Issue 6: Hidden Things

the

Golden Key

spring/summer 2015

issue 6 hidden things Featuring work by Lucas Olson, Christine Butterworth-McDermott, Shanna Streich, Lindsay Fowler, James Heflin, Sara Mithra, Khristian Macom, Brenda Mann Hammack, Sarah Ann Winn, Josh Jones, Katherine West, and Mary Coons.

Art by kAt Philbin.

“So he scraped the snow away, and while he was thus clearing the ground he found a small golden key.”

“Now he believed that where there was a key, there must also be a lock, so he dug in the ground and found a little iron chest.”

Once in the wintertime when the snow was very deep, a poor boy had to go out and fetch wood on a sled. After he had gathered it together and loaded it, he did not want to go straight home, because he was so frozen, but instead to make a fire and warm himself a little first. So he scraped the snow away, and while he was thus clearing the ground he found a small golden key. Now he believed that where there was a key, there must also be a lock, so he dug in the ground and found a little iron chest. “If only the key fits!” he thought. “Certainly there are valuable things in the chest.” He looked, but there was no keyhole.

Finally he found one, but so small that it could scarcely be seen. He tried the key, and fortunately it fitted. Then he turned it once, and now we must wait until he has finished unlocking it and has opened the lid. Then we shall find out what kind of wonderful things there were in the little chest.

—Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, “The Golden Key”

Table of Contents 36

07

I ASK YOU TO TELL ME A STORY

EDITORS’ LETTER

Mary Coons

Susan Anspach, Carlea Holl-Jensen, & LiAnn Yim

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38

FINDING THE GHOSTS

THE FORGOTTEN BEDROOM

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Shanna Streich

James Heflin

ROSE HARPER

TRANSFIGURATION AT THE BOTTOM OF MOOMAW LAKE

Sara Mithra

Brenda Mann Hammack

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THE LAKE

A CATALOGUE OF OUR NATIVE MONSTERS

Lindsay Fowler

Khristian Mecom

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GODMOTHER

Christine Butterworth-McDermott

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THE QUARRY Lucas Olson

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THE DOG WHO SWALLOWED THE FISH Katherine West

48

APPENDIX ROSE, APPENDIX SNOW, APPENDIX GLASS Sarah Ann Winn

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CONTRIBUTORS

THE SLEEP WALKER

Thank you for reading!

Josh Jones

ISSUE ART B by kAt Philbin

Issue 6

2015

Editors'

Note

T

here have been many exciting firsts for The Golden Key over the past year. We’re thrilled to begin paying our contributors with this issue, and last fall we hosted our first flash fiction contest, judged by the wonderful Karin Tidbeck (http://www.karintidbeck.com/). It was the winning story of this contest, Shanna Streich’s “Finding the Ghosts,” that inspired this issue’s theme: hidden things.

In Issue 6, we have work that is secretive, work that is searching. We have work that exploits formal elements to conceal and uncover. You’ll find yourself seeking something that lingers just out of reach, but be careful— sometimes when that longed-for object is finally in hand, it will transform itself in unexpected ways.

Some hidden things, like the sinking body in Lindsay Fowler’s “The Lake,” may remain hidden forever, while others, like those in Lucas Olson’s “The Quarry,” will soon be revealed by inevitable natural processes. And in some cases, as in Khristian Mecom’s “A Catalogue of Native Monsters,” finding what’s hidden may not be nearly as strange a journey as what happens once the sought-after object has been found.

We’re delighted to present this issue of elusive work, with eerie, exquisite illustrations by the talented kAt Philbin. We hope this issue unsettles and surprises you, and that you find something in these stories and poems you didn’t even know you were looking for.

Four pieces from this issue will be available free to readers on our website. The remainder of the issue is available as a PDF for $4.99, via Gumroad. Every dollar of your purchase will go toward paying contributors.

Please help support The Golden Key and its writers by purchasing an issue today.

— Susan Anspach, Carlea Holl-Jensen, and LiAnn Yim July 2015

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n o o s d n a h e ak w a e y a l ard their e h s t Bu

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sof t thumps and wails...

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“She pressed and lifted the lid and looked down into glowing whiteness.�

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{ Winner of the Golden Key Flash Fiction Open 2014, judged by Karin Tidbeck }

Finding the Ghosts { Shanna Streich }

Mother said there are no ghosts, silly, close your eyes and you won’t hear them anymore. But she lay awake and soon heard their soft thumps and wails. Tonight she would find Mother and show her where the sounds came from. She went down the steps and through the dim parlor, where the phonograph was missing from the round table. In the kitchen there was only light from the back porch and no one was there.

When she’d gone down the night before to tell Mother about the ghosts, Dad’s friend Walt was standing with his penguin shoe resting on top of Dad’s army trunk in the corner. He tapped his cigar ashes into one of Mother’s canning jars. You go on back up to bed, he told her. Your ma and pops went to the picture house to see Valentino and I’m just watching things for a while. Dad doesn’t like Valentino, but she didn’t say so.

Tonight she stood for a moment in the kitchen while she got her cat-vision. She could see Walt’s large shape outside, smoke rising around his hat. Her toes found the smooth spots on the floor that didn’t squeak. She went to Dad’s trunk and could hear the ghosts laughing now, their light pushing through the spaces around the lid.

They shouldn’t be in there—it was the only thing Mother and Dad asked her not to touch in the house, for goodness sakes. That’s where Dad keeps his heavy boots and mementos from the war and all the letters Mother sent to him when he was away, and you should respect people’s private things. But they must have found the key, gold colored like Dad’s spittoon and hanging high above the back door where no one ever noticed it. She looked out to the porch and saw Walt tilt his head and blow smoke to the moon. She knelt down to the trunk and ran her hands over the rough scratched metal top and felt the crackle of the paper mailing label that said Dad’s name. Her fingers slid to the curved metal parts on the corners, the rivet bumps and lock-catch in the center. She pressed and lifted the lid and looked down into glowing whiteness.

She heard the phonograph playing, five foot two, eyes of blue—Mother’s favorite, and she always smiled when Dad sang but oh! what those five feet can do. There was movement below the ghost cloud that smelled like Walt’s cigars, bodies dancing and gathered around tables covered with jars and bottles. And there was Mother’s face looking up through the white, her red lips open in surprise. Mother had on a shiny dress she’d never seen before. She reached in and her hands touched the splintery step of Dad’s apple picking ladder. Walt banged open the screen door and said hey now, girlie. She leaned forward and fell to her mother.

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Rose Harper { Sara Mithra }

When Laurel cannot find the honey spurdle in the kitchen, she dives beneath the quilt seeking Rose’s sleeping form, pushing aside sheets and gowns until she reaches the grand alluvial fan of Rose’s dark hair.

It only took once finding a brooch under Rose’s skirt (hooked to her dingey bloomers) for Laurel to accuse her every time of capturing a missing bauble in her thatch.

Sleeping Rose hardly stirs, except to worry an embroidered rose on the corner of the quilt, thinking, no doubt, even in dreams how her mother cursed her “Rose.”

Years of mauve. Dowdy Aunts twisted curling paper in her hair to no avail, her curls flat as her voice in the choir.

Her name sapped the strength she may have reaped from one like Charity or Philomel.

Laurel blushes to appraise Rose-in-herself: pasty, sapworn, napping away a fine afternoon, long since given up pinkening her wardrobe or sneezing at pollen.

Hastening past lace drawn close across Rose’s waist, Laurel resembles her own namesake: ornamental yet astringent, branching less-than-courtly entanglements.

To abandon the fruitless search, Laurel rests her cheek against Rose’s thigh.

A honey spurdle? She can carve another tomorrow out of butternut or sugar pine.

Now, she rather drizzle honey as the bees do.

Without the spoon.

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A Catalogue of Our Native Monsters { Khristian Mecom }

The following is a catalogue of native wildlife seen in the Florida Everglades:

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1. Alligator mississippiensis – the native son of Florida.

A. But really not so special, as they were everywhere in the Everglades.

B. Although, he suspected that they had some kind of magical property. As soon as you spotted

one, more appeared.

C. In his notes, he wrote, “Perhaps they don’t really exist until you see them?”

D. But, no, they were always there. i. Always.

2. Agkistrodon piscivorous – also known as a water moccasin.

A. They moved through the water like belly dancers.

B. Poisonous.

i. Like really, poisonous.

C. He almost stepped on one. His boot just missed its tail. He thought a lot about what

would’ve happened if the snake had reared up and bitten him.

D. He would’ve died out there all alone—

i. The mangroves swaying over his body.

ii. The brackish water devouring his skin and organs.

iii. And only his bones remaining to be bleached by the sun.

3. Ardea alba – the greatest of Egrets.

A. Hunchbacked birds with long legs that went on for miles.

B. Grand and elegant—all white feathers with an orange bill.

C. He often dreamed he was a Great Egret. And in those dreams, he was eaten by an

alligator.

i. But he didn’t die, however, but lived on inside of the alligator like Pinocchio in

the whale.

a. It wasn’t such a bad life—him and the alligator were symbiotic.

D. His note: “Maybe a Great Egret would’ve cleaned my bones if that cottonmouth had

gotten me.”

4. ? – it had no scientific name, but many called it the skunk ape.

A. The Florida variety of what is commonly referred to as Bigfoot.

B. It was dusk. The sun had turned the shallow waters a pinkish red. He was grateful for

the reprieve, for the oncoming night. Nothing was worse than Florida in July. The heat

made you sick. He had, without quite meaning to, fallen asleep in his airboat. Parked

beneath the only tree for miles, he covered his face with his hat and closed his eyes for

only a moment. When he woke, he knew he had to get backquickly—he didn’t navigate

well at night. But he paused to watch the sunset. When he turned back around to start up

the airboat, he saw it.

C. A hulking figure—dark fur, glowing eyes, all muscle.

D. It looked at him.

E. He looked at it.

F. “What the fuck?”

i. That was him, not the skunk ape.

G. There were two ways it could go: people would believe him or people would not believe him.

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The following is a catalogue of native wildlife seen in his bedroom: 1. Girlfriend disbelief-us – also known as Rebecca.

A. “You saw what?”

B. “Those don’t really exist, do they?”

C. “Could it have been just some monkey that escaped from the zoo or something?”

D. “Yes, I know monkeys and apes are different species. Don’t be an asshole. I’m just trying to make sense

of this.”

E. “Were you still dreaming?”

F. “Maybe you should stop yelling at me? I’m not calling you crazy!”

2. Girlfriend worry-icus – known for their tired expression and faux-soothing voice.

A. “You really need to let this go.”

B. “How long can you search for something that may not really be there?”

C. “Please.”

i. “Please don’t go out there again.”

ii. “Please stay here with me.”

D. “I don’t know why this is so important to you.”

E. “It’s driving you crazy.”

3. Girlfriend breakup-gus – soon to be known as ex-girlfriend.

A. “I just can’t do this anymore.” i. “This!”

ii. “All of this!”

B. “I think it might be for the best if I stayed with my mom for a little bit.”

i. “Yes, I’ll be back.”

ii. “Some of my stuff is still here.”

C. “Of course, I still love you.”

i. “I’ll always love you.” ii. “Always.”

D. “But this isn’t you.”

i. “You’re not who I fell in love with.”

ii. “I don’t know who you are anymore.”

4. Anolis sagrei – brown anole lizard.

A. It died a week ago.

i. The lizard, that was.

ii. Also, he suspected he did, too.

iii. But he was a scientist, not a goddamn poet.

B. The brown anole was decaying quickly in the Florida heat and humidity. Already, its skin was all dried

out—a paper-like consistency. If he held the dead thing between his fingers, he imagined he could grind

it to dust.

C. The strange thing was it still clung to the wall across from their—no, his bed.

D. How long could something dead persist?

E. How long could he?

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How long could something dead persist?

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The following is a catalogue of his logic on how he could win her back:

1. Find the skunk ape.

2. Find the skunk ape.

3. Find the skunk ape.

4. Possibly skin the damn thing once he found the skunk ape.

5. Offer Rebecca the hide.

6. Or maybe keep it alive.

7. Could he trap it somehow?

8. Take it on a national press tour, visiting all the morning talk shows and the late night ones.

9. Become famous.

10. Marry Rebecca on top of an airboat in the middle of the Everglades, just the two of them and maybe their parents and the caged skunk ape.

11. But, wait, then what?

12. He’d figure out the specifics of it all later.

The following is a catalogue of the events leading up to and including his disappearance:

1. Neighbors reported hearing him working late into the night. One woman—Eileen, an early riser due

to the fact that she was a local bus driver—said she saw him around four o’clock in the morning. He was

standing in his driveway. The garage door was up. There were power tools and saws visible. She said

good morning as she walked to her car. He didn’t acknowledge her. As she reversed out of her own

driveway, she caught a glimpse of what looked like a large metal cage. She was the type of woman who

knew better than to ask questions.

2. A camera at a southbound Florida Turnpike tollbooth took a picture of his license plate as his

SunPass—a prepaid toll transponder—account was out of money. The camera also takes a picture of the

driver, and it was clearly him driving his truck. There were no other passengers with him. Still, if

someone was involved in his disappearance, they could’ve murdered or kidnapped him after he exited

the turnpike.

3. Rebecca went over to his house to pick up some of the stuff she had left behind. Or at least, that had

been her excuse. Really, she had missed him and wanted to make sure he was doing okay. He hadn’t

called her in over a week, which was odd. Although, she had told him to move on, she wasn’t really sure

if she wanted him to. When he didn’t answer the door, she let herself in with her key—he hadn’t changed

the locks, nor had he planned to. The house was unsettlingly quiet. It seemed like he hadn’t touched a

single thing since she had left: her running shoes were still by the door, her earrings still on the

bathroom counter, her bra still hung on the closet doors, and her leftover pizza was still in the fridge. It

was like walking through the ruins of Pompeii. She half-expected to find him, buried in volcano dust, as

still as a statue, exactly where she had left him. But he was nowhere to be found.

4. The university he taught at kept trying to get ahold of him. He had missed three weeks of classes and

had abandoned his students, who came into the Biology Department demanding to know where he was

and what was going to happen to their grades. It was a rather large mess, and the head of the

department vowed to fire him as soon as he showed up again.

5. Rebecca, after a disturbing call from the university, went back to their house. He clearly hadn’t been

home. She began to wonder if something bad had happened. Had he hurt himself ? Got lost somewhere

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in the Everglades? Or even worse, did he find that Bigfoot creature again? Had it eaten him alive? She called the police and filed a missing person report. They told her there wasn’t much they could do.

6. His truck was found in the parking lot of a visitor center at Everglades National Park. It had been there for a week or so, according to an employee. Or maybe longer. They weren’t sure; they had been out sick for a few days.

7. A short search was conducted in and around the visitor center. A few wildlife officers who knew him went out further into the Everglades but found no trace of him.

8. Every day, for months on end, Rebecca searched for him. She learned to drive an airboat and would cover a great distance each day, stopping every now and again, peering off into the distance with a pair of binoculars. Her skin became tanned and worn under the sun. She encountered all manner of strange creatures: alligators, wading birds, insects, lizards, snakes. She spent so much time in the Everglades she began to believe that she herself had become some wild creature. She was no longer human. Her family begged her to give up, to come home, to move on with her life. But there was something driving her search she didn’t want to look at too closely. And that was why she couldn’t give him up for dead. His disappearance was all her fault. All she had to do was believe him. If she had just believed him, then—

The following is a catalogue of theories about what happened to him:

1. Somewhere out in the Everglades his airboat broke down—maybe he ran out of gas or the propeller

snapped. The possibilities of what could’ve gone wrong were endless. And because he was out so far, he

knew he was in trouble. Hiking out was out of the question. His cellphone got no service.

A. The only course of action he had was to stay where he was and hope for someone to find him.

No one did.

i. He died of starvation and dehydration.

ii. He was still huddled under the seat of his airboat.

B. Another version had all of the details of the first, except after a day, he decided to try and make

it back. But he didn’t make it far: he tripped and broke his ankle. He died.

i. An alligator took his body.

ii. Or his body sunk to the bottom of a marsh, and he became a part of the ecosystem he

so loved.

2. He had narrowed down his search area and was close to discovering the skunk ape. It was late in the

afternoon when he saw it: there, in the distance, a dark shape moving in a lumbering way. He waded into

the water after it. For an hour, he trailed behind the creature—quiet and unseen. The skunk ape smelled

to high heaven. Smelled like a decaying carcass left in the sun. He thought of turning back many times.

Would he be able to find the airboat again? Could he drag the skunk ape back to it? But then the skunk

ape arrived at what must’ve been its den. On a high piece of ground was a grouping of dense gumbo

limbo trees, royal palms, and saw palmettos. The skunk ape made its way through a small opening.

A. He readied his tranquilizer gun and disappeared into the trees.

B. A shot rang out over the stillness of the brackish water.

3. When he spotted the skunk ape, he followed it back to its den. But as he watched the large ape-like

creature sit and play with some sticks it had brought back with it—it was so engrossed in the activity and

clearly more intelligent than he had originally given it credit for—he couldn’t bring himself to shoot it.

The skunk ape was not a means to an end. It was a living thing that deserved his respect, was due its

dignity. There were, he realized, certain things in the world that should remain a mystery. Humans would

only destroy the skunk ape. Because that was really all we were good at it.

A. He abandoned his airboat.

B. He decided the only life worth living was one where he accepted the wildness of his own nature.

4. Something broke inside of him.

A. Something simple.

B. Something primal.

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She could no longer chase his ghost around The following is a catalogue of our native monsters:

1. The specter of grief – also known as tragedy.

A. Rebecca stopped going into the Everglades. One day she just woke up and stayed in bed. She

had planned to search that day—had a lunch packed and her gear all ready. She went back to

sleep instead. It was just that this overwhelming feeling of tiredness had invaded her mind and

body. For what felt like weeks, she slept.

B. And then when she awoke, she knew she was done. She could no longer chase his ghost around

in the sun-filled water of the Everglades. If she kept on going like she had been, then pretty

soon it would be her that was the ghost.

2. The parasite of heartbreak – or the feeling of something burrowing deep into your skin.

A. He never recovered from that feeling.

B. Regrettably, this species of monster killed most of us in some way or the other.

3. The beast of love – the native daughter of all.

A. The skunk ape was alone in the world—the last of its kind. A sad story: its mate had died

after being attacked by an alligator. For days, he lingered on, bleeding slowly until there was no

more blood. As a creature of lofty intelligence, she buried her mate on a high piece of ground.

She mourned him for years. That was until he came along.

B. A human male. The first time she saw him, she recognized something in him—a shared grief,

a mutual heartbreak, a need for love. So she decided to keep him. The two of them alone in the

Everglades would build their own kingdom of monsters.

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“It was late in the afternoon when he saw it: there, in the distance, a dark shape moving in a lumbering way.�

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Godmother { Christine Butterworth-McDermott }

Daughter not-daughter, girl in silver gown, spare a little sparkle for me as you tread down the steps I prepared you to navigate.

Glass does wonders for the footing, letting you glide across the hard surfaces, nearly skating. Remember I taught you the steps to the dance, how to curtsey, how to cock your head to let the moonlight shine across your cheek so it looks kissed by dew, how to make pumpkin sweet to him. Don’t forget from which vine you came: thread back hand over hand into the garden. Don’t forget who tended you with magic. Do not leave me lonely, spellbound by age and service, in this small cottage as fire diminishes into ash.

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The Quarry { Lucas Olson }

“To them it’s just a rectangular pond, as black and limitless as the night sky.”

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rry ...

ly On

par t

ua q icu he t lar n i kinds d e p of secrets are drop

The monster doesn’t know how it came to be in the quarry. Like everything else, it supposes, it must have been dropped in like a wishing penny. This explanation is enough for the monster. It considers itself a chronicler of a sort, but it does not have much taste for autobiography.

The people in the town don’t know that the monster is there. The new generation has forgotten how deep the quarry was dug, forgotten even why it was abandoned to the elements and left to flood with groundwater and rain. To them it’s just a rectangular pond, as black and limitless as the night sky. A log floats in the middle that the stronger swimmers try to balance on. Once there was a swing, but the rope broke and the heavy rubber tire tied to it sank to the bottom to live with the monster.

Naturally, the townspeople know that the quarry could hide something. One of the science teachers at the high school likes to joke with new students. She tells them the quarry is even deeper than the Marianas Trench.

“Anything could be down there,” she intones to the class, whispering so it sounds like she’s disclosing to them something they shouldn’t know. A few less perceptive students have fallen for it over the years.

She always reluctantly explains the truth to them. “There’s nothing at the bottom of that quarry but granite blocks and construction equipment,” she says, and returns to her lecture.

But her truth is no better than her lie. The construction equipment was hoisted out when the quarry was abandoned (small companies don’t have the benefit of disposable machinery) and with it came the last of the granite blocks. No, the only things at the bottom of the quarry are secrets. The monster is the biggest secret of all, since no one in town knows they are keeping it.

Only particular kinds of secrets are dropped in the quarry: only things people want forgotten, secrets never meant to be re-exposed. Secrets people want the darkness to destroy so thoroughly that the town can live as if they never happened. Sometimes the monster wonders if it was meant to be one of those secrets.

For the most part the monster is too content to wonder much at itself.

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The monster does not think of itself as a monster. That name sits waiting above the waterline, but on the flat granite floor of the quarry—in the monster’s home—it considers itself a caretaker; an ally to the townspeople. After all, who else could keep all of the secrets safe and sinless at the bottom of the quarry?

The skinny fish that populate the water? The bugs, the tadpoles, or the turtles? No, only the monster is qualified. Only the monster knows where all of the secrets sit, buried like treasure by the darkness. At any moment the monster can stretch out one of its thin, spectral arms and touch them. Can touch: A large photograph set in a frame that was once gilded. The couple in it, freshly married, bleached by the water until both the bride and the groom were ghosts.

The contents of a cardboard box (long disintegrated), full of a child’s toys, bright and colorful like precious stones.

A rifle, older than the monster but newer to the quarry, its iron barrel jammed into the sediment. It was still hot when it entered the water.

A sedan, rolled in with the headlights still on. The granite brick that held down the gas pedal had been mined from the quarry and the monster was happy to welcome it home. Though the front of the car had crumpled on impact, the rest remained intact, even though schools of small fish now swim through its open windows.

Though the monster tends carefully to these secrets and others like them, it does not give them too great consideration. To the monster these secrets seem incidental. The bodies are what the monster guards like crown jewels.

There are only two, their entrance separated by years (the monster doesn’t know how many; the monster cannot count). The first, a boy, did not mean to do what he did. A clear day, sun as bright as the future. School in session somewhere else, far out of his mind. The boy and his friend alone at the quarry instead, their absence a victory, their stolen beers the trophies they use to commemorate it. A dare. A climb. The high stoney precipice of yellow granite, topped thinly by small pine trees. A leaping yell, a writhing dive into the quarry’s open mouth. A long held breath as the ripples evened out and the thunder of his jump disappeared.

The other, the woman, different. Wrong season, winter, water skinned with patches of ice. Wrong weather, wind, rain, clouds spitting down at the rest of the world. Wrong clothes, a nightgown and a winter coat, pockets and fists weighed down by stones collected from the lip of the quarry. The monster near the surface, confident in its solitude, its great green eye wrinkled with veins and barely hidden by the darkness. The woman exhales, opens her mouth, and takes one hard step off the cliff and into the water.

Both of them, to the monster, were luminescent in the darkness. Living comets, singular lights trailed by a stream of bubbles as they spun and tumbled their way through the water at a weightless pace that ignored time. They still sit at the bottom, waving in the darkness like pond fronds in the wind.

The monster guards these things because it knows something the townspeople do not. The monster knows that the water is getting warmer. The roof of its black, bottomless world is sinking. The monster knows that the quarry is drying up.

For now the townspeople and their children swim in the sunny months, their bare plump legs dangling into the water. They swim and they drink and they sing at the edge of the water, barbecuing in the sunlight, making love in moonlight when they believe no one is around to see (at the end the love is thrown into the water: another secret).

But someday, the monster knows, the quarry will dry. Then the secrets—the secrets the town forgot it was keeping—will draw fresh clean gasps of new air. Meanwhile the monster will do its best to smile, will close its great green eye, and will die with its many slender arms spread wide like an open hand.

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The Sleep Walker { Josh Jones }

There aren’t any children left in the village, other than Pasha and I, and Pasha won’t play with me anymore. He keeps to himself now, squirreled away in some attic or wandering the surrounding wood in silence. Sometimes he’ll happen upon me in the rowan grove, and I’ll see the loneliness eating away at him from the inside out, leeching away his color until his papery skin is almost translucent. We won’t need to speak. He’ll sit beside me, and we’ll watch the birds flit back and forth between the branches. Other times he’ll look for me between the wooden alleyways as I watch the villagers trudge to and from their shops and homes. But Pasha never follows me to the rail station, and I know he hates that I linger there, hates that I always seek a glimpse of a traveler or a flash of another child’s face.

The trains arrive before dawn or after dusk, only stopping long enough to stoke the engines before chuffing away to larger towns. Whenever I hear the shriek of a whistle, I hurry to the station even though Pasha says I shouldn’t. He says it’s not good for me, that I should learn to find contentment. I tell him to stop being so bossy.

Pasha has delicate, spindly limbs and never speaks above a reedy whisper, but he likes to act like he’s the adult.

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We used to play games together. He liked hide-and-seek best of all. He always knew the most clever of hiding places, but now he complains that I’ve found them all out.

Now I’ll sometimes creep up behind him and startle him, sending him scurrying from the shadows, his pale features coloring, his fists clenching in anger, and he’ll shout at me, or as near a shout as he can make, more of a raspy choking whisper. Zoe, leave me alone, he’ll say, and then he’ll run away and sulk, and I won’t see him for days and days, maybe longer. Time spins oddly for Pasha and I, and it’s hard for me to remember how often we see one another or how long ago it was that I played with other children.

I like to sit atop the station house so that I can look inside each train car. Sometimes I’ll see a motherly-looking woman in one of the coaches, and I’ll crane my head to search the compartment for signs of her family. Usually there is only an older man with her—perhaps an uncle, perhaps a new husband—or sometimes an old crone will sit by her and jab a gnarled finger at the darkness beyond the window. Only rarely will there be a child nestled beside her or curled in her lap, and I’ll feel myself unmoored at the sight of such perfect skin, such cherubic and porcelain features, almost like I’m falling from some great distance.

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ten to the groaning ice.

I kneel besi de m y coll ection and lis

I tell Pasha they remind me of dolls. I think I remember having a favorite dolly—I must have had one—but I can’t recall her face, her feel, her smell. I ask Pasha if he remembers his old toys. He says nothing, just leads me into the attic of one of the abandoned cottages. Sunlight seeps through the slats and shingles of the roof. There, between two oaken beams, sits a small wooden box without a lid. He hunches beside it and motions for me to look. Inside: a miniature regiment of tin soldiers. Their paint has faded and their metal is burred in a layer of dust. I want to take them out, clean their faces and polish them until they gleam. One is missing a leg; another, a rifle.

They’re lovely, I tell Pasha.

Pasha doesn’t respond, and I can’t read his face.

Wedged against the side of the box, underneath a stiff-legged soldier, lies a faded daguerreotype. I make out a man and a woman, their faces stern, proud.

The man in a silk suit; the woman in a calico print and bonnet. They seem familiar, like the fading vision of a dream I cannot hold on to.

Who are they?

Pasha shakes his head and stares at his hands, at his spidery fingers. Dust motes tumble about him in the splayed shafts of light.

Come, I have something to show you, I say.

He follows me out of the attic, out of the village and past the rowan grove, almost to the lake, still frozen in the final grasps of winter. A freshly fallen snow has blanketed the thinning wood. A hushed silence surrounds us, broken only by the crack of thawing ice that echoes across the lake. I lead Pasha into a small cleft that cascades toward the shoreline. A forlorn hemlock stump rises out of the snow in the middle of this ravine. It is burled and weathered with a fist-sized hollow in its heart.

Here, I say, and point to a reflective glint inside the darkened hollow.

He peers inside the hole, and his eyes widen. I love Pasha’s eyes, how clear and pure they are, the color of the sky reflected on the ice beyond us. He looks at me, then back at my collection, at the buttons, the ribbons, the cameos, and my favorite piece, the one that sits on top, the silver locket on a silver chain. I’ve never opened it, and I like to imagine what lies inside: perhaps a lock of hair, blonde or maybe red, curling just at the tips, and an ivory miniature of a young woman, her lips rouged and turning upward in maternal affection.

Zoe, where did you get these? Pasha asks, his words slow and measured.

I found them.

You took them.

No, they were given to me.

You took them from the Sleepers, didn’t you. You stole them, he says, and his voice has risen to a shrill whisper.

They were presents. They gave them to me.

But Pasha doesn’t listen. He never listens. He’s gone before I finish speaking.

I kneel beside my collection and listen to the groaning ice. A spectral sun strains through a tear in the clouds, streaking them in shades of pink and gold.

The edge of night bruises the low hanging sky. From the lake comes another plaintive wail, and I wait for the fall of dark.

—

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I pace the roof of the station again, walking its length with my hands clasped behind me.

I never lose my balance and am as silent as a cat. In the distance a whistle howls; moments later the train emerges from the shadows of the wood. It groans and hisses and finally halts beside the platform. The stationmaster waves his lantern about and shouts at the carters to get moving, but these are old men, and they push their barrows forward with stooped and weary shoulders. I see the engineer get out and talk with the stationmaster. A flask is passed between them, then a pipe is lit. Nobody else gets off, and I feel the tightening inside me relax. There will be no Sleepers tonight.

I do another turn along the length of the roof. The carters don’t see me. They keep their eyes cast low as they unload the casks and crates from one of the freight cars. Farther down, I spy a few coach carriages. Their windows are fogged over, but I can make out the shapes of men inside: merchants in fur-lined capes reading newspapers; a cassocked priest with his fingers steepled in front of him, praying or sleeping; soldiers playing dice and rolling cigarettes. None bother to look out of the windows. No one ever notices me.

A wave of dizziness passes through me when I look inside the last compartment. It is dimly lit, but I can tell there are two of them, a boy and a girl. Across from them sleeps a gaunt woman in drab dress. I stop my pacing and stare without blinking. The world in my periphery seems to stretch away from me, distances growing impossibly far so that there’s only me and the sleeping figures. Then everything rushes back, like a stretched elastic band snapping back on itself, and I’m stepping forward, as if pulled by some invisible tether. I drop down lightly onto the wood planks, cross the platform, and slip aboard.

I know Pasha will be angry with me. He will say in that thin, somber voice of his, You promised.

But I cannot stop.

I tell myself it’s just one look. Nobody will know. Nobody will mind if I just watch them. I only want to watch the rise and fall of their chests as they sleep.

The boy leans his head against a rolled blanket. His hair haloes his face in dark whorls. His sister’s face has the same rosy complexion, the same dimpled cheeks. Her chestnut tresses are bound up by a bronze comb, and her hands are buried inside a rabbit fur muff. Her lips—so red, so full of life—move ever so slightly, as if reciting some forgotten poem. Across from them the dour matron clutches a rosary in birdlike hands, her face scowling into her slowly rising chest, and I decide that she cannot be their mother. Her face is too stern, rigid even in sleep, her cheeks too angular: the face of some spinster governess. She lets out a long wheezing exhale and begins to snore. She won’t awaken soon.

I should leave, should return to Pasha.

The girl shifts in her sleep, murmurs something, and my whole body trembles in pangs of anticipation. I know that I cannot resist her, cannot resist myself, and I’m inside the compartment, standing beside the Sleeper, so near, so very near. I want to run my fingers through her hair, to caress her unblemished skin, and I’m leaning close to her, even closer. And then, only then, do I whisper.

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— She inhales with a long, languid sighing, and I smell the powdered scent of the governess, the rich animal odor of sweat, of fur, of the leathern seats. Her eyes flutter open, and everything seems clearer, more vibrant, the way the world looks after surfacing from underwater. I can make out the grain in the wood paneling, the lustre of the brass fixtures, the chequered patterning of threads in her scarf, even the variegated strands of hair on the furs.

I whisper: Come.

The Sleeper rises. The furs fall about her, and she exits the compartment without a sound, leaving its door open behind her, as if the wind itself has spirited her away. The others sleep on.

We make our way down the narrow aisle of the train and out onto the near-empty platform.

In the distance, the stationmaster limps alongside the cars, weaving slightly, making his way toward the engine. We trot across the platform unseen, past the ticket office and into the cobbled street still slick with snow. The Sleeper’s cheeks glow pink as she looks with me at the shuttered shops. The curtained windows of the homes above spill gauzy light onto us. I don’t see Pasha watching. Perhaps he won’t disturb us while we walk. The train won’t leave for another hour at least. I can always have her back before it leaves and brag to Pasha that I can be good. That I don’t need him to tell me what to do.

I whisper to the Sleeper to hurry now, and we make our way past the church and the deacon’s home, past the cemetery and its rimed stones, past the joiner’s house and its velvet curtains. A light snow has begun to fall. The flakes weave and cartwheel then disappear in the shadows between the buildings. Ahead of us, a bobbing lantern lights the flakes like fireflies, and a cowled figure approaches: an old babushka wearing a faded cloak over her skirts. She nears us and raises her lantern higher, casting weird shadows across her face. Pinpricks of light dance in her pupils.

“Who? Who are you?” she asks, her voice quavering, her eyes wide in astonishment.

I whisper to the Sleeper to say the only thing I can think of. “I’m Zoe,” she says, and the truth of her words startles me and turns the woman’s face gray.

“Bohze moi!” the woman cries and holds her hand to her mouth. She staggers back a step, almost collapses onto the snowy curb. Her breath sputters forth in ragged gasps, and she nearly drops her lantern. I pull the Sleeper along with me. The silence of the street swallows the sobs of the old grandmother, and we melt into the shadows of the last few houses.

The cobbled street fades into a rutted track; soon even that disappears beneath a blanket of snow. Our feet crunch deliciously over the frozen ground, and I want to run, to leap, to feel the rush of wind about me. We laugh, and the Sleeper’s voice shimmers across the wooded landscape. The lights of the village are behind us now. Tall pines and firs spring up around us and shelter us from the wind. The snow isn’t as deep among the trees, and our feet move quickly across the sloping downs. Soon we reach the rowan grove and pause amid the circle of trees.

I look up. The snow has stopped; a starry patch of sky peers at us through the branches.

We walk in circles about the grove. A northerly wind runs its fingers through the Sleeper’s hair, and she closes her eyes and smiles. Grass spikes poke through our footprints. Young spring shoots, ensconced in ice like delicate crystals. I help the Sleeper unlace her boots and slip them off and her stockings too. A faint warmth seeps in through her feet as she splays her toes in the dry, powdery snow. She kicks her feet, sends a plume of white flying through the

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sound of splintering ice, e h t call es i r i ng r a c me e ,c lak al e th

g lin

her

.

Aw ind off

air. She laughs, we both laugh, and we dance, kicking our feet high and whirling around. The stars spin dizzyingly above.

Pasha’s voice slices through my reverie. What are you doing? he says. He hovers on the far side of the grove between two of the largest trees. His eyes are shining needle-points of starlight. They’re almost all I can see of him.

We take a step toward him. I tell the Sleeper we must be brave. “We just want to play with her. To dance,” she says.

Take her back, he says. His voice is quieter now, barely a whisper, but even more cutting.

I know that he’s right. I know I should return her. I know I will feel miserable if I don’t.

There’s a wetness on our cheeks and I realize that she and I are crying.

You mustn’t take her any farther, Pasha says.

A wind off the lake carries the sound of splintering ice, calling me, calling her. The Sleeper’s breath quickens, and I know what I must do.

“I’m sorry,” we say and push past Pasha. He says nothing, just looks at us with those pale, sorrowful eyes, and then recedes into the shadows. We walk faster, passing beneath more trees, and into the tumbledown clearing that spills out to the icy shoreline. When I look back, Pasha is nowhere to be seen.

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Ahead of us the hemlock awaits. We kneel beside the stump, and the Sleeper reaches into the hollow and buries her hand into the nest of ribbons and buttons. The icy metal of the necklace slithers across her palm. We shiver at the touch of all the different textures: the silk ribbons, the corduroy buttons, the tracery of the locket. I help the Sleeper remove the bronze comb from her hair. Her tresses fall about her face, the strands tickling our cheeks. We hold the polished comb in front of us. In it we can see our reflection, our shining eyes glinting— almost glowing—in the starlight. We place the comb on top of my collection, and I don’t want to leave this place, this moment, but another sound of cracking ice draws us forward like a siren’s cry, pulls our limbs, our body, our entire singular self toward the yawning expanse of ice.

We slide across the mirrored surface, and we’re laughing, reeling, almost falling over. The Sleeper shrieks with delight. Her voice peals across the wastes and into the silent trees that line the shore. We run faster, slipping and skidding. Her skirt billows out around us. The clouds shift in the sky, unveiling a gibbous moon. We spread our arms and lean our head back skyward to bathe in its light. Beneath us, shadowy shapes of feeding fish flee before our feet.

And we run. Faster, ever faster. A beckoning wind pulls us along, and I feel as if we’re flying.

Ahead the ice darkens, turns an almost inky black, and our feet are splashing through a slush of ice-melt. We kick up a spray of pebbled, icy water with each stride. Fissures form across the thawing surface, and I know we’re close. Three more steps and the Sleeper’s foot breaks through the lake’s frozen rind. The water grabs us, pulls us down insistently, invitingly, deep into the lake’s embrace.

I finally feel alive again.

The world turns blue and silver. I see a flash of scales dart above us, toward the light. I whisper to the Sleeper, Go farther, farther still, and she kicks her legs, and we descend. The moonlight fades about us, but I see even more clearly, my vision growing stronger with a warmth that radiates about us and from within us, a smoldering glow of heat that starts at our fingers and courses along our limbs. We’re almost there. I whisper to the Sleeper, Go faster, but she no longer hears me, and our limbs are slowing. The warmth has faded, consumed by nothingness, as we sink lower and lower until we reach the other Sleepers. Their hair flows like tendrils of seaweed; their tattered dresses are colorless in the stygian dark. They turn to stare at me, their faces so serene, so sad, so terribly alone and abandoned.

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“Here, I say, and point to a reflective glint inside the darkened hollow.�

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“There were two girls in the forest...”

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I Ask You to Tell Me a Story { Mary Coons }

you say you’ll tell me a lie1 and call it a parable

there were two girls in the forest now there’s one

1

she’s digging well past nightfall emptying a hole of sky into sky

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The Forgotten Bedroom { James Heflin } { The Golden Key Flash Fiction Open 2014 Honorable Mention, judged by Karin Tidbeck } The excavation began by the bureau in the forgotten bedroom. It had been a deliberate forgetting, the hardest sort. The excavation began by the bureau because Ellison, the youngest among the seven of us, insisted without ceasing that she had seen dancing upon the Oriental rug a figure no larger than a doll. It was then we remembered again the bedroom. We told her no, that such figures never danced upon rugs.

She bore our denials with a wrinkle in her broad forehead, her black irises ensconced below. She stomped away to the library, where our father had given us free rein in the days before he shipped to the Barbary Coast and did not return. She brought volumes down from shelves high as the Himalayas, creaked open their bindings and perused for hours.

On a rainy Thursday in August, she revealed to us that she believed what she had seen—in a tall hat, she emphasized—could only be one of a few varieties of creature. She listed them to a gathered assembly of all the Rudgard siblings, flipping the top page of a crisp white paper pad as she began.

“Brownie,” she said. “Pixie. Unmindful leprechaun.” “Why?” we asked.

“No wings,” she said. “And the hat.” She opened a book and pointed in turn to depictions of each.

“Unmindful?” asked Hildegest. Ellison did not answer.

We did not wish to discourage her, but we did not believe that such creatures existed, nor that they wore hats. The excavation would, we felt, lay the matter to rest.

We peeled back the rug, pried up the floorboards, and found hard dirt. We dug the hard dirt and uncovered a tarnished silver box. Within rested a translucent amber button.

Suspended inside the amber button we saw a tiny insectoid creature with large eyes, a kindly expression, and five attached legs plus one nearby that looked as if it had been frozen in mid-escape from its owner. Though it is hard, of course, to read the expressions of such creatures.

No one spoke. We replaced the box, patted down the dirt. Ellison helped us nail the floorboards back into place. From then on, however, we found that the bedroom could no longer be forgotten. The same summer, Ellison’s blonde hair grew redder, and the wrinkle in her forehead gave everything she said a parenthesis that never closed.

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“And here he was at the bottom of Moomaw Lake, surrounded by giant snakeheads.�

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Transfiguration at the Bottom of Moomaw Lake { Brenda Mann Hammack }

After chasing some Zs at the local Sleepeasy, Cephus Seymour Clay drove his ‘71 Chevy into prehistory at the bottom of Moomaw Lake.

It weren’t the booger sugar, or even the oxycoffin made him queasy as a grouper snagged by fate.

He’d told some pretty big lies he could still ‘preciate even as drowning diminished color.

And though his mother-in-law often claimed he weren’t much of a catch (even crayfish had more use—in pie or étouffée), Cephus knew his coonhound, Ella-May, would miss him.

She kept the faith, full of ticks, but pure as grain alcohol. He’d left her tied up to a stake. And here he was at the bottom of Moomaw Lake, surrounded by giant snakeheads. Just another marinated mistake. Some say: Jesus were a fisherman, but Cephus ain’t after being saved. He’d sooner snort some algae, turn to tadpole, then swim away.

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The Lake { Lindsay Fowler } { The Golden Key Flash Fiction Open 2014 Honorable Mention, judged by Karin Tidbeck }

I once held hands with a man as he drowned. He had cinderblocks chained to his ankles, his arms extended toward the surface of the lake, like a baby who waits for his mother to pick him up.

I watched as he was thrown into the water; I watched his murderers drive away.

Then I dived in after him and clung to his reaching arms. I always wanted to know how it felt to float in reverse, to be irresistibly dragged to the bottom of the water.

The man’s eyes crinkled with relief when I gripped his forearms. He thought I was trying to save him.

I crinkled my eyes back at him, my body slack, as we journeyed together to the bottom of the lake, past trailing strands of weeds and particles of algae.

His eyes widened in panic when he realized I would not save him. A jet of bubbles burst from his nostrils.

Bad idea, I wanted to tell him; but I would conserve my own air.

The man clawed at my arms, attempting to use my limp, drifting body as a ladder to haul himself that much closer to the surface. I remained calm and allowed him to try. When his struggle ceased, I grew tired of floating to the bottom of this neverending lake. I released my grip on the drowning man, and kicked off his shoulders to launch myself to the surface.

I did not look back to see that we were propelled in opposite directions, that, at least momentarily, I hastened his descent.

I did not hear the man nestle softly on the muddy bottom.

For all I know, the lake has no bottom, and the man has been floating ever since.

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The Golden Key

I wa tched y. his murderers drive awa

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The Dog Who Swallowed the Fish { Katherine West }

The woods are not safe for the likes of you—best you learn to love the hearth and the blessings of a barred door. Lay your head upon my slipper, my dear, my flop-eared, fox-pawed pup, gaze into the fire, and listen: A dog much like yourself left home in the heat of an Indian summer, sure the sun was calling him to follow. As he trotted west through the whispering grasses, he glanced back often to admire his shadow’s growth; he’d never covered so much ground before. As the sun reached the horizon, the dog reached the river: pebble-banked, tree-flanked, and wide as the sky. Through eyes stung by the water’s sparkling, the dog considered his options.

It felt disloyal to turn back now: anticlimactic to return to his yard. The fields had been rife with burrs and standing in the shallows refreshed his feet. Perhaps a little further in.

The water nipped at his belly, encouraging him forward. Hurry, it coaxed. Or be left behind.

He swam head-up, squinting into the light to keep his trajectory true. By the time he’d reached the middle—or what he guessed was the middle—he had only a burnt orange nub to follow: a nut, a berry, rolling over the edge of the world. He’d never doubted he could catch the sun; he hadn’t prepared for solitude in the dark.

His hip cramped and he went under, gulping great draughts of frigid water. When ribbonweed ensnared his hind legs, he decided dark air was a better risk than dark water and thrashed free. After an eternity of blind panicked splashing, his pads scraped the pebbles of the far bank.

Chilled through-and-through, he waded up the shore, stomach sloshing. He vomited gouts, then trickles of water, but the weight barely budged … or rather, it moved in disconcerting ways, twitching like a rabbit.

He collapsed, letting the warm shore-stones comfort his body. When he slept, his dreams muddled weeds and water with a weak voice protesting—or pleading. Something in him was afraid.

“Please let me sleep,” the dog whimpered. “After I wake, I’ll help if I can.”

When he awoke, the reedy lamentations had migrated, occupying his gut instead of his dreams. “Who are you?” the dog demanded.

“I am Fish.”

Aha! thought the dog, I knew I took more than water from the river.

Fish spasmed and the dog yawped in discomfort.

“You have eaten what I have eaten,” groaned Fish and grew still.

“Poor poetic fellow,” thought the dog, “But so we all must end.” And satisfaction alieved his sorrow, for he needed nourishment for the trip ahead. But to what destination? The river was charcoal; the sky indigo; the forest black. Only the shore gleamed faintly, its gray stones hinting at a path into the woods. Was it wiser to sleep away the night here or continue in search of the poor shrunken sun?

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hi

“"When he slep t,

ding.”" plea or ng—

ds and water with a wea e e w k vo ed ice uddl m pro s m a tes re ti d s

While he deliberated, a new voice entwined itself round his thoughts. Sly and cruel, barely discernible, yet all-consuming, with a hint of crunchiness in its articulation, it passed into the dog’s mind through his bones. What it said made the dog run.

He ran without consideration of path or tree or bramble, of thorn or beast or boundary. He ran past hope, past reason, but he could not escape the voice or the tales it whispered in a ruthless singsong—tales about things which you, my sweet, my sheltered pup, have dreamed could not exist.

When he came to a house, he threw himself against the door until it sagged on its hinges and let him wriggle in. An enormous hearth held an enormous fire, banked against the empty room.

Is this where the sun sleeps at night? He flung himself down on the red hearthrug, so close to the coals that his whiskers curled in the heat. Still he shivered from cold and fear; still the shard-thin, shim-sharp voice sniggered viciously in his brain and bones. He lay on his side, legs convulsing, and thus the giant found him.

Puzzled at his askew door, the giant had his club in hand, expecting marauders of a respectable size, or burglars of surpassing foolishness. When all he saw was a damp brown beast lying on his hearthrug, the giant slammed the club on the flagstones.

“You realize I eat dogs?” he shouted.

But the dog opened just one eye (the top one: he was flat like a flounder). “Listen,” he groaned, and opened his mouth, admitting the chill to the room.

The giant sagged into his chair. “Who is that?” “Worm.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants us all dead.” Then, faintly, past hope and reason as he was, the dog turned his head, looked the giant full in the face, and asked for help.

“I am no ally of dogs,” mused the giant aloud, considering the stench and impudence of the morsel drying before his fire. Then he stamped his muddy, bloody boots on the floor and drove himself upright.

“But I will NOT have it said that I am an ally of the Worm!”

Thinking to drive Worm out by force, he seized the dog’s hind legs and whirled him in a great circle, clenching his teeth with the effort. What river water remained was flung across the walls, then the dog’s face changed, becoming more piscine than canine, as Fish protruded into the dog’s skull.

The giant braced his feet and spun faster, and for a moment, he saw the malevolent maw of Worm

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drive through Fish’s profile: blank-eyed and barb-jawed. Even the giant, accustomed to all manner of cruelties, trembled. His arms grew weak and he slowed, dangling the dog from his fists.

Worm retreated to his stronghold, leaving the dog looking only like his weary self, with the skin sagging over his bones. He keened in pain and the giant lowered him to the rug. With uncharacteristic tenderness, the giant stroked the dog’s ears and tucked them under his jaw. He smoothed the dog’s eyes shut, watching his pupils roil under the lids. Closing the mouth and nostrils posed a problem; how to block light but not air? He reached down his blunderbuss’s grease-cloth and laid it across the dog’s muzzle. Faint breaths rustled the rag. The giant smiled.

When he’d secured the dog’s head, the giant took his club and sat facing the dog’s bedraggled tail.

He discoursed on sticks and steaks and the virtues of rabbits. The dog remained inert.

“Good,” muttered the giant, and settled his elbows on his knees, twirling the club’s head against the floor. He began a story that had nothing to do with “onces” or “times,” but rather addressed all times and all places: a story whose theme was not the quest, but what follows quests gone wrong— or quests gone right, depending on whom you speak to after the shouting and sparring and crowning is done.

He spoke of blood running through farmers’ furrows to the sea, of empires squirming under implacable plagues. He spoke of gibbets, of guillotines, of blackened tongues and swollen feet, of the stench of dead sailors gone soft like old pickles from being too long in the brine.

Chiefly though, he spoke of fire; all the horrors of his tale wove around the burning of a great city.

He described hundreds, no—thousands of people running, wailing, clothes alight, from the sizzling, martyr-fed flames. Bodies fell by the roadside; ashes rose in the air. In short, my dear pup, the giant laid a smorgasbord of misery before the Worm and bid him to table.

Have I not told you that, when force fails, persuasion may ease a problem from its sticking place?

Worm grew rapacious, hearing of these delights. What was the body of a fish, or a dog (no matter how succulent with terror!) in comparison to cities on fire and wounded men fleeing? He peered through the eyes of the fish. All was dark towards the dog’s head. He coiled end-for-end, driving deeper in search of a way out.

Worm wriggled out Fish’s gut and into the dog’s bowels, aiming towards the dim glow. The farther he went, the brighter the light and the louder the crackle. With each twist, each doubling back, he slavered over thoughts of clotting blood and rotting meat. At his first peep from the sphincter, he saw the firelight on the red rug.

“The city burning!” he gloated, and began squirming towards paradise.

But the giant had stopped twirling his club and poised it in midair, bracing his elbows on his knees, and when three inches of Worm dangled, thrashing, from the dog’s backside, the giant smashed him precisely on his vile little head.

“Death is an upstanding fellow,” said the giant. “But I do not care for those who glut themselves on his labors.”

He untucked the dog’s ears, and pulled the cloth from his nostrils. The dog’s breath grew strong and rhythmic. Under the eyelids, the pupils ceased their twitching. After a moment’s thought, the giant laid a log on the fire, then two more. The night was cold as the trail of lost souls and the weakened door let in draughts.

In the morning, the dog limped into the kitchen. The giant was cooking oatmeal and sausages. “I am grateful for your kindness,” said the dog. “But I must start my journey home.”

The giant regarded the dog with bemusement and (could it be?) pity. “Is it possible you didn’t know?”

“What is there to know?”

“We can only cross the river once.”

The giant had found a small bowl in his cupboard, shoved to the back of a top shelf. Now he filled it with warm milk and set it beside the stove. It seemed an incongruous thing to find in such a place, crazed pink china with a pattern of birds, and the dog lapped from it until it shone.

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{ Sarah Ann Winn }

Appendix Rose Fig. 425: 6’ spindle, wood. Blood encrusted, kept in a red plastic hazardous waste bag.

Fig. 427: A silver coin depicting a horse’s head in relief hanging from an etched gate. Flip for a reminder about turning back, about checking i.d..

Fig. 430: A walnut sized coverlet made from a pressed petal, twin mattress without twin. Someone pricked the edges to resemble stitching, monogrammed by marring a T into the petal before it dried.

Appendix Snow Fig. 22: A shirt made of feathers, sized XL, but too tight in the bust for standard measure. Half-finished sleeve looks ready to unravel, looks a little ragged, looks like flight might be the stuff of dreams.

Fig. 29: Cedar wood box, containing dried gardenia petals, twenty seven fresh water pearls, irregularly shaped, and a folded note which reads Mother’s last words.

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The Golden Key

Appendix Glass Fig. 227: Mountain composed of gypsum, brittle, left behind by a long-gone inland sea.

Marred by hooves chipping off large chunks as they scrambled towards the top, and slid back. A geologist eventually won the heart of the witch whose hermitage was at its peak, not by surmounting, but by studying, a sort of supplicating suit, a common interest in examining the difficult, the brittle.

Fig. 229: Face of a compass whose ordinal directions point east of the sun, west of the moon, south of the wind, north of the upper mantle of earth. Hand painted porcelain, case and glass missing, hands unattached but intact.

Fig. 230: Hurricane lampshade, 8� tall. Difficult to extinguish, blown over into conflagration and left to burn in the wake of a great wind.

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Contributors

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The Golden Key

CHRISTINE BUTTERWORTH-MCDERMOTT’S poetry has appeared in Cimmaron Review, The Normal School, Southeast Review, and RATTLE, among others. She is the author of the chapbook Tales on Tales and the full-length collection, Woods & Water, Wolves & Women (2012), and the head editor of the online journal, Gingerbread House Literary Magazine.

What hidden thing would she like to find? “I have a reoccurring dream of waking up, coming down for breakfast, and discovering through the window an extremely large gift-wrapped package in my backyard. In my dream, I never open the package, but the thrill and excitement of what the red wrapping might hide is lovely. I have no idea what I’d do if that actually happened, but it’s a pretty nifty emotion.”

LINDSAY FOWLER predominantly writes flash fiction. When she writes longer stories, she takes everyone she knows (including herself) by surprise. Lindsay is a graduate of the MFA program in fiction at the University of Maryland.

The hidden thing(s) she would like to find: “Fascinating family stories that may have been lost; anything new and surprising (preferably not of the insect variety).”

JAMES HEFLIN is a writer and musician living in Western Massachusetts. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry Ireland Review, Conduit, and other journals, and his fiction has appeared in Planet Magazine and others. By day, he is editor of Preview Massachusetts magazine and managing editor of the Valley Advocate, an alt-weekly.

The most secret of his secret hiding places was, many moons ago, the cavity at the bottom of his Dune game box. No one older would be curious about such a science-fiction fanboy thing, and no one else ever wanted to play the game, so it was perfect.

BRENDA MANN HAMMACK teaches creative writing at Fayetteville State University, the Rooster Moans Poetry Cooperative, and The Eckleburg Workshops. She is the editor of Glint Literary Journal. Her first book, Humbug: A Neo-Victorian Fantasy in Verse, was released by Misty Publications in 2013. Her poems have also appeared in A capella Zoo and Gargoyle Magazine.

Asked what have been some of her best hiding places, she replied, “I used to spend my summers in a log cabin at the base of Catawba Mountain. Hand-built in the 1940s, the cabin had a colorful history as a vacation home, a hunting lodge, then a dance hall before being remodeled and rented as a private residence. The closest neighbors were residents of an exotic animal farm. Walking in the woods, I came across numerous forgotten objects: deer and possum skulls; halves of horse collars; a dilapidated dog pen; a detached semi-trailer; a porcelain urinal. Investigating a mysterious light emanating from beneath the cabin, my husband discovered a hidden crawl space with what we took to be a grow light. We did not find a still for manufacturing moonshine.”

JOSH JONES lives in Maryland with his wife, two daughters, and small menagerie of mostly tame animals. When not writing, he earns a living as an animator. His writing has also appeared in Bartleby Snopes.

When he was younger, he loved hiding anywhere up high: a tree, on the roof of the pool center at summer camp, or an 80-foot crane a block away from his dorm.

kAt PHILBIN is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA. She draws inspiration from fairy tales and personal mythologies to create her delicate illustrations with many, many tiny pen lines. See more of her artwork at www.katphilbin.com.

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KHRISTIAN MECOM was born in Oklahoma but grew up and still lives in South Florida where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University. Her fiction has appeared in Slice Magazine, Passages North, Iron Horse Literary Review, and elsewhere, while her novella, Love & Black Holes, is forthcoming from Black Hill Press. Find her online at weoncelivedincaves.tumblr.com.

What have been some of your best hiding places? “My best hiding places have been the depths of my closet, a black hole, the small grouping of trees behind my childhood home, here in plain sight, the cat disguise I often use, the space under my pillows, my desk chair, and behind you right now.”

With powerful strangeness, SARA MITHRA recites tales of desire at the margins. Her pieces, often troubling and folkloric, give voice to characters that would otherwise be drowned out by the calliope or train whistle. Her handwrought chapbooks include The Odditory, Wood: A Handbook, The Better to Teeth You With, and DIG. She also collages experimental poem videos from found footage.

What has been her favorite place to hide? “The roof. Unconfined, open to the sky. It made me giddy to climb the nailed-plank ladder on the chicken coop and scramble to the garage pitch. I wasn’t really hidden, except no one looked up. I liked watching my family searching the backyard. It gave me the rare sense of being wanted.”

SHANNA STREICH is from the San Francisco Bay Area, where she graduated from San Francisco State University, and where she has had several careers. She recently earned an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, and is currently finishing a short story collection.

What hidden thing would she like to find? “A 19th-century house that has somehow become hidden from view and forgotten, maybe down a remote road obscured by fairy tale proportion overgrowth, or an urban dwelling lost within a long-ago overlap of later builds. The house would be full from attic to basement with the furnishings and objects of its onetime occupants, who would appear to have walked out in the midst of their lives. I would go from room to room, opening drawers, cupboards, chests, reading letters and journals, pondering portraits and possessions, and try to piece together the story.”

KATHERINE WEST is the bemused possessor of an undergrad lit degree and a well-worn hard hat. The degree launched her career welding and inspecting railcars; the wear and tear sent her back to her desk in Norman, Oklahoma. She’s writing a canine mythology for her good dog Freya and a retelling of “Rumpelstiltskin.” Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cricket, Gargoyle, and The Drabblecast.

A few of her best hiding places: Palm trees with low-hanging branches. Bikes on back roads and low spots in pastures. Under a weld hood, blinding the curious with a shower of sparks.

SARAH ANN WINN lives in Manassas, Virginia. Her work has appeared or will appear soon in Cider Press Review, Massachusetts Review, and RHINO, among others. Visit her at http://bluebirdwords.com or follow her @blueaisling on Twitter.

What hidden thing would she like to find? “Having just listened to the amazing Neil Gaiman’s short story ‘Chivalry’ on the Selected Shorts podcast, I know the hassle and headaches finding something like the Holy Grail can bring. I’d settle for my grandma’s spoon ring, which I left in a computer lab long ago, and never was able to recover. It wasn’t magic, or even particularly beautiful, but I felt close to her when I wore it.”

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STAFF EDITORS

Susan Anspach Carlea Holl-Jensen LiAnn Yim COVER ART & ILLUSTRATIONS

kAt Philbin DESIGN

LiAnn Yim MASTHEAD ILLUSTRATIONS

Libby Burns WEB DESIGN

Lang Born COLOPHON

Built in Adobe InDesign. Fonts used: Archer, Chokle, and Articulat.