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Charlie only liked it when it was easy. Lukewarm bourbon whiskey out of a water bottle in the backseat of a Chevy easy. Pink panties around his throat like a badge of honor easy. Slow-motion, one-step-forward-and-two-back, meaningless kind of easy. Becky used to feel easy. She sat beside him now in the backseat of an ’‘85 Impala, waist-down naked and skin burned from seat fabric in the weighted heat of early August. Dusk was no reprieve from the stale-air static. When he’d pulled the car over and put his hand on her thigh, he felt her warmth pulling him in, blending with the relentless sun sinking behind the cornfield hills of home. She looked damn good too; plaid shirt still undone because he’d torn one of the buttons in the heat of the moment, still hadn’t had time to apologize (he wasn’t big on apologies anyway). She was a tousled wave of blonde atop a soft frame, lips smeared and sullen, clamped now around a cigarette while she toyed with her lighter. “Get that shit off your neck!” Charlie had been pretending to search for her missing button awash in the beige sea of the car’s interior, watching her closely out of the corner of his eye. He flicked the lace waistband of her panties her direction. “Why? Not my color?” Becky blew a smoke ring out the window and smiled. “Out of your price range.” She used her free hand to pull them from his neck and tossed them on the seat. “You look like a damn fool.” Charlie had grown up along the interstate in a town dotted with heifer farms and trailer parks. His dad had run a walk-through lane out their back door selling whatever substance the neighborhood demanded, but if you asked him, he’d tell you he was in the business of freedom. No one asked though; he was a loud man with a quick temper. Charlie’s mom was gone before he knew her, waist-length blonde braid and an old-school apron, backing down the driveway silent and wide-eyed, a child herself running from a monster. He didn’t remember much about her, but he liked her, liked knowing what he could expect from her. She kept it easy. Charlie uncapped the water-bottle bourbon he was still a year too young to buy. He had stolen it from his job at Jaycee’s Diner in hopes of impressing Becky, forgetting she was never impressed. A swig went down hot and fierce; he grimaced, offering the bottle to her. She waved him off. “I’m good. I’ve got stuff to do later.” A second swig burned worse than the first. “Yeah? What do fancy college girls do in their hometown after dark?” Becky narrowed her eyes but didn’t look at him. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll climb some trees.” They had climbed trees together in their neighborhood until they were about 9. She was sweet and simple then, two pigtails and a voice rarely raised above a whisper, asking no questions and offering no answers. A knotted, gnarled pine was always their favorite, covered in knuckles like a punch frozen in time, cocked and ready but more bluster than bite. He’d race her up the trunk, beat her every time, and use his position above the rest of the world to coax her up a few branches higher than she was comfortable with. He’d extend his hand; she’d take it reverently. But pine is weak and prone to splinter, and one day the branch broke underneath her, sending two pigtails to a bed of needles nearly fifteen feet below. A couple that lived nearby came to clean up the mess, a busted shoulder and some bloodied knees. It wasn’t easy. Charlie looked away and it took years for him to look her direction again. He leaned his head back on the seat, watching the road for cops with nothing better to do than harass them. There was hardly any traffic on this old road, and he’d see it coming if there was. “Well, you should know they took that old pine down a couple years back.” “Did they? Good. It was cursed.” Becky exhaled and a puff of smoke filled the cab, lingering in the stillness like a whitewashed swarm of bees. “So what does that leave you to do with all of your time now?” Charlie raised his hands as if some evidence were on display. “Little of this, little of that. You’d know if you came back from the city more often. Sorority girl, right?” The words tasted a little bitter, so he followed them up with a smile, resting the plastic bottle on his bare knee. Becky fixed her eyes on him before rolling them. They were almond-shaped and large enough to show Charlie his reflection, even in the dimming light. She was a beautiful, somber ghost in the hollow hallways of his past—the places he still lived in secret, the rooms he almost felt her pulling him from. “What’s that got to do with anything?” “Everything. It took you away from this shithole where you should be.” “And away from you.” Her voice was hard, wise, pouring from a place he’d only wondered if she had in her. “I’m guessing that’s also where you think I should be.” The bitter taste was now shared between them like the sickly sweet flavor of her lipgloss circling the rim of his mouth; still sticky, unconcealed. He caught the jarring pale of his nudity and adjusted his boxer shorts. “You really wanna talk about all of that now?” “I want to talk about something now!” There it was: some fire burned inside of her that he both sensed and ignored, wanted and loathed. The night after they graduated from high school, Charlie’s dad split his lip. Something about missing money escalated into something about a missing childhood, and he paid the price for observation with a closed-fisted punch to the mouth. His dad told him to take it like a man and passed out in his recliner. Charlie found Becky under the still-standing pine, all of its fists useless in the blackness, and she pressed her fingers to his lip to stop the bleeding. She had asked no questions and offered no answers, and he let his hand run up her thigh then too. Then pink lace, then his half-swollen mouth on her neck, then the thunderbolt reality that he probably loved her a little bit. It wasn’t easy. Charlie smirked at her now, his mouth twisted into something ugly. “I don’t.” Becky stubbed out her cigarette and reached into the pack for another, a habit he thought she’d picked up lounging around the university green with the intellectual types. He pictured writers and painters packing her bedroom, a constant rotation of bare chests and arched backs that felt like something, meant something, would mean more to her than him. “That’s not a surprise, but I do. You barely spoke after-” “Stop.” Charlie was startled by his own seriousness. The whiskey had burned a tunnel straight to his belly, and he felt like he was overheating. He wanted to do something, anything to break the tension, so he grabbed his tee shirt and threw it on over his head. Becky sighed and he knew she knew him but it didn’t matter, couldn’t matter, mattered too much to matter. “You do what you want, but you’re not going to be cruel to me.” Charlie buried his father two weeks before. It was a small memorial service played out in a cold, fluorescent-lit room, a too-tight rented suit and a sick stomach. They’d asked him to speak and he declined, said he didn’t know the man that well, hadn’t seen him in a couple of years. It wasn’t true, but the truth was irrelevant. Becky’s folks offered gentle platitudes - “He was just Dave, man, he did everything his own way!” - but she watched him, almond-eyed and silent, asking no questions and offering no answers. He made it easy, the casket closed just like his mouth. But pine is weak and prone to splinter, and maybe it wasn’t all buried away, dirt-caked and devoured by worms. Two more silent swigs. He felt low now, knowing he’d hurt her, knowing he would probably do it again. He softened his tone, reaching for a glimmering button just under the right shoe he still had on. He tossed it to her. “Found it. Sorry about that.” Becky ignored him for a while and traced the path of a lightning bug in the weeds with her forefinger. “You’ll figure it out someday. Probably when it’s too late.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” She swung the rear door open, the antique handle clicking on release, and emerged from the car bare-assed and barefoot on the gravel. Every curve of her body was ignited by the sun’s last stand, having dropped just low enough in the sky to meet her. She leaned in, left her panties but grabbed her jeans, and slipped them over her legs in the comfort of a brazen upright. Her cigarette still clamped firm and burning, she avoided his gaze and fought with her zipper. When she spoke, her voice was muffled and edgy, like a live wire in plastic casing. “That you’re an actor in your own life.” Tiffany M Storrs is the editor in chief of Roi Fainéant Press. She is a writer above most other things, but there are so many other things, and she is properly qualified for none of those titles. She loves a lot of stuff but we're not going to get into all of that now. You can find her on Twitter @msladybrute, on Instagram @lady.brute, and out back honing her wit.

These colors don’t run, which is to say this criss-crossed flag, this faux heritage, this emblem of pride, white superiority seems to mean something to your grandfather, the man who refused to spare the rod nor spoil your father, who in turn sold you the bill of inherited trauma, high cholesterol, misogyny. All these emotional debts and miseries shared, revered, all in the name of some form of twisted tradition. These colors don’t run except for the lives of my partners, my beautiful sons, my beloved brown cousins as we run from you, your stepdaddy, and fathers. Because familial ties bound and conscripted you to stay watching, and stay conditioned to be something–anything as long as it was the same as they are. History wound deep through this hate, this tree built on pain, stolen lands, genetic memories. Noose slug low enough to rub raw our necks, I can feel your blood ebb as you see me, forever edging closer. You hoist the flag and party line in haste. Fires travel across California, history books, family folklore from Grandmama too dotted with white crosses, the flames lick the sky, I see you, I see you, I see you. These colors don’t run except when the blood of my loved ones is visible. That is to say, their colors— insides turned out, red in the streets of your blue-blooded, white-hooded, All Lives Matter, thin blue line, strange Southern flag waving in the polluted winds of backwards racial rhetoric. No darlin, it seeps. These colors don’t run, you say, but to me, these colors, these stripes of indignity, simply cannot further stay. Melissa Wabnitz Pumayugra (She/Her) is a writer based out of central Texas who enjoys a great tall tale and a medium iced coffee. Her work centers around identity, cultural phenomena, and embracing the past. Her photography and writing can be found on twitter (mel_the_puma) and in Blood Orange Review, You Might Need to Hear This, Oklahoma Today, Emerson Review, Hobart and many other obscure publications scattered throughout the globe.

In his transcendental state, what must he have felt, did he retreat to his hermitage in the lonely mountains? As the glowing flames licked his blistering skin, did memories of the cool mountain mists ease the pain? The billowing acrid black smoke from his burning flesh, slowly snaked in the air and entwined with the fetid heat of noisy Saigon. As the world watched the grainy images flickering on screen, his stoic reverence jarringly juxtaposed the rampant chaos of his surroundings. His orange robes falling away like embers in a forest fire, and there he sat, a majestic oak, lost in the flames. Not flinching as the heat greedily stole the air from his burning lungs, impassive and serene like the mountains he had returned too. Unaware of the sirens and the horrified screams, as he now walked peacefully in the cloud-filled valleys of the mountain near Ninh Hoa.

Mr. Sharples surveyed the wreck of his once immaculate science classroom. He rubbed his blackened fingers against each other, but this just spread the soiling around. Today had been horrendous, worst in his career. He wandered outside and sat on the grassy verge, replaying the events in his mind. Even now, after the fire alarm had long been shut down, he could still hear its echoes ringing. Perhaps in some ways, he always would. The children stood messily in threes and fours. They kicked the gravel on the all-weather pitch, laughing, joking, taking pictures. He couldn’t tell if this was bravado or just their natural immaturity, handling the situation in the way they saw best. They seemed oblivious to the risks that he took being last out of the building. As soon as the alarm sounded, he had been ready to walk them out under his guidance to the marshalling point. Once they were all at a safe and measured distance, he was able to regain his composure a little. He knew there would be people watching him in this moment of crisis, knowing his past, wondering if he would cope. Still shaking slightly, Miss Fey, the school administrator had handed him a green plastic student list folder with the smallest nod. As she handed it over their fingers touched briefly. He knew what that meant. He worried she would not have seen the black dust that had transferred from his hands to hers in that brief touch. He wondered if she still loved him. Taking the register was like a weary roll call after a gun battle. He knew all the children were safe, but the nagging doubt still teased him. He completed the task twice over to make sure. Later, he waited in the car park to see that all the children were collected, that there were no cars left waiting for a missing person. Just his car remained. The journey home that evening seemed to be a film on fast forward. His clothes were acrid and would need to be thrown out, he may as well have burned them too. He made some dinner but was unable to force it down. The choking dryness in his throat kept pushing his mind back to that morning. He kept imagining himself reading out the register to find that Marsha or Emily didn’t respond, or John Bairstow had been late again and had unknowingly walked straight into a searing wall of flames. If anything had happened to those children. It didn’t bear thinking about. There was a regular gas supply to the science block. He enjoyed the experiments using Bunsen burners, base metals. Energy transfer. As soon as those gas tanks were hit, he knew there would be nothing left. If any child had been left in there it would be as if they had been wiped off the face of the earth. All the love, care and attention held tight in a young life simply vanished away. Mr. Sharples lifted his head from his lolled back position on the sofa. He knew he needed to distract himself. He wondered how they would manage the end of year exams now, and whether the children would be able to study. He took himself to the garage and spent the next couple of hours cleaning the car. There was something soothing about the familiar smell of wax and chamois. He even got the vacuum cleaner out and gave it a full valet and became irritated at those carpets in the boot and seat wells. It was as if dirt and hair was part of the material itself. If you had asked him, he couldn’t have told you what time he finished that evening, or what time he went to bed. He felt outside of himself, as if coming round from a feint. In some ways this was a helpful distraction from the shock of the afternoon. Exhausted after the cleaning and scrubbing, he burned some whisky down, and collapsed into bed. Next morning, the alarm triggered two hours early so he could start the day's ablutions. He showered much longer than normal and found fresh clothes ready and waiting in the wardrobe. He was refreshed and determined to hold it together for the sake of the kids. He had to be that rock, steady, dependable. The choking throat feeling had abated, his breakfast of bacon was good. He straightened his tie in the mirror and headed back to the school. Perhaps a new temporary classroom could be found to continue his teaching. The car radio was playing his wife’s favourite song. In fact, as he recalled it had been played for their first dance at the wedding. He had been in a state of bliss then. The years after had felt like being stuck in a burning building, a melting and diminishing of his very self, down to its base metals, the extinguished spark. He wondered if Miss Fey would be in school today. He remembered the way she had nodded at him when she handed over the register, how it gave him hope. He glanced round the immaculate interior of the car with pride, smoothing down his pristine new shirt and tie. He allowed himself a half smile. He felt signs of the mental scars and wounds of the last few years ebbing. He would tell them in the staff room how his wife had left him and moved away. He would be hopeful the fire investigator wasn’t overly thorough. On his anniversary, he would allow himself to reminisce. How he rose from the ashes of his marriage. At night, he would make love to Miss Fey and feel light-headed. In his dreams, he would catch the faintest scent of burning flesh from within the science cupboard as he escorted the precious children out of the classroom. Gavin Turner is a writer and poet from Wigan, England. Gavin has been published in several journals. His chapbook, 'The Round Journey' was published in April 2022.

I worked at the deli counter at ‘The Dill’, a small gas station- slash-store in the middle of nowhere. We were a desperation spot for the folks with crashing low blood sugar; the last place to catch a bite before their traveling companions pushed them out on the side of the road. Full blown Snickers bullshit. I hated dealing with them. They usually got super picky in their panic. Like someone who is freezing to death taking off their clothes instead of putting on more. Makes no damn sense. You probably knew the place by the slight lean to the building, like the leaning tower, only with scuff marks on the linoleum floor and a bathroom that smelled like a shit-dipped Yankee candle. Pisa it ain’t, but you meet a lot of interesting people. Take Lars, he stocked the dairy for us weekly. He came in and made chit chat. He had one of those lined faces that you can’t pin an age on. Short and thin, but broad shouldered, like his name suggested. His front tooth had gone missing and he replaced it with a gold one. It gave him a pirate vibe that I found stirred my pot a bit. Sometimes when he’d come in around my break, we shared a smoke. I don’t smoke for real, but why the hell not, right? He’d let me bum cigarettes off him since I didn’t own any of my own. We’d get close up together so he could light it. I like the smell of his sweat. A little sharp but not unpleasant, like hay. Short, and juicy is how he described me once. I grew up in the era of thin thighs and even thinner eyebrows. Mine were plucked to a fair thee well and I have been on a ton of diets that were more like prison rations. Styles change and now I tattoo my eyebrows on. I don’t starve myself no more neither. I gained every pound back and had gums that bled every time I brushed my teeth or ate a hard apple. Calorie in calorie out type of thinking. But fuck, no one can excercise that much. Do you know how long you have to run to burn off a bag of chips? A wide ass is the thing now, thanks to that Kim Kardashian lady or whatnot. Except she had to pay money for what comes to me naturally. I’m getting off topic, I know. What did you ask me? “I asked how you lost your hand?” Oh shit, sorry! I can go on. “No worries, and I don’t mean to be rude.” No , actually it’s quite a story. I sliced the bologna, ham and the Swiss on the blade. We had other meats but they, for the most part, stayed in their original packages. Whole sides of prosciutto and marbled roast beef sit in the case like jilted prom dates dressed a little too fancy for their heartbreak. The tastes ran simple around here. But damn bologna is good, right? Sometimes the edges slice too thin for some and they send it back. They say “thin sliced” but that ain’t what they mean. Trust me, I have eaten my share of their cast offs, not that I’m complaining. “I used to eat the‘rind’ of the bologna before making my fried bologna sandwich with ketchup.” So you get it! As you can see, the job has a danger built right in, you get that, but what you get in return is a shit ton of safety procedures and mechanical safeguards that keep you from really being able to do too much damage. Where I’m going with this, is that the blade didn’t cut off my hand. Summers were our busy time being so close to the State Park. Rarely a local came in, just faces I’d never seen but look vaguely familiar. Like one of the regulars had their teeth fixed. We always needed seasonal help. A few years ago, they hired a girl fresh out of high school, Andi, with an i. She was what you might call conventionally pretty; an everyday, everyone can agree on beauty. This generation is so overtly nice, soft though. She couldn’t look me in the eye. Never occurred to me until right this minute she may not have wanted to. Andi had one thing going for her though, she was tiny, I mean diminutive-could-see-daylight-between-the-thighs little. We wound up on the same shift for about a month. Andi on the register, me on the blade. I noticed during this time that the number of conversations I had with folks were dwindling. I’d be slicing up the meat, I’d try to inquire about a day or a destination. Then slowly their eyes would shift to the right, and they would ask Andi a question. “How’s your day, sweetheart?“ or “You from around here?”. While the whole thing felt creepy I still found this incredibly rude. As a human, and not an apparition, disappearing before your own eyes can be soul crushing. Andi would smile, and nod, her eyes a void, pretending to be their best friend. As soon as their back was turned, bam! No smile. Am I right to think this is phony? “That’s customer service I guess.” Either way, it all came to a head when Lars made his weekly delivery. He shouted his greeting, “Hey Joules!” And made his way to the refrigerated cases. He let the load slam down, and looked at the deli/ cashier area and directly at Andi’s phony ass smile. ‘Hey there!’ Suddenly aware of how awkwardly sweaty he was. He took off his baseball cap and wiped his forehead. ‘Lars! Nice to meet you!’ “That’s too bad… I can imagine…” This is how it went, week after week, sometimes the two of them locked into a conversation, like they were the only two people there. Lars would feign including me now and then in their ritualized shared smoke, the one we used to have, but he knew I’d have to say no. Sometimes the customers would stand, arms full of Cheetos and Smart Water, watching Andi and Lars flirt. I’d say from behind the counter, “Sorry, can I help you?” Me, apologizing for them. I felt increasingly inconvenienced and yet somehow an inconvenience myself. The night it happened was one of those really sticky, horse-fly nights where I’d sit around my house after my shift in my underwear, my air conditioner far from adequate, dripping and buzzing in the window. My flesh, where it creased, sweats profusely. Suddenly I could feel the prickle/tickle of tiny beads of sweat with nowhere to go, itching to get out. I’d flipped on the television when I got home, watching some show where even the beautiful people have problems. Then, as if ordered by the devil himself and slipped in between romantic cliffhangers, was an ad for the magic berries some gorgeous older model was hawking. They want you to believe that berries are why, at her age, she looks like she has a painting in her attic aging for her. I shifted slightly to alleviate the discomfort and realized I was alone. I knew I was, don’t get me wrong, but this time it landed inside me with a thud. A heavy car door slam of an ah-ha moment. I hadn't had a single person address me personally, not even Andi, other than to order their meat, all day. I wondered if Andi and Lars were somewhere together, not thinking of me at this very moment. Then the stillness after the explosion. So quiet. Everything from there on out comes to me in flashes and shadows … like a dream you remember in the middle of the day. The can of gasoline, from my shed. The ‘aim-and flame’ from my junk drawer. The turn of my keys in the ignition. My underwear. My thighs sticking to the plastic interior of my car. The Dill. The combination of pity and disgust on Andi’s face when I burst through the door sending the chain of bells over it exploding in different directions, I will never forget. “Pity?” I can imagine how I looked in my overstretched underwear and bra with sweat stains at the arm holes, my hair, a mass of tangles, eyes wild. The fire was quickly out of my control. The heat of the fire and the burning inside my chest were indistinguishable to me. All I could see through the smoke and flames was the cash register where Andi used to stand. She had ducked down behind the register, instead of running. Like I said, this generation is soft. She never got up. When the ceiling fell, shearing my forearm off mid way, I barely noticed. I don’t know how I got out alive. I stumbled out of the building and got in the car. There was little blood. Seems the heat of the cross bar cauterized the arm as it sliced through. The building collapsed in on itself and onto Andi. It was halfway there anyway. And here I am, talking to you. It’s kind of a miracle don’t you think? The Lord works in mysterious ways, I guess. Anyway, enough about me. How would you like your meat sliced? “Thin.” Kellie is the AEIC of Roi Faineant Press. Google her, she’s been around.

woke up new / limbs less / charred & / hot head hot collared / lightning bugs wink / in out / the mountain’s curve / can you stamp / out the cinders / extinguish the spine / can you kill / each light / jimmy the switch the dead / outlet suspended / in danny’s room / whisper honeysuckle / golden tea kettle / a star a clenching / an empty barn / they won’t hear / you unfurl your jaw / unlax the hips / bones snap / under such stress / hairline fracture / hair tousled below fireworks / girls are thumbed / into women / bad lilacs bloom / in heat they wonder / who mothered this / devastation this smoke / whisper arson / begins with an itching / a mount Julia Watson earned her MFA from North Carolina State University. Her works have been published in The Shore, Voicemail Poems, Identity Theory, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and elsewhere. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her grumpy dogs. You can read more of her work at juliawatsonwriter.com.

Still Life with Frying Pan, Fight, and Flower Pot How beautiful it is to break an egg into the waiting pan to repot a plant grown too wild for its housing to see crumbs of soil spilled onto the just-cleaned floor How beautiful it is to see someone walk away in anger and swallow the words that would call them back How beautiful the bright lights that make of the window an opaque slate In the pan the egg yolk whitens like a cataract clouding an eye Outside the window darkness draws close like it wants something On the floor potting soil crunches beneath my socked feet From the next room my partner fumes like a kettle about to boil but in the kitchen I am unappeasing my mouth filled with egg Mr. S after Lydia Davis He wants to be a good manager. So in summer, for example, when he knows his women will swaddle themselves in slacks and sweaters, he slides the thermostat to 60, refusing to relent in his quest for goodness until he sees them shiver with gratitude, arms tucked in thick sleeves, hands like nervous centipedes emerging reluctantly to skate across the keyboard. He wants to be a good manager, especially to L., with whom he cannot make eye contact for more than a moment before he is completely enflamed. He likes her, likes the way her soft body fills sensible office-wear. She sits in view of his window, facing away, and he documents unyieldingly the time she has stolen from him as he stares at the roll of fat peeking out of each cap-sleeve. He wants nothing more than to lay his head in the rising dough softness of her armpit, smell the yeast of her body, warm on the embers of her glands. But good managers do not bake bread with inferiors and he wants, above all, to be good. So he is harsher with her than with the other employees; he asks more, gives less, speaks in short, clipped sentences that hide completely, he thinks, how badly he wants to knead her doughy stomach between his fingers. When he dares to look in her eyes he finds the spark of mirrored longing, and he loves her more for the noble restraint she shows, as he shows it. But then she gossips with the other women, there is talk of a first date, and he is scorched by the sudden realization that other men are not so good. Ignited by this fear he stands over her desk until she says, ‘sir?’ and the two of them live and die in that syllable, because in the moment after he tells her that he loves the smell of yeast, there is no flame of recognition. She is just puzzled, and he can’t hear her response over the roar of burning, loud as bonfire, loud as a pyre. Frances Klein is a poet and teacher writing at the intersection of disability and gender. She is the author of the chapbooks The Best Secret (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and New and Permanent (Blanket Sea 2022). Klein serves as assistant editor of Southern Humanities Review. Readers can find her work at https://kleinpoetryblog.wordpress.com/.

There’s a bovine fly on the screen-door, ripe as a gooseberry and glistening with blood. Mercy ignores the white-noise buzz, cuts the ryebread into slices. It’s scorching outside, the air heavy and parched; it’s barely cooler in the kitchen, wicker fan slowly pushing heat around the room like treacle. Prickles of sweat congregate on Mercy’s hairline, trickle down her back, as she butters the slices and adds ribbons of ham, tomatoes, a slick of mustard. The fly bangs the screen-door rhythmically, trying to tattoo its way into the house. Any minute now, Mercy thinks, I’ll hear the beat of hooves in the distance. She switches on the radio. An old country song is playing, and she hums as she breaks ice into a pitcher of lemonade - citrus tang filling the kitchen, antiseptic and cool. She places pitcher and sandwiches onto a tray and swings the screen door open with her backside. The fly takes its chance and sweeps into the room looking for food. Mercy sits in the porch shade and waits. Any minute now, she thinks, I’ll hear the beat of hooves in the distance, see a dust-cloud rising, rising. She pours herself some lemonade, it’s cloying. . She closes her eyes. It’s been a busy morning; it’s been busy mornings since Mama left and Mercy took over running the house. The truancy officer has visited twice, but Papa is always in the fields and Mercy lays on the floor as his shadow looms outsized on the wall. She thinks him gigantic, threatening, wolfish, a monster. Mercy was glad to leave school, but she’s not glad of her role as Papa’s packhorse. She hopes Kyle might come a-calling, she has plans in that regard. Any minute now, Mercy thinks, the earth will tremble with a timpani of hooves, and the rust-red dust will rise, and the sweet stench of sweat and tobacco will reach her. Her stomach growls and she reaches for a sandwich, chews. Salty ham pops, mustard burns, and her eyes fill. She feels awash today - a flood plain - her body compensating for aridity with sweat and tears, saliva and the blood that came that morning. Mercy is tired, tired of this day and tired of this life. She’d like to kick off her sandals, lie back, ignore the waiting chores. If Kyle comes a-calling she might let him take her all the way to Vegas; a shotgun wedding’s been on her mind for some time. If she’s gonna do chores better to do them for herself, her own man, her own child, than for a Papa as bitter as unripe corn and unappreciative as a goat. The fly pulsates on the screen-door, trying to escape. Switchgrass rifles in a passing breeze, giving momentary comfort; in the distance the boom of a shotgun resounds. Mercy looks for dust, listens for hoofbeats. The scent of creosote fills her nostrils, coats the back of her throat. On the horizon a column of smoke billows upwards. Maria Thomas is a middle-aged, apple-shaped mum of two from London. During daylight hours she works in technical control in financial services, a subject so mind-numbingly dull that she spends the witching hours writing. She has had work published by EllipsisZine, Funny Pearls, The Levatio, Fiery Scribe Review, Paragraph Planet, VirtualZine and Free Flash Fiction. Maria won Retreat West’s April 2022 Micro competition. She can be found on Twitter as @AppleWriter.

vapor-compression constant inside bedroom the hot condensed by water compressed then carried away by water every slight abnormal buzz keeps me up illuminated by glow-in-the-dark skeleton a light when I touch warmth of skin your hair prickled amidst the refrigerant though mostly alone these days it feels barbaric no sleep standing before the bare fridge slowly carving an avocado with a knife to eat anteriorly to the artificial bright with pinch of salt and nothing else the morning gathers clarity made unpalatable sun grows creeping stinging each eyeball and a dream lets go its memory despite hidden exchanges of gas to liquid at night Taylor Devlin is a poet and technology librarian in Boston, MA. She is an English B.A., Creative Writing graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she served as Senior Poetry Editor for Jabberwocky. Her writing has appeared in KGB Bar Lit.

“Believe it or not,” I say, hoisting the ice chest over my head, “I cannot control the river.” “Yeah, whatever,” Samantha says. “Just get us the fuck out of here.” She stands on the levee in a black and purple bikini, rubbing her arms across her chest. Her eyebrows furrow and her freckles have already darkened in the six hours we’ve spent on the water. Today’s adventures are not gaining me any points as a potential boyfriend. “Why’s it always my fault?” I balance the ice chest on the rocks by her feet. Our 1975 jet boat sways back and forth on the Sacramento River like a tightrope walker testing a rope. The boat glitters like the fool’s gold in the shallows. Every few minutes a jet skier zooms by, shattering the river’s glass surface. If water skiers or fishermen stopped to chat, they would notice that the boat is filling with water from the inside, the river is claiming it as its own. “It’s not always your fault,” Samantha says. “Today it’s your fault because you’re the one who backed over the fucking tow line.” “She’s right,” pipes in a voice from above. “It’s your fucking fault.” Riley, my 11-year-old cousin, balances her feet on two big rocks at the top of the levee. She still wears her canary yellow life jacket strapped over her oversized t-shirt and board shorts. Her nose is bright orange from the Zinc Oxide sunscreen that she smeared all over her face. She looks like Hagar the Horrible. “Ri, don’t cuss,” I say. She is only here because Samantha and I needed an observer to spot us when we tow each other behind the boat. According to California law, observers must be at least 12. We were so desperate to get on the water that I accepted my Aunt Patsy’s babysitting plea on the condition that Riley pretended to be 12. On the car ride over, she recited her new birthday beneath her breath, chanting “January fifteenth nineteen ninety-four January fifteenth nineteen ninety-four.” “Whatever, ” Riley says. She wiggles her hips side to side and sticks out her tongue. “At least I didn’t sink my dad’s boat in front of my girlfriend.” “For the last time,” Samantha says, “we’re not—” “Either of you two feel like helping a guy out?” I open the ice chest and pull out some Tupperwares of carrots and celery sticks. The silence is real as both girls pin their eyes on me. I remove each object from the ice chest and place it on the rocks. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches wrapped in cellophane, sticks of string cheese, strawberry yogurt, Dr. Pepper and bottled water. Beads of sweat trickle down my neck. There’s sunscreen in my eye. “What are you doing?” Samantha swings her weight from one hip to the other in an effect that is alluring and at times dangerous. Now it is the latter. “I’m, uh, taking inventory,” I say. “These could be useful.” “You’re going to fix the boat with Tupperware?” “These things can do everything,” I say. “They keep your food fresh and double as bailing tools.” I pick one up, open the lid and dump the carrots onto the riprap, then walk back into the water to the boat. “You’re pathetic,” Riley calls from her perch. “We’re going to die out here.” Some part of me has already resigned. The August heat weighs on my bare back. The climbing temperature makes me feel like I’ve developed another layer of skin. Birds of prey circle and weave above us, leaving shadowy trails along the levee. “You’d better move, Riley,” I say, “or else those vultures will think you’re dead.” “Whatever, Timothy,” she says. But she does scuttle off the rocks. We’d removed all our towels, skis and wakeboards from the boat the moment we noticed it sinking. They decorate the shoreline now like goods set out for a garage sale. I approach the boat, armed with Tupperwares, and all I see are mismatched ski gloves, bottles of Moose Juice and wadded up bags of chips. The water level inside the boat has risen about a half-inch. I scoop water with the Tupperware and pour it into the river. “You bailing out the boat with Tupperware is a little like George W. Bush cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina with a vacuum,” Samantha says. She blows her bangs out of her eyes. I used to think it was sexy. “It’s working,” I say. “That’s what FEMA said.” There are sweat trails crawling down Samantha’s shoulders. I’d like to follow them with my eyes but know I shouldn’t. “Hey! Look what I can do!” Riley picks up a rock and arches her arm back, flinging it forward. It hits me square in the shoulder blades. “God damnit Riley! If you’re not going to help, could you at least not attack me with rocks?” She reaches into her pocket to reapply sunscreen. Aunt Patsy made me promise to keep her daughter well-protected. With her fair skin and red hair, Riley is at high risk for skin cancer. Because Aunt Patsy is a woman who fuels on fear, it’s never surprised me that the threat of one disease carries over to countless others. According to her mother, Riley could get Lyme disease from ticks, AIDS from an infected toilet seat, diabetes from increased doughnut intake. Aunt Patsy believes science exists to frighten us. How would she respond when she found out that Riley was lost not to disease but to her own cousin, certified EMT and rescue lifeguard? Samantha moves down the rocks to the water. “I’ll help,” she says, emptying out a Tupperware of radishes. “Look, they’re like little red buoys.” The vegetables float on the water. The heat lessens. “Thanks,” I say. I clear my throat whenever I lean over; a nervous habit. There’s something about Samantha Jefferson in a purple bikini with popsicle stains on her stomach that reduces me to funny noises. When she transferred to my school in eighth grade, she made my voice skip octaves. She could braid hair the way some people speed-read. During silent sustained reading, she would prop her book up on her desk with her hairbrush and divide her hair into sections, which she would braid without looking up. Her beckoning fingers made me relax. I wish she would braid her hair now. Our movements are soon interrupted by the mind-numbing thump of bass. A sleek white ski boat is drifting our way, music jiggling the wakeboards strapped to the central pole. A crowd of sunburned teenage boys loom like characters from a Dr. Suess book, long and lean with puffs of bleached hair like human Q-tips. My forehead sweats. “Ooh! Look! A rescue party!” Samantha straightens, places her Tupperware inside the nylon siding of the boat, and pulls her hair back into a ponytail. “Ship’s ahoy!” Riley yells, scrambling down the rocks. She slips, and I wince for the howl of pain that’s sure to follow. Her head bobs as the cries come. “There, there,” I say, hopping up the levee to where she sits, tears streaming through sunscreen. I wish I could see what Samantha is doing. Riley’s knee is bleeding. “My leg’s gonna fall off!” Riley’s back shudders with sobs. “I’m gonna get gangrene and they’re gonna cut it off!” “You’ll be fine,” I say. “One Band-Aid should do it.” I turn around to the pile of goods on the bank, where the first aid kit sits between the ice chest and the umbrella. I get a good, long look at the approaching boat. Four guys, all maybe 16 to18 years old, wiry and tan. I don’t recognize any of them. Thank goodness. Someone turns down the bass and Samantha wanders into the shallows. “Hey boys,” she says. I shiver. “I’m gonna die and it’s all because-a you!” Riley holds her knee between her hands. I return to the bank, straining to hear Samantha’s conversation. “Thank goodness there’s someone out here who can manage a boat!” Samantha says. I should be used to this. I should be comfortable with rejection. This is why I should clarify my feelings sooner, but I never do because I’m a gangly guy with a squeaky voice who has never had a girlfriend because girls who make me doubt what I know make me scared. I like that fear, the shiver in my stomach that makes me realize that I’m not going to rescue every person who jumps in a pool, nor might any girl I fall in love with love me back. I like that shiver because it’s a risk, like waterskiing. “—and then when I got in from the water, Tim started up the boat before I could pull in the line. Sometimes he gets nervous around me.” Am I that obvious? “Are you about done?” Riley has stopped crying and looks annoyed. “Are you paying attention to anything today?” She waves a hand in front of my face. “Can you see my hand?” “Riley, stop,” I say, pushing down her hand. “Of course I can see.” “And then what happened?” A boy with a Neanderthal voice asks. “Well, the rope got stuck in the propeller, so when we cut the engine—” “—water could come in but couldn’t flow out,” Neanderthal says. He sits on the engine cover in his boat surrounded by his cronies. He’s ugly. I hope Samantha thinks so too, but it’s hard to tell. She swings her arms by her sides. “Do you think you can tow us?” she asks, her voice rising. “Sure thing,” Neanderthal says. “Phil here is just getting our fishing knife to cut your line out. Once we get the rope out from under the prop, the water should be able to flow back out.” “If you still have trouble starting,” the boy named Phil pipes in, “we can tie our rope to your bow.” “I’m Tim.” I step into the water and extend my hand. “Thanks for helping us out.” Their boat is a few feet away and so Neanderthal doesn’t attempt to meet my hand. “Lance,” says Neanderthal. “No worries, brah. Happens all the time.” Phil finds his knife and hops out of their boat to swim over. He balances the fishing knife in his teeth while doing the doggy paddle. He’s missing a few front teeth. Wakeboarders. “How lucky we are to find these nice guys!” Samantha grins, wider than she’s ever grinned around me. “Yeah, no kidding,” I say. I wish the sun would hurry up and go down because the heat is smacking me in waves. “You could use some of Riley’s sunscreen,” she says, grabbing me by the nose and giggling. “Need any help?” I ask, turning to Phil, who is nosing around underneath the propeller. He grins. “So, pretty lady, I never caught your name,” Lance says, picking up a can of Bud Light. “I’m Samantha,” she says, smiling into her stomach. “He means me!” Riley rushes into the water, disregarding her bandaged knee. “I’m Riley.” Lance and his friends laugh. The other two guys look like extras from a surf video. One has a full beard and a beer belly and he can’t be more than 18. The other has an arm covered in tattoos. Did one arm beg redecoration or was it hiding some body flaw? If tattoos are meant to hide scars, then I should be getting a big one across my chest any day now. “I’m going under,” Phil says, then dives below the prop. He wrings the rope free from the propeller, but the engine won’t turn over, so Lance and company have to tow us to the dock. Samantha squeezes in between Lance and Phil, braiding her hair as a Bud Light jiggles in her lap. I get stuck with Riley in our gold boat, covered in Zinc Oxide sunscreen, watching the trail of radishes follow us home. Vultures circle and I play dead. Julia’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in Mayday Magazine, Okay Donkey Mag, Cutleaf, West Branch Wired, Oracle Fine Arts Review, Fourteen Hills, California Northern and elsewhere. A graduate of UC Davis' master's in creative writing program and alumna of Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Mendocino Coast Writers Conference and the Tomales Bay Writers Workshops, Julia is the co-founder and publicity director of Play On Words, San Jose's collaborative literary performance series, and a 2021-2023 Lighthouse Book Projecteer.

Peach juice trickles down fingers, to knuckles, to wrists to elbows on a sweltering Northwest Indiana day. The steel in the air suffocates—asthma squeezing can hardly breathe. Aluminum Tupperware tumblers’ sugar cracks teeth in ice tea. Even The Magician’s Nephew cannot distract— Mustache of sweat, the Lake with its diapers full of shit two miles away, and the library the same distance. Best to lie here—try not to move. We could ride our bikes, but Hector at the end of the cul-de-sac has air conditioning, a huge television, MTV and a penchant for taking us all in. You do not ask questions when the sweat finally dries in itchy, ropy strings and the cucumber sandwiches with cream cheese, cool as a swimming pool, make you feel safe for now.

I tasted summer on her lips. Cotton candy, chapstick, cherry Coke with rum. Her hands met the shorelines of my hips and I was done for. I would let Juliet crash into me any day, any night, whenever she liked. The flashing lights of Coney Island had never seemed more romantic, despite all of the cacophony that swallowed our words whole. “Kiss me?” I asked, and her enthusiastic “Of course” was nearly devoured by the overenthused screams from the coaster. –Beautiful, I heard her say amidst it all. My heart thrummed in my chest. Grew three sizes too big and could barely stay inside of me. Maybe it bled out in my smile, wide enough to make my cheeks hurt. Our hands grew too clammy and sweaty to hold onto one another, but we did not let go. Her thumb brushed my knuckles with a tenderness I’d not known in years. For a moment, my eyes averted downwards to this holy union of touch and I silently marveled at it. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice resonant like a song blaring through an old radio. “Huh?” I looked back up. She caught me right under her thumb. Deep woodland eyes stared back and saw the sky in me somehow. My heart skipped a beat, and that shit never happened. Not ever. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m great. Never been better.” She arched her sharp brows upward and didn’t take a single moment to look away. “Arabelle.” She scrunched her nose – and my eyes wandered there too, over the full and slightly crooked slope of her nose. It was begging to be kissed. “Juliet.” The three syllables of her name slipped off my tongue like it was the only thing I knew how to say anymore. “You’re thinking a lot, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question, not in that tone of hers. Conviction was her second language. I exhaled slowly and gently swung our hands back and forth. “Yeah.” I was too aware of how my heart still raced. Of how the sweat beaded along the crown of my forehead. Of how this wouldn’t last. “What gave it away?” Her features softened. She squeezed my hand and began to lead me away from the crowd, and out onto the sand. “You get this look in your eyes. Like – I know you’re here, but you’re also a million miles away. Sorta glazes over.” She paused, however, and shook her head. “It’s not a bad thing, by the way. I’m just nosy. If you don’t wanna tell me though, don’t worry about it.” I almost didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure of the last time someone bothered to give me space for myself. Not to mention, this was the last person on Earth I wanted to leave me alone. The sun could have been closing in on us right there and then, hurtling towards the planet, and I still would have wanted to hold her hand. The tears that burned at the corners of my eyes were warm too. “No. It’s okay. Just – sometimes it feels like you aren’t real. Like none of this is – or will stay – real,” I admitted quietly, almost hoping she wouldn’t hear. She did, though. I knew that because she closed in again and pressed her lips to the curve of my cheek. Her arm gently wrapped around my waist. “Do you wanna talk about why, or –?” “Not now.” I frowned as Juliet frowned, but she nodded back anyway. “Not yet. I wanna pretend for a little longer like I’ve got my shit together.” Her fingertips fidgeted with the linen of my dress. She opened her mouth, like she wanted to say something, but then it shut. She tucked her head into the curve of my shoulder instead and pressed a kiss into my throat. My eyes shut. A small, private smile appeared on the curves of my lips. Moments went by before I finally opened my eyes, and before she spoke up. “It’s too fucking hot still,” she admitted, a dry laugh trailing off of her words. “Yeah.” I smiled up into the night. I looked out into the night sky, and wondered if any of those were actually stars, or just friendly satellites. “It’s disgusting.” Summer would end but the skies would stay the same. The world continued to burn and melt away, but – she stayed. E.M. Lark is a writer/book reviewer/frequenter of overpriced theatre, currently based in NYC. Reviews found in Defunkt Magazine, words found in Roi Fainéant Press, oranges journal. Follow them at @thelarkcalls for regular shenanigans.