Issue 3

He pronounced his name, ‘Gee’, like the French name, Guy. That’s what he said when I hired him as a dishwasher. But, he left the plates greasy. And, he kept breaking the glasses as they slipped through his hands. I was ready to fire him, but Gee begged me to let him cook. So, I relented. And, our food acquired an unimaginable richness. Word of mouth spread. Curious, I spied Gee at work in the kitchen. There I discovered his secret as Gee dipped his jaundiced hands into a steaming pot, and his ‘butterfingers’ melted away before my eyes.

To stay safe and free is a constant battle. Wherever I land, wherever I hide, human hands plunge into reeds, rushes, and bushes - thorns or not. To smear pond weed and carrion blood on my golden feathers is of little use - the slightest glint during daylight hours and the hunt starts all over again. Once, I wished treasure-hunting would fall out of fashion, but I fear it never will.

Now, I pray for meteor showers to flood the world with precious metals, to render my plumage as worthless as chocolate coins. Only then may I live in peace and obscurity.

Legacy Bookshop was kaput. For 42 years Sarah maternally operated this quaint literary haven. She saw her baby flourish, albeit modestly. Putting all your eggs in one basket might pay dividends, it seemed. But rapacity had at last intruded upon Sarah's Eden. Her landlord bluntly informed her that he could get $700,000 extra for the space. And he would. MBA vs. MFA once more. Instead of sitting shiva, Sarah performed final inventory. Melancholy ruled until she recorded the sale of Intriguing Young Poets of 1976. Inside this archaic anthology resides "Idyllic Winter" by one Sarah Thomsen. Her legacy shall continue.

The media liked to call it ‘the Boomerang Probe’, whenever they could be nudged into reporting on its progress. More prosaically, the team of scientists and engineers behind its development had named it the Non-Euclidean Curvature Remote Observatory. It was a marvel of twenty-first century technology, designed to cruise through deep space at near light-speed on a long interstellar loop. The aim was to settle the debate over the origin of dark energy once and for all. Everyone expected it to come back laden with novel and exciting scientific discoveries. No-one anticipated that it would return carrying an unwelcome passenger.

Black was slimming; red-and-white stripes, not so much. I guess black would make me look like the Grim Reaper. Not a good look for a hospital volunteer.

“You’re early,” Hunter, the pharmacy supervisor, said, his bearded lips shiny from a half-eaten Wendy’s burger open-faced on the counter.

“Here.” He handed me a package that looked like a bunch of little gray submarines from Battleship. “Separate those, please.”

“Like this?” I tore one off and asked, “Hey, how do people swallow these?”

“Um…what?”

“Are these like horse pills?”

“Uh, no, they’re suppositories.”

I waited.

He blinked. “They go through Door #2.”

On the fifth anniversary of his father’s heroic death in a far-off jungle, a nine-year-old boy pleads and screams as he’s dragged into a tool shed by his drunken stepfather.

On the twenty-fifth anniversary, the boy, reeking of cheap whisky and cigarettes, staggers into his daughter’s bedroom while the young girl cowers against the wall.

On the fifty-eighth anniversary, that girl collapses into her lightless closet, and as her fury-laced glares and impaling shouts become anguished sobs, her teenage daughter sits alone in the bathroom and once again glides the thin, comforting edge of a razor blade across her thigh.

After graduation, I had to buy everything for my first apartment: bed, sheets, plates, desk, and bookcase. Most of my new possessions were from yard sales. At one sale I found a pair of Star Trek mugs emblazoned with the IDIC on one side and “Live Long and Prosper” on the other.

Feeling whimsical, I bought them—although I had no one to drink with. The mugs sat lonely on my shelf a long time.

One morning, I saw her: purple-haired, blue-eyed, and wearing a t-shirt adorned with the Enterprise. I said hi. I think those mugs will get used

Mum pointed at the grass, still lush-green despite the summer.

“Tread softly,” she said. “The dead soldiers lie just under the surface.”

She loved highlighting hidden dangers.

Everything came with a warning, another test for Charlie. Easy on your feet. Mind your position.

“Trust your instincts,” said Dad. “We’re with you.”

Mum and Dad. Here to help.

The wind hushed in Charlie’s ear. Faint voices, still breath in them after so many years.

“Go on.”

Charlie dropped the ball and raised himself onto his toes. He breezed across the grass, gaining speed, flanked by his two defenders.

She found the body fragments when she cleaned the attic. All dried and shriveled up in a wooden box—teeth, hair, nails, umbilical cord. Five sets of each in envelopes, named and dated. She wished it was a memory box, but it wasn’t. She did not have any children.

“Jake! Jake!” She came to wake her husband, who sprawled out on the couch. The place he spent most days now.

“Where’re these from?” She asked.

His dull eyes landed on the box. Unfit. Alcoholic. Abusive. Psych facility. He chugged the rest of the beer. Burped.

“Don’t recall. Where’s my breakfast?”

In this story I let the actress play her part. She is telling a true story. She has her audience crying. But the flowers in her hat are wilted and turning brown and one of her stockings has dropped. She rises expectantly to take her bows, quite startled to see the auditorium has emptied.

There is a second part to this tale. The actress has left town. All of her thespian talents having been disbursed, she now practices ventriloquism in another state to feed her narcissism. She manipulates her puppets with purple strings behind black velvet curtains coated with marshmallows.

Jason had convinced himself he was dating a real girl, until she asked him for a ride to the android factory where she could score an upgrade. She told him she was considerably behind, due to her dataport having a loose wangle. He thought at first she was pranking him, but she pulled back her hair and showed him the dataport. Then she confessed that her nightly hour of meditation was actually a recharging. So, he drove her to the factory and waited in the lobby while she was upgrading. There he met a nice brunette. She seemed real enough.

She knows he’s leaving tomorrow.

She begins making plans. Buys a shell-pink corset of watered silk. The finest oolong.

She stays awake baking cream puffs and madeleines. Draws plans for a knot garden, a pergola. Fashions a moondial out of the sad arc of her arms and trims the dead heads off cabbage roses. Takes a sledgehammer to the walls and carves out a priest’s hole. Buries herself in.

At dawn, her tongue flicking hot over dry lips, tasting of sweat and sherry. Powdered sugar. A hand gently covering her heart, learning the shape of the emptiness there.

I sat sobbing on the cold tile floor at my in-laws’ house. Exhausted, I had mistaken familiarity for safety.

“You’re just too emotional. She’ll hate you for it one day,” they said.

My tears kept moving, but I didn’t.

The baby cradled tightly in my arms cooed.

A long life awaited her. So that was our last visit.

Eight years later, my daughter told me she was studying five-lined skinks. “They freeze around predators. And if that doesn’t work, they run away, but they have to leave a piece of themselves behind, like a tail. Can you even imagine that?”

The husband in the room upstairs identifies birds through his office window. He cannot yet tell the difference between the cardinal and flycatcher.

‘It’s important to remember we all fail in our own ways,’ his wife says.

‘Yes, honey,’ her husband says.

They gave up after their third attempt at children.

Lying in bed they hold each other. Her eyes closed against his chest; his eyes trained on the window. The snow falls in loose patches which he mistakes for the chest of a waxwing.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘Me too, me too,’ he says.

She wakes up early to say goodbye; he’s already gone. She runs to the door, catches a glimpse of his car as he drives away. Her mind takes a picture, processes it, then hangs it in her heart, just a blurry image of him driving out of the frame.

She stands by the door a minute watching a flock of birds that just closed up their summer home take off for somewhere warmer. Maybe they’ll come back. Maybe they won’t. She stares until they disappear into the sun.

She really didn’t want to say goodbye, anyway.

I’d forgotten the airport routine, and the turmoil wasn’t helping at all.

“Do both these bags belong to you?” the agent asked again.

I looked back down the line, but I couldn’t see her.

“Uh, this chick asked me to carry that one for her—the big one.”

“A woman? Can you describe her?”

“Uh, young? Black hair? Said her name was Pandora.”

Frowning seriously now, the agent reached for his phone.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “Sorry!” I looked back again, but the chick just wasn’t there. “Look,” I said, appealing to the agent, “look—why don’t we just open it?”

There have been survivors of The Forest. A few. They shamble out years after entering the dark wood, pale, dazed, pockmarked with scabbed-over bitemarks, but still recognizable. Upon hearing their names, they begin to ascend from their amnestic fog, first nodding, then murmuring Ah yes, ah yes, desiccated finger to chin. An alertness appears in their eyes. Of course, of course, they say, slight smile curving their thin, dry lips. They become titans of industry, amassing wealth, gorging, carousing, sucking the very marrow of life, inspiring generations of new meat to stride into The Forest on its own two legs.

What caused me to doubt him, on that day when I saw the chains? Of all the shining Æsir, only he had ever dared to stroke my black fur, offer morsels of meat, horse-play together in the grass.

Lay your hand in my mouth, then, if these fetters are so temporary, I told him. Do it. I dare you.

One day, the eternal chains will snap and the black wolf will devour all Æsir. Even I have heard the prophecies. I always imagine I will recognize him there, on that end-of-days battlefield, by the telltale stump of his right hand.

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph! A Rabbi at my side?”

The clock strikes midnight. I whisper, “Merry Christmas, Dad”.

I squeeze his hand softly, kiss his hallowed cheek. His breathing is shallow, legs swollen and dark, his face a ghost-like grey. Beeeep. Then nothing.

“12:21 am on Christmas morning. I am so sorry. He is at rest now.”

The news would be revealed later in the day, after presents, breakfast, and sooo much coffee. The irony. Only a sense of humor like Dad’s would appreciate this! A woman Rabbi giving Last Rites on Christmas Eve to Sweet Ole’ Uncle Lar.

He wasn’t the handsomest boy in twelfth grade, but his smile set my nerve endings a-tingle. I followed him everywhere, but whenever I tried to say hi, I’d choke. He’d continue down the hallway, greeting his cool friends with casual backslaps and bro hugs.

Once, when I was bent double, gagging on my distress, he stood and paused until I recovered. I unfurled, rubbing my under-eyes in case flaking mascara had turned me Goth.

I drew a shaky breath. “Hi.”

“Quit stalking me.” Unblinking stare. Zero warmth.

He walked away. I waited until he rounded the corner.

Then I followed.

A package arrived.

“It’s heavy,” my wife exclaimed.

“14 pounds,” I said. It was from Boise, which I hadn’t considered since I’d fired Boise-based Sid long ago.

“A bomb?” my wife asked.

“I wouldn’t think so.” Inside was a decorative vase with a heavily taped lid. After some struggles, the lid burst free. Chalky ash spilled onto our floor.

“There’s a note,” my wife said, brushing ash from her shoes.

I read the note aloud. “Ashes for an ashhole. In life, you were my problem. In death, I’m yours.

“It’s Sid,” I said.

Marjorie grabbed the last jar of Rao’s marinara sauce.

Alexander’s fingers closed around hers, his nails digging deep. Their eyes met across the shopping cart, decades of rivalry crackling between them.

Sauce was required for his binding ritual and her summoning circle.

Neither yielded.

The cataclysmic confrontation—inevitable.

Alexander began his incantation, dark syllables spilling from his lips. Marjorie countered with her own spell, weaving shadows between the aisles. Their magic collided in a violent eruption of energy.

Shoppers fled as reality splintered.

Both wielders lay among scattered groceries, powers spent.

Only the jar of marinara sauce remained.

I arrange my body into a comfortable position for mediation. As soon as my eyelids close, I see a vision. My friend Deborah, newly deceased, lifts my slack body, one hand under each armpit struggling to hoist me upright. I stand, albeit wobbly. She kneels at my feet, head down, like a child examining a tiny ladybug. She brushes off a layer of powdery grey dust, feet, torso, shoulders, back. She’s done, steps back, we stare into each other’s eyes. Time to live. The clamp that's been holding my chest hostage, releases. So heavy is the grieving heart.

We stay off the roads and keep to the woods, cutting the brush with machetes.

Old Wilfred falls and dies on the summit. Now we move by dead reckoning, heading the direction he pointed before he died.

Only Wilfred’s friend Ruth keeps us moving along.

We've had a run of bad luck, she says, but every streak has to end.

Later we realize she planned to lie down in the meadow and refuse to go on. She waves us off, her face cleaved by a beatific smile, her hands full of wildflowers, the joy in her eyes impossible to deny.

Most exorcists ain't willing to deal with the small spirits. There's no glamor banishing a litter of drowned kittens. The chirren are always watching. One cried for three hours straight after I sent Sparky to the Great Beyond.

It ain't right. No kid should grieve a haint.

I don't mind it much. Others are in the business to cavort with the spirits. Me? I'm here to help needy folk at a modest cost. Man don't live on goodwill alone. Not anymore.

So yeah, I can treat your tinnitus. Ain't no fancy doctor got the cure. You've accumulated quite the swarm.

My wife asks for the scissors to cut the hospital band off her wrist.

“I’ll do it,” I say.

I glance back over my shoulder, just once, before leaving her alone. When I return, she’s not on the couch. Bile rises in my throat, the same as when I found her, the bathwater gone cold around her.

This time, she's kneeling in the garden, soil gathering under her toes, her hand caressing an aster she planted. I take a step forward and watch her chest rise, then fall. Then I wait. Wait for it to rise once more.

"No," you refuse, as I pass the pepper. "It's perfect."

For your birthday dinner, I made a roast, grilled radicchio, and tomato soup. You don't like soup, but my intuition proved correct.

"Is there any more?'

"There's plenty."

"Where's Robin? He's missing out."

"He's at Uncle Ray's. He'll be home tomorrow."

You grin.

"Well, more for me. What's the secret ingredient?"

"Juniper berry juice."

You frown, shrug, and hand me your bowl. In the kitchen, I ladle another helping into your bowl. A bone, white and gleaming, surfaces. I'll bury the rest of Robin tonight, right next to your mother.

Zak sits on a folding chair, cold sweat trickling beneath his flannel shirt. Onstage, her performance makes his nostrils flare with a familiar, frantic excitement. He remembers the psychiatrist’s diagnosis—the word "psychopath"—and uses it as a gauge. I’m not one of them, he reassures himself. Psychopaths don’t feel, but I do. I feel pure elation every single time I kill. He stares at her, his face a smooth mask of indifference. He doesn't blink; he just lingers on the dark promise of the afterparty. Tonight, I am definitely going to break your pretty little neck.

“Good lord,” Doreen’s mother said when Doreen let the screen door bang shut.

Doreen shrugged and made herself a sandwich, sharing a bite with the dog. Then she went into her room, pulled up her shirt and admired the bruise that was forming.

Lisa Deane had hurled softballs at her to test her reflexes because Doreen had bragged that no one could touch her. But Lisa Deane did. And Doreen knew she would.

Doreen pulled down her shirt, poking at the bruise.

“I’m leaving,” she yelled, barging back out the door. The dog watched after her, its tail slowly wagging.

Once, only once, I saw you jitterbugging in the kitchen. That’s when I realized there was another you inside the mix of you, hidden deep inside, resisting that urge, before “us,” when you sang, danced, and laughed out loud. The you I know washes clothes until they turned to rags. It’s hard to corner you, a Tasmanian devil, spinning from room to room, one chore to the next. I try to catch you, grab you, but you wisp away like a fly in the kitchen. I just want to ask you how to do the Jitterbug. Is that so bad?

After watering mutual anniversary bouquets, Jenny led Ryan to the park bench she usually occupied solo. Opposite them sat an elderly couple deep in conversation and tenderly holding hands. Ryan laughed. "Look at Betty & Bob," he snarkily commented. Jenny felt envious. "After all those years they've still got it," she swooned. Once kissing commenced, Ryan had had enough. Taking Jenny's hand for the first time that day he made for home. Kickoff in thirty minutes.

Ersatz Betty & Bob remained seated. Finally, he said "It was a joy meeting you. Same place and time tomorrow?" Demurely grinning, she nodded.

The view from the porch hadn’t changed much in his 85 years; the land gently sloping to the field his family had plowed for generations. Daniel Boone had been here once, as had the current governor of Kentucky. This was a sacred place. Unlike Boone, two centuries before, the current governor wanted something else, something that would destroy the land. So, like great grandpappy, Sam sat in the rocker, rifle across his lap. The land would remain, his family claim assured. Big Coal would not win, even if it did pay his pension. This was the price of legacy.

Her bloodied pink panties lay crumpled in the corner near the bathtub where she dropped them when she returned from the clinic. Her boyfriend tossed them into the hamper a day later when he came by to check on her. He said he was happy to hold her through the night while she endured what she called the worst period of her life. When he left in the morning, she drew a bath. She pulled the panties stiff with congealed blood from the hamper and clasped them, sobbing as she sank into the water, pinkness seeping among the tepid suds.

When I was getting Thai today I walked past a grooming place and the smell reminded me of us giving Archer baths how he would just bowl us over like toy soldiers which made me wonder if he's alive he must be almost thirteen and even though he was your dog he felt like mine too so I opened my phone though I couldn't remember whether I'd deleted you but you were still there and I typed a message saying no need to reply but I miss you and probably always will and then I cried and had to dele

It was invigorating to be caught by the speed radar this morning. I was traveling faster than normal. Few drivers were out on an early Saturday morning. The officer’s speed gun was centered on me. He had me. I did not slow down; I pushed my speed. When I arrived within speaking distance, the officer raised his arm pointing, as if to pull me over. I slowed down and said, “Did you clock me?” He said, “Yes. (pause) Seven miles an hour.” We open-mouthed laughed while bending over. I couldn't run that fast even after a Red Bull cleanse.

In the town where I grew up, everyone went out onto their porch each night to hum. Some people kept their eyes closed; others waved and did little dances. The children all joined in. A local legend claims we learned to do this from the crickets and frogs, and that we continued doing it because like them we wanted each other to know that nobody is alone. As a teenager I thought it all was terribly embarrassing. But then I went away for school, and I no longer heard the humming. Now whenever I hear the insects, I miss home.

Sausage, peppers, and eggplant. Salmon and snow peas. Glass containers and cellophane. A Tuesday wrapped in foil. Expired juice next to dill pickles. A jar of jam that's not homemade. Ham with too much salt. Hummus and wilting herbs. Eggs in a cardboard carton, one cracked. Mayonnaise, ketchup, yellow mustard. Spicy peppers no one wanted. Plain yogurt with a watery skin. A rind of parmesan. This is what's left.

Popsicles with slimy slush. Frozen berries and spinach too. Ice that has that freezer smell. A pint of rocky road ice cream, your favorite. This is what’s left of you.

Uncle Fred was in his bed with the end near. That is, of his life, not his bed. Those few relatives who at the last moment could make it to his small unventilated room sat in silence on inexpensive folding chairs. Then Fred abruptly awoke.

“Is there anything you want to say to us, Uncle Fred?”

“What?”

Felice, who’d called them together, asked if he had any, well, last words.

“Last?”

The old man was confused. He looked around.

“Is that Mel there?”

“Yeah, it's me, Mel, Uncle Fred. You're looking good.”

“Mel? What the hell's Mel doing here?”

It has been said that true love is a lifeboat, a salvation in life’s tempests. As humanity’s seas bring you mild breezes, chilling rains, and horrendous storms, you will stay afloat no matter how the seas rage around you. You will not sink during crushing defeats, you will not capsize as all but your great love turn against you, and you will not be drowned by circumstances beyond your control. I’ve been adrift for twenty-two days now, probably several hundred miles off the coast of Chile or Peru, hungry, thirsty, sunburnt, and this metaphor is of no value to me.

The birds are returning with spring and you’re at the sill, yearning. You’ve got crumpled wings, too long asphyxiated during emergence. A prolonged delivery, the midwife had explained softly after you’d first fallen asleep. A complication in becoming. You’ve followed all the doctors’ recommendations since with diligence, the surgeries, PT, but it’s made no difference. Still, you cannot lift your wings. Still, they do not even straighten, forever rucked like sodden laundry. I keep expecting you to retreat from the window, but there you are every year—your own annual migration—watching the return of freedom life has denied you.