Underground Pool 2014

Underground Pool issue four | spring 2014

Underground Pool Issue Four — Spring 2014

Fiction Editor Poetry Editor Designer Cover Artist

Nichole Celauro Veronica Zabczynski Josh Pindjak Bryan Thompson

Readers

Kahla Brown Rebecca Buckley Chris Donovan Maggie Fenning Michael Grant Wes Greene Sean Hogan Meghan Loeb Max Matiash Samantha Milich Michelle Phelan Steven Rascon Davis Rivera Melissa Rothman Alex Stanilla Rebecca Syracuse

Faculty Advisor Illustration Coordinator

Elise Juska Matt Curtius

The University of the Arts

Philadelphia, PA

Serena’s Dream | John Freeman

Letter from the Editors The fourth edition of Underground Pool takes the reader into the finicky nature of searching. In these pages, you will encounter many different narrators and voices, ranging from chaotic and panicked to determined and restless as a result of searching in today’s fast paced society. The narrators are often trying to make sense of their world by seeking out something that will, hopefully, give them understanding as to how it works and who they are within it.

The poems in this edition all have certain qualities of longing—for love, for acceptance and for recognition—that stay with you through life to a certain degree, but are amplified while you’re young and in the progress of finding your place in the world. Some of the poems deal with a particular romanticized version of longing, not a lust, but rather a desire for the façade of completeness that being in a relationship provides. There is also a darker edge to the search for self: rejection. A few poems tackle this scorned edge of searching as well. They range from the truly sentimental, as you’ll read in the adoring description of someone’s hands, nose and laugh in Sarah Galante’s “Noses,” to the disdainful, as you’ll read in Sean Hogan’s “On Love,” which tactfully whisks you from sexualized love to the love of a childhood pet.

In the six short stories collected here, characters find themselves searching for something, whether externally or internally, just out of reach—from beer in a father’s fridge in Nick Schwasman’s “Wedge Wood on Green” to love at first sight in Marianne Murphy’s “Adventure Park” to even a legendary African beast in Carlos Rios’s “On the Hunt.” These searching, hunting, longing protagonists reflect how college often becomes a time we spend searching to find ourselves, our art, our futures. This edition of Underground Pool strives to encompass the complex feeling that is growing up in today’s world.

Veronica Zabczynski Poetry Editor

Nichole Celauro Fiction Editor

Underground Pool The University of the Arts Philadelphia, PA

uarts.edu/undergroundpool undergroundpool@uarts.edu

Fiction 09

On the Hunt | Carlos Rios Illustrated by Anne Meier and Kate O’Hara

23

Wedge Wood on the Green | Nick Schwasman Illustrated by Robin Alcantara

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Adventure Park | Marianne Murphy Illustrated by Aiden Jimeno and Mollie Rossi

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Ezekiel | Emily Famularo Illustrated by Laura Weiszer

53

People Like That | Samantha Milich Illustrated by Corey Shupp

69

The One About Ladybird Magpie | Rebecca Buckley Illustrated by Jamie Mangold

Poetry 07

Something Nice | Alex Stanilla

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Sensory Overload | Jess Landau

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Untitled | Rachel Dispenza

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Who Pays the Rent When I Forget to Come Back | Anna Ladd

30

Comb | Taylor Pavacich

31

Stamped | Melissa Rothman

32

The Internet is Ruining My Life | Shari Heck

40

Six Minutes or Hours | Colleen Daniels

49

Noses | Sarah Galante

50

Small Doses | Alyssa Langenhop

64

On Love | Sean Hogan

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In Light of Recent Events | Kahla Brown

Artwork 02

Serena’s Dream | John Freeman

06

Settled | Bryan Thompson

17

Symphony | Alex Dos Diaz

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An Unsure Soul | John Freeman

29

Figure Drawings | Kuba Jennes

33

Untitled | Abdul Almutairi

41

Outer Space: The Mind of a Nine-Year-Old | Angela Peterdi

48

Scarlet Stockings | Kuba Jennes

51

Pertaining to the Body | Phillip Mastrippolito

63

Courtiers | Hannah Gregory

65

Lady Fool | Victoria Heckman

74

Midnight Elf | John Freeman

80

Unknown Parallels | Phillip Mastrippolito

Settled | Bryan Thompson

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Something Nice Alex Stanilla

Mountain houses Benefit windows No sirens Tailored stairs Time and effort, carpentered and trying something nice A mountain house is something nice in a place that’s somewhere nice and I think if you have a mountain house you might be someone nice We’re a mountain house A person is a mountain house Spoiled and volcanic Choirs of interruptions subdued by laundry and blankets from the dryer and smiles and sweet smells of apples and pies or maybe both of something nice.

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Illustration by Anne Meier

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On the Hunt Carlos Rios

Winner of the 2013 University of the Arts Short Story Award

Grey clouds perched low over the arid West African plains as I dust-trailed my way to the heart of Upper Volta in my Buick Eight. It had been a few months since I last had the good fortune to set out on a proper hunt, and as I drove along, I chuckled a thanks to the Orions and the Pakhets of pantheons ancient and abroad. My dogs were with me. Boccaccio, slate with dark splotches, and his black-and-white sister Mephisto, two Catahoula Curs gifted to me by an American upon whom I had bestowed a magnificent White Lion two years prior. My windows were down and the dogs lapped playfully at the dry air, as if tasting the aroma of fresh meat hidden in the wild grass.

I had met with McCordle’s man in the West, a Liverpudlian named Roche conducting research of some sort in the area. It was this man who had snapped a photograph of the Senegambian Wolf, a monstrous creature almost as tall as a full-grown elk and about as long as the 90 Series in which I was riding, according to old accounts. An animal that had been assumed extinct for three centuries. I had met with Roche two days earlier and examined his photograph intensely, scrutinizing the huddled mass of black fur sitting atop long, skeletal legs. Judging by the shrubbery near it in the photograph, this beast was larger than most predators wandering that land. Ultimately, I conceded that it must indeed have been the infamous wolf. The very last.

I had wired my confirmation back to McCordle, who replied with his offer for the fresh and fully intact body of the animal. McCordle was desperate to have in his collection a specimen no other man could have—it afforded him notoriety in his circles and the privilege of boastfulness, both of which he was endlessly fond. With this in mind, I demanded more from the man before setting out on the hunt and, of course, he obliged.

Evidently, Roche was a quick study. As I loaded supplies into the Buick in preparation for my departure, he had seized the opportunity to hold hostage his detailed map of the wolf’s last known location, demanding two hundred dollars from me in exchange.

Aware that McCordle had instructed Roche to surrender to me any materials pertaining to the wolf without charge, I simply reminded the entrepreneurial scientist which one of us was holding the loaded M1 Garand. He then volunteered to load the rest of my supplies while I studied his map.

With the coordinates and landmarks committed to memory, the map tucked into my pocket and the miserable researcher back in his cluttered office, I was on my way across the overcast savanna, with Boccaccio and Mephisto taking turns biting at the wind in Underground Pool

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the seat beside me, their wagging tails brushing against my arm. The true Upper Volta was all around me. I was far from town—from Roche, from the telegraph office and the smoky Gentlemen’s Dining Club shrouded in French classical and American jazz— headed toward the heart of the West. Acacia trees clustered together on the horizon, casting their umbrella-like profiles against the grey sky.

As I drove on, the dogs left the passenger’s window and turned their attention forward. I eased just slightly off the accelerator, unsure what they had detected, but after a few moments’ observation, I noticed far ahead of me a sight I had never come across on the hunt: a luxury sedan, unmoving and unattended, nestled in the chaparral to the side of this de facto road. A thin plume of smoke billowed from the top of the vehicle, although it did not appear to be on fire. As I neared, I noticed a man leaning against the side of the car. He was dressed in a fine suit, well postured, smoking a cigarette.

Boccaccio and Mephisto were focused on the man, restlessly scampering about the car for unobstructed vantage points. I reached the man and his car, slowing down to a stop only a body-length away. The dogs hurried to the rear left window, their tails slapping the seats at a synchronized pace. It was only then when I realized the smoke was coming not from the car itself, but from a few paces beyond, where a small fire was built on the ground. A metal pot sat over the glowing embers.

“Bon après-midi, monsieur,” the man smiled.

“Anglais?” I hoped aloud.

“Ah, of course,” the man replied in the odd accent of a Belgian. “I’m not even French.”

I gave his car a look. It was a Packard Deluxe, spotlessly clean. “Are you having trouble with your automobile?” I asked him.

“Not at all. I’m simply waiting.”

“Waiting?” I examined his fine suit once more. “I hope you don’t mind my saying, but you seem rather ill-clad for the environment.”

“Ah, ill-clad, but well-dressed, no?” he countered.

I certainly had to agree. “Waiting, you say?” I continued. “What could you be waiting for out here?”

“A great many things, I’m sure. But, for the moment, my tea. It’s almost ready. Would you care for a cup?”

I turned to my dogs. They were excited and seemed eager to run about. With a glance at my watch, I agreed to have tea with the gentleman while Mephisto and her brother chased each other through the tall grasses on the other side of the road.

He introduced himself as Brynjolf and explained to me that, no, he had not seen any wolves about and did not think they were native to the land. I left that at that and spoke of the weather and of politics, although the man appeared to be somewhat distracted in his thoughts. After the usual conversational fare, and after I assured him I was very discreet by nature, he confessed that he was actually the manservant of a wealthy German noble named J. R. Von Braun, in the area for business with a French landowner. On the very day of their arrival, Brynjolf and Von Braun had ridden out to this very spot, but the latter had gone off on foot, seized with a sudden desire to journey onward alone. The man vanished. Since then, Brynjolf had been faithfully visiting the site of his lord’s mysterious disappearance, awaiting his return. After the first two days of waiting, Brynjolf started bringing tea. After day four, he began wearing the German’s clothes. His explanation for the latter was that he needed access to the extravagant clubs in town; he had even taken up smoking to appear more in place there. In fact, around the wealthy men 10

On the Hunt

in town, the players with influence, Brynjolf was posing as Von Braun. He knew the most intimate details of his lord’s life and history, so it was but a small step forward to become the man himself while waiting for his reappearance from the wild.

I could hear the dogs running through the undulating steppe, and every now and again, a rustle in the grass would hint at their position.

“Perhaps I was meant to be a German lord?” Brynjolf asked me.

“You wouldn’t be the first Belgian to be a German on this continent,” I replied.

“Although maybe the first in the French West.”

“There seems to be money in it,” he said, looking up toward the shifting sky. “Have you ever thought you might be something else?”

“I’ll put it this way,” I told him, taking a sip from my second cup of buchu-leaf-and-honeybush blend. “If I were adept at tuning pianos, I daresay I would be tending to my niece Patricia’s baby grand.” As Brynjolf nodded solemnly and puffed away at his cigarette, a small, solitary droplet of water landed on my nose, and at that very moment, my dogs began barking wildly.

With a speed only twenty years in these grasslands could impart, I unsheathed my machete and moved into the field toward the sounds of my dogs. I stalked through the chest-high grass, my blade ready to strike, until the barking stopped. With more caution than before, I continued on until I came upon my two companions. Mephisto held between her teeth a grey snake about a meter in length. The thing was limp and unmoving, spilling out from her mouth and onto the hard soil peppered in a few drops of blood. It was either dead or playing at it. Boccaccio stared up at me, wagging his tail enthusiastically. There were clear fang marks on his throat just under the jaw. It was only then that I realized rain was falling steadily. Carefully, I rested the edge of my blade on the snake’s throat, then pressed down with all my weight until I felt the snap of vertebrae separating. The rain had washed off most of the blood before I sheathed the machete.

The headless serpent was still clutched between Mephisto’s teeth, blood dribbling out of it and getting lost in the softening, sanguine dirt. The rainfall was growing more intense by the moment. I ordered Mephisto to let go of the thing. As I trudged back to my car, I was having trouble seeing much in front of me. Brynjolf was in the Packard Deluxe, which was now facing the other direction. He lowered his window partially.

“I’m headed back to the club for an early dinner!” he shouted over the rain. “You should do the same!”

“I’m on the hunt!” I yelled back, barely able to hear myself over the deafening rainfall.

“Well, if you must remain, there’s an old chapel somewhere due southeast I once considered locating to pray for my lord’s return! Very close by!” He ventured a hand out the window and pointed.

As he sped off, I opened the rear door for my dogs. Boccaccio attempted to jump up into the seat after his sister, but he slipped and fell back onto the mud. I lifted him inside, then hurried into the car myself, already soaked through.

The sky dark, the ground slick, and the rain heavy, it was with great difficulty that I located the chapel, and only then with the luck of a flash of lightning that silhouetted the tiny building against the raging skies. By then, Boccaccio was whimpering in the back seat, and Mephisto was curled up beside him with her head resting on his. As I pulled up by the church, I noticed a trio of shadowy figures with spindly legs only a short distance away from the church doors. I exited the car, bringing my rifle along with me, and took a step toward the dark shapes, leaning forward and squinting through the Underground Pool

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rain. Just then, the doors of the chapel swung open and out jogged two men, both wearing grey nautical jackets. I walked toward them, noticing after a few steps that the larger figures farther off were horses. The men hurried to them, then turned back to the chapel, still unaware of my presence. As I neared the doors, another man exited, shouting something to his comrades in French. Then he noticed me standing an arm’s length away and jumped back out of shock, dropping an armful of silver bowls, plates and decorative porcelain figurines into the mud.

“Excuse me!” I apologized.

The other two men ran up to their friend. “Qui êtes-vous?” shouted one of them.

“Money!” demanded another.

“Yes, money!” added the third Frenchman.

They took a step toward me, but as soon as I lifted my gun, they halted their approach. The closest man scooped up the muddied valuables, then the trio backed away slowly to their horses, their pale faces fading like dying lanterns, and rode off, disappearing in a moment into the thick rainfall.

Boccaccio was wheezing, and I had to carry him into the chapel. It was a one-room affair, ransacked and emptied of anything transportable that could fetch a price at market. The walls were bare. A small shelf had been hastily overturned and it lay on the stone floor overtop fragments of a shattered teacup. I cleared away a few scattered Bibles from the altar and laid Boccaccio down there, cursing Fortune for her capriciousness. Mephisto sat at his side with a somber loyalty, and by the time I had finished removing my wet shoes and clothes, Boccaccio had died.

The only image I had of the heavens was Arbos’s depiction of Aasgaardreien, the gods galloping through the clouds, spears and bows at the ready, no prey out of reach.

I draped myself in a plain tapestry I found folded on a shelf in a narrow, undisturbed closet and quickly fell asleep to the chatter of the rain outside and Mephisto’s quiet whimpers.

When I awoke early the next morning, the rain was still pouring unwaveringly, perhaps Artemis’s tears at the loss of a skilled huntsman. By midday, I was ready for a meal, so I ran out to the car for some of the biscuits, water and gin. The car’s tires were partially sunken in the mud, and the food was not in the trunk where I had packed it. After searching every other inch of the Buick, I realized that Roche must have exacted his revenge while I was studying his map before departing. Of all things, my food. Ordinarily, this loss would not have impacted me so severely, but in the midst of a storm, I would have scant luck shooting game. I could barely see through the rain, and I was not familiar with the area. Still, there was nothing in the way of food in the chapel, so I had to try my luck.

Out in the mud, I found an apple that must have been dropped by one of the thieves as they hurried away. With that single fruit nourishing me, I donned my still-wet clothes and journeyed alone a few kilometers south in search of any animal I could turn into a meal. I could find nothing. I went to sleep hungry that night and awoke even more so. It was my second morning in the little chapel and the rain continued to pour. Mephisto trotted up to me and licked my hand. She was hungry as well. This time, she accompanied me outside in the storm. Together, we followed a promising track, but when we found the animal, it was little more than a discarded ribcage, picked clean by creatures more accustomed to hunting in the barely navigable downpours of the western savanna. The challenge that night was falling asleep with the growling pain of hunger ravaging my stomach.

12

On the Hunt

Illustration by Kate O’Hara On the third day, I was awoken by the wet sound of assiduous chewing. I cast the tapestry off of my chest and sat up. There on the altar stood Mephisto, devouring Boccaccio’s dead body. His side had been chewed through, and his ribs and organs were exposed. The sight was too familiar to disturb me, but I had never been close enough to hear the detailed symphony of a meal in the wild. The tearing flesh, the smacking of gums and gnashing of teeth penetrated the silence of the isolated chapel. A curiosity to this tableau, the thing I was not accustomed to seeing, was the lack of competition.

There were no birds sneaking in pecks or hyenas patrolling wide circles, waiting for leftovers. It seemed lonesome.

I stepped outside to let the downpour drown out the sounds of feeding, but then realized it was no longer raining. The sun once again had its unobstructed view of the land, save for a few dark and drying rain clouds, and its bright heat was steadily baking the earth, already undoing in a few hours what the rain had been working at for days.

The car’s tires were partly submerged in the dirt, but I calculated that by the next day the ground would be dry enough for me to drive away. I whistled for Mephisto, and she came to my side obediently, looking up at me with a lick of her nose. We stared at each other in a moment of understanding. Then, with the doors shut behind us, we set out once more in search of game.

No more than an hour had passed before we encountered yet another in a series of strange sights. Under a lonely acacia lay a fully grown antelope, dead, with odd incisions Underground Pool

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along its face and back exposing pristine sections of skull and bone. There was no blood on the ground beneath it, and encircling the animal was a ring of small white stones. I was much more in tune with Southeastern Africa, but I did know that here in the French West, natives of Upper Volta and its surrounding wild had been pushed far north years ago. Furthermore, they were never a people known to waste an animal, killing it for no other reason than to let it rot into the soil, as appeared to be the case. It seemed like a relatively fresh kill, though, and after sending Mephisto on a quick scan of the area, I quickly dressed the antelope and then cooked it over a fire on the stone front step back at the chapel. That night, Mephisto and I slept in the Buick.

The next day, after a hearty lunch and a change into my spare clothes, I dug small trenches in the dirt where each tire was half-buried. The trenches sloped up until they reached surface level, and when I tried driving away, it worked perfectly. Roche’s map took me back past the tree under which I found the oddly mutilated antelope, and shortly after passing the tree, I spotted another antelope displayed in an identical fashion, although the incisions along its face and body varied in size and placement. I passed several of these dead animals, each with different cuts exposing different parts of the skeleton under its skin, until I reached a narrow river by a cliff face. On the river’s edge, a small harem of zebra gathered to drink. If the Senegambian Wolf were out hunting, this would be a fine opportunity for it to happen across, especially given that I had never seen a zebra outside the southeast.

I stopped the car far away then instructed Mephisto to remain silent and stay by my side. I approached slowly, keeping a constant watch in every direction. When we were close to a hundred meters away, I crouched and waited. The rippling heat waves over the far bank made the dirt there appear more liquid than the gentle river. A few of the animals raised their heads suddenly. Afraid they had noticed me, I ducked lower, then glanced around me in search of another possible predator that may have betrayed its position. I gripped my rifle tightly in anticipation, but before I could spot anything, a loud shot cracked through the air and one zebra toppled over as the rest of the group splintered and retreated in every direction.

From the mouth of a cave in the cliff’s side emerged a man holding a rifle and wearing a double-breasted suit, which I could see was spattered in blood even from my significant distance. He walked over to the felled animal, crouched down and set his rifle aside. He touched the animal’s face, then walked into the cave and exited once more with a long coil of rope. The man hogtied the dead zebra, then turned and stared in my direction. He gave me a friendly wave. I stood up and waved my pith helmet in reply. Then, seeing no other polite course of action, I instructed Mephisto to stay put and walked across the wide, flat area to the man and the zebra.

He introduced himself as J. R. Von Braun.

I looked at his bloody, custom-tailored suit, which he filled out better than Brynjolf could ever hope to. “Are you injured?” I asked him.

“I assure you, I’m quite alright,” he responded with a wink.

“You’re the man who went missing?”

“I suppose so.” He stared at the far bank of the river. “But between just the two of us, I am not lost.”

“On the hunt, then?” I concluded, feeling a sense of respect for the man.

“Somewhat,” he replied. He stared at me for a moment before going on. “You see, I had come here to purchase a wide open stretch of grassland, and the day that I arrived 14

On the Hunt

in Upper Volta, I went out for a view of the area. In the grasslands, something—not a voice, but an impulse—told me I had to go on alone, with no weapon and no vehicle, only the clothes upon my back. I found myself wandering into a dark forest, and when I reached the heart of this place, the canopy split open and a numbing light broke through. Not just sunlight, but something glorious. Amidst this light appeared to me a being, behind which stood others. The Grey Angels, I call them now, perhaps the gods of the hunt themselves, still alive even without the worship of ancient peoples. These angels instructed me to slay the beasts of this wild place to appease them and prepare for their arrival on our earth.”

I thought about the mutilated animal corpses abandoned around the area. “So it’s you who has been killing these antelope,” I realized, my grip tightening once more around the rifle at my side.

“In preparation,” the man repeated evenly. “But there are others, they warned me, competing for their affections. I continue simply to stay ahead and maintain favor.”

The zebra by his feet, I noticed now, had a worn, red halter tied about its head. “And whose mare is this?” I asked. Surely a collector somewhere nearby was mending a broken fence and cursing in low tones.

“It is theirs now,” Von Braun replied, looking skyward. The man was not well, yet I could not help my feelings of enmity toward him. He did not hunt for sustenance nor did he hunt professionally. His prey was only ever discarded and left to no greater fate than to feed the lunatic ambitions of a mad prophet.

The blood-spattered man excused himself to gather more white stones from the muddy bed of the river. He dragged the dead zebra along the hard soil, yanking on the rope until he came to the water’s edge. He then nudged the animal with his foot, sending it sliding down the gentle slope and into the water. Von Braun watched for a few moments, then ventured into the shin-deep fringe of the river, bending over to collect rocks from the murky bed.

“Are you out here for the wolf?” he called from the water, tossing back a less-thanwhite pebble.

My stomach knotted. This man knew of the wolf, and he considered it his divine imperative to wantonly kill the creatures living around him. But no sooner had he turned toward me for my response than, in an explosion of muddy water, a behemoth of a crocodile lurched toward the man, snapping its jaws around his waist and dragging him into the river. Mephisto came bounding over to me from where I’d left her. The crocodile chewed a few times to adjust its grip on Von Braun. The man stared at his bleeding abdomen with confusion, then turned his gaze to the sky before the reptile pulled him under water. In a matter of moments, the water’s surface was once again smooth, save for the untouched zebra still bobbing along a few meters off. A cloud of red billowed up from the bottom and spread from bank to bank.

Within the cave in the cliffside was another dead antelope with a small knife by its side. Nothing more. I headed back to the car, puzzled and anxious, unsure whether Von Braun simply knew of the wolf or meant to tell me he had already desecrated it. I drove alongside the river, following it southwest and passing by a member of the zebra clan from before, it too wearing a red halter over its head. It was sunny, and Mephisto squinted and lapped at the wind rushing into the car, as the river eventually thinned to a stream.

Years ago, on my first assignment for McCordle, I had encountered a white rhinoceros.

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It was a male with an unusually large secondary horn, even larger than its fore horn. I had missed my first shot, and while he glanced around in fear and confusion, I contemplated granting him an escape. We both hesitated, he not knowing which way to retreat and I deliberating on whether he should be allowed the remainder of his life. At the end of this malaise, however—and it was indeed little more than a moment—I decided that I could not allow the creature to fall into the obscurity of a natural death, left out in the plains or perhaps devoured by a hungry cat of some sort. Perhaps any other rhinoceros, but not this one. To deny him a legacy would be a disservice. As he took his first uncertain step away, I fired my second shot through the thick skin around his skull. He swiveled his head toward me as he collapsed, finally aware of my position. Upon my return to McCordle’s estate with the animal’s body, I had been granted a hero’s welcome. The elite had gathered to celebrate the newest and most rare addition to McCordle’s gallery, and the man had even erected an arch of marble for me to pass under. Leigh, a friend of McCordle’s, arrived at the party after everyone else had, riding a live elephant under the same arch. Later on that day, Leigh shot this elephant while it was grazing, to the delight of the partygoers. With the show stolen, McCordle retreated to his bedroom for a week, after which he shipped the stuffed rhinoceros to a museum in Marne that burned during the War. After some time driving along the bank, I realized I had gone far beyond the area marked by Roche on his map and found myself at the end of the stream. The grass here grew short and was a bright shade of green. Not very far away, a cluster of mountains sloped gently up toward the blue sky. A triumvirate of acacias oversaw the placid clearing. In each one perched a Pied Kingfisher, one of the land’s native anglers. I stopped my car by the three trees and stepped out. A thick musk hung in the breeze, although it was not unpleasant.

Roving the land slowly was my wolf, the very one from Roche’s photograph, larger than I had envisioned and much more graceful in its movement. Its shoulders shifted with each deliberate step of its slender and powerful legs. Its coat appeared pearlescent, a deep ebony, but shimmered a bluish silver when the sunlight caught it properly.

A herd of antelope grazed only a dozen meters from the creature, completely at ease. I imagined that this wolf had the authority to simply ask a living thing to lie down dutifully and be eaten. It gazed around at the wide expanse, taking in everything over which it presided. It padded through the short grass of the oasis with an effortless majesty, and I could swear at that moment that I was beholding the overseer of this land. A gentle breeze rustled its thick fur and the grasses underfoot, and the wolf’s pink tongue flickered out to wet its nose. I readied my M1 Garand and lined up the most exquisite shot I had ever aimed on the hunt. I promised the wolf I would ask McCordle for double.

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On the Hunt

Symphony | Alex Dos Diaz

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Sensory Overload Jess Landau

You inhale, taking into your lungs, which you built and maintained singlehandedly, the air — crisp and clean in appearance yet very far from it. The carbon dioxide emitted from the crunching man’s lips climbs down your throat and burrows its potent spice into the walls of your not-quite-pink lungs; the lingering remnants of tobacco smoke venture from your neighbor’s fingertips to your toes, climbing up your torso and around the nape of your neck, venturing into your ears and eyes. Perfume, sweet and seductive, blasts your nostrils from an unexpected angle and the chalk dust, previously resting quietly on the tile floor, explodes in a nuclear cloud beneath you — suffocating you — as you lay down your aged thrift-store overcoat and although you are aware of the medley of invisible contaminants that dance around you and although you are aware that they are all equally as unnatural you inhale — taking into your lungs, which you built and maintained singlehandedly, the air — crisp and clean.

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An Unsure Soul | John Freeman

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Untitled Rachel Dispenza

ever since the accident my mom’s been real spiritual, you know? as if it could change anything that happened. she started believing in the powers of different stones, all the things people say they can do. she has this crystal hanging in her car that supposedly stops you from crashing, as if rocks that existed way before humans can affect what happens in the shit we make. she has this crystal hanging in her car that she believes prevents accidents, as if the bright reflections of the sun shining through it right into your eyes aren’t enough to cause one. she bought a crystal for my car. i keep it in there just to make her happy. i always liked driving. that didn’t change, not after the tragedy last summer and not even after the potential i had to cause another. but tonight was different. i hated being out there alone in the dark as the rain tried to decide whether or not to pour. it made the gloss of the pavement so black that i thought i might disappear at any moment. the probing eyes of the blinding headlights of the passing cars were questioning my every turn.

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i swear to you, they wanted to run me down. i swear to you, they plotted against me together with every little bump and rough patch that i couldn’t see until i ran over them, until they started shaking the wheels beyond my control. i swear to you, they wanted to run me off the road. on the way home, the fog was thicker than i ever remember it being before. and i thought, this is it. this is it. surely i’m going to die like this, making voice memos on my cell phone of things i need to remember to write about later, because all my best thoughts jump out at me from behind the wheel. and i thought, this is it. i’m going to die in a car like my sister. but then i remembered my mom bought me that fucking crystal.

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Illustration by Robin Alcantara

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Wedge Wood on the Green Nick Schwasman

The bottle of Vladdy.

We debated for a whole summer Whether it was gasoline, or mineral spirits, or something lethal like that.

The chances of it being fair game were slim.

It was in plain sight So we debated for a whole summer.

Yeah, I thought that car was nice.

I wouldn’t have liked it if it was any other color.

But it was black.

Black just seemed right.

No, perfect.

It was an attractive car, and I’m no gearhead.

They were livin’ in Wedge Wood.

“Wedge Cock on the Green!”

Ha, no, “Wedge Dick on the Green!”

No, no, no, actually it was called “Wedge Wood on the Green.”

But there’s less truth in that.

There was no wood.

There was no green.

It was wedged in between two low-income housing units.

On warm nights, We would sneak in through the sliding glass door.

We got the idea from West Side Story.

One of us would run around to the back of the complex.

Back there was a fire escape.

If we stretched our arms up high above our heads and stood on our toes Or on “relevé”— Yeah, we knew what that meant But we’d probably just say,

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“On your toes”— Well, if we did that, We could reach the first rung.

Whoever had this job had to be quick and quiet.

I’d usually do it.

He wasn’t my father, but I had a few inches on everyone, or that’s what we’d say.

No one would say, “Let him do it, he has a romantic appreciation for fire escapes!”

It was always nice if the baby on the first floor wasn’t crying.

He lived on the second floor, so the whole operation didn’t take very long.

Rhythmically pulling my body up by the cold black rungs, one by one.

Swinging my legs up over the railing like a northbound Mexican, My black Converse finally planting on the cement balcony.

And that was that. The glass doors slid open easily then.

My first steps inside were always cautious, aware of the man who was probably there, in his chair, asleep or unconscious. Dan’s dad. If he was there, I would stop and stare at him. Take more time than I wanted to. Make the guys knock, maybe look at the Civil War paintings. Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson were all hanging on the wall. I would study the lines of their faces, searching for a sign of sympathy, only to be interrupted by impatient knocking at the door.

So I would walk over to the door and dick with them.

“Hellooo?” I’d say in a high-pitched voice, giving them my best impression of a little old lady. “Whooo is it?”

“Come on man, open the door.”

I’d unlock all the locks but the chain one, open it a crack and say something like, “No, thank you, I don’t need any more Girl Scout cookies,” and slam the door in their faces.

I’d get a laugh out of it; they’d tolerate it.

But eventually I would let them in. One by one they would cross the threshold and enter the lab, the land of no rules: Dan’s dad’s dwelling, affectionately called “Dock’s.”

Wearing backpacks filled with empty baggies, broken guitar picks, and used up lighters. Holding guitar cases, bongos, and Big Gulps, sporting smiles like God’s shoeshine.

Sooner or later, Dan’s dad caught on. He put this stick in the tracks of the sliding glass door so it would only open about six inches. I passed my job off to our skinniest, youngest friend. The first time he did it, we pulled up in the truck, all of us piled in there. Scrawny popped out and scurried around to the back. The others and I went in through the garage.

Noticed the bottle of Vladdy.

Still there in the corner.

Together we’d stop and stare at the car For longer than we wanted to.

Till Dan did something like kick the tires or smack the hood with an open palm and say, “She’s a beaut!” and our jaws would all close again, and we would head up the stairs.

The brown carpet covering the steps was old and worn. Crusted with the white residue of road salt tracked in from outside.

Crushed under boots that Struggled to grip the cold wet asphalt 24

Wedge Wood on the Green

Trod wearily through patches of black ice And never forgot to stomp on welcome mats before entering.

The halogen bulbs threw orange light onto the stairwell. It stuck to your skin. So did the smell of warm beer and cigarette smoke. My mother always loved that. We climbed those stairs so many times I could probably tell you which one giggled, which one gagged, and which one groaned. Even point out for you the ones that bit their tongues and kept quiet. We once knew the actual notes, the musical notes that each one sang under our feet. Someone once named the somber chord that was heard when we played them fast and all at once.

We were all waiting for Scrawny out there in the hall by the front door. He was taking forever so we were, you know, getting annoyed. We all knew he was definitely skinny enough to fit through the crack in the sliding glass door, even if it had gotten a little smaller. While we were waiting, we heard this loud crash, like someone falling on the floor, and we knew that Dan’s dad was probably in there.

The baby started crying downstairs. Dan put his ear to the door, said he heard heavy breathing. So he started pounding on the door. Which got us all worried. When the doorknob started to turn all eyes were glued to that door. It opened slowly, and standing there in the doorway was Scrawny. He was stripped down to his boxers. Catching his breath, he gave us this long-winded explanation about how he swore the crack got smaller and he couldn’t fit this time, so he had to take off his coat, but he was still getting stuck on his belt, so he took that off and had to hold his breath for fifteen minutes and blah blah blah . . .

It was always interesting to me to read the prescription labels on the cans of Busch in the fridge. “They’re for my old man’s DTs,” Dan would say, like it was a quote from West Side Story, not giving me a chance to actually ask. There were some rules about alcohol in this house. I had trouble remembering them. I don’t know who made them up. I guess it must have been Dan. He must have made them up for his dad’s sake. We never paid attention to them, though. We would try our best to drink every beer in the fridge. No, I never felt guilty. Thought I was doing Dan a favor, leaving him with an empty fridge.

One time Scrawny came out from the bedroom all excited. He was dancing around and wiggling a little bag in between his fingers. “Looky what I found in the bedroom,” he said. It caught the curiosity of everyone in the room and soon we were gathered around in a circle, staring at the small square bag in the palm of Scrawny’s hand.

“That, my friend, is cocaine,” I said, as if I had seen it before.

“I know what it is, thank you,” said Scrawny, pouring it into the palm of his hand for further inspection.

It was probably at this point that Dan said something like, “Come on, guys, put that shit back, it’s not yours,” but it was too late.

Scrawny had that look in his eyes. “Do you dare me?” he said, glancing up at me from his palm.

“Yeah . . . I dare you.”

Scrawny never understood my sarcasm. In one fell swoop, he smashed his hand against his face, palm straight to the nose, threw his head back and snorted like a piggy. Of course I was the one who had to call his mother, tell her he wouldn’t be home by midnight.

If you could say Dan’s father raised him, then I guess you could say he raised me too.

He was a man who was good at crossing borders. He would tell us the same stories over Underground Pool

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and over again, stories that began: “When I was your age . . . ” We all knew the one about the hat by heart. It went something like: “I was smuggling five grand in cocaine out of Mexico City. I had twenty-four hours to get it to New York, and I was running late. Later than your girlfriend’s period, Dan. I got to Dallas and realized I left my fucking hat on the other side! So what do you think I did, boys? I went back and got it! Still made it to New York in time, too. You bet your ass I did.”

He had fallen on some pretty hard times. DWI had led to a job loss, which led to the divorce, his second wife. Of course you would never be able to tell any of this just by looking at Dan’s face.

Yeah, I remember the call. It wasn’t very long. He didn’t say much.

“I need you to come over here right now.”

I remember him saying that much.

Within ten minutes, I was on the scene. I watched my mother pull away and turn left at the Wedge Wood sign, leaving me there standing in the tundra of the parking lot.

Alone, I entered the garage. Vladdy, car, stairs. I was standing at the door. The baby was crying, this time real hard. I didn’t need to knock. The door was open, just a crack. The hinges squealed back at me as I gently nudged the door open wider. I saw Dan. He was leaning up against the counter in the kitchen. His hands gripped the overhanging lip hard, sweaty palms and white knuckles. He didn’t look at me. Instead he stared blankly at the wall across from him. His hands relaxed as he spoke, but he was very quiet.

“Thanks for coming over.” He wiped his sleeve across his nose. “He’s not okay.” He was talking so quietly I more felt it than heard it.

“Where is he?” I asked.

Dan just pointed to the living room.

Empty cans of Busch everywhere. Some with labels, some without. Some that were bent up and had holes poked in them, still smoking on the floor. The air was thick with smoke. All the generals in the Civil War paintings that hung on the walls were holding their breath. There was an empty bottle of Valium on the table. Its lid was now an ashtray and held a smoking cigarette. The TV was playing an AC/DC concert. From the quality of the picture and the distortion of the sound, I could tell it was an old VHS. It was turned up so loud that it almost covered up the sound of the baby.

And there he was, Dan’s father, lying there on the floor half-alive. His eyes were low and glazed, but pierced me every time I caught a glimpse of those baby blues. His face was weathered and tanned, worn from too many trips to Mexico. Vomit stained his shirt. When he saw me he tried to stand up, but only ended up knocking more beer cans off the coffee table. I knew something was wrong. He could barely get words to come out of his mouth. They were getting stuck somewhere in his throat. He struggled to lift his body up off the floor. “This is real music,” he said, kneeling and playing air guitar.

“Sounds better than the crap you guys play. Danny Boy!” he howled in a singsong tone.

“Oh Danny Boy! The pipes, the pipes! Listen!”

I left him there and went back to Dan in the kitchen.

He was still leaning on the counter, gripping it tight and staring. I found a cigarette on the kitchen table, lit it up, and stood across from him. Exhaling, I said, “C’mon” and nodded toward the sliding glass doors. That was the rule about cigarettes. You smoked them on the balcony. So I walked over and lifted the stick from the track of the sliding glass door so I could open it. Stepping out, I said, “Tell me what happened.”

26

Wedge Wood on the Green

Dan looked nervous. He was quiet for a while. I just wanted him to tell me what happened.

“He wants me to drive him to Mexico.”

I was confused. “What?”

But he didn’t answer me. He didn’t say another word for the rest of the night.

“Well . . . well . . . we can’t do that, we won’t do that,” I finally said, not knowing if that was what he wanted to hear.

Dan’s dad pounded his fist on the table in the living room.

“Goddamn it, Dan, if you don’t drive me I’ll just drive myself!”

Before I could stop myself I blurted out, “Are you kidding me, you can’t even stand!”

I immediately regretted it.

He growled back at me. “You can keep your fucking mouth shut, this is between me and my son! My! Son! Where are my keys?”

I looked at Dan’s shaking hand. The emblem of a running horse shined between his fingers. He reached for his shoes. I grabbed him by the arm. “We don’t need to do this,” I said. “Let’s talk to him, calm him down.” But I could tell his mind was made up.

I helped Dan’s dad down the stairs. This time not one step let out a peep. I managed to get him into the garage without letting him drop to the floor, but as soon as I let go of him to open the car door he stumbled, fell and threw up. I looked down at him rolling around in his vomit on the cold cement floor of the garage. He reached his arm out. Not to me. He reached his arm out for the bottle of Vladdy that he now saw for the first time.

Dan stepped over him and got in the driver’s seat.

The engine purred. Dan’s eyes were glued straight ahead; not once did he look at me or his father. I maneuvered Dan’s dad into the passenger seat. His head slunk to the side because he couldn’t hold it up straight. I was afraid to take the bottle of Vladdy away from him, so I let him keep it there on his lap.

I climbed in the back seat and we drove away. I had no idea where we were going. I didn’t know if Dan’s father was going to be okay. I didn’t know what to say. I kept whispering in Dan’s ear, “Hey, just get off at the next exit.” “Let’s just take him to the beach.”

“Drive around for a minute, he’ll calm down.” But Dan didn’t flinch. His face hardened and turned to stone. I swear he even stopped breathing. The only signs of life on Dan’s face were the trails of tears that ran down his cheeks and dropped between his legs onto the black leather seat.

And his father, he was not dead yet. He was singing. Hanging his head out the window, he sang, “I’ve got a peaceful easy feeling, I know you won’t let me down.”

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Who Pays the Rent When I Forget to Come Back Anna Ladd

i check my alarm at least four times before i let my eyes shut for good. so, tell me about the time you took three days to come out from your blankets for groceries. nine minutes have passed. the whole thing is off. i can’t go. i won’t go anywhere. something will go wrong if i am not to the far right of the sidewalk. i am the second-day-of-school outfit, i am here to ruin your surprise party because it feels like i’m lying. please stop asking why i waited so long because believe me, we would have fucked that very first day had the scale read one hundred and thirty-eight pounds or less that morning. this eats at you. restricting like those acrostic poems they’d make us write about the seasons, where my words couldn’t possibly Fit in four lines or Abstract anything about Love or the way i’m afraid you’ll Leave by the time it’s cold this year. there isn’t a big picture, only hundreds of small ones, only details, only pressure, only questions — who pays the rent if i never come back because i forgot to schedule it in? am i giving you an open window if i’m not there fifteen minutes before you?

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Figure Drawings | Kuba Jennes

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Comb Taylor Pavacich

In muffled whispers, tell me of that dream where in my lace dress, I am stealing your raspberries faster than you can pick them.

Tell me how that dream for years has spread its sweet red stain inside you, eternally bleeding across your thoughts.

Yesterday will always be tangled in my hair.

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Stamped Melissa Rothman

You’ve kept our old notes, stuffed thick wads of dirty paper in unmarked envelopes.

I’ve told you again, and again, and again: There is no life in those words once scribbled in margins.

Even so, you’ve left claw marks on forgotten phrases, hoarding syllables like some bits of music you’ve plucked from the air.

I’ve seen it. You wincing at flatness of tone, some cherished instrument, now out of tune.

Words without context hum, hollow.

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The Internet is Ruining My Life Shari Heck

I know so many things about people I’ll never speak to again, and sometimes, you know, I wish someone would come around and just tell me exactly how I’m supposed to feel about that.

People put a time limit on love as if everyone’s love is the same. I think people can fall in love the first minute they meet, or, perhaps, never at all.

I have a picture on my fridge of a man who would always tell me, “You look beautiful today,” and I can still smell his ice-tea-vodka breath lingering in my air.

That man no longer exists. The scent does.

Lately, I’ve been mistaking my heartbeats for knocks on the door. I keep getting up and no one is there and you’d think after the first time I’d learn it’s nothing but deception.

Like the way I get mad at myself for caring too much.

Like the way you’re numb until you’re not, happy until you’re not.

Like the way I eat up the idea of meeting the person of my dreams while crying uncontrollably in the middle of a city bar at happy hour.

I’m caught in-between falling in love and keeping up with unimportant social media updates.

Both will kill me, but I know which one’s the more desirable way to die.

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Untitled | Abdul Almutairi

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Illustration by Aiden Jimeno

34

Adventure Park Marianne Murphy

I used to love this song when I was a kid. Here’s how it went: “You know there’s fun at Adventure Park! You know there’s rides at Adventure Park! Adventure Park? Adventure Park! Let’s all go to Adventure Park!” It played over all the commercials for a local theme park.

It was genius. I know it doesn’t sound like much written out like that, but it had a really catchy pop synth going for it, and this super killer beat. My friends and I used to sing it every day at recess. The excitement would build and build until we were hanging off the monkey bars and screaming it at the top of our lungs and very likely annoying the hell out of the playground monitors. Then we’d all go home and beg our parents to take us to the park. It was a truly great marketing campaign.

I get to hear that song every day now, except I’m forced to dance to it inside a gigantic furry cat suit in extreme heat at 8:30 every morning. It’s still a pretty great song, though.

I know seven-year-old me would consider this a dream job. Current me feels more like I’m constantly trapped in a gigantic furry cat prison.

I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of being inside one of those theme park mascot costumes, so I’ll give you a personal tour of the experience. They’re all unbearably hot. If it’s, say, 85 degrees outside, then it’s about 105 degrees inside the costume.

You have to wear these gigantic clownish shoes that cause you to automatically trip if you don’t take gigantic clownish steps.

Even if you’re walking correctly, you could still potentially trip over a baby or something, because you can’t see anything from inside that heavy plastic head. There’s a mesh screen in the very center of the mouth for you to be able to see, but that only accounts for what’s directly in front of you. You could cripple a baby for life if you don’t look down before you take a step. Children love to run into your legs. I’ve kicked, like, twelve children this week. At least ten of those times were not on purpose.

When I first applied for this job, I thought I’d get to run around the entire park and go on rides like a guest. Like a big cat guest who was friends with everybody. But you’re not really allowed to leave your station. Depending on the time of day, you have to stand in a certain area, because guests have been promised that you will be there and it would just be so horrible if their darling kids didn’t get a shitty photo with Paws the Cat. The park assigns you an employee, who we call our “ambassador” as a result of some weird HR initiative to make us feel less like slaves. Their job is to follow you around, speak to families for you, and protect you from asshole teenagers. But I’ve been beat Underground Pool

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up, tackled and straight up punched right in the cat face, so that tells you how effective these “ambassadors” really are.

I think they’re really just there to be spies. They count every “guest interaction” you have. The supervisors check up on you if you’re not having lots and lots of interactions.

It’s kind of becoming a competitive thing, so I try to wave at fucking everybody. Even if they’re halfway across the park, I jump up and down, waving and dancing like an idiot, until they see me and wave back.

This is my life. Seven-year-old me better be fucking grateful.

But sixteen-year-old me actually did just find a little something to be pretty grateful about. When I was walking into work today, past the front entrance, I fell in love with a beautiful man. A beautiful man named Pepsi. I’m calling him Pepsi because he was drinking a Pepsi. It’s been ten minutes since then and I still don’t know his name. He had to throw away the Pepsi before he entered the park because of park protocol. But he’s still Pepsi to me.

I think my psychology teacher last year said that sometimes when you see someone really hot, you have to look away immediately because your brain explodes. She put it a little less casually than that, but that’s what it feels like. Complete, explosive overload.

That’s what happened when I saw Pepsi. I saw him in infinitesimal glances. The first time I looked over, all I saw was the outline of his face, and his general bone structure was enough to cause me to look away immediately. I blushed profusely and my heart definitely skipped a beat. Not in a romantic way, more in like a literal, premature ventricular contraction way. The physical difficulty of this job and being out in the heat has actually been stirring up an old heart infection. I saw his face, my heart skipped a beat, it felt like the blood pooled in my chest for a moment, and it was terrible.

I looked back again and saw a few more flashes of him. His dark hair. His dark eyes.

His height. His waist. His jeans. His shoes. His smile. His Pepsi.

Finally my brain settled enough and I was able to look at him for a longer amount of time. He was laughing with his friends, waiting in line to enter the park. He was talking to the security guard. He was throwing away his Pepsi. I stared at him while I clocked in at the employee entrance. I pretty much walked backwards into the locker room, staring back at him.

Now it’s five minutes before my first shift and I’m sitting on the crusty locker room couch by the door, wearing every part of my costume except my head, shaking, nervous as hell, desperately hoping that I’ll get out and be at my station before he walks by.

He might hug me if I’m a cat. I might get to smell him. So many wondrous possibilities await me if I could just get outside. I’m staring at my ambassador, Lydia. She’s not the worst ambassador in the room right now, but she’s definitely one of the most clueless.

“You’re ready so early, Raina!” my supervisor, Carla, says to me as she walks by. I grin in response for possibly a bit too long, and she gives me a strange look before returning to her office. Since she got promoted, Carla doesn’t talk to the costume characters much. She gets to hide out in her office while the rest of us sit around on these old, diseased couches, silently sweating, wearing our huge costume pants.

“I’m ready early,” I repeat to Lydia. My voice is a little too shaky to be casual. It may have even come across as slightly threatening, because Lydia stands up immediately and helps me put on my cat head. It’s a two-person job, because I’m already wearing the stupid cat gloves, and someone has to snap the helmet to my chin. Lydia has pinched me the fewest number of times out of any ambassador at the park, and for this I am grateful.

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Adventure Park

She pinches me today, though. But I don’t feel it. I’m pumped with adrenaline and numb to everything but Pepsi right now.

We walk outside and make it to my station in record time. I am basically hurling my head from side to side, trying to get a full view of the park through my extremely limited sightlines. There is no sign of Pepsi.

A few kids come up to me, cheering my arrival. I dance up to them and give them huge hugs in case Pepsi is about to round the corner. If he sees me, he’ll think I’m good with kids. He’ll maybe consider me a good potential mother of his children. He’ll think I’m a good dancer. He’ll probably want to dance with me at our wedding in front of all his friends. I bet I would get along with his friends.

I take pictures with the kids in front of the little “Adventure Park! Photos here!” backdrop the park has set up at these stations. We make a few memories, then I wave goodbye so they will get the hell away from me.

“Wow, you seem pretty excited today, Paws,” Lydia says in her ambassador voice, although nobody is around to hear it. They sort of creepily implied at training that our supervisors are always listening, so now when we’re out of the locker room we all speak and act a little bit like Mister Rogers.

I dance in response. I’m not allowed to speak in costume, so as not to spoil the illusion that I’m an actual five-foot-tall cat. So I do a very elaborate mime about a really hot guy at the entrance and how I know he’ll be coming over the bridge any minute now. I’m feeling creative and generous so I even show our future together, including our courtship and marriage and children and joint burial plots.

“I understood none of that,” Lydia says. “And you have a visitor.”

She points over my shoulder and I turn my head around so fast that my big cat cheek collides with something. The cat head slams against my own and my whole skull vibrates with pain, but the park and I are desperately afraid of lawsuits, so I don’t dwell on the pain for more than a split second and instead focus on our guest. I grab the person by the shoulders to steady them, hold them at arm’s length, and pet their face apologetically for a full four seconds before I realize through my furry fingers that it’s Pepsi.

I instantly hug him. I feel him shaking with either laughter or tears from being smacked in the face. I pull him away again and discover, to my delight, that he is laughing. He looks gorgeous. Our hug was so natural and wonderful and I’m swimming in his eyes. His friends are all laughing, too. He rubs his face with a mock pout and I hug him again and ruffle his hair. My cat persona is taking over and I feel an unparalleled level of confidence.

“Paws is so sorry!” Lydia says for me. She’s always good at speaking for me, but this comment causes Pepsi to turn his attention to her and for a moment I hate her. But I get his attention back easily by taking his hand and gently pressing it to my cat lips. It’s not hard to get attention when you’re a gigantic cat. He smiles and curtsies a little so I put an arm around him and motion for his friends to take a photo.

One of his friends, I’ll call him Frodo, comes up to be in the picture too but I wave him away.

“Oooooooh!” his friends all jeer. “I think he likes you, David.”

Okay, so Pepsi’s name is David. It suits him, but I’m going to continue to call him Pepsi for now. It captures his dark brown eyes, bubbly personality and ethereal presence better than the name David ever could.

“Good!” Pepsi replies.

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“Hey, is it a girl or a guy in there?” Frodo asks Lydia, and she smiles.

“Just a cat!” Lydia answers cheerfully.

This is the standard park answer but I really hate Lydia, standing there with her dumb, arrogant, shitty smile. I wonder briefly if she’s doing this to steal Pepsi from me and I’m about to mime the fact that I have tits when Pepsi suddenly plants a kiss on my cat cheek.

“Well, Paws is sexy no matter what,” says Pepsi and I melt in his arms. I get down on one knee and offer him a twig I pick off of my cat shoe, as if I’m proposing. He laughs again and takes the twig, slipping it behind his ear. He winks at me and then, just as soon, he’s gone, running after his friends to the other end of the park.

I feel my heart physically ripping out of my chest as I watch him go, like my heart is a keychain on his backpack or something. I grab Lydia’s arm and point after him.

“Yeah, Paws, he was pretty cute,” Lydia agrees.

I almost slap her.

Instead, I walk after Pepsi, my feet slamming hard against the pavement as I try to maneuver a speed-walk in my giant cat shoes. My head hurts oddly every time I jolt against the pavement but I keep going.

“Paws, you can’t leave your station,” she reminds me.

I wave her off.

“Paws, come back!”

“Fuck you, Lydia,” I mutter under my breath and a nearby child looks up at me in shock. The kid backs away, but several other children have seen me and they start to pull their parents over. Now is not the time for family memories. I outrun them.

I chase Pepsi down and grab his hands. He doesn’t look surprised to see me. He looks pleased.

“I just quit my job. Run away with me,” I say through the cat mask.

“Dude, I knew it was a girl in there!” Frodo says unhelpfully and in a very dumb, ugly, short way.

Pepsi ignores him and stares straight into my eyes. He somehow knows where I am behind the black mesh, because we make legitimate eye contact.

“I would love to,” he says, so sincerely that I want to kiss him right then.

“Paws! Paws! Raina!” Lydia calls after me, coming over to us with her dumb clipboard, probably trying to figure out whether to count this as a “positive guest interaction.”

“Raina,” Pepsi repeats, dreamily. My name sounds so good between his lips.

“We gotta run,” I say. I kick off my cat shoes and start to run with him across the park in my socks. We hop onto a small guest trolley that runs across the park and we escape, rolling away from Lydia, Pepsi’s dumb friends, and a rather confused supervisor at a speedy 25 mph. The trolley guests are pleased to see me. I look in the rearview mirror to see Lydia sadly picking up my abandoned cat shoes.

I turn back to Pepsi and smile, though he can’t actually see my face. He slips his hands under my cat head. His cool fingers graze my sweaty neck as he unbuckles the snap. He slowly lifts the helmet up and over my head and smiles.

“You—” he starts to say, and the trolley jolts suddenly. It feels like that kind of jolt where you’re falling asleep but you, like, fall off your bike in a dream or crash your car and wake up with a start and your heart beating at a million miles an hour. It feels just like that!

38

Adventure Park

Illustration by Mollie Rossi

Oh. My eyes jolt and focus and I find that I’m lying on the ground, staring up at the sky.

Lydia has just removed my helmet. Frodo is standing over me. Pepsi is nowhere to be seen. We’re back at my station.

“Are you okay, Raina? You had a real fall,” Lydia says.

“Where’s Pepsi?” I ask, though my voice sounds very far away.

“You and Peter conked heads a few minutes ago. You’ve been lying here for a while.

I didn’t know whether to take off your head,” Lydia says.

Frodo waves at me. “I’m okay, you took most of the hit,” he offers, stupidly.

“But where’s Pepsi?”

“Are you thirsty?” Lydia asks. I want to correct her and beg her to help me find Pepsi, but I am rather thirsty, so I just nod. I feel a blinding pain with every nod.

“Okay, let’s get you inside,” she says and helps me stand up. I glare at Frodo as we pass him and about fifty kids, who completely freak out when they see Paws the Cat walking back to the locker room without a head. Or a heart.

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Six Minutes or Hours Colleen Daniels

If I’m most likely to be doing nothing at any given moment I would much rather be doing that nothing with you When you’re far away I spend even more time thinking about how much nothing we could be doing than I do actually doing a whole lot of nothing We talk a lot about that nothing or about something and one of those or the other is just fine with me because I could watch you do nothing all weekend long I guess doing something is okay but when my time with you is limited I much prefer the cats on the couch cheese curls in or on the couch Food Network makes us hungry order chicken fingers talk about your car full of board games move a maybe total of six something for two days until you disappear back to the place I wish I were again And I’m trying desperately to grow my hair out as if it takes a kind of effort instead of just patience.

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Outer Space: The Mind of a Nine-Year-Old | Angela Peterdi

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Illustration by Laura Weiszer

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Ezekiel Emily Famularo

excerpt from Memoirs of the Insanitorium

PART I in remembrance This bed has not always been my fortress.

This bed used to be reality. My reality used to be something unlike the hardened buckles that cut off my circulation. It used to be far different than the prickling numbness that took over swollen fingertips, the light blue hint of decaying flesh. I don’t always remember it in pictures and frames. Most of the time it comes down upon me like a rush of water. The inward wave, salty, consumes me, flushes into every orifice, every pore of me. That is what my memories are like.

Flashes of a summer sun.

Lightning in the dark of night.

The tickle of a fleeting breeze.

My life was once this: school, a girlfriend, a family, maybe a dog, and white picket fences. A less than memorable stereotype of the American dream. Fuck. I am shutting down. Everything is shutting down. You are shutting me down. Thrashing, thrashing, thrashing, settle. Repeat. Are my wrists bleeding? Where is the rest of my body? Is this living?

Help. Help. Help.

S.O.S. Maybe if I build a fire, the airplanes will be able to see the smoke. in present The thin nurse is visible again. I remember her every so often. She fondles a needle with a burning hatred for me. Her eyes taunt me, and I retract from her in the most instinctual way. My body shies away from memories I cannot obtain.

Pathetic.

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She says my name. Ezekiel. Zeek. I like that better. Call me Zeek. Where are my manners? Hello, my name is Ezekiel. Please, call me Zeek. My pupils dilate at the thought of the needle, at the thought of not being able to introduce myself to it. Zeek, can’t you hear me? I can pinpoint the single air bubble that escapes upward. It diminishes near the top and my thoughts cumulate into a disgruntled groan. It is hell in liquid form. The memory of how it feels penetrating my skin is like the sensation of being scalded.

Death.

Dying.

Dead.

If that needle touches me, I am going to die.

“Fuck”—that slipped out.

“Fuck. Me.” Only if you want.

“No.” dreaming We don’t wake up just yet. I know this for a fact: somewhere in the parts of my mind that you aren’t controlling I know that we are in a fine line of desperation. The threads of reality and imagination have spun us into a wad of less than living flesh. My body is your canvas, and I am just the nagging appendage that you have yet to hack off. One day I know you may have the chance to be rid of me, and when that day comes I know I will be gone for good. It is scary, but in my thirty years of being alive I have come to grips with this thrilling fact. I am the fly caught in the web. Stuck to things beyond my knowledge, rigid with the idea that one day I am going to have the life, quite literally, sucked out of my body. recap the day My morning episode landed me back inside my room, which you know, and I slept for a good part of the day. They force-fed me the medication, which I haven’t been taking, by way of needle. It did not leave a mark. My wrists are clasped between leather restraints. They look like belts rung into the tightest loop, squeezing the bruises from my pores. Some of that is mine. Some of it is something else. Most of it I don’t remember. They restrain me. Us. Together, we are not allowed to move freely. The medicine they give me makes things feel light, translucent, clear. Like we are suddenly washed of our impurities and turned new again, reborn by way of anti-psychotics, if only for a few hours. I do not always like my medicine. I do not always take it. When I don’t, things get very bad, very strange and disturbing. This is how I am, and this is how you are.

“Paint for me,” Doctor T. says. He is surly, and when he speaks I can hear your laughter at the way his jowls shiver beneath the weight of his words.

“Paint what?” My own voice always seems so distant.

“Paint whatever you see in your mind,” he repeats.

We paint a turtle carcass. It is festering. It has some sort of pox all over it and on top of the turtle there is a naked cat. The naked cat has a large, impending erection coming out of its forehead. Doctor T. does not say anything. We reflect on this work and I know you are pleased, and I am indifferent.

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Ezekiel

in the light When we are not in our room we are allowed into the common area. This hospital is its own standing mental facility for those who cannot control themselves. Lunatic, insane, mental, batty, bizarre, and, my personal favorite, psychotic. We are not all the same, but we’re treated like we are. When you’re normal you think of these places with such pity. Those poor people, what a horrible existence. When you are in one of these places you don’t think much of anything. Besides being constantly doped up on drugs, you are placed into therapies and group activities. Outside exercise is surrounded by state-of-the-art chain link fences, pulsing with electricity and, just for good measure, perfected coils of barbed wire on top.

You and I both know that they added that only last year. The electricity. It just so happened that an older man—his name was Frank, or Henry, or something like that— reflected on how monotonous his real life must’ve been and went on a manic episode after refusing to take his medicine for a week. In the end he punctured a basketball, removed all his clothing and climbed the fence naked. It was quite a show, and they had to wrangle him out of someone’s driveway about two miles away. They got a lot of shit for that one.

This reminds me that I haven’t seen him since that happened.

Which is the point: You’re in here because you’re a threat to yourself and those around you. How unfair of you to exist, to be so deformed and mentally incapable. You do not get to feed your mental instability. Instead you sign up for jazz club and the knitting circle. Play poker with pretzels, play friendly board games that do not stir anger. Watch the news. Watch the blank screen when the news has something much too graphic for you to think about.

“If you’re a good boy and eat all your dinner, then you can have ice cream,” my mother used to say. The nurses still do. in the dark I do not like the dark, but you seem to thrive in it. When I am alone, when the other guests have settled, their prescriptions blooming in their brains, you come to me so desperately. to my decaying brain I like the way my fingers tap against the bed frame as I wait for you. The way my skin feels so smooth against the bronzed metal balls that keep it together. They keep me together. Me, you, us. It is like a sickness, and I wish for the cool touch of it to trickle down my body. I can see it, and I know you can see it too. You are the third eye, pink and oozing. My hazardous, contagious third eye. I wonder what you are like sometimes.

You show me bad things, and not so many good things. Are you bad? Are we bad? I wonder how we ended up here, but I do not question you. The doctor said that it happens like that.

Schi Schizo Schi Schizophrenia Underground Pool

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He says that it is an imbalance. Chemical instability. He says that you’re the problem.

I wonder if he’s right, mostly at night when I can’t sleep, when my back is so rigid that I can do nothing but stare straight up into the white nothingness of the ceiling. All the other patients can be heard screaming, wailing and moaning into the absence of noise.

I cannot scream. I wonder what words taste like, not tainted by the foulness of my deficiency. Our deficiency, because together we are deficient. My doctor explains this to me.

Lack of: • Emotional sensitivity • Desire to have company • Thoughtfulness • Adult-like thought processing Overwhelming: • Anxiety • Depression • Thoughts of suicide • Hallucinations That’s how they prefer to explain things. Listing them, as if the bullets will help me understand. They need me to understand, mostly so I can control you. They tell me I need to persuade you, overpower you and understand you. You and I are not in complete harmony. Our Feng Shui needs some chemical reformation. However, you know that I know these things and it has become extremely inhibiting for me. I dislike that very much about you. a detailed history According to my medical chart, which is also in list format, I entered this room when I reached the age of twenty-eight. It didn’t happen all at once, but over time. It was like an infection spreading over me. The doctors did not know what you were at first, but inclined toward the notion that I’d turn out okay. The depression—there’s a pill for that.

The anxiety—there’s a pill for that. The insomnia—here’s a pill for that. At our lowest point, without knowing we had the disease, we were on ten different medications. None of which would correct what was wrong. It wasn’t until they found it in my heritage, the missing branches and limbs of my decaying family tree.

They would say: “Your grandfather had these symptoms.” Not even a flicker of emotion hurtled over their faces. “They may not have known it then, but these things change over time.”

I remember this day because I was all there. I knew what they were talking about.

What I mean is that I knew I was in control, and not you. I was the one responding. I was the one watching. I could feel the pounding in my chest, which signaled the onslaught of anxiety that would allow you to take over after I received this information. Our disease is genetic, or so they think. They do not know much of it, just that I have displayed symptomatic behavior since I was a boy. Funny, no one ever told me this. You never told me this either—you’re much more of the strong, silent type. I find it endearing.

46

Ezekiel

We’ve been in this institution for 24 months.

104 weeks.

730 days. a new day It is now Day 731. Not that anyone is counting. Most of the time we’re not that open with each other. We’re like oil and water. You are my surface, and I cower beneath you.

I do not question this. Instead, I follow instinctively into the yard. Henry or Frank or whatever his name was isn’t here again. I wonder about his existence for less than ten seconds. We do not socialize. We do not exercise. We do nothing. We slide over to the tree. Our tree. You like to call it your tree, but I feel we have many fond memories beneath this tree. Your tree. We are beneath your tree. The sun is squarely set in the sky.

It is humid. The horrid musk of Mother Nature hazes over us. You are displeased, and I can feel myself feeling rather enamored.

Not in love, maybe not even amused. I feel something, though. The wind changes, and I suck in a deep breath. into the fire If you make connections between elements, you can make things. You can be a producer of things, and you can think for me: how self-sufficient you are, I am so proud of you. As my fingers work over the small branches, the small bush weeds and dead blades of grass, I am only focused on pleasing you. Praise me. Perfectly round beads of sweat have formed at my temples. My heartbeat has become a thunderous roar. I am anxious and you know this. You don’t stop me. I don’t want to stop.

To the outside world I am the shadow, the fleeting moment. No one notices the magnifying glass. A mental institution with magnifying glasses. What I am doing is not harmful. Capturing the light of the sun, beneath our tree. It trickles in between branches and leaves. It funnels, dilates onto my pile of picked-over lumber and weeds. It catches fire easily. You dance in the flames before me, and my arm has moved beyond me and into it. I want to feel you. I do not feel burning. My skin is slowly melting off, but I do not feel burning.

Maybe if I build a fire, the airplanes will be able to see the smoke.

S.O.S. Help. Thrash, thrash, thrash, settle.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

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Scarlet Stockings | Kuba Jennes

48

Noses Sarah Galante

I want to feel your nose rubbing against mine in an unexpected Eskimo kiss as you whisper your secrets into my mouth.

Lying under thick wool blankets, infused with your scent and my affection.

The kind of nose that is too large for your face, but not so large that it gets in the way of kissing after our first real date, where we watched a bad movie and shared popcorn that made our fingers sweat with butter.

My eyes like Chinese lanterns as you confide that you love your sister, but you don’t really like her.

I want the comfort of your immense hands on the very nape of my neck when we hug goodbye.

I want your laugh, which can only be described as vulnerable, to be buried with me when I die, my epitaph reading: I loved you, but I loved your laugh more.

I want to act like a mother of a newborn child and rest my head upon your chest, to make sure you are still breathing.

All through the night.

Each breath reaffirming how important it is to me that you continue.

That you and your laugh and your nose and your hands outlive me.

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Small Doses Alyssa Langenhop

We collect kind gestures and seal them in the swear jar. I like talking. Like this.

You told me to do this like this.

Your lips stroke the gravel. They’re so white.

I wear high heels. I chew my nails.

We make babies with the collision and caresses of our breath.

It’s so cold out. Tonight. Tonight we give birth to the most heartless of affections.

I slurped the paint,

snorted the pepper,

painted my eyelids,

chewed the brick,

gave you the mattress.

You walked over toothpicks to me and built it with red lights, so dull.

Go ahead, crack a joke. I can handle it.

I can handle it in small doses.

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Pertaining to the Body | Phillip Mastrippolito

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Illustration by Corey Shupp

52

People Like That Samantha Milich

I met her on a Monday after most shops had pulled their gates down over their doors and their owners had driven home with leftover Chinese food sitting on their passenger seats. Sunny said we had to stay open till eleven because you never knew when a customer was going to walk in. It was snowing that day. I remember, because when she walked in, the shoulders of her brown peacoat had white fluffs on them that almost immediately melted as I looked her way. She was embarrassed to be in the store, but I didn’t feel embarrassed for her. I waited till she walked past the leather lace-up boots and color-coordinated G-strings before I got out from behind the counter and began to trace her steps. I was wearing these pretty ballet flats that had begun to build blisters on my ankles, but I pretended I didn’t feel a thing.

She had wandered into the back room, where there was an array of dildos and buttplugs and some other stuff that made people laugh or have orgasms or scream or all three at the same time. She had her back turned to all these devices, though, and was staring at the bachelorette decorations. In her white-gloved hands she was lightly holding a package of skin-toned straws shaped like penises.

“Are you finding everything okay, ma’am?”

She didn’t like holding the straws, but I enjoyed the way they looked resting so delicately in her palm.

“My sister is getting married. She wants me to throw her a party.”

“That must be exciting,” I lied.

“It is.” She placed the penis straws back on the rack and took off her gloves, exposing her profoundly red fingernails. Her ring finger had a soft blue vein running down it that ran right into her wedding band, as though pumping blood to it.

I helped her pick out balloons in the shape of penises, the kind that were multicolored so that she could be politically correct.

“What’s your name?” I asked, which made her mute cheeks spot with red. Her bangs were lopsided and had begun to frizz slightly on one side.

“It’s Susan. And yours?”

“Beth.”

Susan’s phone began to buzz in her simple black Coach bag. She didn’t even glance at the caller ID before pressing it to her ear. She looked tired and, as she spoke, only began to look more tired.

“No no, Josh will only eat the dinosaur chicken nuggets,” she cooed, then placed a Underground Pool

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hand on her hip, like a woman in charge. “He didn’t eat dinner? Well yeah, if the nuggets weren’t shaped like dinosaurs, what do you expect?” She was leaning up against the ball gags, smoothing out the creases in her coat as her bag grazed a box of nipple clamps.

“No, sweetie . . . yes, I’m actually at the store right now, buying some more things for her.

Will you give them both a kiss for me?”

I stepped toward the silicone lubricants to give Susan privacy. Susan and I were probably very close in age. She looked like a young mother, someone who got married right after college, to some man who makes a good amount of money. Now they have two children, a boy and a girl, and she stays at home with them during the day and reads them bedtime stories at night. I wonder if her kids’ rooms have those peel-and-stick glowin-the-dark stars scattered about their walls to look up at right before they fall asleep.

“What are these?” Susan asks, done with her phone call, slightly aggravated, gripping Ben Wa balls.

“Ben Wa balls.”

“What are they for?”

“Are you busy tonight?”

“Excuse me?”

She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but I could smell the scent of baby powder and cocoa butter slipping from her wrists. Her coat was unbuttoned, revealing wide set hips that she attempted to hide under an A-line skirt. I could tell by her slender arms she used to be skinny.

“I’m new to the city, maybe we could go out for a drink. We close up here in twenty.”

I could feel Sunny watching us from the cameras up front. Susan had a weird wide nose, and her right nostril twitched as she looked at the massage lotions behind me.

Her blonde hair was shining in one section from the fluorescent lights slightly buzzing above us. Susan made eye contact with me and let one eyebrow peek upward. That was the first night we had sex.

I got this job about two years ago. The store sits lopsided on the corner of 4th and South, with a large blue sign with golden letters sweeping across it: The Toy Chest. The job was easy enough. Just sell what’s in the store. My boss, Sunny, was a casual Indian man with a beard to his collarbones and a dead father who had left him nothing but sex toys. He didn’t like the store, but he never complained about it, and I liked that.

It was slow a lot of the time, which was excellent for me because it meant I got to sit on the partially broken stool behind the counter and do nothing. This used to be my favorite activity while at work, then it became guessing what people were going to buy based on what kind of shoes they had on. But about five months into working there, I came up with a new favorite game. If you could even call it a game. It was more an impulse. The first time it happened, I was helping an older couple buy a strap-on when I couldn’t stop thinking about where they’d gone to college and if the woman had played tennis in her college years. Her husband had the hairiest hands I’d ever seen, and I began to imagine how they looked when stuck with sweat and little pieces of greenery from doing yard work all day. My heart rate accelerated at the thought of what kind of throw pillows they had on their couch and just how many lamps they had around their house. Yes, what kind of lamps: Tiffany lamps, Ikea lamps, all the lamps. I wanted to turn on every single one of their lamps. My legs shook.

When I got home that night, I took a hot shower to defrost my toes from the winter 54

People Like That

walk home, and also to masturbate. I thought of a home in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and as I pressed two fingers into myself, I imagined the house filled with knickknacks and scrapbooks, bowls of plastic fruit. With posters of maps put into frames, a nightlight and a few mason jars sealed tight with homemade jam, tucked away in the pantry.

I always got a thrill out of these people, people like that. Susan was no different. Or maybe Susan was a little different, because she came in alone, and because she looked like she had cold hands even in the summer. I wanted to know how cold her hands would feel when wrapped around me.

The first night we had sex it was awkward and I loved it. She kept saying, “I’ve never been with a woman,” which struck me as funny, because I think of myself as a girl. I took her back to my place, even though she said the kids were visiting their grandparents with her husband in Kentucky for the week while she stayed and planned her sister’s bachelorette party. I wanted to see her house, I was eager to see her house, but after too many lemon drops and draft beers, she whispered this sweet nothing: “I’m way too drunk to drive my car home.” So we took a taxi back to my place. In the taxi I kissed her and she grabbed at my breasts in this stupidly aggressive way, probably the way her husband used to do it back in college.

When we got to my South Philly apartment we pulled off our shoes then kissed in the hallway until I slipped her stockings down to her ankles. She made an over-exaggerated pouty face and said my home looked lonely.

“Where are the pictures of your family? Where are the decorations?”

I then pointed at a postcard of Niagara Falls I had pinned on the wall late last Christmas, when I was dreaming every night of the hottest summer ever and throwing myself into a monstrous waterfall to cool myself down.

She clapped her hands. “How lovely! Have you ever been to Niagara Falls? I just love it.”

“No.” I laid her on my bed and began to unbutton her blouse.

“Where are you from?” she said in such a way that I didn’t have an answer.

“You said you had children. How old are they?” I asked. She turned her face, closed her eyes and giggled, lazily placing her hand over her brow.

“Josh is three-and-a-half. Lily is one.” She giggled again, scrunching her chin. “I still have so much baby fat to get rid of!” I pulled her blouse from her body. She had soft leftover skin hanging from her belly that had been pressed red with imprints of her stockings.

“No. You look great.”

“Why doesn’t my husband say that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know, my husband knocked me up in my last semester of college? I was going to be a dancer. But now I’m married and I have children. And I’m having my first affair.

You’re my first, but it’s strange. I knew I was going to do this. Did you know? Did you know this was going to happen?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

She cried for a second, but then she began to smash her wet face against mine and kiss me too much. Then we had sex and I got off to the thought of her bathroom stocked with Band-Aids and Neosporin for when her kids got little cuts or scraped knees; she could mend them within minutes.

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Susan and I began to see each other about three times a week. She drove to see me at The Toy Chest. “How old is she, Beth?” Sunny asked once, giving me a suspicious look.

“How old does she look?”

“Older then you.”

“She’s, like, twenty-eight. That’s only a little older then me.”

Sunny began to stick sensors through the tags on the diamond-covered bras. “She sure acts a lot older then you.”

“That’s cause I’m a young spirit.” I winked.

“I see she’s married.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t be a home wrecker, Beth.”

“I know what I’m doing.” I flipped a page in the newspaper.

“Like you’ve done this before?”

“No, but, it’s whatever. I know what kind of person she is, and she knows what kind of person I am. We know what we’re doing. I know what I’m doing.”

“Yeah, well, just be careful. People never really know what they’re capable of.” He brought the bras to a hanger and color-coordinated them.

Susan came once we were almost closed, then we went for a drink, and then my apartment, which she had said looked lonely. She bought me a decorative wall piece that I know I would’ve liked if it had been hanging in her home, but seeing it in my apartment, I knew it was a cheap effort and just a lie. I told her I loved it.

My favorite part of all was when she would bring me cookies, or brownies, or leftover dinner, in a Tupperware container stuffed to the brim.

One night we sat on my bed, eating snickerdoodles she’d made for a play date concocted with another mother at the day care. The snickerdoodles were shaped like stars, and as I chewed them delicately, I imagined Susan dutifully pressing a precious starshaped cookie cutter against the soft dough. She’d saved me a handful of these perfect cookies to show she cared.

“Brian thinks my sister’s fiancée is just marrying for the money.”

“Your family has a lot of money?”

“Yes, my father died when I was eight, left us everything. Even if he hadn’t died, we would’ve still been well off. But he had to die too. He was nice, I remember him being a funny man.”

“How’d he die?”

“Car accident. Killed instantly on impact though, so that’s good, even though it’s bad.” Susan looked at her fingernails.

“I’m sorry.”

“What is your father like?”

“He’s in an assisted living home in New Jersey. I try and visit him often,” I said, even though I didn’t.

“That’s thoughtful of you.” She kissed my neck. I took another snickerdoodle and pushed it in my mouth.

“And your mother?” she said, picking at a crumb on my cheek.

I swallowed, then smiled. “My mother was never as good a baker as you, that’s for sure.”

We laughed.

“Is she with your father?”

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People Like That

I picked up another cookie and broke off a star tip so that it looked silly and off-center, ugly and distasteful.

“No.” “Has she died?”

I pressed my finger slowly into the center of the cookie, until my finger broke through to the other side and the cookie had cracks on its surface. I coughed hard, then harder, then told her I would be right back so that I could get a cup of water. When I returned, Susan had me lie down with my head in her lap. She undid my ponytail and began playing with the fine brown hairs.

“You know my husband is going out of town next week, for a few days. If you could take off work, perhaps you could come spend some time with me?”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” I said casually, but I‘d already began to feel just how many feathers were stuffed into her plush comforter or imagine what kind of plant was tucked into the corner to give the bedroom more color. My legs became hot as she laced my hair in a loose braid and asked me if I wanted another snickerdoodle.

We had passionate sex, and I got off to the thought of her rubbing cream on her elbows before bed to avoid dry skin.

To get to her neighborhood, I had to take two buses and walk about fifteen minutes.

Each house looked like the last: some outside lights were on, some kids were riding bikes, but her house was the best house, because it was hers. Susan was sitting on her front porch drinking a cup of tea. She smiled as she saw me walking up.

“It’s about time, dear. How was the trek over here?”

“Fine, I took the bus.”

“Be careful on the bus. I told you I don’t like it when you take the bus.” She had said that but I told her on purpose, just to hear her say that she had told me, that she didn’t like it.

“I know. Sorry, I forgot.”

Her house looked like that of a good mother. Everything was clean, and lived-in, and smelled like clean laundry or some kind of candle or lemons. So many things were beige, so many things showed that she had a good life, maybe even a great one.

“My kids are sleeping so we have to be a little quiet.” We walked up the stairs and into her bedroom, where the walls were cream-colored and the bed lay in the middle, large and inviting. An endtable was perched on either side of the bed; her husband’s was the one on the right. On top was a silver wristwatch, a few pens and a business card with the left side creased.

“Are you hungry?”

“No, I ate after work.” I sat down next to her husband’s endtable while she stepped into the bathroom. I delicately ran my finger over the business card, which he had probably stuffed in his pocket after some arbitrary meeting. It had someone’s name printed on it and was boring to the touch.

“Hey.” Her voice hovered above me as I stared at her husband’s things. I looked up at her. She was wearing a silly black lace teddy.

“Isn’t it terrible?” She pulled a piece of lint off the black material.

“Yes, you don’t look like yourself.”

“I know. Brian bought it for me a few months ago. I told him it was cheap-looking, but he said he paid good money for it.”

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Illustration by Corey Shupp

“Why did he buy it?”

“Because we haven’t been having sex for some time.” She sat down next to me and began to pick at her nails.

“Why?” “It’s stupid, he—he wants another baby. Like, really?”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, it’s just—” She lay down on the bed. “He’s so good with the kids, better than I would’ve guessed. Better than me? He loves kids. He wants another. I’m just—getting so tired.” She laughed. “I hardly do anything. Maybe that’s why I’m tired.” She ran her hands over the suddenly endearing teddy. I looked over by the television, next to it, at a beautiful picture of her two children and her husband. All of them looked wonderful.

“Your husband sounds like a great man.” I began to imagine him driving the children to school on his way to work, playing the oldies station, Marvin Gaye and The Temptations sputtering through the speakers.

“He is. He really is. Let’s not talk about him.”

“I don’t mind.”

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People Like That

She pulled me down to her and kissed my face.

“But I do. And you should, too.”

“All right.”

“Get me out of this ridiculous teddy.”

“No, keep it on, just for a minute.” We continued to kiss while I imagined her husband picking out the teddy from an expensive online catalogue, wondering which one she would like, and which one he would like, and what could get them in the mood to have a wonderful night in bed. How wonderful, to have someone to want to spend your life with, to bring up children, in such a lovely home. Susan and I had sex, and I got off to the idea of their children having a college savings they weren’t allowed to touch until they got into a good university.

I woke up a little before Susan, when it was still dark, and the house was quiet. I lay next to her for a minute or so, then sat up. I decided to stretch my legs and took a stroll in the hall, leading myself to the room just a few feet away from the master bedroom.

There was a nightlight dimly lighting the doorway and a huge stuffed bear in the corner.

I stepped into the room, then stood perfectly still. The crib was in front of me. I took my time with my steps, so as not to disturb the air in the room, and eventually I was hovering over the crib, staring at Susan’s baby. A fat-cheeked baby, with a thick head of brown hair. Such soft-looking brown hair and tiny little fingers. I reached to touch it, to feel it. And I almost did, but before my fingers touched the tuft of hair on top of the baby’s head, I pulled away. I walked back to Susan’s room, where I got under the covers and began to nestle into her crevices, till I fell back asleep, if only for a moment.

We woke up together, when the light outside was a cool shade of blue and the sun hadn’t fully peeked from the covers of the atmosphere. Her children were still sleeping as she peeled the sheets off my body and asked in a whisper if I wanted breakfast.

She made me breakfast, pancakes and fruit, then I asked her to wash the dishes and let me watch.

“Do you want me naked?”

“If that’s what you want.”

She smirked as she picked up the plates and walked them to the sink. I rested my elbows on the table, sticky with syrup, wondering what her backyard looked like. She pulled her oversized Garfield shirt over her shoulders and let it drop to the linoleum tiles where the crumbs and dirt were almost invisible. Almost. She giggled as she turned on her heel and ran the water. The soap got foamy around her hands as she washed each dish individually and precisely. She picked at food stuck to a plate, her eyebrows pinching, her toes curling in. She reminded me of Cinderella, her blonde hair in a weird folded bun, and I was curious to know if her children watched the movie, if they had a drawer under the television filled with VHS tapes.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked me as she placed a wet hand on one of her sagging breasts.

“What are you thinking?” I rested my head on my left palm.

She walked over and kissed me and I thought of the soft carpet in her living room and how, if I had grown up here, I would have leaned on my stomach as I ate egg salad sandwiches from plates set down on the carpet and stared up at the television as it played one of my many VHS tapes.

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her down on the linoleum tile and pushed my face in between her legs.

Did she cook her husband breakfast every morning? Did she make her kids oatmeal and put cinnamon on top and pour them orange juice she bought from the fresh market?

Did she thrust like this with her husband and did she put her oversized T-shirt back on after sex or keep it tossed at the edge of the bed? Did she brush her teeth with Colgate or Crest? I would have to check later that night.

I think she may have said she loved me, and then I flicked at some stuff with my tongue until her left thigh began to twitch. Other things happened too, and we ended up on the soft carpet in her living room, her arms and legs woven around my body. She didn’t have as many plants as I had imagined, but I loved how she had blinds on her windows, as well as thick curtains, neatly pulled back with curtain knobs.

“I want you to be around so much more then you are,” she said as she pulled my hair from out of my eyes.

“We see each other a lot.”

“Yes, but I want to see more of you.”

I laughed, “Yes, I could be your children’s babysitter. I could be their nanny.” But as I said it, it sounded like something I would actually like, and it wasn’t a joke.

“No, no, I mean. I mean this, this whole thing we have going on. I mean it all.”

“I know you do. So do I.” “I know.”

“Are you okay, Susan?”

“Yes, but, I don’t know.” She looked away from me, over toward the antique pictures on her light brown wall. Pictures of horses in knee-high grass, staring at the photographer.

“I want to be with you.”

“You are with me, Susan.”

“No. Right now I’m with my husband, and my children, and you. And right now, I want to be with just you.” Her eyes closed when she said this. The sun had begun to hit the surfaces of her windows, and the room was cast in a golden hue. I could hear the grandfather clock in the dining room ticking, loud and constant.

“I want to leave my husband. I think.” She nodded to herself, the trace of a smile on her mouth.

“I don’t know if we’ve been together long enough for you to be so sure.”

“What do you mean? Of course I know. We’ve been seeing each other for a month.

It isn’t long, but I know I don’t like being in this house. I know I don’t like making dinner and watching shitty movies with Brian on HBO at night. I know when I don’t like things. And I also know when I like things. I like the way things are when I’m with you.

I know that.”

“I don’t know what you’re going to tell your husband when your sister’s wedding finally happens. If he thinks you’re spending all this time with her instead of me—” “I know, that’s why I want to tell him about us.”

The coffeetable had home living magazines scattered on it, as well as a few children’s toys that rang with alarmingly bright colors. Turquoise and crimson and rounded edges, so that the children couldn’t hurt themselves with harsh points and angry corners.

“I just have never felt this way.” She squeezed me harder. “I don’t want this stupid shit, I want to be with you.”

“Your life is not stupid, it’s wonderful.”

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People Like That

“No, it isn’t.”

“I just . . . ” I began to feel hot. I tried to pull her away but she gripped me harder.

“I am not happy with this life.”

The bookshelf to the left was filled with mystery novels. I was curious to know if she had read them or her husband had.

“No.” I tried to pull away from her.

“It could be perfect, really.”

“Your children.”

“You wouldn’t have to work at The Toy Chest.”

“I like my job there, though. I work there because I like it.”

“Okay, fine, keep the job. It’s not the point. The point is we could start something new.”

“I like where we are, Susan, I like exactly where we are. I like what we’re doing and the way it fucking is. This is the way I want it, and you’re being selfish. Stop being so selfish.”

“I am not.”

“What about your kids?”

“I wouldn’t abandon them. Jesus, they would just have divorced parents.”

“No.” “What?” She slowly peeled away from me, her breasts swinging as she moved.

“You’re overreacting, Susan.”

“I am not.”

“You have a great life. Can’t we just keep it at that?”

“I don’t like it. You’ve made me see that.”

I rolled my eyes then stood up, towering over her.

“You shouldn’t do this to your husband or your kids.”

“What the fuck, Beth? What the fuck? You’re fucking me! You and I are having sex and you’re thinking of my husband more than me? Stop feeling bad for Brian. Think about yourself, think about me. I know, you feel guilty—” “I really don’t.”

“But you can’t let the guilt run your life. Let’s have what we want. I want to get what I want, for once.”

I laughed softly. “That’s not how it works.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked. I walked toward the hall to the stairs up to her room. I could hear her quickly following behind. “What do you mean?” Her banister was made out of strong cherry wood, dark and deep and almost red. I walked into her bedroom. She followed and closed the door. “Don’t put your clothes on.”

I grabbed at my underwear, which had been thoughtlessly discarded on the floor. I lifted it over my thighs.

“Don’t put your clothes on.”

I looked around for my shirt and found it over by the small desk with bills scattered about it.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Don’t yell at me. Don’t wake up your children.”

“Stop, you have to talk to me.”

I put my shirt on over my head.

“Why are you freaking out?”

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“You’re the one who wants to run away. You’re the one who wants to leave your life behind. You’re freaking out, Susan. I’ve never seen this side of you.”

I pulled my jeans from under the bed, where they kept three- and eight-pound hand weights to do at-home exercises in order to stay in shape. I put my jeans on, buttoned the top and refolded the cuffs at the bottom. Susan was standing in front of the door, her mouth slightly open.

“Don’t go.”

“I left my shoes downstairs with my bag. I need to go downstairs.”

“If you go downstairs, you aren’t coming back.”

“I don’t think this is going to work out. We want different things.”

“I thought you wanted me.”

My head felt hot with the thought of her children waking up one morning to their mother not being around. Of her husband staring at the front yard, thinking about how he should get a new mailbox or how he should really just move out of the house because it reminded him too much of someone else. Of her children never knowing her, never really knowing her, hardly knowing she existed.

“I don’t like you and I didn’t know you were so selfish, is all. I’m sorry if I led you on.”

Susan looked like she was about to cry, and in that moment I hated her so much I wanted to scream. I hated her for ruining it all. I hated her. She looked like she was going to cry, and she looked like a terrible mother.

“Let me pass, Susan.”

She stepped aside. “Please don’t go.”

I walked down the stairs, then put my shoes back on. I heard her breathing from all the way upstairs.

I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my sweater and began to put it on. Susan came down the stairs quick, still naked, still about to cry. I zipped up the sweater, then closed up my backpack. Her hair was all disheveled and her fingernails looked tacky.

She took a few steps toward me, slowly, but quicker as she got closer. I think she was going to hit me, but stopped short at the sound of a young child crying in one of the rooms around the corner. The cry was shrill, and painful, and made my skin want to bubble off the bone. Susan’s eyes narrowed, then became large again, tired, and quiet. She looked at my legs, up to my face, then turned the corner and went to calm her baby as it shook and cried for her attention. I left, then took the two buses and the fifteen-minute walk back to my narrow apartment, to sleep in my home, which I had been told looked lonely.

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People Like That

Courtiers | Hannah Gregory

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On Love Sean Hogan

Take away the leather and latex, People who are into S and M Are closer to the truth than Barry White.

Dinner by candlelight is fine As long as it reminds you that Even pretty things have the capacity to burn.

Love is not counted in habitual Hallmark cards On Valentine’s Day. It is measured in moments Impossible to quantify when placed side by side.

It’s when you realize you’ve been lying next to someone For hours, never touching, never speaking And you are comforted, by the knowledge they exist.

The bizarre compulsion to kiss them on the neck While they’re doing dishes.

That urge to fuck them while they’re on the phone With their closest friends and family.

It’s represented by that girl who made you feel like shit For breaking up with her when she cheated on you With an Australian guy in Vegas. And yes, I do know about that.

Respecting them enough to not murder everyone Who makes them happy after you.

That, is not an easy thing to do.

It’s holding your lame childhood dog, while the vet puts him to sleep, Letting your last words be a lie when you tell him it’s okay Even as his head goes limp in your arms.

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Lady Fool | Victoria Heckman

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In Light of Recent Events Kahla Brown

I. We have not talked for two weeks.

In fact, it’s been six days, but if anyone asked I’d say two weeks. It’s nice to hear from you, and this bar is breaking my spirit, so I go outside.

I do not tell my friend I am going.

I do not tell his boyfriend I am going.

I do not tell his boyfriend’s friends I am going.

I bum a menthol cigarette from a boy whose friend is drunk drunk drunk.

It’s her 21st birthday. I should not feel old.

I leave and I call you and it is nice to hear your voice.

Phone to ear, I climb up and sit on a brick wall.

The world is not spinning, just close.

You tell me your book is going well.

You tell me boxing is going well.

You tell me about a girl named Cierra with a “C.” I pick my scab. It bleeds much more than I expect.

It bleeds onto my hand.

On my way to find my friends, I pass a boy who followed me for six blocks a week ago and then when I would not let him anymore, because I did not want him to know where I lived, pushed me against a wall and kissed me.

II. The next morning, you send me a text: “Well I guess I might have one friend. But I’m not sure. I’m starting to enjoy talking to her more and more. She is the only one who’ll talk to me. She lives in Philadelphia. I’d like to visit her sometime. Maybe I will.” – a quote from my Journal in Alaska that I just found

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III. There are some very good things about Facebook.

I can talk to Mary who is from Belfast but lives in Chicago.

I can say happy birthday to fifty people whose birthdays I’d otherwise forget.

I can click a link and learn the real reason for our bloated healthcare expenses.

Then again, in six clicks and ten keystrokes I can see what Cierra looks like.

IV. The first thing I notice when I look at anyone is whether or not they are you.

V. My skylight sings to the rain, to the change of temperature (the only good thing about my skylight).

When I set my alarm, my sleep aid plays; it’s the sound of rain on a car roof.

It sounds like a joke or a sham.

I wash my face and I sleep.

VI. “I’m being a baby about life,” you tell me.

“How’s that working out for you?”

“It isn’t.”

You’d rather be doing amazing things right now.

A life isn’t long enough for anything good.

VII. New pictures.

You: happy You: smiling You: riding a bike You: making a face I’ve never seen before I am mostly sure they are you.

VIII. All art aspires to music.

All art aspires to music.

All art aspires to music.

The art of your walking succeeds.

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Illustration by Jamie Mangold

68

The One About Ladybird Magpie Rebecca Buckley

The rifle in question looked quite inoffensive now.

Somehow innocuous on the evidence table, it looked as if the .44 Winchester had only wrongly wandered into the lobby of some building, not as if it should be the subject of a statewide investigation.

The defendant was just wondering about the melting icebox around the back of her house.

It was the hottest day of the year in Deadhorse, Alaska. Fifty-five degrees without wind chill, and you’d have to figure the ice would melt other places, too. Streams would free up, moose would cross freely, fish would swim in strong numbers, and Mr. Whitney’s body would be easing out of the south bay.

It would be a good day for hunters and policemen.

A good day for men with guns.

Ladybird Magpie had been the administrative assistant at William H. Seward K-12 Schoolhouse since 1917. Ladybird might also be called in to assist during peak hours in the library, when Ms. Langford could not handle the rush of students visiting for homework and research. Ladybird was a tall woman. She never needed the stepladder to alphabetize the books on the top shelf in the assembly room, although proper young boys like James Whittier always brought the ladder over for her anyway. Still in her forties, she had a steady hand for putting seasonal ornaments around the school’s main classroom, but this year, the ornaments had found their way to decorative locations before she arrived to put them up herself. Ladybird had started that 1939 school year, as she had every year, meaning to administer study hall and detention for truants. But when she brought the first tardy student of the year into her office, Principal Daghill had swept in to take the student down the hall and into his office at the other end of the school and reprimanded the student himself. By the end of the fall semester, the appearance of delinquent students in her office had slowly trickled down to nothing, and Ladybird had to pretend she did not notice.

The first day back from winter holiday, a snowstorm covered over the schoolhouse door just before lunchtime. The children had started the early hours of their morning excited, praying they might get snowed out of school. To find themselves snowed into school seemed unholy.

The door to Ms. Ladybird’s office scuttled against the chalky stone threshold. The door itself was only medium-weight wood, but the water-warped jamb and uneven floor made it especially hard for those of elementary size to open. Ms. Ladybird assisted the small person on the other side of the door attempting to gain access to her office and, presumably, her.

“Ms. Ladybird,” grunted a bedraggled girl named Lucy. The youngest in the school, she always wore bright pleated skirts and pinafores. She came unstuck from behind the door and popped into the office, suddenly aware of herself, her dwindling curls and rapidly wilting blouse. “Ms. Ladybird, Jasper Baker says we won’t ever get back outside, or home, and we’ll Underground Pool

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have to stay inside learning all year until we know every almanac!”

“Miss Schwartz, it may certainly take Mr. Baker all year to learn every almanac, but you’d be through our whole set in less than two months, I’d bet,” smiled Ladybird.

“What will we do then?” Lucy squealed with vivid concern.

Sparkling as it shook free from the tin roof, a bright icicle crashed into an icy rock outside Ladybird’s office window. A splashy tremble went through Lucy. She kept her gaze on Ladybird, and Ms. Ladybird held back a smile.

Ladybird was sure Lucy had been sent by a teacher for a much more specific reason, but the girl wouldn’t be able to come to that straightaway, and bucking up her spirits could only help the rest of the class find the same resolve if there was trouble on the horizon.

“Did you know this is my third time being snowed into school?” Ladybird’s voice was flush and warm, like red-faced cheeks next to a fire. Ladybird’s hair was a long white braid, like smoke twisting out of a chimney. Her skirt apron had the same pattern as the quilt thrown over her neat couch in the corner of the office. It was the same pattern as the one she had at home. “Once, before you were born, and once, last year before you came to school. I’m going to be honest with you, Miss Schwartz. Is that okay?”

Lucy nodded.

“Last year, there was a bear outside. I know, I was scared, too. But I had a secret weapon.”

Ladybird had turned away from Lucy, her attention won. “Courage, Lucy.”

Ladybird faced the wall behind her desk. There was a fireplace, neatly swept, and a new fire, built to a small rumble. Catching light on all its polished wooden surfaces and metal accents, glinting like the thing was made for firelight, the .44 Winchester rifle slept on the mantel above the fire. Ladybird’s hands flew to the gun with the grace of the bunting finches it was made to kill in no small numbers.

“Courage, meet Lucy. Lucy, meet Courage, my secret weapon.”

“But, Ms. Ladybird, it’s not a secret. Everyone knows you carry your gun everywhere.”

Lucy’s warm nose began to run, and she whimpered, wishing she were in the mood to cry.

“Do they? No one’s ever said a thing to me about it. Would you like to hold it, Lucy?” asked Ladybird, as she swished her skirt beneath her to sit on the hearth.

Lucy instinctively crawled onto Ladybird’s lap. Ladybird brought Courage in a wide arc around Lucy and placed the gun on her lap. Lucy had probably seen her father shoot a gun once a week, but it wasn’t a smiling thing.

Lucy looked deep into the varnish, then up at Ladybird. They smiled.

Lucy had never touched a gun before. On a scale gauged by her mother’s frown, guns were worse than moonshine, new horses and unexpected guests at the dinner table.

“Have you ever shot it? You shot the bear?” Lucy asked through a fading smile, heavy eyes.

“No. I never shot it, Lucy.”

“Mr. Magpie said don’t shoot the gun,” Lucy said.

Ladybird did not stop smiling. “Mr. Magpie said don’t shoot.”

“Do you think Mr. Magpie asked God for a new gun when he went to Heaven, Ms. Ladybird?” asked Lucy, but Ladybird was unfolding Lucy from her lap and returning the gun to the mantel.

She kneeled before Lucy and took the girl’s hands gently, like cupping icy water from a stream. “Now Lucy, why were you here?”

“Oh! Miss Ladybird, I forgot to tell you. I ran to get you because they’re about to start burning books in the assembly room to melt us out of the school.”

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The One About Ladybird Magpie

Ladybird Magpie did carry a gun everywhere. She never mentioned it, and it was the pride of the town to say they never did either. At least, not to her face. After all, if she couldn’t fire the gun toward a bear in a brawl with her own husband, it wasn’t likely she’d be getting trigger-happy any time soon. So when Ladybird ran into the hysterics of an assembly hall full of kindergarteners to twelfth-graders holding torches to books, no one screamed. Nor did anyone even look to the woman wielding a high-power hunting rifle. She simply couldn’t cut a mean shape in their eye. A tall tenth grader, Marcia, ran and grabbed Ladybird by the arm, pulling her out of the heart of the fray and behind an overstuffed coat rack.

“This is no place for you, Ms. Magpie. We thought you and Lucy might already be hiding in your office. Better you stay there.”

Several teachers clumped in a corner made mumbling sounds to each other in an officious manner. A portly older teacher broke off to huff a command in Marcia’s face. “Marcia, you go on and take the younger folks to Ms. Magpie’s office. We’ll get the dirty work over here done quickly.”

“Arthur?” Ladybird squinted at him, removing herself from behind the coat rack and turning toward Principal Daghill.

“Ms. Magpie! I nearly jumped. I did not see you there, I truly did not. This is such an ugly scene for one so delicate. Would you please retire to your office? It would make the situation much more acceptable.”

The books lit and the snow melted more easily without Ms. Magpie in their presence.

Ladybird sensed that some of the teachers and students doubted whether books could even catch fire were she in the room.

The windows had been opened, cold wind and snow caved in, and the lit books piled toward the snowed-in door, until the folks inside were nearly drowned with melted snow.

Then shovels and buckets were brought out, and the school was evacuated and sent home by supper.

The school was closed one week while teachers and students volunteered to restore and rebuild the front that had been scorched and flooded. They even placed a commemorative plaque made by some simpleton’s smith of a father over the door. It read: Save Our Schools, 1939. Ladybird was not even invited to volunteer, and when she offered herself, was flatly refused. What she was fit to do was go into town to replace the books they’d burned. Which is what she did.

Sixty-six degrees north of the Equator, the Arctic Circle runs a parallel latitude around the northernmost part of the world. The zone is a strange place where no trees grow. It is day for twenty-four hours and night for twenty-four hours, respectively, once a year. This is where William H. Seward had been built, twenty-two years ago.

There was one coach in Alaska that came past the Arctic Circle into Deadhorse territory.

Ladybird usually only took the buggy quarterly, to fill supplies for herself and the prescriptions of her elderly neighbor, but this would count as a special occasion.

The bus ride from Deadhorse to Coldfoot was almost an hour. When the coach stopped for passengers at Deadhorse’s only bench, the driver jumped eagerly down from his seat.

Ladybird had before her two suitcases, a smaller leather case with lunch and necessities, and a larger empty one of a darker stain. The driver picked up the cases in one hand. He glanced at the rifle as if it were a walking cane and, with his empty hand, helped Ladybird into the cabin. Her light cases made small thuds on the roof, and the gun nuzzled Ladybird’s dress inside the buggy.

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slouched to a halt against the snow. She lifted the flap at the window and squinted against the snowy wind. A six-foot man in furs stood clean in their path. He took three immeasurable steps and boarded the coach, along with the awful stench of saltwater. The man, Ladybird assumed a crabber, would be her only traveling companion on the long road to Coldfoot.

He rolled up the flap at his window and tacked it to the roof with a spoon, sharpened to a dagger at the handle’s end. He spat a wad of chewing tobacco out the window and repacked his cheek. He spotted the gun and laughed. “Maybe you’ll want to get that back to your husband tonight so he’ll have something for you to cook ’im.”

The driver heard nothing but the wind as he whipped the coach away from the treeless Arctic Circle of Deadhorse and toward the sight of Coldfoot’s forested village. The coach crossed the East River and rested near a bench at the mouth of Coldfoot for its return to Deadhorse that night. The man in furs departed and untied his own luggage, gouging Ladybird’s dark case as he roughly removed and thrust it down to her. The driver plodded off in the direction of the Coldfoot Tavern, and Ladybird Magpie cleared her own way toward Bridges’ Bookshop.

When the door to the bookshop in Coldfoot brushed open with a sweet smell of cider, a charming bell tinkled, and the rush of air swept the hood off of Ladybird’s hair. Those inside turned from the cold and sunk deeper into their reading materials, as the shopkeeper hurried to shut the door.

“Keep that cold out, already a chill going ’round—ah, Ms. Magpie!”

“Well, hello,” said Ladybird.

“Yes, the school has phoned and we all know about the tragedy.”

“A tragedy?” asked Ladybird.

“Ms. Magpie, how the fright has startled the memory right out of you. The fire at the school! All those books!” crowed the bookkeeper, Mrs. Bridges, who was overbundled for the warmth of her shop. She had a gold pin of two bells on her fresh white lapel, peeking out of a knit sweater. She was just over half the size of Ladybird, with an energetic complex twice as large.

“Yes. I hear they do make more of those.” Ladybird nodded toward the shelves, tipping the nose of Courage in the same direction.

“Of course. And these’ll be the updated ones, too.” Mrs. Bridges rocked her heels forward, paying no mind to being between the barrel and the books. “The fire could be a blessing in disguise for Deadhorse’s schools, needing new books and all.”

She lost her pleasant glow at the name, and rattled on, “These will probably be better than the old books. But to think, a whole week of school lost. Your health. Oh, Ms. Magpie, we really don’t see you enough down here, not since . . . Well, it is so good for you to get away from that big empty town, that awful icy flatland. It would be lovely of you to take some tea with me.”

“I’m about four hours late for tea.” Ladybird peeled back her sleeve to check the leather watch that once belonged to her late husband. “And I’m only here for the books.”

“No, no, you’ll stay. I’ll put you up at my home for a night and we’ll take tea tomorrow. Mr. Bridges would be glad for your company. He was a friend of Jim’s.” Mrs. Bridges weighed the effect of the name in the only pause she’d taken since Ladybird’s arrival. “I’m sure one trip was enough for today. It must feel so great already to be out of—of there, even though you’ve only just got here. Don’t you feel better already?”

“I do.” But Ladybird was, in fact, beginning to feel worse. Jim Magpie had been the gentlest man in Coldfoot, and it had been a disgrace to marry a woman from the bleakness of Deadhorse. To have him killed by the forces of nature in Deadhorse had been a worse insult.

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The One About Ladybird Magpie

Ladybird had become Coldfoot’s mission. To be rescued was what she needed.

The bookkeeper’s short gray bob shined perfectly as she selected a new set of reading materials from Ladybird’s list. Ladybird loaded her dark case with the books and headed toward the East River to wait for the driver to return to the coach.

She mounted the side of the cabin to swing the larger case on top of the buggy, taking down the smaller luggage. She swept snow off the bench near the coach to seat herself and unpacked a roast beef sandwich, wrapped in neat wax paper. She folded the paper and placed it back in the open case. As she removed a thermos, the paper flapped out onto the ground, and a breeze carried it out of reach. Ladybird went for the paper. It fluttered again, lightly dancing farther away. In a few more steps, she realized the paper was making its way toward the frozen lip of the river. She figured she could go three more feet before she would have to give the paper over to the river. She closed in, and was almost near enough to use Courage to trap the paper, when two boots stepped on the other side of it.

The man in furs.

Ladybird straightened. Courage climbed in her hands and rested menacingly in Ladybird’s cradled arms. The man in furs smirked, bending half an inch. Ladybird pressed Courage flush to her cheek. The man in furs spat a wad of tobacco on the ice just before the bullet entered his heart.

The bus driver had not remembered Mr. Whitney being on the buggy, at first.

“Yeah, before I stopped at the rest station after Deadhorse, I picked a guy up off Horseshoe Pier. Must’ve been a crabber.”

“That makes sense, crabbers around Deadhorse come up to Coldfoot for drink and cards, probably stumbled upon the lady piss drunk and scared her something,” a jury member affirmed.

Some witnesses claimed they had only heard the crack of the ice.

“She fired the rifle in surprise when the ice broke under Whitney,” one witness claimed.

The defendant was just thinking of the icebox melting around the back of her house. It was a hot day in Deadhorse, hottest of the year. Fifty-five degrees and Ladybird Magpie was feeling fine. Her bags were packed and she was ready for jail. Ladybird was a stone cold killer, a hard mountain lady with an earned reputation. Years from now, they’d attribute dozens of accidental mountain deaths to her, the old lady of the mountain. She’d have ghost stories told around campfires about her, and children would see her shadow slip by before bedtime, the covers pulled up all around their faces. Her story would haunt Deadhorse, and maybe they’d make her cabin a museum. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?

The hard sound of the gavel brought Ladybird around: “Not guilty.”

Ladybird hung her head at the sentence of returning to the prison of her own existence.

The rest of her life would be signed away to the idea of it other people had. She felt the creaking of something inside her, like the surface of ice on the winter pond with spring churning beneath it. She could live and experience and become whatever she wanted, yet stay exactly the same.

Ladybird Magpie could not have done the crime. It was a matter of fact. Could not have fired the rifle. Even if she had, she could not have hit her mark. Deadhorse could not have been happier for the lady who had already been dealt such roughness in life and yet turned out so delicate. People would sure be glad in their hearts to see such a sweet lady carrying around a rifle, should it ever be needed in such troubling times as these.

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Midnight Elf | John Freeman

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Bios Robin Alcantara was born in Bronx, NY, raised in Yonkers, NY, and is currently based out of South Philadelphia: “Euphoria guides my pride, Illustration fuels the ride.�

Illustration 2015

Abdul Almutairi created this work by matching colors and using many small cuts from multiple different magazines. Its philosophy and principle is that humans must work with each other to understand their ethnicity, diversity and humanity. He would like to thank Professor Diane Pepe and her class Color in Art, Film & Design for their help in creating this artwork.

Film/Video 2016

Kahla Brown is an actor, improviser and poet from Austin, Texas. She is a board member of Cursed Church Theater and head of the improv troupe Some Ghosts or Something. This is her first published poem.

Acting 2014

Rebecca Buckley is a Philadelphia-based actor, avid people-watcher and sci-fi enthusiast who loves to play with pointy weapons on and offstage. Her writing is a treasured hobby and lifesaver to her and, perhaps one day, to someone else.

Acting 2014

Nichole Celauro is happy when she has coffee in her left hand and a pen in her right.

This is her second, and last, year as co-editor of Pool. She will miss it.

Writing for Film and Television 2014

Underground Pool

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Colleen Daniels is technically a junior, though her parents like to remind her that she’s chosen the “seven-year plan” to graduate. Outside of school, she enjoys crocheting, horseback riding, snowboarding and putting off home improvement projects in favor of watching them actually get finished on HGTV. Crafts: Wood 2015

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Alex Dos Diaz has brought his cultural flair to the illustration world at the University of the Arts. He has created his own style through a mélange of traditional and digital methods. His artistic rendering of technical work strikes a unique balance between communication and mystery.

Illustration 2014

Rachel Dispenza is a girl with an enormous drive to create matched only by her fear of the result.

Music Business, Entrepreneurship & Technology 2015

Until mac and cheese-eating becomes an Olympic sport, Emily Famularo wants to continue to spend time writing about the little things with the hopes that one day they’ll turn into really big things (without much effort).

Creative Writing 2017

John Roeder Freeman, Jr. only dreams when he is awake.

Illustration 2016

Sarah Galante loves to write and hopes to never stop. She is inspired by writers including but not limited to Sarah Ruhl, Paula Vogel and Andrea Gibson. “Noses” is near and dear to her heart, and she hopes the UArts community appreciates it.

Directing, Playwriting & Production 2016

Hannah Gregory’s spirit animal is a mother bear and she was most likely a warrior queen in a past life. What more is there to say?

Illustration 2016

Shari Heck likes poetry, spoken word and, as of recently, the wonderful world of Zinecrafting. Once in a while she writes tiny poems about things she doesn’t like saying out loud.

Graphic Design 2016

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Victoria Heckman began animating by doodling in the margins of her math notebook.

Growing up overseas with little access to art supplies, she has made the ballpoint pen her favorite tool.

Animation 2014

Sean Hogan is a writer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He would like to dedicate this work to Sebastian Agudelo, for inspiring and encouraging Sean to explore other written forms.

Writing for Film & Television 2014

Kuba Jennes is a twenty-year-old whose interests include fashion and reportage illustration. His work may be viewed at kubaillustration.tumblr.com.

Illustration 2015

Aiden Jimeno loves insects, especially beetles, and hopes to taxidermy some in the near future. He loves how colorful bugs can look and tries to incorporate some of that into his work.

Illustration 2014

Anna Ladd is a six-foot-tall human tornado and buffalo chicken enthusiast. One time she convinced her entire extended family that she had been a volleyball star all though high school.

Photography 2016

Jess Landau’s primary interest is psychology, and this is what fuels the content of her artwork. She processes her questions about human nature by exploring a variety of artistic mediums; language, impulse, and human connectivity are particularly of interest to her.

Photography 2014

Alyssa Langenhop has been writing since the age of seven. In her spare time, she likes to make friends with fictional characters, tree-gaze, collect wilted roses, and write letters that will never be sent.

Creative Writing 2017

Jamie Mangold is from Richboro, Pennsylvania. Using detailed line drawings, she creates illustrations that evoke emotions of adventure, mystery and fun. She hopes one day to be a freelance illustrator and a professional cheese doodle taste tester.

Illustration 2014 Underground Pool

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Whenever he isn’t obsessively collecting records and researching art and music history (“Unknown Parallels” is a result of this), Philip Mastrippolito goes into intensive pondering on alienation and sexuality, creating surreal, allegorical and sometimes comical drawings.

Drawing/Painting 2015

Anne Meier likes doughnuts, dragons and Disney movies, but she loves drawing.

That’s a very crucial distinction.

Illustration 2014

Samantha Milich is a Multidisciplinary major and Creative Writing minor, born and raised in Florida, now in Philly, hoping to continue studies in writing after graduation.

Multidisciplinary Fine Arts 2015

Marianne Murphy owns many puppets and can also juggle and unicycle. She has just yesterday adopted two baby rats named Snicket and Glow Cloud who will hopefully still be alive when this magazine is published.

Animation 2015

Kate O’Hara is from Reno, Nevada. She likes to make work inspired by nature and surrealism that contains a lot of detail and intricacy. She works primarily in pencil with digital coloring.

Illustration 2014

Taylor Pavacich would rather be sleeping.

Graphic Design 2015

Angela Peterdi is an art-making, music-playing, video-gaming, peanut butterhoarding, animal-loving adventurer extraordinaire who happens to be a senior in the Illustration department. She draws inspiration from patterns and color combinations, animals and the human form, and really dumb inside jokes.

Illustration 2014

Josh Pindjak is a Cinnabon enthusiast and fluent in Ebonics.

Graphic Design 2014

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Much in the same way a vampire must drink blood to survive, Carlos Rios must write.

Writing for Film and Television 2014

Mollie Rossi loves everything vintage and retro and is happiest when she is at her studio making art.

Illustration 2014

Melissa Rothman is a senior Illustration major and American Poetry Review intern.

She likes beer, words, sharp pencils, sad music, cats and sleeping. She often writes poems about vices and semi-invented memories.

Illustration 2014

Nick Schwasman is a 21-year-old writer and actor from Rochester, New York: “Liken me to a voyage—a sailor out to sea. Liken me to lichen at the base of a tree. Like in me anything you want . . . I just hope you’re likin’ me.”

Musical Theater 2014

It took a bit longer for Corey Shupp to find his way to Illustration than he had originally thought, but an associate degree later . . . he has found a home. Being amongst great people and artists every day, he is consistently surprising himself.

Illustration 2015

Alex Stanilla doesn’t like name-dropping. His work has been described as the balloon Bill Hicks is holding, a balloon Elliott Smith tied with a Louis Vuitton shoestring.

Writing for Film and Television 2014

Laura Weiszer is a senior Illustration student. You can see more of her work at lauraweiszer.com.

Illustration 2014

Veronica Zabczynski likes Breaking Bad, cheese, champagne, and being the Poetry Editor of Underground Pool.

Writing for Film and Television 2014

Underground Pool

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Unknown Parallels | Phillip Mastrippolito

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