We Run Through The Dark Together

Inside The Bell Jar Presents

We Run Through The Dark Together A Mental Health Anthology

Editors Autumn Aurelia Seanín Hughes Matt Sloan Felicity McKee Emma Guinness Design & Layout Autumn Aurelia Seanín Hughes Matt Sloan

All Rights Reserved ©2018 Inside The Bell Jar. First Printing: 2018. No portion of this book may be copied, retransmitted, reposted, duplicated, or otherwise used without the express written approval of the author, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

Image Credits: Cover image by Annie Spratt via Unsplash.

Image inserts by Caleb George and Kinga Cichewicz via Unsplash.

Title credit: The title for We Run Through The Dark Together is taken from Joyce Butler’s You Felt My Dying Mind, as featured in the anthology.

Connect with us: www.insidethebelljar.com | hello@insidethebelljar.com facebook.com/insidethebelljar | twitter.com/insidebelljar

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A Note From The Editors Autumn: Autumn here, editor and founder of Inside The Bell Jar. I’m thrilled to welcome you to the first printed edition of Inside The Bell Jar: We Run Through The Dark Together — A Mental Health Anthology.

Since establishing the journal in 2016, we have had high hopes of moving into print format in order to reach a wider audience. While it hasn’t been easy, it has absolutely been worth it. Inside The Bell Jar was founded with a simple aspiration: to give a voice to those who struggle to be heard. As a long-term sufferer of obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depressive disorder and borderline personality disorder, I have seen first-hand how rare it is to find a home for my experiences. When I did find a place for my stories, they were always watered-down versions of the truth. Similarly, the stories I read online and in fiction never felt quite like the real thing. They didn’t explore the true depths of the darkness I faced on a daily basis.

From the very beginning, we have always said we wanted Inside The Bell Jar to be a home to those who are willing to openly discuss their darkness in a raw and honest manner. We also understand how this darkness could be perceived as a negative experience, so we always try to balance the pain of living with mental illness with the beauty of being human. We believe we have been successful in this desire, but we know it is only the beginning of what we set out to achieve. In our first year of publication online, we received over a thousand submissions from people across the world and we have published stories and poetry on a wide array of mental disorders and themes.

In order to widen our goals for the future and to better communicate with writers and readers alike, we looked to expand our tiny team of one editor-in-chief and two sub-editors. In this process, we sought Seanín Hughes, a well-established poet and writer from Northern Ireland, who lives with depression, anxiety and a mood disorder. Despite only being with us for a few months, Seanín has been instrumental to the development of the journal and we know her expertise and passion for mental health writing will propel us into a new era. I’ll end this by passing you over to our co-editor, Seanín, who will you guide you through what you can expect from this anthology and tell you a little about why she believes in the importance of mental health writing.

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Seanín: When I first discovered Inside The Bell Jar, it was as though I had stumbled upon it by design. For me, there is a tightly woven link between creativity and mental health; as a poet, my work is heavily informed by my experience of living with a mood disorder, and I strongly believe my diagnosis and pursuit of recovery help to reinforce my identity as a writer. So, when the opportunity arose to join the team, it was a no-brainer — I was on board with bells on.

I believe creativity can offer invaluable strength to those struggling with their mental health.

So many of us are muted by our respective struggles through shame, stigma, misunderstanding, misconception and the inevitable isolation that comes with battling against your own mind.

Sometimes, it feels impossible to be heard. Sometimes, we don’t even know what it is we want to say, or how to say it. But somehow, by distilling these experiences through art and the written word, we find a voice — a voice that is candid, and honest, and real — and this is where the work of coping and recovery truly begins.

Expression isn’t just about helping others to understand the world we live in; it also serves to help us understand ourselves. Creativity is about granting permission to explore and expand upon this understanding, and in doing so, we empower ourselves and those around us. Above all else, this is what Inside The Bell Jar represents.

This is a particularly special project, because we wanted to offer a platform for writers living with mental illnesses or disorders, regardless of where they are in their creative journey. In this anthology, we are proud to feature work from amateur poets and writers alongside their established peers. We are proud to send out the message that all creativity matters, and all voices deserve to be heard, because ultimately, we are all in the dark together; some of us running, some of us crawling, but nonetheless carried forward by a universal human need to express ourselves.

We hope you enjoy.

Autumn & Seanín, editors of Inside The Bell Jar.

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Acknowledgements All thanks and appreciation go to our wonderful contributors, our associate editors Matt Sloan, Emma Guinness and Felicity McKee, and everyone who helped with the production of We Run Through The Dark Together in any way. In particular, we wish to thank our readers and supporters of Inside The Bell Jar for making it possible.

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A Note On Content Warnings As this is a mental health anthology, we thought it pertinent to include content warnings for each of the pieces. You will find these identified by an asterisk beneath each item in the contents section.

Given the serious subject matter contained within our content, we would urge readers to carefully consider any triggers they may have before reading particular pieces.

We hope this is useful for our readers and would also like to draw your attention to the list of resources at the back of the anthology, which may be used as a reference point in the event that these are needed.

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Contents: Poetry Winter Of You by David McGraw —14 *Death, abandonment Ode To A Hospital Fan by David McGraw — 15 *Thoughts of self-harm Patchwork Boy by Stephan Kyriacou — 17 *Depression Until Another Note Is Written by J. J. Steinfield — 19 *Loss Thoughts For The Sick Boy, From The Sick Girl by Kaitlyn Crow — 20 *Suicide A Tidy House by Isabelle Harris — 22 *OCD, medication My Lovely Antidepressants by Pauline Aksay — 23 *Intrusive thoughts, insects And So It Continues by Pauline Aksay — 25 *Eating disorder, abuse In A Darkened Room by Emma Cookson — 27 *Depression Young Bodies by Verity Ockenden — 28 *Body image Ida & Jenny by Kasy Long — 30 *Loss, abandonment, death Forecast of Rain by Alisa Williams — 32 *Depression Troublesome Fauna by Rosie Sandler — 33 *Anxiety, palpitations A Story In Skin by Megan Crosbie — 34 *Self-harm

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Diet Like It's 1950 by Anelise Farris — 35 *Eating disorder, suicide Dry Creek by Anne Anthony — 37 *Drowning, death Train Track by Ruth Boukhari — 38 *Suicide You Felt My Dying Mind by Joyce Butler — 39 *Depression, abuse Peach by Kim Hutson — 40 *Mood disorder, emotional instability Addiction by Aanchal Ghai — 41 *Addiction Cut Down by Bri Griffith — 42 *Addiction, alcoholism I Wonder If I'll Ever Stop Crying In The Bathroom by Bri Griffith — 43 *Self-harm, suicide Hanger by Bri Griffith — 44 *Self-harm

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Contents: Prose The Pink Room by Kaylin Mansley — 48 *Depression There Is A Problem In My House by Katie Watson — 49 *Suicide Postpartum by Damhnait Monaghan — 50 *Postnatal depression The Number 70 by Siobhan Denton — 51 *Anxiety Mother by Siobhan Denton — 52 *Suicidal tendencies The Bridge To Agoraphobia by Leanna Levandowski — 53 *Agoraphobia, anxiety Battleground by Jacqueline Carter — 55 *Self-harm, depression Slice Of Life by Amanda Staples — 57 *Sexual abuse, self-harm, suicide attempt Three Is The Key by Amanda Staples — 62 *OCD Imposter by Alison Wendt — 68 *Rape, cancer, intrusive thoughts, suicide attempt A History Of Cutting Pictures by Erika Schmid — 74 *Eating disorder Change Of The Evergreen by Samantha Rodriguez — 82 *Bereavement New Tank Syndrome by Peter Jordan — 92 *OCD, overdose Soul by Eric Martell — 97 *Self-harm, suicide attempt

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Thrift Shop Swan by Terry Sanville — 101 *Schizophrenia

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Winter of You David McGraw I’m still here in the winter of You. Stiff lily pads – tossed frisbees to wind poured by our time.

Fixed stars glitter their warnings.

Your nomad heart fluttered someplace new, free as the robin we watched flew branch to branch with no real purpose.

My soul nests easy in You – seeing all the world offers through Your eyes.

My body forgets to live, frozen years after lily pads thaw; the robin migrates.

Worms sense opportunity, waiting greedily.

When my paper skin feels their bite I might see You around, thank you for the adventures of just one life.

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Ode To A Hospital Fan David McGraw The committee of gods are untrustworthy in their worn out plimsoll steps.

I did not ask – they sent me a fan.

Their word is law.

It churns on its lowest setting, spraying its tender breeze.

With each blow it grows, striking my face.

Blades spin, tempting their wire cage.

If I could get to them I would.

Hero capsules rush to my aid, relieving my brain carrying my bones.

They harden my nauseated soul.

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They love me so.

Waves bounce against my heart – beats of a drum.

Thunderous claps slowly dull. The fan resumes its calming hum.

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Patchwork Boy Stephan Kyriacou There is a boy who can barely drag his body out of bed because his depression is too loud today and he can’t hear anything over his self-hatred.

But his mother taps him on the head and tells him to stop being silly and says he’d better hurry or he’ll be late for school.

He’s flailing, struggling to stay above the surface but no one gives him a lifejacket because they think he should be able to just inflate himself even though any air he had in his lungs escaped years ago and he’s empty.

His seams unravel until they’re torn at the edges, fraying and unable to put himself back together.

But then a new kid joins his class one day, a boy with sad eyes and shaky hands like his and they sit together and exchange battle stories.

They both know how hard it is to win a civil war when you’re fighting yourself.

And they help to sew each other back together, despite neither one knowing how to cross-stitch.

Needle and thread passes between them, ties that bind their hearts and souls with makeshift bandages until one day he walks across one of the threads and tells his mother the truth.

And she hugs him and cries and asks how Page | 17

she didn’t realise he was suffering so badly.

And he shrugs and says: I’ve always been a pincushion, mum; you just couldn’t see the holes left in me until I showed them to you.

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Until Another Note Is Written J. J. Steinfeld He crumbles the note.

Nothing more to negotiate; the room contains everything of her, even the crumbled note, though her hastiness was so unlike her – even if endings were in mind.

He thinks of recovery, his; hers is no longer in dispute.

He will give it a month or two, perhaps a season.

It is winter after all and winter for him was always of loss.

By spring, he calculates, he will have her memory under control and devise the lies that enable a life to move on, until another note is written to be read slowly, tearfully, then crumbled.

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Thoughts for the Sick Boy, from the Sick Girl Kaitlyn Crow I think I am nervous when I see you and I know that you’re in pain.

No, I think I am nervous when I see you and the earth does not stand still, but instead continues collapsing in on itself, and I wonder why everything insists on forward motion, like I pulled the emergency brake and nothing happened but a hollow click.

The pit of my stomach remembers that I never learned how to drive before the rest of me does, hurtling into the sun, gas pedal cemented to the floor.

I think I am nervous when I see you and taste the blood in my throat: the earth makes another rotation around the sun and we’re not yet dead bodies on a dead planet – see, you and I, we make dying young a team effort, pal! Blood pooling in every available space in our bodies, gravity doing half the work, no one volunteering for the rest.

You have to wonder how long it will take Page | 20

for all the orifices of our bodies to start spilling into each other, for our circadian flow to become overflow, and for you and I to find some other way to spend our time.

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A Tidy House Isabelle Harris The intrusive thoughts are pervasive, always where they are not welcome.

They are not welcome in my marriage, in my husband.

My husband, who, more times than I can count, I have watched crumble before my eyes.

My eyes, which constantly flicker over to the spot I have chosen to hide the tools his mind told him to use.

To use to end his life. Diazepam. Zopiclone. Sertraline. Fluoxitine. Mirtazapine. Paracetamol. The knives.

The knives he imagined releasing the blood from his veins, despite wanting, with every fibre of his being, to stay alive.

To stay alive, to raise our baby, to cook dinner, to drive the car without considering driving off a cliff.

A cliff I am at the edge of, the ground eroding beneath my feet, as I try to find purchase to push his car away from the edge.

The edge is where I reside. Teetering between solid ground and thin air. Composing conversations in my head.

Conversations in my head that I hope I will never have cause to voice, because that will mean I am a widow.

I am a widow, and my baby and I could not defeat the OCD for him.

For him, every day alive is a victory, and another 24 hours of torment. I know he finds it hard to know the difference.

The difference between OCD and a tidy house is a million light years. Which coincidentally, is the size of my soap box.

My soap box, perfectly sized to bridge the gulf between someone’s ‘joke’ and my reality.

My reality is that this soap box is often the only tool I have. Without it, I am an angry woman, who will breathe flames and fury at anyone who thinks living with OCD means my house is tidy.

My house is tidy. Because I tidied it.

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My Lovely Antidepressants Pauline Aksay There’s a fly in my room Shaped like a mushroom It makes loud sounds And hops on the ground The fly goes about, Buzzing around Then lies on my legs And lays some eggs The eggs hatch and spiders Crawl through my Riders But I’m still smiling Because I am finding Bugs all around me Above and below me They crawl into my thin Eyelids and skin It tickles, it does I feel their little fuzz As they start to mate And procreate The babes taste my brain But I’m still the same I love how they just Page | 23

Turn my flesh to pus And as the bugs eat me I am still not defeated I forget the shame I forget my name Who cares? I say Let them all stay.

Who cares? I say I’m happy today.

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And So It Continues…

Pauline Aksay I don’t deserve to live, I don’t deserve to breathe, I don’t deserve to grow, I don’t deserve to eat.

Your dad deserved to lie Your dad deserved to yell At you when you called him out.

You feared he’d slap you well.

Then he’d say, you don’t count!

You’re a silly bitch from a fling.

You don’t deserve my love, You don’t deserve anything.

So you thought, I deserve the shame, I deserve to be treated this way.

I deserve all the pain He has given me Since that fateful day.

I don’t deserve to live, I don’t deserve to breathe, I don’t deserve to grow, I don’t deserve to eat.

This was your new mantra, Page | 25

The code that became your norm You since got skinnier and skinnier Compliments were given at your form Your bones started to show But you knew you deserved the pain, So you ignored everyone’s thoughts When they turned to cries And then you collapsed in vain.

Your dad has since apologized Saying you deserved none of this, But you still remember his words You still remember his hiss.

So you say to yourself, Maybe I deserve to live And maybe I deserve to breathe, But I don’t think I deserve to grow And I certainly don’t deserve to eat.

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In A Darkened Room Emma Cookson I could sleep until next Tuesday, In my darkened room.

Flowers bloom and wither, Battered with the weather, But what if they could stay Safe beneath the earth’s soil?

Like in a darkened room.

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Young Bodies Verity Ockenden * This poem is not intended as an autobiographical criticism of any particular person or institution but mourns the fragility of any young athlete’s career and well-being in a world that obsesses over body image.

When we were young, adolescent squabs a race would become a battle not for loving ourselves most but for hating ourselves more Carb-starved marrow fed on magazine dreams girls with Olympic rings on their biceps not muscle but puppet-strings pulled by a coach But I’ve grown from a cardinal into a queen I don’t want those arms I want eagle wings No pubescent stubs of half-grown flight feathers that quiver in thin rows I want those …

Muscular, predatory things thick on the cutting edge with plentiful plumage like sheaves of arrows Page | 28

I want the air to pulsate on take off no teetering on the edge of a bough I want to live life in one fell swoop

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Ida & Jenny Kasy Long IDA WROTE:

JENNY THOUGHT:

Jenny arrived to my party

I still went to the party,

dressed in faded bruises and tears.

did my makeup and pretended to smile.

I offer her a slice of lemon cake;

Ida offered me a slice of lemon cake;

she throws it into the trash

I took it but threw it in the trash

when she thinks I’m not looking.

when she wasn’t looking.

This is not how I want to see my friend

I don’t like lemon cake anymore.

hurt.

IDA WROTE:

JENNY THOUGHT:

Jenny said she’d meet me, but she’s

I inhale the ashes, sit in the meadow of

swimming in cigarette ashes and daffodils.

daffodils next to the highway.

I pause and look at my watch;

I wait for him to arrive, to say,

she’s always late, yet I still always forgive.

“I love you.”

Jenny, I’m sorry but I must walk away.

He’s always late, yet I still always forgive.

This is not how I want to spend my time.

Ida, I’m sorry for making you wait.

I don’t like this pain.

IDA WROTE:

JENNY THOUGHT:

Jenny’s silence chills my voice

Ida yells at me for being a bad friend;

as I confront her with stabbing words.

my head is in the clouds, she says.

She tells me she’s okay, but I know she’s

Doesn’t she know I’m trying?

lying to keep me happy.

I tell her I’m okay — just to keep her

I want to help her, but she turns away.

happy. I glance at my watch; he’s waiting.

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This is not how I want to fight.

I don’t like to fight with my friend.

IDA WROTE:

JENNY THOUGHT:

Jenny walks to the edge of the bridge,

I stare at the water below me;

but refuses to stop once her feet

it moves to an unknown place.

leave the wood. I lunge for her,

I push off

but I’m not fast enough.

off

She’s gone before I can cry out.

off

This is not how I want to lose her.

into nothing.

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Forecast of Rain Ailsa Williams I tried to spread sunshine today, but it still rained for me.

I left bouquets on desks and was greeted with grateful smiles and hugs and you’re adorables.

I felt like my old self.

Sort of.

The spring in my step not quite there, smiling, but not as wide.

And I was charming and liked and admired.

But I know the storms come at night though there is no thunder.

Only the sound of my heart breaking, criticisms from a year ago, and me crying and crying and crying.

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Troublesome Fauna Rosie Sandler My husband chases rabbits in his sleep, feet scuffing the soft moss of the sheets.

I, meanwhile, have swallowed a butterfly.

It beats in my throat – keeps me awake.

The doctors say it’s harmless.

But its eye-mark wings see the soft red of my innards, flutter open the valves of my heart, signal in the night like a code.

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A Story In Skin Megan Crosbie Your wrists tell stories: the ones you’d written at fourteen sixteen twenty-five told in constellations of starry scars, ghosts of sutures that hugged you back together and rubbery lines like tallies counting the times you’d survived.

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Diet Like It’s 1950 Anelise Farris The cold, smudged steel is oddly comforting, the hum and suction of a refrigerator door: bruised red apples, swiss chard, wilted, and a half jar of olives, Cerignola.

We opt for lit cigarettes and rainbow pills. To want more, can’t.

Far too masculine.

Sylvia, why are you here? We lie on the cool, kitchen tile like bodies in plaster vying to be pure, ash dusting our faces, flushed with shame.

A bell jar over our mouths, compression sealing our fate as we admire the art of self-obliteration: to barter loose skin for sharp bone, a starchy blouse for black chiffon.

Mirror, mirror, an oven door: we fall down the rabbit hole where we cannot eat because of the heat, the boys, the mothers with measuring tape to pinch the fat of mortality.

Anatomy of retrogression. Relapse is a bitch.

This story has since been updated.

There is no evidence.

The striptease, an officer’s slow removal of our ill-fitting clothes, eyeing the scars: the gaps between ribs where our fingers burrow.

The crime scene was not disturbed.

One red-rimmed death stick, latent fingerprints.

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Is that a strand of your red hair?

Sylvia denies.

Suicide is a non-amenable offense.

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Dry Creek Anne Anthony A drowning comes first, life’s racket slips under intentional blunder; tries righting, tries fighting the cold crisp shock.

Bloated breath tightens.

Gray water whitens.

Numb fingers float wide at my side unknotting hands sleeping in life’s ticking clock.

Give way.

Give in.

Give up.

Give over.

A flush calm.

A lush balm.

Soothing.

Losing.

This sink of weight.

This drink of hate. I drag down.

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Train Track Ruth Boukhari They say only iron can kill a ghost, so when the sun is newborn at 7 a.m.

I’ll glide through the early streets, climb the station stairs with the nine to five zombies, and wait right there on the edge of that platform, stare those iron tracks down until I feel the rushing wind slap my face and I know it is time. I see the sad faces in their suits and skirts, move forward like slugs, ready to start their enslaved day while I stagger on tip toes, waiting for those vibrating tracks and that horn to tell me when...

And I suppose this act is selfish since the end of one life will ultimately alter another — that train driver forced to live his days with the knowledge he inadvertently killed someone, and the passengers, late for work, late for dates, the mother that weeps, the friend that regrets, the lover that feels the guilt...

But a ghost who has amounted to nothing, but a memory of what was once good lacks the courage to consider the ones she loves before the deed is done.

So much loss, so much wrong has been done, so she will fly out in front of trains, feel the hard metal on her back, the iron crushing her legs, her soul spilling out with the blood, and then all will be numb. All will be numb.

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You Felt My Dying Mind Joyce Butler I write this for you my friend whoever you are; when you were scared like me and life was scarred, we ran through the dark together, you and I. Not knowing we were both there fighting side by side, your screams collapsed in my throat as I cried believing the shame was all mine.

Believing I was the only one in this world to feel a dying mind.

Truly believing my illness was mine and no-one else’s crime.

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Peach Kim Hutson I look fine I can be fine I smell good and I won’t bother you at all.

Until the slightest knock; the merest pinch or the wrong words pierce my skin and the bruises underneath spread and turn the rest of me to mush.

My pulp covers everything in sticky regret irrational mess and I’m sorry for it, it’s just the way I am.

I tried to keep it from you.

I tried to keep it in.

But now you know; so I’ll go.

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Addiction Aanchal Ghai I have read about addiction.

When your hands shake before a hit, And your fingers tremble.

The adrenaline rush when the cocktail hits your bloodstream And the calm.

I have read about the tiny pills, And the euphoria they bring with them, The overwhelming compulsion to do it over and over, While it's destroying you, While it's stripping you of everything that makes you, you.

Pills and potions and the green fairy, And you.

I have read about addiction.

And how it all ends, Leaving behind searing pain in its wake, Pain that crisscrosses under your skin, And makes you scream at 3 a.m.

Pain that climbs into bed with you, Pain that screams louder every day.

I have read about addiction, And I have felt your unbearably soft skin.

My fingers tremble, The euphoria drowns me, The world crumbles in less than 60 seconds, And then you smile.

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Cut Down Bri Griffith The room was quiet, small, white walls like ghosts haunting my body while I sat at a desk, staring at the doctoral student asking me questions about alcohol abuse — Has anyone ever said you need to cut down?

I told him, No. The next morning, there I was — on the floor of an Arby’s bathroom on Forbes Avenue, crying into my unzipped wallet, whining about wanting pizza — awake enough to know I was alone — awake enough to know I didn’t have money to get home, or anywhere — awake enough to know I was ready to drink again.

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I Wonder If I’ll Ever Stop Crying in the Bathroom Bri Griffith hiding deep breaths behind toilet flushes and paper towels crumpled up — thrown out, if I’ll ever stop wanting to staple my wrists just to see what it’s like.

My therapist often asks me if I have any suicidal tendencies, and I always tell her no, but today she asked, Would you even tell me if you did?

I didn’t tell her about wanting to staple my wrists, and I didn’t tell her about yesterday at my apartment — how hard it was to even

walk

how dizzy

I felt lifting one foot at a time to my left a lifeline the only thing keeping

the railing me

from collapsing — because I really don’t think I’d ever do it — kill myself, but I wonder if I’ll ever stop waking up to the sound of my own question, creeping into every sidewalk crack on my way to school — why are you here?

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Hanger Bri Griffith I keep imagining myself grabbing a wire coat hanger and shoving it through the soft crevice above my forearm, using it like a hook to grab hold of what’s inside of me.

I close my eyes and see the hanger jab until skin breaks and bruises instantly — the wound disgusts me — but I don’t know how to stop seeing it.

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The Pink Room Kaylin Mansley I imagine a room that doesn’t exist where my body lives. It is at once very big and very small. It has four solid, visible walls, but goes on forever in each direction. Everything there is a soft pink, and it’s light but not bright. There, my eyes don’t have to strain to see anything; they relax back into my skull while I sit cross-legged on the floor in the room’s exact centre. In that space, I am the only thing that exists. No one can reach me. There are no sounds or smells or pressures or words or thoughts or pains.

I am off. Stopped. Not dead. Not sleeping. Shut down.

In the world where my body does live, the noises never stop and the lights glare. Mom cries and cries because she thinks I want to kill myself. Sometimes, I think so too. My brain's afraid of guns and razor blades and pills that might come back up, but it fixates on the idea of tall buildings and fast cars with music loud enough to drown out my heartbeat.

Mom makes empty promises: things will get better, life is worth living for, all pain is temporary — spews cliché after cliché. But her words don't help any. Her presence doesn’t make me feel supported and cared for; it reminds me how alone I really am. That she can't even imagine.

Her voice makes my head ache and the pain irritates. The realisation of loneliness sparks, paradoxically, a craving for complete solitude. Cruel words and foul sentiments flood my mouth in an effort to force her away. I have to lock them quick behind bared teeth. Most of the time I'm not quick enough. Most of the time my every vicious thought becomes verbal. The words land like blows.

In these moments I'm enraged. I’m yelling. I'm crying. I'm sobbing. I'm gasping. I'm feeling too much, anger and grief. And then, suddenly, I feel nothing. My breathing evens out. My eyes stop spilling tears. I become still. To my mom, I look catatonic.

My body can't escape the physical world, so my mind conjures up my pink room. Inside, I sit on the floor and acknowledge nothing. While I'm here, I know that I don't crave death, only this: to exist in a place where the quiet wraps around me like soft cotton and a gentle pink glow heals, and then remakes me.

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There Is A Problem In My Home Katie Watson I wake to the sound of water draining, travelling through the veins of my house. The plugs glug glug glug. Swallowing, spluttering, choking, incapable of taking the weight of water in its throat.

Someone’s pulled the plug before I could. Before I had the chance.

There is a problem in my home. When the bath drains, you can hear it in the kitchen sink, in the bathroom sink and in the second bathroom sink. Several mouths gasping for air at once, all competing to be the loudest, most desperate. They are speaking to one another. Yet they seem far away, like I am listening to the sounds of neighbouring houses three streets over. I am not part of the conversation.

The smell too. I never quite got around to asking the landlord to fix it.

The water finds its escape route around all my body parts, easy. It exposes me. My nipples are the first to emerge, two dark buttons floating on the white white white. Then my kneecaps, the round of my stomach, the castles of my hips. The ovals of my thighs, the planks of my shins. And then whole toes, both feet at a time.

Each time the plug opens its mouth to receive, my body becomes heavier, like it is being nailed down with impressive slowness. I feel its true weight now, in this way. I feel that perhaps I understand gravity now, in this way.

The bubbles are the last to go. They are lost without the water, like me, can’t follow it where it goes. They crack and pop and burst all around my feet and ears, dry on my cheek like tears. I feel the cool there now.

All my interior doors are open. An evening breeze searches all the rooms in my house, not in haste, not in any kind of rush. A gentle walkthrough, a relaxed look-around. Like it’s Open House. It dropped in off the street without thought, without looking back.

It does not find me in the first bathroom. It finds me last and it is too late.

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Postpartum Damhnait Monaghan Tea keeps me going when the baby is screaming and her brother is waking up every goddamn morning at four a.m. and the health visitor says some children are larks and some are owls and I want to ask her why I have one of each and yes I know that when the owl hoots all night it’s because — colic — but anyone can tell you that colic is not a hoot, not at all, not at one a.m. or two a.m. or three a.m. and did I mention the lark gets up at four a.m.? So I drink tea. But when my little lark flits into the kitchen and reaches high high up to the counter and tugs and tugs at the corner of the newspaper, he doesn’t know I put my tea at the other end of the paper, far far out of reach like the health visitor told me, so I could rock and rock and rock the colic. So it’s tea that makes my lark scream, hot tea, made in the mug because who has time for a teapot, hot black tea with no cooling milk, so it’s tea that burns, tea that sluices his skin clean off while he stands and screams and I run and cry and grab him and the phone and then I scream Tea! Tea! when they ask me what’s the nature of my emergency. And later, in the hospital when he’s sedated and wrapped in bandages and after the questions from the social worker satisfy her that it’s an accident and me that I’m incompetent, and my baby owl is quiet and nursing, it’s tea that I want and yes I will drink it while my owl nurses because tea keeps me going and did you ever notice how tea is so close to tears? I never knew that until now.

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The Number 70 Siobhan Denton Sometimes, I worry that the words in my head can be heard by everyone around me. Like a low hum.

Those constant thoughts. The questions. The repetition. The intrusion. The fear strikes often. Usually in a public place. Almost always in a public place. It was on the bus yesterday. I stood, holding on to the bar in front of me, tapping slowly. Hoping to distract myself. I tried looking out of the window.

Counted down the landmarks until my stop. Counted the number of times the man in front of me sneezed. Tried and tested. This time it didn’t work. And as the words got louder, as they began to roar in my ears, I found myself looking at those around me. My eyes connected with an elderly woman in front of me. She smiled. But only for a moment.

The panic rose. Like bile. Could she read my mind? Why else would the smile drop? I tried to make my mind go blank. Calm. Serene. It worked. For a moment. If I concentrated hard on not concentrating, then, I could make it stop. She turned away. I’d got away with it. Again. If only they knew. But no one does.

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Mother Siobhan Denton When I’m at work I forget. Busy with other students, with other people’s problems, my mind is full.

There’s no room for anything else. They say I’m so dedicated. A model employee. But work is the only thing that stops the cracks. Stops the worry seeping in. I dread the walk home. Sun feels cruel, like it’s laughing at me. Rain feels like my own personal pathetic fallacy. I spend the day texting friends. Asking them to meet. This is successful sometimes. But not enough. And besides, meeting up with others just delays the issue. It doesn’t solve it. She’s still there when I get home.

Before, I thought she would get better. That’s before I learned the wrong things to say. Asking if she was having an off day was, I discovered later, unhelpful. Pressured. But not acknowledging it seemed impossible. This month there was some hope. She’d started to show an interest in things again.

Was painting. Feverishly. This, the doctor told me later, was a sign. Something I should have picked up on. Would have picked up on now.

I feel like I’m on a perpetual tightrope. Or a cliff. Or a knife. I hid the knives last week.

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The Bridge to Agoraphobia Leanna Levandowski I have a friend that no one else can see. Instead of sharing secret hugs and smooches like my handsome invisible childhood boyfriend did, this invisible companion likes to tell me scary stories.

These stories aren’t about vengeful ghosts, killer clowns or two-foot long centipedes. These spooky tales are about sunny neighbourhood walks, grocery store trips and car rides longer than a mere five minutes. My friend scares me and tells me all the embarrassing things that could go wrong.

He/she/they plays a highlight reel for me on a dusty projector, shuffling through my worst and darkest moments on an IMAX sized screen. 3D, of course, so I’m adorned with dorky oversized glasses that nauseate and make my head thump.

There I am stumbling in the dark towards the bathroom while the room violently spins around me. I fall. Hard. Landing in the form of a murder mystery body outline on the cold dingy floor.

Blink.

There I am in the passenger seat of the car, gripping the dashboard as I struggle to breathe.

Orange blinking lights and men in yellow vests fill my vision; inordinately blurry with tears as the car creeps slowly down the street. My friend tells me I am a trapped animal. Defenseless and small. That I’ll be stuck wherever I go, without access to a glowing exit or a burrow to retreat to. They whisper in my ear that I’ll feel sick and succumb to a variety of symptoms that will mimic the sensation of death.

Yes. My friend convinces me I could and will die. I repeat this on loop in my head until my mouth goes dry: you have and will die of dysentery.

Despite knowing this friend isn’t always trustworthy and often lies, I foolishly and eagerly listen. Taking in every word and processing them as my new truth. The more projector sessions I attend, the more afraid I become. As time passes I notice that when I touch the front doorknob, it glows red and scorches my hand.

Sometimes the fear grows so immense that I retreat for days, taking refuge in my small condo space. With only the company of a 15lb cat, an overworked significant other and the voices that seep out of my TV. I watch the newly formed leaves dance through the blinds, as I contemplate never leaving or wearing pants again. The thought of fun, adventure and purpose fade; the terms becoming strange relics of the past.

Somehow, the fear of going nose blind eventually surpasses my fear of going outside. No one Page | 53

visits these days, but I grimace at the thought of some aristocrat catching a faint whiff of a few petrified cat droppings. I slip on my shoes and scoop them from the plastic turquoise litter box, bagging up Wilbur’s daily bounty. As I head for the door, that familiar feeling begins to take over. The feeling Friend warned me about.

My chest muscles tighten, the tension strangling my heart and lungs and throat.

My stomach flips with queasiness, bubbling with uncertainty and high fibre whole grains.

My breathing goes ragged, my inhalations becoming quick and impatient.

I feel that wave of unsteadiness, like my legs are suddenly made of beef flavoured Ramen noodles. Dizzy and unsure. My body contorts in warning, begging me not to leave my plush and comfy chair.

I grip the red doorknob and the heat gnaws at the palm of my hand, leaving raw pink skin that screams and sizzles and cracks.

I push the door open and step outside, my eyes wincing against the warm bright light.

Unsteadily, I move one foot in front of the other, wading through sinking sand and sticky swamps.

Trudging through the muddy thickness until I make it to the looming green dumpster. I feel a fluttering in my chest, as I quickly toss the bag inside. I debate venturing further down the cracked sidewalks, but instead my compass needle points back towards where I came. I blindly follow, counting the steps until I’m back inside.

A wave of calm washes over me as my breathing begins to regulate. The doorknob no longer glows red; it is crisp and black. Small pieces crumbling off and falling to the floor like charred snowflakes.

I do it all over again tomorrow.

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Battleground Jacqueline Carter I’m at war. But the war I’m fighting isn’t one you’ll see on the news. You won’t hear reports of any explosions or bombs, there won’t be casualties in this war — save one. I’m the only mangled body that lays here, twisted and deformed by its ravages.

But the battle isn’t real.

Or is it?

It’s in my head you see.

It’s against my head.

I’m inflicting damage on my enemy but how does that map when that enemy is yourself? How do you chart a course through waters that are ever changing, that refuse to adhere or contain themselves to clear definition? There’s no horizon to follow, no north marked on these maps.

I could be crazy; some days I’m sure that I am.

Today is a sure “I’m crazy” day.

I lay in bed and hear the house stirring with life. Doors closing, showers turning on. I lie there and I think, these are the sounds of normalcy. These are people who live in peaceful terms with their mind. They don’t question why they should get up, why changing their clothing matters, why they brush their teeth. They don’t stare at the ceiling and measure out their breaths or weigh the burden of their death against the trauma of their presence, day in and day out. They don’t write notes apologising for the lies and secrets, for the failings that seem so mundane written out in scribbled pencil. They don’t buy a box of razor blades and put them in a drawer like a keepsake. Like a whispered promise made late at night. Not today but someday.

Today is a sure “I’m crazy” day.

I wrangle myself into the kitchen and turn on the kettle. People move around me but they’re muffled and strange; like shadows passing behind frosted glass; they exist but we’re on different planes. I hold the coffee between my palms for a long time just to feel the warmth of it and stare out at the trees as they cast long shadows across the yard.

I envy the leaves that shake loose and drop to the lawn, they’ll yellow and curl. They’ll be swept along by nature’s own caretaker; scooped away by the wind when it returns. There’s a trajectory to their lives.

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A clear end.

An expiry date.

My war has left scars I can read on my body like braille, if I pull up my sleeves you can see the language I speak. You can run your fingers across it. It’s not one I created, but it’s one I share with others.

There are so many others.

They’re at war too, you see.

Their battlegrounds are shaped differently to mine but we share a common tongue. We take shelter together sometimes, huddle in groups as we clutch at our bruised and bloody forms, patch each other up and hobble along in solidarity for a spell.

Some days I want to raise a white flag and surrender.

Every day I hope for peace.

Most days I settle for survival — a hand in the dark, a glimpse of the sun through the dust and debris.

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Slice of Life Amanda Staples I waited as he hitched his shirt up and unbuckled his belt. Slowly. Teasing. My heart started pounding.

I felt damp. Sweat gathered at the back of my neck and base of my spine. This wasn’t the first time. I felt myself flush and knew he would see the telltale redness rising from my chest, up my neck, onto my cheeks. He did, and I saw him grin.

Ever since Dad died and Darren became “man of the house,” he’d become real power-trippy. I looked at my brother and I didn’t recognise him anymore through the cold, hard arrogance. Mum said we were lucky to have him; how helpful he was doing odd jobs around the house, and how he’d grown into a brave, strong man. It didn’t fit with my view of him, I thought he was a bully. He was mean just for the sake of being mean and he took pleasure from it.

“You cheeked our Mum.” He’d stopped smiling and was drawing the belt across his open palm, with as much consideration as a snake charmer. I gritted my teeth in readiness. I wondered if I kept on doing this whether one day my gums would collapse and my teeth sink, or worse, my jaw lock permanently.

“Assume the position,” he dictated, his voice steely.

I used to tense myself and hold my breath but I’d discovered that staying as relaxed as possible made it hurt less, though I still couldn’t manage to unclench my jaw until it was over. That helped me not to cry too.

Strike one across my buttocks; strikes two and three across the back of my thighs. Even through my school skirt, it felt like being whipped with stinging nettles.

“That’ll teach you to be a cheeky cow.”

What was I being punished for? I’d asked Mum for a rara skirt to go to a party and she’d said no. I’d protested. That’s when he’d walked in. I didn’t look at him now. I heard the swish of him reloop his belt. I slowly straightened then I stayed stock still, facing away from him.

“I’m going to the pub. Leave my tea in the oven.”

I waited until I heard the back door slam then let my jaw slacken. I wriggled it from side to side, felt saliva flood around my gums. I opened and closed my mouth, just to make sure it still worked.

Slowly, I went into the kitchen and took the cardboard box of ice cream from the freezer, Page | 57

hands trembling. Wincing as I walked into the lounge, I turned the telly on to watch Blue Peter then settled carefully onto the sofa with the block of ice cream under my legs. Mum could never work out why it always ended up in a funny shape. She complained it made the wafers wonky when she tried to sandwich them either side.

Mum worked shifts at the Spar so we took it in turns to do tea. Darren had just finished his YTS and been taken on as a mechanic. Mum was dead proud. She kept on at me to do a YTS in hairdressing, but I didn’t want to be a hairdresser. I wanted to be a primary school teacher. I’d probably end up being a hairdresser.

I checked my watch. It had stopped. Mickey Mouse’s arms paused at ten past four. I was a bit old for Mickey really, but he was one of few smiles I got on a daily basis. I turned the winder a few times and took the ice cream back to the kitchen. The cooker clock read 5.35pm; time to make a start on tea.

I knew before checking that Mum had left pork chops in the fridge. It was Wednesday. I could tell the days of the week by what we had for tea. Grabbing the spuds and carrots I returned to the lounge, eased myself onto the sofa and turned my attention to my favourite person on telly, ever. I opened an old Evening Post on my lap and peeled veg onto it whilst swooning over Peter Duncan.

Mum arrived home as I was laying the table.

“Good timing,” I said, smiling as I dished up, trying to sound chirpy.

“What’s this?” Mum held up an envelope, knowing what it contained.

“Exam results, I wanted to wait for you.”

Mum was too excited to eat.

“Open it, open it!” She fidgeted in her chair.

As we stared at the results, I didn’t feel anything, no tears fell. Nothing. I wondered if I had become incapable of emotion.

“You can still do YTS.” Mum smiled encouragingly, but disappointment showed in her face.

The smile didn’t reach her eyes.

Later, while Mum watched Coronation Street, I slipped out to the Happy Shopper and bought a copy of Jackie and a packet of Opal Fruits and a Twix. I knew I was getting fat, but no boys fancied me anyway. Since Darren had stopped me bringing friends home, people forgot to include me in trips the cinema. A bunch of kids had got caught drinking Diamond White cider on the swings in the park. Now Page | 58

the gates got locked at night and no-one had told me the new meeting place. I thought it might be under the bridge on the cycle track, or at the rec, but didn’t care enough to find out.

At home I lay on my tummy across my squidgy single bed and scoffed the sweets as I thumbed through Jackie. I heard the front door bang and voices in the lounge. I paused and braced myself.

Darren shoved my door open without knocking.

“Mum showed me your results. Waste of bloody space, you are.”

I’d done better than him. He picked up the Twix wrapper. The smell of beer and cigarette smoke wafted as he bent down.

“Useless fat cow,” he sneered. Screwing up the wrapper, he chucked it at me.

After he’d gone I shut the door and dragged my chest of drawers in front of it. I took a plastic bag from the drawer and emptied the contents on the open magazine. Twenty-seven tablets; I’d been nicking them from the bathroom for weeks. As I counted them again and wondered if it was enough the door handle rattled.

“Tracey, love, I can’t get in.”

“Hang on, Mum.” I tipped the paracetamol into the bag, shoved it back in the drawer and pulled the unit away.

“What’re you doing, love?”

“Something fell down the back.”

“I know it’s a bit late for pudding.” Mum handed me a wonky ice cream wafer sandwich, frowning at it as she passed it over. “For the life of me, I don’t know what happens to the ice cream in that freezer.”

She plonked herself down on my bed and looked through the magazine as she licked her ice cream around the edges. She looked tired. Her demi-wave perm was growing out. Her roots were showing through with grey. “He’s a hunk,” she said, holding up a poster of George Michael.

Something white fell on her lap.

“I had a headache,” I explained, quickly taking the tablet from her lap.

“You seem to be getting a lot of those,” she frowned. “Perhaps you should see Doctor Collins.”

“I’m fine.”

We finished our ice creams in silence.

“Is George going on your wall then?’

“Nah, he looks a bit poofy with that earring.”

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“That’s right, my girl,” Mum laughed. “You set your standards. I’m going to watch Crimewatch, see if I can spot anyone off the estate. Coming?”

I shook my head. “I’m going to listen to the charts I taped off the radio.”

“Okay, love.” Mum paused in the doorway. “I do love you, our Trace. You know that, don’t you?”

I nodded and smiled at her.

After she’d gone, I put the paracetamol back in the bottle in the bathroom cabinet. I locked the door, sat on the edge of the bath and tried to cry. Perhaps I’d forgotten how.

Giving up, I washed my face and brushed my teeth. Darren’s razor fell off the little shelf above the basin as I put my toothbrush back in the cup. I picked it up and nicked my thumb. It stung, but not like the belt; it was almost pleasant. I watched the blood trickle down my hand and drip into the basin; making patterns as it mingled with the water around the plughole, like inkblots.

I pulled my sleeve up and drew the razor blade over my arm. It was like opening a valve. I cut again and again; three lines of release. As the blood flowed, so did the tension and pain and sorrow and humiliation.

Darren banged on the door and cursed me. I mopped the wound and quickly cleaned the razor and basin. He barged past me as I opened the door. I wondered how easy it would be to slit his throat.

For the first time since Dad died, I felt something.

That summer, I got a job at the Happy Shopper and studied hard. Craig, one of Mr Gupta’s paperboys, started chatting to me every day when he came in for his sack. Towards the end of August he asked me out and I missed most of Ghostbusters snogging him in the back row. As our relationship progressed, he discovered more of the scars even though I learned to cut in places that most people wouldn’t see. I explained them away as scratches from the cat or off the bushes from blackberry picking. He had no reason to question whether I was telling the truth. I never told anyone the truth.

The scars have faded and the memories blurred. The day I got my resit results, I stopped cutting altogether. You know how some people quit smoking, just like that? I just found I didn’t need to do it anymore. Now I find when I look at my young granddaughter sat cross-legged on the lawn picking absent-mindedly at a long thin scab on her arm — and it’s not the first one I’ve noticed — I worry because she has become withdrawn. My daughter says she is just going through a phase, like all sulky teenagers. Yet I can’t help wondering if she’s telling the truth and the wound is a scratch from Page | 60

her cat.

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Three Is The Key Amanda Staples I’m a twenty-nine year old virgin and my mother thinks I’m gay. I’m not. As far as I am aware I am straight but I’ve never been in a relationship. And I’m not that bothered about women, let alone being in a relationship with one. Ditto for men, which one would assume is the proof of homosexuality; being interested in or in a relationship with a man, or at the very least having sexual intercourse with one. I’ve dallied with women, well, girls, back in my teens, but I’m not a fan of kissing, so it didn’t ever go much past a furtive fumble in the back seats at the cinema.

I heard her whisper it once, Mother, to my dad, “I think our Robert’s gay.” It was the same hushed and shocked voice she had used to pass on bad news to me just a week or so before, as if keeping a low voice would make it less true, “Aunty Beryl has cancer.”

I’m the youngest of five. Dad says that’s part of it. I was an accident, unplanned, possibly even unwanted. I am sure there are days when mother wishes she hadn’t had me. I’m a worry to her, you see. I don’t mean to be. I am fully capable, I don’t do drugs, I’m not an alcoholic or any other kind of ‘holic’, and I am debt free. I don’t have many friends, I live alone by choice, I don’t have a pet, and worst of all I haven’t ‘settled down’. That is the clincher for the worry. I am on the brink of my third decade and am unsettled. Well I am, in a way, but not the way she means. In fact, I have never been a particularly settled person. I am a little uptight. Apparently, I am a loner. I was labelled nerdy and geeky at school, which is where I learned to be a loner; if you fade into the background, even bullies can’t be bothered. I wasn’t particularly bullied at all, not directly. I was perhaps passively bullied by being excluded or singled out and then ignored and avoided. I didn’t care. I preferred that no-one wanted to sit next to me. I don’t like sitting close to people, even people I know. I don’t like feeling their body heat or smelling their odour and their breath. I don’t like the idea of them brushing up against me. Crowded places panic me. I’m not agoraphobic, I simply prefer to stay in and avoid people and public places.

I particularly dislike urinals. I find the whole idea undignified. Men lining up to take a piss like cattle lining up to be milked. Pissing is a private activity, like masturbating. You wouldn’t do that in a line into a grey/white bowl hung on a wall, in public. And so I prefer to use a cubicle. That was the cause of the one and only broken bone in my body. Three boys who used to tease me followed me into the toilets at school.

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“Nerdy Norden’s peeing like a girl again. Going in a cubicle to sit down and pee like a girl!”

I ignored them. I pee standing up actually; always have. I’d certainly never sit on a public toilet seat. God knows what contaminates them. They kicked the door, but the kick coincided with me sliding the lock back and the door flew open and smacked me in the face. It was an accident. I was on lock-check number two at the time. I do the checks slowly and quietly. They wouldn’t have known or heard. A few seconds later I would have completed my third check of the bolt being secure. I liked to use the same cubicle. The bolt was quiet and slid smoothly. And I knew it worked. I knew it locked.

And I know that I know that. But I still just had to check. Three times. Three is the key. I can relax.

All’s well with the world. Anyway, they burst into laughter and ran off, jostling each other to be out of the door first, leaving me a sticky, bloody mess. Ruined a perfectly good shirt. And as I recall, broke my glasses. The school paid for the repair. I expect Mother kicked up a stink. I like to polish and check my glasses three times. I tried to do that in the waiting room at the hospital. The lens fell out. It had cracked. I use contact lenses now. I like the fact they are sterile. I favour disposables, not the most eco-friendly option maybe, but it suits my purpose and that’s that.

In the library, I sit at my usual table on my usual chair. Plenty of space here. The darker and colder area people tend not to favour. I try not to think about all the other people who have sat here. I cannot be comfortable on buses or trains, or in cinema seats thinking of who may have sat prior to me, the hundreds of bottoms, and where they’ve been. I can just about manage to not let it bother me here.

Just. I can’t stay in hotels; the linen may be clean but how many mouths have breathed or dribbled into that pillow. I could take my own pillow but not my own mattress, and don’t even get me started on what could be living in… no.

I open my book, smooth out the pages. I open my notepad and line up my pen, spare pen, pencil, eraser and highlighter pen. They are equidistant from the edge of the table and book, and the top and bottom of the table. The edges of the book and notepad are parallel to the table edges. I start to read, pause to adjust the pens, recommence reading, pause to adjust the pencil and eraser and return to my book. Satisfied. I am fully able to give it my undivided attention.

I’ve always liked books. They are my one comfort. I like researching things. I’m a details person. It’s what makes me good at my job. I could do all this on the internet, and probably quicker, but I work in IT and I get sick of the sight of computers. Books are tangible. I like that. You can’t touch the internet. Cyberspace is very impersonal. And I like taking notes. I have several cupboards Page | 63

full of my notebooks at home, all labelled clearly and stored chronologically.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

Without waiting for a reply she pulls out the chair opposite me. The question is clearly rhetorical, redundant, one could argue. I do mind. I don’t say. As she sits, she knocks the table. Tutting inwardly, I realign the writing implements. She is fidgeting now; taking off her coat and rifling through her sack of a bag. She haphazardly throws a pen onto the table. It is a wide table, but still it rolls and nudges my pencil. Tensing my jaw, I right it, nudging her pen away. I notice her look at me.

She’s obvious about it. Most people, once they find me odd, try not to look at me. Or at least try not to look like they’re looking, but they like to watch me because I am an anomaly. I’m different.

With my head bowed I pretend to read but my eyes travel up and watch her. She’s pulling her hair back and securing it with a band she plucks with her teeth from around her wrist. I can’t begin to think of the amount of germs on it. She tucks a few stray hairs behind her ears. Her hair is red. Bright red. Pillar box red. She wears no jewellery, barely any make-up. There is a hint of freckles on her cheeks. Her lips are shiny. She has a small mole just above the left corner of her mouth. Her green eyes glitter and clash with her hair. Her nails are short, like one cuts a child’s. No nail varnish. I notice these things; details. She doesn’t seem to notice me watching covertly. With a satisfied sigh, she pulls her chair in. Her foot kicks me as she crosses her legs and I jump and hit the table with my thigh. It disturbs everything. I cannot help but let out an exasperated breath. It sounds like a tut. It’s not meant to but it does. I try not to look at her but I feel her looking at me.

“Sorry,” she says.

I continue to line up the bottom of the book and notepad parallel to the edge of the desk. The guys in work can be jokey — play practical jokes — I can’t say funny because I do not find it to be so. They think it is fun to mess up my stuff, because my workstation is so tidy. At first, with gritted teeth, I strained a grin, you guys. It wasn’t just me. They’d Sellotape other colleagues’ telephones down and ring an internal call to it, swap people’s chairs or mess about with the heights so a tall person would fall into it, not realising. Fake memos, salt in the sugar canister — I bring my own green tea and decaf coffee and I have my own mug. After a while, about three weeks, I wanted to yell, “Lay off my stuff, you tossers!” but I also wanted a peaceful life and to fit in enough to gradually become anonymous. So now, nightly, I lock everything away. All of it; pens, mouse, keyboard, the lot.

After I have cleaned it with antibacterial wipes, of course.

“I’m kinda clumsy now.” She smiles apologetically. There is a hint of an American accent.

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“Never used to be. Used to be kinda controlling,” she tails off. I continue lining up the writing equipment, checking mentally it is equidistant. I hope this will discourage her. It doesn’t.

“Isn’t it funny how libraries used to be so quiet, you’d like get shushed up, like being in a Quaker’s meeting or something?”

“It’s hateful.” I surprise myself by responding. I have no wish to engage her in conversation.

There’s a low hubbub of middle-aged people sitting through an IT lesson. They do this in libraries now. That’s the one downside. I can’t fully escape IT here. The instructor is tutoring them like they are kids. They’re asking stupid questions, which if they thought about, they wouldn’t ask.

This is his fault. He’s not letting them think for themselves. If he gave them the benefit of common sense, let them gain confidence, they’d learn more. I should know. I’m an IT trainer as part of my role.

This guy’s an idiot, using their ignorance to inflate his ego. Part of me wants to punch him; shut up his flapping mouth, stop the inane chatter. He’s a fake. Probably couldn’t get any other job in IT. “I used to be like you. Takes one to know one, right?”

I don’t respond this time. Perhaps she’ll take the hint. I pick up a pen, but I’ve nothing to write.

“I’ve been watching you.”

I look up, pen poised mid-air.

“What?”

“Hey, no need to be so hostile. I just mean in here. I’m not stalking you or anything.” She expels a nervous laugh. I think it is louder than she means it to be. Some people look over.

I have never noticed her. You’d think with hair like that she’d be hard to miss. But then I always focus on the books and my notes.

“You have a thing, right? I mean like OCD, but that’s bandied around so much now it’s almost meaningless. So anyway, mine was germs; cliché but hey. I permanently smelled of cucumber.”

I frowned. She was oddly engaging. Her emerald eyes smiled as she talked.

“I mean, like, from alcohol gel. Carried it everywhere. I used it so much it dried my hands out and my skin cracked and it stung putting it on but I still had to keep using it. So I get that you have a thing. You’re a checker, right?”

I nod. I put the pen down, check it’s aligned. She smiles. I quickly check it again and again.

“Three is the key,” I say, despite myself.

“Security, right?”

“Control,” I correct.

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“I just thought, well, look, I don’t know if you feel like I did; trapped in your own world, not a fully functioning member of society. Mad,” she whispers the last word. It is stressed the way mother had said gay.

“I don’t think about it so much. It’s always been there. I’ve always been a loner. It suits me.”

“Okay, well, never mind.”

She looks like she’s going to leave and I find I don’t want her to.

“I’m not keen on germs either. I can’t travel on buses, or trains, or stay in hotels. I don’t like other people’s things. It’s not an obsession.” I hate that word. It chokes me to say it. “I find it best not to focus on it, that’s all.”

I become aware that one of my fingertips is tapping the table. I place my hands in my lap and clench them into fists. I’ve never verbalised any of this. Why to her? Why now?

“I lost my job. I was a cashier in a bank. I couldn’t handle the money, kept thinking about the number of hands that had touched it, the amount of germs on it. I tried wearing latex gloves but they told me off and I got weird looks from the customers. One day it got too much. I froze. I couldn’t breathe, my heart was racing, I was dizzy; I kinda went into meltdown. When I got myself together I walked out and never went back.”

“That’s rough,” I console.

“Anyway, to cut a long story short … ” “Yes, it’s only an hour until they close,” I say, half smiling. I’m joking with her?

She smiles back.

“You have nice eyes, steely grey, unusual. They, like, soften when you smile. Sorry. I’m just so much more comfy in my own skin now. I talk too much. It’s just that I’ve gone from the ridiculous to the sublime. It’s like being freed. I sometimes have difficulty stopping myself.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” Again with the banter — am I flirting? Do I even know how to?

“Okay. Cut to the chase. I just thought maybe I could help you, because I’ve been helped massively. I have a life — I’m not saying you don’t, you just look kinda lonely, is all.”

You’re right, I don’t have a life, I think as she fishes in her bottomless pit of her bag. She takes out her phone and a small dog-eared notebook; the corners have curled. She picks up her pen and pulls the lid off with her teeth. Scrolling through the phone she stops and writes a number and a name. I notice she is left-handed. Her writing is large and circular, like a child’s.

I know my own mobile phone number, I know many numbers, but I appreciate not everyone Page | 66

has that ability. I start to feel panic as the realisation sinks in. She’s giving me her number. What now?

Chatting is one thing but holding hands and kissing — does she know how much bacteria is in another person’s mouth?

She’s handing me the paper. I blink at her. She drops it on the open book. Then she lines it up with the edges of the page and smiles. I look at the note and read Sandra Tobin. She doesn’t look like a Sandra. That’s a stupid thing to — “So anyway, Sandra is a clinical hypnotherapist. I was a bit sceptical at first, you know, brain washing, mind control, Derren Brown, blah-blah. But it’s totally not like that. It’s great. It helped me tons. I owe her my life; my new life.”

It’s not redhead’s number. It’s some crackpot, kooky therapist. I feel offended.

“Anyway,” she continues as she gets up and pulls her coat on. She packs her things back in her bag. I make no effort to delay her now. “I’m Maybelle, by the way. Are you a hand-shaker? I never used to be, so I always check.”

I pause, she falters.

“Robert,” I say, shooting out my hand. I shake hers gently, briefly.

“Well, Robert, nice to meet you. I’m in here most weeks. Maybe see you around.”

“Nice to meet you, too.”

And I mean it. I watch her walk away, watch her reach up and untie her hair, watch it cascade like flames around her shoulders. She pauses to smile and wave goodbye to the woman on the desk, whom I never acknowledge. I can’t take my eyes off her until she has gone.

I pick up the note, consider tearing it up, then fold it three times, smoothing the creases, and put it in my jacket pocket for safe keeping.

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Imposter Allison Wendt Beth lost her mind the same day she lost her virginity. School had ended and she was walking past the mobile building used for band practice. A few trombone notes pealed through the air, and then the entire mobile classroom swelled with the sound of brass instruments. During the crescendo a boy named Bobby poked her shoulder. She turned her head and he was at her opposite side, grinning.

“Gotcha,” he said. “Hey — I’m just teasing, don’t look at me like that.”

Beth looked away, walking faster.

“You live around here?”

“I have to get home, my mom needs me,” Beth said.

“Come on, let me walk you home. I think you’re pretty.”

He paused, waiting for a response, and when he didn’t get one he continued.

“You don’t say much, but that’s okay. I know you’ll come out of your shell one of these days.

You’ll be a famous actress everyone wants to be who’s all like, ‘I was the awkward girl in high school nobody knew existed.’”

He walked close enough for Beth to smell his deodorant mixed with his sweat and the mulchy air. A rim of light appeared around him; deep dark currents were eddying through it. Beth thought she was getting a migraine. Her mom would get them and had told Beth about auras and zigzags of light.

The light circling Bobby wasn’t the only weird thing Beth had seen that day: in algebra class, numbers in her textbook had started to spin on the page. Some of the numbers had turned red or purple as if to signal a deeper equation that wasn’t being taught. To have a boy approach her was just one more strange occurrence that day. She had nothing to say to him.

“We don’t have to talk, we can just walk,” he said.

“Okay,” Beth said, avoiding his eyes. They walked through trees that separated the school from a cul-de-sac in Beth’s neighbourhood.

“Are you okay? Hey, come here,” Bobby said, taking her hand without asking. He put it against his hand, fingers spread. “You’re so small,” he said, “Look how small your hands are.”

Beth snapped her hand back.

“I have to get home,” she said. She was still worried about her mother — always, she worried about her mother.

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“Wait,” he told her, “I want to show you something.” He held his hand out, giving her the option to take it this time. She did, and he pulled her forward. They were past the cul-de-sac now, walking into the woods behind the schoolyard.

“What do your parents do?” he asked.

“My dad’s a CPA. My mom stays home.” It was none of his business why her mom stayed home. She didn’t care what Bobby’s parents did, so she didn’t ask.

“Look at the roots of this tree,” he said, intertwining his fingers with hers. It felt good to have a boy’s attention even though she didn’t trust it. Until now, she had thought she would miss out on all the normal teenage things: hand-holding, a first kiss, being asked out. The roots he pointed to pushed out of the ground, looping around the roots of a neighbouring tree.

“It’s cool... We forget how things are linked in ways we can’t see,” Beth said, thinking about how a tree’s roots were its brain, buried in the earth to process information about its surroundings, then communicating this information through networks of other roots. She touched her head. Her own brain felt strange and electrical and disconnected. She could almost feel it reaching out, trying to extend beyond itself. Her movements were becoming stiff, slower and more difficult. Mom, she suddenly wanted to scream. There was something wrong, she didn’t know what.

Bobby smiled, pulling her toward him. He leaned over to kiss her. A light peck, and then he pressed his tongue against her lips. They were closed, and so she had to open them — there wasn’t time to think. By then he had already withdrawn his tongue. His breath smelled like Doritos. The trees seemed to recede back into space.

“Do you know guys talk about how hot you could be?” he said.

Beth looked down. Her white Keds were muddied. She wore baggy jeans and a navy sweatshirt. She always wore soft, loose clothing because anything else would rub against her skin until it began to itch, then hurt. Suddenly she felt frumpy, something she had never cared about before. She thought about her Mom. What if she is laying on the floor right now, gasping for breath? And if I had gone straight home, I could have been there for her.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked, touching her shoulder.

“I don’t feel good,” she said. But the words didn’t seem to come out of her; they seemed to come from somewhere behind her, or maybe from above. They echoed in her mind: don’t feel good don’t feel good don’t feel good. Tree trunks wobbled. Their roots moved like slick black snakes curling down into the earth.

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“I feel like something is wrong with my head,” she said, touching it above her eyebrows.

“You’re okay,” he said, hugging her. Then he placed his hand on her bottom, pulling her closer. He walked forward until her back was against a tree. He was pressing his member into her belly; it felt like a rock. She put her face against his chest, listening to his heart race as if he had been running. His attention kept her anchored when something else wanted to lift her away.

“You like that,” he said, grabbing her shoulders and turning her around so fast that the tree scraped the side of her face. He put one hand up her shirt, feeling her flat breasts, and used the other to tug at her sweatpants, falling to her knees. Then he pulled her hips toward him while her chest slid down the tree. She didn’t move because her body wouldn’t let her move. She could taste sweat from the corner of her mouth mixed with miniscule bits of dirt.

“Don’t, please,” she said, reminded of a childhood fantasy where a robber held her up and she pleaded with him to let her go. Touched by her kindness and innocence, he ran from her and stopped robbing people.

“But you’re so wet,” Bobby told her.

His finger was inside of her, hurting her. And then his penis was inside of her and she grimaced. He was right about her being wet — she was fourteen and her body was always doing weird stuff. The ground seemed to rise and then recede far below her, as if she were floating. Just as quickly as he entered her, he was out again, spilling himself onto her backside. That’s it? This is what people do? Beth thought, still unable to move.

“You’re okay, right?” he asked. She could hear his zipper, the crunch of a pinecone underfoot.

Beth was crying suddenly. She nodded through tears — she didn’t know what else to do. She felt bad for him. One day he would look back on how he lost his virginity and feel shitty, she knew it.

“Okay. I’ll see you later,” he said.

Beth heard leaves tear and twigs crack as he ran away. A feeling washed over her like the grey sludge of water left over after a painting project. He was the paintbrush, taking all the colours with him. She pressed her face against the tree, her tears falling into its jagged cracks all the way down to its orange flesh. It would grow layer upon layer every year, swelling and pushing the bark farther to the edges. The tree would soak everything up, documenting the world around it — concentric rings of time. All the trees stood watchful: you are whole, standing with us. She could hear them whispering right to her soul.

Without bothering to wipe the semen off, she pulled her sweatpants up and started the walk Page | 70

home. Even though she took the same route every day, she had no idea how far she needed to go, how far she had already come. Time seemed to spin backwards and forwards in a way she couldn’t predict.

Her house finally appeared and then it was far away again. Finally she walked in, dropping her backpack to the floor.

Her mom was alive, watching TV. It was tax season and so her dad wouldn’t be home until late. Something is happening inside my head, she wanted to tell her mom. Something is really, really wrong. But she didn’t know how to explain it. She sat on the couch next to her mom whose silky blue bathrobe fell open to reveal the deep-red radiation burn and the scar from her chemo port. Some pictures were missing from the wall. There was a stack of empty frames on the floor, maybe for dusting. The photos had been hung in an arc beneath a hanging candelabra and now the pictures displayed were like a gap-toothed smile of Beth’s ancestry. Her mom sipped from a glass of red wine.

Beth didn’t think she was supposed to be drinking on chemo.

“Honey, how was your day?” her mom asked.

“It was fine,” Beth said.

“Are you sure?”

Beth nodded. She would never say anything about what happened in the woods, which confused her, giving her a feeling like somebody was after her. Like somebody wanted her dead. She didn’t want to burden her mom with questions about sex Beth never thought she would have to ask.

Bobby’s semen was sticky on her lower back and she needed to take a shower, but she was so tired; she had walked home by some sheer force of will. Perhaps the same force of will keeping her mom alive for three months past her expectancy.

“Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want a hug?” her mom asked.

“Okay,” Beth said, accepting a hug for her mom’s benefit, not for her own — her mom’s frailty scared her and she didn’t like to touch her anymore.

“Do you want some water?” Beth asked to end the embrace.

“I’m okay, thanks honey,” her mom said.

Beth went into the kitchen and ran the faucet, filling a glass. She took the water upstairs to her room. When she sat on her bed something in her brain popped. People started arguing as if through a megaphone held up to her ear. There were a few voices talking over each other. She couldn’t understand most of them. One stood out from the rest. It was angry, a woman. Slut, it said. You’re a slut and you deserve to die. Good people die every day, like your mom is about to die. Why are you Page | 71

still here? Jump out the window.

Beth had no idea what was happening, whether these were ghosts or if she was going crazy.

And then she thought the government had been monitoring her; they wanted to alter her DNA through ports implanted under her skin. She was an alien like so many other people who were also aliens — most people, in fact. It was obvious; the thought appeared to her just as clearly as anything else she knew about the world. She started searching her arms and legs and stomach to find the port. Jump, jump, jump, the angry woman repeated. Beth pressed and clawed at her skin until she couldn’t take the voices anymore. She opened the window to punch out the screen and was standing on the roof when her mother came in, her face red under the blue scarf she had wrapped around her head, sweat drenching her chest.

“Bethany, honey, what are you doing? Come off the roof!” Wheezing, she could barely get the words out. Beth looked at her mother, but this woman didn’t feel like her mother. This was an imposter, she thought, a ghost animating her mom’s body.

“WHERE IS MY MOM?” she screamed. “I just want my mom …”

Jump, jump, jump.

“Beth, I’m right here…I’m right here, what’s going on?”

Her mother was dialling 911 as she spoke. Minutes later, an ambulance came wailing up the street.

At the psychiatric unit, nurses wouldn’t let her wear a hospital gown even though she liked the way it felt better than her normal clothes. They said she needed to get up and dressed, participate in normal activities. A psychiatrist took her into a small room, a table between them. He held a red file and placed it on the table without opening it. He told her about the medication they had given her, which made her feel dull and sleepy. He said all her labs and bloodwork came back normal, and so her problems were symptoms of a mental health disorder. Beth started to think he was in cahoots with the government — to study her — but then the thought seemed absurd and she was embarrassed for even having it. He talked about her over-excitable dopamine receptors, how certain parts of her brain were wired differently than they were in other people, giving her hallucinations and the sense of being watched or persecuted; distorting her senses, confusing her thoughts. He told her this was a disease of the brain and she would probably have to take medication for the rest of her life. With medication, her life could be normal. Beth felt tears coming and blinked to hold them back. She didn’t want another Page | 72

stranger to see her cry. The doctor picked up on her emotion anyway and leaned forward.

“We’ll get you set up with outpatient services, you will meet people like you who are thriving.”

Beth stared at the file underneath his folded hands, noting its alarming shade of red. If people like her were thriving, she thought, then why were so many wandering the streets, muttering to themselves? She wasn’t only thinking about herself; she was also thinking about her mother: where was her normal and happy life? Not only did she have cancer attacking her bones, but now she had a schizophrenic daughter, too.

“This isn’t a death sentence,” the psychiatrist said. He had olive skin, soft brown eyes and grey whiskers like sand on his face. Beth didn’t tell him about her mother’s cancer, how that was a death sentence. She did say, “Thank you for being nice to me.” He smiled.

“Of course.”

“I will never ignore a bag lady ever again,” she said.

The psychiatrist laughed. “You are a good person, Beth.”

As he spoke her brain shuddered. The light in the room shone brighter, stinging her eyes.

Delusional or not, she felt like an alien. Sentinel trees stood out the window. They spoke a language Beth understood.

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A History of Cutting Pictures Erika Schmid I have always wondered when it began, when she did what I so often wish to do. To take a box cutter not to skin but to the glossy surface of a photograph. To obliterate all from history in hopes of scrubbing from personal memory. Of those that remained, of photographs that she did not destroy with a steady hand, I have always found the face that looked back at me to be beautiful. From youth to old age, my great-grandmother shone with a radiance and an inner peace that transcended her outward appearance to instead reflect her inner soul. It is the same look others tell me I have in my own photographs and for that I understand why she cut out her face with delicate precision.

I glance up from my desk as someone passes by, issuing forth the same remark I hear from countless others, without fail, every day. For they all say the same thing, “That looks so healthy.�

I nod my agreement to their blunt statement, telling myself that they only comment for their own lack of ability to eat in such a way. Little do they know that behind my nod is a sadness that cannot convey why I must eat in such a way. It is the same reason why I cannot keep any photographs at my desk and the box cutter at home calls to me, urging me to destroy any evidence of that which was once before. Better to be known as the healthy one than the sick one, for no one would believe that I am sick, not when I glow like my great-grandmother did in her photographs that somehow remain as survivors of her own personal holocaust.

I bite into the tasteless, cardboard circle in my hand that has been masquerading as a delicious cake of pressed and flavoured rice. Nothing adorns it, no smear of peanut butter or even an apple to accompany it. I eat only the small circle that brings me no joy and I masticate in my mechanical maw until it is obliterated. I feel nothing but the affirming words from my co-worker stating that which I continue to tell myself, that what I allow myself to eat is healthy. But that is all I will be eating and while my stomach seizes in protest I turn my body back to task with as much energy as I can muster. It is not much these days.

I know what I am doing. I tell myself this every time I bite into one of those bland rice pucks and I try to say the same as I press the blade against the photographs of my old self. Yet, so much like when it does for food, my hand stills against cutting away the photographs. I never keep any here at work. No one notices though, they only see what has been deemed to be healthy when they see me eat.

When I eat at all. And it is with each time someone states their simple comment, addresses my Page | 74

predictable habit, that I again question when it all started for the generations of women that came before me. Those who gave me the blood that pumps in faltering weakness through my thin veins. I wonder when it all began.

I pluck away at the keyboard in front of me, my head light enough to drift away from my body though it continues to remain in haunting belligerence. I wish I could float away, like the small heads of herself that my great-grandmother cut away so did into the trash. Did it begin for her when she was a child and called adorable with the underlying implication that she was chubby as well? Or did it begin in her volatile teenage years when vicious comments from girls made flirtatious glances from boys feel deplorable and subjective? Or was it years later, when old age creased her face and the weight of marriage with children felt heavy not just on her shoulders but upon her wide set hips as well? Like myself, I believe it was always there, lurking in the back of her mind, and unlike myself she finally found the ability to act upon that which she desired to see fit.

“Hey, do you want to go out tonight?”

I attempt to focus on the question that has been presented to me, instead of the other questions that float around in my hazy mind. I offer a kind smile, looking toward the one I call my friend in the recesses of corporate work, and reply, “No, I’m okay.”

With a shrug of her shoulders, ones filled with life and a broadness that reminds me of what my own used to look like before, she turns away without another comment. She has asked me this several times before and each time I have responded in the negative. I must give her credit for her valiance in continuing her attempts to draw me forth into that which so many call fun. I find no fun in going out. Going out means eating in front of people and I cannot do that, not when it would involve questions about how little I allow myself to eat. Then they might not comment on how healthily I eat.

Or worse, they will continue to with even more fervour. I am unsure which outcome makes my already light head feel even more dizzy, all I know is that I do not want to find out the answer.

Besides, I remind myself as I turn away from my work with another day complete, I already have plans. They are not plans I want to keep, but they are plans none the less that are perhaps better than forced socialization outside of work that often leaves me feeling drained and bitter. And while I know I will be drained and bitter after leaving the company of my grandmother, at least it is family who causes this and not those I see every day at work. For some reason, knowing that a visit to family is fleeting brings a sense of relief in the way going out with friends never brings.

The apartment that my grandmother has been sequestered in is not unlike the small hovel my Page | 75

great-grandmother spent the rest of her days as she presumably cut away her face from photographs.

These cuts always made a small square, a hole where her face once was and the rest remained the same. My grandmother insists on keeping as many photographs around her, in her decrepit room that smells of days past lingering with the pressed linen that stretched in a way only heavy starching could accomplish across her bed. She insists on embracing me with a strength that merited forced, instead of true, love. I do not believe she has ever known what real love is and therefore tries to strike it from the very person she attempts to embrace as her bony hand comes down upon my shoulders with harmful force. I am not what I once was, a person of far more flesh and padding to combat her hurtful love, and I break under the ministrations of her hand now.

“Hello,” I greet, forever unable to call the bent and spiteful woman before me grandma. When not around her I called her by her first name, as if she were not a relation. All too often I wished such a thing were true.

Pressing both of her skeleton like hands against my cheeks, she draws me down so that her eyes, wide as if she is perpetually seeing a ghost, stare into me. I glance away, always unable to look directly at her scrutinizing and Medusa like stare. Her dry fingers scrape against my jaw, pressing against my chin and forcing me to look at her. I pull away.

“You look different,” she comments in return greeting. She does not say this in a kind way or in a way that indicates concern. Instead, she says it in a way that makes me wonder if the thin, wilting figure she sees before her is something she has always wanted to see me as and finally does now. Not with pride, but with a firmness that always accompanies her words that she perpetually believes are right. I flounder ever further, my words invisible, as she adds, “And what are those? On your arms?

Stretch marks?”

Too many questions with no answers ready upon my dry tongue. The derivative click of her tongue is what I do hear and it causes the slight twitch under my left eye to reverberate with as much strength as my hands do when they shake after I have only eaten water for a day. I do have not the courage to say the truth, that they are cuts of a different kind that run in jagged lines across skin that hangs in loose folds across my bones, but that would be far harder to say than to nod along in agreement to the lines of dejection being the deformity of natural stretch marks.

“Let’s all get inside,” my mother states, forever a saviour as she draws my grandmother away from me. I breathe a sigh of relief as the wretched woman I begrudgingly acquiesce to be my grandmother embraces the woman I lovingly call my mother, clinging to her as if she is the life that Page | 76

has forever been fleeting. I take a seat, as far away from my grandmother as I possibly can, which only leaves me incredibly close to the photographs I would rather never lay eyes upon again and yet continue to do with each visit.

As they descend into a murmur of polite conversation that has little heart for it being between begrudging family members, bonded by marriage and not in blood, my eyes drift toward the one picture on her wall of memories that flee from her own mind. It is the photo I want so badly to destroy in my own home and yet continues to look down on me in both locations. It was taken only a few years ago, when I graduated from college. I was happy, standing there in my robe, with my chubby cheeks radiating a wide smile. My cheeks have gone gaunt since then, as the swelling of obesity shifted toward thinness as weight was shed. I look at the photo and see the being I once was, twice the size that I currently am. I take pride in all the work I did to accomplish such a feat, so do many, yet with each comment I feel the smallness that I physically am now.

“What about Thanksgiving?” my grandmother implores, her beady eyes baring into me with such intensity that I shirk away with the hope that my mother will answer instead. “Everyone will be up for it? We need to have a celebration.”

“Actually,” my mother responds with some hesitation as I feel her glance fall upon me. “It doesn’t seem like we will be able to make it this year.”

The cry of objection comes with the same measure of dramatics my grandmother puts into all her actions and words. Everything is described as a celebration when in fact no one ever wants to celebrate the million little things she insists on celebrating without joy or mirth. With a pitiful whine, she adds, “Why not?”

“Well, um.” My mother struggles to convey what I should be speaking. I cannot though, I need her to break the news to the woman who terrifies me. I silently beg my mother to speak the excuse we agreed upon on the drive up, though I do not believe she will stick to it. With a reassuring smile that I feel and do not see, my mother tries again by saying, “We cannot come up for Thanksgiving because there have been some health problems.”

“Oh dear, what’s wrong?”

I am no longer in the room, I cannot be. My presence may remain, but my mind is gone.

Though all the while I hear fragments as my mother relays the truth.

“Her health needs some attention… she’s just not eating enough… and a big meal like Thanksgiving is just too much right now.”

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“What’s wrong with starving yourself? I’ve done it my whole life.”

I wake from my own haziness as my grandmother’s words cut deeper into me than the box cutter against the photographs I so want to destroy. When did it all begin? Was it the mid-century mentality that a good housewife needed to have a tiny waist in order to cook her husband the heart clotting dinner while cigarette smoke stifled every inch of the home? Was it when her children shoved in food that made her turn away from her own in disgust? Or was it when she made a choice to be that which everyone told her to be, as the thing she eventually was able to become? When did the torment of generations come down upon me in a single slush pile of horror that caused me to repeat history?

Was it they who cut their beautiful faces from photographs or starved themselves to become idealized perfection who led me to this re-enactment? Or was it my own self?

“All these women today,” my grandmother continues to ramble, the same words I have heard a hundred times before and I am appalled at myself since my listening to it all has led me to this deplorable life I haunt my way through. “All of those twits, with their short skirts and legs that shouldn’t show. I ask again, what’s wrong with starving yourself so you don’t look like a twit? How else are you going to find a good husband, mmm? Don’t you want to be a good homemaker? I really don’t see…”

I cannot respond to my grandmother’s questions, nor her comments, not as she continues to speak and my ears bless me with temporary deafness. Instead I rise and walk over to the wall of photographs. One of the remaining photographs of my great-grandmother smiles down upon me. She is old in it, her grey hair turning into white and her flush cheeks burrowing into the stole around her shoulders. She took such pride in that fur wrap, a gift from her husband that dignified the high place of a lady in her time. I wish I looked as comfortable in my own skin as she does in this picture. I want to hope that her cutting away her face was a youthful act, one done during a dismal time, and that she found peace with herself later as it so appears in this photograph. I reach out and take it down from the wall. Without a single word to my grandmother, I turn and leave with the photograph of what I hope to become in my hand. For if history is to repeat itself, I want it to be toward this end and not the one my grandmother has just professed to her own life becoming and what she has always deemed worthy for me to have too with such little care.

My mother’s reassuring hand falls upon my shoulders as she catches up to me in the hallway.

Though her hug would be more welcoming than the bony crush my grandmother offered, I shy from her as I am reminded of my own boniness in the warmth of her open arms. How did these horrors not Page | 78

befall upon her? I know the stories, of her being teased for her weight as a child, and yet she never showed the same drastic measures of bending to social beauty and as such she is entirely beautiful. Is it because she married into this line of standard female idealism and did not inherit the succession? Or, as I fear, I listened to the strength of evil voices instead of listening to the gentle assurances she has given me my whole life. That hateful words were easier to hear than those of beautiful blessing because I believed I deserved the latter more than the former.

Words I have not yet been able to speak before spew forth from me in the bleak hallway. My eyes burn with both tears and under the florescent lights as I ask, “When did I become like her? When did I start thinking it was alright to do what I have been doing? What I’m still doing? Why did I never listen to you when you said I was fine the way I am? Why can’t so many of us do that? When…did she stop cutting her face from photos?” I hold up the picture in my hand and it is with an outward sadness that I have held within myself all this time that my mother now displays with an openness I cannot show. She shakes her head, her silence relaying her lack of knowledge. She takes the photo from my trembling hands and murmurs, “I can take the old ones of you down at home.”

“I’m not sure if that’s going to help.”

“What will?”

Residing upon the beige walls is a mirror and I glance over at it, contemplating this question.

My reflection is not someone I recognize. I dreamed of a day when people would say I am beautiful, instead of encouraging that I had a great personality to outweigh that which weighted in all physicality on my body. I dreamed of eating healthy, instead I eat not at all under the ruse of nourishing myself with what others deem good for me. I dreamed of looking in the mirror and liking what I saw, instead I hate myself more than I ever did before when I was twice as big and believed I would never find love because of the added pounds of flesh. I thought in doing exactly what my grandmother just encouraged me to continue doing that I would find happiness. How could I be happy in such a state when I know full well that she has never found an ounce of happiness in her own life? Despite her insistence of a fairy tale ending, the fantasy in her head was clear as decayed unreality to everyone else around her. How could I have not seen that I had fallen into the same trap sooner?

I feel the anxiety of past mistakes rise up into my throat that I have not allowed to swallow enough food to even issue forth from my churning, empty stomach. I am so hungry. I cannot think of anything else as I stare at my gaunt face in the mirror, one with hollow eyes that are beginning to protrude in the desperate way my grandmother’s do as she implores us to love her in a way I know I Page | 79

cannot. I glance at my mother, with her eyes framed by the soft curves of full cheeks and I realize that I was not happy before and I am not happy now. I do not know what to do, but I think there is one woman in this atrocious family of ours who I should listen to more now.

“I think I need to get to know myself,” I respond, realizing that these words are the first bit of truth I have been able to speak in some time. “I’m not sure how though.”

The reassuring hum my mother offers is enough to put me at ease. For all that came before me, of box cutters against photographs and of decades filled with starved days, that which is before me is a woman who has always professed what I have constantly forgotten. That I should love myself, no matter what. I do not know how to do it though, that much I know. Yet, I am able to add a single question, asking her, “Could we get something to eat?”

A bright softness comes to my mother’s flush cheeks. “Of course.”

Calorie counts have been covered up by tape and black marker. Pictures have been taken down and others put up. My hands no longer tremble and my head no longer swirls when I stand up too quickly. I am not better, but I am also not dying. I am not myself, but I am looking to find who that is with each glance in the mirror. I have not spoken to my grandmother and yet I have also not succumbed to the desire that raged in me to cut away my face from photographs in order to leave a small square of destroyed memories. I am still hungry, though it is for something else now.

“Hey, want to go out after work?” my intrepid friend inquires, the hopeful grin never diminishing from her face even with each and every negative response from myself in times past. I let out a contemplative hum and I can see her face begin to fall with a disappointment she does not want to show. I surprise even myself as I respond, “Sure, but only for a while.”

As she bounces away with a giddy happiness, relaying over her shoulder where to meet her later, I begin to regret my response. Am I ready? Am I well enough to embark on that which terrified me before? I am as terrified of the prospect of going out to eat with others as I am to hear my own grandmother tell me that what I was doing, in starving myself for so long, was perfectly acceptable. In their own way, those I will go out with did the same, by commenting on my healthy eating when I was not eating at all. Will they still say the same tonight? Or will the truth of my life be exposed? Or will they think nothing of it? Just as so many did before as my great-grandmother cut away at her pictures and they only saw the ones that she allowed to remain. For so long I have been asking how it began when I should be asking when it will end.

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afforded myself. In that much, I must try to rectify history.

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Change of the Evergreen Samantha Rodriguez Peter Yang was not a germaphobe. Hell, he was going into a profession where he had to stick his hands in teenagers’ gross, bacterial cesspool mouths. But he couldn't help but cringe as he kicked off his shoes and padded across the grainy tile floor of airport security, his walk resembling a duck as he tried to touch as little of his sock feet to the floor as possible. He had a good feeling about this interview. He knew this was going to be worth all of the disappointing phone calls and emails telling him he hadn't gotten the job. If he had to hear, “You looked great on paper, but …” one more time, he was going to yank his own teeth out. This would be good for him. He needed this. Maryland would be a good escape from all the drama and sympathetic looks he gained from everyone in his small Colorado town. They all knew his father wouldn't be much longer in this world, and he was tired of people looking at him like he was dying, too. He deserved to get away from the talk of chemo treatments, vomit, and stress. He deserved a fresh start. Most of all, he deserved happiness, and if moving halfway across the country is what it was going to take, then by God he was going to do it. A buzz in his pocket interrupted his mental pep talk.

“Peter, it’s Mom.” He knew it was his mother. How many times did he have to explain caller ID to her? He would have given her another lecture on the pointlessness of informing him who was speaking, but he bit his tongue. She didn’t sound like her usual self. She sounded urgent. Desperate.

Scared.

“Peter, I’m worried. It’s your father. It’s happening. The nurse just came in to check on him.

She called the doctor in and he said your dad was… oh… bradycardo-something… I can’t remember the term he used, but he said his heartbeat was abnormally slow. His organs are failing. He sounded worried and said there was nothing we could do. He doesn’t think he’s going to make it through the night. Peter, what should I do?”

Peter didn’t even think about the decision. “Hold tight, Mom. I’m on my way. One hour tops.”

He snapped his phone shut and fought his way back out of the line of security. He dashed to his car and didn't even realize he had forgotten to put his shoes on until he was sitting in the seat of his car with a throbbing pain shooting through his right heel. He ignored it and shoved the key into the ignition. Knuckles white from clenching the steering wheel, tears streamed down Peter’s face. He couldn’t accept what was happening. It was a funny thing to Peter that even though he knew this day Page | 82

was coming, knowing it didn't make it any easier to accept.

He had always heard people say things like we knew it was coming; it wasn’t a surprise when she left this Earth, so that made it easier on all of us. It wasn’t unexpected. Well if he could, he would find everybody who had ever said that and shake them until they understood how ridiculous they sounded. It didn’t matter if you knew or didn't know it was coming — it was still hard even though you expected it. Those liars.

He peeled into the parking lot of the hospital and whipped across three spaces without noticing the white lines. His bare feet slapped across the tile floor, echoing down the long corridor. There was no rhythm to his steps. He checked for room 327. He finally found the room due to the Yang scrawled on the whiteboard hanging on the wooden door. Behind his father’s name, he could just make out the names Scarn and Flemming that had been written and erased before his own father’s. Peter reached for the handle and took one last deep breath in an attempt to steel himself against what he would see on the other side of the door.

His mom gave his waist a quick squeeze and excused herself, leaving him alone with his father. Winded and gasping for breath, he kneeled in front of Dad’s bed with a shy smile.

“Hey, Dad.” No response. “Dad?” He gave his dad’s hand a squeeze and studied the veins until his tears blurred the swollen blue lines into a milky watercolour painting. He blinked them away and cleared his throat.

“Dad, I don’t know if you can hear me or not. I know your heart is still beating according to the monitor, so I don’t know if that means you’re listening. I know they say coma patients can hear, but you’re not in a coma. Anyway, I just —” Peter’s voice cracked. He felt his throat tighten and a tear fall on his dad’s hand. Stupid, stupid.

His dad didn't care what the monitor said. He gave Peter’s hand the smallest squeeze, and Peter relaxed a little.

“Thanks, Dad. Look…”

Peter paused to survey his father, and although his eyes weren’t open, he knew he was listening.

“Dad, I’m sorry I was going to leave you. I’m so, so sorry.”

The restricting feeling returned to his throat and he couldn’t fight the tears that fell from his eyes. A sob shook his chest as he hugged his father’s legs, the scratchy white hospital blanket pressed against his cheek. He hid his face in shame. He couldn’t believe he was so ready to walk out on his Page | 83

parents at a time like this. He was selfish. He didn't deserve anything good to ever happen to him again. He deserved to be laying in that bed, washed out and sunken cheeked, pulling in raspy breaths and liver spots dotting his bald head.

“I love—” He was cut off by the piercing shriek of the monitor and a rush of nurses that seemed to move in slow motion. He didn’t remember the nice lady in scrubs prying him off of his father and leading him out into the hallway. He didn't remember the forty-five minutes he spent crouched on the hospital tile. But he picked himself off the floor and slowly wiped a palm across the whiteboard that read “Yang” until all that was left was the ghost of his father’s name. He wondered where Scarn and Flemming were right now; probably six feet under.

He returned to the floor, and his mother slid stiffly down the wall beside him, laying her blackand-gray-peppered head on his shoulder. She cowered into his chest, and a thought crossed his mind of how much his mother needed him right now. There was going to be funeral planning, and she would have to learn how to manage her finances, considering Peter’s father had always been the money manager.

She was going to have to learn to live alone. Peter hated that for his mother. He hated how she spent thirty-five years with a man she had planned to spend the rest of her life with. His heart truly ached for her, but in the midst of all these thoughts, his chest began to tighten and his breathing grew heavy and fast. He would have to go home and live with his mother so she wouldn’t be lonely and make her breakfast every morning except Saturdays because that was her day to prepare it, and she would have dinner on the table by the time he got home from work every night, and he would peck her on the cheek every evening before bed, and he would work at the local orthodontist in the next town and commute the fifty-five miles to work every day, and maybe he would get a dog, but he would never have a girlfriend or a wife because who wants to date a twenty-eight year old who still lives with his mom.

He wiggled out from under his mother’s body weight and drummed his fingers on his thigh.

Mrs. Yang stared at him through a lens of concern as Peter turned his head to look at her. His sweet mother who always cared, always made time to listen, and had raised him to be the man he was today, needed him right now. And he owed her this. Her brown eyes searched his, and for a moment, it felt as if she knew exactly what he was contemplating. She seemed to be silently begging him to stay. He raised a corner of his mouth and leaned back against the wall, grabbing her hand and promising her that he wasn't going anywhere.

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The funeral was the following Sunday. Peter and his mother had decided on a steel casket — eighteen gauge. White lilies. Fifty-picture slideshow. Brother Jimmy to deliver the eulogy. Black granite headstone. The guests began arriving for the visitation on Saturday night, each one finding Peter and wrapping him in a stiff hug, offering him words that carried no weight. He wondered if this was how it was supposed to feel and if everyone felt this way. He wanted more than anything to be alone right now, not watched like a hawk by the other mourners. Not whispered about. Just alone.

He slipped out the glass doors in the front for a breath of fresh air. Uncle Kinny must have had the same idea. Peter found him leaned against the side of the brick building, taking a long drag from a cigarette.

“Heyah, there, kiddo. Want a puff?”

Peter started to say no like he always did when offered a cigarette, but something stopped him this time. He was feeling reckless.

“What the hell.” He grabbed the cigarette out of Kinny’s outstretched fingers and hunched his shoulders waiting for the light.

The first puff tickled his throat, and he wanted to cough more than anything. He held back his sputter and exhaled as far as he could. With every breath he took, he could feel the warmth spreading down his throat, the sensation reaching a little further each time. He wondered if it would eventually begin to thaw this numb feeling in his chest he had been carrying around with him for days.

“You know, Peter, you’re handling this a lot better than I would if I were you.” Uncle Kinny exhaled a stream of smoke and studied Peter out of the corner of his eye. “Your mom tells me you gave up a chance for a job in Maryland to stick around here for her.”

“Yeah.”

“You didn't have to do that. You know me and your aunt would have helped out. You’ve got to learn to worry about yourself a little, too. What do you want? Now that’s a question worth asking yourself and an answer worth chasing.” He stomped out his cigarette and stared at his scuffed dress shoes.

“Thanks, Uncle Kinny.”

“I’m sorry, kid. I hope I didn't overstep my boundaries. I just want what’s best for you.”

Peter offered a small smile towards his uncle and reassured him that he appreciated the advice.

Kinny smiled in return and moved towards the door. “See you in there?”

“Yeah,” Peter hesitated, “Of course.”

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When he was finally alone, he couldn't shake those words out of his head. He asked himself what he wanted, and the answer was clear. He wanted out. He wanted a break. He wanted a full life, a happy family, and a good job. His feet seemed to know what he was doing before he did, they led him to his car, and he got inside and didn't turn back.

Peter drove back to his house and stayed long enough to cram a duffle bag full of clothes that would last him two weeks. He tossed it in the backseat and sped to the airport for a one-way ticket to Maryland.

By a twist of fate, he got the job he had initially interviewed for. On his drive back to the hotel in Maryland, he called his mother to apologize, and she was of course very forgiving as well, blaming his abandonment on the fact that he had just lost his father. He absentmindedly agreed with her even though he didn't think it was because he lost his father. He thought it was more than that. He was ashamed to come face-to-face with who he knew he was deep down — a coward. There was no excuse for it.

The next few years without his father passed quietly, without anything worth noting, really. He stayed the same old Peter. He hated airport floors, loved coffee so thick with creamer it was practically white, and still rolled his eyes at his mother when she greeted him on the phone with “Hi, Peter, it’s Mom!” as if he didn't already know. But by the time he was thirty, he met Sandra, a wide-eyed young lady who intrigued him with her carefree laugh and bright smile. It’s not that Peter didn’t see these qualities in himself, he certainly thought he had his carefree moments, but he did find it amazing that this woman always seemed to be smiling. He wanted that.

She was twenty-eight, the same age he was when his father passed away, and they had crossed paths in his office when she came in inquiring about a new retainer. They hit it off from the start. And he had to admit, he made her come in more often than necessary for just a new retainer, but he didn't want to come off too strong and ask her on a date on her first appointment. He never asked patients on dates.

Their first date was actually suggested by Sandra, who was quite nervous herself. In fact, she confessed to Peter that the majority of the time she was laughing, it was probably due to nervousness.

On their tenth date, she laughingly told him that she knew he had a crush on her, and when she kept leaving his office time and time again, retainerless and dateless, she decided to make the first move.

She was a happy person, so when she suggested that they go for a walk and rent paddle boats for the Page | 86

lake, he wasn’t surprised. She was the kind of girl his mom thought he needed: happy and spontaneous. They spoke of the usual things: hometowns, aspirations, childhood pets, childhood dreams, and family. Peter did not mention anything about his father, and he knew Sandra noticed this.

It wasn't until their twelfth date that she finally asked about his father. Sandra was sitting on her couch next to Peter watching Seinfeld reruns when she turned to him and pursed her thin lips. He felt her staring at him out of the corner of his eye, so he swivelled his head slowly toward her, not breaking eye contact with the TV until he was almost facing her completely.

“What’s that look for, San?” “I just… have to ask. What happened to your father? I know this is out of the blue, but you know, you never talk about him and it’s kind of odd, Peter.”

“You want to know about my dad?”

She nodded.

He turned off the TV and faced her on the couch. He told her all about his dad, from the first memory he had of his dad picking him up out of the pool and wrapping him in a nice, warm towel to the last afternoon he hugged his legs, sobbing. He told her how ashamed he was to leave his parents, and she just sat there, motionless. When he was finished, she rose to her knees and wrapped his head in her arms.

“I love you, Peter.”

The next year, he proposed to her and by the next one, they were married. At their wedding, his best man, his closest friend from college, slapped him on the butt and made some sort of crude joke about only sleeping with one woman for the rest of his life. Peter laughed it off nervously and walked down the aisle to stand at the altar. Once the music started playing and the doors of the chapel opened to reveal Sandra in a form fitting white gown, his breath caught in his throat. He had never seen something so breathtaking, and he was relieved to see that she hadn’t left him at the altar. The wedding march seemed to take forever, and as she approached him, he grew more and more squeamish. His smile faltered, and she cocked her head to the side in response. She could tell something was off, but she thought it must have been her imagination because a split second later, he was beaming down at her and holding onto her hands like they were his lifeline. Peter composed himself and remembered how good she was for him. This made sense. They could be happy. No, they would be happy. He would make sure of that. He grabbed her hands and squeezed them.

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They had a good marriage; it was nothing like Peter feared. They hardly ever fought, and Sandra made him laugh harder than he ever thought possible with her dorky impersonations of movies that she made him watch so he understood her references. A year into their marriage, they were surprised and elated with the birth of a baby girl, and they decided to name her Eva Rose. She was the most beautiful thing Peter had ever laid eyes upon, and the first time he held her, it felt as if his heart was no longer in his body, but that this baby girl had the whole thing wrapped in a little pink hospital blanket. Life with a baby only made him love Sandra more. Every time he looked at Eva, he saw her mother, and his heart swelled knowing that this human being in front of him was the result of two people’s love. He laid Eva Rose in her crib that first night, and he and Sandra gazed at her adoringly. Peter brushed Sandra’s hand with his own and kissed each of her fingers. Eva Rose interrupted their romantic moment with a squeal of anger.

“Well, Mama, looks like this one is yours,” Peter teased Sandra as she bent over to lift the fussy baby girl out of her crib.

Peter’s feelings of pride and happiness quickly faded within a week of Eva Rose returning from the hospital. The baby girl vomited constantly and couldn't swallow her milk, and when they took her to the hospital after she hadn’t been able to keep anything down for twenty-four hours, the doctors mentioned the possibility of Leigh syndrome, a chronic illness in infants that ends in death.

After multiple tests and a sleepless night in the hospital, their worst fear was confirmed. Eva Rose had the disease. After her diagnosis, either Peter or Sandra spent the night at the hospital every evening for three months. During the day, Peter stayed at his office in an attempt to take his mind off his daughter, who was fading fast. It was easier for Peter to cope with the reality if he just didn't think about it. But sometimes, he couldn't help but think about how awful and sick and twisted it was for his innocent baby to be dying, while he, a seasoned-with-flaws middle-aged man, was granted life.

He reluctantly drove home, in no hurry at all to exchange the dirty clothes in the overnight bag he kept in the car. Peter walked in the house and flopped onto his bed, rubbing his palms against tired eyes in hard circles until he saw a blur of red, black, and green static spots clouding his vision. He stared at the ceiling until the dizziness went away, and he pulled himself up into a sitting position. He was at a loss for how he ended up here. He wasn't happy anymore. This wasn't what he signed up for when he agreed to marry Sandra. He didn't sign up for the long nights sleeping upright in a hard hospital chair, staring into a little plastic container that held his baby all hooked up to tubes. He felt the familiar feeling in his chest. Weight. Rapid breathing. Tightness. He could see Sandra and himself Page | 88

standing next to a small coffin, mourning over the child they never really got to know, and neither of them would speak to each other because they wouldn't know where to begin, completely different people, and their faces reminded each other of Eva Rose, and they couldn't even look at each other anymore. He desperately pulled the already half-packed suitcase out of the closet that he would add to every time he had an episode like this. He threw in socks and began taking clothes off hangers and blindly throwing them in the direction of the suitcase.

Finally, he paused, holding a pair of underwear in his clenched fist. What was he doing? He let the boxers fall to the floor as he sat with his head in his hands, rocking back and forth, tears flowing freely down his face. He sat like this for quite some time, until his phone rang in the kitchen.

“Peter, where are you? Are you almost here?” Sandra sounded exhausted. “I’m just gonna run home and take a quick shower when you get here.”

Hearing the sound of her voice melted away all of his anxiety.

“Yeah, baby, I’m sorry, I got caught up in the office,” Peter lied. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.

I shouldn't be too much longer. I love you.”

“I love you too. I’m going to stay at the hospital tonight, too. I don’t think Eva is doing very well today. I want to be here.”

“Wow, our first night together in months,” Peter joked.

There was a smile in her voice, “Oh, hush. I’ll see you in a little bit. Bye now.”

Peter rushed back into their room and shoved the suitcase into the back of the closet. He grabbed a handful of clothes from the clean laundry basket and the underwear off the floor before leaving the house. But he couldn't shake the unsettled, churning feeling in his stomach.

Everything changed after that night. Eva Rose lost her battle with Leigh at two in the morning and something broke in Peter’s heart and grew cold. Something that he knew a million cigarettes couldn't warm. He no longer cared about anyone else; he didn't trust anyone would be around long enough for him to care. And if they were, then they were probably going to die an awful death because God seemed to think it was amusing to take people from Peter. He grew bitter. He didn't like himself.

But more than that, he didn't want to feel that way. He missed the way he used to be. He missed being happy, and he missed being happy with Sandra.

One night when Sandra went to visit her sister, Peter was watching a show about four elderly men who lived together after their wives died — he actually found it quite funny. But it cut to a commercial that advertised back to school clothing. Kids were dancing across the screen laughing and Page | 89

showing off their new shoes. One girl ran towards the camera and jumped as high as she could, twisting left and right, snapping her little fingers. She couldn't have been more than seven years old with her black curly hair and wide, blue eyes. Peter crumpled against the couch. He had seen the blue eyes before, they were the same as Sandra’s. The same as Eva Rose’s. Eva Rose had the same curly dark hair, too.

It was too much. Was he always going to lose himself every time he saw a child that slightly resembled his own? Everything in this house reminded him of that baby. What did he want? He rushed to his room and pulled out the suitcase.

“So that’s it then.” Sandra gestured toward his half empty closet and open suitcase with a blue button-up shirt peeking out of the top. There were no tears in her blue eyes, just fire.

“You just think you’re done now, huh? What the hell is going on, Peter? You… you… you thought you’d just leave?” Her voice rose on the last word. Peter looked down at the beige carpet.

“Sandra, I can’t do this anymore. The long nights, we don’t even talk, our baby who’s —” a sob cracked through his throat and shook his frame.

Her response was nothing but a whisper.

“This is the worst thing that could have ever happened to us, Pete. But I need you. And if you leave, I don’t know if I can make it out. I married you because I love you, and we agreed to better or worse. This is the worst. But that doesn't give you an excuse to leave me alone to deal with this.” She took a step forward and reached a thin hand out to him. Peter didn't try to catch her hand when she let it graze his shoulder and limply return to her side.

“There is hole in my heart. I was happier than I ever thought I could be, Sandra. And then it was taken from me in the blink of an eye, and that feeling of resentment is something that time will never heal.”

“You don’t know what’s going to change. You act like I’m just something that was put in your life for your own enjoyment. We’re actual people, Peter. You can’t walk in and out when life gets uncomfortable—” “Uncomfortable? You think this is just… just uncomfortable for me? You think I think this is some sick game? I feel like I’m dying over here. I’m telling you right now that I can’t do this, and if I have to look at your face that reminds me of her every single day… I just don’t know what would happen.”

She met his final remark with a gesture of anger. Her clammy palm raked against his face, Page | 90

redness blooming across her hand from his three day old stubble.

“How dare you say that to me like I have no idea how it feels. Don’t you think I feel the same way? You’re her father, too. I see her in you, too. But I choose to see the good things. I choose to see the curve of her lips when you smile. I choose to see the way she furrows her eyebrows the same way you do when you’re mulling something over. They’re good memories, Peter. Honestly, do you even think about me?”

“Of course I do, Sandra—” “Do you even think about how you’re making me feel right now? Or are you just concerned about yourself? You know, you’re going to have to stick around for something, sometime. You can’t keep running from things. You ran from your parents, and —” Peter couldn't handle this. He wrapped his wife in a tight embrace. She sobbed against him, writhing in an attempt to push him away. “I’m sorry, Sandra. I’m not good at this. I can’t do it. I can’t do this for you, and be this for you. It’s better I do this now than in ten years.”

He let her go and grabbed his suitcase from the bed as she sat crumpled on the floor in a heap.

He could still hear her muffled cries through the closed door. And with every step he took, the coldness he felt grew stronger.

Peter Yang was not a bad guy. Hell, everyone around his small Georgia town thought he was a saint.

Sometimes he even did charity work and gave a kid braces when it was an extreme case, and the parents couldn't afford it. But looking back on his life, he couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt for his past mistakes. His dad, his mom, Sandra, Eva Rose; their faces flashed through his mind, and he shook his head to clear the bad thoughts. His past proved him to be a coward, he knew that. But he could do better than that. He could change. And he would, because Annalise was the one. He was sure of it. His left hand absentmindedly patted at the little square box he had been carrying around in his pocket for weeks, now. Peter opened his eyes and cast a long glare across the lake in front him. He felt an arm slip around his waist and a kiss on his neck. Peter could see his whole life playing out right in front of him, and his chest began to tighten.

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New Tank Syndrome Peter Jordan Two tiny fish, no bigger than a grain of rice, are wary not to venture too far from the safety provided by the nooks and crannies of the volcanic rock. During the four years George has been on the ward, they are the only fry to have hatched. While George studies the tank, Doctor Guffy pulls up a chair.

“George,” says the doctor. “What do you think about leaving us?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” says George.

Doctor Guffy pushes his tortoiseshell glasses high on to the bridge of his nose and looks down at the last couple of pages of a yellow coloured folder resting on his knees. “We have your meds as good as we’ll get them. I’d say you’re ready.”

“Where will I go?”

“You remember Lorna?”

George thinks for a second, then nods.

“Well, Lorna has a flat at The Avoca Complex.”

George looks back at the tank.

“You’ll still have regular appointments with me,” says Doctor Guffy. “And a Community Psychiatric Nurse will visit once a week to see how you’re getting on.”

On Friday, George walks into Doctor Guffy’s office and says he’s ready. The doctor reaches over the desk and shakes George’s hand. He suggests George find himself a hobby. Without hesitation, George says his hobby will be tropical fish. Doctor Guffy smiles, gets up, and walks George past the Rec Room to the Staff Room. At the bottom of a built-in cupboard is an old fish tank.

Inside the glass tank are some plastic plants, a fresh bag of gravel, an old filter and a little ceramic sign that says, “NO FISHING!” It’s smaller than the tank on the ward but it’s perfect. George lifts the tank and carries it outside and onto the TrustBus. Doctor Guffy follows with a single suitcase and wishes him good luck.

When the TrustBus arrives at The Avoca Complex, Lorna is waiting at the front door. Lorna weighs two hundred pounds. She always wears black; big loose black blouses and long black skirts and wrap around things and dark mascara and various colours of Doc Marten boots. Her hair is always — intentionally or otherwise — a mess. When she was younger she was into Siouxsie and the Banshees; she hasn't quite gotten over it.

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Lorna says, “Sometimes I might not answer the door… maybe I’m sleeping, or it’s the drugs, or else it’s just me. If it goes on for more than three days phone the cops.”

Lorna has been sober for eighteen weeks. Now she’s addicted to the prescription drugs that helped her stay sober; Diazepam for anxiety, Cymbalta for mood, Zimovane to sleep, and Amitriptyline. She isn’t quite sure what the amitriptyline is for; just knows she has to take it.

George likes his flat: the place is clean and furnished. While sitting on the sofa he wonders where to put his tropical fish tank. He decides to place it on a Mexican pine coffee table in front of the sofa.

The tank needs cleaning. He checks the kitchen cupboards but finds nothing. He makes a decision to go to the Spar.

On his walk he is suddenly aware of how much open space there is; to his right are the football pitches and the scout hall, so much open space. After four years on the ward he isn’t used to it — his head spins and, when he stops, everything keeps moving. He thinks he might like to sit down on the footpath, right there, outside someone’s house but he wills himself to make it, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. Once he gets inside the Spar he feels much better; the fluorescent lights and polished floor have a familiar, calming effect. He buys some extra strong bleach, yellow rubber gloves, and a pot scrubber.

When George gets back to his flat he pulls on the Marigolds and thoroughly cleans the tank.

Then, basin by basin, he fills it with tap water, plugs in the light and filter and flicks the switch. It all works. For a long time, he lies on the sofa staring at the tank, listening to the water being drawn through the filter, seeing how the flow of water is sucked through. Already he can feel his heartbeat slowing, peace coming into his life. The next day, it is three in the afternoon before he wakes. After taking his medication, he calls to see Lorna. He asks if she can drive him to PetSmart.

“What time?” asks Lorna.

“Now,” he says.

Lorna owns a little red Micra. When they take off it lists to the driver's side, like some doomed vessel. Lorna tells George she weighed four hundred pounds on the ward. She tells him they had to get her a custom-made wheelchair.

“I’m half the woman I was back then!” she says. They both laugh out loud.

On the back of her giant wheelchair it said “Property of Mental Health Unit” in big white letters. She says, “Seeing those words hurt more than having it custom built.”

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When they park outside PetSmart, George asks Lorna if he can borrow one of her diazepam.

Lorna says, “Be careful, George. Try and keep everything in the middle. A high can be as bad as a low for people like us. Know what I mean?”

PetSmart is huge. There are so many fish George doesn’t know where to start. An assistant, a boy of about sixteen, asks if he can help. When George tells him he wants tropical fish, the boy asks if he has kept fish before. George remembers the ward, smiles fondly and tells him, “Yes”. The boy says they are doing a deal on neon tetras: ten for the price of seven. George buys ten; he also buys two red tetras and an albino debuwi catfish.

When he returns to his flat he cuts open the clear, plastic bag containing the fish and carefully releases them into the tank. The little white catfish dives straight to the bottom.

That night George can’t sleep.

He gets up early, puts on his dressing gown and sits on the sofa watching his fish. The little catfish looks misshapen: he has a humped back, long whiskers and big pink eyes. He is in constant motion sweeping along the pebbles on the bottom of the tank, over and round the ornamental plants and up the glass sides, his mouth open for possibility. Sometimes he darts at great speed to the surface then races back down to the bottom. George watches him for hours then falls asleep: this is his routine for the next few days.

A week after buying the fish George gets up to find one of his neons floating at the top of the tank. The two red tetras take turns nipping at the body, nudging it along the surface. George gets a teaspoon from the kitchen draining board, takes the hood off the tank and scoops up the dead neon. He carries it carefully, in the style of an egg and spoon race to the kitchen, opens the pedal bin with his foot and drops the dead fish into the bin.

It bugs him all day, the little neon dying like that. He goes downstairs, opens the big community door and checks the car park. Lorna’s little red Micra is sitting where it always sits. He heads back upstairs and rings her bell but there’s no answer.

The next morning there’s another neon tetra floating at the top of the tank. George looks down into the water and sees that one of the tetras is also dead amongst the plastic plants. He takes both fish out with a teaspoon and proceeds again to the pedal bin.

George rings Lorna’s bell and waits, but there’s still no answer, so he goes back to his apartment, gets into bed and pulls the quilt over his head. As he lies there he can hear the low droning of the filter. He is sure it’s getting louder. Eventually he sleeps. And he dreams.

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In the dream he’s in a little red rowing boat in the middle of a busy shipping lane. No matter how hard he rows, he knows he’ll never make it out of the way of a supertanker which just keeps coming: the hull getting bigger and bigger until it’s almost upon him. He wakes to the sound of someone knocking. It’s Lorna. Her hair is especially dishevelled.

“Were you looking me?” she asks.

“Three of my fish died.”

Lorna drives him back to PetSmart. The assistant, the boy who sold him the fish, says, “It could be any number of things. Sounds to me like you might have a fighter.”

“How’ll I know which one it is?” asks George.

“He’ll be the last one left.” George looks at Lorna. Lorna looks at George. Then the boy asks, “What type of filter do you have?”

“Just a normal sponge filter… it’s old but it works… I cleaned it.”

“You cleaned it?”

“Yes, with bleach.”

“Not good,” says the boy. “You killed all the good bacteria.”

George stares at the boy.

“The bacteria in the filter break down the fish waste, purifying the water.”

“I did not know that!” says George.

“Have you heard of the nitrogen cycle?”

“I’ve heard of it, yeah.”

The boy looks down at the floor, places one arm across his stomach, the other hand framing his chin, like an adult might do, and says, “It could be New Tank Syndrome.”

“New Tank Syndrome?”

“You need to give a filter time to build up the good bacteria that break down fish waste.”

George thinks about this. “So, what should I do?”

“Your tank just needs time. If you put too many fish in at once the filter can’t cope.”

George looks at Lorna.

“Do you have the dead fish with you?” asks the boy.

“With me… you mean like, for an autopsy?”

“Ah, no,” says the boy. “We’ll replace the dead fish but we need to see the bodies.”

“They’re in the bin.”

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“If any more die just keep them in a bag in the freezer. We’ll replace them then you can start over again when the filter’s ready.”

When they get back to the car Lorna says, “It’s a fucking KwikFit for fish. They don’t fix anything, just replace it.”

Each day another fish dies. Some days two are floating on the surface or sticking to the plants.

The noise of the filter no longer calms George. Everywhere he goes, he can hear it.

He doesn’t answer his door for three days. On the afternoon of the third day Lorna phones the Community Psychiatric Nurse, who in turn, phones Doctor Guffy. Doctor Guffy tries phoning George’s mobile but there’s no answer. He phones the police. When they break down the door of George’s apartment George is asleep on the sofa beside the fish tank. They can’t wake him. A blue medication box sits on the coffee table. It’s Thursday but both Tuesday and Wednesday’s pills are still in their respective compartments. A small white fish lies on its back on a plastic plant.

When Lorna visits the Mental Health Unit George has a chair drawn up in front of the tropical fish tank. As she approaches he smiles a slow smile of recognition. Then he turns his head and looks back at the tank. The two baby fish have grown just a little, but they are still wary of venturing too far from the safety of the volcanic rock.

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Soul Eric Martell “Of my friend, I can only say this: Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human.” Alexa put her phone down and lay backwards onto her bed, burying her eyes in the crook of her elbow. Oh, Kirk, why do you value humanity so much, she thought, as she always thought when she watched this. Why would Spock have ever considered choosing to be human — to feel the things humans do — once he knew he didn’t have to? Alexa was fascinated by Star Trek — from the first episode through all the movies (though she’d told her friends she only wanted to see the movies because Chris Pine was hot), but the pull had always been and would always be Spock, the half-human who chose to live without feelings.

Alexa sat up in bed, wincing as she did — the pain was sharp today. She’d had to make the cuts deeper than ever before to make the howling stop, and there had been that one dark moment where she wasn’t sure at all if it would, or if she’d stop until she’d laid herself open and crossed into the nothingness she hoped awaited her. But finally, it had gotten, well, not better, but okay enough that she could stop. She had watched the blood run down the drain for a few minutes longer — too long, probably — and then cleaned it up, bandaged herself, and headed off to school.

There weren’t many places a high school junior could cut herself and still be invited to the myriad pool parties that infested the valley of the sun, but Alexa had found some. Sure, she’d freak out any guy who someday tried to get her naked, but she was friendly and well-liked by enough people that her reputation as a girl who never went far on dates was just an idiosyncrasy and not a freak flag.

Everyone liked Alexa. She was on the student council, on the honour roll (but not the high honour roll — that was important to not scare people off), a tutor but not a cheerleader (though she’d been invited, just too busy, you know?). She sat for her younger brother and his friends, and sometimes even did the dishes without asking. Everyone liked Alexa.

Except Alexa.

Some days, she’d sit at school and watch the girls who would show off their scars and the kids who bragged about how many meds they were on and the stoners who medicated however they could and wonder why she fought so hard to keep it to herself? Would it be so bad, really, if she asked for help, or got wasted, or told her parents that her breasts were covered with scars? But then she’d remember that it was none of their business what battles she fought inside. No one needed to know.

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No one deserved to know. And so every day, she wrapped her battle-scarred self up and put on the face that she showed the world and made sure that no one knew.

It took weeks for the scars to really start healing this time, weeks of bandages and red bras (her friends, and even her mom, thought that Alexa was just experimenting with feeling sexy). Weeks of smiling in the halls and pretending that the hugs didn’t hurt. And before the scars started to fade from their original dark red, the howling was back.

Some people envisioned depression as a black dog, the Grim of Harry Potter, come to cast a pall over your life. And on a mild day, she saw the dog, sniffing and snorting and pawing at the ground. But when it got bad, the dog lost cohesion and became a maelstrom. It whirled around her, pulling something essential out from inside her and roared on, louder and louder, as she wondered how no one else could hear it, how could no one else hear this noise this noise that was all things in all the world all things in all the worlds and that’s when it needed blood to stop. Just stop. That’s all she ever asked of it. It smiled at her when the blood came, and became quiescent, though only to a point. For a time, and she could go on pretending that she was Alexa again.

The length of time between episodes was usually measured in months. Sometimes only one, but sometimes three, or once even four. Never just a week. And when she saw the dog after five days, and heard the first howling after only seven, Alexa got scared. She didn’t think she could stop this time, not so soon after the last, not with scars still red and tender. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to stop. That probably should have scared her, she thought. But it didn’t. Alexa was more scared of living with this thing that consumed her than she was of finding out what nothingness was like.

It was a quiet night in Alexa’s home. Her brother was busy with the Xbox, her parents with bills and laundry. They didn’t register her going upstairs, though she did, looking at each of them, wondering if she’d reconsider as she said her silent goodbyes. But the howling was loud, louder than Christmases past and birthdays future, louder than hugs and kisses and vacations and movie nights snuggled in the big bed with Mommy and Daddy, and she knew she wouldn’t reconsider. She made it wait, though, as she watched the Enterprise battle Khan, and lose, one last time. She watched Spock die again and knew that he was wrong in one thing. Sometimes the one needed to do what he — or she — needed to do not for the good of the many, but only for the one. Spock would be reborn in the next movie, of course, and go on to live decades more both in his fictional world and in the real one. Maybe there was a Genesis project waiting for her, instead of nothing. Maybe that incarnation wouldn’t draw in the darkness like this one did.

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Alexa performed no rituals, took no extra precautions. Dead was dead, and this was finally her chance to let go of all the worry. She let the water get hot, then stepped in. She wasn’t alone — she was never alone when the howling was there — but there was plenty of room for them both under the spray. She made the first cut, then the second. Not on her breasts this time, there was no reason to hide. Her wrists were there, and there was a reason people used them. But as the blade sliced into her body, the howling grew louder. It didn’t sigh with pleasure as it had in the past. It didn’t smile. It didn’t pull back. It grabbed her — she could feel it bruising her arms — and pulled her out of the shower. She felt it cover her, howling louder with grief. It took control of her arms and legs and walked her, puppet-like, to the door. Blood spattered on the tile, and the handle, and on the rug, as she was dragged, all-unwilling, towards the hall. Alexa’s mind was a torrent of pain and fear and embarrassment, of terror that would be revealed to her family. Physically, emotionally — she’d never felt so vulnerable. But she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t even slow it down. And then her wet foot slipped on the wooden stair and she went down into the dark. Alexa wasn’t alone in the dark. She could still hear the howling, though this time, the noise made sense.

It told her a story of a young girl who hated. She hated fear. She hated joy. She hated emotions.

She hated emotions because they led to actions she couldn’t predict. Happy children laughed at inopportune times. Frightened children wet their pants. So she fought the emotions. She made the emotions her enemy, just like her hero, Mr. Spock. And she beat them. But she was smart enough, this little girl was, to know that living without emotions would make her a stranger, an outcast, and she hated the thought of that too. So young Alexa built a persona, one which would make the rest of the world happy while letting her continue to deny the thing she hated the most.

Or so she’d thought. They were cunning, those emotions, and they pushed and pushed until they found a way out of their prison. In there, they grew noisome and turbulent, and when they came out, they overwhelmed anything they touched. They didn’t want blood, these emotions, not specifically, but what they wanted, they wanted intensely. If pain was all they could get — real pain, not the simulation Alexa laid on top of everything she did — then they would take the pain. And they would feed on it, grow quiet, and allow themselves to be caged again.

Alexa saw all this, there in the dark, and this time she was the one who howled. Her hate hadn’t lessened over the years, not of her emotions. Not of losing control. But the thing that had grabbed her in the shower wouldn’t let go. And so they fought. They fought about anger. They fought about joy. They fought about fear. They fought about hate. They fought about love and loss, sadness Page | 99

and euphoria. She fought as hard as she could, a battle as vicious and tempestuous as any on any battlefield on Earth or in a movie. She was as smart as Khan. As relentless as the Borg. As vicious as a Klingon. But though she gave no quarter to her foe, neither did she gain any ground. And gradually, both combatants tired until there was no fight left. No point in denying that which was so obviously true. Those emotions were her, as much as her thoughts and her memories and her… humanity. She didn’t know if that package included a soul or not — but maybe there were things greater than herself.

Things that could carry her down the stairs to get help instead of leaving her to die.

When Alexa woke up, she was in the hospital. Her mom held her left hand. Her dad stood behind her shoulder, stubble awkwardly shadowing his face. There were cards and balloons throughout the room, and her brother slumped in a chair gnawing on his fingernails. Alexa’s chest hitched, and then she began to cry. And the howling quieted. Just a little. And it smiled.

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Thrift Shop Swan Terry Sanville

Eugene folded his umbrella, stomped on the welcome mat, then entered the Goodwill Store. The floor manager, Mingo, motioned him over.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t go back there.”

“Why? What’s going on?

“The Zombie Lady’s freakin’ out.”

Eugene looked to the rear of the shop. A crowd of women of all shades and ages surrounded several racks of clothing. Pants, blouses, jeans, dinner jackets, and even bras flew through the air.

Animal grunts broke the silence.

“Cops?” Eugene asked.

“Yeah, I called ’em. Didn’t want to, ’cause that lady’s got enough troubles. She’s quiet most of the time. I’ve never seen her this bad.”

“Maybe she’s off her meds.”

Mingo grinned.

“How the hell should I know? I don’t check prescriptions.”

A police cruiser pulled off the boulevard into the parking lot, its roof lights flashing but no siren. Two officers in rain slickers eased through the front door and Mingo pointed. They moved forward and ordered the women to clear out. In a few minutes they led Zombie Lady outside, guided her into the squad car’s rear seat, then drove away.

Eugene saw her every week or so, along narrow streets that ran through the old neighborhoods south of the Downtown. The first time she had almost run him over, moving like a sleepwalker on crank.

Her dark eyes stared at something over the horizon, her face as white as a geisha’s. She seldom looked at him, which felt strange since most street people treated Eugene as one of their own, and surely not as a retired school administrator. He liked his long-haired and bearded disguise.

She wore a full white evening gown, its ragged hem filthy from dragging the ground. Built like a young boy, she kept her red hair wrapped in a tight bun, carried a little girl’s purse and a lace-fringed parasol.

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“She crazy, you know,” Chuntao, the pretty Chinese woman at Rainbow Donuts told him. “She stand in rain. I give her donut, free…but she no come inside.”

“What’s her name?” Eugene asked.

“Natalia, I think. She speak with accent…so not sure.”

“She’s a strange one.”

“She look like girl, but she old. I tell by her eyes.”

“Where does she live?”

“I think at Shelter, or under bridge.”

After the thrift store incident, on his daily walks around town Eugene made up a short speech to tell the Zombie Lady, once he got up the nerve. After being retired for ten years and widowed for seven, talking with women had become harder, except maybe with Chuntao. But he searched for Natalia anyway, at Goodwill, UVS Thrift, The Hope Chest, and Fred & Betty’s Secondhand. She looked intelligent, even in her spaced-out condition. But her eyes never seemed to quite focus.

“Why you care about crazy lady?” Chuntao asked. She poured him a third cup of coffee and leaned against the counter in the empty donut shop. “You think you save her? Be big hero? Forget it.

She lost.”

Eugene smiled and stared unseeing at the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

“She’s no more lost than I am. I wanted to be my wife’s hero. But she died anyway. Once was enough.”

“Not your fault … and … I don’t believe you.” Chuntao shook her head and returned to wiping the counter and refilling the sugars.

On a cloudy Monday, Natalia charged toward him on Pacific Street. He stood his ground. She continued on a collision course. Just before she smashed into him, she slowed, the impact gentle, with more bone than flesh. Eugene figured she weighed less than a hundred pounds. Her high-pitched scream made him jump.

“You’re real,” she said, looking into his eyes for the first time.

“Yes, of course. Why would you think differently?”

“I sometimes see… see people… like the ones following me. The voices tell me I should keep moving, run.”

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Eugene stared past her along the street, the sidewalk empty for blocks.

“Yes, that would be frightening. But I must have scared them off. Look.”

She turned slowly and followed his gaze.

“They are gone. A big man like you would be fearsome while I am nothing. Sometimes, I’m not sure I’m even here. Am I here?”

Eugene abandoned his plan for making a speech. He grinned, reached forward and took her hand. “Yes, you are here.” He felt her stiffen. Her breaths came faster. But she wouldn’t release his hand.

“You must stop them from forcing me to practice. They will destroy me.”

“Practice? Practice what?”

“I can’t quite remember. But I know they do not want me to tell anyone. They say I will suffer if I do. There is always one of them… watching.”

“Hey listen, Chuntao at Rainbow is a friend of mine. Let’s go there and get some donuts.”

“I won’t go inside.”

“Why not?”

“Rats and bugs crawling everywhere.”

“They aren’t there when I go inside. Come on, have coffee with me.”

Eugene pulled her gently along the street. They threaded their way through the neighborhood of dilapidated warehouses, muffler shops, and trailer parks until reaching the donut shop, at the junction of two broad boulevards.

Chuntao’s eyes widened when they pushed through the door. “I see you find Natalia.”

“We’re here for some of your fine donuts, and maybe a little coffee.”

Natalia clutched his arm in a vise-like grip and edged inside. They sat at a corner table next to the plate-glass window with traffic noiselessly blasting by outside. Chuntao brought two mugs and a coffee pot.

“May I have tea, please?” Natalia asked. “Some Lapsang Souchong would be wonderful.”

Chuntao rolled her eyes but brought a teabag and hot water with honey to sweeten.

Eugene and Natalia sat looking at each other, not speaking, not forcing conversation. She smelled of sweat and unwashed clothes that had been rained on and had never fully dried. Chuntao served fresh donuts. Natalia nibbled on a plain cake, finishing only half of it.

“I’m sorry. I don’t eat much, can’t afford to gain weight.”

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She sipped her tea and continued to stare until standing abruptly.

“I must go, it’s time for practice, time for practice.”

“Practice what?” Eugene asked.

“I can’t tell you. They will know.”

She hurried from the shop. He watched her open-mouthed as she disappeared into the distance, her white gown bouncing as she walked.

“You do good,” Chuntao said. “I never get her inside. I think she like you.”

“How can you tell? She didn’t say much of anything.”

“You kind man. She will talk. You still have chance.”

“Chance? What are you talking about?”

“You know, you know.” Chuntao let out a high giggle and returned to her spot behind the counter.

After that day, whenever they met on the street, Natalia offered Eugene her hand or clutched his arm and they’d walk to Rainbow Donuts, sit without speaking in the late afternoon sun until she bolted for the outdoors. One evening, he checked under the Marsh Street Bridge and found her on a mound of dirty bedding, the river roaring not more than ten feet from where she slept. Eugene backed away, thought about how he might help. On a particularly stormy night he paid for a room at the Motel 6. He left her there watching a badly adjusted TV and fingering the dry clothes he had bought for her at Fred & Betty’s Secondhand.

Two weeks went by without an encounter. Eugene checked all the thrift shops but couldn’t find her, phoned the hospitals without success. He couldn’t stop worrying about her safety: being raped by some homeless troll; caught by a flash flood and swept away; or attacked for no other reason than she was small, seemed frail, and an easy target.

The spring rains had slacked off when he caught up to Natalia. Mingo stopped him as he entered the Goodwill Store. “Hey look, you know the Zombie Lady better than anybody that comes in here. Maybe you can get her to stop.”

“What’s she doing now?”

“She’s tossin’ the shoe section. Got the kids and their mothers in an uproar. If you can get her outta here, I won’t call the cops.”

Eugene crept toward the rear of the shop. Shoes flew through the air. A black stiletto-healed Page | 104

number slammed into a mirror, shattering it. Little kids and women screamed. Natalia moved along the shelves full of shoes, yanking pairs from their perch, grunting, then slinging them over her shoulder. She had cleared most of the women’s selection and was working on the top shelf filled with the weird stuff that didn’t belong in any particular category. She grabbed a pair of pink slippers with squared-off toes and stopped, then kicked off her flats, exposing raw feet, calloused, blistered, bones and toes badly deformed, with dried blood under the nails. She pulled on the slippers and wrapped and tied their ribbons tightly around her ankles. Standing, Natalia reached up and drew her filthy gown over her head. The crowd gasped. A pink leotard covered her upper body, breasts flattened by its elastic pressure. White tights encased her slender legs.

Mingo joined Eugene. “After she broke that mirror, I called the cops. They’ll be here any minute. If you can get her outta here, I’m cool with it.”

Eugene smiled.

“No, let her dance. I’ll talk to the police and pay for that mirror.”

Natalia had pushed herself up onto her toes, arms extended in a perfect V above her tilted head.

She raised one leg and joined it to the other at the knee, balanced with no shaking, then moved rapidly across the floor, spinning, arms extended. Little kids from the toy section sat on the floor and formed a gallery of gawkers. They stared wide-eyed, smiling, while their mothers called to them to be still and watch.

Natalia danced with eyes half closed, moving from one position to the next, gracefully, fluidly, face fixed in a state of bliss. She moved along the shoe section aisle, threatening to crash into display racks, but always in control, her jumps perfectly executed, never a stumble or waver on the landings.

The thrift shop’s front doors opened and two beefy patrolmen entered. Mingo hurried to intercept them as Natalia continued to dance before her spellbound audience. In a flurry of leaps and turns, she slowed to a kneeling position, then slid to the floor, eyes closed, hands clasped as if praying, her slender body still, at peace. The women clapped and the children joined in. Natalia rose to her full height and, with great dignity, made a deep curtsy. The little girls surrounded her, giggling, trying to copy her dance moves.

A cop stepped forward. “Excuse me, miss, you’ll have to come with us.”

Natalia backed against a display rack. “Father, I said I would practice more. I will…you’ll see.”

“It’s okay, officer,” Mingo said. “I’m not going to press charges for the broken mirror. You Page | 105

can let her go.”

“I’m afraid not. We’ve received other complaints. This woman needs help.”

The officers retrieved Natalia’s gown, purse and shoes, escorted her outside to their patrol car.

Eugene followed them.

“What are you going to do with her?” he asked.

“Are you a relative?” the cop said.

“No, just… just a friend. A good friend.”

“They’ll probably put her on a 72-hour psychiatric hold. You can call County Mental Health if you have questions. She’ll be taken care of.”

Natalia stared at him from the back of the car, her eyes clear, focused. A quiet smile of what might have been satisfaction creased her face. As Eugene walked home, he thought about how they might live together, how she could put on special performances, at schools, community arts events, show off her talents to those who would appreciate their beauty and grace. He tried building a story of hope for both of them.

Two days later, Eugene phoned Mental Health. Natalia had already been released to the streets.

He searched all the places that she might hole up. As the weeks passed he slowly surrendered any chance of finding her.

“She out there somewhere,” Chuntao told him. “I know you want to save her. But you lucky you not find her.”

“Why the hell is that?” Eugene shot back, scowling.

“I say before, she crazy. She make you crazy, crazy sad. I want you stay normal.

You my friend first.”

“I haven’t felt normal for a long time. Maybe I should start. And … and thank you.”

Chuntao smiled coyly and refilled his coffee cup. He returned to reading the Wall Street Journal and she to wiping down the counter and refilling the sugars.

Months passed. One hot summer day, Eugene sat reading the L.A. Times. He let out a yell. Chuntao almost dropped a tray of donuts and hurried to his side.

“What wrong? You sick? You hurt? I call 911.”

“No, I’m fine, I’m fine. But look.” He pointed to a short column tucked away in the newspaper’s back pages. A grainy image of Natalia stared back at them.

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“What it say, what it say?” Chuntao demanded.

“Natalia was killed in a homeless camp far from here.”

“I’m sorry, so sorry. But why she in paper? Like me, she nobody important.”

“You’re wrong…on both counts. It says here that she was considered a Prima Ballerina by dance critics about ten years ago, worked out of New York City and London until she disappeared from the stage.”

“What happen to her?”

“Schizophrenia.” Chuntao shrugged.

“What’s that?”

“It’s not important.”

She frowned and reached for her counter rag.

“Wait a minute… wait.” Eugene gulped his coffee and stared at his age-spotted hands. “It’s very important. It’s a sickness that strikes some sensitive young people. It smashes their brains with a sledgehammer and breaks them. They stumble through life looking for their own scattered pieces.”

Chuntao stared at him, wide-eyed.

“How … how you know?”

“I had to tell parents that pushing their kids to be the best doesn’t always work.” He banged his coffee mug down. “Fathers and mothers can carry the dark seeds of schizophrenia in their genes, and we don’t know why.”

“So?” Chuntao shrugged again. “Like I say, Natalia real crazy.”

“Maybe it is crazy… to try and build beauty out of what rags you’ve got left.” Eugene shook his head. “I’m glad I got to see her dance, even for just that one time. The thrift shop will never feel the same.”

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Biographies David McGraw David McGraw, 21, is a Creative Writing graduate from the University of Strathclyde. His poetry has previously been featured in the Keith Wright Literary Memorial pamphlet, 2014, and in Octavius Magazine on three occasions, 2016. David currently lives in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, and has a keen interest in grassroots sport.

Stephan Kyriacou Stephan Kyriacou is a Creative Writing graduate and tiny queer writer who likes sushi, puppies, and wine.

J. J. Steinfeld Canadian writer J. J. Steinfeld is the author of eighteen books, including Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2014), Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2015), An Unauthorized Biography of Being (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2016), and Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2017).

Kaitlyn Crow Kaitlyn Crow is an undergraduate student at Longwood University. Her work has been published in Vagabond City Literary Journal, Apeiron Review, and The Flexible Persona, among others.

Isabelle Harris Isabelle Harris is married to a Pure O sufferer, whose symptoms were triggered by the birth of their son in 2015. She lives in the UK and works full time while caring for her family. They are currently working on recovery, with optimism for the future.

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Pauline Aksay Pauline Aksay is an interdisciplinary artist and storyteller based in Toronto, Canada who explores perception, imagination, and limits of memory. Her work offers an evocative glimpse into human experience from the eyes of an outsider. As a Peer Wellness Educator at OCAD University, Aksay supports individuals struggling with their mental health.

Emma Cookson Emma Cookson graduated with a degree in English Literature with Creative Writing. She went on to carry out work placements at DK Publishing, Gladstone’s Library, and Comma Press. Emma is now working and writing in central Manchester.

Verity Ockenden Verity Ockenden is an athlete based in Dorset, finding the highs of her sporting success exhilarating, and the lows pretty low. Running is the single most constant aspect of her life, a powerful tool against depressive episodes and anxiety, teaching lessons in body image and confidence. Most of her inspiration to write comes while running, and she hopes to share with you the feelings she returns with. Verity has a degree in English Literature & Italian from Swansea University, and a master’s degree in English from Lamar University, Texas, where she began writing her first novel. You can reach her on Twitter and Instagram with the handle @youngverit21.

Kasy Long Kasy Long is a 2017 Creative Writing graduate from Ohio Northern University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Icarus Anthology, Ink Drift, Oracle Fine Arts Review, The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, and more. She is an editor and writer at Haute Life Magazine in Terre Haute, Indiana.

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Ailsa Williams Ailsa Williams is 26 and from South Wales. She is a former secondary school English teacher and now working in higher education. She is the mother of a mischievous Westie called Daphne and a lot of her free time is spent improving/decorating a 140-year-old cottage she bought in 2016. She has an MA in English and a BA in Classical Civilisations. Ailsa's poetry focuses on themes of mental health, relationships and observations of the world around her. This is her first piece of published work.

Rosie Sandler Rosie Sandler shares her life with an anxiety disorder, a husband and their two children. She lives in Essex, where she writes novels and poetry, leads creative writing workshops and tends her garden. Her poems have appeared in, among others: Writing Motherhood (Seren), The Emma Press Anthology of Dance, The Poetry of Sex (Penguin), The Rialto, Lighthouse Journal and Dark Mountain.

Megan Crosbie Megan Crosbie is a queer writer and occasional performer from Edinburgh, who often writes in the boundary between flash fiction and poetry. Her writing has been published in journals such as Firewords Quarterly, Northwords Now and Litro. In her free time, she enjoys travelling, drag shows, and too many vegan donuts.

Anelise Farris Anelise Farris is an East Coast native but a West Coast convert, as she is thoroughly enjoying life in Idaho, where she is currently pursuing a PhD in English. Her research interests include literature of the fantastic, folklore, and disability studies. When she is not teaching or writing, Anelise enjoys reading comics, watching horror movies, and hanging out with her fur babies.

Anne Anthony Anne Anthony’s poems have been published in Poetry South, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Page | 110

and the ArtAscent Art and Literature Journal selected her as the Gold Writer for her poem, High Horse. She lives and works in North Carolina.

Ruth Boukhari Ruth Boukhari has been awarded a master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of Sydney and a Diploma of Screen and Media at Metro Screen in Sydney. In 2012, her short horror screenplay Delores was published by Regime Books in Regime Magazine of New Writers 01. In 2014, she was the producer and script consultant on the short documentary Tom's Plan and the short drama We Are Broken (both made for Metro Screen). In 2015, she was co-producer for short mockumentary Be Famous (Naomi Fryer Productions) and writer for Excelsia College's short romantic comedy screenplay Soul Date. Since 2013, she has had numerous feature screenplays optioned both in Australia and Hollywood. Presently, she is collaborating on a sci-fi TV project as creator and writer with LA-based producers.

Joyce Butler Joyce Butler is a 41-year-old writer from Waterford, Ireland and is married with two children. She was shortlisted (19th out of 198) for the Atlantic Short Story Contest 2015 for her short story The Lone Wolf. She is a writer for spillwords.com, where she has had several poems published.

Kim Hutson Kim Hutson, based in Manchester, won the SCBWI Margaret Carey Scholarship 2014 for her children's novel The Times and Life of Mr. M. She is currently writing YA whilst working as associate lecturer in Creative Writing at MMU and supervising a museum.

Aanchal Ghai Aanchal Ghai, a 27-year-old writer, is freakishly passionate about writing (she's got a tattoo to prove it) and that, coupled with the fact that she is hilarious, truly sets her apart (Aanchal also doesn't believe in tooting her own horn). It all started with the Autobiography of an Umbrella in the third grade and Page | 111

she hasn’t stopped making up stories ever since. Aanchal despises writing in the third person but believes in the greater good and will do whatever it takes if it means having mimosas with Oprah in the near future.

Bri Griffith Bri Griffith is an undergraduate Creative Writing major at Carlow University. She's the emcee for Red Dog Reading Series, and Editor-in-Chief for the Carlow Chronicle. Her poems have appeared in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, ITWOW International Anthology, Alien Mouth, Rogue Agent, and Voices from the Attic Vol. XXII.

Kaylin Mansley Kaylin Mansley is a graduate of Penn State’s BA/MA Creative Writing program. Previously, her work has appeared in Bluestockings Magazine. She lives in Prague where she teaches English and butchers the Czech language daily.

Katie Watson Katie Watson is a writer based in Manchester, whose work focuses on themes such as mental health, identity, LGBT and intersectional feminism through short stories, poetry and spoken word. She performed at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2017 at That’s What She Said spoken word event, ran by For Books Sake. She is a member of the Worker Bee Collective (@WorkerBeesMcr) and tweets @KWatsonWriter.

Damhnait Monaghan Damhnait Monaghan is a Canadian now living in the UK. Her stories have found good homes in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Still Point Arts Quarterly, the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology 2016, The Incubator and Spelk Fiction. She’s on Twitter @downith.

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Siobhan Denton Siobhan Denton is a teacher and writer living in Wales, UK. She holds a BA in English and an MA in Film and Television Studies. She is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing. She tweets @siobhan_denton and writes at theblueandthedim.wordpress.com.

Leanna Levandowski Leanna Levandowski is an artist, writer and mental health advocate living near Dayton, Ohio. She earned a degree in Sociology from The State University of New York at Oneonta. In her free time, she enjoys photography, art, nature and cat wrangling. As an aspiring novelist, she is currently brainstorming her first novel. You can contact her at: lealevwrites@gmail.com.

Jacqueline Carter Jacqueline Carter lives in Melbourne, Australia and when she's not preoccupied with the stories she weaves in her head, she works as an administrator, volunteers with the Melbourne Writer's Festival each year and spends her time being an unabashed fan of all things pop culture.

Amanda Staples Amanda Staples is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, who specialises in anxiety and depression. She is fascinated by emotions and the workings of the mind. She has a minor obsession with death and tea. Amanda has a completed novel and is seeking publication while working on a second. She has had several short stories published, broadcast or placed in competitions and has a one act play going into production. She lives in Bristol with her long-suffering husband and two anthropomorphised dogs.

Allison Wendt Allison Wendt is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied oil painting.

She holds an MA in Counselling Psychology and loves being a therapist. She also enjoys yoga, aerial dancing, and is working on some short stories and a novel.

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Erika Schmid Erika Schmid is a writer fueled by tea, yoga, and dark chocolate. Her love of history fuels a bit of her writing too, whether it be ancient civilizations or her own past. She is currently working on several novels, a statement she has been saying since she was a teenager and does not believe will change anytime soon. Erika can be found curled up against a rainy Pacific Northwest day and on Twitter @timeywriter.

Samantha Rodriguez Samantha Rodriguez is a junior at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee where she majors in publishing and marine biology. This is her first published work. She says that Peter Yang is the first character she's created who doesn't feel like just a figment of her imagination, but instead she thinks of him as an old friend. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, snow skiing, and deep-sea fishing.

Peter Jordan Peter Jordan is a short story writer from Belfast. In 1999, he suffered a brain tumour. In 2017, he won the Bare Fiction prize, came second in the Fish, was shortlisted for the Bridport, and longlisted for the Bath. He has received various awards, including a literary bursary from The Lisa Richards Agency, while taking an MA in Creative Writing. Three Arts Council grants followed. His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and journals, including Flash: The International Short Story Magazine, The Pygmy Giant, Flash500, Thresholds, Litro, The Incubator, The Honest Ulsterman, Dogzplot, the Nottingham Review, Spelk and The Avatar Review. He has taken time out from a PhD in Belfast’s Seamus Heaney Centre to complete the edits on his short story collection A Series of Small Surrenders, which will be published this year by KUP. You will find him on twitter @pm_jordan.

Eric Martell Eric Martell is a teacher, physicist, dad, and intermittent writer who focuses on short stories and flash fiction, often dealing with emotional issues and/or fantastical elements. You can find much of his other writing at projectgemini12.wordpress.com Page | 114

Terry Sanville Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and one skittery cat (his in-house critic). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, poems, and novels. Since 2005, his short stories have been accepted by more than 240 literary and commercial journals, magazines, and anthologies including The Potomac Review, The Bitter Oleander, Shenandoah, and Conclave: A Journal of Character. He was nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes for his stories The Sweeper and The Garage. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist, who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

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Resources For anyone affected by the themes raised in We Run Through The Dark Together, we offer the following list of useful resources. These helplines are all based in the country of original publication (United Kingdom). If you are outside of the UK and require help, we urge you to check this list of worldwide resources: http://togetherweare-strong.tumblr.com/helpline MIND www.mind.org.uk 0300 123 3393 Lifeline www.lifelinehelpline.info 0808 808 8000 Anxiety UK www.anxietyuk.org.uk 08444 775 774 Bipolar UK www.bipolaruk.org.uk OCD UK www.ocduk.org SANE www.sane.org.uk 0300 304 7000

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