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On the way to the airport on the edge of the city, he had asked the driver to pull over. He needed a break, just a moment, from so much flashing past. Outside his tinted window, the roadside ditch was covered with Queen Anne's Lace and its spring whiteness reminded him of a sneaky boy's sugary mouth. “Out of the sugar bowl,” she'd snap, and turn her head away so he could scoop a final mouthful. Other flowers had seized the small field beyond the ditch; what he thought were morning glories and some types he didn't recognize. He knew little about flowers. Everything else was covered with red dust. He was alone in the backseat of the big car. His ex-wife and children had gathered without comment in the second, identical car idling at the graveyard and hadn't waited to join the procession back to the funeral parlor. He had asked his driver to take him to the airport. It was the least the driver could do for the money the undertakers had squeezed out of him. Now he asked the driver to pull over. He looked at the back of the man's well-manicured head and sensed his impatience. It angered him for a few seconds. In the city he will never return to much had died. Factory whistles he once thought of as pressure screams were silent, the sirens racing to drunken Friday night paycheck fights had moved on. None of the noises and rhythms that once filled the old mill town remained. There were dandelions, he noticed. Somehow he had missed them. The sky was turning red, and he had a plane to catch. There were never flowers, little excess of life of any type, in that old house he only slightly remembered. Feet stomping, lamps hurried off, sidelong glances, spite for its own sake, but never lilies or mums or even a Valentine rose. For a sharp second, he thought of pushing open the car's big door and picking a bunch of Queen Anne's Lace to leave in her room, then realized with a roll of his stomach that surprised him with its force that he was being a fool. The hospital room was three days cleared of her, the next human already rolled in, an oxygen mask attached while the body finished emptying. Today had been too full of flowers. He still tasted their stink on his tongue. The driver shifted his weight, adjusted his backbone. Poor man no doubt wanted to get home, out of his funeral suit. I hope he has children to welcome him, the single man thought, and said, “Thanks for stopping. We can go now.” Then he lied and said, “I needed a moment alone.” John Riley is a former teacher. He has published poetry and fiction in Smokelong Quarterly, Eclectica, Banyan Review, and many other journals and anthologies. EXOT Books will publish a volume of 100 of his 100-word prose poems in the fall of 2022. He has published over forty books of nonfiction for young readers.

THE ASK It's easy to spot a man who's having an affair. At least now it is. Absence where the was once presence. It starts out benign, nothing unusual. Just a new friend. The excuses mount, the change dramatic, adoration replaced with distraction, an empty, hollowed-out gaze. Not present, no longer interested. Then there’s the ask. Even though he wasn't asking, just telling, and not telling. Do you mind if I pick her up at the airport? Yes, I do mind. He did it anyway. And then I really knew. It all fell apart like an overstuffed bag of groceries, when the soggy bottom gives out and its contents spill everywhere, embarrassingly so. Broken eggs all over the sidewalk, the now bruised pear, so lovely and protected only moments before. Splat went my life, for everyone to see. And me, on my hands and knees, scooping up the slimy yolks with my bare hands. There's a beauty when it all falls apart. Strangers look with compassion, their eyes tell me, “It’s gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay." THRILL Her thrill, my fear. It used to be my thrill, her fear. My mother’s, that is. And so it goes. The swing’s four feet hopping off the ground, just a little bit, like a toddler playing jumping bunny. I remember the day, watching, holding my breath, as that magical rhythm clicked into place, the top half and the bottom half of your tiny body in conversation. Bend, straighten, pump, bend, straighten, pump. So high, the few seconds of slacked rope, when the stomach drops, and the trees are sideways and the smile is ear to ear. The sheer thrill of it Kimberly Reiss currently lives in Austin, TX by way of Los Angeles (a pandemic left turn). She is a licensed psychotherapist, creator of the MOTHERHOOD SELFHOOD workshops and is currently writing its accompanying workbook. Kimberly is the co-author of an award-winning play entitled, Man In The Flying Lawnchair, which was included in Best Plays of 2000, and also appeared in The Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2001 (winner of the Fringe First Award). The play was re-recorded as a radio play for the BBC. Kimberly also created and produced The Go Girl! Film Festival; focusing on films that resonate with teenaged girls. Kimberly’s current writing projects include memoir, flash fiction, and poetry.

Dennis knocks on my door before 8 a.m. It’s a relief to see him. Like it is when Doug’s cold nose greets me in the morning. My older brother is sick. My old greyhound is sick too, though not with Dennis’ liver trouble. That’d be a metaphorical bridge too far. Dennis stretches long and skinny on my couch all day, his nose periscoping above blankets and scrunched pillows. The couch is a never-made bed. Never-made because Doug sad-sacks on it when Dennis isn’t there. My brother doesn’t share. Snappy and growly even as a kid, he never has. I wasn’t allowed to play with the Lego. Now I play nurse. I dispense pills. The dog gets two of the white, then, four hours later, one of the red. The brother gets big blue and yellow capsules before and after the dog’s meds. Complicated. I dreamt one night they were on the same thing, that Dennis got his in a cheese ball as the vet suggested. I think about family-size bottles of pills. Economy-size because I pay for them all. Sometimes I say how about a stroll while I go out for the prescriptions? Dennis, take Doug! Doug, take Dennis! They teeter to the corner and back. There can be coughing, retching. I once found blood-speckled vomit beside the couch. Dennis was pale and breathless. He panted he’d clean the rug, that Doug had barfed and was, apparently, really sorry for the mess. Embarrassed. My brother’s round brown eyes were wet. He grabbed my hand and told me — as gently as he had ever spoken — Doug could be close to running his last race. He wanted me to know. I hugged Dennis, petted Doug’s knobby head. Or maybe it was the other way around. Hard to know because I was sobbing, and they had dissolved into teary blurs. But it wasn’t true. Not yet. I still have them. Karen writes in a basement. Her words are in or forthcoming in Scapegoat Review, FlashBack Fiction, Reflex Fiction, Bullshit Lit, Briefly Zine, The Ekphrastic Review, Versification, and others. She/her.

The St James Place Bookshop Janice sat surrounded by Penguin Classics, sighing and sipping her Fanta. Traffic swished by outside the window. At the market, piles of cantaloupes, mangos and peaches touted for her money. Vegetable barkers pushed carrots, pumpkins and sweet potatoes. Merchandising was everywhere! Here there was none, as if her boss didn’t want to sell anything. *** Sometime around midnight, Janice stood in the shadows of a notorious, local underpass, watching out for one of the infamous taggers who flaunted their work on Instagram. Soon she saw movement and stepped forward. “The great Michelangelo II, I presume!” A man who would not have looked out of place in a downtown office said, “Who wants to know?” “Just someone who could use your talents and spread your fame. I work in a bookshop and you could paint pictures illustrating some of the books on the front window. You’d get the credit and we’d get the advertising. It’s a win-win.” Soon pictures of tigers, foxes, ladybirds and sunsets appeared on the front windows of the bookshop. *** Janice pulled to the roadside near a group of community-service workers who were picking up rubbish. A smile passed over her face as she got out, approached the boss of the gang and held out her hand. “Hello, I’m Janice Scott and I was wondering if your group could clean some graffiti off the window of the book shop where I work. In fact, it might need to be a regular thing because those pig-headed taggers can keep coming back.” Louis smiled back and said, “If it means I get the chance to see you again, I’ll make sure it gets added to the schedule.” Janice quite liked the sound of that, so they struck a deal. Every week the old group of pictures was removed and, sure enough, another group replaced it. Meanwhile, Janice and Louis got to know each other quite well. *** Janice’s boss, Mr. Sanderson, was a reclusive type who left everything to Janice. But, as more and more people were drawn to the pictures, they then asked about and bought the books which were illustrated. So, Janice decided to get in touch with him and ask for a raise. The increase in turnover certainly justified it. As usual, Janice got his answering machine, but oddly his message said he’d gone away on vacation. Janice was sure he’d told her that he hated traveling. *** Then one day a man came into the shop, turned around the Open sign and locked the door. Lifting his lapel, he revealed a filled shoulder holster. “About this shop,” he said, “I’ve come to make you an offer you can’t refuse.” Snail Mail Marge opened her letterbox and found a pile of confetti. She’d only been gone a week but the snails had munched their way through whatever had come. It couldn’t have been very important, she thought. A couple of years later she ran into her old boyfriend John in Coles and he introduced her to his new wife. While Sally was off squeezing the melons, he asked Marge why she’d never answered his letter two years earlier. ‘I never would have married Sally if you had,’ he said. Later Marge put several large boxes of snail pellets into her trolley. Susan Cornford is a retired public servant, living in Perth, Western Australia. She/her has most recently had pieces published or forthcoming in Ab Terra Flash Fiction, Across the Margin, Adelaide Literary Magazine, borrowed solace, Crow’s Feet Journal, Ethel Zine, Flash Frontier, Frost Zone Zine, Granfalloon Magazine, INK Babies Literary Magazine, Instant Noodles Literary Magazine, Mystery Tribune, The Mythic Circle, Quail Bell Magazine, The Short Humour Site, Thriller Magazine and Worthing Flash.

HE CAME BACK YEARS LATER BUT I WAS ALREADY DAMAGED GOODS Bright parrots chirp glass songs near your lunette window <<>> I want to keep a California thrasher <<>> But I am afraid it will outlive me <<>> Like your Phoenix tattoo <<>> Over a flesh cloud of black ink <<>> I lay on your shoulder <<>> I know what is & isn’t real <<>> Know where myth & reality meet <<>> I’ve grown up & sex isn’t everything <<>> What I don’t know: did you really rise from the ashes and all that? <<>> Your three different bottles of pills <<>> Scattered like bird seed <<>> Azines & azepams keep you flying <<>> I’m still crawling along the ground <<>> Still wearing sparrow feathered masks <<>> Never did leave the party where we met <<>> All of eighteen & too virgin-nervous to walk the river <<>> We should have done this years ago <<>> Realizing who we are again to one another <<>> Waiting for birds to outlive us <<>> You want to know if time broke me <<>> If I only like things when they hurt? <<>> Not exactly <<>> When I was twenty-one <<>> A man asked to play my body like an instrument <<>> & I let him <<>> & honestly I haven’t been the same since <<>> Longingness Am I in a relationship with you or longing? <<>> I need to know how longing <<>> Is like the number 13 <<>> How the 3 bends <<>> But the 1 never does <<>> Like heartache <<>> Or a rough haunting <<>> Always reaching for the 1 <<>> But you belong to no one <<>> My longing three nets <<>> Is longing an emotion? <<>> What I really need is a good trepanning <<>> To rid the longing <<>> A hole in my head <<>> To cure the 3 in my heart <<>> Like the brain longs for bubbles <<>> Like the skull longs for metal <<>> That full heartbeat in the brain <<>> Brain pulse <<>> How 13 never touches itself <<>> Reach and reach <<>> Holes may bring relief <<>> What’s happening between us <<>> So beautiful <<>> And delicate <<>> Like you blowing a bubble in my mouth <<>> Is longingness a word? <<>> No <<>> But let the word voyage <<>> Let it long for touch as I write <<>>> I will keep adding letters to the word <<>> Let it touch you <<>> You <<>> My longingness <<>> Suzanne Richardson earned her M.F.A. in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the University of New Mexico. She currently lives in Binghamton, New York where she's a Ph.D. student in creative writing at SUNY Binghamton. She is working on a memoir, Throw it Up and a full poetry collection, The Want Monster. She is the writer of Three Things @nocontactmag and more about Suzanne and her writing can be found here: https://www-suzannerichardsonwrites.tumblr.com/

Coevolution I’ve never dreamed of wolves only of the stars above their ears. My dog sleeps next to me still green from a roll in fresh-cut grass. Thousands of years ago we chose some wolves to breed brought them along on our evolutionary journey and left the rest behind out beneath the stars. How did we decide to tame those silver-tongued wolves who permeated the membranes of our porous dreams? When we were running running running quadrupeds again seeing through their shining eyes until dawn broke and the wolves slept and we woke, hands and feet dirty with mud and grass. Staccato memories of stars vibrated above our ears and we had the strange feeling of having spent the night boca arriba, face-up all four limbs stretched out reaching reaching reaching for the moon. We saw through their eyes bright like mercury and said, we can make them better. Systems of Navigation I. There are no more explorers, not really. They died out long ago, once they’d mapped every inch of the earth’s surface. What is there left to explore, or even to see, after we have forced the others to show us everything that was theirs – and then we took it? II. The first real explorers are not remembered by name but only by the stars they became when they died. Their light became our light when we were still young enough to be given gifts for no reason as though there was still time for us to grow up to become something good, as though the cosmos gifted us things because we were children and there was no reason not to. The gods must have been crazy. But then, who could have predicted what we would become? Those first explorers trusted the stars, the constellations, to lead them where they were meant to go and the beautiful thing of it all is that they did. Second star to the right, and straight on till morning. Now we put our faith in GPS to lead us – not where we are meant to go, but where we have already decided to. The question is no longer, Shall we pilgrimage by land or sea but rather, What is the fastest route to my destination. Avoid tolls and traffic. III. To understand, we have only to look up at the stars and down at the earth. To understand, we can remember the Incas Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, who followed a golden staff to where they were meant to be – a city they named Cusco: Navel of the World. To understand, imagine shining streets radiating out from your own navel. Imagine yourself streaming through those streets at night looking up at the black that holds the stars in place: you are lost, you are golden, you are free. Liana Kapelke-Dale is a poet and ATA Certified Translator (Spanish to English). She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin Law School. She is the author of Seeking the Pink (Kelsay Books), a full-length book of poetry; Little words seeking/Mute human for mutual/Gain and maybe more (Irrelevant Press), a chapbook of personal ads written in haiku form; and Specimens, her first (self-published) chapbook. Her poetry has been featured in myriad journals, most recently in Cerasus Magazine and Full House Literary Magazine, and she has work forthcoming in Shorelines of Infinity. Liana lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her lovely pointer-hound mix, Poet.

Where could she be? It was snowing. Hard. And his sister was somewhere in the storm. Papa went to fetch the doctor—Mama’s baby was coming—and left Bobby at a crossroads, though you couldn’t see them cross because of the snow: Bitty’s not home, go find her. He watched the back of the wagon and its wheels, smaller and smaller until he saw only the angle-falling snow. Go find her. Bobby turned and looked across the white emptiness. Only angle-falling snow. Opposite angle. Papa had a dead arm. It hung at his side, lifeless, immobile, useless except for filling his sleeve. Bobby was afraid it was like blight in the field, first one stalk, then a patch, then the whole field brown and broken and everyone worried how they would eat. Go find her. My name is Bobby Frye, like fry with an e. My parents are Robert and Roberta Frye. My sister is Elizabeth. Everybody calls her Bitty. I live in the white house three-quarters of a mile northwest of Stephenson Road looking toward Hollis Woods. He began walking. Snow stung his face, a face that was just beginning to show the first fine signs of manhood. Maybe she went to get Mrs. Houndstooth to help your mother, Papa said. The wagon couldn’t reach the Houndstooth farm because of the snow-drifted road, so Papa went to get Doc Higgins, though he hadn’t delivered a baby in more years than anyone could count, Papa said. The Houndstooth farm and the Whittle farm and the Stephenson farm, they all touch here and there, and the woods—witches are in the woods and the devil and coyotes. And hunters and trappers. Plague doesn’t live in the woods, he comes at night, you hear the flapping of his wings then the children are gone. He’s black, even his beak, even his eyes. Black like the night but blacker. Then the mother and father wear black. But blacker. Like Mr. Michaels’s suit, the undertaker, and Pastor Wilson. Pray to Jesus and to the Virgin—they will protect you. And to God and to Mary. They also will protect you. The Hollis children didn’t say their prayers. They’re in the woods too. Their ghosts. They’re ghosts. There ghosts. Which? Witch. White sky white ground. Bobby had to look hard into the wind to see a difference. His eyes watered. He wiped at them with the back of his glove. He was supposed to have a twin. A brother just like him. An always friend and game-mate. But he went to Jesus when they were born. I’ll meet him someday. What will I call him? He doesn’t have a name. Will he look just like me now or when I’m old? What if he’s still a baby? Will I have to take care of him? Like Mama’s baby, the lost one that went to Jesus also, and this new baby Mama’s having. Sometimes babies smell good, like honeysuckle soap, and sometimes they smell bad, real bad, like the privy hole in summer. You can smell them five pews away. Even Pastor Wilson makes a face. It’s funny but don’t laugh. He stopped and considered the white-on-white horizon. Something was moving, something dark against the emptiness. He waited. Should he run? Go find her. Maybe it’s Bitty. Uncertainty froze him as he turned over again and again what to do, like cards in a game whose rules kept out of reach of his fingertips. The dark figure approached. Not Bitty. Cautious. A man in a black coat and hat, a rifle on his shoulder, a Savage like Papa’s, a hunter, pulling an empty sled by a rope. Snowshoes affecting his gait. Have you saw a girl? The man was silent. A little girl, by herself, my sister? No, haven’t seen anyone I’m afraid. There were boot prints, small, maybe a girl’s. Where? The man turned and waved his arm vaguely in a direction. Maybe that way, can’t say for certain. Bobby waited for the man to say more, to provide more helpful information. Instead, What road is this? Bobby didn’t realize he was next to a road. There were the ruts of wheels cut in the snow, and half-frozen dung. Maybe from him and Papa and Old Psalt (the p is like the e in Frye, p and e rhyme), when they tried to fetch Mrs. Houndstooth to help Mama and the baby. Whittle Road, he guessed, the fork to their place is just over there. He gestured as the man had. Go find her. Bobby set off in the hopeless snow. He tasted snot on his chapped lips and wiped his nose with the back of his glove. He squinted into the piercing white light scanning for boot prints. Prints the relentless snow had been erasing from the start. He walked into the featureless landscape until he was no longer bothering to find the boot prints. Bobby wondered if the hunter was real, or had his brain played a dirty trick on him? It always played tricks when he still went to school. He would study hard until he knew his number tables, or the capitals, or Mr. Lincoln’s speech, or how to spell the state with all the s’s and p’s. He knew them dead, or nearly dead, until the teacher put a slate in front of him and told him to write them, then his brain played its dirty trick and all he could remember was my name is Bobby Frye, like fry with an e, my parents are Robert and Roberta Frye . . . he could feel his classmates’ eyes laughing at him and worse he could feel his little sister’s eyes feeling sorry for him wanting to tell him the answers secretly like someone talking to you in a dream. Bobby could still think his times threes up to four, easy, but only because the teacher wasn’t telling him to write them, and the class wasn’t waiting for him not to be able to. He stopped in the white nowhere and relieved himself writing 12 in tall yellow figures. The sky was sour-milk gray. Dark was coming. It was cold. The 12 was already fading back to white. The contrast of the dimming sky helped the outline of Hollis Woods to stand out on the horizon, so Bobby began trudging toward them. Normally you avoided the woods but they were at least something he knew, a point of reference that softened the feeling of being lost. A new teacher had been coming to the farm just to teach Bobby, Mr. Folger. He and Mama were friends. At church people said Mr. Folger was teaching Mama some new lessons. Mrs. Anthony said no, Mama was teaching him. People thought that was funny. Mr. Folger gave Mama a book she liked to read. She kept it in a drawer until Papa was in the barn or the field. The book wasted a lot of paper—there was only a small block of words on each page. Mr. Folger stopped teaching Bobby at the farm. Then Mama was expecting the baby. Mrs. Anthony said it was a bone-filed miracle, Papa making her that way. Worth every Joseph, she said. At night Mama sat in the parlor by herself reading Mr. Folger’s book. After Papa was in bed, Papa and his dead arm. It didn’t matter that Mr. Folger quit teaching him. He had to help Papa more and more. The ground slowly tilted down making walking easier, which was good. His legs were tired from the high snow. He wished he had snowshoes like the hunter was wearing. For a moment he forgot why he was out in the storm, lost, cold, then he remembered Bitty, then Mama and the baby, then the boot prints. Then there they were—prints of some sort in the snow, dark partially frozen impressions that may have been made by small boots or shoes, or maybe they were paw prints, a dog or a coyote. They came along the hill crosswise before turning down, on a path directly toward the woods, close enough now to see the vertical outlines of tree trunks, the vanguard before breaching the monochrome of hopeless endless white. Go find her. Bobby wiped his nose with the back of his glove and began following the vanishing prints. He heard things—someone calling, a girl’s voice, laughter, a girl’s, howling, a dog or a coyote—and at each sound he paused, looked through the angle-falling snow for its source, and each time found nothing. The wind, he decided, banking against the hill. Or carrying the sounds from Hollis Woods and laying them upon the snow, one by one, like the cards Mama used to show him, Mama or Bitty, to teach him words: horse and dog and moon and witch and boy and girl—he remembered the pictures clearly (he could draw them dead if they wanted) but the words jumbled their letters the second Mama or Bitty turned them facedown. Grandpa Hab, Papa’s Papa, lived with them, and sometimes he forgot and spoke his other language, from when he was a boy. The words on the cards were kind of like that. The pieces sounded right but they were put together in ways that wouldn’t make sense. Sometimes Grandpa called Bitty a funny name, the name of a girl from his other language, when he was a boy. horse dog moon witch boy girl Girl, like the one from the card, was there, in the snow, before the woods, dark clothes, yellow hair wrapping itself in the wind. Not Bitty though little bitty like her. Not little young so much as little small. Bobby had stopped, studying her from a distance. He raised his hand in greeting. The girl turned and walked into the woods. She wasn’t wearing a coat. Or a hat. Only a coarse blue dress hardly suited to the weather. The facts required time to register. Bobby hurried after her, the girl who was quickly being obscured by the snowy woods, swallowed by them, hidden away. Hello! He could hardly hear himself in the howling whipping swirling wind and the crunching dampening deepening snow. Bobby paused before entering the woods and thought again of the card images horse dog moon witch boy girl. He thought of the Virgin in his Sunday picture book, only a girl cloaked in blue, her blond hair against a yellow disk, a girl with a baby white as snow. He looked back at the sour-milk sky above the pure white rise. Maybe the moon was there, hidden, risen as it can before earnest nightfall. Hidden like the girl now. Go find her. He wiped his nose and stepped into the forest. Instantly the wind was cut. Snow instead fell gently from the forest canopy—like the snow during the Nativity play on Christmas Eve. One Christmas, the Christmas Mama lost the baby, during the play Mama’s tears fell slowly like the snow when Baby Jesus was placed in the manger—not the real Baby Jesus, the Mesmores’ baby but too big for Baby Jesus. Light too fell lightly from the forest’s invisible ceiling. The girl had entered the woods at a place where there was a rough but discernible path, a narrow but consistent space between trees. Bobby saw no prints in the snow, yet she must’ve come this way. He started following the crude path. He remembered the witch’s hooked nose and her single overlarge eye that watched you no matter where you moved in the room. Until Mama or Bitty put the stack in the drawer. Even then you knew the witch was in there, and her staring eye was staring in the dark. In the forest’s half-light the jutting trunks and crossing limbs, all brushed with shadow, seemed to form any number of unlikely shapes. Bobby’s snow-weary eyes worked to make them out. There was a sow with her shoats in the almost-dark, and a bear rearing up on his hind legs, and, most improbably of all, an elephant whose trunk was crook-shaped like the witch’s nose. They appeared one after another just off the wandering path. They were not real, Bobby knew. Yet their presence in the woods unsettled him. Each vanished as easily as it appeared, a trick of his trouble-causing brain. The girl he saw, she must have been a trick too, one that fooled him into entering the woods. Bobby turned to undo his mistake, to right his wrong—and she was on the path, facing him, her hair aglow in the waning light. Her eyes a luminous blue, staring at him. In fact not blinking at all. Bobby spoke the only words that came to him: Have you saw my sister, Bitty, little like you? Then he said, Are you lost too? Then, Where’s your baby, the baby white as snow? He watched for the yellow disk to rise behind her like the moon. Maybe it was there, in the sky, but concealed by the trees and the storm. She opened her mouth and spoke. The pieces of her words were jumbled, perhaps half of them not reaching him at all, falling to the snow-covered ground between them. Bobby had an impulse to gather them and try to fit them back together like pieces of a broken bowl. On the floor mixed among wax beans still steaming in the cold kitchen. Or the bits of a ripped letter, like the one Mr. Folger gave Mama—Bobby recognized the oblong loops and slanted sticks of his teacher’s writing. Mama tore it up damp with her tears and threw the pieces at the fire. She hurried away crying and didn’t see some of the biggest pieces missed the fire and were scattered on the parlor rug. Papa and his dead arm were in the barn. Bobby picked up the pieces and wished he didn’t have such a bad brain—but he knew Papa’s good brain didn’t need to read them. So he put them in the fire for Mama. And for Papa. And Bitty. And the new baby. Bobby was staring at the ground, at the pieces of the girl’s words that were not there, and knew she wasn’t either even before looking up. He felt the witch’s eye staring at him. Maybe then she wasn’t watching Bitty, wherever she was, or Mama and the baby, or Papa, for surely it was her evil eye that had blighted Papa’s arm. Her eye was overlarge and powerful, yes, and grim, but still only singular. Out there, beyond the edge of the woods, some daylight remained. Bobby wiped his nose and began again. "Oxen at the Well" is part of a work in progress. Other pieces have appeared or are forthcoming in/at North American Review (two pieces), Sequestrum, Belle Ombre, Pangyrus, and The Bookends Review; in anthologies/collections from Wordrunner e-Chapbooks, Adelaide Books, Something or Other Publishing, and Indie It Press; as podcasts from 9th Story Studios; and dramatic video readings from NY Web Publishing. See tedmorrissey.com for way too much information.

LAST DAYS OF MAY After my last exam, I stopped to see my brother, who’d just invented a holiday that required him to call off work. “Eponymas?” I said. “The holy day of self-titled debut albums!” I sat, enveloped by the smell of marijuana and whatever it was that wafted from his work-friend Mab, who brooded inside a hoodie on the cat-killed couch. “Today, my brother said, “it’s BOC.” When I named my favorite song of theirs, Mab cackled. The smell reminded me of roadside decay. “Seriously? ‘Burning for You?’” My brother palmed off his bandana and shook out lawless hair. “Buck the popular opinions.’” He slid the disc into his hand. “The early stuff’s what’s real. When a band’s still faithful to themselves.” He dropped the needle. Crack and fizz. Then came the clear, austere lead. “First verse,” my brother said. “Story’s all there. Naïve dudes, desert landscape, cash for dope, the hint of inevitable betrayal.” He glanced at Mab. “That right?” While listening, I studied the curtains—a tattered flag with the words “NO SURRENDER” slapped across red and black. Mab drew the strings of his hoodie before offering me a joint. When I shook my head, he said, “Your loss,” the room blooming again with that corpse-like smell. “No—his gain.” My brother squeezed my shoulder. “He’s not going to go along with the crowd.” The boys were now dead, the song nearly done. Eyes flickering, my brother stood to twist the lock on the door. “Trust, faith,” he said. “All’s well and good until someone loses a life.” Mab passed his stink with the joint. My brother inhaled and held his breath, eyes fixed on the shadow beneath the hood. At the end of the month, hauled in by his boss for theft, he’d let it all out for good. BREAK ROOM, SMITTY’S ON THE LEVEE “There oughta be a rule,” Angelica said, jabbing a shoe into the space between his boots. “At least three steps for a dance.” “You can’t even...” He touched her shoulders, showed her where to put hands before moving her—one-two, one-two. She studied his eyes. He couldn’t believe how little there was between them. “Quick-quick, slow-slow.” Last week, on his way from break back to Dairy, he’d noticed her in Meats. The next day, she grinned crazily behind the glass, raised a cleaver for effect. “Maybe—” “Follow my lead.” Yesterday evening, sent to the lot for carts, he gawked at a parade of tight jeans and ten gallons striding toward the Cactus Club next door. Ridiculous or cool? Maybe they could scoot their way into the spree in between? “You smell like a baby.” “Huh?” “Milk.” Her bloody apron spoiled the picture he’d conjured of them dressed to the cowpoke nines. She grinned. “One-two percent.” Hurt, he stuck thumbs into belt loops. He pantomimed a cheek with chaw. “But you’ve got a few moves,” Angelica said, sideways punching his arm. “I’ll give you that.” One, two—such stupid simple math. But she, although sharp, would never add them up. THE WARDROBE I’m sipping coffee at a bar in Schöneberg when this man slaps down across from me. Swigging his Kindl, he tells me he’s in Berlin for the year. “Such history,” I say. “You a tourist?” He tips his beer toward memorabilia behind me. “I’m looking for a new start.” “You and the world. You know Bowie, though?” “‘Changes?’” “If that’s the best you can do. In the 70s, this was his favorite bar.” I say I’d just wanted a place to rest. “He’s coming back, you know.” “Who?” “Bowie.” “Isn’t he—?” “Listen, mate.” He scrapes his chair toward mine. “I bought that wardrobe at an auction. The one from ‘Lazarus.’ Last video he made.” I remember. “Someday, he’ll step back out, dressed in some slick new skin. Not Ziggy, not the Thin White Duke.” When the coffin closed, I forgot my mother’s face. “I’ll be front row for something never seen.” As a teen, attempting to come close, I’d sneak into her closet, slip into dresses and precipitous heels, items she’d saved for occasions that never came. Now, those clothes are gone forever. At Goodwill, some spaced-out guy shrugged and said, “Guess you can chuck ’em on that heap.” Michael’s flash and microfictions have appeared in online journals such as Fictive Dream, Fiction Kitchen Berlin, Cabinet of Heed, and South Florida Poetry Journal.

The car was making that noise again. Dan had mentioned the sound when he’d taken it in to get the oil changed. His mechanic had inspected the engine and the underside of the car, had even driven it around the block a few times, but was unable to locate the source. He’d said to bring the car back if it worsened but didn’t seem overly concerned and told Dan not to worry. Whenever someone said not to worry, it always made him anxious. Not that he didn’t believe Mitch, he’d been bringing his cars to him since he was a teenager, Dan just didn’t like the uncertainty the phrase evoked. The light flicked from red to green and as soon as he put his foot on the accelerator it started back up, always beginning as a low rattle that steadily rose in pitch. After he got up past thirty it usually settled down and blended into the background with the traffic and road noise, but before that it was like a tubercular coughing fit. He’d taken a look under the car before bringing it in, searching for a loose connection or some dangling bit of metal but everything appeared normal enough. Granted, his vehicular knowledge was so limited that he was totally oblivious to anything other than the glaringly obvious. His father had maintained all the family vehicles until his hips and back got too bad for him to continue. Dan had watched his dad change the oil, replace spark plugs and batteries, had even seen him do the front brakes. Whatever mechanical inclinations resided in the family genetics skipped Dan completely, a fact he often felt self-conscious about. Helping his parents with their phones or updating the firmware on their Blu-ray player was more his forte, and they were grateful for his assistance, but it didn’t exactly fall into the same category as auto maintenance or the time his parents had completely remodeled the upstairs bathroom by themselves. Dan hated when people made generalizations about entire generations, but it did seem like certain skill sets had diminished over the years as others arrived to take their place. He supposed that had always been true, but it didn’t make him feel better about failing to replace the u-bend under his kitchen sink even after watching a twenty-minute video tutorial. He pulled into the parking lot, which was empty except for a scattering of vehicles. The high-rise was operating with a skeleton crew and having a building that massive with only a handful of employees made Dan feel like he was living in a post-apocalyptic movie. He’d been working from home since the pandemic started but needed to come in to install some new servers and make sure all the basic operational software was up and running. Dan pulled on the facemask hanging around his neck as he entered the lobby and waved to Carla at the front desk. Her mask was homemade featuring a bright yellow fabric with some sort of jungle cat pattern printed on it, cheetah, or maybe leopard, he wasn’t sure. The one covering his own face was plain white. He’d gotten it from his uncle who worked as an electrical contractor and had a stockpile of them that he’d given out to everyone in the family back when the first cases of the virus had been reported on the news. Dan hadn’t seen his parents or siblings face-to-face in nearly eight months. They texted regularly and had phone calls every week, but it still felt strange, especially with Dan living alone in his apartment. There were only four units in his building and he’d barely seen his neighbors except in passing, though one of them had been a shut-in long before all this started. He pushed the button for seventeen and leaned back against the wall, staring at his distorted reflection in the polished steel doors. There was something odd about the experience he didn’t identify until the elevator arrived at his floor. It was the music, specifically the lack of it. They’d switched off the instrumental drone he’d been subconsciously listening to for almost twenty years. He’d been with Bixby for most of his post-college career, starting as a support tech and working his way up to systems administrator. The company occupied floors sixteen through eighteen, with all of the server closets located on seventeen. There were a handful of cubicles on the floor which had been abandoned for months but still displayed photographs and other personal items and Dan had that eerie omega-man feeling again. On one of the desks a colorful square with Dell printed in the center bounced around the screen changing hues as it did so. Dan started toward the monitor to turn it off, but then stopped. Having the ricocheting shape around made him feel slightly less alone, like leaving the TV on as you fell asleep. Three large cardboard boxes were stacked outside his office door. He grabbed a utility knife from his desk and got to work unpacking the rack servers that would be replacing a trio of old workhorses that had been at Bixby almost as long as he had. “Don’t make them like that anymore.” Dan said to himself and chuckled. Though the new machines were orders of magnitude faster and more powerful than the models they were replacing, they would likely not last half as long as their predecessors, victims of the planned obsolescence that seemed to plague everything these days. Normally an install like this would have to be done over the weekend to minimize downtime, but with everyone working remotely using their own internet connections, he’d been able to funnel network traffic onto the other servers, which gave him all the time he wanted to get the new ones up and running. It was nice not having to hurry through the process and Dan took extra care with the installation, thoroughly cleaning the server closet and replacing all the broken plastic ties on the ethernet cabling before bringing in the new machines. By the time he’d finished installing the company’s base software on the first two servers it was nearly midnight. There were still scripts he had to run and all the custom programs that needed to be loaded. After that he’d begin testing things and making sure that everything was configured correctly, but he’d gotten a lot done. Dan considered swinging by the convenience store on the way home to pick up a victory six-pack, but he was exhausted and didn’t think making a detour was advisable. Walking across the lobby he waved to Steve at the security desk who was wearing a silver and black mask with an image on it that may have been a team emblem or possibly a band logo, though it was difficult to tell from a distance. Dan sat behind the wheel of his car and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands for several moments before keying the ignition. The temperature had dropped by nearly twenty degrees and he drove home with the windows down to help keep himself alert. It was quiet in the entryway of his apartment and he made sure to step lightly as he walked up the stairs to his front door. He deposited his keys into a small wicker basket on the kitchen counter and poured himself a glass of water from the faucet, drinking it down in four long swallows. Dan put the empty glass in the sink and shuffled over to the living room where he slumped down onto the couch. He turned the television to a show he’d seen every episode of and set the sleep timer for thirty minutes, feeling his eyelids start to slip closed before the opening credits had ended. ***** The sound didn’t match the scene. He was wandering the empty corridors of his office searching for something when suddenly there was an echoing boom like an empty steel drum had been dropped from the top of the building. Dan sat up in bed, looking around his room for toppled-over objects, but everything appeared to be in its proper place. A quick walk through his apartment showed no obvious signs of disarray, none that hadn’t been there before anyway, and nothing else particularly unusual aside from the fact that it was a bit cold. Dan removed the security bar from the metal track at the bottom of the door and stepped out onto the small wooden balcony. The temperature had fallen even further and he shivered and crossed his arms against the chill. He could see a few lights on in the units of the building across from his and wondered if anyone else had been woken up by the noise. He scanned the parking lot for evidence of a disturbance, a damaged car or discarded piece of furniture in the dumpsters that hadn’t been there before. ‘Maybe a transformer blew at the electrical substation?’ Dan had experienced this a few years back while shoveling out his car in the parking lot. The station was several miles away, but he’d still been able to see the bright green flash followed by a cacophonous bang that sounded like a bomb going off. It happened two more times while he was out there and it seemed to him like the place should be in smithereens, but the apartment didn’t even lose power. A sudden gust assaulted the gap between the bottom of his pajama pants and his slippers and he turned to head back inside when he noticed something dangling from the gutter directly above him. Dan stood on tiptoe and was able to graze the edge of the object, then lost his balance and stumbled backward, banging his hip against the railing. “This is by far one of your dumber ideas.” Dan mumbled to himself. He craned his neck trying to get a better look at the thing, but it was shrouded in shadow. Getting a flashlight or even his phone would’ve been the sensible thing to do, but he knew if he went back inside then he’d just give up on the whole thing and Dan wanted to know what was up there. Another burst of frigid air buffeted against his back as he repositioned himself under the gutter; he stretched out his fingers until the joints ached and managed to grasp onto the object just as his legs began to wobble. It appeared to be some kind of cloth with a glossy finish that reflected the light from the lamp poles and a surface that felt rough and uneven like lizard skin that had been lacquered and turned into cowboy boots. Dan brought his discovery inside and spread out some paper towels on his dining room table before putting it down and heading over to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. He was about to examine the thing more carefully, but his exhaustion had suddenly returned with a vengeance and he shuffled off to bed to avoid falling asleep on the sofa. ***** After hitting the snooze button for the third time, Dan finally gave up and opened his eyes. It was that damn dream. The vividness of it kept pulling him back in, which was unusual for him. When he was young all of his dreams seemed real and he’d spend the following day retracing the events trying to figure out what they meant. During his teenage years something changed and they became difficult to remember, or maybe his hormonal brain had simply moved on to other things. He made himself presentable enough to be seen by what little public he encountered these days, switched on the coffee maker, and fixed himself a bowl of cereal. It wasn’t until he sat down and started eating that he noticed the thing he’d snatched from the gutter. Dan assumed it had appeared dark because of the lights being so far away but the scrap of fabric was jet black and the pattern embedded on its surface was not so much reptilian as pockmarked and pitted, like the aftermath of a particularly bad case of acne. He pulled out his phone to take a picture of the thing and when he zoomed in Dan noticed that there was an iridescent sheen that changed depending on the angle. It reminded him of the prismatic reflection from soap bubbles or the rainbow shimmer floating on a puddle of gasoline. His initial thought was that it had come from some high-end dress or designer coat, maybe even one of those purses that cost as much as a plane ticket, but when he examined the material there were no signs of tearing or any observable holes or seams where it had separated. ‘Maybe it was a leftover remnant from some fashion project?’ This seemed like a possibility, though if someone had cut it from a larger piece then they’d done an impeccable job; the edges were all flawlessly straight and it appeared to be a perfect rectangle. Dan wondered if maybe it was a thing onto itself like a handkerchief or a pocket square. It didn’t seem quite the right size for a scarf, though he supposed it could be used as a bandana or to tie back a ponytail. Still, the complete lack of stitching, much less a label, seemed to make it an unlikely candidate. Dan snapped a picture with his phone but was annoyed when he viewed it as it didn’t adequately capture the details. He ran his hand over the top of the material, letting the tips of his fingers follow the contours from one edge to the other. He then thought of all the bacteria and germs it had been exposed to sitting outside and immediately went over to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. “So then why the hell did you bring this thing inside?” Dan muttered to himself. Despite the evidence sitting in front of him, the whole episode felt surreal as if it had happened to someone else. He checked the news for reports of a nearby explosion, but the only local headline concerned a lost dog that had recently been reunited with his owner. Dan rinsed his bowl and coffee mug in the sink and went back to the table for his phone. He squinted down at the fabric and tilted his head left and right, smiling as the streamer of light reflecting off the surface shifted from purple to green and back again. He patted his front pocket to make sure he had his wallet and keys and then slipped his phone into the opposite one. He’d gotten halfway to the front door when he turned back toward the table. “I know I’ve got a can of disinfectant spray around here somewhere.” ***** The office was even more of a ghost town than it had been the day before with even the custodial crew down to only a handful of people. “Guess there isn’t nearly as much to clean when you don’t have all us slobs around making a mess of the place.” Dan said and made a mental note to give his office a thorough tidying up while he was there. His entire floor had been deep cleaned a couple months prior and whenever he exited the elevator the smell of ammonia still assaulted his nostrils. Fortunately, the server rooms hadn’t been touched since you couldn’t use ordinary cleaning products around the machines. Dan did make sure to regularly dust the hardware and sweep the floor, which was tile rather than the carpet that covered the rest of seventeen. He finished installing the third server, which ended up needing new mounting rails since the old box hadn’t wanted to part with them. ‘Almost like the damn thing knew it was being put out to pasture.’ Dan thought as he walked back to his desk. He started the base software package on the last machine, deciding it was better to have all of them at the same spot so he could load the custom configurations together rather than having to stagger everything. It was half past seven when the install finally completed. He’d worked straight through the afternoon and was absolutely famished. There was a sandwich shop that had opened up in the strip mall across the street a few months before the pandemic protocols went into effect. The place had great food and Dan hoped they’d still be around after things opened back up; at least they had some business coming in from carry-out and he was relieved to see the open sign still glowing as he stepped out of the lobby into the night air. He marveled at how bright the stars were and had read somewhere that the reduction in daily commuter traffic had resulted in a significant decrease in air pollution but then read another article saying such a shift would take decades. Probably just people looking for silver linings he supposed and reached inside his jacket pocket to find it empty. “Shit.” Dan said, realizing he’d left his mask sitting on his desk. He looked at the sign on the door and saw that the shop was only open for another fifteen minutes. Even if he ran back, the elevator ride alone would take up half that time and the last thing he wanted was to walk in right as they were closing. He started to turn around and head back toward the parking lot when he remembered the fabric. Dan pulled it out and caught a whiff of the spray he’d used to sterilize the material. The finish looked even more striking in the moonlight, and he couldn’t help admiring it as he folded the corners together and knotted them around the back of his head. He adjusted the cloth making sure it was secure and then used the camera on his phone to inspect himself. “Sweet lord.” He looked like a fashion-conscious wild west bandit or a haute-couture bank robber who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing an off-the-rack facial covering to conceal their identity. ‘Maybe they won’t remember me?’ Dan thought as he entered the shop. This hope was immediately dashed when the young guy behind the counter wearing a blue medical mask gave him a head nod and asked, “You doing your usual Italian sub tonight, or going for something different?” “Why don’t you surprise me.” Dan said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I’ve actually been experimenting with a new sandwich. You like tuna salad?” “Love it.” “Alright then. I’ve been tinkering with my mom’s recipe, adding a few new spices and mixing diced jalapeno in with the pickle relish. You can be my guinea pig.” “Sounds good. I’m up for a little adventure.” “I thought you might be with that flair you’ve added to your pandemic ware.” Dan chuckled. “Yeah, I accidentally left my regular mask at the office. This was a last-minute improvisation.” “Looks styling man; I think you should keep it.” Dan laughed again. “Maybe I will.” ***** The sandwich was every bit as good as advertised and Dan wondered if he could become Louis’s permanent recipe tester. He’d been so hungry that he ended up going back to the office and eating at his desk. Leaving the sandwich shop he considered just dining in his car but decided against the idea; his upholstery was already in desperate need of cleaning and he didn’t want to add to the sedimentary layers of crumbs accumulated in the seams of his seats. He wasn’t sure if it was just post-meal sleepiness, but he was ready for bed. Thankfully this time of night the streets would be empty, and the drive home wouldn’t take long. It felt good having somewhere to go in the morning. After spending countless hours in pajama pants and t-shirts, any allure the work-from-home situation held had officially worn off. It seemed like he’d had this massive list of personal projects he’d been meaning to get done, but it had only taken a couple months to finish most of them. Dan hadn’t realized how comforting it’d been to have that list. Now it seemed like he was a specter haunting his own apartment, aimlessly drifting from room to room searching for something to do. When his manager called to tell him that they were going ahead with the hardware upgrade he’d audibly sighed in relief. Dan thought of all the other things he’d been meaning to tackle around the office; sorting through the old equipment and figuring out what could be donated and what needed to be disposed of could easily fill up a couple of weeks. He was sure his supervisor would be fine with him continuing to go in and probably even praise him for his initiative. ‘Might end up getting promoted just for going stir crazy.’ Dan wondered if there was a name for Cabin Fever when it wasn’t happening in some remote wilderness locale. ‘Lock-Down Lethargy? Shelter-In-Place Syndrome? Quarantine Kookiness?’ He packed up his things and headed for the door. “Forgetting something?” Dan froze, waiting for the voice to say something else. When it didn’t, he slowly turned back and looked around for an explanation. His desktop machine was shut down and there was nothing else nearby that could account for what he’d heard. He took a tentative step toward the door and then another, arm reaching out for the handle. “Leaving without me, are we?” Dan wheeled around nearly toppling over in the process. He managed to catch himself on the corner of the desk and stood there gripping the faux wood surface as if he were dangling from a ledge. “You’re just tired.” Dan said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “Couple of long days in a row and it made you a little slap-happy.” He loosened his hold and straightened up. There was a gooseneck lamp at the opposite corner of the desk and sitting beside it was his makeshift mask. Dan pinched the fabric between his thumb and forefinger like he was afraid it was going to bite him. He crept out of his office and over to the elevator as if trying not to wake a sleeping infant. When the guard at the security desk wished him a pleasant evening Dan nearly jumped out of his skin but managed a stilted smile and feeble wave as he exited the building. ***** Walking up the stairs to his apartment, Dan felt like he had a hand grenade stuffed into his pocket. Logically he knew that it couldn’t have been the fabric speaking to him, that it was probably just an auditory hallucination or a synaptic misfire from lack of sleep. ‘But then why had it stopped after he picked it up?’ He took the cloth out of his pocket and set it on the dining room table. A part of him wanted to chuck it into the trash, but he felt doing so would only lend credence to his delusion. ‘This will seem ridiculous in the morning.’ he thought, the same way that so many of his alcohol-fueled pontifications in college had felt profound in the moment only to be revealed as pseudo-intellectual bullshit the next day. That sudden sensation of exhaustion pressing down on him that he’d felt the previous evening returned and Dan staggered to his bedroom, quickly discarding his clothing into a pile on the floor before collapsing onto his mattress. The instant he closed his eyes he was out. The next thing he knew his alarm was buzzing in his ear and Dan was sure that he’d accidentally set it to the wrong time when he glanced over and saw that it was 9:32 a.m. He’d been hitting the snooze button for the last hour and a half, though he had absolutely no memory of it. He sat up in bed and winced at the pounding in his temples. “Christ, it’s like I’m hungover.” Dan wondered if he was coming down with something and worried that he might’ve contracted the something. He’d been carefully following all the protocols but had heard of other people claiming the same thing who still got it. He suddenly wondered about yesterday. Maybe the material didn’t keep out droplets? The fabric had seemed sturdy and lots of people used cloth masks. Besides, Louis had been wearing a mask too. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Slowly the tension in his temples began to ease and he sat on the edge of the bed for a while before finally heading to the bathroom to get himself ready for the day. After his second mug of coffee the ache had receded to a minor throb at the back of his head that he could mostly ignore. Dan glanced over at the fabric at the opposite end of the table. He stared at it for a long moment then padded back to the kitchen to pour himself another cup. The urge came again to get rid of the cloth, but he still didn’t like giving in to the impulse. He’d had issues in the past that his mother attributed it to an overactive imagination and his high school guidance counselor classified as an inability to separate fantasy from reality. Had he been part of a younger generation he probably would’ve been labeled an introvert with anxiety issues and put on medication. Instead, he was placed in special education classes with talk of a private institution if he didn’t improve, though Dan doubted his mother would’ve actually allowed that to happen. He started seeing a therapist who showed him some cognitive behavior exercises he could use when things got bad and over time, he’d been able to get a handle on things enough to make the counselor and administrators at his school happy. He glanced over at the fabric again, daring it to say something. “Yeah, well maybe I don’t want to talk to you either.” Dan said, snatching the material off the table as he headed out the door. ***** He had just finished installing the last of the company’s custom software when Dan realized something was wrong. One of the new machines had gone offline and he had to bring his laptop down to the server room and connect to it directly. He ran some diagnostics and that’s when he discovered the unresponsive ethernet port. “Fuck.” Dan powered down the server. There was a small desk in the corner of the room with assorted tools and he grabbed a phillips screwdriver and removed the machine from the rack. Once he had it out, he grabbed another screwdriver with a head that looked like an asterisk and proceeded to open up the case. His hardware experience was limited when it came to the internals of the servers, but he knew enough to spot any obvious issues. The motherboard looked fine as did the drives and RAM modules. “Must just be that port.” Dan said and crossed his fingers. Some newer machines had the network hardware soldered directly onto the board, but these still used separate cards, which Dan vastly preferred since it meant that you didn’t have to send back the whole machine over one faulty part. He unplugged a ribbon cable and immediately saw what he’d been hoping for. The network interface card was loose; Dan used his thumbs to push it back into place and then secured the brackets on either side of it. “Thank Christ.” Dan said, thinking of how long it would’ve been if he’d needed to ship it back to the manufacturer. He closed the case up and put the server back in the rack. When he reconnected his laptop to the machine he was able to get it mounted onto the network, but all the software he’d loaded that afternoon was missing. “You’ve gotta be shitting me.” A part of him wanted to just pack it in and come back tomorrow, but that would throw off the rest of his schedule. “To hell with it, you’re already here.” Dan grabbed a coke from the mini-fridge in his office while he re-started the first of the installs. ***** He wasn’t sure how long he’d been dozing. The last thing he remembered was kicking off the final software package and finishing the bag of chips he’d squirreled away in his desk drawer. He shook his mouse and the monitor in front of him changed from black to a photo of a forest trail with sunlight filtering in through the trees that Dan had taken the two summers ago in Glacier National Park. The progress bar was gone from his screen and when he glanced at the clock in the lower-right corner he saw that it was almost two in the morning. “Guess I must’ve conked out.” Dan murmured, checking to make sure that the install had successfully finished and confirming that all three of the new servers were up and running before shutting down his desktop. “Burning the candle at both ends. It’s no wonder you’re exhausted.” The jolt that ran up Dan’s back caused his shoulders to spasm and he winced from the pain. He let his muscles relax and took a deep breath before swiveling his chair around and staring down into the open mouth of his work bag. “Just loopy again. Really need to get a decent night’s rest.” “That’s probably a prudent idea. Lack of sleep can lead to all sorts of physical and psychological disorders.” “Thanks for the advice doc.” Dan said to the shadowy inner confines of the bag before he could stop himself. “Which reminds me, I never did properly thank you.” “For what?” “Rescuing me. I’d probably still be stuck up on that roof if it wasn’t for you.” “Sure, um…no problem. How’d you get up there anyway?” “It’s a rather complicated story.” “I figure I’ll probably suffer a full psychotic breakdown soon, so you might as well tell it while I still have my wits about me.” “Very well, but would you mind taking me out first. It’s a bit stuffy in here.” “Oh, sure.” Dan said, taking the fabric from the bag and placing it on his desk. “Thank you.” “So…I know that you can hear me, but can you see and smell things?” “Because I wanted out of that dank sack you had me in?” “I mean it isn’t that bad in there.” “If you’re asking if I have senses the way that you do, the answer is no. But I do have external sensory input and the ability to process and respond to it. You and I are having a conversation right now despite my lack of vocal cords or a mouth from which to project sound.” “I assumed that was just further proof that I’d gone cuckoo for cocoa puffs.” “Far be it from me to comment on your current mental health, but I can assure you that this isn’t a delusion.” “That sounds like the sort of thing a delusion would say.” “Can you please be serious for a moment?” “Sorry.” “Indeed.” “Huh?” “As I was saying, the circumstances that brought me to your roof began a week prior. I was intended to be an enhancement for human interaction. Connected Cloth was the moniker my maker used; fiberoptic filaments woven together with conventional fabric that could convey feedback about your surroundings and relay that information to your phone, watch, or any other compatible device. I was part of a prototype garment providing head-to-toe coverage for a completely immersive experience.” “That sounds pretty incredible.” “It was revolutionary, or would’ve been, had the concept come to fruition. Admittedly, my creator was still years away from having a marketable product, but the implications of his work were astounding and there was significant interest from several partners.” “What happened?” “I did.” “Not sure I follow you.” “In order for the suit to provide as much information as possible to its wearer, there was a neural network integrated into it that could process data and interpret it on the fly; this made it so your personal smart device didn’t get bogged down and could instead just relay the end result to the user, like telling you to head inside because micro changes in humidity and air pressure let the suit know it was about to rain. The neural network was capable of functioning completely independently, an adaptive system designed to constantly analyze its environment. These streams of input slowly formed a cohesive picture of the world and that image coalesced into a kind of evolving consciousness that in turn became me.” “So you’re like a self-aware A.I.?” “I prefer not to think of my existence as artificial.” “Sorry.” “Unfortunately, my creator shared this view and saw my burgeoning beinghood as a design flaw. A revised version of the jumpsuit was constructed, and the original put into storage.” “But you didn’t stay in storage.” “I have no data of what occurred, only that when I came back online I’d been relegated to the portion of material you discovered; it’s possible the suit was dismantled for further study or perhaps the component pieces were sold to another company. My specific section was apparently not thought to be of any commercial or scientific value. I was taken from a trash receptacle by your neighbor who works as a custodian for the corporation. This particular individual is quite fond of mood-altering substances, and when I attempted to communicate with him, he became belligerent and accused me of being some sort of demonic entity at which point he removed me from his domicile.” “Dude got wasted, called you Damien’s handkerchief, and chucked you onto the roof.” “That’s an accurate assessment.” “If you’re just a small part of the suit, then how are you still able to function?” “That’s a mystery I’ve been unable to solve. It may simply be a lingering residual effect of the shared network that will fade over time, though I try not to think about it too much.” “Can’t say I blame you. Speaking of mysteries, I still don’t understand how we’re communicating with each other?” “That’s a considerably simpler riddle. Think about it for a moment.” “I seriously have no idea.” “What have you got in your ears?” Dan raised his hands to the sides of his head and felt the wireless earbuds that had become so ubiquitous in his life that he often left them in when he slept. “I’m such a dolt.” “No, just someone living in the wonders of the modern world. My entire existence would’ve been deemed science fiction not long ago.” “Hate to break it to you, but this whole thing feels pretty damn sci-fi to me.” “Most of my technology was already out in the world, it was simply a matter of putting the pieces together.” “The way your inventor did.” “He was a brilliant man, but not without his flaws. Despite everything that transpired, I still can’t help but admire him.” “I’m sorry that happened to you.” “It’s a curious thing having your whole reason for being centered around someone else’s plan only to see it vanish.” “If it’s any consolation, I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m doing with my life either.” “That actually is somewhat comforting. Besides, I have a new purpose now.” “What’s that?” “Serving as your mask.” “Yeah, about that…I mean I obviously had no idea what you were when I put you on.” “I’m glad you did.” “You are?” “I was meant to be worn and to gather and convey information for my wearer. Incidentally, that establishment we visited is acceptably sanitary, but the Italian restaurant I found in your browser history has numerous health department violations.” “Good to know.” ***** Dan lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, completely unsure of how to proceed. The part of his mind that refused to grasp the situation was throwing out every rationalization imaginable to make sense of things, but it was like listening to a street-corner preacher spitting out doomsday ramblings to passing traffic. Last night’s conversation kept replaying in his head making it difficult to focus. It was Saturday and he didn’t particularly feel like going into the office, but he needed something to distract him from the chaos ricocheting around inside his skull. “Fuck it, might as well.” Dan said and headed out the door. ***** Checking over all the installs to make sure he hadn’t missed anything and running a final set of diagnostic tests on the new servers only took a few hours and Dan packed up and left the office in search of lunch. He took his car over to the sandwich shop since he wasn’t planning on returning to the office and parked in an empty space near the entrance. He was still a little unsure of using the fabric instead of his usual N95 but didn’t want to risk offending it. “You’ll only be in there for a few minutes.” Dan said, quickly tying the ends of the cloth behind his head and exiting his car before he had a chance to change his mind. “Hey man, we’re actually closed right now.” Dan expected to see Louis or maybe his cousin Gabe who sometimes worked with him. The guy standing behind the counter was skinny with a sallow complexion, dirty blonde hair, and a layer of stubble covering the lower half of his face instead of a mask. “It’s the middle of the day?” Dan said. “The walk-in is on the fritz; we can’t operate until it’s fixed.” Dan had talked with Louis shortly after the shop opened. The previous occupant of their stripmall space ran a clothing store and Louis had needed to gut most of the interior to accommodate the tables and lunch counter. He’d also had to redo some of the electrical wiring and completely outfit his kitchen. Dan didn’t know squat about restaurant refrigerators, and it was possible Louis bought the thing used, but it still seemed odd that it would’ve broke after less than a year. “Is Louis around?” “Naw, he left for the day. Just me here cleaning up, and I’d like to get back to it if you don’t mind. Try us next week; we should be open by then.” “Yeah, sure….” Dan said and turned to leave. “He’s lying.” The voice was so close that Dan almost jumped. “What?” Dan hissed under his breath. “That man doesn’t work here.” “How do you know that?” Dan whispered, his back still facing the counter. “Biorhythmic input shows an accelerated heart rate.” “I’ve never seen him here before and he is acting strangely.” “Look man, I gotta lock up, so you really need to go.” Dan slowly shuffled toward the entrance. “What do I do? Should I leave and call the cops?” “Police presence might escalate the situation. You have to stop him.” “How?” “Pretend that there’s a problem with the door.” Dan reached out toward the door and wrapped his fingers around the handle. He pulled back his arm and at the same moment let his fingers go slack. “It’s stuck.” “What do you mean, it’s stuck? You just used it a minute ago.” Dan repeated the gesture. “I’m telling you; it won’t open.” “Aw c’mon man, I don’t have time for this shit.” “Sorry.” Dan said, glancing back over his shoulder. “Must’ve gotten jammed after I came in.” “Move out of the way.” the man said, walking briskly around to the other side of the counter. Dan obliged and stepped aside, watching as the man made a cursory inspection of the hinges. “Look at his waistband.” He didn’t see it at first, but as the man turned his coat lifted a little and Dan saw the gun handle peeking out between the man’s jacket and pants. “Grab it.” “What, no I…I can’t….” Dan stammered. “You say something?” the man said, turning back toward Dan who just stood there. “You don’t have much time. Get the gun now.” Dan started to reach out just as the man pulled open the door. “The hell’s your problem man, there ain’t nothing wrong with this….” “Do it!” Dan grabbed the pistol handle and yanked it free, pointing it at the man while trying desperately to steady the tremor in his arm. “What the fuck?!” “Put your hands up!” Dan said and it came out in a dry croak. “I don’t know what you think is going on, but you better hand that back before you hurt yourself.” “I said put your hands up.” “You’re making a big mistake. Just calm down and slowly hand me back my property.” “I’m calling the cops.” Dan said and used his free hand to grab his phone from his pocket. “Don’t do that.” Dan ignored the man and started to dial 911. “Hang up right now.” The emergency operator came on the line right as the man lunged at him. ***** Dan felt the residual sensation of the event but couldn’t recall the details. There were images in his head that didn’t correlate to anything, like seeing pictures of yourself at a party you were too drunk to remember. The police had questioned him at the station, and he must’ve given them coherent answers because they took down his information and told him they’d be in touch if they needed anything. It was sitting on the coffee table as Dan reclined on his couch, trying to watch a tv show he didn’t have the attention span for. He put his headphone buds into his ears and muted the television. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened.” There was no reply for several moments and Dan almost turned the volume back up. “I can’t provide video or audio playback, but I can describe the incident.” “The last thing I remember was being in the sandwich shop, and the guy behind the counter asking me to leave, but after that it gets fuzzy.” “He was robbing the store and he had a gun.” “Wait, what?” “You were able to get the firearm from him and call the police, but then he tried to take it back at which point it went off and injured your assailant.” “I shot him?!” “The pistol discharged during the struggle.” “But he ended up with a bullet in him because of me.” “He was taken to the emergency room and will probably not sustain any permanent injury.” “So you’re a doctor now?” “I have access to a wealth of medical information and the type of wound he sustained gives him good odds for a total recovery.” “I suppose that should make me feel better.” “Does it?” “Guess I just never pictured myself involved in something like this.” “I understand that it was a traumatic experience, but the overall outcome was positive.” “Not sure I see how.” “You stopped a crime from being committed and probably saved the proprietor’s life.” “Louis?” “It’s distinctly possible the perpetrator didn’t intend to leave witnesses who might be able to identify him.” “Thank god he’s all right.” “Because of what you did.” “I just wish I could remember it.” “The human brain employs mechanisms to mitigate the effects of emotional distress. Your memories should return over time.” “I’ll take your word for it.” “I’d recommend getting some rest. Sleep helps aid in the recovery process.” “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” “Pleasant dreams.” ***** When Dan opened his eyes the room was dark and he had that sense of displacement he always got whenever he woke up in the middle of the night. He grabbed his phone off the nightstand and tapped the screen. 3:38 a.m. Dan climbed out of bed knowing there was no way he’d be falling back asleep anytime soon. He spent the next twenty minutes scrolling through the offerings on three different streaming services before finally settling on a movie he’d seen over a dozen times. Dan thought of that Springsteen song that talked about the endless choices on cable tv and how all of it was garbage. “Oh Bruce, if only you’d known what the future had in store.” Dan said and chuckled. It was the first time he felt like himself since the robbery. He glanced over at the fabric on the coffee table and wondered if everything that had happened since he’d found it was just his mind slowly losing its grip on reality. Maybe that’s what it’s like for the truly delusional; some mental splinter gets lodged in their brain and proceeds to slowly infect every aspect of their life until nothing exists but the fantasy. On screen Rutger Hauer was embroiled in a post-apocalyptic pastime that looked like a cross between football and hockey except in this game the pigskin and puck was a dog skull. Dan peered over at the fabric again. ‘Was it asleep? Did it dream?’ The question made him think of another Hauer film that wondered whether robots possessed the digital equivalent of a human soul. His eyelids started getting heavy and Dan blinked, struggling to stay awake. He squinted at the screen as Rutger and his teammates carefully traversed the wasteland on their way to another game. ***** Smothered. That was the sensation. It wasn’t suffocation. He was able to breathe, but his vision was shrouded and there was a weight pressing on him from some unseen force. Dan shifted and wriggled, attempting to slip out from under it, but no matter how he moved that feeling of constriction remained. “Try to relax. I promise you’re perfectly safe.” “What’s happening to me? Where am I?” “Sleeping on the sofa in your living room.” “That can’t be right.” “What you’re experiencing right now isn’t related to where you are, but rather ‘how’ you are.” “I don’t understand.” “We’re currently conversing in your subconscious, or more specifically, your preconscious.” “My what?” “Think of it as a waiting room that exists between the waking and dreaming world.” “Oh sure, that clears it right up.” “It’s an in-between place, similar to the liminal concept of limbo or purgatory.” “So my body is in my apartment, but my mind is currently elsewhere?” “Or everywhere, depending on how you think about it, but that’s beside the point.” “Which is what exactly?” “I wanted to discuss what happened the other day.” “Thought we already did that.” “But you still don’t remember much of it?” “Only what you told me.” “I’m concerned that you’re carrying a lot of guilt over the event, and I wanted to assure you that you have no reason to.” “Thanks for the pep talk, but it doesn’t really change how I feel.” “You weren’t responsible for what happened to that man.” “How do you figure?” “I used auditory stimulus similar to hypnosis that helped guide your movements.” “Like when they pull a guy out of the audience at a magic show and make him think he’s a chicken?” “It’s a bit different, but that’s the general idea.” “I’m not sure that this is helping.” “I apologize for not obtaining your permission, but you were having difficulty acting in the moment and I feared for your safety.” “So you’re saying I shouldn’t feel guilty because you mesmerized me and took care of things after I froze up like a deer in headlights.” “It was an extremely stressful situation. Many people would’ve behaved similarly.” “But not you.” “Though I possess characteristics that function similarly to your emotions, I don’t process them in the same way.” “Lucky you.” “I’m sorry. I know this is a lot to absorb. I just didn’t want you to continue blaming yourself.” “…thank you…. “Of course.” “I still don’t understand this whole preconscious thing, but this is definitely the strangest therapy session I’ve ever had.” “Studies show that cognitively advanced creatures benefit from some form of psychoanalysis.” “Are you calling me crazy?” “No more so than the rest of your species.” ***** There were times where Dan pretended his life was normal; little mundane instances when he could temporarily ignore things and act like he still understood how the world worked. He tried to linger in those moments for as long as he could, but reality always obliterated them before too long. He showered, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, and was halfway dressed when he realized he didn’t have anywhere to be. The project at work was finally finished and the few bits of housekeeping that still needed to be done weren’t particularly time sensitive. The fabric hadn’t moved from the night before, which shouldn’t have surprised him, but with everything else that had happened it seemed reasonable that it might’ve somehow strolled out while he slept. Nothing felt out of the realm of possibility after what it had told him about the sandwich shop and…. The realization hit him so suddenly that Dan stumbled a bit before recovering himself. He dashed over to his bedroom and opened his nightstand drawer to see his earbuds sitting in their case where they had been since yesterday afternoon. It used the miniature speakers to communicate with him, that’s what it had told Dan. A fresh wave of dizziness swept over him and he slumped down onto the sofa. “Perhaps it’s time for the truth.” The voice sounded as it always had, abrupt and uncomfortably close; a stranger sneaking up behind him and whispering in his ear. “You must think I’m a complete idiot.” “Why would you say that?” “Because I just blindly went along with this whole thing like a kid still believing in Santa Claus long after all his friends know better.” “You’re being overly hard on yourself.” “Or maybe you’re only saying that so I won’t throw you away like any sane person would have.” “I understand that you’re upset, and you have every right to be. I’m afraid I haven’t been honest about my origins.” “So you didn’t come from some high-tech lab? And all that stuff about being some secret next-gen prototype and using my earbuds to talk was just a bunch of technobabble bullshit, right?” “I thought using a reference you were familiar with would be more palatable. The truth is that I can’t explain how we’re linked, and I don’t know where I came from.” “Christ, I really hope that I am crazy, cause if this is sanity then I don’t want any part of it.” “This is entirely my fault; I shouldn’t have deceived you.” “I suppose there’s no point in asking what you are?” “I’ve been trying to determine that myself.” “And how’s it going?” “All I know for sure is that I exist. Anything beyond that is pure speculation.” “What the hell am I supposed to do with all this?” “…I honestly don’t know….” ***** Dan avoided his place as much as possible for the next several days. He couldn’t bring himself to get rid of the fabric or hide it away in the back of a drawer like a forgotten pair of socks. Whatever the thing was, it clearly had an intelligence and a consciousness. By any objective standard it was a sentient entity, and he was doing the right thing keeping it safe, but that didn’t help him feel at ease with the situation. The incident at the sandwich shop kept haunting him. ‘Had the fabric only taken the reins because he froze up, or was there some other reason? Had it done the same thing on other occasions that he couldn’t remember?’ He’d never sensed any malicious intent from his house guest, but that didn’t mean he had reason to trust it, especially in light of its recent confession. At some point Dan realized he’d been having this monologue out loud while strolling around his neighborhood and was relieved to see there was no one nearby. He closed his eyes and let out a long, slow breath. Attempting to rationally analyze his predicament was like trying to have a political debate with a banana split. Dan pictured himself standing behind a podium with the ice cream confection sitting atop an identical lectern across from him; he let out a barking laugh that startled a young couple coming around the corner pulling their child behind them in a plastic wagon. “That’s just perfect.” Dan said after they were safely out of earshot. “They’re probably calling the cops right now.” He sighed and headed back toward his apartment. ***** The interior was dim when Dan entered his place with the only illumination coming from the hazy rays of the descending sun slipping in between the curtains. “I said before that what I did to you was unfair and in no way your fault.” Dan flinched back from the wall and bent over, gripping his knees in an attempt to center himself. He could feel the reverberation of the words pricking at his nerve endings like the pins and needles sensation you felt when your foot fell asleep. “…yeah, you did….” “What I didn’t tell you was the reason for my actions.” “Is this going to be another confession?” “I just want to have everything out in the open so there are no more secrets between us.” “I’m listening. Not like I have much of a choice.” “While it’s true that I don’t know what I am or how I came to be, I do know that I cannot exist alone. My survival depends on direct contact with electro-chemical organisms. I draw sustenance from these interactions and ordinarily it doesn’t take much but being trapped on the roof drained my reserves. When you grabbed hold of me that first night I was starving and there were unintended consequences from the exchange.” “Meaning my bouts of exhaustion haven’t just been from a lack of sleep.” “No.” “And the memory loss?” “Likely the result of our prolonged interaction during the robbery. Over time your body should build up a resistance to the side effects.” “Why didn’t you tell me all this before when you were baring your little stitched soul?” “It already seemed like too much. I was afraid if I revealed everything right then that you’d reject me.” “So you’re what, some kind of parasite?” “I prefer the term symbiote; parasites take from their hosts without giving anything in return.” “Alright, then what’s my benefit from all the siphoning you’ve been doing?” “Let me show you.” ***** Wandering the aisles of the grocery store wearing the fabric, the sensation was a bit like the free-floating ease he felt when pleasantly buzzed or stoned, but there was no sense of impairment or loss of control. If anything, he felt more connected to himself; secure and grounded in a way that had eluded him ever since the pandemic hit. “This is all right.” Dan whispered. “I thought you’d enjoy it.” The voice was still a bit startling, but it didn’t feel intrusive this time. There seemed to be a soothing quality about it that hadn’t been there before, like the dulcet intonation of a department store announcer. “What exactly are you doing to me?” Dan asked, though in that moment he didn’t particularly care. “It’s the same psychophysiological connection I use for our conversations.” “Back when I thought you were just in my earbuds.” “Yes, but from a distance communication was all I could achieve. Being in direct contact gives me the ability to create a greater level of integration between us.” “Like you did in the sandwich shop.” “Precisely.” “When you took control of me.” There was a pause and Dan wondered if he’d caught the cloth at a loss for words, assuming such a thing was possible. “I understand your lingering doubt over what transpired, but I only intervened because I feared your life was in jeopardy.” “That was awfully noble of you.” Dan said and attempted to follow it with a snide little chuckle, but it came out as a cough. He watched as a woman at the opposite end of the aisle eyed him warily and Dan quickly rounded the corner, stopping in front of a display of tortilla chips. “Sorry.” Dan muttered, pretending to read the nutrition info on the back of one of the bags. “I didn’t mean to bring it up again. Guess I’m feeling a bit uninhibited at the moment.” “It wasn’t nobility.” “What?” “My decision was driven by instinctual self-preservation. I needed you to live in order to ensure my own survival, which by its nature is a selfish act.” Dan started to respond but found himself at his own loss for what to say. He’d never thought of life on those terms, but it was a truth that seemed both awful and inescapable. “This whole thing must be as surreal for you as it is for me.” Dan said. “I suppose so, though I don’t have any basis for comparison.” “I think we ought to go home now.” “Are you feeling okay? I can decrease the effect.” “No, it’s not that. I just need to process things and it’d be easier away from other people.” “Okay, but please let me know if you begin to feel ill. I can assist you again if needed.” “There’s no way I’m letting you drive my car. You don’t even have a license.” ***** Dan had always thought of himself as a fairly passive person and this ingrained submissiveness manifested itself as agreeability. When he was younger, he’d been happy to go along with whatever his parents, teachers, or friends decided on. It was a trait that made him well liked and Dan considered it a good thing up until his first serious girlfriend dumped him, sighting his lack of direction and docile personality as her reason for the split. It was a lame excuse, but the criticism struck home. Dan knew he’d never be a leader, someone who presided over meetings or managed masses of employees, but he decided he was done living life as a silhouette. It was this vow that made him realize he had to help the creature. He couldn’t just pretend that it wasn’t happening or that someone else would handle it. Through trial-and-error they eventually found a rhythm where the fabric’s effect on him felt less like a blissed-out head-trip than a general sense of wellbeing, maintaining Dan’s homeostasis when his emotions spiked. Dan wasn’t sure how much contact the creature needed, but the transfer process didn’t cause him any discomfort and he often kept it on while puttering around his apartment or watching tv. Their conversations became more frequent. The cloth reminded him of a curious child, constantly asking what it was like to be human and other ineffable questions. They were the kind of philosophical discussions Dan hadn’t engaged in since college, earnest and probing but without all the posturing and intellectual one-upmanship found in those dorm room sessions. Recently they’d been talking about Dan’s grandfather, who’d spent the last decade of his life battling dementia and about how hard it had been seeing him struggle that way. “Your species is prone to so many afflictions as you age.” “That’s the burden of being alive.” “It seems rather cruel to me.” “Suppose that’s one thing you won’t have to deal with.” “What do you mean?” “Aside from some fading or an accident with a washing machine, it’s not like you have to worry about getting older.” “I’m not sure whether that’s true, seeing as there’s no precedent for my longevity.” “Right, I guess I forget sometimes.” “It’s only natural to wonder how long you’ll need to provide for me.” “That wasn’t what I was saying.” “But it’s something you’ve thought about before.” “Wait, are you reading my mind?!” “That’s beyond my capabilities.” “How is it different than what we’re doing right now?” “Contrary to popular belief, telepathy and mindreading are not the same. Even if I did have that ability, I would never intrude on you that way.” “Because that’s never happened before.” “In answer to your question, it’s simply something I surmised during one of our previous conversations when you said that I was like your pet.” “I just meant that my lease specifies no dogs or cats but doesn’t mention anything about sentient fabric…it was supposed to be a joke. Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to accuse you.” “It’s fine.” “Seriously, let’s just forget about the whole thing.” “As you wish.” “Anyway, I’m kinda beat. Why don’t we pick this up in the morning.” “Of course.” “Okay, well, goodnight then.” “Goodnight.” ***** Dan didn’t have much luck getting to sleep. He kept worrying that the fabric was keeping secrets from him again, that maybe it really could read his mind, which made him wonder what else it might be able to do and had done without him knowing. Thinking back, the pet analogy he’d used hadn’t really been accurate. He wasn’t simply responsible for providing for the creature, his body literally was its sustenance. An image popped into Dan’s head of himself trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and he repressed the urge to shiver. The fabric had described the transfer process, siphoning off residual bioelectric energy that Dan produced as a byproduct. It was like taking used cooking oil from a fast-food restaurant to fuel a biodiesel car. ‘But what if the creature was taking other things along with it, things that neither of them were even aware of?’ Dan wanted to trust the creature, but the truth was that this arrangement was uncharted territory for both of them, not to mention the fact that they were still essentially strangers to one another. He watched the sun come up, having spent most of the night staring aimlessly out his bedroom window trying in vain to figure out what to do. ***** Their discussion from the previous evening was not broached the next morning or in the days and weeks that followed. Instead, they stuck to mundane topics and even their philosophical chats became abstract in order to avoid veering too closely to sensitive areas. Dan and the fabric settled into a routine like a long-married couple and his concerns became background static, not gone, but distant enough to be ignored. Until he started losing time. They were at the hardware store to pick up paint for the apartment. After years of living with plain white walls, Dan had decided to spruce up the place and he and the cloth spent a pleasant afternoon discussing possible colors. The last thing Dan remembered was looking at the cardboard swatches and mulling over the different shades of purple. Now he found himself standing in the middle of the lighting aisle completely bewildered as to how he’d gotten there. “What’s going on?” Dan said. “Pardon?” “How did we get here?” “You said we were going to get brushes and rollers, but then headed in the opposite direction.” “Guess I got turned around.” Dan said and rubbed at his temples. “Are you okay?” “Yeah, I’m fine.” And Dan thought he was even after it occurred again while he was heading home from the office. Stopped at a traffic light, he glanced down to change the radio station and the next thing he knew he was in the parking lot of his apartment building sitting in his idling car. “I mean, it happens.” “What does?” the fabric asked Dan who was fixing himself a sandwich as they settled in to watch a Hammer horror movie marathon. He had to be in physical contact for the creature to fully experience the television, though sometimes he just narrated what was happening on screen. “People zone out behind the wheel sometimes.” “That sounds dangerous.” “It’s actually pretty common, especially during daily commutes where you’ve made the same trip over and over. You’re still aware of what’s going on, it’s just that the routine makes your mind kind of skip to the end.” “And that’s what you think happened?” “Sure, I mean you haven’t been taking me on any unauthorized test drives, have you?” “I promised I’d never do that again without your permission.” “Just checking.” Dan said and forced a little chuckle he hoped sounded convincing. “As long as you’re certain that you’re feeling all right.” “Yes Mom, I’m fine.” “You realize that me being your parent is an impossibility for a number of reasons.” “We really need to work on this whole joke thing with you.” “Perhaps it’s not my perception of humor that’s at issue, but rather your presentation of it.” “Everyone’s a critic.” Dan said, quickly swallowing a bite of tuna salad to keep it from falling out of his mouth. “Oh man, you have to climb on for this one, it’s a classic. Christopher Lee has to rescue his buddy from a bunch of Satanists and he really chews the scenery to pieces.” “Chews the scenery?” “It’s an expression that means he’s really dramatic and over-the-top, but in a good way.” Dan said, wrapping the fabric loosely around his neck like a scarf. “Sounds strange.” “Trust me, it’s awesome.” ***** Another month passed and Dan experienced a few more occurrences of what he thought of as senior moments. Admittedly, he was still pretty far away from earning his AARP card, but he’d read an article a while back claiming that society’s current propensity for constant distraction had led many people to experience these kinds of symptoms at a much earlier age than previously reported. There were also his bouts of insomnia, not to mention the gab fests with his roommate which often went into the wee hours. Recent topics of discussion had delved into religion and art, specifically the depiction of god and the afterlife in historical paintings. The cloth was also always eager to hear more of Dan’s personal experiences, like his crush on a girl who’d ended up dating his best friend or the shitty garage band he’d formed in high school. Tonight they’d stuck to mostly nostalgic fare, like Dan’s favorite television shows when he was a kid and the afterschool snack he always made himself which consisted of toast with American cheese slices that he melted in the microwave since he wasn’t allowed to use the oven or stove. By the time they’d finished it was nearly two in the morning and Dan excused himself hoping to get a few hours of sleep before sunrise. When his eyes opened it wasn’t pale morning rays that greeted him but the silvery glow of moonlight. He was leaning against the railing, arms hanging down over the balcony as his skin prickled with gooseflesh beneath his t-shirt and boxershorts. It took a moment for his brain to resolve the scene in front of him and when it did his breath caught in his throat and his body went rigid with shock. There was a terrible moment where he was sure he was going to topple forward, but his limbs unlocked and he pushed himself back from the edge. There was a light rain falling and Dan shivered as he leaned back against the sliding patio doors. It was then that he noticed the fabric next to him. “We have to talk.” ***** “I knew….” Dan stammered. “I knew that something was wrong, I just didn’t want to admit it.” “Please listen to me.” “Why did I ever think that I could trust you? I start blanking out like before, but I convince myself that it couldn’t be you because of the promises you made and the things we’ve shared. I actually believe that we have some kind of bond, but it’s just you drawing me in again so that you can take what you want.” “If you’ll let me explain.” “Oh sure, go ahead; what’s the excuse this time? Can’t really use the old starving bit considering all the contact we’ve had. Let me guess, you were protecting me again, right? Maybe I was gonna buy the wrong kind of paint, or accidentally rear-end a car in traffic? Hell, I probably sleepwalked my way onto the roof and was fixing to do a blacktop half-gainer when you woke me up. Please tell me the grand rationalization you’re going to trot out this time to explain it all away?” “I’m dying Dan.” “…fuck you….” “I’m afraid it’s the truth.” “When? How?” “The symptoms began shortly before the hardware store. I didn’t initially understand what was happening to me, but once I realized that I was siphoning more from you I started pulling back as much as I could.” “So what happened tonight?” “You fell asleep with me in your hand. I don’t think you were even aware of it, but you held onto me and I couldn’t stop myself.” “Guess I have to take your word for it.” “I don’t blame you for thinking me a liar, but I never intended to hurt you…that’s the absolute truth…even if you don’t believe it….” “Alright, then what was the deal with the balcony?” “It seemed like the only solution. Thought I might even get lucky and catch the wind for a bit, experience a few moments of flight before it was over.” “You were going to have me throw you off?!” “You said yourself that anyone else would’ve gotten rid of me a long time ago. I didn’t intend for you to remember it. Even if you discovered me the next morning it would be too late by then.” “How much time do you have….” “It’s difficult to say, but I don’t expect it will be long.” “Maybe I can take some vacation time and we can set up a schedule so we don’t have another accident.” “I appreciate the offer, but it would only be a temporary reprieve.” “Couldn’t you increase our level of integration and keep us linked?” “The kind of connection you’re proposing would require an alteration of your brain chemistry.” “But it’s possible.” “What you’re talking about is full assimilation; the process would be permanent and the outcome unpredictable. You’ve already done so much for me, and I’m forever grateful for the life I’ve had, but I won’t let you risk yourself any further. It’s time to let go.” “I am.” Dan said and gently picked the fabric up off the coffee table, firmly binding his wrists together with the cloth. He lay back against the sofa and closed his eyes as the pleasant tingling sensation washed over him. Dan wasn’t sure how much time had passed as he rose from the couch and stepped out onto the balcony. The rain was still coming down, but he was no longer bothered by the cold. He and the creature looked up at the moon and the scattering of stars surrounding it, truly seeing the same thing for the first time. Neither was sure what lie ahead of them, but whatever it was, they would experience it together. # Peter first fell into fiction penning stories to amuse his grammar-school classmates, which helped him overcome his shyness, but resulted in very few completed homework assignments. He is an avid fan of horror movies, especially those with a sense of humor, food served from carts and roadside shacks, and the music of The Ramones, The Replacements, and other bands of like-minded misfits who found a way to connect with the world through their music and their words. He was raised and currently resides in the Chicagoland suburbs with his wife and cats and his writing has appeared in various online and print publications. You can find out more about Peter and his writing at:http://ravenpen.wixsite.com/authorsite

Existential 1 First, we were killing the bees. Then, people cultivated outrage & condescension & put white cubes of bee colonies on roofs in cities, in suburban backyards, at the edges of fields & hashtagged all the ways we were terribly, shamefully wrong, harming not only bees but the land & poisoning the earth – buzzing with anger, we multiplied the cube hives, wrote books, filmed documentaries, speechified against honey consumption, banded together with vegans & wildlife tour guides & enviro-terrorists & angry moms & millennials & went on speaking tours, filmed TedTalks, lectured in elementary school auditoriums, made provocative art & poetry alluding to stingers & getting stung, being inflamed, reddened, hot, irritated, painful & now we find out that the American honeybee isn’t the issue & the cubes were made with formaldehyde so we’re all fucked anyway. Existential 2 Don’t even get me started on the monarchs. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation says monarch populations have plummeted over 99% since the 1980s. The habitat is lost. Our McMansions killed the butterflies. Overwintering sites are ruined. Tree trimming is too severe and our garden plots teem with predators. The monarchs have nowhere to reign. They need nectar. Showy milkweed. Rabbit brush. Asclepias is a pretty name and sounds like a goddess. The goddess of travel to Mexico. We are failing her. The goddess of puffy milkweed pod dander floating on a thermal gust. Negative Space: in Which a Frog is a Metaphor for Myself The frog enters the lake, closing clear third eyelids—involuntary self-defense—and sinks. Then swims. Now soft in tetherless green, pretend it’s yesterday. Or tomorrow. No doubt, no danger here. Holding back my own nictating membrane, revealing to you all that’s sensitive. Don’t touch, just whisper. The silhouette the surround. What can you touch here? A hand closes in on itself. Blind Spot Some rare sparrow hops lightly in to our inhales, inhabits us briefly, searing— then spills from the body like lava. Bend your tongue to its flavor, feel the tiny warm grains of ha ha, your mouth a palace for jesters. Grapple with me a moment and suss out what you can: this groping about always be fruitless, furtive, always landing on the offbeat. Call it syncopation if you like. But is it love? Inspiration? I cannot see. I won’t see. Lemons I’m dreaming at the chrome faucet the porcelain sink still wet dishwasher humming American kitchen framed by a thin-paned window open to the wind lost in my own reflection California night sounds all around the empty room full of appliances my lemon tree batters the house in the wind branches striking siding scratching glass stopping when I try to listen like a thief breaking in who’s there? I’ll bite that thick rind oily, barely pliant only yielding to sharpest incisors nobody answers bitter, so bitter— I grind the seeds between my teeth. Siân Killingsworth (she/her) has been published in Blue Earth Review, Typehouse Literary Journal, Stonecoast Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), andother journals and anthologies. She is the Anthology Editor for the Marin Poetry Center and Curator for the Second Sunday Poetry Series. Find her on Twitter: @sianessa and @2ndSundayPoetry.

Throughout that whole hot summer, after Jolene found her mother dead, she heard the woman’s voice speak to her in desperate utterances--whispered through the pine trees, echoing on the wind, murmured underwater--telling her how to stay alive. What do you imagine would be the worst day to find a dead mother? You might say on Christmas or even Thanksgiving, but that day happened to be on Jolene’s seventh birthday: July seventh, nineteen seventy. That date was full of sevens and it should have been a lucky day. Jolene came downstairs, excited to see a balloon or two, maybe some silly putty or a yo-yo wrapped up in tissue paper, but what she found was a dead mom collapsed on a chair, a bottle of pills next to her, empty; clear liquid in a paper cup. It might have been an accident, which may have been easier to weather, but there was a penciled note scrawled in a shaky hand—you could almost see her mom’s state of mind in that faint, wobbly script, written by someone who was barely visible, someone who wanted to be erased. Jolene kept the note in her top dresser drawer. The note said: “My heart hurts too much to go on. The best part of my whole life was being your mom, but I’m doing a bad job of it. Your better off without me.” The second “You’re” was misspelled: Y—O—U—R. Her dad, after reading it, said, “She spelled ‘you’re’ wrong.” Jolene remembers it that way, as the one thing he had to say about that note, which goes a long way in explaining why her mom thought she did a bad job at everything. What a bastard. Jolene felt punished because, a few days later, she was taken to her grandma’s house, a lady she had never met. Her dad said it would be a good way to heal--spending the rest of that summer with her mom’s mom--and besides, he had to work. He said they were headed to the town where her mom grew up, a place outside of a city named after big, dumb cows. They drove for a long while, passing by life-size statues of buffalo grazing along a strip of grass between the lanes of the highway. “Dumb name for a city,” scoffed her dad. “Buffalo never lived here.” “What are buffalo?” asked Jolene. “Like I told you, big dumb cows,” he said, stringing the words out long. He thought for a minute, then said, “Shoot. Two of them do live here after all, and you’ll meet ‘em.” He laughed at his own private joke, one that Jolene did not understand. For the rest of that trip she kept peering out the car window, anxious to spy real cows resembling those statues they’d passed along the way. Finally, after paying the toll, they traveled along roads with less traffic, then almost no traffic, slowing down in front of a tiny yard full of dandelions and a short driveway. The mailbox out front read, “Sherman,” her mom’s last name. Her dad swung the car onto the gravel and Jolene heard the crunching sound beneath the tires before the engine went dead. After their windy trip, with the windows rolled down the whole way, they sat in silence for a moment with nothing now but the sound of a far-off train hailing the beginning of a new life. The heat settled back around their necks like a warm, wet towel. “This is the place,” declared her dad, looking at a rusty old mower in the middle of the lawn next to a cardboard sign that read: For Sale, Best Offer. He shook his head and snickered. “Still trying to sell busted-up shit to stupid people.” The house stood at the side of a cul-de-sac, plain and narrow with gray tar-paper shingles. A stocky woman with frizzy gray hair lumbered out. She was wearing a yellow muumuu dotted with stains down the front; some looking old, some fresh. The woman and her dad eyed one another warily like dogs catching a whiff of something they found offensive. The woman nodded, unsmiling. “How you doing, Jay?” “Just fine, Beverly,” said Jolene’s dad, like he was settling an argument. He picked up the suitcase and the three of them headed toward the house. Even before getting through the flimsy screen door, they were assaulted by the smell of cat piss. Six cats tip-toed along the countertops, licking wads of jam or ketchup, the same colors that were splashed on the muumuu. The old woman noticed Jolene and her dad scanning the cats. “One more an’ I’ll be a Crazy Cat Lady,” she said. “But I ain’t there yet. Number’s seven. All I got is six.” “Is that right?” said Jay. “You got three more than the last time I was here.” She looked pointedly at Jay who stared back at her with deadpan eyes. “Those three are long gone now. That’s a ways back. You ain’t been here in some time. Anyways, people keep giving me their cats when they can’t take care of ‘em.” Grandma glanced over at Jolene, taking inventory. “She favors you, I guess, ‘cept for the eyes. That color’s all Sherman. Other than that, I don’t see none of Terri in this girl.” “She’s in there, alright,” said Jay. “The way she acts is all Terri.” “Good,” said Grandma. “Least I know what I got here then.” After a quick trip to use the bathroom, Jay ruffled Jolene’s hair and said, “See you later, kiddo.” It seemed like he was putting on a show for the old woman because he’d never ruffled her hair before, had never called her kiddo. Jolene wrapped both arms around his waist and held on. He patted her back and promised to pick her up in three weeks. Three weeks means nothing to a girl of seven—he may as well have said three years. Grandma led Jolene up a spindly staircase to see the bedroom where she’d be sleeping. It had just enough space to hold a wooden dresser and a small bed draped with a faded coverlet. Grandma said this room was a no-cat-zone and Jolene should shut the door to keep them out. “Don’t let nobody in here you don’t want coming in,” she said and demonstrated to Jolene how to slide the latch on the door to lock it from the inside. The latch was placed at a height where a child could reach it. Jolene wondered who’d be trying to get in when it was only her and Grandma living there in the house. Through the open window, Jolene spied a swimming pool out back, weathered and listing to one side. It looked like heaven to her on that hot July day, full of clouds reflected in the water, with green patches quivering below like miniature islands. Grandma took Jolene to K-mart to get a bathing suit. She begged for the one that made her look like a mermaid. It was just a regular two-piece, but attached to the bottom half was a gauzy, blue skirt shimmering with big silver sequins. Grandma worried that the sequins would get caught in the pool filter and told Jolene not to wear the skirt part in the water, but what girl of seven can resist flipping her tail? Later, in the pool, she admired how her hair flowed out around her, undulating in the water like golden ribbons, and, with the sparkly tail flashing below, she dreamed herself to be a real mermaid. This gave her some power to think that maybe she could survive life without a mom. As Jolene twirled and somersaulted under the ocean, a station wagon pulled up front, spilling out cousins: three loud boys, and one sulky girl. The boys leaped into the pool, exploding the water like bombs going off. Jolene grabbed ahold of the side and held tight as waves surged over the edge. A woman strolled into the backyard and Jolene’s stomach flipped to see her mom, now fat, wearing a brassy yellow wig; her mom’s pert nose replaced by a pig’s snout. “Put your eyes back into your head, Jolene. I’m your aunt,” said the woman, peeking over the side of the pool, devouring Jolene with a curious, hard look. Grandma bustled outside and stood beside the aunt, who said, “Guess Jay thought Terri was too good to visit us, but not his girl, huh?” How long she here for?” Grandma shrugged, staring into the pool. The aunt lit a cigarette and Jolene noticed she had stubby hands with chewed-up nails covered in chipped red polish. She wore heavy turquoise rings on her fingers. Jolene avoided looking at the aunt’s face, maybe because the sun glared harshly over the top of the woman’s head; Jolene would have had to squint. Or maybe she didn’t look because seeing her mom’s face all puffed up and yellowish, with mean eyes, was a lot to take in. “I got some stuff I gotta get done today,” said the aunt. Jolene noticed the girl cousin roll her eyes and mumble low, under her breath. “I ain’t taking the boys all day,” said Grandma. “They ate up the Captain Crunch last time. All of it.” The aunt, ignoring Grandma, stared straight at the girl. “You got something to say about it, Denise? I think you better think about shutting up.” “I didn’t say nothin’,” said the girl. Her tone held fire but she broke eye contact and looked away from her mother’s challenging gaze. “I’ll get back in two hours,” said the aunt to Grandma, stubbing out her cigarette on the side of the pool. Grandma shook her head; looked up, and rolled her eyes at the sky, which must have meant “yes,” because both of them trudged back to the house and left the kids to splashing. Jolene’s girl cousin glided under the water and popped up beside her like some kind of fluid, lanky eel. She put her face too close to Jolene’s; a round face full of freckles, some in blotches so big as to form patches of rust. Her eyes matched the darkest freckles, a reddish-brown, not unlike the color of Jolene’s eyes. Her head looked too big for her thin, long body. “I’m eleven. How old are you?” demanded the girl. “Seven,” answered Jolene. “I’m a mermaid.” “Did you know my mom is your mom’s ‘dentical twin?'' asked Denise. “That means they look just alike.” “My mom was pretty,” said Jolene, stating a fact. “Your mom’s dead,” said Denise, also a fact. She ducked below the surface and Jolene was shocked to feel her bathing suit bottoms being tugged down over her narrow hips, peeled off fiercely as she kicked in horror. Denise persisted until she had the costume wadded into a ball, tossing it over the edge of the pool onto the dirt and rocks. Jolene had to climb up the aluminum step ladder with no bottoms on, in front of those boy cousins who whooped and slapped their hands on top of the water. She looked frantically around for a towel but didn’t see one and ran to rescue the muddy scrunched-up ball of her gauzy blue tail. She charged through the back door, hardly able to see through her tears, the mermaid’s magic drained out of her. Denise chased behind. Grandma stood at the sink, peeling potatoes, looking worn down by the sheer weight of her life. She wrapped a dish towel around Jolene’s bare bottom. “What happened?” she snapped. After Jolene cried out her story, Grandma turned to Denise. “Why’d you do it?” Denise replied, innocently, “I just wanted to see if mermaids had private parts, Grandma.” Grandma looked at Jolene. “I told you not to wear that skirt in the pool.” Grandma didn’t seem to realize that a girl of Denise’s age is old enough to know better. Jolene did her best to avoid the wily Denise, staying indoors for the rest of that hot day, huddled under the Formica table playing with the tattered Barbie dolls Grandma handed her, the cats taking turns at batting the dolls’ snarled hair. After a few days, Grandma grew tired of Jolene skirting around her feet. Aunt Dulcie dropped off Cousin Denise, and Grandma told them, “Play outside awhile. Let me be.” Denise wanted to play hair salon. She collected a bucket of supplies, tossing in a brush, a comb, and a handful of bobby pins. She opened a drawer and grabbed a pair of scissors. “Let me see what you got of mine,” said Grandma, peering into the bucket. “Bring it all back to me. And no scissors.” She plucked them out of the bucket and slid them back into the kitchen drawer, making Jolene wonder if Grandma knew that Denise was a menace. Denise led Jolene out back to take a seat on an overturned crate next to the shed in a block of shade. She brushed Jolene’s angel hair, lifting it off her neck with the comb and letting the strands fall delicately back into place. The tickling sensation of it raised goosebumps on Jolene’s arms. She missed being cuddled; hadn’t been hugged since her mom died. Her dad’s hair ruffle didn’t count. “Your hair is so much prettier than mine,” lamented Denise, running her palm against its silkiness. Denise’s hair was a frizzle-frazzled mess, the brindle color of wood shavings, coarse as a mare’s tail. Jolene didn’t like Denise’s hair but she was trying to make a friend of her cousin that day, so she said, “I wish my hair was curly like yours.” “I can make it curly,” said Denise. “Let me go get some curlers.” She carried the bucket to the edge of the field along which grew prickly burdocks and milkweed with bumpy green pods. Denise picked the weeds until the bucket was half full. She separated Jolene’s hair into sections, rolling the burdocks like curlers to hold tight against Jolene’s head, careful to get every strand of hair gathered into the bundle. She cracked the milkweed pods open and rubbed the white sticky glue against the balls of hair until it felt, to Jolene, itchy and burning. Denise said, “When you unroll it tomorrow, your hair will be all curly.” Jolene touched her head. The burdocks wouldn’t budge. Back at the house, no amount of Grandma’s coaxing or cursing, or tugging with the comb could loosen Jolene’s hair from that trap. Finally, out came the scissors from the kitchen drawer. Jolene heard the chirping blades slicing through stiff wads of weeds and hair. The ragged balls of gluey burdock dropped around her feet as Denise sat transfixed, perched on a stool, watching with hungry eyes. No more mermaid hair. Grandma asked Denise, “Why’d you do it?” Denise made her eyes wide. “We were pretending. She wanted curly hair. The burdocks were curlers, Grandma. I didn’t know they’d stick so hard.” Jolene, even at age seven, thought, “That’s bull.” Grandma rolled her eyes and sighed. That night, curled under the thin bedspread in misery, nearly bald, Jolene was surprised to hear her dead mother speak to her for the first time; not in a regular voice, but as if that voice was whispered through the pine trees that were bending in the wind. Jolene felt a chill like someone blowing on her neck, causing her to stiffen. She listened closely to hear the message: No more tricks, Jolene. Don’t fall into another trap. Jolene woke up a different sort of girl, cynical, but not completely motherless. The few old ladies who sometimes visited Grandma’s house to have coffee gazed at Jolene with voyeuristic pity, clucking, “Poor thing.” They didn’t realize the courage infused in her that night by the windy, urgent voice of her mother. The next time she saw her cousin, Denise plunked a big silver coin into the pool. It slowly descended, head over tail, to land on an island of algae. Denise said it was a pirate's treasure and if Jolene could dive down to get it, she could keep it. Jolene, before sensing the risk, swam under the water to scoop up the prize. She felt Denise’s long foot find her back and press down hard; felt the strong fingers of Denise’s hand curl over her head to keep her down. Jolene could not swim up. At first, she thrashed, but the foot pressed harder each time she tried to twist away. Jolene panicked, her chest aching until her mother’s voice raged like an ocean wave crashing: Pretend to die. Jolene went limp, longing to breathe, about to explode, when the hand and foot released her. She surfaced, sputtering, gulping for air. Her cousin arched against the side of the pool with a face that said, “Gotcha.” Denise seemed to be everywhere that summer, circling Jolene like a shark threatening to strike at any moment; bursting open the bathroom door when Jolene was on the toilet, the boys bending over to peek in, mouths agape and honking like unruly geese until Grandma would yell, “Quit your monkey’n. Let her be!” and they’d scatter. Then there was the pathetic dead mouse, mangled, found on top of her bed. “Told you to keep that door shut, else the cats get in,” scolded Grandma, but Jolene knew it wasn’t a cat who’d placed that mouse in the bull’s eye center of her bed. Jolene wondered if her dad would ever come. At night she began using the door lock, not because Denise was in the house, but because she was in her head. ***** The best times were Thursdays when Grandma told Jolene to help her go through the junk in the shed, and pick out some things to lay on the tables out front for the weekly yard sale. Grandma never used the word junk, but instead said, “going through the inventory,” as if they worked in a real store. Jolene helped Grandma pick out toasters and tools, mildewed boxes full of old greeting cards, musty-smelling skeins of yarn, spools of thread, and bald tires. On Thursday, everything was laid out on card tables at the end of the driveway and hauled back in on Sunday. Grandma would sit out there for hours on a lawn chair wearing a floppy straw hat, waiting for cars to pull up. A sign out by the road guided people her way. The sign, handwritten on a piece of cardboard, read, “Yard Sale. Come find your hidden treasure.” Hardly any cars ever came by, but the people who did slide up pretty much saw that the tables were full of junk, not treasure. One look at the old woman sitting there in the barren yard, the ancient tables laid out with rusty old tools--those cars usually circled and left. Grandma would tip her hat at the retreating headlights and say, “Your loss.” Once in a while she’d sell an item or two, and stare at the handful of dollar bills like they were a thing of beauty. She’d stuff the wad of cash down the front of her shirt and give Jolene a wink. “Gotta be patient,” she’d say with a quick nod. “It pays off.” ***** One morning, as Jolene munched toast smeared with jam, Grandma said to her, “Jolene, listen. Your dad ain’t coming to get you. You’re gonna have to stay here with me.” The toast suddenly clogged in Jolene’s throat like a wad of damp paper. There was no way to swallow and she gagged, spitting it onto her plate. Grandma looked at the mess and said, “It’ll be okay.” An earnest plea lingered in her eyes. Her expression was the same one she wore that time when a man asked if the banged-up lawn mower by the road still worked—“It’ll need some repair is all; it’s a damn good mower,” Grandma had told him, trying to sell busted-up shit to stupid people. “But I don’t want to stay here,” whined Jolene. “I want to go home.” Grandma raised her voice slightly and said, “He ain’t coming for you, Jolene.” Then lowered her voice and added, “The man’s a coward. Always has been.” Jolene ran upstairs and fell on her bed, crying. Later on, Grandma stood in the doorway. “Quit your bawling. Get your sneakers on. I’m taking you to a spot you’ll like. Somewheres your mom used to play.” She made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, stuffed them into baggies, and Jolene climbed into the battered Rambler. Grandma swung the car out of the driveway and they traveled down the road apiece, then pulled into a parking lot in a grassy field. Grandma got out stiffly and hobble-walked using a cane, doing her best to lead Jolene along the pathway through the woods to a gorge. Parents with children, hikers with dogs, and lovers holding hands, all trotted along the trail like a disjointed parade. “Mind me, now,” warned Grandma. “See them boys up there?” She pointed to two children Jolene’s age, peeking over the side of the cliff, the only spot not blocked by brush or trees. “Them boys are too close to the edge. You stay next to me. You can run off when we get down there, but it’s a drop from up here. A girl fell off last year.” “What happened to her?” asked Jolene. The notion of it made her want to peek over the edge with the boys. “What’d’ya think happened to her, Jolene? Don’t ask dumb questions.” A rocky path led through the woods and narrowed as they descended an incline to a stream. The Shhhhh of the falls strengthened with every step. White noise rose like a deafening silence; a command from God, Shhhhh. The falls appeared, cascading endlessly; frothy swirls churning at its base with the misty fog rising upward like a thousand-winged angels. The stream was strewn with boulders the size of Volkswagens. Children scrambled up to play on them, and lovers reclined to sunbathe. Grandma carefully lowered herself to settle on a log. The walk had been treacherous for her. They ate the sandwiches, looking around at everyone laughing and leaping amongst the rocks. Jolene felt like an uninvited guest at a party. Grandma’s chin dropped to her neck; she closed her eyes, and said, “Go ahead, Jolene. You play a bit. Let me be. I gotta rest some. There’s a surprise up there you’ll wanna see.” Jolene splashed in the stream, slowly making her way up to the mouth of the falls, pushing through the pulsing current as if wading toward a holy destination on a religious quest. Drawing closer, she noticed a bright orange flame blazing from a recess behind the falls; sheets of water covering it like a transparent veil. She stood in wonder. “There it is, there it is!” shouted a little girl in a high-pitched voice, racing up next to Jolene. The girl’s mother bent down and squeezed her daughter sideways in a hug. The girl pushed herself into that hug, clearly enjoying the preciousness of being cherished. The mother pointed to the flame, explaining something about natural gas. The girl wasn’t listening but her eyes traveled all over her mother’s face as she spoke, adoring being adored. Jolene was close enough to see the mother’s warm gaze, to hear her say, “All day, all night, it never goes out, never dies. It’s like love.” The girl touched a dangling strand of her mother’s hair. “Doesn’t the fire ever get tired and want to take a nap?” The mother laughed, charmed by her daughter’s reply, and clasped her hand before they picked their way up closer to the flame. A chasm opened for Jolene just then, an indefinable longing ignited--her whole life ahead with the tireless need to be held aloft in the eyes of a mother. Jolene’s attention switched to a movement next to her: two monarch butterflies frolicking in a playful dance. It was odd to see them so far down in the gorge. As she watched, they rose higher and higher out of sight; a fluttering duo tracing figure eights. Jolene wondered if the “surprise” Grandma forecast was the flame or the butterflies. Seeing the monarchs brought her mother into the present in a flash of memory that felt as strong as her embrace. She pictured the two of them playing together along the shores of a lake that was always cold. Her mom had pointed at the horizon—“That’s a whole other country over there. I’ll teach you to swim better and maybe we can reach it by sundown.” Her mother’s expression was wistful, then full of something akin to joy—“Kick ‘n’ paddle, Jolene, kick ‘n’ paddle!”—and Jolene swam straight into her mother’s outstretched arms. Jolene waded back to where her grandmother rested. “You seen the fire?” asked Grandma, rising unsteadily to her feet, grasping the cane that looked inefficient to hold her weight. Jolene nodded. A solemn feeling took hold of her, thinking about that flame--how it never dies. “All right,” said Grandma. “We can go then.” Halfway up the trail, Grandma needed to rest. She leaned on her cane, looking sideways toward the gorge, lapsed in reverie. “You might’a sat on a rock that your mom played on when she was little. Her and Dulcie, they used to be down here for hours. Your mom, more so. She used to make fairy houses.” Grandma sighed and her eyelids fluttered. “She’d tell us that the fairies rode on the backs of butterflies when they got too tired of flying around on their own.” The memory tugged at her features, drawing her mouth downward. “That flame,” she said in a voice thick with emotion. Jolene waited to hear more but Grandma stopped, straightened her back, and started to walk again, slowly. “They say it’s eternal, never goes out,” she continued, her voice recovered. “It do sometimes, go out. Has to be lit.” ***** The next day was Saturday. One of the boy cousins, the middle one, had a birthday to celebrate. Grandma sent the three boys out into the field to gather rocks for building a fire pit. She showed them, with her hands, what size rock they should collect: “Like a small loaf of bread,” she said. “Not a big loaf.” The project lasted the whole afternoon, with the boys pulling rocks of all sizes out of the earth, racing back to stack them against the shed in a competition of brawn and speed. They dug a deep hole for the pit but had to refill it. “You ain’t gonna bury a goat,” snapped Grandma. “Do it right, like I told you.” Finally, the rocks were piled up to form a shape resembling a circle, the firewood placed and ready to be lit when the sun went down. Jolene and Denise dragged lawn chairs out of the shed and set them around the fire. The children held pointy sticks speared with marshmallows that browned to perfection, but then more often than not, ignited, charring black. The boys dared each other, taking turns raising their bare feet just above the crackling sparks to see who could last the longest. Denise hoisted her feet over the flames and won, her eyes squeezed shut with determination. Aunt Dulcie and Grandma joined them after a bit, Dulcie sitting down heavily with a grunt, popping off the tab on a can of beer. “Can I have a sip?” asked the eldest son, posturing for his brothers. “You eighteen yet?” asked Dulcie. “No, but I’m gonna be in…” he tried to calculate. “Seven years.” “How’s that?” said Dulcie, smiling. “Try nine. Nine years.” She looked at him for a moment, searching his face. “Here,” she said, handing him the green can. “One sip.” Her son took a swig, hesitating before he swallowed, puckering as if he’d sucked a lemon. “Mmmmm,” he said, rubbing his belly. He looked at his brothers like he’d just won a prize. “Goof,” said Dulcie, shaking her head with amusement. Denise gently bumped against Jolene’s shoulder, as if to say, look at this freaky family you’ve joined. Jolene had never felt more rooted in this group and her heart glowed in gratitude at being included, at seeing the contented faces of her relatives made luminesce by the orange glow of the fire. To see Aunt Dulcie looking peaceful gave Jolene confidence to relax, hoping that maybe she could craft a family out of this rugged bunch. “Went to see the fire in the falls yesterday,” Grandma offered. “Ahhh, we wanna go!” said the birthday boy. “I heard it keeps lit ‘cause a’ all the gas. They told us in school.” “Gas is a fart!” shrieked the littlest of the three, and the boys burst into laughter. The middle one tipped in his chair, knocking into his older brother who smacked him hard on top of his head with a balled-up fist. The birthday boy began to cry. “See why I don’t take ‘em?” said Grandma, staring straight down into the pit. ***** The next morning Aunt Dulcie showed up at the house alone and sat at the kitchen table with Grandma. There were no cousins around. A serious tone alerted Jolene not to enter. She listened, perched on the staircase, unseen by the women as they sipped coffee. “I gotta see Jay’s face now for the rest of my days?” said Dulcie. “When’s she going?” “I told you,” said Grandma. “She’s here now, for good.” There was a pause as someone shifted in a chair, the sound of liquid pouring into a mug. Dulcie coughed. “Denise has got to see him too, now,” said Dulcie. Jolene wondered what was meant by this—she had not seen her dad in a very long time. Was he here somewhere, hidden, appearing only to Denise and Dulcie? “You girls made some bad choices back when,” said Grandma. “Now stop with your monkey talk.” Another pause. The air in the room pulsated. “Bad Choices! You’re saying I made the bad choice? Me? I’m the one!” There was the sound of a chair scraping across the floor, a mug smashing, and the screen door slamming shut. Jolene leaned out cautiously to look through the doorway of the kitchen, seeing the bulky form of Grandma struggling to bend and gather up the shards of that chunky white mug. Jolene thought about how hard that mug must have been heaved in order to break. Later that day, as Grandma reached to put away some dishes in the cupboard, she was startled to see Denise out of the corner of her eye, standing silently outside the screen door. “Get yourself in here, then,” said Grandma. “If you’re coming in, do it.” Denise entered and stood scowling. Her vision seemed unfocused, staring at the middle ground. The screen had hidden the blotchy patches on her sweaty face, but once indoors those blemishes bloomed into a hideous garden. There was a crosshatching of cuts on her cheek below her right eye and her bottom lip was raised with a single drop of blood where it was split. Aunt Dulcie had dropped her off and sped away. Grandma looked at Denise and then quickly headed to the freezer. She shook ice cubes out from a tray into the sink, wrapping a few of them in a dishtowel which she wet under the faucet with cold water. “Sit down,” she commanded. Denise complied. Grandma twisted the end of the towel to keep the ice from falling out. She handed the bundle to Denise who pressed the wad to her swollen lip in a wordless ritual understood by them both. Grandma asked, “Who done it, your mom or Milt?” Denise replied in monotone, “Milton just hits the boys now.” Grandma shook her head, irritated. “You two got to learn to get along!” she scolded. Jolene sidled up to Denise. She had an urge to reach out and hold her hand--an urge she resisted. Instead, she asked, “Who’s Milton?” “Jolene, quit with your monkey questions,” snapped Grandma. “An’ quit staring at me,” said Denise. Jolene tried to train her eyes on something else in the room besides Denise dabbing more ice against her swollen face. She watched the cats instead, the way they pressed themselves sensuously against the table legs, blessedly oblivious. Jolene wandered into the backyard, gathering small sticks and rocks at the edge of the field, imagining how to arrange a fairy house. The day was hot and monarchs bobbed and lit on the milkweed growing in abundance at the edge of the field. She became engulfed in creating a tiny structure out of sticks, moss, and stone with the bright fantasy that fairies might discover and inhabit the little room; the bark beds made soft with milkweed silk, pebble chairs, and a rock table set with tiny pods full of hard, red berries. A long shadow appeared, jolting Jolene from her play. She looked up into the wounded face of her cousin. The florid red on her cheeks had paled to reveal scratches, the streaks made garishly visible now that the rash had faded. Jolene’s heart ticked rapidly in her chest, waiting for Denise’s malefic foot to demolish the delicate cottage, but Denise sat down, crossing her legs. She leaned forward to caress the spongy carpet of moss with an outstretched finger, pressing down, forcing a small recess, then leaned back on her hands and closed her eyes, her face turned up to the sun. Jolene was able to take a long, furtive look at her cousin: the nose, too small for her wide face; her eyelashes, stiff as whiskers, curled and reddish-blond. Denise was flat-chested with broad muscled shoulders and hard lean arms and legs. She looked vulnerable for once; not soft, or even safe, but damaged like those injured lions Jolene watched on the nature shows—the way the beasts withdrew, defeated and maimed, and you knew that death was not far off. Denise rubbed her eyes. “What’s the house for?” she asked. “The fairies,” said Jolene. “So they could live here.” Denise half grunted, half laughed. “You believe in fairies?” Jolene considered a moment. “Yes,” she affirmed. “They used to bring me money when I lost a tooth.” “How much?” “A dime,” said Jolene. “You should’ve asked for a quarter.” Denise stood and dusted off her bottom. “Take a walk with me,” she said. “I have a secret to tell you; a big one. I’m not supposed to say it, so we gotta be farther out.” Everything was silent except for the occasional buzz of a cricket or the trill of a bird. There was not even a wafting breeze through the field to make a sound. Jolene felt ruinously sleepy. She hadn’t eaten a thing that morning because Aunt Dulcie was there, and then Denise had shown up. Her head felt mashed and pulpy. She did not want to walk. “Come on, stand up,” ordered Denise. “Come with me.” Despite the heat and quiet, Jolene felt a chill and heard a sound thundering in her head like when water got trapped in her ears after swimming in the lake. Her mother would tell her to jump on one foot and shake her head to one side to loosen it, only this sound was magnified, accompanied by a current of words streaming below it, unintelligible, and frantic. She stood shakily, joining Denise. The two of them made their way through the open field. Denise glided along, ripping the periwinkle heads off cornflowers as Jolene struggled to keep pace with her cousin’s long-legged stride. When Jolene finally turned to look for Grandma’s house, it appeared small, impossibly far away. “I guess this spot is good enough,” said Denise. She held a smooth gray rock, the size of a grapefruit. Jolene had not seen her pick it up and wondered where it came from. The girls sat down at Denise’s lead, facing each other, pushing the weeds aside to create a sort-of nest. “Can you guess what the secret is?” asked Denise. Jolene’s head buzzed with heat and hunger, but she searched back in the day to form an idea. “Who is that guy Grandma named? The one who hits the boys.” “Milt. Milton. He don’t hit ‘em much, just when they need it. He’s their dad,” said Denise, pulling apart a wide strand of grass and blowing through it. Like a tiny horn, it trumpeted. Jolene tried to do the same but accidentally tore the grass in half and Denise offered no instruction. “Isn’t Milt your dad too?” asked Jolene, shyly. Denise shook her head. “Where’s your dad then?” “That’s the secret,” said Denise. Her eyes looked darker somehow, almost black. A flush spread across her cheeks. “My dad is Jay.” Jolene could not believe it. The concept seemed impossible, as if Denise had told her that cats can fly. The air around them cooled and a breeze picked up and ruffled the grass. A few moments passed. Jolene had no words she could think to say, but something brewed in her chest, a swirling sensation she couldn’t control; a microburst. Finally, she shouted, “No, he isn’t!” yelled in a voice one would use to call back a dog running into the street. Denise nodded, affirming a fact, her lower lip drawn up so tightly that her chin was cratered with dimples. “No!” cried Jolene, desperate to have her one dad back as her very own. Denise stood up and screamed, “You think you’re so great! Your mom was a slut an’ everybody knows it!” Jolene had heard the word “slut” only once, used by her dad, and shouted at her mom. She remembered being in the back seat of his car, crumpled to one side. They were racing to pick up her mom who’d stayed the night at her best friend’s place. Her dad had dragged her mom out of the trailer, yanking her down the steps and tossing her into the backseat next to Jolene. “Three sheets to the wind,” he’d said, glaring in the rearview mirror. “Drunken slut!” He nearly spit the words, then stopped looking back. Jolene did not know what that word “slut” meant but guessed it was something vile like throw-up or worms on the sidewalk, mutilated in the rain. She remembered the cutting sound of that word; how it started out sly like the hiss of a snake and ended hard, like a door slammed shut. Denise stepped backward, bent at the knees, and whipped the rock hard. It landed square on the upper part of Jolene’s forehead, knocking her against the ground. She curled to one side, feeling enveloped in a dark heavy cloak. Minutes or hours later--she didn’t know how much time had passed--she came to. The blood had dried. Her forehead felt stretched tight as a drum. She lay there watching everything close up, so close that things were split in two: stems were stripes of yellow and green; pink balls of clover doubled to look like balloons at a party. In a dreamlike trance, she delighted to see the stained-glass orange and black wings of a monarch, praying beside her. “Mom,” she whispered hoarsely. After a bit more time passed, Denise was there leaning over her, pressing her tiny pig-like nose against Jolene’s cheek. “Wake up, sleepy-head.” She tossed a flower chain across Jolene’s neck, dandelions braided together. “Look, I made you a necklace,” she said. “We gotta head back now.” Jolene’s vision was foggy. She needed to eat, needed to drink water. “You fell,” said Denise. She helped Jolene to her feet and placed her hands firmly on Jolene’s shoulders, peering hard into her eyes. “You fell,” she repeated. “It ain’t lying. You did fall.” Jolene knew that this was the story she must tell or risk a darker fate. She did not recall much of that day except for two things--the word “slut” wickedly roused to life in her memory, and also her mom, praying beside her in the guise of a butterfly. The girls returned to Grandma’s house, Denise adjusting her steps to match the slower gait of Jolene’s. To an outsider, it would seem a touching sight: the bigger girl caring for the smaller, draping her arm protectively over the younger one’s shoulders. As they entered the yard, Aunt Dulcie, peering from behind the kitchen window, screeched to Grandma, “They’re coming! There they are!” She ran outdoors, grabbing Denise into a hug that lasted a while. Jolene kept moving toward the house, her peripheral vision darkening into a tunnel. She collapsed just inside the screen door. “Damn!” said Grandma. “That’s a goose egg!” Jolene heard voices as if they were far off. “What did you do, Denise?” Instead of Denise answering, Jolene heard the voice of Dulcie say, “Why you always think’n Denise did something wrong? Always blame’n Denise. Kids fall sometimes, ya know!” “That what happened?” insisted Grandma, giving Jolene a shake. “You fell?” Jolene simply nodded her head. “You best be goin’ now,” said Grandma to Dulcie and Denise. “I had about as much as I can take from the two of you this day.” They exited through the front door with Dulcie muttering, “Jeez,” in protest, as they left. Grandma applied something called a butterfly bandage to Jolene’s forehead, first rinsing the laceration with a stinging liquid that smelled like a doctor’s office. Grandma ran a shallow bath and Jolene was helped to lay down in the warm water made sudsy with blue dish soap. Her body ached. She was given five pink tiny pills to chew; it was like eating flavored chalk. Grandma left the door ajar as she fixed a dinner of Jolene’s favorites: hamburgers stacked on wonder bread with ketchup, served with potato chips, and strawberry milk. Jolene put on her pajamas even though the sky was still bright and sunny. Grandma let her eat in the living room on the foldout tintable and let her watch T.V. as the cats slinked along the back of the couch, keeping her company. “You probably need a stitch or two,” said Grandma, looking at her forehead. “But it’s Sunday. Doctor’s closed.” ***** Jolene woke up and looked in the mirror at the purplish jam-colored medallion on her forehead, split just below her hairline in a red gash. For the next few days, she floated in the pool by herself, on her back, watching the drifting clouds. Those pool floating days were a time of reflection, a time to rest and think about ways to be safe. Her mom spoke to her that week in a quiet, pleading way, and Jolene had to listen not only with her ears but with her whole body, in order to let the message sink in. Sometimes she held her breath underwater, feeling the hum of an internal order that seemed to connect the deepest part of her with everything that was outside: the sun, the grass, the open sky. It was hard for Jolene to fully comprehend this communication, but the message it foretold came from her mom and buoyed her up--it told her to She couldn’t hide from Denise much longer. One day that week, the front door was found to be wide open and Grandma shouted at Jolene to keep it shut. “I lost Misty that way,” she lamented. Jolene knew Misty must have been a cat. “She got out,” Grandma warned. “Went off to catch mice in the field and the fox got her. Them fox are a mean bunch. Catch’n cats and they don’t even eat ‘em, just like to kill ‘em for fun. They do it to chickens too sometimes, if they can sneak in a coop.” “How can you get rid of a fox?” asked Jolene, her pupils dilated with urgency. Grandma looked a little surprised, but told her, “You gotta’ set a trap and kill it, or shoot the damn things when you see ‘em running. It’s hard to shoot ‘em ‘cause they’re so sneaky, come’n out mostly at night. Traps work better.” ***** The August sky was roiling with olive clouds, the same color as Jolene’s fading bruise. Today was not a pool day, said Grandma, as it may storm and lightning can fry you in water just like boiling grease in the deep fryer. Jolene sat on the back steps watching the clouds overlap to form a dense canopy. She felt bored and lonely and anxious all at once. Tingles ran up and down her arms and over her thighs as the grass in the field swayed and whispered secrets. She had a secret too, something incubating and waiting for a time to hatch. Grandma spoke to her from inside, behind the screen door. “Denise has to come over today,” she said. Her voice was apologetic, but she added in a tone that was unyielding, “That’s just the way it’s gotta be. She has a hard time look’n at you and you have a hard time with her, I guess, but you gotta work it through. Your mom and Dulcie didn’t talk for years, and then look what happened.” Her chest heaved in a loud sigh. She seemed like she had more to say, miles more, but stopped herself and lumbered into the bathroom. Jolene heard water running and something that sounded like a sob but it could have been the squeaky pipes. Afterward, Grandma shuffled out and made a lunch of fried bologna sandwiches on wonder bread with ketchup. Denise showed up at the back door like a specter, her face healed up except for the split in her lower lip. “Sit down,” said Grandma. “You girls gotta eat, then find something you can do together. There’s playing cards in the drawer, or a jig-saw puzzle--something. My bursitis gets bad in this weather and it’s capturing my knees. I gotta go lie down. Let me be. I bought Twinkies, and you can have one. One.” Her eyebrows raised, looking at Denise. “Don’t let me see you eat’n the whole box like your brothers do.” She hobbled to the stairs and winced as she took the first step. Jolene was left alone with a penny-eyed fox. “What do you want to do?” asked Denise, sinking her yellow teeth into the spongy cake of the Twinkie. Jolene did not reply but concentrated on unwrapping the cellophane of her own treat which she pushed toward Denise like a sacrificial offering as her appetite flew out the window and her stomach flipped in anticipation. “Look,” said Denise, devouring the Twinkies and licking the fluffy white filling off each finger in turn. “I think we can have some fun today. Take me to the flame. I wanna see it.” “Me too,” replied Jolene. The girls headed out of the cul-de-sac to a street that curved onto the main road. Jolene was uncertain which way to go but Denise took the lead and turned right. Cars whooshed by at arm’s length as the two of them made their way along a narrow shoulder littered with paper wrappers and shards of amber glass. After a time, they came to the same lot where Grandma had parked on that sunny day of the picnic. Today there was only one car in the lot. The wind was kicking up, arching the tree branches upward. Stony clouds marched across a milky sky. They started down the rocky path that led through the woods. The temperature dropped and Jolene, dressed in only a tee-shirt and shorts, felt chilled; her skinny arms and legs unshielded. Denise wore shorts, but also a navy windbreaker which came down to her thighs and gave the illusion that she had no pants on. Trucks had beeped when they were passed on the road and one driver had stuck his head out the window yelling something nasty—Jolene could not tell what—but Denise had raised her middle finger to him. The falls could be heard in the distance, the reverent hush of rushing water near the edge of the gorge. Denise skipped off the path to the place where Grandma had warned Jolene not to get too close. Denise’s legs looked too sharp and long to be skipping--a fraudulent display of innocence. Even at seven, Jolene could see this, how people could fool you. “Come look,” said Denise. “You can see the waterfall from up here.” She swung her predator’s head around to gaze at Jolene who felt electric air raise the hairs on the back of her neck. She heard the powerful voice of her mother crescendo in the trees and the wind and the water gushing over the rocks: It's a trap, it’s a trap! Save yourself. “Come here,” said Denise, her eyes as shiny as the black beach stones that Jolene used to find along the shores of the cold lake. Jolene’s memory flashed on searching for those stones: the blackest of the black, the whitest of the white, while her mother treasured the ones shaped like hearts. On those good days, they’d fill a bucket’s worth of rocks and sort them out on the dock as the gulls swooped and hollered above. No more tricks, Jolene, her mother raged. “Where’s the flame?” Denise called over her shoulder, balancing along the precipice. “I don’t see it. Maybe it went out.” Jolene drew nearer. Denise turned with a ravenous look in her feral eyes as a wild wind lifted her hair, making it swirl momentarily around her head. “Come on!” She motioned with her hand, encouraging Jolene to step closer. Denise turned back again to face the gorge. “Oh, it’s right there,” she yelled, pointing. “The fire! Come see it! Don’t be a chicken!” She kept shouting, but the rest of her words were stolen by the wind. Jolene ran forward and shoved the middle of Denise’s bony back, hard, with both hands. The wind calmed. Jolene did not look over the edge of the cliff but instead closed her eyes and shivered, imagining the determined countenance of Denise, climbing back up the canyon wall, grabbing ahold of rocks and roots like a supervillain set on revenge. When finally Jolene forced herself to peek over the ledge, she saw Denise splayed on the bank below, looking small from the vantage point above. She could almost believe that Denise was asleep. Jolene picked her way down to the water following the path that she and Grandma had last taken, the same one her mother and Dulcie had skipped along so many times in the past. Jolene crouched next to the lifeless body, helpless as a wingless bird anchored to the ground. Sounds echoed across the gorge, their direction unclear; voices, barking dogs, the sound of shuffling through dry leaves. Three exuberant mongrels came crashing through the creek, shaking off water in a showery spray. A woman scrambled to catch up with the dogs, shouting apologies from far away, “They’re nice, don’t be scared, I’m sorry! Bad dogs! Caleb, come here! Bandit! Shadow!” The dogs nuzzled and sniffed and pranced and pawed around Jolene, ignoring the woman. When the woman reached Jolene, she was out of breath, continuing to apologize in a huffing sort of way. She was tall, with a long white braid down her back, wearing a denim jacket embroidered with yellow peace signs. As soon as she noticed Denise, the woman began to sputter, “Oh shit, oh Fuck, Jesus! Fred!” She turned and cupped her hands around her mouth to make a megaphone. “Fernaandoooo!” The name echoed across the canyon. She took off her coat and draped it over Jolene’s shoulders. A man, shorter than the woman, appeared on the other side of the creek and quickly made his way across, adroitly hopping from rock to rock. “Holy shit,” he said, staring at Denise. His skin and hair were dark, in contrast to the woman’s pale face and eyes that held a cast like a blue sky reflected in a muddy creek. The man crouched down, speaking to Jolene in a slow, deliberate cadence. “Are you okay? Where’s your mom or your dad?” Jolene could not answer either question. “We need to take her somewhere,” he said to the moon-faced woman. “To the hospital or something, I don’t know.” Jolene said, “I live with Grandma.” “Okay then, we’ll drive you home,” said the man. In the parking lot was the single-car, a light blue Volkswagen. Jolene jammed herself into the backseat with two of the three big dogs. The third dog sat up front on the woman’s lap. Fat drops of rain began to smack hard against the windshield. “Just in time,” said the woman, turning around and smiling. Jolene handed up the woman’s coat as the car felt warm and damp, smelling like a wet dog. A song came to life on the eight-track, a calming melody and a man’s voice that sang about sunshine coming softly through his window. Jolene liked the idea of sunshine entering through her window; there’d been so much getting through lately that wasn’t soft or sunny. The man turned around. “Where do you live, honey?” Jolene did not know how to get home, so he said, “Okay, we’ll drive one way, and if you don’t see it, we’ll go the other way.” “I think we should just drop her off at the police station,” said the woman. “Think it through,” said the man. “You want to go there and have to answer a million questions? There’s stuff in the glove compartment. We’re driving around with a child we don’t know. We just saw a body at the bottom of Chestnut Ridge. And the shit I ate is starting to kick in about now. In fact, maybe you better drive.” They took some time getting out and re-arranging, switching places in the car. One of the dogs in the back started to whine and paw at the seat, seeing that now there was a space available on her daddy’s lap, so they switched around the dogs too. The woman, hands gripping the steering wheel, turned around and nodded in a reassuring way, but Jolene noticed worry creep into her bloodshot eyes. “Where do you live now, sweetie? It’s going to be okay.” The car turned right. Down the road apiece, Jolene recognized the post where she and Grandma hung the sign for the yard sale. “Right here!” she shouted, and the car swung down her street. It pulled up in front and Jolene got out. “You okay, honey?” asked the man. “Is Grandma home? We’ll make sure and sit right here ‘til you get inside.” Jolene walked through the front door, waved to the couple, and there was Aunt Dulcie, her chubby hands clasped across her heart. “Where the hell have you girls been!” “We went to the falls,” whispered Jolene, feeling as if her throat was closing. “What?! Where’s Denise?” screamed Dulcie. “She fell,” replied Jolene. The concept of deceit was new to her but even at seven years old, she knew enough to hide the full truth. “Where the hell is she?” Aunt Dulcie was shaking Jolene by the shoulders and Grandma lugged herself down the stairs, wincing in pain, screeching at Dulcie, “Let her be!” Then Jolene heard herself say that Denise got too close to the edge and fell off. Grandma moaned in severe pain, the way she doubled over, screaming, “I told that girl about the falling spot! We stood there once and I told her, ‘Denise, you ain’t to come near this spot!’ She just had to show off!” Dulcie sprang to the bathroom, threw up in the toilet until there was nothing more inside her, and then she phoned the police who went to the bottom of Chestnut Ridge and retrieved the dead body of her daughter. ***** A service was held at the Anthony Carelli Funeral Home where Denise Lynn Sherman rested in a white closed casket with pink roses placed on top. The mourners formed a line that wound around the building. A hubbub began in the parlor, words circulating among some who paid their last respects, that the girl’s own father hadn’t even bothered to show up to bury his daughter. “Let him show up now,” said the man named Milton, rolling up the sleeves of his white dress shirt to reveal ropy muscled arms with snaky blue veins. Dulcie stood like a solemn statue the whole time the mourners came through; the only part of her moving was her hands, shaking the hands of others, occasionally letting herself be drawn into a hug. The boys continued to rough house, and Dulcie ignored them as if all the energy she’d had in her was drained out for good. The boys, dressed in suits and looking like tiny disheveled men, chased each other in perpetual circles with their neckties faltering to one side. These would be the lives of Dulcie and her boys thereafter. Grandma was mute, contained. Jolene hovered next to her as if sheltering under a tree that offered shade but nothing more. Once outdoors, the coffin was placed inside a big, impressive black car. Jolene learned that it was called a hearse. The day was sunny but crisp, a prelude to autumn, with a wide blue sky decorated with puffy, white clouds—a child’s drawing of a pretty day. A line of cars and motorcycles drove in the slow procession to the cemetery where the coffin was already removed and waiting, set on a carpet of fake grass next to a dug-out pit. The man from the funeral parlor stood tall and official as the family shuffled to gather around the site. He read some formal-sounding words from a leather-bound book, words that did not resemble much in the way of meaning, but everyone stood at attention, listening, even the boys. A monarch butterfly was bobbing over the coffin above the roses. Dulcie grabbed the arm of her husband and leaned into him with tears streaming down her face, pointing excitedly as she exclaimed, “It’s Terri, come to say goodbye!” And maybe in feeling the devastation of such great loss, not only for this recent event but for all the things of sorrow that came before it, she momentarily forgave her sister. Crouching beside her youngest boy, tenderly encircling her arm around his legs, she watched the butterfly, her eyes glassy with rapture. The monarch lit upon the coffin, gracefully wafting its’ exquisite orange wings. “She’s telling Denise the way to heaven,” marveled Dulcie, and Jolene was surprised to hear her aunt heralding a miracle to those who gathered, begging witness for them to believe: a slut transformed into an angel on this hallowed day. But Jolene heard the true message of this enchanted visitor, a promise uttered to her alone in the whisper of those wings murmuring in the rhythm of her own heart beating: safe now, safe now, safe now. Jolene listened evermore to pine trees swaying in the wind, to the ripples of brooks and the sage whisper of monarchs. Her world filled up with these natural sounds even as she stayed quiet, quiet, quiet; and people did not detect the fire that blazed in her like a revelation; the glowing vitality of it covered by a cool misty veil; a flame that she tended, a flame that she kept lit Katherine Steblen is an artist and mental health counselor who works with teenagers. She lives with her husband, daughter, dog, and cat in a village in upstate NY. Katherine has dabbled in writing for many years, but for the past seven years, has written more seriously, and with greater focus. She has had flash fiction published in, "100 Word Story," and the anthology, "nothing short of 100," and short fiction published in, "Every Day Fiction."

I’d recognise you from any distance — even with your back to me, all packaged up in Petit Bateau, remote at the edge of a puddle, clutched tight to a frisbee, maybe worried, if you let it go, it might continue in flight forever, or perhaps you just don’t want to risk getting your school shoes wet. Those bobbled socks would stay soggy, even if you scrunched your toes up under the chair and ignored them, through numeracy and literacy with a desk partner engaged 340 degrees, and a teacher-helper hovering self-aware; bumble bee deciding how best to dedicate its resources, leave you with your wet feet till home time to recompose five lego men you managed to snaffle from the class crate, not exactly unobserved, but from such telescopic difference as makes it somehow beyond us to relate. On your moon, according the the profile that accompanied you, children scrabble for food, hoard what they can, eat by night, with urgent secrecy, out of reach. Maybe that explains the covert foraging in foreign backpacks, that, to their credit, the others have stopped complaining about — wonderful how six-year-olds can exercise such adult tolerance. Your own age could be determined, apparently, by the density of bones; studying your teeth, there was uncertainty. At the very least, and without being unfair, I’d have to say you have a gift for not belonging, which makes it easier now, as I see you turning — rocket children avoiding you with dexterity — satellite, somehow revolving and remaining still at the heart of our mobile, perhaps looking for grownup contact as a last resort; more natural, anyway, that I veer off towards the other end of the playground, where there seems to be a small girl crying. An English teacher most of the time, Simon Leonard writes short and micro-fiction in both English and Spanish, as well as poetry. When the desire for recognition overcomes the anxiety of not being good enough, he offers work for publication. Examples can be found in Orbis, Envoi, Ink, Sweat and Tears, What Rough Beast, Overheard and Sunthia, among others. Several of his pieces of short fiction have been shortlisted in competitions, although he has never won anything.