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Natalie’s phone chimed with the arrival of an email from MyAncestry, sending a ripple of anticipation through her. Finally, she was going to get some answers about her heritage—a mystery ever since she’d been left as a newborn on the steps of an upstate New York police station. But when she clicked on the message, it said only that her test results were “sensitive in nature” and best discussed in person.  Don’t panic , she told herself, but her brain was already compiling a list of deadly conditions that the DNA test had revealed she was doomed to develop.  Two days later, she was stepping off a bus in front of their downtown office, her stomach tied in a scout-caliber knot. She attempted deep breathing exercises during the elevator ride to the fifteenth floor, where she was greeted by a receptionist who looked like they’d stepped off the cover of Vogue.  “Last room on the right, hon,” they said when Natalie gave her name, pointing a boldly manicured finger to the corridor running behind them. Passing a series of closed doors along the way, she approached the glassed-in conference room at the end of the hallway. Inside, a grey-haired man sporting thick glasses was gesturing animatedly as he said something unintelligible to a baby-faced guy who kept shaking his head. They fell silent when they saw her coming. As she entered the room, Glasses Man rose to his feet and offered her a weak smile along with his right hand.  “Hello, Ms. Sloan. Jeremy McDaniels,” he said, a hint of an Irish brogue coloring the words. “And this is my colleague, Devon Pembroke.” “Hi,” she replied, shyly shaking his hand and giving an awkward little wave to the younger man, who remained seated and gave a small nod.  “Please, have a seat,” Jeremy said. “Would you like anything to drink?” “No, thanks,” she replied, settling into a sleek chair that was surprisingly comfortable. “To be honest, I’d really just like to know what’s going on. Is there something wrong with me?” The two men exchanged a look that Natalie couldn’t read.  “Actually, from what we can tell, there are no indications of medical concerns,” Jeremy replied. “However,”—the word cut short her surge of relief—"Your test results are quite…unusual.” Anxiety came flooding back in. “What do you mean, unusual?” she asked, her heart thudding like a tap dancer on speed.  Jeremy raised his eyebrows at Devon, who pushed the hair out of his eyes and cleared his throat.  “We ran the test a number of times to be certain,” he began, his voice remarkably deep. “The results always came back the same. Your DNA simply does not match up to the genetic signature associated with people from any part of the world.”  Natalie frowned in confusion. “So…you mean my ancestors came from a long-lost continent or something?” she asked. “Not exactly,” Devon replied. An awkward pause ensued as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Had she imagined a flicker of sympathy in his pale blue eyes? Jeremy broke the silence. “What we’re saying, Ms. Sloan, is that the test results prove you are undoubtedly the descendant of an extraterrestrial race,” he said matter-of-factly. She gaped at him, a laugh-snort escaping. “Wait—are you guys seriously trying to tell me that I’m related to fucking E.T.?”  Not bothering to wait for an answer, she leapt to her feet, nearly knocking the chair over. “I don’t know whether I’m being pranked here or you’re just a couple of whack jobs, but I’ve heard enough,” she said, bolting for the door. With surprising speed, Jeremy sprang up, blocking her way. “My apologies,” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket. She saw the syringe a moment before he jabbed it into her neck.  Shock and pain vied for dominance as the room spun in a dark imitation of the Tilt-A-Whirl ride she’d loved as a girl. Her whole body felt fuzzy as if she had popped the entire jar of edibles this morning instead of only one. The lone thought her woozy mind could manage as she collapsed to the floor was What the hell is happening?  She was vaguely aware of being dragged across the room, her cute new sandals bumping along the polished concrete floor. Natalie willed herself to scream, to fight back, to do something , but her body ignored the pleas from her brain. There was the click and creak of a door being opened, then she was pulled across the threshold and laid down on a hard surface that made her skin erupt in goosebumps.  Squinting in the sudden glare of powerful overhead lights, she had a blurry impression of a narrow room lined with metal supply cabinets. The crushing weight of terror made it difficult to breathe. Devon stood to her left, his gaze directed at the back of the room. “You can’t go through with this,” he said. It sounded more like a plea than a statement.  She heard the clang-clang  of metal on metal before Jeremy responded from somewhere behind her. “You need to focus on the big picture, Devon,” he said, sounding annoyed. “We have a duty as scientists to make the most of this opportunity. It’s the biggest discovery of our lives, for Christ’s sake.”  “But she’s so young,” Devon murmured. “I know you feel sorry for her, but our work will ensure that her name becomes legendary,” Jeremy replied, his tone softening. “To say nothing of the fact that it will put you on the map in the scientific community—you’ll finally be able to get the funding you need to finish your research on early-stage pancreatic cancer markers. Think about how many lives that’s going to save!” Devon let out a resigned sigh as Natalie tried to process the words. No — don’t listen to him! Please help me! she pleaded with her eyes, but he avoided looking at her. There was the squeak of wheels rolling across the floor, and then Jeremy appeared beside her, undisguised excitement on his face. Beside him, an array of surgical instruments glittered under the harsh lights. Natalie could only shed silent tears as she understood that the real testing was about to begin. Maria Carvalho is a multi-genre writer from Connecticut whose work ranges from horror to haiku. Her stories and poetry have been published in a wide variety of magazines and books, including several titles in the Owl Hollow Anthology Series (Owl Hollow Press). She is also the author of the children's book "Hamster in Space!". Connect with her on Twitter @ImMCarvalho .

I met a man who swallowed goats whole — horns and all. I know this because he lifted up his pale blue Oxford shirt and pointed to a pair of rusty asterisks on his stomach. He worked in a sales office for a multinational tyre manufacturer. Grew roses with old-fashioned English names. Spoke affectionately about his golden Labrador Maisie. He might have been the greatest church organist in his area. The man didn't have a shaved head or an Old Testament beard, but something electrified in the air when his pondweed eyes twinkled and he spoke about the importance of being anchored to community, family and God. Preached the value of not herding yourself into a corner. He tasted delicious. I never caught his name.

Frank Furtson  8:29 AM @channel  Good morning and Happy Friday to all of you fellow Boinkers! Hope your week’s been a good one.  You don’t typically hear from the Legal department this way, but my reason for doing so is a good one. First off, the company isn’t being sued. We’re not closing our doors, either. Not yet, anyways lol. If it were, you’d hear about it from Daryl the Dickhead.  No, this is a farewell message.  # Frank Furtson  8:32 AM @channel  Today is my last day at Boink Digital. No doubt some of you are excited to hear about my departure. I get it. One less lawyer to deal with, right? We’re the wet blankets who put the kibosh on everything. No more alcohol in the staff kitchen. No more unauthorized office parties once everyone’s gone home for the night. You have to understand, we’re thinking of the company. It’s all about liability and the bottom line. It’s not about you.   I’m certain I’ve made some of your lives a living hell for being such a legal stick in the mud. I’m not apologizing for it, there were larger forces at play, let me tell you. Forces that your puny minds just couldn’t handle. But I digress.  It’s never been personal, it’s just business. At least for most of you. In my five years working at Boink, I’ve saved the company just over $15M from possible lawsuits and/or legal actions. How many of you can say the same thing? Not many, I’m guessing. # Frank Furtson  8:36 AM @channel  By this point, you’re probably wondering what’s next for me. Is Frank going to another tech company? Is he sailing around the world on a super yacht? Trust me, it’s nothing that crazy. In four months, if all goes well, I’ll be opening my all-organic craft brewery. That’s right, I’m going into business for myself. We’re calling it Biotic Brews. I hope to see some of you at our grand opening party. For those of you who’d rather die than see me again in a social setting, I get it.  But enough about me, let’s talk about you. In my time here at Boink, I’ve had the fortune to work with some of the brightest people I’ve ever known. Most of you, though, I don’t know at all and couldn’t remember your names if I had a gun to my head. But that comes with the territory when you’re a highly-paid lawyer with a tech startup, right? Sorry, not sorry. # Frank Furtson  8:38 AM @channel  Still reading this thread? I hope so, because things are about to get good. Please indulge me for another few moments, as I’d like to call out some of the individuals here at Boink who changed my life in so many ways. I’m indebted to them and would like to express my feelings in front of the entire company. That’s right, I’m putting some of you on the spot.  # To Bill Parsons, CEO:  Bill, you believed in me from the beginning and took a chance on a young lawyer from the corporate world. Look at how far we’ve come. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I can’t wait to see what you do next with the company. # To Janice Grimaldi, CFO:   Your business acumen and guidance have helped me in so many ways I’ll never forget. You have been a great mentor and a big reason for this company’s success. I wish you continued good fortune. # To Carter Thomerson, Director of Product:   Carter, you’re a complete asshole. I’ll never forget the way you tiptoed behind my back and stole my wife. You’ve got some balls on you, you no-good piece of shit. I sincerely hope your dick falls off and Marcie leaves you for some young stud who’s hung like a horse.  # To Amelia Benedetti, VP of Marketing:   Lovely Amelia. Thank you so much for the “lunches” we had in the backseat of my Subaru Outback over at Canyon Creek Park. Steaming up the windows like teenagers was always fun. Your ass is truly beautiful and I’ll never forget our “sexy times” together. I’m hoping our paths will cross again in the near future. # To Daryl Matthews, Head of Legal:   Daryl the Dickhead. Congratulations, I suppose, on your recent promotion after only being with Boink for two years. It still blows my mind. The position that was rightfully mine. The one that I earned in sweat and blood. Thanks for ripping it out of my grasp, you heartless bastard. You must’ve really sucked up to Bill to get the promotion. That, or you sucked him off repeatedly. There’s a special ring in Hell for guys like you.  # Frank Furtson  8:41 AM @channel  If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking “this guy’s got anger management issues.” But not me, no sir. I may have a drinking problem, but emotional intelligence is my middle name. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you. I’m a master at controlling my feelings and dealing with people. I just “get it.” But beware, it’s not all unicorns and rainbows. My story could easily become yours. Just picture the headline: “Promising young lawyer quits his cushy corporate job to join a tech startup and works so hard he loses his mind, his wife, and his dignity.” But I digress. For the few folks here who I’ve enjoyed working with, I wish you tons of happiness and pray you never have to go through the same baloney I’ve had to deal with. As for the rest of you, please eat shit and die already, thank you. # Frank Furtson  8:43 AM @channel  Through my office windows, I can see Dorothy and her HR cronies scrambling my way. She’s probably already called security and told IT to turn off my Slack access, so I’ll say goodbye for now. Remember, every ending is a new beginning. If you like, you can email me at: frankfurterson@gmail.com . If you never want to hear from me again, I get it.  Victor De Anda is a writer in Philadelphia who enjoys watching movies and searching for good Mexican food. His fiction has been published in Dark Waters Vol. 1, Guilty Crime Story Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Shotgun Honey,  and Punk Noir,  with more forthcoming. He is on Twitter @victordeanda  and you can find out more at https://linktr.ee/victordeanda

Kyle was a driven man insofar as he was driven places by his mother. But he was also driven by dreams of fame and fortune—which he hoped to obtain with minimal effort. This led him to attend the Jerry Rollins Ultimate Power and Success Workshop. The daylong event kicked off when Rollins, a huge, lantern-jawed man with a headset microphone, burst out from the wings of the small stage and began high-fiving people. Kyle was enthralled. It was just like the infomercial he'd seen two weeks earlier. "How are y'all doin'?"  Rollins asked. "Are you excited?" The crowd roared. "Well, you should  be because this is going to be a life-changing day."  As the audience at the Convention Centre settled down, he pulled up a stool. "Now, I know you're all eager to grab life by the tail, but first, let's talk about being poor. Trust me—I know all about it. My whole family used to lie in a gutter all day. We thought resources were scarce, but we were wrong . Scarcity is just a mental construct that, if you think about it too much, can become a roadblock to success." He stood up again. "You see, it's not resources that matter, it's resourcefulness —as Abraham Lincoln would no doubt have said if he had thought of it." Kyle noticed that the woman next to him was taking notes.   "All wealth begins in the mind. That means before you can be  rich, you need to feel rich. Think of how money smells . V isualize it coming toward you. Then, as soon as you're ready, prosperity and abundance will start flowing into your life." Kyle felt more than ready. He was getting impatient. About twenty minutes into the presentation, Rollins said it was "time for a little one-on-one," asking for a volunteer from the audience. From the front row came a small man with sunken eyes and a t-shirt displaying the words 'Show Me the Money!' in giant letters. He told Rollins his name was Garth. "What brings you here, Garth?" "Um...I want money," Garth replied softly. "He wants money!" Rollins repeated to the crowd. " Everybody  does. But let me tell you something, Garth: money wants you  too. It loves  you. It's trying to find a way into your wallet and your bank account so it can be with you. If you want money, then you've got to shout it out from the rooftops. Let the universe know you want money. Say, 'I want money!' Say it, Garth." "I want money."  "Say it louder!" After Garth said it louder, Rollins turned to the audience with his arms outstretched. "Everybody say it."  From twenty-five rows back, Kyle surprised himself by joining the chorus. "All right. Now we've put it out there," said Rollins as Garth returned to his seat. "This whole group wants money. So, what's next?  Well, you need to decide what you want the money for.  What are your dreams? I want you to divide into groups of three or four. Just pick the people sitting around you. Introduce yourselves. Find out what makes your neighbors tick and what their goals are. Share your dreams. And I'll be back here in fifteen minutes to tell you how to instantly make them a reality." Rollins was handed a water bottle as he walked off stage to thunderous applause.  Kyle always felt awkward meeting new people. To his right was an empty seat. To his left was a woman in camouflage leggings with tattoos and a nose ring. This was in stark contrast to Kyle, who, wanting to appear upwardly mobile in an understated way, wore a Lacoste shirt with a sweater tied around his shoulders and sunglasses perched on his forehead.  Before he could change seats, his neighbor turned to face him. "Sup, my friend?"   she said. "I'm Amy."  Kyle barely had time to introduce himself before the two were interrupted. "Hey, guys," said a young woman leaning over from the row behind them. The newcomer had long, stringy hair and braces and wore a faded 'Jerry Rollins World Conquest Tour' t-shirt. Her name was Beth. She said that she'd quit school to follow her dream of becoming "an influencer who motivates people to live their best life."  Amy told Kyle and Beth that her  goal was to "take my current work as an entrepreneur to a global level." She was selling press-on nails painted in colorful designs. They weren't her own designs; rather, she bought them in bulk from the Philippines and kept them in her cousin's garage. "If I can just get Jerry to endorse them, that'd be huge. He doesn't even have to wear them or anything."  She handed business cards to Kyle and Beth. "I'm an entrepreneur too," said Beth. "Right now, I'm a distributor of Futura Health and Wellness Supplements." She passed out business cards of her own. "Networking is key. Every day I try to make eight new contacts. It helps that I'm in the Young Conservatives." "I was a skinhead once," said Amy. "They're kinda the same in a way." Kyle didn't know much about skinheads but wondered if he, too, should join some sort of group. "Do the skinheads hold interviews, or is it just a matter of filling out an application?" Amy laughed. "Well, they'd hardly take you looking like a young Pat Sajak. No offense." "Okay, but I want to know I'm accepted before I get a funny haircut." "Dude—you should totally join a cult," said Amy. "Go the whole nine yards. I know Jerry Rollins has fanatical followers, but this isn't a cult per see ." "What do you mean 'not a cult per se '"? "I mean, nobody's bowing down to him or stockpiling firearms in a compound. Trust me, cults can get pretty wild." Kyle sighed. "I guess all I really want is unlimited money and power." "Then join the Young Conservatives!" said Beth. "You'd fit right in.  You're an entrepreneur, right?"   "In a sense," said Kyle. The sense being that he identified in spirit with capitalist tycoon-types, though he hadn't done any actual work since he finished high school two years earlier. He pictured himself a few years down the road on 'Shark Tank'—not as someone making a pitch, but as one of the rich people passing judgment.  Kyle also envisioned himself as someone who had his guests announced by a footman, then greeted them by spinning around in a high-backed swivel chair like a Bond villain.   His reverie ended when music and lights signaled Rollins' return to the stage. "Hey, gang, did you miss me?" asked Rollins with a chuckle. "I hope now that you've got to know your neighbors, you'll be able to draw strength from them in your journey."  Kyle shuddered.  " Okay, so now that you've all had a chance to think about your dreams, how would you like to make them come true—just like that ?" He snapped his fingers. "All right, consider this: it's not a dream—it's a plan !"  There were some gasps from the audience. Amy wrote it down. "Now, who wants to get in on the ground floor of something big ? I mean, really  big. Anyone?"  All hands shot up.  "A few of you," said Rollins, grinning. "Well, good news! Just being here today means you're already on  the ground floor. Time to take it to the next level."  He began a PowerPoint presentation. "Long, long ago, back in the 1970s, people used to talk about 'Pyramid Power.' It was all about harnessing the wisdom of the ancients to bring about prosperity. Physicists tell us that the power of the Great Pyramid of Cheops is one thousand times greater than the power coming out of Hoover Dam—only nobody's figured out how to harness it. Until now."  He paced and gestured broadly as he spoke. "At last we've found a way to unlock the power of pyramids, enabling you to achieve Total Ultimate Success Instantly. This is the real deal, folks! Don't be fooled by imitations. We're selling shares in a virtual pyramid, and I'm giving you a chance to move to the next level—up with all the wealthiest, most successful people on the planet. Best of all, you don't have to leave your family and loved ones behind. If you recruit them, you get points, and whoever has the most points at the end of each month has a chance to move up to the third level absolutely free. Basically a 'win-win' situation. "Plus, if you come up to the second level of the pyramid, you'll get extra perks like an NFT of a pyramid, which is yours to keep, and the possibility of speaking to me directly." He stopped pacing and lowered his voice, adding gravitas to what followed. "Now, I promised you a big surprise, and this is it: in just a few minutes, we'll take a short bus ride to The Great Beyond, where we'll meet Muldor, a powerful mystic steeped in the wisdom of the ages. Muldor will make mind-blowing prophecies and reveal the astounding truth at the core of all human existence—as soon as your payment of sixty dollars has been confirmed. But you can pay on the bus. Sound good? Don't do it for me; do it for you—because you deserve it."  Kyle had hoped that the 'big surprise' would be a handful of cash, not additional charges.  "You'll get lunch on the bus, and after everyone drinks the Kool-Aid, we'll walk on fire. I don't mean that literally; it's not Kool-Aid, it's Sprite. Kool-Aid is just a figure of speech. But we'll literally  walk on hot coals, protected by the power of the mind, as outlined in my book Total Self-Mastery . Talk about life-changing! If you can walk on fire, brothers and sisters, you can do anything!"   The crowd cheered. "When we return, I'll unlock the secret to making your dreams come true instantly and effortlessly. But first things first. Buses are waiting to whisk you away. So, c'mon, gang—your destiny awaits!"  The theme from 'Rocky' played as Rollins left the stage. The house lights went up. "You heard the man, Kyle," said Amy, rising to her feet and swinging her backpack to her shoulders. Kyle resented being charged an additional sixty dollars. It didn't seem right. Besides, he wasn't interested in seeing some old man with a long white beard and a book of spells. "I think I'll sit this one out. I'm not really into sword and sorcery stuff." "But what about the firewalking?" said Beth. "You don't want to miss that." But Kyle did  want to miss it. He liked avoiding danger and uncertainty—which, after all, was part of the appeal of living in his parents' basement. "I'm just going to wait for Jerry to come back and unlock the secret to making my dreams come true instantly and effortlessly."  "Suit yourself," said Amy. "We're off to The Great Beyond." For a while, Kyle remained in his seat. He'd assumed a lot of people would skip Muldor and the firewalking, yet the whole audience seemed to be pouring out the doors. Maybe some were just going for a lunch break—something he hadn't given much thought.  The only person left onstage was a technician employed by the venue who was winding up an electric cable. A frowning guy in a tie-dyed shirt and a headband now entered the lecture hall and stepped smartly up to the front of the stage. "Don't tell me Jerry's gone," he said.  "He left five minutes ago," said the technician. "I think he took off in his helicopter as soon as people got on the buses." "Isn't that typical?" The guy explained that he'd been in charge of preparing the coals for the fire walk portion of the event and had rushed away from his post upon learning how Rollins was going to pay him. "Who'd have thought he'd be using cryptocurrency? It's not even Bitcoin—it's Bitcoin Blue . What the hell is that? We had a contract." "You're not the only one, trust me," said the technician, shaking his head. "This guy's a real smooth operator." "Yeah?  Well, if he wants to play games, fine. He can go right ahead. And I'll see him in court." Kyle was only hearing snippets of the conversation, but uncomfortable with eavesdropping, he got up and left. From the lecture hall, he went down a corridor in search of a vending machine, hardly seeing a soul.  Stepping out a side door, he pulled out his phone. No messages. He checked Twitter under hashtags '#rollinsworkshop' and '#easymoney.' Nothing was happening. He tweeted, 'Where did everybody go? #rollinsworkshop,'  The Convention Centre was on the outskirts of town, without much nearby. To kill time, Kyle started walking a narrow sidewalk toward the back of the building.  It wasn't long before the sidewalk ended, and he found himself on a rough path amid trees and tall grass. Rounding a corner, he came to a sunlit meadow full of tall grasses, dandelions, and tangled weeds, on the far side of which stood a row of two-story suburban homes. He stopped and took a deep breath, leaning back against the wall. A small flock of eastern bluebirds fluttered past, one stopping to drink from a puddle near Kyle's feet. He'd never felt much connection with nature and didn't know how to respond. What would Jerry Rollins do? There was no possibility of getting money from the bird, but surely there was something he could do to turn the situation to his advantage.  'It's not resources that matter, it's resourcefulness,' he reminded himself. Slowly extending his right arm, he attempted to subjugate the bird using the power of his mind, such that it would be compelled to perch like a parakeet on his extended forefinger. Despite twenty seconds of staring at it and concentrating intently, the bird flew off, disappearing among the wildflowers. Clearly, the creature didn't recognize human authority. Score one for the bluebird. Despite its lack of money, no one controlled it. Kyle dimly recalled an old saying—something about being free and how the best things in life are something or other.  Before his philosophical musings could get any deeper, he was notified of a direct message on Twitter. Apparently, Jerry Rollins himself was responding to his tweet. 'Are you still at the Convention Centre?' @jerryrollins asked. 'Yes. Just me,' Kyle responded. 'Hey, buddy, I need your help. Have you seen a dude in a tie-dyed shirt? If he's there I need to talk to him.'  'Tie-dyed shirt and a headband - yes,' Kyle answered. 'I think his phone is dead. Muldor finished way ahead of schedule, but I don't know if the coals are ready for the fire walk.'  'I heard him talking. He said it's fine - u can go right ahead.' Rollins wasn't persuaded. 'He said that? The coals seem hotter than usual. Can you find him for me?' Kyle's stomach growled. Under the circumstances, he didn't feel like being helpful. 'How do I know ur really Jerry Rollins?'   'My account has a blue check mark.' 'That doesn't mean anything. "Don't be fooled by imitations." That's what Jerry said.' At this point, he hoped it really was  Rollins because he was enjoying toying with him. 'C'mon, bro, help me out!' 'I can't talk 2 u cuz I'm only on level 1.' And with that, Kyle exited Twitter.   Continuing his trek, he Googled 'firewalking.' According to Wikipedia, when coals have burned for a sufficient time, they get covered in enough ash to insulate the heat away from the skin. Interesting... After rounding the back of the Conference Centre, he reached the shady main entrance just as some charter buses were pulling into the parking lot.  This surprised him because less than an hour had elapsed.  As Kyle drew closer, grumpy-looking people began to disembark. Beth was one of the first off, and she headed straight for him.  By this time he'd grown weary of dealing with go-getters, yet he was curious to hear what had happened. "Amy's doing the firewalking," she said. "Not me. I didn't expect Jerry to ask for another seventy-five bucks after we'd already  shelled out sixty to see Muldor. Not worth it. You were smart to stay behind." They began ambling back toward the Convention Centre.  "So, what was it like in The Great Beyond?" She sighed. "Brief and stupid. The Great Beyond was just a name they assigned to a vacant lot near where the firewalking was set up."  "So, was Muldor an old coot with a long beard?" "Actually, no. Muldor was just some   white chick in yoga pants. Lynn Muldor. She said happiness is all about maintaining a positive focus, then she tried to sell us stuff."   "I thought she was supposed to have deep insights." "Well, she thought she did. With her infinite wisdom, she said we're all characters in a book and exist only in the consciousness of the reader." "I don't get it." "She said existence is only possible when observed by an outside consciousness—in this case, 'the reader.' It's like Schrödinger's cat." Kyle didn't follow. "Hmm." "I can't believe I paid for that." "At least you got lunch on the bus." "Yeah, right. A tiny bag of chips and a can of Sprite." They stepped over the curb and continued talking on the lawn. "Did she make prophecies?"   "Yeah. She said that a figure would soon appear on the horizon to guide us; a man who's above it all.  Which I took to be a reference to Jerry walking on fire or the fact that he travels in a private helicopter. I'm sure it was no coincidence that it landed behind her just a moment later. Oh, and she said something about the man being someone who reads, implying, no doubt, that Jerry is the godlike 'Reader.' I think the whole thing was scripted, but somehow it came out sounding a bit sarcastic. Anyway, Jerry started walking toward her, and she broke off her talk and rushed over to him." "What did she say?" "We couldn't hear much because she had a hand over her mic. Something about Bitcoin. It looked pretty heated." "Yikes." "Then she got in her car and drove away. I don't think Jerry knew what to do. He had his phone out and seemed to be texting someone, looking pretty pissed." "Imagine that." "Of course, Muldor was supposed to get everyone hypnotized or whatever for the firewalking. But suddenly Jerry's like, 'Muldor schmuldor. Let's go, gang. It's firewalking time!' The hot coals were right nearby, but that's when Jerry asked for more money. I'm surprised Amy paid. They'll probably be back in another hour."   "Another hour ," moaned Kyle. "Oh, well, I guess I don't mind waiting another hour if I get unlimited wealth and power instantly." Truth be told, he'd have been happy with even a thousand dollars if he could have it instantly, as promised.   "You're right. We need to keep a positive attitude. The universe wants us to succeed." She squared her shoulders and forced a smile. The wind picked up a bit, blowing dead leaves and litter around the parking lot. A second wave of buses roared in. While the people from Beth's group had looked somber and disillusioned, the people returning from the fire walk appeared enraged. When Amy emerged, Beth waved, and she came straight over.  "Stupid Jerry Rollins!" said Amy, stepping onto the lawn. "Everything's canceled!" " What?"  "What a joke.  He gave this big speech about how walking on fire proved the supremacy of the will over physical flesh and how if we just believe , we won't get burned. So he gets us all into this lofty state, clearing our minds of self-doubt, then he says he'll lead the way. So he puts one foot on the coals, then starts screaming his head off!" "Look, it's on TikTok!" someone shouted. Soon, everyone was watching a viral video of Jerry Rollins stepping onto the hot coals accompanied by Elvis's 'Burning Love.' (' #jerryistoast #epicfail .') Watching the video, Amy shook her head in dismay. "That's the moment when our eyes were opened and we saw him for what he really is." "So, what happened?" asked Beth.  "He was furious, blaming everyone but himself. Someone treated him for minor burns, then he flew off." Kyle may have taken satisfaction from this turn of events, but he did his best to hide it. As the group mingling on the lawn grew bigger, some of the people who had re-entered the building came back out, complaining that the doors to the lecture hall were locked. Pulling out their phones, people began tweeting. 'It's OVER! #rollinsworkshop.' 'That's all folks! #ultimatepowerandsuccess.' Garth (the young man who had joined Jerry onstage) appeared particularly distraught and kept asking, "What about the virtual pyramid we've been building?"   "What a crook," said Amy. "Here I thought Jerry was such a pure soul—except for the drug charges." "Larceny and assault too," added Beth. "But those were just allegations . Still, I'm going to feel weird wearing my World Conquest Tour t-shirt now."    Kyle's opinion of Rollins had hit rock bottom. "Who needs Jerry Rollins?" he said, speaking with a degree of confidence that had eluded him all day. "Him and his stupid ' levels .' I wouldn't want to be on the top level of the pyramid now, even if it was free . There's got to be more to life." Beth seemed intrigued. "You think so?"  "I know  so," said Kyle. "Maybe unlimited wealth, total self-mastery, ultimate power, and all the rest of it are overrated." "Okay, but what are we supposed to do now ?" asked Garth, coming closer. "Maybe we should just relax and fool around," said Kyle. "You know—have some fun. Stuff like that." It was just what the lost souls needed to hear. "We've had it with Jerry Rollins," Amy told Garth. "To think I was ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. If you ask me , this  is who we should be following." She pointed to Kyle.  "Whoa. I'm no leader," said Kyle. "Everyone should just live and let live. Go with the flow or whatever." Amy, Beth, Garth, and about a dozen others who'd gathered around stared at Kyle, speechless. Finally, Beth spoke in a trembling voice. "Holy crap! It's Muldor's prophecy! She said that someone would appear on the horizon to guide us." She turned to Kyle. "That's you . You're the 'Reader' she was talking about." "But I never read anything," Kyle objected. "I watch videos." Amy wasn't dissuaded. "It's all so clear now. Muldor's Reader is someone who must have read , right? Okay, and you have a red shirt. Red—get it?" She turned to the others. "Kyle's wearing a red shirt! He's the Reader!" " What ? Lots of people wear red," said Kyle. "You guys can think what you want but leave me out of it."   Beth gasped. "Muldor said, 'a man who's above it all.'" "Kyle backwards is 'like,'" added Garth. "Spooky," said Beth. "That clinches it," said Amy. "Any cult of yours is good enough for me." " Cult? Oh, come on , I'm not here to start a cult." Kyle thought for a moment. "But if I do start one, you won't like it. I'll make everyone wear their hair like Pat Sajak—men and women both—and instead of stockpiling firearms, we'll be stockpiling overripe fruit." The group seemed unfazed. "That doesn't sound so bad," said Garth. "And all male members will be castrated."  "Whoa, I hadn't planned on that ." Garth took a deep breath. "Still, if it's a free castration..." The mood shifted as the spirit of peace spread over the little gathering. A serene and beatific look came over Kyle's face. "So be it. Gather 'round, my children." Amy, Beth, Garth, and the others all dropped to their knees before him. He held out his arms as if welcoming them into the fold. "Now bow your heads."  Everyone looked down.  By the time they looked up, Kyle was long gone. David Partington is an omnivorous bipedal mammal, most active during daylight hours. He came into this world at a very young age and has found his subsequent mortal existence to be a reliable source of amusement.

Even though the music was loud in the gym I could hear her clearly; she was talking about the honeymoon and mentioned going to Lichtenstein.    “Lichtenstein?” I asked. “You’re always full of surprises. Still I was not ready for this one. Lichtenstein, of all places. Are you serious?” “Lichtenstein!” she replied. “I didn’t say anything about Lichtenstein. What’s Lichtenstein?”    “It’s a feudal mini-state wedged between Switzerland and Austria. That’s pretty much all I know.” “Really? Lichtenstein sounds like a hero soldier’s name from the Thirty Years’ War.”    I followed it up with research on Lichtenstein but nothing I found made sense. Worse yet, apparently there’s no soldier hero named Lichtenstein mentioned anywhere in the chronicles of the Thirty Years’ War.    Soon we drifted apart.  The truth is, there can be no going back after the bond of trust, Lichtenstein in this particular case, is broken. Johannes Springenseiss is a world citizen and raconteur. He mostly writes speculative fiction and creative essays, which he has published in various literary magazines.

“No, no, no,” he says to himself as he sits at the piano. If he could hear or see me, I’d assure him the song is going to be his masterpiece and will be iconic. He repeats the opening bars, singing along. He stops again, curses and bangs the keys with his fist, then tweaks the chord progression and lyrics. He’s still not quite there. I wish I could help him.  He’s thinner than I imagined. Almost emaciated. Drugs? Or so consumed with writing and recording he’s not eating? After a few minutes, I have my answer; when his wife comes into the room and offers him a sliced avocado, he waves her off. It’s a small detail I’d never have known if I hadn’t witnessed it myself. She kisses the top of his head; he reaches up and touches her cheek Then she sits cross-legged on the floor with a stick of charcoal and a sketch pad. Maybe after I’ve saved enough for another excursion, I’ll see for myself if she really was the villain as she’s been portrayed. After toiling at the piano for longer than I would’ve imagined, he sings and plays the song that’ll be known around the world as an anthem of peace. And I’m here to witness its birth. What a moment.  He turns toward his wife. “I’ll release it and see what happens.” She smiles. “If it’s not a hit,” he says, “maybe I’ll sing it to the grandkids when I’m 64.” He chuckles. Even if I could tell him that’s not to be, I wouldn’t have the heart to. Besides, the cloaked machine that brought me here is signaling that my time is up — and his will be far too soon.

Once Stu decides to leave, that’s it (except not really, no, not at all).  He moves into action at once (or, at least, he tells himself that’s what he’s doing. Stu lies to himself a lot). Packing things – random things like coat hangers and tea cups and knitted gloves and bits of dried flowers – into a big cardboard box. He throws everything in and then stares down at the jumble of items. His life, bits and pieces, that make no sense, strewn about. He closes the box up slowly, sealing the cardboard box up with sticky-tape he stole from the LCA’s stationary cupboard. He picks up the box, ready to take it out to his car (a Kia Sportage, run down, a grunting mess of a thing), before remembering that he sold his car. His car is gone, the money given to the LCA – for all the right reasons, of course. Penny McKenzie had told him that morning that it was important to give – and keep giving – as much as he could. That was the way to freedom, or something like that anyway. But sometimes – and he knows he’s not meant to say this, let alone think it, he doesn’t feel very free at all.  He feels trapped. And tired. His fingers are sore from scrubbing constantly and his muscles ache. Penny says you have to do the work to make it work, and Stu knows she’s right, but why does the work have to be so exhausting?  That’s an O G thought though.  O G means obstructive grievance.  Stu has a lot of O G thoughts. Once in class, they told him he was an O G. Which he understood but he didn’t like. It made his skin bristle.  Still, no matter because the LCA – the League for Cultural Advancement – is his home. It’s a funny kind of home. A home where he is never allowed to relax. He just wants to go out for a while. He just wants to take his box of little bits and pieces – dried lavender that his mother gave him, a fantasy novel he’s never had the chance to read, a pair of folded socks he’s never worn because the LCA say they are the wrong colour – and find some sun somewhere and sit in it. To feel the glow on his skin.  Penny says sun comes from within. That light shines from your insides and sure, that might be true, he doesn’t deny it, but he also wants the other sun. Please, can’t he have the other sun?  He remembers the sun, you know. The way it glided over his body. He remembers wearing sunscreen, slapping it on his nose, his cheeks, his arms, the back of his neck. How it made him feel alive, like something was uncoiling inside of him. Warm, all over. When was the last time he went out in it, felt it settle on his skin? Months ago, surely. Maybe even years ago. Egg and pickle sandwiches, cheese and onion crisps on the grass in front of the library. He’d watched people walk by with books loaded in their arms, students with merry smiles, couples holding hands, mothers pushing strollers. It had been nice (so nice, so much nicer than he even wants to admit), seeing the hustle and bustle of movement. It was a world away from the LCA. Not, of course, that that’s what he wants. He loves (can he really say that, truly, deep down?) the LCA. Of course he does. Still, there’s something inside him, something that pulls and pulls and doesn’t let go, that wants what everyone else has. A wife, kids, a house in the country – blue peachy skies, golden sun, a garden to potter around in. He wants long lazy weekends. He wants to take his car and drive to a diner somewhere, eat butter-milk pancakes with honey, drink coffee from a large mug, his hands wrapped around the sides. He wants to forget about the future of mankind, forget about processes and rules and systems and healing the planet (he’s only one man anyway – he’s limited in what he can do…) but but but but – there are so many buts inside of him.  He’s not going to do any of that. He’s going to ignore the longing in his heart. He’s going to pull the bits and pieces out of his cardboard box again. Cancel those plans inside his head. He’s going to put everything away again, back into their rightful places, and then he’s going to carefully fold the box down again, untape the sticky tape he so carefully taped, and get back to work. He’s going to remember his place.  Katelin Farnsworth lives in lutruwita (Tasmania) among the trees and the mountains with her husband. She loves to read and write, drink tea, and travel. She's currently working on a novel about a cult.

Her new habitat had been untouched for years. Decades, perhaps. The fauna orgiastically entwined around her form. Brittle branches snapped where she'd landed. The blunt fingers of blunter minds pressing into her back and shoulders. Pressuring and demanding obedience. Patches of sky sparkled in her eyes through beatific sun or many speckled stars. The natives traversed her veins like roadways. Her lower half sex doll splayed in the dirt. Not invitingly, but all used up. The streetlights didn’t reach her. She remained undisturbed and unseen. She knew nothing of the necklace clasp snapped. Nor smelled the tang of exhaust fumes wafting in like an accusing abuser who no longer shook her.  They called with no response. They searched and searched the last known whereabouts only feet from where she lay. In that time, new generational trauma was born because life must come from death. Every type of driver came and went.  Horns blaring, tyres screeching, the tailgaters, the joyriders. The sirens wailed past unknowing to other scenes of cursed domesticity. Her bruises would never fade. Her name and face would be replaced in the headlines by her killer’s. The victim’s lot is to be forgotten. That is, if they are ever found. Scott Cumming unsuspectingly went to see Garden State wearing his Shins tee. He has been published at The Daily Drunk, Punk Noir Magazine, Versification, Mystery Tribune and Shotgun Honey. His poem, “Blood on Snow”, was voted the best of Outcast Press Poetry Things We Carry issue and nominated for a Pushcart. His collection, A Chapbook About Nothing, was released in December as part of Close to the Bone's First Cut series. Twitter:  @tummidge  Website:  https://scottcummingwriter.wordpress.com/

Boris Yeltsin and I sit across from each other, the table between us crowded with bowls of borscht. White tablecloth. My dead grandmother is there too, back from the afterlife to haunt my dream with the precision of a grandmother’s visit, polite, yes, but with intent. She’s resplendent in pink, wearing her Sunday best, her silver hair adorned with her good hat. She frowns when she sees Boris. I was hoping for Reagan, she says, her voice heavy with disappointment, but Reagan’s busy in some celestial debate club or another, defending Jelly Belly from St. Peter, I imagine. I brought these,  she says, reaching into her pocket and pulling out two flavors of Jelly Bellies. Blueberry. Buttered popcorn. Colors as vivid and distressed as the Ukrainian flag. But those are your favorites, not mine,  she points out. I shrug. What can I say? We’re from Krakow, we have no flag, just borrowed flavors, borrowed identities, borrowed countries. You're wrong, she says. Boris leans in, asks her for the gołąbki recipe. She responds with a stare—her eyes steely and glittering like the memory of snow. It’s not just a refusal, it’s a verdict. Boris shrinks, or maybe I imagine that. An unexpected rage flares in me, burning hot, reckless. Coward,  I think. He looks at me, breaking the fourth wall, like he’s in on a joke, one I am just beginning to understand. You were the only bluebird in her chinoise wallpaper,  he tells me, and suddenly it’s too much, all of it. I want to tell him I don’t care. I want to tell him I don’t care about this dream or this scene or the way his name trips over my fingers every time I try to spell it out, Yeltsin,  each typo a kind of invocation, each correction an exorcism. But it’s like trying to paint a memory, and you’ve blurred out the nucleus and are left with the lapis lazuli of an empty middle. I got my MFA through my father’s alcoholism,  I blurt out instead. And then it’s all crumbling, everything—the dream, the conversation, the borscht that’s been sitting untouched. Boris Yeltsin, zeitgeist poltergeist of my childhood, the face I remember from years of watching TV with my grandparents, is crumbling. I Google him in the early morning dark, the glow of the screen illuminating his last year in power. It’s the same year my grandmother died. I don’t know what that means, but it feels like it should mean something. Chrissy Stegman is a poet/writer from Baltimore, Maryland. Recent work has appeared in/forthcoming: Rejection Letters, Gone Lawn, Gargoyle Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Stone Circle Review, Fictive Dream, Inkfish, The Voidspace, The Madrigal, 5 Minutes, Ucity Review, and BULL. She is a BOTN nominee.

A skull-shaped cloud floated past the day he crashed into my life. Into the window, to be precise—thwack! And there he was, lying still. One for sorrow. I don’t believe in coincidence. My abdomen fluttered, like the first flicker of life. I crossed myself, saluted, tried to remember which incantations forestall bad luck. Just as I started to fear the worst, he hopped upright.  “Do you need water? Food?” I asked. Like a waiter. Bread or olives while you wait, Sir? I fetched a pack of nuts from inside, poured a little pile. He sat, dazed. Whole minutes later he blinked, shot me a withering look, and flapped off. Next day, the nuts were gone and the magpie sat squawking in their place. When I went out, he flapped into the apple tree. I poured more nuts and was barely back in the house before he swooped down for them. He returned every day. When the nuts were gone, I moved on to peas, then stew, whatever I could spare. I called him Reggie.  *  The village folk bring pies and cakes, but never stay to eat them. I don’t take it personally. They don’t trust the land to hold, here on the edge of things. They think I’m mad to stay. There are places in town, they say. More houses than people these days. Some hardly need any work. They put in compost toilets years ago. Did one for me too, bless ’em. My poo-with-a-view. On nice days I leave the door open, look out over the cliff. No one’s caught me in the act yet, except the odd gull. Living dangerously. They bring me yarn too, the villagers. Flax usually, although they’ve been experimenting with nettle fibre and plant dyes. I run it up on the loom and return the cloth, save what I need, which isn’t much. As we learn, the fabric gets finer, colours richer, patterns more intricate. Reports of the death of technology have been greatly exaggerated. The electronics, telly, phones what-have-you are gone, but we overestimated their usefulness. We still have spades, saws, looms. We were dazzled; magpies drawn to shiny things.  *  The loom’s disassembled and packed into the wheelbarrow. I usually avoid town, but I need someone to take a look. It’s started making a juddering noise, like a magpie’s rasp.  So when I hear Reggie fussing, I picture the loom, zombie-weaving in the yard.  “What’s got into you?” I wipe my hands on my apron. He hops along the path, looks back, chitters. “You tease!” I laugh, following. He flaps towards the wheelbarrow, then up onto it, head cocked. “What’s the rush, you incorrigible bird? I—“ An almighty crack echoes up through the ground. The messy grind of rock on rock, wood splitting, stone crumbling, metal shrieking, all at once. I turn. Strange sky echoes blue where house should be.  I stare back at Reggie, then lift the handles of the barrow, hands trembling. I don’t believe in coincidence. Rachel is a newspaper subeditor, mother-of-three, mood reader and genre floozy from just outside Brighton, UK. Her writing has won prizes with Anansi Archive and Steyning Festival’s Short Story Prize and has featured in Fly on the Wall Press and Pure Slush anthologies, as well as online at Punk Noir Magazine and FlashFlood Journal, who nominated her for Best of the Net. She is on the steering committee for her local Transition Town group and is a big fan of liveable biospheres. You can find her on Threads @spectopia.

If I listen closely, I can sometimes pick out the high-pitched whiz that grand pianos and Acme anvils make when they fall from the sky. On a good day, I can dodge them. But sometimes, I don't hear them until it's too late.  Like this morning. I go into the fridge for coffee creamer, and my eyes notice a pink plastic straw at the back. Where did that come from?  The second I dig out the plastic boba cup — the tea evaporated and only black sludge at the bottom — that's when I feel it, the WHAM!! on my head, and a halo of little yous in prison-orange circle my head. I stomp on the pedal of the garbage can and toss it. But when the metal lid closes, my distorted reflection is giving me stink eye — I probably just threw away one of the last things you touched. That vein in the middle of my forehead starts throbbing, and like clockwork, I hear it: the slow hiss of propane, the click click click of a starter button, and my menopausal body turns into a janky, old BBQ again, the burners blue with flame. I hurry back to the fridge, throw open the French doors, and insert as much of my sweaty upper body into the blue-white wispiness as possible. I lean my forehead against a shelf and stare blankly at the Tetris of takeout boxes I've been working on since I watched you on the nightly news, a police dog taking you down by the ankle in the garish spotlight of a hovering helicopter. Where'd you get the fucking gun from, Michael?! You stupid, stupid kid! I've been meaning to clean out the fridge. No better time than the present, right? I drag the trashcan over and start with the Chinese takeout boxes and Styrofoam containers. I empty produce and deli drawers, cold cuts gone green, green grapes gone black. I gingerly pick up two squishy avocados caving in on themselves; those were two bucks each, what a waste! In a baggie, three-fourths of a Pepperidge Farms summer sausage I splurged on last Christmas. Growing up, it was such a delicacy; I couldn't wait to share that taste with you over some cheese and crackers. But I forgot it had a rind, and after you pulled a long strip of it from your mouth like a strand of some stranger's hair, you refused to have any more.  I take everything out, at first intending only to double-check expiration dates and clear off shelves so I can wipe everything down. But before I know it, the garbage can is overflowing, and I'm almost done filling up a second bag. Practically empty jars of pickles, ketchup I don't even like. In the freezer are those disgusting pizza roll-ups you love and blueberry waffles you said you wanted but never touched. Finally, there's only one thing left, way at the back, an ancient bag of peas I used on your boo-boos when you were a kid. Before I can change my mind about the peas, I toss them in, tie the bags, and hoist them downstairs into the dumpster. The sound of breaking glass is gratifying.  I pause to catch my breath and look around. The cool air feels good against my clammy skin. People out with their dogs and little kids walking to school, holding their mommies' hands. I remember school mornings when you were that age. You used to eat your cereal in front of the TV while I got ready for work. You used to hold onto my pinkie finger like a calf tugging on a teat. And if I didn't grab a kiss from you quick enough, you'd be off, running to find your friends, Meep meep, Mommy!  But right now, you couldn't pay me a million dollars to do it all over again. Dawn Tasaka Steffler is an Asian-American writer from Hawaii who currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a Smokelong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow and was selected by the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Welkin Mini, and the Wigleaf Top 50 long list . Her stories appear or are forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, Flash Frog, Ghost Parachute, Moon City Review, Iron Horse Literary Review’s PhotoFinish 2024 and more. Find her online at dawntasakasteffler.com  and on Twitter and Instagram @dawnsteffler.

I was standing outside the theater with Redford after the show, mingling with what was left of the crowd. It was a cold, late-fall evening in the Pacific Northwest and I was surrounded by people half my age. I’d rather have been in bed, reading a book or bingeing a cooking show, but instead I beamed my thousand-megawatt smile (okay, I probably wasn’t capable of generating one that bright anymore) for a selfie with some random stranger.  No, wait, I’m sorry, that’s not right. A lovely young fan.  “Oh, my god, thank you so much,” the woman said. What was she, twenty, twenty-three? She had that kind of flawless, porcelain skin people I used to know paid a premium to either maintain or to acquire. But I could tell it was the sort of thing she took for granted, like the way she assumed that being young and attractive and able to withstand a cold evening in little more than a child-sized t-shirt and torn jeans was something her body would be able to maintain in perpetuity. Still, there was something about her…energy? Her eagerness to spread a little kindness to an out-of-work actor she just happened to recognize, that reminded me what a gift it is to meet a fan. A real fan. In fact, just being near her had lifted my spirits, made my situation a little less… what’s the word for it? Undesirable. I felt seen. I felt that surge of dopamine that had made so much of my life as an actor worthwhile. “My mom used to be, like, such a huge fan of yours when she was younger. She just turned the big four-five and is super depressed her life is, like, over.” I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t expect such a brutal flurry of emotional bodyblows from this one. I guess it’s true: words can hurt. When a person half your age indirectly points out that she thinks of you as someone who’ll soon be dead, on top of her estimation of you being a has-been—at least in terms of her mother’s fandom—it stings.  So, to keep myself from saying what I really wanted to say—that her no-longer-young mother and I were the same age, that people don’t whither up and die the second they turn forty—I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough that my eyes began to water. She thought I was getting emotional and, to her credit, attempted to staunch the bleeding from the wound she inadvertently opened. But she just ended up doing more damage.  “She’s gonna be so excited I met you and your super-cute boyfriend,” she said. “I think older guys make better boyfriends, don’t you?” She cocked her head to the side and waited for me to say something. To agree with her, maybe? I was well aware my D-list celebrity status meant I couldn’t actually berate a “fan,” much less yank her phone from her hand and delete the photo. Or just smash the fucking thing. You know, give her the full Sean Penn Combo Deal, the Deluxe Alec Baldwin with Cheese. Besides, for all I knew she had already uploaded the selfie to Instagram or Snapchat or God knows what other platform I’m not on and have never even heard of.  I looked over at Redford, my supposed boyfriend. He wasn’t smiling, but then again, he wasn’t not smiling, either. He had a case of perma-smirk. I think it was what you’d call a resting shitface. “Him? He’s not my boyfriend,” I told her. “Are you, like, waiting for him, then? I hope you’re not waiting too long, it’s so cold out here.” She hugged herself to emphasize that last bit.  “Nope, I’m not waiting for anyone. Because I don’t have a boyfriend. Because I’m not actually gay.” “Really? But I thought...” “It’s okay, really. You’re not the first to think that.” “Well, whatever. You two are awfully cute together. Maybe, I don’t know, like, think about it?” “Oh, I will definitely do that,” I said and smiled again. I waved my hand as the daughter of a once-young, former fan of mine turned and walked down the street, probably to an older boyfriend who’s never even heard of me either. “Okay then, bye-bye.” “You should really charge for that kind of thing, Jones,” Redford said. “Fifty bucks a pop for a photo, a hundred for a video. You could say, ‘Happy Birthday, Dennis!’ or ‘Great job at that little league game, Jimmy!’ Some shit like that. I bet you’d do pretty well. Not great, but okay. Like the guy who played that prick robot on Star Trek . I bet he does pretty well.” In the light of sodium lamps lining the streets of Hilltop, Redford looked like a fifty-something lycanthropic truck-stop attendant. His presence—that craggy face layered beneath massive mutton-chop sideburns, and those cold, blue, unblinking eyes—was enough to discourage many a Seattle ex-pat from moving to Tacoma, to be another tech-money-infused gentrifier looking to score big on some Hilltop real estate while it was still cheap. Well, cheap enough for someone pulling down six or seven figures a year.  “Look at me,” I said, “free photo with former-famous guy is about all I have to offer. I start charging people for pictures, no one’s gonna want one anymore.” “So it’s a win-win. Either you make a few bucks, buy me dinner—keep a little something for yourself—or sorority girls don’t bother you in some desperate attempt to impress their mothers who didn’t love ‘em enough in the first place... or whatever.” As he often did, Redford seemed to make a good point out of a lot of nonsense. Lately, I’d begun to wonder what it was that kept me from acting more like Redford: comfortable with myself, not obsessed with the obsolescence awaiting me. Already half-consuming me. Redford’s outsized sense of satisfaction with his achievements (which were minor, but perhaps no less significant than my own) was overshadowed by the pleasure he derived in recounting them for strangers again and again. Even his (petty) grievances, like the claim that he was the true, sole author of “Detachable Penis”—which King Missile rode to a cultish kind of fame while I was still in high school, nearly three decades ago—somehow underlined this notion of his having lived a well-lived life. The man had stories to tell. As an incredibly popular local musician, he had a face and a name people knew and wanted to remember. All I had was the persona of a quirky television character who had long since been remanded to the mold-ridden basement of popular culture called syndication. This idealized version of myself was on a rather precipitous decline, one that pushed me further and further from the public’s collective consciousness and solidified my self-imposed exile from the business we call show. I first met Redford on the road to Puyallup. (This was seven years ago, back in 2014 when  I’d just moved back to Tacoma from L.A. with my tail tucked between my legs, having failed to land even a supporting role in, well, anything for about three years.) He was thumbing for a ride and had this greasy tan duffle bag slung over his left shoulder. Under his right arm was what looked like a piece of wood with the word HEART on it. Turns out, Redford had been busy that morning; he’d cut the heart out of an anti-abortion billboard so that it read: ABORTION STOPS A BEATING. I still can’t say what compelled me to stop, to pick up this complete stranger—one who recognized me right away (I’ll say it again. It is always nice to meet a fan)—but I’ll say that the decision changed my life. In a lot of ways, I feel like he found me.  Since neither one of us had anything to do that day (a fairly common occurrence), we spent the afternoon in a coffee shop on the North side of town shooting the shit before we made our way downtown, on a kind of impromptu dive-bar crawl. He seemed genuinely interested in me, in my having been a regular staple on an honest to god hit television series. He peppered me with questions about how the industry worked, what my process was as an actor, how I found my character, and what it was like working with a new director almost every week. Most people I meet want to know gossip about other, more prominent celebrities who may or may not have been in my orbit at the time. It meant a lot to me that this strange, wolf-like man wanted to get to know me, the real me, and not to get some vicarious thrill off my tenuous proximity to famous people roughly a thousand miles away.  It wasn’t until we hit the third dive bar, a tiny hole-in-the-wall place (ironically?) called The Crown that I found out Redford’s locally sourced fame surpassed my own. I was embarrassed to say the least, talking about myself all afternoon while presuming him to be nothing more than a fan. But he didn’t play it like that. If anything, he propped me up, announced to everyone who I was—who I used to be. I appreciated it. It felt good. The adoration.  Even if it was filtered through Redford. Even if it was plainly obvious he was using my fame to augment his own. All in all, we hit it off pretty well. And while I’m loathe to say it for reasons that will soon become clear, it felt like the greatest blind date in the history of blind dates.  After that, the two of us settled into a kind of friendly rivalry. We were a couple of old attention whores, living off residuals and spending our days seeking that dopamine hit of recognition and adulation, which was becoming increasingly hard to come by. We’ve had our fair share of adventures, sure. “The French Fry Ghost,” “The Misshapen Croissant,” and “The Waiter Who Served Us Toilet Water” all come to mind (and you can read about them in my forthcoming (i.e., never to be finished) memoir, which is tentatively titled, I Find Your Existence Intolerable. ) I suppose I’d been looking for a fresh start in Tacoma, a chance to be the star of my own story. I’d devoted nearly a decade of my life to amassing a small fan base and even smaller fortune co-starring as Rutherford Beulah, the sassy and possibly gay (but that was never confirmed in the series proper) medical examiner on The Aesthetician’s Daughter , a procedural crime drama that ran for eight seasons on CBS. I was still cashing fairly sizable residual checks some ten years after the show aired its final episode in 2011. Not enough for me to continue living in Los Angeles (or even Seattle), but all things considered, I was doing pretty well for a guy whose professional ambition had evaporated along with his career. Redford, on the other hand, was a lot of things I was not. He was the toughest guy I’d ever met. He could drink a gallon of milk in under ten minutes, and, long before I met him, he had already been a preteen arsonist, a drug store model, and, because he refused to let anyone forget, the alleged writer of “Detachable Penis.” To back this up, Redford frequently pointed to his status as the former frontman of Pig Hooves on Porcelain and  Tacos at the Yard Sale, bands with which he’d achieved success similar to that of King Missile around the same time, albeit mostly regionally. I can’t say I totally believed him, but I also can’t say he was lying. He was my friend and I did him the courtesy of trying to take what he said at face value. If something didn’t add up, I would just let the mystery endure. Like when we were walking back to my place on the Fourth of July, enjoying the gloom of dejected revelers and drunken, explosion-loving hicks booing the city’s failed fireworks display, and he told me he’d pulled an inside job, a heist on the blasting caps that would have facilitated the city-wide spectacle, I had asked Redford why he was the way he was, and he said, “I grew up in a family without a swimming pool.” That was the last time I ever asked him a question like that. Despite my having just been accosted by a twenty-something convinced I had one foot in the grave, Redford and I still mingled among a small group of hangers-on who had gathered outside Press ESC, the now-defunct escape room that had been converted into a live-music venue. We’d just seen I Don’t Know, Margo!, who were okay, I guess. They had good energy onstage and a couple of their songs, “Beleaguered Robot” and “Dryager (the Dry-Aging Fridge),” had playlist potential. They reminded me a little of bands I listened to in high school—Superchunk and The Refreshments, and maybe a little bit of The Faith Healers and My Bloody Valentine.  It had been hard for me to completely enjoy the concert, though. For one thing, it was really loud and people kept shouting at me to move, saying I was too tall, that I was blocking them from recording the show on their phones. That was annoying, sure, but it’s not what really bothered me. What really bugged me was seeing Wilson, the band’s lead singer, come so close to achieving actual success. He and I recently had a falling out when I accompanied Redford to Wilson’s house a few months ago. (Wilson had inherited a six-bedroom Spanish Revival in North Tacoma when his mother died. He used the rest of the money she’d left him to record and promote I Don’t Know, Margo!’s debut album, The Donut Man of Wilfordshire .) Redford and Wilson were sitting together at a glossy white grand piano, singing “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs” ( Frasier was a major touchstone for them both, and, they assumed, because I used to work in television, that it was a big deal for me too). I was on the floor sipping a warm Diet Dr. Pepper Wilson had pulled from a gym bag. There wasn’t any furniture in the house other than the grand piano. Not a couch, not a loveseat, not even a folding chair.  The lack of furniture had been perplexing, but who was I to say what was normal for a guy like Wilson? I kept my mouth shut. It was a feat I managed until Wilson started talking about how he knew a guy who was looking to sell a rhinoceros, and that he was thinking about buying the beast. Wilson was either lying or he actually knew a guy who trafficked in endangered animals—I didn’t really care. What bothered me was the way Wilson pronounced “rhinoceros,” like it was a hyphenate. He pronounced everything after rhino as “ess-aeros,” so it came out “rhino-ess-aeros.” At that point, I just had to say something.  We don’t need to get into the particulars. Words were exchanged, obviously. We both said some things I’m sure we neither regret. I was accused of mansplaining. I told Wilson it’s not mansplaining if we’re both men. He said that shouldn’t matter. I accused him of appropriating another gender’s grievances. He told me to not take another goddamned sip of his Diet Dr. Pepper. I did anyway. Things between me and Wilson were pretty tense ever since *** The small group outside Press ESC was already well acquainted with Redford, and some knew of me—or they had enough passing knowledge of The Aesthetician’s Daughter  to smile and nod in polite recognition—so it was no surprise that Redford and I were invited for post-show drinks at the Camp Bar, a summer-camp-themed pseudo dive bar a few blocks away. Redford graciously accepted the invitation on behalf of us both. And while the idea of drinking myself into oblivion with a bunch of twenty-somethings, whose stars were on a more convincingly upward trajectory than mine maybe ever had been, sounded about as appealing as sitting next to my father, glassy-eyed and speechless, watching a video of his most recent colonoscopy (true story), I smiled and said it sounded like fun.  It didn’t really matter; I was otherwise preoccupied with the prospect of calling Quincy, my ex-girlfriend, about an article in Jezebel  I assumed she—or someone on her PR team—had leaked. It was a puff piece about her and her new boyfriend that not only suggested she and I were never actually an item, but that after The Aesthetician’s Daughter  ended, I had begun living in exile in the Pacific Northwest with some strange man.  It was a phone call I had been putting off for the better part of the day. The walk to the bar was short, which made it easier for me to maintain a respectable distance from Wilson and his entourage, which had swallowed Redford whole and didn’t spit him back out again until we were inside the bar. By the time I caught sight of him again, Redford had already ordered a round of Coors Extra Gold (in cans) and shots of whiskey for everyone in the bar. Wilson handed me a can, along with a nod and a curt, “Vernon,” in lieu of an actual “Hello.” Wilson insisted on calling me by my first name, even though everyone else called me Jones. I once asked him whether Wilson was his first or last name and he told me it was just Wilson, like Madonna or Cher. I asked him what about Seal? He said that was different, that it wasn’t a real moniker; it was a showy stage name. “It lacks authenticity, Vernon,” he’d said. The group sat down at a long table with our drinks. Wilson pulled Redford into the seat next to him, so that he was flanked by a handful of I Don’t Know, Margo! fans and the drummer, Annie. Annie had just flashed me one of those genuine smiles of recognition that faded into what I interpreted as a knowing smugness, possibly related to her and Wilson’s successful heist of my only friend, and possibly related to what I assumed was her knowledge of the dismal state of my personal and professional affairs.  With no other seats available, I sidled up next to the bassist. I figured the bassist, with his menial, minor-third position within the group dynamic, would lift my spirits. I’m sure he was used to being in close proximity to talent and stardom. In other words, I was pretty sure he would be grateful for my company.  “Good show tonight. You like King Missile or The Faith Healers?” I asked. “I have no fucking idea who that is,” the bassist said, without looking up from his phone. An unlit, hand-rolled cigarette dangled from his lips. He was really texting up a storm. After a second, his thumb stopped moving, and he said, “Hey, man, how do you spell Sphincter? Is it S-P-H-Y-N-C-T-E-R? Or is there a G in it? My auto-correct keeps changing it to Sphinx.” “An I instead of the Y, and no G,” I said, “Just like Leon Sphincter.” “Leon Sphincter? Is that a thing? Is that a real person?” “You bet it is,” I said and looked around the bar. “He’s probably here tonight. Retired in Tacoma after he lost that fight with Mike Tyson.” The bassist looked at me for a second, not quite ready to believe or disbelieve what I’d said. “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asked. “How do you mean?” “I mean your face, it looks really familiar.” “I used to be on TV,” I said. “But that was a long time ago now.” “Yeah, that’s it! You were on TV,” the bassist said.“What show, though?” “ The Aesthetician’s Daughter ,” I said, though I was beginning to think it didn’t matter what I told him. “Shit, really? I could’ve sworn it was something else. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. You sure you didn’t, like, host Survivor  or a gameshow or something?” “Well,” I told the bassist, “maybe it was before your time.” This remark seemed to please him. As a reward for acknowledging his youth, and lack of knowledge about anything that occurred or was created before 1998, he offered me a second hand-rolled cigarette that had been perched behind his left ear. I didn’t smoke, but I still gladly accepted his offer. I rolled the cigarette between my thumb and index finger and watched Redford confer with Wilson and Annie and the other followers. I was amazed at his ability to command their attention, the way his high forehead, effortless smile, and mutton chop sideburns seemed to make him belong in this bar, this town, and among these people.  I felt a stinging need to get to the bottom of the Jezebel  article, and, if I’m being honest, to hear Quincy’s voice again. So I excused myself and went outside.  Quincy Wurtz, my former co-star (she played the eponymous daughter of the aesthetician) and sometimes-girlfriend, had been spotted canoodling in Vancouver with Derek Austerlitz, her more “age-appropriate” co-star from her new show, Don’t Watch Your Heroes Eat . Quincy starred as Farley Farheim, the proprietor of a greasy-spoon diner frequented by a cast of colorful, yet mostly ineffectual, superheroes. Derek played the show’s Superman ripoff, Supremian, a nigh-invulnerable half man, half chimp hero with a fondness for Farley’s buttermilk pancakes (that’s not a euphemism).  Quincy had broken things off with me not long after I moved to Tacoma. She said maintaining our relationship wouldn’t be fair to me, on account of the hours she put in at work. I’m now convinced she was spending what little time she had off banging Derek. I can’t say that I blame her, much like their onscreen counterparts, the two enjoyed an undeniable chemistry.  I probably should’ve seen it coming. Quincy had a habit of falling in love with anyone who fell in love with her, which explained our on again, off again relationship over the past few years. I was in love with Quincy, but sometimes I think I was more in love with the idea that being with Quincy meant I could, someday, if I chose to, reclaim my place in the world I’d left behind. Either way, you’d think the mental image of her knocking boots with a guy who earned his SAG card pretending to be an indestructible half-chimp would bother me. And I guess it did. But I couldn’t really blame her. I was once in the same room as Derek when he’d taken his shirt off, and I’m pretty sure it made me about half as gay as most people already assumed I was *** The Camp Bar was smack dab in the middle of the Hilltop neighborhood. The building itself was bracketed by two empty lots. One was fringed with weedy overgrowth that partially obscured a concrete staircase leading from the sidewalk to, well, nowhere. On the other side was a trash-strewn parking lot that the Camp Bar shared with the brilliantly-named Grocery & Deli. The place had a turquoise awning that advertised CHICKEN & GYROS, and even FRESH SANDWICHES. I stared at my phone and lit the bassist’s hand-rolled cigarette with the brass lighter I always kept with me, a gift from my mother when I first moved to Los Angeles. On it was engraved the words: “Trust No One.” Mom was a big X-Files  fan.  While I waited for Quincy to answer my call, I blew smoke into the crisp winter air, pleased to see the night sky was not at all cloudy but was instead full of stars.   My call went to voicemail—Quincy was either on set or on Derek—so I ad-libbed some nonsensical message about libel and slander and a possible defamation lawsuit over the article. When I hung up, I felt guilty about being so aggressive and fired off an impotent text: Q. Call or text when you can? I miss you. When I put my phone in my jacket pocket I noticed a familiar, let’s say, vagabond, sitting on the sidewalk to my right, with his back against the Camp Bar’s wall. I’d been known to give this vagabond a few bucks from time to time. He was wearing camouflage cargo pants (probably why I didn’t see him at first), a pair of dusty work boots, and a lived-in waxed canvas jacket that I’m sure Redford would consider throwing his grandmother off a bridge for. His face was mostly obscured by a heavy red beard on the bottom and the rolled brim of a Pennzoil trucker cap on the top. I liked the guy; he felt authentic. That’s what I told myself had brought me to Tacoma. It was the antithesis of Hollywood, a place where being a card-carrying member of the Perpetual Hustle Gang wasn’t a prerequisite to belong. A place where people weren’t constantly trying to make something—themselves, usually—happen. Where people were neither mired in the past nor overly fixated on the future, they were just, you know, living life, relieved to still exist. I don’t know, maybe I was projecting too much of myself onto the people of this crusty burg.  The guy lifted his head in my direction and smiled. I assumed it was because he knew I was an easy touch for a few loose bucks. “Ladies got you down?” he asked. It was the first time he’d spoken to me and the first time he looked at me with something other than incredulity. He had a honeyed voice that belied the life I imagined he must live: panhandling or foraging for food by day before bedding down in a soiled tent under an overpass every night.  “Oh, you know, same shit, different day,” I said, pleased with how genuinely folksy I sounded.  “I hear ya, man,” he told me. “Don’t let ‘em get you down, okay?” “Roger that. Over and out.” I’m not sure why I said that, but I assume it had something to do with his hat. I searched my pockets for loose change, a few bucks, anything. All I came up with was a ticket stub, a tissue, two Werther’s Originals, and an expired Subway Club card. I’m not sure what bothered me more, that the contents of my pockets suggested I had somehow turned into my grandmother or that nothing on or of my person would be of real value to someone in need. I held out my hands to show him they were empty and said, “I’m so sorry. Can I get you next time?” I contorted my face to convey that I understood his struggle, that I sympathized with his inability to get his shit together and that I, like him, also faced each day with the knowledge that time was running out for me to find purpose in this life. That instead of looking forward, I was too often inclined to stare longingly over my shoulder into the past. But, when I communicated this to him, he removed his hat and glared at me. With his hat off, I could see that he wasn’t some grizzled drifter man. He was young, certainly younger than me—by a decade at least, maybe more. He calmly asked me why I was offering to get him next time.  “Because you’re a... person in need?” “I need of what? Your money? Your help?” “You’re not hungry?” “Man, if I was hungry I’d go and buy myself something to eat,” he stood, so that we were eye-level with one another. “I teach at the university. I have tenure, fella.” “No shit? Well, good for you.” I was stalling, trying to recall where it was that I’d seen him and what he’d been doing that made me think he was homeless. I tried to remember whether he ever actually signaled to me that he wanted money, and I don’t know if he ever did. I recall pulling my car into an empty parking space on the university’s downtown campus. I was on my way to The Swiss to hear some local band play and to get a good old-fashioned drunk going with Redford. It was probably nine o’clock at night and pretty dark out. The guy was sitting on the ground, leaning against a window and he recoiled from my headlights like they were burning out his retinas. But he didn’t move. It was like he’d been there all day, like he was protecting his turf. This was a good spot and he wasn’t going to give it up without a fight. While I was paying for parking I heard him say something in my general direction. I assumed he was asking for spare cash so I gave him a few bucks. “Why didn’t you ever say anything, then? Why’d you take my money?” “Oh, those four dollars you held out like they were the cure for cancer? Because it’s embarrassing.” “Okay, yeah, I can see that. Well, I tell you what, maybe don’t sit on sidewalks so much?” “No, for you. It’s embarrassing for you.” I thought about this for a second and said, “So, uh, what do you teach?” *** When I re-entered the Camp Bar it was with Walt the Philosophy Professor, my new friend who was not homeless but was  mercifully understanding about the way I had misread his outward persona. Redford was standing at the head of the table, regaling Wilson, Annie, and the other hangers-on with the story of the time when he and I watched David Bowie eat an entire croque monsieur at Café Presse in Seattle. When he finished the sandwich, the Thin White Duke got up from his table, winked at Redford, and, clear as day, said, “Tacos at the Yard Sale, right? Great. Just great.” That seemed to be enough for Bowie. He left the restaurant and vanished into the back seat of a black Lincoln.  Without breaking his storytelling stride—he was at the part where we sat in utter disbelief until a waiter asked us to order something or please leave—Redford’s eyes drifted from me to Walt with a look that, in my mind, intimated a kind of betrayal. At that moment, I began to give serious consideration to the idea that my tendency to pick up and befriend strange, seemingly itinerant men played some part in perpetuating certain falsehoods that had plagued me throughout my career. Weirdly, those same falsehoods were what aided me in avoiding a significant ass-kicking from Walt moments ago, and to persuade him that I, too, was the victim of a pernicious untruth. Outside, I had showed Walt my phone. It was open to the Jezebel article sent to me by my former agent, Jefferson Mintz. The piece frequently used the word “squee” to describe the author’s approval of seeing Quincy and Derek hold hands and kiss on the streets of Vancouver. As in “Look at the joy of young (and this time we are happy to report it’s actually young) love blossoming on the set of Quincy Wurtz’s new TV show in British Columbia. Squee!” The article also mentioned the poor ratings for Don’t Watch Your Heroes Eat, and that Quincy was in the running for the lead role in a new big-budget dystopian sci-fi film called No Such Thing as Nothing . Then it mentioned that Quincy was previously rumored to have been dating Vernon Jones, her “much older co-star who enjoyed a recurring role on The Aesthetician’s Daughter, and was last seen living in Tacoma, WA with an unidentified male partner.” “You know what bothers me the most, Walt? Can I call you Walt?” I asked when he handed me back my phone. “It’s not that Quincy was thirty-three when we were dating, all of ten years my junior, mind you. It’s the phrase ‘Recurring role.’ Recurring role? What is that bullshit? I was the  co-star . That’s what you call the person who appeared in all one hundred and seventy-six goddamned episodes of a hit series. Check IMDb, Jezebel,  you lazy fucking knobs. Recurring role, my puckered asshole. And who’s their source on this? Who is this mysterious someone who claims to have seen me living with ‘an unidentified male partner’? Why does everyone think I’m dating Redford? It’s like the world is angry that I’m not.” It was then that Walt confessed he thought I looked familiar. It turns out, he used to watch four-hour afternoon marathons of The Aesthetician’s Daughter  on TBS with his mother while she was bedridden with complications from lupus. “She never understood why your character was on the show, but she thought you were really funny,” he told me. “She was always laughing at you.” Backhanded compliments aside, my heart had been sufficiently warmed and, as a way of apologizing for thinking him a vagrant, I offered to buy Walt a drink.  Walt and I stood at the bar, drinking fresh cans of Extra Gold. I gave him the abridged versions of a couple of my best Redford Davis stories. I told him about the time we crashed the Thanksgiving dinner of a woman who’d been sending Redford nudes and whose husband was such a big fan of Pig Hooves on Porcelain he had the band name tattooed on his chest, right above his heart. The woman’s palpable discomfort and her husband’s obvious joy, along with his in-laws’ refusal to believe we were anything other than vagrants, made that Thanksgiving arguably the best I’d ever been a part of. And I say this while also admitting that the turkey was dry and the sides were, well…uninspired. Then I told him about the time Redford accompanied me to an Aesthetician’s Daughter  fan convention in Wisconsin. We got lost looking for the hotel pool and wound up mediating a substantial drug buy between some track-suited Russian gangsters and a quiet Midwestern couple who’d been manufacturing meth on their family farm.  Walt politely internalized and contemplated these stories with greater emphasis than even I thought they deserved.  Then he hit me with this: “Well,” Walt said, “the way I figure it is there are simply no words in the current generation’s lexicon for the relationship you and Redford seem to have. As far as I can tell, they see two men who understand each other the way you and Redford do, who’re committed to each other the way you two are, and they just assume it’s some torrid love affair. They’ve shipped you without your consent, Jones. It seems to me that you and Redford are the victims of their goddamned fan fiction.” Just as Walt was wrapping up his theory, I overheard Redford conclude the David Bowie story. He then immediately segued into a story about the time he joined James Van Der Beek’s bookclub. I knew how this one went: he was kicked out because he kept saying “fuck” (the club was reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover ) when what the Beek had requested everyone say was “make love.” Only that was my story. I was the one who had been kicked out of James Van Der Beek’s bookclub for the excessive use of the word “fuck.” That was right around the time I failed to land a guest spot on CSI: Cyber  and Patricia Arquette stopped returning my phone calls.  I could have stepped in and called foul. I could have claimed the story as was my right. But Wilson and Annie and the others were all laughing hysterically. Redford was in the zone. The attention and the adoration, it was like mother’s milk to him. I thanked Walt for his understanding and for the scholarly analysis of my situation. I then looked over his shoulder at Redford, who had grown silent. As if on cue, an uneasy hush came over the table. One by one, Wilson, Annie, and the bassist all tracked Redford’s gaze across the bar to where it met my own. Redford was waiting for me to say something, to decide if he could continue telling this story—my story—or not.  For just a moment I saw this as my chance to reclaim yet another piece of me that had been lost. But then I thought, who was I to deny Redford this thing he wanted in front of a captive audience? Who was I to pass up the most meaningful collaboration to come my way in years? “What are you looking at me for?” I said. “This is Redford’s show. And believe me when I tell you, he’s got a good one lined up.” Kevin earned an MFA in Creative Fiction from Eastern Washington University where he teaches English Composition and Creative Writing. He is at work on a collection of short stories, some of which can be seen in Clamor, Bigfoot Country Anthology, the tiny journal, Gavialidae, and in ann upcoming issue and FailBetter. His short story, “Say it with Your Eyes Closed,” was voted Best Fiction of 2023 on BarBar Literary Magazine.