Sarp Sozdinler

Primaries

Grandpa gets his news from a messenger pigeon club that has survived since World War II. He says it’s a necessary form of communication between like-minded people, what with the mainstream media and its misleading propaganda. Every Sunday morning, shortly after sunup, the bird flies in from east and chirps twice before leaving the ribboned parchment on the top of our porch stairs. One week the news is about an engineered flood in Tokyo and the next a school shooting in Colorado. There is a different pigeon for each type of content depending on the animal’s speed and the urgency of the news item, each determined weekly by the editors of the club.

Some mornings, on my way to school, I pass by the club’s headquarters downtown. The mustachioed birdkeeper releases the birds into a whirling flock, and the birds make one monstrous shadow before breaking into different routes for their designated delivery. Mostly shrouded in the sun by day, by night the building shines with weird interior lights. I rate its design as a nightmarish version of all those zoos we used to visit with Mom, looking less of a news outlet than an intensely crowded display of dismembered birdlike mannequins and whatnot. The vitrine is, by comparison, rather uneventful except for a gold-veneered frame and a bronze bust of Mercury, the messenger god. The picture within the frame changes every week, ranging from the news clip of the President pardoning a turkey to a bird’s eye view of our town. Every time I pass by the building I make a mental note of documenting the series with Mom’s old Polaroid camera, but I always forget about it afterward.

One day, on my way back home from school, I see the birdkeeper nursing a pigeon perched on his right hand. He is feeding her a palmful of bread crumbs with his thick red glove and caressing her right wing spotted with clots of blood. The sound of daytime TV buzzing out of the birdkeeper’s booth is making it difficult to understand the words coming out of his mouth. As I draw near, I recognize the bird on his arm as the one that delivers us the news whenever there is war-related stuff giving on. In this low, grumbly voice the birdkeeper sings to her what sounds like the national anthem of a faraway land and after a while the animal works up the courage to flutter her wings, only to fight for her balance against the immediate pull of gravity. She strikes it right on the third try and chirps deliriously before heading westward, where our home is, like a missile.

When I tell Grandpa what I witnessed the day before, he simply ignores me. He talks nonstop about his plans on how to stock up our shelter while going on with his morning routine, shaving and whatnot. He turns around to lock his gaze on me when he says that even a simple bottle of water will double its price at time of war, which, in his opinion, will be much sooner than I anticipate. I ask and ask but he won’t tell me when. The whole weekend I fear for Sunday to come, for the pigeon to deliver us the bad news, but no one arrives, not even a neighbor.

The next evening, I find the pigeon from the other day lying motionless on one of the dirt roads leading to our house, her wounded wing folded over a parchment. The page corners are fluttering in the wind like feathers, and the ribbon on it looks wet and wavy around the edges because of the fresh blood. I stoop to pick up the parchment from under the bird’s wing and check its dry part under the weak street light. The news shows the black-and-white picture of an old aircraft, warning the reader of the deep state’s plans for an airborne spray of the bird flu virus. I put the dead bird in my backpack and carry her all the way home. When I arrive, Grandpa is busy hauling in his wheelbarrow some cans of what he calls the Primary, a mixture of water and some precarious energy-boosting ingredients the club’s newsletter gave the recipe of a few months back as a precaution. He says the war is imminent now and that I better pack a suitcase before it’s too late. He tells me that I at least owe my mother that. I run up to my room and unzip my backpack to rest the bird on my bed. I take a damp towel from the bathroom and only after I clean her wings does she look peaceful in her marble-like state, almost as beautiful as Mom, her eye-rings unevenly colored in blue. I pluck a bloodied feather from her wounded wing and put it between the pages of my diary in her memory. I pray for them both at night.

These days, on the patchy acre of land where Grandpa used to tend his garden, I keep a graveyard full of raw, tender bones; my diary is bulky with the dead hands of nature. Grandpa now lives fully underground, sending me messages for this need or that. Behind the hills in the distance I occasionally spot some shadows darkening the sky but I can’t make out whether they are birds or bombs. On and on they fall in front of my eyes, like the chemical rain in Mom’s war tales. The night before she died, she told me that I should look for the sun whenever I would feel lonely or scared, for it was the home of one true God. Today, a poem about the bird that burned up her wings flying toward the sun fills the frame on the vitrine of the pigeon club. The birdkeeper is watching the afternoon news in his booth, and I can’t bring myself to ask the inevitable question.

Home I walk.

---

Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Fractured Lit, JMWW, and Maudlin House, among other journals. His stories have been selected or nominated for such anthologies as the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. He is currently at work on his first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam.

Jody Hobbs Hesler

When Everything You Love Fits in Your Hand

Amelia bolted out the front door in her floppy slippers, her nylon robe fluttering in the wind behind her. That blasted garbage collector. Or maybe it was the truck itself. She never made it outside in time to see how dregs of trash managed to fly from the truck and land on her specific lawn every week. The truck’s gears screeched and the truck lurched, while she waved one hand in the air, the other clutching the front of her robe closed, and shouted, Hey hey hey! to no avail. By the time she reached the sidewalk, the truck had disappeared onto the next street.

A discarded plastic container now roosted in the early blooms of her quince bush. She’d have to go back inside to fetch a plastic bag from the pouch where she saved bags to recycle. She refused to touch an invading piece of trash with unprotected hands.

Inside, her kitchen gleamed from its first wipe down of a new day, and coffee chortled from the walk-in pantry. She selected the cleanest looking bag she could find from her stash, bristled when two others wafted to the floor. She preferred to wash her hands the moment after she stowed a new bag and be done with it forever. Who knew what muck they mingled with at grocery stores? The newspaper’s plastic sleeve was worse, lying in the dewy grass for hours, subject to the sniffing whims of every passing dog. The thought sent a shiver up to Amelia’s shoulders. All because of that careless garbage collector.

Outside, the yogurt cup waited, tilting precariously, threatening to fall deeper into the bush. If it fell, Amelia was sure the quince’s twiggy branches would scrape her skin as she reached in to retrieve it. The germs the container smeared on the branches and leaves on its way down would shuttle into little scratches along her wrist. Her arm tingled as if the shuttling had already begun. She cursed that garbage collector under her breath once more, hoping her first swoop to scoop the cup into the bag wouldn’t dislodge it further.

With the bag inverted like a glove, she slithered her hand toward the cup and reversed the bag around it. Now the cup’s mouth gaped at her through a haze of plastic. Where once she’d seen the last scrapings of something like strawberry yogurt clotted with bits of debris and possibly mold (she hadn’t wanted to look too closely), now she saw something quite different.

She held still, staring into the cup, unwilling at first to believe her eyes, because how was it possible? There, minuscule and in her hand, lay the strip of beach she and her siblings had run along every summer as children. Every summer before their mother died.

If she leaned closer, she could hear it too. Not just the crashing rumble of the sea, but her little brother and sister’s squeaks and laughter. She remembered the velvet feel of wet sand beneath her feet. Their vacations always fell on the early end of the season, so the sand was cold, the ocean not yet tempered for summer. Sometimes it was so cold the sand made the bones of her feet ache, but still it felt splendid. Imagine encountering that here, inside a piece of trash tossed sloppily into her yard.

More memories spilled into mind, and Amelia pressed her eyes closed to better receive them. The sticky cream cheese and jelly sandwiches her mother packed for lunchtime, how she and her siblings clustered together to eat them under the wide beach umbrella their mother spread open at the beginning of the day. Red and white stripes, like a peppermint stick, and the sky blue, the sun blinding beyond it. The gulls screamed and dove for their dropped crumbs. Their mother tsked and waved her open book to scatter them again.

All this, before. Before their mother died, before they went to live with their grandmother, before the foster homes after their grandmother died. This was back when a little grit in a sandwich meant nothing more than beach sand and wind and summertime. Back when Amelia’s body was an organ of pleasure, her life a series of gifts. Before she knew that people could call themselves parents when they were distinctly something else. That they could make you do awful things, and no amount of cleaning would get rid of the traces.

Amelia stood in the yard, unsure what to do next, with her robe flying wildly open in the breeze and her toes, sticking out from the edge of her slippers, turning red from the cold. She was afraid to throw the cup away, but also afraid to clean it. She wanted to stand in the yard and simply gaze into it. See what else it would bring.

Her next-door neighbor, Albert, familiar with Amelia’s annoyance with the trash collector, called across their yards, “Another piece of trash?”

A feeling washed over her that she couldn’t name, but part of it was sadness because everyone who knew her now only knew how finicky and irritable she could be. They had never heard her childhood laughter because after the foster families, her laugh lost its luster, came out rusty and sharp if it came out at all. She would whip up casseroles if you were sick, buy peanuts from Boy Scouts, cookies from Girl Scouts, donate to every marching band, chorus, orchestra, and sports team from the local schools. She would cut flowers from her garden if someone in your house was celebrating something. She was kind to people but quarrelsome with life. She closed her eyes again, even though she knew she should return Albert’s greeting. Ask about his wife, if her knee surgery went well, and when she opened her eyes again, she would.

Only, when she opened her eyes, she wasn’t in her yard anymore. The roar of the ocean startled her, so near, and the spray of it, icy on her now bare arms. She looked down at herself and recognized the bathing suit from when she was seven or eight years old, a navy one piece with a red band around the middle like a sash. She touched it and felt the surprise of nylon against her fingertips, the ribbing of the edges of the sash, the small delicateness of her own hands.

Another wave surged and bubbled into the shore, and this time it licked her toes. She leapt aside, and the sound she made, the high-pitched shriek, rang like bells inside her. This was what joy felt like. And indeed, there was little Josiah, only three, and Bettina with her sand-colored curls. They rushed toward her with their buckets full of sand, and she knelt with them, dumping the buckets into castle shapes. Digging moats with her hands, as water rushed in and ebbed away. No matter how big and good this castle would be, it would be gone by nightfall, and that was the point, not a sorrow but part of the thrill.

“Amelia?” It was Albert again, kneeling beside where she’d fallen in the grass. Now quince blossoms dappled her view upward. Otherwise, the sky looked the same as the one she’d just left, but for the cast of light that suggested a different season. The plastic bag with the dirty yogurt cup had fallen from her hands. Tilting in the grass beside her, it was clear it had become nothing more than trash again.

“Are you all right?” Albert was nervous for her, as if aware he’d stumbled into something essential about her beyond her everyday indignation. Or maybe, despite everything, people could sense what she’d been before all the befores that made her who she was now—a lonely older woman, living alone, suddenly stricken prone in her front yard, in her old robe and tattered slippers, with no one else to find her but her neighbor.

Eventually she allowed Albert to help ease her from the ground. When she laughed to excuse herself, the sound came out less raspy than usual. Then her life rushed in on her again, bringing a nearly unbearable urge to scrub her hands and shower dirt and grass from every inch of her backside. She wanted the hot cup of coffee that waited for her inside. Inside, where everything was quiet and clean. She wanted to feel okay again.

She glanced once more at the yogurt cup, still wrapped in the plastic bag, and lifted it gently back into her hands. What she wanted most was to return to where it had taken her, to move forward from there toward a different life.

Swallowing the urge to clean herself, she let small talk with Albert ebb naturally, then walked at a normal pace back into her house. Alone again, she hurried to the laundry room and dumped her clothes directly into the washing machine, stepped into the shower in the downstairs bathroom, and let hot water course over her while she scoured and scoured, pretending to hear seagulls in the distance.

When the garbage truck rumbled up the street a week later, Amelia stood on her porch, already dressed, with a clean plastic bag in her hand.

---

Jody Hobbs Hesler (she/her) is the author of the novel, Without You Here (Flexible Press, September 2024; Winner of the 2025 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction and finalist for Southern Literary Review's Book of the Year) and the story collection What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better (Cornerstone Press, October 2023). Her words also appear or are forthcoming in Swing, South Dakota Review, The Pinch, Necessary Fiction, Gargoyle, Electric Literature, CRAFT, Arts & Letters, and elsewhere. She teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia; writes and copy edits for Charlottesville Family Magazine; and serves as assistant fiction editor for the Los Angeles Review.

Phebe Jewell

Wings

         I got my wings the summer me and Drew kept our clothes in garbage bags, just in case Cherie lost another job and we had to move again. The summer of Jimmy B and the kid I almost killed.      

         The first time we saw Jimmy B he was perched on top of the monkey bars, legs dangling. He pointed at an empty swing. “If you can stay on the RollerCoaster for a count of ten, I’ll let you play.”

         The swing’s left chain was short and the right chain so long the seat dangled, almost touching the ground. Drew froze, heavy with fear. I sat on the warped, torn seat, pushing it back as far as the chains could take me. Then I let go, pumping my feet until I was kicking air.

         “Eight nine ten.”

         Too high to stop, I flew over the swingset, above the roof of the apartment building and  the boarded-up pawn shop. I soared over cars and streets, bridges and boats. I saw rivers and forests below me, and when I was ready to return to earth, I flew out of the seat, landing on a little kid waiting his turn by the seesaw.

         “You’re pretty good for a girl,” Jimmy B said, pulling me off the kid who ran away before I could say sorry. Drew wrapped his arms around my waist. “Show me how to fly,” he whispered.

         We lived on the playground that summer. Jimmy B waited for us on top of the monkey bars every morning. I’d survey the scene below with him while Drew and the younger kids chased each other. We were always the last to leave, long after the other kids were called home for supper. I’d switch on the light, pull open the fridge, scraping the half empty jars of peanut butter and mayo and make us sandwiches. The day before school started Cherie told us we were going to live at our dad’s. “Pack your toothbrush,” she added, in case we forgot she was our mom.

The 16th of Every Month I Check My Mailbox

         God started sending me letters every month, ever since my teen-age son had brain surgery. I’m no church-goer, but I murmured lines from half-remembered prayers as I watched them wheel my boy into the operating theater. Would he survive? If he did, who would he be? When the surgeon showed me before and after pictures, repeating “It was a miracle,” I nodded, flooded with relief.

         The first week he was home from the hospital I found a pearl white envelope in our mailbox addressed in handwritten block letters. I usually get bills and appeals from nonprofits I can no longer afford to support, so I was surprised to open the envelope and read a handwritten note in the same block letters : “It gets better. Trust me, he’ll come through it alright, though he might be a little different afterwards, and so will you.”

         The letters were a little shaky, but the “you” was underlined with a firm hand. No return address. Stamped, but the ink on the postmark was so smudged I couldn’t make out the sender’s location. Had I been wrong to doubt God’s existence? But why now? Why me? I dropped the letter in the recycling bin only to find my son later, standing in the kitchen, holding the letter. “It’s cool that someone cares enough to write you,” he smiled. “So old school.”

         Months after his surgery the letters arrive like clockwork. They’re never signed. They have to be from God. Who else knows what’s really going on in my world? I only share the outline of a life on social media because my days are filled with fears that never go away, people I miss. I show my son the God-letters but he just shrugs. This generation has no appreciation for mystery.

         I make sure to check the mailbox the 16th of every month, certain a letter will be waiting for me. Like this month’s message, written in the same shaky hand: “Look around you: the world is full of surprise.” I frown. Lately the surprises hollow me out with dread - flash floods, ugly elections, missing neighbors.

         Again the “you” is underlined. I stare at the page, trying to see the hand hesitate before writing each word. I hold out the letter to my son, who pats my arm. “Maybe that God of yours is on to something,” he says as he hands me the letter. “One thing I can tell,” he calls as he starts up the stairs, his thin back shaking with a laugh he can barely contain, “whoever wrote these sure is dope.”

---

Phebe Jewell's recent flash appears or is upcoming in numerous journals, including Ghost Parachute, JMWW, Wildscape Literary Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, SoFloPoJo, BULL, and other wonderful publications. A teacher at Seattle Central College, she also volunteers with the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, a nonprofit providing college courses for incarcerated women, trans-identified, and gender non-conforming people in Washington State. Read her at https://phebejewellwrites.com.

Martyn Rosser

We Have All the Time in The World Wide Web

       It’s after the phone call that it starts.

       I answer and nod and offer my thanks and try desperately to think of a question that will convey my anger and sorrow and composure, but my mind slips and I tumble away, watching myself, watching my wife watching me, watching myself watching her watching me – spinning like a cartoon animal trapped in a whirlpool. I have no idea how she feels, but every idea about what’s happened. Ideas appearing in rotation, a series of slides from an ironically endless briefing about the end; the snap of the clicker, the whir of the motor. I see everything we weren’t allowed to: the jagged line falling flat; the squeak of plimsolls on vinyl, the white sheet pulled overhead; the gurney tucked into the lift at an improbable angle; the closed casket in the church; the cross behind the altar, its scale emphasised by the emptiness; the slow drive to the crematorium; the indifferent flames burning like a childhood vision of hell. I was blind but now I see. All these events unfold in silence. The reverend is waiting for me to reply. I thank her again, hang up and look at my wife. I nod and offer a smile that will never quite be enough, that is an admission of our awful limitations. She rises from the stool and leaves the kitchen.

       She doesn’t want to talk. I understand – I have to understand – after all it’s my job to be supportive. Admittedly, I never really knew my own father, but I did lose my mum in her fifties. I’ve been here before, approximately, and I’m not saying it was a good or a bad thing, but it did change my life, God knows. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. So, I’ve offered to listen, practised my open questions and eye contact. I’ve waited, refusing to placate my own anxiety by kicking away the heavy blanket of silence. I’ve given practical support. The kids are fed and watered, the house spotless – clothes on the line, beds made, vacuum recharging. I even struggled through the list of calls. Stressed but sympathetic colleagues, forgotten relatives and chatty strangers. Odd how much they want to talk about this person I barely know. Barely knew. I mean, I was never really sure if my father-in-law liked me. Even when it wasn’t mandated, he kept his distance. Or how, instead, they start discussing the weather or their new hobby or make little jokes about how they never really got out anyway. It’s a pity there wasn’t a proper funeral, they say. God is always watching, I reply.

~

       I drive to the house and stand in the garden not chatting to my mother-in-law. We grow drowsy with the scent of spring flowers. Neat beds of trumpeting daffodils and wilting snowdrops; heavy towers of hyacinths; bushels of starry rhododendrons; aubretia clambering hungrily up the shed wall. Yellows and whites and blues and reds and purples offering a wordless eulogy. Margaret acts like it’s normal. Says he had a good run, that it gives her a chance to clear out some of the clutter. Grey-haired and knock-kneed, she looks as if she’s been up since five scrubbing the kitchen floor and darning socks. When I ask if she’ll move somewhere smaller, easier to manage, she answers my question with a question: how’re the kids doing? As I back out of the drive, watch her wave and walk back into an empty house, I’m reminded that my troubles are relatively minor. That I should come again. Halfway home, I put my foot on the brake and tap a reminder into my calendar. There are no other cars on the road. Haven’t been since the rumours infected the headlines, since they told us to travel only when necessary. You think it’s impossible to forget until you do.

~

       I spend too much on the shopping, and the delivery guy gives me a look like I’m hoarding vital supplies. I guess it’s my own fault, I didn’t know what to buy so asked the kids. Katie, with the world-weariness of a teenager, complained about the amount of packaging. Libby tried, but what does an eleven-year-old know of well-rounded meals? Peanut butter and burgers? Tomato soup and crisps? I gave her a hug which, thankfully, stopped her talking, and sent her back upstairs. Within a couple of minutes, I heard her sister telling her to get out but decided to let it go.

       The cooking, at least, I can manage. I produce sloppy piles of stew, pies dripping in gravy and bubbling pasta bakes. The veil of steam and the aroma of melted cheese remind me of when I first met my wife. Back then she was so consumed with her writing, or with toddler Katie, that she’d forget to eat. I’d arrive in her kitchen with carrier bags of comfort to peel and dice and simmer my way into her heart – to stir her leftover emotions. The cracked tile behind the stove. The flabby grind of the extractor fan. The seasoned assurance of a home-cooked meal. It’s strange how a scent can evoke a memory; how our thoughts are tangled up with what we smell and see and hear and taste.

       At five pm, we sit in front of the telly and watch the daily briefing. The living room, with its doughy sofas and wide screen, felt cavernous when we first moved in; the girls suddenly too old to share, the money from her marketing job heavy in our pockets, but it’s amazing how things gather. Houseplants and shoe racks and occasional tables and cubes of shelving and floor lamps and leather puffs coalescing into a tidy mess, forming the rocks around which our lives used to run.

       We’re allowed to eat in here because she never joins us for food, and because I find it easier than actual conversation. It’s not like the kids are really listening anyway – they spend most of their time staring at their phones – but there’s something soothing about the academic tone, the endless rotation of slides, the line that goes ever upward, that never stops.

       Testing capacity is now at 51,254 per day.

       If you can stay home, stay home.

       We will be totally transparent about what comes next.

       Protect the NHS.

       There is no link between these two things.

       Hands. Face. Space.

       Makes it feel like the world is still turning, that the people in charge are in charge. Meantime, I leave optimistic snacks in opportune locations and then can’t bring myself to tidy them away. Biscuits soften in the trapped air. Red apple skins crinkle. Cups of tea catch cold, their milky heads slumping. At two am, I find her eating a plain tortilla, wrapping on the floor, a glass of water half-empty. I pray for guidance.

       I get why she shuts herself in the attic, I do. I wouldn’t want to talk to me either. But the rules are there for a reason, I was just doing the sensible thing. Time unravels, days falling into hours falling into minutes, the excess pushing at the sides, spilling over the top, piling up until we have to wade through it in slow motion. The only thing we have too much of. I wish I could donate it to some good cause. Fast forward a year and still feel worthy. By then, maybe, we’ll be back to normal, whatever that looks like. Maybe she’ll have stopped blaming me. Don’t shoot the messenger, I’d said. How would you feel if you could never see your father again, she’d replied, what damage could it really do? She’d had a point.

~

       Overnight, her laptop disappears from the office giving me a reason to investigate – right after breakfast. I manage to add a little to long enough by checking the kids are at their desks. Libby looks at me through half-closed eyes and offers the memory of a smile. Her golden hair, growing wild, sprawls over her forehead, threatens to envelop her face. Katie won’t open her door, tells me I worry too much. Didn’t I just watch her eat her damn cornflakes? I want to tell to be careful with her language. That sitting there hoping won’t get her through GCSE maths. That just because her dad lets her talk like that doesn’t mean it’s okay here. Maybe now’s not the time. Sunlight dapples through the window. The metal ladder winks at me. I dust the skirting, evicting a spider from its home, before stealthily poking my head through the trapdoor to scan the dusty savannah like some fragile mammal. There’s a moment where I believe she’s gone. That’s she’s at work, the kids at school. That I’m alone in the house again, thinking I heard a noise. That’s there’s nothing to worry about, that this madness is mine alone. Then I spot the light at the back and, as my eyes adjust, find her pouring and pawing through a warped cardboard box, head bent in concentration, and surrounded by flimsy towers – an avatar walking through a city of paper memories.

       “Hey.” I try for eye contact, but she continues to scan the sheet in her hand. The laptop is sat by her feet, the pale light casting shadows.

       “Hey,” she mumbles.

       I embrace the silence, ask an open question. “So, er, how’s it going?”

       “Pretty good.” Then, as if remembering herself, “All things considered.”

       I take a few steps up the ladder, rest my arms on the floor, and wait.  When she doesn’t protest, I lever myself up, briefly, thankfully, squeezing my middle-aged spread through the hole without incident. Then I stand and crack my head on the roof. While I wince – checking once, twice, for blood – she drifts, pauses in contemplation, skims through the top of one pile, then another, and another, before turning her attention back to the first. I offer support, “Can I help?”

       She bites her top lip. Finally, she glides beyond the towers – a phantom spirit, dressing gown streaming behind her – kneels and starts construction on the bare brownfield beyond. “No, not really,” she replies.

       “Right,” I say, wondering whether it’s a statement or a question. I watch for a few minutes, recalling a sermon on forgiveness – Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven – then head back to the kitchen.

~

       I get an email from Libby’s form tutor that leaves me mortified. My child has not been to a single lesson in the last week. They understand the situation, it’s difficult for everyone right now, but it’s important she doesn’t fall behind, especially so soon after starting a new school. What should I say? The kid just lost her grandad, for goodness’ sake. I know what her mother would say. Words would not be minced. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up. I listen for the distant pad of her feet. Then I draft and redraft an apology. I’d prefer to go in and talk to them. Break the ice. It’s what I do. What I did. I miss chatting to the customers while I made teas and coffees. St. Luke’s, the place meant something to me, gave me grip after mum passed. Dallying at the end of my shift. Popping into the shop if it was quiet. Taking the new recruits under my wing. The jobcentre called their placement mandatory. I joked: man, de Tories; to break the ice. Though definitely never in a West Indian accent.

       We finish eating and, as cutlery clangs onto porcelain, I take a breath, mute the telly, and try to sound casual, “So, Libs, I got a message from Mr. Carr.”

       I watch her hand dart up and down the chair arm, a spider fleeing the light. Then she looks away and shrugs. I’m about to ask her what’s wrong when Katie interrupts, “Idiot.”  She manages to imbue the single word with contempt despite never looking up from her mobile.

       Libby is quickly to her feet, fists clenched, body leant forward, a half-empty bowl clatters to the floor. I watch the soup spread, a circle of brown on the carpet, noodles twisting like earthworms. “Who are you calling an idiot?” she says. I want to run and get a cloth. Leave them to it.

       Katie is big enough – five years older and blessed with the graceful authority of an apex predator – to remain nonchalant. She’s wearing a white dress, thin shoulder straps, black ankle boots. Dressed like Friday night, she raises a contoured eyebrow then responds, “You. Idiot.”

       Libby drops her head, pulls an arm back and prepares to charge.

       “Girls. Girls. Girls!” I’ve gone sotto voce, though have no idea why. I grab her Libby the waist and pull us both onto the sofa. Katie offers a grunt of amusement, nudging her hair away from her eyes like a god flicking away a fly. Then there’s a knock at the door and we freeze. Who on earth could it be? We look at each other as if the answer is harder to discover than it is. Although we don’t hear anything, suddenly, there she is – wife, mother, dead father’s daughter – opening the door and picking up the parcel. It’s size, and the white cross, reminds me of a tithe box. Then we watch her turn away, hear the steps on the stairs – heavy now, certain – the metallic twang of the ladder and the wooden clap as the trapdoor closes.

       Katie looks up, as though there’s nothing left that can surprise her, and catches Libby with a questioning glare, “Why don’t you just sign in and turn your camera off, like everyone else? No one cares anymore.”

       I care, I want to say. God cares. But it seems stupid.

*

       The following evening, I start hearing voices. I’m in the kitchen putting away the dishes, steam rising from the sink, when Libby begins talking. She’s at the top of the stairs, telling some story about a trip to the zoo, the rhinos and how they were grumpy like grandad. Some story that elicits a familiar laugh, but by the time I arrive she’s gone, every door closed apart from one – my, our, bedroom. It rocks gently on its hinges, tapping out a message in Morse code, beckoning me in. I tiptoe forward and reach for the handle, almost expecting my hand to pass through. The door opens onto a pile of my wife’s clothes. Business suits wrapped in plastic mingle with crumpled summer blouses. I spy her jogging pants, a blue velvet jumper, that cocktail dress she wore on our first anniversary. The hood of a winter coat hangs from the wardrobe where Katie – acting as though it’s completely ordinary, as if she isn’t in her parents’ room, isn’t rifling through her parents’ belongings – pulls out another dress, hanger and all, and tosses it into the mire. Then she looks over, eyes grappling mine and says, “Mum said I could.”

       I take a moment to rank the possible responses by order of importance. I fail. She knows what I’ve done, is old enough to understand. Knows what her mother thinks of me. Has decided what she thinks of me. The day I refused to let them go to the funeral, when I blocked the doorway and hid the car keys and threw her mother’s phone, I exhausted any authority I’d acquired. Katie doesn’t have to listen to my sanctimonious bullshit anymore. She hoists the pile of clothes into her arms and pushes past me and out of the door, fabric rustling in the silence.

~

       The reverend says I should make more of an effort to connect. I head upstairs to see Libs and lose track of time watching her sing tunelessly to herself, comically large headphones slipping down her head. When I wrap her in a hug she leans in, like a dog nuzzling for treats, and I don’t want to leave. On the way down, I spot the bruised and broken notebook that contains my wife’s unfinished, unfinishable, novel. Unearthed, perhaps, during her late-night wanderings and set aside. It shivers through me, a visceral memory, the scent of blood and iron; a lamb sacrificed at the altar of our family’s future.

~

              “I found some old photos of your dad.”

Once again, I’m a disembodied head, upright on the floor. It makes me think of John the Baptist, the loner, the beheaded, the Nazarite, who could not drink wine, or cut his hair, or come near a dead body.

       “Thanks.” She’s sat cross-legged on the floor, laptop in her lap, fingers poised in thought. She looks at me and smiles beatifically, “But I’m not sure I need them.”

       “Then…” I pause and she looks at me patiently, looks ready, “Er...”

       “It’s not what you think.” She seems awake, aware of me, for the first time in – what’s fair – days or weeks? She rests a hand on the parcel box beside her, “Do you still have that stuff from when we were first dating?”

       She knows I do, knows I can’t bear to throw those things away. “I guess.” I look at her and I look at the box. “Though they’re pretty tatty.”

       It started with me leaving messages – saying the things I couldn’t say – on her kitchen table after she’d snuck off in the morning. We could have texted, but it’s not the same. She responded, then I again, and so on, until the backs of envelopes, or flyers from local takeaways, or council tax bills became festooned with the chaotic awkwardness of our courting, and I, with unsuccessful secrecy, snaffled them away. Even after all this time my cheeks redden at the thought.

       “Super,” she smiles again, goes back to typing, “If you can rustle anything up, anything at all, I’d be forever grateful.”

       “Great. But…” The word balances on my lower lip, pulling it down until I’m almost gawping. “Why?”

       She glances at the box, then back at me, and brings her hands together in a ball, “I’m pulling my life together.”

       “Well. Good. But…”

       She finishes my sentence, “Why?” incorrectly as it happens. That smile again, like a politician answering the question they wanted to hear, “Because it helps. Because it’s good for the family.”

       “But…”

       “You’ll understand when it’s finished.”

       “But…”

       This time she waits, reaching into the cool dark for a sip of water.

       I look at the box, the only solid thing in the room, and find a train of thought to follow, “What are you trying to do? You can’t put your whole life in there. It’s here. We need you, me and Libby and Katie and…” I realise I don’t want to say her mum.

       “The girls are fine. You’ll understand when it’s finished.” She’s as certain as a line falling flat.

       “But…” my lower lip must have dropped below the floor by now, must be working its way down the ladder and towards the landing, “When?”

       “Soon,” she continues, “If you’ll help.”

       And, so, of course, I help. What else is there to do? What else am I supposed to say? I help happily and reluctantly, doling out utility bills, holiday snaps, school reports, prescription slips, warranty guarantees, car MOTs, Christmas cards, TV licenses, tax returns, security passes, CDs and DVDs, recipes, newspaper clippings, home videos, and magazine subscriptions in incremental doses, testing the impact, reviewing progress, updating my hypothetical charts. I take it as a good sign that she leaves the attic most days now, and try not to feel disheartened when, after the first box is taken away, a second and then a third arrive. I look up the company name, Total Recall, but only find the sci-fi film from the nineties. I need expert help so go in search of the children.

       Katie rolls her eyes, looks as though this is more embarrassing for her than me. Why don’t you just ask her, is all I get. Well, that and a mutter as I leave which sounds something like grow a pair. Teenagers require the patience of Job, especially if you’re locked indoors with them.

       I discover Libby dragging a box across the hallway. Turns out both girls were recruited to their mother’s cause a lifetime ago – Libs was easy pickings once her big sister was onboard – and have been busy gathering digital footprints ever since. She shows me on her computer, so I nod and pretend to understand. Then I wait until everyone’s asleep and open the box. My head throbs but I don’t throw up. I don’t throw anything, thank God. How’s it possible that I’m the last to realise? Did the girls figure it out for themselves, or did she tell them? And when did she tell them? Worse still, the whole thing is legitimised by this revelation. It’s hard to have an issue with something that’s been happening for weeks. That all your family have agreed to. You can’t, halfway through your baptism, complain about the temperature of the water. But – while I have no wish to be categorised as difficult – it doesn’t seem fair. I don’t like feeling isolated in my own home.

~

       It’s weeks before I work up the courage, even though I know it’s unavoidable. I lie awake at night, thinking and rethinking how I might approach it, listening to the inhospitable silence, questioning my own beliefs. I tell myself I have to say something, if only because I promised never to lie, even by omission. Yet, trapped inside these walls of things unsaid, it becomes easier to say nothing. Time thrums by, enumerated by boxes arriving empty and leaving full. With little else to distract us we become a well-oiled machine. We fill the present with the past until it blocks out the future. We grow to understand our roles, are consumed by the gathering weight of our workload, rediscover the imperative joy that can only be found in a sense of purpose. Even when we begin to chronicle the present, keeping records about keeping records, setting up cameras and watching our lives on playback, counting hours of sleep and steps made, calories consumed and defecations completed, itches scratched and spots picked, the girls just get on with it. They capture every moment and I crunch the numbers and draw the graphs, like an epidemiologist preparing for the next briefing, so we can submit our findings to some invisible overseer, who like us find their life enumerated by the sending and receiving of boxes. But little by little, in the dark, my courage grows. Nurtured by resentment and fed on a terrible fear, it grows.

       And this is that fear: that each day she becomes a little fainter, a little less recognisable, like a garden at twilight. That, in trying to hold on, we’ve created something eternal. Have become trapped in a recording of our lives, and are now compelled to wander aimlessly, our heads turned forever backwards, victims of a self-inflicted torment plagiarised from the inner circles of hell. And everyone else is okay with that.

       I climb the ladder. I squeeze through the hole, embarrassed that the kids, woken by the noise or kept up by the expectation, are listening. I pull myself upright and hit my head on the ceiling. She ignores me, looks at her laptop and is pleased with all she’s created.

       “Hey.”

       She takes a moment, considers me with a distant kindness, like my teachers on the last day of school, then says nothing.

       “So, I, er, look...I don’t want to be the bad guy here, but I don’t think you’ve...I’ve been left with much choice.”

       I pause, expecting something. She places the laptop on the floor, screen tilted upwards so that it catches her face, shrinking it to a circle, to eyes and nostrils and lips shaped by shadow.

       “Look, I think you know this already. If we’re being honest, there’s nothing I can say that you won’t have already thought of. I know you,” I used to think I knew you, “You’re smart. Much smarter than me. I still thank God every day that you chose me, chose us. But sometimes I wonder whether you’re only doing this for the kids.”

       I look at the floorboards. Can they hear this? Do they understand? Libby is probably recording it like a good girl.

       “And if it’s just for them, is this really how you imagined it? Shouldn’t we be trying to make their lives more normal, not less? I get the structure, I do, I like the structure...but they should be at school.”

       I shake my head, retrace my steps, “They should be doing their schoolwork. Katie has exams in less than two months, and you’ve got her running around collecting our online shopping history and fuc...and Facebook posts. Libs is still a child and, instead of encouraging her to value education, you give her an excuse to do nothing. They just lost their grandfather, they need their parents. They can’t afford to lose anyone else.”

       I look up. I’ve gone too far. She looks back, her lips curling upwards. A slight smile or awkward frown, I can’t say.

       “You act like none of this means anything. Look, if you’re trying to punish me, I get it. It isn’t like anyone in this house is damn…is talking to me properly these days. I can leave if that’s what you want me to do?” The words rise in me, self-determined, “Libby and I can just go.”

       She stares and blinks and stares.

       “Alright, I’m sorry. I’m fuck…fucking sorry. I’m sorry he’s dead. But he’s with God now. Well, I believe he’s with God now. Funeral or not. I get that’s no excu…”

       She moves and I hesitate. I watch while she picks up a piece of paper, turns it over, puts it down again.

       “I don’t want to do this, alright. You must know I’d never want this. I was just trying to be sensible, reasonable, yet here I am dragged ever further into this...godless debacle.”

       She reaches out, pulling a glass from the darkness. I see the fissures in her lips as the rim closes. When she pours the water into her mouth it overflows at the corners, rivulets catching the light as they run down her chin and dampen her nightdress.

       “I’m just worried about you. I get what you’re doing, I do. I’m terrified too. We’re all terrified. But whatever this is, however it ends, if it…if it, God willing, ends; this thing, these boxes and boxes and boxes won’t be you. Can’t be you. You are you. Here and now. Here. We have all this time and this how you want to spend it? The glory of creation on all sides and here we are watching. Watching screens, watching ourselves, watching life pass us by. Do you think that’s what your dad would want?”

       A quote I’ve been saving dashes through my mind – and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it – too quick to wrestle into words, “Tell me it’s right to teach your kids that he’s not in heaven. That he’s nothing but bone fragments and dust. That your soul can be captured here on earth. That eternal life is less a matter of faith and more a matter of careful cataloguing. Did you even think about discussing it with me? You must have known how I’d feel. They’re not just your DAMN...sorry. But how can you think whatever you leave behind will be you? How can anything but you be you? I’m sorry he’s gone but you know we couldn’t have saved him. We can’t even save ourselves. Only God can do that.”

       Her mouth moves, forming a small parting between the lips shaped like a yogic exhalation. Nothing escapes. I watch the pale membrane stir and shimmer, a bubbled surface stretched flat by the movement of her jaw, transparent across the neat white rows of incisors and molars, and sewn tight at the gums. I want to reach out and punch a hole through it. Then, the mouth closes and she steps back into the darkness.

       The fear that fills me is not for her but for all of us. I whisper to myself, “Oh Becca, what have you done?”

       “Hey baby, I haven’t done anything.”

       The tinny sound rises from the laptop. At some point, it must have turned toward me. I see her face, pixelated but perfect. The hair falling over her brow in a neat line, cut back across the ears to fall into a bob; the face shaped like a cartoon heart; the fierce brown eyes shining with curiosity; the pale skin against rouged cheeks; the nose like a Victorian doll. She tilts her head and offers an impudent smile, “Not yet, anyway.”

---

Martyn Rosser is a teacher. He has been published as part of the “On Silence” podcast featured in the Lincoln Review. He lives in Yorkshire and spends far too much time thinking about the dangers of solipsism, the ambiguity of everyday acts, and how easy it is to make sweeping judgments about things he knows almost nothing about.

Mike Itaya

Pen Pals from Ezekiel (Webelo)

         Last month at school, they gave out pen pals. I got a fellow named Charlemagne, from Auburn, Alabama, who sent me a picture with his first letter. He was this runty fellow who lived on a farm, which he swore was a “hellhole with no TP.” I took a liking to Charlemagne. We became blood brothers and sent each other bloody communiqués to make it bonafide. But things took a tailspin when I forwarded him my “Ezekiel, Mississippi Letters,” my account of this shitbag town and what all goes on here.

         And I believe Charlemagne's mama got a hold of my bizarre epistolaries then flipped her fucking lid. I got a final post, then never did hear from them again:

         Charlemagne and his family do not live here. They have moved to Canada. As such, Charlemagne is not your blood brother. He used Heinz 57 to seal the deal.

         It was one thing to lose my friend, but to’ve been blood brothers under false pretense is how I ended up on the dark road.

         Lordyjay, I’m just a ten-year-old nothing with a postcard covered in dried ketchup.

         So much happens in Ezekiel, that I believe the citizens are more cursed than the place itself is.

         Like this time when I was nine, me and R.T. (Pa) went on a father-son trip out west to Yosem-mite. I wanted to see all them mountains, especially one called Craterface. We pulled over off the road to take a gander. Yep. There were all kinds of folks out there lookin’. Near the Craterface summit, there was this dude in a blue bunny costume, free climbing. And watching him climb higher and higher made my heart soar, like if that bunny got to the top, there was no tellin’ where all he might get to. A person could take from that a mighty fine lesson about life. At least that’s what I was thinkin’, when that bun just kind of let go, and all of us watched him take a header from on high, and seconds later when it was all over was the first time I felt the dark road open up inside me. I wondered who was in charge of that bun, who was supposed to make him behave. Afterwards, R.T. bought me a Yosem-mite t-shirt, and while two days before I would’ve slapped my own bottom for such a prize, I didn’t know who’d want a shirt from a place where such things happened. 

---

Mike Itaya is the editor-in-chief of DIRTBAG and writes about dirtbags, always. @DirtbagWriting

Tom Hedt

Small Lessons in Thievery

….and you know you’ve rarely been a thief, but like magicians and shamans, you appreciate their skills, the skill to make things appear and disappear, like when you sat in that restaurant and were telling your son-in law that you can’t expect people to be perfect, and he is so caught up on being good, and he wants his daughter to be good, and he’s agitated because you and your daughter are teaching your granddaughter how to pinch silverware from this restaurant and she is slipping the knife into her sleeve and she is a good student and the silverware is beautiful braided patterns of fish and crustaceans that shine dull in pewter and yellow lighting and your son is getting animated and your granddaughter is getting giggly with the excitement of the heist and you quietly tell her she needs to keep her cool as you take the check from the waitress and examine it for accuracy, line by line and calculate the tip at 22 percent and your daughter and son in law are now arguing and your granddaughter has got the knife and the spoon in her sleeve and your son so much wants his daughter to be good and he’s adopted Buddhism and you explain to him that karma, like entropy, is not a law, but a statistical abstraction and how you used to steal toilet paper from the library when you were too poor in college and couldn’t afford to buy any but the universe didn’t starve you of toilet paper, but he’s not paying attention because two pieces are now in his daughters sleeve and you’ve handed your card to the waitress and he wants his daughter so much to be good and he’s arguing with your daughter who is explaining to him how she learned to steal cups from her mother and it’s a tradition and he feels so powerless and you again have to tell your granddaughter to breathe deeply and restrain her giddiness and to remember to always walk slowly and calmly and you eat the last fry as the waitress returns and you sign the receipt as your daughter walks out with your granddaughter and you stand and leave the bill on the table and look out the window and see you granddaughter on the sidewalk jumping for joy and pulling the silverware from her sleeve and you understand that the next lesson will be to never celebrate too soon.

Dancing Queen

It’s a bit of a drive, but it’s early so the roads are empty. Streetlights off black pavement, shiny from the mist, the burn of Smirnoff down my throat. We park in the alley.

“Come on Princess, its time.”

“I don’t want to go. It’s sad.” She’s in her onesie. The sideways frownie face always breaks my heart.

“I know it’s sad, but we agreed.” She pouts, climbs out of the van, pulling her stuffed pony along by the ear. Her face reminds me so much of her mom.

She looks up, startled. “Oh, I almost forgot my book.” I manage a nod and a half-smile, she gathers the stapled sheets of paper, the little play she’s been writing.

I lock up the minivan, and fumble for my key card, trying not to look up at the camera.

There’s a buzz and a click. I hold the door.

“Why do you always carry your bottle in a bag? Are you trying to hide it?”

I straighten up and take a breath. “No, I’m not trying to hide it. It’s the law, if you carry a bottle, it’s got to be in a paper bag.”

We’re waiting for the freight elevator. Silence is heavy, except the clang of metal as it slowly descends to us, the whirring of engine and cable. It’s only been a couple months since my fall. Technically I’m still on staff, but for some reason this place is freaking me out.

She’s dancing on the concrete floor. “Why? Why does the law say that?”

I watch her, trying not to let my nerves get raw. “I don’t know, it just is.”

We get up to the top and follow the dark halls. I nearly trip over some tools. I think about going to my locker, see if I’ve still got my old spot. But the kid is with me, and I want to get outside for dawn. I want to see the wreckage.

A right turn, then a left, and I see the opening, dark sky framed by walls. There’s a rush of cool air. I walk out. Fuck! Twenty stories off the ground. I reach and shimmy my way over to the ledge, push my back against the wall and slide down, take a shot. I’m dizzy. Grayscale shapes in the darkness make the height worse.

She’s dancing. For fucks sake, she’s dancing. She’s next to me on the ledge, I reach for her to pull her to me, but she turns out of my reach, feet floating over blackness.

“Get over here!”

She just smiles. “Did you know I have really good balance? In gymnastics, my teacher says I can balance on anything.” She steps on an open steel beam, and keeps on dancing, skipping, twirling, like she’s suspended in air.

“Get off the beam!”

“Did you look at my book?” My heart is beating so hard, I feel it hitting the wall.

“No. I didn’t. Bring it over, so I can read it.”

“It’s next to you on the floor.”

She’s dancing out further on the metal beam. I try to push myself from the ground, but my strength is gone.

“Read my book, daddy, you said you would.”

I try to steady my breathing. “You come over here. Then we’ll look at it together, OK?”

“No. You should come to see me do the balance beam. I’m really good. I can do a flip without falling off!”

“Don’t you dare do a fucking flip!”

“Read the book daddy.”

I fumble my right hand against the wall, feel the folded papers, crumble them in my hand, lift them to my face.

“Why did we stop living over there?” She points to the apartments. The wreck that’s about to come down. The reason we are here. The place where we began. The only place where the three of us lived together.

I take another breath. “It’s complicated sweetie, let’s just read your little thing here.”

“We get to see them knock it down today, right? Why did you want to watch them knock it down?”

“Let’s read your little play darlin’. Come here, you start, right?”

“No. You start. You’ve got the first part. You get to be mommy.” That makes no sense. We’ve read this before; it has cats, mice, and frogs, not moms and dads.

It’s still dark, I have a hard time focusing my eyes. The vodka and my nerves all seem to be working against me. I take off my glasses so I can read better, put them on the ledge next to me.

I read the script out loud, my daughter’s handwriting. “John, stop! Please! We’re a family! It’s always just you and your bottle….” My voice trails off. That’s exactly what she’d said. I look up, there is a blurry shape dancing on a steel beam over an abyss, the sun is coming up, I am dizzy. Through my tears, she stares at me.

“You did it wrong. You’re supposed to yell. You’re mommy, you’re supposed to try to convince me to come back!”

“This is not funny! Get over here!”

Across the street they’re firing up the crane; it slowly lifts the wrecking ball. My fingers are numb, the papers fall, drifting, floating like white birds through the morning air.

“What did you do!? You have to read your part! You are mom, you have to beg me to come back! Otherwise, I can’t come back!”

All I can do is stare, slack jawed. Sprites are dancing in the water of my vision. The noise of the crane swinging the wrecking ball is drowning out my little girl’s voice. It is swinging in bigger and bigger arcs.

---

Tom Hedt’s work has been published widely in journals, including: The Sijo International Journal of Poetry and Song, Bright Flash Literary Review, Cirque, Cathexis Northwest, The Tule Review, The Lilly Poetry Review, Flash Boulevard, and elsewhere. His poetry compilation, Artifacts and Assorted Memorabilia, was published in September of 2020 by Cold River Press. He currently serves as the Associate Poetry Editor for Bending Genres. He lives in Eureka, California.

Stuart Watson

More Than It Can Hold

We were gardening, pushing bulbs into the ground and hoping for flowers. I heard a car door slam, looked up, saw four young men carrying something really heavy toward the front door of the house across the street and two doors down. It’s painted red, but I couldn’t tell much about the thing they were carrying toward it. All I could tell was they were straining under its weight, spread out, struggling with their share of the load, but knees bent almost to the ground.

Equally puzzling was the sound. Sometimes loud. Sometimes soft, like spring breeze. It was never the same, always distinct. One man went down and the others hurried to adjust, to keep their load from falling and crushing their friend. He sprung to his feet, quickly grabbed new purchase on the load and they resumed their trudge. Maybe it was the bright setting sun, but I couldn’t tell what this object was. It had corners and edges, apparently, where people could grab it and lift. It was longish, maybe the length of a rolled rug, but it wasn’t a rug. Or at least it wasn’t what I could identify as a rug. Frankly, I’m not sure if it was anything except heavy.

“New neighbors?” I said to Sylvia, tapping dirt from my trowel.

My wife looked up, a smear of dirt like a mustache above her lip.

“Looks like it,” Sylvia said. “House has been on the market so long. It will be nice having somebody in it.”

“Will it? I love empty houses. New people are always odd people.”

“Why?”

“Because people are odd? No, seriously, they just move in and go about their lives and none of it matters. Why should I care? Why not let the house be empty? So we can live in peace. They’ll probably have a dog. And let it sit outside and bark. The noise will drive me nuts. I’ll want to go over with my noise vacuum and suck it up and the dog with it.”

“What are they moving?”

“Not a clue. Can you see anything?”

She looked for a few seconds. “Nope,” she said. “But they sure look like they’re hauling huge stuff. Hey–” She got my attention. “--you think they’re mimes?”

“Who knows, but it sure sounds big.”

It was the same thing all week long. I grew despondent. Groups of two to five men, carrying large items that, at least to our eyes, were invisible, but appeared to have considerable heft. One day, a really long item, maybe an invisible girder? The next day, something that could have fit inside a small apartment, floor to ceiling, wall to wall.

“I’m guessing it’s a commercial laundry machine,” I said. “Dirty sheets in, gray sheets out.”

“You know how when you’re on the freeway and get stuck behind some huge piece of industrial machinery on a low-boy?” Sylvia said. “Things that sort rocks or make concrete or turn forests into toilet paper? Maybe they’re DIYers, making their own butt wipe?”

“We should get them an Oversize Load banner. As a housewarming gift.”

That got us giggling like little kids, and the next thing you know, we were in the rack. When we were done, Sylvia rolled onto her side, propping her head on her hand. I’ve always loved the way her breasts slumped sideways at moments like that.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” she began, “but when I was walking Oscar by their place earlier today, I heard … well, it sounded like the sound you hear when an elevator starts to move and picks up speed. Rollers. Rattling. Air rushing past. Hearts beating loudly, everybody hoping this isn’t the elevator that goes blooey.”

“Did it go blooey?”

“Nope, but I heard it ding and the doors open and suddenly a bunch of voices, like when you arrive at your floor and other people are waiting to get on and everybody stands back for the guy with the photocopy machine on a cart and maybe you know some of them. Somebody always says that line from the Aerosmith song. Good morning, Mr. Tyler. Going … down?”

“Maybe they’ve got a big elevator in there?”

“It’s a one-story rancher, you idiot.”

The day after they moved the big thing in, I noticed an aroma. It was a little like fresh-mown grass, with notes of strawberry and lime, backed by a somewhat yeasty base. I imagined it was what a kombucha bakery smelled like. If there was such a thing. I asked Sylvia if she noticed it, and she said it smelled nice, like a lotion she wouldn’t mind rubbing behind her knees. My imagination chased that one, like a rat into underbrush. The aroma lasted for a day or two, then waned. In that time, the house swelled to twice its previous size, mostly upward but a little to the rear as well, despite no evidence of physical alterations. A light touch behind the knees will do that. Lights pulsed behind the windows.

We hadn’t met the new residents, so we thought it might be nice to invite them over for dinner. Get to know them. Maybe satisfy our curiosities.

Lars and Wanda arrived at six with a bottle of screw-cap red. Chateau Oaky Hills something or other. I already had a beer but poured three wines for them and Sylvia. She had made chicken with roast potatoes, onions and carrots. Very Middle America.

I toasted “to good neighbors,” hoping it wasn’t too direct. Then I offered my help, if they needed any, with moving their … whatever in.

“It looks big,” I said. “And heavy. I didn’t know … well, that shit like that, uh, took up so much space.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Lars said. “Sensational, actually.”

“Well, if you need a dolly or a come-along, let me know.”

They thanked me. From there, it was pretty open-ended questions, hoping they would spill the beans. “Lotta stuff.” “Don’t you hate moving?” “Where did you come from?” “Are you among the lucky ones, remote workers?”

They weren’t. They came from Dubuque. Two kids, in elementary. He was a sonic archivist. And an olfactarian. What he said, but he saw our uncomprehending looks.

“Like a sound engineer,” he said. “Not a producer so much. More a collector.”

“Oh,” I said. Then, “All abooooard!”

He looked at me like I was an idiot.

“You know? Trains?”

“That would be the conductor,” he said. “No trains involved.”

It was a pleasant evening. Social events drain us both. We crashed. I was deep in dreamspace when the sound of a huge crash jerked me awake. Sylvia was screaming. “What is it? What is it?” Our room was fine. I slipped into my sweatpants and hoody, closing the door behind me in case we had an intruder, who had accidentally tipped over the refrigerator. I flicked on the hall light and slowly made my way through the house. All was normal. Nobody jumped out from behind a doorway with a knife.

So I went outside, out front, where activity lived. It was still dark. We had no street lights, by our choice, so I had to pick my way along our sidewalk. When you’re looking for a sound, or more precisely, the source of a sound, it can be challenging. Nothing presented itself. Across the street, I heard crunching and tinkling, like what you hear after a building has collapsed and the stuff on the top floor is just arriving at the bottom, all atomized and reduced to rubble inside a billowy cloud of concrete dust.

Otherwise, nothing to see here. I turned back toward our house and that’s when I tripped, stumbling forward and down, onto our lawn. What was that? I crawled to my hands and knees and worked my way back, feeling the ground for the obstruction. I found nothing but flat, pebbly concrete.

And then the voice. Ahh, that magic voice. Fred Parris. I’m old enough to remember when he first shone from the airwaves, he and his do-wop Satins. “In the Still of the Night” became the theme song to my lost innocence. Our lost virginity. But where was it coming from? It was almost as if the song had … body? Like wavy, blonde hair made out of air. What was the source? I heard Fred, but I saw no one. I was lying on a sidewalk in the dark, no radio, no passing car, no lights from any window. The song’s lyrics trailed off, as if just passing through, which of course, any song does.

Sylvia had the lights on when I returned, and told her about that magic moment. She smiled that smile, and wrapped her arms around my neck. Still the same.

After the sun came up and everyone got after their yard chores, I could see the new neighbors – Lars and Wanda and two teenage boys – out picking up stuff from their yard. I couldn’t see what. Frankly, it looked like they were just going through the motions. There was nothing there, but they were bending over and reaching down and struggling to stand back up, whatever it was (or wasn’t) cradled in their arms. Then they would take it back into the house.

I couldn’t resist wandering over, casual as can be, with Oscar on his leash. “Lend a hand?” I offered. Lars looked up, smiled. “Thanks, no,” he said. “Think we got it.”

“Uh, it?” I said.

“Oh,” he said, looking around, almost as if it should have been obvious. “Our sound file tipped over in the night. Not sure why. But audio went everywhere. Still missing a few pieces. If you happen to come across The Still of the Night or Alley Oop, we’d love to get them back.”

“Records?”

He stared at me, geezer and dog. “No,” he said, finally. “Songs. The sound of voices and instruments. Gear on gear. Weather. Urbanity. Construction and transport. All for aural consumption. They’re beasts, these sound bites. And heavy. Especially the death metal. Cavernous. Enough to fill St. Paul’s Cathedral.”

I must have looked confused. “Sorry if it woke you,” he said. “Moving is a bitch. We hadn’t organized everything yet. Our Tower-Crane-Toppling audio … well, it toppled– ironic, right? –  and knocked over the 747-Crashing, and that tumbled into the Walk-Off-Home-Run-Cheering and the Atomic-Bomb-Detonating and …”

He looked at me, as if something on my face betrayed what, in fact, I felt – a mixture of confusion and incredulity and the sense that I was being fed a line of snake oil mumbo-jumbo. Or the jabber of a savant. So I jumped at the chance for clarity.

“Isn’t sound just air? Invisible vibrations passing through? Like a pulse? Not much more than a feeling?”

“Or like a stupid question,” Lars replied. “It’s not just air. Sound is … value-added air. It’s  the most valuable thing, the repository of words, emotions, speech, music, natural percussive echo and oral transmission of memory, the gospel rock of Sister Rosetta Tharp, bird journeys, exhalations swept away by atmospheric rivers, conversations in sidewalk cafes and the councils of government, where hate takes root, gains traction, where fear inhales and hides, where ...”

“You’re stoned, right?”

To his credit, Lars smiled. Took no offense. Figured Rubes like me would never get it, so why waste time and breath trying to explain. He invited us to come by later.

“This house is way too small for our collection,” he said. “Last night? Proof if ever we needed it: We’ve got far more than the house can hold. We’re having a yard sale later. You could find a bargain or two. I’ll give you a deal on a priceless Steam-Engines-Colliding.”

I nodded. Priceless? As if anyone would pay for something as evanescent as a sound bite from the 19th century? I didn’t know what to say, but I’m sure that when our eyes met, Lars realized that I thought he was nuts.

“You could get a phone,” I said. “Upload all your noise. To the cloud? And download it when you need it. Easy peasy.”

Lars’s lips thinned out, tight, cinched into a grimace. It was like I’d insulted him and he didn’t want to get arrested for taking me to the ground and extinguishing my lights. Such as they are, my lights. Maybe I should’ve called it something other than noise, but it wasn’t exactly all music, was it?

“We gotta lighten the load,” he said. “Got a cacophonous shipment of stuff coming down the river on a barge. Need to make room.”

On the way back to our house, I chastised myself for being too judgmental. Who was I to say that Lars and his clan were any different than some scruffy philatelist or presser of flowers between paper towels inside the pages of the Sears catalog, whatever that is? Was.

Sylvia was sipping coffee when I returned. Slurping it. Loudly. At the top of her lungs. Or lips, actually. She peered over the top of her cup, expectant.

“News?”

“Lars is an air collector.”

“No shit? Where does he collect it?”

“Anywhere and everywhere. Only thing is? They’ve got too much of it. It’s crashing down around their ears.”

I suddenly felt the urge to capture Sylvia’s slurp, like a free-flying parakeet, and put it in a cage for future reference. To protect it, treasure it, appreciate it whenever I wanted. Then I realized that was unnecessary. It would always be there, every morning, until it wasn’t. Instead I told her about the yard sale.

---

Stuart Watson worked at newspapers in Anchorage, Seattle and Portland, and has literary work in Bull, Barzakh, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Bending Genres (Best Microfictions nominee), The Writing Disorder, The Muleskinner Journal, Reckon Review, Sensitive Skin, The Broadkill Review, Does It Have Pockets, and others, all linked from chiselchips.com. He lives in Oregon.

Rhea Thomas

Have You Seen My Sphinx?

Missing - Oakwood Grove Neighborhood

Paula H. on Moss Side Lane

May 27 at 8:13 AM

MISSING! My sphinx has escaped the backyard again. Please keep an eye out. Her name is Zara, and she might come to you if you call her by name. However, she doesn’t like men. Also, she’s going through menopause and is a bit grouchy, so you might want to avoid her. If she approaches you, don’t run. Hold very still and try your best to answer her riddles. If you see her, please call me and I’ll retrieve her safely, so no one gets hurt. There’s a reward.

Comments:

Jennifer T. - I haven’t seen your sphinx, but I’m very curious how you came to have one. Do you need a permit for that?

Alan M. - Is she microchipped?

Gene K. - What happens if you can’t answer her riddles correctly?

Luis H. - I wouldn’t advise calling her if you see her. She could kill a person.

Leslie R. - Oh, I’ve met her before. She’s very pleasant and intelligent. We discussed the theory of relativity for two hours.  

Vick S. - Why do you keep her in the backyard and not the house?

Jennifer T. - I’m pretty sure that goes against our HOA policies.

Bev J. - I didn’t know sphinxes could go through menopause. Has she tried any hormone replacement therapy?

Linda L. - I hope she comes home soon. Prayers to you and your family.

Jake R. - I saw her! She was in the park by the school, perched on top of the playscape. She looked like she was locked in on those annoying chihuahuas that always escape their backyard and run loose in the park, barking at the ducks. How much is the reward?

____________________________________________

Paula H. on Moss Side Lane

May 27 at 9:43 PM

UPDATE: Thank you to everyone for helping us find Zara. She was successfully located and brought home, but not after, regrettably, eating several chihuahuas and a duck. My apologies to the one gentleman who approached and attempted to solve her riddle before we showed up. That was a close one. She’s now safely in our backyard, and we’ve reinforced the gate. She’s really quite happy here, she just occasionally gets bored. She’s my best friend, and I’m so thankful nothing bad happened to her.

Comments

Jake R. - Nothing bad happened to her … You’re kidding, right? Thank god nothing bad happened to any humans. Those poor chihuahuas…although I’m so glad I don’t have to hear them yapping anymore.

Linda L - Thank God! Our prayers to Him were answered, and your sweet friend was returned. God bless you and bless Jesus for his miracles today!

Bev J. - I really hope you’ve looked into hormone replacement therapy for her. Menopause is a b*tch. I know that I raged regularly before I got help. I could have easily eviscerated my husband. Frankly, eating chihuahuas is way more chill of a result than it could have been.

Paula H. (author) - I’ve contacted a veterinarian who handles exotic animals and my gynecologist. They are currently consulting on the best course of treatment for her unique biome.

Jennifer T. - I looked in the HOA handbook. There are no rules around sphinxes in particular, but exotic and/or mythical animals are strongly discouraged, and you need to get the HOA board's approval before having one on your property.

Vick S. - Surely you don’t keep your best friend chained in the backyard? She must have a bedroom in your house? That seems inhumane. I have a friend who has an alicorn in their backyard, but they’ve built a temperature-controlled stable for him.

Paula H., (author) - My husband purchased her on our honeymoon in Egypt. She’s always lived with us, and I can’t imagine life without her. She goes in and out of the house but seems to prefer the outdoors over the bedroom at night. As with most cats, she does like our bathtub.

Leslie R. - I’m not sure Zara could have lived with herself if she’d eaten that man. She’s a very deep thinker and empathetic being. I’m sure she would have controlled herself. We’re both reading the book Sapiens and plan to discuss it next weekend over tea.

Jennifer T. - The city of Austin does require a permit for mythological animals. I’d hate to suggest anyone might call the cops on you, but you’d better have a permit just in case.

____________________________________________

Luis H. on Hawthorne Street

May 28 at 8:35 AM

This is Laura, Luis’ wife. I can’t find him. He’s gone missing. He was last seen looking for our chihuahuas at Oakwood Park.

---

Rhea Thomas lives in Austin, Texas where she works as a program manager in the digital media world. Her short stories have been published in multiple publications, including, most recently, The Fictional Café, Toasted Cheese, and Does It Have Pockets. She spends her free time hoarding books, walking her stubborn Labrador retriever, playing games with her sons, kayaking and swimming in rivers, searching for mysteries and writing short stories that explore magical moments in the mundane. Her first book, a collection of short stories, was published in August 2025, and she’s currently working on a literary mystery novel. You can find her online at https://rheathomasauthor.com/

Chris Scott

Someone Adopted a Mile of Route 59

         I almost missed the sign on my way to work, a commute I’d done so many times I kind of functioned on autopilot. But I’d also driven these 25 miles back and forth to town often enough that I was prone to notice even the smallest change of scenery -- minor construction, freshly painted dividers, the infrequent trooper patrolling for speeders. And this sign was definitely not something that’d been there before, though by the time I processed what it was -- blame it on not enough coffee in my system yet -- I’d already sped past it.

         So I was on the lookout for it on my commute home later that evening, and sure enough, there was an identical sign erected on the opposite side of the highway, just past the 72nd mile marker, southbound on Route 59. I eased off the gas a bit to read it. The sign was clearly brand new, as I’d suspected, its light blue background and white reflective lettering still crystal clear, not yet stained by the elements. It read: Adopt-A-Highway. Next Mile. Sponsored By: The Good Earth. I had no idea what The Good Earth was -- some environmental organization or religious group, if I had to guess -- but I couldn’t help but feel some pride in my community, a little gratitude for these unnamed good Samaritans. Lord knows Route 59, with its frequent neglect and littering and outright illegal dumping, could use a little TLC.

         A few miles later I pulled off into Blue Cove, a new-ish housing development and my home of 5 years -- and where, it should be noted, there is no cove, blue or otherwise. The largest body of water that could conceivably have anything resembling a cove is hundreds of miles away. I took the winding main road through the cookie cutter array of houses and manicured lawns until I arrived at mine, which I shared with my wife Melanie. I pulled my sedan up next to Melanie’s smaller teal green hatchback and opened my door to the sound of a lawnmower which was abruptly cut off. I didn’t even need to look across the road to know it was Reggie, who seemed to spend maybe 70% of his time mowing his yard, which always looked immaculate.

         “How goes it?” Reggie called out, per usual.

         “It goes!” I replied, giving Reggie a quick wave, along with his wife Sherri who was seated on their porch, securely under the shaded canopy, and sipping a glass of what I guessed was a cocktail. Retirement suited them well.

         Inside the house, Melanie was already home from work and seated at the dining room table, carefully studying one of a dozen magazines spread out across the polished wood, opened to various room decors and colorful nursery concepts.

         “Hey,” I said.

         “Hey,” Melanie said back. “This shit’s overwhelming.”

         I walked up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. From this angle I could see she was beginning to show. “So give it a break for a while,” I said.

         “I mean, it’s still fun.” Melanie showed me an outer space themed nursery, with planets and rockets and astronauts painted on the walls. “Do you think I could do this?”

         “For sure,” I said. “Absolutely.” Melanie was a teacher and t-minus five months from delivering our first child, which was the whole reason we moved into a house that was unquestionably too big for only the two of us. It just took us a little longer than we expected.

         “Oh, cool thing,” I changed the subject. “Someone adopted a stretch of Route 59, just down a little ways. Few miles from here.”

         “That’s great,” Melanie replied, still focused on the magazines. “It could use some TLC.”

         “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I said, leaving Melanie at the dining room table so I could start dinner.

~

         The next week I was driving to work when, just past the adopt-a-highway sign, I saw a group of people holding garbage bags and spread out along the grass between the shoulder and the woodline. Making an uncharacteristically impulsive decision, I slowed down and pulled over onto the shoulder, turned on the hazards, got out of my car, and started walking back to them. There appeared to be around ten of them, two adults -- a man and a woman -- and a large group of kids of varying ages. They were all dressed casually with orange reflective vests hung over their shirts, and using pickers to move trash from the roadside into their bags.

         I waved to the adults and called out “Howdy!” even though I never say howdy. The man and woman and some of the kids waved back, all smiles, and I suddenly felt a little awkward. But I extended my hand to the man first and he shook it and I said “Welcome to the neighborhood,” which I immediately realized was a little weird because I don’t really consider the highway my neighborhood per se, and also it’s not like these people actually lived right here.

         “I’m Ted,” I said, and then turned to shake the woman’s hand next. Both of them appeared slightly older than me, maybe in their late 40’s, and what I would describe as classically good-looking and tall, with light blue eyes and perfect postures.

         “Hi Ted, how are you?” the woman asked.

         “I’m great,” I said, “How are you?”

         Before she could answer, a little boy sidled up next to me and echoed, “How are you?”

         So again I said, “I’m great.” And again I asked, this time of the boy, “How are you?”

         That’s when the boy, instead of answering, said, “Do you know Neil Armstrong?”

         I reflexively chuckled at the out-of-leftfield question before saying “Sure, yeah, first man on the moon!” And then the boy’s face completely changed, his smile transforming into an awestruck and mesmerized gaping mouth.

         “And how is he?” the boy asked, in what I could only describe as pure wonderment. I was so taken aback by the question that it took me a few seconds to understand what he meant.

         “Oh I’m sorry, I’m not actually friends with Neil Armstrong. I just mean I know about him. Because he’s famous,” I said, and looking into the boy’s face, now morphing into clear disappointment, I figured this would be the wrong time to mention that Neil Armstrong had been dead for a number of years.

         It was at this moment that a young girl, around 9 years old or so, walked up next to the boy and announced in one breathless and uninterrupted sing-song stream-of-consciousness: “Neil Armstrong Buzz Aldrin Pete Conrad Alan Bean Alan Shepard Edgar Mitchell David Scott James Irwin John Young Charles Duke Gene Cernan Harrison Schmitt.”

         I really had no idea what to say to this peculiar outburst, so for a moment we all just stood there for a bit, under the bright heat of the sun, a steady stream of traffic buzzing by us.

         Finally I asked, “Is that a list of everyone who’s ever walked on the moon?”

         And the girl nodded with a grin and said, “Sure is!”

         “That’s remarkable,” I said, still unsure how to respond to this inexplicable turn in the conversation. “That’s really, really impressive,” I added.

         And then I turned to the man again, trying to salvage my attempt at a neighborly introduction. “Well I just wanted to say thank you for doing this. For cleaning up,” I said, and the man nodded, smiling, clearly appreciative.

         “Of course,” he said, “We’re making pretty good headway so far. Lots of trash picked up. This is the first phase.”

         “Oh,” I replied, “And what’s phase two?”

         “Clearing out all these non-native invasive plants,” the man said, gesturing back toward the brush. “Kudzu, English Ivy, knotweed, and so forth.” I didn’t really know what any of these things were, but I took his word for it.

         “Destructive species that don’t belong here,” the woman added, apparently sensing my confusion. And I have to confess that there was something about the tone of her voice combined with the smile stretched across her face -- across all of their faces -- that sent a slight chill down my spine. I noticed they had formed a large crescent shape around me.

         “Well, thank you again,” I said, starting to step backwards toward my car. “Maybe my wife and I could come help out sometime.”

         “We’d love that,” the man said, his smile never wavering. The kids started spreading out again, getting back to work with their pickers. “Enjoy the rest of your day,” the man said, and then pointed at the sky. “Going to be a waxing gibbous tonight.”

         “That sounds great,” I said for some reason, “See you later.” And then just before I got to my car, I remembered something and turned back to holler, “Oh I meant to ask, what’s The Good Earth?”

         “A nonprofit!” the man yelled back.

         “Awesome!” I said, because that’s just usually what people say whenever someone says they’re associated with a nonprofit, no matter what the nonprofit is. As I started to pull away, I realized I’d never gotten any of their names.

~

         When I arrived home that night I found Melanie upstairs working in the guest bedroom that we were gradually converting into a nursery.

         “So guess what,” I said. “On my way to work this morning I ran into that group that adopted Route 59. The one I was telling you about?”

         “How exactly did you run into them?” Melanie asked.

         “I mean they were cleaning up the highway when I drove by so I pulled over and chatted with them. Anyway, it’s actually this, like, huge family. Or maybe it was two adults chaperoning a group of kids? I couldn’t really figure that out, but they all seem really nice. But also a little weird? Like they’re all kind of obsessed with the moon for some reason?”

         “Oh weird,” Melanie said, a little distracted.

         “And the guy -- the dad I guess -- said The Good Earth is a nonprofit. Though now that I think about it, I don’t know if that means they work for the nonprofit, or they own it or something. Or they’re just volunteering? I’m not wording this right, but they all just seemed a little off. I searched for The Good Earth online but that combination of words is pretty much Google proof. So I…” I noticed Melanie was texting on her phone, not really listening to anything I was saying. “What’s up?” I asked.

         Melanie sighed and said, “Have you seen Reggie the last couple days?”

         I searched my memory. “No, now that you mention it, the last time would’ve been a couple nights ago. He was mowing his yard, naturally.”

         “Sherri’s been texting me. Apparently she can’t find him. Says he went to town to run some errands yesterday and then she got some weird texts from him, and then he just never came home.”

         “Oh wow,” I said. “Weird how?”

         “She didn’t say. God, my fear would be like a stroke or dementia or something. Really scary.”

         “He’s always seemed fine to me,” I replied. “I mean I haven’t noticed any slippage. Have you?”

         “No, but I guess it’s hard to tell when you start getting along in years. And it’s not like we’re super close.”

         I noticed Melanie gently rubbing her stomach, which prompted me to ask, “How are you feeling?”
         “Honestly pretty good. Appetite’s firing up though. Hint hint,” she said.

         I went downstairs to start dinner.

~

         Over the next two weeks I saw the Good Earth family -- as I’d taken to referring to them, whether they were a literal family or not -- on their mile of Route 59 just about every morning on my way to the office. It made me wonder why the kids -- there were 10 of them, I’d counted, ranging in age from about 5 to 16 -- weren’t in school, or if they were homeschooled, or what. And I was a little puzzled by these people’s obsession with this one mile stretch of road. But there was no arguing with their results.

         In just a few days’ time they’d completed the first phase, clearing a full mile of all trash, fast food bags, water bottles, tires, and other junk. It looked so much cleaner than I’d ever seen it. Then they began phase two, swapping in their pickers for shovels and pruners and loppers, ripping up all manner of plants and vegetation that must have been the invasive species they’d mentioned.

         It was amazingly clear, very quickly, what a difference simply removing some garbage and problematic vegetation had on this mile-long stretch of highway. The colors appeared more vibrant, the remaining plants and wildflowers more alive and lush, the sky clearer, the air actually fresher -- as hard as that might be to believe. I basked in it every morning and every evening, driving by with my windows down, waving to the family hard at work. And they always took the time to wave back, the usual big smiles on their faces.

         Back in Blue Cove the police visited Reggie’s and Sherri’s house a few times in the immediate days following Reggie’s disappearance. I caught Sherri outside once or twice, and she looked distraught, despondent. I felt awful for her. Shortly after that the police appeared at a couple other houses further down the street. The McCluskys (a family of four who moved in shortly after we did) appeared to have upped and left town without telling anyone. Another teenage boy, Charles Camp was his name, went to his job at the gas station one night and never returned to his parents. This was far and away the most police activity I’d ever seen in Blue Cove. Everyone was a little on edge.

         Maybe I was on edge too, because pretty soon the mile 72 stretch of Route 59 started to feel a little creepy and unsettling to me. The Good Earth family appeared to have finished their work, and I turned in six or seven consecutive commutes to and from work without seeing them. But the section of highway they worked on took on a distinct feeling of unreality to me, as though the pendulum had swung too far in the other direction from the neglect and degradation that once marked that place, to the borderline artificial and sterile cleanness that I drove through every day. It was too perfect, in other words, a jarring contrast to the immediate miles preceding and proceeding it. Every blade of grass in this one mile seemed deliberately organized, the trees marking the woodline symmetrically spaced and exactly straight in a way that made me feel anxious and uneasy. When I asked Melanie if she’d noticed this too, she was no help. Even though Route 59 was the only access point for Blue Cove, the high school she taught at was in the opposite direction, meaning she rarely drove through mile 72.

         Then one night, driving through Blue Cove after another long day at work, I noticed police cars at yet another house on our street. That was when I started to get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I pulled into our driveway and noticed Melanie’s car wasn’t there. When I got inside, the house was empty and I realized I had several missed calls from her, and a series of texts:

         Running to the hardware store for some paint and stuff. Back later!

         And let me know if you need anything from town

         Just tried calling, can you call back?

         I seem to be turned around on 59 somehow. GPS isn’t working. I’m totally lost

         Nobody else around. Really creepy. Getting freaked out. Call back asap

         I immediately turned back out the door and ran to my car, jumped in, and spun out of the driveway, tires screeching as I floored it down our street, out of Blue Cove, and back onto the highway. I white knuckled it for three miles, speeding toward that awful and disquieting stretch of road, where I felt in my gut I would find Melanie. 55 mph, 60 mph, 65, 75, 85. Dusk was descending, and when my headlights caught the reflective glimmer of the adopt-a-highway sign, I immediately slowed the car to a crawl, and started scanning, eyes peeled in every direction, squinting through the setting sun for any clue, any sign of Melanie anywhere.

         I almost missed it. There, tucked in the trees, how it got there was anyone’s guess. The teal green bumper of Melanie’s car, peeking out through the immaculate brush. I braked hard and threw the door open, started running toward it as fast as I could, calling out Melanie’s name, fearing the worst. If I had been paying closer attention at that moment, if I hadn’t been so distracted, so focused on Melanie, I would’ve thought it odd that there were no other cars on the highway. I would’ve found it peculiar that there were no tire tracks leading from the pavement to Melanie’s car. But when I finally got through the brush, the tall grass and leaves, I flung open the driver’s side door and just as I did there was a loud crack, a blinding flash in the sky, a shaking of the earth, and I was subsumed by a cold and ghostly white space, that looked uncannily as bright and brilliant as the surface of --

~

         I’m on autopilot again. No memory of leaving work, but I must have, because it’s nighttime and I’m driving south on Route 59. When I pull into Blue Cove, it’s totally empty. All the lights are out in every house I pass. Nobody’s home. There’s no sign of life anywhere, until I pull into my driveway and open the car door to the sound of a lawnmower. I step out of my car, and the first thing I notice is that even though the sky is black, it’s still incredibly bright out. I look up to the source of the light and see a full moon, but it’s not just a full moon. It’s far closer to the earth than it should be, casting everything under it in an eerie white luminescence. It’s so near to the Earth I can make out its pocked surface in unreal detail. Every crater and peak, every death-black shadow against its white and gray and ancient surface. It’s so horribly vibrant it almost looks alive, like it has a pulse, and I’m gripped with a dread so all-consuming I have to avert my gaze.

         I once again notice the sound of the lawnmower and look across the street to see Reggie, back home and diligently mowing his lawn again. Under the moonlight I can make him out clearly, and when he pivots his push mower back in my direction, I can see that his cheeks are wet with the tears streaming down his face. I call out his name but he doesn’t see me, can’t hear me over the roar of the mower. He turns back to mow the next strip of grass.

         I follow the walkway up to my front door, open it, go inside. It’s not until I see Melanie sitting at our dining room table that I remember she’d gone missing. I’d left the house in a rush to go find her. It’s coming back to me now.

         “Where were you?” I ask her.

         “I’ve been right here,” she says, and then she turns and looks at me, and it’s immediately clear she’s trying to communicate something to me with her eyes, something she’s afraid to say out loud. She breaks eye contact and looks aimlessly around the house, so I do the same, and that’s when I realize: There’s something wrong with our house. Nothing obviously amiss at first, just the kind of deep wrongness you’d notice in a place you’d inhabited for years, a place that’d been profoundly changed somehow. It’s too clean, yes, but there’s more to it than that. Like someone took our house completely apart, and then reassembled it piece by piece in a way that’s slightly off, vaguely unreal. Everything is at a wrong angle. It could be the too-bright moon hurtling its vast wattage through our windows, but I know it’s more than that. I know this is not the same house I left this morning. This is not Blue Cove. Not exactly.

         Suddenly there’s a knock at the door. I give Melanie a look like “I’m not sure I want to answer that.” But her expression is impossible to read. Or maybe I just don’t want to acknowledge how terrified she looks right now.

         In spite of myself, I walk to the door, open it. The man is standing there. The founder of The Good Earth, or the good samaritan, or the husband and father of ten children, or whoever he is. He’s smiling, of course.

         The man says, “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

         “But this is my neighborhood,” I say, and he gently nods and says “Mmhmm” and gives me a look like he’s patiently humoring me.

         “Mind if we talk outside?” he asks. I don’t want to, but I follow him out onto our walkway, and then he stops and breathes in deeply, exhales with a beatific smile across his face, and looks up at the massive moon hanging above us, nearly close enough I could reach out and touch it.

         “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks. I don’t reply.

         “Humans used to imagine there might be beings living on the moon,” the man says. “Of course now you know there’s exceedingly little atmosphere there. No liquid water, temperatures far too low to sustain life, et cetera, et cetera. But there’s more to the moon than what you can see and touch. A great deal more, in fact.”

         “What did you want to talk about?” I ask, eager to get this over with. Eager for him to leave so I can get back to my wife, back to figuring out how to deal with all this.

         “Ah, yes, well…” he kind of trails off, seems to collect his thoughts. “I guess I wanted to talk about pollution. Both the obvious kind of pollution you leave by, say, carving up hundreds of millions of acres of pristine natural beauty with paved roads and automobiles. Or, just as another example, the kind of pollution you create when you choose to stain the perfect void of space with chemicals and exhaust and debris, and… other things.”

         That’s when I notice that planted right in the middle of our front yard is a flag that wasn’t there before, flapping gently in the night breeze, intermittently unfurling itself to reveal red and white stripes, white stars against a blue background, all faded just slightly with a light layer of gray dust. My mind is racing. I don’t want to know what it is. I don’t want to know how it got here.

         “Then there’s another kind of pollution,” the man continues. “An unseen, odorless pollution you create, every second of every day, simply by being what you are.” The man looks at me, and for the first time I can recall, he’s no longer smiling.

         “What… am I?” I ask. And then the man laughs, like I’ve just said the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

         “Excellent question, Ted,” the man says. “Excellent question.”

         Then we’re both just silent for a minute, before he says, “So I wanted to talk about this, yes, but I also wanted to share the good news. Would you like to hear the good news, Ted?” he asks, and the truth is I really don’t. I don’t want to hear whatever he has to say next. But I nod anyway.

         “The good news,” he continues, “Is that whatever is done can be undone. And whatever is made,” and then he gestures grandly at my home with open arms, “Can be remade even better, safer. Cleaner. And far, far from where it can do any more harm whatsoever.”

         Then, the man puts his hand on my shoulder, and for the first time I can sense his immense, unnatural strength and total command of me and everything around us, his obvious otherworldliness. He leans in close and whispers, “That’s phase three.”

         The man pats my shoulder, then turns and begins strolling away leisurely through the bright night, turning back just once more to holler, in a voice barely audible above the din of Reggie’s lawnmower, “It’s pretty quiet here now, but you’ll have more neighbors joining you soon. Many more.”

         He turns the corner and disappears. I stand alone before my house, ablaze in the moonlight. If I squint, if I think about this in just the right way, I can believe this is my home. My big, immaculate, perfect home. Just as it’s always been. I can believe that Melanie and I and our growing family will be happy here, whatever this place is. What other choice do I have? I clear my throat, walk back up the steps, and go inside to start dinner.

---

Chris Scott's work has appeared in The New Yorker, HAD, Flash Frog, ergot., Gooseberry Pie, New Flash Fiction Review, scaffold, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor for ClickHole, and an elementary school teacher in Washington, DC. You can read his writing at https://www.chrisscottwrites.com.

Nicole M. Babb

Useless

Excuse me, I want to call after you as you turn off the lights to the now-empty office. You’ve left me behind. But I don’t say anything, and you don’t look back.

~

       We met the day you graduated from college. Your grandfather gave me to you as a gift. Precision, he said. It’s everything in this business. He would know. We took our first picture together that day – the one you kept in a brass frame on the top shelf of your bookcase; the one you placed into a box just this morning. You held me aloft like a queen with a scepter, the world at your feet.

       You got your first job and brought me along. You spent hours bent over the drafting table in your office, me under your hand, making sharp, straight lines together. You were a natural. Everyone said so. 

       One night, late, a senior architect with frat boy hair and a single front tooth inexplicably more yellow than the rest, passed by on his way out. We were still working. He stopped in your doorway and stared. A t-square, he sneered. Useless. Computers are the future, baby. You better keep up or you’ll get left behind. Your face remained scarlet long after he left, your warm tears pattered onto my unvarnished oak body, leaving behind faint spots. Scars I bear to this day. You put me away that night, into a dusty corner where I could humiliate you no more.

       The following summer, the facilities manager seemed determined to single-handedly end the record-breaking heat wave plaguing the city. The A/C was set to Arctic. Your arms were covered with goosebumps. You looked desperately at the vent, wide open, and searched around for a means of closing it. Your eyes landed on me. Hello, friend. In your outstretched hand, I was just long enough to slide the tab that would block the icy blast. Instead of returning me to the corner, you propped me against your desk. It felt good to be of use again.

       You got a promotion – with a raise – and bought your first piece of real art. A landscape painting, Impressionist style. No buildings. An unusual choice for an architect. You laid me flat against the wall, making tiny pencil marks and moving me back and forth until you arrived at a midpoint. Precision, just like your grandfather instructed you all those years before. When you had the spot just right, you turned me on my side and used my thin edge to hammer the nail into place.

       That senior architect was also promoted, to partner. He stopped by your office again. That night he came in, his one discolored tooth portending malice. He touched your hair, then your neck. He called you baby, but instead of condescending, it sounded sinister. You wielded me like a sword to keep him at bay as you fled. If I could have, I would have tripled in size to shield you from him. I would have used my giant, permanently outstretched arms to fling him to the ends of the earth.

       You got your second job. The one that would be home for the next twelve years. The one that made you, nurtured you, almost broke you. You burned bright in those years. Clients sought you out. You were staffed on the most prestigious projects, pushed to your limits.

       On your hard days, or when you just needed to think, you held me over your shoulder in a batter’s pose, tossing crumpled drafts into the air, swinging me with more heft than necessary to make the connection. Over and over, the wads of paper would bounce off the wall into a pile. T-ball, you called it, in my honor. Other times, I hung upside down in your hands to become a putter as you took aim at makeshift golf balls, rocketing them into an upended cup. Carolyn would come in most afternoons. She acted as pitcher, or caddy. But mostly, she was your confidant, and you hers. You were inseparable then. Best friends.

       You started using me for work again. Your wealthy clients enjoyed the theater of it. Of feeling like something special was being created just for them. During meetings, you brought me into the conference room along with an oversized drafting pad. The clients looked hungrily across the marred table, mesmerized watching you work. Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what I had in mind, they whispered. Without fail, they left the office contract-bound, several thousand dollars lighter, and clutching your sketches as though they might take flight like some rare and mythical bird. Those were some of my favorite days.

       You started getting the recognition you deserved. Your projects were featured in Architectural Digest. A luxury beach cottage in the Hamptons, a sprawling ranch in Wyoming, an eco-friendly winery in the Willamette Valley. You were chosen for the Design Network’s 40 Under 40. Each accolade was cause for celebration. Champagne in the conference room, Bruce yelled from the hallway. For our star. He was thrilled to have you as his protégé, to claim he had some hand in your skill.

       Those celebrations lasted well into the night. One bottle of champagne turned into two, turned into half a dozen assorted bottles, always left scattered about the conference room in the mornings. Eric would bring a bottle of bourbon out from his office. Jackie would put on music. Once, I was still in the conference room, left behind after a meeting, when the party started. Bon Jovi came on. You grabbed me with both hands and belted Livin’ on a Prayer. I was passed around. Carolyn took her turn with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I was the star of Conference Room Karaoke. Jackson even had a habit of flipping me over mid-song, turning me from mic into electric guitar. He ran his fingers back and forth, strumming the imaginary strings along my spine. There was a period when those parties happened more nights than not. From our perch on the 47th floor, the city sparkled below and it those moments it felt like the sparkle was just for us. You were still the queen, the world still at your feet. It was exhilarating while it lasted.

       You were unstoppable then. Before the accident.

       The firm was hired to design a 200-unit luxury condo building in a historic district. Your name on the project was part of the deal. You didn’t want to do it. It was out of your depth, you said. Your other projects had been smaller. You could prioritize form. Aesthetics. This was all function, hidden behind only the thinnest veneer of creativity. Your involvement was non-negotiable. It was the only time you and Bruce argued. The only time he pulled the boss card. I may as well be designing a Wal-Mart, you whined. Bruce was pissed. You think you’re too good for our clients? You’ll do this, and you’ll do it well, or you won’t even be able to get a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart by the time I’m through with you. You may have had more raw talent, but Bruce had connections. You knew when you had lost. You did the job, adding your signature touches where you could. And when you attended the ribbon cutting, even you had to admit, it was magnificent.

       Six weeks later, a two-year-old boy, left alone on a balcony for just a minute, slipped under the beautiful wrought iron handrail you had so painstakingly selected. A lawsuit was filed. The gap between the floor and the bottom of the railing was one inch wider than it should have been. One inch, and someone’s child was gone.

       The suit dragged on for nearly two years. I didn’t think you would survive it. There were no more parties. You started keeping your door closed. You blamed Bruce, and yourself. Some people said the inch wouldn’t have made a difference. Two year olds are small. It was really the mom’s fault. But it mattered to the building department. It mattered to you. Then, as abruptly as it started, it ended. Carolyn testified in a deposition that you partied a lot. That you often came to work hungover. Finally, someone said it. Someone who was supposed to be on your side blamed you. The next day, the case settled, and that night, you bludgeoned your office to bits. Swinging me like a mace, you brought awards, sheetrock, knick-knacks to ruin. Even that beautiful, blurry landscape was unrecognizable when we were done. We too, were changed. One of my arms snapped off in the fray. For the second time since we met, I thought, That’s the end for me. Useless now. I think you felt the same.

       But when you went out on your own a few months later, you brought me with you to the two-room office at the corner of a strip mall. The carpets were a dirty beige, as were the walls. You patched me up with a thin line of wood glue bolstered by a strip of duct tape. You arranged your few surviving items – the picture of us – on the bookshelf left behind by a former tenant. It was bulky, old-fashioned, nothing you would have picked out.

       You worked alone. It was somber. And sober. No champagne, no karaoke, no glittering lights. You took small projects. Houses. Office remodels. A Target – which I had to admit was a lot like a Wal-Mart. You erred on the side of caution, so much so that your work became bland. You sighed a lot.

       After we had been alone for a couple of years, one Wednesday, at five o’clock sharp, a man met you at the office. Tall, with black hair, wearing the khakiest pants I’ve ever seen. It was the first time since the move that another person had been in the space. Less than a year later, you added a second picture to the top shelf. This one in a crystal frame. You in a white dress next to the man.

       I was the first to know when you got pregnant. You were in the middle of sketching a conceptual design for a beachfront hotel – your first big bid since going out on your own – when you doubled over, hands pressed to your mouth. You crawled to the trashcan and vomited. Then you addressed your stomach, Keep it together, Pipsqueak. We need this job if you want to live in a good school district.

       You got the job. There was still no champagne, but the tall man – Scott, I learned – came and painted the walls a mossy green. You replaced the carpet. Bought a new landscape. Scott hung it with a real hammer, which was probably for the best, given my arm.

       As your belly grew, you found new uses for me. A shoe horn to slide your swollen feet from your shoes so you could prop them on your desk, and to squeeze them back in. A back scratcher for that fleshy part just beneath your right shoulder blade that always seemed to itch.

       The hotel took years to finish, but it breathed new life into. Or maybe it was Scott and Pipsqueak. I was never really sure. You brought on two associates. Young, eager, like you were once. They hung on your every word.

       When Pipsqueak decided to be an architect for career day, like her mom, her outfit included me. I was going to school for the first time. Then, the morning of, she decided she wanted to be a judge. I could tell you were sad, when you asked, Are you sure, but then you said, You can be anything you want to be. You pulled me out of her backpack and turned me into scales of justice with string and paper plates. I still got to go to school. It was more fun than being an air guitar. Some years later, you added another photo. Pipsqueak in a cap and gown. She looked just like you did the day we met.

       You started having hot flashes and we came full circle. I was back on vent duty, full time. Open the vent, close it. Open, close.

       The years passed in a comfortable rhythm. Another photo appeared, Pipsqueak in her own white gown, you and Scott beside her. One day you brought in a boy who called you Mimi and climbed on everything. You pulled him from the bookcase, and as you set him down, I thought I saw your eyes glisten. I wondered if you were thinking of another little boy.

       Work slowed. Your associates had become partners and they got other offers. You were happy for them, even as you knew it was the beginning of your end. You packed up the office and turned off the lights and locked the door and left me here. If there’s no use for you, there’s none for me.

~

       The lights flicker on. You’re back. You pick me up, gently now. I’m as frail as you are. Come on, you say. We have shit to do.

---

Nicole M. Babb is a recovering litigator who is using her exit from the world of facts to write stories that exist somewhere between the real and not-real. Her favorite stories include larger-than-life characters and an extra helping of snark. She’s a lifelong New Orleanian, and when she’s not writing enjoys good wine, the occasional bad wine, yoga, and board games. She has a piece forthcoming in Foofaraw (November 2025) and in 2024, she was awarded the Scribes Prize for Microfiction. Find her at nicolebabb.com.

Kristen Havens

In the Face of Such Hope

(The Giant Cookie We’ve Been Waiting For)

On the afternoon the first asteroid hits, a woman in the building across from mine orgasms for forty-five minutes. I am on my balcony, reading a sci-fi novel about Mars. The sound of their lovemaking bounces off the walls of our shared alley. Every so often I shuffle my pages so as to say, "Here I am, going about my business, not listening,” but I am caught up; it is impossible not to be. The lovers laugh; the woman’s voice moves around the apartment, her climax rising here, falling there, until it seems a traveling prank. When it’s finally over, I hear the shower running and realize half the chapter has finished without me; the red planet rises like an ogre on the horizon. I check my watch. Once again, I have lost time: hundreds of seconds have slipped away from me while eavesdropping on other people’s lives. I go inside to moderate my afternoon support group. So many heads in little boxes on the screen: so many people like me, needing purpose before the end, and then others who’ve looked and found and lost and now demand nothing less than true love immediately, like a klieg light in the eyes. That alignment. What can I say, in the face of such hope? Each of us is alone, but we’re together in loneliness: isn’t that enough? No. They want more. I’m burning, it’s like a burning, someone says. Another: I want that. And another: What do you think it means? Consumed by clues, signs, and suggestions, they examine everything in search of joy. I envy this: the way they wring meaning from every moment, rather than merely tumbling through time. Doctor, someone says. I listen again for the couple next door, but there is nothing, only sirens in the distance. What do you think? Nobody has ever demanded passion of me like that; I am no one's one and only. Doctor, they repeat. What are you reading? I look down. My hand is still on the cover of the old paperback. Mars pulses and writhes under my palm. I hold the book up so they can see. Hurry, the red planet hums to me. There isn’t any time. One of the men onscreen, a teacher, nods. It’s a sign, he says. A girl in the class I am teaching writes of a giant cookie that blots out the sun.

---

Kristen Havens is a writer living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in PANK, Atticus Review, Monkeybicycle, Necessary Fiction, and Bending Genres, among others. She makes her living as a freelance IT contractor and developmental editor. She is currently writing a novel about technology.

Olivia Sawatzki

The Devil was passing out gift cards at the corner of Figueroa and Slauson,

I.

Across from the Arco and right next to the medical clinic where I got my shingles vaccine. A small crowd gathered around him; I knew it was The Devil right away cause he was wearing his usual outfit; a long maroon coat worn down to threads at the elbows, black bloody kilt with studded belt, and a beret made of garbage to hide his Horns.

I drew closer just to see what all the fuss was about and was interpreted as being in line; this was not my intention at all but The Devil keeps a surprisingly organized queue. Before I knew it he was handing me a little piece of plastic and saying in his oily voice, I Hope You Like Pancakes, Kid. How Much Is It For? I asked him while he scratched out the grime under his claws with an IHOP® gift card. Infinity Dollars, said The Devil, and that's when I started to smell fish but I figured I had nothing to lose. So I went to the nearest IHOP® which was on Slauson and Western.

The IHOP® was a big warm hug of brown linoleum. I felt instantly at peace there and could lose my mind in the mathematical swirling of the blue printed upholstery. I was a little nervous when it came time to pay for my Special Limited Time Offer which was a key-lime pie pancake so rich it made my teeth hurt. I explained the gift card away to Sheri, my waitress who looked uncannily like my Aunt Mary even wore the same perfume. I said I’m Not Sure if This Has Anything Left On It. I Can Check For You, she said and she whisked away my check and came back with a receipt and a pen. She said it would say on the bottom of my receipt and I looked and it said: $∞.

A thing like this can trip a man out if he’s not careful. I learned that when I got really into the Fibonacci sequence and started stapling leaves to my ceiling. When the leaves dried up and crumbled I thought God was telling me to hurt people. I thought the whole thing might be a fluke, it was the Devil after all, so I went to IHOP® again with Raymond that next weekend, this time the one on Crenshaw and Stocker. Would you believe it that Sheri sat us again but her name tag said Teri and she didn’t remember me?

Raymond didn’t believe that breakfast was on me. He made a big old show about ordering nearly everything on the menu, even things I knew he didn’t like such as Strawberry Banana Pancakes. I never saw Raymond eat a fruit in his life. I nodded, playing unfazed while he listed out his order to ShTeri, but inside I was feeling rough because if this whole thing was a hoax I would unfortunately I would not be able to tip ShTeri or pay my credit card interest payment. Oh I was sweating all right. 

Raymond, all covered in strawberry maple syrup and whipped cream and butter, thought it was the funniest damn thing he’d ever seen. He ate like an asshole, took one bite of each plate clockwise around chewing real slow like some kinda demented aristocrat. ShTeri came back smiling with the check finally and I gulped down a big biley knot in my throat and gave her the gift card. Magic Gift Card My Ass, Ray said, looking at my face covered in cold sweat, my fingers tapping the table without rhythm so I didn’t have to think about breathing. The receipt came back and I grabbed it and looked at the bottom. Amount remaining: $∞. Ray howled so hard when he saw it I thought he was gonna have a heart attack.

II.

The first couple months were a ton of fun. Ray tried for a long time to make money off it. He thought I had hacked the card with a computer. When I told him it was a gift from the Devil of course he thought I was speaking in metaphors or having another episode. He would shoplift empty gift cards from Ralph’s and try to get me to hack their code. He thought I was withholding my secrets somehow and being greedy. IHOP® Isn’t Even A Good Choice, he would moan, Who Even Likes IHOP® That Much. I Don’t Know, I said, The Devil Gave It To Me. He thought I was crazy and he started getting mad. He sat me down probably 12 times and explained that if I had figured out a way to Manufacture Currency, we could get anything we wanted in the world. And to not include him was a crime. I Think Shoplifting From Ralph’s Is A Crime, I would say to that. An Amazon Gift Card! He would yell, A Visa Gift Card Is Basically Cash! Take It Up With The Devil, I would say to that. And then we would go to IHOP® which by the way also serves lunch and dinner.

III.

I couldn’t get IHOP® out of my head. Every time I went to the vending machine at work, I would think: This Would Be Free At IHOP®. Every lunch out, every first date, every birthday meal I would beg people to go with me to IHOP® and promise to treat them. Why Can’t You Treat Me Somewhere Else? Said a girl on Tinder when I insisted on IHOP® for dinner. I Have a Connection, I said. She called me cheap and she blocked me but I was right that the IHOP® T-Bone Steak Dinner is not nearly as nasty as it looks in the picture.

IV.

It took longer than you’d think for anyone to catch on. I started getting obsessed with the amenities. I had IHOP® toilet paper in my bathroom. I had commercial-grade IHOP® 100ppm cleaning solution in my cabinet. I shut off my air conditioning in August even though it was over 100 degrees and just hung out at IHOP for 18 hours a day which is as long as it is open. I had packets upon packets of Smucker’s Orange Marmalade stuffed down my pants at any given hour. I got away with it all for eighteen months and some change. When ShTeri finally cornered me at the IHOP® on South Sepulveda and asked me Where The Hell I Got That Gift Card. ShTeri, I said (whose name tag on South Sepulveda said “Keri”), How The Hell Do You Work at Every IHOP In Los Angeles With A Different Name At Each One? She scrunched her forehead up playing confused. I Know You’re An Agent Of The Devil, I said. She dissolved into the ether after that, probably headed back to Hell, and some poor patron, caught up in the crosshairs of all that dark magic, must’ve called the cops. Well there is nothing illegal about calling someone an Agent of The Devil.

V.

Nobody on the force could figure out the card. They called in a consultant from the Geek Squad who had a patchy black beard that made a dry noise when he scratched it. He had long greasy hair and glasses. He said he would have to do some research and the cops let him take the card with him. Meanwhile my face was plastered in every IHOP in Southern California on account of “harassing” ShTeri “Keri” “sexually” (which was not true, I only called her an Agent of the Devil) but no charges were brought forth. Would you believe last week I walked past the IHOP® on Wilshire and saw the man from the Geek Squad and his whole clan of greasy friends being escorted out in handcuffs?

VI.

Next time I saw the Devil on Fig I asked him what it was all about. I caught him alone for once, leaning against the fence outside an elementary school playground, dirtying up clean hypodermic needles and shoving ‘em through the holes in the fence. He smiled when he saw me and passed me his joint which burned bright purple neon blue. 

What Was The Purpose? I asked him. He laughed his goaty laugh, and coughed up a little bit of green fire. 

What’s The Purpose of Torment? He asked, silver pupils widening to take me in.

I thought about that for a while. I do still think about the T-Bone steak dinner. I taste the Cinn-A-Stack® Milkshake in my dreams. I embarrassed myself in front of a lot of women I might have had a shot with otherwise. The whole thing lays heavy on my mind.

To Win? I said. 

A bell rang, and children filled the playground. The Devil snapped his fingers and a little boy tripped over a needle, scraping his knee bad, bleeding like crazy and wailing wailing wailing. The Devil smiled at that. He turned back to me.

Did I Win?

You Never Do, I said.

No, He winced. I Just Haven’t Yet.

He paused to watch a child fall out of a tree.

Did I Get The Geek Squad Guy, Though? 

I Think So, I said.

He was clearly happy about that. I clapped him on the back. He was one of my oldest friends and just doing his job. We’ll both get another shot.

---

Olivia Sawatzki is an author and playwright originally from Columbus, Ohio. Her fiction and essays have been published in Does It Have Pockets, Bending Genres, Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, and elsewhere. Her plays have been produced in Ohio and California. She published her debut chapbook, Misanthropocene, with Bottlecap Press in 2024. She lives in Echo Park, Los Angeles.

Jaime Gill

The Hate Baby

First Trimester

“Kate, please stay calm,” Dr. Keenan says, with kind eyes but no smile. Have those words ever calmed anyone? “I have difficult news.” The air in the room thins. My hand moves to my stomach—involuntary, but the gesture feels stagy, like I’m in a bad movie. “I’m sorry, but we can’t terminate.”

“No,” I say, trying to sound assertive, not desperate. I try to remember the speech my sister wanted me to memorize but I was sure I wouldn’t need. “You can’t refuse me. I called and registered in advance. I travelled here specifically because the law—”

“It’s not that,” Dr. Keenan interrupts, hand raised. “You’re experiencing toxin-triggered parthenogenesis. You probably know it as TTP.”

I stare. This happens to other people. It can’t be happening to me.

“I’m having a hate baby?”

“I’m so sorry,” Dr. Keenan says.

Her arm twitches, as though she were about to reach for me but decided against it.

I drink three gin and tonics on the flight home. The attendant grimaces when I ask for the third, and I briefly think it’s because he’s seen I’m pregnant. I almost tell him to stop judging me, it’s a hate pregnancy, but calm myself. There’s no baby bump, not yet. He just thinks I’m a garden variety alcoholic. My resentment still froths at that assumption until I remember resentment is one of the toxic emotions Dr. Keenan warned me against.

I still have a bunch of leaflets Dr. Keenan must have given me, though I was so dazed I don’t recall her actually handing them over. I take one from my bag now and slide it inside the meal menu, so the old man in the aisle can’t see. I read about parthenogenesis, a word I doubt I’ll ever be able to say even if it is the word that fucks my life up. Parthenogenesis is a non-sexual form of reproduction often seen in reptiles. Great, I’m a pregnant fucking lizard. TTP is impervious to all known contraceptives and is triggered when the host (a better word than mother, I agree) is exposed for prolonged periods to external stimulation fostering extreme negative emotions.

“In a way,”—Dr. Keenan had said, sounding not-very-scientific—“TTP can be seen as a positive bodily function. It expels toxins.”

“Like throwing up?” I said.

“Less pleasant than that.”

So now, of course, I’m trying not to think about anything I hate. No more wondering who is worse, the spineless politicians or the duped dopes voting for them. No more fantasies of sociopathic billionaires locked up. But it’s like that game where someone asks you not to think of an elephant, and there it is in your brain—the elephant. There they are—everyone I hate.

I feel a tiny movement inside. I think I just fed the hate baby.

I try soothing myself by listening to Joni Mitchell on my headphones. I look out of the window, at the pretty cornfields laid below like a patchwork quilt. I even try breathing exercises, like in that meditation class I attended twice before I decided I didn’t have this “center” the instructor babbled about. But I can’t stop my mind from moving towards the discomfort in my belly. I’m so aware of it now, that little ball of poisonous tissue.

This is Tony’s fault, even if it wasn’t his sperm that did the impregnating. I knew we shouldn’t watch the news so much. I told him we should cut down on social media, I said we should delete Twitter, when it was still called that. But Tony spouted bullshit about good citizens being aware citizens. Well, great, Tony. You’re informed and I’m having a hate baby. Round of fucking applause.

God, I have to stop thinking like this. It's the only way. Dr. Keenan said doctors are still working on TTP solutions—in those countries where they’re allowed to, anyway—but no safe abortion method has been found yet. Terminations are always deadly to the mother. The moment a hate fetus dies, it dissolves into its constituent toxins and poisons its host, instantly and fatally.

There are two slightly-less-appalling options. Trying to block out all the ugly noise of the world—all the injustices, idiocies and cruelties that feed negative emotions—can starve the hate fetus of enough material for growth, precipitating a safe miscarriage.  Or—if toxic emotions can’t be eliminated from the host’s experience—the fetus will grow until it is large and solid enough and can be delivered relatively safely.

I have to learn not to hate. I am not giving birth to this fucking thing.

Why can’t Tony be the one having a hate baby?

No, I’ve got to be kinder. Hate gets inside men too. In their cases, it metastasizes into cancer. For the first time since Adam and Eve, men might have actually drawn the biological short straw. The spleen, the stomach, the bile duct, the prostate—hate latches onto those. Tony needs a check-up.

Second Trimester

I’m at the TTP Support Group, one of a dozen women in a circle. Kumbay-fucking-ya. One red-headed woman’s stomach is so swollen I can’t look at it, can’t bear to imagine the tangled toxic mass lodged beneath her stretched skin. My brain flashes on a memory from that documentary we saw: a newborn hate baby howling at the camera, skin a sickly mottled green, mouth already full of jagged teeth.

“Let’s begin,” Clarissa, our group guide, says. “Speak your truth but speak it kindly. Especially to yourself.” Once I’d have texted Tony or my sister a vomiting emoji, but I don’t have a smartphone now and mocking is a form of hate, too. I force myself to smile. Fake it ‘til you make it, Tony says, though I’m not sure that works when the it is inside you.

There is a brief silence, which I push my way into. I’ve spent weeks sealed up at home with no Internet, just a brain-sucking succession of cozy documentaries, subtitled Korean soap operas, and Disney movies. My musical diet is also curated, endless Mamas and Papas, Sigur Ros, and The Beatles before they went weird and got into politics. Peace and quiet, that’s what my mother would have called it, though it feels stifled and sterile to me. Tony’s so terrified of triggering hateful responses that he barely talks to me now. Which would make me hate him, if I wasn’t afraid to. So, yeah, I need to talk.

“I’m frightened,” I say. Clarissa cocks her head, which isn’t infuriating, no it isn’t. “I try to avoid toxic emotions. I practice the TTP Kindness Principles. I never expose myself to politics or the news but the… it’s still growing.”

Sympathetic murmurs in surround sound.

The TTP Support Groups are new. The burgeoning industry of TTP theorists argue that hate pregnancies have probably occurred throughout human history, but been freakishly rare, with most blamed on curses or other local superstitions. The numbers began climbing in the late 20th century, then started to rise exponentially after 2010. Most experts argue that acceleration is due to the cumulative impact of smartphones, social media, political polarization, economic stagnation, climate terror, etc. etc. etc. etc. Except for the vaccine conspiracy theorists, but I mustn’t think about those pieces of shit, or the TTP baby rights groups, and definitely not those freaky religious sects waving their “Jesus Was A Hate Baby Too” placards.

There’s probably something ironic about the fact that I’m a trained researcher but I can’t even read up on my own condition. Just reading about TTP risk factors triggers enough rage in me to swell the fetus. Tony did tell me— carefully—that the current rates are about 1 in 5,000 pregnancies, though it varies country to country. I try not to think “why me”, because that’s another bus ride to Hate Town. There are certainly enough TTPs now to make support groups like this viable even in a small city like ours.

“Fear is an understandable but complex emotion,” Clarissa says. I tell myself she doesn’t mean to sound condescending, she’s just trying to calm me. “We must accept its existence, allow it space, but not be ruled by it.” She smiles, benevolently. “Fear is a doorway to hate.”

Does Clarissa know she sounds like fucking Yoda?

Third trimester

Tony and I walk towards the forbidding, dark brick building of the TTP Residential Facility. Most people call it the Hate Orphanage. It’s in a mental institution that was closed down thirty years ago, and doesn’t look like it’s been refurbished since.

On the two-hour drive here, we listened to talk radio. One rabble-rousing host made a joke about how TTP women are angry feminists and their children were always going to be little monsters, it’s just you can see it now. When he changed the subject to some immigrant outrage, we found another station and a call-in where people raged about respectful TTP terminology, as if fixing the English language just so would also fix the world. I loathed them all. Pure, glorious hate.

I wallow in toxic emotions lately, a hippo in mud. Since I accepted it isn’t possible to live in this world without hating it—not for me, anyway— I’ve surrendered. If I’m going to get this thing out of me, I want to do it fast, so I’m on an all-hate, all-rage diet to make the fetus grow.

Every day I descend to our basement to listen for hours to Nine Inch Nails or Curve at full volume. Smashing Pumpkins, too, but skipping right past the hippie ballads. I scream along to every word, matching their fury and bile. No. Exceeding it. Tony hides upstairs with his headphones on, since we’re trying to reduce his hate intake. No signs of cancer yet, but he’s in a high-risk group, his doctor said. Living with a TTP woman is in itself a risk factor. Well, fuck you too, Mr. Doctor.

I spend three hours on my restored Twitter account every day and can actually feel my stomach getting harder and bigger. Sometimes I feel proud of myself for making the fetus grow so fast, then I hate myself for feeling any pride towards this thing, and—of course—that works too.

As we walk towards the orphanage, we hear the screams and snarls of the hate babies, even over the tall, glum walls with their barbed wire crowns. There must be some kind of playground on the other side.

Tony looks pale, but it was his idea to come. He said it was the only responsible thing to do. If nothing else, the creature will be sentient when it’s born and if we’re sending it away we should know where it’s going. I didn’t argue—it seemed like a perfect opportunity for a hate feast.

We step inside a reception or lobby with high ceilings, though it’s impossibly gloomy and we can’t see any staff. There’s a thump thump thump on the floors above and a strange strangled cry that’s almost a word. One of the older hate babies, presumably. A hate teen, maybe.

Tony takes my arm, turning his stupid big brown eyes on me. “Can we do this? Just give it away and leave it to”—he gestures at the cavernous gloom—“whatever life it will have here?”

Oh, that’s good, Tony. That’s really making me hate you. Good baby food.

“If you want to raise this thing, you’ll be doing it without me,” I say.

A door opens and a staff member hurries towards us, mumbling apologies. Behind him, we can hear the disgusting sounds from the playground. By the vivid red scratch on the man’s neck, I presume he was playing with them. Gross. I listen to their bestial sounds and I hate them and I revel in it.

The monster squirms inside me. Do you hate them, too? I wonder, then thrust the thought away. That’s a recent development. Brief flashes of connection, notions that maybe me and the thing inside me aren't so different. The most hateful thoughts of all.

I wince from a blunt pain in my stomach. My baby can really kick.

---

Jaime Gill is a queer, British-born writer happily exiled in Cambodia, where he works and volunteers for nonprofits. He reads, runs, boxes, travels, writes, occasionally socialises. His stories have appeared in Blue Earth Review, Trampset, f(r)iction, NFFR, Phoebe, Litro, and more, with stories due to appear in The Forge and Fractured. He has won multiple awards including a 2024 Bridport Prize and the 2025 Luminaire Prose Award. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions, he’s currently writing a novel, a script, and far too many short stories. More at www.jaimegill.com, www.x.com/jaimegill, www.instagram.com/mrjaimegill or https://bsky.app/profile/jaimegill.bsky.social.

Ron Burch

You’re Stalled Near the Exit

Your car won't start. You're stuck on the side of the 5 Freeway, one of the busiest freeways in the world. Your phone battery sits in the red. You can't remember if you have your AAA card for a jump. Or if you have to pay for the next one. You hear the lively hum of passing cars. Your dog is sick and threw up on your black travel bag this morning. You cleaned it off but you can still see a vague outline of it on the side of the bag. You rub it with a used napkin you pick up off the cluttered seat. The bag doesn't change and you throw down the napkin. This morning, your husband was irritable, hung-over. He barely spoke to you. Your car won't start. Those in the passenger seats look you as they drive by, blank faces, searching, maybe a few who seem concerned but that could be about them, you suspect. You think of how small you are in comparison to the planet. To the universe. You think about punching yourself in the stomach but decide that ultimately will not help you. Your phone is almost dead, more than the last time you looked. You should call someone but you're unsure of who to call yet: AAA if it's going to be free help or your husband.

She mouths the words silently words she has to say but come out as nothing. In the other end he says hello but it’s not a question.

Your car won't start. Your phone battery is now dead. You didn't tell your husband. There were spaces in which to do it. But they all felt like Sunday nights: unhappy and existential. Why does every weekend have to have a crisis of spiritual proportions. Admit it. You didn't want to tell him. He should know why the dog is sick. Your car won't start. A car pulls up behind. A Blue Honda or something. The driver, some guy in a baseball cap, waves to you. You get the feeling he wants to help you. You roll down your window and wave him on. He waves again and you indicate with your hand that he should go. His car backs up and he, shrugging at you, leaves. Your car won't start. Through the trees you see a luminous coffee shop right off the exit. You wish you could stay there forever. The cars pass you like puffs of smoke.

---

Ron Burch's fiction has been published in numerous literary journals including South Dakota Review, Fiction International, Mississippi Review, New Flash Fiction and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and other awards. His last novel, JDP, was published by BlazeVOX Books. He earned his MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and lives in Indianapolis, IN.

Jessica Dawn

The Mammoth

         There was always going to be a tour, they want to be clear about that. It had been announced way back when the pregnancy was confirmed and they planned it even before that. They share all the documents to prove it, but still seems ghoulish. They could have just refunded all those tickets but no, they’re going through with it anyway. Instead of a little pen they’ll have a little glass coffin. Real tasteful, they promise. Everyone is still going to see the mammoth, not like they aren’t getting what they paid for.

  ~

         The mammoth only lived for ninety minutes, all of them caught on camera. Its elephant mother was under the lights for days. She didn’t know she wasn’t carrying her own baby, that she was pregnant with one of her ancestors. Or maybe she had some idea. Hard to say what elephants do and don’t know.

         When the sloppy birth finally happened everyone watched it live, with interruptions from the sponsors of course. It was like super bowl for advertisers, bet they spent a boatload on those commercials. Between the ads everyone watched the scientists in their white paper suits wash blood and slime from its hair, saw it rise on unsteady legs and take its first stumbling steps.

         “There it goes,” one of the reporters said.

         “It’ll get stronger, this is normal,” the other reporter said like he knew, like he saw this all the time.

         But its steps got shakier and shakier until it fell and never stood back up. Its big eyes stared straight into the lens like it could see everyone watching from their living rooms and from bars and crouched around computers in cubicles and hunched over phones on the bus. It shut its eyes when it had seen enough and quietly left the world, de-extinct and re-extinct in an hour and a half.

 ~

         Of course Janice missed the whole thing on account of being in court through those ninety minutes. The bailiff was sure serious about the no phones thing, couldn’t even sneak glances while the lawyers and judge were talking no matter how bad she wanted to. Just had to wait and wait and wait while they decided that her night in jail plus probation and AA meetings and a suspended license were what it would take to make up for going off the edge of the road and then blowing a point one one. Consider yourself lucky, the judge said. Do it again and it’s jail for sure.

         That was it. No banging the gavel or anything. Guess that’s just in movies, Janice thought. She didn’t feel so lucky when she was out of the courtroom. Felt more like well I guess that’s what I get. Felt more like if she could figure out the first mistake she could undo all the rest, but hell if she knows how far back she’d have to go. Seems like there’s always another mistake that came before and who knows how many still ahead. Takes out her phone and figures she could at least see some cute mammoth pics and that’s when she finds out she missed its whole life, that it’s gone baby gone.

         This day just keeps getting worse, she thought.

~

         Its whole life is all over the internet. One of the videos has over five million views by the end of the day, fifty by the end of the week. It’s been watched for more collective minutes than the mammoth’s whole life, from embryo to the end.

         I watched this with my kids they were traumatized!! the first comment says.

         Pussy in bio the next comment says.

~

         AA meetings are at the church that isn’t closest to her house but second closest. Still easy enough to walk, which is important given her driving status, namely that she’s not allowed. She gets there early but then she’s self-conscious about being early so she walks around the block a couple times and ends up late, slides into a chair in the back while an older man tells everyone that even though his daughter said no more chances he thinks they can still work it out. Janice wonders if she’s supposed to clap when he’s done. No one else seems to know either. Some do, some say thank you, some just nod.

         Woman in a pink sweatsuit takes his place. One of those matchy deals that looks like it’s for exercise, but isn’t really made for moving. Hair all slicked back in a ponytail. Dainty little earrings that look like birds.

         “Hi, Hannah, just here to work on myself,” she says with a wave of her hand like she’s telling herself yeah yeah, get on with it already. “I just want to talk about the mammoth for a quick second.”

         The room groans so must be this isn’t the first time. “Maybe we can focus on ourselves today,” says a man in an old flannel. He’s got the kind of voice that says if he’s not the boss of AA, he’s at least been here the longest.

         “It’s about me, I promise,” Hannah says. “I mean, for me it just seems shady as hell that they sold all those tickets before they even knew what would happen. For me that just doesn’t feel right, you know?”

         “Let’s stick to your recovery journey today,” says the flannel man.

         “But this is about my recovery journey,” she sighs. “Everything is about my recovery journey.”

         She gets the message, though. The message is stop talking about the fucking mammoth.

~

         “You know if it lived the mom wouldn’t be able to nurse it,” says Hannah. She swirls a fry in a little paper cup full of ketchup, keeps stirring and stirring and stirring. “Or, she could at first but she wouldn’t make enough milk because they think it would’ve gotten so big so fast. They had to get milk from like four other elephants ready.”

         “Wow,” Janice says and chews.

         Took all of a week for them to start going out to get food after meetings.

         “Is that allowed?” Janice had asked and Hannah shrugged. They’re both only here because the court ordered, so they figured the rules must be different for them anyway.

         “They had freezers full of elephant milk that they had to try and donate to zoos when it turned out they didn’t need it. But a lot of it went bad. Spoiled elephant milk.”

         Janice has come to understand what all the groaning is about. She does talk about the fucking mammoth a lot.

         “What do you think elephant milk tastes like?”

         “Probably just like regular milk,” Hannah shrugs. “Hey, can I tell you a secret?”

         Here we go, Janice thinks, we’re finally going to talk about something new, something real. They can trade stories of how they got here. They can talk about what they’re going to do when their time is up.

         “I bought tickets to go see it,” Hannah says.

         “Well yeah, I assumed you had tickets,” Janice says, sounds annoyed even though she’s trying not to.

         “No, I mean I didn’t buy tickets until after it died.”

         “Were they cheaper after?”

         “Nope,” she says and finally takes a bite of the fry. All that ketchup is bright red in her mouth, on her teeth. “Way more expensive.”

         “Why?”

         “Dunno. People are sick.”

         “No why did you wait until after it died?”

         “It’s not like I waited to see if it would die.” Long pause while she tries to suck vanilla milkshake through a paper straw. “It just seemed more important to see it after it was dead. Is that weird?”

         “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”

         “You want to know something else weird?”

         “I guess,” Janice sighs.

         “I bought two tickets,” she says, that smirk on her face that Janice hasn’t quite figured out yet.

~

         We think there’s still tremendous value and much to be learned from viewing such a rare specimen, the spokespeople had said after the mammoth died. Without the constraints and unpredictable nature of a living creature, it might actually be better. Easier for everyone to see it, you know? Dead things don’t need breaks for food and sleep. It’ll look so much better in pictures this way, they said.

~

         “It feels like you bought tickets to a wake is all,” Janice says a few days later once they’ve made it out of the church, away from where all the alcoholics can hear them.

         “What do you mean awake?”

         “A wake, like when you go look at the body before a funeral.”

         Hannah shrugs, palms up. Help me, her face says. I don’t understand, her face says.

         “You’ve never been to a wake?”

         “I’ve never been to a funeral,” Hannah says.

         “Are you serious?”

         There’s the shrug again, but this time it means something more like I’m sorry. I’m sorry with a question mark, like she’s not exactly sure what she’s apologizing for.

         “So are you coming with me or not?”

~

         Janice still has most of the year before she’s allowed to drive again and Hannah is only allowed to drive her car so they pile into her old Celica. She smashes cans and bottles underfoot on the passenger side while Hannah blows into the tube that keeps the car from starting if it smells any alcohol on her. On goes the engine, test passed.

         “Here we go,” Hannah says and backs up without looking.

         Closest stop on the tour is an hour and a half away but it takes them almost three to get there. Hard to believe all those people could be there for one little mammoth, but maybe. Who knows how many tickets they sold. Probably too many.

         Of course the line is around the block by the time they park. Takes a while to find the place, too, Hannah squinting at her phone in one hand and missing their turn with the other. Janice asks if she needs help,

         “Nah, I have a system,” Hannah says and swerves into the next lane.

         They finally get into a garage, though, spiral up and up and up until there’s an empty spot and ride the rickety elevator back down. Easy enough to find the end of the line, they just have to walk the same direction as everyone else.

         “This is going to take forever,” Hannah sighs.

         Janice chews at her nails, does it without thinking. Pure habit by now. Doesn’t notice she’s at it until she tears one down too low, feels the pain as she takes some skin with the nail.

         Dammit, she thinks, finger in her mouth to catch the blood. Now they all have to be this short.

         By the time they can see the entrance she’s bitten down one hand and has moved on to the other. When they get to the security guards and it’s her turn to be patted down she’s only got two left. Drives her crazy, those two unchewed nails. She can feel them against her palm, can’t stop scratching and scratching.

         Inside it’s all gates and ropes wrapped back and forth, as much line as they can squeeze into the building.

         “At least it’s air conditioned,” Janice says between bites.

         “Mmm,” Hannah says. Her face says that she is somewhere else, that she is far away from here.

~

         Takes at least an hour of plodding through the maze, maybe more. Every time Janice looks at her phone it’s only been three minutes since the last time she checked.

         “I bet it’s not the real thing,” says someone ahead of them in line.

         “I hear they just glued a bunch of hair to an elephant,” someone says back.

         Hannah’s never been this quiet, not when Janice has been around. Most of the time it’s like Hannah will die if she stops talking. Who knows what’s happening in her head, Janice thinks but doesn’t ask. She wishes she had more nails to chew on, ten extra fingers for this kind of occasion.

         “We’ve been here for hours,” grumbles a kid behind them. There’s a whole group of them with a few tired adults, has the look of a field trip. They lean out over the barriers and try to guess how much longer.

         “Like ten minutes,” says a little girl.

         “It’s gonna be another hour,” says a little boy.

         Turns out to be somewhere between the two. Janice feels like she’s going to crawl out of her skin by the time the couple in front of them gets called up to the little platform. They have sketchbooks with them, wishful thinking on their part. No time for that says the bored security guard. They can buy a photo, though.

         They pose awkwardly on either side of the glass case. Smile the photographer says, but is that right for this kind of photo? One decides it isn’t, straight faced while the other gives an uneasy grin. Too much teeth, it’s more like a grimace. What will they do with a photo like that, Janice wonders. Hang it on a wall? Put it on a desk at work?

         Then they’re ushered away and Hannah and Janice are up.

         “You guys together?” the security guard asks. Hannah says nothing so Janice tells him yeah and in they go, up the carpet steps.

         Even up close Janice can’t tell if it’s real or fake, not that she knows enough to be able to tell the difference anyway. Who can tell flesh and bone and hair from foam and steel and polyester if they’ve only seen fakes in the first place?

         I bet I could tell if I could touch it, Janice thinks. If I could weave my fingers through that red-brown fur, really dig into it. Maybe rip out a chunk. Keep it. Put it in my pocket, she thinks, just walk away with a part of the thing.

         “Picture?” the photographer asks. Janice jumps.

         “Yes,” says Hannah.

         Janice doesn’t know what to do with her hands so she lets them hang. She tries a smile but it feels all wrong, lets it drop.

         “One, two,” the photographer says.

         Instead of three there’s a thud, a smash. Hannah kicks the glass, leg high, heel first like she’s been practicing the right kind of kick. Nothing looks broken but that sound means something gave, maybe something came unglued. She’s ready to do it again but the security guard is faster, has her on the ground where she screams and flails but can’t get close. Takes two more security guards to drag her away. They don’t tell Janice where they’re going.

         “Wow, your friend is nuts,” the photographer says.

         “I don’t really know her that well,” Janice tells him.

         “Huh,” he says in a way that means he doesn’t believe her.

         “Oh. She is my ride, though.”

~

         Only one more month of meetings left per her court order and she doesn’t really mind the longer walk to the Unitarian church. The group is smaller, they sit in a circle instead of everyone facing the front of the room like audience members. Janice likes that better. And the woman who leads it is warm and kind, always wears different bright colored cardigans over her shirt and slacks, especially now that it stays cold all day. Plus the coffee is better. Tastes like cinnamon. There’s always hugs and handshakes at the end for anyone who wants them, and today Janice does.

         “You’ve come so far,” says Pastor Becky, and sure she probably says it to everyone but could be she means it every time.

         Best part is that everyone goes their own ways after. No one has anything else to say once their time is up. Back to the rest of their lives.

         The walk home is her favorite part some days. She skips the headphones and just listens. Were there always so many birds around, she wonders. Days like today she thinks maybe she’ll never drive again. She imagines herself as the kind of person who walks everywhere. Maybe gets a bike. I could live like that, she thinks. She stops at the mailbox in the lobby, daydreams about carrying groceries home in cute little bags. Baskets for the produce.

         The return address says Hope Springs Treatment Center, out in Palm Desert. Probably an ad, she figures. In the first couple weeks after the arrest her mailbox was stuffed with flyers from lawyers, insurance companies, rehab centers. They’re probably just late.

         Tear open the envelope and there’s her own face staring up at her, eyes wide, mouth open in a stupid surprised O. There’s Hannah, the back of her anyway, leg raised mid-kick. In between them is the little brown blur, all hair and trunk under glass. Around the picture is a border all green and red, candy canes and ornaments neatly spaced.

         Merry Christmas from the mammoth, the card says.

---

Jessica Dawn lives on an island in the San Francisco Bay with a failed farm dog. Her work has appeared in HAD, Rejection Letters, Jake the Magazine, and more. She is currently finishing a novel and a short story collection. Find her on BlueSky if that’s your thing: @jessdawn.bsky.social

Cole Beauchamp

1989: Every day is the same in East Berlin, until it’s not

Tuesday in September

I meet Jan in the queue at the state-owned record shop, Amiga, while Mother wheels her trolley to join the other faded house dresses in front of the department store, hoping for something to vary our bland meals of breaded veal.

Jan and I try to ignore the girls behind us, a year younger, still infected with optimism. They puff bubble-gum pink stories of Ferris wheel rides at Kulturpark Plänterwald in our direction. Jan eventually snaps, “What are you even here for?” He has no time for their cotton-candy happiness. His father disappeared five years ago. No visit in the night, no Stasi shadows, no neighbours with a grudge. Just gone.

Wednesday in October

There are the usual readings, Marina with her long wavy hair and modernist poetry. We have a thing for her soulful eyes and expressive hands, her brand of tough fragility. Not a clue what her poetry means. We chant Encore! Encore! even though it’s a Western word, rebels that we are in our Wisent jeans and fraying shirts.

Rumour is Amiga has a few copies of Madonna’s True Blue and The Ramones Halfway to Sanity. We agree to queue early the next day, in case it’s true.

The old guy with the freckled neck comes on. He’s supposed to be writing a novel but only ever reads Chapter One. We shout out the first few lines with him before getting bored and finding somewhere to piss.

When we return, someone new is talking, one of the politicos you always get at these gatherings. “In Poland, Solidarity! In Hungary, mass demonstrations! In the Baltic, the Singing Revolution!” We’ve heard about the 370-mile human chain calling for independence in August. People are emboldened, sensing Gorbie is on our side.

“Now it’s our turn! Down with the SED!” he shouts. We chant back, “We are the people!” There’s a new energy rising and we’re ready to bring the whole miserable lot down – our shitty prefab concrete blocks and blocked toilets, our Trabis smoking oily exhaust like they’re on fire.

When he finishes, the opening chords of The Clash’s Pet Sematary blast out. The whole yard erupts. We sing like we’ve written every word, belting out the chorus of “I don’t wants,” shaking our heads like wet dogs and slamming into each other. There’s so much to not want.

Thursday in November

Jan’s building stinks of pickled cabbage and sweat, but we can’t get any of the West German TV channels at mine. We watch a video of Wetten, dass…? and laugh loudly to block out the never-ending orange flower wallpaper, trapped in lines of brown leaves.

On the television, Thomas Gottschalk has the same long blond permed hair as the actress sitting on the sofa. Liza Minelli looks a right stoner. The Georgian National Ballet prance about and pirouette. At last come the bets: a guy who claims he can light his Zippo with an excavator’s shovel and a farmer saying he can identify his cows based solely on the sound they make chewing apples.

I like the farmer’s weary face and stained overalls. You can smell the manure just looking at him. Jan’s all for the pimple-faced driver of the excavator, the jacked-up nature of him, flicking his lighter and garbling to Gottschalk about what a steady hand he is on the gear shift.

We snort into our Pilsners. “Gangschaltung!” Jan pretends to jerk off and I throw an ashtray at him. We wrestle, elbows and legs flying, until I get him in a headlock. By then the pimple-faced guy has failed his bet and the farmer’s being blindfolded.

Jan’s sister Elise comes in and orders us to clean up. Jan washes dishes while I sweep cigarette butts into my hand, calling out what’s happening with the farmer. Then we swap. I stack dishes on their painted blue wooden shelf, above tins of Ogema green beans, a bag of barley, a packet of crispbread and two jars of gooseberries.

I make it back to the living room in time to see the farmer win his wager and become the bet king. We pop another Pilsner to get us through the government broadcast at seven, drab men in front of a drab curtain. I’m half watching Günter Schabowski read through his press release, half watching Elise’s thighs shift under her blue knit dress, when her leg goes still. “No restrictions on private travel?”

She jumps to her feet as the three of us watch pandemonium whip across the press hall. A journalist asks, “When does this go into effect?”

Schabowski delays, flicking through papers. He finally says, “As I understand it… immediately, without delay.”

“Holy shit!” Elise screams.

Jan and I look at each other, stunned.

I try calling my mother but the lines are busy. We argue about what “without delay” means. We switch channels. The ZDF news anchor announces that the GDR has opened its borders.

Opened.

Elise slaps our heads. “That’s it! Do you two want a beer on Kurfürstendamm or not?”

We run into the street, shout to neighbours leaning out their windows, hug people on the street. At Bernauer Straße, hundreds of thousands of people gather like it’s a party – clapping, singing, saying “Let us through!”

After three hours, the border guards simply step aside. Trabi horns beep; weeping grandmothers hand out flowers; Wessis pour bubbles into our open mouths; people dance like they’re on pogo sticks. We rock the Casbah, churn out that boogaloo and give it all we’ve got.

Five hours later, we stand on the wall like birds on a wire, Mauerspechte with chisels in hand, pecking away at brick and concrete, chipping off pieces of a life that’s already ending.

---

Cole Beauchamp (she/her) is a queer writer based in London. Her stories have been in the Wigleaf Top 50, nominated for awards and shortlisted for the Bath, Bridport, Oxford and WestWord prizes for flash fiction. She's been widely published in lit mags including New Flash Fiction Review, Ghost Parachute, The Hooghly Review, Gooseberry Pie and others. She lives with her girlfriend and has two children. You can find her on Bluesky at @nomad-sw18.bsky.social

Scott Madison

Affogato

The kitchen smells like sour milk and bins. We leave the window above the sink open to let out the heat, but more heat only lets itself in. This part of France doesn’t get a breeze in the Summertime. Moments exist until they are physically removed.

I chip through the thaw of the freezer: drawers full of things we won’t admit we will never consume. A pizza with black olives, a 2-pack of chorizo fish cakes, a candle burned and blackened to its bottom.

Wedged between a half-empty bag of chips and some loose magnums, I find the final Greek yoghurt pot. I run it under the hot tap until the contents are soft enough to slide out into a glass; a perfect cube - white at the centre, with a translucent coating.

The heat pauses for a moment to let sound arrive at the window: a jangle of keys being tried into a fussy lock. Jangle. Click. Jangle. Click. Jangle. Click, click, release. I lean over the window sill just as my mother opens the front gate and lets herself through, pausing to slip the set of keys back into her woven beach bag. Tomorrow, she will not remember which key it is the lock welcomes. She does not mind. Not remembering which key opens what lock is good for training the bladder, she’s told me more than once. And when I look back on my life, I think I will remember all of the women I have seen almost piss themselves on doorsteps, and that I have never seen one actually do it.

I press the power button on the achy espresso machine and it vibrates to life. I swap out an old pod for an untouched one, and watch as hot coffee pours onto the frozen cube of yoghurt. It’s still streaming down when my mother appears at the doorless kitchen opening. She is pink and salty from an afternoon at the beach. It smells like, air sniff, sour milk in here.

“I know,” I say. “And bins.”

“Yes. Bins.”

With both hands, I touch her arm, and she leaves. It’s one of life’s easiest tasks - telling my mother what to do, physically. Where to go. To sit down for a moment. To head to the balcony. To perch like a baby bird, open-beaked, and wait for a worm. Let me direct you, stroke you, present you odd things in glasses. Let me do it for you because I never understood you were doing it for me.

By the time I bring the concoction out to her, she is already on a call with her sister. She holds the phone between her ear and her neck despite having both hands free. Oh how awful. Yes, I remember. Yes, awful, she is saying. I grew up with just a younger brother, so I will live my life unable to speak the language of sisterhood. It is, for all its turbulence, a dialect I am sad to miss. I would like to hear about the divorces of old school friends, about court cases that were solved quite a few years ago, about how to stop the roasted courgette sticking to the aluminium foil.

“One second Deb, Robin’s brought me an affogato. Yes, yes, when in Rome!” She mouths thank you and rolls her eyes as if auntie Deb is asking her whether she’s been in a car accident and if she has insurance. And then she goes back to laughing at one thing or another.

What I have made my mother is not an affogato. It is thawed Greek yoghurt in a glass of watery black coffee. In a few minutes, it will begin to disintegrate into small, sour flakes.

The freezer was full of Greek yoghurt pots when we arrived at the beginning of July. They taunted my mother, these small pockets of sweetness that were never meant for us. She would have liked to throw them out, all seven or eight of them. But when I showed her a ‘guilt-free affogato’ recipe curated by an Instagram influencer promoting disordered eating, she agreed we might be able to put them to use.

I had presented the Greek yoghurt experiment with enough confidence that she had enjoyed it, taking several pictures, flash on, to send to her friends. Now, each afternoon, she expects her affogato. And so I will make it quite happily until the yoghurts, the last traces of him, are gone.

Lifting the cube with a spoon and wrapping her mouth around it from several angles, she is like one of those crumpled dogs who holds their toy between their paws and licks, pulls, licks until they taste the peanut butter inside. I catch myself thinking this in the reflection of the French window, and quickly busy myself with tidying around her.

When she is finished, she will tell me about the beach, about what auntie Deb said on the phone: who’s husband is dying and who is getting a bit too big for their boots. I will tell her the details of a case at work and a fictional piece of feedback from my manager. And we will talk about small things like these until the sun is gone and it is time to turn on the television.

Here is my father on this same living room floor, several years earlier, lying on his side as if he is about to extend himself into a side plank. He is fiddling with the box because somebody got him a good deal on English channels over here. He is muttering quiet things to himself, asking Siri questions Siri can not answer. He is always doing things like this, fiddling with boxes and getting deals from expat cab drivers who have the same South London accent as he does. We look out for one anotha, he had said as he closed Trev’s boot and tugged the handle of his suitcase up. And we had nodded, because we really do like watching television.

He was a good man, auntie Deb says to me from time to time when my mother leaves the room, as if my father has actually died. As if he is in the ground. Not in the bungalow of the lady who used to come round and cut our hair.

And now we are back in the present, if that is at all fully possible.  My mother and I are watching A Place In The Sun. Perching on the floor in front of her, I let her plait my hair, though I have never liked my head being touched. We do not say much, even when the adverts play. We are not a family who love in tongue. We love in full stomachs and shoulder rubs and now in milky cubes in black coffee.

On the table in front of us, my phone vibrates. I flip it over instinctively. It is a force of habit; I mean nothing by it. And I would like to have not done it. But I did, and my mother has already removed her fingers from my scalp. The room is cold now.

“Is that him?”

“No.”

Minutes pass. I do not know what is happening in A Place In The Sun anymore.

She leans forward, holding her face so close that the Bacardi on her tongue feels like it’s on mine.

“You can tell me if you’d rather be with him. And her. Like your brother. Go on. You can leave tomorrow. I’ll pay for your flight.”

I do not answer.

“That’s all I’m good for, isn’t it? You can go. I’ll go to bed actually, when this episode is finished, so you can text him back and arrange it.”

And I cannot help it now. Because while we do not love in tongue, we are experts in using it to sting. And so, “Not everything is about you,” I spit, and flip my phone so it slams down on the table like a tiny expensive skateboard. And there is my screen, and the WhatsApp notification from Sam.

She does not ask the things I think I want her to ask, now she has seen it: why he is messaging again and if I think I will see him if he wants me to, despite his temper and the way the thick hairs on his hands curl when his fists do. She does not ask, and I will not surrender unasked. And then, just as heavy in the air, are the things I have not asked her. What day of the week it was, or what the weather was like the day she found them together.

After what the advert break tells me is a few minutes, she moves my new plait over one shoulder, and I feel her hands on my upper back, taking hold of the strings on my top that have been coming loose since the afternoon. I watch her mind work in the cabinet mirror; her lips tort like a squeezed lemon and her thick brows pointing towards her nose. She tries different loops, like placing a jigsaw piece into a hole at all possible rotations. And then she gets it.

Very quickly, she loops the two pieces of string into the sides of the top, and brings them up again. She moves the plait gently back to the centre, smoothing my shoulders as she removes herself from my skin altogether. She reaches forward, and moves my tea towards me. I have a tendency to let it go cold. 

“Would you like to sleep in my bed tonight?”

---

Scott Madison is a London-based writery type person. Her poetry has appeared in independent publications like SEED, Dear Damsels, and Kamena. She can be found on Instagram @WordDonkey and is always happy to hear about writing / performing opportunities.

Rebecca Klassen

How to Clean Stilettos

1)   Wipe a microfibre cloth around the inside of the shoe to remove any accumulated dust and debris.

High heels from her single days on the floor confirms your hunch that something’s off between you two. That’s why you open her laptop for the first time and peruse the inbox.

2)   Use an old toothbrush to scrub the outside of the sole and the tip of the heel with warm, soapy water, then dry with a towel. Fun fact: stiletto is Italian for ‘pointed writing instrument’.

Her words are recent, lurid, erotic, and not for you. They cut you, leaving you raw and your hands shaking. 

3)    A handled brush with horsehair bristles is softer on leather. Gentle, circular motions should remove scuff and black marks.

You want to talk to her, but you don’t trust yourself to speak calmly. She’s never liked your aggression, which you’ve labelled passion. The argument will get stuck in a loop; you’ve always been a broken record. Your history together is blotchy. No wonder she’s sent these words to someone else.     

4)    Shoe cream is workable and gives a shinier finish than wax. Apply with two fingers wrapped in a polishing cloth. Ensure you select a good colour match.

People said you were soulmates, that you complimented each other. Maybe that’s why you were complacent, thought it would work out effortlessly. You didn’t pay attention to detail, to her needs.

5)    Move your brush around the shoe again until the cream vanishes.

Perhaps couples counselling, atoning for your mistakes to create a brighter future.

6)    Leave them by the door for her. A good pair will last years.

You shut the laptop. God, you love her, but you can’t talk to her yet without that damn passion, so you pick up her high heels, along with your cleaning kit. Only elbow grease will do now.

Playing I Have Never with the Thirteen-Year-Old Girl My Best Friend Just Adopted

Tammy’s left us alone while she fetches the windbreak from the car. She wants Millie and I to bond on this beach rug, the breeze playing our open lemonade cans like panpipes. Tammy and I played I Have Never in pub gardens, bent double, trying not to pee, learning about each other.

I tell Millie, ‘Just drink if you’ve done the thing I say I haven’t.’

She nods, watching two brothers skimming a frisbee.

I say, ‘I have never liked playing frisbee.’

Millie shrugs. ‘Never touched a frisbee. Do I drink?’

I look back at the carpark. Tammy’s rummaging in the boot, unable to offer an answer that satisfies Millie and assuages my guilt. ‘You don’t need to drink.’

Millie stares longingly inside her can. I kind of hate Tammy now she’s ruined brunching, weekend breaks, getting pissed together. We can’t chat uninterrupted anymore about books, the old days, our dreams. Of course, Millie is Tammy’s dream. Mine’s to visit Machu Picchu and sleep with Tom Hardy. Millie felt more appealing when she was just potential.

‘Your turn,’ I say.

Millie says, ‘I have never had a one-night stand,’ and I wonder if she knows what casual sex is, then she giggles as I drink. I imagine Tammy in my place on the rug, remaining humbly dehydrated for her new daughter.

I watch the frisbee brothers, not wanting to look at Millie, and I can’t believe I say aloud, ‘I have never wanted to go home and cry more in my life.’ I drink deeply, and Millie’s laugh bursts out, which makes me laugh too, lemonade fizzing on my chin.

‘My turn,’ she says. ‘I have never wanted to just drink my fucking lemonade more.’

She takes a glug, belches, and I think she might be my new best friend.

---

Rebecca Klassen is co-editor of The Phare and a Best of the Net 2025 nominee from Gloucestershire, UK. She has won the London Independent Story Prize and was short/longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, Flash 500, Bridport Prize, Alpine Fellowship, Laurie Lee Prize, Quiet Man Dave Prize, and the Oxford Flash. Her stories have featured in Mslexia, Fictive Dream, Toronto Journal, Shooter, The Brussels Review, Amphibian, Roi Faineant Press, Writing Magazine, Ginosko, Riggwelter, Cranked Anvil, BarBar, and Ink, Sweat & Tears, and have been performed at numerous literature festivals and on BBC Radio.

Beth Hendrickson

Roots and Wings

He lays out the knife, creamy peanut butter, sugar, and dates just so. The knife will cut the slit and smear the peanut butter. Fingers, even his arthritic ones, will be necessary for extracting the date pit, rolling in sugar, and licking. Extra fingers are coming to help. Waiting at the table, he fidgets with the white paper placemat.

“Hi, Granddad.”

“Hello, Grandson.” With the greeting, one of Granddad’s eyebrows sprouts yellow canary feathers and flutters off his face. Grandson’s eyes twist in concern, watching the eyebrow fly toward the door he’d just entered.

“It’s nothing,” Granddad reassures, waving a gnarled hand. “Don’t need two of those anyway. Here. Help me.” He nudges a knife to Grandson.

Reassured and conscripted, Grandson gets busy.

Grandson and Granddad slice, smear, and lick for the space of three (Grandson) and five (Granddad) peanut-butter stuffed dates. Christmas carols play from speakers, and a woman in a wheelchair by the muted TV hums along to “Sleigh Ride.” Next to her hangs a cross stitch from a forgotten resident. Orange and green yarn lettering: “There are two things we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings.” A nurse appears silently at Granddad’s elbow, places a white paper cup with thirteen various colored pills (she’s counted, so he doesn’t), and retreats. Granddad’s right kneecap unfurls ravens wings, rises from his leg, and follows her.

“You’re falling apart Grandad,” Grandson observes as his tongue scrubs his finger, peanut butter and sugar being a tough job.

“And you’re growing up, kid,” Granddad counters.

A root, green and supple as an orchid’s, snakes out of Granddad’s little finger, undulates across the table, and attaches to Grandson’s pinky. If either notices, they do not comment.

“Your dad picks you up in an hour, right?” Granddad says. “That’s what your mom told the nurse.”

Grandson shrugs, not willing to commit on his father’s behalf.

Granddad nods, equally unwilling to trust his son who has recently proven to be better at leaving than coming.

Grandad’s left elbow unscrews, flexes albatross wings, and flaps elegantly to the ceiling. A root spools out of Granddad’s ear and navigates over to Grandson’s earlobe. There the root quivers, tightens, and burrows.

“What’s Santa getting you for Christmas?” Granddad wonders.

A skeptic growing into a cynic, Grandson raises a single, youthfully secured eyebrow.

“I see. No secret there. Well, did I ever tell you I played Santa for all the neighborhood kids when your dad was little?”

“You mean you grew a beard and got real fat?” Grandson licks his knife.

“Any Santa would, if he were making magic for his best son. His pal.” Grandad’s bushy white mustache quivers into the air with luna moth wings, leaving behind a naked lip.

“No one says pal, Granddad.”

“Buddy?”

A grimace.

“Well then, what do you kids these days call their best buds?”

“Gruzz,” Grandson nods.

“Gruzz,” Granddad repeats.

Monarch butterflies carry off Grandad’s thumbnail. A root twists from his palm to Grandson’s wrist and wraps.

There’s a scent of pine from the candle warmer on the nurse’s station. In the corner, the wire pole trunk of the Christmas tree shines behind bristled branches and red bulbs.  The wheelchair lady hums “Last Christmas.” Grandson eats one sugary date. Granddad eats two. Four molars flit out of his mouth on bumblebee wings and take to the sky. A root twines up Grandson’s leg to secure his bouncing knee.

“In case I’m not around come Christmas morning, I’ve ordered Santa to bring you that video game computer you want.” Granddad spits a pit into his empty pill cup.

“I know you’re dying Granddad, you don’t have to pretend. Mom already told me.”

“And your dad? What’d he say?” 

Seven of Granddad’s ribs splinter away on starlings’ wings. A grey root thick as a rolling pin wraps around Grandson’s waist.

Grandson shrugs, and his knife slices a date in half.

Granddad’s right shoulder detaches with red hawk wings. Roots knit into a lace shroud that drapes across the table and snarls in Grandson’s hair. He mashes an oozing date into the sugar dish. He grinds it around. Sugar crystals glitter. Five of Granddad’s toes hover suspended by hummingbird wings under the table.

“One thing I won’t pretend, Grandson—Gruzz?”  He looks to confirm he’s said it correctly.

“Gruzz,” Grandson echoes. When his voice cracks, he doesn’t flinch.

“You can’t get away from me. We’re connected, me, you. You’ve got some places you have to go, and so do I, but I think I’ll stick with you, one way or another.”

A bouquet of sparrow wings erupts from the top of Grandad’s skull. A hairy root snaps around his ankle and then undulates under the table to shackle Grandson’s.

Granddad places his knife next to the empty plate. The blade sticks to the placemat the nurse set out. Granddad’s hip buckles, folds, then launches away with the waddling disgrace of a loon lifting from water. An old, gnarled, peanut-butter sugared hand rubs a young, smooth, peanut-butter sugared hand.

“I love you,” Grandad says.

“I love you too, Gruzz,” Grandson says.

A root, the biggest, sturdiest, thickest yet, swells from an old chest and dives to a young. It anchors right above Grandson’s heart which flaps, beats, and flutters within a cage of growing bones.

---

Beth has been a riverboat deckhand, violinist, rock climber, and substitute middle school Algebra teacher (in no particular order). She was long-listed for Jericho Writer’s 500 Novel contest, and her stories have appeared in Muleskinner Journal, The Quarter(ly) Journal, and The Fourth River. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband, two daughters, and a self-centered dachshund.

Matt Leibel

How to Build a Sandcastle

Hire an architect. Someone with vision, and an understanding of light, space, materials, temperature controls, safety protocols, 3D modeling. They should know their way around a city planning commission, have experience balancing the interests of competing stakeholders. Possibly a past Pritzker winner, or someone in the conversation for the future: a towering talent with Hadid’s sense of the avant-garde, Gehry’s knack for the baroque post-modern, Kahn’s elemental geometries, Pei’s iconic simplicity. And sure: you may object that sandcastles are for children on your beach day, and you’re just happy to hand them plastic shovels and buckets to keep the phones out of their little mitts while you attempt to catch some rays while zoning out to whatever reliably heart-pounding thriller plot Robert Ludlum or Lee Child or Tana French or Harlan Coben may have in store for you. But this misses the sheer structural power, the potential for grandeur and dazzle that sandcastles offer. Face it: you’re never going to build Versailles in your lifetime, or a new Monticello, or Great Wall. You’re probably not going to build an extension on your home, or even fix a pothole in your street. But you can build a tiny world that expresses your constructed dreams. You can make the universe incrementally better, if only for the time between the tides. Don’t be afraid to bring in outside help, to tell the kids they’ve got it all wrong. They’re thinking too small: you want flying buttresses, raised turrets, hidden pathways, maze-like courtyards, staircases leading to nowhere. Castles were created by Kings as walled fortresses to ward off usurpers. All sandcastles can fend off is the deadness in your soul, and even that only for a little while. There’s a reason adults compete in sandcastle building contests, and it’s not (just) because they’re trying to regress to their six-year-old selves who imagined they could dig their way to China, or whatever their corresponding “other side of the world” was. Sand is one of the world’s oldest substances; when you (or your architect’s subcontracted building team) are working with it, you’re communing with the origins of our planet, that whirling, gaseous chemical play set. Jack Reacher—for all of his skills with a rifle, his hands, or his wits—can’t really dig that deep.

How to Get Unstuck

Call a tow truck. Call a locksmith. Call a therapist. Call your mother. Call my mother. No. Leave my mother alone. She’s got enough on her plate. Don’t try to stick things to other things in the first place. Don’t affix decals to your car bumper. They don’t age well. No one cares who you supported in the 2004 election. Well, there are probably people who care. I might care, a little bit. But don’t do it. Don’t try to stick the landing on your dismount without years of practice. Don’t bother trying gymnastics at all if you didn’t sacrifice your childhood for it. If you’re a child, for the love of God, don’t sacrifice your childhood. Definitely don’t sacrifice your childhood for the love of God. God, if she exists, would want you to have more fun than that. If you’re stuck on a piece of writing, set it aside for a while. Come back to it later. Hopefully, the piece will then unveil itself to you, like a previously-withholding lover suddenly deciding to entrust you with a disconcerting torrent of emotional honesty. If you’re still stuck, set your writing aside for 500 years. In the distant future, someone will discover your barely-scrutable texts buried under geologically-intimidating layers of sand and rock. They’ll decide to continue your work where you left off, and either they’ll make the writing better or worse. If they finish it and improve it, this will confer upon you a kind of immortality that you’ll be too dead to properly appreciate. If they make it worse, you’ll be forgotten by history, which seems appropriate since most people forget all the history they ever learn anyway. And what will you care? You’ll be kicking back in the afterlife. In the afterlife, there are beanbags 100 times more comfortable than anything you had back on Earth, including the ones they had at that one startup you worked at where they tried to turn the work environment into a glorified playroom. If you sink deeply enough into your afterlife beanbag, you will become one with it, as if with the universe itself. In the end, this is the kind of stuck you want to be. Maybe none of us ever truly become unstuck, and maybe that’s okay. We’re all stuck with each other until the day we die, and maybe long after that. If you’re stuck in rush hour traffic on the 405 trying to get home from downtown LA at twilight on a Friday night under a sky striped with layers of orange, pink and purple whose beauty belies their origins in the environmental ruin we seem to have irrevocably yoked ourselves to, then sorry: I’ve got nothing for you.

---

Matt Leibel’s short fiction has appeared in Post Road, Electric Literature, Portland Review, The Normal School, Quarterly West, Socrates on the Beach, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, matchbook, and Wigleaf. His work has also been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2024 and Best Microfiction 2025. Find him online at mattleibel.com.