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Reincarnation There is,  in a small city in Michigan,  an old man sitting in an old chair in his living room.  He is pleased with his bowel movements lately.  The kids are here, packing up his things,  because he is going into an assisted-care facility tomorrow,  but at least for now, he thinks,  everyone is here.  There is,  in that same city,  an old woman alone.  She does not have bowel movements.  She believes, with certainty, that everyone in her life has let her down.  She believes, with even greater certainty, in reincarnation,  and that once, many long lives ago,  she was a queen. We Don’t Always Choose Who We Love Come on  Come on  start a fight, then lock yourself in the bathroom with the scissors and tell me you will make the floor run red. I was adopted, she said. My birth mother never loved me.  When she met me, she wanted argue about the date I was born on because she couldn’t remember but she couldn’t stand to be wrong. Come on Come on  I’m begging you now come out of the bathroom, you know I would never do this to you. Why isn’t that enough? The Passing of the Night I want to sleep with you, yes, I do. I want to lie there in the quiet silence, lie against the warmth of your body and feel, like a quiet and graceful tide, the rise and fall of your sleeping breath. The birds that sing just before the dawn do not sing to hasten the coming of the sun. They do not cheer the fire and the coming heat. They lament the passing of the stars, and their softer, kinder light. Copperhead Hey there Copperhead.  Is it true your mother’s dead?  She says to say she loves you, and even if you don’t think it’s true,  it’s the only thing she wants to do. Copperhead, Copperhead. Did you know your mother’s dead?  She wants to hear you say you love her,  even if it isn’t true.  She told me to speak to you, it’s the only thing she wants to do. It is Hard to do Right by Everyone She said, she said, she said to me I don’t know what I want but I don’t want this and it isn’t his fault he’s a good guy you know a real good guy but I can’t stand it I can’t stand it  anymore and I just want it to be over without going through the  ending of it and I told her that I don’t know what to do here,  do now, but I want to be the guy, the next guy, the last guy to taste her mouth, but it doesn’t feel right. I don’t know if I can do this, Isn’t there a Patron Saint or an Eagles song, sung for bad people like us? I am unsure, you know, because I am not a saint.

Me: Aren’t you  supposed to be  writing? Me : How can  I write  when you keep  pinging  me???  Me :  So it’s MY fault?  Me: It’s  ALWAYS your fault. Me : You think I don’t know  you weren’t writing  before I texted? Really?  You know I know  you better than that.  I saw you refreshing  your Submittable queue  for like the 1,000th time today.  Right before you scrolled through  every pair of sale boots  on Anthropologie  Also how many times can you  microwave the same  cup of tea?  It’s a  little sad. Just saying… Me : OUCH Anyway… tea totally a writer thing. Like being an  introvert  or crippling self-doubt… Or cats.  Me : Begging you not to  Google kittens  for adoption.  You’re SO allergic to cats. Make your eyes  swell so much  you almost can't see  the bags under them.    Me: SMH. Nice. Really nice.  Anyway tortured eyes  totally a writer thing. The darker  the circles the  deeper the prose.   Me: Then  you must  have a  Pulitzer. Me : ME-fuckin-OW  Me : You’re right. That was mean. Sorry…  Me: Whatever. Me: Seriously. Don’t you think  you should at least  try writing something today? How about some morning pages!  ☺  Me: It’s 3:45 in the afternoon… genius. Me: Genius, you don’t say…   Me: Whatever Me: So… less shoe scrolling  more keyboard  clicking Me: Sigh… I know. You’re right… Me: But?  I hear a but coming.  ? Me: But… Me: But?   Me : But it’s an extra 40 percent off already reduced prices…  Me: Really?   They still have those  lace-up  chocolate suede ones?  The ones with  the chunky heel?  I bet they are  off-the-charts soft  would go with  just about everything… Me : I know! Right?   Me: STOP.  Don’t pull me  into this. You’re the one  who told me  it’s my job  to make sure  you write today. You made  me promise. Me: Sorry? Me: You called it… and I quote… “a sacred duty.” Me: Can we  PLEASE  forget that  I thought that  let alone said it? Me: K NP  Forgotten.  Me: Thanks. Me: So? Me: So? Me: So…  Remember  the whole thing  about how the  place is quiet today.  How you finished  your other work.  You’ve done  everything else. I mean you even  alphabetized your sweaters.  Me: I think my new  “A for Argyle” system  is inspired. Me: Move over Marie Kondo… Me : Rude. Me : fine. Me: FINE. Me: So, the writing? Me: TBTH…  I can’t think of a single  thing that seems  worth saying. There… you made me say it. Happy? Me: A little bit… Not really… No. ☹ Me: I want to do this. It’s just…  Me: I get it. Me: [Sigh.] Me: It’ll come  to you. Me : You think? Me: Sure… Me: Really? Me : [shrug] Me: That’s like  one of the  nicest things  you’ve ever  said to me. Me: ☺  Don’t get too  used to it Me: Believe me I won’t. I’m familiar with  your work. Me: So…  Me: So? Me: So…  THE WRITING  Me: Can we get the boots first? Me: Is there free shipping?  Me: …   *** Beth Kanter’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in a range of publications including McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Emerge Literary Journal, Identity Theory,  and Cease, Cows . Beth is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fiction nominee. She won a UCLA James Kirkwood Literary Prize for her novel-in-progress, " Paved With Gold ."  When not writing, she leads creative nonfiction workshops. You can read more of her work at bethkanter.com  or follow her @beekaekae  on Instagram.

It was almost a joke when you asked me. I’d been splashing water on my face in the bathroom off the grand ballroom’s hallway, inching up my sleeve cuffs to press cold, wet fingers to my wrists, wiping blindly at my temples so I wouldn’t have to lift my gaze above the sink. It was in this state that you’d come up behind me and said something about tampons. “I—sorry?” When I turned, you had my face, like a mirror, like a nightmare. I didn’t scream, but it was close. “Holy shit,” you said. “Who are you?” “Samson,” I said, prickly. The curls I’d fought to have edging below my hairline had plastered themselves to my damp neck. I stuck out a hand like an idiot. You didn’t take it. “Samson, the—?” Star of tonight’s gala, sure, yes; satellite of the star, at least. I shrugged. You tipped your head like you’d get a better view from a twenty-degree angle. “Hm.” “Okay,” I said, because I was tired and the party was terrible and this may as well have been happening. “Do you… know someone here?” “I work for the hotel,” you said. “We should switch places.” I laughed. You didn’t. I laughed again, more nervously. You smiled. This was the first hint I had that you were nothing like me. “Why?” I asked, like an asshole. “Why not?” you answered, like a crazy person. Which wasn’t a generous assessment on my part, but I wasn’t feeling at my best that night, and you were suggesting defrauding hundreds of guests at my expense. You put a hand at my elbow; I jumped. “Seriously,” you said. “We could get away with it. Don’t you want to try?” “We don’t look that  much alike,” I told you, because— “Okay, you’re a boy,” you said, dismissive, “but come on, Sam; do you mind if I call you Sam? Samson’s a bit biblical… but look at us!” You dragged me to the mirror. Nobody else was using the bathroom, so there was no one else to gawk at us: a shaggy-haired boy and a short-haired girl, me in oval-shaped glasses, yours more rounded. You were maybe half an inch taller. I straightened my spine, averting my gaze. You grinned at me. “I’d hardly have to cut my hair.” You pinched a lock under your ear, then tapped your glasses. “What’s your prescription?” I didn’t know the number offhand. We swapped frames, bracing to wince, and found our eyes to be as identical as our faces. “Carmen,” I said, off your nametag, “what you’re proposing is identity theft.” You shrugged. “Can’t steal what’s freely given,” you said. Some people would call that socialist propaganda. I didn’t want to voice that. “I mean, it’s not like I’m saying permanently  or anything.” So we got down to logistics. How the washroom attendant would swap herself out for the socialite. Not that I’d  have to—just, you riding along, making an appearance. Living the life you’d seen from afar. It didn’t sound so crazy when you said it. I let you make a lot of plans. I didn’t have scissors, but I gave you my room number and when I opened the door to your knock you’d found a pair, so I followed you in and cupped your scalp to trim your curls. It was an unprecedented intimacy with a stranger. I didn’t… touch people, not a lot. I didn’t touch girls a lot. Your hair was very soft. I tried to be gentle. The scrape of the scissor blades set my skin on edge; you didn’t notice, or say anything if you did. “You’re sure your dad won’t catch us?” you asked, and my hand jerked. “Hey!” “Sorry.” I squinted at your hair, cheeks hot. “It, um, it looks fine.” “Okay. So your dad?” My father was busy. My father was the sort of man who never really looked at anyone except for what he could make of them, and he could never manage to make anything of me. “No,” I said. “Drop your voice around him. That’s all.” You looked at me for a minute. I focused on protecting your ears from the scissor’s snips. “Why are you doing this?” you asked, finally. “I can’t suddenly have longer hair,” I said, but you put a hand on my wrist to stop me, so I had to look at you. Your eyes were bright, I thought. Lively. Nobody would believe you were me. “Sam?” “It was your idea. Call it a social experiment.” I brushed loose hair off your shoulder. “What about you?” Again, that flash of a grin. You’d have to learn to keep that under wraps. “This kind of opportunity! How could I turn it down?” “Oh, shit. You’re some scam artist.” The scissors were warm in my hand; I lifted them so they caught the light and your eye. “I think this is kind of a big commitment to ripping my father off.” “How often do you meet your doppelgänger?” With this weird earnestness. Like you were really excited to meet yourself as a boy, and not faintly sick. “Hey, you don’t think your dad was a sperm donor?” “Definitely not,” I said, and didn’t volunteer what he thought of unmarried pregnancy. “Maybe he has a secret twin.” “Maybe we  were twins. Separated at birth.” Maybe some force of nature just had a sick sense of humor. I stepped back and looked at you, which was nauseating. “How do I look?” you asked, deadpan. Like me. I shrugged. “You’ll pass.” # You did pass, beautifully. Handsomely. Not that I—But on you my features could almost seem pretty. Anyway, nobody noticed a thing. You glowed, telling me afterward, gloating about shaking hands and brushing shoulders with the high and mighty unsuspecting. I had never, in my whole life, been so excited about attending a dinner. Or maybe about anything. I shouldn’t have been surprised when you asked, “Could we do it again?” So we did it again. Smuggled you along, hid one of us in a closet, trotted you out for another public appearance. And then, when your palms didn’t sweat during and nobody puked afterwards, for another. “This is great,” you said, grinning, glorious, and I had to agree. It was kind of inevitable that we’d try our fantastic new trick in other ways. Could you get away with being me at dinners? at school? at breakfast? “Your mom’s nice,” you told me, and I shook my head. “ Your  mom.” This wasn’t the first time we’d slipped out of character; I didn’t mind reminding you. “Okay, whatever. Our mom’s nice.” You flopped back on my bed. Our bed. Your bed, half the time—on those nights, I slept on a pile of blankets we’d put together in the walk-in. It was fun, like camping, if family camping trips had ever been fun. We took turns. What if someone had come in to wake us? “Did she say anything to you?” I asked. You bit your lip the way I always did when I didn’t want to answer. You were getting really good at me. “Oh.” Mom was—had been—the last hurdle we thought we might stumble over. Like, at least, my mom would… Our mom. I focused on my breathing. “I think she’s glad we’re eating,” you said, and my eyes slid to the plate you’d brought me. “Later,” I said, and even though you knew my face, you weren’t looking. # You were me more often now. My friends liked you, you reported, which was weird because I didn’t know I had any. After that, school was your domain. You brought home textbooks with page numbers circled so I could keep up. Had to be on top of things when I went back, right? We joined clubs: chess, at first; and then drama, which made sense with all the acting practice you were putting in; then band, where you revealed we had a gift for flute. “I can’t play the flute,” I insisted. “Well, we do now.” You held it out to me. That’s a girly instrument. Kids will talk. I could just picture your face if I said that. Instead, I tried, “I don’t know how,” so you ended up teaching me. Trying to. I was never very good, I kept making this horrible screeching with the thing until you snatched it away from me. So music was yours, too. # I got used to hearing how you were acing my life; I got used to free time: I caught up on my TBR pile. I tried people-watching until we realized if I was noticed it would blow our cover. I discovered my bedroom had 413 ceiling tiles and 6 of them were cracked. “That’s great, Sam,” you said when I told you this. “Hey, weird question: Could you stay, y’know, back this afternoon? I invited Terry and Sahar over.” Girls? I tried, halfheartedly, to convince you it made sense for me to be the host. But they were your friends, and they’d notice if we were different than we’d been all day. You made good points. I spent the evening trying not to eavesdrop. You’d tell me about it eventually. # You were me more than I was. In the closet, spread out among the linens and throws, I closed my eyes and waited for you in stale air. “Hey,” you said, drawing the door open, “check this out.” You’d pierced your ears. A little stud sparkling at me from each lobe. Which meant you’d pierced our ears. You acted like you didn’t get why I didn’t love that. “Come on, Sam,” you said, “it’s cute. It looks cute on us, it really does. And you can always let it close later if you hate it.” I let you talk me into it; we watched Parent Trap and took notes, and then you brought us an apple, a lighter, and a pin. I bit my tongue bloody, but no one downstairs heard anything. The mirror caught the flash of silver any way I turned my head. # “We need a haircut,” I told you when I saw your curls brushed your shoulders now. Mine too, I guess. You ran a hand through the ends of it. “Do we?” I didn’t really know how to counter that. Eventually, I said, “Is it my turn tomorrow?” “No, I have flute after school,” you said, but you looked sorry about it. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll take next shift.” “Thursday is play rehearsal. And Friday the chess tournament starts.” Oh. Huh. Inhaling took effort. “Has Dad said anything about the hair?” “Dad doesn’t look at me,” you said. “Us,” I said. # I thought it was obvious that I’d do the play one night and you’d do the other. Apparently I hadn’t cleared that with you. “Sam,” you said, “you don’t even know our lines.” Yes, I did. I’d studied everything you were doing for us. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew the lines and the cues, and I would be great up there, or at least not terrible. I didn’t say this—something invisible was sitting on my stomach, pressing me flat. You were angrier than I had ever seen you, angrier than I had ever seen myself. The brightness in your eyes was cold. “I can’t believe you’re trying to steal this from me. I’ve been practicing—” “ We’ve  been practicing—” “No!” You were whisper-shouting now, because even hidden in the walk-in we didn’t want anyone overhearing. “No, we haven’t! I’ve gone to every session, I’ve been with the other actors, and you think dancing with clothes hangers is going to substitute for real human interaction!” I saw red. “No one asked you to do any of this,” I said, which felt reasonable. “You invited yourself, remember? I’m doing the play. It’s my life.” I slept in the bed that night. At two am, I woke up because you were standing next to me. The crack of light from under the door cast your shadow across my chest. “I’m sorry,” you said. “Of course you can do the play. Can I do opening night?” “Fine,” I said, and rolled over. As I fell back asleep, the closet door closed quietly. # I shouldn’t have gone to watch your play. We’d agreed a long time ago we could never be in the same place at once, outside our bedroom. But I needed to see. I was careful: I put on our most oversized hoodie, wore sunglasses indoors like a creep, and stayed way back at the end of the auditorium the whole time. You were great. That was—whatever, I’d passed the script back and forth with you, I had some idea you knew what you were doing. If it was just that it wouldn’t have meant anything. After, though. After the curtain fall and the bows and the applause. The cast spilling out from backstage to get hugs and cheers—and our parents were there, with flowers, Mom calling for her Sam. My  parents, actually. My parents. Your friends. Everyone loved us, but no one was looking at the weirdo in the hoodie. There wasn’t any air left in the room. I went home. “That was amazing,” you said as soon as you got back, bouncing on my bed, beaming. “God, you should have seen it. We totally killed.” “You,” I said. The mattress was jouncing me with your excitement. “You did. Not me.” “Well, it’s your turn tomorrow.” Your smile didn’t waver. When had I ever smiled like that? “C’mon, we’re celebrating!” I said, “I think you should leave.” The words took a moment to reach you through your halo of bliss. Then you said, “What?” “Go home,” I said, chest tight. “I’m sick of the game. You’re taking my whole life.” Your cheeks flushed. “As if you wanted it,” you said. “Like I haven’t noticed our massive closet doesn’t have anything in short sleeves. Mom’s really glad we’re doing so well.” Nausea churned. I couldn’t draw breath. “Get out of my fucking house,” I said. “I’m done, Carmen.” “Sam,” you said, and I guess I’ll never know if you meant it as a plea or a correction, because that’s when I slapped you. “Ow! What the fuck!” “Get out!” I said, voice rising into hysteria, cracking on the pitch. “God, didn’t anyone even notice you disappeared? Is that it? You wanted to try being someone who mattered?” “Picked pretty badly then, didn’t I,” you said, breathing hard and fast, “right, ’cause guess what, Sam, no one—” I had never hurt anyone but myself in my life. But you had been me for months, and I was on top of you, and my hands fit around your throat—you clawed at me, but I got my knees onto your arms to put a stop to that; you opened your mouth like you planned to scream, but I don’t think you had enough air left. “Leave me alone,” I said, pressing as hard as I could, “stop it, stop it…” “Sam,” you wheezed. “It’s Samson,” I said. “Sam’s someone you made up.” Your eyelids fluttered. You were so pretty—how did nobody notice you weren’t me? Your face was growing darker. You mouthed something I didn’t catch. I don’t know what I did after that. It gets blurry. I hope I was careful cleaning up. I wasn’t really thinking at my best. Could have used an extra pair of hands, a partner in crime. Or just a washroom attendant. But I couldn’t dwell on all that. I had to get plenty of sleep that night; after all, I was going back onstage tomorrow. Ayin Ships (any pronouns) has received a BA and MA from Brooklyn College in English and Secondary Education, respectively, and currently works within the NYC public school system. As a trans and queer writer, Ayin enjoys genre-bending, gender-bending fiction. They have never met their doppelgänger.

One downward sweeping stroke, barely kissed by two concave, backwards curls. Not quite a letter, a character unrecognizable, even to me.  Not my name and nowhere close to my initial. Yet it seems to be my signature just the same.  A pattern, a shape, a symbol that, defying definition, is written with compulsion, without choice or understanding. Simply to be repeated throughout my life.  By two shaking, pudgy fists that pull gnarled sticks through wet sand and cloying mud. By adolescent hands that scrawl on toilet walls and bus shelters, illicit cider dulling their sharpness, but instinct rising just the same. Scored with a compass, dragged through tender, flinching skin; later overwritten with vivid, violet ink.   Doodled on lecture notes and the margins of essays, on messages taken and messages lost. Traced on the backs of menus, receipts, bus tickets. Sketched inside books, some borrowed, some mine.  And always, it seems both familiar and distant, comforting and unsettling.  Question and answer. With no explanation, no recognition and no resolution, this symbol, my symbol, stands alone.  Each day on the early train, armed with a blunted pencil, I repeat the marks time and time again.  As the other passengers avoid my eye, repelled by my vacant intensity.  Until she arrives.  Her. The girl with autumn-burnished hair. That smells of bonfires and pungent leaves. Who sits close to me; waiting, watching. Undeterred. Who reaches out and without speaking stills my hand. Who rolls up her sleeve and lays her forearm next to mine.  Whose patterned skin is the mirror that tells me finally I am home.  Rachel Canwell is a writer and teacher living in Cumbria. Her debut flash collection ‘Oh I do like to be’ was published by Alien Buddha in July 2022 and her Novella in Flash ‘Magpie Moon’ by Kith Books in November 2023. She is currently working on her first novel.

We went on a family ski trip to Australia once. It’s was strange skiing through gum trees in the rain. The terrain flat the snow thin the queues long. But the strangest thing of all was the roadkill - from Canberra to Cooma through sweeping farmland kangaroos sculpture the highway. Roo after roo - a Mad Max cull. Once we started to climb towards Jindabyne up through the national park, rounder more solid marsupials appeared. It took me a few kilometres to work out what these neon-tagged creatures were. I could barely bring myself to tell the kids they were wombats. Dark hairy motionless barrels. My son was free-skiing at the Australian Junior Nationals. He won two gold medals that day. The ski company rep made him refuse his second first prize set of skis on the podium to the second placegetter. The kid’s eyes popped out of his head as he swapped his goggles and poles. Travelling back through the wombat dead, my son said he’d felt happier winning a hundred bucks in a local comp the weekend before. Sweat turned to tears. The Lucky Country  is home to a lot of odd decisions. Take the bloke who invented y-fronts with a special scrotum pouch. Separate your balls from your legs, the ad claims. An internal kangaroo pouch in your duds for your crown jewels. Keep em cool. Keep em safe. You’d need big nutz to carry that off, I suspect, much like flipping upside down on skis or taking a prize off a fourteen year old. I found out later the spraypainted letters on the dead marsupials meant Animal Rescue volunteers had checked their pouches for babies. They weren’t best-before codes, at all. My son gave up competitive skiing the following season. Queenstown, New Zealand based writer, Jane Bloomfield, is the author of the Lily Max children’s novels. Her poetry and CNF are published and forthcoming in Tarot, Turbine |Kapohau, Does It Have Pockets, a fine line  - NZ Poetry Society, MEMEZINE, The Spinoff, Sunday Magazine and more. Find her at Jane Bloomfield: truth is stranger than fiction - janebloomfield.blogspot.com

Under a dayglow sun, you crawl along Witham Way, windows down, glad of the roadworks that slow the traffic as you imagine the Capri gleaming diamond white in the queue of regular Fords. The faux-leather seat burns your still-slim thighs as you flip down the sun visor to check yourself out in the vanity mirror, your shutter shades neon-pink and fringe Sun In-streaked and stiff with spray. You push in the tape you mixed the night before for Steve who rests his hand on your lap, fingering the hem of your denim mini, and you turn up the volume as if pop will transform the poverty-paved street with the promise of summer. Of being Sweet Sixteen. And that’s when you see her. On the corner, outside the newsagents. The shine of bomber jacket and Docs. Baby-blonde hair feathering her otherwise shaven head. You hide behind the plastic slats of your glasses. But she hears Madonna blaring from a cut and shut. And when she gives you the finger, all you will remember is her smile.  Kerry Byrne lives and writes in the Cambridgeshire Fens, UK, with a backdrop of sky-filled water and an endless horizon. Her writing has been published by Ellipsis Zine, Lucy Writers, Pidgeonholes, streetcake magazine and Bandit Fiction, among others. In 2022, Kerry received an MLitt in Creative Writing with Distinction from Glasgow University. She is currently working on a collection of short fiction and poetry inspired by the Fens.

The window shut as the door creaked open, silencing the feral fogs barking in the woods. I turned around.  “How do I look?” It was my first time wearing my grandmother’s dress – a unique piece she made herself out of fifteen thousand little spoons. After all, tonight was supposed to be an extraordinary ball.  “Turn around,” the cat ordered, adjusting two of the spoons. “Alright, let’s go.” I followed the cat, descending the moss-draped spiral staircase, always keeping my eyes on her ears, which helped with the dizziness. “And I don’t have to do anything else?” I asked upon our arrival in the basement. “Only what I told you to do,” replied the cat, who was using one of my spoons to fiddle with the keyhole in the door. “Come on now,” the cat urged, “and don’t get the dress dirty.” I cautiously followed her through the exit and out into the foresty fog that barked harshly. “Cat, where are you?” “Hold on to my tail, I’ll guide you to the lake.”  Holding the tail with one hand and the dress with the other, I moved through the fog until it gradually cleared. The bright lights of the professor’s castle already greeted us in the distance. “Get in the boat,” the cat said, and I was startled when I realized that it wasn’t the cat’s tail I was holding in my hand but a twiggy branch.  “Let’s move,” said the cat or the branch as I carefully climbed over the skulls on the bank, into the boat and started rowing. “Be careful not to wake them,” warned the branch that rode on the cat alongside my boat, but it was too late. I had already hit two of the skulls. “Quack!”  “Please excuse me,” I said, “but I didn’t see you in all that fog.” After a little more than a little while and three damaged skullducks later, the castle sat enthroned on the cliff before us. The fog lifted and the professor’s horse helped me out of the boat.  “The cat and the branch must stay outside.”  I bid farewell to the cat and the branch and mounted the horse. We galloped along the cliff until the horse leapt through a hole half the size of us. Ever faster we raced through the tunnel, which was covered in green velvet on all sides and lit only by a few candles held in the claws of bats. At the end of the tunnel, we came to an abrupt halt. “Please dismount, I cannot proceed any further.” When I went to say thank you, the horse had already vanished into the tunnel. “Good evening, young lady,” a beak protruding from the rock peeped at me. “If you could be so kind as to pull.” So I pulled, carefully at first, then more forcefully until I had broken the stone bird out of the wall. Then I climbed through. The light from the chandelier dazzled my eyes, the melodies of the nightingales rang in my ears and so it was only after a short period of orientation that I realised I was already in the ballroom. There they all sat at the lavishly laid tables towards the walls of the room: thrushes, finches, blackbirds, and all sorts of beautiful birds whose names I did not yet know. A lone couple, green at the neck and otherwise rather inconspicuous, danced intimately in the centre.  I took a step into the hall. The clinking of the spoons on my dress caused a great stir among the birds. A silvery voice demanded silence. “Please come closer,” called the old heron at the head of the table. Hesitant, I waded through the sea of feathers, that the panic had torn from the birds, until I stood in front of him. “Dear Professor,” I started, bowing my head humbly like the pheasants sitting to his left, “I sincerely apologise for the damage I caused your ducks in the course of writing.” “Ashes to ashes, ducks to ducks,” replied the learned heron, flicking his beak at the valets.  “It's about time you arrived. Now we can commence.” The tallest of the valets ascended and circled the chandelier two or three times – the light was too bright to see it clearly – before alighting and letting off a roar. “Caw, caw, cawstard!” With those words, golden gates swung open on all sides of the room and in came small woodcocks, always in groups of eight, bearing stone bowls on their backs, peenting under the weight with every step. “Dessert is served,” proclaimed the heron and a brief silence was followed by the fluttering and waving and shaking of thousands of wings – a deafening noise. They all descended upon me, tearing and tugging and pulling, until only one spoon remained on my dress. Now, I could complete the task the cat had given me. I adjusted my dress – or what was left of it – and started climbing the neck of a large swan, who was preoccupied with his custard. Always keeping my eyes on his ears, which helped with the dizziness. Having reached his head, I lowered myself down his beak, waiting for his next bite. Then I leapt inside.  The interior of the beak was covered in white velvet. There was a bed in the centre with eggs on top. How would I open them? I tossed one against the wall, but the velvet prevented it from breaking. I carefully removed the last spoon from my dress and tapped the egg that I had just thrown. Its shell immediately cracked, and the cat emerged. “Well done,” she said, politely for once, and added in her usual rude manner, “Now the others.” Swiftly, I tapped all the other eggs on the bed – there must have been about a hundred – and out of each came a different cat. Then, my cat took the floor. “Dear sisters, let's eat.” And with that, they disappeared out of the swan’s beak into the ballroom. Felix Anker, born and raised and based in Germany, used to be a linguist, now collects stories at a hotel's reception. Humour, Science-Fiction, and other weird stuff in German and English lit mags (A Thin Slice of Anxiety, State of Matter, Don't Submit!, Maudlin House, Johnny, UND). Twitter: @bananentupper  Instagram: @schundundsyntax

Elaine knew that her keys were trying to tell her something when she dropped them on the floor in front of her bed. They landed in such a way that the deadbolt key with the green topper formed a perfect 90- degree angle with the silver dumpster key, and the Betty Boop key to the front gate fell beside a turquoise ring she’d lost months ago. The possibilities of coincidence or serendipity didn’t even cross her mind. Since her mother’s death, she’d sensed that the entire order of the universe was inches from her comprehension. Elaine knew that all she needed was a cipher, and she believed that once she found that cipher she could use it to guide her decisions and align them with the master plan. Elaine’s mother wasn’t lucky enough to find a cipher in her lifetime. Elaine had watched her fumble for decades, and ultimately arrive at the end of her life in confusion and deep regret. Elaine pitied her mother for dying before she could understand her place in the universe, and resented her for not even trying to help Elaine understand hers. She picked the keys up off the floor, squeezed them between her palms, and asked: “Where should I hang the O’Keefe print?” Then she threw them at the wall. And when the keys landed behind the ottoman, she crawled hungrily across her studio apartment to assess.  The green key and Betty Boop pointed towards the kitchenette, while the dumpster key was tangled with a souvenir bottle opener from Clearwater Beach. Elaine inferred that the keys had a hierarchy, that Green and Betty competed for dominance and Dumpster stayed out of the way unless its voice was needed to balance the vote. On the question of where to hang Sky Above Clouds IV , the keys seemed to agree that it belonged in the breakfast nook.    Elaine did as she was instructed. And every morning thereafter, as she blinked awake and the pale, orange horizon on the other side of the room came into focus, she felt an immense tranquility knowing she’d never face indecision again.  *** The following weekend, Elaine went to a bar, ordered vodka and cranberry juice, and dropped the keys on the floor. She told herself she’d go home with the first man who picked them up for her. But when her suitor reared himself, handing the keys to her with a yellow, threatening grin, she noticed that Green and Betty’s teeth were caught on each other, and they were nearly crossed to form an “X.” Elaine took that as a warning, an instruction to skip this man and look for another.  Relieved, she squeezed the keys between her palms to thank them, and 20 minutes later she dropped them again.  This time, the man who retrieved them was handsome and aloof in the ways that Elaine had been hoping for. She charmed him, brought him home, and after many consultations with the keys over the course of the next week, made him her boyfriend. *** Before long, Elaine was using the keys to make decisions at her job. She worked in data entry at a local importer of grocery products from Poland, Romania, and a few other Eastern European countries. Invoices from suppliers and distributors arrived in various formats, and Elaine’s task was to ensure that every total that entered the accounting system was accurate down to the decimal. It was work that didn’t actually require her to make any decisions. In fact, if she was making decisions, it meant that she was probably cooking the books.  That was never her intention, but sometimes the order of the numbers in the totals unsettled her. When threes preceded fours on either side of a decimal point, or when sixes appeared more than once in a single line, she’d become paralyzed, unable to enter them into the spreadsheet. Elaine developed a particular motion of fondling the keys to probe them for an answer, which was much more discreet than her previous method of throwing them at surfaces and assessing how they landed. When she encountered a number that felt wrong, she’d pick the keys up from her lap, close her eyes, and dangle them just above her fingertips. She’d rotate them once, very slowly, and count the number of times she felt a key graze her middle finger. Then she’d repeat, rotating in the other direction. She’d add the first result to all numbers on the left of the decimal point, and the second to all numbers on the right. Usually, this produced a total that put Elaine at ease. If it didn’t, she’d subtract from whichever side of the decimal point was still giving her trouble. Elaine maintained this system through her remaining eight months at the company. No one ever detected the errors, but her boss recorded a significant dip in profit. He attributed it to inflation among his European suppliers, and offset the loss by laying off several administrative staff, including Elaine.  *** Papers arrived in the mail regarding Elaine’s mother’s will. Elaine learned she was inheriting a small house in Santa Fe. Her mother’s second husband had inherited it from his brother and left it in his own will when he passed, five years before his widow. Elaine’s mother lacked the ambition to make something out of the house, so it had been sitting, empty and neglected, ever since.  Elaine went to the cemetery and dropped the keys on her mother’s grave marker. They landed in such a way that they were equidistant from each other, making a nearly symmetrical star shape. Elaine stood over them for a few minutes, squinting intensely in an attempt to deepen her connection to them. Her goal was not to communicate with her mother’s spirit but to ask the keys questions that only her mother would know the answer to. She believed that with her mother’s death, those answers now lived with the universal force that the keys transmitted to her. Elaine’s method of eliciting a yes or no answer from the keys involved slapping them against the back of her hand. If any of the keys swung up and grazed her wrist, or briefly slipped between her fingers, she’d read that as a “yes.” If the keys only made contact with the back of her hand, the answer was “no.” She asked: “Did mother spend a significant amount of time in the house?” No. “Did her husband spend a significant amount of time in the house?” Yes. “Does his energy remain on the premises?” No. “Will visiting the house bring me good fortune?” Yes. “Will selling the house bring me good fortune?” No. “Am I meant to live in the house?” Yes. *** Elaine had a downright transcendent experience at the Dido concert. At times she felt she had astrally projected herself far away from the crowd to some sort of spiritual observation tower beyond time. And even though all of Elaine’s favorite Dido songs were about great romantic love, she arrived back at her apartment overwhelmed with the urge to break up with her boyfriend. She realized he’d never made her feel like Dido’s performance had that night. She stepped over the boxes he’d helped her pack and slumped onto the mattress he’d promised to help her load into a U-Haul later that week. He couldn’t make the drive with her because he had to finish up a gig, but he said he would join her in Santa Fe as soon as he’d completed the job and collected his pay. He’d been displaying a lot of excitement for this next chapter of their relationship. Elaine believed her boyfriend was good on his word, but she was suspicious of his reasons for following through at all. She had constructed a prediction for their future in which he joined her in her house only to have a place to stay while he infiltrated the local artist colony, chasing women who were more beautiful and more creative than she was, ultimately abandoning her.  But Elaine knew better than to dwell on unknowns. She asked the keys. “Does my lover truly care for me?” Yes. “Will he love me forever?” No. That was all the certainty Elaine felt she needed. She asked one more question: “Do I have to act immediately?” No. Elaine interpreted this to mean that she could wait to cut things off until her mattress was in the U-Haul. *** Elaine’s landlord sent her a text that read: “you can leave the keys in the mailbox.”  She considered her options. Maybe the keys had guided her as far as they could. Elaine was confident that every detail of her life was now exactly as it should be. She trusted the keys enough to believe that they wouldn’t abandon her in a time of need, but maybe she no longer needed them. Besides, she’d be picking up a whole new set of keys upon her arrival in Santa Fe.  Elaine stepped out onto the sidewalk and stood in front of the mailbox, pressing the keys to her lips. She figured she should let them weigh in. “Is there more than this?” Yes . She nearly sprained her ankle in a frantic sprint to the hardware store before it closed. She made copies of each key and kept the originals for herself.     The house in Santa Fe had a brass key to the front door, two silver keys to the back gate and sliding glass door, a rounder silver key to the basement, and a tiny square key to the shed. Elaine bought them each a unique topper and added them to the keychain with Green, Betty, Dumpster, and the Clearwater Beach bottle opener. Then she sat on the patio for hours, watching the sun push a large succulent’s shadows along the stucco of her new home, gently massaging all of the keys between her palms. *** The keys told Elaine to paint the living room a pale green and hang the O’Keefe print behind the couch. They told her to put up a wooden fence and gate, for which she needed another key of course, but she anticipated this would only elevate their power. When a home inspector mentioned that the basement could be converted into a separate rental unit, the keys coached Elaine through the renovation. They helped her pick out appliances, tiles, and lighting fixtures. They even decided on the amount that she charged for rent.  She used the keys to make trivial decisions, walking around the grocery store slapping them against her hand to make sure she purchased the right brand of chickpeas, the right width of parchment paper, the right fat content of yogurt. They advised her on big decisions, too. When a book she’d read left her with an intense compulsion to travel to India, the keys suggested she open a new credit card to pay for the trip. When she had a tenant whose lifestyle she disapproved of, the keys instructed her to evict him. When her doctor diagnosed her with aggressive cancer, the keys confirmed that going through treatment wasn’t worth the hassle she suspected it would be, and she’d be better off letting the disease determine her fate. As she lay on her deathbed, morphine coursing through her veins while her consciousness slipped away, Elaine was satisfied. There was nothing she could have done differently because none of it was up to her. And when the keys finally slipped out of her limp fingers and onto the floor, Elaine’s eyes had already rolled too far back to see how they landed. Olivia is based in Chicago.

The boxed baby was just over nine inches long. Pink-skinned. Pert. In the sunlight streaming through the high cedar branches, the woman could see the baby’s ringlet of hair, flaxen, and its irises ringed with indigo. It waved its little arms at her. It coo-ed. “My goodness,” she exclaimed, wiggling her fingers in the baby’s plump face. “And what have we here?”  The baby babbled. The baby clacked. The baby disarticulated its bones into a flesh puddle and slithered to the side of the box, folding like a paper accordion fan to reach the edge of the box and flow over it like oily soup.  “That’s a trick, sure enough,” said the woman in delight. “Follow me.”  She left the box with its sodden, mildew-speckled blanket still inside, and pushed her door open to enter the cottage, the puddle-baby gurgling and burbling behind. It slid and glided, wet and wide, right up to her heels as if it meant to wrap itself around them, but the woman skipped lightly whenever the baby seemed on the verge of taking hold and in this way avoided being seized in the baby’s liquified limbs.  The puddle-baby raised itself off the cottage floor and slapped two parts of its puddle together. The bones inside clacked against one another. An altogether unpleasant sound that demanded attention, but the woman only laughed and said, “Oh, be quiet, you little monster.”  The baby lowered its gelatinous self back to the floor and hurried after. A rocking chair stood before an open hearth, and into this, the woman lowered herself, the puddle-baby quivering at her feet.  “Well, come on, then,” she said, lifting her skirt to expose her bare legs. The puddle-baby drew near and slid over her foot. It wrapped its jelly-self around her pale ankle and began to climb her calf, up over her knee and under her skirt where it got tangled in the bunches of fabric there and could go no further. The woman laughed again as the puddle-baby punched at the fabric, trying to get free.  She began to rock. She rocked and sang a tune gentle and dark as she helped free the glutinous baby from her skirts. From under the fabric, the clicking and clacking of bones kept time to the lullaby.  Elizabeth Rosen is a native New Orleanian, and a transplant to small-town Pennsylvania. She misses gulf oysters and etouffee, but has become appreciative of snow and colorful scarves. Color-wise, she’s an autumn. Music-wise, she’s an MTV-baby. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as North American Review, Atticus Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, Ascent, and others. Learn more at  www.thewritelifeliz.com .

Longing  She wants a mother. Her brother’s.  Caveman  Two stones. Fire make. Hot, hot!  Sonography  Two hands. Two feet. Two horns.  Hiccups  Inhibitions walk out of a bar.  Paralysis  Her toes on his. Still nothing. Cheryl Rebello (she/her) is a writer and poet from India. She found writing one day and has been all the better for it. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Hooghly Review, Kitaab, Tiny Wren Lit, Coffee & Conversation and others. She occasionally posts at @cheruwritesalot

5 pm. Flight canceled, a fourteen-hour layover. Ernest sits in a vinyl seat, a little girl wriggling on the seat behind him, and calls his sister.  Lydia answers on the third ring, voice bleary over the speaker. “Hi. You at the airport?” “Yes, but my flight got canceled. Storm over the Atlantic.” In the black spiral- bound notebook in Ernest’s messenger bag, beneath the flight information and his assigned seat (18D), he has written in red pen and underlined twice that one in one hundred flights on this airline get canceled. He has also written that 71% of flight cancellations are due to adverse weather. “We’re flying out at seven tomorrow.” A pause. A rustling sound comes through the phone, as if Lydia is sitting up, or turning over. “I can’t pick you up, then. I’ll be at brunch with Kyoko and Jiro. You’ll have to take the train on your own.” Ernest props the phone between his ear and shoulder to pull out the notebook, and retrieve a black pen from his shirt pocket. In the notebook, on the same page as the flight information, he writes the new flight number, and the new arrival time: 10 am.  “Ernest?” Lydia repeats. “You’ll have to take the train to Nagoya by yourself.” “I won’t be able to read any of the signs.” Below the arrival time, he writes that Shinjuku Station is the busiest train station in the world, and therefore the easiest to get lost in, without a guide. Lydia sighs over the phone. “Don’t you have the Japanese dictionary I sent you last March?” He has it in his bag, in front of the laptop and next to the exclusive hundredth anniversary edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles . “Yes, but there are forty-three letters in Hiragana, and over one-thousand common  symbols in Kanji. I can’t just stand in front of every sign looking up all the words.” “Most of the signs will be written in English too.” “What if I get lost?” “Ask someone for help.”  Ernest presses his lips together. “Lydia. I can’t just go up to someone I don’t know and ask them for help.” Another sigh. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Look, Ernest, it’s seven in the morning over here.” “That’s a normal time to be up,” says Ernest. “It’s a normal time for you to be up,” says Lydia. “ I  was at a nightclub with Sumi and Arisa until two, and I’d rather be asleep. Text me when your flight lands.” “I will,” says Ernest, but Lydia has hung up before he finishes.  6 pm. Ernest eats minestrone soup and caramelized mushroom ravioli, and reads The Hound of the Baskerville s for the thirteenth time. In an earlier page of his notebook, he has written that there is no statistical evidence to prove that the number thirteen is actually unlucky. As soon as he finishes this reread, he will flip back to the beginning and start over.  “Can I get you anything else?” asks the waitress, which means that either he’ll need to order something else, or get out of there so another customer can sit down. But this padded chair is more comfortable than the airport seats, so he orders an American mule and reads chapter eleven.  In front of him on the table are six felt-tip pens, and a set of sticky tabs with colors corresponding to the pens: cherry for well-written prose, rust for quotes he appreciates, dandelion for foreshadowing, and so on. He takes a sip of the mule and uncaps a pen (green, for thought-provoking passages), writes a notes, with the date beneath it. He adds a tab above it, perfectly aligned with the printed text.  “Ernest Carter?” The voice above him is sharp, not quite nasal, and Ernest looks up, then squints in slight disbelief.  The woman who stands in front of him has artificially red hair, and although he hasn’t seen her in what feels like forever, he still recognizes the thin lips and perpetually cocked eyebrows. “Tessa Rowe?” She wrinkles her nose a little. “It’s Tessa Gellway now,” she tells him, “but yeah.” Tessa had been Lydia’s best friend for all of middle school and most of high school. They’d been inseparable, almost sisters, and Tessa had spent more time at their house than she had her own, although she never talked about her family. She has always regarded Ernest with a kind of removed disdain, as if it was a coincidence he lived in the same house as Lydia, as if she were more a member of Ernest’s family than he was. “Funny,” says Ernest, “I’d never have thought I’d run into anyone here.” He’d moved away for college when Lydia was thirteen, and hadn’t witnessed the falling out, but he remembers vividly the phone call from Lydia at one in the morning in her junior year of high school. She’d been crying already, voice hoarse and broken over the phone. Tessa had turned all her friends against her somehow, and now no one would speak to her. At the time Lydia had a boyfriend whom Tessa had taken for herself, but she wasn’t upset about the guy. She was upset about Tessa. “I didn’t realize you lived in Chicago,” says Tessa.  “I don’t,” says Ernest. In his notebook, he would like to calculate the probability of running into someone you know at the airport, which probably decreases as the length of time since you’ve seen them increases, and your lives gradually diverge overtime. “I’m on a layover.” Lydia hadn’t really made any more close friends until she’d moved to Japan halfway through her undergrad. By that time Ernest had finished college and moved back to Indiana, close enough to see their parents a few times a month, but not more than that. He and Lydia had been best friends the summer before she moved, haunting museums and board game cafes. She brought her easel and paints to his apartment and worked on her landscapes while he watches architecture documentaries on weekends. He’d helped her pack stuff into suitcases to bring overseas. Tessa glances at her phone and takes a step back, but lingers, looking just to the side of him. He runs a fingertip around the rim of his glass. “How’s Lydia?” He’d been surprised when, on one of their scheduled phone calls, Lydia had told him she’d met someone. Ichiro was sweet, and when he’d come home with Lydia that Christmas he’d shown Ernest photos of his indoor seedling experiments, and watched Agatha Christie film adaptations with him and analyzed all the evidence. Lydia had been thrilled they got along so well, but the odds hadn’t been against her. There weren’t many people Ernest didn’t get along with.  “Good,” says Ernest, surprising himself with the smile that creeps over his face. “Really good. She lives in Japan.” Tessa frowns, but doesn’t say anything else. Ernest runs a hand on the edge of the table. He would like to call Lydia now, just to hear her voice again, but she would groan at him for calling while she’s at work, and anyway, he doesn’t know what he would say. Instead, he gives Tessa a placid smile, and opens up his notebook, clicking open his pen. “Well. I’m sure you have a flight to get to. It was nice seeing you.” 7 pm. Back in the vinyl airport seats.  “Have I seen you before?” asks a woman in a green dress with honey hair twisted back from her face. Her narrow nose and wide-set eyes are unfamiliar. “I don’t think so,” says Ernest. In his notebook, he writes that the odds of running into someone you know at the airport is approximately one in fifty-thousand. 9 pm. He’s migrated to a high table and stool where he can charge his laptop as he works. He hasn’t quite gotten to the point where exhaustion trumps the discomfort of the seating, so he might as well be productive, earbuds playing a quiet combination of rain and white noise he combined himself for optimal calm and focus. As a bonus, it drowns out the baby across the gate whimpering into its mother’s shoulder. He is running two fingers up and down the cord of the earbuds, when a voice somewhere above him says, “Ern!” Ernest has not been called Ern for at least twelve years, but automatically, he looks up. “Henry?” Henry Bryant looks much the same as he did in his undergrad years, except for a premature graying around the temples, and a deepening of the crow’s feet around his eyes. He has an army green backpack slung over one shoulder, which he slides to the floor as he pulls out the chair across from Ernest and sits. “God, it’s been years. What are you doing in Chicago?” “I’ve got a layover,” says Ernest, “but I’m going to Japan for my sister’s wedding.” Henry was his first roommate, and they’d stayed friends all through college, although they were so different, none of their other friends had understood why. Somehow it had worked. Henry could talk all he wanted and Ernest could listen and not say anything without feeling awkward. He’d gone on Henry’s hikes and weekend camping trips whenever Henry urged him to get outside more, and Henry had accompanied him to libraries and jazz bars where Ernest could take in information and organize it in his mind all he wanted.  “Great. That’s great. Tell Lydia I said hi.” “I will. Funny, you’re the second person I’ve run into today.” It was Henry who’d first started calling him Ern, and soon everyone, even their professors, were doing it. Ernest just sounded so damn pretentious, Henry had said, and maybe that was true, but Ernest had thought that ‘Ern’, if anything, sounded a little morbid. He hadn’t really cared what people called him, though. He’d been happy to have friends who liked him enough to give him nicknames. “Have you seen Jess, or Tony? Or Martin?” “No,” says Ernest. “No, I haven’t seen anyone in years.” He digs his fingertips into his knees under the table, feeling the corduroy over the jut of bone. He thinks about the probability of running into someone you know, written neatly in his notebook, in sharp black pen. “Aw, that’s too bad.” Henry’s face crinkles in a half-smile, all eyes and no mouth. “We should do some kind of a reunion, get the gang back together again.” “Yes,” says Ernest. “That would be enlightening.” He runs a thumb over the bend of his knee, and corrects himself. “That would be great.” They hadn’t talked much, after Henry had moved to Seattle to work a fancy office job and cross hiking trails off the bucket list. Ernest had considered moving overseas to study in England, but ended up floating from one job to another, data analyst, library assistant, and finally risk management, which at least paid the bills. Years ago he had talked about flying over to Seattle to give Henry a visit, but hadn’t been able to get the time off. They were friends on Facebook—but Ernest spent very little time on social media. “Great,” Henry echoes. He slings his backpack back over his shoulder and stands up just a little, hands braced against the edge of the table. “Well, listen, I gotta go, but it was great to see you. Tell Lydia I said hi.” “I will,” says Ernest. Once Henry is gone, he pulls out his spiral bound notebook, and clicks open his pen. 11 pm. Ernest sits on the floor, leaning against the wall, with his legs stretched in front of him and jacket draped over himself like a blanket. He snores softly. 1 am. Still on the floor, he eats the salted peanuts he bought earlier. He can’t sleep anymore, so he opens his notebook. He writes a list of the next ten books he would like to read, and another list of the most common words and phrases in Japanese, which he has memorized from Lydia’s dictionary, and then he calculates the probability running into two people you know at the airport, two people who have never met before and are completely unrelated to each other.  Then, on a whim, he calculates the probability of running into three people you know. The odds are one in a million. “Ernest?” His breath catches. After all these years, he’d recognize her voice anywhere. For half a second he doesn’t look up, wondering if he’s just imagining her. He’s been awake for so long that everything feels like a dream. The odds that she’s just in his head are greater than the odds that she’s actually here. When he lifts his head she is standing over him, and she looks the same as she always had, a dark halo of curls around a freckled face, deep eyes, beautiful lips. She looks like an angel, just as he always thought she had.  “Ivy.” Her lips purse in a small smile and she steps closer, kneels and then sits against the wall, leather bag in her lap, shoulder and hip brushing his. If it were anyone else, he’d bristle, but it’s her, and it means she is real. He can smell her perfume, lavender and something else he can’t identify.  “Ernest,” she says again, and when she says his name it sounds soft and exquisite, “how are you?” Ernest closes his eyes, feeling the warm shape of her beside him, and exhales. “Lonely,” he says. Ivy says nothing for a moment, and then she says, “I’m sorry.”  They weren’t exes, not really. They’d never actually dated.  They’d met at a party, one that Henry had dragged him to, all purple lighting and music with too much bass and alcohol perfumed breath. He saw her before she saw him, red shoes and a white silk dress that rippled like the ocean in a storm as she danced. He had watched her, entranced, until drunk hands had shoved him to the side and he got lost in a throat of shoulders and knees, and the only escape was the porch steps and the cold night air. She joined him only a minute later, as if she’d been watching him the whole time. Out here all by yourself, handsome?  she’d asked, and they’d laughed as if they’d known each other their whole lives. “What are you doing now?” she asks. Her right hand rests on her knee, so close it’s nearly touching his, but not. “Risk management.” Ivy laughs, and though it’s quiet it sounds just the same as when she used to laugh as loud and strong as the wind. He’s missed it. “That’s just like you,” she says. She doesn’t tell him what she’s doing, or where she’s been. Instead she asks, “Do you remember that weekend in the field?” He does. They had known each other a year by then, and they had become binary stars, infinitely circling each other. On the first warm night of the year they had driven out to the middle of nowhere and not told anyone where they were, relishing the spontaneity like wild birds. He had read poetry aloud while she watched, openly staring, and she had taught him how to dance and showed him how to find Saturn with her telescope.  He hadn’t brought his notebook. For once, he hadn’t needed it.  “I remember,” he says. She left before they graduated, and she didn’t tell him why, or where she was going. She hadn’t answered his calls, and none of her friends had known where she was either. He can’t explain her leaving even now, only that it was like having the thread between his heart and his lungs snap. Like having his ribs ripped apart and hands grasp the wreckage inside to tear it out. In all these years the pain has faded to a dull thrum, but still sometimes when he thinks about her his sternum screams like it’s burning from the inside out.  “I still dream of you,” he says, quiet. They are not looking at each other. “I dream of you too.” Between them, their hands intertwine. They are silent for a long time. Then, like breaking crystal, he asks, “When’s your flight?” Ivy shifts, takes a breath. “Two. I should probably go.” She stands, leather bag back over her shoulder, and he stands too, still so close, fitting together. They don’t exchange information. He doesn’t ask where she’s going. After all, their lives have diverged so much, what would be the point? Meeting here was just a failing of probability, a tiny chink in the equation.  The moment is almost over.  Ivy holds his face in her hand, soft palm against an angular jaw, and he leans into it. “Ernest,” she says, one last time, and it sounds like a prayer. She presses a kiss to his temple, dark curls caressing his cheek, a whisper of breath against his jaw. And then she is gone.  3 am. He does not sleep, and he does not write. He watches the moon disappear over the horizon. 4 am. He’s standing in line waiting to board so he can pretend to sleep for the next fourteen hours. His mouth tastes bitter, and his jacket is creased across the sleeves. There’s a text on his phone, from Lydia. Just had dinner. You boarding soon?  He types out a reply, and a second later gets back, See you in 14 hours :) “Have a good flight,” says the attendant scanning his boarding pass. He’s too exhausted to smile, but he nods. His seat (18D) is an aisle seat, and when he gets there the rest of the row is full. The person by the window is fast asleep, eyes covered by an orange sleep mask, and the middle seat is a familiar face. It’s the woman with the green dress and narrow nose. She’s reading The Hound of the Baskervilles.  When he sits down, she looks up, and her face changes. “Hey, I recognize you.” He smiles, just barely. “I guess you were onto something there.” It’s a statistical improbability, but it’s not impossible. The woman slides a bookmark into the book, closes it, and holds out her hand. “I’m Meg,” she says. He takes it. “I’m Ernest.” Lyra Cupala studies Theatre and English at Whitworth University. She currently runs her school’s student lit mag, and is working on the second draft of a novel.

I. Quest Before what happened to Christine, before arriving in Iraq, before even leaving Nebraska, all we knew for sure was  that there would be violence and sand. We began by trying to solve the wrong problem. Although wearing our gas masks in sandstorms was almost certainly the most sensible way to avoid breathing difficulty and probably eye damage, the memory of her exiting a port-a-potty in one, sand swirling around her, still chills me. So much can hide in the sand when it’s like that—some things you want to conceal and some you later try desperately to uncover. And I guess some that you’re just not sure about.  I remember lying and sweating on my cot, mask in place outside our tent, my head hanging over the edge so that she was upside down in the haze walking toward me, her uniform covered in the white ragged circles of salt from her sweat. It was only Christine, but with the fog creeping inward on my mask’s lenses, she seemed like an astronaut on Mars. And in the mask, she looked like the rest of us. Like nothing special at all. * She came from another unit, somewhere far away like Maine. I don’t know why she was transferred, but someone said she’d been a stripper there. Her unit wasn’t deploying, and ours was—and in need of military police—so I guess that was it; it didn’t have anything to do with stripping if that was even true. She didn’t seem like the type.  The rest of us girls weren’t MPs. I was an admin clerk, but the others were medics and food service. Four of us altogether. Well, five if you counted Christine, but we never did. She slept in the female tent, but she rarely talked, and, yes, I have to say it, even though no one else did, she was startling. I mean that in the literal sense, that her beauty was so strange it startled you. I won’t describe her; it wouldn’t do her justice. Just picture what you will.  I always thought of her as a bird I’d seen on the cover of National Geographic from one of the donation boxes that came in every week: a grey crowned crane; it has a halo. And dignity, like her. Her face made her less welcome in our tent, where we sat around, breathing in burn-pit fumes, sweating with IVs in, courtesy of the medics, and watching Sex and the City  on scratched and skipping DVDs. And being less welcome in our tent meant being vulnerable. We weren’t the only ones bored, and we were far outnumbered.  We had a plan, and in our defense, we did try to tell her. It was when we were washing our uniforms. We only had two because this was the beginning of the war, what we all later called the Wild  West , when units of untrained reservists were handed M16s and sent to do infantry work, regardless of their actual job. All that meant, when it came to uniforms, was that we had to wear one and wash the other in buckets with grey water every so often.  When it came to everything else, it meant innumerable things. Like, we took the plates out of our vests on patrol because it was so hot, they were heavy, and it made more sense to us to carry snacks in there. Like, we didn’t have armored vehicles, so we put sandbags under our feet to slow rolling over if we hit IEDs, and we actually thought it would work. Like, we took pictures with ammo we found in the desert and explored old bunkers as if this was summer camp.  Nonetheless, uniform washing provided a good opportunity to talk. And Christine, perfect as she was, still had to wash her uniform. So, pastel wash buckets in a line next to the water truck, we orchestrated a casual intervention, like hyenas luring our crowned crane to the watering hole. “May I join you ladies?” Peterson asked, but we were prepared for this.  “Hey, we need to chat about something. Would you mind coming back in twenty?” I said, walking him away. “And tell your friends.”  Christine looked up at this. “What’s going on?”  Monica, the only sergeant among us, but still just Monica to us, said “Let’s take our buckets over there.” She pointed to sand far enough from the water truck to avoid overhearing.  “Look,” I said when we’d started washing, water warmed by the sun battling ineffectually against salt stains and dust. “You have to choose someone.” “What are you talking about?” she asked, but I knew she had to understand. “You have to pick a guy,” Nikita said. “Anyone want an IV?” She hooked Jen up, and I said, “I can’t believe we have to explain this, but the reason you are constantly fending off guys is because you haven’t chosen one yet. And it’s not just about you, you know. We don’t want random MPs creeping around the tent all the time.” “You mean like the dudes you guys are fucking?” she asked. “I’m not into them  creeping around either.” Monica, perhaps due to the emotional escalation, jumped in. However , the truth was that even though Monica outranked us, she wasn’t really into leadership. “Look, having a boyfriend at home isn’t enough. You need to have someone here who they respect enough to leave you alone,” she said, kind of too quietly, I thought. “Christine, they will keep hounding you until you pick one of them,” I clarified. “Simple as that.” My hands were getting pruney, but submergence in water was a luxury, and I didn’t want to be done. I watched the bubbles spread to the edges of the bucket and slowly dissipate, and I wanted to put my face in the water and stay there forever. “I don’t have a boyfriend at home, and I don’t want one here. I’m not going to have sex with someone so that you guys feel better. None of this is your business.” Christine wrung out her uniform, dumped her bucket, and walked away. “Hey, we tried,” Monica said. “Right? Cara?” It was shocking how quickly the moisture left your body here. My hands were dry, not a wrinkle on them now. I nodded. “There’s only so much you can do,” I said.  “And you know she was a stripper in Michigan, right? Maybe she knows what she’s getting into,” Jen said. “Maine,” Nikita said.  “Right. Well, I’m sure they have strippers there, too.” Jen said. Nikita looked at me, waiting, and I said, “Tell the guys to keep an eye out for her anyway.” She nodded, satisfied, I guess, and we got up to leave. The trouble was that our guys were not MPs, so our guys were never close enough to keep anyone safe but us. II. Love I had a secret. I was happy on that deployment, really happy. I loved being part of a team and being valued. I hadn’t fit in in high school, mostly because I was too smart for the normal classes and too poor for the gifted ones. But here, my poverty was an asset. I used tenacity and ingenuity to solve problems, the way only someone with a lifetime of training could. I was used to dirt and hard work,sleeping on the ground,  eating terrible food or going hungry. I didn’t have to waste time becoming adjusted to our situation or wishing I was somewhere else. When we couldn’t get enough water shipped in, some of the girls wasted what we had washing their hair, but I cut mine off. In Iraq, the guys called me Sunshine. For the first time, I flourished. I pretended I hated it, but secretly, it felt like home. Christine had a secret, too. III. Knowledge I spent the day Christine was raped with the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran—the MEK, eating biscuits made from chickpeas called nan-e nokhodchi and drinking dark orange tea heated with their samovar. I was the only female w ho worked in the command tent, mostly filling out forms and fending off the Major’s childlike advances, so I got to drive them to the meeting. The MEK was still a terrorist group then, but borderline, in possession of things we needed, and, importantly for me, mostly matriarchal. So, I joined the officers in the Humvee on an adventure outside the wire to represent all American women, though I’m not sure that including one who was so inferior that she was driver, note-taker, and photographer all in one sent the message they thought it did. They were certainly annoyed when the female generals addressed their questions to me and served my tea first.  But that story is always tainted in my memory by the worst sandstorm we saw on that year-long deployment and what happened to Christine when it kept the officers away from camp for so long. It rolled in like waves of a waterless ocean. The tent shook, and the MEK covered their mouths with their hijabs. Less prepared, we pulled our shirts up over our mouths and noses as professionally as we could. But the wind was too strong, and sand stung our faces through and around the tent walls, so one of the MEK soldiers shoved blankets in our direction. I helped cover the officer nearest me, but we’d run out of blankets by then. The youngest general came to me and covered us both. Our faces were side by side, and we smelled like sweat and dirt and tea under the blanket.  I suppose it was obvious I was terrified from my shaking, so she told me a story muffled by the roaring wind, by sand simultaneously pounding and peppering the tent, by her accent, and by her hijab. But I clung to the words like they were all that was real.  It was about birds. The birds didn’t have a leader, so the wise hoopoe thought they should find the most righteous and courageous bird to lead them—the simorgh. She lived in the middle of a sea in a tree that held all the seeds of the world. When she flew away, a thousand branches grew, and when she came back, a thousand branches broke, and the seeds fell into the sea.  To get to her, they had to cross seven valleys, each with its own peril. Along the way some of the birds died from fright or thirst or violence, until only thirty were left. When they reached the tree in the sea, they learned that the simorgh was their reflection, their shadow: si : thirty, and morgh : birds. But not all along; the simorgh was the thirty birds who crossed the seven valleys, not the untested ones that began the journey. It was dark under the blanket so I couldn’t see much of her face while she told the story, but suddenly, the tent, which had been flapping wildly, partially dislodged, and we were exposed to the storm. The wind beat us down, and my young MEK general—I didn’t remember her name—pushed me to the ground and covered my body with hers. Sand cut into our skin through the blanket, and then I saw something I never expected. Lightning. So bright, I couldn’t mistake it even through tightly woven wool. Lightning without rain, breaking up billowing clouds of sand in brilliant, ragged lines. Although dwarfed in significance by what followed, it is still the most magnificent event I’ve personally witnessed. * It was night by the time we could leave. We picked ourselves up along with what was left of our military bearingless gracefully than our hosts who were presumably used to such intrusive acts of God, and drove dazed and shaking back to camp. But before we left, they agreed to provide us water and internet, so the Major said all in all, it was a successful journey. IV. Detachment A farmer from a family of Quakers, the Major maintained that attaining water rendered the mission a success, “because, Sunshine, we can’t live without water.” But he didn’t sound as convincing when the doc visited the command tent with news from Christine’s examination. Of course, the other officers thought I couldn’t hear or wouldn’t understand or didn’t care, but the Major sent me outside. The thing is that a tent only blocks eyes, not ears.  “There’s considerable damage,” the doc said.  “Definitely forced? Or borderline? What’s she saying?” one of the officers asked. “I mean, I can’t say for sure, but it looks bad. She’s saying forced.” “Who was it?” the Major asked. “That’s not really my department. I think you should ask her.” I didn’t finish listening because I decided to ask her for him. And for her. Our camp was in shambles from the storm, so almost everyone was helping rebuild it. Returning personal items to their owners that scattered across the sand and re-erecting tents in groups of four or so. If I didn’t know better, this could have been the scene from any missionary trip—college kids setting up an area to feed refugees or provide medical aid. Because we were  college kids; almost all of us joined the reserves to pay for school and left it to play soldier. Though, I guess, some took it more seriously than the rest of us, testing the line between machismo and misogyny.  I couldn’t find Christine, but the other girls were gathered in our tent, setting it all back up again. “Is it true?” Nikita asked me when I stepped inside. “I think they’re trying to find out,” I said. “Where is she?” “Not helping us,” Jen muttered.  I ignored her. “So you guys weren’t around? What happened?” Monica said, “We were here, trying to keep from blowing away with the tent. She was supposed to be on patrol, I think.” “So it was an MP,” I said. “We don’t even know it was rape. She might be just saying that because those guys have all that booze, and she didn’t want to get into trouble,” Jen said, and right then I knew the officers were working out that narrative for themselves.  “Well, who assisted the doc?” I asked Nikita and Monica, the medics.  “Neither of us,” Monica said. “She didn’t want us there.” I took a deep breath. How much she must hate us to go to the doc alone, to feel safer without the only other females in camp. I knew there was something wrong with us, something damaged. Why else would we have abandoned her? It was the only explanation. We were broken.  V. Unity Before I even found Christine, everyone was unified in the narrative. Nothing else we did was particularly efficient or organized, but in the face of a threat, suddenly we were the dream team. She was a voice shattering what we wanted to believe in. That we were the good guys, the civilized ones, doing something worthwhile. It was a lie, I could see then, that made it bearable for them. I didn’t need that lie; I just wanted to belong to something, and I didn’t care too much if it was something good.  Christine was behind our tent, on top of a shipping container, staring out into the world beyond the concertina wire. I climbed up, sat down next to her, and handed her my water. From the container to as far as I could see there was nothing but sand. Nothing. “So everyone knows?” she asked. “No. Only you know.”  I was watching the nothingness, not her, so her sob surprised me. She crumpled next to me, and I wrapped my arm around her and pushed her head onto my shoulder. “I’m supposed to be a cop,” she said through tears. “I can’t even protect myself.” “No. He’s  supposed to be a cop. It was an MP, right? You’re supposed to depend on your battle buddy to watch your back, not assault  you. What a piece of shit.” “I can’t go down there.” I nodded. “Then I’ll bring you food up here. I mean, the only enemy here is us.” She hugged me and drank the rest of my water.  “Are you scared?” I wanted to ask, but I didn’t, and I didn’t say: “You have to turn him in. He can’t be allowed to go around hurting people. Was it Martin? DeMazzo?” I just hugged her back.  But she was  scared so we stayed on top of the container where she could see anyone who approached. And I could feel the unit holding its breath to see what damage Christine was going to do. What she did was tell me her secret. “Did you drink with him or was that just something else they made up?” I asked, still not knowing who him  referred to. She shook her head.  “Do you want me to tell them that?” She stared at the desert. “No. It doesn’t matter.” “It might help—”  “It doesn’t matter, Cara. People have consensual sex without alcohol every day.” “I’m just saying that it might make it more likely—” “Cara,” she interrupted quietly. “Can I trust you?”  “Of course,” I said. “Look, if you tell me that you made the whole thing up, I will take it to my grave.” “What? No. The reason it couldn’t have possibly been consensual is because,” she breathed out. “I’m gay.” So, I finally understood. “And he knows.” She nodded. She didn’t have to tell me that was probably why he did it. She didn’t have to tell me that it was worse to be gay than raped in the Army in 2003, when don’t ask, don’t tell was still enforced. And she didn’t have to tell me that she could be kicked out and unable to pay for college. “I am so sorry,” I told her. She looked at me, and I think she understood what I meant. She handed me the hot sauce from her MRE. She hated it, and I loved it, so it worked out well. I looked at the little glass bottle. It seemed so out of place in an MRE. “You know, I’ve never met a gay person before,” I said naively, the way only an eighteen-year-old from Nebraska two decades ago could. She laughed. “I bet you fifty bucks that’s not true.” I looked up at her, and I understood a bit more. After a day or so, the rest of the girls started taking shifts watching while she tried to sleep, stockpiling MREs, taking her to the latrines. And slowly we all moved up there with her, our cots in a row with her in the middle, and she slept again. Through the whole night.  VI. Wonder The other girls still had to do their jobs, so they left during the day, but the Major strongly implied that my mission was to watch Christine, whether to keep her safe or to keep them safe, I never asked. So, I brought up binoculars to make her feel like she was contributing to security, and when I returned with more MREs and some magazines from care packages, she said, “Come here.” She handed me the binoculars and pointed in the direction of the MEK camp. It was still beyond sight, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to see. “Are you at the horizon?” she asked. “Mmhmm.” “Okay, down three inches and two to the right.” She waited. “Do you see it?” “The rock thing?” “Yes! It’s a fulgurite! From the lightening the day of the storm.” The thing I was looking at was like a weird coral rock, ragged and crooked and thin. But it was strange because there was nothing else out there at all. “How do you know that? Are you sure?” “I was a meteorology major. And I guess I’m not completely sure; it’s pretty far away, but I am damn close. It’s glass . Glass formed by lightning hitting the sand. Isn’t that amazing?” “Like a sculpture,” I said. “Out there, in the middle of nothing.” “People used to call them fingers of God,” she said. I looked through the binoculars again. It was pointing toward us. “Let’s go see it,” I said, and she smiled. Borrowing a Humvee was easy at that point because the officers were terrified of her. When the Major gave me the keys, extra ammo, and a walkie talkie, he just said, “It’s a four-seater, so fill all four seats. And be careful, Sunshine.” He knew that she would never leave the wire with a man, and I like to think he also knew that she needed this. Still, I had to say, “Walters, Sir. Or Cara.” He nodded and looked tired. “Be safe, Walters.” VII. Death We all went. There were four seats and five of us. Jen said, “I can’t believe this is happening” from the back between the medics. I drove, and Christine directed. The cool thing about nothingness and an off-road vehicle is that you can drive in a straight line, and it was actually safer than roads there because no one plants IEDs in the open desert. All you had to worry about were landmines from the Gulf War, and most of those were probably too old to blow up. The fulgurite was about twelve feet long, curved like an elderly finger toward our camp. It felt like hollow rock, and when we were finished touching it and gaping at it, we sat down under its crook. Christine started laughing and couldn’t stop. We exchanged looks that were somewhere between worried and hopeful and waited. When she caught her breath, she looked at us and wiped her eyes. “I told him I wanted to see the lightning, so he came with, and we had to hide in the shipping container when the storm got bad.” “The container we’ve been living on?” I asked, shocked. I could not believe we moved onto the place she was raped, that she had wanted to stay there. But she didn’t seem to hear me and said, “And here it is. A fulgurite is petrified lightning . It would have waited for me forever.” I looked up at the glass suspended by a force I hadn’t even known about and saw a tiny clear spot that reflected my eye and nose and some of Christine’s face, too, and her halo. Still there. Still dignified. “Yeah,” I said. “But you’d never have known if you weren’t sitting on top of that container with a pair of binoculars.” She looked at me for a second and then ran her index finger over God’s. Michelle's fiction is included in Umbrella Factory Magazine, Hair Trigger Magazine, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Maudlin House, The Big Ugly Review, and Fine Lines Journal. It has been awarded a Gold Circle Award for fiction from the CSPA. She holds a BFA in fiction writing and a JD. Find her at www.michellereneebrady.com .