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THE MALL OF MEN She chooses men the same way you’d pick a detergent bar or a cereal box at a hyperstore Carefully; after looking at the expiry date manufacturing details, ingredients, trademark, et cetera (At best, we are museum exhibits or broken seats of the last matinee) Her aching prurience sways under the glib talk of poetry While she measures our frame on the totem pole of her abstinence Our libido must equal her void Our despair must average her thirst for bestial lunacy Our rough skin must hold the salt of her childhood Our torsos must resemble dim hotel rooms or borrowed flats (Because she has stayed in seven stars with her husband) Our tongues must carry her bittersweet words So, when we sweat above her she can taste herself, more Her trained irises hunger-spot us for signs of buried trauma That way, we could be cold-pressed for character arcs first and then smoothly molten into stories The acid of our triggered abuse could be used for quick exits Someday, We could become poems too So, she can read the in-between of our giving breaths, in festivals far and near, like a lost huntress while tasting our blood, forever unpublished. EXTRA MARITAL We have an extra-marital affair - with time Standing at the door with bags packed ready to move out At the slightest hint of infidelity, ignorance or negligence Time claims everything when it leaves - The past sharing of rooms, kisses and windows pasted with evening skies The earth of our souls and quantum of every journey The stories we kept repeating and the ones we couldn’t tell It takes too much when it leaves you for someone else And worse, for nothing but itself It’s painful to let time depart So, we write and rewrite our lives with the desperation of a thousand atoms Hoping that time understands our honesty waits for some more time a day or two calling it true love Sanket Mhatre has been featured at Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Jaipur Literature Festival and Glass House Poetry Festival. His first book of cross-translated poems, The Coordinates Of Us won the prestigious Raza Foundation Grant after been shortlisted at IWrite2020 at Jaipur Literature Festival. Sanket’s poems have appeared in multiple anthologies such as Shape Of A Poem, The Well Earned, Home Anthology by Brown Critique, Poetry Conclave Yearbook as well as literary magazines such as Punch, Borderless, Muse India, Madras Courier, The Usawa Literary Review, Men Matters Online, Anthology by Querencia Press and many others.

From the diary of Cassandra Austen, sister of Jane Austen I have a choice, one which I fear may attract some consternation and regret. Circumstances dictate that I must make a decision soon, as time pushes me on like an angry mother lamenting filial disobedience. I have in my possession many letters written in your fair hand; my dear, departed sister. They hold within them much that is secret; secret and steeped in venom, the venomous barbs with which only you knew how to pierce. You were private, and you confided in me many things too dreadful to see the light of day. You were not in the habit of withholding your scathing understanding of the very darkest edges of the human condition. And as I walk through the winter of my life, I fear that there will come a day when the world seeks to know what was hidden in the private chambers of your heart. But what right do they have to speak of your heart? What claim can they make upon your laughter and your tears? You and I shared more than your novels, more than your stories and your imaginings. You let me in, utterly, and between us we made a pair, which some struggled to tell apart. I was always there, the useful sister, bidden to a bedchamber of childbirth, chained to the scrubbings of a dirty floor. And I was content to do it, to be the ‘sensible and pleasing Cassandra’, my head always ‘full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb’, so that you might be everything that your talent would create. You called me a phoenix once, and I have kept that image close to my heart, even now, after all of these years. I am old, and increasingly of little good to anyone, but I remember what you said, and I sincerely hope that there will be another rising once all is sunk into the ashes. Not for myself, but for you, dear sister. For you and your blessed children; the brilliant works you left behind. It has been my privilege to care for them and help them to their proper place, and now I am tired. I busy myself in my garden and I knit calmly by the fire, but I am lonely. All have left me, and I am burdened with the oppressive hours of a life now spent in painful isolation. I find the hours have leant me great means of reflecting on your words, and I imagine how others may feel and judge without understanding the real nature of who you were. Your tongue and your talent were tied together; one did not exist without the other, though I fear this will not be recognised if your ungenteel utterances are laid bare. I feel honour bound to protect you as I prepare to follow you into the unknown; to follow you as you once followed me to school, because you could not bear to be separated. You have been gone these many years, but I love you still, and I know in my heart what I must do. This will hurt me, but it will hurt you more if I do not act. I have given them pieces, but the masterpiece that was the true Jane Austen shall remain with me. I have shared your work, but I will not share you. I will commit your letters to the flames. I have made my choice. I had truthfully made it before I even took up my quill, and I take this action now, not out of pride, or selfishness, or jealousy. My dearest Jane, forgive me. This is an act of love. Esther Byrne is a writer from Yorkshire, UK. She has had short stories published with fiftywordstories.com, Toasted Cheese and Secret Attic. In 2021, she was runner-up for the Val Wood Yorkshire prize. She lives with chronic illness and is passionate about encouraging people with disabilities to express themselves creatively. You can see more of her work at estherbyrne.com.

She liked doing it to music. It relaxed her, she said, helped her focus. “On what?” I asked. “The situation,” she said. The niche between her fingers looked like it was missing a cigarette. *** “I’m not a performer.” “I can tell.” She reached for her phone. The side of her face changed color as she scrolled. “You don’t feel like you’re onstage? Exposed?” “Isn’t that the point?” She laughed as her eyebrows turned orange. *** “What about an instrumental? No words—just atmosphere.” She turned her phone so I could see. I squinted at the display and shook my head. “I have awful associations with that album. With everything she’s done, actually.” “But she’s just playing piano. You don’t even hear her voice.” “Doesn’t matter. It’s still her.” She crossed her legs and sat up. The side of her shirt rippled over a wedge of skin. *** “Did you know singers save their voices sometimes? Like if you go to a matinee, the leads will be onstage, walking around and doing all the poses and gestures. But someone else sings their part from offstage?” She nodded. “I didn’t know that.” Her eyes traced the crawl of text near her feet. “Of course they try to hide it. When we went for school, the singer was in the pit. You couldn’t see him or his microphone, or the stand he was using to turn pages. But once you know, you know.” She typed something and set the phone down. “I never liked theater after that.” “That’s understandable I guess,” she said. *** The traffic outside bore with it a song that for months had been inescapable. It was playing in the café where we had agreed to meet. I watched her from the table where I sat, early for once. She glanced from booth to booth as her mouth moved around the words of the chorus. *** “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just—” Her phone chirped and trembled, then came to rest. Its silver edge formed a perfect parallel with the nightstand’s edge. She ignored the noise and uncrossed her legs. The room around us receded into vague shapes. I could see her eyes roving the wall opposite from behind a scrim of hair. “Your eyes are green,” I said. We both liked doing it in the dark.

We talk a lot about process—not outcome—and trying to consistently take all the best information you can and consistently make good decisions. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't . . ." --Sam Hinkie, General Manager of the Philadelphia 76ers, 2013 Concession Fighting his way from the concession stand, Josh saw her pass. He stopped, turned, unthinkingly called out: “Liza!”—the woman he still thought of as the future mother of his kids. Boys. Two of them. Sixers faithful all the way. She looked good, and he said so. Could he see her again? Next Saturday? There was this awesome new sports bar in Manayunk. Turned out she was quite busy—would be, in fact, for the foreseeable future. He did his best to insist. “Josh.” She cocked a hip. “No offense, but you are the spitting image of a first-round exit.” He winced as if struck. “It’s splitting.” “What?” “Splitting image.” A lanky teen in an Embiid jersey preened by, saying, “Dude, you couldn’t be more wrong,” before bouncing with friends up the concourse ramp. Liza smirked. Josh looked down to see his Yuengling had already lost its head. “Fair enough,” he said, his words mostly trounced by the announcer’s rousing call for the crowd to stand for the anthem. “I’ll give you—” She rejected his response with a hand. “Whatever you have you can keep.” Someone bumped him from behind, and beer splashed upon his Nikes. Defeated, he tried to take solace in the sight of her walking away. Those crazy thin heels, that flimsy crimson blouse, the tight white leather pants. So hot. The colors, in fact, of the Heat. And still, despite this evening’s outcome, he held out hope that they might someday be a team. Obsession Beads of sweat were leaving streaks in the white paint around his temples. Davey hadn’t anticipated the heat of the Wells Fargo Center lights. And the rage radiating off his wife certainly didn’t help. “Of course I care, honey. I—excuse me,” he said, rising with his fellow die-hards. “What are you doing! Get after it or get gone!” he shouted as the Sixers played catch around the perimeter. “Yeah, get after it!” A nearby dad of two mimicked, winking in Davey’s direction. “See, he understands!” Davey threw arms in the direction of the man so hard that the faux red mullet almost slid off his head. The section cheered in agreement. “Hit me up at the half, man. We’ll get a pic for the gram.” “Hell yeah!” The man gave his eldest an exuberant high-five. Davey sat back down. In tears, his wife asked, “Are you serious?” “I know it’s not easy being married to the Sixers Superfan, but we wouldn’t be able to pay for your hormones without it.” He rubbed her arm. “Let’s make a TikTok. It’ll cheer you up.” She pulled her arm away. “Hardly feels worth it. Not like you’d be around.” Davey watched her watch the clock run down to zero. Already down by sixteen points, catching up for the Sixers would be as difficult as this damn IVF. Or getting back into his wife’s good graces. Regression The sound of his father’s hand hitting his own was so loud that it drew the attention of the fans heading for the stairs for a stretch and snack. “I can’t believe it!” his father shouted. From his seat, Knox could see the slot in his mouth where a missing premolar should be, ejected by an elbow in a pickup game of hoops during the old man’s “glory days.” It reminded Knox of Ricky Sheetz when he got his tooth knocked out during an after-recess scuffle. He rolled his eyes. “It’s not that big a deal, Dad.” “Not a—are you kidding? The OG superfan is a legend, and he wants to take a picture with us? It’s the epitome of cool. Can’t wait to tell the boys.” He stared into his phone, not noticing how his son winced at his embarrassing use of slang. Knox pulled the plate of nachos off of his father’s lap to avoid spillage. Things had been different when his father first brought him and his brother Michael before the pandemic. It was a fun family outing, picturesque in its wholesomeness. After two years of watching reruns of games from afar, however, his father seemed to have forgotten how to behave. “Suck my farts!” his father shouted as the second half began. Knox snapped back to reality in time to see the Heat’s point guard bounce one off the side of the backboard. His father went berserk, fumbling his beer into the aisle after making a particularly rude gesture in mockery of the miss. At this rate, Knox thought, pulling down the brim of his cap, he’d have to drive them home. Suppression Sasha’s stomach dropped through her seat as the ball clunked off the rim. “It’s okay,” she said, clapping politely. “We still have time.” Anton looked at her. “You’re more optimistic than me, baby girl.” “I just think we should give them the benefit of the clock. Miracles do happen.” And she believed that. At least, she wanted to. It felt so good to be back watching sports in real time again. She was already dreading the long, lonely summer. What was she going to do? Watch baseball while eating overstuffed, juice-leaking brats? No way. Basketball season couldn’t be coming to a close already! The Sixers could still turn it around and win it all. They had before, although not in many years. There was Wilt in ’67. Dr. J. and Moses in ’83, over the Showtime Lakers no less. And in 2001, with Iverson—The Answer—well, second place was still a tremendous achievement. “It’s not all about miracles, you know. It’s about hard work…” Sasha didn’t know if Anton was being sarcastic as usual or sincere, so she ignored him. Besides, it’s not like she wasn’t trying. Intimacy was a process. It took time, not unlike confidence in the home team’s ability to get the job done. It could be frustrating, downright discouraging, but that’s what made it all worthwhile in the end. Anton of all people should get that. It’s not like he was sinking emotional baskets left and right. “I know you think I’m crazy,” she said, patting his knee, “but we’re due for a championship. It’s the law of large numbers or statistics or whatever. We’ve been losing for so long, something’s got to give. Right?” “I suppose.” She locked eyes with him. “It’s called believing,” she said, leaning over to kiss him on the temple. Digression He stepped back to the charity stripe, received the bounce pass from the referee. The first attempt had been an air ball. Behind the stanchion, fans turned rabid. Merciless. Online, they’d been going on about his game. His free throw troubles. His three-point percentage. His inept passing. His Swiss cheese D. Someone said something nasty about the Insta babe he’d dated for a week. He dribbled three times, bent his knees, saw a cut out of his face bouncing directly in his line of vision. After all, the stakes were mighty high. If he missed this second shot, the fans would win some shitty fast food. His release was flawed, and the ball grazed the front of the rim. The fans went mad. It was as if they’d won it all. Laughing, he backpedaled down the court. Let them have their victory feast. All that mattered was taking the home team down. Expulsion Even before the Beard jab stepped and shot a brick, it slipped out—effortlessly, as if it had come from his father’s mouth. Cameron winced, knowing what came next. “What did you just say?” His mother towered over him, eyes brighter than the white trim of her Sixers jersey. His father turned, soft pretzel crumbs still in his beard. “Did you hear what your son just said?” Cameron pulled the neck of his sweatshirt over his nose as his mom cupped her hands around her mouth. His father tried to hide his smile. “Oh no,” he said, “whatever shall we do?” “He’s only fourteen.” “He’s becoming a man!” Relief flooded Cameron. Dependable Dad. His mother spat, “That’s it? He just gets a pass? What about next time? What about shit or damn or twat!” “Calm down.” “You did not just tell me to calm down!” she shouted, before letting out a streak of profanity so startling, nearby parents kept their children’s ears covered long after the security guard ushered Cameron and his parents out of the arena. Concussion Their power forward went down. Blow to the head. Time was called, and referees gathered at the monitor. Miami’s coach approached, foaming at the mouth. He seemed completely unhinged. Flagrant one? Two? Was one of the game’s brightest stars going to get tossed? Slouched in a seat a friend couldn’t use, Octavius thought of all the blows he’d received in recent months. Elsewhere, striding, head and shoulders bobbing in the distance, was the MVP Octavius, the one who always won when it mattered. The one who would have not only been able to get that Boeing job, but also would have been able to keep it. To rise in the ranks. Players milled around the court, waiting for the verdict. The sad fact was he did not ask to be an Octavius. Normal people made lists, tried to find common ground. They considered current trends. His parents must have been seriously impaired. Drink, drugs, a fetish for ancient Rome. What the hell was with them? My God, if his parents were so keen on having an emperor, why not Julius? As Philly fans, wasn’t that the most obvious choice in the world? How different school would have been. Kids would have taken to calling him The Doctor. Dr. J. He would have cultivated this mystique, this air of grace and cool when the heat was on. He saw himself soaring now, pedaling his feet, extending his arm for a highlight reel dunk. Cameras flashing. The crowd going wild. Quickly—too quickly—he came back down to earth, reality as painful as a high ankle sprain. The truth was, whatever his name, school would still have been a disaster. Because there were winners and losers and although the NBA probably was not fixed, life almost surely was. When alone—when free from all the bullies—he could be man enough to accept this unfortunate truth. Perhaps later, if it was not too late, he’d call his parents and confront them about the name at last. Perhaps it would free him from the him he was right now. Through some miracle or another, he could be if not that MVP self then at least a key player with some useful, specialized skill. He nodded, conjuring an image of himself, feet planted just outside the restricted circle, smiling, stone still, waiting for the blow that would come with the charge. Depression Danny, Matt’s on-again off-again friend since first grade, said, “Grief is a process.” “I’m going to ask you kindly to fuck your motherfucking process.” Danny shrugged. “Hey, it’s not mine. It’s that one psychologist. Keebler something?” “What? The elf?” “Huh?” “You know—the stupid cookie guy.” “No, no, it’s Kubler. That’s right. Kubler…Ross!” At the light, Matt asked, “What the hell were we talking about?” “Sara. Your daughter’s not dead, but losing custody has got to be the next worse thing. There are steps you need to go through in order to heal.” “I’ll buy your beers if you’ll shut the hell up.” “See. That’s one of them—the steps. Bargaining.” “Enough!” “And there’s Anger.” “Does it count if it’s aimed entirely at you?” They pulled into Tom & Jerry’s for their traditional post-game nightcap. Inside, it was loud, Blaze of Glory just starting their second set. Matt drank in silence, brooding over the sad state of affairs. He was embarrassed by how many Bon Jovi lyrics came so readily to his lips. “Don’t worry, bro,” Danny screamed in his ear. “We’ll get ’em next year.” “Yes—of course.” Matt downed his beer, unable to keep from thinking about The Process—the bloated contracts, the piss-poor fits, the top picks who couldn’t shoot to save their lives. “Christ,” he shouted, “they could have done better by drafting out of a hat!” “Now you’re back at anger. Think that means you lose your turn.” On stage, the singer was living on a major off-key prayer. Still, Tommy and Gina were going to make it. “Let’s do shots,” Danny screamed. Shots. Matt had taken a few and missed them all quite badly. Now, all he had to look forward to was a weekend with his daughter twice a month. Decompression At the kitchen table, Josh poured another. Why did his steak look so suddenly sickly in its roll? He took a bite—cheesy, greasy glue. Checked his messages. No Liza. No surprise. Clicked game highlights on the phone: a pretty floater here, a poster dunk there. A role player sealing the win with a parking lot trey, adding insult to injury by making goggles with fingers and thumbs all the way down the court. Josh swiped greasy lips with a sleeve. Life was sad—the loss of Liza was ample proof of that. But, ever the optimist, he was determined to find solace once again. He sat back, breathed in and out, in and out. Closed his eyes, conjured up a celebration: shower of confetti, tears of joy, the foamy spray of champagne. In the end, someone was going to have what it took to win the whole damn thing. To be number one. And that, he allowed, would have to be more than enough. Jillian S. Benedict is a creative writer living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In her free time she enjoys yoga, reading, and listening to music while people watching from her stoop. Her work can be found in Feels Blind Literary, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and on instagram @writerwithoutacause. Michael Cocchiarale's work has appeared in online journals such as Fictive Dream, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Disappointed Housewife, and Roi Fainéant.

Hel is perched in the large bay window of Hemlock Tattoo Removal. Her serpentine tail curls around her, flicking in time with the sound of distant thunder. She cleans her front paw with a sandpaper tongue, lulled by the storm outside. Her owners move about the shop, readying for the day’s appointments. All three beings are unaware of Hel’s impending death. Mimicking her Norse namesake, the fur on Hel’s face is split between creamy orange and obsidian black. Her eyes are similarly mismatched, golden-yellow on one side and piercing blue on the other. Her owners often joke that she’s two cats in one body, either bounding with lively mischief or lounging in subdued repose. Currently, she’s chosen to engage in the latter. Hel stops cleaning her paw and flops onto her side, her back to the window. She stretches in feline satisfaction, readying herself for her morning nap. She’s soothed by the sound of rain pattering the glass. Her eyes drift closed. A BANG reverberates against the window. Hel leaps from the ledge, scurrying behind the reception desk. Her owners jump, their preparations briefly halted. The woman walks to the front of the shop, cautiously peering out the rain-streaked glass. She gasps softly. “It’s a bird...” “Seriously?” Her husband moves to join her at the window. “Yea, look.” She points to the sidewalk. A large black crow lays on its back, wings splayed. “Is it alive?” “I don’t-” The bird twitches, then flutters to its feet. “Huh, must be disoriented from the storm.” The crow looks around, then flaps its wings and flies out of sight. The woman shakes her head. “Weird.” After a moment, they both return to their morning activities. Hel peers out from behind the reception desk, eyeing the window suspiciously. Her ears perk up when she senses movement along the far wall. A needle-like tail flits out from beneath the radiator as a creature darts amongst the shadows. Forgetting her fright, Hel crouches low and slinks slowly around the corner of the desk. A small black mouse with fiery red eyes pokes its head into the light, whiskers twitching. Hel stops just beyond the desk, plotting her approach. Before she can move, the mouse darts beneath the radiator again, disappearing into a hole in the floor. It’s a dissatisfying start to the day, but Hel is undeterred. She leaps to the top of the desk and finds a comfortable position in a basket of papers, where she finally naps. The rest of the morning passes in a blur of soggy people and buzzing machines, all relatively typical for Hel. She’s sleeping on the lobby sofa when one of her humans returns with a paper bag clutched to his chest. He deposits the bag on the reception desk before walking towards the treatment rooms in the back. “Anna!” he calls. “Lunch time!” There’s a sound of a reply, but Hel doesn’t hear it. She’s already trotting silently towards the desk, following the scent of fried chicken. Once at the bag, Hel spots the tip of a golden-brown wing. Without hesitation, she lunges, sinking her teeth into the warm, crispy flesh. She draws back, pulling the wing with her, but it’s bigger than she anticipated. The wing catches, causing the bag and its contents to topple toward her. “Hel, no!” her human calls from the doorway. He starts towards her and Hel leaps from the desk. There’s a loud SQUEAK as his wet shoes slip and he falls backward. Hel’s other human steps out from an adjacent room. “What-” She trips over her prone husband, causing the stack of files she’s carrying to fly forward. Hel drops her prize and scampers away, narrowly avoiding being crushed as the stack crashes down onto the stolen chicken wing. Hel freezes, watching her groaning heap of humans. Her eyes flash to the pile of folders and papers that now harbor her fried loot. As she contemplates her second robbery attempt, the small black mouse with red eyes skitters across the floor in front of her. Hel doesn’t hesitate. The mouse screeches and zigzags between the toppled folders. Hel’s paws slip on the spilled pages, but her eyes remain fixed on the demonic rodent. Hel’s humans are still trying to right themselves when the mouse scurries through a gap in their legs. Hel bounds over the pile of limbs and tears after her prey. “Hel!” the woman calls, but Hel is already gone, chasing the mouse down the corridor. The mouse turns abruptly into a side room and Hel follows without missing a step. Backed into a corner, the mouse tries clambering up the wall. Hel slows, stalking forward on liquid limbs. The mouse turns, eyes and head darting. Hel pauses for an instant then pounces. Instead of running away from her, the mouse leaps with one final screech and latches onto Hel’s leg. There’s a burning sensation and Hel yowls in pain. She crumples into the corner and instinctively bites at the mouse, ripping it from her flesh. She tastes blood. It should be sweet and metallic, but Hel only tastes foul sulfur. She drops her prey, retching in vain as the blood slides down her throat. Hel’s throat is closing. Her little heart races as her lungs starve for air. She collapses, wheezing and twitching until her small body can fight no longer. This is how Hel dies. “Hel?” a woman’s voice calls from the corridor. Hel is dead so she doesn’t hear. “Hel?” a man’s voice this time. Silence echoes in response. “Where’d you get to?” Hel’s eyes flash open, revealing fiery red irises. She shudders and blinks slowly. There is no rise and fall of her small chest, but there’s a hunger deep in her belly. “Hel? Come on out sweetie.” This time Hel hears, and her hunger roars. M. Rose Seaboldt (she/her) obtained her engineering degrees so she could study structures and fire science. She writes so she can explore characters and the trials they endure. Find her on Twitter @boldtsea.

Shoveling Out Dust haloed, scratcheyed, kneedeep in grain, we shovel toward the buried shriek of the auger. Our masks press sharply into our tear ducts as we slowly heave forward, exposing the rough concrete you laid the summer that boy beat up your brother and you got suspended for threatening him on his home answering machine. You spent June helping Grandma fix fence, haul hay, dig, mow, and sweep, walking the pasture out back, becoming patience in the empty, finding a milkweed there, bursting loose, unable to contain its own entropy, and knowing the warning of that. When we slow up, exposing the drill, the grain bin rings with mechanical crows, and, as we snort, scratch, and tumble out, wheat pours from our shoes like old blessings. Cemetery Mower after Ted Kooser The sun rose up at 6:15 today. I’d already primed the mower by then, drank half my coffee, the painted glaze chipped into my mouth as I rolled out of my truck. I spit & cough the night’s bad humors away. The clients don’t seem to mind. They don’t pay me to pull away the bindweed from iron crosses, to wipe bird scat from the gazebo railing. Nope, just to mow, shearing the grass with the loud metal teeth, the petroleum breath and oil sweat rising acrid above the many dead and the one living. Wind sprays the coarse irritant grass on my legs and I hesitate to pinch a dusty snot bubble out from under my nose, afraid I’ll only make my upper lip dirtier. No one is here to judge me, and I try to do the same, but when a stone catches my eye and I notice how small the years are between dates, I wonder why. I always wonder, when the granite reads “Our Angel” or the ceramic photo looks too damn young. A boy’s Senior photo catches me cold and I nearly crash into his grandmother, the mower’s deck grazing her stone like an eager calf nicking fingers held through a fence. This is the only red prairie grass I cut, all of it too close to the names. I course correct and return to my duty, the only one here who can’t yet escape their shame.

yes, i’m the heat of a promise of snow. my friends think i’m a Vegetarian, so i lie and say i am. if only i could have black sunglasses, cross my knees and stare into a horrifying use of contrast (white jackets mean a blizzard for sure). i don’t even drink hot, so what difference will it make? still, i keep putting off roasting some heavy meat, watching air run off—an inverse precipitation. pick me, the slight jostle of a woman getting shit done. my nose is running, but—validation for validation! eating gummies is the closest i can get to ham: touch my neck please. i’m not needy! i’m a Vegetarian; i’ve got something for patience. Aaliyah Anderson (she/her) is a junior majoring in Literary Arts at her high school in Petersburg, VA. She's obsessed with storytelling.

I've been stacking rocks. Igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary—I don't know. We learned that in school last year, yes, sure, but I don't know what kind of rocks these are. And I don't remember what it even means for a rock to be one or the other. I just know my rocks are rocks and I’ve been stacking them. Some are brown and some are black and some are white. Some are as big as a shoebox and others as big as a fist and others as big as a, like, paperclip and others as big as an ant. Obviously, the biggest ones go first. I stand in my backyard and stack as many as I can until they fall. When they fall, instead of being one rock on top of another in a big skinny tower, they become a layer of probably like fifteen rocks, and then maybe another layer of like ten, and then five, and blah blah blah. You know what a pile looks like. It’s much harder to knock down the pile than the tower. If you want to knock down the pile, like make it one single flat layer, you really need to kick it and push it and do some serious work. And the more rocks I start with in the tower, the harder it is to knock down the pile. Also, I forgot to mention, sometimes my friend Jack comes over and pushes down the tower to fuck with me, and then I punch him in the arm. My English teacher explained a few months ago that Curley's wife wears red in Of Mice and Men because it represents danger, and that when you read a book the happenings are not just the happenings but represent things and allude to things and you can analyze them like that. Like also the farm George and Lennie talk about going to is not just a farm but independence. And so, after class last week, after all the other students left, I told my English teacher about how I stack the rocks and how they fall and how I think this means that in life if you develop good habits and traits and skills and other such things, then even if you fall on bad times those developed traits and things become a big pile that’s hard to knock down completely. And I told him my friend Jack knocking down the tower means that sometimes others might wrong you and cause you to fall on the bad times, but that punching them or, like, you know, seeking revenge or whatever, doesn’t put your life back together. My English teacher said it was a nice thought, but that you can't analyze life in the same way you can books. I asked why not. He said the reason you can talk about books in that way is because someone created them and they’re art, but life doesn't work like that because it isn't art. I asked why something needs to be art to be analyzed. He started to sweat. Probably not because of our conversation, he just often sweats. He is a short, fat, often sweaty man who once told our eighth-grade class that he got into poetry because—being a short, fat, often sweaty man—it was his best chance to attract women. I don't know why he told our eighth-grade class this. He then wiped his forehead with a napkin and said, "That's just the way it is, I guess." Which was another way of saying what he had been saying, which was nothing. Angry, I asked again, and he started organizing his papers while mumbling more words that still meant the same thing. It was the end of the school day and he was trying to brush me off and wasn’t answering my questions and couldn’t just admit he was wrong. This made me mad, but I wasn’t going to punch him in the arm or anything, because it was my teacher, you know, and so instead, like it was an essay assignment, I just said in our Honors English class way, I said, "Can we not make the case that you wiping the sweat from your brow moments ago, can we not make the case that that wipe represented not just the wiping of sweat, but also your desire to rid yourself of the negative externalities of your actions?” Barely listening, he said, “Let’s talk about this another time,” and started stuffing his papers into folders and his folders into his messenger bag. I slammed the classroom door shut. He turned to the noise. “What are you—” “Yes, yes, yes,” I said, stepping back toward his desk, “and can we not say this stuffing of papers is merely a symbol for your attempt to keep hidden what cannot be hidden? To keep hidden what is causing the externalities in the first place!” He started sweating more than normal. He looked surprised, guilty even. I pulled a chair up to his desk, stood on top of it, and pointed down at him. “The sweat! The sweat! A manifestation of dread! A symbol of nervousness! Lest, yes, I say it, lest! Lest! Lest we forget the lessons of The Tell-Tale Heart, that physical things, no, no, more precisely, furthermore, moreover, physical phenomena can represent spiritual and mental ruin. Lest! You have been sleeping with Mrs.Gladis, have you not?” “What?” My English teacher jumped up from his desk, his hair now looking like he just got out of the shower and his face looking sad. This made me happy, but not happy enough. I jumped down from the chair. I stepped toward him and he stepped back, closer and closer to the window. “Yes, how wonderfully ironic. A perfect example of literary irony! That a man who by his own admission has had extraordinary difficulties with women has now attracted two—not only his wife, but also Mrs.Gladis! And that this would be his undoing!” “How do you—” “But can we also not say,” I continued, “can we also not say that your steps, your steps right now, can we also not say that these are a symbol of your want, your wish, your hope to move backward in time, to reverse what you have done. Or perhaps, they’re a metaphor for how you have backtracked on the agreement implicit in your marriage. Implicit and explicit! Or, furthermore, it may conceivably be, perchance, an allusion, yes, an allusion to Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird, who also will not admit his guilt, and who also steps! Irregardless, all are damning symbols of your infidelity and your guilt!” Looking like he was about to cry, he bumped up against the window. He turned and pulled it open, then climbed out and into a shrub. “An open window,” I screamed after him while he ran, “Oh boy, an open window! Need I say anything else!” The power of good analysis was made clear. Obviously you can analyze life in that way and obviously I was right, because it worked. I felt a little bad about my outburst but figured it was probably just a representation of the early-teen angst that affects all youth. We’ve had a substitute teacher each day since he ran out the window last week. I think that may represent he’s thinking through his wrongs and becoming a new man. Anyway, the most rocks I've stacked up is forty-three. Forty-three rocks! Tyler Plofker is a writer in NYC. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Identity Theory, Roi Fainéant, Maudlin House, Idle Ink, Defenestration, Bear Creek Gazette, and elsewhere. In his free time, you can find him eating sugary breakfast cereals, laying out in the sun, or walking through the streets of New York City in search of this or that. He tweets badly @TylerPlofker.

Love Poem to Myself, Number Five Forty-two. That’s how old you are when you finally put down the knife aimed at your own chest. That’s how old you are when you finally begin to love your own precious body. You’re not quite sure what did it, but suspect that seeing disease winnow and wither your weight away tore your eyes wide open. Made you see what marvels had been there all along. You even love the pocket of abdomen fat that droops below your narrow waist now— have looked it straight on in the mirror as you change, and smiled, patted your little kangaroo pouch. (When I say narrow, I mean compared to the rest of you. You are all hourglass, the inward dip of your waist feeding right back into full hips. Your breasts are pendulous and large. Delicious.) This year, the year you finally begin to love yourself, is also the year you can’t stop wearing orange. Orange velvet wiggle dress; rust orange swing dress; skirt rung round with delicate fruit. You begin to associate orange with self love— dying streaks of tangerine into your pink hair, smearing on gleaming orange liquid eyeshadow, sliding orange daisies into the raspberry and russet of your hair. It only turns into a bit of a sitcom episode when you decide you really need an orange jumpsuit. When you look them up, you’re shown mostly Halloween costumes of people as prisoners. Perhaps you’ll hold off this once. But not for long. Soon you’ll find the next perfect orange thing. And you’ll look into the mirror as you put it on, whispering just this, over and over: I love you. I’m sorry it took me so long. Sometimes orange is hard to come by. I love you. I’m sorry it took me so long. You’ll cradle your little kangaroo pouch, then glide your brave, thick body into something orange and satin and sweet. I love you. I’m sorry it took me so long. The Kind of Woman I’d Write Poems About She’s the kind of woman I’d stay up all night talking with, her giggle a balloon animal. Inching my own joy closer to the ceiling, where hers wiggles its tail happily. She’s the kind of woman I’d buy blue velvet dresses for, chain daisies through her rainbow of soft hair. We’re both pale, voluptuous. Small hands, chipped nails. I want to take her to Rehoboth in Autumn, when the season is just dying down. When there are still boardwalk fries, but no boardwalk people. I want to show her the blue and white hotel with the prints of seahorses on the walls. I want to leap through waves with her, barefoot and cackling, glee hooking to pink clouds that swirl above us. Sanderlings darting between our toes. She’s the kind of woman who loads up her cuddly hatchback with snacks and luggage, when you fall ill and desperately need to see a small heap of doctors. It’s literally life and death— she eases in beside you. Grips the wheel, phosphoresces. Fends dirge-dark away. She’s the kind of woman who asks questions; who actually cares about the answers; who talks in rushes of bubbles, but always leans in to listen as well. I tried to tell her how I feel tonight, as we sat across from one another in a crowded sushi restaurant, and we both nearly turned to tears. Ever since Kat and Heather died, I’ve thought I would never love friends that way again. She’s the kind of woman who makes me think I’m wrong. She glows in the dark, human turned constellation, and doesn’t even know it. I’m not falling in love with her, but there’s a trail of pink calla lily petals leading from my heart to hers. Friendship is its own sort of falling when you do it right. I don’t mourn the dead less tonight, but I do sleep more soundly. I memorize the downbeats of her laughter, the alabaster arc of her cheeks when she smiles. It’s past one a.m. when she finally leaves my room for her own, next door. Her pearled nails are glittered newly teal, and she scoops up a slice of cheesecake our server gave us for free. Even in black, she’s so colorful, the room undulates. I turn my bedroom lights off, squeeze my eyes shut, practice glowing in the dark like Clara. First Christmas in Baltimore CW: Sexual Assault We crunch through mounds of grey-soured snow, arms linked loosely, on our way to the corner hardware store. Every year, you throw a Christmas Party for those who would otherwise spend the holiday alone. You need white twinkle lights. Need a sturdy shovel to clear your front walkway. A bag of rock salt. More than once, you catch me at the waist when I slip on a smear of ice. We have known each other for twenty-two years, and I trust you more than anyone in all of Baltimore. Still new in town, I spend too many late nights alone, eating Indian takeout, cross-legged on a blue velvet couch from the sixties. In the hardware store, there’s an enormous orange cat named Gingerbread. A suspiciously festive name. You gather twinkle lights, shovel, light bulbs, all while I pet Gingerbread. You going to steal that fat cat?, you whisper into my ear. I startle, then laugh. Shrug. I’m considering it. We stop to get frothed cups of hot cocoa on the way back to your home, cupping them close to our cold-bitten lips. I remember urging perspiring cans of Mug Root Beer from the rickety vending machine at YMCA camp. Offering them to you, rose-faced, stuttering like a broken metronome. Now, twenty-two years later, you usher me into the warmth of your yellow row-home. I have something for you, you smile. My hands leap to startled lips. I thought we’d said no presents. In the corner is a two-foot tall, light-up tree that matches my pink hair precisely. I glimpse my reflection in tinfoil branches. I don’t come to your Christmas party, but we have regular take-out Korean nights at home. Watch sci-fi classics, and even once, the newest Pee-wee Herman movie. We sit in the sun, eat spicy corn fritters and brie cooked with jam. We cuddle, but it never goes beyond that. Your friendship, you promise, is worth far more than sex. Soon it’s the day after New Year’s, and I’m drinking vodka alone. My first drink in a decade, but for no reason more than curiosity. You call me, insist on coming over. Don’t worry, you say. I don’t mess with drunk people. I just want to take care of you. I am giggly. Woozy. We curl under the oceanic swells of my teal comforter. I just want to be two sleepy cats. From there, my memory is hollowed out, is mostly holes. A worn-out loofah or a hunk of cratered black rock. I have snatches of hazy recall— a tongue on my nipple, teeth at my hips. I hear the crinkle of condom wrappers. Our calls stop after that night. No more good morning messages. It takes me two years to call what happened what it really was, and takes you four to confess and apologize. I don’t take your confession letter to the police. Consider that payment for the pink tinsel tree crammed in the back of my deepest closet, which I somehow still can’t bring myself to throw away. Robin Kinzer is a queer, disabled poet, memoirist, teacher, and editor. Robin has poems and essays published, or forthcoming, in Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Blood Orange Review, fifth wheel press, Delicate Friend, Anti-Heroin Chic, Rooted in Rights, and others. She’s a Poetry Editor for the winnow magazine. She loves glitter, Ferris wheels, vintage fashion, sloths, and radical empathy. She can be found on Twitter at @RobinAKinzer and at www.robinkinzer.com

I. Prologue/Epilogue The image of a screaming head, its mouth stretching, crackling like a splitting vine, the strands and follicles of flesh, hair, and expression prying vastly pulling over the top of the cranium like a cozy shirt.. The song of terror, an enigmatic soliloquy, known only to a monster. A music box upon the mantle in a tower… II. A True Night Story Ego, she hopes. Something she knows she must hide, and hide from. Seems like everything these days. Give me another chance. Promise I won’t choose this again. Her arm points at the wall, southeast. An old rooster weathervane. Her extended arm, covered by a sheet. Concealed as the hulking thing enters. It doesn’t see her limb. She knows this as best as she can know anything in this moment, in this room. A result of other moments, other rooms. Down the dim lit limb of the hall. Threads off into other rooms, going on forever. Veins of some immortal enlightened body. Seems like everyone these days. A history she can remember as intricately as she can, given all there is—said history, anxiety, etcetera. Last time, nothing happened when it came. We’ll see, she thinks, hopes, prays, grieves. That hunched back full of crawling wounds bleeding through the sheet. She hates this thing. That upward bumpy slope. She has seen rickety carriages climb this topography, the squeaking and creaking keeping her up all night. The bumpy road leads into a horse-shaped head. Red splotches where the eyes are, dark gray in the lightless room. Please keep going, she thinks to herself, like a joke she tells. Like the farce children know the world is before they are stolen. People become colonized hunks of land eventually. They are exhausted into compliance. A dance they’d never find their way out of. Being young is the slow dilapidated acknowledgment that other rituals always seem to tie back around into this grotesque one. She’d go until the truth glinted off the theatrical stage covering up Nature. This is the cover-up the confounded shriek about at the present era’s trendy altars. She’d go until everything she knew would be forgotten. That recognition of the moment, of the time. It emerges like a leech’s sucker drawing blood. Horror is the story collapsing in on itself. The process of shriveling, physically, spiritually, and what is revealed would be what is. The narrative is that youth inevitably starves into a tragic ending. Please don’t turn. Please don’t groan. A question mark would result in her presence, the answer she does not want to become. The knowledge would become Now eventually. She would know the thing she feared next —that moment the prior one leans into. The hulking thing sinks, groans downward like a crippling staircase. A scrunching accordion squeeze box. This is its music. The creature is an undiscovered hull, a mountain breaking and falling. It is a thing warting and snaking off of its previous thing. The era following the destroyed Before. The result of Now. It leans into her body, removes the pillow covering her arm. She watches its eyes through the sheet, through the gray. Based on a true story, she knows it cannot see her arm. She feels like that very source of fodder she and her friends once saw the world as. She feels her eyes inside of it. She believes for a moment she is seen, yet the fog of Unseen hovers about the inside of her head like vague hope, like its own falsehood’s tiny, unknown segment. So as according to her narrative, what is the probability..? SNAP-CRNNCH-SPLLICK. Its mouth un-crinkles, creak-slides open, like a body falling down stairs. As smoothly as a rug, the bulk of the mouth is a sight to behold: a whorl of fungal shadow, fermentation gusting out. A death wind. It hangs open like the bottom of a trunk. Unhinged, dangling in the dark, swaying like a porch swing. A foul, penduluming moan of satisfaction. The squelching rawness odorizes the room, the pith of its mouth, esophageal chamber, worldly innards, massages the space, suckles upon the broken, gnashing arm. And into permanent ruin. Iron and rot stain the walls, consumption fills the gullet of this once-sacred room. But sacred is synonymous with starved in some cultures, and often meets the definition at some point following more civil and undefiled words. They happen eventually. Stringing off and meeting down the line with this hulking thing. Its innards uncoil like a faltering cumulonimbus tower through the open mouth, flesh splaying like wings to aid the birth. As comfortable as a shy youth in a trusted friend’s basement. She thinks about her people, horror movies, and cheap beer. Every century is another dime. Payment and collection. A meat hook descends like a prize-fight microphone. It curves, swings, and fishes into the puss-warted terrain of the hulking thing’s back. It rises, a seer over all, returning to its panopticon tower. The hulking thing licks its many flittering, inter-lapping chops. Unholy mouths devouring their miniature meals. A recent rough-hewed cold sore spittles its oppressive bacteria. A newborn infection that inspires the name of a planet. Based on a true story: From its presiding position, the hulking thing awaits the next rueful dreamer. III. Epilogue And as adrift as an outsider through town, yet so intricately apart, an existential pulsation, a piercing song soars the scape like an ethereal limb reaching, calling to every true story before and after… The depraver holds its trembling, frightened guts. Attempts to reach for the music box upon the mantle. Its insides heave out of the orifices. Its unkemptness, splayed in a collage along its living room. It will not make its tower shift… Andy studied writing and film in college while working at a library. He also helped develop scripts and reviews for the college radio station. He has since worked jobs at all hours. He has been published in Dark Entries Journal, State of Matter, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Hungry Shadows Press, and has work forthcoming in Anterior Skies Anthology, Vol. 1. Writing has been an invaluable path, helping bring ruin to the most vile of monster-dom: our lord depraver, Status Quo. He is grateful for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, goofy friends, and horror movies. He currently works at a library in Iowa.

On a balcony overlooking the parking lot of the El Capitan Resort Casino, Rodney and Tatiana shared a cigarette while a red glow crept over the mountains. They’d been inside for hours, pulling slots and learning which waitress arrived fastest. Within the breast pocket of Rodney’s favorite flannel sat a small felt-lined box, and within this box lay an engagement band, a hoop of gunmetal titanium he’d purchased the week previous. He touched it nervously, glancing toward Tatiana when she looked away, the little plumes of smoke billowing into her black curls. Their room was paid for one more night, but that night was ending fast. “We’re floating even,” she said, “nothing lost, nothing gained.” “We still have time,” Rodney said. The resort sat within a mountainous bowl. A thin road wound between sheaves of granite and live oak, cresting a pass before descending onto the minor plain upon which the casino sat like a castle from olden times. It was flanked by an executive golf course, several pools, and the neon spike of a hotel. This sprawling compound was in turn ringed by sharp hills and canyons that ached for water in summer but summoned waterfalls in spring. Ranches dotted this landscape, and on some patches of flat ground crops would grow. Rodney didn’t care for any of that. He’d ridden a horse once, but the act had terrified him. What was to stop such a massive animal from kicking a person to death? Combustion engines were much more agreeable. “You haven’t done well,” Tatiana said. They stood among a party gathered outside, a ragtag collection in all manner of dress and affect. Truckers, vaqueros, and homecoming queens paying dollars on the cent for drags. Over the growing clamor, Rodney said, “Not really,” but Tatiana did not respond, nor did he repeat himself. Earlier that evening a peculiar crowd arrived, a band of crewcut Marines, chisel-jawed and dopey, attending their annual soiree. They’d floated between craps tables and buffet lines, many holding a cavalcade of spectacular women hooked on their arms, dates for the military ball, girlfriends and wives and all manner of escorts. Others of the men sat by themselves, draining cocktails by the tray, and others still butted heads in the parking lot outside like stegosauri. All those big faces and crisp uniforms put Rodney on edge. Tatiana ashed onto the shoulder of his favorite flannel, the one she'd bought him. She did this when the background noise of their quarrelsome love went quiet. “You know,” Tatiana said, “I’m not having the worst time.” By then it was deep midnight, and the military ball was in chaos. They watched the brawny young men stalk the parking rows, squawking each other down. “Why is the sky red like that?” Tatiana asked, lighting another lung dart. The night clouds above their private wargames were tinting rose. Two leathernecks tackled a third. Rodney had been drinking, that weekend and throughout his life. It took a moment to pivot and comprehend the crimson glow illuminating the valley, a burn some distance away that would surely spread. Smoke, apocalypse. A torrent of fire engulfing the land. With each new calamity, he maintained a tally, in continual anticipation of the gambler’s fallacy, that long stretches of bad luck prophesied a turn towards the good. “If it’s a wildfire,” Tatiana said, “should we go? Are the roads still open?” “I bet we’re safer here,” Rodney said, “surrounded by concrete.” She smirked. “You bet? Aren’t you just trying to watch what’s left of your money burn?” There was a time when this might have angered Rodney: her wanton disregard, her vocal contempt. Instead, he’d come to accept such treatment, even to love it. Tatiana, his junior by a decade, was much like a woman he’d known many years before: headstrong, irresistible, prophetic. The two women sometimes became confused in his dreams, a body from one angle suddenly turning to have the other’s face, or voice, or some other bizarre mutation of features, eyes instead of nipples, disembodied limbs, patches of wildly colored hair. He’d met Tatiana during his longest and most recent upswing, a clearheaded time of intentions and early mornings. At first, he’d a sense he could do no wrong with her. Things fell into place that should never have worked. During their first dinner together, a waiter carrying a platter of banana splits tripped and hurled them across the room. A single cherry, spiraling through the air, landed neatly among the fine-edged ice of Tatiana’s rocks whiskey. She sipped and said ahhh. It took Rodney a long time to realize she was the lucky one, not him. “Well, if we’re staying put,” Tatiana said, “we may as well get back to it. Last one inside is a –” “Sack of shit,” Rodney said. *** It soon became obvious that fire was bearing down on the valley. The roads would be thick with killing air, the surrounding ranches scorched in a deadly conflagration. Hill-dwellers rich and poor came to El Capitan with their animals in tow, as if in flight from an enemy army. All were welcome in that place of worship. Telephone poles burst into flame behind them. There was a nervous row of horses on the casino floor, heads wrapped in T-shirts and towels to keep calm. Rodney considered sprinting down the line, snatching each covering as he went. What a sight it would be, the beasts kicking loose from their handlers, rearing above the nitwits hunched over the blackjack tables, the flailing hooves launching chips in great flurries like thrown roses. Instead, he dropped another coin into the slot and pulled the machine’s long brass lever. The reels spun like turbines, and Rodney saw a bindle of grapes, a woman's face – the fierce Knave of diamonds – and the letters B, A, R, written in cartoon red beside the clanging lights. Nothing, bust. The dazzle played across his graying visage like the reflections on a grotto wall. He pulled the lever again. Somewhere, a shrieking animal stamped its hoof, the bloodshot eye circling. Within his head fought two impulses: the heroic and the cowardly. The hero in him wanted to continue his string of rash decisions and present the engagement ring to Tatiana, his friend, lover, and sometimes-enemy. The coward in him winced at every improbable success she wrenched from the world and wanted desperately to give up and sink back to nothing. He didn’t think he could bear her refusal, if it came. Rodney counted at least four valid reasons his plan had already gone awry: the fire, the military ball, the fleeing horse ranchers, their thinning pocket change. And the more he counted, the more reasons he found. Who's to say what that first reason was? Maybe the day in third grade when Rodney discovered a rip in his pants, standing before the class presenting a diorama on the historic Mission San Luis Rey. The monks of Capistrano could not save the Luiseños from their freakish illness, nor would the children of Lakeview Elementary stifle their honking laughter. Or had it occurred even earlier, in the unremarked dreamtime of young childhood, and Rodney had long forgotten the moment which soured his life? A dropped ice cream, maybe, boiling on the asphalt, or a balloon floating skyward? Not that it mattered. A taupe stock horse clopped behind the slot machines. Rodney wouldn’t look. He finished the last salty gulp of martini and glanced around for a waitress, a lonely olive resting within the crater of glass like a meteorite. “They’re so calm,” Tatiana said. “It’s amazing.” She ashed into the tray between them, watching the horses, the nest of her black curls now trussed within a lilac kerchief. The whole room reeked of smoke, from many years of tobacco abuse and from the brush fire raging in the hills outside. “This is the one,” Tatiana said and confidently pulled her slot. The machine erupted into a fever of bells and flashing lights. The digits ticked up, nearly two thousand dollars. What luck. Her jumping and laughing startled the animals. Rodney held his head in his hands. The ring in his pocket was something so insignificant it might have been undetectable, just another quivering electron. A waitress approached Tatiana’s blinking machine, alongside a spindly casino concierge with a mustard tie. In this, the age of gold, Tatiana’s tray overflowed with ducats. “Mr. Champagne-taste here,” she announced, gesturing toward Rodney, “would like a glass of your finest bubbly to celebrate my victory. And I would like something... maybe with Chambord? On ice, with mineral water.” Rodney accepted this new insult without remark. Instead, he considered everything he’d seen in movies that spooked horses. Snakes, loud airplanes, sudden gusts of wind. Perhaps if he threw his empty martini glass the entire caravan would stomp like monsters across the floor, clearing the last patrons from their perches and giving him victorious solitude. One by one, the line of snorting beasts disappeared into an adjacent ballroom. Each of their handlers looked drag-assed and grim, not unlike chimney sweeps. Rodney envied the horses their humility. “We hear you’ve had the beginnings of a lucky run,” the concierge said. “I have your winnings here.” He held, curled within a bundle of irregular knuckles, a stack of hundred-dollar bills. “And I have something else to offer,” the concierge continued, making a sweeping gesture in reference to the surrounding bedlam. “As you can see, we have a full house tonight.” “Good one,” Rodney quipped. “The roads are closed,” he said, “and no one will be leaving this evening. We believe the lucky deserve reward, and are offering a suite, free of charge, all-inclusive, for the night, and for as long as your luck holds.” “You won’t let us leave?” Rodney asked. “I’m afraid that time has passed,” the man said. “The fire department is laying a perimeter now. We will be completely surrounded soon, if not already.” Rodney watched the final horse’s shivering rump disappear into the ballroom’s double doors. Its tail whipped one last swish, as if waving goodbye. “What about the jarheads?” he asked. “And the ponies?” “The military ball has concluded,” the man said, twitching at his mustard tie. “And the livestock will... have to make due. Please, my friends, we insist. Accommodations have been arranged, here in the hotel. The room is ready for you.” “I hope you’re prepared for us to move in,” Tatiana said, “because my luck… Honey, my luck is going to hold.” The man bowed, very slightly, just as another slot machine began to panic, and during this chaos he slipped away. The waitress returned now with their drinks, handed a tumbler of carmine fizz to Tatiana, and to Rodney, a flute of golden-straw effervescence, only the finest bubbly. He took a slurp, quickly, and nearly shot the liquid from his nostrils, so sickly sweet it was. Whether through ill-will, or confusion, the waitress had brought him a glass of sparkling apple cider. Perhaps she was new to the job and distressed by the circumstances. Or perhaps she disliked him too and wanted to make abundantly clear the extent and severity of his many failures. Rodney briefly considered shattering the long-stemmed glassware on the paneling of his slot machine and using the shards to gouge from their sunken sockets his own eyeballs. How they itched in this weather. Instead, he tilted the flute back until the cider was finished, dramatically wiping his chin with a greasy sleeve. “Are we ready to see the room?” he asked. *** When he first began calling after Tatiana, Rodney was conscious of himself as an older man, perhaps as a man who’d once been broken but had found some sliver of moonlight to illuminate his path. He was proud of that, to have emerged onto new plateaus. He’d felt lucky to visit her sometimes, where she worked as a hairstylist, and knew the other women who worked with her were examining him closely. Just who was this Rodney? Where did he come from? Where was he going? He hadn’t minded then. He was happy to be an object of interest once more, flattered. He’d brought bouquets and smiled broad smiles. In the dim halls of the hotel, however, whatever flattery he’d once felt, judged beside this woman, became a miserable doubt. Here she was, resplendent, exuberant with riches she’d summoned, as if by sorcery. And him, a husk, a simpering shuck of a man, contemptible, deserving of scraps, maybe. He scurried behind her. They navigated a labyrinth of near-featureless corridors, punctuated by octagonal mirrors and thin tables supporting singular ferns. Whatever powerlines ran through the Cuyamaca Mountains had melted, and the casino was now operating on reserve generators. In the half-light, groups of frenetic Marines passed with their dates, many of them still blitzed into a hooting frenzy. Molten rage boiled within Rodney when a particular gaggle of men whistled at Tatiana as she rounded a corner. He stopped to confront them, both fists balled; he’d struck men before; he’d held his own. But once he squared his shoulders, they were gone, around another corner, whisked away on legs of hooch to whatever mysterious destination they could possibly be seeking. The hallway before him curled toward ominous, empty places. An alarm meeped somewhere, like an itch. “Rodney!” Tatiana had opened a door down the hall. “This is it,” she said, hanging on the frame. “Come inside!” They had been promised a suite and, strangely, were not disappointed. Two beds, a separate nook with a dinette set, a deep bath, jetted and seashell pink, portents for an evening of romance. Tatiana flung herself onto the striped sheets while Rodney headed for the window. There was a warmth behind the curtains, not unlike what transpires during a summer’s day spent indoors, shutters drawn, in retreat from a world of burden and woe. Rodney pulled the heavy linen back, only slightly, and in the shimmering interplay of darkness and gleam beheld the mayhem outside. Whorls of sparks rode a murderous wind. He hadn’t expected to see flames, but there they were, taller than buildings, lashing at the night. The casino complex, its radiating concrete, for parking, golf, and lounging poolside, was an island within a sea of fire. Yellow figures passed to and fro before the glass, firemen with axes and masks. A line of them broke from the building carrying a length of hose toward a fenced structure some distance into the lot. Rodney noticed the peaking white domes of tanks filled with propane or natural gas. “There’s no point,” Tatiana called. “Why watch that stuff? We’re safe in here.” Lugging their hose like a massive boa, the firefighters wove between rows of sedans and pickups. They looked like scouts advancing into an alien dimension. Rodney had once seen a propane tank flare, though it had been much smaller. A friend had set a twenty-gallon tank onto a campfire in a fit of drunken bravado. From afar, they’d watched it gas off, sending a torrent of pinkish flame into the evening sky. “In all seriousness, Rod,” Tatiana said, “we’ve been very lucky today. Wouldn’t you like to celebrate?” He glanced at her in the window’s vague reflection. She fished a bottle of sparkling wine from the minibar and cradled it with both hands. For a long time, she rocked on her heels, holding the emerald vessel. Rodney sighed and closed the curtain. “Okay,” he said, “let’s celebrate.” Tatiana smiled. She snatched two tumblers from the dinette table while Rodney popped the bubbly, carefully withdrawing the cork. It launched from the bottle and rubber-balled off the ceiling with a fwap, ricocheting below a cabinet. “Leave it for the cleaners,” she said. “Do you think we could order room service?” At this, Rodney nearly laughed. It welled from the core of him, like a thermal spring, but at the point of emission, he tamped down the indulgence. He carefully poured each glass, the liquid perfectly even between the two, and set the chilled bottle on the tile floor of the dinette. Tatiana raised her drink. “To our luck,” she said, “today and for the rest of our lives.” “To our luck,” Rodney repeated, and they clinked. Within the pocket of his flannel sat the ring, waiting. Sometimes he felt the little nub of pressure on his chest, dizzying with possibility. At this moment, a searing explosion rocked the hotel wall. A burst of heat filtered from the window, the room's corners shook, and thunderous drumfire from an enormous combustion rollicked the structure. The tanks had caught fire and detonated, mushrooming burning gases into a hellish world. Tatiana dropped her glass. Rodney watched its turning, the liquid spilling as the tumbler tilted, the thick glassware shattering, spreading a rash of tiny fizz as wine pooled on the tiles at their feet. Tatiana screamed and sat into a dinette chair. Rodney knelt before her, watching rivulets slipping between tiles. Would he reach into his pocket and withdraw the little box? Could he focus enough to slip a titanium ring onto her finger? There were already so many reasons to quit. Would there be a better moment? Rodney took a sip from his own glass. Yes, he thought, there would be a better moment. “We need to go,” he said. Tatiana wiped her nose with the back of her hand, smearing lipstick. “Our bags,” she said. “What if we need to evacuate?” “We need to be ready to leave. We’ll get them.” “We can’t drive through fire,” she said. “No,” Rodney said, “but we can’t say here.” *** Through the halls they went, lost among wrong turns and windowless stretches. Strange sounds echoed around corners, distant howls and malfunctioning electronics. Beneath all of it growled the ominous rumble of the fire outside, the sound of a gargantuan consumption, millions of tons of drought-stricken flora converting into a stinking cloud of fumes, visible from the moon. They searched for the old room, but casinos are built like mazes on purpose. At a dead end, where not one but three ice machines sputtered, Rodney held Tatiana by the shoulders and said, “There’s something I need to tell you.” The box in his pocket pressed against his heart. “Please,” she said, “we have to get through this.” “It can’t wait much longer.” “We’re almost back,” she said, “I’m sure of it. Just a little farther.” He chased after her, sprinting halfway across the vast casino floor. Both were short of breath when they stopped, lost again. The front door was only a few steps away, but what lay beyond? As elsewhere, the lights were dimmed, and the machines deactivated, disappearing into the gloom in even rows. Dust hung in thin bands of tangerine glow creeping from the edges of pulled curtains. Rodney put his hand to the brass handle of the great double doors leading outside. “This way,” Tatiana said, gesturing toward another wing of the hotel. He’d expected the handle to sear his hand, as if the fire were immediately outside, but the brass was oddly cool. He pushed it open, just a crack, and gazed upon a world ablaze. Everything beyond the parking lot had caught. A column of light pierced the room. The heat was unreal. Nothing could survive that. A sudden drumming filled the chamber, echoing wildly from the broad walls and many metal surfaces, followed by a brazen, toneless hooting. “Now what exploded?” Rodney asked. A naked man, head-shaven and muscular in the manner of military servitude, galloped toward him on the back of a jet-black American quarter horse. Spitting and laughing as he spurred the animal onward, his penis flapped like a severed tongue. With one hand he wielded a dice stick, the hooked baton used by craps dealers, and with this saber swung at poor Rodney, scourging him, striking a glancing blow. Rodney ducked below a roulette table, a welt rising across his face. He began crawling across the aisle, toward a line of poker tables forming rows too narrow for a steed to navigate. The rider circled back, urging his mount onward again. He would ride poor Rodney down before he could reach sanctuary. From across the room, Rodney watched Tatiana grab an ashtray the size and shape of a tea-saucer. Without hesitation, she hurled it over the gaming tables toward the oncoming assailant. Cigarette butts spun from the glass in powdery spray as it whirled across the room like a frisbee, and in this moment it occurred to Rodney that she’d meant exactly what she said, about luck, that they could be lucky together. The projectile, heavy as a stone, struck the side of the rider’s head, knocking the failed cavalier to the ground and leaving the great black horse to gallop off, back into the depths of the gambling den. Rodney couldn’t think of anyone he would be luckier with. *** Minutes later, after they’d found their old room, Rodney slid the magnetic key into the lock and watched the light flash green. He pushed the door open. “Help me pack,” Tatiana said, heading for the closet and their bags. “Hold on,” he said. “Slow down, for a moment.” “Rodney?” He went to the windows and threw the curtains open. They watched the fire, that inconceivable thing. It had already taken so much. Heroic or foolish, there would never be a better time. Rodney went to one knee. From the breast pocket of his favorite flannel, he produced the little box. Coyly, he opened its tiny hinge. With the steadiest voice he could manage, he asked Tatiana, in all her splendor, if should would like to marry him. “Rod,” she said, “you really do pick the perfect moments. Of course I will.” Matt Knutson is a graduate of the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop. He's been a resident at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and his work has appeared in Cola Literary Review, Expat Press, Bat City Review and elsewhere. His manuscript "In The Hills" was a semi-finalist for Iron Horse Literary Review's 2022 Chapbook Contest, and his story "So Far Behind I Thought I Was First" was a finalist for Bridge Eight's 2022 Summer Short Story Prize. Originally from San Diego, he now lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and cat. Find him at mattknutson.net and @mattknuts.

after working like one of those first social work jobs after having just got married head over heels madly in love on school st. in newport rhode island spending the whole day driving back & forth over that long narragansett bay bridge to the boys group homes & shelters in providence due to kids pretty much being abused & neglected, deserted & abandoned & when the day at last is finally over that blinding sun in bumpadabumpa lowers its dome & sluggishly head back home where i feel from a sixth sense experience previous existence someone on my shoulder eventually getting ticketed & taken off the road by this rookie cop boasting how he's been following me since the highway as if he was so proud of himself & some kind of hero (you wondering who's the real criminal) having no idea how you've been working all day with hurt kids trying to hurt themselves & others until i now have to absurdly cautiously paranoid exhausted watch my back & return back home down that dark gravely country road where my new young lovely wife is just waiting for me with the light on in the kitchen having had made me supper expressing how worried & concerned she was & kept it warm & what went wrong as took me so long & blood shot down on my luck just sick of it all didn't even know where to begin as just like those battered kids feeling numb dumb all over simply knowing it just never ends. Joseph D. Reich is a social worker who lives with his wife and teenage son in the high-up mountains of Vermont. He has been published in a wide variety of eclectic literary journals both here and abroad, been nominated seven times for The Pushcart Prize, and his books include...If I Told You To Jump Off The Brooklyn Bridge (Flutter Press) A Different Sort of Distance (Skive Magazine Press) Pain Diary: Working Methadone & The Life & Times Of The Man Sawed In Half (Brick Road Poetry Press) Drugstore Sushi (Thunderclap Press) The Derivation Of Cowboys & Indians (Fomite Press) The Housing Market: a comfortable place to jump off the end of the world (Fomite Press) The Hole That Runs Through Utopia (Fomite Press)