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and by the time we order drinks she’s lit two cigarettes.   She says, (while breathing in smoke from harbor fires),   Glo-ree days! Says, I’m trying to quit. ​​​Exhale.   Did anyone ever tell you, that with your eyes silver and gold like that, they look like coins? Like, I could scoop ‘em out and plunk them in my pocket and they’d jingle? You should know that you’re not the first — or, there’s been hundreds of firsts who thought they could make me right.   For example: I sometimes act a little too much like my daddy. I’ve got wiles to drive a man wild, and I often use ‘em to burn. Sometimes I’m burning, and I never met a history book that didn’t make me cry. Sometimes I powder my hair, and did you know that I got “collateral damage” tattooed across my inner thigh? ​ Do you wanna see?   … Slow down, boy!   Have you ever held someone who looked like you? A girl disappeared from this place, right after we kissed behind the jukebox — that old dinosaur, that old relic. I was high. They probably got her bones scattered across Appalachia by now, and she’s making things grow, or else she hit-and-run to Hawaii trying to get away from me as best she can. God Bless Her, either way. A toast!   ​ And down goes a gulp of Diet Coke — her lips, ​ mine.   I wonder sometimes what museum they’ll put me in. Once I wrapped bandages around my chest — up&up — and it felt kinda good, until I started seeing shades of mummification. I’m past my peak. There’s no future here. And I thought, Fossilize me.   What the hell.   Sometimes I act too much like my daddy. I deny the influence of prescription pills. I don’t cut myself- I just rust. But I don’t read  either.   ​ She takes a bite of a burger, ​ and breathes out smoke.   Ever been to France? There, they call me La Liberté éclairant le monde  — and I think that’s beautiful. My accent’s kinda good, huh? My mama got kicked hard, in the gut before I was born And maybe that’s why it all turned out the way it did. Did anyone ever tell you that your eyes, silver and gold, looks like blood money? You can love me —   believe me, honey, I’m wide open —   but once day these acrylics will stop piercing your hands, and I’ll topple down, down, into the harbor and she’ll welcome me home. She’s tasteful.   I’ll sleep.   But until then—   ​ I toss ​ blood-money bills on the countertop of justice as Liberty              lights another match,              licks out, and              swallows it whole.   But until then — hell, we got time. C’mon, new-moon sucker — let’s light a fire, pummel the highway, make the National Parks fear to god. Let’s end up laughing on a slab. let’s hit the road.   Julianna Reidell is an undergraduate English and French major at Arcadia University. Her work can be found in two anthologies by Moonstone Press, Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine, Sword and Kettle Press’s “Farewell, Neverland,” and issues of her university’s literary magazine, Quiddity.

Into the Land of Nod Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished,                         and all the host of them Her smile is a dead end street,  a door opens, snow  skitters across hardwood.  I’m inconspicuously  armed; we’re not supposed to be here,  not flirting, not during Mass.  I miss the sting,  that sharp bite right before needle  hits groove.  Light bends to her,  I become a long shadow;  her breath evaporates. Into the Land of Nod Genesis 2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden;                         and there he put the man whom he had formed The moon is bullet shaped,  wonder how it might feel  pressed against my temple.  My limbs are pitched, nothing  ever happens here.   She gives me a sideways wink,  her shoulder bumps mine;  wonder what I’m made for,  wonder if it was a day like today when men stopped believing in God.  Into the Land of Nod Genesis 2:12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium                          and the onyx stone There are other people’s feelings to consider.  There are saints, traditions, passages with hidden doors.  There are steps and steps and steps and the dry  sharp intake of air when we hold our breath.  She brushes her hair back, touches my hand,  we’re supposed to be recounting our sins; all I see is the black edge of her bra strap, all I feel are the ragged edges of the exit wound.   Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Jasper's Folly Poetry Journal, Beatnik Cowboy, One Art Poetry, Black Moon Magazine, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook,  Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife , was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024.  http://www.louisianaliterature.org/2024/04/11/new-release-announcement-alex-stolis/  ,  RIP Winston Smith  from Allen Buddha Press 2024, and  The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres , 2024 by Bottlecap Press.

SNOWSCAPE Flakes gathered  on a stone, on a leaf, on the arm of a lawn chair left out. A coating of snow, I suppose I could say. Yet  each object  holds  its own. WHITE ON WHITE The white lettering pasted  onto his front bass drum head  blends into its white background, so no  full words emerge  to name the snappy society quartet  for which he was the drummer. My teenage grandfather, cigar  jutting out, brandishes  two sticks in one hand and a tambourine in the other for this sepia-toned, Roaring-Twenties publicity photograph. If, say, fourteen, he had ten years to live before  his fatal auto accident and made use of them: played in a band on a boat to Europe; played  on a cruise to the Caribbean; filled-in, one night,  with Paul Whiteman (the biggest bandleader of the day); married a beautiful, tender woman; fathered my father. And left this blanked-out—so iconic—lettering. THE BRONZE BUST I forgot to buy milk and needed wine so I threw my coat on and clopped downstairs with the shops across the street in mind when I saw, in my building foyer,  a life-size bronze bust  of Gene—one  he fashioned when a young artist  of his beautiful young self—receding atop a wooden dolly, an appraiser giving instructions to the mover in her British accent. I literally clutched my heart, having  known this bust nearly thirty years as it presided over the entry hall  of Gene’s apartment, a bust passed countless times by my wife and me  and our two boys when Gene invited us up  for tea and pastries, a bust that seemed to watch  its model’s manifold life unfold before its  attentive, sensual, unchanging gaze. But Gene, at ninety-one, his memory deteriorating  by the day, felt it was time to deaccess  his kept work while he could handle it  judiciously, stripping  his apartment of every piece, a process  about which he was unsentimental—or  so the appraiser reported when I confessed  my stab of pain. And she, of course, was as unsentimental as he,  just doing her job while I stood and watched this  emblem of Gene’s full life—and emptying memory— fade away, its tender face to me. Mark Belair's  poems have appeared in numerous journals, including  Alabama Literary Review, Harvard Review , and  Michigan Quarterly Review .  Author of seven collections of poems, his most recent books are two works of fiction: Stonehaven  (Turning Point, 2020) and its sequel, Edgewood  (Turning Point, 2022). A new collection of poems entitled Settling In  will be published by Kelsay Books later this year. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times, as well as for a Best of the Net Award. Please visit www.markbelair.com

“Let me just send this one email,” Derek says, his eyes already on the phone, thumbs flying across the screen. He’s not expecting me to say, Please, don’t, we’re in the middle of a conversation . I don’t think he’s expecting me to say anything, because, to him, I might not be  fully corporeal, certainly not someone who’d place a barrier between him and an email. Or him and a call. Or him and a text. I lean back and bring my glass toward my chest. Take small sips. Roll the glass between my palms while I hold it close. Watch the liquid swirl. I look up at Derek from time to time, but he might as well not be here. He types. And types. I should say something. It feels like it’s been forever. But I only take another sip.   Eventually, I set the drink back on the table. I run a finger along the rim, pressing down as I do, wondering how much harder I would have to press before I hear a sound. A squeak. “Just give me a minute,” Derek says, not lifting his eyes. “It’s a whole clusterfuck at work.” There is always a clusterfuck at work. At 12 PM on a Tuesday, during our first lunch date. Perfectly understandable, I thought, even felt a little in awe of him then. Such commitment. Such importance.   At 5 PM on a Wednesday, leading to a canceled dinner. Sometimes things really do happen just before the work day is over. At 10 AM on a Saturday, while on vacation. He really can’t take any time off. Things would fall apart without him. Such commitment. Such importance. Clusterfuck. “Sorry, baby, just a couple of messages that I have to fire off. I’m really sorry.” I look around and wonder what the hell I’m doing here. What even is this place? The tiny dollop of seafood risotto, topped off with fresh basil, sure looked nice for the two minutes it took me to eat it. It also looked much better than it tasted, and it didn’t look or taste nearly good enough for how much it cost. Derek has barely touched his food, and now his phone rings. He picks it up and shoots me an apologetic smile as he presses his index finger to his lips, letting me know I should be quiet, as if I’d actually said anything in the last … how long? Ten minutes? Hours? It feels like months. And then he takes the call— of course he fucking takes the call —and gets up to go outside, because my being perfectly silent just isn’t silent enough. There’s a low hum around us from other patrons, but this is a nice place, an overpriced-fancy-risotto place, so even the hum is fancy, the kind that helps cushion all conversation so no one hears anyone else, and the togetherness of eating out feels insulating and cozy, the kind of aloneness among the crowd that only a pile of money can buy. We have a nice table, one that faces the street. I can see Derek outside, pacing, four long strides in each direction before he turns around. His free arm waves wildly, stilling only to point straight ahead, as if he’s trying to show someone the path forward, to impart on the person who called at 8 PM on a Friday that things are about to go Derek’s way, because that is the only way that things can ever go. He stops, runs his hand through his hair, and starts yelling, his body tense in a half squat, one arm straight above his head, as if he’s summoning some divine help, or trying to beam all the frustration at this Friday night clusterfuck into the stratosphere through his outstretched palm. He yells and yells and yells. I dab my lips with a napkin. Even the napkins are stupid fancy here. For a split second, I feel bad that I’ve left some lipstick on it. The funny thing is, Derek looks and acts exactly how he did when I first met him. He hasn’t done  anything wrong, really. He’s always been exactly this, this thing we’re all supposed to want. He finishes the call. I think, Finally , but then he starts to type. He types and types and types. And then he makes another call. I look at the traces of my long-gone risotto and realize I’m still hungry. I am so desperately, endlessly hungry, like there is a cavern at the center of me, and something ravenous lives inside, clawing rabidly at the walls. I look at Derek’s untouched steak, which is probably cold by now, and I wonder if I should just eat it to spite him, but I don’t want Derek’s steak, I don’t want anything from Derek anymore, perhaps I never did, so I pull out my phone and send him an email, not a text message but an email to his work account because that’s what he seems most likely to check, and I write a very nice polite message starting with Dear Derek , and I say that I left so he would have one less clusterfuck to handle tonight, and that it was nice to know him, and I close with Sincerely , because I am being sincere, the most sincere that I’ve probably been for as long as I’ve known him. Then I block his number and I am off, making my way through the kitchen and out the back door. I await a pang of guilt, guilt over doing this the way I have, because maybe he deserves more from me, more sincerity, more explanation. I wait for the pang on the ride to a fast-food drive-through, and when I bite into a greasy sandwich, ketchup and mustard dripping down my chin, but it never comes. Maura Yzmore is a Midwest-based short-fiction author. Her work can be found in trampset, Bending Genres, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. Find out more at https://maurayzmore.com  or on Twitter  @MauraYzmore .

Prologue  You write your wills before your first trip away from your young son. You revise them when you have more assets and a second son. They are more complicated. But they won’t be relevant until a time in the distant future. You rewrite your wills after your husband is diagnosed with a disease that gives him a 5% chance of living 5 years, the disease fiction writers unimaginatively use to kill off a character.  You do not understand the minute details of living trusts and irrevocable trusts. But you have more immediate worries, concerns, fears about how to get through each day.  You go together to a cemetery to select the plot you will visit in the future. That future arrives sooner than you think, as his body comes apart like the fraying quilt on your bed. You lose sleep, weight. Your wobbly hold onto the life you’ve known, falling away. In a millisecond, you are a member of a club no one wants to join.  The Next Chapter Dinner invitations pour in at first, from friends, from mere acquaintances. You feel grateful, resentful, exhausted. Soon those invitations disappear. You think of the condolence notes you wrote with “let me know what I can do to help” offers that never materialized. A colleague tells you co-workers don’t know what to say to you. You become a third, fifth, seventh wheel when invited out by couples, wondering if you mention your husband’s name too often or not often enough. Turning away rather than watching those couples walk holding hands, tuning out talk about their travel plans, their anniversary celebrations.  Your number of anniversaries are trapped in amber.  There are days when you don’t see or speak to anyone other than a barista, a pharmacist, or a wrong number.  Or, maybe, to anyone.  You talk to yourself. You feel incompetent struggling to open jars, clasping necklaces. You are overwhelmed by a first-ever sewer backup in the basement, fetid water from the past. A metaphor, you wonder.  Haircuts, pedicures, and massages are the menu of intimate touches. Unless you have grandchildren, whose impossibly soft skin and sweat baby sweat replenish you. Joy tinged with an ache for the absence that no balm can soothe. Collections of vinyl albums, stamps and postcards fill the basement closet shelves and spill out of the basement, haunting you. You curse the computer. The inoperative passwords. Your husband’s incomprehensible financial records. Your husband. Your house is a minefield of memories. The graceful tall glass vase shaped like a volcano, the colors of lava, from Hawaii, a surprise gift; the painting that dominates the dining room of ripe persimmons, which everyone thinks are tomatoes, by an artist in a tiny town in Nova Scotia, whose garden filled with wildflowers enticed you into her studio.  Everywhere are reminders of your lifetime of decisions, arguments when you felt so angry you wanted to leave, days when you felt lonely.  Wasted emotions you regret. You eat soup every night for dinner, sometimes with chunks of squash, carrots, mushrooms in rich seasoned broth from the farmer’s market, sometimes the salty brew from the familiar red and white can of your childhood.  You spoon coffee gelato, the flavor only you liked, directly out of the pint plastic container, unable to stop yourself from having just one more spoonful, until the spoon is empty. Some in your situation find new companions through random meetings, others on   dating apps, which you’ve eschewed as phony, frightening, and foolish. Leaving you, secretly envious, to wonder what is wrong with you. You imagine a meeting on an airplane, in an art class, a wedding, a memorial service. Thoughts that tantalize and terrify. You do not return to your previous “usual” side of the bed, the side closer to the bathroom, which you relinquished to make it easier.  You sleep on a third of the bed, narrowing yourself as if in a coffin. You treat the rest of the bed with reverence and the spot for your new leap-of-faith puppy.   Epilogue  You feel less incompetent with each necklace clasped. In the morning, you smooth wrinkles from the blankets and tug your new quilt tight, just the way you like it. So you can slip under them at night. Alone. A compact exploration of widowhood. I live outside Washington, DC, and am part of a small women writers’ workshop.  I have published pieces in Wild Greens, Months to Years, Struggle Magazine, and Five Minutes 100 Words.

On a sunny, bright blue June morning—likely the last day of his nine-month-long teaching career—Randy Shep slouched on a hot metal folding chair next to his soon-to-be-ex-fellow teachers, facing the crowd of students and parents, and sweating through his shirt. The queasy and anxious thoughts about his future that had clouded Randy’s mind over the past week had now congealed into sour and grudging resignation about his present circumstance: if he wanted to get his last full paycheck and to leave this job on a good-enough note, he would have to make it through today’s Celebration of Excellence!  and somehow pretend to give a shit. The 1980 sixth-grade graduating class of Camino Alto Elementary School sat on the new lunch benches—under a canopy that the district had somehow found money for—nice and comfortable. Their parents were behind them, fumbling with Polaroids and flowers wrapped in crackling cellophane, talking away. One dad, taping the whole graduation ceremony on a giant Betamax camera with a furry microphone, kept standing up to pan back and forth.  Behind the audience, late-model family cars filled the teacher’s parking area. Mercedes coupes, Volvo station wagons, black BMW sedans, and more than one new Porsche were crammed into the lot. A burgundy Alfa Romeo convertible was parked on an angle in Randy’s usual spot, blocking half of the next space. Randy had been forced to park his rusty Datsun half a mile away. Proposition 13 had paid for a lot of those new cars. Two years ago, most Californians had listened to Howard Jarvis and passed his Prop 13, cutting property taxes for themselves, and the state government made up the deficit by gutting school budgets. So, while these parents drank rosé and ate quiche on their decks with beach access, Randy and his wife Joanie had rented a house they could afford at the edge of town. They watched the ground near their home for rattlers, and coyotes hunting through the sagebrush at dusk. The other sixth-grade teachers hissed and glared or snapped their fingers and pointed when one of their students stopped paying attention or started to pull a stunt. Randy half-heartedly tried to quiet his bunch, who were in the first row twenty feet in front of him. The Miller twins were at one end, bickering in matching checkered dresses. Bobby Corn was next to them, picking at a big scab on his knee, and the other Bobby, Bobby Flake, was flossing his teeth with a strand of his own hair. Mikey, Todd, Tom, David, Josh, Patrick, and Scott were taking turns punching each other in the arm or sticking their wet index fingers in each other’s ears. Stephanie, Christine, Michelle, and Samantha alternated between whispering and scowling at the boys horsing around next to them. Mary was being ignored by the four of them, and Zoë, wearing her older sister’s Circle Jerks tee shirt again, was drawing the anarchy “A” symbol on her leg with a purple Sanford felt pen. Next to her, Jonathan, big dopey grin, hummed “Another One Bites the Dust.” In the middle of the chaos sat Donnie, who tried very hard to blend into the middle of elementary school. Bowl-cut white-blonde hair, blue eyes, spray of freckles across his nose, wearing the typical all-weather Southern California boy uniform: Ocean Pacific short sleeve shirt, matching two-tone corduroy shorts, checkered slip-on Vans. He did his homework—and his test scores were high—but you could see he didn’t like the days he was pulled out of regular class for gifted program activities. He volunteered to clean up after art projects or to pass out milk cartons at lunch, but not too much or too often. Sometimes, he played with Jonathan when no one else would, or helped Zoë trace a picture of Siouxsie Sioux, or said hello to Mary, but never so much for anyone to notice or remember. If pressed, Stephanie, Christine, Michelle and Samantha would think about it for a minute and then say he was “sweet,” and he wasn’t the first or last pick when Mikey and the boys played football. He was decent to the gross Bobbies but kept his distance and, unlike Randy, could tell which Miller twin was which, but rarely sat near them at lunch. He never fought or mouthed off or pranked anyone, and if he knew what nonsense his classmates were up to behind the snack shack, he stayed clear of any trouble, and never snitched.  Right now, though, Donnie sat stiffly, his eyes radiating discomfort, darting left at the kids talking too loudly, then right at the kids about to throw real punches, then up at the teachers, then locking onto the principal walking up to the podium. Randy’s lineup of pre-teen troublemakers was causing a scene, and there wasn’t anywhere for Donnie to hide. Donnie’s expression froze.  Now that the student names had been read, the principal spoke, loud and sharp enough to startle Randy’s class and shut them up for a minute. “While we are here to celebrate the graduating sixth grade class of 1980, we are also saying farewell to someone from our Camino Alto family.” Here we go. Randy stopped staring at Donnie, sat up straight, and adjusted the black armband he had made last night from one of Joanie’s old Polyester scarves. He twisted around a bit to show it off. Betamax dad noticed, stood up and adjusted the zoom. Randy looked right at the lens and smiled. “One of our beloved—” said the principal. He turned and glanced at Randy’s black armband. “—teachers will not be returning to our school next year.” The principal paused again, maybe debating whether this was a good idea, then turned to the parents. “I’d like for Mr. Shep to stand up. Let’s show our appreciation for all his hard work and dedication to your sons and daughters.” Randy stood up. He smiled and slowly waved, making sure everyone got a good look at his black armband. A handful of parents applauded; the few handclaps sounded tinny as they bounced off the stucco walls of the courtyard. Betamax stopped filming and changed a tape. Randy kept standing and turned to look at the principal. Randy waited another moment, watching the principal about to say something. Randy sat down. The principal exhaled and turned back to the audience. “A fun day ahead. Three-legged races. Then our famous cakewalk. Teacher-Student softball game starts at two PM.” The parents gave a hearty round of applause. Randy looked over at Donnie. Donnie sat there, relieved. Donnie smiled at the principal. The principal winked at Donnie. The same principal who had pulled Randy into his little triangular office last week and, as the last bell rang, started talking about budget cuts, used the word “redundancy” twice, said that certain contracts could not be renewed, and ended by telling Randy he was laid off. The same principal who happened to be Donnie’s dad.  The ceremony ended. Randy ducked out. # While Randy walked to his—well, what used to be his—classroom to grab the rest of his stuff, he replayed the parent’s halfhearted clapping in his head. The silence as he stood up with his armband. The principal winking at Donnie. As he turned the corner of the building, Randy felt a hot electrical pulse of resentment ripple through his body. A neighborhood dog—the big brown mutt, the one that wandered into the schoolyard daily and looked like the bear on the California state flag—was dropping the last of a giant dump outside Randy’s classroom door. The dog looked at Randy as it straightened its back and padded away. Randy stepped over the soft mountain of crap and slammed the door behind him. He crossed the classroom, sat down at his desk, opened a drawer, lit a Kool, and ejected a plume of blue cigarette smoke over the rows of empty tables. The swirl of particles floated in the streams of light from the high windows. The clock above the chalkboard ticked forward, paused, ticked backwards, then ticked forward again. Randy seethed, waiting for the nicotine to kick in.  Randy had spent his first—and maybe only—school year as a teacher in this classroom. The kids had cleaned it out earlier in the week. They had taken down their California history posters, math concept diagrams, illustrated short stories, and rubbed tinfoil artwork, leaving behind an assortment of thumbtacks stuck into the mustard yellow fabric wall. On the low shelf where they’d displayed their reforestation dioramas, bits of dried-up clay and green pipe cleaner lay next to an empty tape dispenser. Plastic olive-green chairs were stored upside down, chrome legs sticking up in the air. One chewed-up pencil lay on the linoleum floor next to a rubber band and a Now and Later candy wrapper. A paper airplane, which until now had been stuck by the tip of its nose between two ceiling tiles, suddenly dropped down, made a loop, and shot straight towards Randy’s face, hitting him square in the forehead. Randy crumpled the plane and tossed it across the room. Randy dragged a moving box across his desk, tipped it back, and looked inside: his high school baseball glove that he would need for this afternoon; the roller skates he’d used to show Newton’s first law of physics by rolling across the playground, letting the kids whip cherry balls at him to try and knock him down with an “unbalanced force;” the videotapes he used to record PBS for rained-out afternoon recesses. Randy spent weeks dialing that antenna controller back and forth to get a good TV signal on his old Zenith to catch the full season of Connections.  James Burke—professorial Irish brogue, leisure suits, thick glasses—laid out centuries of consequences. Like how the dukes of Burgundy were the first to use credit to buy armor, which ended up creating larger armies. Those bigger armies needed food that didn’t spoil, which led to bottled food. Those bottles led to the idea of refrigeration, which, in turn, led to Sir James Dewar creating a thermos that could keep liquids hot or cold—and, next thing you know, the Germans use that idea to send V2 rockets across the channel and smash into London. Some of the kids paid attention—Donnie did, now that Randy thought about it—and only acted up when Randy forgot one episode had topless Medieval women running around a bath house. Randy pushed the box back and sniffed. The room had the same overpowering odor it had the whole year: Formula 409, Ditto ink, a splash of sour milk. Even Randy’s fresh cigarette smoke was undetectable, swallowed into the air. Randy’s stomach knotted. He felt his resolve to be pragmatic today transform into something denser, heavier, and sharper. Randy picked up his box and walked toward the door, stopping where Donnie sat all year. Randy set his box down and stubbed out his cigarette in the pencil groove of Donnie’s table. Randy lit another, grabbed his box, and walked out, stepping over the dogshit. # Randy made way across the blacktop playground to the baseball field. He reached the shuttered snack shack next to third base and placed his box on the dented metal counter. He leaned against the wall and flicked his cigarette butt into the dirt. Soon the parents would be walking over to the bleachers for the big game. Randy pulled out the joint he’d brought for the occasion, stuck it in his mouth, and headed to the rear of the snack shack, flipping his lighter open. Randy heard voices.  “Dude. Awesome,” said someone, voice breaking on “awesome.” “Do it do it do it,” said someone else, followed by peals of snotty laughter. Mikey, Todd, Tom, David, Josh, Patrick, and Scott turned to Randy, and their mouths dropped open. Scott’s grip on a plastic garbage bag slipped, and a dozen water balloons rolled out on to the gravel. One popped and splashed over Scott’s navy blue Keds sneakers. Randy recognized the giant slingshot-like contraption that Mikey, Todd, and Tom were about to use. The Funnelator—six feet of surgical tubing with a duct taped plastic paint funnel in the middle serving as a pouch for a wide variety of projectiles—was a formidable and economical weapon, favored equally by thrifty delinquents and fun-loving idiots all over Southern California. Todd and Tom, standing almost eight feet apart, strained to hold on to the taught silicone stretched out between them. Mikey, crouched on the ground between Todd and Tom and leaning back hard, had pulled the duct-taped paint funnel at the center back nearly ten feet. He was about to launch the first water balloon round over the snack shack, right into the crowd of parents watching the end of the cakewalk a football field away. “Uh-oh,” grunted David. For a moment, Randy regretted interrupting them. Seeing a parent take one to the head might’ve lightened his mood. There was a pause. Randy could hear the tubing squeak as Mikey struggled to hold on. Mikey tilted his head quizzically. “What’s that in your mouth?” Randy remembered the joint hanging off his lower lip. He pulled it out and stuffed it back into his shirt pocket.  “Drop it,” said Randy, pointing at the Funnelator.  Randy held out his hand as Mikey, Todd, and Tom shuffled closer together, releasing the tension. Mikey hung the Funnelator from Randy’s outstretched palm and stepped back. Randy looked at Scott and the half empty bag of water balloons and pointed to the oil drum trash can next to the back wall of the snack shack. Scott shuffled over and dumped the bag, followed by Josh and Patrick carrying the balloons that had rolled out on the ground. Six of the boys had worried expressions. Mikey—who, Randy was pretty sure, had at least two stoner brothers in high school—looked less worried and started to open his mouth.   “Get out of here,” said Randy. All seven looked at each other, then bolted back across the field. Randy leaned against the snack shack wall, dropped the Funnelator, pulled out his joint again, and popped it back into his mouth. He looked down at the Funnelator lying in the dirt. Can’t leave it here. Too easy. Can’t tell the principal. Mikey knew what he’d seen. Bury it in lost and found, that was the answer: someone, probably looking for their retainer, would pull the Funnelator from the mountain of forgotten surfer ponchos and unleash a new reign of terror. Randy would be long gone. Not his problem. Randy lit the joint, and took one nice, long, deep hit. He licked his index finger and dabbed spit onto the cherry. He picked up the Funnelator, stuffed it into his box, and took off across the field towards the school office. As Randy walked, he looked at the bleachers now filling up with parents. To the right of home plate, Betamax had claimed a prime part of the row in front. Some kids were running around on the infield, haphazardly tossing the ball back and forth, missing grounders, overreacting, and slamming their mitts into the dust. The teachers were gossiping, leaning against the low chain-link fence lining the visitor’s dugout.  Donnie was in the outfield. His mitt looked expensive, and he was wearing a new Padres cap. Randy looked straight ahead and quickened his pace. Opposite the field, near the library, the principal was chatting it up with the district superintendent. The superintendent stopped talking, leaned to her right, and glanced at Randy over the principal’s shoulder. The principal turned to look at Randy, turned back to the superintendent, said something to her, and then both laughed. Randy felt nauseated. The weight inside him lurched. Heat bloomed behind his eyes. Randy reached the empty front office, stood outside the open door, and set down his box on the concrete. Across from the interior entrance to the principal’s office was the school secretary’s desk. Behind it was the bulging cardboard lost and found box. Randy whipped the Funnelator across the room. It slapped the back wall and fell onto the top of the jacket pile.  Randy picked up his box and took the long way back to the field, avoiding the principal and superintendent. Randy stopped behind a corner to look at two of them. The superintendent shrugged at the principal, headed to the parking lot, and drove off. The principal walked into the office and shut the door. Randy made it to the teacher’s dugout, flopped down at the end, tucked his box under the bench, and leaned back into the chain link fence. Gail, who had just hit her two-year mark and made tenure, sat down next to him. “Randy, it’s going to be ok." “No, it isn’t.” said Randy. # By the bottom of the last inning, teachers were up by two, the kids were at bat with bases loaded, and Randy stood out in left field.  Donnie walked out of the dugout, popped a too-large batting helmet over his Padres cap, and took a few practice swings over home plate. Gail—who had been playing catcher—waved at Randy, who pretended not to see her. Each of the teachers had taken turns at the mound, tossing three easy pitches to make it a fair game, and, so far, Randy had avoided his turn. Gail waved again, and then pointed at the pitcher’s mound. Randy ignored her. Gail stood up from her crouch behind home plate. Donnie broke his batting stance and stepped back as Gail marched across the infield, right up to Randy. “Your turn,” said Gail. “You need to pitch.” “Get someone else.” “Randy,” said Gail. “I’m sorry you got laid off. We all are. But they’re kids and their parents are right there in the stands. It’s not their fault and they are kids and it’s their graduation day.” Gail held out her hand with the ball. “These are the good times.” Randy looked over at Donnie. He looked at Gail. He grabbed the ball out of her hand. Gail started to say something more, but Randy took off towards the mound. She ran ahead and returned to her crouch behind home plate. Donnie stepped back into his stance. Donnie drew in his breath and focused, looking expectant, confident as he twirled the tip of his bat. Randy had seen this Donnie once before. A month ago, Randy had promised the class that the lift and drag diagrams he had drawn on the noisy overhead projector would pay off with something fun. He had opened a ream of crisp white letter-sized paper and passed out stapled packets with instructions for a dozen different paper airplanes. “Or make your own,” said Randy. “It’s a contest.” While the rest of the kids folded one or two planes and started whipping them at each other, Donnie had taken a quarter inch pile of paper. He sat at his desk, ignoring the planes zipping over his head, creasing subtle changes into his designs, and carefully stacking each version into a shoebox.  The next day, Randy took his class on a field trip down into the state park bordering the school. They wound their way through the sunny and hot chapparal, taking a far switchback trail up to the top of a large canyon that opened out to the beach. The slow ocean breeze—a little humid, with a hint of drying kelp even this far from the water—drafted up the canyon, gently buffeted the sage brush, and whistled in the few pine trees lining the flat ridge where Randy and his class stood in a semicircle. Randy’s class pulled out their creations. They were supposed to go one at a time, but within seconds, the air was filled with planes making clumsy arcs, smacking into tree trunks, flopping down into the dirt, or tearing into backwards loops and nearly scoring headshots on the kids who threw the planes in the first place.  Donnie waited until the air was clear. Randy saw that Donnie’s plane was different than the others. Crisp winglets, carefully angled flaps, and what looked like a thicker, heavier set of folds at the nose. Donnie pinched the plane between his thumb and index finger and cocked his arm. He took a breath, focused, brought his arm forward, and lightly snapped his wrist, sending his plane curving upwards into the wind.  Randy kept watching Donnie’s face as the plane caught a thermal. The kids around him started yelping as it soared higher. Donnie ignored them and watched his plane sweep and glide in the air. For the first time Randy could think of, Donnie looked like he didn’t care who was watching or what was happening around him.  Now, as Randy stood on the pitcher’s mound remembering that moment, something inside him started to give way. His thoughts tumbled loose. He could feel them smash together, their sharp edges punching holes in each other, the whole jagged mess tearing through his body, falling into his stomach, and imploding. He remembered the paper plane rising and floating. He remembered how he had felt happy for Donnie. He remembered that Donnie’s dad put him out of a job. He remembered those parents and their cars and their houses, and that Gail and the principal and all the other teachers would be back next year. He remembered people around him would have money and careers and lives and everyone except himself would be just fine.  Randy threw the ball as hard as he had ever thrown a ball in his life. The slap against Gail’s mitt caused everyone in the stands to look at her, and then Randy. Betamax swung the camera away from some kids making faces and towards Randy. Gail stood up and glared as she tossed the ball back to Randy. He caught it and shrugged. Donnie hadn’t even been able to swing. Randy rifled it again. “What’s he doing?” murmured someone in the bleachers. Gail threw the ball at Randy hard, mouthing, “Stop.” Slap. Again. That was it. Randy was breathing hard. His skin tingled. His peripheral vision shimmered.  Donnie tossed the bat. It landed with a dull aluminum thud. He walked towards the dugout, looking down. “Dogshit,” he said, just loud enough for Randy to hear. “What?” Randy heard himself saying, feeling himself leave the pitcher’s mound and walking right up to Donnie. Donnie stopped and looked up. Tears rimmed his eyes. He balled his fists and turned to face Randy. “What did you say?” asked Randy. Donnie’s cheeks were pink. His mouth trembled. Tears jetted down. His breathing hitched. He looked back at the stands, then the dugout, the school, the front office.   “I asked you a question,” said Randy. “DOGSHIT,” yelped Donnie, startling the crowd. “I SAID THAT WAS DOGSHIT.”   “Your poor sportsmanship,” said Randy, shaking his head, “sets a bad example.” Donnie shook, breathing hard. He started to say something but stopped and gritted his teeth. “I will see you,” said Randy, “in your father’s office.” Randy pointed. “Go.” Donnie’s eyes darkened. He turned and walked past the dugout and out across the field. His team stifled giggles as he passed. Jonathan reprised “Another One Bites the Dust.” Randy walked back to the pitcher’s mound, taking in the silence of the crowd. Betamax lowered his camera. Gail, her jaw clenched, tossed the ball back. Randy pitched one last, nice, slow ball to Mikey, who sent it flying over center field and past the chain link fence. The stands were quiet until the ball hit the grass. Mikey’s dad stood up and let out a guttural yell, followed by the rest of the crowd clapping for the grand slam. The game ended and the kids cheered “2-4-6-8. Who do we appreciate? Teachers!” Randy grabbed his box from under the dugout bench and walked away from the crowd towards the school office. # The door to the front office was open, but the lights were off. Randy stepped inside. His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he saw Donnie sitting at the school secretary’s desk, slowly swiveling in the chair in front of the big lost and found box. He was cradling an open backpack in his lap. There was can of Sunkist orange soda in front of him. “Randy,” said the principal, leaning out of the doorway to his office. “A word?” Randy followed him into the cramped triangular room. A bookcase holding thick three-ring binders with neatly hand-lettered labels loomed behind his desk. Framed class and staff pictures formed a grid on the wall. A baseball glove from the 1930s lay on his desk, next to an open package of lemon cookies. The principal shut the door. “Randy,” the principal started, holding up a finger before Randy could speak. “I’m sorry you lost your job. Those decisions come from the district.” He pointed to Randy’s black armband. “I get it. You’re angry. But taking it out on a kid? My kid?” “Poor sportsmanship—” said Randy. “You humiliated him in front of his friends. His friend’s parents. Teachers.” the principal said. “This is what’s going to happen. We’re going to walk out this door, my son will apologize, you’ll accept it, you’ll drive away, and that will be it.” The principal opened the door, gesturing for Randy to walk out. Donnie zipped up his backpack. “I’m sorry I said dogshit,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. He picked up the can of Sunkist, took a sip, and walked out. “Goodbye Randy,” said the principal, stepping back into his office and closing the door. Randy stood and listened to the clock tick. # On the drive home, Randy stopped by the 7-Eleven. While he paid for two six-packs of Olympia, three Camino Alto kids at the new Asteroids  machine shot looks at him and whispered. Randy got back in his Datsun, pulled out his joint, lit it, and swerved out of the parking lot, cutting off a white station wagon as he made the left turn heading out to the back country. East of town, and past the new freeway, the housing developments stopped. Where the street’s four freshly paved lanes switched to cracked concrete, he pulled off and headed down the uneven road into the canyon. Randy and Joanie’s rental—a peach colored ranch with a chipped orange tile roof—sat next to a dusty trailhead and faced a steep cliff. Randy pulled up to the front of the house, grabbed his beer, and walked across the lawn. “I’ve done the math,” said Joanie, arms folded, leaning against her yellow Nova in the driveway. “Rent, utilities, gas, food, student loans. The numbers are in the kitchen.” She shook her head. “I’ll tell you one number right now. Twelve. You, Randy Shep, are twelve years older than that little boy.” Joanie flicked her cigarette at Randy and got into her car. Randy caught a bit of ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” from the radio as she accelerated up the street. Gail must have called her. Randy would be on his own tonight. Randy opened the garage door, turned on the radio, unfolded a beach chair, and sat down in the middle of the driveway. He opened a beer and closed his eyes. # Randy was drunk by sunset. The streetlight flickered on as the sky darkened to deep blue. The large pine tree that sat at the top of the cliff across the street became silhouetted, it’s Y-split trunk framing the last light of day. KFRQ’s “Friday Night Freaque-Out” thumped. Randy was a six-pack in, and Average White Band was feeling better than average. The aluminum frame of the beach chair scraped against the concrete driveway as he shimmied in his seat and tapped his foot. “Pick Up the Pieces” segued into “You Should Be Dancing”, and Randy squeaked out his best Barry Gibb. Randy tried to stand up, slipped, rolled onto his knees, then bounced up to the bass kicking in on “I’m Coming Out.” He kicked the beach chair across the driveway onto the lawn and stumbled into the garage. Where was his box? Bingo. Randy yanked out his roller skates, spun the wheels and loosened the laces from the top eyelets. Back against the wall, he slid down to the ground, kicked off his shoes, and pulled on the skates. Chic came on and Randy was up and carving loops around the driveway to “Good Times”, grooving like it was senior year back at Skate King. Randy spun in place and stopped, hands on his hips, lit by the sodium glow of the streetlight. He breathed in the smoggy night air. The dark mass inside of him was now a black hole. He could feel himself being pulled down and crushed, but there was a rush of euphoria, too. Everything was fucked, he thought, so fuck everything. Fuck these rich people, fuck their cars, fuck their houses, fuck their property tax breaks. Fuck that school, fuck that principal, and fuck Donnie. Before it hit him in the face, Randy sensed something flying at him, fast. A warm, wet mass slapped the bridge of his nose and spread explosively from ear to ear, chin to hairline. The stench filled his nostrils, and realizing it was in his mouth too, he jerked backwards and gagged, throwing himself off balance. His legs flew out from under him, and for a moment Randy was parallel to the concrete, roller skate wheels spinning violently in the air. He hit the pavement and smacked the back of his head. The buh buh buh ah rumbumbumbumbabump  of “Another One Bites the Dust” rumbled out of the radio. After a moment, Randy sat up and checked for blood at the back of his head. He pressed gently into the swelling bump and looked at his fingers. Nothing. He crawled over to the beach chair on the lawn and dragged himself up to sit, his legs splayed out in front of him.  He untied the black armband he had been wearing all day and used it to wipe the dogshit off his face. # Joanie found Randy at dawn. Still sitting in the lawn chair, he woke up as she pulled off the roller skates. He winced as he got up. She folded the beach chair and bagged up the empty Olympia cans that had rolled onto the lawn. She left the black armband alone. Randy touched his face. Traces of dogshit had dried into crusty streaks. He pulled off a shred of flimsy plastic grocery store vegetable bag stuck to his forehead. He looked across the street and up at the pine tree on the cliff, glowing brightly in the sharp sunrise light. Something was new. Tied between the Y of the tree trunk was the Funnelator. A pair of yellow kitchen gloves hung neatly from the surgical tubing. Randy thought of Donnie zipping up his backpack, casually walking out of the school office. Joanie handed Randy a damp rag. “Clean up.” Randy pointed to the tree. “Look! Fucking Donnie. The Funnelator. Fuck! It had to be. He shot me with dogshit! In a bag! He stuffed dogshit in a plastic bag and shot me in the face!” “Toss your armband before you come indoors,” said Joanie as she walked inside the house. # Randy showered and dressed. The bump on the back of his head throbbed. He walked from the back bedroom to the kitchen, pushed through the swinging doors, and stifled a gasp. The principal was sitting at the breakfast table with Joanie. A half-empty coffee pot sat between them. “Randy,” said the principal. He stood up. “The district is desperate for people to teach this summer. The superintendent found enough contingent staff budget to cover it. She called last night to tell me and to ask me to take care of getting the teaching positions filled. Personally.” Joanie sipped her coffee. “I’ve been told to bring you back.” The principal turned to Joanie and thanked her. He turned back to Randy. “Donnie liked you. He would come home and talk about the projects you had them do. How you’d roller skate around for a physics experiment. Those Connections  episodes you had them watch. Even after yesterday, he mentioned the paper airplanes. I asked him: what did you learn from all of that? ‘One thing leads to another,’ he said.” The principal showed himself out. # Randy kept his mouth shut about what had happened that night. Eventually he was hired back full-time and spent his career at different schools in the district. Within a few years, even whispers of graduation day 1980 faded, and Betamax’s video—trapped on an obsolete format—never surfaced. Randy’s students graduated from solid universities and had nice families and did good things. Sometimes one would be visiting home and remember Randy at the supermarket. Randy and Joanie saved up enough to buy their rented house. The land around them was developed into some of the most coveted real estate in the area. Prop 13 kept their property taxes low, and Randy ditched his Datsun for an Escort, and, eventually, a series of Taurus sedans. The principal retired, and twenty years after that—just after the principal passed away—Randy and Joanie sat under cool canopied benches at the recently rebuilt Camino Alto Academy campus, listening to the dedication ceremony for the school’s new engineering laboratory and workshop complex named in the principal’s honor. A tall man in an expensive suit approached the podium. Donnie—well, it was Donnell   now—adjusted the microphone. Darker hair cropped short. Same blue eyes behind stainless-steel eyeglass frames. Tanned, with faded freckles across the bridge of his nose. Donnell had made billions from his stealth defense startup. His company created “advanced machine learning algorithms” and “autonomous flight guidance and precision targeting” for their “economical nano-drone hardware.” Applied Ballistics Corporation became the country’s premier supplier of “smart projectiles” made from sustainable materials. Green, cheap, and easy to assemble in the field. Donnell spoke about his father, the school, the teachers, and the community in a measured and warm tone. He announced a donation to the school that made the audience gasp. He stepped back. As others spoke, Donnell slowly scanned the audience. For a second, Randy thought Donnell looked directly at him, but Donnell’s gaze passed right by. After the ceremony, Randy waited for Joanie at the entrance to the teacher’s parking lot. He searched for Donnell’s company on his phone and tapped on a video. The first scene showed soldiers folding small laser cut sheets of stiff transparent paper into shapes that looked like razor-sharp miniature paper airplanes. The video graphics pointed out the fire control and navigation circuitry printed on the wings, the recycled battery, the miniaturized high torque motor, the bamboo rotor blades at the rear, and the glaze of explosive material coating everything. Racks of completed planes leaned against a sandbagged wall. In the next scene, three soldiers were behind a concrete building. Two of them stood several feet apart and held onto thick elastic bands. Between them, the third soldier crouched, leaned back, let go, and slingshotted dozens of the nearly invisible planes into the dusty air. Each one quietly whirred to life and whispered away in multiple directions. The soldiers started laughing as explosions cracked and screams echoed in the distance. Someone had dubbed “Another One Bites the Dust” over the footage. Randy looked up from his phone and saw a big clump of people headed straight for him, fast. Donnell was in the middle, shaking hands, comfortable in the crowd. Randy couldn’t get out of the way in time. The mass of people pushed him to the side, forcing him off balance. Rolf Ebeling is a product design manager at a technology company in Seattle and lives with his family in Kirkland, Washington. In his previous career in New York, he worked at Newsweek and Scientific American magazines.

She worships at his feet. She doesn’t care that I exist. She stands at the foot of the stage, looking up at him with adoring eyes, his face stretched in monochrome across her little round breasts, the knots of her nipples poking through at his illustrated cheeks. She submits her lithe body to the rhythms of his sound, her slender midriff writhing, head rolling, hair flying in orgasmic supplication. She leans levered over the barricade, a flower reaching for sunlight, her bronze skin shining with the heat of his rhythms, the heat of the venue, the heat of the lights and the dimmers and the pumping amps, the heat of 5,000 other bodies, just like hers, surging to the rhythmic trance of his music. He stands in his exalted place, before her on the thrust of the stage, his guitar the scepter in his hands, his pulpit the semicircle of monitor wedges I arrange for him each day and mix for him each night, his mixes the ones most frequently in the cue wedge beside me as I listen for any problems, any feedback, any ringing in his vocal mic. The two wedges at his sides feed him the sounds of his backing band and his own guitar. The two in front of him—between her and him—carry nothing but his own voice, bone dry and carefully tuned, with a 31-band equalizer all to itself in the rack beside my elbow. At his feet, the printed set lists taped to the stage each night by his guitar tech, the name of tonight’s town handwritten in magic marker block letters, blue this time. His high-end tube microphone handled only by his tech, set up on the boom stand that I provide, a respectful distance from his guitar and decorated with colorful scarves, the mic cord wrapped discreetly, a friction clip loaded with guitar picks, which he flicks out to his fans as if coins to a crowd of beggars. Even though she is almost at his feet, he doesn’t pick her out of the crowd, doesn’t appreciate her glistening beauty as I do, doesn’t deserve her focused attention, her nipples poking at his cheeks. He has all the attention in this great hall, 10,000 eyes caressing his rugged face, his beaded locs, the wiry muscles of his arms and chest exposed by the colorful vest that serves as his shirt. Even I, lurking black t-shirt in my shadowy corner, serve to exalt him, my desk of dials, knobs, and faders solely dedicated to making sure he and his band of hired guns can hear themselves, can hear each other, can hear him, his guitar, his voice, the unexpected orders he sometimes calls out, cueing his assembled musicians to make sudden turns in new and unexpected directions. He has their full attention, the backline hanging on his every whim. He really should have my full attention as well, although the hard part of my job was done before the doors opened and the crowd surged in and the rows of seats were rendered obsolete. Maybe he does see her, right there at his feet. But she is just one of 5,000 here for his show, easily a 100 of whom, on any given night, as on so many nights before, would follow him at a crook of his finger, out to the buses gleaming behind the building, beside the eight-bunk bus for his backing band, into his own bus, the most luxurious, tucked closest to the building, tied into the venue’s electricity and water and sewer, and would follow him into the stateroom where he rests in satin-sheet luxury while I collapse in a console lid—or a truck sleeper, or a hotel room if I’m really lucky—and would give themselves to him for the taking, if only so they could say they had done it. Maybe she is one of those women. Those girls. Maybe she’s old enough that it wouldn't be illegal. Maybe she isn’t old enough, and it would be illegal, but the weed smoke thick in the air, intoxicating us all along with his music, hints that maybe illegal doesn’t matter all that much. I watch her bouncing, grooving to his rhythms, worshiping him with her eyes and with her body, and I grip the edge of my desk as I picture her doing the same in the luxurious stateroom of his bus, his face no longer screen-printed across her round little breasts, her torso writhing just like that, her nipples knotted like that between his strong fingers, her skirt discarded, or perhaps draped around her legs and his pelvis, tented around the place where his body thrusts into hers, while she grooves and sweats to his driving rhythms, raises her arms, and lifts her hair to cool her hot nape. Yes, just like that, as the song comes to an end and she drops out of her wild dancing to fan herself and catch her breath. “Yo! Monitors!” The bassist’s voice shouts my de-facto name on this tour, on any tour really, dragging my attention away from her, back to this stage, which is my job. I see him gesture a what-the-fuck, the drummer beyond him also looking at me with panic in his eyes. Something sounds wrong. The stage sounds wrong. I scan my rig in a panic, the bridge gauges illuminated as they should be, the rack of equalizers and compressors still lit up beside me, and I’m about to look underneath at the racks of amplifiers at my knees when I see the row of bright red lights, one at the fader for each channel on the board, activated by the illuminated red button forgotten beneath my thumb, the button labeled “D”, the programmable scene mute that a lot of us set up as a sort of parking brake, one button to mute every channel on the entire board. The button that I seem to have accidentally pressed as I gripped the edges of the desk, while she was riding him like that, there in the climate-controlled stateroom of his bus. I press that illuminated red button and the row of bright red lights goes out. The stage sounds like it should again. I look up to grimace an apology as the star of the show—the man whose name is on every poster, on every ticket in every pocket, the man whose art and charisma carries the entire six-figure economy of tonight’s show—glances at me over his shoulder from his pulpit of monitors.  The girl who is watching his every move, her eyes follow his, and for the first time, she sees me, at my electronic desk in my shadowy wing, sweating in my filthy t-shirt, my face hot with shame. Jay Parr (he/they) was a roadie a long time ago. He lives with his partner and child in North Carolina, where he did an MFA at UNCG in the early '00s and is now a lecturer in their online liberal and interdisciplinary studies program. He's honored to have work in Bending Genres, Cutbow Quarterly, the Mirrors Reflecting Shadows anthology, Five Minutes, Mid-Level Management Magazine, Reckon Review, Roi Fainéant, Bullshit Lit, Identity Theory, SugarSugarSalt, Anti-Heroin Chic, Dead Skunk Magazine, Discretionary Love, Streetcake Magazine, and Variant Literature Journal.

It was going to be a dark and stormy night. Watching the clouds roll across the horizon, I anticipated a crack from the thunder that was due to come. Depending on how close the storm was, we could feel the house shake. I learnt my lesson from that one violent storm where I kept working and a lightning strike caused a blackout that wiped my computer clean. Now, whenever I sensed a storm coming, it meant I got a paid night off. That's what made those nights the best nights. Amelia always thought I was too busy for her – except for those nights. We even began to create an impromptu ritual. She pretended to be scared, and of course, her big, strong dad would come in and save the day!  “Dad, Dad! Look! It’s going to rain.” “Oh no Amelia! What if the power went out? I should probably get the torches and put new batteries in, huh?” As her eyes lit up brighter than the torches ever could, she hurriedly walked to the lounge area, putting away all her toys in anticipation. As I walked around the corner, I snuck my head back. I watched her clean faster, and more productively than ever before. Just so she didn’t think I was spying, I picked up the torches, and headed back.  “Torches, check.” “Room cleared, check!”  “Amelia, what else do we need?” “Pillows! Blankets!” “Haha! Of course, we need to build our castle to protect us from the storm!” Brigid stuck her head out from the kitchen, wanting to play along too. Resigned to the fact that she could never surpass me as the cool parent, finding lesser roles to play during the daddy-daughter adventure was the only way she knew how to be included.  “I suppose I’m on S’mores duty again. You weren’t happy with my last fort!” Amelia gasped in excitement. “Really Mum? S’mores? Am I able to eat lots this time?” “Depends on how good you and your father build the castle.” The first crack of the storm broke through our discussions, and I looked at Amelia with a serious look on my face.  “Oh no, the storm seems to be coming early! We need to build quick! Mum might need to work on the S’mores too – you know, so we don’t run out of energy.”  “Ok, ok, I know when I’m not wanted.” Brigid walked back into the kitchen and began preparing the S’mores. We knew she meant business when we could hear multiple packets open, with the biscuits making a loud sound as they tumbled onto a plate, awaiting production. Knowing we had to make sure that it was built before she came back with our sugary feast, Amelia and I started collecting everything to get the build started. “C’mon Amelia. Let’s try to get it organised before your Mum gets back with snacks.” Using chairs to create corners, we then started stacking the lounge pillows to create a wall. Carefully, we draped the blanket in between chairs to make our doorway. I wanted to create something special - something actually suggested by Brigid, that would completely change our rainy night adventures.  “Amelia, could you go in the kitchen, and see how long mum needs before our S’mores would be ready?” “Of course! Don’t do too much without me though daddy.” “I won’t.” As soon as Amelia disappeared from sight, I got to work. I grabbed some of the smaller pillows and the orange blanket I purposely left to the side. I carefully crawled into the space laying the three cushions into a circle and put the blanket in the centre to create a rough mound shape. Forgetting the torch, I figured we could bring that in when I showed Amelia the set up. I quickly got back out and pretended to work on stabilising the wall. Amelia saw me, and thought I was doing more of the build without her.  “You said you would wait!”  “I was, the wall just looked a little unstable, so I was fixing it. Was Mum able to let you know about the food?” Brigid stuck her head out, pretending to be annoyed that I was asking too many questions. “It’s coming, it’s coming.”  “Fantastic! Amelia, if we’re careful, do you think we should eat them inside the castle?” Her eyes widened at the thought. “Really, can we?”  “Sure. You will need to take the torch with you, so you can see where you are going of course. It’s a big castle we built.” “Ok.”  Getting onto all fours, Amelia dragged the torch along the carpet whilst trying to enter. I followed closely and knew exactly when she saw it from her gasp. She instinctively sat on a cushion, waiting for me.  “Dad, why are there three pillows?” “Well, if Mum is bringing in the food, it’s only fair she gets to stay.” “Ok. MUM, ARE YOU COMING?” “Yes, yes, but you might need to hold the blanket door open for me.”  We all got into position, and I grabbed the torch that Amelia left to the side of her. I positioned it under my chin, and then turned the light on, illuminating my face in the most unflattering way.  “With all this spppoooookkky weather, what better thing to do than tell ghost stories by the campfire…”  “Can you start Dad? I want to eat one of Mum’s S’mores first.”  Joanne Macias is a multi-disciplinary writer from Sydney with multiple publications, both online and print. She is an alumnus of the Westwords Academy, having participated in 2023. Her works explore themes of discovery, identity, and internal strength. Although only writing for a short period, being creative was nothing new, as she is an avid photographer and line artist. Her art has been recognised and shared by well-known musicians and her first photo published with Illographo press. If not at her desk working on her debut YA novel, she is being distracted by her neighbour's cat. Follow her adventures at @joanne_macias­_writer

birthday toads children laugh singing sapo verde to you, some  green jumped-up  gringo from the top rope hit with a steel chair when the ref wasn’t looking bah gawd almighty  hummingbird in a wind tunnel for science, to see   why they’re so unflappable oh hey irony kid in the oral surgeon’s chair staring at his  hands transforming with gloves, oh boy he is now a mouse space bears i thought i misheard like ursa major, minor it bears  repeating J. R. Wilkerson is a DC-area resident by way of Lawrenceburg, Missouri.

Kihyana is sixteen and wears CDG and thrift store jeans three sizes too big. She likes stompy boots with spikes. She occasionally dyes her hair red. Kihyana is the hero of this story. In a different family, she could be the prodigal daughter, or Homer’s Odysseus, traveling the world to slay Cyclops and save villages. She would return home safe and sound to a family who welcomes her back from her adventures with joy. “Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother.” Kihyana’s life is more Cinderella than Little Red Riding Hood: whenever she calls me, she is cleaning the kitchen or babysitting her two sisters. When the youngest, Khiyumi, was born, she asked me, “But Grandma, isn’t three too many?” Kihyana gets stuck watching Khloee and Khiyumi because their mother needs her beauty sleep and can’t miss her favorite TV reality shows. And where was her father – my son -- in all this? (Where was Little Red’s father, when her mother was sending her out through the woods to bring goodies to her sick grandma?) Milo had been sentenced the summer before she was born, and went to jail a month after Kihyana’s birth. War on drugs. Other kinds of goodies. Now, he plied the grey market trying to feed a family of five in a Red State tough on crime. I sent all the money I could, trying to keep them off the streets from 800 miles away. The wolf-dog was the only stability in Kihyana’s life. I don’t think her escape will involve being saved by a huntsman or a prince. I hope she will live happily ever after. “Grandma, I pierced my lip.” “Why, sweetheart, why would you hurt yourself like that?” “Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me get it pierced, so I took a needle and did it myself.” I am appalled that my granddaughter – the gentlest, most vulnerable child, who saves turtles lost in the road and wouldn’t hurt a spider – has mutilated her body. In the Instagram post she sends me, her chin and throat dripping with blood, superimposed with “Kihyana Must Die.” Zuko the wolf-dog nuzzles her leg in the background. I want the blood to be fake. I want to be supportive, so I don’t ask.  The mother, who was named Carly or Cardi (you never knew which of her stories were truth, which delusion) but changed her name to Kharlie, “because Kharlie sounds like a celebrity’s name,” treated Kihyana as her doll, as if she owned her daughter’s body. She bleached and straightened four-year-old Kihyana’s hair until clumps fell out; pinched the pimples on her teenage daughter’s face, leaving dark spots on her nose and forehead; and posed her draped provocatively in mini skirts and tube tops to get likes on YouTube. What is most important is that the children look fashionable: “Clothes express who they are.” Kharlie insisted on picking out what the children wore until Kihyana refused, shredding the chosen garments and using them to pad the bed of her guinea pig’s cage. She pulled out the box braids Kharlie made her sit still for hours to put in, and started wearing her father’s undershirts and baggy jeans. This sent Kharlie into a rage. She cannot tolerate any hint of her daughter’s separate identity. “Kihyana is just like me.” Kihyana has grown taller than her mother, but she still winces at Kharlie’s wrath. The last time I saw her, Kihyana was wearing Kharlie’s “tummy trainer.” I stared in disbelief. ( Grandma, what big eyes you have.) “Why would you wear such a thing?” “Mom said it would give me an hourglass figure.” “But it’s squishing your organs and cutting off your breath.” “I can breathe fine, Grandma.” What daughter doesn’t want her mother’s love and attention? “Instead of mangling your body, can’t you express yourself through singing? You’ve always loved music.” Kihyana sings to herself all the time, while she scrolls through videos on her phone, while she washes the dishes and cleans her sisters’ bedrooms, when she locks herself in her room to mute her sisters’ tantrums, her parents’ fighting. She memorizes the songs to musicals, knows all the words to Wicked  and Six , belts out 1980s songs of her parents’ generation: “Through the Fire” by Chaka Kahn and the Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Kharlie says “Kihyana has the voice of an angel.” Then: “She doesn’t need school; she can get an agent and make millions.” “No, Mom; you’re the one who wants to be a star.” Kihyana loves the K-Pop band BTS, despite her mother’s taunting and purposefully mispronouncing their names. “Why do you want to sing those foreign songs?” “Grandma, will you get me Lingodeer, so I can learn Korean?” I sent her links for high school exchange programs, hoping for her escape. She surprised me by filling out the applications on her own. “You know, I could never let Kihyana leave me; she’s my baby. What would I do without her?” It’s true that Kharlie needs Kihyana: to watch Khloee and take care of Khiyumi, make dinner and do the laundry, feed the pets and walk Zuko, even though he weighs twice as much and pulls her down the road. Kihyana is her mother’s maid, nanny and confidante. When Kihyana FaceTimes me to help her with homework, Kharlie yells at her to clean the kitchen, or grabs the phone to tell me her plans to “live off the grid” in Alaska. Kihyana is failing high school. She’s attended 13 different schools since Kindergarten, having moved continuously and never spending more than one year anywhere. She started ninth grade already seven classes behind, and didn’t pass any of tenth grade. Milo thinks I care too much about school, and Kharlie wants Kihyana to become rich and famous on TikTok. I told Kihyana I would help her study for her GED. “But Grandma, I want to finish high school.” *** For years after they moved to Georgia, I begged her parents to let Kihyana visit me. I wasn’t sick, but since COVID I spend a lot more time in bed. The Arboretum near my house is more Tree Museum than darkened woods. What danger did they fear in allowing her to leave the house and visit her grandmother for a week or two? She could even bring the wolf-dog. When she finally made it to my house last summer, Kihyana immediately shed her designer outfit and put on my T-shirt and sweatpants. When she leaves, I have one less pair of socks. She amazes me with her knowledge of other countries and languages, always has a new craft project she learned from YouTube. The last time I saw her, she was watching tutorials on installing lined finger escapes in Fursuit paws and sewing a white and purple wolf head with Mochi Indoor Sock Paws. That was years ago. At sixteen, she has outgrown furry animals, and asks me for an electric guitar and a Basquiat skateboard. Kihyana and I were close when she was little. After moving back and forth across the country, Milo stayed in California trying to get his grow business off the ground after graduating from Oaksterdam University, “America's first cannabis college.” Kharlie brought three-year-old Kihyana to me on the Greyhound bus, arriving in what was then a bad part of town at 10 p.m., with no other clothes but the outfit she was wearing, boots with no socks even though it was April. I put her in Milo’s old pajamas and the next day bought her shirts with hearts and “Best Granddaughter Ever.” She picked out Brown Cow yogurt, chamomile tea and her favorite red panda stuffed animal. I rubbed her feet with lavender oil, recited fairy tales and sang her lullabies until she fell asleep in my bed, murmuring, “The better to eat you with, my dear.” After a week, Kihyana stopped having night terrors. She never asked for her mom and dad. Kharlie’s Great Aunt Agnes had called me in the middle of the night to tell me mother and child were robbed at gunpoint: “you have to go and get that baby, or they’ll come back and take her, too!” Agnes only spoke in crisis and hyperbole. I couldn’t tell how much was truth, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out. I told Kharlie she, too, could stay with me, but she insisted on going straight home: “I can’t just leave my clothes and things.” I told her it would all work out. “I’ll keep Kihyana, so you and Milo can have space to figure out your lives.” Kharlie had moved to Atlanta with Kihyana the year before on a whim, hoping to become a star in Black Hollywood. Agnes said she was selling hair extensions and made friends with some shady clients. Agnes was lying and delusional, certainly a big part of where Kharlie got it from. According to Kharlie, she, her brother and sister were raised by “Grandma” Agnes, their grandfather’s sister, after their mother became hooked on crack. Their mother was also raised by Grandma Agnes, because the real grandmother was a teenage groupie who followed their famous grandfather and his band, not fit to raise the daughter she had at eighteen. I don’t know how much of this was true, nor did I get the full story of the robbery, just a three-year-old’s heart-rending description: “The robbers took my toys and the computer and stuck their gun in mommy’s nose. They took my puppy and pierced his ear, Grandma.” Eight months after Kihyana came to me, Grandma Agnes told Kharlie she had to come back because I was trying to take Kihyana away from her. In the car, I told Kihyana I was bringing her to her mom; she burst into tears and begged me not to go. Her crying echoes in my head. (Grandma, what big ears you have.) *** I try hard to be kind to Kharlie, for Kihyana’s sake and because she must have had a difficult childhood herself. When he was eighteen, Milo first brought Kharlie home when Grandma Agnes kicked her out after she was expelled from high school for hitting another student. I let her stay with us, and I wrote a letter so she could take summer school math to graduate high school, but she didn’t follow through. I wrote a letter to Kharlie’s job at Leisure World because her boss was treating her unfairly. And a letter when she was pregnant and went to court for assaulting the driver on the bus. Kharlie was always the victim, never at fault. I took her side against my own son the first times she called me crying to say that Milo was treating her badly. After she took Kihyana from me, and Milo brought them out to Oakland, I saw the bruises where she had thrown the phone at his head, the bite marks on his arms. Four-year-old Kihyana called to tell me she’d burned her arm but, “Mommy won’t take me to the doctor because she said they’ll take me away from her.” I flew to California and hired a lawyer. “You can get custody of Kihyana and leave,” I told him. ( Grandma, what big teeth you have.) *** Milo didn’t save himself. His own father had left when he was three, and to Milo, protecting your children meant not leaving. They moved back to Atlanta when Kihyana was ten, had two more children, two dogs, and a revolving cycle of miscellaneous found animals taken in, who eventually die. The wolf-dog was Kihyana’s idea. She always loved animals of every kind. She smuggled home snakes, caught frogs on the swampy edge of the road, hid stray kittens in her closet and lied to her mother that they had mice in the house, so she could keep them. Kharlie hated cats. Cats had boundaries, which signaled to her rejection. Milo never got the dog he begged for as a boy. Throughout his childhood, I was dealing with my own predators, my own demons. I had repeated my mother’s cursed life twice. Milo’s childhood was his father’s rejection, followed by a wicked stepfather, then moving multiple times, not across the country but to other countries, until I was finally able to break the cycle, alas too late to save him. I know better now, but the vindictive god I don’t believe in is punishing me for past sins by refusing me the chance to save Kihyana. Please let it not be too late for her to break free. Resentful that I had refused to get him a dog when he was young, Milo capitulated immediately each time his own child asked for a pet. It was Kihyana’s idea, but Zuko was always Milo’s dog. Wolf. Wolf-dog. But you couldn’t see a trace of dog in him. I asked Kihyana, “Does he howl at the full moon?” “No, but he howls when anyone comes near Khiyumi. She’s the baby of his pack, so he protects her.” This made sense. I always silently said the children were raised by wolves. At nine, Khloee howled if they took her phone away, or told her she couldn’t eat potato chips for dinner. Three-year old Khiyumi stayed up until two AM, jumping on the couch and strewing headless baby dolls across the living room floor. Kihyana learned to make her own meals when she was a toddler. Now there was a real wolf in the house, more parenting than the human-wolves. Unlike in fairy tales, real-life wolves are not deceitful; the wolf is honest and straightforward in hunting its prey. The wolf is a pack animal, protective of its young. Zuko adopted the three girls and took care of his pack. Because they wouldn’t let Kihyana come to me, I had to go to them. Even though I’d vowed never to stay in a home of Kharlie’s again. Every Christmas for three years I flew across the country to Los Angeles. Every year a different house, but always the same scene.  Kharlie pushed and pushed, picked and picked, while Milo tried to head off a fight by agreeing, ignoring, or leaving the house to walk the wolf-dog. Eventually, inevitably, something Milo did, or didn’t do, set Kharlie off.  I cowered with the girls in their room while she ranted; threw dishes, glasses, her phone; followed Milo screaming while he locked himself in the bathroom; and pounded on the door for hours. “BURN IN HELL UR WHOLE FAMILY” The last Christmas I spent with them, Kharlie threatened to take the children away in the middle of the night. I called her sister to try to talk her down, but it was only because the car wouldn’t start that she ended up staying. It is not the wolf holding us hostage. I am apprehensive in their house, anticipating Kharlie’s unavoidable outbursts. The house seethes with tension. Milo speaks on tiptoe, apologizing until Kharlie succeeds at making him snap. The children act out their emotional distress physically, each in a different way. At the teen theater camp Kharlie asked me to pay for three years ago, Kihyana started having neck and shoulder pain, fell off her chair, couldn’t remember what happened. Now, Kihyana shakes and can’t stop; every few weeks she has seizures. The school calls Milo to come pick her up and brings her to the car in a wheelchair. The neurologist told him to take her to a psychologist, but Kharlie convinced Kihyana not to go: “You don’t want to talk to strangers about our business.” The middle one hardly talks at all. Khloee compulsively plays Roblox on her phone with Internet strangers. Kharlie created a fake account that says she’s thirteen, because nine-year-olds are not allowed on the platform. “Khloee, put the phone down to eat. Put the phone away so you can sleep. Leave the phone so you can do your schoolwork.” The tantrums they gave into when she was two and then four are now a full-fledged person’s explosion. Kharlie makes Khloee stand in the corner to feel ashamed that she spilled chips on the rug. Instead, Khloee thrashes her body and shrieks a bloodcurdling cry until she exhausts herself and collapses on the floor. She pulls the blankets off the couch and hides underneath. For now, Khiyumi is the good one, can do no wrong in her mother’s eyes. “What did Khloee do to you? Why won’t Kihyana let you play in her room? Khiyumi is my sweetest baby. You give her your phone or I’m taking it away. Clean up your sister’s room; it’s a pigsty.” Kihyana says she wants to move with her friend Cammy to Brooklyn and do musical theater on Broadway. I tell her I will do anything I can to help her. We are sitting on her bed, a rare peaceful moment. An enormous snout pushes the door open, golden eyes, pointed ears and long, bushy tail. “Will he let me pet him?” “If he thinks you’re part of his pack.” ( Zuko, what big teeth you have.) But he never bit, not even the underage kitten Kihyana had snuck home. Khiyumi named the kitten Smoke; don’t ask me why. Khloee loves Smoke and holds her in a death grip, the only thing aside from Roblox she can call her own. Zuko loves Smoke, too, in a similar way to Khloee. All day long we hear the cat mew, a plaintive appeal to save her from the girl and the wolf. Smoke spends her days squeezed to Khloee’s chest or dangling from Zuko’s mouth. He knows not to crunch her, though, or she would have been gone in an instant. *** I dreamed I was in the New York Public Library reading fairy tales to the children, and there was a mother wolf with cubs. Suddenly, the Wolf Mom had latched onto me with her teeth and wouldn’t let go. We began to merge, transforming the pain and anguish of those children into strength and fierceness. Awakened by the dream, I started looking up Brooklyn apartments for rent. Saturday afternoon I text Kihyana about the theater class she asked me to sign her up for. Her homework was to pick three movies from different time periods and say how they identified with the characters. “Which movies did you decide to use?” “For the 50s movie I chose a Swedish movie, Sommaren med Monika .” “Wonderful! Ingmar Bergman is one of the best directors.” “I liked it a lot.” “Did you identify with Monika?” “Not really. she started acting like a feral wolf-person.” “I love it when she steals the roast and runs away to the woods.” “when she became a wolf! she doesn’t really become a wolf she just acts like one”  “Maybe that was her way of escaping the bonds of society,” I say. “She wanted to be free.”

She often reminisces that when she was a little girl she’d only get to eat full meals on school days, and during her college years she’d buy all her clothes in consignment and thrift stores.     Renowned financial analyst now, she is also a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, a sought-after motivational speaker, and she is on the Board of Trustees for the George R. Sumakhazy Memorial Foundation. In addition, she stands a good chance to be elected the next treasurer of Nuestra Naturaleza, an international environmental organization headquartered in Cartago, Costa Rica.     Aside from that, pretty much everything she does causes a great deal of damage to society or nature, occasionally to both simultaneously. John Szamosi is a wordsmith and peace activist who has published over one hundred short stories, satires and poems in print and online magazines., satires and poems in print and online magazines.

I just read the beginning of a restaurant review in which the writer said the one thing chefs have in common is a mother who can cook, so it is with a grain of salt I continue reading, it’s my restaurant this reviewer is talking about and my mother did  not  cook, she was too busy dying. …the variety is endless, copious, the fusion of cultures otherworldly, and this comes from the pen of one who has known fusion cooking intimately... Our neighbours cooked for us. They used to come and scoop me out of our flat, they coaxed me into their tiny kitchens and hours later I went home with a fully prepared dinner for three. I never left my mother’s side otherwise, everyone said she should be in the hospital but her illness went on for years and I don’t think hospitals offer that kind of residency. ...I cannot call this restaurant unusual, for it is deeper than that, it is abnormal... We lived in Belfast at first but moved to a flat in Derry after she got sick, we needed a less expensive place, a  cheap  place – it was costing everything my father made and then some to keep my mother alive. She was grateful of course but I heard her whisper sometimes,  Tommy my love, it’s good money after bad,  a saying I didn’t understand, but I liked the sound of the first bit,  Tommy my love. ...The beloved crispy halibut of England, mine this day is fried darkly, perfectly, and placed on my plate the shape of the continent itself – wait, is this purposeful? – and in place of Ireland and the French fried potatoes I expect is a mound of curried mash, and we have above Scotland a bright hat of frozen mango slices, beautifully transparent, like so many feathers… Water comes to my mouth when I think of the hallway around the corner where the Sanyal’s apartment was, permanently infused with the strong yet soft scent of Kari, Mrs. S wrote the word out for me, and beside it she wrote  curry  and then crossed it out, on my menu I have done the same, all curry dishes are Kari with her capital K. In her mango-coloured kitchen she taught me the strategy of Indian spices and flavours, we baked bubbly naan that reminded me of roasted marshmallows, she taught me the specific chemistry of different rices, she spelled each out for me and I serve them spelled the same way, I pretend to take note when the correct spelling is offered. ... the sushi, too, is divine, almost excessively so, for should I close my eyes I feel I might open them again in a strange city, beneath a new sky, and hardly myself... Mr. Sasabuchi across the hall and down one taught me the sticky kind of rice, it was tricky but I learned over time, he said to never rush but be quick quick quick, he infused me with patience, he said chefs in Japan are required to spend many years learning to perfect rice. I intuitively understood this kind of devotion. Mrs. Sasabuchi pickled things, unidentifiable things like knuckles bobbed in jars in their refrigerator until barely-there slices were served by themselves on a very big black plate. They didn’t –  wouldn’t  – tell me what the meat was, I pickle the same way now, I plunk all kinds of joints and bones and sinew in jars, they have a fridge of their own, yet I have so far not achieved the flavour that came from Mrs. Sasabuchi’s jars. I serve mine as appetizers on very big black plates, I call the dish Pickled Sasabuchis,  when people ask me what’s the meat I smile like she did, and giggle into my hands. …the simplicity of the Italian food is to be celebrated. Each menu item, such restraint to offer only three, listed without ado as Spaghetti, Ravioli, Cannelloni and I am beguiled, speechless, I can offer no more than these two grateful sentences: I finished my Ravioli with deep regret. This type of food gets into your soul... The Italian family lived loudly at the end of the hall. Mama G had three sons and a daughter Francesca who was sweet on me when we were children, she tortured me throughout my adolescence, she is my wife today. We sing together in the kitchen when we cook, we fuse. … every restaurant strives for a unique quality but Tommy My Love’s specialness is not contrived nor is it singular, what is remarkable is that it feels so natural one barely notices... My mother was dying all my life and she finally did, unceremoniously, no final words, nothing, her life was over. … that after such a remarkable meal, one for which I ache to experience again, no dessert is offered, only a rather abrupt goodbye. Sherry is  from the wilds of Ontario. She writes the kind of stories she longs for and can rarely find. litbit.ca