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Brandy Wore a braided chain, but it wasn’t silver and it wasn’t from Spain, it was from Delia’s. Ninth-grade Brandy was who we all wanted to be. Rhinestones on her fingernails, upside-down faces smiling at you when she held out her hands, criss-crossed at the wrists. Brandy’s name listed on the Ms. Pac-Man game at the mall. Brandy ditching the DARE assembly, smoking in the third-floor girls’ room. Brandy caught shoplifting in Caldor, and we were sure they would call the police. Brandy got away with it, and smiled when we asked her how. Brandy sneaking off during the drama club class trip to New York. Making out on the fire escape with Joey Santorini. High above us all. The rest of us watching like she was the star we’d come to see. You only have one life to live so live it wild,  was her yearbook quote. Brandy the first to get married. 19 years old. Brandy three kids before 30. Brandy works at the nursing home now. Different scrubs every day. Disney, Hello Kitty, Paw Patrol. All our grandfathers call her honey. All our grandmothers ask Brandy to do their nails.  Ivy Everybody called her Poison Ivy, but who could blame them? She dressed that way for Halloween, spent hours sewing leaves onto a green bathing suit. Ivy had an itch to get away. Took French and AP Italian when the rest of us quit Spanish after the obligatory two years, barely able to get through the menu at Taco Bell. Ivy reading college catalogs sophomore year, ranking them for their year-abroad programs. Ivy with two after school jobs, already saving up. Back pocket bulging with the copy of Les Mis  she carried everywhere. We never expected to follow her, but we wanted to see her go, wanted to know she was out there, sipping espresso in a café in Milan, dancing down a cobblestone street like Audrey Hepburn, twirling under a Parisian moon. We always thought we’d get letters from her, foreign postmarks, odd-sized paper, something we could touch, but the letters never came. Did anyone send letters anymore? Ivy didn’t. Someone said they heard she was living in Seattle. Said their cousin’s friend ran into her there, working at Starbucks.  Justine Was going to marry the boy next door, literally, and we all believed she would because they’d been going out since fifth grade. Justine + Bobby 4EVA . Only once were they broken up, for two weeks, and Justine wouldn’t date other guys, just stayed in her room playing mix tapes Bobby had given her. She liked the same songs she’d liked in fifth grade, always ordered the same ice cream (Rocky Road, extra sprinkles), shopped at the Gap because she knew where everything was. Justine getting taller year by year, still wearing the same uniform, straight jeans, white T-shirts. Justine liked what she liked. Wasn’t tempted by the new. Are you just going to stay in this town until you die , we asked her, and Justine said, What’s wrong with that? Only she didn’t. Or maybe she did. Nobody knows where Justine died, or if she did. Justine’s face on a milk carton. Justine’s face on telephone poles. A Justine TV special, a cold case, an unsolved mystery. Justine the only one of us who got famous and she never wanted to. Last seen walking home from school. Justine’s face. Justine’s face. Age adjusted. A hologram of a possible future Justine, 15 forever, but now 18, now 25, faded posters peeling from closed shop windows. A face we can’t picture now except in pixels. A digital ghost. If Justine came walking back one day would we know her? Bobby still trots out tears for anniversary specials, but some of us think there’s something shady about his eyes, think Bobby knows more than he’ll ever tell.  Kathryn Kulpa has work in Bending Genres, Flash Frontier, Ghost Parachute, Gooseberry Pie, and Vestal Review. Her stories have been chosen for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and the Wigleaf longlist. She will always choose the shady side of the street.

I just moved here and I’m renting a room in that apartment with the engineer and his Rottweiler. There’s no washing machine so I spend Sundays doing laundry across from McGuckin’s Hardware, in the same strip mall as the 24-hour diner with the perfect over-easy eggs. It’s no small feat to perfect the over-easy egg, and Bob knows this as well as I do. It’s one of the things we share, along with our birthday on the 24th of May. His is years before mine, of course, but that doesn’t feel like it matters when it comes to birthdays. We’re Geminis. Ruled by Mercury. We get off on communicating.    We were both surprised (Midwesterners that we are) by how much the sun shines here. We marveled at the aspen leaves (which actually do quake) and the sunsets over Flagstaff Mountain that pink up the undersides of the long thin clouds hovering over Pearl Street.    There’s a mouse in the laundromat today, running from underneath the commercial strength washers, scurrying along the walls, dashing under dryers. I have sandals on because it’s summer and maybe we’ll dip our feet in the creek later. I let out a screech because what if a little bag of blood runs across one of my bare toes but then I bite my lip. I don’t want a scene. If I play it cool, no one will recognize him. I’ve taken him to the over-easy diner, the farmer’s market (which he hated, can we leave now , he kept murmuring) and the Safeway out by the movie theater without anyone pointing or staring. Bob’s the kind of guy you see a lot of in Boulder—scruffy scarf, puffy hair, shoulders up, eyes down. So, he kind of blends in if you don’t look close enough. We just walk along minding our own business, and it’s worked out fine so far.   If you’d asked me which Bob I wanted, I’d have said ‘Don’t Look Back’ Bob; skinny, sarcastic, chainsmoking. Grilling me about what I liked about him. But I got 1970s Bob. Post motorcycle accident, a little weight in his face. Singing about cabins in Utah and reminiscing about past loves. He’s probably a better companion.    I’m stacking my panties and standing on one foot, one eye on the last place I saw the mouse. Bob wipes his forehead with a faded bandana. Hot one, he croaks, his voice like sun-cracked earth in one of those sepia photographs of starving families fleeing the Dust Bowl. We could take a dip after, I suggest, shoving my pile of pastel Jockeys in my laundry bag. I imagine us on one of those big rocks past the library, our toes numb in the froth watching kayakers practice tumbling upside down in the rapids.    Usually, Bob’s up for anything, but today he seems preoccupied. The mouse skitters under the machine my stack of quarters was on and I plant my butt in a chair and lift both feet off the floor. There’s nothing to be afraid of, Bob chuckles. He has this way of making fun of me, kind of gently putting me down while making it obvious that I amuse him. He pulls a harmonica out of his breast pocket, his favorite in the key of C, and starts to blow into it. C’mon man, I whisper, looking around, they’ll recognize you for sure. Bob ignores me and starts to play the harmonica part from Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, the song that inspired me to buy that Yamaha guitar for 200 bucks and throw it in the backseat and drive all the way out here with no plan and no job and no money.    I’m trying to figure out what this has to do with the mouse when my last load starts to slow down in the dryer, my cut-offs and tank tops slowly tumbling over each other one more time and one more time and one more time until they lie still. The mouse is scared of the music, I guess, because it’s nowhere to be seen and I stuff my clothes in my bag without folding them, just to get out of there quick before someone spots him and the jig is up. But Bob shakes his head when I gesture toward the door, my bag over my shoulder.    It’s the part of the song where you remember that this is not going to end well, that it didn’t really even start well and the tune you thought so naively was a little love song the first time you heard it ends up a quick-witted break-up song every time.    I get what he’s saying even though his face is half covered with two hands and that harmonica. But I’m not ready to be Bob-less. I just got here. I don’t know anybody, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. I don’t even know what I came here for. All I know is I couldn’t stay where I was, and Bob has been with me all the way.    Bob stands up and walks out the back door. Down the street is the poetry school where Allen Ginsberg and all them hung out. I think maybe he’ll wander over there. I follow him and peek down the alley. Bob is headed the other way, north toward the strip club and the highway to the national park. Maybe he’ll head even farther west, I think. And then I realize other people need him, too. And I can probably do this on my own.    I hear the harmonica getting softer and softer, but Bob never does look back.    Lisa Thornton is a writer and nurse. She has work in SmokeLong Quarterly, Hippocampus Magazine, Pithead Chapel, and other literary magazines. She has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and Bridport Flash Fiction Prize. She lives in Illinois with her husband and son and can be found on Twitter/X @thorntonforreal .

When You Book Us a Tarot Reading After Your Death... I show up, you are still my sister after all. You say I’m late, but it’s easy for you. You’re conveniently dead. I still have mortal duties, you know--school drop-offs, pick-ups, work, checking in on Mom, driving her to doctor appointments. Why are we doing this tarot thing anyway? Since when do you believe in tarot? You never tell me anything, never told me anything, not the important stuff anyway--not when you collapsed, not your diagnosis, or your failing health. The tarot reader picks the Death card. You snicker--funny ‘coz it’s true, you say. But I don’t laugh, this isn’t like old times. Everything’s changed now. I’m empty inside. So what if I was an ocean away? I wanted to be there for you, look after you, to tell you things I never told you. What do I do with all this regret now? There’s nowhere to put it. I’m sorry, you say. The tarot reader draws Temperance--forgiveness, letting go. I forgive you, but when I try to hug you, you’re air. See? I can’t let go. Cannot let you go. Miss Havisham Teaches English Her class begins at twenty minutes to nine. When the swish of her yellowing wedding gown and the faint smell of decay glide down the hallway, we draw the blinds shut. Miss Havisham hates bright, we’re sure she feeds on dying hope and darkness. She holds a rotting, half-eaten slice of wedding cake in one hand, and a piece of chalk in the other.  “METAPHOR” she writes on the blackboard. “Repeat after me, girls--our hearts are blocks of ice.” We mumble under our breaths--our young hearts are only now learning to beat to the rhythm of love songs--we pine, we sigh, we long to be at the school gates where the boys drive around in circles on borrowed motorbikes. We let them tease us, we let them woo us, we pretend not to care, but our hearts are furnaces burning bright--the opposite of blocks of ice. We refuse to be her. Many years later, when we’ve been betrayed and broken, jaded and numb, when we’ve learned that love doesn’t conquer all, her ghost will visit us. We will see her in the mirror then, but not now. Not now.  Hema Nataraju is an Indian-American writer, mom, and polyglot based in Singapore. Her work has most recently appeared in Best Small Fictions 2023, Emerge, Barrelhouse, Booth, Wigleaf, and 100-word Story, among others. She edits Literary Namjooning, and is a submissions editor at Smokelong Quarterly. She tweets as m_ixedbag .

He was a bit rough around the edges, but he’d do. You were bored of one-night stands, of being ghosted, of being told how [ insert ] clever [ insert ] pretty [ insert ] funny [ insert ] one-in-a-million you were. And then being dropped as quickly as the clothes he couldn’t wait to rip off your body.  At least this one turned up on time. He always paid. He always chose decent venues for their dates. He didn’t suggest going back to his place the first time they met. Or the third. Or the fifth. By date number six, you wondered if the two of you would become just good friends. Or maybe he noticed you squinting, scrutinising, checking out his footwear. You once ran away from a man who assumed moccasins were stylish. And that guy – wearing grey leather uppers – you let him buy you a drink but kept picturing him in that shop, making a definitive choice to buy those shoes. The latest in this yawning line of potential Mr Rights might not bear any resemblance to the guys you usually go for, but his trainers couldn’t be faulted. And you made it to Date Number Six before you kissed.  Am I ugly as sin ? you messaged your friend before you left. Maybe he’s a virgin , your friend replied, with a trail of laughing emojis. You didn’t feel any signs of stubble when, finally, your lips touched his. Your tongues circled, and he pressed your body so close, you wanted him to swallow you up whole. Jesus, this was worth waiting for, you thought, and let the kiss continue for as long as it could. You didn’t usually let your guard down in public places, but manners could go take a hike.  Text me when you get home , he whispered. Alone and on the tube, you remembered your first kiss, aged thirteen, that tangle of open mouths proof you were a woman. It was autumn and you turned crimson when he ignored you at school the next day. You’d never lose control again. Pleasure coursed through your body as you swiped past all those losers. You were glad you paused before you swiped past him.  He worked in the city (they all did). He was looking for something serious (that’s what they all said). I’m that diamond who’s forever  was his tagline and he had a trusting smile.  My grandparents came from Bangladesh , he told you, laughing when you said you liked his tan. My father came from Tottenham, but he died when I was 4 . As tragedy fluttered over cocktail hour, you liked his trainers even more.  You dressed carefully for date number seven. You clasped your grandmother’s pearl necklace at the back. You thought of her, outwardly upright with a wink in her smile.  You took his hand when he arrived at the subway through the rain. You turned towards him, stood face to face. Not wanting any more, you asked him, very softly, if he’d like to dance.  Lizzie Eldridge is a writer, teacher and human rights activist based in Glasgow. Author of two novels – Duende (Amazon 2014) and Vandalism (Merlin Publishers 2015) - Vandalism was nominated for a National Book Prize in Malta (where she lived for 12 years) and selected as one of the Best Books 2017 by Waterstones Glasgow. Her flash, CNF, poetry and short stories have appeared in book anthologies and journals such as Epoch, Northern Gravy, Literary Revelations, Unapologetic and Ellipsis Zine.

I feel your fingers work my hair like a jar of butterflies. You’re laying sideways on my pillow and you worry I  won’t feel you. Just your fingers. With my begging head  pressed against the pulse of your breast you trace letters  on my back for me to guess. Slow letters in a carnal code.   You say, now do me. I do. I worry you won’t remember me  either, after the skin has settled and the sun comes up and a blackberry-stained porcelain bowl rejoices in the kitchen  sink. You say, let’s not get up . But you will. And the picture  will swirl and the places will change. Eventually, after a  life  I’ll be the only one left who remembers. And I will. As  an  early  translation of a lost manuscript that I quote in my sleep  when  the feeling goes out of my body and my eyes smile politely  and my side of the bed forgets everything but your fingers. Tim Moder is a poet from northern Wisconsin. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Cutthroat, South Florida Poetry Journal, One Art, and others. He is the author of the chapbooks All True Heavens (Alien Buddha) and American Parade Routes (Seven Kitchens). He is a member of The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. His poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Puchcart Prize. Find him at timmoder.com

Tried and true fashions never seem to be in not on catwalks or clothed mannequins  a juice cleanse and diet pill racket spamming your inbox and cluttering your mind keeping their eyes on your obvious faults  imploring you to snap “before and after”  pictures so you can linger on results  we hire therapists and life coaches  for stress management  finding the obvious irony in feeling small and having to see a shrink  I thought to myself…              “I enjoy laying on the couch at home,       so why not lay upon a strangers                                      fragmenting words from a mind so clutteres                                            It's usually just devoid of motivation                                                   or resting in the gutter”  Mutter these fragments in bold italic shards soft spoken, feeling hard to say  got a sadness circa 1990-something  never confronted “I feel about this tall, doc  and I just can't seem to keep this weight off” He recommends a dietician  and some cardiovascular hogwash but I am speaking of the weight upon my shoulders and the burdens I bear picking my poisons like ripened fruit then binging until my shirt starts to swell, Hey, fruit is healthy, right? “A bowl of Apple Jacks a day keeps my therapist paid.”   ...I think this to myself and I smirk. Everything he says feels sugar coated processed is this food for thought  an overweight man feeling lesser than  paying someone else’s mortgage  with my deep down agony  “Ope, that’s all time we have for this session we’ll revisit this next week until then just do those exercises for your grief watch what you eat, and take a handful of these” I’m left wishing my body could be  half as small as these appointments  make me feel oh, the irony in feeling small and seeing a shrink Nicholas Grooms is a proud father, poet, author and musician hailing from Garden City, Kansas. He has contributed to periodicals such as Midsummer Dream House, Verse Libre Quarterly and Southwest Review, but is best known for his songwriting work with the Kansas City Chiefs. He currently resides in Austin, TX.

Reincarnation There is,  in a small city in Michigan,  an old man sitting in an old chair in his living room.  He is pleased with his bowel movements lately.  The kids are here, packing up his things,  because he is going into an assisted-care facility tomorrow,  but at least for now, he thinks,  everyone is here.  There is,  in that same city,  an old woman alone.  She does not have bowel movements.  She believes, with certainty, that everyone in her life has let her down.  She believes, with even greater certainty, in reincarnation,  and that once, many long lives ago,  she was a queen. We Don’t Always Choose Who We Love Come on  Come on  start a fight, then lock yourself in the bathroom with the scissors and tell me you will make the floor run red. I was adopted, she said. My birth mother never loved me.  When she met me, she wanted argue about the date I was born on because she couldn’t remember but she couldn’t stand to be wrong. Come on Come on  I’m begging you now come out of the bathroom, you know I would never do this to you. Why isn’t that enough? The Passing of the Night I want to sleep with you, yes, I do. I want to lie there in the quiet silence, lie against the warmth of your body and feel, like a quiet and graceful tide, the rise and fall of your sleeping breath. The birds that sing just before the dawn do not sing to hasten the coming of the sun. They do not cheer the fire and the coming heat. They lament the passing of the stars, and their softer, kinder light. Copperhead Hey there Copperhead.  Is it true your mother’s dead?  She says to say she loves you, and even if you don’t think it’s true,  it’s the only thing she wants to do. Copperhead, Copperhead. Did you know your mother’s dead?  She wants to hear you say you love her,  even if it isn’t true.  She told me to speak to you, it’s the only thing she wants to do. It is Hard to do Right by Everyone She said, she said, she said to me I don’t know what I want but I don’t want this and it isn’t his fault he’s a good guy you know a real good guy but I can’t stand it I can’t stand it  anymore and I just want it to be over without going through the  ending of it and I told her that I don’t know what to do here,  do now, but I want to be the guy, the next guy, the last guy to taste her mouth, but it doesn’t feel right. I don’t know if I can do this, Isn’t there a Patron Saint or an Eagles song, sung for bad people like us? I am unsure, you know, because I am not a saint.

Me: Aren’t you  supposed to be  writing? Me : How can  I write  when you keep  pinging  me???  Me :  So it’s MY fault?  Me: It’s  ALWAYS your fault. Me : You think I don’t know  you weren’t writing  before I texted? Really?  You know I know  you better than that.  I saw you refreshing  your Submittable queue  for like the 1,000th time today.  Right before you scrolled through  every pair of sale boots  on Anthropologie  Also how many times can you  microwave the same  cup of tea?  It’s a  little sad. Just saying… Me : OUCH Anyway… tea totally a writer thing. Like being an  introvert  or crippling self-doubt… Or cats.  Me : Begging you not to  Google kittens  for adoption.  You’re SO allergic to cats. Make your eyes  swell so much  you almost can't see  the bags under them.    Me: SMH. Nice. Really nice.  Anyway tortured eyes  totally a writer thing. The darker  the circles the  deeper the prose.   Me: Then  you must  have a  Pulitzer. Me : ME-fuckin-OW  Me : You’re right. That was mean. Sorry…  Me: Whatever. Me: Seriously. Don’t you think  you should at least  try writing something today? How about some morning pages!  ☺  Me: It’s 3:45 in the afternoon… genius. Me: Genius, you don’t say…   Me: Whatever Me: So… less shoe scrolling  more keyboard  clicking Me: Sigh… I know. You’re right… Me: But?  I hear a but coming.  ? Me: But… Me: But?   Me : But it’s an extra 40 percent off already reduced prices…  Me: Really?   They still have those  lace-up  chocolate suede ones?  The ones with  the chunky heel?  I bet they are  off-the-charts soft  would go with  just about everything… Me : I know! Right?   Me: STOP.  Don’t pull me  into this. You’re the one  who told me  it’s my job  to make sure  you write today. You made  me promise. Me: Sorry? Me: You called it… and I quote… “a sacred duty.” Me: Can we  PLEASE  forget that  I thought that  let alone said it? Me: K NP  Forgotten.  Me: Thanks. Me: So? Me: So? Me: So…  Remember  the whole thing  about how the  place is quiet today.  How you finished  your other work.  You’ve done  everything else. I mean you even  alphabetized your sweaters.  Me: I think my new  “A for Argyle” system  is inspired. Me: Move over Marie Kondo… Me : Rude. Me : fine. Me: FINE. Me: So, the writing? Me: TBTH…  I can’t think of a single  thing that seems  worth saying. There… you made me say it. Happy? Me: A little bit… Not really… No. ☹ Me: I want to do this. It’s just…  Me: I get it. Me: [Sigh.] Me: It’ll come  to you. Me : You think? Me: Sure… Me: Really? Me : [shrug] Me: That’s like  one of the  nicest things  you’ve ever  said to me. Me: ☺  Don’t get too  used to it Me: Believe me I won’t. I’m familiar with  your work. Me: So…  Me: So? Me: So…  THE WRITING  Me: Can we get the boots first? Me: Is there free shipping?  Me: …   *** Beth Kanter’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in a range of publications including McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Emerge Literary Journal, Identity Theory,  and Cease, Cows . Beth is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fiction nominee. She won a UCLA James Kirkwood Literary Prize for her novel-in-progress, " Paved With Gold ."  When not writing, she leads creative nonfiction workshops. You can read more of her work at bethkanter.com  or follow her @beekaekae  on Instagram.

It was almost a joke when you asked me. I’d been splashing water on my face in the bathroom off the grand ballroom’s hallway, inching up my sleeve cuffs to press cold, wet fingers to my wrists, wiping blindly at my temples so I wouldn’t have to lift my gaze above the sink. It was in this state that you’d come up behind me and said something about tampons. “I—sorry?” When I turned, you had my face, like a mirror, like a nightmare. I didn’t scream, but it was close. “Holy shit,” you said. “Who are you?” “Samson,” I said, prickly. The curls I’d fought to have edging below my hairline had plastered themselves to my damp neck. I stuck out a hand like an idiot. You didn’t take it. “Samson, the—?” Star of tonight’s gala, sure, yes; satellite of the star, at least. I shrugged. You tipped your head like you’d get a better view from a twenty-degree angle. “Hm.” “Okay,” I said, because I was tired and the party was terrible and this may as well have been happening. “Do you… know someone here?” “I work for the hotel,” you said. “We should switch places.” I laughed. You didn’t. I laughed again, more nervously. You smiled. This was the first hint I had that you were nothing like me. “Why?” I asked, like an asshole. “Why not?” you answered, like a crazy person. Which wasn’t a generous assessment on my part, but I wasn’t feeling at my best that night, and you were suggesting defrauding hundreds of guests at my expense. You put a hand at my elbow; I jumped. “Seriously,” you said. “We could get away with it. Don’t you want to try?” “We don’t look that  much alike,” I told you, because— “Okay, you’re a boy,” you said, dismissive, “but come on, Sam; do you mind if I call you Sam? Samson’s a bit biblical… but look at us!” You dragged me to the mirror. Nobody else was using the bathroom, so there was no one else to gawk at us: a shaggy-haired boy and a short-haired girl, me in oval-shaped glasses, yours more rounded. You were maybe half an inch taller. I straightened my spine, averting my gaze. You grinned at me. “I’d hardly have to cut my hair.” You pinched a lock under your ear, then tapped your glasses. “What’s your prescription?” I didn’t know the number offhand. We swapped frames, bracing to wince, and found our eyes to be as identical as our faces. “Carmen,” I said, off your nametag, “what you’re proposing is identity theft.” You shrugged. “Can’t steal what’s freely given,” you said. Some people would call that socialist propaganda. I didn’t want to voice that. “I mean, it’s not like I’m saying permanently  or anything.” So we got down to logistics. How the washroom attendant would swap herself out for the socialite. Not that I’d  have to—just, you riding along, making an appearance. Living the life you’d seen from afar. It didn’t sound so crazy when you said it. I let you make a lot of plans. I didn’t have scissors, but I gave you my room number and when I opened the door to your knock you’d found a pair, so I followed you in and cupped your scalp to trim your curls. It was an unprecedented intimacy with a stranger. I didn’t… touch people, not a lot. I didn’t touch girls a lot. Your hair was very soft. I tried to be gentle. The scrape of the scissor blades set my skin on edge; you didn’t notice, or say anything if you did. “You’re sure your dad won’t catch us?” you asked, and my hand jerked. “Hey!” “Sorry.” I squinted at your hair, cheeks hot. “It, um, it looks fine.” “Okay. So your dad?” My father was busy. My father was the sort of man who never really looked at anyone except for what he could make of them, and he could never manage to make anything of me. “No,” I said. “Drop your voice around him. That’s all.” You looked at me for a minute. I focused on protecting your ears from the scissor’s snips. “Why are you doing this?” you asked, finally. “I can’t suddenly have longer hair,” I said, but you put a hand on my wrist to stop me, so I had to look at you. Your eyes were bright, I thought. Lively. Nobody would believe you were me. “Sam?” “It was your idea. Call it a social experiment.” I brushed loose hair off your shoulder. “What about you?” Again, that flash of a grin. You’d have to learn to keep that under wraps. “This kind of opportunity! How could I turn it down?” “Oh, shit. You’re some scam artist.” The scissors were warm in my hand; I lifted them so they caught the light and your eye. “I think this is kind of a big commitment to ripping my father off.” “How often do you meet your doppelgänger?” With this weird earnestness. Like you were really excited to meet yourself as a boy, and not faintly sick. “Hey, you don’t think your dad was a sperm donor?” “Definitely not,” I said, and didn’t volunteer what he thought of unmarried pregnancy. “Maybe he has a secret twin.” “Maybe we  were twins. Separated at birth.” Maybe some force of nature just had a sick sense of humor. I stepped back and looked at you, which was nauseating. “How do I look?” you asked, deadpan. Like me. I shrugged. “You’ll pass.” # You did pass, beautifully. Handsomely. Not that I—But on you my features could almost seem pretty. Anyway, nobody noticed a thing. You glowed, telling me afterward, gloating about shaking hands and brushing shoulders with the high and mighty unsuspecting. I had never, in my whole life, been so excited about attending a dinner. Or maybe about anything. I shouldn’t have been surprised when you asked, “Could we do it again?” So we did it again. Smuggled you along, hid one of us in a closet, trotted you out for another public appearance. And then, when your palms didn’t sweat during and nobody puked afterwards, for another. “This is great,” you said, grinning, glorious, and I had to agree. It was kind of inevitable that we’d try our fantastic new trick in other ways. Could you get away with being me at dinners? at school? at breakfast? “Your mom’s nice,” you told me, and I shook my head. “ Your  mom.” This wasn’t the first time we’d slipped out of character; I didn’t mind reminding you. “Okay, whatever. Our mom’s nice.” You flopped back on my bed. Our bed. Your bed, half the time—on those nights, I slept on a pile of blankets we’d put together in the walk-in. It was fun, like camping, if family camping trips had ever been fun. We took turns. What if someone had come in to wake us? “Did she say anything to you?” I asked. You bit your lip the way I always did when I didn’t want to answer. You were getting really good at me. “Oh.” Mom was—had been—the last hurdle we thought we might stumble over. Like, at least, my mom would… Our mom. I focused on my breathing. “I think she’s glad we’re eating,” you said, and my eyes slid to the plate you’d brought me. “Later,” I said, and even though you knew my face, you weren’t looking. # You were me more often now. My friends liked you, you reported, which was weird because I didn’t know I had any. After that, school was your domain. You brought home textbooks with page numbers circled so I could keep up. Had to be on top of things when I went back, right? We joined clubs: chess, at first; and then drama, which made sense with all the acting practice you were putting in; then band, where you revealed we had a gift for flute. “I can’t play the flute,” I insisted. “Well, we do now.” You held it out to me. That’s a girly instrument. Kids will talk. I could just picture your face if I said that. Instead, I tried, “I don’t know how,” so you ended up teaching me. Trying to. I was never very good, I kept making this horrible screeching with the thing until you snatched it away from me. So music was yours, too. # I got used to hearing how you were acing my life; I got used to free time: I caught up on my TBR pile. I tried people-watching until we realized if I was noticed it would blow our cover. I discovered my bedroom had 413 ceiling tiles and 6 of them were cracked. “That’s great, Sam,” you said when I told you this. “Hey, weird question: Could you stay, y’know, back this afternoon? I invited Terry and Sahar over.” Girls? I tried, halfheartedly, to convince you it made sense for me to be the host. But they were your friends, and they’d notice if we were different than we’d been all day. You made good points. I spent the evening trying not to eavesdrop. You’d tell me about it eventually. # You were me more than I was. In the closet, spread out among the linens and throws, I closed my eyes and waited for you in stale air. “Hey,” you said, drawing the door open, “check this out.” You’d pierced your ears. A little stud sparkling at me from each lobe. Which meant you’d pierced our ears. You acted like you didn’t get why I didn’t love that. “Come on, Sam,” you said, “it’s cute. It looks cute on us, it really does. And you can always let it close later if you hate it.” I let you talk me into it; we watched Parent Trap and took notes, and then you brought us an apple, a lighter, and a pin. I bit my tongue bloody, but no one downstairs heard anything. The mirror caught the flash of silver any way I turned my head. # “We need a haircut,” I told you when I saw your curls brushed your shoulders now. Mine too, I guess. You ran a hand through the ends of it. “Do we?” I didn’t really know how to counter that. Eventually, I said, “Is it my turn tomorrow?” “No, I have flute after school,” you said, but you looked sorry about it. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll take next shift.” “Thursday is play rehearsal. And Friday the chess tournament starts.” Oh. Huh. Inhaling took effort. “Has Dad said anything about the hair?” “Dad doesn’t look at me,” you said. “Us,” I said. # I thought it was obvious that I’d do the play one night and you’d do the other. Apparently I hadn’t cleared that with you. “Sam,” you said, “you don’t even know our lines.” Yes, I did. I’d studied everything you were doing for us. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew the lines and the cues, and I would be great up there, or at least not terrible. I didn’t say this—something invisible was sitting on my stomach, pressing me flat. You were angrier than I had ever seen you, angrier than I had ever seen myself. The brightness in your eyes was cold. “I can’t believe you’re trying to steal this from me. I’ve been practicing—” “ We’ve  been practicing—” “No!” You were whisper-shouting now, because even hidden in the walk-in we didn’t want anyone overhearing. “No, we haven’t! I’ve gone to every session, I’ve been with the other actors, and you think dancing with clothes hangers is going to substitute for real human interaction!” I saw red. “No one asked you to do any of this,” I said, which felt reasonable. “You invited yourself, remember? I’m doing the play. It’s my life.” I slept in the bed that night. At two am, I woke up because you were standing next to me. The crack of light from under the door cast your shadow across my chest. “I’m sorry,” you said. “Of course you can do the play. Can I do opening night?” “Fine,” I said, and rolled over. As I fell back asleep, the closet door closed quietly. # I shouldn’t have gone to watch your play. We’d agreed a long time ago we could never be in the same place at once, outside our bedroom. But I needed to see. I was careful: I put on our most oversized hoodie, wore sunglasses indoors like a creep, and stayed way back at the end of the auditorium the whole time. You were great. That was—whatever, I’d passed the script back and forth with you, I had some idea you knew what you were doing. If it was just that it wouldn’t have meant anything. After, though. After the curtain fall and the bows and the applause. The cast spilling out from backstage to get hugs and cheers—and our parents were there, with flowers, Mom calling for her Sam. My  parents, actually. My parents. Your friends. Everyone loved us, but no one was looking at the weirdo in the hoodie. There wasn’t any air left in the room. I went home. “That was amazing,” you said as soon as you got back, bouncing on my bed, beaming. “God, you should have seen it. We totally killed.” “You,” I said. The mattress was jouncing me with your excitement. “You did. Not me.” “Well, it’s your turn tomorrow.” Your smile didn’t waver. When had I ever smiled like that? “C’mon, we’re celebrating!” I said, “I think you should leave.” The words took a moment to reach you through your halo of bliss. Then you said, “What?” “Go home,” I said, chest tight. “I’m sick of the game. You’re taking my whole life.” Your cheeks flushed. “As if you wanted it,” you said. “Like I haven’t noticed our massive closet doesn’t have anything in short sleeves. Mom’s really glad we’re doing so well.” Nausea churned. I couldn’t draw breath. “Get out of my fucking house,” I said. “I’m done, Carmen.” “Sam,” you said, and I guess I’ll never know if you meant it as a plea or a correction, because that’s when I slapped you. “Ow! What the fuck!” “Get out!” I said, voice rising into hysteria, cracking on the pitch. “God, didn’t anyone even notice you disappeared? Is that it? You wanted to try being someone who mattered?” “Picked pretty badly then, didn’t I,” you said, breathing hard and fast, “right, ’cause guess what, Sam, no one—” I had never hurt anyone but myself in my life. But you had been me for months, and I was on top of you, and my hands fit around your throat—you clawed at me, but I got my knees onto your arms to put a stop to that; you opened your mouth like you planned to scream, but I don’t think you had enough air left. “Leave me alone,” I said, pressing as hard as I could, “stop it, stop it…” “Sam,” you wheezed. “It’s Samson,” I said. “Sam’s someone you made up.” Your eyelids fluttered. You were so pretty—how did nobody notice you weren’t me? Your face was growing darker. You mouthed something I didn’t catch. I don’t know what I did after that. It gets blurry. I hope I was careful cleaning up. I wasn’t really thinking at my best. Could have used an extra pair of hands, a partner in crime. Or just a washroom attendant. But I couldn’t dwell on all that. I had to get plenty of sleep that night; after all, I was going back onstage tomorrow. Ayin Ships (any pronouns) has received a BA and MA from Brooklyn College in English and Secondary Education, respectively, and currently works within the NYC public school system. As a trans and queer writer, Ayin enjoys genre-bending, gender-bending fiction. They have never met their doppelgänger.

One downward sweeping stroke, barely kissed by two concave, backwards curls. Not quite a letter, a character unrecognizable, even to me.  Not my name and nowhere close to my initial. Yet it seems to be my signature just the same.  A pattern, a shape, a symbol that, defying definition, is written with compulsion, without choice or understanding. Simply to be repeated throughout my life.  By two shaking, pudgy fists that pull gnarled sticks through wet sand and cloying mud. By adolescent hands that scrawl on toilet walls and bus shelters, illicit cider dulling their sharpness, but instinct rising just the same. Scored with a compass, dragged through tender, flinching skin; later overwritten with vivid, violet ink.   Doodled on lecture notes and the margins of essays, on messages taken and messages lost. Traced on the backs of menus, receipts, bus tickets. Sketched inside books, some borrowed, some mine.  And always, it seems both familiar and distant, comforting and unsettling.  Question and answer. With no explanation, no recognition and no resolution, this symbol, my symbol, stands alone.  Each day on the early train, armed with a blunted pencil, I repeat the marks time and time again.  As the other passengers avoid my eye, repelled by my vacant intensity.  Until she arrives.  Her. The girl with autumn-burnished hair. That smells of bonfires and pungent leaves. Who sits close to me; waiting, watching. Undeterred. Who reaches out and without speaking stills my hand. Who rolls up her sleeve and lays her forearm next to mine.  Whose patterned skin is the mirror that tells me finally I am home.  Rachel Canwell is a writer and teacher living in Cumbria. Her debut flash collection ‘Oh I do like to be’ was published by Alien Buddha in July 2022 and her Novella in Flash ‘Magpie Moon’ by Kith Books in November 2023. She is currently working on her first novel.

We went on a family ski trip to Australia once. It’s was strange skiing through gum trees in the rain. The terrain flat the snow thin the queues long. But the strangest thing of all was the roadkill - from Canberra to Cooma through sweeping farmland kangaroos sculpture the highway. Roo after roo - a Mad Max cull. Once we started to climb towards Jindabyne up through the national park, rounder more solid marsupials appeared. It took me a few kilometres to work out what these neon-tagged creatures were. I could barely bring myself to tell the kids they were wombats. Dark hairy motionless barrels. My son was free-skiing at the Australian Junior Nationals. He won two gold medals that day. The ski company rep made him refuse his second first prize set of skis on the podium to the second placegetter. The kid’s eyes popped out of his head as he swapped his goggles and poles. Travelling back through the wombat dead, my son said he’d felt happier winning a hundred bucks in a local comp the weekend before. Sweat turned to tears. The Lucky Country  is home to a lot of odd decisions. Take the bloke who invented y-fronts with a special scrotum pouch. Separate your balls from your legs, the ad claims. An internal kangaroo pouch in your duds for your crown jewels. Keep em cool. Keep em safe. You’d need big nutz to carry that off, I suspect, much like flipping upside down on skis or taking a prize off a fourteen year old. I found out later the spraypainted letters on the dead marsupials meant Animal Rescue volunteers had checked their pouches for babies. They weren’t best-before codes, at all. My son gave up competitive skiing the following season. Queenstown, New Zealand based writer, Jane Bloomfield, is the author of the Lily Max children’s novels. Her poetry and CNF are published and forthcoming in Tarot, Turbine |Kapohau, Does It Have Pockets, a fine line  - NZ Poetry Society, MEMEZINE, The Spinoff, Sunday Magazine and more. Find her at Jane Bloomfield: truth is stranger than fiction - janebloomfield.blogspot.com

Under a dayglow sun, you crawl along Witham Way, windows down, glad of the roadworks that slow the traffic as you imagine the Capri gleaming diamond white in the queue of regular Fords. The faux-leather seat burns your still-slim thighs as you flip down the sun visor to check yourself out in the vanity mirror, your shutter shades neon-pink and fringe Sun In-streaked and stiff with spray. You push in the tape you mixed the night before for Steve who rests his hand on your lap, fingering the hem of your denim mini, and you turn up the volume as if pop will transform the poverty-paved street with the promise of summer. Of being Sweet Sixteen. And that’s when you see her. On the corner, outside the newsagents. The shine of bomber jacket and Docs. Baby-blonde hair feathering her otherwise shaven head. You hide behind the plastic slats of your glasses. But she hears Madonna blaring from a cut and shut. And when she gives you the finger, all you will remember is her smile.  Kerry Byrne lives and writes in the Cambridgeshire Fens, UK, with a backdrop of sky-filled water and an endless horizon. Her writing has been published by Ellipsis Zine, Lucy Writers, Pidgeonholes, streetcake magazine and Bandit Fiction, among others. In 2022, Kerry received an MLitt in Creative Writing with Distinction from Glasgow University. She is currently working on a collection of short fiction and poetry inspired by the Fens.