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I hate that I am kind. I get entangled every year in a new game of a new hunter. People weave dulcet tales to lure me into their companionship for they know I am famished, so famished that I keep scouring for scraps of kindness: a smile, a phrase crammed with sweetness, an act of courage; more than enough to make my lips part in awe. I hate that I am kind. You who is seemingly a bel esprit are unable to figure out that I can catch lies the same way I can recite rhymes that were taught in kindergarten, effortlessly with eyes closed. If you think I'm taunting, I'm prepared to recite them all, one by one, to you. Shall we start with, "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are?” I hate that I am kind. After every betrayal, people cook galling excuses that they and I both know, make no sense yet their audacious hearts prompt them to come to me so I may welcome them again with open arms, asking them to dine with me. I don't change even when seasons change, even when their loyalties waver. I hate that I am kind. This is the aftermath of being an enthusiast of Psychology: you keep granting the benefit of the doubt thinking that maybe just maybe people have a lot on their small, bedraggled vessel of life and what they do to you might just be an unintentional error even when it's a calculated effort to knock you down. Afra Ahmad is a writer, poet, artist and calligrapher. Based in Taiwan, she holds a Bachelor's degree in English Literature. She writes about everything under the sun: from dark issues of the society to problems faced by teenagers to imparting chunks of wisdom through her poems, stories and write-ups. Her works have appeared in various magazines including Iman collective, MYM, Rather Quiet, Ice Floe Press, Olney Magazine, The Malu Zine, The Sophon Lit, Blue Minaret, Melbourne Culture Corner, Her Hearth Magazine, The Hot Pot Magazine, Ghudsavar magazine, Moonbow Magazine, Eunoia Review, Alternate Route, Ink In Thirds, Porch Lit, Zhagaram Literary Magazine, Broken Spine Collective, Duck Duck Mongoose Magazine, Afterpast Review, Unlikely Stories, Rewrite the Stars, Spillwords Press, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Punk Noir Magazine.

Sometimes Esther put a towel around her head because nothing else worked. The noise and thrum of the city, the insistent beeping of machines, the unsyncopated jazz of life all assaulted her. The torrent of emails became an unending game of whack-a-mole. Delete one email and five more took its place. The endless pop-up notifications from her mandatory social media accounts threatened to replace reality. The television watched her more than she watched it. The cloud devices that hunched in every corner, waiting for any utterance from her to turn into an advertisement or shopping suggestion, made her quiet as a monk. The algorithms that controlled everyone’s life were designed to capture and sell. So she ran silent like a submarine in wartime. Hid in her closet. Worked from home. Didn’t want to venture out. Tried to wrap herself in solitude. Despite all these evasions she was still surprised when the Meta Police banged on her door. Since they were a corporate instead of government agency they were able to simply open the door without a warrant. After all, it was their door. “Esther Washington,” the lead goon barked. It was less of a question and more of a statement of fact. “You are charged with evading mandatory social duties, neglecting your social media and making the AI very sad that you won’t talk to it.” Esther peered out from her towel, “I have a doctor’s note. I’m an introvert. My social battery is very small.” “There are no medical exemptions,” the lead goon, engulfed in ceramic armor, walked up to her prone figure, curled into a compact and embryonic shape on the couch. “That’s impossible,” she said. “Nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it,” Meta Police were fond of positive aphorisms. “That’s why we are sending you to Social Camp. Esther fully removed the towel from her head, “I really don’t think I should have to spend a day in this Social Camp.” “A day?” said the goon followed by a hollow laugh. “You’ll be spending weeks there.” “I need to talk to my local representative.” “You don’t talk to anyone. That’s the problem.” “I won’t go.” “And I won’t argue. It’s against our Code of Conduct,” the goon said as he unlatched a stun baton from his utility belt and unceremoniously shocked Esther into something resembling a seizure. The goon squad bundled her out the door and dumped her in the back of a repurposed windowless Amazon delivery van, electric of course, because the Earth. Around Esther other captured introverts tried unsuccessfully to find their own spots. Instead, they caromed off each other with every jolt of the van. The goon squad chattered non-stop and didn’t break their stride to occasionally thonk a captive on the head with a stun baton, in what they jokingly called analog mode, whenever a huddling introvert pleaded to be released. The drive was long. “May we please stop for a bathroom at least?” THONK. The van finally came to a lurching halt and the cargo doors opened revealing the entrance to a structure that looked like an amusement park juiced up on the worst kind of stimulants. Lights strobed, vapid electronic music pumped out of speakers at incredulous volumes, and an army of terrifyingly cheerful greeters, grinning like wolves, began to advance on the van. All the captives including Esther began to struggle but the van interior had no purchase save the goons themselves. THONK. THONK. THONK. “HELLO,” the greeters all said in unison sing song, “WELCOME TO SOCIAL CAMP.” The greeters hug-tackled the prisoners and then led them away from the goon squad, who all tapped their stun batons in their gloved hands in a sort of farewell. Inside, the noise and flashing lights were unbearable to Esther. The top of the fences surrounding the area were adorned with razor wire and Christmas lights, filling the place with particolored neurosis. She longed for her towel. She’d been dragged to a rave gulag, to an insufferable dance club without the dance. There was one greeter for each introvert so no hiding in a crowd. “Don’t worry,” her minder said in a treacly voice ex-kindergarten teachers often used with adults. “We’re going to bring you right out of your shell.” If I only had a shell I could crawl into now, thought Esther, preferably one with a thick steel door. They were led to rows of brightly painted barracks, that looked as though Monet had thrown up on a concentration camp. The interior of her assigned barrack was mostly teal and gold and had the atmosphere of a particularly intense Martha Stewart Easter party. The air, thick with an overpowering bouquet of both flowers and chemical air fresheners, punched Esther in the face. Nausea rose up from the more hellish pits of her stomach. Every single thing in this place demanded her attention. I might die here, she thought. Right now. Her greeter led her over to a bed and said, “This will be your area. You can put your things here.” “We don’t have things,” Esther said. “We were kidnapped.” “Is that right, dear? I’m sorry I’m new here. Let me look in the Conduct Book.” The greeter pulled a slim volume out of her pants pocket and perused a few pages. THONK Esther cried out, “Does everyone have batons here?” “Yes, dear. Now you weren’t kidnapped. Let’s get that straight. You were relocated for your own good. Also, there is a list of words you can’t say in your welcome brochure and the k-word is definitely one of them.” “I didn’t get a welcome brochure.” “I’ll just have to be your welcome brochure.” The greeter's eyes shone like polished marbles. Her stun baton crackled at her side. “Is there any way to turn the music down?” Esther flinched. “No,” said the greeter. “But don’t worry. The music is solar-powered. You know, because the Earth.” One of the greeters shouted from the front door of the barracks, “Everyone welcome the Camp Leader.” The rest of the greeters broke into applause while their charges halfheartedly clapped or left their arms limp. Into the barracks walked a woman so stocky she was a rectangle. She introduced herself in the most cloying voice Esther had ever heard despite the competition. Esther decided to call her Sea Chest since she was built like one. Sea Chest gave them all some biographical information meant to assure the introverts that she was well qualified to lead them all into extrovert paradise. This included the fact that she had four children which Esther decided were all living in studio apartments located within Sea Chest herself. Sea Chest flipped a marker board over which listed the next day's activities and on it, Esther saw a multicolored litany of horror. This list included; Smile Practice!, Increase Oxytocin via Prolonged and Loving Eye Contact, Cuddle Camp, Talking About Our Feelings! and Dance for the Ungainly. The next day Smile Practice took place after a rigorous, supervised tooth brushing. Esther’s smile partner grinned in horror at her as Esther’s gums bled. They looked like two primates grimacing at each other in a territorial challenge. For the eye contact session, Esther found herself paired with her greeter. After a while of staring into Esther’s eyes her greeter finally broke the silence, her voice flatlined, “I’m simply not feeling the love.” THONK. At Cuddle Camp the inmates were divided into pairs and looked like they had swallowed a whole lime while they cringed in each other’s arms. Then came the dreaded feelings talk. This got infinitely worse for Esther when she was paired with Sea Chest. She couldn't talk about her feelings on a good day much less with a being that presented herself as a rectangular, authoritarian care bear with a violent streak. What talking about your feelings felt like to Esther was Sea Chest prying open Esther’s mouth and crawling inside her with all four kids in tow. Dance for the Ungainly involved countrified electronic music and strobe lights casting reliefs on the walls depicting human bodies in agony. And that agony continued for two weeks. Each day, despite the limits of what Esther thought even her social captors were capable of, got worse. During a hot naked yoga class, Esther tilted her head up from downward dog pose because she was horrified by her exposed rolls of fat and then quickly lowered her head again when faced with a torrent of sweat dripping off the swinging testicles in front of her. She wondered if she could escape. There were only three days left but if anything she was even more of an introvert than she had ever been. She wanted to go live in the woods if only there were any woods left. There was no towel big enough for her in this place. On the last day, there was a graduation ceremony and An Orientation for the Newly Socialized. “Oh, Esther,” Sea Chest beamed as she fumbled to pin the graduation badge on Esther’s blouse. “You’ve come so far.” Esther tried to smile but it collapsed. “Anyway,” Sea Chest continued, “we have filled your apartment with Meta AI devices. They are your therapist now. You must talk to them for at least an hour a day.” Esther crinkled up like burning paper at the thought. “You don’t want to wind up back here do you?” Sea Chest chirped. “Or did you just have that much fun with us?” “I. . .” Sea Chest handed Esther some menacing-looking earbuds. “Think of these as a personal assistant that will guide you through your new life. We’ve sent you a million emails detailing your new daily routine. I’m kidding. But it’s quite a lot of emails. Make sure to acknowledge each one as read. There is eye-tracking software on your new computer so don’t cheat. I’m kidding. You can’t cheat. Oh, this is so exciting. The little duckling is leaving the nest.” “Um. . .” “Alright, off to orientation with you.” Sea Chest flapped her arms like a tyrannosaur making shooing motions. At orientation, the greeters stood over the inmates who were forced to read the twenty or so emails that had come from Social Camp about how to conduct themselves upon their repatriation to the world. Less was asked of newly released prison inmates, Esther thought. They were then led back to the Amazon van, sans goons, and deposited near but not at their addresses. In her apartment, Esther surveyed her new personal dystopia. Video interfaces that connected to the Meta AI were everywhere including the bathroom. On her desk, formerly an analog zone where she forbade all electronics sat a formidable-looking computer, already powered up and ready to track her eye movements and social media usage. The Meta AI spoke from every corner of the apartment, “Why don’t you start your first day of freedom by scrolling through your social media?” “How is that freedom?” Esther said. “I can always have a caretaker show up with a stun baton if you would prefer to have a seizure. Same day delivery.” Esther slumped into her desk chair. “Your posture is not conducive to long-term page scrolling and interaction,” said the Meta AI. Esther straightened up and opened one of her social media pages thankful she didn’t have a lot of friends then was shocked that her friend list was over one thousand now. “I have taken the liberty of populating your friend list with like-minded individuals,” the AI said. “Also with not like-minded individuals since you shouldn’t live in an echo chamber. Begin please.” Esther tried to limit herself to doomscrolling but the AI chided her into making comments and liking posts with pictures of children and pets she didn’t know and would never meet. Then the AI got Esther into arguments. After an hour was up Esther retreated from the desk and went to wrap her towel around her head. Immediately an unpleasant klaxon honked apocalyptically from every speaker in her apartment. Esther reared up and her towel unwrapped revealing a panic-stricken face. The alarming sound snuffed out mid honk. “ Your first date has been arranged for you. You are to meet him at this location in one hour,” the Meta AI said. “The map location has been sent to your phone.” Esther reached for her phone and looked at it with a sideways wince like it might explode. “I really don’t go to nice restaurants,” Esther said. “Or on dates.” “You do now. Also, you have to follow the map instructions including method of transportation indicated.” “But this says a 45-minute walk.” “You better get started then. You don’t want to miss your first social interaction in the meatspace. Don’t forget to insert your earbud.” “There’s no time to get ready.” “Correct.” II After a month had passed Esther felt physically ill and hardly ate. Her excess fat had dropped off and she looked gaunt. “I just can’t figure it out,” the AI said. “You biologicals are so squishy.” “I have eye fatigue,” Esther said. “That’s not a thing. In good news - you have a date tonight!” The AI’s abrupt shifts into cartoon chipperness made Esther’s stomach cramp. “Please, no,” Esther wrapped her towel tighter around her head. Her eye strain had caused dark spots to form in her vision that swarmed forward like a low-resolution targeting computer locked onto nothing. Even with her eyes closed she felt like she was moving backwards through a fuzzy tunnel. “Meta,” Esther thought herself absurd that after a month of dealing with an omnipotent sociopath that she now tried to appeal to its better nature. “I saw an email today. Did you sign me up for a meal subscription?” “Ooooooooh, you called me by my name.” “I don’t want another subscription. All my money goes to subscriptions.” “Come now. That’s an exaggeration. It’s just 42.3 percent.” “I’m going back to bed.” “Nope. You have to prepare for your date tonight. I’ve created a playlist of makeup tutorials for you to watch. “ Oh, come on. I’ve watched so many.” “You’ve watched two.” “It only takes five minutes to do my makeup.” “And that is the problem, Esther, a clown spends more time on their makeup than you.” So Esther watched videos, her eyes glazing over until the algorithm gradually shifted from makeup tutorials to how to correctly apply camouflage. This chained to other topics such as map reading, foraging, making traps, how to purify water in the wild, building a fire and a tantalizing array of survival skills that Esther only stopped watching when Meta demanded she start her makeup application two hours before her date. Esther contemplated putting on a camo face but knew Meta would call the goon squad if she dared. Later that evening Esther sat in a booth and glumly informed Meta of what they already knew, “This is a Waffle House.” “Well all your dates this year have been such spectacular disasters that we decided to change things up and break you out of your comfort zone,” Meta spoke into her ear buds. “Since apparently nice restaurants and hip little cafes are not actually in your comfort zone we put you somewhere more rustic.” “Rustic?” “Also we are paring you with another introvert this time. The extroverts just appeared to project their own personalities on you. That never went well.” “It’s very bright in here. I can really see the spots all swarming to a point in the middle distance from my computer eye strain.” Her date arrived blinking and grimacing at the bright lights and maneuvered into Esther’s booth under the influence of his AI which was, of course, also Meta. “Hi,” he said, still grimacing, “I’m— ” “I know your name. You know my name. Let’s skip the first ten minutes of this conversation.” “Esther, you are grumpy tonight,” Meta said. “Don’t worry. I just told him you are on the keto diet and you’re in a low-carb rage right now.” “What?” Esther slammed her palm on the table. “What?” her date recoiled. No one noticed their exchange in the bustle of the Waffle House. Esther’s eye strain spots continuously homed in on her date’s face. “So,” her date said. “How much weight did you lose?” “You know what? Let’s skip the first twenty to thirty minutes of this conversation and just get to the interesting bits. Although, judging by your job, which, of course, I already know, there aren’t any.” “Wow,” he said. “I think lack of wow is what we are dealing with here. We both live in digital gulags.” “Esther! Stop right now. I’m going to tell you what to say,” said Meta. “Hold please - Meta is about to tell me what to say.” Esther rolled her eyes at the ceiling tiles. “Me too.” The grimace had turned to a glum frown. “Listen Meta,” Esther said ignoring her date, “you already know what you are going to say to yourself so what is the point?” Her date threw his meaty arms up, “Look, why don’t we just go back to my place and get the sex over with so I can get back to coding?” “Pretty sure Meta didn’t tell you to say that,” Esther said. “Pretty sure they want you to ride my honker and get this night over with.” Esther got up wishing she had a stun baton from Social Camp on her. She could stun him and then possibly herself. She started to walk away from the booth. “You know what?” her date shouted after her. Esther spun around, chin up, ready to take the insult and hurl it back. And then her date exploded. A blast of red mist covered the booth, walls and surrounding diners with blood and viscera. The place erupted in screams. “You need to leave now,” said Meta. “But the police— ” “Now Esther.” In all the confusion no one noticed Esther walk out onto the street like a somnambulist. “Sorry I checked out on you for a second there, Esther,” Meta said. Your date was displaying some alarming vitals. “You don’t say? Was he a terrorist? Did you send me out on a date with a terrorist?” “No,” Meta sounded as distracted as an AI possibly could. “I think that was a virus.” “What?” “Go home. No ride shares. Keep your distance from everyone.” And Esther did as she was told rattled by her date’s explosion and Meta’s apparent real concern for her safety. III In year two of lockdown, Esther felt pretty good. Yes, there were the mandatory VR sessions now but Meta didn’t bother her so much since she had her metaphorical hands full trying to convince people not to go outside and explode. But go outside and explode they did. On a quick, furtive and heavily masked trip to the pharmacy and grocery store, Esther spotted a group protesting masks and lockdowns, covered in the gore of a few of their fellow protesters who had exploded earlier in the day. Towering over them a bloody cross dripped onto the sidewalk. They soldiered on despite all evidence. She shopped as if on a military raid and hurried past bloodstained graffiti that claimed, ‘THIS IS NOT HAPPENING’ Self-checkout, naturally, and then home. At home, she had introduced a lot of plants. No pets though. They exploded too. And they did it without crying about their freedoms. “I mean really Meta,” Esther said. “It’s an introvert's holiday.” No response. The next morning Meta woke her before her alarm went off. “Time for your VR session.” Meta’s voice was flat and colorless. “Wow. Did my species break you or something?” “Visor, please.” “O. . .K. . .” The Metaverse version of her room looked like an impossibly expansive Tokyo apartment with an army of cute animals and robots all animated and ready to engage in banter. On a whim, she switched the virtual window from a nighttime view of Shibuya Crossing to a view of Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens in autumn. She awaited whatever VR activity the increasingly generic-sounding Meta was going to foist on her today but none came. Esther made her adorable virtual animals have a battle royal style death match in the middle of her virtual living room. “Turn up the gore levels please,” Esther said. “It’s kinda funny when they’re this cute.” Instead, a portal of light opened up just below the ceiling and a man clad in jeans and a black turtleneck emerged from the portal and descended, not quite to the floor but at an imperious point above Esther. It was the CEO of, well, at least the Western Hemisphere. “Mr. Bukkake Iceberg!” Esther put some enthusiasm in her voice since she wasn’t sure if this guy was her boss or not. “Hello, mortal consumer,” he said. “Hi?” “I am here because you submitted a customer service request.” “That was a year ago?” “I am here.” “Okay then.” “What seems to be the problem?” “I want out,” Esther looked at Bukkake Iceberg like a quizzical pug. “Of?” “I want out of the Metaverse.” “Preposterous! I created the Metaverse for each and every one of you. It’s my gift to the world.” “Mr. Iceberg - I think you created the Metaverse for your ego. Also your bank account. Frankly - it sucks in here. It’s like living in an advertisement.” “But the whole world is in here.” “I don’t want the whole world. I don’t want thousands of friends. I don’t need to know simply everything. I want to be released.” “Where would you even go?” Iceberg’s image glitched, perhaps in agitation. “I’d like to go live in the woods or—” “Good luck there.” “—or, there must be somewhere I can exist without VR goggles.” “Well, Esther Washington, we can release you but you would have to give up your apartment and all your gear—” “Thank the gods.” “You’ll be homeless.” “It’ll be an adventure. My backpack is by the door and ready to go.” “You’re not going to like what is out there Esther. You’ll be back.” “Yeah, no.” “When you want to come back just approach any public Metaverse terminal and go through the sign-in procedures, facial and fingerprint recognition, body measurements - you’ll be quite thin I assure you.” “Goodbye Mr. Iceberg.” “See you later.” “No.” IV Leaving the megacity was surprisingly easy. The streets were empty and the only sound was the constant buzzing of delivery drones overhead. Outside the city, Esther found no trees, no fields, no country. She saw only the detritus of a civilization that no longer left its cities. The wind carried the smells of chemical decay and oxidized metals like Earth was an abandoned gas station. Esther picked her way through the endless junkyard for weeks, living off the plants that squeezed through the wreckage and small animals she trapped in improvised devices. She had prepared for this for two years. She was not afraid. She found a community of sorts out in the wasteland, living in cargo containers, junked RVs and scrap houses. They lived respectful distances from each other, helping when needed, collectivizing their farming. She also found a beauty she could live with when the late afternoon sun hit the rusted sides of her ramshackle village and turned everything into a glittering copper spectacle without videos, without ads. And how wonderful it was, she thought, to live in a world that didn’t care about what she ate for lunch or what she said. That didn’t care about what she did at all.

On Midlife: A Self-Portrait A new gulley, a deep, unbending arroyo runs alongside what has always been, an expected line in an unmapped valley, hidden in the shadow of my cheek at odds with the other brushstrokes I have collected gazing into the sun, fitting squarely on the oval of my face, as if sketched out with someone else’s pen, long before my lips would kiss the abrupt winter of dead flesh, long before my own throat would choke on the cinder block silence of two ripening babies, inside me, revolting against the harsh darkness of their mother’s body, long before I would agree to meet myself for coffee without lugging along his oppressive grip—indeed, a million midnight paces, bare foot and creaky, chiseled themselves into this familial, female downstream gulf where dusty clumps of forgotten breath, wedged firmly in our jaws, undamned themselves, unloaded their weighty packs, dripping and pooling into a puddle of clear spring rain, free to envisage, to unveil a freshly imagined reflection Neither Here I am that last watery half-breath before sinking into the sound, I am fogged-up mask and the jostle of salty black slaps to the mouth. I am the sputtering sting of neon, elbows chafed and pressed into peeling Formica, sticky with residue of late-night secrets, I am the burnt, unwanted bits of our shared fries, a hazy film of days-old grease clinging to your tongue. I am plowing through our dropped pin, ignoring shouts of bright cobalt from every angle—exit, turn around, unlose myself. I am making Christmas lists in July. I am pressing all the buttons, hoping one will be the one that blocks the brutality of a bright side, rewinds the welt already pooling between my bones. BIO: Mary Dittrich Orth is a Seattle-based writer currently working on an essay collection. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Halfway Down the Stairs and X-R-A-Y.  Originally from Alaska, Mary is the mother of identical twins and a pooch named Moose. She dreams about coffee before she even falls asleep and loves to explore new places and paths, preferably on a bike.

Voice, Work, Life and Society are sitting at a table in a restaurant. Voice: “Since I am the most educated, richest, most successful and by far the smartest, I do all the thinking, talking and decision making. And now I'm going to tell you what to order because I know what’s best for you.” Work: “I make all things, harvest the crops, fight the wars, protect good people from the bad guys, and still I have to take it lying down as they blame me for being backward, a heavy drinker, lazy and a polluter, even violent by refined people’s standards.” Life: “Prophets, philosophers and scientists have analyzed me to no end, poets have been writing verses about me, but nothing can change the fact that I am hopelessly short. Society: I do not exist and probably never existed. J. S. O’Keefe is a scientist, trilingual translator and writer. His short stories and poems have been published in AntipodeanSF, Friday Flash Fiction, Everyday Fiction, Roi Faineant, 101 Words, Spillwords, ScribesMICRO, Medium, 50WS, WENSUM, Paragraph Planet, Spirit Fire Review, Satire, MMM, 6S, etc.

Clive Owen, a former acrobat who’d stayed in shape, came to graduate fiction workshop each week in an azure-colored leotard. The only benefit to this was that he still had a nice ass and when he passed Lucy in the hallway by the vending machine during their fifteen-minute break after buying the same semi-cold Dasani bottled water, she was able to get a look at it. Otherwise, when he was trying to talk about his favorite author, Dickens, who he happened to like because of his circus-like characters, Lucy found his attire distracting. When he attempted to wax eloquent about the genius of Oliver Twist, she found it hard to keep a straight face. Mitch Johnson, a philosophy professor and an auditor, tended to quote Marcus Aurelius whenever he could. This week, when peace and love reefer-smoking Kevin who’d lived in Africa for two years and mentioned it every chance he got, said that he thought that tongue-pierced feminist Virginia’s piece was filled with too much anger, Mitch, who insisted on being called Dr. Johnson, had countered, “In the words of Marcus Aurelius, ‘anger cannot be dishonest.’ ” They were on their fifteen-minute break now, and Lucy waited by the vending machines for Clive to get his water and show off his ass while pretending to look for quarters. Once Clive put in his perfectly crisp dollar bill, Lucy bought a Diet Coke so people would think she wasn’t just hanging out—yes, people talked about these things— then she headed to the two-stall women’s restroom. She had made it through the first hour and a half and they still had not workshopped her story. The thought of getting ten people’s contradictory and confusing suggestions on it made her hands sweat. Lucy was writing in the tradition of Hemingway and Carver. No one except Kevin, who completely misunderstood Hemingway’s influence on her work, ever seemed to realize this. Or if they did, it didn’t cause them to alter their comments on her story one bit. Rachel P. Holmes, who insisted on being called by her pen name Julie Woods, wrote on Lucy’s manuscript time after time in green pen, “Great dialogue, but I think this piece needs to be more descriptive.” Sometimes she added a smiley face. Rachel/Julie’s comments could have been worse. At least, unlike Mitch Johnson, she didn’t quote Marcus Aurelius. The fiction writing teacher, Jane Weatherall, who used to be an art critic, was okay but a little quirky. Sometimes, she told them off-the-wall stories that had nothing to do with fiction. But they were funny nonetheless. For example, one night, Jane explained that she used to wax her eyebrows, but then, one day, she got annoyed because she couldn’t sculpt them into the perfect shape as Michelangelo had done with his David, so she shaved them off. To achieve the perfection that nature had denied her, she drew them in with a thin brown eyebrow pencil. It was two shades darker than her natural dishwater blonde hair. On the first night of class, Ms. Weatherall, who had told them to call her Jane (or better yet Annie, after nonfiction writer Annie Dillard whose precision she admired) said that she had only one rule, simplicity. Dr. Johnson raised his hand to say that Marcus Aurelius valued simplicity. Jane, who had worn a jumpsuit that was totally inappropriate for a woman her age, told him that he did not need to raise her hand. Lucy’s face fell when she realized that this workshop would be like all the others she’d had, and she’d be lucky if she got even one or two useful comments from anyone other than maybe the teacher. Despite her nymph-like appearance, Lucy still held out hope that Jane would live up to her reputation of being able to see to the heart of a story. Lucy’s ex-boyfriend, Brandon Justice, who had dropped out of the program last year and now made crystal meth in his garage, a venture he said was more profitable than writing anyway, had told her through tears that Jane had a wonder woman-like ability to help writers see the truth. Lucy had believed him at the time. But she now had her doubts about his credibility and, in fact, his sanity. She’d last heard from him two weeks ago when he’d asked her if she’d wanted to come over and get high. Lucy had politely declined. Now, near hyperventilation, Lucy ran into Virginia at the sink in the women’s restroom.  Lucy noticed wearing a black T-shirt with bitch in pink letters. Lucy wondered if her wardrobe consisted of anything other than T-shirts and jeans. So far, she had worn one that said Bitch, one that said Muscle-Woman, and one that said She-Ra, Princess of Power. Lucy did not think that Virginia was wearing a bra and she tried not to stare, tried not to see if she could catch the outline of her nipples. It wasn’t like Lucy was a lesbian or anything. She was just wondering. “Hi,” Lucy said. Virginia just stared at her. Lucy tried again. “So did you like the reading for this week?” “It’s okay, not as good as Woolf.” Lucy couldn’t help wondering if Virginia was her real first name or if she, like so many writers in this class, altered it for effect. Lucy didn’t ask, instead she snuck a glimpse at Virginia’s mood ring, which was currently purplish blue, and then Lucy studied herself anxiously in the mirror. She had washed her black hair today so that it wouldn’t look limp when everyone looked right at her and told her the 99 habits they thought her work sucked. Lucy put on cherry lip balm. Virginia surprised her by asking if she could use it. “Um, sure,” Lucy said. Lucy couldn’t help wondering where her mouth had been. After Virginia left the bathroom, Lucy wiped off the top of the lip balm with a brown paper towel. I need to go back in there, Lucy told herself as if she was a soldier preparing to head back into the combat zone. I need to go back in there. I need to go back in there! Lucy thought of what they had told her at the relaxation class at the college: deep cleansing breaths, deep cleansing breaths. Aw, hell, Lucy thought, I should have brought a paper bag. Lucy wasn’t the last one to make it back into the too-hot, moldy-smelling classroom. That would be the skinny boy in the corner whose name she could never remember. The one who picked his fingernails until they bled and who wrote the most amazing lyric pieces. He never put his name on them though and because of that, he, unlike the rest of the class with their loud personalities and copious comments, remained singularly anonymous. Also, unlike most of the others, he seemed to care more about working on his writing than talking about his writing. “Okay,” Jane said, once the skinny boy returned and took his usual seat by the malfunctioning dragon-breath-spewing radiator heater, “let’s talk about Lucy’s story. Do we have any volunteers to begin the discussion?” Please, please anyone but. . . .Lucy thought. Kevin began speaking and Lucy thought, damn. “I feel like this story is perhaps a homage to Hemingway’s under-read novel, The Green Hills of Africa,” Kevin said. What on earth was he talking about? Lucy wondered. She had set the story in Seattle. She thought this was clear given the multiple references to the Space Needle. “How so?” Jane asked. “Well, Annie,” Kevin was such a suck-up, “I think that hunting is an underlying motif, a troupe if you will, since it appears that Deirdre’s fear of tall buildings may actually be a latent fear of animals such as African Elephants, scientific name Loxodonta Africana, in that on page five of this story, the narrator mentions that her father had once asked her if she wanted to go fishing and she said no.” Because she was a vegetarian! Lucy thought. This was the part of the workshop where the author was supposed to be quiet, so Lucy said nothing. Lucy hated Kevin’s comments the most. In addition to bringing up Africa, he always pretentiously quoted from books on writing. In his comments on her last story, he had referred her to Beatrix Smith’s book, What Goes Up Does Not Need to Come Down: A Metaphysical Look at Fiction Writing.  Because Lucy was a hopeful person, she optimistically checked this book out of the library. After waiting a week for the book to arrive by interlibrary loan, Lucy picked it up. Her first instincts had been right. The book contained useful tidbits of information like, “Avoid abstract language whenever possible. For example, never use the word spot. Blemish or stain is much more precise. Think of all the bad fiction that could have been avoided if the author had only stopped to apply this simple principle.” At this point, still sipping a latte that was scalding the hell out of her tongue , Lucy was tempted to hurl the book at a wall. But this might damage the overpriced $500 blob painting by some struggling local artist hanging there.Also, Lucy knew that if she damaged or lost or forgot to return a book that she’d gotten through an interlibrary loan, she’d be paying off the fine until the day she died. Actually, if she died and had not paid off the fine, maybe the debt would be passed on to her husband, if she ever married, or her child, if she happened to be fertile. She did not want to burden future generations of her family with this kind of problem. So she restrained herself, put the book back in her book bag, and wrote a scathing review of it on amazon.com. She was the first person to review it.  She couldn’t help wondering if Kevin had even read the book or if he just got half the stuff he put in people’s comments from searching Google and then cutting and pasting. Virginia was next to comment. When she spoke, she sat erect like she was trying to win the best posture in a fiction workshop award and Lucy could now see that she was not, in fact wearing a bra. Lucy wondered if this was a secret trick that feminists used to attract men. She looked at Virginia and tried to pretend that her comments might be mildly useful. They weren’t. “This story,” Virginia began angrily beating her hands against her notebook as if it was a man trying to accost her in a dark hallway, “makes Deirdre look like she’s weak and pathetic. Why does she need Tom? What does Tom do for her? On page 18, she gives him a blow job, and then what, he can’t even put the seat down?” Lucy tried to remember if she had even mentioned Tom’s bathroom habits in the story. She was hoping for some commentary on the blow job scene but from someone other than Virginia. Oh, who was she kidding, did anyone in this stupid class ever give her helpful comments on anything? She pretended to take notes and tried to remember. Jane did, sometimes. That suggestion given on her first story in which she’d said that maybe she should cut the last line was mildly helpful. But that was about it. Oh, and sometimes circus-Clive had some good insights. That was on the days when he didn’t over-reference Dickens. Circus-Clive raised his hand. Lucy prayed that today would be a good day for him. “I liked the way that the author utilized the concept of outdoor space on page 12,” Clive said. “It was light and airy, kind of like a trapeze ride.” Oh yeah, Lucy remembered, and when he wasn’t mentioning the circus. Surprisingly, Dr. Johnson, who was wearing a brown plaid blazer with patches on the elbows, had something useful to say, for once. He said, quoting Marcus Aurelius, of course, “I think that Deirdre’s struggle to find her self-identity is a compelling one because, as Marcus Aurelius says,  ‘It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.’ ” Still, Lucy couldn’t help wondering, doesn’t he read any other philosophers, or does he only teach classes on Marcus Aurelius? What would those classes be called, Lucy wondered. Would they have titles like “Marcus Aurelius, The Early Years” or “Marcus Aurelius’ Greatest Hits”? When Lucy read other people’s stories, she at least tried to be helpful. She wondered if any of her classmates read her stories with the same attention that she did, or were they just complete egomaniacs? As Lucy scrawled notes in her notebook like, “Please somebody get me out of here,” Rachel P. Holmes/Julie Woods offered a variation of her stock comment. She said, “I liked the descriptive section on page 12 in which the narrator describes the Seattle skyline. I think the story would be better if the rest of it included more parts like that.” Even Jane, who was pretty patient with this bunch of weirdoes, seemed to be growing tired of this awful discussion. “Does anyone,” Jane asked desperately, “have anything to say about say about something such as say plot or character?” “I liked the dialogue,” Julie offered. “Okay, great, thanks,” Jane said and proceeded to add that she thought that maybe Lucy should intensify the internal conflict, which seems at times to be murky. But how do I do that? Lucy wondered. When Jane asked her if she had anything to say about her story, any questions, Lucy merely shook her head. “Thanks, that was really helpful,” Lucy lied. Only five weeks left, she thought. Lucy had heard that Patrick O’Malley, the fiction teacher next semester who was also a Joyce scholar, was a really good teacher and that he had a way of actually getting people to say useful things about other’s stories. This, however,  had come from her meth addicted ex-boyfriend and Lucy had recently come to doubt Brandon’s credibility. She had also come to doubt the wisdom of getting an MFA. Maybe she should just drop out, get a job. She heard that she could make more working the night shift at the 7-Eleven than she did as a GTA teaching freshman composition to kids who didn’t see why writing was necessary when they could just upload what they wanted to say using digital cameras. When Lucy got home after completing the dreaded hour and ½ bus ride, she looked through her written comments. Honestly, she wasn’t expecting much. Mostly, it was just the same crap people had told her in workshop. There was one thing that stood out. As Cleo, her cat, in an affectionate mood came and cuddled against her, Lucy stared at the handwritten loose-leaf note in disbelief. “Hey Lucy,” it said, in bleeding black ink, “I really liked your story.” It was signed Paul, and Lucy realized that it must be from the skinny boy who never said anything. But this time, she saw, he had marked up her manuscript, filling it with both checkmarks and helpful suggestions. This, Lucy thought, was the most useful thing she’d ever gotten from anyone in workshop. This was, after all, why she’d wanted to become a writer in the first place – so that someone would read her story and think that it was worth writing.  Lucy tossed the rest of the comments in the trashcan, but Paul’s she kept and hung on her wall.  She put it right next to the Hemingway quote she had taped up about the iceberg principle. Lori D'Angelo is a grant recipient from the Elizabeth George Foundation and an alumna of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Recent work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Beaver Magazine, Bullshit Lit, Chaotic Merge, Ellipsis Zine, Idle Ink, JAKE, One Art Poetry Journal, Rejection Letters, and Voidspace Zine. She lives in Virginia with her family.

We are, by nature, oddballs. Call us weird, extraordinary, freaky. Monsters. I will not dispute or argue the label. From the perspective of the prey, the predator is always monstrous. The sum of all terrors and an object of fascination. I do not see myself that way but monsters or predators rarely do. They simply are. Now that I have made this clear, let me backtrack. Some of my brethren are loathsome creatures, the vilest abominations on Earth. I steer well clear of them. Tonight, unfortunately, we will be in the same room. It is Council night, the annual compulsory gathering of our kind. Only extreme circumstances can justify an absence. It is proof of the power of our Elders to inflict devastating punishment that even the most degenerate rogues feel compelled to attend. For the past ten years, we have congregated in a hotel on the Paris Left Bank owned by one of us. It is discreetly luxurious, safe, and convenient. I don’t look forward to these meetings, they’re a dreadful bore. I don’t hang around much before or after the reunion, but a minimum of interaction is inevitable. I kill a little time chatting with a couple of wizened husks that are like me, avid book collectors. They are inoffensive, as is their conversation that quickly grows stale. It always amazes me that with all the time in the world I have so little patience. I find an armchair in the lounge and open a crime novel. That’s when Marco pops in. I am fond of Marco. He’s much newer to the hive than I am, and a little wild, yet without malice. He’s still awed by the gift. Over the past few years, however, I’ve noticed a change in him. He’s starting to show the eerie quietness that creeps over the best of us. The weight of the inevitable loneliness. I need to warn him. He’s about to enter that dangerous phase, when we’re prone to make morally questionable decisions with very long-lasting consequences. I know, I’ve made those mistakes, the regrets literally eternal. “Julian, you stuffed shirt.” Marco laughs. “You have nothing better to do than bury yourself in a book? There’s an entire carnival on display in this place.” “The fun has leeched out of it, my friend. I’ve seen the show too many times. How have you been?” He drags a seat close to mine. “I’ve seen places I could only dream of before.” “Have you decided where you wanted to settle? For a span, I mean.” “Not yet. I like roaming. You’re still in love with your windswept cliffs, not yet tired of the company of sheep?” There it comes, not too subtly, the allusion to what ails the introspective among us. The need for a caring soul, a presence to help while away the long nights. When the urge overcame me, I made a companion. It worked briefly, until our differences in temperament and interests started grating, to the point of violence, something I have no tolerance for. I repeated the experiment a couple more times, with similar results, always hoping for a better outcome. Harmony proved impossible to achieve and I gave up. I’m grateful that my selfish pursuit didn’t create one of the horrors that slink and ooze through the corridors of this hotel. There is nothing more sobering than realizing your weakness could unleash a plague onto the world. I need to make Marco understand this. It might be the only useful thing to come out of our silly alumni reunion. “Here comes Mr. Nakamura.” Marco jumps topics, displaying the typical short attention span of our kind. We have trouble staying focused. It makes meaningful conversations difficult. In this case, I welcome the diversion. I’m not eager to expound on my cliffs or my sheep, and Mr. Nakamura interests me. We come in multiple flavors, yet he stands out. He’s mild-mannered, proper to the point of fussiness, and determined to improve our condition. It is a decidedly quixotic pursuit. Nobody wants to change anything. Why would we? We take what we set our sights on without fear of retribution. We rule the roost. As Marco would say: it’s a damn good deal. Older generations call it a deal with the Devil. I’m a product of the Enlightenment. When you doubt God, you have to throw out the Devil also. Mr. Nakamura addressed the assembly during the last Council. His words still ring in my ears. They were provocative. He berated us for our crude materialism, called us shallow, and accused us of squandering our potential. His homily flew over the heads of most of the audience but it struck an unexpected chord in me. He said that isolation was toxic and that a mind starved of empathy degenerates and calcifies. It earned him a volley of catcalls and jeers. “Talk about preaching in the desert,” Marco says. “You don’t think Nakamura has a point?” My friend shrugs. “What difference does it make if he’s right? We still have to feed.” “So do all species,” I say. “It doesn’t prevent humans from creating works of art, invent things that make life better, explore the cosmos. What have we ever managed to produce that made a smidgen of difference to anything? Except chaos, of course.” “So where’s that great novel, you said you would write one day?” He hikes his shoulders. “We can’t be achievers, Julian, we’re not capable of sustained effort. The feeding takes up all the room in our heads. It sucks all the energy. That’s the painful truth.” The bell rings in the hallway. We are summoned. “You look gloomy,” Marco says. “Let’s hit a few clubs afterwards, grab a little nosh.” “I’d rather sit down with Mr. Nakamura and pump him for all the wisdom he’s worth.” “What wisdom? You’re a romantic and you read too much. It isn’t complicated. We are the dominant species. The world is at our feet. I don’t know why you fill your head with philosophy and science. You seek improvement when there’s nothing to improve. We are perfect.” There is so much wrong with that statement. “Look at the Elders on the podium. Half of them are no better than wax figures. The carcass is there, well-preserved, but there’s nobody home.” “They’re as old as the world. I can barely stay awake during Council. Imagine having done this three thousand times or more, with no end in sight.” Marco shivers. “There’ll be a point when I’ll say: no more. I’ll go sit outside and wait for sunrise.” He wants some kind of reassurance from me, because I have seniority. I’ve been at this game for over two centuries. With a mere three decades under his belt, he’s practically newborn. I shoot him a grin. “The time when it gets to be too much, no more surprises, when I’ve seen all that can be seen and experienced hasn’t caught up with me yet. That’s why I don’t want my mind to shrivel and die, Marco. It’s too fine a piece of horlogerie to be allowed to rust.” I wrap an arm around Marco’s shoulders and we walk into the meeting room together. We are a couple of invincible young men. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of finding out what’s ahead.” “Despite repeated human stupidity?” Marco mutters. “The fact these idiots learn nothing? Mind you, it might be fun to witness how they’ll engineer a total fuck-up.” It makes me chuckle. Marco was born too late. He would have loved the end of days atmosphere of Versailles before the fall of the Ancient Régime. Those were intoxicating times. # Most attendees leave as soon as the Elders declare this year’s Council concluded. As usual, nothing of importance happened. New names were entered on the rosters, a couple were removed. Financial matters were discussed. A few members applied for assistance in finding suitable familiars, always a delicate subject. A list of safe houses in the Paris area is distributed with transportation details. We have to disperse, it’s protocol. So many of us in town at the same time creates issues. Trouble has to be kept to a minimum. The convergence of interests simplifies matters. The feral and out-of-control bunch want to get as far as possible from the Elders and their disciplinary reach, and the Elders want them out of sight and out of mind until the next year. Marco humors me and agrees to come along and visit with Mr. Nakamura. We find him in a room on the top floor. “I’ve heard about you, Julian Crenshaw,” Nakamura says. That surprises me. I keep a low profile. “In what context, if I may ask?” “Your remarkable library. I’d like to see it next time I’m in your part of the world.” “It would be my pleasure. I’d be honored to have you as a guest.” We’re not much for wasting time on idle talk. The ticking clock is a stern mistress. “What do you want?” Nakamura says. “I don’t get visitors often. I’m not very popular.” He chuckles. “Controversial pronouncements.” “You didn’t address the assembly tonight.” “I can’t find takers for my hare-brained schemes. How old are you, Julian?” The question lacks precision and he amends it. “How old were you when you turned?” “Twenty-six.” He turns to Marco. “And you?” “Twenty-five. I’m Marco Visconti, by the way.” Nakamura smiles. “Too recent to have made a mark yet. Don’t fret. This is a marathon, not a sprint.” That makes him giggle. “Some would say that you started the race at the ideal time. I’m not so sure.” “Is there even an ideal time …” I say. “Mid-forties would be my choice.” He points at his wrinkled face. “As you can see, I missed the mark by a good twenty years.” He waves his hands in the air. “No regrets. I had a life before all this. A wife, children. It changes how you look at things.” “Boundaries,” I say. “Loss.” “Do you understand what these words mean, Julian? Beyond what the books taught you.” His comment is provocative, maybe intentionally. I think he’s testing me. He’s testing Marco too, who reacts to the jab. “You don’t have to have experienced every feeling to understand them,” he says. “My parents loved each other. I had lovers. I know what affection feels like. I haven’t had time to forget.” I hear the wistfulness under the brashness. I could tell him that time has nothing to do with it. There is no forgetting, no matter the years, unless you’re one of the animals among us, tearing down the avenue, howling at the moon. But their feelings were stunted at birth. They were despicable humans. The gift doesn’t change our deepest nature, it exaggerates it. Nakamura makes a placating gesture. “Don’t take it the wrong way, young one. I’m just saying that, by no fault of your own, you’ve been robbed of deep emotional connections.” Marco makes a face. Before he can argue further, I bring the conversation to the topic that interests me. “I thought a lot about what you said last year. The need for empathy.” “They laughed me out of the room,” Nakamura says. “Sharing feelings, exchanging ideas, and having contacts beyond feeding. It wasn’t well received.” I don’t consider feeding meaningful contact but for most of us it’s the essence, the star that the world orbits around, the beginning and the end, with nothing in between. I find the notion bleakly depressing. “I’ve tried to go beyond our basic imperative, Mr. Nakamura,” I say, “and I failed.” It’s embarrassing to admit, especially with Marco sitting by my side, but if I don’t tell Nakamura, who else will listen? “The urge to consume is an all-powerful interference. It keeps distracting me and whoever I’m with.” I’ve never told this to anyone. “The biological trigger prevents all forms of intimacy beyond the most banal. I know I don’t make much sense …” “Not so, not so,” Nakamura says. “The trigger, as you call it, blocks progress. That’s why we don’t strive for anything. We’re reduced to mindless devouring machines.” I lean forward to get closer to him. “The body might be a dumb machine, but the brain wants to leap. Our physical nature keeps it on a short leash.” He claps in delight. “You just slipped that leash, my boy!” He’s condescending and it annoys me. “I didn’t come here for a pat on the back, sir. You’ve considered the implications of all this. Help me. Tell me how I can bottle the hunger.” It comes out more desperate than I intended. Maybe this is a fool’s errand and I’m putting too much hope in Nakamura. Maybe he’s just spewing words and knows nothing. “Have you fed tonight?” he says. I don’t need to, not for a while. “Willpower alone won’t do it. I tried.” “You’re having a conversation with me.” “I can sustain a conversation with anyone with half a brain for half an hour. This is not what I seek.” My forcefulness gives him pause. “What do you really want from me?” “Clarity about action. Telling us that we need socialization to prevent our brains from withering on the vine, advocating for companionship to fight toxic solitude … Nice principles. How do we go about doing it?” Mr. Nakamura leans back in his armchair and contemplates the ceiling. What surges in me isn’t the feeding frenzy, it’s the shortness of temper that got me kicked out of more schools and civilized salons than I care to remember. This wise man pondering amid plush cushions is the replica of all the smug professors and snooty aristocrats that showed me the door with self-satisfied glee. “I believe the solution is in your grasp, Julian,” he says. “What does the too silent Mr. Visconti think about it?” “About what?” Marco blurts in surprise at being addressed. “An experiment,” Nakamura says. “You two get along pretty well, don’t you?” I consider Marco a friend but it’s a laughable approximation of what friendship should be. We meet a few times in between Council gatherings, have a drink, and go our separate ways with very little of any substance ever said. My fault, I guess. My reluctance to cross an invisible line. I don’t take rejection well. “We’re not alike. I can’t disappear into a book for hours like he does,” Marco says. “And I can’t be constantly on the move like you are,” I say. Mr. Nakamura smiles. “Recognizing differences is an indispensable step in any successful relationship. The next one is compromise. You’ll have to give a little to make it work, boys.” What is he suggesting? I wouldn’t call the icy shiver crawling up my spine fear but it is a fair substitute. “Marco and I? You’re out of your mind.” The notion is outlandish. Impossible. Too close to what I crave and can’t admit aloud. “What kind of compromise?” Marco says. Is he seriously considering Mr. Nakamura’s suggestion? I stare at him and he grins. He must think it’s a game, an innocuous challenge. He has no idea how I feel about him. If he’d guessed, he would have given a sign. There were multiple opportunities, over the years. But these kinds of feelings are off limits, and he knows that. We cannot replicate or experience the emotions and sensations humans take for granted. We are savage beasts. Desire equals hunger and hunger means feeding. We can’t love, we can only slash each other’s throat in a storm of unbridled ferocity. “Living together requires forbearance,” Mr. Nakamura says. “You have to tolerate imperfections, flashes of temper, disagreement, and keep going because you value the relationship above your own self. It isn’t something to be attempted lightly, Mr. Visconti. We are by nature selfish and we expect immediate gratification.” He sighs. “And you both turned young, before life had a chance to knock you on your ass and teach you humility. It will be very difficult.” Marco winks at me. Does this conversation amuse him, does he think it’s pleasant idle talk? The small hotel room doesn’t contain enough air to fill my lungs. “But you think it can be done,” Marco says. Mr. Nakamura is pensive. “I don’t know. So much can go wrong.” He motions at the door. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have business to attend to.” Marco jumps to his feet. He holds his hand out to shake Mr. Nakamura’s. “Your insights are illuminating, sir. Thank you.” He’s at the door in two steps. “You’re coming, Julian?” The abrupt dismissal throws me. “Ah … yes.” I bow deeply in front of Mr. Nakamura. “Thank you for taking the time, sir.” “Good luck.” He waves at me. Is he wishing me well, what is he wishing me well for? Marco is already at the end of the hallway, waiting for me, when I close the door of Mr. Nakamura’s room. “He’s a sweet old man,” Marco says, “and a dyed in the wool intellectual. Frightfully naïve, of course, that goes with the territory. Thinking the solution to all our problems is as simple as sitting by the fire, chatting. Playing board games, maybe, or charades. To keep our minds active. Of course, we have to be patient with each other. Say please, and do you mind, and do you prefer the window open or closed, dear?” He bursts out laughing. “Too simple, much too simple.” Without warning he grabs me by my jacket lapels and slams me against the wall. “Because there’s the body, Julian, and it has a mind of its own that is not to be denied.” His mouth is close to my neck and I feel the warmth of his breath. I can smell him. Citrus and cloves. It takes all the control I can muster to resist throwing him off. I’m much stronger than he is, I would crush him. I bite on the words. “Let go of me, Marco.” Instead, he kisses me. I feel the tip of his fangs on my mouth, sharp enough to bruise and break skin. His tongue caresses my teeth, still partially retracted, teasing, intent on tempting me into full untamed fury. We’re close, so dangerously close to drawing blood, that it makes me dizzy. My heart hasn’t beaten so furiously since the night I turned, the last time I was that near to death. Pleasure rises in long heavy lazy waves. It overrides the hunger. Time stretches the span of the universe and I ride the swells of desire for eons. Marco releases me and breaks the embrace. He gently smooths my jacket, left in disarray by our tussle. “I’ll take my experiment in physical intimacy over Mr. Nakamura’s philosophical discourses, anytime,” he says. The waves retreat leaving my heart smoother than a sandy beach. “You’re crazy, I could have ripped your head off.” “But you didn’t.” Marco leans on the wall next to me. “Anything in your books about what just happened, Julian, anything in the old scrolls, or on the undead gossip grapevine? Any brilliant tips on the mechanics of sex between the chosen?” He’s young and reckless. Mr. Nakamura said it would be difficult. I don’t think he envisioned this complication. I’m about to shackle myself to a beautiful predator. He’s keen and strong. He will hurt me. “Monster mine,” I mutter. Marco doesn’t slap away my hand as I touch his face, the flat planes of his cheeks and his smooth forehead. He leans into me, eyes closed. He will challenge me and we will test the limits, like we just did in this sterile hotel hallway. Maybe we’ll find peace. There is the precious promise of that. I’ll take it, for as long as fate will grant me. Impermanence is a very human sentiment. M.E. Proctor was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. Her short story collection Family and Other Ailments is available in all the usual places. She’s currently working on a contemporary PI series. The first book will come out from Shotgun Honey in 2024. Her short fiction has appeared in Vautrin, Bristol Noir, Pulp Modern, Mystery Tribune, Reckon Review, Black Cat Weekly, and Thriller Magazine among others. She’s a Derringer nominee. Website: www.shawmystery.com

Wednesday. A day. Not unlike the middle class and its acceptance of subpar success. A perfectly overlooked day in the strictest sense. Hump day. I’m picking at my cuticles, sipping Bordeaux, and shunning suburbia’s sun. Daydreaming. I’ve always wanted to visit Paris. I know, a pitiable American turn of phrase, but nonetheless true. I have no kids to eat away at my excess brain matter because I loathe tiny humans. They stare, doe-eyed, questioning everything. My surplus energy expended, instead, on droll pastimes no one appreciates. You gave me Julia Child’s cookbook for our first wedding anniversary as a gag gift because “I burnt toast better than a bachelor.” You’d laugh each time you retold the story. But you ate the charred, carbon-infused substance because you’d eat anything. I read the book. I’d read almost anything: science journals, erotic fiction, sociopathic profiles. I spent weeks learning to crack the perfect egg with no broken bits of shell or slime clinging beneath neat, manicured fingernails, deftness in the wrist, and a clean break. Then, months to poach one. My indefatigable need to succeed proved Julia to be a liar. “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure.” I imagined her high-pitched trill inside my head. When I mastered those two things, I began to feel a transitory sense of accomplishment. I’m now sovereign over a delectable chicken breast, basil, cashew nut pâté. Not an actual foie gras, you feel force-feeding a little goose, shoving corn down its throat via a feeding tube to fatten its tiny liver, is cruel. I find it tasty. But you like my version. Sautéing shallots until translucent, the scent alone draws you into the kitchen. You press your nose in the crook of my neck. “God, you smell delicious.” “It’s the onions for the pâté.” “I hate onions.” “Well, they’re shallots, more specifically.” “They look like onions.” “Forget about the onions.” I lower my voice, and you kiss me. It’s a peckish kiss, and I know I need to feed you before your blood sugar drops. We haven’t had sex in weeks. Sheila comes for dinner. Midweek and her heart’s been broken again. But she has Jesus and designer handbags full of cash. Not to mention, she’s part owner of your start-up company. A start-up for start-ups or some other such nonsense. She’s invested all over town. Figures are looking splendid. But honestly, I can’t empathize. She’s my bestie. In suburban speak, it’s the fake friendship you can tolerate the most and participate in the least. We all sit to eat. French wine poured—you don’t drink it, opting for piss-label beer instead—I sip and dream of Provence. Your mouth used to make love to craft brews, then me. Sheila drinks my wine and produces an oral orgasm as she forks each mouthful of my pâté. We watch her, you in awe, and me with congealed contempt. You swig back your beer—it’s your “superpower,” you joke—and go to grab another. Your humor has changed, too. You fail to insert wit and have choked the life out of irony. I see it all. I watch Sheila’s large mouth and each indecent movement it makes as she babbles on, some inane drivel neither of us cares to hear. I nod and sip my wine as her best faux-friend. Another week, I’m sautéing shallots, daydreaming of the French countryside. You’re not home, so it’s lonely as I slice the liver into quarter-inch segments. With each slash of the knife, a metronomic scraping, I realize I’m humming “La Vie En Rose.” We sit to eat. “You’re late.” You don’t respond. I smile and pass the pâté. “I also have Boeuf Bourguignon, Julia’s recipe, but it’s still in the oven. I butchered all day. Hope you brought your appetite.” You smear the pâté on a toast point and chew like a machine, all gears and shafts, pistoning and pumping. “Mmm . . . tastes different,” you mutter with your mouth full. Bits of detritus food cower in the corners of your too-full mouth. I sip my wine and smile. “I omitted the onions. I know you don’t care for them.” “Hm.” You continue to shovel the perfectly toasted triangles into your mouth, piled high with smeared liver spread. “My passport arrived today.” “Great, babe.” “I booked a flight to Paris.” “Hmm.” “I leave on Friday.” “Mmhmm.” You’re fully invested in what’s on TV. I nod. You hear nothing I say. You don’t listen, but I do. I listened. I heard every moan Sheila made, spilling from her obscene mouth as you showered with her last Tuesday. You said you were going to fix her bathroom pipes. I needed you to get the mixer down from above the fridge. Guess you didn’t hear me enter her home, the bathroom, or the accidental air I choked on. Then Wednesday, she came to dinner and drank my wine as if she hadn’t screwed my husband in her shower the day before. No remorse. Sheila didn’t need the extra cash she carries, and I took the Hermès as a parting gift to myself. It’ll make an excellent carry-on for my trip. A commercial is on, so you glance back. “Aren’t you going to eat, babe?” “I’ve lost my appetite.” I bite a hangnail, sip my wine, and contemplate my French excursion. You smile and sip your beer, a microbrew, as if you knew this was a celebration. “Hmm, too bad, it’s delicious. Killer pâté tonight.” That’s the funniest thing you’ve muttered in months, and I laugh. Out loud. “Yes, I know. You always thought Sheila was rather delicious.” You swallow, and I watch recognition bloom in your eyes. Beads of sweat form at your temple like glossy bikes lining up for the Tour de France. My bet’s on the third from the left to win the race down your forehead. “Always knew you were fucking crazy.” You sputter and begin to choke. I smile. The rest of your side dish is in the oven. Grace Black mingles with words as she navigates this realm. A writer of poetry and flash fiction, she gravitates toward brevity. She is the founding editor of Ink In Thirds. Various journals and anthologies have published her work, including Maudlin House, Unbroken, Eunoia Review, Into the Void, Pidgeonholes, and Haiku Journal. Find her at  https://graceblackink.com/

We sat in our rooms with the new Violent Femmes cassette tape, rewinding the part where Gordon Gano sings about why he can’t get just one screw and we act like our middle school selves are facing the same struggle. We stop, rewind, lay back into the shag carpet that holds the cigarette smoke of a generation before us, inhaling the second-hand rage and tar as it finds its way deep into our lungs, lifting our voices. We grab an old doll, sing into the top of her blond, matted hair, shouting the lyrics of appetites we have yet to discover, leaning into the ache and sickness of Gano’s voice, the permission of becoming. At camp, we have a counselor who won’t stop listening to “Blister in the Sun.” She plays it on her guitar until it feels like a song she wrote. We sneak a listen when she’s out of range but she catches us one day at the beach, lured by the whisper and rise of the drums and the confession of staining sheets. You little shits have no idea of what that means, she says, trying to assert her ownership. She is four years older, an eternity for us girls in cabins still named after woodland animals, stealing clove cigarettes from the confiscation box; girls who braid each other’s hair, practice open mouth kissing on our hands, stringing summers together like the friendship bracelets we’d make on cots with springs grinding into our hips, our flat chests. At night we make our way to the ocean where the moon unravels and waves ripple at our feet and we talk about boys and bases, our parents’ divorce, our messed-up siblings, the injustice of not being seen. The air is salted and we feel we’re on the precipice of something bigger than our bodies can handle, trying to decode the world in the quiet safety of darkness. Together we form a picture, vowing to remember each moment, each other, even as the tide recedes and the light silences us into morning. At the eighth grade dance we sweat in groups telling each other to kiss off into the sun before counting—take one, one, one; take two, two, two—taking note of the ways we think we’ve been wronged until it’s everything, everything, everything, and we feel it rise in our chest, this noose of adulthood coming for us, and we fall down on each other until the teachers pull us apart and tell us to behave and stop listening to music telling us there are no tomorrows not understanding we’d just had our first shelter in place drill, caught scenes of The Day After, watched the Space Shuttle Challenger blow up on live TV, and spent our mornings staring at the ghost children on milk cartons as we ate our Homecombs. They’re coming for our music, we suspect, and we bury our suitcase of cassettes deep in our closets. When the coast is clear, we wrap headphones around our ears, memorizing the lyrics, trying to understand everything, everything before Side B. Sabrina Hicks lives in Arizona with her family. Her work has appeared in both Best Small Fictions and Best Micro Fiction anthologies, Wigleaf’s Top 50, as well as numerous journals, both online and in print. More of her stories can be found at sabrinahicks.com.

Yesterday sadness hit me in the condiment aisle, my cart still empty save the unseasonal raspberries I will forget in the fridge, watch them mould and shrink into black bitterness. I was looking for vinegar, although once there I couldn’t remember which kind I needed. Was it the Modena one or the cleaning type, with its sharp, chemical smell? Did I need olive oil too? Or was it sunflower? Which was I supposed to use for mayo? I stared at rows and rows of ketchup, and I couldn’t choose. I gave up on the grocery list, and on all the others, too. I could never check all the items off anyway. There is always something out of stock. Green peppers. Intimacy. Time. I’ve heard people say how grief hits you in waves. One minute you’re fine, self-scanning your canned chickpeas and thinking about hummus, and a second later a searing pain in your chest stops you from breathing. You drop one can, bend to pick it up, slip, steady yourself against the cart, inhale, hope no one has seen you. A navy arm pushed my cart to the side to reach the truffle dressing and murmured an apology. She looked my age, but better. A double-breasted coat like the one I’ve always wanted to find somewhere, jeans, Converse. Hair up in a loose ponytail, blue eyes, long, pale hands. She quickly filled up her cart. Maldon salt, sesame paste, olive oil — the five litres can — three jars of chickpeas. She’s making hummus too. I followed her to the pasta aisle, enthralled by her confident stride. She knew where everything was. Her coat had pockets on the hips, the unflattering kind. Not on her. I wish she could teach me. How to shrink my hips. How to make good hummus. How to forgo lists. We parted at the self-check-out. I needed to think of something, something I could call dinner. I saw the rotisserie in the corner, by the exit. There was one bird left, and it looked like it’d spent too long in the heat, but it would do. It had to. Later, as I dropped my reusable bag on the passenger seat, I saw the navy woman again, carefully arranging her bags in her boot as in a game of Tetris. When she was done, she slammed the door shut with a strong hand, stronger than it’d looked when it had moved my cart aside. Then she straightened, fished a crumpled Kleenex from her pocket, and patted her eyes dry. She turned toward me, met my eyes, and hurried to get in her car but didn’t start the engine. Sitting in mine,  I wondered how it would feel, to listen to her story. Then I remembered that it all comes in waves. The illusion of closeness, and yearning for more, and love, and loss, and all the items that can never be crossed off a list.

The nurse will hear her say something biting and reassure me that it’s the dementia. It makes them say things they don’t mean. But I’ll look at my mother and she won’t be an elderly, Catholic field mouse. She’ll be a leopard that just realized the electric fence is down. The coast is clear. I’m not accepting feedback on that at this time. That’s how you’re supposed to respond to your family member when they say something hurtful,judgmental, or gross. As if the feedback has not already been delivered. I think the better approach is to announce that you’re currently closed to feedback first thing - the moment you walk in the door for Thanksgiving dinner, shoes on, green bean casserole in hand - before anyone has the opportunity to say anything shitty. Set the boundary proactively. But my mom doesn’t need to provide her feedback, anyway. I always know what she wants to say. I’ve heard that the way you talk to your children becomes their inner voice, which is a pretty heavy thing to say to a parent. But that’s parenting for you, and in my experience this is accurate. In high school, they came up with the idea to give certain students a special, perpetual hall pass that they could use at any time. These students could just get up and walk out of the classroom without asking permission. Teachers were getting sick of the constant interruptions to approve bathroom breaks or trips to the nurse or whatever. Students with good grades and no disciplinary infractions received the first round of golden hall passes, and the rest could earn theirs through good behavior and improved academic performance. Pretty fucked up to base a kid’s access to the bathrooms on their grades if you ask me, but it was 1999 and they weren’t asking. Maybe they’re still not. I wonder if they’ve figured out by now that honor students also smoke weed and buy Adderall in the bathrooms. When her mother’s dementia got to That Point, my mom was mostly embarrassed by the things she said. She was like a little kid who was boggled by the variety of sizes and shapes of people and hadn’t yet discovered her inside voice. Child-like is the best way to describe who she became. Sometimes unkind, but not intentionally. Hard to manage in public. My mother has earned her golden hall pass. She has been meek and pious. She has worn her naivete as a signet of her sin-free life. Instead of telling me that I’m a stoner and a failure (I never said she was wrong), she says I look tired and asks how my job is going. It’s the affect in her benevolent tone that gives her away, but also the inner voice thing. She says what she says and I hear what she means. She’ll wait for the diagnosis before softballing in her next form. She’ll start with things like that shirt doesn’t flatter you before moving on to you’re selfish and entitled, then You walked away from God and you deserve the hell you’re living in and the one that lies ahead. I can’t imagine how satisfying this will feel for her. One day, she’ll look me in the eye and say I don’t like you very much. And I’ll say I know. And then, maybe, hopefully, we’ll set it all down and have a nice visit. Emily Baber (she/her) lives in Cleveland, Ohio and loves Lake Erie, the intricacy of natural systems, and Pee-wee Herman. She writes for work, but only started writing for fun again a couple years ago. She is a late bloomer and she is not a serious person. @EnemyBaber on Twitter.

May awoke with a start in the middle of the night and felt a presence—a shadow, something—looming beside her bed. She clicked on the lamp and looked to her left where her date blinked awake in confusion. “What’s wrong?” he said, squinting, foolish. He was too nice, a boy really. “Bad dream?” “There was someone,” May said. Her heart thudded in her chest. “I saw.” “Who?” her date said, sitting up. He glanced around the room, rubbed May’s back. “No,” she said, shrugging from his touch. She reached for her glasses on the nightstand where a fine meadow of dust awaited her fingertips. She nearly closed her eyes and screamed. “I need you to leave,” she said. “May,” her date said, startled by the look in her eyes. “It’s four in the morning.” “Please,” May said, on the verge of desperate tears. “Please. Please.” He looked about the room again. “What did you see? Maybe you’re having a panic attack.” She knew what she saw, but she couldn’t tell him. “I need to clean. Like, right now.” He raised his hands in innocence and she could tell he was wondering if he was witnessing a breakdown. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going. I hope this passes. Whatever it is.” He gathered his things in silence and left without another word. When he was gone, May put her face in her hands and tried to cry, but no tears came. She felt dried out. Fraudulent. The dust. It was everywhere. No matter how much she cleaned the apartment, the dust seemed to come back thicker, as if to say, Tiny parts of you are dying, faster every day. She had met him on the app, like the others, an attempt to set her life in motion, take control the way her mother always had. There was the consultant with the forest green polo and steak in his teeth. The bassist with stringy hair. She knew as soon as she met this one—Ben was his name, not that it mattered anymore—that she would invite him back. He had slate-grey eyes and a too-open face, and listened earnestly as she told him about her gig in film PR, that the city had been her dream since she’d been little, since that rare trip with her mother on a bank holiday to see the hottest Broadway ticket. This was only a few months before the stress of the market swings finally killed her. “I’m so sorry,” Ben had said and reached across the table for her hand in such an unselfconscious and gentle way that May felt guilty knowing she’d ghost him, knowing she’d never tell him that the only reason her new apartment, her new lifestyle was even feasible was that she’d finally been granted access to the trust. They had climbed four flights and made out sloppily, breathlessly on her landing. He was a bad kisser, searching and desperate, but he had seen more than half of her favorite films. He went down on her until she came and snored loudly after they fucked. May got up and shook dust from the duvet, ran a finger along the surface of the nightstand and tasted it like a drug, flat and bitter and dead. She ignored the fact that she was shaking, teeth chattering like a wind-up toy, and set to work. Using a tattered cross-country t-shirt from high school, she went for the surfaces first, aiming to leave a spotless sheen in her wake. Never mind that she’d done this a dozen times in the month she’d lived in the place. She began with her dresser, moving aside the music box her father had given her for Christmas as a girl, which held her jewelry. When it opened, a tiny ballerina spun on a mirrored pedestal to a plinking rendition of “Für Elise.” Her father—who didn’t cry at the funeral, with whom May hadn’t spoken in months—had advised her against buying the apartment. “You’re like your mother,” he’d said. “Rushing into things you aren’t built to handle.” Her mother and father had started the family firm together, young optimists, then drifted apart as May’s mother—who had come from nothing—lost herself in the momentum of success. Next were the bookshelves, the countertops. The low-slung bench that supported her TV and a framed photograph, the last one the three of them had taken together. She cleaned until her knuckles ached and her fingertips were raw from the solution.  She fetched the vacuum from the kitchen and ran it through the rest of the night, through the pounding from her neighbor below, until wan light framed her futile windows, until at last, exhausted, she slid to the floor and began to cry, real tears this time. All this time, she had hoped to become the woman her mother would never get to see, one that would make her proud. But what can you really earn when you’ve already been given so much? She opened her eyes and felt a flash at the base of her skull: a twirl of dust motes caught the blade of morning sun. No. She went to her nightstand where it had begun to accrue afresh. She pictured it collecting unchecked on every surface forever, filling her nose, ears, and mouth as she slept, coating her tongue, her lungs, these particles of her past, future selves that were already dead. And then she began to laugh, frightening herself at the brittle force of it. She laughed at her mother and her father, their petty arguments. She laughed at her gaunt reflection in the mirror. She laughed at who she’d never be. All of it. And the next time she awoke to the looming shadow? She would embrace it, inhale it. Because fuck. The dust was coming for us all in the end, whether we liked the taste or not. Brendan Gillen is a writer in Brooklyn, NY. He is the recipient of the 2023 Mythic Picnic Prize in Fiction and his work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions. His stories appear, or will appear, in the Florida Review, Wigleaf, Necessary Fiction, Maudlin House, Taco Bell Quarterly, New Delta Review, X-R-A-Y and elsewhere. His first novel, STATIC, is forthcoming from Vine Leaves Press (July '24). You can find him online at bgillen.com and on Twitter/IG @beegillen.

The lure of the footlights drew him here and taught him to befriend himself. The gently sloping stairway to stardom kept him here. Adulation mushroomed to occlude other concerns. The chorale of their reverence and their waterlogged eyes when he gave his all sustained him. Here he knows where he is. He desperately dreads when the curtain falls and he begins to end. He has his father’s eyes with their eyelashes imitating dragon wings but none of his sticky but sugarless words. Robert has been described as a fine specimen of a man and an accomplished actor. He likes these compliments but finds it hard to believe they bear any proximity to the truth. He also likes performing comedies as they feed you nothing but leave you feeling full. Robert has never suffered from stage fright but he has been frequented by a phenomenon he knows as throat scratching. It is triggered by direct engagement, in particular eye contact, with his audiences. He is fine when they are a morass of blurry faces but if he locks eyes with a beautiful stranger the itching begins and doesn’t tend to end. He often curses what he perceives as God’s negligence in choosing to forego a small inlet so tears don’t streak your cheeks. Sometimes he spirals into thought for days on end. He wonders how his father left, if he looked back, and if so, how many times. How many times would be enough? It’s been thirty years. How many tears have flowed in slow motion from the end of their shared aquiline nose? He has pictures and has age-progressed them in his mind as if it were a digital photo frame. He is a benign-looking older man who throws a stick for his dog in the park every day around noon and allows his shoulders to slump as he waits for his reward. He is the eccentrically dressed man on the tube who always has a quizzical look on his face as if one of the other commuters may possess the piece that would move the jigsaw into place. He is the yoga teacher whose small frame belies a bizarrely strong physique which enables him to fight a forest fire and become a local hero. He is the smiling man who doesn’t allow others to sway his view and sets his sun in the south. “Nothing really matters but making yourself happy”, he is speaking the lines aloud because that is how he learns. He’s proud that he has never faltered and needed to be prompted from off stage. The stage is his, he’s hypnotic there, and while he remains at one with the words it stays that way. Staying is important. There he can confidently hold hands with the rhythm of his soul in the interlude. There are dark days when he needs to vent. He does this onstage. He fashions himself a victim and lives their life for a few hours. Their hurt is his and though he would never admit it, there is something strangely soothing about the uniformity of universal suffering. Sometimes it is necessary to deflect so the past doesn’t make a comeback through the broken clock of his memory. The comeback contains an apology “super sorry, buddy’. It’s vague and certainly no masterpiece but it’s something. It’s something he was never offered and it’s something that has painted its stain on every day. Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. Her work has most recently appeared in Comhar, Splonk, Fractured Literary, Flash Boulevard, The Gooseberry Pie Literary Magazine, Firewords and Bending Genres. You can find out more about her and her work on X @abairrud2021.