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“What’s more American than tax evasion?” I half-joke, drinking AriZona out of a chipped teacup. Upstairs, Uncle Sam’s third cousins mow through my man’s papers. They think he’s more Clyde than Carlton, but I know he’s simpler— or I wouldn’t be unsticking spaghetti from starter pots night after night. My dress would be longer and less scratchy. He would have more friends and reflavored fears. For one, I wouldn’t be confined downstairs like low-rent Rapunzel while the suits talk coin. He’d be smarter from the jump. He’d consider a girl in a Britney Spears bra and tennis skirt too flashy, like Pop Rock(ette)s: fun but not (ful)filling. For the two of us, things would go smoother. The stucco wouldn’t be the rock-splattered, grotto blue of your soul, this suffocating shade. My pace wouldn’t be splintered by buckling floorboards, scored by prom songs and praise for destruction self-made. I thought audits were only for entrepreneurs and idiots. He only pitches tent in one of those boxes. So what’s he selling, a story to who? He’s no Goodfella with a know-nothing wife. I only got rings under my eyes, no hired help to bankroll my sighs. Distractions come in silicone and ray(the)on commercials that clutter the TV screen. Keeping Up with the Kardashians drones in the background since the last tenant buried the remote along Ocean Drive. A dozen doppelgängers strut beyond the gold window film. Maybe they know what it’s like to moll for the long haul, count red-bottom blessings instead of stressing one slip. Paige Johnson is editor-in-chief of Outcast Press, collaborator w/ Roi Faineant and Anxiety Press for the upcoming story collection: Mirrors Reflecting Shadows. She is also the curator of Slut Vomit: An Anthology of Sex Work, and the author of Percocet Summer: Poetry For Distancing Dates and Doses. Find her at @OutcastPress1 on Twitter and Facebook.

An Address Bleeds On The Door Once more I've come to the door, scored a photo, asked the mystery behind- "What is it that keeps pulling me in?" The numbers on the woodwork, hand-painted, bleed a lot, and I wait as if its wound would heal, the address would instill a jiffy etched in the air like a capricious feather. Knock on the skull; if I have ever lived here as a resident, as the one behind, that I had been unlocked into infinity. My father, all gone, whispers to my mother, all gone, that I have grown to be nothing they imagine, but it matters no longer. The Short Life of The Spring In its kingdom of shadows sits the cat. When the car will start and roll away it will be a pauper. This moment is sacred. This moment is rich with all its quiet. In the sugarcane juice spilled from the cup of an old man runs the youth of the Spring, its alysm and inbetweenness. An author, journalist, and a father, Kushal Poddar, editor of 'Words Surfacing’, authored eight books, the latest being 'Postmarked Quarantine'. His works have been translated into eleven languages. Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

The ground trembled when the trains came by, vibrating the bones in their ankles and knees as the countless boxcars barreled on, clanking like warring titans beating steel fists. The neighborhood children loved to lay pennies and quarters on the tracks to see them flatten under the thunderous wheels, erasing their faces and elongating their bodies. Elias got off the bus with his cousins, Celine and Greta, even though he was from the next neighborhood over, because that’s where almost all of the kids got off. A gaggle of them from up and down the block and surrounding streets, their numbers changing every afternoon and every minute. Every day they all poured out of the bus, ran to dump their backpacks at home or in the hedges and grab their bikes and scooters. The wild lots, brambles, and disintegrating buildings around their neighborhood a wide open world to dominate and survey until their parents got home after five. Two and a half hours of sovereignty, a brief eternity. They kicked empty beer cans around the corpse-soot of a dead bonfire that was hidden behind the half decayed house among waist high grass, or they played in the creek filled with storm water coming from the six-foot-wide concrete culvert in the thin outcropping arms of the woods. A wild field with long shaggy hides of brown grass and weeds with an interminable gouge of train track that split the expanse. A sagging rusty playground with limp chains and seat-less swings, a rough metal slide textured with orange rust like snake skin. Sequestered backyards, cloisters of cul-de-sacs, barren streets and boundless woods. Elias’ brother, Stewart, went off with his high school friends, shooting Elias threatening glares and promises of Indian burns later when he tried to follow, so he stayed behind with his cousins and their friends. He trailed around the outskirts of the group, just like he did at school. At school he could read quietly at his desk, or play in the dirt alone behind the tree on the playground for the dragging thirty minutes. But here, after the bus ride, while his dad was still down at the motor shop covered in pungent oil and his mom sweating ink from her fingertips and jotting down final messages, he could and wanted to do anything, everything. Here there was movement, there was freedom from rules and regulations and homework and silent lunch, there were the last warm rays of a cooling summer sun that still brought his blood to boil with exuberance. So he tried to find his way in to the circle of friends as they cavorted, but there was always another back that slid in front of him, cutting him out, a voice that rose over his, a ball that was caught before his outstretched hands. After two hours of sweating and running and laughing, hunting honeysuckles and drinking from hoses, it was Celine who suggested visiting the train tracks. She had seen a movie with her sister last night where the getaway car had just narrowly missed instant death by collision, and the chasing cops were flattened and blown into the air like twisted metal confetti. She described the destruction with sweeping arms that whipped her braids, wide eyes and spit flying from the percussive sound effects. Ever eager for her lead, and for chaos and violence, the children imagined, gasped in awe, and agreed to go, Elias puffing along behind. The train came everyday around four-fifteen. Teens and kids alike would sit on the bank in groups, sometimes alone, and watch them go by. Dozens, occasionally hundreds of cars of all shapes, sizes, colors, textures, designs, and unknown origins and destinations rolled by until they were no longer discernible beyond the first moment of catching the eye, memory blending them together into aggregated harsh-edged blurs. Most were corrugated and ribbed, black, brown and red. Matted dirt and weather-worn graffiti fading like temporary tattoos from the fair. Beautiful, bizarre, bold, and brief. Some carts were skeletal and opened to the air, some merely an empty platform baked by the sky as if a beaten desert were hitchhiking to gentler climes. The group liked to race along and try the impossible task of keeping up with the train, or making up stories of what would be inside. Zoo animals, criminals, alien salvage, werewolves and dragons; they imagined action sequences on the top of the cars, gun fights, wild chases, swords and ninjas, and cowboys with horses running along on the ground. Elias once even described the train engine spewing gold clouds and lifting off the tracks, soaring into the air in spiraling loops and curls like a grimy, boxy dragon. It was Amar that came up with the idea. He, like Greta and Celine, and most of the kids in their exploits, derived inspiration from the warm fuzzy static screens of televisions. He had seen an old black and white silent movie where a guy in funny clothes performed stunts like leaping across the gaps between skyscrapers, or jumping out of a moving car and rolling down a big hill, or laying underneath a train deathly still until it rolled past, standing up unharmed and strolling along as if nothing happened. It was Byron that dared to do it. He was a friend of Stewart’s, depending on who you asked. If you asked Elias, he would have called him Stewart’s acquaintance. Byron and a group of boys in high school were responsible for some of the beer cans throughout the neighborhood, and the strange skunk smell that made them sluggish and red-eyed, which led the kids to believe a poison gas exuded from a crack in the earth’s core just below the abandoned house. The kids tried to steer clear of the older boys, as they could be mean. They would pinch Greta, Celine, and Keisha, pulling their ponytails, while the younger boys often evaded barrages of airborne sticks and rocks, onslaughts of wedgies, noogies, and indian burns. But Byron had overheard their conversation, sitting at the edge of his group, and the older boys picked at the wild story with derision, bravado, and fear soaked in the smell of sweat, adrenaline, and contagious swings of budding testosterone. The sun was shifting into its evening palette as the two groups mingled, half with juice boxes and soda cans pilfered from home fridges, half with beers and joints smuggled through secret but well-known channels. Byron lay down on the track. The sun glazed his burned neck and dirty hair in ochre, the dead brown grass eating at the gravel track ballast with lustful razor teeth. The muddy brown rails simmered in the afternoon warmth as he lowered his back and head onto the wooden crossbars, checking his waterproof digital watch: four-twelve. Despite the dissent of reason in a few weak squeaking voices, Keisha’s and Elias’ mostly, begging him to stop, saying what a stupid and dangerous idea it was, every one of them fell silent to the crackle of dead grass in the wind, the wispy whines of gnats in thin smoke clouds overhead, and the space between them all hollowing for the anticipation. The ground was already beginning to gurgle. The train was early. It hailed loudly as it came around the corner fast. Very, very fast. Byron sucked his arms into his trunk, scrunching his face tight, holding his breath and closing his eyes, his body shivering. To Amar, he looked the way an egg does when it’s frying on a pan, like his Baba would make on Saturday mornings, bubbling and rippling while staying as flat as possible. Amar thought about how the yolks sometimes broke, and the gold bled out. The thought of food, the phantom memory-smell of it, made him nauseous now. Elias was struck by a series of thoughts, moments before the front of the engine swallowed Byron whole. Elias had seen him in his home with his older brother and friends playing Nintendo 64, watching MTV and eating popcorn, throwing the football in the backyard, yelling at Elias to go away and play with the other babies. But more often than not, Elias had seen the boy sitting by himself on the hill of brittle grass watching the trains come and go, sulking in shadows outside the herds as they drank and laughed, walking home by himself. Byron had always been quiet, and always been sad. Last choice for all teams, picked on the most and the hardest for his unwashed clothes, his dirty hair, how skinny he was, how he wore sweaters in the scorching throttle of summer. It saddened him, but in a way it made him feel something else, like when he read a book and felt like the brave knight, the courageous orphan, the chosen one in the story had feelings exactly like he did. Like there was someone else just like him. In a strange, quiet way, it made him happy, to see that there were others just outside the circles. Elias wondered if that had anything to do with this death-defying stunt. It also occurred to Elias that the stuntman Amar had seen had probably planned ahead. He probably knew how to lay underneath a train. He probably knew the exact height of the train’s undercarriage, the thickness of the rails, the depth and width of the slats beneath the track. He probably knew the cameraman, the director, the train conductor. He probably had inspected the undercarriage of the train before laying down in its path. Byron had no such planning or knowledge. None of them did. And they did not know. The bones in their ankles and knees buzzed and their chests trembled, mouths dry at the first taste of true, tangible danger in their lives. They did not know that the train had departed behind schedule, and the conductor was breaking regulation by increasing the speed well above allowance for city limits, ticking up over forty-five miles an hour. The train engulfed Byron. It ran on without hitch or pause, smooth sailing, full steam ahead. They did not know that in a train yard four hundred and eighty-two miles north of their homes and school and playgrounds, that a man in Pennsylvania was newly divorced, and drinking at eight in the morning, stumbling toward the end of his shift in the train yard inspecting the locomotive before it left, rushing through trying to make up for delays. They did not know that he was one strike for drinking away from being fired. They did not know that as the sun rose he pulled a flask from his overalls as if scratching an itch absently on his nose, that he did not clear all the chassis and carriage connections properly. They did not know that this man would lose his job days later, solely for the fact that he drank and clocked in late, and that his anguish would have nothing to do with what his actions were about to cause. That of all the things that bloated and corroded his conscience, the lamentable things that pushed his wife and kids and friends away and excommunicated him outside the circle he had built for himself where he could only see their back and hear their voice he had loved dimly directed anywhere else, that this was one terrible thing he would never know that he did. The train plowed on. The wheels beat in heavy revolutions, tearing away at the two long lines that carried them. The group of young spectators ran back and forth in fear, trying to catch a glimpse of Byron, trying to see movement, hear a scream. There was a small space of light between the wheels, but they passed so quickly that it was hard to see. Keisha shouted, pointed, voice raw with terror and exultation. There was Byron, under there, blinking and immobile like a corpse, but then he turned his head and looked at them, eyes wide and panicked, chest heaving, but smiling. They all cheered, clapping, jumping, the shaking ground shooting them skyward as they released all their pride, excitement, concern, relief. They had never seen the train move so fast, they had never seen something so exciting in person, they had never been so proud or in awe of one of their own. They all knew a hero, and felt elevated themselves by it, as if they too had shared in the glory and gumption in the act of watching it happen. The train trumpeted in fury, the pistons, axles, hooks, bolts, belts rattled their fists, and the children cheered back and egged them on. It was all so loud that none of them, especially not Byron, would have been able to see or hear it before it came. Even if they had, there was nothing that could be done about it. Tragedy had set its course, and it would run to the end. The disheveled man in the Pennsylvania train yard had neglected to unwrap a chain from a bogie. But the whiskey in the metal flask had still been cold and burned just the way he liked it, and the condensation soaked red bandana he wrapped around it for concealment still smelled like his ex-wife, apricots and menthol, and so the chain went unheeded as he stumbled on. It had rattled suspended in the claustrophobic compartment of air all the way down to Rowan County, North Carolina. Two intruders in this pocket of air that smelled of oil, chafed metal, and the char of friction, both of them in places they had no right to be, not ever, especially at the same time, on the same day. The only times either of them would ever be there. The children on the outside never saw the chain, and neither did Byron. He died immediately when it split his skull open, and it clutched at him with a grip instant and irresistible. To the children outside, it just looked as if he sat up. Not for any good reason. Maybe he thought the last car had already gone by. It seemed as if an invisible hand had grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked him upward. Celine and Greta dreamed about it every night for years, and even when they were grown and married it still came to mind once every strange feverish night, but they never talked about it with each other, or their husbands, or therapists. They always remembered in detail but never described how Byron’s body seemed to roll in on itself like a chameleon’s tongue. As if he secretly had been walking around all this time with putty in his frame instead of bones. In fact, they hardly talked at all for a long time, no longer offering the lead, content to reticence. Amar threw up, and could never look at another train for the rest of his life without feeling nauseous, and seeing Bryon in that condensed trench folding in half, then half again, then tumbling into a flailing formless shadow that ricocheted up and down, in and out, the outlines becoming looser and abstract. He grew up to buy a house in the suburbs, his office never more than a mile away, and a silent, air-tight Prius to get him there. He nestled himself into the silence, where nothing rattled, trumpeted, or quaked under his feet, and ever after preferred cereal with his morning tea. Keisha moved away that summer. She had a stack of love poems that Byron had stuffed in her backpack, and kept hidden away because she had been twelve and Byron sixteen, and she knew her parents would have killed him. When she grew and went to college, her first apartment, her first house, she kept them in a box of old junk from her bedroom that she pulled out once every few years. Each time she put it away, she felt his image and memory were receiving more of a burial than the strewn debris that had been wrung out in the field. Elias always thought about how it never stopped, not the rumbling, not the sound of metal, not the stench. Even after the train was long gone out of sight, and they saw Byron’s body strewn out and elongated like pennies and quarters, faceless and stretched in thin pieces and ribbons. He thought about how nothing seemed to ever stop. How so much of life turned into a bittersweet blur, yet a chance moment of visceral carnage, random, cruel, pointless, could linger and stain so vividly even until the last day that the pearly gates themselves clanged together like crude, dirty steel. Their parents came home after five, the police were there shortly after. The blood trail dripped on past the horizon for miles. Byron’s mother cried for months and forever grieved. The city held a vigil, and began building chicken wire fences along the track with warning signs. Both the endeavor and the memorial were quickly forgotten. The high school put a special page in the yearbook and honored him at homecoming. They remembered him with varying degrees of misremembered fondness, depending on who you asked. If you asked Elias, he would have told you that Byron had finally gotten inside the circle. The Pennsylvania man no longer worked in the train yard, but drank at the bar every night after work as a janitor, returning home to an empty, dirty apartment, wondering why he had the worst luck in the world, why did life or God hate him so much, pacing within his own lonely circle of loathing. He did not have to clean the blood, or the bits of flesh that were stuck to the undercarriage discovered at the next train stop. He did not untangle the pendulum of gore that he had hung. A sin unknown, never stirred into the brew that rotted him from the inside out every night. Elias came back to visit years later, while his kids were napping at their grandparents, walking outside the circle he had built for himself for just a moment, thinking less about the now and to be and trading it in the hallowed wild fields that quiet evening for what was. He sat down on the hill, sweating in the heat that lingered steadfast in the beginning of fall, wondering if he should have invited his brother. If he would have come. The ground no longer trembled, its shuddering calmed and lapsed into a stillness that was thick and sticky. The grass around the train tracks grew ever taller, as fewer feet tread in that field until even the trains stopped coming by, saddened by the memory. Heavy feet and lingering tears wandered away as far as they could, but the place had no choice but to stay and grow, until the yearning woods reclaimed it all under the omnipotent circle of the cooling sun. A word from the author: "Stuntman" explores the interplay of fairness and social dynamics as a nostalgic latchkey afternoon suddenly shifts, and the ripples of shock and loss reverberate throughout the lives of those present. Daniel Mowery lives in Greensboro, NC with his wife, daughter, and dog. He works in residential construction. He received a BA in Literature & Creative Writing from Catawba College. He has been published in The Chamber Magazine and has upcoming poetry in Spurned Zine by Gnashing Teeth Publishing, and Suburban Witchcraft.

Lisle Donker (back row, second from the right) with daughters Anne, Freda, Dagmar, Maud, and grandchildren circa 1901 Long dresses still make us look short and unhappy. I'll admit what Mum won't: we're not hat people. The red cheeks in the painting? All that hiking and the fresh Alpine air. According to Mum, our Donker ancestors were robust and hardy. Times change. Mum and I live in a basement apartment in a flat town. She goes outside to smoke, gasping as she climbs the stairs. Those red cheeks are not, by the way, rosacea. Mum doesn't believe her condition came from Great-grandma Lisle, but does think I'm responsible for her flare-ups. I'm stress-producing. Like when I stare at the picture, blurt, "What weird skin." "You're being too literal." She argues the painter was making an artistic statement about their—our—blue blood. But they look more green than blue. She shouts me down. "It's the majestic woodland background!" Whatever. Thank God I don't have the Donker complexion, being sun-kissed like my father. He was from Italy and left us to go back. At holiday time, Mum recreates the painting. She sorts my aunts and girl cousins from tall to short then fiddles with the arrangement to cover up indecently short skirts, gravy and wine stains. Traditional black Tyrolean blouses would disguise such sloppiness. Old ways, she preaches, are the best ways. To show off my wide child-birthing Donker hips, Mum pulls hard on the belt of my school uniform. I slap her hand. "Scheiße, hör auf" is the only German I know. She smacks me back. "How else are you to attract a nice boy and continue our line?" Hopes for four granddaughters and a grandson, like in the picture. Wait. What? The littlest child—name unknown; everyone else's is in fancy loopy handwriting on the back—in the black overall-type thing is a boy? Whoa. Great-grandma Lisle apparently told Mum so during their midnight chats and that the boy's name was Maximilian. "Now, wouldn't that be cute for a future Donker?" Me, "No." Karen writes in a low Canadian basement. Her work is in or forthcoming in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Bullshit Lit, Janus Literary, JAKE, L'Esprit Literary Review, Moon Cola Zine, boats against the current, and others. She/her.

All the Single Women were invited to the pilot program of HappilyEverAfter where the newly invented HomoSapiens module would spit out genetic codes to assemble their perfect partner. The single women presented their mile-long list: thick finger-losing never-thinning hair, good teeth, perfect toilet aim, fart-less butt, diamond-gifter etc. They shriek with joy at the sight of their handsome man, but soon their men shrugged away to flirt with younger and more beautiful women. Outraged women ripped each other’s mane before turning away from their foolishness, hair flying like freedom flags. Left to their own device, men melted back into a puddle of primordial soup. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Madagascar before settling in Boston, Christine H. Chen’s fiction work has been published in CRAFT Literary, SmokeLong Quarterly, trampset, The Citron Review, and other journals. She is a grateful recipient of the 2022 Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship and the co-translator from French of the hybrid poem-memoir My Lemon Tree forthcoming in 2023 by Spuyten Duyvil. Her publications can be found at www.christinehchen.com

Wake Up, Sheeple! We bring you RICE IN SPACE, the greatest conspiracy of all time. Space itself, of course, is a giant cover-up but don’t sweat it. Forget the dark side of the moon. Instead, think ‘dark matter.’ What a joke. It’s actually BLACK RICE. South of the equator you’ll find it in specialty shops. In the past, only the rich could afford it. In space, it’s, like, totally invisible against all that inky nothingness. Newsflash! We’ve identified a bumper crop of black rice in and around space debris, aka JUNK. You get the connection between black rice and space debris, don’t you? Ultimate Supremacy. Black rice traditionally feeds the good folk of the warm, water-logged tropics. Due to all-weather issues they now run a cross-border Embassy for Ruined Farmers. Ruined, you say? Why? Because the Powers That Be have outsourced rice growing. Incredible, right? This particular rice is now grown in mini-orbit round all the junk orbiting Earth where, naturally, it’s invisible. Black on black, right? When the time’s right, those (name deleted) will send a Metal Salvage Team, and pay Ruined Farmers to harvest rice. Here’s where it gets interesting. Back on Earth, they’ll hand over the rice to one of the Anti-Famine Groups, which then make food drops on all the war-torn, starving parts of the globe. The grateful army of the starved will snatch the food parcels and rush off to cook said rice, and why not? It’s nutty, wholesome, delicious, a complete meal. Except the same irradiation that’s permitted said rice to grow in a vacuum environment in space will also turn the Grateful near-Dead into willing tools of (name deleted). The Starving will crave more and more. They’ll besiege everyone else’s Embassies and demand citizenship. They’ll do anything to get that rice. Think mayhem. Bosch. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a’ comin’ at ya. Remember, the third Horse is Black, and represents FAMINE. Do you feel the hot breath of that Horse? Do you see the immensity of this vile conspiracy? We suggest the following ACTION PLAN: Donate to your favourite Abolish World Poverty charity. (Anything but rice.) Check the colour of your food. Is it natural? Does it contain additives you don’t understand/need/want? Those numbers in brackets? Do they add up to 999? Here’s the recommended course of action: Run! (signed) Armageddon Outta Here Brenda Anderson's fiction has appeared in various places, including Daily Science Fiction and Wyngraf. She lives in Adelaide, South Australia and tweets irregularly @CinnamonShops

My previous expectations regarding the hereafter were closer to worms than to bareass comrades. Amazingly enough, Death was not it, and Her elevator didn´t serve all floors, hence I went straight down. Though I find it useless to dwell on the fact that I´d never been a man of beliefs, such unexpected displacement rendered me a bit resentful indeed, as integrity is not a synonym for faith, but truth be told, I´ve always had a preference for warm weather. While I have to admit it gets awfully hot in here, there´s not much to worry about – apart from the no-wiggling rule. I call it simple living, amigos, quite different from life above. And while on the subject, I suspect my ticket to hell was not only bought last minute but also by accident; so, apropos my fate, be a good listener in order to be a good judge: Upon my mandatory retirement I yielded to public life, becoming – among a handful of others – Lord Assistant of a town very dear to me. Politics, you see. Was I acquainted back then with its heavy burdens? No, and if I were given a chance to go back in time, what I´d do I cannot tell. Bottom line, it all came down to choosing my battles. That a day would come when illiterate men no longer inhabited this planet I could only dream of; though with powers so limited, the south village – five villages lazily named after their location formed our cross-shaped city – known for growing bananas by men unable to spell ‘bananas’, was where I was aiming. As you might expect, one has no enemies among those provided with rice, gods, and potatoes, still decades can go by without much change, and a rock remains a rock. By no means did I intend to reinvent the wheel; I simply wanted to take education beyond classroom walls. Throughout my career I can assure you, Gentlemen, it barely reached the gates. I was aware of resistance to my plans, but the day I took office I made my point crystal clear: ‘Then – mark my words! – whether or not we find means, we will send those villagers books. If not food and books, nor medicine and books, then books and books.’ That such ambition had its fair share of compromising came as no surprise, as it often required a blind hand to sign here and there, and though my motto had never been ‘the end justifies the means’, I was duty-bound to stick to my ideals. Within a year my rather modest project had drawn a lot of attention to itself, slightly putting us on the map nationwide. Though winning approval had never been on the agenda, only when the clapping was over I realized I had no objections to it; still, knowing such pioneering endeavors would definitely make history I kept on signing, managing, and delegating. Such was the simplicity of life I wondered whether happiness lay somehow in planning itself, but regardless, at that point there was no stopping me, no. From time to time, lovely counselors urged me to reallocate part of the books budget to this and that; on such occasions, a framed article on the wall headlined ‘Third World Unbendable Man’ would reassure me, and once alone, however silly I felt, I must confess I´d always wink back at my picture. With each passing month, increasing knocking on my door along with some quite alarmed faces tried to keep me from focusing, at times begging ‘Sir, please’, at times admonishing ‘Sir, I insist.’ Insist! That very word gave new momentum to my plans: if not threats nor violence – modern times had particular setbacks to heroism – then interruption, goddamn interruption, was this soldier up against. Sophisticated as my mind was, yet discretely prone to comedy, on the door of my office a note read: ‘Knock, knock. Who´s there? Your former boss’. Oh, wit. Some got it, some didn´t; I equally despised all, as ludicrous reports on banana crop losses were now slipping under my door, never to an end! Intimidation had never been my modus operandi, yet unable to control my state of anger, I was on the verge of yelling at every single person who crossed my path had not a thud on the door made me swallow my distress. Opposition, you see. By then I´d become so inured to political shenanigans I was actually curious to see what those conniving pigs had come up with, since rumors about forceful measures had been going around the office. What was my surprise, Gentlemen, to find out that my office was no longer cozy enough, therefore I was taken to the police station – and while the whole situation made me feel acutely embarrassed, the real shock was yet to come. I´ll spare you the gruesome details. Suffice it to say, piles of bodies – ranging in age from newborns to the elderly – had been recently found all over the south village. As for me, upon being accused of their murder, I could but reply ‘Let me remind you, gentlemen, that never in the village have I set foot.' Having a hard time to disguise their state of agitation, my accusers left me to my own conjectures. At that point my best guess was the riots have erupted, rioters have been violently suppressed, and the police needed a scapegoat... but me? Well, I´d never expected I´d live to witness revolution, still one is capable of changing the world under the influence of great fiction. Lack of evidence did not prevent them – pigs – from holding me accountable, so I was told to publicly beg the Lord for forgiveness or else, to which I replied ‘Which Lord? I beg of you more,’, to which they replied ‘Give them something to believe’, to which I replied ‘I have.’ Making history more often than not meant going to hell, yet on their leaving my cell I entreated ‘Let not my death be closure!’ But it wasn´t until later that my fate was sealed, as a tiny note left under my pillow read: ‘They´ve been eating it, sir. The books.’ Jane Camoleze is a fiction writer. Her work has appeared in trampset. She lives in São Paulo.

Pressed within milk-bottle glass, I am the coarse rock to man. My holes are bitty with pilled glitter. I cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Every tawny morning, a corpse with a dab hand; me the wife, opens the cans. Sausage and beans in a pool of tomato syrup, red like chilli oil. He scarfs it down. Then comes a blister. I am the sickness; the pus-rich boil. Born and raised in the North of England, Courtenay Schembri Gray reared her head as a budding poet with a penchant for the macabre. After finding a kinship in the rich verse of Sylvia Plath, Courtenay has amassed a grand amount of publishing credits. Her poetry collection, The Maggot on Maple Street, was published by Anxiety Press in 2023. Twitter: @courtenaywrites WordPress blog: www.courtenayscorner.com

You ask what I want and you look expectant. I want to tell you that I want a day in a hotel room with you. I want a nowhere space, where we talk, and I gaze at you, and you touch my hand, and we laugh, and eat takeaway, and half-watch something, hyperconscious of each other. That sometime late in the day, we would kiss and I would touch you and you would moan into my mouth, but I wouldn’t follow through, I would just bring you to moaning then I would stop. And then you would laugh and do the same to me, a path of discovery. And finally, when it’s too much waiting and wanting, you would ask almost shy if we could, and I’ll want to, so we will, and it’ll be good, and we both know if we carry on for the rest of our lives it could be great. But since you’re waiting for me to answer, I guess… I’ll have a latte? Hobbies Ad hoc hypothesis: every PhD student gets good at something that isn't related to their degree. I know someone who became a marathon runner. She says she runs to take her mind off things, but I wonder sometimes why she needs to take her mind off her work for five hours every day. I know someone else who is a potter. I mean, she doesn't just make pots, she makes all sorts of pottery and has gotten big into chemistry and making her own glazes and everything. She's a historian. I have a friend who got big into cats. I mean, like, hardcore. She travels around the world volunteering on neutering missions. She's not a vet or a nurse. It's just her thing. I'm not gonna say that I wouldn't recommend a PhD though lots of people do say that. I think they're great if you're into long-term projects with limited support and being part of an institution steeped in racism, sexism, and a culture of not giving a single solitary fuck about doctoral students' wellbeing. If your experience was different, well, lucky you. You'd think anyone in that sort of toxic work environment would just say screw it and walk away, but startlingly few of us do. I finished up last year, after four tedious years of feeling totally shit about myself, but that's fine because my PhD hobby has turned into my career. It's amazing how that happens, right? I thought maybe I'd stay in academia. That's what a lot of us think, going into the PhD. We're going to be incredible researchers, we're going to change the world, one reference at a time, and everyone will sit up and listen when we convert our findings into public-facing blog posts. Journalists will beg us for interviews, other institutions will pile job offers at our feet. I don't know what the average drop-off point is for that career aspiration, maybe somewhere in the second year? That's what it was for me, anyway. I was in a meeting with my supervisor, and I mentioned postdoc positions after my PhD, and she just goes 'ah.' Like, not 'ah!' and not 'ah?' Just 'ah.' And I walked out of there knowing, just knowing, I had no chance. It was my hobbies that saved me, just like they save us all. Ad hoc hypothesis, but grounded in anecdotes, which is all social science is anyway, right? Don't tell my supervisor I said that, she'd probably cry or pull all her hair out. Which is maybe why she said ‘ah.’ Anyway, now I'm done, and my hobby is my life. Most of the others I know with a hobby passion haven't turned it into a career move, like I did. The runner still runs, though not as much anymore, because she doesn't need to escape her life for 25 hours a week. The potter, well, can you really turn that into a career? Anyway, she still needs to finish her doctorate, so there's that. But in my line of work, there's plenty to get paid for. I mean, it started as a hobby, and I was paying to learn everything. And then I joined a team, because university is basically still like school, and everyone loves a team player. That's when I got noticed. I got offered an absurdly cushy scholarship by an exclusive old boys club that didn't seem to care that I was female, if I would promise to keep practising and go twice a year to a training camp somewhere warm and sunny, but spend most of each day indoors and promise not to sit out in the sun too much because it might destroy my eyesight. I signed immediately. My work takes me all over the world now. My contract is basically the same. Travel where they tell me, and try not to do anything stupid. Take your pay, go home and eat obscene amounts of sushi. Find some new, low-risk hobbies. Live your life, basically. I'm just saying, if you need a hobby when you're doing your PhD, choose one that turns into a great career. Sharpshooting worked out pretty great for me. Emma Burnett is a recovering academic. She’s big into sports, cats, and being introverted.

A sudden tap on the shoulder made her twitch. She looked up at the scruffy bearded man as she yanked a little oval pill out of his hand without meeting his gaze. Her eyelids became heavy with shadows dancing their last dance of the day. Silence set upon her mind once again. I left not knowing if I’d ever see her again. *** Throughout my thirty years career as an investigative journalist, I dealt with all sorts of stories, from political corruption to serious crimes, always looking for the ulterior motive. Unveiling deliberately concealed truths was my forte. I was perceived as relentless when it came to fighting dishonesty and lack of integrity. My stories led me all over the world, yet somehow this particular story left a profound impact on my psyche. Maybe because it originated in my own neighbourhood or maybe because of her innocence, not really sure, all I knew was that being an observer was no longer enough. *** Her name was Jayce and she was an only child. She told me that she used to live in a land far far away, across the oceans and dark blue seas, over frosty, unfriendly mountains and that she was named after a Greek goddess of healing. Her family believed that having a strong name would help her in the years to come as she was born small and premature. I was never sure what to believe, but occasionally I’d sense a faint imperceptible accent which would disappear as quickly as it would emerge. She was a toddler when her father died at sea, on one of those offshore fishing boats. While other kids spent their days outdoors, on the playgrounds, Jayce grew up with her nose buried in a book. The only memory of her father was a faded children’s picture book she carried with her everywhere. I never got to read its title. No matter the good rapport between us, that one childhood possession was her most cherished treasure and she didn’t trust it with anyone. Jayce was also not a big fan of animals. She didn’t dislike them, she just liked books more. Not sure how or why, but she found herself surrounded by them, nonetheless. The tortoise Donatello, who was named after one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the famous children’s cartoon from the early 1990s, loved eating out of the little girl's hand, especially mulberries. No one could really remember how he came about to live with them. Parrot, whose name remains a mystery to this day, got rescued in the most fortuitous way. This dainty jade-coloured parrot was saved from a tree in the park by none other than her mum who climbed the tree to fetch it. Muki, the orphan bunny was also extricated by Mum during one of their trips to the country. She told me she remembers tiny soft paws on her head and a series of hops he would make in the same pattern: head, shoulder, down her arm to the floor and back. He slept in her bed, ate out of her hands and used her head as a hopping board. He was by far Jayce’s favourite. Sometimes she would gaze at me with those big piercing eyes as if wondering why anyone would be interested in her life. She once revealed as much. It took me a while to realise that I was her island, someone who didn’t judge her, and in a way, she was mine. We were both alone in this world, the only difference was that I had chosen it. It happened on one of those gelid winter mornings when you could feel parts of your body getting numb to cold exposure. As her milky breath reminded her of a smoky curtain rising from an ashtray on her grandfather’s escritoire, she found Muki outside on their balcony, motionless. The carcass prompted her to think of the stiff lifeless animals she sometimes saw on National Geographic. Not long after she discovered Muki’s tiny little body, Parrot broke his neck during one of his frantic indoor flights and was buried in the park from which he got so unexpectedly liberated. The irony of the situation didn’t escape her so she gave Donatello away, never to be seen again. “The thought of losing him as well would have been unbearable”, she admitted in strained voice. A year later, her mum passed away. Her illness was no secret but as any child, Jayce believed Mum was invincible. After that day even books lost their appeal. I still remember the devastation in her eyes when she declared to finally understand why she always favoured books. “In their world, you are but a mere observer of someone else’s pain”. From what I gathered, her mum was her whole world. She was a sickly yet determined lady who came to this country when her husband died, together with her father and Jayce. They had some savings and some distant relatives who helped them settle in. Due to limited language knowledge, Mum worked all sorts of odd jobs, from Paper Towel Sniffer, Face Feeler, Pet Food Taster, Rubbish and Bin Collector to the most recent ones, Laundry Worker and Housekeeper. “The latter ones were the most dignified of her jobs”, Jayce would state matter-of-factly. During one of our interviews, she conveyed feeling ashamed of her mum, especially when she was a teenager. It had taken her a while to understand that her mum dedicated her whole life to securing a better future for her child. “Mum never complained. She would sometimes work three jobs at the time and all I did was ignore her in front of my friends. Once I even denied she was my mum, when she came to pick me up. What child would ever do that?!” By this point she was yelling at me and it took a while for her to calm down. On occasions like these, scruffy bearded man would appear out of nowhere as if having a sixth sense to the needs of his customers. When I asked Jayce where she got the money from, she’d point those big piercing eyes at me, almost with a crazed look on her face, swallow a pill and walk away. Her teenage years were especially challenging. Her behaviour alienated her further from the family and with no kindred-soul to turn to, she closed herself off to the world. Her grandfather did everything he could to help her get out of her shell. I gathered that she was very fond of him. Her eyes would tear up each time she’d mention his name. As her recollections were often incoherent, I was not always certain about the timeline of her stories but I did sense a tremendous guilt when she spoke about him. At one time, and I couldn’t say with an utmost conviction what she told me was true, she blamed herself for her grandfather’s untimely death. “He did for me so much over the years and I’d never acknowledged the fact he lost his daughter at the same time I lost my mum. So selfish, so ungrateful.” Her voice merely a whisper. “Yet he never punished me. Once I ended up in jail for solicitation (that he knew of). I couldn’t have known he was a cop.” The embarrassment in her words was unmeasurable. “Worst thing of all was that he hugged me when he came to bail me out. I don’t understand it.” Through an avalanche of tears, she sobbed: “All is well Jayce, you’ll see. We’ll get through this.” As if she had fallen into a trance, she started swaying back and forth, back and forth in an endless mantra: “All is well Jayce. We’ll get through this.” This was the worst I had ever seen her. The blame she carried on her young shoulders seemed unbearable. When we met, Jayce was already homeless, eating out of the garbage cans and using different means in silencing her tortured mind. In the course of that year, the interviews I conducted with her for the homeless series for my newspaper, struck a chord. Her innocence was remarkable and her pain palpable. Sometimes it was more about the things she didn’t share, as if they were too precious or too defective to be exposed. From time to time I’d come back to check up on her, trying to encourage her to check herself into a rehab centre, offering to support her every step of the way. More often than not, she was rarely lucid enough to recognize me and I knew that her mind wanders through the land, far far away where once lived a girl, just an ordinary little girl with big eyes and with love of books. The dreaded moment arrived and Jayce was nowhere to be found. I still visit the spot where I last saw her, a patched-up army tent tucked under a highway overpass, away from judging eyes, hoping for a miracle. Occasionally I’d check nearby refuge places that are considered a 'bellwether' of homelessness, but to no avail. Thanks to Jayce and stories like hers, homelessness in my city finally got the attention it deserves with residents coalescing to advocate for the forgotten ones. I still see her in the faces of displaced youth wandering our streets, hoping she had found her peace. Andrea Damic who writes from Sydney, Australia has words published or forthcoming in The Dribble Drabble Review, 50 Give or Take (Vine Leaves Press) Anthology, Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine, The Piker Press, The Centifictionist, Spillwords and elsewhere. You can find her on linktr.ee/damicandrea or TW @DamicAndrea.

1. I wore the same green, sleeveless jumpsuit two days in a row. We had landed in another temporary home, this time in a small rural town in Germany. I had survived a very long, five-hour drive from the Frankfurt airport to our new apartment in Hannover. My partner drove. I sat stiffly in the back of the rental car, attending to my cat while trying to ignore my fatigued body. She had been the perfect travel companion, sitting almost noiselessly throughout the seven-hour plane ride. I unzipped her carrier and let her round head peek out. She sat erect, staring regally at the sight in front of her. When we arrived, I met the realtor briefly. He had just handed the keys over to my partner and they were reviewing the wohnungsgeberbestätigung. A very long German word that translates into lease. The well-dressed man turned his attention to greet me, a display of good manners. I was too exhausted to engage in small conversation. “Please forgive me,” I said, my voice scratchy and hoarse. “I’m too tired. I have to rest.” I turned away before he could respond, though I may have heard a surprised “okay.” I closed the bedroom door and let the cat out of the bag. She feared the bare, unknown territory. She made a dash under my sweater and curled inside. I draped another jacket on the floor and I fell asleep on it almost immediately. I woke up some hours later. My partner’s body was next to mine, the cat still curled in a ball under my jacket. It was only mid-afternoon. We refreshed ourselves and went out despite our rumpled clothing. When he visited in April, he mentioned an incomplete building across from our apartment. Four months later, a small discount grocery store and a bakery opened. I stared at the display signs of the baked goods. German words seemed strange, too long with too many letters. How would I ever learn the language? I asked myself in panic. I relied on my partner, who has but very cursory skills. I whispered to him to order a large pretzel and what I thought was a raspberry cheesecake. I’d later add butter brezel to the list of things I liked about Hannover. The list is still quite short. We were the only customers occupying the outdoor tables. Inside, a few elderly folks leisurely enjoyed their coffees and their own afternoon treats. “Is that jello on the cheesecake?” I asked, removing my surgical mask. I poked the top of the cake with my fork. It didn’t jiggle or dance, perhaps from the weight of the raspberries. I took a small bite. The crust wasn’t made from graham crackers, the cheese wasn’t quite cream cheese, and the topping seemed almost watery. “Käsekuchen,” my partner called it by its German name. “It’s not like American cheesecake.” “I gathered,” I said, making a face at the obvious. “The crust is…?” “A shortbread, maybe?” “And is there always jello?” I poked the remains again, for emphasis. “I think so. And the cheese they use is called quark.” Ever the curious philosopher, he had used Google to expand on his knowledge of encyclopedic trivia. “Quark,” I repeated. “Quark, quark.” ~ We live in a building full of older or retired tenants. The only other younger couple live across from us. They were about ten years younger and owned their apartment. They also rented another one of the apartments to a different younger couple, in a different building. Our neighbors could speak in English. I often gave them samples of my baking successes and failures. Successes because it was the exception when my cakes rise well. Failures because the German ingredients did not always translate well for American recipes. I offered the more presentable slices and rolls to them. Linus knew my name. I stood out amongst all of the white Germans living in the complex. He referred to my partner as Richard, a name that bore no resemblance to his actual name. Linus once presented us with his own baked treats. It was his girlfriend’s birthday, and he gave us three slices of käsekuchen. It was almost the exact same cake from the bakery across the street. It was raspberry-flavored, complete with a raspberry red jello topping. I looked at the slightly burnt but very buttery crust. German grocery stores didn’t sell graham crackers, one of those unremarkable items. Grocery stores aren’t universal. The more I stared at the slice, the more I thought about aspic, a relic of the past brought back as kitsch. Germany, I would learn, was not self-aware but was actually stuck in the past. The end of the second world war became the only significant event in Germany’s collective memory. Their history, so thought the white Germans, were not connected to the grammatical tenses of language. They’ve moved on because the war had ended. But neither colonialism nor racism end simply after a war. I ate the slice slowly and almost painfully. I rarely waste food. “You can eat the other slice,” I told my partner. Now it’s rare for me to swing by a German bakery, but my curiosity led me to try baking my own käsekuchen. I looked up a recipe online, to make sure I found a recipe that used quark. When I opened the container, I was surprised it resembled a thick yogurt. The käsekuchen baked quite beautifully, especially without the aspic, jello topping. Unlike the conventional American cheesecake, the golden-brown crust rose like a shield. It was a very dense, somewhat creamy cake. I was grateful for the lemon juice and zest, to offset the peculiar quark. But it still tasted unfamiliar to me. When I served the cake for the next few days, I always made sure my slices were smaller than my partner’s. ~ My partner asked his parents to send us a large box of goods from Arkansas. A box that would serve as a housewarming, Christmas, and birthday gift. The large package arrived with two boxes of graham crackers, local coffee beans, cans of pumpkin pie, baking powder from the United States, and some odds and ends. Customs must have been rough with the box. Packages were ripped and opened. Some of the crackers were already crushed. But he nearly wept in hyperbolic happiness, holding the dented boxes delicately and joyfully. A box of graham crackers contains three packages of cookies. One package makes one crust. I could make six pies. Some pies my partner greedily ate, declining my offer to share some with Linus. When the taste of cheesecake lost its novelty, I managed to cut two generous slices for Linus and his girlfriend. I had also spread a lovely blueberry compote, if somewhat haphazardly topped, over the lemon cheesecake. I tend to think citrus and blueberries, both acidic, aren’t as complementary as recipe developers assume they are, and always omit the extra squeeze of lemon juice for the compote. A fleeting essence of lemon is enough. When Linus lent us his toolbox, the topic of food came up. He had spent a year abroad in the U.S. and marveled at the wonderful food he sampled. Like so many others, he lamented, with a faraway look, that he had gained so much weight upon his return home. I didn’t have a similar story about Germany, so I didn’t regale him with a disingenuous tale. “That is the best cheesecake I’ve ever had,” he texted almost ten minutes later. It must be the crust, I didn’t write back. I’m better at silence than offering small talk. 2. Brown sugar, if available, can be purchased at Asian grocery stores. He found out by enlisting the aid of Google. It is confounding that some of the more colonial grocery stores, like Edeka — the k is an abbreviation for Kolonial — considered them too exotic or a rarity for their shelves. The chain has a very small aisle for Asian ingredients, filled with small boxes of ready-to-eat curries or instant noodles written in bold and offensive, exoticizing eastern script. Some days, brown sugar is available at the two Asian grocery stores we frequent. Other days, they may be completely out of stock. Sometimes they would have a sparing amount of light brown sugar, a product from South Korea. If the light brown sugar is out, there may be a few bags of a darker brown sugar imported from China. It’s only ever one option, not both. At the Asia Supermarkt downtown, I think I hear Vietnamese. The family and workers speak so softly to each other. Their German is louder. The older woman with the long, straight black hair always fixates on me when I enter her shop. Her eyes follow me as I walk down the refrigerated section. I once speculated every person bearing a Vietnamese surname spoke the language simply because I learned and grew up speaking it in Arkansas. It was a childish assumption. When I ran into the daughter of a family friend at the mall, I greeted her in Vietnamese. “Oh, I don’t speak Vietnamese!” she answered with a chuckle. I thought I had misremembered, but she was right. When we played together, we exchanged loud, excited bursts in English. It was the children’s language, free from the ears of our parents. They couldn’t really understand everything we were saying. Vietnamese was the language of the adults. At the checkout line, the woman peered at me through her silver, wire-rimmed glasses, casting a quick glance at my partner. She didn’t wear a mask, but she sat behind a plastic partition. She used short phrases in German. First, a polite greeting. Then the amount. Each time she spoke, she gave me a meaningful look. I nodded at her, hoping my eyes and wrinkled forehead conveyed my masked smile. When she said her third sentence, tschüss, I almost responded with tạm biệt. Instead, I repeated her farewell in German. I used the first bag of German-purchased light brown sugar to make pecan pies for Christmas. A day before, I made more so-called American baked goods to give to Linus. His parents lived nearby, in a cozy home tucked away somewhere in the neighborhood. I brought over very warm apples and pecan pies, each hand covered with a tattered red oven mitt. “I hope your family enjoys them,” I said, carefully placing them on his kitchen counter. “Have you had pecan pie before?” He hadn’t. But it was the apple pie that he praised when I received a text from him days later. ~ He and I had decided to take a weekend trip to Spain, something that we had planned since the spring. A sick cat had delayed our plans. So had my fear about traveling during an ongoing pandemic. This would be the second time I’d been on a plane since the transcontinental move. His professorial salary allowed him to find cat sitters. When the couple came over, I introduced them to the cat. “She looks like an eule, doesn’t she?” I said, pointing to the tortoise-shell cat sitting on one of the yellow plastic IKEA chairs. Her cautious green eyes appraised them suspiciously. The cat is not fond of strangers but will become affectionate when she realizes her human roommates are away. The couple tried to decipher that one German word they couldn’t understand. They asked me to repeat. “Eule,” I said again. It was one of the recurring words on DuoLingo. The mascot of the app is an eule. “An owl.” “Oh!” they both exclaimed. “Eule.” I thought our pronunciation sounded similar. My partner gave them a tour, pointing to her litter box and water and food bowl. They seemed shy and nodded at everything he said. It was just a job after all. Before they left, I told them I’d bake them a pan of cinnamon rolls. To enjoy while they sat around with the cat. “And please take them to share with your family and friends,” I urged. “You can return the pan along with the keys.” Like gracious strangers, they insisted I didn’t need to trouble myself. “I’m happy to,” I said sincerely. “It’s just an extra thank you for taking care of our cat.” Curious if they had something resembling a non-German cinnamon roll, I asked if they had tried one if they had been abroad. An image of Cinnabon floated in my mind. They hadn’t. “I don’t think I’ve tried cinnamon rolls here, but I imagine the ones I’ll be baking might taste different,” I continued. “Maybe sweeter? Especially with the cream cheese frosting.” Before they left, they thanked us for trusting them. “We’d love to try your cinnamon rolls if you decide to make them,” the young lady said. ~ The day before our trip, he returned home from his professorial duties with two bags of very dark brown sugar, the Markt's only option. I cut open the bag and was surprised by the chocolatey, almost rich coffee smell of the sugar. As I prepped the first rise of the rolls, I worried about the taste. I hadn’t ever eaten cinnamon rolls made with dark brown sugar. The very strong scent of the sugar lingered on my mind as I mixed half a cup of it into the softened butter. It seemed impolite to use the cat sitters as taste testers for my experiment. I hesitantly topped the rolls with generous amounts of the cream cheese frosting. The dark brown sugar traced the edges of the swirls like a marble effect. There were ten rolls in the white pan. I thought about trying one but didn’t want to destroy the image of a full pan. I left them to cool. I set out the box of Earl Grey tea and mugs on the counter next to the electric kettle in case they wanted to drink tea with their rolls. ~ They promptly returned the key and the pan the evening we returned. I placed a mask over my face. I had been sequestered with too many unmasked people in the confined airport spaces. Some coughed, some stood too close to me. Before gesturing them inside, I had an impulse to ask them to take off their shoes. My parents rarely had white guests over. When they did, they never asked them to leave their shoes at the door, but their eyes followed the shoes to the table or to the sofa. I shook away the instinct. They would only be inside for a few minutes. They thanked me again for the baked goods. Their families had enjoyed them, they said in delight. “Is it different from the cinnamon rolls you’ve tried here?” I asked. “It’s definitely sweeter,” the man replied. The woman returned the empty and gleaming white pan. I held it close to my chest. They left, and we saw one of them had tracked in a flattened dead mouse. I stared at the creature in rigor mortis. My partner, for once, acted more quickly than I did. He cleaned up the spot and disposed of the body. Wearing shoes inside a home, wearing a mask, I hoped I never again have to be the person demanding hygienic boundaries ever again. A day later, I made another pan of cinnamon rolls. I had leftover cream cheese frosting. In three hours they were finished. The taste is almost like the smell. Too potent. We had trouble polishing off the pan, each uneaten roll drying out. I wished Linus was home. He’d probably take half of the pan. He and his girlfriend had left for a year-long European trip. I wondered where they had parked their RV this time. I only hear about their adventures through my partner. I don’t keep in touch with them. I haven’t used the dark brown sugar since. It is tucked away in one of the cabinets. Perhaps when the holiday season came around, I’d bake a few more pecan pies or make caramel sauce. If I could remember in time, I’d just use less brown sugar. 3. September was a long month. It also marked our first year living in Hannover. I was unhappy here. My university had neglected me. The same university had made my partner reassess if he wanted to remain in academia. The university made our lives hard in different ways. I lost some joy in cooking and baking. I preferred to clean or do laundry, mundane tasks over creative ones. When it was time to go grocery shopping, I vetoed the thirty-minute walk to Edeka. I didn’t want to deal with the crowds, didn’t want to deal with maskless people, didn’t want to hear the guttural sounds of the German language. I didn’t want to witness yet another curious glance from a white German, either their eyes on my tattoos or indulge them in their game of guessing where I might be from. In line at a coffee shop, a man, eavesdropping on our conversation in English, had stood too close to me and asked if I was Vietnamese. In Germany, too, I heard men yell out “me love you long time!” when I pass them. In English, not German. For a country obsessed with maintaining its own nation-state and upholding German citizenship, its inhabitants parade their ignorant allegiance to American culture in the worst possible ways. We began relying on the discount store nearby. Every week, we made sandwiches. My partner became obsessed with the soft bread from the shop. “It really reminds me of Wonder Bread, you know?” he said, one night when we made a stack of sandwiches for dinner. “It’s like sweet white bread.” I didn’t grow up eating Wonder Bread, but I could easily conjure the white packaging with the solid circles in primary colors. The bread he buys from the discount store is wheat with grains. It must be the texture of the breads he is half-heartedly comparing. When he left for his conferences, I relied on the packaged loaf of bread. I didn’t have the energy to cook a meal for myself. I didn’t even want to go to the grocery store, the one barely two minutes away. But I did have a schedule. I’d wake up, make coffee, write or read for my supervisor-less dissertation, run, and continue my writing. In between these tasks, I let myself be distracted by the cat. Maybe I would snack on toast or make myself ramen. With my partner away, I rarely had an appetite. I’m not sure why that is. I have never relished the act of cooking and feeding him. I don’t consider myself domestic. But I could go hours without eating when he’s gone. Maybe it’s the solitude that fills me. We spent too much time together in our shared living space. I forced myself to eat a slice of buttered bread. Finishing it took a couple of hours. The apartment was quiet for a few days. I’d call for the cat. If there was noise, it was from my DuoLingo app. Bier oder wein? I heard constantly. Those words were from the first lesson. I have never actually heard a server ask if I wanted bier oder wein when I sat outside for a meal. “Etwas zu trinken?” I have heard. Rarely do language classes capture everyday living. I did hear bier oder wein uttered once in Germany when we were summoned to the police station to give a witness account of a neighborly dispute. Linus had been assaulted by a tenant downstairs, over an ongoing argument about the noise ordinance. On our way to the grocery store, we found him, shaken and pale, standing outside in front of the building. A large blue bruise was forming atop his right eye. The tenant had attacked him in the garage. Linus was waiting for the police, holding a bag of shattered glassware. He had dropped it when the neighbor headbutted him. Months had passed since the incident. Before leaving for his road trip, he told my partner he may be contacted by the police station. He wanted to punish the neighbor, he told us in a cold voice. He must have misspoken. We each received an ominous, official letter with appointment times and dates in early September. Not attending, the letter threatened, was against the law. At about seven thirty in the morning on the designated day, we walked to the police station, ten minutes away from our apartment. I’ve never been inside a police station before. The door to the reception was locked, and we had to be buzzed in for permission. We could see one of the officers pick up the phone and ask, in German, what we needed. In English, my partner answered that we had appointments. As we were ushered into an office, I glanced at the posters and photos of weapons tacked on the long rows of white walls. There were also black-and-white photos or sketches of wanted people. Many of them had dark hair. The young officer motioned for us to sit down. I took the chair across from him. He was very blond and muscular. Unlike the officers at the front desk, he didn’t wear a uniform. He wore tight jeans, a grey t-shirt, and a light jacket. On his feet were spotless white tennis shoes. He had gelled his hair so that not one strand was loose. He began in German, his face serious. I glanced behind my chair so I could safely roll my eyes. Had Linus not informed his lawyer we couldn’t speak the language? That seemed to be a vital piece of information. When the cop finally realized he couldn’t interrogate us in his language, he guffawed and mumbled something to himself. This will be interesting, I think he said. He began his line of questioning, using names I didn’t know. His cadence changed when the language changed. “I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “Who are these people?” “It’s who you have been referring to as Linus,” he answered, confused. The other name was the name of the accused. “Oh, that’s their surnames?” I hadn’t known. We tried to recall the events. We hadn’t actually witnessed the ordeal, we emphasized. We saw the assaulter enter the front door sometime in the afternoon, but we hadn’t seen the two of them together. Their hostile history was only passed down by Linus. I watched the cop make short scrawls on a notebook. When he tried to communicate and couldn’t find an English equivalent, he relied on Google translate. It was clear he didn’t treat this interrogation as formally as he should have because he couldn’t do his job in English. Our statements and any additional questioning took about fifteen minutes. He asked if we had any questions. “I do,” I piped up. “If you were to contact the assaulter for questioning, would he know that we talked to you as Linus’ witnesses? If there’s a history of violence, I don’t want him to know we spoke to you. I don’t want him to put us on his list.” We had seen the assaulter a few times, our interactions never amounting to more than a simple hello at the front door or in the laundry room. He and his wife seemed to be well-acquainted with the other residents. They all looked to be in the same age range. “I don’t think you should be worried,” he answered, after a pause. “I don’t know these people, but this is just a small dispute between neighbors. I’ll ask Linus’ lawyer.” This did not assuage my fear. He took my concern of possible assault too lightly. He then asked why we were here in Hannover, a question of interest directed to non-German speakers. My partner said he was hired as a professor at a nearby university. “I’m a beamter, too,” my partner responded, much to the cop’s interest. Their jobs were both classified as employees of the state. They held the same titles. “How long do you think you’ll live here?” When the interrogation stopped, we should have been allowed to leave. I couldn’t help myself. “Yes, for how long?” I turned my attention to my partner, staring him down. It was a double question. The cop’s eyes lit up. He must enjoy gossip. “Did I start something?” My partner laughed nervously. As much as he tried to deny his upbringing in white Arkansan culture, his parents had encouraged small talk with people of a particular rank. They also tried to avoid looking rude, mainly to other white people, for networking reasons. He hadn’t yet unlearned this habit. The next question was about learning German. I didn’t join the conversation. I didn’t have a reason to. I sat with my hands folded in my lap. My partner mentioned that he wanted to learn more than just bier oder wein, brot und wasser. The cop laughed and said that bier oder wein was in fact a useful question. I made a face behind my mask and pretended to pick off a piece of invisible lint on my blue polka-dotted jumpsuit. I didn’t want him to see me roll my eyes. Maybe he was trying to practice his English. We were finally allowed to leave. He wished us a good day as he walked us out. I didn’t return the salutation. “He seemed more interested in talking to you than in hearing the details,” I remarked to my partner as we walked home. “It seemed like he didn’t want to do his job.” I was trying to reprimand him for indulging the cop. Aside from a follow-up telephone call from the cop, who discussed our testimonies with Linus’ lawyer and ensured our anonymity would be protected, the case went dormant. On our end, at least. ~ In late September, I spent a few nights alone. As I was finishing up a slice of buttered toast, another dinner, the doorbell rang. I froze. It was rare for someone to ring my doorbell at all. The person was already in the building. They hadn’t buzzed from the outside. I waited, hoping the person would go away. There was a loud knock. I took off my slippers and approached the door as quietly as I could. I heard some angry words. Or maybe German just sounds angry. It’s not a very beautiful language. I stood without movement for some time before I gathered the courage to open the door. No one was standing at the door. I heard footsteps on the second floor, the one below us. A door slam shut. The person lived on the same floor as the person who assaulted Linus. I shut my door quickly, turned off the living room lights, and fled into the bedroom. My hand gripped my cell phone. I called my mother. I had already spoken to her two hours earlier. I rarely call her more than once a day, our allotted time together. She answered on the third ring. “An-nah?” she answered. I grew up thinking this was the only way to pronounce my name, the first syllable a memory of her forgotten Vietnamese name. A wave of foolishness swept over me. I was now in my mid-thirties and called my mother when I was frightened. In my own apartment. All of the anecdotal stories about my unhappiness in Germany led my mother to believe the country was damaging to my livelihood. She concluded every lament and complaint with “don’t leave the house without him” or “come back to the States.” “I’m waiting for him to call,” I finally said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “I’m just bored. Will you talk to me?” Quickly grasping for a different topic, I asked, “Have you been summoned to a police station before?” “Still thinking about your visit? Have you seen that man since?” “Yes. Mainly in the laundry room, in the basement.” “Never speak to him.” Her voice was stern. “Have you been to the police station?” I repeated. “I have been arrested and sent to jail.” “In the United States?” I screeched before reminding myself to keep my voice low. When we moved in, we had been informed the concrete walls were soundproof. Germans took pride in this architectural design, highlighting it as a remarkable feature. No one had informed us that it may just be a result of ruhezeit, the designated quiet times Germans expected every day. “No, no!” she quickly responded. “I never got in trouble in the United States. It was in Vietnam. I was very young. A soldier wanted my chicken, my pet, to cook for their happy hour.” I wanted to laugh, as I usually do whenever my mother offers these glimpses of her previous life in Vietnam without warning. She was a little girl, not yet ten years old, when the war began and would see the ravages of it for another twenty years. She grew up in and with violence. “You were in jail because you refused to give your chicken to a soldier?” I repeated, more for my own understanding. “I was raising the chicken! It was just a couple months old!” my righteous mother exploded. The soldier had requested the police arrest my mother in the afternoon, where she was held captive for a night at the station. She spent another night in a jail cell. Her uncle had bailed her out. Soldiers would retell this story to other villagers, changing two nights into six months of imprisonment. “Did the cops say you were in jail for six months? Is that why the soldiers repeated it?” “The cops don’t care,” she muttered. “The soldiers just wanted to frighten and threaten the others into giving them whatever they wanted.” “Did you have a record?” “No record. But some people were surprised to see me at the markets. I was supposed to be in jail. They thought I broke out of prison.” I thought her last sentence was an appropriate place to laugh. She and I talked for another half an hour. She probably sensed that I was withholding something from her but didn’t push. “What have you been eating while he’s gone?” The topic of food only ever fills up space. “Sometimes ramen, sometimes bread.” She didn’t seem surprised by my underwhelming meals. “Just eat something that fills you up. Sometimes making elaborate dishes is tiresome.” Most of her work now involves feeding her four young grandchildren. A mother and daughter can only hold a telephone conversation for so long. We eventually ran out of things to say to each other. Before hanging up, she again advised me not to leave the house. “I know you say it’s quiet in your neighborhood, but quiet doesn’t mean friendly,” she said. “Or safe.” I stayed up for hours that night, the unknown person keeping me awake. I even tiptoed into the kitchen to feed the cat without turning on the lights. Since that unresolved incident, no residents or neighbors have rung the doorbell or knocked on the door. If there is someone behind the door, it’s a delivery person handing us a package. The only occasion I do see people in the building is when I am walking downstairs. The residents stand outside of their doors, engaged in conversation. They grow quiet when I pass them, barely returning my nod or a “hallo.” When I’m no longer in sight, they resume their chats in a language I have stopped trying to learn. Anna Nguyen is a PhD student and instructor currently in Germany. She likes to blend theoretical creative non-fiction while thinking about food, science, and the mundane without enforcing academic conventions. She hosts a podcast, Critical Literary Consumption. Website: www.ilostmyappetite.com

A curious little songbird cocks its head as I place a box of unopened letters on the Palladio stone table. It’s morning here at the Evergarden. The sun has begun to rise, casting radial lines of warm light that reach just over arched hedges, clipping pastel-colored flowers along the cobblestone paths. I’ve wandered this place for what feels like years. I’ve seen many trees, flowers and stones, but never another person nor an end to this vast space. No matter how far I walked the day before, each morning begins at the same stone table, with the same curious bird, in the same warm light, and with the same pain that this box of letters brings. Although these letters will certainly involve people I used to know and love, the pain doesn’t come from love—at least not anymore. No, not from love, but from gridlock, born from the fear of uncertainty. It’s an odd thing, knowing nothing about your home. What I do know is that significant outcomes are usually the consequence of significant circumstances. Whatever led to the creation of this place and to my inhabiting it cannot be insignificant. And I don’t know if it’s worse to continue spending my days wandering this endless landscape without purpose, or to pay for answers with sorrow and heartbreak that will stay with me until the end of time. I want to know the why of it, but . . . the why could be too much. Maybe finding a new path today will help. I bid the bird farewell and begin walking toward some high arches in the distance. The Evergarden is evergreen and ever in bloom. It has 256 different species of flower, each frozen in time at its blossom’s peak. There are 128 species of trees, 64 species of luscious grass with interleaved blades, and 32 types of stone. Massive stone structures find themselves in the company of deep green vines, which, in turn, intertwine with the bright foliage that rests along the steel arbor trellises. Everything is in perfect order, as if an artist had painted directly onto reality. Rounding the corner of a brick wall, I spot a patch of chrysanthemums nestled against a stone pergola. The chrysanthemums are my favorite. When I was a young girl, I would walk with my mother and father in our garden, where purple, white, and yellow chrysanthemums lined the stone wall. We would each pick one and sit there in the afternoon, counting the petals to see whose bloom had the most. The purple ones always did. Sometimes my father would keep the petals after we counted. He always seemed to collect organic bits from around our garden and house. He was the chief research scientist at his company, NData Medical Technologies, and always studied other species’ secrets of life. There’s a lot we can learn from these beings, Naomi. Some would say they have figured out living better than we have. Many of them have unique properties that can help people like us live longer lives, and who wouldn’t want to live a longer, healthier life if they could? A longer, healthier life. This made me think of Finely, our pet goldfish, who, after an out-of-tank near-death experience left him without much (any) perceptive ability, had managed to reach an astonishing 40 years of age, kept alive by a special food bioengineered by my father. Finely definitely lived a longer life, but not so much a healthier one. One day in our garden, the warm sun felt too hot, and the stone path felt too hard under my feet. I grabbed onto my mother, feeling almost too exhausted to stand. “Oh honey, you look flushed! Why don’t we sit at the patio under some shade?” said my mother as she placed the back of her hand on my forehead. She helped me back to a seat under the covered patio. Soon after that, my father brought several flowers for us to count. I tried to count the petals, but my eyes wouldn’t focus, and I saw too many of them. My father said, “Don’t worry, Naomi, it’s just a little heat exhaustion. Once you feel better, we can spend the whole day out there and even plant new flowers.” I had no idea that day would never come. Over the next few days, my condition worsened. I felt hot all the time, not just in the sun, and my legs felt shaky everywhere, not just on the stone path. I couldn’t even make it out of bed, much less to the patio. I felt . . . frail. My father’s company employed some of the best doctors in the world and had access to cutting-edge diagnostic equipment (some of which were unavailable to the public), so he wasted no time turning my room into a space-age medical laboratory. The familiar warm lamp light in my room was now overpowered by the bright glow of equipment screens dotted with the colors of various LEDs. I could see the machines react to every movement, every breath I took, every heartbeat. They were like a living extension of myself, with every bodily signal being tracked and analyzed in real-time. Being a child at the time, I hadn’t really thought past what a drag this was. I only thought about how much I hated being in bed all day and how, once I was better, I would tell my friends about how I had been so sick that I almost died. But then I’d tell them how my father, the smart doctors, and all the fancy equipment saved me. I thought about this the way a child would: like part of a plotline in some movie. I wasn’t thinking about actually dying. That all started to change the following week. None of the tests or medications seemed to help. I could feel myself getting worse. I couldn’t eat anything, and just thinking about food, even the special treats my mother would bring, would cause waves of nausea to wash over me. Every time I tried to move, I felt like some old machine with all its gears and hinges rusted in place, howling with squeals and shrieks as it struggled to start up. My thoughts shifted from impatience and what I would do after getting better to being scared of getting worse. What if you never get better? This question would sometimes creep into my mind, and I would shut my eyes as hard as I could and shake my head to get rid of it. One day, I remember hearing the muffled sounds of an argument at the foot of my bed as my awareness stumbled through a hazy fog of lethargy. I could barely make out what they were saying. Rapidly progressing . . . alternative . . . dangerous . . . must be explored. Then, and I’m not sure if it was hours or seconds later, I heard the front door slam, and I saw my father storm past my window to his car. Sometime later, I awoke to my father placing a bunch of stickers all over my head, each with a clear wire attached to it that was almost as thin as a strand of hair. He moved quickly but with the jittery energy of someone who hasn’t slept in days. “. . . Dad” I groaned, as both question and acknowledgment. “Just hold on for me, baby. Almost done,” he said. “There we are. Bill? Bill, are we up and running? Yes? Ok, Naomi, I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions. Ok, sweetie? Now don’t worry about the answers being right or wrong. Just say whatever you think of first, ok?” He held up a picture. It was of himself. “Who is this?” he asked. “That’s you, Daddy!” I said. “Very good. Now, what is the first story about me you can think of?” I told a story about how Mother and I had cooked a special breakfast together all morning for him one Father’s Day, but I accidentally used cayenne pepper instead of black pepper. His face got red and sweaty with every bite, but he ate it anyway so I wouldn’t feel bad. “Very good, sweetheart. Now, how about this one?” We went through different pictures for a long time. Some triggered happy memories, others sad, and some were related to scary dreams I had. We also solved school problems and did quizzes. Some strained my brain, like quickly saying the color of letters which spelled different colors (the word “blue” written in red crayon, for example). On one of the machines, I saw a three-dimensional image of my brain. As we went through the questions, I watched as different sections lit up, and pairs of numbers that looked like coordinates were recorded in a table on one side of the screen. “Did I do ok, Daddy?” I asked as I watched my father’s eyes dart around, lost in the data. “You’re perfect, Naomi,” he said without looking away from the screen. “Now, you should get some rest.” I hardly saw my father over the next few days. I heard him drive up to the house but not come inside. I remember seeing my mother stand outside with a worried look in her eyes as my father walked past carrying two big bags, leaving a flurry of chrysanthemum petals in his wake. One evening, I stirred awake to muted yelling outside my room. It was my parents. You can’t . . . lose you both . . . have to try. Then the front door slammed shut, rattling the house, which shot me out of the hazy fog into cold awareness. After the sound of my father’s car faded away, all I could hear was my mother weeping. She stood outside my room for a long time. “Mommy?” I called out. It must have startled her as she drew in a sharp breath. I can still remember the sound of it, the sharp, sudden inhale of someone being ripped out of an entire lifetime of emotions they just experienced but did not have the chance to process. After a minute, the door slowly opened, and she came in and sat on the bed. “Naomi, honey, I . . . need to talk to you.” I remember her eyes were puffy, illuminated by the soft glow of blue LEDs as though the equipment was trying to help tell a story of despair. “Where’s Dad?” I asked. My mother looked down at my hand as she held it. “He . . . something has come up with his work, and . . .” she looked up at me. “He has to go away for a while.” I felt completely frozen. I could feel the blood drain from my face, and my hands turned cold. My initial shock sank into the depths of the large pit in my stomach, making room for fear. Thoughts flew through my mind at a rate I could not control. Why was he really leaving? Did he know I would die and couldn’t bear to be around when it happened? He just . . . gave up? What’s going to happen to me? I started to hyperventilate; the escalating hums and beeps of the equipment echoed my panic. “Breathe, Naomi. It’s going to be ok,” said my mother, adjusting one of the dials on a machine. My reaction seemed to snap her out of her own anguish. My breathing calmed, but tears began streaming down my cheeks. I asked, “Is he leaving because he . . . thinks I’m going to die?” My mother winced with a pang of sadness that stabbed to a depth I may never truly understand. She looked down for a moment as she took a deep breath, her bottom lip quivering, and then met my eyes with a resolute gaze. “Sweetie, you are not going to die. We’re still just trying to figure out how to make you better, and your father’s trip may be able to help with that. He’s doing it for you, Naomi. He would do anything for you, and so would I. We both love you so much.” Mother’s voice wavered as tears of her own pockmarked the bedsheet. “Now, please, try to get some rest. The medicine should be kicking in.” The days felt different after my father left. They felt . . . indistinguishable, like frames of film blurred at the edges to the point where you can’t tell where one ends, and the next begins. Doctors seemed to float around in my bleary state of existence. Their movements were choppy, like random pages missing from a flipbook. At some point, the gyrations of doctors and colors began to settle, like how water swirled in a glass comes to a rest. I remember everyone standing around my bed, and then, suddenly, they were gone, except for my mother, who held a bright purple and white chrysanthemum. She smiled and sat down on the bed like she had the night she told me my father had left, except she looked tranquil, and her eyes held a steady gaze of adoration. She placed the flower in my hands. “This one is for you, Naomi. Let’s count the petals together.” Each number she spoke sounded more distant than the last as the light in the room started to fade away from the edges, leaving only the brilliance of the flower, shimmering as if under the warm sunlight in our garden. I began to walk toward the flower, following Mother’s voice, which slipped further away until it was a distant echo. I return to the table at the Evergarden, where I am once again greeted by the little blue bird. I take the first envelope out of the box, open it, and remove the letter. My heart starts to crawl into my throat. Naomi, If you are reading this, then you have made it to the place I call the Evergarden: the best parts of our home garden, scaled up to a large, beautiful place where a lifetime of discovery waits. I am so sorry I had to leave, but I could think of no other way to save you. After we exhausted every conventional treatment method to no effect, your illness was deemed terminal. I considered this a valid assessment in the realm of conventional treatment, but as a medical professional, I have never limited myself to this realm. The need to shift from conventional to unconventional was clear, and so I began searching for other solutions. My company was in the early phases of experimental research into transferring the data and behavioral tree of mammalian brains into a virtual environment where the subject could continue life with all their memories and personality traits intact. It is the chance to live forever and still feel like you. I started to map all the addresses of stored memories in your mind and model your emotional and behavioral circuitry. This process went extremely well, and we were confident we had enough information about your brain to successfully locate your stored memories for extraction and build a model that would emulate your personality and decision-making logic; we had your behavior and a map of your data. The only piece we had not solved was the actual transfer of memory data. In every test prior, extensive inflammation of the subject’s brain would cause data corruption of both the transferred and remaining portions of the data, manifesting false memories and aggressive behavior. A vegetative state and, ultimately, death then followed. We worked day and night to figure out how to transfer the data while maintaining its integrity throughout the process, again exhausting all conventional methods. One evening in the lab, I noticed a tingling sensation on some of my fingers. I had been deep in thought, unconsciously fiddling with something in my pocket. Chrysanthemum petals. I discovered the sensation was due to compounds in Chrysanthemum indicum, which contain anti-inflammatory properties different from those of typical steroidal and non-steroidal drugs. I wondered if a concentrated form of the extract, if potent enough, could be used to keep the swelling at a level that would not interfere with the transfer process. I gathered as many of the purple chrysanthemums from our garden as I could and formulated an incredibly potent compound. I was confident in this new approach; however, the problem of testing it remained. Advancing studies to the human testing stage would take a long time, and we could not afford to wait. At the same time, I could not bear the thought of the potential side effects corrupted data would create for you. I had to be sure it would work, so I decided to test it on myself. Telling your mother that I would not be coming back was the hardest thing in the world, but this was the only way I could be sure. As you now know, the test was a success. However, there was another complication. Because there was no time to accurately model my behavior, only the data of my memories were transferred, which you have here in these letters. This essentially means that I am a read-only dataset that you cannot interact with, but in an effort to still be relevant in your later years, I spent my final days thinking about what our family’s life together would have been and the strong person you are and will continue to be. I hope you still feel like a part of me is with you, not just as a record of the past but also as a companion in the future. When her time comes, your mother will join us, and I look forward to the day when we can count the petals on the flowers in our garden. I love you with all my heart, Dad I fold the letter and place it back into the box. Although I now know the tears on my face are produced by an emotional algorithm, they still feel real as a gentle breeze dries them, cooling my skin. I look up at the bird, which in turn cocks its head. And just as I begin to think about this as rudimentary programmed behavior, a gust of manufactured wind carries a soft howl from the distance, which the bird immediately turns to and flies away. As it disappears into the orange light, guided by song, the feeling of hope from knowing it might find who it’s been waiting for fades away into a terrible awareness. Elliott Dahle is a software engineer and indie game developer living in Austin, Texas. He enjoys writing science fiction and horror stories.