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Tell everyone you're fine. Pick yourself up from the bottom of the stairs, climb back up to the kitchen and take the phone from your mom to talk to the 911 operator. Hold your daughter close. Repeat that you are fine. Hold your breath as he brushes past you to leave the house and return to the guest cabin. Lock the door. Too late. It should have been locked before. But too late is still better than leaving it open. It's a way of pretending. Pretending is important. Repeat to the 911 operator that you are fine. Tell her again that you don't need an ambulance. Go to the bathroom and swallow some Advil. Call your friends. Tell them everything’s fine. You just need company. It's Christmas Day after all, and company is a good thing. When your friends come over, tell them that you’re fine. Tell them your daughter needs distraction. When he broke into the house and pushed you down the stairs - she screamed. Now you can’t get that sound out of your head. Be grateful your son was still sleeping. Stay busy in the kitchen. Keep your arm pressed tightly to your side so no one notices that it doesn't seem to be working. Plus holding it still relieves the pressure on your ribs. When the police arrive, tell them that you are fine. The RCMP constable takes one look at you and calls for an ambulance. Tell the paramedics that you are fine. Try not to breathe deeply, it hurts too much. Smile. Ask them about their Christmas dinners in an attempt to distract yourself when they take photos of your body and recommend you go to the hospital. DO NOT GO to the hospital. It's Christmas Day. That would be a huge mistake. Take the turkey from the fridge, brush it with oil, season it, and then, awkwardly, slide it into the oven. It's hard to peel potatoes with one hand pressed against your body. When the police constable gives you a copy of the restraining order, try not to cry, try not to let anyone see how scared you are. When they escort your husband off the property, don't stand in the window and watch. It will only make everything worse. When the police come to tell you they are leaving, tell them you will be fine now. When your friends have to go home to their own Christmas dinners, reassure them that you will be okay. Go to the bathroom and swallow more Advil. When your mom leaves, close the door to your bedroom, lie down and let silent tears fall. Don't let the kids hear you. The day is almost over. You made it. You are going to be fine. Alison Colwell graduated from the BFA program at UVIC and is now the Executive Director of the Galiano Community Food Program, a charity focused on increasing food security on Galiano Island. She is a single working mother of two children with mental health challenges and a survivor of domestic abuse, all of which inform her creative writing. Alison was recently awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Grant to work on a series of interconnected essays that weave fairy tales with memoir. Her creative non-fiction work can be found in the climate-fiction anthology Rising Tides, Folklife Magazine, The Fieldstone Review, the NonBinary Review, The Fourth River, The Humber Literary Review, The Ocotillo Review and is forthcoming in Two Hawks Quarterly and Hippocampus Magazine, and her fiction in Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, Crow & Cross Keys, Carmina Magazine and Tangled Locks Journal. Website: www.alisoncolwell.com

Alan stepped out of the Land Rover and peered down the long driveway. After jackhammering over three hundred miles of washboard roads, he had hoped for better. It was nearly impossible to reconcile the aggregation of shacks littering the Canadian clear-cut with Frank’s description of the place. For a moment, he wondered whether this was another of his brother-in-law’s malevolent practical jokes. But the delaminating plywood ‘Johnson Outfitters’ sign appeared too weathered to be a recent forgery. Alan panned the landscape through his Leica’s viewfinder. How had Frank described the place—bucolic? If that were true, Cabrini Green had been upscale. The Upper Michigan ghost towns he shot in 2015 looked more accommodating. Icons like Adams or Porter wouldn’t have wasted a single frame on the scene; after all, there's a difference between clutter and squalor. But he had resolved to record the entire adventure. Alan stashed the Leica behind the driver’s seat and grabbed his Hasselblad. Desolation such as this demanded the severity of black and white. He snapped off a few shots and then resumed his drive up the lane. The cluttered yard was hardly reassuring. Half a dozen vehicles in varying stages of decay lay among the buildings. A ’59 Chevy lay in state on naked rims, its cat eye taillights peeking out from a tangle of blackberries. The perforated shell of a vintage Mustang hunkered down beside the skeleton of a Jeep. Oil drums, paper trash, and a toppled satellite dish rounded out the scene. The house, a tarpaper-clad hovel with concrete-block steps and a smudgy stovepipe jutting through the roof appeared just marginally more inhabitable than the other shacks. Alan turned off the engine and felt it rising within him again—that sinking feeling. For decades, he had known the phrase only metaphorically. But his years with Deborah had transformed it into a physical entity—a smothery nausea in the throat that inevitably slid into the gut like the slow-motion initial drop of a roller coaster. As he tried to swallow the sickening swell building behind his Adam’s apple, a skinny dog bolted out from a brush pile. Alan rolled the window down a crack. "Hi, pup." The dog snarled and leaped against the door, its claws raking the rented SUV’s finish. A boy appeared around the corner of a shed. He gave Alan a cursory glance, then squatted in the gravel and began building a small teepee of sticks over a crumpled wad of paper. He rolled the window down a little farther. "Could you call your pooch, son?" The dog leaped up and bit at the side-view mirror. The boy’s only response was to set a match to the paper. Alan gave a short blast on the horn, and the shack's front swung open. An old man stepped onto the concrete block porch. He started down the steps. “Goddamnit, get!” and the dog slunk off toward the weeds. The man snatched a chunk of cinder block, then hurled it along with a second epithet at the retreating beast. Alan shook the trembling from his hands and climbed out of the Land Rover. "Quite a watchdog you have there. What breed is he?” The old man shrugged. “Wolf and something.” "I'm Alan Kurtz.” Alan held out his hand. “You must be Orin Johnson.” Alan felt little enthusiasm in the old man’s grip. "I expected you yesterday." "I had to tie up a few loose ends back in Chicago." "Price is still the same." Johnson's face could have been an Avedon study— weathered and craggy as the surrounding Rockies; ravines etched into his cheeks and forehead, a crooked promontory of a nose. And perhaps it was just the ill-trimmed beard, but his countenance seemed just a bit asymmetrical, as though Mother Nature had carved one side of his face, taken a century-long lunch break, and then finished the remaining side from memory. “You said on the phone you're here just to take pictures?” “I hope to sell a pictorial article to National Geo,” Alan answered. “I mainly want photos of Dall sheep, Bighorn sheep, and goats.” “You’ll see Bighorn and goats,” Johnson said. “Any Dall sheep you see is going to be one lost son-of-a-bitch. Southern edge of their range is a couple hundred miles to the north.” He started across the yard. “We’d better get moving.” On his way to the corral, Johnson stopped beside the boy and nudged him with a toe. When he got no response, Johnson stomped out the fire and yanked him up by an arm. He turned the boy to face Alan. “This is my kid.” The youngster stared past Alan, his flat face a mask of disinterest. Tufts of hair, the color of anemic soil, jutted from beneath his stocking cap. He had his father’s short, bowed legs, but his shoulders were broader and more heavily muscled. Alan offered his hand. “I’m Alan. What’s your name?” “He’s Jerry,” the old man answered. “The strong, silent type?” “He’s pretty much deaf.” An embarrassed burn surged into Alan’s cheeks. “Sorry. Does he sign?” “We do some signs.” Alan spelled out, "Hello, I am Alan," one of the few phrases remembered from an American sign language video. The boy stared at Alan’s gesturing hands. His eyes, a dull pewter, mirrored the overcast sky. He looked at his father. Johnson shrugged. “I guess my signing is rusty,” Alan said. "We got our own signs." Johnson motioned with his head, and the boy began walking toward the corral. “We’ll saddle the horses. You get your things.” “What about the dog—the wolf?” The implicit danger in the word sent a chill through Alan. “Heave a rock at him. He’ll run off,” Johnson called over his shoulder. On his way back to the vehicle, Alan stooped to pick up a baseball-sized rock. He knew he’d never use it. Still, the rock’s heft imparted a certain comfort. As Alan pulled his knapsack and a pair of matching duffel bags from the Land Rover, the dog materialized around the skeleton of a pickup. The creature glanced over at the corral, then trotted toward the SUV. Alan held up the rock. “Stay!” The dog broke into a run. Alan dropped the rock and dived into the back of the SUV. The dog put its front paws on the rear window and stared inside. “Please go away,” Alan called out. “Shoo!” The dog dropped onto all fours and began sniffing Alan’s gear. Johnson reappeared as the dog was lifting his leg on the knapsack. He started into a bowlegged trot, hurling curses at the animal. Alan waited until the dog loped away before crawling from the vehicle. He forced out a smile. "It seems my karma’s a little out of whack today." "I hope you get on better with horses than dogs," Johnson said. He nodded toward Alan’s gear. “Christ, you got enough to save the Donner party.” “I wanted to be ready for anything.” “You gotta cut way back. I only got two pack horses.” Alan spread out his gear onto a scrubby patch of lawn. He knelt among his possessions. “Everything looks so essential.” He looked up at Johnson. “Where do I begin?” “With this.” The outfitter nudged a backpacker’s pillow with his boot. “A couple extra pairs of socks will do you better.” He pointed to the neck of a liquor bottle peeking out from under a pair of Dockers. “Now, that’s essential.” Alan felt a small rush of gratitude that Frank had recommended the pint of Southern Comfort. “Break it out some night,” he had said. “You’ll thank me.” Alan commenced filling the duffel, Johnson hovering close, judging each item with a nod or a derisive grunt. Frank described Johnson as "colorful" and "a character." From Alan's vantage point, that assessment of the old outfitter was generous. When the bag seemed close to bursting, Alan wedged his drum in and forced the zipper closed. “What’s that?” “A Haida drum.” “You’re a Indian?” “No, I’m not Native American.” He hoped the subtle correction would take. "If you’re no Indian, why the drum?" “I incorporate elements of Native American religion into my spiritual life.” He pulled his Mackinaw out of the vehicle. Johnson shot him a skeptical look. “I had one of them once. Froze my ass off.” “But it’s a Filson. Virgin wool. Alaskan prospectors wore them.” “Sure. Along with a pair of long handles and a couple of sweaters. Give me a down ski jacket any day." The boy came out of the corral, towing a string of four tired-looking horses. He grabbed Andrew’s duffel and lashed it between two oversized saddlebags on the lead packhorse. Johnson handed the reins of a swaybacked mare to Alan. "I get to ride Rocinante?" Alan said. "Her name's Rita.” “I meant Rocinante. Don Quixote’s horse.” “I don’t know any Don Coyote,” Johnson said. “I bought her from a guy named Anderson.” “No. Don Quixote. Man of La Mancha?” Johnson stared at him blankly. "Dulcinea? Sancho Panza?” Johnson turned away. “Call her whatever you like, but get on her. We got some hard miles before we make camp. You’ve rode before?” “A little in the past." Alan secured his camera bag to the saddle horn and watched Johnson mount up. He noted the series of moves: left foot into the stirrup, the grasping of the saddle horn, a little bounce, then the arc of his right leg over the horse’s hindquarters. He ran the sequence through his head again before pulling himself into the saddle. The boy hoisted a knapsack onto his back, then took up position between Alan and the packhorses. “Your son doesn’t have a horse?” Alan called out. “Him and horses got issues, you might say.” “I can at least carry his pack on Rocina—on my horse.” Johnson started his mount with a kick in the ribs. “He manages.” Alan shook the reins gently. The old mare sighed and fell in behind the boy. The group set out through the clear-cut, wending their way through a labyrinth of brushy snags and old stumps weathered a tombstone gray. It felt good to be on a horse, the soft set of old leather reins in his hand, the saddle creaking in synch with the nag's rolling gait. How long had it been? A good thirty years. Not since a family visit to Wisconsin. And that had been maybe a dozen barebacked circuits around the cattle pen on an uncle’s geriatric draft horse. “How far is the game preserve?” Alan asked. Johnson pointed to the distant line of mountains, their summits obscured by the marbled ceiling of clouds. “Over that ridge and four more like it.” Despite the overcast, Alan felt a crisp, optimistic bite in the air. Every cool inhalation seemed to purge more of the city’s spiritual and physical toxins from his system—exhaust fumes, the crush of appointments, the venom of competition. Johnson’s son trudged ahead, his gait measured, almost metronomic. How many times, Alan wondered, has the boy walked this trail, his feet landing on the same rocks and earth? And, like the erosive forces of wind and rain, have his repeated footfalls ever slightly reshaped the terrain? Something rustled behind him. He turned and caught sight of the dog slinking behind. “Mr. Johnson. That dog isn’t going to attack me again, is he?” “Only if Rosie’s Auntie bucks your ass off her.” Finally, the chaos of the clear-cut surrendered to a meadow of knee-high grass. The sun eased from behind the cloud bank, sending a swath of light across the valley floor. Alan felt a hitch in his breath. He had been in Chicago's concrete and asphalt confines for so long, existing on the periphery of Deborah’s depressions. It was as though his vision had dialed down to black and white. Surrounded by this rich palette, it felt like the valley displayed every shade of green, gold, and earth tone at the Creator’s disposal. Alan pulled back on the reins and reached for his camera. “I have to catch this on film.” Johnson twisted around. “It’ll still be here when we get back. We gotta make time.” The trail ended at the bank of a shallow river. Johnson gave his horse a kick in the ribs. Horse and rider plunged down the incline and straight into the current. The packhorses followed in kind. The boy charted a different course, hopping from one rock to another, some jutting out of the river, others just beneath the surface. He moved carefully but confidently despite his burden—forward, right, left, sometimes even backward, as though negotiating some fractured, subsurface tightrope. Alan shook Rocinante’s reins. She remained motionless. He gave her a gentle prod with his heels. “Giddy up.” The horse held her ground, venturing forward only after the boy passed midstream. She shivered slightly as her front hooves hit the water. The horse kept a constant distance between herself and the boy, stopping when he veered sideways, retreating when he moved back in her direction. Alan could see the two were old partners in this dance. After Rocinante clambered up the bank, Johnson led his party through a narrow slash in the wall of trees and into the forest proper. The thick canopy allowed access to precious little sunlight. Only a single, unimpeded shaft yawned from the trailhead behind them. When their route hooked to the left, even that sliver of light disappeared. The twilight felt unwelcoming, almost hostile. Wind rasped through the treetops. Alan half-wished he still had the dog’s belligerent company. Something exploded from the underbrush, sending a rush of sweat across his torso. “What was that?” “Spruce hen, most likely,” Johnson answered. The trail cut back again, and Jerry disappeared into the forest. Alan marked the boy’s uphill progress by his litany of grunts and snapping branches. As they rounded the next switchback, the boy jumped back onto the trail. He labored a few steps, then plunged back into the wood. "Your son doesn't subscribe to the path of least resistance," Alan said. "He gets in a hurry.” A low branch grabbed at Alan’s hat. He pulled back on the reins. Rocinante coasted to a stop, letting out what sounded like a grateful sigh. Alan pulled out his small tree guide and thumbed through the pages. It was a poor time to regret buying cheap. Judging from the vague illustrations, the surrounding trees could have been either Douglas firs, white pine—or even Sitka spruce, which, according to the book, "is used in the construction of fine, stringed instruments." Alan gazed at the surrounding evergreens, imagining the legion of violins, guitars, and harps lay dormant beneath their rough skins. And he felt a pang of guilt for exiling his Celtic harp to basement storage only two months after its purchase. Alan urged the mare back into motion. Chicago, even Johnson's homestead, felt far distant in terms of distance and time. He could almost sense the souls of the aboriginals and mountain men trudging the trail. "Mr. Johnson, what Native American tribes were indigenous to this area?" "Joe Smiley and his folks live about five miles north of me," Johnson answered. “He’s mostly Cree and a decent sort when he's sober. His wife Janey, I think she's Assiniboine. She’d steal the gold right outta your mouth.” The first few hours, Rocinante's rolling gait had felt comforting, even therapeutic. But as the trail steepened, she began to struggle. Her stride deteriorated into a series of punishing lunges, progressing from irritating to uncomfortable to painful. By the time the trail widened into a small clearing, the ache in his lower back was nearly unbearable. The clearing bore Orin Johnson’s signature. At the far edge, a mound of fire-blackened cans and sundry half-burned trash spilled into the forest. A fire pit monopolized the center of the clearing beside a tall, fire-scarred conifer. Johnson swung down from the saddle and looped the reins around a crude hitching post. The boy set down his burden and then began to unload the packhorses. Alan slid from his mount, clinging to the saddle horn when his knees threatened to buckle. “Guess it’ll take a minute to regain my land legs.” “Happens,” Johnson said. Alan performed a few shallow knee bends. "I'm not the natural horseman Frank is." "Natural horseman?" Johnson snorted. “Every time that jackass dismounted, he waddled like a buggered duck.” Alan pulled his camera case off the saddle horn. “Can I help?” Johnson shook his head. “We got a system.” Alan took a few tentative steps and scanned his surroundings: the ravaged evergreen, the trash heap. He walked to the downhill edge of the clearing. A skein of Canada geese strung out across the eastern sky in a mutating vee. Bloated cumulus clouds, their bellies fire-tipped by the setting sun, hung above the jagged horizon. A haze had descended upon the valley below, melding trees and rocks, blending greens and yellows into a soft blue-gray. The mountains’ progressing shadows oozed over the landscape like warm tar swallowing a Monet. “Dinner’ll be ready in a half hour,” Johnson called out. Alan waved a thank you. Half an hour was barely enough time for his evening ceremony. Worse yet, he didn't see one square foot to avoid Johnson's hypercritical gaze. Alan pulled his small, catlinite pipe and the drum from his bag. He started toward the woods, then paused at the forest edge. “Are there any bears in these parts?” “No, the wolverines keep ‘em away.” Johnson's faint smirk gave Alan hope the old man was joking. Alan stepped into the dense underbrush. Branches pressed against him, resisting his progress, tugging at the drum. After a few minutes, the brush relented at the foot of a giant conifer. The spot seemed far enough from the campsite for privacy yet close enough to hear the faint, reassuring clang of pots, the snorting of horses, and the occasional curse. Alan brushed away a few cones, then settled back against the trunk. This country possessed such diverse and terrifying beauty. Within the borders of the previous six hours, they had passed drop-offs so sheer a single misstep could send a person tumbling into space and through forests so thick a body couldn’t fall over without sincere intent. He tamped a pinch of tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, struck a match, and lit the pipe. Before he could offer smoke to the four directions, something skittered across the forest floor. His scalp prickled. Another creature rustled behind him. Pinpoints of sweat burst from his pores. They’re just squirrels or maybe chipmunks, he told himself. But his deeper self said wolf, bear— wolverine. He snatched the drum and started toward the clearing. A branch clawed his left ear. He glanced off a small tree. A root rose and tripped him. He stumbled into the clearing on a half-run. To his relief, no one appeared to notice his panicked return. Orin Johnson hunched over a portable table. The boy was pulling wood from his knapsack and stacking it into piles. Alan walked over to Johnson, doing his best to look casual. A blue, enameled coffee pot ticked and rumbled on one of the camp stove burners. A stew of some kind simmered on the other. Johnson was tearing wads from a lump of dough and arranging them in a Dutch oven. He glanced up from his work. “Enjoy your walk?” “It helped me work out the kinks.” “You best settle into your tent,” Johnson said. “It'll be dark after supper." He pointed a doughy finger. “That far one is yours.” The tent, an old canvas affair, hardly appeared welcoming. The canvas was an abstraction of irregular patches, and its profile rivaled Rocinante's. Alan crawled inside, dragging his gear in behind him. The interior stank of mildew. Every night, the previous week, he had barely been able to fall asleep, anticipating idyllic nights, snug in his sleeping bag and bathed in the bracing bouquet of pine. This tent reeked like a dirty gym sock. Alan crawled from the tent and tied back the flaps. When he joined Johnson by the camp stove, the old man handed him a steaming bowl. “This’ll put lead in your pencil.” Chunks of meat and vegetables bobbed in a grease-mottled broth. “What is this?” “The best damn venison stew this side of Whitehorse.” “I don’t eat meat. I told you that I’m a vegan.” “Christ,” Johnson said. “I thought vegan was some cult, like a Hindu or Mormon.” That explained why Johnson had replied, "That’s fine. Just don't push it on me," during a previous phone conversation. “Can you just eat the carrots and potatoes?” “I’m afraid not,” Alan said. "The meat has tainted them. “How about some scrambled eggs?” “Nothing animal.” Johnson rummaged through his larder, muttering the occasional "shit" and "goddamn" under his breath. He pulled out a pair of potatoes. “I can fry these up for you.” “That’ll be fine.” Orin hacked up the potatoes and tossed them into a skillet. He dipped his spoon into a jar, then paused. “Bacon grease is a no-go, too?” Alan nodded. “Butter?” “Sorry.” “Jesus H—,” Orin’s tone could have been embarrassment or disgust. "I could throw the spuds in the fire. They'd ready in maybe a half hour." “Don’t bother.” “I got some biscuits and syrup.” “Did you use animal shortening in the biscuits?” “Crisco, whatever the hell that's made of.” “Hydrogenated oil. It’s a potential carcinogen.” Johnson sighed. “Well, hell.” “That’s okay. I brought some snacks along.” Alan hurried back to his tent. As he dug around for the trail mix, the pint of Southern Comfort slid from the knapsack. Despite its seemingly spontaneous appearance, he couldn't consider this a full-blown sign. But, coupled with Frank's cryptic hint: "SoCo is to Johnson’s jaws what WD-40 is to a rusty hinge,” it might have been a little cosmic nudge. Alan stuffed the bottle into a vest pocket, the trail mix into another, and scuttled out of the tent. Johnson sat cross-legged by the fire, ladling the stew into his maw. He held out a plate of biscuits. “Sure you don’t want a couple?” “Thanks, no.” Alan settled down near the fire. The clouds on the horizon now looked cold and pregnant. “Think it’ll snow tonight?” Johnson shook his head. “Frost tonight. Snow tomorrow.” They sat in relative silence, Alan crunching his trail mix and Johnson slurping the stew until Jerry appeared dragging a section of an evergreen. The boy tossed a few branches onto the blaze, causing it to smolder and hiss. A breeze eddied around Alan, wrapping him in a shroud of gray smoke. He swabbed his smarting eyes. “Nothing like the smell of a wood fire.” “The kid likes ‘em,” Johnson said. “But it'll be a cold day in hell before I drag as much as a chopstick halfway across the wilderness to make one." “There must be plenty of wood out here." "I’d bet enough to burn your goddamn Chicago again." Johnson sounded a little embarrassed. Alan pulled the bottle out of his pocket. “Ready for a little digestif?” Johnson brightened. “Don’t know about that, but I wouldn't turn down a drink.” He held out his cup. Alan cracked the seal and tilted the bottleneck into Johnson’s cup. “Say when.” The amber liquid nearly lapped at the rim before Johnson said, “That’ll do.” He frowned as Alan capped the bottle. “You’re not drinking?” “I’m more of an IPA person.” “It would do me pleasure if you had a drink.” There was more insistence than invitation in his voice. Alan poured one lean finger for himself. Johnson clinked his cup against Alan’s. “Here’s to you.” He took a healthy swallow and then gave Alan a look. Alan swirled his cup around. He hated the cloying, syrupy liqueur. But, under Johnson's unwavering stare, there appeared no option. He took a small swallow and shuddered at the alcohol's aromatic burn. He forced a smile. “Good stuff.” "Your boy’s wood stash.” Johnson drizzled syrup over a biscuit. “He’s been playing with fire since he could toddle. Eight years back, we was up here.” He paused to chase down a bite of biscuit with a slug of liquor. “It rained steady from day one. So wet the devil couldn’t have raised a spark. But the kid tried and tried. When I dragged him in the tent, he raised such Cain, I set up a rainfly and let him stay out." The evergreen branches ignited with a woof, their needles crackling like snapping threads. “Anyways, the kid got a bad ear infection. Played hell with his hearing. From then on, he brings wood along." The boy then settled down with his dinner. He ate slowly, his gaze fixed on the blaze. “And his mother?” Alan asked. “Is there a Mrs. Johnson?” The old man slipped the last bite of biscuit into his mouth and looked away. Alan saw he had gone too far. “Will we see sheep tomorrow?” Johnson shook his head. “Day after next. And we’ll be pushing it to do that.” He tossed a pebble at his son and then pointed toward the horses. Jerry let out a plaintive "Aww." Johnson pointed a threatening finger. The boy tilted the bowl to his mouth and sucked it dry. He took a final look at the fire, then sulked into the dusk. “Damn kid should have fed the horses before supper," Johnson muttered. "I'm getting too lax with him." There was a hollow thud, and a horse whinnied. “What was that?” "The boy don't like that mare you're riding. Last fall, she nipped off a piece of his ear." Johnson pulled out a pouch and rolling papers. “You hear anything from that brother-in-law of yours?” “Only that he hopes I enjoy my time here as much as he did." Johnson snorted. "Hell, he bitched sunup to sundown." “That’s odd,” Alan said. "What didn’t he like?” "The weather, the mountains, the food. You name it." "He’s very proud of his trophy." “I got that ram for him.” Johnson spat into the fire. "That jackass couldn't hit a grizzly if he had the rifle stuck up its ass.” Alan shifted position, and his right heel caved in a corner of the fire as Jerry returned. The boy snatched a stick and rapped the sole of Alan’s boot. Alan swung his leg away. “What's your sign for I'm sorry?" “Don’t got one.” Alan mimed, “I’m sorry,” but the boy had already returned to tending the fire. "He's a cheap bastard, too, your brother-in-law is. 'Keep the meat,' he says. 'I just want the head.' We get back to my place, and he wants a partial refund because he gave me the meat." Johnson held his empty cup out toward Alan. By the time he said, “When,” the bottle was empty. He raised his cup in a silent toast. "He kept grousing till I agreed to give him fifty bucks for any referral." Alan frowned. That explained Frank’s unbridled enthusiasm for the Canadian Rockies—and Orin Johnson. "He's the best guide in all of Canada," Frank had claimed. “Probably the whole Western fucking Hemisphere.” A pitch pocket exploded, sending a geyser of sparks skyward. The boy's mouth fell open. His eyes followed the ascending sparks until the last one burned out. He whacked the fire with his stick. A second miniature cyclone of sparks swirled into the blackness. As Frank had predicted, the Southern Comfort proved a stellar social lubricant. The first cupful made Johnson increasingly talkative and semi-sociable. But halfway through the second cup, his monolog deteriorated into a barely intelligible smear of syllables, and his chin began a slow, halting descent. The boy reached for another piece of firewood, but Johnson shook his head. He snubbed his cigarette and labored to his feet. “Morning comes early. And we got ground to make up.” He tapped Jerry’s shoulder and placed his palms together. The boy nodded. Johnson patted his shoulder and hobbled off toward his tent. “What did you tell him?” Alan asked. “To say his goddamn prayers.” Alan stood and slapped the dirt from his pants. After the campfire's impression faded from his retina, he shuffled carefully into the darkness. The crescent moon contributed little light for his walk back to the tent. Before crawling into his tent, Alan glanced back to see the boy’s silhouette in the dying fire’s dirty, orange glow. There was a thud, an explosion of sparks, then a curse from Johnson’s tent. “Goddamned kid.” Alan performed a quick strip and dived into his sleeping bag. He retrieved his affirmations book and a flashlight from his knapsack. The day’s meditation on tolerance of incompatible personalities expressed the perfect sentiment for his present situation. He made a quick entry into his journal and then settled deeply into the mummy bag. The thin mattress pad afforded little comfort. More than ever, he missed Deborah’s ample, accommodating warmth. But this time apart might provide the perspective they need to heal their relationship. Lately, he couldn't say anything right. Like his innocent quip at Frank's party the previous weekend: “Any man who believes in male superiority hasn’t tried folding a fitted sheet.” Deborah hadn't uttered a word on the ride home. Then, as they dressed for bed, she said, “So laundry is only a woman’s job?” When he blamed his remark on the glibbing influence of his second hard cider, she countered, "Alcohol always brings out true feelings," before slipping into another of her expansive, punishing silences. Alan rolled up a chamois shirt and slipped it under his head. The weight of the day seemed to hit him at once. He fell asleep quickly despite the jab of a collar button in his cheek. *** First, there was the musty odor. Then, the stiff neck. Finally, Johnson cursing at the packhorse named Bill. Alan cracked open an eye. Sunlight filtering through the canvas bathed the tent's interior in an olive-drab pall. Yesterday had not been a bad dream. "Time to get up, Mr. Kurtz," Johnson called. “We’ve got to make time today.” Alan watched his breath rise in clouds and condense on the tent peak. He curled deeper into his bag, trying to ignore the numbing gloom radiating from his center. Could this be how it is for Deborah? he wondered. Her fits of melancholia, as she called them. Those black holes from which aura work, flower essences, and guided meditation at best provided only temporary respite. Alan pulled his clothing into the sleeping bag. The addition of each clammy article sent a new wave of chills coursing through him. He crawled from the tent. Simply standing was a painful proposition. The subtle but constant strain of riding had taken a toll. His inner thighs felt as though they'd been pounded with a bat. He performed a few shallow knee-bends and then started toward Johnson at the cookstove. The boy, huddling over a small blaze at the fire pit, didn't acknowledge Alan as he passed. Johnson gave Alan a cursory nod. “I’m fixing some flapjacks. But I ain’t frying them in bacon grease.” “Great.” “Just good old Aunt Jemimah, milk, and—” “Milk. That’s dairy.” “Shit.” Johnson jammed his spatula under a flapjack. "I could make some with water, but they'd taste like fucking fry bread.” “I’ll just have some trail mix.” “There’s some leftover biscuits,” Johnson offered. “If you don’t mind the hydrogized Crisco.” Alan paused to consider the impact of a minimal quantity of trans fat. “What the heck. A few grams of the stuff won’t kill me.” Johnson actually chuckled. “Grab some coffee.” Alan poured a steaming cupful and raised it to his lips. “Let ‘er cool a bit,” Johnson warned. "That metal cup'll scald a layer of lip off you.” Alan set down the cup. The nurturing warmth of his regular morning coffee would be one more thing he would miss during this junket. Johnson dropped a trio of biscuits onto a plate and rationed a teaspoon of syrup over each one. "Eat up quick now. We got ground to cover." *** A feeling of snow hung in the raw evening wind as Alan slung the last of his gear over the makeshift clothesline. Of everything in his pack, only the plastic bag of trail mix had remained dry during the fatal river crossing. He felt grateful he had slung the camera bags from Rocinante's saddle horn. Otherwise, they would have suffered the same fate as his journal. He sat on a nearby stump and started peeling apart page after sodden page. Nearly six months' worth of remembrances, sufferings, hopes, and revelations—meticulously laid down with his favorite fountain pen—now bled together in an indigo stain. The day's events would forever be high on his list of major disappointments. From the very outset that morning, Johnson had set a punishing pace. Before the party crested the first ridge, both packhorses had worked up a heavy lather. By the time they'd encountered the river, Rocinante's sides were heaving like a blacksmith's bellows. Then, right in mid-crossing, Old Bill the packhorse stopped. Alan could still see the poor nag swaying drunkenly in the knee-deep water, head down, tail drifting in the current. The poor beast had barely flinched as Johnson scourged his haunches with the lead rope. Then, like some slow-motion extra in a Peckinpah film, the horse sagged forward into the water and rolled onto his side, the current pillowing against his burden. Alan tossed the journal into his tent and joined Johnson beside the camp stove. "Other than my journal, everything should dry out eventually. “Journal?” "It's a diary of sorts. It's completely illegible now. Must be a sign I shouldn't hold onto the past." Johnson slammed his fist into a mound of dough. “It’s a sign I got to buy another goddamn packhorse, is what it is.” His tone seemed to imply Alan was responsible—maybe by arriving one day late, he had killed the horse. But the old man had pushed the pace, not him. Johnson ladled stew into a pair of wide, shallow bowls. He handed Alan an empty plate and a fork. “I got something special for you.” Alan followed him over to the fire ring. This clearing was a near twin to its predecessor, right down to the trash pile and campfire-tortured evergreen. The old man fished a foil packet from the coals and dropped it onto Alan's plate. “Careful. It’s damned hot.” Alan folded back the foil, revealing a steaming mound of vegetables. He speared a chunk of carrot. The grievously-overcooked vegetable had all the structural integrity of pâté and conveyed the acrid bite of scorched herbs. Johnson watched him expectantly. “Well?” Alan could see the situation called for diplomacy. “Very⎯flavorful. Do I taste oregano?” Johnson dropped his gaze as though embarrassed by the non-committal praise. “It’s called I-talian seasoning. Last fall, I guided a group of Dagos from New York. One of them brought the stuff and forgot it.” Under Johnson's periodic scrutiny, Alan labored through the mushy vegetables, bite by pungent bite. By the time he forced down a last unpalatable morsel, his mouth tasted like the aftermath of a brush fire. As Alan pulled the trail mix from a vest pocket, he noticed the boy staring intently. "Is it okay if he has some, Mr. Johnson?" Johnson swabbed his bowl clean with a portion of biscuit. “Suit yourself.” Alan dumped a good portion onto the plate and held it toward the boy. Jerry looked over at his father. Johnson nodded, and the boy snatched Alan's offering. He separated the different ingredients into piles before starting to sample them. Neither the peanuts nor the sunflower seeds produced a discernible response. The raisins brought a smile to his lips. A tentative pinch of coconut elicited a low "Mmmm." He stuffed all the carob chips into his mouth and almost immediately spat them into the fire. “I’ll be damned,” Johnson said. “Last guy who come here gave the kid a chocolate bar, and he about inhaled it.” “Yes, that is funny,” Alan said. Explaining the difference between carob and chocolate hardly seemed worth the effort. Jerry spat on his hands and wiped them on his jeans. He smelled his fingers, then devoured the remaining coconut. Alan stood and stretched. “I better start a fire and dry out my things.” “Might be some paper in the trash pile to help get her started," Johnson said. "Or, you could bring a few things over by this fire." The offer sounded less than heartfelt. "Thanks, but I've already hung them up." Alan scavenged an armload of branches from the clearing’s perimeter. He dropped them near enough to dry the clothes, far enough to avoid igniting them. He fashioned a teepee of sticks over a wad of crumpled paper, then set a match to it. The paper flared up but quickly died. Alan's second try yielded a few smoldering twigs. Before he could make a third attempt, Jerry appeared and knelt beside him. The boy scraped a pile of birch bark shavings from a stick and cupped them in his left palm. He retrieved a glowing twig and cradled it in the nest of shavings. He worked with a mechanical proficiency, easing a few shavings over the ember, nursing it to life with a few soft breaths. A thread of smoke rose from the tinder, followed by a tongue of flame. There seemed a reverence in how the boy eased his tinder bundle into the lopsided pile of kindling. He pulled Alan's sleeve and motioned toward the fire. As Alan blew on the tiny flame, it grew larger, hungrier. A birch limb blistered and burst into flame. The boy added a few more substantial sticks. Alan leaned back on his elbows, head reeling. The boy rummaged around the clearing's perimeter, returning shortly with a pair of long branches. He handed one to Alan and took a seat across the fire. Jerry whacked the fire with his stick. His eyes followed the sparks spiraling into the darkness. He gestured to Alan, who followed suit, sending another glowing shower of sparks skyward. The boy issued a strangled laugh and smiled. Johnson stepped into the ring of light. “Appears the party’s moved over here.” He dropped his saddle between Alan and Jerry. “You don’t happen to have another pint of Comfort, do you?” Alan shook his head. “Sorry.” Johnson felt a few items hanging on the line. “These shirts’ll dry out. But I don’t hold out hope for your bag.” “That’s not good news.” “We can fix you up.” Johnson plunked down on his saddle. “We’ve got four saddle blankets for starters. Well, three, anyway. Old Bill’s is soaked.” He pulled a lumpy, hand-rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket. “Or, I suppose you could use my bag." This offer also lacked the ring of sincerity. Considering Johnson was barely tolerable on a good day, it seemed unwise to risk further deterioration of his demeanor from a bad night's sleep. “The saddle blankets and my jacket should be enough.” Alan nudged the fire with his stick. The boy watched the sparks ascend, then smiled again at Alan. Johnson struck a match and lit his smoke. “You’re from Chicago, then.” “All my life.” “Bulls fan?” “Go Jordan.” “I’m a Celtics fan. Sometimes they have all white guys on the floor." “Imagine that.” “Who was that jackass on the Bulls that dyed his hair and had so much hardware in his mug he looked like he'd fell face down in a tackle box?” "I couldn't say," Alan lied. “Goddamn sports is turning into a—" Alan thumped the fire. Johnson slapped an errant spark from his pant leg. “Jesus Christ! Now he’s got you doing it?” Alan and the boy grinned at each other. It felt good to share a joke with Jerry, a private one beyond the old man’s understanding. Derailing the old man's malevolent train of thought was a bonus. But Johnson's mental railroad had many tracks, each ultimately dead-ending in a rant about some person or institution that screwed him. Everyone from old Bill’s previous owner— “Bastard told me he’d be good for ten years”—to Canada’s current administration occupied his shit list. Alan stared into the shimmering heart of the fire while Johnson droned on, only offering an occasional "Imagine that" or "Really?" Glancing across the fire, he caught the warmth radiating from Jerry's eyes. The connection felt like pure communication—an understanding between two souls, unaided and unhindered by the spoken word. He closed his eyes to drink in and celebrate the feeling. Alan awoke alone, stiff-necked and shivering. The fire was down to a few smoldering coals. The horse blankets lay in a mound beside him. He stood and checked the clothesline. His sleeping bag was a clammy no-go. Alan crawled into the tent, dragging the stinking blankets in behind. He layered them over his legs and torso, then scratched a quick journal entry on a flour bag from the trash pile. "Cold, aching, tired. But all is well. *** For the second consecutive morning, Alan found waking up easier than getting up. It seemed difficult to imagine the same sun created both the harsh sunlight penetrating the tent and the nurturing rays that filtered through their bedroom curtains in Chicago. Alan tried to roll over but found his clothes crudely folded and packed around him. Too groggy to explore the mystery, he slung a forearm across his eyes. He was slipping back into the sweet sanctuary of sleep, when Johnson roared in his dry, congested tenor, “Goddamned fucking bacon anyway!” Alan threw off the blankets and shimmied from the tent onto a thin layer of snow. After a second day in the saddle, he had expected his discomfort would have lessened. If anything, he felt worse. Hamstrings, calves, arches, nearly everything but his eyelashes ached. He performed a trio of shallow knee bends, then limped across the clearing. Johnson was stabbing at a frying pan from an arm's length with a long-handled fork. He greeted Alan with a grunt and a nod. “That bacon. It’ll spit like a bastard.” He reached down, snatched a handful of snow with his handkerchief, and pressed it against his cheek. Alan poured a cup of coffee, then set it on the cook table to cool. “You have a gift for predicting the weather.” “No gift. I checked with the weather service just before you showed up,” Johnson said. “Of course, those bastards being right is a small miracle.” Alan took a tentative sip of coffee and looked over at the boy. As expected, his new friend was feeding a small fire in the fire ring. Johnson motioned to the table. "I cooked up some flapjacks. Of course, I had to do them in hydrolated.” Alan picked up his plate and started toward the campfire, Johnson closely behind. The boy gave Alan a quick smile. His eyes still retained a spark of warmth from the previous night. Alan returned his silent greeting. Jerry pulled Alan down beside himself. "Seems the boy's taken a liking to you." Johnson handed his son a plate, then eased himself down on a stump. "That's a rarity." Alan pulled the trail mix from a vest pocket. "Is it all right if I give this to the boy—to Jerry?" “Suit yourself.” Alan handed the bag to Jerry. The boy stuffed it beneath his sweater, scooted close, and scraped his bacon onto Alan's plate. “Kid’s taken quite a liking to you,” Johnson said. "First, he burns up half his wood drying out your gear last night, and now he gives you his bacon." He issued a dry chuckle. “Seeing as pork ain't hardly a vegetable, you got yourself a problem." Alan prodded one of the fat-ribboned strips with his fork. He hadn’t eaten anything animal for nearly a year and even longer for bacon. But the prospect of rejecting this gift felt so wrong. He broke off a small piece and set it on his tongue. The texture felt unfamiliar, even foreign. But no meat substitute could match its luxurious richness and mouth feel. This evening, he would offer thanks to the pig’s soul. And back home he could mail a check to a local animal shelter. Not an ideal solution, but a sincere compromise. He picked up a slice and took a more substantial bite. “Well, look at you now," Johnson cackled. "Another week with us, and you'd be chewing the backstrap off a mule deer on a dead run.” *** About half an hour into the morning's ride, Alan's stomach had begun to percolate. Bacon, he concluded, isn't the ideal meat for exiting a vegan lifestyle. Bacon as a gateway meat leading to the "harder stuff" like foie gras and veal. Funny, he thought. He ran it through his mind again—gateway meat, foie gras, veal. He wished that Jens or one of his savvy friends were along on the junket. Sharing the witticism would be wasted on his current companions. He imagined trying to explain it to Johnson. "You know, bacon, a gateway meat to veal. Like marijuana is a gateway drug to heroin and cocaine." “You’re saying that bacon leads to drugs?” “No, other meats like veal.” "Veal leads to drugs?" No, it would just be reframing the Rocinante/Don Quixote farce. As the party ascended, trees grew shorter, the stands sparser. Finally, the forest fell away completely. They passed through inclined meadows of pale grasses punctuated with jumbled ridges of rock. An occasional sleepy-eyed marmot chirped in protest of their presence before waddling into its den. A few small birds, perhaps juncos or chickadees, according to Alan's bird book, flitted about. Whenever Alan insisted on stopping to capture the mountain’s severe magnificence on film, Jerry fidgeted, braiding and lighting handfuls of dead grass. At midday, after a light lunch, Johnson grabbed his rifle and a coil of rope. “Now we walk. It’s too rough for the horses from here on.” As Johnson led them onward, the landscape lapsed into a tedious sameness; treacherous expanses of rock rubble, talus Johnson called it, interrupted by meager patches of grass. Alan trudged on, focusing on Jerry’s heels a few yards ahead. His heart hammered, and his head swam in the rarified air. Twice he slipped, sending slabs of rock clattering down the slope. The wind had grown hostile, almost predatory. It pounded the group, sometimes head-on, other times eddying around and ambushing them from behind. Finally, the old man held up his hand and sprawled onto his stomach. "Sheep.” Alan scanned the terrain ahead. “Where?” Johnson pointed at a handful of beige specks near the top of the ridge. Alan unpacked his gear. He pulled his Leica from the case, attached a telephoto lens, then zoomed in on the animals. There they stood, at a distance of nearly three hundred yards, ten sheep in all; three ewes, five young, and a pair of immature rams. The rams were disappointing, horns at best only half curl. Alan snapped off a dozen shots of ewes with their young, a few of the young males clumsily jousting. "I was hoping to see a good ram." Johnson pointed above the other sheep. “Like that one?” Alan stared through the viewfinder again. What was he missing with a 300X lens that the old man saw with his naked eye? He panned the horizon twice before he saw the flash of a horn as ridged as wind-eroded rock. Moments later, the ram crested the ridge. He was an old warrior, thick-bodied with a scarred Roman nose and massive, and slightly-broomed, full-curl horns. Alan locked his tripod and fired off a series of shots. He stopped down the aperture a few clicks, then took more. The ram turned broadside as though consciously posing for him. The creature's muscular, tawny flanks and alabaster rear end appeared etched into the cobalt sky. Alan switched filters and resumed shooting. "You done yet?" Johnson asked. Alan snapped off a final shot. “That’s it.” An explosion fractured the air. A young ram staggered drunkenly. The herd scattered over the ridge. The ram crumpled, then skidded down the mountainside, coming to rest, scissored between a pair of rocks. Alan’s ears rang painfully. “What the hell?” “A little meat till I get my elk.” “But this is a wildlife preserve!” “It ain’t like I shot a goddamn ewe,” Johnson slung the rope over his shoulder and motioned to the boy. He looked at Alan. “You coming?” Alan sagged back against the mountain and shook his head. Johnson and the boy set off. Alan rolled over and began to follow their progress through the camera lens. Father and son spent nearly an hour of crab walking across slides and clinging to steep slopes until they reached a narrow ledge above the dead ram. Johnson cinched a loop of rope around the boy’s chest just below his armpits. Jerry slid over the ledge and began to pick his way down the rock face, jamming his free hand into cracks, taking toe holds on tiny outcrops of rock, his father feeding out the rope one arm length at a time. Finally reaching the ram, he tied the rope around its horns. Johnson began hauling the carcass up. His son hugged the rock face. A rush of vertigo overcame Alan as he watched the boy huddle on the meager outcrop of rock. Johnson hoisted the sheep onto the ledge, then lowered the rope over the lip. The boy tied a loop beneath his armpits. Johnson braced himself, keeping the line taut as Jerry picked his way up the mountain face. A few feet below his destination, the boy's handholds failed. Johnson reared back. His feet stuttered close to the edge. The boy swung against the mountainside, clambering for purchase. Alan’s stomach lurched as Jerry labored hand over hand back onto the ledge. Johnson knelt beside the ram. He slit the animal up the front. The old man castrated the ram in a single stroke and tossed the scrotum over the ledge. He next slit the animal up front, reached into the cavity and severed the windpipe, then pulled the entrails from the body cavity. The viscera oozed over the edge, painted a bloody scar down the rock face, ricocheted off the outcrop, and plunged out of sight. Alan snapped off shot after shot, capturing each step of Johnson's butchering process:  decapitating, skinning, hacking it into quarters. As much as it sickened him, the authorities would appreciate the documentation. After Johnson lashed half of the carcass to the boy and the other to himself, they began picking their way across the mountainside. Alan watched Jerry's progress through his lens. Obviously, Johnson didn't value his son any more than he did the horses. The child deserved so much more from life:  decent clothes, an education, and nurturing parents. He and Deborah could give him these things. And Jerry was precisely what they needed to put their trivial problems in perspective--another soul to focus on. The idea wasn't so crazy. He and the boy had already initiated a warm, sharing relationship in only one evening. Father and son rejoined Alan barely ahead of the mountain's advancing shadow. Alan was on Johnson even before he could shrug off his burden. He waved a trembling finger in the outfitter's face. “You bastard! You goddamned bastard!” Johnson lit up a cigarette. “What crawled up your ass?” “Your boy could have been killed.” Johnson turned away. “Well, he wasn’t.” "Goddamn, you!" Alan grabbed Johnson's shoulder and spun him around. “You don’t deserve to have a child.” A blow from behind dropped Alan to his knees. A following knee drove him face down to the ground. The boy straddled him, and Alan covered the back of his head with his hands as the boy continued pounding him. Alan rolled onto his back and thrust out his hands to divert the blows. The boy bit down. A bolt of pain shot up Alan’s arm. He felt a jarring blow against his left temple. The mountainside tilted, went gray, and then black. *** Orin Johnson tossed Alan’s duffel bag into the back of the Land Rover. “Yeah, that was quite the accident you had,” he said. “You’re lucky to be alive.” Alan recognized the thinly veiled warning beneath Johnson’s words. But the threat wouldn’t hold water when he and his kid were behind bars. Then, as though he had read Alan’s mind, the old man added, “You know, plenty of folks around here would say my kid’s as harmless as mothers’ milk. Unless somebody attacked his dear, old dad, of course.” He slammed the Land Rover’s rear door. “I’d bet for fifty bucks your peckerhead brother-in-law would swear to it.” The raw wind felt abrasive against Alan’s bruised cheek. Lights arced in his right eye as he climbed behind the wheel of the Land Rover. A detached retina, no doubt about it. The journey back to Johnson’s had played out like a nightmare montage: Outsized shadows cast on his tent by the young monster’s nightly fires, Old Bill’s half-eaten carcass lying in the river, snatches of forest and clear-cut valley, then eventually the outfitter’s wolf mix stalking the river’s edge upon their return to the valley—all filtered through the flashing interference in his left eye. Pain had been the one constant on that descent back to the valley:  the dry, grinding ache behind his right eye, a pulsing throb in his mangled middle finger, the rhythmic twinge in his left rib cage dictated by Rocinante’s syncopated gait. Johnson waved his son over to the SUV. He clasped his two hands together and pointed at Alan. The boy shook his head. Johnson cuffed his ear. The kid turned and, slouching obliquely, offered a hand. Alan scrutinized the boy’s dull, belligerent countenance. How he ever imagined the young brute possessed even an ember of humanity was a goddamned Miss Marple mystery. “Mr. Kurtz,” Johnson said, “It’d be bad manners not to say goodbye.” Alan reached out the window and briefly touched the boy's hand. He exerted no pressure and received none in return. Johnson cracked an amber-toothed smile. “It warms my old heart to see you boys parting on such good terms.” He started away from the Land Rover. “Well, that new carburetor won’t install itself. And this is no place to be without wheels.” Alan checked his eye in the rearview mirror. The sliver of sclera peeking out between his swollen lids shone an angry red. He reefed the steering wheel to the left and aimed the Land Rover toward the driveway. Threat or no threat, there'd be hell to pay when he contacted the cops, the Mounties, or whoever the fuck. Within a hundred yards of the highway, a movement in the side mirror caught his eye. The dog had broken from the ditch and was giving chase. Alan eased up on the accelerator. His gaze darted back and forth between the mirror and the driveway. The beast was in an all-out sprint and quickly closed to within a few feet behind the Rover. Alan drifted to the left and slammed on the brakes. His chest snapped forward against the shoulder harness, a shower of light exploding in his eye. There was an abbreviated yelp. Alan looked back to see the dog dragging its hindquarters toward the ditch. Johnson hobbled into view, firing off a volley of indiscernible curses. Alan thrust his bandaged middle finger out the window and pressed down on the accelerator. Michael Propsom is a guitar maker and former Big 10 defensive tackle with a BA in Social Work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has been published by various magazines including The Saturday Evening Post online, Berkeley Fiction Review, Ponder Review, and Wisconsin Review. He has received two Pushcart Prize nominations.

‘We made a pact,’ the Devil says. He’s here in black and white, like a young Cary Grant. Top hat and tails. Tombstone teeth. Tommy, rat-arsed on Wild Turkey on a pool lounger, shades his eyes and squints into the unrelenting LA sun. Wishes he had fallen asleep wearing something more dignified than orange Speedo’s. ‘I didn’t mean—‘ ‘Not my problem, what you meant, Devil’s in the detail, dontcha know?’ The Devil twirls his walking stick. Smirks. ‘You can’t have Delia,’ Tommy’s daughter, seventeen. A hot mess because having a hellraiser daddy will do that to a kid. She’s seen too much, too young, but she’ll come good, he knows she will, if she has more time. Tommy struggles upright. The shards of reflected swimming pool light assault his brain. Briefly, there are two devils. Tommy reaches for the whisky bottle wedged between his thighs. Empty. ‘You signed the form,’ the Devil sings. A pleasing Tenor, it turns out. ‘You can’t have her.’ ‘What is this Tommy? A third-act redemption? Please. You signed the contract.’ ‘You can have it all back,’ Tommy feels a pang at the idea of letting the Oscars go, though he keeps them in the downstairs loo in his London flat as if they were trinkets. ‘Even your face, Tommy, can I have that?’ Tommy pauses. The moneymaker: dimpled chin, smouldering eyes, chiselled cheekbones. He never tires of the mirror. How could he when he’s been guaranteed a perfect view for the last forty years? ‘Yes,’ he says. Noble. Like the time he played Henry Vth. Sell-out run, as he recalls. ‘Even the face.’ The devil looms above him. ‘I don’t want your face,’ the devil hisses. He’s not debonair now. Teeth sharp. Eyes hungry. ‘I want Delia. Plump and juicy. Like you promised.’ ‘I promised you my first-born but I didn’t know—‘ ‘That you could have children. I get so bored, Tommy,’ the Devil’s breath is old meat, boiled eggs, stale marzipan. He grips Tommy’s cheeks with icy fingers. Tommy can’t avoid the Devil’s blood-black glare, ‘so very bored of people who think they can trick me. Give me your daughter.’ This is the part of the film where the hero rallies, finds his inner strength, fights his demons, saves the girl and walks off into the sunset. Tommy’s played this scene a thousand times, to great acclaim. But there’s always been a director to make sure Tommy looked good, someone to feed him his lines. ‘She’s inside,’ Tommy says. His face is salt-wet: sweat and tears. His crotch piss-damp. That’s how they’ll find him, an hour or two from now. Baked on a sun lounger, empty bottle smashed beside him, soiled. And Delia, his much-loved only child, gone. It makes headlines for weeks which, his agent points out at the memorial service, is what Tommy would have wanted. Jac Morris thinks about writing a lot and sometimes does actual writing. Stories available at Willesden Herald, Retreat West, Roi Faineant, National Flash Fiction Day, Skirting Around and Brilliant Flash Fiction. Forthcoming in Kaleidotrope, Summer 2024.

I’ll never forget his face, wide open to the harsh light of the screen, drinkin’ it all in. At’s why it happened, Da said. He was all full up of film and his body couldn’t take no more. Stopped watchin’ the telly for a month so I did, in case at’s what happened when ye went square-eyed. His eyes and mouth yawned like they were takin’ in some miraculous stunt. At’s how I knew there was somethin’ wrong, because it was a musical and there’s no explosions in them’uns. There’s not much difference between the last gasp and all the others. His hands were crossed on his lap, charcoal anorak zipped right up because everyone gets foundered in the pictures, so they do. He’d near finished his carton of milkman’s orange, stripped all his Werther’s in advance n’all. Went to the pictures and couldn’t get a seat Used to see him takin’ his wee scruff over the park, so I did. The bitsa would scamper ahead while he sloped behind, all arms and legs glidin’ over The Grove, a dirty big black drip against a screen of grubby clouds. Auld Skinnymalink, the other kids called him. They’d sing it as he’d pass, actin’ the big man then gettin’ all afeared when he’d turn and glare. We’d chuck stones sometimes, too. One hit the wee dog once. It yelped and was away like two men and a wee lad and when he turned – at look would cut ye to the quick. Scundered, so I was. When he got a seat, he fell fast asleep For weeks after, I’d dream I was standin’ over him, peerin’ at the tongue squattin’ in his gapin’ gob. I’d pinch it between my finger and thumb, see it wasn’t grey and greasy like at the pictures and pull and pull and amber reel after amber reel would tick out from behind them aged Formica teeth and I’d keep on pullin’ and I’d hold the stills up to the dead stare of the screen and see shot after shot of him and his scruff over The Grove. And then he’d grab my wrist and gurn at me. Skinnymalink Melodeonlegs Big Banana Feet. His wee dog was still tied up out the front when they wheeled him out, so it was. Da said we could bring it home with us. Used to take it a dander over The Grove every day, so I did. Didn’t throw stones with them kids no more. Sophie (she/her) is an emerging writer and social researcher, originally hailing from Ireland. She currently lives in Essex, United Kingdom with her partner, young son and three chickens. She was a finalist in the WOW! Women on Writing Fall Flash Fiction Competition 2023 and has been longlisted in the Farnham Flash Fiction Competition February 2024.

He built a community book box located at the bottom of the drive. “Take One, Leave One,” said the sign. So, they exchanged books over the following months, getting to know about each other’s taste in literature. After he left a book by D H Lawrence, she visited his cottage. Chris Lihou is retired and writing short stories. His first self-published book of micro-fiction and poetry “Fifty More or Less” is now available via Amazon.

I don’t like the way my wife eats toast. I tell her this because it’s important. I say no rush, babe! Slow down the frantic crunching! Fuck you, she replies and takes her toast to the toilet. She breezes back in and brings up the rainy day we went to the aquarium in Plymouth when she kept having to pull my elbows off the railing and move me on. You spent so long looking at each stupid species! What’s that got to do with toast? She always does this. I talk about something I deem important, then she unearths a random artefact and gets flustered and woe-be-me and all I can do is stare. And so she stays still and breathes, then invariably removes a piece of her clothing. As if this is going to solve everything. As if I'm going to forget the original impulse by seeing her belly sway to some silent bass that bores into the marrow of me as her long buttery fingers slide down her gym shorts, beckoned by something beyond us, beyond our petty domestics, finger envoys sent from somewhere behind time to say you sodding useless mortals you. As if. Kik Lodge is a short fiction writer from Devon, England, but she lives in France with a menagerie of kids, cats and wabbit. When she is not writing, she is not exercising either. Her flash collection Scream If You Want To is out with Alien Buddha Press. Erratic tweets @KikLodge

At seventy-one years of age, Robert wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to climb to the top of the tower. His inhaler sat on the dresser of his hotel room about a mile and a half away, and he was already out of breath from the walk to the tower. But it was his first time back in Florence since he and his wife Alice visited fifty years ago for their honeymoon. After thinking it over for a few minutes, he decided to slowly make his way up the old stairs. The view from the tower of San Niccolo would be worth the leg-busting climb it took to get to the top. Rob’s lungs were frail, and his right knee cursed him for forcing it to cling to its ligaments for so long without a break. To help take his mind off his aching body, he thought about the golden sunset he'd encounter once he reached the top. He thought about the rays that would pierce his skin and inject their warmth into his veins. He thought about how beautiful Alice looked atop this very tower so many years ago. And he kept walking. *** The tower of San Niccolo was something they had stumbled upon during their first night in the city in the summer of 1971. After checking into their hotel and changing their clothes, they ventured out for a walk without any clear destination in mind. As the sun began to set, they discovered the tower. The guard at the door told them it provided the best place in the city to take in a sunset and that it was a must-see for anyone who had yet to take in its views. Alice accepted the young man’s offer without consulting Robert. The young man spoke in a way that made her feel as if she and her husband were the only two people he had ever shared such an intimate secret with. They made the climb with ease. Young legs and strong lungs are two overlooked cornerstones of youth. The couple reached the top, gazed out at the city and took in the skyline they had seen in travel magazines for the last year. Leaning against the tower’s stone edge wrapped in each other’s arms, they admired colors that seemed to have escaped from Botticelli’s palette and watched them dance in the sky, as if they were celebrating their newly found freedom. Yellow, pink, and orange. Some red and purple. They all collided with each other in a symphony of liberated emancipation. “Oh my,” gasped Alice, as she rested the back of her head against Robert’s chest. He draped his thick arms around her body and tucked his chin into her shoulder, so that the side of his face touched hers. “That little sucker wasn’t lyin’, was he?” responded Robert. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen that shade of yellow,” observed Alice as she squinted her eyes against the liveliness of the sun. *** Robert stretched out his right arm and grabbed a hold of the edge of the tower. Pulsations ran down the entire length of both legs. His feet yelled muffled obscenities from inside his sneakers. The muscles in his right thigh cramped up into knots, and his heartbeat pounded in his throat harder than it had when he’d suffered his heart attack six years ago. But he made it. He inhaled deeply and slowly before exhaling through staggered wheezes. After wiping his brow with a tissue he had been using to blow his nose, he gazed out at the city with strained eyes. He had planned to stand in the same spot he held Alice fifty years ago, but it was occupied by another young couple who smelled of sweat and the inside of a small pizzeria. They held each other in an embrace that made his body shiver with the yearning of Alice’s touch. He smiled at them as he passed by and planted himself a few feet away, closer to the corner of the tower. He rested his elbows on the stone that had already begun to cool as the sun’s rays dipped below the city’s skyline. Looking around, he noticed that the tower hadn’t changed too much since he last saw it fifty years prior. The green that once grew in between the bricks of the walkway that ran around the top of the building had been cleared away, but everything else looked exactly as it had that night with Alice half a century ago. The skyline of the city hadn’t changed at all either, except for the few construction cranes that mingled with the aged red slate rooftops. Rob continued to breathe heavily but felt his heart rate finally begin to regulate. He wiped his brow again with his forearm and spit down between his feet. The young couple glanced over at him, looked back at each other, and then moved a little farther away from him. *** A bluish hue replaced the rambunctious collection of colors in the sky and brought a cooler air with it to replace the sticky heat of the August sun. Alice grabbed her husband’s arm, turned on her heel to face him, and got up on her toes to grace his lips with hers. The artificial lights of the city shone down onto the Arno River and bounced up into the sky that sat above them, showering the couple in a warm yellow gleam. Once their lips parted from each other, the guard popped his head up over the last stair that led to the top of the tower, as if he had seen what was happening and decided to wait until they finished. They turned around at the feeling of another’s presence and decided to leave their sanctuary in the sky upon seeing him. “I think he’s ready to lock it up,” Alice whispered. “Let him,” laughed Robert. “Let’s spend the night up here.” She grabbed his hand tightly and led him to the top stair. After walking through the exit of the tower and thanking the guard, they lingered along the Arno, stopping to grab gelato for the first time since arriving in Florence. Pistachio for Alice and chocolate for Robert. “Of all the flavors, you pick pistachio?” teased Robert. “What’s wrong with pistachio?” “Nothing’s wrong with it, but don’t you want a real dessert?” “One of us has to stay healthy for the kids,” she quipped. “The kids, huh?” “Well, sure. We’re gonna have lots. What’d we agree on, five?” “Hah. Three. At the most,” Robert answered while trying to conceal a grin. “Three? You’re a slacker, Robert. We’re young and healthy and beautiful. And I’m smart. Our DNA mixed together? We’d be doing the earth a disservice if we didn’t produce at least five little Gilmores.” She began to laugh as she licked her gelato. “Five sounds like a handful,” Robert mumbled through a mouthful of ice cream. “Just eat your chocolate and I’ll stay healthy for our babies.” Alice swung her hips from side to side, bumped them into her husband’s, and erupted into a gelato-filled fit of laughter. *** The young couple that stood a few feet from Robert atop the tower left as the cool night air breezed across the river below. Robert watched the gentleman extend a hand to his lady and guide her down the first few stairs before he followed her, leaving Robert by himself. He slid over to the spot he came up to visit, ran his cold fingers along the stone, and looked out toward the sky. The colors weren’t as bright as they had been fifty years ago. Was it the sky that had turned dull? Or was it his own eyes that the color and vibrance had vacated, being replaced by a lazy gray? Maybe standing here with his new bride is what made the sky explode with color atop this tower fifty years ago. Now the heavens above resembled the color of Rob’s skin that drooped below his eyes; a tired, pale ash. He let out a long sigh, which brought on a coughing attack. As he pulled the damp tissue from his pocket to blot his eyes dry, a hand reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Robert, don’t use that tissue to dry your eyes! You’ve been blowing your nose with it for three days.” “Alice, it’s my nose I’m blowing with it, not a stranger’s,” answered Robert as if his wife had been there with him all along. She snickered at him and pulled a fresh tissue from her purse. As Robert brought it up to his eyes, the aroma of lavender curled its way into his nostrils. “I missed that smell. Where do you get these? I always ask Angela to pick some up when she gets my prescriptions, but she says they don’t make them anymore.” “Robert, they stopped making these fifteen years ago. Don’t you remember me complaining about it?” Robert dropped his head in defeat, embarrassed by his lapse in memory. “Yeah, no, I remember, darling. I just forgot.” “Robert, what are you doing up here?” asked Alice with a worrisome look in her eye. “I was thinking about you.” “You know you shouldn’t be walking by yourself. You aren’t even supposed to do this back home in Massachusetts.” Rob responded with a laugh, “I know. I just missed you.” Alice tried holding back a smile but failed. “Always the rule-breaker, aren’t you?” Robert tapped the stone edge of the tower as he looked over to the skyline. “You remember that night, though, don’t you? The colors in the sky. You remember the colors that night?” he asked with a rush of delight. “Oh, yes,” responded Alice. “Do you remember the yellow? I never saw that shade of yellow again.” “Never again,” he responded immediately. “I know I’m slipping, that I’m forgetting things now, but that night never grew dull in my mind. The city down below us across the Arno, there. The sky and its colors. Being with my new wife,” he emphasized. “First time out of the country, I don’t know. Magic.” “I cherish it even to this day,” Alice said in agreement. “You remember things you did down here, where you are now?” asked Robert innocently. “Oh, yes, honey. I can remember any single moment I choose to. Like picking a song from a jukebox.” “Tell me more,” Robert pleaded as he embraced his wife and laid his head against her chest. “Where I am now, there are colors you never even knew existed. Music you can’t describe with words. Your legs never get tired, and your lungs are full no matter how many stairs you climb,” she whispered into his ear as she ran her fingers through his thinning white hair. He smiled, knowing why she said what she did. “What about the food?” “Oh, Robert. Overflowing mounds of food. Ice cream never melts. The milk never goes sour. And allergies don’t exist.” “So, I can eat seafood where you are?” “All the shrimp you can find,” she said as she caressed his head. “It sounds too good to be true,” said Robert with a soft laugh. “It does, doesn’t it?” He lifted his head and looked into her eyes which glowed with a hazy luster. “How come you haven’t visited? Since you left, I mean?” The sides of her mouth curled as she prepared to answer. Her eyes twinkled with a renewed youth, though wrinkles still lay upon the sides of her face. “Well, you see,” she began tepidly. “We aren’t… by we, I mean… you know. The deceased.” Robert nodded. “We’re told that it’s best if we stay away for a while. To let you grieve and recover. Let’s face it, Robert. You and I both know you wouldn’t have been able to handle me visiting right away. You needed time.” Robert shook his head in understanding. “So, why here? Why today?” “Curiosity got the best of me, I suppose. I wanted to know what you were doing here. And who the hell let you go off on your own,” she said as she put her hands on her hips. “I told Ben I was going across the square to get a gelato,” he said with a wheezy laugh. “So, you and Ben took an excursion to Italy? I didn’t know I could still feel jealousy until now. How is he doing?” “Oh, you should see him, hon. Twenty-one and quick as a devil,” he said with wide eyes. Alice couldn’t help but smile. “Our oldest grandbaby – twenty-one years old. My,” she said as she shook her head and sauntered over to the edge of the tower. “Why don’t you come back with me? To see him! He’d love that, hon. We’ve talked about you nonstop since we got here. He doesn’t know about this spot, but I showed him everywhere I could remember. I brought him by that cafe where you pushed that cop the second night. Told him how you were a nasty drunk,” he said with a wild smirk. “He got a kick out of that one.” Robert wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He had begun to cry and hadn’t noticed. Alice turned back to her husband once more, a melancholy look strewn upon her face. “I can’t, Robert. I came to visit you, seeing you were alone. I can’t just wander around the world, willy-nilly. That’s not how it works.” Robert frowned at this, not expecting her to object to his idea. “Not how it works? You’re a gh--… I mean, an… an angel. You’re an angel, right? Can’t you go wherever you want?” Alice laughed sweetly, and once more approached her husband to embrace him. “I missed your little tantrums the most, believe it or not,” she whispered into his ear. “I mean it, Alice. Come and see Ben. Don’t you want to see how he’s grown?” Sensing sincere sadness in her husband’s voice, she pulled away to look him in the eye. “Honey, I see all of you. I’ve had my eye on all of you since the day I left. Well, almost since the day I left. I had orientation for about… come to think of it, I seem to have lost all sense of time since I’ve left. Odd how I haven’t noticed that till now,” she said, almost to herself. Robert looked at her not knowing what to say. “I’ve watched you, painfully at times. I’m with you at your doctor’s visits. And I must insist, please listen to Dr. Malone. You give the man too much attitude when all he’s trying to do is help.” “I…I don’t think—,” “And stop eating so much pepperoni! We had that discussion ten years ago, Robert. Just because our daughter isn’t as watchful as she should be doesn’t mean you have to go and take advantage of it.” Robert began to laugh, much to the annoyance of Alice. “And what is so funny about that?” “I’m just so happy to see you is all. And to know you’re not, ya know… gone. I can’t believe you’re here, talking to me. I gave up on this possibility a few years ago,” he said with confusion in his voice. “I read that once we die, and we’re… where you are, we kinda forget about our lives down here. ‘Cause we’re in paradise, and what’s better than that? We’re with God, eternal glory. I remember talking to a priest about it, and he described it all so matter-of-factly that I had no choice but to accept it as fact.” “Well, until that priest passes on himself, his facts are only assumptions. Or regurgitations of what he’s been told. We miss our families, our friends. We miss the places that stuck in our memories, like this tower here. It’s why I chose to come back now. I can visit you in Massachusetts any old time. But we both know this is your last time in Florence, Robert. You’re seventy-one. Not old, but not young,” she said with a laugh so genuine, Robert had forgotten she had died a decade ago. “I saw you up here alone, and said, yes. Now is the time to see him.” Robert felt the breeze pick up atop the tower, heard the cars speed along the narrow road below. He looked to the right of his wife and saw the Duomo, dominating the Florentine skyline. “It’s been wonderful seeing you, my darling. But we both know you have to go. The young guard’s been kind enough to let you stay ten minutes past closing time. And Ben has probably filed a missing person’s report by now,” she said with a tinge of worry in her voice. “Can you visit me again? Now that you have, you can’t just stop.” “I’ll come and see you again, Robert. I don’t know when, and I can’t promise it’ll be often. But I’ll come see you.” She glided to him once more and they held each other tightly. His wispy hair clung to her face as tears began to fall down his own. “I miss you, hon. I really do. I think about you every day,” he said through huffy breaths. “I know, Robert. I miss you, too. But we’ll be reunited soon. We’ll be together once again. I can’t wait to show you the colors up there,” she said in a lullaby-like tone. Robert felt the warmth that had engulfed him since she arrived vanish, leaving behind a distasteful chill. He reached for the crumpled tissue in his pocket, but instead felt the freshness of a new, full pack. He grabbed one, brought it to his nose, and inhaled the most intense wave of lavender he had ever experienced. The intake of it seemed to brush the chill away just as Alice’s presence had, and he felt a calmness begin to swim through his veins. He thanked the guard at the bottom of the tower and began his trek back to the hotel. Walking along a sidewalk that ran parallel to the Arno, he craned his rickety neck upwards, past the city skyline and through the clouds. He wondered where she was, where she lived. And just as suddenly as his wonderings began, they stopped. He realized it didn’t matter where she was. He trusted that she could see him, that she watched him, as she said. A.C. Francis is a copywriter from outside Philadelphia, Pa. He has a master’s degree in English from West Chester University, is an avid baseball fan, is fascinated by the arts, and longs for the day he can return to Italy. He has publications in The Bangalore Review and The Hyacinth Review.

So masculine, I could stare at you all evening. Rude me - probably because I missed seeing you the past 32 years. I gave up straight men when I was 40 and unaware of bi, assumed I would live like a nun. But here you are inhabiting both worlds with all the insight and tenderness and kindness and Ohhhhhhh……….! A note from the author: For more than 40 years, I have supported myself in Information Technology, primarily by designing computer databases. I have also been writing poetry, since I learned what a poem was and recently started publishing them. My first published poem, ‘Deskbound’ appeared in Oberon Magazine in 2019. My first chapbook, “Working Woman Poetry” was published by the gracious Leah Huete de Maines of  Finishing Line Press in October 2020. Also during Covid, I published a second chapbook “Plague Year Poetry,”  and one of my Covid poems was included in the on-line journal of the Writer’s Institute of Albany, New York, sponsored by William Kennedy (“Ironweed,” “Legs,” etc.).

“Hello, I’m Emmy Lu,” said a tiny woman with bright white hair cropped short and elegantly dressed in a sapphire blue cardigan the color of her eyes with a dangly sea glass necklace and earrings. “There’s a seat over there.” She motioned beyond where I stood in the coffee shop’s dim entryway to the wooden tables and chairs surrounding a smaller table that held a vase of peonies and a simple iron cross. She led worship, glowing against the dark wood paneling on the walls. Her voice ebbed and flowed, a full river singing, as she asked us to confess aloud and then to rise and join hands for communion and again to pray for those in need. Crone, Emmy Lu called herself. I imagined crow and crane together, the sleek dark strength of the crow married to the white smoke feathers of the crane, impossibly beautiful, impossible to hold. I fell in love with her immediately. She then 70; me 32. That Wednesday evening was my fourth visit to the coffee shop church in Washington, D.C. The church was and is unconventional, founded on principles of social justice and dedicated to the idea that members would get to know each other deeply and work to “be church” to each other and in the world. People attended services in small communities that met in various places around DC. Within a year of attending the church, I joined a small group Emmy Lu was part of that explored feminist theology. We sat in Rebecca’s living room with its plush floral sofa and green velvet chairs. A candle pooled light on the gleaming wooden coffee table. Wine glasses and cups of tea sat in front of us with small bowls of nuts and chocolates. After the hubbub of hellos and getting settled, we stood to open the circle. By the earth that is her body, by the air that is her breath, by the fire of her great spirit, by the living waters of her womb, the circle is cast. Then we shared one by one, putting out our joys, sorrows, hopes, and frustrations. There was no cross talk and no response when we were each done. Only the voice of one woman telling her story, opening herself to the rest of us, was fully heard. Not as part of a conversation, with the listeners readying their responses, but her story alone taken in. Each woman echoed back to herself more loved than when her words had gone out. Emmy Lu spoke aloud into the circle to tell us how she had failed. Her stories changed over the years, as she accepted what had happened, wove new stories. The guilt over leaving her young children years and years ago to follow a man to the Virgin Islands, who tempted her with the fine, expensive things she coveted and left her with nothing. How much she loved her adult daughter and son and they loved her in return. How greed had dogged her earlier life, made her follow that man to the Virgin Islands and others who promised wealth that never materialized. How poverty shaped her into a woman who freely gave and graciously accepted the gifts that others offered. How her almost violent relationship with the man she lived with for years bound her until she unknotted the ties and sent him away. How often she was angry, irritable toward coworkers and friends. I loved her for all of these stories, how righteousness was not in her wheelhouse. Honesty was. Authenticity. The spiral of learning, failing, learning again and better, failing less. Still, I struggled with this intimacy. In my early thirties, I was a jigsaw puzzle put together haphazardly, pieces jammed in where they didn’t belong. Other pieces flung to the floor. How much my mother had invested in raising us as a stay-at-home mom. My cousins marrying in their twenties, raising families, staying home. How afraid I was, always the new girl, moving every two and a half years, standing in classroom doorways wearing thick glasses and an A-line dress so I would look less chubby. How much I wanted my first kiss at 16 in an ice-green pool under a dark sky far above the suburban backyard. The next day he called to say I wasn't the kind of girl someone marries. Not the first or last time my appetite would be my shame. How I wanted to escape the narrow rectangle I grew up in, find a place I belonged, home finally in DC, this city of transients, in a neighborhood that I knew was my place the first time I walked in it. How everything with men was like walking in mud in the dark, slipping and dirty and wet and cold. How I threw a metal vase at a man who was late for a date, how I slammed a glass door at my office so hard, I was surprised the glass didn’t shatter. How many times I flung my phone across the room again. How that anger shattered me. How I drank red wine, dark enough to hide all the ways I wasn’t the person I wanted to be. How I wavered home from parties and bars, almost too drunk to remember where I lived. Week after week, into months, then years, Emmy Lu’s stories knitted my jagged pieces together. When a man I loved too much too fast broke up with me, she let me cry on her shoulder. Then she disappeared into the kitchen and brought back two cups of coffee and a plate of chocolate Milanos. “You’re too good for him. Don’t waste your time with men like him,” she said. I laughed. I almost believed her. She never stopped believing in me. She took me to thrift stores when I began freelancing and had no money for new clothes. Our favorite event, though, was an annual rummage sale at an Episcopal church in the neighborhood next to ours. We got up early on that Saturday, filled our travel mugs with coffee, parked as close as possible to the church, and got in line behind the other bargain hunters. Once in, we hurried to what we wanted most, sometimes in the same direction, most often scattering. We met up here and there, showed off our loot, and took off again. After we checked out, I carried whatever was heavy to the sidewalk, and Emmy Lu brought the rest. Then she stood guard while I got the car. How we loved reviewing what we found and congratulating the other on her finds. “That scarf, Emmy Lu, is you, so you. And a working microwave. Amazing!” “I can’t believe you found that black tulle skirt! You can wear it with those black boots you have.” Incorporating past lives, histories into our own, loving them again, like the stories we told and retold in our circle rewove themselves into who we were becoming. “Posture is everything,” she often told me. “Sit up straight. Stand up straight.” It was an almost too perfect metaphor for what I needed. The confidence took hold in my body even if my brain had no idea what the hell I was doing. Emmy Lu was my wise woman in the forest, the true compass ever pointing inward to what I don’t know I know. I looked into mirrors to ask, “Who will I be when I am old?” “If you are lucky, you will be just like Emmy Lu,” the mirrors whispered back. This past July, I visited her at the Armed Forces Retirement Home just before her 100th birthday, August 4th, the same as President Obama’s, she often pointed out. She had moved recently to the assisted living wing, two floors down from the fifth-floor room she had lived in before, where she had loved looking out into the trees. “I don’t know why I need be here. I was fine in my old room,” she complained. “I don’t need someone to give me my pills.” But she was unsteady on her feet, scaring her daughter, me, all of us who loved her. Her eyes lightened, still gleaming, still forceful, as I came in the door of her small room. It was cluttered with furniture, walls covered in paintings, some her own, and small modern quilts of brightly colored fish in the sea made by a friend. Photos lined up on shelves, the desk, bureau, and nightstand. A pot filled with deep purple shamrocks sat in the window, near a vase of Gerbera daisies. She rose from the black desk chair she wheels around the room to avoid falling and reached out her arms. I hugged her gently, worried about her thin skin and bones like pencils beneath, light enough to lift her where I cannot follow, a day that is coming soon. We took the elevator to the coffee station on the ground level where a machine made us cappuccinos then took them out to a patio, polka-dotted with sun amid the shade from bayleaf magnolias. She sat in a shady chair, I in a sunny one. “I sang in the talent show here a few weeks ago. Did I tell you?” she asked. “I sang Here’s to Life.” She had a musical act for a while when she was in her 80s, performing as the Golden Miss M for retirement and nursing homes mostly but also in other places when friends requested. She sang songs from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Here’s to Life is her signature song. “I bet you were a big hit,” I said. “I wore the gold sequin top and my mother’s jeweled shoes, probably for the last time.” She showed them off to me every now and then, told me her mother had bought the shoes when she was old and living with Emmy Lu’s brother in Maryland, having moved from Minnesota after her husband died. “She loved to go shopping at Garfinkel’s,” Emmy Lu said. “When she saw those shoes, she bought them, even though she couldn’t really afford them.” I don’t demur when she says “probably for the last time” as I have so often before, insisting that she is fine, just fine. At our women’s group Christmas dinner in January when we asked whether anyone was planning a birthday party for her, she said, “I don’t know if I will make it that long.” “Of course, you’ll make it. It’s only seven months away,” I retorted, anger masking my dread at the thought of her death. Now I am not sure that my insistence that she is nowhere near death is doing either one of us a favor, especially her. It takes an effort to let go of the idea that she will always be here, always be my friend. That day on the patio I said, “I hope you will. I can imagine living to a hundred if I were doing as well as you, but it must be hard. I know you must be tired.” Then she sang the first few lines of Here’s To Life in her low, slightly raspy voice. “No complaints and no regrets/I still believe in chasing dreams and placing bets/But I had to learn that all you give is all you get/So give it all you got.” I wished she would keep singing so I could memorize her voice, her deeply wrinkled, deeply beautiful face. She is phosphorescent with grace. Like the ocean as we saw it, brilliant green against the night black sea, from a house on Assateague Island on a long ago weekend in early spring, running toward it laughing and saying look, look, look. Until we stood where dark water met sand, white foam lapping at our feet, until it was gone. A freelance writer for more than 20 years, Sherri Alms recently began writing creative nonfiction. Her essays have been published in Wild Greens Magazine, Five Minutes, and A Plate of Pandemic. After years of urban life in Washington, DC, and Baltimore, she now lives with her husband and two cats in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The toddler stands barefoot in his nappy on the warm tarmac. Or in his diaper on warm asphalt, if I were to use the North Americanisms my husband does from growing up in this tumbleweed town in the Canadian Badlands. Over a decade in England now means words like bloke, cuppa, and aggro have osmosed into his daily vernacular, but his lack of chatter and his uncomplicatedness show where he’s really from. We are visiting his family, who’ve all stayed in Vauxhall, Alberta, and I’m nipping to the Co-op alone when I spot the toddler in the middle of the crossroads, finger in his mouth, watching a car turn off Highway 36, paused at a stop sign several blocks (not roads) away. If I was back on British soil, I’d have bolted to the child, rushing him to the pavement, not only because of denser traffic, but because if I’d been mistaken and shouldn’t have picked up a stranger’s child, I would have the confidence to explain myself. Vauxhall, Alberta is home to Plattdeutsch-speaking Mennonites, farmers with digits lost to machinery, and mothers in snapback caps who dig trucks out of snowdrifts for the school run, teenagers in plaid shirts who gawp at my tea dresses, unsupervised children who throw rocks from their front porches, and baseball spectators who spit sunflower seed shells onto the bleachers so that they crunch when I take my seat. It doesn’t matter anyway, because none of those people are here right now by the crossroads, just a man further up the street, walking with a cane from his truck into the Co-op, swaying with the effort and taking no notice of us. The car is getting closer, so I pick up the toddler and go to the sidewalk (not a pavement). I keep my back to the driver, so they don’t see the face of the woman who plucked a child from the road. There are no twitching blinds from the surrounding houses, or anyone running up the street calling desperately for their baby. The little boy takes his finger out of his mouth and places his hand on my cradling arm, his spit in a string. ‘Where did you come from?’ I know he can’t speak yet. He leans down the street in the direction of the highway and houses, likely because he wants the stranger to put him down, rather than understanding my question. If I was back home, I’d call 999 on my mobile. There’d be witnesses, dashcam footage, CCTV from home security of me finding the stray child, but here, I’m uncertain how convincing my story of I just found him would be, especially as an out-of-towner. In this town’s population of twelve-hundred, people keep themselves to themselves, inconvenienced when the Canada Day Show n’ Shine brings a crowd that clogs up the single-row parking lot outside the only bar for an evening. ‘Let’s find where you belong.’ As I carry him down the street, I investigate the windows of the houses we pass beyond yards of crispy grass with hardworking sprinklers, chintzy curtains drawn again the midday heat. Despite my desperation, holding the little boy’s fair body, his soft hair tickling my cheek, is like slipping into a soothing bath while listening to a familiar song. His breath is raspy, and he smells a little cheesy. I wonder if I’m taking him back to a good home. About twelve houses down, a side gate in a fence is open to a yard (garden). On the lawn is a plastic slide and one end of a wooden board resting on bricks for a ramp. The toddler wriggles so much that I put him down, and he totters to the slide. He climbs up the slope instead of using the steps, the bare skin of his tummy screeching as he slips down. He repeats this process over and over. At a window of the house, a woman watches me, haube headscarve knotted on, dishtowel in her hand. She’s wearing large, owl-like spectacles. My mother-in-law used to be like her, staying home and making clothes for her six children before she moved here from rural Cuauhtémoc in Mexico, and discovering Target and paid overtime. Over the past fortnight, I’ve seen the local Mennonites going into the specialist store opposite the Co-op. My husband took me in there to buy foods from his childhood; Gansito bars, de la Rosa peanut marzipan, and packets of powder for creamy gravies. It’s set up in someone’s converted living room. There’s floral wallpaper, freestanding shelves, and the shopkeeper sits in a rocking chair with a cash tin and notepad. I wait for the woman in the window to wave to me and dash out. You’ve returned my offspring. Thank you! Or would she talk in Plattdeutsch? Even if I didn’t understand, I’d sense her gratitude from hugs, looks of relief, and being pulled inside for homemade lemonade. Tyres shriek behind me. A boy in a cowboy hat has pulled up on a push bike. He can’t be more than twelve. He looks beyond me into the yard at the toddler. ‘This yours?’ I point my thumb at the little ‘un. Bike boy nods. Then he shakes his head at the toddler, who’s stopped sliding to look at the boy, presumably his older brother. I look up at the woman in the window, unmoving, still clinging to her dishtowel. We stare like the other is in a zoo behind glass. Then the woman turns away from the window like I did from the road, and I understand why she isn’t coming out. The boy wheels his bike into the yard and closes the gate, and I carry on to the Co-op. Rebecca Klassen is co-editor of The Phare and lives at the bottom of the cheese-rolling hill in Gloucester. When she's not standing at the bottom with a handful of crackers, you'll find her feeding her axolotl, and broadening her mind with reality television. She has won the London Independent Story Prize, and recently had one of her stories performed on BBC radio.

It all started when my cunt of a roommate, Christine, brought a tropical crab home. She called us up and asked if it would be all right if she purchased a tropical crab. I was busy and missed the call. Gary told her no. She already had a cat, Arthur, a vomit-white Siamese she’d bought for two dollars from a lady in a cardboard hat at the Ashby swap meet last summer. He turned out to be the meanest cat alive. I don’t say this because I have a problem with cats—generally, I never have. But my fearful distaste for all felines was slowly assembled, refined, and crystallized in the three years I lived with Arthur. He had no tail. Just a lump at the end of his butt curving like a broken bone into a loggy stump. His fur, post-kittenhood, quickly morphed from off-white to crusty gray to a swimmy discharge color. His claws ripped like talons through whatever he could grab onto at any given moment—a pantleg, a chest, the side of a couch. He especially loved to tear apart the fuzzy alpaca blankets Brook had brought back from Ecuador. There was absolutely nothing cute about this cat whatsoever, but Christine insisted on cooing at him, berating him in a disgusting child-whine and calling him “Meow-Cat,” over and over, ostensibly because he had a constant, thimble-stretched yowl (it hardly substituted as a meow). She’d try to pick him up and hold him, lovingly pressed against her breasts for the three or four seconds he’d allow before yowling and scratching the shit out of her arms, until she finally dropped him and he could scamper away, probably to spray all over the bathtub, which he did whenever feeling scared or aggressive. He hated her and he hated the rest of us. It was unfortunate, for Christine, being so blinded by love that she was never able to recognize the inability for compassion deep inside his cat heart. It was also unfortunate that she only came home every two or three days to feed him. This meant that he would starve for two days, then get a dump truck-size serving of kibble on his kitchen floor platter, eat it all in one sitting, and then starve again for two more days. She hadn’t cleaned his litter box in about three months. We kept her bedroom door closed religiously, so the thick wafts of stale feces and urine wouldn’t permeate the entire house. Gary said no. I said no. Politely, of course. You have Arthur already, and we don’t want the distraction and responsibility of a second animal, we said. Thanks for understanding. She seemed put out, but grudgingly, no crab was brought home. We found out a few days later she’d indeed gone and bought the crab, opting to bring it over to her boyfriend’s place. A week later they broke up, and the crab arrived on the scene. We were a little peeved at this. But she was in a delicate state, given the breakup. She promised to keep the crab in her room. She made a place for it inside the top shelf of her closet. Its heating lamp lit up the dark interior around the clock; shuffling to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I could always make out the yellow light filtering through the crack under her door. The crab stayed graciously in place like this for a couple of months. Out of sight, out of mind. We left to go visit our families for a week or so during the holidays, and when we returned, the litterbox had been restationed in the living room (urine pellets scattered across the floor) and the crab was set up on the kitchen table. With passionate indignation, we moved the litterbox back into her room ourselves. Then we called her up and asked her to keep both the crab and the box in her room. She said of course. She’d only brought them out because no one was there. A few days went by, and the crab remained in the kitchen. Its head was bluish purple, while its claws glowed bright red, extremely tropical (I figured), with two liquid-black eyes flustering on tiny stalks poking from the top of its head. Its claws groomed the glass back and forth with a shiny squeak that made my teeth hurt. It seemed to be always sitting in a pile of wet and soggy sand, its mottled back glistening in the kitchen light. I started to get a sick feeling whenever I sat down at the table to eat. The cage smelled faintly of moisture and other excreta. We asked her to move the crab back to her room again. She said okay. A week went by. Then two. On a Monday morning, when we were in the kitchen together, I asked her again. “It’s a little unhygienic to have it in here,” I said. Her back was turned away from me, her torso half-hidden by the open refrigerator door. Her head swiveled, her expression ruffled. “Well,” she said. “He’s completely contained in the cage. He’s not hurting anything in here.” “You didn’t seem to mind having it in your room before,” I said. “I hate keeping him in there. It’s not good for him.” She said we could compromise by putting him in the living room. I decided to remain obstinate. “That’s not a compromise,” I reminded her. “The compromise was letting it be in your room, because we asked you not to bring it to the house at all. We asked you not to buy it, and you did. We asked you not to bring it here, and you did. That was the compromise.” Her soft face wrinkled into a sneer. She said that all of that had been weeks ago, aspects of the past she’d already apologized for. She said that I had been holding a grudge against her crab for months. I left the kitchen. The crab remained for two more days. Then, when I came home on a Wednesday, it’d been positioned on top of a wooden crate in the corner of the living room. The yellow heat lamp shone down on its host, haloing the crab. Rarifying it. She’d chosen a corner of the wall where a painting of mine had hung. Looking around for it, I found it lying face-down on top of the television. A couple of nights later, I was sitting on the couch watching a movie when Christine marched into the living room with a slice of ham in her hand. She went to the crab and slid back the cage’s grated opening. She dangled the ham above its head, cooing at it in the same tone of voice she used on the cat. “You hungry? You want it?” The crab didn’t move or respond in any fashion. “It’s a special treat,” she chided the thing. “You don’t want a special treat?” I knew she was putting on the show purely for my benefit. I pretended to be very interested in the elastic of my sock. “You sure you don’t want it?” I wondered if she half-expected it to tell her it was having a stomachache at the moment. “Okay, well if you’re sure. I’ll try again later…” She cooed at it for a few more seconds and then slid the opening shut. She sauntered back to the kitchen, the piece of slimy meat still clutched in her hand. Lying in bed at night, I found myself brainstorming different ways of murdering the crab. I was shocked by my violent thoughts. I’d never been the kind of person to impose cruelty on animals. And I knew I wasn’t angry toward the crab itself. It was what the crab stood for. I lay in the dark, my head cooking. The rationalizations she made up in her head were amazing. She never believed she was wrong. She always thought she was innocent. Even when she apologized for something, I could hear in her voice: it wasn’t sincere. The words were spoken with a shrug, a smirk on her lips. It was the kind of apology a child makes when they spill grape juice all over the floor. Oops. I don’t know at exactly what point I hit the corner—or the bottom—and decided I was unequivocally going to kill the crab. For weeks I played with the idea, compiling different scenarios in my head (just for fun, of course). I could boil it in a pot and eat it. I could walk up to the cage with a knife and spear it in the head like it was a baked potato. I could poison it. I could trap it under the heavy plastic log in the far corner of the cage. I could throw it out the window. I kept thinking about how good it would taste in a salad or a risotto dish. My mouth began to water whenever I imagined its brain, creamy and braised, melting on my tongue. I finally decided on poison. If Christine didn’t notice the mold growing on the underside of Arthur’s food dish, I doubted she’d be willing to probe so far as to recognize what kind of particular ingestion had led to the death of her crab. It would probably sit for weeks in the cage, dead as a doorknob, before she even noticed. As far as I was concerned, I was putting the little thing out of its misery. As far as things were concerned, she was the one enacting animal cruelty, not I. I waited for an afternoon when everyone was out of the house. I’d read on the internet that crabs will eat almost anything you give them, so I spent some time in the kitchen preparing a special meal for the little guy. I pounded ten aspirin tablets into a powder and rubbed this into a piece of tangerine I’d sliced open. I dropped it into the cage and waited for the crab to go at it. The fucker didn’t move. So what, I thought. Maybe it wasn’t hungry. Its ugly little tentacle eyes swung up toward the window, then drooped into the sand. I couldn’t quite figure out where its mouth was. I put on a movie and decided to keep an eye on it. Halfway through, it sauntered toward the tangerine and ate a bit of the side, shoving it under its stomach. I supposed its mouth was down there somewhere. It refused to eat any more of it, though, and the half-shredded tangerine lay pressed against the glass, half-covered in sand. It resembled some kind of tropical shrimp companion, bright orange and pulsating in the water. Braving the terror of the cage, I lifted the  lid off and scooped the thing up in my fingers, throwing it down the garbage disposal. Coming back from the kitchen, I eyed the crab. It was looking fit as a fiddle,  and if crabs can appear as such, practically jubilant. I glowered at it until others started getting home. The next morning, I went to check on the crab while my cunt of a roommate was in the shower. Awake and docile as ever, it stood perfectly still on its mound of soggy sand, not unlike a Buddha meditating. It occurred to me that the crab might be an enlightened spirit who saw all the wickedness festering in my heart. I turned away from it. On the drive to work, all I could think of was my utterly failed attempt. The fact that it hadn’t worked seemed to deepen the evil of the plot. I observed my hands on the brown steering wheel, thinking, are these the hands of a killer? Am I capable of these thoughts and these actions? I was fascinated and mutually disgusted by the lengths I’d already gone in this melodrama. I vowed to never act on a bad feeling, ever again. ***** When I got home from work that night, the crab was dead. He was lying on his back ; not a very traditional pose for a crustacean. His claws jutted out like twin bottle openers. I opened the cage and poked him a few times, just to make sure. No response whatsoever. I flipped him over to his sitting position. From far away, he appeared pretty much  alive . If Christine were standing at the opposite end of the room, she’d never notice. It wasn’t until one got right up to the cage and realized his stalky eyes were glazed over, no longer shining with liquid ink, that something might be wrong. I could’ve hurled. Instead, I microwaved a burrito for dinner and set myself up on the living room couch with a book. The scene of the crime. Thoughts raced through my head: maybe it hadn’t been my fault. Maybe the crab had died of natural causes. The other week a friend’s hamster had died, completely out of the blue. It was two months old and one morning she’d found it with its feet sticking up in the straw. Animals were just a mystery of life we humans couldn't fathom. I sat there, sweating, my nose in the book, until Christine came home. She didn’t come into the living room right away. I could hear her fussing around in her room—a space that  was easily a prime  example of a hoarder’s den. I don’t know how she ever found anything in there. Everything stinking of cat piss, the piles of clothes on the floor mixing with the stenchy pellets. Arthur had carved a trail to go back and forth to the bathroom. Where he was at the moment, I didn’t know. I’d been so busy with my crab-killing plot I hadn’t been paying as much attention to him. I used to open all the windows in the house, hoping he would jump out of one of them. He never did. It took about two hours for Christine to notice. She made dinner, ate off the coffee table, and complained  to me about her day and the fact that her boss was making her work on Saturdays. She futzed in her room for a little longer and then came back out and started rolling a tiny joint. I stared at the coffee table’s surface, the glass sticky in spots. It was littered with old cardboard coffee cups, bowls of soup from three or four days ago, a couple of dusty art books forgotten to be replaced on the shelf, a water glass, a pair of AA batteries, and some grimy-looking scissors. Christine lit the joint and offered me a hit before smoking the rest herself. She leaned back in the chair, her elbows resting on her stomach. She had bobby pins thrust into her greasy hair, but at the end of the day they’d slid enough so that she was tucking and re-tucking the slimy hairs behind her ears. Even though I hated everything about her, I knew she didn’t deserve to have a dead crab. I slouched on the couch, hunkering lower into my misery. Ice Road Truckers was on TV. We watched two episodes in a sticky, conspiratorial silence. Christine sighed ostensibly a few times, the moist joint pinched in her fingers, which she eventually abandoned in one of the coffee cups. At a certain point, I let my eye wander over to the crab cage. I cleared my throat conspicuously. “Does the crab look all right to you?” I asked, my voice uncharacteristically conveying mild interest. Christine glanced over to the corner. “What do you mean?” “He just…looks. I mean, he hasn’t moved in a while.” Christine hefted herself up from the couch and crossed the room. She stood in front of the cage and bent her head to the glass. She smiled and waved at the crab. “No, it’s fine.” Aghast, on the couch: “Are you sure?” “Yeah, he’s just sleeping.” “How can you tell? Do they close their eyes?” “This is his prime sleeping time. They’re nocturnal, you know. He’ll be frisky later, when we’re all in bed.” I left it at that. The next morning: the crab had not moved. The following day the crab had begun to secrete a black liquid, trailing out from below and ringing around him in a watery puddle. Gary and I did a closer inspection. He looked dead, in fact, he looked like he was falling apart. We inquired with Christine, who said that he was molting. He ate yesterday, she told us. Reassuredly. We look at each other. “Really?” “Oh yeah,” she says, “It’s totally normal. This is his molting season.” “I didn’t know crabs molted,” Gary said, all politeness. “He smells,” I added. “It’s all totally normal,” she repeated. A week or so went by like this, and the crab remained motionless. Food Christine had tried to entice it with started to pile up in the tank: bits of meat and soggy apple slices. He appeared now to be separating from his shell, his body conforming to the glass. She still insisted he was molting, but at some point did decide to take him, cage and all, to a vivarium in Berkeley. I decided to go with her, because it was a Saturday, it was beautiful out, and I had nothing else to do. Plus I was terrified of what they’d tell us at the place. Would they be able to tell the crab was poisoned? I pictured a pimply guy around our own age, eyes widening with dawning realization, stabbing a finger at the cage and saying, “Do you know that any kind of medication isn’t allowed? This crab was fed painkillers. It’s a classic presentation of toxin ingestion.” Instead, with the cage on the counter, Christine began her molting story but before she could finish, the guy waved a hand. “THAT,” he told us, gesturing to the cage, “is a very dead crab.” No other explanation required. ***** We carried the empty cage out to the parking lot, shoving it into the back of Christine’s red Toyota Yaris. She was thoughtful, frowning, as she leaned against the hood, still eyeing the cage. “I just don’t understand,” she said, after a beat. “I fed him on a schedule. They said they love meat, and I made sure to give him plenty of protein. I just don’t get it.” I felt my mouth, amazingly, unglue. “Sometimes these things just…happen.” “I know,” she said, sighing again. “But they’re supposed to have upwards of 30-year lifespans.” I noticed that she was never one to blame herself. Despite the facts, the sheer amount of ham she probably fed that thing, she never once rationalized into the realm of personal responsibility. For all I knew, she was the one who’d killed it. With an elevated protein diet, perhaps. I realized that I was trying to take responsibility for someone else’s lack of accountability and foresight. Christine would always be a threat to her own pets. My part, in the end, was most likely negligible. I put an arm around her and squeezed. “Let’s go get a beer or something,” I said, “Huh?” My guilt  somehow entirely resolved. Wiped clean. Pure. Christine agreed. Always open to a drink on the house. “To the little creep,” she said proudly, holding up her peanut butter stout. I conceded, lightly tinking my martini against hers, “To the little creep.” Chloe Noland is a fiction writer and information professional. She received her BA in Literature & Creative Writing from California College of the Arts, and her MLIS from San Jose State University. Her work has been previously published in Acid Free Magazine, Medium, Sequestrum, and Action-Spectacle. Her first novel, The Cataloguer, was completed in 2023, and she is now working on a second novel. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Birds on a Bus The guy behind me squawks at his seat mate. "I used to live just over there until my wife tried to knife me and I got put in jail.” Heads bob. Ears stretch back and flap like wings. “The bitch! She attacks me and I'm the one who gets charged.” Heads freeze face-forward. Alert. Ears snap back into place above jaws. Oh, I so want to turn and gawk at him. To see if he has scars. Missing teeth. Taped glasses. Greasy hair. A beer belly topping spindly legs. The bus stops. I hear him skitter out the door behind me as bits of feather float and land. Squinting side-eye through the real-estate ad opaquing the window I wait for him to strut past. Hoping he will somehow surprise my cliches. Waiting. Waiting. Until I realize he must have winged it back the way we came. Spring Training A cloud, shaped like a baseball bat, squats on the horizon, blocking the sun that’s rising over the playing field. It shadows the sun all day. Hovers over the stands at mid-morning. Stares the fans down at high noon. Sweats out into the mid-afternoon. In the evening, the sun softly pushes back, bleeds orange and pink light around both sides of the bat-shaped cloud. The cloud angles back. Stops. Lets the sun move forward without it. But a strong wind, confusing the sun with a baseball, whips around, sweeps the cloud back, then forward, knocking the sun out through the night. Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada. Her writing appears in a variety of journals/anthologies and she has been included in Best Microfiction 2024. She is a contributing editor at NFFR. Her Flash-CNF book, Glass Bricks, is published by At Bay Press.