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For Lyuba Yakimchuk In a vast bomb shelter, hundreds of citizens cup candles. The soft light gives a warm hue to the coldness, and the girl scribbles in her notebook, trying to distract herself from the current images around her with a pleasant one from last month: A bike ride down a hill near her church, a steep one, where she cranked the pedals until her legs were rubber and the tires bounced, causing the chain to jingle against the frame. She sped into an overgrown patch of weeds, mostly wild brush, where dried twigs jammed and dinged in the spokes of her wheels. Then she slammed the brakes and watched a little cloud of dirt rise and sweep over her, the dust sparkling with bits of dandelion seed heads. She made a wish. She tries to capture this moment in a little poem, one that was assigned for class last week, the last day of school before the invasion. She thinks it is silly to write a poem while bombs strike the old brick in her village. She thinks it is stupid to think of another word for “green” when bodies in her neighboring town are being carried out on stretchers as air raid sirens howl. She thinks she is dumb for trying to write a cute poem during a war. But, as another bomb is dropped and the shelter shakes again, she drops her pen, and her father wraps her hard before reaching down to pick it up. He passes it back to her. He gives her his candle, too. He asks her if she has enough light to keep going.

Tom says there is an old man named Scotty and that Scotty has seen the Devil. Tom tells this to the new hire. You ask him, Tom says, and he’ll tell you. Scotty has been sitting in the same pub every second Friday for ten years now. He retired, but he kept to the rhythm of his workplace and attended the informal after-work socials common to the drones that filled the cubicles. He’d be there before any of the unretired arrived, and when they came in, he’d have a sit and a chat and watch the same sports highlights they watched. The company of individuals of similar circumstances, without the circumstances, is a balm to the soul. When Tom and the others including the new hire get to the pub there’s Scotty. He wears the jacket with the logo of his favorite team, like he always does, and he has already ordered. Tell us Scotty, Tom says, tells us about the time you saw the Devil. Scotty waves his hand. Not again, he says, that’s an old story and you’ve all heard it before. For the new hire, Tom asked. One more time. Have you really seen the Devil; the new hire asks? Yes, Scotty says. Yes, I have. Right here in the Heart and Garter, on a Friday night long before the sun went down. You see, we used to have a woman working with the company named Sandra. Sandra’s husband had left her and she hated him. When I say that she hated him, it was Hate with a capital “H”, white hot and enduring - and she’d tell you about it. She had few other topics of conversation. She had a son too, but the boy had, at some time, chosen to live with his father. We’d talk about work but she’d turn the conversation to her ex-husband. We’d talk about sports and she’d bring up the former spouse. We’d talk about elections - she’d curse the memory of a man none of us had ever met. It was, in a word, tiresome. I just want to sit in here in my jacket and watch the boys on TV, see if they can win the division again. I want to drink my shandy. I want to relax. But Sandra had an agenda, or, more accurately, an agenda had her. The new hire nodded and asked: But what does that to do with the actual Satan? Scotty continued: One time a woman from Human Resources came with us. Her name was Candace. She was a quiet, dignified woman. She had not come before, and hasn’t been here since. She actually left the company shortly thereafter, but there is no story there, only here. She came because I’d mentioned to her that the Heart and Garter was a place where you could get a proper shandy – that’s what I drink – and she wanted to try one, so she came along with some others and of course, Sandra. We ordered our shandies, the others ordered their whatever’s. Immediately, as was her practice, Sandra raised her glass and toasted her own anger. The son-of-a-bitch is still alive, she said, here’s to nothing, and she tossed back her vodka and Coke. Candace said nothing. Sandra turned to Candice and asked in order her if she knew anything about fibromyalgia, then chronic fatigue syndrome, then something called Lyme. Candace demurred to all. I am not sure if she even tried her shandy, but she made her goodbyes shortly and left without finishing it. (She probably tried it, Tom interjected, they are bloody awful – terrible, even – and I don’t know how anyone can drink them,) but Scotty continued on his own: Time passed; Candace was gone. Sandra changed her name to Sandrine, or at least told everyone to start calling her that, and began to … descend, if I can use that word. Yes, descend. De-evolve. She shrank. She became small, and less than she could be, less than she should be. She was dying I thought, of vodka and Coke, anti-anxiety medications, and of sitting alone and thinking too much. She continued to toast to the hated – and apparently living only out of his spite for her - ex-husband. She showed us pictures of a grandchild. She spoke of resenting her son, who was now far away. I can only imagine what Sandra (now Sandrine) was like to live with. Unspoken at the table was the sense that the Chinese water-torture of her complaints, the endless drip-drip-drip of her bitchery, had driven those men off. I can’t actually remember a single specific complaint she had against this unknown man. I thought of her complaints – all of them - as generic. I seem to remember that she once said he chewed noisily, or that he had a child’s handwriting. One or the other or both or neither, I cannot remember the specifics but I marvel that there were so many. I am sure my wife had some of the same complaints, all wives even - men are men after all, and women, women - but they were forgotten as soon as they were uttered, and did not possess my wife in the way that Sandra (Sandrine) had been possessed. Then one day, she and I alone of the every-second-Friday-crew were here, I with my shandy, she with her vodka and Coke. She raised her glass, I demurred. I will not toast to that I told her, give it a rest. The boys – my team, I mean – were doing well. They had a chance at winning the division. I didn’t want to sit there while some woman rehashed old miseries the provenance of which I could never know, even had I cared to find out. She rolled her eyes at me and went up to the bar and then, the Devil. How do you know he was the Devil, the new hire asked? Scotty ignored the boy and continued: The Devil came in and sat at Sandrine’s elbow. To be sure, I did not know at first that she – for the Devil is a She – was the Devil. But from her entry I knew something of the infernal was in the room. The woman looked in no small way like our few-year’s-gone Human Resources director Candace, but more so a more perfect rendition of Candace. Candace was tall, this woman an inch taller. Candace had ruddy hair then just begun turning to grey, no longer than the base of her neck, while this woman’s hair was a cascade of red-blond like honey and cinnamon that flowed down her shoulders. Her eyes too – I have to speak of her eyes. Candace, as I remember, had green eyes turning to brown, a hazel really – this woman’s eyes were green turning to yellow, the light of the sun seen from the bottom of a well. They were marvelous. They were frightening. Maybe it was Candace, the new hire said. No, Scotty said, this woman was a more perfect rendition of Candace, but not Candace. She was to Candace what tigers are to housecats, or eagles to sparrows, each of the former the more perfectly idealized version of the latter. She was mythic, and so, Satan. She sat with Sandrine a while and they spoke intently, heads together. They possessed a familiarity I would have thought born of relationship, and I assumed that they knew one another. I imagine that when the Devil comes to men, she comes in some way particular to their interests, and brings other things with her, but when the Devil came to Sandrine she came as a sympathetic ear and a kindred soul - a Mother, a sister, a daughter - a friend. Sandrine spoke to her new confidante, and the Devil listened. Sandrine ranted and the Devil held her peace, Sandrine cried and the Devil gave her a shoulder. When Sandrine was done crying the Devil spoke to her, softly and at some length, and then gave her something in a manila envelope. Sandrine looked very far away at that moment, like a woman who had lost her sense of location amid the fury of her own thoughts. The Devil walked out, passing just by me and my shandy. She stopped briefly and looked at me sitting there with my drink and told me that she had always wanted to try one, but hadn’t had time yet. Maybe someday, she said, then she was gone. Was there no scythe, the new hire asked? No stench of sulfur? Well no, Scotty said, of course not. The Devil is not Death. The Devil comes not to harvest but to gather. It should go without saying. At any rate, the Devil walked out and left me there with my shandy and my hopes for a division title for my team. Sandrine came back with her envelope and sat down. I asked her about the contents of course, and she opened the envelope and shook out a newspaper clipping – an obituary in fact. It was her ex-husband’s obituary, and although not long it spoke well of him in the way that obituaries do and was gracious about his good character as a son and husband - he’d remarried evidently - and as a father and grandfather. I shrugged and told Sandrine that it appeared that she’d got what she wanted after all, but that surely this was unfortunate for her son and grandchild no? Look again, she told me. Look at the date. She pointed to it with a shaking finger. I looked and the date was over six years into the future. I stammered and harrumphed. There must be some kind of mistake, I said. A typo. Maybe, she said, but most likely not. She took the obituary and put it back in the envelope. She left the bar and I was alone there with my shandy. A strange gift. the new hire said, and as you might say, impossible to provenance. Did you keep a copy? What of Sandra (Sandrine) today? Sandrine died within the year, Scotty said. She died of pancreatic cancer. It works fast. I believe the seed of it was in her well before the Devil came. I believe the Devil came with news both good and bad. The Devil spoke of the bad first, to tell her that she’d be dead before her husband, but hold on there, Sandrine, here’s the good news: he dies too. Here’s what you asked for. Read it, it is all there. I think back on the scene now, Sandrine and the Devil up at the bar, Sandrine railing and crying, and I wonder if she cried only for herself or if maybe she cried, even little, for him. I doubt it. At any rate, I have seen the Devil, she is very near to six feet tall, has hair of fire, and eyes the green of a sacrificial well. The obituary, the new hire said, would there be any way to find it? You can look it up, Scotty said. I know the man’s name. So yes, he died at the appointed hour, years after she passed. Of this I am sure. If you mean the obituary, the Devil’s gift to Sandrine, of that I can’t say where it might be. Sandrine was cremated, so maybe it was consigned to the crematoria fire with her. But I think not. I think more likely her son, who came out to sort through her estate and her papers such as they were, shredded it without even scanning it. Of what use is a gift of the Devil to anyone other than the one who prays for it? Especially if it’s someone else’s obituary. If you must pray to the Devil, pray for money, like everyone else. Living well is the best revenge as they say. Prescience is not worth as much - at least that kind of prescience. But I have seen the Devil, in particular circumstances, and she is exactly as I tell you she is. A word from the author: If you must pray to the Devil, pray for money, like everyone else.

Gwen picked up the levee trail behind the high school after the early morning rain stopped. She hadn’t put in contacts in the rush to beat the next storm that hovered over the hills in the distance, so everything looked slightly out of focus. She should have grabbed her glasses, but if her 2-year-old daughter saw her, she knew it would cause an inevitable delay. So she ran out the door and out of the cul-de-sac with her vision impaired. She knew the route by heart from her cross country days, when she would follow teammates mid-pack out the back of the campus near the football field up onto the then-newly paved levee. Like she had done at 15, she ran down the steep hill at Miller Avenue. The backside of the park used to be a mess of bamboo, wild reeds and grasses that grew up to her knees. Now part of it had manicured grass for a baseball diamond and soccer field, and the swaths of dirt were cut through with a circuit of cement bike paths. The weather was warm that morning, unlike the frosted days of the week before. High 40s— comparatively warm, anyway. The air smelled of wet compost, not the diseased decomposing scent one might expect, but an earthy, rich odor of transformation. Gwen looked up toward the white-washed boards of a horse corral in the distance. The mounted police unit used it for training exercises, but never so early in the morning. She lost her footing on some brush across the walkway when she noticed someone on a white horse in the distance. She swiped the debris from the path and squinted at the figure. She made out the silhouette of someone with shoulder-length hair and a silver or gray top. She moved past them, keeping to her pace and route. As she rounded the corner back to her house, the first heavy drops of rain hit against her shoulders. She rushed upstairs to insert her contacts and shower, kissed her daughter Maddy and husband Tony goodbye, and headed out the garage door for work. She rummaged through her purse with one hand in search of her key fob while she juggled a laptop case, a plastic grocery bag repurposed as a sack lunch, and a refillable water bottle. As she clicked the trunk open, she looked up and saw the white horse at the edge of the cul-de-sac. Gwen couldn’t be sure it was the same horse or the same person she had seen before. She saw a man now, with brown hair that fell to his shoulders and a jaw that jutted out toward the Stop sign at the end of the block. He wore dark leather pants and a burgundy tunic with what looked like chain mail around his neck and shoulders. Gwen thought perhaps he was headed to the high school for a history lesson. She waved as she drove off in her SUV. The next morning, the man on the horse was there again as she rushed to her car, perpetually in a state of lateness. But this time he approached her. “Maiden, please join me on my steed and I shall whisk you away from this monstrosity,” the man said in an English accent as he held a sword in the direction of her car. Gwen laughed and wondered if she’d missed an announcement of a Renaissance Faire in town. “I’m quite alright,” she said. “What are you? Into cosplay?” The man gave her a quizzical look and lowered himself from the horse. “What is ‘cosplay?’ I’m here to rescue you, Guinevere,” he said. “I found your letter and I’ve been searching for you for years. I apologize for the delay.” “Okay, enough shenanigans,” she said. “I’m late for work. And I don’t need to be rescued.” Gwen threw her laptop bag into the passenger seat and started the car. She watched the man from the rearview mirror as she connected her phone to the Bluetooth. She waved as she exited the cul-de-sac. At the end of the day, Gwen collected her daughter Maddy from daycare and they played a silly song called “We are the Dinosaurs” when they got home. Maddy stomped around the dining room table, her torso bent forward in velociraptor form, while Gwen cooked. Tony came in just before bedtime and whisked Maddy up into his arms, and nuzzled his nose against hers. The toddler giggled and shouted, “Maddy daddy tickles.” Gwen cleared away the plates and leaned in to kiss Tony. “Hey, have you seen someone on a white horse around the neighborhood lately?” she asked. “A white horse?” Tony said. “Around here? What do you mean?” “Nothing.” Gwen lifted Maddy from his arms to carry her upstairs. After the bedtime routine that seemed to grow longer every night, Gwen sprawled out on top of the comforter of her own bed, to have a moment of quiet to herself. When she went back downstairs, Tony had changed out of his suit into basketball shorts and a t-shirt. He had on a similar outfit when they first met at a boot camp class when she was 26. The other men in class couldn’t take their eyes off the platinum blonde, bronzed instructor who had a perfectly sculpted body, but Tony had his eyes scrunched closed for most of the class as he lunged around the room, his white calves flexing. That’s how he bumped into Gwen and almost knocked her into a treadmill. He apologized and pulled his face into exaggerated exhaustion as they neared the end of a set. “Sorry for knocking you around. Let me make it up to you. How about a shot of wheatgrass?” he said. And when she realized he was joking, she had let him take her for coffee. Sometimes it hardly seemed possible they had been together 10 years. “How was work?” Tony asked as she sat down with him on the couch. “Okay,” she said. “There’s some talk about another round of layoffs on the horizon. Sometimes I wish I could be next. I don’t know what’s more stressful—being unemployed or being left behind to take on all the extra projects?” Her husband turned away from the TV. “Being unemployed, definitely,” he said. “Want to watch something together?” Gwen shook her head and went back upstairs to read alone. The layoffs came the next week and Gwen’s boss gave her three more projects to manage. “You’ve done such a great job in the last quarter, I know you’ll be up to the challenge of adding to your portfolio,” he said. Gwen looked out the window of the skyscraper she stood in, out toward the eastern foothills. “And will this extra work come with extra compensation?” she said. “Come on, Gwen, we just had to lay people off. If we get our earnings up, maybe we can reevaluate in six months.” “Okay, but I can’t do the overtime anymore. I have a kid now, and a commute.” “Don’t make me think I made a mistake keeping you on. You’ve always been a team player.” Gwen walked away, toward the elevator instead of her cubicle. Her eyes stung and she didn’t want the tears to erupt in the office. She texted Tony to ask if he was free to chat, but he didn’t respond. She walked out of the office and midday sun bathed the Plaza de Cesar Chavez. She sat on a bench near the fountain and lowered her head into her hands with a deep sigh. As she lifted her head, she was startled to see the man on the white horse again, even more out of place in the city than in her cul-de-sac. “Guinevere, please don’t weep.” “What are you doing here? Are you stalking me? Leave me the hell alone.” Despite her harsh words, Gwen stayed seated on the bench as the man dismounted the horse. “Guinevere, please, pause for a moment to listen to me.” He held his hand out with a crumpled piece of paper. “A letter, to prove I am here at your behest.” “It’s Gwen,” she said as she took the letter. She unfolded a crumpled piece of pink paper, faded Lisa Frank lined rainbow heart stationary that almost made the looping purple ink impossible to read. The note held a faint scent of candy apple body spray. October 10, 1990 Dear Lancelot, I wish you were real and you could come here, and take me away from everything. I hate everything about my life. I thought Jay liked me, but now he’s going to the harvest festival with Cati who is perfect and blond and skinny. She’s like a princess and I’m not. My best friend says maybe Jay doesn’t really like her because he’s always sitting next to me in math class, but I know it’s because he’s just not good at math and I am. I wish for once I could be pretty instead of smart. Then someone would like me and my life wouldn’t be so miserable. Sincerely, Guinevere “Gwen” Alexandra Garcia Her name hadn’t been Garcia for almost eight years and her handwriting hadn’t looked like that since she was 12, when she wrote in cursive every day in paper notes to her friends. Gwen didn’t recall writing this particular letter, but she remembered Jay. Her first crush in middle school, he had blond hair, sleepy eyes, and rosy cheeks. He wasn’t particularly cute, but he had been nice to her, and back then that was all it took for her to fall in love. Back then, when she was round with pimples across her cheeks and greasy hair, and a deep-seated belief she would always be unlovable. She had never told her friends she thought the only reason Jay was nice was because he wanted help in math class. She’d kept that in for this imaginary correspondence with Lancelot. Jay had moved away at the end of middle school to a town in the valley and she hadn’t thought of him after. She handed the letter back to the man. “I wrote this a long time ago,” she said. “I don’t need to be rescued anymore.” Lancelot folded the letter and placed it into a leather satchel that sat across the horse’s flank. “I will be here for you when you are ready, Guinevere.” He rode up the plaza and disappeared from sight behind the Tech Museum building. *** On a night when Tony put Maddy to bed, Gwen headed out the side gate dressed in a loose pair of sweatpants, flip flops, and a tank top. She dragged the full blue recycle cart down the driveway to the curb in the last light of the day. Lancelot, or Lance as Gwen had started thinking of him, stood next to the Mexican lavender bushes. She had stopped being surprised when he turned up. He didn’t have the horse with him that night. “A beautiful maiden such as yourself should not be doing such an undistinguished chore,” he said. “Let me do this for you.” Gwen shook her head no, but Lance rushed ahead, his chain mail clanking in the evening air. He grabbed the gray garbage cart and wheeled it out to the street, his long, dark hair whipping behind him in a sudden gust of wind. “If you depart with me tonight, we will have an entire court to manage these mundane activities.” She did hate taking out the trash, but she didn’t say that to Lance. It just happened to coincide with one of the weeknights Tony could be home early enough to put Maddy to bed so it became her job. “Right, and no indoor plumbing.” She smiled up at Lance’s earnest face. “I don’t mind this. It’s a small thing.” “If you will not come away with me, then I am sworn to stay and protect you.” Gwen became used to Lance showing up in random places. He turned up on a Monday night at the grocery store, his dated attire replaced with a pair of dark wash jeans and a button-down shirt in a pale shade of green. “Guinevere, we could have gourmet meals prepared for us daily, if you come away with me.” “I like to cook.” Gwen did like to cook, but she hated grocery shopping. “Give me half your list,” Lance said. “I will fetch the game and cheese to help you out of here sooner.” “Don’t you have a dragon to slay or something?” “I am sworn to protect you, Guinevere.” “I don’t need protecting, though. My life is fine.” Lance walked her out to the car in the dark and loaded the groceries into the back of the SUV. “Thank you,” she said. He took her hand and kissed it before he turned to go. *** In late winter, Gwen got up early one day and left before the sun was up. As she approached the levee, she spotted a man in a green jacket with blue running shoes, short hair tucked under a beanie. The man jogged in place at the head of the trail and as Gwen switched from her warm-up walk to a run, she recognized him. Lance, with his hair cut short and workout clothes on his lanky frame. “Don’t you worry about being out alone in the dark?” he said in his posh accent. “No. I don’t. Women shouldn’t have to limit their lives to daylight hours in crowds.” But when she went out alone at first light, her eyes darted across the landscape until the sun brightened the park. On dark mornings she ran at a slower than optimal speed in case someone approached and she needed to sprint away. Once when the park was near empty and dim across the plateau, a man in a torn jacket had approached her. She changed directions and he changed with her, cutting across wet grass. Gwen picked up her pace and tried to discreetly glance over her shoulder to gauge his distance. Her heart raced that morning and she’d sped toward a couple walking a dog in the far distance. But now, this morning, she had Lance next to her and her heart rate went up just because of the cardio. They ran to the end of her three-mile route and she told him about running cross-country in high school. “It was the only sport I was ever any good at,” she said. “Running away from things.” “Or perhaps you were running toward something,” he said. Before she turned the corner to her cul-de-sac, he touched her hand. A light sweat made the golden hairs on his wrist glisten. He pulled her hand up to his rosy lips and kissed it like he’d done once before. She pulled her hand away. “Don’t,” she said. “I have to go.” That night while Maddy slept and Tony watched TV, Gwen sat at the dining room table and checked her work email. Despite her protests to her boss about working overtime, she spent uncompensated time trying to keep her inbox under control. If the unread messages crept up above 100, Gwen’s chest tightened when she opened up the app on her phone or in a browser. “Are you okay?” Tony asked as he passed her on the way into the kitchen. “Yeah, just trying to get caught up.” She rubbed her eyes, her contacts itchy, as she yawned. “I’m going up to bed,” Tony said. “Early morning. I have court tomorrow.” “I’ll be up in a bit,” she said. She read thirty more emails and Maddy started crying over the baby monitor. “What’s wrong, sweetie?” she said into the dark room, then lifted the baby out of the crib. “Water, Momma. Water.” Gwen filled the pink cup from the bathroom, the one they used when Maddy brushed her teeth twice a day, and held the cup up to her daughter’s lips. “Here, baby. Take a drink.” In the rocking chair that she had nursed Maddy in for a year and a half, she sat with her daughter in her arms and patted the toddler’s small back. Gwen sang an out-of-tune lullaby and felt her daughter’s body go heavy in her arms as the girl fell asleep. Maddy’s breathing became still and even as Gwen placed her back in the crib. In her own room, Tony snored on his side of the bed. Gwen brushed her teeth in the dark and undressed, pulling a tank top over her bare skin before she climbed into bed. Just as she drifted off to sleep, Maddy cried again and Gwen jumped out of bed to settle her. The rest of the night continued on repeat and when the sun came up, Gwen saw Maddy’s cheeks flushed red with fever. “What does your day look like?” Gwen asked Tony when he got out of the shower. “We can’t send her to daycare.” “I have court today. Can you stay home today? I can do tomorrow if she’s still sick.” Gwen and Tony took turns at home after three days, slipping work into the gaps of the day while Maddy napped. By the fourth day, Maddy was well enough to return to daycare. But by then Gwen’s throat burned and she knew she’d caught whatever virus her daughter had carried into the house. As Tony departed with Maddy, Gwen turned away from their kisses. “Don’t want to get you sick.” Without showering or putting her contacts in, she settled on the couch to check work email on her laptop until fatigue caught up with her. She stretched out on the couch “just for a moment,” she told herself, and didn’t know how much time had passed when she woke up to the smell of chicken soup wafting from the kitchen. Someone had taken the laptop away and plugged it in by the end table and covered her with the soft throw blanket Maddy used for pillow forts. Gwen sat up without her glasses on and swiveled around toward the kitchen where Lance stood over a pot. “What are you doing here?” she said. “You can’t be here.” Without her glasses on, she watched the outline of Lance’s shoulders as he ladled soup into a bowl and carried it to the table. “I thought you needed someone to take care of you,” he said. “You always take care of the rest of us.” Gwen moved to the table where Lance had laid out a cloth napkin. She dipped a spoon into the bowl and it tasted the way her mother used to make it when she was a girl, with chunks of chicken, carrots, celery and a squeeze of Meyer lemon. While she ate, she watched Lance move around the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher, wiping down the counters. “When you are feeling better, we should get away,” he said. “No. I told you. I don’t need to be rescued. I’m fine.” The man walked toward the end table and picked up Gwen’s glasses and brought them to her. She put them on and he came into focus. The short brown hair, the blue eyes, the nose with the same curve as Maddy’s, the lips she had kissed a thousand times. “I don’t want to rescue you,” her husband said. “But I know how hard you work, how much you do for Maddy. You don’t have to do everything alone. I just mean we could rent a place by the coast, leave Maddy with your parents, and take a little break.” Tony came up behind her and put his hand against her warm forehead, then leaned down to kiss the top of her unwashed head. Gwen took another bite of the soup and relaxed into the comfort of his touch. Melissa Flores Anderson is a Latinx Californian and an award-winning journalist. Her creative work has been published by Rigorous Magazine, Moss Puppy Magazine, Variant Lit, Twin Pies Literary,Roi Fainéant Press, Chapter House Journal and Voidspace Zine. Follow her on Twitter @melissacuisine or IG @theirishmonths

Have you ever awoken in the morning filled with a sense of dread? That today the world might end and you wouldn’t mind because then you wouldn’t have to work late alongside that asshole Michael only to come home afterward and have to finish that six-page paper that’s due tomorrow? That there isn’t really a point to anything because things outside your control have forced you to follow a life path or make certain decisions that you maybe wouldn’t have made under a different set of circumstances? If so, then you understand Barry. Barry opens his eyes every morning and a wave of thought cuts through the sleep. My goodness, he hasn’t even sat up yet and the day is already a wash at best. The morning ritual – the shower, the pitiful breakfast (you know it’s the most important meal of the day, right?), the rummaging through the clean clothes pile and trying to decide if they actually should’ve been put in the dirty clothes pile, the dressing, the gathering of the things, and the leaving – all happens shrouded by life’s gloomy black cloud. The past was bad and the outlook is worse, and people like Barry are going to be left holding the biggest bag of human excrement ever assembled in the history of the world. Poor Barry. Barry finally finds the strength to sit up after pushing off the weight of the world. He walks into the bathroom and scratches his ass and stretches and yawns and is a little bit sad. See, that sadness is what makes Barry human. He looks into the bathroom mirror and sees himself. It’s hard to believe that a spritely, young, and motivated kid used to look back from the mirror. Now, it’s just Barry. Barry: a man for the people. Barry: just like the people. Barry: stepped on and kept down by the people. And it’s not just Barry that appears in the mirror. There are the bottles of shampoo and body wash, shower and toilet, towel rack with the wet towel, and that terrible picture that looks like it was stolen straight out of a Hilton or Marriott (it was). He sees the bottles. Why did he choose those bottles? Well, the junk mail came and, even though he knew it was junk mail, he looked through it. Barry discovered the advertisements for that big grocery store downtown – the one running everyone else out of the game – and added “shampoo and body wash” to his grocery list. He could’ve bought any brand of shampoo or body wash, but those were the ones on special, so he bought them. “But why those ones?” Barry thinks. He could’ve gone to any store. He didn’t have to go to the big store solely because of the special, thus supporting the trampling of local business, but he did. He could’ve gone to the small grocery store which is actually closer to his apartment (though it won’t be much longer; no profits) and saved the money not on buying a cheaper bottle of soap but on the gas burned by his car. He could’ve spent one dollar less on gas and one dollar more on soap. That would’ve been greener and supported the small grocery store. Instead, he spent more on gas and less on soap. Problem is: Barry is normal. Barry goes to work and comes home and likes to save money and watches sports and gets drinks with his friends on occasion. Of course Barry is going to spend more on gas and less on soap! “But what about the fish?” Barry asks himself. See, Barry knows that when the bottles of shampoo and body wash are empty, he will throw them away and his robot brain will make him spend more on gas and less on soap again. No matter the color of the bin in which those empty bottles are thrown, they all end up in the blue. Some garbage collector comes by – they are normal, too – and chucks everything together in the big stinky garbage truck. The path that garbage takes is a mystery except that it starts in Barry’s bathroom – actually, it probably starts at the store, or maybe ever earlier, it’s hard to tell – and ends up in the ocean. Then people like Barry get to see ads on Hulu of fish who swallowed a plastic bottle one day and never recovered. Barry sees the ad and calls to give money to the cause despite having hardly any money left after his excursion of spending more on gas and less on soap. There is always a fish that eats a bottle cap and Michael, who brought the two together, is too busy counting his Franklins to notice. Meanwhile, Barry is left concerned about the fish as he looks in the mirror each morning. “It’s so exhausting,” Barry considers. And it’s imperative when Barry goes to work that he smells nice and doesn’t take bathroom breaks, so his toilet and shower perform their functions each morning. Flush. Wash. Rinse. Water and soap = down the drain. Back to the sewer or treatment plant or wherever the flow is directed; nobody really knows. Every day water runs through the house and Barry makes use of it because he has to, otherwise Michael will certainly have something to say about it; Michael has always been a stickler for the rules despite breaking them himself when necessary. Yes, Michael would definitely say something if Barry conserved a little water every now and then. The soap must flow and the water must run and the fish must die so that Barry is acceptable to Michael. It’s the gym where it’s the worst. The gym is where Barry goes after work because Michael needs longevity from him. Barry spends time moving heavy objects against his will and theirs so Michael doesn’t have to hire someone new at any point in the next thirty years. Then, once the heavy objects have been reorganized, an exhausted Barry goes into the locker room to spill more soap, use more water, and make sure there isn’t enough for the fish. Use, use, use, take, take, take, me, me, me; Michael demands it. “But for so little money?” Barry ponders. The towel rack is falling off the wall. It’s a geriatric towel rack, and its primary function (you guessed it; holding up towels) is becoming too much to handle. The towel itself is plush, soft, soaks up the water very well. It’s a tag-team effort to ensure the towel’s dryness when the water runs and soap spills again; Barry hangs up the towel and the towel rack holds it. How big is the operation? Do they hire mostly young people or old people or men of women? The long, tiring hours worked by the workers in the towel factory ensure that the demand for dead fish is always booming. They are paid so little it’s insulting. Michael’s insistence alone should result in higher pay. Days and nights and all around the clock; the showers and toilets and towel factories never stop. The big grocery store and Michael say thank you. Barry and the small grocery store and the fish and the workers at the towel factory are sad. “Dance for me,” Barry thinks, shaking his head. And the soap-stained fog which fills the bathroom coalesces on the canvas of the terrible picture. A reproduction. The reproduction factory and the towel factory are on the same schedule and everyone is exhausted except Michael. Barry reaches out and runs his thumb along the canvas and thinks if he presses too hard, the paint (which isn’t even paint) will come off. Then he would have to send the picture off with the next batch of empty shampoo bottles and the fish will not appreciate it. The artists manage to keep busy but never see the profits. They are chained in place. They have one creation good enough to end up above a urinal before it makes its way to a hotel where it’s stolen by Barry who can’t afford the real thing because he is normal. The artists paint the pictures, yes, but they also do so much more. They dance and write and sing and produce and direct and film and sculpt. And Michael feels entitled to tell them “go,” to kick them off, to set them free. Dance, dance, jump, spin. Ha ha. Tell me a joke. Back to the kitchen. But Barry can’t; he has work in the morning. The cycle must continue and Barry is the linchpin. What does Michael do? Barry is the one who does. Do, do, do; that’s all Barry. Barry is the one who spends more on gas and less on soap. Barry is the one who spills the water, kills the fish. Barry is the one exhausted at the gym. Barry is the one who steals the art. “But why?” Barry asks himself. Michael is the asshole who demands. He demands more is spent on gas and less is spent on soap. He demands the water be spilled, the fish be killed. He demands the exhaustion of the gym. He demands the art is stolen. And then Barry thinks: “Why not just get rid of Michael?” Barry flips off the light and walks out of the bathroom. He gets dressed and goes to work.

“This is most irregular. Most irregular, indeed.” The judge pushed his tiny glasses up his nose and looked at the petitioning lawyer. “Yes,” the lawyer said, “it is. Hence… this.” He spread his hands to indicate the hearing. Adjusting his glasses, the judge looked up to take in the lawyer’s client, shaking his head and murmuring again, “Most irregular.” Then, he said, “A biomechanical tyrannosaur owning a corporation? It’s unheard of!” With a gentle cough, the lawyer clarified, “A biomechanical tyrannosaur with the brain of a man… the brain of the corporation’s major shareholder, to be exact.” “I don’t know,” said the judge. He shuffled papers. “Let me see if I understand this… Biomechanical… Now, I understand what ‘mechanical’ means, but ‘bio’? That means ‘alive’, correct?” “Correct,” said the lawyer. “But, the question is… how much of it –” the tyrannosaur leaned closer “– er, him is alive? Other than the brain, of course.” The tyrannosaur blinked, then leaned back. The judge exhaled. The lawyer steepled his fingers and considered. “About fifty-fifty, I believe. The entire body, save for my client’s brain, is artificial, but the core had to be biological to maintain the brain. But, it has been augmented cybernetically.” He looked at the judge. “Ah, that means it is essentially robotic, both the organic and inorganic parts of it, but governed by a living human brain.” Nervously, the judge examined the tyrannosaur. “But, does that constitute being alive?” With a shrug, the lawyer said, “Would you contest his life if he required an exoskeleton to overcome paralysis?” “No, but this is hardly the same.” “It is. My client suffered terminal injuries that left only his brain functioning. This is essentially the outcome of a brain transplant. An unusual brain transplant, granted, but still…” The tyrannosaur growled, a rumbling sound produced by hidden speakers in its throat, and the judge blinked. “Sorry… It’s a question of whether he can own a corporation as a non-human.” The tyrannosaur blinked, then spoke: “Your honour, a corporation can own property – can own another corporation, even, and be regarded as a ‘person’ for legal purposes. A corporation is an entirely-abstract entity… not even alive. I am alive. I am no abstract. Can you deny me as much?” Sweating, shifting awkwardly in his seat, the judge said, “I will have to take this under advisement. You have made some very cogent points, but this is a complicated topic and I can’t just rule on it like that.” He snapped his fingers. “You can and you will!” The tyrannosaur roared. The judge quailed. “But, I… I…” The tyrannosaur lunged forward and seized him up out of his chair and snapped him in half, redecorating the wall of the courtroom. The judge’s legs tumbled to the floor and twitched for a moment. The rest of him, with a muffled wail, was swallowed down. The lawyer wiped his hand across his face and shook his head. “Not again! That’s the third judge you’ve gone and devoured before we could get a ruling. Someone is going to notice soon and, then, we’ll never be able to get a judge to guarantee your ownership.” The tyrannosaur roared at him. “A hissy fit, really?” It growled and said, “I’ve had enough. The corporation is mine and nobody is going to take it away from me.” Shrugging, the lawyer said, “The corporation made you; your shareholders might just decide to reclassify you as a test subject.” Growling, the tyrannosaur said, “Let them try.” The door opened and a cleaner half-stepped into the courtroom; it was after hours, but the courthouse wasn’t entirely empty. “Is everything okay? I thought I heard a – oh, my goodness! What the hell is that?” “I’m a tyrannosaur, you idiot. Did you never watch Jurassic Park?” With a sudden lunge, it seized the man and shook him so that bits went flying, before swallowing what was left. The lawyer wiped gore off his face. “Thank you very much for that little display…” He checked his phone. “What do you want to do next? I have another two judges we can try… What do you want to do?” The tyrannosaur turned and looked at him. Blood dripped from metal fangs. “Kill you,” it said and snapped up the lawyer. It made a sound almost like a purr of satisfaction and said, “I always hated lawyers.” It was silent for a moment, considering. “Actually, it’s people I hate…” With a loud crash, it smashed its way through the courtroom door, then it smashed its way out onto the street. Forget running a corporation, there was a whole world to rule… A police car screeched to a halt in front of him, the officers staring out through the windscreen in confused terror. With a crunch, the tyrannosaur planted its foot on the hood, crushing it to the road, and roared. “I am your tyrant,” he cried. “Obey me or die!” This was the life. Why waste it in an office when you were a monster, the like of which hadn’t been seen in aeons. Yes, this was the life for him. He roared in satisfaction. A new age was dawning: His age. DJ Tyrer is the person behind Atlantean Publishing, View From Atlantis, and the 5-7-5 Haiku Journal. Their website is at https://djtyrer.blogspot.co.uk/

silver tongued words fall from my lips as the clock strikes midnight suspend me take me to new heights make me cum my Sunday dress hangs in the closet, waiting to be worn for her rewrite your story among the stars among the oceans among the lands Brianne Reilly is the author of several works of poetic verse, critical essays, and fiction. She holds BA’s in English Literature and Philosophy, as well as an MA in WGST. Her work ranges from the creative to the academic and has been published in various anthologies. Her first full-length collection of poetry and prose, along with a book of critical essays is in the works.

My father told me if I wanted to catch fish I had to think like a fish except he said it with an r like frish and an extra s and h like frisshh and maybe a third h if you can stand it. We were floating in a barely curved boat. I sat on a six pack and he sat on a bigger box of beer which eventually collapsed. I noticed, among other things, that his bladder had the same capacity as a bottle of beer, and I imagined it was also the approximate shape. I was surprised how clear his pee was, nearly invisible like the fishing line, the tint likely stuck somewhere in the vicinity of his liver. He smoked cigarettes, one after the other, and spewed nonsense the rest of the time, kept offering me beer when he knew I was only eleven. When he pressed his bottle against my bottom lip, I took a bubbly sip, half terrified and half hoping it would turn me into a frisshhh. I was already thinking like one, deep under the boat where it was calm and cool and silent mostly, nicely alternating ribbons of light and shadow, a few echoes that pulled me briefly their way. That was a long time ago. My father staggered to death early which is what he seemed to want. My mother remarried quickly, and my new dad didn’t drink at all, just strange juice what came out of the machine he stuck carrots and beets and parsley into, a little thick and bubbly almost like a chocolate milkshake but rank. His name was Craig – she met him at Al-Anon – and we were sort of friends, buddies he said, although he called me son at my sister’s wedding and five minutes later he also called her new husband son so it took some of the weight off or maybe put some back on I don’t know which. But what I want to tell you is the thinking-like-a-fish part, the round about way my father is responsible for turning me into a writer, because all my life I’ve been hiding between words, deep in stories, following echoes, carefully not making a splash. I write in a bright room that glows when the sun comes through the window all bits and pieces because of the leaves and shadows. I swim into this place, out of the usual gloom, and I write sometimes thoughtfully and other times it’s like a spell, with my eyes closed typing like mad – I’m doing it right now – my usual mistakes easyOtoOspot, a zero where there should be a hyphen and other weaknesses like double letters as in frisshh. My stories are short and plentiful. I am passionately involved in many make-believe lives, important lives – relevant and purposeful lives of substance – like the life beyond this closed room, my pretend wife setting the table for dinner, knives and forks flashing in the light, my fake kids laughing from far away, the paw of my imaginary white cat waving beneath my door. Sherry is from the wilds of Ontario. She writes the kind of stories she longs for and can rarely find. feelingfunny.ca

In the mornings, they step on the rotten branches of her used-to-be vegetable garden and sneak their beaks into the holes within them; they breathe in the stench and the rot and smile. In the evenings, they stare through the cracks between the curtains of her bedroom window; they watch as she closes her eyes, and they sing her to sleep. She wonders if she should talk to them, scream at them before they devour the last two blueberries holding on to the bush at the edge of her yard. She wishes she could have tasted the berries, bitten into them halfway and waited for the juice to tickle its way down her taste buds. It’s too late now, and she knows it. Damn those crows, she says, sliding the glass door open and stepping barefoot into grass. She waves her arms at them, like a lunatic. Lunatic. That’s what her neighbors call her when she’s not looking. That’s what they whisper in the mornings, what they shovel down 6-feet under their tongues when they see her. If only they would say it to her face, caw it into her ears until they bled. She waves her arms again. The biggest crow, three feet away from her, picks at a berry and raises his head. He twists his neck until his eyes meet hers and lets out a piercing caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. She waits for him to stop, her hands now plastered against her thighs, her lips now shut. He lifts his head to the few clouds above her and caws one last time before flying upwards. She traces his movements with her eyes and notices how his wings turn blue against the rising sun. She never realized that feathers could find synchrony with light, blend into its rays like a non-man-made kaleidoscope. She chuckles. If only she could fly away with him. Karen Gonzalez-Videla is an Argentinian immigrant living in Florida. You can usually find her somewhere in nature, hiding among the animals and plants. Her writing has been featured in PANK, Menacing Hedge, Paranoid Tree, and other places. You can find her on Twitter at @Gv12Karen or on her website at https://kgonzalezvidela.carrd.co/.

“Just wait until I show you what we got!” My father beamed excitedly as we drove from the airport to my family home. It wasn’t like my dad to be excited about something, or to want to pick me up from the airport. Though it was a short distance, he hated waiting for what was sure to be my delayed arrival. This was some time in the late 90s, before we all had cell phones. I’d been living in Los Angeles for five years. I came home to visit at Christmas and, if I could afford it, during the summer. That summer, I could afford it. I’d stayed in Los Angeles after studying there for a semester. I’d made some connections in the film and television industry and were able to turn those into jobs. Granted, five years later I was still a lowly production assistant, but I hoped to move up to a production coordinator soon. It was difficult to explain my career and goals to my east coast family. Even when my name showed up in the occasional TV show credits. “You won’t believe that we got one right here in Revere,” he channeled Robert Preston. “We’re going now?” I asked. After nearly six hours on a plane, I wanted to get home to see my mother and have a delicious home-cooked meal. “You’re going to be so surprised,” my father oversold it. We turned into the parking lot of Northgate, the local shopping center. “Does mom need something?” I asked. “Can’t you see it?” he exclaimed as if Santa Claus were about to land on our car. No. “What?” “We got a Taco Bell!” The new building in the middle of the parking lot almost slapped me in the face. It was a small, but classic style Taco Bell. Complete with a drive-thru and some outside seating. A perfect addition to Squire Road, which housed our McDonald’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken and two Dunkin’ Donuts (which would become four in a few years). “That’s great,” I said. “Just like Los Angeles.” “Except out there, there’s one on every corner.” One of the few in-depth conversations I’d had with my father during a return visit was how there were a plethora of fast food restaurants in Los Angeles, yet no Dunkin’ Donuts (they would take a few decades to get there). I mentioned there were tons of Taco Bells, where I recalled seeing only one on the North Shore of Boston. I was also surprised to find that El Torito was a chain restaurant. That conversation must have left an impression on my father. “We’re finally catching up with you guys,” my father’s brag reminded me of the time he told our cutting edge tech neighbors that we got a VCR. “You could say that.” “Let’s get something.” “You hate Mexican food,” I reminded him. He’d ordered a hamburger at my high school graduation dinner at El Torito . “And I don’t want to spoil mom’s dinner.” “Just a little something,” he tempted. “Some tacos?” “I love their Mexican Pizza.” “I’ve never tried that. Let’s get one.” Who was this person and what did they do with my unadventurous, meat and potatoes eating father? He pulled into the closest parking spot. “We’re going in?” I asked. “Of course. It’s new. You have to see the inside.” Before I could protest, he was out of the car. As a kid, I’d always wanted to have something to bond with my father over. But he was a sports and news guy, while I was comic book and movies kid. I’d given up trying, but suddenly we were connecting over a fast food Mexican restaurant. I’ll take it. He stopped as we entered and spread his arms as if he were about to welcome me to Jurassic Park. “Looks just like the ones in Los Angeles , right?” “Yeah…” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I couldn’t remember actually ever going inside a Taco Bell. I’d only been in their drive-thru. “You wouldn’t know the difference, right?” The patrons speaking with Boston accents would have given me a pretty big clue as to where I was. My father proudly led me to the counter. A pale, young kid was waiting there to take his order. “Hola!” my father blurted. I wanted to crawl under the table. But was also slightly impressed that my father was attempting to speak Spanish to some kid who was probably studying it at Revere High School. “We’ll have a Mexican pizza,” he told the cashier, then turned to me. “What else?” “That’s enough. Don’t want to spoil our dinner.” When did I become the adult? “No nachos?” “I’m good.” “Something to drink?” “Just water.” He turned to the cashier, “And a couple of waters.” As we waited, my father read the menu. “Look, they got everything. Burritos, nachos, both soft and hard tacos. What’s a tostada?” Luckily our order came before I had to field any questions. My father grabbed the tray and walked to the seat furthest in the corner. He excitedly opened the tiny pizza box. “Should I use a knife and fork?” he asked sincerely. “I use a spork,” I handed him the one on our tray. “Or my fingers.” He opted for the spork. He had difficulty breaking off the first piece, but once he did, he shoved it into his mouth. His face lit up. “Oh, that’s tasty!” “Glad you like it.” “I feel like we’re eating in Los Angeles.” “OK.” That horse had been flogged to death, come back as a zombie and been decapitated. “Now you can move back here.” “Huh?” I’d lost some beat of the conversation. “We got Taco Bell, all the other Los Angeles stuff is soon to follow. So it’ll be no different living there than here.” A list of differences popped into my mind, but I didn’t speak any of them. “I’m happy there.” “You could be happy here. And have Mexican pizza anytime you want.” “I’ll think about it,” I lied. I took a bite of my Mexican pizza. It tasted like home. A word from the author: I studied Writing, Publishing and Literature at Emerson College in Boston before moving to Los Angeles. Over 100 of my short stories and two novels have been published. This year, my work has appeared in Grim & Gilded and Red Ogre Review. Last year, my story, Giving Up The Ghosts, was published in Constellations Journal, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

In Shared Movement, the Clocks Stop Through me exists a succulent kaleidoscopy, Warmth through me and over me and in me, Moments stretched with the tearing colours Of dimming light: snowfall and a final all-knowing. And I know, too, the fierce sidelong intimate gash Of hardened redness, how it skins the south-face Of poplar trees. It taught me change, Your love, the prompt to shed flesh. Now I, who have loved most of all skin pressed to skin, Ructions, as tongues press, I betray my laughing peers, Co-conspirators in shivering melodies of gasps, Of sighs, and momentary immolation. Now I am become solely your instrument, Knowing the truth of your love: You are relentless, and I, I am your image. The Knowledge of Loss I see the alchemy of shame, and shamelessness, in the filaments of light in flight, so much fixated on function, that it quiets everything with time. yet, in a comic reworking of trees, I looked up and saw plastic bags hanging like leaves, garlands in the branches, and I mistook them, thought them a resting place for the birth pangs of the stork. and today I am bereft, sad in the absence of my old heroic mother and her fat gunny sack of leaves and earth-worn remedies, which, with relish, she salved on both the doing and the dead, her designs the only real instance of being I have known. Woman, outside Damascus Café She willed me to speak, But I turned and left, Heavy with regret, Pregnant with the memory Of dust embalmed streets, And how, with every third step, The wind spun a story of shape Spooled from cotton and flesh. The Navigator I am spent, In need of bailing The boat out, Yet the sails Still hang, And brittle I, I navigate, For I am An instrument Of the sea. Irish poet, academic, and journalist, Oisín Breen’s debut, ‘Flowers, all sorts in blossom ...’ was released Mar., 2020. Breen has 163 poems published in 75 journals, including in About Place, Door is a Jar, Northern Gravy, North Dakota Quarterly, Books Ireland, the Seattle Star, La Piccioletta Barca, Reservoir Road, and Dreich. A collection of shorter works, (4² by 5), published by Dreich, is coming soon, followed by a new set of longer work, Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín and other poems, published by Beir Bua, in January.

Kanagawa Prefecture - 1877 Keijō believed that his responsibilities encompassed much more than simply keeping the temple free of mice, moles and other vermin. Whenever any weary travelers along the Tōkaidō highway sought refuge at the lonely Temple of the Snows—which was little more than four simple walls, a peaked roof and a door set on a steep wooded hill outside the little town of Gora—Keijō adopted the role of host, making sure those who stayed under its humble roof were well cared and provided for, and did not lack for attention. He was a well-built feline in his prime years, dusky in color and able to take care of himself without need of any human assistance. Rodents and other sources of food were plentiful this far away from human habitation, and the trickling spring which flowed through the tiny temple’s center provided ample water to drink. Keijō had still been a kitten when he’d succeeded an aged orange cat named Shinko as temple watcher. He’d followed Shinko around as the older cat showed him where the water ran through a narrow channel in the center of the floor, where the rice bags were stored (and therefore where the mice liked to snack), as well as several nearby bird and rodent nests. Then Shinko had wandered off into the forest without a look back. Keijō had never seen him again. That was several years ago, and in the time since Keijō had played host to many travelers. Sea salt merchants from Odawara passed by nearly every spring and always remembered to bring him delectable dried fish morsels. Occasionally a monk on a pilgrimage would stay for a period, burning incense and blessing the place with his chants. As a rule, Keijō did not let travelers pet him—guests of the Temple of the Snows came and went, and he preferred to keep their relationship professional. But once during a ferocious thunderstorm, a mother and her infant child had taken refuge inside the temple: they’d been unable to get a fire lit on that wet night, so Keijō had slept next to them, keeping the little girl warm with his furry body. The summer was near its end, and the green leaves of the surrounding pine trees were beginning to fade, when the Stranger came to stay at the Temple of the Snows. He was in his middle years—small for a man, but compact and strong. He wore the remnants of armor, and carried the long shining stick that Keijō had seen enough times to understand that this man was of the order of the ones who fought. He was a cat, and understood little of Bushido, or politics. He did not understand the word ronin, nor could his cat mind conceive of what that meant. The Stranger had arrived just before dawn. Nobody had stayed at the Temple for several months, and it had begun to fall into disrepair. The roof leaked in one corner, and the trickling stream had become clogged with leaves, and now barely flowed through its channel in the center of the tatami mat-covered floor. So the first thing the Stranger did was to clear the leaves which had choked off the water, so it once more ran clear, singing its happy bubbly tune. He then tied his blouse around his waist, and clambered up to the roof with some bamboo branches to seal up the hole—at least temporarily. Over the course of his tenure, Keijō had been privy to many people’s conversations, but he had also learned that many humans, even when alone, spoke aloud to themselves with regularity—some quite loudly in fact, especially when they were drinking the sour drink they often carried with them: the one that smelled like spoiled rice. The temple’s feline guardian found both the odor of that drink and their noise annoying, so he was happy to find that this current guest indulged in neither. In fact, the Stranger was utterly silent; never making so much as a grunt—and he ate very little: cooking small pots of the stored rice, and drinking straight from the brook. The Stranger was watchful as well, always keeping the door slightly open—and always his shining stick was near-at-hand. Keijō himself was a natural-born predator, so he natively understood the Stranger’s behavior. He’d seen it in his own prey: voles and hares and the small grey squirrels who lived in the nearby trees. This human was being hunted. It went like this for several days and several nights. Sitting cross-legged in the center of the Temple floor, the Stranger would doze lightly through the night, leaning on his sheathed weapon. He would rise early with the sun, bathe himself in the water, and then pray for a while at the Temple’s small altar. Afterwards he’d make and eat some rice, and would then go about busying himself for the day—making small repairs to the Temple, or gathering firewood in the forest nearby—but never straying too far from the building. He also practiced every day, standing still for long minutes before pulling out his shining stick very rapidly—he’d do this over and over, again and again, for hours at a time. For his part, Keijō minded his own business during this time. Cats and people had different needs, and unlike the Stranger, Keijō needed many hours of sleep during both night and day. His furry coat needed grooming as well, and that took up a good deal of time. There was a noisy bird who had taken to sitting on the branch of a tree nearby the front door of the Temple, and Keijō devoted much of his waking attention to keeping a careful eye on it—just in case. The Shadow Men came on the forth day—just after nightfall. The Stranger had been sanding a new board for the floor to replace one that had become waterlogged and soft—he had been working on it all day out in the yard in front of the Temple. He was more relaxed than Keijō had yet seen him, and after making himself his usual dinner, he sat and sang a low tune to himself—the first noise the cat had heard him make. Overall it was not as annoying as many others’: The leaves fall, As does my soul; To the ground that my love Lies buried beneath. Keijō didn’t understand the meaning of any of these words, of course: but his was an empathic spirit, and he could sense the sadness of the Stranger. This was someone who had lost something important, and was now lonely. Cats understood these feelings, and for the first time Keijō came close enough to the man to brush against him, and his soft grumbly purr rumbled. The Stranger’s hand absently reached down to stroke Keijō’s back, and scratch behind his ears, and Keijō permitted it. It was at that moment the front door burst down, and two men leapt through: they were dressed all in black raiment, and their heads were hooded—even their faces and hands were painted black. They both held the sharp sticks like the Stranger’s, but theirs did not shine in the firelight. Keijō was off in a flash. Instinct carried him across the floor and into his spot behind the piled rice bags in the wink of an eye. Crouching low there, he could hear feet moving on the wooden floors, grunts and yells coming from the three men, and the swish and clang of their weapons. He did not understand what was happening and was terrified. This type of conflict was not supposed to happen in his Temple. This was a sacred space. After several moments the noises ceased, and all Keijō could hear was a low panting sound. When he peeked ‘round the rice bags, he saw the two Shadow Men lying on the floor, unmoving. The Stranger stood over them, catching his breath, his back to Keijō. Red liquid dripped off the end of his shining stick, and Keijō’s senses told him that these two men were dead. The cat guardian stayed where he was, waiting to see what would happen next. After a moment, the Stranger wiped his weapon free of the red and put it back in its sheath. Laying the weapon on the tatami, he bent down and lifted the legs of one of his attackers, pulling him towards the door until he could roll the body down the steps and out of the Temple. He took a moment, and returned for the other one. Even Keijō, with his sharp feline senses, hadn’t heard the third Shadow Man enter from the rear of the temple, behind the altar. But out of the corner of his yellow eye he caught the black-hooded figure moving utterly silently as he climbed over the rice bags and moved towards the Stranger—whose back was once again to the Temple’s rear. A black-painted hand dipped into a belt, and brought out a small flat piece of metal, cut with several points like a star. Its edges glinted. Keijō did not know what it was, but yet he understood the danger in the thing. The Stranger was saying a low prayer over the remaining body, and was unaware of the third would-be killer. Keijō watched the man raise his hand to throw the weapon, and made a decision by instinct. These Shadow Men had come to do violence, and in doing that had violated the rules of his temple; small as he may be, that disrespect required a response from the temple’s guardian. The cat was a stealthy blur as he darted out from his safe place, lunging with his sharp front claws at the Shadow Man’s ankles. The assassin gave a sharp cry of surprise and pain, and out of reflex hurtled the star down at the cat. Keijō moved lighting fast to dodge away, but the star still severed off a few of his whisker tips, before lodging with a thud in the floor. Keijō had fled almost back to his hiding spot when the last Shadow Man let out another, louder cry—one which made him stop and turn: The Stranger’s shining stick now protruded from the Shadow Man’s chest, and the Stranger stood behind him, gripping the weapon’s handle. His face was covered in sweat, and his expression was dark, until he glanced down to see the cat guardian watching him. Slowly the Shadow Man sank to the ground, and the Stranger pulled free his weapon. Man and cat stood there staring at one another, and after a moment, the Stranger bowed to Keijō. It was over. The Stranger stayed two more days at the Temple. He carried the bodies out into the woods far past where Keijō dared to venture. He cleaned the floors of the assassins’ blood, and the boards he couldn’t clean, he replaced. He prayed a good deal of the time. The second morning after the fight, he caught a fish upstream, and after cooking it over the coals, he shared the delicious meal with Keijō. The two slept very soundly that night. The Stranger left the next morning. Keijō was awake to see him go, and the man waved to him as he walked off. He did not return to the Temple of the Snows after that. Keijō hosted many more guests over the next few years: emissaries and wanderers, courtiers and pilgrims, nobles and refugees—all of their stays were thankfully peaceful. In time he came across a younger cat with black fur and green eyes named Yoshi. For a while he and Yoshi shared their duties at the temple, and when he believed him ready to take over the hosting responsibilities, Keijō left the temple and ventured off down the same road the Stranger had taken; ready for his next adventure. Jim Towns is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and artist. He lives in San Pedro CA with his wife and several mysterious cats.

Driving Home a Coltrane solo’s loping from the stereo. The GPS keeps chiding, “Route recalculating.” The music fills my head and chest. I feel the sky is opening. Wrong turns are now my specialty. Everblue It’s here, my yearly birthday bleed. The everblue mood descends upon me—or ascends, from depths of riches I don’t understand. A darting shark among a shoal, my focus shifts, to drinks outside last night with friends: for Sandy, Fran, and Ann, champagne; and beer for Gary and me. Cool eastern breeze that bore our laughter, hell, as far as Iowa. Epiphanies? Yes. Other people give life meaning. Treat myself as friend (and realize why I keep on typing fiend). Blue eyes I got from Mom (from Dad, the gold explosions near the pupils). Wish my darker sister happy Mother’s Day, belatedly. Island Saga 1 What’s happened on the island of your heart? The queen has hanged herself? The king’s torn out his eyes? Your children scatter, exiles smart enough to sense a fate accursed, the rout of free will, frail spine snapped against a grim alignment of the stars. And yet they act. They suffer, learn, and now return, like slim shoots in the fields, like truth that outlasts fact. 2 She drinks strong wine, and rhythmic words she needs transform her. Sea and sky, and she a maid escaped, a smoking fortress leagues behind her, sharks below. She plies the rudder, freed to drown, not contemplating death, not brave, just spying land, soul bared to what she’ll find. Thomas Zimmerman (he/him) teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review https://thebigwindowsreview.com/ at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His poems have appeared recently in Streetcake Magazine and The Minison Project. His latest book is Domestic Sonnets (Cyberwit.net, 2021). Website: https:/thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com Twitter: @bwr_tom Instagram: tzman2012