.

billionaire who steals clothes.”

James walks past him and lights a cigarette with his white flip-cap lighter.

“Mister James, you cannot smoke in here! It is not the sixties,” says Keaton as James pushes the bathroom door. The ring of a cell phone echoes in the bathroom, Keaton pulls out a cell phone and answers it. “Hello?”

Keaton smiles. “No. I haven’t told him yet. Of course, when the time’s right. He’s a particular type person— but I will soon. You have my word.”

At a bar in the ballroom, James leans against the counter while sipping on a glass of hard liquor. A blonde young woman with small eyes squints at him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be like… serving people and stuff?”

James turns to her. “I’m on break.”

The blonde leans closer. “I don’t see any other waiters on break.”

He takes a sip from his glass. “That’s because they haven’t run out of spit yet.”

The blonde’s small eyes become large. “What?”

James smiles at her and says, “Did you like your food? We added an extra special ingredient tonight— spit, in case you weren’t following me on that. I couldn’t tell… would you like to dance?”

The blonde grabs a nearby waiter. “Excuse me. He said you all spit in our food?”

“What?” says the waiter, confused.

“He said you all spit in our food,” she says pointing at James who’s already turned around.

The waiter frowns at him. “What the hell’s going on here?”

“I’m on break,” says James nonchalantly.

One of the other waiters whispers something into the bartender’s ear, a big shorthaired woman. She walks over and glares at James.

“Are you James Greene?” “…Who’s James Greene?”

The bartender snatches the half-full glass from his hand. “He said you said that.”

“Hey— I wasn’t finished with that!” James says, reaching over to try snatch it back.

The bartender shakes her head at him. “A mister Lancelot Keaton has persuaded us not to forcefully escort you off the premises— so you have two minutes to return that tuxedo to the break room and leave… or else.”

James lunges over and snatches his glass back from the bartender. He downs it all and slams it on the dark wooden counter with a big smile on his face. “ ‘Or else’ what?” The bartender cracks her knuckles. Raising his hands mockingly, James says, “Ooh, scary. You’re not straight, are you?” He laughs. She clobbers him in the face. His legs go limp beneath him and he falls to the floor.

The noise of people and music fill a ballroom. Below the hanging bright light of a golden chandelier, men in suits and women in dresses twist and twirl around each other, smiles on their faces.

In a nearby men’s restroom, James stares blankly at himself in the mirror. He’s wearing a black and white tuxedo. Behind him, two men dressed exactly as him leave after a conversation on how stuck up the party guests are. The bathroom door swings back and forth letting the two men leave and a third enter. Keaton swaggers in with a grin on his face.

“Stop smiling, Keaton. It makes you look younger,” says James turning around to lean on the bathroom sink counter. He fixes the cuffs of his sleeves.

“Why thank you, mister James. I’m having the time of my life. Adriana she’s…” Keaton pauses to stand in front of a urinal. He unzips. “… kind, funny, ridiculous, stubborn, atrocious— in the best conceivable way and the best part is—” A short man with a large mustache enters the bathroom, relieves himself, and washes his hands with a frown on his face while James and Keaton whistle simultaneously. Keaton walks over beside James to watch his own hands and the two of them stare at the short man with the large mustache. Upon the man’s leaving, the two resume conversation. “‘And the best part is’?” says James gesturing with a hand for Keaton to continue.

Keaton faces the door. “Well punch my peter and call it a pineapple. Mister James, have you ever seen a man so short?”

“No, Keaton. I haven’t. So what about your lady friend again?”

“And that mustache… it was so— massive, almost majestic, wouldn’t say so?”

“I guess. I don’t know. He was like five-two. That’s not that short.”

With a perturbed look, Keaton spins around to point a finger at James. “Why are you wearing a waiter’s outfit?”

“And the best part about Adriana is?” says James rhythmically.

Keaton crosses his arms. “She’s never been married. How did you get that waiter’s outfit?”

James looks over his shoulder at the mirror and winks at himself. “It’s called a tuxedo, Keaton. Were you born yesterday?”

“Mister James, please return that outfit— tuxedo, to wherever or whomever you stole it from. I would appreciate it if the best night I’ve had in over two decades did not end with myself being linked to a

Opening his eyes, James looks around to see 13

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

himself inside the black Cadillac, with Keaton at the wheel and an attractive older woman in a white gown sitting beside him with a blood stained rag in one hand and an ice pack in the other. Soft folk music plays from the speakers at a low volume. “…You look like my mother,” says James looking into the woman’s red-brown eyes.

“I hope that’s a compliment,” she says placing the ice pack on the floor of the car.

“Me too…” James winces after touching the shiner around his left eye, “… never met the woman.”

She looks at him sadly.

“It’s better this way. I mean, better not knowing you have an ugly mother than— knowing you have an ugly mother. James Greene by the way…” he says holding out a hand, “… No relation to Abraham Greene, though he did adopt me and I do say ‘thank you daddy’ when gives me lots of money.”

“Adriana Simmons,” says the woman shaking his hand cautiously. “Do all your nights end with women punching you in the face?”

James smiles proudly.

“Only the good ones,” says Keaton turning on the windshield wipers due to a light drizzle.

“I just got sucker punched by a lesbian, Keaton, a little more sympathy please,” James sits up and after noticing himself in nothing but blue boxers and long black socks, turns to Adriana. “So, tell me a little about yourself, miss…?”

“Simmons,” says Adriana sighing before putting on a smile.

“Well, miss Simmons. It seems that you and Keaton are embarking on an endeavor the entails erotic adventures of the exciting nature. Dancing is a gateway activity to many things: sex, homosexuality, loneliness, and… sex. I guess what I’m trying to say is, who are you and what your intentions with my sweet innocent dear Keaton here?”

Adriana smirks and looks at Keaton in the rear view mirror till he throws her a glance.

“Keaton is a fine fellow. I enjoy his company. He’s a… fabulous dancer,” she laughs, so does Keaton.

James gasps and crosses his arms. His face switches between Keaton and Adriana again and again. “Oh god— the two of you? Do your funny parts even work anymore? That’s got to be illegal or something.” He groans in disgust and looks out the car window. They drive around the city. It’s late, the streets are empty, yet Keaton stops at every red, slows down at every yellow, and waits for the traffic lights to go green.

Rose Tattoo

by Mary Incontro ave you ever watched as the bottom record in a stack of 45s dropped to the turntable on an old phonograph, dropped with a soft whoosh, then spun slowly as the tone arm swung toward it, its needle descending with precision onto the record’s outer edge, a space filled with exquisite silence before the needle landed in the spiral groove – as if home – and circled steadily toward the center, filling the air with music?

That’s how observant was Sara, my love, as records dropped from the old hi-fi her father had bought for her when she was a child. She would listen for hours, oblivious to the scratchy sounds it produced. That’s how she learned to fill the silence between us.

A rose tattoo, on my ankle, please, she told the boy in the shop as she sat on the table, bravely extending her right leg and her thin bare foot. She squeezed her eyes closed and gripped tightly the table’s worn edges as the boy approached her unprotected skin with a needle. The pain was sharp, as she had no body fat and no muscle on the part of her ankle that would soon bear pink petals and a green stem. That first sensation, of an unrelenting scratch with a vibrating needle, soon gave way to even more intense pain and a sense that she was being cut up, carved into like a pumpkin, but she would not flinch. After a bit, the skin on her ankle began to feel numb and she watched, wide-eyed, as the boy filled the rose’s outline with color.

That night when we got into bed, you showed me your ankle, its rose so delicate, your skin still tender.

As I kissed it, you said that you did it for me. Did you know I was with another woman at the moment the needle came down with precision on your flesh? Ah, the pains I have inflicted on you.

H

Mary Incontro is a former Federal prosecutor, now writing her first novel. "Rose Tattoo" is a slice of it. She is also an assistant editor with Narrative Magazine and blogs at www.maryincontro.com.

Joseph Daniel Lewis V is a writer from Hawaii who likes rainy days, stormy nights, and sunshine.

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DROP DEAD FRED

by Lori Lopez he dog’s name was Fred. When I woke to find Fred dead at the bottom of the stairs, I saw it as a sign that my life needed a change. But in the abstract, I wasn’t sure where or what. After burying the dog, I returned to the house. My husband sat in the kitchen at the small table for two doing what he always did. That’s when I knew.

For thirty-six years, I’ve been married to the same man. Little has changed in those years beyond addresses and jobs, and today was no different. The newspaper held at arm’s length with his reading glasses sitting on top of this head. A cup of coffee sat at his right hand and a donut at his left. He was dressed in a brown suit, white shirt, and the color of the day, blue tie. I knew in exactly fifteen minutes he would refold his paper, tuck it under his arm, place his cup in the sink, and toss the napkin in the trash. He’d then wait for me to join him at the door, kiss me goodbye, and drive off to work returning sometime between six and seven.

When I was in high school, I wanted a marriage like my parents, stable. I never considered how boring and predictable my mother’s life was, I just knew I never wanted to end up like my friend’s mothers. Angie’s parents were divorced and they played the guilt game with her stuck in the middle. Many nights Angie could hear her mother cry herself to sleep. Craig’s dad died in the war leaving his mother a widow and struggling to raise three kids alone. But most of all, I was never going to end up like Samantha and Nathan’s parents.

Samantha’s dad was a philandering cretin and her mother put up with it, forgiving him each time she caught him with the other woman. Nathan’s mother was the other woman and if his dad knew, no one could tell. I made a promise to myself then that if I were ever in that situation I’d kill them both.

I looked from the dog reading the newspaper to the dog lying under the mound of overturned dirt in the backyard and formed a plan.

The first time Fred cheated was before we had children. I didn’t find this out until the second time, which I suppose was for the best because who knows what I might have done. By the time I became aware of his infidelity I could hardly walk away leaving my babies without a father and me to handle everything by myself.

Fred has a heart condition associated with his diabetes and excessive weight. Some years ago he had

a pacemaker put in, but the doctors said he was a prime candidate for a heart attack if he didn’t begin exercising, suggesting he start slow. Even as I bought the sexy negligée, I wondered if I could entice Fred’s winkie into action, and how physical it would have to be. I skimmed the racks of clothes at the local department store, calculating how much salt to put in his food over the next days and if I could substitute water for his insulin without him becoming suspicious.

That night I met Fred at the door in little more than a basic black trench coat and five inch FMPs the color of celery. For several weeks, I greeted him like this, varying the outfits. Twice I served him his meal wearing only my birthday suit, and once dessert was drizzled over my body. Within a month, I was well sated and Fred had lost interest along with ten pounds.

The second time Fred cheated I caught him with his hands in the ‘cookie jar’. He claimed it didn’t count because even as he was performing he was asking for forgiveness…but let’s be grownups. Worst part of the whole unfortunate incident was she looked like me only younger. She had less weight, less grey, less wrinkles, less sagging, less brains. If the kids hadn’t been months from graduating and thus close to moving out, I tell myself now as I did then, I would have done something.

Fred is mechanically inclined, but after nine hours selling used cars, the last thing an ex-mechanic car salesman wants to do is fix his own car, so I fixed the brakes. Funny thing about brakes, sometimes days can pass before they fail. It wasn’t supposed to be me behind the wheel, alone, on a dark country road when they finally went out sending me over an embankment.

I don’t remember much of the crash, but I’ll never forget the sound of metal crunching as the car rammed through the guardrail. I suffered a mild concussion and after being held overnight, the hospital released me with the provision he not leave me alone until I’d completely recovered. Taking a month’s vacation, he doted.

We all do it, get complacent with age, start to convince ourselves that if he comes home every night, takes us to a movie and dinner a couple times a month and hands over most of his paycheck, everything is fine.

It’s okay that he diddles around now and again, that’s what romance novels are for. I have two full bookcases.

With spring’s arrival, I imprudently forgot to refill the Epipen we store in the first aid kit attached to the

T

15

side of the white wooden boxes housing the beehives.

It wasn’t hard to order the more aggressive bees and mix them into the colony. I worried at first they might kill off the originals, but they all survived. The ER doctor said Fred was lucky the medics arrived when they did considering I was at the library. If the neighbor hadn’t looked out the upstairs window into our yard when she did, who knows how long Fred would have laid there before I got home.

The third time Fred cheated, I had just returned from the grocery store when I received the call. Greta from our pharmacy had been let go because she was caught sneaking out of the bathroom, half dressed. Ten minutes later Fred exited. For legal reasons they keep that part of the store locked to prevent entry without an escort and no one admitted to letting him in.

The copperhead rattlesnake was a little harder to procure and far more dangerous to let loose. Plus I worried it would escape to the neighbor’s yard before Fred went to work in the garden. He’d caught a summer cold staying in bed for two days. My scream at the slithering thing was genuine and Fred came out to the carport brandishing a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, the smell of pine tar floating with him. I think it was the sound of me slamming the car door that caused the snake to strike. The man from the snakebite response team said Fred was fortunate he was wearing his work boots because it prevented the snake from getting both fangs into his leg. After one course of anti-venom, and twenty-four hours monitoring, he was back home sitting in his leather recliner with a bottle of beer in his right hand and the remote in his left.

With winter setting in and his arthritis worsening with the cold, he decided to retire. It took only a few weeks for his smile to return. He started bringing me flowers, books, and hardly ever left my side. We would sit for hours reading together and I joined his bowling league. By the time we received his first retirement check, I’d decided I was happy with our relationship and it didn’t matter what he did when I wasn’t around because he loved me and I loved him. I grew. Life and marriage isn’t about perfection. Sometimes you have to be big enough to let another’s hand instill punishment.

We were talking as we strolled hand in hand down the boardwalk after an exceptional dinner and a very enjoyable touring Broadway production of Guys and Dolls. Thinking it was a nice night, and our house is only a few blocks away, we decided to forgo the cab ride home. He nuzzled my hair, whispering sweet nothings like we were kids. Slipping lower, he was kissing the nape of my neck when I felt the first raindrop. Moving into a storefront with an overhead awning, he continued the passionate kiss while pulling me closer.

We waited for the rain to decide what it wanted to do.

When it started in earnest, he said he’d catch us a cab and I should stay where I was so only one of us gets

wet. Just as he stepped away, a woman in stockings with a seam running up the back of her very nice legs walked by. Fred’s eyes followed each of her long strides, suddenly forgetting I was standing behind him.

I didn’t see the bus hit Fred. Calling out his name, I waited for him to turn around. He continued walking backwards toward the street as I blew him a kiss and mouthed ‘I love you Fred’, leaving him to puzzle why I’d called him by the dog’s name. I turned back to the storefront display of a black dress perfect for a funeral.

Under my breath, I was singing, “When I think of the time gone by…and I think of the ways I tried…” A witness told the police Fred’s foot slipped off the curb causing him to stumble directly into the path of Crosstown number thirty-six. “You could honestly die...”

Lori Lopez is an author, military wife, mother of three, sister, dog owner, friend, and postal worker.

Her completed works include a series of six young adult fantasy, one thriller and one romantic suspense novel, as well a handful of short stories. www.lostinthewriting.net • • •

Bright Side

by Anthony Ward I’m worn down to the bear threads of life From riches to rags Left baring my skin That hangs from me like an engorged garment As I shrink into myself Peering out through outstanding eyes Which ought to be returned to their rightful owner.

But for now I decide to make a run for it Shedding my wears so nobody can see Me darn myself through the crowd Hoping to emerge again suitedEnough to fit comfortably in my own skin And keep my eyes from being repossessed.

Anthony Ward tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Word Gumbo, Drunk Monkeys, Crack the Spine, Shadow Fiction, The Rusty Nail, Torrid Literature Journal and Ginger Piglet, amongst others.

16

A VOICE VOICE FOR YOUR

An Exclusive Interview with Vishnu Rajamanickam Where did you get your inspiration for Of Roses and Thorns?

something which essentially had a meter. Everything else was prose or not worthy of a read.

Writing a book has been a childhood dream. That said, inspiration comes to me in spurts, the times when emotions overwhelm me. Of Roses and Thorns wasn’t constructed with a theme surrounding it. I had been writing for quite a while and suddenly realized nearly every poetry piece I wrote was laced with a melancholy feel. I thought, “Why can’t I make them into a poetry collection?” and thus this happened. It never was a conscious effort.

What would you do if you suddenly couldn’t write? How would you deal with this?

I have had many mental tussles over this. “What if my flow just dries up? What if the one I wrote now was actually the last one I could ever muster?” and so on.

But then, I hear that every writer gets through such a phase in life. Dry patches occur now and then. No point in fretting over it. The best way to deal would be to indulge yourself in some interest of yours or sit down and read something you like. Nothing could bring my spirits up like a hot cup of chocolate and a good sitcom on my laptop!

Tell us about your writing background. When did you start writing?

That’s quite a story. My grandfather tells me that I used to narrate tales on my own when I was around 8 years old. Though I don’t remember that very much, my first tryst with the pen was when I was thirteen, when I happened to win all the writing events at school. My school librarian recognized my talent and asked me to write for the school magazine. But instead of getting famous, my poetry actually made me the oddball amongst classmates who mocked my poems which had lines that didn’t rhyme. Back at school, poetry was

Why do you write?

Writing has been the best possible vent I have found to relieve my mind from the vagaries of life. I have always found it hard to restrain myself when I get depressed.

It has been this way for a long time now. And I discovered writing was a brilliant way to appease the upsurges. Some of my poetry tends to be particularly dark because of this.

17

You call it writing when there is a sublime flow of spirit in words. And it takes some skill to bring them out.

Something which I recently figured out was that many people believe a person who has a good command over the language can author splendid scripts. This is simply not true! Writing isn’t about words alone. It’s about how well you structure them in verses and has nothing to do with infusing jargon in sentences. Writing is very much like a sculpture. It doesn’t matter whether its made of white marble or sand. It’s the beauty of art that’s captivating.

Who are you influences in regards to writing?

I enjoy the works of Byron, Keats and Shelly. I can say that they inspired me to start writing initially, though I wouldn’t say they influence me. Another reason I started writing was because of my grandfather, who actually taught me the etiquettes involved in writing.

His suggestions helped me a lot to develop at the start.

What do you think is the greatest misconception people have about writers?

People construe a mental picture that writers have no life and that they keep sprouting lines every minute.

That’s quite hilarious. Writers are your normal class of people and they definitely don’t sit around writing all the time. And yeah not to mention, they do have a life.

You can contact Vishnu through his Facebook account at: Facebook.com/vishnucr or through email at: vishnucr@rocketmail.com. You can visit his website at vishnurajamanickam.weebly.com

What is your overall goal in regards to your writing? Do you intend to persuade, inform, or entertain?

I started writing to save my soul and not because I wanted to convey something to the world. With regard to my writing, most of them tend to have a dramatic ending with underlying noir in them. Although I don’t usually intend anything while I write, I would feel deeply satisfied if people say my works entertain them.

After all, that’s what every writer yearns for; a smile on the lips of his reader.

Of Roses and Thorns is available on Amazon and through Createspace. www.createspace.com/3944156 • • •

About Vishnu Vishnu Rajamanickam is an undergraduate student of Civil Engineering at the National Institute of Technology - Trichy in India. His work has been featured over 20 times in various literary journals.

Vishnu's first collection of poetry, Of Roses and Thorns was released during the month of July 2012, appearing on Amazon. The author spends his time doing research, sparing which he listens to music, with progressive metal being his favorite. He passes his leisure speculating about the intricate beauty of mother earth and swimming in lonely pools brimming with chlorine.

What type of themes do you explore in your work?

Though the genre setting is usually noir, I try to write about diverse issues. Being a good observer, I tend to pen what goes on around me. I have also written about war, child labor, women suppression, suicides, etc.

Do you think anyone can write? Is it a natural ability or can it be learned?

18

Little Green Flowers

by Anna Bohn

J

anie felt the crisp October air sift through her curly brown hair. She looked up at the bleak grey sky, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath, smelled the dead leaves skittering around below her. She could hear the shrieks of laughter and clink of swing chains drifting over from the schoolyard half a block away. She was supposed to be with them, playing before the school day started. But she had an important job to do. So she kept her eyes closed and thought about Nora.

Nora, with her big blue eyes, sat at the stumpylegged little table in the playroom, wearing the puffy princess dress she had gotten for her birthday. The teddy bears on the wallpaper looked on enviously as Nora neatly arranged Janie’s dolls around the table.

When everything was perfect, Nora clapped her hands imperiously. “Oh, servant girl! Bring the tea!”

Janie handled the plastic teapot carefully as she walked slowly around the table. It was her turn to be the servant. Nora had said that since they were at Janie’s house, Janie had to be a good hostess and serve her guest.

Filling each cup with the grape juice “tea,” Janie made her way closer to Nora. As she leaned over to fill Nora’s cup, she wobbled on her too-big dress-up heels, and the teapot dropped square into Nora’s lap, splashing deep, sticky purple all over the pink ribbons and tulle of the beautiful dress. For a moment, the two girls looked at the mess, and then both burst into tears.

“Mrs. Hilson!” Nora sobbed, and Janie’s mother came running in from the kitchen. “Mrs. - hic - Hilson, Janie - hic hic - ruined my dress! She did it on purpose!”

“No I didn’t, mamma!”

“She did, she did! Janie wanted to be princess, but it wasn’t her turn, and she spilled the tea all over my new dress!”

Janie was struck dumb. Maybe she had wanted to be princess, but she knew she would have gotten her turn. It really was just an accident. But Janie’s mother mistook her pensiveness for a tacit confession, and sent her off to the corner while she gently shushed the whimpering and blotchy princess.

In the time out corner was a small, framed square of fabric, with the words, “Treat others as you want to be treated” stitched in glittering gold on a creamcolored background. Even before Janie could read, she knew what these words said. Her mother had taught her, so that she could think about them when she had done wrong. Usually, wrong meant pulling the dog’s tail or throwing a fit about having to finish her

asparagus at dinner. But now, Janie tasted for the first time the bitterness of injustice. She had been too shocked to defend herself. She felt betrayed by her mother’s imperceptiveness, and cheated by her friend’s unfair accusation. Nora went home for the day not long after Janie’s incarceration ended. Janie had longed to push her right out the door. She ate her vegetables quietly that night, and resolved always to stand up for herself from then on.

The two girls had lived next door to each other for about a year. Nora’s family had moved into the neighborhood and were quickly befriended by the Hilsons. They threw Nora and Janie together as often as possible, to give Nora a friend in her new neighborhood. They played together most afternoons, and they walked to school together every morning.

Except for when Nora went to Disney world for her birthday, and got to miss a whole week of school. Janie walked the two blocks to Roosevelt Elementary by herself that week, and rather enjoyed it. She marveled at the beautiful princess dress from the Magic Kingdom when Nora returned.

The day after the tea was spilt, Nora was over for after-school playtime again while her mother and father were at work. The weather was warm, so Mrs. Hilson let the two girls play in the yard while she weeded the pansies in the window boxes. Nora played with her Skip-it while Janie drew chalk flowers on the driveway, her head bent intently towards her work.

Nora took a misstep and the Skip-it skidded away into the grass. She looked over at Janie’s flowers and said, “Janie, you’re doing it wrong. Flowers can’t be green.”

Janie raised her head up warily. “Green is my favorite color. My daddy’s eyes are green, just like mine.

And when he comes home from his trip tonight, he’ll like them.”

“He won’t be able to see them if it’s nighttime. And besides, he’ll probably think they’re ugly, and just say he likes them because he has to. Nobody likes green flowers.”

Janie set her little jaw and went back to work. But when Nora turned her back, she picked up the blue chalk and began to scribble over the green lines. Mrs. Hilson stood up at the other end of the yard and called over to the girls to say that Nora’s mother would be home any minute, and that they should clean up.

Janie did not want to leave for school the next morning. “Can’t I go to work with you, mom?” she begged.

19

“Sweetheart, if you’re not sick, you have to go.

Everyone has to go. It’s only fair.”

“You’re mom’s right, baby,” said Mr. Hilson. “You have to go to school just like we have to go to work.”

Janie thought of Nora’s birthday trip and knew this wasn’t true, but she didn’t argue. She walked outside and saw Nora, with her Lisa Frank backpack and light-up tennis shoes, waiting at the end of the front walk. The weather was chilly, and a light mist was falling. Janie dragged her feet as she walked with Nora - or rather behind her. Nora bounced happily along and jumped in puddles left from a rainstorm early that morning. Their route to the elementary school passed by a house with a retaining wall out in front, right along the sidewalk. It started low - only about two feet - but it got much higher. Nora stopped to look at the wall, and then hopped up on the low part and stepped higher and higher, until she was towering high above Janie’s head.

“Nora, you should get down. My mom doesn’t let me climb that wall. She says it’s dangerous.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” said Nora, tossing her blonde hair. “Your mom probably said that because she knows how clumsy you are. I’m much more graceful. I take ballet.” Nora began to do pliés on top of the wall.

Janie felt her face get hot. Tears jumped to her eyes.

She was angry. She wanted to shout. She wanted Nora to fall off that wall and learn her lesson.

And suddenly, Nora lost her footing. For a moment she wobbled back and forth, her arms flapping as if she were a baby bird trying to take flight. But she didn’t fly.

She let out a sharp yelp as she tumbled over, falling towards the sidewalk ten feet below, instead of the soft grass only inches behind her. Her arm and shoulder hit first, but Janie could still hear a thump when her head made contact with the pavement. Janie stared, wideeyed, for only a moment, before running to the nearest door for help.

Nora went to the hospital, and Janie was late for school. She didn’t play much at recess, mostly sitting near the fence and staring down the block, towards the wall. When she got home, her mother told her that Nora had a broken arm and a small crack in her skull. She would have to stay at the hospital for a while. Janie nodded and cried, and Mrs. Hilson told her that it was okay to worry for her friend, but she was sure Nora would be fine in time. Janie went into her playroom and sat in the time-out corner.

Janie was afraid of this power she had discovered within herself. She had made Nora fall. She had wanted Nora to get hurt, and that’s exactly what happened. It was her fault. But she didn’t know how to confess this to her parents. They might not love her anymore, knowing that Janie had done such a bad thing.

The gold letters in the frame on the wall sparkled and jumped out at her, in the light streaming through

the gauzy curtains. She hadn’t treated Nora the way she would have wanted Nora to treat her. Janie had broken her family’s biggest rule, and she had broken Nora’s arm, and scraped up her rosy round face, and broken her shiny blonde head. Janie thought about what it must be like in the hospital. That’s where babies came from, but it’s also where they took Grandpa when he got sick. He never came back from the hospital. Janie knew Nora wasn’t old like Grandpa, but she wasn’t sure whether her mother really knew that Nora would get better.

Janie had to make things better. She had broken the golden rule, but there was no one to punish her.

She had put herself in time-out, but Janie realized that time-out wasn’t enough when she had hurt someone so bad that she had to go to the hospital. She had never done anything this bad, so she didn’t know what a fair punishment would be. Janie sat in the time-out corner for a long time and thought and thought and thought.

In the end, she knew what she should do. It was only fair.

The next morning, Janie walked to school alone.

Her father had offered to walk with her, so that she wouldn’t be lonely without Nora. But she told him she could do it herself. “That’s my big girl,” Mr. Hilson beamed. “Next thing I know, you’ll asking for my car keys!”

Janie kissed her parents goodbye, and walked out the door with purpose. The weather was overcast, like the day before, and the wind had picked up. The green flowers in the driveway had been washed away by the previous day’s rain.

Now, as she stood at the top of the wall, the wind nudged at her back, breaking her out of her reverie and reminding her of what she had come to do. Her eyes had been squeezed tight, and she had seen pink, purple, green and blue behind her eyelids. But now she saw the grey sky, the brown leaves, the sand-colored sidewalk.

Janie took a deep breath and jumped.

Anna Bohn is a 21-year-old attending Westminster College in Fulton, MO, majoring in English Literature and Secondary Education. Although a lover of literature, she never considered herself to have any talent as a creative writer. But through courses that involved creative writing assignments in college, she fell in love. Flash fiction and poetry are two areas that intrigue her, and with the encouragement of wonderful professors, she began developing her skills as an author of more than just academic essays. She was honored to be published in she school’s literary magazine, Janus for the last two years in a row.

• • •

20

The Green Door

by C. N. Nevets Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

been taken in constructing this door. This, this tiny green door hewn into the ivy-covered rock-face.

I waited a full three weeks before finally deciding to enter. I never saw anyone around. I myself had only found this place because I was wandering blindly through the scrub outside of town, kicking at the ground and cursing my decision to move here. But I wanted to be sure. I was pretty confident that no one could be living inside there. I wasn’t certain about other uses. A cache of stolen goods. A hideaway for moonshine. A secret place for selling drugs, manufacturing drugs, or swapping sex for drugs.

Remember that advice about not allowing a door to be shut behind yourself in to a strange place? I should have followed it.

My new life in the dreary old town was dull with a capital Boring. And then I found this, this tiny green door hewn into the ivy-covered rock-face.

It had been smart of me to wonder whether or not I should enter. I should have kept wondering. I should have been satisfied to draw pictures and wonder. It should have been enough to sit down and write a random piece of flash fiction, speculating on what was behind that door.

But I was curious.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Oh how I envy that cat.

I should have been suspicious as soon as I pushed that green door open. The air inside was cold, a little stale, but surprisingly clean. There was no scent of decay. Nothing had died, rotted, or mildewed inside. I should have noticed, too, that there were no leaves piled up at the foot of the door. And that the door swung easily on its hinges.

Everything was well-taken care of.

My new life in the dreary old town was dull with a capital Boring. And then I found this, this tiny green door hewn into the ivy-covered rock-face.

If I had been paying attention. Thinking. Being careful. Being cautious. Being sensible. I would have realized that someone had to be using this place – and that I had no business intruding. If I had thought clearly about that and just left, I would be okay. I might be bored again, but . . .

I would have food in my belly.

I would have freedom of moment.

ou know how they tell you to never allow a door to shut behind you in a strange place?

It’s good advice. Follow it.

My new life in the dreary old town was dull with a capital Boring. And then I found this, this tiny green door hewn into the ivy-covered rock-face.

I kept telling myself that this was an improvement. It was what I had wanted. It was the pick-me-up I’d needed since relocating to this dead West Virginia village in pursuit of a romance that had vanished almost as quickly as I had realized there wasn’t a single stop-light in my new hometown. Dull with a capital Boring.

At first I had thought it must be a cottage, just an overgrown stone cottage with enough debris around it to make it look like it did. What it looked like was a door inserted into a mass of sedimentary rock. Like a man-made intrusion in an all-natural environment. I spent days searching through the brush, though, and then I spent weeks crawling all over the stones, and it was no cottage. It was a rock-face. With a door. This tiny green door hewn into the ivy-covered rock-face.

There was a bit of a porch in front of the door. A slab, really – a stone slab only as wide as the narrow door and probably half as long as the door was tall.

There was a crude stone step, leading to the slab porch. The rock face had been carved out around the door, and the door itself recessed a good half a foot in.

It was an old door, rather like the access door on an old farm out-building. A few vertical boards, braced by a support Z on top and a reverse Z on bottom. Care had

Y

21

I would have clothes on my body.

I would be able stand on my left foot.

I would have both of my eyes.

But I was not thinking, and now I have none of those things.

My new life in the dreary old town was dull with a capital Boring. And then I found this, this tiny green door hewn into the ivy-covered rock-face.

When I entered the room, the building, the cavern, the whatever it was I was entering – it was silent and dark. And I was still curious. So I took a few steps.

And I let the door shut behind me.

When it shut, I heard it latch solidly. I also realized that, without the outside light, I could see nothing. I paused to allow my eyes time to adjust. When they did not, I turned carefully around and reached for the door.

There was no handle.

It opened to the inside, so I couldn’t push it.

I tried to get a grip between boards to pull it awkwardly towards myself, but I could get no purchase. I knelt at its base and tried to get my fingers underneath, but there was too little clearance. I stood on my toes to try and grab the top of the door, but there was no space there either.

Suddenly panicking at the thought of being trapped here, I rammed into the door with my shoulder. I kicked the door as hard as I could. I pounded into it with two fists. Nothing. It did not creak. It did not splinter. It did not give.

I was stuck.

Just the way she wanted me.

My new life.

I still don’t know what she’s after. Even now. I’m naked, but she has suggested nothing sexual, done nothing to humiliate me. My left foot has been permanently mangled. My right eye has been burned through with a hot poker. But she has never asked for information. She has never seemed to take pleasure in my pain. She has not fed me, but she has not offered me food in exchange for anything.

I have free movement around the room; I just can’t leave. She comes by sometimes. Says a few words.

Tickles me with a feather. Throws tiger-claw punches at my chest. There’s no telling what she will do. Or what she will say.

There’s also no telling what she’s after.

What the point is.

My new life.

It was when I first sank to the cold, stone floor, my back against the door, that she initially spoke to me, like a phantom in the dark.

“Can you see?”

I shouted some curse word in shock at suddenly hearing the voice. She repeated her question. This time I wasn’t surprised, but I was confused. Could I

see? No, I couldn’t see. There was not a single thread of light in here. Who could see?

I heard her walking in the blackness, booted steps on stone. I heard the clinking and clanking of metal.

And then I had to squint to shield my eyes as two lanterns were lit and began to cast orange light into the room.

“Can you see now?”

Could I see now? She had just lit two lanterns. How could I not see?

“Close your left eye.”

I think the only reason I obeyed was because this whole experience was so far out of the ordinary, that I didn’t know what else to do. I closed my left eye. I then stood still, as if waiting for her next instruction. Perhaps my obligation to her was out of gratitude for the light. For breaking the darkness.

“Can you still see?”

Of course I could! I still had my right eye open.

Even so, I never saw it coming.

The woman moved like a cat – lunging at me, thrusting a hot poker at my open right eye, and stabbing with the grace of a saber. She screwed the poker gently clockwise, then counterclockwise, then withdrew it.

“Can you see now?”

The dreary old town was dull with a capital Boring.

The last time she left, she turned out the lantern light again. Theoretically I could walk around the room as much as I pleased. Practically, I could see nothing. Practically, I would never be able to walk on my left foot again. Practically, I might as well have been in chains.

I don’t know how long she was gone.

I was so hungry that every moment lasted forever, and no moment was different from another, so that in the darkness and emptiness, both inside and out, I was a single frame of time that might have been eternal, or might have been an instant.

She didn’t turn the lights on when she came back.

“You would only be able to see with one eye anyway, so why bother?”

I told her I was hungry.

“You have your own flesh.”

I told her I was thirsty.

“The rocks around you are damp, and you have a tongue.”

I told her I hurt.

“You could always die.”

I could?

“Of course.”

I hadn’t realized that.

“I am doing nothing to keep you alive.”

That was certainly true. She had provided nothing to sustain me, and had done many things to make my 22

life more difficult. There was no reason for me to think I could not die, if I wanted to. Of course, I had no easy way to deliver that death.

“I didn’t say you could die easily.”

What was her point? Why was she doing this to me? What was she after?

“There is no point.”

Then why?

“Are you bored?”

And then I found this.

I had to admit that I was not bored.

“Then, are you complaining?”

I sighed, sinking back against the stone wall.

I had to admit that I was not complaining.

My new life in the dreary old town was dull with a capital Boring. And then I found this, this tiny green door hewn into the ivy-covered rock-face.

Nothingness

by Anthony Ward With space I’m mostly nothing, Only the matter making me what I am.

While most the time I’m nobody, With only what matters making me who I am.

Inside the universe that is inside me, Orbiting that which constitutes my being.

With invisible forces influencing my existence, Where nothing can destroy me.

C. N. Nevets is an author psychological suspense.

With experience fields as diverse as radio comedy and forensic anthropology, he currently lives with his wife on a small acreage in rural Indiana. There, they watch mixed marital arts, work in their yard, and drink a lot of coffee. His stories explore the intersection of philosophical ideas and real human experience. He can be found on the web at Nevets-QST.com.

• • •

Teardrop’s End

by Michael Adams Starlit tears now streak along her fallen cheek at night; Where sunlit smiles I once had known whimper for the light.

• • •

Overcome Again

Like winds that shake and rattle at the gates that keep me whole, It’s the gurgling howl of an empty heart, in mourning for its soul.

by Jonathan Butcher The attic window frames the darkened landscape, as we place bets for cigarettes on the rain drops that race down the glass pane, and we hide our ankles from the drafts that entwine around us like undernourished cobras.

Two split as one, an unnatural site, love scattered through strange lands.

Now hope denied and future lost are as sand grains through my hands.

And over the hills, I spy from this view point, the houses that hold in comfort what I once was, but will never again be, whist I still hold on to this thread bare rope.

Still desperate grasps meet tortured gasps that wish our fate to mend.

With atheist’s prayer I’ll stretch to reach, dreaming tonight of teardrop’s end.

That irritating, pointless pride I thought I left hanging in gallows, a feast for passing vultures, is now once again sat in it's right full place; a servant that refuses its masters wants.

Michael Adams is an Australian writer of science fiction, who has for a long time not written any poetry. With the help of someone very dear to him, he has recently been inspired to start again. He has self-published a novel under another name in a very different style to his poetry.

And the nagging tide now departs, and leaves it's beach of debris that we collect at dawn to sift through it's treasures, finding worth and fortune in the discarded.

23

Washing Dishes

by Amye Archer If I only had a dishwasher, that book I've been sliding back and forth between my hand and brain would finally finish itself.

It would find itself an agent, a good one. a New York City one with bright suits and shiny shoes with long hair and no weird acne.

It would sell itself to a publishing house an old one.

A publishing house with a brick outside and real wood and plaster walls separating the rooms.

Maybe a lunchroom with a microwave where the workers could huddle and think about their weekends while their hot pockets zip around in circles on clear trays sopping up x-rays.

My book would then secure itself an advance.

I once read that Stephen King went from poor to rich overnight. Well, not really overnightif you consider the thousands of years he spent writing, researching, and editing Carrie.

If only he had a dishwasher, he also could have made it so much easier on himself.

My advance would be around a quarter of a million dollars. Maybe less.

My book would then take itself on tour.

See everywhere in the world I have ever wanted to goParis at Christmas, The Italian Coast, Australia in the fall, Pittsburgh.

My book would Tweet and Facebook for several hours a day, constantly promoting itself.

It would call Oprah's people and even though she doesn't have a show anymore, she would schedule some sort of special, just for the book.

Then, after seventy-seven weeks at the top of the New York Times Bestseller List, she would come home, curl up beside me, lay her head in my lap, and beg for me to stroke her hair with my dishpan hands.

24

of Clarence’s apartment key I’d made on last Monday and tested last Wednesday. The floor of the elevator is covered in dust and dried gum covers the hand railing on either side of me. When the elevator bell chimes, I look at the digital display over the door flashing the number six in red light. I step through the elevator doors as they open and walk down the hallway. My footsteps echo in the hallway, so I try to focus on another sound, my heart beat in my ears. It’s been four years and this never gets easier.

Once inside Clarence’s apartment, I lean against the wooden door and close my eyes. I take a few deep breaths, I think of the kid killing ants in the park, the smile on his face. My shoes seem to sink into the grey carpet of Clarence’s apartment, and besides the sound of an 80’s radio station the place seems to be quiet and empty, as it should be. On Wednesday mornings, Clarence goes for a morning stroll in Great Park. The park is enormous, so I gave up looking for him and bought a pear instead, which I enjoyed on the bench till seeing that kid.

Walking down the hallway, I enter Clarence’s living room. His black leather couch still sits in front of a big flat screen TV, with a dark wooden coffee table between the two. The same pornographic DVD’s about women who enjoy knowing someone’s watching or will be watching, lay in a pile next to the TV remote. On a metal shelf beside the TV are rows and rows of framed photographs of familiar children. I’ve seen their faces from files on unsolved missing children cases I downloaded from a police criminal database I hacked.

Hacking isn’t easy, but I’m a digitizer at a digitizing office ten blocks from Great Park’s East Gate, so for me, it is.

I go into the kitchen and step as quietly as possible along its black and white tiled floor, even though I know Clarence isn’t home. Picking up one of the wooden chairs around the glass table in the corner of the kitchen, I take it to the living room and push the couch and coffee table closer to the flat screen TV, so I can put the wooden chair in the middle of the room. A loud thump sound, makes me jerk, but then I hear muffled yelling coming from the ceiling. I look at the cracks in the ceiling and listen to Clarence’s upstairs neighbors fight. They did this last Wednesday too. I almost peed myself when I first heard them, thinking it was Clarence, that he was home. Thinking of pee makes my groin twitch, so I walk past the kitchen entrance to the hallway leading to Clarence’s bedroom and bathroom.

Leaving the door open, I turn on the lights and look at the man in the mirror. He’s young, well dressed, but he’s got dark circles around those big eyes of his.

They’re an amber color, a reddish brown, and I’m exhausted because I never sleep well the days before I visit people like Clarence.

ANTS

by Joseph Daniel Lewis V don’t eat too much, because I’ve lived too long. It’s what crosses my mind as I enjoy a pear on a bench in Great Park. Looking around, I see a little boy smashing ants with his fingers. Across the concrete path from the green metal bench I’m at, he sits there on his knees, with a grin on his face, while squashing the insects below him with his filthy hands. Soon a pretty woman swoops him off the concrete into her arms and shakes her head at him, pouting. She then places him on the ground gently and with a graceful finger points at a water fountain before patting his head and watching him skip off to wash his hands and drink water.

Walking over with my half-eaten pear in hand, I look at the ground, where ants crawl out of a dark hole in the concrete and drag in their dead. Looks like someone’s having a bad Wednesday.

The pretty woman smiles after noticing my presence, her teeth are nice and white but not perfectly straight. She gives the ants a glance then frowns before squinting at the sky and turning to me with another polite smile. I wonder what her name is.

I look down at cracks in the concrete. When I first visited Great Park, there wasn’t a single one. Now there’s so many it looks as if the ground’s ready to give up.

When the pretty woman bends down and turns away from me with open arms, it confuses me until the kid returns, jumping onto her. She turns around and nods politely at me. I say taking a bite out of the fruit in my hand. It’s a pear. For a moment I forget this, like I’ve forgotten a great many other things. I’m a lot older than I look.

My navy blue slacks begin beeping. I pull out my cell phone and look at the title of the alarm: ‘10 AM. VISIT CLARENCE.’ Spinning around, I walk towards Great Park’s North Gate and hail a taxi van, before tossing my half-eaten pear into a nearby over-flooded trash can. As I’m driven away, I remember a Wednesday when there were no cracks in the ground at Great Park, and of a pretty woman whose name was not a mystery to me.

Coming up the elevator in the decrepit building, I listen to the loud metallic grinding of the mechanisms taking me to the sixth floor. My hands begin to sweat, so I stuff them in my pockets and fiddle with the copy

I

25

I rip off a piece of toilet paper before lifting the toilet seat due to ants crawling around dried drops of pee on it. Taking a deep breath, I let it all out and enjoy the clean stream flowing from me, wondering if it’s pear flavored. The bathroom door creaks and I turn to see how far the wind’s opened it, but the only window in Clarence’s apartment is in the kitchen, and it’s closed, and the air conditioning isn’t that strong, and that doesn’t matter because Clarence is standing in the doorway to the bathroom, dressed in a murky green bathrobe, blue and white striped pajamas, and has a little black pistol in his hand, pointed right at—

basically, the guy’s… dead. He’s— it’s in the bathroom.

It’s a mess. Blood everywhere. He was taking a leak and— I just really need you guys to—’ and he doesn’t finish his sentence because I’ve already touched the side of his neck and he’s slumped on the couch, out cold.

I gently pick up his cell phone and end the call.

Scanning the room, I see nothing to tie him to the chair in the middle of the living room with. I ignore this and jump over the couch to drag him to the chair, so that I can still do this properly, and that’s when I see it, red sneakers on Clarence’s feet, with white shoelaces in them. Perfect.

I stare at Clarence, sitting sedated on the wooden chair in the middle of his living room with the white shoelace from his sneakers holding his chest to the back of the chair.

Taking a deep breath, I pull out my cell phone and look at the time, ten forty-two. I go to his bedroom and look under his bed for a red backpack I slipped under it last week. Spare clothes and a small digital audio recorder are inside this bag, I bring it because accidents happen, the bloody type, and I always try to record the last words of people like Clarence.

After changing into a cleaner and dress shirt, skinny black tie, and navy blue suit jacket identical to what currently lies in Clarence’s tub, I fill the red backpack with small expensive valuables because he won’t need them anymore. To be careful, I get a black trash bag from the kitchen and stuff my bloodstained clothes in them, while watching ants crawl all over the chunks of flesh stuck to the blood splatter on the wall. When I look in the bathroom mirror to pick off dry specks of blood, I wonder if the blood might taste sweet to the ants due to the pear I ate earlier, and then return to the living room to find Clarence groaning, slowly gaining consciousness. I click on the digital audio-recorder and put the volume receiver on high before stuffing it in my inside jacket pocket.

‘No… no this isn’t right— this isn’t right at all,’ Clarence says, his small beady eyes finding mine. ‘I shot you… What are you—’ ‘Say what you want. This will all be over soon,’ I say clenching my fist.

He stares at me, his eyes large. I think he’s wondering if I’m real.

‘What? No, wait… what’s going on here? This can’t be real—’ ‘Last words, Clarence— that is all I can offer you before this comes to an end,’ I say before turning to look at the shelf full of framed photographs of familiar

• • • I open my eyes to the flickering bulbs of Clarence’s bathroom lights, which tell me I’ve finally come back. It sometimes takes a while, usually a minute or two.

My face feels warm and when I touch it, I find it wet and my fingers red and shiny with blood.

Taking in my surroundings, I see that I’m lying in the bathtub under the shower near the toilet I was peeing in. The sight of ants on the toilet seat helps me focus on what I need to do next, so I quietly pull myself off the tub, to the effect of a metallic rolling sound and see a bloodstained bullet between my shoes on the floor of the tub. Standing up, I take off my navy blue suit jacket, skinny black tie, and white dress shirt, because they’re dirty. Quickly, and in order to avoid the squeak of the sink faucet, I kneel down and cup water from a still not flushed toilet, to wash away the blood from my face and use toilet paper to wipe away what I can. I toss my clothes in the tub and look at the blood splattered on the wall above it, the way it’s dripped down and congealed into an oxidized brown, the chunks of flesh sticking to the wall.

I wonder if they’re pieces of brain. Tiny black dots move near the dark trails of red turning brown, and I see the ants, remembering why I’ve done all this. Clarence is home.

In the hallway, my shoes sink deeper into the soft grey carpet, while I skulk down the hallway towards the living room. At the sound of Clarence’s voice, I hold my breath and try to listen to what he’s saying over the deafening beat of my heart in my ears.

‘— I need you guys up here now. There’s a body. My gun went off… I think I shot him. No, I know I shot him…’ I see the back of Clarence’s bald head, a cell phone pressed against it. He’s sitting on the black couch in front of the coffee table and the flat screen TV, waving a black pistol in the air frantically. ‘…Well,

My face feels warm and when I touch it, I find it wet and my fingers red and shiny with blood.

26

children. I think of all the people these children had, that I didn’t, and of all the children who unlike me, no longer have life.

‘What are you talking …what’s coming to an end? I don’t understand. How are you here?’ he says tears in his eyes. ‘I shot you—this doesn’t make any…’ he looks at the shelf with the framed photographs of children that should be familiar to him as well. ‘This. This isn’t real,’ he says desperately in a pleading tone.

‘That’s not true,’ I say reaching out with my hand, telling myself that this isn’t for me, that this is for them, and look to Clarence. ‘This is for the children.’

‘Wait— hold on!’ he says, my hand overshadowing his face.

The palm and fingers of my hand touch the flesh of Clarence’s face and I watch it grow limp and discolored.

Clarence screams. His skin bubbles into boils that rip and crack open into sores that ooze blood and puss all over his face. I stare at him and listen to his screams turn into wailing, that echoes in his apartment. Doing this in his home, feels right. It takes about thirty seconds, but when his screaming and squirming stops, he falls limp, so I untie him from the chair and pull him across the soft grey carpet of his apartment, leaving a trail of blood and puss I wonder if the ants will like. I drag a very dead Clarence down the hallway to the darkness of his bedroom where I’ve forgotten to turn on the lights, and leave him there, concluding my visit.

Now in the hallway outside the apartment, I lock the door and turn around to see a little black girl, maybe seven or eight, with her hair in puffy pigtails, no older than the children in the framed photographs. She wears a white shirt, blue overalls, and green shoes.

‘What’re you doing?’ says the little black girl.

‘You shouldn’t talk to me. I’m a stranger, you don’t know,’ I say looking into her big brown eyes that look almost too big for her face. The image of Clarence lying still and quiet in his dark windowless room comes to mind. Now this little girl will have plenty of time to grow into those big brown eyes of hers.

‘Well,’ she says smiling, ‘My name’s Tatiana, so if you tell me your name— you won’t be a stranger anymore.’

‘No,’ I say to Tatiana, hoping my cold unfriendly face will frighten her away.

‘Nice backpack,’ she says nodding with a very impressed expression on her face.

‘Thank you.’ It seems only natural and polite to say it.

‘What’s in it?’ says Tatiana, making my grip on the backpack grow tighter.

‘Nothing. Go home, Tatiana. It’s not safe out here,’ I say looking to my left to see the hall go on for what looks like another ten apartments, and then to my right at the end where the elevators are.

Tatiana doesn’t budge, so I leave, but soon look over shoulder to see a sad look on Tatiana’s face, but I keep walking the hallway’s black carpet. At its end, I press the elevator button and cross my hands in front of me, with the red backpack and black trash bag hanging over my legs.

‘You should not— have do that,’ says a raspy voice to my right. I turn to see an old Asian woman in aqua green pajamas, with pink curlers in her hair, staring at me. Her face is old and wrinkled, her cheeks sagging.

She points an old shaky finger at me. ‘You did wrong thing.’

My heart beats hard within my chest. I clench my hands tighter onto the backpack and trash bag in front of me. ‘I’m sorry. What are you trying to say?’

‘You press both button,’ she says. I follow her finger as it moves towards the control panel with the elevator buttons on it. Both buttons for going up or down are lit up. ‘Now we going get up only elevator or down only elevator.’

‘Sorry about that,’ I say, relieved.

‘Don’t sorry. Just think next time, okay? You young people, busy-busy-busy, never know where you going, always doing two-things. Never one thing.’ I watch her old hands move in the air as she says this, and smile.

‘Okay.’ I nod. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Down or up?’ she says pointing at the ceiling and then the carpet.

I look at the ceiling above. There’re cracks in it.

Maybe there was a Wednesday for this old woman when these cracks weren’t here yet. ‘… Down?’ I say it like a question, since I’m now thinking about the cracks in the concrete walkways of Great Park, the kid smashing ants with his fingers, the pretty woman, and the ants crawling out of the dark hole in the concrete. When I try to think of something else, I remember dragging Clarence into his dark windowless bedroom.

I should’ve flipped on the lights. No one deserves to be left in darkness like that.

‘Good I going there too,’ says the old Asian woman, bringing me back to the here and now.

I look at the ceiling above. There’re cracks in it. Maybe there was a Wednesday for this old woman when these cracks weren’t here yet.

27

‘Where’re you going?’ says a small familiar voice. I look away from the old woman and see Tatiana suddenly standing by my side, a brown teddy bear in hand, a smile on its fuzzy face.

I pause, almost ready to ask her about the teddy bear, but instead say, ‘Nowhere.’

‘That’s confusing,’ she says, looking away to twist her little face as though to actually think about it.

‘He don’t know where he going. This guy press both up and down button, but say he only want to go down,’ says the old Asian woman, surprising me.

A bell chimes and out of the three elevators, the middle one opens. I step forward and hold the elevator doors open with my arm, for the old Asian woman.

Once we’re both inside, I see Tatiana standing outside the doors, hugging her teddy bear. The old Asian woman quickly presses the button labeled: ‘L’. I don’t know why, but as the doors close, I wave to Tatiana, and she waves one of her smiling teddy bear’s arms at me and says, ‘Bye, Mister.’

The elevator goes down. For some reason, the metallic grinding noise of the elevator’s mechanisms, seem so quiet now.

‘That girl—she always run-run up and down hallway with stupid bear. Someday, maybe someone will take her. One day she maybe disappear— but maybe that for better. No end up like her mom,’ the old Asian woman turns to me, ‘Her mom, very weird, probably is prostitute— maybe worse.’

I try to think of what could be worse than a prostitute and picture Clarence.

‘I think she’ll be okay.’ The words just come out. I don’t even remember thinking them, only picturing Tatiana and her brown teddy bear with the smile on its face.

‘How you know?’ says the old woman.

I smile, watching the digital display of red numbers go from three to one. ‘A little bug told me.’

The elevator bell chimes once the digital display flashes a big red ‘L’ for lobby. When the doors open, the old Asian woman and I are met with the sight of a SWAT team clad in black armor with all their guns pointed at us.

‘Get out of the elevator now— with your hands above your head! This is the A.P.D! I repeat, get out of the elevator now— with your hands above your head!’ says a white muscular guy cop with a black pistol aimed at me, wearing a blue bulletproof vest that reads: ‘PROPERTY OF ATHERTON POLICE DEPARTMENT’.

The old Asian woman faints, collapsing to the floor on the threshold between the elevator floor and that of the lobby. It looks like she’s fallen on a dark straight crack between the SWAT, cops, and us. A black pretty lady cop rushes over to her and pulls out a cell phone that she tosses at a nearby SWAT team member.

‘Call a paramedic van now— and tell the coroners to bring a stretcher,’ she says.

The white muscular guy cop looks at her as she puts her fingers on the old Asian woman’s neck. ‘She alive?’

The black pretty lady cop looks up at him with a white smile, ‘Yeah, thank God. She’s just passed out.’

I stare at her before getting spun around and shoved face first into the wall of the elevator behind me. The white muscular cop pins me up against it and twists my arms behind me. I feel the cold touch of metal as he puts my hands in handcuffs, and speaks loudly into my ear.

‘Do not— move. You have the right to remain silent.

Anything you say or do, can and will be held against you in a court law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney…’ he pulls me off the elevator wall and pushes me into the SWAT team. Black-gloved hands reach out and snatch me.

‘Toss him in the van. I gotta’ go make sure Officer Beasley’s all right. What’s that’s screw-up’s cover name again?’

The black pretty lady cop helps a man and woman in red jackets carry the old Asian woman onto a stretcher. She then turns to her partner and says, ‘His cover name is Clarence. Clarence Sphinx.’

I hear this and then I feel the black-gloved hands of the armored SWAT team members drag me away through the lobby, out the doors of the building, across the cracked concrete sidewalk, and throw me into the back of a van. They shut the doors behind me. I lie there on my side in the windowless darkness of the van.

Clarence Sphinx. Officer Beasley. I forgot to turn off the digital audio recorder in my jacket pocket, and replay Clarence’s last words to me. ‘This. This isn’t real.

Wait—hold on!’

The van jerks and shakes as the SWAT or cops begin to take me away, and even though I can’t see my hands, they feel filthy, and I remember the little boy at Great Park washing his dirty hands in the water fountain after smashing the ants, and I can’t help but feel around the floor of the van to make sure I’m alone, because that’s not how it feels. In the windowless darkness of the moving van, as it goes up and down at the same time, I feel them all here, like dead ants dragged in with me, all the people I’ve visited: every person like Clarence I’ve ever killed. So I fall down to the floor of the van and lay here in the dark, hoping all this shaking will create cracks I can fall through, so I can run away to the water fountain in Great Park and wash my hands, because maybe this isn’t real, even though deep down in the cracks inside me, I know that’s not true.

28

on the other side. He was a worm digger, a clam digger, a hauler of kelp.

At the back of his mind, some awareness pulled him into another consciousness. At a different level, more pronounced, it was a severe yank, and one he knew would be folly to ignore. Be alert to your own voice, old Bartholomew had said. Be alert. He stood up to get a better view of the small bay now growing under the tide, the tide’s reach coming in over the flat land. As he put his hand up a visor over his eyes, stories of old Bartholomew flooded him and he fastened onto the first of the legends of the old man now sitting in a chair in the sunroom of his daughter’s house.

As a youngster of eighteen, in the little village of Pratolino outside Florence, his grandfather’s Saturday task was to take horse and wagon and crops about fifteen miles to the market for sale. It was repetitious and boring and offered little escape from the centuries old drudgery of the rock-strewn farm. The Cohorts were long gone. The Legions were long gone. Adventure was long gone. Pieces of mountains came up profusely through farmlands. Italy rendered little but continual labor. So one Saturday morning Bartholomew Bagnalupus, yearning for more, hearing the voice inside his body, sold the crop, then sold the wagon, then sold the horse and bought a ticket on a ship headed for America. Seventy years later, three wives later, fifteen children later, thirty-five grandchildren later, he could still demand attention from his youngest and last grandchild, and the fourth one to bear his name.

There had been a sail out there and now there wasn’t. Bart dropped his pitchfork and raced toward the water. His sneakers were filled with salt water and muck and he struggled in some parts of the flats. Out on the water he could see the half silhouette of a capsized sailboat, but saw no movement. In minutes he knew he’d be in the water so he took off his sneakers and dungarees at the banking. Then he thought about his wallet. Pulling it from his pocket he placed it under a large flat stone that would be there when the tide was out again. Bartholomew Bagnalupus, fourth of the name, worm digger, from the other side of the tracks, dove into the water off Mussel Flats and cut his strong arms through the water like a propeller. As if a buoy had found release from a tangled underwater line, a girl popped to the surface a few yards from the overturned sailboat. Air and noise and blubbering came from her mouth, and one arm swung like a hen’s broken wing against the water. In a few strokes he was at her side, grasped her in his arms, pulled her close to the boat.

Bart held her against the hull and could feel her body pressing back at him, the curves and softness he had only dreamed about. Blonde tresses swung like leather traces over her eyes, thick, knotted and ropelike. The one arm that had swung idly now wrapped about his neck. Her lips were soft looking. Against him

The Boy Who Dug Worms at Mussel Flats

by Tom Sheehan

F

irst there was a smaller sail out on the water.

And then there wasn’t any sail, as if it had been erased. Bartholomew Bagnalupus did not blink at the contradiction his eyes gave him. There were things like mist and eyespots and vacuums of sight. Been there, had that, he thought, as he swung his short-handled curled pitchfork into the earth of Mussel Flats. Another bucket of worms he’d have before the tide would drive him off the flats.

Out on the bay the light sail boats were running under the small breeze, and in the slash of waters that would cover the stretch of Mussel Flats before the day was half old. Young Bartholomew Bagnalupus, seventeen by a few weeks, thought the sails looked like napkins off his mother’s table, the way they folded in triangles, ran the breeze as if the front door had been opened and whipped them from the table. Contrast was never far from his mind as he dug in the muck for worms, at four cents a piece from the bait shop. …the white sails out there on the bay and him on his knees here in the muck.

The sun, insisting it was fire, cussed its way across Bart’s shoulders and upper back. The bucket was only half full of worms, gray water, sand and minute debris, and his short angled fork dug into the muck of Mussel Flats in the way only he could attack it. His grandfather, the great Bartholomew himself, had shown him how to worm when Bart was just out of diapers. “On your knees, boy, ‘cause that’s the way the good Lord wants you serving. On your knees and your eyes wide open.

Never forget that.”

Now his eyes were open and the salt was into every crevice of his body. He thought it an iodine, a penetrating thinness with the point of a stiletto. His body ached the way it did every afternoon, his knees sore, sneakers sopped and loaded with mud, the sun way past ignition, his mind filled with the being of salt, with his grandfather, with the waters of the ocean that had taken his father.

If there were railroad tracks at this end of town people would have said Bartholomew Bagnalupus lived 29

her breasts were softer. A knee, lightly, accidentally, not quite harmlessly, touched at his groin. He could feel the new action in his body. Even above the salt in his nose, at his eyes, a new essence came to him, filling his head. Listen to your body, old Bartholomew had said. Now he was listening.

He was listening and it was the girl who spoke.

“God, you smell good,” she said as her second arm swung limply about his neck. Her whole frame was pushed against him. “Thank you for jumping in. I’d have been all right except for the line that caught at my foot. But I think I’ve hurt my arm. Do you always dig out here?”

“Not going to find it now, son. Come aboard.” His hand came back down to Bart. His eyes were big and pleasant, and the face kindly though he had not shaved this day. “I know you’re in your skivvies, son. She told me. It’s okay. She don’t mind, I won’t mind. She’s mine and she’s precious, even if a little headstrong.”

Those were not harsh banker’s eyes looking down at him, not a banker’s hand extended fully to him. “I’ll have to dive for it,” Bart said. “It’s all I have and my mother needs it. My father was lost in his boat a few years ago.”

“You the one always digging for worms out here?”

The hand came again, still fully extended. Bart took it and the big man hauled him out of the water in one swift movement. His erection was gone. He felt shrunken and weak and his breath suddenly came in loud gasps. The banker threw a blanket over Bart’s shoulders. "Was your father the one who tried to get that other crew out of the storm when their boat went under?”

“Yes, sir, that was him.”

The girl Marcy was staring at him, first at his face and then at his crotch. A redness ran all across his face. She smiled again. A haunting and passing beauty glowed on her face.

Bart felt he’d never see this same beauty again in his life.

“Knock it off, Marcy,” her father said. “Why don’t you kiss him and let it go for now.”

Bartholomew Bagnalupus said to himself, I better listen to this man the same way I listen to my grandfather. He says things you have to find for yourself.

“That arm looks bad, Marcy. We better get you down to see Doc Smithers.”

The girl with the soft lips, the warm frame, the deliciously new body, spoke up. “I won’t go see that drunk. He’s always peeking down my blouse or up my skirt. Take me to Doc Higgins. He tends to business.”

Bart was listening. Learning was coming at him from every direction. This girl was beautiful, willful, and independent. Gray-green-hazel eyes were knocking his socks off. Her father threw Bart a pair of swimming trunks. Bart put them on. Marcy still smiled at him.

Bart could not answer. Had she smelled saltresidue, shaving lotion, pasta, sauce from the back of the stove, the harsh cut of liberally dosed garlic, the riches of his mother’s kitchen? He knew what she smelled like. It was new; it had smooth edges to it, and then a cutting edge. It filled his head. If he had socks on they would have been knocked off his feet. And her body, even in the water, was warm and fresh and totally new in experience against his body, floating against him the whole length, all the curves and softness bending to his bends, following his contours.

Suddenly he realized he was in his skivvies, practically undressed, and aware of an erection starting on its route. What an embarrassment! Yet her eyes were telling him something, even as a voice came to them over the water: Marcy, are you okay? Her eyes closed once, she leaned against him the whole way, and said, “You’re precious.”

The voice came from another boat. It was Marcy Talbert’s father, the banker, the man who owned most all of Pressburn Hill off the old pond, who owned Vinegar Hill and Applepine Hill and Cutter’s Pond itself and practically half of Rapid Tucker’s Pond. The broad, heavy-chested man was in the water and lifting his daughter into the other boat and climbing back aboard.

His hand came down to Bart Bagnalupus. “Come aboard, son. I’m damn glad you were around.”

Bart did not accept the hand, his erection still somewhat in place. “Thank you, but I left my wallet back there under a rock.” I’d be embarrassed to hell, he thought. Over his shoulder he looked, back at the expanse of Mussel Flats. Time and tide had closed down on him and the rock was now under water.

Over his shoulder he looked, back at the expanse of Mussel Flats.

Time and tide had closed down on him and the rock was now under water.

They ran ahead of the breeze, all the way into the marina. Banker Talbert drove them to Doc Higgins’ office. Marcy was but bruised. Bart was just chilled.

Then the banker drove Bart home. He spoke to his 30

mother. “He saved my daughter’s life, Mrs. Bagnalupus.

He’s not hurt, but if I were you I would not let him out of the house before tomorrow. Doc says he might have a reaction. Keep him inside and rested. He’ll be okay tomorrow. Tomorrow’s a great new day. You and your son please come to dinner at my house tomorrow evening. My daughter demands it and I concur. I’ll come and get you at five-thirty.”

He looked at the two teen-agers sitting on the steps.

“I think they have already had some kind of mental correspondence.” His eyes were light and friendly. At the end of the porch an old man rocked away in an old rocking chair, alert, nodding.

Early the next morning, when Bartholomew Bagnalupus clomped out onto the muck of Mussel Flats and the tide had gone out to sea, the rock he had hidden his wallet under was sitting on the mud like a pancake.

The wallet was stuffed with hundred dollar bills. The first thing he thought about was handing it to his mother, seeing the glow on her face. Then, seeing Marcy’s face and the face of her father, he began to wonder how he would handle it all.

But all along his body, though, he could feel the softness of the girl in the water, knew the smell of her in his nostrils, could hear her straightforwardly saying, “God, you smell good.” If he told the old man in the

For the Taking

by Keith Rebec One has to act and dress as a pervert, some makeshift law man, in plain some criminal, that stakes the home— the family, the child that plays alone in the lawn—from an unsuspected car.

On most afternoons, one just eyes what is called the unfortunates. Wait for the yellow sun to fade and turn to black as the hawk swoops in and forms its deathly shadow, yanks the lively hood from a curb, a garage, from the mortgaged earth, back to the nest where it belongs.

It’s good pay being a repossession specialist, though one must be smooth and quick, ease the rig through the night, miss the bumps, hook up the chains. Be ready for the owners’ last plea of lent from their pocket to not lose all, the good life, as their little boy or girl looks on through the dirty lens for a brighter world, the world where mommy or daddy’s car still remains.

Tom Sheehan served in 31st Infantry Regiment, Korea, 1951. Books are Epic Cures, 2005, and Brief Cases, Short Spans, 2008, Press 53; A Collection of Friends and From the Quickening, 2009, Pocol Press; and three manuscripts tendered. He has18 Pushcart nominations, is in Dzanc Best of the Web 2009, and has 270 stories on Rope and Wire Magazine and work in four issues of Rosebud Magazine. His newest eBooks from Milspeak Publishers are Korean Echoes, 2011 and The Westering, 2012. His work is in/coming in Ocean Magazine, Nervous Breakdown, Stone Hobo, FaithHope-Fiction, Canary, Subtle Tea, Red Dirt Review, Nontrue, Danse Macabre, Nashwaak Review, and Qarrtsiluni.

Just yesterday a man thought to take back his borrow.

With a shattered window the unfortunate sat behind the wheel, took in the interstate lines, felt the wind pulse through, the hums of the daily dance. He listened to the cicadas, traced his finger along the broken dash lines, thought about his job before it was gone, his family that had left him, the voice of “Daddy, are we there yet,” from the empty back seat.

Today news broke over the airwaves, the hiss and the crackle, another had failed to take back the key that wasn’t rightfully theirs. The slouched body, it was said, the dreams, were again left ruined, soiled and seeped into society’s face for a fortunate to clean and lend once more.

• • •

Keith Rebec resides in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He’s a graduate student, working on a MA in writing, at Northern Michigan University.

31

some time. He’d spent so much time drinking away his short term memories, that all that remained was long term reminiscences that echoed through him—as if from a former existence.

It was as if from a former existence that he used to bathe in the warm glow of the porch light, enjoying the ambiance that settled across the room while he sat watching television.

It was as if from a former existence that he had not a care in the world as he drank them all away. For, after all, it was him that liked to say: “You have to not care about life to really live it.”

Now that Adam cared about life, he couldn’t live it.

The porch light from Ted’s yard continued to thud against the side of his face, giving him a sallow complexion, until it intensified to the point he could no longer tolerate it.

“Where are you going?” asked Emilia as if she were asking herself.

“I’m going to get some air,” replied Adam, not wanting to disclose his aggravation as he made his way absently out of the room.

Adam strode towards Ted’s house, overflowing with rage. He threw aside the gate, which boomeranged back from its hinges and slammed into the catch as he bounded up the steps, and with the most effortless punch—smashed the bulb with his fist.

No sooner had he disposed of the offending light, the lounge light retaliated, followed by the hall light, before the door was torn open by Ted. “What the hell’s going on? Adam is that you? What the hell are you doing?”

“That damn light, I can’t concentrate,” Adam replied holding his fists to his head.

Ted noticed blood dripping from his right fist. It ran down his cheek like a trailing tear.

“I can’t concentrate,” he repeated, shaking his head between his fists.

“Why didn’t you say something?” asked Ted, raising his hands and letting them fall again.

“Why didn’t you?” Adam snapped back.

Ted sighed and looked down at the shards on the porch.

“I heard about the diagnosis Adam. I’m really sorry.”

“All these years you let it go on?”

“We all tried to tell you Adam. But how could anyone have told you when you didn’t want to listen to anybody else?”

Adam looked back towards the floor. The light pulsated in his gaze.

Porch Light

by Anthony Ward s much as Adam tried, he could no longer abstain his awareness of it. He sat in his arm chair looking towards the television. Not watching it, but gazing at it. For he couldn’t concentrate on anything, nor indulge himself in anything—the pictures merely splashed against the walls as sounds ricocheted off them.

No matter how much he tried he could not lose himself. Something was wrenching at his attention that he could not ignore. He had tried closing the curtains; Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net tried to block it out—but it was no use. It still penetrated the darkness like a dull ache, throbbing like a low electrical hum in the night.

It never used to bother him. He would sit with the curtains open and almost bathe in its comforting glow; at times being soothed by the sound of the swinging chair creaking back and forth, either as a result of the wind, or the respiration of a moment that had only just passed.

Now the creaking reminded him of something out of Edgar Allen Poe—a swinging pendulum with a very sharp blade.

Yet it wasn’t the swinging pendulum, or the sharpness of the blade that bothered him, it was the dull thud of the light that ached his thoughts.

“Are you alright?” asked his wife causing him to avert his eyes from the television.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied sincerely, since to him he’d been trying to convince himself he was fine.

“Are you sure?” she asked as confirmation.

“Yes Emilia.”

He smiled at her, then at himself, as he pictured the clarification administered upon his countenance.

Though Emilia had not seen it that way; she only saw the side of his face that remained constantly in the shade, like the dark side of the moon, with the other side illuminated by the porch light that shone from Ted’s yard.

Adam hadn’t realised how emaciated he had begun to look. Emilia had watched him grow old right before her eyes as she stood looking at him. His face had subsided into his head, as if he’d gradually sunk into himself. And Adam had been sinking into himself for

A

32

“There’s nothing wrong in making mistakes if it helps you to understand how to make them right, but it’s another to think you’re right in making mistakes. I wished someone would have told me what I wanted so I would have known what to do with myself. I never knew what to do with myself. Every time I managed to lay off it, every time I’d get a sense of myself—someone would knock it out of me. It seemed that everybody else had their life sorted, that they got along just fine. Where was my life? Wasn’t I entitled to one? Did someone steal it from me? Was it confiscated for past sins?

“It was confiscated for present sins don’t you think?”

Adam remained silent for a while. The sound of the creaking chair swinging back and forth hypnotised him, as it had done many times before. Adam sat himself on it and allowed himself to be swayed while looking down at the floor boards.

“I’m afraid people will attend my funeral out of politeness, not respect.”

“Now come on Adam, you know that’s not true. It seems to me the only person that hates you is yourself.”

Adam looked up at him as he leant against the post placing a cigarette between his lips.

“I thought you were quitting?”

“I am,” replied Ted with a reassuring smile, “this is the only way I can quit, by putting one in my mouth.”

“I wish I’d have quit. I wish someone could have stopped me from getting this far.”

The sound of a stridulating cricket made the most elemental music Adam had ever heard, accompanied by a distant breeze that stirred amongst the trees.

Adam listened intently, admiring it as he would if he were a child again.

“Why do you always have to leave the goddamn porch light on all night?” he asked, absolving the silence.

“I don’t know,” replied Ted, his upper lip contemplating over his lower, “I guess I never really thought about it. I didn’t think it bothered you?”

“It didn’t,” replied Adam as he stared deep into the darkness.

watching as it eases south, rolling over the unpaved access road, down from the nearby avocado orchard.

The bed is full of hungry faces, their eyes follow, moist lips, darkened by labor.

They search for a single word, vanishing around the bend; that word, separating one from another.

Night crests, cooling the yoke of the desert, skin scorched by storms.

The radio has changed with the darkness.

All things, it reminds us, return to dust, eventually; springing, like those dusk flowers seeds, I bloom in the palms of your damp hands.

DRY MOUTH

by Erick Mertz There is only glaze of rain, reflecting light from the warmed, black street.

There is only pencil, notebook, only an empty cup of coffee on the desk to serve as reminder.

We know things about one another, not gleaned from simple proximity.

Switch on the porch light, chasing away the uncertainty of strangers—

• • •

There are only the lines drawn which describe the slope of your back; stage lights, illuminating white skin, for undeserving eyes.

STORIES OF SMOKE

by Erick Mertz There are fires to the east.

We lean in, listening to news on the car AM radio, stories of smoke, filling in the road, dirt storms, wind to feed the sprawling flames.

I will speak these words from a dry mouth, to steal your tongue, and in one moment, draw scorn, inspire action.

You point to the farm truck instead of calling for help – you hold my hand down, 33

William's superior rank, and allowed him to keep the imposer under surveillance. But when the imposer’s attention was on the phone, William abandoned his post on top of the refrigerator. He batted at the latch on the snack’s cage door.

“I can’t believe you’d accuse me of taking your damned bird. I thought you knew me better than that---“ “Yeah, but that ain’t the same as stealing from you.

Ain’t nothing like it. I thought we was more than that.

I am offended, Barbara. Highly offended.”

“Peep! Gack!”

“No it ain’t! That’s just the TV. Hold on---.”

“Psssst…. William! Scat! Damn.”

William dodged the throw pillow. He scampered to the top of the entertainment center. Once safe, he busily groomed himself, as if no recent indignities had taken place. Or at least none that concerned him in the slightest.

“Come on, babe. What would I want with a damn fifty cent bird?”

“When I left, that maintenance man was outside hanging around. He’s got a key, don’t he?”

“He was hanging around, doing nothing. Highly suspicious. He probably gave it to that fat chick he’s always sniffing around. Hey… that was on Valentine’s Day too, wasn’t it? There’s your culprit, right there.”

“I told you, I got called on an emergency job. It ain’t my fault if it was Valentine’s Day. Come on, babe. Don’t I have to go when I’m called, especially when you’re always telling me to move out?"

"Yeah, well, saying I have to start paying rent is the same as telling me to move out when I ain’t got the money" "Yeah, well, how am I supposed to get the money when you don’t want me to work when I’m called?“ William heard It thundering up the steps. Its key clicked in the lock. If he ran, he risked tipping off the imposer to get off the phone. If he stayed, he risked a swoopage. His tail thumped indecision.

“B-r-r-r-illiam! Look at Mommy’s big boy, way up in the air. You’re Mommy’s way up in the air boy!”

“I’ve got a call, gotta go. Love you.” Click.

William leaped down and ran.

“Eunice!" Kiss.

“Di-i-rk, you’re messing up my hair. How did you get in? Who were you talking to?”

“I was... making reservations... because you’re too skinny.” Kiss.

“Aw, that's sweet. But you don’t have to take me out.

You can barely pay for a place to stay right now. I’ll make spaghetti.”

“Babe, I thought…”

“Honey, no. We’ve already been over all this.” It kicked off Its high heels and plopped down on the sofa.

The springs sagged mightily. William skittered out from underneath, alarmed. “Look, Dilliam, toys!” It

William and the Pink Snack

by Carly Berg

“

There you are! There’s Mommy’s William.

Mommy’s Zilliam. Give Mommy a kiss, Milliam!”

William puffed up, large and menacing.

“Look at Mommy’s big fluffy baby. Big boy!” It swooped him up.

William flattened his ears back, closed his eyes against the onslaught. Its giant wobbly bosom and cheap fruit perfume choked off his air.

The phone rang. William wriggled out of Its grasp.

He scrambled up along the back of the sofa and swiped furiously at the lipstick smear on his face fur.

“Dirk? A Valentine’s surprise? For me? No, I’m not really mad at you anymore. I just don’t know if---you’re here? Okay… come on up.”

Shortly afterwards, the imposer walked into the apartment without knocking.

William narrowed his eyes.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Eunice.” Kiss.

“Di-i-i-rk, quit. You’re messing up my hair. ” “I thought you said you wasn’t mad no more. Gimme a kiss.” Kiss. “ I told you, it ain’t my fault she keeps calling.” Kiss.

“But she said---“ “Who cares what she said? Barbara just wants to make trouble because I left her. Fat bitch.” Kiss.

“Is she really fat? Is she bigger than me?”

“Oh yeah. She’s two of you, babe.” Kiss. “Three of you, babe.” Kiss.

“Really? Is she really? Hee hee.” Kiss.

“Lemme show you something. Look what I brung you.” He stepped out into the walkway for a minute.

“Look, babe. You like that?”

William perked up. He slipped down to the floor.

“Oh honey, a bird! A pink Valentine’s Day bird! Oh, look. Look at the itty bitty pinkie birdy bird!”

“Pink parakeets is highly damn rare.”

The imposer puffed up, clearly trying to appear large and menacing to ward off being swooped. Puffing up didn’t help him, either. William snickered.

“They…damn valuable… endangered species…”

Dirk’s voice was muffled by the meaty floppages.

The wonderful snack hopped about its cage. “Peep!” it shrieked. “Gack!” William swept across the room towards it, low to the floor.

When It was not home, William kept himself positioned above the imposer. This established 34

pulled a basket out from under the coffee table and tossed a small felt mouse.

A hunting drill. William pounced on the decoy.

“The reason we keep going over it is because it don't make no sense. Are you really gonna tell me I can’t stay here because your damn cat don’t like me? Your cat? I thought we was more than that.”

“Di-i-rk. This is William’s home. Besides, I hate to say it, but William is always my friend. Some things would have to change first---” “I thought you and me was straight on everything now. You know what your problem is? Nothing is ever over with you. I mean it, and that’s on you. You got to learn to forgive and forget... like Jesus done. Anyhow, he likes me now. Me and William is friends.”

The imposer approached. William hissed.

“Like I said, I’ll make spaghetti. And then you have to go. How did you get in, anyway?”

“Phone call! It might be about a job.” The intruder flipped his phone open and stepped out onto the balcony.

It lumbered upright.

“Look, William Dilliam, a bird!” It flicked the rod and the attached, feathered string sailed through the air.

William jumped, he snagged it mid-arc. It flicked the rod again. He pounced. It trolled it side to side. William stalked the target. He got it, again and again. He fluffed up with pride, a top killer. He wished the imposer would come in and see.

“Mommy’s baby plays with hims toys! What a good boy!”

William put It through this drill often, but Its fat content was still too high for his taste. It was dinner time. He meowed and rubbed against It as if he liked It. “Did the angels send Mommy’s William straight down from heaven?” She lay down on the couch.

“William’s Mommy is tired. Mommy is sad. Love hurts, Trilliam.”

He climbed atop It, hopeful.

“Oh, he sits with his Mommy when she’s sad. Sweet boy!”

It felt too warm, the pulse was too strong. He could not take It down yet.

The imposer left just before It got home. He called just after It got home. Then he came right back in.

At bedtime, there would be a little argument. But in the end, It always made him leave.

William wondered if the imposer was smart enough to train. He carried the rod and feather tool in his mouth, dropped it at the imposer’s feet.

“Your mama ain’t home and now you wanna be my friend, haw haw.” He flicked the rod, and the feathers on the end of the string sailed. William jumped, snagged it with ease.

The imposer flicked it higher, faster, trolled it. He ran through the rooms with it, leapt with it, did crazy circle eights with it. He flicked it high, standing on the couch, standing on the kitchen table.

William pounced, relentlessly, joyously.

He drilled harder than ever before. At last, he dragged himself over for a long drink of water, and flopped down.

“What a mighty hunter! I thought you was a panther! Haw haw. So, you're the man of the house, huh?” William allowed the imposer to rub him down.

No shrieking or snatching William up, just a good massage and scratch. William stretched out.

The imposer might make a better servant than It. He wondered if he and the imposer could bring It down together.

There would be way too much meat for one, anyway.

“Here, man of the house, I got something for you.”

The imposer opened a can of tuna. William began to dance and mew. Tuna, tuna, tuna! But then, on second thought, he sauntered over to the pink snack’s cage.

“Peep! Gack!”

“I hate that noisy rat.” The imposer lit a cigarette, which he was not supposed to do inside. “Ain’t like nobody appreciates it, anyhow.” He stood there, smoking. “Okay, then, man of the house.”

The imposer opened the cage door.

William put It through this drill often, but Its fat content was still too high for his taste.

“Mommy’s home! Where’s Mommy’s little William?

Where’s my B-r-r-rill---OH MY GOD!” “There now, babe, it’s buried. And I said a prayer, and now it’s with God.” Kiss.

“Now, don’t you go holding a grudge. It’s an animal’s nature to hunt, and no, it ain’t either his fault. You got to learn to forgive and forget. Am I right?”

“I know. I understand. I do. I must have left the door loose. It was my fault. It was horrible. Oh!” “Don’t cry. Come here, babe. Aww.” Kiss. Kiss.

William crept out from under the couch. He jumped up on Dirk’s lap, a tight squeeze since It was in the way.

William spent most of his days and nights focused on the pink snack. He tried the cage door. He batted at the bars to make it squawk. William watched with huge eyes, entranced.

After It left in the mornings, the imposer arrived.

He used the shower, the washer and dryer, ate and slept.

In spite of himself, William was impressed.

35

He turned around three times and lay down there. His mind drifted back to The Great Event.

“Hey! Look at that. William likes you!”

“Didn’t I tell you that me and him was friends? See, William don’t hold no grudge. He gives somebody a chance.”

William purred.

“I’m gonna take you out to dinner and cheer you up.

Somewhere nice. You’re too damn skinny.”

“Aw, that's sweet. Okay, honey. Let’s stop by and get a load of your stuff on the way home.” Kiss.

THAT AFTERNOON DOZE

by John Grey

Carly Berg edits an e-zine and writes. Her work has appeared in PANK, Dogzplot, Defenestration, and elsewhere. If her cat could kill and eat her, it would.

Stretch out on the grass, it deserves you.

A stream curves around your supine body like a tame snake.

You are nothing but a lightly gilded face, a fluttering shirt, blue jeans, and bare feet.

Light concentrates on you as much as it can but it has a continent to cross and then an ocean.

It will leave you to it, with your lowing sunflowers and your gurgling springs and your small towns dotted throughout the hilly map.

• • •

ON THE DAY WITHOUT SANDALS

The sky hangs overhead, awaits the cool wipe of night.

The soil welcomes the dark fertilizer of shadow.

You begin to tremble awake, as does the book you planned to read, your fingers, its pages, curled, uncurled, wresting sight out of the sparkling haze.

Back to the house, you go quietly.

The path is where you left it.

Garden flowers begin their slow shutdown.

Your door opens and the moon rises as if on the same hinges.

People ask where you've been but how do you explain the quiet snooze in the great outdoors when their ears only understand the interactions of family, neighbors, strangers.

You explain that you must have dozed.

They regret the time you wasted sleeping..

You regret the time you wasted telling them about it.

by John Grey I didn't count on the parking lot, the tiny gray pebbles, sharp and insistent on contorting my face, causing me the most hurt.

And then there was the sand.

Sure I was expecting hot but this was boiling, scalding, fish fry hot.

The soles of my feet burned red raw.

Only the water could save me, and either it was retreating or my hops and jumps were searing me to the spot.

Once I didn't believe that plates on the stove could inflict such horrific pain on the palm of a young boy's hand.

And that warning, don't go near the neighbor's dog, was proven true in an upper leg's worth of bites and scratches.

Poison ivy, ticks, the bully on the next block... the world is full of pains waiting to be inflicted.

Eventually though, all hurts were salved, by time, by medicine, by soothing ocean water.

The world is also full of cures anxious to be applied.

Such joy bobbing in the waves but there was that walk back to the car to be negotiated.

The world is full of agonies bent on getting the last word.

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What Water Taught Her

Love Story

by Ali Znaidi

by Gregory Luce

Water taught her how to wipe away her sorrows—a sinew of revival.

Water taught her how to forget about yesterday’s hallucinations.

Water taught her how to shake off her ash—a new blood for her heart.

Water taught her how to wear a new body everyday— a sword glitters after each rust.

Water taught her how to restore the shell of that carefree little girl.

Nothing in her brain, but to play with water bubbles.

Try to eat a single grain of rice with a fork.

To see her was to want to touch.

She could turn and slide sideways like a trick of the light.

I reached anyway until my arm trembled from shoulder to fingertips.

She slid away an ice cube on a hot stove top.

Grass Blues

Standing Out in the Rain

by Ali Znaidi

by Gregory Luce The grass gives a grim smile.

Lawn mower trips the light fantastic in front of it. So it just wilts in sweat of fear. Some little fragile wheat ears just bleed from the mower’s noisy tunes. Little poor ears—innocent martyrs sully the mower with pure green blood.

Remnants of grass just moan and whisper to that big tree in the middle of the field: “Oh, Whitman! Where are you?

Leaves of grass are bleeding.

Oh, Whitman! Where are you?

Leaves of grass badly need you to sing the song of their martyrdom.”

I looked up at the wet sky and tried to see it as a layer of silver air spread level and smooth just above my head but a few fat drops fell on me then a crow tore a hole in it getting away quick and the lightning started and the rain was percolating through my shirt so I shook myself and walked back indoors thinking about that crow.

Ali Znaidi lives in Redeyef, Tunisia. He graduated with a BA in Anglo-American Studies in 2002. He teaches English at Tunisian public secondary schools. He writes poetry and has an interest in literature, languages, and literary translation. His work has appeared in The Bamboo Forest, The Camel Saloon, phantom kangaroo, and in BoySlut.

Two tiny poems are due to be published respectively in April and May in fortunates.org. He also writes flash fiction for the Six Sentence Social Network— http://sixsentences.ning.com/profile/AliZnaidi.

Gregory Luce is the author of the chapbooks Signs of Small Grace (Pudding House Publications) and Drinking Weather (Finishing Line Press). His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Kansas Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Innisfree Poetry Review, If, Northern Virginia Review, Foundling Review, MiPOesias, Praxilla, Little Patuxent Review, and in the anthologies Living in Storms (Eastern Washington University Press) and Bigger Than They Appear (Accents Publishing). He lives in Washington, D.C. where he works as Production Specialist for the National Geographic Society.

37

ry hit me. Sitting in an airport in Houston, Texas, I watched in amazement as the dumb animals lined up outside the barn door to await the farmer's invitation into the familiar building. No, that's not what I meant to say! What I intended to say was that I watched sixty human beings as they followed the instructions of a disembodied voice. “Please line up in the order of the number on your boarding pass. Numbers one through thirty on the right and thirty-one through sixty on the left. Five people between poles please.” The human cattle dutifully lined up, finding their places as they approached the numbered poles. Once they were in place, they waited quietly for further instructions. Yes, there was a Cutter or two in the crowd, but they soon learned where their place was and dutifully stood there. When the plane was ready, the voice once again gave the instruction for each group to move forward.

They did so with such obeisance that I couldn't get the image of the old cows out of my head. It was all very funny until my flight was called and the voice without a body started giving instruction to the new herd, of which I was a part. I almost laughed again as I considered what the reaction would be if one of the attendants had appeared with an electric cattle prod to keep the cutters in line.

Time has passed and I've had a little time to consider the implication of the thoughts I had as I waited to board my flight. The cattle entering the barn had a reward in mind. They were going to be fed and the inconvenience of waiting and of being hooked up to the vacuum line was of no consequence to them. They got what they wanted and were content. I, and the other humans who awaited the flight, also had a goal in mind. It wasn't just that we were going to get from point A to point B; we didn't want to pay too much for the journey and were willing to give up a little freedom to keep the price down. There are airlines which do not herd their passengers through the loading process, but allow them to board as they come and to sit in an assigned seat. I was willing to give up that luxury for the reward of saving a few hard-earned dollars. I'm still debating about whether the reward justifies the humiliation. My assumption is that the next time I travel, I'll save the money again. Some habits are just hard to break.

It’s kind of sad to see parallels all about us. Folks hold paper numbers in their hands as they sit in the Revenue Office (License Bureau), awaiting the time when the rude person behind the desk will call that number. When we go out to eat at many restaurants, we are given buzzers which vibrate and flash, indicating that our turn to sit and masticate has finally arrived. At amusement parks, we actually go through the same sort of chute system used by sale barns to guide the livestock to auction. Our lives are, day in and day out, lived as domesticated stock; standing where we are told until allowed to move closer to the

Part of the Herd

by Paul Phillips C'mon Bermuda! Move on up to the gate, now!” The farmer, his visage aged well beyond his actual years, gave the old cow a gentle slap on the shoulder and she immediately acquiesced, edging forward six inches to allow the slats to close around her muscular neck. The sweet-natured Holstein knew she would find food in the trough on the other side of the wooden stall anyway, so she didn't mind expending the effort of shifting a few inches.

While Bermuda (named for the black coloration that extended down just below the knees on her front legs) settled in for a snack, the gnarled hands of the middle aged farmer deftly pulled down the cups which would attach to her milk-filled udder and manipulated them into place. The phhhht-phhhht-phhhht of the gentle vacuum started and then it was on to the next donor.

Uncle JoJo had run this farm for more years than he wanted to talk about, having learned the trade from his father before him. As he ran the milker and moved the gentle cows through the barn, his son worked the cows who were awaiting their turn.

Outside the barn, the beasts weren't quite as docile. “Hey, Cutter! Get back there!” Jody, with his long, curly shock of hair flying about his sweaty face, wasn't exactly docile either. His job was to keep the cows in the yard, awaiting their turn in the barn. They had been happy enough to make their way to the yard from the fields, but patience wasn't their best attribute. I had noticed though, having been here a time or two, that the animals seemed to know where they should be and were, for the most part happy to stay in a fairly well-defined line. All of them, that is, except Cutter, so named for obvious reasons. She kept moving from her place and shoving in between other cows, who didn't take kindly to the intrusion. “What's going on?” I asked Jody. The big-boned, good-natured fellow laughed. “These ladies all know their place. Except for Cutter. She'll learn, someday.”

The thought hit me instantly. “What? They stand in the same order all the time?” He chuckled again.

“Of course they do. Every day, as we call them in from the field, no matter where they are when we call, you can see them getting into line as they come. By the time they get to the barn door, they're in the same order as they've always been.

Young Cutter there...she's new to the herd and just hasn't found her place in line yet. Like I said, she'll learn.” As we talked, I realized once again that animals are creatures of habit, much more so than humans. It also seems that they may be smarter than we give them credit for.

I thought of Uncle JoJo's cows again not too long ago. I was on my way to Los Angeles when the memo-

“

38

goal. Well, a lot of us live that way. As time goes by, I'm starting to take notice of a few folks who refuse to live by the herd rules.

Back in that airport, as I had watched the people line up for the flight before mine, I noticed a blue-jean clad fellow sitting off to the side with a Stetson hat on the seat beside him. He had a smile on his face as he stretched out, arms behind his head and legs pushed out as far in front of him as they would go, his shiny cowboy boots pointing into the air. The noisy, grumpy people stood and waited, then filed through their sequences of sixties, one at a time, as he relaxed there.

After the line was gone and the hubbub had died down as they disappeared down the jetway, he stood up, set the cowboy hat atop his head and strode leisurely to the gate. In my imagination, I can hear the Texas drawl as he replies, in answer to the obvious questions. “Well shore, I had a number. But there wasn't no reason to stand there awaitin' when a body could be sittin'. Didn't figger ya'll would be leavin' without me anyhow.” I'm not sure that's how he would have talked, but I'm pretty sure that cowboy knew a herd when he saw one. And, he wasn't part of any herd.

We're not intended to run with a herd. We are, each and every one of us, designed as an individual.

We are made, you and I, to be “peculiar”, or unique.

The Book assures us that all of the days ordained for us were written before even one of them dawned. I'm pretty sure that means we weren't made to be part of the herd. And, knowing that, it may be time to break out of the corral we've allowed ourselves to be put into.

Maybe Cutter had the right idea after all. I'm not sure I know how to break out of the mold, but I do like the way the cowboy thinks. Now, if I could just find my Stetson.

“Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” (Cowboy logic)

Lost.

by Michael Stimson The day is done, And night has come.

He takes off his tie and shoes.

He sets them in the hamper Lays out a new, preparing for tomorrow.

He picks up a picture And walks towards his window.

The north star shines.

He gazes at the sky And then again at the picture.

Hoping she can see him.

He sets the picture down And retreats to his bed.

He sees the empty spot next to him.

Paul Phillips owns and operates a music store in Arkansas, but, having delusions of grandeur, attempts to write an essay or two now and then. Paul Phillips is a fifty-something grandfather who is also a musician, punster, and more recently, a wanna-be blogger. If, for some strange reason, you feel compelled to read more of his work, he publishes his blog, entitled "He's Taken Leave", at www.hestakenleave.blogspot.com

Hoping that she remembers him, He closes his eyes.

In his dreams he can be with her.

For when he wakes the next morning The pain and suffering will continue.

• • • Michael Stimson is an aspiring writer born in Seattle, Washington and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with friends, walking the dog, and taking long naps.

39

Three Vignettes on Love

The Raven Will Never Be Your Bride

by Michael Dwayne Smith

Saturday pours into the mouth—warm, red cherry, body of oak. The wind says the more this house ages, the drunker these dreams are whispered.

Procession of white gold light inches silhouettes across the lawn. Rotting black walnut swirls in a breeze, palms curved in reverie. Timbre turns the flavor of memory.

A faint echo of fado seduces the ear. Afternoon’s tannin pulls imagination back to the flush lips of Portugal’s interminable kisses. Teresa, at midnight, singing in a Lisbon street window, one blood rose bloom in the fantasy of her hair.

A cork oak thrumming in a wheat field, awash in the Alentejo region, and the empty sky there is a prison of birds. Teresa hovers over the flaxen sea, in hopes of capturing several kites and kestrels.

Her rising boat fades into the wailing cries of lapwings, and the falling sun opens my face again to eucalyptus scent, and so it is that wine turns to vinegar, and vinegar to desire. O corvo nunca será sua noiva.

Winds gossip of lust with tittering leaves that hide behind the black walnut’s lurid branches. Lush grasses on bare feet weave between the caress of toes, tipsy in a goldening light, the last drops of this colonial vintage now lost in a signal swallow.

Falling Sky Maybe even the rest of this marriage. Like maybe skipping dinner. Sitting, staring into the silver blue beauty of ice and sparkling water, turning the thick faceted glass in his hand, feeling only like his third vodka tonic.

His giddy, overdressed wife, her friends and relatives, are gathered and waiting in front of the huge new state-of-the-art television, in anticipation of his wife’s cousin’s debut on some network shit-com.

We interrupt this broadcast— Exploding on impact, diffusing bolts, sheet metal, a pilot from its flash crater, fireball sneezing into the air race crowd, he watches a P51 Mustang drop from raw Nevada clouds.

Aubude in a Desert Landscape Angie sits on her porch step, chin on blue-jean knees. Trailer park feels almost like early mass when she gets up to watch the night drain away, tangerine sunrise fanning out above the distant, naked rock of little hills, the quick burning resurrection of another slow Mojave day.

Lone motorcycle on Highway 18 drones behind her, engine a rising swarm of bees, before passing into the road’s deep honeycomb of silence. Leaning trailers are still grey— long, motionless shadows.

She thinks about home, Mami, who still suffers Papa’s mean existence. And her sisters: she misses them.

Lucinda, spoiled into uselessness, and Maribel, wild, frantic, and, a week before Angie left for California, pregnant. Maribel. Always Angie’s favorite, always Papa’s great shame. At least until Angie left her wheezing, drunken father at an angry sixteen, scratching three years to this.

She’s only traded the hunger of what is Mexico for the starvation of what was Mexico. Here: a little less family, a little more money. That was all.

A rectangle of apricot light falls across the dirt driveway, then a clatter of pans in his kitchen. He’s awake. Angie stands, palms brushing denim, and catches a thick coffee scent. She decides today she’ll trust its path to his doorstep— skyline just turning to platinum and blue, cottonwood breeze just beginning to rustle the dusty trees.

Michael Dwayne Smith proudly owns and operates one of the English-speaking world’s most unusual names. His fiction materializes at Monkeybicycle, Northville Review, Inlandia, Red Fez, and Mosaic, among other haunts. He is a past recipient of the Polonsky Prize in fiction. His poetry appears at Pirene's Fountain, BLIP, Right Hand Pointing, Short Fast & Deadly, Phantom Kangaroo, The Camel Saloon, Quantum Poetry, and other mysterious locations. He is a past recipient of the Hinderaker Prize in poetry. Michael lives in a desert town with his wife, son, and rescued animals—all of whom talk in their sleep. Conjure him using the spells michael.blackbear@gmail.com, michaeldwaynesmith.tumblr.com, or michaelthebear on Twitter.

• • •

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