Search Results

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.

On Wednesdays, we pound wine. By six o’clock, my wife and I are three or four glasses deep six depending on who you ask), as we lie in bed, our bodies a half-foot apart. There is no talking between us, for there is nothing left to say. Silence has become the dog at the foot of our bed, a creature we’ve come to accept as the glue that keeps us together. Once we’re loose and ready, we shimmy out of our clothes and lazily fiddle with each other’s genitals. It always starts this way. Ten minutes and a seventh glass later, I’m inside her. Missionary position, of course. There isn’t much else nowadays. She groans with each thrust while the mound of my belly flattens her into the bed. I can see that she’d like to comment on my recent weight gain but stops herself. She knows there’s no point. Instead, she tries to spur me on by whispering sweet, filthy nothings into my ear, but, as we both know, dirty talk is hardly her forte. I close my eyes, thinking about someone else to stop myself from going soft. The young blonde with the pert breasts and forever puckered lips from the office, Alicia, comes to mind. I close my eyes and pump faster, dominating. I feel like a God. A sweaty, disgusting God. But neither of us have ever been religious so she doesn’t expect much. A few pitiful pumps rob me of my breath and leave me helpless as I lie on top of her. She rolls her eyes and squeezes out from underneath me. As I suck in air by the mouthful, I ask her if she came. “Yes,” she says, lying as always. “How about you?” “Of course, I did,” I say, still dreaming of Alicia. “That was amazing. It always is.” We smile and peck each other on the lips before inching back over to our respective sides of the bed. She flips open a book in which she never seems to make progress while I pull out a years-old crossword puzzle that I still haven’t figured out. After a few minutes of gnawing on the pen and coming up short, I decide that I’m too tired to pretend tonight. I kill the lamp on my bedside table and get comfortable under the covers, knowing I’ll sleep well for once. Until a soft, timid voice floats through the darkness and says, “Good night honey. Tell Alicia I said hello tomorrow.”

I never knew they were so vulnerable, energetic little tykes. All I’d ever heard is how mischievous and resilient they are. The tiny rubber bands stretch the limits of my patience as I hold the bridles with a stoic forbearance. Welcome to Motherhood, whispers continue from deep inside my head. I realise that had I paid more attention in Psychology class, I would have been better prepared for that altering mind-blowing moment when all the control evaporates like the morning’s mist. The words lamented under my breath that it wasn’t my fault, faded away in the fog of trillions of synapses trying to comprehend what had happened. I should have anticipated her minuscule forehead splitting in two. A grike forming upon a clumsy impact with the marble edge as she launches full speed ahead. The collision - unavoidable. Time standing still, a slow-motion sliver, erroneous and out of place. And all I had to do was child-proof the edges. Had I paid more attention like a parent should, I would have been ready for the silence setting atop the room, a quiet ringing in the ears before sh** hits the fan. Her scream ripping through the air. The ruby colour of blood gushing out from a deep cleft free of the skin’s confinement. My heart, imploding. My vision veiled with vapour, fighting the urge to faint. Panic creeping in. And all I had to do was child-proof the edges. My home attire soiled crimson, no patch left unscathed. On autopilot pressing the laceration, I enwrap my body to swallow her whole (as if that would stop the lifeblood). Fragile, like porcelain dolls I remember mishandling in childhood. But she’s no doll. Her chubby cheeks roofed with a mixture of tears, snot and blood. The gauze in my hand soaked. Bulging doe-eyes searching for me, plump fingers touching my nose while I try not to let go of the fissure on her forehead. Relentless voice on a loop: ‘And all you had to do was child-proof the edges.’ *** In a hospital bed, attached to a series of smothering tubes, unconscious on the way to the operating room, I hold her lifeless hand. My thoughts invaded by the memory of the invasive scandent shrubs overtaking Grandma’s picture-perfect garden. It’s weird how the mind plays tricks on you. In a trance, I listen to White Coats chatting about last night’s game, oblivious to the guilt eating me away. The cracks opening in my soul, never to be fully sewn again. *** Years later I still wake up with a gulping dread, restless bubbling in the gut. And I rush to her bedroom just to find her blissful in the Land of Nod. I know she doesn’t remember any of it as she continues on her roguish path of being a child. I also know that the twin sisters, Relief and Anguish, ingrained inside my heart are forever entwined, an aide-mémoire of how much I am not in control. And I remind myself to breathe. Andrea Damic, born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, lives and works in Sydney, Australia. She’s an amateur photographer, writer, and poet. Her education is on the opposite side of creative expression (she's an accountant with a master's degree in economics). She writes at night when everyone is asleep; when she lacks words to express herself, she uses photography to speak for her. Her literary art appears or is forthcoming in Roi Fainéant Press, The Ekphrastic Review, the other side of hope, Sky Island Journal, The Dribble Drabble Review, Your Impossible Voice, and elsewhere. She spends many an hour fiddling with her website damicandrea.wordpress.com. You can also find her on X @DamicAndrea, Instagram @damicandrea and FB @AndreaDamic

When I finished Yellowface's eleventh chapter by R F Kuang, my armpits were sweaty, and my mouth was dry. I was astounded because, after over ten years, I recollected the first few days when my ex cyberbullied me. I was just 19, in the closet. Yellowface is Kuang's satirical novel on the publishing world. It is about the people it comprises and the ways they operate. It included two primary characters: Athena Liu, a young New York Best Seller Asian author, and June Hayward (aka Juniper Song), Athena's college Yale contemporary/friend who craved Athena's literary success. Written from the perspective of Hayward, a white woman from the US, Kuang took us to the harsh realities of the publishing world and writers' exploitation through various stages of their writing careers. Through her gripping narratives, Kuang's Yellowface, written in Hayward's voice, takes readers to Hayward's publishing journey, which came along with a series of dark, uncomfortable, and deeply unconceivable scrutiny and solitude after an alleged Twitter rumor that Hayward secretly stole Athena's unfinished book, the Last Front, and published Athena's book as her second book. Though Hayward's character already had established in the story how she secretly stole Athena's manuscript and the circumstances around it, Athena's ex from eternity past spread this rumor without concrete proof through a ghost Twitter account for his financial benefit and a tinge of jealousy when Hayward's book became an overnight hit. Kuang's story plot becomes even more interesting when Hayward's character, throughout the novel, maintains the claim that she is the sole author of The Last Front despite knowing the stakes for her writing career. To stand firm on her claim, Hayward survives a series of public bullying and a series of harassment moments. A substantial part of this harassment was online. The novel later depicts the complex culture of bullying on alleged theft and plagiarism accusations, delving further into racial, privilege, and cultural appropriation allegations Hayward encountered, specifically on Twitter. Though a satire, Kuang's novel reminded its readers how social media could be emotionally debilitating and cause a public debacle if someone is bullied and trolled in cyberspace without any potential proof. Yellowface's eleventh chapter is the descriptive testimony of such online attacks. The eleventh chapter of Kuang’s recent novel closely describes social media's 'dark side' in the modern world and how one can be made uncomfortable or publicly humiliated. In my late teens in India, I confronted my bully ex about his possessiveness and micromanaging, and I finally broke up with him. It was also the time when being gay in India was a punishable offense according to Indian Penal Court Section 377. Though it was a one-sided breakup, I was naive enough to think it was over.  Then, he showed up at my place within the next few hours and told my parents I was "gay." Unfortunately, it was not all. ALL MY SOCIAL MEDIA WERE GONE when I got on my computer the next day. Passwords were changed. My registered email accounts had been hacked. I troubleshooted using my mobile, but the number associated with the accounts was changed. "This number is not associated with this account" would appear on my screen. My college friend told me he saw a LinkedIn update on his wall that I now work as a "professional Gigolo."  This friend did not know I was gay, and after a long pause, he disconnected. He avoided me for the rest of our freshman year. I was taken out of all college WhatsApp groups, after all, those friendships were just a few semesters long. A few other friends called out of frustration to ask if I was in my senses because they were being sent porno clips from my FB account. Everyone knew it was out of character for me to do something like this, but cyberbullying is an almost unheard phenomenon, at least among the public. To take matters into my own hands, I made another FB account to spread the news that all my original accounts had been hacked. When I read Hayward saying in the eleventh chapter, "I should have stopped looking once I'd glimpsed what I thought was the bottom of the pit of internet stupidity. But reading discourse about myself is like prodding at a sore tooth. I'm compelled to keep digging, just to see how far the rot goes." I could not agree enough. But little did I know bullying was about to heat up. I started getting random phone calls from people asking my rates to sleep with them and messages telling me they got my number from my LinkedIn and FB. The water went up my head when my acquaintances and professional contacts phoned to confront me about my alleged rude and vulgar behavior on social media. A few female colleagues even got rape threats from my account. That was when I could not do anything else but stay glued to my laptop to see what my ex had been misusing my original account, just like Hayward's character in the eleventh chapter. Though Hayward did steal Athena's book and was afraid of being caught, and my situation was radically different, Kuang's fiction shed light on the under-explored phenomenon of cyberattacking and its detrimental impact on one's mental health and well-being. Reading (and then re-reading) Kuang's eleventh chapter of Yellowface reminded me of my unreachable urge, such as Hayward's, to control all the cyberbullying I witnessed myself or what people sent to me. Every day, my original accounts would have fake claims and secrets that I did not want to share publicly. Secrets and matters of my past that I confided in my partner were out in the public sphere. My account would send threats to connections and friends. People called my friends, parents, and relatives to find out what was happening. People I did not get along with said, "We always knew something was off with him." or some version of it. This cyberattacking would ultimately loop into me and my family receiving threats. I received my first death threat on a phone call when I was 19 from an anti-LGBT group from an FB account with no photo. My nose bled thrice later that night. No matter what one says, who says, using what language,  or how many times, the bullying victim does not want to get away from social media despite its toxicity. I know I could not, just like Kuang's character Hayward. Every notification would make me gulp my saliva, even if there was none. I lost hope for my old life. My fingers used to tremble while operating my computer's mouse. I uttered the exact words when I read what Hayward said while confronting cyberbullying on Twitter for allegedly stealing Athena's work (alleged because it was never proved) The eleventh chapter of Kuang's book is about the bitter reality of how our compulsive dependency on social media becomes the cause of how people's rationality gets compromised. In her work, Kuang evoked the language of terror, betrayal, and embarrassment I had to face in my own life. While reading Hayward's anxieties in the moments, I often reminisced about the deep quandaries and mental scars cyberbullying left me for the longest time of my life afterward. Kuang did an exceptional job of curating a victim character witnessing baseless cyberbullying scenarios, which led the character to think only the worst versions of their life would possibly be if not taken charge of control. This immediate and anxiety-inducing human instinct overpowers intuitive human reaction to think positively and the power of manifesting a brighter future despite everyone being overly trained to do so. I recalled how cyberbullying changed my mindset of looking at the world with the tendency to distrust everyone. It took me years to find my bearings and look for a cheaper therapist I would secretly hire (because most in India then thought only those with mental illness go for therapy.) and learn the art of controlling anger and not retaliating. After a decade, I do not blame myself for what happened and am comfortable with my sexuality. When I read Hayward's cyberbullying experience in Chapter 11, I felt juxtaposed. I was sad that the character had to deal with gaslighting and the online whatabouttery. However, I felt heard and soaked in the denouement, thinking at least there are cautionary tales now of what Hayward, a fictional character, and I survived online. Born in Delhi, Saurabh Anand is an Assistant Director at the University of Georgia's Writing Center. He is a linguist and writing teacher. His creative works have appeared in Washington Square Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, the Community Literacy Journal, The Autoethnographer, and the Journal of International Students. To access his work, visit anandsaurabh.com.

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