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Dear Readers, Authors, and Supporters of RF: This One's for You One year ago, I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar…no, that’s not true. But to be honest, that would probably have been more interesting and profitable. Actually, I was working in a soul-sucking desk job where the only saving grace was my co-workers. I was unaware that an Indie Lit World existed or that people published work in digital presses. So, when one of said co-workers, Tiffany, started talking about starting an online press I really had no idea what she was going on about or if she was serious. She was totally serious. In the past twelve months, I have had the pleasure of reading so many amazing pieces of writing and connecting with so many very cool people. The whole thing is kind of unreal. I feel like I have this one life where I’m still trudging away at the same soul-sucking desk job. But I also have a much more vivid life where I get to read tons of submissions, sometimes I even get to polish them up, just a little, so a bright and beautiful piece can shine just a tad brighter. Having someone trust you with their words? Their creations? That is truly an honor. Or I get to sit in on “A Word?” and watch Kellie do her magic. Or enjoy cocktails with a group of inspiring writers and watch them do their magic. It’s really been fucking awesome. So I feel I must extend a heartfelt and gigantic Thank You to all of our contributors, readers, interviewees (is that a word?) Everyone who has participated in or attended an RF reading or Cocktail Hour. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You have made everything a little shinier in this old girl’s life! Oh, look at me getting all shouty again!! I cannot wait to see what the next year holds for us all. I’m just waiting for the next “I have an idea…” text. With much love and tons of appreciation, Marianne Baretsky Peterson In the year of our Lord 2021, Tiffany Storrs made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. What does one say when someone presents you with an opportunity to work with absolutely incredible writers, to interview some of the coolest people on the planet and get you writing again yourself? You say YES goddamit! A year has passed and it all has exceeded my wildest expectations. From the book clubs where we get to vibe off of our already loving and silly relationship while talking about work that is so breathtakingly beautiful, that I choke up reading it aloud, to the cocktail hours where I meet all of you for a drink and a little creativity, there is no substitute for what it brings to what I consider a wonderful life experience. Then there is “A Word?”, my absolute truest love. Getting to know all of you, your process, and making connections with people from all over the world. In the depths of a pandemic, it feels like it literally saved my life, and I didn’t even know it needed saving. Marianne, Tiffany and I carry a similar vision, and we work hard to try to give you what will fuel your creativity and feel a part of something. However, none of it is possible without YOU. I want to thank the authors, artists, creatives, and readers, for sharing your truest selves with us for the last year. Also, the positive support from the writing community for this press is unparalleled. Keep writing, keep expressing the important truths you hold. The artists will save us, and pull us out of these dark times. You have done that for me, I will continue to be there, holding up some corner of this press for a long time, until they kick me out at least. I will be here for you. I will read your words, and I will love every minute of it. I don’t like to drop names but… 12 years ago, Oprah grabbed a hold of my shoulders as I was getting on an airplane. She looked me in the eye and said “Dream Bigger”. She said this twice. I could not fathom what she meant. I mean, c’mon, I was in Australia with Oprah, how much bigger can it get? And on Sept. 4th, 2022..I finally know what she meant. Viva la Roi! Kellie Scott-Reed AEIC I've always had a complicated relationship with the word "no." As a kid, it was the one word I was never allowed to say to my parents, and the one I was never allowed to question when it was said to me. I was a people pleaser baby, so my childhood was spent adhering to that mindset, revering it, never enforcing it myself but being made aware of my own limitations every time it was uttered. As you can imagine, that led to some disastrous results later in life. I was precocious, nonetheless, and the older I got, the more "no" changed shape for me. It became less of an absolute and more of a suggestion, a detour, a sign that, if something was important enough, I should find another way to do it. I was bright and feisty, and more often than not, I did just that. Fast forward 20, 25 years. I am a part-time writer and toying with the idea of pursuing traditional publication on a collection of short stories I had cobbled together through lulls in my miserable day job in 2019. The more I explored that path, the less it felt right. Elements of it felt disingenuous, salesy, a little cheap. No one told me no, but it felt like one. So, without being consciously aware of it, I started formulating another way to do it. A lot of divine circumstance and daydreaming later, I decided to start RF. I can't say it's the first time the idea crossed my mind, but it was the first time it had legs underneath it, something concrete, nearly tangible. If you're unhappy, you eventually wind up running out of suggestions to second-guess yourself with, and you eventually just do it. That was over a year ago now, and I could not have imagined how much the press would grow and change in that time, how much I would change, how grateful and proud I would be. The point of my babbling here is really just to drive home the fact that you find where you belong, in case you've ever doubted it. You'll know it when you feel it but that doesn't mean it's going to come easy. Sometimes you have to put yourself out there in ways you weren't expecting. Sometimes you have to trust that you might not fail, but if you do, you didn't go down without a fight, and that's worth something. Sometimes you have to detach from an outcome long enough to give yourself a shot at it. Sometimes, you have to hear "no" just often enough to let it guide you to finding another way to do it. There is always a way. The last year is as close to concrete proof as I have. To our authors, our readers, and everyone who has seen fit to give RF the time of day in its infancy, I say what I always say to you: thank you for everything you've given to us, to the written word, and to each other. You may never truly know what it means to us, but I do, and it does not go unnoticed or unappreciated. The best is yet to come. To the future! Happy fucking birthday, Roi Fainéant! XOXO, Tiff

CAVED SILHOUETTES With tired feet we run while the woods peel back on their own past the boarded homes we played in past crusty folds we slept in past the herb-riddled gardens we fed from and the laundry machines we checked for quarters as we reach to clutch and hold and breathe with mixed intent reaching for our hands unclasped unwilling undaunted by the tide rolling over these woods now salted and swept clean of silhouettes traveling beneath these caved walls and rooted memories we look down at the smiling corpses caught in the thickets of our dreams, content to mingle and haunt and moan. FOREVER MORE boil me up a pot of spuds free the chicks from the pen lay low the shovels and axes and get to pickin' the yard full of sticks it's still cold outside the wind has not forgotten as the wagon rolls towards Fandango and the birds cry out for seedlings set Paddy up with a fresh round of whisky open the windows throw open the doors the air in here is sucking at the stillness in our hearts come around Sister Mary let the other nuns pray some more bless me with forgiveness my bride can't take no more roll me slow, roll me out out of this barren cloud of muck bring along the boys and their wicker baskets beat them till their sore lets your wrists feel for the springtime nestled 'neath the falling sky let the snow melt 'cross our faces as we sing a song forever more Rob Azevedo is a writer and radio host from Pembroke NH. He has written three books, one memoir, "Notes From the Last Breath Farm" and two books of poetry, "Turning On The Wasp" and "Don't Order The Calamari."

A Woman Witnesses Velvet Shedding In the woods behind her house, half a mile from the Savannah River, she hears the bellow of a buck. Googling white-tail deer, this woman learns it is rut season. She takes a deep dive into the world of deer hormones and is startled by the pairing of two words— shedding and velvet. Life is a series of odd pairings; paradox has hardened her some. She then reads when the buck’s antlers stop growing, losing blood flow, their velvet covering peels off. A velvet shedding madness happens but a hundred yards from her bed, its own paradox happening nightly. Could her itch yield new antlers too? She too a complex trophy as mating ensues under loblolly pines. But rut season means hunting season. Nothing will keep the bolt action rifles from up the deer stand opening weekend. Trail cameras show a trophy buck behind the antlers. Look for the does, the hunting websites advise— let their estrus work for you. Tonight, she is startled by another act of cruelty, reading about the British radio host— Steve Allen— atop his platform, the crosshairs of his tongue fixed on chubby little thing Tilly Ramsay. Let us not forget, taxidermists prepare for every girl. Chronic Pain A woman finds her husband has been on dating apps / she regrets looking through his iPad / insomnia / This isn’t the first time she’s had to find the hammer / Sometimes it’s in the junk drawer, sometimes under the sink / It seems to appear in her hand / She rubs her thumb over its steel head— cold & smooth & hardened like memory / Eight years earlier this woman earned a modest advance for her book / She bought a laptop / The day she approved the galleys, she went into labor / Her husband covered his eyes with his Dodgers hat / he couldn’t watch // Their daughter broke through the amniotic sac / The new mother didn’t sleep for months / She soaked her swollen vagina in warm water, filled hospital gloves with ice and stuffed them into her panties to soothe the stitched flesh / Before long, she found herself using the hammer on the laptop— shards of glass & silicon & plastic landed in the creases of the stroller / Her daughter is older and / she watches her mother on the front porch smashing the iPad with a hammer / her father comes home with a new tattoo that spells her mother’s name in cursive / as the girl’s thumb rubs over the bandage, she wonders how much it hurt. Candice Kelsey is an educator and poet living in Georgia. She serves as a creative writing mentor with PEN America's Prison & Justice Writing Program; her work appears in Grub Street, Poet Lore, Lumiere Review, Hawai'i Pacific Review, and Poetry South among other journals. Recently, she was chosen as a finalist in Iowa Review's Poetry Contest and Cutthroat's Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Find her @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.

A song about soaking in the sun plays over the loudspeakers. I wait in the aisle with the wrists braces and heating pads and watch the pharmacist frown at his computer. His haircut is new, and his coat is ironed crisp. Sometimes he gets sweaty and takes it off and rolls up the sleeves of his button-down. When he’s busy, he’ll hold the pharmacy phone in one hand and wipe the sweat off his brow with the other. “Penny?” one of the assistants calls from the window. She doesn’t smile at me; it’s a chain pharmacy, not a small-town apothecary, and there’s no time for niceties. “Yep,” I say, but my voice is so small because as soon as I start to speak, the pharmacist looks over at me from the back, and he smiles a little so I choke on my own saliva. I cough and try again. “That’s me.” “You can wait outside the booth,” the assistant says. She gestures at a makeshift cubicle with frosted glass walls and a red cartoon Band-Aid on the door. It’s got a smiley face and sunglasses, and it’s giving me a thumbs up. I’m sweating and my shirt is sticking to my underarms. I am suffocating, and I smell like shallots, and my mother is calling for the fourth time today. “Mom, I’m busy,” I say. “Doing what?” she says. A blow-dryer’s going in the background. “I’m getting my flu shot.” “I get sick every time I get one of those. And this year, when I didn’t get one? Guess what? Didn’t get sick.” “Listen I have to go.” “What, are they about to stick you right now?” “I’ll call you back.” “You’ll forget.” “Text me, then.” “I miss my Blackberry, it was so much easier to text.” “Wrong, those buttons were tiny.” “They were not, they were better, and my screen never broke, you know how many times I’ve shattered this one? Seven times!” The pharmacist rounds the corner with a syringe rolling back and forth in a plastic tray. My stomach flips. He will be able to smell me. “I’m hanging up,” I whisper. “You’re always so annoyed to talk to me on Sundays, I don’t get your deal—” I slip my phone into my bag, a tote from the Paris Review. I reposition it on my hip so that my pharmacist can see it and think that I’m literary, or maybe that I’m French, or that I have enough taste to not wander around with a tote bag from Trader Joe’s like a purse. “Miss Langley?” “You can call me Penny.” “Go ahead and have a seat.” He grins and opens the door. His teeth are so white, and there’s a little stubble on his chin, and my vision blacks out a bit. # His name is Paul, Paul the pharmacist. It’s the first time I’ve gotten close enough to his coat to read the name tag. He never helps at the pickup window so I only see him in the back fluttering around with pill bottles, clicking at computers. But his name is Paul, and I try my best to commit it to memory because mine is shit, and before you know it I’m at the pharmacy thinking it’s Phil because I’m too busy asking for my Prozac in a hushed-enough tone so he doesn’t know it’s mine. He tugs on a pair of latex gloves. “Any allergies?” “None,” I say, breathy as if he’d find a functional immune system attractive. “Have you had a reaction to flu shots before? Any other routine vaccinations?” “Nope.” Flecks of dry skin work their way up and out of his scalp and skitter down to his shoulders. It humanizes him. “Do you normally work on weekends?” I ask. “Do I work on weekends?” Paul smiles. “Sometimes.” I nod as Paul rubs an alcohol pad on the side of my upper arm. He grips it hard, palming my muscle to plump it up. “One, two, and a pinch.” I don’t feel it. Paul’s eyes are green. Kind. I imagine looking at them at Christmas across the dining table at my parents' house—who would absolutely love Paul even though it wouldn’t matter because I’m my own woman—and he would smile as he passed the potatoes. I would be victorious in bringing someone so nice instead of my other boyfriends, one of whom is in jail for statutory rape, and he didn’t do it to me, it was after we broke up, but it’s still tragic. My high school boyfriend was a cocaine dealer and I didn’t know until I was twenty-two. But Paul would be lovely, and Paul could take care of me if I were sick, or at least get me the best drugs, and it would be a relationship I would work for. “Feeling okay?” Paul asks. “Penny?” He waves a hand in front of my face. I have zoned out. I didn’t mean to. But now he’s even closer, and he smells clean, nothing like body odor, and Jesus Christ, he is going to kiss me. He grips the back of my neck as if it’s going to roll onto the floor, and I appreciate the gesture, but it’s making things worse. He’s staring at my eyes and I lean into him, and I delude myself into thinking it’s cinematic and slow, but it happens at lightspeed. “I’d eat your dandruff,” I whisper, and ram right into him, my lips crushing against his. Stiff and unprepared, he recoils. I blink fast and shake my head, trying my hardest to look alive. “Sorry,” I say. “Shit, I don’t know what happened.” He tugs on the sleeves of his coat, clears his throat. “No allergies, right?” I shake my head. I touch my lips. I cannot speak and I think I am going to shit right here, right in the cubicle with the smiley band-aid, and of course he saw it all, too. “Just be sure to stay put for a few minutes.” He leaves, tripping over my tote that looks sadder crumpled on the floor, less chic, and does not look back at me. Taylor Arnette is a writer and essayist from Boston, MA. She is an MFA candidate at Boston University, a Leslie Epstein Global Fellow, and winner of a Saul Bellow Prize in Fiction. Her work has previously appeared in The Beacon and The Normal School. She currently serves as an editorial assistant at AGNI.

Davis stands before projection… raises instrument to his lips stare long enough through open window catch someone exposed baring all passion fruit preserves dusty shelf back of pantry pains joints retrieving most humid new paint job deck furniture refuses to dry – sticky for weeks flame before him so tiny barely distinguishable… could burn forever Jerome Berglund graduated from the University of Southern California’s Cinema-Television Production program and spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the midwest where he was born and raised. He has exhibited many haiku, senryu and haiga online and in print, most recently in the Asahi Shimbun, Failed Haiku, Scarlet Dragonfly, Cold Moon, Bear Creek Haiku, and Daily Haiga.

On the last day I saw her, Reed snuck me a picture. I don’t know how she had one. They’d taken everything from our old lives away. Reed had long hair. She wore a pink crystal on a chain around her neck and pink Nike Airs. She was not the kind of girl I would’ve liked in the past. I liked girls who were into kittens wearing dresses and anime. Who sat in the back of the classroom. Who never shouted. Girls like me. Girls who didn’t break rules. Ever. Reed broke rules. Once, in target practice, she shot the apple before we were supposed to and yelled: “RAGE!” She stabbed a guard. She was going to be locked up for good, but she escaped. And she’s waiting on me. “They want to banish the art out of us,” Reed whispered to me the first time we kissed. “But I won’t let them.” She made a paper sunflower for me out of a Civil War map. She cut little hearts in the hem of her uniform skirt and said each heart was for me. And I didn’t say anything. No one had ever liked me in a serious way before. I want to be with Reed. And I want lots of other stuff, too. Mint chocolate chip ice cream. Dimetapp when I have a sore throat. That feeling you get when you wake up and you realize there’s no school and you fall back asleep for like ten hours. Or you don’t. You get up and go to the movies with your younger sister and you share buttered popcorn and it gets all over your fingers and that’s okay because later you’re going to take a shower and use your favorite shampoo. I want to go to a concert, even if it’s Justin Bieber. I want to dream again. Before my mom got taken away, she said the world is a strange place, that some things don’t add up to reason. When she said it she was talking about how my dad left us for the choir director and then the two of them fled the country. Fuckers. Now I understand my mom’s words to mean it doesn’t stand to reason that two sixteen- year-old girls who were straight A students and bound for futures called “promising” are risking their lives to be able to see the sun again. I open my backpack and find my gun. Freezing rain pounds the glass of the windows. It’s after midnight, but feels even later. I don’t know how I’ll make it past the guards. But Reed’s waiting. I pull my jacket over my head and open the door. The rain is loud. But the girls on the field are louder. “America! America! America!” they chant. I shiver. Then, I run. It’s dark, but I’ve studied the map Reed left me, memorized the route to the creek. And I do what Reed told me to if I got scared, which I am. I picture us. What it will be like when I am out and we are twisted up in a blanket on the sand. Sun. Bananas. Mango. Shrimp. I run faster, past the classrooms and the lacrosse field, the boarded-up art studio and theater. I make it to the last hallway and then I am through the iron gates. Victory. Raindrops blur my vision. The mud is thick under my boots. My heart pounds so loudly in my ears that at first I think the thud in my head is the sound of my heartbeat. But then I fall to my knees and I get hit again. My left cheekbone. I see stars. That’s a real thing. There are two of them. One pummels me. The other watches. And they’re laughing like I’ve just told a joke. I start crying and they laugh harder. In this new world, pain is a punchline. The one watching calls for others on his walkie talkie. Soon there will be a group and I’ve heard what they do to girls they find trying to escape who aren’t lucky like Reed. “I want you to teach me a lesson,” I say to the one closest to me, the one who’s made meat out of my face. My voice is low, guttural, unfamiliar. He smiles broadly. When he turns to the other, I open my backpack. My fingers find the gun. The one bullet I was able to steal is in the chamber. Which one should I shoot? Will the one left shoot me? They’re talking. One unbuckles his pants. My future is not looking promising anymore. I aim my gun at the one with his pants falling off. “Back the fuck up,” I say. They both draw their guns and then we’re all aiming guns. I point mine at one, then the other. In the end, I settle on the one who smiled. Sun. Bananas. Mango. Shrimp. He goes down. Then I go down. I wish I could see Reed one more time. I’d tell her we don’t need to make a big deal about bananas. Or the sun. What we need is a room where we can be alone. Where I can touch her hair. Where I can tell her I love her. I waited too long to say it because I was afraid. But I’m not afraid anymore. Jennifer Dickinson is a graduate of Hollins University. Her short fiction has appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, The Florida Review, Maudlin House, Blackbird, and others. The recipient of a Hedgebrook residency and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation, she works as a writing teacher and book coach in Los Angeles.

The Clown King finds herself next in a city where people spontaneously combust into a flurry of confetti. Cherry-blossom pink and white, or glittery and holographic, a diamond-cut shine. The newspapers call this terrible affliction a result of dreaming too colorfully. The Clown King bristles when she reads the airborne leaflets and landbound posters warning people against extremes of merriment and revelry. The flyers illustrate in bold, black lines the Dangers of Dreaming. Fear turns people in the streets from incandescent to ashen, like cigarettes trampled in the gutter. Watching her community, her heart is tender as a bruise or a daisy; open as a wound, a sunflower. She turns, like she always does, to her trusted troupe of harlequins, pierrots, and mimes. “Should we leave and protect ourselves?” she asks when the combustion cases are in the thousands and the powers that be continue to sit idle. “No,” the troupe decrees. “We stay. We help.” The Clown King releases a sigh of relief, of resolve. “Then help we will.” The Clown King and her troupe chop tomatoes, onions, and okras in the middle of the plaza, where the worried and the heartsick can come together and share a hearty stew on picnic tables. She sews patchwork quilts and hands them out on busy corners. The soup and blankets won’t heal the survivors’ grief or guilt, but they will warm them up nonetheless, so they may face another day. She gives those mourning their loved ones dustpans and brooms, helps them scoop the glittery confetti remains into mason-jars-turned-pastel-urns to treasure forever. The troupe of clowns and other volunteers take turns working and resting. At night, they create and print flyers of their own, demanding research for a combustion cure. When that doesn’t work, and dreams--dreamers--are still blamed and ostracized, the flyers become calls to protests and marches. Invitations to underground performances that raise funds and morale. In the morning, during the first cooking shift, the police arrive with loaded guns and rictus smiles. At once, dreamers form a shield around the Clown King and her troupe. They hold hands like flower chains woven together with steel thread. The Clown King stirs rosemary and thyme into today’s soup special. Tears of salt, too. Dream, you rainbow children, she thinks. Keep on dreaming. Avra Margaritiis a queer author and poet from Greece. Avra’s work haunts publications such as Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions. You can find Avra on twitter (@avramargariti).

At birth, he looked inky black with corkscrew hair tufts. His ancestors were magicians and arcane sorcerers. At two years, his voice squawked. Doctors said he would grow out of it — and he did. At four, he understood the language of crows. At five, his mother’s heart broke as she watched him shape-shifting; the crunch and crackle of bone, his neck and spine hardened. Wings unfurled beneath his shoulder blades. He spread them, soared skywards, then dived towards his own kind. In the rookery, heads cocked on elongated necks greeted him with a caw, caw, croak, croak, caw, caw. Mary Anne Mc Enery is an Irish and Dutch citizen, a senior—who does not act her age— living in The Hague, The Nederlands. She has fun writing micro, flash fiction, and longer short stories. Her words can be found on the Friday Flash Fiction site.

Summer School: 19 The summer I learned to swim I also learned that one can survive three sticky months on popsicle melt and Lou Reed. When people say oppressively hot they are lying. Salt and water escape: you are left an empty room with no central cooling. The summer I learned about makeup I also learned about the night sky. My skin was a constellation of freckles and zits. Nothing helped, but after dark on the hill, we were just people-shaped imprints in the grass, stardust and dead skin and oil and perfume staring up at a different kind of forever. Learning about us meant learning about them. We took to the streets to throw a funeral decked in flags and fishnets. We made love and ate confetti to remember. On the periphery, storm clouds rumbled, threatened to drown our swelterlove and chosen joy. But we were a river of saltwater in the hot sun and we escaped into rainbows. Three queens held my hands and taught me how to blow bubbles. Swimming and dancing were the same so we danced butterfly, freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke. We held our breath and evaporated in the heat; left the streets glitterstruck for days. Summersalt We turn pink and then the sky does. I get up and rub suntan lotion across it. “Hold still,” I tell the sky, and it melts in contradiction. My lover appears behind me and begins to peel long strips of skin from me. “You’re molting,” he says and I guess the jig is up. There is nothing left to peel but the sky. Dead me skin and dead sky skin pile up on the rocks, burying my lover under molt. Underneath its burn, the sky is black and a few stars blink. You are only going to get hotter, I think sadly at the sky. The burns will only get worse. I mean it as a gesture of care, but the sky bares its teeth. You are only going to get dead, it thinks back. Ruby Rorty is a scholar moonlighting as a journalist moonlighting as a poet in Chicago, IL. Her work has recently appeared in Mythic Picnic Volume 8, hex, EcoTheo, among others. You can find her on Twitter @RortyRuby or Instagram at ruby.rorty.

CN: substance abuse; in-community use of a reclaimed slur (d*ke) I came to town thirsty for all that it had to offer. 2007 Portland electrified me: 3 am seagull screams, cobblestone streets, exquisite graffiti, DIY culture. Pictures of my new neighborhood, the Old Port, filled travel brochures as commodified Maine at its finest: quaintness, lobster and lighthouse souvenirs galore; but street kids with facial tattoos intermingled with the clean-cut tourists, who watched punks spin fire and play music in Tommy’s Park. Those were the pictures that didn’t make it into the guidebooks. I loved it all. Meandering along brick sidewalks, I took everything in: glittering Casco Bay, the historic New England port buildings, unique local businesses. With branding and signage strictly legislated, there were no billboards or big box stores to obscure the view. As I walked up Munjoy Hill, past Victorian houses, roasting coffee’s burnt cinnamon raisin toast scent traveled on the breeze with Nag Champa, salt, seaweed, marijuana, cigarettes and hops from the breweries, plus intermittent bursts of sulfur on the East End. The summer ocean air caressed my skin, lulling me into staying awhile, but my mind drifted to accumulated cautionary tales: Maine summers reeled you in, leaving you wholly unprepared for the brutal winters. So glorious was the June weather to which I’d arrived, though, that I dismissed any sense of foreboding. Portland’s motto was Resurgam, its mascot the Phoenix, suggesting struggle but also regeneration. Our dilapidated loft was better suited to one person or a couple with porous boundaries, but for $175 a month, I, along with Portland natives Ben and Wren, set out to make it work. The crown jewel of the space was a built-in stage doubling as a living room, a perfect set for many scenes, rehearsed and not, to play out: in a few weeks, I would bring home a cavalcade of afterpartying booze cruise revelers who blew lines off Ben’s collectible Tony the Tiger plate. Someone happened upon his beloved Devil Duckies, also collectible, and thought it would be funny to float the horned rubber ducks in sudsy water in the plugged bathroom sink. When Ben returned he was not amused, but would later find it within himself to forgive me, much like how I’d forgive him after he polished off my hummus and tortilla chips on a day when I was particularly hungry. Portland was the friendliest New England locale I’d been to, a party town. And town is what most people called it, as opposed to the city it technically was. “Oh, it’s a small town, alright,” said Ben. “You’ll see.” *** Wren coined the term “dudebro dyke” at Styxx, the gay dance club, when a middle-aged butch who emanated a cloud of cologne exaggeratedly hit on every young, femme-passing person in sight. When they turned her down, she put up a fight instead of gracefully taking no for an answer. She reminded Wren of the drunken dudebros in popped collar Polos and white baseball caps who lurched out of Wharf Street sports bars, yelling misogynist slurs. This woman seemed determined to embody several stereotypes at once. With much effort, I successfully rebuffed her—“I don’t dance!” I insisted, the ink on my Dance B.A. still practically drying. Later, I mentioned this dudebro dyke to Ben and found out her coke addiction had spiraled her into trouble so serious she may have lost her house because of it. When I returned to Styxx that weekend we of course ended up hanging out, magnetized together as cokeheads are. It was when she procured our party supplies (that we then snorted off construction equipment outside the club) that I first encountered her dealer, Sally, better known as Sal. *** Within a week of my arrival, I found myself at Platinum Plus, the local strip joint, with Sal and her best friend Steph. I rolled my eyes at their more dudebroish behavior, like declaring their “bros before hos” life philosophy on repeat, but felt drawn to their swagger and older-than-me confidence. I wanted to somehow be both a bro and a ho. Everything about Sal was rough around the edges: scratchy voice, pockmarked skin, jerky movements. Her smile was a half-smile with only the left side fully moving, which I assumed was due to a drug-induced stroke. Her permanent coke jaw activated as soon as she got fucked up on any substance. She and Steph worked at an SUV dealership and dipped into the drugs Sal sold, bragging about going on “coke diets” where they suppressed their appetites with the stuff. They had triumphantly spiky hair and wore matching leather jackets. Steph and I admitted that upon first seeing each other’s MySpace pages we’d declared to whichever friend was within earshot that we would fuck. I gravitated towards the citrus-mint of her scent, how she blushed when she saw me, her orderly-yet-bad-boy persona. I went home with her that night and had rough sex on her red sheets, which matched the bandana she sported in her back left pocket. We began up against the wall: I pulled her hair, she bit my face, I bit her lip. We left a trail of clothes to the bedroom. While Steph was the one I had the hots for, I ended up spending more time with Sal, who lived around the corner from me. “Well howdy, neighbor!” she said, smiling her half-smile when I first mentioned the loft’s location. Since she hated patchouli, I brought up liking it to get a rise out of her. It worked every time—she went on comedic tirades. She would sniff me and pretend to fall down dead, yelling, “Ugh, pee-yew, ya stinky old hippie!” We shared a love of Amy Winehouse and sang along to “Rehab” while cutting lines on Back to Black’s CD case, leaving scratch marks with the straight razor. *** Billie, better known as B, and I met through Sal, who introduced us one night during a transaction when I tagged along. In my perusal of the town’s queers on MySpace I’d seen photos of B and her wife, Callie, two little peas in a pod, with identical profile pictures of them at their wedding (technically a commitment ceremony due to same-sex marriage’s illegality). B was cute: tattoos, baggy clothes, baseball cap pulled over her shag of hair. Callie was beautiful, a fairy-like femme. They’d been together for seven years—an interminable amount of time for a relationship, in my opinion. We all hung out on a triple date excursion to a Boston nightclub, with Steph driving us in her new SUV. Sal brought Tierney, a femme with an ice blonde pixie cut, and B and Callie rounded out the crew. After shotgunning a beer, B grew increasingly talkative and lit into Steph about the evils of not only driving but also selling gas-guzzling SUVs. Sal and Steph barely suppressed their laughter at B’s soapbox ascent, which I’d learn was her m.o. whenever she got drunk. Callie stayed out of it, linking her arm through B’s and kissing her cheek, a placid expression on her face. We got fucked up on the way down, on the lookout for cops but drinking beers and doing key bumps and laughing about the Gold Star Memorial Highway. I imagine this is a Maine dyke rite-of-passage and icebreaker: “So, who here is a gold star?” (For the uninitiated, that’s a dyke who’s never had sex with a man before. Turned out Callie was the only one). Speaking of sex, the tangled hookup web of passengers in the vehicle cracked me up: while Sal was with Tierney, I was with Steph, and B was with Callie, back in the day Sal and Steph had banged a few times, and Sal and Callie had dated as teenagers, claiming to be one another’s first loves. *** A week since Boston, the night after the booze cruise, I tossed and turned on my mattress, wondering if I should go to the hospital, sensing the spirits of junkies who’d died in the building, not wanting to become one more. I’d consumed massive amounts of alcohol and cocaine, day to night. The euphoria and then numbness had worn off and now the poison gripped my insides. After Ben had returned to find his collectibles defiled, the bacchanal broke up. The most committed party animals among us relocated to Sal’s for a few more hours. B was there and gave me a massage with clammy hands when I mentioned I was stressed about Steph, who’d been evasive lately. Back in the loft with only my jittery thoughts as company, I didn’t feel right. Maybe this is it—maybe I’m dying—maybe I’m panicking—oh shit! My body temperature climbed as I sweated through the sheets. I went to the bathroom a few times, system sped up, abdominal muscles clenching. Nothing came out except weak streams of pee. I didn’t puke, but probably should’ve. In the mirror, my skin had the tint of an overcast sky, which alarmed me. Back on my mattress, my heart pounded, chest tightened with pain, arms tingled. I breathed as slowly as I could, trying to will myself back to normal. Ben, a heavy sleeper, didn’t wake up through any of this, although I considered whether or not I should rouse him. Wren wasn’t home. I fast-forwarded to what would happen if I didn’t die but started feeling worse: hospital, family finding out, forced reckoning, a new 100% clean and sober life. Finally, rock bottom. A part of me was ready to feel relieved if I lived through this. Tears burned the backs of my eyes as I silently bargained with whatever forces might spare me. I tried for measured breaths to control my body’s shaking, afraid I’d start seizing, afraid to go to sleep. Outside, seagulls circled and screamed. It took a few anguished hours, but the vice-like doom in my body dissipated, leaving a hollow fatigue: wrecked, thankful. Afforded a second chance. *** Later that morning I texted Sal, and headed over to bring her back the hoodie she’d lent me last night since the temperature had dropped and I’d been underdressed, as usual. She emerged from the bathroom, looking like maybe she’d slept there. Her apartment smelled sour. The opioid pills she’d upped her consumption of recently had caught up with her, and the withdrawals were kicking her ass. I tossed her the sweatshirt. She smiled a weak half-smile. “Better not fucking smell like patchouli!” I told her about how I thought I was going to O.D., and for a second dizzy panic surged again, sweat beading my palms. She let out a laugh. “My little drama queen. You’re okay…” and I did feel okay, in that moment, because Sal had said so. Then she lurched forward, fist pressed to mouth, and rushed back into the bathroom. I let myself out. B texted that she was in the neighborhood, and we took a walk to the East End Beach with its No Swimming sign. The water sparkled too brightly. Even under her baseball cap and sunglasses B’s face looked ragged, paler than usual. She recounted how awful she’d felt all night, also wondering if she would need to seek medical attention. “Dude, that stuff was bad. At one point I couldn’t even see. Callie was seriously worried. She wanted to call 911.” We had a talk then, the first of many, about how we needed to steer clear of that type of partying, how we wanted to clean up our acts. *** A week after our brush with death, B became my girlfriend (or boifriend, as I’d more often refer to her) after she told me she liked me and said it would be okay if we kissed. After downing a few Purple Geezers, a drink she introduced me to at Styxx, we walked up to the Eastern Prom, where we sat on the grass and watched the blurry lights reflected in Casco Bay. That’s when it happened. I said I liked her too, she asked if she could kiss me, I objected because what about Callie? She assured me they were in an open relationship and it would be fine. I thought kissing her would be fun, and enjoyed her lips’ surprising softness, she trembled in a way that let me know she felt more than that. Turned out it was anything but okay. B told Callie immediately, but we may as well have been fucking behind Callie’s back for how she reacted. They’d been exploring the possibility of opening things up in addition to other remedies for the long-term problems their twin flame veneer belied, but it wasn’t a done deal. It would remain a mystery whether B’s conviction that the kiss would be fine was more wishful thinking or willful ignorance. Sal, Tierney and Steph rushed to Callie’s side. At Styxx, they turned away from me, freezing me out. They chided B, but seemed open to her redemption during the brief “trying to work things out” phase that followed. When I ran into Steph on Wharf Street a few nights later and approached her apologetically, she said, “Dude, I can’t have any of that drama in my life. You need to be humble, give it time before you try and talk to anyone.” The cobblestone street only heightened this exchange’s provincial feel. They cast me out as a pariah, a whippersnapper out-of-towner destroying a pillar of the queer community for shits and giggles. No one stopped to question the deep dysfunction of B and Callie’s relationship, the ease with which it had crumbled. I felt resentful of losing this whole new crew over such an ignorant misstep. How could these adults—and debaucherous party adults, at that—think a kiss was such a huge deal? After all the contempt, the cold shoulders, and B moving out of their shared apartment to keep the peace, Callie ran immediately into the arms of Sal. They rekindled their love within a week. Sally and Callie. Ben was right: this was a small town. My thirst for it had slaked; the seagull screams began to cloy. As a performer and art model, Goldie Peacock spent over a decade bouncing between frenetic movement and absolute stillness before chilling out and becoming a writer. Their stories, essays, and poems appear or are forthcoming in HuffPost, Wild Roof Journal, Sundog Lit, (mac)ro(mic), Powders Press, MIDLVLMAG, Bullshit Lit, beestung, and DRAGS, a book showcasing NYC's drag superstars. They live in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY, USA). You can find them online @goldiepeacock.

Fish Supper so much has been lost along with our Sunday best / we now have different types of Christ tricks / and 60 second flicks filling the hole of us / all the new revivals / prequels and sequels / are stories we stopped caring about long ago / tiny images of insurrection / like all small things / pull on the heartstrings / for a techno second / yet we are more harpy than harp / and can treat the drownings as a conversational starter / served with salmon / and the old white man sauce / give a man a fish / blah, blah, blah / better the sweet words of a woman / instead of letting them swim with the fishes / give any one who needs it / a fish / and then a rod / so they can eat first / and fish later Watching Dr, Zhivago With My Daughter How you loved Dr. Zhivago / but I told you there was no poetry in snow / and you said it was a space to fill with other things / angels / and men whose reasons to leave you understood / You told me I played tragedy like a balalaika / the same three strings over and over / a haunting melody of loss / so you went / dancing with the snowflake people / babbling they were made up of everything that was not here / not me / yet when the rent was due you nailed the stars / fixing them as a slipped cross / so I could find you / I put your bloody fingers to my mouth / a gesture that tasted oh so old / Now the cold scolds my bones / and I choke from the ground up / like a snowflake I am made up of what is not there / and you are spinning rings far away / beyond the illusion / of stars / or redemption / still I always look for you / in the chaos of shapes leaving a bus / in every doorway / and at every special showing of Dr. Zhivago Adele Evershed was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut. Her poetry and prose have been published in several online journals and print anthologies. She has been recently nominated for The Pushcart Prize for poetry, shortlisted for the Staunch Prize for flash fiction, and her novella-in-flash, The History of Hand Thrown Walls was shortlisted in the Reflex Press Novella Award.

Hugh and Floyd sat in the dive bar, drinking. "Hey Hugh! Remember that botched bank robbery years ago that you did? Man, when I heard about that madness, I laughed for days." Floyd laughed as he drank the remainder of his beer and beckoned the bartender for another. "Man, looking back, it was not funny , but now that we're older. . . I can see how amusing it must have been when I shot myself in the foot, the getaway driver leaving me, the dye packs exploding as I walked out of the bank.”." Hugh tapped the counter acerbically before the bartender walked away. The bartender filled Hugh's empty mug and left the pitcher. “Yeah, real funny.” "Hey, Floyd, whatever happened to that drug you made...?" Hugh gulped his beer. "The drug I made? HNFP: Hugh and Floyd Productions? Even when you were locked up, I thought of you." Hugh turned to Floyd and jokingly pointed a finger in his face. "Those were the days of making some of the best stuff ever. Now, this crap they're making these days has nothing on my stuff." "All right," Hugh leveled his hands and turned back to the bar, "Come off the soapbox, man. They make what they can with what's available." "I guess." Floyd sighed, " I was making insane loot. It was inevitable-some chem grad would figure it out. When they did, their stuff was flooding the market! My stuff became obsolete, so I switched and ran drugs for the new guys. And even after being a drug runner for those shits, they still set me up." "Sucks, man," Hugh shook his head. "Really sucks." Technicalities got me out. Then, I was put in this shithole 'Quad'. I had no clue what a Quad was." "Tell me about it. I got only a little bit of info in the joint. They gave me credits, a letter and a map before I was released. I am an ‘undesirable’." Hugh laughed and Floyd joined him. “You’d think they woulda had flying jet cars by now. Right, man?” Hugh stated. “Heh, now everything is ‘holograms’ or whatever. My last doctor visit was on a tv screen!” “Holoscreen.” Hugh corrected. “I don’t get it. Society…ugh.” They nursed their watered-down beers at the booze stained bar. The bartender flung a towel over his shoulder, walked over to the television and turned up the volume. "Hey, check this out!" he said. "Good news for the residents of Quad Three! Edward "The Sphinx" Maccoli made a successful run through 'The Gauntlet' and is now an Official Police Officer. He made it through Quad Three with Christina Vasquez of Quad Four and . . ." the voice continued as pictures of the new recruits flashed across the screen. "Sphinx! That's Joey Maccoli's kid! Is he a cop now? Damn, I taught him everything. It looks like somebody smashed his face into a brick wall!" They both paused and looked at the TV. "Well, with a man 'inside', maybe we won't get jacked as much. You know, things could get easier." Hugh grinned and pumped his fist in the air. "Things will be easier!" A voice yelled from across the room. " Shoulda thought of that before you tried to kill him. 'Sphinx' don't forget a face." Another voice yelled. # Floyd and Hugh looked at each other, paid their tab and left. They walked out of the basement bar, in the building covered with vines, and up the trash covered stairs. They walked halfway down the block. The building where they lived was a nondescript-brownish brick with a few windows scattered like playing cards and no higher than ten stories-as all the others. When Floyd reached to open the door, Hugh checked to make sure the address was correct. “Still smells like piss. Must be the right spot.” Hugh joked. They made their way up several flights of toy cluttered steps, and Hugh opened the door to his place and flipped on the light. Floyd's apartment was right across the hall. "I can't believe it," Hugh lamented, "I taught that kid, ‘Sphinx’, all my tricks and gave him my secrets." He switched on a lamp. He'd managed to procure some subdued artwork and a plant for his apartment. He also had a small table and two chairs next to the window he'd made in prison, the only things he kept when released. "Hey bud, you look lower than a bowlegged toad, what gives?" Floyd asked as he sat across from him. "Maybe that kid will come to town and remember to help you out or something." "To the 'Quad'." Hugh corrected. "Yeah, Quad." Floyd cleared his throat. Hugh wiped his brown, "Doubt it. Who comes to the 'Lowers'? What we need is a piece of good luck, like a four-leaf clover or something." "What we gonna do with a piece of good luck? We are two old guys from a past that doesn't exist. We lucky to have these crap shacks the 'benevolent government' has given us." "No, man, we get us some good luck and maybe we can leave and move into one of the nicer Quads." Hugh strolled over to the sink and turned on the tap, "Water?" Floyd shook his head. "Hey, all I'm saying is things are bound to change for us. We are due." Hugh chugged his water. Floyd scratched at his graying stubble, "Like a genie's lamp or somethin'?" "No, think bigger!" "Two four leaf clovers?" "Don't be a dick, Floyd. The bigger, the better-- and the more luck! Okay, so imagine something with a lot of good luck symbols on it." Hugh held his hands up for emphasis. "We can pull it out, rub it and ba-boom, we got good luck! I'm telling you, I'm so sure we are gonna get lucky that I put in an application to move Quads. I checked in with my parole officer and I did some community work with delinquents here. All I need to do is get this one piece of good luck and I'm moving on up!" Hugh's eyes twinkled. Floyd sat back and rubbed his stubble, "Sounds like a plan and it seems you've been working it." He pushed back from the table. "We can talk about it tomorrow. I gotta go to bed; work in the morning. . I'll meet you at the bar at six? We can talk about luck." "Uh, I may be a little late , I'm gonna check out that piece of luck. After I have it in my hands, things will change for me, you’ll see. Man, I'm going places." Hugh clapped his hands and stood, "Things are about to change for this old man." "Yeah, 'night, 'Lucky'." Floyd walked to the door, "Just remember me when ya luck changes and don't be disappointed if it don't." "Yeah, yeah." Hugh locked the door behind his friend as he left. # Floyd worked the assembly line in one of the nondescript warehouses in the Quad. Sorting circuit boards or bolts was an easy enough job. Other days, he drilled. He did not worry about where the things he worked on went; he was glad to have work. He met Hugh for lunch. They both carried the same standard issue metal lunch boxes. They could eat the standard lunch from the cafeteria: cold cut wraps, an apple, milk, and a bag of chips. They always opted out. They joked the warehouse food was probably from the same prison kitchens. Floyd looked around, "You ever wonder where that meat comes from?" "Oh no, not the 'Soylent Green' business again!" Hugh chuckled. "We eat the same every day. It's a population control technique." Floyd swirled his ramen in his thermos he brought from home. "So, Hugh, I've been thinking about this luck. What's the deal?" "Lean in," Hugh whispered, "I am gonna blow your mind." "Dude, as long as no one gets hurt, I got your back. You know this, right?" Floyd slurped some of his ramen broth from his thermos. "Look at where we live, man. Felons, thugs, rapists; do you think any life is worth anything in this Quad? As soon as one of us 'passes on' , their apartment is emptied, scrubbed clean and set up for the next person. "I feel like I'm still in prison and you can't tell me you don't. We get up, work, eat, go home and sleep. Do it again the next day." Floyd interjected, "But we are not in prison. We're free." "Are we though? Are we really free?" Hugh sat back in his chair and nodded at Floyd. "Do what you think is right. Just -- no one should get hurt in your quest, Lancelot." Floyd reluctantly stood and patted him on the back. They announced an extra four-hour shift. Hugh and Floyd glanced at each other. "Okay, see you at the bar in four hours," Floyd saluted. Hugh gave him two thumbs up and walked away. # If he had not promised to meet Hugh later, Floyd would have gone home and passed out. His body was too old to work twelve-hour shifts, but he enjoyed the bonuses. He punched out and joined the other old man drones as they left the warehouse, each headed down their separate paths. It was particularly loud that evening: street workers soliciting at every intersection, robbers casing out alleys and random fights -- everywhere. Floyd held his lunchbox handle and strolled past the women, down the streets with crumbling signs that promised new apartments or places of employment. Floyd laughed to himself at the rusting signs. He heard kids playing among the rubble of the bombed out warehouses, sounding like ghosts of the past. He walked by the enclosed gardens that said: "keep out" and "will shoot on sight ". There was always someone living in a shack on the land with a shotgun leveled at anyone that tried to climb over the gate. . Surprisingly, some street lights shone down as he neared the central area of town where most of the shops and bars were, and the Quad felt alive. He checked his watch. He thought he could rush home and take a quick shower. As he strolled inside the building, the old mailboxes along the wall grasped at the plaster, full of flyers and magazines spilling onto the floor. He ascended the steps, hearing a few televisions blasting, babies screaming, and a few kids playing in the hall. He never recalled seeing any kids outside the apartment building. He'd spoken to one of the mothers once, and she'd told him it was simply not safe for them to go out. "Evenin' Mr. Floyd." A little snaggle-toothed girl with two pigtails walked up to him and sang as he put his key in the lock. "Cindy Lou, don't try to rip me off today. I'll give you a piece if you leave me alone. Next time your ma wants money, have her come see it to me." He flicked a silver coin in the air. "My name's not Cindy Lou. My name is Becky." She yelled over her shoulder as she caught the coin. He made it inside as the little girl's footsteps raced down the hall and another door slammed shut. He needed to stop giving his coins away. "They will all think of me as some idiot donor." He took his clothes off and jumped in the shower. He bounded down the stairs and headed to the bar to wait for Hugh. He held his finger up for one beer. The bartender limped over with a glass, "Evening sir, where's your friend?" "Late, I guess." Floyd checked around and didn't see Hugh. "Just one tonight, Damon. I think he should be here any minute." "Sure, Mr. Floyd." Damon wore a white apron and had a heavy Irish accent. He also had a pronounced limp. When he returned with the beer, Floyd asked him how he ended up here in the Quads. "Well," he leaned back and wiped his hands with a towel, "Everything was fine with me wife and such. Kids were grown and off to school, ya know. The wife asked if her mum could stay in the extra room we had. I wanted wifey happy, so I agreed. But I'll tell ya', damned if her mum didn't ride my ass everyday about any and everything. 'Dayyy-mon' is how she said me name, 'Oye need. . .' and it just went on." He paused and refilled a beer for someone at the bar. He walked back over to Floyd and continued, "I mean, I tried to talk to her but I may as well ha been whistlin jigs to a milestone. So, one day, the wife goes ta work and I'm alone with this old bag. She asked me for one simple thing; I can't remember and I walks out to the yard, gets me favorite axe, come in and chop her up. I had her buried and the house cleaned before the wife came home and oh was she a mess when I told her. But let me tell ya' boy, she looked relieved, she did. There was a twinkle in her eye and she smiled a little before she called the coppers. Visited me ev'ry day in prison too until she died some years later. Rest her soul." "Is there any person with a decent soul living here?" Floyd mumbled. "Why d'ya think we're here? No one is decent." Damon joked. Hugh whipped in like a hurricane and pulled up a stool next to Floyd, "Aye, one for me Damon. How's it goin'?" "Slow and steady, sir. Was just chatting with yer bud here. I'll grab that beer for ya'." Damon hobbled away as Floyd whispered, "I like Damon and his Irish accent. The other bartender, I don't like as much." Floyd took a huge gulp of his beer. "So, I found it." Hugh nodded. "And I wanna show it to you." Hugh took a swig of beer from the glass Damon had placed in front of him. "What'd ya find? This piece of luck?" Floyd finished his beer and took out a black card, preloaded with credits, to pay for it. "Yep, and we're going to see it tonight. Right now." Hugh turned up his glass and poured the beer down his throat. "After I finish my beer, of course." He put the glass on the bar and left a few bills, "Let's go." “Drinks on me. Card’s prepaid with credits. Those bills are relics, man.” Floyd swept the bills up and passed them to Hugh When they left, "Sphinx" was on television talking about how rewarding it was being a police officer after his rough childhood and hard work. Everyone in the bar applauded except Hugh. He headed straight for the door. Floyd moved slower than Hugh and tried to keep up as Hugh led them down a street and around the complex maze of warehouses to a tattoo shop. The shop was above ground and well lit, occupying one of the nicer warehouses. Hugh opened the doors and a friendly girl with a high black Mohawk and golden-brown skin walked over; her arms covered in tattoos. "What's up, Hugh?" She smiled behind the counter. She wore black leather pants, biker boots and a black shirt that stopped above her pierced navel. She had perfect white teeth and a happy demeanor for a girl living working in such a bad place. "Hey, Terra! This is my friend, Floyd. We’ve been buds forever." Hugh took off his green baseball cap and rubbed his hair with his dirty tanned hand. "Are we still talking about 'luck'?" She beamed, put her elbows on the counter and cupped her face in her hands. Floyd noticed the tattoos covering her body, all except for her face. "What's all them tattoos stand for?" Floyd asked. "Well, my left arm," she held her arm out, "is like all the evil and bad I've done. Here's a gun--held up a liquor store, some dudes I beat up -- those are the 'Day of the Dead' faces with their mouths stitched--Snitches." She snorted, "Some chick I didn't like, so I took care of her: the doll with the sewed up mouth. But this, this one is my favorite: my spider web on my elbow. If you know what that means, well, you wouldn't want to mess with me outside these walls, you know?" She winked. "Well, you got me. What does it mean?" Floyd asked as he leaned in closer to inspect it. Hugh elbowed him in the side. "Mmmm," she hummed. "I killed someone in prison. Don't tell them that, I could lose my job." She laughed. Floyd pulled back, intrigued, "But the other arm, what's that all about?" "Everything is like yin yang, you know? These tattoos on my right arm are my good luck symbols. For every bad tattoo representing my past, I got one representing my future. Like the Buddha, his hands, some Tibetan script, koi swimming upstream and a favorite that my boy just finished, a hamsa on my inner arm with the warning eye. It's for protection and whatnot." She held her arm out and outlined it for them. "So all this good luck negates the bad luck and bad things?" Floyd asked as he tilted his head to examine her tattoos. "You could say. I mean, I'm trying to bank some karma as well--good deeds and all that. Hey, Hugh, decide on some ink yet? I'm always ready to start." A tall white guy lumbered up behind her and smacked her on the butt. His face, a series of ridges and tattoos. His thick, ink covered arms swung like baseball bats, and he had the same spider web on his elbow. He shot a quick glance at Floyd and Hugh. He grunted and stood next to Terra, "You gents lookin fer something particular?" "I think we found it. Terra, have a great night." Hugh smiled and backed out the door, followed by Floyd. They walked along in silence until they got to Floyd's apartment. "Well," Floyd began, "We are getting all sleeved up for luck? This is your idea of good luck? I think I'll take my chances with a rabbit's foot or something. Besides, I tried to get some tattoos in prison and almost had my arm amputated because they got infected. India ink and a needle, my ass." "You just don't see it, do you?" Hugh held his head down and snickered, "We ain't gettin' tattoos. We takin' 'em." Floyd's eyes widened. "Wait, what?" He thought for a moment, "No, not what I think. We could. . . we could. . . man I just. . ." "Pal, let me show you something, over here in my place. I finished it today, worked on it for a while." They walked across the hall to Hugh's place. Hugh flipped the light switch, "Bathroom." He pointed. Floyd walked into the bathroom. It was covered in plastic drop cloths, "We're taking that chick's arm and we're gonna skin it. See, I've read about how these Japanese people sold their fully tattooed skin after they died; like willed it to someone. It was treated like a prized possession. So, when they died, it was part of the will for them to be skinned and the skin was sold and preserved. It's a black market thing now, but it got so popular they -- the Japanese -- made offers to bikers, here in the US. Or what was the US. Now, we steal that chick's arm and skin it. How else are we gonna get that much good luck?" "You can't be for real." Hugh pulled a chainsaw from behind the curtain in the bathtub, "Do you think I am joking? I told you, man, one way or another, I'm getting out of here." He laughed and started the chainsaw. "Purrs like a kitten." "Are you serious? You are going to take some girl's arm? That has to be the stupidest thing ever! Think about it. I mean, what are you going to do, whip out her arm when you're buying a lottery ticket and start rubbing it? This is some serious shit, man! I do not want to have someone looking to exact justice on me in this Quad. Lives here are worth nothing. If you do that, your life will be worth less than nothing. You may even be moved into a worse Quad, and I don't think you'd survive there at all." "Oh and now you don't support me in my endeavor?" "Why would I support murder? Sure, her tatts looked cool. Sure, she was a nice looking girl who wouldn't give an old man like me the time of day, but this is wrong. Besides, did you see ol' boy standing behind her? He looks like he eats guys like us for breakfast, lunch and dinner!" "Meh, I'm not worried about him. I just need to get her alone and I can handle it, understand? Again, I'm asking if you are going to support me in my endeavor of acquiring, ah, something to help me change our current circumstances." Hugh straightened, up nodded his head and crossed his arms. They stood face to face. Hugh’s stance was defiant. Floyd signed and shook his head. He stepped out of the bathroom, "You have fun." He only saw Hugh one more time. # Floyd sat in the bar after another shift at the factory, days after he tried to convince Hugh he was wrong. The idea was ludicrous, but every time he knocked on his door to talk about it, Hugh didn't answer. He couldn't find him at work. Eventually, he gave up. After a few hours of television and small talk with Damon and the other patrons, he settled his tab and walked home. He went inside, flopped on his tattered couch, and turned on his new, very small, black market, black and white television to watch the news. He watched until he fell asleep. At the sight of Hugh's face, Floyd sat up and leaned forward to turn up the volume. He heard the word "murder". He wiped his eyes and focused on the screen. Even though they lived in one of the worst Quads, reporters from the wealthier Quads would sneak in and film footage, just to show the world how awful the people in the poorer and dangerous Quads were. There was hope for genocide in the poorer Quads because the rich were running out of space in their Quads. Hugh's face was on the screen. A voiceover spoke about the murder. Some reporters managed to sneak into the apartment the night of the murder and capture the gruesome scene. There was blood all over the bathroom. Terra’s body hung from the shower rod, her arm cuffed to the shower rod. Her legs were spread and cuffed to something unseen. She had on her leather pants and black shirt. The only odd thing, excluding the blood all over the walls and the floor, was her missing right arm. There was a bone and some muscle in the bathtub and Floyd heard the word, "Skinned". He shook his head and mumbled beneath his breath. He couldn't believe his friend actually went through with a plan so macabre. He sat up and put his head in his hands, "I can't believe he was that desperate. He actually did it. Damn, Hugh." He thought back to the last night he saw his friend. It began with an urgent banging on his door. He looked through the peephole to see Hugh grinning. He peeled the door open and began to speak before Hugh cut him off. "I did it! I bought something for you, too!" Hugh spoke fast as he pushed his way into Floyd's apartment. "Man, is this why you didn't come to work today? You didn't do it, did you?" Floyd closed the door as Hugh giddily paced around with a small-folded item in his hand. He looked at Hugh's blood covered shoes and felt his stomach drop. He felt a tingling in his chest. It felt as though he could hardly breathe while he swallowed around the sour taste in his mouth. "I can't believe you did it." He moved in slow motion, while Hugh was a hive of energy. He pressed the door closed behind him. Hugh had the eyes of a mad man. "This is for you." Hugh held the small-folded item out and motioned to Floyd. Floyd felt a chill run through him from head to toe. "Come closer." Hugh beckoned, hunched over the item. Floyd stepped back. Hugh lumbered over to him and pushed it in his hands. Floyd peeled back the layers of plastic and tissue paper. Inside was something small and very oily. Hugh nodded with approval, like a mad scientist, "Luck will change tomorrow! I promise you! I told you I would do it!" Hugh ran in circles, tapping his fingers together, "I gotta finish, and everything is so fresh. Gotta start saving it, preserving it. Not a lot of books on preserving this type of thing, but I think I got it figured." Just like that, Hugh was out the door. Floyd knew about justice. He didn't realize justice in such a dangerous Quad would be so swift. Justice kicked in Hugh's door in the form of two fully tatted guys with baseball bats. The sound scared Floyd from awake. He scrambled over and looked out the peephole. One of the guys was the bald guy from the tattoo studio. He saw a huge brown skinned guy, covered in tattoos, bald and stocky, wearing sunglasses and standing in front of Hugh's door. The big guy had to sense something because he held his finger up and shook it very slowly from side to side, saying, "No" towards Floyd's peephole. Floyd stumbled back, his heart pounded in his chest, as fresh beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. He walked to his sink and grabbed a bottle of water. He ripped it open and drank it. Part of the problem with these old buildings was that some of the apartments were sound proof and some weren't. Hugh lived in an apartment covered with brick walls, so any sound coming from within was muffled. Floyd dropped the empty bottle when he heard noises in the hallway. He ran over and peeked out the peephole and saw Hugh trying to flee. Someone grabbed Hugh from behind. Hugh held onto Floyd's door frame with all his strength as someone yanked him away. The door to Hugh's apartment closed. There were a few thumps. Then, silence. The guy at the door pulled out a bottle of cleaning solution and a hand towel. He walked over to Floyd's door and cleaned the blood handprints on the doorframe. He resumed his position across the hall as he placed the bottle on the floor, folded the bloody towel and slipped it into his pocket. Floyd stumbled and sat on the couch in a daze. Floyd knew things had not gone in Hugh's favor. Petrified, he crawled to the door and looked out the peephole to see women standing outside the door. Once the other guys left, the big guy at the door nodded and they rushed inside with their elbow length gloves and plastic suits to clean the apartment. The next day, the local news reporters asked Floyd's neighbors if they knew what had happened in the apartment. Later, they broadcast the footage, "We have obtained exclusive footage from inside the killer's apartment. We believe he was practicing some type of voodoo ritual. . ." # A knock at his door snapped him out of his thoughts. Floyd walked over and looked out the peephole. A man in a suit looked around and patted his forehead with a handkerchief as two very armed police officers stepped back and blocked the hall with their stature. The knock was persistent. Where was his good for nothing lawyer to defend him now? "Yes?" He cleared his throat. "Sir, would you please open up? I need to speak to you about a matter.." "What kinda matter?" Floyd asked. "One of a monetary nature. Now, please, open the door or these two officers will kick it in. Trust me, sir, I don't want to be out here as much as you want me out here, broadcasting your news to your neighbors." Floyd undid the locks and chains and opened the door. The man fixed his tie and walked in. One officer stood at the door and another came inside and closed the door. The man in the suit walked over to the table in Floyd's apartment and sat. He was sweating profusely and sporting a nasty comb over. His suit was a work of art: brown and polyester. Floyd thought the suit looked like something his father would have worn. The man smoothed his hair down, took a deep breath and pulled out a folder. He opened it, placing a pen on the papers. He motioned for Floyd to sit down. "Sir, Mister. . .ah. . ." The man shuffled the papers, looking for a name. "Floyd. Just Floyd." "Yes, then. . . Ah Mr. Floyd. I'm not sure if you knew, but you were the prime beneficiary of a Mr. Hughefort Neville. Please sign these documents and I will have the credits transferred to your account immediately. You exhibit exemplary behavior and a high work ethic, which merits you a..." Floyd interrupted, "Credits? Not prepaid card credits, but real monetary credits?" The man cleared his throat, "Yes, monetary credits. We are currently phasing out green money with credits. Even now, we are offering two credits for every dollar as an incentive to embrace the new system." "Am I getting 'two for one' on Hugh's money?" "There's more than enough that you don't have to worry about the 'two for one' deal. We are willing to convert any cash you have on hand or in the bank." The man fidgeted as he spoke. "Finish ." Floyd smiled, "Sorry to interrupt." The man adjusted his tie, "Well, as I was saying. . . You exhibit exemplary behavior and a high work ethic, which merits you a one-time transfer to the outer edges of Quad Five. It's a lower middle-class place, but there is a small house on the edge, near the perimeter fence that needs to be fixed up. A person like you doesn't deserve to be here. You paid your debt to society. To be frank, you're old. Who are you legitimately going to harm?" The officer by the door chuckled. "What about work?" Floyd eyed the paperwork. "I'm not sure you saw the insurance amount." The man's tone changed, lowering his voice. "You don't need to work anymore. You can spend your last years in peace, living on that small plot of land, fixing up the shithouse in a halfway decent Quad or you can stay here with your credits and get robbed. The choice is yours. News like this travels fast in these parts. You know, with you not opening the door promptly and all." Floyd looked at the paper. He hadn't seen that many zeros in a while. He laughed a bit and signed as the man pointed to certain spots on the papers. He also had to initial here and here and here. When he was done, he put the pen down and asked, "How soon can I move?" "The officer will be stationed outside your door tonight. There will be two more downstairs, so we can move you whenever you are ready." The man looked over the paperwork, stacked the pages together neatly and put them in a briefcase. He pulled out a device and clicked a few buttons, "Money is in your account. I'd like to thank you for your time, Mister. . . Floyd. I imagine you don't have a lot of belongings. Hopefully, you can leave tonight. Remember, word travels fast around here. Have a great day." He stood and extended his hand. Floyd shook it and the man was out the door. The officer stood outside and asked Floyd if he knew when he would be ready to leave. "I need about a half hour, is that okay?" The officer nodded. Floyd closed the door. # Floyd exhaled. For the first time, he smiled. What luck! He was getting out! He walked into his bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. He opened the nightstand and pulled out his Bible. Inside was a package wrapped in plastic. He pulled it out and peeled the plastic open. It was the hamsa from Terra's arm, "I don’t know if this works, if Hugh was onto something or maybe it was just my time. Either way, thanks for the luck, baby. Tomorrow's gonna be a better day." He wrapped the tattoo and put it back in the Bible, grabbed his bag from beneath his bed and packed his few belongings.