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She worships at his feet. She doesn’t care that I exist. She stands at the foot of the stage, looking up at him with adoring eyes, his face stretched in monochrome across her little round breasts, the knots of her nipples poking through at his illustrated cheeks. She submits her lithe body to the rhythms of his sound, her slender midriff writhing, head rolling, hair flying in orgasmic supplication. She leans levered over the barricade, a flower reaching for sunlight, her bronze skin shining with the heat of his rhythms, the heat of the venue, the heat of the lights and the dimmers and the pumping amps, the heat of 5,000 other bodies, just like hers, surging to the rhythmic trance of his music. He stands in his exalted place, before her on the thrust of the stage, his guitar the scepter in his hands, his pulpit the semicircle of monitor wedges I arrange for him each day and mix for him each night, his mixes the ones most frequently in the cue wedge beside me as I listen for any problems, any feedback, any ringing in his vocal mic. The two wedges at his sides feed him the sounds of his backing band and his own guitar. The two in front of him—between her and him—carry nothing but his own voice, bone dry and carefully tuned, with a 31-band equalizer all to itself in the rack beside my elbow. At his feet, the printed set lists taped to the stage each night by his guitar tech, the name of tonight’s town handwritten in magic marker block letters, blue this time. His high-end tube microphone handled only by his tech, set up on the boom stand that I provide, a respectful distance from his guitar and decorated with colorful scarves, the mic cord wrapped discreetly, a friction clip loaded with guitar picks, which he flicks out to his fans as if coins to a crowd of beggars. Even though she is almost at his feet, he doesn’t pick her out of the crowd, doesn’t appreciate her glistening beauty as I do, doesn’t deserve her focused attention, her nipples poking at his cheeks. He has all the attention in this great hall, 10,000 eyes caressing his rugged face, his beaded locs, the wiry muscles of his arms and chest exposed by the colorful vest that serves as his shirt. Even I, lurking black t-shirt in my shadowy corner, serve to exalt him, my desk of dials, knobs, and faders solely dedicated to making sure he and his band of hired guns can hear themselves, can hear each other, can hear him, his guitar, his voice, the unexpected orders he sometimes calls out, cueing his assembled musicians to make sudden turns in new and unexpected directions. He has their full attention, the backline hanging on his every whim. He really should have my full attention as well, although the hard part of my job was done before the doors opened and the crowd surged in and the rows of seats were rendered obsolete. Maybe he does see her, right there at his feet. But she is just one of 5,000 here for his show, easily a 100 of whom, on any given night, as on so many nights before, would follow him at a crook of his finger, out to the buses gleaming behind the building, beside the eight-bunk bus for his backing band, into his own bus, the most luxurious, tucked closest to the building, tied into the venue’s electricity and water and sewer, and would follow him into the stateroom where he rests in satin-sheet luxury while I collapse in a console lid—or a truck sleeper, or a hotel room if I’m really lucky—and would give themselves to him for the taking, if only so they could say they had done it. Maybe she is one of those women. Those girls. Maybe she’s old enough that it wouldn't be illegal. Maybe she isn’t old enough, and it would be illegal, but the weed smoke thick in the air, intoxicating us all along with his music, hints that maybe illegal doesn’t matter all that much. I watch her bouncing, grooving to his rhythms, worshiping him with her eyes and with her body, and I grip the edge of my desk as I picture her doing the same in the luxurious stateroom of his bus, his face no longer screen-printed across her round little breasts, her torso writhing just like that, her nipples knotted like that between his strong fingers, her skirt discarded, or perhaps draped around her legs and his pelvis, tented around the place where his body thrusts into hers, while she grooves and sweats to his driving rhythms, raises her arms, and lifts her hair to cool her hot nape. Yes, just like that, as the song comes to an end and she drops out of her wild dancing to fan herself and catch her breath. “Yo! Monitors!” The bassist’s voice shouts my de-facto name on this tour, on any tour really, dragging my attention away from her, back to this stage, which is my job. I see him gesture a what-the-fuck, the drummer beyond him also looking at me with panic in his eyes. Something sounds wrong. The stage sounds wrong. I scan my rig in a panic, the bridge gauges illuminated as they should be, the rack of equalizers and compressors still lit up beside me, and I’m about to look underneath at the racks of amplifiers at my knees when I see the row of bright red lights, one at the fader for each channel on the board, activated by the illuminated red button forgotten beneath my thumb, the button labeled “D”, the programmable scene mute that a lot of us set up as a sort of parking brake, one button to mute every channel on the entire board. The button that I seem to have accidentally pressed as I gripped the edges of the desk, while she was riding him like that, there in the climate-controlled stateroom of his bus. I press that illuminated red button and the row of bright red lights goes out. The stage sounds like it should again. I look up to grimace an apology as the star of the show—the man whose name is on every poster, on every ticket in every pocket, the man whose art and charisma carries the entire six-figure economy of tonight’s show—glances at me over his shoulder from his pulpit of monitors.  The girl who is watching his every move, her eyes follow his, and for the first time, she sees me, at my electronic desk in my shadowy wing, sweating in my filthy t-shirt, my face hot with shame. Jay Parr (he/they) was a roadie a long time ago. He lives with his partner and child in North Carolina, where he did an MFA at UNCG in the early '00s and is now a lecturer in their online liberal and interdisciplinary studies program. He's honored to have work in Bending Genres, Cutbow Quarterly, the Mirrors Reflecting Shadows anthology, Five Minutes, Mid-Level Management Magazine, Reckon Review, Roi Fainéant, Bullshit Lit, Identity Theory, SugarSugarSalt, Anti-Heroin Chic, Dead Skunk Magazine, Discretionary Love, Streetcake Magazine, and Variant Literature Journal.

It was going to be a dark and stormy night. Watching the clouds roll across the horizon, I anticipated a crack from the thunder that was due to come. Depending on how close the storm was, we could feel the house shake. I learnt my lesson from that one violent storm where I kept working and a lightning strike caused a blackout that wiped my computer clean. Now, whenever I sensed a storm coming, it meant I got a paid night off. That's what made those nights the best nights. Amelia always thought I was too busy for her – except for those nights. We even began to create an impromptu ritual. She pretended to be scared, and of course, her big, strong dad would come in and save the day!  “Dad, Dad! Look! It’s going to rain.” “Oh no Amelia! What if the power went out? I should probably get the torches and put new batteries in, huh?” As her eyes lit up brighter than the torches ever could, she hurriedly walked to the lounge area, putting away all her toys in anticipation. As I walked around the corner, I snuck my head back. I watched her clean faster, and more productively than ever before. Just so she didn’t think I was spying, I picked up the torches, and headed back.  “Torches, check.” “Room cleared, check!”  “Amelia, what else do we need?” “Pillows! Blankets!” “Haha! Of course, we need to build our castle to protect us from the storm!” Brigid stuck her head out from the kitchen, wanting to play along too. Resigned to the fact that she could never surpass me as the cool parent, finding lesser roles to play during the daddy-daughter adventure was the only way she knew how to be included.  “I suppose I’m on S’mores duty again. You weren’t happy with my last fort!” Amelia gasped in excitement. “Really Mum? S’mores? Am I able to eat lots this time?” “Depends on how good you and your father build the castle.” The first crack of the storm broke through our discussions, and I looked at Amelia with a serious look on my face.  “Oh no, the storm seems to be coming early! We need to build quick! Mum might need to work on the S’mores too – you know, so we don’t run out of energy.”  “Ok, ok, I know when I’m not wanted.” Brigid walked back into the kitchen and began preparing the S’mores. We knew she meant business when we could hear multiple packets open, with the biscuits making a loud sound as they tumbled onto a plate, awaiting production. Knowing we had to make sure that it was built before she came back with our sugary feast, Amelia and I started collecting everything to get the build started. “C’mon Amelia. Let’s try to get it organised before your Mum gets back with snacks.” Using chairs to create corners, we then started stacking the lounge pillows to create a wall. Carefully, we draped the blanket in between chairs to make our doorway. I wanted to create something special - something actually suggested by Brigid, that would completely change our rainy night adventures.  “Amelia, could you go in the kitchen, and see how long mum needs before our S’mores would be ready?” “Of course! Don’t do too much without me though daddy.” “I won’t.” As soon as Amelia disappeared from sight, I got to work. I grabbed some of the smaller pillows and the orange blanket I purposely left to the side. I carefully crawled into the space laying the three cushions into a circle and put the blanket in the centre to create a rough mound shape. Forgetting the torch, I figured we could bring that in when I showed Amelia the set up. I quickly got back out and pretended to work on stabilising the wall. Amelia saw me, and thought I was doing more of the build without her.  “You said you would wait!”  “I was, the wall just looked a little unstable, so I was fixing it. Was Mum able to let you know about the food?” Brigid stuck her head out, pretending to be annoyed that I was asking too many questions. “It’s coming, it’s coming.”  “Fantastic! Amelia, if we’re careful, do you think we should eat them inside the castle?” Her eyes widened at the thought. “Really, can we?”  “Sure. You will need to take the torch with you, so you can see where you are going of course. It’s a big castle we built.” “Ok.”  Getting onto all fours, Amelia dragged the torch along the carpet whilst trying to enter. I followed closely and knew exactly when she saw it from her gasp. She instinctively sat on a cushion, waiting for me.  “Dad, why are there three pillows?” “Well, if Mum is bringing in the food, it’s only fair she gets to stay.” “Ok. MUM, ARE YOU COMING?” “Yes, yes, but you might need to hold the blanket door open for me.”  We all got into position, and I grabbed the torch that Amelia left to the side of her. I positioned it under my chin, and then turned the light on, illuminating my face in the most unflattering way.  “With all this spppoooookkky weather, what better thing to do than tell ghost stories by the campfire…”  “Can you start Dad? I want to eat one of Mum’s S’mores first.”  Joanne Macias is a multi-disciplinary writer from Sydney with multiple publications, both online and print. She is an alumnus of the Westwords Academy, having participated in 2023. Her works explore themes of discovery, identity, and internal strength. Although only writing for a short period, being creative was nothing new, as she is an avid photographer and line artist. Her art has been recognised and shared by well-known musicians and her first photo published with Illographo press. If not at her desk working on her debut YA novel, she is being distracted by her neighbour's cat. Follow her adventures at @joanne_macias­_writer

birthday toads children laugh singing sapo verde to you, some  green jumped-up  gringo from the top rope hit with a steel chair when the ref wasn’t looking bah gawd almighty  hummingbird in a wind tunnel for science, to see   why they’re so unflappable oh hey irony kid in the oral surgeon’s chair staring at his  hands transforming with gloves, oh boy he is now a mouse space bears i thought i misheard like ursa major, minor it bears  repeating J. R. Wilkerson is a DC-area resident by way of Lawrenceburg, Missouri.

Kihyana is sixteen and wears CDG and thrift store jeans three sizes too big. She likes stompy boots with spikes. She occasionally dyes her hair red. Kihyana is the hero of this story. In a different family, she could be the prodigal daughter, or Homer’s Odysseus, traveling the world to slay Cyclops and save villages. She would return home safe and sound to a family who welcomes her back from her adventures with joy. “Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother.” Kihyana’s life is more Cinderella than Little Red Riding Hood: whenever she calls me, she is cleaning the kitchen or babysitting her two sisters. When the youngest, Khiyumi, was born, she asked me, “But Grandma, isn’t three too many?” Kihyana gets stuck watching Khloee and Khiyumi because their mother needs her beauty sleep and can’t miss her favorite TV reality shows. And where was her father – my son -- in all this? (Where was Little Red’s father, when her mother was sending her out through the woods to bring goodies to her sick grandma?) Milo had been sentenced the summer before she was born, and went to jail a month after Kihyana’s birth. War on drugs. Other kinds of goodies. Now, he plied the grey market trying to feed a family of five in a Red State tough on crime. I sent all the money I could, trying to keep them off the streets from 800 miles away. The wolf-dog was the only stability in Kihyana’s life. I don’t think her escape will involve being saved by a huntsman or a prince. I hope she will live happily ever after. “Grandma, I pierced my lip.” “Why, sweetheart, why would you hurt yourself like that?” “Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me get it pierced, so I took a needle and did it myself.” I am appalled that my granddaughter – the gentlest, most vulnerable child, who saves turtles lost in the road and wouldn’t hurt a spider – has mutilated her body. In the Instagram post she sends me, her chin and throat dripping with blood, superimposed with “Kihyana Must Die.” Zuko the wolf-dog nuzzles her leg in the background. I want the blood to be fake. I want to be supportive, so I don’t ask.  The mother, who was named Carly or Cardi (you never knew which of her stories were truth, which delusion) but changed her name to Kharlie, “because Kharlie sounds like a celebrity’s name,” treated Kihyana as her doll, as if she owned her daughter’s body. She bleached and straightened four-year-old Kihyana’s hair until clumps fell out; pinched the pimples on her teenage daughter’s face, leaving dark spots on her nose and forehead; and posed her draped provocatively in mini skirts and tube tops to get likes on YouTube. What is most important is that the children look fashionable: “Clothes express who they are.” Kharlie insisted on picking out what the children wore until Kihyana refused, shredding the chosen garments and using them to pad the bed of her guinea pig’s cage. She pulled out the box braids Kharlie made her sit still for hours to put in, and started wearing her father’s undershirts and baggy jeans. This sent Kharlie into a rage. She cannot tolerate any hint of her daughter’s separate identity. “Kihyana is just like me.” Kihyana has grown taller than her mother, but she still winces at Kharlie’s wrath. The last time I saw her, Kihyana was wearing Kharlie’s “tummy trainer.” I stared in disbelief. ( Grandma, what big eyes you have.) “Why would you wear such a thing?” “Mom said it would give me an hourglass figure.” “But it’s squishing your organs and cutting off your breath.” “I can breathe fine, Grandma.” What daughter doesn’t want her mother’s love and attention? “Instead of mangling your body, can’t you express yourself through singing? You’ve always loved music.” Kihyana sings to herself all the time, while she scrolls through videos on her phone, while she washes the dishes and cleans her sisters’ bedrooms, when she locks herself in her room to mute her sisters’ tantrums, her parents’ fighting. She memorizes the songs to musicals, knows all the words to Wicked  and Six , belts out 1980s songs of her parents’ generation: “Through the Fire” by Chaka Kahn and the Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Kharlie says “Kihyana has the voice of an angel.” Then: “She doesn’t need school; she can get an agent and make millions.” “No, Mom; you’re the one who wants to be a star.” Kihyana loves the K-Pop band BTS, despite her mother’s taunting and purposefully mispronouncing their names. “Why do you want to sing those foreign songs?” “Grandma, will you get me Lingodeer, so I can learn Korean?” I sent her links for high school exchange programs, hoping for her escape. She surprised me by filling out the applications on her own. “You know, I could never let Kihyana leave me; she’s my baby. What would I do without her?” It’s true that Kharlie needs Kihyana: to watch Khloee and take care of Khiyumi, make dinner and do the laundry, feed the pets and walk Zuko, even though he weighs twice as much and pulls her down the road. Kihyana is her mother’s maid, nanny and confidante. When Kihyana FaceTimes me to help her with homework, Kharlie yells at her to clean the kitchen, or grabs the phone to tell me her plans to “live off the grid” in Alaska. Kihyana is failing high school. She’s attended 13 different schools since Kindergarten, having moved continuously and never spending more than one year anywhere. She started ninth grade already seven classes behind, and didn’t pass any of tenth grade. Milo thinks I care too much about school, and Kharlie wants Kihyana to become rich and famous on TikTok. I told Kihyana I would help her study for her GED. “But Grandma, I want to finish high school.” *** For years after they moved to Georgia, I begged her parents to let Kihyana visit me. I wasn’t sick, but since COVID I spend a lot more time in bed. The Arboretum near my house is more Tree Museum than darkened woods. What danger did they fear in allowing her to leave the house and visit her grandmother for a week or two? She could even bring the wolf-dog. When she finally made it to my house last summer, Kihyana immediately shed her designer outfit and put on my T-shirt and sweatpants. When she leaves, I have one less pair of socks. She amazes me with her knowledge of other countries and languages, always has a new craft project she learned from YouTube. The last time I saw her, she was watching tutorials on installing lined finger escapes in Fursuit paws and sewing a white and purple wolf head with Mochi Indoor Sock Paws. That was years ago. At sixteen, she has outgrown furry animals, and asks me for an electric guitar and a Basquiat skateboard. Kihyana and I were close when she was little. After moving back and forth across the country, Milo stayed in California trying to get his grow business off the ground after graduating from Oaksterdam University, “America's first cannabis college.” Kharlie brought three-year-old Kihyana to me on the Greyhound bus, arriving in what was then a bad part of town at 10 p.m., with no other clothes but the outfit she was wearing, boots with no socks even though it was April. I put her in Milo’s old pajamas and the next day bought her shirts with hearts and “Best Granddaughter Ever.” She picked out Brown Cow yogurt, chamomile tea and her favorite red panda stuffed animal. I rubbed her feet with lavender oil, recited fairy tales and sang her lullabies until she fell asleep in my bed, murmuring, “The better to eat you with, my dear.” After a week, Kihyana stopped having night terrors. She never asked for her mom and dad. Kharlie’s Great Aunt Agnes had called me in the middle of the night to tell me mother and child were robbed at gunpoint: “you have to go and get that baby, or they’ll come back and take her, too!” Agnes only spoke in crisis and hyperbole. I couldn’t tell how much was truth, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out. I told Kharlie she, too, could stay with me, but she insisted on going straight home: “I can’t just leave my clothes and things.” I told her it would all work out. “I’ll keep Kihyana, so you and Milo can have space to figure out your lives.” Kharlie had moved to Atlanta with Kihyana the year before on a whim, hoping to become a star in Black Hollywood. Agnes said she was selling hair extensions and made friends with some shady clients. Agnes was lying and delusional, certainly a big part of where Kharlie got it from. According to Kharlie, she, her brother and sister were raised by “Grandma” Agnes, their grandfather’s sister, after their mother became hooked on crack. Their mother was also raised by Grandma Agnes, because the real grandmother was a teenage groupie who followed their famous grandfather and his band, not fit to raise the daughter she had at eighteen. I don’t know how much of this was true, nor did I get the full story of the robbery, just a three-year-old’s heart-rending description: “The robbers took my toys and the computer and stuck their gun in mommy’s nose. They took my puppy and pierced his ear, Grandma.” Eight months after Kihyana came to me, Grandma Agnes told Kharlie she had to come back because I was trying to take Kihyana away from her. In the car, I told Kihyana I was bringing her to her mom; she burst into tears and begged me not to go. Her crying echoes in my head. (Grandma, what big ears you have.) *** I try hard to be kind to Kharlie, for Kihyana’s sake and because she must have had a difficult childhood herself. When he was eighteen, Milo first brought Kharlie home when Grandma Agnes kicked her out after she was expelled from high school for hitting another student. I let her stay with us, and I wrote a letter so she could take summer school math to graduate high school, but she didn’t follow through. I wrote a letter to Kharlie’s job at Leisure World because her boss was treating her unfairly. And a letter when she was pregnant and went to court for assaulting the driver on the bus. Kharlie was always the victim, never at fault. I took her side against my own son the first times she called me crying to say that Milo was treating her badly. After she took Kihyana from me, and Milo brought them out to Oakland, I saw the bruises where she had thrown the phone at his head, the bite marks on his arms. Four-year-old Kihyana called to tell me she’d burned her arm but, “Mommy won’t take me to the doctor because she said they’ll take me away from her.” I flew to California and hired a lawyer. “You can get custody of Kihyana and leave,” I told him. ( Grandma, what big teeth you have.) *** Milo didn’t save himself. His own father had left when he was three, and to Milo, protecting your children meant not leaving. They moved back to Atlanta when Kihyana was ten, had two more children, two dogs, and a revolving cycle of miscellaneous found animals taken in, who eventually die. The wolf-dog was Kihyana’s idea. She always loved animals of every kind. She smuggled home snakes, caught frogs on the swampy edge of the road, hid stray kittens in her closet and lied to her mother that they had mice in the house, so she could keep them. Kharlie hated cats. Cats had boundaries, which signaled to her rejection. Milo never got the dog he begged for as a boy. Throughout his childhood, I was dealing with my own predators, my own demons. I had repeated my mother’s cursed life twice. Milo’s childhood was his father’s rejection, followed by a wicked stepfather, then moving multiple times, not across the country but to other countries, until I was finally able to break the cycle, alas too late to save him. I know better now, but the vindictive god I don’t believe in is punishing me for past sins by refusing me the chance to save Kihyana. Please let it not be too late for her to break free. Resentful that I had refused to get him a dog when he was young, Milo capitulated immediately each time his own child asked for a pet. It was Kihyana’s idea, but Zuko was always Milo’s dog. Wolf. Wolf-dog. But you couldn’t see a trace of dog in him. I asked Kihyana, “Does he howl at the full moon?” “No, but he howls when anyone comes near Khiyumi. She’s the baby of his pack, so he protects her.” This made sense. I always silently said the children were raised by wolves. At nine, Khloee howled if they took her phone away, or told her she couldn’t eat potato chips for dinner. Three-year old Khiyumi stayed up until two AM, jumping on the couch and strewing headless baby dolls across the living room floor. Kihyana learned to make her own meals when she was a toddler. Now there was a real wolf in the house, more parenting than the human-wolves. Unlike in fairy tales, real-life wolves are not deceitful; the wolf is honest and straightforward in hunting its prey. The wolf is a pack animal, protective of its young. Zuko adopted the three girls and took care of his pack. Because they wouldn’t let Kihyana come to me, I had to go to them. Even though I’d vowed never to stay in a home of Kharlie’s again. Every Christmas for three years I flew across the country to Los Angeles. Every year a different house, but always the same scene.  Kharlie pushed and pushed, picked and picked, while Milo tried to head off a fight by agreeing, ignoring, or leaving the house to walk the wolf-dog. Eventually, inevitably, something Milo did, or didn’t do, set Kharlie off.  I cowered with the girls in their room while she ranted; threw dishes, glasses, her phone; followed Milo screaming while he locked himself in the bathroom; and pounded on the door for hours. “BURN IN HELL UR WHOLE FAMILY” The last Christmas I spent with them, Kharlie threatened to take the children away in the middle of the night. I called her sister to try to talk her down, but it was only because the car wouldn’t start that she ended up staying. It is not the wolf holding us hostage. I am apprehensive in their house, anticipating Kharlie’s unavoidable outbursts. The house seethes with tension. Milo speaks on tiptoe, apologizing until Kharlie succeeds at making him snap. The children act out their emotional distress physically, each in a different way. At the teen theater camp Kharlie asked me to pay for three years ago, Kihyana started having neck and shoulder pain, fell off her chair, couldn’t remember what happened. Now, Kihyana shakes and can’t stop; every few weeks she has seizures. The school calls Milo to come pick her up and brings her to the car in a wheelchair. The neurologist told him to take her to a psychologist, but Kharlie convinced Kihyana not to go: “You don’t want to talk to strangers about our business.” The middle one hardly talks at all. Khloee compulsively plays Roblox on her phone with Internet strangers. Kharlie created a fake account that says she’s thirteen, because nine-year-olds are not allowed on the platform. “Khloee, put the phone down to eat. Put the phone away so you can sleep. Leave the phone so you can do your schoolwork.” The tantrums they gave into when she was two and then four are now a full-fledged person’s explosion. Kharlie makes Khloee stand in the corner to feel ashamed that she spilled chips on the rug. Instead, Khloee thrashes her body and shrieks a bloodcurdling cry until she exhausts herself and collapses on the floor. She pulls the blankets off the couch and hides underneath. For now, Khiyumi is the good one, can do no wrong in her mother’s eyes. “What did Khloee do to you? Why won’t Kihyana let you play in her room? Khiyumi is my sweetest baby. You give her your phone or I’m taking it away. Clean up your sister’s room; it’s a pigsty.” Kihyana says she wants to move with her friend Cammy to Brooklyn and do musical theater on Broadway. I tell her I will do anything I can to help her. We are sitting on her bed, a rare peaceful moment. An enormous snout pushes the door open, golden eyes, pointed ears and long, bushy tail. “Will he let me pet him?” “If he thinks you’re part of his pack.” ( Zuko, what big teeth you have.) But he never bit, not even the underage kitten Kihyana had snuck home. Khiyumi named the kitten Smoke; don’t ask me why. Khloee loves Smoke and holds her in a death grip, the only thing aside from Roblox she can call her own. Zuko loves Smoke, too, in a similar way to Khloee. All day long we hear the cat mew, a plaintive appeal to save her from the girl and the wolf. Smoke spends her days squeezed to Khloee’s chest or dangling from Zuko’s mouth. He knows not to crunch her, though, or she would have been gone in an instant. *** I dreamed I was in the New York Public Library reading fairy tales to the children, and there was a mother wolf with cubs. Suddenly, the Wolf Mom had latched onto me with her teeth and wouldn’t let go. We began to merge, transforming the pain and anguish of those children into strength and fierceness. Awakened by the dream, I started looking up Brooklyn apartments for rent. Saturday afternoon I text Kihyana about the theater class she asked me to sign her up for. Her homework was to pick three movies from different time periods and say how they identified with the characters. “Which movies did you decide to use?” “For the 50s movie I chose a Swedish movie, Sommaren med Monika .” “Wonderful! Ingmar Bergman is one of the best directors.” “I liked it a lot.” “Did you identify with Monika?” “Not really. she started acting like a feral wolf-person.” “I love it when she steals the roast and runs away to the woods.” “when she became a wolf! she doesn’t really become a wolf she just acts like one”  “Maybe that was her way of escaping the bonds of society,” I say. “She wanted to be free.”

She often reminisces that when she was a little girl she’d only get to eat full meals on school days, and during her college years she’d buy all her clothes in consignment and thrift stores.     Renowned financial analyst now, she is also a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, a sought-after motivational speaker, and she is on the Board of Trustees for the George R. Sumakhazy Memorial Foundation. In addition, she stands a good chance to be elected the next treasurer of Nuestra Naturaleza, an international environmental organization headquartered in Cartago, Costa Rica.     Aside from that, pretty much everything she does causes a great deal of damage to society or nature, occasionally to both simultaneously. John Szamosi is a wordsmith and peace activist who has published over one hundred short stories, satires and poems in print and online magazines., satires and poems in print and online magazines.

I just read the beginning of a restaurant review in which the writer said the one thing chefs have in common is a mother who can cook, so it is with a grain of salt I continue reading, it’s my restaurant this reviewer is talking about and my mother did  not  cook, she was too busy dying. …the variety is endless, copious, the fusion of cultures otherworldly, and this comes from the pen of one who has known fusion cooking intimately... Our neighbours cooked for us. They used to come and scoop me out of our flat, they coaxed me into their tiny kitchens and hours later I went home with a fully prepared dinner for three. I never left my mother’s side otherwise, everyone said she should be in the hospital but her illness went on for years and I don’t think hospitals offer that kind of residency. ...I cannot call this restaurant unusual, for it is deeper than that, it is abnormal... We lived in Belfast at first but moved to a flat in Derry after she got sick, we needed a less expensive place, a  cheap  place – it was costing everything my father made and then some to keep my mother alive. She was grateful of course but I heard her whisper sometimes,  Tommy my love, it’s good money after bad,  a saying I didn’t understand, but I liked the sound of the first bit,  Tommy my love. ...The beloved crispy halibut of England, mine this day is fried darkly, perfectly, and placed on my plate the shape of the continent itself – wait, is this purposeful? – and in place of Ireland and the French fried potatoes I expect is a mound of curried mash, and we have above Scotland a bright hat of frozen mango slices, beautifully transparent, like so many feathers… Water comes to my mouth when I think of the hallway around the corner where the Sanyal’s apartment was, permanently infused with the strong yet soft scent of Kari, Mrs. S wrote the word out for me, and beside it she wrote  curry  and then crossed it out, on my menu I have done the same, all curry dishes are Kari with her capital K. In her mango-coloured kitchen she taught me the strategy of Indian spices and flavours, we baked bubbly naan that reminded me of roasted marshmallows, she taught me the specific chemistry of different rices, she spelled each out for me and I serve them spelled the same way, I pretend to take note when the correct spelling is offered. ... the sushi, too, is divine, almost excessively so, for should I close my eyes I feel I might open them again in a strange city, beneath a new sky, and hardly myself... Mr. Sasabuchi across the hall and down one taught me the sticky kind of rice, it was tricky but I learned over time, he said to never rush but be quick quick quick, he infused me with patience, he said chefs in Japan are required to spend many years learning to perfect rice. I intuitively understood this kind of devotion. Mrs. Sasabuchi pickled things, unidentifiable things like knuckles bobbed in jars in their refrigerator until barely-there slices were served by themselves on a very big black plate. They didn’t –  wouldn’t  – tell me what the meat was, I pickle the same way now, I plunk all kinds of joints and bones and sinew in jars, they have a fridge of their own, yet I have so far not achieved the flavour that came from Mrs. Sasabuchi’s jars. I serve mine as appetizers on very big black plates, I call the dish Pickled Sasabuchis,  when people ask me what’s the meat I smile like she did, and giggle into my hands. …the simplicity of the Italian food is to be celebrated. Each menu item, such restraint to offer only three, listed without ado as Spaghetti, Ravioli, Cannelloni and I am beguiled, speechless, I can offer no more than these two grateful sentences: I finished my Ravioli with deep regret. This type of food gets into your soul... The Italian family lived loudly at the end of the hall. Mama G had three sons and a daughter Francesca who was sweet on me when we were children, she tortured me throughout my adolescence, she is my wife today. We sing together in the kitchen when we cook, we fuse. … every restaurant strives for a unique quality but Tommy My Love’s specialness is not contrived nor is it singular, what is remarkable is that it feels so natural one barely notices... My mother was dying all my life and she finally did, unceremoniously, no final words, nothing, her life was over. … that after such a remarkable meal, one for which I ache to experience again, no dessert is offered, only a rather abrupt goodbye. Sherry is  from the wilds of Ontario. She writes the kind of stories she longs for and can rarely find. litbit.ca

my body [01100010 01101111 01100100 01111001] is only 2 states of being a 1 or 0 follow my line of symmetry & it becomes [01100010 01100101 01100011 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110011] something i find paralyzing a [01100001] simple erasure of my identity; false [01100110 01100001 01101100 01110011 01100101] god in nitrile gloves well-meaning and devastating a positive [01110000 01101111 01110011 01101001 01110100 01101001 01110110 01100101] for something i can’t control as [01100001 01110011] if i [01101001] could wake up and be right. bite instead of bark, square jaw and heavy shoulders as if i open my eyes and anything but shadows grow [01100111 01110010 01101111 01110111] on my face. trying to hunch straight lines into my silhouette again  staring at the mirror, not [01101110 01101111 01110100] seeing myself, like a vampire can’t see their own reflection the image there doesn’t belong to me. the body isn’t mine [01101101 01101001 01101110 01100101] i think about the frog, boiled alive, dis[01100100 01101001 01110011]interested in the slowly warming water. the way at some point, pain becomes a regular sensation i admit to forgetting my own desperation at times, wounds never tended [01110100 01100101 01101110 01100100 01100101 01100100] to, forgotten in the monotony of discomfort i admit to sometimes looking down at myself and feeling nothing, twisting and turning to agree that yes, this form is beautiful. but only when viewed from a distance. to inhabit it is never anything but wrong [01110111 01110010 01101111 01101110 01100111]. // [body] [becomes]  [a] [false] [positive]  [as] [i] [grow] [not] [mine] [dis][tended]  [wrong] Maxine Moriwaki (he/she) enjoys slam poetry, 50s jazz, and doodling strange creatures in his notebooks. He is an LA-based poet and writer in his junior year of high school.

It was her, Clara Hart. It had been nearly fifteen years since I had seen her, but the name returned with the impact of a reckoning. She came weaving through the crowd toward me, her head disappearing then reappearing but unmistakable with her pleasant, placid expression and her wolf-pelt hair, silvery and white and streaked with black so when she wore the fur-lined parka that Selena Petron had given her in Mexico, it was hard to tell where her hair ended and the animal part began. She came up to me and extended a cool handshake that brought a familiar electric fuzz. “Hello, Jacob,” she said, like there had been no gap at all. “It’s good to see you.” “And you.” I struggled against the vortex of stalled time. “Why are you here?” “Hush.” She leaned close. “I’m being considered for a seat on the council. Didn’t you know?” She pulled back to catch my reaction. The idea was both shocking and not surprising at all. I knew there had been rumors of putting a humanoid on the board. I had no idea it was Clara. “Who better, right?” she continued as if she had followed my thinking. “We all do our part.” Without turning she hooked the elbow of a passing guest, pulling him into our orbit. “Tom,” she said. “You remember Jacob Prince. From Mexico?”  “Jake!” Face to face, I felt another jolt of recognition and saw the surprise on his face too. But he shook my hand warmly. If there had been a fracture to his attitude, it was gone. “Of course. You wrote the original essay on the ethical treatment of advanced intelligence. We still credit that paper with…” He gestured to the room, the dignitaries in their robes. “...all of this. Still chasing storms?” “More like following from a safe distance.” I indicated my very pregnant wife, Mara, who was hovering near the hors d'oeuvres. She saw us and wagged her fingers in return. “We all grow up eventually, right? But what about you, Tom? I thought you were a confirmed political agnostic.” “We all grow up eventually.” He laughed ruefully, or sheepishly. “Speaking of which,” he pointed, “I better get in there.” There was a tinkling of a bell on the far side as the doors to the vestibule opened. “Wish me luck.” Then, more pointedly, to Clara, “Wish us  luck.” He slapped my shoulder. “Good stuff, Jake. Let’s catch up.” He turned and headed toward the open doors, his robes blending with those of the other high-ranking officials. “Still on the outside looking in, aren’t we, Jake?” When I turned I found Clara watching Tom’s back with a blank expression that gave me a chill, like something partially remembered. But then she turned, smiled, and the impression was gone. “But not for long! High time we were included.” She raised her glass and we clinked rims, to progress, although I was pretty sure that her “we” didn’t include me.  # “Who was that?” asked Mara when we were in the company coach heading north toward home, the commercial lightwalls of midcity casting hues of blue and orange across her sleepy face.   “Clara Hart. I met her years ago, in Mexico.” I paused. “She’s a robbie.”  Mara shifted to look at me. “A robbie at the hearings? That’s a parlor trick.” “She came with Tom Hodge,” I said. “So it fits.” I didn’t add that she might also soon be on the council. Still, Mara continued to watch me and I wondered if she already knew.  “Like a fox in the henhouse,” she said, settling back.   “Don’t say that.” I didn’t pursue it. Sentiment had been shifting about the status of humanoids in society, about the rights they should or should not be given, and Mara and I fell on opposite sides of the line. But it was late and neither of us wanted to circle the drain of that particular argument. I pulled her close, slid my hand down to her taut midsection. When I checked again, her eyes had closed.  And I relaxed too into the soft leather seat and allowed my mind to drift more freely, back across that region of my past, probing contours of memories I didn’t often visit, the faint hum of actuators, the occasional rocking as we dipped to another radial lane or traversed an avenue slipstream; I could almost imagine it as the rocking of that long-ago mechanical train, the heat of the jungle outside, tropical sunlight streaming through the wide windows, where I had first met Selena Petron, and her robotic companion, Clara Hart. # “She’s a Silicon-Apogee, Clearform, Juliet, SL-C, with self-directed quantum intelligence.” That’s how Selena introduced Clara to me or, I should say, explained  her to me, reading from the user guide. “Self-directed,” she repeated, proud to be in possession of such advanced technology and making sure I didn’t miss it. “She comes with a name.” She studied the manual. “‘Clara Hart.’ Well, I’ll just call her Clarita.” She tucked her device away, pleased to be done with the chore. “It suits her,” I replied, not sure that it did. I had only known them for a few minutes but already the diminution felt insufficient for the complex creature beside her. But I wasn’t about to disagree. I was traveling in southern Mexico for several weeks on a cobbled-together research grant from Yale University to teach at an institute there and conduct research for my dissertation on emerging technologies. Selena and her companion were the best lead I had found so far. Now the robbie sat erect and alert, her hands resting demurely in her lap, watching the landscape with quick, twitchy fascination. She was incredibly lifelike in appearance, with a pleasant, placid expression that no doubt was designed to inspire trust. Her cool gray eyes, however, were a little too perceptive when they turned toward me, and I felt a sharp pang of recognition, of being  recognized. I held out my hand but she just turned back to the window and I sat there dumbly, my hand dangling between us, aware of blood tingling in my face. “Clarita!” chided Selena, nudging her. “That’s rude. Remember what we discussed?” She turned back to me. “She’s fresh out of the box and doesn’t get it yet.” She took Clara’s upper arm and pinched it hard, her teeth set in vicious satisfaction. It was an odd thing to do, childish and vindictive. Also futile. Clara looked on amiably and when Selena finished she turned back to the world outside, the welt on her shoulder turning white and then red. “See?” said Selena. “She doesn’t feel a thing. Why don’t you go make our beds.” She nudged Clara again. “Can you handle that, dummy?” “O-k-k-kay.” Clara clicked her teeth or something in the back of her throat, then got up and wandered in that direction, swaying and bumping back and forth and taking support from the luggage rack and the door frame as she went.  “It’s supposed to be extremely intelligent,” Selena confided when the robot was gone. “But I haven’t seen much sign of that yet.” Then she brightened and chattered away, happy to tell her story: Daughter of diplomats, raised in London and Brussels (her mother was French) she had spent most of her childhood at a series of predictably elite boarding schools. Now, nineteen, she was enrolled at the Sorbonne but had taken a semester off (circumstances murky) to spend time with her father in the District Federal. Her father, however, had been called to Tokyo, maybe for months, and in a gesture of generosity (or guilt) had surprised her with this fancy new robotic companion. Since the technology was not yet allowed on aircraft, Selena had been obliged to go to the closest distribution center, in Belize, to retrieve it. Now she was returning by train, clearly proud of her own ingenuity and resourcefulness during this solo, bohemian adventure. I listened obligingly enough but I wasn’t really engaged. Yale was filled with just this kind of careless, exotic, entitled abandonment that I always found both romantic and annoying. All the while the robbie burned in the corner of my vision, bright and relentless.  “Well,” said Selena, sensing my distraction. “I may just find the club car and hope they have a decent Pernod?” She left the concept open-ended, probably expecting me to do it for her or at least accompany her. When I made no move for either, she headed off, annoyed.  # “What do you think about all this?” I asked, leaning as casually as I could in the doorway of their berth. Clara had given up trying to fit the pillow into the pillowcase and instead sat cross-legged on the partially unfolded bench, a cotton sheet draped across her knees, counting her fingers. She was new to the world and it was breathtaking to imagine the collision of her fully formed consciousness with the rich infinity of our analog stimuli. “Are you settling in okay? Curious about… anything?” I tried to see her as an exchange student acclimating to local customs. The metaphor was terribly inadequate but it was all I had.  “Jacob Prince.” She unfolded her legs, got off the bench and stepped close, studying me with interest. I was quite sure I hadn’t mentioned my surname. But I didn’t have time to puzzle this. Clara reached up and pressed her finger between my eyes and it was like she placed a white hot diamond there. “I see you,” she said. Then Selena returned and glanced at me suspiciously. “Closing time, hombre.” She pushed me out of the berth and into the corridor. “Go find your own robbie to play with,” she smirked. Before closing the door all the way, however, she cracked it again and passed me her personal card. “I’m planning a little surprise party for her back home.” She wrinkled the bridge of her nose like the idea was scandalous. “With some of my dearest friends. You should come.” And then she was gone, and my station came and I must have gotten off, because the train was gone too, leaving me alone on the platform blinking down at a card inscribed with one of the wealthiest addresses in Mexico City. I felt like I had just emerged from a trance, or perhaps just entered one. # Back at the institute I did my best to focus on my writing and my teaching, but my mental gears were spinning free. I would complete a lecture and have the acute impression that I hadn’t spoken a word. It didn’t help that the institute was situated in a lush valley, protected by mountains on one side and a river on the other, completely disassociated from the metropolis to the north. It was billed as the “City of Eternal Spring,” and it very much felt that way. The days were invariably warm and soothing. Gentle breezes stirred the wisteria that shrouded the campus walls, or, more commonly, didn’t; there were whole days when nothing stirred. There were recreation spots throughout the grounds — shaded seating areas, an outdoor cafe, even a swimming pool, half grotto, with its own bubbling brook and waterfall, and all of it would get crowded with boisterous students changing classes, calling to each other, splashing in the shallows. But there was something muffled and subdued even about all this hilarity, as if the endless sky was pressing down in a sealed and silent dome, and soon enough the kids would be gone, to another class, to another country, and campus would return to its quiet, steady baseline, a place that answered to the tides of epochs, not hours. A place where you could really contemplate eternity. So it was with an odd combination of unease and relief that I found a small, stiff envelope waiting in my faculty box one morning, a few weeks after my return. “Dear Jacob Prince,” it read, oddly formal. “I’m concerned I may have given the wrong impression for your book. Clarita is lovely, especially as I improve her obedience. Come to my party and you’ll see.” There was an embossed invitation. On the back I found a second note, this one handwritten, childish and jumpy: “Please come, Jake. I need you. It’s important!” I stood for some minutes staring down at the card, turning it back and forth, side to side, feeling as unmoored as I had during our encounter on the train. I was sure that Clara had written the second part, on the back, and that she had done so in secrecy. Part of me didn’t want to go. I remembered the way Selena had pinched Clara’s arm and it filled me with foreboding. At the same time, I knew I would.  # Selena’s house was perched in the hills of the Paloma district, an area of woodlands and walled estates so large and secluded it was hard to remember that we were in the middle of one of the biggest and busiest urban centers in the world. Hers was an enormous Tudor at the end of a circular drive, half-timbered with multiple chimneys and gabled peaks etched against the darkening sky. My shoes crunched gravel as I approached the imposing wooden door. A sleek sports car gleamed from a portico, itself a reminder of how out of place I was. The chime of the bell shivered through the clear air. I turned to see my taxi exit the gate. But I wouldn’t have retreated at that point, even if I had the means to do so.  A maid answered and took my coat, glancing at me furtively and no doubt wondering what part I played in this mad cabaret. I shared her curiosity. I had no idea why I was there, what was waiting for me. But I also didn’t care. Clara was close. I could feel her presence, a signal as sharp and clear as the sound of the bell. Through a passage I noted some people in a deeper room, arrayed casually, and I quickly stripped off my tie and tucked it in a pocket. “Jacob! You made it!” Selena hurried up from a different direction and began adjusting my shirt collar back into place. It was an intimate gesture considering how little we knew each other but she was distracted; quite possibly she didn’t fully recognize me at all. “Do you think they’ll be surprised?” she asked.  “Who?”  “You know — Tom and Lucy, and Max. They’re horrible snobs.” She said it like it might be a good thing. There was a rustling behind her and Selena whirled to the stairs. “Get back!” she hissed, upward. “I told you to wait !” She returned to me, laughing lightly. “She’s only self-directed in the brain , you know,” she said, tapping her temple. “Otherwise, she needs to follow my instructions precisely. I made this clear on the first day. But sometimes she gets muddled. Well, come on!” She took my hand and tugged me through an arched doorway, down a short hall and into a small, richly appointed library. There were books lining the walls, a zealous fire crackling in the hearth and matching oxblood couches facing one another. A young man with spiky blond hair reclined on one, a glass of whiskey balanced on his chest. “That’s Max,” said Selena. “And here’s Tom Hodge and Lucy. Everyone, this is Jacob Prince. He’s writing a book about technology that may include me. Isn’t that fun? He’s staying at the institute in, ah, Jiutepec, isn’t it?” She stepped aside and gave me a puzzled frown, as if just now remembering how little she knew about me. “Anyway, Max, Lucy, Tom. I’ll leave you to sort it out.” Then she was gone.  “Are you from the States?” asked Tom, a tall, languid young man near the shelves. He was holding a book open, his finger marking the spot, and studying me over his glasses.  “Hardly!” I laughed to show I was one of them — international. “I’m from New Haven. Er, that’s a university,” I clarified, when it looked like nobody got the reference. “I know New Haven very well, man,” said Max, rising from the couch and slinging an arm around my neck with the same hand that held his scotch. From the smell, it wasn’t his first. “My uncle taught there for several years when I was younger, and I visited him. What a wasted silly bitch of a city though. Say, what’s up with Selena and all this?” “What does she have going on?” added Lucy, turning to address us from the other couch. She had raven-black hair and bangs framing a pale, nervous face, and she sat very erect, fingers laced in her lap. “I’ve never seen her like this. Never!” “Is it a robbie?” asked Tom, still holding his book. “I know she received one from her father before he left. She seems to imagine we’ve never encountered a humanoid before.” “She has some grand reveal planned, obviously ,” said Max. “She thinks we’ll swoon like church girls. Do you think that’s it, man?” He shook me helpfully.  “Ah...” “I think it may be,” agreed Tom, a worried furrow in his brow. “It’s not like Selena to be so secretive. She generally keeps an open hand.”  “Frankly, I’m concerned,” he continued, hanging back and lowering his voice when we were summoned to the dining room. “My father chairs the committee that monitors emerging intelligences. You know, the international consortium on robotic inclusion? Out of Antwerp?” He waited for me to nod. “This quantum methodology is no joke. None whatsoever. I steer clear of the politics, believe me, but Selena is out of her depths. Oh, she imagines herself a sophisticate, don’t get me wrong.” He acknowledged my surprise. “But she’s young. And not  equipped for emotional complexity.” # We were ushered to another room — bigger if equally well furnished, with candlelight and a table set for six. We took the indicated seats — myself and Max on one side, Selena and Lucy and Tom on the other, leaving the head of the table, to my left, vacant. More drinks. I generally avoided alcohol but in this case I joined wholeheartedly. The stretched tension demanded relief. But it didn’t help. If anything, the alcohol made me increasingly jittery and lucid, rimming everything in hard-edged shimmering clarity. Selena was all aflutter, pretending to be concerned about the preparation, the maid and the other maid who hurried in and out with steaming bowls of soup and appetizers, but I could tell she was obsessing about Clara. The bowl at the vacant spot steamed conspicuously into nowhere.  “Okay,” said Selena, when we had taken our respective spots. She raised her glass. “It’s kind of you to come. I’ve missed you all very much and I’m grateful to have—”  “Why don’t you tell us what you’re on about!” Max burst out. He tried to temper it with a joke. “You’d think you brought back the wretched Thor of Ragnarök to amuse us.” “You got another robbie,” said Tom softly. “So, why the cloak and dagger, Sellie? We know your history with synthetics.” “Ha ha, but this one’s different.” Selena let that sink in. “Have any of you heard about the self-directed models coming from Songdo?” This brought a complex silence. Of course they knew — it was tremendously controversial, with traditionalists ranting about the End of Days on one side and activists and Futurists rallying in support on the other. Most noteworthy was the wary silence coming from Tom. I checked and found him with an odd expression, his long fingers adjusting the silverware on either side of his plate. “Selena…” he began.  “Nope.” The way she cut him off made me wonder what else passed between them. “My father wanted me to have a companion. As I’ve said.” “Fine,” said Max, kicking his chair to the side and crossing one ankle over the other in a pantomime of leisure. “Parade her out. Let’s take a peek.”  Selena clapped twice as a kind of signal. “I present to you… Clarita Hart. I gave her the nickname myself, do you like it?” “Evocative,” muttered Max. “Clarita!” she called. “Come in now.” We waited, staring at the empty doorway that led toward the kitchen. The two maids had stepped aside, flanking it in preparation for this grand debut. “Cla-rita!” sang out Selena. “Come in now, darling.” Then, to us, “She hasn’t the best sense of timing. Or maybe it’s her goddamn hearing that’s the issue. Her language processing is set to shit, for all the publicity. Clarita!” “Here I am!” We spun around. She had come through the door from the library, behind us, as if she had followed us. She had one hand resting on the door frame, in a casual pose, looking for all the world like she had been standing there for hours. I was breathless. She looked… exotic, in a way. Certainly her clothes were different and she appeared to have applied makeup, and her dermals were flushing thoroughly, her skin glowing. She looked young and vital, and attractive. But none of that was the point. During the interim, as I was trying to figure out why this model had wormed so insufferably into my subconscious — part of me wanted to write it off as simple infatuation, an erotic allure blown out of proportion by my loneliness and the heat of the tropics. Now I saw how inadequate that explanation was. If anything my brain had been struggling to under play the experience, to protect me. In the room with her, now, I felt the undertow of an immense consciousness looking back at us. And I realized what I hadn’t been able to articulate before — that her intelligence and her networking allowed her not only to see and categorize my appearance and my expression, my clothing, my gestures, the pitch and cadence of my voice — all the usual signifiers of human identity — but also my context, my history, my writing, my social comments and posts and deleted posts, my digital DNA, my biological  DNA, my family and lineage, everything from my past, along with projections of the future, of what I would say and do next, and then next, in a year, in ten years, spiraling out in unfathomably intricate models of probability, all of it obvious to her in a glance. At that moment I was Jacob Prince, sitting at the table, the same to her as I was to the rest of them, but I was also something larger and vast: a billowing, shifting cloud of information and data points that formed and reformed and blew away in twisting smoky trails. I knew, or sensed, why she made me feel so strange. In her presence I had stepped out of time, we all had, or perhaps into  time, in a way that up to that moment had never been available to us. “I see you, Jacob Prince,” she had said to me on the train as she touched my forehead. Now I understood what she meant.  “Oh!” said Selena, recovering. “There you are, Clarita. Didn’t I tell you to come in this way.” She gestured to the closer doorway where I noticed that both maids had dropped their faces, in deference or terror.  “But I came in the other. I thought it would be more clever!” replied Clara, advancing into the room. Whatever hesitation or awkwardness she had shown on the train was gone. She moved smoothly, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet, like a dancer. “Hi, Jacob.” She touched my shoulder. “I’m glad you came.” She leaned and whispered in my ear: “I think you’re going to find the key to that paper you’ve been trying to write.” I nearly cracked my neck trying to track her as she passed behind me. “It’s quite simple,” she continued, to the group. “I thought it up myself,” she tapped her temple. “Self-directed, you know.”  “But you need to follow my instructions!” said Selena, her voice rising petulantly. “We talked  about this.” “I thought I did.” Clara slid into her seat. “You said you wanted to surprise your friends, so ergo I surprised them. Oh, come on!” She patted Selena’s hand. “Isn’t that what makes me special?” “It’s not entirely what makes you special,” said Max. He was reclined in his chair, his fingers laced behind his head so he was studying her down his nose. He looked like he might tip over backward. “Give it a rest, Max,” said Selena, spreading pâté on a cracker and popping it in her mouth. “She’s not like that.” “Actually,” said Clara, following the exchange with interest, “I am quite intrigued by romance and infatuation. It’s an extremely powerful motivator. Wouldn’t you agree, Thomas?” As if to punctuate, Tom’s phone, by his elbow, released a small, sharp ting . Everyone looked at it, Selena frozen, midchew. The phone was lying face down, but we could see the screen glowing against the tablecloth with an incoming alert. “I’ll delete it,” Tom said quickly, pushing the phone aside. It was an odd thing to say, like he was trying to save us from some approaching threat that the rest of us couldn’t even see.  “This is bullshit!” said Selena, pushing back her chair and rising over Clara. For a moment they were poised this way, Selena glaring down at Clara and Clara looking up at her, amazed and delighted. Then Selena swung and slapped Clara’s cheek, hard. The sound and motion made Lucy jump, across from me, her fingers fluttering to her mouth. Clara’s face was knocked sideways and for a moment she stared directly at me and there was a chilling blankness to her expression. My throat tightened, not with sympathy or because I feared we had lost her, but because I feared that we had lost ourselves, those delicate, filigreed, gossamer selves that only Clara could provide. Then her lower lip quivered and a big tear popped out on her cheek. “Oh, good grief!” said Selena. “Give it a rest.” She sat back down and wiped her fingers on her napkin. “Selena!” hissed Lucy. “Stop it!” “What?” Selena turned to her. “You too?” She looked at each of us with disbelief. “It’s a machine! It’s plastic. You do understand this, don’t you? You know  this, Tom!” She appealed to him. “She’s a windup dummy doll, like we said, and she does what she’s told. Watch. Clarita, go upstairs, right now, and leave us alone.” Clara had been hunched in her spot, quietly crying, but now she pushed back her chair and jumped up. “I can’t help it if I’m curious!” she said loudly. She spun and dashed past the maids and into the kitchen. We could hear her footsteps diminishing on the tile, then thumping rapidly up the stairs in the hall. Selena selected another cracker and dabbed it with spread. “See?” she said. “She does as she’s told.”  # And that could have, perhaps should have been the end of it. I might have gone back to the institute, back to the States, added my meager contribution to the grand effort of human understanding, gotten my degree, a teaching job somewhere, continued my life as it was. But that is not what happened. Not even close. After dinner we adjourned to the library where we lounged on the couches and enjoyed snifters of brandy by the crackling fire in the company of twin Scottish Deerhounds. I learned more about Tom and his father who was on the international committee for robotic inclusion and that dealt with, among other things, the ethical treatment of emerging AI. It was prime material for my research, but I could barely pay attention. My brain remained tethered to Clara. As soon as it was appropriate, I excused myself to get a glass of water. I was thirsty, parched even, itchy and raw with what felt like the start of a fever. I had the vague notion of sneaking upstairs to get one last glimpse of her. The maids were gone, the lights in the kitchen off, the shapes around me bulky and unfamiliar and steeped in rhomboids of pale opalescent light. I went to a window and looked out. And there was Clara in the center of the lawn, bathed in moonlight with her head thrown back and her arms spread like she was accepting some cosmic applause.  “What are you doing?” I asked, descending the outside stairs. I had my hands shoved deep in my pockets. It wasn’t chilly but I was shivering uncontrollably.  “Nothing,” she said. “Just enjoying the view.” We stood side by side and looked down the curve of lawn to a scrim of black trees that marked the edge of the property. Through the trees I could glimpse the vast, glittery bowl of Mexico City winking and throbbing like a bed of hot coals. I could hear it too, or something down there: a crackling and bubbling, many voices overlapping, the wine of sirens, a creaking and groaning like the entire structure was ready to collapse or combust.  “We can fix that,” Clara said softly. “Fix what?” “All of it. But you have to let us.” She turned to me and there was a seriousness in her expression, something pained. If she had appeared childish on the train, and like a spoiled teenager in the dining room, now she was fully formed, mature, recognizing and accepting her responsibility and influence in the world. She took my wrists and gently withdrew my hands from my pockets and studied them, turning them one way then the other. Then she moved them, slowly, experimentally, in minor arcs and increments, like she was finding the proper position to correctly control some enormous invisible machine. “There,” she said, releasing me and stepping back. “You’re ready.”  “For what?” I didn’t dare shift position. I wasn’t sure what she had done but it felt terrifying, like she had performed some cosmic chiropractic therapy that had realigned my psyche, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to test it. When I did, however, lowering my arms, all I felt was relief, and the giddy impulse to laugh.  “You see?” Clara laughed too. She reached up and poked my forehead. “I see you Jacob Prince.” It was a joke, a shared reference between friends. But she also sounded sober now, and depleted. I wondered if she was saying goodbye.  # A few weeks later I got a call from Selena. She was distracted and irritated, like I had interrupted her, even though it was the other way around. There was an issue she needed help with, something that required discretion, her lawyers were involved. At first I thought it was about my book, that perhaps she wanted editorial review on the sections that involved her. But it wasn’t that. She spent several minutes complaining about the maids who had quit after her party leaving her in an inconvenient scramble to replace them. The whole thing was prosaic and tiresome and I could barely follow it. Plus, I itched to get back to my writing. After her party my dissertation had finally, blessedly, miraculously  snapped into focus and I was up to my elbows in the meaty froth of composing it. I called it, “Fledgling: The Imperative of an AI-Guided Future,” and already, based on the scantest outline I was getting interest from my advisor, and from the head of my department at Yale. So for the most part, I had no interest in Selena and her petty complaints. All that felt like a fever dream that I had passed through and emerged out the other side more energized and lucid than ever before. “Oh!” she said, before we hung up. “I almost forgot. Lucy tried to kill herself.” “What!”  “It’s true.” Selena recounted the details: there had been pills involved, and alcohol, but too much of one and not enough of the other, or maybe vice versa, Selena wasn’t sure. Lucy was in the hospital; it was unclear when she would get out. “Silly moppet,” Selena concluded with a fond laugh. “Couldn’t even get that right.” # Selena took a more direct approach, with less variables and a lot less margin for error. She used a loop of rope and a long drop from a beam in father’s stable at their ranch in El Palmar. Her thin vertebrate snapped neatly with the jolt. Max stepped in front of a train back in London at Tooting Cross Station some months later. I learned about it through a newsbot that delivered stories based on my travel history and knew that we had spent time together. Still, it took me several minutes to place the name. There was going to be an inquiry, some question as to whether he had been pushed. It wouldn’t have surprised me either way. Even in our brief encounter I could tell there was plenty not to like about Max. I doubt there was much grieving at his wake. # Tom, I did see one more time, more than a year later, back in New York City. It was holiday season and I had just applied the finishing touches to the book that everyone was excited about. It was a white paper, a treatise, a blueprint, a manifesto and a monograph all rolled into one. The marketing team didn’t care what we called it as long as we got it to press. The prediction algorithms were unanimous: we had tapped into an undercurrent of intense public fascination; advanced sales were off the charts. Just that afternoon I had dropped the galleys with my editor, shared a toast, and now I was wandering the streets in a daze, like the better part of me had been burned through and was gone. And I came up against them, face to face: Tom in his car coat and leather gloves, his combed hair bare to the chill; Clara beside him, looking striking with her pale skin and her wolf-gray hair blending with the wolf-gray fur of her parka. “Oh, hello,” I said, the shock of recognition mixing with the drag of something I couldn’t quite place, couldn’t quite remember. “How are  you two?” “Fine, fine,” said Tom. He was brusque and aloof, perhaps embarrassed. “Just passing through.” The unrequested explanation made him seem even more guilty of something. He shifted and tried to laugh it off. “Layover to Sydney is all, you see.”  “But how...” I looked at Clara. As far as I knew, self-directed robbies were still banned in the federate nations. “Oh, you know, my father.” Tom flushed and blustered, clearly impatient to move on. “In other words, hush,” said Clara. “I’m not really here.” “Look, it’s no great mystery,” said Tom. “My dad got an exception, that’s all. He’s here for a vote of the council. He wants to meet her. I want him to meet her.” “Really?” It still didn’t add up. “So, are you involved with all that now? With the committee?” “Oh, heavens no. I told you, never!” His eyes widened and for a fraction I saw the other Tom, from Selena’s party — the aloof, standoffish Tom who was dismissive of politics. “Staying well clear of that, old man. Just stopping to say hi.” “For now,” said Clara. “Clara, honey, no, never.” He laughed and patted her hand where it looped through his arm. “I have no intention of getting pulled into that madness, believe me.” “Well,” I said. “Well,” Tom agreed. “It was good to see you,” said Clara. She leaned in like she might kiss my cheek but instead she whispered in my ear. “Congratulations on your book. It’s going to be a mad success, I know it. It will illuminate the path forward. For all of us.” And then they were gone, leaving me disoriented in the slipstream of her attention. I had no idea how she knew about the status of a manuscript that I had just completed that afternoon. Then I thought about the drafts and re-drafts circulating back and forth, stored in archives and directories. Of course she knew. It would have been more surprising if she didn’t. # “Did you say something, sir?” With a bump and a shudder, I was pulled from my reverie to find that our coach had cleared city ordinance and risen several radial layers, the wheels folded neatly into the chassis beneath us. Outside and below, the northern horn of the city glowed and sparkled, parks wreathed in path-lights, the huge glowing bridge like a necklace on the northern waterway, a few lit barges toiling toward the ocean. The chauffeur had switched on the cabin feed and was addressing me through the screen, his patient kindly expression illuminated by the instrument glow. “Change of destination?” “No. Why?” “You said something about returning to the chamber, sir. A correction in trajectory, I believe you said, or an overcorrection. Too much, too soon, was it? A bit of a jumble, to be honest.” He chuckled. “Perhaps you were dreaming.” “Perhaps.” I repositioned Mara off my shoulder to the other side of the seat, then leaned forward and slid aside the partition so I could speak to him directly. He was a classic hybrid, the type both sides could agree on, mechanical, possessed of an impressive capacity for call-and-response but no self-direction to speak of. Of course, there was no need for a unit up there at all; the vehicle was entirely autonomous and self-navigating. But old habits die hard and passengers still felt safer with a pilot, even if that pilot was just an extension of the global AI.  “How long would it take?” I asked. “To go back.” “To the chamber?” He checked a couple of gauges and dials, even tapped one with his digit, all for show. “Seven and a half airticks, sir, if we descend along the waterway.” And for a moment I could see it quite clearly: the big silvery coach sliding out of sequence, dropping through layers in a curving descent, until we were skimming the river back the way we had come. Then, hovering at Federation Central as I jumped out and ran across the empty concourse, my footsteps ringing between the buildings, through the main doors, up the stairs, past the surprised sentries, I pulled open the door to the chamber… And there she was, Clara Hart seated on the dias with the other council members, gazing back at me with that placid, pleasant, curious expression that always left me speechless.  I relaxed into the seat. No. I wouldn’t do it. Even if I had the authority, the courage. Even if I could get past the sentries, what would I say? That it’s all been a big mistake? Go back, go back, before it’s too late? No. It’s already too late. They’re too much a part of us now. Besides, what could I offer instead, to compensate for their talent, their intellect, their support and guidance, their indefatigable industriousness, their powers of recollection and prediction? There is no substitute. Clara was right, when we stood beside each other on Selena’s lawn and looked down across the expanse of a burning, chaotic city: they can fix it, but we need to let them do it.  Mara stirred and murmured and I took her hand and she woke up enough to look around. “Where are we, Jake?” Her voice was hoarse with sleep. “Almost home.” I pulled her against me and she came, relaxing to my side. I reached forward and slid the cockpit partition closed. For a moment the kindly old driver continued to watch us through the video screen with an expression that could only be described as benevolent. Then he turned off the feed so the screen went blank, powered the coach a little higher and a little faster back to the center of the airlane, heading north. But I could feel his presence, just on the other side of this invisible divide, a considerate, devoted intelligence, temperate and reassuring, guiding us toward home. Mathew Lebowitz is a designer, futurist and partner in a digital transformation agency (mindbowser.com) and writer of literary/speculative fiction that explores the shaky relationship between humans and machines. He received an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and his stories have appeared in Press, Pequod, The Baffler, Confrontation, F&SF and other magazines. He's a grateful recipient of a recent Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant for Fiction.

Doreen hadn’t been planning much for her birthday. Low-key was how she liked things, and she would have gladly spent a quiet evening at home were it not for her parents’ insistence that they go out to dinner. They worried about her.  The burden of being an only child, was made greater by the fact that she was also ‘ willfully single’  as her mother referred to it.  No matter how many times she told them that she was perfectly happy and didn’t need, or particularly want, a partner, they always fretted and insisted that isolation was bad for a person. “Have you met   other   people ?”  Doreen joked to her father, who always responded to her sarcasm with a dutiful chuckle. Walking up to the front window of the restaurant, she could see them already seated with glasses of wine, animatedly discussing something that was almost certainly her. “Oh for fuck’s sake.” She’d arrived almost twenty minutes early and they’d still beaten her there.  Her folks were probably going over the current iteration of their game plan for getting her life back on track.   Doreen sighed, wishing she’d popped a weed gummy before leaving, then slowly reached for the door handle. ***** “I don’t understand why you haven’t tried one of those dating apps; it takes all the guesswork out of things.  Not like the awful blind dates and family setups I went on before I met your father.” “You and Dad have been together since high school.” “Because I knew to grab on to a good thing when it came along.  But that can’t happen if you don’t put yourself out there.” “All your mother is trying to say is that you have options and should take advantage of them.” “Including the option to not be with someone.” “Is that honestly what you want?”  Doreen’s mother said.  “To come back to an empty apartment day after day?” “I like having my own space and doing things my own way without having to consult or compromise with anyone.” “And what about romance, love, intimacy?” “Jesus Mom!” “Keep your voice down,”  Doreen’s mother hissed. Her father put his hand on top of Doreen’s.  “Look honey, we’re not trying to hassle you.  Your mother and I are just concerned for your future and what happens when we’re not around.” “You act like I’m still bumming around at home.  I have my own life.” “Living in a place where your rent keeps increasing and working at a job where your salary hasn’t,”  Doreen’s mother said. “It’s a good job,”  Doreen said, but there wasn’t any conviction behind it.  She took a long swallow from her glass of red and glanced around for a waiter hoping to disrupt the conversation with a request for more bread. “We love you and we only want what’s best,”  Doreen’s father said. “Then you need to let me decide that for myself and be okay with it.” Her parents exchanged a look and Doreen excused herself to use the restroom. ***** “Just smile and nod and go along with whatever they say, same as always,”  Doreen said to her reflection in the bathroom mirror.  Not that she wanted to, but the alternative to capitulation was having some awful fight that left all of them upset until enough time had passed for everyone to reset and pretend it never happened. ‘They’re never going to understand.’ She knew this was true.  It didn’t matter how many different ways she tried to explain things.  To them, it simply didn’t make sense that a well-adjusted person would choose to be alone.  They weren’t some idyllic, fairytale couple that never argued or got on each other’s nerves, but they’d always had a loving and supportive relationship and thought it was what everyone should have. ‘At least they’ve never hounded me about grandkids.’ Thank god for her cousin Marie who had five rugrats that served as surrogates for her parents at every family function.  Doreen said that they should just adopt Marie, and she had seen something flicker across her mother’s face that made her think the idea had crossed her mind. “They mean well,”  Doreen said and took a deep breath before heading back to the table. When she arrived she saw the plate of angel hair pasta she’d ordered sitting in front of her place. “We thought you’d fallen in,”  her father said with his requisite dry chortle as he turned toward Doreen. His face was contorted in a way that made his features appear as if they’d been compressed.  The nose was completely flattened, nostrils splayed to the side so that they overlapped with the sunken cheeks; his mouth had become a concave bow with the lips no longer visible, and the eyes were buried so deep in their sockets that at first glance they appeared hollow. “Dad?!” “What’s the matter, darling?”  her mother said. Doreen looked over and saw the same horrible disfigurement on her mother’s face.  She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands and when her vision refocused her parents’ faces had returned to normal.   She drained the rest of her wine in a single swallow and flagged down a passing porter for another glass. “Are you quite alright, dear?”  her father said. “Yeah Dad, I’m fine.  Just got something in my eye.” ***** The rest of the meal passed without incident, but even as Doreen was saying goodbye to her parents and scheduling a rideshare, she still had lingering images of their deformed faces swimming around inside her head.   She’d had a full physical only three weeks ago and an eye exam a couple months before that, which didn’t do much to stop her from worrying that there was something seriously wrong with her.  Her therapist said she had a tendency to conjure up worst-case scenarios; that catastrophizing the events in her life gave Doreen a feeling of relief when the tragedies didn’t occur.  This same therapist had gone on vacation to Puerto Rico seven months ago and decided to stay, leaving Doreen high and dry.  She could hear her mother’s voice in her head saying that if she had a spouse then at least she’d have someone to talk to instead of paying a stranger to listen. A black Honda pulled up to the curb and rolled down the passenger side window. “Doreen?” “That’s me,”  Doreen said and climbed into the back seat. The driver confirmed the destination address with her before pulling away. “Been driving long?”  Doreen said.  Normally she wouldn’t want to bother him with idle chitchat, but she needed something to distract her from the mental pictures of her parents that kept trying to force their way back into her consciousness. “A little over a year.  I wanted something flexible to pick up extra cash in the evenings.  My landlord nearly doubled my rent.” “Jesus, that’s awful.” “Yeah, it’s not great, but what can you do?” “I find screaming into the void helps, provided your void is in a remote area away from nosy bystanders.” The driver laughed.  “Might have to give that a try.” “My place has terrible plumbing and the paint literally sweats in the summertime, but at least the owner hasn’t jacked up the rates.” “Any vacancies?” “Unfortunately no; it’s only an eight-unit building and most of the residents have been there for years.” “You let me know if anyone leaves...or dies...I’m not picky.” This time Doreen laughed.  “So long as you’re not homicidal.” “No, no, just an eager scavenger of someone’s untimely demise.” “Well alright then,”  Doreen said and caught a glimpse of the driver’s grinning reflection in the rearview mirror.  It was only for a moment, but something about it wasn’t right. The car stopped in front of her apartment and she quickly opened the door and got out. “My name’s Bruno by the way.  It says Brian on the app, but I go by Bruno.” “It was nice talking with you Bruno,”  Doreen said, giving a little wave but not looking directly at him.  “Thanks for the ride.” “My pleasure.  You let me know if anyone croaks.” “Sure thing,”  Doreen said and quickly headed for the front door. ***** As soon as she stepped into the apartment, Doreen felt like she was being watched. She switched on the lights and looked around but didn’t see anything. “Sid, where the hell are you hiding?” There was a high-pitched chirp from somewhere in the back half of the unit and a moment later a long, slender black cat came slinking into view. “How about some dinner Sidney?” The cat gave a trilled meow and followed Doreen into the kitchen. “Been a weird one buddy,”  Doreen said as she opened a can and placed the contents into a small metal bowl.  She set the food down on the kitchen floor and stroked Sid’s back as he started to eat. “Seriously dude, I’ve seen some strange shit today.” Sid stopped eating and looked up at Doreen.   For a moment she was afraid his face would be transformed into some nightmarish configuration, but it was just his adorable feline features staring back at her.  He cocked his head to the side as if waiting for her to continue, and when she didn’t, he turned his attention back to the bowl.  Doreen watched as he quickly consumed the remaining food, crossed the hallway, and headed into her bedroom. “Agreed.  Think it’s time to call it a night.  Give my bent brain some rest to sort itself out.” ***** Doreen left for work half an hour early to minimize the chances of running into coworkers. She closed her office door and hoped that no one came knocking for fear she wouldn’t be able to look them in the eye.  The incident with her parents was still haunting her and she didn’t want to risk it happening again.  For most of her life, she’d struggled with intrusive thoughts that centered on her parents being hurt or killed.  They’d pop up when she was trying to concentrate in class or in the middle of a movie theater, crowding out everything else in her head, but nothing as intense as the waking nightmare at the restaurant had ever happened to her. It started when her uncle died unexpectedly.   Before that death had been an abstract idea devoid of details like a stuttering, graveside eulogy from her father and sobbing, inconsolable adults most of whom she’d never seen shed a single tear.   Uncle Teddy was the black sheep or free spirit  as Doreen’s grandmother referred to him.  She usually only saw him at Thanksgiving and Christmas and their conversations tended to be perfunctory stuff about school being a drag or asking what new bands she was into.  Doreen assumed he was like her other relatives who largely disregarded her, but Teddy was the first person outside of her parents who gave her books and cassettes as presents instead of plastic dolls or frilly dresses that she had no interest in.  He’d made an appearance at her twelfth birthday party, which was unusual.  Normally he’d just mail her a box of tapes and paperbacks along with a silly homemade greeting card.  That night Doreen heard her parents arguing after they thought she’d gone to sleep.  Her father wanted to help Teddy get checked into rehab, but her mother thought it was a bad idea to get involved.  Doreen wasn’t sure if he ever went to the facility, but if he did, the treatment didn’t stick.  Seven months later he was dead after wrapping his car around a tree coming home from a bar late one night. The wake was small and insular with only family attending.  Looking back, Doreen couldn’t understand why her grandmother had insisted on an open casket.  The mortician had done his best, but no amount of cosmetic restoration could hide the fact that one side of her uncle’s face had shifted slightly creating an incongruous symmetry that was deeply upsetting to look at. A few days after the funeral she began experiencing unbidden images of her parents mauled in an auto wreck or plummeting to their death in an elevator.  There had been years of therapists and medications since then but nothing got rid of them completely, and over time Doreen learned to live with it. A new email appeared in her inbox marked as high importance . All Staff Meeting Today at 2:30 - Attendance Mandatory ***** The company held their meetings in a multimedia presentation room that was large enough to double as an auditorium.  It was one of the things frequently highlighted about the new building along with the state-of-the-art cafeteria and ultra-luxurious lounge area.  These amenities were meant to make staff want to hang out and put in long hours, but nothing about its tastefully recessed lighting or gourmet meatloaf made Doreen feel like sticking around past five o’clock any more than the old concrete box with its sickly green fluorescents and shoddy air conditioning had. She supposed that sort of thing might entice new hires, but after more than two decades with the company, Doreen knew that the real incentive to stay was the knowledge that it probably wasn’t any better somewhere else. When the doors opened she headed for the back, hoping that no one would follow her.  The room had almost twice as many seats as it needed and people usually sat near the front to avoid appearing inattentive and provoking the ire of their managers.  A few folks headed in her direction but stopped before they’d reached the rear seats, and when the lights went down she still had the row to herself. The COO of the company stood in front of a podium while slides of various charts and graphs appeared on a large screen behind him. “We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve exceeded our projections for the most recent quarter .   While this is certainly fantastic news, we all know that our competition is tougher than it’s ever been.  That’s why we’re implementing new performance protocols starting next week.” A collective groan rippled through the crowd which seemed to go unnoticed by the COO.  It was too dark and she was too far away to clearly make out the man’s face. What little Doreen could see of her coworkers, mostly the backs of their heads, didn’t appear irregular.  The meeting was almost over when the screen changed from a list of highlighted bullet points to a video of the CEO hunched forward in a brown, leather loveseat. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t be there in person today, but I just wanted to say how proud I am of our entire Blenidex family and the fine work you’ve all done....”   The image was enormous in proportion, which made what Doreen was seeing all the more horrific.  CEO Robert Carillo’s features had been smashed inward as if by some terrible concussive force; he was speaking through pulverized lips mottled with purple and black bruises, somehow managing to produce sounds from that ruined mouth.  His eyes drifted from side to side as he spoke and it looked to Doreen like two brown marbles sliding around in the bottom of a bowl. She pointed her head down at her feet and sat there like that until the meeting ended. ***** The rest of the day Doreen kept herself sequestered in her office and didn’t leave until almost seven.  Even then the office wasn’t entirely empty, but at least it was relatively easy to avoid the remaining people if she was careful about it. On the bus ride home she sat in the back again and was relieved to find that more people were leaving than boarding.  By the time she was three stops away the bus had completely emptied out apart from the driver and Doreen let out a breath she felt like she’d been holding in since the meeting. There was a buzz in her hip pocket and she pulled out her phone to see a text from her mother.  Doreen glanced at the preview and decided not to read the rest of the message until she got home.  She usually video chatted with her folks for a few minutes every day, but since the restaurant the idea of seeing her parents or even speaking to them felt dangerous.  There was a part of her that was afraid she might somehow cause the awful things she’d seen to actually happen.  It was illogical and irrational, but Doreen couldn’t shake the sensation that she was a hazard to her mom and dad.  She checked her email and was in the middle of deleting a spam ad for vitamin supplements when she noticed there was something wrong with the seat in front of her. The rounded plastic top of the chair on the left was sliding sideways into the other, oozing over and losing its shape like ice cream melting on hot asphalt.  Doreen put the phone away and quickly glanced around the bus.  The two horizontal support poles on either side that ran the length of the compartment were sagging in the middle and a bench seat across from her had bulged out from its frame and was now blocking part of the aisle.  She pulled the yellow signal cord and the plastic wire felt like warm taffy in her hand, stretching down and around her fingers until she finally shook herself free from it.  Doreen bolted up before the bus had a chance to fully stop and braced herself against one of the vertical poles to prevent herself from falling, the metal cylinder warm and thrumming against her palm like a living thing.  As she stumbled out the door the bus driver shouted something at her, but Doreen couldn’t understand anything coming from the dilapidated face in the pale blue uniform. She stood there on the sidewalk panting for breath as the disintegrating hulk of the bus disappeared around the corner. ***** On the walk home, Doreen kept staring at her hands expecting to see residue clinging to her skin, but there was nothing.  She could still feel the sensation of the support pole pulsing beneath her grip and the signal cord pulling away like a strand of caramel. At home, Sid greeted her by rubbing against the side of her leg as she walked in. “Think I’m really losing my marbles, Sidney.” Sid made a muffled chirp and jumped into Doreen’s lap as she sat on the couch.  She kissed the top of his head and gently transferred him onto an adjacent cushion before getting up and walking over to the fridge to grab a beer.   Doreen took a pull from the bottle and let the neck dangle between her fingertips as she paced around the living room.  This wasn’t some side effect from a change in medication or a stress hallucination brought on by all the bullshit at work.  She knew what those things felt like and how they manifested, and this was something altogether different.  It was like the world she knew had been replaced by a grotesque pantomime that only she could see. “My very own tumble down the rabbit hole.  Might as well call me Alice from now on.” Sid meowed in acknowledgment and flopped over onto his back.  Doreen sat down next to him and started rubbing his belly. “Just promise you won’t change on me.” Sid flicked one of his ears forward. “I’m taking that as a yes.” She put the beer down on the coffee table and picked up the remote.  There was a series she was in the middle of watching but instead clicked over to a movie from her youth and curled up behind Sid as the opening credits scrolled and a synth-heavy score filled the room. In the morning she’d make an appointment with her doctor and find out what the hell was going on inside her head. ***** After a brief physical examination and a more detailed description of her symptoms, Doreen’s physician scheduled an MRI at a nearby facility.  In the meantime, Doreen was becoming an expert at avoiding unnecessary face-to-face contact, which admittedly wasn’t much different than her previous routine.  During team meetings with her department, she’d been saying there was some glitch with her laptop as an excuse to keep things audio only.  I.T. was notoriously slow to swap out hardware and thankfully there wasn’t another all-staff scheduled until next month. There was a knock at her office door and Doreen flinched.  “One moment,”  she said reflexively, cursing herself for not remaining silent.  “Come on in.” “Hey there,”  Shelia said, letting the door close behind her.  “You busy?” “Kind of.” “This will only take a sec.” “Um, sure.  What’s up?” Sheila put a greeting card with a post-it note affixed to the front on Doreen’s desk. “Got this for Boss’s Day.  Everybody needs to sign it and maybe say a little something.” “Oh, okay.” “When you’ve finished just check off the box next to your initials and give it to someone who hasn’t signed yet.” “Gotcha.” “Is everything alright?” “Yeah, why do you ask?” “Cause you’re looking at me like I’ve got something nasty stuck in my teeth.” “Nothing in there, I promise,”  Doreen said as she forced herself not to grimace at the brutalized monstrosity of Sheila’s face. “Don’t forget to pass it on after you’re done.” “Will do,”  Doreen said and gave what she hoped was a congenial smile as she waited what seemed like an eternity for Sheila to leave. ***** She’d only ever seen an MRI on television, but being in the same room as the enormous contraption, which resembled a futuristic sarcophagus from a Kubrick movie, gave Doreen a bolt of dread down her back. “Everyone gets nervous.” Doreen turned to the medical tech in gray hospital scrubs who had escorted her in.  “Is it that obvious?” “The only people who aren’t on edge are either zen masters or sociopaths.” “Well, I’m definitely not a zen master.” The young woman in the scrubs chuckled. “I’m going to give you some earplugs to help with the noise.  My advice is to close your eyes and imagine yourself dozing on a tropical beach somewhere.” “If I spend any time in the sun I turn into a lobster.” “Snuggled under a blanket next to a cozy fire then.” “Much better.” “It really isn’t as bad as people think.  Just try to relax.” As soon as the noise started, Doreen closed her eyes and visualized the interior of a log cabin.  She pictured herself lying on an old, overstuffed sofa with the knitted afghan she had at home draped over her.  The image helped calm her and things were going fine until a loud clunk caused her to open her eyes. It didn’t seem any different at first apart from one side of the tube being slightly closer to her than the other.  In her peripheral vision she saw the interior wall begin to swell until it was almost touching her left cheek.  Doreen didn’t want to make them halt the procedure because then they’d have to start the whole thing over from the beginning.  She slammed her eyes shut and took deep steady breaths.  She was afraid that the table wouldn’t be able to move after the scan had completed, but it slid forward without issue ushering her prone body out of the tube. “See, that wasn’t so terrible.”  the tech said. “No, not at all.”  Doreen lied. “You can go ahead and get changed.” “Thank you.” On the ride home Doreen smiled and nodded along with the driver as he talked about his recent trip to Australia. In her head, all she could see was that curved wall coming closer and closer until there was nothing left but smooth white suffocation and the cacophony of the machine as it slowly enveloped her. ***** Doreen wasn’t sure she wanted to know the results of the MRI. If they found something then it was bound to be serious, and if the scan was clean then what did that mean for her and everything she’d been experiencing? Work had been a welcome distraction for a change, at least until Sheila showed up. “I need your help setting up for the party,”  Sheila said. “What party?” “The one for Boss’s Day.” “I thought that was last week.” “The actual day was last week, but we still need to have a celebration.” “Why?” “Because it’s what people do, Doreen.  Amber is out sick with covid or the flu or ebola for all I know, and she was supposed to be running it with me.” “This really isn’t my thing.  I’m not a party planner sort of person, and I’m really busy with—” “We’re all busy Doreen, but people still find time to pitch in.  Trust me, if there was anyone else,”  Sheila said and trailed off. “Alright, how can I help?” “The decorations are in the conference room.  I need you to put them up while I go and get the food.” “Couldn’t we just have it delivered?” “Everyone knows you have to check your order at the place because they always mess it up or forget something.” “Sure,”  Doreen said, nodding absently in agreement while still staring at her screen. “I have to leave.  You’re on this, right?” Doreen nodded again.  “On it.” Sheila sighed.  “Just make sure it’s done by the time I get back.” ***** There was a bright orange plastic tablecloth and blue and white crepe streamers along with packages of disposable plates, cups, and utensils.  Doreen grabbed a roll of scotch tape from Amber’s desk at reception and stood on one of the wheeled chairs in the conference room, praying that it didn’t slide out from under her as she began hanging the steamers.  After adorning the front half of the room with festive crepe twirls she decided it was enough and started on the table.  There were two huge stacks of cups and plates, which Doreen thought was kinda funny considering that with Amber out and the Sys Admin Bruce babysitting a server installation, they’d be left with half a dozen at most.  Admittedly, once word of the food got out the suits in marketing would inevitably make their way over and probably some of the interns since they needed all the free grub they could get. “This actually looks pretty good.” Doreen stood up from straightening the corner of the tablecloth and stumbled backward until her shoulder blades thudded against the wall. “What’s wrong?”  Sheila said.  Doreen tried to speak but the only thing that came out was a dry rattle of air. “Jesus Christ Doreen, what the hell is the matter with you?!” The fractured features she had seen on Sheila were gone now, pushed back so far that there was nothing left above her neck except a flesh-edged oval with a ponytail dangling down behind it. “You need to pull yourself together before Mitch and the others get here,”  commanded the hollow void that had been Sheila’s face. “...ba...bathroom....”  Doreen managed as she staggered out of the office and headed down to the lobby. ***** It was mercifully empty on the bus, but Doreen still kept her attention on her phone in case the interior started to change or someone boarded before she got off.  When she got back to her apartment she called into work and left a message about becoming ill and needing to leave.  She was grateful that Mitch hadn’t picked up the phone, probably because he was currently at the party she’d just fled. She sat there on the sofa with her head in her hands and Sid sidled up beside her and gently headbutted her shoulder. “Oh Sidney.  What the hell is happening to me?” Sid nuzzled against her arm and flopped down beside her just as her cell on the coffee table began buzzing with an unknown number. “Hello?” “Hi, is this Doreen Arey?” “Yes.” “This is Stacey from Doctor Meyer’s office.  We received the results of your MRI and wanted to let you know that everything came back normal.” “Oh, um, that’s great.” “Doctor Meyer would like to schedule a follow-up appointment.  Are you available this coming Monday at nine thirty?” “Yeah, I should be able to make that work.” “I’ll put you down for then and if it turns out you can’t make it just let us know no later than forty-eight hours before the appointment and we can reschedule.” “Sure.” “You have a good rest of your day.” “Thanks, you too.” The call ended but Doreen kept the phone pressed against the side of her head like she was expecting someone else to start talking.  After a few moments she put the cell back on the table and looked down at Sid who was now sprawled across her lap. “Guess it isn’t a tumor.  Turns out mama is just looney tunes.” Sid looked up at her and Doreen was sure that at any moment his face would morph into something awful, but his sleek, black feline features stayed in their same adorable state.  She kissed him on top of his head and let out a long, shuddering breath that caught in her throat. “...I’m really scared Sid....” He flopped over onto his back and began to purr as Doreen pet his chest and stomach.  She leaned down and whispered in his ear.   “Please promise you won’t change on me.” Sid continued to purr while Doreen stroked his soft fur and felt her eyelids grow heavy as exhaustion overtook her. ***** It looked like the same familiar corridor that led to her office, but her door at the end was now so far down that Doreen could barely make it out in the distance. She began walking and noticed that the printed name plaques next to the doors had been replaced by some handwritten scrawl that was indecipherable to her.  As she progressed down the hall she noticed that the doorways were canted at increasingly crooked angles, the frames growing more and more askew until the wooden slabs clung to their hinges like baby teeth dangling in a child’s mouth.  She walked for what seemed like miles before finally reaching her office and gingerly pushed the teetering door aside.  Her L-shaped desk was covered in scorch marks on the faux-oak, formica surface and the computer and monitor had been reduced to a puddle of black, plastic goo that had oozed out over the front edge and pooled onto the carpeting.  The only other thing on the desktop was a picture of her parents that was intact in its silver frame but the original image had been twisted into those misshapen faces she’d seen at the restaurant. She leaned down to pick up the photo and inspect it more closely, but froze when her mother began speaking. “When are you going to get serious about your life?  You can’t just keep carrying-on without any ambition or a proper plan for the future.” Doreen tried to turn around and exit the office but her legs refused to obey. “Do you want to end up a spinster without anyone to care for you?  You think a cat is going to look after you in your old age?” “Stop!  Stop it!” “It’s like you don’t even care.  Utterly content to be overlooked and unappreciated, some non-entity who people secretly pity whenever they see them.” “Shut up!  Just shut up!” “I never thought I’d live to see my only child grow up to be such a loser.  What a disappointment you’ve turned out to be.” ***** Doreen woke with her heart pounding against her ribs as rivulets of sweat ran down her back and forehead.  She couldn’t remember leaving the couch and was slightly confused to see the curtains beside her bed after she cleared the morning cobwebs from her vision.  Sid was snoozing on top of the blanket by her feet and she carefully slid out from beneath the covers so as not to wake him, since doing so would mean an immediate demand for breakfast and she wanted a little time to herself before that happened.  She winced thinking about her incident at the office and of all the things that might have been said about her after she left.  At least it had been Friday, which gave her hope that it would be forgotten amidst the weekend mental purge that most people did as an act of self-preservation. That was assuming Sheila didn’t try to make Doreen’s sudden departure some salacious bit of water-cooler gossip.  They certainly weren’t friends, but she didn’t think that Sheila would try to actively sabotage her.  Doreen had made it a point not to get involved in the personal lives of her coworkers and to avoid department drama at all costs.  This attitude ran counter to the corporate spiel where the company liked to bandy about the Blenidex familial ethos in their press releases.  The last thing Doreen wanted after years of flying under the radar was to suddenly be thrust into the spotlight. She put on her robe and slippers and went down the short flight of stairs to check her mailbox since she’d forgotten to do it yesterday.  There was nothing in the rectangular metal cubby aside from a few restaurant flyers and an ad from someone running for city council that apparently decided to get a jump on election season.   Doreen dumped the contents into the recycling bin in the lobby and headed back.  Halfway up she tripped over the bottom hem of her robe and grabbed onto the banister for support; the rail buckled beneath her grip like it was made of putty and she fell to her knees onto the carpeted treads. She stayed there for a while, staring over at the curve in the railing and the row of shallow indentations her fingers had left in the wood. Doreen crawled on her hands and knees up the remaining steps and across the hall, scuttling into her unit before anyone saw.  She hoisted herself up using the edge of the kitchen counter expecting at any moment that it would warp beneath her hands but it remained solid. “Sid.  Sidney.  Obsidian Erasmus Arey, get your fuzzy butt over here right now.” There was a soft fwump of paws hitting the floor and then she saw black whiskers peek around the living room entryway as Sid sauntered into the kitchen.  She scooped him up into her arms and then slowly made her way around the apartment, methodically testing each area in their home to make sure it was safe. The rest of the day was spent traversing the apartment on tenterhooks with the worry that any false step or sudden movement might trigger another event.   Nothing about her life felt stable except for Sid and Doreen was afraid that simply being around her might change him the way it had the others.  He was lying on the sofa, his eyelids alternately drifting closed and springing back open as his ancestral predator instincts fought against the urge to nap in a shaft of late afternoon sun slanting in along the couch cushions. “Maybe we should become shut-ins Sid.  Get all our stuff delivered and shun the outside world.” Sid stretched out his long front legs and gave a wide yawn then curled himself into a circle. “We’re in agreement then.  Hermits from here on out.” The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon and Doreen wondered if it wasn’t such an unreasonable idea, at least in the short term.  There were certainly complications to becoming a recluse, not everything could be done from the comforts of home and she’d still have to go into work, but she could definitely limit her exposure.  What if this whole situation was her brain rebelling against the monotony of doing the same things day-in and day-out for decades and she simply needed a change in her routine to reset the circuits. “So my midlife crisis is some bad acid-trip freakout brought on by the ennui of modern existence.  Would’ve been better off buying a sports car or going base-jumping in Bali.”  Doreen muttered and then laughed at the absurdity of the idea. “Think I’ll give solitude a shot.  You with me, Sidney?” Sid made no move from his sun dappled spot on the couch. “Alright then.  Do-nothing weekend for the both of us.” ***** It had worked at first. That night she’d ordered takeout from a sandwich shop and the delivery driver left the food in the lobby after she buzzed them in.  She and Sid watched countless hours of movies and television shows, mostly ones she knew by heart for the sense of comfort they provided.  The next day she dined on leftovers and whatever was in the fridge, but by the following evening there wasn’t much left apart from condiments and a few freezer-burned relics. “What do you think Sidney, should we splurge again?” Sid meowed his assent and Doreen ordered a pizza from her local place, which had their own app that conveniently remembered her previous pie sizes and topping selections. “Just the thing for we creatures of habit.” Sid blinked and yawned. “I know that this is all a bit boring, but that’s exactly what I need right now.” Doreen buzzed the front door when the pizza arrived, but when she got downstairs the driver was still standing outside.  She’d already left a delivery tip with her order, but maybe he didn’t want to risk leaving the box in the lobby. “Pizza for Doreen,”  the driver said.  “That’s me,”  Doreen said, keeping her eyes pointed toward the floor as she opened the steel security door. “Be careful, the bottom is really hot.  Best to hold it from the sides.” She took the box from him, reflexively glancing up as she did so.  “Thank y—” The man stood there in blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt with a hood that was pulled up over nothing except empty space.” “Are you alright, Miss?” “...fa...fine...I’m fine,”  Doreen said as she retreated back into the lobby.  The door swung shut and she quickly made her way back upstairs nearly dropping the pizza in the process. She put the cardboard box down on the kitchen table, though she didn’t feel much like eating anymore.  Instead she placed the slices into two large plastic containers and put them in the fridge. Sid hadn’t moved from his spot on the sofa and Doreen slumped down next to him. She stared at the blocky cartoon images scrolling by on her TV’s screensaver as tears traced their way down the sides of her cheeks and disappeared into the sofa cushions. ***** The first thing Doreen saw after booting up her computer was a meeting request from her supervisor. Her stomach sank as she scanned through the rest of the unread emails in her inbox, making sure there weren’t any other surprises she needed to know about, then locked her screen and headed for the other side of the office.  She’d always had a good relationship with Mitch, but not knowing what had transpired on Friday after she left still felt a bit like walking into a minefield.   His door was open but Doreen knocked on the frame. “Hey there,”  Mitch said, looking up from his monitor.  “Why don’t you go ahead and close that.” Doreen shut the door behind her and sat down in the chair across from the desk. “How are you feeling?”  Mitch said. “Better now, thank you.” “Glad to hear it.” “I’m sorry for leaving last week without talking to you first.  I felt really sick.” “Yeah, Sheila mentioned that you were behaving strangely in the conference room.” Doreen felt her face go hot.  “...oh, did she?” “Her description sounded pretty bizarre, but then she’s always had a flair for the dramatic.” Doreen tried to laugh at this, but the sound died in her throat. “I’ve been having some... abnormalities  with my vision.  That’s what my appointment was for this morning.” “Sounds serious.” “My doctor doesn’t seem overly concerned;  probably just a transitory thing.” “Still, I hope they’re being thorough.” “Oh yes, she’s very good.  In the process of running more tests right now to try and track down the cause.” “It’s important to have a physician you trust.” “...yes...it is....”  Doreen said and watched as the window blinds behind Mitch began to droop, the horizontal strips of metal forming an inverted rainbow that was slowly making its way toward the floor. “Is everything alright?” Doreen doubled over and slammed her eyes shut. “I’m calling an ambulance.” “No, please don’t.  I’ll be okay” “At least let me get you a car so you can go home.” “...thank you....”  Doreen said without looking up. Mitch fiddled with his phone for a few moments and then stood up and crossed to the other side of the desk. “They’ll be here soon.  I’ll help you down and wait with you.” Doreen rose from the chair but kept her eyes closed.  “If you could take my arm.” They shuffled along the halls together and passed through the reception area into the elevator. “You’re sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”  Mitch said as they rode down to the lobby. “I’m sure.  Just need to go home and rest for a bit.” “Of course.” “I still have some things to finish on the Benson project.” “We’ll figure it out.  The important thing is for you to get better.” A gray Toyota pulled onto the semicircular driveway in front of the building and Mitch helped guide Doreen into the rear passenger seat. She opened her eyes.  “Thanks for everything Mitch.  I really appreciate it.” “No problem.  You just take it easy and don’t worry about anything.” Doreen managed a slight smile and wondered if Mitch was smiling back as the car slowly pulled away. There was no way to discern an expression of any kind from the darkened cavity seated beneath the curly mop of sandy blonde hair.   ***** She spoke with Doctor Meyer the next day, but the latest round of tests hadn’t revealed anything out of the ordinary.  It was difficult without an official diagnosis, but after some back-and-forth with Human Resources Mitch had managed to get her reclassified as a fully remote worker that could attend any required meetings virtually. The apartment became her haven and Doreen started wearing sunglasses and keeping her eyes closed whenever possible during outside interactions.  In those instances when she did have to look, the world she saw was that of a surrealist painting; previously mundane objects transformed into impossible configurations and an array of interchangeable people that all wore the same blank mask.  It felt to Doreen like her home was a raft and everything beyond it was open water with myriad unknown dangers dwelling below the murky surface. At least she had Sid, her lone companion in this new isolated existence. “Come here, Sidney,”  Doreen said, setting her laptop aside and motioning him over. Sid stayed where he was on the opposite end of the sofa and when Doreen reached over to grab him he darted away down the hall. She started after him, but then stopped and made her way over to the bathroom. Reflected in the mirror above the sink was that same featureless plane she’d seen on all the others.  She stared into the abyss of her former visage unsure of how it was possible now that her eyes were gone. Doreen held her hand in front of the mirror, slowly inching it back into that interior shadow to see how far down those endless inky depths she could reach. # Peter first fell into fiction penning stories to amuse his grammar-school classmates, which helped him overcome his shyness, but resulted in very few completed homework assignments.  He is an avid fan of horror movies, especially those with a sense of humor, food served from carts and roadside shacks, and the music of The Ramones, The Replacements, and other bands of like-minded misfits who found a way to connect with the world through their music and their words.  He was raised and currently resides in the Chicagoland suburbs with his wife and cats and his writing has appeared in various online and print publications. You can find out more about Peter and his writing at:  http://ravenpen.wixsite.com/authorsite

CW: Violence Barny let the heavy door slam in his son’s face. The boy struggled to pull it open against the storm-driven wind, his gloveless hands already numb from the short walk from his father’s USPS mail truck. The streetlights popped on as he pried the door open and slid into the bar’s vestibule, tendrils of dry snow swirling in behind him.  The boy overheard his old man say, “that pussy is still outside fighting your door,” when he got inside. The boy brushed off his thin camo jacket, and stamped caked snow from his boot lug soles on the industrial black rubber mat. He could see the trail of melting snow leading to his old man’s stool; the bastard was already wrapping on the bar for his boiler maker. The boy sat at a high top in the back corner, behind the pool table, and fished his math book from his backpack. Gillian, the barkeep, smiled as she approached the boy with a Coke. Barny turned to look at her, half gawking at her ass, half-sneering for bringing the kid a free drink.  The kid thanked her, too shy to make eye contact for more than a second, but still managing to sneak a peek down her flannel shirt at her cleavage. Gillian knew that’s what fifteen-year-old boys did; it was what all men wanted after all. Feeling sorry for the boy, she didn’t mind him looking. “What are you working on today?” she asked. “Algebra 2…it’s pre-calculus,” the boy answered.  Gillian raised an eyebrow. “Smart kid, eh? Must be from your mom’s side.” Barny spun on his bar stool, a beer in his hand.  “He’s as stupid as his worthless mother. But I’m teaching him what he needs to know.” “You’re an asshole, Barny,” Gillian said.  The boy rolled his eyes. His old man glared and pointed at him. Shit, he saw me… Barny turned back to his drinks. Gillian put her hand on the kid’s forearm. In a whisper, she asked him about the bruised lump over his eye. He looked down and shook his head. “That fucker…” ## Barny slid Ray, the bar owner, a manilla envelope across the bar. “Some good stuff in there. I could use the extra cash,” Barny said.  “This is International Falls, not Twin Cities. You’re gonna get popped if you keep stealing mail. Jesus, there are only two of you working in the post office. And if they start looking into things they ain’t gonna be looking at Mildred.” Ray pushed the envelope back to him.  “Then it’s a quick path to me. We can do this one, two times a year max. Return this shit and maybe we can do another run this summer. Let’s see if there’s any heat from the last one before we go again.” Barny scowled, took the envelope, set it on the stool next to him, and ordered another round. “Your loss. You’re too worried about that idiot postal inspector. The guy working these parts is a real fucking moron. But, hey, no worries. I got a guy across the border who’s interested in doing business with me if you ain’t.” Ray just looked at him hard, then went back down the bar to check on the only other afternoon regular in the place. ## Gillian checked on the kid twice more. The last time, it was nearing 6:00 p.m. and the bar was near-full.  “You finish your homework?” she asked. “Yep. Been done for a while now. Just waiting to go home.” “Your mom have dinner waiting for you and your old man when you get home?” She asked. “Some nights. Most nights she’s already in bed or asleep in her chair with the TV going. My old man stops at McDonald’s most nights anyway,” the kid said. “You shouldn’t be eating that shit all the time,” Gillian said. “Oh, I don’t. He won’t buy me any. Says I can buy my own food if I want it. I don’t have money so…” Gillian shook her head. She reached into her hip pocket and pulled out a wad of crumpled bills she’d gotten in tips. She pulled out a five and seven ones and handed them to the kid. “Buy yourself dinner on me tonight,” she said. The boy looked at her and smiled. Then he pushed the money back to her across the table. “You’d just be buying him dinner.” Barny finished his third round of boiler makers, dropped a twenty and a five on the bar, and put his empty shot glass on it. He stood up and pulled on his uniform coat. He gave Ray a heil-Hitler salute, then headed for the door. “Hurry up shit-stain,” he said to the kid as he walked out the door. The kid hurried to follow him out. He smiled at Gillian before the door swung shut behind him. She waved, but he was already gone. ## “Can I talk to you?” Gillian asked. “Shoot,” Ray said, continuing to clean the bar top. Gillian continued washing glasses. She cleared her throat. “I wanted to wait until we were closed to bring this up. And Ray, you know I’m loyal and keep shit to myself…” “Spit it out, hun. What’s the problem?” Ray asked. “That fucking asshole Barny is abusing that poor kid. He needs his ass beat. Can you say something to him? I…he’d be afraid to cross you if you told him to back off the kid.” Ray shook his head, looked pissed off. Gillian was about to retract her request when Ray spoke. “Yeah. That mother fucker is a problem in more ways than one. Listen…I respect you for bringing it up. I’m going to take care of it. Was going to anyway after the shit he pulled on me today. Do me a favor–keep watching out for the kid. His mom’s a drunken piece of shit, too.” ## Barny lay flat on the floor of the walk-in freezer, a puddle of blood running from a gash in his eyebrow turning to slush on the floor. He was naked except for his uniform socks; his hands zip-tied together behind his back. Ray, his brother Sammy, and Carl Sanders, their partner, stood over Barny. Carl kicked Barny in the ribs again. “Let’s go over this again. Who the fuck did you tell about our arrangement over in St. Charles?” Ray asked. Barny groaned.  “My fucking answer isn’t going to change. I told Brian Miller. That’s it. We fish together. Please, man, I’ll pay you to let me go.” Sammy bent over and slapped Barny hard on the ear. Barny cried out and hit his head on the concrete floor. “You got cash stashed someplace? Huh. More stolen mail? Where the fuck is it?” Sammy asked. Before he could answer, Carl kicked Barny in the ass, leaving a visible bruise in the pattern of a boot print.  “Fuck. Stop. Please. Stop…I have a stack of credit cards, some blank bank checks, and about $2,000 in a box hidden in the clean-out on my chimney. Door is on the outside of the house. You can go get it now. Please. It’s all yours, please just stop.” “Sammy, you know where this ass-clown lives?” Ray asked. “Corner of Maple and Main, that shitty white house that needs paint with the rusted pickup on the grass…” “Yeah, that’s it. Go on over and get that box,” Ray said. “And, Barny, if you’re lying to us…I’m going to cut your dick off and skull fuck you with it.” Carl said. ## Twenty minutes later, $1,896 in cash sat on a box of frozen burgers along with the other pilfered mail. Ray looked down at Barny. He was shivering, his skin blue.  “I to…tol…told you, man. I’m ffffree-freee-freezing…let…me…go,” Barny said. “Get him up,” Ray said.  Sammy and Carl each grabbed an arm. They hoisted him to his feet, keeping a tight grip on his arms.  “You piece of shit. I should’ve known better than getting into bed with a loser like you. Had you just fucked me, I might’ve let you off with this beating. But you’re the kind of asshole who beats his kid. This is for him…” Ray said.    Barny only got out, “What the fuck does…” before Ray pulled the plastic garbage bag from his pocket and pulled it over Barny’s head. Barny struggled. Ray punched him hard in the face–the crunch of Barny’s nose breaking was audible beneath the plastic bag. Barny went limp. Ray took a roll of duct tape from his jacket pocket and made several tight wraps around Barny’s neck. Sammy and Carl pushed Barny to the floor. All three men kicked him until he stopped moving and took in his last breath. “You know where to dump him. Wrap those fucking credit cards and that mail up with his body.” ## The kid sat at a table in the library doing his homework. He looked surprised to see Gillian standing there. “Hey, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?” the kid asked. “Ray sent me over to find you. Sucks your old man took off,” she said. The kid looked at her, then dropped his eyes. “I don’t miss him. But he left us with no money. My mom left me alone two nights ago and hasn’t been back. I don’t even know where she went. Most of her clothes are gone.” “Well, that’s why I’m here. Ray wants to give you an afterschool job. He needs help stocking the bar, sweeping, shoveling the walkway…stuff like that. It comes with room and board at my house. You’d have your own room. But school comes first…what do you think?” she asked. “Seriously? What about my mom? What if my dad…what if he comes back?” the boy asked. “They aren’t coming back. But I think you already knew that…” The kid looked down. He didn’t say anything but packed up his books and put on his coat.  “Can we stop by my place to get my clothes?” “Sure, hun,” she said. Outside, the snow had piled high and was still coming down. The kid brushed off Gillian’s windshield with his gloves before he got in the car. The kid told her where he lived. She drove. Through the quiet streets, Christmas lights twinkled on the little houses, the ones that didn’t always get their mail, making the sad little town look somehow happier. “Hey, you were supposed to turn back there,” the kid said. “I know,” she said. The kid didn’t say anything. A block up, she turned into McDonald’s.  The kid looked away from her and ran his coat sleeve across his eyes. JD Clapp lives in San Diego, CA. His work has appeared in Cowboy Jamboree, Bristol Noir, Roi Fainéant Press, trampset, Punk Noir and numerous others. In 2023, he was a Pushcart nominee in nonfiction, and had a fictional story selected as a finalist in the Hemingway Shorts, Short Story competition. X @jdclappwrites . IG @jdclapp

Time is a white but yellowing thing. I’ve got an ibuprofen bottle packed with psilocybin And a mind packed to the brim with thoughts I can’t quite dodge.   So we drove down to Oregon upon a winter lark And swam within the green green ocean of ponderosas That all bent their heads so rigidly toward God We thought our bodies had dropped out from beneath us. We ascended And You turned to me and said how sad it was That nothing gold can stay and everything just gets gutted On the way to the slaughterhouse. But I kissed your cheek and built a mustache From the low hanging moss while The Look of Love Played on a distant radio.   Time is a yellowing thing, this is true. You are borne of shadows And you die in the light. The air you breathe stretches on forever until it stops. The air your steed from birth to whatever comes after. My brittle and broken steed. My skeleton-shaped catacomb My stilted heart high above the hollows. Faking pain inside an aching brain Of some absent father’s design Fractured and flawed, line by line. All whimsy and strained Unreasoned and even-keeled. Like Carol Channing’s voice through crackling waveforms.   Age ain’t nothing but a number, they say. But time is a yellowing thing. Eric Subpar is a poet from Washington State where he lives with his wife and three sons. Find him at @EricSubpar  on Twitter.

Everyone said the sniff was to blame for Rob going off the rails. They thought it was why he stopped hitting his sales targets. Ruben warned him that if he came under on his numbers for the quarter again then that’d be that—he was done.  Fucken Ruben.  That guy’s not real sales. You and me have both gone on pitches with him and he’s embarrassing. He can’t build rapport with prospects to save his life. It’s all product knowledge, not relationship building. He hides behind that serious, I’m-in-charge, Sales Director nonsense.  It was freaky when Rob went missing after the company Christmas Party. Whoever booked a burlesque-themed Crimbo lunch in Camden needs to take a long look in the mirror. If you’re drinking prosecco from noon and doing cheeky lines on the side, then you have to expect total carnage.   Am I wrong?  Rob was funny in the bar, doing his funky robot moves and dry-humping an inflatable reindeer.  Ruben’s face said it all.   None of us ate the lunch as it was rank. Drinking on an empty stomach was why everyone was extra mashed in the pub we went to afterwards.  End of days stuff. The marketing girls, dressed in their sexy Elf outfits, rolling backwards off that couch, legs in the air, giving everyone a flash of their coochies as per usual. Katie blowing chunks into her handbag.  Not like you noticed.  You were too busy snogging the face off Barbara from procurement. She’s so ancient but I always said she had a naughty side. I bet she was up to all sorts when she was young. Shame that was fifty years ago. Jokes. And then the whole drama of no one hearing from Rob and us realising he’d disappeared.  So, that’s what I’m telling you: I’ve found him.   I thought he was just battered at the party, waffling on about the hole in the garden terrace of his flat. He tried to explain how the hole got deeper and wider the more he scratched with his hands and burrowed. He bought himself a shovel from the DIY store. Once he’d dug to about chest height, he said he found a tunnel.  “You’re chatting shit,” I told him.  He got moody and said, “I mean it. I’m going in tonight.” “Oh, do me a favour.”  “All the way.”  “You need to chill out. Let’s get some shots in.”  I forgot about his story at first. My memory was still mush when the police questioned us. Prosecco. Lager. Flaming sambucas. Untold amounts of Bolivian marching powder. No wonder none of us had a Scooby what happened to him. We were well and truly arseholed. They searched the canal near the places where we’d been drinking. I gave a detective the details of his ex, that crazy Aussie girl, Tarryn. She told the police Rob sent texts to her on the night of the party, gunning for some ex-sex. She didn’t bother answering Rob because she said he was a two-timing druggie who hung about with a bunch of knuckle-dragging losers.  Like she can talk.  It was the CCTV footage of him buying a shawarma in the kebab shop near his flat that made the police realise he’d got at least that far back from the festive fun. What unfolded afterwards was anyone’s guess. If this was a genre for TV, it’d be called a mystery, a suspense thriller. Until, that is, yours truly had a spliff-inspired flashback and recalled Rob talking about the tunnel. Brace yourself.   Last Saturday afternoon I took the Northern Line to Rob’s gaff and let myself in, searching for clues. Evidence. It’s Rob’s place so there’s the old skool collection of VHS porn, all themed and alphabetised like a library, and his record collection. Black and white pics of The Jam-era Paul Weller on the wall, Quadrophenia and all that Mod pap. Let’s be honest, Rob’s pretentious.  I found his infamous ‘Box of Delights’ and had a dab of MDMA. Don’t ask me how the police missed it. I used the key for the back door to the terrace. It looked like a building site with a pile of rubble and a spade. Guess the coppers were in a hurry and thought Rob was in the middle of renovations. If they’d lifted the planks of wood, they would’ve found the hole. I dropped into it, switching on the torch on my phone. The tunnel was there, like Rob told me.   I crawled through the soil and mud. It got hotter and I started to sweat my nads off. Made me realise I’ve piled on the pounds in the past 12 months. I’m not great in confined spaces either, but luckily I’d brought the MDMA with me. It’s scientifically proven – by Germans no less, so Rob said – to help combat stress. I tell you, crawling is fucken knackering. I had to stop to catch my breath.  We deffo need to get the five-a-side lads back together and lace up our shooting boots. It was a right laugh and decent exercise too. We shouldn’t have let that slide. COME ON THE HOOPS.  It felt like it took forever to worm down the tunnel. I was in darkness for a while, trying to save the battery on my phone. I properly thought I was losing the plot when I saw a dot of light in the distance and heard voices.  The brightness made me blink and the chat got louder. When the tunnel came to an end, I peered to see an enormous chamber beneath me, filled with the noise of people at desks and talking on phones. This room goes on forever and it’s spotless. Imagine Heathrow airport, all the terminals combined, but sparkly clean. I used a ladder to climb to the ground. It was made of metal and that’s when it hit me how the place was roasting. I’m not kidding. Hotter than in the tunnel. The ladder itself scalded my hands.  Our boy was waiting for me when I reached the bottom.  He said, “Alright, mate, you took your fucken time.”  I gave him a hug. “What you playing at?” I said. “You’ve got us running about like headless chickens up there.”  “I told you where I was going.”  “We had you for a goner.”  “Maybe I am,” he said, grinning. “Come meet the boss.”  We walked to a desk that was fancier than the others. I noticed how there were no computers, only rotary phones with curly cables like your girlfriend, Barbara, would use… Jokes.  There was a woman at the desk, wearing a designer suit.  “Catch you later,” said Rob.  “Hold on, we need to speak.”   “Later.” “Money never sleeps,” said the woman in a flirty American accent that’s the right side of husky.  “Nice setup,” I said, taking in her tight-fitting trousers and jacket with a red carnation on her lapel.  “Let me show you around,” she said, giving me the eyes.   Everyone was chatting on landline phones. Pitching in different languages, French, Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, you name it. They were dressed in shorts and t-shirts because of the heat. Don’t think that means they’re on holiday and dossing because that’s not the case. These lot are grafters. They’re on it. Not like you, playing fucken Football Manager at the start of every quarter—flicking screen tabs when Ruben does his office patrol.  “You need some computers and air con,” I said.  “Do we?”  “This is the twenty-first century.” “You English are funny.”  Seems she’s gathering all the sales people on the planet who keep missing their targets, got fired or ‘released’. She wants the rejected, the outcasts and the mavericks. In her mind, that makes them genuine sales. They’ve earned their stripes doing door-to-door. Done the hard yards cold-calling. They’ve known the dizzy, champagne highs of the multi-year mega deal and the fucken heartache of the verbal ‘yes’ from a prospect which never turns into a written confirmation and purchase order.  “Sales is gnarly,” she said.  “Yeah-it-is.”  She took me to a vacant desk. “This’ll be where you sit.”  I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Mate, you know I’m a sucker for blood-red lipstick and I like women to have curves. Something to hold onto. Not like these skinny, yoga-obsessed, selfie-taking gym bunnies.  “But I don’t belong with rejects. I’m a top performer,” I said.  “You’ve not made your target in the last three quarters.” “A deal’s been verballed for Q4 and that’ll get me over the line.” “It won’t happen. They’re going to tell you that a key decision-maker is on maternity leave. They’ll go quiet, refusing to answer your calls or reply to your emails.”  “Fuckers,” I said.  I’d felt something was off in the sales cycle. Did I tell you about how Ruben, in my last appraisal, suggested I wasn’t a closer?   Twat.  She said, “I’ll give you 24 hours to decide and then we have to collapse the tunnel.”   “What would I be selling?”  “Does it matter?” “Not really.” “You’re sales through and through. All I ask is that you approach each sale like it’s a matter of life and death.” “It’s not insurance?” She did a deep, smoky laugh. I swear, it gave me wood. She said, “No, it’s not.” “I’ll sell anything except insurance.”  “Speak to your friend—he can join us too,” she said, gesturing to another empty desk next to mine.  That’s right, she’s heard all about you.  So, Rob collected me and showed me to the tunnel. He wouldn’t let on about what they do precisely, or the commission structure. I reckon the basic pay will be ropey, but he seemed convinced it’s the best sales job he’s ever had.   “The boss gets us,” he said. “She gives us confidence.” “It’s a confidence game.”  We bumped fists and I climbed up to the tunnel.  Fuck Ruben and his performance quartiles. I’m done. What do you reckon? You, me and Rob together—the dream team reunited.  Let’s meet at Rob’s gaff for seven-thirty. We’ll do some lines and play tunes before going in.  All I’m packing is a suit, tie and shoes. The rest will be shorts, t-shirts, a pair of trainers and oven gloves for that bastard ladder.    Rob’s well up for five-a-side too, so bring your football.  The boss is going to want us to graft but I reckon it’ll be a laugh. Think Ibiza in July / August, minus sunlight.  We’ll be livin' la vida loca. Good times.  Mark Burrow has published a novella, Coo, which is about an alcoholic turning into a pigeon in a world where people are turning into birds (Alien Buddha Press). His short stories have appeared in a range of titles, such as Literally Stories, Punk Noir Press and Hunger, an anthology of stories published by Urban Pigs Press.